The Postmodernist Detachment of Morality From Literature
Written February 9, 2004

In Oscar Wilde’s assertion that “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all,” there is an implicit challenge of the innate existence of morality in literature. Although literature and moral issues have been firmly intertwined for centuries, the relatively new hypercriticism of poststructuralism, in conjunction with Roland Barthes’ work in Anthologies, is capable of breaking down the role of morality within literature and thereby demystifying it as a subject of major contention and interest in texts.

One of the first contentions over the role of morality in literature occurred between the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, after which Aristotle attempted to compartmentalize or structure literature into various categories to legitimize and affirm its importance. Many years later, the combined movements of postmodernism and poststructuralism are once again attempting to understand literature by breaking it into smaller parts for closer scrutiny. Postmodernism operates under the assumption that there are no solidified truths and that the world is entirely subjective in its assessments of morality. With stigmas and preconceptions about the ‘essential’ human experience consciously flung aside, many issues in texts – including morality – can be examined with an increasingly objective critical eye, both as a singular element and in context with the surrounding world and its influences.

While structuralism is based in revealing the core function of elements within a larger framework, Roland Barthes provides an overarching system into which the functions of literary elements can fit. His work involved the uncovering of ‘myths’ in human experience. By Barthes’ definition, myths are attractive stories designed to simplify life which run, largely unconsciously, through the stream of society. These myths are passed from individual through individual, subtly imbued in written texts and other forms of communication.

Barthes’ concept of ‘myth’ provides a context for poststructuralist theorists to identify and isolate these undercurrents within literature, exposing them as aspects of a text for consideration rather than merely allowing them to continue perpetrating their ongoing shaping of popular ideology. This effectively serves to remove concepts such as morality from the inherent nature of a text, allowing theorists to examine them in context of the text’s historical surroundings and other prevalent elements. By isolating myths such as morality within the overall structure of texts, poststructuralist and postmodern critics have essentially negated the possibility of referring to a book as definitively ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ – rather, these texts can be noted as containing either strong or weak examples of underlying moral mythology. Oscar Wilde’s quote is affirmed not by the disproving of morality within literature, but by the removal of morality from the inherent nature of texts through its identification as an isolatable example of ‘myth’ within society. The concepts of structuralism and postmodernism provide the theoretical groundwork required for morality to lose its untouchable status as an assumed aspect of literature, and thus calls morality into question as a definitive or effective method for categorizing or classifying specific texts.

For those questioning how a mythology such as morality could have achieved such a prominent status in human society, Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony provides a brief explanation. Essentially, hegemony describes the process of the ruling ‘class’ of any particular nation enforcing a set of specific ideologies upon the rest of its people through widespread propagation of these ideas as ‘common sense’. Some of these ideologies are designed to ensure the quality of life for citizens and others are specifically intended to maintain the power base of a group of powerful individuals. Once issues of morality can be exposed in texts by structuralists and identified as myths traveling through society’s subconscious by Barthes, their existence can be examined in terms of Gramsci’s hegemony – specifically the questions of which moral values are being promoted or demonized and who would directly benefit from their widespread acceptance. For example, groups such as the Church and the government would directly benefit from the widespread acceptance of moral values such as piety and humility which promote servitude, while the population as a whole improves when society assumes that murder is a morally unacceptable act. Using the concept of hegemony, even aspects of society which have been unchallenged and assumed for centuries, such as morality, can be reduced to their essential motivations and functions and explored as a tool of ideology rather than an unquestioned truth.

However, there are those who would argue that morality is an essential, innate aspect of the human struggle or a key component of the meaning of life. These claims will undoubtedly be grounded in religious texts such as the Bible and argue that moral purity is an important part of why humankind exists in the first place. In this matter, there is no resolvable argument – the topic is reduced to the basic tenets of religious faith coming into direct opposition with the postmodernist assumption that there are no absolute truths or values. An individual’s faith is an intensely personal thing and frequently invincible even when confronted with a brick wall of carefully constructed logic.

In conclusion, Oscar Wilde’s quotation highlights a rift between morality and its innate connection to literature that poststructuralism and postmodernism are well-equipped to address. The critical observation that all truths are subjective in conjunction with an emphasis on close examination of the various elements that comprise the overall structure of a text enables theorists to focus on morality in literature in a newly detached manner. Roland Barthes’ concept of mythology provides a context within which morality can be defined as an unconscious subtext within contemporary society for the purpose of simplicity and Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony provides an adequate reasoning of motivation describing why the concept of morality has been so widely propagated and popularized within human societies for so long. As these theorists provide the means to detach morality from literature, the classification of books as ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ becomes useless and reduced to a mere assessment of whether a specific text adequately carries elements of a subjective ideological undercurrent.