The Unbearable Literariness of Literature: Spectral Marxism and Metaphysical Realism in Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self

Abstract

Following his now classic studies of Hegel (Hegel and Hegel and Modern Society) the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has steadily increased his international fame as a sharp and sound observer of modern society. This has resulted in a richly varied body of work in which model philosophical essays on Herder, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein alternate with reflections on culture, politics, multi culturalism, and economics (see the two volumes of Philosophical Papers, The Malaise of Modernity, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition). Taylor may best be described as a philosopher of culture who is fascinated by the inner discord of European modernity, a subject that clearly comes to the fore in his magnum opus Sources of the Self In this impressive reconstruction of modernity, which centers on the genesis of identity and subjectivity, art and more specifically literature take up a very prominent place. As will be shown in the following essay, they somehow seem to function as a house of refuge for the philosopher, from which he analyses and exposes moments of loss of sense and loss of values. Taylor does not hesitate to critically question other approaches to culture and literature. Poststructuralism, postmodernism, and formal ism are his preferred targets: the court bench finds Breton, Marinetti, Jakobson, Foucault, Lyotard, and Derrida sitting brotherly in the dock. Such a highly normative intervention in the (meta-)literary domain cannot and should not leave literary scholars indifferent. Taylor's philosophical reading of literature (or of literary scholarship itself) should be closely examined, in order to understand how it affects literature and which preconceptions it takes as its basis. This essay, therefore, will not present any new literary-theoretical insights. At stake in the debate is a contemporary variant of Kant's Streit der Fakult?ten ( The Conflict of the Faculties), but now with philosophy and literary scholarship as the protagonists. The present debate deals with positions and with a thor ough reflection on the implications of taking up this position or that.