MEDZI TOTOŽNÝM A RÔZNORODÝM V SÚČASNOM LITERÁRNOVEDNOM VÝSKUME

The article offers a methodological reflection on the trends that have shaped literary historical research from the postmodern cultural turn in the late 20th century to the present. It maps and analyses postmodern tendencies that have challenged the model of literatures based on the principle of homogeneous and unified identity, emphasised hybridity and syncretism, and shifted attention from the centre of cultures to their peripheries. However, it becomes evident that similar strategies inherent in the previously rejected cultural models – such as the construction of a unified identity and the projection of a teleological, emancipatory trajectory – are also present here. The paper highlights contemporary initiatives that correct these approaches and conceptualise new relations between diversity and homogeneity and centre – periphery dichotomy. The article also applies these processes to the study of Slovak literature conceptualised as a “small” literature – an approach rooted in principles that the current cultural paradigm views with scepticism. The paper points the potential of a methodological starting point drawing on the methodological impulses of Yuri M. Lotman’s theory of culture. It accepts the processual nature of identity, as well as the dynamic character of the centre and periphery of cultures. They aim for a unified identity as an ideal, yet are fundamentally rooted in diversity and pluralistic movements.