Revolution’s power lies in temporal form rather than practical content

Evidence

What if, in other words, revolution were to be understood not so much in terms of content as in terms of form? What if the power of the revolutionary idea came fully as much from the new temporal reorganization of experience that it permits, as from any practical consequences which might flow from it as effects from a cause? — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 515

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Core Jamesonian move: transposing political content into formal/temporal terms foreshadows his whole dialectical project of reading ideology as form.
• XREF: Directly anticipates the ‘political unconscious’ and Jameson’s claim that form always carries ideological content. — connects to: The Ordinovista movement treated knowledge as revolutionary rather than as consent-building — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 579; Revolutions are defined by rapid drastic shifts in capacity or democracy — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 426; Revolutionary moments compress history so improvisation outweighs long-term structures — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 55