A glimpse at Fictocriticism

By Dilshan BOANGE

The term fictocritcism has not as yet gained much familiarity in Sri Lanka’s present mainstream literary discourses. But with the growing focus amongst academia to develop postcolonial literary studies the means of study devised by fictocritcism, fusing literature with academic discourse to better the depth of cultural studies within the borders of the text itself, presents new channels for Sri Lanka to explore new means for expression and analysis.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a work of fictocriticism is that it presents itself as a text juxtaposing creative composition such as prose with a leaning towards fiction or biography (to take two examples) with academic writings from disciplines such as sociology, psychology, history or political science (to take as simple examples) which can act as theoretical framework by which the segments of creative/fiction writing may be better understood and studied.

Excerpts from works of theoreticians who have pioneered studies in linguistics to psychology could be interwoven to build a text of a multidisciplinary nature which presents a theoretical grounding while giving significant focus to the creative elements to be appreciated for the knowledge they contain in light of cultural studies.

Fictocriticism therefore becomes a narrative mode that provides more cohesion between art (creative expression) and science (academic knowledge).

Origins of fictocriticism

The origins of fictocriticism are traced to women’s writing and is rooted to a significant level in feminist writing and feminist approaches to critiquing ‘paternalistic views’ about ‘literature’ and ‘theory’.

The approach of fictocriticism in blurring boundaries between genres finds its theoretical grounding in the views of French theorists Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes.

And in the course of time courses in creative writing began adopting fictocriticsm which has had notable success in countries such as Canada and Australia.

The subtle dissipation of genre boundaries in a fictocritical work may provide the writer to test himself as a creative composition writer as well as a researcher and thereby become a ‘knowledge producer’ in light of cultural studies.

Stephen Muecke

In this article I wish to briefly discuss my impressions of the fictocritical writings of Prof. Stephen Muecke with reference to three selected stories from his book Joe in the Andamans. Firstly, a few lines of introduction about Prof. Muecke to those who may not be familiar with his name. Stephen Muecke is a Professor of Writing at The University of New South Wales, Australia and is a key promoter of fictocritical writing. His doctoral thesis had been on the storytelling techniques among the aboriginal people of Western Australia. This research was published later as Gularabulu: Stories from the West Kimberley. His other publications in fictocriticism include No Road (bitumen all the way). Prof. Muecke who has been a pioneer of fictocritical writing was to become the first Australian professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Technology in Sydney.

Joe in the Andamans gleans from many published works that range in their genre from fiction to poetry to essays which are constructed together with the writers own writings in the system of building a text that offers more space to explore newer meanings of the author’s writings read in conjunction with the excerpted texts. And another noteworthy element in the fictocritical stories is how several works of cinema and TV are also cited and described by the author to form the diverse texture of the book. Therefore we may understand that fictocritical writing need not be limited in its fusing of genres to written works alone. This mode of writing offers space for a mix of media within the realm of writing.

The three selected stories

The three pieces from Prof. Muecke’s book I wish to discuss are –‘Joe in the Andamans’ (the title story), ‘The Fall’, and ‘Choreomanias’. The stories present a strong element of philosophical musing laced with experiences of the author. In the title story the narrative starts off telling the reader how the narrator (whom we may assume is the author himself) came across a book he began reading to his son Joe, of which the title is –Tom in the Andamans. A lengthy extract from this work is presented which gives an account of the proposed plan to send Tom on a holiday of sorts to the Andamans to better recover from influenza, since the climate in Britain isn’t conducive to his health. The reason for the chosen destination is that his mother’s cousin Hugh Standish has been recently appointed the Chief Commissioner of the Andamans. From the outset we encounter a glimpse of the colonial times that prevailed over certain parts of the world through the excerpt from Tom in the Andamans.

The journey that takes place when the narrator and his son Joe go to the Andamans on a small holiday in the hope of having some boyish adventure does not however prove to be anything much other than the expectable mundane.

The impressions that the narrator offers the reader of the topography and the politics behind the town landscape speak of how the colonial enterprise has affected the country and has very much shaped the perceptions of the people. The ponderings of the writer then offer cross referential materials from historic account of the Andamans.

The remarkable account of Marco Polo and how there is reference to natives with ‘heads like dogs’ speaks very soundly of the degree of exoticness imbued into what is generally considered a ‘factual account’ by a historian.

The fact that nearly every such scientific documentation of the westerner in the age of ‘discovering the world’ through western eyes is highly subjective and riddled with misnomers comes out very pronouncedly in this piece of fictocritical writing.

Which leads us to wonder how scientific is the historic accounts of the likes of Marco Polo, now in this day and age when we may revisit and reevaluate the ‘scientificness’ of the thinking of that age and their authority as knowledge producers? Therefore I feel Joe in the Andamans is piece built with a postcolonial method that allows means to critique the ‘science’ of the occident by visiting the places, people and phenomena they arbitrarily interpreted, through their subjectivities, to the world at large.

Taking it further the idea of the Andamans as a place of exoticism is compounded by popular media of the 20th century. The in-flight movie shown while the narrator and his son Joe fly from Singapore to Madras is The Phantom the movie based on the popular comic book character whose secret abode is located in the Andaman Islands.

Another work of film media that comes into discussion is the popular TV series of the 60s Lost in Space. It is interesting to note how the writer analyses this story from a point of postmodernist outlook paralleling it with the Swiss family Robinson taken into a new modern space age setting. All of these elements contribute to a fundamental thrust as I see it, which is developing a critical postcolonial outlook towards the thinking patterns and value judgments that we have inherited as a result of the colonial enterprise when it comes to approaching and appreciating culture and at that I would say mostly non-western culture.

The Fall

The story The Fall is much more different to the title story in both its content and context. The central storylines move between two elements. One is a set of essayistic pieces that chart the founding of fictocriticism from anecdotal accounts of a gathering of eminent academics amongst whom the pivotal figure is Jacques Derrida. The other is the account of a narrator who has emotional turbulence affecting him for having fallen in love.

The narrator of this segment or storyline, is both a man named Monsieur Mouche and a fly, the latter being a creature who is attracted to a carnivorous plant (like the Venus flytrap). Thereby one may read the idea of falling in love as possibly self destructiveness which cannot be resisted.

The Fall’s narrative brings into its fictocritical centrality (if one may put it that way) descriptions of the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo.

By dealing with these fusions the reader may get a fair idea of how the theoretical aspects of fictocriticsm may have developed. It intends to see persons, feelings, phenomena as beyond the existential and explore what values they may have in the perceiver who may give it a more subjective, newer interpretation.

Choreomanias

The story titled Choreomanias: Movements through our Body, is a remarkable piece of research based writing which in my opinion veers essentially towards the essayistic.

The piece dwells into the phenomena of mass hysteria and mystical trances associated with eastern (or non-western) ritualism. The discourse looks at the phenomena of trances and hysteria from many vantages and seeks to understand the political as well as psychological implications within the context of a cultural ritualism.

The reasons sought to be understood are looked at from a point of historical records, account of Madagascans and their ritualistic practices and beliefs that are linked very strongly to the spirit world and channeling the dead through a medium.

Choreomanias in particular has much value in terms of the anthropological foundation it presents to approach cultural studies with cross continental case studies being brought into the discussion.

The writer brings in historical records from the middle ages in Europe where acts of collective dancing in the lower classes of society took on the form of ‘dance manias’.

In this line of argument the writer presents the writings of Hecker and Ian Hacking.

The association of dance ritualism with religious festivals in Europe is also discussed as another significant aspect that indicates a sense of collective performance being needed for the common masses to vent their tensions through rhythmic bodily movement.

This article is but a mere glimpse at the work of Prof. Muecke and the discipline of fictocriticism. With the growing interest amongst Sri Lankan writers to explore new modes of expression and narrative styles I feel studies in fictocriticsm at least at an introductory level here in the English departments of our local university system may open new vistas to develop new types of literary works that seek to explore the diverse cultural ethos of Sri Lanka.

While many universities around the world offer courses in writing ranging from diplomas to doctoral programmes, the Sri Lankan university system is yet to develop a course in writing which may seem as a noticeable lacuna of the present times.

Fictocritical studies could help the aspiring, eager writer whose forte may not be fiction but more academic writing, to explore the avenues of fusing elements of the two genres to create new expressions.

In conclusion I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to poet and writer Mr. Sunil Govinnage whose introduction of Prof. Muecke to me is much appreciated, since it marked the start of my own explorations into fictocriticism.