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The Direction of Literary Theory within the Horizon of Literary Activity

文学活动视域中的文论走向

Ma Dakang · School of Humanities, Wenzhou University

Jianghai Academic Journal, 2012, No. 2 · 《江海学刊》2012年第2期

Abstract

Literary activity, as a distinctive and extremely complex intentional activity, contains both the aesthetic relation and, at the same time, cognitive, value, moral, and bodily relations; it is the mutual transition and conversion of these various relations. The literary work, as the intentional object and fictional world generated by the interaction of reader and text, has both a side of textual determinacy and a side in which the intentional object and fictional world are indeterminate and unfinished. For this very reason, literary activity and the literary work simultaneously possess the duality of “autonomy” and “heteronomy.” Inquiries from different angles and levels yield sharply different conclusions, and this is precisely the reason for the multidimensionality of the development of literary theory and for the limitations that the various theories can hardly avoid. Only by taking “literary activity” rather than “literature” as the logical starting point can we possibly achieve a new theoretical synthesis.

Keywordsliterary activityintentionalityliterary fictionaesthetic autonomyideology

The fictional world of literature has two most fundamental properties. First, in this imagined fictional world, the human need no longer obey the laws of reality; the fictional world is "lawless," or rather, it obeys only the laws of life itself. Here, life can freely and spontaneously unfold of itself. Thus the human's existence also returns to life itself, returns to the natural state of life. Second, in the imagined fictional world, any real-world purpose has already lost its meaning. When the human, because real-world purposes have lost their meaning, gives up the pursuit of concrete purposes, the human's existence is transformed from the natural state of life into the state of freedom. This is precisely what we call "aesthetic reduction," "aesthetic liberation," and the "transcendence" of literature. (5)

Viewed from this angle, the work as intentional object, as fictional world, is once again free for the human; it has the nature of liberation and transcendence. Although the reader is situated within the grip of ideology and cannot shake off power relations—so that this situation limits the reader's free imagination and influences the construction of the intentional object; and although this intentional object, this imagined fictional world, is still ideological—yet so long as this intentional object, this imagined fictional world, is indeterminate and unfinished, it has already offered the human the possibility of liberation and transcendence. It is precisely indeterminacy and unfinishedness that let the reader rise above the given, manipulated state, let him move toward the realm of freedom, toward his own self-generation, and provide him the occasion to return to the free state of life.

Thus we cannot but see that literary reading is an extremely complex process. In the process of reading, the reader is in a tension constituted by two forces, swinging between the poles of being manipulated and counter-manipulating, bondage and freedom, repression and liberation. On one hand, the text, with its own strategies, entices him, beguiles him, even coerces him, intending to lure him into the trap, to press him into the position of the implied reader, to make him submit to the might of cultural power. (1) On the other hand, as intentional object, as imagined fictional world, literature, with its indeterminacy and unfinishedness, endows the reader with a free mode of existence, arouses the vigorous vitality of life, and resists the manipulation of the text through life's own creation. This is the dual nature of literary reading.

By the same token, the author's creation also has a dual nature. The language and narrative conventions the author uses, and even the author himself, are all ideological, all within the grip of cultural power; yet when he unfolds his imagination, constructs the intentional object, when he becomes intoxicated in the fictional world of his own creation, he again has an indeterminate, unfinished state of existence, to some degree breaking free from external bondage and control and returning toward the natural state and free state of life.

The key that distinguishes a literary text from other, non-literary texts lies in this: the literary text uniquely possesses a potential—when it is read, it constructs, together with the reader, an intentional object and generates an infinite literary fictional world; whereas an ordinary text always remains merely the text itself. For instance, legal documents or official papers strive to wring dry the metaphoricity of language, clear away the linguistic blanks that harbor multiple interpretive possibilities, and, with rigorous grammar and logic and a tight connection to the real context, bind the text up airtight, allowing it no escape from the real context and the reader not the slightest freedom; therefore such a text cannot be constructed into an independent fictional world.

Literature is not merely text; for it to become literature, it must be constructed into an intentional object and generated into an imagined fictional world. For the literary text and its language and narrative, we can interpret it using the methods of scientific analysis, and formalist literary theory, structuralist poetics, and narratology can accomplish much. If we place the literary text within the socio-historical context, we can also subject it to literary-sociological study and cultural study, exploring the production mechanism of the literary text, its relation to cultural tradition, to socio-cultural institutions, and to various fields and powers, and so on. (4) It is precisely from this angle that Bourdieu asserts there is nothing about literature that cannot be analyzed and rebukes such figures as Gadamer for propagating mysticism. But in fact, for literature to become literature, it must first be constructed into an intentional object, into an imagined fictional world; otherwise it cannot be felt and experienced by the human. That is to say, literature is in essence an intentional object, an imagined fictional world; it can exist only in the reader's concrete reading activity, generated in the unfolding of reading. From this angle, literature is always indeterminate and unfinished, and therefore also "uncertain." It can be probed only metaphysically, speculatively; thus phenomenological aesthetics, existential aesthetics, and other philosophical aesthetics find their own garden here. (3) As Wittgenstein said, literature is "unsayable"; the methods of scientific analysis can hardly find a place to display their prowess here, and Bourdieu's declaration only betrays his conceit and arbitrariness.

Looking one level deeper, when we focus on the more microscopic world—namely the "blanks" in literature—we again make a discovery: within literary blanks there is interwoven, at the same time, a rather complex movement. In Iser's The Act of Reading, "blank" refers to the empty places in the overall system of the text. (6) The literary text is full of blanks, and the reader, in reading, continually fills these blanks, thereby constructing the intentional object and the fictional world.

In appreciating a drama or a novel, the appreciator inevitably enters into dialogic exchange with the characters of the work, until, unconsciously, he gradually fuses with the characters, produces resonance, and realizes what Gadamer calls the "fusion of horizons." This is an imperceptible process, and also a process in which the appreciator is manipulated. Especially in drama, the narrator is absent, and the appreciator can only attend to the scene performed on the stage, completely losing consciousness, vigilance, and evaluation of the narrator; this makes it all the easier to be manipulated by that hidden narrator.

Brecht acutely realized that in the process of viewing drama, the relation and distance between appreciator and drama are changeable and controllable, and he skillfully used various techniques to regulate the relation and distance between the two, letting the appreciator constantly maintain his own reason and criticality, so as to realize the "educational" purpose of drama. Brecht's "epic theatre" consciously lets the "narrator" appear, inserting a narrator between the appreciator and the plot, opening up appreciative distance, and at the same time creating a "double vision" for dramatic viewing, pushing both the narrated situation (the dramatic scene) and the narrator himself into the foreground. This not only helps the appreciator cast off the unconscious state but also lets him occupy a detached position from which to unfold criticism. (8)

But he overlooked the important value of Aristotelian "immersion." Things are not entirely as Brecht said. It is precisely the viewer's being attracted by the drama, and then merging into the dramatic fictional situation, that, in the process of forgetting the self and becoming so immersed as to forget to return, finally lets him rise above the real self, realize his own liberation, and gain transcendence—in a certain sense becoming what Sartre calls "universal man." Brecht saw only the manipulated side of dramatic "resonance" and did not recognize the other side—the liberation and transcendence of the fictional world that differs from the real world. The fictional world of drama lets the viewer "personally experience" a "free" experience unattainable in real life, lets his soul shed its worldly garment; thus, when the viewer, regulated by Brecht's dramatic techniques, is "alienated" out of the fictional situation and returns to the ground of reality, he may view all that the dramatic work displays with a new eye and make a profound critique of it. Drama, like other literary genres, cannot do without the appreciator's re-creation; as long as you enter appreciation, you enter the fictional world of drama; Brecht's "alienation" technique merely pulls the appreciator back out from time to time. The whole process of viewing is, as Wang Guowei said, both "entering into it" and "standing outside it," continually going in and out between inner and outer, wandering among far and near distances and different relations, thereby producing a distinctive appreciative effect.

The reason literature and art differ from ordinary works and possess an immense cognitive-educational function lies not merely in providing vivid, infectious artistic images, nor in the feature of "instruction through delight," but most fundamentally in this: the indeterminacy and unfinishedness of the literary fictional world provide the human with a new mode of existence, let the human gain transcendence, and thereby unfold his own critique from a footing closer to life itself. This feature is precisely what Marcuse esteemed.

In Art and Revolution, Marcuse points out: "Whatever its reality and naturalness, art remains the 'Other' of reality and nature." Art exists in the "world of otherness" outside the real world; with the aid of this transformation, "art opens for the existing reality another dimension: the dimension of possible liberation." (9) Marcuse even denies expressing resistance to reality directly in art; he holds that such resistance is still internal to the existing order, bouncing about within the framework of the existing world yet unable to leap outside this framework. That is, the resister or critic is always situated within ideology and cannot make a truly powerful critique of the existing ideology. Only art, with its fictional "world of otherness," offers the human the possibility of liberation, offers another mode of existence, and cultivates a "new sensibility"; only this gives the human a new footing from which to critique ideology. The human possessing this "new sensibility" is the one who is truly revolutionary. Marcuse's exposition is full of romantic passion, yet he does indeed reveal the secret of the immense power of literature and art.

Richard Kearney says: "Narrative imagination enables us to empathize with the characters in a story—their every move, their sorrows and griefs—while at the same time endowing us with a certain aesthetic distance by which we witness the unfolding of events and thereby discern the 'hidden causes of things.' … It is precisely this strange fusion of empathy and detachment that produces within us a double vision, necessary for the journey of transcending the closed self toward other possibilities of being." (10) The change in the relation between human and work in literary activity, the change in the human's state of existence, and the fusion of "empathy" and "detachment" contain the magical power of literature and at the same time foreshadow the human's free future.

From the above analysis we can see that even the cognitive-educational function or ideological function of literature is not something scholars can obtain through word-by-word textual analysis, narrative analysis, linguistic analysis, or socio-cultural analysis; it likewise cannot do without the continually generated intentional object, cannot do without the indeterminate, unfinished, fleetingly changing literary fictional world. In the literary world, the relation between human and ideology is extremely complex: the human is both internal to ideology and at a distance from it. (2) For literature, literary sociology, cultural studies, or narratology and postmodern narratology must all maintain the necessary humility, knowing the limitations of their various methods. (7) When the reader is firmly led along by the narrative, he may unconsciously identify with the cultural assumptions and value standards that the narrative form possesses. (11) In fact, when scholars examine literature with the attitude of "study," literature has already changed its nature and flavor; it is no longer living literature but has become the dissected "corpse" of literature. In this respect, our ancients had more wisdom. For the literary text, they made meticulous, exhaustive inquiry through textual bibliography and exegesis; yet for literature itself they deeply knew it to be like "the moon in water," "the image in a mirror," "leaving no traces to seek," "impossible to pin down," and so they soberly kept silent, only cautiously offering hints and inspiration through "remarks on poetry," "remarks on lyrics," and commentary—hesitantly, holding back, speaking around the point.

Nevertheless, we may still try our best to interpret literary activity and the literary fictional world. In eras when ideological control was relatively severe, the creativity of both writer and reader was limited, their demand for independence and autonomy was limited, and the connection between the literary fictional world and ideology was relatively close. In order to realize the purpose of instilling things into the reader and to strengthen the persuasiveness of the work, the writer often strengthened narrative logicality; thus the coherence and completeness of the plot were emphasized, and narrative blanks were strictly controlled; the reader was firmly led by the nose by the plot and was coercively subjected to instillation. Although the literary fictional world has a liberating function, because this world is itself restricted, it is not yet sufficient to resist the coerciveness of narrative logic. Popular fiction is structurally similar to this. In eras when thought tends toward pluralism and ideological control is relatively loose, this coercive mode of narration only arouses the reader's resistance, even being disliked and rejected. Then, cutting or downplaying the plot, leaving more narrative blanks, adopting a character's limited point of view, continually changing the narrative angle, and so on—so as to relax the work's control over the reader, fully bring into play the reader's autonomous creation, and respect the reader's independent judgment—naturally become text strategies worth adopting. In this situation, the transcendence of the work's fictional world becomes all the more conspicuous. As for Bakhtin's "polyphonic novel," on its narrative plane it has already constituted mutually independent consciousnesses, deconstructing the unified rule of ideology and clearing away the various coercive things; here, the liberating function of the literary fictional world is brought into fuller play.

Viewed from another angle and level, the process of social modernization brought the development of the human's notion of subjectivity and at the same time caused the intensification of real-world alienation; the conflict between human and reality grew sharper, and this inevitably led to literature's fictionality being highly prized, prompting writers to intend, with the aid of the defamiliarization of literary form and content, to emphasize the distinctiveness of literature as distinct from reality. The literary fictional world was constructed into another "world of otherness," becoming the spiritual home in which the human can dwell freely, and the independence and aesthetic autonomy of literature thereby became the fundamental nature of literature. Romantic literature's hatred of real society, its longing for a lost poetic life and pristine nature, even for the world of heroic legend and the world of myth, and modernist literature's ardent pursuit of formal innovation, are precisely reflections of this situation. Since the postmodern era, with the high development of electronic media and reproduction technology, the boundary between fiction and non-fiction is dissolving, the aesthetic form of literature is increasingly disenchanted, the distinctiveness of literature is gradually weakening, the commonality between literature and other cultural phenomena and the connection between literature and reality are further highlighted, and the rule of commodity exchange controls literary production ever more severely—this is precisely the occasion for the appearance of the "cultural turn." Yet this does not mean that literature is henceforth destined to be only heteronomous; in fact, it likewise contains the feature of aesthetic autonomy, only that this feature can no longer occupy the central position. The relation between the two features of literary activity—autonomy and heteronomy—changes in different contexts; when one becomes the dominant feature, the other cannot but retreat to a secondary position.

This change has, in our country, a special background: at the beginning of the New Era, out of dislike for politics' brutal interference in literature, emphasizing the independence of literature and aesthetic autonomy naturally became the common demand of the literary-theory world; and when the cultural environment became relatively relaxed, especially with the powerful penetration of the commodity economy and the laws of commodity exchange into the field of culture and art, the cultural turn became inevitable.

Because the context of literary activity, as well as the stylistic register, narrative mode, and strategy of the literary work, regulate the relation between text and reader, influence the construction of the intentional object and the fictional world, and influence the transitions among the various intentional activities, therefore different socio-historical contexts or different writers and different works adopting different techniques will make the contest between the two forces of autonomy and heteronomy rise and fall, making the movement in the process of literary activity manifest in all sorts of states; this endows literature with a rich and diverse appearance and function and also determines the diversity, multidimensionality, and adaptability of methods of literary study.

On the above grounds, our literary theory should take "literary activity" as its logical starting point, viewing literature from the angle of "activity" rather than merely regarding literature as a fixed, rigidified object; it should regard literary activity as the sum of multiple intentional relations, regard literature as an intentional object and a fictional world, and view literary activity and literature with a flowing, changing, transitional, unfinished eye. In this way, we may be able to synthesize the fruits brought by both the aesthetic turn and the cultural turn.

Staged result of the National Social Science Fund of China project “A Study of the Question of Literary Fiction in the Horizon of the Modern and the Postmodern” (10BZW003).

Notes & References

Wayne C. Booth notes: “Every reading experience involves an implicit dialogue among author, narrator, other characters, and reader. Among these four, each, in its relation to each of the other three, varies along value, moral, cognitive, aesthetic, and even physical axes, ranging from identity to complete opposition.” (W. C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, trans. Hua Ming, Hu Suxiao, and Zhou Xian, Peking University Press, 1987, p. 175.) As regards the relation between reader and work, these distances—whether of value, moral, cognitive, aesthetic, or physical type—lie in different intentional relations.
Both the cognitive relation and the moral relation require the intervention of the human’s intellect. And once the intellect intervenes, a rift and distance are created between reader and work; the aesthetic realm of thing-self unity begins to dissolve, and the human returns to the ground of reality.
For the needs of exposition, this paper has not adopted Roman Ingarden’s “four strata” theory.
Edward W. Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic, trans. Li Zixiu, SDX Joint Publishing, 2009, p. 78.
The Soviet writer Lavrenyov’s novel The Forty-First depicts a story from the Russian Civil War: the Red Army markswoman Maryutka has killed forty enemies; while escorting a captured White Army lieutenant to headquarters, they meet a storm and drift to a deserted island. Though the two differ in standpoint and often quarrel, they fall in love. One day the lieutenant sees a White Army ship near the island and runs toward it, whereupon Maryutka raises her rifle and kills this “forty-first” enemy. On the battlefield the two are irreconcilable enemies obeying the kill-or-be-killed law of war; but in the distinctive context of the isolated island, identity no longer has meaning and the law of war loses its binding force—they are merely two people, a man and a woman, and falling in love becomes the most natural thing. When the enemy ship appears and the context changes, they again become enemies. The literary fictional world’s distinction from the real world likewise produces a kind of “island phenomenon,” suspending the laws of reality and letting the human’s existence return to life itself, to the natural state of life. Likewise, the masked ball and anonymous online chat—these virtual contexts all have a liberating function for the human.
Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, trans. Jin Yuanpu and Zhou Ning, China Social Sciences Press, 1991, p. 234.
Linda Hutcheon holds: “The reference of historiographic metafiction seems to be plural and quite arbitrary… one needs to consider at least five directions of reference: intratextual reference, self-reference, intertextual reference, textualized extratextual reference, and what we may call ‘hermeneutic’ reference.” (Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, trans. Li Yang and Li Feng, Nanjing University Press, 2009, p. 210.) This paper does not adopt Hutcheon’s formulation—not because there is a problem with her summary, but mainly for the distinctions required by this paper’s argument.
Bertolt Brecht, “On Experimental Theatre,” in Ding Yangzhong (trans.), Brecht on Theatre, China Drama Press, 1990, p. 60.
Herbert Marcuse, “Art and Revolution,” in The Aesthetic Dimension: Marcuse’s Aesthetic Writings, trans. Li Xiaobing, SDX Joint Publishing, 1989, pp. 158–159.
Richard Kearney, On Stories, trans. Wang Guangzhou, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2007, p. 25.
Wallace Martin says: “The forms of narrative are instances of certain general cultural assumptions and value standards—our views of the important, the ordinary, the fortunate, the tragic, good, and evil, and what we think drives movement from one state to another.” (Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative, trans. Wu Xiaoming, Peking University Press, 1990, p. 97.)

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