The dialectical criticism of Fredric Jameson; or, The dual hermeneutic of anxiety and hope

This thesis is an extended discussion of specific key texts of the cultural critic Fredric Jameson who is acknowledged to have made an invaluable contribution to the understanding of contemporary culture amidst the commodification of the lifeworld. Yet his work raises a number of problematic issues.; These issues are explored in three related sections. The first section offers an overview of Jameson's conceptions of dialectical criticism, totality, and the historicizing of the subject through conditions of possibility. The second section attempts to reveal a key strategy of containment in Jameson's work through his foundational positioning of Marxist science. Here, Jameson's theoretical trajectory is seen through the lens of Althusser's conception of an 'epistemological break' which separates and valorizes the work of Marx as distinct from all other analytic positions. It is argued that Jameson's axiomatic Marxism suffers from an outdated Newtonian scientific paradigm. This is contrasted to the radical alternative of 'postmodern science' put forth. The final section considers Jameson's dual hermeneutic of anxiety and hope which seeks out the utopian impulse in all cultural texts and ideologies. The problems of an upper-cased Utopia especially regarding praxis are critically examined.