Modernist interiority’s deep probing tends to dissolve the very subject it explores

Evidence

The paradox is that the deeper one probes beyond even fragmentary inner consciousness into the unconscious, the more one threatens to crack the subject open, and to confront the external forces which traverse and constitute the ego. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 108

Categorization

• XREF: Directly challenges Jameson’s characterization of Modernism as ‘impressionistic aesthetic’ versus expressionism — this is the reader’s core counterargument payload against Jameson. — connects to: Foucault traces the subversion of the Cartesian subject to Modernist literature and philosophy — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 287; Postmodern ‘waning of affect’ fragments the subject into depthless, spasmodic flux. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 154
• DEFINE: Establishes the dialectic of interiority and exteriority in Modernism — a key definitional frame for contesting Jameson’s postmodernism thesis.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that depth psychology’s logic is to disintegrate the subject and reveal it as constituted by external forces is a dense, counterintuitive inversion worth sitting with — Modernism’s inward turn undermines inwardness itself.
• SEED: Angle: ‘the inward turn that abolishes inwardness’ — a possible essay on why Modernism’s own logic precludes the clean interiority/exteriority divide Jameson’s periodization needs.

Broader Connections

• Foucault traces the subversion of the Cartesian subject to Modernist literature and philosophy #expands (0.82) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 287
• Postmodern ‘waning of affect’ fragments the subject into depthless, spasmodic flux. #complicates (0.75) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 154