Fredric Jameson and Film Theory

KEITH B. WAGNER is an assistant professor of global media and culture and director of doctoral research in film and media studies at University College London in the United Kingdom. He is the coeditor of Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture and Marxist Critique.JEREMI SZANIAWSKI is an assistant professor of film studies and comparative literature, and the Amesbury Professor of Polish language and culture at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the author of The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov: Figures of Paradox.MICHAEL CRAMER is a professor of cinema studies at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. He is the author of Utopian Television: Roberto Rossellini, Peter Watkins, and Jean-Luc Godard Beyond Cinema.

• Introduction: Always Historicize the Moving Image! Fredric Jameson’s Place in Film StudiesMICHAEL CRAMER, JEREMI SZANIAWSKI, AND KEITH B. WAGNER1 Feeling Film as the Pulse of the Postmodern Condition: On Jameson’s “On Diva”DUDLEY ANDREW2 Allegory and Accommodation: Vertov’s Three Songs of Lenin (1934) as a Stalinist FilmJOHN MACKAY3 Nostalgia, Melancholy, and the Persistence of Stalin in Polish CinemaJEREMI SZANIAWSKI4 Jameson, Angelopoulos, and the Spirit of UtopiaPAUL COATES5 Jameson and Japanese Media Theory: A Virtual DialogueNAOKI YAMAMOTO6 Where Jameson Meets Queer Theory: Queer Cognitive Mapping in 1990s Sinophone CinemaALVIN K. WONG7 A Jamesonian Reading of Parasite (2019): Homes, Real Estate Speculation, and Bubble Markets in SeoulKEITH B. WAGNER8 Strategies of Containment in Middle-Class Films from Mexico and BrazilMERCEDES VÁZQUEZ9 The Neoliberal Conspiracy: Jameson, New Hollywood, and All the President’s MenMICHAEL CRAMER10 The Conspiracy Film, Hollywood’s Cultural Paradigms, and Class ConsciousnessMIKE WAYNE11 A Theory of the Medium Shot: Affective Mapping and the Logic of the Encounter in Fredric Jameson’s The Geopolitical AestheticPANSY DUNCAN12 “An American Utopia” and the Politics of Military Science FictionDAN HASSLER-FORESTAfterwordFREDRIC JAMESONAcknowledgmentsNotes on ContributorsIndex

"[The essays] demonstrate the range of interpretive projects made possible in the Jamesonian mode, the 'geopolitical aesthetic,' as it were, entailed in the study of the cultures generated in globalized capitalism. These collected essays bear out the editors’ belief that Jameson's film theory might be a missing link that authorizes nuanced historiography without divesting the field of its critical powers." (Critical Inquiry) "This exciting volume explicates the Jamesonian project while also extending and—sometimes—taking issue with it. It will be regarded as a major landmark in film studies." - Carl Freedman (author of Critical Theory and Science Fiction) "This collection offers a thoughtful reckoning with the impact of Jameson's work on film studies to date while also charting a critical agenda for a Jamesonian film studies to come. Drawing on an international range of scholars Fredric Jameson and Film Theory answers Jameson's call to map the relation of individual films to the world-system of capitalism, illuminating along the way exciting new avenues for film theory and criticism." - Derek Nystrom (author of Hard Hats, Rednecks, and Macho Men: Class in 1970s American Cinema) "The excellent essays collected here revisit some of Jameson’s explicit filmic engagements before scaling out to explore the wider utility of Jamesonian theoretical models in contexts that he did not necessarily address. In so doing, Fredric Jameson and Film Theory exemplifies one of its central claims, the importance of Jameson’s work for thinking about the 'global turn' in film studies." - Joseph Jonghyun Jeon (author of Vicious Circuits: Korea's IMF Cinema and the End of the American Century)