SELF-WRITING IN THE DIMENSION OF EVERYDAY LIFE: DYNAMICS, CHALLENGES, PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

The article presents a study of the everyday life discourse in writing about the Self of a fictional subject. It seems obvious that involvement of self-writing in everyday practice calls into question the power of self-writing in the context of everyday life for the self-knowledge of the individual. The purpose of this scientific research is to debunk this illusion and explain the connection between the everyday life and self-writing. It transforms the practice of incorporating one’s own «I» in writing into the dimension of constructing the subject’s identity. There are no works on this topic in modern literary criticism and this fact also indicates the relevance and novelty of the research that is unfolding in the following article. Nowadays, the history of everyday life is booming. It is evidenced by a whole array of scientific papers on this issue. The study of self-writing in the dimension of everyday life appeals to the semiotic approach of Y.M. Lotman and G. Knabe for the analysis of the sign-symbolic nature of everyday life, to the sociological studies of A. Schutz, P. Berger and T. Lukman to identify the ways of constructing everyday life as reality or as a «life world», to the works of V.D.Leleko in the field of aesthetics and culturology of everyday life. The works of the philosophical and anthropological school serve the basis for the research. Particular attention is given to the text-letter of the Enlightenment. The protagonists of the Enlightenment Age invest the issues of everyday life in the work of writing that is a daily practice in the XVIII century. Due to its characteristics, the sphere of everyday life is a measure of self-knowledge and self-affirmation of the individual that was first artistically embodied by enlightened characters. The study shows that everyday life asa strong ground for self-affirmation of the subject was discovered with the help of the personal writing in the novel of the XVIII century, but this discovery became a lost testament to the text-writing of the Enlightenment. Changing the picture of everyday life under the influence of new technologies does not interfere with the text-writing. In the dynamic picture of everyday life offered to us by the 21st century, writing about the Self of a fictional subject opens up new facets of the power of everyday life discourse for the anthropological laboratory of literature. The study is illustrated by thesuch texts as: «Robinson Crusoe» by D.Defoe, «Nun» by D. Diderot, «Memoirs of two young wives» by O. de Balzac, «Poison of Love» by E.-E. Schmitt, «Self-portrait of the radiator» by K. Boben.