Rousseau’s Social Contract performs what it has shown to be impossible

Evidence

To the extent that it never ceases to advocate the necessity for political legislation and to elaborate the principles on which such a legislation could be based, it resorts to the principles of authority that it undermines. We know this structure to be characteristic of what we have called allegories of unreadability. Such an allegory is metafigural: it is an allegory of a figure (for example, metaphor) which relapses into the figure it deconstructs. The Social Contract falls under this heading to the extent that it is indeed structured like an aporia: it persists in performing what it has shown to be impossible to do. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 537

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘allegory of unreadability’ as metafigural: an allegory that relapses into the figure it deconstructs, structured like an aporia.
• XREF: connects to: Rousseau’s general-will system inevitably yields totalitarianism — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2535
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Rousseau’s general-will system inevitably yields totalitarianism — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2535