Fiction, developing

Metafilter led me to "The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge" (also PDF).  David Lewis, Dennis Rogers, and Michael Woolcock observe that "the themes emanating from development policy documents – the official texts produced by multilateral development agencies, government planning offices, and NGOs – can often be rather starkly contrasted with those of fictional writing on development" (4) and go on to claim that "fictional accounts of development can sometimes reveal different sides to the experience of development and may sometimes even do a ‘better’ job of conveying the complexities of development than research-based accounts" (7).  Drawing on both their own reading and that of several critics, the authors argue that such varied authors as Naguib Mahfouz (4), Ahdad Soueif (4), Chinua Achebe  (5), J. G. Ballard (5), Helen Fielding (6-7), Shrilal Shukla (7-8), Rohinton Mistry (8-9), Khaled Hosseini (9), and Monica Ali (9-10) all write fictions of development--set in wildly different nations, historical moments, class structures, etc.--that equal or surpass professionalized academic accounts of development. How so? To begin with, "fictional writing can be said to enjoy a freedom of fabrication that allows it to present ‘ideal type’ exemplifications of social phenomena in a way that empirically grounded academic literature sometimes cannot" (8); moreover, fiction undeniably sells better than your average academic monograph (8-9) and, as in Ali's example, may engage with, and thus help popularize, contemporary scholarship (9). As the authors do acknowledge ("can," "may," "sometimes"), they are talking about a subset of novels, not any (implicitly) realist novel. 

Without at all denying that fiction can have educational value in contexts that are not primarily literary (e.g., history, sociology, etc.), I do have some observations/questions about points that could be further refined:

1.  It's interesting to see the authors rely so heavily on what is a very conventional rationale for using fiction as an educational tool.  The authors themselves note the "delight and instruct" tradition (3-4); literary historians would add that one of the first lines of defense against accusations that novels are mad, bad, and dangerous to read has always been that they teach readers about "life."  (However "life" is to be defined.)  Thus, some novelists and critics suggested that young men and women could learn much about courtship from novels, while more staunchly religious authors argued that the formalized patterns  of "poetic justice" illustrated the workings of Providence far more clearly than "life" ever could.  In other words, novels produce knowledge not  only by recording the minutiae of everyday life, but also, paradoxically enough, by using narrative and thematic conventions that may not reflect everyday life.  We are too deeply embroiled in the hustle and bustle of life to perceive the forces (whether divine or social) that drive events onward.  The author's own praise of the "freedom of fabrication" suggests a similar, albeit non-theological, position: the novelist fabricates in order to clarify.

2.  I can't help noticing, however, that the authors never answer, let alone raise, a pretty serious question: how do we know that these novels bear some relationship to the reality "on the ground"? Take the authors' praise of Khaled Hosseini, for example: "the US invasion of Afghanistan and continuing ‘war on terror’ have obviously played a significant role in the success of Khaled Hosseini’s extraordinarily popular novel The Kite Runner (2003), which has arguably done more to educate Western readers about the realities of daily life in Afghanistan (under the Taliban and thereafter) than any government media campaign, advocacy organization report, or social science research" (9).  This acclaim prompted some exasperation at MeFi.  If Average Reader sits down with a novel on a subject about which he knows zero (or close to zero), how does he evaluate whether or not he has been "educated"? This sounds positively sola scriptura in its assumptions about the self-authenticating text.  More Alert Reader Y may have questions about sensationalism (as in this instance), the politics of the plot, the particular choice of subject matter (and, perhaps, the evasion of other subjects), and so forth.  Nevertheless, More Alert Reader may still want to take the details at face value (cue Roland Barthes on the reality effect).  But, then again, how do we know that the details are factual? And if Average Reader and More Alert Reader have nothing against which to judge the novel's selection of details, how will they know about any significant omissions that might be skewing the picture in one direction or another?  Certainly, as the authors suggest with their final quotation from George Eliot, novels heighten our ability to "relate" (our students' favorite word...) to people and situations; nevertheless, this is not quite the same thing as being able to evaluate what, precisely, we are relating to. 

3.  Ironically enough, the professional academic quietly inches in through the back door here, since s/he can validate or invalidate the novel's accuracy.  After all, academics, along with journalists and similarly credentialed observers, are far more likely to have access to the relevant scholarly texts, firsthand accounts, and personal experiences than either Average Reader or More Alert Reader.  Thus, as the authors note, some novels crop up on syllabi, where they receive the imprimatur of academic approval. 

4.  The authors seem to be working with a "reflection" model of literary representation.  They note that Mistry "had the freedom to carefully craft his characters in such a way as to reflect the dramatic social reality of impoverishment in India..." (8; emphasis mine), and later quote J. Elliot to the effect that fiction may "'reflect an external reality'" (10).  Again, even if we put to one side several centuries' worth of debates over how representation works, what justifies us in taking the leap from "this novel reflects Mistry's assessment of poverty in contemporary India" to "this novel reflects the 'reality' of poverty in contemporary India"? In all likelihood, nobody would argue with the former, but it takes several more argumentative steps before we can safely assert the latter (if we can).       

5.  In fact, the authors not  only leave their novelists oddly decontextualized, but also fail to consider how and why certain novels are produced, distributed, and reviewed in the United States, Europe, etc.  That is, what kinds of novels will we--and here I include academics--be asked to accept as "reflecting" reality? More precisely, what kinds of supposedly reflected reality are Average Reader (and even More Alert Reader) willing to accept? In my line of work, for example, Victorian Protestant novelists constantly represent Catholics as depressed, spiritually unfulfilled folks, while Victorian Catholic novelists constantly represent Protestants as depressed, spiritually unfulfilled folks--because, in both sides, that was clearly the self-congratulatory "reality" acceptable to the target audience.  We can learn quite a bit in both instances, but what we're learning is not what Lewis et al. have in mind.  What market forces drive representations of other realities for international sales?  Moreover, the authors don't mention any objections from "on the ground" to these novels, even when their existence has been well-publicized (e.g., in the case of Monica Ali).   However one assesses such objections (valid reactions, kneejerk responses, etc.), surely their existence matters--especially if these novels are supposed to "reflect" a particular reality?

6.  Last but not least, the authors don't really deal with the fiction of erudition.  One of the reasons I've become more and more...angsty...about attempts to turn historical fiction into a subset of historiography proper is that historical novelists can do quite a lot on very, very little.  A novelist can sound quite learned with a very limited bookshelf and no primary research.  This holds true even when the subject is contemporary (and we have to beware of the natural assumption that any given author will be an expert in his/her own culture or subculture, whatever it is). 

Comments

[k]

On point 5, there were interesting newspaper articles about the Japanese-language translation of Memoirs of a Geisha, which was probably not taking as an "accurate reflection" of recently historical Japan by all, but certainly by some of the audience. My understanding is that regardless of the facts of the lives of geisha in Kyoto during the time period (and these were disputed hotly by some), was that the book just came off odd in Japanese. (Which is a shame, I thought, because the translators went to a lot of work to learn the appropriate dialects for the characters.)

And this is, of course, leaving out Orientalism (and orientalist novels) on the broader scale.

I would have to dig to find the articles again, but I'm certain that the Yomiuri shinbun had some of them.

[Vance Maverick]

Back in the day on rec.arts.books, the peculiar Jorn Barger would claim that it was possible to teach an AI system about human relationships by feeding it the works of Iris Murdoch. Objections along the lines you suggest here were nonchalantly misunderstood.

[Jonathan Dresner]

This is quite frustrating. I use novels (and poems, short stories) along with other primary sources in my historical teaching, but I'm extremely picky: I only use works in which the author is writing about their own time and about milieux they experienced. As you note, historical novels can get everything "right" but always end up distorting things as a result of the process of dramatization; as historical sources, they have all the historiographical problems of secondary sources as well as all the historiographical problems of fiction. By the time I get done explaining that to my students, it's time to go on to the next chapter anyway.

[a frequent visitor]

Precious material, even if they get everything wrong... I think the greatest lesson to be learned from fiction - if, as said, it's to be thought of as an educational tool at all - is source criticism. We know novelists are no experts - therefore, although they may open our eyes to certain possibilities, there's no-one saying we ought to really take their word for it. The great thing is, they inspire us to learn more while not possessing the authority of science (I think the layman is much likelier to consider as the truth something a scholar wrote than any fictional account) to make us adopt their views unconditionally and finally.