The future of literary studies?

Hans U. Gumbrecht

pp. 399-416

in: Hendrik Birus (ed), Germanistik und Komparatistik, Stuttgart, Metzler, 1995

Abstract

Transforming a phrase like »the future of literary studies« into a question is by no means an unquestionable operation, for it is bound to generate new questions regarding the status of this question. Is it a ›philosophical question‹, a question which, according to a definition by Jean-Francois Lyotard², has no possible answer and which, therefore, we only ask with the intention of producing a proliferation of further questions? Or is it what one might call a ›real question‹, a question for whose solution there is a concrete (perhaps even an ›existential‹) need? For many decades now, literary critics have been handling questions regarding the future and the social functions of their disciplines as philosophical questions. As such, they have inspired some of the most intense debates in the profession, and have thus greatly contributed to keeping it alive in potentially difficult times.

Cited authors

Lyotard Jean-François