At the age of 90, the American intellectual Fredric Jameson passed away yesterday, September 22.
It was professor emeritus of Comparative Literature at Duke University, where he directed the Center for Critical Theory. Jameson is considered the leading Marxist critic in the US and was one of the first thinkers to critically link postmodernism to specific socio-political and cultural conditions. He had developed a rich view of the relationship of Western civilization to political economy, defining the postmodern as the aesthetics of late capitalism.
History plays a very important role in Jameson’s thought, which he considers a fundamental tool for both reading and writing literary texts. This position of his was captured through phrase “Always historicize!» which comes from the preface to his book “The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act» (1981) – with this he sealed his commitment in Hegelian-Marxist philosophy.
His work covers a wide range of cultural issues that preoccupied the 20th century: modernism, postmodernism, Third World literature and cinema, Marx and Freud, the Frankfurt School, science fiction, etc. In Greece, his books are published by Angelus Novus, Alexandria, Topos, Plethron and Nefeli.
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