The Aesthetics of Clarity and Confusion: Literature and Engagement Since Nietzsche and the Naturalists

ISBN-13: 9783319421704 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 279 str.

Geoffrey Baker

Opis

What should literature with political aims look like? This book traces two rival responses to this question, one prizing clarity and the other confusion, which have dominated political aesthetics since the late nineteenth century. Revisiting recurrences of the avant-garde experimentalism versus critical realism debates from the twentieth century, Geoffrey A. Baker highlights the often violent reductions at work in earlier debates. Instead of prizing one approach over the other, as many participants in those debates have done, Baker focuses on the manner in which the debate itself between these approaches continues to prove productive and enabling for politically engaged writers. This book thus offers a way beyond the simplistic polarity of realism vs. anti-realism in a study that is focused on influential strands of thought in England, France, and Germany and that covers well-known authors such as Zola, Nietzsche, Arnold, Mann, Brecht, Sartre, Adorno, Lukacs, Beauvoir, Morrison, and Coetzee.
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Spis treści

Table of Contents

 

Preface and Acknowledgements                                                                                                        

 

Introduction: Literary Activism, Clarity and Confusion                                                             

I. Sartre and the Aesthetic of Clarity                                                

II. Adorno and the Aesthetic of Confusion

III. The Use(lessness) of Literature and Language                                                   

 

Part I: Naturalists and Nietzscheans: Codifying Clarity and Confusion

 

Chapter 1: “For Love of Clarity”: Émile Zola, Practice, and the Political Potential of Realistic Literature                                                                                   

I. “Tout voir, tout savoir”: Seeing as Knowing                                                         

II. Content to Know                                                                                                  

III. The Practical Uses of Clarity                                                                               

 

Chapter 2: Grounds for Confusion: Nietzsche, Theory, and the Political Potential of Anti-Realism                                                                                                                 

I. “Das Problem der Wissenschaft”: Against Knowing                                             

II. “Clarity Bordering on Stupidity”: The Form of Confusion                                  

III. The Practical Uses of Confusion                                                                         

 

Part II: Ambiguities of Activism: Complicating Clarity and Confusion

 

Chapter 3: Between Theory and Practice: Matthew Arnold, Thomas Mann, Julien Benda, and the Purpose of the Intellectual                                                                                           

            I. “Apostle[s] of Political Detachment”?                                                                   

            II. Criticism between Clarity and Confusion                                                            

            III. Criticism as Activism                                                                                          

            IV. Between Theory and Practice, Still

 

Chapter 4: “Different Kinds of Clarity”: Science, Sense, and Utilitarian Realism in Bertolt Brecht

I. Naturalist Brecht?

II. The Sense of Brecht

III. “The Truth is Concrete”: Brecht’s Materialism

IV. “That Brechtian Usefulness”

 

Chapter 5: Pressing Engagement: Jean-Paul Sartre and the Aesthetic Problem of the Political

I. Communication, Clarity, and Confusion                                                               

II. Forms of Engagement: Confusing Sartre                                                             

III. To Change the Subject: Narcissistic Activism                                                    

 

Chapter 6: An Other Engagement: Simone de Beauvoir and the Ethical Problem of the Political                                                                                                                     

I. The Problem of Engagement                                                                                  

II. The Aesthetics and Ethics of Engagement in The Mandarins                              

 

Conclusion: Contemporary Engagements with Clarity and Confusion

      I. Peter Handke: From the Ivory Tower

      II. Toni Morrison: “How to See without Pictures”

      III. J.M Coetzee: “Surprising Involvement”

 

Works Cited                             

O autorze

Geoffrey A. Baker is Associate Professor of Humanities (Literature) at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. He is the author of Realism’s Empire, in addition to articles on political aesthetics, realism, and other topics.

Blurb

What should literature with political aims look like? This book traces two rival responses to this question, one prizing clarity and the other confusion, which have dominated political aesthetics since the late nineteenth century. Revisiting recurrences of the avant-garde experimentalism versus critical realism debates from the twentieth century, Geoffrey A. Baker highlights the often violent reductions at work in earlier debates. Instead of prizing one approach over the other, as many participants in those debates have done, Baker instead focuses instead on the manner in which the debate itself between these approaches continues to prove productive and enabling for politically engaged writers. This book thus offers a way beyond the simplistic polarity of realism vs. anti-realism in a study that is focused on influential strands of thought in England, France, and Germany and that covers well-known authors such as Zola, Nietzsche, Arnold, Mann, Brecht, Sartre, Adorno, Lukács, Beauvoir, Morrison, and Coetzee.