Realism means representing the deathly underside of market desire, not pastoral escape

Evidence

If “realism” has any kind of meaning, then, it means that: the Hurstwood parts of Sister Carrie, the representation of the deathly Other of the market and desire, a “literature only of exhausted desire and economic failure” (GS46). The “realisms” -like that of poor old Howells — that evoke some pastoral withdrawal from the market into some other (imaginary) inner-worldly space are all weak and sentimental fantasies, though The House of the Seven Gables is signally excepted from this judgment because it explicitly marks itself as a nonrealism and confronts the contradiction head-on in its very form. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 456

Categorization

• DEFINE: Jameson here redefines ‘realism’ as the honest registration of the market’s deathly Other, contrasting it with Howellsian pastoral withdrawal fantasies.
• XREF: connects to: Realism is a form of paranoia that dehumanizes both nature and peoples — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 153