Groups form as a reaction against serial dispersal to recover autonomy.

Evidence

Given the impotence of individuals in the serial situation, the motivation behind the formation of genuine groups is easily understood as a way of regaining autonomy, of reacting against dispersal through a new type of unity and solidarity. The group thus always comes into being on the ruins of seriality, and history can be seen alternatively as either a perpetual oscillation between moments of genuine group existence and long periods of serial dispersal, or, at any given moment, as a complicated coexistence of groups at various stages of their development and masses of serial individuals surrounding them. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 500

Categorization

• XREF: The oscillation between group fusion and serial dispersal is the Sartrean version of class formation and fragmentation that Jameson later maps onto capitalist versus revolutionary historical phases — connects to Lukács on class consciousness. — connects to: Groups prefer to subordinate to strangers or outsiders — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 5612; Physical separation from a group precedes rather than follows ideological change — Amy Fisher-Smith, Charles R. Sullivan, John D. Macready, and Geoffrey Manzi, Identity Reconfiguration and the Core…, 414
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Groups prefer to subordinate to strangers or outsiders — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 5612; Physical separation from a group precedes rather than follows ideological change — Amy Fisher-Smith, Charles R. Sullivan, John D. Macready, and Geoffrey Manzi, Identity Reconfiguration and the Core…, 414