The death of Fred Jameson was probably one of the foremost Marxist literary critics, cultural hunter-gatherers, and cultural trends analyzers of our times. He will not be severely missed but also his death marks the end of an era. It is the least I could do – for us and our sporadic readers to manage to celebrate his work on the timespacewarps blog. In bleak times like ours, one has to keep him close. Also have to mention that this month has see the departure of two important and revolutionary figures, each very different but dedicated to emancipatory politics and a more equal and just world, Jameson and German label-founder Achim Szepanski.
Even those who never read any of the many and important books he wrote will recognized the often-quoted phrase: “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. It was slightly modified by Mark Fisher and attributed to both Jameson and Zizek. Many have tried to trace it to articles such as the 1979 H. Bruce Franklin’s critique of J.G. Ballard in his essay “What Are We to Make of J. G. Ballard’s Apocalypse?”, there is even a Reddit on it. Another attribution is to his 1980s text (probably his most famous one) – Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (published in 1984 in New Left Review). Yep, he was a white cis dude, but his work was still unavoidable and hard to ignore. With his interest in radical theatre practitioner and playwright Bertolt Brecht, he managed to rekindle and update Marxist critique – and was together with Professor Darko Suvin (who is still alive and well and who defined SF famously as the literature of cognitive estrangement) one of the founders of the modern field of science fiction studies and utopian studies (check Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions). It is high time to start looking back at Fred Jameson’s work which if it is sometimes winded and hard to parse – still remains essential. To go back on that quote here is a version of it:
“It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations. I have come to think that the word postmodern ought to be reserved for thoughts of this kind.” (Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism)
Jameson at 90 was a dossier organized by Verso Publishing this spring in celebration of his Birthday. Check it here (there is a great free text to read by Daniel Hartley, Ian Buchanan, Alberto Toscano, Sianne Ngai, Gerry Canavan, Anna Kornbluh, Kristin Ross and many other important thinkers in their own right.
For ease of sharing, I will post a few of the TW detailing his work and sharing articles or dossiers dedicated to Jameson.
Read here an interview with Fred Jameson by Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda.
TimeSpace Warps 