After Year Zero

Jameson's legendary lectures on German thought, brought together in one volume for the first time.

In this series of accessible lectures, Fredric Jameson explores German philosophy and critical theory as it developed in the wake of World War II. Focussing in on key thinkers such as Horkheimer, Adorno, Heidegger, Habermas, Marcuse, Beuys, Enzensberger, Kluge, Sloterdijk and RosaJameson weaves close readings of texts with anecdotes to craft a story about the uses of theory from the postwar division of Germany to its reunification at the end of the Cold War. Ranging from the legacy of Nazism to the formation of the EU, After Year Zero is an indispensable account of the German critical tradition’s past and future, as seen by the “most significant Marxist thinker in American culture.”Editor’s Preface

Lecture 1
8/24/2021
[Introduction]

Lecture 2
8/26/2021
[Horkheimer and Adorno]

Lecture 3
8/31/2021
[Horkheimer and Adorno]

Lecture 4
2/2/2021
[Horkheimer and Adorno]

Lecture 5
9/7/2021
[Horkheimer and Adorno]

Lecture 6
9/9/2021
[Horkheimer and Adorno, Heidegger]

Lecture 7
9/14/2021
[Heidegger]

Lecture 8
9/16/2021
[Habermas]

Lecture 9
9/21/2021
[Adorno]

Lecture 10
9/23/2021
[Adorno]

Lecture 11
9/28/2021
[Marcuse]

Lecture 12
9/30/2021
[Beuys, Mitscherlich, Haug, Backhaus]

Lecture 13
10/12/2021
[Sohn-Rethel]

Lecture 14
10/14/2021
[Bahro]

Lecture 15
10/19/2021
[Bloch, Enzensberger, Negt, Kluge]

Lecture 16
10/21/2021
[Negt and Kluge, Gadamer]

Lecture 17
10/26/2021
[Gadamer, Blumenberg, Koselleck]

Lecture 18
10/28/2021
[Gadamer, Koselleck]

Lecture 19
11/2/2021
[Negt and Kluge]

Lecture 20
11/4/2021
[Negt and Kluge, Weiss]

Lecture 21
11/9/2021
[Bohrer, Kittler]

Lecture 22
11/11/2021
[Kittler, Luhmann, Habermas]

Lecture 23
11/16/2021
[Luhmann, Habermas, Sloterdijk, Rosa]Fredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. The author of numerous books, he has developed a richly nuanced vision of Western culture's relation to political economy. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. He is the author of many books, including Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The Cultural Turn, A Singular Modernity, Archaeologies of the Future, Brecht and Method, Ideologies of Theory, Valences of the Dialectic, The Hegel Variations and Representing Capital

Carson Welch is a doctoral candidate in Literature at Duke University. He is the editor of Fredric Jameson’s The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present (Verso, 2024).