The day and the not-day: On possible worlds and freedom (some foundational considerations)
Abstract
This paper is divided into 1. Possible Worlds: An Approach Reading Doležel’s Heterocosmica; 2. Freedom as a Constituent and Horizon of Possible Worlds. Agreeing with Doležel’s formulation that fictional worlds of literature are incomplete, I proceed to plead for a semiotic pragmatics within a historical epistemology and to foreground the PW’s story, while doubting the usefulness of his modalities. Inescapably, a story and its PW need to be approached syntagmatically and paradigmatically (Jakobson). Part 2 aims to give some orienting suggestions about what does freedom do for understanding PWs, and what do PWs do for understanding freedom. The PWs of “word art” include a vision of limits, a possible self-rule within them; they are clearly and openly probes; and finally they are suffused with potential power and yet radical. As all arts, they are akin to phronesis, practical wisdom that discusses right choices – that is, freedom and creativity, Whitman’s “I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not-day exhibited”.
Downloads
References
Adorno, Theodor W., Eingriffe, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 1980.
Angenot, Marc, “Dialectique et topique”, La Parole pamphlétaire, Paris, Payot, 1982: 145-233.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 2 vols., Ed. W.D. Ross, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1954.
Auerbach, Erich, “Figura”, Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (1959), Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1984: 229-37.
Carr, David, “Thought and Action in the Art of Dance”, British J of Aesthetics, 27.4 (1987): 345-357.
Doležel, Lubomír, Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Eco, Umberto, Lector in fabula, Milano, Bompiani, 1979 (somewhat different in Role of the Reader, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1979).
Haraway, Donna, “Situated Knowledge”, Feminist Studies, 14.3 (1988): 575-599.
Hesse, Mary B., Models and Analogies in Science, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1966.
Hintikka, Jaakko, “Exploring Possible Worlds”, Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts and Sciences: Proc. of the Nobel Symposium 65, Ed. S. Allén, Berlin, New York, W. de Gruyter, 1989: 52-73.
Jakobson, Roman, “Concluding Statement: Linguistics and Poetics”, Style in Language, Ed. T.A. Sebeok, Cambridge, Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1964: 350-377.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris, Gallimard, 1945.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Le visible et l’invisible, Ed. C. Lefort, Paris, Gallimard, 1988.
Peirce, Charles Sanders, Collected Papers, Eds. C. Hartshorne - P. Weiss - A. Burks, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1931-1935.
Rancière, Jacques, Aux bords du politique, Paris, Gallimard, 2004.
Rieser, Hannes, “Some Caveats with Respect to Possible Worlds”, Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts and Sciences: Proc. of the Nobel Symposium 65, Ed. S. Allén, Berlin-New York, W. de Gruyter, 1989: 137-151.
Simmel, Georg, Die Philosophie des Geldes (1900), Berlin, Suhrkamp, 1989.
Simon, Josef, “Vorwort”, Distanz im Verstehen, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 1995: 9-17.
Stalnaker, Robert C., Inquiry, Cambridge, Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1984.
Suvin, Darko, “Levels of Narrative Agents”, Theory of Poetic Form: Proceedings of the International Comparative Literature Assn. X Congress, Ed. C. Guillén, Garland, 1985, vol. II: 227–32 [rpt. in part in “Words, Shapes, and Our Common World”, Introduction to D. Suvin, Disputing the Deluge, Ed. Hugh C. O’Connell, London, Bloomsbury, 2021: 15-16].
Suvin, Darko, “Can People Be (Re)Presented in Fiction?”, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Eds. C. Nelson - L. Grossberg, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1988: 663-96 [rpt. Darko Suvin: A Life in Letters, Ed. Ph.E. Wegner, Vashon Island, Paradoxa, 2011: 53-72].
Suvin, Darko, “The Chronotope, Possible Worlds, and Narrativity”, Fiction – Narratologie – Texte – Genre: Proceedings of the ICLA XI Congress, Ed. J. Bessière, 2 vols., New York, P. Lang, 1989, vol. II: 3341.
Suvin, Darko, “Revelation vs. Conflict: A Lesson from Nô Plays for a Comparative Dramaturgy”, Theatre J, 46.4 (1994): 52338.
Suvin, Darko, “15 Theses about Communism and Yugoslavia, or The Two-Headed Janus of Emancipation through the State”, Critical Q, 57. 2 (2015): 90-110.
Suvin, Darko, “Parables and Uses of a Stumbling Stone”, Arcadia, 5.2 (2017): 271-300.
Suvin, Darko, “Using Negativities”, Communism, poetry: communicating vessels (Insubordinate writings, 1999-2018), Toronto, Chicago, Political Animal Press, 2020: 227-243.
Suvin, Darko, “On Fake (Death-dealing) vs. True (Life-affirming) Novums”, MediAzioni, 30 (2021): D31-D40.
Suvin, Darko, “Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four Today: Genius and Tunnel Vision”, Disputing the Deluge, Ed. Hugh C. O’Connell, London, Bloomsbury, 2021: 261-288.
Suvin, Darko, “A Little Liberatory Introduction to Talking About Knowledge”, Historical materialism 7 January (2022), https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/blog/little-liberatory-introduction-to-talking-about-knowledge
Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs, Paris, F. Maspero, 1982.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophische Untersuchungen. Werkausg. Bd. 1., Berlin, Suhrkamp, 1988.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
