The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act

312 Pages·2006·10.91 MB·English

by  Fredric Jameson

•
•
Th e Pol it ical Unconscious
Fredric Jameson
..
Literary Criticism/Critical Theory
ISBN 0- 415- 28751- 0
II Ill
II Ill
9 780 41 5 287517
• • •

Fredric
Jameson
The Political Unconscious
Narrative as a socially symbolic act
u"tL~,
~~:
: London and New York
< v
-4 s s '
First published in 1981 by Methuen & Co. Ltd
First published by Routledge 1983
First published in Routledge Classics 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Routledge is an imprint oft he Taylor a( Francis Group
© 1981 Cornell University Press
Typeset in joanna by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn
All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN o-415-28750-2 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-28751-0 (pbk)
0 rna belle guerriere!

CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act
2 Magical Narratives: On the Dialectical Use of Genre
Criticism 8g
3 Realism and Desire: Balzac and the Problem of the
Su~ect 137
4 Authentic Ressentiment: Generic Discontinuities and
ldeologemes in the "Experimental" Novels of
George Gissing 172
5 Romance and Reification: Plot Construction and
Ideological Closure in Joseph Conrad 194
6 Conclusion: The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology 271
INDEX
To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.
-WITTGENSTEIN
Since the world expressed by the total system of concepts is
the world as society represents it to itself, only society can
furnish the generalized notions according to which such a
world must be represented .... Since the universe exists only
insofar as it is thought, and since it can be thought totally only
by society itself, it takes its place within society, becomes an
element of its inner life, and society may thus be seen as that
total genus beyond which nothing else exists. The very con
cept of totality is but the abstract form of the concept of
society: that whole which includes all things, that supreme
class under which all other classes must be subsumed.
-DURKHEIM