Croce’s content-form identity is a philosophic category, not literary technique

Evidence

In point of fact the identification of content and form is affirmed by idealist aesthetics (Croce), but on idealistic premisses and with idealistic terminology. “Content” and “form” do not therefore have the meaning the Manual supposes. That form and content are identified means that in art the content is not the “abstract subject”, that is the novelistic plot and a particular mass of generic sentiments, but is art itself, a philosophical category, a “distinct” moment of the spirit, etc. Nor does form mean “technique” as the Manual maintains. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1663

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies a term (content/form unity) often read as a literary-technical claim when it is actually an idealist-philosophy doctrine.
• XREF: Precedent for the reader’s later caution about reading European categories (assimilation/civilization/etc.) in colonial and Orientalist texts as if they carried ordinary meanings. — connects to: Narrative categories like character and plot are the form of content, not content itself — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 6030; Philosophy reconciles content and form as a sensed, non-representable absolute form — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 961; Idealist aesthetics identify form and content, not technique and plot (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Idealist aesthetics identify form and content, not technique and plot #corroborates (0.90)
• The form-content distinction is a methodological device, not a real separation #corroborates (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 204
• Philosophy reconciles content and form as a sensed, non-representable absolute form #corroborates (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 961
• Narrative categories like character and plot are the form of content, not content itself #corroborates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 6030