Kitsch as aesthetic recuperation

• Author: Andreea Ivan
• Position: Transilvania University of Brasov
• Pages: 143-150

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 9 (58) No. 1 - 2016

KITSCH AS AESTHETIC RECUPERATION

Andreea IVAN1

Abstract: The case study provided by the analysis of Daniela Zeca’s

Oriental Trilogy novels reveals the enterprise professional literary critics

embark upon when they convert a short-term bestseller into a long-term

bestseller, namely into a classic book. It therefore becomes evident that there

exist the kitsch of a literary work and the kitsch of its critical reception.

Literary critics, regarded as actors with a significant role in the production

of a work of art, are responsible for the propagation of kitsch, the ethical

evil, when they deceit their audience.

Key words: kitsch, critical reception, Daniela Zeca, short-time bestseller,

long-time bestseller.

1. Introduction

Paramount to the discourse on kitsch is Hermann Broch’s theory, which presents kitsch

not as a mere aesthetic category, but rather as an ethical or metaphysical one. To the

Austrian thinker, kitsch disrupts the obligatory connection between the ethical component

of any formative action and its aesthetic counterpart. Kitsch does not advance knowledge,

such as a good work of art should do, but it reaches at once for the effect, for the

beautiful. It does so by imitating the formal characteristics of art. Kitsch, in almost all of

its instances, is defined as forgery, as it parades as art (Broch, 2002, pp. 3-39).

It is precisely this attempt to affect the appearance of authentic art that is kitsch par

excellence. It may well be that not only kitsch authors are responsible for this imposture,

but other actors active in the process of production of a work of art. Following Pierre

Bourdieu’s theory, we try to bring forth the fact that literary critics abuse the importance

of their position in the literary field by imposing on their audience works of art

incompatible with the aesthetic standards of high art. Therefore, the literary critic

impinges on the ethics of their profession, in their instance as promoters of low art.

In his classic study Rules of art, the French sociologist presents the field of literary

production as divided by the degree in which the makers of cultural objects are perceptive

to the demand of the market. Consequently, there exists the subfield of large production,

very sensitive to the demands of the market and whose success is determined by large

sales figures. At the other side of the cultural field, we find the small-scale cultural

production, where large sales figures are equivalent to aesthetic scarcity, whose aim is the

accumulation of symbolic capital, proper to the field of literary production. The time

interval necessary for the recuperation of capital – be it economic or symbolic – defines

the length of the production cycle which, in turn, positions a cultural endeavour inside the

1 Transilvania University of Braşov, ivanandreeacristina@yahoo.com.