THE habit of reading has many shades. A number of readers flip through numerous books. In this multi-faceted literary longing, there is a certain kind of affinity that makes people communicate and share each other’s ideas. While entertainment and reading have come a long way, serious readers have benefited a lot from this habit. Their opinion on international happenings is largely shaped by what others have to say about the world they live in.
All literary analysts know that what they infer after going through a certain text is important. Social and political orientation of authors and readers leaves room for other interpretations. These politically committed analyses aim at a comprehensive explanation of language, and not just its description. Language is, therefore, rejected as something completely neutral.
This contemporary art of critical analysis is different from reconstructing other people’s meanings. I hesitate calling this domain ‘critical linguistics’; call it whatever you like.
In this respect, the first question that comes to mind is: why ‘our’ meaning of the text is important? The answer is because it is ideologically determined. It is not possible for us to articulate and explain someone else’s understanding of what the text means.
When we say our meanings are ideologically determined, the logical next step is to assume that there must be an influx of ideas. Hence, our analyses come from various disciplines and include subjects like politics and philosophy. Even in the ’80s, it was considered totally inappropriate for literary analysts to look for such ideas in the text.
This has resulted in the expansion of theoretical and philosophical interests in language and literature. Today, language, as well as literature, is political, social or economic. The range of the text has also increased proportionally. The reader today has an interest beyond the text. While the intrinsic value of the text itself is important, what lies beyond the confines of words is of greater interest.
Here, it is worth looking at Deidre Burton’s argument in a passage on Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1982). She believes that an analyst, or a serious reader, has to be politically committed. This commitment is a prerequisite for a serious study. Hence, the choice of texts cannot be arbitrary. She believes that all observation takes place within an already constructed theoretical framework of ‘socially, ideologically, and linguistically constructed reality’.
There is no such thing as apolitical interpretation. We are irresponsible if we do not recognize this fact. The purpose of the text becomes clear now. All academic work is committed to influencing better development and improving the rights of human beings. Knowledge for its own sake has no meaning in the world today. Modern analysis forbids asocialism.
These days, society is classist, racist or sexist. The elimination of these major injustices is the lifeblood of serious analysis. One can only pretend to be innocent of these ideologies. Otherwise, how can a culture be immune from them?
In this regard, the processes and participants in the text become important. The participants — the actors and the acted upon, and their actions — form power relations. It is important that linguistic structures, or the realities we construct through language, be restructured in ways that are less damaging for people. Call it literary ethics or political awareness, it makes no difference. The key to understanding is the linguistic or expressive study of relationships among human beings.
Why do readers respond in a particular way after reading a text? Why do they find someone more sinned against than sinning? What is it about language that enables them to construct the text the way they do? It is so because they cannot avoid noticing who is responsible for each process, what sort of processes they are, and who are getting affected by such processes. Burton is right in bringing a serious study to its proper course.
The post-colonial era has its own demands. From self-denial to change of identity, and from isolation to hateful diction, all are deep attitudes that have significant value within the text. Hanif Kureshi and his disdain for Enoch Powell’s speeches is the politics without which he is nothing more than a man urging to satisfy the needs of his body. Who said literature is science when it is as large as man himself?
