The Years of Theory Lectures on Modern French Thought

by Jameson, Fredric

• ISBN13: 9781804295892
• ISBN10: 1804295892
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-10-08
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

Legendary lectures on the major figures of French theory from America’s leading Marxist critic

Fredric Jameson’s The Years of Theory introduces the major themes of French theory, including 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 contentious philosophical debates of the period come to life as much through anecdotes as through extended readings of work by their participants, including Sartre, Beauvoir, Fanon, Barthes, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, Deleuze, groups like Tel Quel and Cahiers du Cinéma, and contemporary thinkers like Rancière and Badiou.

Drawing on a wide range of references and thinkers, Jameson’s seminar provides an essential account of an intellectual moment whose significance is compared to that of ancient Athenian philosophy, both situating it historically and revitalizing its central concerns for the present.

Author Biography

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.