Procedures of Resistance : Contents, Positions and the 'Doings' of Literary Theory

This volume explores the state of literary theory today, decades after the repeatedly proclaimed end of theory. It builds on the idea that theory is historically constituted as it is “always becoming something else” as Leslie Fiedler claimed in the 1950s, arguing that the historical constitution of theory relies on theory’s procedural nature. In order to assess theory’s procedural challenge to the fundamental notions that all the disciplines within an episteme have brought to the fore, it addresses these questions: What are the procedures theory has relied on? Are they a secret to its resistance, or is resistance its primary procedure? And if so, a resistance to what? Secondly, if resistance were theory’s principal vehicle, at which point does resistance, conceptualized only procedurally (as resisting something, questioning anything, criticizing whatever), display hallmarks of a disciplinary closure that must call for new resistances, and perhapsfor a fundamentally another kind? The book turns to what theory does in order to avoid a partial answer to what theory is. About This Book Contents Notes on Contributors 1 Introduction Bibliography Part I Synecdochic Procedures 2 Analytical vs. Synthetic Theories in 1920s Russia Some General Notes on Analytical vs. Synthetic Theories The FFS vs. Formalism—General Points of Criticism: Against Reductionism and the Avant-Garde Art Philosophy vs. Literary Scholarship (Criticism), Aesthetics vs. Poetics Poetics vs. Noetics Synthetic Unit(ie)s and Structure “Internal Form” vs. “External Form”: A Rehabilitation of Pictoriality Aesthetics of Experience vs. Sensation (perezhivanie vs. oshchushchenie) Personalität der FFS vs. persona non grata des Formalismus Invitation to a (Delayed) Reception Bibliography 3 The Leopard in the Temple: Svetozar Petrović and the Zagreb School Bibliography 4 An Analysis of Cultural Icons: A Synecdochic Procedure Discourses Relating to the Cultural Icon of the Bronze Horseman Monument The Mythopoetic Discourse The Biblical Discourse The Elegiac Discourse Conclusion Bibliography 5 The Points of No Return: The Avant-Garde and the Institutional Crisis Normativisation: Historisation as Production of Classics Cracks in Narrating National Literary Histories Bibliography Part II Procedures of Accountability 6 Inter-esse: Narrative, Theory, and the Stakes of Literature Bibliography 7 Studying Literary Multilingualism, Revisiting National Philology: Post-Imperial East-Central European Literature as a Testing Ground Introduction Studying Multilingual Literature, Revisiting Philology World Literature and Literary Multilingualism: The Multilingual Local and the Translation Zone Translatio Imperii: Creating Language Difference and Zones of Indetermination in (Post-) Imperial East-Central Europe Translatio Imperii: Multilingual Modernity in Miroslav Krleža’s Post-Imperial Fiction Conclusion Bibliography 8 The Rhetoric of the Unsayable Bibliography 9 Reading the Cultural Trauma: Újvidék Raid Whose Cultural Trauma Is This? The Quicksand of Memory From Cultural Trauma to Transnational Memory Conclusion Bibliography Part III Procedures of Materialism 10 The Economies of Theory and Resistance Bibliography 11 Procedures of Synthesis: Mannheim’s and Lukács’ Third Ways The Struggle for a Synthesis: Epistemology The Struggle for a Synthesis: Politics Bibliography 12 On the Heuristic Validity of Aesthetics: Economy, Media and Power in Arkadij and Boris Strugatskijs’ Monday Begins on Saturday (1965) Resistance and Aesthetics in Critical Theory, Deconstruction and Media Theory Adorno’s Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory Jacques Derrida’s Aesthetic Textual Practices of Deconstruction Marshall McLuhan: The Aesthetic Artefact as a “Fait Medial” and the Sustainability of All Theory Television and the End of Soviet Culture “Fairytales Become Reality”: (Radiophone) Word Magic and Science Magic Kopeks and the Transfer Roubles of the Soviet Planned Economy (Soviet) Consumerism and Television The Strugackijs’ “Universal Consumer” and Deleuze’s/Guattari’s “Desiring-machines” Bibliography 13 Justice and Guilt: Death and the Dervish by Meša Selimović Bibliography Part IV Mastering Procedures 14 Is Literary Theory Possible? Interpreting Crisis, Mastering Procedures Bibliography 15 Literature’s Theories Literary Umpires Henry James: Kinds as Theory Honoré de Balzac: Dotted Bodies From Theory to Paradox Bibliography 16 Literary Theory and the Return of the Lyric Bibliography Part V Resisting Procedures 17 On Halt! “Up in the Gallery” by Franz Kafka Intervening Preliminary Reflections A Scene of Power and Resistance Das Halt Der Halt Halting the Halt! Coda: Hal(l)t! Bibliography 18 Writing the Theoria: Genre occidental, Jean-Luc Nancy and Pascal Quignard, a Footnote to Plato’s Seventh Letter, 344c Bibliography 19 The Stereoscopic Effects of Theory: Procedures of Contingency or Contingencies of Procedure? Notes on the Relationship Between Speculative Realism and Aleatory Materialism A Speculative (Pseudo)-Problem: The (In)compatibility of Stability and Contingency (Non-)Superstitious Miracles: (In)congruencies of Causal and Non-causal Explanation(s) of the World Aleatory Materialism: Incongruent Compatibility of Stability and Contingency Bibliography Index