Abstract
Associating autonomy with art has long been viewed with suspicion, but autonomous signifying agency may be attributed to literary discourse without lapsing into decontextualized aestheticism or neoliberal conceptions of subjectivity. Through literary practices that “move” readers in a “singular” manner, a work becomes what Rita Felski, following Bruno Latour, calls a “nonhuman actor.” Such an actor, Felski observes, “modifies a state of affairs by making a difference,” participating “in chains of events” so as to “help shape outcomes and influence events” (2015, pp. 163–64). Autonomous signifying agency within works and literary discourse more broadly enables them to become actors within what Latour terms “networks of associations” through which “the social” is constantly “reassembled.” But literary works also act as interlocutors, in the sense Levinas gives the word (1996a, pp. 2–10). Though not full-fledged ethical others, they nonetheless, as interlocutors, are sufficiently invested with the attributes and agency of ethical others to be their extensions or ambassadors. Nonhuman, interlocutory literary agency may be explored in iconic passages of ancient literature—Telemachus’ recognition that he is being visited by a god (Odyssey Book 1: ll. 319–24) and Judah’s recognition that Tamar is more “righteous” than he (Gen. 38: 26). In being authoritative but not authoritarian, literary discourse becomes a potently autonomous actor within the networks of associations in which it participates.
Highlights
Judah’s recognition that Tamar is more “righteous” than he (Gen. 38: 26)
While arguing that a literary work’s “singularity” gives it an agency unacknowledged by “instrumental” readings that treat literary texts as examples of or evidence for claims and interests “behind” the work, Derek Attridge carefully differentiates singularity from autonomy by stressing that a work’s agency is going to vary as it interacts with different contexts and circumstances (Attridge [2004] 2017, 2015)
If literary works are not exactly full-fledged ethical others, they are sufficiently invested with the attributes and agency of ethical others to be their extensions or ambassadors
Summary
Associating autonomy with art has long been viewed with suspicion. While arguing that a literary work’s “singularity” gives it an agency unacknowledged by “instrumental” readings that treat literary texts as examples of or evidence for claims and interests “behind” the work, Derek Attridge carefully differentiates singularity from autonomy by stressing that a work’s agency is going to vary as it interacts with different contexts and circumstances (Attridge [2004] 2017, 2015). Literary signification involves three aspects that may be heuristically distinguished but in practice are artfully interwoven: an eliciting of fellow feeling and imaginative sympathy predicated on somatic empathy shared by humans with other animals accompanies engagement with culturally sanctioned moral norms and an internalized moral sense associated with rational pursuit of personal and communal wellbeing, to which is added an evocation of ethical significance as enjoining one to make others’ wellbeing, apart from and at the risk of one’s own, the focus of attention and the motive of action The way these signifying aspects are entwined generates a work’s distinctive singularity, but the effect of the entwinement gives the work an internal autonomous signifying agency, as the readings here seek to sketch
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