Methodology of The Political Hermeneutic: An Stylistic Analysis of Jameson’s Essay-Writing

Cultural texts are always the mark of abstraction from the thought process, itself asunder between the expressions on the one hand, and their underlying assumptions on the other. Political hermeneutics meanwhile is a way of transcending this object/method split, with the aim of dialectically restoring the hidden content of the cultural text to its superstructure. The dialectic method is applied through a contrastive depiction of some phenomenon with its opposite. This dialectical mirror-image is essentially defined by Fredric Jameson (1971, 1981) as a kind of diachronic transformation always at work between the opposite sides. To come up with such a diachrony, Jameson believes, the dialectic vision should be soaked in historical details. Political hermeneutics, basically formulated to bring order to the chaotic interpretive marketplace, is in the first place to express not the nature of interpretation, but the need for it; so, what it requires is taking an overarching strategy, as well as a meticulous dialectical methodology, in its way to cultural text analysis. The precision requisite for the dialectic method may be evident of Jameson’s own style in essay writing, provided that the histicization of text transcends, following the methodology of political hermeneutics, from the level of content analysis, to a level of self-conscious know-how about form analysis. The main aim of present article is then to explain the internal logic of form, drawing -before applying it- on Jameson’s political hermeneutic.