Art for Aliens: An Extraterrestrial's Guide to Literature

ART FOR ALIENS: AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL’S GUIDE TO LITERATURE

By: Madeline Happold

“Writing unfolds like a game that inevitably moves beyond its own rules and finally leaves them behind… it is primarily concerned with creating an opening where the writing subject endlessly disappears.” (1396) – Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?”

Literature is the art of words, of creating worlds existing both within and apart from our conscious world. The term literature comes from the Latin litterātūra, meaning the use of letters, writing, and instruction in reading, writing, and scholarship.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines literature as the “knowledge acquired from reading or studying books, esp. the principal classical texts associated with humane learning; literary culture.” It also defines literature as “the action or process of writing a book or literary work; literary ability or output” (OED). While the two may appear synonymous, the definitions actually expose a divergence within the term. The difference lies in the type of literature being studied; the first definition denotes literature as classical texts, those few designated to the Cannon that are considered “classical texts.” The second denotes the process, simply the creation of text – like a memo or a letter or even this research zine – without the connotation of prestige, as literature. What separates the “classical texts” from the “literary work?” This is the difference between Literature, the proper noun, and literature, the common noun. What is part of a text – and who produces them – to make this difference so?

With literature, there seems to be a chasm between aestheticism – or the idea of creation as something beautiful in its own regard – and art as social justice and/or criticism. This can be seen with the divide between formalism/structuralism – which are based on fixed ideologies of beauty or esteem – and post-structuralism/deconstructionism – which assume that these ideologies of beauty are in fact constructed, and culture created by these constructs are constantly engaging with power/knowledge dynamics.

While my argument may appear rooted in binaries of interpretation that juxtapose these

theories, my later analysis will show how the two are actually interrelated in their interpretation of language. In this paper, I will discuss the hermeneutical instability between aestheticism and art as resistance, and theorize what is the difference – if any – between Literature and literature based on the groundwork of critical theorists Cleanth Brooks and Michel Foucault to influence by own theory of interpreting and critically engaging with literature.

Since my analysis will largely discuss the difference between Literature and literature, I would like to clarify how each term will be used throughout my paper. The common noun literature will be used in conjunction with literature as a product. The common noun is any text, whether that be a Marvel comic, a Shakespeare play, an alien zine created for a college final. The proper noun Literature will denote an art form, one conceived as having significant value, and act much like a synonym for the Cannon. Given my focus on the Cannon, I think it is also important to point out the history of contemporary literary studies and its exclusive culture. It is not presumptuous to acknowledge that there is a connotation to the Cannon, and thus Literature, which assumes a white, cisgender, Western, and often imperialist world view. The English Cannon assumes a specific history of Literature that contributes to continuous erasure. My argument does not offer an interdisciplinary approach or solution to the study of hermeneutics or literary criticism, including race, gender, history, etc. That would be far too extensive for this scrappy zine. My discussion of literary theory and literary studies predicates itself on the presumption that texts included in the Cannon intrinsically hold enough value to be interpreted. It does not question their substance or their role in supporting hegemonic cultural and/or historical narratives. It does not question the merit of those texts already considered to be included in the Cannon, but rather questions the ideology of the Cannon as a construct in relation to its value for literary studies. This lack of intersectionality is a noticeable oversight in my analysis, one that would require more research, but one that could be expanded as pathways to more specified hermeneutic theories.

Literary studies became a became a fixture of the humanity departments in academic institutions largely due to the influence of the 20th century literary theorist Cleanth Brooks. Think of him as the granddaddy of literary studies. His argument created the study of close reading, now a staple method of studying literature in school from primary education onward. Brooks is known for pioneering the movement of New

Cleanth Brooks

Criticism, defined by viewing the text as a unified form that exists separate of humanity.

New Criticism is also related to the formalist movement, focusing on structure and the interior life of a text. In his 1947 book The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry, Brooks argues that literature should be analyzed as only a textual reading apart from the history, author, or culture that produced the text. This is through literary tools, like ones we are all taught in high school English class; tone, diction, metaphor, meter, etc. While Brooks’s argument specifically discusses poetry – limited to his analysis of mostly Canonized, Western works written by white, cisgender males – it can also be applied broadly to the discussion of narrative. He was concerned with the text’s aesthetic, or “a system of principles for the appreciation of the beautiful” (OED). For Brooks, Literature is like a closed circuit; it is able to stand on its own apart from outside information or context in order for the reader to understand its meaning.

In the chapter “The Heresy of Paraphrase” from The Well Wrought Urn, Brooks argues that a poem “is a structure of meanings, evaluations, and interpretations; and the principle of unity which informs it seems to be one of balancing and harmonizing connotations, attitudes, and meanings” (1184). It cannot be deduced into parts, or paraphrased extractions. He rejects that Literature “constitutes a ‘statement’” or a singular meaning that holds more validity than other interpretations (1185). Instead, Literature is based on irony and paradox that create tension within the text. This tension is implicit and important to the meaning of the poem as a whole; one interpretation cannot be extracted from the other. Brooks argues, “the reconcilement of opposites which the poet characteristically makes is not that of a prudent splitting of the differences between antithetical overemphasis” (1186). Instead, the poem is able to hold various meanings in one, which adds to its mysticism. In order for the poem to make sense, though, one must “dramatize the oneness of the experience” to make the poem coherent, so the “use of paradox and ambiguity is seen as necessary” (1194). He basically means that the text is above us, and if its meaning could be reached with anymore tact then it wouldn’t be considered Literature. The poem is a fully-formed unit while also seeped in contradiction and fragmentation of meaning, elevating it to art above human intelligibility. It’s Literature, it’s mystifying, and worth of study because we can’t understand it.

While Brooks and the New Criticism movement were largely influential in the institutionalizing and structuring of literary studies as a discourse, the New Critics also have received critiques of their own. New Criticism offers a sterilized reading of Literature and poetry as it asserts a surface-level analysis of “art for art’s sake” rather than putting it into context or in conversation with societal / external events. Viewing art from only an aesthetic viewpoint both elevates its aesthetic importance while diminishing its cultural interaction. This makes Literature non-confrontational and sanitized, acting as an idealized aesthetic. The selection of poets Brooks’s chooses to analyze in “The Heresy of Paraphrase” also seems to reinforce the aforementioned code of the Cannon, seeing as they can all be traced to similar white, educated backgrounds. Brooks is pretty West-centric and tends to limit the cannon to white men, those already canonized

by American and British history, while disregarding the writing of women and people of color. He also withholds any literature that engages in political or cultural commentary.

Brooks and the New Critics hold a rudimentary and hegemonic definition of literature, one that predicates itself on maintaining normative power structures by viewing art as

Michel Foucault

only linguistic sublimity. Yet, they also provide the basis in which to analyze literature by focusing on the internal paradox and incongruities of a text, a starting point that is unavoidable for future theorists.

Brooks’s analysis of literature as an essential structure separate from human condition and constraints assumes a stability of what constitutes Literature. He does not question, or even attempt to diversify, the Cannon. Later theorists attempt to destabilize these categories by questioning positions of power behind culture, politics, and, in turn, art. In opposition to the formalist or structuralism movement, post-structuralism emerged in the 1960s, particularly among French intellectuals. Post-structuralism instead focuses on the instability of meaning and deconstruction of assumed reality.

One of the most influential post-structuralism theorists is Michel Foucault, whose works have influenced literary criticism, queer theory, identity politics, and culture studies.

Foucault’s work is influenced by humanism, or the scholarship concerned with human rationality. He carries this further to identity formation and the institutional bases from which identity and thought is formed to create binaries between normal/abnormal. For example, if going to college is now the norm, then any life path outside of higher education is considered abnormal. Foucault is interested in how society creates these categories, and how citizens self-regulate based on these decided norms. He argues that power creates categories to best control populations, creating norms and abnormalities to better systematize, regulate, and, if necessary, punish its citizens.

This systemization and regulation is best seen in his widely influential 1976 work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. In the chapter “The Carceral,” Foucault coins his theory of the “carceral continuum” or “the carceral archipelago transported this technique from the penal institution to the entire social body” (1413). The carceral continuum forms through the constant fear of surveillance that forces citizens to self-regulate in all disciplines, including Literature, to avoid social and political consequence. Rather than individuality, the carceral continuum works to standardize “disciplinary norms into the very heart of the penal system and plac[es] over the slightest illegality… the threat of delinquency” (1412). This surveillance and creation of norms is enforced in the name of “the normalization of the power of normalization, in the arrangement of a power-knowledge over individuals,” whether that be for social ideas or in regards to literature for studying only a select few authors, genres, or texts (1412). It becomes a means of surveillance through categorization and the fear of deviation. The power/knowledge relation makes this influence inescapable, as the external is constantly influencing the internal, the self, the work, and the text.

The idea of classification and exclusion are foreshadowed in Foucault’s earlier essay “What is the

Author?” (1969), which deals directly with literary criticism. The author functions as a unit of “description and designation” which organize and analyze different texts based on their shared categorization or same byline association (1399). The term of “author,” and the name function of the author, then become is a mark of prestige. Is a Shakespeare play considered great Literature because of the work, or because it is a work of Shakespeare? The author function also helps to interpret material. How does Hamlet compare to other Shakespeare plays? This combines post-structuralism and New Historicism that both questions the “author” as a categorization method and uses proper name of the author as outside source of interpretation and comparison, quite in contrast from the internal focus of Brooks and New Criticism. If Brooks is saying just look at the poem as its own unit, Foucault would question the power-knowledge relations behind the name of the author. What are the power structures behind the text? How does this text fit with a larger historical and cultural pedagogy?

Let me provide a concrete example to better engage the theories of Brooks and Foucault. Take my hodge-podge creation of a zine into consideration; would this be considered Literature or literature? How would Brooks and Foucault each analyze the zine as a text? Brooks would view my zine as a closed circuit, an entity that exists with its own meaning. Through a formalist criticism of my writing, he would analyze the wordplay, tone, and individual paragraphs to see how they work together as a whole. How does the zine function as a full-formed unit, what is the equilibrium of the parts to the whole? What role does the textuality of the zine medium provide to the meaning of the text? Is there a universal beauty to the zine that would allow it to transcend a specific cultural moment? Is it possible to more succinctly explain my argument? Yes, probably.

So, for Brooks, hell no, this is not Literature. He would probably not like it very much, considering the lack of elegance in subject matter. There is no inexplicable, grandiose beauty that can be extracted apart from the human condition. My argument could be deduced to a simple thesis. Also, I hold quite overt and controversial opinions concerning the Cannon that attempts to destabilize Brooks’s very notion of Literature. Would I even want my work to be included in something I see as fundamentally problematic and exclusive? Not to mention, I was pretty hard on him and the New Critics. I do owe some debt to them for their foundation in my area of study.

For Foucault, I honestly don’t think he would give a damn about the difference between Literature or literature. That doesn’t really matter, as, according to Foucault, there is no difference between the two, just a difference in their importance assigned by society. Foucault would engage with the knowledge/power structures at play with my work. He might look into the historical discourse of zines and how they became a deviant form of publishing apart. Remembering Foucault’s theory of the carceral continuum, and how self-regulation can be applied to culture, at first glance, my zine would give the appearance of breaking with the continuum of literature. Zines – self-published, non-commercial publications of varying content – are a literature of counter-culture that reject institutionalized or mainstream processes of publishing. Why would I make a zine and step outside of the paper-to-professor structure of academia? Yet, my zine is not separate from institutional ideologies. It is still deeply engrained in the ethos of higher education as, really, this zine is being completed for a required assignment for a required class for the completion of a degree. The zine is still self-regulating; I am simply regurgitating and reproducing work in a manner that will reinforce the norms of a productive student, all for the end product of receiving a good grade, passing the class, getting my degree. I can attempt to invert the reality or truth of my paper – turn it into something abnormal or individual by creating a zine – but I am still complacently engaging with the normative culture of academia. He would care more about how the zine situates itself in larger conversations, perhaps in relation to publishing, to contemporary academia, or to the creation of new discourses (i.e. media studies).

Brooks merely proposes that a text or Literature can contain paradoxes through textualism. He attempts to reconstruct the multiplicitous meanings of a text to show their interrelatedness, not their difference. The text is whole because it is paradoxical and cannot be deduced to a more digestible form (i.e. paraphrased). Foucault

theorizes of what those paradoxes might be outside of the text through cultural criticism. Foucault attempts to deconstruct the text as a whole object and expose the instability within its meaning, or provide other avenues of interpretation. Yet, both acknowledge an inherent instability to the literature they analyze. It is how one chooses to view that instability – as a means of aesthetic mysticism that equates prestige, or as a means of questioning continuing knowledge/power relations in regards to literary prestige – that divides criticism. Brooks does not care to question the basis of Literature, but rather attempt to expose its sublimity. Foucault wants to know why Literature is considered Literature, and how that Literature interacts with other popular discourses.

It seems like all of literature – Literature and literature – is based off this instability. The fact that something can hold duality, can be duplicitous, is what seems to make literature. There is no definite to literature, which is what makes it so aggravating but also so engaging. If the writing opens up larger conversation, if it contains these nuances and multilayers, can that turn any text into Literature? Literature, the proper noun, cannot be conceived as an object because it is an action. The action of turning literature into Literature happens en media res, when conversations form concerning texts, meaning, significance, and culture. Literature forms dialogue – whether that be in conversation with itself or in conversation with culture. Literature seems to be based on texts that can stand up against this unravelling because they are constantly coming apart and being stitched back together. This textual surgery is the basis of literary studies.

Not all Literature gets the same care, though. The Literature that remains a source of study, that become Canonized and have the privilege of being unraveled, is largely in place due to institutions that perpetuate their continual unravelling. What other Literature is being negated because it has not yet had the privilege to be unraveled? I would propose that if it has the ability to spark discussion, thought, and various

interpretations, then it can become Literature. I understand this is quite the sweeping claim, as it appears to turn the act of interpretation into the concept of Literature itself.

My point is to separate the proper noun from the hegemonic cult of respect it connotes in which Literature is active and engaging while literature is likened to static, a noun, a closed entity that cannot be repurposed, cannot contain paradox. That requires an openness of contemporary literary studies – perhaps studies of Indigenous writers, comics, trans writers, new media (that does not make these groups divergent from already systematized literary studies).

Literature is other, both of and apart from. To avoid the fog of abstraction, let us, again, analyze my zine. In my writing we can unravel a nexus of meaning. I have a singular objective I want the zine to articulate – to theorize literature. Yet, in creating a writing an entity separate from myself I have created something alien from my thoughts, my desired meaning – I have created Literature. By dissemination the zine enters a world apart from my own construction. It becomes its own life and enters an ether of discourse. The reader can then take the zine and formulate their own significance from mine. This is quite an ideal of communal culture that is open to usage. It can be unraveled, critiqued, heralded, discarded. I must acknowledge the certainty of interpolation in creation, that in creating, in making life, I am also giving it away, I am removing it from myself, it removes my life from the text. The alien is literature, and how one chooses to interact with that alien – to view it as an extension of life, to view it as apart from human, to accept, reject, but to always interact with – is Literature.

Works Cited Leitch, Vincent B., general editor. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 3rd

ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Brooks, Cleanth. “The Heresy of Paraphrase.” Leitch, pp. 1183-1195.

Foucault, Michel. “The Carceral.” Leitch, pp. 1409-1421.

Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” Leitch, pp. 1394-1409.

“Literature.” The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2019. oed.com,

https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/109080?redirectedFrom=literature#eid. *images from repurposed Adbusters and other magazine scraps found at Quimby’s

bookstore in Wicker Park, Chicago, IL.