Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 13:54:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Thomas M. Orange" <tmorange-AT-bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
Subject: tynianov (was luhmann)


apologies again.  bourdieu's reference that i had in mind, in _the rules
of art_, is not to luhmann but to russian formalism and specifically juri
tynianov:
	refusing to consider anything other than the system of works,
	that is, the 'network of relationships established between
	texts'... these theoreticians are also forced to find in the
	'literary system' itself the principle of its dynamics. thus, even
	if it does not escape their notice that this 'literary system'
	(far from being a balanced and harmonious structure in the manner
	of saussurean language) is the cite, at any one time, of tensions
	between opposed literary schools, the canonized and the 
	non-canonized, and presents itself as an unstable equilibrium
	between opposed tendencies, they continue (especially tynianov)
	to believe in the immanent development of this system and, like
	michel foucault, they remain very close to the saussurean
	philosophy of history when they assert that everything which is
	literary (or, with foucault, scientific) can be determined only by
	previous states of the 'literary (or scientific) system'.
	(200-201; tr. susan emanuel)

i suspect you could in some ways extend this critique of 'literary
systems' to luhmann's more broadly conceived 'social systems'.

tom orange
tmorange-AT-bosshog.arts.uwo.ca



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