All theories of history covertly organize around a hypothesis of a vanished plenitude

Evidence

WE ARE thus led little by little to reflect on the connection between such a dialectical vision of historical change, in which the various moments are articulated according to the various possible relationships between subject and object, and some hypothesis of a historical moment of plenitude or completion against which the other historical stages are judged and weighed. Such a moment is of course first and foremost nothing but a logical possibility: the concept of what Adorno calls Versoehnung or reconciliation between the subject and objectivity, between existence and the world, the individual consciousness and the external network of things and institutions into which it first emerges. The naïve projection of such a logical possibility into the realm of historical chronology can only result in metaphysical nostalgia (the golden age before the fall, the blissful state of primitive man) or in Utopianism. Yet in some more subtle fashion all so-called “theories of history” tend to organize themselves around the covert hypothesis of just such a moment of plenitude: think of Jeffersonian America or of the “unity of sensibility” of the Metaphysical poets; of the humaneness of medieval economic doctrine or of the organic continuity of an ancien régime unsullied by regicide or by the hubris of political self-determination; not to speak of the innumerable ideological exploitations of ancient Greece. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 91

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Adorno’s Versoehnung (reconciliation between subject and objectivity) as the logical possibility grounding Jameson’s dialectical vision of history.
• DEEPTHINKING: The crucial distinction between Versoehnung as logical possibility versus its naive projection into historical chronology (nostalgia or utopianism) is a subtle and generative move worth deep consideration, especially the claim that even sophisticated theories of history secretly harbor a plenitude-index.
• ADDENDUM: Recalling ‘On Sacrifice’ where Dido and sacral kingship rest on claims of organic, prelapsarian community — Jameson’s diagnosis of ‘metaphysical nostalgia’ as an organizing hypothesis applies directly to narratives of sacrificial plenitude.
• SEED: Possible essay: how every theory of history secretly posits a golden age it renders unreachable — from Jeffersonian America to the Metaphysical poets’ ‘unity of sensibility’, demonstrating the structural nostalgia beneath putatively forward-looking historiography.
• XREF: connects to: Ideologies apply the logic of an idea to history as an unfolding process. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1061; An ideology claims the key to history or universal hidden laws — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 432; Ideologies claim total explanatory keys to history or nature

Broader Connections

• Ideologies apply the logic of an idea to history as an unfolding process. #expands (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1061
• An ideology claims the key to history or universal hidden laws #exemplifies (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 432
• Ideologies claim total explanatory keys to history or nature #exemplifies (0.72)