Fascist aesthetics can still protest reified social life

Evidence

In a daring and imaginative move for a Marxist to take, Jameson argues that the writing of Lewis — fascist, sexist, racist, elitist — must be seen, precisely because of its distinctive formal ‘expressionism’, as a particularly powerful ‘protest against the reified experience of an alienated social life, in which, against its own will, it remains formally and ideologically locked’. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 104

Categorization

• XREF: Core problem for the reader’s strategic essentialism — does formal position always stay ideologically locked regardless of authorial intent?
• SEED: Angle: how far aesthetic/fronic distance can exempt a text from its own ideological content — direct parallel to ironic essentialism.
• BMF: flagged by the selector, no supporting note recorded