Social Theorizing through Literary Fiction. Social Aesthetics and The Man Without Qualities

Kód výsledku v IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68378068%3A_____%2F25%3A00619374" target="_blank" >RIV/68378068:_____/25:00619374 - isvavai.cz</a>

Výsledek na webu

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-46348-9_2" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-46348-9_2</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-46348-9_2" target="_blank" >10.1007/978-3-658-46348-9_2</a>

Jazyk výsledku

angličtina

Název v původním jazyce

Social Theorizing through Literary Fiction. Social Aesthetics and The Man Without Qualities

Popis výsledku v původním jazyce

I build on Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (MwQ), the „Soziologische Aesthetik” of Georg Simmel, and Arnold Berleant’s social aesthetics to propose a model for theorizing social phenomena through literary fiction. The „aesthetic totality” of literary texts comes into being through a unique reading experience in the sense of Simmel’s „relational emergence.” Unlike classical emergentism in sociology, Simmel’s non-hierarchical and non-causal approach implies that the emergent entities depend on a singular constellation of relations but also sediment into more durable forms. The aesthetic totality thus consists of the dynamic interplay between the actors’ bodies and environments as well as collective representations and cultural structures. I argue for a dialogue with literary works via literature’s own means of communication as a viable alternative to theorizing social phenomena especially when it comes to their nondiscursive, emotional, and existential dimensions. As an example, I propose a dialogue with MwQ to theorize the so-called „nondeclarative culture” that recently took by storm some of the leading Western sociological journals. Instead of positing factors of social action inside human bodies as neurocognitive science suggests, or in collective representations proposed by Durkheimian cultural sociology, Musil’s seminal novel allows us to elaborate what Simmel called Stimmung—the mood. Through its aesthetic form, MwQ channels the mood without its explicit and discursively fixed definition, thus rendering what we might call social theorizing in „happening.”

Název v anglickém jazyce

Social Theorizing through Literary Fiction. Social Aesthetics and The Man Without Qualities

Popis výsledku anglicky

I build on Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities (MwQ), the „Soziologische Aesthetik” of Georg Simmel, and Arnold Berleant’s social aesthetics to propose a model for theorizing social phenomena through literary fiction. The „aesthetic totality” of literary texts comes into being through a unique reading experience in the sense of Simmel’s „relational emergence.” Unlike classical emergentism in sociology, Simmel’s non-hierarchical and non-causal approach implies that the emergent entities depend on a singular constellation of relations but also sediment into more durable forms. The aesthetic totality thus consists of the dynamic interplay between the actors’ bodies and environments as well as collective representations and cultural structures. I argue for a dialogue with literary works via literature’s own means of communication as a viable alternative to theorizing social phenomena especially when it comes to their nondiscursive, emotional, and existential dimensions. As an example, I propose a dialogue with MwQ to theorize the so-called „nondeclarative culture” that recently took by storm some of the leading Western sociological journals. Instead of positing factors of social action inside human bodies as neurocognitive science suggests, or in collective representations proposed by Durkheimian cultural sociology, Musil’s seminal novel allows us to elaborate what Simmel called Stimmung—the mood. Through its aesthetic form, MwQ channels the mood without its explicit and discursively fixed definition, thus rendering what we might call social theorizing in „happening.”

Druh

C - Kapitola v odborné knize

CEP obor

—

OECD FORD obor

60206 - Specific literatures

Projekt

<a href="/cs/project/GM24-12400M" target="_blank" >GM24-12400M: Přehodnocení sociologie literatury: K epistemologické symetrii ve zkoumání vztahu literatury a společnosti</a><br>

Návaznosti

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Rok uplatnění

2025

Kód důvěrnosti údajů

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Název knihy nebo sborníku

Zwischen Wirklichkeits-und Möglichkeitssinn: Robert Musil literatursoziologisch betrachtet

ISBN

978-3-658-46347-2

Počet stran výsledku

25

Strana od-do

23-47

Počet stran knihy

216

Název nakladatele

Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

Místo vydání

Wiesbaden

Kód UT WoS kapitoly

—