Fred Jameson – French Structuralism and German Dialectics (eye doctor)
"In the last 20 or 30 years, in the United States [...] there has been a violent clash, in Marxism for example, between a French tradition, a structuralist tradition and a German tradition, a dialectical tradition. People have lined up on either side, have attacked the other ones for various reasons and oddly, I have always been caught in the middle of this, because the French thought that I was too German, and the Germans thought I was too French, whereas I feel that, given my conviction about transcoding, that these two traditions have much to say to each other. I think of it the way one goes to an ophthalmologist , an eye doctor, and he puts in one lens and then asks you 'is this clearer?' or 'is this one clearer?' and so on. And I think that each philosophical language, each National language as well, has a certain zone of clarity and distinctness. But there are things it can't say. And another language has a somewhat different zone and there are different things that it can't say. "
from:
• How to adapt to cultural change | Fredric ...