An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army

Resumen del libro

Controversial manifesto by acclaimed cultural theorist debated by leading writers

Fredric Jameson's path-breaking essay An American Utopia radically questions standard leftist notions of an emancipated society, advocating among other things universal conscription as the model for the communist reorganization of society, fully acknowledging envy and resentment as the central problem of a communist society, and rejecting the dreams of overcoming the division between work and leisure. Endorsing the axiom that to change the world one should begin by changing our dreams about how we imagine an emancipated society, Jameson's text is ideally placed to trigger a debate on possible and imaginable alternatives to global capitalism. In addition to Jameson's essay, the volume brings reactions to it by philosophers and political and cultural analysts, as well as an epilogue from Jameson. Many will be appalled at what they will encounter there will be blood. But what if one has to spill such (ideological) blood to give the left a new chance?

Contributors include Kim Stanley Robinson, Jodi Dean, Saroj Giri, Agon Hamza, Kojin Karatani, Frank Ruda, Alberto Toscano, Kathi Weeks, and Slavoj i ek.

Biografía del autor

Jameson, the William A. Lane Jr. is Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University.<br>Jameson received a Ph.D. from Yale in 1959 and taught at Harvard, Yale, and the University of California before going to Duke in 1985. He is the author of Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991, which won the MLA Lowell Award), Seeds of Time (1994), Brecht and Method (1998), The Cultural Turn (1998), and A Singular Modernity (2002). His recent works include Archaeologies of the Future (2005) and The Modernist Papers (2007). He received the 2008 Holberg Prize for his scholarship.

Biografía del autor

Slavoj x{0026} x0017D;ix{0026} x0017E;ek (Liubliana, 1949), filósofo, sociólogo, psicoanalista y crítico cultural, es uno de los pensadores más innovadores y carismáticos de nuestro tiempo. Es investigador en el Instituto de Sociología de la Universidad de Liubliana (Eslovenia) y profesor en diversas universidades de Estados Unidos y Europa. Ha publicado decenas de libros, traducidos a varias lenguas, en los que integra el pensamiento de Jacques Lacan con el marxismo y vincula sus reflexiones teóricas con ejemplos de la cultura popular.