After Year Zero: On Postwar German Thought

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 Two. Focusing on key thinkers — Horkheimer, Adorno, Heidegger, Habermas, Marcuse, Beuys, Enzensberger, Kluge, and Sloterdijk — Jameson weaves close readings of texts with anecdotes and aperçus to craft a narrative about the uses of the­ory. He delves into world-historical phenomena, such as the legacy of Nazism and the formation of the European Union, in a story that stretches from the postwar division of Germany to its reunification at the end of the Cold War.

After Year Zero is a vital account of the German critical tradition, as understood by the “most significant Marxist thinker in American culture.”

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).