Fiction and Imagination (The Boundary of Literary Anthropology)

Author: (German) Wolfgang Iser, translated by Chen Dingjia, Wang Zhenglong, et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-02-01
Features: In the 1970s and 1980s, Iser was a prominent figure in reception aesthetics. After the 1990s, he shifted his focus to literary anthropology. Although we cannot yet conclude whether Iser's literary anthropology can recreate the significant impact his reception aesthetics once had on literary studies, it is certain that its theoretical impact on literary theory has been even greater. This interview, centered on fiction and imagination, discusses the main topics of literary anthropology, such as performance, performativity, transgression, alterity, heterogeneity, and the hidden other, among others. These discussions will lead us to re-examine the legitimacy of literary theory based on Cartesian epistemology, which relies on the dualism of subject and object, and may inspire us to "perform" our own existence in the philosophical sense of ontology. In recent decades, tremendous changes have occurred. In this regard, it shares the same fate as philosophy, as we see philosophy has also undergone such profound transformations. It is enough to simply compare the philosophical context of half a century ago with that of today to realize how immense and profound these changes are. Fifty years ago, Western philosophy could still be divided into different cultural and political empires. Geographically, Germany, France, and the Anglo-American world dominated, while from other perspectives, there were purely academic, radical Marxist, and so on. This book marks a theoretical climax that the author triggered after reception aesthetics, serving as a model for the "cultural turn" in contemporary Western and European criticism. The book aims to answer, from an anthropological perspective, why we need literature. Wolfgang Iser, the author, is a German aesthetician and an important representative of the Konstanz School of reception aesthetics.