Flexing the imagination

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 61, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 247-258

  Harold, James ^a  

^a MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049252854     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1540-6245.00110     Document Type: Review

References (36)

1. William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner, 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Vintage International, 1993), p. 448
2. See John Henrik Clarke, ed., William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968)
3. This question should not be confused with a similar one, discussed recently by Tamar Szabo Gendler. Gendler focuses on cases where a failure to imagine is the result of a kind of moral hesitation - where what is to be imagined is an immoral event or perspective. I am interested in a different kind of case, where it is not what we are asked to imagine that is morally questionable, but rather the imagining itself is thought to be morally worrisome. See Gendler, "The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance," Journal of Philosophy 97 (2000): 55-81
4. For example, see Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe (Harvard University Press, 1990)
5. see also Susan Feagin, Reading with Feeling: The Aesthetics of Appreciation (Cornell University Press, 1996)
6. See, for example, Martha Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)
7. For example, see Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror (New York: Routledge, 1990), chap. 2
8. see also Peter Lamarque, "How Can We Fear and Pity Fictions?" The British Journal of Aesthetics 21 (1981): 291-305
9. In a recent piece, Peter Lamarque emphasizes the importance of appreciation of formal elements in getting meaning from fiction. See his 'Tragedy and Moral Value," in Art and Its Messages: Meaning, Morality, and Society, ed. Stephen Davies (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 59-69
10. There are plenty of nonrealistic narratives that do not encourage or expect the reader to identify with the characters or to see them as accurately resembling real people. Reading absurdist or nonlinear novels such as Catch-22 or Naked Lunch is quite different than reading "realistic" novels such as Anna Karenina or The Shipping News, and one should not expect the imagination to play the same kind of role. My remarks in this paper are directed only toward the latter sort of realistic narrative
11. In his Leonard Conference Lecture, "In Other Shoes: Empathy and the Arts," presented at the 2000 National Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics
12. Ted Cohen, "Identifying with Metaphor: Metaphors of Personal Identification," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 (1999): 399-410
13. It is not crucial here that Vera Brittain's book is a memoir, not a novel; she is, from our point of view, a character to be imagined, and, hence, the book can be read as a novel. Kendall Walton makes this argument in Mimesis as Make-Believe, chap. 2 ("Fiction and Nonfiction")
14. In his afterword, Styron discusses his grandmother, who spoke wistfully of the days before emancipation, and the slaves she owned. Styron writes of his fascination and horror of hearing about this
15. It is possible that the error in such cases is not properly a moral error, but rather an intellectual one: a failure to grasp the limits of one's abilities. Of course, such errors of self-knowledge may also count as moral errors on some accounts, but they need not
16. Alvin F. Poussaint, "The Confessions of Nat Turner and the Dilemma of William Styron," in William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, 17-22
17. See, for example, Nancy Hartsock, "The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism," in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1983)
18. This phrase, as well as the discussion of each class's standpoint, occurs in Marx and Engels's "Manifesto of the Communist Party," in Collected Works, Volume 6 (New York: International Publishers, 1976)
19. The term "reasonable" here, of course, means that this is less a precise rule than a general guide. There will often be disagreement about the scope and depth of this obligation. An interesting case in this regard is Michael Frayn's recent play, Copenhagen, which depicts the historical meeting between Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941. Frayn amended later versions of the play where historical research contradicted the actions of his characters; however, he has refused to amend it in other cases - as when, for example, Heisenberg's son told Frayn, "Of course, your Heisenberg is nothing like my father... I never saw my father express emotion about anything except music." Here Frayn claims that other artistic aims, including having each character in the play express his viewpoint fully, override his obligation to portray accurately Heisenberg's emotional life. See Frayn, "'Copenhagen' Revisited," The New York Review of Books 49 (2002): 22-24
20. In one important respect, of course, it was clearly more troubling. Carmen used deception to publish and sell his book; Styron did not
21. See, for example, Philip Gouveritch, "The Memory Thief," The New Yorker 75 (June 14, 1999): 48-68
22. Thomas Nagel, "Death," in his Mortal Questions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 6. I am grateful to Peter Kivy for suggesting the connection between this essay and my topic
23. Of course, it is possible that these figures do not merit the respect they are usually awarded; this is presumably what Roberts would claim
24. This concern is mitigated somewhat by the fact that Ishiguro was raised in Britain from the age of six, and so is not as different in background and experience as it might first seem. Still, Stevens belongs to a very different social class, and a different generation than Ishiguro, and although the difference between the two groups cannot be described as simple power difference, the gap is sufficiently wide to make one wonder about the imaginative project
25. Thomas E. Hill Jr. makes a similar argument when he attempts to explain why we should worry about a person who has no respect for nature. See Hill, "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments," Environmental Ethics 5 (1983): 211-224
26. According to a Seattle Times article, Carmen had been trying to get published for many years. He came forward with his hoax to show that white males like himself are discriminated against in publishing. See Peter James Spielmann, "New Australian Aboriginal Hoax Uncovered," The Seattle Times, Thursday, March 13, 1997
27. There is a complication here that I have overlooked for the sake of simplicity. Leon Carmen's motives in imagining may not be as bad as I have it here. We might distinguish between Carmen's motives in creating the work, or in publishing it, with his motives in the imaginative creation of the central character of the work. Thus, Carmen might be capable of having very different motives once engaged in the imaginative process than he had for initiating the project in the first place
28. I do not mean to imply that this is the only motive for assigning these books, or that these books do not have literary merit. But I do think that in many cases, these books are not selected solely for their literary qualities
29. On All Things Considered, Monday, March 4, 2002. Eskin's book is called A Life in Pieces
30. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), esp. part 1, div. 1
31. See Maria Lugones, "Playfulness, 'World'-Traveling, and Loving Perception," Hypatia 2 (1987): 3-19
32. Vincent Harding, "You've Taken My Nat and Gone," in William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, p. 23
33. Lerone Bennett Jr., "Nat's Last White Man," in William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond (1968), pp. 3-16
34. Ernest Kaiser, "The Failure of William Styron," ibid., pp. 50-65
35. Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner, 25th Anniversary Edition, pp. 438-439
36. Earlier versions of this paper were given at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in 2001 and at the National Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in 2001. I am grateful to my commentator at the National Meeting, Ronald de Sousa, and to the audiences at both meetings for helpful criticisms and feedback. I also owe thanks to Marcia Muelder Eaton, Matthew Kieran, Sarah Worth, and the members of the University of Minnesota's ethics reading group for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of the paper. Whatever weaknesses remain in the paper are, of course, my own