Franco Moretti – Graphs, Maps, Trees
9 October, 2021 -
examPrep
- 2 – The distant reason for these choices lies in my Marxist formation, which was profoundly influenced by Galvano DellaVolpe, and entailed therefore (in principle, if not always in practice) a great respect for the scientific spirit. And so, while recent literary theory was turning for inspiration towards French and German metaphysics, I kept thinking that there was actually much more to be learned from the natural and the social sciences. This book is a result of that conviction, and also, in its small way, an attempt to open a new front of discussion.
- Finally, these three models are indeed, as the subtitle intimates, abstract. But their consequences are on the other hand extremely concrete: graphs, maps, and trees place the literary field literally in front of our eyes-and show us how little we still know about it. It is a double lesson, of humility and euphoria at the same time: humility for what literary history has accomplished so far (not enough), and euphoria for what still remains to be done (a lot). Here, the methodology of the book reveals its pragmatic ambition: for me, abstraction is not an end in itself, but a way to widen the domain of the literary historian, and enrich its internal problematic. How this may be done, is what I will try to explain
- 17 – Why the lag? Almost certainly, because as long as a hegemonic form has not lost its ‘artistic usefulness’, there is not much that a rival form can do: there can always be an exceptional text, yes, but the exception will not change the system. It’s only when Ptolemaic astronomy begins to generate one ‘monstrosity’ after another, writes Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that ‘the time comes to give a competitor a chance’-and the same is true here: a historical novel written in 18oo, such as Castle Rackrent (or in 1805, like Waverley’s abandoned first draft) simply didn’t have the incredible opportunity to reshape the literary field that the collapse of the gothic offered Waverley in 1814.
- 18 – Instead of changing all the time and a little at a time, then, the system stands still for decades, and is then ‘punctuated’ by brief bursts of invention: forms change once, rapidly, across the board, and then repeat themselves for two-three decades: ‘normal literature’, we could call it, in analogy to Kuhn’s normal science.
- A lot of borrowing from social constructivism of STS
- 30 – I began this chapter by saying that quantitative data are useful because they are independent of interpretation; then, that they are challenging because they often demand an interpretation that transcends the quantitative realm; now, most radically, we see them falsify existing theoretical explanations, and ask for a theory, not so much of ‘the’ novel, but of a wholefamily of novelistic forms. A theory-of diversity. What this may mean, will be the topic of my third chapter.
- 78 – Trees; or, divergence in literary history. But this view of culture usually encounters a very explicit objection. ‘Among the many differences in deep principle between natural evolution and cultural change’, writes Stephen Jay Gould, their ‘topology’-that is to say, the abstract overall shape of the two processes-is easily the most significant: Darwinian evolution at the species level and above is a story of continu ous and irreversible proliferation… a process of constant separation and distinction. Cultural change, on the other hand, receives a power ful boost from amalgamation and anastomosis of different traditions. A clever traveller may take one look at a foreign wheel, import the invention back home, and change his local culture fundamentally and forever.I The traveller and his wheel are not a great example (they are a case of simple diffusion, not of amalgamation), but the general point is clear, and is frequently made by historians of technology. George Basalla: Different biological species usually do not interbreed, and on the rare occasions when they do their offspring are infertile. Artifactual types, on the other hand, are routinely combined to produce new and fruitful entities… The internal combustion engine branch was joined with that of the bicycle and horse-drawn carriage to create the automobile branch, which in turn merged with the dray wagon to produce the motor truck.”
