Theses about the Poietic Principle of Metonymy Cover Image

Teese poieetilisest metonüümsuspõhimõttest
Theses about the Poietic Principle of Metonymy

Author(s): Aare Pilv
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: SA Kultuurileht
Keywords: fictionality; figural discourse; ethics of literature; poiesis; Wittgensteinian interpretation of literature; „theory of two contexts”

Summary/Abstract: the paper discusses the relation of fictional/figural discourses to language games that are active in reality. the starting point is the „theory of two contexts” by arne merilai, based on the idea of distinguishing fictional and factual speech acts on the basis of their different contexts of truth value. It is suggested to expand it to the whole sphere of figurality. after that the paper views a Wittgensteinian theory by john Gibson regarding fiction as an archive of standards/etalons of language games and a laboratory of reshaping and creating these standards. the fictional/figural sphere can be described as the area of possibility that creates language games of reality via poiesis. then the article describes some cases where the logic of the figural sphere is brought directly into real political discourse, forcing reality to act according to the rules of art, but thus excluding the ethical freedom of our real-life language games. It means that between the figural sphere as an archive and laboratory of standards, on the one hand, and the languagegames of reality, on the other hand, there exists a certain principle of metonymy, while a violation of that principle involves a danger of losing the reconciliatory power of fictionality/figurality that (according to jaak tomberg) is a significant function of literature as a human practice. there are several possibilities of further analysis – the cases where danger can be turned into something positive, the problems and gains of art forms (certain theatre, happenings) that use techniques of intrusion into reality, or the question if such violation of the „principle of metonymy” is specifically connected with modernist avantgardism or not.

  • Issue Year: LIV/2011
  • Issue No: 10
  • Page Range: 721-733
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Estonian