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Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions
In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful?
Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson¡¯s most substantial work since Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, investigates the development of this form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of utopian thinking in a post-Communist age.
The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness - alien life and
alien worlds - and a study of the works of Philip K. Dick, Ursula
K. LeGuin, William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson, and more.
Jameson¡¯s essential essays, including ¡°The Desire Called Utopia,¡±
conclude with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value today.
Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson¡¯s most substantial work since Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, investigates the development of this form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of utopian thinking in a post-Communist age.
The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness - alien life and
alien worlds - and a study of the works of Philip K. Dick, Ursula
K. LeGuin, William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson, and more.
Jameson¡¯s essential essays, including ¡°The Desire Called Utopia,¡±
conclude with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value today.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
114 people are currently reading
3,153 people want to read
About the author
Fredric Jameson
165?books644?followersFredric Jameson was an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He was best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jameson's best-known books include Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) and The Political Unconscious (1981).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
April 24, 2024
Introduction
has been my great white whale, the book that I have been trying to read for at least 13 years. My last crack at it was in 2018 and I only got 12 pages in before putting it aside. This time I got through the whole thing in a week, although finishing my review has taken considerably longer than that. It felt a little like writing a journal paper and turned out just as long. As I exceeded the goodreads length limit, the conclusions and appendix will be posted in comments.
Literature Review
After 150 pages I became accustomed to Jameson's dense prose style and was absorbed in his analysis of utopian fiction. What I think made the difference is that since 2018 I've read a lot more of the novels that Jameson discusses and gained basic familiarity with the philosophical jargon he draws upon. I found it helpful to have read the following fiction: , , Delany's , , Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, Le Guin's utopian sci-fi, John Brunner's four great dystopias, , and a selection of novels by the Strugatsky brothers, Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, and Stanis?aw Lem. Non-fiction that proved useful included: , , , , a bit of Marx, and some Slavoj ?i?ek. I'm not going to summarise that lot because this is not actually a publish or perish situation, merely acknowledge that they gave me context for understanding and assessing this book.
Jameson only provides translations for some of his quotations, apparently assuming that the reader doesn't know Italian but is familiar with French, some Latin, and German philosophical terminology. I kept a glossary of unfamiliar terms, some borrowed from biology and others from philosophers, which I include as an appendix to this review. The reader must also expect many , a mysterious form of diagram that I think obfuscates as much as it illuminates. It is definitely not worth trying to read unless you've slept well. On six hours sleep I couldn't make sense of it at all.
Discussion
After this build up, you might ask whether was worth all the effort. I think it was, as Jameson is an astute literary critic and makes many thought-provoking points about sci-fi and utopian writing since Thomas More. I also enjoy the mental exercise of reading critical theory. If the percentage of difficult non-fiction in my book-diet falls below a certain level, I start to over-analyse every little thing I read. Jameson's detailed synoptic analysis of sci-fi I've known and loved was a pleasure. I particularly appreciated his attempts at defining the characteristics of the speculative genres, as this is a topic I often ponder myself and discuss in book reviews:
However this is definitely not the kind of book to fall into reductive generalisations about the difference between sci-fi and fantasy:
I find in-depth discussion of these distinctions interesting as it examines what the two genres are doing, the reader's experience of them, and whether utopian and dystopian ideas emerge from them. It's also worth noting that was published 19 years ago and the genres have evolved since. Social, political, technological, and environmental themes have started to become more prominent in recent fantasy fiction that I've enjoyed, for example , , and sequels, and sequels, and . Indeed, all the books I've read that are tagged 'fantasy' and rated four or five stars could be described as such, as that's what I enjoy in the genre. However, the importance of magic and of an ethnical binary (even if treated with originality and nuance) remain central in a manner that still differs from sci-fi.
I have also observed an increasing tendency for literary fiction to borrow sets and props from sci-fi and/or fantasy then tell a story focused upon interior emotions (the 'individual moral adventure' that Amitav Ghosh complains of in ). In my experience this can be done very well (, ) to very badly (, ). Either way, such novels continue the discussion about where the boundaries of genre lie.
By starting in the 16th century with More's , Jameson traces the history of utopian fiction and how it overlaps with sci-fi. I was intrigued to learn that the turn towards social satire, which has considerable overlap with dystopian fiction, in sci-fi was dated by Isaac Asimov to (1953). I read that many years ago and recall it savagely parodying capitalism in a remarkably prescient manner. (Compare it with Elon Musk's ideas about identured labour in space; a real situation.) Jameson charts the chronological (albeit overlapping) stages of sci-fi as: adventure & space opera, science or mimesis of science, social satire & cultural critique, subjectivity or 'the 1960s', aesthetics or 'speculative fiction', and cyberpunk. I'd be interested to know how he characterises our current (postmodern) era of sci-fi. Resisting environmental breakdown despair by claiming there will be a future, perhaps? This theme has always had a place in sci-fi, but it has become increasingly textually dominant in the evolution of fiction by, for example, , , , and over the past two decades. Although there are counter-examples and this might say more about what I read than the genre as a whole; always a risk. Anyway, stages and eras are easier to see in retrospect than at the time.
I was filled with a smug sense of vindication upon realising that Jameson's definition of dystopia agrees with my own (much less developed) ideas. This will be useful to cite, so I'm quoting it at length:
That last paragraph chimes with my differentiation of apocalyptic novels, which depict collapsing systems, from dystopian novels, which depict systems that resist collapse despite their destructiveness. 'Systems' can be interpreted broadly within this, as economic, social, technological, cultural, religious, etc. I would argue that apocalyptic novels often have ideological subtext that is usually individualistic, libertarian, and nihilist to some extent. Post-apocalyptic novels, on the other hand, slide back into the categories of utopian, dystopian, and anti-utopian as they deal with what has survived and can be rebuilt after catastrophe. There's a lot more room for variation in such a setting, compared with one in which the narrative is essentially one of basic survival in a situation of utter collapse.
The second part of is less concerned with genre and examines specific sci-fi writers and novels in greater depth. The lower density of theory made this more readable. I particularly enjoyed Jameson's commentary on J. G. Ballard, to whose alluring disasters I am not immune:
I also greatly enjoyed the chapters on 'History and Salvation in Philip K. Dick' and realism and utopia in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, wonderfully titled 'If I can find one good city I will spare the man'. Jameson maintains that although political utopias have essentially come to an end, utopian writing continues to flourish in sci-fi. He cites , , , and . Notable examples from the subsequent two decades that sprang to mind include the and sequels, Ada Palmer's and sequels, , and the work of .
has been my great white whale, the book that I have been trying to read for at least 13 years. My last crack at it was in 2018 and I only got 12 pages in before putting it aside. This time I got through the whole thing in a week, although finishing my review has taken considerably longer than that. It felt a little like writing a journal paper and turned out just as long. As I exceeded the goodreads length limit, the conclusions and appendix will be posted in comments.
Literature Review
After 150 pages I became accustomed to Jameson's dense prose style and was absorbed in his analysis of utopian fiction. What I think made the difference is that since 2018 I've read a lot more of the novels that Jameson discusses and gained basic familiarity with the philosophical jargon he draws upon. I found it helpful to have read the following fiction: , , Delany's , , Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, Le Guin's utopian sci-fi, John Brunner's four great dystopias, , and a selection of novels by the Strugatsky brothers, Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, and Stanis?aw Lem. Non-fiction that proved useful included: , , , , a bit of Marx, and some Slavoj ?i?ek. I'm not going to summarise that lot because this is not actually a publish or perish situation, merely acknowledge that they gave me context for understanding and assessing this book.
Jameson only provides translations for some of his quotations, apparently assuming that the reader doesn't know Italian but is familiar with French, some Latin, and German philosophical terminology. I kept a glossary of unfamiliar terms, some borrowed from biology and others from philosophers, which I include as an appendix to this review. The reader must also expect many , a mysterious form of diagram that I think obfuscates as much as it illuminates. It is definitely not worth trying to read unless you've slept well. On six hours sleep I couldn't make sense of it at all.
Discussion
After this build up, you might ask whether was worth all the effort. I think it was, as Jameson is an astute literary critic and makes many thought-provoking points about sci-fi and utopian writing since Thomas More. I also enjoy the mental exercise of reading critical theory. If the percentage of difficult non-fiction in my book-diet falls below a certain level, I start to over-analyse every little thing I read. Jameson's detailed synoptic analysis of sci-fi I've known and loved was a pleasure. I particularly appreciated his attempts at defining the characteristics of the speculative genres, as this is a topic I often ponder myself and discuss in book reviews:
Fantasy has indeed, as a genre, much stronger affinities with medieval content than with such Renaissance forms; and this will indeed be one of the topics to be explored in what follows, particularly in the light of the medieval currents that continue to inform More's Utopia. But I will also want to address two other structural characteristics of fantasy which contrast sharply with SF and can also serve as differentiae specificae for the genre, namely the organisation of fantasy around the ethical binary of good and evil, and the fundamental role it assigns to magic.
However this is definitely not the kind of book to fall into reductive generalisations about the difference between sci-fi and fantasy:
Yet it would not be altogether correct to stage the opposition between SF and fantasy as a replay and variant of the more familiar modern antagonism between high and low mass culture - or at least it is a position one can take only after registering the postmodern attenuation of these boundary lines, the rapprochement between high and low culture in the last decades [the 80s and 90s], and the blurring of distinctive generic characteristics which characterises postmodernity here as elsewhere. Not only are some of the best recent works and writers difficult to classify, but the disputes about what cannot be admitted into the SF canon have come to seem increasingly unproductive, even though the genre itself depends on them and is constituted by generic recognition (or its accompanying opposite number, generic indecidability). The work of Gene Wolfe, richly developing in the spaces between fantasy and SF, can perhaps serve as a central exhibit in these debates: for myself, I acknowledge its quality but feel a deep reluctance to abandon these generic distinctions. Perhaps the qualitative judgements that are so easy to make in SF are unavailable in so amorphous a world of discourse as fantasy.
I find in-depth discussion of these distinctions interesting as it examines what the two genres are doing, the reader's experience of them, and whether utopian and dystopian ideas emerge from them. It's also worth noting that was published 19 years ago and the genres have evolved since. Social, political, technological, and environmental themes have started to become more prominent in recent fantasy fiction that I've enjoyed, for example , , and sequels, and sequels, and . Indeed, all the books I've read that are tagged 'fantasy' and rated four or five stars could be described as such, as that's what I enjoy in the genre. However, the importance of magic and of an ethnical binary (even if treated with originality and nuance) remain central in a manner that still differs from sci-fi.
I have also observed an increasing tendency for literary fiction to borrow sets and props from sci-fi and/or fantasy then tell a story focused upon interior emotions (the 'individual moral adventure' that Amitav Ghosh complains of in ). In my experience this can be done very well (, ) to very badly (, ). Either way, such novels continue the discussion about where the boundaries of genre lie.
By starting in the 16th century with More's , Jameson traces the history of utopian fiction and how it overlaps with sci-fi. I was intrigued to learn that the turn towards social satire, which has considerable overlap with dystopian fiction, in sci-fi was dated by Isaac Asimov to (1953). I read that many years ago and recall it savagely parodying capitalism in a remarkably prescient manner. (Compare it with Elon Musk's ideas about identured labour in space; a real situation.) Jameson charts the chronological (albeit overlapping) stages of sci-fi as: adventure & space opera, science or mimesis of science, social satire & cultural critique, subjectivity or 'the 1960s', aesthetics or 'speculative fiction', and cyberpunk. I'd be interested to know how he characterises our current (postmodern) era of sci-fi. Resisting environmental breakdown despair by claiming there will be a future, perhaps? This theme has always had a place in sci-fi, but it has become increasingly textually dominant in the evolution of fiction by, for example, , , , and over the past two decades. Although there are counter-examples and this might say more about what I read than the genre as a whole; always a risk. Anyway, stages and eras are easier to see in retrospect than at the time.
I was filled with a smug sense of vindication upon realising that Jameson's definition of dystopia agrees with my own (much less developed) ideas. This will be useful to cite, so I'm quoting it at length:
This word [dystopia] is laden with dangerous and misleading ambiguities, which are not diminished by the recent coinage of the neologism (whose wider currency dates, we are told, from the 1950s - in other words, from the Cold War). As our own practice has testified, it is not easy to change one's linguistic habits when it comes to a word like this, which obviously began to fill a real gap between the two negations in question [which are critique of the old order and prophetic warning about what replaces it]. The dystopian tetralogy of John Brunner, for example, is the classic exemplification of a principle designated by the title of a famous 1940 Heinlein story: 'if this goes on...' Overpopulation, pollution, an inhuman rate of technological change - these are then extrapolated into what are certainly in Brunner 'new maps of hell', maps frequently (and not incorrectly) characterised as dystopian. [...]
Tom Moylan's proposal for a generic conception of the 'critical dystopia' clarifies this difference. The critical dystopia is the negative cousin of the Utopia proper, for it is in the light of some positive conception of human social possibilities that its effects are generated and from Utopian ideals its politically enabling stance derives. Yet if one reserves the term dystopia for works of this kind, then Orwell's works must be characterised in a markedly different way and by a distinctive generic terminology: I propose to characterise them as anti-Utopian, given the way in which they are informed by a central passion to denounce and warn against Utopian programs in the political realm. [...]
A fourth term or generic category would seem desirable. If it is so, as someone has observed, that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, we probably need another term to characterise the increasingly popular visions of total destruction and of the extinction of life on Earth which seem more plausible than the Utopian vision of the new Jerusalem but also rather different from the various catastrophes (including the old ban-the-bomb anxieties of the 1950s) prefigured in critical dystopias. The term apocalyptic may serve to differentiate this narrative genre from the anti-Utopia as well, since we do not sense in it any commitment to disabuse its readership of the political illusions that Orwell sought to combat, but whose very existence the apocalyptic narrative no longer acknowledges.
That last paragraph chimes with my differentiation of apocalyptic novels, which depict collapsing systems, from dystopian novels, which depict systems that resist collapse despite their destructiveness. 'Systems' can be interpreted broadly within this, as economic, social, technological, cultural, religious, etc. I would argue that apocalyptic novels often have ideological subtext that is usually individualistic, libertarian, and nihilist to some extent. Post-apocalyptic novels, on the other hand, slide back into the categories of utopian, dystopian, and anti-utopian as they deal with what has survived and can be rebuilt after catastrophe. There's a lot more room for variation in such a setting, compared with one in which the narrative is essentially one of basic survival in a situation of utter collapse.
The second part of is less concerned with genre and examines specific sci-fi writers and novels in greater depth. The lower density of theory made this more readable. I particularly enjoyed Jameson's commentary on J. G. Ballard, to whose alluring disasters I am not immune:
Let the Wagnerian and Spenglerian world-dissolution of J. G. Ballard stand as exemplary illustrations of the ways in which the imagination of a dying class - in this case the cancelled future of a vanished colonial and imperial dynasty - seeks to intoxicate itself with images of death that range from the destruction of the world by fire, water, and ice to lengthening sleep or the berserk orgies of high rise buildings or superhighways reverting to barbarism.
Ballard's work - so rich and corrupt - testifies powerfully to the contradictions of a properly representational attempt to grasp the future directly. I would argue, however, that the most characteristic SF does not seriously attempt to imagine the 'real' future of our social system. Rather, its multiple mock futures serve the quite different function of transforming our own present into the determinate past of something yet to come. [...] SF thus enacts and enables a structurally unique 'method' for apprehending the present as history, and this is so irrespective of the 'pessimism' or 'optimism' of the imaginary future world which is the pretext for that defamiliarisation.
I also greatly enjoyed the chapters on 'History and Salvation in Philip K. Dick' and realism and utopia in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, wonderfully titled 'If I can find one good city I will spare the man'. Jameson maintains that although political utopias have essentially come to an end, utopian writing continues to flourish in sci-fi. He cites , , , and . Notable examples from the subsequent two decades that sprang to mind include the and sequels, Ada Palmer's and sequels, , and the work of .
August 12, 2019
A non-apologist review of the science fiction genre through the eyes of America's leading Postmodernist thinker. You will need to bring your knowledge of the Western Canon and contemporary philosophy with you in order to fully appreciate this text. Its division into books I and II enables regular science fiction readers to access straight forward reviews in Book II.
Expect to learn from this book and don't expect him to enshrine SF into the Western Canon but rather to provide you with an understanding of the zeitgeist of the history of the genre and ourselves. Authors reviewed range from Dick to Robinson, Brunner to Le Guin. With a focus on utopianism and dystopia the subjects covered are sex and society, aliens and psychoanalyst, and the motifs and mechanics of this writing field.
Jameson also remarks on the differences between hard science fiction and fantasy. He clearly traces the link between the utopian members of the Western Canon and the rise of science fiction's paraliterature, and the societal needs for these works and their roots in the human collective conscienceness. He also notes the limits of critical literature and the "drift" of high literature into the domain of science fiction in recent years as a result of our Postmodern condition and the limits of critical literature to deal with the disassociative nature of the contemporary experience.
The reader will be left with an understanding of the genre, our times, and our historical basis. He or she will also be perplexed as to how science fiction was replaced by fantasy as the popular literature of our times at the same moment it matured as a literary entity. One will also begin to understand how the internal dynamics of science fiction and its authors went from the popularizers of American modernism and imperialism to become the primary opponents of modernism in our times.
Be forewarned that Jameson does not see Marxism as a bad word but rather a critical tool for evaluating society.
Expect to learn from this book and don't expect him to enshrine SF into the Western Canon but rather to provide you with an understanding of the zeitgeist of the history of the genre and ourselves. Authors reviewed range from Dick to Robinson, Brunner to Le Guin. With a focus on utopianism and dystopia the subjects covered are sex and society, aliens and psychoanalyst, and the motifs and mechanics of this writing field.
Jameson also remarks on the differences between hard science fiction and fantasy. He clearly traces the link between the utopian members of the Western Canon and the rise of science fiction's paraliterature, and the societal needs for these works and their roots in the human collective conscienceness. He also notes the limits of critical literature and the "drift" of high literature into the domain of science fiction in recent years as a result of our Postmodern condition and the limits of critical literature to deal with the disassociative nature of the contemporary experience.
The reader will be left with an understanding of the genre, our times, and our historical basis. He or she will also be perplexed as to how science fiction was replaced by fantasy as the popular literature of our times at the same moment it matured as a literary entity. One will also begin to understand how the internal dynamics of science fiction and its authors went from the popularizers of American modernism and imperialism to become the primary opponents of modernism in our times.
Be forewarned that Jameson does not see Marxism as a bad word but rather a critical tool for evaluating society.
December 19, 2014
Bruising hermeneutic Marxism got no answers just diagrams and arrows. Easy to point out limitations of Jameson's approach, still, for someone thinking about the emergence of science fiction out of 17th century utopias and advances in...science,this provides a number of useful generic definitions and distinctions to work with and against. It also provides a defense of utopic literature to supplement Russell Jacoby's intellectually fuzzy one. Holy fuck Steph Curry is killing it.
December 25, 2013
Brilliant novel, but very dense and difficult to follow if you're not plugged into the conversation already. Jameson's book speaks to a very specific audience, and if you are not part of that audience, prepare to be left in the dust.
August 28, 2013
One of the rare books that really merits the "amazing" mark. The book is difficult to read because the ideas are deeply explored, original and counter-intuitive in many cases. Jameson also draws on a huge range of philosophical and literary texts, and actually explains them fairly clearly. Unlike a lot of literary theory that may rely on obscure language to express banal ideas, perform standard or moralistic ideological readings of narratives, /or congratulate itself for radicalism in some way, this book, like Jameson's earlier _The Political Unconscious_ really offers startling and fresh readings of texts as well as a deep appreciation and consideration of literary forms.
October 1, 2024
Niet alleen enorm erudiet, origineel en stimulerend, maar vooral een fantastisch boek om te hebben. Jameson¡¯s stijl, de opbouw van zijn essays en hoofdstukken en de gigantische variatie in zijn bronnen maken dat ik dit boek nog vaak zal vasthebben komend jaar :))
November 28, 2024
(przeczytana cz??? pierwsza i wybrane eseje z cz??ci drugiej)
znowu pot??nie meandryczne, ale znakomite studium utopii literacko-kulturowych. jak u Jamesona, do z?otych tez, prognoz i my?li trzeba si??dokopa? przez dziesi?tki zawi?ych nawias¨®w, dygresji i odniesie¨½ akademicko-beletrystycznych, ale warto
znowu pot??nie meandryczne, ale znakomite studium utopii literacko-kulturowych. jak u Jamesona, do z?otych tez, prognoz i my?li trzeba si??dokopa? przez dziesi?tki zawi?ych nawias¨®w, dygresji i odniesie¨½ akademicko-beletrystycznych, ale warto
October 10, 2011
Jameson's book is comparable in stature and ambition to Georg Lukacs's _The Historical Novel_, which Jameson himself has dubbed the most significant volume of dialectical literary criticism. Jameson succeeds in doing for science fiction--particularly in its utopian form--what Lukacs did for the historical novel. _Archaeologies of the Future_ is a major achievement of materialist critique.
January 7, 2022
Un mamotreto, un verdadero tratado como s¨®lo un marxista, al estilo Lefebvre o Lukacs, pudo haber hecho. Denso. Plantea mucho m¨¢s problemas de los que eran necesarios para abordar la utop¨ªa. Exhaustivo, filos¨®fico, pol¨ªtico, abismal. Este es un libro para estudiar y releer durante varios a?os, que te conecta y permite moverte entre la ficci¨®n nost¨¢lgica y el futuro amenazado.
Me parece que su lectura de los l¨ªmites de lo imaginable, lo incognoscible, a partir de las obras de Stanislaw Lem, es brutal. Hay partes que no entend¨ª, varias, porque se trata de un fil¨®sofo que abarca demasiado y describe distintas obras que no conozco, que muchos no van a conocer, pero es la mejor conceptualizaci¨®n de la utop¨ªa y la ciencia ficci¨®n que he le¨ªdo en mi vida, sin duda.
Me parece que su lectura de los l¨ªmites de lo imaginable, lo incognoscible, a partir de las obras de Stanislaw Lem, es brutal. Hay partes que no entend¨ª, varias, porque se trata de un fil¨®sofo que abarca demasiado y describe distintas obras que no conozco, que muchos no van a conocer, pero es la mejor conceptualizaci¨®n de la utop¨ªa y la ciencia ficci¨®n que he le¨ªdo en mi vida, sin duda.
May 19, 2022
Um livro monumental, em especial a Parte 1. A reflex?o de Jameson sobre o desejo de Utopia, lendo o mesmo a partir de diversas inst?ncias liter¨¢rias (especialmente na fic??o cient¨ªfica) desse desejo, ¨¦ impressionantemente capaz de historicizar e trazer para o campo do materialismo cultural sua discuss?o. Dessa forma, qual a materialidade do presente contida e implicada no desejo de Utopia? Como a sua inscri??o na literatura de fic??o cient¨ªfica produz ramifica??es discursivas que excedem proje??es futuras para operar como um espelho para nosso tempo presente?
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May 4, 2025The thing about Fred Jameson is how your favorite book by him is often the last one you've read, and this is not an exception. Formidable thinking and writing, as usual. Essential reading on utopia and utopian thinking.
May 6, 2020
Examines Utopia as a literary form, as a subset (and perhaps earliest example) of science fiction; how science fiction is reflected in Utopian thinking, and vice versa; and the limitations, impossibility of, and absolutely necessary function the concept of Utopia has provided in the modern and postmodern eras.
Part one of the book covers my all too brief (and completely lacking in nuance) introduction, and part two is a series of essays Jameson wrote over a period of thirty years in which he developed the theory in part one (a structure which seems the mirror the original Utopian text: Thomas More's Utopia, whose first part was written later, and develops the theory of that book's part two).
Few literary theorists have as much energy and can cover such large distances as Jameson; here he is on P.K. Dick:
"Thus, we may suggest that these episodes very much include a meditation on mass culture, a hypothesis reinforced by Cornel West's insistence that religion is also very much a form of American mass culture (whose absence from current Cultural Studies he deplored). Drugs are also, perhaps, a form of American mass culture; and certainly what is feared in all these instances is precisely a certain 'fusion' with the medium and a loss of individual autonomy. Television is in any case another one of those contextual 1950s themes and current-event references which we have observed Dick's work to soak up (as with the dramatization of the then novel Barbie dolls): and it may be suggested that in Dick drugs and schizophrenia are bad, not because they provoke hallucinations, but because those hallucinations are too closely related to television."
And through all of his text he remains dedicated to the methodical, such as what I think could be considered his love of Greimas Squares (or semiotic rectangles, if you prefer):
"The usefulness of this exercise (which may otherwise strike the reader as mechanical or anti-aesthetic) lies not only in its demonstration of the deeper interrelationship between the various thematic clusters, but also in the way in which it opens up the possibility of an even more ambitious (if speculative) interpretive act. For each side of the rectangle also offers the occasion for the projection of a kind of impossible synthesis, in which contraries or contradictions find some ideal solution: the hypothesis being that it is at that level alone that we will be able to surprise something of the energy and the impulsion of the work itself." (Personally I find the notion or anti-aesthetics intriguing, and perhaps a promising avenue for expanding horizons).
Today it is just shy of fifty years since Jameson published his first major work, Marxism and Form, and since he has published something like 27 volumes (the most recent published last year, in 2019). In that period he has been willing out get out in front of every development in cultural theory, every movement in aesthetics, literature, film, society, economics (obviously from a Marxist bent) and no less the grist of the mass market mills. And with each development he adds another dimension to his Marxist-oriented dialectics, which are always ready to expand and take in new developments, always ready for the new sensations and experiences, as any true "theoretical tourist" (as he described himself in, I believe, Postmodernism or the Theory of Late Capitalism) would be.
I mean come on: his theories on postmodernism are inescapable for for anyone who is interested in the specificity of our current cultural moment, in seeing what is unique in the problems we face. This facet of his work is certain to make him a figure of history, but also it is also only one of his facets. His production in Archaeologies of the Future is clearly another. If you have any passing interest in Jameson, or in the literature of Utopia, or science fiction in just about any form ¨C this text is not to be missed.
Part one of the book covers my all too brief (and completely lacking in nuance) introduction, and part two is a series of essays Jameson wrote over a period of thirty years in which he developed the theory in part one (a structure which seems the mirror the original Utopian text: Thomas More's Utopia, whose first part was written later, and develops the theory of that book's part two).
Few literary theorists have as much energy and can cover such large distances as Jameson; here he is on P.K. Dick:
"Thus, we may suggest that these episodes very much include a meditation on mass culture, a hypothesis reinforced by Cornel West's insistence that religion is also very much a form of American mass culture (whose absence from current Cultural Studies he deplored). Drugs are also, perhaps, a form of American mass culture; and certainly what is feared in all these instances is precisely a certain 'fusion' with the medium and a loss of individual autonomy. Television is in any case another one of those contextual 1950s themes and current-event references which we have observed Dick's work to soak up (as with the dramatization of the then novel Barbie dolls): and it may be suggested that in Dick drugs and schizophrenia are bad, not because they provoke hallucinations, but because those hallucinations are too closely related to television."
And through all of his text he remains dedicated to the methodical, such as what I think could be considered his love of Greimas Squares (or semiotic rectangles, if you prefer):
"The usefulness of this exercise (which may otherwise strike the reader as mechanical or anti-aesthetic) lies not only in its demonstration of the deeper interrelationship between the various thematic clusters, but also in the way in which it opens up the possibility of an even more ambitious (if speculative) interpretive act. For each side of the rectangle also offers the occasion for the projection of a kind of impossible synthesis, in which contraries or contradictions find some ideal solution: the hypothesis being that it is at that level alone that we will be able to surprise something of the energy and the impulsion of the work itself." (Personally I find the notion or anti-aesthetics intriguing, and perhaps a promising avenue for expanding horizons).
Today it is just shy of fifty years since Jameson published his first major work, Marxism and Form, and since he has published something like 27 volumes (the most recent published last year, in 2019). In that period he has been willing out get out in front of every development in cultural theory, every movement in aesthetics, literature, film, society, economics (obviously from a Marxist bent) and no less the grist of the mass market mills. And with each development he adds another dimension to his Marxist-oriented dialectics, which are always ready to expand and take in new developments, always ready for the new sensations and experiences, as any true "theoretical tourist" (as he described himself in, I believe, Postmodernism or the Theory of Late Capitalism) would be.
I mean come on: his theories on postmodernism are inescapable for for anyone who is interested in the specificity of our current cultural moment, in seeing what is unique in the problems we face. This facet of his work is certain to make him a figure of history, but also it is also only one of his facets. His production in Archaeologies of the Future is clearly another. If you have any passing interest in Jameson, or in the literature of Utopia, or science fiction in just about any form ¨C this text is not to be missed.
November 28, 2018
I'm feeling positive about this book because the last essay was the real reason I bought the book to begin with - analysis of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. This was definitely above my reading level in many ways - but even with a good amount of 'what is he talking about', I still enjoyed the cross-novel connection building and reflections that Jameson was making!
Not for the faint of heart, but overall I'm glad I took the time to read it.
Not for the faint of heart, but overall I'm glad I took the time to read it.
April 2, 2022
I have read this book like urban warfare, fighting to advance house by house, chapter by chapter, hoping to find one of the few pearls scattered throughout. It has been an exhausting and disappointing experience. I struggle to understand how this book has been so influential despite being so obscurely written. Jameson is notorious for his oblique and unintelligible writing style. The worst part is that I am sure he can write much more transparently. He just doesn't give a toss.
April 18, 2021
"The historical opportunities of science fiction as a literary form are intimately related to this paralysis of so-called high literature. The officially 'non-serious' or pulp character of science fiction is an indispensable feature in its capacity to relax that tyrannical 'reality principle' which functions as a crippling censorship over high art, and to allow 'paraliterary' form thereby to inherit the vocation of giving us alternate versions of a world that has elsewhere seemed to resist even imagined change."
"The science fiction writer is obliged to invent an entire universe, an entire ontology, another world altogether ¡ª very precisely that system of radical difference with which we associate the imagination of Utopia."
Jameson commences with the commonplace observation that utopia is inherently a political matter. This venture of attempting to imagine an idealized world, after all, necessarily entails the selection and prioritization of particular values and beliefs. In this regard of world building, utopianism has naturally found a frequent home in science fiction, whose own principles rely upon attempts to imagine alternatives and stretch the bounds of the reality principle, within which other genres comfortably thrive. What follows in Part One is, then, a wide ranging discussion on the nature of science fiction as genre and as it coincides with utopianism. This includes ruminations on classic utopic works (e.g. More and Skinner), genre boundaries between science fiction and fantasy, conceptions of otherness with constructing aliens in science fiction, and the disruptive quality of imagined futures. Specific utopic qualities of the genre are constantly foregrounded, such as an almost inherently socialistic nature of many idealized futures, generally highlighting that utopianism and science fiction draw upon the same impulses of the human imagination.
Part Two consists of a dozen republications of Jameson's previous articles regarding science fiction. The best of these is an essay regarding what Jameson has termed 'world reduction' in Ursula K. Le Guin. He highlights a fascinating and creative tendency in Le Guin's corpus to fashion alternate worlds, not through the addition of elements to our present world (as so much of science fiction does with futuristic technological advances), but rather through subtraction of ordinally banal features, such as sexuality and gender roles. This innovative technique, then, allows for much of Le Guin's work to stand apart from and subtly critique features of the present reality. Another of Jameson's essays regarding reality in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is also a stand-out work, tracing the complexity of Robinson's characters and the events regarding the literal fashioning of a new world.
Overall, Jameson's book is a fascinating read, though, as with most of his work, very dense with theoretical material. Perhaps the only shortcoming is the immense speed at which Jameson flies through an expansive assortment of science fiction works. Combining this with the consistent off-hand references to philosophical and other theoretical works certainly makes it a challenge to keep pace at times, though it is typically worth the effort as Jameson often reaches particularly poignant ideas and connections.
"The science fiction writer is obliged to invent an entire universe, an entire ontology, another world altogether ¡ª very precisely that system of radical difference with which we associate the imagination of Utopia."
Jameson commences with the commonplace observation that utopia is inherently a political matter. This venture of attempting to imagine an idealized world, after all, necessarily entails the selection and prioritization of particular values and beliefs. In this regard of world building, utopianism has naturally found a frequent home in science fiction, whose own principles rely upon attempts to imagine alternatives and stretch the bounds of the reality principle, within which other genres comfortably thrive. What follows in Part One is, then, a wide ranging discussion on the nature of science fiction as genre and as it coincides with utopianism. This includes ruminations on classic utopic works (e.g. More and Skinner), genre boundaries between science fiction and fantasy, conceptions of otherness with constructing aliens in science fiction, and the disruptive quality of imagined futures. Specific utopic qualities of the genre are constantly foregrounded, such as an almost inherently socialistic nature of many idealized futures, generally highlighting that utopianism and science fiction draw upon the same impulses of the human imagination.
Part Two consists of a dozen republications of Jameson's previous articles regarding science fiction. The best of these is an essay regarding what Jameson has termed 'world reduction' in Ursula K. Le Guin. He highlights a fascinating and creative tendency in Le Guin's corpus to fashion alternate worlds, not through the addition of elements to our present world (as so much of science fiction does with futuristic technological advances), but rather through subtraction of ordinally banal features, such as sexuality and gender roles. This innovative technique, then, allows for much of Le Guin's work to stand apart from and subtly critique features of the present reality. Another of Jameson's essays regarding reality in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy is also a stand-out work, tracing the complexity of Robinson's characters and the events regarding the literal fashioning of a new world.
Overall, Jameson's book is a fascinating read, though, as with most of his work, very dense with theoretical material. Perhaps the only shortcoming is the immense speed at which Jameson flies through an expansive assortment of science fiction works. Combining this with the consistent off-hand references to philosophical and other theoretical works certainly makes it a challenge to keep pace at times, though it is typically worth the effort as Jameson often reaches particularly poignant ideas and connections.
January 10, 2025
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August 14, 2022
This book is interesting in that it is structure as theory for the first half (postmodern utopias, dystopias, and anti-utopias) and then a set of essays in the second half where Jameson is applying the ideas he¡¯s talking about as he examines various science fiction texts. I read this because I was working on the idea of utopia in science fiction but eventually didn¡¯t use it since my project went a different direction. It was worthwhile and I read through it a couple of times since it was good background in helping me develop a vocabulary for critically thinking about and writing about science fiction -- even if I didn¡¯t understand half of what he was writing about.
March 16, 2022
I read this as an ebook, which I always find harder going than dead-tree format, something which is bound not to help when reading Fredric Jameson. It's an interesting exploration of the nature of writing on utopia through a number of essays ranging from theory, to Thomas More, to modern science fiction. I usually find Jameson a challenging read and this was no different. I think I found the earlier and more theoretical essays more interesting than the later essays which cover specific novels but I guess your mileage may vary.
September 21, 2022
Haven't finished, but it's a theoretical read that tries to relate Utopian thinking to the history of science fiction through a variety of philosophical frameworks and concrete examples. I find the writing style to be a bit difficult - it's not intended for the average reader at all, which is fine - but it exposed me to a lot of old works and historical sci-fi I didn't know about. And the bits and pieces I have managed to understand are really insightful, especially when the register of the writing goes down to more straightforward literary criticism.
March 9, 2025
Bastante interesante. El tema principal es el g¨¦nero ut¨®pico y la ciencia ficci¨®n (tambi¨¦n habla un poco del g¨¦nero de fantas¨ªa).
Teniendo en cuenta que tanto el estilo, como la ideolog¨ªa y muchos de los autores que usa de referencia no son de mi agrado; tiene su merito que me haya gustado.
No est¨¢ hecho para m¨ª, pero est¨¢ muy bien hecho.
Teniendo en cuenta que tanto el estilo, como la ideolog¨ªa y muchos de los autores que usa de referencia no son de mi agrado; tiene su merito que me haya gustado.
No est¨¢ hecho para m¨ª, pero est¨¢ muy bien hecho.
April 21, 2025
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February 19, 2022
This felt like a long read - while there are pearls of wisdom hidden within the dense text, at times it becomes hard to follow. Fortunately I read the eBook version, with the possibility of translating paragraphs of text, as Jameson has a habit of quoting full paragraphs in French.
February 19, 2024
Kitab?n sistemati?i ?ok iyi idi. Giri? geli?me sonu? . ?topya ya ilgisi olanlar?n mutlaka okunmas? gereken bir eser. Kitab? okurken o kadar da ilgimin olmad???n? fark ettim . Ama sonu? k?sm?nda favorim kitaplar?mdan birindeki al?nt? ile bitirmesi kalbimi ald?.
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June 25, 2019Fredric Jameson annoys the hell out of me.
July 5, 2020
Jameson gambols about on the fringes of utopia.
October 29, 2020
Not for the faint-hearted; essential for anyone in the field.
March 14, 2021
?¦Ì¦Ï¦Ñ¦Õ¦Ï ¦Æ?¦Ó¦Ç¦Ì¦Á. ¦§ ¦Ð¦Ô¦Ê¦Í? ¦Ã¦Ñ¦Á¦Õ? ¦È¦Á ¦Ò¦Á? ¦Ä¦Ô¦Ò¦Ê¦Ï¦Ë?¦×¦Å¦É
July 6, 2024
big on citing Bloch here. Jameson is good with being specific, and I loved the KSR chapter at the end
April 24, 2025
Review to come.
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May 18, 2009Literary criticism in the form of a collection of essays, this book explores particular aspects of the genre of science fiction:
"Religion was perhaps the most ancient organizing concept in the emergence of anthropology as a discipline: the ultimately determining instance for national or racial character, the ultimate source of cultural difference itself, the marker of the individuality of the various peoples in history (a role it still plays in Hegel and whose revival today we can witness in ideologues like Samuel Huntington). It can thus provide the most facile solutions for SF, a kind of ready-made thought of the other; and at the same time stage the most interesting conceptual dilemmas and form-problems." (95)
Even footnotes are deep:
"(1) violence is an ideology, constructed around the structural omission of state power and physical oppression authorized by the 'law'; (2) violence is always initiated by the Right and by conservative or counterrevolutionary repression, to which Left violence is then a response; (3) political violence is self-defeating, and dialectically strengthens its opposite number: thus, US expansionism generates al Qaeda, whose growth then encourages the development of an American police state, which may well in turn susscitate new forms of resistance." (232)
Chapter 4 in part 2 is a neat place to begin.
"Religion was perhaps the most ancient organizing concept in the emergence of anthropology as a discipline: the ultimately determining instance for national or racial character, the ultimate source of cultural difference itself, the marker of the individuality of the various peoples in history (a role it still plays in Hegel and whose revival today we can witness in ideologues like Samuel Huntington). It can thus provide the most facile solutions for SF, a kind of ready-made thought of the other; and at the same time stage the most interesting conceptual dilemmas and form-problems." (95)
Even footnotes are deep:
"(1) violence is an ideology, constructed around the structural omission of state power and physical oppression authorized by the 'law'; (2) violence is always initiated by the Right and by conservative or counterrevolutionary repression, to which Left violence is then a response; (3) political violence is self-defeating, and dialectically strengthens its opposite number: thus, US expansionism generates al Qaeda, whose growth then encourages the development of an American police state, which may well in turn susscitate new forms of resistance." (232)
Chapter 4 in part 2 is a neat place to begin.
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