After learning of the passing of his old friend Jameson, the author expressed his condolences and nostalgia for this internationally renowned scholar. Jameson is a visiting professor at Duke University in the United States, who has won multiple academic awards. His works extensively cover literary, philosophical, historical, social, and cultural theories, and have had a profound impact on the North American academic community. He has visited China six times and had extensive exchanges with Chinese scholars. His works have also had an important influence in the Chinese academic community. Jameson's death is a huge loss for the international academic community, and many famous scholars are writing commemorative articles. The Chinese cultural community also strongly reacted to Jameson's death, and the Chinese Department of Peking University held a memorial service to commemorate him. The author plans to provide an overview of Jameson's academic achievements.

Political Unconsciousness

Jameson proposed the idea of "always historicizing" in "The Political Unconscious", explored the relationship between aesthetics and social history, and put forward the methodology of meta criticism. He places cultural texts in a historical context and explores the impact of interpretive strategies on individual text understanding from a hermeneutic perspective. Jameson emphasized the importance of Marxist ideological analysis, believing that Marxism encompasses all other interpretive strategies. He proposed that the political perspective constitutes the absolute field of view for all reading and interpretation, challenging Freud's unconscious ignorance of history. Jameson attempted to integrate modern and postmodern critical theories, embracing all other analyses with radical analysis, believing that Marxism can overcome the limitations of other interpretive approaches and preserve its positive discoveries. His critical practice is similar to psychotherapy, focusing on the phenomena of texts and exploring the basic historical realities that have been suppressed and buried. Jameson's analytical method aims to study the reasons for textual phenomena and reveal the ideological matrix on which texts are generated. He drew on the theories of Derrida and Lacan, but at the same time avoided Freud's main narrative induction and post structuralist anti historicism. Jameson believed that Marxist criticism is inclusive and comprehensive, integrating various theoretical resources to achieve greater semantic richness. Critics should examine the political history, social history, and production mode history referred to in the text, which overlap and integrate with each other to achieve a higher level of universality and deeper historical causal relationships.

Historicism and Dialectics

Jameson's theoretical and academic contributions in the field of literary criticism are mainly reflected in historicism and dialectics. As a Marxist in the style of Lukacs, he transcended Lukacs' nostalgic historicism and elegant humanitarianism, focusing on how to take history, class struggle, and the dehumanization of capitalism seriously after deconstructing post structuralism. Jameson emphasized the Marxist exploration of "totality" to avoid idealistic assumptions and mystical consequences. His first work, "Sartre: The Origins of a Style," analyzed Sartre's literary theory and creation. Although it lacked the Marxist category and political understanding found in later works, it reflected his efforts to oppose conservative ideas and become a critical intellectual at the time. Jameson's works constitute his intervention in the hegemonic forms and modes of ideological domination in literary criticism.

unfinished business

Discussed the relationship between literary criticism and the real world, emphasizing the importance of the value of literary works and the value of critics in this relationship. Jameson's critical works are regarded as contemporary exemplars, and his works have a wide influence, not only because of their originality and the momentum that encompasses the entire field, but also because of their bold innovation. Jameson's works involve multiple languages and ethnic histories, showcasing rich cultural knowledge in various fields such as urban planning, architecture, film, literature, and contemporary visual arts. His ability to integrate different ideas into a cohesive whole has been both appreciated and criticized, but undoubtedly makes his works full of vitality. Jameson's writing history reflects a series of discussions on the spirit of the times, while the reception history of his works reflects a response to these discussions. The acceptance of his works can be roughly divided into two categories: one is to readjust their direction based on his surveying and mapping of the criticized landscape; The other type continues to use existing surveying maps or proposes their own surveying maps. Every new work by Jameson enters a new field, and when faced with new readers, he is unwilling to repeat the past and always hopes to raise new questions and arguments. Jameson's influence mainly lies in methodology, as his works integrate the ideas of Sartre, Adorno, Benjamin, Lukacs, and others, but it is difficult to say whether any of them had a direct impact on him. His concept of 'meta commentary' indicates his approach of conceptualizing theory as a code with its own laws of discourse production. Jameson's' The Political Unconscious' is an internationally influential work that provides practitioners of cultural studies with an effective method to explore and articulate the ideological foundations of popular and popular cultural texts. His book 'Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' is hailed as a groundbreaking work on postmodernism. Jameson's preference for science fiction and utopia is reflected in his book 'Archaeology of the Future'. He remains interested in modernist texts, especially those related to postcolonial culture. Jameson elaborated on the emerging world historical phenomenon of globalization from the perspective of cultural theory, believing that the concept of globalization is the "sexualization of the market". What he is concerned about is that the view that there is or may be a social system that replaces capitalism has shrunk or is disappearing.