From"Constitutive"to"Generative":The Paradigmatic Value of Literature's Turn to"Sociality"
Hillis Miller's"the death of literature"has triggered an academic discussion in the domestic academic circles,and the general trust in"literariness"and the legitimacy of literature are the main reasons hidden behind this controversy.However,"literariness"is an ambiguous empirical concept,which cannot prove literature exists legitimately.We should break the inevitable connection between literature and"literariness",and focus on the"sociality"of literature.However,the tradi-tional sociology of literature,which emphasizes on"social content",is unable to explain the new changes of literature in the present age.Understanding"society"in the sense of the turn,"society"should be what Latour calls a fluid,heterogeneous,pluralistic,and non-essential network of actors,which is not only the source of literary content,but also the structure that reveals how literature ex-presses itself in such a way;it is both the result and the revelation of literary production.Literature's comprehensive turn to society means that literary criticism and theoretical research have also changed from constructive to generative.In the future,literature would be performative rather than referential,occurrent rather than ontological,and relational rather than eternal.
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