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.

进入20世纪90年代，詹姆逊开始注重文化研究，尤其是影视文化研究，他连续出版了两本论述电影的著作：《可见的签名》（Signatures of the Visible, 1990）和《地缘政治美学》 (The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System, 1992)。作为富于总体关照的批评家，詹姆逊经过近十年的潜心研究和观察，写出了《后现代主义，或晚期资本主义的文化逻辑》（Postmodernism ，or，the Culture Logic of Late Capitalism ,1991）一书，获得了最佳批评著作奖。这部著作在后现代主义历史上具有里程碑意义，在西方学术界产生了轰动效应。随着跨国资本主义的发展，他又写了论述后现代二律背反的著作《时间的种子》（The Seeds of Time,1994），发表了《文化转向》（The Cultural Turn，1998）一书。该书集中了他80年代和90年代两个十年对后现代问题的认真卓越的思考，被佩里•安德森称为“至今詹姆逊在研究后现代的著作中最好的一本”。他在这本书的前言中写到：“詹姆逊的著作，犹如夜晚天空中升起的镁光照明弹，照亮了后现代被遮蔽的风景。后现代的阴暗和朦胧霎时变成一片奇异和灿烂。”