Formal concepts retain traces of the historical phenomena that produced them

Evidence

It will no doubt be objected that we are playing on words, and that style as an object of research and as a literary category is not to be confused with what we have above described as the historical phenomenon of style in the modernistic sense. Yet such “wordplay,” inadmissible as it may seem to the older analytical type of logical reasoning, is the very essence of the dialectical method itself: as a scandal for static rationality, its inner movement dramatizes the irresistible link between a formal concept and that historical reality in which it originated. Thus, the abstract idea of style in general retains traces of that concrete historical phenomenon of style in modern times which it was first designed to express; and it is because style is a historical phenomenon that an absolute science of style is impossible. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 679

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The core dialectical move — treating apparent ‘wordplay’ between a formal category and its historical instance as the essence of method, dramatizing the link between concept and historical reality. This is the Frankfurt-School mediation doctrine in miniature.
• XREF: Directly traces to Adorno’s critique of identity-thinking and Lukács’s historicization of categories; the claim that ‘an absolute science of style is impossible’ echoes the historical-materialist denial of transhistorical essences. — connects to: The dialectical pun links each formal concept to its originating historical reality — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 679; Histories and causal narratives persist buried inside the language used to tell them; Historical change forces theorists to invent new, more concrete concepts (+5 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the dialectical method’s inner movement as exploiting the ambiguity between formal concept and concrete historical phenomenon.

Broader Connections

• Histories and causal narratives persist buried inside the language used to tell them #corroborates (0.95)
• Formal markers in pastiche texts appear as traces of older forms #exemplifies (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 230
• Historical change forces theorists to invent new, more concrete concepts #expands (0.75)
• Systematizing the unsystematic can force a historical way of thinking #expands (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 894