The Years of Theory
Lectures on Modern French Thought
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Magisterial lectures on the major figures of French theory from 'America's leading Marxist critic'
Fredric Jameson introduces here the major themes of French theory: 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 philosophical debates of the period come to life through anecdotes and extended readings of work by the likes of Sartre, Beauvoir, Fanon, Barthes, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, Deleuze, groups like Tel Quel and Cahiers du Cinéma, and contemporary thinkers such as Rancière and Badiou. Eclectic, insightful, and inspired, Jameson's seminars provide an essential account of an intellectual moment comparable in significance to the Golden Age of Athens, historically fascinating and of persistent relevance.
About this Author
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.
Reviews
"An intellectually rigorous overview of post-World War II French thought ... Tracing webs of influence, and rebellion, among them, Jameson conveys the intellectual vitality of a vastly changing world."
--Kirkus Reviews
"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
"Probably the most important cultural critic writing in English today. It can be truly said that nothing cultural is alien to him."
--Colin McCabe
"The most significant Marxist thinker in American culture."
--Cornel West
"Jameson's contributions to the critical theory, to the analysis of the forms and content of the world we live in, and to the empowering of the imagination to envision alternatives to the present are immeasurable. But more importantly, perhaps, his thinking has served to inspire others -- artists, activists, critics, theorists, and students of all kinds -- to extend his efforts."
--Robert T. Tally Jr., Jacobin
"An intellectual titan and one of the torchbearers of Marxist thought through the tenebrous night of neoliberalism"
--Kate Wagner, The Nation
"Jameson was arguably the most prominent Marxist literary critic in the English-speaking world... Criticism, as he understood it, could never be [easy], because of the complexity of its objects and its need to perpetually revise, refine and question its own procedures. To my mind, nobody did this as doggedly -- or should I say as dialectically, with such a clearly articulated sense of the intellectual stakes -- as Jameson."
--A.O. Scott, The New York Times
"The greatest intellectual titan of the past half-century...No one reads anything (not literature, not film, not even the uncannily lit corridors of a casino) quite like Jameson did, but to read him well, when you could, was to be dazzled by the gargantuan generosity of his mind."
--Jacob Brogan, The Washington Post
"The legendary literary critic Fredric Jameson...perceptively and lucidly discusses theory from the immediate postwar period to today. With one foot in the present and the other in the past, Jameson illustrates the unique political possibilities French philosophers opened over the course of five decades."
--Gregory Jones-Katz, Foreign Policy
"[The Years of Theory] offers a masterful introduction to its topic, beginning with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and then moving on to Claude Lévi-Strauss, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze, among others. And it allows readers to sit in, like virtual auditors, while Jameson guides us through their ideas. After Jameson's death in September at the age of 90, the volume carries forward his work as a teacher."
--Caleb Smith, The Chronicle of Higher Education
"Straight-talking, yet never pedestrian, The Years of Theory ... offers a history not of ideas, but of 'problems' ... Ever the Marxist, Jameson has dismantled the camera obscura to develop a more historically focused snapshot of that amorphous thing called 'French theory'."
--Tommy Gilhooly, London Magazine, Books of 2024
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