A bold, dialectic engagement with Fredric Jameson's thought
Fredric Jameson (19342024) is widely regarded as the most influential literary and cultural theorist of the past fifty years. The culmination of more than three decades of sustained engagement with Jameson's work, Late Theory offers a critical response to his late writings, namely the final volumes of his ""Poetics of Social Forms,"" to develop an original and dialectical reading practice in conversation with his evolving thought.
Jameson's final works bring renewed clarity to three foundational concerns that structure his intellectual legacy. These are the problem of periodization and the challenge of grasping the present as a historical category, the dangers posed by the rise of moralizing modes of critique in literary and cultural studies, and the radical interpretive potential unlocked by allegory and the semiotic method. Phillip E. Wegner shows how these late interventions mark not a conclusion but an extension of Jameson's long-standing project: envisioning the dialectic as a living, collective form of reasoning-a ""thought mode of the future"" capable of transforming our lives.
At its core, Late Theory is a passionate argument for cultural and aesthetic education as a practice of solidarity and imagination. Foregrounding Jameson's enduring effort to build heterogeneous communities of readers committed to shared inquiry, Wegner affirms the urgency of reading, teaching, and thinking together in a moment of crisis for the university and global culture.
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By:
Phillip E. Wegner
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 140mm,
Spine: 15mm
Weight: 340g
ISBN: 9781517920524
ISBN 10: 1517920523
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 17 March 2026
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents A Note on the Title Introduction: Reading Jameson at the Front CONVOLUTE J POETICS 1. A Partial Summing Up, or Fredric Jameson as Storyteller A. [Reading] B. [Allegoresis] C. [Periodization] D. [Mapping] E. [Binaries] F. [Modernity] G. [Praxis] H. [ . . . . . ] ETHICS 2. The Persistence of Moralizing Criticism, or Against Interpretation I. [Barthes] J. [Against Reading] K. [Excursus: Against Theory] L. [Against Culture] M. [Against Allegory] HERMENEUTICS 3. Beyond Good and Evil, or Toward Creative Reading N. [Ressentiment] O. [Creativity] P. [Levels] Q. [Form] R. [Generosity] S. [Production] HISTORICISM 4. How to Fix This Intolerable Present with the Naked Eye, or Periodizing the Contemporary T. [Contemporary] U. [Science Fiction] V. [Alternate History] COMPARATISM 5. Allegories of an Embattled Public, or The Red Thread of the Modern Swedish Crime Novel W. [Swedish Crime Novel] X. [Closure Effects] Y. [Parallax View] Z. [Generations] Acknowledgments Notes Index
Phillip E. Wegner is professor and Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar in English at the University of Florida. He is author of several books, including Periodizing Jameson: Dialectics, the University, and the Desire for Narrative and Invoking Hope: Theory and Utopia in Dark Times (Minnesota, 2020).
Reviews for Late Theory: Fredric Jameson, or the Persistence of Reading
""Late Theory is a remarkably innovative work of cultural theory. Through a dialectical alchemy, Phillip E. Wegner actively thinks with Fredric Jameson, producing a stronger and more pliant critical substance that illuminates contemporary Marxist cultural theory and extends it into new areas of inquiry. There is probably no one alive today more suited to do this work than Wegner.""--Robert T. Tally Jr., author of The Critical Situation: Vexed Perspectives in Postmodern Literary Studies ""Ambitious in scope, original in form, and rigorous in execution, Phillip E. Wegner's Late Theory offers a clear account of Fredric Jameson's work, pairing closely attentive readings of Jameson's texts with Wegner's own more creative interpretations and applications of aspects of the arguments.""--Kathi Weeks, author of Abolition Archives, Feminist Futures
