Frederick Jameson´s article “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”, offers a different perspective that expands our understanding of transnationalism, contributing to some of the debates held in our class. More specifically, Jameson interrogates how Western thought has been determined by the fundamental division between the public sphere and the private realm, a dichotomy that has been extensively studied in a number of different fields. For example, Susan Bordo draws on Carlos Guillen to support the argument that during the Renaissance, European culture “became interiorized”, bringing about the proliferation of oppositions, including divisions “between the inner and the outer, between the subjective and the objective, between self and world” (45).  Jameson focuses on the radical split between public and private and the way this separation distinguishes Western thought from “third-world” texts, particularly literary texts.

I would like to argue that Jameson´s illustration of the epistemological distinction between the private and the public spheres through his allusion to two of the most influential thinkers of our time -Marx and Freud- serves us as a staring point in order to examine the different approaches we have seen so far in our class. For example, while Bhabha´s central concepts are strongly influenced by psychoanalytical theories, Appadurai or Appiah are mainly concerned with the psychological dimension, as well as the different ways in which individuals are affected by transnational processes. However, I consider that in some cases, their emphasis on the psychological causes them to overlook a materialist analysis that could take into account the impact of external forces. On the other hand, Ong´s Flexible Citizenship aims to combine a Foucaltian approach that pays attention to the specific power contexts that enable certain practices and imaginings.

Jameson attempts to bridge this epistemological breach through his theory of a third-world literature, which according to him, provides us with a breakout from Western binaries. As an example of how theory can become more inclusive when dualisms try to be overcome he mentions the “cultural phenomenon of subalternity” as theorised by Gramsci: “not in that sense a psychological matter, although it governs psychologies … When a psychic structure is objectively determined by the economic and political relationships, it cannot be dealt with by means of purely psychological therapies; yet it equally cannot be dealt with by means of purely objective transformations of the economic and political situation itself, since the habits remain and exercise a baleful and crippling residual effect” (76).  In this particular example, we can see how psychological forces cannot be separated from external elements. Although this is not a new thing, Jameson gives a step further when he suggests that this awareness is more visibly manifested in third-world literature.

In other words, third-world literature, as well as third-world intellectuals, merge theory and practice, conceiving literature as a political act. In this sense, Amuleto can be read as an excellent instance of Jameson´s concept of the allegorical. But not only Amuleto, I also consider that to some extent Open City blurs the lines between fiction and epistemology, art and politics, turning literature into a political act. “third-world national allegories are conscious and overt: they imply a radically different and objective relationships of politics to libidinal dynamics” (80). The historical awareness  exhibited by these literary works characterises “third-world” literature, at the same time that distinguishes them from Western narratives. Jameson refers to their situational consciousness and how that cannot be separated from the collective, and, as a consequence, from politics. “Third world must be situational and materialist despite itself. And this is finally which must account for the allegorical nature of third-world culture” (84).

The allegory he uses to parallel Western and third world literature to Hegel´s Master-Slave relation summarises his convincing argument about third-world writers not being able to escape the “nightmare of history” -as it is obvious in Cole and Bolaño´s novel-.This impossibility or reluctance to ignore material circumstances provides them with a larger vision that reminded me in certain ways of Sandra Harding´s idea of the “epistemic privilege”. As Jameson claims, “only the slave knows what reality and the resistance of matter really are; only the slave can attain some true materialistic consciousness of his situation, since it is precisely to that that he is condemned” (85).  Despite Jameson´s important contribution, his idea of a “third-world literature” is quite problematic, for even if it is acknowledged that these properties emerge from different historical circumstances, I still feel that there is a certain degree of essentialisation as far as his thesis of the so-called “third-world literature” is concerned.

Bordo, Susan . “The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought”. Signs 11 (31). pp.  439-456, 1986.