This piece makes a comment on the usefulness of allegory as a mode of reading, by way of an examination of the representation of nationalism in Jameson and in Antonio Candido.

The piece is a review of Roberto Schwarz’s ‘Two Girls’ and Other Essays, edited by Francis Mulhern, and published by Verso. It gives the reader an overview of Roberto Schwarz’s intellectual project and formation. It comments on the essays and tries to substantiate the claim that Schwarz is ‘the finest dialectical critic since Adorno’. This is done mainly through a discussion of one the key categories that organise his thought, objective form, and also by a discussion of his practice of (...) spatial dialectics. (shrink)