Marxism and Form Quotes

“. . . it is a mistake to think that Marxism is simply a type of interpretation that takes the economic "sequence" as that ultimately privileged code into which the other sequences are to be translated. Rather, for Marxism the emergence of the economic, the coming into view of the infrastructure itself, is simply the sign of the approach of the concrete.”
― Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature

“Mi, u stvari, zamišljamo našu kulturu kao neki ogromni imaginarni muzej u kome su svi životni oblici i intelektualni stavovi podjednako dobrodošli da stoje jedan pored drugog, pod uslovom da su pristupačni samo za kontemplaciju. Tu bi tako, uporedo sa hrišćanskim misticima i anarhistima XIX veka, sa nadrealistima i renesansnim humanistima, bilo mesta i za neki marksizam koji bi bio samo jedan filozofski sistem među ostalima. Čak ni neki zahtev za apsolutnom verom ne bi smetao marksizmu da bude prihvaćen na taj način, jer u toj nama dobro poznatoj eklektičkoj tradiciji sasvim komotno koegzistiraju i same religije, pretvorene u slike. Ne, osobenost strukture istorijskog materijalizma leži u tome što on poriče autonomiju same misli, u tome što on, i sam misao, uporno dokazuje da čista misao funkcioniše kao prikriveni način društvenog ponašanja, u njegovom neugodnom podsećanju na materijalnu i istorijsku stvarnost duha. Tako marksizam, kao kulturni objekt, ustaje protiv kulturne aktivnosti uopšte, snižava joj vrednost i razgolićuje klasne privilegije i dokolicu, koji su preduslovi za uživanje u njoj.”
― Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature

“... we conceive of our culture, indeed, as a vast imaginary museum in which all life forms and all intellectual positions are equally welcome side by side, providing they are accessible to contemplation alone. Thus, alongside the Christian mystics and the nineteenth-century anarchists, the Surrealists and the Renaissance humanists, there would be room for a Marxism that was but one philosophical system among others. Nor can it be some requirement of absolute belief that prevents Marxism from being assimilated in this fashion, for the religions themselves, transformed into images, easily coexist in the eclectic tradition with which we are familiar. No, the peculiarity of the structure of historical materialism lies in its denial of the autonomy of thought itself, in its insistence, itself a thought, on the way in which pure thought functions as a disguised mode of social behavior, in its uncomfortable reminder of the material and historical reality of spirit. Thus as a cultural object, Marxism returns against cultural activity in general to devalue it and to lay bare the class privileges and the leisure which it presupposes for its enjoyment. It thus ruins itself as a spiritual commodity and short-circuits the process of culture consumption in which, in the Western context, it had become engaged. It is therefore the very structure of historical materialism—the doctrine of the unity of thinking and action, or of the social determination of thought—which is irreducible to pure reason or to contemplation; and this, which the Western middle-class philosophical tradition can only understand as a flaw in the system, refuses us in the very moment in which we imagine ourselves to be refusing it.”
― Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature

“Nigde se, međutim, neprijateljstvo angloameričke tradicije prema dijalektičkoj ne iskazuje tako jasno kao u široko rasprostranjenom gledištu da je stil tih dela mračan i težak, nesvarljiv, apstraktan - ili, da sumiramo to u prikladnoj krilatici, germanski. Može se dopustiti da on nije u skladu sa kanonima jasnog i tečnog novinarskog pisanja kakvi se uče u našim školama. No šta ako ti ideali jasnoće i jednostavnosti služe u kontekstu naše sadašnjice sasvim drukčijoj ideološkoj svrsi od one koju je Dekart imao na umu? Šta ako su oni, u ovo naše doba hiperreprodukcije štampanih stvari i poplave metoda brzog čitanja, namenjeni tome da navedu čitaoca da brzo pređe preko rečenice, pozdravljajući u prolazu, bez napora, unapred spremljenu ideju, a da pritom i ne sluti da stvarna misao zahteva silazak u materijalnost jezika i saglasnost oblika rečenice sa samim vremenom?”
― Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature