In such celebrated works as Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism , Fredric Jameson has established himself as one of America’s most observant cultural commentators. In Signatures of the Visible, Jameson turns his attention to cinema - the artform that has replaced the novel as the defining cultural form of our time. Historicizing a form that has flourished in a post-modern and anti-historical culture, he explores the allegorical and ideological dimensions of such films as The Shining , Dog Day Afternoon and the works of Alfred Hitchcock, among many others. Fifteen years on from its original publication, this remains a piercing and original analysis of film from a writer and thinker whose influence continues to be felt long after that of the fashionable post-modernists he has always critiqued.

進入20世紀90年代，詹姆遜開始注重文化研究，尤其是影視文化研究，他連續齣版瞭兩本論述電影的著作：《可見的簽名》（Signatures of the Visible, 1990）和《地緣政治美學》 (The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System, 1992)。作為富於總體關照的批評傢，詹姆遜經過近十年的潛心研究和觀察，寫齣瞭《後現代主義，或晚期資本主義的文化邏輯》（Postmodernism ，or，the Culture Logic of Late Capitalism ,1991）一書，獲得瞭最佳批評著作奬。這部著作在後現代主義曆史上具有裏程碑意義，在西方學術界産生瞭轟動效應。隨著跨國資本主義的發展，他又寫瞭論述後現代二律背反的著作《時間的種子》（The Seeds of Time,1994），發錶瞭《文化轉嚮》（The Cultural Turn，1998）一書。該書集中瞭他80年代和90年代兩個十年對後現代問題的認真卓越的思考，被佩裏•安德森稱為“至今詹姆遜在研究後現代的著作中最好的一本”。他在這本書的前言中寫到：“詹姆遜的著作，猶如夜晚天空中升起的鎂光照明彈，照亮瞭後現代被遮蔽的風景。後現代的陰暗和朦朧霎時變成一片奇異和燦爛。”