A fully conscious model of historical action fails to capture history’s impersonality

Evidence

The real theoretical problems inherent in this model lie elsewhere. The attractiveness of the notion of a sign, or of the hypothesis of an unconscious, stemmed precisely from the way in which it allowed something else, something disproportionate and incommensurable, to be substituted for the immediate data of consciousness itself. Now, however, Sartre’s model implies that in some fashion the actors of history are conscious of what they are doing and why they are doing it; and this simply does not seem to do justice to our feeling of the impersonality of history, of the alienations of all kinds involved in its process, of the relative insignificance of the individual actor. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 455

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Marx/Engels ‘Ideology’ problem and Adorno’s critique of a self-transparent subject; connects to the reader’s Frankfurt-School lineage interest. — connects to: Historians invoke subjective motives only when objective causes fail to explain an act; Historical synthesis by a single mind reveals deep connections across eras — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 31; Knowing a historical transition differs vitally from living through it — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 104 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Historians invoke subjective motives only when objective causes fail to explain an act #corroborates (0.80)
• Historical synthesis by a single mind reveals deep connections across eras #contradicts (0.75) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 31