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Introduction and Overview: Who, What, Why Read chapter Read first chapter

2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

10. Looking at Narrative as a Complex System: The Proteus Principle

Author : Federico Pianzola

Published in: Narrating Complexity

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

I am here proposing a strategy of consolidation for narrative studies. Disciplines and paradigms have their own specificities, which implicitly shape how we approach narrative phenomena. To make explicit such processes of selection and contextualization is an act of intellectual honesty and I suggest how to do it in three simple steps: (i) adopting a systemic perspective, (ii) distinguishing between logical levels, (iii) employing the Proteus Principle in the formation of theories. Narrative is seen and used in many different ways that can be conceived as systems, i.e. considering that the properties of narrative cannot be studied in isolation but are interconnected in a network of relations where all the components are influencing each other.

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previous chapter Closure, Observation and Coupling: On Narrative and Autopoiesis
next chapter Narrative Experiences of History and Complex Systems
Footnotes
1
In light of the interdisciplinary orientation of this volume, I am here focusing on scientific conceptions of complexity and system. Cf. Steiner (1984, pp. 99–137) for an historical overview of philosophical influences that led Russian formalists (especially Tynjanov) to develop a systemic view of literature and narrative. And cf. Pier (2017) for a more recent attempt at understanding narratology in terms of systems and complexity.
 
2
I am here assuming that the audience's experience of a discourse is always situated in a certain context, thus I use the term audience synecdochically, referring to a situated cognitive and aesthetic experience. Moreover, I would like to specify that I am using the terms audience and discourse—drawn from the rhetorical tradition—because I think they sound more familiar in the context of narrative studies. However, if narrative is conceived as a mode of cognition (Hutto 2008; Herman 2013) agent and stimuli might be more adequate terms, general enough to be used in every context, like, for instance, when I imagine a tiger jumping on my desk interrupting my writing (cf. Caracciolo 2014, pp. 93–109).
 
3
A similar attitude is shown by Gilbert Ryle (1949) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) when they claim that the phrase “the meaning of something” is not referential and does not pick out any object as a meaning, it simply points out the way in which we use something (a term). The focus is upon our relationship to the term, upon our act of relating it to a state of the world, not on the state of the world itself. Referentiality is just one aspect of that relationship. In a similar way, a theory is just one way of knowing what a narrative is: unavoidably it is the most relevant in academia, but in other contexts we can claim to know what narrative is on the ground of some practice or beliefs that do not have a conceptual form (cf. Wittgenstein 1969).
 
4
Alternative schemes of concepts where a similar logical distinction is made are: “form–device–material” or “frame–device–form,” used respectively by the Russian Formalists and Skalin (2008, p. 209).
 
5
Other scholars who showed this epistemic attitude are, for instance, Francesco Orlando (1978) for literary theory, Darko Suvin (2010a, 1979) for theories of science fiction and utopia, and Nielsen et al. (2015a, b) for fictionality.
 
6
I subscribe to Wittgenstein's argument (1969, §204) that the epistemic regress problem is overcome by the assumption of transcendental conditions of experience that are reasonable—founded upon our forms of life—not logical. We do not doubt to know what narrative is—in Wittgenstein’s terms: we know how to use the word narrative—and this is a ground solid enough to support our theoretical activity.
 
7
As seen in Sect. 3.2, according to Sternberg, the representation of a sequence of events is only one among many other ways for generating suspense, curiosity or surprise.
 
8
A similar kind of scoping was done by Gérard Genette investigating the role of the tense imparfait in Marcel Proust's narrative, a research that brought him to readdress the issue of narrative sequentiality and to use the concept of syllepsis for those events whose order cannot be established (1980, p. 155).
 
9
Is there any event in the so-called “shortest story ever written:” “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”? (Wright 2014, p. 327). I guess this example is problematic because it requires at least Hühn's concept of “non-event” (2016) (a baby has not worn the shoes), and reference to some cognitive construction of hypothetical events that are not told. (A miscarriage? A stillborn baby? A shoemaker who ran out of business?) Perhaps we can consider events necessary for narrative organization, but we should acknowledge that events are not necessarily represented, they are constructs, whose source is not only discourse but also imagination, past experiences, etc. Thus, events too emerge from the audience–discourse interaction.
 
10
But not only cognitive approaches adopt the PP: see Skalin (2008) for an example of aesthetic perspective.
 
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Metadata
Title
Looking at Narrative as a Complex System: The Proteus Principle
Author
Federico Pianzola
Copyright Year
2018
Book
Narrating Complexity

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64712-8

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-64714-2

Copyright Year: 2018

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64714-2_10

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