Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Scheffer, Bernd

Titel

Change in society can arise only from cultural change: Literary studies as self-will and consensus, as essay, empiricism and application

Ist Teil von

• Poetics (Amsterdam), 1989, Vol.18 (1), p.93-111

Ort / Verlag

Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

1989

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Elsevier Journal Backfiles on ScienceDirect (DFG Nationallizenzen)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Change in society can arise only from cultural change. Literature and Literary Studies represent subsystems within a more comprehensive cultural system in which all patterns of experience and processing of reality are generated, maintained and transformed. Cultural and social transformation result from active observation, in the sense of critical and individual actions outside conventional and consensual action-patterns: through individual, independent, self-willed, through creative actions. Literature and Literary Studies should intensify this type of observation: not only must literature itself continuously propagate new possibilities of actions, but also the discourse on literature could be intensified to an essayistic activity with constant innovation. The basis of cultural change lies in the need for goal-oriented action and in the need to continuously define these goals. Literature and Literary Studies function in the context of this goal-orientation and goal-definition. Observation leads to cultural and social change when, as a result of observation, new domains and new forms of social and cultural praxis, that is, of new consensual and conventional domains, are created. To act in consensual and conventional domains describes at the same time the mode in which science operates. Literary Studies (as a cultural science) should proceed empirically and have an orientation towards practical application.