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This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic

B >> Benedetto Croce >> Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic




The problem of the origin of art, historically understood, is only
justified when it is proposed to seek, not for the formation of the
function, but where and when art has appeared for the first time
(appeared, that is to say, in a striking manner), at what point or in
what region of the globe, and at what point or epoch of its history;
when, that is to say, not the origin of art, but its most antique or
primitive history, is the object of research. This problem forms one
with that of the appearance of human civilization on the earth. Data for
its solution are certainly wanting, but there yet remains the abstract
possibility, and certainly attempts and hypotheses for its solution
abound.

[Sidenote] _History and the criterion of progress._

Every form of human history has the concept of _progress_ for
foundation. But by progress must not be understood the imaginary and
metaphysical _law of progress_, which should lead the generations of man
with irresistible force to some unknown destiny, according to a
providential plan which we can logically divine and understand. A
supposed law of this sort is the negation of history itself, of that
accidentality, that empiricity, that contingency, which distinguish the
concrete fact from the abstraction. And for the same reason, progress
has nothing to do with the so-called _law of evolution_. If evolution
mean the concrete fact of reality which evolves (that is, which is
reality), it is not a law. If, on the other hand, it be a law, it
becomes confounded with the law of progress in the sense just described.
The progress of which we speak here, is nothing but the _concept of
human activity itself_, which, working upon the material supplied to it
by nature, conquers obstacles and bends nature to its own ends.

Such conception of progress, that is to say, of human activity applied
to a given material, is the _point of view_ of the historian of
humanity. No one but a mere collector of stray facts, a simple seeker,
or an incoherent chronicler, can put together the smallest narrative of
human deeds, unless he have a definite point of view, that is to say, an
intimate personal conviction regarding the conception of the facts which
he has undertaken to relate. The historical work of art cannot be
achieved among the confused and discordant mass of crude facts, save by
means of this point of view, which makes it possible to carve a definite
figure from that rough and incoherent mass. The historian of a practical
action should know what is economy and what morality; the historian of
mathematics, what are mathematics; the historian of botany, what is
botany; the historian of philosophy, what is philosophy. But if he do
not really know these things, he must at least have the illusion of
knowing them; otherwise he will never be able to delude himself that he
is writing history.

We cannot delay here to demonstrate the necessity and the inevitability
of this subjective criterion in every narrative of human affairs. We
will merely say that this criterion is compatible with the utmost
objectivity, impartiality, and scrupulosity in dealing with data, and
indeed forms a constitutive element of such subjective criterion. It
suffices to read any book of history to discover at once the point of
view of the author, if he be a historian worthy of the name and know his
own business. There exist liberal and reactionary, rationalist and
catholic historians, who deal with political or social history; for the
history of philosophy there are metaphysical, empirical, sceptical,
idealist, and spiritualist historians. Absolutely historical historians
do not and cannot exist. Can it be said that Thucydides and Polybius,
Livy and Tacitus, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Giannone and Voltaire,
were without moral and political views; and, in our time, Guizot or
Thiers, Macaulay or Balbo, Ranke or Mommsen? And in the history of
philosophy, from Hegel, who was the first to raise it to a great
elevation, to Ritter, Zeller, Cousin, Lewes, and our Spaventa, was there
one who did not possess his conception of progress and criterion of
judgment? Is there one single work of any value in the history of
Aesthetic, which has not been written from this or that point of view,
with this or that bias (Hegelian or Herbartian), from a sensualist or
from an eclectic point of view, and so on? If the historian is to escape
from the inevitable necessity of taking a side, he must become a
political and scientific eunuch; and history is not the business of
eunuchs. They would at most be of use in compiling those great tomes of
not useless erudition, _elumbis atque fracta_, which are called, not
without reason, monkish.

If, then, the concept of progress, the point of view, the criterion, be
inevitable, the best to be done is not to try and escape from them, but
to obtain the best possible. Everyone strives for this end, when he
forms his own convictions, seriously and laboriously. Historians who
profess to wish to interrogate the facts, without adding anything of
their own to them, are not to be believed. This, at the most, is the
result of ingenuousness and illusion on their part: they will always add
what they have of personal, if they be truly historians, though it be
without knowing it, or they will believe that they have escaped doing
so, only because they have referred to it by innuendo, which is the most
insinuating and penetrative of methods.

[Sidenote] _Non-existence of a unique line of progress in artistic
and literary history._

Artistic and literary history cannot dispense with the criterion of
progress any more easily than other history. We cannot show what a given
work of art is, save by proceeding from a conception of art, in order to
fix the artistic problem which the author of such work of art had to
solve, and by determining whether or no he have solved it, or by how
much and in what way he has failed to do so. But it is important to note
that the criterion of progress assumes a different form in artistic and
literary history to that which it assumes (or is believed to assume) in
the history of science.

The whole history of knowledge can be represented by one single line of
progress and regress. Science is the universal, and its problems are
arranged in one single vast system, or complex problem. All thinkers
weary themselves over the same problem as to the nature of reality and
of knowledge: contemplative Indians and Greek philosophers, Christians
and Mohammedans, bare heads and heads with turbans, wigged heads and
heads with the black berretta (as Heine said); and future generations
will weary themselves with it, as ours has done. It would take too long
to inquire here if this be true or not of science. But it is certainly
not true of art; art is intuition, and intuition is individuality, and
individuality is never repeated. To conceive of the history of the
artistic production of the human race as developed along a single line
of progress and regress, would therefore be altogether erroneous.

At the most, and working to some extent with generalizations and
abstractions, it may be admitted that the history of aesthetic products
shows progressive cycles, but each cycle has its own problem, and is
progressive only in respect to that problem. When many are at work on
the same subject, without succeeding in giving to it the suitable form,
yet drawing always more nearly to it, there is said to be progress. When
he who gives to it definite form appears, the cycle is said to be
complete, progress ended. A typical example of this would be the
progress in the elaboration of the mode of using the subject-matter of
chivalry, during the Italian Renaissance, from Pulci to Ariosto. (If
this instance be made use of, excessive simplification of it must be
excused.) Nothing but repetition and imitation could be the result of
employing that same material after Ariosto. The result was repetition or
imitation, diminution or exaggeration, a spoiling of what had already
been achieved; in sum, decadence. The Ariostesque epigoni prove this.
Progress begins with the commencement of a new cycle. Cervantes, with
his more open and conscious irony, is an instance of this. In what did
the general decadence of Italian literature at the end of the sixteenth
century consist? Simply in having nothing more to say, and in repeating
and exaggerating motives already found. If the Italians of this period
had even been able to express their own decadence, they would not have
been altogether failures, but have anticipated the literary movement of
the Renaissance. Where the subject-matter is not the same, a progressive
cycle does not exist. Shakespeare does not represent a progress as
regards Dante, nor Goethe as regards Shakespeare. Dante, however,
represents a progress in respect to the visionaries of the Middle Ages,
Shakespeare to the Elizabethan dramatists, Goethe, with _Werther_ and
the first part of _Faust_, in respect to the writers of the _Sturm und
Drang_. This mode of presenting the history of poetry and art contains,
however, as we have remarked, something of abstract, of merely
practical, and is without rigorous philosophical value. Not only is the
art of savages not inferior, as art, to that of civilized peoples,
provided it be correlative to the impressions of the savage; but every
individual, indeed every moment of the spiritual life of an individual,
has its artistic world; and all those worlds are, artistically,
incomparable with one another.

[Sidenote] _Errors committed in respect to this law._

Many have sinned and continue to sin against this special form of the
criterion of progress in artistic and literary history. Some, for
instance, talk of the infancy of Italian art in Giotto, and of its
maturity in Raphael or in Titian; as though Giotto were not quite
perfect and complete, in respect to his psychic material. He was
certainly incapable of drawing a figure like Raphael, or of colouring it
like Titian; but was Raphael or Titian by any chance capable of creating
the _Matrimonio di San Francesco con la Poverta_, or the _Morte di San
Francesco_? The spirit of Giotto had not felt the attraction of the body
beautiful, which the Renaissance studied and raised to a place of
honour; but the spirits of Raphael and of Titian were no longer curious
of certain movements of ardour and of tenderness, which attracted the
man of the fourteenth century. How, then, can a comparison be made,
where there is no comparative term?

The celebrated divisions of the history of art suffer from the same
defect. They are as follows: an oriental period, representing a
disequilibrium between idea and form, with prevalence of the second; a
classical, representing an equilibrium between idea and form; a
romantic, representing a new disequilibrium between idea and form, with
prevalence of the idea. There are also the divisions into oriental art,
representing imperfection of form; classical, perfection of form;
romantic or modern, perfection of content and of form. Thus classic and
romantic have also received, among their many other meanings, that of
progressive or regressive periods, in respect to the realization of some
indefinite artistic ideal of humanity.

[Sidenote] _Other meanings of the word "progress" in respect to
Aesthetic._

There is no such thing, then, as an _aesthetic_ progress of humanity.
However, by aesthetic progress is sometimes meant, not what the two
words coupled together really signify, but the ever-increasing
accumulation of our historical knowledge, which makes us able to
sympathize with all the artistic products of all peoples and of all
times, or, as is said, to make our taste more catholic. The difference
appears very great, if the eighteenth century, so incapable of escaping
from itself, be compared with our own time, which enjoys alike Hellenic
and Roman art, now better understood, Byzantine, mediaeval, Arabic, and
Renaissance art, the art of the Cinque Cento, baroque art, and the art
of the seventeenth century. Egyptian, Babylonian, Etruscan, and even
prehistoric art, are more profoundly studied every day. Certainly, the
difference between the savage and civilized man does not lie in the
human faculties. The savage has speech, intellect, religion, and
morality, in common with civilized man, and he is a complete man. The
only difference lies in that civilized man penetrates and dominates a
larger portion of the universe with his theoretic and practical
activity. We cannot claim to be more spiritually alert than, for
example, the contemporaries of Pericles; but no one can deny that we are
richer than they--rich with their riches and with those of how many
other peoples and generations besides our own?

By aesthetic progress is also meant, in another sense, which is also
improper, the greater abundance of artistic intuitions and the smaller
number of imperfect or decadent works which one epoch produces in
respect to another. Thus it may be said that there was aesthetic
progress, an artistic awakening, at the end of the thirteenth or of the
fifteenth centuries.

Finally, aesthetic progress is talked of, with an eye to the refinement
and to the psychical complications exhibited in the works of art of the
most civilized peoples, as compared with those of less civilized
peoples, barbarians and savages. But in this case, the progress is that
of the complex conditions of society, not of the artistic activity, to
which the material is indifferent.

These are the most important points concerning the method of artistic
and literary history.




XVIII

CONCLUSION:

IDENTITY OF LINGUISTIC AND AESTHETIC


[Sidenote] _Summary of the inquiry._

A glance over the path traversed will show that we have completed the
entire programme of our treatise. We have studied the nature of
intuitive or expressive knowledge, which is the aesthetic or artistic
fact (I. and II.), and we have described the other form of knowledge,
namely, the intellectual, with the secondary complications of its forms
(III.). Having done this, it became possible to criticize all erroneous
theories of art, which arise from the confusion between the various
forms, and from the undue transference of the characteristics of one
form to those of another (IV.), and in so doing to indicate the inverse
errors which are found in the theory of intellectual knowledge and of
historiography (V.). Passing on to examine the relations between the
aesthetic activity and the other spiritual activities, no longer
theoretic but practical, we have indicated the true character of the
practical activity and the place which it occupies in respect to the
theoretic activity, which it follows: hence the critique of the invasion
of aesthetic theory by practical concepts (VI.). We have also
distinguished the two forms of the practical activity, as economic and
ethic (VII.), adding to this the statement that there are no other forms
of the spirit beyond the four which we have analyzed; hence (VIII.) the
critique of every metaphysical Aesthetic. And, seeing that there exist
no other spiritual forms of equal degree, therefore there are no
original subdivisions of the four established, and in particular of
Aesthetic. From this arises the impossibility of classes of expressions
and the critique of Rhetoric, that is, of the partition of expressions
into simple and ornate, and of their subclasses (IX.). But, by the law
of the unity of the spirit, the aesthetic fact is also a practical fact,
and as such, occasions pleasure and pain. This led us to study the
feelings of value in general, and those of aesthetic value, or of the
beautiful, in particular (X.), to criticize aesthetic hedonism in all
its various manifestations and complications (XI.), and to expel from
the system of Aesthetic the long series of pseudo-aesthetic concepts,
which had been introduced into it (XII.). Proceeding from aesthetic
production to the facts of reproduction, we began by investigating the
mode of fixing externally the aesthetic expression, with the view of
reproduction. This is the so-called physically beautiful, whether it be
natural or artificial (XIII.). We then derived from this distinction the
critique of the errors which arise from confounding the physical with
the aesthetic side of things (XIV.). We indicated the meaning of
artistic technique, that which is the technique serving for
reproduction, thus criticizing the divisions, limits, and
classifications of the individual arts, and establishing the connections
between art, economy, and morality (XV.). Because the existence of the
physical objects does not suffice to stimulate to the full aesthetic
reproduction, and because, in order to obtain this result, it is
necessary to recall the conditions in which the stimulus first operated,
we have also studied the function of historical erudition, directed
toward the end of re-establishing our communication with the works of
the past, and toward the creation of a base for aesthetic judgment
(XVI.). We have closed our treatise by showing how the reproduction thus
obtained is afterwards elaborated by the intellectual categories, that
is to say, by an excursus on the method of literary and artistic history
(XVII.).

The aesthetic fact has thus been considered both in itself and in its
relations with the other spiritual activities, with the feelings of
pleasure and of pain, with the facts that are called physical, with
memory, and with historical elaboration. It has passed from the position
of _subject_ to that of _object_, that is to say, from the moment of
_its birth_, until gradually it becomes changed for the spirit into
_historical argument_.

Our treatise may appear to be somewhat meagre, when compared with the
great volumes usually consecrated to Aesthetic. But it will not seem so,
when it is observed that these volumes, as regards nine-tenths of their
contents, are full of matter which does not appertain to Aesthetic, such
as definitions, either psychical or metaphysical, of pseudo-aesthetic
concepts (of the sublime, the comic, the tragic, the humorous, etc.), or
of the exposition of the supposed Zoology, Botany, and Mineralogy of
Aesthetic, and of universal history judged from the aesthetic
standpoint. The whole history of concrete art and literature has also
been dragged into those Aesthetics and generally mangled; they contain
judgments upon Homer and Dante, upon Ariosto and Shakespeare, upon
Beethoven and Rossini, Michelangelo and Raphael. When all this has been
deducted from them, our treatise will no longer be held to be too
meagre, but, on the contrary, far more copious than ordinary treatises,
for these either omit altogether, or hardly touch at all, the greater
part of the difficult problems proper to Aesthetic, which we have felt
it to be our duty to study.

[Sidenote] _Identity of Linguistic and Aesthetic._

Aesthetic, then, as the science of expression, has been here studied by
us from every point of view. But there yet remains to justify the
sub-title, which we have joined to the title of our book, _General
Linguistic_, and to state and make clear the thesis that the science of
art is that of language. Aesthetic and Linguistic, in so far as they are
true sciences, are not two different sciences, but one single science.
Not that there is a special Linguistic; but the linguistic science
sought for, general Linguistic, _in so far as what it contains is
reducible to philosophy_, is nothing but Aesthetic. Whoever studies
general Linguistic, that is to say, philosophical Linguistic, studies
aesthetic problems, and _vice versa_. _Philosophy of language and
philosophy of art are the same thing_.

Were Linguistic a _different_ science from Aesthetic, it should not have
expression, which is the essentially aesthetic fact, for its object.
This amounts to saying that it must be denied that language is
expression. But an emission of sounds, which expresses nothing, is not
language. Language is articulate, limited, organized sound, employed in
expression. If, on the other hand, language were a _special_ science in
respect to Aesthetic, it would necessarily have for its object a
_special class_ of expressions. But the inexistence of classes of
expression is a point which we have already demonstrated.

[Sidenote] _Aesthetic formulization of linguistic problems. Nature
of language._

The problems which Linguistic serves to solve, and the errors with which
Linguistic strives and has striven, are the same that occupy and
complicate Aesthetic. If it be not always easy, it is, on the other
hand, always possible, to reduce the philosophic questions of Linguistic
to their aesthetic formula.

The disputes as to the nature of the one find their parallel in those as
to the nature of the other. Thus it has been disputed, whether
Linguistic be a scientific or a historical discipline, and the
scientific having been distinguished from the historical, it has been
asked whether it belong to the order of the natural or of the
psychological sciences, by the latter being understood empirical
Psychology, as much as the science of the spirit. The same has happened
with Aesthetic, which some have looked upon as a natural science,
confounding aesthetic expression with physical expression. Others have
looked upon it as a psychological science, confounding expression in its
universality, with the empirical classification of expressions. Others
again, denying the very possibility of a science of such a subject, have
looked upon it as a collection of historical facts. Finally, it has been
realized that it belongs to the sciences of activity or of values, which
are the spiritual sciences.

Linguistic expression, or speech, has often seemed to be a fact of
_interjection_, which belongs to the so-called physical expressions of
the feelings, common alike to men and animals. But it was soon admitted
that an abyss yawns between the "Ah!" which is a physical reflex of
pain, and a word; as also between that "Ah!" of pain and the "Ah!"
employed as a word. The theory of the interjection being abandoned
(jocosely termed the "Ah! Ah!" theory by German linguists), the theory
of _association or convention_ appeared. This theory was refuted by the
same objection which destroyed aesthetic associationism in general:
speech is unity, not multiplicity of images, and multiplicity does not
explain, but presupposes the existence of the expression to explain. A
variant of linguistic associationism is the imitative, that is to say,
the theory of the onomatopoeia, which the same philologists deride under
the name of the "bow-wow" theory, after the imitation of the dog's bark,
which, according to the onomatopoeists, gives its name to the dog.

The most usual theory of our times as regards language (apart from mere
crass naturalism) consists of a sort of eclecticism or mixture of the
various theories to which we have referred. It is assumed that language
is in part the product of interjections and in part of onomatopes and
conventions. This doctrine is altogether worthy of the scientific and
philosophic decadence of the second half of the nineteenth century.

[Sidenote] _Origin of language and its development._

We must here note a mistake into which have fallen those very
philologists who have best penetrated the active nature of language.
These, although they admit that language was _originally a spiritual
creation_, yet maintain that it was largely increased later by
_association_. But the distinction does not prevail, for origin in this
case cannot mean anything but nature or essence. If, therefore, language
be a spiritual creation, it will always be a creation; if it be
association, it will have been so from the beginning. The mistake has
arisen from not having grasped the general principle of Aesthetic, which
we have noted: namely, that expressions already produced must redescend
to the rank of impressions before they can give rise to new impressions.
When we utter new words, we generally transform the old ones, varying or
enlarging their meaning; but this process is not associative. It is
creative, although the creation has for material the impressions, not of
the hypothetical primitive man, but of man who has lived long ages in
society, and who has, so to say, stored so many things in his psychic
organism, and among them so much language.

[Sidenote] _Relation between Grammar and Logic._

The question of the distinction between the aesthetic and the
intellectual fact has appeared in Linguistic as that of the relations
between Grammar and Logic. This question has found two solutions, which
are partially true: that of the indissolubility of Logic and Grammar,
and that of their dissolubility. The complete solution is this: if the
logical form be indissoluble from the grammatical (aesthetic), the
grammatical is dissoluble from the logical.

[Sidenote] _Grammatical classes or parts of speech._

If we look at a picture which, for example, portrays a man walking on a
country road, we can say: "This picture represents a fact of movement,
which, if conceived as volitional, is called _action_. And because every
movement implies _matter_, and every action a being that acts, this
picture also represents either _matter_ or a _being_. But this movement
takes place in a definite place, which is a part of a given _star_ (the
Earth), and precisely in that part of it which is called _terra-firma_,
and more properly in a part of it that is wooded and covered with grass,
which is called _country_, cut naturally or artificially, in a manner
which is called _road_. Now, there is only one example of that given
star, which is called Earth: Earth is an _individual_. But
_terra-firma_, _country_, _road_, are _classes or universals_, because
there are other terra-firmas, other countries, other roads." And it
would be possible to continue for a while with similar considerations.
By substituting a phrase for the picture that we have imagined, for
example, one to this effect, "Peter is walking on a country road," and
by making the same remarks, we obtain the concepts of _verb_ (motion or
action), of _noun_ (matter or agent), of _proper noun_, of _common
nouns_; and so on.

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