The Years of Theory Lectures on Modern French Thought

Magisterial lectures on the major figures of French theory from 'America’s leading Marxist critic'

Fredric Jameson introduces here the major themes of French theory: existentialism, structuralism, poststructuralism, semiotics, feminism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. In a series of accessible lectures, Jameson places this effervescent period of thought in the context of its most significant political conjunctures, including the Liberation of Paris, the Algerian War, the uprisings of May ’68, and the creation of the EU.

The philosophical debates of the period come to life through anecdotes and extended readings of work by the likes of Sartre, Beauvoir, Fanon, Barthes, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, Deleuze, groups like Tel Quel and Cahiers du Cinéma, and contemporary thinkers such as Rancière and Badiou. Eclectic, insightful, and inspired, Jameson’s seminars provide an essential account of an intellectual moment comparable in significance to the Golden Age of Athens, historically fascinating and of persistent relevance.

Fredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. Over the last several decades, he has developed an influential and richly nuanced understanding of the relationship between culture and political economy. He is a recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize and the Modern Language Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the author of many books, including The Political Unconscious, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, and Valences of the Dialectic.

Editor’s Preface

Introduction: The Seminar as a Collective Book

1 Les Cinquante Glorieuses
2 The Uses of the Verb to Be
{Sartre}
3 Reification or Otherness
{Sartre}
4 After Sartre
{Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Fanon}
5 After the Liberation
{Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Fanon}
6 Glory to the Binary Opposition!
{Saussure, Levi-Strauss}
7 Saussure in Brazil
{Levi-Strauss}
8 Victory of the Paradigmatic
{Levi-Strauss, Barthes}
9 Utopia: But Where Does Power Come From?
{Baudrillard, Clastres}
10 Enter Lacan
{Lacan}
11 Genealogy of the Look
{Lacan}
12 Class Struggle in Theory
{Althusser}
13 The Lonely Hour of the Last Instance
{Althusser}
14 How to Avoid Meaning
{Derrida}
15 Linguistic Politics of the Third Way
{Derrida}
16 Feminism as Transgression
{Beauvoir, Wittig, Irigaray}
17 Mothers and Moving Images
{Kristeva, Comolli, Baudry}
18 “Moi, Michel Foucault...”
{Foucault}
19 The Prison-House of Subjectification
{Foucault}
20 Nominalism of the Photograph
{Barthes}
21 Philosophy’s Postmodern Theater
{Deleuze}
22 Joyousness of Gilles Deleuze
{Deleuze}
23 Return of le Politique
{Rancière, Balibar, Nancy}
24 Simulating the End of History
{Debord, Baudrillard}

Envoi: Theory after Demarxification
{Latour, Meillassoux, Stiegler, Laruelle}

Index