Fredric Jameson

[Music] Hello and thank you for joining us on another episode of Y Theory. As always, I am your host, Ryan Angley, joined as always by co-host Todd McGowan and Todd. Normally I would say how you do anybody today. We are grieving and remembering the loss of an absolutely major figure in our field. Many of you probably know maybe even most. The Frederick James passed away last week. Saturday? I think. Yeah, last exactly seven. Yeah, so we're recording this on a Saturday and he passed away last Saturday. We're going to take the time in this episode, interrupting our normally scheduled or our previous day scheduled horror episode to just talk about a figure that means a lot to both of us and go over some of the things that have left a mark on us and there will also be some qualified disagreement from Tom McGowan out of-- Not from you. No. I hear in chomeum from Ryan. Yeah, I think so. We'll see as the episode goes on, but just out of love and appreciation for just an unbelievable life's work. Here's where I want to put this in. I just say something. Go ahead. Because I think it's like we're in your reading heart of darkness and it's like the horror and then it stops because it doesn't get there. People are waiting for the next the horror and they're not going to get it for another episode. So it's a bit of a-- It's a bit of a-- We're making it to be continued where there was not one, a slight interruptions. So here's where we'll start and I'll kick this to you if you want to take this. I think one of the things about is so striking about Jameson's career and his work is that when you start talking about the major ideas and the things that he was able to bring to the theoretical table, you and I, like we're going to explain them and there may be people out there who will hear it and be like, so what? And it's like it's in that he articulated things. I mean, starting with-- well, maybe before, but for like from the political unconscious, like the idea of a work of literature or a literary work, arising in a particular form due to a political friction at the time the era in Ippok and Wichita arose. I think people just think that now and I think like there's not a-- We should be so lucky to have articulated something in our lives that later becomes common sense. And I don't know that I could pay like a greater complement to Jameson or a greater observation of his intervention and his life's work than to put it like that. Totally agree. Totally agree. I think he-- so he was a major figure, he was up until his death at age 90, right? Like a major theoretical figure. But when I was in graduate school, he was the figure, I think probably. And I, in fact, the first class I took as a PhD student was a seminar just on Frederick Jameson. Unfortunately, it was a terrible seminar because the professor believed that the students should run everything, including creating the syllabus. Which we didn't know anything about Jameson, so we didn't know how to create a syllabus on Jameson. So that was not a great idea. That is a-- That is a vision of the flip classroom that is absolutely getting away with something. It's just exactly. Exactly. It's me. That turned me off. I never-- from that moment on, I've never even allowed a student presentation in class in one of my classes because I was so pissed. And I thought, you're just-- you've just ruined an entire class where I could have learned more about Jameson, although I did learn a lot just on my own. And reading-- the other thing I felt in that class was how stupid I was compared to these other-- I remember a couple of women there like Walter Benjamin. I'm like, who the hell is that? So like I was really-- I mean, I was like a real tyro. But Jameson really-- I really found him such a powerful source. And we read-- this was right after the postmodernism book came out. So we read political unconscious and the postmodernism book. And we read this earlier book by him Marxism in form, which I think is under-talked about and really great too. And there's a last chapter in that book called Towards dialectical criticism, which has some really nice interesting examples of how he conceives of dialectics, which is not exactly how we conceive it. But what it does is it thinks dialectics as the totality of relations, which is really-- I think it's important in that-- I think there's definitely value in that chapter. And it does-- as good a job as any I've read about this thing about dialectics and Marxist terms of Marxist aesthetics. So I was just say that about that. Anyway, so I was-- I would-- the other little story that I was housing that class. And then about a year or two later, Jameson comes to Ohio State to speak. I saw him speak twice. I've never met him. And he came to Ohio State to speak huge crowd, like for probably five, six hundred people. Watching him and Hillary happened to be visiting me at Ohio State. And my professor Walter Mac Davis went to the talk with Hillary and me. And so we-- for some reason Paul was sitting somewhere else or something. So I was sitting down and I had Mac on one side, Hillary on the other side. And we're listening to Jameson. It's like if there's a heaven, that would be something that would happen in it. And then-- so he's talking. It's a very good talk, I thought. And I looked down about-- I don't know, about 30 minutes into the talk. And each of them had their heads sound asleep rested on one of my shoulders. I thought that was-- I thought even this is kind of-- there's something beotific about this moment, right? Like they found it kind of his voice sort of soothing and they were tired and fell asleep. And afterwards I said, well, you guys, this degree talked to her, what do you-- they were like, both, what do you mean? I was-- I heard it was great. I'm like, yeah, okay. So those are my-- that's my Jameson stories. I didn't know that. I didn't know either of that. That's really sweet, actually. He-- for-- if we-- we'll start this way just in like the strictly personal. I think he-- So there were-- this was how-- how he came into my theoretical understanding was-- I had read political unconscious. I don't know if I read it with-- with you or not. I don't think he did. Okay, so this had been later. And then I read postmodernism. And the-- I mean, those were in like a-- they get taught in intro theory courses in literary and cultural theory courses at end of PhD program because they're just foundational, you know, again, just to go back to this thing. Like it's like you-- they're-- and then we-- I think we read excerpts from prison House of Language. Like it's almost like-- it's one of those things where-- he-- one of those figures where it's incredible that there was all from him. Yeah. The ideas. Like you're like, oh, no, that was-- No, that's also Jameson. No, no, that's-- that's Jameson too. It's like-- he's like the-- like it's like a-- it's like a Mark Twain or Shakespeare quote. Incredible breath, a theorist. Incredible breath. Yeah. Unbelievable. And-- but the-- the-- the-- something I want to talk about later for just strictly personal reasons. But the thing that has meant the-- the most to me is actually the foreword that he wrote to the new edition of Sart's Critica Dialectical Reason because I read-- I think a copy you gave to me. Like it was an older edition. Yeah. Of Critica Dialectical Reason. And I just-- I knew-- I knew why you gave it to me. I knew why I should read it because of the-- you know, what he says about the series. And I was beginning my-- my journey into writing about seriality. And obviously I had to know-- I had to know Sart. And it was-- I understood-- I understood the like-- okay, yes, the-- a queue of people, like a series of people organized by-- by capital. Like I kind of-- I kind of got that. But just like the whole book, I just-- I didn't-- I was just kind of mystified. I didn't-- I really didn't know where I was. And-- and I-- and I felt-- you know, that I didn't-- I probably-- this is true. I didn't know enough to make sense of it. Otherwise, it would have made sense. And then I don't know, it was like-- it was a year or two later, there was like just like-- luckily enough. Or I just found out about it. I'm not sure which way this went. But there was like a sale on Verso. And I saw that there had a new edition of-- of the-- of Critica Dialectical Reason. And it had a forward by Frederick Jameson that was-- is significant, I want to say. And I read it. And it was for the first time the-- like the book-- it snapped-- it snapped into sense for me. And I just like-- that's how I think of him. And I find that there is just tremendous rigor and clarity in his work and in his writing. And I-- like-- Sart-- we've-- you know, we did those episodes a couple-- a couple years ago on Critica Dialectical Reason. I-- there's no way that book-- means anything to me without the Jameson forward. - That's incredible. - I wanna say that I mentioned that, but I maybe didn't hit that hard enough at the time because it's just very, very true. It's just that forward, it's and it sounds stupid 'cause it's not like a full book that he wrote, but I mean, people, there are some things like this, like introductions and forwards that unlock a work for a large group of people. And I just think like, and they're largely, these are like the more thankless level of philosophical tasks that you can do. It's a right-of-forward, right-in-in-in-action. - Yeah, for sure. - For sure. - And it's just like, yeah, that's what I'll just, I'll say about that, it's just like a complete door opening moment. And I just, I don't know. And that's how I'm gonna remember him. - Yeah, yeah, that's great. I mean, I think, so I think a lot, for a lot of people, the first text that they encountered was political and conscious, so it's 1981. It's published. And so he had already kind of, he's written this, his first dissertation, his first book were on Sart. He mentioned, made him an appropriate figure to write that forward. And then he wrote Marxism in form, which is important, and he wrote prison house of language. So he had some, he was writing, he was very prolific. He wrote almost, sometimes almost a book a year, even more. And then in '81, there's the big, I think the big breakthrough was political and conscious. And one of the things that I think it does, and this is something that's there, even in as early as Marxism in form, which is early '70s, what he does is he brings together structuralist analysis and historicism, right? And to put it in his terms, like, synchronic analysis and diachronic analysis, right? Like so he takes, in prison house of language, for instance, he takes sussur and Russian formalist thinkers, sussur of structuralism. He takes it seriously. It's a critique of that. But he takes it seriously as a form of analysis and then tries to add a dialectical approach to history into that structural analysis. So I think that the acme of this approach is political and conscious, because so the book starts with this phrase that I think is probably the most quoted thing by Jameson, it says the first two words of the book is one sentence, always historicize with the exclamation point. And I think people take from that this idea that, okay, Jameson is the historicist par excellence, right? Like he's the one, he's the one who's, I mean, he's given us the imperative, he's in a way, he's leading the charge of what would become new historicism, this is before new historicism. So you could say that, right? Even though Marxism, new historicism, are totally at odds with each other. But what I think is interesting about the book, right, is that it's really invested in a structural analysis as well, right? There are all these, he has these, this guy, AJ Grommas, they made these rectangles that are used to structurally analyze different things. So the book is filled with these Grimazi and rectangles and then he'll map out the novels that he's analyzing in terms of this, like he'll put different characters and different points on the rectangle and has arrows going everywhere, which way. And at the time, I like really work to make sense of that. And so I think it's valuable. And I even wrote, I'll never forget this. I even wrote it for that class, that James McClass, I wrote a paper on Sister Carrie, in which I created my own Grimazi. And I have like, first wood Carrie, which is terrible. And I think even, I mean, my God, this is so embarrassing. I sent it to a journal and they're like, please never send us anything ever again. I got the message. They're like, this is kind of a sub-parity of Fred Degamison. But I think, well, it's not even, I thought it's not an exaggeration. - You should have sent it to your parents to have it put on the fridge at home. That's what I think. - Well, I have actually, that essay does exist. Like I found, it was before, like discs even, like I, but I didn't have it on a computer and I, but I have a printout. I don't have the computer file anymore. I have a printout of the essay. So just, I save things that, I don't save anything that's like a prize or reward or anything. But I save humiliating. (laughing) That's a dice-dollier. - That's pretty good. - Yeah, like all the rejections I've ever got, I've saved the acceptances I are lost to history. - Okay. - So, but I think it's, isn't what, so great about that book is that it's not just, oh, it's historicized, it's historicized with the structural analysis that allows us to make sense of the novel in a, in a synchronic that is like a temporal way, but then that's the effect of history, right? Like, isn't that what's so great about him? Like he, he shows how this synchronic, a temporal moment is itself the effect of history. So I found that, to be such a valuable thing, in that book, and I really, I mean, I think political and conscious is probably, still, I don't know what people think, but to me is still probably the masterpiece, right? It's such a, it really kind of gets this idea that, that the other, that, again, like you're saying, like we, now what I just said, may even seem commonsensical, of course, that's true, but it's only because of him that it would ever see that way. Yeah, just the basics of the literature PhD, like program, were like in some ways, like written by Jameson's work. And I also, I just want to underline something, you said very quickly that, if Jameson being seen as a, as a, an historicist, par excellence, it, it, it, that misses. So the, the thing with, just to give a very quick example, 'cause we're, you know, we're talking about this, and we're not, we're not talking about historicism, exactly in this episode by itself, but there, there was this, I think the best place to see how Marxism and new historicism were, historically, at odds with each other are in the, I think in the pages of representations that, that journal, and there was this movement. I want to say, Stephen Greenblatt, was a, was a pretty big figure in this? For sure, he's a huge, he's a big figure. Yeah, yeah. So, and was this movement away from ideology critique, which is Marxist toward discourse analysis, which became, that's like kind of the big, the big bad rock of new, new historicism. And what you're laying out, I just want people to hear it, if they don't have that, 'cause the, the things that happened in academic journals are not necessarily things that everybody is gonna have, heard about, and who listens to our podcast. Well, no one should ever read an academic journal. And it's probably. Yeah, that's, that's really, that's, that's, that's its own episode, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the function of the journal, you know, 'cause we need it, and it's like, but then it, they're not accessible, and I mean, I think that that's kind of a, I was excited that we, that my, the sports essay that I wrote for a second, second analysis culture in society, is free to access, but it's only because Pomona College pays for that to be, oh, yeah, publicly accessible. But it, and it's, anyway, I, other things that I, like the, the thing that I wrote on the bottle episode, which is my favorite thing that is currently that I've written, like that's not accessible to everybody, and that, that things, that's a bummer. So anyway, the, just back more on point. So this, this movement from, from, from ideology critique toward discourse analysis, Jameson refuses that. - Sure. - And, and this is what, this is what you're trying to underline, is that he, he was able to, to put the, even the, like the Russian formalism, which at the time, like, I mean, they're more out of fashion now than they were. - Yeah, they wrote, they were out of fashion then, but you're right, even more so now. - Even more so now, and I still, I mean, like, maybe it's because of, I mean, I don't even think about this, it's probably because of him that I still, like, when I do, like, the structure of like a TV episode, I often refer back to the Russian formalism, and I just think it's very helpful as a way to move through things. And, I don't know, Jameson revitalizes that, I think, or shows what, as he's critiquing it, - As he's critiquing it, isn't that what's interesting? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - And that's so valuable about him, right? Like, even the things, like, he, that, that, there's things in political and, like, like political unconscious, obviously begins with this all his historicize, it's a critique of the prevailing structuralist and aftermath of structuralism's dominance, right? But, yeah, yeah. But at the same time, you're like, well, wait a minute, he's kind of shown the value of structuralism as a mode of analysis. So, I think that's a, it's a pretty remarkable, like, it's like, you know, that, you know, this reversal of the thing with enemies like that, who needs friends, right? - They're right, right, right, right, right, yeah. He's a good enemy to have because his deputations depiction of your thing ends up, he appropriates the thing that he's critiquing in such a positive way that it ends up showing your thing in the best light possible. Like Russian formalism, it's best champion, it's Frederick Jameson, who is this? - It's critiquing it. - Critic, right? I just think that there's something really, just generous about that, I think. And I know that he was personally, for a lot of people, a really generous thinker up to the very end, right? Like he was taking on dissertation students up in, still he was 90, so that's, there's something really remarkably generous about that. And I think that comes through in his writing, in his work. - This is a total, this is an aside point, but it is very hard to be so productive with one's work and also that active as a dissertation advisor. Like that's just a total like inside academia, kind of, kind of thing. - It really is true, Ryan. - But it's why it would very hard. - It would take a job where I had to direct a certain, right? Like, I mean, there's a certain advantage of being a little podunk state school, right? Like I think, yeah, I think there's something, I think there's real truth to that. And he was able to do both things. - Yeah, which is, it's hard. That's a hard, it's hard. Like, you can't compare, obviously the most productive person in our intellectual universe right now is Slavoy. - Sure. - But you can't, there's just no comparison, 'cause Slavoy has zero students, right? And so, and Jameson had, there's hundreds of, like he really, I mean, that's another thing that's great about him is, he proliferated theory out, because of his students, out to all these different universities all across the country, right? There's like, there's like, there's like, there's sort of this meld of Marxism and psychoanalysis and Higel, like in all these different places, in a way that other people who don't have PhD students, like you and me, we can't, we don't have that kind of influence. But I think you're right, like that really bespeaks his incredible productivity, and you know, he didn't confine the generosity to just his students, but also it's in his books as well. - Oh, absolutely. He was the Johnny Appleseed of the unholy, a lot of students. - He really was. I really was. - You know? - Yeah, he really was. So, I'm gonna, okay, you said this was coming. So, here's, - No, but listen, - Hold on, I wanna just listen. You're, I just wanna be clear. - I just wanna be clear. - Yeah, because I think that this is, I think this is as nice of you. You're way, you wanna do a regular episode in remembrance of him. And so I just wanna put that out there. So in a regular episode, in a regular episode, if we were covering James, or like any of these works in particular, what we do, we do the thing that we normally do, we do a portion of time, pretty much 20 minutes of a kind of summary, like what did the thing mean in the time that it was received, like what's kind of like a, you know, an orthodox, and which does not mean wrong, but an orthodox way of understanding the thing. And then we're gonna pick and pull at some tension points and try to make the thing move in a different direction and mobilize it to maybe get something new, out of what perhaps people would think to be a dry well, that like there's something's been settled on this. And that's what, so, that's what you're gonna do. - So, I just wanna be clear. - I'm gonna lodge another thing, that I don't think it's respectful of people not to speak ill of the dead and not to criticize the dead. So I gave, I've told you just before, I gave the funeral or a ration for my father. It was a good half of it was a critique. Like, and I hope when I'm dead, if anyone even says my name, that most of it's a critique, because that's the only way to really respect the person, I think, I mean, as you know, when you hand your thing to someone and they hand it back and they're like, great, this is so great. I don't know, you're like, well, that's not, that's not very nice, it's not reciprocating me. So, I feel the same way about this, but here's the thing, so, so, Jameson was a scholar of Sard, he met Sard, which is cool. But I think that he had trouble integrating the insights of existentialism into his Marxism, and I want to turn to, and I think that the new edition doesn't have the same pagination, but I'm going to tell you the pagination. This is in chapter five, page 261 of the political unconscious. And he's talking about the relationship between Marxism and existentialism, and you'll see that his, his gloss on what existentialism is, is pretty crude, but that's not even the point here. So, he says, that life is meaningless, it's not a proposition that need be inconsistent with Marxism, whose affirmation is the quite different one, that history is meaningful. However absurd organic life may happen to be. The real issue is not the propositions of existentialism, but rather their charge of affect. In future societies, people will still grow old and die, but the paschalian wager of Marxism lies elsewhere, namely in the idea that death and a fragmented and individualized society is far more frightening and anxiety laden than in a genuine community, in which dying is something that happens to the group more intensely than it happens to the individual subject. Okay, I'll just continue one little bit. Hypothesis is that time will be no less structurally empty, or to use a current version. Presence will be no less of a structural ontological illusion in a future communal social life, but rather that this particular fundamental revelation of the nothingness of existence will have lost its sharpness in pain and be of less consequence. Okay, so in the future utopian, which let's just get that word on the table, 'cause that's gonna come up a lot in the next half hour or so, death will be experienced more collectively, and so it will be less painful. Now, couldn't you say, eagles exactly the opposite, right? Like life is pretty good, right? Like things are pretty good, it's not individualized and fragmented. We live in this commute, things are nice, it's a community, and so what's the worst thing that could happen? You die. Like, couldn't you say that one of the things that's kind of nice about capitalism is, it sucks so bad that when death comes along, you're like, okay, fine, it's taken me away from this. Right, I mean, I couldn't you just refer to it? Like I just don't, I don't, plus, I mean, this idea that the thesis of existentialism is life is meaningless, that's absurd. I mean, I don't know, I don't know, I don't even wrote that, but so I don't know, so I feel like that totally misses, and the other thing I would say is even the collective dies, right, like even the collective dies, like, they're eventually, like eventually the sun's gonna go Nova, the universe's gonna heat death, right? So there's like this kind of idea that in this socialist utopia, all of a sudden things are, like the traumas of existence are mitigated. I just think, like, to me, it's the opposite. The world that I'm working toward, I hope, in my whatever way, is a world in which, no, the traumas of existence are actually worse, right? Because for one thing, it's the avoidance of those traumas of existence that causes the oppressive society in the first place, and if you don't see that, I think you've missed something absolutely fundamental. - Okay, so this, now the wider point here, you're not gonna refute me, okay. - No, no, no, no, well, I'm just gonna go, 'cause your thing is about Jameson utopia. - Yeah. - Like, and so I would just say this, 'cause, and I'll try to engage on the specifics of what you just said. One of the things that I appreciate a lot about Jameson is he tried to dedicate a lot of time to trying to think just the biggest things that we can think. - Right, and I do think, I'm not sure there's a bigger thing that you can try to think. - The actual, yeah, then utopia, then the actual nuts and bolts of how something like that would work and how it could work. And how, this is one of the things I wanted to get to later. He has this little essay, I think you're gonna access it on Verso on Walmart as utopia. And I almost think it was this essay that convinced them to make sure that everyone knows, and print not to write wall-dash-mart, 'cause now it's not as, 'cause they, when I was working there, they were wall-dash-mart and then they were not, because it didn't, organizationally, it was determined that that seemed too corporate and they wanted to see more friendly. So Walmart, without the dash, is more friendly. That's what they decided. - Gotcha. - Anyway, but he writes it wall-dash-mart, which is, he should do that. So I'll just talk about that later. Obviously, as a people know, I worked at Walmart for five years. So there's something, and there was something utopic that I will, I want to underline about it. It's not what he writes about, but there is something that I want to get at 'cause I like the way that he thinks it. So just as a wider thing, I'm with you. I'm on this point. I do think that if we want, moving toward anything, to move toward a utopic vision, I do think that trauma has to be laid bare and not in any way that would make it less evident. Or it's hard to avoid the word that utopia would repress trauma. It's like, I don't know. Isn't that a problem with the word utopia? That's what would be my argument. Yeah. I mean, that's so. Like, I think to me, that's the underlying, and I think that's where Jameson comes up against his limitation. And it's a very, he's one of the great things about him is the way that he integrates psychoanalysis into his Marxism. Like he's a real serious psychoanalytic thinker. Absolutely true, right? But sorry, psychoanalysis is an anti-utopian. Like, you can't make reference to utopia. You just, you can't do it because, I mean, isn't the fundamental thesis of civilization is discontent that there's a basic antagonism between every individual and every collective. And that that is insurmountable. And so what we can do is navigate that and navigate it better than we are now and create a kind of egalitarian society, which I am obviously totally for. But I don't think we can create a utopia. And I think this, I think the idea, might I mention, Matt. Would he say, sorry, if he was able to respond to this, if he was able to respond to this, would he maybe say that when you say egalitarian, that's him saying utopia? Yeah, maybe, but I think the idea that utopia, I think there is this idea of it as, it is a kind of reconciled collective, right? Like I think, and that's-- And you think he's doing that? Or that's just like, well, I think the word bears that. So, but I do think that in his book, "American Utopia," which we're gonna get to, maybe at the end, like I feel like it does, that is him doing it. So I do feel like there is some of that. And I, as I mentioned, Mac Davis, before he once said to me, utopia is nostalgia projected into the future. And I thought-- That's a pretty good line. I just think it's the great, I think it's just, and he's a great psychoanalytic thinker. And I think that he's, he by the way, told me it's okay, you could have that line. And I, this is again, one of those lines that you can't take for yourself, because it's just too good. But he will also, people had, this was, we said this, I think, in several episodes, and then we haven't said in a while, but he was the, it's his line that LeCon socializes Freud. Yes, right. Because people have written to us about that before. Yeah, yeah, that's his line too. Right, great one. He has some good, all of his best lines don't come in his books. That's really, really good. Well, it's too bad. It's like, well, there's not like, we just say this about REM, right? Like the best solution, not hits. Yeah. The hits are not the, where the tattooed, that's the first. No, yeah, yeah. No, harbor coat, baby. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. Okay, I want to, I want to, so engage more in this thing. I, I, I want to, I see what you're, so what you're trying to say is that there, well, I think, okay, I think you're trying to do, to, to underline two things, that there is, an existential dimension of psychoanalysis that is not fully integrated in what Jamison argues. Right. And that there is a psychoanalytic dimension that has to be added to Marxism that is not added when he talks about folytopias. That's not added to foly. That's right. Not added to foly. Because I think, again, like, I don't want to underestimate the, the great contribution that he makes of psychoanalysis to Marxism, right? Like he, he's incredible on that. But I do think there is this final dimension that, that, that, where his Marxism, I guess, I guess what one would say is for me, in the end, my psychoanalytic bent outweighs my commitment to Marxism, and for him, it's the opposite, right? Like I think that that's, I think that's probably what is true. - I will say this. Okay. This would be my, I am, I am on the side of the idea that, when we think about the death drive, when we think about the drive, we have to have room for the idea of undermining oneself into better circumstances. - I agree. I agree. - Okay. So, and I, you know, and I have, it's not, that's not how yet, obviously, but I try to write about this a little bit. So, I think where I would, where I would begin to try to work with the objection that you raised to the idea of the James and Utopia, where like trauma is not front and center. Like I think that's maybe where I would start. Is that like, is there a way like, could that be a model? And again, like, you know, he, just to go back to the thing, like he tried to really play this out. These are like the biggest things you could think. I am just, I'm tossing this out now, like live as you're hearing it. I don't have the step after this worked out. But like, I do, I do think that it would be a worthwhile venture to move from the idea of, to imagine the drive at the center of a collective imagination for society, but it is a drive of undermining into the, into the new and the uncomfortable potentially. - I think it's very good. I think it's very good. I mean, it's sort of a contralie Edelman for sure. But, yes, that is true. - But interesting. Yeah, I find that very compelling actually. And then, I mean, just to move on, like I think his, the postmodernism book, which was the occasion for this James and class that I took, I think. One of the things that's really remarkable about him is that, I think most people would write a book like, political unconscious, and then keep writing a book like the political unconscious again and again and again. Like, I think that that's, I mean, I think I do that. Like, I keep writing, like you've read one, you've kind of read them all. And I feel like there's a lot of thinkers for whom that's true and he's not one of those thinkers. Like, he really genuinely moves on. Like, he's done a thing, he moves on to something. And it's not just, and I think that what I mean by me doing that is like, I think, okay, I'm just in a new territory but kind of doing my same thing. - Sure. - And I think he doesn't do that. Like, his book called Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, like that is an entirely, there's no Grammazian rectangles. There's no, there's no structural analysis informed by the dialectics of history. There's none of that, right? Like, it's just a totally, and it's not like he's given that up and betrayed himself. It's like, you know, he's moving on to this new way of analyzing culture and thinking of it. I mean, again, I think what's great is he's thinking about this cultural form that he calls Postmodernism, which I, everyone knows I have a beef with that term, but I think he, this is the one place actually where I don't have a beef with it. 'Cause I think he's defining it in this very interesting way. He's not just using it as a toss off word. And I think he's, the one thing that, one thing I really like about this is he clearly links, and I think this, this sounds simplistic and reductively Marxist, but I think it's not done enough, right? He clearly links realism to competitive capitalism, modernism to monopoly capitalism, and then post what he calls Postmodernism to what he calls late capitalism. He takes the term from Ernest Mandel, which Ernest Mandel, his book, Late Capitalism, is the economic, it's a book on economics. It's the economic background of, and Jameson says this, I'm not, this is not my analysis. It's the economic background of Jameson's book. And so I feel like that kind of analysis really, just kind of pops things into a sort of clarity that they didn't have, he's there too. And I think one of the great things, I mean, this is actually on the cover, the Andy Warhol's Diamond Dust Shoes, and then he, in the book, you see, Heidegger's the analysis of Van Gogh's peasant shoes and the, like, how one is a real modernist icon, right? And the other one, and like, there's something different about these shoes. And I feel like there's so much in that, the way he captures this shift, right? And he doesn't just say, like, oh, commodification, he doesn't use any, or like, medium is the message. He doesn't have any of these kind of, Neil Postman, who are musing ourselves to death. He doesn't have any of this stuff. Not, nothing against that, but he, it's much more sophisticated, right? He's like saying, no, there's a certain kind of economic form and we can see the cultural form that corresponds to it. And I just feel like that, that was a, that really made an impression. on me, it's just a remarkable kind of way to analyze how things go. And I really, that ended up really taking me for a while, like really captured me in my way of thinking. You know, I just want to, I think that, so you snapped a couple things in place. I want to say, like, actually, that is so influential for you because when you say, I tell me if you agree, and actually, no, you know what, I'm right. So even if you disagree, I'm right about this. I think that when you're often on the side of like, you know, like, does something have an idea? And I think, and this is your take on film and television, like, is there an idea here? Like, is there a concept that's being articulated? And I think that I kind of think that comes from Jameson. Yeah. I think that that, like, I think Jameson maybe taught you that because what you just said about, like, he doesn't have the, like, the line, like what you're saying is like, there's not like a catchphrase. Like it's not like when, you know, like when John Lovitz was the heyday of John Lovitz on Saturday Night Live, you know, what was his catchphrase? Do you remember? I don't remember. You remember? Yeah. That's the ticket. That was his catchphrase. You know, and like, so all the different, like, the different, like, lead, like the big actors for a certain time, like they had like the catchphrase. And that's what you went through, like, you know, like McClellan means a lot to my work. But it's true that like when people think about McClellan, they think the line, the medium is the message. They don't, what they don't think is like, or maybe, maybe, again, this is me doing this live. If I was writing this in an essay, I think, maybe I'd take you later differently. But like, it's the, like, his, like McClellan's idea of medium gets just put right into that line. Okay? Yeah. Oh, Jameson's idea of form. I don't think it can be concretized in a single line, but that doesn't make it diffuse. It's like, it is like, it is concept. I want to say, like, like, it is concept pure. Like, that's, that's maybe what I, what I would want to underline from that. And what I want to take, what I want to take from you. Like, I think that that is what you gravitate toward. It's not the, it's not the, it's not the catchphrase that encapsulates the idea. But like the idea, like, like, lifts out of the work. And it is, like, it is larger than the words that you read to understand it. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Ryan, I think it's absolutely true. And I think you use the key word, which we, for some reason, have avoided up till now. It's form, right? Like he, yeah. He's the great, like, thinker. There, I mean, there are other ones, right? But, but a Dorno maybe, but, but I think, and it's not surprising. He wrote late Marxism on a Dorno. And there's an adorno chapter, the first chapter of Marxism and form. But he's just, you know, he, and Marxism and form, he has this, and this speaks to exactly your time. And as this great little, I don't know, it's two paragraphs, one paragraph on Ernest Hemingway. And he says, you know, you think like Hemingway's, has this machismo, and he uses the Hemingway sentence to express the machismo. But he goes, that's exactly the opposite. He goes, it's the, what he wants to express is the form of the Hemingway sentence. And the machismo is just the kind of content he got to fill out that more. Yeah. And it's like, oh my God, like all of a sudden Hemingway, okay, he goes from being, and this is, I think the right reading of Hemingway, history has proven this to be true. He goes from being this like macho asshole to being this like really complex writer thinker and, and complex life, right? Like, you know, like cross addressing and all, and yeah, sort of sexual ambiguity. And I, and he's very interesting, right? In this way, and I, and, and combined with this existentialist dread. And I feel, and it's, and I think the notion that it's the form driving it is, is just, you're just like the scales come from your eyes when you read that, right? You're like, of course, that's true. Right? Like, that's what you were saying before, the beginning of the episode, right? Like, you're, you're, you're like, the thing that just seems like, oh, that's just common sense. Well, it's like, there's other very, very famous line that sometimes gets credited to Slavoy is that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, right? Like that, like that now, Mark Fisher wrote a whole book about that. It's like, that becomes common sense, but, but it's a common sense because Jameson said it. Right, right. I feel like that's a really, and I think that the, the turn to form, I think it's really hard to overestimate that because I think it's, I think it's really easy as a Marxist to, to, to be reductive and to think in terms of content. And not only as a Marxist, I think as a, as a leftist, because you're constantly thinking like, is this the proper, is this the proper content or not? And he just never thought in those terms. He thought, you know what, you analyze the form, and then that the form can be radical, even if the content is absolutely conservative. So I think that, I mean, this is why one of his analyses of, of anti-Semitism, this is in the political unconscious. He, he says, anti, and this will come back to the utopia question. Because he says, even anti-Semitism, he has this point there is every ideology is also utopian because it imagines formally, at least, a collectivity, right? And I, I mean, I have some problems with that. But I think what's interesting is the focus on the form of the, and one of his examples is anti-Semitism. Like, at least anti-Semitism is formally imagining how to construct a collectivity. I mean, what he misses, I think, I would say, is that that collectivity relies on in fundamental exclusion, right? And that. Right. Right. So I think, like, I think he wants to like, bridge the gap between ideology and utopia and maybe, and see how they dialectically turn into each other. But maybe they don't always, right? That's what I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, it's like, I don't, like, again, that's another one of those, that's just another one of those things in his intervention that, well, just two things where you just said, one, I think, like, the way to, like, do justice and to pay fidelity with his intervention is to have this focus on form where it is so much easier to see content. Yeah. And I mean, and that also does tie into, like, I think that probably the easiest way to make, just because you mentioned him, the easiest way to make McClellan relevant is like to pair him with Jamison. For sure. For sure. Like, it dresses up. You know, it's like, like, like, like a nice blazer with just like your favorite pair of jeans, you know? And so. Who's the blazer in this scenario? Well, the jeans is McClellan. The blazer is Jamison, like, you know, and I, I mean, you know, that's just. I got you. I mean, so, but anyway, the sharp blazer, but still comfortable. Anyway, it's a piece of. It's a blazer, man. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. You see it. You're like, you know what? That's nice. And it's also, it's, it's, it's, it doesn't, it doesn't, it's not trying to make me feel insecure. Right. Like, anyway, so then, so that's on, that's one, that's one thing I think on the, on the question of form, which we could maybe talk a little bit more on. This, like, this other thing, I think the, the idea that, like, like, looking at ideology and utopia as having this, like, intrinsic relationship to each other, like, again, it's just another one of these things that you think that, like, I, that's common sense after you read it. Yeah. Like, I, you know, and I think that that, and so maybe I think he's coming upon the, the, where the, where they, and where the antagonism is that, that, like, requires, like, working through that. And that's, that's maybe what, what I would say about his work in utopia, which I'll get into my thing. Like, I really like this, I really like this little essay he wrote. I think it was in, uh, because of the launch of an American utopia, right, a collection of essays of which he has, uh, one and then a kind of an epilogue in, I mean, it's basically, I think he got friends of his to write responses to his, essay, American utopia. I think that's what it, it, it is. Yeah. And there's great, there's great essays in there. Yeah. That's great. Well, it's, it's great. Yeah. Um, hit, but he has, yeah, like I said, this is thing. It's called Walmart as utopia. And what he, um, his, his idea, like, this, like, little dialectical turn in there that I think is really novel is Wal-Mart's, um, I don't know if they still use this as their slogan. But when I was working there and when he wrote this, what their slogan was, uh, save money, live better. That was their slogan. And so he gets into like, well, how did it, how does that happen? How did, how is Walmart able to have you save money? And it's because they are ruthless in, um, under like, that underpaying, uh, suppliers, underpaying the workers, they go into areas and, like, towns and localities and they absolutely kill local business. They are about, they, they, they, they destroy local, um, mom and pop stores, as they say. Absolutely. And I think in, uh, I can't remember the last time I saw a map of this, but they, they were edging toward the like in most, in over half of the of US states, they are the single largest employer in this country. And they may be now. I'm not sure. I don't have the things in front of me. But it's just like, so how they're able to, so what they, he locates this thing that like, they are the reason why somebody who works there or shops there needs to save money. Because like, they are the thing that has crushed the economy to this point where like, they're the necessary thing you have to engage with to try to like stretch your meager paycheck like a little bit. And his twist on that is like, can't the thing that is responsible for the, like the form of living that requires like bargain shopping from everybody and like, and like bargain cheap goods. Can't the form that does that be flipped to do the opposite? Yeah. And I think it's, you know, again, you might say basic dialectical move, only if most people did that and most people don't. Right. Like the basic move there is a duality. 'Cause we don't think dialectically, basically. Right. And not, yeah, not as a first impulse. Yeah. And I think that there's another, there's a recent, somebody articulated this in an article. So I don't know if you know about how the ocean temperature has risen quite dramatically this past year. And one of the reasons for it, climate scientists have looked at is that there was a change in what chemicals like ocean liners, like tankers were used, could use to like power their ships because there would always be this thing where there'd be like low level clouds that would follow ships on their route and those clouds would be produced by the ships themselves. Okay. And those clouds were being, that were being produced, we had like toxic pollution chemicals. So then there was a, like this was considered to be like a great victory for the climate and for the earth that like they could no longer be using these polluting chemicals. Okay, so what's happened is that now long, now it doesn't produce clouds anymore and those clouds actually had like a huge effect on cooling the ocean. Oh my God. So, but I read someone talking about this who knows what they're talking about in an article. I wish I remember where it was from. And what they said was, rather than this seeming like an absolute disaster for climate policy that they should offer an apology for, I can't condense those two words, that this person observed, like it kind of says that it is that easy. Like if just one change to ocean liners can make this like a couple of degree difference in the ocean, then there has to be a way to create the clouds that follow the ocean liners that doesn't just produce pollution. Yeah, and I thought that is a really interesting dialogue. I like doing some Walmart essay. It's exactly James and Walmart essay. So, and this isn't his point, but I'll just tell you, when I worked there, like I went, so I worked there for a month before I got in the car accident and nearly ended my life. And I came back two, three months after the accident. And it was 'cause I just like, I needed to be out of the house and I needed something to do that wasn't just be injured and I was going through therapy like outpatient rehab. Like I did that for like six months. Walmart in the, what is the line when Orson Wells is doing the Mrs. Buckley's piece, the depth of your ignorance, as I said, the one that he said, he also had that guy. So Walmart and the depth of their ignorance, they allowed a person to work there who had like six and a half inches of his skull missing. And like they, and like I look back at this and like absolute horror that they let me do this. Because they didn't, like I had to go through all these things. They had to, they had to wait for this falling to go down. I had to get imaging of my of my skull done. They had to make the prosthetic, the titanium wire mesh filled in the bone substitute. They had to do that whole thing and it had to be at a time like where I was healthy enough that I could go back into surgery. They were gonna reopen the scar that they had to, that they had to cut into my head to take the damaged fractured skull out in the first place. So it was for six months. I had no, I had, like I said, six and a half in diameter, but kind of circular of that much of my skull missing and they just let me work there. And I wanna say this on the side of Utopia, I really needed that. - Yeah, yeah. - Because I'm now on the like, I don't know, I'm now on this other thing, like I would rather, I think this is common amongst people who have an invisible disability that they, one that they feel like, well, I can pass as someone who doesn't have one. So I shouldn't mention it or bring it up because other people can't and they need more, which is true. So there's a little bit of a shame in it, but there's also, at that time, I'm trying to get over this, I'd rather people think I was rude or elude for something than that I was disabled and could do something. And when I worked at Walmart, like nobody, I had to, nobody's just everyone treated me like everybody else. And I like, I really, really really, - So you didn't have that Utopia in feeling there? - I did, yeah, I did. It's not exactly what, you know, Jameson gets at in that essay, but because you could, I think you could get that anywhere and you could also get there with like, you know, that kind of healthcare that doesn't bankrupt you, like that kind of thing, right? But, so there's those aspects to it, but I do, and again, this is nothing really to do with Walmart, but it is this, I do think there are ways to talk about Utopia that Jameson opens up that I think could be discussed more in sort of, in our thing, in, in, and I just think that it's one of those, there's obviously a way of talking about normality that is like repressive and does aim to single people out, but there is, if we're gonna follow Jameson, there's another way of talking about it, that like, you know, it is just, it is sometimes nice to be treated just like everybody else when you're going through something that is not what everybody else is going through, but you just have to take a vacation from it, yes, or. - Isn't that the genius of David Lynch's elephant, man? Right, like he just wants to, he just wants to lie down like everybody does, like he, I mean, it's not like he wants, and I think that's, I think that's pretty, I think that's pretty common, right? Like it's not that he wants some, and he wants the opposite of special treatment. Like, and I think that's what you were saying, like you, yes. And I think that's, I think there's some, - My life was special treatment. - Yeah, I think there's something about that in Jameson's, in Jameson's vision for sure, and then I think it's interesting, 'cause this leads, I mean, this essay was written in to promote American utopia, which is his, I think it's his last major work, probably, and it was a work, we already described it as each response in it, but his idea of utopia was to universalize the military, because in the military we get free healthcare, there's a kind of relative equality, there's all these things. So, okay. - Can I just, I just wanna interrupt just his idea, it's an American utopia. So the idea is, is there an existing, like when we think of utopia, one of the basic ideas, is that, like higher education and healthcare should be free. Are there any existing system that guarantees that in American society, and there is, and it's the military. So that's what that was his starting point. - Right, that's a starting point, and then so, and he also notes the popularity of the military, right? Like, it's one thing that, whereas social spending people argue about, military spending, they tend to argue about who can, who can spend more on it, right? - Yeah, yeah. - And so, I think that's another thing that's attracted to him about it. I guess my issue, again, my issue's with utopia as such, but I think, I can't imagine, and he doesn't really address this in the book. I can't imagine a military that doesn't, isn't focused its entire energy on the enemy. And so, that enemy, it seems to me like, once you're in the situation with the enemy, you're off the terrain of the left altogether. That, to me, that's, it's no surprise that Carl Schmidt, the great Nazi theorist, believes that politics depends on having an enemy, right? Like, I think, and I think that that is something, whenever I hear leftists say, our enemies are, but I always think like, okay, you've left the terrain of the left altogether. Because, of course, we have adversaries that we're, but the point of the left, as I understand it, whereas egalitarianism, as I understand it, or socialism, as I understand it, or communism, as I understand it, is, you're saying to other people like, no, no, you're really on our side. You might not know it, but you're, it's really, to follow your, to get the satisfaction you want, come on to our side, right? It's not about like, we're gonna defeat your side, we're gonna own your side to use the contemporary lingo. Right, so, and I feel like, I can't imagine a military without an enemy. And I think the only thing that I want to say is that the government is not just the government, but the government is not just the government. reason people are so invested in the military is because there is an enemy to fight. Like imagine you took the enemy away, people would be like, "Well, this is no better than like funding people on welfare." Right? Like what's the. So I feel like to me, that's a real issue with the book, I guess. Okay. Response. It's my response. I'm going to try to take up from Jameson's side of things. So what he writes in his section is that like, I think he acknowledges the problem that you're laying out. And maybe you think this is an allision from him. So I would want to hear if you do think that's true. His solution is that the military has to be effectively demilitarized. And so that the military becomes this like universal distributor of goods and services. And that the enemy, if you like, that it is purposed with eradicating is inequality. Now you think that's just too slick. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I just think that that. The libidinal investment in the military comes from the fact that it's fighting a real enemy. Right? Like, so sorry, you can't get that you don't get the one without the other in my view. Right? So that's why I think it's. You took in the worst sense, the word. Right. It's true. Yeah, that's thinking. No, no, no, I got to. That's tricky. I'm just wondering if. Yeah, I don't have this. I don't have the next step for you. I see why he did that. Yeah, I know. I see. Look, it's courageous. It's like incredible. I'm not. Yeah. I'm not calling it "existentially into question." I'm just saying, I don't agree. I still think God had existed as a text and I'm glad someone's trying to do it, et cetera, et cetera. I want to say. So I want to turn it because I. I want to. We're both in film and media studies. And I think, Jameson's. What's interesting is I think his influence has probably been more in that area than literary studies, I think, for. Yeah. And he wrote. Primarily, I think there are two texts, one called "Signatures of the Visible" and then another called "The Geopolitical Aesthetic." And I think one of the things that strikes me about both those books is they're absolutely unteachable to undergrad. And I say that from experience. Like, they're just. Yeah. Jameson is not the kind of writer that is. Like I think you and I are, but for better or worse, right? Like, we're writing basically that so undergrads can read our thing and it's fine, right? Like even my book on Hegel, I tried to make it so a normal. Like my mom could. She couldn't, but that my mom could read it, right? So I. And he doesn't. He doesn't care if his mom could read his book or not, right? And he just doesn't care about that. And I think that nowhere is that more pronounced than in "Signatures of the Visible" and "Geopolitical Aesthetic" that mean the main cinema books, right? And it's even hard, I have to say, to find a Jameson essay that's really accessible to teach to a group of undergrad when they're not going. I didn't understand anything that he said. I say this again from total experience. But I think that I want to mention one essay from both the kind of collections of essays, right? When you say they're not necessarily coherent. They're just kind of different things together. But it's not like a monograph. It's not like a monograph, right? But in both books, he's doing, especially as geopolitical as "Setic", he's doing this thing that in a certain way he's maybe more known for than anything else. And so it's odd we haven't mentioned it yet, which is cognitive mapping, right? Like he's trying to say that these. The films that he's analyzing assist the spectator in mapping out there the geopolitical terrain that they exist in. And that part of what late capitalism does is it renders it almost impossible to cognitively map your political situation, right? And so you're kind of lost. You don't know how to read things. And so what. Some of the films that he analyzes got. No, no, no, no. I just. Like to what you're saying. Like it is. I do think that it's. I do think you're right. It's hard for. To teach at the undergrad level. But I'm just. I'm struck because at both at UVM and URI when I was a grad student in teaching classes, his idea of cognitive mapping was basically what undergirded the rhetoric and composition idea of what the writing class is. They're interesting, I know. Yeah, so like. So like on the one hand, it's almost a dialectical thing here, right? Like the direct apprehension for like a typical undergraduate class, like non-specialist, not students who are, you know, like preparing themselves to go to graduate school is a little difficult. The. that same idea, those same essays, is exactly the thing that structures the like the first year writing class that everyone has to take. That is meant to be accessible for everyone no matter where they're coming in, to the college, no matter what experience level, no matter what major they're going to go on to. So I think that. I was just struck by that when we were talking about that. No, it's a great point. I hadn't made that connection. Yeah, yeah. It's a great point. Although, again, I think it's odd that he's absolutely unteachable. He's absolutely unteachable. He's just unteachable. Like I taught this is actually an essay from geopolitical aesthetic. I think it's called Totality as Conspiracy. Is that right or to have it backwards? It's something. I think that's it. I think it's Totality as. It might be Conspiracy as. But I think it's Totality as Conspiracy. I taught. I got death threats from teaching that essay. So I really. I think I'm just barely exaggerating. People were pissed. Like they stood outside my office ready to kick this shit out of me for that. So. And I kind of understood where I'm coming from. But I think one of the things that's interesting about that is that he takes this thing that. Okay, we're. Hopefully, all. How can we say? Right-thinking people are against Conspiracy Theory, right? And he shows how even in Conspiracy Theory, which he's not a Conspiracy theorist, but even in the cons. And I do have to say, it's the Conspiracy Theory of the 70s. Conspiracy Thriller, right? It's not the Conspiracy theories that are dominant today. So it's not. He's not talking about anti-vax or things that my. I won't say. You don't want to. Nah, don't do that. Yeah, I won't do that. He's not talking about that. But he's nonetheless. Nonetheless, right? He's saying. There's something in this Conspiracy Theory that it's in a. Like say, three days of the conduct. He just talked about that film. Sure. All the presidents' men, right? They're trying to map, in lieu of like a collective organization, they're helping the individual to map how this structure of control and dominance works in their lives, right? And so when Redford is struggling against this CIA within the CIA and doesn't know what. You know, like that and is kind of lost. That's the lostness of the contemporary subject and the film is trying to help that subject find a way to think about things. And it's a fascinating. Again, it's not a beacon of clarity, but it's a fascinating argument. And I think it's real. And in that. Senator, the visible is a great essay on the Shining, which is. Which is. I should say, my colleague in Frentoni, Magistrali, teaches that essay on the Shining. Because we did a little art in the department. There was a little kind of mourning and celebration of the life of Frederick Jameson and he said, "I teach that essay and I thought he's a better. You're the better professor that I am because he can teach that to undergrad." But there's a lot of great stuff in his analysis of the film. And part of the thing that's great is it cuts against. Like you think conspiracy theory bad, but he ends up without being a conspiracy theorist. It's kind of like what you're saying about Walmart. He's not a pro-Walmart person. No, no, no, no. But he's able to see this thing within. Even the thing that's despised, it kind of comes back to what we're saying about Structuralism, right? Like even the thing he's attacking, he's able to grasp this thing that's really valuable in it. And I think, who does that? Right? Who does that? I just don't think. I don't know if anybody else who does it. And so I've probably been unfairly critical of him, but now I want to say to me that the greatest compliment is I don't really know another thinker that is as generous to the position he's attacking and is able to find something valuable in what he attacks than Jameson. Yeah. You know what it is, Todd? It's one of the things that I think is most inspiring and haggle is what he manages to do with phonology. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's that moment in phonology, but expanded into a career. Into a career. of developing like, and really building something with that. Like it's not the same, every place that he picks to do that, to make that move, I think like it really unveils something. It's remarkable. Can I really piss off a lot of people? Here's what I'm going to say. I think he's a secret Higali and who got derailed by Marx. That's what I think. That's what I think. And I think for exactly the reason you said, right? Every moment in his career is like the chronology, which is the brilliant section really of the phenomenology, right? Like Higel's not an idiot. He knows chronology is-- I mean, actually, it's a time. There were people that were serious chronologists. And he had foresight to see that it's stupid. He sees also that there's this one moment of incredible genius within it, right? And then James and does that. It's like he wrote that section again and again and again throughout his life. It's just amazing. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. He was able to get the spirit as the bone out of Walmart, out of-- Out of porousity. Out of so many other things. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know. I know that we said this in the Mari episode. This is one of your takeaways is that you're worried when someone passes, is that the thing that they were is gone from the world. And I would really hope that the thing that Jameson was able to concretize is very much not gone. I hope it's not gone. I think we need it. Yeah. I have to say that I don't know of another person who does it. Right? I don't know. I really don't know. Like, other thinkers, obviously, I prefer to Jameson, but I don't know another thinker that is able to do that thing where he finds this point of genius in the thing that he's absolutely opposed to. Yeah. I just don't know. I don't know of anyone that does that. I don't do it. I don't know if anyone does it. Maybe that's the gauntlet. Yeah, that's the channel. It's down. Yeah. Yeah. I think the best way to, you know, to memorialize some of this, to really try to take up what was best about them, I think that's absolutely. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Absolutely. So, what's the lesson, Tom Agamon? Is it elephant man? I think the lesson has to be, because Jameson isn't talking about that film, but yeah, I think it has to be watch elephant man and see that the kind of, that Jameson is helping us to think of normality as emancipatory. And that is a tough thing to think. Man. Great take. Great. Yeah. Over and out. Over and out, Tom. Yeah. Yeah.