The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present
Fredric Jameson, Carson Welch
List price £20.00
Product Details
- Format:
- Paperback / softback
- ISBN:
- 9781804295892
- Published:
- 08 Oct 2024
- Publisher:
- Verso Books
- Dimensions:
- 480 pages - 234 x 153mm
- Availability:
- Not yet available
Categories:
Fredric Jameson's The Years of Theory introduces the major themes of French theory, including existentialism, structuralism, poststructuralism, semiotics, feminism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. In a series of accessible lectures, Jameson places this effervescent period of thought in the context of its most significant political conjunctures, including the Liberation of Paris, the Algerian War, the uprisings of May '68, and the creation of the EU. The contentious philosophical debates of the period come to life as much through anecdotes as through extended readings of work by their participants, including Sartre, Beauvoir, Fanon, Barthes, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, Deleuze, groups like Tel Quel and Cahiers du Cinéma, and contemporary thinkers like Rancière and Badiou. Drawing on a wide range of references and thinkers, Jameson's seminar provides an essential account of an intellectual moment whose significance is compared to that of ancient Athenian philosophy, both situating it historically and revitalizing its central concerns for the present.
Legendary lectures on the major figures of French theory from 'America's leading Marxist critic'
Editor's Preface Introduction: The Seminar as a Collective Book 1 Les Cinquante Glorieuses 2 The Uses of the Verb to Be {Sartre} 3 Reification or Otherness {Sartre} 4 After Sartre {Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Fanon} 5 After the Liberation {Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Fanon} 6 Glory to the Binary Opposition! {Saussure, Levi-Strauss} 7 Saussure in Brazil {Levi-Strauss} 8 Victory of the Paradigmatic {Levi-Strauss, Barthes} 9 Utopia: But Where Does Power Come From? {Baudrillard, Clastres} 10 Enter Lacan {Lacan} 11 Genealogy of the Look {Lacan} 12 Class Struggle in Theory {Althusser} 13 The Lonely Hour of the Last Instance {Althusser} 14 How to Avoid Meaning {Derrida} 15 Linguistic Politics of the Third Way {Derrida} 16 Feminism as Transgression {Beauvoir, Wittig, Irigaray} 17 Mothers and Moving Images {Kristeva, Comolli, Baudry} 18 "Moi, Michel Foucault..." {Foucault} 19 The Prison-House of Subjectification {Foucault} 20 Nominalism of the Photograph {Barthes} 21 Philosophy's Postmodern Theater {Deleuze} 22 Joyousness of Gilles Deleuze {Deleuze} 23 Return of le Politique {Rancière, Balibar, Nancy} 24 Simulating the End of History {Debord, Baudrillard} Envoi: Theory after Demarxification {Latour, Meillassoux, Stiegler, Laruelle} Index
Fredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. Over the last several decades, he has developed an influential and richly nuanced understanding of the relationship between culture and political economy. He is a recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize and the Modern Language Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of many books, including The Political Unconscious, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, and Valences of the Dialectic.