A Review Of Jameson’s "the Cultural Of Late Capitalism" Thought

Frederic Jameson is a well-known American scholar of contemporary Marxism. After World War II, human society has entered into a brand new period of relative stability. Jameson inherited Mandel’s theory, which divided the history of capitalism development into three stages: "classical or ethnic market capitalism", "monopoly capitalism or imperialism" and "transnational capitalism." On this basis, Jameson expanded the horizon of Marxist theory of mode of production, which is started from the aesthetic term to political and historical perspectives, involving and concerning Marxist political judgment "Cultural Revolution", described human’s liberation as a part of narrative in the mode of production. The purpose of this theory is that analysis the intermediary between the economic foundation and superstructure, utilizing the dominant code of mode of production and interpretating synchronicity. He also studied "structural causality" from the pespectives of overall level of society, then originally addressed the concept of "cultural revolution" to solve "transitional" problem of the mode of production. Overall, Jameson provided a unique academic point of view to fight for the interpretation of contemporary Marxist survival experience.In this paper, the research of Jameson’s theory of late capitalism culture can be roughly divided into three parts, further analyzing its background, content and evaluation.The first part discusses social background of Jameson’s theory of late capitalism culture, and theoretical origin of his cultural thoughts of late capitalism from political, economic and cultural aspects.The second part focuses on the demonstration of the main content of Jameson’s late capitalist culture theory and conclusion of attributes of this theroy.The third part of this paper evaluates the late capitalist culture thought of Jameson, reveals this theroy’s implication on contemporary society and also analyzes its rationality and limitations.