Fredric Jameson, a philosopher, an American literary critic and a Marxist theorist, died at 90 on September 22 in his home in Killingworth, Connecticut. He was the world’s leading theorist for over four decades bringing to life his rigorous Marxist criticism, Sci-fi films, German Opera and luxurious hotels. 

Fredric Jameson’s work, which included over 30 books and edited collections along with his journal articles, has been a major portion of the required syllabus for graduate students in literature, history, architecture, and even film studies. 

Since 1985, Fredric Jameson has been a professor at Duke University, where he taught comparative and romantic literature. Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism were Fredric Jameson’s finest-known books. Fredric Jameson truly believed that reading should not be treated as a leisurely activity but can be a transformative journey of the mind and lead to absolute changes in society.

Fredric Jameson’s Contributions To the Literary Spheres

Sartre: The Origins of a Style 

Jameson’s first book, “Sartre: The Origins of a Style”, didn’t include Marxist theory, according to Douglas Kellner, UCLA’s professor. But, it was the Cuban Revolution, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the rise of the New Left that got Jameson interested in Marxist literature. Influential figures like Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Georg Lukacs had a significant impact on his work.

Postmodernism

In 1991, Fredric Jameson wrote about postmodernism and its connection to the later stages of capitalism, showing how it related to the big changes in the economy and society at that time, similar to how earlier scholars connected modernism to the Industrial Revolution.

According to Jameson, postmodernism was noteworthy in that it represented the commercialization of culture itself, supplanting history and forward-looking ideals with irony, cynicism, and pastiche – a blend of various cultural elements and forms without regard for their historical contexts.

The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act

In his 1981 book, “The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act,” he explained how narrative forms, from the Homeric epic to the modern novel, were influenced by the development of capitalism. Jameson also discussed how these forms revealed the capitalist structures.