The exhortation to “read some effing Orwell!” is an old chestnut of the online left, whether ironic or sincere, or somewhere in between. But if we’re looking for a writer whose body of work truly anticipates the world we live in now – globalised, postcolonial, postmodern – we might instead turn to the American Marxist cultural critic Fredric Jameson.
He’s just turned 90 and, in characteristically productive style, has three new books out this year. But where to start? To get a grip on Jamesonian thought, Richard Hames invites Sianne Ngai and Matthew Beaumont, both incisive critics in their own right, to discuss the breadth of his life and work, from postmodernism to the political unconscious to Jaws.
Sianne and Matt recommend that new readers of Jameson start with The Geopolitical Aesthetic or the essay ‘Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture‘.
Read Sianne and Matt’s recent essays on Jameson over at the Verso blog.
ACFM Trip 31: Strikes
TyskySour: Britain’s Energy Nightmare
TyskySour: Half A Million On Strike
TyskySour: Sunak’s NHS Pay Lies
Downstream: Science Isn’t Truth w/ Adam Rutherford
TyskySour: Hunt’s Economy Speech
TyskySour: Asylum Seeker Children Kidnapped
TyskySour: Zahawi On The Ropes
Downstream: The Sexual Marketplace w/ Annie Lord
TyskySour: Starmer At Davos
Novara FM: Havens in a Heartless World
TyskySour: Nurses On Strike
Downstream: Tories Don’t Think w/ Peter Hitchens
TyskySour: Anti-Strike Law Showdown
TyskySour: Doctors Tear Into The Tories For NHS Collapse
TyskySour: Ambulance Workers On Strike
TyskySour: Union Talks Break Down
TyskySour: Right To Strike Under Threat
TyskySour: Sunak’s Lame Duck Speech
Downstream: Novara’s 2022 Roundtable Review
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