An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army

An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army

by Fredric Jameson (Author), Fredric Jameson (Author)

Synopsis

Fredric Jameson's pathbreaking essay An American Utopia radically questions standard leftist notions of what constitutes an emancipated society. Advocated here are-among other things-universal conscription, the full acknowledgment of envy and resentment as a fundamental challenge to any communist society, and the acceptance that the division between work and leisure cannot be overcome. To create a new world, we must first change the way we envision the world. Jameson's text is ideally placed to trigger a debate on the alternatives to global capitalism. In addition to Jameson's essay, the volume includes responses from philosophers and political and cultural analysts, as well as an epilogue from Jameson himself. Many will be appalled at what they will encounter in these pages-there will be blood! But perhaps one has to spill such (ideological) blood to give the Left a chance. With contributions by Jodi Dean, Saroj Giri, Agon Hamza, Kojin Karatani, Kim Stanley Robinson, Frank Ruda, and Kathi Weeks

$46.96

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Publisher: Verso
Published: 09 Jun 2016

ISBN 10: 1784784532
ISBN 13: 9781784784539

Media Reviews
In An American Utopia, Jameson affirms the critical function of utopian thinking and the efficacies of the form itself. He insists that the fundamental function of utopias is to revive a sense of the future, which requires taking aim at the forces that prevent us from venturing out from the comfortingly familiar confines of the present. - Kathi Weeks Jameson [...] gives us good reasons to call back utopia from obscurity. - Rain Taxi
Author Bio
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. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. He is the author of many books, including Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The Cultural Turn, A Singular Modernity, The Modernist Papers, Archaeologies of the Future, Brecht and Method, Ideologies of Theory, Valences of the Dialectic, The Hegel Variations and Representing Capital.