Ian Buchanan (ed.): Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · architecture, art, capitalism, cinema, cognition, ideology, literary theory, literature, marxism, modernism, philosophy, politics, postmodern, postmodernism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, urbanism, utopia
Fredric Jameson is one of the most influential literary and cultural critics writing today. He is a theoretical innovator whose ideas about the intersections of politics and culture have reshaped the critical landscape across the humanities and social sciences. Bringing together ten interviews conducted between 1982 and 2005, Jameson on Jameson is a compellingly candid introduction to his thought for those new to it, and a rich source of illumination and clarification for those seeking deeper understanding. Jameson discusses his intellectual and political preoccupations, most prominently his commitment to Marxism as a way of critiquing capitalism and the culture it has engendered. He explains many of his key concepts, including postmodernism, the dialectic, metacommentary, the political unconscious, the utopian, cognitive mapping, and spatialization.
Jameson on Jameson displays Jameson’s extraordinary grasp of contemporary culture—architecture, art, cinema, literature, philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis, and urban geography—as well as the challenge that the geographic reach of his thinking poses to the Eurocentricity of the West. Conducted by accomplished scholars from United States, Egypt, Korea, China, Sweden, and England, the interviews elicit Jameson’s reflections on the broad international significance of his ideas and their applicability and implications in different cultural and political contexts, including the present phase of globalization.
The volume includes an introduction by Jameson and a comprehensive bibliography of his publications in all languages.
Interviewers: Mona Abousenna, Abbas Al-Tonsi, Srinivas Aravamudan, Jonathan Culler, Sara Danius, Leonard Green, Sabry Hafez, Stuart Hall, Stefan Jonsson, Ranjana Khanna, Richard Klein, Horacio Machin, Paik Nak-chung, Michael Speaks, Anders Stephanson, Xudong Zhang
Publisher Duke University Press, 2007
Post-Contemporary Interventions series
ISBN 0822340879, 9780822340874
296 pages
Robert Sumrell, Kazys Varnelis: Blue Monday: Stories of Absurd Realities and Natural Philosophies (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · architecture, city, new media, object, philosophy
AUDC’s first book captures three moments in modern culture that offer glimpses into our increasingly perverse relationship to architecture, cities, and objects. “Ether” explores the Los Angeles telecom hotel, One Wilshire; a 39 story building of utter banality and complete mystery. “The Stimulus Progression” examines the strange story of the Muzak Corporation and the invention of a culture of horizontality. “Quartzsite, Arizona” visits a desert town of 3,000 people that swells to over 1 million residents every summer when modern nomads in Recreational Vehicles descend upon in it in hordes. This book is a lively mix of philosophy, photography, architectural drawings and models, and new media.
Publisher Actar Editorial, 2007
ISBN 8496540537, 9788496540538
175 pages
McKenzie Wark: The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1950s, 1960s, architecture, everyday, life, philosophy, politics, situationists, spectacle, theory
“Over fifty years after the Situationist International appeared, its legacy continues to inspire activists, artists and theorists around the world. Such a legend has accrued to this movement that the story of the SI now demands to be told in a contemporary voice capable of putting it into the context of twenty-first-century struggles.
McKenzie Wark delves into the Situationists’ unacknowledged diversity, revealing a world as rich in practice as it is in theory. Tracing the group’s development from the bohemian Paris of the ’50s to the explosive days of May ’68, Wark’s take on the Situationists is biographically and historically rich, presenting the group as an ensemble creation, rather than the brainchild and dominion of its most famous member, Guy Debord. Roaming through Europe and the lives of those who made up the movement—including Constant, Asger Jorn, Michèle Bernstein, Alex Trocchi and Jacqueline De Jong—Wark uncovers an international movement riven with conflicting passions.
Accessible to those who have only just discovered the Situationists and filled with new insights, The Beach Beneath the Street rereads the group’s history in the light of our contemporary experience of communications, architecture, and everyday life. The Situationists tried to escape the world of twentieth-century spectacle and failed in the attempt. Wark argues that they may still help us to escape the twenty-first century, while we still can …”
Publisher Verso, London, 2011
ISBN 1844677206, 9781844677207
224 pages
Reviews: Christopher Collier (Mute), Anthony Hayes (Marx&Philosophy), Ian Birchall (Review31), Brettany Shannon (Society&Space), Ben Brucato (Humanity&Society), Karl Whitney (3AM), Vince Carducci (PopMatters), Andrew McCann (Sydney Review of Books), Gary Pearce (Steep Stairs), Jonathan Derbyshire (The Guardian), Andrew Blake (The Independent), Edwin Heathcote (Financial Times).
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