Totalizing cultural analogy cannot account for genuine historical change

Evidence

Such a model has of course been used to support organic theories of society or culture, yet in the present context such ideological content may be seen simply as the framework or organizational pretext for the practice of analogy in general, or for the exercise of a sensibility of what have come to be called “homologies” between the various levels of reality. … In the long run the most telling objection to such global analogy remains its inability to project diachrony or to operate successfully in anything but a single instant or vertical cross section of time. Indeed, the culture pessimism of both Taine and Spengler ultimately stems from that optical illusion of continuity projected by the mere juxtaposition in sequence of the various sealed and unrejoinable instants: in such a model, we are tempted to say, time can never run anywhere but down. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 664

Categorization

• XREF: This is the methodological critique of Spenglerian morphology that Jameson inherits from Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness — totality without diachrony collapses into organic pessimism. — connects to: Art-historical period concepts fail because cultural change has no real beginnings or endings — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 662; Extreme postmodernism erases historical specificity into a millennia-old cultural constant — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 129; Linguistic form lags behind radical historical change (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Extreme postmodernism erases historical specificity into a millennia-old cultural constant #exemplifies (0.85) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 129
• Cultural analysis must trace routes of transformation rather than roots of continuity #expands (0.80)
• Cultures represent themselves as fixed but are always changed by history #corroborates (0.80)
• Linguistic form lags behind radical historical change #responds-to (0.75)