Sunday, July 28, 2013

Value Judgement of Literatures under Questions


Literary studies in almost all parts of the world involve a system of valuation of literary texts and authors. Consequently, some texts and authors are canonised and established as "standards" in every literature on suppression of rest of "non-standard" texts.  Traditionally, some qualities like test of time, aesthetic standard and representation of real life are regarded as benchmarks of value judgement of literary texts and authors. Nevertheless, such systems of judgements are most of the times suspected to be false as they apparently exclude many of texts with different qualities and they base the judgements upon few select critics. Due to exclusion of many texts and authors as decided by few critics, value judgements in literature are under the questions of accuracy and credibility.
Not the mass of general readers, but some established institutional authorities determine standard of literatures. These authorities are most of the times institutions of knowledge like universities and academies. Few academicians dominate the judgement process. As human beings with subjective perspectives, their valuation is based on their impressions of and attitude toward the texts. They evaluate the texts based on how they feel about them and what they consider to be determiner of value in literature. Explaining ideas of the British philosopher David Hume, Waugh writes, "…any interpretation will already involve a projection of my implicit assumptions about the value of literature per se, and therefore about the value of the particular text I have before me" (74). Thus, judging the value of any text is subjective as the critic projects his/her perception of values into that text. As subjective human judgements, thus, literary valuations can be questioned from the perspectives other than one employed.
Canonisation is often a reflection of political ideologies. Many of the Marxist critics have, thus, criticised standards of literature as they represent value systems of established political classes. For a Marxist critic Terry Eagleton, the canon is an instrument of institutionalised social political power and the belief that some autonomous aesthetic values exist in literature is an ideological construct (Waugh 71). Eagleton's claim is confirmed by changes seen in definition of canons through various periods of history. As soon as the governing system changes in a country, the definition of literary canon also automatically changes there. It is because the larger political system defines what is valuable and what is not.
Many recent schools of criticism including Marxism, feminism, post-colonialism and Afro-American criticism give a backlash against canonisation. Paul Lauter, a professor of literature at Trinity College writes, "The literary canon as we have known it is a product in significant measure of our training in male, white, bourgeois cultural tradition" (qtd. in Green and LeBihan 274).   Feminist, Marxists and post-colonialists argue that a canon is defined as a set of literatures that conform to ideologies of ruling social groups including patriarchy, bourgeoisie class and Eurocentic people. Thus, a canon cannot represent real and objective value judgements acceptable for all as they say.
But ironically, those theories that attack canonisation – including Marxism, Afro-American criticism and feminism – have themselves built Marxist, Afro-American and feminist canons; that further proves that canonisation is highly political. To counter established canon – that is believed to be defined by patriarchal European white ruling class – such theories have promoted counter-canons based on shared identities. And, for them, such canons are weapons to battle against establishments that exclude them. For a literature to be a canon for Africa, for example, "an African sensibility is to be admitted" (Ojaide 3). Ojaide further explains that such a canon "aims at countering the Western image of Africa in cultural and socio-political perspectives" (11). So, African canon also includes what an American or European canon rejects. The same quote from Ojaide also means that all writings by Africans cannot be included in an African canon – they need to have aimed at "countering the Western image". Thus, it is not impossible that an African canon excludes many literatures within Africa itself that many not support this countering mission. Thus, counter canon is at the same time against canon and much more like a new canon, which is as exclusive and discriminatory as what it tries to attack. 
It can be argued that literatures indeed have aesthetic qualities that make them canons. One of such qualities can be the test of time. But this quality itself is not sufficient for establishing the value of any text because it is debatable that whether test of time gives value or vice versa. Waugh writes, "This text is valuable because it has passed the test of time, but it has passed the test of time because it is valuable" (75). This circularity for her is never escapable. The same circularity is applicable in relationship between "significance of form" and "greatness of art" as Clive Bell has discussed (Waugh 75). Thus claiming test of time or significance of form as the sole bases for value judgement is falsified.
There have been excessive debates on authenticity, accuracy and credibility of value judgements in literatures for the last many decades. The influential critic FR Leavis viewed that there must be some definitive aesthetic values in literatures in a utilitarian and technologically driven age. For him, critics need to define and establish those values. But, several other critics including Northrop Frye and AJ Ayer state that value based judgements ruin a true significance and value of literature. Thus, they should be evaluated not with value based judgements, but with its own systematic methodology (Waugh 75-76).  Frye writes, that the ground should be cleared of "all the literary chit-chat which makes the reputations of poets boom and crash in an imaginary stock-exchange" (qtd. in Waugh 76). This never-ending debate in history itself is evident that value judgement is always under a big question in the arena of literary studies.   
The value of value judgement has been more problematic in the age of postmodernism where significance of every value in every sector is questioned. Postmodernism believes that there is no any objective value thus trying to define aesthetic qualities of literature itself is problematic. Thus, contemporary debates on canonicity of literatures have shifted their focus from aesthetics per se to identity politics of various social groups (Waugh 80). In the same line, the Israeli polysystem theorist Itamar Even-Zohar has claimed, "Canonicity is no inherent feature of textual activities on any level: it has nothing to do with value judgements and is no euphemism for 'good' versus 'bad' literature" (qtd. in Zepetnek 96-97). As the time is moving toward uncertainty of values, literary canonicity has been questioned from many more perspectives.
The debate that whether values are determined by objective aesthetic qualities or subjective political authorities is perhaps a never ending one because some critics try to present subjective judgements as objective evaluations based on intrinsic qualities of the text. Nevertheless, the history of value judgements has already proved that evaluation of literary texts cannot be independent of sociopolitical contexts and academic authorities. Rather sociopolitical contexts and academic authorities that completely depend on subjective judgements are what govern canonisation. Awareness of this operation always leads to questions against validity of valuations. Evaluation and canonisation of literary texts are, thus, always under such question marks that no one can easily erase off.      
  Work Cited
Green, Keith and Jill LeBihan. Critical Theory and Practice: A Coursebook. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Ojaide, Tanure. "Examining Canonisation in Modern African Literature". Asiatic 3.1 (2009): 1-20.
Waugh, Patricia. "Value: Criticism, Canons and Evaluation". An Oxford Guide: Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Patricia Waugh. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 70-81.
Zepetnek, Steven Tötösy de. "Canonization and Translation in Canada: A Case Study".  Erudit 1.1 (1988): 93-102.




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