Narrative, for Lukács, is the formal sign of access to social totality.

Evidence

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

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects Lukács’s Theory of the Novel / History and Class Consciousness to Heidegger’s understanding of Marxism as ontology — central to the reader’s Frankfurt-School lineage project. — connects to: Lukács’s career forms one continuous meditation on narrative; Lukács located revolutionary agency in workers’ self-awareness as commodities — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 66; Literary forms depend on the social structure of the experience they arise from. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 697 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies that the category of totality mediates between empirical narrative analysis (Greimas, analytic philosophy of history) and ontology.

Broader Connections

• Narrative point of view is a historical symptom of middle-class social atomization #exemplifies (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 702
• Literary forms depend on the social structure of the experience they arise from. #corroborates (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 697
• Lukács located revolutionary agency in workers’ self-awareness as commodities #expands (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 66
• For Lukács, proletarian class consciousness would bring social development to self-consciousness #expands (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 315
• History is the ceaseless dissolution of reified social forms for Lukács #expands (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 320