On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization - Pasta blanda

Offers an interrogation of Jameson's critical legacy.

One of the leading figures in the debate over postmodernism in the 1980s and 1990s, Fredric Jameson is regarded as the most important Marxist theoretician and cultural critic writing in America today. Although Jameson's significance as a global intellectual has been widely recognized for some time, none of the literature covers the full range of his work. This timely collection reflects on Jameson's entire body of work and demonstrates its potential to shape the emerging field of globalization studies. Experts in literary theory, Slavic studies, film criticism, and Biblical studies explore the significance of Jameson's work for their diverse fields. The contributors treat Jameson's work as a complicated and interconnected whole, and deal with many topics, including his influence in China and Russia, his interests in second- and third-world cinema and literature, and his lifelong passion for science fiction. As On Jameson reveals, integrating these concerns is Jameson's project of producing a critical theory of contemporary global cultures.

“The first question to ask about an edited volume is: why does it exist? The material on Jameson in English is relatively meager considering the extent of his influence, and so any book dedicated to a close engagement with his work is welcome. By a slightly more ambitious commonsense criterion—a volume like this should collect important essays on an important topic in a more or less coherent way—the book succeeds admirably.” — symplokÄ

"The contributors exude a sense of the younger generation claiming Jameson's work as its own, not defensively or by simple identification with any political line, but as part of an ongoing set of intellectual struggles with the best that has been known and thought about the largest issues of their/our own time." — Bruce Robbins, author of Feeling Global: Internationalism in Distress

Contributors include Roland Boer, Ian Buchanan, Vitaly Chernetsky, Sean Homer, Caren Irr, Carolyn Lesjak, Michael Rothberg, Robert Seguin, Imre Szeman, Evan Watkins, and