"To imagine that, sheltered from the omnipresence of history and the implacable influence of the social, there already exists a realm of freedom--whether it be that of the microscopic experience of words in a text or the ecstasies and intensities of the various private religions--is only to strengthen the grip of Necessity over all such blind zones in which the individual subject seeks refuge, in pursuit of a purely individual, a merely psychological, project of salvation. The only effective liberation from such constraint begins with the recognition that there is nothing that is not social and historical--indeed, that everything is "in the last analysis" political" (Jameson 20).
The first thing that jumps out to me is the juxtaposition between "words in a text" and the privacy of religion, because it kind of expands what were known as realms of ideological existence or experience. Or maybe it doesn't expand as much as it makes it clear that the idea of a "realm of freedom" in a vacuum presents itself polyvalent. Is this expressing that people believe there is this realm of freedom somewhere that can be located if we take away all the social coercion? That he uses blind zones is interesting because it recalls the notion of refusing to see what is present in order to attempt to escape its structural imposition. There is an illusion here that liberation comes from an individual project rather than an awareness that everything is social and historical and political.
