DOI: 10.5176/2251-3566_L315.43
Authors: P. P. Giridhar
Abstract:
More deductivist than inductive, more theoretically motivated empirically oriented, the paper, a low-down on my view of (literary) art, argues that there has to be a natural adductive-abductive tension in art, which corresponds to how the world is and how you wished it was, or to put it in more picturesque terms, the prose of reality and the poetry of the soul, the outer eye of empiricism, real-worldism and the inner eye of deductivist mentalism. There can be no such tension, for example, in sociology and cultural anthropology. (Literary) art is a magical carpet that wafts you away from mundanity and this-worldliness on to a heart-warming soul-lifting, soul-searching plane, onto the infinity or divinity, if you will, of human existence and being. There is no such thing in sociology or cultural anthropology. Man is home to both good and evil, both to meanness and magnanimity, to selfishness and selflessness and so are aggregates of human beings. Irrationalities like caste and religion tap into the dark irrational seamy part of man. The big question is if the empirical setting is loaded in favor of the evil, selfish, and mean side of man, what ought to be the equation of art with such a setting? The magic broached above derives from the adductive-abductive tension, it seems to me. And it is this level in literary discourse that corresponds to the level (non-restrictively) of scientific discourse where scientific ideas steer happily clear of their creators. This compares with inter-human negotiation where one’s negotiation with other humans steers clear of the person being negotiated with, in terms of the character etc of the participants. Equally crucial, and this is the crux of this piece, is the flip side: experience which is crucial to, and grounds, all art could be seriously flawed, could be something that reason disowns, in which case there are no positive vibes that can transit or evolve or climb or morph into art from experience. This hallmark of art is the result of the adductive-abductive tension that runs through it. The crux then is pieces that do nothing more than depict sordid irrational realities as they exist, pieces that do nothing more than own what reason disowns, are emphatically NOT (literary) art. This is a strict no-no for art. Artists need to transcend the manifest to ignite change. That literary art by definition, should not be mere unadulterated realism might sound contrarian but here it is, the argument against every novel, everything that is big, bouncy and allegedly artistic that is intellectually indigent, lacking humanity and rationality.
Keywords: adductive-abductive, deductivist, inductive, deductive mentalism, sanskaara, scaffold, literary art, experiential reality, artbed, pavement, poetry of the soul, prose of reality.
Updating...