Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions

“Fredric Jameson is America’s leading Marxist critic. A prodigiously energetic thinker whose writings sweep majestically from Sophocles to science fiction.” — Terry Eagleton

In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World, and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful? Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson’s most substantial work since Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, investigates the development of this form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of utopian thinking in a post-Communist age.

The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness … alien life and alien worlds … and a study of the works of Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson and more. Jameson’s essential essays, including “The Desire Called Utopia,” conclude with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value today.

Archaeologies of the Future is the third volume, after Postmodernism and A Singular Modernity, of Jameson’s project on the Poetics of Social Forms.

Praise for A Singular Modernity
“This is Jameson’s most important and comprehensive account of the theoretical implication and the question of modernity/postmodernity since his path-breaking Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” — Choice

Praise for Brecht and Method
“There is no better example of a “Marxist scholastic” than Fredric Jameson.” — The Economist

“Perhaps the secret of Jameson’s greatness, like Brecht’s, is that he doesn’t adhere to his method too strictly.” — In These Times

Fredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University.