Being so thoroughly influenced by Hegel’s dialectic and the representational logics of cultural Marxism, Jameson indeed promulgates a very specific ontological structure, if not in word then in deed. We can make the argument explicitly: Jameson is an ontological thinker; he proposes a specific structure of being. The key lies in Jameson’s critique of method. Ostensibly against method, in that he denies the existence of any kind of pre-given Marxist method perfected and honed for all circumstances, Jameson defines Marxism instead in terms of a material condition. In other words, there exists no Marxist method as such, yet there exists a material condition that structures the horizon of interpretability for all society and culture. The outlines for such a position were laid down early by Jameson: “the political perspective [is] the absolute horizon of all reading and all interpretation” (The Political Unconscious, 17). What is this “absolute horizon”? Where does it reside? And why is it absolute? History is one part of the answer, materiality another, the social yet another. And while Jameson’s fundamental Freudianism is sometimes overlooked in the secondary literature, the unconscious is still another way of thinking through the problem of the absolute horizon. The absolute horizon refers to the determining nature of the material conditions of existence. The horizon thus inflects and sculpts all things taking place within it. (Sorry, all you liberals, Marxism is a determinism; there’s no getting around it.) And inside such a structure is forged a fundamental relationship of correspondence: the “realities of social class and of the unconscious” condition the everyday life of individuals; the “determinate historical situation” conditions social relations and cultural production. Or, in the punchiest line from The Political Unconscious, “[h]istory is what hurts” (102). An evocative expression meaning two things at once. First, when history is reified or mystified it sets real limits on individual or collective practice. Yet at the same time history is the badge people wear designating the struggle or hurt endured.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:44:11 +0000