Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 6 Number 2, August 2005
Special Issue: Literary Universals
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Roche,
Mark William. Why
Literature Matters in the 21st Century.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004.
ISBN 0-300-10449-9. ₤18.
Reviewed
by
Clayton
State University, USA
Why
Literature Matters in the 21st Century
by Mark William Roche is an ambitious and erudite gesture toward defining or
redefining the moral matrix of literary, artistic, and critical expression for
the new century. Responding to what
he perceives as a fundamental crisis in today’s “senseless, self-serving,
and idle” literary establishment, Roche asks, “if literature and literary
criticism are no longer anchored in the idea that the object of interpretation
and evaluation is to garner a window onto an ideal sphere, why should we
continue the enterprise?” (259). This
demanding book—more a work of philosophy than criticism—would have the
reader see the social, intellectual, disciplinary, and even ecological
consequences of what Roche perceives as irresponsible and misdirected critical
practice. It is notable that Roche
chooses to evaluate twentieth and twenty-first century literature and criticism
not so much on their own terms but from the more removed perspective of idealist
philosophy, sometimes communicated through trans-historical metanarrative on the
nature of artistic truth and sometimes through discrete labeling of the
universal forms populating his overarching model.
Although it may be argued that Roche’s perspective and discursive mode
lend an aura of objectivity and authority to his discussion, some readers may
feel that his emphasis on specialized and highly allusive philosophic discourse
belies the book’s implied subject and purpose; on a perhaps more problematic
level, some readers may consider aspects of Roche’s method and message quaint.
In
Roche’s view, contemporary criticism is too much removed from traditional
aesthetic and moral examination of literature and has adopted an artistic and
critical relativism that cannot but negatively affect literary studies and
contemporary culture as a whole. Has
the literary and critical establishment become irrelevant as a moral touchstone
for modern life? Roche’s response
to this and similar questions takes the form of a systematic meditation on
artistic and intellectual integrity, primarily drawing upon his own expertise in
modern German literature and culture but also engaging contemporary ethics and
the history of ideas. Perhaps the
most significant critical problem Roche attends to is what he describes as a
disconnect between nuanced, organically unified art—even of the most
challenging and disturbing kind—and art founded in and illustrative of a kind
of nihilism and dissonance that “may be a hidden reflex of our cynical
unwillingness or inability to seek a higher level of symmetry in the world”
(166). Although Roche’s views
into the origins of post-modernism’s creeping malaise resonate powerfully
throughout this book and illustrate in complex ways the modernistic zeitgeist, his most fundamental premises (the quest for a zeitgeist
among them) either insist upon the complete renunciation of
post-structuralism’s emphasis on the particular, the culturally-located, and
the chaotic or insist upon the reframing of those challenges to universal truth
as its proofs.
Considering
the canon, Roche offers the supposition that lack of discrimination in the
assessment of literary merit in all aspects of content and form is among the
chief failures of contemporary criticism. “All
topics,” Roche laments, “are now deemed equally worthy of study” (259). In Roche’s view, this aesthetic and intellectual shift has
countenanced irresponsibility in artistic production and betrays and,
ultimately, alienates audiences. This
is the dark side of the modernist experiment—or, some might argue, its end.
Roche is concerned, justly, for the student of literature and the modern
reader and, also justly, with the future of criticism as a viable discipline:
“Literature is written not for the scholar but for the general public, and so
the critic should speak not only to the scholar but also to the intelligent
layperson. Most literary criticism, however, does not satisfy the moral
value of enhancing the reader’s understanding of the work” (76).
So in this intellectual—or anti-intellectual—context, “a simple
scribble” or an expression of “unsublated evil” are subjects for analysis
as worthy as Shakespeare in what Roche, in a moment of unfortunate hyperbole
that has the unintentional effect of diminishing the most horrific events of
modern history, calls “value free science at its most destructive level”
(42). Such moments frustrate the
reader and cry against the objectivity Roche works so hard to establish.
On a more realistic level, Roche offers interesting, even absorbing,
discussion of the place of eccentricity and play in artistic production and
affords the fringe much room in critical reception and clearly appreciates its
contribution to culture when it meets his terms.
More specifically, Roche argues that there is a significant difference
between alienation and anxiety that produce works of greatness and moral
distinction and the more pervasive alienation that merely replicates the values
of abusive systems, dehumanizing technologies, and moral dissolution at the core
of that alienation.
What
is moral excellence in art? What is
the impact of the spirit of the age on artistic and critical production?
And how should we define great art, and why? Roche does build his argument on time-honored questions, but
it is exceedingly difficult to ignore the history of withering challenges, from
Dada to deconstruction, to the mode of inquiry Roche endorses and employs.
Can the modern student of criticism—presumably the audience of this
book—accept that true or great art must not only exhibit the unities of a
transcendent aesthetic but also communicate a moral purpose beyond its social
and material reality? At this
juncture we find the critic: “The endeavor of the literary critic,” Roche
asserts, “is . . . not unrelated to the modern scientist who seeks in nature
the hidden order and veiled patterns behind the seemingly arbitrary and
chaotic” (33). Roche’s vision of the universe—and of art—is tightly
ordered, and he rightly expects as much of his reader, but it is possible that
his exhortation toward the sacred truths of art—a major feature of the overall
argument—may be the book’s greatest liability.
In
terms of the specific structure of Why
Literature Matters in the 21st Century, following a cogent
introduction which engages the traditional and contemporary questions referenced
above, Roche offers a “normative discussion of the value of literature and
literary criticism,” which examines “more traditional questions and
traditional aesthetics” (12). The
function of this discussion is the definition of key terms and assumptions
regarding questions running the philosophic register from aesthetics to
epistemology. At its most basic level, this initial discussion asserts
Roche’s understanding of organic unity and balance in content and form as
among the most desirable goals of literary production and interpretation.
One will by this early stage of the book understand that Roche’s
overall position is not so much about the twenty-first century or literature
proper but rather that he has the more salient purpose of addressing the general
crisis of faith and reason across history and as figured in a range of
postmodern representations. Herein
we find art, artist, critic, student, and lay reader embroiled in an epic
struggle against the unsettling figure of rapid change and the new and tempting
but morally empty emergent paradigms. To
provide a picture of the problem from a critical standpoint, Roche dedicates the
conclusion of the first half of the book to a classification of modern
criticism, here represented in the direct and elegant if deceptively narrow
confines of the historical and formalistic approaches and their natural
descendants, cultural studies and deconstruction, the general nature of which
will be clear to readers of this review and of the book itself, too; but
Roche’s purpose is less to classify exhaustively than to broadly—and from a
safe distance—suggest where modern criticism has come close to getting it
right but missed.
The
second part of the book, an extended meditation on “The Technological Age,”
values contemporary over classical philosophic discourse as the primary mode of
inquiry and offers a survey of the postmodern landscape through a humanistic,
ecologically-sensitive lens. The
aesthetic and critical problems Roche isolates with respect to what he perceives
as the moral significance of modernism and the crisis of meaning in modern and
postmodern art and criticism are intensified under the pressures of his vision
of unbridled technology and the waves of meaningless and alienating information
accompanying that technological deluge. The
most distinctive aspect of this part of Roche’s argument—and possibly the
book as whole—is his assertion of a symbiotic theory of art and ecology in
which he suggests, “Artworks that evoke a concept of self-restraint and of
embeddedness within the cosmos might better assist us in cultivating the
consciousness that would resist overconsumption and limit indefinite
expansion” (218). Roche’s
emphasis on social and geophysical balance neatly parallels and expands his
positioning of organic unity as the most objective measurement and,
paradoxically, most transcendent quality of artistic expression in the first
part of the book.
While
Roche’s general observations on the relationship between art and culture are
insightful and offer a modern reframing of the classic concerns outlined early
in the book, Roche’s implication that critical modes that do not meet his
moral standards are not only socially but ecologically degrading pushes the
boundaries of logic. One might
wonder at first, for example, whether Roche wrote with tongue in cheek when
composing complementary paragraphs on the moral and intellectual emptiness of
the New Historicism and the destructiveness of cancer-causing pollutions
generated by unbridled industry, but the author, it seems, would have this
parallel taken seriously (152-3). Can
literature and criticism have a direct impact on the degradation or reclamation
of global ecology through the implementation and distribution of a universal
moral frame? Perhaps, but if Roche
is looking for moral cancers in modern society, it might be cautioned that there
are much more sinister locales to interrogate than the literary criticism
section of university libraries or even the most morally objectionable art, so
long as these expressions do not constitute actual crime. To argue that the most baneful results of modern alienation
emerge because criticism is sleeping on its watch seems to place an inordinate
proportion of blame on an industry that even with all its warts does much good
in the name of keeping art, thought, and intellectual freedom alive in
contemporary culture.
The
ideas at the core of this book link Roche to idealist thinkers who have
questioned and attempted to prescribe the proper form, function, and morality of
the arts—and technology—for millennia.
Right or wrong, and it would be hard to prove one way or the other, Roche
claims that “Fewer and fewer works address the broader dimensions of literary
history in their overarching scope, much as fewer and fewer works discuss the
normative presuppositions and essential principles of the discipline.
The postmodern abandonment of metanarratives . . . and postmodernism’s
embrace of the particular and local at the expense of the universal have given
strength to this development” (165). These
developments, Roche argues, parallel and may even contribute to the ecological
shortsightedness of the age.
Why
Literature Matters in the 21st Century is a challenging book by a
deeply learned author that, despite its trendy title, addresses issues of art
and morality as old as the subjects themselves and at a level of philosophic
discourse far beyond the scope of the lay reader Roche sometimes invokes to
scold modern critics. Audience
considerations may prove a problem for this book: it may be that the potent
subtext referencing the politicizing of modern art in early twentieth-century
Germany will speak much more eloquently to ethicists and students of modern
Germany than Roche’s primary argument will to the students of literature whose
methods, taste, and morals concern Roche so profoundly.
Roche’s often stern indictment of contemporary literary criticism—and
his somewhat dismissive method of summarizing developments in contemporary
literary theory—may alienate the audience he should be most interested in
convincing of his views, an audience steeped in post-structuralist theory,
identity politics, and the post-modern unlikely to accept a prescriptive
aesthetic based on organic unity and morally absolute standards of critical or
cultural normativity. While some
objections will be raised in response to Mark William Roche’s Why
Literature Matters in the 21st Century, Roche has written a
timely, humane book and offered an analysis of critical culture that even
readers who disagree with his methods and conclusions will benefit from
considering.