Fred Jameson is living proof that in theory…miracles DO happen, that what seems impossible CAN be done: to unite Marxism with the highest exploits of French structuralism and psychoanalysis. This achievement makes him one of the few thinkers who really matter today. – Slavoj Žižek

…the contemporary world has thrown up two of the most brilliant dialecticians in the history of philosophy [Adorno and Žižek]: and it seems only appropriate to scan each one for the dialectical effects with which their pages so often electrify us. – Fredric Jameson

             About every fifth issue in the ten-year history of the International Journal of Žižek Studies focuses on a special topic like Iran or the Left, but by my count only three take up Žižek’s connection to another theorist, namely: Badiou, Heidegger, and Baudrillard. The present issue pairs the titular character of IJŽS with the American literary and cultural critic Fredric Jameson, both of whom, despite all of their writing dedicated to academic subjects, do not produce university discourse so much as that curious entanglement of discourses – at turns masterly, hysterical, bureaucratic, and analytical – that characterizes dialectical prose. Beyond being two of today’s most famous dialecticians, where exactly does Žižek stand in relation to Jameson? How do their respective projects relate? Are Jameson and Žižek pretty much on the same page philosophically and politically – as I have long suspected (or rather desired) – or do their dissimilar writing styles and positions within academia and the world at large indicate or perhaps even precipitate significant divergences of thought? Put succinctly but with the drawback of jargon, is the Hegelian Marxist Jameson a foil for the Marxist Hegelian Žižek, or is this syntactical distinction between eponymous adjectival labels one without a difference?

IJŽS - 2007 & 2016