This article compares the dialectics of Fredric Jameson and Roy Bhaskar. From a dialectical critical-realist standpoint, it argues that Jameson’s approach in his recent collection Valences of the Dialectic sits uncomfortably between Hegelian and Marxist presuppositions. This is seen in the way he configures the relation between thinking and being, and it leads to an alliance with poststructuralist thinking in which real negativity is denied. In consequence, his thought is caught between a critique of the present and the impossibility of thinking real change within it.
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Adorno Theodor W. Ashton E.B. Negative Dialectics 1973 [1966] London Routledge
Archer Margaret Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach 1995 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Barnes Jonathan Early Greek Philosophy 1987 Harmondsworth Penguin Books
Bhaskar Roy Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom 1993 London Verso
Bhaskar Roy Plato, etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution 1994 London Verso
Bhaskar Roy A Realist Theory of Science 1997 London Verso
Bhaskar Roy The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences 1998 London Routledge
Callinicos Alex Resources of Critique 2006 Cambridge Polity
Deleuze Gilles Patton Paul Difference and Repetition 1993 [1968] New York Columbia University Press
Hartwig Mervyn Dictionary of Critical Realism 2007 London Routledge
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Knox T.M. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right 1952 [1820] Oxford Oxford University Press
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Wallace William Hegel’s Logic: Being Part One of the ‘Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences’ (1830) 1975 [1830] Oxford Oxford University Press
Inwood Michael A Heidegger Dictionary 1999 Oxford Blackwell
Jameson Fredric Valences of the Dialectic 2009 London Verso
Jameson Fredric The Hegel Variations 2010 London Verso
Jameson Fredric Representing ‘Capital’: A Reading of Volume One 2011 London Verso
Kant Immanuel Meiklejohn J.M.D. Critique of Pure Reason 1993 [1781/7] London J.M. Dent
Marx Karl & Engels Frederick Collected Works 1983 Volume 40 London Lawrence and Wishart
Norrie Alan Law and the Beautiful Soul 2005 London Routledge
Norrie Alan Dialectic and Difference: Dialectical Critical Realism and the Grounds of Justice 2010 London Routledge
Sartre Jean-Paul Barnes Hazel E. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology 1956 [1943] New York Washington Square
Jameson 2009. I also make reference to the essays Jameson has since written on Marx’s Capital ( Jameson 2011) and Hegel’s Phenomenology ( Jameson 2010), which draw upon the understanding of dialectics already developed in Valences.
Jameson 2009, p. 69, n. 68.
Bhaskar 1993; see also Bhaskar 1994. The difficulty in this work is now alleviated by the publication of Hartwig 2007 and Norrie 2010. In the latter (Norrie 2010, pp. 5–7), I suggest that the difficulty in Bhaskar is overstated because he works against the grain of at least four different currents in modern critical thought (Hegelianism, Marxism, poststructuralism and ‘original’ critical realism). I also develop there a dialectical critical-realist metacritique of justice and a critique of poststructuralist ontology (Norrie 2010, Chapters 5–7). The latter is explored below.
See Jameson 2009, Chapter 2.
See Jameson 2009, p. 8, as discussed below.
Jameson 2009, p. 4.
Norrie 2010, pp. 7–11.
Archer 1995.
Bhaskar 1997, Chapter 3.
This is the argument of Bhaskar 1998, Note 8.
Callinicos 2006, Chapter 2.
Hegel 1952, p. 10.
See Bhaskar 1993, Chapter 2; Norrie 2010, Chapter 2.
Norrie 2010, pp. 28–34.
See Jameson 2011, p. 5. Here, the dialectical relation is also given a spatio-temporal turn, but in a limited and supplementary way.
See Norrie 2010, Chapters 6–7.
Norrie 2010, pp. 42–7, Chapter 6.
Jameson 2009, p. 5. There is a less ambitious form than ‘the dialectic’, which is dialectic as ‘method’, but Jameson rightly suggests that this leads back to the more ambitious sense of dialectic as system ( Jameson 2009, pp. 3–4). From a dialectical critical realist standpoint, this idea of dialectic is doubly problematic: because of its closed (untranscendable) and its thought-based character.
Jameson 2009, p. 7.
See Jameson 2009, pp. 23, 36.
Jameson 2009, p. 8.
Jameson 2009, pp. 8–9.
Jameson 2009, p. 9.
Jameson 2009, p. 15.
Jameson 2009, p. 18.
Jameson 2009, p. 17.
Jameson 2009, p. 18.
Cf. Norrie 2005, Chapter 8.
Jameson 2009, p. 22.
Jameson 2009, p. 25.
Jameson 2009, p. 26.
Jameson 2009, p. 10.
Jameson 2009, p. 12.
For a similar view, see Norrie 2010, pp. 187–9, Chapter 7.
Jameson 2009, p. 36.
Deleuze 1993.
Jameson 2009, p. 37.
See also Jameson 2011, pp. 130–4.
Jameson 2009, pp. 116–20.
Jameson 2009, p. 120.
Jameson 2009, pp. 37–8.
Jameson 2009, p. 38.
Jameson 2009, p. 43.
As discussed at Jameson 2009, p. 43.
Jameson 2009, p. 50. Compare this with what he says in Representing ‘Capital’: ‘no dialectic without realising that we are practising dialectic; no spontaneous and unselfconscious dialectical thinking as such’ ( Jameson 2011, p. 137). If so, what of the ‘dialectical reality’ that embeds our thought, and has the last laugh?
Jameson 2009, p. 50.
Jameson 2009, p. 56.
Jameson 2009, p. 57.
Jameson 2009, p. 60.
Jameson 2009, p. 62.
Jameson 2009, p. 64.
Jameson 2009, p. 65.
Jameson 2009, p. 57. At various points in his Negative Dialectics, Adorno identifies different, problematic, escape-routes away from conceptuality: the primordial, the somatic, the historical.
Jameson 2009, p. 65.
Jameson 2009, p. 608.
Jameson 2011, p. 7.
Jameson 2011, p. 9.
Jameson 2011, p. 132.
Jameson 2011, p. 71.
Jameson 2011, p. 133.
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This article compares the dialectics of Fredric Jameson and Roy Bhaskar. From a dialectical critical-realist standpoint, it argues that Jameson’s approach in his recent collection Valences of the Dialectic sits uncomfortably between Hegelian and Marxist presuppositions. This is seen in the way he configures the relation between thinking and being, and it leads to an alliance with poststructuralist thinking in which real negativity is denied. In consequence, his thought is caught between a critique of the present and the impossibility of thinking real change within it.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 590 | 132 | 29 |
Full Text Views | 604 | 457 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 1116 | 1021 | 3 |