Opposing deconstruction: the value aspect of the theory of artistic wholeness

Abstract

The article discusses the legacy of the literary critic M. Girshman, in particular, his book A Work of Literature. The Theory of Artistic Wholeness [Literaturnoe proizvedenie. Teoriya khudozhestvennoy tselostnosti] (2007), which argues the priority of the holistic and value-based approach to literary criticism over Postmodernist deconstruction practices. According to Girshman, the language of a literary work is an embodied and materialized aspect of aesthetic reality and beauty, incorporating the Truth and the Good. The scholar sees it as the ‘existential-semantic assumption’ of literary criticism. O. Minnullin defends Girshman’s method and challenges the ‘instrumental’ approach of ‘deconstructionist’ philologists, which he believes reduces the aesthetic space: significance in place of meaning; the discourse in place of the world; actions or simulation in place of existence; the scribe in place of the author; a construction or deconstruction in place of wholeness, etc. The article is written in response to the polemic reaction of ‘deconstructionists’ to V. Tyupa’s ‘Literary Theory Two’ As a Threat to Humanities, published in Voprosy Literatury in 2019.