Absolute Mapping: Jameson's Variations on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

Abstract

The chapter engages with Jameson's interpretation of The Phenomenology of Spirit as exposed in his Hegel Variations (2010). It questions Jameson’s attempt to rescue the Hegelian dialectic from Hegel’s notion of the speculative and warns against the deflationary drifts of such an attempt. It also suggests that Jameson paradoxically distances himself from Hegel where his critical theory gets actually closer to the latter's speculative ambitions. Drawing on the commitment to the totality that the philosophies of Hegel and Jameson both share, it proposes a rapprochement between Hegel’s conception of Absolute Knowing and Jameson’s notion of cognitive mapping, with the aim to make room in Jameson’s theoretical framework for the valences of Hegel’s Absolute. The chapter argues that it is possible to find in Jameson’s reactualization of the discourse on totality a fruitful theoretical perspective to frame Hegel’s understanding of “Absolute Knowing” as absolute mapping.