Political Unconscious

Fredric Jameson (1934-). Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University and one of the most provocative and influential cultural critics of our age.

'Every now and then a book appears which is literally ahead of its time ...The Political Unconscious is such a book ... it sets new standards of what a classic work is.' - Slavoj Zizek

• PREFACE 1 On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act 2 Magical Narratives: On the Dialectical Use of Genre Criticism 3 Realism and Desire: Balzac and the Problem of the Subject 4 Authentic Ressentiment: Generic Discontinuities and Ideologemes in the Experimental Novels of George Gissing 5 Romance and Reification: Plot Construction and Ideological Closure in Joseph Conrad 6 Conclusion: The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology INDEX