Afterword: Non-Western Literary Theories and What to Do ... - Non-Western... · In their preface to the new edition of The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, the editors mention

Afterword: Non-Western Literary Theories and What to Do with ThemAuthor(s): Lalita PanditSource: College Literature, Vol. 23, No. 1, Comparative Poetics: Non-Western Traditions ofLiterary Theory (Feb., 1996), pp. 179-191Published by: College LiteratureStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25112236 .

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AFTERWORD

Non-Western Literary Theories and What To

Do With Them

LALITA PANDIT

The theoretical project of this volume is no doubt ambitious in its broad scope,

yet each essay focuses on a central aes

thetic concept that can be used to interpret

European and non-European literary texts in

new ways. Many of these key concepts are

defined and re-examined in schematic ways

and can prove very useful for teaching indi

vidual works of Western and non-Western lit

erature at the graduate and the undergraduate

levels. It is obvious that many of these con

cepts provide necessary tools for teaching Asian and Arabic literatures. What is less obvi

ous is that these theories apply as easily to lit eratures written in other traditions. In fact, this

kind of cross-cultural comparative aesthetics

inevitably allows for greater imaginative free

dom and interpretative pluralism. Perhaps it

can be used to forge a path out of the current

post-structuralist, cultural-materialist, new-his

toricist impasse(s) that have made models and

options for literary analysis highly overdeter mined. The authors of this volume, through

their diverse interventions, indicate new possi

bilities and potentialities for the future of

multi-cultural studies in aesthetics and literary theory. In the following pages, I would like to

isolate some of the key concepts that the authors of this volume discuss, and indicate

ways in which these models can contribute to

179



an enhanced understanding, appreciation and teaching of literature, aesthetics,

and culture.

To begin with, Zhang isolates the Chinese idea of Wen, revised and rede

fined in light of his critique of earlier European misconceptions of the idea.

Zhang wishes to extricate the idea of wen from its confinement (in the West) within a framework of mystifying cosmology. Without denying the centrality of the connection between writing and various cosmic configurations in

Chinese theory, Zhang maintains that "the scale finally tilts toward human writ

ing rather than natural pattern, and things in nature can be said to display rec

ognizable patterns only because they intimate the meaning of the universe as

a total order, as emanation from the great tao . Thus heaven and earth, moun

tains and rivers, animals and plants, the entire natural world and all things in

it, become a gigantic text inscribed with naturally written characters."

In the context of traditional debates about the relations between poetry and painting, and discussions about the pictoriality of Chinese poetry, Da'an

Pan familiarizes the reader with the notion of emotion-scene fusion in Chinese

poetics?"the triangular relation between xiang, yi, and yan (emblematic

image, idea, and word) and creative value of forgetting the words in the inter

est of an internalization of image, idea and sense." The key concept that Da'an

Pan isolates and develops bears some similarity to the Indian idea of dhvani, discussed in detail in Hogan's and my essay on Abhinavagupta's aesthetics.

According to Abhinavagupta, the dhvani meaning is often unspoken, it relies

on the capacity of the poetic metaphor to access unobtrusively the coded

memory banks of readers/spectators. Both essays focus, from different points of view, on the archival notion of memory on which the related ideas of desire

traces (vdsands) and memory traces (samskdras) are based. The psychologi cal emphasis in Chinese aesthetics on conscious "forgetting" of words in order

to preserve and store the idea, sense, and image in the archives of memory

bears striking affinity with the Indian aesthetics of memory and poetic

metaphor (See for example Hogan, Pandit, Lehmann and Heidinger).

Focussing on dramatic structure, May Smethurst analyzes Aeschylus's

The Persians in light of Zeami's notion of jo-ha-ky? (breaking open, climax

ing, and quickening to the finale): the dance-music oriented, lyrically accentu

ated wholeness of a N?h play. The Aeschylian tragedy, The Persians, Smethurst

points out, does not clearly fit into the Aristotelian pattern. On the other hand, when read (or performed) in the light of Zeami's different dramaturgical notion

of a playtext, this unusual Aeschylian play is proven to be aesthetically as sat

isfying as the Greek dramatist's other tragedies are. The N?h paradigm can be

applied to other, more modern tragedies as well, for instance, Synge's Riders

to the Sea, which, too, does not exactly fit into the Aristotelian pattern. Many

of Beckett's plays can also be read and performed in accordance with Zeami's

notion of the plot unity of the N?h .

A significant advantage of sustained inquiry into non-Western aesthetic

models is to make the overall repertoire of paradigms and models more

diverse, so that the aesthetic value of many more works of art comes to be

180 College Literature



fully realized. The contrary interpretative situation is one in which non-avail

ability of alternative paradigms ?

for reasons of ethnocentric bias and hege

monic claims of ascendancy ?

limits genuine appreciation of different types

of texts/artworks produced within the context of a supposedly homogeneous tradition. In fact, no literary tradition is as homogeneous as it is made out to

be. Often, a universally acclaimed ascendancy of a limited number of models

leads to the neglect of many exquisite works of art and literature within any

single, supposedly coherent tradition. A limited number of nation-culture

defined models and the tight segregation of cross-cultural models serves only to exclude, marginalize and dismiss many worthwhile literary texts. At the same time, this tendency serves to inflate the importance of a limited number

of models and paradigms. In explicating and re-defining numerous non

Western theories, the authors of this volume suggest a need to broaden the

parameters of theoretical practice and discussion. Due to limitations of space, I shall select only a few key concepts discussed by the authors of this volume

and indicate ways in which they can be used

Akhenaten 's "Hymn to the Sun " and Bash?'s notion of Sabi (loneliness of

things and people portrayed in a poem).

In their preface to the new edition of The Norton Anthology of World

Masterpieces, the editors mention that the Expanded Edition adds, "some two

thousand pages of major works by major artists of Africa, the Arab countries of

the Middle East, Israel, the Caribbean, China, Egypt, India, Japan, native

America, and the Persia that became Iran" (xxix). The other, nearly four thou

sand pages, are devoted to the conventional body of "world literature" from var

ious European traditions. In its broad spread that includes many unabridged works, not works in "bits and pieces as is the Norton custom," this anthology

is very much a mirror of a changing, expanding, massively pluralist world cul

ture. The key phrase used by the editors in their explanatory preface is "spa cious;" by adding two thousand pages they have made space for "disparate and unfamiliar civilizations" many of which have five thousand years of stories to

tell. Even a page for each year would add too many impossible pages to a

hypothetical anthology of world literature. Hence, one must welcome the addi tion of two thousand pages of textual space in the two volumes of a cohesive

anthology. Quite appropriately, the first volume begins with "Akhnaten's Hymn to

the Sun" (Ancient Egyptian Poetry, 1500 to 1200 B.C.). The opening lines

clearly offer praise to an ascendent deity: "When in splendor you first took

your throne/high in the precinct of heaven/O living God,/ life truly

began!/Now from eastern horizon risen and streaming,/you have flooded the

world with your beauty./You are majestic, awesome, bedazzling, exalted"

( World Masterpieces 45). A concise scholarly preface informs us that the Pharaoh Akhenaton, the founder of Heliopolis (early city of the sun) "empha sized the universal supremacy of the sun, and the images he uses to evoke

the scope and depth of Aten's powers suggest an emerging monotheism." The

Laiita Pandit 181



Pharaoh, in marking the ascendance of Aten "caused the names of the older

gods to be hacked out of inscriptions" (43). In light of this information, the

Longinian sublimity, the reproductive and creative plenitude celebrated in the verse stanzas, comes to be associated with sovereignty, the majesty of the

Pharaoh who makes the sun the source of his earthly power: "There in the

Sun, you reach to the farthest of those/you would gather in for your Son [the

Pharaoh]/whom you love"(45). The sun, as the sublime object of royally man

dated poetic praise, stands alone, far from the earth. As the world remains dis

tant, filtered through the sun's light, what this verse celebrates is the alone

ness of the sun-disk.

The next stanza conjures a world veiled in darkness, bereft of the bedaz

zling light, the source of which has now sunk to rest: "earth lies in darkness like death/Sleepers are still in bedchambers, heads veiled/eye cannot spy a

companion;/All their goods could be stolen away/Heads heavy there, and

they not knowing!/Lions come out of the deeps of their caves/snakes bite and

sting;/Darkness muffles, and earth is silent:/he who created all things lies low

in his tomb" (45). Readers accustomed to identifying dichotomies of darkness

and light, as metaphysics and metaphor, can easily detect a pattern in these two stanzas. Dazzling light of the sun and of royalty (of the Pharaoh) set

against the darkness of a sunless earth and the spectacle of commoners (as

sleepers in bedchambers) whose goods might be stolen in the dark (in a world

without rule of law, that is). Lions can "come out from the deeps of their

caves/snakes bite and sting" (45). The deeper, cultural meanings of the poem become more accessible with

reference to the Japanese notion of sabi , an unusual concept defined by

Bash? as the principle of "loneliness ? not only the loneliness of people, but

the loneliness of all things portrayed in a poem" (See Hogan, "Introduction" to

this volume). The conflation of ancient Egyptian poetic utterance and the

notion of sabi might seem too radical, but it leads to a better understanding of the poem. When Bash?'s idea of sabi is applied to the "Hymn to the Sun,"

we can see that what is striking about the poem is this aloneness of the "liv

ing God," of his majesty, his distance from the life on earth, while he "shines

in the faces of all." Seen from this perspective, the word "sun" in the poem no

longer refers to the sun alone, but to the principle of aloneness which is the

cause of Aten's glory.

Similarly, it is the aloneness of the Pharaoh that makes it possible to liken

him to the sun, the conflation of Pharaoh and Aten is followed immediately by the qualification, "though you are far." In the second stanza, all things por

trayed poetically are portrayed in their aloneness. The earth's darkness is like

death; the heads of sleepers are veiled, their "eye cannot spy a companion."

Darkness "muffles" the world, and "earth is silent." Silence also is a form of

aloneness, as death is. The sun lying "low in his tomb" inscribes another image of aloneness into the rich tapestry of the poem; sleep, darkness, death are

ways of existing in this textual world. The separation, the loneliness marks

things and people as poetic objects; they are taken out of the context of life




? defamiliarized, made strange, as Victor Shklovsky might see it. Bash?'s the

ory of beauty, and of poetic meaning offers a key to the semiosis of objects and people in this poem. It allows us to makes this semiotic principle the cen

tral interpretative strategy.

Even the subsequent stanzas, where the "Earth dawning" day has

"upraised the sleepers," who "go to their crafts and professions" and "the herds

are at peace in the pastures," the aloneness, the sabi principle is evoked again

as the central poetic dynamic of the poem because the focus is on the Eye of

the sun, its sight, its field of vision in which "Fish in the river leap" as the "rays strike deep in the Great Green Sea." The optically pierced point in the great

green sea is nothing if not an embodiment of poetic aloneness. The Eye of

the "Sun-Disk" is alone: it takes the "Nile, stream through the underworld."

Itself, it is a "Sole God/Beside whom is no other!" (46). It divides "tongues by words," even as it gives "Each his portion of food." It creates aloneness, mak

ing natures diverse, making "Even men's skins different," so that it "might dis

tinguish between nations." At this point, the signifier of loneliness no longer functions solely as a poetic principle, it echoes the early conflation of sover

eignty (of the Pharaoh) with the monotheistic sun-god. Aloneness becomes a

political necessity, the polities of alone nations and peoples; this god too rules

by dividing on the basis of skins and tongues.

My intention so far has not been to treat Bash?'s idea of sabi as anything more than a broad poetic principle. However, given the way instances of sabi

accumulate in the "The Hymn to The Sun," the mirroring and merging of poet ry and history, power and polity, monotheistic transcendence and monarchy come under a sharper interpretative focus. The political ideology of the poem evident in its fashioning of a monotheistic order of divinity is clearly evident in reiterations of "You are the One God." The poetic praise song addresses

itself in another stanza to "yourself, who are One alone," while "each" person

"looks back and beholds you." The regenerative metaphor in Stanza V offers another parallel to the aloneness of the Eye image. The focus in this stanza is on the "creation of a new creature" by "Man" and "Woman," the use of the sin

gular case reinforces the idea of aloneness. Stanza VI extends the procreative

metaphor to include "the chick in the egg/He who speaks in the shell" (46). The aloneness of the egg and the chick is stressed, as it progresses in its life's

journey under the invisible benediction of the sun-disk, as it breaks the shell to "peep at his natal hour," stands on its "own two feet" and "struts forth."

Emotion-Scene Fusion and Dhvani Resonance in the <(Hymn to the Sun. "

Risking the purist censure that often follows radical mixing and mingling of multi-cultural tools of analysis, I wish to further demonstrate how the

"Hymn to the Sun" responds equally well to a dhvani analysis because in this

poem the figure of hyperbole works in conjunction with vastudhvani . In my essay, I have used examples from Macbeth to explicate the aesthetic notion of vastudhvani and its conflation with different figures of speech. In "The

Hymn to the Sun," the directly praised subject is no doubt the sun-disk and

Lalita Pandit 183



the philosophical burden of the poem is to mark a historical and mythic ascen

dancy of monotheism. Pharaoh, the "Son" of the celebrated deity, loved by him, is mentioned only once, in the second stanza. The contextual (historical) information supplied by the editors about the rise of the Pharoah's monarchi cal power, the construction of the city of sun is significant in determining the

ways in which the poem invites an unconscious association of monotheism

with monarchy. In the poem itself, these meanings are not paraphrasable. In

his essay on dhvani, Hogan emphasizes that dhvani meanings are not para

phrasable. Furthermore, the poetic principle of aloneness, as it operates in the

hymn, goes hand in hand with the dhvani analysis. It is clear that the sun-disk is an overseeing Eye; yet, as the explicit sub

ject of the poem this overseeing attribute is too literally true. As a symbol of state power, naturalized by cosmic configurations and theological constructs,

the sun-disk is transfigured as the life giving source. From a different theoret ical perspective, its all seeing Eye is what Foucault would refer to as the

Panoptic Agency (see, for example, "Panopticism" in Discipline and Punish

195-228). The Sun-Disk, like the all-seeing Eye of the Panoptic agency of state

power, in the context of Foucault's satire on Bentham's idea of the Panopticon,

is contingently situated in its aloneness: it must be able to see everything. Its

"gaze," as Foucault characterizes the semiosis of the Panoptic phenomenon, "is

alert everywhere" (195). From the dhvani point of view, one can say the poem is not about the sun-disk; instead it is about the reification of the panoptic

machinery of the state: its aestheticization. The key to this Foucaultian (sug gested) sense is the dhvani meaning embodied in the poetic metaphor.

Psychoanalytically, the poetic utterance is "the full word" that reveals the

erased primary intention to institutionalize monotheism in the service of

monarchical power structures. The poem's constitution of a political uncon

scious is its contextual, rather than its formal, symbolic function. A formalist

analysis would not allow us to arrive at this level of signification. In addition, the poem demonstrates clearly the fusion of emblematic image

(of the sun-disk) with the scene, idea and word. One series of dhvani markers

in the poem have been isolated above; these are the reiterated images of alone ness . The other dhvani markers are the pronouns, "you," "he," and the less fre

quently used collective pronoun "they." Since it is a song of praise and wor

ship, the social practice/convention of worship and hymn writing serves to dis

tance and elevate "you" (King, Sun-disk, all seeing and invisible because it is

"bedazzling," blinding). The implicit "I" is the worshiper, the slave in relation to

the master, one might say. Poetic deployment of the social value of worship constitutes the ethos and aesthetics of love, the love of the worshiper for the

object of worship, the love of the human for the divine. The use of the personal

pronouns, their suggestion of intimacy, in contrast with the distance and lone

liness, invokes the conventional symbiosis of love, the voluntary love of the

worshiper for the worshiped. The opposite of voluntary love is the sociological

necessity to inspire the subjugated to love his/her state of subjection, to make




unconditional love of the divine a condition for man's (woman's too) survival

in the world.

In other words, the emblematic image ( xiang ), as Chinese theory teaches

us, is of the sun-disk, the words ( yi ) "sun" and "son" are to be forgotten even

tually, and the idea (yan ) of the resplendent "all in one" deity is mirrored and

doubled as the idea of royal power. All three elements are successfully fused in

this poem. The triangular relation that Da'an Pan speaks of in "Tracing the

Traceless Antelope," a relation established by what he calls "the semiotics of lan

guage" takes us beyond words, to the fusion of emotion (of devotional love) with scene (the panorama of life, all things and people in their aloneness, a

quality that characterizes their relation to the creator). The triangular fusion leads

naturally to the final stanza which celebrates devotional love more explicitly: "And you are in my heart/there is no other who truly knows you/but for your son Akhenaten" (48). In this line, the privileged devotee is the King who

becomes fused with the figure of the sun-disk, basks in its glory, is transfigured. To this transfigured figure, the others owe servitude (of love). These others are

less privileged worshipers; their love is as intimate but they have no privileged access. In this ancient hymn, then, Love becomes a transcendent value.

Concurrently, its terms are negotiated through various processes of reification

of history, of national ("the rich Black Land of Egypt") and international polities ("far lands of Khor and Kush" 46).

Orienting Sanskrit Drama (Kdliddsa) Into the Xiang (image) Yi (idea) and Yan (name or word) of Siva.

Shifting the perspective of time from Ancient Egyptian Poetry (1500-1200

B.C.) to Sanskrit Drama (5th to 9th A.D) and situating the reader's gaze some

where in the middle section of World Masterpieces ("India's Classical Age"), I

wish to identify another emblematic image, as broad in its cultural/symbolic

significance as the image of the sun-disk. The word associated with this image is Siva, most commonly the name of one of the gods of the Hindu Trinity. The

opening sloka of K?lid?sa's famous play, Sakuntald, refers to Siva not sim

ply as divinity, but as a foundational idea, emblematic icon, myth, metaphor, and cognitive paradigm: "The water that was first created/the sacrifice bearing the fire, the priest,/the time-setting sun and moon/audible space that fills the

universe,/what men call nature, the source of all seeds/the air that living crea

tures breathe ?/through his eight embodied forms/may Lord Siva come to

bless you" ( World Masterpieces 1183). The explanatory note at the bottom informs us that the verse is a Ndndi,

a benedictory verse, recited at the beginning of a play. Siva, the note explains, dances the cosmic dance of creation and destruction. More pertinent for our

discussion is the fact that K?lid?sa "praises Siva as the cosmic divinity per

vading the universe in his eight forms ? the five elements (ether, air, fire, water, and earth), the sun and the moon, and the sacrificing priest" (1183). Hinduism is obviously not monotheistic, yet the all pervading image of Siva that K?lid?sa invokes at the beginning of his play is similar to the bedazzling

Laiita Pandit 185



sun-disk in the Egyptian "Hymn to the Sun." Like the sun, Siva is the source

of all that is, and the benedictory verse uses the context of worshipful love.

Since K?lid?sa's play is about erotic desire along with its social, psychologi cal and transcendental implications, the praiseful invocation of a loved divin

ity is very suggestive. In teaching the play, I have often found it works well to use an extended

discussion of the verse to situate K?lid?sa's play in its relevant conceptual framework. However, the preconceptions about Hinduism and the exoticized

mystique elicited, unfortunately, by the word "Siva" paves the way for an

interpretative impasse. One way out of this impasse is to emphasize that the word and emblematic image, "Siva," have a host of cognitive, social and psy

chological meanings attached to them. A few excerpts from Heidinger's essay

"Derrida and Siva," excerpts in which he explores the signifier, Siva , in its rela

tion to many cognitive principles, can be quite useful at this juncture. This type of intervention might be more appropriate for a graduate class. However, the

opening sloka and its benedictory purpose can be made less oddly "religious," more contextual for undergraduates as well. Drawing on the work of an Indian

Saivaite philosopher, Heidinger explains that the word, icon and emblem "Siva" is associated, among other things, with the four stages of language awareness:

vaikhari (gross speech, material language), madhayamd (speech containing a word image),pasaynti (beholding, dualist speech) and pard, the unsur

passable I-consciousness in which mind and language become one: the tran

scendental signified. Lehmann, Hogan and I also refer to this hierarchized notion of language awareness; it is a central concept for all Indian aesthetic the

ories. The schema that Heidinger isolates in connection with the Siva principle is very similar to the better known theos-logos schema. In teaching Indian lit

erature, it is important to highlight this connection because very often the con

ceptual/cognitive value of Indian thought is dismissed because of the theolog ically oriented terminology many ancient Indian authors use. A shift in inter

pretative methods is therefore necessary in order to extricate Indian texts from

a pattern of hermeneutic overdetermination that hides the complexity and

diversity of Hindu thought by reducing individual concepts to one single denominator and amplifying the hermeneutic significance of a fetish and a frag ment. The signifier, "Siva," is undoubtedly one of these fetishized fragments.

A discussion of the conceptual complexity of the Siva paradigm is an

example of a specific pedagogical intervention one can make to cut through the cyclical pattern of interpretative overdetermination. "Siva" as a composite

embodiment of varying stages of I-consciousness, as well as the mirror reflec

tions of these in language, manifests "the inner content, i.e., question-answer

which appears in the consciousness of the highest Lord in an undifferentiated

way [pardvdc], because of its being the highest truth, it is thought of in the

pasaynti stage in an indeterminate form ... it is posited with a sense of sepa

rateness in the madhyamd stage in a determinate form; it is finally expressed in the form of question and answer in the vaikhari stage of gross speech con

sisting of mdyia letter, word, and sentence" (Pandit 15, in Heidinger). Read in




this context, K?lid?sa's mystifying benedictory verse orients the play into the

cognitive implications suggested by the icon, word, and the idea embodied in

the figure of "Lord Siva."

K?lid?sa's Sdkuntald is a play about erotic desire, its hasty consumma

tion because of impetuous passion, the disruption caused by a curse (as a

symbolic punishment for transgression), love's fruitful final outcome that rec

onciles dharma (duty), karma (action and individual fate) with kdma (con summated eros). Yet, it is a very reflexive play and it allegorizes the protago

nists and the central motif of remembering and forgetting. K?lid?sa's creative

imagination, his takhayil, as Alf?r?bi might say, turns these into cognitive

metaphysical schema. The spontaneous, unreflective erotic union of the first

phase represents the middle (madhyamd) Siva state of language awareness.

The separation due to a curse that causes the inexplicable forgetting of the

beloved (wife) by the lover (husband) suggests a stage of dualism. In this state, as Heidinger points out,

" Siva becomes dualistic, separating himself and Devi,

his female counterpart." A state of melancholy, of abjection sets in when the

king-husband recovers the signet ring of recollection that the queen-wife had

accidentally lost. The recovery of the ring makes him remember the absent

beloved; this state of separation parallels with the Siva state of vaikhari, the

phenomenal consciousness of limit, of illusion, of mdyd. The final union of the two in a semi-divine world is no doubt an emblematic scene representing

the pard state of Slvahood, the unsurpassable I-consciousness, "where infor

mation is carried by j?dna sakti (cognitive power) to hit, which is "the

supreme consciousness base of all objective [or socially shared] experience like

[the color] blue, etc., and all subjective experiences like pleasure, etc., and also

the empirical exprerients conditioned by the body, prdria [breath] and bud dhi [intellect]" (Pandit 61, in Heidinger). K?lid?sa's use of the Siva figure, therefore, encompasses the entire metaphysics of the play; it is not a mere mat

ter of asking for Lord Siva's benediction before staging a play.

Pratibhd and Takhayil: Intuition and Imagination.

Finally, the concept of pratibhd (Lehmann) and the Arabic idea of

takhayil ( Matar) deserve special mention. These concepts are different from the others because they have more to do with the mind of the author than with aesthetic structure and/or aesthetic response. One of the key concepts

Lehmann isolates in "Poetic Principles of South Asian Literary Tradition," is

pratibhd, ordinarily translated as "intuition," or "talent." Lehmann uncovers an

elaborate notion of innate and acquired components of pratibh? in the six

levels, or components of it. The first, svabhdua , refers to the innate tendency or skill (of the bee to build hives, of the spider to build webs, and so forth); all creatures, "behave according to their inborn nature." The second, cdra?a ,

is acquired, an extension o? svabhdua. It can also be translated as "behaviour,"

or "character."

The next stage of pratibhd can be achieved through abhydsa, "dedicated

practice and repetition." Whatever perfection and fluency is to be achieved

Lalita Pandit 187



through abhydsa cannot be taught. The fourth stage can be achieved through yoga, a word much used and abused in speaking of Indian culture. In the con

text of pratibhd, the term, yoga, refers to "dedicated practice" which is direct ed at enhancing perceptive intelligence; a form of pard-skill. Through it one can achieve the ability to determine the thoughts of others. The fifth stage is

mysterious, and more typically Indian. It refers to that part of pratibhd which

develops as a result of adrsta, that which is, but is not seen or known. In

other words, it could be something inherited from a previous existence, some

thing coming from an unknown source. Through it, a person may have access

to a type of knowledge that is superior to knowledge gained by empirical rea

soning. It is clear that only this particular component of pratibh? has anything to do with the English term "intuition" (Lehmann).

The sixth component o? pratibhd is visistophita , special grace, or tal ent of a person. It is not clear whether this quality is innate or learned, but it is unique to the person; it is that part of pratibh? which makes the poet stand out, become distinct. Developed in this elaborate way, the pratibhd

paradigm that Lehmann identifies can be used for various pedagogical pur

poses. It can be used to serve as a theoretical and a practical model for

composition and creative writing classes. More discursively, it can be used to

orient works of Indian literature in the context of an elaborated cultural par

adigm. Pedagogical use of models like this, once again, marks a shift from

interpreting Indian texts as mystifying to understanding their complexity. More importantly, the pratibhd paradigm identified by Lehmann makes one

seriously question the validity of the dichotomous understanding of India's

privileging of intuition over reason. A partial perception of this kind is often a result of an amplification of one of the components of pratibhd, yoga and/or adrsta, to the exclusion of others and a fragmentation of the whole

ness, the conceptual elegance of this paradigm. Such instances of amplifica

tion and fragmentation are, unfortunately, very common in teaching and

analyses of Eastern literatures.

I end my concluding remarks with a brief mention of Nabil Matar's dis

cussion of Alf?r?bi. Matar focuses on Alf?r?bi's notion of imagination as that

which receives, projects and recreates images, and motivates action. Matar's

discussion of the Arabic notion of imagination is not only relevant for study

ing Arabic and other works of literature; the Arab theorist introduces the read

er to a radically different way of looking at human motivation and action. For

Alf?r?bi, imagination, not reason, motivates action. In doing so imagination

legitimizes itself as a socially productive agency. Alf?r?bi notes that "reason

might indicate one thing, but if imagination indicates another, the individual

might choose what imagination dictates." It follows that if imagination projects a falsity, then individual act will follow the pattern of falsity and be severed

from truth, in contradiction to reason. More important, however, is Alf?r?bi's

conception of imagination as a "causative faculty" that operates within the

realm of sense perception and reason "but with its own cveative-mukhayyil

meaning" (Matar).




Alf?r?b?'s notion of imagination is significant especially in connection with Aristotle's notion of imitation; it radicalizes the notion of imitation, as it

changes accepted ideas about human action. Moreover, in teaching and writ

ing on Arabic literatures, the analytic focus on the categories of reason and

passion is not as efficacious as Alf?r?b?'s notion of creative imagination is. In

addition, the theoretical potential for a specifically Arabic notion of a new phe

nomenology of reading is clearly suggested by Alf?r?b?'s idea of takhayil and its various morphological derivatives discussed in detail by Nabil Matar. The

attached translation of the Arab Master's original treatise can be taught along with Plato and Aristotle, and this segment can be of particular use in Literary

Theory classes.

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Laiita Pandit 189



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Afterword: Non-Western Literary Theories and What to Do ... - Non-Western... · In their preface to the new edition of The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, the editors mention