The work’s autonomy is itself a dialectical, historically variable phenomenon

Evidence

Rather, it seems to me that the initial problem which a dialectical theory of literature has to face is that of the unity of the literary work itself, its existence as a complete thing, as an autonomous whole, which, indeed, resists assimilation to the totality of the historical here and now (in what sense can Ulysses be said to be part of the events which took place in 1922?) just as stubbornly as it refuses dissolution in some supraindividual history of forms. And no doubt our first loyalty as critics is to the wholeness of the work itself, provided it is realized that that autonomy is itself a dialectical phenomenon. For the Russian Formalists showed us that every work of art is perceived against a generic background (which may itself, to be sure, alter from moment to moment and generation to generation): it is read as work in a given form, or against a given form, in a context in which the various genres are felt to coexist at fixed distances from each other in relatively systematic complexes which can themselves form the object of study in their historical coexistence or succession. It is clear, therefore, that even the self-sufficiency of the work of art varies, depending on whether it deliberately invites comparison with the whole of what already exists in the form, as with the Renaissance sonnet or the Japanese haiku, or, like Ulysses and The Divine Comedy, aims at replacing all of culture by summing it up in a single book of the world, where, however, the idea of the Book remains itself a fact of culture and an element in the generic background against which the work is perceived. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 646

Categorization

• XREF: This is Jameson staging the dialectic of work-autonomy vs. history — the formalist generic-background thesis set against historical totality. Ties to his methodological chapter on Form and Content; also evokes Sartre’s notion of the work’s totalization. Contradicts/overrides a formalist reading of autonomy as ahistorical. — connects to: Dialectical criticism lets each work dictate its own interpretive categories — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 678; Autofiction’s ‘auto’ fixation stems from the industrial restructuring of cultural labor — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 122; Dialectical thinking generates its categories from the content’s own inner logic. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 681 (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that ‘the Book remains itself a fact of culture and an element in the generic background’ is a compact dialectical insight — even the totalizing work that aims to replace all of culture is itself caught within generic background, so totality and form condition each other.

Broader Connections

• Autonomous art is inherently dialectical, blending magic with freedom rather than being reactionary #expands (0.90) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 260
• Dialectical thinking generates its categories from the content’s own inner logic. #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 681
• Dialectical criticism lets each work dictate its own interpretive categories #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 678
• Autofiction’s ‘auto’ fixation stems from the industrial restructuring of cultural labor #expands (0.72) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 122