Algirdas Julien Greimas
(1917–92)*Structuralist, semiologist, whose work influenced figures as diverse as Roland Barthes and Fredric Jameson (an avid exponent of Greimas's semiotic squares). He was part of a great ...
alternate modernity
The theory in development studies and Postcolonialism that different parts of the world experienced modernity in their own fashion and at their own time. This theory is especially prominent in China ...
cognitive estrangement
A concept derived by Darko Suvin from Russian Formalism's notion of ostranenie and Bertolt Brecht's closely related (but Marx inflected) notion of the estrangement-effect in his Metamorphoses of ...
cognitive map
A mental representation of a portion of the physical environment and the relative locations of points within it. Cognitive maps are generally distorted by simplifying assumptions and preconceptions: ...
David Harvey
(1935–)British*Marxistgeographer. Born in Kent, Harvey completed both his BA and PhD at St Johns College, Cambridge. His first appointment was at the University of Bristol, where he remained for a ...
decadence
A general word for a decline in cultural standards that was adopted to name an aesthetic style that emerged in the latter part of the 19th century in Europe. In the first instance decadence was, in ...
dialectical criticism
Fredric Jameson's term for his approach to literary and cultural analysis. The essential tenets of the approach—he insists that it is not a method as such, which would imply a ‘one size fits all’ ...
Field Day Theatre Company
Founded in Derry city by Brian Friel and Stephen Rea in 1980. Since staging Friel's play Translations (1980), Field Day has reassessed the borders of its initial identity as a ...
floating signifier
A signifier without a specific signified (see sign). Also known as an ‘empty signifier’, it is a signifier that absorbs rather than emits meaning. For example, Fredric Jameson suggests that the shark ...
G. W. F. Hegel
(1770–1831)German philosopher. He is especially known for his three-stage process of dialectical reasoning (set out in his Science of Logic, 1812–16), which underlies his idealist concepts of ...
geopolitical aesthetic
A type of narrative whose essential subject is the inter-relations between nation states. Fredric Jameson coined the concept for a series of lectures he gave at the British Film Institute in London ...
György Lukács
(1885–1971)Hungarian Marxist philosopher. Lukács was briefly a minister in the Hungarian government in 1919 and again in 1956, although he spent years in exile in Russia. Lukács saw in Marxism the ...
Henri Lefebvre
(1901–91)French*Marxistphilosopher and sociologist. Lefebvre published 70 books in his lifetime on an incredibly wide array of topics, and is generally regarded as one of the great theoreticians of ...
hysterical sublime
Fredric Jameson's suggested term for a reformulated vision of the sublime (in Kant's sense) focused on technology rather than nature. Kant defined nature as sublime because it consistently exceeds ...
Jürgen Habermas
(1929– )Born in Düsseldorf, Habermas was educated at Bonn and Marburg, before holding posts at the Institute for Social Research, and eventually becoming professor of philosophy at Frankfurt. He is ...
late capitalism
A term used in Marxism since the 1930s, but brought into prominence in critical theory by the work of economic historian Ernest Mandel with the publication of Der Spätkapitalismus (1972), translated ...
Marxist criticism
A form of cultural criticism that applies Marxist theory to the interpretation of cultural texts. Since neither Karl Marx nor his collaborator Friedrich Engels ever developed a specific form of ...
metacommentary
American cultural critic Fredric Jameson's term for his comparative analysis of competing interpretive methods. Jameson says that the metacommentary implies a model not unlike Sigmund Freud's ...
metahistory
The overarching narrative or ‘grand récit’ that gives order and meaning to the historical record, especially in the large-scale philosophies of history of writers such as Hegel, Marx, or Spencer.
mode of production
A fundamental concept in Marxist thought, mode of production refers to both the skills and technologies available to a given society and to the way in which the labor process ...
