Tag Archives: internal coherence

‘The Fantastic Imagination’ by George MacDonald

Posted by jrlookingbill on

After speaking of those laws which must be most strictly adhered to in any world authorially constructed, which MacDonald asserts that contradictions to the constructed laws will cause the world to evaporate and that, as writing cannot help having a meaning, it should not violate moral consistency either by calling good a character who does bad things.  In this manner, we are made to understand

“[I]f it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in it than the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and the fairytale would give no delight. Everyone, however, who feels the story, will read its meaning after his own nature and development: one man will read one meaning in it, another will read another.”

~The Fantastic Imagination (1893) by George MacDonald accessed here

Laws, even inverted physical or metaphysical laws, provide a space which may offer vitality.  Perhaps we should think of something being ‘true to life’ in order to grasp what MacDonald might mean by “vitality is truth” or perhaps I have n’t grasped his meaning at all.  Regardless, however, for the time I am pleased to consider such a thought (and to be guided to a better one should it present itself).

It reminds me of a time I attempted to defend the notion of truth as a person contra my fellow speaking of truth solely as correspondence.  In his definition, ‘true to life’ meant that it was true to some overarching laws we might never be able to perceive truly (though he would assert, I think, that we know a good deal already – it is the denial of this which betrays weakness of stomach for him) but I can’t let the matter go so easily.

Truth is not a thing to be had in such a manner, but that which some chase while others abandon all hope of ever turning up the trail again.  Perhaps it is not so elusive, but truth is at least that which is acceptable within our discourse (and so it lives as our stumbling words enable it to) and I think it goes beyond that as some persons are wholly incapable of being summed within our discourse well.  Chief of these is, for my faith, Christ who seemed interested in showing the untruthfulness/deceitfulness of the hearts of many (coupled with the offer to then come follow).  But the healing movement was not to agree to his underlying principles, it was to ‘go and sin no more’ – to be a follower in the truest sense, the living one.

My own considerations have, I think, bent away from where a close reading might take us (of Fantastic Imagination, not of MacDonald’s corpus I think) so I return to consider that the experience of that vitality in reading will be different for each reader.  It is not that the reader has failed to meet the author’s intention, but that the author always says more than she intended and that some readers may find items which enrich the discourse in a manner the author could not have dreamed of.

“If so, how am I to assure myself that I am not reading my own meaning into it, but yours out of it?”

‘Why should you be so assured? It may be better that you should read your meaning into it. That may be a higher operation of your intellect than the mere reading of mine out of it: your meaning may be superior to mine.’”

~Ibidem

I love that MacDonald answers question with question for if we will understand our questions we may understand what we are hoping for.  Many read with the hope of reconstructing the author’s intended reading, but no such thing can be reconstructed while maintaining the vitality which captured the author.  It is the author’s job (as the sculptor’s) to remove that which is not truly part of the story so that the story may exhibit that life of which we are speaking.

As Pierre Bayard asserts, we are going to assert our meaning into the text – but hopefully we shall realize we are doing so and in so doing test our ‘seeing as’ to note whether it will hold up to the richness of the story.  Instead of being assured that we bring nothing to the text (whether through force of will or otherwise) we ought to fully dive into this reading and see what can be made of it.  Perhaps it is less than the author envisioned, but it may be more.  Or, more likely, our seeing-as will teach us about the way in which we view the real world – the manner with which we approach vitality.  It is my hope that, through submitting such readings in dialogue, we might learn how best to reconnect with our own world rather than escape from it and be trapped within the fantastic.  Instead, the imagination is a tool to teach us indirectly about true vitality so that we may experience it in its fullness and that is most unlikely if we settle for the catching the author’s meaning where we should practice ‘living in’ so that we might learn how to better see home.

 

In sum,

“If a writer’s aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to be understood, but to escape being misunderstood; where his object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an æolian harp. If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it.”

~Ibidem

I believe logical conviction to be far less meaningful than the attempts to awaken or stir the soul of the reader.  In such case misunderstanding is not the object of fear – it is to be immovable and incapable of being stirred from slumber.  Which is the more frightening?  Better by far to misunderstand and be misunderstood but strain to catch the music and join in.

A Study in Discontinuity

Posted by jrlookingbill on

While recalling little of my last match with Foucault, I barely remember tapping on the mat from that stunted encounter with the Archaeology of Knowledge, still the outline of that which has bested me calls for action.  At last I am equipped to make a beginning where before I had sadly wandered into the wrong arena.  (On a side note, anyone looking to hire someone to narrate significant moments in their life should probably look me up; after all, I don’t believe I minced that metaphor too poorly).  So, for those requiring translation, again I am summoning my meager intellectual prowess in hopes of successfully coming to the other side of Archaeology with some sense of what I ‘ve just ingested.

On the misunderstanding end of things, I am rather inclined to put forward that I ‘m happy to come up a little short here.  Not finishing won’t do for me this time, but we should not judge the quality of our reading by the page count nor by how much of the Stanford Encyclopedia’s synopsis we can critique.  Somewhere in the middle, in the tensions of becoming, a work like this may hint at some significance worth an improved understanding.  Foucault’s words may have painted a picture my poor mind cannot yet grasp, but the way to understanding, I still believe, is through misunderstanding worthy subjects.  Foucault is at least worth disagreeing with, but to agree or disagree first requires a preliminary (mis)understanding.

So now to that which has I find both inspiring and confounding.  At the opening Foucault descries how the values behind the interpretive frameworks of traditional history and the traditional history of ideas (i.e. histories of science, philosophy, thought, and of literature) are encountering the ‘phenomena of rupture’ – that of discontinuity (Archaeology, 1972: p. 4 [trans. by A.M. Sheridan Smith]).  Whereas historians have established the “great continuities of thought…the solid, homogeneous manifestations of a single mind or of a collective mentality” as their science has been “striving to exist and to reach completion at the very outset”, those tracing the history of ideas have been turning toward the ‘displacements and transformations of concepts’ (ibidem, p. 4).  In other words, many in the latter school were considering less the continual progression of titanic, homogeneous thoughts and significances which engulf all else than considering a ‘displacement’, something that goes against the grain, by way of various sub-disciplines of spheres in which that blip in the data showed its influence (or influenza, if you will allow the Lewisan pun).

This translates to looking not so much at the Past but at “several pasts, several forms of connexion, several hierarchies of importance, several networks of determination, several teleologies, for one and the same science, as its present undergoes change: thus historical descriptions are necessarily ordered by the present state of knowledge. (ibidem, p. 5)”  I must now make mention of where I believe Foucault’s finger pointed.  History itself is a construction, one which is at this moment the living product of present communities and receives its values from those social constructs.  History is therefore both product and producer; in other words it is not so much History as a history.  Consequently, the current historical projects are affected even as they define the effects of prior and current events.  Foucault remarks that even as the ‘histories of’ are finding further discontinuities, history itself is rejecting them in favor of stable structures (Archaeology, 1972: p. 6)

Where prior histories sought to have a document speak and reinforce the built up historical structures, a member of the ‘new school’ works on it “from within and to develop it:…divides it up, distributes it, orders it, arranges it in levels, establishes series, distinguishes between what is relevant and what is not…defines unities, describes relations (ibidem, p. 6).”  This is aptly descriptive of what I feel modern doctorates are meant to put themselves through.  Justifying your research methodology becomes a significant part of your research in many fields.

I should note in what little experience I can relate.  I ‘ve been considering my own future thesis now with the added difficulty of not only hearing what the author said and finding the internal coherence I can string together into something snappy, but also with the necessary considerations for where the voice comes from, how it relates to and grates against other local voices and wherein should I find significance: for the author’s community, for that time period, or for something closer to mine own.

This chopping, sorting, and rearranging is exhausting, but I believe the product is worth it.  See, one may misunderstand the formation of History versus histories.  Speaking of histories opens up the possibility of viewing the infinitude of events.  True, some events and thoughts stand out (they tend to stand out by contrast which is partly understood in the prior historical project) but we do the text or the event injustice to understand them in our context primarily.  We may not be able to encounter events so closely, but the truth seems to me to be that the better I understand something the better I understand the distance between myself and it.  Even as I see myself in the light of a tiny trickle of a long flowing stream, continually branching out and converging, in that moment I see distance as well.  Of course not all can be subjected to the microscopic perspective, but while the macroscopic should not be uncritically discarded it should be understood how its seeing is terribly near-sighted.  In this sense such movements in research are disconcerting and refreshing at once.  Regardless, this seems to be the distinction between the possibility of a ‘total history’ and the emergence of a general history (ibid, p. 9).

In reference to this conflict between structure and historical development, Foucault remarks: “it is a long time now since historians uncovered, described, and analysed structures, without ever having occasion to wonder whether they were not allowing the living, fragile, pulsating ‘history’ to slip through their fingers (Archaeology, 1972: p. 11).”  The introduction of the death of history is that which makes it most true to life.

Without discontinuity, Foucault avers, we would find the throne for the ‘sovereignty of consciousness’ immovable.  Time would then, at some point, predictably flow back into continuity.  The wave which rises and crashes must lead to another elsewhere.  Perhaps that was poorly chosen, for I do not mean to suggest preemptively a blow struck against causation, but certainly there is one being struck against predictability.  If Ration rules, then one has only to find the cause prior and one may predict what will follow.  It reminds me somewhat of Chesterton’s talk of determinists, but I surely digress.  In such a system, human consciousness seeks power by way of understanding the inevitable flow of history.  As I tend to appreciate those who poke holes in arguments for causation (or really, understanding causation simply by any means), I ‘m left considering how knowledge and power are interrelated.  More particularly, I wonder how history itself is not only the product of the powerful, but also the means of effecting its intentions.

How might history be the language of power?

And, to introduce a criticism I may regret: how can discontinuity be spoken of except continuously?  I understand that Foucault is more describing the shifts in historical pursuits than arguing directly for a particular, and further I understand (or perhaps thoroughly misunderstand) that speaking of discontinuity requires one to consider the effects of discontinuity on various threads.  In so doing, perhaps what is observed is the flaws in continuity.