About Suffering: Voice, Genre, and Moral Community Author(s): David B. Morris Source: Daedalus, Vol. 125, No.

1, Social Suffering (Winter, 1996), pp. 25-45 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027352 Accessed: 29/09/2010 08:25
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David

B. Morris

About

Suffering: Voice, Genre,

and Moral

Community

"About Its human

suffering, position_"

they were

never wrong,

The Old Masters:

how well they understood

?W. "Mus?e H. Auden Arts"

des Beaux

hat

can the

study

of literature

tell us about question, directors

It is, of course, chasm yawning It is also a question that debates in contemporary such basic about

impossible that dissertation opens

an

suffering? a a sinkhole, warn against.

difficulties because up special have forced us to ask hard ques theory of interpretation, issues as the nature the tions texts and the boundaries and the relations between of literature, as an for example, is now routinely world. described Literature, ideological its status ?criture, category threatened and that did not such exist before by postmodern A loose alliance grammatology.1 has shown how once-canonical works the Enlightenment? as discourse, upstarts of new academic liter of Western

relegate minority figures?i.e., at best, marginal status. What Asians?to, on basic in short, depends about suffering, counts The hard as literature and whose mount literature because has difficulties to say what suffering current

disciplines ary tradition

women, literature decisions

and blacks, has to tell us about what it often Some

matters. theory about makes anything.

to tell us

David

B. Morris

is a writer.

25

26
theorists

David B. Morris
hold that all texts are inherently undecidable or receive stable meaning their changing historical only through A move different communities. from interpretative by does not promise firmer ground. The individual are numberless. no exaggeration "It is probably common the single most subject of art," writes Walter

temporarily

receptions theory to practice texts to consider to say that "is some Slatoff,

critics in the form of human Practical suffering."2 texts often simply replicate of specific contested theoreti analysis can expect that Marxist We critics will show how cal assumptions. is bound with social class and with the means of up suffering production; lines psychoanalytic critics will recent show how it taps have into mecha left us in no

nisms of desire; feminist critics will show how it follows the fault
of gender. While of oversimplifying danger pear at times incompatible distinguish literary a discussion debates of among suffering, partisans ap they may of wholly

a conflict as merely of reading.3 ways related to barriers

A final difficulty?the
it from seem pain?would some impassable currently

presumed need to define suffering and to

or overlapping states an impassable constitute can be as grief and barricade. Yet, is sidestepped. Suffering such

safely redefinition within the biom?dical vigorous undergoing in a process that still seems rather fluid.4 Moreover, community into the for explorations has long served as an arena literature accounts should there of suffering unknown and the indefinite; fore veals. invoke include whatever literature

specialized Sidestepping an exploratory spirit means of materials both the diversity of respecting need for dialogue and the urgent among disparate which tend to see things a bit differently. always VOICE AND Voice often Eliot, poetry human common SILENCE both means Three in grammar finding Voices of and one's

re (or its postmodern successor) or essentialist I prefer to definitions, as a and a provisional vocabulary on suffering disciplines,

said

is a concept familiar well that writing in his demands essay an encounter "The

own

in poetics. voice. argued

It is T. S. of less its that

Poetry,"

with

expressing speech but useful way

tone, to think

intricately and attitude, about voice

layered nuances A character.5 is to consider

Voice, Genre, and Moral

opposite: or strong, silence. Silence

Community

27

to every voice, weak stands in opposition or poetic. The basic oppo or unique, prosaic ordinary voice here because sition between and silence matters suffering, it so often intermingles, exists in part beyond like pain, with which language. The silence of suffering has, oddly, the contrary turned into something of an almost of a

modern

minable

inter evidence clich??despite of complaint, discourse lament, symptom-mon litigation, The clich? may gering, and public confession. simply acknowledge to tune out unwelcome the power that most news, possess people but it also captures is voiceless a complex and basic in the metaphorical fact about sense

suffering.6 that silence be Suffering a sign of something comes It implies an unknowable. ultimately or repugnant to not but inaccessible just disturbing experience an irreducible In this sense, suffering encompasses understanding. at least in any dimension that we cannot nonverbal know?not normal mode The language. as the void it happens of knowing?because remains quality of such suffering in a realm as blank beyond to thought for the is not sound

up by a scream. serve as a potent the scream might Paradoxically, image at the heart of suffering. A scream silence metaphorical intense possible of language: negation speech but the most opened and terror

the limits of absolute muteness. Like the approaching seems to come from a region where ceremonial of grief, it wailing a words fail. A typical Hollywood it often shatters scream, while as if silence or calm, also deepens the silence it shatters, preceding one toward Indeed, something radically gesturing inexpressible. is to give this deeper silence a voice. Literary to Krapp9s Last Tape works from Philoctetes labor to make such our awareness silences of an irreducible, "speak" by extending of suffering nonverbal dimension that can never be put into words. function of literature to silence of giving is important impossible project "speech" it exposes because how we simplify and betray suffering especially we ignore its power to elude every linguistic whenever and concep can marshal to understand tual tool that humans it. The Silences are not of significance, from to outrage, disbelief, phorical links with a wide all identical, of course, but convey range the contemplative of a pregnant pause depth In addition to meta and stunned wonder. an inexpressible or unknowable the experience,

28
silence speech.

David B. Morris
of Its suffering also that points is, resistant and to very practical reflects something to description. in this sense breakdowns not ultimately to of of

ungraspable make people suffering chronic pain,

silence, but merely

often

inarticulate, resembles who

tends Suffering the voicelessness

the quiet retreat discover that months and

of people who live with or years of unremedied even

exhaust care-givers complaint finally tients withdraw into an uncommunicative to an environment response all but vanished. The silence voicelessness possess status with rich of many of the patient, who where

Such pa family. in constructed isolation, effective and concern have help

a recognized that confers an entire

differs significantly from the however, at least suffer in other ways. Patients a status within the social world of medicine, and system obligations, and with connecting its attendant, the sufferer

language insurance and nurses, agents, therapists, who suffer the routine misery of famine, attorneys. Many people no status have almost civil conflict, and industrialized poverty An occasional flashed the role of victim. grim picture beyond field of physicians, across A millions loss of of television that it is axiomatic the victims intensifies the silence: merely not speak. do to be almost to the built-in proves occurs. That which suffering usually screens

rights health-care

interpersonal is, even when speech famous occurs, poem embedded

voice, further, structure within words

even when prove at least partially adequate, in his communication fails. W. H. Auden observes des Beaux world immediate Arts" where and that in a social suffering nonsufferers is inextrica find always like the torturer's

"Mus?e

absorbing, a tree.7 The problem, as Auden its rump against scratching turn away from disaster, it, is not that witnesses poses deliberately to assist, although to bear it or refusing in fact people often unable horse do

bly their own

lives more

turn away. While and threatens disturbs us, regularly suffering to explain why many recoil or resist the ethical which people helps an aversion to it makes does not represent claims upon us, Auden suffering as moral failure, a lapse, but or detachment, aversion depicts we cannot tural position help Suffering, we witness in Auden's always almost and only say, of charity or courage. He of a struc rather, as the outcome is an event that view, a pane of as if through

occupy. structuralist

once-removed,

Voice, Genre, and Moral

thick

Community

29

never looks up; the expensive glass. The ploughman ship sails on. Should an act of suffering fall unavoidably within always our field of vision, Auden insists that we cannot escape our built as well occur in silence. Not even the Old in estrangement; itmight Masters, in direct he shatter the glass and place us implies, could somehow to another's relation their triumph? Instead, suffering. us to recognize the structure insurmountable of

in forcing the limits of art?lies straining perhaps our fated detachment. to contemplate and We need not wholly view that accept Auden's an absolute at its heart contains and suffering otherness. widespread Samaritan. His view, modern Good for however, provides say, pieties based, Samaritan acts

a helpful to the corrective in the parable of the Good a belief and suffering The compassion. can take right action otherness at the that

The

is an occasion great place heart our strength

religious of the parable the

represents of virtue that silence also

is to insist

despite incomprehensible of suffering. Still, the parable awareness that acts of virtue rare, and "human it thus

and

nately, normal

indirectly in relation position" and detachment. us will forcing in the structure

for its impact on depends and compassion are, unfortu view that our supports Auden's to suffering a mandates our role changes If abruptly to endure affliction firsthand,

glasslike separation to victim, from witness we then our position pass at once detachment irreducible The is what matters

into an unfamiliar and otherness

with

and correspondingly change, dimension where others view us as if through a thick glass. incomprehension, resonance so well of suffering that Auden evokes to the concept of voice. Voice to some degree, inac remains, suffering

gives special because precisely cessible. Voice is what gets silenced, repressed, denied, preempted, or at best into an alien dialect, as clinicians translated much a patient's translate pain into a series of units on a grid of audio visual descriptors. voice ranks among the most Indeed, precious human endowments us of, remov that suffering normally deprives

or assist us. than a hope that others will understand ing far more Silence and the loss of voice may eventually or represent constitute for some who suffer a complete of the self. shattering in paradoxical literature often to the attests, Certainly ways, loss of voice minimalist texts in suffering. inwhich, Samuel Beckett spent a lifetime seems creating caught like the Cheshire cat, voice

3O

David B. Monis
imminent bleakness or disappearance.8 leaves almost Either the human to state as in say, nothing crumbles toward identity

in the process of in its seriocomic Waiting

For Godot,

anonymous a mouth-sized voice futile of utters

personal as in Not a spotlight shines on I, where incoherence, a nameless hole in the closed curtain which through woe. its nonstop breakdown and Images of linguistic is not that suffering in Christian tradition?but view theater of

stable

express Beckett's interchange faith or a noble burden?as charade

a trial an

almost with on.

Beckett's

meaningless art is to represent state of being this diminished, nullified "I can't go such droll precision that it seems almost tolerable. also contains As potent if in resistance describe, suffering. of more of voice employments to the detachment and other writers That explore is, they seek out or at least respect an is really texts, of in the Book of

in the cosmic

the absurd.

I'll go on." literature Yet,

in the face of affliction. bleakness ways means that Auden

and Beckett

to readjust the structure of expression that might beyond diverse

experience ordinarily a plural concept. The course, Job or are far from

approximate Like language. transmitted

voices

silence, voice in literary

or composed. As always wise to the unprec in the voluminous that responded writing edented disaster of World War and I, readers may confront halting ex voices and confused, troubled that are angry voices, hurt, or blasphemous.9 The content of the utterance, hausted, foolish, while what crucial literature itself: to its writer can affliction tell us has or

less in suggesting speaker, matters about than the sheer act of suffering at last broken of words such through that cross enormous into over language. from the

speech are We other

in the presence finally side of torment. indeed convey

voices Literary views that?taken a kind Women's than

an

of suffering experience than white of men; black voices speak differently not match of inquisitors; voices will the voices voices; martyrs' Protestant differ from Catholic will medieval martyrs; martyrs the voices that voices.10 Edmund link suffering In King to sin and damnation, for example, the Lear, to the attributes both suffering

together?they might of encyclopedia of suffering. No a different voices will convey

of diversity or approximate approach is sufficient. single voice

in beliefs voices, steeped from modern will differ treacherous, self-serving

Voice, Genre, and Moral

influence foolish Kent in moods variations of malign Gloucester gods blames and his to brutal on

Community

31
Blind, pious

human

invokes

the mystery from ranging on

suffering of an all-seeing to madness, offers compassion the question of what it is to suffer. And to the encyclopedic two other makes Writers side and diversity significant of voices

appetites. fortune, while divine providence.

Lear, still more in one it con to a

all that

play. In addition tains, literature

contributions

knowledge texts,

of suffering.

can open of

up the interior that we with

or private see. rarely an unusual

life of a character inways often difficult or impossible outside of

a personal can infuse Moreover, they to move emotion power create the occasion writers revealing affliction the voices of suffering attention. compel

In both ways, for an empathetic that reader-response counteract the structural detachment observed might by Auden. in short, holds a power to address, or even reverse, the Literature, inherent pressure within "The use of language," and affliction Joyce toward Oates isolation noted and when silence. accepting Carol

the National
death the world Oates limitations never

Book Award
silence."11 Writers, and misuses seem

in 1970, "is all we have to pit against

of course, of have much to say about in characters

literature

guarantees however writers also struggle giving voice to affliction, imperfectly, to alter and improve our difficult to suffering. William relation the Nobel that literature holds a Faulkner, Prize, argued accepting to lift the human us of our capac heart by reminding special duty for "compassion and sacrifice and endurance." It is suffering ity that these requires traditionally a resource and sustain As Faulkner said powers, and literature needed desperately in the final sentence thus may in times of

the Half language. in telling lies to the other half, and engaged that the opposite of silence is truth. Yet, in

of his acceptance as a figure for all great "The poetry speech, invoking literature, be the record of man, it can be one of poet's voice need not merely the props, to help him endure and prevail."12 the pillars award Although minded statements, has a long history. defended ative, against a necessary call forth suspiciously may high can oppose that literature suffering In the Middle literature was sometimes Ages, as its pious detractors and restor therapeutic tonic for renewed spiritual struggle. Medieval the belief ceremonies

develop trouble.

32
doctors medicine

David B. Morris
openly tales as an effective laughter and comic to continued against plague.13 Renaissance physicians as a therapy mirth useful the epidemic illness against prescribed and thus the noted writer-editor an films ancient and comic to Norman when television Cousins he de reruns simply invoking Marx Brothers' to be tradition

prescribe called melancholy, in 1976 scribed was how

helped him recover from a debilitating

comedy powers dent uses seem seems an enduring response has of pain and suffering. as Western medicine Certainly, high-tech of an instrument greatly on machines as basic and and

illness.14 Like tragedy,

the dehumanizing increasingly depen the voice and right

grown

complex

pharmacokinetics, as the human inexpensive from

underestimated. can

Evidence that

psychoanalysis conditions, on pain in their

suggests strongly have healing powers.

support groups under the language, Words can

demonstrably patients speak or re

trigger a painkilling placebo effect. Yet, the vast biom?dical library

contains own in which only a few slim booklets via from appropriation voices?free American of helpful novelist voices cancer. commentary Price Reynolds he "I needed

analysis.15 The distinguished the absence lamented cently faced some a personal story that struggle

when

bafflement," but.. An .1 never Illness

against spinal at whatever paralleled, "?some he writes, honest found it."16 His

suddenly to read

report

my unfolding distance, from a similar war,

with a final list of hard facts learned and offered unvarnished?

and a Healing, soon after own account, A Whole New Life: a compelling is of how writers example

can help others by empowering

human letters hear voice: a voice publication each week from

and amplifying
he was his

the individual

is rarely

diaries, ing. Letters, and remote?from attest to a value

seeking people than when stronger and journals written Keats

some forty receiving The need to assistance. suffer famous

a person endures sufferers both by slaves Many or who

John implicit

to unknown

soldiers? today to an

in the act of writing. literature in restoring

suffer silently and in confusion might be helped ifwe learned how

to tap the resources of voice. human individual significance

Voice, Genre, and Moral

GENRE AND THE SHAPE OF SUFFERING Voices

Community

33

of individual the speech. With simply the medium to Foucault from Wittgenstein and Austin and help recent literary studies have argued voices that individual Bakhtin, are always in (often unnoticed) that links them engaged dialogue to other speakers in the encompassing social network of language. of theorists a distinctive voice speaks with timbre, of course. Yet, no one can communicate in language without the innumerable employing speech acts?asking, ing?that ing even

are never

Each

promising, telling, begging, urging, prais and linguistic codes underly typify the intricate cultural of such ordinarily the most simple utterance. Analysis we communicate it clear that unnoticed codes makes of by means social patterns that Bakhtin calls "speech genres."17 widely-shared Speech codes genres denote us that allow from papal all the formal to understand or informal?pure and to construct or mixed? individual

utterances, postcards, tion.

to jokes, documents legal briefs and government football and letters of recommenda bulls, cheers,

makes the crucial point when he writes that Jacques Derrida to text." "A text," he insists, "cannot belong "there is no genreless no genre, or less a genre."18 Like texts, voices it cannot be without communicate of genres that impose loose or strict only by means demands existence meaningless no makes do more They Ralph on of speakers. specific in a culture assure Speech discourse without moreover, genres depend, A football communities. on cheer the is

sense than

in a world that the how

sport. An Islamic call to prayer devoid of Muslims. Yet, speech genres a voice there is never simply speaking. of what narrative is said. (about crucial changes For example, the murderous as it is

help to shape Cohen shows George

substance a single

apprentice chapbook, Why does

Barn well)

undergoes

retold in the differing genres of oral ballad, domestic

and novel.19 it matter How that we every voice talk about is shaped and

tragedy,

constrained

talk by speech genres? suffering when is always and constrained the speech suffering shaped by of specific In a scholarly discourse communities. genres journal, about will normally discourse take the form of twenty suffering to contemporary be footnotes think essays. There will five-page

and how we

34

David B. Morris

titles with colons. Obscenities and profani ers, correct grammar, ties will be expunged. Readers may notice that the essays place an on intelligence, or specialized invisible difficult premium employ avoid familiar diction, ideas, and strive to appear original. Meth a speech treat suffering within odist hymns, genre by contrast, none where almost of the assumptions about essays scholarly apply. Subtly contours, depending television utterances or overtly, facts and events then, genre molds and a narrative of suffering will undergo subtle on whether a documentary it takes the form of to fit its changes film, a

or a comic book. Even such deeply personal miniseries, as the testimony of Holocaust survivors will fall under no doubt to the speakers. the sway of generic invisible patterns is now a distinctive modern Indeed, "survivor testimony" subgenre, with informal conventions content, governing setting, camera angle, of emotion. and displays Scholars who gesture, ignore how speech genres making ritual mask?torn wall The or any utterance shape the same error as visitors from force its context artwork. representation to a museum of social of who life?hung risk suffering see an African up on the

like Western

In of genre extends form to meaning. shaping beyond on generic patterns a framework to provide audiences fact, depend for interpretation. Such frames, for example, let us know whether we are words we a sacred scripture reading be almost identical. may within understand a tragedy may the meaning or a blasphemous the parody: seem An utterance that would sense in a farce. The make perfect

incoherent way

E. D. writes of any utterance, on genre, is "like learning the rules of a Hirsch, Jr. in his chapter It is and new games may appear. game."20 The rules may change are historical to remember creations that genres and, important over time. like tragedy, change that tells us what language-game It is genre, however, we are playing. even beyond meaning in every age,

to influence of genre reaches The power of courtroom testi of speech. As in traditions the very possibility and sways understanding but mony, genre not only shapes content to say. A fact so obvious may it constrains what we are permitted are far-reaching. go without saying, but its implications Specific literary logical or unspoken them explicit genres often carry within values.21 Suffering, thus, will be infused with specific ideo values

Voice, Genre, and Moral

depending on

Community

35

in which it is communicated. the speech genre Fur do not somehow values ther, generic stop short at the (porous) a strong argu of literature. Hayden White borders has mounted our own ment write that historians hence we know history?and past?only relevant have within the conventions that two powerful Western dominated It is highly genre.22 and the novel? literary genres?tragedy on suffering. discourse The unavoidable of literary or of

be put this way: What constraints, values, question might on our knowledge conditions do tragedy and the novel impose

suffering?
Tragedy suffering tragic. to Aristotle. search indeed that Behind is the one newspapers this casual thousand genre so basic still call almost on thought any large misfortune lies a tradition that stretches back toWestern

usage

years of theory and practice make any essence of tragedy more for an unchanging than ordinarily futile. Northrop that most theories of tragedy focus Frye observed on a single great drama as the norm, much as Hegel's on emphasis to the Antigone.13 the clash of opposing is keyed systems of value on Oedipus centered mostly is no account, Tyrannus, as the origin less partial than other but its status of theories, on tragedy makes an important Western discourse test the Poetics case for examining the influence of genre on our knowledge of Aristotle's suffering.

Two

Suffering
Drama

(pathos) is, for Aristotle,

pathos,

indispensable

to tragedy.

cannot he writes, be tragic. Unknown the fifth century before not indicated b.c., the term pathos just or misfortune but what classicist Thomas Gould calls "cata misery or god, strophic undergone suffering, by some great figure, man excess of the sufferer's far in deserts."24 Aristotelian in its tragedy, without implicit suffering about ducing Greek assumptions the values of aristocratic whereas and privilege, ordinary suffering lie beyond its scope, pushed to the margins or ordinary people in a passive, in chorus. These social values, personified hapless in Aristotle's insistence that the tragic poet turn, are reflected in an elevated writes to powerful individuals and style appropriate acts. The catastrophe a person of high rank likely great befalling involves the fate of whole families, armies, or cities so that Aristo ideological (and not assumptions, everyone who thus involves a view that not all is equal. In effect repro suffers) social worth, it holds at its core

36
telian

David B. Morris

our assumption is in that suffering tragedy helps confirm a belief serious. Yet, that suffering is always serious? variably to the history of Western cultures tragic?belongs thought. Other do not The Western uniformly novel?the share second of it.25 dominant genre that but helps also to shape reinforces

knowledge suffering?complicates in tragic drama on individuality the emphasis and seriousness. One lies in novelistic for achieving the mixture complication techniques of distinct and discourses that Bakhtin calls voices, styles, clash dynamic is what distinguishes of differing the novel

"heteroglossia."26 Heteroglossia?the dialects and diction?for Bakhtin from more

and elevated such as tragedy. genres homogeneous to a in his view, extend Novels, heteroglossia beyond language mixture that encompasses social and status, action, character, belief systems such that no single voice can emerge from the text as delivering implicitly established serious, carnival the authorized aristocratic, hierarchies. Bakhtin views version. the novel Where the where Where is tragedy for Aristotle for Bakhtin subverts implicitly sees tragedy as always Aristotle inherently and a laughter call as comic, license a prose to speak every

novel

or marketplace, across traditional freely or single-minded solemn It is useful to examine the

lines of authority view. further of the ways view

into question in which

Bakhtinian

complicate suffering implicit instances of suffering that Just as novels mostly explore tragedy. are less than catastrophic, extend the role of hero to figures they birth would whose exclude them from classical low or middling to the novel tends to undermine spirit native In Beckett's for example, the novel may work, tragic seriousness. a sense that suffering even embrace is absurd?or comic. absurdly tragedy. The comic its focus on the social vastly expands us to recognize of for example, forces the suffering world; Zola, reason masses to There whole of common is, thus, good people. on outlooks think that tragedy and the novel offer quite different in two for important human Yet, allowing differences, suffering. Further, the novel often respects rely on tragedy and the novel of plot. both reinforce an implicitly unified

novels

in Aristotelian

view of suffering: high value is placed on the individual, and both

the fascinations

Voice, Genre, and Moral Plot, for Aristotle,

tragedies must include

Community
does

37

is the soul of tragedy. While

alone

he insists that

It is the action, tragedy. the pathos makes which imparts quirky many to

suffering so central to the novel is likewise that exceptions, plot seem little more mass novelists than machines for its popular

not create pathos, suffering or a structure within that creates plot, sense. Plot, is what then, for Aristotle, some obvious status. With its tragic and

Novelistic its forays into stream production. suffering, whatever or meditative of-consciousness demands the stasis, fundamentally construction of plot. Plot, we might is somehow crucial to the say, generic human framework suffering. within which both novels and tragedies place

What

does suffering have to do with plot? Through

their em

represent tragedy and the novel implicitly suffering state of being?persisting like a viral infection almost of human rather as an event independent agency?but a matrix embedded within of related actions. Further, plots illumi nate are connected. the ways in which events individual One reason why so highly Aristotle values is because it offers plot more in his words, tragedy, than history.27 a for Aristotle, philosophical History, provides mere record of actual happenings, whereas its tragedy employs constructed is actual or merely artfully plot to show us not what cognitive clarifications that make but rather probable. It demonstrates, almost like a theo possible rem in geometry, is an unavoidable outcome that suffering given a of specific, connected actions. sequence In short, in tragedy as and the novel, is represented suffering more than a persistent in the human theme It implies condition. that suffering is less a condition?a state of being?than an event: an event within the context of a larger, surrounding plot. Despite the frequent invocation of fate by characters in Greek tragedies, suffering because in tragedy and it is never merely is an action. the novel loses its ancient aura of fatalism the experience It is the outcome view of a debilitating passivity. of a series of preceding holds the promise of cognitive be or in

phasis on plot, not as a mere

Suffering acts. Indeed, change.

this plot-centered

clarifications thatmay lead to the possibility of personal and social

the protagonist of a tragedy or novel may a structure within too intricate of action inextricably trapped to reverse, a position the reader or audience complex occupies Although

38
which Arts"

David B. Morris
the detachment offers a crucial view relief. that Auden vantage point observed for in "Mus?e securing des Beaux and

knowledge

con holds of suffering important certainly Peru in the world literature. Gustavo outside Guti?rrez, sequences views of the the suffering of liberation vian founder theology, masses in Latin America and of the impoverished Lima slum-dwellers as a changeless human condition. not extended and series or leaders Guti?rrez state He of being understands rooted in original sin or as embedded it instead in the in an

directing A plot-centered

action: historical and ongoing economic by oppression sponsored of of

in this case, the political an elite class (including

an appalling who secured power the Church) through in the slums of Lima, historical Suffering injustices.28 not by medicines, compassion, implies, will be reversed these might be, but the creation signifies only of a

welcome however services, improved social change?action?that material by new and just historical plot. SUFFERING AND MORAL The massive COMMUNITY

raises the and elsewhere in Latin America suffering an indi as purely of how far we may perceive suffering question there C. S. Lewis once claimed vidual matter. that, at any moment, in the universe than a single person is never more experi pain an indi so the argument exists only within ences.29 Pain, goes, feel nervous I cannot feel your pain; you cannot vidual system.

of we cannot battlefield feel the pain of a whole mine; together of non-Western the claim This casualties. argument disregards to transcend the isolated ego. It also completely traditions spiritual as cannot be described misses the point. The Holocaust accurately times. The fact six million of a single Jew repeated suffering or entire populations is an of groups remains that the suffering dif find extremely that most included, people, writers experience ficult to grasp. the Literature, in its reliance on individual our difficulties in grasping large groups augments in the sense that and cultural is historical Such reliance of people.30 a specific social landscape?neces situated within writers?always characters, of the affliction reflects and

sarily work with

the materials

of a bounded world.

It is hardly

Voice, Genre, and Moral

surprising that the emphasis and the novel on individual is saturated

Community

39

tragedy through roots in Dionysian its deeper values culture. Despite of Western or fertility in the takes its social origin cults, tragedy mysteries culture of ancient Greece, while heroic aristocratic, slave-owning, era when the early modern the novel emerges during famously to crumble under the new hierarchies feudal began European are sound reasons why There individualism. of bourgeois pressure

reinforced suffering the distinctive with

tragedy and the novel would

fering,
matter.

reinforce an implicit belief that suf

is ultimately an individual

whatever

its wider

resonance,

and the novel, however much preoccupied Certainly tragedy or the social world, tend to focus on the crisis of with metaphysics a single hero or heroine: Rex, Macbeth, Lear, King Oedipus some writers Gabler. Although Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Hedda subordinate ance, even character in novels to theme, setting, or sheer linguistic exuber casts and huge catas immense that describe as War and Peace?the affliction of entire groups as a vague background in which we view against characters. casualties the famous Despite in David O. Selznick's film

trophes?such appears sharp

mostly detail the lives of a few main shot of Civil War

panoramic

Gone With
center not

the Wind,
We

it is Rhett and Scarlett who

see but in another sense

occupy the
see?do

of attention.

do not

of multitudes. suffering truly experience?the to see but is often not just difficult The affliction of large groups to find. The text simply cannot the suffering recognize impossible run of as in the common of groups whose it represses, misery cowboy films or colonial novels.31 This on a principle very operates suffering of detachment that Auden identified. ideological different from Auden and traces inability blindness the structure our detach the to share to

ment

to a normal of

human a fellow

consciousness suffering,

self-absorption creature. An

philosopher communities Moral cohesiveness but

by contrast, largely depends Tom Regan "moral has termed differ

to blindness ideological on the operation of what communities." and In

they always on the Coming The Thee Generation: Reflections this geometrical proposes Regan analogy:

in their beliefs, values, immensely on exclusion. share a dependence Revolution,

40

David B. Morris
Suppose we Individuals circumscribed imagine the moral community by a circle. inside the circle are members of the moral community, outside the circle are not. Those inside the circle, by

individuals are entitled to virtue of their membership in the moral community, a kind of consideration denied those outside. Of the former, but not the latter, we may say, "They are morally considerable."32 The often boundaries of a moral are flexible of course, and community, are excluded for example, from most Americans although regularly make and for a few charismatic pets species, are excluded?mass Certain criminals bank robbers,

Western

Animals, paradoxical. moral communities, an exception for household like whales

or dolphins. not and serial rapists?but for example, murderers, or repentant stock manipulators, Wartime evangelists. shows nation's of war) blacks, we how

a it is to exclude easy and convenient moral the pretext just as earlier ages (without community, to exclude it possible the insane, the poor, women, found and children. a raw datum, but a social a natural status phenomenon that we extend or truck laser in

propaganda the enemy from

in short, is not Suffering, can identify and measure, sufferer falls within and the

withhold. We
the driver

extend or withhold
Gulf War United

it depending largely on whether

in the Persian

our moral An Iraqi community. can die in a firestorm of will play on American (Iraqi States

guided missiles, as proof of superior not

incident

television soldiers, com as

technology. outside from

turn, seemed to find Kuwaiti civilians readily disposable.) We do

the destruction acknowledge as suffering; we detach munity were an incomprehensible a moral island. Within and inscribe of beings ourselves we our moral their on if it pain some Swiftian

behavior

encountered

or hero

tives of hallowed

plays a significant or invalidates certain Literary ues of the inclusions

names like martyr community, employ narra the suffering of our own people within Literature and epic achievement. sacrifice clearly the language that validates role in orchestrating as suffering. experiences reflect dominant and exclusions usually a text is written, within which but val one

is to challenge and stretch?even literature important to transgress?the of a moral The Aeneid, boundaries community. to the stance of national while for example, epic, places aspiring the deep of Italy in a tragic light that exposes the Roman conquest

community of function

Voice, Genre, and Moral

losses of required by imperial seeks to extend things" even implicit success.33

Community
moral

41
com

Virgilian pathos of the Roman the borders the death reader

at the "tears

to encompass munity a former world. The their

of an enemy and the loss of cannot posited by the Aeneid

overlook or glorify the suffering imposed by national destiny. By

writers emotions skill in moving and altering perceptions, special as uncreate?suffering. can help create?as well That is, of the moral the borders and force us community they can expand to acknowledge do not see it. suffering where we normally Charles clear Dickens and Harriet Beecher to reinvent provide especially In adapting the suffering. a Romantic concern for Stowe

of this power examples earlier sentimental novel, they extend outcasts and marginal figures?slaves, and an almost

sweeps, chimney orphans, a focused subculture of the poor?into forgotten social protest the evils of slavery and industrialism. Their against vivid characters, interconnected and empathetic styles un plots, cover suffering where not to exist. In fact, it was earlier thought

Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly?the

American novel to sell over a million

first

copies?so strongly engaged that she has been cited among the causes of the popular feeling at the ordeals Civil War. readers not only wept of Contemporary came to fictional slaves but, far more the important, acknowledge to rearrange ordeals as suffering and felt moved the exist enough

ing social order that had denied it.

The borders Stowe nial or contracting to reinvent the power suffering by extending of a moral be used can, like other powers, community could address the link between domestic injustice and colo vast pornographic novels to a circle of community suffering hand, is trans a modern and

with differing degrees of blindness or insight. Neither Dickens nor

empire. that almost The Marquis de Sade wrote contract their moral gleefully On that

aristocratic libertines, pain-crazed into a source of pleasure. formed Information ers who Group"?a described are more modern clinics, coalition

for whom the other

admirer of Sade,Michel Foucault, in 1971 helped found the "Prison

gave voice to a silent

powerless minority by publishing the firsthand accounts of prison

conditions Few writers paradoxically, tions?prisons, important affliction penal system.34 in exposing how, is promoted by the same institu madhouses?that the state establishes in than Foucault within the French

42
order

David B. Morris
It is a paradox that still remains potent as disability institutions insurance and which may often do as much harm as good.35 or condemn is not to celebrate but to specific writers suffering. modern writing to create and to uncreate helps suffering. and voice are concepts that can help us genre,

to prevent in such ubiquitous welfare payments, point how recognize Moral The

community,

think about suffering both within

raise questions certainly is all suffering alike, or neous? How in the drama such of Brecht) that need to what

and beyond

literature. They

to be pursued. extent To what extent is it inescapably heteroge of detachment of suffering than (as per de

far can writers

techniques exploit a revaluation to permit

haps impossible through techniques of empathy? A response to

should indicate that writers do far more questions scribe or represent affliction: they can also, on occasion, in the process, the will, and, suffering help to mobilize to change and intelligence needed the world. reinvent passion,

not to claim too much. be careful the Yet, we must Perhaps most that literature has to tell us about important thing suffering concerns in the face of an experience the need for respect that

always holds back part of its truth, inaccessible and alien. In London in 1972 a small company of Zulus from South Africa put
on a performance warriors devoted much The fur-clad, the performance to the hero's inner drama. of cries Macbeth The Zulus of Macbeth. Zulu spear-thrusting to tribal dances; they "O, full of scorpions torment none after the of this.

paid no attention is my mind, dear wife!" murder of King Duncan Instead, conveyed unthinkable one murders close-knit nity?and ignoring

in his

(Ill.ii). conveyed the psychology of individual distress, what they the drumbeat and ritual dance was through superbly some a small community when disaster that enfolds the king. The dances separate to be seemed of the suffering expressed commu but a moral individuals a means of dealing with a

group?not they also

the

disorder Macbeth had unleashed, much like formal prayers in times of grief. Efforts to help people in affliction cannot succeed if
we fail to respect how different and how of suffering practices remedies literature and action. cultures construct distinctive social these practices may envision unique or responses.36 Here the Zulu too, if we heed dancers, to tell us about the possibilities for knowledge has much

Voice, Genre, and Moral

ENDNOTES Literary Theory: An Introduction

Community

43

*Terry Eagleton, 1983).

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell,

2Walter J. Slatoff, The Look of Distance: Reflections on Suffering and Sympathy in to Agee, Whitman to Woolf (Columbus, Ohio: Modern Literature?Auden Ohio State University Press, 1985), 233. 3SeeFalling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature, ed. David H. Richter (New York: St.Martin's Press, 1994). 4For biom?dical definitions, ing, ed. Patricia L. Starck forNursing Press, 1992); fering and itsRelationship see The Hidden Dimension of Illness: Human Suffer and John P.McGovern (New York: National League and C. Richard Chapman and Jonathan Gavrin, "Suf to Pain," journal of Palliative Care 9 (2) (1993): 5-13. (New

5T. S. Eliot, "The Three Voices of Poetry" (1953), in On Poetry and Poets York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957).

6On silence, see Elaine Scarry, The Body inPain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 42-45. Voice and represen
tation are discussed in Pain as Human Experience: An Anthropological Perspec

tive, ed.Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good et al. (Berkeley, Calif.: University of Califor nia Press, 1992).
7On suffering, see Thomas Dilworth, "Auden's 'Mus?e des Beaux Arts,'" Explica

(3) (Spring 1991): 181-83. 8On suffering, see Cho-hee Joh, "Beckett's Capacity for Differentiation: Some Ob servations on Reading His Works," Journal of English Language and Literature 35 (4) (Winter 1989): 759-73. 9SeeGustavo Guti?rrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent (1985), trans. Matthew J. O'Connell (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1987); and Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1975).

tor49

10SeeSusan Sipple, "'Witness [to] the Suffering of Women':

Transgression inMeridel Le Sueur's Women on

the Breadlines,

Poverty and Sexual "

in Feminism,

Bakhtin, and the Dialogic, ed. Dale M. Bauer and Susan JaretMcKinstry (Al bany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1991): 135-53; John Knott, Discourses ofMartyrdom in English Literature, 1563-1694 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Katherine Heinrichs, "Love and Hell: The Denizens of Hades in the Love Poems of theMiddle Ages," Neophilologus 73 (4) (October 1989): 593 604.
nJoyce Carol Oates, "Remarks.. .accepting the National Book Award in Fiction"

(1970), inMary Kathryn Grant, The Tragic Vision of Joyce Carol Oates (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1978), 164. 12William Faulkner, "Address upon Receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature" (1950), in Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters, ed. James B.Meriwether (New York: Random House, 1965), 120.

44
13Glending

David B. Morris
Olson, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.:

Cornell University Press, 1982).

14Norman Cousins's JAMA (New York: essay W. W. was expanded 1979). into On his

Anatomy
Regeneration

of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections

Norton,

best-selling

book,

on Healing
see David

and
B.

comedy,

Morris, 1991).

The Culture of Pain

(Berkeley, Calif.: University

of California

Press,

15SeePeople With Pain Speak Out, ed. Christine Nyhane and Brian Sardeson (Ballarat East, Australia: The Writing Project Group, 1990); and Living With Chronic Pain: Personal Experiences of Pain Sufferers, ed. Laura S. Hitchcock (Bethesda, Md.: National Chronic Pain Outreach Association, 1992). Various
newsletters also seek and to give support voice such as the American groups, to the experience of patients. Chronic Pain Association,

16Reynolds Price, A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing eneum, 1994), 181.
17M. M. Michael Bakhtin, Holquist, Genres Speech trans. Vern and W. Other McGee Late Essays, (Austin, Tex.:

(New York: Ath

Emerson and

ed. Caryl University

of Texas

Press, 1986). Derrida, 18Jacques

Derrida 19On genre offers and

"The Law of Genre," Critical Inquiry 7(1)

this view as a change, "hypothesis." see Ralph Cohen, "History

(Autumn 1980): 65.

and Genre," New

narrative

Literary History

17 (2) (Winter 1986): 203-18. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University

D. 20E. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation Press, 1967), 70.

21See Thomas O. Beebee, The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). 22HaydenWhite, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination inNineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).
23Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1957), 212. 24Thomas Gould, The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), ix.
25For a non-Western view, see Gananath Obeyesekere, "Depression,

(Princeton,
Buddhism,

of Culture in Sri Lanka," Culture and Depression: Studies in the Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Psychiatry of Affect and Disorder, ed. Arthur Kleinman and Byron Good (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985), 134-52. and theWork 26M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1981); and Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle (1981), trans.Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis, Minn.: Univer sity of Minnesota Press, 1984).

Voice, Genre, and Moral

27"Clarification" Poetics: Golden, is one definition and of the Aristotelian term A Translation commentary Commentary by O. B. Hardison, for Students Jr.

Community
catharsis. of Literature, Cliffs, N.J.: trans.

45
Leon

See Aristotle's Prentice

(Englewood

Hall,
28Gustavo

1968).
Guti?rrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation

(1971), trans. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson 1973).

(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1944), 103-104.

as infused access to with large thoughts groups re

29C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan,

30Marxist and theorist emotions Georg "typical" Luk?cs of sees novelistic large groups, yet characters even this

mains
Literary

through individuals. Georg Luk?cs,

Characters" (trans. 1936), in Radical

"The Intellectual Physiognomy

Perspectives in the Arts,

of

ed. Lee

Baxandall

(Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1972), 89-141.

31See Marxist Literary Theory Terry Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology: A Study in (London: NLB, 1976); and Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said,
Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of

Minnesota

Press, 1990). On ideological Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production don: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).

blind spots in texts, see Pierre (1966), trans. Geoffrey Wall (Lon (Phila

32TomRegan, The Thee Generation: Reflections on the Coming Revolution delphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1991), 20.

33See Michael C. J. Putnam, The Poetry of the Aeneid: Four Studies in Imaginative Unity and Design (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965). Miller, The Passion ofMichel Foucault (New York: Doubleday, 34James
65, 187-93.

1993), 64

35On disability, seeWilbert E. Fordyce, "Pain and Suffering: A Reappraisal," American Psychologist 43 (4) (April 1988): 276-83; andMark D. Sullivan and John D. Loeser, "The Diagnosis of Disability: Treating and Rating Disability in a Pain Clinic," Archives of Internal Medicine 152 (September 1992): 1829 1835.
36See Arthur formation: Kleinman Toward and an Joan Kleinman, of "Suffering Interpersonal and its Professional Experience," Trans Culture,

Ethnography

Medicine

and Psychiatry 15 (3) (1991): 275-301.