Cornel West, “Frederic Jameson's Marxist
Cornel West, “Frederic Jameson’s Marxist Hermeneutics,” boundary 2 11 (1) (1982), 177-200.* Fredric Jameson is the most challenging American Marxist hermeneutical thinker on the present scene. His ingenious interpretations (prior to accessible translations) of major figures of the Frankfurt School, Russian formalism, French structuralism and poststructuralism as well as of Georg Lukàcs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Max Weber and Louis Marin are significant contributions to the intellectual history of twentieth century Marxist and European thought. Jameson's treatments of the development of the novel, the Surrealist movement, of Continental writers such as Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Alessandro Manzoni, and Robbe Grillet, and of American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Kenneth Burke and Ursula LeGuin, constitute powerful political readings. Furthermore, his adamantly anti-philosophical form of Marxist hermeneutics puts forward an American Aufhebung of poststructuralism which merits close scrutiny. In this essay I shall highlight Jameson's impressive intellectual achievements, specific theoretical flaws, and particular political shortcomings by focusing on the philosophical concerns and ideological aims in his trilogy.1 Jameson is first and foremost a loyal, though critical, disciple of * Note: I would like to extend my gratitude to Jonathan Arac, Stanley Aronowitz, Paul Bové, Fredric Jameson, David Langston, Michael Sprinker and Anders Stephanson for their incisive comments and criticisms of an earlier version of this essay.
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