The glass bead game: Matei Calinescu and the secret life of concepts
The glass bead game: Matei Calinescu and the secret life of concepts

Summary/Abstract: This paper looks at Matei Calinescu’s theoretical output, with a view to identifying a common denominator: his keen interest in conceptual tools as hypothetical constructs, as well as in their self-reflective potential. The ways in which Calinescu defines and uses the concepts of modernity, postmodernity and rereading pertain to an area which is always of key importance in intellectual discourses: the relationship between trans-historic, systematic conceptualization, on the one hand, and historical experience on the other. As well as the nominalist appeal of the author, his work also betrays his concern with the pressures exerted on art by various historical contexts. Specifically, the Romanian-born theorist boldly asserts that our aesthetic postulates and hypotheses are strongly shaped by the particular intellectual discourse of a specific era rather than by the particular creative strategies of that time.

• Details
• Contents