History and Theory 51 (February 2012), 84-106 Wesleyan University 2012 ISSN: 0018-2656

REVIEW ARTICLE


ThE dIALECTICS oF JAmESoNS dIALECTICS
VALENCES OF THE DIALECTIC. By Fredric Jameson. London: Verso, 2009. Pp. 624.
Always historicize!
1

ABSTRACT
This review essay attempts to understand the book under review against the background of
Jamesons previous writings. Failing to do so would invite misunderstanding since there
are few contemporary theorists whose writing forms so much of a unity. Jamesons book
can be divided into three parts. The first and most important part deals with dialectics, the
second with politics, and the third with philosophy of history. In the first part Jameson
argues that dialectics best captures our relationship to the sociocultural and historical
world we are living in. The second part makes clear that Jameson is not prepared to water
down his own marxist politics in order to spare the liberal sensibilities of his political
opponents. In the third part Jameson develops his own philosophy of history, mainly in a
dialogue with Ricoeur. dialectics is his main weapon in his discussion with Ricoeur, and it
becomes clear that the Spinozism of dialectics allows for a better understanding of history
and of historical writing than does Ricoeurs phenomenological approach. The book is an
impressive testimony to the powers of dialectical thought and to its indispensability for a
proper grasp of historical writing.
Keywords: Fredric Jameson, Paul Ricoeur, martin heidegger, Jacques derrida, hegelian-
ism, marxism, dialectics, philosophy of history
I. INTRodUCTIoN
Jameson was born in 1934 in Cleveland, ohio. he studied French and German
at haverford College in the early 1950s and at several universities in France and
Germany from 1954 to 1957. he took his mA at Yale where he studied under the
supervision of Erich Auerbach. his Phd thesis on Sartre was published in 1961
as Sartre: the Origins of a Style. In his thesis, Jameson used Sartres work to
reflect on the relationship between form and contenta theme that would occupy
him throughout his intellectual career.
2
Politics is absent from the book, even
though it was so very prominently present in Sartres own oeuvre. Jamesons
interest in politicsand marxismonly came with Marxism and Form (1971).
3

1. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London:
Routledge, 1981), 9.
2. Jameson discussed it as recently as 2007. See Fredric Jameson, The Modernist Papers (London
and New York: Verso, 2007), xiv.
3. Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971).
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
85
As the book title suggests, Jameson maintained his emphasis on matters of form
or styleas exemplified by the work of a number of (neo-)marxist authors,
such as Adorno, Benjamin, marcuse, Bloch, and Lukcsbut this time with a
specific focus on how style or form relates to (marxist) politics.
4
It is Jamesons
first openly political bookgenerally recognized as such
5
and it testifies to the
continuity between his interest in issues of form and style, on the one hand, and
his marxist politics, on the other.
Jameson believed marxism to be the best remedy for the shortcomings of
Anglo-American (political) philosophy, but here too, this is above all a matter of
style. For, as Jameson argues, the style of Anglo-American (political) philosophy
necessarily blinds it to societys main problems, and it is, therefore, sui generis
conservative: the method of such thinking, in its various forms and guises, con-
sists in separating reality into airtight components, carefully distinguishing the
political from the economic, the legal from the political, the sociological from
the historical, so that the full implications of any given problem can never come
into view (my italics).
6

obviously, this argument comes close to the familiar neo-marxist argument
against liberal political philosophy as being the victim of a halbierter Vernunft
(halved Reason) because Reason is used solely for thinking about what the best
means are for achieving certain goals, whereas these social and political goals
themselves are believed to be beyond the scope of rational argument. These
goals always concern the whole of the sociopolitical order, and each attempt to
conceptualize this order would inevitably result, according to these liberal politi-
cal philosophers, in idle, metaphysical speculation. Neo-marxists see this as a
sure sign of the intellectual bankruptcy of liberal political reason. In what kind of
political order are we living if we are forbidden to conceptualize it as a whole?
And why should reason be incapable of meaningfully discussing the pros and
cons of the political order as a whole? They agree, therefore, with hegels das
Wahre ist das Ganze (the truth is the whole) and, hence, that we can get to the
basic truths about our political order only on the condition that we do not hesitate
to make use of the notion of that orders totality.
7

This is surely one of the more powerful (dialectical) arguments against liberal
political philosophy, and it need not be surprising, therefore, that Jameson was
never willing to abandon this idea of the social whole or of its totality. Even
though Louis Althusser (one of Jamesons main marxist heroes) repeated over
and over again that twentieth-century totalitarianism had discredited forever
the notion of totality, Jameson remained convinced that surrendering the notion
4. The issue returns in the book under review. See 22ff.
5. The book has been described as the Ur-text for the renaissance of marxist criticism in the US
academy throughout the 1970s. See Sean homer, Fredric Jameson: Marxism, Hermeneutics, Post-
modernism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 13.
6. Quoted in ibid., 15.
7. As Frederick Beiser argues, the notion of the whole or totality is an indispensable component
of dialectics. The main idea is that, in dialectics, we cannot move on from no single thing is both
F and not-F at the same time to Reality as a whole cannot be both F and not-F at the same time.
From this tension all dialectics arises. And, obviously, all this is possible only on the condition that
we can make use of the notion of Reality as a whole. See Frederic C. Beiser, Hegel (New York and
London: Routledge, 2005), 162.
FRANK ANKERSMIT
86
would amount to the emasculation of all of political philosophy.
8
here we can
only agree with Jameson.
9
For it is a non sequitur that thinking the totality neces-
sarily invites political totalitarianism. It is rather the other way around: responsi-
ble political thought about the totality of our social-political order will arm us all
the better against any future attempts to use it for totalitarian purposes, whereas
removing it from our political vocabulary will blind us to any such threats.
Jamesons Late Marxism: Adorno, or, the Persistence of the Dialectic of 1990
can be seen as a continuation of his Marxism and Form.
10
Adornos negative
dialectics is presented here as the main and most successful instrument against
the workings of liberal reificationbest understood as a freezing of the dialec-
tics of history in an everlasting present
11
and of commodification. Commodi-
fication results from seeing in money the instrument for making everything
products, labor, services, science, art, culture, and so oncommensurable with
everything else. If everything is commensurable with everything else, nothing
really new can ever come into being. For newness is by definition incommensu-
rable with what exists. So commodification has a natural affinity with reification
and vice versa. Both freeze time, put dialectics to a standstill, and result in what
marcuse characterized as one-dimensional man (see note 11). By its refusal to
think the whole, Anglo-American philosophy is, in fact, the ideology of a society
taking reification and commodification as its two secular gods. This, then, is why
we need the crowbar of dialectics if we wish to be able to think the past and the
future again.
As if to redress an overemphasis on matters of form and style, Jameson had
previously criticized formalisms tendency to cut completely through the ties
between form and content in his The Prison-house of Language: A Critical
Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism of 1972.
12
In this work, Jame-
son insists that the interest in form, however recommendable it may be as such,
should never allow us to abandon contextualization. We should never forget
8. For an account of Jamesons discussion with Althusser about the idea of totality, see Adam
Charles Roberts, Fredric Jameson (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 15-20, and homer,
Fredric Jameson, 60-62. one more contemporary critic of the notion of totality is Jean-Franois
Lyotard, whom Jameson quotes: let us wage war on totality (Jameson, Valences, 210).
9. Jameson also appeals to the vintage marxist argument linking the notion of totality to praxis
(see Jameson, Valences, 10, 50ff.; see also homer, Fredric Jameson, 94ff.). The nature of existing
sociopolitical reality (its totality) will reveal itself to us only when we try to change it (praxis)
just as the nature of marble will reveal itself to the sculptor only when he or she makes a sculpture
out of it. Inversely, without a notion of totality, praxis is aimless. The argument makes sense,
though, admittedly, in Jamesons case it is hard to see what this appeal to practice comes down to
in practice.
10. Fredric Jameson, Late Marxism: Adorno, or, the Persistence of the Dialectic (London: Verso,
1990).
11. This, of course, was the main thesis in herbert marcuses immensely successful and influ-
ential, One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). Jameson rarely refers to marcuse,
however, probably because whereas marcuses analysis of desire (as in his Eros and Civilization) is
still basically Freudian, Jameson prefers an approach la Lacan and/or deleuze. For Freud, desire
is still an irrational, ahistorical given, whereas Lacan and deleuze historicize it (and pleasure). As
Jameson famously urged: always historicize! (these are the two triumphant first words of The
Political Unconscious).
12. Fredric Jameson, The Prison-house of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and
Russian Formalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972).
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
87
about the texts historical context as it announces itself in the texts content. This
book defines Jamesons position with regard to the structuralism of Lvi-Strauss,
Jakobson, and Barthes
13
and can best be summarized in terms of the difference
between dialectics and structuralist thought. Both see the world, or the text, in
terms of oppositions. But whereas structuralism freezes opposition in terms of
a system of ahistorical, binary oppositions, dialectics carefully avoids any such
fixationjust think of the dialectical triad of negation, persistence, and Aufhe-
bung. Structuralism is a truncated dialectics.
In the late 1980s and 1990s Jamesons thought moved in new directions.
Before then the products of high culture were the self-evident subject matter
of his writings. But now film, video, the visual arts, and architecture are also
eagerly explored for their cultural and (hidden) political meanings. This is what
was at stake in Signatures of the Visible (1990) and in The Geopolitical Aesthetic:
Cinema and Space in the World System (1992).
14
At the same time the theme of
utopianismalready addressed in the two volumes of The Ideologies of Theory
essays (1988)
15
became ever more prominent. This resulted in The Seeds of
Time (1994) and Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and
Other Science Fictions (2005), where Jameson presented utopian models of the
future by employing marxist speculations on the classless society and science
fiction as well.
16

This combination of all-encompassing analyses of contemporary art and
culture, both high and low, with the political agenda of utopianism established
Jamesons reputation as a cultural critic. Indeed, in both the blurb on the book
under review here and on The Modernist Papers of 2007,
17
Colin macCabe char-
acterizes Fredric Jameson as probably the most important cultural critic writing
in English today.
18
If one peruses the many things that have recently been said
and written about Jameson, there seems to be near unanimous agreement that he
should be seen primarily as a cultural critic. This is why Jameson is now often
heralded as one of our greatest contemporary sages, as our present counterpart to
the Carlyles, Baudelaires, Nietzsches, Arnolds, Benjamins, Eliots, and Trillings of
a remoter and more recent past, by such highly important and influential authors as
Terry Eagleton, dominick LaCapra, and hayden White. Jameson has become one
of the greatest names in the reflection on contemporary culture, if not the greatest.
13. Jameson criticizes Barthes for his unrepenting surrender to bourgeois jouissance.
14. Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible (London and New York: Routledge, 1990); idem,
The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indianapolis University Press, 1992).
15. Fredric Jameson, The Ideologies of Theory, 2 vols. (minneapolis: University of minnesota
Press, 1988).
16. Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); idem,
Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London and
New York: Verso, 2005).
17. Fredric Jameson, The Modernist Papers (London and New York: Verso, 2007).
18. It will need no elucidation that (neo-)marxism is the almost natural point of departure for
almost all cultural criticism. See for this Richard Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frank-
furt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), xv.
FRANK ANKERSMIT
88
II. mAIN ThEmES
however successful the books I have mentioned may have been, Jameson is
best known for two others: The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially
Symbolic Act, in which he develops his own brand of marxist hermeneutics, and
Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, which offers a marxist
interpretation of postmodernism. As will be clear by now, Jameson is a dialecti-
cal thinker. In order to recognize what this must mean for his hermeneutics we
should recall, above all, that dialectics is basically monist and therefore is pecu-
liar among all Western philosophies since descartes and Kant in that it leaves
no room for the subject/object split or any variants of it. The hegelian dialectic
inherited this from Spinozas doctrine of the one Substance, comprising within
itself both subject and object.
19
dialectics is thus best seen as the historicization
of Spinozist monist rationalism.
As homer shows, three consequences follow from this. First, instead of accept-
ing the well-known epistemological relationship between historian or reader on
the one hand, and some isolated cultural artifact we have inherited from the past,
on the other, as his framework, the dialectician will prefer to see the interpreta-
tion of the past, or of the text, as the process of a continuous mediation between
past and present and in which both participate ex aequo.
20
In dialectics there are
no insurmountable epistemological gaps or fixed hierarchies between subject and
objectthis is, again, Spinozas legacy to dialectics. Interpretation then becomes
an allegory of the confrontation between two social forms, namely, past and pre-
sent. Second, because of this, in all interpretation the past remains an active agent
in its own right, so to speak. This is the paradox of dialectics: precisely by pulling
the past closer to usby doing away with the epistemological barrier between
subject and objectwe grant to it a power and presence for which epistemology
leaves no room at all. Third, because dialectics comprises the past, the present,
and the future, the future must also be incorporated in all this. or, as Jameson
puts it himself, we must allow for: the sense of a hermeneutic relationship to the
past which is able to grasp its own present history only on condition it manages
to keep the idea of the future, and of radical and utopian transformation alive.
21

This, then, gives us the utopian impulse in Jamesons thought.
19. See Beiser, Hegel, 61-65 and Beisers quote on 46-47 from hegel himself in his writings on the
history of philosophy: when one begins to philosophize one must be first a Spinozist. The soul must
bathe itself in the aether of the single substance, in which everything one has held dear is submerged.
See also Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 99, 227.
20. As White insists, this has implications for how to conceive of ideology. Ideology cannot be
framed within the reassuring, epistemological science/truth opposition: ideology is not, for Jame-
son, a lie, a deception, or a distortion of a perceivable reality but rather an attempt to come to terms
with and to transcend the unbearable relationships of social life. See hayden White, Jamesons
Redemption of Narrative, in idem, The Content of the Form (Baltimore: Johns hopkins University
Press, 1987), 154.
21. homer, Fredric Jameson, 42.
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
89
Next, the question arises how to operationalize or conceptualize this dialec-
tical mediation between historical reality in its subjectivist and objectivist
manifestations. This is where Lacan comes in. For the Lacanian Real is exactly
the same middle between objectified and subjectified reality that reality is within
dialectical thought. So Jameson now posits a parallel between the Lacanian triad
of 1) imagination, 2) the symbolic order, and 3) the Real and the hermeneutic
triad of 1) the text, 2) society, and 3) history. It follows from this schema that
history should be equated to the Lacanian Real; this can properly be said to be our
political unconscious since, just like the unconscious, history is always present
but nevertheless successfully resists ever being fully captured. As homer puts it:
history is repressed in cultural texts and operates as a textual unconscious.
22

This has, in its turn, consequences for how to think about narrative. For what is
more natural than to tie dialectics and narrative firmly together? Is dialectics, in
the end, not the narrative of the self-unfolding of spirit (Geist) where we must
never fall into the trap of seeing the intrinsically dialectical process of narrativiza-
tion as solely a thing of the mind? For dialectics typically shuttles between what
in the Cartesian, epistemological tradition is called mind and reality. It follows
that narrative is just as much a thing of the mind as it is of reality: again, it medi-
ates between the past itself and historical thought.
23
or, as epistemologists using
their bizarre vocabulary would be compelled to characterize this state of affairs:
narrative is both in the past itself and a category of the human mind. In this way
the notion of narrative can be said to be a symbolization of what our hermeneuti-
cal understanding of the past (and of the text) gives us access to. So the books
titleThe Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Actis most
appropriate. In fact, it is the shortest possible summary of the book. Finally,
Jameson illustrates his marxist hermeneutics with an elaborate discussion of
three novelistsBalzac, Gissing, and Conrad. No theory without examples!
Taking into account all of this, one can only be deeply impressed by Jamesons
success in weaving together all this within one coherent whole. This book truly
is a tour de force.
The Political Unconscious is probably Jamesons most difficult book. The
book on postmodernism is far more accessible. It grew out of a much-discussed
essay on postmodernism in the New Left Review of 1984 that is included in the
book. As behooves a marxist, Jameson relates the emergence of postmodernism
to changes in the economy. he was one of the first to see how the victory of the
ideology of the market, of neoliberalism, of milton Friedmans radicalism, of
the dismantling of the welfare state by Reagan and Thatcher resulted in an eco-
nomic system that is basically different from the one we had. As early as 1991 he
observed the Lefts helplessness with regard to neoliberalism: the surrender to
22. Ibid., 55; see also Roberts, Fredric Jameson, 61-68.
23. When discussing narrative, homer agrees with Roy Bhaskars criticism that Jameson is guilty
of the epistemic fallacy and fails to give a convincing argument in favor of an independently exist-
ing historical reality. See homer, Fredric Jameson, 65ff. But the attempt to give such an argument
would automatically require abandoning dialectics, and this one cannot reasonably demand of some-
one who, like Jameson, openly embraces it.
FRANK ANKERSMIT
90
the various forms of market ideologyon the left, I mean, not to mention every-
body elsehas been imperceptible but alarmingly universal.
24

The neoliberal market ideology is, above all, the regression to a pre- or ahis-
torical truth about human society where, paradoxically, it intersects with marxist
thought. Jameson appeals here to Gary Beckers claim that the market economy
is the most basic economic model one can think of and one whose perfect exem-
plification already exists in the prehistorical household model.
25
Indeed, this
agrees with the old marxist claim that economics is at the root of all of human
society: it was there already when the take-off from the household model had not
yet taken place. This is what neoliberalism and marxism have in common. But
as Jameson provocatively continues: I will argue the proposition that we [that
is, marxists] have much in common with the neoliberals, in fact virtually eve-
rythingsave the essentials!
26
And the essentials concern how to interpret this
regression. For the neoliberals this regression is a Rousseauean return to human
nature, to whom and what we basically are and that we so sadly lost sight of
with history (mainly thanks to all kinds of collective arrangements that we had,
stupidly, handed over to the state). hence, their Rousseauean rejoicing about this
albeit belated rediscovery of our true social and economic selves.
For marxists (and the more enlightened liberals), however, this can only be
half of the truth. For the mistake of the neoliberals is to confuse the rediscovery
of our economic nature with the market model. And, as the marxists go on to
argue, identifying economics with the market model is to deny that econom-
ics has a history of its own. Its an attempt to abolish history and to return to
the state of nature. But economics has, needs, and will have its history, no less
than anything else in the condition humaine. Neoliberalism is, therefore, an
attempt to stop history in the name of the reification of the ahistorical nature of
interhuman economic relationships. It is this attempt to close down history that
has resounded through all of Western culture and from which postmodernism
emerged. Postmodernism is what you get when you try to stop history and live in
an eternal presentwhich is a resurrection of our Rousseauean natural pastand
will result in the triumph of what hegel called schlechte Unendlichkeit (bad
infinity), excluding any qualitative change for the future. Where we are now, we
will remain forever.
The book on postmodernism is, mainly, an effort to detail what this must
mean to our contemporary culture and to our (postmodern) societies. Jamesons
primary focus is on the exchange of time for space, where these two notions
24. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (durham, NC, and
London: duke University Press, 1991), 263.
25. obviously, Beckers argument cannot fail to remind us of hannah Arendts claim in her book
on revolution that the word economy derives from the Greek word oikos. hence, economy has its
origins in the private domain of the household and is, therefore, right from the beginning an unsuitable
model for a politics serving the public interest. Jameson also briefly mentions her relevant ideas (see
353). A no less fierce denunciator of economy as a model for politics was, of course, Carl Schmitt in
his Der Begriff des Politischen of 1932. But, as a marxist, Jameson would disagree with both Arendt
and Schmitt: for him politics is and ought to be subservient to economy (297). This raises the interest-
ing question as to whether marxism leaves any room for the notion of the public interest as different
from the sum of all private interests.
26. Jameson, Postmodernism, 265.
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
91
should be understood primarily in a metaphorical sense. Time is suggestive of
change, and we can only properly appreciate it if we keep in mind the different
phases of the process of change: of what a thing was (and is now no longer), of
what it is now, and of what it may become in the future. This gives to the world a
(temporal) depth comprising a tangible and real present apart from a past that we
can only remember. That is times chiaroscuro. Space (and we must think here of
two-dimensional space), however, lacks such depth and offers us only a surface.
Time is metaphorical or synecdochical; space is metonymical. Time focuses on
identity and space on difference. In the time-model meanings are organized as
sets of internal relationships; in the space-model we have only external relation-
ships so that meanings become like items on a map that are only externally (that
is, spatially) related to each other. hence moving from the time- to the space-
model, from modernism to postmodernism, involves a loss of meaning and of
meanings capacity to organize the world for us; it is therefore no less ominously
than correctly described as a breakdown in the signifying chain.
27

Almost everything that we have learned since Jameson to associate with
postmodernism can be derived from this shift from time to space; think of
Lyotards thesis of the exchange of metanarratives comprising all of the past for
postmodernist so-called little narratives that never exceed the horizon of the
present. hence, the loss of historicity in postmodernism. hence, the exchange
of modernist paranoia for postmodernist schizophrenia (deleuze), that is,
the shift from weaving the web of meanings as closely together as possible, to
unraveling that web into separate threads of meaning. hence, the predominance
of science over history. hence, the waning of affect, since what affects us
will affect now at best just a few of these individual threads of meaning but no
longer the web of meaning as a whole. hence, the exchange of parody for
pastichewhich is, in fact, parody robbed of its meaning. hence, postmodernist
architectures playfully combining classical or baroque architectural rhetoric with
that of modernismfor these styles of the past have now lost their original mean-
ing and therewith their innate resistance to quotation in postmodernist architec-
ture. hence, postmodernisms ne plus ultra of the very dissolution of the category
of meaning itself, as exemplified by Baudrillards theory of the simulacrum.
So the resurrection of an economic state of nature in our modern world, which
is advocated by neoliberalism to the present day, has had the most momentous
consequences. All the more may one be surprised by Jamesons relatively posi-
tive appraisal of postmodern architecture, art, and culture.
28
Then again, perhaps
we should we see his recent monumental book on literary modernism
29
dealing
with Baudelaire, Rimbaud, mallarm, Kafka, Joyce, Proust and othersas a, for
him, welcome warm bath in the work of authors whose superiority to postmodern
authors he has never really doubted. moreover, does Jameson not observe in A
27. In the book under review Jameson adds to the analysis of space and time, as given in the book
on postmodernism, by explaining how they can be related to each other dialectically. See 66-70.
28. [A]s far as taste is concerned (and as readers of the preceding chapters will have become
aware), culturally I write as a relatively enthusiastic consumer of postmodernism. See Jameson,
Postmodernism, 298.
29. Jameson, The Modernist Papers.
FRANK ANKERSMIT
92
Singular Modernity a revival of the concept of modernityapparently with his
approval?
30
So it seems.
Commenting on Jamesons intellectual achievement, homer observes:
[I]n the last thirty years he has produced a body of work that combines a formidable degree
of philosophical breadth, political integrity and intellectual rigour. his great philosophi-
calliterary models remain Sartre, Lukcs and Adorno, but he is equally at home engaging
with figures such as Lacan, derrida and Baudrillard. moreover, he presents an astonishing
range of cultural analysis from high literature to science fiction, from popular music,
film and video to painting, sculpture and architecture. Jameson will slip from a discussion
of heidegger to pop art and hollywood film with an ease that is at once breathtaking and
unsettling.
31
one can only agree: It is hard to conceive of a contemporary thinker with greater
erudition, a better grasp of the profoundest philosophical and literary theories,
32

or a more original and penetrating insight into the peculiarities of our contempo-
rary postmodern world than Fredric Jameson. his work testifies to a wealth of
learning and a scope of interest that are unparalleled by any other contemporary
scholar. he seems to have read just about everything and to have a more secure
grasp on all of it than anybody else. his reputation and standing in the academic
world are in agreement with this. In 2008 he received the danish holberg Prize
a kind of Nobel Prize for the humanities.
But this should not make us forget that this so very impressive oeuvre is not
without its weaknesses, too. There is, in the first place, the infamous Jameso-
nian style (douglas Kellner
33
), which, unfortunately, has proved to be a fatal
stumbling block for many readers wishing to orient themselves in Jamesons
writings (and so it was with me for quite some time). his books belong to the
most difficult and demanding texts written by contemporary theorists. This is
not merely a matter of basically clear thoughts being unclearly expressed (think
of Kants or donald davidsons style of writing), but rather the more dramatic
variant of unclear thoughts that are expressed unclearly. When this occurs, read-
ing inevitably becomes guesswork. Though in all fairness it should be added
right away that there is an immense difference between the tortuous and indeed
impenetrable prose of, say, the first chapters of The Political Unconscious and the
urbane, relaxed, and easygoing style of, for example, the one-hundred-page-long
conclusion to the postmodernism book.
Jameson is aware of the problem. he recalls that after the publication of The
Prison-house of Language he received two sets of letters: one praising him for
defending structuralism and one for attacking it.
34
most authors would be worried
by such a contradictory reception of their work and conclude that they should try
30. See the introduction and conclusion to Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity: Essay on the
Ontology of the Present (London and New York: Verso, 2002).
31. homer, Fredric Jameson, 6.
32. Think, for example, of Jamesons absolutely brilliant exposition of heideggers conception of
representation. See Jameson, Singular Modernity, 45-54. This is Jameson at his very best where he
offers to his readers something that only he can give them.
33. douglas Kellner, Fredric Jameson, http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell19.htm
(accessed November 28, 2011).
34. Jameson, Postmodernism, 297.
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
93
to write just a little bit more clearly in the futurebut that was not Jamesons
reaction. his defense is that you inevitably get difficult prose if you deal with the
kind of difficult topics he typically addresses.
35
But this is the sort of argument
that says that the description of something blue should be blue itselfand that
will convince few people.
A better explanation (and partial excuse for Jamesons arcane prose) would,
in my view, be an appeal to his embrace of dialectics. In dialectical argument
concepts are always in transition, and necessarily so because of their continuous
shuttling between what epistemologists like to refer to as language and real-
ity. Language and the concepts we use are in permanent flux in dialectical and
historical thoughtthink of Nietzsches slogan definierbar ist nur was keine
Geschichte hat (one can only define things that have no history). obviously,
this makes historical debate vague and imprecise and dialectical argument dif-
ficult to nail down; in fact, if you find this intolerable you had better stop reading
history (and dialectical texts) at all.
36
It also follows that clear and unambiguous
prose will be seen from the perspective of the dialectician as a sure sign of the
reification of language, of a fixation on the relationship between language and
the world that dialectics should always avoid. As Jameson puts it: I believe that
theory is to be grasped as the perpetual and impossible attempt to dereify the lan-
guage of thought, and to preempt all the systems and ideologies which inevitably
result from the establishment of this or that fixed terminology (9).
But there are more obstacles for the Jameson reader. There is the prolixity of
his texts often obscuring the demarcation between the important and what is mere
detail, the immense size of most of his books, and the fact that they are almost all
collections of previously published essays. Jameson himself justifies his prefer-
ence for the article or essay with the argument that in the contemporary intellectu-
al world books have become a less appropriate vehicle for theoretical reflection.
Perhaps. Nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that prolific writers such as Jameson
would do their audience a most welcome service by now and then publishing a
monograph explaining where they presently are on their intellectual journey. The
problem is further aggravated by the fact that, as far as I can see, there has been
little development in Jamesons thought: he seems to hold the same theories now
that he argued for in the 1970s (though, of course, these theories are applied to
ever new topics). There is nothing wrong with thisno doubt about that!but it
does reinforce the readers impression of having been thrown into a sea of texts
without compass or destination, and left to try to find ones way in it.
Finally, since all of Jamesons writings are uncompromisingly theoretical, one
sometimes wonders whether so much theory might not be counterproductive in
the end. There is a real world outside theory, after all, in which a marxist theo-
rist, probably more than any other, might wish to intervene. do we not expect the
marxist theorist to focus more than any other on changing the world rather than
on understanding it? I would agree therefore with Rortys lament that there is
little sign in Jamesons oeuvre of his being aware of this. Indeed, the second and
35. Roberts, Fredric Jameson, 6.
36. In recent decades there has been much interest in so-called fuzzy thinkingwhich does
indeed fill a lacuna in contemporary philosophy.
FRANK ANKERSMIT
94
third parts of Rortys Achieving Our Country are one continuous, subterranean
philippic against Jamesons unrestrained lust for theory and abstraction. For this
is, according to Rorty, what killed the American cultural Left, and here Jameson
is his primary target:
[T]he difference between this residual Left and the academic Left is the difference
between people who read books like Thomas Geoghegans Which Side Are You On?a
brilliant explanation of how unions get bustedand people who read Jamesons Post-
modernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. The latter is an equally brilliant
book, but it operates on a level of abstraction too high to encourage any particular political
initiative. After reading Geoghegan, you have views on some of the things which need to
be done. After reading Jameson, you have views on practically everything except on what
needs to be done.
37
We can be sure that Rorty has no a priori bias against Jamesons political con-
ceptions. on the contrary, he can be expected to be fully open to all that Jameson
thinks and writes, and not to be far removed from him on the political spectrum,
so such criticism should not be dismissed out of hand.
III. dIALECTICS
Against the background of the foregoing we can pencil in the main contours of
the book under review. The book is huge, 620 pages, over 300,000 words; again,
the book is a collection of essays published between 1993 and 2009 (though one
of them is from 1981). It is the first part of a trilogy and will be followed by a
book on hegels Phenomenology of Spirit and one on marxs Capital. Unfortu-
nately, there is no introduction or conclusion suggesting how these three books
will be related or how to approach this one.
38
But perhaps such an elucidation
would only state the obvious and therefore be superfluous.
When dealing with dialectics Jameson begins by distinguishing among 1) the
dialectics 2) dialectics, and 3) the adjective dialectical. Jameson defines
the dialectics as the subsumption of all varieties of dialectical thinking under
a single philosophical system, and probably, in the process, to affirm that this
system is the truth. And ultimately the only viable philosophy (page 5; Jame-
son goes on to add that this is how he would look at dialectics himself). So the
strategy of distinguishing between 1) on the hand and 2) and 3) on the other is
to suggest that there are more dialectics in the world than just the dialectic and
that anyone wishing to participate successfully in the contemporary academic
37. Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (Cam-
bridge, mA: harvard University Press, 1998), 78. I would like to thank John White for having drawn
my attention to Rortys book. however, Jameson might have a thought-provoking rejoinder to Rortys
criticism: what happens is that the more powerful the vision of some increasingly total system or
logicthe Foucault of the prisons book is an examplethe more powerless the reader comes to feel.
Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine,
to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralyzed. . . (Jameson,
Postmodernism, 5). Thus Jameson might reply that it is precisely the impossibility of basing political
action on his work that proves how right he is. It is a strong argument, but whoever uses it wins a
pyrrhic victory over his opponent.
38. See 69, note 68 for a brief comment on how the book relates to the forthcoming ones on
hegels Phenomenology and on marx.
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
95
world must have installed the dialectics program on his intellectual PC. You
have dialectics, for example, in Kants transcendental dialectics, in Nietzsche, in
Bergson, in Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations, in deleuze, and so on.
All these philosophers do dialectics in one way or another, but without neces-
sarily subscribing to hegelian or marxist dialectics. Even liberal philosophers
work with dialectics: just think of mandevilles private vice, public virtue or
of Smiths invisible hand (287). Jameson discusses two specific traditions at
length in this context: structuralism and deconstructivism.
As we all know, structuralism requires us to look at culture in terms of binary
codes where each element of the code is the others opposite, even though for
each element the presence of the other is the condition for its own existence.
Self-evidently this must remind us of the role played by negation in dialectics.
It is to this extent that structuralism can, indeed, be said to be dialectical. The
difference is, though, that in structuralism negation does not penetrate into the
components themselves that are each others binary opposition. They would
remain what they are if the negation or opposition were taken away. As Jameson
puts it, in structuralism each pole of the specific dualism . . . is governed by
distinct laws and dynamics, which cannot be made to apply to or to govern the
opposite term (25). This is not the case with dialectics. Jameson mentions a fas-
cinating example: Fritz Langs film Woman at the Window (1944). After seeing
the film the viewer does not know whether the films main character is a quiet,
kind, decent, bourgeois professor dreaming that he is a murderer or a murderer
dreaming, in his everyday life, that he is a quiet, kind, decent, bourgeois profes-
sor (57). Now, if one gets stuck in this dilemma, then one has not understood
the film because there would simply be two mutually exclusive interpretations,
which is not a matter of much interest. What is of interest and what the film
wishes to convey is that a quiet, kind, decent, bourgeois professor can just as well
be a murderer. That is the shocking message of the film that only comes across
if the two opposite possibilities interpenetrate
39
so that the viewer is constantly
aware that the professor may be a murderer and the murderer a professor. The
message is that the professor may be a murderer and vice versa.
40
This was surely
a most appropriate insight at the time that the holocaust was nearing its dismal
completion! Only this is true dialectics. As Jameson nicely summarizes: the
deconcealment of structuralist antinomies that is at the root of practical or
theoretical dilemmas can serve as a powerful instrument of ideological analysis
(as in deconstruction), but it should not be confused with the more dynamic and
productive act of setting the antinomy itself in motion, that is to say, revealing it
39. This is the process that dialecticians call mediation. As Jameson quotes Adorno: media-
tion is therefore in hegel neveras any number of fateful misunderstandings since Kierkegaard
would have ita midpoint between the extremes: rather mediation takes place within the extremes
themselves: and this is the radical feature of hegel which is irreconcilable with any moderate or
intermediary position (56).
40. This also provides us with the model for how to think about the relationship between base and
superstructure: we should begin with recognizing their oppositionand hence recognize their relative
autonomy with regard to each otherbut only in order to see that their opposition is the fuel for the
machine of their dialectical interaction (47ff.).
FRANK ANKERSMIT
96
to have in reality been the form of a contradiction: for it is the unmasking of the
antinomy as contradiction which constitutes dialectical thinking as such (43).
This is precisely why dialectics is so basic to all historical thought. For it is
the historians main task always to be aware of the dialectical proliferation of
meaning, to see how meanings may invite their opposites, or negations, and to
recognize that this interplay of meanings may never be broken off on penalty of
reification (see the introduction) and which is tantamount to not being a histo-
rian. There is no better example of this than hegels own cunning of Reason:
within this context it must be observed that in world history the actions of human beings
may sometimes have results differing completely from what these human beings had in
mind or intended to achieve, and from what was directly known and desired by them.
Indeed, these human agents achieved their goals; but something more was brought about
by this as well, that certainly had its roots in their actions, but not in their consciousness
and intentions.
41

Intentional meaning automatically produces nonintended meaning, and that
may very well be its very opposite or negation. Collingwoodian hermeneutics and
its more recent variants, such as that proposed by Skinner or Bevir, is prototypi-
cally blind to this dialectics of meaning. Admittedly, it proposes a way of looking
at history whose value nobody would wish to deny. Nevertheless, if one aspires
to being a true historian this can only be the beginning, and the real historical
work will be done only on the trajectory of dialectical reflection coming after it.
After Jamesons criticism of structuralism we may wonder whether he would
consider poststructuralism in its derridian deconstructivist garb an improvement.
This question is not easy to answer. For when Jameson discusses derrida he
focuses on Glas and on Spectres de Marxhence, on books in which derrida
analyzes hegel and marx and about whom Jameson has very pronounced opin-
ions himself. The result is that it becomes hard to discern between 1) Jamesons
appraisal of deconstruction and 2) Jamesons disagreement with derrida over
hegel and/or marx.
42
obviously, these two things must be carefully kept apart.
Perhaps the closest to an ex cathedra comment on derrida and deconstruction is
the unconcealed relish with which Jameson expatiates on derridas own confes-
sion I dont know how to tell stories (131)and where it becomes clear to
every reader that this necessarily puts derrida outside the world in which dia-
lecticians, like Jameson, live. The Jameson of The Political Unconscious would
be the first to stress that dialectics is nothing other than one way of codifying
41. jener Zusammenhang enthlt nmlich dies, dass in der Weltgeschichte durch die handlungen
der menschen noch etwas anders berhaupt herauskomme, als sie bezwecken und erreichen, als sie
unmittelbar wissen und wollen. Sie vollbringen ihr Interesse; aber es wird noch ein Ferneres damit
zustande gebracht, dass auch innerlich darin liegt, aber das nicht in ihrem Bewusstsein und ihrer
Absicht lag. G. W. F. hegel, Vorlesungen ber die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte. Band I. Die
Vernunft in der Geschichte (hamburg: Felix meiner Verlag, 1970), 88.
42. An additional problem is that Jamesons text is often regrettably unhelpful here. See, for
example, 104, 105. It is clear that Jameson disagrees here with derridas interpretation of hegels
notion of Aufhebung, but even after several rereadings of these two pages I have been unable to
put my finger on what exactly the disagreement is about. There is more clarity on 106 where derrida
is accused of reverting to the rather banal question of whether hegel was a theologian rather than a
philosopher. But, of course, this is of little help if we wish to find out about Jamesons appraisal of
deconstructivism.
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
97
narrative, and this seems to suggest that, according to Jameson, at the end of the
day, the deconstructivist and the dialectician simply live in different worlds. Nev-
ertheless, in the long chapter on derrida mainly focusing on Spectres de Marx,
Jameson opts for a strategy of peaceful coexistence with deconstructivism.
43

But a clearly repressed criticism sometimes shimmers through Jamesons
exposition. For example, he observes that there are moments of lowered guard
in derridas customary posture of a philosophy that neither affirmeth nor deny-
eth and where Jameson clearly prefers Rorty to derrida (136). Similarly, when
derrida criticizes marx for attempting to unmask specters with the argument that
such an attempt is inevitably just one more fight against specters for the simple,
but decisive, reason that specters do not exist, Jameson respectfully observes that
the belief in specters is sometimes less harmless than their nonexistence seems
to suggest (143ff.). Reminding us of this possibility is clearly what the marxist
notion of ideology has always been about.
Finally, in Spectres de Marx derrida discusses marxs polemic against
Stirnerand we know this polemic to have been a particularly bitter and vehe-
ment one since marx was painfully aware that Stirner had been more successful
in exorcising the last specters of hegelian idealism than he himself had been.
derrida commented on this: my own feeling is that marx is afraid of himself,
he obsessively pursues someone who is not far from being a perfect likeness of
himself, a brother, a double, thus a diabolical image. A sort of phantom of him-
self. That he would like to distance from himself, to distinguish from himself:
to oppose (173). And then Jameson, though almost contre coeur, comes up
with the inevitable rejoinder: namely, that there is a good deal of hypocrisy in
derridas Es-deutung of marx. For what philosopher is, after all, more afraid
of himself than derrida? Indeed, does not his permanent ontological and episte-
mological abstinence and persistent preference for the parasitical use of others
arguments rather than risking one of his own, not make him into the very para-
digm of philosophical cowardice (my term, not Jamesons, to be sure)? The
undertone of irritation in Jamesons otherwise so very respectful discussion of
derrida and deconstructivism therefore need not be surprising. Who could blame
Jameson for that?
When turning to Jamesons own account of dialectics, two comments are in
order. First, recall that hegelian dialectics was, at least partly, the result of the
Spinozist reaction against all the dualisms that Kant had introduced with his criti-
cal philosophy. Since the Pantheismusstreit, beginning in 1786, many German
philosophers had come to the conclusion that 1) these dualisms were, in fact, the
Achilles heel of the Kantian system, and 2) they had best be overcome by return-
ing to Spinozas notion of the one SubstanceDeus sive natura. With one pow-
erful blow this move eliminates the troubling dualisms of Kantian epistemology.
Indeed, from the perspective of philosophical strategy, this was a most dextrous
43. Characteristic is his comment so far, dialectics and deconstruction are consonant with each
other: both work to bring up into light the structural incoherence of the idea or conceptual posi-
tions or interpretations which are their object of critique. Though a few lines further on he does
not hesitate to speak of the nihilism of deconstruction, which can hardly have been intended as a
compliment (27).
FRANK ANKERSMIT
98
move. Nevertheless, no matter how one looks at it, arguing in favor of a Spinoz-
ist identity of subject and object will forever remain profoundly counterintuitive
if we have the sciences in mindone need only remember Schellings lifelong
hopeless wrestling with Naturphilosophie to realize as much.
This is why we had better opt for a more modest and less outrageous monism
by mixing Spinozas monism with Vicos verum et factum convertuntur, with
the result that the scope of Spinozas monism is safely restricted to Vicos world
that has been made by man himself. Even more so, Spinozist monism is then
almost trivially true. For who can make a clear demarcation between subject and
object in the domain of culture, the humanities, and so on? We need only think
of Freuds superego to recognize that all our thoughts, plans, decisions, fears,
and hopes are permeated through and through with social and cultural determi-
nations. We cannot live for even a moment without them nor they without us.
The monism of subject and object is for the social and cultural world a basic and
indisputable truth. We can therefore only agree with Jameson when he rejects
Friedrich Engelss (and hegels own) claim that dialectics should be valid for the
sciences as well. Indeed, this may remove one more obstacle to our willingness
to recognize the plausibility of hegelian dialectics as our conceptual model when
reflecting on cultural and historical reality.
This leads me to a second comment. hegels dialectics makes sense only as
long as one avoids the temptation of reification, whether inspired by materialist
or realist assumptions or (unconscious) prejudices. dialectics resists each effort
to pull apart the order of knowledge and the order of what we have knowledge
of. dialectics is, so to speak, always a thinking-with-the-thing. Admittedly, it
is not easy to live up to this demand consistently, for we are all born reifiers.
Reification promises to give us a hold on the world for which we are always
striving just as desperately as the drowning person for a piece of wood that might
save his or her life. Against this background one may well have doubts about
the ease with which Jameson is able to assimilate philosophical systems into his
thought, though those systems may have contours that do not appear to agree
with dialectics. Think, for example, of the Lacanian triad of the imaginary, the
symbolic, and the Real where the symbolic order comes close to how the category
of language functions in current accounts of the relationship between language
and the world. This is certainly not meant to present Lacan as an (albeit peculiar)
philosopher of language but to suggest that the Lacanian triad comes closer to
current discussions in philosophy of language than to dialectics, and where such
notions as the imaginary, the symbolic order, and the Real could only be used
sous rature, to speak with derrida. one thus has to ask oneself what is left of such
notions once they are imported into Jamesons dialectical overall framework?
one could equally think of deleuzes distinction between codes and axioms.
Codes are a matter of custom and myth and, as such, are probably reducible to
a dialectical framework, but axioms are operational; they do not offer anything
for commentary or exegesis, but rather are merely a set of rules to be put into
effect (186) and thus appear to be quite undialectical. This is all the more wor-
rying since for deleuze, it is axioms and not codes that govern economics; this
is the domain of dialectics par excellence for marxists. So one wonders whether
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
99
Jameson is at all times sufficiently aware of whether the many philosophical
systems he tries to incorporate into his own thought really do lend themselves to
his ever-so-hospitable eclecticism.
IV. PhILoSoPhY oF hISToRY
It will not be surprising that Jameson discusses at length what several hegelian
and marxist theorists have had to say on history and on our relationship to the
pasttheorists such as Lukcs, Benjamin, Adorno, horkheimer, Althusser, or
habermas. Nor that he has only meager interest in contemporary philosophy of
history and its practitioners. As we have seen, for Jameson dialectics originated
from the Spinozist revolt against Kantian epistemology and the dualisms result-
ing from it, whereas for the last half-century, philosophy of history has held an
almost exclusive interest in epistemological issues as occasioned by the question
of the possibility and nature of historical knowledge. It therefore follows that
contemporary philosophers of history would have little to offer Jameson even
when they decide to write about marx.
44
For though an epistemological approach
to marx is certainly possibleno doubt about that!one can only agree with
Jamesons view that such an approach must remain blind to the very essence of
hegelian and marxist dialectics.
Nevertheless, a large part of Valences of the Dialectic deals with the philoso-
phy of history of Paul Ricoeuranother discouragingly prolific writer. It is not
easy to say why Jameson awarded to Ricoeur the honor of his interest in prefer-
ence to any other philosopher of history. After all, because of his background in
phenomenology Ricoeur does not seem to be notably closer to Jamesons own
dialectical thought than is any other contemporary philosopher of history. Jame-
son himself seems to recognize this when he characterizes Ricoeur as a human-
ist or as clearly a traditional philosopher and these epithets are certainly not
meant to be understood as compliments (485).
45
moreover, Ricoeur never showed
any interest in dialectics,
46
or hegel, and/or marx. Finally, as we shall see in a
moment, there is very little that Jameson actually finds worth recommending in
Ricoeurs philosophy of history.
To my mind, Gadamer would have been a more obvious choice from Jame-
sons perspective, first, because Gadamer can be seen as the most profound
thinker in the hermeneuticist tradition. Although it is true that hermeneuticism
arose from an epistemological inspiration (culminating in dilthey), it has always
remained fairly close to a Spinozist, Vichian, and/or dialectical approach to
44. As, for example, melvin Rader, Marxs Interpretation of History (New York and oxford:
oxford University Press, 1979), or G. A. Cohen, Karl Marxs Theory of History (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1978). These are brilliant books, unparalleled in their knowledge of marxs text and
in the precision and perspicacity with which they analyze these texts. But their throbbing heart has
been cut out.
45. It is true that just earlier Jameson had praised Ricoeurs work as a stunning example of the
dialectic (484)but surely the term dialectic must be understood metaphorically here.
46. Though with some creative pulling and pushing, Ricoeurs argument about the relationship
among mimesis
1
, mimesis
2
, and mimesis
3
could be fitted within a dialectical model. But Jameson
apparently does not feel challenged to try to do so (502-510).
FRANK ANKERSMIT
100
history. one might well say that hermeneutics gives us the most ontological of
epistemologies and the most epistemological of ontologies. moreover, in Truth
and Method, Gadamer was at pains to remove all traces of epistemology from
hermeneutics.
47
Second, one need only think of the so-called hermeneutic circle
to recognize the affinities of hermeneutics with dialectical thought. But Jameson
mentions Gadamer only once and when doing so mistakenly attributes to him
views that had been proposed by Koselleck (527). one other more obvious choice
would have been hayden White. Like Jameson himself, White is much more
interested in how we relate to the past than in epistemological niceties. moreover,
White shares Jamesons fascination with literature and with how literature may
help us understand the nature of our relationship to the past. Both call themselves
marxists. Nevertheless, though Jameson is undoubtedly acquainted with Whites
oeuvre, he refers to it only a few times in passing.
Ricoeur organized his own philosophy of history around the experience of
timeand Jameson follows him here. When defining his position vis vis
Ricoeur, Jameson distinguishes among three ways of making sense of the experi-
ence of time: 1) the psychologist approach, 2) the structuralist approach, and 3)
the phenomenological approach (496). Jameson rejects the firstwhich makes
the claim that tenses merely express more fundamental human experiences of
time (496)though without explaining why. Jameson is more elaborate on
the structuralist approach, mainly associated with Greimas. Both Ricoeur and
Jameson praise the structuralist approach for linking the experience of time to
narrative: without the capacity for organizing our experiences narratively the
experience of time is impossible. But both also criticize structuralism for com-
pletely separating narrative structures in our use of language from the experien-
tial material itself that is organized by them. The idea is that such structures are
outside time themselves, since they are mere systems for how to connect textual
components with one another. It then follows that the structuralist approach is sui
generis incapable of explaining the experience of time (489, 492). So that leaves
us with the third, the phenomenological option.
obviously, this is the approach favored by Ricoeur himself and is, therefore,
the occasion of a lengthy exposition of what Jameson finds good and bad in
Ricoeurs philosophy of history. This results in a number of lists of proper-
ties that are attributed by several philosophers to how the experience of time
presents itself us to us, if seen from a phenomenological point of view. It all
begins with the prephenomenological conceptions of time proposed by Aristotle
and St. Augustine, and then moves on to husserls thesis that the experience of
time is always a matter of retension and protension, which still is closely
similar to St. Augustines conception of time (499, 517). he then moves on to
heideggers five existentials of Sorge, Zuhandenheit, inauthenticity, Sein
zum Tode, and so-called collective time (516, 517). This account is compli-
cated by the fact that heidegger had one more list up his sleeve, namely that of
1) Bedeutsamkeit (significance), 2) datierbarkeit (datability), and 3) Ges-
panntheit (spannedness)and where it is not clear how these two lists hang
47. Though without being wholly successful in this, as I tried to show in my Sublime Historical
Experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), chapter 5.
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
101
together (517). Ricoeur further adds to the complication by adding two more lists
of his own. The first list distinguishes among: 1) peripeteia, 2) anagnoroosis, and
3) pathos (504), and the second list among: 1) the calendar, 2) the generation, and
3) the derridian trace (518).
48
Jameson spends a lot of time and space on the
pros and cons of all these lists, but one needs to have a theological turn of mind
to be able to keep track of his argument here. I shall therefore refrain from trying
to do so, all the more so since Jameson approvingly quotes Ricoeur, saying that,
in the last analysis, there could be no pure phenomenology of time (482).
49
So,
apparently, little is to be expected from these lists anyway.
But Jameson has a far more fundamental objection to Ricoeur. he points out
that when Ricoeur seeks to test his philosophy of history he turns to novels to
provide him with concrete examples. Specifically, he turns to Virginia Woolfs
Mrs. Dalloway, Thomas manns Der Zauberberg, and marcel Prousts la
recherche du temps perdu. Jameson would be the first to recognize that what
Ricoeur has to say on these novels is absolutely brillianthowever, novels are
not historical writing.
It is true that all of these novels were written against the dark and threaten-
ing background of World War Iwhich Ricoeur characterizes as an axial
event
50
but all of the action in these novels is not situated in this background
itself, whereas such backgrounds are typically at the foreground in historical writ-
ing. moreover, as Jameson mercilessly goes on to say, Ricoeurs blindness to the
differences between the novel and historical writing and to the role played by time
in each of them is not hard to explain. For here we encounter the incapacity of all
of phenomenology to move in a convincing and adequate way from the level of
the individualand to which the novel is condemnedto that of collectivities,
such as nations, cultures, classes, and so on and that are the object of study of
historians. Phenomenology is marvelous as long as it investigates how the indi-
vidual builds up his or her life-world from materials preceding it, but becomes
utterly helpless when you move from the individual to the collectivity. Just try,
for example, to make sense of the unintended consequences of intentional human
action from a phenomenological point of view. Any attempt to do so will provide
the non-phenomenological theorist a target that one simply cannot miss. So we
can only agree with Jameson when concluding that Ricoeurs humanism and
anthropomorphism made him forget to discern between two orders: that of the
appearance of Time and that of the appearance of history (528).
51

48. According to Jameson, in the trace being and not-being co-exist in a fashion unconceptu-
alizable by philosophy (this is an aporia if ever there was one) (527). Some philosophers might feel
tempted to use a somewhat more pejorative term here than Jamesons aporia.
49. And then Jameson goes on to say: a statement which, coming from the most eminent contem-
porary phenomenologist and authority on husserl, really amounts to a death sentence on philosophy
itself (483).
50. Axial events are events in which the frictions among the past, present, and future dramati-
cally announce themselves (522). Think of how the French Revolution broke down the continuity
among the past, present, and future.
51. It is somewhat disconcerting, to say the least, to see that after this fairly devastating com-
ment on Ricoeurs failure to properly distinguish between the novel and historical writing, Jameson
continues singing the praises of aesthetics and of the novel for making us see things that we would
have remained blind to without them. The novel makes us aware of the real toads in an imaginary
garden, as Jameson nicely puts it (531). I wholly agree; but then the relationship between the novel
FRANK ANKERSMIT
102
This brings me to one last issue. Jameson invites his readers to recall the
Fronde, a Pirandello-like spectacle coup in the first years of the reign of Louis
XIV, with ever-changing fronts and without any deeper historical sense or mean-
ing and then asks the rhetorical question: who should we cheer for in that mud-
dled event that was the Fronde? . . . With whom are we to take sides, in a situation
in which the so-called people of Paris are to be understood as notables, lawyers,
shopkeepers and their apprentices, and very far indeed from anything resembling
a proletariat or downtrodden or oppressed masses? (547, 548). he then goes
on to argue that this perplexity is not peculiar to the Fronde only, but a problem
that one almost inevitably runs up against when writing history. So this is why
Jameson can agree with Lvi-Strausss condemnation of historical writing for
compelling us to become willy-nilly partisans in struggles with which we have
no wish to identify ourselves (547). he then explains this most regrettable feature
of historical writing by an appeal to Ricoeurs notion of the quasi-character
(546). Ricoeur introduces this notion in order to expand the idea of the historical
agent far beyond the range of action of mere individual human beings, of even the
Caesars or the Napoleons. Braudels mediterranean or Foucaults discipline are
such quasi-characters, and these are historical agents no less than Philip II or
Jeremy Bentham. It will indeed be hard to avoid writing history without taking
sides if we people the past with these quasi-characters.
This is a rather amazing argument and is in need of some comments. First,
when trying to rescue historians from their sad predicament Jameson recom-
mends a strategy that is impossible to reconcile with his condemnation of histori-
cal writing for always compelling us to take sides. For Jameson presents the
marxist interpretation of history as our unerring guide in our dilemma about with
whom we should side in the past. So taking sides is not such an objectionable
procedure, after all, as long as this taking sides is guided by the conviction that
marx was basically right. No less amazing is Jamesons (and Lvi-Strausss)
claim that the historian is always confronted with the obligation to take sides.
For if there is just one thing that (almost) all historians and philosophers of his-
tory agree upon, it is undoubtedly that there is no greater sin in historical writing
than this taking sides. Ranke said that it is the historians supreme task:
to stand aloof from the conflicting parties themselves, to understand them, to grasp the
intentions of the combatants, to weigh their actions accordingly, and to describe them only
against that background. To do justice to each, to the extent that is due to them, that is how
the historian ought to proceed. however, it happens only too often that the historian, con-
vinced of the infallibility of his own opinions, begins to participate himself in these strug-
gles in the past and to decide them in agreement with his own convictions. The historians
narrative then becomes a weapon in the struggle itself, and history then becomes politics.
52
and historical writing is fully on the agenda againand we might therefore invite Jameson to think
just a little harder about the nature of this relationship.
52. ber den Streit der Parteien zu stehen, ihn zu begreifen, die Kmpfenden jeden in seiner
Absicht zu fassen, darnach seine Tten zu wagen, und erst alsdann sie zu beschreiben. Jedem die
Gerechtigkeit widerfahren zu lassen, deren er sich in sich selber wert ist, das geziemte sich. dagehen
geschieht nur allzuoft, dass die Geschichtsschreiber, von der Unfehlbarkeit ihrer meinungen durchd-
rungen, in den Streit eintreten und ihn, soviel an ihnen liegt, mit auszufechten suchen. die Erzhlung
wird selber zur Waffe, und die historie zur Politik. Leopold von Ranke, historisch-biografische
Studien: don Carlos, in idem, Rankes Smtlichen Werken. Band 40/41 (Leipzig, 1867), 452.
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
103
Since Ranke, this main maxim for the writing of history has been repeated a
thousand times by thousands of historians and philosophers of history.
Jameson is a most erudite and responsible theorist, so he will undoubtedly be
aware that his argument about taking sides brings him into a frontal collision
with all of contemporary historical writing and philosophy of history. This chal-
lenges us to take a somewhat deeper look at the matter and to try to find out what
made Jameson say such strange things.
The most obvious point to start with is the observation that undoubtedly his-
torians do take sidesnamely, when they debate how we should look at the
past. historians disagree about how we should look at, say, the French Revolu-
tion and then devise arguments that would, in their view, convince each reason-
able person to take their side in the debate on the French Revolution. So we
should then ask ourselves how to move from this conception of taking sides in
historical writing to the one that Jameson had in mind. The simplest way to do
this is to hypostatize the views historians have on parts of the past into entities
existing in the past itself. This is, of course, what Ricoeur was doing with his
quasi-characters, and this earned him Jamesons criticism, as we saw a moment
ago. But we can be sure that Jameson is guilty of the same mistakefor his own
argument about taking sides in history only makes sense after a fusion of the
order of knowing (that is, taking sides in a historical discussion) with that of
being (that is, taking sides in the sense of identifying with historical agents in
the past itself). There is no other way to move from the former sense of taking
sides to the latter.
We should observe, however, that for a dialectical philosopher like Jameson
there is nothing particularly outrageous about the fusion of these two senses of
taking sides. For this fusion of knowing and being is precisely what the dialec-
tical tradition inherited from Spinozism (as we saw in section II). This, then, is
where Jamesons position would differ from Ricoeurs. Ricoeur is not a Spinoz-
ist; he safely operates in the epistemological traditionand here the fusion of
the two senses of taking sides does indeed require one to hypostatize historical
views into historical agents. But this is different from Jameson. We therefore
cannot accuse Jameson of inconsistency when criticizing Ricoeur while at the
same time doing the exact same thing as Ricoeur by requiring us to take sides
as marx wishes us to do. Indeed, both come to the same result, but from a wholly
different background.
When expounding dialectics in section II, I argued that Spinozism makes sense
if applied to human history. The question thus arises whether Jameson might not
be right after all. Perhaps the domain of human history is such that the fusion of
knowing and being (and, hence, of the two senses of taking sides) is not only
legitimate here, but even a necessary truth about the nature of historical writing,
with the result that historians and philosophers of history who attack Jameson for
his most objectionable recommendation of taking sides (in his sense), now find
themselves in the dock. Jameson can now rightly denounce them as nave positiv-
ists falsely believing that they could rise above the great powers active in the
past and present themselves (however one might wish to define their nature) to
some timeless, ahistorical Archimedean point from which they can pronounce
FRANK ANKERSMIT
104
about their conflict. This is certainly a most powerful rejoinder to Ranke and
his thousands of contemporary followerswhether historians or philosophers of
history.
So the question now is: how can we 1) accept Spinozism with Jameson (and
dialectics) and at the same time 2) avoid the fusion of these two meanings of
taking sides? having arrived at this stage, we should recall Louis o. minks
argument on Universal history. mink defended the amazing claim that, despite
thirty years of speculative-history bashing (he wrote this in the 1980s) most his-
torians and philosophers of history still believe in Universal history. For they
all assume that there should be some untold story in the past itself and that it is
the historians task to approximate this as well as one can with ones own stories.
This belief is, from whatever way you look at it, what speculative philosophy
has always been about. But as mink goes on to say, there is no such Universal
history. Although historians can tell stories about the past and although some
of them are demonstrably better (or worse) than others, the past is not a story
or a narrative itself; stories and narratives are found only in history books, or in
novels, for that matter.
53
Just as the physicists formula can be found only in the
articles written by physicists, not in actual physical reality itself.
As I have recently suggested elsewhere,
54
minks argument (whose tremendous
theoretical significance is impossible to overestimate) comes quite close to the
gist of donald davidsons attack on conceptual schemes.
55
In both cases the main
idea is that there are no fixed rules or algorithms of whatever nature tying together
language and the world. For davidson, the claim is argued by an attack on the
epistemological scheme that allegedly enables us to move faultlessly from lan-
guage to the world, and vice versa. Similarly for mink, much the same is argued
by showing that stories and narratives simply have no counterpart in the past
itself. In both cases we therefore have knowledge and beingwhose existence no
Spinozist feels any temptation to deny!but without there being some clear and
final demarcation line between the two of them (coinciding, for example, with the
alleged barrier between subject and object or with that between language and the
world). Both knowledge and being are simply part of some larger whole within
which a continuousdialectical, if you willinteraction is going on between the
two of them. davidsons theory could thus be characterized as a Spinozism with-
out the notion of the one Substance; the same would be so for mink.
Next, precisely because of the absence of any such epistemological rules tying
language or knowledge to the world, language or narrative would have a certain
autonomy with regard to what they are about. This is dramatized by minks claim
that the historians narrative does not possess its exact counterpart in the past
itself. But such a claim entails that we abandon Jamesons model suggesting that
taking sides on the level of the writing of history cannot be discerned from,
53. Louis o. mink, Historical Understanding, ed. Brian Fay, Eugene o. Golob, and Richard T.
Vann (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1987), 182-203.
54. F. R. Ankersmit, The Necessity of historicism, Journal of the Philosophy of History 4
(2010), 236-238.
55. donald davidson, on the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme, in idem, Inquiries into Truth
and Interpretation (oxford: oxford University Press, 1985), 183-199.
THE DIALECTICS OF JAMESONS DIALECTICS
105
and should therefore be fused with, the taking of sides in the past itself. This
inability to recognize the ways that Spinozism and/or dialectics is able to grant an
autonomy of its own to knowledge is, in the last analysis, the error in Jamesons
argument. But as we have seen, adopting Spinozism and/or dialectics is reconcil-
able with the old Rankean maxim that the historian should never take sides in
the Jamesonian sense; this is a most satisfactory finding indeed.
V. CoNCLUSIoN
Gallia omnis divisa est in partes tres, said Caesar. So it is with Jamesons book,
which also consists of three parts. The first part deals with dialectics, the third
part with philosophy of history. Both parts were discussed above. Between the
two of them is a third part of a more varied characterthough mainly devoted to
more practical and political issues. Jamesons political pronouncements are, on the
whole, in agreement with what one would expect a marxist to believe. Even so, it
may surprise readers when Jameson declares that Soviet communism did not fail
because of its weaknesses but because of its success (397);
56
that prerevolution-
ary regimes should be held responsible for all the crimes of revolutionary terror-
ism (298, 389); that the Right has always provoked the violence in communist
states (which makes one wonder how Jameson would assess the hungarian and
Czechoslovakian revolts of 1956 and 1968 and the achievement of Solidarno in
the 1980s); that the political tyranny of Stalin should be seen in the light of the
universally accepted doctrine that the state has the monopoly on violence (385)
or that Stalinism was thus a success and fulfilled its historic mission, socially as
well as economically, and it is idle to speculate whether this could have happened
in some more normal peaceful, evolutionary way (397). This last quote especially
could be read as an extenuation of the show trials, the Gulags, the great famine,
and all the other horrors unleashed by Stalin, mao, Pol Pot, and so on. I am not
saying that such a reading would be correct, but Jameson does not take the trouble
to avoid being misunderstood here. This is all the more regrettable because he
does not devote one word to the many millions who lost their lives under the most
dreadful circumstances in the name of marxist ideology. This needlessly compro-
mises Jamesons political pronouncements. Even if one is willing to share most of
Jamesons marxist analysis of our contemporary Western societies and of what is
wrong with them (as is the case with me), he goes to political extremes that will
make him lose even his most sympathetic audiences. At times it even looks as
though he willfully prefers provocation to conviction.
Given Jamesons political pronouncements (cited above), an appeal to the
marxist doctrine of the unity of theory and praxis might lead the reader to infer
that his theory of dialectics must then be wrong as well. But such a reaction would
be as overhasty as it is short-sighted; here we must recall that hegels dialectics
presents us with precisely the reverse of marxs unity of theory and praxis. For
hegel, wisdom comes only in the evening when the owls of minerva fly out,
and here theory comes after praxisas is, of course, typically the case with
56. Though he writes on the very next page that Soviet communism was no match for the West
because of its flimsy structures.
FRANK ANKERSMIT
106
historical writing as well. here, the doctrine of the unity of theory and praxis is
not necessarily part of dialectics, and dialectics is therefore not automatically
compromised if someone were to infer objectionable political conclusions from it.
This is all the more reason to look forward to Jamesons next books on hegels
Phnomenologie and on marxs Das Kapital. Lets never forget that dialectics is
the key to many of the secrets of historical writing, and therefore we should be
most grateful to Fredric Jameson for having so powerfully reminded us of that.
FRANK ANKERSMIT
Glimmen, The Netherlands