Literary criticism’s relevance varies with the historical and ideological moment

Evidence

It is more honest and more dialectical to point out that the scope and relevance of criticism varies with the historical and ideological moment itself. Thus, it has been said that literary criticism was a privileged instrument in the struggle against nineteenth-century despotism (particularly in Czarist Russia), because it was the only way one could smuggle ideas and covert political commentary past the censor. This is now to be understood, not in an external, but in an inner and allegorical sense. The works of culture come to us as signs in an all-but-forgotten code, as symptoms of diseases no longer even recognized as such, as fragments of a totality we have long since lost the organs to see. In the older culture, the kinds of works which a Lukács called realistic were essentially those which carried their own interpretation built into them, which were at one and the same time fact and commentary on the fact. Now the two are once again sundered from each other, and the literary fact, like the other objects that make up our social reality, cries out for commentary, for interpretation, for decipherment, for diagnosis. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 790

Categorization

• XREF: Direct Lukács reference (the realism of self-interpreting works) and an anticipation of Jameson’s later ‘allegorical’ diagnosis of postmodernity. Inner-allegorical reading is a core method here. — connects to: Whether art reflects class passively or actively depends on the critic’s historical distance — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 739; Archetypal literary analysis can attend to historical and ideological circumstances; Literary theory’s rejection of nationalism mirrors poststructuralism’s rise — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 62 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: The ‘fragments of a totality we have long since lost the organs to see’ pairs interestingly with later Jameson on postmodern pastiche — worth chasing how this early formulation develops.

Broader Connections

• Archetypal literary analysis can attend to historical and ideological circumstances #exemplifies (0.85)
• Literary theory’s rejection of nationalism mirrors poststructuralism’s rise #exemplifies (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 62