Enjoying Storyness: Narrative and Aesthetic Experience in Postmodern Consumer Culture

(1)

Naomí Combrink

(2)

Introduction

A couple, kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower; going on a road-trip accompanied by the perfect music to function as a soundtrack; sitting around a campfire on a warm evening and considering it the perfect summer experience; smoking a cigarette while enjoying the stylish look that accompanies it; being heartbroken while walking through the pouring rain, wallowing.

These are all potentially narrative and aesthetic experiences, occurring

throughout the world today. Many of them are commodified; all of them are informed by the (or a) cultural imaginary. These experiences entail the recognition of known narrative and aesthetic tropes in real life and, more specifically, entail the using of this recognition to place its reader at the centre of the moment. The phenomenon I am interested in throughout this thesis entails the momentary feeling of being the

protagonist of your own story as an aesthetic experience and the way that this pleasure is engrained in postmodern consumer culture. Or approached from another side: what I am interested in is the aesthetic pleasure and narrative experience that might lie behind the prevalent casual consumption of experiences and products. This interest is based on the premise that these activities are not necessarily reducible to their external

manifestations, but can contain some sort of aesthetic dimension that is at least experienced as more than the sum of its commodified ingredients.

Unfortunately this phenomenon, identificatory pleasure, seemed to have slipped through the gaps of cultural -, reading - and aesthetic theory. This is of some surprise since the role narrative has in the way we understand and structure our lives has been studied abundantly throughout academic disciplines. Yet, the occurrence of people enjoying the feeling of momentarily being part of a storyworld has in my experience been somewhat overlooked as a topic that deserves more contemplation. This does not mean that the phenomenon has been ignored altogether: it has shown itself throughout fiction and theory in various ways. The desire to experience the stories we know has, for example, been the centre of several novels in the 18th_{and 19}th_{century, in addition to the}

(4)

most notable examples of Don Quixote and Madame Bovary. These readers are so enchanted by the stories they have read that they expect or desire to experience them themselves. The recognition of narrative in real live has thus been considered in the study of such novels and other works of fiction (for these longing readers keep

returning throughout fiction and the media as narrative trope). This desirous relation to fiction, however, generally is conceived of as a pathological, lunatic or kitsch-like

disposition in a person while in the present day world it can be found any- and

everywhere as a consumable experience that is foreign to no one. The latter observation has led me to the conclusion that we could use a way of thinking about this

phenomenon that is free from disdain; that we could use a conceptual way of exploring the idea of experiencing narrative in real life and exposing its layers without

condemnation.

With this thesis it is my aim to develop a concept for the phenomenon of identificatory pleasure that can offer a more in depth understanding of what happens when we enjoy feeling like the protagonist of a story. The aim is to have a judgement-free concept with which cultural practices can be contemplated and analysed. I hope to show thatthe seemingly simple imitation of stories potentially involves the

appropriation of aesthetic significance and that this phenomenon can be found throughout postmodern culture and is in need of a suitable concept. I will explore the idea of identificatory pleasure and provide a theoretical framework and analytical tool based on my perception and interpretation of this phenomenon; a framework which is designed to examine cultural products and experiences otherwise dismissed as simple escapism and left unscrutinised.

A prevalent view of the postmodern consumer culture1_{we live in is that it is marked by} the empty consumption of products and experiences, which are in turn not much more than differentiated signs meeting an insatiable need for the escape from empty, depth-less and an always shifting reality. It is a culture characterised by simulacra, the consumption of signs and a preoccupation with lifestyles.2_{We exist within an endless}

1_{Sociologist Michael Featherstone writes that “To use the term 'consumer culture' is to emphasize that} the world of goods and their principles of structuration are central to the understanding of contemporary society” (84). Which I indeed want to emphasise.

2_{Out of the immense wealth of sources on postmodernity I base this account primarily on works by} Fredic Jameson and David Harvey.

(5)

stream of images, all referring to and constitutive of various stories and narrative tropes we have come to know.3_{Furthermore, there is no clear distinction between fiction and} reality or between narrative and the real, on the one hand because the everyday has become the topic of fictional representations and on the other because the enacting of stories has become increasingly possible. Our daydreams have become our pursuits. Or as sociologist Daniel Bell has put it: “The post-modernist temper demands that what was previously played out in fantasy and imagination must be acted in life as well” (53-4).

This enactment of the known narrative tropes from the cultural imaginary (our collective well of fantasies, imagination and stories) can be found throughout consumer culture. Most obviously, there are activities that focus specifically on known stories, such as film-set visitations; New York Sex and the City or Friends bus tours; James Bond world-travel; historical re-enactment and Disney-, Star Trek- or Pride and Prejudice-weddings.4_{In addition, there is less explicitly imitative, but still clearly narratively} inspired, consumption. Here you can think of commodified romantic experiences (for example valentine’s day arrangements); theme parties or Christmas celebrations. Then there are also countless everyday products and activities that enable an aesthetic setting in which we can feel like narrative protagonists, such as background music, candles, mood lighting, wood-burning fires, clothes and accessories, cocktail parties and outdoor summer evenings. Although often these products and experiences are not specifically designed with the purpose of enabling consumers to feel like a fictional hero or heroine in such terms, they can be used to evoke such a feeling. When you wear new, fashionable, shoes you can start your day feeling like you are starring in a film; as is true for when the perfect mood is set by background jazz at a dinner party or when you curl

up in front of a fire; and when you listen to music on some mp3 device while being on

3_{I use the word “images” here, which in this context underwrites the notion that “postmodernism is} visual culture” (Mirzoeff 4). Nevertheless, I want to emphasise that I do not practice a strict division between visual and non-visual media, or between readership and spectatorship. On the contrary: in the context of narrative tropes and a desire for protagonism I think the division is not as relevant as it might be in other contexts. Mirzoeff noted that the idea of visual culture is a tactic for analysing postmodern everyday life (5). My study of identificatory pleasure and focus on the role narrative can be considered such a tactic as well, albeit employing different dichotomies than the ones relevant in visual culture studies.

4_{In these activities, consumers re-enact or visit particular stories or storyworlds. These activities,}

however, make their consumers not so much protagonists of their own lives or stories, which ultimately is the topic of this endeavour, but rather try to transport them to stories already told.

(6)

your way somewhere it can feel like a soundtrack. These facilitators of identificatory pleasure are not necessarily commodified - the weather can provide such a feeling as well - but of course often are. More important is that they are inseparable from the life we live today and not necessarily confined to specific groups of people: no one is immune to identificatory consumption.

Marketers seem to be very aware of the attraction of identificatory pleasure, for it is one of the main forces behind advertising from its beginning. This playing into our desire to experiencing stories can already be found in the design of the window displays of the first department stores in the 19th_{century, where exotic worlds were being rendered in} which to place the product for sale (Williams 66). Not much has changed.

Advertisements constantly present us with stories that we can experience if only we purchase the product in question.

Advertisers show that they have a thorough understanding of how to evoke our narrative desires. There are whole teams of people considering how to use stories and fantasies to exploit us. For that reason, it is important to gain a critical understanding of what processes are at play in the narrative enjoyment that potentially moves us as consumers. There are many possible ways to approach this, and many have been in some or other form been employed in academia. The starting point of my approach is viewing consumers as readers.

Readers of real life

Since this omnipresent consumption of products and experiences is so strongly based on signs, it is important to understand (post)modern consumers as readers. We as consumers are not merely readers of the immense amount of stories we are confronted with - stories told, shown and sung to us - but also are readers of our own lives. Readers, not as processors of letters, but in a broader sense: sense makers, looking for narrative, meaning and beauty, corresponding to the broad use of text as carrier of meaning, unconfined by one medium (Bal 5). It is important to keep this inclusion of all channels as carriers of stories and narrative tropes, including visual and audio ones, in mind

(7)

throughout this thesis. Perceiving the semiotic code Frenchness, for example, can occur by reading a book, seeing a film, hearing a song or smelling a scent. For the present project I consider all the ways of conceiving such a semiotic code as reading.

What we buy is often not about the practical use of an object, or its

particularity, but about the person we imagine becoming with that product and about the way that product fits into and contributes to the story we tell about ourselves.5_{In a} culture preoccupied with lifestyles the relevance of products' semiotic codes cannot be underestimated. These codes or narratives call on us as readers and are facilitated by our reading, interpreting and creating a symbolic meaning. This type of consumerism has turned us all into readers of productsand additionally, into readers of our own lives. We are constantly fitting our consumption and the experiences and paths we choose into a narrative that we are simultaneously reading, writing and acting. Important building blocks of that narrative are the stories that we already know.

The amount of stories we consume on an everyday basis, through television, songs, advertisements, books and magazines (to name a few story-carrying media) cause our source material for the recognition of narrative in real life to be inexhaustible. These stories all form a cultural imaginary. What we recognise from this well is

dependent on a personal déjà-lu. Roland Barthes used this term to refer to the way in which already read texts inform the way we read anything new. The déjà-lu does not consist of traceable sources: the narrative conventions and other information we know are not all directly linked to a specific source-text that we know. Barthes’ idea, however, also conceives of the subject as a déjà-lu: “This 'I' which approaches the text is already itself a plurality of other text and codes which are infinite or, more precisely, lost” (S/Z 10). We use these stories in our passion du sens: our passion for and of meaning that moves us to construe comprehensible meaning in life and perhaps to read ourselves as characters in it as well (“Structural” 271, elaborated on by Brooks 19). This perspective of the reader, perceiving meaning and aesthetic form in real life with one’s self as protagonist, lies at the heart of my approach of identificatory pleasure.

5_{This idea has an extensive tradition in theory. A clear starting point is Marx' notion of commodity} fetishism in which a product's practical value is no longer most important. Baudrillard specified this into categories like the symbolic and sign values. Campbell has written specifically about the way in which we hope that consumption might transform us.

(8)

Even though the idea of products as semiotic is anything but new, the specific

perspective that consumers are readers and that products or experiences potentially are props or settings to a temporal narrative and aesthetic occurrence has not crossed my path. That does not mean, however, that cultural studies have not taken into account the phenomenon of identificatory pleasure or identificatory consumption at all. One field in which identificatory pleasure has been considered, in a way, is in the studies on the culture industry. In these considerations focus lies mostly upon the objects produced rather than the way in which subjects read them: what story is being told by or through a particular object? What ideological message does it carry? Readers of these stories and messages are in this perspective generally understood to be mindless consumers of these products, their manner of reading is not really relevant. The longing to experience a story is then presumed to be mere escapism; a coping device for living in a harsh capitalist postmodern world.6_{The main interest in that view is not in what kind of} experience is had when narrative recognition takes place as much as in what function these experiences have within the standing ideology. Although these perspectives on consumer society and the culture industry are very valuable and necessary, they also tend to be reductionist. The consumption of Paris, a mood-CD, or any product or experience that promises some sort of narrative in that view is nothing more than a hollow escape, reduced to the unsophisticated but also inevitable act of cheap ingestion. This is a pity.

Such perspectives often operate on the premise that certain competent people can undermine or escape consumer culture through the experience of High Art, Affect or some other Authentic practice (perspectives of among others Adorno, Massumi and Boym respectively). But in a culture in which everything is so thoroughly inscribed with cultural codes, does it not make more sense to investigate varying experiences of these codes rather than pile them up and dismissing them altogether? These contentions may give you the impression that the present project is undertaken in defence of escapism, of the masses, of pop culture. It is however, nothing of the sort. Being critical of

thoughtless consumption and borrowed emotions is of high importance. It is, however, equally important to acquire a layered understanding of the narrative experiences that are now a pile of kitsch, escapism and cheap consumerism. Dismissing them to solace

6_{Examples of such analyses can be found in Jameson (18), Horkheimer and Adorno (113), Harvey} (Postmodernity 292) and Kathleen Stewart (228-9).

(9)

ourselves with a superior alternative has been a short-sighted tendency in cultural studies and philosophy. Jonathan Culler noted something similar in 1990 when, after relaying a critique of the modern tourist, he states:

It is not untypical of what passes for cultural criticism: complaints about the tawdriness or artificiality of modern culture which do not attempt to account for the curious facts they rail against and offer little explanation of the cultural mechanisms that might be responsible for them (“Tourism” 1).

With the help of Culler the described tendency has had plenty of critics,7_{but has} nevertheless prevailed considerably.

The somewhat snobbish disregard for identificatory pleasure in daily practices within traditional cultural and critical theory has left us rather at a loss for terms with which to critically consider what and how we experience when we recognise narrative in real life. This narrative inclination is, as said, thoroughly exploited by advertisers and marketers. Yet, in addition to considering these identificatory practices as an inherent part of the escapist culture industry we need to have a better understanding of what we might long for when we want to experience a story. Creating more awareness (and perhaps refinement) in relation to the way we deal with identificatory practices without dismissing their undeniable attraction seems a crucial task for the humanities. Even if we disagree with the late capitalist, exploitative and consumerist system that is surrounding us, we are still undeniably part of it, inhabit it and have to negotiate its challenges to (the possibility of) authentic or aesthetic experiences. We cannot just decide to disregard all enjoyable experiences that are based on recognition or identification, surly standing in the corner of the room at a party without sincerely engaging and trying to understand what is going on. We could use a more evolved vocabulary with which to reflect on our narrative pleasures; an aesthetics that takes everyday enjoyments seriously. Rather than invalidating identificatory pleasure, we should acknowledge its inevitability and unpack what is at play.

7_{Another example of such a critic is sociologist Michael Featherstone who calls on his peers to “move} beyond the negative evaluation of consumer pleasures” without turning it into a “reverse populist celebration of mass pleasures” (13).

(10)

Another reason why the consideration of identification as aesthetic enjoyment is important, is that social media have made it one of our perpetual hobbies to consider others as characters in their own stories and encourages us to be writers, actors and readers of our own as well. By profiling ourselves we protagonise ourselves – we place ourselves in aesthetic contexts through which we gain symbolic meanings, borrowed from narrative contexts and from the cultural imaginary in general.

Approach

Now that the motivation for this project is hopefully made clear, some words need to be said about the way I will go about my intended scrutiny of this narrative aesthetic experience and the terms and ideas I will use in that endeavour. As mentioned, my starting point is conceiving of consumers as readers, and in this context identification forms one of the most important function of the reading that consumers do.

Identification within narrative theory is usually used to denote a relation of recognition

while reading a work of fiction often involving the process of recognising a character or situation as similar to yourself. But of course we could speak of identification as well, albeit a reversed form, when you recognise yourself in the situation of a character in real life. Identificatory pleasure is thus meant to signify a moment of enjoyment that follows the recognition of something from a story in real life.8

I have repeatedly mentioned that identificatory pleasure potentially is an aesthetic experience. This is not to say that it is necessarily some sort of higher or artistic experience. Rather, it is my contention that when we recognise stories in real life, our experience seems to be temporarily aestheticised. When such a moment takes place, when you really feel like the protagonist of a scene, the mere narrative

recognition is transcended – there is this extra layer, this je ne sais quoi, this aura, this atmosphere that belongs in the conceptual realm of the aesthetic.

8_{Here I should mention the fact that identificatory pleasure need not be based on fiction for it can also} be based on stories of celebrities, family members, history, etc. I have not employed a careful distinction between fiction and non-fiction throughout this thesis, which is in line with the general premisses of postmodernist theory. Do, however, take note that in Anglo-Saxon criticism this idea is still quite controversial, which becomes especially salient when considering Derek Maltravers work, who uses empirical research in his attempt to convince his non-continental peers of the relative insignificance of the distinction between fiction and non-fiction.

(11)

Besides these notions of identification and aesthetic, I will use many terms to approach this somewhat tricky subject matter of aesthetic experiences evoked by narrative recognition. Identificatory pleasure is meant to refer to a moment in which we simply enjoy recognising something (in relation to ourselves) from fiction in real life; it is intended to refer to the phenomenon for which I have set out to create a concept.

Aesthetic consummation (not to be confused with consumption) is a term borrowed

from Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin that in my use involves the feeling of having clearly defined part to play in a story for a moment in time, combined with the sensation of being seen and appreciated in such a role by an (invisible) audience. The cultural

imaginary should be seen as a culture's overall collection of narratives, tropes, aesthetic

conventions, sounds and images, and so on and so forth. A person's déjà-lu, as I already described, is their personal collection, the part that they (unconsciously) know from that cultural imaginary and that inform their narrative recognition. Storyness is the quality in a phenomenon that makes it resonate strongly with an idea from the cultural imaginary. Of course these definitions are crude and by no means should be understood very literally. Rather, they are meant to roughly refer to quite abstract processes and categories.

In the first chapter I will navigate the theoretical surroundings of my approach of identificatory pleasure. Looking for conceptual explanations of this aesthetic and

narrative enjoyment, I will discuss ideas from narrative theory and theories on reading, on aesthetic experience, kitsch and quixotic reading. These ideas form the conceptual context for narrative experiences and inform my own conceptualisation, not only through the insights they provide on aesthetics and reading, but also through the layers of identificatory pleasure that they have left unilluminated.

Concluding that these selective but various existing concepts I encountered fall somewhat short in providing an in depth understanding of identificatory pleasure, in the second chapter I will continue that search myself. I will start with questions

regarding what we might exactly enjoy when we recognise narrative in real life. Basing myself on Bakhtin’s concept of aesthetic consummation I will propose that this has something to do with the way protagonists are often framed. Bakhtin holds that the protagonist of a novel is given meaning and purpose by an author that places them in a

(12)

context. I will argue that such an aesthetic context can be a very alluring idea to many (identifying) readers and that the longing to experience a story is often not necessarily about the specific story, but about feeling part of such an aesthetic context in which you have attained a clear meaning and purpose. For Bakhtin's protagonists this occurs through the enframement by the author - but we can try to imagine this ourselves as well using known stories (from the cultural imaginary) to place ourselves in such a significant context. In order to illustrate and apply this, I will show how Emma Bovary (on whom I based and tried most of the ideas in this thesis) reads herself in such a context to acquire some form of aesthetic consummation. Emma uses products, lines, movements and poses to open up an aesthetic and narrative dimension. These products and acts open up this dimension because her déjà-lu provides them with a certain narrativity: there is a certain storyness about them. This latter concept will be vital to the third part of this work.

In my final chapter, I will develop my concept of storyness and relate it to aesthetic consummation. I will suggest that like Emma Bovary, we can tap into the (aesthetics of the) narratives and stories that we know to frame ourselves as if we were narrated and seen by an author and reader. For this we use storyness: the quality in a place, thing, sound, phenomenon, that resonates with tropes from the cultural

imaginary. I will argue that by surrounding ourselves with products, settings and experiences that we perceive as having storyness, we transfer ourselves into an aesthetic context in which we feel aesthetically consummated. In place of the author who, according to Bakhtin, does just that, postmodern consumers (foreshadowed by Emma Bovary) use an imaginary entity – the eyes of the cultural imaginary - to gain meaning in a similar way.

The purpose of this project is most of all to develop a concept, a toolbox if you will, with which to analyse identificatory cultural practices and experiences in the future. It follows that my focus lies on the theoretical embedding of identificatory pleasure, rather than on the analysis of particular cultural objects or practices. My aim here is to develop a conceptual vocabulary for everyday aesthetic and narrative experiences.

This is very clearly a tough balancing act – so many big ideas in what should be a humble thesis. Some of them I will explore more thoroughly, while others I will touch

(13)

upon, hoping that the power of suggestion and my current reader’s, your, déjà-lu and imagination will fill in the unavoidable gaps that will fall in the exploration of this elusive, speculative and personal subject matter.

(14)

Chapter 1: Conceptual Surroundings

Our relationship with stories has not been an overlooked topic in academia. Yet

somehow, the idea that the recognition of narrative in real life can evoke a momentary and pleasurable aesthetic experience does not have an extensive theoretical presence. Still, there are plenty of concepts that do, in one way or the other, relate to the subject. In this chapter it is my aim to lay out these conceptual surroundings of identificatory pleasure and so I will discuss some of the instances in which academics have touched upon the idea of aesthetic experience evoked by the recognition of narrative in real life. Before I came to my own concept of storyness, I tried to name, comprehend and analyse identificatory pleasure with existing concepts, with varying results. Although the

concepts I engaged with certainly offered interesting perspectives, they did not offer a truly satisfactory and layered understanding or explanation of identificatory pleasure. Still, the discussion of surrounding concepts is always vital to the construction of a new one.

Identificatory pleasure as a momentary aesthetic experience evoked by the recognition of narrative in real life relates to several academic fields, of which the most salient could be named as narrative theory, aesthetics and theories on reading and the reader. These fields encompass an inexhaustible amount of studies and schools of thought. My quest has led me to isolate some topics that touched identificatory pleasure the closest. Firstly, although narrative theory and theories on reading unfortunately overall do not relate that much to the reading of real life or the momentary pleasure of experiencing narrative, I will relate to them more generally. Then, from the field of aesthetics I will discuss both Immanuel Kant's and Hans-Robert Jauss' concepts on aesthetic experience, which unfortunately exclude experiences based on recognition. This unavoidably

relates to a topic within aesthetic theory that is all about recognition: kitsch, which I will discuss and explore in relation to identificatory pleasure. Kitsch offers many ideas on the phenomenon, although it does not supply a ‘neutral’ means of analysis since it is most often pejorative. Lastly, an unmissable concept and trope I will discuss is

quixotism. Quixotism is a foundational idea when it comes to the role fiction plays in our desires and is significantly related to identificatory pleasure. Though despite of its

(15)

parallels there are considerable problems when considering today's consumer society in its light. This roughly constitutes the way in which I will navigate identificatory pleasure’s conceptual surroundings. Although the theories I discuss here are

informative of my conception of this narrative experience, I will have to conclude that these concepts do not offer a complex enough understanding of what is at play in identificatory pleasure.

Narrative theory

Since what is central in this project are identification, the consumer as reader and the recognition of stories, it seems natural to take narrative theory as a starting point. Narrative theory is an unspecified field that encompasses studies - from all kinds of disciplines - in the role that narratives and stories have in the world, our perception and structuring of it and in our lives on the whole. 9 _{Additionally, studies in narrative form,} or narratology, would fall under this as well; the list is endless, and it is not an easy field to navigate. Still, it seems that something like identificatory pleasure, or even

identification, is not a widely studied topic. If you take The Cambridge Introduction to

Narrative, for example, a work that fruitfully aspires to provide an entrance into this

wide field of studies, there are several entries on studies dealing with the relation between fiction and reality, or narrative and the real world, but nothing significant on the pleasure of experiencing narrative or storyworlds in real life or the desire to

experience such pleasures. The role narrative has in our coming to know, structure and relate to the world has been studied in abundance, yet the pleasure we can get from recognising it generally seems to be taken at face value. This is strange because it holds such a significant role in society. One would think that the desire to experience certain stories, tropes or aesthetic forms - a desire that is so obviously and widely exploited

9

For example as film scholar Edward Branigan has written:

One of the important ways we perceive our environment is by anticipating and telling ourselves mini-stories about that environment based on stories already told. Making narratives is a strategy for making our world of experiences and desires intelligible (1).

This forms a typical part of an introduction to a narrative theory study that can be found any and

everywhere. Besides this academic trope, the existence of the field of narrative psychology also attests for this structuring function of narrative.

(16)

throughout consumer culture as well as been a reoccurring topic throughout literature and film - would be a worthy object of study.

A related field of study is that of theory on the reader. Since identificatory pleasure is a result of the initial enjoyment or consumption of fiction or other narratives in any form, it would make sense to find some or other contemplation on the pleasure that could result from recognising our favourite stories in real life, or on what happens when we read ourselves as the protagonist of a scene. Yet, theories on the reader or on the practice of reading generally are interested in the way in which meaning is

constructed (Littau 104), while I am primarily interested in what happens when readers bring their reading into the perception of and interaction with real life. In most reading theory identificatory pleasure merely falls under the category of incompetent or

inadequate reading: the reader is then not properly making sense of the text (a book) and is not sufficiently interested in the literary form, but too emotionally involved to interpret the text adequately (Culler Structuralist 152). Even though this might be a valid assessment, it does not tell us much on the process of narrative recognition itself.

Incidentally, besides these fields in narrative theory that do not really accommodate identification there are academic works that attempt to redeem

identificatory and emotional reading. These generally are, however, not that interested in the pleasure of identification as much as they are in their emancipatory value.10_{As far} as I can tell, studies and concepts in narrative theory generally keep focussed on the reading of books and other texts while identificatory pleasure is caused by the reading of real life through the frame of fiction. There is, however, one reader in theory who has provided an interesting heritage in this topic: the quixote, who I will discuss later on. But before that the aesthetic dimension of identificatory pleasure should be addressed.

The realm of aesthetic experience

Apart from the obvious narrative dimension to identificatory pleasure, I have also insisted that it potentially is an aesthetic experience. By this I do not necessarily mean

10_{For examples of such analyses see Janice Radway’s book Reading the Romance or the essays by Brown} and by Heilmann.

(17)

that it provides an experience of the beautiful. Rather, it is an aesthetic experience because it differs from the everyday: the subject experiences a sort of transcendence into a dimension of imagination and narrative form. When a couple kisses in front of the Eiffel Tower they are, in a way, aesthetically framed by the similarity with the already existing images from the cultural imaginary. Or when particular music plays in certain settings it can be experienced as a soundtrack, making its listeners part of an aesthetic form. This has led my search towards theories of aesthetic experience. Can any

description of identificatory pleasure be found there? Do any of them offer significant comprehension of this phenomenon?

The etymology section of the Oxford English Dictionary roughly describes two different developments of the term aesthetic. One based on its Greek origin, developed and coined by Baumgarten and dealing with sensual perception. The other, of course, concerning the norms of taste and the experience of the beautiful. At the entry

aestheticism this dictionary notes: “The quality of being aesthetic; the pursuit of, or

devotion to, what is beautiful or attractive to the senses, esp. as opposed to an ethically or rationally based outlook.” Even though the beautiful is central to the common

understanding of aesthetic, it is important to take note here of the component “attractive to the senses”. This is essentially not the same as beautiful. Moreover,

important in this definition is the idea that the aesthetic is the realm or perspective that is demarcated by the borders of the ethical and rational. In that sense the aesthetic includes not just the beautiful or attractive, but all experiences that lie outside of the domains of those other two realms.

In his Critique of Judgement, Immanuel Kant approaches the aesthetic

accordingly. Within this realm, he distinguishes between two types of aesthetic pleasure or experience. We can be either sensually and bodily gratified by the agreeable or derive delight through contemplation of the beautiful. These pleasures correspond to two types of judgements: “pure” aesthetic judgements that depend on our “taste of reflection” and “empirical” aesthetic judgements that depend on our “taste of the senses” (Kant 214, 223-4).11_{Throughout time this distinction has been simplified by} excluding the agreeable - the taste of the senses - from the category of the aesthetic

11_{For the convenience of those with different versions of Critique of Judgement, I have referred to the} page numbers of the German “Academy Edition”.

(18)

which has caused the experience of the beautiful and aesthetic experience to generally be equated in Kant-scholarship. In the original Kant, however, pleasurable experiences of any kind belonged the realm of aesthetics. It is in this line of thought that this thesis operates.

It has been fashionable in cultural studies to refer to the earlier mentioned Greek origin of the word aesthetic to note that it originally relates to sensual perception. This notion has been used to reclaim the field of aesthetics to move beyond the

rationalist and formalist (Kantian) tradition and delve into experiences that allegedly lie outside of discourse and cognition. 12_{It should be clear by now that the present study,} however, is not in line with many that have been done within the field of Affect theory, where aesthetic experience takes place outside of intellectual practice. For it is exactly aesthetic experiences evoked through re-cognition that hold my interest.13_Still,

explorations like those in affect theory do show that the field of aesthetic experience can be wider than the experience of the beautiful and sublime.

Another account of what aesthetic experience might entail is provided by literary theorist Hans-Robert Jauss, who writes:

Aesthetic experience differs from other functions in the world of the everyday by a temporality peculiar to it: it permits us to "see anew" and offers through this function of discovery the pleasure of a fulfilled present. It takes us into other worlds of the

imagination and thereby abolishes the constraint of time in time. It (...) makes possible both the curious role distance of the beholder and the playful identification with what he ought or would like to be: it permits the enjoyment of what may be unattainable or difficult to bear in life; it provides the exemplary frame of reference for situations and roles that may be adopted in naive imitation but also in freely elected emulation. (Jauss Aesthetic 10, my emphasis)

Here, Jauss describes aesthetic experience as a temporal pleasure characterised by imagination. This provides an understanding of aesthetic experience that potentially offers room for identificatory pleasure since it involves a temporal demarcation and a

12

For examples of such studies see the listed works by Massumi, Marks, Mazzarella and O'Sullivan. 13_{Cognitive is meant here not at all in the philosophical or scientific sense. Rather, narrative or aesthetic} recognition is cognitive in the sense that it relates to memory and imagination. Of course, the senses have a memory of their own and I do not wish to claim otherwise. Rather, this is intended to clarify that identification is generally, or not necessarily, bodily.

(19)

fulfilling of the present through imagination and role distance. These features are exactly what I hope to emphasise as intrinsic to this narrative enjoyment. Identificatory pleasure is aesthetic because it involves a temporary sensation that is separate from everyday experiences and involves the imaginary and virtual. The notion of aesthetic is needed to refer to this sort of experience, even if it were only because we are at a grasp for words to describe it otherwise.

Even though Jauss' description initially is quite open and inviting, the notion of

seeing anew is hard to unite with identificatory pleasure: the enjoyment of a romantic

feeling through the presence of the Eiffel Tower is unlikely to involve a fresh perspective. Nevertheless Jauss’ description presents a relatively inclusive

understanding of aesthetic experience, centred around imagination, temporality and its distinctiveness from the everyday and should be kept in mind.

The imaginative nature of identificatory pleasure and its temporal distinction of the everyday would suggest that it potentially is an aesthetic experience, yet it has proved difficult to find a concept that actively includes it. Enjoyment based on narrative recognition involves many components that exclude it from most conceptions of aesthetic experience: it involves the enjoyment of the already-known rather than the new and it is likely to be emotional in nature.

Let me provide an example to ‘test’ a number of theories: enjoying music as if it were a soundtrack to the moment, for instance while going on a road trip. A certain song is played and suddenly there is this sensation of zooming out and seeing yourself riding there, soundtrack and all, as part of a story. Through their déjà-lu, the listener

recognises this type of music as having a road-trip function from the cultural imaginary and thus evoking identificatory pleasure.

This piece of music is in this instance not appreciated for its composition or form; it is not observed or contemplated on its own merit. Rather, the mood that it evokes is enjoyed – it provides a je ne sais quoi experience of the moment which means that it is more than the cold determination that this moment shows similarities to a known story. It is thus not the art-object (the music) that provides a traditional

aesthetic experience, but rather is the case that a temporal and imaginative distinction from the everyday is being experienced. Such an experience does not seem to have a

(20)

clear place within aesthetic theory, even though accounts of its occurrence precedes the road-trip trope: a medieval serenade might have provided a similar experience.

In Kant’s system, for instance, identificatory pleasure clearly holds no spot. Aesthetic experience there is divided into two categories, as said, that of the beautiful and the agreeable.The former is subjectively universal and “pure”, while the latter is merely personal, corresponds to what gratifies us and is completely bodily (Kant 214, 223-4). Identificatory enjoyment cannot be derived from the beautiful in Kant's theory. For Kant it is famously required to be disinterested in order to experience the beautiful. Identification is certainly not disinterested because it connects a subject to an object, causing the former to be unable to judge independently whether or not the latter is beautiful. The music that is enjoyed because the setting resembles so many stories is not enjoyed disinterestedly on its own merits, and thus its enjoyment cannot be a true experience of Beauty.

Since in Kant’s system there are only two options for non-ethical or

-epistemological experiences, and identificatory pleasure cannot be beautiful, this would automatically make the pleasure agreeable. As Kant, however, conceives the agreeable as something sensuous and material, the latter category fails to accommodate the intellectual nature of identification and the pleasure that can be derived from that. You enjoy the music in this case, not primarily or merely because of the sensual

perception of it, but because of the recognition of its role in the cultural imaginary (and thereby, your role, at that moment, in it). Kant’s notion of the agreeable is purely bodily, which is thus somewhat problematic since the criteria for the experience of the

beautiful are so strict. In between these two experiences lies a world of narrative and imaginative enjoyments that meet the criteria of neither of Kant’s described pleasures.14

Most likely, Kant would deem identificatory pleasure “pathological” because any interested enjoyment is marked by desire and therefore conditioned (209). It most likely would be considered an inclination which deprives the perceiving subject of a contemplative distance with regards to the object at hand. Indeed: since the subject merely uses the object, rather than contemplate it, it would presumably be considered some sort of perverted conception of beauty. Kant is not really clear on this, but he does

14_{Aesthetic philosopher Tom Leddy has observed this problem as well and proposes to solve it by}

extending the borders of the agreeable: he notes that there is an “imaginative element in the experience of the agreeable”. Leddy proposes to consider the agreeable as “a play of sense and imagination” in order to include, among other things, the role imagination plays in the pleasures of sexual intercourse (7).

(21)

note that it is “barbarian” when your taste “requires an added element of charm and

emotion for its delight” (223 original italics). Those are, however, all the clues we get

regarding his view on identificatory pleasure, for Kant simply does not acknowledge its existence.

Kant is far from being alone in his alleged view of narrative enjoyment as pathological. Jauss, for instance, uses this word as well, even more specifically in relation to

identificatory pleasure. This, while the earlier passage seemed to suggest quite a open idea of what potentially are aesthetic experiences. Moreover, Jauss considers narrative an important force within aesthetics when he states that “the disclosure of another world is the obvious entrance for aesthetic experience”(5). Additionally, he opens up aesthetic discourse to the consideration of experience over objects and claims that he has taken on “the unwonted role of apologist of discredited aesthetic experience” (xxxvii). In this process, however, he still discredits some aesthetic experiences himself. For even though all these steps seem to create a conception of aesthetics in which the narrative enjoyment of a soundtrack could be considered an aesthetic experience, Jauss has taken care to exclude it. Narrative desires - to find recognition from your reading in real life like Don Quixote and Emma Bovary do (two characters he names explicitly in this context) - are “a pathological reverse of the aesthetic experience”(7). On second consideration, Jauss does not exclude it from his conception as much as calls it an illegitimate form of aesthetic experience - even though he does note of “the seductive power of aesthetic identification” (8).

Identificatory pleasure in these views is a pathological excuse for an aesthetic experience. Even if this extreme assessment were valid, it would not really tell me anything about the enjoyment of narrative recognition besides it being pathological. What happens when we enjoy identificatory pleasure? When we momentarily feel part of a story? These theories seem to pass judgement without scrutinising what is really at play. Moreover, their reluctance to admit narrative recognition as a legitimate

experience results in a failure to accommodate a significant part of what it means to live in postmodernity.

A field in which more thought has been given to what exactly happens when we relish in the familiar is that of kitsch studies. There more effort is shown to analyse

(22)

interested pleasures, although these analyses traditionally use a condescending

terminology. Moreover, discourse on kitsch is generally characterised by disdain for “low-culture” and a thorough conviction that the theorists themselves are barely susceptible to such feelings. It, however, is in these judgemental parts of theory that most can be found to work towards a conceptualisation of identificatory pleasure with.

Kitsch

As studies on the enjoyment of the already-known, writings on kitsch can provide us with more insight in what happens when we enjoy experiencing a narrative moment in real life. If postmodern consumers are looking to recognise stories, kitsch-objects are products that potentially meet this need. Seen in that light, the aim of this work is to conceptualise a desire that is met by kitsch-objects. Both kitsch and identificatory pleasure revolve around the enjoyment of the familiar.

Kitsch generally denotes cultural objects that are characterized by worthless

pretentiousness and inauthenticity. Genealogically speaking, kitsch started out

describing “paintings (…) which seemed to show a lack of integrity and which catered to the longings of the sentimental bourgeois” (Harries 75). Today, the term is used to describe objects, emotions, behaviour and branches of industry. Kitsch is the pink Eiffel Tower souvenir and the plastic grapes hanging from the Italian restaurant ceiling, but also, as noted by Matei Calinescu, the act of hanging a Rembrandt in an elevator (236). So even if the term has been stretched from its initial meaning to describe behaviour and dispositions in addition objects, the original notion of worthless pretentiousness and

lacking integrity have prevailed. The term’s pejorative trait at first sight does not

promise a world of insight into identificatory pleasure. Kitsch has, however, been conceptualised more than sufficiently to offer some understanding of its enjoyment.

One prominent feature of kitsch is the inauthenticity it embodies. Kitsch always refers to something else: the pink Eiffel Tower, the plastic grapes: they have no value on their own, but are obviously flawed referents. Overall in academia, there seems to be consensus that kitsch has to do with a form of secondary enjoyment and inauthenticity exemplified in Clement Greenberg’s statement that “Kitsch is vicarious experience and

(23)

faked sensations” (paragraph II). It is inauthentic or fake because the meaning that is enjoyed is borrowed; is already existing: “It draws its life blood, so to speak, from [the] reservoir of accumulated experience” (ibid). Or as Gadamer has put it, kitsch bases itself on the recognition of what we already know (52). Incidentally, what is enjoyed is often not the object itself, but rather the mood that is evoked: it is “atmosphere which Kitsch seeks to elicit. The [object] itself becomes unimportant; it is merely a stimulus to evoke a mood” (Harries 79).

Kitsch has a fascinating relationship with the notion of distance. Generally, kitsch is criticised for its complete lack of distance since it fails to provide the space for reflection that is, according to many, inherent to aesthetic experience. Yet interestingly, Kitsch inherently involves its own form of distance as well: kitsch is “more reflective than simple enjoyment in that it detaches itself from the original emotion in order to enjoy it” (Harries 80). There is this distance in which the subject considers themselves as they are enjoying it. Not in a too self-aware manner, but more relating to awareness regarding their position at that time. So while there might not be a distance between the perceiving subject and the art-object, there is a certain distance between the perceiving subject as perceiver and the subject as character in that moment. Milan Kundera

explained this well in his famous passage:

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!

The second tear says; How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!

It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch (251).

Here, not the children but the experience itself becomes the object of enjoyment. For this enjoyment to take place, the perceiving subject has to take distance from their direct experience of the events and reflect on their role in the whole of the scene. You might even say that kitsch in such a case is preconditioned on the one enjoying to take enough distance to read and to consider themselves a character of a narrative moment.

If we stretch kitsch this far (from an object to an experience), kitsch is enjoying watching a sunset with your romantic interest, not because of the intrinsic quality of the

(24)

sunset (its colours and such) but because of the idea that you are romantically enjoying a sunset with your lover. The aesthetic focus lies not with the object but with the

experience - and thereby your role in it - itself. In terms of identificatory pleasure a subject enjoying this sunset, like enjoying music on a road trip in the described manner, is a reader of the situation (and of their own life). Having read many tropes and stories with a romantic sunset, the subject now reads themselves in the same situation, gains pleasure from the recognition and can consider themselves as protagonist of this particular scene, rather than just there in the moment.

Interestingly, kitsch' inherent distance could be a way to legitimise it and defend it as a traditional aesthetic experience: Adorno wrote that “aesthetic experience first of all places a distance between the observer and the object” (cited in Jauss “Identification” 285), but if you interpret this canonical perspective liberally, you could consider the observers themselves as objects. In that case the distance between the observer as reader and as character could be considered a distance between observer and object and thus to potentially evoke an aesthetic experience. This forms an interesting strategy to legitimise kitsch as an aesthetically valid experience in the traditional sense. Yet, such a legitimation is not the primary aim of this project. The point is rather that the concept of kitsch with its features of distance and indirectness does provide some insight into narrative enjoyment. These explorations using kitsch might seem promising for the conceptualisation of identificatory pleasure, but we have not sufficiently taken kitsch’ pejorative character into account yet.

I started this chapter by stating the aim of mapping the conceptual surroundings of identificatory pleasure. I have described this phenomenon as the enjoyment resulting from recognising narrative moments in real life and consequently having some sort of aesthetic experience, with the road-trip soundtrack case as an example. Kitsch has some overlapping with this phenomenon. Both are based on the enjoyment of recognising something from the cultural imaginary through your déjà-lu and kitsch revolves around the enjoyment of the mood that is evoked by an object which is exactly what happens in the soundtrack-case. Moreover, kitsch can be said to involve the perceiving subject’s reading of themselves as a character in a scene.

(25)

Despite of these communal aspects of identificatory pleasure and kitsch, the latter remains a problematic concept with which to continue. The most salient reason for this remains kitsch’ pejorative heritage. Even though notable accounts of kitsch can be found that are (more) positive,15_{its connotation remains rather condemned:}_{“to call} something kitsch is in most cases a way of rejecting it outright as distasteful, repugnant, or even disgusting” (Calinescu 235). Additionally, kitsch has been associated with “moral ineptitude”, Satan and Hitler (respectively Calinescu 259, 260 and Giesz 160). The concept that is central to the present endeavour aspires to be a neutral tool for analysis rather than a condescending instrument for legitimising other aesthetic experiences, which is often the case in conceptualisations of kitsch. As I argued earlier, we need a more sophisticated framework with which to consider the narrative

enjoyments that are intrinsically part of life in postmodern consumer culture.

Besides this issue with kitsch’ negative connotation, it also remains a difficult term to work with because it primarily refers to objects, while identificatory pleasure refers to an experience. Of course you could use “kitsch enjoyment” or “personal kitsch” or “kitsch attitude”, were it not for the negative connotations. It, however, is my

contention that that use would gravely stand in the way of a layered understanding of narrative experience. Moreover, there are potentially plenty of identificatory

pleasurable experiences that are not evoked by kitsch-objects, just as that there are plenty of kitsch-objects that will never evoke aesthetic, narrative pleasure.

Identificatory pleasure potentially is an aesthetic experience because of its temporal and imaginative nature, the way in which it is separated from the everyday and because it does not belong in the realm of the ethical or rational. Yet, it is not actively

acknowledged to be so by any theory of aesthetic experience I have encountered.

Conceptions of kitsch do acknowledge experiences that are very similar to identificatory pleasure, but generally fail to consider them without condemning them. This conclusion has strengthened me in my contention that a conceptualisation of identificatory

pleasure would be a welcome addition to aesthetic theory. Such a conceptualisation would consolidate some of the aesthetic pleasures and desires that now seem to be left

15_{For positive works on kitsch see for example the writings of Walter Benjamin (see Menninghaus’} essay) and Susan Sontag.

(26)

unconsidered and unscrutinised. Before I continue to lay out my own thoughts on such a concept I still have one eminent idea on narrative desire to discuss.

Reading real life: quixotism

One concept that I could not possibly leave out of this chapter is that of quixotism: a trope and concept that deals with longing for narrative and looking at real life through the frame of known stories. Writings surrounding quixotism form a prominent cluster relating to the use of the frame from the stories you know to read real-life and about the longing to experience those stories. Anyone dreaming to kiss in front of the Eiffel Tower or take a road trip might be a modern day quixote. Yet, we will see that there is some trouble with the translation of this concept to today's world.

Not initially coined as a concept, Quixotism is of course based on Cervantes’ early 17th_{century character of Alonso Quixano, who after reading an abundance of} chivalric romances renames himself Don Quixote and sets out to go on heroic adventures. The term quixotism is commonly used in various ways, sometimes for denoting the delusional fighting of an invisible enemy; sometimes as the description of taking on a hopeless cause. The use of quixotism I am, however, interested in here is of course the one that refers to the confusion of fiction and reality and the expectation of or desire for things known from stories. This idea has not remained limited to

Cervantes' famous novel, but has had a long legacy throughout 18th_{and 19}th_-century European and American literature: the quixote became a narrative trope. 16_{Most of the} times this trope was used in cautionary tales on the dangers of fiction and the reading of novels. In today’s world, however, it has somewhat disappeared. Within postmodernity both the consumption of fiction and the potential of re-enacting it have become so widespread that the embodiment of these phenomena in a caricature falls on deaf ears.

16_{The quixote trope figured in many Anglo-Saxon novels explicitly named in works such as Charlotte} Lennox’ The Female Quixote (1752); Richard Graves’s Spiritual Quixote (1773) and Tabitha Gilman Tenney

Female Quixotism (1801). When you also take into account instances of the narrative figure in which the

term quixote is not used (which I do) the list becomes inexhaustible, but besides Flaubert’s Madame

Bovary (1857) prominent examples are Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1798-99) and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740). (I have included the years of publication here to illustrate the broad period in which this

trope has featured.) For a more extensive overview of the quixote trope in Western literature see the works by Gordon and Paulson on the topic.

(27)

However, precisely because of this invisibility the quixote trope is quite informative of what is at play in our present day relationship with fiction.

A typical quixote has read many works from one particular genre (chivalric or gothic romance for example) which form the “generic lens” through which they perceive the world (Gordon 33). This reading evokes expectations and desires from life: the quixote expects and (probably) desires real life to resemble fiction, stemming from the fallacy that the known stories represent reality (which Gillian Brown has named the Quixotic

Fallacy). This fallacy in turn stems from an uncritical appropriation of the reading

material. The quixote never learned to distinguish fiction from reality and is clearly not a competent reader. Often in this fallacy based expectation, quixotes are characterised by the attempt of adapting real-life to resemble fiction, either through making the reality fit through faulty perception (like Don Quixote seeing giants instead of

windmills)17_{or through own performance and the direction of that of others (Emma} Bovary demanding that her lovers write her sonnets).18

This adaptation of real life to resemble fiction directly follows from the manner in which a quixote reads, for a quixote does not stop reading when they close their book. The quixote is a constant reader in the sense that they are constantly constructing narrative, significance, beginnings, endings and main characters in daily life. They are continually viewing daily life from a distance, while living it, rejoicing in the recognition of narrative tropes and interpreting the events at hand as a, not very detached, outsider. Quixotes are actually more active readers of their lives than they are of fiction: books they consume passively while in their lives they are actively constructing recognition and meaning. They live their books and read their lives.19

17_{Foucault has written on this process of transforming reality to fit expectations in his chapter called} “Don Quixote”. There, he distinguishes the madman from the poet. The former is a Quixote-like figure who uses sorcery to transform anything that fails to coincide with their expectations, while the latter is always open to new experiences (49). This structure forms an interesting parallel to the dichotomy of true aesthetic experience versus kitsch.

18_{You could say that the first type would coincide with the mistaken expectation based on fiction, while} the second one clearly is marked by desire – the second type of quixote is one who is already aware of the discrepancy between fiction and real-life, but refuses to accept it, not necessarily out of denial, but out of assertiveness.

19_{Furthermore by reading their lives, seeing scenes in everyday events, hero(in)es in potential love}

interests and themselves as protagonists quixotes are acting as well as reading; performing the play they are also watching and trying to get others to play their parts in the right way so that real life matches the world and conventions of their reading. When quixotes direct in that way they become authors of their own story on top of readers and actors. Quixotes as readers, actors and authors, which, incidentally, boils down to quixotes as subjects who consider themselves objects.

(28)

The notion of the quixote reading his or her own daily life is where quixotism is most relevant to the issue of the postmodern consumer seeking to be an aesthetic protagonist and to identificatory pleasure. Consider the earlier mentioned soundtrack-case with the perspective of quixotism: a quixote would have seen or heard many stories in which music forms the aesthetic setting of a road trip and then expected or desired to

experience a similar event. Or perhaps the quixote would just hear the music without it being actually there. When the moment arrives, the quixote rejoices in the recognition. (In this sense, it is not much different from kitsch but for the additional focus on reading and delusion.) Moreover, the quixote reads the situation with themselves as protagonist of the scene.

So far the quixote trope or concept seems to fit quite well with identificatory pleasure. It deals with the longing for protagonism and recognition of narrative in real life and the reading of real life. The perspective it provides on identificatory pleasure is that enjoying feeling like the star in a film through the use of aforementioned

soundtrack is a result of uncritical reading and slight lunacy. Although the latter seems quite an exaggeration, the former could form a valid assessment. Nevertheless, there are various reasons why quixotism in the end is unsuitable to accommodate postmodern consumption and identificatory pleasure adequately.

One problem with quixotism is that it becomes invisible when the stories that are mimicked are conventional. As mentioned, the quixote trope has often functioned as a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of fiction. It is no coincidence that quixote stories had their blooming period throughout the 18th_{, well into the 19}th _{century. They}

flourished in a context in which there was great concern regarding the power and influence of fiction. Fiction was considered especially dangerous because it “might produce effects almost without intervention of the will” (Samuel Johnson, quoted in Litau 37). It provides its readers with a particular world-view which could evoke unrealistic expectations of life. Most worrisome was that in the context of 18th_{and 19}th century culture, novels contained all kinds of stories that set examples that, when acted out, would threaten the socio-economic order (Brown 259). Historian Martyn Lyons describes this cultural anxiety as Bovarysme, which he defines as the fear that female readers would come to expect too much of their love lives (98). Identical to the

(29)

behaviour described with quixotism this stems from a passionate attachment to fiction. In these senses, Bovarysme and quixotism are ideas that did not necessarily develop to describe the experience or desire for stories in real life, but only to describe or accuse the commitment to the wrong kind of stories. They point “less to concerns about a noxious power in fiction than to worries about the behavior of readers” (Brown 251). Quixotism is a phenomenon or concept that is only visible or used when the reader’s behaviour is transgressive. When a 18th_{century girl would fanatically follow her dream} of marrying whomever her family had picked out for her this would by no means be considered quixotic, even if this dream was based on novels she had read. A desire or expectation is only considered quixotic when it is unrealistic or transgressive.

Consequently quixotism can be best described as acting on the basis of expectations or desires formed by your reading whenever the story is unconventional.

This trait forms an important reason why the notion of quixotism is hard to apply in present day society: as I noted before, in postmodernity it has become the norm to pursuit most fantasies and we are encouraged to make stories come true. This

strongly ties into the changed role of imagination and the position it has in

consumption. While stories belonged to a separate, dangerous, realm in the context in which the quixote trope flourished, they since then have been used at a daily basis to sell products, thereby normalising the act of appropriating the imaginary.20_{In that sense} the quixote has evaporated into the (post)modern consumer since our symbolic

consumption of leisure and commodities is often based on expectations formed by fiction. This, however, does not offer a satisfying understanding of narrative

consumption or identificatory pleasure. Quixotism most of all provides connotations of being unrealistic or lunatic when you think fiction can become reality. Diagnosing us all as crazy and unrealistic is not an explanation that will suffice in relation to a

phenomenon that can entail activities and sensations as diverse as moonlight strolls, barbecues, autumn leaves and smoking cigars.

Another facet from quixotism that prevents it from being a suitable tool for analysis of today's culture is its strong premise of a knowable distinction between fiction and reality. This distinction has become increasingly problematic and

20_{Gordon also notes this shift, and explains that the re-evaluation of the idea of imagination, formerly}

considered a base and “unruly force” in a negative way, coincided with “the emergent consumer revolution that needed individual consumers to invest objects with personal fantasies” (35-6).

(30)

problematised in postmodernity, if not a complete impossibility. The boundaries

between fiction and reality have evaporated, corresponding to the constructed nature of “reality” (Gordon 5). This ties in with Gordon's interesting work on quixotism in

relation to postmodern theory in which he conceptualises the activity of calling someone a quixote as a speech-act in which the accuser positions him/herself as a superior subject who is in contact with the real truth as opposed to the quixote.21 Gordon's use of quixotism as an exposer of rhetoric devices is far more valuable in today's context than it could be for identificatory pleasure. Moreover, the unsuitability of quixotism for identificatory pleasure becomes even more salient when considering that with quixotism there is generally no acknowledgement of the aesthetic dimension of narrative experience.

Identificatory pleasure and the road-trip soundtrack

I mentioned a road-trip soundtrack experience as an example of identificatory pleasure with which to survey its conceptual surroundings. What can be concluded based on this survey? That in the theories of Kant and Jauss, experiencing a sense of protagonism when hearing a certain type of music in a certain setting does not pass as an aesthetic experience since it is based on interest and recognition and that these theories do not offer much understanding of what exactly is at play. Additionally, it can be concluded that such enjoyment of music would definitely fall under kitsch-behaviour: it is rooted in the recognition of the situation as familiar, the focus lies on the evoked mood and there is a self-awareness regarding your own role in enjoying it. Lastly, subjects of this soundtrack experience could be considered quixotes: they enjoy the experience because it resembles the stories they know and they probably recreated these stories by

selecting the music with the appropriate mood in the first place.

What, however, do these concepts tell us about what happens in the enjoyment of such a narrative pleasure? Mostly that it contemptible because the experience is

21_{With this Gordon provides a fruitful concept which can be used today. For even though the term}

quixote is not always mentioned, it certainly forms a recognisable rhetoric device employed daily

throughout politics and the media. For example: perpetually being called delusional and unrealistic in its idealism in service of establishing the authority of the accuser has been the fate this year of the Greek Syriza party throughout the Greek crisis.

(31)

based on an already existing meaning; that it is delusional and inauthentic. All this might be a valid judgement of such practices. Identificatory pleasure certainly is facilitated by an already existing meaning, borrowed from the cultural imaginary and that indeed makes it an experience that is in many ways inferior to the enriching experience of something new. It, however, still remains the case that no real effort seems to be made to understand or dissect the experience of recognising narrative with an open mind or to look for a more layered understanding of what might be happening there, without prior condescension.

In the next chapters I will perform an unpacking of the layers of identificatory pleasure (or put more sceptically: construe those layers). In Chapter 2 I will explore what the pleasure of narrative recognition might exactly entail, for it can be more than simple recognition, but rather about being seen. Then, in Chapter 3 I will finally offer my concept of storyness; storyness as a quality of things, places, phenomena, that enables us to feel like characters and thereby attain (aesthetic) meaning and significance.