Virtual Communities vs. Imaginary Communities. Festivities. Reading. Chatting Cover Image
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Виртуални общности срещу въображаеми общности. Празници. Четене. Бъбрене
Virtual Communities vs. Imaginary Communities. Festivities. Reading. Chatting

Author(s): Aleksander Kiossev
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Институт за литература - БАН
Keywords: communities; Iser; literary theory

Summary/Abstract: The traditional phenomenology of reading presupposes a certain forms of the so called "implicit reader". From its methodological perspective this figure is seen as separate singularity of perception, as "lonely point of view" wandering through the text (so the early books of Wolfgang Iser) . This study considers the "implicit reader" as partaking in a community - in an plural audience, which is implicit to the text, too. This rise the question about the nature, structure and function of this "fictional community" as well as about its relation to others communities - real or imagined. As a kind of short "historical" detour the second part presents a Bulgarian debate which in the middle of the 80-ies followed some ideas of W. Iser There were two confronting positions about the nature of this "implicit audience" in the works of B.Bogdanov and Al. Kiossev. The first one considers the reading act as symbolic operation restoring the unity and universality of the world, similar to the mythological and religious festivities. This operation, so Bogdanov, poses the reading individium in a community consisting from equal and universal individuals - in a immagined communitas. The second position considers the reading act as a field of competing strategies and thus it see the implicit audience not so monolitic. It posed it in the tension between two limits - the universal communitas and the anonimous conventionality/ plurality of the typical reader's role. In the next part the analysis goes further, re-considereing and revising all three positions mentioned. The methodological tool for this revision is the insight of Benedict Anderson's book The Imagined Communites. Anderson investigates the role and structure of the fictional reader's community, created in the great national novels during the late XVIII and XIX century. He demonstrates that these forms of fictional literary communication are necessary categories of the modern (national) solidarity and identification.

  • Issue Year: 2000
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 8-29
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: Bulgarian