Novara FM: Read Some Effing Jameson! w/ Sianne Ngai and Matthew Beaumont
Novara Media
Novara Media
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 25 April 2024
⏱️ 80 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The exhortation to “read some effing Orwell!” is an old chestnut of the online left, whether ironic or sincere, or somewhere in between. But if we’re looking for a writer whose body of work truly anticipates the world we live in now – globalised, postcolonial, postmodern – we might instead turn to the American Marxist cultural critic Fredric Jameson.
He’s just turned 90 and, in characteristically productive style, has three new books out this year. But where to start? To get a grip on Jamesonian thought, Richard Hames invites Sianne Ngai and Matthew Beaumont, both incisive critics in their own right, to discuss the breadth of his life and work, from postmodernism to the political unconscious to Jaws.
Sianne and Matt recommend that new readers of Jameson start with The Geopolitical Aesthetic or the essay ‘Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture‘.
Read Sianne and Matt’s recent essays on Jameson over at the Verso blog.
Novara FM now has its own inbox – email your comments, criticism and suggestions to fm@novaramedia.com
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Navarro-FM now has its own dedicated inbox. You can write in, we talk questions, comments, criticisms and quibbles, |
| 0:07.7 | to FM at Navarro Media.com. We've had some very interesting suggestions for people we might have on the show in the future, |
| 0:16.4 | as well as the many comments we've received about episodes just released. |
| 0:21.4 | That's FM at Navarro Media. |
| 0:24.3 | Thanks for listening. Frederick Jameson is an American Marxist cultural critic, perhaps the most important |
| 0:48.4 | one of the late 20th century. |
| 0:50.9 | He's famous in an actually famous, famous kind of way, for writing about what is often called |
| 0:56.3 | postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capitalism, but his work goes far deeper and |
| 1:01.8 | broader than that. |
| 1:03.0 | He's written about the film Jaws, about Hegel, about architecture, |
| 1:08.0 | and the utopias of science fiction, |
| 1:10.0 | and is possibly the originator of the phrase |
| 1:12.0 | that it is easier today to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. |
| 1:17.0 | It is also one of the main influences behind Anna Corn Blues work who we interviewed a few episodes back. |
| 1:23.7 | You can find that under the title, |
| 1:25.8 | Critical Theists Hate This One Weird Trick, |
| 1:28.4 | wherever you're listening to this. |
| 1:30.7 | Jameson's work is endlessly supple, endlessly |
| 1:33.2 | historicizing, endlessly dialectical. But what does that actually mean? What |
| 1:39.3 | exactly the dialectical method is is a slippery fish. But in this interview, Cianna Gagans my electrical is, |
| 1:43.0 | but in this interview, |
| 1:44.0 | Siena Guy describes it as treating concepts as narratives |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Novara Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Novara Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

