Literary aesthetics' representation of political violence
- The intrinsic-extrinsic dialogue of the significant form -
- Part 3 -

Dr. P. Milan Khangamcha *

It is an internally vibrant existential pathos and indomitable power of aesthetics as its socio-cultural upsurge as a symbolically representational democratic discourse or a kind of de-centering of power of discourse from the mainstream core to the India's regional periphery. Art also may turn out to be a socio-cultural form of self-reflexive protest through the medium of the generalised symbolic aesthetic representation.

It may also serve as an expression of collective unconscious which releases the long repressed and suppressed negative collective emotions being released via the art works. In the work cited here, speaks about the especial value of works of art in terms of its progressions in the stream of history which as 'A tradition is impersonal'. The character of generalisation and symbolic aesthetic representation may agree with the tradition of the intrinsic worth of art works as being impersonal.

For a subsequent treatment of aesthetic aspect of works of art that have the generalised emotive content of political violence and its built in message of sublime and subjectively universal tragedies in its progression 'in an entirely new element' it is necessary to analyse as to how an artist '…stands in the stream of history and he is duty bound much less with the (customer) audience than with art.

It is also true that, due to the communicative nature of art works and the very structure of intersubjectivity of the human life world, in the light of the view of 'art-as-an-end-in-itself' or as having its own intrinsic worth and the larger contexts of the artists' situatedness in his particular dynamic socio-temporal set up, somehow its form/meaning/message being suggestively conveyed by its aesthetico-symbolic representation as significant forms to the spectators.

The success or failure of art works consists in their capability to evoke the same emotive content to the aesthetically cultivated spectators with the accompanying newer and newer hermeneutically unconcealing relish of art unalloyed experience. Once again whether, this ends up as a protest, propaganda or as a pure of act of aesthetic joy depends upon the depth, dexterity, skills of the creative talents of the artists.

This author had elsewhere brought this case out in the relation between art and morality that, without being directly didactic innovative art works can smoothly take the members of the audience to the level of catharsis where art releases negative human tendencies and indirectly reveals via its power of suggestivity in a non-discursive way an order of existential truth. Even if great art works have failed to take mankind from their state of nature towards an ideal order of existence, great works of art may remain as a standing call to mankind to a common good of mankind.

There seems to be a timelessness in its significant form with its revelation of the futility, mindlessness and self-destructive actions of mankind in their acts which are symptomatic of being polarised and fragmented in their expressions which will ultimately get boomeranged to the eventual self-destructions of those very human agents who enjoy basking in their temporary gains and glitters born out of their violent actions perpetrated towards the helpless and marginalised fellow beings.

Now, this ideal demand is not something which an artist of substance discursively does from his position of dichotomised subjectivity which stands in opposition to other selves, society and reality at large as objects to be overcome. This evident from the sciences' relentless search for the attainment of objective truths that are mostly turning out to be instrumental in nature for serving as the ends of the inalienable derivative rights of the possessive tendencies of highly fragmented and polarised human individuality and its accompanying sense of liberty.

But the ingenious work of art of artist of creative genius is a response of his whole being (this may be explained with reference to Heidegger and Jidu Krishnamurti) as an expression of the given ontological structure of the larger world of which he/she is existentially structured. His work is not that of a subject who causally produces his work as a product. In Heidegger's language it is 'earth' which has become unhidden as 'world' of equipmental totality with its underlying structure of unitary system of assignments through a form which it has taken as 'matter'.

And this aesthetically constituted (significant) 'form' is not a mere 'form', but 'formed matter' that shows something other than itself, that in some way has an intellectual content or meaning [Carrier, 2008: 38]. His concept of 'worldhood-of-the- world' as being revealed to the interpretative understanding of an ontologically situated Dasein as a 'being-in-the-world', is not something causally produced as a 'product' by an 'efficient causality'.

This model of Heidegger may be adapted to a work of art as something that is not a product but as a revelation or the appearing of the appearance which is a meeting point of showing nature of non-Dasein beings in general and the seeing capability of Dasein. That is, a new order of non-propositional truth is being cleared or unconcealed to the artist-Dasein to whom only the question of being is an issue, and who only can understand meanings of exitence.

The aforesaid idea of the stream of history is echoed in the contention of Heidegger [Heidegger, 2006: 168] that, '…in emphasizing the strangeness and thickness of art, regarded a meaningful work less as an object (and thereby subject to stable conceptual aesthetic categories) than an event in the world.

A work of art has '…extraordinary address to its viewers and their ability to put it 'to work,' transforming mere material into meaningful form ('earth' becoming 'world,' a place of unveiling, unconcealing, lighting up). Such a philosophical position is possible only when an artist is not a subject working on a product in the form of art work as an object. As a being-in-the-world his work of art is a response by him/her as a whole being where praxis and theoria are equi-primordial and, it is therefore not that, just as it was misinterpreted by Sartre, that, praxis or concrete existence precedes essence.

A more articulate discussion may be done by revisiting the two answers to the question 'what is literature'? [Claire & Zwijnenberg, 2003, eds.: 165] and Edmund Burke's the Sublime and Beautiful. [Ibid.]. The first deals with the distinction between a textual feature and an aesthetic feature. The two types of answers, however, differ sharply in that one (the former) is reductive and the other non-reductive (the latter).

This may help in discerning as to how aesthetic structure of literatures assumes the kind of aesthetic functions in portraying the emotive contents of literatures even if they are taken to be having a self-referring character (as in the reductive model of textual feature) or more indirectly or suggestively they point to a reality outside (aesthetic feature as non-reductive model).

It is necessary to see as to how these two differences of interpretations will have a bearing on the theme of this paper when one takes the relationship that is understandable between art and life or society and the reality at large. That is, if one speaks about literary aesthetics with reference to textual feature, one cannot gobble up its aesthetic structure purely within the domain of textual feature.

While they can be distinguished, their synthetic structure can only by spoken in terms of textual feature as the embodiment as well as expression through the significant form of aesthetic feature which is suggestive of its emotive content as then generalised aesthetic representation via media its non-discursive or symbolic language. While, such an emotive representation especially those existential pathos as its emotive content, if seen in terms of the autonomy of art and literature cannot be treated as propaganda tool.

The least which may be said in the light of the intimate art-life-society-relation is that, the power of aesthetics to suspend disbelief becomes a symbolic or non-discursive language of expression. In being communicative in the aesthetic way, it hints at the futility of violence as the communicated truth without being educational instruction or an idiosyncratic propaganda mouth piece.

If life imitates art just as it is also true that art imitates life, then, without being treated as a means to an end, the portrayal of the existential pathos of aesthetic representation (symbolically emotive or non-discursive language) of political violence and conflicts in their extreme forms as the emotive contents of works of art and literature, they may indirectly hint at their intrinsic worth. Their power of catharsis would not go wasted. If the characters of sublime and beauty are applicable to every extreme forms of the portrayal of tragic violence, the aesthetically empathic spectators may not be merely indulging in their pathological joy of sadism.

Concluded ...