Knowing a historical transition differs vitally from living through it

Evidence

Corresponding to these two structural irregularities, the attacks on the Hegelian system have tended to fall into two distinct groups. On the one hand, the existential objection to Hegel has always been that there is a vital difference between the knowing of a transition between two moments and the living of it: the salvation of the slave may lie in a stoicism which will result in a whole new inner life for humanity, but generations of individual slaves must die before the qualitatively new moment is achieved. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 104

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The gap between knowing and living a transition — the existential objection to Hegel — is a profound point: consciousness of emancipation is not the same as its achieved reality, and costs lives in between. Jameson is posing the Sartrean/existentialist critique against the totalizing systemic view.
• XREF: This is precisely the Sartrean existentialist critique of Lukács’s totality that Jameson stages throughout — existential vs. dialectical method. Connects to Adorno’s critique that history swallows the suffering individual. — connects to: People’s lived sense of their era may be wholly unrelated to its structural reality — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 615; Historic transformations are set in motion by people unaware of them — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 306; A fully conscious model of historical action fails to capture history’s impersonality — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 455 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• People’s lived sense of their era may be wholly unrelated to its structural reality #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 615
• Historic transformations are set in motion by people unaware of them #expands (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 306
• A fully conscious model of historical action fails to capture history’s impersonality #expands (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 455