Pleasure: A Political Issue with Anna Kornbluh

Fredric Jameson is one of the most important Marxist literary critics. We are joined by Anna Kornbluh to discuss his theory of postmodernism and particularly his work on psychoanalysis and Marxism. We analyze Jameson's incredible essay "Pleasure: A Political Issue" which looks at the relationship between psychoanalysis and Marxism. This conversation gets at the heart of the Marxism-psychoanalysis relationship, what the stakes are, what psychoanalysis offers to Marxist analysis and more. Anna Kornbluh's research and teaching interests center on Victorian literature and Critical Theory, with a special emphasis in formalism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and theory of the novel. She is the author of The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space (University of Chicago 2019), Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club (Bloomsbury "Film Theory in Practice” series, 2019), and Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form (Fordham UP 2014).