Meta: Can texts speak with moral voices?

[alixtii]

This morning's Seven Days had me crying like a baby. Or perhaps more like me, when I am crying.

Anyway, bethbethbeth has a fascinating discussion going on over in her LJ. She's linked to this post in Neil Gaiman's blog on authors and morality. I know I'm not the only one who immediately thought of Orson Scott Card and his stances on, among other things, homosexuality and militancy. I know this because people who are not me mention him in the comments.

Most people seem to agree that the author's views shouldn't have an effect on the appreciation of the work, although a few point out that financially supporting someone who spouts hate by buying their book may be a morally questionable activity. But I think witchqueen is right in saying that she "think[s] Gaiman's questioner missed the really interesting question, which isn't, 'Do you enjoy the good work of people with questionable moral stance?' but, 'Do you enjoy high quality work espousing a morally deplorable view?'"

Having just finished an Ender's Game fanfic and having inhabited that world for a while, I can say that the novel is deeply problematic in so many ways. (Which doesn't change the fact that I love it deeply. Oh, Valentine.) The problem isn't just with Card, but with the novel itself. (Although admittedly understanding how Card thinks opens up elements of the novel that weren't obvious before; knowledge about the biographical author influences how we construct the author-function.) And the anti-abortion rhetoric in Shadow Puppets became so thick I felt like throwing up. Although there it was particularly disgusting because it was clear how he was warping and distorting his characters in order to preach his religious message.

But that's just the thing: we don't notice how problematic Ender's Game is at first because we read it with our moral perspective firmly in place. Card never comes out and says that what Colonel Graff does is good or bad, right or wrong; we're left free to judge for ourselves. Colonel Graff is just being Colonel Graff. Part of Bernard Shaw's genius is that he was never able to commit himself to the socialist message that he wanted to preach (and did preach in his prologues); his sense of drama and character always forced him to give the devil the best lines. As long as the author is true to their characters, it seems, texts don't really have moral voices, because they don't have morals. There's no clear right or wrong side, simply a sequence of events.

There is always the option of constructing an ironic or satiric author-function (regardless of the historical intent of the actual author) in our reading. I'm able to read Atlas Shrugged as a call for altruism and socialist healthcare. And anyone who thinks the Bible is unambiguously pro-Christian (or whatever relevant religion applies) simply hasn't read it. As shrewreader says on the second page of comments: "YMMV: It's not just for driving anymore!"

But still, there is the intuitive notion that these readings are against the grain, which implies that there is a grain. At least in this sociohistoric location, my intuition insists that there is something in the text which can strategically pass as an essence. (It's actual ontological nature isn't really the issue.) Graff gets off scott-free and is given a high-ranking post within the Hegemony; most of the characters are converted to his way of thinking by the end of the novel. Sure, we can read it as a satire and interpret these conclusions the same way we do "He loved Big Brother" on the last page of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but is that really just as valid of a reading. And even if it is, the fact that we can doesn't disguise the fact that in most cases we don't and as a radical feminist I privilege praxis over theory.

I've often said that I don't think a literary work can be "feminist," in that concerns of character, narrative, etc. inevitably distract from that message and introduces thing which are problematizable from a radical feminist perspective. (But then again, what isn't problematizable from a radical feminist perspective?) But does that imply that a text can't be anti-feminist, either, because it is always potentially empowering to somebody? That texts can't be pro-militarism or pro-Nazi, anti-religion or anti-homosexual, that Triumph of the Will is just as much anti-fascist satire as it is pro-fascist propoganda? That the only that the moral message depends on is the moral commitments of the reader, and not any feature of the text itself? That was the conclusion to which I came in my thesis, but I'm still not completely comfortable with that radical a hermeneutic relativism.

After all, literary texts have the power to persuade and to convert, and it seems a castrated sort of text which could only provide that which one brings to it. (And yet I'm still reminded of Wittgenstein's statement that the Tractatus "will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it--or similar thoughts" and can't help wondering if maybe literature works the same way.) And I've already express my distaste with the "YMMV" doctrine when it is indicative of a radical relativism, because I don't think feminism is tenable under those conditions.

This is completely a theoretical question; I've already worked out the practical question ("Am I disempowering others, in this sociohistorical location, through my writing?") here. But still my intuitions are conflicting, which usually is a sign that something interesting is going on, theoretically.

So what do you think, flist? Can texts speak with moral voices? And if not, how do we respond to them when we see them disempowering people in a specific sociohistoric location?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/__marcelo/]

Pragmatically, my approach to this is currently somewhere along the lines of: Texts can be read and used in many ways, some of them opposite to what the author intended, and each reading/usage has different semantics, and hence different moral valuations (for a given moral system/reader). Nonetheless, some readings have a... not privileged place per se, but are rather more often relevant to context than others (e.g., "Atlas Shrugged" is read most often as non-satirical), so the moral valuation of those texts in those readings affect more deeply the consensus valuation of the text than less frequent readings. In other words: value depends on reading, but not all readings have the same pragmatic weight in any given social or theoretical setting. Or in yet more words: the moral valuation of the text as a series of words depends on how they are read, but the moral valuation of the text as a social whatever is rather more fixed, as the context is more a function of consensus reading assumptions than an arbitrary choice.

Oh, and clearly artistic integrity (in the sense of drawing realistic results from plot assumptions) does a lot to mitigate moralistic absolutisms, although "realism" probably doesn't translate that well between moral worldviews after all.

But it's not a topic I've thought much about, as opposed to just coasting along with whatever works for me as a reader, so I don't expect it to survive in toto any well-grounded criticism. *g*

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Everything you say meshes well with what I'm thinking. Certainly dominant readings are sociohistorical phenomenon; I'm just not quite sure I'm ready yet to say that's all they are.

[gloss]

Can texts speak with moral voices? And if not, how do we respond to them when we see them disempowering people in a specific sociohistoric location?

While I'm with Gaiman about not judging texts too harshly on the basis biographical details (the commenter on bethbethbeth's post who mentioned the cult of personality was onto something, I think), I'm also deeply uncomfortable with his pat formula of trust the tale, not the teller. That kind of elevation of texts beyond their sociocultural context reminds me of tnh's story is a force of nature and matociquala's stories are my culture. They are my only culture. They are the country where I live. Being able to do that, to have the choice to separate text from context (to, in the second two examples, *naturalize* text to such a degree), strikes me as a deeply privileged opportunity.

That was background. (And, it should go without saying, I'm always already in the midst of working out these questions, so this is all provisional and whatnot.)

So. Can texts speak with moral voices? Sure. Texts establish and refer to moral universes all the time. Do readers have an obligation to accept those universes? Not at all.

I'm confused, or lost, honestly, by the connection between your two questions. That is, this bit -- when we see them disempowering people -- attributes a much greater amount of agency to texts than I think they really deserve. Texts create, represent, refer, and invert, but can they actually disempower? I'm afraid that my sense of what texts do and how reading works, however vague and underthought it still is, can't support that.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

That kind of elevation of texts beyond their sociocultural context

Hmm, I'm sympathetic to that sort of elevation, I suppose; I think it's the mystic inside me. But also culture is itself a type of text, so to say "stories are my culture" shouldn't be all that controversial, should it? Il n'y a pas de hors-texte and all that.

But you are certainly right about formalist criticism being a priveleged opportunity.

Do readers have an obligation to accept those universes? Not at all.

If they do accept them, then, does that mean it is their fault?

Texts create, represent, refer, and invert, but can they actually disempower?

If not, I have to ask, then what can? The only other answer I can be that as readers, of literal texts but more importantly of culture, we disempower ourselves. And I accept that on some level; after all, it seems intuitive to say that I can empower you. To imagine our (dis)empowerment as some sort of external force is itself disempowering.

But there is also a level on which I can't accept it, both because the very conclusion seems disempowering in some ways (in that it ignores the ways in which we can extend to others aids in empowering themselves), but also because there are people who, either because of injustice in our society (those mentally or physically fatigued because of work, those who have inadequate education) or natural causes (children, the mentally disabled) don't have the opportunity to react to texts critically).

Indeed, it seems to me the entire premise of my process of cultural critique assumes that texts can disempower (and empower, which is at least as important). The pledge of allegiance (and the cultural practice of reciting it in schools) disempowers atheists; non-gendered language disempowers women (and/or men, depending on the context); etc. To say that texts can't disempower seems to me to me to be a rejection of the very idea of systemic injustice, for what is such injustice if not textual? We're left with the conclusion that oppression is not the fault of the (in most cases well-intentioned and clueless) oppressors, but of the oprressed for allowing themselves to be oppressed.

Our personhood stems from our relations within a language and a culture, that is from texts, so that these texts have the power to disempower doesn't strike me as a radical statement.

(I have the feeling that one or both of us isn't understanding what the other is saying. I look forward to seeing where this goes.)

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

I haven't much to add to the question at hand, but I will say that as Card gets older (more famous? Richer? Something) he does more and more moralizing, and it's not pretty. I bulled my way through an entire series (the Homecoming Series) which was extremely thinly veiled moralizing, and then pretty much quit reading him entirely. The retelling of the narrative of Ender's Game in the latter Bean books (he reconsiders the story fairly explicitly) is interesting as well (by which I mean he is, as you say, losing the characters in service of a message).

I would love to think more specifically about the trajectory of the Ender books from the original short story (not quite a novella) to the book to the Ender sequels to the Bean sequels. Also, Bean's origination story (the toilet tank thing) also shows up in an early short story that isn't about Bean at all; it's called "Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory" and it's about vengeance, justice, and morality. Having read it turns Bean's story into something else entirely.

Actually, my answer is that texts always speak with a moral voice (they have to; they have authors who make moral choices in writing), but good texts are inherently open to questioning, and good authors try to offer complicated narratives that are open to a variety of interpretations. Whether they succeed or not is something else, but the world is complex, and everyone knows it.

Also, how are you defining feminist in saying literary works can't be inherently feminist? (Did I miss that post?)

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes. The first time I read Ender's Game I took the gender dynamics to be part and parcel of Card's critique of militarism. This time 'round, I "realized" that there is no critique of militarism in the novel and the gender dynamics are simply a function of a less than enlightened view of women. But it's subtle, so much so that I was able to mimic the style fairly well by imagining a horrible caricature of militarism gone wrong (which seems to square fairly well with his ideal) in R3 2.3.16. What makes my version satire and his sincere?

It's been about a year since I've read "Eumenides," but I vaguely remembering recognizing the parallels.

I agree with you, as an aesthetic criterion, on great works being the ones which are open to questioning. (But even this can be a matter of perception; most people don't see Ayn Rand's novels as being open to questioning, while I do.)

I kind of cheated when I said that I've said often that lit. works can't be feminist, as I don't know if I've actually said it in this journey. I don't like definitions (they never do their job), but by feminist I usually mean something along the lines of "pertaining to an intellectual systems which examines the ways in which society disempowers humans, especially women and proposes solutions to such systemic injustice." I don't think literature can be feminist in the same way that I don't think it can be capitalist or Marxist or whatever -ist you choose, in that if the work is rich and complex enough to be of quality than it will inevitably have something problematizable from the x-ist perspective. (For every potentially "feminist" work there can be a feminist critique.) Whether this is because literature and politics don't mix, or because aesthetic "quality" is a patriarchal standard, I'm not actually sure.

I talk a little bit more about the word "feminism" here--but again, I'm not giving a prescriptive definition.

[deliriumdriver.livejournal.com]

Firstly, OMG, do I love Colonel Graff! I mean, I don't know if I'd like him if I met him, but he's one of my favorite characters in Ender's Game. Oh, the torment of moral ambiguity! I actually just read First Meetings, and watching Graff in the story "Polish Boy" was fantastic.

Can texts speak with moral voices? I would answer with a hesitant 'yes.' I mean, obviously, writers can spell things out within a text, but that's the writer speaking, not the text. But I think texts do better with suggesting or implying a moral message than with outright stating it. The trick, as you mentioned with Card's Shadow Puppets, is in staying true to the characters, because if you violate the character's self-ness, then anything you say in the process is moot. By making a character act out of character, a writer violates the integrity of the text.

Now, all that said, should texts always be interpreted as moralizing pieces? Of course not. I think it does benefit the reader to broaden their horizons by considering the moral codes of individual characters and what they themselves think of those codes and those characters. But a character's view shouldn't be interpreted as propaganda from a writer with a moral agenda. Yes, sometimes there will be characters used (rather, abused) in such ways, but I think readers should not be quick to judge. And even if it is propaganda in some cases, it still deserves consideration as much as an independently created character does. Even when writers do have moral agenda, it doesn't mean that we should completely overlook the ideas they are propagating.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I mean, I don't know if I'd like him if I met him, but he's one of my favorite characters in Ender's Game. Oh, the torment of moral ambiguity!

That's almost exactly how I feel about Peter. I'm at once repulsed by his actions and secretly using him as a wish-fulfillment device. He's a good example of what I often call in this journal "the het male lense."

But I think texts do better with suggesting or implying a moral message than with outright stating it.

I agree, but I'm unsure whether a text can suggest/imply anything that the reader doesn't already believe in their heart. Take an Orwell or a Swift--their works masterfully critique the objects of their satire without the author having to say a word against it. But if we didn't already believe that boiling babies was wrong and that humans should be free, would the texts convey that message? (This issue takes up something like ten pages of my thesis.)

By making a character act out of character, a writer violates the integrity of the text.

Agreed. And again, this is why I love Shaw so much; he sucked as a propagandist; his characters kept on taking over. Even Heinlein is a much worst propagandist than he is generally given credit for, for much the same reason.

I think it does benefit the reader to broaden their horizons by considering the moral codes of individual characters and what they themselves think of those codes and those characters.

As I have think may have been pointed out in the comments above (possibly by me), not everyone has the advantages necessarily to be able to conduct such a critical reading. If texts can speak with moral voices, then they may well be able to shape thoughts in ways which are at first invisible. Which of course requires robust critical voices in response.