Who is speaking?
Brodsky, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and the question of genre
pp. 163-169
in: David Rudrum (ed), Literature and philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 2006Abstract
What are the parameters according to which we determine and decide on a text's genre? How does a text establish, enact, and safeguard its generic status? Do we map our generic expectations onto the text in interpreting it within a certain framework, or is it, rather, the text itself that enjoins us to read it as a certain kind of text? With these concerns in mind, I want to look at a particular instance of generic differentiation in this essay: the distinction we make between philosophy and literature. My guiding questions are as follows: How do we know that we are reading a philosophical and not a literary text? What is involved in our apprehension of a text as philosophical or as literary?
