Story and Discourse
Short Description
Culler Jonathan D...
Description
PLOT
So much work has een done in the eld o narratology that to attempt any sort o synthesis, identiying areas of fundamental agreement and the principal issues in dispute, would e a massive task. Limting oneself to the obvious cases, there is the work of the ussian Formalsts, partcularly Propp and Shklovsky; an American tradition, running rom Henry James's prefaces, through Lubbock and Booth, to modern attempts at synthesis such as Seymour Chatman's Story and Dscours has een especally concerned wth prolems o point o iew French Structuralism has undertaken the development o narratve graars (Barthes, Todoro, Bremond, Greimas, Thomas Pavel, Gerald Prince) and description of the relatons between story and narration (Genette). In German the wrtings of of Wolfgang Kayser, Kayser, Eerhard Lmmert, Franz Stanzl, and Wol Schmid come to mind; important work has een done in the Netherlands, notably y Teun Van Dk and Mieke Bal; and there is an active group in Tel Aiv (Benjamin Hrushovski, Meir Sternber, Menakhem Perry)1 There is considerale variety among these traditions, and of course each theorist has concepts or categories of his own, but if these theorists agree on anything it is this: that the theory o narrative reuires a distnction etween what shall call storya story a seuece o actions or events, conceied as independent o their manifestation in discourseand discourseand what shall call discourse, discourse, the discursive presentaton or narration o events n ussian Formalism this is the distinction etween abula and sjuzht: the story as a series o events and the story as reported in the narrative.
Other theorists propose dierent ormulations whose terms are oten conusing recit or example, is sometimes fabula, as in Bremond and sometimes sjuzht as in Barthes ut there s always a basic dstnction between a sequence o events and a discourse that orders and presents evets Genette, or instance, distinguishes the sequence of events, histoir rom the presentaton of events in discourse recit and also from a third leel, narrtion, which is the enunciation o narrative; but rom the way in which Genette uses his catgories Mieke Bal argues, rightly I believe, that in th end Genette distingushes only two levels, those o Russian Formalism. he American tradition has been less inclined than the others to ormulate this distinction explicitly It has been primarily concerned with the problems o point o view: the identication and discrimination o narrators overt and covert, and the description o what n the novel or short story belongs to the perspective o the narrator In order to do this, however, one must post a distinction between actions or events themselves and the narrative presentaton o those actions. or the study of point o view to make sense there must be various contrastng ways o viewing and telling a given story, and this makes story an invariant core, a constant against which the variables o narratve presentation can be measured. But to describe the situation in this way is to identiy the distnction as a heuristic ction, or except in rre cases the analyst is not presented with contrasting narratives o the same sequence o actions; the analyst is conronted with a single narrative ad must postulate what actually happens in order to be able to describe and interpret the way in which this sequence o evets s organized, evaluated, and preseted by the narrator. hus the American tradition, though it has never been much concerned to formalze its categoris categoris or attempt a gram mar o plot has relied o the same basic distinction that European narratology explcitly ormulates, a distinction which, I claim, is an idispensable premise o narratology. o make narrative an object o study, one must distinguish narratives rom nonnarratives, and this invariably involves reerence to the act that narratives report sequences o events. narrative is dened as the representation o a series o events, then the analyst must be able t o identy these events, and the come to function as a nondiscursive, nontextual give, something which exists prior to and ndependentl o narrative presentaton and whch the arrative then reports I am not, o course, suggesting that narratologists believe that the events o a Balzac story actually took place or that Balzac conceived the events rst and then embodied them in narrative discourse I am claimng that narratological analysis o a text requires one to treat the discourse as a represetation o events which are coceived o as independent o any particular narrative perspective or presentation and which are thought o as having the properties o real events. hus a novel may not identiy the tem poral relationship between two events it presents, but the analyst must assume that there is a real or proper temporal order, that the events act
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8 STORY AND DISCOURSE IN THE ANALYSIS OF ARRATIVE
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Jonathan Culler Source: T Psi f Sigs: Smiics, Li Coell Univesity Pess, 2002, pp. 169-187
Dcsci
Ithaca and New York:
More and more there is emarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed Walter Benjamin
STORY AND DIS COUR SE IN THE A NALYSIS OF NARRATIVE
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play reating tese events as the reality of the story, one then seeks to nterpret the signicance of the way n which they are portrayed In the case of Oedpus, as in many other narratves of which the detectve story is only the most banal eample, the discourse focuses on the brngng to lght of a crucial event, identied as a reality wch determnes signicance Someone killed Laus and te problem s to discover what in fact happned at that fateful moment in the past One of mllions of enthusiastc readers, Sigmund Freud, descrbes the play as follows:
occurred either simultaneously or successively Mieke Bal denes this assumption with an eplicitness that is rare among theorists of narrative: the story [l'histoire] consists of the set of events in their chronological order, their spatial location, and their relations with the actors who cause or undergo them And more specically, The events have temporal relations with one another Each one is either anterior to, simultaneous with, or posteror to every other event. '3 The analyst must assume that the events reported have a true order, for only then can he or she describe the narratve presentation as a modication or eacement of the order of eents If a novel does not identify the temporal relation between two events, one can treat this as a distinctive feature of its narrative point of view only if one assumes that the events themselves do have an order of succession Of course, it s only reasonable to assume that events do occur in some order and that a description of events presupposes the prior eistence, albeit ctive, of those events In applying these assumptions about the world to the tets of narrative we posit a level of structure which, by functioning as a nontetual given, enables us to treat everything in the discourse as a way of interpreting, valuing, and presenting this nontetual substratum This has been a frutful way of proceeding Indeed, it is indispensable, even for the analysis of contemporary ctions that seem to reject the very notion of event The assumption that narrative presents a series of events is necessary to account for the eect of narratives, such as RobbeGrillets Le Voyeur, that make it impossible for the reader to work out what the real events are and in what order they occurred Without the assumption of a real order of events, the repettons of the narrative dscourse would not be at all confusing and would be interpreted, atly, as a repetition of motifs How ever, indispensable as this perspective may be, its premise about the nature of narrative and the organzaton of narrative discourse is frequently questoned in narratives themselves, at moments when the hierarchy of narrative is invertedmoments that must be carefully investigated if one is not to oversimplify the way in which narratives function and fail to account for their force Positing the priority of events to the discourse which reports or presents them, narratology establishes a hierarchy which the functioning of narratives oen subverts by presenting events not as givens but as the products of discursive forces or requirements To illustrate the issues involved, let us start with a familiar eample, the story of Oedipus The analysis of narrative would identify the sequence of events that constitutes the action of the story: Oedipus s abandoned on Mt Cithaeron; he is rescued by a shepherd; he grows up in Corinth; he kills Laius at the crossroads; he answers the Sphinxs rddle; he marries Jocasta; he seeks the murerer of Laius; he discovers his own guilt; he blinds himself and leaves his country. Aer identifying the fabula, one could describe the order and perspective in which these events are presented in the discourse of the
Freud ephasizes that the logic of sgnication here is one in whch events, conceved as pror to and independent of their dscursie representaton, determine meanngs the play brings to lght an awful deed whic s so powerful that it mposes ts meaning irrespective of any ntention of the actor. he prior event as made Oedipus guilty, and when ts s revealed he attains tragc dignity n accepting the meaning mposed by the revealed event Ths way of thinking about the play s essential, but there is a contrary perspective whch is also essential to ts force and whch an apparently margnal element will help us to grasp Wen Oedipus rst asks whether anyone witnessed Laiuss death he is told, All died save one, wo ed n terror and could tell us only one clear fact His story was that robbers, not· one but many, fell in wth the Kngs party and klled them5 And later when Oedpus egins to wonder wether he mght not mself be the murderer he tells Jocasta that everythng hangs on the testimony of tis witness, hom they await You say he spoke of robbers, that robbers killed hi If he stll says robbers, t was not I One is not the same as many But f he speaks of one lone traveller, tere is no escape, te nger points to me o which Jocasta answers, Oh, but I assure you, that was what e sad He cannot go ack on it now; the whole town heard it, not only I' he only witness has publicly told a story tat s incompatible wth Oedipuss gult hs possbilty of nnocence s never elinated, for when the wtness arrives Oedpus is interested in his relation to aius and asks only about his birth, not about te urder. e wtness is never asked wheter the urderer s were one or many6 I am not, of course, suggesting that Oedipus was really nnocent and as een falsely accused for 2,400 years I am nterested in the sgncance of the
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The acton of te play conssts of nothing other tan the process of revealng, with cunning delays and evermounting ecitement, that Oedipus imself s the murderer of Laus, but further, that he is the son of the murdered man and of Jocasta Appalled at the abomnaton he has unwttingly perpetrated, Oedipus linds himself and forsakes his home4
STRY AN ISCURSE N THE ANALYSS F NARRATVE
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fact that the possibility of innocence is never dispeled. The 'whole action of the play is the reveation of this awful deed, but we are never given the proof, the testimony of the eye-witness. Oedipus himsef and all his readers are convinced of his guilt ut our conviction does not come from the revelation of the deed Instead of the revelation of a prior deed determining meaning, we could say that it is meanng, the convergence of meaning in the narrative discourse, that leads us to posit this deed as its appropriate manifestation Once we are well into the play, we know that Oedipus must be found guilty, otherwise the play will not work at al; and the ogic to which we are responding is not simply an eshetic logic that aects readers of literary works Oedipus, too, feels the force of this logic. It had been prophesied that Oedipus would ki his father it had been prophesied that Laius would be kiled by his son; Oedipus admits to having kiled an old man at what may have been the relevant time and place; so when the shepherd reveals that Oedipus is in ·fact the son of Laius, Oedipus leaps to the conclusion, and every reade leaps with him, that he is in fact the murderer of Laius His conclusion is based not on new evidence concerning a past deed but on the force of meaning, the interweaving of prophesies and the demands of narra tive oherence. The convergence of discursive forces makes it essentia that he become the murderer of Laius, and he yieds to this force of meaning Instead of saying, therefore, that there is a sequence of past events that are given and which the pay reveals with certain detours, we can say that the crucial event is the product of demands of signication Here meaning is not the eect of a prior event but its cause. Oedipus becomes the murderer of his father not by a violent act that is brought to ight but bowing to the demands of narrative coherence and deeming the act to have taken place Moreover, it is essentia to the force of the pay that Oedipus take this leap, that he accede to the demands of narra tive coherence and deem himsef guity If he were to resist the logic of signication , arguing that the fact that hes my father doesnt mean that I kiled him, demanding more evidence about the past event, Oedipus oud not acquire the necessary tragic stature In this respect the force of the narra tive reies on the contrary logic, in which event is not a cause but an eect of theme. To describe this logic is not to quibble over details but to investigate tragic power Moreover, one might note that this contrary ogc is in fact necessary to Freuds reading of the play, even though he himsef stresses in his account the priority of event to meaning If we were to follow this logic and say that the prior deed, commtted without understanding, is hat makes Oedipus guilty of patricide, then Oedipus can scarcely be said to have an Oedipus complex7 But suppose we stress instead that as soon as Oedipus earns that Laius is his father he immediatey decares what he has hitherto denied: if Laus is my father, he in eect says, then I must have iled him If e emphasize this point, we can indeed dentify an Oedipus complex: that is to
say a structure of signicationa desire to ki the father and a guit for that desirehch does not result from an act but precedes it This logic by which event is a product of discursive forces rather than a given reported by discourse is essential to the force of the narratie, but in describing the play in this way we have certanly not replaced a deluded or incorrect model of narrative by a correct one On the contrary, t s obvous that much of the plays power depends on the narratologcal assumption that Oedipuss guilt or innocence has aread been determined by a past event that has not yet been reealed or reported. Yet the contrary logic in which Oedipus posits an act in response to demands of sgnication is essential to the tragic force of the ending These two ogics cannot be brought together in harmonious synthesis each works by the excusion of the other each depends on a hierarchical reation beteen story and discourse which the other inerts In so far as both these ogics are necessary to the foce of the play, they put in question the possibility of a coherent, noncontradictory account of narrative. They stage a confrontation of sorts between a semiotics that aspires to produce a grammar of narrative and deconstructive nterpret ations, hich in showing the orks opposition to its on ogic suggest the impossibiity of such a gramar If an analysis of the logic of signication shows that Oedipus requires a double reading, a reading according to incompatible princples, this ould suggest both the importance of narrato logcal analysis and the impossibility of attainng its goal. If Oedipus seems a special case, in that the analysis turns on a possible uncertainy about the centra event in the plo, et us consider an example from a very dierent period and genre, George Eliots Daniel Deronda, as anayzed in a recent article by Cynthia Chase Deronda, the adopted son of an Englsh nobleman, is a talented, senstive young man, moving in good society, ho has been unable to decide on a professon He happens to rescue a poor Jewish gir ho as trying to drown hersef, and ater, in searhing for her family, he meets her brother Mordecai, an ailing scholar with hom he begins to study Hebrew He deveops an intense interest in Jeish cuture, falls in ove ith Mirah, the gir he has saved, and is accepted by Mordecai and others as a kindred spirit At this pont Deronda receves a sumons from his mother, who, obeying her dead fathers injunction, reveals to him the secret of his birth he is a Je The novel emphaszes the causal orce o this past event because he was born a Je he is a Jew. Origin, cause, and identity are linked in an implicit argument tha is comon to narrative Wit the reveaton of Derondas parentage it is implied that his present character nd involvement with things Jesh have been caused by his Jewsh origin But on the other hand, as Chase notes,
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The sequence of events in the pot as a whole presents erondas reveaed origins in a dierent perspectve. The account of erondas
STORY AND DI SCOUR SE I N THE ANALYSI S OF NARRAT IVE
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By one logic Deronda's birth is a past cause of present eects by another contrary logic, named by Deronda's friend Hans Meyrick in a ippant letter, one should speak rather of the present causes of past eects. '9 It is essential to stress here that, as in the case o Oedipus, there is no question of nding a compromise formulation that would do justice to both presentations of the event by avoiding extremes, for the power of the narrative depends precisely on the alternative use of extremes, the rigorous deployment of two logics, each of which works by excluding the other. It will not do to say, for example, that Deronda's involvement with Judaism is partly but not com pletely the result of his birth, and that the revelation of his birth is therefore in part an explanation and in part a narrative fulllment This sort of formu lation is wrong because the power of Eliots novel depends precisely on the fact that Deronda's commitment to Judaism and idealism, instead of to the frivolous society in which he has been raised, is presented as a free choice. To have exemplary moral value it must be presented as a choice, not as the ineluctable result of the hidden fact of parentage It must also be presented as wholehearted, not as a dilettantish dabbling which woul then be trans formed into commitment by revelation of the fact of birth The novel requires that Derondas commitment to Judaism be independent of the reve lation of his Jewishnessthis is thematically and ethically essentialyet its account of Jewishness does not allow for the possibility of conversion and insists o the irreplaceability of origins: to be a Jew is to have been born a Jew These two logics, one of which insists upon the causal ecacy of origins and the other of which denies their causal ecacy, are in contradiction but
tey are essetial to the way in wic the narrative functions One ogic assumes the primacy of events; te other treats the events as the products of meanings · One coud argue that every narrative operates accordig to tis doube ogic, presenting its plot as a sequence of events which is prior to and idependent of the given perspective on these events, and, at th€ same time, suggesting by its implicit claims to signicance that these events are justied by their appropriateness to a thematic structure. As critics we adopt the rst perspective when we debate the sgicance of a character's actions (taking those actions as given). We adopt the secod perspective wen we discuss the appropriateness or inappropriateness of an ending (when we debate whether these actions are appropriate expressions of the thematic structure which ougt to determine them) eorsts of narrative have aways, of course, recognized these two perspectives, but they have perhaps been too ready to assume that they can be held together, synthesized in some way wthout contradiction. Not ony is there a contradiction, but it w characteristically manifest itself n narratives as a oment that seems either superuousa oose end, as n Oedipus or too neat, as in Daniel Deronda. Recent work on narrative has brought such momets to the fore, stressing their importace to the rhetorica force of arratives. ough my examples so far have been classics of European literature, this doube ogic is by no means conned to ctional narrative Recet discussions of the nature and structure of narratve in Freud enabe us to identify a similar situation In geeral, Freudian theory makes narrative the preferred mode of explanation Psychoanaysis does not propose scientic laws of the for if X, ten Y' Psychoanalytic understanding invoves recostructing a story, tracing a phenoenon to its origin, seeing how one ting leads to another. Freuds case histores themselves are indeed narratives with fabula and a sjuzhet: the fabula is the reconstructed plot, the sequence of vents n the patients life, and the sjuzhet is the order in which these events are pre sented, the story of Freuds conduct of te case10 Lke Oedipus and Daniel Deronda, Freud's narratives lead to the reveation of a decisive event which, when placed in the true sequece of events can be seen as the cause of the patient's present situato One of Freud's more dramatc cases s that of the Wolfman, n wich analysis of key dreams and assocations leads Freud to the conclusion tat at a age of /2 years the child woke up to witness his parents copuatng. Freud recostructs a sequence of events that begins wit ts decisve prima scene' and icudes te transformatio of the memory into a trauma at age 4, a striking exampe of Nachtrglichkeit hough the evet has been posted or projected (constructed is Freuds term) from the discourse produced by the patient, and tus might see the product of dscursive forces, Freud argues vigorousy for the reaity and decisve prority of the event. It ust therefore, he concudes, be left at tis (I can see no other possibiity) either the
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stuation has made it increasingly obvious to the reader that the progression of the hero's destiyor, that is to say, the progression of the storypositively requires a revelation that he is of Jewish birth. For Deronda's bildungsroman to proceed, his character must crystallize, and this must come about through a recognition of his destiny, which has remained obscure to him, according to the narra tor's account, largely because of his ignorance of his origins The suspenseful stress on Deronda's relationship with Mordecai and with Mirah orients his history in their direction, and Mordecai explicitly stresses his fait tat Deronda is a Jew. Thus the reader comes upon Deronda's Jewish parentage as an inevitable inference to be drawn not simply from the presentation of Deronda's qualities and his empathy with the Jews but above all from the patent strategy and direction of the narrative. The revelation of Deronda's origins therefore appears as an eect of narrative requirements The sup posed cause of his character and vocation (according to the chapters recounting the disclosure), Deronda's origin presents itself (in the light of the rest of the text) rather as the eect of the account of his vocation his origin is the eect of its eects. 8
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analysis base on the neurosis in his chilhoo is all a piece of nonsense from start to nish, or else everything took place just as I have escribe it above.'1 To uestion the priority of the event is to court absurity. At this point Freu is attempting to hol together in a synthesis the two principles of narrative that we have foun in opposition elsewhere: the priority of event an the etermination of event by structures of signication. Inee, he cites the fact that his construct makes sense, hangs together nicely, as evience that the event must have occurre He rejects the conception of the event as a meaningful, highly etermine ction by refusing to see it as a possibility; he amits nly the two alternatives: a real, prior event or a narrative without signicance. Bt later Freu comes to see another possibility, an in hat Peter Brooks calls one of the most aring moments i Freu's thought an one of his most heroic gestures as a writer,' he allows his rst argument to stan an as a further iscussion, by way, he says, of supplementation an rectication'12 It is possible, Freu says, in supplemen tation, that this primal event i not occur an that what we are ealing with is in fact a trope, a transference from, say, a scene of copulating animals to his parents to prouce at age 4 the fantasy of witnessing at 1 years of age a scene of parental copulation To the possible objection that it is implausible for such a scene to have been constructe, Freu replies by cit ing as evience for the possibility of this fantasy precisely the structural coherence that ha previously been auce as evience for the reality of the event itself For example, if the fantasize event is to work in a plausible narration, it must be imagine as taking place at a time when the chil was sleeping in his parents' beroom The scene which was to be mae up ha to fulll certain contions which, in conseuence of the crcumstances of the reamer's life, coul only be foun in precisely this early perio; such, for instance, was the conition that he shoul be in be in his parents' beroom.'13 In this secon argument, then, Freu separates the two principles of nar rative instea of attempting to conate them as he i previously. One may maintain the primacy of the event it took place at the appropriate moment an etermine subseuent events an their signicance Or one can maintain that the structures of signication, the iscursive reuirements, work to prouce a ctional or tropological event At this point Freu amits the contraiction between these two perspectives, but he refuses to choose between them, referring the reaer to a iscussion of the problem of primal scenes versus primal fantasies in another text hen he oes return to the proble in this case history it is with a rich an pertinent formulation: I shoul myself be gla to know whether the primal scene in my present patient's case was a fantasy or a real experince; but, taking other similar cases into account, I must amit that the answer to this uestion is not in fact a matter of very great importance'1 Confronte with the iculty of eciing whether a putative narrative event shoul be
regare as a given or a prouct, Freu notes that it is not ecisivey importan, in that either perspective gives us the same narrative seence ut Freu also recognizes that the reader or analys can never calmly accep this concusion when he has egage wit a arrative here is o happy compromise, for te force, the ethical import of a arrative, always ipels the reaer or anayst towar a decision Unersanaby, Freu esires to know whether he has iscovered the ecisive event of his aient's astan event which, for exaple, other arents might on e basis of Freu's iscovery be ejone to avoior whether he parents' behavor was in no way ecisive, since whatever they i co be rans forme by te tropes of fantasy into hat the forces of signication in he narrative reuire The ethical an referentia imensions of te narratve, that s to say, make such uestions of comeling interest, even thoug the theorist resists this interest with the suggestion that te choice oes not atter n one sese, however, Freu is right, for the two ateratives give us very silar narratives. f oe opts for te proction of the event by forces of signication, it becomes cear ha the primal fantasy, as we ight call i, can be ecacious y if the iagie event functions for the 4yearl as a rea event frm his past Ad if, on the other han, we ot for te reaity of he pria scene, we can see that this event col not have ha the isastrous cosequeces it id uless the sructures of signication which ade i a traua for e Wofman an gave i irresistibe explanaory poer were so suite to it as to ake it in some sese ecessary The fact that the event supposedly experienced at age Y2 became a traua ony throgh eferre action at age 4 shows the owerful role of te forces of eaning. But how ever cose these two accouns ay be, the fact remains that from the point of view of narratoogy, a aso from the pot of view of he engage reaer, the ierence beteen an event of the plot an a magiary event s irreucibe As Brooks conces, the reatioship beween fabula an sjuzhet, between event a is signicant rewriig s oe of suspicion an conjecture, a structre of uneciability hich can oer only a fraework of narrative possibilities rater han a clealy speciable plot.'5 This unecidabity is he eect of the covergece of two narrative ogics tha o not give rise to a synthesis he same patte of arrative an analysis aears in another text of Fre's which tels no the story of an inviual but he story of the race In Totem and Taboo Freu tels of a ecisive historical even in primitve ties a jeaos a tyranical fater, ho kep al the woen for imsef a drove away he sons as they reache matrity, was kille an devoue by the sons who ha banded together his memorable an criminal ee' was the beginning of socia organizaton, region, an ora restrctons, since the guilt e to the creaton of taboos This hstorical eve, Freu cais, remains ecacious to this day. We iherit and repeat the ish f not e
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STORY AND DISCO URSE I N THE ANALY SI S OF NARRAT IVE
actual deed, and the uilt which arises from this wish keeps the conseuences of the deed alive in an unroken narrative But clearly if uil can e created by esires as well as by acts, it is possible that the oriinary act ever took place. Freud admits that the remorse may have een provoked by the sons' fantasy of killin the father (by the imain ation of an event) This is a plausible hypothesis, he says, and no damae would thus e done to the causal chain stretchin from the einnin to the present day.'16 Choosin etween these aternatives is no easy matter; how ever, he adds, it must be confessed that the istinction which may seem fundamental to other people does not in our judment aect the heart of the matter' As in the case of the Wolfman, emphasis on event and emphasis on meanin ive the same narrative. But once aain, one cannot fail to wish to choose, and Freud does: primitive men were uninhibited; for them thouht passed directly ito action. With them it is rather the deed that is the substi tute for thouht And that is why, without ayin claim to any nality of judment, I think that in the case before us it may be assumed that "in the beinnin was the Deed. '17 A safe assumption, perhaps, ut safe because it is so euivocal. Freud here starts with the fantasy and asserts that for primitive men the deed was a substitute for the fantasy The deed truly took place, he caims, but his formu lation prevents one from takin the deed as a iven since it is itself but a sustitute for the fantasy, a product of this primal fantasy. And in claimin that in the beinnin was the Deed, Freud refers us not to an event but to a sinifyin structure, another tet, Goethe's Faust, in which deed' is but a substitute for word' Faust is translatin the openin words of Genesis, In the beinnin was the Word,' and, unhappy with the German Wort, decides to substitute for it, in the very esture Freud repeats, the word for deed': Tat. Quotin Goethe in assertin an oriinary deed, Freud cannot but refer us to a prior Word. Freud's tet shows that even when one tries to assert the primacy of either word or deed one does not succeed in escapin the alterna tive one tried to reject I emphasie the impossibility of synthesis because what is involved here in narrative is an eect of selfdeconstruction A deconstruction involves the demonstration that a hierarchical opposition, in which oneerm is said to be dependent upon another conceived as prior, is in fact a rhetorical or meta physical imposition and that the hierarchy could well be reversed The narra tives discussed here include a moment of selfdeconstruction in which the supposed priority of event to discourse is inverted. The most elementary form of this deconstruction, somewhat dierent but still very relevant to narrative, is Nietsche's analysis of causation as a trope, a metonymy. Causation involves a narrative structure in which we posit rst the pres ence of a cause and then the production of an eect Indeed, the very notion of plot, as E M. Forster tauht us, is based on causation: the kin died, then the ueen died' is not a narrative, althouh the kin died, then the 127
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queen died of rie is18 his, one ight sa, is the fabula of the causal narrative rst, there is cause ; then, there is eect; rst a osquito bites one's arm, then oe feels pai ut, says Nietzsce, this sequence is not ive; it is constructed y a rhetorical operation Wat appens ay e, fr eample, that we feel a pain and then look aroud for some factor we ca treat as the cause e rea' causa sequence ay be: rst pain, ten mosuto It is the eect that causes us to produce a cause; a tropooical operation then reorders the seuence painosquito as mosuitopain his latter seuence is the product of iscursive forces, ut e treat it as a iven, as te true order19 This account of the productio of causatio does not imply tat we ca scrap the notio of causation, any more tan the discursive prouction of events impies tat narratives coul function without the idea of causation, but there are momets wen narratives identify their on tropoloical pro duction and when the second perspective is indispensabe to a account of teir force This is true not oy of coplex literary or teoretical arratives but aso of hat the socioinuist William Laov cas atura narrative' an interestin case for the narratooist n his studies of the blac Enish vernacuar, Labov became interested in the arrative skills displaed b adolescents and preadolescets In inter views he would ask, for exaple, Were you ever i a ht ith a uy bier than you?' and if the answer were Yes' ould pause and then as, sipy, at happene?' Laov beis his formal analysis of these stories by assuin te primacy of events: he denes narrative as a method of recapitulatin past eperience y matcin a veral seuece of causes to the sequence of evets'2 0 But, starting fro this denition, he discovers that tere is oe iportant aspect of narrative that has not een dis cussedperhaps te ost important eemet in addition to the basic arrative cause Tis is what we term te evaluation of te arrative: te eas used by the narrator to indicate the point of te narrative, its raison d'tre, wy it was told ad what the narrator as getting at 2 Laov even cocludes tat the narrator's primary concern may not e to report a sequence of evets, as the deition of arrative would suest, but rater to el a story tat will not be tout pointless Poitless stories are et [in Elish] with te witherig rejoinder, "So at? Every ood arra tor is cotiuay ardi o this uestion en is narrative is over it shou be unthikable for a bystader to say, "So what? ' 22 Labov's narrators prove silled at arding o this questio hey con struct their narratives so that the deands of signication are met and the story percived as worthy of telin, as arratable Labo's analysis distiuishes tese discursive, evaluative eeents from the seuence of actions 28
ORY A ICOURE I HE AALYI O ARRAIVE
reported in the narrative clauses; it is thus based on yet another version of the basic narratological distinction between story and discourse. Labov's analysis \orks very ell as long as he can distinguish story from discourse If he can separate narrative clauses from evaluative clauses, then he ca main tain the view that a narratie is a sequence of clauses reporting eents, to which are added clauses evaluating these evens, but when he comes to describe the evaluative devices, he discovers that some of the most ineresting and powerful are no comments external to the action but acually belog to the sequence of actios Instead of oneself remarking how exciting or dangerous or what a close call an incident was, one can emphasize the reportability of a story y attributing an ealuative comment to one of the participants and narrating this comment as an event in the story: And when we got down there her brother turned to me and whispered, "I think she's dead, John ' Or, as Labov says, the evaluation may itself be a narrative clause' in that an actio one reports has the primary function of emphasizing the dramatic character of the event, as i I never prayed to God so fast and so hard in all my life! m Labov is certainly correct to claim that many clauses reporting actions are in fact determined by heir evaluative function; instead of thinking of them as reports of prior actions, he prefers to see them as in eect producing an action so as to comply with the requirements of signicance and make the story one to which no one will say So what?' But given this possibility, the analyst nds himself in an awkward position For every report of an action there is the possibility that it should be thought of as evaluatie, determined by the requirements of signicance, and not as the narrative representation of a given event Since the analyst's most basic distinction is between narra tive and evaluative clauses, since for him analyzing a tale is rst of all a matter of sorting elements ito these two classes, he must make this choice, which may be a ery dubious one Of course, in a sense, as Freud said, his choice may not matter, since however he describes a particular event we still have the same tale But if we are concerned with the force of the story, and those who tell or listen to natural narratives are especially concerned with their force, then we are inited to choose In natural narratie the desire to choose, the urgency of choice, is likely to emerge in the form of suspicion: it sounds too neat, too dramatic, too good to be true did it really happen that way, or is this incident an evaluative device designed to preent us from saying So hat?' Is this particular ele ment of the story a product of discursive reqirements? In so-called natural narrative' the choice usually emerges as a question about ctionality Is this incident true?), but as soon as the narrative as a whole is placed under the aegis of ction, as soon as we approach it as a short story rather than a narrative of personal experience, then the question of the relation of story and discourse nds no such simple outlet We cannot as simply whether an incident is true or false; it would be very odd to say of Daniel Deronda that 129
PLOT
we do no beieve he was actua ly born a ew We hav e to ask insead whether this is an event tat determines meaning and discourse or ether it is isef determined by various narrative and discursive requirements The analysis of narraive is an imortant branch of semiotics e stil do not appreciate as ully as e ought the imortance of arrative schemes and models in a asecs of ur ives Anaysis of narr aive depends, as I ave argued, on te distinction between story and discourse, and tis disinction aways invoves a relation of deendency either the discourse is seen as a representation of events hich must e thought of as indeendent of hat particuar representaion, or ese the so-called evens are though of as the postulates or roducs of a discourse Since he disinction eween story and discourse can function ony if there is a deermination of ne by te her, the anayst must alays choose which wi be treaed as the given and hich as the roduct Yet either choice leads to a narraology that misses some of he curious coexiy of naaives and fails o account fr mch of teir imact If ne tinks of discourse as he resentation of story, one wi nd i dicult o accoun fr the sorts o eects, discussed here, wich deend uon he deerminaion f story by discourse, a possibili often osed by the narraive itse If, on the other hand, one ere to adot the vie hat ha e call evens' are nohing oter than roducts of discourse a series of redicates ataced to agents in the text, then one oud be even ess abe to accoun for he force of narrative For even the most radica ctions deend for their eect on the assuion ta their uzzing sequences of sentences are presentaions of events (though e ay not e abe o te ha tose events are), and that these events in rincile ave features no reported y the discourse, such tat the seection oerated y he discourse has meaning ithou ha assumion, wich maes the discourse a seection and even a supression of possible information, texts old lac eir inriging and disocaory power Neither perspective, then, is iey to oer a satisfacory narratoogy, nor can e ogether in a armonious syntesis; hey stand in irreconci able oposition, a conict beteen to ogics hich uts in quesio the ossibiity of a coherent, nonconradictory science' of narraive But this identication f a certain sef-deconstructive force in narrative and te e ry of narraive shoud n lead o rejecion of te anaytica enterprise ta drives one to this discovery In te absence of te possibility of synhesis, one ust be iling t shi from one perspecive to te oter, from story to discourse and a c again Notes
For a bibiogaphy and useful synthesis, see Seymour Chatan Story and Discourse: Narative Structure in Ficion and Film, Ithaca Corne University Press 130
STORY AND DISCOURSE N THE ANALYSS OF NARRATVE
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 l
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 1
20 21 22 23
1978. For more recent disussions and further bibliography, see the three issues of Poetics Today devoted to narrative: 1 :3 (180) 1:4 (180) and 22 (181) Mieke Bal, Narratologe: essai sur Ia signcation narratve dans quatre romans odes Paris, Klinksieck, 177 p 6 Ibid, p. 4 Sigmund Freud, The nterpretaton ofDreams New York Avon, 165 p 25 Sophocles, Oedpus the King translated with a commentary by Thomas Gould, Englewood Clis, N.J, Prentie-Hall, 170, lines 842-7 See Sandor Goodhart, 'Oedipus and Laiuss Many Murderers, Dacritics 81 (Sprng 178) pp 5571 See Cynthia Chase, Oedipal Textuality Reading Freuds Reading of Oedus,' Diacrtcs 1 (Spring 17) p 58 Cynthia Chase, The Decomposition of the Elephants DoubleReading Daniel Deronda PMLA 32 (Marh 178) p 218 Ibid, p 215 This is a simplication of a more complex account in Peter Brooks, 'Fictions of the Wolfman, Diacrtcs 1 (Spring 17) pp 756 Sigmund Freud The Woan and Sgmund Freud Harmondsworth, Penguin, 173 p 220 Brooks, Fitions of the Wolfman, p 78; Fred, The Woman p 221 Freud, The Woan p 223 Ibid, p 260 Brooks, 'Fitions of the olfman, p 77 See also Brooks, Freds Masterplot Questions of Narrative, Yale French Studes 5556 (177) pp 280-300 Fred, Tote and Taboo Ne York, Norton, 150 p. 16. Ibid, p 161 Unlock E M orster, Aspects of the Novel Harmondsworth, Penguin, 162 p 3 Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke ed Karl Schlechta, Munich, Hanser Verlag, 156 vol 3 pp. 804-5 For disussion see Jonathan Cller, On Deconstruction Lterary Theory in the 1970s Ithaca, Coell University Press/Rotledge & Kegan Paul, forthoming, ch 2 William Labov, Language in the nner City niversity of Pennsylvania Press, 172 p 360 Ibi, p 366 Ibid William Labov, Narrative Analysis Oral Versions of Personal Experience,
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Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts: Proceedngs of the Amercan Ethnological Socety (166) pp 37
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NARRATIVE THEORY Crtc Concpts n Ltrr nd Cutur Studs First published 2004 by Rouledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN
by Mieke Bal
Simulaneousy published in he USA and Canada by Rouledge ZO Madison Avenue ew York NY 1006 Transferred to Digia Prining 2006 Reprined 2007
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an infora business Edioria maer and selecion© 204 Mieke Bal; individual oners retain copyrigh in heir own maerial
Volume I Major Issues in Narrative Theory
Typese in Times by ReneCach Limied Bungay Suok Prined and bound in Grea Brain by MPG igia Soluions Bodmin ornwal A righs reserved. No par o this book may be reprined or reproduced or uiised in any orm or by any elecronic mechanical or oher means now known or hereafer invented incuding phoocopying and recording or in any inormation sorage or rerieva sysem without permission in writing from he publi�h�rs
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References within each chaper are as hey appear in he origina compete work
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