Towards a Somatic Narratology: Enactivism and its Implications for Literary Studies in Max Blecher’s Modernist Legacy
Amalia Cotoi
Caietele Echinox June 30, 2026 DOI: 10.24193/cechinox.2026.50.13 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Embodied cognition Enactivism Relation database Perspectivism Perception Narrative Philosophy of science Constructivism international relations Epistemology Aesthetics Romanian Relativism |
| Key points | Proposes that Max Blecher's modernist prose can be analyzed through an enactivist framework, introducing "somatic narratology" to describe how the body generates cognitive processes in literature. |
Abstract
Within Romanian prose of the first half of the twentieth century, Max Blecher literature occupies a singular position in the narration of the body, representing corporeality as prior to any determinate form of thought. In his prose, embodied memory and perception as a mode of knowledge intersect to configure a body that actively generates its own cognitive processes. Drawing on the explanatory model of 4E cognition, articulated in terms of embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended cognition, and following the methodology of enactivism, a postcognitivist approach, this study employs a somatic framework to analyze Max Blecher’s modernist prose. In the first part, I analyse the enactivist methodology in relation to literary studies and propose the concept of somatic narratology. In the second part, starting from the enactivist hypothesis that perception is a bodily activity, I explore Blecher’s perspectivism through the relationship it constructs with the body and the environment.
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