सुब्जेकटिविस्म इन

Subjectivism In Literature

It is an unwritten rule of literary commentary that, unless you want to be accused of Herostratic[1] honour, you never speak or write about your fellow writers except in praise. But there are times when the merman must mingle his sighs with soughing of reeds. When silence feels more like betrayal than golden.

In every corner I turned to at the recent Cape Town Book Fair, I found commentators commenting that the good thing about the direction of South African writing is that people are starting to “tell personal stories more” as compared to the past when the political novel was popular. I don’t dispute the merit of this. I get concerned though when the vein of Kafka, Becket and, of course, Coetzee, is used as desired pinnacle aspirations of our springs.

Subjective literature has contributed a lot in the protection and enhancement of our common humanity. It’s psychological individual brooding yielded many fresh and penetrating insights, and gave us more understanding of individual pathos. But this individual centeredness, as can be read in Coetzee’s latest fiction, is balding, and has started to pall. It has mastered the Hegelian concept of synthesis between the self and the external world to an extent of hallucinating reality.

What I’m saying is that too much personalism in literature has given rise to cloying escapist blind spots of exaggerations, more concerned, for instance, with animals, than aspects of democratic our ideals. It has become blind to the sympathies and aims of the vox populi. As a theory of intersubjectivity, it started as critical means against dehumanising forms of collectivism. Now the terms by which Hans Jonas Paton criticised some existentialist philosopher apply to it too: “We should be particularly on our guard when the guide makes no pretence at objective thinking, which stands or falls by the argument independently of the personality of the thinker, but rests his case on the inwardness of his own personal experience. . .” The complaint here is that of making an individual the measure of all things.

The problem with individual centred starting-point for literature, and philosophy, is that it tends to show less appreciation for other things, like history. It tends to run riot with morbid forms of subjectivism and individualism; looking only at the night side of life with unduly anthropomorphic understanding of reality. When a man is isolated as a centre of interests he tends to see himself, and those who share his point of view, as the highest and authentic forms of existence. From there, as we know it is just few steps to Fascism. Recent history has given us nationalist fascism; and is presently brewing variations in guise of protecting, culture from the barbarians at the gates, or religion from decadent infidels.

Unhealthy internal intensity promotes anti-socialism, elitism, and escape from necessary collision with history. Every country, every nation, needs means to collide with its past. Present day German art is good example of a nation trying to grapple with it’s demons through what they call Bildung; that is an engagement of history through art, philosophy and learning in general. Failure to confront our demons eventually lead to . . . well you know what they say about the plague bacillus; it never dies or disappears for good. It lies dormant, biding its time. But when it awakes, all hell breaks loose.

My quarrel with radical subjective forms of art, especially in writing, is their tendency of neglecting the necessary need with (blighted) history as a step towards regeneration and a stable democracy. Worse still, to closer readers, it has become little more than wordsmith technicality with no lasting substance; especially if it’s hodgepodge of subjective artificial extensions of senescent mediated kitsch, neurasthenic impatience, and bravura profunda does not appeal. It carries very little of value to those who are not interested in semiotic games and fables of insight.

In that sense the likes of Nadine Gordimer as springs of our starting-point makes more sense to me. She has already planted the seed of synthetic balance between individual and demands of qualitative historical engagement. I know we live in an era where the victim trumps the hero; where navel gazing is more appealing than looking to the horizons. But after all, artists are supposed to be interested in the exception that proves no rule.

It may be that both the intensity of internal life and the phenomenon of hope are both alike illusionary as guiding ideas of regenerating to the final destiny of our country and nature. But let us at least bring forth to expression the spirit of our country so as to know what can or cannot be achieved by it. The wounds of possibility are before us.

[1] In 356 B.C. Herostratus, to make his name immortal, burnt the temple of Artemis at Ephesus.