Fredric Jameson: 1934-2024

September 23, 2024 5:26 AM

Intellectual giant Fredric Jameson has died. The LRB has a brief obituary, with links to his reviews. His most famous work--at least the one most frequently seen popping up in graduate English courses--is 1991's Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (read a selection here, or the whole thing at the internet archive), but he was a prolific author who kept writing (and analyzing) up to the very end (in fact, in two weeks, his (much-anticipated-by-me) The Years of Theory will be out).
posted by mittens (23 comments total)

(flagged for misspelling even though his name is right here in front of me)
posted by mittens at 5:28 AM on September 23 [3 favorites]

*Grad school comes flooding back.
posted by R. Mutt at 6:14 AM on September 23 [1 favorite]

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posted by Kattullus at 6:52 AM on September 23

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posted by limeonaire at 6:55 AM on September 23

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posted by audi alteram partem at 6:56 AM on September 23

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posted by signal at 7:15 AM on September 23

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Never understood a word he said but others have.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:27 AM on September 23 [2 favorites]

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posted by CostcoCultist at 7:45 AM on September 23

One of the giants. His writing has had enormous influence in theory and literary criticism, from his great book on Marxism to the legendary postmodernism book.
posted by doctornemo at 8:28 AM on September 23 [2 favorites]

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posted by Joeruckus at 8:32 AM on September 23

Jameson was also a very kind and gentle man, endlessly committed to his students, always willing to help out junior scholars.

OK, my Jameson story. He was the guest of honor at a utopian studies conference, back in the 1990s. I proposed a paper on Jameson, Adorno, and utopia and it was accepted. I wrote the thing in a frenzy, between teaching 4 classes and parenting a very young child, and carried the draft with me to the conference.

...and I got a mean cold on the way, maybe a flu. The kind which gives you migraines, joint pain, fatigue, but, most relevant here, makes it hard to think. Our panel was scheduled for 11 am or so, and I got to the room around 8 am, settling down with printouts and pen to work on the paper. The ms had some gaps, cryptic notes to myself, all of which I was working on between sneezing and feeling my body contract upon itself.

Around 9:30 the panel convener strolled in, along with Jameson himself. I introduced myself, a bit starstruck, and holding this sheaf of papers, telling the man a bit about it. "Wonderful," he said, and then *took the papers*, before walking off for a meeting, tossing over his shoulder: "I'll give it back to you before the panel."

I panicked. I didn't have a laptop because it was the 1990s and I was a very poor humanities professor. Jameson had the only copy. Feverishly I turned to blank sheets, trying to remember as much of the thing as possible, especially the gaps I needed to fill in. My cold/flu brain refused to comply. The room gradually filled with an expectant audience. I spiraled into anxieties.

Around 10:56 the convener and Jameson strode back in. I staggered over to them and Jameson handed the ms back to me - extensively marked up - and said very nice words about it. My heart soared and I stomped up to the panel platform, exhilarated and addled.

I don't remember much of my part of the show, except the audience seemed pleased. A major critic asked me a dumb question and I - remember, junior faculty in a very hierarchical world - more or less tore him a new one about it. Foolish move, but I think he respected the chutzpah or assumed I was on drugs.

Fred's kindness (after the terror) meant a lot to me. He had zero requirement to be nice, much less actually read my text. What a mensch.
posted by doctornemo at 8:39 AM on September 23 [33 favorites]

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posted by Saxon Kane at 9:19 AM on September 23

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I am not the kind of academic-adjacent where I read Jameson but this loss is reverberating through my dear ones today.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 9:35 AM on September 23

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posted by exlotuseater at 10:29 AM on September 23

Harper's had a long review of his works last month. I had never heard of him, but what I read really got me to wanting to look him up. The quotes from his works were complex, yes, but there was a very human, and perhaps, spiritual side to his writing. It ended with a quote that said that believing in a Messiah was living with the hope for a new humanist and utopian society, Marx's coming utopia. The reviewer considered him a Marxist critic, with a capital M. Though I haven't read his work, what little was quoted in the review led me to see his marxism as being a lot richer than just economics.

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posted by njohnson23 at 10:33 AM on September 23 [5 favorites]

This is the Harper's review: Glimmer of Totality.

He might have retired in 1999, at sixty-five, as one of the most influential literary critics of the second half of the twentieth century. In 2005, Jameson surprised, instead, with a defining work on science fiction, Archaeologies of the Future. To him, the genre was not about technology or escape, but ways of thinking about utopia, as visions of a future radically different from those on offer in present politics.

posted by meehawl at 11:09 AM on September 23 [9 favorites]

Writing quickly! I saw Jameson talk at a film conference at Yale. If you haven't read him, you might want to try out POSTMODERNISM--a lot of is quite readable and about pop culture, like Brian De Palma flicks!
posted by johnasdf at 11:53 AM on September 23 [3 favorites]

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posted by demonic winged headgear at 12:28 PM on September 23

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posted by kewb at 12:32 PM on September 23

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posted by symbioid at 2:38 PM on September 23

I had also read the Harper's article, and with this new appreciation by Mark Greif (a fabulous writer, who I first encountered in N+1), checked out a book from my local public library called Marxist Esthetics (1970). Too bad he's gone. According to Greif, he was just getting interesting (from my perspective, anyway).
posted by kozad at 3:15 PM on September 23 [1 favorite]

I was extremely fortunate to be exposed to Postmodernism when I was still in high school, circa 1994. My buddy at college was home for the holidays and shared a copy with me. Totally blew me away. I felt immediately compelled to watch the movies he’d referenced: American Graffiti, Body Heat, and Chinatown, to name but a few off the top of my head. Listened to all the works of John Cage and Philip Glass I could get my hands on. And I found every picture I could of John C. Portman’s Bonaventure Hotel in LA. Then I ended up writing my AP English term paper on pastiche, and introducing my former teacher to the concept - which was fairly groundbreaking back then, at least to us.

A truly life-changing work.
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posted by edithkeeler at 8:18 PM on September 23 [1 favorite]

I never heard of him until now, and I'm wondering how I possibly missed him given my politics.

I wish I'd known to read his work while he was alive, but I'll probably be doing it posthumously.

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posted by sotonohito at 11:21 AM on September 24 [1 favorite]