Below is a stunning lecture on the Russian Formalists and Trotsky, Literature and Revolution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11_oVlwfv2M&NR=1
The historical resolution to this conflict between modernity and revolution was in practice resolved in expressionism and not in the medium cool of formal abstractions---well you had to sneek them in sotto voce, under the wire. Media like film and jazz were much better suited for the job.
I confess, I was so trapped between the two, I learned them both and practiced them independently. I'll explain. The forms most identical with their content, so that form is only form and function, is mathematics (geometry) where there is a much less meaningful division. I suppose you could say that actual R is the content or field over which such and such a function is defined. But there seems to me something very artifical about this distinction. The algebra of operators level (or combinatorical topology) is just much more simple.
...sorry, that's the gin after the wine...
CG