Reading as an Affective and Discursive Event
Its Contribution to Reshaping Human Identity
Abstract
This paper deals with a twofold understanding of the notion of event. The first construal of the latter draws upon the philosophical framework of Marc Richir, in which that concept event corresponds to a process of phenomenalization occurring within a schematism that serves as a transcendental matrix for individual phenomena. It enables access to a sphere of fluctuating phenomena correlated with the non‑intentional activity of phantasia, which precedes their symbolic institution. According to Richir, the experience of reading literature can exemplify this kind of phenomenalization, one that activates interaction with human affective experience.
The second concept of event referred to in the study is derived from the thought of Paul Ricoeur, and may be characterized as a discursive one, since the latter thinker emphasizes the transcendence of the merely event‑referring dimension of discourse in favour of the meaning it conveys. In his elaborated theory of reading, Ricoeur describes the process as both active and passive: a wandering point of view on the world opened up by the text, a dynamic synthesis of sentential retentions and proten‑ tions, a bidirectional modification of the reader’s expectations and memories, a search for meaning and a struggle with its absence, and a breakdown and reconstitution of narrative coherence. Yet Ricoeur’s category of the world of the text appears to suggest a certain kind of symbolic and ontological institution. At the stage of exis‑ tential appropriation of textual proposals, these proposals are directed toward the imagination (operating intentionally), not toward fantasy (non‑intentional).
The paper examines some consequences of both views of the act of reading through the lens of two selected narratives from Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino. The aim of this final investigation consists in assessing, from the perspective of reading literature, the joint contribution of both thinkers to an event‑oriented reshaping of human identity.
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