Periodizing Jameson: Dialectics, the University, and the Desire for Narrative

301 Pages·2014·1.566 MB·English

by  Philip E. Wegner

Periodizing Ja meson
8
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A complete list of titles begins on p. 270.
Periodizing Jameson
Dialectics, the University, and
the Desire for Narrative
Phillip E. Wegner
northwestern university press ❘ evanston, illinois
Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Copyright © 2014 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2014.
All rights reserved.
Digital Printing
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wegner, Phillip E., 1964– author.
Periodizing Jameson : dialectics, the university, and the desire for narrative /
Phillip E. Wegner.
pages cm — (Flashpoints)
ISBN 978-0-8101-2981-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Jameson, Fredric. 2. Marxist criticism. 3. Postmodernism (Literature) 4. Marxian
school of sociology. 5. Dialectical materialism. I. Title. II. Series: FlashPoints
(Evanston, Ill.)
PN75.J36W44 2014
801.95092—dc23
2014012369
For two teachers
Fredric Jameson
and
John Hartzog
Jag ska försöka komma ihåg vad vi talat om.
—Riddaren Antonius Block, in Ingmar Bergman’s Det Sjunde Inseglet
(The Seventh Seal)

The “desire for Marx” can therefore also be called a
desire for narrative, if by this we understand, not some
vacuous concept of “linearity” or even telos, but rather the
impossible attempt to give representation to the multiple and
incommensurable temporalities in which each of us exists.
—Fredric Jameson, introduction to The Ideologies of Theory,
volume 1 (1988)

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Preface: To Name the System xv
Introduction: Betraying Jameson 3
part i. mediations; or, the triumph of theory
1. The Return of Narrative (1960s) 27
2. Theoretical Modernisms (1970s) 43
3. Symptomologies and Intimations of the Global
(1980s–1990s) 60
interlude: from the symbolic to the real 81
part ii. untimely modernisms
4. “The Point Is . . .”: On the Four Conditions of Marxist
Cultural Studies 121
5. Unfinished Business: On the Dialectic of the University in
Late Capitalism 153