A definitive collection of Jameson’s early essays

Ideologies of Theory, updated and available for the first time in a single volume, brings together theoretical essays that span Fredric Jameson’s long career as a critic. They chart a body of work suspended by the twin poles of literary scholarship and politcal history, occupying a space vibrant with the tension between critical exegesis and the Marxist literary tradition. Jameson’s work pushes out the boundaries of the text, making evident the interaction between literature and the disciplines of psychoanalysis, philosophy and cultural theory, all of which are shown to be inseparable from the ideological allies.

The essays in this volume track a shift from ideological analysis to the phenomenology of everyday life, and constitute a rigorous and passionate argument for the necessity of theory as the simultaneous critique of empiricism and idealist philosophy.

“Probably the most important cultural critic writing in English today … It can be truly said that nothing cultural is alien to him.” — Colin MacCabe

“Fredric Jameson is America’s leading Marxist critic. A prodigiously energetic thinker whose writings sweep majestically from Sophocles to science fiction.” — Terry Eagleton

Fredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. The author of numerous books, he has over the last three decades developed a richly nuanced vision of Western culture’s relation to political economy.