Affiliations of Literary Studies: non-patriarchal readings of literature

• Grant number: 24/19490-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: May 13, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Piason Natali
• Grantee: Danielle Henrique Magalhães
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Throughout the Western tradition, literature has been affiliated with a patriarchal lineage guided by an Adamic principle: the act of naming for the first time. Two crucial texts attest to this affiliation: Walter Benjamin's 1916 Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen', and Viktor Shklovsky's 1917 Art as Device. These essays can be read as paradigmatic examples of founding texts of a critical reading of literature in the 20th century, determining a transmission of Literary Studies that crosses the 21st century. Whether from a Benjaminian philosophical line or a literary line of Russian formalism, what was at stake in both essays was the constitution of a metaphor for reading literature that was necessarily forged in one of the founding myths of the genesis of Western culture, Genesis. The hypothesis of this research, therefore, is that the founding myths of the West were part of the foundation of a Literary Theory in the 20th century, constituting pillars that structured a patriarchal way of transmitting literature. Not only patriarchal, but also hierarchical, since the premise of the Adamic "pure language" in Benjamin and the "first time" in Shklovsky operated as a beacon that demarcated what is or isn't literary, culminating in dichotomies and hierarchies. Thus, the aim of this research is to investigate and interrogate the patriarchal affiliation of literature in texts considered formative or fundamental to Literary Studies. In contrast to the patriarchal pillars that support them, non-patriarchal affiliations will be proposed for the transmission of literature and Literary Studies.