| "The dismantling of the universal is widely considered one of the founding gestures of twentieth-century thought," the feminist theorist Naomi Schor has recently commented. In chapter 1, I defend the category of universalism and show its necessity as a conceptual correlate to the capitalist world system as a horizon of analysis. In chapter 2, I examine the development of transnational means of communication with the rise of capitalism and its specific implications within the work of the French communications theorist Armand Mattelart. In chapter 3, I explore the "language debate" within African literature, imposed on African writers by the history of colonialism, and argue for the need to reframe that debate in universalist terms. Then, in the next three chapters, I take up the writings of the American cultural theorist and Marxist Fredric Jameson, exploring his hermeneutics, his specific theory of third world literature and film, and his attempt to reconstruct the project of Marxist totalization today. In the conclusion, I defend Marxism against the charge that it is a Eurocentric and dominative discourse and, following Samir Amin's formulation, ask: "What are the elements from which one might begin to conceptualize a truly universalist cultural project?" I also include, as an appendix, an interview with Christopher Norris that addresses some of the philosophical foundations of the universalism defended in this thesis. |
