Questions of Non-Fictionality and Context

A major part of Hayot’s analysis of Greenblatt’s use of anecdote is the uncovering of historical background that was absent from Greenblatt’s framing of the text. Whether this context was left off intentionally or otherwise, in removing part of Scott’s account from context the interpretation of the text was significantly altered. Both theorists appear to agree on the importance of truth and accuracy. Greenblatt remarks that the categories of fiction and non-fiction “fundamentally alters our mode of reading texts and changes our ethical position towards them” (15). Meanwhile Hayot’s fight to recover the original context implies that in order to fully understand a work it must be properly contextualized.

The tension between the two articles raises several important questions about non-fictionality, genre, and context. Foremost, it becomes clear that non-fiction is not easily defined. All non-fiction accounts are mediated. Greenblatt points out the circumstances under which Exact Discourse was written may have led Scott to embellish (11). Hayot adds the fact that cultural stereotypes regarding the passive stoicism of the Chinese and a desire to create a certain image of England were both at play in shaping both the narrative and Greenblatt’s interpretation (46). It becomes hard to pick fact from fiction, or even to determine at what point in the mixing of the two an account stops being considered non-fiction. The genre distinction between fiction and non-fiction is held to be vitally important but is, in fact, not particularly well defined.

More so, early in his essay Greenblatt mentions the textuality of history. As was mentioned in last week’s readings, history is neither unmediated nor continuous. There is no single, complete, correct account of it, and much of what is known is colored by different layers of interpretation and embellishment, past and present. This suggest that the historical context of the work, while important, is also subject to question. If historical accuracy is the measure of a work’s non-fictionality, the genre would be farther destabilized by the notion that history is—and will necessarily remain—somewhat obscure.

Non-fiction is given weight because it refers to a real event. According to Hayot, “As a ‘narrative form’ specifically dedicated to the real, the anecdote binds story to history”(40). But when both the event and the soundness of the reference is called into question, it becomes unclear how much the non-fictionality of a text should color our reading. To what extent should Scott’s real cruelty be held as a stronger example than, say, the blinding of Gloucester in King Lear—a fabricated act that has persisted in Western cultural consciousness because it refers to a more generalized form of human cruelty, and which Greenblatt notably mentions as a fictional counterpoint to the events of Exact Discourse(14)?  

If we are to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction, there is also the matter of texts which cannot be classed as either. Some accounts are mislabeled. Some are separated from their context, or may not be able to be located in history. Even when speaking of Scott’s Exact Discourse, Greenblatt asks, “How can we be certain that what Scott reports in the passage I have quoted actually took place?” and immediately responds that, “The answer is we cannot” (14). If historicization and genre distinctions play an important part in our understanding of a text, what happens when one or both of these things aren’t possible? Can the text still be interpreted in any meaningful capacity?

I was also struck by the way that Hayot’s style of analysis seemed to imply that, by zooming out and viewing the passage in a fuller context, he was able to interpret it more accurately. Yet given both the limited space allotted for historicization in the essay and the idea of history’s inherent obscurity, there is no doubt a third, more encompassing view of the text that explains it more accurately still, and a fourth after that. In fact, it seems possible to zoom out infinitely, until all excerpts are held as misleading and the only way to fully understand a work is as a part of the entire text and as a product of its exact historical moment. To what extent can a passage be understood when removed from the entire text? And while the idea that a text can only be fully described by itself is philosophically interesting, is it practical?

As an (unrelated) end note, I wanted to remark on when Greenblatt says that "runs the risk of losing the dark specificity of that account, the risk of absorbing the unspeakable but spoken rupture of human relatedness into an abstract, prepackaged schema." Last week, I found myself deeply skeptical of Jamison and Althusser’s attachment to Marxism as a master theory, even though they claimed to have consistent, rational arguments to support their line of thinking. In this line Greenblatt perfectly articulated exactly why their adulation of Marxism was so suspect—not just that it can become reductive, but also in the idea that the schema is prepackaged. That is to say, Marxism may be able to adequately interpret a text but because Marxist theorists aim to analyze things through one particular predetermined lens, there is no guarantee that particular lens will give the most comprehensive view of the text and may end up missing some of the nuances. It would not be wrong to frame the interaction between Scott and the goldsmith in terms of economics and class, but to do so would blunt the edges of Scott’s cruelty and remove much of the humanity.