What is dialectical analysis? I often pretend to understand, but sometimes I don't think I understand at all. I'm reading a new(-ish) book by Ian Buchanan entitled Fredric Jameson: Live Theory. Jameson is one of the most important cultural theorists (i.e. literary critic, cultural critic, etc.) of recent times. I've always found his ideas to be extremely clear and insightful – the sorts of insights that make you look up from what you're reading and go "wow, yeah, that makes sense!"
But this writing is very dense, and presupposes an immense amount on the part of the reader. I guess I'm little rusty on all this lit-crit and philosophy stuff. I'm only 5 or so pages in, and already managing Deleuze and Althusser (and, in my misguided opinion, Lacan, although he's not been explicitly mentioned). And, of course, Marx. Jameson, like Eagleton, is what's known as a marxist critic. I like to use the small "m" because it's important, in my opinion, to make clear that a marxist analysis as a critical or philosophical pursuit isn't the same thing as a political compromise (not that I'm trying to imply anything, either way, with respect to the degree of political compromise Eagleton or Jameson specifically hold).
Indeed, given the current world-situation, I would almost hazard a guess that a clear marxist analysis of the world economic and political picture might lead one to conclude that Marxist political compromise needs to be ruled out. Certainly the Communist Party of China seems to have reached that basic conclusion – I read an interesting description of the Chinese political color as being infrared (as opposed to red). The term captures a great deal about the nature of that weirdly fascistic (and fetishistic?) brand of communism, eh?