Artistic Experiment as a Cognitive Strategy of the Contemporary Novel: A Case Study of Onde estas? by Sebastian Bukaczewski.” (original) (raw)
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Aesthetic Investigations, 2019
OPEN ACCESS. In which sense can literature be conceived as an experiment? What type of experiment and experience does literature offer and what type or dimension of reality is at stake in literary investigations? What are the ontological stakes of literature in its construction of another world or a second nature? In this essay, I address these questions in discussion with two authors who explicitly understand literature as experiment, namely Paul Ricoeur and Giorgio Agamben. To get a better sense of these ontological stakes of the experiment of literature, I will first turn to Ricoeur's account. Subsequently, I will offer a critical discussion of how his concept of configuration, a central notion in his theory of narrative, actually limits the sense of the literary experiment and its ontological stakes. This discussion will address the relation between the concepts of potentiality, contingency, and event. Finally, I will turn to Agamben's reading of Herman Melville's famous story Bartleby, the Scrivener to offer a different sense of both the ontological stakes of the literary experiment and the relation between these three concepts.
Power and Limits of a Picture: On the Notion of Thought Experiments in Philosophy of Literature
2019
Most philosophers, it seems, like things neat and tidy; many hold on to the ideal that we should aim at revealing the deep structures of reality by performing clean cuts that -to use Plato's oft-quoted metaphor -»carve nature at its joints.« 1 They are not likely to accept the very idea that reality might be unstructured, messy, or chaotic, nothing but a »blooming, buzzing confusion,« 2 arbitrarily composed of a vast range of phenomena of the most different kinds. According to this image, the unstructured manifold that presents itself to our senses is overwhelming only for the untrained eye of the novice -while the sage, who knows what to look for, can discern the deeper, underlying structure of reality. In order to do so, one has to have attuned oneself -or better: one's perceptual apparatus -to the relevant aspects of our environment, one has to have figured out which properties indicate or instantiate the deep, underlying structure of reality. The natural sciences, it is often suggested, provide for privileged ways to individuate the properties that should be considered salient -or »élite«properties, 3 and scientific experiments -including thought experiments -are their most powerful means to do so.
Aesthetic experiments: On the Event-Like Character and the Function of Disruptions in the Arts
Disruption in the Arts, 2018
LarsK och and TobiasN anz Aesthetic Experiments On the Event-Like Character and the Function of Disruptions in the Arts "Disruption" can be seen as anew meta-category in cultural studies dealingwith the socio-political, epistemic, and medial conditions of the constitution of images of reality and society.The studyofdisruption combines individual perspectivesfrom literaryand media studies, sociology, the history of knowledge and is intended as acontribution to the deconstruction of certain still-powerful categories, such as the distinction between highcultureand popularculture. Our goal is to demonstrate thatd isruption-as an object of scenarios that shift between factualityand fictionality,aswell as an instrument of an aesthetics of uncertainty-plays an important role in quited ifferent culturalf ields; as an organizing principle of reflexive experimental spaces,disruption makes asignificant contribution to the generation of socially relevant knowledge. Originally published in German (Koch and Nanz 2014) and translated into English by Gregory Sims.
Introduction to Art, Literature, and the Empirical Paradigm
Art, Literature, and the Empirical Paradigm (ed.), CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, III, 3, West Lafayette, Purdue University Press, 2001, http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol3/iss3/, 2001
The Aesthetic Experience of the Literary Artwork: A Matter of Form and Content?
Ever since the introduction of aesthetics in philosophy, the literary arts have posed a challenge to common notions of aesthetic experience. In this paper, I will focus on the problems that arise when a formalist approach to aesthetics is confronted with literature. My main target is Peter Kivy's ‘essay in literary aesthetics’ Once-Told Tales, in which Kivy defends formalism and concludes from this approach that literature is a non-aesthetic art form. Contrary to Kivy, I will claim that we have good reasons to consider literature an aesthetic art form and, therefore, that the literary arts naturally pose a challenge to formalism. By showing the inextricable intertwining of form and content in literary artworks, I will demonstrate that the identification of so-called aesthetic properties with purely formal properties of a literary artwork is problematic.
Breaking the Barriers between Aesthetics and Theory in Literature
Up to few decades ago, aesthetics and theory were considered as two separate disciplines in the realm of literature. More recent studies have indicated that the experience and also the study of literature are breaking these existing boundaries by revealing the common factors present in both aesthetics and theory. Several literary theorists and aestheticians have emphasized this close relation which is woven within literature itself. John Gibson, Derek Attridge and Peter Lamarque are few of the theorists who argue in favour of such a relation. They contend that the perspectives of both aesthetics, as a branch of philosophy, and theory, do not exclude each other. Furthermore, they suggest that both aesthetics and theory can be complementary to each other and combine the philosophical concern with clarity, and the creativity which pertains to theory. The aim of this paper is to show how the study of literature can break the barriers between aesthetics and theory by combining them together in several ways, suggesting possible ties within the creation and the act of reading literature, with particular reference to fictitious narratives. In this paper I shall discuss firstly how ambiguity and imagination can have the potential to effect both literary aesthetics and literary theory offering different results. Secondly I shall focus on fictitious narratives from both the aesthetical and the theoretical points of view. I intend to emphasize the manner we view and discuss literature in the process of reading it. My literary discussion will include theories proposed by the literary philosophers Attridge, Lamarque and McGregor and how these theories can be combined through particular readings, thus breaking the barriers between aesthetics and theory in literature.
Spoiler Alert! Unveiling the Plot in Thought Experiments and other Fictional Works
Argumenta Issue 11, 2020
According to a recent philosophical claim, "works of fiction are thought experiments" (Elgin 2007: 47), though there are relevant differences, as the role of spoilers shows – they can ruin a novel but improve the understanding we can gain through a thought experiment. In the present article I will analyze the role of spoilers and argue for a more differentiated perspective on the relation between literature and thought experiments. I will start with a short discussion of different perspectives on thought experiments and argue that the mental-model view and the conception of games of make-believe are most promising for developing the present analogy. Then I will assess the similarities and differences between thought experiments and other works of fiction. I will focus on the role of spoilers and, more generally, on the foretaste context, of which they are part. This context guides readers of literary works of art to draw their attention to the literary and aesthetic quality of the text. In the case of thought experiments, on the other hand, it (i) prompts them to accept the presence of fictional elements in worldly-cognitive works and (ii) draws their attention towards cognitively relevant elements of the story. A discussion of Borges' Pierre Menard in the last part will show that literary works of art become thought experiments if they are embedded in an appropriate foretaste context. Spoilers, thus, unveil that even works which – due to their length or plenty of detail – usually are not considered thought experiments, can perform similar cognitive functions.
Fiction and Thought Experiment - A Case Study
2016
no es algo sui generis, el procesamiento de la ficción será a menudo parásito de la las capacidades cognitivas que pueden reemplazarla; en la medida en que es sui generis, nada garantiza que la ficción se comporta suficientemente bien para acatar las constricciones del discurso del discurso científico y filosófico, por no hablar de los requisitos mínimos de coherencia conceptual y lógica.
Наукові праці Кам'янець-Подільського національного університету імені Івана Огієнка: Філологічні науки, 2017
The article deals with an attempt to revise contemporary methodological approaches to the problem of space and spatial structure in fiction. Despite deep elaboration of mentioned problem in the frames of semiotics, phenomenology, receptive aesthetics, it is still needed to actualize experience of analytical philosophy of personality in part of representation of reality and forming of world model. It is stressed, that shifting between physical and imagined worlds, immersion of imagined space are issues for narratological studies and studies of virtual reality. Thomas Metzinger’s observations on concept of Phenomenal Self-Model are crucial for understanding of general limitations for representing the spatial model in fine literature. First, it was stated that the so-called reality is in fact never accessible for human perception – only in adopted version of phenomenal reality; evolutionary human beings developed and improved ability to extend simulation with dreams about possible worlds – the basics of culture, fine arts and philosophy. Inevitable laws of perception (max of three spatial dimensions and one temporal, first-person perspective of human experience, ego-centeredness of world model) put their limitations upon literary rules of spatial representation. Both VR-expert F. Biocca and philosopher T. Metzinger interested in the phenomenon of attention – special mechanism of internal resource allocation, causing shifting of details, maintaining shift between the so-called physical world and imaginable world. Deictic shift theory, funded in the framework of narratology, is close in touch with some ideas of VR-theory. Some ideas of spatial limitations in literature and work of attention were demonstrated based on material of novels «Perdido Street Station» by China Miéville and «The Cult» by Lubko Deresh. Key words: Space, model, world, Self-model, attention, representation, simulation