Reading symbolism to the second power reveals the mythical surrender of autonomy

Evidence

It is the originality of Benjamin to have cut across the sterile opposition between the arbitrary interpretations of the symbol on the one hand, and the blank failure to see what it means on the other: Elective Affinities is to be read not as a novel by a symbolic writer, but as a novel about symbolism. If objects of a symbolic nature loom large in this work, it is not because they were chosen to underline the theme of adultery in some decorative manner, but rather because the real underlying subject is precisely the surrender to the power of symbols of people who have lost their autonomy as human beings. “When people sink to this level, even the life of apparently lifeless things grows strong. Gundolf quite rightly underlined the crucial role of objects in this story. Yet the intrusion of the thinglike into human life is precisely a criterion of the mythical universe.” We are required to read these symbolic objects to the second power: not so much directly to decipher in them a one-to-one meaning, as to sense that of which the very fact of symbolism is itself symptomatic. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 149

Categorization

• XREF: Jameson’s account of Benjamin’s two-level symbolic reading is a methodological template linking to Adorno’s negative dialectics and to Lukács’s reification — the ‘thinglike intrusion into human life’ is reification by another name. — connects to: Dialectical thinking is thought to the second power inscribed in the sentence itself — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 115; Some knowledge forms are intrinsically resistant to being wielded as power; A secret utopia within reason explains phases resisting demythologization — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1389 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces Benjamin’s key methodological move: reading texts ‘about symbolism’ rather than decoding symbols, plus the criterion of the mythical universe as thinglike intrusion into human life.

Broader Connections

• Dialectical thinking is thought to the second power inscribed in the sentence itself #corroborates (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 115
• A secret utopia within reason explains phases resisting demythologization #corroborates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1389
• Some knowledge forms are intrinsically resistant to being wielded as power #expands (0.72)
• Authorial intent and state authority share the same historically-produced metaphysics #expands (0.72) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 43