Brecht and method

An analysis of the connections between Brecht's drama and politics. The author argues that Brecht's method was a multi-layered process of reflection and self-reflection, reference and self-reference, which allows individuals to situate themselves historically, to think about themselves in the third person, and to use that self-projection in history as a basis for judgement. Emphasizing the themes of separation, distance, multiplicity, choice and contradiction in Brecht's entire corpus, Jameson's study engages in a dialogue with a cryptic work, unpublished in Brecht's lifetime, entitled Me-ti; Book of Twists and Turns. This text is seen by Jameson as key to understanding Brecht's critical reflections on dialectics and his orientally informed fascination with flow and flux, change and the non-eternal.