Senka ANASTASOVA

Ss. Cyril and Methodius University

THEORY OF NARRATION

THE TEXT AND THE NARRATIVE IDENTITY COUNTERPOINTING: FICTION, REALITY, HISTORY, HISTORIOGRAPHY

1.

NARRATIVE IDENTITY – FICTION – REFERENTIAL REALITY

In the period of post-structuralism the contextual methodology abandones the hermeticaly closed (isolated) textual model of structuralism and turns towards the open literary text, towards its communicational trans-historic, trans-cultural ontological roots. By definition, each literary text is derrived form the natural language, it is secondary, double coded, alternately actualized iconic modelative system of reality that inscribes the referential meaning post hoc.

The objective non-literary empirical world becomes positioned and actively constructed in

the literary text motioned by language as primary medium of reality, carrier of the inscribed meaning which does not represent a dictation and crude reflection of the real world, instead it is a verbalized product – construct, a repeated description in the text of the community. All the consecutive repeated articulations of meaning which become re-shaped in the texts through the interpretative receptive stratagems depend on this construct. The referential field of the literary text is established through language, it is always already textualized and canonized with different signs, and the referring of the literary text to reality is transposed, mediated by language conventions, by other literary or non-literary texts. That way the reality we speak of is not transmitted, but mediated in a given context with communicational practices. More specifically, the referential reality of the literary text is what the text displays as reality through the structure of signifying, rather than the reality itself. Therefore, the literary text is a coded message and it works as an intermediary, or a simulacrum of the structure and processes of the real events as Hayden White says.

Literature is embedded in the language. The language as a schematized system of signs is

not a mirrored, reproduced image of reality, but rather a construction of existing conventions which in a creative way “recreates” and reproduces the world. Considering this fact, the relation fiction-reality or the depiction of reality in the artistic text is dislocated, transferred from a referential to a communicational axis. Experience also becomes intermediated by language, which is why we do not speak of an opposition between language and reality, but the existence of dialectics in the symbolic reality itself. Viktor Zmegac says that there is no literary reality, rather the literary reality is just “an addenda to reality”, “an arrangement of real data”, “a contradictory composition of the literary essence” and what is called “real”. According to this logic, the real (mimesis) functions through the degree of contingency. This means that literature does not deliver reality by means of an equation,

but it fakes it, simulates it in an intentional, intelligible way, planned in advance, through laws and linguistic-literary conventions within the borderlines imposed by the logic of the text. Fiction points to that which is shaped in a certain text or created (from the Latin root fingere), but it also points to that which is invented and relates to that which is not real. 1 In relation to this analytical stand point towards the term reality, there is also the question and pretension for the „objective“ depiction and the „objective“ notion of reality.

In the study „Introduction to the non-objective truth” James Clifford notes that the theoreticians Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau and Terry Eagleton consider literature as a transitive category (1992). Clifford states that 17th century western science excludes certain expressive forms form its repertory, such as rhetorics, in favour of the “ordinary” and “obvious” meaning. At the same time, fiction is left out in favour of reality, and subjectivity in favour of objectivity. These categories are excluded from science and marked as “literature”, and the literary texts are marked as structures, compositions of fantasy, not of facts. Michel de Certeau notes that the fictionalization of the literary language is harshly stigmatized for lack of “univocality”. In this scheme the discourse of literature becomes inherently uncertain, unstable, aspiring towards layers of meaning, it narrates one thing, but intends to express something completely different, it is traced in the language from which it continuously draws out effects of meaning that cannot be limited, or checked. Such discourse (which continues to be “banished” into science with undoubtedly variable success) will become incurably figurative and polysemic, while the scientific text will be qualified as literary because of the use of metaphors, stylizations, evocations etc. The important thing for this study is that Certeau differentiates between narration and historical discourse.

Narration is an art of saying, not just a description. It would not represent approaching to

“reality” through a technical operation, but it would enable to accept the text “through the reality” depicted in it. On the other side, narrated history creates a fictional space and distances itself from the “real” through the mechanisms of the frozen syntagmas: “once upon a time...” and so on. The narrated history is a “matter of facts”, an act of balance in which the circumstances of the time, space and the narrator himself participate. It is a way of knowing how to manipulate and arrange (Certeau). In that sense we indicate literature as fiction, not because it tries to refuse “the acknowledged” reality, but because it is not certain that the language functions according to the principles that exist or resemble those of the phenomenological world. That is why it is not a priori certain that literature is the reliable source of information, except for its own language (Paul de Man).

The contemporary study of the specifications and problems concerning the relation fiction-

reality, from a linguistic point of view, imposes directions, comments and counter-comments to the laws of semiotics as a contribution from the school of deconstructivism, with a radical displacement of the stability of the sign, and also the term reality. Thereby, it is important to emphasize that this study points in an aspectual way to the key terms from the domain of theory of literature and the narrating production (narration – identity – fiction – reality) which intersect with Jacques Derrida’s deconstructivist critique, vis-à-vis Paul Ricoeur’s symbolic representation of reality, with no pretensions of entering the complex broad philosophical concepts which deal with studying metaphysics and theory of cognition in the works of these philosophers.

*

1 Fingere – from fingo, finxi, fictum – creates, makes, does, builds, recreates, remakes, reshapes, shapes, arranges. But in some of its uses also means a degree of lying, invention (Latin – Serbo-Croatian dictionary, 1979).

In Time and Narrative I, II, III (1984-6) Paul Ricoeur correlates the theory of symbolic

representation of reality with the specifics of narrativity which are derived from the: hermeneutical approach, the category time interpreted in the narratological and anti-narratological approaches, the theory of historiography vis-à-vis the fictional discourse and its borderline genre inclinations and deductions which (sometimes) lead to documentary prose and vice versa. In such case, the task of hermeneutics becomes double – to reconstruct the internal identity outside of itself (outside the text), by representing a world which could happen.

Ricoeur’s interpretation of the narrative identity, reality and meaning, or their

comprehension and understanding is mediated by signs, symbols and narrations. Paul Ricoeur believes that meaning is never final and exclusive, but rather that it is possible, derivable and always open, dialogically and polyphonically. In that sense, the process of interpretation is also possible and dynamic. With Ricoeur we enter into the other side of the poststructuralist alternative deconstruction in relation to Jacques Derrida. Because of this, further on in this study, the hermeneutics of Ricoeur or the problems of the annunciation of meaning have the basis to counterpoint the philosophy of Derrida about the “impossibility to finish the reading” of the meaning of the text and of the world.

In the study “What is text?” Ricoeur lays out the key premises for the hermeneutical

approach of the artistic text in relation to reality. Ricoeur stops at the thesis that the text does not close in on itself, but rather it opens up towards another text, and that binding of the text itself unveils the unique ability for its renewal. Here is where we see the characteristic of open identity of the text, and the interpretation is the specific result of that connection and that renewal (1971).

The dialogical dimension of interpretation is activated in the relatively predicative notional

systems inside of which indeterminateness oscillates, and the polisemicity of the word and the text become concrete, they assume shape inside the interpreter and his awareness of the separate status of the accomplished meaning:

Interpretation which is evoked in the spirit of the sign cannot be a result of pure and simple

deduction that would extract from the sign something that was already contained in it... That which is interpreted is a comment, definition, gloss of the sign during its relation to the object. It is the symbolic expression itself. The joining of the sign or what is achieved through interpretation and through the psychological process, is possible only in their union, more or less – in the imperfect interaction between the narrator and the reader... It is an experience that is never completely reduced to the idea or the object of the sign which I have defined as structure. This is where the undefined character of the series of Pierce’s interpretation is derived from (Ricoeur 1971, 809, italics by me).

The phenomena of semiosis and the semiotic trilateral, triadic shaping of the sign set by

the American scientist Charles Pierce takes place through the interpretant, user of the sign who connects the carrier of the sign (sign) and the denotate, the referent, the object to which the sign refers. Ricoeur takes the stand that the relation sign – interpretant is always open, which means that there is always another interpreter which will have the ability to intermediate in the first

relation. Pierce interprets the sign, Ricoeur the statement, i.e. he transfers the lexical unities to the field of statements and texts. The open sequence of interpretation, which is based on the relation of the sign towards the object, creates the trilateral relation: object – sign – user of the sign (interpreter) which is a model for another triad created on the level of the text. The text is the object itself, the sign is semantics liberated from structural analysis, and the sequence of interpretation becomes a chain of interpretations “tangled” in the dynamics of the text.

2.2. NARRATIVE IDENTITY: “EMBEDDED” IN HISTORY Paul Ricoeur writes: “As narrative identity we shall denote the structure of experience or

the model through which we read the life of a person interpreted in the function of the personal story that is told through the plot” (1999a, 20). The thesis that the narrative identity is a narrative model which is parsed through interpretation, which postulates understanding and interpretation of itself through fiction, develops from this definition. Namely, the act interpretation correlates the understanding of oneself through the narrative identity in the fiction. Defined like this, the narrative identity is equalled with the personal identity of the narrating subject placed in history. It is actually the identity which comes from the self interpretation (interpretation of the self) through narration and story.

In the foreground, the narrative identity will be examined in relation to the term potential

history, and the search for personal identity enables continuity between the potential (initial) history and the spoken history for which we take certain responsibility. Ricoeur lucidly warns that a person is “embedded in history” (verstricktsein) before he narrates the history. Being „embedded in history“ is in fact the „prehistory“ of the narrated history. The narrator chooses the begining of his own will. Such „prehistory“ connects the history with a wider whole and gives it an essential beckground of „vivid intertwinings“ of the entire lived, experienced, (personal) history. In the basis of this thesis the focus is on the „ issuing“ (auftauchte) of history from that background. The metaphore of the „man embedded in history“ is the basis for defining narration as „secondary process“ of getting familiar with history. Narration, following and understanding of history is only a continuation of the history which has remained “untold”... Is there not a hidden kinship between the secret that history comes from and the secret into which it returns? – asks Ricoeur.

The thesis which comes forth is that the narrative identity is in close connection with the

hermeneutics of self (personal identity). In order to describe the variations of literary fiction Ricoeur examines the dialectic2 relation of the identity signified through the principle sameness (idem – identity) and the identity signified through change of the self (ipse – identity).3

Identity as sameness is a dialectic term used to signify the formally-unchangeable oneness.

With the change of self (le soi) is signified that out of which self is composed, that which is not continuously necessary and unchangeable. Dialectics takes place inside the subject which in time remains one and the same individual, the same narrating subject. Within the sameness of identity two identities become separate, the numeric and the qualitative identity which can be used to

2 P. Ricoer does not speak of dialectics in terms of Hegel, it is not a “synthesis”, but rather a continued openness of the dialectic process. 3 Sameness – Latin – idem, same; French – memeté; German – gleichkeit). Change of selfhood / self– Latin – ipse (by itself), French – ipséité; German – Selbstheit.

follow the biological continuity of the one we consider as the same narrating individual, but whose selfhood changes in time.

The numeric identity functions through the formula: two cases of the same thing, with a

name that does not change in everyday language, do not create two different things, but rather the same thing. In this case identity signifies singularity and the operation identification suits it – understood also as re-identification of sameness, as opposed to recognizing the same thing twice or innumerable number of times.

The qualitative identity points to a very close similarity (X and Y wear such similar clothes

that it does not make a difference whether we mix them up or not). The operation substitution without semantic loss (salva veritate) suits this kind of identity.

The self always includes the dimension of duration (and change) in time. It does not come

down to determination of one substrate, but it rather opens the question “who am I”? Therefore, the dialectics between sameness and the change of self is accomplished as dynamics of sameness and the internal multiplications of otherness (inside the self). The search for permanence in time is the answer to the question “who am I”?

In the attempt of answering this complex question of personal identity Paul Ricoeur places

the term narrative identity in relation to the emplotment. The plot integrates diversity, changeability and the discontinuity in the incongruous congruity of the story. 4

Therefore, the self is constituted as a story, and the events which are contingent have a

double position, namely 1) they cause incongruity in the plot (or the selfh as something that includes congruity); 2) they are necessary for the development of the plot (selfh) and they influence the creation of congruity as a necessary element for the development of the plot (the self). Here is where we come to the main conclusion, which is that the hermeneutics of the self appears as hermeneutics of the story, and the personal identity becomes analogue to the narrative identity.

With this point we focus upon the narration which constitutes the identity of the character,

also called narrative identity of the character, i.e. construction of the identity of the narrated story. This identity of the story makes the identity of the character which will then go on to be placed against the plot in the fiction and in the historiographic texts in culture and reality.

David Wood, philosopher and follower of Paul Ricoeur’s opus, points out that one of the

basic products of the narrative in Ricoeur’s work is the creation of the narrative identity, on two levels: 1) on the level of history and 2) on the level of individual life. Such view on the narrative identity is a contemporary incursion in the stability of the identity.

Ricoeur gives a suggestion for a model identity, but he is aware that many stories could find

place in the constituting of the narrative (1991). Therefore, we are talking about contingency of the identity, its revision through reorganization of the events which took place through memory, the will of the narrating subject, its ethical implications and the moving force of narration. This Ricoeur’s thesis accentuates the life story, it stems from Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and it juxtaposes Jacques Derrida’s philosophy – about the divide of the narrative on the level of the narrating subject and its ability to multiply the stories through imagination and in real life.

4 Congruity and incongruity (Aristotle). If incongruity dominates over congruity in life, the artistic text is governed by the principle of dominance of congruity over incongruity (see Ricoeur 1993, 59-72).