culture, subculture and counterculture - Facultatea de Litere

DAVID LODGE: THE WRITING GAME OF CULTEXTUAL OTHERING
codes? The problem with the plurality of cultural codes is that it often seems to
lead to a related point of view, namely relativism, to view that anything goes,
that nothing is truer or more right or more wrong than anything else. However,
there has to be made a distinction between two kinds of pluralism. First, there is
a type of normative pluralism, an idea which may also be called relativism or
nihilism: the acceptance of all narratives, expressions and norms, claiming that
no one is better than all the others. Secondly, there is a kind of postmodernism
which is pluralist in the sense that it accepts different views, without denying
that something is better than other things. In this latter case of pluralism or
postmodernism, one is faced with the old idea defending other people’s right to
say/ write whatever they wish, without accepting their points of view. And this is
the kind of postmodernism that is the most interesting: embracing a diversity of
human expressions and interests, without lapsing into relativism.
The medium of The Writing Game is almost exclusively language because
there are certain features of the play that are not related to writing but rather to
the gaming of the script which undoubtedly has an influence on the voyeur
reader. This last feature is very important for the marketing of the play.
However, this does not affect the way in which fiction hidden beneath the covers
of the stage is perceived, this being a matter of aspect versus content (the latter
being fiction itself).
“(Maude) What’s wrong with that? If they get some satisfaction out of
expressing themselves in words …
(Leo) Writing is not just self- expression. It’s communication.” (Lodge 1991:
35)
As a postmodernist critic, writer and playwright, David Lodge attempts to
create a new role for his writing, one that moves beyond the strictures of realism,
incorporating irony, pop culture and formula variety in an attempt to more
effectually present the world as something worth considering: there is an ever
increasing sense that the image-conscious culture with which his characters
communicate has little inclination to receive the serious literary work.
To conclude, the predominance of mass-media(ted) forms of
communication in The Writing Game manifests itself in two directions. One is
the easy euphoria of the broadcast (reproduced and projected) textual image,
simplified and created specifically to propagate itself and the other is the
established aesthetic of the inter/intratextual passive viewer (and/ or voyeur),
glorifying not merely the images that the play/ script presents but also the
reception of the messages therein, enabling a process of cultextual othering.
References:
Derrida, J. 1989. ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences – Discussion’, in Contemporary Literary Criticism. R. Con
Davies and R. Schleifer (eds.). New York: Longman
Lodge, D. 1991. The Writing Game, London: Secker and Warburg
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