Phenomenology and The Possibility of Narrative

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Phenomenology and the possibility of narrative

Steeves, H Peter. Clio 24. 1 (Fall 1994): 21.
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Abstract (summary)
A few brief points of Edmund Husserl's account of intentionality are examined, and a phenomenology of narrative is presented. A Husserlian theory offers a new and useful way to understand the experience of the narrativity of narrative.
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Introduction How is it that we experience narrative and what is it that we understand narrative to be? The answers to such questions inevitably depend on how we go about looking for them. That is, if our method is psychological, then our answers tend to be couched in psychological terms, explaining the effect of story-telling on the conscious and subconscious and perhaps even the need or drive to create narrative which resides in our unconscious. If our method is more metaphysical, then our answers will concern such things as ontology; we might attempt to deduce the proper form of narrative and uncover the epistemological link between the possible world with which we are presented and our imagination and perception. But such answers, though interesting and not without their merit, are somewhat less than satisfying. The psychological description of narrative will rest on some basic, often unexamined assumptions about generic human unconsciousness--assumptions we may find suspect or at least open to debate. The metaphysical approach offers similar problems in its need to make assumptions concerning the world, the mind, and the necessary structures which constitute and bridge the gap between the two. What is needed is a method which is both descriptive and certain, thus we adopt a skeptical stance and ask ourselves: what can we assume in our investigation of narrative? The answer proves simple: we are having an experience of narrative. That is, when reading narrative we are sure that there is consciousness, that it is filled, and that of which we are conscious is some aspect of what we call narrative.(1) Our task is thus newly defined, leaving us with two distinct questions. First, what is the experience of narrative like? That is, how do we experience narrative, how is this experience unlike non-narrative experiences, and what mechanisms of consciousness seem to be employed in these experiences? And second, what are the necessary preconditions for narrative, i.e., for the experience of narrative as narrative? Our method is thus phenomenological, but the possible avenues of investigation are neither immediately nor drastically limited, for there are a variety of phenomenological methods within the tradition. It has been suggested that a standard Husserlian approach to phenomenological literary criticism or literary theory is misdirected, outdated, even straightforwardly wrong. Such is the lesson of post-structuralism: the notions of objective interpretation and the independence of text from
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interpreter have given way to a type of relativism and a radical skepticism that we should have any faith in a text apart from an interpreter. Indeed, the generation directly following Husserl was quick to pick up on such points and even the young Heidegger, seeing that consciousness is always active and perspectival, suggested in opposition to the traditional Husserl that the mutual implication of interpreter and work ensures a variety of possible interpretations, each with its own validity. But it is part of our goal to suggest how standard interpretations of Husserl have been misdirected. Thus we will first sketch a few brief points of Husserl's account of intentionality so that they might remain fresh in our mind as we apply them to the task at hand. Next we will move to offer a phenomenology of narrative, finally turning our attention to the question of the possibility of narrative, where it will become clear that a Husserlian theory offers a new and useful way to understand our experience of the narrativity of narrative. Some Appropriate Background For Husserl, consciousness is always consciousness of something. Intentionality is directed in the sense that it always has an object. Normally, we focus our attention on an object of perception--a desk, for example. Thus when we undertake a phenomenological investigation, we study the consciousness of the desk and not the desk per se. The desk itself is, actually, ignored. It is bracketed, and even its existence becomes a non-issue. Now, it is a characteristic of consciousness that it can be self-reflective; i.e., we can focus our attention on the intentional act itself as well as on the object toward which it was directed. Such is the initialization of Husserl's reduction. Thus we can investigate the basic structures of consciousness and ask, more specifically, what it is like to experience narrative. When we investigate intentionality itself we discover that we do not experience the world as a succession of unrelated, instantaneous moments, but rather each now-moment is a rich slice of conscious-life with a full array of protentions and retentions stretching into the near future and the near past. The manifold of retentions and protentions which exist with each now-moment necessarily enforces boundaries and limits on our experience. If a certain future experience does not match with a given protention, we experience surprise, but then go on to interpret the experience in this new way, thus altering our other retentions and perhaps all other recollections as well.(2) But if a new experience fails to match with even a possible protention, then we cannot even rightfully call it an experience; for without the imposition of some order--i.e., without placing the experience in our horizon of understanding--there is no experience. My horizon of experience thus includes the manifold now-moment plus a set of retentions which provides a context for my current experience (and defines the limits of my anticipations) and a set of protentions which provides a possible order to current and future experiences (as well as sets limits to my recollections and the patterns of organization therein). If, for example, I disassemble my pocket watch and spread its bits on the desk before me, I would have a collection of gears, springs, hands, etc. As I look at a particular spring, for instance, I take it to be a watch-part; however, if the neighbor child happens by and sees the mess I have created on the desk and picks up the same spring to examine it, she will not see it as a watch-part. Her background experiential horizon does not include the notion of the watch as a whole, thus it would be impossible for her to protend or experience the spring to be a part. Similarly, should I hike through the jungle with a witch-doctor and happen upon a particular root which is a key ingredient in the making of some sort of "zombie-powder," I will see the root as a root, but my friend the witch-doctor will see it as a part of his magical concoction, as a source of strength, and a variety of other notions I necessarily cannot articulate. The limits of my horizon determine the limits of my experience. The question which we must now ask, though, is how is it that we come to understand the meaning of any experience--i.e., where does this meaning reside and how does it reveal itself? Early-Husserl suggests that, in an attempt to find meaning in a text, we must try to echo the intentional act of the author. This is due to his belief that the written expression is a kind of sign which stands for an idea which is tied to an object. For the Husserl of the Logical Investigations (1900), meaning is achieved through the reader's intentionality, yet his proper intentionality has a definite form: it must mirror the author's original intentional meaning if it is to be correct. With the advent of the Ideas (1913) and the development of the theory of noesis and noema, intentionality becomes richer and meaning is present not just in the act, but in the intentional object--the noema--as well; thus the text and the interpreter provide meaning together. This is not so far off from the theories of Husserl's successors. When Heidegger writes that "interpretation is grounded in something we have in advance--in a fore-having," we are reminded of Husserl's dynamic horizon of experience which provides a framework for all of experience, including
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literary interpretation.(3) When Gadamer writes, "receptivity is not acquired by an objectivist 'neutrality,'" we see that he is not actually attacking Husserl (as he suggests) but rather concurring with Husserl that a necessary precondition for receptivity is the adoption of a distinct perspective.(4) And finally, when Heidegger suggests that Dasein is projected on the text and the text then projects its own "counter-thrust" on Dasein, thus ensuring the "mutual implication of interpreter and literary work," we recall Husserl's noesis and noema both participating in the achievement of meaning.(5) We see how Husserl's phenomenology has set the groundwork for the later hermeneutical and "radical" phenomenological movements which followed. Since experience can take place only given a certain horizon, it is necessarily pre-interpreted, conforming to certain preestablished standards of possible experience. This is not to say that one's horizon is a static, a priori construct, though. Indeed, it is the case that actual experience continually shapes and redefines the limits of possible experience. This is what makes growth, learning, and even creativity possible. And that is to say that the dynamic nature of the phenomenological horizon, the self-reflective possibility of intentionality, and the mutual implication of meaning couched in both noesis and noema are necessary for the experience of narrative--the specific topic at hand and the question to which we now turn. The Phenomenology of Narrative vs. Poetic Description Let us define narrative according to the object and manner of its presentation; namely, narrative represents a world in motion as mediated by some voice relating a story of the world to an audience. This sets narrative apart from description, which represents a world at rest, and drama, which offers direct access to characters and scenes.(6) But before we are accused of an ad hoc definition, let us investigate the intentional structure of reading narrative and the preconditions which make such a reading possible, thus making it clear how narrative can be so defined and separated from other forms of discourse. Reading narrative is largely the process of constructing a new narrative-horizon in which to understand. Our ability to perform the reduction is crucial to our investigation at this point, as we are now peering at the structures of intentionality as we encounter narrative rather than the narrative itself. When we pick up a novel, for instance, we are invited to understand. We are given chronologically ordered descriptions--which is not to say that all narrative is linear, but rather the object of representation (a world in motion) and the physical ordering of sentences on the page ensure a temporal sequence--and these descriptions demand not only interpretation, but understanding as well. Now when we say understanding we do not mean that there is an inherent, objective meaning which we are called to understand and uncover, but rather that experience to be experience must be ordered, and a coherence of understanding is one aspect of such orderliness. Thus we pick up Henry James' The Turn of the Screw or Nabokov's Lolita, and we try to make sense of what is before us--of the descriptions and thoughts and actions within the world represented by the text. Of course, the first things we encounter are words (or perhaps sentences or even "black marks on a white background" depending on the starting point of our theory), but this level of analysis is not of direct interest to us presently.(7) Rather, we assume a common linguistic system for text and reader, and then move to ask how the overall experience of narrative takes shape. When we encounter narrative, we are forced to make some phenomenological moves peculiar to the narrative experience. If I encounter a traffic sign with the text "SOFT SHOULDER" as I am driving down the road, I may not at first understand its meaning and thus its significance for me. Yet there are some things of which I can be more or less certain. First, I recognize it as a traffic sign by its shape, color, placement, etc. This puts it in a certain category and thus creates expectations concerning its possible meaning. In my activity of driving I might consider it an anomaly, but it is not completely foreign, as I can maintain my current horizon and still have some hope of achieving understanding. Perhaps I will note a danger or a difference in driving- conditions up ahead and make a tentative conclusion concerning the significance of the text. Similarly, if I read a description of some thing (e.g., in a scientific paper, a mathematical proof, or even an object in a poem) I may not completely understand, but my move to understand will be intra-horizonal. The "delicious, sweet, and cold plums" may take some analysis, but as I proceed through the poem I attempt to understand by searching for their relation to other objects in the poem, objects in my horizon, possible symbols of deeper meaning in my horizon, etc. But the experience of narrative is very different. First, the experience of narrative occurs under very specific conditions. When I pick up a novel and agree, as it were, to enter into a relation with it, I am engaging in an activity that has pre-arranged conditions and rules for participation, though to leave our analysis at this level would be to beg the question of how we experience narrative. To say we experience narrative as narrative is not meaningless babble--for, in fact, it suggests that narrative can be experienced, that it is a type of experiential classification, etc.--but then we have to ask how these structures, the arena in which the
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spectacle of narrative unfolds, initially arise. The answer is that narrative forces us to adopt a new horizon in an attempt to understand. Since the world which narrative represents is dynamic, we cannot "grab a hold" of it and scrutinize it under the lens (i.e., horizon) of our everyday experience. William Carlos Williams' plums "sit still" for us, as does the author's consciousness of the plums, etc. The represented world contrary to a narrated world is a static one, and even though I must consider the author's consciousness of his world and the way in which he chooses to organize and describe it, such processes are not shown to be in motion. Rather, they have already taken place and have left me with a dormant product to analyze. This calls for some further analysis. Indeed, it might at first glance appear straightforwardly wrong. Surely there are many clear examples of poetic description which seem to be non-static--many instances of discourse we would typically label poetry yet they describe a world in motion. Williams' plums used to be in the icebox, now they are inside the speaker's stomach--something is not at rest here. And there are even better examples. What are we to say of Williams Stafford's "Traveling Through the Dark"?(8) Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her side brought me the reason--her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road I hesitated. The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights; under the hood purred the steady engine. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; around our group I could hear the wilderness listen. I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--, then pushed her over the edge into the river. In these lines do we not have a description of a world in motion--do we not have a narrative, a story? In addition to such persuasive examples, it could be suggested that to claim that poetic description lacks temporality--that its objects are at rest, sitting still, and outside of time--is to abandon a description of our phenomenological life on which much of the rest of our theory depends. That is, it must be our position that all experience is essentially temporal. Such is the claim of Husserl and many of his commentators and philosophic heirs. Indeed, David Carr puts it succinctly: "without past and future there can be no present and thus no experience at all. . . . Even the most unarticulated or instantaneous of occurrences . . . is experienced as an event with a certain temporal thickness . . ."(9) Consequently, if we were to have a very short poem describing the popping of a balloon--not a story of how the balloon was popped and what people did afterwards, but just a description of the popping sound--it would not be the case that we have an atemporal world at rest, for in order for the popping to be an experience for us (either as a first hand experience or an experience through literature) there has to be a retentional/protentional context of understanding. That is, we need the retention of the inflated balloon, the quiet absence of the popping sound, etc. And we need the protention of the sound ending, the balloon deflated, etc. The popping, to be an experience, is more than an instantaneous sound. It is a rich event originating in silence and ending in silence, and in this sense even the most seemingly atemporal objects, events, descriptions, or worlds are essentially dependent on time and the temporal thickness of all experience. All of this is true. Indeed, we never meant to suggest otherwise by claiming that poetry is a still world while narrative is active. The distinction is that there is a certain level of objectification possible in poetry which is not evident in narrative. Poetic content can become objects for us, whether such objects are plums, balloon poppings, or the encountering of a dead deer--whether they are things or events such content is objectifiable. Poetic objects are surely temporal, then, and a poem can "tell a story," but we must understand these notions in a very special way. As I am writing this, I notice the pen in my hand. Stopping for a moment to look at it, I can objectify it. As I move my eyes from the clip to the point and back down the body, I acknowledge that my experience of the pen is temporal. Now surely it is the case that the pen is, in some sense, a social construct--its uses are defined socially, its design was born of another's creativity, and so forth. But in order for the pen to be understood (assuming that in this instance understanding a pen means knowing that it is for writing and knowing how to use it), I need not actively take up or investigate the phenomenological horizons of the inventor, designer, nor the rest of society. Rather, the pen "sits still" for me. It does not resist objectification. It is understandable given my own horizon-a horizon which is dependent in many ways, no doubt, on my culture, my previous encounters with pens, etc.--but is, nevertheless, mine.
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Such is the case with poetic description. Williams subjectively describes his plums, Stafford sifts the story of the deer encounter through his own horizon as he writes, and the designer at the Cross pen and pencil factory has his or her own set of talents and preconceived notions on pen-aesthetics: the objects of poetry are by no means completely uninterpreted before we encounter them. But the point is that these objects make sense to us given only our own horizon. Perhaps such understanding could be enriched by an expansion of that horizon--perhaps knowing more about Greek mythology will help me read certain poetry because references and symbols taken from myths are lost without my having the knowledge which makes such experiences possible for me--but it is still my horizon, expanded or not, in which there is understanding. In narrative, however, this is not the case. In order to understand the objects represented, the consciousness involved--i.e., in order to understand the world of the narrative--I must adopt a horizon appropriate for such an understanding. I do not force the narrative into my everyday horizon as if it were representing a world at rest, but rather take up a sub-horizon, or narrative-horizon, as a means of understanding. We have seen that the activity of driving (and seeing unexpected traffic signs) is not so foreign as to require such a process of horizonal-shift. But what happens when we read a narrative about someone driving? When I am actively driving, my horizon could be said to be in driving-mode: it is there in its entirety but certain specific possibilities come to the forefront and influence my retentions and protentions. When I experience a narrative of someone driving, it is not enough that I switch to my driving-mode horizon. In fact, it is inappropriate, for my experience is not like driving. It is a pseudoexperience of someone else driving--someone else switching his or her horizon to driving-mode. Thus in order to understand the story being presented, I must try to understand the narrative-world from this new horizonal-mode. It is not exactly like trying to experience life from the horizon of the character who is driving. Neither is it like experiencing driving myself. It is, instead, recognizing my own horizon of experience, realizing that it is--in some sense--inadequate for understanding the dynamic world before me, recognizing the horizon of the narrative (whether this is a character's horizon or the author-as-narrator's horizon, etc.), and attempting to experience the reality of the world of the text through both my horizon and this narrative-horizon. The new horizon--not completely separate from my own yet not identical either--gives limits for retentions and protentions and allows an understanding of the text. Here, then, we have the Husserlian/Heideggerian notion of mutual implication. Meaning is achieved by mixing what I bring to the text (my own horizon) and what is found in the text (the narrative-horizon). This notion becomes clearer when we ask ourselves how we know what the narrative-horizon is like. What sort of horizon do we adopt, and in what sense does the narrative force a certain horizon on the reader? There are two forces shaping the new horizon. First, there is the horizon of the reader, in which the new horizon necessarily makes sense. Second, there is the text. The world of the text is what we want to understand and the narrative-horizon is supposed to facilitate such understanding. As we read, we try to make sense of the data given us. The narrative world is playing itself out in front of us in the text. If we attempt to stop it and analyze it as an object, we destroy it. Our only hope is to "jump in" and adopt a horizon appropriate for an understanding. As I read The Turn of the Screw, I see that the world presented is sifted through the horizon of the governess. If I attempt to analyze the data she presents as isolated, objective, and static, I will not achieve understanding. Furthermore, if I analyze this data as data with which I might be presented or which I might experience given my own horizon, I will again fail to achieve understanding. The problem is that the data presented in the text is already post-horizonal. It has been interpreted by both James and the governess.(10) Seeing the ghost in the window, for instance, was possible for the governess given her specific horizon of experience. If I attempt to analyze this description without first investigating, and in some sense taking up and participating in, the horizon of the governess which made the experience possible in the first place, I will never achieve understanding. And this is what is meant by suggesting that reading narrative is largely the process of constructing a new narrative-horizon in which to understand. Naturally, we do not give up our own personal horizon. Neither do we ever have the horizon of the governess as she would actually possess it, but we can and must attempt to reconstruct the latter within the context of the former if we are to understand.(11) The dynamic world of narrative forces us--as no other form of literature, discourse, or experience can--to go through such phenomenological moves. The notion of how much a text forces a certain horizon on a reader thus becomes more of a question of aesthetic judgment than phenomenological epistemology. Wolfgang Iser talks of "interpretation," but if we think of "adopted narrative-horizon" in its place in the following passage, the point becomes clear: As we work out a consistent pattern in the text, we will find our "interpretation" threatened, as it were, by the presence of other possibilities of "interpretation," and so there arise new areas of
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indeterminacy (though we may only be dimly aware of them, if at all, as we are continually making "decisions" which will exclude them). In the course of a novel, for instance, we sometimes find that characters, events, and backgrounds seem to change their significance; what really happens is that the other "possibilities" begin to emerge more strongly, so that we become more directly aware of them. . . . As we read, we oscillate to a greater or lesser degree between the building and the breaking of illusions.(12) The choice of adopted horizon clearly makes a difference in our understanding--as is evidenced in The Turn of the Screw's forcing a choice between a horizon allowing for the perception of ghosts (i.e., the governess actually sees ghosts) versus a horizon allowing for the creation of ghosts (i.e., the governess is deluded and does not actually see ghosts)--but Iser's point, and the point we are trying to make, is that the degree to which such choices are forced on the reader ultimately indicates the success of the narrative. "The author," explain's Iser, "may, of course, exert plenty of influence on the reader's imagination--he has the whole panoply of narrative techniques at his disposal--but no author worth his salt will ever attempt to set the whole picture before his reader's eyes" (218). That is, no successful author will say what the narrative-horizon is, but rather will show it in operation in the text. Thus we have seen what it is that the narrative experience turns out to be, but it remains for us to show how the experience of narrative qua narrative is possible. For this we invoke the notion of Husserlian intersubjectivity and move to investigate the preconditions of the narrative experience and the recognition of the narrativity of narrative. The Possibility of Narrative Perhaps it would be possible to bypass the question of the possibility of narrative altogether. Perhaps it is enough to say that we have isolated the narrative experience, shown how it is unique, and suggested what we understand its intentional structure to be. But some would say that our definition of narrative is still suspect, for we have shown how the representation of a world in motion plays a major role in narrative's forcing us to take up a new horizon of understanding, and we have seen that the mediating voice of the narrative helps define and give insight into the world of the narrative and thus the new horizon, but the basic structure of story, storyteller, and audience is unaccounted for. Why assume that narrative takes this form; or at least, why assume that such a form is a primary quality of narrative? Perhaps we attribute such a nature to narrative because we recognize the story of our own existence and then see this structure mirrored in a text. That is, we are only capable of recognizing a quality in something if we are aware of this quality in isolation or in some other context. Thus, I recognize Freudian structures in Nathaniel Hawthorne's work only after I know of Freud; and I take a baseball game to be a sport only after I have an understanding of what a sport is. Therefore, perhaps it is the case that I see myself going through experiences, interpreting life through my particular horizon, and participating in a world in motion: I see the story of my life. Given this, I have achieved a notion of "story" which allows me to understand narrative. Without such an internal concept of the narrative of my life, I would not have the experience of narrative elsewhere, and I thus use my own narrative as a model for judging other experiences as to whether or not they exhibit narrativity. Indeed, such a notion is neither new nor radical. Alasdair MacIntyre comes very close to this position in his After Virtue, when he writes: "It is because we all live out narratives in our lives and because we understand our own lives in terms of the narratives that we live out that the form of narrative is appropriate for understanding the actions of others. Stories are lived before they are told . . ."(13) But this is the less traditional position. More often it is suggested that narrative is a form imposed by artists. Consequently, "Stories," writes Louis Mink, "are not lived out but told. Life has no beginnings, middles, or ends; there are meetings, but the start of an affair belongs to the story we tell ourselves later, and there are partings, but final partings only in the story."(14) We wish to suggest, however, that both notions are misdirected. We do not recognize narrative as narrative because it reminds us of our own personal life story. But neither is it the case that external narrative is prior to personal narrative. Indeed, our sense of personal narrative and our awareness of external examples of narrative are equally reliant on each other. In the fifth of the Cartesian Meditations (1929), Husserl deals with the problem of intersubjectivity and encounters a similar situation. Is it not true, his critics were saying, that I first possess a notion of myself as an isolated, monadic Ego and then look to the world to see what else looks like it might be an Ego as well? Is this not how I achieve a notion of the Other--by seeing structures in him so similar to my own that I transfer the sense of "Ego" from me to him? Surely the Ego is prior to the Other. Husserl, however, suggests that this is not what happens, that the notion of Ego and Other arise together within a common communal framework, and that there is a mutual transfer of sense from
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my body to the alien body and from the alien body to my body in what he termed a "pairing" relation. Indeed, the Other is a necessary precondition for the experience of myself as an "I," and I am always constituted as a member of a community. Let us be more specific about the mechanisms involved.(15) To be technically thorough, we need two distinct arguments. First we must acknowledge that we are fundamentally committed to a phenomenologically founded community. That is, we must show that without the Other there is no Ego, and that without the communal network there can be neither Other nor Ego. The details of such an argument are beyond the scope of this essay, but what we have said already can point in the direction of establishing this notion. There is no time at which a monadic, isolated human Ego exists--from the very beginning, the Ego is constituted as one among Others, as a member of a community. Second, we must show that this community is somehow dependent on narrative for its existence as well. Consequently, as soon as the Ego is generated--since it comes to sense simultaneously with the Other and the community--there is narrative. At the same moment that the human Self is being realized and constituted--at the same moment that this Self is capable of seeing itself as a unity, as possessing a life story (or what we have been calling a personal-narrative)--the community is being constituted for this Self, and thus a realization and commitment to the concept of a communal narrative (or what we have been calling an external narrative) is made evident. In regard to this second point-the dependence of the community on narrative--Carr claims that "at whatever level or size or degree of complexity, a community exists wherever a narrative account exists of a we which has continuous existence through its experiences and activities" (163). Narrative is a way of being for the community--it inflates the community to life. It is worthwhile to note in what sense the above suggestions differ from Carr's account. Actually, the difference is founded in a question of social ontology. At one point, Carr writes that "narrative has its first role in the pre-literary structuring and shaping of real life, before it is employed in its literary embodiments for purposes which may be purely aesthetic or purely cognitive. And our use of 'before' here is logical, not really temporal" (72). This last sentence is very telling. It is not just that life stories exist first and then artists write narratives about them, but that external-literary-narrative requires the personal narrative. Artistic narrative receives its structure from the narratives of real experience--without the latter, the former could not exist. Our point is somewhat different, and this stems from our insistence that the Ego and the Other necessarily simultaneously arise in meaning. It is impossible for the Ego and the personal narrative to come before the Other and the external narrative in a temporal or logical sense for us. Consequently; it is external instances of narrative--the novels, fables, and stories of our culture and community--which make possible the experience of our own life's narrative as a narrative and vice versa. There is a mutual transfer of sense taking place when we experience the stories around us--they become stories for us only as our own life becomes a story for us as well. Neither is used as a model for the other but rather the two achieve their meaning in union. Through a pairing relation much like the one Husserl describes, personal and communal narratives arise in sense together. This is to say that as both develop as themes, certain aspects of what will become external narrative are recognized as similar to certain aspects of what will become personal narrative, and, again, vice versa. In the stories that surround me, for instance, I experience closure. The characters have experiences that end--happily ever after, or in tragedy, or somewhere along the spectrum between such extremes. There is a framing that takes place in external narrative that serves to single out the story as a unity, an isolated whole. Such structures are mirrored in the burgeoning notion of my personal narrative. Certainly, closure and an enframing unity are not directly experienced as attributes of this personal narrative. People come and go from my life, but an absence is not taken to be a closure and a set of experiences shared with the Other is not taken to be a unity until these notions are recognized in external narrative and appropriated as an interpretation for structures within personal experience. Similarly, in my own experience--my burgeoning personal narrative--I have direct access to concepts such as attention, whereby I order experience and memory. Inevitably, the personal narrative of my life will not be a restatement of every sensation, every experience I have ever had across time. Rather, there is a picking and choosing and an assigning of relevance that I recognize as mirrored in the external narrative--a statement of a character's specific, isolated experiences (in the sense that they are separated in the story-telling from the rest of the experience of the character which we must assume). Only given this understanding--a sense taken from the personal narrative--are the concepts of theme, main character, etc., possibly recognized in external narrative. Thus we can say that the Ego arises in a community, and the personal narrative arises in a communal narrative. Just as Husserl claims that the Ego does not make sense without a notion of Other--that, in fact, it could not be the case that we first have the Ego and then map it onto the Other, for the concept of Ego (my self) without Others (selves owned by Others) is meaningless--so, too, is the concept of life
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story. Clearly I experience the episodes of my life--the drama and the suspense, the sense of completion at certain times, etc.--but without the external experiences of narrative, it makes no sense to pull these episodes together into something we might call a life story. This taking of our life as a life story can only occur when examples of external narratives are experienced as well, and thus there is the mutual implication. Though only a brief sketch of the topic at hand, we hope to have suggested how it is a communal and reciprocal activity, this taking of narrative as narrative; and the necessary preconditions for the experience of narrative thus expand not only to include a certain phenomenological structure and the ability to adopt a new narrative-horizon as a means for understanding, but a community in which to participate as well--a community in which the recognition of narrative is made possible. 1. Narrative, though perhaps not necessarily limited to a written form, is used in the following as a type of literature--i.e., a form encountered in reading. What, exactly, this form is will be dealt with presently. How narrative operates beyond the written text is a question for another day. 2. One is reminded here of T. S. Eliot's insistence that a new work of art necessarily alters all works that came before it. 3. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 191. 4. Hans Gadamer, Le Probleme de la conscience historique, qtd. in Robert Magliola, Phenomenolo and Literature (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 1977), 176. 5. Cf. Heidegger, par. 32 and Magliolal 174. 6. This suggests some interesting problems, such as how do we classify a text such as "Instructions for Bicycle Assembly," which seems to suggest a world in motion (the process of assembling the bike) and to offer a mediator's voice (as the instructional authority) yet does not intuitively fit our concept of narrative? Perhaps such a difficulty suggests that our definition is lacking and needs a phenomenological element describing the experience of narrative in order to rule out such cases as the bike instructions. Also, our use of the word "story" in our definition of narrative would seem problematic if not plainly circular. A phenomenological definition will have to be aware of and, I hope, address this concern. 7. Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur have done great work in this area. There is, of course, much to be said here. How do we choose one meaning of a word over another; how does the aesthetic element of a word shape meaning; how do we understand the intentional use of words which rupture the linguistic-pact between text and reader; etc.? But again, these are topics for another day. 8. "Traveling Through the Dark," by William Stafford, reprinted by permission of Dorothy Stafford. 9. David Carr, Time, Narrative, and History, (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991), 29-47. 10. It is not just interpretation which makes the narrative, though, for recall that Williams' plums were pre-interpreted. The difference is that understanding the world of narrative requires understanding the horizon of the governess. 11. Indeed, even if we are to experience narrative as narrative--a point which will be made presently. 12. Wolfgang Iser, "The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach," in Modern Criticism and Theory, ed. David Lodge (New York: Longman, 1988), 222. 13. Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 1984), 212. 14. Louis O. Mink, "History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension," New Literary History 1 (1970):557. 15. I have argued elsewhere for this version of Husserl's intersubjectivity and the pairing relation (which is especially tricky and rich). Some of the details, which I must be content to gloss over for the moment, are worked out in my "Constituting the Transcendent Community: Some Phenomenological Implications of Husserl's Social Ontology" in Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, vol. 19 (Albany, NY: SUNY P, forthcoming 1995). Copyright Indiana University-Purdue University Fall 1994
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Subjects: People: Title: Writing, Philosophy Husserl, Edmund (1859-1938) Phenomenology and the possibility of narrative
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Publication Authors: title: Volume: Issue: Pages: Number of pages: Publication year: Publication Date: Year: Publisher: Place of Publication: Country of publication: Journal Subjects: ISSN: CODEN: Source type: Document type: Subfile: Accession number: ProQuest Document ID: Document URL: Copyright: Last updated: Database:
Clio Steeves, H Peter 24 1 21 0 1994 Fall 1994 1994 Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne United States Literature, History, Philosophy 08842043 CLIOCF Scholarly Journals Feature Writing, Philosophy 02261803 221589447 http://BT2HA9XT3Y.useaccesscontrol.com/go?url= /docview/221589447?accountid=10342 Copyright Indiana University-Purdue University Fall 1994 2010-06-09 Arts & Humanities Full Text
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