Tag Archives: Fredric Jameson

Fredric Jameson on Narrative at UChicago

Fredric Jameson onstage with Leela Gandhi

Fredric Jameson onstage with Leela Gandhi

A few days ago I visited my old neighborhood of Hyde Park, on the south side of Chicago. While walking I happened to recognize an acquaintance who asked if I’d be going to see Fredric Jameson talk in mere minutes. Shocked that I hadn’t known about this earlier, I decided that I really had no choice but to go see one of the greatest thinkers alive today.

Jameson, among others, had been invited to the University of Chicago for the multi-day conference “Forms of Fiction: The Novel in English.” The main focus of the conference was an examination of four novels: Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Henry James’s The Golden Bowl, and James Joyce’s Ulysses. Having not read all of them, I was a bit concerned that I wouldn’t be able to follow all of Jameson’s talk, which turned out to be on Ulysses among other ideas, but my worry was assuaged by his handling of the material. Jameson unknowingly had made a case for me to read Ulysses along with giving me a bit more faith in the novel as a worthwhile form of reflection of the world.

Upcoming Conference, “Rethinking Work”

In March 2013, The Marxist Reading Group will be hosting their annual conference at the University of Florida. This year’s conference will be on the ideas surrounding work. To quote a bit of the prompt:

Thus, this conference proposes to follow Marx’s imperative to exit the “noisy” public sphere “where everything takes place on the surface and in full view of everyone” and instead enter “into the hidden abode of production” so that we may better understand the political power of the word “work,” the concept it signifies, and its material consequences for workers and non-workers around the world.

I wish I could check it out since there are already some interesting thinkers among the keynote speakers including Fredric Jameson, and Kevin Floyd—one of my professors at Kent State.

More information can be found here.