On saying the unspeakable or from self-evidence to reflectiveness- Reflections about how literature can interrupt the self-evidence of everyday life
Abstract
The contribution investigates how texts as constructs of sense and meaning are still able to indicate something beyond the context of sense and meaning, leading to a moment of corporeal interruption. During everyday life, humans live is embedded a context of meaning and sense which appears self-evident, beyond explanation and is taken for granted.
There own foundation as the simply fact of corporeal localization and rootedness, which precede any context of sense, any being-in-the-world already structured by meaning, is usually concealed. The possibility of a rupture in this context of meaning and sense, which bears the potential to modify the everyday life in total, is linked to the corporeal confrontation with pure resistance.
The thesis of this text is that literature, for example with fables, fairy tales or Kōans, offer such moments of confrontation with pure resistance for the reader, which indicate to him*her the boarders of sense and meaning and point to what lies beyond those boarders. Thus, the lecture of theses texts leads from self-evidence and taken-for-grantedness to reflectiveness (Nachdenklichkeit).
In their performance these text can be described as attempts to say what can not be said. Last but not least, telling stories offers a therapeutical potential to be freed from the entanglement in one's own thoughts, prejudices and self-evidential opinions about why things are as they are.