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.Modern poetry destroys, he claims, the functional nature of language (Barthes,1984a:39), retaining only the outward shape of relationships, their music, but nottheir reality (Barthes, 1984a:39).Now, this last proposition points towards a viewof language that we can also find in the writings of the French philosopher PaulRicoeur.Ricoeur (1983) distinguishes between separate functions of language andhere he follows the poetics of Roman Jakobson and Jan Mukarovsky (see, forexample, Jakobson, 1987c and Mukarovsky, 1978; see also, for example, Titunik,1986:189 and Galan, 1985:29)17 that is, he makes distinctions within language.The two functions in language that he contrasts are, on the one hand the poeticfunction and, on the other the referential function.The fundamental difference betweenthe two is, then, that in the poetic function a centripetal movement of languagetowards itself takes the place of the centrifugal movement of the referential function(Ricoeur, 1983:186).When functioning poetically, language glorifies itself in theplay of sound and sense (Ricoeur, 1983: 186, italics mine) or, in other words, inpoetry the sign refers to itself, whereas in its referential function language refersto something outside itself, to the reality poetry in its modern shape has lost accordingto Barthes.And Northrop Frye (1973:73f) makes the same point.One can also notice that this referring back to itself is a fundamental elementin Russian Formalism s and especially Viktor Shklovsky s18 concept of defamiliarizationand hence literariness (Shklovsky, 1986),19 which makes possible or so they claimto distinguish between literary texts on the one hand, and referential on theother, where literariness is accomplished by the device of defamiliarization.Akey characteristic of the literary text is its capacity to make strange todefamiliarize to dislocate our habitual perceptions of the real world so as tomake it the object of a renewed attentiveness (Bennett, 1986:20); the real world is presented as if it were seen for the first time (Erlich, 1981:76).Defamiliarizationworks in two directions, towards the making strange of both language (which thus draws attention to itself ) and the world: The technique of art is to make objects unfamiliar , to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length ofperception (Shklovsky, 1986:55, 61), i.e., even if in a literary text such as the novelor short story one finds the presence of non-literary discourse(s), this does notmake the text any less literary; this presence is not something lying outside theliterariness of the text; it is not something that makes the text less of a novel;rather, it contributes, or could at least be argued to do so, through the defamiliarizingdevice, to the text s literariness, giving it a specific flavour or quality that heightensthis literariness, no shadow falling upon it because of the defamiliarizing effect20(it is easy to imagine, however, how strange elements (jokes, poems, or whatever) Language and criticism 45work in the opposite direction in the scientific text, resulting not in a reinforcementof the text s scientificness but rather towards a descientification ).The function of ordinary, prose language or, as Bennett says, the non-literary functionof recognition (Bennett, 1986:130), on the other hand, is automatic perception of thealready familiar (Shklovsky, 1986:55).If Shklovsky s analysis is accurate, defamiliarizationmay thus make it possible to distinguish between literary and scientific texts.Now, accepting Russian Formalism s line of thought on this particular point,one could suggest that the effect of the pure scientific text (if such a thing isimaginable) would be instead to familiarize the unfamiliar.I would like to argueinstead, however, that in most cases21 almost the opposite is the case, i.e.that thescientific text is characterized by both a defamiliarization and a refamiliarization, inso far as it makes strange the familiar, the common sense appropriation of theworld with the help of its characteristic conceptual apparatus but then by supersedingthe now defamiliarized with its own picture of the world refamiliarizes it.Anilluminating example of why and how could be Marx s condensed presentationof the method of political economy in the Grundrisse::When we consider a given country politico-economically, we begin with itspopulation, its distribution among classes, town, country, the coast, the differentbranches of production, export and import, annual production andconsumption, commodity prices, etc.It seems to be correct to begin withthe real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to begin, ineconomics, with for example the population, which is the foundation andthe subject of the entire social act of production.However, on closerexamination this proves false.The population is an abstraction if I leaveout, for example, the classes of which it is composed.The classes in turnare an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which theyrest.E.g.wage labour, capital, etc.These latter in turn presuppose exchange,division of labour, prices, etc.For example, capital is nothing without wagelabour, without value, money, price, etc.Thus, if I were to begin with thepopulation, this would be a chaotic conception of the whole.(Marx, 1973:100 8)So, even in this case something like Shklovsky s and the Russian Formalists sdefamiliarization takes place where the effect is put in motion by the presenceof scientific concepts which makes us experience a disturbing effect (Ingarden,1973b:164), the scientific text becoming almost by definition, if we stick to theFormalist conception, literary since the quality of literariness is defined as a resultof the defamiliarizing process in the text (cf.Jakobson, 1973:62, 69f).Thus, itdoes not seem that one should be able to argue that literariness is a distinguishingmark between literary and theoretical texts.The ultimate position, not among separatists since he denies the possibilityof making a distinction between languages, seems to be occupied by Jacques Derrida,whose view(s) on language is not always already or easily accessible, and to which 46 The reading of theoretical textswill be paid some attention below
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