Literary content is already meaningful social life, not formless matter

Evidence

For the essential characteristic of literary raw material or latent content is precisely that it never really is initially formless, never (unlike the unshaped substances of the other arts) initially contingent, but is rather already meaningful from the outset, being neither more nor less than the very components of our concrete social life itself: words, thoughts, objects, desires, people, places, activities. The work of art does not confer meaning on these elements, but rather transforms their initial meanings into some new and heightened construction of meaning; for that very reason neither the creation nor the interpretation of the work can ever be an arbitrary process. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 768

Categorization

• XREF: Distinguishing Jameson’s dialectical form/content from the Aristotelian one directly echoes Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness treatment of form and content in totality. — connects to: Literary language’s mood can be carried over onto real, living things rather than arguments — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1840; Literature and culture are never politically innocent but inseparable from society — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 101; Society and literary culture can only be studied together
• QUESTION: If raw content is ‘already meaningful,’ does interpretation ever add genuinely new meaning, or only re-structure what is already there? Worth chasing in the next chapters.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘The work of art does not confer meaning — it transforms initial meaning’ could anchor a piece contrasting the genteel ‘art gives life meaning’ view against a materialist one.

Broader Connections

• Literature and culture are never politically innocent but inseparable from society #corroborates (0.85) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 101
• Society and literary culture can only be studied together #corroborates (0.85)
• Literary language’s mood can be carried over onto real, living things rather than arguments #expands (0.82) — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1840