From Literary Communication to Literary Systems . ‘System’ and ‘Observer’: two key concepts in (future) Literary Studies Cover Image

Od literárnej komunikácie k literárnemu systému. „Systém“ a „pozorovateľ“: dva kľúčové koncepty (budúcej) literárnej vedy
From Literary Communication to Literary Systems . ‘System’ and ‘Observer’: two key concepts in (future) Literary Studies

Author(s): Siegfried J. Schmidt
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Ústav svetovej literatúry, Slovenská akadémia vied
Keywords: Literary Communication; Literary System; General Systems Theory; Observer; Niklas Luhmann; Empirical Studies of Literature; Constructivism; Deconstructivism

Summary/Abstract: General systems theory has offered various options about how to conceptualise systems. Opposing Luhmann’s narrow conception of system, I propose to combine systems- and actortheoretical approaches in order to model social systems (including literature) as nonlinear, interrelated complexes of systems where causal structures depend – among other things – upon the decision of goal-oriented subsystems, namely actors whose sociality is introduced into the system via culture. The second part of this chapter is devoted to some consequences arriving from the observer problem; e.g. the mutual construction of system and environment, the relation observer: meaning vis a vis the operational closure of cognitive systems, and a constructivist reading of the concept of the ‘empirical’.

  • Issue Year: VI/2014
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 5-21
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: Slovak
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