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This thesis is meant to give an explication on Fredric Jameson’s Utopian thinking through transcoding, establishing homologies between Lacan’s Imaginary/Symbolic/Real registers, Althusser’s ideology/History binary and Jameson’s ideology/cognitive mapping/History orders. I think Jameson’s Utopian thinking is a mechanism of praxis to induce change for a classless and human-friendly society through theoretical education on desire and formation of consciousness of the capitalistic alienation and exploitation. It is a process of signifying, with no signified. It aims at the construction of a map of the social totality, not at that of an imaginary blueprint. It stresses consciousness-raising, not goal achievement. Traditionally, Utopia features an imaginary blueprint. Nevertheless, for Jameson, the Utopian blueprint is problematic in that it is ideologically enclosed so that it is far from qualified to serve as the goal of praxis. At best, a Utopian blueprint can only be viewed as a “figure” waiting for the interpretation of theory, or to put it psychoanalytically, it is a symptom of the (political) unconscious awaiting the diagnosis of a psychoanalyst. But Jameson does endorse Utopists’ “Utopian praxis” to map and criticize their respective social context. The critic applies the practice to the postmodern, in which time is spatialized and the individual is fragmented and deprived of the ability to think historically and to imagine an alternative future. Jameson proposes the approach of “cognitive mapping” to help people to obtain a map of the postmodern hyperspace, to locate their positions in it, and to finally reconstruct in them class consciousness, which Jameson believes is the basis of praxis for a Utopia. This task has to be done through the construction of the collective subject, because of the death of the subject and the growing abstraction of postmodern hyperspace. And certainly in this undertaking, Marxist critics like Jameson play an important role. They, like a psychoanalyst, are entitled to diagnose and interpret what the current world is suffering from and to offer prescriptions. In conclusion, Fredric Jameson’s Utopian thinking is a persistent process of praxis at present to form collective consciousness and subjectivity in the hope of an unspecified Utopia in the future, which is supposed to be a communist one.

Introduction 1-11
Chapter 1 History, Desire and Ideology 12-33
Chapter 2 The Utopian Text as a Process of Praxis 34-54
Chapter 3 The Construction of a Cognitive Map 55-82
Conclusion 83-90
Works Cited 91-95

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