Literature’s grounding in individual experience makes collective understanding structurally impossible within the art form.

Evidence

Yet it is precisely this enlargement which is irreconcilable with the very form and structure of literature. The framework of the work of art is individual lived experience, and it is in terms of these limits that the outside world remains stubbornly alienated. When we pass from individual experience to that collective dimension, that sociological or historical focus in which human institutions slowly become transparent for us once again, we have entered the realm of disembodied abstract thought and have left the work of art behind us. And this life on two irreconcilable levels corresponds to a basic fault in the very structure of the modern world: what we can understand as abstract minds we are incapable of living directly in our individual lives and experiences. Our world, our works of art, are henceforth abstract. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 350

Categorization

• XREF: This is the classic Lukács/Jameson thesis that the novel is structurally moored to individual experience — the Frankfurt-School lineage argument about why totality cannot be rendered in the modern art work. Connects directly to Lukács’s Theory of the Novel, which Jameson brings in at paragraph 352. — connects to: The novel’s twin poles are ungeneralizable psychology or abstract thesis — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 75; Understanding others requires no shared experience — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 892; People inevitably perceive others through generalization because full individual knowledge is impossible — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 173
• DEFINE: Jameson here defines the structural limit of the literary form and the ‘two irreconcilable levels’ of modern existence — a load-bearing conceptual frame for the whole book.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the modern work of art is condemned to the individual-experience level while collective understanding only exists in abstract thought — ‘our works of art are henceforth abstract’ — is the dense, paradigm-setting thesis that orients the entire Jamesonian enterprise. This is the theoretical heart, worth sitting with.

Broader Connections

• Understanding others requires no shared experience #contradicts (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 892
• People inevitably perceive others through generalization because full individual knowledge is impossible #corroborates (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 173