This article regards the possibility of applying genetic criticism methods to the analysis of philosophical manuscripts. The cases mentioned include manuscripts by Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Arthur Schopenhauer.
How can one study the genesis of a text written straightaway which would lose its authenticity value if it were corrected? Such a text is the evidence of a practice, so that transforming it into a work (especially a published one) is likely to impoverish and disfigure it. This article intends to show that if Genetic Criticism has little leeway, it still has room to maneuver: preparatory notes and editing on the same day, intertextual situations (reading notes, correspondence quotations, etc), analysis of the progressive transformations of the diary’s rhythms, the diarist’s writing about rereading, recopying his journal… Past this point, the diary becomes either an autobiography (a selection or composition of the diary by the author him/herself) where Genetics has ample room to perform, or a publication.
The first part of the study is based on historical genetics. It examines the issues of the page over a long period of time and places it within the evolution of a written culture. In light of this past, the second part offers an integrated view of functions whose sequence creates the possibility of a genesis: a manipulable material object – a medium at the interface of thought and trace – a unit that measures the writing stages – a space where words and graphics interfere with the production of meaning. The conclusion points to another dimension of history: the future.
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