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?