Balzac’s moment precedes the full formation of the bourgeois subject

Evidence

What was to have been shown was evidently the historical specificity of Balzac’s “moment” and of a situation-before the full constitution of the bourgeois subject and the omnipresent effects of massive reification-in which desire, the decentering of the subject, and a kind of open history are still conjoined. — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 4010

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines reification as the force that later decouples desire, subject-centeredness, and open history.
• DEEPTHINKING: This compressed sentence carries Jameson’s whole historicist thesis: a specific historical situation makes certain narrative configurations possible that later reification forecloses.
• XREF: connects to: The aestheticized self belongs historically to bourgeois private life — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 213; Balzac’s biography gave him direct bodily access to his era’s historical forces — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 403

Broader Connections

• The aestheticized self belongs historically to bourgeois private life #complicates (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 213