On the Fate and Future of Literary Theory after “the End of Literature”

The statement of “the end of literature” resulted from the prosperity of image culture has aroused people’s thinking about the fate and future of literary theory namely whether literary theories aiming at exploring the nature of literature will also come to an end ? Literary theory is a reflection on the nature of literary and literary criticism, and a “meta-critical” perspective of questioning the presuppositions of all critical practices. From the perspective of “meta-discourse”, on the one hand, we explore the nature of literature from the viewpoint of ontology which reveals the limits of the traditional way of grasping essence defined by logos, and attempts to transcend them by the phenomenological method of essential reduction, and this path of inquiry eventually leads to the functional definition of literature. Due to the inherent blind spots and limitations of the ontological field of view, we turn from ontology to existentialism and grasp the essence of literature as an existential concept. The most typical way of grasping essence from the perspective of existentialism is Wittgenstein’s concept of “family of resemblance” and this model of anti-essentialism not only avoids the dilemma between essentialism and randomness, but also breaks out of the chronic disease of hermeneutics cycle from the perspective of ontology.