![OS POSITIVOS](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zKKfxaIfpU8/Wv1aApfmmBI/AAAAAAAARbk/X7F-ldyPjjE3TCXHeH3HZ2xeVNDugZDCgCKgBGAs/s1600/x_header-200.png")
Já que fechámos o chapter I do "Capitalist Realism" do Mark Fisher com uma nota de rodapé a exemplo citado do jornal, desse mesmo jornal um outro exemplo mais completo a merecer o destaque por razões além das intencionadas. 2017 é de facto o ano de MF, uma dupla infelicidade ter-se suicidado no início do ano. De hoje, como numa só peça encontramos ecos das suas teorias, e como as aplicamos às nossas:
Prémios.
$$$
Literários.
Indústria.
DIY.
Academia.
Punx.
Shiit, tantos tópicos que nos são recorrentes, como resistir?
Prémios, o mais rápido então: fuck those.
Realismo capitalista aplicado aos literários.
Incapazes de conceber uma alternativa ao capitalismo e este consegue subsumir e consumir toda a história que o precede, criando uma equivalência de valor monetário a todos os objectos culturais e rituais onde "the old struggle between detrournement and recuperation, between subversion and incorporation, seens to have been played out" ...? Sure:
Acceptance is one of the most dismaying political consequences of capitalism. It informs the literary too, and the way publishers and writers "go along" with things.
And the magic dust of the free market gives to the episode the fairytale-like inevitability Karl Popper said history-writing possesses: once history happens in a certain way, it’s unimaginable that any other outcome was possible.
The attractiveness of the free market has to do with its perverse system of rewards – unlike socialism, which said everyone should be moderately well off, the free market proposes that anyone can be rich. The Booker’s randomness celebrates this; it confirms the market’s convulsive metamorphic powers. In literature, it has redefined terms like "masterpiece" and "classic".
in "My fellow authors are too busy chasing prizes to write about what matters" 16 ago 2017
E o exemplo maior:
I was shocked to run into a novelist who used to regularly rant against the Booker soon after he’d finally won it. It seemed like a part of his personality had gone. Docilely, he was doing the promotional rounds, as if he had been administered a massive sedative. He was robbed of the crusading bitterness that once animated him, and had become a case study of the memory-erasing contentment that capitalism provides.
in "My fellow authors are too busy chasing prizes to write about what matters" 16 ago 2017
Aceitação, surrender. O exemplo dá-se a mais leituras, que retomaremos depois de apresentar os restantes snippets. Continuando,
Indústria
There are relatively few publishers who identify, and are loyal to, novelists in the long term because of commitment to literary merit. Publishing houses were once homes to writers; the former gave the latter the necessary leeway to create a body of work. Today there’s little intellectual or material investment in writers: literary prizes and shortlists are meant to sell books, and, although there’s a plethora of them, the Man Booker is the only one that has a real commercial impact.
in "My fellow authors are too busy chasing prizes to write about what matters" 16 ago 2017
Academia
A merecer-nos um carinho especial, tal como Fisher lhe dedica a mesma atenção. Desinvestida da sua missão primária, a constatação repete-se. Extra: substitui "literary festivals" por outras feiras de vaidades e o excerto que se segue engloba bem mais que os literários.
As in other walks of life under capitalism, there has been a loss of initiative among writers: a readiness to let others decide why their work is significant while they busy themselves at literary festivals. In British academia, this loss of control over what constitutes value, especially in the humanities, has had its counterpart in what the UK government equivocally calls impact. "Impact" is judged not by gauging the importance of new scholarly work to other scholars, but to the market. In emollient governmental language, impact is described as "an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia". As academics have discovered, "beyond academia" is, fundamentally, the market.
in "My fellow authors are too busy chasing prizes to write about what matters" 16 ago 2017
Falta de controlo? Toma controlo. DIY.
The alternative isn’t another prize. It has to do instead with writers reclaiming agency. The meaning of a writer’s work must be created, and argued for, by writers themselves, and not by some extraneous source of endorsement. No original work is going to be welcomed with open arms by all, and the writer is not doing their job if they don’t make a case for their idea of writing through argumentation, debate, and fervour.
in "My fellow authors are too busy chasing prizes to write about what matters" 16 ago 2017
Argumentação, debate, com fervor? PUNX. Acresce à atitude a subversão e o novo.
Virginia Woolf didn’t wake up in the morning and think, "I wonder if Mrs Dalloway will be longlisted for the Booker?" She wrote instead her essay, Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown, questioning prevailing forms of valuation in the establishment. Her reformulation of what the novel could be or do, its impact on the reader, and, crucially, the ways in which we value or ignore its possibilities, is as pressing – as political – now as it was then. DH Lawrence, TS Eliot and Henry James too had to argue, in and outside their creative work, for their idea of the literary, because the question of why literature was important hadn’t been settled. It isn’t settled today.
in "My fellow authors are too busy chasing prizes to write about what matters" 16 ago 2017
O final da citação é, de resto, a base da nossa tese: a importância de um certo tipo de literatura ainda não está definida, e queremos dar o nosso contributo para que essa se guine na direcção certa.
E o exemplo não termina aqui. Apesar de todas as sobreposições – até encontrámos o TS Eliot como segway ao nosso post anterior... – há uma outra análise a registar além das palavras que já o foram.
Mais exactamente, a análise das palavras que foram retiradas no artigo original, uma vez que este que agora podem aceder online é a sua segunda versão. Para comparação: como ficará à posteridade, e como foi originalmente publicado:
"Wednesday 16 August 2017 Last modified on Wednesday 16 August 2017 16.55 BST"
O corpo do texto manteve-se inalterado, mas o seu título e lead foram substituídos. Podem encontrar o snapshot no Web Archive.
Novo título:
My fellow authors are too busy chasing prizes to write about what matters
Lead:
What we read is now defined by the market, as the views of Booker prize judges carry more weight than the need for originality and innovation
Título original:
Why the Booker prize is bad for writers
Lead:
To celebrate the true value and purpose of literature we need an alternative to this prestigious prize. I’m sure Virginia Woolf would agree.
Porque nos importa a mudança? Caros, é o market at work. Não cremos que tenha sido uma correcção, mas uma alteração do artigo. O url manteve a tónica no original, e ainda que possamos escusar essa por constrangimentos internos da ferramenta de publicação do jornal, espreitando os metadados notamos que inicialmente o foco se prende exclusivamente com os prémios, sem qualquer referências a "mercados".
- url: booker-prize-bad-for-writing-alternative-celebrate-literature
- description: Booker prize, Man Booker International prize,Culture,Awards and prizes,Fiction,Books
Se a primeira versão coloca sérias reticências sobre os Booker Prize e incita-lhe uma sugestão de crítica, na segunda versão o vilão da história é agora uma entidade difusa e abstracta chamada mercado - e os próprios fellow authors. Porquê? Porque não é bom para o business confrontar a galinha de ovos de ouro de toda uma indústria. Já acusar o sistema de ser o papão – como veremos nos próximos capítulos do CR,MF- é parte do sistema, como o é culparmo-nos no processo.
Senhoras e senhores, realismo capitalista.