REVISED BECAUSE I GOT THRASHED BY N.Q. FOR THIS:

Cocoy, who was an instructor in Arneo and now abroad as a Fulbright scholar, would fall asleep in class. Poor boy (he couldn’t help it so he wasn’t really very subtle about it).

Mina, though nice and helpful, is off-tangent in her assessment sometimes. I believe her graduate studies thesis was/is on Philippine Speculative Fiction (another one in that cab). How is the Literary Theory and Criticism discourse in Arneo nowadays?

Laverne was identified as a smart agoraphobic.

And Benjie (the cat&mouse driver) had a stint as my research assistant and would march me to the gym every Tuesday to be tortured by Sheila (the Fitness Napoleon) to get rid of fast-food-cholesterol-induced-hypertensive-attacks. What’s left of my once sculpted body’s cuts is attributed to her: minimum-100-crunches is fucking boring and I fired the whole gym’s ass. The cat kept Benjie (but I think I fired him, too).

FORMAL METHOD and SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD

[I.R. Titunik, Marxist Philosophy of Language 175-200]

RUSSIANS vs. RUSSIANS IN MY HEAD

The Formal method, according to Eichenbaum, was governed by the principle that the study of literature should be made specific and concrete i.e. the investigation of the specific properties of literary material and what makes a literary work “literary”. [Rivkin and Ryan, 8]

It is this problem on specification that is the prime contradiction between the formal and sociological method. Bakhtin/Baxtin, Medvedev and Volosinov asserted that the study of the specific properties of literature cannot be divorced from the historical and social world that created the meaning-content-ideology that produced these words, devices, and language.

They objected to the whole idea that literature is “extrasocial” and that the specific characteristics of literature is “self-valuable, self-contained, and self-perpetuating”; and that literature should be isolated from the social surrounding in which it existed and which made it an object of study. [MPL, 181] Literature, then, if seen from the formalists position can almost be equated to a glorified spore.

These objections are classified into three: utterances, form of the whole, and generative process.

OBJECTION 1: UTTERANCES

Formal Method Premise: Poetic Language is different from Ordinary Language

Sociological Method Argument: There is no such thing as “poetic language”

The first objection is about the specificity in the notion of poetic language. The error in the Formal method lies on its reliance on linguistics and its categories because the method had absolutely divorced “form” from meaning. “Form” has become the proper object of the study while meaning has been relegated to other disciplines.

Language, according to the Sociological method, cannot be broken down into “poetic” and “practical”. What can de distinguished is that language can carry out different functions. The poetic function of the language relies on its poetic content, on the works of literature themselves. Therefore, the study shouldn’t be on the poetic language but on the poetic context/construction which is the literary work of art.

The entire literary work of art is a special kind of organized utterances. An utterance is a product of ideology therefore the object of study is not the form but the meaning, and therefore cannot be divorced from the socio-historical milieu.

Sociological Approach: Directed towards the problem in poetic construction

Poetic construction is not according to the definition of its exclusivity but to its integration in the process of making ideologies. It should unite depth and commonality of meaning with the actuality of the uttered sounds. Poetic construction is an outer form to an inner ideological significance.

The sociological method provides an evaluation that is historically centered and assumes a common code that defines mentality, outlook, choice, range and interests of a given social group at a given time. This method endows every particular literature with its real here-and-now meaning.

OBJECTION 2: FORM OF THE WHOLE

Formal Method Premise: The components of a literary work defines and determines its genre

Sociological Method Argument: It’s the other way around; genre defines and determines the literary work

Because the Formalists were concentrating on the specifics and the component parts of the poetic/literary language, they missed the importance of genre. They defined genre simply as a mechanical assemblage of devices. Studying the components of a literary work will result in determining its genre, and the latter is just a fixed set of devices that has some particular component that is dominant.

Sociological Approach: A definition of Genre

Genre, according to the sociological method, is the “form of the whole utterance or the form of the whole of the literary work.” [MPL 184] It is genre that gives shape and meaning to a literary work, as a whole entity, and not its specific components or devices used.

Genre defined as “from the outside in”: a literary work is a social fact. This means that a literary work is created and studied according to the time and place it was produced, its means and mode of performance, the audience, and the relationship established between the author and audience. It also includes the social institutions and ideology by which the literary work is associated. A literary work is influenced, if not propelled, by historical and social conditions.

Genre is also defined as “from inside out”: a literary work is a product of ideology, or what the Sociological method terms as “thematic orientation/unity”. A specific genre deals with specific aspects of reality, principles of selection, or a certain way of envisioning reality.

The basic contradiction between the two methods is that the formal deals with components, while the sociological deals with the whole. The sociological method pays attention to the meaning of the form and how the social factor plays a role in the construction and presentation of this whole.

OBJECTION 3: GENERATIVE PROCESS

Formal Method Premise: Literature changes because the literary devices change

Sociological Method Argument: This so-called generative process is nonsense

The changes in literature are brought about by assembling, disassembling and reassembling of the devices, according to the Formal method. Literature then seems like the end product of “karambola” or a glorified game of Boggle. The formalists posited that literature changes without a change in consciousness (of, I suppose, the writer, reader, and Formalist critic) because the definition and evaluation of the literary devices remain the same; they’re just re-arranged or used differently.

The whole idea that literature changes autonomously, all from within, without external influence or catalysts is preposterous, if you really think about it. The urge to change, according to them, is “felt” by one’s consciousness and thus urges the consciousness to disassemble and re-assemble the same literary devices. It is a completely isolated and static process.

Sociological Method Approach: Literature changes due to the changes in history, society and ideology and vice-versa

According to this method, the changes in society, history and ideology generate the changes in the creation and reception of literary works. Because literary works have changed, history, society and ideology also change in reaction to or in accordance with these changes in literature.

Change occurs not because the elements are disassembled and then are re-assembled; change occurs because the whole configuration is changing. Literary changes cannot be divorced from the external changes, external to that formalist consciousness. To study and understand a literary work, we have to understand not only its components and form but its context, as well.

…SO WE RETURN TO A CRASH COURSE ON THE SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD

The sociological method, as explained by Titunik, is employed towards a Marxist agenda. The agenda is to re-direct attention to what is supposed to be the main concern of literary study-- the literary material itself—in addition to all the concerns involving the object of the study.

The Sociological method requires the social nature of the literary work for its study and analysis, while the Formal method posits that literary facts (devices) need to be studied first before their social associations can be understood.

It seems that the Formalist began the study and the Sociological method ended it by firmly committing to a Marxist agenda as essential to the social evaluation of literary works. Because of the contradictions provided by the sociological method, the formal method had begun to re-evaluate its principles, becoming more and more open to the position that language is tied to the social aspect of literature, that language provided the way to study literature in its full social dimensions. [MPL 189]

Volosinov provided a standard of sociological evaluation concerning several topics previously studied by the formalists. He viewed poetry as “a powerful condenser of unarticulated social value judgments” in which there are three participants: the author, listener and hero. [MPL 192] He viewed these three participants purely as factors in the structure of the literary work, however with definite sociological meanings. The social value judgments determine the choice of words of the author and the reception of the listener; and the evaluation is also determined by the content/object of the utterance: the hero. The context of three is interrelated and, in turn, affects each other’s.

Volosinov also provided evaluation on reported speech: it is not merely a grammatical category but a language process in relation with other social processes. [MPL 194] Reported speech shows the general tendencies on how we receive and utter messages. It shows the changes in history and ideology. Volosinov examined this distinction in narratives: the same literary devices studied by the formalist were given a sociological evaluation. Language was examined not just through its components but through the social values exhibited by the utterances, the reception of these utterances, and their content. Once again, meaning changes as history and society change and to appreciate and understand a literary work, one has to consider its sociological governance.

Baxtin also presented another approach, a system of analysis based on the interrelation of contexts of the “author’s speech” and the “another’s speech.” [MPL 196] The author’s speech is termed “monologue” and has a direct and immediate reference to the object of the literary work or the characters. The speeches of the heroes or the characters (objectified utterance), on the other hand, also have a direct referential meaning but are subordinate to the monologue. Both are termed “single-voiced utterances,” which refer to one concept, one idea that is being presented by the narrative, or one social value judgment. [MPL 197]

There is also the “double-voiced utterances,” a speech act that the author utilizes to propose a new intention or meaning without going against the initial concept or meaning. [MPL 197] Stylization implies an agreement on the two voices: the author’s voice does not clash with another’s voice, the latter following the convention of the author (unidirectional). In parody, the second voice clashes with the author’s voice, presenting opposite intentions (varidirectional). Skaz, or the “narrator’s narration”, may be either. [MPL 198] Nevertheless, in all cases the author’s voice is the dominant medium of the concept or intention being presented.

The importance of Baxtin’s study lies in his proposition that sociological characteristic of literature is indicated by the language usage. A speech act is by nature social and it is dynamic. It moves from one speaker to the next, one context to the next, and from one period to the next. A sociological evaluation is necessary in order to understand and properly analyze the components of the language itself and its use, especially in literary works of art.

In the end, the Russians kissed and made out.

Da, welcome to my three-years-and-counting-grieving brain.

It has a strain of the Marxist virus, obviously.

Apparently, it is a miracle that I can still write essays/CNF/ stories/poems/chuva/crap.

And we haven’t even started on the whole idea of “Beauty” and some other atoms (or [Post-]Structuralist leptons that may influence the writers reading this to never write again) yet.

So, if I do say your text is crap, it is crap because that means I’ve exhausted all the possible frameworks I know that may validate your text since the time of Plato or if not I go older which is Non-Western. And the bravest are those who would ask me to beta-read their texts (by association and by default).


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TAINTED-STUFF-IN-THE-TEXT-PRE-POST.
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
TAINTED-STUFF-IN-THE-TEXT-PRE-POST
 
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

I just choose not be that mean to deconstruct one’s mega-text and therefore the creator yet with something nice like BULLSHIT. Because, hey, I like the idea of “hope not being a slutbagwhore”. There are triggers to that neurocharm, though.

Ah, the power of triggers, words like “poetics”. You bet your pretty asses that we all wished that boxes of my whole but still evolving mega-text weren’t unlocked because (for me alone) the gerund of this is hell.

Oh, well, hell, enough for now.

Next, I will tell you about my reunion with the old men and a lady and how they got me to sit down and study seriously.

Or the Happy Monday last September 1.

Or a gift for Katitang’s graduate studies thesis in Michigan: a planned curriculum for writing with originality, without Western influence. [And one day I will gather all my friends and we’ll be the Giant Brain that will rule the Philippines! *Evil laugh*]

Or something else.

Thank you for reading me.

*Curtsy tayo, Meanie, Curtsy!*