The essay and interdiscursivity: Knowledge between singularity and sensus communis

Abstract

The disciplines increasingly organize knowledge, but according to Lukács and Adorno, the essay represents a continuing need for an intersection of disciplinary knowledge and the totality of experience. According to Foucault, the essays of Montaigne and Bacon embody the tran-sition from medieval commentary to modern science’s empiricism and criticalness. The essay does not submit to the systematics of science but persists in the singularity of the literary work. It interdiscursively confronts personal experience with various discursive fields and constructs a fragmentary, perspectival, and aesthetic mode of truth. Notwithstanding the literary singularity of the essay, which corresponds to Kant’s “aesthetic idea”, the genre also relies on the sensus communis. Since the 18th century, the essay has established itself in newspapers, where it has become susceptible to stereotypes and ideologies. The tension between singularity and (medial) common sense is also evident in contemporary Slovenian examples (Marjan Rožanc).