The concept note for the Seminar, ‘The Textuality
of History and the Historicity of Texts,’ spelt out the great relevance, vitality
and germaneness of the Two-day National Seminar hosted by the Research
Department of English, of the highly renowned St. Xavier’s College,
Palayamkottai, on 19 & 20 February 2018.
The Seminar was indeed quite a rewarding and a fruitful endeavour aimed at altering our perspectives on “How we look at literature today.”
At the outset, Professor Joseph Albert outlined, with finesse, the eight broad themes of the Seminar. He also reiterated his
trademark, ‘tried-and-tested’ formula of 2 + 8 + 2 for presenting papers.
1. Citing the interplay there is, between
historicity and textuality, Prof. Albert quoted from Montrose’s famed liner, on
the poststructuralist orientation to history which is now fast emerging in
literary studies, which he characterizes chiastically, as a reciprocal concern
with the historicity of texts and the textuality of history.
Hence, Art is NOT created in vacuum. It
emerges out of a social milieu – a ‘relational striving.’
2. Words exist within a Context. For
example, Fire is very much denotative, meaning ‘it burns.’ At the same time,
there are numerous connotations or meanings to it. We say, ‘The heart is full
of fire,” etc.
3. Thirdly, history is not 100%
objective. Hence, even Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India is his version
of history, and speaks to how a historian translates into a writer. Moreover, to
Hayden White, it is not history as such, but metahistories. [In his
masterpiece, Metahistory: The Historical
Imagination in the Nineteenth Century, White is very much concerned with
historizication and discontinuity. The historical profession was not formed in
a vacuum; and historical practice was not a matter of a priori rules. Rather,
as one of White’s teaching assistants put it, ‘what I got from it all was that
history had a history.’]
Even Stephen Greenblatt argues on why the
historian selects some and omits some from his purview.
4. Focus on Relational Striving related
to Intertextuality.
5. An outline of New Historicism and
Cultural Materialism.
6. The paradigm shift from Comparative
Literature to Cultural Studies.
8. How Deconstruction stands at the
crossroads.
After having clearly outlined the eight
themes and the specifics of the National Seminar, Dr. Joseph Albert then
introduced the key-note speaker of the Day – Dr. Dasan!
Dr. A. S. Dasan delivered his vivacious
key-note address on the topic, “Historicity and Textuality: Relational Striving
as a Way forward towards Meaning-Making.”
Excerpts from his Address –
Literature today is a problematic arena,
as New Historicism emphasizes the importance of the context as a co-text. By
context we connote the social, the political, the anthropological, and
everything else that connects with the milieu. And this is the metonymic part
of hermeneutics. ‘Metonymic’ would mean, the part contributing to the whole.
All that we see, feel and experience is
phenomenal – that connotes the temporality of Time. Moreover, literature is not
merely a spatial category. It becomes inclusive and accommodative. Because of
this multivocal, multilocal sites coming into literature, these sites are
termed polyphonic, rightfully called, the heterochromatic in hermeneutics.
The Interstitial and the intertextual
contribute towards dialogism. ‘Dialogic’ is a diacritical energy that makes us
understand that truth is polyvalent.
Bakhtin characterizes the prose of
Dostoevsky's heroes in general by referring to “the word with the sideward glance,”
“internally dialogic discourse,” or, a “dialogic collision” of voices, and “double-voiced”
discourse.
The unsaid that has the potential to be
said!
This comes under concentric circles,
which destabilize hierarchic discourse. Hence, Feminism is a part of
Hermeneutics, and so is Dalit Studies.
Essentialism, which used to guide literature,
no more has a tenable set of values, taking its cue from Friederich Nietzsche. To
Nietzsche, god is perhaps dead, but, man and woman, and their existential angst
that gives us the ‘will to power’ is still alive.
Whatever is relevant to life from
historicity of texts, we accept it as part of literature.
Secondly, the Message code is more
important than the language code. Hence, historical connotations and
considerations are not merely a part of the context, but of the text.
Thirdly, History is a panoptic past. In
this regard, Louis A. Montrose’s monumental essay, ‘Professing the Renaissance:
the Poetics and Politics of Culture’ gives out a renewed concern with the
historical, social, and political conditions and consequences of literary
production and reproduction. In this essay, published in 1989, Montrose
outlines some of the important assumptions of this body of work. He emphasizes the
role of Post-structuralism, especially deconstruction, in influencing the New
Historicist concern with what he calls the ‘textuality of history.’
The writing and reading of texts, as well
as the processes by which they are circulated and categorized, analyzed and
taught, are being reconstrued as historically determined and determining modes
of cultural work; apparently autonomous aesthetic and academic issues are being
reunderstood as inextricably though complexly linked to other discourses and
practices.
It means that history is seen as
“textualized”, i.e. as a group of linguistic traces that can be recalled, but
is always mediated through the narrator and the reader. This, in turn, makes
the attempt to depict history objectively impossible and changes the
relationship of history and literature fundamentally. Therefore, new
historicists consider “historical” accounts as equally interpretable as
literary texts, since both are seen as “expressions of the same historical
‘moment’” (Barry 173) and can, therefore, both be analyzed in this respect.
“A Conversation with the Living: Louis
Montrose and the New Historicism,” by Reuben Martens, Ghent University & KU
Leuven (Belgium) is a PhD thesis work - a theoretical exploration of the
specific type of new historicism as practiced by one of the 'founders' of the
critical movement, Louis A. Montrose. This thesis explores the underlying
tensions between theory and actual practice of new historicism, focused on the
work of Montrose.
To Foucault, trying to find meaning
within a text is like peeling away the layers of an onion – meaning is only
procrastinated! All these philosophers have contributed to the poetics of New
Historicism as a part of Hermeneutics.
Then Professor Dasan proceeded to outline
the major differences between Old Historicism and New Historicism. One essential
difference is that, while Old Historicism relegates context to the background,
New Historicism parallels the context to the position of a co-text.
To be contd…
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