Diacritics

This essay offers an immanent reading of Fredric Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future (2005) in terms of his theorization of a four-fold allegorical hermeneutic. On the literal level, the book explores science fictions; on the allegorical, Utopian representations; on the moral, or individual psychological, it serves as a “partial summing up” of a number of sequences in Jameson’s ongoing project; and on the anagogical, it contributes to a reinvention of Marxism for an era of globalization. Jameson’s recent writings also share an interest in modernism, challenging late modernist ideology and recovering more radical forms. The essay concludes by exploring how Jameson’s discussion of Utopia serves as a figure for the problems of radical politics in the present.