Mimesis, Expression, Construction: Fredric Jameson’s Seminar on Aesthetic Theory

<p><i>Mimesis, Expression, Construction</i> brings Fredric Jameson’s famous Duke University seminar on Adorno’s <i>Aesthetic Theory</i> into print for the first time.</p> <p>Transcribed and edited from audio recordings taken by Octavian Esanu of the original seminar at Duke University in 2003, <i>Mimesis, Expression, Construction</i> reproduces Jameson and his students’ engagement with <i>Aesthetic Theory</i>, one of the most influential theories of modernist aesthetics.</p> <p>The first and only published record of Jameson’s teaching and pedagogic style, the seminar delves into modern and modernist aesthetics through the perspectives of Kant, Hegel, Freud, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche; Benjamin and other members of the Frankfurt School; the literary works of Thomas Mann and Samuel Beckett; the music of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg; the films of Chaplin, Vertov and Eisenstein; the aesthetic implications of psychoanalysis and biblical exegesis; classical music; and more.</p> <p>Presented in the format of a play, with stage setting, student interruptions and exchanges, interjections, auditory noises, and ambient sounds, and complemented with scans of students’ notes, <i>Mimesis, Expression, Construction</i> is a groundbreaking addition to the work of one of the greatest modern cultural critics.</p>