Fredric Jameson

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Homer
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
Fredric Jameson

Fredric Jameson (b. 14 April 1934) is North America’s leading Marxist cultural theorist and critic. He is the Knut Schmidt-Nielsen Professor of Comparative Literature, Professor of Romance Studies (French) and Director of the Institute for Critical Theory at Duke University, where he has worked since 1985. Jameson has been the recipient of many awards throughout his career; some of the most recent and prestigious include the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize in recognition for, in the words of the awarding committee, his career-long research “on the relation between social formations and cultural forms.” Jameson was a central figure in the renaissance of Marxist literary criticism in the United States in the 1970s, and with his students at the University in California, San Diego, he helped to found the Marxist Literary Group (MLG) in 1969. In the early 1980s his essays on postmodernity and late capitalism were seminal in grounding the concept of postmodernity in transformation in contemporary capitalism and became the center of intense debates. Postcolonial critics such as Simon During criticized Jameson, and Marxist criticism generally, for his Eurocentrism and refusal to take into account the subaltern experience (see During 1987, cited under Critical Readings: Selected Articles). This may seem to be a particularly misplaced criticism of Jameson, whose work has always engaged with non-anglophone traditions, and has also been extremely influential in Latin America, China, and many other parts of the globe. In the mid-1980s, Jameson lectured in Beijing. These lectures, collected in Postmodernism and Cultural Theories (Jameson 1987, cited under Collected Essays and Lectures), were enormously influential on younger Chinese intellectuals and understandings of postmodernity in China. Since his semi-retirement, Jameson has been compiling many of his articles for a monumental six-volume project, The Poetics of Social Forms; a literary project that was first announced with the publication of Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Jameson 1991, cited under Postmodernism) and is surely without comparison today. The exact structure of the project is not clear, but at least four volumes have been published to date: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991); Archaeologies of the Future (Jameson 2005, cited under Science Fiction and Utopia); The Modernist Papers (Jameson 2007, cited under Modernism); and The Antinomies of Realism (Jameson 2013, cited under Realism). In addition, A Singular Modernity (Jameson 2002, cited under Modernism) provides “the theoretical section of the antepenultimate volume,” and a footnote in the Hegel book promises Volume 2 will be on allegory and titled Overtone: The Harmonics of Allegory. As Sara Danius described it in her address to the Holberg committee, The Poetics of Social Forms attempts to “provide a general history of aesthetic forms, at the same time seeking to show how this history can be read in tandem with a history of social and economic formations,” (see the Archives section for further details).

The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Programme ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Visual And Performing Arts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of

M. Fabius Quintilianus was a prominent orator, declaimer, and teacher of eloquence in the first century ce. After his retirement he wrote the Institutio oratoria, a unique treatise in Antiquity because it is a handbook of rhetoric and an educational treatise in one. Quintilian’s fame and influence are not only based on the Institutio, but also on the two collections of Declamations which were attributed to him in late Antiquity. The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian aims to present Quintilian’s Institutio as a key treatise in the history of Graeco-Roman rhetoric and its influence on the theory and practice of rhetoric and education, from late Antiquity until the present day. It contains chapters on Quintilian’s educational programme, his concepts and classifications of rhetoric, his discussion of the five canons of rhetoric, his style, his views on literary criticism, declamation, and the relationship between rhetoric and law, and the importance of the visual and performing arts in his work. His huge legacy is presented in successive chapters devoted to Quintilian in late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance, Northern Europe during the Renaissance, Europe from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century, and the United States of America. There are also chapters devoted to the biographical tradition, the history of printed editions, and modern assessments of Quintilian. The twenty-one authors of the chapters represent a wide range of expertise and scholarly traditions and thus offer a unique mixture of current approaches to Quintilian from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Some Thoughts on the Mutual Displacements/Appropriations/Accommodations of Culture in Several Fictions by Toni Morrison, Cynthia Ozick, and Grace Paley

Prospects ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 387-404
Author(s):  
Emily Miller Budick
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cynthia Ozick ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History

InPlaying in the Dark, Toni Morrison sets out to chart a new “geography” in literary criticism, to provide a “map” for locating what she calls the “Africanist” presence in the American literary tradition. The assumption of Americanist critics, she argues, has been that “traditional, canonical American literature is free of, uninformed, and unshaped by the fourhundred-year-old presence of, first, Africans and then, African Americans in the United States. It assumes that this presence — which shaped the body politic, the Constitution, and the entire history of the culture — has had no significant place or consequence in the origin and development of that culture's literature.” For Morrison, recording the Africanist presence produces nothing less than an absolute revision of our notion of what constitutes the American literary tradition.

Context Rocks!

PMLA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
pp. 579-587
Author(s):  
Amy J. Elias
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Rolling Stock ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Dead End ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Crowe Ransom ◽  
Vanderbilt University

Searching for the phrase “appreciation of literature” in Google's Ngram Viewer shows that the phrase reached its peak usage in English publications between 1936 and 1937 and then nosedived after those years. It's interesting to speculate about what came together at that time. In 1937, DC Thomson published the first issue of The Dandy, one of the best selling comics in the history of British pop culture and the third-longest-running comics in the world; Daffy Duck debuted in the animated short Porky's Duck Hunt, directed by Tex Avery for the Looney Tunes series; and Detective Comics commenced publication. A year later, Superman went public. But 1937 also was the year that John Crowe Ransom left Vanderbilt University for Kenyon College and published “Criticism, Inc.” in The Virginia Quarterly Review. The target of Ransom's ire is “moralist” historical criticism, into which camp he puts actual morality purveyors, the new humanists and the new leftists (those purveyors of what we often now call symptomatic readings), and “personal registrations” or unfettered appreciation (597). While of course correlation is not causation, 1937 might mark an important fork in the subterranean lines in the United States, where the two trains of comics fandom and literary criticism begin to go in different directions, on trajectories that take them farther apart during and after World War II: comics toward the aesthetics of appreciation, and criticism to increasingly professionalized literary analysis. Critics today seem to be returning to this junction, asking how comics and criticism might reunite. Perhaps that convergence is happening now, through approaches variously known as surface reading (Best and Marcus), reparative reading (Sedgwick), close reading, postcritique (Felski, Limits), thin description (Love), or redescription (Latour)—each of which encourages professionalized critical appraisal without taking rolling stock into dead-end symptomatic tunnels. Perhaps it is through some other approach, one that may look like Hillary Chute's Why Comics?

scholarly journals Problem of Periodization and Some Aspects of the Late Work of F. Bret Hart

2021 ◽  
pp. 244-258
Author(s):  
A. B. Tanaseichuk ◽  
O. Yu. Osmukhina
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Late Stage ◽  
American Studies ◽  
Late Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
First Time

The article is devoted to the discussion of the problem of periodization and the study of the features of the late stage of the work of the outstanding American prose writer Francis Bret Hart (1836—1902). The relevance of the article is due to the need to build a coherent and consistent history of the development of American literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, an important part of which is the writer’s prose heritage. The authors comprehend Western (J. Stewart, G. Scharnhorst, A. Nissen and others) and domestic (A. V. Vaschenko, L. P. Grossman, P. E. Schegolev, A. I. Startsev, V. A. Libman, E. Yu. Rogonova, A. B. Tanaseichuk) studies on biography and various aspects of the prose writer. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that for the first time in American studies a gap in the reception of F. Bret Hart's work was filled (the absence of clear criteria for periodization); the tradition of a disdainful attitude to the European period of his work, established in American literary criticism, is refuted, in particular, it is proved that in the stories and novels of the 1880s and 1890s Bret Hart boldly goes beyond the usual themes and images: the “Californian theme”, traditional for his early prose, takes on a new dimension — in the aspect of understanding national and gender psychology (“Maruga”); amorous and melodramatic collisions are combined with an appeal to science fiction (“The Secret of the Hacienda”).

scholarly journals Art Addressing Consumerism in the Age of Late Capitalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (61) ◽  
pp. 39-51
Author(s):  
Polona Tratnik
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Political Art ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Cultural Logic ◽  
Artistic Interventions ◽  
Fredric Jameson ◽  
Globalized World

The globalized world is still in the phase of late capitalism, signified by the establishment of multinational corporations, globalized markets and work, mass consumerism, and the fluid flow of capital. The question of the criticism of art towards the capitalist system, its ideology and consumerism is therefore still current and is readdressed in this contribution. Considering this issue, the recurrent theoretical reference is American materialist aesthetician Fredric Jameson, who was among the first to define culture and art in the context of late capitalism. In the article the author revises Jameson’s critique of art addressing consumerism and demonstrates that he did not consider the relevance of the means of consumption as regards the cultural logic of late capitalism. She claims that in order to open space to examine contemporary art as being critical towards consumerism, one also needs to consider the ontological changes that have occurred to art and pay attention to performative art, while Jameson was still focused on a representational mode of art. By being performative and also setting out actions outside of spaces that were traditionally designed for art, in the space meant for consumption, art has much a better chance to act politically, which Jameson wished to see from art which addresses consumerism but did not. The author argues that if one is to seek critical or political art in late capitalism, those would be the cases of artistic interventions into the means of consumption.

History of Astronomy and Space Science in the Islamic World

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Matthias Determann
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Central Place ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Global Science ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Printed Materials

Throughout Islamic history, important rituals have been tightly connected to the movement of celestial bodies. Daily prayers have been aligned with the place of the sun in the sky. Finding the direction of Mecca has required many believers to look at the stars or, more recently, connect to a satellite. The beginnings of months, including Ramadan, have depended on the visibility of the moon. Astronomy has thus had a central place in Islamic culture. Astronomers have contributed to the construction and running of mosques, taught in madrasas, and advised rulers. In addition, they have also contributed to global science through planetary models and calculation. In the centuries after the Arab conquests, Muslim scholars translated and built on earlier learning in the areas that Islam reached. They thus also served as a bridge between the geocentric model of Ptolemy and the heliocentrism of Nicolaus Copernicus in Europe. In modern and contemporary times, the legacy of such medieval achievements has formed a valuable resource for countering racism and Islamophobia. For all of these reasons, the history of astronomy in the Muslim world has attracted much attention, arguably even more than botany or zoology, for instance. With few exceptions, most historians have specialized either in the medieval or the modern period. This has to do in part with the huge differences in cosmologies and technologies between the 12th and the 20th centuries. Another reason for this temporal specialization has been differences in source material: manuscripts versus typed and printed materials. The study of modern astroculture, including science fiction, also requires methods of analysis from outside of the history of mathematical astronomy, such as art and literary criticism. However, some scholars arguably neglected the modern period due to the belief that the greatest flourishing of Islam and its science occurred during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, we also have some works that cover scientific developments over different periods.

Creation in American Popular Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 143-161
Author(s):  
James F. McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Music Television ◽  
History Of ◽  
Television Film

The biblical creation accounts have always held the interest of interpreters, but during the history of the United States, major social and scientific changes have framed and profoundly influenced interpretations. Study of the reception history of the early chapters of Genesis provides ample illustration of the mutual interplay of influence between scriptural text and culture, artist and consumer, science and society, in a tangled web whose threads help us to understand our history and ultimately ourselves, as well as hopefully the texts in Genesis. There is benefit to focusing on music, television, film, and visual art that engages with the text of Genesis as well as with controversies about those stories at the divergence between those sacred texts as traditionally understood and aspects of modern life including (but not limited to) the natural sciences. In doing so we can obtain a clearer picture of the cultural impact and importance of Genesis and issues surrounding its interpretation than is easily accessible through a direct look at debates about either the text or modern science. The controversies themselves are often so entangled and heated as to thwart attempts at analysis. The ripples of broader cultural impact on the arts, and in genres of storytelling such as science fiction, illuminate the bigger picture as well as clarifying what aspects of the interpretation of these texts persist in driving controversy and maintaining the attention of North American culture in particular.

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