Page 24 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 24
Ideology in the 20th Century: studies of literary and social discourses and practices
the normative poetics, which often influences the literary system from the
outside, and Tynyanov draws particular attention here to the system of
everyday life and everyday language. What he calls everyday life contains
in its extreme form all other social systems (economic, political, and cer-
tainly technological); it is a kind of polysystem, similar to Lotman’s con-
cept of semiosphere. The role of technology creating new semiotic inter-
faces in this process is essential. Thus, through remediation, technology
is crucially affecting the relationship between elite and popular culture,
mainstream and alternative culture, between entertainment and art, and,
last but not least, between conformism, subversiveness and counter-cul-
turalism in political terms, and it does so regardless of our value judg-
ments. Therefore, analysing a particular literary or cultural phenomenon
without considering its diachronic evolution and the cultural context
24 that influenced it is meaningless—what must be analysed is the entire
system, or the whole simultaneous order of art and culture.
New Genres
If the simultaneous order of art is conditioned by technological develop-
ment, we may say that today we find ourselves in a state of universal ubiq-
uity of imaginative stimuli, described by Valéry already in 1928 as home
‘delivery of Sensory Reality’:
Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in
times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon
things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth
of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the
ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound chang-
es are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is
a physical component which cannot be considered or treated as it used to
be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and pow-
er. In the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what
it was from time immemorial. We must expect innovations to transform
the entire technique of the arts thereby affecting artistic invention itself
and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of
art. At first, no doubt, only the reproduction and transmission of works of
art will be affected. It will be possible to send anywhere or to re-create an-
ywhere a system of sensations, or more precisely a system of stimuli, pro-
voked by some object or event in any given place. Works of art will acquire
a kind of ubiquity. We shall only have to summon them and there they will
be, either in their living actuality or restored from the past. They will not
the normative poetics, which often influences the literary system from the
outside, and Tynyanov draws particular attention here to the system of
everyday life and everyday language. What he calls everyday life contains
in its extreme form all other social systems (economic, political, and cer-
tainly technological); it is a kind of polysystem, similar to Lotman’s con-
cept of semiosphere. The role of technology creating new semiotic inter-
faces in this process is essential. Thus, through remediation, technology
is crucially affecting the relationship between elite and popular culture,
mainstream and alternative culture, between entertainment and art, and,
last but not least, between conformism, subversiveness and counter-cul-
turalism in political terms, and it does so regardless of our value judg-
ments. Therefore, analysing a particular literary or cultural phenomenon
without considering its diachronic evolution and the cultural context
24 that influenced it is meaningless—what must be analysed is the entire
system, or the whole simultaneous order of art and culture.
New Genres
If the simultaneous order of art is conditioned by technological develop-
ment, we may say that today we find ourselves in a state of universal ubiq-
uity of imaginative stimuli, described by Valéry already in 1928 as home
‘delivery of Sensory Reality’:
Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in
times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon
things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth
of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the
ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound chang-
es are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is
a physical component which cannot be considered or treated as it used to
be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and pow-
er. In the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what
it was from time immemorial. We must expect innovations to transform
the entire technique of the arts thereby affecting artistic invention itself
and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of
art. At first, no doubt, only the reproduction and transmission of works of
art will be affected. It will be possible to send anywhere or to re-create an-
ywhere a system of sensations, or more precisely a system of stimuli, pro-
voked by some object or event in any given place. Works of art will acquire
a kind of ubiquity. We shall only have to summon them and there they will
be, either in their living actuality or restored from the past. They will not
