Jonathan Culler, “What is Theory?” nature od theory
- The Nature of Theory as a Genre:
o Theory is often a “bunch of (mostly foreign) names” (like Foucault, Derrida, Lacan) and is characterized by its practical effects: it changes how people think about their objects of study.
o It is not simply “literary theory”; it is an interdisciplinary body of work that draws from linguistics, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and philosophy.
characteristics of theory
- Interdisciplinary: It has effects outside its original discipline.
- Analytical and Speculative: It involves an attempt to work out what is involved in categories like “sex,” “writing,” or “the subject”.
- Critique of Common Sense: It acts as a “pugnacious critique” of concepts we take for granted as “natural” or “obvious”.
- Reflexive: It involves thinking about the very categories and thinking processes we use to make sense of the world.
- Explain Foucault’s notion of “discursive practices”
With “discursive practices”, Foucault means the systematic way a society talks about, writes about and investigates a certain topic. They are established rules and habits of communication used by certain groups of people to discuss specific topics, often carried out by experts (Culler, 1997:4). Foucault uses the example of sex for which our modern understanding of it came from the discourses of experts such as doctors, clergy, novelists, psychologists, moralists and social workers, who claim to be describing the truth about human beings (Culler, 1997:7). Foucault argues that these discourses are not descriptions of reality, but rather that they produce reality, which Data we then mistake for natural facts (Culler, 1997:7). So instead of the existence of natural things and the discourse of these, he states that the act of talking and classifying is what makes things exist in a specific way (Culler, 1997:7).
- Explain Derrida’s notion of the “logic of supplementarity”
With the “logic of the supplementary” Derrida means the way of showing that things we figure as original or pure are dependents of the things we see as add Ons or extras. Derrida identifies two meanings behind the word supplement:
1- The addition: Supplement being something that is added on (Culler, 1997:10)
2- The Remedy/Replacement: Something that completes or makes up for a deficiency or lack (Culler, 1997:10).
Derrida uses the example of speech and writing used by Jean-Jaques Rousseau to demonstrate that we often organize concepts into a pair, where one is deemed as the original and the other as the supplement (Culler, 1997:9 f.). With this example he challenges Rousseau’s simple distinction by showing that the thing we deem as original already proves to have the very qualities thought to characterize only the supplement (Culler, 1997:11). Therefore, the original turns out to need supplementation and is never present without this (Culler, 1997:12). This logic reveals that the original thing itself is already supplementary from the beginning (Culler, 1997:13). Overall, this states that the original is not pure but is already an effect of deferral (Culler, 1997:12).
Narrativity
The set of features distinguishing narrative from other genres, defined through three main approaches:
* Story-oriented: Focuses on a chronological sequence of events that brings about a change in situation (plot).
* Discourse-oriented: Defines narrativity through mediacy (Mittelbarkeit), where events are recounted through a specific narrative perspective.
* Experientiality: Defined as the “quasi-mimetic evocation of ‘real-life experience,’” focusing on how stories account for human experience.
Story vs. Discourse
- Story (Fabula): The chronological sequence of narrated events, consisting of “events” and “existents” (characters and settings).
- Discourse (Sjuzhet): The artistic shaping and transmission of the material. It addresses how a story is communicated and who is narrating it.
Communication Model for Narrative Texts
- Extratextual Level: Involves the Real Author (addresser) and the Real Reader (addressee).
- Intratextual Level I (Narrative Transmission): Features the Fictive Narrator addressing a Fictive Reader (Narratee).
- Intratextual Level II (Level of Characters): The “level of action” where characters interact as addressers and addressees.
- Embedded Narratives: Occurs when one narrative is inserted into another superordinate narrative, such as frame tales or interpolated stories.
Narrative Situations
- Authorial Narrative Situation: The narrator is outside the world of characters (heterodiegetic) and possesses omniscience. Characteristics include addresses to the reader, moral judgments, and an external perspective.
- First-person Narrative Situation: The narrator is a character within the story world (homodiegetic). It features an identity between the “narrating I” and “experiencing I”.
- Figural Narrative Situation: The narrator recedes into the background. Events are filtered through the experiential perspective of a reflector character involved in the action.
Narration (Who speaks?)
- Extradiegetic: Narrator is on the level of narrative transmission.
- Intradiegetic: A character narrating to other characters.
- Heterodiegetic: Narrator is not a character in the story.
- Homodiegetic/Autodiegetic: Narrator is a character in the story or the protagonist.
Focalization (Who sees?)
- External: The focalizer is the narrator, observing from a superior perspective.
- Internal: The focalizer is a character within the story (character-focalizer).
Free Indirect Discourse (FID)
Blends the narrator’s third-person voice with the character’s language and subjective signals (e.g., exclamations) to offer immediate insight.
Time and Space
- Temporal Order: Chronological vs. anachronic (e.g., analepsis/flashback or prolepsis/flashforward).
- Duration: The relationship between discourse time and story time, categorized as Summary (speed-up), Scene (congruent), Stretch (slow-down), Ellipsis (omission), and Pause.
- Space: Fictional spaces are “semanticized” and can serve as mood-invested space (symbolic/atmospheric) or a space of action (a framework for events).
Theatre vs. Drama
While drama refers to the written text and action, “Theatre” comes from the Greek theasthai, meaning spectacle, focusing on the visual and performance aspects.
Speech Act Theory (Austin)
- Constative Utterances: Statements that are either true or false; they describe a state of affairs (e.g., “The door is open” as a factual observation about the door).
- Performative Utterances: Utterances that do something or perform an action through the act of speaking (e.g., “I promise to pay you five pounds” or “The door is open” used as an invitation to enter).
- Contextual Dependency: The same words can change from constative to performative based on the context (e.g., “It’s raining” can be a weather report or an answer to “Should we go outside?”).
Levels of Utterance
- Text: What the words actually say—the literal meaning.
- Context: Where the words come from; the situation surrounding the speech.
- Subtext: What the words do (the speech act); the underlying meaning or impact intended by the character.
- Pretext: What the speaker wants; the ultimate objective or motive behind the utterance.
Stichomythia
A technique where characters exchange rapid, alternating single lines of dialogue, often used to create pleasurable tension or speed up the pace of a scene.
Types of Focalization
- Internal: Information is limited to what a character within the story knows or perceives.
- External: The narrator observes from a superior perspective without entering a character’s mind.
- Variations: Includes fixed (one perspective throughout), variable/multiple (switching between different characters), and collective (the view of a group).
Knowledge Acquisition
Analyzes not just what we know about characters, but how we know it.
Narratorial vs. Figural
Characterization provided by the narrator versus that provided by characters.
Explicit vs. Implicit
Features directly specified (explicit) versus those inferred from behavior or judgments (implicit).
Speech
Includes Dialogue, Direct Discourse (quoted directly), and Indirect Discourse (reported in the narrator’s third-person voice).
Consciousness
Includes Free Indirect Discourse (FID) (blending narrator and character voices), Interior Monologue (direct “stream of consciousness” in the first-person), and Psychonarration (narrator summaries of a character’s mental state).
Narrative Presentation
Distinguishes between “Showing” (mimetic, scenic representation) and “Telling” (diegetic, narratorial summary).
