European Modernist movements like Cubism and Neue Sachlichkeit refute the inwardness reading.

Evidence

But without entering into such a formal analysis, it is worth observing how much less plausible Jameson’s interpretation becomes when applied to the broader currents of Modernism beyond the English-speaking world. Where, for example, does Expressionism fit in - a highly subjective kind of art which nevertheless externalized inner anguish, projecting it on to and thereby distorting the objective environment of the personality? Or Cubism, which systematically dismantled the objects of common-sense experience, spreading out before the viewer their internal structure and external relationships? Or the Neue Sachlichkeit of Weimar Germany, which reacted against the extravagances of Expressionism in favour of cool, matter-of-fact (sachlich), sometimes avowedly Neo-Classical art, but combined this with a critical, if not revolutionary attitude towards existing society — an art whose greatest achievement was perhaps Brecht’s ‘theatre for a scientific age’? — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 107

Categorization

• XREF: The case of Brecht’s ‘theatre for a scientific age’ — political, externalizing — deeply complicates Jameson’s own political investment in Modernism’s inwardness as a proto-postmodern condition.