Speaker: Velna Rončević @Velna
Affiliation: University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciencesd Social Sciences
Title: Application of Literature: Entering Real Life
Abstract (long version below): In this paper, we present ways in which literary application can be a form of engagement with text. We view reading a form of participation from the reader and consider the experience of art or text as existing within life, not separate from it. Reflecting on one thousand interviews with non-professional readers, this paper addresses how literature enters the everyday lives of readers. Our paper will show empirical evidence of how, mediated by imagination shaped by emotions and affects, literary application forms part of the reading experience for non-professional readers.
Long abstract
In literary practices, application is a form of engagement with text. Anders Pettersson (2012) considers literary application an “adequate response to literary art” and defines it as a “complex act of focusing on something in a literary text, comparing the element with a somehow corresponding element in the real world, and evaluating the comparison”. In this paper, we explore examples of literary application in the experience of non-professional readers. The research we will present is part of a wider study called Remembering Literature in Everyday Life (ReLEL or PoKUS in Croatian), an Installation Research Project financed by the Croatian Science Foundation. The goal of the project is to comprehensively identify and interpret facts about the memory of literature in everyday life among non-professional readers in Croatia by conducting semi-structured interviews. Based on one thousand semi-structured interviews we select examples of how literature steps out from texts into the everyday lives of readers. In our interviews, we do not specifically ask about application, the examples are brought up during an interview about the memories about specific works or authors selected by readers. Pettersson proposes to distinguish between the supposedly objective understanding of text and further processing, and he considers application as a paradigmatic example of the latter. We view the process of literary application, part of further processing, as an example of text or literature in everyday life. As an intimate process, reading is a form of participation from the reader, the experience of art or text does not exist outside of life. If individual readers perceive texts in supposedly distinctive ways, and if the lives of readers are distinctive in their own ways, texts are further processed distinctively in readers’ lives. For Pettersson, application constitutes a form of thinking, a praxis we interpret as imagination as defined by Appadurai (Appadurai 1996, 2013): as form of work that becomes part of the life story of individuals and groups and is central to all forms of agency. Ien Ang (1985) views imagination as an integral dimension of daily life and states that “life without imagination does not exist”, while Ingold (2013) reminds us how difficult it is to “split the reality of our life in the world, and of the world in which we live, from the meditative currents of our imagination”. Furthermore, Rohrer and Thompson (2023) warn us that imagination may be difficult to obtain and that finding a way to represent our “inner creations” can be a struggle. What we want to present is precisely how these “creations” exit from mental processes, and how they, by way of application of literature, enter the “real” world or the everyday lives of readers. Pettersson maintains that readers of literature compare elements of text with elements of the real world, a process that implies evaluation and which can in turn affect personal perspectives in real life – often charged with emotions. For Sara Ahmed (2014) emotions are the “feeling of bodily change”, they ‘stick’ and move from bodies and things. Emotions presume evaluation, “to give value to things is to shape what is near us” (Ahmed 2010). This ‘act’ of evaluation is similar to what Lawrence Grossberg (1992) terms “mattering maps”, areas of interest that mean something to us, what directs attention and affects identity. These things or areas are what is important to us and what turn our orientation – they move us. Because they mean something to us, important things move us. Mediated by the work of imagination and saturated with ‘sticky’ emotions, application happens when the reader is moved by important areas in the text, movement that can flow inwards and outwards. In our interviews, we recognize application that happens in different directions and areas of reader’s lives. In order to better conceptualize these movements, we distinguish four main categories, while acknowledging that that they are not exclusive or separate from each other. The first category concerns occasions when readers state that the text they read transformed their lives in some way – served as therapy, provided life lessons, or guided them in making a personal decision. The second one relates to examples when texts provoke action or movement in real life, for example, talking to others about the text or visiting places. The third are instances when readers reveal that reading provided them with knowledge which may be applied in their professional lives or provide understanding of a subject. The fourth category concerns examples when reading served as inspiration, whether for artistic creation or sparking an interest for the subject. Our paper will therefore produce empirical evidence of how application forms part of the reading experience for non-professional readers.
References
Ang, Ien. 1985. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London – New York: Methuen.
Ahmed, Sara. 2010. “Happy Objects”. The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, 29-51. New York: Duke University Press.
Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Appadurai, Arjun. 2013. The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. London - Brooklyn, NY: Verso.
Grossberg, Lawrence. 1992. “Is there a Fan in the House?: The Affective Sensibility of Fandom”. In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis, 50-65. London: Routledge.
Ingold, Tim. 2013. “Dreaming of Dragons: On the Imagination of Real Life”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19 (4): 734-752.
Pettersson, Anders. 2012. The Concept of Literary Application: Readers’ Analogies from Text to Life. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Rohrer, I., & Thompson, M. 2023. “Imagination theory: Anthropological perspectives”. Anthropological Theory 23 (2): 186-208.