The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act

"The Political Unconscious" is a challenging book to read but worth the effort. Jameson's mantra is "always historicise" and his thesis is that all good authors have something of their own historical context in their writings. This may be conscious but is not necessarily so, and we may use Freudian techniques to discern the social symbols that betray the patriarchal, class or imperialist assumptions behind the text. Of course Jameson is a Marxist, and thus for him, everyone is participating in a history that inexorably leads to the worker's worldwide utopia. History itself is not a series of accidents but is a meaningful process, the one great meaningful act of humanity. Thus the social symbols, that may or may not be unconscious for the individual author, are in fact the true meaning of the text. As readers we may or may not agree with Jameson about the end of history, but the discerning of the social symbols and assumptions behind a text is certainly a valid and useful way of approaching literature. We may apply Jameson's own technique to his very text. He writes in the context of witnessing from within the USA, from afar, the failure of the great Marxist experiment of the Communist Revolutions of the twentieth century, which failed because they could not get the food on the shelves and because central planning could not deal with fast changing technology. Thus the socialist utopia retires from spoken discourse to the realms of the unconscious, to be glimpsed only in dream symbols and in Freudian slips.

The Political Unconscious is a prodigious crical enterprise that unveils in a stimulating protean verve, the relationship between the political structure and the narrative enterprises of a variety of literary movements and/or individual authors. A model work of Marxist Criticism that sharpens our sensitivity and awareness in relation to the confines and intransigence of political schemas, for these affect and filter, construct and deflect the interpretation of artistic ouvres, while also creating the space for them within the tension provided. A treasure as is all of Jameson's criticism, his reading of Conrad's fiction is exceptional and vibrant in tone and exposition, to the extent that one rushes to re-read "Lord Jim" and plunge into a dialogue with Jameson while at it. Fredric Jameson is an artist and a cultural critic whose philosophy and literary analysis conveyed an American brand of Marxism that is second to none. The Political Unconscious is a fable, an historical approach that disseminates, and disrupts the fixed political schemas in a valient and elegant attempt at rousing readers from the slumber in which we are , however unconsciously, shrouded. A very important work indeed; It is with refreshing vigour that he reminds us of the importance of reading and writing. Yet he does so without the ascendancy of negative theology, such as is done by Blanchot and Agamben, although they also deserve our respect and gratitude. It is just that Jameson's texts are not mired in a restless solitude that asserts itself as feigned indifference. As was the case with Adorno and Allon White, a passionate surge is provoked, and the tragedy of being human(and all the more one of those doomed creatures known as scholars)is evoked in a confessed ambiguity that laments and hates the fact that it loves and believes in this, our life.OF NOTE: A corresponding reading of Pierre Macheray "A Theory of Literary Production" for it will illuminate the theoretical impetus of the here reviewed book that much more.

The premise of the book, from what I understood at least, is that novels, stories and narratives are a socially symbolic act that are created to resolve the events and conflicts that occurred in history. Consequently, history cannot be divorced from the text that created it. In contravention to most structuralist, poststructuralist and post-hegelian criticism Jameson contends that History is the ultimate frame onto which a novel can be interpreted as a symbolic act.One does not have access to the "real" of history, real in the Lacanian sense... but the thrust of any criticism according to Jameson is to engage with historical content as it is this content that had lead to the creation of a novel in a specific time frame.

HOW CAN SOMEONE WRITE LIKE THIS AND STILL GET HIS WORK PUBLISHED??!! Most sentences are at least three lines long, with some that cover five lines. PLEASE have a person help him to cut the sentences into shorter ones. IF YOU WANT PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND YOUR ARGUMENT THEN, YOU SHOULD WRITE IN A WAY that presents your thoughts to be easily understood.

This stands along with The Sublime Object of Ideology, Simulacra and Simulation, and The Powers of Horror as one of my absolute favorite pieces of literary criticism and critical theory.I will return to it often for quotes and ideas.

Great condition, as advertised.

This is exceptional.

Jameson has a conception of the phylosophy of the history related to the Hegel activity. That doesn't have something to do with the surrealism in France. Because Jameson is particularly a pragmatist as Pierce and James, that implies to follow the ideas of Kant very seriously. By contrary, a Fench surrealist is usually a pseudo-revolution sponsor a la Voltaire, wating to become an yuppie. Jameson writes in pag. 222 that "the position of Barthes and Nietzsche stressed the lucidity which with the contemporany writer live". A very good economist as Stiglitz could came in the exact terms for this condition.

This book is very carefully written and very thorough in putting forward the goals of interpretation he endorses. Even though the book was written and published a couple of decades ago (or more), it is still extremely relevant and the arguments are solid.

Boring book. Had to buy it for my MA studies