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Writing in shady places
Nov. 6th, 2011 12:40 amI did a presentation in Women's Lit class recently on creativity, talking mostly about Cixous's idea of ecriture feminine, or female writing. My argument was that ecriture feminine is a manifestation of what I called yin, or shaded, or have-not writing. Yin for the part of the taijitu that represents it, shaded as a translation of the idea of yin and have-not as what is in my opinion the essential part of the idea of yin. There are some quirks in the idea -- many of the traits we associate with yin (passivity, for example) are rare in shaded writing, but I would argue that the only truely essential trait of yin is scarcity as opposed to yang abundance. Other than that, shade tends to take on whatever traits are devalued by the light, either of its own volition or by imposition.
In writing, light refers both strength and richness of literary tradition and opportunity to write and have that writing read. Lighted traditions are rich and complex with strong intertexual links; creating a new text in a lighted tradition means building a new level on a large, well-established body of works. The problem with lighted traditions is that each work is seen in the light of every other work, and is compared to them. Pressure to write like Homer or Milton grows, and the more intense the light, the more washed-out and uniform new texts become. Eventually everything becomes either too complex and obscure to understand or too timid and derivative to possess meaning.
Creative writers, and artists in general, are poor conformists. As lighted traditions grow overly complex and esoteric, new ideas tend to spring up in direct opposition to them, forming shaded traditions that usually set themselves up directly opposed to the ruling lighted tradition. These shaded writers challenge and subvert the lighted assumptions and bright to the fore values that the light ignores or devalues. For example, Romanticism challenged victorian neo-classicism by mixing genres, focusing on the self in nature and refusing to simply emulate the great writers of the past. As individual shaded writers begin to form a tradition, their works begin to inform one another and the whole literary movement moves in the lighted direction. Eventually the tradition will become too strongly lighted and will need to have its own assumptions challenged once again by newer, fresher ideas, completing the natural cycle.
This is how it works under ideal conditions, of course. The dominant literature of the most privileged classes has indeed followed this sort of wave pattern. When we talk about female writing, though, we are talking about a group that has been thrust deep into the shade for pretty much all of time. The resulting shade is so strong that the writers that do emerge are too far and few between to establish a strong, lighted tradition, so women's writing remains dark. This has been changing, recently, in some contexts, but the more elitist circles (particularly those concerned with 'serious writing' and the canon) are still strongly male-dominated. Women's writing is breaking in, but women writers in this context have to deal with a literary canon that is horribly scewed in its portrayal of their gender (representing them almost exclusively in broad, generalized strokes as active monsters or passive angels.)
That said, similar rules of shaded writing apply to all oppressed or silenced groups. Racial minorities, third world countries, queer groups, disabled people, etc. In all cases the shaded writing with varying success to subvert and overcome the lighted writing it opposes.
