Circulation of Social Energy – How Texts Come Alive

Hjemmeeksamen i ENG4310 – Literary Theory in English, vår 2012. En pdf av oppgaveteksten finnes her.

1. Introduction

This essay will be a discussion on some basic assumptions of the critical tradition of new historicism. In line with new historicism’s “determination to do so much justice to the example itself,”[1] I will base it on a close reading of Stephen Greenblatt’s 1998 essay “The circulation of social energy,” and discuss how new historicism appears specifically within and throughout that text.

 

Following the assignment text, I will try to separate out, and focus my discussion around, three basic assumptions of new historicism: First, that there is no single totalizing or autonomous originator, neither of a text, nor of a consistent, corporate social ideology; second, that, through a process of dynamic exchange, a text emerges out of, and bases its existence on an interplay with, a distinct culture; and third, that a successful text through this process can be empowered with a kind of social energy that makes it speak to us across centuries. Finally, I will remark briefly on the relevance of Greenblatt’s theoretical stance for other eras and genres.

 

To make the discussion coherent, I will treat these assumptions as both successive and interdependent – and I will identify underlying assumptions as I deem that necessary.

2. No totalizing originator: contingency

The first basic assumption of Greenblatt’s is a twofold and interlinked one: that there does not exist a “total artist,”[2] from which an entirety of a text has originated, as if in a vacuum, or in complete and total self-deferential inspiration: There is “no originary moment, no pure act of untrammeled creation.”[3] And similarly, or indeed adversely, when seen from society at large, there does not exist a totalizing society, i.e. a ruling power perfectly ideologically coherent.[4] So, importantly, rather than a text having a monolithic originator in a society of a stable basis of power, a text comes into existence, or indeed, into play, within a heterogeneous society, where there is a variegated complex of sources for both power and meaning, making both text and society places for “institutional and ideological contestation.”[5]

 

Thus, a text is not, and should not be analyzed as, an abstracted, autonomous entity, but in relation to, and as part of, a distinct social and cultural environment (or context, or indeed co-text), what Greenblatt terms its “shared contingency.”[6] As I understand Greenblatt, a text emerges in an interplay between forces in this heterogeneous society; thus, a text might be regarded as a confluence (point, or zone, or perchance just confluence) of cultural and societal elements, meeting, interacting, and displaying for, and in interaction with, an audience – be that audience contemporary or future. However, as Greenblatt says, his main project is not

 

to strip away and discard the enchanted impression of aesthetic autonomy but to inquire into the objective conditions of this enchantment, to discover how the traces of social circulation are effaced.[7]

To explain this, at this point we must assume another set of underlying assumptions: That there exists a sort of social energy,[8] with the capacity for circulatory power; that the effacement of this circulation is possible, i.e. that it can be perceived, extracted, collected, and displayed; that this process imbues a work with a certain enchantment; and that the conditions for this enchantment can be studied objectively. So, the projection, display, production, effacement of these traces of social energy, in may be the interstitial spaces, the margins, borders,[9] cracks, the demarcation lines, i.e. the contingencies[10] – or else in the sites[11] or zones[12] set aside for literary production and consumption by these same margins – and here, laudably, Greenblatt wants it both ways – where the conditions for enchantment can be found, may be the process by which a text is empowered with social energy – and to discover, unravel and objectively describe this process, may be the endeavor for a literary critic in the new historicist tradition.

 

Texts appear in a “subtle, elusive set of exchanges, a network of trades and trade-offs, a jostling of competing representations, a negotiation between joint-stock companies.”[13] This is the environment wherein a dynamic exchange[14] of social energy can unfold.

3. Dynamic exchange of social energy: the mirror

Greenblatt reiterates (or more appropriately, appropriates) the metaphor of a mirror, the text as a mirror of society, to illustrate how this dynamic exchange is undertaken. Importantly, the mirror is not objective, nor neutral; according to Greenblatt, it has a knowledge,[15] and that which it represents, it “intensifies, diminishes, or even evacuates.”[16] Again, for this to work, we must assume another underlying assumption: The establishment of certain zones, set aside by demarcation lines, across which something is moved, for the specific purpose of mirroring, from one institutional(ized) set of social and cultural practices (for example, Society at Large; Christian Liturgy) into another (for example, The Stage): For something to be mirrored on stage or in text, we must assume a joint understanding that that which signifies or represents the mirrored something is placed into a certain exclusive and already existing zone, wherein the object is not itself, but a signifier of a something signified.

 

How is this done? Greenblatt describes[17] three distinct processes of, and preconditions for, dynamic exchange: First, through the process of appropriation, i.e. the freely taking for use of already existing objects belonging to the public domain, e.g. language, which is a ready-made more or less collectively agreed-upon collection of meaningful signifiers; or the easily appropriated, like the working class, or Nature, or History. Second, through purchase, which is precisely what it is, e.g. of costumes and the like. And third, through what he terms symbolic acquisition, which is the employment of known symbols; familiar institutionalized social practices; or known metaphors – either directly, or indirectly through already established circumlocutory strategies.

 

Albeit different strategies, the overarching dynamic is this: That there are already known, pre-existing forms in society; that these form can be staged, and for effect; and that in a joint social enterprise dependent upon the foreknowledge of the audience and the participatory interpretation of the represented reality on stage, this effect is collectively produced. For example, language is both collective, and a collective enterprise. The meaning, force, energy embedded in language is thus dependent on the collective, and necessarily pre-dates any writing of text – but still, a preexistent collective knowledge of language is a precondition for a text to function socially, for example when staged.

 

Throughout this process, a gradual institutionalization of a set of social practices, with a set of behavioral norms, designated roles, and a more or less distinctly defined geography will emerge[18] – and create, for want of a better word, a genre. However, this is not fixed, and the unfixedness, and possibility for unfixing, is part of what makes it possible to continue the dynamic exchange between what is outside and inside the precarious boundaries set up, i.e. everything in society at large that shares contingency with the stage or the text.[19]

 

As I understand Greenblatt, these processes of dynamic exchange, of cultural transactions,[20] are how “great works of art are empowered,”[21] and whereby the “social energy initially encoded in those works”[22] make them so powerful for us today.

4. Empowerment

As I mentioned above, one of the main endeavors of Greenblatt’s is to objectively describe this process of empowerment. As I see it, this is a salient point in his essay, and one that he, in my opinion, does not argue convincingly. As Greenblatt says, nothing is really taken, only signified, represented, on stage – but the critical question is still how this is successfully done, to encode life, enchantment, social energy, into a text. What is social energy?

 

Power, charisma, sexual excitement, collective dreams, wonder, desire, anxiety, religious awe, free-floating intensities of experience … everything produced by the society can circulate unless it is deliberately excluded from circulation. [23]

I would probably agree that the successful encoding of some or all of these elements in a text or play would enchant it, and, in some cases, make us able to “speak with the dead.” But what makes it successfully done? What about the composition (or indeed, co-positioning) of all these different and various representational elements, all these artifacts? The success would (I assume, but I am tempted to say must) depend in large part on how expertly, accurately, importantly, interestingly, significantly, this is done – and further, how significantly this is perceived to be (done) by the audience – for the work to amass the necessary social energy to be imbued with the right amount needed for a work to “generate the illusions of life for centuries.”[24] There might not exist an “expressive essence”[25] that can be singled out or identified, but that does not mean that there cannot be an organizer of expressions. This may also be a beginning to an answer to why some plays survive across the centuries, whereas others are forgotten – despite being conceived in the same cultural context, with the same kinds of social energy floating about. I will return to this point in the last part of this essay.  

5. Conclusion: A broader relevance for the assumptions of new historicism?

Greenblatt’s essay starts and ends with a desire to speak with Shakespeare. So one could ask: What theoretical insights can we extract from this essay relevant for critiques of works from other periods, or other genres? As Greenblatt himself mentions, his analysis is probably more relevant for a drama and a subsequent stage production, complete with actors, props and an audience. On the other hand, I find that e.g. the concepts of appropriation and symbolic acquisition could be relevant for an analysis of, say, pop culture – and the more general process of dynamic exchange a most relevant point of departure for an analysis of how artistic meaning is negotiated and created within social media.

 

But I believe new historicism could most definitely inform a discussion on a play from another time, and I will conclude this discussion by briefly outlining a rudimentary new historicist analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest – where I also believe we are confronted with, and limited by, the same shortcomings I have tried to identify with regard to Greenblatt’s analysis of Renaissance drama.

 

Wilde’s play is in a format most familiar to his time and his audience, stylistically consistent with contemporary playwrights. The main conflicts and characters are mostly a collage extracted from similar contemporary plays.[26] Moreover, Wilde was an expert appropriator in the Greenblattian sense: He took truisms, beliefs, the doxa of the era and treated it all with exalted irreverence, turned it upside-down and inside-out, always, by his characters, in utter earnestness. And today, we remember Wilde, whereas the others are forgotten. So, the final question stands: What was it about Wilde, and Shakespeare, that they could do what the others did, use what the others used, exchange dynamically with the social energies of their respective eras – but still in some way different, so that the encoded, social energy in their plays would give them life throughout the centuries? What is the operative difference? And here, it is tempting to answer by paraphrasing Umberto Eco, from another discussion[27] on a similar problem: Let’s call it magic. 

 

 

References

Eco, U. 1984. Casablanca: Cult movies and intertextual collage. In: Lodge, D. and Wood, N., eds. 2008. Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader. 3rd ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman, pp. 462–70.

Greenblatt, S. 1998. The circulation of social energy. In: Lodge, D. and Wood, N., eds. 2008. Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader. 3rd ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman, pp. 557–71.

Lodge, D. and Wood, N., eds. 2008. Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader. 3rd ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman. 

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[1] Lodge, D. and Wood, N., eds. 2008. Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader, p. 555.

[2] Greenblatt, S. 1998. The circulation of social energy, p. 555.

[3] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 561.

[4] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 558.

[5] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 558.

[6] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 559.

[7] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 560.

[8] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 560.

[9] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 559.

[10] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 559.

[11] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 558.

[12] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 565.

[13] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 561.

[14] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 564.

[15] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 561.

[16] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 562.

[17] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 562–4.

[18] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 565–6.

[19] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 566.

[20] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 559.

[21] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 559.

[22] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 560.

[23] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 559.

[24] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 561.

[25] Greenblatt, 1998, p. 565.

[26] Juan Pellicer, in seminar, 29 February 2012.

[27] Eco, U. 1984. Casablanca: Cult movies and intertextual collage, p. 464.