Such a conclusion is completely unsatisfying, of course. It simply
displaces instead of resolving the question: rather than ask ‘what is
literature?’ we need to ask ‘what makes us (or some other society) treat
something as literature?’ There are, though, other categories that work
in this way, referring not to specific properties but only to changing
criteria of social groups. Take the question ‘What is a weed?’ Is there an
essence of ‘weedness’ – a special something, a je ne sais quoi, that
weeds share and that distinguishes them from non-weeds? Anyone who
has been enlisted to help weed a garden knows how hard it is to tell a
weed from a non-weed and may wonder whether there is a secret.
What would it be? How do you recognize a weed? Well, the secret is
that there isn’t a secret. Weeds are simply plants that gardeners don’t
want to have growing in their gardens. If you were curious about weeds,
seeking the nature of ‘weedness’, it would be a waste of time to try to
investigate their botanical nature, to seek distinctive formal or physical
qualities that make plants weeds. You would have to carry out instead
historical, sociological, perhaps psychological enquiries about the sorts
of plants that are judged undesirable by different groups in different
places.