Affect, and the study of culture
Affect, and the study of culture

Summary/Abstract: In the 1970s, when Iwas astudent of Literary Studies—in the Netherlands called the studies of General and Comparative Literature—Roman Jakobson’s communication model provided the most important framework and mode of thinking for understanding the specificity of literature. Of course, being inter-ested in this specificity and the possibility of pursuing it, was highly modern-ist, although in culture, but not yet in scholarship, post-modernism was already flourishing. Jakobson’s model distinguished between six different functions of the sending of amessage by asender to areceiver of it. His model is analytical, instead of historical, and provided asystematic way of thinking about literary and other cultural texts. Because my interest in literature was inclined to address it by theoretical questions rather than historical questions, Jakobson’s communi-cation model made abig impression on me. And although Jakobson was first of all alinguist, instead of aliterary scholar, his model was one of the most sophisti-cated efforts to understanding the literary text in its difference from other cultural messages. And in addition, it also provided means to distinguish between differ-ent literary genres based on the dominance of other communicative functions.

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