Aukje van Rooden
Utrecht University, Netherlands
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Published in: Current Issues in European Cultural Studies; June 15-17; Norrköping; Sweden 2011
Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 62:46, p. 453-458
Published: 2011-11-22
ISBN: 978-91-7519-993-1
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
One of the main reasons for embedding literary studies within the broader field of Cultural Studies was the wish for contextualization. A growing awareness of social; political; and cultural power structures at play in literary texts and their interpretation urged scholars to investigate the literary text in relation to its context instead of conceiving it as an independent; isolated entity. However; in attempting to contextualize literary texts one runs the risk of artificially maintaining binary oppositions like text/context; autonomous/heteronomous; internal/external. Drawing on the notion ‘relational aesthetics’ coined by Nicolas Bourriaud; I would like to investigate the possibility of understanding the literary work not in relation to its contextual factors; but as being itself a relational space.
