Empirical Systems Theory Perspectives from the Viewpoint of Younger Scholars: Consistency, Openness, and Reliability

Abstract

Contemporary literary studies are characterized by methodological pluralism. The discipline no longer contains one predominant direction, but instead uses various approaches that coexist with one another. In this chaos, systems theory offers more systematic literary theory and knowledge. Although this theory does not have “redemptive” power to resolve literary studies issues and it undervalues the text, it manages to connect the moments of the literary process in a given period to a satisfactory extent. These moments are part of approaches focusing either on the text or on production and reception, but separately from one another. – The integration of moments in the literary process was clearly successful at the end of the 1970s. In his Grundriß (1980), Siegfried J. Schmidt explains literature within the context of interconnected social systems as put forward by Niklas Luhmann. Literariness is not an ontological feature of the text. It is a result of a complex integration of the text, the context bearers, and concepts of literature that develop in the social processes of canonization, socialization, and ideological orientation. A coherent systematic approach is typical of the model developed by Gebhard Rusch, which contains an extensive and open descriptive standard for the medium. It is impossible to break the transfer between the literary field and social network. Rusch divides the factors that extend into literature into cognitive, social, and ecological factors. – In order to establish a more transparent paradigm in studying literature, the author conceives of the literary system as a multilevel system. It is comprised of texts and multiple components interactively oriented towards these texts, which ascribe a literary character to texts as part of their actions, taking into account the textual parameters and concepts of literature that have developed in socialization processes and in connection with constant political, economic, and other situations. The model’s openness is clearly visible in the combination of presumably strict categories of production, distribution, and processing. In the discussion, this model is analytically broken down. This fuzzy model includes literature at the level of the socio-cultural organization of society. The literary field and network factors that participate in literary communication are no longer separated, enabling a more reliable and comprehensive approach to literary communication. – On the other hand, not even this kind of description implies the entirety of literary existence. It is clear to empirical researchers that they do not observe the literary system exclusively from the outside as well, and that they are part of this system. This is why they do not declare that only one systematic production of meaning is accurate, but are open to new suggestions.