Alan Pauls and 'expanded literature'

Abstract

The idea that literature has already crossed the limits of its modern constitution, having exceeded its autonomic status, and opened itself to new forms of cultural existence, like contemporary art has done, has become one of the most vigorous and suggestive critical statements within current literary studies. The continuous appearance of the term "literature in the expanded field of art" as a subject of research or describing scientific events bears witness to this new state of affairs. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an evaluation of the reach and limits of the concept of "expanded literature" when it is being used to highlight the supposed post-autonomous novelty of current literary experiments. Strategically, the argumentation focuses on a paradoxical case: the use of this concept in a celebrated essay by Alan Pauls, "El arte de vivir en arte" (2012). The paradox in this case lies in the fact that the post-autonomous image of literature appears among the layers of a thought that draws all its conceptual strength from the principles that individualize the "aesthetic regime of art" (Jacques Rancière), that is, within the horizon that the alleged literary "expansion" would come to overflow or overcome.