The Spirit and the Letter of Hegel: Irony, Recollection, Critique

Abstract

This dissertation defines, analyses, and puts into practice a theory of speculative reading as developed from the work of G. W. F. Hegel, and assesses its importance for literary theory. Hegel’s relation to literary theory is seemingly paradoxical. One the one hand, ‘theory’ often names that which has established itself against figures like Hegel and all that he ostensibly stood for: the imperium of reason, systematicity, ‘absolute idealism,’ and the end of art. And yet, this opposition notwithstanding, it is frequently claimed that literary theory cannot escape Hegel, and rests upon a number of concepts and ways of thinking that were prefigured by him. The Spirit and the Letter of Hegel seeks to complicate this debate, first by claiming that Hegel’s influence on literary theory can only be registered in the way in which the latter has made use of certain concepts or arguments as abstracted from their more dynamic presentation in Hegel’s writings. It also argues, however, that by reading Hegel ‘speculatively’—that is, by being alive to the experience of the content as it progressively (and sometimes regressively) unfolds—Hegel’s phenomenology yields a literary theory, and more specifically, a theory and practice of reading. This argument will be conducted across three main chapters and one extended concluding chapter, organised conceptually around four essential yet overlooked modalities of Hegel’s dialectic: irony, recollection, ‘the spirit and the letter’, and critique. Through close engagement with the work of Hegel and a range of his readers (from Theodor Adorno, to Gillian Rose, and Robert Brandom) these chapters explore what Hegelian speculative reading might reveal about the relationships between text and meaning, the role of the critic, and the critical work that literature itself might be capable of. In particular, it seeks to cut through current debates concerning ‘the limits of critique’ in literary studies. In recent years, the theory and practice of critique has been increasingly cast into doubt as a mode of interpretation, and questioned concerning its political and ethical efficacy. Principally, it has been accused of being overly detached and methodological, tending to diagnose the text’s disavowed symptoms at expense of the text itself. I will argue, however, that Hegel provides a model of speculative reading which is critical without succumbing to methodologism or pretensions of mastery and detachment; and one which prioritises the reading experience without succumbing to the implicit subjectivism of the so-called ‘postcritical.’