Summary: | The study deals with situating a literary work between general properties (laws) of literary discourse and singularity, between institution and idiom. According to Derrida, singularity cannot be achieved without participation in generality. A literary work as a singularity is not isolated – in order to be read as a singularity, it must be juxtaposed with other works, which it differs radically from. G. Deleuze paraphrases Proust saying that a writer invents a new language within a language. This other language within the previous natural and literary language, however, does not only have to function on the linguistic (stylistic) level, but also on the level of the „secondary language “, the system of literary codes and conventions. It may transcribe and transform not only the level of language in the common sense (deviated syntax) but also genre conventions (e.g. deviated crime story), literary etiquette. This language is not torn off the „old language “ (primary system), but it is created as its redesign. From the viewpoint of the „middle“ perspective of an individual literary work, the work (event) can thus become – for instance – a radical transformation of a particular genre structure. The genre norm, which is overcome by the given work, becomes a system of conventions, with regards to which this work is comprehensible: a genre is a condition of possibility of partial comprehensibility of an innovative work. Such a work is a sort of message partly encoded in a familiar language which flows into an unexpected, unknown language. A work – singularity, an event establishes a new code – idiolect. The work – event (an event as something that is unrepeatable by definition) is thus – according to Derrida – always pre-infected with a repetition structure so that it could be read at all.
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