1

Does Jameson define "narrative" anywhere? I've read the political unconscious, and just ordered a study of him, and I would probably agree that narratives embody social reality, but am unclear what counts as a narrative.

Examples in the secondary literature include myths, stories, and the plots of soap operas. But I believe history itself isn't a narrative?

  • 1
    According to Wegner's Periodizing Jameson:"Jameson characterizes narrative as a mode of presentation — or to use the “untranslatable” German term that is so important for his project,
    Darstellung — taking the form of a “rhetorical movement of language and writing through time”    ".     – Conifold Dec 18 '19 at 01:46
  • 1
    Wegner takes as epigraph a quote from The Ideologies of Theory:"The “desire for Marx” can therefore also be called a desire for narrative, if by this we understand, not some vacuous concept of “linearity” or even telos, but rather the impossible attempt to give representation to the multiple and incommensurable temporalities in which each of us exists." – Conifold Dec 18 '19 at 01:48
  • i think someone is just being vindictive to downvote this haha –  Dec 18 '19 at 06:17
  • 1
    Seems a reasonable question to me. +1. – Geoffrey Thomas Dec 18 '19 at 10:21
  • 1
    See Narratology and Literary Theory. IMO, Jameson does not use "narrative" in any "technical" sense; see e.g. Postmodernism. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 18 '19 at 12:09

0 Answers0