Samantha Kilbane
COMPSTD 1100
August 29, 2020
Frederick Jameson’s Words Spark Critique
This week’s reading is a critique by Aijaz Ahmad in response to an essay written by Frederick Jameson. In order to understand what Ahmad is claiming about Jameson, it is important to know a little about Jameson, and his piece Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism. Jameson published his journal entry to the Social Text in 1986, and just one year later, Ahmad came out with his response to Jameson’s words.
To begin, Frederick Jameson is a current professor at Duke University in Comparative Literature and Romance Studies. Duke’s faculty directory describes Jameson as an American literary critic, theorist, and author with a “… need to analyze literature as an encoding of political and social imperatives, and the interpretation of modernist and postmodernism assumptions through a rethinking of Marxist methodology” (Duke University). Recognizing Jameson’s Marisxt thought process, gives a better understanding behind his works. Marxism is greatly centered around theories and principles of socialism, with a focus on class struggle and dialectical materialism (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).
Professor of english at Texas State University, Robert T. Tally Jr., theorizes that Jameson wrote his “Third-World” essay in response to his previously published book Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism in 1991. Tally supports this claim as he mentions the works state very similar ideas, yet the “Third-World” essay was omitted due to the criticism it was expected to receive, hence Ahmad’s essay. Jameson receives much of his criticism toward his claim that all third world country literature creates a ‘national allegory’. To quote Jameson from his essay, “[third-world literature] project[s] a political dimension in the form of national allegory: the story of the private individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society” (Jameson, 69). Controversy becomes thick with this singular labeling of countries with such diverse cultures.
So how does this connect to Aijaz Ahmad’s essay? Well, as Ahmad quickly mentions, they are a writer from India and commonly write in the Urdu language. In Jameson’s piece, he writes that countries such as Africa, South America, and Southern Asia all fall under the same title of “third-world” based on the literature that is produced from these countries (Tally). Ahmad is one of many authors to criticize this essay by Jameson. Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism continues to spark controversy among readers almost 25 years later.
Works Cited
Jameson, Frederic. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.” Duke
University Press, Social Text, 1986.
“Marxism.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster,
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Marxism.
“Program in Literature.” Fredric Jameson | Program in Literature,
literature.duke.edu/people/fredric-jameson.
Tally, Robert T. “Fredric Jameson and the Controversy over ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of
Multinational Capitalism.’” Global South Studies, U.Va., Nov. 2017, globalsouthstudies.as.virginia.edu/key-thinkers/fredric-jameson-and-controversy-over-“third-world-literature-era-multinational.
Hello Samantha!
The way you wrote this post was really informative and just had a great flow to it. I liked how you gave some background information about Frederick Jameson and how others see him as a professor and an author. It helped me have a better understanding of Ahmad’s thought process and how it all ties together with Frederick Jameson’s piece “Third world literature in the era of multinational capitalism”. That’s so crazy that there’s controversy still about this topic/ piece to this day!
Samantha,
Your post was very informative. Not only did you give thorough background information about the person who authored the work that prompted Ahmad to respond, but it also gave an understanding as to why Jameson wrote the way he did and essentially what caused Ahmad to respond. It’s definitely interesting to learn a bit about Ahmad’s reasoning behind his response as well which directly ties with his own ethnicity and cultural background.
Hello!
I really enjoyed reading your context presentation. I personally was very intrigued by Jameson’s writing and i really liked having the ability to read what others took from it as well. I found it very helpful that you gave background research on Jameson as it made me have the ability to understand even more the way he proposed his views. Thank you for such a great post!!
Hello Samantha!
This post is very informative and interesting to read as you went beyond the writing itself to provide background information about Jameson as well as his beliefs. Reading your presentation I was able to grasp a better understanding as to what Jameson’s views on third world literature are. The information you gave about Jameson and connecting it back to Ahmad’s response helped to understand why he felt so motivated to share his view as a writer from India.
Good information about Jameson, but little information about our reading by Aijaz Ahmad, “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the ‘National Allegory”. It would have been shocking to the Ahmad’s soul because he enjoyed the writings from Jameson up until this article which mention his country as being third world and his writings included was third world literature. He goes on to explain his disagreement with Jameson.
Greetings Samantha,
I thoroughly enjoyed your research behind Ahmad’s writing. I find it very interesting that his critique of “third world literature” was once omitted because of how controversial it appears. I also really enjoyed the explanation of Jameson as it gives us more insight to why he writes about the varying levels of culture. I feel as though understanding the background of both Jameson and Ahmad gives the reader greater insight into their respective opinions and their writings. Thank you for a wonderful post and awesome job with the research!
Hello, Samantha.
I enjoyed reading your post this week, I especially found the part where you gave Frederick Jameson’s background to be interesting. Although overlooked sometimes, to really understand an author’s work, you may have to learn about who they are as a person. Which is something that you began to do here.
Hi Samantha!
I really enjoyed reading your post about both Ahmed and Jameson. I found that it gave both good background and a good summary of the overall conflict and controversy relating to their perspectives and their writings. It is so crazy to me that this is still a controversial topic, and I really enjoyed the insight you provided!!