Con-Science and The Whole: Sara Lidman s Literary Philosophy
The purpose of this project is to investigate the complex relation between philosophy and literature through a study of the Swedish modernist author Sara Lidman (1923-2004). At the center of the investigation lies Lidman’s concepts ”con-science” (“sam-vettet”) and “The Whole” (Det Hela), found in her literary and non-fictional writing alike. The study aims at showing how the philosophical problematic of “con-science” deeply shapes Lidman’s authorship, and is given literary articulation through the poetics of “The Whole.” The project wants to a) demonstrate how Lidman belongs to a philosophical and literary modernist tradition that is occupied with the problem of “the ineffable,” b) compare her to other such authorships, and through the theories and methods of the ”Ordinary Language Criticism”-tradition, show how the problem of “the ineffable” sheds important light on the relation between philosophy and literature, c) contribute to the international field of ”philosophy and literature” research, as well as d) to Nordic Lidman scholarship. The project is important since there is a perceived opposition between philosophy and literature, palpable since Plato, which obscures the mutual relevance of literature and philosophy to one another. The study of Lidman will help to remedy this obscurity both on a more general level, and with specific regard to Lidman by illuminating a neglected aspect of her authorship.
Final report
1. Purpose and development of the project
The purpose of this project has been to investigate the intersection of philosophy and literature through Sara Lidman’s concepts “con-science” and “The Whole”, and hereby unearth Lidman’s previously under-investigated modernist literary philosophy, centering on “the ineffable”. Are there ineffable experiences? Can literature somehow express them? How should this ineffability be understood? In studying Lidman’s authorship through ordinary language philosophy, I have tried to answer these questions and contribute to the field of ordinary language criticism.
Initially the project focused equally on “con-science” and “The Whole” as central concepts, but as the project evolved con-science took precedence. Throughout the project, the need for philosophical development and clarity has been paramount. As the work on Lidman progressed, it did so in tandem with work on issues central to ordinary language philosophy and ordinary language criticism. This meant that the questions about the ineffable and literary interpretation gradually became focal points in their own right, and not just in Lidman’s authorship.
2. Implementation
The project has resulted in five peer-reviewed articles and one popular science article.
Two of the peer-reviewed articles are in English and three in Swedish. This is a deviation from my original plan: to publish four peer-reviewed articles in English and one in Swedish within the allocated time-span. I have, however, three English article-manuscripts about Lidman, two of which will be submitted to peer-review in May and June 2023 and one in September 2023. When I started the RJ-project I had already partially begun the work on one of my English articles (“Two Examples of Ordinary Language Criticism”, 2019). Therefore RJ is not listed as the singular financier of that article, but Birgit och Gad Rausings Stiftelse för humanistisk forskning, as well. Writing about Lidman for an English-speaking academic audience proved to be more difficult and time-consuming than I first imagined. This had to do with difficulties of translation; one aspect was that Lidman’s authorship is only exceptionally translated into English, and much of her philosophizing takes place in her play with the Swedish language; another had to do with making her philosophizing relevant and accessible for an audience who hardly knew anything about her.
Early on in the project, I realized that in order to do Lidman’s literary philosophy justice, as it develops throughout her authorship, I would need to write a monograph in Swedish. So parallel to my work on the articles ,I have been working on a book. The manuscript, with the working-title: From Conscience to Con-Science: Sara Lidman’s Literary Philsophy, is to be finished in December 2023.
Out of two planned trips to the Lidman archive in Umeå, only one was realized, partly due to the pandemic. It took place October 5–11 2020.
A plan that was cancelled, because of the pandemic, was a visit to The Wittgenstein Seminar at New School for Social Sciences in New York in March 2020. I have, however, made other international presentations of my work (see item 5 below), as well as organized two conferences at Uppsala University: Tanke, dikt, handling – Sara Lidmans litteratur och verkan i världen, Februari 6 2018, and Vardagsspråkfilosofi och skönlitteratur, October 26–28 2020.
During the project I started a Nordic network together with three colleagues: NOLC (Nordic Ordinary Language Criticism), and I have presented my work on NOLC’s online seminar. NOLC was founded in autumn 2020 and has been organizing online seminars since spring 2021.
Working on this project, I have edited an anthology about the corona pandemic together with two colleagues: Pandemiska reflektioner. Retoriska och litteraturfilosofiska undersökningar i coronas tid (eds. Löfgren, Schou Therkildsen, Rosengren, 2022). It contains one of the project’s publications (”Att tänka sig ett annat nu”, 2022). I have also co-edited a special issue of Policy Futures in Education (eds. Johannsom & Löfgren, Vol. 20, issue 3, April 2022) in which another of the project’s publications figures (“Nineteen-eighty-four, Totalitarian Lived Skepticism, and Unlearning How to Love”, published online 2021).
3. The project’s three most important results and conclusions
The three most important results are:
A. Lidman’s con-science is a philosophical-poetical concept that offers an alternative articulation of the question about the meaning of life. The “ineffability” Lidman addresses should not be viewed as a metaphysical theory of language but concerns a moral-aesthetic-existential problematic that plays itself out in our everyday lives.
B. Lidmans’s con-science offers an alternative to posthuman theorizing about human-animal relations.
C. Lidman’s con-science can be used as a theoretical tool in order to understand moral-aesthetic problems in other authorships besides her own.
Resultat A is reached predominantly in the Samlaren-article from 2019. In it, I investigate how Lidman’s development of the con-science concept should not be seen as a naïve theory about non-linguistic language, but rather seen as a lived problematic revolving around matters of community and understanding. In light of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, I suggest we view it as a re-articulation of the question about the meaning of life.
Result B is achieved in the TFL-article from 2022. There I compare Lidman’s con-science with philosopher Cora Diamond’s thinking, demonstrating how Lidman’s con-science offers an alternative to posthuman theory about human-animal relations.
Result C is exemplified in the article published in Pandemiska reflektioner from 2022, in which I use Lidman’s con-science as analytical tool to clarify how the Greek economist, activist and author Yanis Varoufakis employs aesthetic imagination in order to envision another political reality in his work Another Now (2020).
A more over-arching insight that the project has led to, is that Lidman develops from being an author of conscience (from her debut in 1953 until about the end of the Vietnam war) to becoming an author of con-science from about 1975 until the end of her life in 2004. In the monography I am working on I demonstrate in a detailed manner.
4. New research questions
During the project, questions about Lidman and legal issues has arisen. In a legal defense (in Sara Lidman, och trädet svarade, Stockholm 1988), Lidman pits law against con-science, and the only novel in which the word con-science occurs (Sara Lidman, Järnkronan, Stockholm 1985) places it in a legal context: the main character, Didrik Mårtensson, broods over con-science while imprisoned for embezzlement. Since the spring of 2022 I and Joel Samuelsson, a professor of law at Uppsala university, have been outlining a Law and Literature project. This March we applied for funding from The Swedish Research Council.
5. How research has been disseminated
Besides through publications, the research has been disseminated through research presentations and conferences (see list), and trough two popular science appearances.
On November 11 2019, I discussed Sara Lidman at Fyrisbiografen’s screening of Gunilla Bresky’s documentary Sara med allt sitt väsen (2019) in Uppsala.
On October 12 2020, I gave a talk about Sara Lidman at Skellefteå berättarfestival.
Presentations at conferences:
“Fifty Years of Sensens of Walden”, NATURE: ANIMAL, MORAL, TECHNOLOGICAL, Association for Philosophy and Literature,The Fairmont Banff Springs, May 25-29 2022.
- “The Truth in Skepticism and the Truth in Formalism”, Stanley Cavell: A Retrospective, Milano September 23–24 2021.
- “Challenging Interpretative Skepticism”, ACLA Annual Conference, April 8–11 2021 (zoom).
- ”Sam-vettet som ett vidgat ’vi’ – människa, djur, natur i Det Hela i Sara Lidmans författarskap”, ECO 2020, litteraturvetenskaplig ämneskonferens, Göteborg University, December 2–4 2020 (zoom).
- ”Att bruka sitt sam-vett”, Vardagsspråkfilosofi och skönlitteratur, Uppsala University October 26–28 2020 (zoom).
- “Sara Lidman, Ordinary Language Philosophy, and the Sharing of Con-science / Sam-vett”, Virkelighetslitteratur og dagligspråksfilosofi University of Bergen, December 6 2019.
- ”Sårbara läsningar”, Umeå University, October 11–12 2019.
- “Vulnerable Reading – or Do We Need a Hermeneutic of Vulnerability Instead of a Hermeneutic of Suspicion?”, Keeping it Honest: Vulnerable Writing, Uppsala University August 21–23 2019.
- “Reading the Financial Crisis as an Existential Crisis: Yanis Varoufakis and Sara Lidman”, Wealth, Finance, Aesthetics, Norlit, University of Copenhagen, August 14–16 2019.
- ”The Truth in the Ineffable – Sara Lidman’s Sam-vett and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus” , Filosofi, feminism och litteratur, Åbo Akademi University, January 28 2019.
- “The Truth in the Ineffable – Cora Diamond, Sara Lidman and the Sharing of Con-Science” Ethics: Form and Content, University of Pardubice, May 26–27 2018.
- “Före ‘Före ordet’. Gemenskap och tystnad innan sam-vettet”, Tanke, dikt, handling – Sara Lidmans litteratur och verkan i världen, Uppsala University February 6 2018.
The purpose of this project has been to investigate the intersection of philosophy and literature through Sara Lidman’s concepts “con-science” and “The Whole”, and hereby unearth Lidman’s previously under-investigated modernist literary philosophy, centering on “the ineffable”. Are there ineffable experiences? Can literature somehow express them? How should this ineffability be understood? In studying Lidman’s authorship through ordinary language philosophy, I have tried to answer these questions and contribute to the field of ordinary language criticism.
Initially the project focused equally on “con-science” and “The Whole” as central concepts, but as the project evolved con-science took precedence. Throughout the project, the need for philosophical development and clarity has been paramount. As the work on Lidman progressed, it did so in tandem with work on issues central to ordinary language philosophy and ordinary language criticism. This meant that the questions about the ineffable and literary interpretation gradually became focal points in their own right, and not just in Lidman’s authorship.
2. Implementation
The project has resulted in five peer-reviewed articles and one popular science article.
Two of the peer-reviewed articles are in English and three in Swedish. This is a deviation from my original plan: to publish four peer-reviewed articles in English and one in Swedish within the allocated time-span. I have, however, three English article-manuscripts about Lidman, two of which will be submitted to peer-review in May and June 2023 and one in September 2023. When I started the RJ-project I had already partially begun the work on one of my English articles (“Two Examples of Ordinary Language Criticism”, 2019). Therefore RJ is not listed as the singular financier of that article, but Birgit och Gad Rausings Stiftelse för humanistisk forskning, as well. Writing about Lidman for an English-speaking academic audience proved to be more difficult and time-consuming than I first imagined. This had to do with difficulties of translation; one aspect was that Lidman’s authorship is only exceptionally translated into English, and much of her philosophizing takes place in her play with the Swedish language; another had to do with making her philosophizing relevant and accessible for an audience who hardly knew anything about her.
Early on in the project, I realized that in order to do Lidman’s literary philosophy justice, as it develops throughout her authorship, I would need to write a monograph in Swedish. So parallel to my work on the articles ,I have been working on a book. The manuscript, with the working-title: From Conscience to Con-Science: Sara Lidman’s Literary Philsophy, is to be finished in December 2023.
Out of two planned trips to the Lidman archive in Umeå, only one was realized, partly due to the pandemic. It took place October 5–11 2020.
A plan that was cancelled, because of the pandemic, was a visit to The Wittgenstein Seminar at New School for Social Sciences in New York in March 2020. I have, however, made other international presentations of my work (see item 5 below), as well as organized two conferences at Uppsala University: Tanke, dikt, handling – Sara Lidmans litteratur och verkan i världen, Februari 6 2018, and Vardagsspråkfilosofi och skönlitteratur, October 26–28 2020.
During the project I started a Nordic network together with three colleagues: NOLC (Nordic Ordinary Language Criticism), and I have presented my work on NOLC’s online seminar. NOLC was founded in autumn 2020 and has been organizing online seminars since spring 2021.
Working on this project, I have edited an anthology about the corona pandemic together with two colleagues: Pandemiska reflektioner. Retoriska och litteraturfilosofiska undersökningar i coronas tid (eds. Löfgren, Schou Therkildsen, Rosengren, 2022). It contains one of the project’s publications (”Att tänka sig ett annat nu”, 2022). I have also co-edited a special issue of Policy Futures in Education (eds. Johannsom & Löfgren, Vol. 20, issue 3, April 2022) in which another of the project’s publications figures (“Nineteen-eighty-four, Totalitarian Lived Skepticism, and Unlearning How to Love”, published online 2021).
3. The project’s three most important results and conclusions
The three most important results are:
A. Lidman’s con-science is a philosophical-poetical concept that offers an alternative articulation of the question about the meaning of life. The “ineffability” Lidman addresses should not be viewed as a metaphysical theory of language but concerns a moral-aesthetic-existential problematic that plays itself out in our everyday lives.
B. Lidmans’s con-science offers an alternative to posthuman theorizing about human-animal relations.
C. Lidman’s con-science can be used as a theoretical tool in order to understand moral-aesthetic problems in other authorships besides her own.
Resultat A is reached predominantly in the Samlaren-article from 2019. In it, I investigate how Lidman’s development of the con-science concept should not be seen as a naïve theory about non-linguistic language, but rather seen as a lived problematic revolving around matters of community and understanding. In light of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, I suggest we view it as a re-articulation of the question about the meaning of life.
Result B is achieved in the TFL-article from 2022. There I compare Lidman’s con-science with philosopher Cora Diamond’s thinking, demonstrating how Lidman’s con-science offers an alternative to posthuman theory about human-animal relations.
Result C is exemplified in the article published in Pandemiska reflektioner from 2022, in which I use Lidman’s con-science as analytical tool to clarify how the Greek economist, activist and author Yanis Varoufakis employs aesthetic imagination in order to envision another political reality in his work Another Now (2020).
A more over-arching insight that the project has led to, is that Lidman develops from being an author of conscience (from her debut in 1953 until about the end of the Vietnam war) to becoming an author of con-science from about 1975 until the end of her life in 2004. In the monography I am working on I demonstrate in a detailed manner.
4. New research questions
During the project, questions about Lidman and legal issues has arisen. In a legal defense (in Sara Lidman, och trädet svarade, Stockholm 1988), Lidman pits law against con-science, and the only novel in which the word con-science occurs (Sara Lidman, Järnkronan, Stockholm 1985) places it in a legal context: the main character, Didrik Mårtensson, broods over con-science while imprisoned for embezzlement. Since the spring of 2022 I and Joel Samuelsson, a professor of law at Uppsala university, have been outlining a Law and Literature project. This March we applied for funding from The Swedish Research Council.
5. How research has been disseminated
Besides through publications, the research has been disseminated through research presentations and conferences (see list), and trough two popular science appearances.
On November 11 2019, I discussed Sara Lidman at Fyrisbiografen’s screening of Gunilla Bresky’s documentary Sara med allt sitt väsen (2019) in Uppsala.
On October 12 2020, I gave a talk about Sara Lidman at Skellefteå berättarfestival.
Presentations at conferences:
“Fifty Years of Sensens of Walden”, NATURE: ANIMAL, MORAL, TECHNOLOGICAL, Association for Philosophy and Literature,The Fairmont Banff Springs, May 25-29 2022.
- “The Truth in Skepticism and the Truth in Formalism”, Stanley Cavell: A Retrospective, Milano September 23–24 2021.
- “Challenging Interpretative Skepticism”, ACLA Annual Conference, April 8–11 2021 (zoom).
- ”Sam-vettet som ett vidgat ’vi’ – människa, djur, natur i Det Hela i Sara Lidmans författarskap”, ECO 2020, litteraturvetenskaplig ämneskonferens, Göteborg University, December 2–4 2020 (zoom).
- ”Att bruka sitt sam-vett”, Vardagsspråkfilosofi och skönlitteratur, Uppsala University October 26–28 2020 (zoom).
- “Sara Lidman, Ordinary Language Philosophy, and the Sharing of Con-science / Sam-vett”, Virkelighetslitteratur og dagligspråksfilosofi University of Bergen, December 6 2019.
- ”Sårbara läsningar”, Umeå University, October 11–12 2019.
- “Vulnerable Reading – or Do We Need a Hermeneutic of Vulnerability Instead of a Hermeneutic of Suspicion?”, Keeping it Honest: Vulnerable Writing, Uppsala University August 21–23 2019.
- “Reading the Financial Crisis as an Existential Crisis: Yanis Varoufakis and Sara Lidman”, Wealth, Finance, Aesthetics, Norlit, University of Copenhagen, August 14–16 2019.
- ”The Truth in the Ineffable – Sara Lidman’s Sam-vett and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus” , Filosofi, feminism och litteratur, Åbo Akademi University, January 28 2019.
- “The Truth in the Ineffable – Cora Diamond, Sara Lidman and the Sharing of Con-Science” Ethics: Form and Content, University of Pardubice, May 26–27 2018.
- “Före ‘Före ordet’. Gemenskap och tystnad innan sam-vettet”, Tanke, dikt, handling – Sara Lidmans litteratur och verkan i världen, Uppsala University February 6 2018.