Realism debates shift from content fidelity to formal concepts of totality.

Evidence

We will be less inclined to dwell on the inherent difficulties of the concept of realism, however, if we understand that it has for the most part involved a focus on the content of art rather than essentially formal phenomena. When the problem of realism is posed in a formal way, as we have seen in our discussion of Lukács, criteria of representationality and verisimilitude tend to be replaced by others of a wholly different kind, by such formal judgments as are implied in the concepts of totality and the concrete, and of narration versus description. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 744

Categorization

• XREF: This re-frames the realism debate in terms of totality and narration versus description, directly echoing Lukács and pointing toward Jameson’s later formalist turn in The Political Unconscious. — connects to: Authenticity judgments are shifting from origin to method of production — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 274; Invoking representational circumstances forces the realism question discourse theory evades — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 761
• DEFINE: Defines how Marxist critics should pose the realism problem formally rather than representationally.