Utopian thought since Thomas More, and science fiction in the neoliberal age.
In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World, and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful? Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson’s most substantial work since Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, investigates the development of this form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of utopian thinking in a post-Communist age. The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness … alien life and alien worlds … and a study of the works of Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson and more. Jameson’s essential essays, including “The Desire Called Utopia,” conclude with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value today.
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“Archaeologies of the Future is certainly among the most stunning studies of science fiction ever produced... a vast treasure trove of a book, crammed with brilliant apercus... Jameson is one of the world's most eminent cultural theorists, but he is also a peerless literary critic in the classical sense of the term.” (Terry Eagleton - London Review of Books )
“Jameson's skill in connecting diverse materials and theories, the suggestiveness of many of his insights and his passionate conviction make this an exciting book.” (Times Literary Supplement )
“Jameson's skill in connecting diverse materials and theories, the suggestiveness of many of his insights and his passionate conviction make this an exciting book.” (Times Literary Supplement )
About the Author
Fredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. The author of numerous books, he has over the last three decades developed a richly nuanced vision of Western culture's relation to political economy. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. He is the author of many books, including Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The Cultural Turn, A Singular Modernity, The Modernist Papers, Archaeologies of the Future, Brecht and Method, Ideologies of Theory, Valences of the Dialectic, The Hegel Variations and Representing Capital.
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Literature for our times,
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This review is from: Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (Paperback)
A non-apologetist review of the science fiction genre through the eyes of America's leading postmordernist thinker. You will need to bring your knowledge of the Western Canon and contemporary philosophy with you in order to fully appreciate this text. Its division into books I and II enables regular science fiction readers to access straight forward reviews in Book II.
Expect to learn from this book and don't expect him to enshrine SF into the Western Canon but rather to provide you with an understanding the zeitgeist of the history of the genre and ourselves. Authors reviewed range from Dick to Robinson, Brunner to Le Guin. With a focus on utopianism and dystopia the subjects covered are sex and society, aliens and psychoanalyst, and the motifs and mechanics of this writing field. Jameson also remarks on the differences between hard science fiction and fantasy. He clearly traces the link between the utopian members of the Western Canon and the rise of science fiction's paraliterature, and the societal needs for these works and their roots in the human collective conscienceness. He also notes the limits of critical literate and the "drift" of high literate into the domain of science fiction in recent years as a result of our postmodern condition and the limits of critical literature to deal with the disassociative nature of the contemporary experience. The reader will be left with an understanding of the genre, our times, and our historical basis. He or she will also be perplexed as to how science fiction was replaced by fantasy as the popular literature of our times at the same moment it matured as a literary entity. One will also begin to understand how the internal dynamics of science fiction and its authors went from the popularizers of American modernism and imperialism to become the primary opponents of modernism in our times. Be forewarned that Jameson does not see Marxism as a bad word but rather a critical tool for evaluating society.
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