The Geopolitical Aesthetic Cinema and Space in the World System [Paperback]

The Geopolitical Aesthetic is a dazzling... distillation and application of the theoretical system he first presented in The Political Unconscious (1981). The San Francisco Bay Guardian

Taking contemporary films from the United States, Russia, Taiwan, France, and the Philippines, The Geopolitical Aesthetic offers a reading of some of the most interesting films of the last decade and a general account of filmic representation in the postmodern world. Fredric Jameson poses some essential questions: How does representation function in contemporary film? How does contemporary cinema represent an ever more complex and international social reality? Jamesons sophisticated and theoretically informed readings stress the ways in which disparate filmsfor example, Godards Passion, Pakulas All the Presidents Men, Yangs The Terrorizer, Tahimiks The Perfumed Nightmare, Tarkovskys Andrei Roublevconfront similar problems of representation. The solutions vary widely but the drive remains the samethe desire to find adequate allegories for our social existence.

The Geopolitical Aesthetic, a refinement and development of the arguments put forward in Jamesons seminal work The Political Unconscious, is crucial reading for everyone interested in both film analysis and cultural studies.

Preface by Colin MacCabe
Introduction: Beyond Landscape
Part One: Totality as a Conspiracy
Part Two: Circumnavigations
Chapter 1 On Soviet Magic Realism
Chapter 2 Remapping Taipei
Chapter 3 High-Tech Collectives in Late Godard
Chapter 4 Art Naif and the Admixture of Worlds

Index

FREDRIC JAMESON is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University, where he directs the Graduate Program in Literature. His numerous published works include Signatures of the Visible, The Concept of Postmodernism, and Late Marxism: Adorno on the Persistence of the Dialectic.