Has the Development of the Internet Done More Harm Than Good to Literature?

Recently my blog updates have nearly ground to a halt; next time I should make a point of reflecting on that. This time I’ll just casually write down the associations sparked by this title, and try to recover my feel for writing~

This title is one of the debate topics in the freshman cup debate contest that our department’s undergraduates will be taking part in this time, and I, in my role as “adviser,” was also honored to be consulted, so I suppose I should at least give some kind of answer.

Seeing this topic, I first thought of a few articles I wrote before. One of them was a comment three years ago on another debate topic: “What Is Art?—On Whether “Super Girl” Is Art”, where I roughly mentioned that one should not use an after-the-fact, dogmatic, idealized concept to arbitrate real activities; or rather, one should not substitute some kind of authoritarian value judgment for those complex, concrete forms of human activity; or rather, one should not equate science with truth, art with beauty, or literature with goodness. In particular, one should not equate them with the truth, goodness, or beauty one oneself recognizes. Then, inevitably, I also thought of two other articles written in debate with unic: “What Is “Literature”?” and “Is Literature Merely the Study of Human Beings?—A Response.”

When facing certain literary-and-art young people, one has something in common with facing scientistic people: first of all, both will start by tossing out a few heavy-sounding yet highly dubious assertions, such as: science/literature is sacred/noble; science is power; literature is the study of human beings; and so on. Not long after dropping these assertions, they will slip away, because they will immediately discover that you and they have no common language: you have had little contact with real science, or rather you have had little contact with real literature, whereas they have personal experience; they know what science/literature is like; they have real experience, and you do not. You are an outsider; you lack scientific literacy or literary sensibility; how can you possibly argue with them about science/literature? Even if they do have the patience to chat slowly with you, it is only because they hope to win you over or convert you.

If what is to be debated is some technical detail within a scientific specialty, or if one is exchanging concrete impressions brought about by certain literary works, then of course a bumpkin who has not studied the relevant material naturally lacks the qualifications to discuss it. But if the issue is not something internal to science or literature, and is instead a matter of concepts or history, then I believe a rustic like me also has the right to speak. In particular, an “external” perspective is more likely to prevent one from flying into a fever and becoming dogmatic and tyrannical.

When Snow first spoke of the chasm between science and the humanities as the “two cultures,” what he mainly expressed was the problem of humanists generally looking down on scientists. But decades later the situation reversed, and the swagger of the scientific camp instead came to overshadow the humanities world. Yet this does not mean that the arrogance and prejudice of humanists have completely disappeared. At any time, when “self-identification” expands excessively so that one fuses oneself with some universal concept one understands, that becomes dogmatism. Put simply: for example, when I say “A is true” or “B is science,” that is not necessarily dogmatism; it is more likely simply expressing my personal judgment or inclination. But once I say “A is science, therefore A is true” or “B is false, therefore B is not science,” dogmatism has appeared. For at that point “my” personal judgment is concealed beneath certain universalized, rationalized discourse; I am no longer saying “A is true” in my own name, but am beginning to say “A is true” in the name of “science.” Dogmatism is not, so to speak, an exuberant assertion of the “self”; quite the opposite, it is the denigration and substitution of the “self,” just as the overwhelming majority of tyrants do not rule in the name of “I,” but rule in the name of sacred concepts such as “Heaven,” “God,” or “progress.” The problem is that the dogmatist substitutes some abstract idea for the real self, and thus private likes and dislikes are turned into universal public standards. A typical pattern of dogmatism is to drape a private, historical, situational feeling of value in the outer garment of something public, eternal, and absolute. This kind of attitude can often be seen in those literary-and-art young people or scientistic people.

Here, dogmatists or fanatics often easily confuse value judgments with definitions of real activities. For instance, they first declare, without argument, that “literature teaches people to be good,” and then many literary works in reality look quite bad; not only do they not encourage goodness, they are downright evil—so what then? They then go on to declare that “those bad literary works are not really literature,” and that calling them literature is merely a misunderstanding. But what counts as goodness and what counts as evil are judged according to standards that differ across historical periods and cultures; furthermore, not everything called a literary person or a literary work is intended to teach people to be good—so what then? At that point they simply slip away, deciding to ignore a bumpkin like me and my relativism.

The pluralism I advocate is not meant to suppress personal views—“this also makes sense, that also makes sense; this is good, that is also good,” becoming a fence-sitter or a yes-man. Quite the opposite: it is to bring one’s own views into the open, to present them as one’s own, in one’s own name, rather than having to disguise them as something else and present them under some grander name. For example, if I think some literature is terrible, then I should state frankly these two judgments: “(I think) it is terrible” and “(I think) it has betrayed the tradition of literature”; rather than saying “It is terrible because it has betrayed the tradition of literature” or “It is terrible, so it has betrayed the tradition of literature.” When I say “It is terrible,” I am using a certain measure of aesthetic value; when I say “It has betrayed literature,” I am using a historical or conceptual measure. These are two different judgments, both arising from some of my personal standards. A pluralist is not without standards; rather, a pluralist has stronger and clearer standards, which is precisely why different levels of standards are not casually mixed together.

Everyone has some measure by which they assess the properties and quality of specific literary works. I personally have not talked much about literary works, but similarly, I have had fairly personal opinions about animated films. For instance, I might say that Chinese animation and Japanese animation are completely different kinds of things; or I might say that certain Japanese animated films are masterpieces, while others are trash, and so on. However, I also fully understand that there are many people who, for example, impose excessively high moral didactic expectations on animated films (just as some people do on literature), and at the same time hold stubborn moral views, so that in their eyes all Japanese animation is trash. Of course, if I too were like a dogmatist, I might once again invoke my private experience, saying, for example, that I have personally experienced those “real animated films” and felt that they really are different, and so on. But in fact, even if a person who holds prejudices has personally experienced the animation I praise, they probably would not feel very good about it; on the contrary, they would more likely take it as confirmation that it is indeed full of violence and unhealthy elements, thereby becoming even more steadfast in their prejudice. Private experience is, after all, private. If I want to discuss objectively “what animated film is,” I cannot simply point to that small handful of “masterpieces” to explain it, taking my own preference as the ideal template for all animated films. That won’t do.

So how should one define it? Does it mean that you have your understanding of “literature,” I have mine, and everyone can just say whatever they like, with nothing to be discussed? Of course not. Just as the other day Teacher Wu, in defining “science,” introduced “family resemblance” and then adopted a historical tracing method, concepts like “literature” can only be defined in this way first. Such a definition is public; it is something that can be brought out for discussion and debate. On the basis of such common ground, one can then further put forward one’s own ideal of “literature” in a targeted way, and thus be convincing.

The origins of the concept of “literature” were mentioned in the article from that year, so I won’t repeat them here. The general idea is that literature is a free activity of textual creation.

What I want to emphasize first here is that literature (or science, art, religion, and so on) is a human activity, a “living” action; that is to say, it is itself evolving and historical. Of course, if you say literature is already dead, then we can only say that the development of the internet is beneficial to preserving and disseminating all literary works of the past. But if it is still alive, then it will inevitably undergo corresponding changes as the times develop.

Different eras have their own literary forms. Of course, if one defines the earlier form of literature as the only true literature and excludes the new form, then naturally one can say that the development of the new era has harmed traditional literature. But what is the standard for judging different forms? For example, which is superior, Tang poetry or Song ci? Or are they two different things? And how should one compare classical-style poetry with modern poetry? As the times develop, the forms of literature will inevitably keep changing. If change is always a bad thing, then the development of the times will always be harmful to literature; conversely, if change is always a good thing, then the development of the times will always be beneficial to literature. Of course, I would rather say that there can be all kinds of yardsticks by which to measure whether a particular change is good or bad, but no one yardstick is uniquely dogmatic. To say that some change is a good thing or a bad thing always requires speaking in a specific sense; one cannot emptyly say that some change simply is good or bad.

Strictly speaking, the concept of “literature” in Western languages is precisely a product of the print age. In classical times, although there were activities such as poetry and drama—things now called literature—no specific “literary” activity had yet formed. It is like “science,” which is likewise a modern thing: in antiquity there existed many bodies of knowledge and research activities that are now classified as science, but they were never unified into a specific activity. With the rise of the print age, on the one hand the concept of “literature” acquired an independent status; on the other hand, the activity of “literature” also began to play a specific social role, or rather, to shoulder a specific social function. For example, it was given a certain moral-didactic significance; perhaps this function can be called “non-didactic didacticism,” that is, not issuing doctrinal instruction, but influencing people through infection and cultivation. In the print age, apart from school and family education and general social experience, the cultural activities people could participate in were very limited, so reading, especially literary works, played a relatively important role in people’s lives. But in the internet age, the emergence of television, online chatting, video games, and so on has made the role literature plays in people’s growth and lives increasingly secondary. This situation will of course affect the development of literature and transform literature’s role.

A couple of side remarks: speaking of “non-didactic didacticism,” I suddenly thought of Kant’s aesthetic concept, namely “purposiveness without purpose,” and then thought of Kant’s dislike of novels. Kant believed that the fictional world of novels bewilders the mind, preventing people from calmly confronting the moral responsibilities of the real world. In a certain sense, this is not without reason: the idealized or modelized virtues and situations created by literary works always differ somewhat from reality. Those who become addicted to fictional worlds—whether addicted to the world depicted by violent literature, or addicted to literature that seems to portray ideal morality—may all be affected in their real-world judgment. In some cases perhaps the latter is even worse, because carrying out justice in the name of violence may be somewhat preferable to carrying out violence in the name of justice. Of course, one cannot deny the value of novels merely because there is a possibility of going astray. In my view, the value of novels lies neither in obstructing morality nor in promoting morality. How to use literature to promote morality is one matter; the value of literature itself is another. It is just like saying that how to hang artworks up to decorate a façade and attract customers is one matter; the value of the artworks themselves is another.

Sure enough, it has been so long since I last put pen to paper that I’m writing slowly and straying off topic. Let’s stop here for now. Finally, let me return to the debate topic itself—when talking about the impact of the internet on literature, what comes most readily to mind is the vulgarization and fast-food-ification brought about by the internet and so on. But one should note that before the internet developed, what arrived first was the age of television. And vulgarization, fast-food-ification, and the like had already been brought by television. American children watch an average of seven hours of television a day, so the status of literature need hardly be said. Against this background, the rise of the internet seems to have rescued literature from a state of near-death, turning the completely passive “audience” before the television set back into “viewers” clicking mice and tapping keyboards in front of computers; readers once again confront written symbols, and can participate in the construction of texts in a more active way. It is indeed hard to say exactly how internet-age literature compares with classical literature before the age of print. But compared with the age of television, the rise of the internet seems more like a savior, although it certainly also destroys certain things; yet relative to television, this new medium—cold and hot at once—may well have saved some more important things.

October 16, 2009

Latest Comments

• uniceros

  2009-10-16 19:07:45 Anonymous 115.155.143.75

  Seeing that the title of the article on the homepage finally changed, and was rather interesting too, I got a little excited…
  “Just as the other day Teacher Wu, in defining “science,” introduced “family resemblance” and then adopted a historical tracing method, concepts like “literature” can only be defined in this way first. Such a definition is public; it is something that can be brought out for discussion and debate. On the basis of such common ground, one can then further put forward one’s own ideal of “literature” in a targeted way, and thus be convincing.”
  ——Could you give a link? If it was mentioned in earlier discussions, that is.



• unic

  2009-10-16 19:09:26 Anonymous 115.155.143.75

  Seeing that the title of the article on the homepage finally changed, and was rather interesting too, I got a little excited…
  “Just as the other day Teacher Wu, in defining “science,” introduced “family resemblance” and then adopted a historical tracing method, concepts like “literature” can only be defined in this way first. Such a definition is public; it is something that can be brought out for discussion and debate. On the basis of such common ground, one can then further put forward one’s own ideal of “literature” in a targeted way, and thus be convincing.”
  ——Could you give a link? If it was mentioned in earlier discussions, that is.



• Gu Chu

  2009-10-16 19:14:45 [Reply]

  http://epr.ycool.com/post.3557763.html
  One cannot impose a clear-cut “definition” on “science.” Teacher Wu cited Nietzsche’s remark: everything historical cannot be defined. (As for non-historical things, in the after-class Q&A Teacher Wu gave examples such as mathematical concepts.) Because historical things are always developing and changing, they can never be boxed in. Teacher Wu invoked Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblance” to explain: from ancient Greece to the present, although it seems that there has been some single thread running through what is called “science,” one cannot find an overarching common essence. It is like ABC, BCD, CDE, DEF… looked at up close, each pair is very similar, but seen from a distance they are completely different. Therefore, we do not seek to give a one-and-for-all precise definition of “what science is,” but are more inclined to make some concrete, broad classifications of “what science is.”

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.