Name: Valences of the Dialectic
Price: 85.80 NZD
Availability: InStock
Author: Fredric Jameson
ISBN: 9781844674633

Type

Physical Book

Author

Fredric Jameson

Publisher

Verso

Year

2010

Language

English

Pages

634

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

23.4 x 15.5 x 3.4 cm

Weight

0.88 kg.

ISBN

1844674630

ISBN13

9781844674633

Edition No.

Synopsis "Valences of the Dialectic "

After half a century exploring dialectical thought, renowned cultural critic Fredric Jameson presents a comprehensive study of a misunderstood yet vital strain in Western philosophy. The dialectic, the concept of the evolution of an idea through conflicts arising from its inherent contradictions, transformed two centuries of Western philosophy. To Hegel, who dominated nineteenth-century thought, it was a metaphysical system. In the works of Marx, the dialectic became a tool for materialist historical analysis. Jameson brings a theoretical scrutiny to bear on the questions that have arisen in the history of this philosophical tradition, contextualizing the debate in terms of commodification and globalization, and with reference to thinkers such as Rousseau, Lukács, Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, and Althusser. Through rigorous, erudite examination, Valences of the Dialectic charts a movement toward the innovation of a "spatial" dialectic. Jameson presents a new synthesis of thought that revitalizes dialectical thinking for the twenty-first century.

Fredric Jameson

(Author)

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Fredric Jameson (1934–2024) was an influential American literary critic and Marxist theorist, known for his analysis of contemporary culture and its relationship with late capitalism. He earned his PhD from Yale with a thesis on Sartre and taught at universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Duke. His methodological approach combined Marxism, structuralism, and psychoanalysis, addressing issues like postmodernism and cultural production in the globalized era. In 2008, he received the prestigious Holberg Prize for his outstanding contribution to the study of the relationships between social formations and cultural forms.

Among his most notable works are Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), Theories of Postmodernity (1996), The Seeds of Time (2000), A Singular Modernity (2002), Archaeologies of the Future (2009), and The Realism and the Providential Novel (2006). The latter, published by the Circle of Fine Arts, examines narrative structures in Western literature, from Heliodorus to George Eliot, and suggests that happy endings are a literary rather than existential category. His work falls within the genre of critical essay and literary theory, and has left an indelible mark on contemporary cultural and literary studies.

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