Blog post

Frederic Jameson on contemporary intellectuals and adapting to cultural change

Duncan Thomas 3 September 2015

In this extended interview, eminent cultural critic Frederic Jameson looks back on his career, arguing that the role of the intellectual today is not to "produce solutions", but to "produce problems". Originally posted on march.es







The career of American philosopher Fredric Jameson is characterised by his permanent intellectual evolution, from his doctoral thesis on Jean-Paul Sartre to his ongoing concern with dialectical investigation and semiotics. Jameson has also become one of the most outstanding theoretical exponents of postmodernism (or "the cultural logic of late capitalism", as he famously terms it), investigating the subject from a mutifaceted intellectual perspective via critique of audio-visual media and other cultural phenomena.  

In this video, Jameson engages in autobiographical reflection, with the interviewer Ramon de Castillo paying special attention to his style, his way of seeing and doing things, and understanding culture. Jameson claims that the sharpness of the intellectual of our time is not a matter of producing solutions but producing problems.