Тодор Христов
Abstract
Roman Jakobson invented the notion of literariness to name the subject of the future literary science Russian formalists hoped to develop. Then in the late 1920-ties the formalists scattered, Jakobson moved to Prague, to United States and to structuralism, and the notion of literariness migrated with him. In the 1950-ties Jakobson proposed a very powerful project of linguistic poetics, and since that project referred to the notion of literariness, the notion became massively popular and in effect synonymous to his version of structuralism. Linguistic poetics was both controversial and inspiring project, and the notion was taken over both by critics who tried to disparage it and by structuralists or semioticians who found it congenial. So the notion played a crucial part in shaping the agendas of French, German or North American structuralism and semiotics as well as the agendas of its major rivals (poststructuralism, reader-response criticism, new pragmatism, analytic aesthetics, critical theory, cultural studies). The attempts at defining literariness however turned out to be futile, and in the early 1970-ties the notion was abandoned as the structuralist controversy itself. It was not erased however since being abandoned in the case of literariness meant being relegated to the realm of the notions of the past and the others (i.e. the notions of the other theories from the past that no one would currently advocate). So the notion of literariness retained its meaning and even its functions despite being ‘sous rature’, dashed out by the development of literary theory; e.g. it could still support arguments which denial justified the arguments of the current theory, arguments that were not yet past (as any promise not to break a promise once again implies the denial of the past failures to keep it). The current book tells the story of the notion of literariness. The first 9 chapters trace the transpositions and transformations of the notion in the contexts of Russian Formalism, the Prague School, New Criticism, glossematics, French, German and American structuralism, semiotics, phenomenology and analytic philosophy of literature. The text offers a detailed discussion of the significant theories of literariness as well as a critical assessment of their misunderstandings and misconceptions. Chapters 10-15 describe the various strategies for abandoning the notion of literariness invented by poststructuralism, analytic philosophy, new pragmatism, reader response criticism, cultural studies and critical theory. The relevant theories claiming to offer a better insight in the nature of literature are carefully explained and analyzed so as to explain the constitutive function the notion of literariness still retains despite its being abandoned. Drawing on Wittgenstein, Foucault and Lacan, the last chapter attempts a non-metaphysical reading of the problem of literariness aimed at showing that the stake of Jakobson’s invention was the problem of referentiality of literature, i.e. the problem of how the name literature was used to refer to objects, or how one was able to refer to literature as an object. The main thesis is that literariness designates the conditions of possibility of successful reference to literature, and that the theories of literariness fulfill those conditions inadequately, so the reference of the name literature in their context is always unstable or questionable. Yet the further development of literary theory demonstrated that theorists were generally unable to meet the conditions of possibility of referring to literature in a more adequate manner. And if we take seriously that predicament, then theories of literariness will provide a rather unexpected insight – that the reference of literature is always unstable and questionable, produced by practical methods in particular practical, cultural and disciplinary circumstances. Having demonstrated that, the study sets off to describe the practical methods used by the theorists of literariness, and tries to explain those methods by means of a particular discursive technique called formalization. Since any formalization hinges on promises, deferrals, bricolage, it can be only provisionally successful, since the future development of theory tends to overturn the promises, to render the deferrals unjustifiable, and to expose the inadequacy of academic bricolage. One major contribution of the study, in addition to being the first detailed history of the theories of literariness, is that it resists the temptation to deconstruct their provisional nature or their vulnerability to future developments, and instead makes an attempt at explaining the practical methods they managed to get by, i.e. the practical methods that enabled the theorists to repair and maintain the reference of literature despite the vulnerability of their theories and notwithstanding the tragic end of their attempts to answer the question what is literature.
