Religion represents the superstructural projection of earlier modes of production

Evidence

Religion, to the henceforth “religiously unmusical” subjects of the market system, is the unity of older social life perceived from the outside: hence its structural affinity with the image as such and hallucination. Religion is the superstructural projec­ tion of a mode of production, the latter’s only surviving trace i:h the form of linguistic and visual artifacts, thought systems, myths and narratives, which look as though they had something to do with the forms in which our own consciousness is at home, and yet which remain rigorously closed it. Because we can no longer think the figures 242 P O L I T I C A L U N C O N S C I O U S of the sacred from within, we transform their external forms into aesthetic objects, but also monuments, pyramids, altars, presumed to have an inside, yet housing powers that will forever remain a mystery to us. — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 6154

Categorization

• DEFINE: Jameson’s definition of religion as an ideological trace of a superseded mode of production.
• XREF: Shades of Marx on ideology as inverted/phantom objectification, and links to Jameson’s later reading of postmodernism as cultural logic of late capital. — connects to: Industrial bread production refutes Christianity more than rationalist critique does.; Mode of production can assign dominance to politics or religion in different epochs; Modern classification of cultures secularized earlier religious structures (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Religion functions as a utopia reconciling real historical contradictions in mythological form #corroborates (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1440
• Mode of production can assign dominance to politics or religion in different epochs #qualifies (0.82)
• Rapid compressed industrialization produces religious resurgence #expands (0.80)
• Rapidly industrializing societies experience compressed cultural dislocation that fuels religious revival #expands (0.80) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 266
• Modern classification of cultures secularized earlier religious structures #qualifies (0.75)