2024-01-28 22:16:48
One hundred years have passed since the birth of Luis Martín-Santos, whose premature death in a traffic accident in 1964 did not prevent him from bequeathing us Time of silence, a novel that has been considered one of the best literary works of the Spanish 20th century (and which Seix Barral is now republishing, with a prologue by Enrique Vila-Matas). And the key word here is “consider.” Because I want to focus in this article on the way in which a canon is configured through the construction of forms of prestige and literary value, and on the operations that occur in the institution of literature to distinguish between what should be considered literature and what not.
I take the concept of “institution of literature” from Jacques Dubois. in his book The institution of literature (1978), the Belgian literary sociologist defines this institution as a set of instances and norms that validate, regulate and codify a literary discourse as such. The notion of “literary institution” shares certain characteristics with the notion of “literary field” that Pierre Bourdieu later elaborated in The rules of art in 1992 (although he had already introduced the concept in his article The market for symbolic goods in 1971). The difference between both terms lies in the fact that for Bourdieu the “literary field” enjoys a certain autonomy, while for Dubois, influenced by Louis Althusser’s notion of “ideology,” the institution of literature functions as an ideological apparatus that reproduces and legitimizes a specific social order. In this sense, the different instances that make up the institution of literature – from the publishing industry to academic criticism, which recognizes, consecrates and classifies works, through the legal apparatus that intervenes through censorship – not only contribute to define what is literary, but also participate in the circulation of ideas that are functional to the State. The ruling class appropriates a cultural heritage to develop and establish values and codes that perpetuate its position of power. These aesthetic codes and values – and also ideological ones – are changing and depend on the “intellectual group” that manages to hegemonize the literary institution.
#institution #literature