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15 results in The Limits of Expression

  • 4 - After Structural Essentialism What?

  • Patricia Kolaiti
  • Book:
    The Limits of Expression
    Published online:
    11 January 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019, pp 46-56

  • Summary

    Is it still possible in the post-structuralist era to talk about a distinct essence of literature? This chapter radically reassesses the theoretical implications of the collapse of structural essentialism for the ontology of literature and art, treats the widespread equation between literature and literary language as merely a reductionist structuralist assumption and argues that the essential distinctness of literature/art should still be treated as an open question. It goes on to trace the implications of this theoretical assumption for linguistic pessimism: the reasons behind the literary individual’s discontent with language go far beyond the pervasiveness of the phenomenal in human experience, and are rather linked to the nature of literature as a distinct output of human cognition. Questions about the essential distinctness of literature, on the one hand, and the literary individual’s discontent with language, on the other, seem to stand in an interesting feedback relationship: if literature had a distinct essence, this might help explain why linguistic pessimism is more intensely experienced by the literary mentality, while at the same time the fact that linguistic pessimism is more widespread among literary individuals provides some ground for exploring anew the possibility that literature is an essentially distinct object.

  • 3 - The Curse of the Phenomenal

  • Patricia Kolaiti
  • Book:
    The Limits of Expression
    Published online:
    11 January 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019, pp 28-45

  • Summary

    In constant dialogue with philosophy of mind, cognitive science and recent theoretical developments in lexical pragmatics, Chapter 3 turns again to the mind, this time to explore the significant role of perceptual or, more generally, phenomenal – as opposed to conceptual – representations in the human mental tapestry. The expressive difficulties that seem inextricably bound up with phenomenal representations, and the gap in expressiveness between what philosophy of mind has described as ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ representational systems, force us to acknowledge that linguistic pessimism is to some extent justified, and to accept the relative ineffability of at least some of the contents of the mind. Linking the discontent with language of the modernist literary mentality to the ineffability of phenomenal states, this chapter argues that the challenges phenomenal experience poses for our communicative abilities are more pervasive than is sometimes thought, and reach well beyond the limited range of those expressions tightly associated with emotion and perception.

  • 2 - Language, World and Mind

  • Patricia Kolaiti
  • Book:
    The Limits of Expression
    Published online:
    11 January 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019, pp 14-27

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 focuses on how major twentieth century developments such as the move from World to Mind, the emergence of so-called ‘cognitivist’, ‘mind-internal’ or ‘psychologistic’ accounts and the subsequent move from semiotic codes to pragmatic inference may radically alter perspectives on human linguistic communication and the interplay between literature, language and mind. Among other things, this chapter reassesses the theoretical and epistemological legacy of behaviourism, semiotics and postmodernism for literary criticism and the arts, contrasts the semiotic presuppositions of much literary theory with Chomsky’s work as well as recent work in pragmatics, and defends the view that linguistic pessimism can be seen as a backward effect of semiotic, postmodernist and behaviourist theoretical models on the way literary individuals evaluate introspective data.

  • 5 - Literature as Artefact versus Literature as a Cognitive Object

  • Patricia Kolaiti
  • Book:
    The Limits of Expression
    Published online:
    11 January 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019, pp 57-75

  • Summary

    Chapter 5 points in the direction of a novel cognitive, or mentalistic, or producer-oriented account of literature and art that puts the artist/producer at the centre of attention and argues against the binary oppositions between artefact-oriented and receiver-oriented accounts. A producer-oriented approach to literature and art shifts attention away from the artifactual properties of the literary text and its linguistic make-up and allocates it to literature as a case of human agency, introducing a theoretically necessary distinction between literature as an inter-individual and an intra-individual occurrence. This approach sheds new light on a diverse range of literary and art-theoretical issues including much of the literary individual’s discontent with language: it reinstates the issue of linguistic pessimism in a different form, as one that does not necessarily entail the inadequacy of human natural language as a communicative medium, but raises questions about the possible distinctness of literature/art as an action-process, or the distinctness of the literary/artistic mind itself. The chapter advocates this mentalistic – and quintessentially ‘internalist’– view of literature and art in its strongest possible construal, suggesting that there might be uniquely literary/artistic cognitive features or processes that may also amount to special evolutionary adaptations of a certain kind.

  • 6 - Literature as Meaning versus Literature as Experience

  • Patricia Kolaiti
  • Book:
    The Limits of Expression
    Published online:
    11 January 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019, pp 76-94

  • Summary

    Chapter 6 attempts to put back on the theoretical table a crucial component of the literary/ art event that is widely neglected by contemporary literary study: aesthetic experience. I argue against what I call ‘interpretationalism’ – the reduction of literary study to interpretation, resulting from a tendency to treat the experiential aspect of literature and art as subordinate to, and ultimately at the service of, its conceptual content. An implicit theoretical assumption underlying interpretationalism is that artworks/ literary texts are ‘ostensive stimuli’, that is, objects ultimately designed to achieve effects at the conceptual level by communicating such and such meanings, by being interpreted and understood. In grappling with this issue, the chapter also embarks on a valuable exploration of Relevance Theory. With aesthetic experience back in the picture, there is a good chance that much of what literary individuals refer to when they speak of the ‘inadequacy of language’ or their ‘agony of expression’ might amount to describing in impressionistic terms the symptoms of what in reality is an agony for aesthetic achievement; it is only by focusing on the latter that we might get an idea of the complex psychological and sensory states underlying linguistic pessimism.

  • 1 - The Question of Expressibility or How Far It Is Possible to Speak Our Mind

  • Patricia Kolaiti
  • Book:
    The Limits of Expression
    Published online:
    11 January 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019, pp 5-13

  • Summary

    The idea that language falls terribly short when it comes to articulating the rich and disparate contents of the human mental tapestry is not only intuitively appealing but also deeply entrenched in everyday thought. Adopting a cognitivist approach to communication, Chapter 1 takes as its starting point a divergence in views on what philosophers and linguists call ‘effability’ or ‘expressibility’: the extent to which it is possible, through the use of a public language, to make one’s thoughts available to others. While many philosophers and linguists have defended stronger or weaker forms of effability (I call this linguistic optimism), the ‘struggle of the literary individual to defeat the ineffable’ is a recurring motif in most twentieth century critical thinking (I call this linguistic pessimism). The book then uses the tensions between linguistic optimism and linguistic pessimism as a point of departure for reconsidering a wide range of interdisciplinary issues of particular interest to linguists, psychologists, literary theorists and philosophers of art and sketching a radically new view of the interplay between literature, language and mind.

  • 7 - Interdisciplinarity, Theory and the Sciences of Mind

  • Patricia Kolaiti
  • Book:
    The Limits of Expression
    Published online:
    11 January 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019, pp 95-129

  • Summary

    An underlying theme in this book is that literature/art is so characteristic an output of the human mind, that without a systematic cognitively-oriented study of both the intra-individual and inter-individual aspects of the literary/art event, it will be impossible to ever fully understand the workings of the mind itself, let alone its place in nature. In this light, Chapter 7 spells out the broader epistemological and methodological implications of the book, stressing the need for a genuinely interdisciplinary or ‘bi-directional’ relationship between theory in the humanities and scientific theory of the type produced in disciplines belonging to the empirical and cognitive paradigm, with a focus on how empirical and cognitive theories can not only influence but also be influenced by the study of literary and other art forms. I explicitly argue for a ‘naturalistic’ turn that favours the development of such genuinely interdisciplinary investigative practices in literary and art-theoretical study and looks at a range of theoretical, epistemic and methodological challenges raised by a bi-directional interdisciplinary enterprise.