|
3.10 |
Connected to his either-or staging of the semantic- syntactic opposition is a cardinal axiom. Ricoeur posits the eternal stasis of a taxonomy. His evidence is culled from "Elements of a Narrative Grammar". In this text Greimas explains that Lévi-Strauss's 1955 structural analysis of the Oedipus myth "resulted in the construction of a simple achronic model." (67) and furthermore "such a model accounts for the achronic apprehension of the signification of the stories that could possibly be generated by a given microuniverse" (68). However, Greimas continues "if one considers it [signification] as an apprehension or production of meaning by a subject" one can represent the taxonomic model dynamically (68). Ricoeur transfers to Greimas himself attributes that Greimas affixes to Lévi-Strauss. This referential migration of the adjective "achronic" accrues a certain force when the adverbial qualifier "rigorously" is attached. Ricoeur on Greimas: Semantically speaking or to say the same thing differently, from the point of view of morphology the model is rigorously achronic. It is a taxonomy, that is a system of unoriented relations. But one can represent the model dynamically. You just have to move from the morphological point of view to the syntactic one, that is, treat the constituent relations of the taxonomic model as being operations. ("Greimas's Narrative Grammar" 5-6) The French text gives the impression that the model is a semantics: En tant que sémantique or, ce qui est synonymique, du point de vue morphologique le modèle est rigouresement achronique. C'est une taxinomie, c'est-à-dire un système de relations non orientées. ("La grammaire narrative de Greimas" 7) |
3.10 |
|
3.11 |
The answer hinges on the distinction between achronic
and atemporal. If achronic is taken as synonymous
with synchronic, then the moves between semantic and
syntactic dimensions, indeed their very mutual
implication, cease to be wondrous. Greimas,
himself, at the end of the section treating the
narrativization of taxonomy, invites readers to note
that the "so-called achronic apprehension of myth
is an unstable instance [...] its
"dogmatic" structure is capable, at any
moment, of turning into a story" ("Elements" 68).
Exploiting the suggestion of instabilities and
responding to Ricoeur's critique, Jean Petitot (1983)
has demonstrated that the semiotic square, schematized
according to catastrophe theory, does possess a
temporality (n1).
|
3.11 |
|
3.12 |
Petitot, like Ricoeur, discredits the generative powers
of logic. It is banished from the explicative
framework. In Morphogenèse du
Sens he carefully distinguishes between
topological schematization and logical
formalization. The pretensions to logicity of the
taxonomy are displaced by the application of
sophisticated mathematical tools. The question of
conversion is for Petitot not one of equivalence
between metalanguages but one of "double
reading" (Morphogenèse
268). This double
reading is a "covering
of paths" in a mathematical representation of the
semiotic square (n2). Plots can be generated from
taxonomies. Petitot's work however lends credence
to positions like Ricoeur's that to do the trick, logic
alone does not suffice.
|
3.12 |
|
3.13 |
When pictures are made to tell stories or graphs to sing tales, magic is afoot. Certainly topological schematization has affinities with prelogical thought as characterized by Lévy-Bruhl: The concrete categories of position, location and distance are of such paramount importance to the conception of rude nations as are to us those of time and causality. (n3) (Lévy-Bruhl 150) As well, topological schematization requires a stratified space or a space that is not uniform. A similar condition exists for prelogical thought. According to Lévy-Bruhl, spatial representations have a bearing on cognitive moves and what types of linkages are possible and permissible: The condition of our abstraction is the logical homogeneity of the concepts which permits of their combination. Now this homogeniety is closely bound up with the homogeneous representation of space. If the prelogical mind, on the contrary, imagines the various regions in space as differing in quality, as determined by their mystic participations with such and such groups of persons or objects, abstraction as we usually conceive of it becomes very difficult to such a mind, and we shall find that its place is taken by the mystic abstraction which is the result of the law of participation. (Lévy-Bruhl 121)
The law of participation is posited to explain
"mental activity [which] is too little
differentiated for it to be possible to consider ideas
or images of objects by themselves apart from the
emotions and passions which evoke these ideas or are
evoked by them" (Lévy-Bruhl
36).
|
3.13 |
|
3.14 |
In this prelogical alloy of feeling and thought one
recognizes an equivalent to Ricoeur's pathemic
dimension. However the pejorative laden discourse
of Lévy-Bruhl on primitive mentalities has been,
through the linguistics of Viggo Brøndal,
purged. It is through Greimas's encounter with
Brøndal's work that the law of participation is
implanted into the fundamental structure of
signification. Ricoeur contends of course that
the Greimassian taxonomy partakes of a mixed nature and
hence is not purely logical. On geneological
grounds, his charges stand substantiated.
|
3.14 |
|
3.15 |
The semiotic square maps a relation between complex and neutral terms. These designations are derived from Brøndal's morphological studies. After explaining the characteristics that define positive, negative, neutral and complex terms, in that order, the Danish linguist remarks in reference to the last of the terms explicated: L'existence ce cette espèce de termes ambigus ou synthétiques sera d'un intérêt capital pour la logique (je n'ai qu'à évoquer le grand nom de Hegel), elle sera avant tout importante pour la solution du problème à la fois sociologique et linguistique de la mentalité ou des mentalités, problème toujours actuel depuis les études de M. Lévy-Bruhl. (Brøndal 16) (n4) The existence of this kind of ambiguous or synthetic term will be of capital interest for logic (I have but to evoke the great name of Hegel), it will be above all important for the solution to the both sociological and linguistic problematic of cognition or ways of thinking. It is, since Lévy- Bruhl's studies on mentalités, a problematic still with us.
Brøndal reformulates Lévy-Bruhl's
"collective representations" that peculiar
amalgam of emotion and idea. It receives a new
designation as complex term. Brøndal places
the complex term in systematic relation to three other
terms: the positive and negative terms that are
its components and the neutral term that is its
antithesis. It thus enters into the orbit of
logic. So dialectic lurks at the edges of the
semiotic square.
|
3.15 |
|
3.16 |
Notwithstanding Brøndal's invocation of the name
of Hegel, substitution of dialectic for logic cannot
and will not advance analysis of Ricoeur's
argument. Ricoeur terminates a long note
reviewing the work of Alain de Libéra on the
logical status of the semiotic square with the question
"But is this logic Artistotelian, Hegelian or ...
other?" He offers no answer ("Greimas's Narrative
Grammar" 30
n. 11).
|
3.16 |
|
3.17 |
Ricoeur is pursuing two tasks. He is destabilizing the logical status of the semiotic square and he is attempting to demonstrate the case that logic proves fallow. The passage from logical relations to syntactic operations, from the contraries and contradictions of the semic dimension to the disjunction and conjunction of the syntactic dimension, is delineated by Ricoeur as the passage from a paradigmatic axis of selection to a syntagmatic axis of combination. It can also be delineated as the passage from a list to a sequence. Ricoeur stakes his critique upon the non reciprocal convertibility of lists and sequences, syntagms and paradigms. This is not unrelated to the fact that he describes less a passage than a takeover: Greimas's topological preoccuppations can be seen as an ultimate attempt to extend the paradigmatic as far as possible into the heart of the syntagmatic. ("Greimas's Narrative Grammar" 26)
The preoccupations can be seen otherwise, as the depth-
surface representation of the model indicates, as an
attempt to uncover paradigms beneath syntagms or to
link an immanent level with a manifest level.
Whatever the assessment of the threat of conquest,
Greimassian transcoding and the generative trajectory
are impossible without two-way conversions.
|
3.17 |
|
3.18 |
The difference between the two thinkers is partially explained by the variance of their aims. The object of Greimas's concern is narrativity: the generation of meaning does not first take the form of the production of utterances and their combination in discourse; it is relayed, in the course of its trajectory, by narrative structures and it is these that produce meaningful discourse articulated in utterances. [original emphasis] ("Elements" 65)
Ricoeur's object is narrative; he attends the birth of
new stories. His concern is with the production
of narratives. He expresses himself in biological
terms ("Greimas's
Narrative
Grammar" 20).
Greimas does not.
|
3.18 |
