This picture of a METROPOLIS could perfectly represent what Huxley understood as:
These are my links:
As Huxley said in chapter one of his book: "I Shall begin at the beginning". In this draft, you´re going to find my own interpretation about some signs and their literary value in Brave New World. I would say that it´s a mix in between my own ideas about narrative, about culture, about the act of reading, and about the way I "saw" this novel about future.
I don´t know the way you read or the way you understand culture. In that sense, I want to describe you what was my point of view to develope my reading strategies and my project, and what was the methodology I´ve used to develope my own ideas. First of all, I ´ve followed the definition of culture that Poyatos mapped out in his book about Literary Anthropology. He defines culture as:
A series of habits shared by members of a group living in a geographic area, learned but biologically conditioned, such as The means of communication at different levels, the various activities of daily life, the products of that group and how they are utilized, the peculiar manifestations of both individual and national personalities in their cultural context, its patterns and prohibitions, and their ideas concerning their own existance and their fellow men. Therefore, I´ve differenciated two types of cultural habits: genetically-conditioned habits, which do not neccesarily become cultural because they do not spread to the rest of the community after being adopted by many other membersI´m interested in knowing much more about those explicit or implicit learned habits that can be found in English Narrative to understand English Culture. I ´ve thought about the problems that foreign readers of English Narrative can have when re-creating or re-producing these products. Those signs, that the native writer has used to do his/her literary product, are sometimes very difficult to describe in order to understand the whole meaning. In those cases, they´re produced by the explicit or implicit senses that the sing could represent. But, what happens when we compare two different systems?. This is our situation . We´re observers of that culture throught their products, and we need another type of reading strategies to establish the relation in between forms and meanings.
( a condition for an idiosincratic behaviour to become a cultural characteristic ) and, learned habits, the ones that really make up a culture and are used explicitly or implicitly, in NARRATIVE LITERATURE.
A first generalization is that, at least in Literature, we will find two types of signs: The sensorially perceived sign and the intellectually perceived one. Descriptions of environments or description of rituals are a good example for each one. To get this point, I´d like to explain you the way I read the book from a literary anthropologist point of view.
As you will know the Philological studies deal, principally, with natural languages, communication and their forms. Therefore, all the products made by human-being, at these levels, are our objects under study. On the one hand, we´ve those who are studying the verbal level. On the other hand, those who are interested in the written level. But, what happens when we are more interested in culture, in general, and in narrative, in particular, as in our case ? I think we don´t share the same learned habits, so we won´t interpretate those products as required.
A good example of this is Internet.This is a revolutionary sub-cultural changed that is being spread all over the World. But, how could we understand this phenomenon if we don´t share the same technologies?. Obviously such a observers.
The Literary or Linguistic approach, in a classical sense, have new products under investigation. Just think about the new literary products that are being produced in the English Cultural context. Apart from the classical book or text , we can find the Hypertext. In this new product we find other systems (visual or sound). So, How are we going to interpretate these new forms if they include several systems at the same time and the reader´s role has been totally changed because s/he can SEE instead of IMAGINE?. How are Literary Theory or Linguistic Theory going to define them? Obviously, by describing it from a semiotic-communicative approach. But what happens with the classical texts ?. Are they going to be eliminated by this new product?. What are we going to do with the "older" products?. I think that, firstly, we should change the value of these products by this one mapped out by the Literary Anthropology approach and, in terms of Poyatos, we should see them as :
"the richest source of documentation about human life styles and the most advanced form of one´s projection in time and space and of communicating with contemporary and future generations. Even if we exploited narrative literature from the point of view of communication only, the research area whose main characteristics and objectives are outlined here would offer an abundant array of interdisciplinary perspectives , since the very nature of communication is interdisciplinary."The "new" products have several systems at the same time (images or sounds), but by using another reading strategies, we can find the same in the "older" ones. That´s what this new approach pretends. Basically , and pay attention to the above definition , we can change our role when reading these products in order to find those cultural aspects that will help us to understand these textual cultures.I think, in this sense, that it is possible to read them with a new sensorial and intelectual perception.It basically deals with the classification of the different signs that we find when reading a novel. A basic definition of sign, in this approach, is the perception through many different channels and made up by a significant (word, gesture,color) and a signified (the meaning of that word, gesture or color) in the encoding (producer-sender) or decoding
As you will know there´s not a real correspondence in between the verbal system and the written one. Both are included in a higher level, the cultural signs. But those signs have different forms. In our terminology is the difference in between Phonetics and Phonology. But the anthropoligists use this basic distinction when defining the emic and the etic aspects in a culture. They try to explain this phenomena when comparing two systems. This definition deals with the problem of thought and behavior to describe culture as a whole. At this point, I´ll give you a cultural aspect to think about: THE KIND OF READER.
In this sense, we have to make clear a significative distinction. When we read, we can reproduce the direct perceptions in a controlled way. On the other hand, when we are perceiving two or more codes (such a film) together, we can lose much more details because we´ve to process much more information at the same period of time. This basic difference is what had made the written text so worth.
In the Anthropological approach, and according to Marvin Harris, we can describe the object under investigation from two perspectives. The first one is what it is directly made by the native participant and the second one it is made by an observer. In the observer case, the concepts and distinctions are appropiated and significatives for the participants. (This would be when we´re reading a narrative product and we can ask to a native informant, who will explain us the explicit or implict signs). In the participant case, concepts and distinctions are significatives and appropiated for the observers.(We are observing the explanation of signs made by a native informant, but he hasn´t pay attention to it).
In this paper, I´m going to use the second strategy. I will observe the explicit or implict concepts and distinctions that make up cultures described by Huxley. In a word, I´ll try to explain you the explicit or implicit learned habits that Huxley´s describe in his fictional world and that are directly taken out from his real one. But according to Thomas G. Winner we need to know that:
"Literature is related to extra-literary cultural phenomena in an attenuated and transform manner. This is a function of the fact that literature , as all aesthetic systems, is essentially self-oriented or autotelic. That is , artistic messages do not function , in contrast to historical or scientific texts , primarily to elicit information about the world outside the text ( the objective context with such a text signifies, the author, the codes, etc.), but to rivet attention onto the text itself, onto its construction. Thus, unlike referential or scientific texts describing a certain reality, the aesthetic text is introverted and its relation to its object is fundamentally different.Yet, paradoxically, such a text consist of material taken from the world external to it; it may describe human action, clothes, facial expression, voice, it may depict objects of nature, of architecture, citiscapes , automobiles , food, political events. But in contrast to other types of text, literature exploits the real world not for its own sake, in order to describe and comment upon it, but for the sake of the literary itself text, the construction of a fictive world.Thus we may say, in a rather oversimplified manner, that the events and objects taken from the `world out there´ are in the text for the sake of the text, rather than vice versa, as is the case in other types of texts"Brave New World, it is based on Huxley´s own IDEAS about understanding Culture. If he´s talking about cultural changes that are taking place in his own society, Couldn´t be possible that instead of "Doing Literary Art", as we normally see this kind of texts, he was trying to communicate something more?. Problably, it would be if we evaluate this text as an informative one. I think it is in a way, but you´ll see that it is really confusing. Huxley is using his ideas to make the reader to think about the social changes, but I think he uses them to satirize the Modern World. But what´s happened when we have evaluate it in a wrong way? Think about this quote of Huxley, that can be found in the introduction of his book:
"We are getting more and more into a position where these things can be achieved.This is possible : for heaven´s sake be careful about it" (1961).It´s look like if we were trying to reach those ideals, an in a way we´re creating them. How is going to be the world? In which society are we going to live in? How many changes we will see? Is that World possible? If this is only fantasy, why are we creating it and why are we afraid of it ?.
These are some questions that maybe Huxley and all writers that use this narrative asked themselves. But, why? This text creates a possible fictive world, but it is a part of the real culture in which it was created. Looking at the "bunk" events that took place in the 20s and 30s, we could say that Huxley mix all big narratives in a big fictional one to talk about the future of all human-beings. How could we explain this wrong evaluated value to the artistic text?. First of all, there is not a literary definition of utopian narrative. From this approach, I have tried to define it as :
"A very specific kind of artistic narrative, that exploits sensorial or intellectual events in writers and readers ´mind, with or without a plot, to describe a sensorial or intellectual realism that has a lot of simmilarities with our direct sensorial or intellectual reality .Its main theme is the description of a better or worst reality in order to create a cultural shock, by using all types of signs included in one or more given culture and using a scientific or informative credibility in order to represent, explicitly or implicitly, the controversial biologically or learned habits that a culture has had, has, would have, or could have, and that it is due to both the evolution of the "objective world" and "human being."In this sense, I´ve found a direct relation in between the sensorial and intellectual descriptions in his fictional world with those informative and scientific narratives that were taking place in the 30s, if they´re looked as cultural signs. By using these signs, as the main theme in his novel and using a third person narrator, Huxley has described all the world´s ideas and societies from two approaches : The modern society and a primitive one , but representing , in both of them, the shock of Past and Future and the cultural shocks at the same time. Think about the sensorially perceived travels that his characters are doing to the other world (London and New Mexico), and in the intellectually perceived world described by art (Shakespeare and other books).
From a semiotic point of view, it´s very interesting the way he has changed those values of reality by a fictional reality that all of them have in common and that all of them share. I think , that he is describing what those real narratives were or are looking for, but represented throught dualities (good/bad) in a social and in a aesthetic level . They only have a big State, but they´ve several environments and cultures. The D.H.C , one of the Ten Fordships (Musthapa Mond), and John the Savage are describing the reader the way that world is based on.
To read this novel, I recommend you to be able to perceive the different types of signs that are used to describe and understand culture. What follows, it´s a possible classification of them according to their values as signs.
According to this semiotic-communicative approach, you can find in each expression given by the author, an interactive or non-interactive event. In each one, the author has tried to reproduce that event to give you the opportunity to imagine his world. You´ll agree with me that in most of the paragraphs you can move in between the buildings, or to listen several sounds, or feeling the soma effect, just by identifying yourself with the characters.You can feel the madness of that world, precisely through the verbal and non-verbal communication in the written level.
For example in this paragraph we can see the relation in between the sensorial and the intelligent reality he perceived:
"Home,Home - a few small rooms,stifingly over-inhabitated by a man,by a periodically teeming woman, by a rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease, and smells. (The Controller´s evocation was so vivid that one of the boys, more sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the mere description and was on the point of being sick).I think that with Huxley´s words I cannot add anymore.This would be the ideal lecturer, the one who´s more sensitive than the rest of readers because you´re not only moving your eyes along the lines, instead of that, you´re looking for the hidden sign that the writer has created. For example, I have found very interesting a formal change, in the foreword and in the plot, with time concepts. Huxley added a hyphen each time he wrote about these concepts :
" The president stood up, MADE THE SIGN OF THE T and, switching on the synthetic music , let loose the soft indefatigable beating of drums and a choir of instruments_ near-wind and super-string _ that plangently repeated and repeated the brief and unescapable haunting melody of the First Solidary Hymn."The first thing that can be seen is the way he made the sign of the T. It´s done vertically and after horizontally or it´s just the opposite Is there any conection in between the formal change in these temporal concepts and the making of this sign? Let´s see what the author thought about time:
"´To-morrow´he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menancing geniality,´you´ll be settling down to serious work.You won´t have time for generalities. Meanwhile... ´Meanwhile , it was a privilige.I think that exists a direct relation in between this expression and the concept that modern societies have about time.At the beginning of the massive production, time was totally changed.The implication in between these biological and learned habits should have been changed. As we can see in the elements of Utopia, time is measured. We lost it, we buy it, even we need i , but it´s a crazy time. We don´t have time to think or just to live peacefully because the social change has totally changed our habits. Those changes, as Huxley has explicitly or implicictly explained, can be the product of our controversy nowadays.
From a literary point of view, and about the sensorial change that the time conception can create, you can see a good example of this temporal change in the structure of chapter 3 , where the author is showing us the magic realism that his descriptions offer us. He has changed lineality for several simultaneous events that can be perceived. The first time you read it, you can think that there´s not exists a real connection in between sentences ( the classical reading ) but they ´ve been created from a audio-visual realism easily reproduced:
" The nine Years´ War began in A.F. 141´Is this Literature? Is this Narrative? Of course it is!. It´s more than a formal question because we can see the innovation in the creation of a literary art. He is using his signical and intellectual capacities to tell us some events at the same time, but using the classical lineal form. For most readers could be really difficult to reproduce this chapter, because the´re reading with the classical strategies. At first, they don´t find COHERENCE and COHESION in his discourse. But, this really exists if we see it as a lineal movement in between lines. Voices, movements, sounds, etc, are interactuating at the written level. The most important thing is to know how to get to the meaning.
Not even if it were true about the alcohol in his blood surrogate
Phosgene,chloropicin,ethyl iodoacetate,diphenylcyanrsine,trichlormethly chloroformate,dichlorethly sulphide.Nor to mention hydrocyanic acid.
Which I simply don´t believe , Lenina concluded
The noise of fourteen thousand aeroplanes advancing in open order. But in Kurfurstendamm and the English Arrondissement , the explosion of the antrax bombs is hardly louder than the popping of a paper bag.
Because I do want to see a Savage Reservation."
If we pay attention to his creative point of view, we can see that Huxley is using all his potential to satirize his surronded world. Think about how a SEXOPHONIST is, or THE FEELIES, or BIG HENRY, or CLOTHES, or the BUILDINGS, or whatever. Or think about the physical aspect of BENITO HOOVER, or the sound of the ORGY -PORKY song. All his real objects have been changed and they have a new value that, for a big number of foreign readers of that culture, cannot be reproduced. I think that with this approach we could find some interesting aspects in the creation and evaluation of Literature. After this, we could analyse them by using our discipline ( morphology, syntax, phonetics, etc) or another one, or what could be better using some of them at the same time to see how it has changed.
As a conclussion, I´d say you that these descriptions are not obligatory. You can evaluate a description differently than me, but what you´ve to think about this, it´s that you´ve to be able to distinguish them, in order to try to see, hear or think as the author did. Only in that way you´ll understand and communicate with him/her. In that sense, If I´ve given you a good description of each sign, the only thing I´d add is that it is your own bussiness to link Huxley´s ideas with his sensorial and intellectual descriptions to talk about this cultural signs, because I´ve found some of them really interesting and, apart from this, think about that maybe the sense given by the author is not clearly manifested in a sentence.
It can appear in a movement, reaction, expression, description, sound, or image. Finally, if we worked with Constrative Literature, we could appreciate much more better the forms, values, or changes that all these sensorial or intellign signs can reproduce. Finally, if you haven´t read this novel, I want to show you the last paragraph of his novel:
Slowly , very slowly , like two unhurried compass , the feet turned towards the right;north,north-east,east,south-east,south,south-south-west;then paused,and,after a few seconds,turned as unhurriedly back towards the left.South-south-west,south,south-east,east...A very dramatic conclusion. Can you see and listen that As you can see, it has a tragic ending but by reading this expression, Don´t you want to see and hear what has happened before? . In this open ended, the author gives you a little graphic sign to think about it. The rest is your work by reading what happened before this fact/event and what, maybe, it´s happening now.
Huxley,A.:"Brave New World".Longman:Harlow,1991.
Poyatos, F.:"Literary Anthropology: Toward a New Interdisciplinary Area". Literary Anthropology. John Benjamins:Amsterdam/Philadelphia,1988:45.
Winner,Thomas G.:"Literature as a source for Anthropological research".Literary Anthropology.John Benjamins:Amsterdam/Philadelphia,1988:51-62.
Harris, M.:"La antropologia y el estudio de la cultura". Antropologia Cultural. Alianza Editorial.Madrid.1995:32-36.
Gray, M.: A Dictionary of Literary Terms.Logman York Press.Beirut.1984.
Academic year 1997/1998
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