Whether art reflects class passively or actively depends on the critic’s historical distance

Evidence

Thus, to use the well-known terminology, the work of art or the cultural fact certainly reflects something, but what it reflects is not so much the class in itself as some autonomous cultural configuration, as rather the situation of that class, or, in short, class conflict. To put it this way, however, is to become aware that the model proposed allows for a fairly wide range of possibilities in the mode of reflection itself. Within the analyses of Jansenism described above, for instance, there would seem to be an essential difference between the way in which, for Goldmann, Jansenism as a philosophy “reflects” its tragic social situation and Bénichou’s concept of it as a deliberate, if desperate, ideological strategy. This disparity may be most usefully understood, it seems to me, not as an empirical difference in interpretation but as a shift or rearrangement within the model itself: as the substitution, for a relatively passive conception of the way in which “reflection” takes place, of a relatively active one where the ingenuity and creative power of the writer or ideologue are more strongly insisted on. Such a shift is essentially a function of historical distance itself, of the focus on historical events: from far away, cultural objects seem to reflect their situation or infrastructure in a relatively passive way, and this is neither true nor false but rather simply the formal implication of the medium itself. As we move closer and closer to such phenomena, on the other hand, the individual actors begin to emerge and we grow oppressively aware of the unique existential situations in which each of their acts springs into being; in such a focus, close up, classes are no longer even visible, and we find ourselves slowly being forced to the conclusion that if the notion of reflection is to mean anything at all, it must at least be reformulated in such a way that it is the individual writer who makes himself over into an instrument for such reflection. But, of course, this formulation also is simply a function of our distance from history, or rather, of our too great proximity to it. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 739

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The reformulation of ‘reflection’ as a function of observer distance, dissolving the Goldmann/Bénichou dispute, is a genuinely dense dialectical move.
• XREF: Ties to the ch.7 claim that extended sociological study converts causality into homology and parallelism, and is itself resolved here. — connects to: Realism began as description of existing works before becoming prescriptive dogma — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 386; Class in Marxism is a differential, relational concept rather than an isolated substance — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 738; Aesthetic comparisons across eras secretly measure the whole mode of production — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 659 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: The active/passive axis as homologous to form/content and to distance deserves further working out by the reader.

Broader Connections

• Literary criticism’s relevance varies with the historical and ideological moment #corroborates (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 790
• Aesthetic comparisons across eras secretly measure the whole mode of production #corroborates (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 659
• Genre judgments about class nature require historical specification #corroborates (0.75)