A bold, dialectic engagement with Fredric Jameson’s thoughtFredric Jameson (1934–2024) is widely regarded as the most influential literary and cultural theorist of the past fifty years. The culmination of more than three decades of sustained engagement with Jameson’s work, Late Theory offers a critical response to his late writings, namely the final volumes of his “Poetics of Social Forms,” to develop an original and dialectical reading practice in convers...

An appeal for the importance of theory, utopia, and close consideration of our contemporary dark timesWhat does any particular theory allow us to do? What is the value of doing so? And who benefits? In Invoking Hope, Phillip E. Wegner argues for the undiminished importance of the practices of theory, utopia, and a deep and critical reading of our current situation of what Bertolt Brecht refers to as finsteren Zeiten, or dark times.Invoking Hope was...

Shockwaves of Possibility explores the deep utopianism of one of the most significant modern cultural practices: science fiction. The author contends that utopianism is not simply a motif in SF, but rather is fundamental to its narrative dynamics. Drawing upon a rich array of theory and criticism in SF and utopian studies, the book opens with a global periodizing history that shows the inseparability of SF from developments in other cultural fields. It goes on to examine literatur...

This volume examines the concept of the utopic figure, focusing on the textual procedures through which utopian texts negotiate the limits of the imaginable. Drawing from literary theory and criticism, political philosophy, social history, cartography and geography, urban studies and visual culture, it discusses utopian figuration in relation to classical, early modern, and (post)modern contexts, dwelling on the aversion to stasis or civil war and the import of animality in the cl...

Through virtuoso readings of significant works of American film, television, and fiction, Phillip E. Wegner demonstrates that the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 fostered a unique consciousness and represented a moment of immense historical possibilities now at risk of being forgotten in the midst of the “war on terror.” Wegner argues that 9/11 should be understood as a form of what Jacques Lacan called the “second...