Saturday, May 21, 2011

Fiction and Discourse

 Philosophy and poetry seem particularly apt for comparison. Since Plato’s Republic, we have a standard juxtaposition of the two forms. We do seem to have a sense of what to say when asked to discuss their contrasts. But most of us find ourselves at a bit of a loss in our attempts to delineate narrative from either poetry or philosophy. We don’t quite know how to say they are all different.
Poetry may have a narrative aspect, but the prominence of novel metaphor and strict form gives it a stunning distinction from philosophical discourse (and the roots of any critical enterprise are philosophical). One might define poetry as the mode of language that engenders metaphor, and in the creation of metaphor we are given a new way to experience the world. A metaphor that sticks with us is one that provides us with new insight on the concept it describes, and thus poetry is the place in human language for robust conceptual re-description. Before we read Gerard Manley Hopkins’ The Windhover, we do not see a hawk as the “kingdom of daylight’s dauphin.” But once the metaphor has worked on us, our understanding of what a hawk could be, what a hawk could symbolize for us, has become something more, something greater. The Windhover is not narrative; it is, in a sense, the construction of symbol. Linguistic representation is both constitutive and constituting of its object.
Philosophy – all critical writing, in fact – gives us an argument in (hopefully) clear terms. The writing has an aim, to convince us of something, to appeal to our rationality in such a way so that we change the way we think or behave. This does not mean that there isn’t some blending of the modes - poetry can certainly make claims, and there are plenty of philosophers who have created novel metaphors – but, to put it bluntly, poetry appeals to our hearts, while philosophy appeals to our heads. Poetry makes us see the world differently through the experience of understanding metaphor – the hawk is no longer just a hawk - whereas philosophy looks to our rationality to change our behaviors and beliefs.
Narrative is tension-filled; it straddles a line between the poetic re-describing of the world and critical arguments concerning reality, artwork, or what have you. But narrative is neither of those things, and we have trouble hitting on exactly what it is. Narrative surely creates metaphor – any form of symbolism is metaphorical in nature – but it too has a streak of rationality. To use the blunt metaphor from above, narrative appeals to both our heads and hearts. Although we should remind ourselves that both poetry and philosophy usually have aspects of narrative (there are no easy distinctions), the most obvious version of narrative in contemporary life is fiction, so it seems best that we focus on it in our considerations here.[1]  One might argue that fiction, as our representative of narrative, blends the defining features of the other modes of linguistic discourse together.
But it is naïve, if not dangerous, to cast fiction as something like “critical discourse with poetic faculties.” It is not philosophy dressed up in fancy prose, nor is it poetry stretched out so that extended theoretical considerations might be plumbed. Fiction is both philosophy and poetry, and it is neither, which might leave us with the question, “if it is just some jumbled medium, why do we read it at all?”
One might respond that fiction should be seen as some kind of hybrid mode of discourse, something created out of the fluidity between philosophy and poetry; a middle ground where the two play off against each other, a space where novel metaphor can rub shoulders with analytic argument. This would seemingly ignore the works of naturalist writers such as Zola in favor of writers like Proust. Fiction, in this view, is a kind of translator, letting two disparate, nigh-incommensurable, forms of communication talk to one another. It is the form of communication for forms of communication, the discursive mode that allows discursive modes to interact.
But that seems to me to be the wrong way to answer the question, in that it actually answers the question. Instead, we should wonder whether the question should be asked at all. Rather than trying to explain why fiction as a jumbled medium has its place in human life, we should instead be arguing that fiction is nothing of the kind, but its own mode that happens to resonate with the other discursive modes around it – it creates for us a space where poetry and philosophy can speak to us.
It seems to me that a brief foray into what great fiction can do is enough to silence that question. Though we may not give an adequate definition as to what fiction is, we may be able to provide a litany of differences from other discursive modes of language. My suggestion, then, is to turn to a work of fiction that is both critical and poetic, but is neither criticism nor poetry – and cannot be criticism or poetry. By cannot, I mean that by attempting to translate the work into either critical poetic discourse, the work is lost. The work of fiction a form of communication must then be incommensurable with other forms. We cannot translate or paraphrase, we can only experience.
J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals is an astounding work for prose style, deep characterization, and ability to make a series of academic lectures actually interesting. Wax as I could on the merits of the book, it stands to me as a perfect example of how fiction can subsume the questions and objects of poetry and philosophy, and cast them in an entirely new light – as part and parcel of the experience of a particular narrative. The novella concerns itself with the visit of Elizabeth Costello, an older Australian writer notable for recasting Joyce’s Ulysses, to Appleton College, American liberal arts college[2] of Costzee’s creation. Costello, ostensibly invited to lecture on literature or her creative process, instead speaks of our treatment of animals, and our lives as animals. Her decision and words spark debate and strife within the insular academic community of Appleton, which includes her physicist son and antagonistic daughter-in-law.
One might – and plenty of intelligent people have[3] - read The Lives of Animals as merely a staging ground for ethical arguments about our treatment of animals. This reading believes that the book has a thesis (what that thesis is will depend on the reader) that is expounded via narrative. This kind of understanding of the book is ultimately a misunderstanding. Coetzee is a strict vegetarian, and most likely shares some of Costello’s more radical notions about human activities towards animals, but to read Costello as her creator is similar to reading Ishmael from Moby Dick as Herman Melville. Connections between characters and their creators are a natural part of the creative process, but we should be wary of equating Coetzee with his creations.
But neither could the story be thought of as purely poetic. The novella is almost plot-less; more than anything it is series of interactions between the various characters than a tale with a specific skeleton. But the story is not simply made up with the images it creates for us – striking as they are. If it were so, the real intellectual and emotional conflict between Coetzee’s creations would be lost. It is unclear what Coetzee thinks of his characters – in many of his novels he uses real people as parts of his casts, including himself – but one gets the sense that they are neither the kind of exact creations of someone like Zola nor pure expressions of artistic whimsy of Dickens. They seem to be somewhere in between, which makes them all the better examples for my argument here.
Elizabeth Costello is not merely a mouthpiece for a particular thesis about our horrific treatment of animals, but a living breathing woman – or as close to one as fiction can create. During her lectures, Elizabeth’s son John, in exasperation, thinks to himself, “Why can’t she just come out and say what she wants to say?” (Coetzee, 37). That is a question the superficial reading of The Lives of Animals would ask as well – “Why doesn’t Coetzee just come out and say what he wants to say in these lectures? Why isn’t he straight-forward with us?” John is exasperated because his mother will not enter the typical critical mode of discourse – she will not state in plain language what she means. This is a pretty basic frustration of human existence. We very rarely just come out and say what we want to say, sometimes because we are afraid, or unwilling, or angry, but other times because there is no way to just come out and say what we mean to say. Communication instead has to come through a kind of instigation of empathy, a sharing of a world-view. A fundamental fact of human interaction is that we often manage to communicate quite clearly by not saying what we mean.
The reason Elizabeth cannot say what she means is because she has no thesis, no dictates that can be easily summarized. Her talks are meant to explore a kind of thinking about animals, not to codify it. “I was hoping not to have to enunciate principles,” she says, “If principles are what you want to take away from this talk, I would have to respond, open your heart and listen to what your heart says” (Coetzee, 37).. Again, Elizabeth Costello is not a mouthpiece for a moral code or critical thesis, but a woman with a particular perspective on the world. And in The Lives of Animals, she tries to share that perspective – not convince us it is right, not enunciate it, not show its logic, but to share it. And that, in turn, is exactly what The Lives of Animals does as well; it shares a world with us.
The Lives of Animals gives us the world of Elizabeth Costello. It allows us to inhabit it – if only for a while – and lets us confront her as she grapples with our callous and superficial stances on the things and creatures we exist amidst. We watch as she embodies the wounds that our lives with animals create. The book creates a space where she can ask us to listen to our hearts, and we can perhaps follow her advice. But it also gives space for those who disagree, for those who question or don’t understand – other academics who respond to her lectures, of course, but also her son, John, proud of his mother, yet ultimately confused about why she acts the way she does. We might share in his confusion – the book has space for that as well.
At the beginning of the second chapter (or lecture, as it may be), John finds himself defending his mother

from the attacks of his wife, Norma. Norma attempts to put a kind of rational framework around

Costello’s first lecture. “Presumably she was trying to make a point about the nature of rational

understanding. To say that rational accounts are merely a consequence of the structure of the human

mind; that animals have their own accounts in accordance with the structure of their own minds, to

which we don’t have access because we don’t share a language with them” (Coetzee, 47). Norma gives

Costello’s remarks a particular form, saying they exist as a kind of argument – and, notably, suggesting

that Costello actually has a thesis, although her mother-in-law may deny it. John, asking what is wrong

with the depiction Norma gives, is told that his mother is being naïve and shallow. Here we are given a

particular depiction of Costello, one which we are free to ignore, argue against (in our thoughts, of

course), or accept. We may in the end agree with John, remaining confused about what Costello wants to

tell us but also willing to defend her from Norma’s criticism. 
The Lives of Animals, then, gives us the chance to understand Elizabeth Costello’s opinions, not Coetzee’s. And, through the repudiations and interactions with other characters, we are given the space to interact with and repudiate her ourselves.
So how is this accomplished? The world-sharing-ness of fiction cannot simply be attributable to its narrative structure. If that were the case, it would be indistinct from good anthropology or common journalism. As I noted before, fiction must be able to say what it means without saying what it means, and while plot points can do this kind of work[4], the author certainly has recourse to far more than just a plot.
Consider the perspective of The Lives of Animals. Elizabeth Costello does not tell her story, nor is she the character the narration remains closest to. Her son, John, is the ostensible protagonist. We learn his thoughts and feelings, not those of his mother. Everything we find out about her we must infer from what she says, what other characters say, and what John thinks about her. We are presented with multiple levels of discourse – there are the words on the page – the descriptions, quotations, etc. - and then what we can infer from those words. Our work in assessing a piece of philosophy or criticism is not to look for subtext or hints of the narrator’s intent[5], but to glean meaning from the statements the author makes. There is no “first-order” meaning in an academic text, because there is no “second order” meaning to contrast it to. Elizabeth is in second order – we are not granted direct access to her, thus we must make our opinions about through her son’s perspective – all the while acknowledging that this perspective is necessarily skewed.[6]
This kind of opinion-making or inference is exactly what we do in our everyday lives. I have no access

to your thoughts or feelings, all I can do is form an opinion of you through interaction and experience.

While we cannot personally interact with Elizabeth, we experience other people’s interactions with her,

and experience her words as they ring out in our minds. Considering this, it becomes clearer how fiction

differs from poetry or philosophy. Fiction is mimetic of everyday human experience, in that it gives us

the ability to share in the perspective of another – something we do each and every day of our live.

Poetry and philosophy may discuss everyday experience, make claims about it, or give new metaphors

for understanding it, but neither can recreate it.

By “everyday experience,” I do not mean something like “the rote necessities of human life,” or “the dull

repetition of human life as it moves forward.” By everyday, I mean to describe what normally happens to

us in our interactions with the world. Fiction obviously can share with humdrum existence with us, but

that isn’t my point.  Think of everyday experience as that which we all go through – learning,

understanding one another, making educated guesses, exposing ourselves as thinking, feeling creatures.

Furthermore, fiction is not realistic to everyday experience in the sense that what it portrays could always

actually happen[7], but realistic in the sense that we can interact with characters and events in the way

we interact with people and events in real life. In his aesthetic work, Stanley Cavell argues that we treat

artworks the way we treat people. Perhaps that is the case, but we most certainly treat characters in great

fiction as people – they may be flawed, or not fully fleshed out, but we still laugh at their jokes, and cry

when they perish. We might feel that most – if not all – characters in stories are not fully dimensional to

us in the way that real humans are. There can easily be thought of as mere technical constructions of the

author – and on many occasions they are that; consider most of Dickens’ Mr. Gradgrind for example.

That intuition is not without grounds, but, I think, if we consider how well we really know the many

people in our lives, we might come to think of many of our fellow human beings as holding a kind of

two-dimensional place in the narrative we create for ourselves. Characters in fiction can appear as artistic

reproductions of emotional responses, or mouthpieces, or automatons, but so can regular people. A failed

character is one that does not resonate with the reader, not one that is constructed this way or that.

Likewise, a failed human connection is one where empathy cannot be shared.

Fiction, like everyday reality, allows us the chance to broaden our understandings of others, to share in

their perspectives. Now, as suggested above, sharing perspective does not mean something as simple as

sharing a belief. If perspectives and beliefs were equal, then Costello’s preference not to talk about her 


principles wouldn’t make any sense. The kind of communication I’m pointing to is non-propositional in 


nature. To be sure, there are plenty of claims made about Costello throughout the novella, and Costello 


herself does certain aver a number of things. But, the sense of Elizabeth Costello we get from reading 


The Lives of Animals is not adequately expressed in a series of claims – nor is it presented that way. The 


interactions with her daughter-in-law, provide an example of this. After reading The Lives of Animals


we may very well be able to state Costello’s beliefs as propositions, but that is only because we have 


either shared in her perspective, or, like Norma, we feel the need to create a framework of argument 


around Costello’s words.

To share in another’s perspective, then, is to see how she understands her place in the world. Part of this

understanding is her beliefs, no doubt, but it is also in the way she moves, in how she talks; it is in her

comportment. By spending enough time with that person, we get a sense of the way she behaves – and


why she behaves. We may not be able to articulate the way and why logically, or propositionally, but 


that does not mean that we lack an understanding of it.[8] The common metaphor in western culture is 


seeing through another’s eyes – and the common emotion noted is empathy. I’m a little concerned by the 


saccharine connotations of both the metaphor and emotion, but alas I have no better way to bring across 


my point. Once again we have multiple levels of discourse, as in The Lives of Animals, which we read 


and synthesize into a whole.

So we are able to empathize with Elizabeth Costello – and we do so in a robust sense. The point is not

that we understand how she feels in certain situations, but that we understand how she sees herself fitting

into the world around her. The former is simply emotional content, the latter is the amalgam of

everything that makes us human. When we treat another human being as another human being, we see 


her – as much as we can - as she sees herself. This does not mean that we always see her as she sees 


herself, or that the sharing of perspective somehow overshadows or clouds our own position[9]. What 


we get instead is an opening up of our own understanding of what it means to be in the world. That, in 


the end, is what fiction does for us. Both poetry and philosophy are attempts at capturing and describing 


the world, but through different channels. Different modes of discourse give different kinds of 


information.  Fiction, by recreating our experience of other creatures in the world, broadens our 


understanding of how the world can be experienced by a subject.

Indeed the act may be world forming in a particular way. The Australian philosopher Raymond Gaita

argues in his book The Philosopher’s Dog that many of our basic concepts of cognition, ethics, and 


empathy are partially formed from our thousands of year old relationships with other species. So, for 


example, our concept of loyalty has been partially formed by our ongoing relationship with domesticated 


pets such as dogs and cats. Thus, Gaita argues, when we speak of “animal ethics” versus “human ethics” 


we not only do a disservice to the animals of which we speak, but also our very concept of ethics.

The same argument seems true of literature. Fiction in its modern form is relatively new, but narrative

certainly is not. I would say that many of our concepts surrounding empathy and solidarity are partially

formed by our understanding of characters within a narrative. This is not a particularly original thought –

Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Lear argue as much in various books[10] - but I have never heard it

phrased this way. My point is that the empathetic qualities of fiction – the world-sharing qualities – have

in fact become integral to our conceptual understanding of our worlds, and the worlds of others. Again,

this claim is not as sui generis as it may seem; one need only read a book to be reminded of it.


[1] I personally would call creative non-fiction and good journalism narrative mediums as well, but considering that fiction is the modern archetype, it seems best to focus on it here.
[2] The Lives of Animals was in fact first presented as the Tanner lectures at Princeton, adding a rather strange meta-narrative quality to the work. Mulling Coetzee’s intentions in presenting a novellas as series of academic lectures is fascinating in itself, but should be saved for another time.
[3] Peter Singer being a notable example.
[4] Consider the “moral” of a story. Aside from nursery tales, the moral of a story (if the story has a set moral at all) is not stated baldly, it is inferred from the conclusion of the tale. Of course my point seemed to say that great fiction does not advance a clear thesis in the way philosophy does, so perhaps this is a bad example. But most fiction does not rise to such sophistication, and still provides an aesthetic experience, so it does not seem all that bad of an example in the end.
[5] Though this is sometimes intriguing. Reading a philosopher’s writing in a psychological light can sometimes yield some interesting information. But to do this is to break the tacit agreement the writer has with you – you are meant to accept the words she uses as meaning exactly what she contends they mean, nothing more.
[6] Does this mean that first-person narratives are somehow lesser in their ability to create experience for us? Certainly not. Even with a first-person narrator, there are usually multiple levels of meaning in a work (unless, of course, the work is bad). Ishmael in Moby Dick provides a perfect example of this.
[7] We would lose nearly all of great literature if that were the case.
[8] It has been a silly assumption since Socrates that we must be able to articulate what we know. Indeed, you’ll have to forgive me for my rather shaky depiction in these pages, since it’s remarkably hard to describe something that does not always have propositional content.
[9] It can, but it certainly does not need to.
[10] Nussbaum’s Poetic Justice and Lear’s Radical Hope for example.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, Noah! Thanks for reaching out. I tweet for Evanston Writers Workshop. I see you're assistant to Sara Paretsky. Could I interview you for our ShopNotes blog? I'd love to hear more about what it's like to be an assistant to a bestselling author.

    If so, please email me at your convenience. I can be reached at amanda AT evanstonwritersworkshop DOT org.

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  2. My feeling is that poetry like music and art, gives a rhythm that creates a memory - and as you say - impresses the heart and facilitates the memory. Philosophy can be dogmatic, unless the one who is presenting a "philosophy" actually lives as he preaches - a rare dauphin... Just my 2 cents.

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