"Mind-blowing... What we get here is not the insight in some secret core of Jameson's thought lost in later gentrified published versions but, on the contrary, a flow of improvisations and mental experimentations where the detours through secondary topics are often more precious than the main line of argumentation." - Slavoj Zizek

Mimesis, Expression, Construction brings Fredric Jameson's Duke University seminar on Adorno's Aesthetic Theory into print for the first time.


Comprised of twenty-one seminar transcripts in which Jameson engages with his students as they explore Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, one of the most influential theories of modern art, this volume is also the first and only record of Jameson's teachings and pedagogic practice.


Transcribed directly from audio recordings taken by the editor when the seminar was given in 2003, and presented like a play with closed captioning and stage directions, Mimesis, Expression, Construction is a new entry in the work of one of the greatest living philosophers.