Ver um texto como literário: uma abordagem wittgensteiniana sobre aspectualidade e significação do conceito de literatura

Abstract

This work investigates, in the light of the notions of noticing an aspect and its correlatives (seeing-as and representation), found in Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy, in what sense the phenomenon of seeing a text as literary - that is, noticing the literary aspect of the textual ensemble - can clarify the ways we mean the concept of literature. We intend to show that the meaning of this concept, when viewed in Wittgensteinian terms, derives not from mere intrinsic qualities of the literary text, but from possible attitudes that one adopts towards it in specific circumstances of interactions between author, reader, intentions etc. Such attitudes reveal an openness to diverse possible uses of the concept, anchored in our way of life and, therefore, far from an essentialist perspective. The research is divided into three parts. In the first, we briefly highlight, as a starting point, the distrust of some authors in the contemporary philosophy of literature regarding the possibility of defining literary art precisely. In the next section we outline a general exposition of Wittgenstein's philosophical method as developed in the Philosophical Investigations, which is done with the support of Arley Moreno's comments on the mentioned work. The last part, in turn, has the purpose of applying the described method to the central question. It is suggested that, if there are several ways to read a literary text, not all of them literary, one way to interpret the phenomenon of literary apprehension is through the movement of noticing an aspect, according to which, from a specific attitude in front of the text, its literary aspect is captured, and thus it comes to be seen - and consequently read - as literature. What we see here is the breakdown of the essentialist Image according to which the concept literature represents an entity or set of entities endowed with intrinsic qualities immediately given to apprehension and arranged in a definition. By dissolving this vision, demonstrating other possible uses for the concept under analysis, the scope of its meaning is broadened, and its aspectuality is effectively verified. Finally, as an example of this opening, we present Peter Lamarque's conception of literary art as practice, reinforcing the hypothesis that literature is an aspectual concept.