Prosthetics of imagination:

Theory and cultural practice

By M. Ramachandran

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not”.

The quotation is from the Book of John of the King James Version of The Holy Bible. What does that mean? Does the Word mean promise as the way we use it now? Or does it mean the word is supreme, life and light? The arbitrary nature or the relationship between word and meaning, or between signifier and signified is a much analysed and theorised subject in the fields of semantics and semiotics by the scholars like Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes.

In the binary division of word and meaning, primacy is given to word as if it dictates meaning. But meanings are evolved thorough the relationships among words, the situations, the cultural specificities of the person or persons and the way they use words and the traces of history a word carries through in its traverse across cultures.

When we realise the relationship between the medium (the signifier) and message (the signified) do not have any strong bondage as conventionally thought of, (from the ancient times to that of Kalidasa and to the Modernists of the 20th century) and they continually break apart and reattach in new combinations, we also become aware of that whatever we write or speak conveys meanings we do not or could not possibly intend. And our words cannot say what we mean. The authority of a text on meaning thus becomes a myth. The perpetual interweaving of texts and meaning is beyond our control. The awareness of the potential of irrepressible significations of words or signs necessitated the shift of focus in art and literature from author-centric to a reader centric one. Once out in the public domain, a piece of literature is liable to interpretations the author cannot defy. The work of art becomes, if I use the term coined by Mikhail Bakhtin, carnivalesque by the participation of people of all shades and colours in it. Bakhtin saw medieval carnivals as a period of time in which people were able to ridicule their governing bodies. This ridicule promoted both freethinking and new ideas in the minds of the public. He then applied this idea to certain forms of literature, calling them carnivalesque.

Interpretation

An interpretation, in other words the meta-text that produced as a narrative for communicative action, is an exercise to bring out more clarity, bring more light upon the basic text. Taking a cue from the logical correlation with the Word and God from The Holy Bible that I quoted above, my use of the metaphor light in this context elucidates the problems of interpretation.

In one’s perception of a visual image, light and shade plays the role of defining the contours. In other words, light and shade are what determine the form of the image. That means, the very idea of the signifier is given by light and shade.

The more light falls on an image, the less will be its clarity. Signs, due to their inherent carnivalesque nature i.e., not controlled by the hegemony and free to express and celebrate their own opinions, allow polyphony of meanings in all our efforts at metatextuality. Hence, all interpretations are some kind of misinterpretations. How convincingly one can interpret, is what makes any interpretation significant.

Criticism, whether it is art, literary or music, being analytical and intertextual rather than interpretational it is dynamically discursive. Hypothetical presupposition is what makes criticism interactive with the text in which it intervenes to expand the contours of meaning.

Intervention

Such an intervention into the semantic structures of a text converts it as a discourse material. Distanced from the authoritative control of the meanings by the author the text is liberated by the application of critical theory. Critical theory provides the normative bases for all the analytical tools that are used for increasing freedom in all domains of society including that of art and culture.

The emergence of the notions of feminism, multiculturalism, minority and gay/lesbian rights or environmentalism, in the present social context, is the result of such recognition of intertextuality and polyphonic nature of language.

In application critical theory, which I consider as an inclusive term of all critical ideas though it was mainly propagated by the Frankfurt School and Jurgen Habermas, makes the text upon it works, bare of its ideology: the explicit enunciated content of the text and its pragmatic presuppositions.

Analysis

However, in such a discourse analysis that has been taking place with convincing points of view; say Marxian, Freudian or Deconstructive for that matter, a tendency of reductionism prevails. Of course, such a reductionism is unavoidable to the loyal followers of any system of thought because, beneath such “ideologies” lies some kind of fundamentalism that distorts the presuppositions of any text.

For many schools of criticism the dominant standpoint of the philosophy that it tries to follow works as prosthetics of imagination. Hence, critical theory itself is bound to enunciate its own presuppositions while working on other texts for their own emancipation.

While the guiding philosophical approach elucidates many a subtext that naturalises the symbolic order of social relations it also obscures most of the tendencies of the text to liberate itself from the analytical eye with its dominating gaze. Resigning from its occupation in pathology, criticism becomes responsive to the subtleties as well as the sublime by accommodating all the otherness such as sensibilities, features and contradictions of attitudes within every textual discourse whether it is literature or art. Escaped from the clutches of a domineering point of view the practice of criticism can sympathise with the social attitudes and conventions that structure many a text. Such an enlightenment allows the objective of discourse analysis be more democratic and receptive. It also allows the crossover of boundaries within the philosophic traditions enabling much more liberation in social systems and attitudes.

Certainly positing such an open-ended theoretical propagation for critical approach is not a relativist or pragmatist one as criticism does not look for absolutes. On the other hand, such an open-ended position allows one to comprehend the facets of arguments in the text not to be distorted by the domination of gaze.

Power

At the same time, the inevitable hypothetical presuppositions should not be overlooked in one’s efforts at discarding its domineering power.

It is the ability to be dynamically discursive makes criticism the strongest binding factor in a multilingual, multicultural and multiracial society. Ultimately, the simple concern for the other enables society as well as criticism mutually responsive.

I can foresee the criticism about this position as anarchic. The notions of blurring the boundaries of philosophical streams and the proposition to liberate the tool of criticism from the hold of the guiding point of view to accommodate counterpoints necessarily weaken the argumentative prospect of communication. But, it takes away the biting fundamentalist attitude towards the text and opens up the arena of discourse for more sympathetic scrutiny.

If in art and literature, the boundaries of medium and categories have already blurred the criticism cannot be far behind.