Following his death in 2024, Fredric Jameson’s vast body of work continues to challenge orthodoxies while retaining close ties to older critical and philosophical traditions, notably dialectical criticism, formal analysis, and utopian discourse. The Future of Totality brings together a selection of Jameson's former students and other prominent scholars thinking from Jameson, rather than writing on him, to represent future directions of Jamesonian thought in the tradition of dialectical criticism and cultural study. Through four sections reflecting and building on Jameson’s legacy, focusing on theory, critical reading of new forms, the reshaping of contemporary problematics, and new dimensions inspired by Jameson, The Future of Totality makes its own intervention about the continuity and innovation of Jameson’s contributions. Serving as both a tribute to the scholar and a space for thinking about the future of his work, these essays explore new and unforeseen dimensions to which Jameson’s work leads.
Foreword. Jameson Maestro / Kim Stanley Robinson xi
Introduction. Writing from Jameson / Nicholas Brown, Maria Elisa Cevasco, Fabio Akcelrud DurÃo, and Robert T. Tally Jr. 1
Part I. Theory
1. Thresholds of the Concept / Sianne Ngai 17
2. Allegorical Mimesis of the Flowing of All Things: The Search for a Method in Fredric Jameson’s Brecht and Method / Xudong Zhang 28
3. Is Jameson’s Theory Althusser’s Philosophy? / Eleanor Kaufman 44
4. The Spatial Dialectic in Hegel; or, Asymmetries / Andrew Cole 67
5. The 1960s as a Vanishing Mediator; or, From the Symbolic to the Real in Fredric Jameson / Phillip E. Wegner 87
Part II. New Forms
6. Totality Desires: Psychoanalytic Dialectics in Jameson and Kiesling / Anna Kornbluh 113
7. Jameson, the Jukebox Musical, and the Postmodern Pastiche / Ian Buchanan 128
8. Big Marx Energy: Jameson’s TikTok Dialectics / Clint Burnham 144
9. Jameson as Blindspot Machine / Eric Cazdyn 160
Part III. The Present and the Future
10. Late Capitalist Scalings / Kathi Weeks 179
11. Unred: Poetics of Protofascism / Alberto Toscano 190
12. Utopia as Agility / Gerry Canavan 205
13. Toward a New Comparatism: “Third World Literature” Today / Ericka Beckman 221
Part IV. Extrapolations
14. A Diagnostic Criticism for the Twenty-First Century / Carolyn Lesjak 239
15. The Poetics of the Tax-Form / Michael Denning 257
16. The Contemporary Third-World Novel: Toward a New Humanity / Aisha Karim 278
17. Dialectical Criticism in a Era of Multinational Genocide / Henry Schwarz 298
Afterword. Lunch at the Savoy / Richard Dienst 313
Contributors 329
Index 335
