Fredric Jameson, "The Antinomies of Realism"

Fredric Jameson’s The Antinomies of Realism is the third volume in his project, The Poetics of Social Forms, which attempts to outline his Marxist approach to different aesthetic forms. Preceded by Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) and The Modernist Papers (2007), this work shifts focus to the realist novel, particularly its rise in the 19th century. Jameson challenges the traditional view of realism as a straightforward, transparent mode of storytelling, where an omniscient narrator presents a stable, objective world. Instead, he argues that realism is a complex historical process, containing both positive and negative aspects, whose development inevitably leads to its own decay and dissolution.

Jameson begins by exploring the nature of realism, which he sees as shaped by two conflicting ways of organizing narrative time. The first is chronological time, which he refers to as the "narrative impulse" or récit (a French term for storytelling). The second is a kind of eternal present, which he describes as the realm of "affect"—the direct, sensory experience of emotions. This distinction resembles the contrast drawn by the Hungarian Marxist thinker Georg Lukács in his essay "Narrate or Describe?", which is an important reference point for Jameson throughout the book. Lukács believed that narrative storytelling, as seen in epic writers like Walter Scott, was superior to the descriptive naturalism of authors like Émile Zola. However, Jameson shifts Lukács’ argument, viewing both narration and description as equally important and as the opposing forces that shape realism.

After laying out these ideas in his introductory chapters, Jameson presents four case studies on major realist authors—Zola, Tolstoy, Benito Pérez Galdós, and George Eliot—through which he examines the concept of "affect" in their works.

In his study of Zola, Jameson locates affect in the sensory overload of Zola’s descriptive style. Zola often overwhelms the reader with so much detail that the narrative seems to collapse under its weight. This is most evident in The Belly of Paris, where the infamous "symphony of cheeses" is described in such exhaustive detail that it breaks free from the story's context and becomes a purely sensory experience. As the descriptions of different cheeses and their odors pile up, they lose any symbolic meaning tied to the characters or plot and instead become an autonomous series of sensory impressions. Jameson argues that this sensory excess is a form of affect that disrupts the flow of the narrative, turning it into an unfolding of sense-data.

When discussing Tolstoy, Jameson identifies affect through the way Tolstoy’s characters are constantly shifting between moods—moving from expectations to disappointments, from generosity to indifference. This variability of emotion is so prominent that Jameson suggests these mood changes are the true narrative of Tolstoy’s works. The characters themselves seem to be in a constant state of distraction, which affects the structure of the story. Tolstoy’s multitude of characters and their various experiences reflect what Jameson calls a “narcissism of the other,” where the author becomes temporarily fascinated by each character, only to lose interest and move on. This scattering of attention hints at a broader trend in realism: the fading importance of the central protagonist, which Jameson explores further in his analysis of Pérez Galdós.

In the works of Pérez Galdós, Jameson identifies a loss of protagonicity, where the minor characters and subplots take over the narrative, pushing the supposed protagonists into the background. In the novel Fortunata and Jacinta, for example, the "omniscient narrator" turns out to be one of the minor characters, a friend of the protagonist Juanito. This decentralization of the protagonist reflects a broader trend in realism, where the focus shifts from individual heroes to a wider cast of characters. Jameson relates this shift to Lukács’ observations about how earlier writers like Goethe and Balzac, who actively engaged with the social issues of their time, gave way to later naturalist writers like Zola and Flaubert, who distanced themselves from societal engagement.

Jameson’s chapter on George Eliot stands out as one of the most intricate analyses in the book. He gives a Nietzschean reading of Eliot’s moral universe, arguing that her work seeks to dismantle the rigid social codes of good and evil that dominated her time. Eliot’s metaphor of the "web" of life is interpreted by Jameson as a force for "dereification"—a process that breaks down the solid, fixed categories of social life, showing that individuals only have meaning through their relationships with others. In Eliot’s novels, there are no true villains, and evil is portrayed as a relative, non-existent concept. Jameson uses Eliot’s character Tito from Romola to demonstrate how Eliot’s writing challenges the traditional binary of good and evil, and he draws on her knowledge of German philosophy to highlight the Hegelian elements in her work.

Following these case studies, Jameson turns to the question of how realism as a genre begins to unravel. He examines how realist narrative structures, such as the Bildungsroman (novel of personal development), the historical novel, and the novel of adultery, contain within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. Realism, with its emphasis on referentiality and representation, creates rigid narrative forms that eventually break down under the pressure of the very reality they seek to portray. This is especially evident in Jameson’s analysis of naturalism, where the genre’s focus on the individual’s decline and fall mirrors bourgeois fears of working-class revolt and social disorder. Jameson argues that naturalism’s conservatism lies in its inability to recognize the possibility of deep social change, instead portraying the individual’s fate as inevitable and unchangeable.

In the later chapters of the book, Jameson explores the use of pronouns and the emergence of what he calls the "swollen third person," a narrative perspective that shifts between different characters and viewpoints. He also looks at the work of Alexander Kluge, whose journalistic style of writing creates a form of realism without affect, where the boundary between fiction and non-fiction has disappeared, and fiction itself no longer functions as a meaningful category.

The second part of The Antinomies of Realism consists of three essays that explore the persistence of realist forms. In the first essay, Jameson examines the concept of providence in realist novels. He argues that providence represents a paradox: while characters believe they have freedom of action, their decisions are ultimately pre-determined by external forces. Jameson links this idea to Lukács’ notion of the synthesis between the individual and the collective, as seen in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister. Jameson also uses Eliot’s "web" metaphor to illustrate how realist novels create a collective destiny for their characters, reinforcing the conservative, anti-political nature of the genre.

In the second essay, Jameson turns to the representation of war in realist fiction, noting how war is often portrayed as both a collective event and a subjective experience of confusion and chaos. In the third essay, he discusses the impossibility of the historical novel, arguing that realism’s focus on individual subjectivity makes it difficult to capture the true scope of historical events.

Throughout The Antinomies of Realism, Jameson frequently uses classical music as a metaphor for his literary analysis. He compares Zola’s sensory autonomy to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Tolstoy’s distracted characters to Mahler’s symphonies, and the loss of protagonicity in realist novels to the death of gods and heroes in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. These musical references reinforce Jameson’s argument that realism was the dominant cultural form of 19th-century capitalism, shaping not only literature but also other forms of art and expression.