Fredric Jameson : beyond a Marxist hermeneutic?

This thesis provides a critical study of the theoretical work of the North American Marxist
theoretician and critic Fredric Jameson. Jameson has been described as probably the most
important cultural critic writing in English today and yet there has been no major study of his
work published to date. This thesis sets out to contribute to such a study.
One reason for Jameson's relative critical neglect has been his adherence to a tradition of Marxist
thought, that both within Marxism itself and theoretical discourse in general has been superseded
by Structuralist and more recently Post-structuralist modes of thought. The first chapter,
therefore, provides an exposition of Jameson's Hegelianism which is rather more sympathetic to
Hegel and dialectical theory than the accounts one usually encounters today filtered through
Structuralist and Post-structuralist readings. The following three chapters focus upon key areas
of theoretical debates that have emerged over the last two decades - that is, questions of history
and representation, desire and subjectivity and finally postmodernism. The concluding chapter
returns to the concerns with which this study opened and once more reflects upon issues of
totality, politics and style from the perspective of having worked through Jameson's own corpus
of work.