The novel’s twin poles are ungeneralizable psychology or abstract thesis

Evidence

It is at this point, of course, that the novel, as a meaningful identification between the individual and social dimensions, begins to come apart at the seams as a form. Now that individual experience has ceased to coincide with social reality, the novel is menaced by twin contingencies. If it holds to the purely existential, to the truth of subjectivity, it risks turning into ungeneralizable psychological observation, with all the validity of mere case history. If, on the other hand, it attempts to master the objective structure of the social realm, it tends to be governed more and more by categories of abstract knowledge rather than concrete experience, and consequently to sink to the level of thesis and illustration, hypothesis and example. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 75

Categorization

• XREF: This dilemma directly anticipates Jameson’s own later doctrine in The Political Unconscious that literary criticism must pass through mediations between individual text and social totality — and echoes Lukács’s account of the novel as the genre of transcendental homelessness. — connects to: Literature’s grounding in individual experience makes collective understanding structurally impossible within the art form. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 350; Preconceived theory intervening in art degrades the novel to thesis illustration — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 392; The novel makes ambiguity of motive its core dramatic engine — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 276
• SEED: A usable frame for an essay: every great novelistic failure and success can be located on this two-axis chart of existential particularity versus abstract social totality.

Broader Connections

• Literature’s grounding in individual experience makes collective understanding structurally impossible within the art form. #exemplifies (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 350
• The novel makes ambiguity of motive its core dramatic engine #contradicts (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 276
• Preconceived theory intervening in art degrades the novel to thesis illustration #qualifies (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 392