ROBERT MUSIL'S OTHER POSTMODERNISM: ESSAYISMUS, TEXTUAL SUBJECTIVITY, AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE OF MODERNITY

• Published in: Comparative literature studies (Urbana) Vol. 44; no. 3; pp. 231 - 253
• Main Author: Freed, Mark M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: University Park The Pennsylvania State University Press 01.01.2007; Penn State University Press; Pennsylvania State University Press
• Subjects: Comparative literature; Discourse analysis; Enlightenment; Essays; Ethical epistemology; Ethics; Modern philosophy; Modernist art; Morality; Musil, Robert (1880-1942); Phenomena; Philosophers; Philosophical subject; Postmodern philosophy; Postmodernism; Reason; Subjectivity
• DOI: 10.1353/cls.2007.0057
• ISSN: 0010-4132; 1528-4212

Freed articulates Robert Musil's position within the philosophical discourse of modernity by identifying the principal features of his participation in modernity's effort to create normativity out of one's own self/moment. He explores new contexts for Musil's reception within debates about postmodernism. These new contexts provide loci at which to gauge Musil's attempts within the cultural project of modernity to create normativity out of his own moment without, however, recurring to subject-centered reason. Among other things, he discusses Musil's quest for new discursive techniques with which to engage the problem of normativity emerges most clearly in a distinction Musil makes between morality and ethics that is in turn grounded in the different modes of rationality associated with each.