Theory Matters pp 219-232 | Cite as

The Literary Work as Ethical Event

  • Derek Attridge
Chapter
First Online:

Abstract

What follows if the literary work is understood as an event rather than a material object, a set of signs, or an abstract type? The notion of the event has been important in a number of theoretical discourses from Nietzsche and Heidegger to Deleuze, Derrida, and Badiou, but in recent years it has played a particularly significant role in accounts of the domain and practice of literature. The title of Terry Eagleton’s recent book, The Event of Literature, is one indication of its prominence, although Eagleton does not get very far in its theorization, preferring the weak notion of ‘strategy’. There has also been strong opposition to the notion of the work as event; see, for instance, the debate between the present author and Peter Lamarque, one of the leading figures in the analytic tradition of philosophical aesthetics.

In this chapter author’s own work, especially in the arguments of The Singularity of Literature (Attridge, D. (2004). The singularity of literature. London/New York: Routledge), I have followed through some of the consequences of this way of understanding the ontological status of the work of art, drawing in particular on the thinking of Derrida, Levinas, and Blanchot. In this essay, he revisits those claims and offers a fuller development of them, as well as relating them to other accounts of the literary event, and defending them against the critique of philosophers such as Lamarque. In particular, the ethical implications of the eventness of literature is discussed: what is the responsibility of the reader whose activity, in this way of thinking, is what brings the work into being as literature? How does the reader’s activity relate to the author’s original creative act? What are the reader’s ethical responsibilities to the text, to its author, to the culture in which he or she is reading, to the culture in which the work was created? And how does the question of individual responsibility relate to the wider social and political function of literature?

Keywords

Literary Work Cultural Event Literary Event Literary Reading Autonomous Entity 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Bibliography

  1. Attridge, Derek. The Singularity of Literature. London/New York: Routledge, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Attridge, Derek. The Work of Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
  3. Attwell, David. J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing: Face to Face with Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
  4. Barthes, Roland. ‘From Work to Text’. Trans. Richard Howard. The Rustle of Language. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986. 56–64 (1971).Google Scholar
  5. Blanchot, Maurice. The Space of Literature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.Google Scholar
  6. Collini, Stefan. ‘Introduction: Interpretation Terminable and Interminable’. Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Ed. Stefan Collini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 1–22.Google Scholar
  7. Derrida, Jacques. ‘Signature Event Context’. Trans. Alan Bass. Margins of Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. 307–30 (1972).Google Scholar
  8. Derrida, Jacques. ‘“This Strange Institution Called Literature”: An Interview’. Acts of Literature. Ed. Derek Attridge. London/New York: Routledge, 1992. 33–75.Google Scholar
  9. Eagleton, Terry. The Event of Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
  10. Elliott, Jane, and Derek Attridge, eds. Theory After ‘Theory’. London/New York: Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
  11. Ingarden, Roman. The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation of the Borderlines of Ontology, Logic, and Theory of Language. Trans. George G. Grabowicz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
  12. Lamarque, Peter. ‘Replies to Attridge, Blackburn, Feagin, and Harcourt’. The British Journal of Aesthetics 50 (2010): 99–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Linna, Väinö. Under the North Star, 3 vols. Trans. Richard Impola. Beaverton: Aspasia Books, 2002–03.Google Scholar
  14. Macherey, Pierre. A Theory of Literary Production. Trans. Geoffrey Wall. London/New York: Routledge, 1978.Google Scholar
  15. Rorty, Richard. ‘The Pragmatist’s Progress’. Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Ed. Stefan Collini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 89–108.Google Scholar
  16. Shusterman, Richard. The Object of Literary Criticism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Derek Attridge
    • 1
  1. 1.University of YorkYorkUK

Personalised recommendations