Sablasti filološkog zadatka. S onu stranu povratka filologiji

Abstract

The paper follows the numerous debates on the importance of philology that have started to emerge in the 1980s, beginning from Paul de Man's essay Return to Philology. The assumption is that despite obvious devaluation of its importance and institutional ruination, philology survives precisely because the idea of a return is inherent in it. However, as the return is in this context grasped as the return of the repressed, it is claimed that philology survives as a paradoxical discipline whose epistemological power seeks to be represented by the figure of a specter and within hauntology, as Derrida introduced it in his works. It is argued that philology today draws strength precisely from its openness to disciplinary hybridity, institutional uncertainty, and continuous rethinking of its own social role. In conclusion, the work of Vatroslav Jagić, one of the greatest Croatian philologists and world-renowned representative of Slavic philology, whose understanding of the task of philology relates to the theses presented in the paper, is included in the discussion and introduced in the dialogue.