Lukács’s career forms one continuous meditation on narrative
Evidence
But for Lukács, as we will see again and again in varying contexts, pure thought never has absolute value as a privileged means of access to reality. On the contrary, it is narration which is for him the absolute, and even the preliminary sketch of the stages of Greek art has as its premise the primacy of narration. Only the epic can be considered a purely narrative form: tragedy is drama—that is to say, it presents instants only, can no longer have recourse to the techniques of narrative continuity; and in philosophy, of course, the dominance of pure thought, far from being a virtue, is judged and evaluated precisely by its elimination of narration as a formal possibility. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 355 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Thus that ideal of the concrete which was inscribed in the Theory of the Novel as a will to reestablish epic narration remains intact in the later theory of realism, where it is shown, in the spirit of History and Class Consciousness, and indeed, like revolutionary praxis itself, to depend on those privileged historical moments in which access to society as a totality may once again somehow be reinvented. … Lukács’ work, however, provides a theoretical framework for such essentially empirical observations through its insistence on the relationship between narrative and totality: it thus confirms the opinion of no less an expert than Martin Heidegger himself, who saw in Marxism not merely a political or economic theory but above all an ontology and an original mode of recovering our relationship to being itself. But of such an opening onto being, now conceived as a social and historical substance, it is narration which is both the formal sign and the concrete expression. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 406 (
#exemplifies, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: For Lukács narration is the absolute, not pure thought — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 355; Narrative, for Lukács, is the formal sign of access to social totality. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 406
Broader Connections
- For Lukács narration is the absolute, not pure thought
#expands(0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 355 - Narrative, for Lukács, is the formal sign of access to social totality.
#exemplifies(0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 406