In 2013 I drove with my comrades Jeff and Norman to Columbus, Ohio for the Marxist Literary Group Institute on Culture and Society. We were giddy on the drive through the prairies. We were meeting friends from the conference, and we’d make new ones along the way. Plus, Fredric Jameson was going to be giving a talk. We knew he’d founded the group in 1969 with regular attendees being Stanley Aronowitz and Gayatri Spivak. I’d gone to MLG-ICS first in 2010 to Antigonish, N.S. In Columbus, we gathered in the evenings after the talks and dinner to rehearse our papers together and give one another notes. Adam, David, Kate, Jeff, Norman, Tom, and I made the most of our talks. Revising them right up to presentation time.
I was speaking on my dissertation topic: the ideology of US post-apocalyptic novels. It was a piece where I used the Gremasian square to elaborate the stalled futures of a novel, Immobility. During the Q&A, Fred raised his hand. I wondered if he had a question for my paper. Would I be able to answer it? That wouldn’t even matter; the question would be illuminating in its own right. Fred didn’t get to ask his question. The moderator chose someone else. We ran out of time. This speaks to the egalitarianism of the group: a grad student could pick the person with their hand up first or who had not yet spoken rather than the founder of the conference. I was disappointed, but I had a great question from Andrew Culp about extinction as possibility, so I wasn’t left out of the conversation.
However disappointed I was, this egalitarian moment brewed its own opportunity for me. I took a chance to chat with Fred at the BBQ. I could ask about his question for the panel. We chatted about the cozy apocalypse tales of John Wyndham. The idea Fred wanted me to think about was Lyotard’s commentary on the threat of nothing further happening (see The Sublime and the Avant-Garde). He gave me a quote that I used to track down the piece. I think he even mentioned it in his next book. I realize now that me asking also allowed him the chance to pose his question. It was a memorable exchange. Someone (I forget who) even captured the moment.
Michael Hardt also spoke at the conference. Before he gave his talk on the politics of love, he explained a heuristic that Jameson used to help his students plan their projects: on the one hand, if it’s a simple idea, you can use a complex apparatus to work it out; if, on the other hand, it’s a complex idea, use a straightforward structure to exfoliate the topic. Simplicity for the complex and complexity for the straightforward. A delightful semiotics to work with and very helpful to students. In a way, this recollection has been a small complex way of saying something simple: good-bye, Fred. We’ll miss your presence, and you’ve left us with plenty to think about. Thanks, comrade.
Moving piece, Brent.
Love this!