The Singularity of Literature

Abstract

This chapter takes the form of an interview which includes a series of questions and answers in which the issues treated briefly in The Singularity of Literature are discussed more fully. These include: the distinctiveness of literature as a cultural practice; the use of the concepts invention, singularity, and otherness; the implications of regarding the literary work as an event; the nature of the experience of reading a literary work; the role of beauty, unity and truth in literary response; the notion of performance; the work of literature as cultural and political intervention; the various sources of the theory advanced here; the relevance of the arguments to literature of different periods and to different media; the ethical significance of literature; the role of politics and ideology in literary criticism. Several literary examples are discussed in dealing with these questions.

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