Save

Difference Relates: Allegory, Ideology, and the Anthropocene

In: Historical Materialism
Author:
Carolyn Lesjak Associate Professor, Department of English, Simon Fraser University Burnaby, British Columbia Canada

Search for other papers by Carolyn Lesjak in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Download Citation Get Permissions

Access options

Get access to the full article by using one of the access options below.

Institutional Login

Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials

Login via Institution

Purchase

Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

$40.00

Abstract

Fredric Jameson’s recent book, Allegory and Ideology, argues that allegory has become a ‘social symptom’, an attempt during moments of historical crisis to represent reality even as that reality, rife with contradictory levels, eludes representation. Mobilising the fourfold medieval system of allegory he first introduced in The Political Unconscious, Jameson traces a formal history of attempts to come to terms with the ‘multiplicities’ and incommensurable levels that emerge within modernity and postmodernity. This article identifies the complexities of Jameson’s understanding of allegory and draws on the brief moments when Jameson references the Anthropocene to argue for an allegorical reading of our contemporary environmental crisis that would allow us to see the problem the Anthropocene names as truly contradictory: at one and the same time, the world we inhabit appears to us as a world of our own making and as a world that has become truly alien to us.

Content Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 1163 207 27
Full Text Views 518 385 2
PDF Views & Downloads 1183 856 6