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REMODELLING REPERTOIRE [Draft version 20.08.2011] Arnout De Cleene Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 24.08.2011 It is often asserted that texts written by ‘insane’ authors have played an innovatory role in literary history. The way in which these writings and madness in general influence the functioning of literature, has hardly been studied. In this presentation, I want to explore, rethink and develop some pivotal theoretical concepts and the way in which these theoretical concepts can be translated into methodological instruments for this kind of research. The theoretical framework I intend to use, is Polysystem Theory (PST). More specifically, I would like to outline the hypothesis that ‘madness’ can be studied as a model and modelling function within the literary ‘repertoire’. Polysystem theory & repertoire Let us begin by briefly sketching the main characteristics of Polysystem theory (PST). PST was developed by the Israeli culture researcher Itamar Even-Zohar who conceptualized socio-cultural phenomena as semiotic systems that can be studied from a dynamic functionalist point of view. These socio-cultural systems are seen as dynamic sets of relations in which tensions, change and heterogeneity are keywords. Polysystem theory searches for and formulate general laws that structure these systems and their evolution in relation to the other, surrounding systems. Within this framework, Even-Zohar posits the existence of the semi-autonomous literary (poly)system. Based on Jakobson’s famous communication scheme, EZ conceptualizes the existence of six, interdependently functioning, basic factors that are involved with the activities called ‘literary’. Among these factors, the concept of repertoire (Jakobson’s ‘code’) is of great significance. It is this concept that I want to explore more thoroughly. Even-Zohar defines repertoire as “the aggregate of rules and materials which govern both the making and handling, or production and consumption, of any given [literary] product” (1997, p. 21). In more comprehensible terms as a mental ‘tool kit’ (Swidler 1986) that determines our consumption and production of cultural, or in this case, literary products. It can be used actively, as strategies of action in literary production, or passively, as a conceptual strategy for ‘understanding’ literature. I will confine myself to this passive aspect of the repertoire. Literature, madness & repertoire Before pursuing the conceptualization of repertoire and its structure in greater depth, let us return to ‘madness’. Acknowledging the role madness plays in the literary system raises the question how this relation between madness and literature can be studied. What is the function of madness in literature? How and where can we situate it in the polysystemic framework? Seen from the perspective of Even-Zohars ‘factors’, madness, a cherished subject in literary studies, has most often been situated on the side of the ‘producer’. Studying madness in literature is in that case studying insane authors or the insanity of authors, as has been done, for example, in psychoanalytic and biographic literary studies. This is approach is in many ways problematic. Starting out from a biographic statement and medical diagnosis, it would involve a selection of ‘officially’ diagnosed authors such as Artaud or Hölderin, while leaving out ‘borderline’ authors, such as Joyce or Kafka, who are as interesting for the interrelation between madness and literature. On a fundamental level, this approach denies the relative functional autonomy of the literary system, which is, from my point of view, untenable. As such, the literary system would become dependent on and subordinate to psychiatry, while the meaning and functioning of madness in literature would be reduced to being a derivative and echo of medical insanity. The opposite is true: what constitutes a ‘mad author’ in the literary system, is not dependent on a biographic fact or psychiatric diagnosis. To put it blunt: an

Arnout De Cleene 8/20/11 6:02 PM Comment [1]: When we consider the previous century, for instance, there appears to be a clear evolution considering the status of these texts: suffering from insanity in the beginning of the twentieth century precluded being a ‘recognized’ author. Madness was, to put it in Foucaults famous terms, equal to the absence of the literary work. The avant-garde movements in the first half of the twentieth century, and surrealism in particular, marked a profound change towards these writings, as they evolve from curiosity to a source of inspiration and creative model. During the second half of the twentieth century, in visual arts as in literature, texts written by the insane became appreciated in their own right and presented, by Dubuffet and others, under resounding labels such as Ecrits Bruts or Les Fous littéraires. It is the evolution of the reception of these texts which is the topic of my PhD research project. Arnout De Cleene 8/20/11 6:03 PM Comment [2]: “a consumer may ‘consume’ a product produced by a producer, but in order for the ‘product’ to be generated, a common repertoire must exist, whose usability is constrained, determined, or controlled by some institution on the one hand, and a market where such a good can be transmitted on the other” (1997factors, p. 21).

author who is perceived as and functions as ‘mad’ in the literary system, can, from a psychiatric point of view, be perfectly sane. (This means, moreover, that psychiatric theories themselves can’t be equated with or related to the polysystemic approach.A similar objection goes for situating madness on the level of the product: studying literary works as characterized by certain stylistic or thematic features that are typical of insanity – as was done by some poststructuralist literary theorists emphasizing the endless play of signifiers, for example – would be an essentialist and static claim, which would again make a hardly tenable selection of what constitutes a relevant text. Situating madness on the producer- or product side of the polysystemic framework, is not an option for studying the functioning of madness in the literary system. In order to answer this question madness must, I contend, be situated on the level of the repertoire. This means that madness is, or is a part of, the mental tool kit that determines the consumption of literary products. In brief, and by way of illustration, lets consider the fairly unknown Belgian writer Sophie Podolski (1953-1974). Studying the functioning of madness in the literary system would mean to study the fact that and the way in which her texts are presented and perceived as highly prolific writings embodying typical features of insane literature. If these texts are or are not belonging to such a genre, is not a question which would help us understand the way madness functions in literature (reproductie bijlage 2). Likewise, Podolski herself was presented as someone who spent time in psychiatric institutions in Brussels and Paris (foto bijlage 1). While this latter literary statement is very interesting, the fact that she was or was not mentally ill from the point of view of medicine is of little importance. Repertoire and model between theory and practice This being said, things become more difficult when this theoretical-conceptual construction has to be applied in actual research. The bridging of the gap between theory and methodology has repeatedly been pointed out as one of the major weaknesses of polysystem theory (see Codde 2003, Andringa 2006, Bemong 2010, De Geest 1997). More specifically, it is Even-Zohar’s development of the structure of the repertoire that has been rightfully criticized on the basis of methodological adequacy. EvenZohar conceptualizes repertoire as a combination of individual elements or ‘repertoremes’ on the one hand, and models on the other. These models are “the combination of elements + rules + the syntagmatic relations imposable on the product” (EZ, 1997, p. 23). Furthermore, EZ states: “For the potential consumer, the ‘model’ is that pre-knowledge according to which the event is interpreted” (p. 24). While this concept of model is interesting, it has, just like the ‘individual elements’ very limited heuristic adequacy. For, what are these elements in a repertoire and in a model? What kind of rules and relations define its functioning? What is the difference between model and repertoire? In this regard, Els Andringa has provided a welcome contribution. She restructures the concept according to components, following the “principles of empirical research” (525). More specifically, as “a mental equipment that enables its users to act and to communicate in a literary (sub)system” (525) the structure of the repertoire consists of (a) knowledge of a collection of works/oeuvres that have a model function and serve as a frame of reference; (b) sets of strategies and conventions (c) sets of internalized values and interests. Andringa’s repertoire has considerable advantages when compared to Even-Zohar’s definition. Hers is an extremely practical definition of repertoire that makes it possible to combine polysystemic and theoretical insights and (empirical and statistical) reception study. Nonetheless, it is difficult to integrate ‘madness’ into this scheme. On the one hand, it is not favourable to conceive of ‘madness’ as a literary repertoire in itself. Repertoires have been identified with either the relation with the user (producer/consumer) or with the product. There have been, for example, studies on the repertoire of translated literature, children’s literature on the one hand, and on the repertoires of feminist Dutch literary critics, Icelandic people, translators in a Catholic network... on the other. Defining a repertoire by its relation with a repertoric element, such as madness, seems difficult to grasp and even more to

delineate in a practical way. Moreover, the attribution of repertoire to groups of users is a very workable hypothesis. On the other hand, madness can neither be attributed to one of Andringa’s repertoric components. In fact, it functions within all three. A case in point is the publication of Le pays où tout est permis (1973), written by the already mentioned Sophie Podolski. On the back flap we read a short, ‘biography’ of ‘Sophie’, of which the first ‘fact’ is highly interesting: “1953. Le goût du lait transforme la naissance en folie excrémentielle dans le sommeil des heures de la ville” (my emphasis) (The taste of milk transforms birth in excremental madness during the sleep of the city-hours). Added to this is a part of the introduction by French writer Philippe Sollers, who refers to Antonin Artaud. The publication and printing strategy of the book are eye-catching: the printed text is accompanied by facsimiles of the idiosyncratic original manuscript, emphasizing a relation between the verbal and the visual. In the introduction itself, Sollers writes “j’ai la manie dans mes rêves d’ouvrir les fenêtres voilà pourquoi j’aime ce livre qui n’est pas un livre” (p. 12) (In my dreams I have the mania of opening the windows that’s why I love this book that’s not a book), giving a clear positive evaluation, linking mania, a sense of freedom and a rejection of literary values. As such, it is significant that there are a frame of reference, strategies and values present in this publication, components that can be related, each in their own right, to madness. For this reason, madness can neither be limited to one of Andringa’s repertoric components. Madness as a modelling function in the literary repertoire In Andringa’s conceptualization of repertoire, the focus lies on the components – Even-Zohars ‘individual elements’. Although these components are susceptible to change, a cognitive-dynamic aspect is lost which was present, and even dominant, in Even-Zohars conceptualization of repertoire. This aspect is most clearly present in the notion of model, and even more, in Even-Zohars explicit use of the TartuMoscow semiotic concept of modelling. Referring to Lotman and Uspenski, Even-Zohar emphasizes the structuring, processing character of a cultural repertoire, which has vanished almost completely from Andringa’s definition. It is my contention that reintroducing it in her methodological outline and thus ‘remodelling’ repertoire makes it possible to study ‘madness’ within the polysystemic framework. If a repertoire is a set of options used by humans for conducting their lives (Even-Zohar, 2010making, p. 181), and if these options are (or can be studied as) structured in Andringa’s components, than we can hypothesize the existence within a repertoire of concepts such as madness whose primary characteristic is not a specific content, but their modelling function: they select and organize elements within the existing repertoric components and establish relations between them in a specific, coherent configuration. Madness, while being itself a repertoreme, organizes the relations between the different repertoremes as structured in Andringa’s conceptualization of repertoire which results in a conceptual-cognitive strategy or model by which we understand specific literary products. Returning, by way of illustration, to Le pays où tout est permis this means that ‘madness’ is the hypothesized function within a repertoire of a group of actors in the literary system. It functions as a conceptual strategy that determines the publication and reception of the book by establishing or modelling relations between elements within the repertoire; madness, in this case, is the specific selection of and established relations between a frame of reference, in this case Artaud, strategies such as the facsimiles and evaluations such as ‘freedom’. The ‘modelling function madness’ can’t, unlike Andringa’s components, be empirically detected, yet: The power of relational thinking does not stop (...) at the level of analyzing “known’ phenomena, which is basically explanatory. It lies also, and perhaps even more forcefully, in the ability to surmise unrecognized, yet unknown, objects, thus transforming it into a tool of discovery. By hypothesizing a relation as an explanation

Arnout De Cleene 8/20/11 11:25 PM Comment [3]: In this text, there is a significant reference to Antonin Artaud: “les paroles dit artaud sont un limon qu’on n’éclaire pas du côté de l’être mais du côté de son agonie” (the sayings, says artaud, are a lemon that we don’t explain from the perspective of being but from its pain)

for an object (...), relational thinking can arrive at assuming the ‘existence’ of some phenomena which have not been recognized before (EZ, 1997, p. 16) Madness is such a phenomenon. Studying the function of madness in the literary system gains in this way a methodological base, combining both the theoretical advantage of Even-Zohar and heuristic advantage of Andringa. To sum up, studying the function of madness in the literary system is hypothesizing its existence as a modelling function within the repertoire of a group of literary actors and mapping the selection of and established relations between repertoremes. Structuredness, cohesion and ‘mental order’ thus become, ironically, the core characteristics of what has been, time and again, conceptualized as a lack of structure, chaos and mental disorder. --------------------------------------------Bibliography Andringa, E. “Penetrating the Dutch Polysystem: The Reception of Virginia Woolf, 1920-2000.” Poetics Today 27.3 (2006): 501. Print. Bemong, N. “Internal Chronotopic Genre Structures: The Nineteenth-Century Historical Novel in the Context of the Belgian Literary Polysystem.” Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives. 2010. 159–178. Print. Codde, P. “Polysystem Theory Revisited: A New Comparative Introduction.” Poetics Today 24.1 (2003) : 91. Print. Even-Zohar, I. “Factors and Dependencies in Culture: A Revised Outline for Polysystem Culture Research.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 24 (1997) : 15–34. Print. ---. “The Making of Repertoire, Survival and Success Under Heterogeneity.” Festschrift F\ür Die Wirklichkeit [To Honor Sigfried J. Schmidt] (2000) : 41–51. Print. De Geest, D. Literatuur Als Systeem, Literatuur Als Vertoog: Bouwstenen Voor Een Functionalistische Benadering Van Literaire Verschijnselen. Peeters, 1996. Print. Podolski, Sophie. Le Pays Où Tout Est Permis. 1973. Print. Sheffy, R. “Models and Habituses: Problems in the Idea of Cultural Repertoires.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 24.1 (1997) : 35–47. Print. Swidler, A. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review (1986) : 273–286. Print.