Form and content are mutually translatable terms in dialectical criticism
Evidence
This is, I believe, the “materialistic kernal” of Schiller’s remark, which serves as the epigraph of this section: “As far as I am concerned, I am convinced that beauty is only the form of a form, and that what is ordinarily called its content must necessarily be thought of as content already formed.” Indeed, the first methodological consequence of the dialectical notion of form and content is that, depending on the progress of the interpretive work and the stage at which it has arrived, either term can be translated into the other: thus every layer of content proves, as Schiller implies, to the but a form in disguise. But we have seen above that it is just as true to say that form is really only the projection of content and of the inner logic of the latter. In fact, this essential distinction is useful only on condition that it ultimately re-abolish itself in the ambiguity of the artistic substance itself, which can be seen alternately as either all content or all form. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 769
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the Adorno/Benjamin form-content debates; this is a core Frankfurt-School mediation concept. — connects to: The form-content dialectic succeeds for Marx precisely because it is aesthetic in origin — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 671; The form-content distinction is the central operative mechanism of dialectical thinking — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 670; Eliot’s literary-order concept smuggled dialectics in as novelty while masking its ideological function — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 647 (+6 more)
- DEFINE: Lays out the dialectical re-abolition of the form/content distinction — a key Jameson methodological move.
Broader Connections
- Thinking must hold dialectic and its opposite together at once
#expands(0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 170 - Literary form depends on the deep logic of its raw material
#qualifies(0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 389