Jameson (Fredric) Archives

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Wendy Chun, on software and the machine

July 5, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

Is the relation between the analog and the digital itself analog or digital? That might be one way of thinking the relation between the work of Alexander Galloway and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun. I wrote elsewhere about Galloway’s notion of software as a simulation of ideology. Here I take up Chun’s of software as ...

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On Galloway

June 21, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

Take the tv show, 24. In what sense could one say that the show is ‘political’? It certainly appears so in a ‘red state’ sort of way. The Jack Bauer character commits all sorts of crimes, including torture, in the name of ‘national security.’ But perhaps there’s more to it. Galloway draws ...

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Cognitive Mapping

May 1, 2015 • by McKenzie Wark

I am inordinately fond of a crappy TV show called Leverage. Its about a little band of hackers, grifters and second-story artists who steal from the rich to give to the poor. Perhaps I like it because it reminds me of my favorite childhood TV show, The Adventures of Robin Hood. Made ...

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Can Anyone Even Remember Postmodernism?

October 31, 2014 • by McKenzie Wark

If one teaches the ‘postmodern’ moment to today’s students, it is worth remembering that when pomo was a big deal, they had probably not even been born. If ‘retro’ was one of the characteristic style moves of pomo, then there is now even retro-pomo, a kind of meta-retro, or meta-pomo, ...

Politics

The Empty Chair: On Reading Jameson

His texts are allegorical readings of the Marxist classics, the texts of and for a people, their being and their destiny

October 31, 2014 • by McKenzie Wark

—Guy Debord, Panegyric Hermeneutics has its roots in the practice of reading the old testament through the new one. The sacred Jewish texts are at one and the same time a book of and a book for a people; at one and the same time the text of that people’s being ...

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Utopian Realism

October 28, 2014 • by McKenzie Wark

I once asked Jean Baudrillard for his impressions of his tour of the colleges of America. “Boring,” he said, “like any realized utopia.” This was a provocation on several levels. In the cold war, realized utopia mean Soviet terror, not American prosperity. And of course Baudrillard was as aware as Jameson ...

Theory & Practice

Four Cheers for Vulgar Marxism!!!!

April 25, 2014 • by McKenzie Wark

If you want to show that your version of Marxism is better than somebody else’s, the quickest way to do so is to call the other version vulgar. One’s own version is nuanced, sophisticated, subtle, erudite, philosophically rich – all the things the vulgar is not. Or so it has ...