Rediscutarea conceptului de valoare în contexte teoretice actuale
Debates on Literary Value in Contemporary Theory

Summary/Abstract: Recent reflections on the return of the aesthetics (Michael Bérubé, Vincent Jouve) have triggered debates in French and American cultural contexts on the need to re-evaluate the literary according to a set of contingent criteria. The paper investigates the impact of these theoretical debates on literary studies in the post-2000 period, by questioning the concept of value in the field of postcolonial studies (concerned with the relation between high and low culture), new reception theories (preoccupied with the revival of the „aesthetic emotion”) and the ideology of literature. On the one hand, the article Debates on Literary Value in Contemporary Theory shows that postcolonial studies have never ceased to functionalize value principles. Recent American theorists (Martha Nussbaum, Rita Felski) have maintained the utility of the literary work by redefining the readersʼ interaction with the literary work. The concepts of self-identification or self-problematization become central in the postcolonial axiology. On the other hand, French theorists openly state the conjunction of aesthetics with other disciplines like sociology or cognitive psychology (Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Yves Citton). The paper holds that the extension of the notion of „aesthetic experience” (Marielle Macé) over domains of experience unacknowledged by the tradition of literary studies („democratic experience” or ,,cognitive experience”) is part of the same attempt to redefine literary value on new theoretical grounds.

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