Infantile wishes in Proust are the purest archetype of the Utopian impulse

Evidence

The storyline in Proust is precisely one of wishes; and indeed the force of the work lies in its experience of wishing in its most powerful and infantile form: as a longing for an object, a rendezvous, a dinner invitation, a trip to the theater, so total that for the moment it blots out the rest of the world, so absolute it has all the peremptory force of the desires of a child. And it is precisely such wishes which yield the purest archetype of the Utopian impulse. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 292

Categorization

• XREF: The link between infantile wishing and Utopian desire echoes Ernst Bloch’s Das Prinzip Hoffnung and anticipates Jameson’s later ‘regression’ thesis in The Political Unconscious. — connects to: Proust offers the ideal test case for a Utopian hermeneutic — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 291; Animals embody a Utopian unexchangeability that children instinctively love. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 253; Artistic categories for Bloch become modes of Utopian realization at the ontological level — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 290
• SEED: The idea that the trivial wish (a dinner invitation, a trip to the theater) — not the grand political vision — is the purest carrier of Utopian energy could anchor an essay on why small desires outlive ideologies.

Broader Connections

• Proust offers the ideal test case for a Utopian hermeneutic #corroborates (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 291
• Animals embody a Utopian unexchangeability that children instinctively love. #corroborates (0.72) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 253