The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act / Edition 1

by Fredric Jameson

Overview

"Monumental.... Its learning and range of references are exceeded only be the imperial embrace of its complex argument, whose elaboration never imposes a sacrifice of clarity.... Indispensable for all university and college libraries."
― Choice

Fredric Jameson, in The Political Unconscious, opposes the view that literary creation can take place in isolation from its political context. He asserts the priority of the political interpretation of literary texts, claiming it to be at the center of all reading and understanding, not just a supplement or auxiliary to other methods current today.

Jameson supports his thesis by looking closely at the nature of interpretation. Our understanding, he says, is colored by the concepts and categories that we inherit from our culture's interpretive tradition and that we use to comprehend what we read. How then can the literature of other ages be understood by readers from a present that is culturally so different from the past? Marxism lies at the foundation of Jameson's answer, because it conceives of history as a single collective narrative that links past and present; Marxist literary criticism reveals the unity of that uninterrupted narrative.

Jameson applies his interpretive theory to nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts, including the works of Balzac, Gissing, and Conrad. Throughout, he considers other interpretive approaches to the works he discusses, assessing the importance and limitations of methods as different as Lacanian psychoanalysis, semiotics, dialectical analysis, and allegorical readings. The book as a whole raises directly issues that have been only implicit in Jameson's earlier work, namely the relationship between dialectics and structuralism, and the tension between the German and the French aesthetic traditions.

The Political Unconscious is a masterly introduction to both the method and the practice of Marxist criticism. Defining a mode of criticism and applying it successfully to individual works, it bridges the gap between theoretical speculation and textual analysis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801492228
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	08/31/1982
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Fredric Jameson is Professor of French at Yale University. He is author of Marxism and Form; The Prison-House of Language; and Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist.

Table of Contents

1. On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act2. Magical Narratives: On the Dialectical Use of Genre Criticism3. Realism and Desire: Balzac and the Problem of the Subject4. Authentic Ressentiment: Generic Discontinuities and Ideologemes in the "Experimental" Novels of George Gissing5. Romance and Reification: Plot Construction and Ideological Closure in Joseph Conrad6. Conclusion: The Dialectic of Utopia and IdeologyIndex

What People are Saying About This

Jonathan Culler

The Political Unconscious is a remarkable work, destined to play an important role in the critical debates of the coming decade. Jameson is now the leading Marxist critic in America, and his book is exemplary not just for those who are interested in Marxist criticism as such but for all who are dissatisfied with formalism and seek alternative modes of argument.

Hayden White

Fredric Jameson is the best Marxist critic writing today, possibly the best social-historically oriented critic of our time. It seems impossible for him to write anything that is not illuminating in an original way. There is no cant, no cliché, no jargon in his work, only sustained dialectical reflection, His thesis concerning the political content of 'the unconscious' is provocative but theoretically grounded and demonstrated by close readings of texts worthy of the best formalists. No one else encompasses as many positions within a disciplined critical practice. The Political Unconscious is a major work, and it should be read by historians, social scientists, and philosophers, as well as by literary scholars.

Editorial Reviews

A major work of critical theory.... The Political Unconscious integrates and refines a vast body of theoretical work, demonstrating a superb mastery of the field of contemporary criticism. The result... is a compelling, forceful argument in favor of the primacy of Marxism over contending strategies of interpretation.

Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Monumental.... Its learning and range of references are exceeded only be the imperial embrace of its complex argument, whose elaboration never imposes a sacrifice of clarity.... Indispensable for all university and college libraries.

Choice

"A major work of critical theory. . . . The Political Unconscious integrates and refines a vast body of theoretical work, demonstrating a superb mastery of the field of contemporary criticism. The result . . . is a compelling, forceful argument in favor of the primacy of Marxism over contending strategies of interpretation."—Nineteenth-Century Fiction

"Monumental . . . . Its learning and range of references are exceeded only be the imperial embrace of its complex argument, whose elaboration never imposes a sacrifice of clarity. . . . Indispensable for all university and college libraries."—Choice

"Fredric Jameson is the best Marxist critic writing today, possibly the best social-historically oriented critic of our time. It seems impossible for him to write anything that is not illuminating in an original way. There is no cant, no cliché, no jargon in his work, only sustained dialectical reflection, His thesis concerning the political content of 'the unconscious' is provocative but theoretically grounded and demonstrated by close readings of texts worthy of the best formalists. No one else encompasses as many positions within a disciplined critical practice. The Political Unconscious is a major work, and it should be read by historians, social scientists, and philosophers, as well as by literary scholars."—Hayden White, University of California, Santa Cruz

From the Publisher