The political unconscious

Abstract

It is almost at the end of the long first chapter of his The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act I that Fredric Jameson explains the hypothesis that gives the book its name: conceiving narrative as a collective practice in which imaginary "-'solutions' or formalities to insoluble social contradictions" (p. 72). The thesis seems anthropologically inspired; The Political Unconscious:... takes up formulations by Levy Strauss; already mentioned in the final chapter of Jameson's previous (1971) book, Marxism and Form; Jameson endorses that "the visual text of Cadivéu facial art constitutes a symbolic act, through which real social contradictions, insurmountable in themselves, find a purely formal resolution in the realm of Aesthetics" (p. 72). From there, Jameson considers that "ideology is not something that informs or involves symbolic production; instead, the aesthetic act is itself ideological" (p. 72), premise of the conclusion according to which "the production of aesthetic or narrative form must be seen as an ideological act in itself" (p. 72) so that "all cultural artifacts must be read as symbolic resolutions of true political and social contradictions" (p. 73).