Abstract
The essays in Part III of this volume indicate to what extent critical theory draws on resources from beyond the realm of literary and cultural theory in the narrower sense, such as ecological thinking (Zapf), ethics (Attridge, Domsch, and Middeke), or complexity science (Walsh). While doing so, all contributions insisted on the particular cultural productivity of literature, which in turn inspires theoretical reflections. All contributions in Part III thus provide good examples for the ‘dispositional, as well as institutional, anchorage’ (Brubaker 216) of literary and cultural theory highlighted at the end of Interlude II. The medium for this particular cultural productivity of literature is, of course, the text, just as it is, albeit with different rules, the medium for the particular cultural productivity of literary and cultural theory itself. If there is a unique selling point for the expertise accumulated in the disciplines of literary and cultural studies, it should be just this: that there is a long and very sophisticated tradition of reflection on the role of texts in modern culture in terms of the features that can be described under the rubrics of philological comparison, rhetoric, form, or structure, in terms of the shapes and functions that texts can assume in different media environments (writing, print, electronic media), and in terms of the reading protocols that may be desirable (hermeneutics, hermeneutics of suspicion, deconstruction, analysis, …). The essays in Part IV illuminate various aspects of this centrality. After introductory reflections on ‘The Fate of Texts under Changing Theory’ (Grabes), the remaining contributions address the potential residing in the isomorphism of literature and theory (Alworth), the role of the mediality and materiality of texts for reading processes (Reinfandt), and the long-standing relation between form and textuality (Chaudhuri).
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Middeke, M., Reinfandt, C. (2016). Interlude III: On Interpretation. In: Middeke, M., Reinfandt, C. (eds) Theory Matters. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47428-5_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47428-5_20
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