In some of the most influential and innovative quarters of contemporary literary and cultural studies, periodization-an ancient concept, but a relatively new word-finds itself in very bad odor indeed. 1 The widely cited Marxist critic Fredric Jameson, for example, concedes that the" use of the notion of a historical or cultural period" may be" potentially rewarding," but even a" rewarding" use of periodization, Jameson adds," tends in spite of itself to give the impression of a facile totalization, a seamless web of phenomena each of which, in its own way,'expresses' some unified inner truth-a world-view or a period style or a set of structural categories which marks the whole length and breadth of the'period'in question. Yet such an impression is fatally reductive...." 2 Though Jameson had other purposes in mind, his remarks provide a most instructive moment of obfuscation, and a handy way of entering into the postmodern debate about periodization. They convey a double ambiguity. Firstly, if there are" rewarding" uses of periodization, then the" impressions" that Jameson says are" fatally reductive" in all periodizations are not that fatal after all; or else the so-called" rewarding" uses of periodization are not all that rewarding. Secondarily, it is unclear whether the mistaken" impression" that Jameson seems to regard as" fatally reductive" in all attempts at periodization is the reader's or critic's mistaken" impression"-or their mutually held, or possibly diversely held mistaken" impressions." In fact, it is precisely because of the latter ambiguities that Jameson can assert the possibility of a" potentially rewarding" use of" the notion of a historical or cultural period." Once that possibility has been asserted, we are then left with only a straw-man Viconian brand of periodization and stylistic period definitions (" a facile totalization, a seamless web of phenomena, etc.") needing to be condemned entirely. 3