The Jamesonian Unconscious: The Aesthetics of Marxist Theory

295 Pages·1995·16.945 MB·English

by  Clint Burnham

THE JAMESONIAN UNCONSCIOUS
The Aesthetics
of Marxist Theory
Clint Burnham
Duke University Press
Durham and London
1995
THE
~JAMESONIAN
UNCONSCIOUS
POST-CONTEMPORARY INTERVENTIONS
Series Editors: Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson
© 1995 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper oc
Designed by Cherie H. Wesunoreland and typeset in Plantin Light
with Gill Sans display by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear
on the last printed page of this book.
FOR DANIEL JONES. 1959-1994.
in remembrance
and love
CONTENTS
'.'
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
Abbreviations xxi
I MARXISM TODAY I
virtual marxism ... why marxism (today)? ... pragmatic objections ... technologies
of marxism ... reading marxism reading. .. returning to normal. .. liberalism and
marxism ... the two dints
2 POSTMODERN MARXISM 3 I
apostrophe's' ... reading marxism (ii) ... dissing for tenure ... /for example I, for ex-
ample. .. examples, ii. .. stretching language ... digressing as example ... seriality and
inftation ... footnote as commodity. .. ontinkel: the figure as illusion ... casual rela-
tions ... barbarically long quotations ... non-place ... form and content. .. utopia and
emotion. .. style and the man. .. the fetish of the category. .. elevated language ... in
defense of sartre as hero. .. against clarity. .. no subject
3 THE JAMESON IAN UNCONSCIOUS 76
always red ... molar/molecular antagonisms ... and yet, ... a materialist theory of
power...a briefforay into novels ... the power of materialism ... marxism and orien
talism ... truth, error, contradictions ... dialogic marxism. .. a return to althusser ...
viii contents
•
overdetermination explained, once and for all ... shrunken dwarfs, expanded ... de
sire ... three interpretive levels ... acting out your aggression .. .lukilcs: or, marxism
and masochism ... sex and money. .. dead soldiers ... morganatic marriages ... conrad
and "easy morality" ... a theory of sediment of theory. .. mass culture, at last...four
conrads
.. THE HYSTERIA OF MASS CULTURE 145
critical mass ... can the skatepunk speak? ... homi don't play that...a sublime quilt...
fieldwork in mass culture ... platform sneakers remix ... the filmic object...miss cul
ture ... reification: or, the jaws oflife ... search for a fi~re ... the heist of class ... cu-
rious georg ... triadic allegories of totality. .. allegorizing interpretation ... ethics and
hitchcocK ... the existence of jameson ... the desire for nostalgia ... the end of the
chapter. .. postrnodernism is always in taste ... vertiginous slime ... ftannelized jame-
son ... the revenge of the content ... postrnodernism as liberalism ... prolegomena to
any fugue of the postrnodern ... taste and liberalism ... the rhetoric of taste ... sublime
hysteria
CONCLUSION: THE SYNOPTIC JAMESON 243
Works Cited 25 1
Index 269
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
'.~
This book began as a dissertation I wrote while at York University in
Toronto. So my greatest debt is to my Ph.D. supervisory committee: Ian
Sowton, Terry Goldie, and Kim Michasiw. Ian is a wonderfully progressive
and gentle teacher, and he has taught two or three generations of Canadian
intellectuals. I learned a lot working with him, not least to trust my own
idiosyncratic methodologies and style. Terry and Kim both kept me working
to the edge of my capabilities, and encouraged me to see the relevance of
Nine Inch Nails to Hegelian Marxism. My outside examiners, loan Davies
and Jed Rasula, also provided readings that were both sympathetic and
challenging. I don't think I could have written a dissertation and a book on
Jameson without the strong support of my committee.
But writing takes place in a larger context than the seminar room or
library, and I received support, arguments, and interventions from a lot of
people in the Toronto intellectual and writing communities. In particular,
the comradeship of the following is gratefully noted: Ken Wilson, Christine
Ramsey, Julie Sawatsky, Steve McCaffery, Jinnean Barnard, Peter Fitting,
Kevin Connolly, Karen Mac Cormack, Victor Coleman, Libby Scheier,
Lola Lemire Tostevin, jwcurry, Stan Fogel, Christopher Dewdney, Stuart
Ross, Chris Wodsku, Jim Smith, Graham Barron, Lance La Rocque, and, of
course, Paul Mergler. I'd also like to thank the anonymous readers at Duke
University Press, and my editor, Reynolds Smith.
x acknowled!Wlents
Last of all, I'd like to acknowledge the funding I received during the
writing of the dissertation in the form of a doctoral fellowship from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
C. B.