‘Intentionality and Unintentionality in Art’: Jan Mukařovský’s ‘Pre-Post-Structuralism’, 1940–43

0564483 - ÚČL 2023 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Matonoha, Jan
‘Intentionality and Unintentionality in Art’: Jan Mukařovský’s ‘Pre-Post-Structuralism’, 1940–43.
The Slavonic and East European Review. Roč. 100, č. 3 (2022), s. 401-421. ISSN 0037-6795. E-ISSN 2222-4327
Research Infrastructure: CLB II - 90136
Institutional support: RVO:68378068
Keywords : concept of non-intentionality * pre-post-structuralism * literary theory * literary text as a sign vs a thing * phenomenology and structuralism * Mukařovský 30 years earlier than Roland Barthes or Gilles Deleuze
OECD category: Literary theory
Impact factor: 0.3, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/427/article/875309

The paper aims to discuss Jan Mukařovský’s article “On Intentionality and Unintentionality in Art” in the context of a possible (post)post-structuralist paradigm, stressing his dichotomy of the work of art as a sign (standing for conventional or default works of art) on one hand vs his radical understanding of the work of art as a thing on the other. According to Mukařovský, the work of art as a thing stands out unpredictably when a literary text ceases to make unified sense as a communicative sign and starts to appear as an incomprehensible, silent, mute thing instead, thus radically provoking readers’ interpretative efforts. Mukařovskýʼs text was originally delivered as a talk in 1943 at a Prague Linguistic Circle session and was only published 23 years later in 1966 (and in English translation by Peter Steiner in 1977), while the notion of a fissure occurred in his manuscripts even a few years earlier. Comparing it to works by, among others, Roland Barthes and Gilles Deleuze (and discussing Mukařovskýʼs work also in the context of thinking of his student, Milan Jankovič, namely Jankovič’s work from the late 60s), the article aims to point out that Mukařovskýʼs text at hand had foreshadowed post-structuralist literary theory by almost three decades.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0336142