eJournals Colloquia Germanica 39/3-4

Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/91
2006
393-4

MARK WILLIAM ROCHE: Why Literature Matters in the 21st Century. New Haven & London: Yale UP, 2004. $ 32.

91
2006
William Collins Donahue
cg393-40428
428 Besprechungen / Reviews M ARK W ILLIAM R OCHE : Why Literature Matters in the 21 st Century. New Haven & London: Yale UP, 2004. $ 32. When Mark Roche expatiates on the beauty of nature, he succeeds, I think, in conveying a sense of its total «otherness,» that is, its rich, emotional value independent of its utility to our survival as a species: «Nature takes us beyond ourselves not just in the empirical sense of removing us from the inessentials of human society, it awakens in us a greater awareness of the value of what is - independently of human invention» (215). When he then relates this quality of intrinsic value, by way of analogy, to the potential of an ideal artwork, he manages - for a moment, at least - to overcome years of critical training and praxis that impel many of us to view reality (and therefore also art) as essentially a social construct. Particularly in his poignant treatment of nature and ecology - but elsewhere as well - Roche creates a hunger in the reader for an aesthetics that would accommodate this experience of ontological otherness (not the otherness of cultural studies). He stokes that appetite by demonstrating in a philosophical tour de force the weaknesses of the four regnant critical paradigms: socio-historical approaches, formalism, culture studies, and deconstruction. To be fair, he also notes the strengths of each, but I am willing to bet that when readers complete this chapter, they will recall principally the wreckage Roche leaves in his wake. He shows, among other things, that the very criticism that sees itself as oppositional is in key respects consistent (perhaps even complicit) with the age it purports to critique. Roche further argues that the literary critical establishment, with its emphases on matters of production and reception, often fails to capture literature in its full depth and complexity. But the real «crisis of literary criticism» stems from its inability to justify itself and therefore its place within the university specifically and in society in general. None of the aforementioned approaches, he says, can in the end tell us why we should read literature, or why we should choose one work of literature over another. In his analysis of the current crisis - which of course is just one aspect of the broader legitimacy crisis facing the humanities - Roche is devastatingly perspicacious. This book - an earlier version of which appeared in German as Die Moral der Kunst: Über Literatur und Ethik (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2002) - views modernity as characterized chiefly not by «late capitalism» or the «simulacra» of modern media, but by the relentless rise of technology. Our lives are characterized, Roche argues, by an enormous increase in technical rationality (often to the exclusion of value rationality), an overvaluation of subjectivity (especially when this underwrites a one-sidedly constructivist point of view), and the proliferation of «autonomous value systems,» by which he means parallel and usually mutually exclusive spheres of being. All of this is forcefully argued, and merits widespread attention and discussion. Yet I wonder if this book will receive its due. Well before we join the author in his congenial reflections on nature, or submit ourselves to this challenging broadside on contemporary theory, we must first ascend the steep ramparts of «objective idealism,» a philosophical model that will strike many colleagues as obsolete, quaint, or maybe just plain incomprehensible. Roche is aware of the problem, but in stating in the introduction that «few contemporaries Besprechungen / Reviews 429 would find an objective idealist framework a natural choice for the present age,» I think he may be underestimating it - substantially. It probably was wise to have exported a full-blown explication of objective idealism; I’ve wrestled myself a bit with Hösle (the philosopher who is most closely affiliated with this position and to whom this book is dedicated) and can attest that it requires a book or two in its own right. Roche has opted instead to argue his objectivist position by demonstrating its heuristic value. But the strong and repeated use of idealist vocabulary and assertions may undermine this strategy. For this is, fundamentally, a question of audience. One doesn’t want to have invested this much work in order to preach only to the (presumably small) objectivist choir. I think Roche might have aided his cause in two ways: first, by perhaps following a course of greater rhetorical humility; and second, by giving fuller discussions of selected works of literature (as he did in the German version). As it is, we are restricted to a broad array of suggestive apercus. Yet in a book that masterfully argues for the importance of literature in the abstract, and the importance of a consistent aesthetics that grounds this view, we find no single reading that exemplifies the approach it advocates. Now, with regard to the first point: it may well be true that Roche’s constructivist opponents have not particularly distinguished themselves with rhetorical humility; so, perhaps it is unfair to require this, unilaterally, of him. He has given us a strong and clear argument with which to engage. Must he also make it palatable? My own reservation has more to do with the premise of «artwork aesthetics» that requires us to view a work in question as intrinsically valuable and super-temporally valid before we may have a right to do so. Roche is aware of the potential circularity of criteria that at once determine which questions we ask of art and which works qualify for this moniker. And he gives a sophisticated accounting of the ideal dialectical process of sifting the wheat from the chaff. But in his defense of tradition and the ontological otherness of art - in itself a perhaps salubrious check on the self-avowedly indiscriminate pursuits of cultural studies - he gives too little attention to the toand-fro that is necessary in order to come to terms with the sometimes disconcerting array of contemporary literature. Precisely because we need to raise questions of value concerning this diverse and unruly corpus, it will be necessary to explore it patiently and without prejudice. This strikes me as a necessarily messy, contentious, and time-consuming process that requires a berth somewhat wider than is accorded in this study. Why Literature Matters is a challenging and provocative study of wide-ranging interests and daunting erudition. Ancillary to its core objectivist agenda, it espouses (somewhat unexpectedly) the virtues of science fiction; presents (surely controversial) criteria for state-supported art; and recommends how we might sensibly make use of «surplus» literary critics (who are currently being overproduced in our graduate programs). No matter what one might say about this or that specific proposal, one certainly cannot accuse Roche of playing it safe. It would be a great shame if we were to do so by failing to engage this bracing critique of contemporary literary studies. Duke University William Collins Donahue