MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

Andrews, Chris. “Constraint and Convention: The formalism of the Oulipo.” Neophilologus 87 (2003): 223-232.

Andrews’ stated purpose is to define and distinguish constraint from genre and other types of rules, procedures, etc. He does this by critiquing other attempts to define constraint, most particularly Baetens and Schiavetta’s article from Formules, as well as various statements from members of the Oulipo. He summarizes Baetens and Schiavetta’s definition: a constraint is “unconventional, systematic, and objectively demonstrable” (224) wherein “a rule is unconventional if it has been used to generate a small number of texts, systematic if it affects as many as possible of the text’s constitutive elements, and objectively demonstrable if it bears on the signifier rather than the signified” (224), in this way they mean to differentiate constraint from conventions and “linguistic norms”. Even from this short summary, one can see that their definition is much centered on what I call syntactic constraints, but I’ll save my critique of their article for another time, as here I am concerned with Andrews.

He claims to address the three criteria before moving onto what he considers the main underlying problem with their theory, but he really avoids all but the first. The idea that a constraint produces a small number of texts is inconclusive and non-specific as a defining trait. Similar to Conte’s (see last week) defining a constraint as making one text, this is a problematic assertion. Andrews quotes Oulipian Jacques Jouet in saying that a constraint should be “re-useable”, which is a stance I agree upon — what matter how many times a constraint is used as long as the work generated from it is successful in some way. Andrews does not really address the issue of systematicity in their definition, instead writing tangentially on the restriction of a constraint versus its liberatory power. I found the idea of affecting as many elements as possible a matter of subjective preference and much situated to B & S’s prejudice for the syntactic constraint. Again he avoids the signifier versus signified concept.

The problem he see with the underlying assumptions of B&S’s argument is focused on confusing the prescriptive rule with the regularity when relating constraint as a third level of rule above linguistic norms and generic conventions. In Andrews’ conception linguistic norms and generic conventions are regularities whose status is defined after the fact to explain what has already occurred. In contrast, constraints are prescriptive rules defined before the fact. His explanations focus on genre and the way a genre is defined from an already existing body of texts rather than being defined before the texts are created. In this way, genres are fluid while constraints as rules are static. Andrews offers a table of the differences between constraint and convention in his conception (reprinted below). The list itself works well as a heuristic tool for separating the two.

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An important part of the difference is the idea that constraints are “apprehended rationally” — through the prescriptive rule of the constraint — while conventions are “normally assimilated by imitations” — a writer works in a genre through the writings of others in the genre. In relation to this he notes, that while generic conventions and constraints “differ fundamentally”, there can still be a transition from one to the other. Generic conventions could be formulated as a rule and applied prescriptively, while constraints could be widely adopted and used not as a rule but as an imitation of the texts to which the rule has already been applied.

I still maintain a disagreement with “a small number of works” as a necessarily defining characteristic of constraint, though there few examples to the contrary. I think of the haiku in this case, a form that is taught through its precisely formulated rule. I would consider it a constraint, and there are endless examples of the form.

He also offers a good, simple analogy as follows:

…constraints can be likened to the rules of a game like chess… In breaking the rules one ceases to play the game, whereas one can deviate from a linguistic (or generic) regularity without leaving the language (or the genre). (229)

I’d add that as far as genre goes, a good part of it is the ability to stretch the conventions to new places, as the best genre works do.

Overall, I found Andrews’ differentiation cogent and useful, though he doesn’t exactly follow through on the many of the issues brought up the early parts of the article, and it leaves me wondering why some of the points were even mentioned at all.

References:

Schiavetta, Bernardo and Jan Baetens. “Definir la contrainte?” Formules 4 (2000): 20-55.