Sketches of Theories of Genre

This paper deals with conceptions of genre in literary studies by critically discussing their implications from the viewpoint of an empirical science of literature that has turned its attention to TV phenomena. The basic question addresses the necessity of genre conceptions within the empirical theory of literature. It is argued that there is no need for conceptualizing ‘genre’ within that theory because the underlying philosophy of generic thinking implies an incommensurable metaphysics. On the other hand, it is shown that issues of modern (functionalist sociological) theories of genre can largely be reconstructed as starting points for an empirical theory of ‘genres’ if their core assumptions are grounded on the level of cognition. Types of genre theories considered here are the classificationist, the form-content descriptivist, the typological universalist, and the functionalist sociological approach. The paper concludes with an attitude against genre as a scientific object domain of its own and suggests that ‘generic’ phenomena should be treated as problems of the aggregation of knowledge for consensual interaction in media systems.