Historical-evolutionary criticism reorders present perception by politicizing thought about the past

Evidence

We may describe the rhetoric of the older Marxist criticism as genetic in its emphasis on historical evolution and on the emergence of capitalist institutions from the earlier feudal and tribal modes of social organization. … The ideological effect of such an approach, above and beyond the anthropological facts with which it is concerned on the literal level, is to reorder our perception of the historical present, to restructure our vision of modern society in such a way that we are able to distinguish the shape of an older collective artistic practice behind the individualism of the literary and artistic present. The notion of historical evolution is thus essentially a form or pretext for a new politization of our thinking, which gives us to understand what kinds of future social renewal and regeneration are available to us by allowing us a glimpse of the healthier, socially functional art of the past. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 23

Categorization

• XREF: This is Jameson’s early statement of a dialectical critical move the reader will track across the whole book — the turn from historical facts to their present-day ideological function, which recurs in his readings of Lukács, Adorno, and Benjamin later. — connects to: Disciplined history coexists with a combative political historical consciousness — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 202; Falsely analogizing the past leads people to misapply its lessons; Dismissing past thought as irrational reduces to smug presentism (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that evolutionary historiography’s real function is politizing the present — not narrating the past — is a dense methodological thesis the reader should sit with.

Broader Connections

• Dismissing past thought as irrational reduces to smug presentism #corroborates (0.80)
• Disciplined history coexists with a combative political historical consciousness #complicates (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 202
• Falsely analogizing the past leads people to misapply its lessons #qualifies (0.75)