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Resisting Novels: Ideology and Fiction
"By making friends with signs", Lennard Davis argues, "we are weakening the bond that anchors us to the social world, the world of action, and binding ourselves to the ideological." For the reader, this power of the novel needs to be resisted. But there is a double resistance at work: the novel is also a defensive structure positioning us against alienation and loneliness: the dehumanising symptoms of modern life.
While discussions surrounding ideology in novels traditionally concentrate on thematics, in this study – first published in 1987 - Davis approaches the subject through such structural features as location, character, dialogue and plot. Drawing on a wide range of novels from the seventeenth century to the present day, and on psychoanalysis as well as philosophy, Resisting Novels explores how fiction works subliminally to resist change and to detach the reader from the world of lived experience. This controversial critique will engage students and academics with a particular interest in literary theory.
While discussions surrounding ideology in novels traditionally concentrate on thematics, in this study – first published in 1987 - Davis approaches the subject through such structural features as location, character, dialogue and plot. Drawing on a wide range of novels from the seventeenth century to the present day, and on psychoanalysis as well as philosophy, Resisting Novels explores how fiction works subliminally to resist change and to detach the reader from the world of lived experience. This controversial critique will engage students and academics with a particular interest in literary theory.
262 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 1, 2019
Q: The ideology of ideology... (c)
While the delivery is atrocious, the ideas are sane. Of course, one has to fish them out from a sea of rambling text. Yes, novels can and do and always will propagate some ideas. There will be hypersexualization and objectisation and all kinds of political ideas and feminism and myriads of other ideas promoted via fiction.
Why? Because it's interesting to read about something that makes some sense. (As opposed to reading something that makes little sense. Except for some very specific cases. )
Why? Because our brains have neuroplasticity and don't distinguish all that much between things we perceive and things we experience directly.
Why? Because we are gullible and suffer from lots of cognitive biases and are generally wired the weird way.
Why? Because we are effing humans and not some AIs.
And yes, there must be some way for a reader to distance oneself from some or other things that are delivered into his lovely, yet confused, brain and psyche. One doesn't want to become a serial killer after reading about them? Anyone, wanting to become a staunch commie after some other read? Anyone, willing to participate in a war, violent crime, basejumping after some or other read? So, yes, it's a good idea. But what a bumbling, babbling, blathering, prattling, windling, drattling read... I shudder. DNF.
While the delivery is atrocious, the ideas are sane. Of course, one has to fish them out from a sea of rambling text. Yes, novels can and do and always will propagate some ideas. There will be hypersexualization and objectisation and all kinds of political ideas and feminism and myriads of other ideas promoted via fiction.
Why? Because it's interesting to read about something that makes some sense. (
Why? Because our brains have neuroplasticity and don't distinguish all that much between things we perceive and things we experience directly.
Why? Because we are gullible and suffer from lots of cognitive biases and are generally wired the weird way.
Why? Because we are effing humans and not some AIs.
And yes, there must be some way for a reader to distance oneself from some or other things that are delivered into his lovely, yet confused, brain and psyche. One doesn't want to become a serial killer after reading about them? Anyone, wanting to become a staunch commie after some other read? Anyone, willing to participate in a war, violent crime, basejumping after some or other read? So, yes, it's a good idea. But what a bumbling, babbling, blathering, prattling, windling, drattling read... I shudder. DNF.
July 1, 2013
I am sorry to say that to me this book makes no sense whatsoever. A couple of ideas are mildly interesting, in spite of the fact that they have been widely discussed by other critics already. But most of what he says is ridiculous, plus he seems to ignore some of the developments of literary theory of recent years. The arguments that he provides to support his ideas are inconsistent, superfluous and under-researched to say the least. He is talking constantly out of history and he seems to have forgotten that the term "novel" refers to fiction other than realist 18th century Victorian novels written in the Western World by members of the white, Christian middle class. He is also inconsistent in his method of interpretation, jumping from framework to framework at convenience.
In short, it has been for me a waste of time.
In short, it has been for me a waste of time.
August 25, 2011
Quite enjoyable, as ideology-driven literary criticism goes, although the chapter on dialogue doesn't make that much sense and quietly avoids the obvious elephant in the room (which is the fact that plays/films have just as much, if not more, effect on attitudes people have towards speech and have had it long before novels became popular).
May 12, 2017
I think three quotes sum up the nature of this book's insanity:
"I have found that the arguments I make in this book are simply echoes of those made by the staunchest pre-novelists-- those folks so thoroughly outside the mainstream and even the flotsam of the novel that they are branded now as stupid, regressive know nothings. They were the bad guys of literary history — and I am speaking of the Puritans. Odd as it may be for a left literary critic to ally himself with 17th-century Puritans, it probably makes more sense than alliances with trendy Tories like Swift, Pope, and Fielding. The Puritans did not like fiction and they did not like it for the main reason that it was not the truth. It was a pack of invented lies." -- p. 11-12
It isn't odd at all for a left literary critic to ally himself with the Puritans--he is a modern Puritan. The American elite colleges that produce left literary critics were founded by Puritans. Harvard's anthem calls on its students to be heralds of light and bearers of love “till the stock of the Puritans die.” They have not died yet. Everything in this book is part of the long Platonic tradition begun, in Plato's Republic, of hating liberty, realistic fiction, and representational art, which traces through the medieval Catholic Church, to the absolute monarchists and the Puritans, to present-day Marxists, modernists, and academic leftists. This book just re-explains why: They hate realistic fiction (and representational art) because it can present the world as it is, rather than as they say it is.
"Character gives readers faith that personality is, first, understandable and, second, capable of rational change. As part of the general ideology of middle-class individualism, the idea that the subject might be formed from social forces and that change might have to come about through social change is by and large absent from novels. Change is always seen as effected by the individual." -- p. 119
Platonists, Catholics, monarchists, and Puritans objected to fiction because it taught that truth could come from sources other than contemplation of the Forms / from the Church / the Crown / the Bible. Davis objects to it because it teaches truth comes from places other than Marx, and change can come from sources other than collective political revolution.
"Reading fiction demands isolation of ideas and affects; that is, it demands the ability to say of these pictures, feelings, and thoughts in our mind's eye, 'These are not part of my emotional or cognitive being. They are simply part of what is in this book.' Isolation, as Freud noted, is one of the major forms of defense, since it keeps unwanted emotions or thoughts from entering consciousness in a disturbing way. Probably our modern distinction, at least for the purposes of cataloging genres, between fact and fiction is most strongly linked to this defense. Earlier times clearly did not make such a strong distinction in narrative." -- p. 20
I think that Davis thinks he's saying readers must learn to distance themselves from the emotions in a novel. This is a stupid objection, since one could just as easily say the novel trains people to empathize as that it trains them to avoid empathizing. I think the truer reason is that, as he mentions, novels train us to distinguish fact from fiction. Distinguishing fact from fiction is inimical to Marxists, because their economic and social theories are made up of fictions.
The book is both evil and stupid, yet valuable, because it helps to rip off the mask of today's Marxist "literary theory" and show it for what it is: the takeover of literature by people who hate literature. This should be obvious to anyone who reads the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (or any other anthology of literary theory produced since 1990); the last 1500 pages of the book are nothing but denunciations of literature and arguments that it is meaningless and impotent except for its ability to instill people with racism, sexism, and imperialism.
"I have found that the arguments I make in this book are simply echoes of those made by the staunchest pre-novelists-- those folks so thoroughly outside the mainstream and even the flotsam of the novel that they are branded now as stupid, regressive know nothings. They were the bad guys of literary history — and I am speaking of the Puritans. Odd as it may be for a left literary critic to ally himself with 17th-century Puritans, it probably makes more sense than alliances with trendy Tories like Swift, Pope, and Fielding. The Puritans did not like fiction and they did not like it for the main reason that it was not the truth. It was a pack of invented lies." -- p. 11-12
It isn't odd at all for a left literary critic to ally himself with the Puritans--he is a modern Puritan. The American elite colleges that produce left literary critics were founded by Puritans. Harvard's anthem calls on its students to be heralds of light and bearers of love “till the stock of the Puritans die.” They have not died yet. Everything in this book is part of the long Platonic tradition begun, in Plato's Republic, of hating liberty, realistic fiction, and representational art, which traces through the medieval Catholic Church, to the absolute monarchists and the Puritans, to present-day Marxists, modernists, and academic leftists. This book just re-explains why: They hate realistic fiction (and representational art) because it can present the world as it is, rather than as they say it is.
"Character gives readers faith that personality is, first, understandable and, second, capable of rational change. As part of the general ideology of middle-class individualism, the idea that the subject might be formed from social forces and that change might have to come about through social change is by and large absent from novels. Change is always seen as effected by the individual." -- p. 119
Platonists, Catholics, monarchists, and Puritans objected to fiction because it taught that truth could come from sources other than contemplation of the Forms / from the Church / the Crown / the Bible. Davis objects to it because it teaches truth comes from places other than Marx, and change can come from sources other than collective political revolution.
"Reading fiction demands isolation of ideas and affects; that is, it demands the ability to say of these pictures, feelings, and thoughts in our mind's eye, 'These are not part of my emotional or cognitive being. They are simply part of what is in this book.' Isolation, as Freud noted, is one of the major forms of defense, since it keeps unwanted emotions or thoughts from entering consciousness in a disturbing way. Probably our modern distinction, at least for the purposes of cataloging genres, between fact and fiction is most strongly linked to this defense. Earlier times clearly did not make such a strong distinction in narrative." -- p. 20
I think that Davis thinks he's saying readers must learn to distance themselves from the emotions in a novel. This is a stupid objection, since one could just as easily say the novel trains people to empathize as that it trains them to avoid empathizing. I think the truer reason is that, as he mentions, novels train us to distinguish fact from fiction. Distinguishing fact from fiction is inimical to Marxists, because their economic and social theories are made up of fictions.
The book is both evil and stupid, yet valuable, because it helps to rip off the mask of today's Marxist "literary theory" and show it for what it is: the takeover of literature by people who hate literature. This should be obvious to anyone who reads the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (or any other anthology of literary theory produced since 1990); the last 1500 pages of the book are nothing but denunciations of literature and arguments that it is meaningless and impotent except for its ability to instill people with racism, sexism, and imperialism.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews