Practice Of Cultural Criticism

This dissertation is designed to theoretically deal with the Critical Theory formulated by F. Jameson in order to show the coherent relationship between his theory and western intellectual tradition and the contemporary Marxism in particular, furthermore, to represent its intrinsic connection with the transformation from Western Marxism to Post-Marxism. In a sense, it is safe to say that the dissertation makes attempt to trace the current western knowledge development and analyze the Cultural criticism by taking Jameson's theory as a sample.This dissertation consists of four chapters in total, covering analysis of Jameson theory's intellectual resources and important concepts, interpretation of the practical modality of his theory, and the idiographic research of the reality in his theory.The first chapter consists of two parts. One is to show historism dimension and dialectic methodology in Jameson's theory practice. In his theory, there exists a special relationship between the Marxism problematic with post-structuralism theory, which plays a role of theoretical tool in Jameson's theory. On the same time, it is pointed out that the dialectic thinking, as a core intention, has internalized integrated part of Jameson's thoughts which fully displays the historiality and complexity of Marxism against the current knowledge production. The practice of Jameson's Critical Theory is encompassed in historical interaction of theory and practice, which is part of Marxism tradition. The other is to lay out the configuration of the varied current thoughts, namely, Sausure's linguistics theory, Freud's spiritual analysis theory, and Existentialism in Jameson's theory. By effectively absorbing these thoughts into his theory system, Jameson's social-cultural analysis extends to the fields, which the previous theories failed to touch. It should be noticed that Jameson's critical understanding and assimilation constitutes a crucial moment, from which his theory probe into the current cultural context.The second chapter mainly deals with the three key concepts in Jameson's theory, history, totality and ideology, which form an integrated concept cluster and occupy an important position in his theory system. History, the concept in Jameson's theory is neither text nor narration, but a cause that is beyond our direct observation. It is can not be understood unless it is tackled in a way of being narrated. To be more specific, history exists as a symbolic narration in political unconsciousness. Totality in Jameson is directed to the diachronic and dialectic social-cultural development. On the basis, he divides the culture into different stages in a perspective of totality. For him, ideology is nothing but a limited reflection of social ideology. Meaning generated from text through a kind of special meaning-generating matrix mechanism, which leads to the ultimate historical horizon.The third chapter is engaged on the practical features of Jameson's theory in a hope of showing how cultural studies that is dominated by political analysis approaches to the content text criticism. On the other hand, "utopia" is taken into the consideration, which is a significant thread repeatedly appearing in Jameson's theory. Jameson takes utopia as premises of social transformation. Literary and cultural texts are taken as utopia space that resists the reality. However, interpretation is kind of reflection of utopia, a kind of disenchantment, thus an approach to truth.The fourth chapter is focused on the realistic feature of Jameson's theory. Varying from the "realistic meaning" or "realistic concern", realistic feature in his theory refers to an absolute abstract theory concept, which directs to a sort of special type of practice, that is, practice of theory itself. By putting Jameson's theory in the Chinese context, the varieties, especially the misreading, and the interior conflicts of his theory are discussed. The next task in this part is to orient Jameson's theory in the genealogy of current knowledge, and put forth the possibility of theoretical reality that his critical theory may lead to a concrete ideological structuralism method. In this right sense, Jameson inherits the realistic consciousness in the tradition of Western Marxism.The conclusion of this dissertation mentions that Jameson theorizes the post-modernism features within a new frame of Marxism social theory, and offers the totalizing interpretation of post-modernism cultural and subject experience form.