György C. Kálmán

The “Other” in/of Literary History

(Sofia, Bulgaria, 2002)

 

There are several dubious categories in the title of this paper. I have to confess, that in what follows, I will use the term “other” in a pretty loose way, meaning something more or less fundamentally different from the perceiving self; something which implies a sort of obstacle for the perception, something resisting to a smooth way of appropriation. In a general sense, “other” is whatever is not us; it is an object vis-à-vis to the perceiving subject. All these loose formulations deserve quite a lot of qualifications, and I hope in the end of my paper at least some aspects of “otherness” will be somewhat clearer. Literary history is, again, a rather fuzzy expression. In what follows, I will reflect on some of its possible uses and meanings.

In this paper, I could address two levels (or rather two interpretations) of otherness, both in connection of literary history. What I will in fact focus upon is the "other" as the literary wok itself, the literary historical process, the proper subject of literary history as a sort of the "other", as something strange to be interpreted. The other issue of otherness could be the "other" as represented in literary works and as posing a task of interpretation for the literary historian. Although I will drop this latter problem, let me note, in parentheses, some interesting issues to be treated in this connection. The “other” is an ancient topos, especially, of course, in narrative: the fool or the wise old man, the prophet or the fortune teller, the magician or the witch, the wandering Jew or the Gipsy - all these figures appear in a narrative (in a tale or in a novel) as turning points: although they are marginal (usually not the leading figures of the narrative, but episode characters), they play a decisive role in the line of the story. The archetypical “other” within the narrative is the stranger, and she or he is a stranger because there is something secret in her/his history: there is one (or there are several) obscure point in their life, something unexplained and perhaps unexplainable. Their very function in the narrative is that they cannot be fully understood, that they remain strange. They do not completely fit into our world; they are beyond or beneath or besides the norms of ordinary human life.

There is something similar to this function of the “other” in confronting literary work itself. So let us start with the more general problem, that of facing literature as the other. Literature here means several things: the individual literary work, our vision of literary history (whatever it is), intertextual clusters of literary texts, and, of course, our reading something as literature. Literature is always something other inasmuch as it is not our own text: it is something clashing with our familiar tacit knowledge, with our horizon of expectations, it is in conflict with whatever we know of our own world. It represents a different seeing of the world, an unexpected grammatical form, something that does not fit. It is something inappropriate, surprising, shocking. (It is the case even if the text is fairly simple, if on the surface there is nothing special, if it is decidedly everyday, ordinary, factual - then the otherness lies in the fact that in the process of communication it is presented as something literary, as if it pointed towards something transcending the phenomenon of the text.)

Giving account of literary history is also always facing something other: the history of literature is clearly not our history - neither our personal nor our family nor our group history. We have to understand another age, the thinking, categories, logic of the people of another age - moreover, since literary history is always a history of its reception, the task is to understand the readers of perhaps several ages. We have to face quite a number of other minds, and not only that of the author (which in itself would mean quite a lot of headache). Similarly, interpreting the individual work of art is clearly an encounter with the other, during which we construct a voice, and try to understand what it tells us, and why.

Generally speaking, whenever we experience the other our strategy of understanding it will not rely merely on the phenomenon. We try to understand its history; we need a narrative behind it. It can be supposed that whenever we face a text, in understanding and interpreting it, the moment of narrative cannot be excluded. Narrative on several levels: we forge, we construct a narrative of the author; a narrative of the series of texts the text in question will fit (that is, a narrative where the leading figure will be the text in question); a reconstruction of a narrative inherent in the text, that is, the narrative told or referred to by the text; and so on. Even if the reader does her best to concentrate on "the text itself", she cannot help placing it in a specific history.

This is the case even if the text is definitely strange, in cases of extreme otherness. Ignoring any sort of information about the author will not exclude suppositions of her or his age, gender, nationality, historical, social and geographical context, and so on. The reader will - perhaps tacitly - include in her interpretation presuppositions of these sorts. Moreover, she will have a narrative governing her interpretation as far as the historical position of the text is concerned. And, of course, the world represented by the work is reconstructed as part of a narrative pattern. The reader will - perhaps tacitly - include in her interpretation presuppositions of these sorts. Our interpretations are thus penetrated with narratives.

Shortly, then, even the naïve reader will face the "new" text, the text different of her "own", personal texts, the "other" text in the framework of history or narrative: she will place some texts into the position of "old" and respectable pieces of literary history, others as unreadable (because they are too old or too new), and since in her socialization process she had mastered some cornerstones of the canon, she will try to construct a story of the text she encounters.

Now let us turn to the professional interpreter of literature. She will, quite consciously and on theoretical grounds, either ignore the narrative behind the text, or sink into it; she will avoid telling a story, or accept that this is the only way to give account of her understanding of the given "other". Is there a proper, adequate, "good" or appropriate way of facing the other? If so, is it centered around narrative, or is it a trial to get rid of it? And what are the ways of handling narratives in either case?

As a starting point, let us go back to the early seventies. Hans-Robert Jauss, on the first pages of his seminal "Literary History as a Provocation of Literary Studies", has two interesting remarks. The first is a reference to Wellek's and Warren's The Theory of Literature, the passage where the authors condemn histories of civilization (or histories of ideas) as well as collections of critical essays, claiming that the former is not the history of art whereas the latter is not a history of any art. The other remark is a critical assessment of the old, traditional chronology, where Jauss quotes, with great sympathy, Georg Gottfried Gervinus, who as early as in the eighteen-thirties told that these discussions of literary history cannot be regarded as (hi)stories, hardly even sketches of (hi)stories.

Jauss' standpoint is clear: however he criticises and however radically he revises literary history writing, he is for a history of literature; one of the real problems of literary history, for him, throughout very different schools and trends and literary historians, is that it is not history enough: that is, following Gervinus, what he is looking for is the real story, and not just sketches of story. And, on the other hand, with his agreement with Wellek and Warren, he presupposes a clear and long lasting (if not perpetual) concept of both literature (or art) and history. This obviously contradicts to his own vision of what literary studies should be. In other words, a firm foundation is invoked, an idea of literature and history, on which literary history can be based. Thus, instead of a  critique of the narrative and of the allegedly eternal bases it is built upon, within the framework of the very influential and fruitful aesthetics of reception, Jauss involuntarily reproduces some old concepts. One can then conclude that traditional writing of literary history is not at all excluded from this framework, it is allowed or even encouraged to tell a round and "classical" story of what is known to be literature.

Second, and even more important point is that Jauss takes story or history as something being by its inherent properties what it is - that is, he seems to overlook the fact that even if some accounts seem to be rudimentary, and even if they do not deserve the honorific term "story" (or the even more honorific "history"), they function as stories, they are used this way, their position in the praxis is that of a story. They are tools used to give account of the "other". Genealogies cannot be said to have any plot or event, still, they serve as parts of the narrative of the past. So what Gervinus and, following him, Jauss has to say about "sketches of history" do not really count once we really come to their operation.

Another case for narration as a proper form of literary history is of course the recent tradition from Collingwood through Hayden White to the present day, which proposes that a self-conscious and controlled involvement in telling the story is both indispensable and useful part of history writing. We all know the lesson of these debates, so I will not go into details. Just let me also mention New Historicism which has an aim to modify the narrative structure so that it could include the contingent, the marginal, the anecdotic. And let me add David Carr's argument for narrative: for Carr, narrative is always already there in our perception of the world; causal structures, chronology, characters will preform our sensation. Even if it is not an anthropological given, it must be with us inevitably from a very early period of socialization. We cannot do without history, Carr suggest.

Translating all these considerations into the problem of understanding the other, we could speculate that even perhaps narrativization is not anthropologically wired within our human system, in confronting with the “other” we always make use of it anyway. We try to solve, to dissolve, to smooth away “otherness” by narrativizing it; we try to understand the “otherness” of literature (and the “otherness” of literary history) by forging any sort of narrative for it.

However, there are arguments against the narrative nature of our understanding the other, and there are three cases against narrative forms of literary history writing – or there may be more but here I mention three of them. First, the ideological nature of narration; second, the anthropomorphic metaphors penetrating every inch of this narration; and third, they are by nature exclusive, closed, they do not allow the contingent, the peripheral, the ephemeral to get into the story. These three may overlap.

As to the ideologically loaded nature of the narrative, just let me remind you that narratives of the other will imply a value sequence, a progress or a climax, and represent heroes (more likely than heroines) who achieve or miss their goals. Literary histories, in particular, are formed in order to satisfy certain ideological needs of those maintaining the canon (and the whole system of literature): they may serve as a story of where we came from, where we are going to, who we are (that is, national identity); or it may propose role models, etc. In most cases it is clear that the subject behind these stories is an European male, with a clear national identity. It is not evident just because the thematic nature of the texts and characters included but also as regards the value preferences: an agonistic, fighting hero is narrated about, going out to the dangerous world, leaving his family behind, and manifesting all the masculine virtues. Counter-narratives may satisfy the needs of the society, non-narratives possibly will not. By the ideology of the narrative, an identification with the other becomes possible: it is not only ours, but we are it, in a sense: we have the illusion that we can bridge the difference.

As to the anthropomorphic metaphors, here I would like to just mention the metaphors of seeing and memory. The presupposition laying behind traditional literary histories is a sort of personification. Literary historical “facts” are things remembered of the post of mankind or of the nation, whereas forgotten events and persons reflect the working of the collective memory (or forgetfulness). As if memory on the areal, national, international, human level worked the same way as it does in the individual human level. Again, the remembering and forgetting subject posited behind this conception is a self-sufficient, coherent, even self-conscious one, and he (most probably he) does not have any lapses, momentary losses of memory or contingent associations. Seeing, again, implies a fixed focus, negligible peripheral movements, foreground and background, and, of course, a given point of view, an aspect. In writing literary history as understanding the “other”, a very human way of seeing is presupposed, as if  it were universal and original (something behind which one cannot possibly go back). These anthropomorphic traits, seeing and remembering, are very forceful metaphors which shape our concept of writing (or reflecting on) literary history. However, just because the idea of the subject inherent in them, they are rather suspicious. Just as in the case of the ideological nature of the narrative, there may be a need to replace them or to get rid of them. In this case the other is represented as something factual and present (even if present only in the past): something given which can be seen or remembered to; and not only it is an object, but we who wish to understand the other are personified: quite ordinary human actions (seeing and remembering) are attributed to the far more complex functioning of  understanding it. Just as in case of the ideological nature of narrativization, this may lead to a simplification to a smoothing away of the obstacles and difficulties of understanding the other.

And third, another case against narratives of the other is that they are closed, they exclude a number of interesting alternatives, that due to their chronological and causal order they will not allow certain phenomena surface or intrude, or even they will sanction them. Just think of the sad fate of the Avantgarde in certain East Europan countries; they did not fit into the round, closed, teleological narrative, into the story what is told of the “other” –it was an other of the other. The advent of Post-Colonialist criticism is another point in case,for it shows that there are quite a number of texts, events, even narratives suppressed in or by a master narrative. It is, then, a logical step to oppose or subvert these powerful narratives in order to open them, in order to give place for all sorts of forgotten, ignored or hitherto unperceived texts. But focusing on these, hitherto excluded narratives of the “others” of literary history, on the alternative faces of this other, may have the effect of excluding, again, other others.

 

So there are some arguments against the narrative conceptions of literary history writing, and there are some alternatives of understanding literary history or literary works as something “other” in respect to our own self or our own world. But are there really any ways out? What could be the “simple ways” of pursuing alternative literary histories of literature?

There are no simple ways, as we all know. The starting point of the provocation of literary history is that literary history is a form of reification, an objectivation of ideology, and real literary studies should avoid this dangerous area. It is a function quite different from and even parasitic upon literary studies proper.

Although we know very well that all these horrible things literary history is accused for are the function of its use, it is not the narrative to be blamed for being ideological, but ideology is produced through it, there is a desire to challenge the narrative based concepts. Perhaps it is not the narrative which could be used as the best instrument for understanding the other. Theoretical possibilities are to displace the categories of “character”, “event”, “chronological order”, “setting”, “causal relations”, etc. Or, if we take the texts of the past as manifesting the language of the other, to replace the “grammatical categories” of that language, to construe a break, a discontinuity between our own language and the language of “the other”. That is, it may be possible to write literary history without important elements of narration (or important elements of “grammar”).

Perhaps we can make it without characters, if by characters we mean authors in the biographical sense, but it is more difficult if the characters of the story are the texts. Still, literary history without names is an old and interesting topic. Also history of “forms” (genres, figures, structures etc.) would be a sort of realization of this project. To have a history without names may count a lot. Characters or heroes of literary histories are regularly not only active in the field of literature, but they are also represented as heroes of social, intellectual, family life, heroes of politics and ethics. We may hope that we can concentrate on their proper function.

As to events, it is far more complicated. But remember Foucault in his The Order of Things: in each section, there is no beginning, no end; it is not structured as having a beginning, a middle and a conclusion. Foucault tries to eliminate the causal steps of leading from one episteme to the other; he represents, instead, ruptures; and the elements of his structure – either we take them as events or characters – tend to me on the same level, rather than subordinated to one another. Foucault’s description is far more structural than narrative it is historical, but it tries to escape the causality as well as essential events or figures. He leaves some room, then, for the contingent. Sade, for instance, appears several times (usually in the end of the chapters) as a character unexpected, untypical, transgressing epistemes. As to events, a story, we are told by narratology, must have one event minimum. If it has more, they are coordinated or subordinated one way or another. Still, we may choose, instead of trying to eliminate events, to multiply them, to make a jungle or a risomatic complex structure of events, thus making room, again, for the contingent, for the minor or unexpected. This is one of the strategies of New Historicism.

Of course, Foucault did not abandon chronological order (though within the epistemes it does not count too much – and note that his use of data [years] is almost parodic). He refuses to fix the threshold of the episteme, but sometimes he insists on quite unexpected data of publication of some books, invention of something etc. Anyway, for the anachrony Foucault is perhaps the best example.

To provoke chronological order, there are basically two ways. One is to proceed in a capricious way, or starting from the present and going back, or just by some sort of non-temporal logic, or simply by association. These methods are not necessarily bad, and they may have very good educational purposes, as well as they may discover hidden similarities or differences. Another way is not to proceed at all – to stop. We hope to avoid chronology if we just stick to a synchronic investigation.

A promising example of this synchronic work is that of Bourdieu. Although I have some reservations – I think that gathering data of all sorts concerning the literary field of an age is far too close to the Classical Positivism – it is a very interesting structural history (instead of being narrative). When Bourdieu sets out to map the context of Flaubert’s work, it is a sort of inquiry into the episteme of that age. No doubt, one must have the historical training and even the historical perspective to do this – but the undesirable side-effects of the narrative are over, we hope. Bourdieu’s work is something like reconstructing the grammar of the other, thus trying to understand the text of the other – to re-invent the language on which these texts have been written.

But point of view is something that we cannot possibly do without. Only Positivists believed we could. But what we can do is to multiply the focuses, standpoints, angles and voices, so that they work, as it were, simultaneously, and without hoping that we can get to the totality, we can freely alternate among the aspects. This is something shared by cultural criticism, Feminism and Post-Colonialism. This could also be a reaction to the worries that by understanding the other the subject/object confrontation is reproduced: as if the both the other, the object, and the “we”, observers, subject, remained the same, fixed, ahistorical, unified, single and unmovable.

 

But telling stories of literature is clearly not an ahistorical phenomenon. Historically speaking, writing literary history is a product of a specific period (an episteme, if you like). Literary history is as old as the reflection on literary history; it is far too obvious that literary history as an institution is itself a manifestation of reflecting literature as something having a history. But why does literature as an institution (probably a product of the last five centuries) need a history at all? Is it not a legitimization via its genealogy? A demonstration of its sources, its origins, its noble heritage?

The problem of the narration of the history of literature is its ideological nature. A narration of this history will necessarily ignore several respects and set them aside as contingent, irrelevant, obscure episodes. It will sketch a line of development, a vision of origin and telos. Moreover, it is very often attached to practical social functions: they have a didactic character, strengthening the national identity and self-esteem, either through education or in other sites of social life. It is not an exclusive characteristic of developing and nationalistic countries: a strong knowledge and awareness of the origins, of the historical path and the possible future of the culture is part and parcel of every national culture.

Thus, the provocation of this tradition of literary history writing has been signaled, on the one hand, by confining traditional histories within the walls of didaxis (preserving them as useful but not too interesting remnants of the past). Literary history is just a form of reification of the ideology, real literary studies should avoid this dangerous area. It is a function quite different from, and even parasitic upon, literary studies proper.

As I have just said, literary history is as old as the reflection on literary history, and literature is as old as reflection on literature; it is an other ever since it has been acknowledged to be literature, something different. It is far too obvious that literary history as an institution is itself a manifestation of reflecting on this other; but maybe telling narratives is not the only way of understanding it, although it may be unavoidable. We can, for instance, proliferate, multiply and dive deep in narratives, thus relativizing and even ironizing them. There may be ways of concentrating on the legends, tales, cultic series and anecdotes of some figures of literary history; collecting all the unreliable data, rumors, fairy tales and literary historical constructs attached to the work or the author (to the name of the author) and instead of desperately looking for the truth elements or trying to discredit the apparently legendary and anecdotal stories, we may concentrate on the working of this whole complex. Or another way to understand the other may be cult studies, which, similarly, do not at all reject the network of stories and anecdotes woven around major figures and their work; it tries, instead, examine how this network is inherited and used, recycled and modified. The stories, including the inherent subjects telling them, will shed light on the literary history of reception, on the history of literary conventions, and, ultimately, on the subject appropriating the other. The teaching is that understanding the other is always a question posed for the understanding subjects, it is about the subject’s position, and not merely a simple appropriation.

We may be interested in specific poetic patterns no matter in what age or geographical region they appeared, giving the impression that the subject of the inquiry is not certain authors or ages and perhaps not even texts, but forms; a realization of the old Russian Formalist claim for a historical poetics. There was a huge project in Hungary to write a new history of Hungarian literature, but in a way that is far more resembling to linked websites than history. Historical figures should appear in the chapters as myths or legends or archetypes of their age: beyond factualism or the pursue of historical truth, these portraits would consist of the stories of these authors as told by tradition. On the other hand, texts would relate each other freely and perhaps even capriciously: constraints of period, school or influence relations do not count at all, concepts of progress or development are eliminated. There were several preliminary works made for this big project, but it did not get too far. The reasons are partly organizational and financial, but it can be added that the rejection of the narrative may have been one of the obstacles. Those in charge of money for human sciences may encourage a new, alternative history of literature, but certainly a history; even if the heroes will not be the same, and the plot will be either replaced or displaced, what is needed is something which can be told, which gives a coherent story of the national identity.

The most promising is the subversion of the fixed canonical order of what is in the focus and what is suppressed (in the margin or the background). This operation (which can be traced back as far as the concept of canon of the Russian Formalists) allows an insight into the nature of what is taken to be "normal" and "transparent" - in the nature of the subject(ivity) present in literary history writing (although childishly pretending not to be there). No wonder that challenging traditional ways of literary history writing (as of the sixties of the last century) was paralleled not only by de- and re-forming narrative structures but also an interest in canonicity.

So what can we do if we are pressed by an interest in subverting time structure, in a revision of the role of main characters or heroes (histories without names), in an emancipation of the anecdote? The concepts of “contingent” and “essential” surely have to be reassessed, the anthropomorphical metaphors of “memory”, “happening” (and narrating), or “seeing” must be reflected upon.

As to memory, the presupposition laying behind traditional [literary] histories is a sort of personification: literary historical “facts” are things remembered of the past of mankind, whereas forgotten events and persons reflect the working of the collective memory. As if memory on the aerial, national, international, human level worked the same way as it does in the individual human. (One may also speculate on the implicit nature of this very human subject - he is, most probably, a European and modern individual etc.)

As to happening and narrating, writing literary history relies, as a rule, on the structure of the narrative: events are brought about by the actions of some characters, they are ordered in a chronological and causal pattern. Moreover, against the background of this structure, certain events etc. are dismissed as merely contingent, ephemeral, marginal, peripheral. The presupposition behind all this is a narrative is told by a self-sufficient, reliable and coherent subject, with a transparent and evident point of view and a "natural" logic (of causes, effects, time and action). (Cf. also Carr’s notion that sensation itself is prefigured in terms of narrating.)

As to seeing, this structure itself is also based on the metaphor of seeing, with a fixed focus, negligible peripheral movements, foreground and background etc. A human way of seeing is presupposed, as if it were universal and original (something behind which one cannot possibly go back - cf. Dilthey’s foundation of Geisteswissenchaften.)

Both seeing and remembering are very forceful metaphors which shape our concept of writing (or reflecting on) (literary) history. Their alternatives may appeal to other (equally anthropomorphic) metaphors such as blindness or the unconscious. Challenging the narrative based concept, however, seems to be a perhaps more fruitful way, placing the specific narrative devices into their proper historical and poetical context (cf. H. White), and also transforming them. Theoretical possibilities are to discredit the central position of specific texts ("events"), of authors ("characters" or “heroes”); to relativize the relation of “main course of events” to what is regarded as anecdotic (cf. Greenblatt); to appeal to an alternative logic of causes and chronology (through either giving them up or finding/creating surprising constellations of remote texts); and also, most importantly, to deconstruct the central/peripheral dichotomy.

 

I have promised to give you some illustrations of the different solutions offered in the Hungarian context. I will not go into details. As to the one side of the spectrum, just let me mention some recent works concentrating on the legends, tales, cultic stories and anecdotes of some figures of literary history; there has been, for instance, a book length study on a late eighteenth century novel, collecting all the unreliable data, rumors, fairy tales and literary historical constructs attached to the author (or to the name of the author), and instead of desperately looking for the truth elements or trying to discredit the apparently legendary and anecdotal stories, the analysis has concentrated on the working of this whole complex. Other studies, which regard themselves as representatives of cult research, similarly, do not at all reject the network of stories and anecdotes woven around major figures and their work; they try, instead, examine how this network is inherited and used, recycled and modified. The stories, including the inherent subjects telling them, will shed light on the literary history of reception, on the history of literary conventions, and, of course, has serious sociological teachings.

On the other extreme, I refer again to the attempts at breaking with the conventions of time structure, influence patterns, or the concept of individual author as the main character of the literary history, and to the project of the middle of the nineties to write a new history of Hungarian literature. And finally, some words on the subjectivity implied in (or embodied in or derived from) the specific canonical structures, referring back to the metaphors of seeing and memory (canons are taken as traces or documents of [national etc.] memories; and they represent a vision of the field). For instance, in Feminist terms, most recent European canons can be characterized as having a dominant male as a speaking/viewing/remembering subject, very simply because of some thematic traits of the texts (and characters) included. However, there may be some more intricate and interesting approaches: eliminating (or, conversely, emancipating) the minor, the strange, the “parasitic”, the “perverted”, the “untimely” or premature will shed light on the culture fostering the canon, and also circumscribe its virtual subject. (But do we not express a specific subjectivity in assigning a subjectivity to the canon?)