@article{8200878,
  abstract     = {{I start from the definition of the exemplary case offered by Angela
Condello and Maurizio Ferraris – an exemplary case is a “concrete abstraction”
– and argue that exemplarity is a process, an attribute of the phenomena
depending on the action, and a realistic practice. I refer to the analysis of
Walter Benjamin and Gy€orgy Lukacs on realistic and modernist literature to
consider that, in order to be exemplary, a case has to be particular and that
we discover exemplarity when we focus on the details of the case. I call the
particularity of an exemplary case its “thick features” and claim that these
features cannot be absorbed by an abstract model. Exemplary cases cannot
be described and understood by their thin features – as if they were facts
belonging to a species – but they need to be appreciated through their thick
features. Furthermore, I claim that exemplarity exists only within a community
and because of an appreciation and that the gesture of appreciation is
not an “innocent” practice. I analyze the gesture of appreciation and claim
that exemplarity does not belong to the Platonic kind of knowledge, but it
entails the same ontological premises of mimesis. We appreciate a case
because we are in a mimetic relation with it. We do not learn the general
model the case refers to by a concept, but we learn it by reference to a concrete
situation. We see the general model in a concrete situation. I argue that
there is a strong link between the appreciation of a case and the special normativity
of exemplarity. The special link between the concrete and the
abstract characterizes the normativity of exemplarity so radically that exemplarity
appears always, in a certain way, as “counter-normative.” It expresses
a principle not yet expressed, without a formal recognition, a voice without
language.}},
  author       = {{Toracca, Tiziano}},
  issn         = {{1535-685X}},
  journal      = {{LAW & LITERATURE}},
  keywords     = {{concreteness,abstraction,particulars,realism,modernism,thin properties,thick properties,mimesis,counternormative .}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{3}},
  pages        = {{465--477}},
  title        = {{Towards exemplarity : when the particular matters}},
  url          = {{http://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2017.1379195}},
  volume       = {{30}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}

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