The Horizons of Theory: Jameson, Marxism, and Poststructuralism Essay

The Horizons of Theory Jameson, Marxism, and PoststructuralismFredric Jamesons The Political unconscious mind is a mold which crosses theories boundaries, which walks (or polices?) Marxisms border on poststructuralism. It may easily be read as a refutation of poststructuralism, or as an embrace of it as a flight from Marxism (though under its own banner), or as its abstractive repurchase this is not a contradiction in terms (we might read Jameson as sufficeing), tho a dialectical, productive exploration of the tension between these philosophies. Indeed, Jamesons exposition of his red ink hermeneutic may be taken as a reply (from within a discourse he perceives as Marxism) to the poststructuralisms of Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, and as a conversation with the structural Marxism he calls Althusserian but Jameson attempts to reconcile these views with the Marxist tradition. We may read The Political Unconscious as positing a mode of variant which is acceptable to or w hich subsumes both a demystifying Marxism and the aporia or irreducible contradiction of deconstruction but in so doing, as Jameson perhaps realizes, the text is drawn into the clear contradictions between these theories, and only disseverially resolves (or evades) them.The central thesis of The Political Unconscious is the presence of History as the untranscendable or imperative horizon of all reading and all interpretation (17). We may straight note that this untranscendable presence apparently contradicts deconstructions mistrust of all presences within and quarter texts, to say nothing of Derridas derisive references to transcendence. To look for History in the text, to pass the hidden meaning of History through it, would evidently not be a sa... ...rificing the individual text to a broader structural analysis that a Marxist cultural study can hope to play its part in policy-making praxis, which remains, of course, what Marxism is all about (299). It is revealing (from a Marxist standpoint) that this final aside marks the only reference to concrete political involvement in the volume perhaps more tellingly, The Political Unconscious treats this sacrifice of the traditional, individualistic literary text as a expense which, however unfortunately, must be paid (in order to satisfy the demands of Marxism). further as a reconciliation of the poststructuralist, anti-transcendent insistence on specificity with some of the theoretical imperatives of Marxist cultural thought, The Political Unconscious remains a breakthrough and as a proposal of a newly political, poststructuralist historicism, it is undeniably persuasive.