Fredric Jameson’s marxist criticism

A review essay on five works by Fredric Jameson: The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-1986, Vol. 1: Situations of Theory, Vol 2: Syntax of History (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1988); Signatures of the Visible (London: Routledge, 1990); Late Marxism: Adorno, or, the Persistence of the Dialectic (London & New York: Verso, 1990); Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke U Press, 1991); & Postmodernism/Jameson/Critique (Kellner, Douglas [Ed], Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press, 1989 [see listings in IRPS No. 76]). This review of Fredric Jameson's works focuses on his method of exposing racial, sexual, & class oppression in literature. Jameson's admiration for Mao Zedong & Herbert Marcuse is discussed, & it is argued that Jameson's influence issues neither from the power of his argument nor from the moral force of his position, but from his having furnished the underpinnings for the "victim-centered" criticism that has overtaken university literature departments. Also discussed is Jameson's reading of some popular films & his theory of pleasure. It is concluded that Jameson's literary & cultural interpretation amounts to little more than the indiscriminate & inappropriate imposition of Marxist ideas on irrelevant texts & objects. W. Howard