Poetic Abstraction As a Way Forward (Contra Prose)

 “All art is both abstract and illusionistic. All human invention is an abstraction from reality. We observe, we learn, and we extract; and we use what we learn as the basis for making things. That is to say: we abstract and create illusions. Even linear perspective, which is designed to rationalize the world, is an abstraction from reality.”—Samia Halaby 

The field of writing has yet fully embraced abstraction as a legitimate form of innovative praxis.  While there have been innovations certainly with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets in the latter half of the 2oth century, we have reached an impasse, I believe, and the exploration of more exciting modes of writerly expression have either been abandoned or never attempted in the first place.  Perhaps, in addition to the Language poets we must include James Joyce in the "abstract" pantheon, whose monumental experimental work, Finnegans Wake, is the last great effort to use language in a thoroughly different manner.  I know there will be arguments to the contrary--that there are numerous writers over the past fifty years or so who have actually surpassed the abstract innovations of Joyce, but I don't see it.

I'm not going into why this has occurred.  I'll leave that up to the reader.  I will say we absolutely need a way forward, as I have previously argued.  The way forward, I believe, at least in the field of writing, is abstraction--extreme abstraction. The new innovations are not to be found in prose, but in poetry, oddly enough, where abstraction finds a natural home. Essentially Joyce discovered that uncomfortable truth with the Wake. The Wake is really just a very, very long poem, with no obvious plot structure or narrative arc.  So many readers and critics approach the book as a work of prose.  It is not. Joyce was just a frustrated poet. He certainly worked within the confines of novelistic conventions, but it's obvious he felt more comfortable expressing himself poetically, and abstractly, hence the plotless and meandering qualities of the Wake.  

My argument then is that poetry is a far more malleable and exciting form of expression than prose. As we have seen recently with the Conceptual Poets, poetry can be whatever you want it to be.  It is harder to make the case with prose, because prose is constrained by more rigid conventions and rules, and has a more intimate relationship with market forces.  Many people write novels to make money.  No one I know writes poetry to make money! Therefore, there is an inherent freedom to poetry.  It a form of expression mostly untethered to the exigencies of capitalist accumulation.  

For a Revival of Modernism, and Rejection of Postmodern Nihilism

The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future. The avant-garde must find a direction in a landscape into which no one seems to have yet ventured. —Jürgen Habermas

When it comes to the Arts, we are living in an age of diminished expectations and stunted imaginations-- in a soulless and vapid Postmodern age where “anything goes.”  Yet, paradoxically, we are told, by the purveyors of taste, everything has been done, and there is nothing new left to discover.  Everything has been exhausted and recycled and regurgitated (see John Barth’s 1967 essay, Literature of Exhaustion). The idea of creativity itself has been called into question, too. Unfortunately, this nihilistic posture has been embraced by many artists and writers over the last fifty years or so.  That pernicious line of argument also targets a perennial bugaboo: the foundering edifice of Modernism, as it encapsulates everything the purveyors of taste hate, and militate against. They insist: Modernism is dead!  Utopianism is dead! Stop living in the past!

What exactly is Modernism? And, more importantly, why is it still controversial, and why are the purveyors of taste obsessed with driving the final nail in its coffin? Moreover, if it is indeed a moribund ideology—why would it be necessary to kill off something that is apparently already dead? 

***

Above all, Modernism is a very specific way of thinking and approaching the world. More to the point, it is a way of approaching a chaotic, disorienting world, of attempting to make sense out of chaos through the radical manipulation of form, and a devotion to unconventionality. It is a hatred of what is respectable and acceptable, especially in the guise of bourgeois values. Peter Gay calls it, “the lure of heresy.”  In our age, one kind of heresy, for example, might take the form of contempt for the ubiquitous “entrepreneur-artists” obsessed with money and status, but possessed of little or no intellectual rigor behind their edgy “art.”  We are told by the purveyors of taste that these are the creative people we should emulate, as they are successful at the game of art, and have legitimately earned status and fame within the right kinds of clubs. A dedicated Modernist would naturally push back against that, and would likely be the logical enemy of that kind of art. The existence of such a bold critique would also be a challenge to the establishment.  One immediately thinks of the art critic Robert Hughes, (ironically dubbed a conservative by the establishment, and an enemy of “progress”), who throughout his career railed against the cynical manipulations and vapidness of the Postmodern “artist-entrepreneurs,” while championing Modernist masters like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Jackson Pollock. 

***

Yet were the old adherents of Modernism victims of their own success? Had they inadvertently helped pave the way for the vapid nihilism of Postmodernist reaction and the demise of the Modernist experiment itself?  Suzy Gablik writes: 

In our present state of freedom, there is no recognized means of prescribing or forbidding anything to anyone. We can see now, however, that rebellion and freedom are not enough: modernism has moved us too far in the direction of radical subjectivity and a destructive relativism. 

There is an element of truth to what she says, but only up to a certain point. As Jürgen Habermas argues, Modernism is a result of a historical process over many centuries, originating from the Enlightenment, and culminating in the twentieth century with Dada and the Surrealists.  It is a movement that does not reject wholesale the past or tradition, but “disposes those pasts which have been made available by the objectifying scholarship of historicism, but it opposes at the same time a neutralized history which is locked in the museum of historicism.” In other words, Modernism incorporates and synthesizes traditions of the past, and uses those traditions as a guide or schema to make new, innovative art.  There is obvious reverence for the Old Masters. Therefore, Modernism is not ahistorical or relativistic in the least, quite the opposite. 

On the other hand, Postmodern nihilists harbor no love for the accomplishments of the past, if they bother to study the past at all.  Postmodernism is not, and never has been, a tendency that incorporates tradition or history into its praxis. Postmodernism is a bastardization of Modernism, a profound mistake, if you will, a tendency wholly distinct and sui generis. Postmodernism is a heresy of Modernism and possesses none of the positive intellectual underpinnings, or humanism, of Modernism. Modernism is based upon a grand vision of the future; Postmodernism has no grand vision of the future.  Since Modernism has a grand vision of the future, and a clear purpose, it cannot be nihilistic; conversely, since Postmodernism has no grand vision of the future, or clear purpose, it is ipso facto nihilistic. 

***

Undoubtedly, the issue before us is whether Modernism can be revived in the face of Postmodern onslaught and other destructive cultural influences. Peter Gay argues a revival is unlikely and Modernism will remain a relic of the past, because it is ultimately an undemocratic, elitist ideology, and has virtually no mass appeal. This comes into sharper relief as we lament the dumbing down of the general population due to the failures of the education system.  In addition, the myriad cultural forces that once supported Modernism in the 19th and 20th centuries no longer exist with the same intensity or passion.

With that in mind, I still believe there exists a small but passionate group of people committed to the cause of Modernism, and to the avant-garde principles it champions. This new iteration of Modernism may not take the form of a vanguard mass movement challenging conventional wisdom on a grand scale.  But as global warming progresses, and the breakdown of literate society intensifies, such a small cohort of true believers may ultimately emerge in small pockets and virtual redoubts, as “avant-garde monks” single-mindedly dedicating themselves to the making, dissemination and preservation of radical art, in the hope one day it may once again transform the world for the better.

References

Barth, J. (1967). The literature of exhaustion. The Atlantic Monthly, 220(2), 29–34.

Gablik, S. (1984). Has modernism failed? Thames and Hudson.

Gay, P. (2007). Modernism: The lure of heresy: From Baudelaire to Beckett and beyond. W. W. Norton & Company.

Habermas, J. (1981). Modernity—An incomplete project (S. Ben-Habib, Trans.). In H. Foster (Ed.), The anti-aesthetic: Essays on postmodern culture (pp. 3–15). Bay Press.

Noetic Variations, Volume 4 is now out!

 

The new installment (Volume 4) of the multi-volume project, Noetic Variations by David A. Bishop is out now from #Ranger Press.! You can download a free digital copy here. It is also available in print here.

"Noetic Variations uses many of the kinds of things Bishop has done in other books, including visual and collage poetry, text generation, found images and texts in many languages, and other techniques, which he uses to create a new intense and complex literary/visual reality page by page.

The book can perhaps be generally understood as analogous to the Voynich manuscript, though a somewhat more literary or language-based one, using letters, single words, and typographic symbols in apparently free combinations with copious footnotes, sources, resources, visuals, illustrations, and diagrams of all kinds." --Dr. John M. Bennett                                                             

Confronting the Reality of Non-Things

How does an artist confront this new set of circumstances--the reality of non-things and a glut of consumable information/data? 

More to the  point: should it be confronted at all? Because, let's face it, does anyone really care that the artist may be trying to confront this new set of circumstances?  Most people are glued to their devices, or fully immersed in the data glut.  They honestly don't care what the artist is doing.  They don't even know the artist exists!  

Our fragmented society keeps the artist underground--far underground, separated and ghostly. This sorry apparition must confront this new set of circumstances alone, and with the knowledge that no one cares he/she is confronting this new set of circumstances alone. 

Post-narrative redux

Abstract writing (or "post-narrative" writing) does not invite interpretation in any conventional sense. There is no hidden message, no allegorical structure, no encrypted ideology waiting to be decoded or explained. Instead of asking, “What does this work mean?” one is forced to confront a more perplexing question: “What is this?” 

Post-narrative writing invites inscrutability and wallows in obscurantism.  In a world of "non-things," inscrutability mirrors (and/or) revels in our dystopian reality, depending on your perspective.

Peter Ganick's Abstract Writing

One of  the first practitioners of pure abstract writing, or radical abstraction, was experimental poet Peter Ganick. In an interview with Steven Meinking, Ganick admits:

The poetry I write is abstract, not non-referential. The Language poets, from who early on I took my model, write non-referential language. This is language that has a relationship to some reference to reality. Namely that of negation. The writing I do is, on the other hand, abstract. Meaning, without relationship to reality. This is its insularity and its vulnerability at the same time. I like to see that the language is a structure that is pure and of-itself. Sort of like the abstractness of mathematics. 

By all accounts, Ganick is attempting to expand the innovations of the Language poets by completely eschewing a relationship to “reality” in his writing. Ganick’s poetry, if we can call it that, is a project informed by the intellect, with the intention of generating an intellectualized product. This makes sense since we live in a machine age, guided by the dictates of computer algorithms and social media. Perhaps we should acknowledge we no longer live in a reality-based world. How does an artist confront this new set of circumstances? And should it be confronted at all?

 

Advent of the Post-Narrative: Radical Abstraction and the Refusal of Meaning

Radical abstraction is a form of writing that rejects narrative meaning. It is writing with absolutely no relationship to the outside world or “reality” whatsoever. It is writing without internal logic or meaning. It is writing denuded of substance or content. It is writing stripped of “concept” or grand design. This does not merely describe a literary style; it articulates a final break with the very foundations of representation, interpretation, and communication.

Radical abstraction does not seek to distort reality, critique it, or reimagine it—it seeks to sever all ties to it.

Unlike experimental or avant-garde writing that challenges meaning, radical abstraction attempts to eliminate it altogether.

Even the most experimental literature pays homage to intelligibility.

Fragmentation still implies a whole.

Absurdity still gestures toward coherence through its negation.

Symbolism still presupposes a symbolic order.

Radical abstraction refuses even these normative structures. It is not anti-narrative so much as post-narrative. Language itself becomes pure material—sound, mark, rhythm, visual shape, and textual residue. Words no longer signify; they merely exist as is.