ASEBL Journal – Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2014
valued changes and hence how it reacts, interacts, and behaves changes.17 Memory
alone is in comparison rather passive and can only change self by updating the self
through consciousness. One level of the implications of this is inherently ethical. The
self is relational.18 It exists only as so far as it interacts with the non-self – including
both the “outside” world of other beings and things and the “inside” world of
memories and imagination. The self is created through its interactions with others, and
it is through those interactions that individual values are established and changed. I
argue that this represents the arts’ most direct influence on the self. There are of
course other ways of influencing people such as presenting models for imitation or
rules to be followed or information to be considered. But these are all indirect
influences on our decisions because they are non-self objects (although potentially
powerful ones). Consciousness is the only means of directly affecting the self that
establishes value. It is also my contention that the emotional coloring of what we
process affects how it is valued and mapped and therefore how strongly it affects our
selves. Our emotions are our quick and dirty evaluation system. They tell us how to
think of something or someone without requiring the expense of prolonged thought.19
Thus, not only real events, but narratives that are emotionally tinged can change us
more effectively.
This brings us back to fiction in general and my specific example, Dostoevsky. For
those not familiar with the novel, some background and interpretation are necessary.
The novel is split into two halves with the first, but chronologically later, part
consisting largely of a philosophical disquisition on the psychological problems of the
narrator (who is nameless, but is generally referred to as the Underground Man). The
second half tells a story from the Underground Man’s past when he attempts to gain
the friendship of a group of old classmates and almost begins a relationship with a
young prostitute (this is Dostoevsky, after all). These failed attempts at
companionship seem to mark his last chance to get out of his “underground” existence
and the man we see at the start of the novel is the result of the decisions taken at the
end.
The Underground Man is arguably the greatest example of tortured self-awareness in
modern literature. As Bakhtin shows, n early his every word is said in anticipation of
and then in reaction to the reader’s response. The novel begins: “I am a sick man . . . I
am a spiteful man. I am a most unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. Then
again, I don’t know a thing about my illness; I’m not even sure what hurts. I’m not
being treated and never have been, though I respect both medicine and doctors.”20 The
opening is simple enough: he is sick. But he does not want pity (the ellipses mark an
internal dialogue and could be virtually inserted at the end of every sentence in Part
One), so he claims he is “spiteful.”21 “Spiteful” makes too negative an impression and
so he pulls back to merely “unpleasant.” He then feels the need to give a reason for his
unpleasantness and blames his liver. This could elicit too much sympathy from the
reader so he claims to not really know what his problem is and takes back the
diagnosis.22
And so on and so on for another twenty-five pages. This constant back and forth, this
implicit dialogue with the reader, is a symptom of what he calls his
“hyperconsciousness.” This “disease” leads him to an overawareness of and an
16