The Purpose of Purpose: Aesthetics and the Unity of Context and Form in Third-World Literature

Type :

Presentation

Pages :

6 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

10/12/2007

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Literature

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Summary :

Introduction
Literature as a political necessity
1. Angela Carter and functional dichotomy
2. The presentation of Western literature
The consequential problem of translation
Providing purpose for work
1. The narrow scope of third world literature
2. The importance of the texts as a whole and their linguistic components
3. Wicomb's writing: Aesthetically pleasing
Conclusion
Works cited

Abstract

All literary texts are both political and aesthetic. Words in and of themselves are innately sensual, inseparable from the emotions they evoke in a reader. They are also political, pieces of language steeped in history and theory. However, writers often plan toward one extreme, selecting their words either for contextual or libidinal value. Beyond a doubt, most first-world authors embrace the aesthetic foremost; in the West, reading has become an activity of leisure, performed for pleasure, not for knowledge. The beauty of these works is literally derived from their otherwise purposeless existence, a feature of aesthetic judgment that Immanuel Kant calls "final without end" (69). But this does not mean that the opposite is true of third-world texts: while the written word still has the power to give birth to revolution in these regions, non-Western authors are still concerned with the aesthetic value of literature. Nor do all first-world texts exist separate from the political world. It is only Western bias that leads individuals such as Fredric Jameson to believe that libidinal texts are solely a product of industrialized nations. Aesthetic techniques, the affects of wordplay and structure, do not ensure an aesthetically-pleasing text. There must be a relationship between form and context. As Christian Wiman states, "form itself has no inherent political meaning, but that [does not] mean that a [writer's] treatment of the form [cannot] give it a political meaning" (212). If form itself can be given into a role within the realm of politics, then surely politics can become a thing of beauty. When aesthetics are manipulated into vehicles for the political message of the text, only then can those aesthetics be considered beautiful. third-world writers, regardless of first-world opinion, write with both libidinal and political intentions, for they understand that aesthetic value depends on the innate harmony between context and form.