Subjekt izjave kot predmet raziskovanja zgodovine književnosti

If it is true that there is not only one possible narrative about events in the past; if it is true that a text is only the discursive outcome of information put into words; if it is true that neither generalizing nor a synthetic canon exists, then what we are left with is a subject who writes texts using his/her own more or less subjected discourse. The focus of research is therefore a creative subject. Not an abstract philosophical subject, but the subject of the process of textualization, meaning that not one theoretical premise developed by literary theory since the moment it placed language at the center of research has lost any of its significance. The only difference is that the subject of literature is not oriented towards “verbal communication” (language as a means of communication affects, at most, the reader; the subject has nothing to do with it), but merely towards the constitution of his/her own word (or own discourse). Viewed from this perspective, it does not suffice to seek merely relations with “other” words when studying such a discourse (intertextuality, discourse as studied within a cultural approach), but we must also take into account the attitude of a subject towards its own, already uttered words (the genesis and constant transcending of one’s own discourse), and last but not least, the attitude towards the words that come to life during the very process of writing (the self-engendering character of a word, text analysis, surpassing mimesis precisely because of the discursive nature of the new reality into which the self-generating text is being inscribed). The transition in question is threefold, and talk about a subject (any subject, not only literary) would be impossible without it: a subject does not exist outside a language. Throughout ‘history’ the transition from reflection to the uttered or written word had its limitations and obstacles (historically it is not necessary that this threefold transition always be present), and it was invariably realized as one choice out of many that becomes anchored within the text: this choice contains the subject with an autonomous consciousness that does not produce “documents” of time and space (the death of a subject), but through its presence in the form of words adds specific dimensions of meaning to existence. Until now literary history has been an encyclopedia of organized entries, but now is the time for the “narration” about these entries that represent a unique and unrepeatable transcendence of the world given meaning. In other words, it is time for the narration about the responsible choice that is occasionally but not necessarily realized through its own language. The point at issue is not the quality of choice, but the presence of choice as such. In today's world in which the “effect of reality” (Roland Barthes) has surpassed every illusion of reality, I find it necessary to return the literary subject to the fold of ethics (every choice is actually a method by which we mark our discernible presence; there is no discernible presence outside language, and there is no ethical issue without discernible presence). After all, literature is an entirely optional human activity, and equally optional is the question of the language of literature as an implicit ethical category: there are only two alternatives, which may or may not be realized. A narration about something that has been written can thus be a narration about realized (and unrealized) possibilities and about a subject who has decided to realize one such possibility.