Dismissing discredited concepts wholesale forfeits their rational core.

Evidence

In this, the polemic posture of Benjamin can be instructive for those of us who, undialectically, are tempted simply to reject the concept of myth altogether, on account of the ideological uses to which it is ordinarily put; for whom this concept, like related ones of magic or charisma, seems not to aim at a rational analysis of the irrational but rather at a consecration of it through language. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 146

Categorization

• DEFINE: Capsules Benjamin’s dialectical move: redeem rather than discard a concept soiled by ideology — a core dialectical-criticism method.
• XREF: Mirrors Adorno’s insistence on rescuing the rational content of bourgeois concepts, and Jameson’s own procedure of rescuing myth/reification across this book. — connects to: Excessive critical skepticism of research can discard genuinely useful ideas; Concepts supposedly abolished in theory keep returning in altered form. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 199; It may be that when the details of this practice are laid bare, the concepts we do use will be shown to be as silly and as thick with illusion as those the nominalists invented. If so, then we shall have to find other ways to describe what we do, and either provide other justifications or change our practices. But until we have discovered this and made these adjustments, we cannot accept the nominalists’ premature invitation to turn our backs on the problems our present concepts provide. (+3 more)
• SEED: Angle: ‘Redeeming the tainted concept’ — a method essay on how critics can salvage myth, charisma, even ‘West’ from their ideological captors.

Broader Connections

• Excessive critical skepticism of research can discard genuinely useful ideas #corroborates (0.92)
• Opponents conflated specific scholarly disagreements with wholesale factual discrediting. #corroborates (0.85) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 48
• It may be that when the details of this practice are laid bare, the concepts we do use will be shown to be as silly and as thick with illusion as those the nominalists invented. If so, then we… #expands (0.82)
• Concepts supposedly abolished in theory keep returning in altered form. #corroborates (0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 199
• These concepts are too deeply cemented into the structure of our political practices-they cannot be given up like cigarettes or hats. Some of the nominalists have half-admitted this and said that… #corroborates (0.78)