Heterologie

Abstract

Early modern subjectivity has been analysed under the competing rubrics of (a) autonomy and the emancipation of the individual (Burckhardt, Dilthey) as well as (b) heteronomy and self-fashioning within the limits of contextuality and discursive economy (e.g. Greenblatt). In view of the reductionist tendencies of both these models, a change of perspective is suggested. The concept of >heterology< offers an alternative mode of dealing with certain aspects of subjectivity which the familiar paradigms systematically neglect. Heterology focusses on the ways the self relates to alterity — with emphases varying from otherness in a weak sense to radical transcendence —, insisting that it cannot in fact be understood outside this relationship. In combination with the rhetoric of copia, heterology provides an analytic orientation which permits not only rereadings of central texts by Montaigne and Descartes, but above all shows the achievement of literature as a medium for the constitution of early modern subjectivity. An interpretation of George Herbert’s The Collar finally demonstrates the superior possibilities of poetic language in mapping out the problem of the self beyond the current clichés.