Ngugi and the Purpose of Literature

In the essay, “On the Abolition of the English Department,” Ngugi expresses his opinion of the purposes of reading and studying literature, more specifically, African literature. His essay is directed towards his fellow Kenyans, and he questions the English Department that the university has now, arguing that a new department with African literature at the center should replace it.

So what does Ngugi think that the purpose of literature is? He believes that “[t]he primary duty of any literature department is to illuminate the spirit animating a people, to show how it meets new challenges, and to investigate possible areas of development and involvement” (NA 2094). For Ngugi, literature is a window to finding identity, particularly cultural identity. Studying African literature is a way to support the culture that one has come from, a way to understand culture and a group of people, a way to face the future.

Ngugi thinks that studying African literature can be a tool for understanding the nation of Africa (NA 2096). What better way to learn about your own nation, its history, its development, and its culture than to read the works of your own people? Understanding can happen more easily when reading works that have endured the history of your nation, and are the very roots of your nation.

I really like Ngugi’s argument that literature is a means of liberation (NA 2095). It offers a “multi-disciplinary outlook,” while enabling the students who study it to learn and see “fresh approaches” to new and different art forms (NA 2095). Literature allows “the student to be familiar with art forms different in kind and historical development from Western literary forms,” therefore broadening the scope of the student (NA 2095) from just the European literary forms to the African art forms as well. Through this, literature becomes a type of forward thinking, and a way to focus on the future.

Hughes and the Author

In his essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Langston Hughes addresses the question, “What is the author?” or rather, “What is the artist?”

Hughes believes that the Negro artist faces racial challenges, especially Negro artists like the young Negro poet that he describes in the beginning of the essay. The poet is a Negro, and he wants to be a poet, but a White poet, not a Negro poet, as a result of Caucasian racial influences both inside and outside of his home (NA 1313-1314). Hughes seems to believe that the author is shaped by what they are taught, and agreeably so. “..[H]ow difficult it would be for an artist born in such a home to interest himself in interpreting the beauty of his own people. He is never taught to see that beauty. He is taught rather not to see it, or if he does, to be ashamed of it when it is not according to Caucasian patterns” (NA 1314). How can the artist recognize what he is not taught to recognize? How can he even know that the beauty of his people exists, when White influences are all he knows? How can the artist see that he has beauty to communicate, or a truth to communicate, if such truths are always stifled? For Hughes, he is sorry for this poet, this artist (NA 1313), because he is approaching African American artistry in the wrong way.

Hughes also believes that the Negro artist, or any artist, “must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose” (NA 1317). I agree with Hughes on this point, that artistic freedom should be available, but that the artist should never feel ashamed of what they choose to produce, or what they choose to reveal. According to Hughes, artists can be “free within [them]selves” (NA 1317), they can reach the truth because it is accessible within their very being.

Woolf: Serving the Reader

In her essay, A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf writes of the notion of the androgynous mind, that is, when the mind encompasses both sexes, and they correspond together. Woolf views this mind as a type of spiritual cooperation, with both sexes within the mind working together, “united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness” (NA 1025). When reading this, I was thinking what?! How in the world is somebody supposed to accomplish this? How does Woolf suggest that people become this way? Are we to train our minds to think “man-womanly,” or “woman-manly?” (NA 1026).

Although Woolf does not specifically address my questions, she does describe what this androgynous mind should look like, and says that the androgynous mind “is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided” (NA 1026). This type of mind should resound with everything both male and female, and, with this type of capability, should be able to communicate any type of emotion to any type of reader without any problem because it transcends the singular, gendered mind.

It seems to me that Woolf believes that with this type of mind, the one who is author will be able to emotionally serve every type of reader, and will be able to reach both male and female readers. Woolf cautions the female reader against reading books by Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Kipling because, within their pages, the female reader will not find what she is looking for (NA 1028). But what is the female reader looking for? What is it that she so desperately needs to find?

I think that Woolf would say that the female reader is seeking an intimate, emotional connection that non-androgynous minds simply cannot provide, and, without this androgyny, the reader cannot be properly served.

Bourdieu and Taste

In the very beginning of his essay, Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu raises a point of how culture and education work together to determine taste. He claims based upon surveys that “scientific observation shows that cultural needs are the product of upbringing and education” (NA 1809). Whatever people decide that that they need, or whatever their culture determines what they need is based specifically on class distinctions, as upbringing and education are two major factors affected by class distinction.

Bourdieu then goes on to say that specific tastes of art rely on class distinctions or are a result of class distinctions, and that with the “socially recognized hierarchy of the arts…corresponds a social hierarchy of the consumers” (NA 1809). Certain consumers, depending on their social status, are taught which types of art to like, and know how to appreciate such kinds of art simply because that was exactly how they were raised.

This idea is somewhat frightening to me. It makes sense, but I don’t necessarily want to believe it. Do we like things not because we truly, genuinely like them, but because we have been told to like them and taught to like them? Before I was an English major at Messiah College, I really did enjoy books like The Catcher in the Rye and Crime and Punishment, but was it only because the public schooling aspect of our culture chose to teach them to me and therefore I liked them? When I began to study English at Messiah, there were poets and authors that I had not liked before I studied them, but then I learned to like them because I learned how to appreciate them, so do I like them just because I know how to appreciate them, or because I genuinely enjoy their work? I’m not even sure that these things can be separated…comments?

Ohmann and Culture

Before reading Ohmann, I had never thought before of exactly how much culture and society influences the books that we read. We read things because we are told to read them, and so that we can participate socially with what we’ve read.

Ohmann really hits the nail on the head when he states that “culture is itself a core industry and a major source of capital accumulation” (NA 1889) because, and this goes for any type of culture, we as humans buy into culture; we see what culture presents, and we want to be a part of it and want to participate in it. When it comes to our literary culture, we hear the books that are being raved about, or the books that are presenting great controversies, and so we read them to be active in the industry of culture.

Ohmann also says that culture “is inseparable from the making and selling of commodities” (NA 1889), that is, commodities practically fuel culture, and are completely engrained in the culture that we live in. Books as commodities was something I had never thought twice about, but they are marketed to the general public in a certain way, targeting specific audiences for profits, just like any other commodity. I never before realized that this would affect the literary canon, and Ohmann proves that it does.

Also on culture, Ohmann states that we have a “rapidly changing cultural process that calls for new and flexible ways of thinking about culture” (NA 1889). In what kinds of ways do we need to be thinking about culture, especially literary culture? Ohmann is obviously making a call to action, and he argues that we need to think differently about social classes and Marxist ideas to begin to understand this new, changing culture that is based on the buying and selling of commodities (NA 1889).

On Storytelling

In the first section of “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin immediately argues that the storyteller “has already become something remote from us and something that is getting even more distant,” and declares “that the art of storytelling is coming to an end.” Why is this happening? Benjamin thinks an obvious reason is that “experience has fallen in value.”

While the culture that we live in today is certainly not an oral culture with traditions of stories being passed down, and while our culture doesn’t really offer a career deemed “Storyteller,” I would have to disagree with some of Benjamin’s initial arguments.

Benjamin says that “more and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed.” I think this statement is ridiculous; the majority of the way people communicate is through telling stories, and asking somebody to tell a story is very commonplace. Now I know that people don’t just walk up to each other and say, “Please tell me a story.” But people do say “Remember that time when…” and “So this thing happened Saturday night…” and “This is what happened then, this is what needs to happen now…” etc. Even if people don’t realize it, they tell stories on a daily basis, and need to hear stories on a daily basis for more than just entertainment.

Back to Benjamin’s main argument: “experience has fallen in value.” Does Benjamin mean that what we experience is no longer valuable, or that the value of our experiences has lessened? Experience “that goes from mouth to mouth” seems to be the important kind of experience for Benjamin, but does that mean if our experiences don’t necessarily happen that way, that they are less of an experience? Is Benjamin saying that because we don’t experience something through a story, that experience loses value? Comments?

A Passage from Pope

This week for outside reading, I read Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism,” which is on pages 441-458 of the NA. I wanted to focus on a particular passage of his, and dissect it a bit:

Nature to all things fix’d the Limits fit,

And wisely curb’d proud Man’s pretending Wit:

As on the Land while here the Ocean gains,

In other Parts it leaves wide sandy Plains;

Thus in the Soul while Memory prevails,

The solid Pow’r of Understanding fails;

Where Beams of warm Imagination play,

The Memory’s soft Figures melt away.

One Science only will one Genius fit;

So vast is Art, so narrow Human Wit:

Not only bounded to peculiar Arts,

But oft in those, confin’d to single Parts.

(Pope, lines 52-63, NA 442)

The argument that Pope is making through this passage seems deeply grounded in Romanticism, and, although Emerson is born after Pope has already passed, they write of the same ideas. Pope says “Nature…wisely curb’d proud Man’s pretending Wit” (lines 52-53) to possibly mean that nature has sort of brought the human mind back down to earth, that is, nature has humbled the human mind because the mind is limited. And so the connection can be found to Emerson because he argues that the mind, through poetry, will always fall short. Pope blatantly brings out this notion of the fall of the mind by saying “The solid Pow’r of Understanding fails” (line 57). Emerson would also argue that poetry itself has fallen away, but it can, however, point to the ideal world that poets can never reach. Pope would agree, saying that our “narrow Human Wit” (line 61) is “confin’d to single Parts” (line 63). Having said that, I find it interesting that Pope used an actual poem to express his feelings on the human mind and the ideal world, which poets can never reach, according to Emerson.