Exploring New Avenues Beyond Literary Historicism: A Cross-Temporal and Cross-Cultural Dialogue Between American Posthistoricism and Slavic Literary Theory
Sayantan Pahari
National Institute of Technology Durgapur, IndiaSayantan Pahari is a University Grants Commission doctoral research fellow at the National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India. His research interests include the theory of canon formation, reception studies, spatiotemporality studies, postcritique, the history of literary theory, and the philosophy of literature. Presently, he is working on the Slavic blind spot in various Anglophone literary-theoretical paradigms—a project that could draw increased scholarly attention to Central and East European epistemologies of literature that have been relegated to the margins of academic literary studies. His research efforts are directed toward rejuvenating pedagogical and scholarly practices in literary and cultural studies departments, where critique and its methods are becoming increasingly cliched.
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6242-1577
Arindam Modak
National Institute of Technology Durgapur, IndiaDr Arindam Modak is an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India. He specializes in both classical and contemporary literary theory, with particular emphasis on Anglophone literary-critical practice. His doctoral thesis is a critical reexamination of John Crowe Ransom's theory of literature. Dr. Modak regularly presents papers at national and international conferences and has published several scholarly articles in peer-reviewed and Scopus-indexed journals across the world.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1650-5364
Abstract
This study works toward filling the Slavic blind spot in American literary posthistoricist discourse. Drawing upon Rita Felski’s onslaught on historicist contextualism, Russell Berman’s refutation of periodization in literary studies, and Wai Chee Dimock’s manifesto for a diachronic (post)historicism, it argues that these paradigms have shown a high degree of territorial confinement and would do better to engage with Slavic theories on literature. Given the centrality of the act of reception in posthistoricist perspectives on literature, the article posits the reception-oriented theories of the Prague School of Literary Studies and the Polish School of Literary Communication as the representative Slavic voices for symbiotic transactions with American posthistoricism(s). The resonant interactions the study orchestrates between these literary-theoretical paradigms across a spatial and temporal chasm pave the way for an amplified riposte to the hegemony of various historicizing tendencies in contemporary literary scholarship. The article does not limit itself to the mere refutation of literary historicism but also outlines a few posthistoricist directions that future literary/cultural scholarship could take. These alternatives, pivoting around the figure of the lay reader, could lead to the proliferation of studies on the history of reading and the dynamics of canon formation while questioning the viability of academically mandated interpretations of literary/cultural texts driven by the historicizing imperative.
Keywords:
literary posthistoricism, postcritique, reception theory, concretization, resonance, Jan Mukařovský, Michał GłowińskiReferences
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National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India
Sayantan Pahari is a University Grants Commission doctoral research fellow at the National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India. His research interests include the theory of canon formation, reception studies, spatiotemporality studies, postcritique, the history of literary theory, and the philosophy of literature. Presently, he is working on the Slavic blind spot in various Anglophone literary-theoretical paradigms—a project that could draw increased scholarly attention to Central and East European epistemologies of literature that have been relegated to the margins of academic literary studies. His research efforts are directed toward rejuvenating pedagogical and scholarly practices in literary and cultural studies departments, where critique and its methods are becoming increasingly cliched.
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6242-1577National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India
Dr Arindam Modak is an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, India. He specializes in both classical and contemporary literary theory, with particular emphasis on Anglophone literary-critical practice. His doctoral thesis is a critical reexamination of John Crowe Ransom's theory of literature. Dr. Modak regularly presents papers at national and international conferences and has published several scholarly articles in peer-reviewed and Scopus-indexed journals across the world.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1650-5364
