On Literariness: From Post-Structuralism to Systems Theory

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 2 (2000) Issue 2 Article 1 On Lit Liteerarines iness: s: FFrrom PPoost-S -Str truc uctur turali alissm ttoo SSys ysttems Theor Theoryy Marko JJuv uvaan University of Ljubljana Follow this and additional works at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Recommended Citation Juvan, Marko. "On Literariness: From Post-Structuralism to Systems Theory." 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Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Langua-ge Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monog-raph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Volume 2 Issue 2 (June 2000) Article 1 Marko Juvan, "On Literariness: From Post-Structuralism to Systems Theory" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol2/iss2/1> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2.2 (2000) <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol2/iss2/> Abstract: In his article, "On Literariness: From Post-Structuralism to Systems Theory," Marko Juvan argues that the question of literariness concerns the very identity and social existence of not only literature per se but of literary theory as a discipline. A literary theorist is not only an observer of literature; he/she is also a participant who -- at least indirectly, via the a priori systems of science and education -- is engaged in constructing both the notion and the practice of literature as well as the study of literature. Literariness is neither an invariant cluster of "objectively" distinctive properties of all texts that are deemed literary nor is it merely a social, scholarly, and/or educational function. Rather, it can be defined as the effect of a text in the literary system, which is only possible on the basis of paradigms and conventions derived from the literary canon itself. Marko Juvan, "On Literariness: From Post-Structuralism to Systems Theory" page 2 of 12 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2.2 (2000): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol2/iss2/1> Marko JUVAN On Literariness: From Post-Structuralism to Systems Theory Literariness and the Crisis of Literary Theory When a literary theorist -- in this case someone guided by Jakobson's phenomenological imperative, encoded into the modern, formalist tradition, that the object of literary scholarship be "literariness" and not just anything that is historically, biographically, socially, or psychologically related to literature (Jakobson 1921, 11) -- tries to find out what the "essence" of literature may be, what discriminates texts deemed literary from other forms of communication, or, rather, what exactly changes their status into works of verbal art, he/she does not only ask questions about the object of the inquiry. Despite the apparently dispassionate distance from the reified language which this scholar is trying to isolate from the rest of reality, by asking this question the theoretical observer is also seeking an excuse for limiting the territory in which it is possible to utilize legitimately explanatory concepts, tools, and plans. Therefore, posing the question about literariness is indirectly and implicitly aimed also towards the observer as a representative of the discursive field which has well defined and institutionally inherited cultural functions. Literary theory developed and institutionalized as late as the twentieth century, originating in the tradition of ancient poetics and rhetoric (see Ocvirk 6-12; Glaser 15-23; Groden and Kreiswirth <http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/>). However, since Aristotle, the two ancient disciplines used to reflect, describe, classify, and normalize the domain of communication that was either narrower or larger than what has been for approximately two hundred years considered belles-lettres and written and read for aesthetic purposes: poetics dealt mostly with poetry, which, for instance, did not include prose genres, while rhetoric cultivated and studied the skill (in the sense of ars) of any kind of public speaking, not just that inspired by artistic muses. From poetics and rhetoric, literary theory adopted series of issues and notions, e.g., t (...truncated)