Project Details
Description
This research focusses on what might be called nonrational textuality. By this is meant linguistic structures that escape the order of rationality, as is the case in much (modernist) poetry, but also in psychotic writing or in highly emotionally charged speech or writing (cf. hate speech). Julia Kristeva has called this nonrational textuality after the Russian formalists 'Poetic language'. Although poetry makes detours (such as metaphors), it is affective (as Jean-Jacques Rousseau already describes) more than rational discourses (such as science, philosophy or conventional narrativity). The least that can be said is that the 'truth' of a poem is different from a scientific or even philosophical truth. The ‘truth’ or eloquence of the verbiage of a tantrum differs from a carefully argued argument. In philosophy, one usually assumes the coherence of an argument, and in science, demonstrable causal relationships, which are criteria for the quality of content. In short, the requirement for thinking and textuality is to be able to give well-founded reasons (Leibniz's law of sufficient ground). In 'poetic language', other criteria seem to apply: intonation, sound, rhythm, melody, interjection, etc. Rather than the human subject getting a grip on itself through language (the Cartesian model in which the ego affirms itself), the subject loses itself in poetic language (as it does in a tantrum). What is the philosophical significance of this? How does meaning emerge outside the rational order? What does this say about affectivity? How can we study nonrationality rationally and still do justice to it? The research is not restricted to authorial study but explores the extent to which certain contemporary nonrational discourses can be approached without casting them aside as irrational. In terms of application areas, modernist art, 'psychotic' texts, but also the (hate) discourses of political populism can be considered.
Status | Not started |
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Keywords
- nonrationality
- psychosis
- poetry
- Lacan
- Kristeva
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