Historical disadvantages can secretly become advantages and built-in strengths become limits

Evidence

THE BASIC story which the dialectic has to tell is no doubt that of the dialectical reversal, that paradoxical turning around of a phenomenon into its opposite of which the transformation of quantity into quality is only one of the better known manifestations. It can be described as a kind of leap-frogging affair in time, in which the drawbacks of a given historical situation turn out in reality to be its secret advantages, in which what looked like built-in superiorities suddenly prove to set the most ironclad limits on its future development. It is a matter, indeed, of the reversal of limits, of the transformation from negative to positive and from positive to negative; and is basically a diachronic process. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 639

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the dialectical reversal, the core dialectical figure Jameson will deploy throughout.
• XREF: Hegel’s and Marx’s quantity-into-quality and the general logic of negation; connects to Adorno’s negative dialectics. — connects to: Superior resources and skill can actually disadvantage a bargainer — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 61; Freedom can break the circle of imposed inferiority — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1979; Regime collapse preserves inherited advantages for some elites — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 1514 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Superior resources and skill can actually disadvantage a bargainer #exemplifies (0.85) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 61
• Freedom can break the circle of imposed inferiority #expands (0.70) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1979