Stranded Economies

Abstract

It probably seems a little late in the day to suggest a critique — even a friendly one — of Fredric Jameson’s work. For an entire generation of students, scholars, and writers concerned with the contemporary cultural scene, Fredric Jameson’s name has been the name associated with the idea of the postmodern. And postmodernism has been the brand name of contemporary cultural production, at least in the rich, industrialized states of the North. Indeed, no writer has, over the past thirty years, developed and sustained such an ambitious project of socio-cultural analysis and critique as has Jameson; few have prompted such outrage, adulation, or just plain confusion; few have risked articulation of such difficult problems with such elan; and none can claim to have been so ardent and successful in elaborating Marxism in and for the present. It is not too much to say that Jameson’s work — and his legacies — are a crucial enabling condition of critical theory and cultural studies, not to say first-world Marxism, of the present, and perhaps the future.