Abstract
Jacques Rancière reconstructs the term "literarity" through the concept of "distribution of the sensible." By considering "literarity" as the joint of politics and literature, he defines the term as the availability of mute letters and the excess of words. The unbridled wandering of mute letters expands the space of literary expression and blurs the boundary of literature, which represents not only the democracy of literarity but also the paradox of democratic literarity. Literature suppresses the democracy of literarity by various means of self-cancellation. On the one hand, this mechanism transforms the paradox of democratic literarity into a productive contradiction of literature; on the other hand, it makes literature an irregular mode of writing under the regime of aesthetics. Literature is thus open to infinite possibilities, reconciling the normative speech of representational poetics and the mute speech of non-compliance.
First Page
161
Last Page
167
Recommended Citation
Zheng, Haiting. 2019. "Jacques Rancière on Literarity." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 39, (6): pp.161-167. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol39/iss6/8
