ABSTRACT
The “problem of the superstructure” for Marxist criticism is well known. It is that if the superstructure exists, at least on the terms dictated by orthodox or traditional Marxism, then no such thing as Marxist criticism can exist. The point of Frederic Jameson’s diagram is to represent the articulations of the various levels of base and superstructure. Jameson wholly accepts the consequences of this critique in its main outlines, and his one reservation, characteristically, is less a reservation as such than an attempt to see why the orthodox notion of base and superstructure ever had any plausibility in the first place. A Marxist criticism becomes possible, then, only when some alternative account of the relation between base and superstructure is given. The most powerful alternative so far proposed is Althusser’s notion of “structural causality,” the authority of which stands behind Jameson’s theory and practice as a literary critic.
