Incompatibilities: the possibility of engagement in contemporary literary theory

Abstract

Tato prace zkouma moznost angazovanosti v literarni teorii. Hovofit 0 angazovanosti vsak predpoklada urCite zmeny ve zpusobu, jakym jsou chap any nektere tradicni pojmy literarni teorie, v teto praci reprezentovany predevsim prazskym strukturalismem a literarni hermeneutikou. Pojem "angazovanosf' oznacuje v teto praci kriticky zpusob cteni, nikoliv vsak kriticky ve smyslu "peCliveho" cteni literarniho dila, tedy kritickeho k literarnimu dilu a jeho kvalitam. Angazovany zpusob cteni zde oznacuje cteni, ktere je kriticke ke kontexmm prekracujidm ramec toho, co se oznacuje jako "dilo". Tezi prvni kapitoly - nazvane Cteni - je, ze cteni predstavuje ve sve pod state proces. Tento proces vsak neni chapan teleoIogicky, neni tedy chapan jako ukoncitelny, ale je naopak chapan jako prosty sled udalosti. K rozliSeni techto dvou moznosti chap ani cteni je rreba nejprve rozlisit dye ruzna pojeti textu literarniho dila, nebot to, jak bude nahlizeno na proces cteni, je primo zavisle na tom, jak se nahlizi na samotny text. Prvni kapitola proto na zaklade Rolanda Barthesa rozlisuje "dilo," ktere je definovano uzavrenosti a linearnosti (6mz dava zaklad tomu, aby se i cteni chapalo linearne jako aplikovani metody za uceIem dosazeni jisteho dIe), a "text", ktery je naopak definovan otevrenosti a nelinearitou. V tomto kontextu...

To relate question of literature, or art in general, to any notion of engagement represents a number of problems. Probably the first is the problem, manifested in the development of the avant-garde, that engagement no matter how openly defined would nevertheless end in a subordination of art to politics, accompanied by politics usurping the right to define what is art. As Theda Shapiro in her account of the relation between politics and avant-garde art points out, at the beginning: "Many artists tacitly and somewhat naively assumed that, since art has been revolutionary before the Revolution, avant-garde artists would intuitively understand what was now needed and respond to the new economic and social situation."l However, this did not prove to be the case. To a certain surprise, the initial belief that "The fine phrase 'free, unpolitical art' is not meant for you"2 has not lead to a natural and spontaneous co-operation of artists and politicians. Instead, the claim of art being necessarily part of politics in a very wide sense was soon seen to be seized by the increasingly bureaucratic apparatus pursuing "ideological needs of the moment,"3 only to be in the end transformed into a doctrine by the "1932 proclamation of 'socialist realism' as the only officially accepted art form."4 To relate literature to...