Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

Tilo Women Critics and South African English Literavy Strcdies
~vork~ngniasses inakes them rcluctalit to challenge the status quo:
It rnust not be forgotten either that the Sew who contrive against great odds
change, assirnilation, imitation and revolt when imitation lacks the
dynamic spirit of the movement in its beginning (1944~: 12).
to rise above their Scllows, hold a precarious footing hct\veen two worlds.
l'hey are neitlier at one with tlieir oppressed brothers. nor are they
ere Van Heyningen consistently elevated literature above politics, Taylor insisted
11 the primacy ofeconomics a ~ politics d ill relation to literature. This is most vividly
acceptable to the wllitc man .... They are rnol.eover apprehensive of losing
~iirougl~ ally action on their part tlic little they have gained as individuals. It
is an at~nosplicre fatal to the flowering of any art (1942f: 10).
arent in how they understood the relationship between literature and social change.
eirs is the traditional disagreement between the idealist and the dialectical
ist: Van Heyningen stresses the role of ideas in historical change, and Taylor
As with her al~alysis of black South African writing, so too in her understallding
white South African writing, Taylor (like Trotsky) argues that art is an expression o
class interests. Taylor distinguishes between William Plo~ner and Roy Ca~npbell
revolutionary insurgency. Coln~ne~lting on early twentieth century attempts to
Irish national sentiment by means of Celtic theatre and the work of the Gaelic
ague, Taylor argues that
social critique (in firrbon Wove [1925] 1985; and The Wmoo.re [I9281 197
respectively) on the basis of their class affiliations. According to Taylor, Ca~npbell
critique is the 'expression of contempt of the petit-bourgeois herd on the part of
poetic aristocrat' (1943e:12) while Plainer's is the scepticism of the bou
it is well known that revolutions cannot be made by literaly or cultural
movements; the deep social discontent of the masses must supply the urge
to action (1941f: 15).
intellectual in the aftennath of World War 1. 'Taylor's analysis ofclass alld race in
African literature is influenced by the notion prominent amongst Unity Movemen
ilarly, Upton Sinclair is guilty of
~nernbers of race as a construct, and 'racialism [as] a mere excrescence of capitalis
(Saunders 1986:76). White South African writers, then,
reflect the ideology of tlieirclass as in amirror. When they aclmit an African
or a Coloured into the pages of their book in Inore tlian a decorative
capacity ... they write as members of a dominant ~vhite castc looking li-om
aSar at some almost sub-human species. When Ilc is not a mere victim, an
over-emp]lasis[ing] the role which art plays in the social process. the
function ofart a weapon of propaganda, as the maker of anew world. Art
in many varied and subtle ways reflects social processes, art accompanies
great historical movements and tlie study of art illulninates these. But
Sinc]air was to regard art as a lever in social change. as the
mighty agent ofapeacefuI revolution, as a substitute for the workers taking
over by force (194%: 16).
object of humanitarian pity. he is a Problem, a menace, a []ireat to wllite
purity and white civilisation (1 942f: lo).
e, Xylor draws on Trotsky's understanding of the relationship between literature
its econoinic base. For Trotsky (echoing Hegel),
A final instance of her critical method is the series of articles on fatellineteen
and early twentieth-century European and American poetry published in 1944, whi
resembles the kind of wide-ranging cultural and economic analysis attempted by t
English Marxist Christopher Caudwell in Jllzrsion trnd Kt.ali& (1937). The series
political, social and economic crises which mark European history frorn the
nineteenth century are understood to have produced certain observable reactions in t
the nightingale of poetry, like that bird of wisdom. the owl. is heard only
after the sun has set. The day is the time for action, but at twilight feeling
and reason come to take account ofwhat has been accomplisllcd.( 192553).
artistic PI-oduction of the period. These she summarises as a 'tendency towards am strongly marked individualism in art, and more complete occupation of the Iv
Tower' (1 944c: 13). This broad conception of artistic lnovements in relation to chang
in the ecor~ornic base is qualified by a recognition, first, that artistic movement
it is not possible 10 steep literature over-night in a political progralll. Itor is
it desirable. Creative literature is impossible witliout a deep imaginative
assimilating ofexperience (1 943a: 15).
subject to their own laws of development and, second, that individual responses
take differe,nt fonns:
at follows from this of the relationship between literature and social
Tllc development of literary (artistic) rnovelnents is ~iota si~r~plc tiring to he
traced niechanically in each country it1 parallel li~ies according to the
development and declillc ol'capitalist society in eacll. Wl~ile the econoniic
base is an irivaluable and essential guide in tracing the rise of certain
~deological concepts, literature at the saint tin~c has its own laws ofgrowkli,
lor, this is to conf~~se art and politics.
~~~lo~-'s to abandon the categoly of the 'literaly' pk~rsuit of
litica17 art, and hel- far more nuanced understanding of the relationship between
rat1ll.e and its material context did not prevent her work from being l-ccupel-ated by