Essays

Irene Marques

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To have to mute our complex and different writing voice, in order words, to package it in a medium that the literary elite finds convenient, and which may suit their own tastes, is not conducive to real growth or diversity. It stifles us and prevents us from accessing a diversity of speaking voices. They could have shown us a different angle about the world and invite us to leave that closed shell where we may want to remain due to fear or any other reason. Such fears could also be related to the idea of an “imagined literary audience” and its supposed desires (as noted above) or to the mere marketing capitalist machinery that we think we cannot control. This latter issue cannot be fully addressed here but may also be related to this “monoculture” in the writing industry as some (including Brouillette)  argue. She seems, though, to be saying by the end of her article that the current market capitalist system can easily adapt to the different demands of the market. She notes that “It is a characteristic of contemporary capital that it accommodates critique very well and finds the marketable kernel in even the most virulent anti-market gestures.” And indeed we do have agency, or do we not? Isn’t God dead (at least in most of the West) as Nietzsche pronounced over a century ago? Or has God become something else? And do we not in fact yearn to exit our limited selves, to read people who do not live and think and write like us, who we may not really understand; people who may confuse us with their style and form of writing and therefore force us to grow? Isn’t that how we exit the loneliness of the self and expand our consciousness? How do we maintain the awe of living alive if not by constantly rediscovering the world and its people, reconsidering our self in relation to the other self and finally coming to perceive our self as a minuscule part of an immense cosmos of others and otherness? Yes—I want to say. The Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector, puts it more beautifully at the beginning of her novella The Hour of the Star: “Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.” It is this “yes” that we may in fact need and which may allow us to come to see ourselves as part of the other, suspending the dichotomy of “them” and “us” and finding a common humanity, a solidarity, rediscovering the dialectical “whole” that we are and were always meant to perform. Because our collectivity demands it. Because we are social beings that need the mirror of the other to find ourselves. It may be that all art is propaganda, propaganda about a way of being and seeing and living—thus the need to have the art of different peoples be acknowledged and nourished and not silenced. As W.E.B. DuBois wisely puts it in “Criteria of Negro Art”:

All Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the other is stripped and silent.

Were Liz Howard to submit her own manuscript directly to McClelland & Stewart without the aid of the well-known and critically acclaimed intermediary that Dionne Brand is, it is quite possible that she would not even get a reply. I am not suggesting here that Howard’s writing is not outstanding and does not merit high accolades. My interest is in pointing out the incestuous nature of our literary industry and the monoculture that arises from that since we have a specific connected elite serving as intermediary or gatekeeper. It is necessary to open up a discussion about this pernicious nexus so that we can create a more equitable environment where all those who write and write well and devote time and love to the craft can have a fair access to the publishing market. And “well” here is also to be understood as reflecting a variety of ethics and aesthetics as noted above. This is not what I see reflected in Canadian literature. To have to depend on ‘connections’ to see our work out there is not really satisfying: not for the writers and not for the publishers. If our spirit of justice is alive, that is, for it is a reminder of what power and privilege can do: either allow us to enter the “house” in red carpet style or stare at it from the outside, yearning, yearning, with beautiful wide eyes, in open, persistent and innocent belief, for a just and naturally welcoming invitation. Because we are equal—equal a priori. Let us recall what Michel Foucault tells us in “Truth and Power” on the pernicious and delicate matter that Truth and Power are:

Truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements. “Truth” is linked in a circular relation with systems of power that produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it—a “regime” of truth. (132)

Works Cited

Anderson, Hephzibah. “Why won’t English speakers read books in translation.” BBC. October 21 2014. Web. 2 June 2016. < http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140909-why-so-few-books-in-translation>

Barret, Paul. “Why literary critics failed to understand and define Austin Clarke, a Canadian writer far ahead of his time.” National Post. Toronto, June 30 2016. Web. 23 July 2016. <http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/books/why-literary-critics-failed-to-understand-and-define-austin-clarke-a-canadian-writer-far-ahead-of-his-time>

Brouiellete, Sarah. “On Some Recent Worrying over World Literature’s Commodity Status.” Maple Tree Literary Supplement (Issue 18). Web. 10 June 2016. <https://www.mtls.ca/issue18/impressions/>

Du Bois, W.E.B. “Criteria of Negro Art.” Web. June 2 2016.  <http://www.coreknowledge.org/mimik/mimik_uploads/documents/297/Du%20Bois%20WEB%20%20Criteria%20of%20Negro%20Art.pdf >

Foucault, Michel. “Truth and Power.” Power: Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984, Vol 3. New York, NY: The New Press, 2000. 111-133. Print.

Lispector, Clarice. The Hour of the Star. Trans and Forward. Giovanni Pontiero. Manchester: Carcanet, 1986.  Print.

Medley, Mark. “How Liz Howard went from studying science to the Griffin Prize short list.” The Globe and Mail. Toronto, May 31 2016. Web. 10 June 2016. <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/how-liz-howard-went-from-studying-science-to-writing-award-nominated-poetry/article30217639/>

Ong, J. Walter. “Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought.”  The Written Word: Literacy in Transition. Ed. Gerd Bauman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. 23-50. Print.

Richardson, Jael. “12 Reasons Why Canlit’s Got Me So Tired.” Open Book Toronto. July 11 2016. Web. 23 July 2016.

Wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ. Decolonizing the Mind: The Language of African Literature. London: J. Currey, 1986.

 

Notes

[i] On the importance of translation and its relation to healthy literatures, the Canadian publisher, Biblioasis’ International Translation Series aptly notes the following: “The Biblioasis International Translation Series is dedicated to publishing world literature in English in Canada. The editors believe that translation is the lifeblood of literature, that a language that is not in touch with linguistic traditions loses its creative validity, and that the worldwide spread of English makes literary translation more urgent now than ever before.” See Biblioasis International Translation Series <http://www.biblioasistranslation.com/about.html?ckattempt=1>

 

 

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2 Comments

tony marques August 3, 2016 at 3:51 pm

keep up the good work, Irene!!!!!!!

tony

Reply
Veena Gokhale August 26, 2016 at 4:12 pm

I think this is a problem the world over. It’s power politics, systematic “othering” & discrimination essentially. Even if individuals involved may have the best of intentions, the system seems to triumph. Thanks Irene for this honest and very well researched piece.

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