Agata Wiśniewska

Academic English: Writing for research

Winter Semester 2017/2018

Brown's 8 Questions:
1.
'Chaos is a writer's natural environment': literature as indeterminate resistance and M. Hakkas' The
Third Kidney
2.
Agata Wiśniewska
3.
Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies
Journal of Modern Greek Studies
Journal of Modern Hellenism
Modern Greek Studies Online
4.
Prof. Dr. Angela Gioti, FU, Berlin – course supervisor
Prof. Dr. Miltiadis Pechlivanos, FU, Berlin – year supervisor
Prof. Dimitris Tziovas, University of Birmingham – the article chalanges his appropriation of
Lyotard's thought in the criticism of the post-war Greek prose

5a. The central question of the paper:

What is Hakkas' stand on the role of literature as a locus of resistance.

5b.
According to Hakkas literature is a discourse of justice. Hence, it should resist the rule of any
ideologies.

6.
The article shows that M. Hakkas' prose is literature of 'new resistance'.
7a.
In 1963 B. Leontaris named post-war leftist Greek literature 'a literature of defeat' as opposed to the
'literature of resistance' of wartime. His thesis that the 'crisis of consciousness', brought by the end
of the Civil War and the downfall of the revolutionary Idea, saturates post-war Greek literature was
severely criticised and accused of defeatism. Consideration of Hakkas' representation of the defeat
of the Idea in light of Lyotard's theory as a 'new resistance' contributes to the on-going debate.
7b.
I analyse Hakkas' works and in particular the short story The Third Kidney in light of Lyotard's
theory of postmodernity as explicated in his works: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge and The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Postmodernity is considered here a discourse
that attempts to 'do justice' by resisting the rule of determinate judgements.
7c.
Hakkas rejects 'literature of resistance' that promotes a rule of a single ideology as unjust. His
alternative is a literature of postmodern resistance that advocates indeterminacy as a principle for
judgement. By testifying to differends Hakkas advocates the indeterminate judgement as a 'rule
without a rule' for the linking of phrases. The Third Kidney through its sublime effects is a 'negative
presentation' of Lyotard's 'impossible idiom', the literature as a discourse of justice.
7d.
New voice in the debate on the 'poetry of defeat'. By showing that the 'defeat' of the Idea in post-
war Greek literature is just a new mode of resistance the essay offers a possibility of reconciliation.
 Agata Wiśniewska
Academic English: Writing for research
Winter Semester 2017/2018

8.
Χάκκας, Μ., Άπαντα, Athens: Κέδρος 2008 – collected works of Marios Hakkas
Λεοντάρης, Β., “Η ποίηση της ήττας”, Επιθεώρηση Τέχνης, τ. ΙΗ', 106-107 (October 1963) –
Leontaris' milestone article which established the term 'poetry of defeat' in Greek criticism
Lyotard, J.-F., The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and
Brian Massumi, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. - Lyotard's appropration of
Kantian indeterminate judgements and sublimity to the postmodern thought
Lyotard, J.-F., The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1988. - Lyotard's work on language as a locus of injustice