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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hallucinatory realism (2nd nomination)

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. MBisanz talk 20:26, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hallucinatory realism

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AfDs for this article:
Hallucinatory realism (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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(This is not an impermissible re-nomination; it was speedy kept because it had been added to the main page after its existence had been contested by several users)

This is not a style or genre, but rather a two-word phrase that happens to have been used by a couple of different reviewers - a modifier "hallucinatory" added to "realism." (Just like many other such two- or three-word phrases that may be used several times but that aren't topics - see the original AFD for some.) No two reviews define it in the same way, and it's clear in each of them that these are words that the reviewer has chosen to describe the particular style of the author in question, not a statement of participation in any tradition.* (In some, the author believes they're coining the term. In others, the "hallucinatory" actually refers to a character who has hallucinations!)

*Except where it's used as a synonym for magical realism, as in the Oxford Companion; obviously magical realism has its own article. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:56, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(I'm assuming good faith that nom genuinely believes the article should be deleted for stated reasons. Events went beyond the first AfD due to the Front Page link, nom has a right to see a fair closure.) -- Green Cardamom (talk) 19:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Multiple independent reliable sources. It's not our concern if the definition or usage is vague, there is vagueness with magical realism too. Genre is slippery like that, we just report on the various ways it's used. It's no accident that this term is used over-and-over for 40+ years. True, some of it is a modifier "hallucinatory" added to "realism", but not all of it. Here are some of the best sources:
  • (1) Harold Osborne, ed. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Art. p. 529. Explicit definition.
  • (2) Burkhardt Lindner (1983) Halluzinatorischer Realismus. Clear use of the term and concept as title of paper in capital letters, like a proper noun.
  • (3) Corner, John (1996). The Art of Record: A Critical Introduction to Documentary. Quote: "The notion of 'hallucinatory realism' seems appropriate". The use of single-quote and word "notion" shows an established term.
  • (4) Steene, Birgitta (2006). Ingmar Bergman: A Reference Guide. Quote: "Bergman's conception of Strindberg's play was in fact reminiscent of Alf Sjöberg's approach in his film version of Fröken Julie in the late 1940s when he saw the drama as a dreamplay, a form of 'hallucinatory realism'." The use of single-quotes show it to be a preexisting term of use.
(I may add more to the list)
-- Green Cardamom (talk) 19:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'd actually argue the opposite for 3 and 4 - 3 seems to be coining the term, and 4 is quoting Sjöberg's use of it. These are all single uses: some in passing, some like the Lindner as the conceit for a longer piece, but all are basically coining a phrase to describe the works of the specific author (or artist, or filmmaker) they're discussing (or, as in Osborne, using the phrase as a synonym for something else, as I explained above). Keep !voters are finding a number of examples of its use, but Wikipedia isn't the place for things that are just terms; that's Wiktionary. It's not enough to show that the words are used, the sources need to discuss it as a genre or style (rather than equating it to the style of one particular writer - am I making sense?). –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:49, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Understand what you're saying but hard to believe these writers are unaware of the term and repeatedly coining it for the first time, since it has been in use for so long - why do they keep coining this same term, it doesn't make sense. Surely any literary critic would have heard of the term before, or researched it before deciding to coin it. And it's very hard to ignore the Oxford Companion's direct definition of the term. Beyond the 4 sources above, and the 5th source below by Jun Liu, Professor of English at Cal State (in Chinese), the examples of use may or may not be appropriate for the article but that doesn't change the sources we have so far, and who knows what else will keep popping up. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 16:51, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not really sure how this amounts to supporting the retention of this article. Current sources do not seem to indicate anything like a "long history" as much as mentions of the the term in passing without any significant coverage of the term itself. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 19:03, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:00, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Keep Most of the news sources seem to use the same sentence quotation, which doesn't discuss the term in any detail or even indicate that it is a commonly used term. Nonetheless, the coverage in academic sources does suggest keeping the article, although it doesn't seem as clear cut to me as some are saying. Nwlaw63 (talk) 00:43, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The term itself has been in use at least since 1983, and now the style it describes has been recognized as worthy of the highest literary award out there. Deleting the article would leave a gaping hole in our coverage of contemporary literary styles, and it would also mean we're passing up a chance to be useful to the reader -- perhaps a more important consideration than distinguishing Wikipedia from Wiktionary. Malatinszky (talk) 12:08, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It is a fashionable new phrase, having the article here will be useful for the readers. Its content is much wider than what is suitable for the Wictionary.--Szilas (talk) 12:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keeping an article because it is popular is not an especially persuasive argument. Same thing goes for saying that it'll be useful unless you can state some reason why that might be. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 19:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or Merge with magic realism. The incredible obscurity of the few academic writings with the phrase does not make it a notably established genre or style. The page still has very little substance and few examples of what would actually constitute the genre. Would be suitable, perhaps, for a subsection in magic realism, as that is the style in which Mo Yan has been identified with and most likely what the citation referred to. 8ty3hree (talk) 23:51, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary line break for readability

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  • Weak Keep I agree with about every word that Nwlaw63 said. I'd like to see more references, though, as per Roscelese's comments (but that's not a convincing argument for getting rid of the article, I think). 72.47.0.74 (talk) 08:00, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Just for information, I've read an article in Southern Weekly today about 'hallucinatory realism' (in Chinese[1], it's not an academic writing), written by Jun Liu, Professor of English at Cal State LA. He defines 'hallucinatory realism' as a 'special literary phenomenon', distinguishes it from 'magic realism', and describes its feature in detail. --Stevenliuyi (talk) 15:42, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Great source! Notice how he says 'hallucinatory realism' is a way to distinguish from the Latin American 'magical realism' and so it appears to be a term borrowed or in use in Chinese literary studies. Hard to tell with Google translate if Liu is making a case for that as a new thing, or establishing it already exists. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 16:51, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note to closing admin: Many participants in this AfD are the same as in the previous AfD except for Stevenliuyi (talk · contribs), Malatinszky (talk · contribs), Joefromrandb (talk · contribs), and myself. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 18:58, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The first AfD closed prematurely due to outside circumstances. Great to see people continuing to participate in the process. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 21:30, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I'm not convinced by the sourcing that this is a term, as such. I may be mistaken, but it appears to me as if "hallucinatory realism" was used to describe a recent award-winning author, and then someone researched the history of the term, finding numerous instances where critics had used it in the past, thus constructing the article. The problem with this is that 1) despite assertions to the contrary it's not clear whether these critics were simply stringing together an adjective and a noun or using it as a term and 2) doing this verges on original research. The term itself, as a term, has not received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources, as far as I can tell. The one exception is in an old dictionary about art, which to me suggests it was at one time considered something applicable to visual art, but not necessarily to criticism and commentary on art and the world in general, which essentially is what the article claims. I think we should wait until reliable sources begin talking about hallucinatory realism as a term and draw a distinct meaning around it. Until that happens, it's an adjective-noun combination that, while it may have been used numerous times in the past, has not become a term with an established meaning that has been discussed to a significant degree in secondary sources. Hence it fails WP:GNG for lack of reliable independent sources covering the subject of the article, which is presented as a term and not simply a verbal construction. --Batard0 (talk) 09:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - There's alot of sources that used the terms and collectivly they would convey meaning and details over time about the topic. An early usage is in Philadelphia Inquirer January 24, 1989. It's probably a little more difficult to write about this topic. A statement such as "In 1975, Clemens Heselhaus used it to describe the poetry of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff" (presently in the article) doesn't convey anything about Hallucinatory realism. However, the text adjacent to Hallucinatory realism in tha tsource probably conveys something about the term. If you take usage of the term from 1989 through the present, I think an article can be written to convey the scope of the terms and how and where it has been used to give an overall picture of the topic. Some sources with the term in the name of the news article include: [2][3]. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 03:41, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • The first article you cite illustrates well my uncertainty about this as a term. It says "From that point until the early 1960s, his paintings might be described as hallucinatory realism". Is the writer using "hallucinatory realism" as a term or merely as a descriptor? I lean toward the latter in this case. The writer, it seems, is simply trying to come up with a way to describe Dali's paintings and stumbles upon "hallucinatory realism". Unless we can find a reliable source that says, for example, "The term, 'hallucinatory realism', has been in use sporadically since the 1980s, but has more recently been popularized to describe the literary work of so-and-so and the art of so-and-so" we can't make these kinds of inferences. In my view, doing so is WP:OR. What I don't see is a reliable source that discusses the term as a term, aside from the art dictionary entry (and it's not clear if this has the same meaning as the more current usage). The danger here is that maybe it's not a term that's verifiable as a term. I mean, I could come up with plenty of reliable sources that used the phrase "tepid praise" over the years, but that hardly means "tepid praise" is a verifiable and notable term, because it hasn't been shown to be such in reliable sources. --Batard0 (talk) 03:56, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • 'Hallucinatory Realism' might not have been an established literature topic as yet, or rarely used in that capacity,or not yet fully agreed upon among the critics, but Mo Yan's Nobel Prize has earned it a permanent respectability in literary world. New and future researchers will constantly refer to Wikipedia for elaborating their ideas about this term. Even a negative critical view on your pages will also help them in forming lucid concepts. The page should stay even as a stub.121.52.144.212 (talk) 20:09, 24 October 2012 (UTC)Waseem Gul[reply]
Note: I have added this from the AfD talk page. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 20:12, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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