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THE SEMIOTIC OF MYTH title: author: publisher: isbn10 | asin: print isbn13: ebook isbn13: language: subject publication date: lcc: ddc: subject:
The Semiotic of Myth : A Critical Study of the Symbol Advances in Semiotics Liszka, James Jakób. Indiana University Press 0253335132 9780253335135 9780585000978 English Myth, Symbolism. 1989 BL304.L57 1989eb 291.1/3/01 Myth, Symbolism.
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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THE SEMIOTIC OF MYTH A Critical Study of the Symbol JAMES JAKÓB LISZKA INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis
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© 1989 by James Jakób Liszka All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Liszka, James Jakób The semiotic of myth : a critical study of the symbol / James Jakób Liszka. p. cm.(Advances in semiotics) Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. ISBN 0-253-33513-2 1. Myth. 2. Symbolism. I. Title. II. Series. 88-45500 BL304.L57 1989 CIP 291. 13'01dcl9 1 2 3 4 5 93 92 91 90 89
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for my mother, Mary Dombrowski, and my father, Joseph Lishka
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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Page vii
Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ix
Introduction
1
Part I: The Development of a Theory of Transvaluation ONE
Peirce's Concept of the Interpretant
19
A. The Interpretant as Sign Translation
21
B. Translation, Purpose, and Value
45
Peirce and the Structuralists: The Interpretant and Its Relation to TWO Language
48
A. Jakobson and Peirce: The Interpretant as Translation
48
B. Saussure and Peirce: Translation and Value
53
Part II: The Concept of Transvaluation THREEThe Definition of Transvaluation
61
A. The Phonological Model
61
B. The Definition of Transvaluation
70
FOUR Transvaluation in Semiosis
74
A. Social Perception
74
B. The Perception of Facial Expressions of the Primary Emotions
78
C. Caricature
86
D. Euphemism and Symbolic Transvaluation
87
Part III: Narration as Transvaluation FIVE
SIX
A Critique of the Formalist-Structuralist Analysis of Narration
99
A. A Critique of Propp's Morphology of the Folktale
99
B. Lévi-Strauss's Theory of Narration
103
C. The Narrative Semiotics of Greimas
109
D. Bremond's Ethical Model of Narrative
112
E. A Reestimation of Propp's Morphology
113
The General Structure of Narration in Myth and Folktale
117
A. The Mythemic Sequence
117
B. Analysis of the Agential Level of the Myth
121
C. Analysis of the Actantial Level of the Myth
125
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Page viii SEVENTypes of Narrative Transvaluations
129
A. Northrop Frye's Four Mythoi
129
B. Types of Narrative Transvaluations: The Source of the Four Mythoi
132
C. The Violence of Hierarchy: Ritual and Violence in the Studies of Girard and Turner 134 Part IV: Myth as Transvaluation The Structure of Narration and Its Relation to Culture: An Analysis of EIGHT Netsilik Mythology 145 A. Analysis of a Netsilik Myth
145
B. Nuliajuk and the Cosmic Power of the Inferior
153
C. The Ambivalence of Hierarchy: A Reading of a Tlingit Myth
155
D. The Ambivalence of Hierarchy and the Directed Determination of Interpretation: A Reading of a Myth among the San Blas Kuna 158 NINE Myth and Culture among the Bororo: The Pragmatics of the Myth
TEN
164
A. The Question of Ideology
164
B. The Teleology and Pragmatics of Bororo Myth
178
C. Cultural and Cosmic Crisis and the Teleology of the Myth
200
Transvaluation and Transformation: The Question of the Origin of Myth
203
Conclusion
214
NOTES
221
REFERENCES
225
NAME INDEX
237
SUBJECT INDEX
241
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Acknowledgments I especially want to recognize the help of my teachersAlexandre Métraux, KarlOtto Apel, Reiner Schiirmann, and Michael Shapiro. I also wish to thank the following, whose discussions about the text and matters related to it helped to give direction to the principal arguments: David Savan, Paul Bouissac, Paul Dixon, Hollis Dixon, Howard Gold, Sharon Anderson-Gold, Kevin Clark, Mickey Peck, Frank Kirkland, Graeme Hunter, William Seager, Chris McKinnon, Paul Gooch, Gordon Nagel, Nancy Armstrong, and Marvin Loflin. The University of Alaska-Anchorage provided the sabbatical leave which made the completion of the book possibleand I want to thank Steve Haycox for support in this matter, as well as Ronald Spatz for the performance of duties which allowed me to write the book full-time. During my sabbatical I was elected Humanities Fellow by the philosophy faculty of the University of Toronto, Scarborough College, who provided me with the facilities, clerical support, and the collegiality that enabled me to efficiently finish the text. This also gave me the opportunity to teach a seminar on a topic directly related to the book, and I am grateful to the Scarborough students and faculty who helped me clarify many of the theses in my text. I am also grateful to Frank Cunningham, John Slater, and the staff at the St. George campus, who facilitated my stay in Toronto. I also want to thank the staff of the Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, especially Christian Kloesel and Max Fisch. I want to make a special note of thanks to Peter Dunlap-Shohl and Susan Berry for their artistic help. Help in seeking permissions was given generously by James Howe of MIT, Asen Balikci of Université de Montréal, Jorgen Meldgaard of the Nationalmuseet of Denmark, the Latin American Center of UCLA, George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd. of London, the editors of the Journal of American Folklore, Paul Ekman of San Francisco State University, and Peter DunlapShohl of the Anchorage Daily News. "The Star Girl's Descent" is reproduced by permission of James Howe, Lawrence Hirschfeld, and the American Folklore Society, from the Journal of American Folklore 94:373, 1981; not for further reproduction. The Bororo tales "Origin of the Stars," "The Origin of the Stars and of Certain Animals," "The Legend of Baitogógo,'' "The Origin of Sickness," "The Story of the Woman Ararúga Páru," "The Woman Cibairágo and Her Husband Júre," and "The Legend of Geriguiguiatugo or Toribugo" are all reproduced by permission of the Latin American Center at UCLA. Finally, special thanks to my close companions through all of thisCecilia Demidoff, Zachary Liszka, and Alexandra Liszka.
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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THE SEMIOTIC OF MYTH It cannot be said purely and simply of the world that it is: it exists in the form of an initial asymmetry, which shows itself in a variety of ways according to the angle from which it is being apprehended: between the high and the low, the sky and the earth, land and water, the near and the far, left and right, male and female, etc. This inherent disparity of the world sets mythic thought in motion. . . . Claude Lévi-Strauss Only when there are . . . symbols of activities and their outcome can the flux be viewed as from without, be arrested for consideration and esteem, and be regulated. John Dewey
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Introduction It may be argued with some foundation that myth is the archetype of all other fable: folktale, epic, drama, parable, romance, novel. But myth is foundational not simply in terms of the influence of a traditional content, in the manner in which the Greek drama was influenced by the Greek myths; rather, myth has a more hidden effect, importing to the genres that follow it a common form, a narrative heritage, as well as a series of teloi which tie them intimately to the cultures in which they are generated. If this be so, then the study of myth is a study in the fundaments of narration and the sociocultural function of the story. But, too, it may be argued, as Cassirer does, that philosophy and science, first being developed out of myth, define themselves negatively as a kind of discourse that opposes storytelling. Consequently, the study of myth wedges itself between discourse and fable like an unwelcome visitor, in the mood for conversation, on a park bench populated by two strangers. As a study it joins non-narrative discourse; but as a study of myth, it wishes to discuss the nature of story, perhaps even in light of its relation to rational discourse. Myth is present in almost every human culture; other, more prosaic forms of speech, and most certainly rational discourse as exemplified by science and philosophy, are less universal. These two kinds of speech, discourse and fable, 1ógos and mythos, confront one another as soon as somewhere in the development of a culture there is reflection on myth; that in itself is an indication that myth has lost already its primal appeal to a certain audiencethat emotional and intentional affect that binds the listener to the self-evidence of the story. The study or lógos of myth plays about two poles. The one strategy, under the rubric of theology (and to some extent literary criticism), seeks further articulation or clarification of the text in terms of its meaning. Its classical purpose is to demonstrate to the reader or listener that there is a more fundamental meaning to the text than its apparent one. This strategy involves a process of meaning analysis which clarifies the ambiguities of the text and seeks a deeper sense beneath its literal understanding. It is a solicitous activity, helping the listener or reader to understand more and better the dark allegories of the story. In its more religious function its aim is to decipher the intentions of the author(s), God or the gods, as part and parcel of a religious dogma which is justified, ironically, precisely because of the self-evident faith of the text, but which nonetheless must be disrupted and interpreted for the sake of the dogma's justification. When this strategy vacates intentional analysis for the house of hermeneutics, viewing the meaning of the text in its traditional and historical circumstances and as evolving out of and upon the meeting of the horizons of present and past readers, the literalness of the text becomes especially problematical. In becoming part creator, part interpreter, the hermeneutic reader of the text deepens the dimensions of its meaning into a kind of vertiginous array of directions to the next horizon.
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But this strategy is deeply contrasted to the rational explanation of mythexemplified in the discourses of psychoanalysis, anthropology, biology, linguistics which seeks from the perspective of some model of science an explication of the laws of the text. The scientific strategy hopes to present myth as nothing more than well-ordered relations between elementswhether in the form of psychic forces and structures or biological tendencieswhich it claims fundamental precisely because they have some scientific credibility. Its interest is not to enlighten readers about the meanings of the myth, but to bring its explication in line with the hierarchical framework of the hard sciences; to claim that cultural phenomena, too, can be understood objectively, much in the same way as physical phenomena. Where meaning can be explained, it can be understood; where it cannot be explained, it does not exist. This black-and-white characterization is not meant to create stereotypes or to exclude the mediate positions. There are anthropologists who are deeply hermeneutical, and there are theologians deeply indebted to psychoanalysis, linguistics, or structural anthropology. I am also not suggesting that there ought to be a return to a perhaps fictional, primal experience of myth which may be thought to be more authentic, more truthful than any discourse about it. If such events are destroyed when reflection intervenes, then all the better; the same can be said for those discourses that attempt to recapture these nondiscursive moments, tendencies found in Plato's mythology, Blake's myth/anti-myth distinction, Jung's notion of the lived symbol, Ricoeur's "event," or even in the anthropology of Geertz. My claim here is that neither of these aims, hermeneutic or explanatory, is wholly satisfactory in itself. Because both present aspects of the myth which are legitimate considerations, both should be incorporated into a critical discourse that avoids the uncritical appropriation of the texts as tradition but still avoids the sterile, value-free discourse of scientific explanation. The attempt to provide an explanation of the myth meets serious difficulties, especially if such a strategy models itself after the natural sciences. As characterized classically in Hempel's so-called deductive-nomological model,1 an explanation of an event, E, occurs when, given a set of laws, Ll,...,Ln, and a set of conditions, C1,...,CR, E can be logically inferred from those laws and conditions. It can be explained why this apple fell to the ground by inferring that event from the law of gravity as it applies to bodies near the earth and the conditions which set up the possibility for free fall. Such an explanation has the power of predictionit tells us why an event was to be expected and why such events will occur under similar conditions in the future. It also provides grounds for the testability of the laws: if the laws are true, then under certain conditions the event will occur. It is possible to imagine how this model might be applied to the explanation of myth, supposing a best-case scenario. Suppose a myth, M, is to be explained. This would be comparable to an event, E, in Hempel's model above. Suppose also that certain laws could be discoveredfor example, first of all, laws concerning the structure of narration. These might be of the following form: if a certain narrative event of type A occurs, then an event of type B will follow. There would have to be laws concerning the manner in which a culture generates a myth. For ex-
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ample, and for the sake of illustration, it might be discovered that societies that are exogamous produce type A myths while those that are endogamous produce type B. Exogamous societies that are patrilineal produce also type C, while matrilineal ones produce type D. Patrilocality and uxorilocality in their combinations with the other categories would produce more types, etc. This would be further complicated by economic divisions, depending on type of food production and the division of laborprimarily agricultural peoples may have different types of myths than hunter-gatherers. The presence of class, caste, and moiety systems, would also have to be taken into consideration. Religious belief systems would also have to be typified, and it would have to be shown how each would produce a myth-type. This would be further complicated by the consideration of all the unique factors that compose the particular culture's materiality and ecology, i.e., its flora and fauna and its various cultural artifacts and tools. Even if these laws are considered probabilistic, Hempel has argued that the probabilistic version of the deductive-nomological model still follows the pattern of explanation of that model. The object of an inductive-probabilistic explanation also is an individual event E. Given a set of other events or states, El,...,En, there is a set of probability laws which argues that when El,...,En occur, it is highly probable that E will occur (cp. von Wright 1971:13ff.). Thus, according to Hempel, there is no difference between the two models in terms of explanatory character; there is a difference only between the laws, the one showing necessary connection, the other probable connection. As an example of this strategy as it applies to myth, one can look at the recent work of Pierre Maranda (1985:1).2 He has reconstructed all of Propp's functions for the Russian folktale narrative in terms of a probabilistic network representation. Thus, if a storyteller begins with function A, the probability that he will then go to B1 is 0.235, the probability that he will go to B3 is 0. 117, or B4, 0.294, or C, 0.235, etc. There is, in effect, then, a series of probabilistic "laws" established between the narrative functions of the Russian folktale. But whether it is the nomological model or the probabilistic one, the question is, what would be explained if all of these laws and conditions could be articulated within a theoretical framework? Ideally, the appearance of a unique myth or folktale, M, would be explained. But this may be subject to a criticism comparable to the one which Dray levels against Hempel in regard to the application of the explanatory model to historical events (1957:25, 33ff., 51, 97, 102, 134). Suppose one wanted to explain why Louis XIV died unpopular (E); a general law which claims that all rulers who do x become unpopular would provide the basis for the application of Hempel's model, but only if so many qualifying conditions were added to it that, in the end, it would be equivalent to saying that 'all rulers who pursue exactly similar policies to those of Louis XIV under exactly similar conditions to those which prevailed in France and the other countries affected by Louis's policies become unpopular'. Since such a law cannot be stated in general form, its necessity applies to only one instance, viz., that of Louis XIV. Such an explanation, then, turns out to be rather trivial, if not tautologous: an event will occur because of a unique configuration of laws and events. Thus, every event would
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have its own "laws," and any ability to predict events except that one unique event from those "laws" would be de facto impossible. However, this may not be an entirely fair criticism. Even though there may be such variability in the conditions which produce an event as to make any laws of history or human behavior or cultural configuration useless for the prediction of a particular event, still these laws may have some general explanatory power. For example, it is clear that there are many similarities between myths in geographically disparate regions. There are two extreme theories which attempt to explain this similarity. The diffusionist theory argues that the similarities are due to channels of transmission which follow the migratory routes of early man; differences between myths are due to the variable conditions at the geographic site or to lapses and distortions in the transmission process.3This could explain a great deal, although it cannot explain the generation of any one particular myth. A theory diametrically opposed to this would be an innatist one, espoused, for example, by Jung. The theory of the archetype suggests that there is a deposit of primal images in a collective unconscious wedded to the structure of the human brain. Myths are disturbed from their unconscious slumber by certain events and modified by both the individual consciousness and cultural conditions peculiar to the occurrence of that event. Because of this, similar myths may arise spontaneously in different geographic regions. Despite a large variety of myths, there is a common core to the repertoire of myths which points to its source in the collective unconscious. Neither theory can predict the emergence of a particular, unique myth, but given a particular myth, each can cite the conditionsfrom the framework of the theorywhich made that myth possible. Diffusionists would attempt to show the migratory paths and contacts that that particular culture had; Jungians would expose the underlying archetypes that inform the myth. I want to emphasize here that I am separating the issue of the confirmation of these theories from the mode of the explanation. The problems with the theories mentioned are familiar enough: the diffusionist theory cannot account for the origin of original myths; Jungian theory supposes an archetype which is, in principle, unverifiable and so vaguely defined that a number of symbols may be defined in terms of it. However, these kinds of explanation have a family resemblance with those found in cosmogony, geology, the theory of evolution, or any study of the development or history of natural events or processes. As analyzed by von Wright (1971:50 59), these kinds of explanation show how something was or became possible, rather than answering questions as to why something was or became necessary. The latter explanationwhy something was or became necessarycites sufficient conditions for something to occur and can thus predict the event from the presence of those sufficient conditions. The first explanationhow something was or became possiblecan only be used for retrodictions. From the fact that an event is known to have occurred, one can infer that its antecedent necessary conditions must have occurred in the past. Although B does not occur every time A does, when B does occur, A was present. A Jungian theory could, in principle, take an existing myth and show that the necessary conditions for its composition were the
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archetypes, but it could not have predicted that that particular myth would have emerged, because of the great variability of "local conditions," in this case, the conditions of conscious elaboration and the particular cultural framework in which the myth was generated. What is peculiar, then, about what might be called reconstructive explanationsespecially as applied to cultural phenomenais, unlike genuine causal ones, their inability to predict with necessity, although they still retain some ability to explain.4It might be argued, however, that reconstructive explanations are rather the result of an inadequate state of knowledge than based on the character of a phenomenon type. Should we, as Kant suggests, argue that "all nature, indeed, is nothing but a combination of phenomena which follow rules; and nowhere is there any irregularity. When we think we find any such, we can only say that the rules are unknown" (1762:1). This is a point which John Stuart Mill made in regard to the application of scientific method to psychological and cultural phenomena. He used the examples of tidology and meteorology to make his point. It was supposed by Mill, in the case of meteorology, that general laws could be established, in principle, to explain any weather condition; but because of the complexity of local conditions that occur at any moment in the atmosphere, it would be nearly impossible to predict, with certainty, local weather conditions. One could, simply put, predict what will happen when a cold front meets a warm front, but that the two fronts will meet in a certain delimited region under the right conditions is more difficult to predict. Consequently, it is easier to reconstructively explain the existing condition than to predict the occurrence of one. What makes prediction difficult is not the absence of natural laws, but the complicated procedure in applying these laws to extremely variable and complex local conditions. The trouble is that the system is far too complicatedfrom the perspective of our present knowledgeto calculate any of its states. Accurate weather prediction may be possible, but, at present, the only certainties are retrodictions.5 The same point may be applied to a theory of evolution. Suppose that a theory of evolution could be reduced to a series of genetic laws; the great variety and complication of local conditions would still prevent nonprobabilistic predictionthus its status would be the same as that of meteorology at present. Yet future accurate prediction may be possible, in principle, if the state of knowledge advances to the point where such local conditions become calculable. This argument, which is applicable to the explanation of social, psychological, and cultural phenomena, then makes the following claim: 1. there are necessary, causal relations between the elements in the systems that constitute a phenomenon, but the many possible interventions upon and variables within the systems make accurate prediction impossible given the present state of knowledge. However, I would like to propose an alternative leading principle for reconstructive explanations as they occur in the study of culture. It can be argued that the inability to make accurate predictions based on explanatory theories about cultural phenomena is due to the fact that
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2. there are no necessary causal relations between the elements in the systems that constitute the phenomena in question. This latter claim does not necessarily lead to skepticism, or to a free-for-all characterization of cultural phenomenait only suggests that the relations between elements are not necessary, causal ones, not that they are not systematic. If, in fact, the use of causal relation is replaced by rule-relation, claim 2 would make sense in the context of certain kinds of reconstructive explanations. This is clear at all levels of language analysis and sign systems and of human behavior in general. Starting at a grosser level, a sentence in a particular language could be reconstructed, in principle, in terms of its grammatical rules, yet those grammatical rules could not be used to predict the utterance of that sentence; nor do the rules necessitate their use by the speaker. Rather, the reconstructive explanation takes on the following form: if S is a sentence uttered by a speaker, P, in a language, L, then S is possible by means of rules, Rl,..,Rn. To argue that most English speakers, in uttering declarative sentences, place the subject before the verb, as a law or as a statistical generalization, is to miss the character of the rule. The presence of rules will generally typify speaker or human behavior. A rule which states that we must stop at red traffic lights and go at green creates a behavioral pattern that can be statistically generalizedbut this pattern is a result of agents following rules rather than an example of causal behavior. Wittgenstein's idea of a language game and Saussure's analogy of language as a chess game are relatively correct. Given the rules of chess, one could not predict with any causal accuracy the moves of any player, nor even that a player will play by the rules or play at all. But given a move, one can reconstruct it in terms of the rules of the game. A master may be able to predict a weaker opponent's strategy, hence his next move, but this again relies more on the typical use of rules, in the context of the values and purposes and intentions of the rule-users, than on any necessary, causal connections. But more important, such reconstructive explanations, based as they are on rules, focus more on the evaluative function of such rules. As Winch suggests, using the framework of Wittgenstein, "the notion of following a rule is logically inseparable from the notion of making a mistake. If it is possible to say of someone that he is following a rule that means that one can ask whether he is doing what he does correctly or not. .... the point of the concept of a rule is that it should enable us to evaluate what is being done" (1958:32). This same point is made by Anthony Giddens, who argues that the possibility of sanction of behavior indicates the presence of normative rules for that behavior (1979:270-71n.63). Habermas speaks of the "evaluative accomplishment of rule consciousness," so that, for example, "the rule consciousness of competent speakers functions as a court of evaluation . . .'' (1976:13-14). Notions of right, wrong, good, bad, correct, incorrect, proper, improper, replace questions of cause and effect; in this case the introduction of rules into explanation also introduces the question of evaluation, and its concomitant notions of value and criticism. But to return to the question of myth in this regard, Maranda's characterization
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of Propp's narrative functions as a probabilistic network (as cited above) simply shows a likely sequence of narrative events in a relatively mechanical function: the move from A1 to C has a probability of 0. 235. In attempting to predict the move from Al to C, Maranda's technique not only fails to explain why such a move is even probable, but fails to account for how it is possible. If one supposes that the folktale narrative is constituted by a set of rules, one could no doubt show the probabilities between the various narrative functionsbut these would be the result of the typical or atypical employment of the rules, either consciously or unconsciously used by the storyteller, rather than any law-like relation between functions. In regard to the more primitive levels of language, for example at the level of the phoneme, the sedimentation of sound relations may argue against the view above. But here one is looking at rule-like behavior that has become habituated, in Peirce's sense, rather than anything remotely law-like. Roman Jakobson has effectively argued that the sense-informing aspect of sound cannot be accounted for by causal-physiological mechanisms that produce it (1976:45ff.). Physiological laws cannot account for the generation of a sound system. Given the habitualized use of sound relations in language to utter meaning, it is easy to forget the processes of language acquisition in the child. Yet Saussure's claim of arbitrariness at the basis of the relation between sound and meaningalthough it recognizes that conventional rules permeate every aspect of languagemust be attenuated by the recognition that it is precisely because of these rules that relations between the elements of language have systematic, synchronic character. The reconstructive explanation of language is possible only on that assumption. Although there is no motivation, in Saussure's sense, between sound and meaning, the rules which organize sound make it into a coherent system, consequently one amenable to meaning generation. The variable yet systematic character of languages shows that relations between language elements must be considered rule-like rather than law-like; yet the similarities between varying languages, the so-called universals of language, may cast doubt on the claim that the whole of language is rule-constituted, since there is a feature of language that appears to be present among all languagesa sure sign of biological determination. This is an issue present in the analysis of other cultural phenomena, such as kinship systems, where the rule of incest is thought, paradoxically, and as Lévi-Strauss pointed out, to be both universal and yet not necessary. This could also be true of mythology, where, despite the vast variety of myths, many share certain common elements. Yet, as Lévi-Strauss pointed out, if the rule of incest is universal, it does not necessitate the behavior it prescribes; moreover, if biology provides the patterning for incestavoidanceas studies in ethology show (cp. Bischoff 1975; Shepher 1983)it does not determine the manner in which such a patternwhen culturally formulated as a rulewill constitute the kinship system. Whether these fundamental "rules" are genetically encoded or not, it is clear that their elaboration and play within the larger framework of a semiotic system goes beyond that biological source. But it is also clearly the case that there are "natural" semiotic systems, as studies in animal communication show (cp. Sebeok 1979:1-60).
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However, there is still one mode of explanation in this regard that requires some attention. If it is true that language, myth, and other cultural phenomena can be treated as systems of rule-like relations, is it not possible to apply the insights of cybernetics and systems theory in general to these kinds of relations? But given the general characterization of systems in terms of function and purposewhat is generally called teleological explanationcybernetic concepts may, in fact, supervene rules as the deeper explanation of the sign system; excluding that possibility, cybernetics would at least provide the basis for an additional explanation of the system beyond reference to the rule components of any system. I think in order to avoid confusion here two pairs of distinctions have to be made. Firstly, a distinction should be made between two kinds of questions about any sign system. On the one hand, there is the general concern about what constitutes the relations between elements within the system, their makeup and any generalizable character that they have; another set of questions concerns the evolution of the system, and how it functions within the nexus of other systems, that is, its purposeful function. A second distinction should be made between teleology and teleonomy (cp. von Wright 197 l:l 6ff.). In the classic paper on cybernetics written by Rosenbleuth, Wiener, and Bigelow (1943), the authors argued that apparently purposeful functions of elements within a system could be recharacterized more accurately as causal relations. This hinged on the notion of negative feedback, which may be defined in the following way: a system, within which a cause-factor (such as a heater, for example) produces an effect (the rise of temperature in a room) may be associated with another system such that a failure in the effect of the first system (the drop in temperature below a certain point) produces a correction (viz., increased heating activity) in the operation of its cause-factor. The effect-factor of the second system then gives the operation of the cause-factor of the first system an "appearance of teleology." Yet both systems operate according to causal laws (von Wright 1971:17). Purposefulness can be explained in terms of the concatenation of causal systems; such self-regulating or homeostatic systems are also characteristic of living organisms, cardiovascular systems being a prime example. These kinds of functional explanations may, following von Wright, be called teleonomic, since they couch purpose in terms of causal or nomic relations. These teleonomic explanations should be distinguished from genuine teleological ones. In teleonomic systems, the function of the elements within the system or nexus of systems is law-like; in teleological systems, the elements with the system form rule-like relations which are incorporated within the intentions and purposes of the rule users. This may seem like begging the question, but let me illustrate the difference with a simple example. Suppose I can manipulate the nerves of my body so that my right arm raises in a reflex action. This reflex behavior may be characterized as teleonomicthe set of nerves is activated in order to raise the right hand. But suppose I raise my right hand in order to get the teacher's attention in a classroom situation. Here the relation between raising my hand and getting the attention of the teacher is based on a conventional rule ('The proper way to get the attention of a teacher in the classroom is to raise one's arm'); the in-order-to as a purpose, that is, as an intention of the agent, is set in the context of a particular rule. In this manner
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the movement of the hand is transformed into symbolic behavior (in Peirce's sense). The in-order-to of the reflex action, on the other hand, is in terms of a series of causal relations. Thus, rather than supervening rules, genuine teleological explanations as they apply to sign systems require rules as the basis of their explanans. Combining these pairs of distinctions yields basically three types of legitimate explanations concerning sign systems. The first concerns the origin and development of the system, the second focuses on the structural relations between elements within the system at a certain period of its history, and the third concerns the general function or purpose of the system. In the case of teleonomic systems, supposing the received view correct, origin and evolution will have a biological determination, the structural relations will be causal, and the purposefulness of the system will be reduced to a concatenation of causes. In the case of teleological systems, the origin of the system may or may not be biologically conditioned, the structural relations between the elements of the system will be generally rule-like, and the purposefulness of the system will be related to noncausal functioning. In the case of the latter when it applies to specifically cultural sign systems, it will be related to the intentions, beliefs and values of human agents. It is possible to find these three kinds of explanationin regard to mythpresent, for example, in Lévi-Strauss. In regard to the question of the origin of mythic systems, he argues that an inherent genetic or biological tendency toward opposition is at the basis of myth: It cannot be said purely and simply of the world that it is: it exists in the form of an initial asymmetry, which shows itself in a variety of ways according to the angle from which it is being apprehended. .... This inherent disparity of the world sets mythic thought in motion. .... (1971:603) In regard to the structural relations between elements within the mythic system, he argues that "it is through the systematic application of rules governing opposition that myths . . . are transformed into different myths. .." (1971:603). "Mythic thought operates essentially through a process of transformation" (1971:675) and the rules of these transformations are contrariness, contradiction, inversion, and symmetry (1971:675). Finally, on the third level of explanation, the teleological one, Lévi-Strauss gives his classic account: "the purpose of the myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction'' (1955:229); or, as in the later writings, "to come to terms with history, and on the level of the system, to reestablish a state of equilibrium capable of acting as a shock absorber for the disturbances caused by real-life events" (1971:607). Each of these types of explanation belongs to a category of reconstructive explanations. In attempting to explain the origin or evolution of a phenomenon, the explanation cites the conditions for how such a phenomenon was possible. The second type demonstrates, given the rules of the system, how any event within the system is possible. The third type, in light of the rules of the system, demonstrates how its acquired function was possible. But given this general catalogue of explanations, there is still the basic question: what does explanation explain and is it an exhaustive account of the myth? Herme-
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neutics would respond by arguing that a very important element has been left out of this account of mythmeaning. Explanation may be able to provide a set of answers to the origin of myth and its general structure and how it functions within the cultural whole; but in doing so it reduces the phenomenon to an observed entity rather than a lived experience. It may at best disclose the rules which constitute the myth and how these relate to the intentions, beliefs, and values of the culture, but it fails to understand this in the context of a believed tradition. Explanation works from the interest of a disengaged observer, hermeneutics from the perspective of a participant. The task of hermeneutics is to communicate a tradition into the lived experience of a present which has already been part of that traditionin Gadamer's sense it develops a wirkungsgeschichtlichtes Bewusstsein. It is not a discourse about something so much as a discourse from within a generally understandable and mutually shared framework of participants in that discourse. Rather than cataloguing a set of beliefs or values that are empirically normative for a population or a culture, hermeneutic discourse engages these beliefs and values in further conversation, resulting in a process of "edification," as Richard Rorty calls it (1979:360). "The attempt to edify (ourselves or others) may consist in the hermeneutic activity of making connections between our own culture and some exotic culture or historical period, or between our own discipline and another discipline which seems to pursue incommensurable aims or an incommensurable vocabulary" (1979:360). But hermeneutics is not just a supplementary task incidental or peripheral to the principal task of explanation. It is not a propaedeutic for explanationsomething which clarifies the context for explanation in the human sciences. As Gadamer argues, hermeneutics "is not a methodology of the human sciences, but an attempt to understand what the human sciences truly are, beyond their methodological self-consciousness, and what connects them with the totality of our experience of the world" (1960:xiii). Hermeneutics is neither a method nor a search for truth but a prospect for human discourse which helps to situate all discourses, including rational explanatory ones, into the presence of a cultural understanding, one whose aim is Bildung rather than Erkenntnis, Verstehen rather than Erklärung. There is no doubt that a hermeneutic study provides more than just a background to explanatory discourse. It reveals both the interconnections and the cultural and historical underpinnings which situate that discourse within the interests and belief-value systems of the participants who engage in its practice. Hermeneutic discourse enlivens and enculturates any rational-explanatory discourse by establishing conditions which help restrain any participant from escaping back into an observer position. Once in the hermeneutic grasp, participants in rational-explanatory discourse appear to remain participants, rather than self-observing observers of a rational discourse about rational discourse. But I think one has to be careful of becoming enamored of hermeneutic discourse as a kind of discourse which absorbs all others. There are two reasons for this: first, the hermeneutic tradition itself demonstrates that there is no unified understanding of hermeneutics; consequently, some discourse must be established
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which can adjudicate between hermeneutic ones. Secondly, if the Gadamer-Rorty version of hermeneutic discourse is correct, that is, true, then critical reflection of one's own understanding of the tradition which enculturates discourses may be severely constrained. Finally, so I would argue, certain kinds of explanatory discourse, when understood in the tradition of discourses and reflective of their own interests, may serve as an interest which can be more critically reflective than hermeneutic discourse. The first criticism is especially appropriate to the study of myth. The task of the more traditional theories of interpretation in the Western biblical tradition is to communicate to a lay populace the intention(s) of the author of the textit reveals the messages of God to participants in the belief-value system which views the myth as fundamental. As understood, for example, in the tradition of Paul-Origen-Augustine, the myth presents itself as a text with an absolute message, but a text that is nonetheless seen "through a glass, darkly" (cp. Paul I Cor. 13:12; Augustine i.400-416:XV.VII. 1); when the message is literal, all the better, but when it is not, the interpretation of its underlying import must be laid bare till one finds the word which is "an image of the Word of God" (cp. i.400-416:XV.X. 3), as Augustine argues. Both strategies presuppose a truth or a true meaning to the text, or at least a coherent set of messages. Thus, Augustine builds strategies for the interpretation of the text which cannot be transcendedit builds truth into its hermeneutic by presupposing the principle which interpretation is designed to find. Hermeneutics in this case is tautologousit demonstrates what is already known. For example, in The Literal Meaning of the Genesis, this strategy is articulated as follows: The Bible should be: 1. treated literally when possible, i.e., as an account of historical events that actually happened (as in the Book of Kings [i.401-416:l1.1. 2]); 2. allegorically when literal meaning is absurd or contrary to Christian principles or theology (i.401-416:1 1. 1.2); 3. both literally and allegorically when a specific purpose for allegorical interpretation is indicated (thus Sarah and Hagar represent the two testaments as well as actually existing persons [i.401-416:8.4.8]); 4. and where the passages are obscure, they should be understood as stimulants to thought (i.401-416:1.20.40). Prepared in this manner, the interpretation of the Bible cannot help but yield the presupposed meanings of such an interpretation. The supposition that there is a hidden meaning supposes that one has prior acquaintance with it; yet access to the hidden meaning requires the proper exegesis of the text, but proper exegesis of the text presumes acquaintance with the hidden meaning. In the end such interpretational strategies are simply mirrors for a foreunderstanding of the text. Hermeneutics evolves as an uneasy tension between the view that the understanding of the text must be seen in light of the historical-cultural conditions of the earthly authors of the text, as in the case of Ernesti and Semler (cp. Gadamer 1960: 155), and the view that the job of hermeneutics is to reconstruct the meaning
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of the text primarily by means of interpreting the intentional messages of the author, as in the case of Schleiermacher (cp. Gadamer 1960:157ff.). Hermeneutics, especially in its modern versions, moves away from characterizing the text as having a true meaning to the treatment of texts as meaningful within a tradition of shared understandings. But not only is it questionable how hermeneutics decides among the hermeneutics discoursesexcept to say that the most recent is the more meaningful, since it has been absorbed into the wirkungsgeschichtlichtes Bewusstsein of the present agebut it is also questionable how such discourses might accommodate the critical appropriation of a tradition. This is a question of evaluation versus valuation of the text. In operating at the level of meaning without either truth or explanation as guides for its discourse, hermeneutics discourses within the framework of the values which constitute its discourse. Evaluation of other discourses then becomes an estimation of the values of other discourses in light of the values of one's own discourse. For hermeneutics, not only are all discourses value-informed, but where discourses impute the existence of "facts," these too are, in fact, value-laden. In this case hermeneutics is ill-equipped to evaluate the various discourses. This is clear in the case of Ricoeur, who argues that "the dissolution of myth as explanation is the necessary way to the restoration of the myth as symbol" (1969:350). This seems to tear asunder the immediacy of symbol, as a believed sacred tradition and the mediation of thought. Yet Ricoeur's attempt in, for example, The Symbolism of Evil is to discover how these can be "held together" (1969:350). The solution is in terms of developing a hermeneutic which, of course, cannot imitate the "original belief" in the symbol, but which provides a criticism that goes "beyond criticism by means of criticism, by a criticism that is no longer reductive but restorative" (1969:3 50). It is a criticism which involves itself in a peculiar version of the hermeneutic circle: ''We must understand in order to believe, but we must believe in order to understand" (1969:351). But if explanation of the myth is disenfranchised from the process of criticism, the ability of this criticism to be truly critical is called in question. In being a criticism which aims at restoration, it is, by that very fact, one which aims to appropriate the text in an almost unconditional manner, as in the case of Augustine. Ricoeur worries that the "critical" aspect of hermeneutics might not "turn it away from its appropriative function" (1969:3 50); but, on the contrary, its participation in the version of the hermeneutic circle cited above guarantees its ending in a claim that proves the point: ". . . the time of restoration is not a different time from that of criticism. . ." (1969:350). In the more vulgar versions of hermeneutics, criticism of other discourse types results often in a kind of marketing-advertising strategy in which a discourse is proffered rhetorically as the best for your money. I think one can see hermeneutics as an essential component in the communication of meaning and the understanding of the traditions which contribute to the constitution of beliefs, values, and rules which organize human culture in all its aspects; but it fails as a discourse for the means of critical reflection upon these constituting elements. This leads to the third point made above, one which is made by Karl-Otto Apel and Habermas in their various ways, viz., that there are certain kinds of inquiries
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whose interests and values are primarily critical, evaluative, and emancipatory.6Habermas gives Freud's psychoanalysis and Marx's ideology-critique as two historical examples which both aim, in different domains, to liberate persons from negative conditions by explaining the forces which, on the one hand, tie behavior to neurosis, or, on the other, enslave the worker in a capitalist economy. The explanation of the condition effects an understanding of that condition which serves as a means of evaluation of that condition by those affected by it. This is not to claim that such "sciences" were theoretically correct, only that the interests which ultimately informed such inquiry distinguished them from the normal, hard sciences. Habermas has also been criticized in terms of his interpretation of Freud and his estimation of Freud's success.7 But I think that even if this interpretation of Freud is incorrect, it still outlines a model for a critical science that is worth considering. According to Habermas's analysis, the strategy of psychoanalysis in the clinical situation "takes into account that information about lawlike connections [and] sets off a process of reflection in the consciousness of those whom the laws are about. Thus the level of (nonreflective) consciousness, which is one of the initial conditions of such laws, can be transformed" (1968:310). Thus, in regard to dream interpretation: The technique of dream interpretation goes beyond the art of hermeneutics insofar as it must grasp not only the meaning of a possibly distorted text, but the meaning of the text distortion itself, that is the transformation of a latent dream thought into the manifest dream. In other words it must reconstruct what Freud called the "dreamwork." (1968:220-21) From this framework it is clear that the explanation of the distortion is not the total objective of the science, nor is the objective just the interpretation of the dream; rather, the act of understanding the dream, based as it is on the explanation of the semiotic processes, must also be appropriated by the producer of the dream through self-reflection on these aspects. The analyst is guided by his interest in helping a patient overcome certain symptoms, and the patient's desire to have these symptoms eliminated provides the impetus in which explanation and understanding serve the interest of emancipation from the force which creates the negative condition. In this light, explanation cannot be used to predict, thus control, the patient's behavior; rather, it must be used in the context of a process of understanding for the purpose of a self-reflective release from the forces which are explained. Of course, Habermas's theory relies on a contested theory of rational subjectivity, the assumption that the subject is not completely constituted by the cultural system in which the agent acts and, so, exhibits the capability of intentionally transforming behaviora controversy somewhat similar to that concerning libertarianism and soft determinism.8 This controversy may be due to the mistaken reification of the system of rules which, for example, constitutes a language or a practice. I think Anthony Giddens's notion of structuration is one possible solution. What must be understood, in this view, is not how structure or system determines action, but rather how action is structured, i.e., how social organization is reproduced by the activities of individuals pursuing their goals. Rather than structure and action
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forming an antagonistic dualism, they are simply the aspects of structuration: ". . . . social structures are both constituted by human agency, and yet at the same time the very medium of this constitution" (Giddens 1976:121; cp. 1984). In this case rules are not a reified structure but are the interpretants of behaviorto use the Peircean vocabulary. Interpretants make action cohesive and understandable to others; they are the regular effects of signs on sign agencies, but precisely for that reason interpretants are the means by which any sign agency accomplishes the control of his or her behavior and the behavior of others. They are the means by which agents simultaneously accomplish their goals and reproduce or modify a system of such rules. It is in this light that I present the following textas a hierarchical coordination of explanatory, hermeneutic, and critical interests. This coordination is guaranteed to some extent by the kind of explanation about myth that pervades this textthe one which I have labeled "reconstructive." This kind of explanation, as it applies to culture, works on systems which exhibit no necessary or causal relations between elements but, rather, are generally rule-like in character. Because a reconstructive explanation is associated with rules, and rules are associated with evaluations, such an explanation involves the criticism of behavior. As a result, the attempt is not to provide an explanation that can predict and, consequently, control the phenomena or the participants in the phenomena in question. A reconstructive explanation for this reason is ex post actu; given a myth or a system of myths, it is possible to reconstruct the rules that make it possible. As such, a reconstructive explanation provides for participants and observers an understanding of the rules which constitute the myth and its relation to other rules of a culture; consequently, a reconstructive explanation provides the means for reflection and dialogue about these rules in the context of how myths might distort or encode the cultural values of its participants. Not only does the type of explanation ensure a critical aspect to the study, but the results of reconstructive explanation provide a further impetus to critical reflection. I have tried to explain the myths as processes of transvaluation, that is, not in terms of the purely formal relations peculiar to structuralism and semiotics influenced by structuralism, but as valuative relations. This approach not only characterizes the myth qua sign system in its dynamic aspect, but it allows it to be understood in its reflexive capacitythat is, the manner in which the rules and values that constitute the various levels of culture are turned back into and reevaluated in the body of the myth. In the myth, then, understood as transvaluation, one finds a condensed, sometimes displaced, sometimes distorted, version of cultural values. This valuative reconstruction of myth allows us, as Habermas says in another context, to "bring an 'unconsciously' functioning rule system to consciousness in a certain manner" (1971:23). Selfreflection, or what Peirce calls "self-control," becomes possible once the rules and systems which constitute a symbolic process are brought to light (cp. Habermas 1971:22). Transvaluation is based on the insight that all sign systems involve a valuative and evaluative aspect, an aspect which is superordinate in the sense that it gives final coherence to semiotic systems. In its most general form it takes its clue from
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the semiotics of Peirce and argues that any sign-referent relation is always mediated by a process which reevaluates the perceived, conceived, or imagined valuation of the referent within the pragmatic value structure of a sign user. Myths in particular are a transvaluation of the rules and concepts which "structurate" the economic, social, political, and cosmic fabric of a culture; they are not simply a window through which one views those values, however, they also provide a set of lenses which focus, invert, distort, obscure, and distance the culture of which the myth is a part. That is, truly speaking, myths are transvaluative processes par excellence, much in the way in which Freud recognized dreams as transvaluative, displacing representations of the psychic condition. But, moreover, myths are not merely a passive representation of cultural life; rather, they are reflexive, in the sense that the cultural participants view their own culture through the spectacles of myth. They are therefore not just ideological representations of rules which inform a culture, they take part in the in-formation of culture; they are not always guided formations, but, in many senses, steering mechanisms as well. In this text I argue that the process of transvaluation in myth finds its locus in narrationthat is, narration is one good example of transvaluation. The narration focuses on a set of rules from a certain domain or domains of cultural life which define a certain cosmic, social, political, or economic hierarchy, and places them in a crisis. There is a disruption of the normative function of these rulesthey are violated, there is some transgression. The narrative then unfolds a certain, somewhat ambivalent, resolution to this crisis, depending on the pragmatics of the tale: the disrupted hierarchy is restored or enhanced or, on the other hand, the hierarchy is destroyed, leading to social anomie, or terrible tragic consequences, such as the introduction of pain, disease, or some sort of loss. The ambivalence of the resolution reveals the presence of a certain tension which serves as the dynamic of the narration, the tension between an order or hierarchy, i.e., a set of rules which imposes an order on a culture, and the possibility of its transgression, i.e., the possibility of an alternative order. The narrative of the myth continually plays out this tension. For example, if a culture has a certain incest prohibition, myths will generally focus around its transgression and its consequences: among the Bororo there are tales about father-daughter, mother-son, and intramoiety incest, some of which involve the punishment of the transgressor, but some of which place the transgressor in a heroic role (although tragic consequences for the culture result). Of course, the classic Greek Oedipus tale depicts the downfall of an "innocent" transgressor. A. K. Ramanujan (1986) has also found a similar Oedipus-like tale among south Asian Indians, but where a mother plays the role of Oedipus. But within the same framework there are two versions: one with a tragic ending (the woman hangs herself) and one with a happy ending (she confronts a goddess with the truth, who replies, "don't worry, don't tell anybody and be a good wife")9 In this case the incest rules, which create a certain social hierarchy (between those who are sexually approachable and those who are not), generate a number of possible transgressions, but also play out a variety of consequences (some tragic, some not). This last aspect points to the teleological-pragmatic function of the myth. Let me clarify this point by a brief and simple analogy to troping. Given
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an especially taboo topic such as sex, a euphemism may represent sex or sexual acts in a way which makes indirect or displaced reference to it, in order to avoid offense to the interlocutor. On the other hand, a vulgarism will take a highly taboo topic and intensify the referent even further, making it more explicit, in order to offend. In either case the form of the linguistic representation reflects its pragmatic function. Similarly with narrations in myth: tragic narratives intensify the consequences of transgressions, while romantic or comedic narratives find a way to enhance the dominant hierarchy. Just as classic comedies avoid incest and reconcile the family, so classic tragedies witness incest and its tragic consequences with the dissolution of the family. But the final resolution of this narrative structure is met in the particular social and pragmatic conditions under which it is presented orally as a communal lesson or interpretation. To the extent that myths are believed, then by placing the cultural rules and values of a culture in crisis, myths are dangerous symbols. The violation of these rules creates an ambivalence that must be carefully watched and interpreted in the correct way. Consequently, their interpretation must come under strict control. An alternative interpretation could possibly disrupt the dominant order of the culture. In this sense, myth, its presentation, and its interpretation form a symbolic web by means of which humans control the rules and norms which govern and constitute the culture. Placing the myth in a sacred tradition or its source in direct revelation further cements the authority of those rules, norms, and values. But to leave myth as the final authority is to leave a gap in the critical and evaluative process that is the strength of human being. To subject myth to criticism, to lay bare the symbolics of its process, is to engage in the most comprehensive criticism of a culture. Whereas to control the myths in which a culture believesto govern its symbolismis to control the hearts and minds of a people, to allow the criticism of myth is to dilute that power, to loosen sedimentations of thought and belief that may be harmful to a community or, positively, to reaffirm beliefs and values that are indeed helpful. The task of critical semiotic is not to replace one dogma by another, but simply to disclose the rules of the symbolic processes by which symbols become suchto place control on that controlleading, as Peirce suggests, to self control. Critical semiotic substitutes understanding and explanation for dogma, and where interpretation is delimited or directed, it suggests possibility.
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Part One The Development of a Theory of Transvaluation
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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ONE Peirce's Concept of the Interpretant Here, therfore, we have a divine trinity of the Object, interpretant and ground. The Interpretant is evidently the divine Logos or word. Lowell Lecture XI, 1866 . . . that word translating seems to me to contain profound truth wrapped up in it. Letter to Lady Welby, March 14, 1909 Although undoubtedly Peirce has contributed more to the theory of signs than any thinker, if there is one contribution that remains singular it is that of the interpretant.10 Fundamentally it exemplifies the insight that signification and representation are not exhausted by a simple duet of sign and object, but involve the intervention of a third factorin its most comprehensive form, a rule-bound process which creates a grid through which any one sign belonging to its system will refer and signify.11 Peirce did not see a strict separation between a theory of reference and a theory of signification, but saw denotation (breadth) and connotation (depth) as fundamentally interrelated in terms of what he called, in his early writings, information, or the quantity of the interpretant: . . . the dyadic relations of logical breadth and depth, often called denotation and connotation, have played a great part in logical discussion, but these take their origin in the triadic relation between sign, its object and its interpretant sign; and furthermore, the list appears as a dichotomy owing to the limitation of the field of thought, which forgets that concepts grow, and that there is this third respect in which they may differ, depending on the state of knowledge, or amount of information. (c. 1903:3.608) Indeed, as W. B. Gallie, commenting on Peirce, suggests: The belief still all too prevalent among philosophersthat a sign can stand in a simple two-term relation, called its meaning, to its object, is . . . seen to rest on a radical misconception of the kind of a thing a sign is and of the way in which it functions. The truth is that a sign can function only as an element in a working system of signs: it means what it does only in virtue of the fact that other signs belonging to the same system mean the slightlyor immenselydifferent things that they do. (1952:124-25) This suggests a holistic and antireductionist theory of meaning in which the meaning of a sign, linguistic and nonlinguistic, is filtered through the structural relations
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among a set of signs which contribute to its evolving network. One discovers in Peirce's pragmatism that although the object determines its sign(s), it is the further determination of the sign through which we come to know the real. Truththe philosopher's grailis not found in exfoliating signification from the object of signification, but in the arrangement of that very foliage: ". .. the highest grade of reality is only reached by signs" (1904:23). It becomes clearer in Peirce, especially as one witnesses the more concentrated efforts in his last years, that his semiotic is the keystone of his philosophic edifice. As philosopher and cosmologist, Peirce saw the proper understanding of signs as the correct path between the thick underbrush of realism and the high terrain of idealism, a position he called "objective idealism"; the interpretant, as a principle of synthesis in semiosis, was not the sole accomplishment of a knowing conscious, but neither was it a determined process and a natural law unto itself. The principle of synechism and tychism instead suggested that the sign process evolved and grew by means of a teleology not predetermined but defined by the confluence of previous semioses. As the human mind participated in and contributed to this process, especially in the form of generalities which the symbol made possible, it reaped the double benefit of making predictions and rationalizing conduct: "The value of a symbol is that it serves to make thought and conduct rational and enables us to predict the future" (c. 1903a:4.448). Semiosis for this reason was essentially purposive, the means by which any sign-using agency could control representations which were a necessary way of being: A symbol is essentially a purpose, that is to say, is a representation that seeks to make itself definite, or seeks to produce an interpretant more definite than itself. For its whole signification consists in its determining an interpretant; so that it is from its interpretant that it derives the actuality of its signification (c. 1904:261). This is where pragmatism and semiotic meet. Peirce the scientist realized that the meaning of a sign was nothing more than the regular effects it would have on sign-interpreting agencies, i.e., its interpretant; but this gave that agency the power to predict semiosis, simultaneously leading to the formation of beliefs and the solidification of conduct based on those beliefs. The meaning of a proposition is, "according to the pragmatist, that form in which the proposition becomes applicable to human conduct . . . that form which is most directly applicable to self-control. . ." (1905c:5.427). Representation not only allows us information about the object represented, to understand the object without its direct presence, but also to control our conduct toward that object by controlling its representations and symbols. Retaining that peculiarly nineteenth-century optimism, Peirce had imagined that progress in rational conduct would be contemporaneous with progress in scientific knowledge. Symbols thus had the double effect of becoming a source of knowledge and a means of behavioral control through criticism. Those methods which attempted to dogmatize or hinder the growth of symbols, such as unquestioned authority, were to be replaced by the more communal, democratic, and verifiable procedures of the sciences:
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Now thought is of the nature of a sign. In that case, if we can find out the right method of thinking and can follow it outthe right method of transforming signsthen truth can be nothing more nor less than the last result to which the following out of this method would ultimately carry us. (1906a:5.553) But whether or not the claimthat such a method should be exclusively identified with scienceis itself an uncritical dogma, and should also be addressed, nonetheless Peirce saw clearly that the growth of the symbol through criticism was most important. Ultimately such criticism is tied to a normative aspect, understood at three levels: right thinking is connected to right conduct, which, in turn, is connected to right ends, corresponding to three normative disciplines: logic, ethics, aesthetics. Semiotics, then, is essentially evaluative and critical, engendering growth and movement toward a "concrete reasonableness": The highest kind of symbol is one which signifies growth, a self-development, of thought, and it is of that alone that a moving representation is possible; and accordingly the central problem of logic is to say whether one given thought is truly, i.e., adapted to be, a development of a given other or not. (1906d:4.9) Peirce recognized the power of the symbol, its ability to bind belief and control conduct; however, the optimism of Peirce's rational scientism blinded him to some of the more negative aspects of the power of the symbol. His Enlightenment attitude led him to underestimate the power of the methods of authority and tenacity in creating distorted symbols which had perhaps more power to convince and persuade than the clarity or publicness of scientific methods. He seemed to believe that the community would simply see and recognize the rationalism of science. He failed to understand that it is not simply the case of exchanging one symbol for another. The symbolics which binds a believer to a belief system must first be exposed, its distortions shown, made conscious, and brought under a healing set of symbols which can represent those underlying representations in an undistorted way. This is certainly the case for myth as a symbolic system. Whereas Plato shared the normative ideals of Peirce, he more clearly recognized the power of myth as symbol and so purposefully tried to encapsulate his philosophy in myths that could express it. But surely Peirce recognized that to control the symbol is to control its effects on symbol users. Especially in the cases of distortion, tenacious authority, the power of the symbol, must be broken, the mechanisms of that distortion exposed. I think in this respect Peirce gives us a double benefit: firstly, a fruitful and relatively accurate theory of the sign and, secondly, a means of critique, embedded within that theory. These benefits peak, I believe with the notion of the interpretant, understood as a rule of sign translation. A. The Interpretant as Sign Translation Peirce's concept of the interpretant was an early achievement, as found already in 1866 (cp. Kloesel 1983:112), and continued as an essential ingredient for the remainder of his philosophic life, receiving especial clarification and classification
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in his later years. I believe that this certainly was at least one concept that remained relatively consistent in Peirce, despite other changes in his philosophic framework. There are, of course, those who dispute this. George Gentry has suggested that the interpretant, prior to the development of pragmatism, is bound up with the notion of sign translation, which, in turn, assumes a kind of indefinite semiosis, involving certain paradoxes of infinite progress. After the development of pragmatism and its differentiations from that of James and Schiller, Peirce stressed the definition of interpretant as the "proper significate effect" of a sign, the ultimate interpretant being the rule of action or habit that the sign engenders. It was Gentry's opinion that the latter definition saved Peirce from the paradoxes of infinite progress and was, at the same time, more attuned to the insights of his pragmatism (1952:89-90). But this supposed incompatibility between the interpretant as sign translation and as proper significate effect is perhaps just a forced distinction. Peirce combines these definitions of the interpretant in an insightful passage made in his later years. The whole purpose of a sign is that it should be interpreted in another sign and its whole purpose lies in the special character which it imparts to that interpretant. When a sign determines an interpretant of itself in another sign, it produces an effect external to itself. (c. 1904:8. 191) It is true that the development of Peirce's pragmatism and its defense motivates him to emphasize the practical effects of the sign, i.e., in its preferred form as a habit of action; but I don't think that that precludes the possibility of understanding the interpretant, even in its final form as a habit of action, as a case of sign translation. In measuring the progress of sign translation, one is witnessing the significate effects of the sign. Indeed, Peter Skagestad suggests that the principle of indefinite translation is an early version of the pragmatic maxim, since the meaning of a term will depend on the process of inquiry or sign translation, which is, essentially, an indefinite enterprise. The absolute meaning of the term is attained in a state of omniscience, i.e., the unrealizable condition of the end of inquiry. If the meaning of a term consists in the totality of its conceivable experimental consequences, still we do not know the totality of these consequences (1981:125-26; cp. Altschuler 1978). The essential feature of the interpretant is its function of continuing a translation of a sign which serves to make that sign more determinate, to place it in a context of other signs so as to yield more information about its represented object, to develop or enhance any meaning it might have. This is suggested in one of Peirce's more general definitions of a sign: . . . anything which is related to a Second thing, its Object, in respect to a Quality, in such a way as to bring a Third thing, its Interpretant, into relation to the same object, and that in such a way as to bring a Fourth into relation to that object in the same form, ad infinitum. If the series is broken off, the Sign, in so far, falls short of the perfect significant character. (c. 1902:2.92) The sign, in representing its object, undergoes a kind of evolution and transformation in which its significant character is elaborated and determined through sign
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translation: ''A sign is only a sign in actu by virtue of its receiving an interpretant, that is, by virtue of its determining another sign of the same object" (1906a:5. 509). "A sign is not a sign unless it translates itself into another sign in which it is more fully developed" (1898:5.594); ". . . meaning . .. [is] in its primary acceptation, the translation of a sign into another system of signs . . ." (c. 1893:4.127); "the meaning of a sign is the sign it has to be translated into" (c. 1893:4.132); "there is no exception to . . . the law that every thought-sign is translated or interpreted into a subsequent one . . ." (1868a:5.284). Greenlee, in commenting on Peirce, makes the same point: "to respond interpretatively to a sign is not to react to it automatically but is, in one sense of the term, to 'translate' it into another sign, which calls for further interpretation by virtue of being a sign" (1973:108). According to Peirce this process of translation follows the "law of the mind," i.e., the "law of association" with its concomitant principles of contiguity and resemblance, and the more general principle of "synechism": If, after any thought, the current of ideas flows on freely, it follows the law of mental association. In that case, each former thought suggests something to the thought which follows it, i.e., is the sign of something to this latter. Our train of thought may, it is true, be interrupted. But we must remember that, in addition to the principal element of thought at any moment, there are a hundred things in our mind to which but a small fraction of attention of consciousness is conceded. It does not, therefore, follow because a new constituent of thought gets the uppermost that the train of thought which it displaces is broken off altogether. On the contrary, from our second principle, that there is no intuition or cognition not determined by previous cognitions, it follows that the striking in of a new experience is never an instantaneous affair, but is an event occupying time, and coming to pass by a continuous process. Its prominence in consciousness, therefore must be the consummation of a growing process; and if so, there is no sufficient cause for the thought which had been the leading one just before, to cease abruptly and instantaneously. But if a train of thought ceases by gradually dying out, it freely follows its own law of association as long as it lasts, and there is no moment at which there is a thought belonging to this series, subsequently to which there is not a thought which interprets or repeats it. There is no exception, therefore, to the law that every thoughtsign is translated or interpreted in a subsequent one, unless it be that all thought comes to an abrupt and final end in death. (1868a:5.284) Sign translation in its more complete form implies continuity, in Peirce's sense of synechism, a rule-bound evolution, a determinative process.12 1. TRANSLATION AS TRIADIC AND THE SPECIAL CHARACTER OF THE SYMBOL Peirce defines semiosis as "an act, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into acts between pairs" (1905a: 5.484). Semiosis is not the additive or mechanical reproduction of the relations between sign-object and sign-interpretant and object-interpretant, but the three form an indissoluble bond, not reducible to any kind of dyadic relation. As W. Kolaga notes, "the interdependence of the categories within the sign is thus of the structural type; an elimination of one destroys the triad. A sign is a sign only in vir-
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tue of its relations to the other two elements, and is qualified by these elements" (1986:23). The irreducible quality of triadic relations is illustrated by Peirce in two analogies: the act of giving, and intentional-purposive actions: Analyze for instance the relation involved in 'A gives B to C'. Now what is giving? It does not consist in A's putting B away from him and C's subsequently taking B up. It is not necessary that any material transfer should take place. It consists in A's making C the possessor according to Law. There must be some kind of law before there can be any kind of givingbe it but the law of the strongest. (1904:8.331) The act of giving suggests a coherence between three phases: "Here are three pairs. A parts with B, C receives B, A enriches C. But these three dual facts taken together do not make up the triple fact which consists in this, that A parts with B, C receives B, and A enriches C, all in one act" (u.b:307). This emphasizes that triadic relations are essentially examples of thirdness, that is, they introduce a law-like or rule-like character to the relations between elements. Semiosis requires an interpretant and an interpretant is triadic or law-like: "Whether the interpretant be necessarily a triadic result is a question of words, that is, how we limit the extension of the term 'sign'; but it seems to me convenient to make the triadic production of the interpretant essential to a sign. . ." (1905a:5.473).13 As opposed to triadic relations, dyadic relations can be analyzed into pair relations, e.g., as in a series of causal relations (1905a:5.472-73) (cp. Fitzgerald 1966:73ff.). An event A may produce, by brute force, an event B; and B may, in turn, produce by brute force an event C; but the fact that the event C is about to be produced by B has no influence at all upon the production of B by A. This is so since the action of B in producing C is a contingent event at the time B is produced. In other words, B is not produced in order to produce C, but because B was produced by A, then C could be produced by B. On the other hand, in a triadic relation A produces B as a means to the production of C. B is produced because it is likely to produce C, not because it was produced by A; or, as T. L. Short puts it: "the likelihood of B's leading to an event of some type C has an influence on whether A produces B" (1981:205). The same point is made by von Wright in his distinction between causal actions and intentional behavior (1971:87f.). An action may be distinguished in its outer and its "inner" aspects. Consider the action of opening a window by some agent. For convenience, let's suppose that the outer aspect has three phases, the pressing of a button (A), the opening of the window (B), and a drop in the temperature in a certain room (C). Thus, the agent pressed the button and as a consequence the room was cooled, that is, A caused B and B caused C. But, as von Wright emphasizes, though this could, obviously, account for the causal relations between events, it does not explain why the agent opened the window. He opened the window in order to cool the room, and the intention of the agent connects the phases of the outer action into a synthetic whole which cannot be reduced to an addition of relations between them. Even if one were to treat intention as a "cause," the
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explanation of why the agent performed the action would not result. We would simply have another preceding cause added to the series of dyadic relations: I(intention)®A®B®C. Consequently, I caused A, A caused B, B caused C, but C, then, could not be understood as a reason for the action but only as the consequence of B. Intentional description involves the triadic relation between intention, result, and action and cannot be reduced to a series of causal relations between the outer phases of the action. Intentionality is thus analogous to semiosis in this respect: goal, means, and action correspond, respectively, to object, interpretant, and sign. The goal (object) determines the action relative to the means; the means are determined relative to the goal and the action realizes the goal in terms of the means. On the other hand, symbolic semiosis can be characterized as intentionality: Every sufficiently complete symbol is a final cause and "influences" real events, in precisely the same sense in which my desire to have the window open, that is, the symbol in my mind of the agreeability of it, influences the physical facts of my rising from my chair, going to the window and opening it. (c. 1904:254) For example, I may analyze the causal relations of the nervous system and the muscles that raise my hand and thus explain why parts of my body move, but I will not thereby be able to explain not only why I am raising my hand (in order to call attention to myself) but also why the raising of the hand is significant. As a series of causal relations I may explain the mechanisms involved in physically raising the arm, but as an index the mechanical movements acquire another description: the raising of the hand is a sign of an object (the person's desire to be recognized) to an interpreting agency (the teacher), who understands the symbolic import of the means (the rule of the gesture). The interpretant, in this case the conventional rule concerning the gesture, allows the interpreting agency to connect the sign (the gesture) as representative of its object (the desire to be recognized). The teacher may say, in an odd fashion, "Why is the nervous apparatus of the motor cortex causing your musculature in the right arm to raise the arm?" and still characterize the meaning of the gesture. But that meaning would evaporate if the teacher simply noted that the arm was being raised because the nervous apparatus in the motor cortex was causing the musculature in the right arm to raise the arm. The triadic quality of the raised arm (under an intentional description) cannot be reduced to a series of dyadic (causal) relations. For the action to become a sign it must be viewed under the description of an interpretant which relates that action to an object. Meaning, like intention, does not subsist somewhere in the fabric of the mind, but accrues within the framework of a certain kind of relation between things, more specifically, the relation between two things and the rule which designates the one as the sign of the other. This argues for two important features of translation understood triadically, and the notion of the symbol in particular. Firstly, the language of symbols cannot be reduced to the language of indices, intension cannot be reduced to extension. If such a reduction were artificially imposed, it would arbitrarily exclude the legiti-
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mate domain of symbolic activity. If language or gesture were reduced simply to the set of indices which produces it, we would simply be left with just the indexical infrastructure, unintelligible to a set of symbol users. As Rorty argues in this respect: The fact that we can predict a noise without knowing what it means is just the fact that the necessary and sufficient microstructural conditions for the production of a noise will rarely be paralleled by a material equivalence between a statement in the language used for describing the microstructure and the statement expressed by the noise. This is not because anything is in principle unpredictable, much less because of an ontological divide between nature and spirit, but simply because of the difference between a language suitable for coping with neurons and one suitable for coping with people. (1979:355) The language of the symbol is the means by which we incorporate the language of indices into a framework understandable from the perspective of intention and purpose. This suggests its second characteristic. Translation is essentially purposeful and teleological. The sign cannot be adequately comprehended in a singular function of representing some object; rather, it is tied to purpose and value through evaluation. As Peter Skagestad writes, dyadic relations are devoid of evaluation, they simply are. Triadic relations on the contrary are essentially open to evaluation; a sign may represent its object to its interpreter rightly or wrongly, truly or falsely, better or worse. These normative terms imply the possibility of correction and improvement. It is an essential property of semiosis, therefore, that it can be corrected and improved upon, something which can happen only if the semiosis is itself made a subject of discourse (that is, of a secondorder semiosis) and explicitly criticized. So, the capacity of discourse to function as the subject of second-order discourse is an essential prerequisite for discourse to function as semiosis. (1981:124) The meaning of a sign is engendered in its ability to delimit an interpretation which, in its final form, describes a rule in which a sign will develop in the course of relating its object to its interpreting agency. As such it becomes possible to create interpretants of interpretants, making possible a critical reflection on action. In that case sign translation, in its symbolic aspect, is tied to value and purpose. 2. SIGN TRANSLATION AS INFERENCE If the interpretant is triadic, then for Peirce inference is the exemplar of triadic relation, in which case, inference seems to be the primary mode of translation. Semiotic and logic are thus largely coincident, as he suggests several times. Peirce consistently divides the subject matter of logic into the study of terms (rhemes), propositions (dicisigns), and arguments, the latter being divided into three types: abduction (hypothesis), induction, and deduction (c. 1902:2.95-96). The purpose of terms, so to speak, is to combine into a proposition, and that of a propositions into an argument (c. 1895a:2.341). Each of these three kinds of signs, according to Peirce's third trichotomy, is thought of in relation to its interpretant (c. 1897:2.228, c. 1903:2.250). As such the study of their interpretants is part of the
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third branch of logic or semiotic, which Peirce calls pure rhetoric. "Its task is to ascertain the laws by which in every scientific intelligence one sign gives birth to another, and especially one thought brings forth another" (c. 1897:2.229). In other words, as he says elsewhere, pure rhetoric is the study of sign translation (1865:274). The term gets its translation and further interpretation in a proposition, and the proposition in an argument. The proposition allows one to make assertions about the objects represented by the terms, and arguments allow one to infer other propositions from existing ones. In accordance with its general character, the interpretant, as translation, is triadic. For example, the proposition 'A is B' is a representation which represents that whatever is represented by the representation A is represented by the representation B (1873a:64). In the case of an argument, the interpretant is the rule of inference which allows any argument of that type to draw the conclusion that it does, the conclusion itself representing the interpretant of the argument (c. 1903:2.253). According to Peirce, every proposition contains a subject and a predicate (c. 1902:2.316), and the relation between the subject term and predicate term is exhausted by three relations: breadth (denotation, extension), depth (connotation, comprehension), and information, the last being Peirce's original contribution to the issues of sense and reference. Breadth is what the subject of a proposition denotes and depth is what the predicate of the proposition asserts (1905a:5.471). Information is the "sum of synthetical propositions in which the symbol is subject or predicate, antecedent or consequent" (1901:2.364). Peirce calls information "the quantity of the interpretant" (1866:465), where 'quantity' is understood in the classical logical sense as a part/whole relation, i.e., the manner in which a genus may be analyzed into a species, and, on the other hand, the manner in which a whole is defined in terms of its parts, i.e., the manner in which the species constitutes the genus (cp. 1901:2.364). Information, in this sense, is the functional interrelation of the breadth and depth of terms in a proposition, summarized in the following formula: breadth x depth = information (1867a:2.419) If we learn that S is P, then as a general rule the depth of S is increased and the breadth of P is increased (1867a:2.419). To learn that arsenic is poisonous claims, in effect, that the depth of arsenic is increased, while the breadth of poisonous things is increased: The effect of an addition to our knowledge is to make one term predictable of another which was not so before to our knowledge. And it thus at once increases the known depth of the subject term, and the known breadth of the predicate term without any decrease of either of these quantities, so that in the increase of knowledge, the known breadth and depth of terms are constantly increasing and the sum of the breadths and depths in either product, if you please, will measure the extent to which investigation has been pushed. (1837b:89) Information, then, is the functional connection between the breadth and depth of
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a subject and predicate in a proposition, and the breadth and depth of any term is relative to a state of information. Progress in knowledge is represented by the process by which we can legitimately use terms in propositions in a certain denotative and connotative arrangement. However, the information that is expressed in the proposition, for example, 'S is P' does not arrive ex nihilo, but is the accomplishment of previous translations. Translation, or the development of the sign, is a continuous process, through which a sign stands in a certain relation to what has preceded it and what will follow it, thereby forming a system of signs: "A system is a set of objects comprising all that stand to one another in a group of connected relations" (1898:4.5). But the process by which signs are (or ought to be) systematized is another name for reasoning or inference. For this reason, inference is the primum mobile of translation: "the illative relation is the primary and paramount semiotic relation" (c. 1893a:2.444n 1). At this point the connection among translation, information, inference, and interpretant becomes clearer. Translation is essentially the substitution of one sign for another, through which the latter develops the former: "Everything may be comprehended or more strictly translated by something; that is, has something which is capable of such a determination as to stand for something through this thing" (1865a:333). This coincides with the more formal meaning of translation as found in Peirce's logic of relatives. Translation is a species of transitive relation (c. l903b:3. 594), which is the most important class of relations from the standpoint of logic (c. 1903b:3. 590). "A relation is transitive if, and only if, an individual object in that relation to a second which is in the same relation to a third is itself in that relation to this third" (c. 1903b:3. 590). A transitive relation is a translation when, given a primitive relation, in which an individual stands to some other individual, any other individual related to the first will stand in the same relation to any other individual related to the first (c. 1903b:3. 594). For example, given a primitive relation such as 'loving', then 'loving whatever may be loved by' is the translation of 'loving' (c. 1903b:3. 594). Taken out of the context of its strict logical application, translation establishes a continuity between units in a system and simultaneously develops the implications present in each of the units in terms of the other, i.e., it establishes a set of substitutes or ''equivalents" (not synonyms) which enhance the semiotic feature of earlier units. Information acts similarly. Information allows us to extend the breadth and depth of terms, by showing that the breadth of a depth term and the depth of a breadth term now extends to another term not previously related to it. If 'A is B' is the basic form of the proposition, then the 'is' or the copula expresses a certain relation of equivalence between the two diverse terms (1873c:97). To say that 'Arsenic is poisonous' is to show that now among poisonous things is to be included arsenic, thus extending the breadth of poisonous; it is simultaneously to extend the depth of arsenic, which is now known to be poisonous: "Every addition to the information which is encased in a term results in making some term equivalent to that term" (1866:464). Not in every respect, but in some respect arsenic is substitutable for poisonous and it stands in relation to poisonous in the same way in which every other poisonous thing stands in relation to being poisonous: poisonous and arsenic
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stand in a transitive relation and are thereby translations of one another. As such they are interpretants of one another. The relation between information and interpretant becomes clear in the following passage: Indeed, the process of getting an equivalent for a term, is an identity of two terms previously diverse. It is, in fact, the process of nutrition of terms by which they get all their life and vigor and by which they put forth an energy almost creativesince it has the effect of reducing the chaos of ignorance to the cosmos of science. Each of these equivalents is the explication of what there is wrapt up in the primarythey are the surrogates, the interpreters of the original term. They are now bodies animated by the same soul. I call them the interpretant of the term. And the quantity of these interpretants I term the information or implication of the term. (1866:464-65) Equivalent terms are literally equi-valent, i.e., in the chemical sense of having the power to combine with similar predicates. In this sense two terms may be equivalent only in terms of the number of predicates they have in common and, therefore, not in every respect. As such they are substitutable for one another, they are interpretants of one another, in just that respect. Inference also involves substitution: "The conclusion may be regarded as a proposition substituted in place of either premiss, the substitution being justified by the fact stated in the other premiss. The conclusion is accordingly derived from either premiss by substituting either a new subject for the subject of the premiss, or a new predicate for the predicate of the premiss, or by both substitutions" (1868a:5.279). The interpretant of an argument is represented by the Conclusion (c. 1897:2.253), and the interpretant proper is the general rule of translation or transformation found in a particular inference, which can easily be inferred from two statements: "the rule of a system of symbols is a permission to make a certain transformation" (1901:4.377) and "illative transformation is the passage from a symbol to its interpretant" (1901:4.375). Thus the interpretant is a rule of translation or inference. The connection between information and inference is also made clear early by Peirce. Inference may be divided into deductive or analytic, on the one hand, and synthetic on the other, the latter being subdivided into induction and hypothesis (abduction) (1878a:2.623). These three forms of valid reasoning are claimed to exhaust inference types, every other inference being understood as a combination of two or more of these characters (1868a:5.274). In analytic or deductive reasoning there is no change of information, but there is an increase of extension and comprehension. More specifically, there is an increase of the breadth of the major term (predicate) of the conclusion, and of the depth of the minor term (subject) of the conclusion (1867a:2.423), as indicated by its prototypical form (1868a:5. 279):
Both induction and abduction, as synthetic inferences, involve an increase of information. The form of induction can be generalized as follows (1867a:2.424):
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In this case M receives an increase of depth, P of breadth (1867a:2.424). Hypothesis or abduction also involves an increase of information. Its typical form is as follows (1867a:2.425):
In this case S receives an addition to its depth and M an actual increase of breadth in S (1867a:2.425). Other types of reasoning, such as analogy, reasoning from definition, and from definitum to definition, can be included under these three. Thus the latter is considered a form of deductive reasoning (1867a:2.426), while reasoning from definition is a kind of abduction, called formal hypothesis (1867b:2. 509). Analogy is a combination of induction and hypothesis (1867b:2.513). Besides the principal forms of inference and their derivatives, there is another list of what Pierce seems to call "operations" (1867a: 2.427). These include generalization, abstraction, extension, ascent, descent, discovery, depletion, amplification, determination, among others. The relation of this list of operations to inference is not made clear by Peirce, although there are some hints of a connection (1901:2.364; 1867a:2.422; 1901:3.642; c.1903a:4.463). But given Peirce's claim that all types of reasoning can be classified as some combination of deduction, induction, and abduction, and assuming these operations to be forms of reasoning, then their connection is at least implicit. What makes an analysis of these semiotic operations more difficult are the changes in terminology and conceptions among the sketchy presentations found in 1867, 1870 and 1893. Using the 1893 version wherever it contradicts the other versions, a reconstruction of the general idea can be made. Each of these operations is characterized as a functional interrelation of breadth, depth, and information, in terms of either increase, decrease, or constancy of each. The functional interrelation is based on three rules which Peirce develops: First, that, as long as the information remains constant, the greater the breadth, the less the depth; Second, that every increase of information is accompanied by an increase in depth or breadth, independent of the other quantity; Third, that, when there is no information, then there is either no depth, or no breadth, and conversely. (1867a:2.419) Extension is the general name for any increase of breadth, with or without change of information. Restriction proper is its contrary, meaning any operation that decreases the breadth of a term (1867a:2.427). Determination is the name for any operation which increases depth, while its contrary, depletion, is any operation which decreases depth, with or without change of information (1867a:2.428). Discovery is the name for any increase of information, and Peirce does not name its
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contrary (1867a:2.430), although I would venture to call it analysis for lack of a better name. All other operations are some combination of these five categories, as indicated in figure 1. Thus ascent is extension by depletion; this is any passage from a broader and less-deep notion, without change of information (1867a: 2.422n. 1). Descent (sometimes called specification) is determination by restriction (1867a:2.429).
Figure 1. A classification of semiotic operations based on Peirce's analysis. Using Goudge's notation (1952:131), B = breadth, D = depth, I = information, d = decrease, i = increase, and c = constant. As a speculative interpretation, I would say that any process which increases information is tied to synthetic inference, and any process in which information remains constant or decreases is connected with analytic or deductive inference. This is suggested by the fact that deductive reasoning does not add information, while both inductive and abductive do. That Peirce classifies abductive reasoning under discovery seems to confirm this idea (1867a:2.430). Also, the claim that abstraction (or prescission, depending on terminology) is one branch of deductive logic (1901:3.642), abstraction involving a decrease of information (1867a:2.422), suggests this division as well. Under discovery, Peirce makes the classification diagrammed in figure 2. In turn, a comparable diagram can be constructed for analysis (figure 3). 3. DETERMINATION One kind of semiotic operation or mode of translation discussed by Peirce in some detail is that of determination: A subject is determinate in respect to any character which inheres in it or is (universally and affirmatively) predicated of it, as well as in respect to the negation of such character, these being the very same respect. In all other respects it is indeterminate. (1905: 5.447) This has a family resemblance with the definition given by Peirce's philosophical mentor, Kant: a determining predicate is a predicate which is added to the concept of the subject and enlarges it. (1781:A598, B626) Complete determination is the principle of the synthesis of all predicates which are intended to constitute the complete concept of a thing. . . (1781:A572, B600)
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Figure 2. A classification of synthetic types of inference based on Peirce's analysis.
Figure 3. A classification of analytic types of inference based on Pierce's analysis. This is consonant with Peirce's general definition of determination as any increase of depth in a term, with or without change of information. But Peirce seems also to suggest that determination is not just an increase in depth, but a restriction of breadth of certain vague subjects. Peirce's concept of determination is expressed more fruitfully in terms of the process of interpretation of a term or proposition: a completely determinate propositionwhich is impossible (1905d: 5. 06)leaves "no latitude of interpretation" (1905:5.447). Conversely, then, an indeterminate sign is one that demands the process of interpretation to set a goal for such final determination (1905: 5.448n. 1). But what is especially interesting about this formulation of determination is that it suggests that the process of translation is not delimited solely by a process of inference, but by a semiosis tied to the discourse and universe of sign usersspeakers and auditors, authors and interpreters. Determination is established within the framework of a speech community. The definition of determination in terms of a continuous decrease in the latitude of interpretation suggests that determination is correlative with consensus. In other words, agreement in interpretation or meaning would have the effect of diminishing the latitude of interpretation, and zero latitude of interpretation would mean a consensus among interpreters of a par-
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ticular speech community. A completely determinate text, speech, or proposition is one that does not motivate or require interpretation on the part of the reader or auditor; an indeterminate sign is one that does. Since any sign utterance can be supposed to have as its primary purpose the communication of a message, a determinate sign achieves that purpose for some set of auditors, while an indeterminate sign does not. Complete determination is consensus. This becomes clearer in the context of an examination of indeterminacy. 14The latter is of two types: vagueness (indefiniteness) and generality (1905:5.448n. 1), vagueness being the antithetical analogue of generality (1905d:5. 505).15 Within the context of a discourse between utterer and auditor, generality leaves further determination to the interpreter of the sign (1905d:5.505, 1905:5.447). On the other hand, in the case of vagueness, "the right of determination is not distinctly extended to the interpreter [but] it remains the right of the utterer" (1905d:5. 506). To put it differently, "a definite proposition is one the assertor of which leaves himself no loophole for escape against attack by saying that he did not mean so and so, but something else" (1904?:25). In the case of the subject of a proposition, indeterminacy occurs in terms of the indeterminateness of the reference. According to Peirce, the object of every sign is an individual (u.d. :8. 181), and the signs which may serve as subjects of propositions are of two sorts: selectives and cyrioids (u.d.:8. 181). Selectives are what are generally called "quantifiers" (cp. 1905:5.450), and are subdivided into universal (all, any, etc.) and particular (some, at least one, etc.). Selectives are more or less "directions for finding an object" (u.d.:8. 181). Universal quantities are general because, when uttered, they invite the auditor to pick any individual of the type named: 'All men are mortal' suggests that if you select any man you please, then that man will be mortal. On the other hand, particular quantifiers are vague (1905:5.450), since the claim that 'Some men are wise' does not specify to the auditor which men in particular are to be selected. To use Peirce's example: 'A man whom I could mention seems to be a little conceited', made in the context of a party, is vague because "the suggestion here is that the man in view is the person addressed; but the utterer does not authorize such an interpretation or any other application of what he says" (1905:5.447). "'A certain man' means that the determination which is left uncertain to the reader or auditor is, nevertheless, or once was certain either to the utterer or some other person" (1905d: 5.505n. 1). Cyrioids include proper names, demonstratives, personal and relative pronouns, abstract and common nouns. Sometimes Peirce calls these singular quantities (1905:5.450). Again, their determination depends on the context of their utterance, i.e., in the relation between speaker and auditor. A proper name, for example, "denotes a single individual well known to exist by the utterer and the interpreter" (c. 1904:243). The reference of the proper name is fixed by the users of the name: Suppose, for example, two Englishmen to meet in a continental railway carriage. If one mentions Charles the Second, the other need not consider what possible Charles the Second is meant. It is no doubt the English Charles Second. Charles the Second of En-
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gland was quite a different man on different days, and it might be said that without further specification the subject is not identified. But the two Englishmen have no purpose in splitting hairs in their talk....(1905:5.448n. 1) The reference of a proper name is fixed or made determinate relative to a shared discourse or universe of experience between speaker and auditor and their respective communities: "It is useless to attempt to discuss the genuineness and possession of a personality beneath the histrionic presentation of Theodore Roosevelt with a person who recently has come from Mars and never heard of Theodore before" (1909b:8.314). We might then speculate that Peirce's response to the puzzles presented by Russell's enigmatic proposition 'the present king of France is bald' might be similar to Strawson's, viz., not as to the truth or falsity of the proposition, but in the sense that most likely any present-day speaker would claim that there is no king of France presently. To the extent that such a description corresponds to nothing in the universe or in the collateral experience of the auditor it is meaningless for that auditor. In this respect, Peirce might agree with Kripke's assessment, that ". . . reference actually seems to be determined by the fact that the speaker is a member of a community of speakers who use the name" (1972:106); or, as Saussure claims, "the signifier, though to all appearances freely chosen with respect to the idea that it represents, is fixed, not free, with respect to the linguistic community that uses it" (i. 1906191 1:71). As Christopher Norris adds in regard to Saussure, "without this provision it is impossible to pass from an abstract conceptualization of languagela langueto a grasp of its communicative workings and social nature" (1983:160). As Brock comments on this matter, ''relative to such a universe of discourse and such conventions, proper names and definite descriptions are determinate in reference. But they are not absolutely determinate, i.e., they are not determinate in all conceivable universes of discourse" (1979:44). Thus Peirce: "we can only say, in a general way that a term, however determinate, may be more determinate still, but not that it can be absolutely determinate. Such a term as 'the Second Philip of Macedon' is still capable of logical division into Philip drunk and Philip sober, for example" (1870:3.93). In any case, as a species of sign translation, determination is not only purposive, it has an essential pragmatic dimension which demonstrates that it is tied intimately to the discourse of a community. That determination of reference is dependent on the shared universe of speaker and auditor is made clear in Peirce's notion of "collateral experience." In the case of demonstratives, "for instance, I point my finger to what I mean, but I can't make my companion know what I mean, if he can't see it, or if seeing it, it does not, to his mind, separate itself from the surrounding objects in the field of vision" (1909b:8.314). Thus when the explorer Jacques Cartier first encountered the Hurons, he swept his hand out over the area, asking what this place was called. Their response was 'Kanata'. Assuming that this meant the entire area as far as the eye could see, he gave the name 'Canada' as an appellation for the entire region, even though 'Kanata' was simply the name for the Huron village that stood before the speaker and auditor. Thus Peirce would probably agree with Quine's notion of the
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inscrutability of reference, that absolutely determinate reference is impossible, so that, for example, 'gavagai' may refer to the whole rabbit, or just some rabbit phase (cp. Quine 1960:31ff.). But, nonetheless, such references can become relatively determinate given a certain shared universe of discourse or collateral experience: Two men meet on a country road. One says to the other, "That house is on fire." "What house?" "Why, the house about a mile to my right." Let this speech be taken down and shown to anybody in the neighborhood village, and it will appear that the language by itself does not fix the house. But the person addressed sees where the speaker is standing, recognizes his right hand side (a word having a most singular mode of signification) estimates a mile . . . and looking there, sees a house. It is not the language alone . . . but the language taken in connection with the auditor's own experiential associations of contiguity, which determines for him what house is meant. It is requisite then, in order to show what we are talking or writing about, to put the hearer's or reader's mind into real, active connection with the concatenation of experience or of fiction with which we are dealing, and, further, to draw his attention to, and identify, a certain number of particular points in such concatenation. (1892b:3.419) The difference between demonstratives and proper names on the one hand and common nouns on the other is that "words like this, that, lo, hallo, hi there, have a direct forceful action upon the nervous system, and compel the hearer to look about him; and so they, more than ordinary words, contribute towards indicating what the speech is about" (1892b:3.419). But still they are not enough to fix the reference of a sign absolutely determinate, though they can do this more so than either proper names or common nouns. Thus, in order to fix the reference of a linguistic sign, other indices and information are called for from the auditor's and speaker's shared universe of discourse. In regard to the common noun, its function . . . is the same as that of the Proper Name. That is it merely draws attention to an object and so puts its interpreter into a condition to learn whatever there may be to be learned from such attention. Now attention can only be drawn to what is already in experience. A proper name can only function as such if the utterer and interpreter are already more or less familiar with the object it names. But the peculiarity of a common noun is that it undertakes to draw attention to an object with which the interpreter may have no acquaintance. For this purpose it calls up to his mind such an image as a verb calls up, appeals to his memory that he has seen different objects (as) the subjects of that image . and then of those which might be so recollected or imagined, the noun indefinitely names one. (1904?:23) In this case the common noun is indeterminate because it is general. Vagueness also applies to predicates; but whereas the vagueness of the subject of a proposition is due to the indefiniteness of reference, vagueness of the predicate is due to the indefiniteness of the essential depth of a term, i.e., its conceptual or conventional definition (cp. 1867a:2.410): We may use indefiniteness in depth or vagueness to denote any indefiniteness which primarily affects the essential depth of a sign, that is, the predicates or other consequences
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which its affirmation may by logical necessity carry with it, and which will, at least usually, thereby affect its logical breadth, or the total of subjects of which it can be affirmed in a given state of information. (1905e:321) A good example of this type of vagueness is given by Peirce: . . . the question whether a newly found skeleton was the skeleton of a man rather than of an anthropoid ape, the reply 'yes and no' might, in a certain sense, be justifiable. Namely, owing to our conception of what a man is having been formed without thinking of the possibility of such a creature as that to which this skeleton belongs, the question really has no definite meaning. (u.a:20; cp. Brock 1979:47) Thus, due to the indefiniteness of the definition of 'man', it is uncertain whether a skeleton which has some attributes not generally considered human should be called a human skeleton. Consider also the following example: What has been said of subjects (concerning vagueness) is as true of predicates. Suppose the chat of our pair of Englishmen had fallen upon the color of Charles II's hair. Now that colors are seen quite differently by different retinas is known. That the chromatic sense is indeed more varied than it is positively known to be is quite likely. It is very unlikely that either of the travellers is trained to observe colors or is a master of their nomenclature. But if one says that Charles II had dark auburn hair, the others will understand him quite precisely enough for all their purposes; and it will be a determinate predication. (1905:5.448nl) Again, a predicate is determinate relative to the purposes of the speakers and their community. These analyses suggest that determination is subordinate to purpose and bound to a discourse universe of some speech community: ". . . the latitude of interpretation which constitutes the indeterminacy of a sign must be understood as a latitude which might affect the achievement of a purpose. . ." (1905:5.448n. 1). Reference is determined through the mediation of the act of uttering a sign to some auditor in the context of some universe of experience for a certain purpose: "It is the circumstances under which the proposition is uttered or written which indicate that environment as that which is referred to" (1901:2.357). A term, therefore, whether name or predicate, will be determinate relative to the purpose of the communicative partners, or of a linguistic community in general. In this respect, Brock, following Peirce, argues that an absolutely determinate termwhich is impossiblewould have to survive the test of being determinate in all universes of discourse and relative to all purposes. A relatively determinate term need only survive the test of a given universe of discourse and a given purpose or purposes" (1979:44). Let me give a nonlinguistic example of this general idea. Suppose an exotic observer, relatively familiar with the language and conventions of a particular culture, but not completely so, is confronted with a particular sign, a relatively generic drawing of a man attached to the front of a door. Its indeterminateness is due to its generality, for it could represent any man or woman. However, he notes that this drawing of a man is located on the door to a room, and so assumes that the purpose of the sign is to indicate that the room has a special
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function in regard to men and women. He observes that this door with this particular sign is directly across from a door with a sign that bears the drawing of a woman. He supposes then that the door with a picture of a man pertains only to male persons, as opposed to female persons, and, correspondingly, the room serves a function exclusive to men. He ventures into the room and observes men performing excretory functions. Realizing that such information could not have been obtained from the generally indeterminate sign alone, the exotic observer wonders why the sign was not made more determinate, and he imaginatively lists a number of alternatives: a picture of a man standing next to a urinal or a toilet, or perhaps even a picture of a man performing an excretory function. But being relatively familiar with the values and norms of the culture, he realizes that such depictions would be considered too improprietous. The exotic observer concludes the following: (1) the sign on the door is general, so that any other person who shares the same universe of discourse as the originator of the sign could apply it to himself; (2) the depth of the sign is left intentionally vague since such determinations are too improprietous for that culture. In other words, there are at least two rules which serve as interpretants for the formation and interpretation of the sign: (a) a conventional iconic rule, which is understood by the community which associates the generic picture of a man with any man, and, (b) the rule of propriety, which disallows any further determination of that sign by its creator. Thus the creator of the sign made the sign determinate relative to the purposes of communicating a message to members of a speech community within the constraints imposed by a set of conventions and values. Determination, as interpretation, is the process of making subject and predicate, reference and sense more definite. This process is, however, relative to the purposes or teleology of sign users. Yet Peirce's larger sense of determination seems to carry with it an objective teleology, i.e., a purposive structure not determined by any particular sign users. Thus, besides the use to which sign users may put sign systems, nonetheless, as a system, signs themselves seem to have a life and order of their own. Peirce often speaks in this manner: "A symbol is something which has the power of reproducing itself . . ." (c. 1904:260). The symbol moves from indeterminacy and vagueness to determinacy (c. 1904:260-61), so that "a symbol seeks to produce an interpretant more definite than itself' (c. 1904:261). John Smith speaks of this dualistic teleology in Peirce: "purposes appear as a double-barrelled form: there is, first, the purpose or goal of the specific thought and the habits associated with it, and, second, there is the purpose of thought itself which is to produce habits of action" (1978:26). Sign processes themselves contain an objective teleology, which then serves as a framework or a set of constraints of the teleology of the user. Thus when Peirce says "thought thinks in us rather than we in it," this conveys some of the sense of an objective teleology. However, this could lead to the mistaken impression of a kind of Hegelian absolute idealism in which Mind somehow plays out its strictures on the backs of humans, or it would imply at least a false reification of a sign system. But I think, firstly, that Peirce's concepts of tychism and synechism do not suggest that there is some preformed telos which rigidly oper-
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ates throughout the cosmos; instead, these suggest the operation of a system of constraints which constrain further development, organizing into a kind of teleology that is more bricolage than engineered. Secondly, in regard to the reification of a sign system, Peirce's notion of the interpretant prevents this characterization. The general exists as the interpretant or the habit of action of a set of individuals. To the extent that individuals act by means of rule-like behavior they reproduce these generals. The general does not exist per se, but exists in its ability to be reproduced by the action of individuals. If a sign system completely determined individual action, then self-control would be impossible. It is precisely because the system is reproduced only by an individual's action that changing a habit of action in effect changes the system. In this case, to paraphrase Peirce, what is ultimately determinate is not what you or I or any other group may determine, but is a determination as settled into by the most complete and total community of inquirers. In this sense of an objective teleology, determination is a general semiosis in which a sign mediates between an object and an interpretant, "since it is determined by the object relatively to the interpretant, and determines the interpretant in reference to the object, in such a way as to cause the interpretant to be determined by the object through the mediation of the sign" (1907:81, emphasis mine). As the sign becomes more determinate its possible interpretations become less varied and the existing ones more rigid and habitual. This establishes a system of constraints which sets constraints upon further determinations. If the object determines the sign, then any sign of that sign will be constrained by that sign's determination. Determination in its larger sense sets the conditions or limits for any sign interpretation, i.e., any user-specific determination. In this case the interpretant acts as a rule of translation which orders a certain set of constraints upon the development of any sign, on the one hand, and, on the other, any interpretation by some sign agency. It establishes a pattern or habit of action in the interpreter of that sign. The object, in engagement with a sign medium, will determine its representation and the interpretant will represent that determination; that is, the interpretant is a rule of translation corresponding to the sign's relation to its object (1904: 8.332). As Peirce's general definition of the sign suggests, the determination of a sign involves a triadic relation, a determination in which each aspectobject, sign, interpretantcontributes to that process. The determination between sign, object, and interpretant is triadic although not symmetrical. Peirce argues that the object determines the sign (relative to an object), but the object is not determined by either sign (unless it is a sign of something else) or interpretant, and the interpretant does not determine either the sign or the object. Thus, the (relative) beginning of determination is the (dynamic) object and its (relative) end the (final) interpretant. The goal of a sign, then, is to establish an interpretant and the (immediate) goal of an object (so to speak) is to determine a sign, i.e., to be represented in some sign; and the goal of the sign is to represent that relation between sign and object, i.e., to establish an interpretant. The object imparts information about itself to a sign which the interpretant synthesizes as coherent information about the object, relative to the purpose of the sign agency.
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Peirce is very clear about how the object determines the sign: . . every sign is determined by its object, either first, by partaking in the characters of the object, when I call the sign an Icon; secondly, by being really and in its individual existence connected with the individual object, when I call the sign an Index; thirdly, by more or less approximate certainty that it will be interpreted as denoting the object, in consequence of a habit (which term I use as including a natural disposition), when I call the sign a symbol. (1906:4.531) Suppose I want to measure the amount of fuel in my gas tank. In this case I bring a certain personal or subjective teleology to a system of signs already in place. I may use a variety of media to create signs which could represent that measure. The dial on the gas gauge would serve as an obvious sign because there is a diagrammatic relation between the position of the dial on the face of the gauge and the level of gas in the tank. I could take a stick and by placing it in the tank observe the relative length between the wet and dry portions of the stick in relation to the depth of the container. I could tap the tank and by listening to the sound roughly determine the amount of gas remaining. In all these cases, the "object," the actual amount of gas in the tank, i.e., strictly speaking, the difference between the space occupied by gas and the space occupied by air, determines the sign in the sense of acting as a constraint upon those signs. The difference between space occupied by liquid and space not occupied by liquid is correlated with a sign that translates this difference as a measure between another (conventional) differenceE and F; or correlates it with another sign that translates it as a difference between the presence of moisture on a certain stick and its absence along a certain length; or correlates it with another sign that translates it as a difference in sound pitch. In each case the object, defined as a set of differences, determines the differences as translated in the sign. Peirce argues that the sign is determined by the object "relatively to the interpretant." If one is interested in an iconic mode of representation, then any potential icon of the object will be determined by the object's constraint. In other words, in a strange way of speaking, this constraint will determine any rule by which the icon can be said to be an icon of that object. Thus it is relative to the interpretant that the object determines the sign. That is to say, the actual constraintfor example, the physical level of gas in a tank, i.e., the amount of space occupied by a liquid as opposed to its absencewill serve as the basis of any interpretant that any icon of it would establish. Thus, using a variety of gauges, and supposing that the tank is half full, a number of icons are available to depict the "object" in question (see fig. 4). It is clear that each of these icons is an icon of the condition of the tank, because there is a rule of similarity which can show a correspondence between the two. The condition of the tank is translated into the reading on the gauge, so that the sign is determined by the object relative to an interpretant. How does the sign, in turn, determine an interpretant? Peirce gives some suggestion in the following passage:
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Figure 4. The Sign creates something in the Mind of the Interpreter, which something, in that it has been so created by the Sign, has been, in a mediate and relative way, also created by the Object of the Sign, although the Object is essentially other than the Sign. And this creature of the Sign is called the Interpretant. It is created by the Sign; but not by the Sign qua member of whichever of the Universe it belongs to; but it has been created by the Sign in its capacity of being the determination of the Object. (u.d.:8.179) The object imparts a certain determination to its sign and it is this determination which is the basis for the creation of the interpretant. It is not sign qua sign, as the production of the intersection between object and sign media, which creates the interpretant. This suggests, then, an important difference between sign production and sign determination. Sign production is the interaction between an object and a sign medium; it is a physical process which yields a physical product. Sign determination is the manner in which a particularly produced sign establishes itself as a sign or representation of its object for some sign agency. Thus the bee's perception of the flower will vary remarkably from a human's perception of the same objectand assuming constancy in the object and its environment, this is due to the differences between the media in each of the organisms. But in each case the object will determine the sign relative to an interpretant. The object, in the context of a certain degree of illumination, will reflect and absorb certain wavelengths of light. The bee's perceptual mechanism will translate these differently than will the human's. But in each case interpretants are established which allow both the bee and the human to recognize the sign before them as a sign of the flower. Whereas the sign's determination by the object will determine an interpretant, the interpretant, in turn, will determine the action of the sign user toward that sign (1877:5.371). This is where the objective determination of the sign system meets the subjective determination by sign users. The interpretant serves as the mediate linkit represents the sign's representation of the object and at the same time the means by which that sign can represent some object for some agency. Consider, in this respect, an example given by Peirce (1867:1.553). The relation between 'p' and 'b' may be said to be iconic. Why is that so? Peirce suggests it is because there is a rule which could spatially transform the one so that it is coincident with the other. Placing p on a threedimensional coordinate system such that the stem of
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p is coincident with the positive part of the y-axis and the final point of the stem rests at (o,o,o), we simply rotate p 180. about the z-axis to produce b (see fig. 5). This rule is the interpretant of the iconic relation since it represents the representation of p by b. At the same time, by making such a rule explicit we recognize the means by which a human agency can recognize that iconicity. Let me try to illustrate all these various points about determination by some abstract illustrations. Let's suppose there is an object which is a certain organization of dots, i.e., generally speaking, a certain relation between elements (see fig. 6). Whether this object is a sign of something else does not matter for the moment, but let's suppose that it is the object of other signs which aim at an iconic mode of representation. Now, consider a medium of representation which cannot "see" dots, but instead sees dots as straight lines in the following sense: between any two dots the medium will construct a straight line. The result would be something like that shown in figure 7. On the other hand, suppose there is a medium that also cannot "see" dots, but instead sees dots as curves such that a dot must always be either the peak or the trough of the curve. The result would be something like figure 8. Because the constraint of the object is of a certain kind of organization or structure, the representational medium, given its structure, will organize the sign within a certain set of parameters, ceteris paribus. Thus figure 9 would not be an icon of that object for that medium since a dot must be either a trough or a peak. Again, assuming the mode of iconic representation, the object acts as a constraint upon any icon of it; in its interaction with a medium of a particular type, with a certain structure, in a certain disposition, and modified at a point in time, the result is a sign with an iconic character that can be expressed by the interpretant as a certain rule of translation. A prescient observer who knows that figure 7 is an icon of figure 6 would devise a rule by which figure 7 is translated as figure 6. In other words, the (final) interpretant is nothing other than the rule of translation between sign and signatum. The sign, as the product of the interaction between medium and object, and the object intermediately determine the interpretant, since the latter is precisely the way in which the sign translates the object with the way in which the object is already organized. A rule of translation is the expression of
Figure 5.
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that process by which one level of organization is represented by another. In the language of structuralism, one set of differences, in being translated into another set of differences, establishes a rule of translation which creates meaning. As Peirce writes, ". . . if I take all the things which have certain qualities and physically connect them with another series of things, each to each, they become fit to be signs" (1868a: 5. 287). Since figures 7 and 8 are signs of the same signatum, it must also be supposed that there is an interpretant which relates figure 7 to figure 8. Roughly speaking this would be the rule which would translate figure 7 into dots and reconnect them by the rule which makes figure 6 possible. There is an interpretant which relates figure 7 to figure 8 because there are interpretants which relate figure 7 and figure 8, respectively, to the same signatum. Consider some further complications of the primary example. Although figure 7 is a sign of figure 6, there is another medium which translates figure 7 into a sign. This medium can only see triangles. Thus figure 7 would be translated into figure 10. Now figure 10 is not only a series of intersecting lines but is reorganized as a series of adjacent triangles of various sorts. Suppose there is a medium which can only see equilateral triangles (fig. 11a), or scalene triangles (fig. 11b), or right triangles (fig. 11c) or parallelograms (fig. 11d). In turn, figure 1la can become figure 12 by a certain gestalt switch. If we consider figures 11ad to be higher-level representational media, then it is clear that each of these can be considered, firstly, as a certain selection of elements to the exclusion of others. In figure 10, the space between triangle 2 and triangle 3, originally "seen" in figure 7, is no longer represented in figure 10. In figure 11a, the lines originally represented in figure 7 between angles 1 and 5, and angles 4 and 3, are no longer represented; or, put differently, the triangles in figure 10 are eliminated and reorganized in favor of triangles A, B, C. Secondly, this selection of elements is always immediately embedded within the context of their combination, i.e., their reorganization. Translation can be further refined, then, as a rule which reorganizes one level of organization by means of another, i.e., involves processes of selection of elements or features that exist on the first level and their combination within the organization of the second. This is the basis of what I will later call transvaluation.
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Signification is not the excess baggage which we must get rid of in order to come to know or understand an object, but is precisely the means by which such knowing and understanding is accomplished. The (dynamic) object, far from being the goal of the process, serves only as the indexical anchor of the process. The process of semiosis is achieved by the series of interpretants which adds paths of meaning, i.e., a series of translations upon the (dynamic) object. As Wojciech Kolaga argues, "it is in the interpretant that the relevant qualities of the other two elements of the triad [sign and object] come together and are, in their interpreted form, transformed into the higher levels of semiosis" (1986:25). The goal of a particular semiosis, the selection of a path of translation, is directed by a purpose. The pragmatic dimension adds an ultimate coherence to the semiosis. Whereas Quine might view our illustrations here as a good example of what he called the "indeterminancy" of translation, Peirce would view these as relative determinacies, that is, relative to some purpose held in common among their users. 4. COMMUNITY AND DETERMINATION Determination is a process of sign translation which aims specifically to decrease the latitude of interpretation for a community of speakers with respect to a certain universe of discourse, in the context of some purpose. In continuing such a dialogue, acting upon and believing in a set of meaningsestablishing interpretantsspeakers reproduce an objective set of constraints which determines further interpretation. In its most general sense, meaning or translation is determined in the consensus of an ideal community, in an ideal discourse which subsumes all possible universes of discourse. Translation is regulated, although never constituted, by this ideal. In this case the ideal speech community serves as the focus imaginarius of any actual speech community, and the purpose of such an ideal community is the most general one, viz., self-control, critical autonomy:
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As for the ultimate purpose of thought, which must be the purpose of everything, it is beyond human apprehension; but according to the stage of approach which my thought has made to it . . . it is by the indefinite replication of self-control upon self-control. . This ideal, by modifying the rules of self-control modifies action, and so experience tooboth the man's own and that of others, and this centrifugal movement thus rebounds in a new centripetal movement, and so on ....''(1906:5.402n.3) There is no doubt in Peirce's mind that this ideal community of inquirers should be modeled after the scientific community, since the latter promotes a method of inquiry which holds four vital features (cp. Liszka 1978). Firstly, openness to refutation: i.e., the scientific community does not employ tenacity, by which one adheres to a belief simply by refusing to admit its refutation (1877:5.378). Secondly, such a community exhibits reasonableness, i.e., it lacks the forceful advocacy of its opinion, or the use of power to enforce it, such as appeals to authority demonstrate (1877:5.379). Thirdly, such a community must display a healthy skepticism, in the sense that everything that is held presently as true may be subject to doubt; more specifically, it avoids any a priori dogmatism (1877:5.383). Finally, the scientific community adheres to the principle that what is to be justified must be justified in ways that involve the possibility of public testimony and confirmation. In a word, there must be something independent of any convention or any particular community or group by which one can measure any opinion or meaning. This is the Real-"something upon which our thinking has no effect" (1877:5.384). But the Real is not something that sits like a huge rock which inquiry can bump againstthat is what Peirce calls brute existence. The Real lies in the fabric of determinations which inquiry, indefinitely extended, would produce: the Real is the general and the general is the long-run or final interpretant of sign translation. "Pragmatism makes thinking to consist in the living inferential metaboly of symbols whose purport lies in conditional general resolutions to act" (1906:5.402n.3, emphasis mine). So, if "the opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real" (1877:5.407), this does not suggest a purely conventional definition of truth and meaning: ". . . the third categorythe category of thought, representation, triadic relation, mediation, genuine thirdness, thirdness as suchis an essential ingredient of reality, yet does not by itself constitute reality. . ." (1904:5.436). Truth and meaning are not just consensus, but consensus achieved within the framework of a speech community that is regulated by certain rules or norms. The fixation of meaningadequate meaningis established by right thinking in the right community for the right purposes, i.e., the right logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Inquiry, sign translation, in the long run is normative, dialogic, rule-bound practice tied to purpose and value. Peirce's model of translation might be considered sympathetic to both the critical and the hermeneutic enterprises since it involves a language of symbols and not a dyadic model of reaction to things, or eventsa language of indices. Peirce's theory of translation is a triadic model of mediative discourse. As critical discourse it argues that the measures and standards of evaluation are developed integrally and
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metabolically within the dialogic process of sign translation. That measure is not imposed from without, but is developed from within. Science is a model not so much because of its accomplishments or its physicalist bias, but because of its communal and public form of inquiry. Peirce's model is also sympathetic to the hermeneutic project, since its emphasis is on a continued conversation, one that seeks to create some intersection among apparently incommensurate translations; yet, in order to be critical, to evaluate, it must maintain that consensus and agreement are the underlying goals of such discourse. B. Translation, Purpose, and Value If determination is subordinate to teleology, then this calls for an analysis of the relation between translation, purpose, and value. Peirce suggests at least two kinds of teleology operative in semiosis, an objective one, in which, in and through a process of determination, signs form a system which establishes a set of constraints represented by its interpretants, for any possible interpretation of those signs within the framework of a second, subjective teleology of the sign user. Thus, sign systems in general move from indeterminateness toward determinacy, from vagueness to rigidity or definiteness. Sign users, who come to use a sign system for some particular purpose, select among those possible interpretations allowable in the system, thereby reproducing the system, or, in the case where new interpretants are established, modifying it. Just as the rules of chess set the limits to the possible moves of chess players, the rules themselves become modified in the course of modifications that become conventionalized and habitual. The (final) interpretant is nothing more than the general effect which signs or symbols have on sign users. The system is not reified but subsists within the structuration of sign users. Just as the rules of chess do not determine which moves will be made at which particular time and place, so the sign system establishes the framework for its use by sign users but not its particular use in any given situation. A particular use is specified within the context of speakers and auditors, authors and interpreters, within the context of the universe of discourse which is established between them. If the sign system delimits possible interpretation, still it remains in some sense meaningless, informationless, until it is addressed by some sign agency in the context of some purpose. As Peirce argues, "nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign" (1901:2.308). Or, as Pranas Zunde suggests, "in general, a text is informative if it has purposeful meaning to some interpreter. In other words, a text is informative if and only if its meaning could have bearing on some interpreter's goal-oriented disposition" (1980:589). Or, as Gallie argues in the context of his Peirce analysis: "Informative sentences and other signs do not exist and function on their own right; they exist and function only in the life of an organism or society of organisms" (1952a:74). To paraphrase Kant, it might be suggested that interpretation without system is blind, but system without interpretation is empty. The purpose of a sign is to make itself determinate (for some sign agency), i.e., to make itself into a system which would have some determinate effect on potential sign users; and the purpose of interpreting such a
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system for some sign agency is to consciously control those effects: "the latitude of interpretation which constitutes the indeterminacy of a sign must be understood as a latitude which might affect the achievement of a purpose .... This is, to be sure, rank pragmatism; for a purpose is an affection of action" (1905:5.448n. l). "A thought is a purpose and that in order to perform the reflexion necessary to the straightening out of the threads of thought and laying them orderly and parallel will consist mainly or at least first of all in defining to ourselves what the purpose is a purpose to bring about and what use, theoretical or practical, it is designed to subserve; and that is Pragmatism" (c. 1903C:159). Indeed, in a very revealing passage, Peirce connects the notions of meaning, translation, and purpose together in one stroke: The meaning of a proposition is itself a proposition. Indeed, it is no other than the very proposition of which it is the meaning: it is a translation of it. But of the myriads of forms into which a proposition may be translated, what is that one which is to be called its very meaning? It is, according to the pragmaticist, that form in which the proposition becomes applicable to human conduct . . . that form which is most directly applicable to self-control. . ... (1905c:5.427) Translation cannot be thought of simply in terms of inference, but as inference coordinated by purpose, primarily the purpose of self-control. "It is to conceptions of deliberate conduct that Pragmaticism would trace the intellectual purport of symbols; and deliberate conduct is self-controlled conduct" (1905:5.442). "The value of a symbol is that it seems to make thought and conduct rational and enables us to predict the future" (c. 1903a:4.448). Purpose, as generally and traditionally understood, is, of course, related to value. Purpose entails a goal or an end, and the end of an action is that which engenders purpose in an agent; the end of that action is valuable for that agent and, generally, provides the reason and motivation for that action. The value of an end, state, or element, in turn, is dependent on its relation among other ends, states, or elements within a system of such units. But Peirce has little to say about value, although the following passage shows that the notion is tied to that of meaning: Let us note that meaning is something allied in its nature to value. I do not know whether we ought rather to say that meaning is the value of a worda phrase often usedor whether we ought to say that the value of anything to us is what it means for uswhich we also sometimes hear said. Suffice it to say that the two ideas are near together. (c1902b:24) Thus, although Peirce makes the relation between semiosis and purpose relatively clear, the relation between sign and value is left undeveloped in his system. Perhaps Morris could be suggested as the likely successor to Peirce in this respect because of his work on value and signification. However, besides some of the more general differences between Morris and Peirce, there is Morris's behaviorist interpretation of the interpretant and his identification of it with the sign interpreter (cp. Rochberg-Halton and McMurtrey 1983:146-47; Dewey 1946;87). But besides the fact that Morris gives a strictly behaviorist interpretation of the
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interpretant and a questionable analysis of value in terms of preferential behaviorsomething which is too restricted for Peirce's sensethe relation between value and meaning, significance and signification, is too additive and artificial in Morris. Value and purpose for him are not intertwined at every level of signification, as they are for Peirce, but, rather, value intersects with signification only at certain levels: While signs generally occur in behavior in which operative and conceived values are involved, there are aspects of sign behavior that may be studied without reference to values, and there are aspects of preferential behavior whose study involves no reference to sign. The overlap of the two disciplines comes in the study of predominantly appraisive and prescriptive signs, for such study is equally a part of semiotic and of axiology (1964:43). But I think that Peirce sees a more cohesive and complete relation between value and meaning. As Dewey, echoing Peirce, suggests, "quite the most striking thing of [Peirce's] new theory was its recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition and rational purpose" (1931:42; cp. Peirce 1905C:5.413). Consequently, Peirce leaves a crucial gap in his semioticthe relation between semiosis and value. 16 It is therefore an analysis which requires the aid of other thinkers concerned with the nature of signs.
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TWO Peirce and the Structuralists The Interpretant and Its Relation to Language In his various general definitions of translations, Peirce, I think, points to two modes of translation, one which might be called synchronic translation and the other diachronic. In the latter case, translation is a process in which one sign becomes a fuller or more determinate sign of a previous one (c. 1893:5.594). In the first sense, translation is a translation of a sign or sign system into another system of signs (c. 1893:5. 594). The previous chapter has dealt mostly with the diachronic sense of translation; presently I wish to discuss the synchronic sense. Undoubtedly it is Jakobson, in the spirit of Peirce, who develops this notion in a most fruitful way. Jakobson defines structuralism as "the idea that any set of phenomena [be] examined not as a mechanical agglomeration but as a structural whole and the basic task is to reveal the inner, whether static or developmental laws of this system" (1929:711). The idea of a structural whole is further clarified in Jakobson through the idea of intrinsic coherence and the relational and hierarchical nature of the constituents of that whole (1971:713). But most important, ". . . modern structuralist thinking has clearly established language as a system of signs, and linguistics is part of the science of signs, or semiotic" (1971:713). This is the point of connection with Peirce, and Jakobson is anxious to recognize his indebtedness to the American philosopherto the point of arguing that Peirce "must be regarded as a genuine and bold forerunner of structural linguistics" (1953:565). Indeed, according to Jerome Bruner, "He [Jakobson] had always regarded himself as the inheritor of the tradition of Charles Sanders Peirce, a tradition that sees the structure of the linguistic system as a reflection of the functions to which language is put" (1984:232). Peirce was Jakobson's "historical mentor'' (1984:233). A. Jakobson and Peirce: The Interpretant as Translation Although Jakobson had not outlined a philosophical foundation for his structuralist theory or method, his thesis of isomorphism, crucial to his concept of structuralism, proves to be compatible with, if not an exemplar of, Peirce's theory of objective idealism (the view that matter and mind are organized by the same principles). But
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because it is restricted to the analysis of language, Jakobson's idea of isomorphism and his use of Peirce's notion of translation give a concrete dimension to Peirce's own theory. As Henning Andersen writes, "One of the most fertile ideas in modern linguistics has been the insight that different levels of language structure embody identical organizing principles" (MS:14). This idea of isomorphism, as related to the study of linguistics, has its origins in the work of Jakobson, who, in 1929, formulated it in terms of the notion of "correlation": Characteristic of the basic and unique trend of current Russian science is that the correlativity between single series is not thought in causal terms, the one series is not derived from the other; the basic picture with which science operates is a system of correlative series, a structure to be viewed immanently and endowed with its own inner laws. (1929:629) As opposed to the mechanistic interpretation of linguistic phenomena, where linguistic facts are causally attributed to psychological or physiological causes, the isomorphic solution argues that the system of rules of a language is seen as an image of a physioneurological system of rules and not a result of such processes. Jakobson intimates in other places that language is also isomorphic to the genetic code (1976a:45ff.). This proposal, then, is antireductionist as well, although it does not entail for that reason the philosophical consequences of a dualism. This isomorphism is not a simple one, but is multileveled, occurring within the structure of the language system itself, e.g., between the level of the phonetic system and its distinctive features, and the grammatical system. In 1932, Jakobson supported this thesis by employing the concept of correlation in analyzing the Russian verb system, demonstrating how grammatical categories could be understood as forming binary oppositions, and the meanings of individual morphemes described as bundles of distinctive features (1932:315). Moreover, this isomorphism is complicated by the attempt to study and delimit the transformation of systems. The culminating effort of this task, the study of their isomorphisms and transformations, is "the system of systems" (1971a:79). Using language as a model, one may disclose more clearly the specific nature of this isomorphic principle. Traditionally language has been conceived in terms of two distinct levels, that of the sound, sound substance, or sign vehicle (signàns), and that of meaning (signatum). A genuine isomorphism between these two levels would argue neither for a reductionism nor for a complete dualism. Meaning cannot be reduced to sound; nor is linguistic meaning ever represented but in sound. As Jakobson argues, "there is neither signified without signifier nor signifier without signified. Meaning always belongs to something which we use as a sign" (1976:xi). The irreducibility yet symbiosis between the two categories of language points to an inherent asymmetry, which, as Henning Andersen notes, must be carefully taken into account in order to understand correctly the nature of isomorphism in language (MS:27ff.). This point becomes clearer in Jakobson's analysis of the differences between the phoneme, the totality of the distinctive features of a sound, and
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the morpheme, as the most primitive grammatical unit. Phonemes are simply diacritical: they serve to distinguish between meanings without having positive meanings themselves. Morphemes, on the other hand, correspond to a definite and constant meaning. A difference between two morphemes always contains two concrete, unambiguous differences. First, a difference on the plane of the signans between two external forms and, secondly, a difference on the plane of the signatum, the difference between two general meanings. On the other hand, a difference between two phonemes contains only one concrete and unambiguous difference, that on the level of the signans, while in terms of the signatum it contains only potential distinctions, i.e., an indeterminate number of concrete differences. Distinctive features are never meaningful in themselves, because they do not register real differences on the plane of the signatum. This inherent asymmetry between the level of the signans and that of the signatum argues essentially, then, that the isomorphism between these two levels must not be that of a simple one-to-one mapping of elements, but must be in terms of relations between elements. The relations can be thought of in terms of general rules of organization by which syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations are constructed. An isomorphism in this case would exist between rules of organization which perform similar, symmetrical or parallel functions. For example, Andersen argues that there is a reverse symmetry between formation rules and implementation rules; and, more generally, it should be the case that the way in which distinctive features are organized into phonemes is isomorphic to the organization of morphemes into grammatical units. To put it differently, the phonological level of language is a system of constraints, based on physiological differences in the production of sound, which is meaningless in itself. However, in its correlation with more complex units of sound, i.e., its translation into higher organizational levels, such sounds acquire meaning within the context of their relation to these higher units, i.e., as functional parts of a whole. Like Peirce's objective idealism, the thesis of isomorphism or correlation argues that within any structural system, although there are asymmetries among levels within the system, nonetheless, the various levels are organized about rules that are generally isomorphic to one another. That is to say, there exists a general correspondence among relations among elements among the different levels. The correlation among the levels creates meaning by simultaneously creating representation. Applied to language, this means that there is an isomorphism among the rules which organize elements at the level of the phoneme, morpheme, lexicon, grammar, etc., just as for Peirce, generally, mind and matter, although asymmetrically related (1868c:6.264), are nonetheless identical in terms of legislative principles (1893a: 7.464). It still remains to characterize in more detail the general nature of these rules which organize the elements within one level of language and correlate these levels into a meaningful, structural whole. Jakobson writes: "I would like to state that the set of interpretants is one of the most ingenious findings and effective devices received from Peirce by semiotics in general and the linguistic analysis of grammatical and lexical meanings in particular" (1977:1029). "How many fruitless discussions
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about mentalism and anti-mentalism would be avoided if one approached the notion of meaning in terms of translation, which no mentalist and no behaviorist could reject. The problem of translation is indeed fundamental in Peirce's views and can and must be utilized" (1977:1029). The essential nature of the interpretant, as interpreted by Jakobson, is that of translatabilitywhichalso simultaneously characterizes the principal structural tenet of language. "As Peirce incisively defined the main structural tenet of language, any sign is translatable itself into another sign in which it is more fully developed" (1953:566). This would indeed, in Jakobson's eyes, make Peirce the "forerunner of structural linguistics." For Jakobson the idea of translatability is bi-directional or bi-dimensional, in the sense that signs organize themselves, firstly, from negative or nonmeaningful units to meaningful complexes, i.e., for example, from the level of the phoneme and its distinctive features to the level of the most primitive meaning unit, the morpheme. Phonemes serve as a prototype of this first direction since they are "signs which are given ad significandum but which in themselves mean nothing." The phoneme imparts meaning but never embodies it. As Jakobson writes, "it is one of the most peculiar and most essential dialectical antinomies of language that this literally most meaningful of all sign systems is built up of empty, negative basic units" (1932:289). In terms of the second direction, the meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence is found in the rule of translation of that meaning unit into other more explicit meaning units, e.g., the meaning of 'bachelor' is determined by the rules of translation which allow the complex sign 'unmarried man' to be substituted for it. The idea of the rule of translatability is further clarified through the notions of combination and selection. Speech implies a selection of certain linguistic entities and their combination into linguistic units of a higher degree of complexity (1965:241). At the lexical level this is obvious since a speaker selects words from a given repertoire and combines them into utterances according to a predelimited syntactic system. At the level of the phoneme, selection and combination are more restricted. In uttering the word 'pig' as opposed to 'fig', there is a choice between two distinctive features and one must reject one or the other, choosing the former of the oppositions in order to utter the desired word. However, in the same act of speech there are certainly other simultaneous features, using the grave and tense features of /p/ in contrast to the acute feature of /t/ and the lax one of /b/. All these attributes have been combined into a bundle of distinctive features called the phoneme. Using this as a model, Jakobson argues that "the concurrence of simultaneous entities and the concatenation of successive entities are the two ways in which we speakers combine linguistic constitutents" (1965:242). With the phoneme as a model, translation is really a set of rules for combination and selection of elements into hierarchical wholes which, in turn, serve as combinative parts for more complex wholes. In general, then, if we use the phoneme as the prototype, any linguistic sign involves two modes of arrangement where, in combination, any linguistic unit at
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one and the same time serves as a context for simpler units and/or finds its own context in a more complex linguistic unit (1965:243). Any actual grouping of linguistic units binds them into superior units: combination and contexture are two faces of the same operation. The second mode of arrangement is that of selection, whereby the choice between two alternatives implies the possibility of substituting one for the other, equivalent to the former in one respect and different from it in another (1965:243). Selection and substitution are two faces of the same operation. If there exists an isomorphism between the level of the signans and that of the signatum, then the operations of combination and selection should also play the principal role at the level of grammar and lexicology. In the speech situation, the addressee perceives that the given utterance (message) is a combination of constituent parts, viz., the code (1965:244). The constituents of a context are in a state of contiguity, while in a substitution set, signs are linked by various degrees of similarity, which fluctuate between the equivalence of synonyms and the common core of antonyms (1965:244). It is precisely these two operations or modes of arrangement which provide the intepretants which translate the signone to the code and the other to the context, in such a way that, in the former, the sign is related to another set of linguistic signs through alternation while, in the latter, through alignment (1965:244). In this case "a given significative unit may be replaced by other, more explicit signs of the same code, whereby its general meaning is revealed, while its contextual meaning is determined by its connection with other signs within the same sequence" (1965:244). The opposition between selection and combination is at the basis of the opposition between the general meaning of a given sign, which is revealed by rules of substitution, and its contextual meaning, which is determined by its connection with other signs in the same sequence. Translation, as the essential feature of the interpretant, is the structural law of any sign system, i.e., the rules for the translation of one sign into hierarchical complexes of other signs, and the generation of meaning within that structural whole. Thus, "Translation contains the semantic invariant of the signatum" (1962:275). For this reason, Linda Waugh, in interpreting Jakobson, defines language as "a relatively autonomous . . . semiotic entity in which there is a dialectical tension between selection on the one hand and combination on the other" (1976:37). The fact that translation, in terms of combination and selection, is the main structural principle both at the level of the phoneme and at the level of grammar and lexicon shows clearly, also, the isomorphism of the linguistic system. But, more important, combination and selection, as based on the more primitive operations of contiguity and similarity, show clearly the tie to Peirce's law of the mind, i.e., the rule or habit of association with its two concomitant principles of the same name. This is the point of most specific contact between Jakobson and Peirce. That Jakobson attempts to reconstruct Peirce's triadic classification of signsas icon, index, and symbolin terms of similarity and contiguity again emphasizes this specific connection (1965:347f.). For this reason, Jakobson's characterization of translation might be seen as a concretizationwith reference to linguistic signsof Peirce's broader concept.
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B. Saussure and Peirce: Translation and Value It may be suggested that Jakobson serves as a mediator between the two great semiotic traditions of Peirce on the one hand and Saussure on the other. Of course, Jakobson's phonology owes a great deal to the groundwork laid down by the Swiss linguist and, in fact, reflects its general premises. Language for Jakobson, as for Saussure, is the correlation of one set of differences at one level with a set of differences at another. On the other hand, Jakobson is fascinated by Peirce's notion of interpretant, as a rule of translation which, through the operations of selection and combination, can account for this correlation among levels of language. Jakobson's use of both masters has sometimes led to ambiguities in terms of the perceived predominance of a dualistic theory of signs in Saussure, as opposed to the triadic concept in Peirce; but the question is whether there is some common ground between Peirce and Saussure in this respect. Although there are many fundamental differences between Peirce and Saussure, still the latter's concept of value may not necessarily be included among those differences. Consider, for example, Michael Shapiro's remark on this matter: "The role of the interpretant in Peirce's conception of semiotic is obviously central; there is nothing strictly comparable in Saussure, with the possible exception of his idea of valeur linguistique" (1983:7). Christian Stetter also argues that Saussure's chapter on value suggests a closer link between Peirce and Saussure, although he is less specific in identifying value with the interpretant. For Stetter, value has a similarity with Peirce's notion of thirdness or mediation (1979:12 5). It is here that it is possible to return to the question left in chapter 1, that of the relation of sign and value. The traditional criticism of Saussure argues that, in light of Peirce, Saussure's notion of the sign is fundamentally flawed since it relies on a dyadic rather than a triadic conception of the sign (cp. Harris 1987:62; Ogden and Richards 1923:6; Deladelle 1976, 1976a). The sign, in Saussure's most familiar formulation, is a correlation between signans and signatum (i.1906-1911: 66f.). But this correlation, which Saussure calls "signification" (i. 1906-1911:1 14), must be understood within the broader context of linguistic value. As Roland Barthes claims, "Saussure did not see the importance of this notion [value] at the outset, but even as early as his second Course in General Linguistics, he increasingly concentrated on it, and value became an essential concept for him, and eventually more important than that of signification (with which it is not co-extensive)" (1964:54). This is reiterated by Roy Harris: "Saussurean linguistics stands or falls by the Saussurean concept of linguistic values. This is made eminently clear in the Cours, where that concept is presentedrightlyas Saussure's most original contribution to modern thinking about language, and indeed to linguistic thought of any era" (1987:231). It is important, then, to stress the difference between signification and value, which, as Saussure notes, is quite subtle (i. 1906191l:114). Signification, understood as the actual correlation of a signans and a signatum, is an abstraction from the chains or systems of signantia and signata of which that signans and signatum are a part. The correlation between any signans and signatum is not just an isolated event but assumes the mediation of their respective systems. Value is another name
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for this mediation, for the ordered set of relations among terms in a system. As Saussure writes: The ultimate law of language is, dare we say, that nothing can ever reside in a single term. This is a direct consequence of the fact that linguistic signs are unrelated to what they designate, and that therefore a cannot designate anything without the aid of b and vice versa, or, in other words, that both have value only by the differences between them, or that neither has value, except through the same network of forever negative differences. (u.63) Since the particular correlation of a signifier with a signified requires the mediation of the value of the sign and the value of the signified, then, in effect, value makes signification possible or, as Saussure emphasizes, "without them [values] signification would not exist" (i. 1906-1911:117). As Barthes writes, "the production of meaning is no longer the mere correlation of a signifier and signified, but perhaps more essentially as an act of simultaneously cutting out two amorphous masses, two 'floating kingdoms' as Saussure says" (1964:56). In other words, meaning is generated by means of the value of the systems and not by means of the isolated correlation of the individual terms. Granted this important distinction between signification and value, let me turn to an analysis of the latter. Saussure uses an economic metaphor to clarify his notion of value, for, as he suggests, "here as in political economy we are confronted with the notion of value; both sciences are concerned with a system of equating things of different orderslabor and wages in one and a signified and signifier in the other" (i. 1906-1911:79). In this sense, Saussure argues that value must contain two essential features: values are always composed 1. of a dissimilar thing that can be exchanged for the thing of which the value is to be determined; and 2. of similar things that can be compared with the thing of which the value is to be determined (i.1906-1911:115).17 To determine what a five-franc piece is worth, for example, one must know that it can be exchanged for a fixed quantity, such as bread, and that it can be compared with a similar value of the same system, e.g., a one-franc piece (i. 1906-1911:11 5). By analogy, a word can be exchanged for something dissimilar, an idea; but besides, it can be compared with other words, its value relying on the comparison with similar values, and with other words that stand in opposition to it (i. 1906-1911:115). I venture to say in this respect that the ability of the word to be exchanged for something dissimilar to itself, an idea or object, is comparable to the general notion of breadth; while the comparison of a sign within a system of signs is comparable to the notion of depth. The connotation of a sign is determined precisely in terms of its contrast and comparison with other signs. 'Man' as an animal shares many attributes common to 'animal'; yet as a rational animal, it is contrasted to the meaning of other animals. Its meaning gets established within these sets of differences. These sets of differences established at the semantic level allow it to be exchanged for or to refer to a set of differences at the perceptual or conceptual level. Saussure emphasizes that both factors, the ability of the sign to be exchanged and to be com-
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pared, "are necessary for the existence of value" (i. 1906-1911:115). The value of the sign, then, is not simply its relation with other signs in its system, but its relation with signs or objects outside of its system as well. The value of the sign involves both its referential and its connotational aspect, so that a signifier refers to a signified only through the mediation of the system of signifiers, while the system of signifiers coalesces into meaningful differences by means of anchorage in a referential system. If this assessment is correct, then, to the extent that value is the organization of relations between signatum and signantia and among signantia in Saussure, and the interpretant is the organization of the breadth and depth of a sign, then value and the interpretant are family-related notions. According to Saussure, "Language is a system of interdependent terms in which the value of each results solely from the simultaneous presence of others..." (i. 1906-1911:114). As he writes, "the whole has value only through its parts and the parts have value by virtue of their place in the whole" (i. 1906-1911:128). In regard to the material side of languagethe sound system"the important thing in the word is not the sound alone but the phonic differences that make it possible to distinguish this word from all others, for differences carry signification" (i.1906-1911:118). ''Signs function, then, not through their intrinsic value but through their relative position" (i. 1906-1911:118). Phonemes are prototypical of the language system: "Phonemes are characterized not, as one might think, by their own positive quality but simply by the fact that they are distinct. Phonemes are above all else opposing, relative and negative entities" (i. 1906-1911:119). Saussure believes this is the means to solve the puzzling problems of the relation between language and thought: "Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system" (i. 1906-1911:120). One might say that although the phonic differences and the conceptual differences have a sense, they acquire meaning only through their systematic correlation. Thought is not a preexisting, preformed system which is expressed materially by language. The notion of value and its distinction from signification prevents the characterization of language as a simple naming process (i. 1906-1911:114). That is to say, the signans is not simply a name for a preexisting signatum; rather the differences among signantia and the differences among signata gain a further, meaningful organization through their correlation. Language is not the cloak or expression of thought; nor is language simply a mold into which thought must necessarily fit (cp. i. 1906-1911:1 12). If this were true, if words stood for preexisting concepts, they would all have exact equivalents in meaning from one language to the next; but this is not true (i. 19061911:116). Rather, "a linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass of thought engenders a system of values; and this system serves as an effective link between the phonic and psychological elements within each sign" (i. 1906-1911:120). Thus "language is only a system of pure values" (i. 1906-1911:111). In general, value is another name for the set of relations among signs within a system, on the one hand (its depth), and, on the other, the set of relations
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establishing a correspondence with another system of signs, i.e., its ability to stand for or represent another system (its breadth). As Saussure argues, there is an "inner duality" of all sciences concerned with values (i. 1906-1911:79). On the one hand, linguistics, as such a science, is concerned with the shift, evolution, and change in the relationship between signified and signifier, its diachrony, i.e., the shift in its value structure; on the other hand, linguistics is concerned with language (langue), a "system of pure values which are determined by nothing except the momentary arrangement of its terms" (i. 19061911:80). This system of pure values which constitutes langue serves as a norm for the speech community (i. 1906-1911:9). In this respect the value of the language system establishes a set of constraints for its use by some sign agency or community. However, as in the case of chess, the rules do not dictate or determine the use of the system; rather, they establish the limits and the norms of its use. This last point is illustrated nicely by Saussure: Our memory holds in reserve all the more or less complex types of syntagms, regardless of their class or length, and we bring in the associative groups to fix our choice when the time for using them arrives. When a Frenchman says marchons he thinks unconsciously of diverse groups of associations that converge on the syntagm marchons. The syntagm figures in the series marché, marchez, and the opposition between marchons and the other forms determines his choice; in addition, marchons calls up the series monton, mangeons, etc., and is selected from the series by the same process. In each series the speaker knows what he must vary in order to produce the differentiation that fits the desired unit. If he changes the idea to be expressed, he will need other oppositions to bring out another value; for instance, he may say marchez or perhaps montons. It is not enough to say, looking at the matter positively, that the speaker chooses marchons because it signifies what he wishes to express. In reality the idea evokes not a form but a whole latent system that makes possible the oppositions necessary for the formation of the sign. By itself the sign would have no signification. If there were no forms like marché, marchez, against marchons certain oppositions would disappear, and the value of marchons would be changed ipso facto. (i. 1906-1911:130) Saussure makes it clear that this holds also at the phonological level as well as that of the grammar of a language (i. 1906191l:130-31). Saussure recognizes that the selection of signs is in accordance with the purpose of the speaker but constrained by the system of signs elected by the user to fulfill his or her purpose. The purpose and related value of the speaker or interpreter are set in the context of the value structure of the sign system used. In this case, value, as the relation between signs within a system and their use as exchanges for objects or other signs outside a system, acts as a constraint upon the users of such a system in the context of the users' purposes. Saussure outlines here the same sorts of teleologies established by Peirce in his analysis of determination. On the one hand, there is the telos of the system; on the other, the telos of the user. I think this analysis suggests a strong family resemblance between Saussure's concept of value and Peirce's notion of the interpretant. Although Peirce's interpretant is a powerful and innovative concept, Saussure's 'value', when interpreted correctly, has one important advantage: it has the ability to conjoin in a more
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coherent fashion the notions of value and sign which are left somewhat inchoate in Peirce's own work. It allows for the possibility of a fuller understanding of the relation between purpose and sign and, consequently, the teleologies of sign systems and their use. In effect, Saussure's theory of value is Peirce's theory of the interpretant, i.e., translation, understood valuatively. What is left wanting is a device which can incorporate the advantages of the interpretant, and its pragmatic dimension, into Saussure's notion of value. This device I find in the concept of transvaluation, which, with the elaboration of value as a markedness relation, makes clearer the connection among translation, purpose, and value.
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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Part Two The Concept of Transvaluation
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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THREE The Definition of Transvaluation A. The Phonological Model Within the domain of linguistics, it can be reasonably argued that phonology "can claim to be that subfield of linguistics with the largest body of specific and generally accepted results. . ." (Greenberg 1978:1). Vocal language is communication through the use of acoustically discernible, systematic modifications to the flow of air between lungs, lips, and nostrils. These modifications can be organized into a series of distinctive features. Their function is purely diacritical in the following sense (cp. Jakobson and Halle 1971:14f.) Complex speech units can be analyzed into morphemes as the most primitive constituents endowed with proper meaning. These, in turn, can be further analyzed into units which are capable of differentiating morphemes from one another; they "serve merely to differentiate . . . or bring into relief the manifold meaningful units" (Jakobson and Halle 1971:14). Or, as Jakobson writes elsewhere, the distinctive feature signifies "mere otherness'' (1932:280). Distinctive features are organized paradigmatically and syntagmatically. Paradigmatically, each of the distinctive features involves a choice between two terms of an opposition that displays a specific differential property, divergent from the properties of all other oppositions (Jakobson and Halle 1971:14). Thus grave and acute are opposed to each other in the listener's perception by sound-pitch, as relatively low-pitched and high-pitched; in the physical aspect they are correspondingly opposed by the distribution of energy at the ends of the spectrum, and on the motor level by the size and shape of the resonating cavity. This allows, for example, English-speakers to differentiate between 'pill' and 'bill' as a difference between /p/ and /b/, which is a choice between two polar qualities of the same category. In this case it is tense as opposed to lax, i.e., a longer (vs. reduced) duration of the steady-state portion of the sound or, on the motor level, a deliberate (vs. rapid) execution of the required gesture resulting in a lastingly stationary articulation. This paradigmatic organization of distinctive features is contrasted with its syntagmatic organization. The terms of the phonological oppositions do not occur in isolation, but are combined into syntagms of various extents (Andersen 1974:892). This syntagm is what uniquely characterizes the phoneme. For example, in the case of the English /p/ and /b/ (using the analysis of Jakobson and Halle) the syntagms are as shown in figure 13. What makes the unique sound /p/ is the simultaneous combination of the pres-
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Figure 13. ence or absence of certain features; what contrasts it with other sounds, such as /b/ in this case, is the presence of tense versus its absence in /b/. This paradigmatic and syntagmatic organization of the distinctive features accounts for the differential properties of sound and its diacritical functionin general the unique sound of each phoneme in contrast to any other phoneme in the language. 1. HIERARCHY AND VALUATION To this extent Jakobson has followed closely the model developed by Saussure for the explication of language. However, certain recent developments in the analysis of difference and opposition have led to a more fruitful concept of value as the organization of differences. The paradigmatic and syntagmatic organization of distinctive features should not be viewed, on the one hand, as simply a series of binary, dyadic oppositions or, on the other hand, as a bundle of distinctive features; rather, as Jakobson had already recognized as early as 1932, and something which Andersen (1974) and Shapiro (1983) have argued more recently, the organization of opposition is made more coherent through a process of valuation, characterized in terms of markedness on the paradigmatic level and by rank on the syntagmatic one. Indeed, according to Bruner (1984:163), Jakobson argued that "the most primitive and important distinction in language was between the unmarked and the marked." It was "from that distinction that many grammatical patterns grow, even such elementary ones as topic and comment, subject and predicate" (1984:163). For Jakobson, "the deep function of language was to mark or to leave unmarked" (1984:232). a. Markedness Generally speaking, markedness refers to the valuative relation between the two poles of an opposition which establishes an asymmetry between them. More specifically, as Battistela argues (1986:42), "the thesis of markedness is the proposition that all oppositions have an inherent nonequivalence defined in terms of the presence or absence of a property or feature"; this is also the claim of its original formulation found in Trubetzkoy (1975:162f.). Other definitions center on the difference between complexity of the marked term versus the simplicity of the unmarked one, as in Jakobson (1962:266): "a marked category tends to be interpreted in relation to the unmarked one as a compound, complex category opposed to a simple one"; or, as Shapiro argues, ". . . the marked sign is conceptually more
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complex than its unmarked counterpart" (1983:79). The definition of complexity has some versions: for example, because the marked term is more complex, it provides more information (Holenstein 1976:131); "the marked term of an opposition provides an additional, more specific piece of information in comparison with the unmarked term" (Waugh 1976:89). Battistela also suggests that the marked/ unmarked relation may be compared to the relation between abnormal/normal (1986:6). I think these three characterizations, presence/absence, simplicity/complexity, normal/abnormalall of which emphasize the asymmetry between terms of an opposition are interrelated. If psychologists define normal as "the absence of neurosis," then normal is an unmarked condition which serves to characterize behavior that is a normative background to more complex, focused behaviors which are deviations and derivations of the norm. Similarly, in figure/ground relations, the figure is the more focused aspect of the whole, the ground serving as the background through which the figure becomes focused. Consider, for example, the studies on feature analysis done by Treisman (1985, 1986), Treisman and Gelade (1980), Treisman and Schmidt (1982), and Treisman, Syles, and Gelade (1977). This work has shown that in the area of visual perception there exists a certain "search asymmetry" among perceivers when targeting a certain feature in the context of its perceptual opposite. For example, if a single curved line is placed in a background of straight lines, the curved line "pops-out," that is, it requires less search time than the converse case, where a straight line is targeted with a background of curved linesand so the curved line becomes the immediate focus of perceptual acts in this context (see fig. 14). The latterthe straight line amidst the curved linesinvolves a ''serial search" and requires more time to find. In this case, as Treisman suggests (1986), straightness is coded as the absence of curvature, or the unmarked term, curvature generating more activity on the retina than straightness; i.e., curvature is the more complex or focused member of the opposition. This is also true in the case of long lines (unmarked) versus short ones (marked), and vertical lines (unmarked) versus oblique ones (marked). Thus curvature, as a deviation of straightness, i.e., the abnormal versus the normal, becomes the focus of perceptual attention. This creates the asymmetry which Treisman notes: the unmarked straight line can serve best as a background to the marked curved line, but the marked curved line inhibits the ability to focus on the straight line when the former serves as background. As emphasized often, this asymmetry establishes a hierarchical relation between the terms of an opposition: dominant/subordinate, paradigmatic/derivative, normal/ abnormal, unfocused/focused. As Linda Waugh suggests, "there is a priority of the unmarked term over the marked term. Thus, that which will become the unmarked term in opposition tends to be learned earlier by children while the marked term tends to be learned later. .... In aphasic loss, the marked term tends to be lost earlier (thus dissolving the opposition) and that which was the unmarked term is lost later" (1976:89). Battistela goes so far as to claim that ". . . for any opposition one term is dominant and more highly valued (by virtue of its unmarkedness) and its 'opposition' is less highly valued" (1986:42).
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Figure 14. Anne Treisman's experiments show that an oblique line viewed in a background of straight lines is noticed more easily than a straight line viewed in a background of oblique ones. The determination of markedness values rests on the basis of several criteria, though almost everyone points to their tentativeness (cp. Lyons 1977; Comrie 1976, 1983; Waugh, 1979, 1982; Andrews 1984; Brakel 1983; Battistela 1986). These include optimality (vs. nonoptimality), indeterminateness (vs. determinateness), simplicity (vs. complexity), and unrestrictedness of distribution (vs. restrictedness). Each of these criteria is related to the family of concepts which define markedness (presence/absence, normal/abnormal, paradigmatic/derived, complex (focused)/ simple (unfocused). Optimality refers to relations of implication in language typology. Since the marked term is seen as derivative of the unmarked, which is paradigmatic, then the presence of the marked term implies the presence of the unmarked. There are many examples of languages lacking /ü/, but few lacking /i/; the distinctive feature which distinguishes /i/ from /ü/ is rounded/unrounded, consequently /i/ is unmarked with respect to /ü/. The asymmetry between the two is expressed by the following pair of implications: if /ü/, then /i/, but it is not necessarily the case that if /i/, then /ü/. This is also the case for the lexicon. For example, the presence of Polonaise (female Pole), implies the presence of a masculine form (Polonais), which is also used generically, as in 'the Polish' (Le polonais); in English, no such differentiation is made ('he is a Pole', 'she is a Pole'). Indeterminateness of the unmarked term also expresses asymmetry, and is tied to the complexity/simplicity characteristic, the ability of the marked term to provide
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more information but less referential scope. Specifically, indeterminateness refers to the power of the unmarked term to substitute for the marked term, but not conversely. That is to say, the unmarked term has a zero-interpretation in which the nonsignalization of the marked feature indicates the irrelevance of the poles of the opposition; and it also has a minus interpretation, in which it signals the absence of the unit of information associated with the marked term (cp. Waugh 1982). There are many examples of this characteristic of indeterminateness. In semantic oppositions the unmarked term can mean either the generic category or the specific member of the category, as for example in English, where 'man' can mean either 'Homo sapiens' or 'male Homo sapiens'. 'Woman' refers, in its traditional usage, only to 'female Homo sapiens'. In French there is a similar difference between lion and lionne and in Russian between ösel (donkey, male donkey) and oslica (female donkey). In these three cases there is also an iconicism between the morphemic complexity of the word and its meaning: woman, oslica. These are derivative, morphologically speaking, of the more generic stems. Orwell's imaginary language, Newspeak, is also a good example. In that language there is an attempt to eliminate the more marked terms in the lexicon in favor of morphemic variations of the unmarked ones: instead of evil, ungood is used. Other examples include truth value (which may be either true or false), day (seven days in the week versus 'I work only during the day'), and the English present tense, as in 'I live in Alaska' versus 'I lived in Alaska'. In this last case the present tense can signify past, present, and future, as in 'God is good', '2 + 2 = 4', but the past tense only signals past time (cp. Waugh 1982:308). That the present tense can also indicate past and future is also the case in comparative phrases such as 'How old are you?', 'How long is it?', 'How far is it?'. In the latter cases the unmarked term does not signal short or long but length, generally. A third criterion is that of simplicity. The unmarked term is usually formally less elaborate in either its morphosyntactic makeup or its acoustic and articulatory nature. The difference between present and past forms of verbs illustrates this: 'I walk to the store', as opposed to 'I walked to the store'. The derived form usually demonstrates markedness, as in the case of comparative adjectives: great, greater, greatest. The criterion of unrestricted distribution concerns the fact that unmarked terms have greater freedom to combine with other language elements. This is related to the phenomenon of neutralization. For example, consider the distinction host/ hostess, where 'host' is considered unmarked and 'hostess' the marked term of the opposition (cp. Battistela 1986:83-84). In the use of the plural, (a) Your hosts are Mr. and Mrs. Hill. (b) Your hostesses are Mr. and Mrs. Hill. b is impossible given present conventions. For the plural, the male/female distinction is neutralized in favor of the unmarked term. I think these criteria can be used to sort out, generally speaking, the markedness values of opposition types as found in the lexicon. Using a classification such as Lyons's (1977), such oppositions can be divided into (a) morphologically related
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oppositions (e.g., friendly/unfriendly); (b) antonyms (e.g., good/bad); (c) complementarities (e.g., male/female); (d) converses (e.g., husband/wife); (e) directional oppositions (e.g., up/down); and (f) nonbinary oppositions, which may be either serial (e.g., hot, warm, cool, cold), cyclical (e.g., spring, summer, winter, fall), or hyponymic (e.g., cow/animal). Antonyms, such as good/bad, receive their markedness from a number of considerations. Good may be considered the unmarked term since, for example, in asking the question 'How good is it?', there is no presupposition or implication that the referent is good rather than bad. But 'How bad is it?' carries with it the presupposition that the referent of 'it' is bad rather than good (cp. Lyons 1977:275-76). As Greenberg points out, there are a number of languages, African, Amerind, and Oceanic, which have no separate term for 'bad' but in which 'bad' is expressed by 'not good'. On the other hand, there is no language which lacks a separate term for 'good' and expresses it normally by 'not bad' (1966:52). Also, the unmarked member tends to precede the marked member when the opposites are coordinated, as in the case of irreversible binomials, for example, 'good and bad', 'the good, the bad, and the ugly', 'high and low', 'great and small'; and this may be true of non-antonyms as well, for example, 'man and woman', 'parent and child', 'north and south', 'heaven and earth', 'food and drink' (cp. Malkiel 1959). Also, as Lehrer has pointed out (1974:27), it is the negative case which approaches some limit or zero point, while this is not true of the positive case. This can be reinterpreted in terms of markedness, so that the fact that a thing can be so narrow or so short or so small that it approaches zero in extension but that there is no corresponding limit to how large, wide, or tall a thing can be exhibits the marked characters of short, small, and narrow. This is generally implied also in the indeterminateness of the unmarked terms, as in 'How tall is he?', 'How long is it?', 'How wide is it?', 'How far is it?'. The markedness of complements, such as male/female, man/woman, which do not admit of grading, is determined in similar ways to that of antonyms. In general the unmarked term, for example, 'man', is more indeterminate, i.e., its reference is vague, as in the case of 'All men are created equal'; 'woman', the marked term, is more determinate in reference. Irreversible binomials, such as 'a man and a woman', or 'are you male or female?', again seem to support the markedness of female. 'Woman' is the presence of a feature; 'man', in its indeterminate sense, is the absence of some specific feature. This is also broadly supported by the fact that in most morphologically related opposites that concern male/female distinctions, the female term usually employs an additional suffix, as in host/hostess, count/countess, comedian/comedienne. In this case the more complex and derived form is the marked one. This is also true in the case of the naming of certain animals, where the male name can be applied to the species, whereas the female name often represents only the female of the species, as in 'What kind of dog is it?' (vs. 'bitch'). Morphologically related opposites present an especially difficult test of the criteria for markedness. The criterion of simplicity would suggest that the morphologically derived term is the marked one, and this seems to work with most examples:
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friendly/unfriendly, cooperative/uncooperative, which also coincide with the marked term as a derivation of the norm (i.e., a social norm in this case). Yet, ironically, the simplicity criterion could not account for the markedness values between marked/unmarked, which would label 'unmarked' as marked. I think that the complex of meanings attached to markedness have to be used to sort out these anomalies. It can be argued that most prefixes of the sort involved in morphologically related oppositions, 'ab' (from, away, off), 'un' (not, no), 'in', 'il', 'im', 'ir' (not, no), 'de' (down, away, from), etc., indicate the negation or absence of the morphological stem. Thus the terms which use these prefixes would appear to be the marked terms since negation is generally considered a marking relation. This would coincide with the criterion of simplicity which suggests that the more morphologically complex term is the marked one. Yet, as certain counterexamples show, this is not always the case. Consider, for example, the attributes given to God as opposed to man in classical Christian theology: God = unmarked infinite (the absence of limiting features) perfect (the absence of fault) incorporeal (the absence of materiality)
man = marked finite (the presence of limiting features) imperfect (the presence of fault) corporeal (the presence of materiality)
Here we see an example of the mismatch of the criterion for markedness. Assuming that because, theologically, God is original and man is created and derived, then man is marked, God unmarked, and the attributes given each should also be marked and unmarked, respectively. But here we have a case, e.g., 'infinite', which is more morphologically complex than its counterpart yet is the unmarked term of the opposition. The same is true for 'incorporeality'. This suggests that markedness relations between the various levels of the language are not always coordinate; for example, the concept of incorporeality, which, given its theological context, is valuatively superior to that of corporeality and is, consequently, unmarked, is expressed by the morphologically marked term. The case where the unmarked item at a certain level of a sign system is used to represent an unmarked sign at a different level, or where a marked sign at one level is used to represent a marked sign at another level, might be called a rule of assimilation; while the opposite case, where there is a mismatch between the markedness of sign and signatum, might be called displacement. The significance of the latter will be discussed in the next chapter. In directional opposites, such as up/down, come/go, markedness can be determined in terms of motion in one to two opposed directions with respect to a given place, p (cp. Lyons 1977:281ff.). In the case of come and go, arrive/depart, the opposition is based on the fact that with respect to some place, p, arrival is movement toward p, departure movement away from p. Motion from a place, p, results in being at non-p; arriving at p is a movement from being at non-p to being at
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p. Thus, in the sense that arrival is a transition from an absence to a presence, and departure a change from presence to absence, departure must be considered the marked term. Directional opposites, such as right/left, up/down, are easier to determine because of their social contexts. Left-handed persons are given special names, 'lefty', 'southpaw', etc. This is the case since left-handedness is non-normative. 'Moving up' in the world is the unmarked condition opposed to being 'down on your luck' or 'down in the dumps', the marked member of the opposition. Nonbinary oppositions can also be articulated in terms of valuative hierarchy. Cyclical opposites, such as spring, summer, winter, fall, are so in a number of ways. They can form sets of oppositions within the cycle, in turn correlated with other oppositions that do connote valuative distinctions: for example, spring (genesis of life)/fall (decay of life), the winter of discontent/the summer of youth, etc. (cp. Haley 1988:179ff.). But there is also a direction to the cycle: spring(birth)®summer(life)®fall(decay)®winter(death) In serial oppositions where gradedness is possiblefor example, hot-warmcoolcoldthe directionality of the series may indicate a possible markedness determination: i.e., moving from hot to cold is moving away from heat, moving away from cold is moving toward heat, cold defined as the absence of heat, heat the more marked term: "You're getting warmer . . . warmer . . . now you're really hot," as the children's game says. In hyponymy, as Bendix argues, "we view a taxonomy as one type of paradigm of a natural substitution of terms, where a higher taxon is also a component in the definition of a form expressing a lower taxon, and where the relation between a higher and lower taxon is a hierarchic kind of opposition characterized by nonmarking versus marking with one or more components" (1966:6). The more generic taxon is more indeterminate in the sense that it can refer to any of its species, and so is unmarked, while the hyponymic term is more determinate, has less referential scope, and so is marked. This is true for whole/part relations in general, where the part is defined in terms of a more specific, delimited function than the whole (as in arm versus body). b. Rank Whereas markedness is the evaluative aspect of paradigmatic relations, ranking is that of the syntagmatic ones. As Shapiro argues, "The ranking of diacritic signs in the simultaneous syntagm is the syntagmatic counterpart to the asymmetry of markedness, since markedness is the asymmetry of paradigmatic relations" (1983:80). As Andersen (1979:892) and Shapiro (1983:80) have emphasized, phonemes are not mere bundles of distinctive features, but are organized into hierarchical structures; their immediate constitutentsthe diacritic signsenter into relations of subordination (rank order) (cp. Hockett 1955:90). Andersen argued that "the reorganization of diacritic signs into phonemes can be described by a set of phoneme structure rules generating all the admissible simultaneous syntagms of the language in question. Phoneme structure rules are ordered and their order diagrams
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the ranking of the diacritic paradigms" (1979:379). Each rule, which has the form X ®± OPP, introduces a phonological opposition into the segments defined on the left side of the arrow, and can be said to expand the syntagms to which it applies with the subordinate terms it introduces. An example which Andersen uses is the generation of vowels in Lezghian (fig. 15). The rank order of the features can also be expressed as a tree diagram (fig. 16).
Figure 15. The rank of the vowels of Lezghian. The rules in A generate the phonemes in B. Andersen argues that "ranking provides important criteria for phonological typology: one can distinguish vocalic and consonantal systems, vowel systems can differ by the ranking of tonality opposition relative to diffuseness properties and by the ranking of the flattening relative to gravity" (1979:379). Thus, for example, "it is essentially a difference in rank that separates the Russian and Japanese vowel systems" (1975:70). "If it is a fact that the same phonological oppositions can yield different vowel systems depending on how they are ranked, one may assume that difference in ranking accounts for such differences among vowel systems which could be attributed to the utilization of different phonological oppositions" (1974:895). It is clear that there is an interrelation between ranking in the simultaneous
Figure 16. The rank of the vowels of Lezghian as represented by a tree diagram.
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syntagm and markedness features of the paradigms. On the one hand the asymmetry of diacritic paradigms is important for the combination of diacritic signs into syntagms in the following way, as Andersen points out (1979:379): 1. the marked sign in a paradigm will not be combined with subordinate signs unless its marked opposite is. This is called the principle of markedness compensation. That if a subordinate opposition is combined with a marked term of a superordinate opposition, then it will be combined with the unmarked terms of that opposition, but not conversely. Thus, for example, in figure 17 it must be supposed that + grave is unmarked, since the subordinate opposition ± flat combines only with it and not withgrave.
Figure 17. On the other hand, Andersen argues: 2. when signs of a diacritic paradigm are subordinated to the marked member of another paradigm, then normal, basic, markedness values may be reversed. This is called the rule of markedness reversal. (1979:379) Thus, Andersen concludes that "these, briefly, are the salient features of a diacritic system: a set of signs forming paradigms, rules for their combination into hypotactic syntagms, markedness values in part determining the extent of these syntagms, in part being determined within these syntagms according to general principles" (1979:379). B. The Definition of Transvaluation 1. MARKEDNESS IN LIGHT OF PEIRCEAN SEMIOTICS The various criteria of markedness, optimality, indeterminateness, simplicity, and unrestrictedness of distribution all exhibit a certain kind of conceptual interdependence. For example, the criterion of optimality suggests a kind of developmental, evolutionary principle in phonology, viz., the movement from globality to differential complexity to integration. In Peirce's language, this entails a movement from firstness to secondness to thirdness, or, from indeterminacy to determinacy, not much unlike Heinz Werner's orthogenetic principle: "wherever development occurs it proceeds from a state of relative globality and lack of differentiation, to articulation and hierarchic integration" (1957:126). If this is the case, then it explains why the unmarked term, which is more global, serves as the necessary condition for the development of the marked term, since the latter is a further differentiation of the former. Optimality also implies simplicity of form, the more
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differentiated, i.e., marked, term being a more complex development of the unmarked one. Moreover, the globality of the unmarked term allows it to refer to more or to have greater generality and is, thus, indeterminate in Peirce's vocabulary. The marked counterpart of the unmarked term is, in this sense, more determinate and so its scope of reference is more restricted. This also clarifies neutralization, since, in cases where reference is to two opposing species of the same genus, the indeterminateness of the unmarked term allows it to refer to both. All of these criteria meet under the rubric of Peirce's determination, the process of sign translation which moves from vagueness to definiteness, from globality to differentiation. 2. THE INTERPRETANT IN LIGHT OF MARKEDNESS AND RANK If the interpretant in its most general sense is the rule of sign translationthat is, the interrelation of depth and breadth, or between signans and signatum, on the one hand, and among signantia, on the otherthen markedness and rank can give a clearer and more definite characterization to that process. But also, markedness and rank can redefine the interpretant in a most fruitful way, in terms of value, thus filling a gap which is found in the semiotic of Peirce. The comprehension of sign translation in terms of rank and markedness is what I call transvaluation. In its most general form, transvaluation is a rule-like semiosis which revaluates the perceived, imagined, or conceived markedness and rank relations of a referent as delimited by the rank and markedness relations of the system of its signans and the teleology of the sign user. In this case, the referent is given a certain order and valuation by means of revaluating its signans. Reference is established in the hierarchical arrangement of the signans, which also displays the sense of the referent. Transvaluation thus coordinates the depth and the breadth of a sign; and, in this sense, transvaluation is at least a species of interpretant. Michael Shapiro argues that "the idea can now be advanced with some confidence that markedness is a species of interpretant, fully compatible in its own way with the system of interpretants established by Peirce" (1983:17). "The being of the sign, therefore, consists in its causing an interpretant; in other words, in causing an evaluation of the relationship between sign and object" (1983:17). If indeed Jakobson viewed the interpretant as 'translation' and translation as the essential semiotic process in language, but markedness as the "deep function of language," then possibly these concepts meet in the notion of transvaluation. Indeed, I will want to make the strong claim here that transvaluation is the most comprehensive species of interpretant. It is precisely by means of the valuation of the signatum by the signans that signification is made coherent. But, in addition, a transvaluative analysis also allows the comprehension of the pragmatics of the sign, its use within the valuative and purposive framework of sign users and their community. Consider in this respect an earlier example given by Peirce. The letter p is an icon of b, according to Peirce, since there is a rule of translation which can show one to be a spatial transformation of the other. But if p is considered an icon of b, it is not just a translation of b, but also a revaluation of b, much in the same way that p with a serif, or p italicized or made bold in print, although it is an icon
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Figure 18. An illustration of the asymmetry of p, b, d, q.
Figure 19. A calculation of the asymmetry of p, b, and d, based on a study by DunnRankin. of p, also marks p in certain ways, or the way that a certain typeface of p may connote certain things: readability, legibility, or aesthetic sense. That the stem moves upward from the loop in b, as opposed to downward in p, may serve as an important marked differenceone is a transformation of another that creates a valuative tension. The basic visual features of the lowercase letters have been analyzed in many ways. Most investigators, however, consider such letters as being made up of five simple components: a vertical line (1), a closed circular curve (o), a horizontal line with a curve (e) and a cyclical curve (s) (Dunn-Rankin 1978:122). The letter p is composed of two features, then, o and 1, but combined in such a way that 1 extends downward from o. So the four letters p, b, d, q are rotationally similar, composed of two features that vary directionally in two ways (up/down, right/left) (fig. 18). A study on letter discrimination by Dunn-Rankin showed that among beginning readers there are certain differences in the ability to distinguish among p, b, and d (1978:122-23). On a scale from o to 100, where o indicated a perceived identity between letters, and 100 a perception of most difference, the relations between p, b, and d were recorded as in figure 19. The results indicate certain asymmetries, that is, valuative distinctions between the differences that compose the letter. The translation of 1 from up to down alone was more distinctive (28) than the movement from down to up (18); on the other hand, the movement from right to left and left to right made little distinctive difference. Yet when down to up was combined with right to left or left to right, then this seems to have added weight to the distinctive quality of the translations, which now register on the scale at 28 and 27. The greatest difference is between b/p, p/d, and d/p, the least difference between b/d, p/b, d/b. The relation between b/p and p/b is asymmetrical, which indicates that there is an asymmetry between the vertical directions up to down and down to up, which creates a markedness relation between them.
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Figure 20. The asymmetry of p, b, d, q is exploited in this advertisement in order to convey a message. Consider, for example, figure 20, an advertisement which might take advantage of this marked relation in order to convey a message. Here the marked opposition between right/left, up/down is used to create a picture that is iconic with the semantic message. The o feature of the lowercase letters is, in turn, iconic with the human face. The picture represents a court with two teams on opposing sides; and their position spells out the message, ''don't quit, be a player," which, in the context of the message written below it, is in reference to suicide. Translation, then, is not just a correlation of equivalent differences into equivalent differences; rather, it is a transvaluation which revaluates differences that are already valuated.
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FOUR Transvaluation in Semiosis A. Social Perception Suppose an advertiser is trying to design an advertisement which ensures that the man wearing or holding the product will be perceived as socially dominant. In other words, he is attempting to create a sign which translates the value and rank assignments of the principal figure in relation to others in the advertisement. How could this be analyzed from a transvaluative point of view? In some interesting experiments done by Barry Schwartz (1981) and Schwartz, Tesser, and Powell (1982), Schwartz designed a series of figures which varied from each other only in terms of bodily position. The four bodily positions, left/right, front/back, standing/seated, elevated/non-elevated, were used in thirty-two combinations to measure the perception of social dominance perceived by subjects observing the displays. The four positions, then, served as "distinctive features of deferential opposition" (1981:47). The results confirmed intuitive analyses, viz., that perceived social dominance is "most likely to be associated with elevation, standing position, foreground and position in the right" (1981:47), as indicated by the data: 75 percent of the time the elevated person was perceived as dominant, while only 29 percent of the time was the non-elevated person perceived so. Similarly, 61 percent of the time the standing person was dominant, 45 percent of the time the person in the back. The percentages for right/left were just about evenly divided. In regard to these results, Schwartz points out something rather interesting for our orientation here. It is clear that the percentage difference between the feature and its opposite is greatest in the case of the elevated/non-elevated distinction (46 points), and the least for the right/left. I think this data could be reinterpreted in light of the notions of markedness and rank. The marked member of each of the oppositions would be the one with the highest percentage of dominance perception (since one could argue correspondingly that this feature is the focus of more perceptual activity, and therefore is more perceptually complex). On the other hand, the percentage differences between the sets of features could also show the relative rank of the features, thus making the elevated feature the highest rank, the right/left feature the lowest rank. This would predict that any syntagmatic combination of these three features would result in the perception of social dominance for any figure that was at least elevated when its complementary figure was non-elevated. The rank of these features could also be expressed using Andersen's rules:
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Based on these rules, one can say that the elevated feature is the highest rank in the sense that it will consistently represent dominance no matter what the variation of the other features. Whether the elevated figure is right or left (fig. 21), back or front (fig. 22), the elevated figure will be perceived as socially dominant. The right/left feature can be said to be of lowest rank, since, as figure 23 demonstrates, it is difficult to determine the dominance of either figure (although there may be a right-sided bias in the perceiver). Schwartz's data again confirm that the right/left is the least distinctive of social dominance for the perceivers. I repeated Schwartz's experiment under slightly different conditions for the purpose of obtaining a clearer picture of the markedness and rank of these features. I followed the method employed by Schwartz, Tesser, and Powell (1982). I used the same culture-neutral figures, one of a male and one of a female placed in the following positions: left/right, front/back, elevated/non-elevated (unlike the Schwartz study, I was not interested in the sitting/standing contrast). Both figures face forward and are conventionally clothed: the male in shirt and slacks, and the female in a plain dress. However, unlike Schwartz, Tesser, and Powell, I used only 19 figures instead of 64, as indicated in figure 24. There were 108 respondents, 64 women and 44 men, all students from a western university. Each was given a booklet with the 19 figures placed in random order. Each page compared two figures, who were set in contrast by means of some combination of the features listed above. Each respondent was asked to mark the person they considered to be socially dominant with an uppercase D. If they could not decide, they were to leave the figure blank. Students were instructed to rely on first responses, not to change their answers and not to return to previous ones. Markedness was defined as paradigmatic asymmetry. Specifically, in this case, a member of a paradigmatic opposition would be marked with respect to social dominance if it significantly cued a perceiver to designate that person or figure as socially dominant. If the features are paired in the following manner, front (F)/ back (B), elevated (E)/ non-elevated (N), right (R)/ left (L), male (M)/ female (W), then the data should be used to determine which of the members of the paired opposition are marked and which are not. Since Paradigm 2 in the table (fig. 24) exhibits only the precedence feature as distinctive, it demonstrates clearly that F is marked with respect to dominance while B remains unmarked in this regard; 88 percent of perceivers chose person B while only 8 percent chose person A as socially dominant. Similarly, Paradigms 10 and 14 in that table show that R is marked while L is unmarked. Because of the configuration of the features, it was impossible to isolate either M or E in this regard. However in comparing Paradigm 6 with Paradigm 10 in the table, the addition of M to L adds .17 to the percentage of perceived dominance, while the effect of adding W to R decreases the percentage of perceived dominance by .08. This suggests then that M is marked with respect to dominance. The same strategy could
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be applied in comparing Paradigm 1 and Paradigm 10. The addition of E to L increases the percentage of perceived dominance by .63, while, adding N to R decreases it by . 35, again confirming the markedness of E. Since rank may be defined as a measure of the feature's tendency to represent a certain signatum despite the composition of other features in its syntagm, one way to measure the rank of the features is simply to determine the ratio between the total number of times the feature appears in a syntagm and the times the syntagm represents the target signatum. Based on that strategy the results would look like this:
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Page 77 Paradigm person
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
9
10
A B A B A B A B A B A B A B A B A B A B F B E N
B F
WM B F
F B WM E N
E N Configuration (Syntagm)
7
L R B F
E N L R
L R
WM
MW
L R
L R
MW
%Dominance
82 14 8 88 18 63 71 25 11 86 36 41 5 91 80 19 77 20 19 49
Asymmetry*
68
80
45 46
75
05
86 61
Distinctiveness**
04
04
19
04
03
23
04
01
Paradigm
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Person
57 03
A B A B A B A B A B A B A B A B A B B F B F E N E N
Configuration (Syntagm) M W M W
B F E N MWWM E N L R
N E N E L R
WM
Asymmetry* Distinctiveness**
32
19
F B B F E N
%Dominance
30
L R L R WMMW
22 71 88 11 66 24 18 53 14 78 20 70 44 49 47 45 42 49 49 77 07
01
42 09
35 29
64 08
50 09
05 02 07
07
07 09
*calculated as the difference in the percentage of dominance for the two persons **calculated as the percentage of no responses F= front, B= back, E= elevated, N= non-elevated, M= male, W= female, L= left, R= right Figure 24.
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F 9/10 = .9 E 9/11 = .82 R 6/9 = .67 M 7/12 = .58 These data show that F and E hold relatively high rank, while R and M are of relatively low rank. Furthermore, F and E are of proximate rank as are R and M. Proximate rank can be confirmed by a comparison of syntagms for what might be called neutralization. In comparing obverse syntagms, e.g., Paradigm 1, Paradigm 6, and Paradigm 17, for two features, the asymmetry between the persons in Paradigm 17 is only .05; this shows proximate rank between the two features, so that when set in contrast with one another, the two persons have a tendency to neutralize into the unmarked. On the other hand, Paradigm 1 shows a high asymmetry, consequently the two features are of distal rank. Overall, since the perception of a sign with respect to a certain signatum is a function of the markedness and rank of the features of that sign, then the following results obtain: 1. A distinct representation of dominance can be obtained by (F) frontal position alone. 2. The asymmetry will not increase by much if marked features of distal rank are added to a syntagm which includes F. 3. The asymmetry will not decrease by much if unmarked features of distal rank are combined with F. 4. 1, 2, and 3 above also hold for E (elevated position). 5. The perception of dominance will tend toward neutralization in the case of obverse syntagms composed of features of proximate rank. 6. Syntagms composed of low-ranked features are marginal in representing a target signatum. B. The Perception of Facial Expressions of the Primary Emotions A similar approach can be taken in analyzing the work of Paul Ekman (1971). Ekman argues that the appearance of the facial expressions for the primary emotions (surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and happiness) are universally the same and consequently are cross-culturally perceived. Allowing variations due to masking or social context, the facial displays for these emotions are spelled out by Ekman (1971:251-252) (fig. 25). These facial displays can be rearranged to conform to a kind of phonological model: this can be done in terms of specific areas of the face-forehead, brow, squint area, eyelids, mouth, lips, and cheeks (figs. 26 and 27). Each of these areas, in turn, has features that can be roughly categorized as oppositions: for the forehead, long horizontal wrinkling versus short horizontal wrinkling; for the brow, raised versus lowered, curved versus flattened; for the squint area, either the presence or the absence of the squint (the presence caused by drawing the brows together); for the upper eyelids, tensed versus stretched, lower eyelids, tense versus lax, raised versus lowered; for the eyes, open sclera versus the absence of sclera display; for the mouth,
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open versus closed; for the lips, tense (stretched back) versus lax (dropped), outer corners raised versus lowered. The markedness values can be tentatively assigned on the basis of the general criteria as well as what is known about perceptual features, as in figure 28. Syntagmatically, one can consider the possibility of ranking these features. For the sake of convenience, I want to focus on the facial expressions for happiness and sadness. I think there can be a good argument made for claiming that it is Appearance of the Face for Six Emotions Brows-Forehead Eyes-Lids Surprise Raised curved eyebrows; long horizontal forehead wrinkles
Fear
Lower Face
Wide opened eyes Dropped-open mouth; no with sclera showing stretch or tension in the corners above and often of the lips, but lips parted; below the iris; signs opening of the mouth may of skin stretched vary above the eyelids and to a lesser extent below
Raised and drawn- Eyes opened, tension Mouth corners drawn back, but together brows; apparent in lower not up or down; lips stretched; flattened raised lids, which are raised mouth may or may not be open appearance rather more than in surprise; than curved; short sclera may show horizontal and/ or above but not below short vertical iris; hard stare quality forehead wrinkles
Anger Brows pulled No sclera shows in down and inward, eyes; upper lids appear to thrust appear lowered, tense forward; strong and squared; lower vertical and lids also tensed and sometimes curved raised, may produce forehead wrinkles an arched appearance centered above the under eye; lid eyes tightening may be sufficient to appear squinting
Either the lips tightly pressed together or an open, squared mouth with lips raised and/or forward; teeth may or may not show
Disgust Brows drawn Lower eyelids pushed Deep nasolabial fold and down but not up and raised, but not raising of cheeks; mouth either together; short tensed open with upper lip raised and vertical creases lower lip forward and/or out, may be shown in or closed with upper lip forehead and nose; pushed up by raised lower lip; horizontal and/or tongue may be visible forward vertical wrinkles in mouth near the lips, or on bridge of nose mouth closed with outer and sides of upper corners pulled slightly down nose
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Brows-Forehead
Eyes-Lids
Lower face Sadness Brows drawn down with Eyes either glazed, withMouth either inner corners raised and outer drooping upper lids and open with corners lowered or level, or lax lower lids, or upper partially brows drawn down in the lids are tense and stretched, middle and slightly raised at pulled up at inner trembling lips inner corners; forehead shows corner with or without or closed with small horizontal or lateral lower lids tensed; eyes outer corners curved and short vertical may be looking pulled slightly wrinkles in center area, or downward or eyes may down shows bulge of muscular show tears contraction above center of brow area HappinessNo distinctive browforehead Eyes may be released Outer corners appearance or neutral in appear of lips raised; ance, or lower lids may usually also be pushed up by lower drawn back; face action, bagging the may or may not lower lids and causing have eyes to be narrowed; pronounced with the latter crow feetnasolabial fold; apparent, reaching from may or may not outer corner of eyes have opening of toward the hairline lips and appearance of teeth Figure 25. Paul Ekman's analysis of the facial features of the primary emotions (1971:251:52). Courtesy of Paul Ekman, © 1972. the smile and the frown, respectively, that are the highest ranked among the features for each display. This is clear in the case of stylized representation of happy and sad faces, as fig. 29 demonstrates. Firstly, such stylized representations generally ignore the distinctions between brow, forehead, and eye display in happy versus sad expressions and focus instead on the down-turned curve (frown) versus the upturned curve (smile). These serve merely as generic contextual cues. The fact that happiness and sadness can be represented even without these generic cues demonstrates the rank-order of this particular feature, so that the distinction between iconic signs for happiness and sadness hinges on the distinction between È and Ç. This is also repeated in the case of a stylized representation (fig. 30) which when viewed upright signifies happiness, but when inverted signifies sadness (fig. 31)and simply through the change of curvature. This same point can be made in the context of a fairly realistically stylized representation (fig. 32). The stylized face can be easily transformed into a sad one by
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Figure 26. Composite drawings of the typical facial features of the primary emotions, based on Ekman's work.
Figure 27. Composite drawings of the facial features of the primary emotions categorized by regions of the face.
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Page 82 Area
Emotion
Feature Surprise Fear u
m
m
m
curved (m) / flattened (u)
m
u
Squint Area presence (m) / absence (u)
u
m
Forehead long horizontal wrinkling (u)/ short horizontal wrinkling (m) raised (m)/ lowered (u) Brow
Upper tense (m) / stretched (u) Eyelids
u
Lower Eyelids tense (m) / lax (u)
Eyes
m
u
u
m/u
m
u
m
m
m
m
u
m
m
u
u
m
sclera above (m) sclera below (u)
u m
raised (m) / lowered (u) nasolabial fold present (m) Cheeks / nasolabial fold absent (u) Mouth
Lips
u
m
raised (m) / lowered (u) exposed sclera (m)/ unexposed sclera (u)
Anger Disgust Sadness Happiness
u
u
u
m
u
open (m) / closed (u)
m
m
m
m
rounded (u) / squared (m)
u
u
m
m
tense (m) / lax (u)
u
m
m
u
Outer corners raised (u)/ outer corners lowered (m)
brow Areas of Markedness
m
u
u
m
u
forehead
forehead
brow
brow
squint squint
squint
eyelids eyelids eyelids eyes
eyes cheeks
cheeks
mouth mouth mouth mouth lips
lips
lips
Figure 28. A reorganization of Ekman's analysis of the facial features of the primary emotions in terms of markedness.
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simply changing the simle to a frown (fig. 33), despite the remainder of other cues for happiness. Finally, using the photography of a real human face, this can be manipulated to make the same point. Consider for a moment figure 34: the inverted smile in the context of an upright face disrupts the normal reading of the facial expression. That is to say, the distortion of the highest ranked feature can inhibit its proper interpretation. Yet if the entire face is inverted, but the smile remains in its normal position, it is still relatively easy to read the face as smiling (fig. 35).
Figure 29. Stylized representations of happiness and sadness demonstrate the rank of the smile and the frown.
Figure 30.
Figure 31. The inversion of figure 30 shows again that the smile or the frown determines the perception of the face as either happy or sad.
Figure 32.
Figure 33. Even in the case of more realistically styled drawings, one need only change the smile to a frown to achieve the perception of sadness.
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Figure 34. If a smile on a face is inverted, the determination of the emotion remains enigmatic, thereby demonstrating the rank of the smile in recognizing happy emotions.
Figure 35. By inverting figure 34, the emotion is easily recognized despite the fact that all other features of the face are inverted. This supports the claim that the recognition of happiness is possible as long as the smile is recognized in its normal position.
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Figure 36. The smile is the normal or unmarked presentation of the self in portraiture.
Figure 37.
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It can certainly be argued that happiness, or the expression of joy, is an unmarked condition, compared especially to its emotional opposite, sadness. For example, in the case of portraiture or advertisements, the normative expression of the person is the person smiling; a quick survey of any yearbook will usually show this to be the case; frowning or sadness is left for especially marked contexts, as figures 36 and 37 show. Syntagmatically the smile is of highest rank for the emotion of happiness, while the frown is so for the emotion of sadness; paradigmatically the smile is unmarked while the frown is marked. If the frown (= tense lips and outer corner of the mouth lowered) is marked (indeed, there is some evidence that musculature involved in the frown is more complex than that of the smile), and the smile (= lax lips and outer corners of the mouth raised) is unmarked, then the use of the smile in photographs, portraiture, and stylized representations is a transvaluation that suggests markedness assimilation. C. Caricature Ranking and markedness are also evident in caricature. Whereas in portraiture there is generally an attenuation of uncomplimentary features, and an emphasis or supplementation of complimentary ones, in caricature the pragmatic function is based on satire and so the icon is often uncomplimentary. This is created by the intensification or exaggeration of the most perceptually prominent parts of the face. In this case, the features of highest perceptual rank are generally overemphasized or exaggerated, that is to say, doubly marked. A series of sketches of Helmut Schmidt by Jean Mulatier (fig. 38) shows how the nasolabial space is progressively exaggerated. In caricatures of Jimmy Carter it is always the smile (fig. 39), or of Reagan, the hair (fig. 40). This general idea is confirmed in the computer-programmed caricature work of Susan Brennen (cp. Dewdney 1986). Simply put, ''the program compares the photograph of the target face with an average face stored in the memory of the computer. The features that differ most from the average face are scaled up in size" (Dewdney 1986:20). In the language of markedness, it could be argued that the features which differ most from the average (unmarked as normal) face are the marked features. In turn, these marked features are ranked in terms of their perceived prominence (e.g., the smile of Jimmy Carter). Finally, their markedness is displaced through intensification or exaggeration, i.e., increasing the distance from the norm. The result is the intended effect of an uncomplimentary appearance. Brennen created an average androgynous face (fig. 41) from the averaging of several faces, i.e., unmarked in the sense of normal rather than normative. These were translated into coordinates that created a kind of "face space" by facial area. The caricature is created by adding the corresponding coordinate of the target face to a quantity that exaggerates the differences between norm and target face. Brennen suggests that "when the highly exaggerated caricatures were recognized, they were recognized significantly fasterabout twice as fast, in fact, as the realistic line drawings of the people." This seems to suggest that if the face has features
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Figure 38. The development of this caricature of former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt by Jean Mulatier shows that those features of the target face which are most marked in comparison to a normal face are exaggerated or doubly marked in the caricature. Reprinted from Masters of Caricature, Ann Gould, editor (New York: Knopf, 1981). Courtesy of George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd. which are of higher perceptual rank than others, these features serve as cues for facial recognition; thus, when they are intensified, as in caricature, recognition is easier. D. Euphemism and Symbolic Transvaluation Some kinds of troping involve a special kind of transvaluation which is associated with the notion of displacement, viewed essentially as a process of value disruption. More specifically, displacement has to do with the disruption of hierarchy qua rank, that is, in the sense in which Freud originally defined it: displacement is a process in the dream-work which differentiates the dream from the dream-thought by centering the important elements of the dream-thought, i.e., those with the greatest psychical value, differently in the manifest dream (Freud 1900:305). "A direct derivative of what occupies a dominating position in the dream-thoughts can often only be observed precisely in some transitory element of the dream which is quite overshadowed by more powerful images" (1900:330). In effect, as Freud argues, using Nietzsche's phrase, "a complete transvaluation of all psychical values" takes place between the material of the dream-thought and the manifest dream (1900:365). Of course, using the terminology of Freud, Jakobson labeled metonym as displacement (1956:95). In its traditional definition, metonym is the representation of a whole by one of its parts. But a close analysis of metonyms will show that the part selected to represent the whole is, generally, of high perceptual, sensual, emotional, or conceptual rank, or, to use Freud's terminology, something of great "psychical value." In using 'sail' for ship, the perceptually prominent part of the ship serves as the representamen; or in the use of 'wheels' for car, the item most associated with the movement of the car serves as its representation. Generally, the
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Figure 39. Two caricatures of former President Jimmy Carter, the one on the left by Gerald Alsteens, and the one on the right by Peter Dunlap-Shohl, demonstrate the importance of Carter's smile and its marking in the caricature to achieve the desired effect. Gerald Alsteens is reprinted from Masters of Caricature, Ann Gould, editor (New York: Knopf, 1981), courtesy of George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd. The caricature by Peter Dunlap-Shohl is courtesy of the artist, © 1988.
Figure 40. Caricatures of President Reagan must include a marking of his hair in order to achieve the desired effect. Courtesy of Peter Dunlap-Shohl, © 1988.
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Figure 41. The androgynous average face as created by Susan Brennan (Dewdney 1986:20). feature of highest rank is used, as in the case of 'smiling faces' for the representation of happiness. But the part may be selected to emphasize or connote a certain aspect of the situation, as in Zola's phrase, "the loud voices that wrangle in the corridors. " Displacement is most evident in euphemism, since the social or pragmatic function of euphemism is so clear. It is employed whenever there is reference to taboo topics: sex, bodily parts, excretory functions, death, etc. It is used in a conscious manner, to avoid some form of unpleasantnessfor example, a politician may never speak directly about raising taxes to his or her constituents. In generalto use the language of Freudeuphemism is a representation which displaces something of intense psychical value; but to use the terminology of markedness theory, we have a more precise characterization of euphemism as the representation of a highly marked referent by an unmarked signans. More specifically, if value may be redefined in terms of markedness and rank configurations, then displacement occurs when the perceived value configurations of any referent (object, event) are transvaluated in any one of its representations. In the case of euphemism, a highly marked referent (sex or death, for example), with a certain perceptually, cognitively, or emotionally ranked configuration, will be represented by an unmarked signans by means of reranking its perceived value configuration. This is opposed, for example, to vulgarism, whose pragmatic function is to offend, and which generally intensifies (i.e., re-marks) and devalues an especially marked referent. This points, by the way, to an interesting coordination of the traditional trichotomy of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. In this case, transvaluation might be seen as the coherence and coordination of these three aspects of linguistic expressions. The strategies of transvaluation involved in euphemism vary, but they are finite and can be categorized systematically using the concept of rank and markedness. Transvaluation, in the context of euphemism, may occur in two ways, each of which has subtypes. The first effects displacement by decentering rank, the second by inverting rank. In the first type, a perceptually or conceptually lower-ranked feature which is either contiguously associated with or similar to the signatum is used to represent the signatum. For example, consider the euphemism "sleeping together." People who have sex together often sleep together as a consequence, or they use a bed for the sexual act, which is thereby incidentally associated with sleeping. In this case what is peripherally associated with the event, and of low sensual rank, serves as its representation. To put it differently, the value intensity of the
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event is diffused in the expressiona movement from marked to unmarked, from more specific to less. The more direct expression "they had sex" is replaced by "they slept together," which has the effect of sanitizing the impact of the first expression. The reference of the euphemism, as typical for unmarked terms, is indeterminateit could mean that they slept together or that they had sex, or both. In this case there is a kind of "reference shift" in which what is referred to is referred to by something else. A historical-etymological example of this phenomenon is mentioned by Robert Burchfield (1985:16). There is clearly a family resemblance among the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin words for 'bear' (rkos, rkas, àextos, ursus, respectively), while in the Germanic and Slavic languages, where the bear terrorized people, this feared object was replaced by words such as the Russian medvéd, 'honey-eater', the Lithuanian lokys, 'licker', and the Germanic bär, 'the brown one', all of which, in their etymological sense, use an action or feature peripherally associated with the beast, rather than a direct or generic expression. A similar device is used for the euphemism 'my place or yours'. Again, rather than making a direct statement, 'let's have sex', a more indirect pronouncement is made whereby both partners understand the deeper implication, but yet is indeterminate enough to avoid any overt reference to the act in question. Since it is assumed that if sex occurs, sex will occur in some place, preferably one of the partners' living quarters, then something which is contiguously associated with having sex is used to represent sex. Instead of 'turkey leg', whose mention was thought to be too improprietous for the Victorian English, 'dark meat' was used-the color of the meat was used instead of its anatomical name; and so the use of 'white meat' instead of 'breast', or the biblical use of 'thigh' for 'testicles', i.e., a part of the anatomy in physical proximity to the one meant (cp. Rawson 1981:10). It was a practice of English prisoners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to commit suicide by tying their belts or a rope made from their clothes around a beam, standing on their waste bucket, and hanging themselves by kicking the buckethence the euphemism 'he kicked the bucket'; Homer's use of the phrase 'he bit the dust' for death in combat focuses on the peripheral event rather than the central one. This substitution of a peripheral term for the main term is also clear in the case of euphemisms for excretory functions. Thus the rooms that are used for such functions are generally labeled euphemistically: 'men's room', 'bathroom', 'washroom', etc. The fact that men exclusively use a particular room for their excretory functions is incidental to that excretory function, but the euphemism is used precisely for that reason to represent that type of room; similarly in the case of 'bathroom'a less improprietous function associated with the room is used to represent the primary function of the room, which is simultaneously the most improprietous function the room affords. If a woman mentions that she must 'powder her nose', again a function contiguously associated with the actually intended event is used to represent it. An 'out-house' is indeed a structure outside of the main building, but the name in no way would give a clue to an exotic observer of its real function. Other cases of contiguity include initialing and hyponymy. In the case of children's bathroom language, 'BM' may be used instead of bowel movement,
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which is itself a euphemism. The first letters of each word together represent the entire expression, as in 'JC' for 'Jesus Christ' or 'pee' for the more vulgar expression 'piss', as also in 'BS' for 'bullshit' or 'Gee' for 'God'. Printing swear words is usually done in this manner: 's.o.b.', 'f...', 's ....', etc. Acronyms are a species of initialing: for example, 'snafu' for 'situation normal, all fucked up'. In the case of hyponymy, a more general term, to which the referent is connected taxonomically, is used instead of the referent. Mammal is taxonomically superordinate to mammal species, such as bear, human, etc., and so its scope of reference remains more general and indeterminate than its marked subordinate. As Bendix suggests: "we view a taxonomy as one type of paradigm of a natural substitution of terms, where a higher taxon is also a component in the definition of a form expressing a lower taxon, and where the relation between a higher and lower taxon is a hierarchic kind of opposition characterized by nonmarking versus marking with one or more components" (1966:6). For example, 'animal functions' is used instead of sex, 'budget adjustments' or 'advanced downward adjustments' instead of 'budget cuts', 'revenue enhancement' instead of 'taxes'. In each of these cases the more indeterminate, superordinate, and hence, unmarked term is used in the place of the subordinate one. 'Revenue enhancement' could mean creating revenue by means other than tax increases, but it could also mean that as well. Sexual hyponyms are often very general, as 'do it' for sexual acts, or 'thing' for any of the sexual organs. The preceding are examples of euphemism by contiguous association. A second subtype involves the decentering of rank by similarity. In this case, the perceptually or cognitively or emotionally ranked aspect of the referent (which is intensely marked) is unmarked by using an expression that is similar to it but which harbors none of the marked connotations. WWI soldiers called machine guns 'sewing machines' because the sound they made were similar to the old Singer sewing machines. The focus in the representation is on the sound the machine makes, which is peripheral to the actual purpose of the gun, and then likened to something which does not have the deadly connotation. Instead of using real dentures in denture cleaning commercials, the advertisers use a simulated model which retains enough similarity to teeth to make it a recognizable substitute for them, but not so similar as to offend. In the case of children's bathroom language, for example, the word 'tinkle' may be used for urination, since it is a name for the sound that is similar to the sound made when urinating. Another device using similarity involves phonetic distortion: for example, 'heck' for 'hell', 'Cripes' for 'Christ'. Again, a sound similar to the referent is used to represent it, but with enough distortion to emphasize its dissimilarity with the referent. A good example of this is given by James Hedges (1976:282-83) in the use of the word 'whifflecate' for adultery. 'Whiffle', as defined by OED, means to vacillate, to evade, to flicker or flutter, and 'whiffles' is defined as a relaxation of the scrotum and has sexual connotations. The bound morpheme, cate, on the other hand, is a variation of ate, as found in fornicate. A more complicated case of similarity is found in euphemisms which attempt to disguise the markedness of words by substitution with words of similar meaning
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but broader reference, in other words, unmarked lexicon. For example, A Guide to Nonsexist Language provides a list of substitutes for various common but sexist terms: homeland for fatherland, pioneers for founding fathers, tender for ladylike, husky for man-sized, fair play for sportsmanship, first voyage for maiden voyage. An example of a sexual euphemism in this category is 'upper frontal superstructure' for 'breasts' (Pei 1973:142). Bankers often label 'bad debts' as 'nonperforming loans'. A U.S. Assistant Secretary called a news leak a "premature unauthorized partial disclosure." Businesses often call layoffs "resizing our operations to the level of profitable market opportunities," or "downsizing personnel." Politicians have called the recent recession 'rolling adjustments', and lying 'strategic misrepresentation'. Used car salespersons have also devised a euphemistic vocabulary for their product: 'experienced', 'pre-owned', and 'pre-loved' cars (Safire 1980:83). Another strategy of displacement which employs similarity involves the negation of the contrary. Roughly speaking, since loss of life = death, bad = not good, etc., then the negation of one contrary can become a substitute for the other. Instead of saying that someone did badly, we might say, in order to soften the blow, that he or she 'did not do very well'. If good/bad are the contrary terms involved, then bad is marked, good unmarked; in this case the euphemism employs the negation of the unmarked term rather than the direct expression of the marked term. This is also the case of Orwell's imaginary language, Newspeak, where the bureaucrats of 1984 are busy replacing marked terms with the negation of their unmarked counterparts: instead of evil, 'ungood' is used. Today's bureaucrats use the phrase 'non-goal oriented member of society' for the homeless. Even comparatives in Orwell's Newspeak use the unmarked member 'more' rather than 'less', as in 'plusungood', 'superungood'. The State Department often calls killing "the unlawful or arbitrary deprivation of life." The word 'killing' or 'death' is never used; instead there is the 'deprivation' of, i.e., the negation of its contrary, 'life'. If something terrible is 'not satisfactory', or something wrong 'not accurate', then lying can be called 'misinformation', and the liar has simply 'misspoken'. A looser sense of the negation of the contrary is found in other cases: bald men like to call themselves 'hair free'. Bald being a marked term, the negation of its unmarked opposite is used instead. Another example is the case where New York gypsy cab drivers call themselves 'nonmedallion' cabs. Just as the Department of War is now called the Department of Defense, so missiles are often called 'peacekeepers'. Of course there is the ploy often used to soften the blow to a jilted lover, recently repeated in a soap opera: "I wasn't running to Jack [the other lover], but away from you." A second type of displacement, besides the decentering of rank, is found in euphemisms that employ inversion. 'Honeybucket' is a term for the bucket used for execretory functions in households that have no indoor plumbing. Similarly, the person who has to clean toilets is often called a 'honeydipper'. The 'honeywagon' is the name often used for trucks that clean out septic tanks. In these cases, something which is diametrically opposed to the perceptual feature of the signatum is used to represent it. Honey, as sweet and tasty, is the perceptual opposite of excrement, which is inedible and foul-smelling. Other examples include 'beauty mark' (for a mole on the face), 'blossom' for 'pimple'. Life insurance is really death insur-
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ance, just as the Romans called the deathbed, the 'bed of life' (cp. Griffen 1985:33), and just as the ancient Egyptians called the deadhouse where bodies were mummified, the 'beautiful house' (cp. Rawson 1981:8). The Talmud refers to the blind person as one possessed of "extra light." The Greeks, of course, referred to the avenging Furies as 'the Eumenides' ('the kindly ones'), while the English refer to Satan as 'the good man' or the 'great fellow' (cp. Rawson 1981:2). The French call the mother-in-law 'la belle-mere', 'the beautiful mother'. There is also an example of phonetic inversion, as found in the case of the phrase, 'dog gone it' for 'god damn it'. Each phrase has three morphemes, with an identical morpheme at the end of each phrase. Each of the other two morphemes has the following syllable configuration: CVC CVC, but whenever the consonant /g/ occurs in the original phrase, the euphemism substitutes /d/, and whenever the consonant /d/ occurs in the original phrase, the euphemism substitutes /g/. Similarly /n/ is substituted for /m/ in the euphemized expression. The vowel /o/ remains the same in the first morpheme of each phrase, although the second vowel changes from /a/ to /o/ in the euphemism. At the feature level (and using Jakobson's classification), /g/ and /d/ share all features, except where /g/ is marked with respect to compact and /d/ is unmarked; where /g/ is marked in respect of grave, /d/ is unmarked. Similarly /m/ and /n/ share all features except where /m/ is marked in respect of grave, /n/ is unmarked (cp. Battistela 1986). In general, the euphemism represents a highly marked referent in terms of an unmarked representation, and does so by means of decentering or inverting, i.e., displacing, the ranking of features of the referent in its representation, a process I have called transvaluation. This structure or syntax is motivated by the sociopragmatic function of the euphemismto avoid offense. I think the advantage of this theory of euphemism is that it gives a simplified account of the various euphemistic constructions that is tied to a relatively verifiable linguistic theory. For example, Joseph Williams (1957:202-203) (cp. also Neaman and Silver 1983:911), suggests five semantic processes for the creation of euphemism, each of which can be reexplained in terms of the schema I've presented. These are (1) borrowing, (2) widening, (3) semantic shift, (4) metaphorical transfer, and (5) phonetic distortion, which has several subtypes. Under my schema, borrowing from foreign languages may be seen as an example of decentering rank by using similarity; most English speakers are not conversant with Latin, which, given its high status in academic and medical jargon, always makes the euphemized referent sound better, as in halitosis for bad breath. Of course, often such substitutes are just as vulgar, if one understood the literal meaning of the latinate. In logic, someone who threatens another in order to win an argument is accused of ad baculum, which literally means 'getting the stick'. French is also thought to be a sophisticated language and its use often has a euphemizing effect. Lying may be described by the use of canard, which comes from the French phrase, 'vendre un canard a moitie--'to half-sell a duck', i.e., to pretend to sell it with an intention to cheat (Safire 1980:82). This same device is used in what Williams calls widening, where a roughly equivalent but ambiguously more general term is substituted for the referent, as in 'foundation' for 'girdle' or 'social disease' for 'syphilis'. An example of what Williams calls se-
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mantic shift, 'to sleep with', is, under my schema, a case of decentering rank by contiguity, as explained above. Williams defines metaphorical transfer as the comparison of things of one order to things of another, as a general case of decentering rank by similarity. The last mechanism of euphemism cited by Williamsphonetic distortionhas several subspecies: (a) abbreviation, (b) apocopation, (c) initialing, (d) backforming, (e) reduplication, (f) phonetic distortion, (g) blending, (h) diminution. Abbreviation is a case of decentering by contiguity, as in 'Ladies' for 'Ladies room', as is apocopation in the use of 'vamp' for 'vampire'. Initialing also falls in this class, as in 'JC' for 'Jesus Christ', or 'DOA' for 'dead on arrival'. Phonetic distortion, blending, and diminution, on the other hand, are cases of decentering by similarity. Distortion, as in the case of 'Gad' for 'God', relies on disguising the vowel. In blending, as in 'gezunda' (for a 'chamber pot'another euphemismthat 'goes under' the bed), the two distinct words which comprise the euphemism are synthesized into one word, which further disguises the euphemism. Just as diminutives in English, Jimmy, Johnny, etc., are labels for children, the use of the diminutive adds a similar sort of character to offensive words, such as 'heinie' for 'hind end'. This particular characterization of euphemism that I have presented can also be confirmed indirectly by examining vulgarisms, which, clearly, have the opposite pragmatic function of euphemisms. The vulgarism always aims to offend or shock either the cocommunicant or a person or group of persons who are the focus of the conversation. More specifically, in the vulgarism, the higher-ranked (i.e., perceptually or cognitively prominent) part of the signatum is used to represent the signatum, but is reexpressed in terms of something of lower value, again either through contiguity or through similarity. The so-called popular Romance novels are often called "bodice rippers." The entire literary phenomenon is represented by a sensually prominent part of the typical action in a typical plot, i.e., passionate love-making, but is, at the same time, expressed in a vulgar manner. There are other such examples of contiguous vulgarisms: 'chest-cutter' for heart surgeon. In this case the vulgarism focuses on the most perceptually prominent or central part of the activity, yet couches it in a language that devalues the practice; the same could be said of 'cutthroat' for murderer. The vulgarism 'the old in and out' centers on the activity of the penis going in and out of the vagina, and, by calling it the old, devalues the activity. Whereas a euphemism might call the bald man 'hair free', the vulgarism would label the man a 'skinhead', focusing on the most perceptually prominent aspect of the man's condition while devaluing it. This is similar to all vulgarisms that concern stupidity. Since the head is the locus of the brain, then the head is usually modified by devaluing adjectives: dumbhead, bonehead, shithead, garbagehead, empty-headed, pointed-head, meathead, numskull. Vulgarism also makes use of similarity techniques. One of the most prominent features of a Nazi soldier was his helmet. The English thought the Nazi helmets looked like 'jerry pots', used for excretory functions, and used the name 'jerry' for the Nazi soldiers. Sexual intercourse is often likened to animal functions or to particular kinds of motions: poking, humping, mounting. In each case the prominent part, the physical activity, the movement in sexual intercourse, the part of highest
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rank is represented by making it analogous to something of low value. Instead of using the euphemism 'handkerchief, which has no obvious semantic relation to its primary function of blowing the nose, 'snotrag', on the contrary, free', identifies the item with its particular function, labels it in terms of something of low value-'snot' and 'rag'. The same sort of analysis could be applied to other tropes such as hyperbole and litotes. In hyperbole, something of lower value is transvaluated into something of higher value or importance, as found, for example, in the names of socially lessvalued occupations: 'sanitation engineer' or 'garbologist' (Pei 1973:143), 'demolition engineer' (for housewrecker), 'rodent officer' for rat catcher, 'canine control' or 'animal welfare officer' for dogcatcher, or the Department of Interior's name for cowboys, 'mobile mountain range technicians', or the Senate's name for shoeshine boy, 'footwear maintenance engineer' (Pei 1973:144); 'singlepurpose agricultural structures' for pigpens, 'media courier' for newspaper boy, 'service technician' for repairman, 'career associate scanning professional' for grocery store checkout clerk. Hyperbole is found also in the highly inflated language of bureaucrats, as in 'canine seclusion habitat' for doghouse or 'hedonic affect icon' for the smiling faces that accompany "have a nice day" buttons. Consider the advertisement in figure 42:
Figure 42. This advertisement from the 1930S is a good illustration of hyperbole.
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something which is of little concern or of low value to business operations, viz., the kind of hand towels used in the bathroom, is suddenly not only of major importance to the company, but entails radical political consequences as well. The threat of unionization, Bolshevism, and the overthrow of democracy now hinges on the right kind of paper towel. The proper kind of towel will ensure worker satisfaction and political tranquility in the work place. Litotes may be seen as the contrary of hyperbole, since they often devalue or attenuate something of higher value or importance, usually through the specialized technique of the negation of the contrary: 'he's not a bad singer' or 'that's not too shabby'. Thus, unlike euphemism, which employs a similar technique, i.e., which negates the unmarked member of an opposition ('that is not good'), litotes negates the marked member of the opposition, and this parallels its pragmatic function of attenuating the value of the referent. Where euphemisms attenuate the marked value of their referents, vulgarisms intensify them; where hyperbole heightens the value of devalued referents, litotes devalues valued referents.
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Part Three Narration as Transvaluation
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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FIVE A Critique of the Formalist-Structuralist Analysis of Narration Myth is the most elementary form of narrative. It serves as the evolutionary ancestor for all others. In its broadest sense, myth is a representation of action and event and narration is the means by which such representations are accomplished. Consequently, the understanding of myth requires understanding narration. Narration organizes actions and the characters who perform or suffer those actions into a coherent whole. ''Clearly a narrative is a whole because it is constituted of elementsevents and existentsthat differ from what they constitute" (Chatman 1978:21). Narrative takes events and characters (existents) and organizes them with a meaning over and above the meaning each has individually and independently of one another. I want to show how such an organization is tied to the notion of transvaluation, specifically, to the notions of rank and markedness. "So much work has been done in the field of narratology that to attempt any sort of synthesis, identifying means of fundamental agreement and the principal issues in disputes, would be a massive task" (Culler 1981:169). I certainly do not believe I could perform such a task. Consequently, my focus in the following will be on those studies that concern elementary narratives such as folktales and myth. Secondly, I want to focus on the formalist-structuralist tradition, since I believe it is that tradition which produces the most interesting and fruitful analysis of such narrative types; thirdly, I want to give a reading of the classical sources in that tradition, since it is surely their theories which serve as the groundwork for all other studies within that tradition. As Wallace Martin claims, "in addition to creating the most influential of such [formalist and structuralist] theories, Propp and LéviStrauss have connected on each other's work; they provide the best starting point for anyone interested in this branch of narrative theory" (1986:105). The purpose in all of this is to show how a certain critical reading of this tradition can lead to the development of a theory of narration as transvaluation. A. A Critique of Propp's Morphology of the Folktale The formalist theory of narration begins with a decided shift in the study of the folktale. Folklorists of the late nineteenth century were more concerned with the
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genesis and development of folklore than with its structure (Dundes 1975:6).18 But with the development of the so-called Finnish historical-geographical method, questions of the ultimate origin of the myth are discarded in favor of analysis of inherent patterns within the myths themselves, exemplified in the work of Aarne and Thompson. According to Stith Thompson, the aim of his study is "to arrange in a simple logical classification the elements which make up traditional narrative literature" (i. 1933-1936:19). The elements of the tale are defined as motifs, which are defined as "the smallest element in a tale having a power to persist in tradition" (i. 1933-1936:415-16). Motifs are of three types: actors, items in the background of the action (e.g., magic objects), and single incidents. The ultimate purpose of the classification is to delineate the "complete life history of a particular tale" (i. 1933-1936:430) in order to determine the manner of dissemination and the process of development of folklore content. Aarne used the term type, to which Thompson's motif closely corresponds. Type refers to the type of plot (defined rather loosely) (1911). Using this notion of type in his study of North American Indian tales, Thompson aimed at disclosing, through geographical distribution and frequency of repetition of folktale segments, the makeup of an original archetype and its relative geographical locale, leading to the hierarchization of its variants. But as it has been pointed out (Hendricks 1982), the inconsistencies in Thompson's analysis cast doubt on the correctness of the archetype and point to the need of a prior synchronic study of the tale-type. This is precisely the upshot of Propp's criticism of the efforts of the so-called historical school in the area of the folktalea criticism which introduces a radically new approach to the study of the folktale and the structure of narration (1928:lff.). In the classic Morphology of the Folktale, Propp suggests three ways in which the folktale can be studied: ". . . from the aspect of their composition and structure, or from the aspect of those processes and changes to which they are subject, or from the aspect of their origins" (1928:4-5). The first approach is synchronic, in the sense that it is concerned with the form or morphology of the folktale. The second approach appears to involve what Propp calls studies in transformation. At the end of his classic study Propp argues that the entire story of fairy tales ought to be examined as a chain of variants. Were we able to unfold the picture of transformations, it would be possible to satisfy ourselves that all of the tales given can be morphologically deduced from the tales about the kidnapping of a princess by a dragon. .... Tales could be arranged so that a picture of the gradual transition from one theme to another would turn out to be quite clear. (1928:86) Indeed, in his "Wonder Tale Transformations" (1928a), Propp attempts to characterize these various rules of transformation, e.g., reduction, inversion, substitution, etc. The last approach may involve a historic-geographic approach, for example, that all the tales came from India; or it may involve a psychological study, as suggested by Wundt in terms of a delimitation of the human imaginative processes; or it may involve a socioanthropological approach, in which tales have arisen out of the context of everyday life or religious belief (1928:106f).
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But there is no doubt in Propp's mind about the relative hierarchy of these approaches. Although he insists they are not mutually exclusive approaches, nonetheless, the synchronic analysis must precede any diachronic analysis: "one cannot separate formal inquiry from the historical approach, nor oppose one to the other. The opposite is true: formal analysis, the precise, systematic description of the objective material studied is the condition and the premise of historical research and is at the same time the first step in it" (1928a:71-72). Propp reviews the failure of the historical school in their attempts to classify folktales without first synchronically studying the phenomena in question; before throwing light upon the question of the tale's origin, one must first answer the question as to what the tale is (1928:5). The difficulty with the historical approach is that a classification of folktales was needed prior to the historical analyses, yet such classifications required a synchronic study of the tale, something not theoretically possible within such an approach. Thus in regard to Aarne and his school, whose method is that of a geo-ethnographic comparison of variants of separate plots, Propp argues that "plots are in close relationship to each other. In order to determine where one plot and its variants end and another begins, one must first have made a comparative study of the plots of the folktales, and have established the principle of selecting plots and variants." This question "needs a special preliminary study before they can be extracted. Without such study the investigator is left to the mercy of his taste. . ." (1928:8). This preliminary study is none other than the classic morphology of the folktale. Propp argues that "the functions of a folktale's dramatis personae must be considered as the basic components" (1928:18). This is the case since "the names of the dramatis personae change but neither acts nor functions change. From this we can draw the inference that a folktale often attributes identical actions to varied dramatis personae" (1928:17). Propp lists a set of examples: 1. A king gives an eagle to the hero. The eagle carries the hero away to another kingdom. 2. An old man gives Sucenko a horse. The horse carries Sucenko away to another kingdom. 3. A sorcerer gives Ivan a little boat. The boat takes Ivan to another kingdom. 4. The princess gives Ivan a ring. Young men appearing from out of the ring carry him away into another kingdom. Here we can readily note the similarity between functions. For Propp, "the question of what folktale dramatis personae do is an important one for the study of the folktale; the question[s] of who performs various roles in folktales, and how, fall within the province of accessory study" (1928:19). Thus, the fact that the king, in one case, or a sorcerer in another case, gives a ring or a boat to the hero is an accidental feature of the folktale; what is essential is the identity of function in each case. "The definition of a function is most often given in the form of a noun expressing an action: interdiction, interrogation, flight" (1928:19). But, moreover, even though a king, a sorcerer, a princess, and an old man in each of the functions listed above
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are different, they can be identical in respect to type, i.e., connected to a particular "sphere of action. " That is to say, each performs the function of a "donor" in Propp's terminology. According to Propp there are seven such spheres of action (1928:7980): hero, villain, donor, dispatcher, helper, false hero, sought-forperson. The aim of Propp's analysis is to identify the basic units of action in the tale (functions) and demonstrate their likely sequence: "Functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled. They constitute the fundamental components of a tale" (1928:21). The same function can be performed by different kinds of agents and the nominative elements of the function may differ, but despite these differences a generic core to the function can be found: interdiction, violation, villainy, etc. The number of these functions is limited to 31 (1928:21). These functions are always organized into a sequence that is identical (1928:22). Generally speaking, there is the preparatory part of the tale, which introduces the villainy or the lack; this leads to the acceptance by the hero to liquidate the lack, leading to a quest. This involves the test of the hero and the acquisition of a helper and/or magical agent. This leads to liquidation of the initial misfortune, and/or punishment of the villain. This can be followed by delaynew quests or struggles, the introduction of a false hero. The tale ends with the recognition of the hero, marriage, and reward. The narrative roles of the agents are defined by their spheres of action. The villain functions in initiating a lack, the hero in liquidating it, the helper in aiding the hero, the dispatcher in establishing the hero's quest, etc. The tale as a whole "is built upon the proper alternation of the . . . functions in various forms, with some of them absent from each story and with others repeated" (1928:99). Consequently, the various Russian folktales may be seen as a single tale (1928:22) and "all fairy tales are of one type in their structure" (1928:23). In other words, all fairy tales are variants of one basic type and this basic type is the form of the fairy tale (see fig. 43). But beyond the merely external and rather mechanical interrelation between the functions, Propp fails to give a satisfactory account of the dynamic unity of these functions into a coherent whole. As Ricoeur argues, To my mind, this unity of the tale, which gives rise to a new combinatory system, does not result from the segmentation into functions but rather precedes it. It constitutes the teleological guide for distributing the functions along the sequential time and governs such subsets as preparatory section, complication, delay and denouement .... And the narrative time is thus no longer the simple succession of segments external to one another but the extended duration between a beginning and an ending. (1984:38) Where Propp fails, the structuralists attempt to compensate. If the form is the story underlying all the variants, and the story is the external combination of likely sequences of functions, then structure is the underlying combinatory system which accounts for the genesis of those sequences.
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Figure 43. The sequence of functions in the Russian fairy tale, based on Propp's analysis (1928:105) B. Lévi-Strauss's Theory of Narration In his criticism of Propp, Lévi-Strauss argues: One can wonder whether . . . [Propp] does not stop the analysis too soon, seeking the form too close to the level of empirical observation. Among the 31 functions which he distinguishes, several appear reducible, i.e., assimilable to the same function reappearing in different moments of the narrative, but after undergoing one or a number of transformations. (196:136ff.) He argues most radically that "several of Propp's functions would in reality constitute the grouping of transformations of one and the same function" (1960:137). Thus, one could treat 'violation' as the "reverse" of 'prohibition', the latter as a negative transformation of 'injunction'. The 'departure' and 'return' would appear as the same function of disjunction, negatively or positively expressed (1960:137).
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But this model, as an explanation of the dynamic of narration, is never really fully explicated by Lévi-Strauss. Beyond the fact that he claims that it can account for both the diachronic aspect of the narration (its succession of events) and its achronic character, such that "the shifting of functions is no more than one of their modes of permutation (by vertical columns or fractions of columns)" (1960:138), the closest attempt to an account of narration is found in the classic "Structural Study of Myth." Lévi-Strauss divides his work on mythology into a "paradigmatic" phase and a "syntagmatic" one, each of which serves to complement the other (1964:307). The first, as exemplified by "The Structural Study of Myth," aims at disclosing the underlying structure of the elements within any one myth. The latter, the focus of the Mythologigues series, is concerned with the rules of transformation of themes and elements between myths and consequently is not so concerned with accounting for the narrative structure of a myth. It is in the early work, if anywhere, that a theory of narration can be found in Lévi-Strauss. But in the structural study of myth one finds an even more mechanical account of narration than in Propp; rather, the focus here is not on the dynamic of the narration, but on the underlying structure of the myth. According to Lévi-Strauss, "myth like the rest of language is made up of constituent units present in language when analyzed on other levels; namely, phonemes, morphemes, and sememes but they, nevertheless, differ among themselves; they belong to a higher and more complex order. For this reason, we shall call them gross constituent units . . . or mythemes" (1955:210-11). The mytheme consists of a relation, i.e., a proposition which contains a subject linked to a function (1955:210-11). In turn, these mythemes "are not isolated relations but bundles of such relations, and it is only as bundles that these relations can be put to use and combined so as to produce a meaning" (1955:211). Just as phonemes are bundles of distinctive features, and grammatical structures bundles of morphemes, so the mythical tales are bundles of mythemes. Likening the myth to an orchestra score, he sees the myth as a sequence of the following sort:
Accordingly, in analyzing the Oedipus myth, Levi-Strauss organizes the myth into four columns, each with a number of mythemes united by a common theme (1955:214). These are (1) the overrating of blood relations, with the mythemes (a) Cadmos seeks his sister, Europa, ravished by Zeus, (b) Oedipus marries his mother, Jocasta, and (c) Antigone buries her brother Polynices, despite prohibition;
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(2) underrating of blood relations, with the mythemes (a) the Spartoi kill one another, (b) Oedipus kills his father, Laius, and (c) Eteocles kills his brother, Polynices; (3) the denial of the autochthonous origin of man, with the mythemes (a) Cadmos kills the dragon and (b) Oedipus kills the Sphinx; (4) the affirmation of the autochthonous origin of man, with the mythemes (a) 'Labdacus' meaning 'lame' and (b) 'Oedipus' meaning 'swollen-footed'. Lévi-Strauss proposes a rather simple account of narration: We thus find ourselves confronted with four vertical columns, each of which includes several relations belonging to the same bundle. Were we to tell the myth, we would disregard the columns and read the rows from left to right and from top to bottom. But if we wanted to understand the myth, then we will have to disregard one half of the diachronic dimension (top to bottom) and read from left to right, column after column, each one being considered as a unit. (1955:214) Thus the sequence of mythemes is reduced to mere mechanical contiguity, emphasis placed rather on accounting for the genesis of the mytheme. But such a division fails to account for a very important aspect of the myth, viz., the connection between narration and the underlying telos of the myth. Lévi-Strauss seems to pursue the latter to the exclusion of the former. But even this analysis of the structure of the myth is riddled with difficulties. Firstly, it is clear that the fourth column does not meet the criterion of a mytheme since it is not "a function linked with a subject," and, therefore, does not consist of a relation. Secondly, it is not clear why 'Cadmos seeking his ravished sister' is an "overrating" of blood relations, yet alone why it has anything in common with the fact that 'Antigone buries her brother'. Rape, incest, and disobedience may perhaps have some general category in common, but it is not Cadmos who ravishes his sister after all. It is relatively easy to establish a somewhat modified list of categories which could incorporate the same mythemes (cp. Carroll 1978). In fact, by introducing other key mythemes which Lévi-Strauss fails to include, one could substantially change the meaning of the other categories. For example, the theme of banishment is excluded in Lévi-Strauss's analysis: Cadmos is banished by Agenor, Oedipus is abandoned by Laius, Oedipus's self-banishment, Polynices is banished from Thebes by Eteocles, etc. This argues, in fact, that by bringing extrinsic categories to bear on the organization of the myth a certain arbitrariness in interpretation might result, and there could be an indefinite number of categories which might always be added to existing ones. Moreover, even if a list of such categories could be completed, my suspicion is that these would come very close to a typology of functions in the sense of Propp, and hence violate Lévi-Strauss's own criticism of formalism. In the early work, Lévi-Strauss claims that "the purpose of the myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction" (1955:229). "Mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution" (1955:224). It may be argued that it is precisely these underlying mytho-logical processes that can give an account of the narrative process. In this study he outlines three such processes: (1) "the purpose of the myth is to provide a logical model
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capable of overcoming a contradiction" (1955:229); "mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution" (1955:224); (2) a rule similar to generalized exchange (1955:228), which "confronts us with a double, reciprocal exchange of functions" (1955:219); and (3) there is the familiar formula: Fx(a):Fy(b)::Fx(b):Fa- (y). The first principle provides the basis for the interpretation of the Oedipus myth. The first column is identified as the "overrating of blood relations," the second as "the underrating of blood relations"; the third is associated with the "denial of the autochthonous origin of man," the fourth with the affirmation of that origin. Without much justification and using some dialectical obfuscation, one is told: It follows that column four is to column three as column one is to column two. The inability to connect two kinds of relationships is overcome (or rather replaced) by the assertion that contradictory relationships are identical in as much as they are both self-contradictory in a similar way. (1955:216) In other words, the contradiction between the view that we are born of humans and the view that humans had to have been originally born of something else is overcome by showing that the contradictories of each of those positions are homologous precisely in terms of their contradictory character. But besides the fact that the column labels require a leap of faith in terms of their interpretation, it is unclear why a contradiction would be overcome by showing it to be homologous to other kinds of contradictions. Is it really possible to argue that the contradiction between A and -A is resolved by merely showing it to be similar to any other contradiction, B and -B? It is also even more difficult to imagine how narration might be generated out of such a process. The two other mytho-logical processes appear to be more viable in accounting for the narrative structure of the myth. The second logical process found in the myth "confronts us with a double, reciprocal exchange of functions." For example, in regard to the Cushing version of the Zuni origin and emergence myth (Lévi-Strauss 1955:219), the various mediators in the myth form a "dialectic" in which there is a change from a spatial dimension (mediation between sky and earth) to a temporal dimension (mediation between summer and winter; i.e., between birth and death). But while the shift is being made from space to time, the final solution (triad) re-introduces space, since a triad consists of a dioscuric pair plus a messiah present simultaneously; and while the point of departure was ostensibly formulated in terms of space reference (sky and earth), this was nevertheless implicitly conceived in terms of a time reference (first the messiah calls, then the dioscurii descend). (1955:226f.) This, as Lévi-Strauss notes, is a process similar to that of generalized exchange (1955:228). In kinship terminology this occurs when men of group A give women to B, who give women to C, who complete the circle by giving women to A (example: matrilateral and patrilateral cross-cousin marriage). This idea of generalized exchange is clarified in his Elementary Structures of Kinship.
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It is man's ability to organize biological relations as systems of opposition which is the condition of the possibility of exchange (1949:136) in kinship; exchange, in its general aspect, is a phenomenon of reciprocity (1949:143). Reciprocity, in turn, is a synthesis of oppositions. For example, in economic exchange, reciprocity synthesizes the opposition between private property and common ownership, both of which are a denial of reciprocity (1949:490). In matrimonial exchange, it is the mediation of woman as the object of personal desire and the object of the desire of others (1949:86). In general, reciprocity entails a mediation between I and other (1949:84). In fact, the process of opposition and correlation, which is basic to the definition of the dualistic principle (in turn essential to dual organization in kinship structure), is itself one modality of the principle of reciprocity (1949:83), and, as Lévi-Strauss points out, is an operative principle in myth (1955:225). For Lévi-Strauss, then, the human mind, perceiving relations of oppositions in natural reality, reconciles and mediates them through the structures of reciprocity. Finally, there is the last process which Lévi-Strauss mentions, viz., Fx(a):Fy(b) ::Fx(b):Fa-1(y). Given two terms, a and b, and two functions, x and y, of these terms, it is assumed that a relation of equivalence exists between two situations defined respectively by an inversion of terms and relations under two conditions: (1) that one term be replaced by its opposite; (2) that an inversion be made between the function value and the term value of two elements. Although Lévi-Strauss never really systematically uses this formula in later works (there is a reference and modification of it in On the Origin of Table Manners) (cp. Maranda and Maranda 1971:28-29), there have been attempted applications of the formula, as found in the work of Maranda and Maranda (1971) and Crumrine and Macklin (1974). An examination of the Marandas' work might suffice to determine its credibility. According to the Marandas, Lévi-Strauss's formula is non-linear, i.e., it implies a permutation of roles or functions and of terms. The term 'a' becomes inverted and becomes a function; 'y', which is a function, becomes a term in the final outcome of the process. So, for example, if a given actor 'a' is specified by a negative function Fx (and thus becomes a villain), and another one 'b' by a positive function Fy (and thus becomes a hero), 'b' is capable of assuming, in turn, also a negative function which leads to a 'victory' so much more complete that it proceeds from the "ruin of the term 'a"' and, therefore, definitely establishes the positive values 'y' of the final outcome. .... Another way of explicating our interpretation of Lévi-Strauss' formula is to point out that its first three members, Fx(a), Fy(b), and Fx(b), express a dynamic process whose final outcome, expressed by the last member, Fa-1(y), is the result or a state; i.e., the end of the process of mediation. (1971:26-27) However, a closer examination of Lévi-Strauss's formula shows the following conditions: 1. what 'a' performs 'b' performs, Fx(a)?F(b); 2. 'a' performs 'x' but then 'y' is transformed into an agent, and an agent the opposite of 'a' is transformed into a function, such that 'y' performs a-1;
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3. 'b' performs first 'y' then 'x':Fy(b)?F,(b); 4. there exists an analogical relation between 'a' performing 'x', 'b' performing 'y', and 'b' performing 'x' and 'y' performing a-1; 5. 'y' performing a-1 is the end result of a process of mediation. Keeping these conditions in mind, I would now like to turn to an examination of the Marandas' application of this formula to the analysis of folklore. The Marandas argue that it is only in the Model IV (successful mediation; permutation of initial impact) that we have an "unquestionable exemplification of Lévi-Strauss' formula" (1971: 66). As an illustration, they use the following schwank: Well, once a farmer and his servant were starting their meal, as the neighbors were eating too. So the farmer said, "Let's pretend eating, but not eat." The servant contented himself with it, and then when they went to the field to mow, the servant took the blade off the scythe and said, "Well now, let's pretend mowing, but not mow." (1971:66) Here: a = authority, b = servant, x = pretending, y = accepting pretense. The Marandas' final interpretation reads: "If pretending authority results in the servant's acceptance of pretense, then the servant's pretense results in the permutation of the authority function of accepting pretense" (1971:67). Carefully examining the analysis in light of the conditions of the formula (1-5) cited above, it is clear that there are several problems in matching up the two. In regard to condition 1, it is indeed the case that what 'a', the master, performs, 'b', the servant, performs. That is, both pretend to do something, although there is a difference in the pretending acts, in the sense that by pretending to eat breakfast the master refuses to meet his obligation to the servant, and, by pretending to use the scythe, the servant refuses to meet his obligation to the mastera kind of negative reciprocity. In regard to condition 2, Fa-1(y) would, given the Marandas' substitute, have to be translated as 'one who accepted pretense loses masterly authority', where transforming 'a' into a function (e.g., commanding, as a master might), then changing the function 'y', 'accepting pretense', into an agent might make it read, 'one who accepts pretense'. But the master never accepts pretense, the servant does but only to patiently wait his turn to trick the master. It is true that the master does lose his authority by means of the clever trick of the servant, but this result is not really a mytheme, that is, an agent in combination with a function present in the schwank; rather, this is perhaps the interpretation or the feeling that results from the patterning of the schwank. In regard to condition 3, it is clear that this condition holds: the servant first accepts pretense and then does the pretending. The most difficulty with the application of the formula centers on condition 4. It is difficult to see the four mythemes as forming a homology. Given the Marandas' translations, it would read as follows: master pretending is to servant accepting pretense as the servant pretending is to the one who accepted pretense losing (masterly) authority.
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They are not, strictly speaking, homologous, since the first two terms have a different logical relation than the second two. The first two are converses in terms of master/servant and pretending/accepting pretense; but no such relation exists between the second two terms. Fa-1(y) is indeed the impression that the schwank leaves, i.e., the master loses authority by being tricked by the servant; but as mentioned before, this is not, strictly speaking, a mytheme. If, instead, this schwank were given a transvaluative interpretation, I would argue, firstly, that it takes on more the form of a joke than a simple narrationin which case, following the line of Freud, it could be treated as a kind of displacement. The schwank inverts the rank order between farmer and servant. The farmer is both socially and economically superior to the servant, but the schwank devalues this hierarchy by introducing a second one which shows the servant to be superior in terms of wit and fairness. C. The Narrative Semiotics of Greimas Propp suggested that many of his functions could be paired in the following way: 1. interdiction/violation (1928:27) 2. reconaissance/gain of information (1928:29) 3. deceit/complicity (1928:30) 4. (villainylack)/liquidation of lack (1928:31, 34-35, 53) 5. request/acceptance (1928:38) 6. test/(reaction-receipt of magical agent) (1928:46) 7. departure/return (1928:56) 8. task/solution (1928:62) 9. false hero makes claims/false hero exposed-punishment (1928:62) 10. combat/victory (1928:109) 11. pursuit/rescue (1928:110) This leaves the following functions unpaired: absence, spatial transference, unrecognized arrival, marriage. Greimas (1966:195), along with Propp, notes that these paired functions are based on implication, i.e., violation presupposes interdiction, even if, as Propp notes, the interdiction is not explicit in the text (1928:82) (cp. also Lévi-Strauss 1968:121; cp. also Guttgemanns 1975:82). However, Greimas attempts to go beyond this simple reduction of the functions and make the reduction in terms of the framework of his own structural semantics, that is, in terms of an underlying structural relation between the elements of the functions, based on his ''semiotic square." Thus, for example, interdiction/violation is seen as a case of 'S vs. non-S' and is correlated with request/acceptance as cases of rupture of contract/fulfillment of a contract, i.e., as à vs. A (1966:195). As Henault (1983:27) argues, the narrative, according to Greimas, ". . . can be read as the transformation of a given state into its contrary (or at least its contradictory)." Marriage, then, is also seen as the fulfillment of an implicit contract between the
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sender and the hero who has rescued the princess (1966:196). The reduction continues with the categorization of several functions, such as fraud/deceit, marking/ recognition, under the rubric of communication (C) and the remaining functions in terms of tests and their consequences (F). The achronic structure of the functions, then, is reduced to the oppositon between à vs. A and C vs. C; F, because of its peculiar relation to A and C, is tied to the diachronic character of the functions. The diachronic character of the plot, then, is characterized as a movement from the initial sequence à + C, to its final sequence A +C, mediated by the various tests (F). Similar to Lévi-Strauss, but in a more detailed fashion, there is a reduction of Propp's functions to a series of binary oppositions, and their syntagmatic combination in terms of conjunction and disjunction, which generates the narrative. This is made clear in Du Sens (Greimas 1970:226ff.). The narrative, syntagmatically considered, is a process beginning with the establishment of a contract, its violation, and ending in its restoration. The reduction of this syntagmatic level to the paradigmatic one results by assimilating the establishment of the contract to a conjunction between a mandate and its acceptance, the breaking of the contract to some new conjunctionthe receiving of the helper in the qualifying test, the liquidation of the lack in the principal test, and the recognition in the glorifying test. Between the initiation of a lack and its liquidation, there are thus only conjunctions and disjunctions: narration is reduced to logical oppositions and their disjunctions and conjunctions. In its most general function, the narration serves as a mediationit aims at restoring a prior order that is threatened, or projects a new order that would be the promise of salvation (Greimas 1966:212f.). But this underscores the element of value that is present in the dynamics of the narration. If the narration is a play between the initiation of a lack and its liquidation (the loss of an order and its restoration), then, as articulated in the notion of transference (1970:173ff.), this can be reformulated as a movement from the situation in which one subject acquires a (valuable) something of which another subject is deprived, to its restoration to the original owner. Thus the movement from lack to its liquidation is in effect a circular transference which constitutes the narration "as a process that creates values" (1970:178). In this light, the general function of the narration, in the context of the analysis of the folktale, is to restore a threatened order of values. But there are several difficulties with the analysis as outlined here. The first concerns certain logical anomalies; the second, which is more important for my purposes here, concerns the ability of this account to generate the axiological character of the narration from its merely logical relations. In regard to the first point, 'violation' is not the "reverse" or the "contrary" of 'interdiction', although 'obey' is the contradiction of 'violate' or 'disobey'the relation is rather one of implication. Thus it is difficult to see any logical sense of characterizing violation/interdiction as 'a vs. non-a', especially since in any typical logical symbolism, non-a is the complement of a. The second consideration is far more important. Granted that the syntagmatic character of the narrative is found in the circulation of values, is it possible to gener-
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ate this axiology from logical axiomatics? The answer to that question in its most general form would require a long analysis. However, I think that in the context of Greimas this can be answered directly. I would argue that the merely formal relation between the functions is not enough to account for, firstly, the peculiar qualitative difference between the functions, and, secondly, the dynamic or the tension that valuative oppositions create. Consider the first point. To obey implies a command or an interdiction which was issued and has the structure of implication: if x obeys, then x was commanded; similarly, if x disobeys, then x was commanded. Obey and disobey are contradictories and could be reformulated as O and -O. But the formal relation alone is not enough to characterize the valuative difference between obeying an interdiction and disobeying one. The last calls up the entire normative framework of authority, obligation, duty, etc. Thus the violation of an interdiction would create a series of tensions that demand a response from the authority: will the authority retaliate by force? will there be a struggle? what are the consequences of the violation? The violation of the prohibition, in effect, creates a crisis in the structure of the authority that issues the interdiction. If the command or interdiction is obeyed, there is no such crisis created; the action is, practically speaking, complete. It is difficult to imagine how these aspects of violation can be derived from the purely logical relations between it and prohibition. As Burkert suggests, the actions which make up the tale cannot be set up into "symmetrical" pairs, which yield "a neat transformation from minus to plus." Rather, these sorts of acts ''have their own complex, asymmetrical dynamics" (1979:17). Moreover, as Ricoeur argues in his analysis of Greimas, the very concepts of contract, violation, and restoration introduce already a highly axiological aspect to the formation of the narrative (1984:47). "As a negation of the acceptance, the violation is an axiological negation as much as it is a logical disjunction" (1984:47). In regard to the role of the quest and the test as mediating element in the narrative (F cited above), Ricoeur argues that "the mediation that the narrative brings about as a quest cannot simply be a logical one. . . . The test, the quest, and the struggle may not . . . be reduced to the role of being the figurative expression of a logical transformation" (1984:47). Indeed, as Ricoeur notes, it appears in Greimas that the axiologic is not generated out of the logical, but is something that is superimposed or added to the logical structure of the semiotic square (1984:54). In point of fact, Ricoeur goes so far as to argue that "my initial doubt . . . is whether from its very first statethat is, from the construction of the semiotic squareGreimas's analysis is not teleologically guided by an anticipation of the final stage, namely, the one where narration is a process that creates values" (1984:56). In this respect I think Greimas fails to make a transition from the semiotic square to the valuative function of the narration. What occurs at best instead is the development of a logical model, on the one hand, and an axiological analysis of the narration on the otherand a forced mapping of one onto the other. But even if this mapping could be successful, it would mean the reduction of value to logical relation and, consequently, the loss of the dynamic of the narration. As Walther Burkert suggests in this respect, "one may wonder . . . how one can ever
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get back from such neat and barren systems to describing any identifiable tale in its dynamic. . ." (1979:11). Instead, the weaknesses of Greimas's account show that an account of narration must begin from an axiological framework, not a logical one and, indeed, as Greimas himself writes, the problem is "to transform an axiology, given as a system of values, into an operative syntagmatization" (1976:62). The importance of Greimas is that he recognizes the overall valuative character of narration; the weakness is the attempt to derive it from a logical structure. D. Bremond's Ethical Model of Narrative In his analysis of the French fairy tale, Bremond (1976) comes very close to finding the structure of the narrative in valuative terms. In this study, Bremond is analyzing a fairly well-defined kind of narration, fairy tales which have a kind of morally edifying narrative "which is governed by the optimistic requirement of a happy ending" (1976:49). However, I think the approach he takes here has wider implication for the narratives of myth and folktale as a whole. Bremond argues that many of Propp's functions can be reduced to six, couched in the language of evaluation. Propp's function A, 'villain causes injury', can be placed under the rubric of deterioration; function K, 'liquidation of misfortune', is relabelled as improvement; under unworthiness comes A, 'villainy', and L, 'claims of a false hero or villain'; under merit comes E, 'hero's reaction to donor's test', I, 'victory of hero over villain', K, 'liquidation of misfortune', and N, 'difficult task accomplished'; finally, F, 'hero acquires use of magical agent', Rs, 'rescue of hero from pursuit', T, 'hero given new appearance', and W, 'hero marries and ascends throne', as cases of reward (1976:52). These six functions, deterioration, improvement, unworthiness, punishment, merit, and reward, can be organized in terms of "elementary sequences" (1976:49): 1. deterioration®improvement 2. merit® reward 3. unworthiness® punishment These elementary sequences provide the basic dynamics of the narrative: the deterioration of the victim is due to an unworthy villain, which results in the punishment of the villain; the improvement of the victim is due to a worthy helper, which results in the reward for the helper (1976:50). In its most complete form (what Bremond calls Type IV), the deterioration of a victim due to an unworthy villain creates a movement toward its valuative opposite, an improvement in the condition of the victim, thanks to the worthy helper; but the unworthy villain's action generates its valuative opposite, punishment, and the worthy helper's action generates its valuative complement, reward. The sequence of functions in the narrative is given a coherence in valuative terms, rather than in terms of a mechanical, formal relation between functions, or in terms of any deep logical structure. "We must . . . leave Dundes as well as Propp if we do not want to merely represent the structure of the tale as a linear array of events chronologically arranged one after the other"
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(1976:52). But I think the full force of Bremond's novel approach to narration is not entirely realized by Bremond himself, and he resorts occasionally to viewing the valuative dynamics of the narrative as logical, deductive sequences: "being . almost purely deductive, our model should be applicable a priori to every kind of morally edifying narrative which is governed by the optimistic requirement of a happy ending" (1976:49). Although Bremond shows that axiology provides the coherence in the narration, still, valuation is treated as a logical relation. E. A Reestimation of Propp's Morphology I would like presently to reexamine Propp's functions in light of the valuative framework of narration as intimated by both Greimas and Bremond, but using the vocabulary of transvaluation. Here I can only give a general idea of how Propp's functions and their dramatis personae can be articulated in terms of transvaluation. A more detailed and rigorous analysis requires a more radical examination of narrative, which is to follow. In Logique du récit, Bremond uncovers a certain kind of tension in the relation between two alternative outcomes of a possible action as disclosed within the framework of Propp's functions. Propp was merely concerned with the mechanical, quasinecessary connection between functions (Bremond 1973:18ff.). Propp's model outlines a certain cultural pattern found in the Russian fairy tale. But if the basic functions are viewed as one of at least two possible actions, then the dynamism of the narrative is accounted for. Read backwards, the tale imposes a kind of teleological necessity, so that to punish the villain, the tale has him commit a villainy. But read progressively, a struggle can lead to either victory or defeat, although the typicality of the Russian folktale guarantees that victorious struggles with the villain will result (Bremond 1973:3lff.): "That struggle is implied in victory is a logical requirement, that victory is implied by struggle is a cultural stereotype" (1973:25). Thus, instead of the notion of function, Bremond employs the concept of "elementary sequence," which views the pairing of functions hinted at by Propp as actually the opening and closing of this elementary sequence (1976:51). For example, the opening of an elementary sequence might be a struggle (H), its closing, victory over the villain (I), although the other possibility, defeat, is not part of the cultural solution for such events in the tale. Similarly, the assignment of a difficult task (M), is the opening of a sequence in which the accomplishment of the task (N) is its closing. Although this analysis does not account for the dynamic of the narration in terms of valuation, it still emphasizes the difference between two alternatives to a possible action, which can serve as a beginning point for their valuative comparison. Keeping the pairing of functions suggested by Propp in mind, and the further pairing found in Greimas, given Bremond's insight, 26 of Propp's 31 functions can be reorganized as in figure 44. The opening function (for example, interdiction) is divided into two possibilities, obey and violate, each of which has a markedness value (U = unmarked, M = marked). The marked alternative adds a certain valuative tension to the opening
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Figure 44. Propp's functions can be reorganized in terms of a set of marked opposites. function, which causes, so to speak, the narration to move to another elementary sequence until the alternative of the consequentially related function is unmarked, thus either ending a "move" (using Propp's terminology) or the entire tale. Generally speaking, the dynamic and coherence of the narrative are made through the movement from marked situations to unmarked ones. Thus, in a typical sequence of functions, whereas obeying an interdiction would close the sequence, its violation calls for another sequence to extend the tension created in the breakdown of authority. In the typical tale this invites villainy. Again, if any of the unmarked alternatives result in the sphere of action that concerns villainy, the move would come to an abrupt end, that is, if the villainous reconnaissance were unsuccessful, or the deceit failed, the villainy could not take place. As a general schema it is clear that the typical narration moves from the initia-
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Figure 45. Propp's sequence of functions can be reorganized as three phases involving the disruption, crisis, and enhancement of a hierarchy. Stage I Disruption of a hierarchy: marking the unmarked Stage II Crisis: will the hierarchy survive? State III Restoration and enhancement of the hierarchy: unmarking the marked
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tion of a lack (marked) to its liquidation (unmarked); the act of villainy to its punishment (unmarked); the acts of the hero to his reward (unmarked). Within each of these sequences, there are subsequences that also end in the unmarked situation: pursuit leads to rescue (unmarked), combat to victory (unmarked), test of the donor to success (unmarked), a difficult task to its accomplishment (unmarked), departure to its return (unmarked), branding to its recognition (unmarked). In general, the choice of the marked alternative continues the sequence, aiming teleologically for an unmarked alternative to further sequences. The search for the unmarked closes either a particular subsequence, or the tale as a whole: the overarching principle of the fairy tale narrative, one which gives coherence to the sequence of functions, is the rule which articulates the movement from a marked situation to an unmarked one. This principle generates three stages in the narrative structure of the kinds of folktales Propp describes: (1) the destruction of a hierarchy, i.e., a stage marking the unmarked; (2) the development of a crisis in the hierarchy due to its marking, i.e., a liminal stage; and (3) the restoration and/or enhancement of the hierarchy, i.e., the unmarking of the marked (fig. 45).19 Rank becomes coordinated with markedness in terms of the connection of the dramatis personae with their respective functions, i.e., their spheres of action. The relative hierarchies can be characterized in the following way: victim/destinator, due to violation of interdiction villain/victim, due to act of villainy hero/destinator, due to acceptance of the call for help donor/hero, due to receiving helping agent hero/villain, due to victory in combat false hero/hero, due to deception hero/false hero, due to recognition hero/victim, due to rescue destinator/hero, due to reward This creates a general hierarchy of the dramatis personae. The villain's dominion over the victim is lost by means of the hero's punishment of the villain; the loss of the victim by the destinator is mediated by the hero's actions; the victim, who refuses the authority of the destinator, is reestablished in the marriage, which serves simultaneously as the hero's reward. Together the movement from marked situations to unmarked ones, and the relative ranking of the dramatis personae in terms of their functions, i.e., their spheres of action, provide the general coherence for the narration of the folktale, that is, they give an overarching unity to the tale. However, this is a general analysis of the rules of markedness and rank as they could serve in the account of the dynamic and coherence of narrative. This is something that must be spelled out in some detail and it requires a further analysis of narration and its elements.
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SIX The General Structure of Narration in Myth and Folktale Myth is essentially human action encoded as narration, or, as Walther Burkert suggests, "the verbalization of human action." Narration is a specific function of language, and it is reasonable to assume that, as such, it retains some of the general features of language structure of which it is a part. I have advocated Jakobson's thesis of isomorphism, or what might be called, in Peirce's sense, synchronic translation. It argues that a set of differences is translated into another set of differences, creating a hierarchical integration which generates meaning. Add to this idea the notion of translation as transvaluation and here, so I would argue, is the essence of narration: it takes a certain set of culturally meaningful differences and transvalues them by means of a sequence of action. This requires an examination of narration from its lowest level, the mythemic sequence, or basic unit of action, to the narrative type (plot), i.e., the organization of units of action into an organized whole. 20 A. The Mythemic Sequence The mythemic sequence is the basic unit of action in the myth. Its constitution is especially problematic. Lévi-Strauss suggests the rather general formulation of "a subject linked with a function." However, if the suggestion that narration is a representation of action is feasible, then there is a good reason to believe that a grammar of action ought to serve as the basis for articulating the mythemic sequence as a linguistic representation of action. 21 If it can be shown that, in addition, there is a link between a grammar of action and a grammar of language, then the isomorphism between language and narrative (as a specific function of language) is more credible. Such an attempt on my part here should not be considered as the final formulation of the mytheme, but as a working hypothesis to serve as a means for articulating the nature of transvaluation in narration. To this end, I want to use the work of Jerome Bruner in psycholinguistics and Georg von Wright in philosophy.22Each theory is, of course, not without controversy, but does nonetheless present credible views on the matter. In an early paper, "The Ontogenesis of Speech Acts," Bruner proposes an interesting hypothesis.
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. . . the structures of action and attention provide benchmarks for interpreting the order-rules in initial grammar: that a concept of agent-action-object-recipient at the prelinguistic level aids the child in grasping the linguistic meaning of approximately ordered utterances involving such case categories as agentive, action, object, indirect object, and so forth. . . . The claim is that the child is grasping initially the representations of joint action at a pre-linguistic level, learning to differentiate these into components, learning to recognize the function of utterances placed into these serially ordered structures, until finally he comes to substitute elements of a standard lexicon in place of the non-standard ones. .... [It is] an extension of rules learned in action to the semiotic sphere. Grammatical rules are learned by analogy with the rules of action and attention. (1977:107-108)23 More generally, Bruner's claim is that there is an isomorphism between linguistic case structure and the organization of action (1977:91), since fundamental case-grammatical forms are present in all languages, categories of agent, action, object of action, recipient of action, location, possession, etc. (1977:92). The principal categories of grammar refer to acts as carried out by agents having effects of a particular kind in particular places, etc. (1977:93). Bruner emphasizes that "it is not the case that syntactic knowledge differentiates out of innate knowledge of language universals. What is universal is the structure of human action in inferring which corresponds to the structure of universal case categories" (1977:93). Or, as Slobin puts it specifically: there are certain prototypical ways in which the child experiences the world, "an animate agent is seen willfully . . . to bring about a physical and perceptible change of state or location in a patient by means of direct bodily contact," and by the age of two these prototypical ways are "encoded in consistent grammatical form," and "encoded in the most grammatical forms available in a language" (quoted in 1977:40). Thus Bruner writes, "the facts of language acquisition could not be as they are unless fundamental concepts about action and attention are available to children at the beginning of learning" (1977:94). Indeed, the works that Bruner calls upon to support his position all demonstrate that in the early state of language utterance (cp. R. Brown 1973) the categories of agent-actionobject-recipient are apparent in the child's conceptual categorizing of action (cp. Bowerman 1970; R. Brown 1973; Greenfield and Smith 1976). Roger Brown (1973a:111-12) argues that in "Stage I" development, the child's learning exhibits a certain concept of relations because "his words are produced in a particular order and that order is almost always appropriate to the relation that is suggested by the non-linguistic setting." It is clear, according to Brown, that in the context of case categories, children's sentences at this stage will take on either the form of agent-action ("Mommy sews"), action-object ("sew sock"), or agent-object (''Mommy sock"), or even agent-action-object ("Mommy sews sock"). But these categories will always take on an order appropriate to the nonlinguistic setting, yet in accordance with the grammatical order found in the cultural language. If a child sees a cat bite a dog, the child may say either "cat bite," "bite dog," "cat bite dog," or "cat dog," but "what he would never say in these circumstances but
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would say for circumstances where the roles were reversed is 'dog bite"' (1973a:1 12). These principal categories of action, agent-action-object-recipient, find their parallel in the philosophical analysis of Georg von Wright. According to von Wright, an action could be analyzed into result and consequence. This is based on the distinction between doing things and bringing about things. By doing certain things we bring about other things (1971:66). For example, by opening a window, an agent lets fresh air into the room. The thing done is the result of an action; the thing brought about is the consequence of an action (1971:67). There is an intrinsic and logical connection between the result and the action of the agent. If the result does not materialize, the action simply has not been performed. The result is an essential part of the action (1971:68). This, by way of inference, discloses the necessary connection between agency and result. Similarly, there is an intrinsic connection between consequence and patiency. A consequence could not possibly be a consequence without the ensuing effect on a patient. The patient need not be animate, i.e., a possible agent, nor need the consequence upon the patient be the desired or intended consequence by the agent. In the case of the failure of the result to achieve the intended consequence, nonetheless, a consequence still occurs. If, for example, the agent acts to open the window, but the window refuses to budge, the consequence of the result is that no fresh air enters the room. Although the tie between agency and result, on the one hand, and patiency and consequence on the other, is intrinsic and logical, the connection between result and consequence is extrinsic and causal. What an agent brings about is the effect of the action (result); that which the agent does is the cause of those effects (1971:66). Between result and consequence there is a conditionship relation in which, for example, the opening of the window is a sufficient condition for cooling the room, or the occurrence of a draft, etc. Moreover, the relation between result and consequence is somewhat relative (1971:68). An agent opens the window (result) bringing about a draft (consequence); yet the action may be analyzed further into: the agent turns the latch (result), thereby opening the window (consequence). Consequences may be compounded into immediate and remote: the agent, in opening the window, creates a draft which gives a patient a cough. The immediate consequence is the creation of the draft, the remote consequence, the cough. Primarily, the things done and brought about are changes or events. Changes are transitions from one state of affairs to another (1971:67). In the terminology of systems theory, the performance of action means the transition from a state preceding the initial state of a system to the initial state (1971:68). The result is the initial state, the consequent considered a (relative) final state. In the case of opening the window, the state preceding the initial state is the stuffy condition of the room. The initial state changes this condition, i.e., introduces the presence of what is absent (ventilation), or, from another perspective, liquidates a lack. The initial state proves to be a sufficient condition for the consequent (the ventilation of the room) and also the remote consequent (the cough). What gives unity to the sequence of actions (from an external perspective and not in terms of the intentions of the agent)
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is precisely the change in events, i.e., the contrast between initial and final state. The change of condition primarily affects both the patient and the agent. On the one hand, when an agent acts, a patient is affected through a change of state (assuming the result of the agent is successful in making the change). In simpler terms, the agent gives some condition to the patient, who, conversely, receives this condition; or conversely, an agent in performing an action takes away a condition already present in the patient and, so to speak, replaces it with another. Giving a condition is simultaneously taking away a previous condition. If an agent takes one condition from the patient, then he gives the patient another consequent condition; conversely, a patient loses one condition and receives another. Together, the research of Bruner and the philosophical analysis of von Wright provide a general category for any action sentence. Synthesizing the terminology, these categories are: agent, action, patient, consequence, and these provide the basis for what might be called the mythemic sequence, or the basic unit of action in the myth. In its most general form, myth may be viewed as a representation of action, which can be analyzed into a series of consequentially related sequences. Each sequence should mirror, then, the syntactical-grammatical structure of the action sentences, and it is, of course, a schema which sets a certain framework for dividing and organizing the events in a tale. This involves essentially the following schema: an agent acts upon a patient in such a way as to change the condition or state of a patient. It is clear from this schema that there are two functionally distinct aspects of a sequence which mirror the functional syntactic distinction between noun and verb. Accordingly, the further analysis of the mythemic sequence into its distinctive features must take into account such a distinction, yet, at the same time, maintain the integrity of the mythemic sequence as one unit. These various aspects must be hierarchically superimposed one upon another. Although the general strategy here follows that of the distinctive feature analysis of Jakobson, because the mytheme is of a higher order than that of the phonemein the sense that it contains both grammatical and lexical components organized into a certain formatthe distinctive features of the mytheme must by necessity have a more complex organizational quality than the distinctive features of the phoneme. Although there is nonetheless a general isomorphism between the organization of the phoneme and the mytheme, the higher-order complexity of the mytheme disallows a complete correspondence. In light of these considerations, the mythemic sequence can be analyzed into features at two interrelated levels. The first level is in terms of the general features of the dramatis personae (the agent-patient categories), and more specifically in terms of (a) the biophysical characteristics of the agents (e.g., male, animal, human, etc.), (b) social characteristics (e.g., kinship and affinal relations), (c) political characteristics (class, rank, etc.), and (d) economic characteristics (hunter, fisher, etc.). The second level involves an actantial level, in terms of what agents do and the conditions suffered by the patients, i.e., the roles they play in the narrative.24 The second level determines the narrative roles of the agents and patients in their relation to one another. This avoids the difficulties inherent in Propp's arti-
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ficial separation of function and dramatis personae; by concentrating on the order of functions and treating agents as mechanically associated with the functions, he makes an artificial bifurcation, destroying the continuity and coherence of the basic units of action. Moreover, such an analysis would also stress the importance of the features (social, political, etc.) of the dramatis personae to the tale. Propp dismisses these as irrelevant and, instead, treats the specific agent as a dramatic type (hero, villain, etc.). I want to argue that it is precisely the interrelation of these two levels that accounts partially for the transvaluative character of the narration. From the perspective of the tale's culture, the agents and patients can be characterized in terms of a certain hierarchical schema: humans/animals, divine/human, men/women, the old and the young, allies and enemies, kin and non-kin, etc. The actantial level superimposes relations on this first, agential level by giving these agents some dramatic roles. This superimposition may assimilate the two levels, so that kin may ally against non-kin, humans against animals; or it may create a displacement in which kin become enemies, and culturally typical enemies allies. In either case, this second, actantial, level serves as a transvaluation of the first. B. Analysis of the Agential Level of the Myth This level of the myth concerns the general features of the agents and patients of the myth, as defined within the cultural contexttheir biophysical characteristics, kinship and social relations, economic roles, political status and rank. A general analysis or chart of features of every possible dramatis persona is probably not possible, but neither is it necessary, since there is no reason to look outside the culture for their characterization. Some myths may contain divine figures, others notin some only animals play the roles of agents and patients. Of course, what is determined as a member of these classes will vary with culture categorization: a rock may be animate (as among the Ojibwa), or a bird divine (as among the Tlingit). There is also the problem of an agent who may have the biophysical characteristics of animals, yet retain the social characteristics of humans. All of these various features which characterize the perceived cultural relations among agents are based on a set of implicit and explicit rules. The rules in turn establish certain kinds of asymmetry: only men can hunt, only men can participate in religious rituals, all political decisions must be approved by the chief, etc. The asymmetry, in turn, is the basis for markedness assignment. Markedness assignment may also be difficult in light of a distinction between normal and normative. In the lexicon, the unmarked term may represent a genus and a species of the genus, i.e., a zero interpretation and a minus interpretation, the implication in the latter being that the unmarked term is the absence of a feature lower-ranked than its marked counterpart. This suggests two senses of unmarked: (1) normal, i.e., a zero interpretation, which characterizes the person as average or typical, someone who aspires to the ideals and norms of a culture but exhibits these behaviors in an average way; and (2) normative, in the sense of being paradigmatic, i.e., in being ideal, retaining the best or most excellent features or behaviors
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Figure 46. A possible taxonomy for ancient Greek myths. of the cultural norms. On the other hand, the marked person is one who falls below the average or norm, who does not exhibit or aspire to the cultural norm. 1. BIOPHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONAE The biophysical feature of the agent and patient concerns their general position in a certain cultural taxonomy that classifies their biological, physical, or cosmological type. A fairly typical taxonomy might take the form outlined in figure 46. Of course these taxonomies will always be culture-relative. The taxonomy in figure 46 might fit the general biophysical characteristics of the agents in Greek myth. How might markedness assignments be made in this case? Since markedness is highly contextual, such assignments cannot be definitely determinedbut let me illustrate with some general considerations. Animate beings, for example, might be considered marked, since they indicate the presence of some thing, 'life', which is absent in inanimate beings, and which is also supported by the morphological difference between the words. Mortal beings are marked, since they have the possibility of dying while this feature is absent in divine beings. Since mortals were created by immortals, there is also a derivative relation which further characterizes the mortals as marked. Immortals are normative; of all animate beings they are superior and consequently paradigmatic. For reasons discussed above, being female may be considered marked, being male, unmarked. These features will create a syntagm for each agent (fig. 47). This creates a certain valuative tension which has potential for actions. Europa may stand opposed to Zeus and Cadmos since she is female and they are male; Cadmos and Europa may stand opposed to Zeus since they are human and he is divine. Cadmos and Europa are kin-related, which could also serve to establish opposition to Zeus. How these potentials are actualized depends on the actantial level of the myth.
Figure 47. Marked syntagms for three figures in the Cadmos myth.
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2. KINSHIP FEATURES OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONAE Kinship relations are important defining features of the dramatis personae, and this is true for most myths. But unlike the general biophysical features of the dramatis personae, kinship poses special problems, both formally and culturally. Firstly, and formally, kinship is a converse relation; 'animate' is a property that the dramatis persona has despite relations with others, but kinship is relational and relativeego may at the same time be both father and son. Culturally there are also difficult problems. Kinship terms are culture-relative, so that one culture may have a special term for the male parent of the female parent and one for the male parent of the male parent, and others may use the same term for both maternal and paternal grandfather, or the same term for any grandparent, whether male or femaleand the situation may be similar in the case of siblings (cp. Scheffler and Lounsbury 1971:79). Also, in certain cultures the distinction between affinal and consanguinal may be blurred if one's spouse is also kin (Scheffler and Lounsbury 1971:94ff.). The formal problems with kinship terms have led some linguists to argue that any componential analysis has difficulty translating the relational opposition of the terms into components with a simple ± binary opposition. This would seem to make kinship analysis less amenable to marking (cp. Lyons 1977:319ff.; Palmer 1981:111f.). But I think that most studies have avoided this problem by establishing categories with oppositions which can capture the relationship of the kin terms. In the study of Sirono kinship terms, Scheffler and Lounsbury (1971:100ff.) articulate familial kinship in terms of oppositions within five categories: (1) familial vs. nonfamilial, any ego's genitor and genetrix plus those persons who share their genitor and genetrix with him or her; (2) lineal, i.e., direct ascendant or descendant vs. collateral; (3) one generation removed vs. same generation as ego; (4) senior generation vs. junior generation; (5) male vs. female. Thus, father (eru) in its primary sense may be componentially defined as familial, lineal, one generation removed, senior generation, male. In a more recent study by Noricks (1985), based on the model of W. H. Goodenough (1970), there is a similar result. The Nuiato kin terms are analyzed in terms of a set of oppositions within eight categories (1985:7071): (1) presence or absence of mediating relative in the genealogical chain between ego and alter; (2) consanguinity or affinity of alter; (3) lineality or collaterality of alter; (4) similarity of sex of ego and alter; (5) relative generation of the marital tie in the genealogical chain between ego and alter; (6) sex of the mediating relative between ego and alter; (7) generational seniority of alter; (8) sex of alter. Thus father (tamana) may be componentially defined as absence of mediating relative or genealogical chain, consanguineal, lineal, alter in a senior generation, male. Greenberg (1966:51ff.) claims some universals in regard to the markedness of kinship terms. For example, in general, consanguineal terms are unmarked in relation to affinal, and less distant are unmarked in relation to more distant lineal kin. 'Mother' may include both the consanguineal kin type female parent and the affinal type, while the marked term 'mother-in-law' designates only the affinal kin type.
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Also there exist cases of neutralization of sex differences in the higher degree of collaterality, so that 'cousin' may designate either male or female, while there exist separate words for male sibling (brother) and female sibling (sister).25 The culturally related problems of kinship terminology suggest that no comprehensive model can be established but must be culture-relative. However, the analysis of kinship relations in the myth need not be so complicated as to include the entire analysis of the kinship range in a culture. 3. SOCIOPOLITICAL FEATURES OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONAE These features are primarily hyponymic, i.e., rank-related. They include purely political relationsking (chief)/subject, master/slave, general/soldier, etc.but also extend into kinship relations, in the sense that these have social aspects. The husband may be considered head of the household, the wife subordinate; in matrilineal societies, such as the Tlingit, the maternal uncle/nephew relation may be more socially and politically important than father/son; etc. Generally speaking, in such hyponymic relations the superordinate person is considered unmarked, since he or she is considered normative or paradigmatic. The chief is the superior man; the uncle is the teacher of cultural values, that is, the nephew will evolve, so to speak, into his position. The head of the household is the only one who can make final decisions; all other decision makers must seek his approval. Of course, any one dramatis persona may take on many roles: a man may be head of the household, head of the clan, and chief of the tribe, and an uncle to many nephews as well. These roles must be defined within the cultural context of the myth. Social position may be gender-sensitive as well. Men may dominate public lifethey are in charge of the religious and political rituals, and women may not even participate in these. Women may dominate the household in some cultures, whereas in others they are clearly subordinate. Hyponymic relations show an asymmetry which can be formulated in the following way: If A, then a, but if B, then not-a, where A is superordinate, B subordinate, and a, a certain kind of action. Given two agents, A and B, there is an asymmetry between them when A can perform what B cannot. 4. ECONOMIC FEATURES OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONAE These concern the various social divisions of labor: food gathering vs. butchering, preparation, and distribution, within the context of the cultural categorization by food type. For example, in a certain society perhaps only men can hunt or only men can hunt certain types of animals. Other societies may permit women to fish but not to hunt, and other sorts of permutations may be imagined. Among the Bororo, for example, only the shamans can butcher and cook certain kinds of animals; only men can fish. In other cultures, butchering and preparation are exclusively female duties, although there may be exceptions. Among the Netsilik Eskimo, only men can hunt the seal during the winter, and it is the duty of the women to butcher, prepare, and distribute the food. Men, however, butcher the caribou.
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Women, as among the Bororo, may be in charge of agriculture; men's duties are confined to getting animal protein. Economic features would also include building of shelter, childcare, furniture arrangement and maintenance, and the like. The markedness of these features may be generally assigned in terms of their normativeness: some are hyponymic relations, others are dependent on the value of the activity. If meat is considered a superior source of protein, as for example in the Bororo culture, then hunting is considered a superior activity to agriculture. Since seal meat is the only source of protein for the Netsilik Eskimo in the winter, seal hunting activity is considered paradigmatic. C. Analysis of the Actantial Level of the Myth Considering the various types of features, every agent in the myth can be represented by a certain paradigm, displaying the markedness and rank of those features. These syntagms represent the set of valuative relations among the various agents of the myth. They indicate vectors of accord as well as conflict; but, generally, they provide a grid upon which the valuative relations among the agents, as defined by the culture, can be organized. The kinds of actions agents perform in the context of the tale transform them into dramatis personae; and when these actions are superimposed upon the agential level they establish higher-order relations among the agents. In light of the actions they perform, agents, with all their cultural features, now become heroes, villains, helpers, or victims. This, in turn, establishes a means of comparison and contrast to the first level. Kin-related dramatis personae may be helpers or heroes to kinvictims, or conversely, kin may play the antagonistic roles of hero and villain, or villain and victim, or nonkin may be heroes, etc. The intersection of these two planes, the agential grid and the actantial grid, can serve, as I hope to show later, as a means for understanding the myth within the cultural whole. In analyzing the kinds of actions performed by the various dramatis personae and keeping in mind the general schema of the mytheme in terms of the relation between actionconsequencethese actions may be described most generally as, on the one hand, giving or taking away some state or condition or possession from some patient, or, conversely, receiving or losing some state, condition, or possession: If A gives X to P, then P receives X from A; if A takes X from P, then P loses X through A. Of course, the condition or state lost may often have no recognizable responsible agent but may simply exist as a fact in the opening of the tale. From the logico-semantic point of view, give/receive, take/lose are converses: If A gives X to P, then P receives X from A. Give/take are contraries, as are receive/lose, and they do form a sort of "square of opposition" (fig. 48). In this case even the relation between give/lose, take/receive may be said to be consequential; someone who gives something loses what they give, as when someone who takes something, in a sense, receives something as well. But the logico-semantic relations between these actions are not adequate to capture the sense and coherence of the actions on two accounts: (1) they fail to articu-
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Figure 48. A "square of opposition" which might be suggested for the pair give/receive, lose/take. late the axiologic of the action, i.e., the sense that the action is good or bad, or of higher or lower rank, and (2) they fail to account for the dynamic of the myth, e.g., as in the case of a simple moral tale, the overcoming of the villain by the hero, or some amelioration of the victim's condition in the progress of the story. Let me consider (1) first. It is clear that the formal features of give/take do not characterize any axiologic quality, which is, rather, dependent on the condition or possession given or taken. I may give you a disease or a sense of worth, I may take away the sins of the world or your life. The quality of the action is to some extent dependent on the rank values of the conditions or possessions. In general, and in terms of general folk morality, giving something of high rank or value is good, taking it away is bad; giving something of low rank or value is bad, taking it away is good. It is evident, then, that the character of these actions is dependent on the value system of the culture. Life may have higher rank than death; thus, giving life or taking away death is an act of higher axiological rank than either taking life or "giving death." In general, taking away something good creates a lack or marked condition in the patient, while giving something that was lacking to the patient creates an unmarked condition, something which Dundes, following Propp, calls "the liquidation of lack" (1975: 74-75). In this case 'lack' does not have the formal sense of 'absence' which is characteristic of unmarked conditions. The unmarked or normative condition becomes marked when that condition is disrupted in some way.26 Thus both rank and markedness figure in the axiological judgment of the actions, something which the purely logico-semantic relations cannot capture. But this is further complicated by the fact that taking away life, for example, may be considered, within the context of a typical folk morality, a good, if it is done to someone who has taken another's life unjustly. The classic lex talionis, "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth," is not purely a reciprocal injunction but has an inherent asymmetry to it: "If someone takes an eye, then I may take his/her eye"; at the same time, it establishes the rank equivalence of the condition ''Only an eye for an eye, not life for an eye." This dependence of the axiological quality of the action on the dynamic interconnection with other actions leads to the second criticism of the purely logico-semantic analysis of the mythemes. Consider a simple tale cited by Dundes (1975:74-75), "The Release of Im
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pounded Water": a monster keeps back all the water in the world; a cultural hero slays the monster, which serves to release it. This may be analyzed formally as: Al takes X from Pl A2 takes Y from P2 A2 gives X to P1 From this framework the tale could be seen as a kind of negative reciprocity; but this, in itself, does not adequately characterize the axiological quality of the drama, nor the dramatic roles of the agents and patients and their valuative framework. Rather, an analysis of the rank and markedness relations of the various actions and their consequences and their interdependence is required before the dynamic of the drama becomes clear. Assuming that the lack of water is of lower rank than its possession, then the taking of water initiates a lack, i.e., a marked condition in P1. Consequently, this marks the action of Al, as the one who initiates a lack. A2, in effect, returns the water to P1, i.e., changes the marked condition of Pl to an unmarked one by means of taking the life of Al. That is to say, A2 improves the condition of P1 (by changing the condition from a marked to an unmarked one) by creating a deterioration in the condition of P2, who initially created the marked condition of P1. On the basis of this axiologic, one can then assign the actantial roles of the agents: the victim is the patient whose condition moves from deterioration to amelioration due to the aid of the hero; the villain is the agent who initiates a lack in some victim and whose own condition deteriorates due to the hero; the hero is the agent who improves the victim's condition and creates a deterioration in the villain's condition. More formally speaking, these may be encapsulated in the following rule: If (1) there is an agent, A, who changes the condition of a patient, P, from unmarked to marked (i.e., P's initial condition is of higher rank value than the consequent condition), and if (2) there is an agent, A, who changes the condition of a patient, P, from marked to unmarked (i.e., from an initial condition of low rank value to one higher), and where (3) sequences which characterize (1) precede those which characterize (2), then (a) the villain is identified as A in (1) and P in (2) (b) the victim is identified as P in (1) and P in (2) (c) the hero is identified as A in (1) and A in (2) This analysis of the agential and actantial levels provides a kind of valuative grid for further analyses of the myth, especially in terms of the myth's relation to the cultural whole in which it functionsan analysis which I will undertake in the following chapter. The agential analysis outlines, on the one hand, a series of valuative oppositions between agents involved in the action of the myth: human and animal, male and female, husband and wife, hunter and nonhunter, head of the household and his subordinates. On the other hand, at the level of the kinds of actions performed by these agents, the actantial analysis establishes a set of
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valuative oppositions in terms of narrative roles: victim and villain, helper and hero, etc. In any case, the interrelation of the two levels emphasizes an organic relation between agents and their actions and does not artificially separate them as found in Propp. These two levels, however, point to a third level which connects the characteristics of the agents and their narrative roles within the general framework of what might be called the narrative type or plot. At this last, narrative level, the consequential relations between mythemic sequences are ordered within a particular type: for example, within the Russian fairy tale the actions of agents upon patients initiate a lack which leads to the liquidation of that lack, that is, the narrative type creates a certain tension and movement from a marked condition to an unmarked resolution. However, there may be several narrative types, each of which establishes certain valuative tensions in the tale. The recognition of this third level also makes possible a clearer analysis of the teleological-pragmatic dimension of the narration.
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SEVEN Types of Narrative Transvaluations I have argued for the division of narrative structure into three levels: the first, the agential, concerns the distinctive features of the dramatis personae, as they form a set of valuative oppositions in the context of categories defined by the culture. The second, or actantial, level incorporates these systems of valuative differences into a higher-order grid which further creates valuative tensions among the agents in terms of the dramatic role they play within the narration. The third, or narrative, level coordinates these actions performed in the second level within the more comprehensive framework of a narrative type or plot. It is this last level which is the subject of the present chapter. My strategy is to begin with the analysis of Northrop Frye's study of the same problem, which, as Jonathan Culler remarks, can "specify the thematic forms which govern the organization of plots at their most abstract level," and so "serve as models which help readers to identify and organize plots" (1975:222). A. Northrop Frye's Four Mythoi According to Frye, "in myth we see the structural principles of literature isolated . . ." (1957:136), indeed, "the mythical mode . . . is the most abstract and conventionalized of all literary modes, just as the corresponding modes in other arts religious Byzantine painting, for exampleshow the highest degree of stylization in their structure. Hence the structural principles of literature are as closely related to mythology and comparative religion as those of painting are to geometry" (1957:134-35). Frye proposes four mythoi, i.e., four narrative categories of literature: comedy, romance, tragedy, satire/irony, each of which has six phases and forms a cycle such that the phases interlock with its neighbor to form subtypes, the tragedy with a romantic theme or, conversely, the romance with an element of tragedy, and so forth. I hope here to confirm yet qualify Frye's basic thesis, that these literary categories are in some general sense based on the structural principles of myth. But in using the framework of the previous sections, I will want to show how these literary categories can be seen as generated out of the play of the tensions of hierarchy present in the elementary forms of narrative. I would like in this respect, and for the sake
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of convenience, to focus on the third phase of each category, which for Frye stands as prototypical for the category. The movement of comedy is "usually a movement from one kind of society to another. At the beginning of the play the obstructing characters are in charge of the play's society, and the audience recognizes that they are usurpers. At the end of the play the device in the plot that brings hero and heroine together causes a new society to crystallize around the hero, and the moment when this crystallization occurs is the point of resolution in the act, the comic discovery, anagnorisis" (1957:163). In general, the total mythos of comedy . . . has regularly what in music is called a ternary form: the hero's society rebels against the society of the senex and triumphs, but the hero's society is a Saturnalia, a reversal of social standards which recalls a golden age in the past before the main action of the play begins. Thus we have a stable and harmonious order disrupted by folly, obsession, forgetfulness, "pride and prejudice," or events not understood by the characters themselves, and then restored. (1957:171) [italics mine-JL] In its most typical form, then, the comedy is movement from an original harmonious order to its disruption and finally its restoration. The classical examples of this are found in the comedies of Plautus and Terence, As You Like It, or the Marriage of Figaro. The obstructing characters in the play are typically socially dominant characters: father or father-figure, master, etc., while the hero is of lower social status, the son, the servant, etc. (1957:169). The humor or the blocking character may be the source of an irrational law that the action of the comedy moves toward breaking (1957:169). The tendency of the comedy is not to expunge or destroy the blocking characters, but more often to reconcile, convert, or simply repudiate them (1957:165). Thus, the tendency of comedy is to include as many people as possible in its final society (1957:165). As opposed to the society governed by the absurdities and obsessions of the humor, the society emerging at the conclusion of the comedy represents a kind of moral norm, or a pragmatically free society (1957:169). Thus comedy usually moves toward a happy ending, and the normal response of the audience to a happy ending is that "this should be" (1957:167). In romance a different structure occurs. The comedy is concerned with making a certain order or hierarchy triumphant, but without incorporating the obstacles to this final stage within that stage. Consequently, the opposition between the humor and the hero is not radical, as in good versus evil, but the obstructor is eventually led to a transformation as well, much like the transformation of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. The comedy is a victory of one society over another, but not of contradictory societies so much as contrary ones, where the differences can be graded and, thus, through transformation, one incorporated into the other. In the romance, however, the opposing orders are contradictory, the victory of one is the death of the other, good versus evil, and hence the romance has at its base the ultimate agon or conflict (1957:192). The heroes or heroines of the romance embody the ideal values of some ruling social or intellectual class of the era in which the romance is created; the villains are generally threats to the ascendancy of the heroes and, consequently, to their
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ideals. "This is the general character of chivalric romance in the Middle Ages, aristocratic romance in the Renaissance, bourgeois romance since the eighteenth century, and revolutionary romance in contemporary Russia" (1957:186). "The enemy is associated with winter, darkness, confusion, sterility, moribund life, and old age; and the hero with spring, dawn, order, fertility, vigor, and youth" (1957:18788). Everything, in the romance, is focused on a conflict between the hero and the enemy, and all the reader's values are bound up with the hero (1957:187). Thus the romance does not concern so much the creation of a new order out of an irrational one, or the restoration of a more innocent order, as the maintenance of an ideal order in the face of orders which threaten its valuative quality, or its very existence. The movement in the romance is from the establishment of a hierarchy to its constant reestablishment through the struggle with its opposites. This is perhaps why the typical plot of the romance is exemplified in terms of the successful quest(s) of the hero (1957:187). Such quests demonstrate the qualities of the hero and his ideals and the worthiness of the order he represents, even, as in Le Morte d'Arthur, if it means the death of the herothe book remains an exaltation of the chivalric values; or, as in Spenser's The Faerie Queene, St. George's quest is so designed that by killing the dragon he raises Eden in the wilderness and restores England to the status of Eden (1957:194). By destroying the character or society that stands diametrically opposed to the one represented in the character of the hero, the hero reaffirms his society and simultaneously proves the worthiness of its ideals. The archetypal form of tragedy concerns the hero's struggle with an inexorable law or norm or force, whose violation or whose dictates must inevitably lead to the demise of the hero. In its most elementary form, this may be the lex talionis, or the law of revenge. "The hero provokes enmity, or inherits a situation of enmity, and the return of the avenger constitutes the catastrophe" (1957:208209). Consequently, "the original act provoking the revenge sets up an antithetical or counterbalancing movement, and the completion of the movement resolves the tragedy. This happens so often that we may almost characterize the total mythos of tragedy as binary, in contrast to the three-part saturnalia movement of comedy" (1957:209). In other words, the primitive tragic plot moves from the disruption of an initial normative hierarchy by the tragic hero to its rebalance or reestablishment, which somehow involves disintegration or pathos of the hero. As in Oedipus Tyrannus, there is a counterpoint in the movement of the hero's condition to the rebalancing of law, or the enactment of fate. As fate slowly redresses the wrongs of incest and patricide and regicide, Oedipus simultaneously declines from king to outcast, savior of the city to its threat, spouse to widower, sighted to blind, proud to shameful. "Here we see the tragic hero as disturbing a balance in nature, nature being conceived as an order stretching over the two kingdoms of the visible and the invisible, a balance which sooner or later must right itself' (1957:209). The hierarchical law may be one of revenge, fate, or cultural norm (as in Romeo and Juliet), or some moral law. Tragedy tends toward romance when the defeat of the tragic hero is simultaneously the victory of the values exemplified by the hero, as in Prometheus Bound or in the passion of Christ, or the Apology. But it tends toward irony when the
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hero is defeated, when his condition is one of pathos, despite his innocence or good intention, as in Oedipus Tyrannus; but the norm for tragedy remains, as in Macbeth, or the tragedy in Genesis, where "the hero's act has thrown a switch in a larger machine than his own life, or even his own society" (1957:211). The principal difference between irony and satire is, according to Frye, that "satire is militant irony: its moral norms are relatively clear, and it assumes standards against which the grotesque and absurd are measured" (1957:223). For example, the satire of the "low norm" "takes for granted a world which is full of anomalies, injustices, follies, crises, and yet is permanent and undisplaceable, e.g., as in Candide. Its principle is that anyone who wishes to keep his balance in such a world must learn first of all to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut'' (1957:226). Satire is essentially the measure of one norm against the other, one hierarchy against the other, the one always claiming high value, but the satire exposing it as folly or fraud or simple naiveté or illusion, as in Candide or Don Quixote. Satire often represents the collision between a selection of standards from experience and the feeling that experience is bigger than any set of beliefs about it. It is often "the setting of ideas and generalizations, and theories and dogmas over and against the life they are supposed to explain" (1957:230). Irony moves away from the comedic-like quality of satire (i.e., the triumph of the pragmatic over the illusory) to a simple almost fatalistic perception of the human condition, "in which the main emphasis is on the natural cycle, the unbroken turning of the wheel of fate or fortune" (1957:237), a glimpse in the direction of tragedy. In its strongest phase, "it presents human life in terms of a largely unrelieved bondage" (1957:238), as in 1984 or Darkness at Noon. Irony recounts the failures of norms or hierarchies or values as they break on the wheel of fate or on the rack of an inexorable or supremely powerful cultural force, and end in the sparagmos of the hero and the anomie of his values. Frye suggests that these four mythoi are interrelated, . . . as four aspects of a central unifying myth. Agon or conflict is the basis or archetypal theme of romance, the radical of romance being a sequence of marvellous adventures. Pathos or catastrophe, whether in triumph or in defeat, is the archetypal theme of tragedy. Sparagmos, or the sense that heroism and effective action are absent, disorganized or foredoomed to defeat, and that confusion and anarchy reign over the world, is the archetypal theme of irony and satire. Anagnorisis, or recognition of a newborn society rising in triumph around a still somewhat mysterious hero and his bride, is the archetypal theme of comedy. (1957:192) B. Types of Narrative Transvaluations: The Source of the Four Mythoi However, instead of a central mythos at the core of these four mythoi, I would argue that the four mythoi are generated out of a certain violent tension present in the context of hierarchy. It is hard to imagine a basic myth at the source of the four mythoi, since such a pattern would have to contain contradictory narrative strate-
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gies. Rather, the four mythoi are, in fact, the four basic strategies used by fantasy, by the narrative imagination, in playing out the tensions between the violence of a hierarchy that imposes order and the violence that results from its transgression. The strategies envision various sorts of displacements of hierarchy and, in effect, serve as a catalogue of the basic types of narrative transvaluations. The four literary categories can be, firstly, divided into those which emphasize the victory of one hierarchy over another (comedy, romance), and those which emphasize the defeat of one hierarchy by another (tragedy, satire/irony). Within each of these divisions, the difference between comedy and romance, on the one hand, and tragedy and satire/irony, on the other, is clear. In comedy, the stress is on the victory of the new order over the old, obsessive order, while in romance it is the continuous celebration of the victory of the old, ideal order over its hopeful usurper. In tragedy there is the observance of the decline of the transgressor of an inexorable order, as opposed to satire where the defeat of a hopeful order is reordered by means of articulating its absurdities or illusions. From the perspective of victory, the result is recognition, in its most general sense, of the obsessiveness or unnaturalness of the imposing order and, at the same time, the propriety of the new order; or, the result is successful agon, the defeat of the other, negative order. From the perspective of defeat, there is the result of pathos, the defeat of transgression, or, on the other hand, sparagmos, the defeat of illusory ideals or exposure of the absurdities of an imposing order (cp. fig. 49). One might first compare the way in which hierarchy is transformed in comedy as opposed to tragedy. In the first there is, as Frye emphasizes, a ternary movement, in which an original, harmonious hierarchy is blocked by the obsessions or irrationalities of a powerful social hierarchy; but, by story's end, this hierarchy is defeated by the comedic hero's society. The defeat is not the blocker's death, but his or her
Figure 49. Each of Frye's four mythoi can be reclassified as a certain tension between a hierarchy and its disruption.
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incorporation in the new society, which celebrates life, hope, and good fortune. The hero of the tragedy, on the other hand, moves within a dyadic movement, a counterpoint of sorts, where the movement of an inexorable hierarchy simultaneously involves the pathos of the hero, the catastrophe of his gain or fortune, the demise of his society or hierarchy. This opposition of hierarchy is neatly summarized by Frye: In comedy the erotic and social affinities of the hero are combined and unified in the first scene; tragedy usually makes love and the social structure irreconcilable and contending forces. . .. Comedy is much concerned with integrating the family and adjusting the family to something as a whole; tragedy is much concerned with breaking up the family and opposing it to the rest of society. . . . Comedy works out the proper relations of its characters and prevents heroes from marrying their sisters or mothers; tragedy presents the disaster of Oedipus or the incest of Siegmund. (1957:218-19) In the same vein, romance and satire/irony form opposite poles. In romance, there is always the great agon or conflict between two diametrically opposed systems of values or hierarchies, the highly idealized one of the hero proving victorious over the other. This, too, as in tragedy, is a simple dyadic processthe existence of a hierarchy and the events which challenge or threaten it, ending in the survival or creation of that hierarchy. But in satire the conflict is always a defeat of the romance ideals; this moves from satire, where such ideas are simply ridiculed or shown illusory, to the strong form of irony, where, indeed, there is the victory of evil over the good. Thus, Don Quixote presents a world opposed to that of the one in Le Morte d'Arthur, and Brave New World one opposed to the one in Walden II. Both tragedy and satire/irony stress the perspective of the defeat of a hierarchy, although there is a fundamental difference. In tragedy, the hero's culture is thrown into conflict with an inexorable natural, moral, or cultural norm that breaks against it, leading to catastrophe; but this norm is somehow something that must be, something of high value and cosmic dimension. In satire, the victorious norm is of low value compared with the hierarchy found to be an illusion, or, as in irony, may even be a force of dark, evil character. The tragedy usually stresses the violation of something more cosmically valuable than the values of the hero's culture, whereas the satire focuses on the illusions of higher ideals, irony, or their vanity. C. The Violence of Hierarchy: Ritual and Violence in the Studies of Girard and Turner Given the general outline of the narrative strategies of transvaluation, it now remains to clarify further their generative principle, the tension between the violence of hierarchy that imposes order and the violence of its transgression. A similar point is made in literary criticism by Fernando Ferrara (1974) and Nancy Armstrong (1977). For example, Ferrara argues that the relations between levels of narrative structures must be understood as a process of cultural communication, aiming at obtaining approval for a system of proposed values. This is accomplished by means
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of the dialectics of two impulses, one aimed at the preservation of the relation between elements in the social structure and one aimed at their transformation. The intention of any narrative is bound up with the relative coincidence with or disparity from the traditional dominant values (Ferrara 1974:260; cp. Armstrong 1977:323). However, given the emphasis on myth here, I would like to explore the same point through an analysis of the controversy between René Girard and Victor Turner concerning the nature of ritual, precisely because this controversy focuses on these two aspects of hierarchy. Girard bases his argument on the claim that violence results from the loss of hierarchy, the breakdown of distinction and order: ". . . it is not the differences but the loss of them that gives rise to violence and chaos. . . " (1972:51). "Perfect equilibrium invariably leads to violence, as in Greek tragedy" (1972:51). This is diametrically opposed to Victor Turner's argument that ''structural differentiation, both vertical and horizontal, is the foundation of strife and factionalism, and of struggles in dyadic relations between incumbents of positions or rivals for positions" (1969:179). For Girard, ritual has the primary purpose of imposing hierarchy where there is a lack of it, such as in reciprocal violenceas exemplified in lex talionis. Turner, on the other hand, argues that the function of ritual is to liberate the participants from hierarchy into a kind of communitas, where differentiation is minimal, and the experience of equality and humanity predominates. In one sense it might be argued that Girard subscribes to a Hobbesian view of the state of naturea war of all against allthat is only ameliorated by the imposition of a powerful hierarchy over its members; Turner, on the other hand, subscribes to a Rousseauean view of this state of nature, where equality remains a natural and most human condition of Homo sapiens. I want to argue that these apparently contradictory positions can be resolved by suggesting that each describes, relatively accurately, two aspects of hierarchy and the violence it creates. I think, on the one hand, that Turner is correct in arguing that hierarchy, in imposing order, i.e., legitimating differentiation, creates societas, that "structured, differentiating and often hierarchical system of political-legal-economic positions with many types of evaluations, separating men in terms of more or less" (1969:96). Societas creates a tension in society based on these differentiations, divisions of labor, sex, age, rank, status, class, position, role, etc. Within the framework of this order-imposing hierarchy, violence is a constant possibility and threat. More radically put, value, with its caste of differentiation, is violence. It is this hierarchy which imposes order, but at the same time generates the possibility of violence. Consequently, against each order-imposing hierarchy stands the violence of its possible transgression. Girard focuses on this aspect of hierarchy, i.e., its opposite possibility. Ritual has the function of maintaining order-imposing hierarchy and avoiding anomie by creating hierarchies which can avoid the kinds of nonhierarchical reciprocities or equalities that engender violence and can disrupt the existing order. Ritual has the function of imposing hierarchy where none exists or where there is a rupture in the existing one. Turner, instead, focuses on the violence of imposing order, so that ritual is given the function of dissolving hierarchy into nonhierarchy, leading to a transformation of societas into communitas. My
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point is that both stress legitimate aspects of hierarchy, the violence of its order imposition and the violence of its transgression, but, however, the one in each case to the exclusion of the other. A proper analysis must include both aspects. The result is the truth of the claim that order-imposing hierarchy breeds violence (with Turner), but also the recognition that the transvaluations of order-imposing hierarchy are still hierarchies (with Girard). 1. TURNER If it is true, as Turner argues, that hierarchy is the foundation of strife, then lack of hierarchy or differentiation, or equality, ought to be the foundation of peaceful coexistence. Turner brings a great deal of evidence to bear upon this. Religions and social invariants which stress love and peace often emphasize equality among their memberships (1969:196ff.). There is no doubt that such feelings and emotions occur among members of these groups, but it is questionable whether such associations are examples of anti-structure, i.e., lack of hierarchization, in Turner's sense. Rather, so I would argue, hierarchization still exists, and on two planes. Firstly, there exists a contextual hierarchy in the sense of the group versus the rest of the social structure. In the example of the Hell's Angels cited by Turner this becomes clear (1969:19394). The Hell's Angels contrast themselves to society at large. Their unity and amity result from this contrast, rather than from first a sense of brotherhood; the latter is derivative of the contrast with society at large, rather than a precondition for their union. They refer to members of the "straight" world as "citizens," as opposed to themselves, who are the "one-percenters," "the one percent that don't fit and don't care" (1969:194). It is their antagonism to existing hierarchies, exemplified by symbolic inversions of the existing society's valuesdress, life style, work habits, etc.that gives them their coherence. Rather than "organized within an anti-structure,'' in the sense of a lack of hierarchy, they are defined as anti-structure in the sense of an inverse of the dominant order-giving hierarchy. Secondly, within the group, although camaraderie prevails, the association is certainly not marked by lack of hierarchy. Both political and social stratifications exist. Indeed, Turner notes that organizations which exemplify his notion of communitas eventually must establish hierarchies (1969:129). Communitas is the context in which individuals associate integrally and not in terms of segmentalized statuses or roles. In communitas all are equal in terms of a shared humanity (1969:177). Communitas is exemplified in the two basic types of rituals, rituals of status reversal and rituals of status elevation. One example of the former is the Apo ritual among the Tekeman at the new year: you may have hatred in your heart against another, because of something that person has done to you and that causes your sunsum [soul] to fret and become sick. Our forebears knew this to be the case, and so they ordained a time, once every year, when every man and woman, free man and slave, should have freedom to speak out just what was in their head, to tell their neighbors just what they thought of them, and of their actions, and not only to their neighbors but also to the king or chief. When a man has spoken freely thus, he will feel his sunsum cool and quieted, and the sunsum of the other
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person against whom he has now openly spoken with will be quieted also. The King of Ashanti may have killed your children, and you hate him. This has made him ill and you ill; when you are allowed to say before his face what you think you both benefit. (Turner 1969:179) The possibility of a prohibited reciprocal violence within the normal social hierarchy is displaced by means of a sanctioned reciprocal violence which is restricted to verbal abuse or stylized physical violence, and which can only occur at a certain time of the year. A stylized form of revenge is attained within the ritualized form in which inversions of the existing hierarchy obtain and bad feelings are allayed. But it is difficult to see the presence of a communitas in the context of this ritual. It is difficult to see the inversion of roles as constituting equality, except perhaps in a strange sense. In societas, the king is high, the subject low, in Apo, the subject high and the king lowthus some sort of equation may formally result, king = subject. But in reality, there is only hierarchy in the normal case and in its ritualistic inversion. The king and subject are not made equals; their roles are merely reversed in a complementary fashion. Among the Bororo, a clan in a particular moiety may own an aroe spirit, a totem, but it is ritually represented by a clan from the opposite moiety. Should it then be said that the two are equal? It appears to be a case of a reciprocity of functions, but not an equality of functions. After all, the one clan owns the totem, the other can only represent it. The king may kill your children, but you can only scold him at a certain time of the year. The reversal of status in the Apo ritual is, firstly, a ritual inversion, and occurs only at certain times of the year; it is opposed to the social hierarchy which permanently exists as part of the social fabric. There can be no doubt, as Turner suggests, that the inversion of hierarchies, their transvaluation, may, through catharsis and other psychosocial effects, revitalize existing social hierarchies; but the question is whether that liminal stage entails the effacement of hierarchy. I think there is good evidence to suggest that it does not. The case of rites of status elevation is even more transparent, as in the case of the Ndembu ritual often described by Turner. There can be no doubt that rituals are often "a time and place of withdrawal from normal modes of social action" (1969:167); but it is doubtful that they entail a complete effacement of hierarchy. Rather, they seem to concern a transvaluation of the ordergiving hierarchy of societas. As such, as Turner suggests, the ritual "can be seen as potentially a period of scrutinization of the central values and axioms of the culture in which it occurs" (1969:167). In fact, Turner suggests something supportive of the categorization of transvaluative types in this respect. The rites of status reversal may be compared to comedy, since they imply mocking and inversion but not the destruction of the structural rules; life-crises rites, on the other hand, may be compared to tragedy, since both imply humbling, stripping, and pain (1969:201). 2. GIRARD In Violence and the Sacred, Girard presents a radical thesis: "I maintain that the original act of violence is the matrix of all ritual and mythological significations"
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(1972:113). Societas and its institutions, to use Turner's vocabulary, function as a means of preventing the worst sort of violence, intragroup, from occurring; thus rite and myth have the especial function of instituting strategies for the suppression of such violence. Since ". . . all violence involves a loss of difference" (1972:281), hierarchy as an order-giving process, the creation of differentiation, mollifies tendencies to violence. Indeed, it was by loss of difference and its concomitant outbreak of violence that the community achieved a differentiating order (1972:283). Accordingly, "the purpose of the sacrifice is to restore harmony to the community to reinforce the social fabric" (1972:8). ''The function of sacrifice is to quell violence within the community and to prevent conflicts from erupting" (1972:14), especially the worst sort of violence, the endless lex talionis which creates an indefinite cycle of revenge and retribution. Purely dyadic, it creates a cycle of violence from which it is difficult to escape. The continuation of this cycle not only creates disorder and anomie, but portends the immanent destruction of a society. The function of ritual, thus, is "to keep violence outside the community" (1972:92). The sacrificial rite inhibits violent exchange among intragroup members by means of a substitution of a victim against whom everyone perpetrates violence, but who cannot reciprocate with violencethus ending the cycle of reciprocal violence. The violence of all against one replaces the violence of one against another. As typical of a cathartic theory of ritual, violence against members of one's own group is channeled and transformed into violence against the sacrificial victim, the pariah, the pharmakon, the liminal figure, the scapegoat (fig. 50). The dyadism of revenge is replaced by the triadic structure of mediation: ". . . the violence directed against the surrogate victim might well be radically generative in that, by painting an end to the vicious and destructive cycle of violence, it simultaneously institutes another and constructive cycle, that of the sacrificial ritewhich protects the community from that same violence and allows culture to flourish" (1972:93). Girard sees judicial systems as the modern equivalent of the sacrificial rite. However, although Girard may be correct in the sense that they both serve the function of mitigating reciprocal violence, there are, nonetheless, crucial formal differences. In the sacrifice violence ends because the victim cannot reciprocate with violence; but in the legitimate judicial system violence ends because the adjudicator cannot be visited with revenge. Secondly, there is a difference in the hierarchical organization of the two. In sacrifice, the victim is generally lowest in hierarchical
Figure 50.
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rank, but in judicial systems, the judge has more authority and power over the disputants (fig. 51). Thus it can be seen that elementary forms of judicial systems are the converse of the sacrificial rite, precisely in terms of the hierarchical arrangement: the adjudicator must be ranked higher than the disputants, the sacrificial victim is generally ranked lowest. But there are also other aspects of hierarchy that must be taken into consideration in order to explicate the sacrificial rite. There is some ambiguity that centers around the notion of reciprocal violence. Reciprocity gives the impression that violence is perpetrated among equals; but, it must be kept in mind that such violences always occur between members who are somehow differentiated. Kinship systems, status, and rank not only identify different individuals as the same, but thereby articulate their differences. Reciprocal violence is reciprocal in the sense that those who do harm to others are themselves visited with revenge: but it is rarely the caseif not impossiblethat persons of perfect equality perpetrate violence against each other. Two chiefs of the same moiety may be distinguished by clans, or two chiefs from the same clan may be affined, or two brothers may be distinguished by age. There is a telling example in this respect among the Tlingit. If a member of one clan of low rank murders another member of a different clan of higher status, the wronged clan does not seek the death of the murderer, but of someone of equal status from his clan. In case of war between opposite moieties, peace may be regained only if there are an equal number of dead on both sides, measured also in terms of status and rank; if not, then property is exchanged until a perceived balance is attained. In other words, reciprocal violence is defined and regulated within the framework of hierarchy. This is contrary to Girard, who argues that "it is violent reciprocity . . . that truly destroys differences" (1972:64). But this confuses cause with effect. Violence is generally prompted by differences and may, as in the case of revolutions and wars, destroy differences or social hierarchies, though reciprocal violence destroys people rather than differencesthe hierarchy between victim and violator still remains. This failure to recognize hierarchy involved in reciprocal violence and in the sacrificial rite leads Girard to suppose that violence results from the loss of hierarchy, the breakdown of distinction: ". . . it is not the differences but the loss of them that gives rise to violence and chaos. . ." (1972:51). "Perfect equilibrium invariably leads to violence, as in Greek tragedy" (1972:51). Girard supports this position in his reflections on the royal Incwala rites of the Swazi (1972:110). These
Figure 51.
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are based on the belief in the king's silwane ("to be like a savage beast"), a power which sets him apart from all other warriors as the bravest. Before the rite the people sing a hymn, the simemo, which expresses their hatred of the king and their desire to see him expelled from the community. A mock battle ensues between the royal clan and all other clans. The warriors eventually surround the king, and at a crucial point he transfers his silwane to a cow (transformed into "a raging bull"). The warriors hurl themselves all together and without weapons onto the beast, belaboring it with their fists. During this part of the ceremony the distance between the king, his entourage, and the warriors is temporarily effaced. Girard continues: "This loss of difference has nothing to do with 'fraternization'. Rather, it is the result of the violence that engulfs all the participants'' (1972:111), and so Girard agrees with Beidelman's assessment of the ritethat it involves a "dissolving of distinctions" (Beidelman 1966:391n.1). The assumption here is that the violence is a consequence of the effacement of hierarchy. However, I would argue that the rite does not involve so much an effacement of hierarchy as a transvaluation of hierarchy, specifically in the form of an inversion. The ritual inverts the social hierarchy between king and warriors. The chief is ranked highest, the bravest among the warriors, precisely because of his silwane. Within the combat situation, the chief has supreme power over his warriors. Any warrior whose shield is struck by the royal gourd during combat must forfeit his life. Within the context of the rite, the king, displaced in the cow, is killed, sacrificed by the warriors. The rite inverts the normal state-of-war hierarchy, and here lies the significance of the rite. It is not the dissolving of distinctions, the effacement of hierarchy, but its inversion which governs the logic of the rite. This suggests that the cathartic effect of the sacrificial rite works through a displacement of a possible reciprocal violence (i.e., revenge against the chief), but as it occurs or has occurred or will occur within a particular hierarchy. In other words, the catharsis is consequent upon the displacement of one hierarchy by means of another, just as the schwank (in the analysis by Maranda and Maranda cited above) works as satire because of the displacement of a normal hierarchy between master and servant by inversion. I would argue that the apparent contradictory claims of Turner and GirardTurner's claim that communitas, recognition of human equality, is the result of the effacement of hierarchy, and Girard's claim that it is precisely the effacement of hierarchy that is the source of violencecan be resolved by recognizing the two faces of orderimposing hierarchy. Any hierarchy that imposes order, by imposing differentiation in terms of rank, class, status, role, etc.i.e., by social valuation in generalalso simultaneously creates tension, the possibility of violence. Not only is such an imposition itself, in a sense, an act of violence, but it creates at the same time possible avenues for violence within that society. If a hierarchy creates a high/low status, that tension could direct violence in a certain way, either the abuse of the low by the high, or the overthrow of the high by the low. Hierarchy, although it creates order, also creates the vectors of violence within that culture. Consequently, the existence of hierarchy is simultaneously the existence of
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its possible transgression, and transvaluation is the process and play of this tension between the two aspects of a value-imposing hierarchy. At the level of narration one witnesses the strategies of transvaluation: comedy, romance, tragedy, satire, the defeat of one hierarchy by or its victory over another. The practical result may be ideological or cathartic or revolutionary, but these results find their matrix in the transvaluation of the dual aspect of hierarchy.
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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Part Four Myth as Transvaluation
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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EIGHT The Structure of Narration and Its Relation to Culture An Analysis of Netsilik Mythology In the two previous chapters I examined the general structure of narration in terms of hierarchical interrelation among three levels. On the first or agential level, the various agents are analyzed in terms of their biophysical, socioeconomic, and political features as culturally defined. These categories can be organized into a valuative grid in which the valuative tensionsthe markedness and rankof these features can be articulated. This level is incorporated within a second, actantial, one which has to do with the dramatic roles which the narrative assigns these agents. This carries the valuative tensions present on the first level onto another plane, and redefines and reorganizes them into the tensions between antagonist and protagonist, helper and enemy, victim and transgressor. These sets of valuative differences are finally set within the framework of the telos of the myth, i.e., the manner in which the story expresses the tension between an order-imposing hierarchy and its possible transgression. Thus the three levels form a hierarchical whole in which the set of valuative differences found at one level is reordered within the valuative differences of the higher levela process I have called transvaluation. I want to apply this general idea to the analysis of myths of a specific culture, an analysis which avoids the sterile formalism of most structuralist analysis, and encourages, as I would argue, a more complete picture of the relation between myth and culture. I have chosen as a testing ground myths from the Netsilik Eskimo. A. Analysis of a Netsilik Myth As a sample text, I have chosen the following Netsilik Eskimo tale, entitled "Netsersuitsuarssuk" (Rasmussen 1931:416-17): Netsersuitsuarssuk was the name of a man who never could catch seals. When his neighbors came home with their catch, he never had anything. At last his wife became angry with him and refused to give him any water to drink when he came home from hunting
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at the breathing holes. In that way he lived for some time, out with the other men during the day at the breathing holes, but when he came home his wife would give him no water to drink. At last he started out wandering and he walked on and on and did not come home when it was night. He came to a big house where three bears lived. For a time he stayed with them, and then returned to his village. When he got home he asked his wife as usual for water to drink, but she would give him none. Then Netsersuitsuarssuk turned round and gazed stiffly and incessantly at the side platform, and at once the snow outside began to creak with the footfalls of a bear. It was his new helping spirit, and the window of the house was smashed in with a blow of a bear paw. "Here is some water!" cried his wife, and at once the bear left the house without doing them any harm. After that Netsersuitsuarssuk got all the water he wanted to drink when he came home from hunting, and now the strange thing happened that, although he had never been able to catch a seal, after the bear's visit to this house he became a great seal hunter who killed many seals. 1. THE CULTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE NETSILIK The Netsilik live at the edge of the world in one of the harshest environments imaginable. Of all the Canadian Eskimo tribes, the Netsilik probably experience the highest degree of environmental pressure (Riches 1974:3 54). Breathing hole seal hunting is the only means of winter survival for the Netsilik (Balikci 1970:57). As Samik, one of their shamans, put it: "In this country the seal is the only animal that can hinder a famine, for it is the only animal that gives both food and warmth in the snow huts, and only the winter can be a time of need. For the caribou come in the spring. . ." (Rasmussen 1931:135). This vital form of subsistence depends on male hunters. This contrasts with the findings from a number of hot-climate huntergatherer societies, such as the Bushmen and the Hadza, where perhaps 80 percent of the protein intake comes from vegetable matter. Although meat is highly prized in these societies, and being a good hunter is a source of social prestige, there are no sanctions against the lazy hunter. In fact, only a few men hunt regularly in these societies, and some hardly at all (Riches 1974; cp. also Lee 1968:40 and Woodburn 1968:54). But where vegetative sources are not good or varied, as in the North, hunting is of prime importance. Lazy Eskimo hunters suffer heavy penalties, sometimes even death (D'Anglure 1967:188). In typical seal hunts, all hunters share in the kill and it is not the property of the successful hunter alone (Rasmussen 1931:159; for a detail of this procedure see Balikci 1970:133-35). Even men who are ill or who stay in the village because of urgent work that must be done may still receive a share of the kill (Rasmussen 1931:159). In fact, the Eskimo do not say "I am going after a seal," but "I am going out to try to get a hunting share" (Rasmussen 1931:162-63). Although, especially in the winter, the hunting share is strictly distributed by rules, every hunter would get something (1931:162-63). Famine, consequently, was a result of the entire group's inability to catch seals, as when there were too many storms, or the ice was not solid enough as in warm winters (Rasmussen 1931:134-35). Consequently, the inability of Netsersuitsuarssuk (hereafter cited as N) to get seals in the tale cited above is of a radical naturea life and death situation for
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N and his wife. Because of the importance of the hunting task, it should also be supposed that there would be a correspondingly high degree of blame and shame on the part of N. However, given the rules of sharing the catch, N should not be worried about starvation. Yet the tale insists that he comes home with "nothing." This implies that he is perhaps unrelated to anyone in the village, or an outcast of some sort. But, in any case, that he never could catch seals implies that he would never receive the successful hunter's share of the seal, which, although it did not involve much meat, included parts of the seal that were useful in the household (Rasmussen 1931:163), especially the jawbone, which a woman would keep in her lamp to give her husband good luck in the hunt (Rasmussen 1931:166). Although, in the tale, N and the bear are allies, the Netsilik men often hunt the bears, but only incidentallyif in the pursuit of some other animal a hunter comes across the tracks of a bear, he will follow it (Rasmussen 1931:183). There are special taboos which accompany the killing of the bear and which must be observed, since the soul or the spirit of the bear is considered very dangerous and could bring disease or misfortune (Rasmussen 1931:184; Balikci 1970:200). There is a special procedure which should be noted since it is related to the tale. Bears and seals are always thirsty. Consequently, it has a favorable effect on their souls to give them drinking water when they have been killed (Rasmussen 1931:242-43; Balikci 1970:218), and they are the only animals that are given water. Water is associated with the hunter in another respect. It is claimed that the moon may bring good luck to the hunter; "this is why small boys, when they discover it for the first time up in the sky, have to express their joy by splashing water up in its direction. Water is the best thing of all to one who thirsts, and a great hunter is often thirsty" (Rasmussen 1931:231). Since the Netsilik are endogamous, with a preference for first-cousin marriage (Balikci 1970:100), it can be supposed that N and his wife are related so. The relation between husband and wife is fairly typical: In theory no doubt the husband is lord and master over her ... . He can do as he likes with his woman. But despite the fact that this is the general and time honored view there is no sign of subjection. On the contrary, women's behavior in the home is very selfassertive, and she is not only lively and loudspoken but has considerable authority in both her early and later years. (Rasmussen 1931:190) This loudspokenness may often lead to quarrels, however, and wife abuse is usually the end result (Rasmussen 1931:190). There is a typical division of labor: the man procures the food while the woman does all the houseworkand she brings many of the house instruments with her into the marriage, including the precious water containers (Rasmussen 1931:192-93). The women are also responsible for the drinking water, which is prepared by melting old sea ice in their soapstone pots (Balikci 1970:7). "Just as it is the exclusive work of the men to provide the house with meat, it is exclusively the work of the women to skin, cut up and share out the hunting shares" (Rasmussen 1931:164). Although this is true for seals, usually caribou are butchered by men, and foxes, hares, and wolverines are butchered by either men or women (Rasmussen 1931:164); when the breathing holes of the seals
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are opened in the spring, women and children also participate in the hunt (Rasmussen 1931:160). But, generally, women do not hunt; they are not self-sufficient and are less independent than men (Balikci 1970:151). Adultery is overlooked in men, but the woman is beaten for hers. A woman usually neglects her household duties as a retaliation for adultery in men, but that is her only recourse for retribution (Rasmussen 1931:195; cp. Balikci 1970:16061). In wife exchange, the husband is completely in control, and there is a tale which serves as a lesson for women who might disobey their husbands in this regard (Rasmussen 1931:196). As Balikci (1970:142) claims, "it was always assured that the wife should comply with her husband's will." In general, the woman, although recognized for her household function, is considered a less valuable member of the society, and so female infanticide is often practiced (Rasmussen 1931:139ff.). "Due to the mutual dependence and complementarity of male and female work roles, there is a need for explicit demonstration of male dominance" (Freeman 1971:1015). There have been many rationalizations for the female infanticide, but from its consistent practice it is clear that females, and especially female infants, are the lowest ranked members of Netsilik society. Most scholars argue that there are ecological considerations involved, i.e., the control of population, conservation of food energy, etc.: "higher infanticide rates will reflect higher economic instability and hence more extreme environmentally oppressive conditions" (Riches 1974:354). The Netsilik rationalizations do not indicate this: the boy is desired as provider for the parents in their old age, and girls are less valuable because of their patrilocal residence (Freeman 1971:1014). As Riches points out (1974:357), the ecosystem pressures combined with the endogamy and the focus of the patrilocal extended family seem to support female infanticide. Unless a female infant has a prearranged betrothal, she only becomes available as a child-producer for someone outside the family, thus extending kinship ties, and thus could strain scarce food supplies through the sharing system of the Eskimo (Riches 1974:357). Female infanticide becomes one more demonstration of male dominance, since it is the father's prerogative (see the case study given by Freeman 1971:1015). Freeman, in fact, goes so far as to argue that female infanticide "is adaptive insofar as it reduces tension within the decision making unit of Netsilik society, namely the household" (1971:1016). 2. ANALYSIS OF THE MYTH On the agential level, the various features of the principal agents are relatively clear. Biophysically there is the distinction between humans and animals. Bears are hunted incidentally to other kinds of animals, but they are pursued, and when they are pursued, usually the hunters are successful. Thus, in terms of hunting prowess and ability, the Netsilik consider themselves superior. Although bear souls are greatly feared by humans, the powers of the shaman give some magical control over these (Balikci 1970:200). There are also the nanorluk, or giant bears, among the list of spirits, but these are minor in relation to the chief gods, Nuliajuk, Narssuk, and Tatquq, the first two having human form and the last being a moon
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spirit. Cosmologically there is nothing to indicate any sort of priority or superiority of the bears; men did not evolve from, nor were they born out of some union with, bears. In fact, animals appeared only after human beings (Balikci 1970:209). With these considerations in mind I think it can be claimed that human is unmarked with respect to bear, i.e., humans are normative or paradigmatic of natural animacy in relation to bears. Although humans may be unmarked with regard to bears, there is good evidence to suggest that females in general are marked with respect to males. Cosmologically, man appeared before woman; the man is head of the household; male offspring are preferred and female infanticide is often practiced. Man is the hunter and supplier of the principal sources of protein, the woman prepares the food. Adultery is asymmetrical. Economically, N is the hunter, engaging in an unmarked activity, and so is the bear. These markedness assignments establish the following set of valuative oppositions or tensions between the three principal dramatis personae of the tale. There is, firstly, the tension between the human/non-human features. Bear and man are natural enemies; their relation is one of hunter to hunted. In this case N and his wife are valuatively opposed to the bear; because they are kin-related and husband and wife, this also creates a valuative distinction with the bear. But there are valuative tensions between N and the bear, on the one hand, and N's wife, on the other. N and the bear are both male hunters, N's wife is neither male nor hunter. Finally, between N and his wife there are also a number of differences: male/female, head of household/subordinate, hunter/non-hunter. This establishes a kind of triangle of conflict; and in noting the similarities among the three agents, one finds also a "triangle of accord" (fig. 52). The assignment of markedness relations points to several vectors of valuative
Figure 52. The triangle of accord and the triangle of conflict among Netsersuitsaurssuk, his wife, and the bear.
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tension among the three agents, with N's wife at the center of these tensions. There are actually more avenues of possible conflict between N and his wife than between N and the bear, because of the greater number of hierarchies the bear and N share. The triangle of accord shows that N's wife and the bear share no features at all. These vectors of valuative tension are open-ended in the sense that they become redirected and completed by the roles assigned to the agents at the actantial level. In general, the Netsilik view the relation between husband and wife, who are generally kin-related, as one of amity, but clearly the husband is head of the household, and there exists a clear division of labor between the husband-hunter and the wifehousekeeper (cp. Balikci 1970:103). The bear, as an animal of the hunt, is a natural enemy of the Netsilik, and although the bear is treated as a formidable enemy, it is clear that the Netsilik consider themselves superior to the bear. Within the context of the tale, there appears to be several types of rehierarchizing based on these markedness relations. Firstly, there is a disruption of the rank between N and N's wife: the household is turned upside down because of the breakdown in the division of labor, and enmity resultsN's wife maintains control over the household, and N leaves home. Kin-related spouses become enemies. The amity of the household is lost; an enmity develops between husband and wife, head of the household and his subordinate, male and female, kin-related agents. On the other hand, the natural enmity between man and bear is lost. Instead, an alliance is established between the two; the hunter becomes helper. The inverted relations in culture are righted through an inverted relation in nature. If the Netsilik tale is analyzed into the following set of mythemic sequences, M1: M2: M3: M4: M5: M6: M7:
N cannot hunt seals N's wife refuses him water N leaves home Bear gives N a home N returns home Bear frightens N's wife into giving N water N is able to hunt seals
it is clear that M1-M3 establish a series of lacks in N, the marked conditions of N: N is a hunter who cannot hunt seals, he is the head of a household in which his wife does not obey him and refuses to perform her duties, he is the head of a household which he must abandon. M5-M7 are, conversely, the liquidation of these lacks: N returns home, his wife gives him water, he is able to hunt seals. N moves from a deteriorated condition to one of improvement, from lack to its liquidation. N's wife does initiate a lack in N, and the last sequence suggests that N's ability to hunt seals is consequent upon the liquidation of a lack initiated by his wife. As a result, the bear must be treated as a helper, since it is his actions which change the Eskimo's condition from a lack to the liquidation of that lack. The valuative structure of the tale is such that a certain kind of hierarchy that is disrupted at the beginning of the tale is restored and enhanced by the tale's end. In other words, the tale appears to reinforce the rightness of the initial hierarchy.
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Thus, though the normal social hierarchy is disrupted in the initial part of the myth, it is restored in the endand even at a higher level. The husband's social power and hunting ability are enhanced by the transvaluation. This very same theme is reinforced in two different tales, each of which recombines the social elements on the narrative level, thus achieving the same effect. Consider the tale of the ''Woman Who Heard Bears Speak" (Rasmussen 1931:218-19): There was once a woman who ran away from home because she was angry with her husband. She had a baby with her in her amaut. She walked and walked and came to a house where there was no one at home. It was just like an ordinary house for people, and so she went in. Everybody was out hunting. They were bears in human form, and, they became her helping spirits from the moment she went in to them. In the evening when they returned from hunting, she crawled in behind the a'ulisAq [the seal-skin hangings that line the interior of a snow hut]. The bears were great hunters, and they had a fine, big snow hut lined throughout with beautiful seal skins. From her hiding place the woman could hear what the bears spoke about while they fed, eating only the fat of their kill as bears do. There were an old couple and their sons. The youngest of the sons was young, inexperienced and gave himself such airs. He spoke about the breathing hole hunting of humans, saying: "Those shin-bone figures are terribly thin below. One almost feels inclined to knock them down." His parents, however, remonstrated: "It's not so easy to tackle these shin-bone figures. They have hunting gear and their dogs to help them." This was how bear speech soundedno other than that the woman could understand it. The old people warned the young one to keep his head, but all to no purpose. The next day he went manhunting just the same. He was young and disobedient. Evening came, and they waited in vain for his return, but he did not come. He had tried to attack some humans, and they had killed him. Not till the fourth day after did he come home, and then he had a harpoon head hanging in his fur. He had learned that it was dangerous to attack people, and he now told of everything he had gone through. He had tried to hunt the slender shin-bone figures that walked about upright on two legs, but when they set their dogs on him he had returned frightened and had run away. The dogs, however, were faster and did not get out of breath; they got up to him when he himself had to stop to get his wind and eat snow, and they nipped his tail. As soon as they bit his tail he became so strangely slack at the knees and sat down, feeling no inclination at all to run away. In the meantime the shin-bone figures got up to him and, when they simply pointed at him with something that looked like a rod, he suddenly felt a scorching heat in his body; he became so faint that he simply threw himself down on the snow. Then they all surrounded him and he got up with difficulty to run, but again the dogs were there and nipped his tail, so he had to sit down again. Once more the men pointed at him, and, inexpressibly tired he fell over and became unconscious. Thus the bear was killed by the humans, and they gave him a death taboo that was as it should be; for four days his soul rested among many splendid presents in the house of the humans. Then he was free again and could come back home, rich in experience and with great respect for the shin-bone figures whom he had previously despised.
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The woman got well away from the house of the bears and told the people of her village what she had gone through. From that experience people have obtained proof of how important it is that a dead bear's soul gets the right taboo. For the strongest thing of all life here is the soul. As in the N tale there is a quarrel between husband and wife, although this time the wife leaves home. Like N, the wife comes across a house of bears who become her helping spirits. From overhearing their conversations and the experience of the young bear, she, too, learns about the power of the hunter over the bears. With this knowledge she returns to the village and her household. Whereas in the N tale the bear, as an ally, aids the husband directly in regaining control over the household, here the aid is indirect and within the context of the enmity between bear and man. A third tale, "The Hipshot One Who by the Aid of a Stick Got His Bear," again reinforces the same theme (Rasmussen 1931:420-21): The hipshot one with a companion was out getting blubber. A bear, it is said, who had left a track, he trailed, his stick only having in his hand; his companion he told to build a sleeping house. The bear, which was asleep lying, he came to. With his magic song he hushed it to sleep: You, strong of gland; you, strong of gland Sleep deeply, sleep deeply! You, who are hard to fell, You, strong of gland, by your side Hang them up (your strength glands). You, who are hard to catch sysysy! Sjusjusju! And when it fell asleep, with his stick he lifted up its tail, a strong one; and when he had lifted it up he stabbed it in the rump hole with his stick. The bear, it is said, rose up but fell on its end; the stick it knocked down against the smooth ice and died. When he had got the bear and taken it home he said to his companion: "I have got a skin for you, that you can suck the fat off!" The man, it is said, because the other had not any (weapon) in his hand, at first would not believe him. In this story there is a relation of enmity between man and bear (hunter/hunted), but the association of the man (who is even physically inferior to most men, i.e., lame) with a more powerful agent (magic) demonstrates once again the superiority of the man over the bear. This appears to be a lesson in transitivity for the woman: the man is more powerful than the bear, the bear more powerful than the woman, hence the man more powerful than the woman. Each of these tales exploits the valuative tensions present on the agential level among bear, wife, and man/hunter. These tensions are organized differently on the actantial level of each of the three tales. Bears and man become allies in the first tale to help the man restore the order of his household; the last two tales focus on the enmity between bear and man, and give witness to the hunting superiority of man over bear. In the first tale, the hierarchy between husband and wife is dis-
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rupted but then restored by a helpful bear; in the second, the hierarchy between husband and wife is restored through the wife's witness to the superiority of man over bear, a superiority directly reinforced in the last tale. B. Nuliajuk and the Cosmic Power of the Inferior It may appear from these three tales that their function implies a one-sided ideological support of the socioeconomic superiority of the male. This is also the case in some origin myths, such as "the earliest times on earth" (Rasmussen 1931:208-209), where "in the very first beginning, there were only men and no women" (Rasmussen 1931:209). But this characterization of the function of the tale has to be attenuated in light of the myth of Nuliajuk, the sea spirit and mother of the sea beasts (Rasmussen 1931:225-27): Once in times long past people left the settlement at Qingmertoq in Sherman Inlet. They were going to cross the water and had made rafts of kayaks tied together. They were many and were in haste to get away to new hunting grounds. And there was not much room on the rafts they tied together. At the village there was a little girl whose name was Nuliajuk. She jumped out on to the raft together with the other boys and girls, but no one cared about her, no one was related to her, and so they seized her and threw her into the water. In vain she tried to get hold of the edge of the raft; they cut her fingers off, and lo! as she sank to the bottom the stumps of her fingers became alive in the water and bobbed up round the raft like seals. That was how the seals came. But Nuliajuk herself sank to the bottom of the sea. There she became a spirit, the sea spirit, and she became the mother of the sea beasts, because the seals had formed out of her fingers that were cut off. And she also became mistress of everything else alive, the land beasts too, that mankind had to hunt. In that way she obtained great power over mankind, who had despised her and thrown her into the sea. She became the most feared of all spirits, the most powerful, and the one who more than any other controls the destinies of men. For that reason almost all taboo is directed against her, though only in the dark period while the sun is low, and it is cold and windy on earth; for then life is most dangerous to live. Nuliajuk lives in a house on the bed of the sea. At the bottom of the sea there are lands just as on the earth above the sea, and Nuliajuk lives in a house that is arranged in the same manner as those that humans live in. In her house Nuliajuk lives remote from all, hasty in her anger and terrible in her might when she wishes to punish mankind. She notices every little breach of taboo, for she knows everything. Whenever people have been indifferent towards her by not observing taboo, she hides all the animals; the seals she shuts up in her in'aut: a drip basin that she has under her lamp. As long as they are inside it, there are no animals to hunt in the sea, and mankind has to starve; the shamans then have to summon their helping spirits and conjure her to be kind again. ... [A description of the various techniques that shamans use to mollify her anger follows.] In her house Nuliajuk is surrounded by a lot of frightful beings. Just inside the entrance to her house passage sits kataum inua, the ruler of the passage, who keeps an exact record of all the breaches of taboo committed by mankind up on earth. Everything he sees and hears he passes on to Nuliajuk, and
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he tries in every possible way to scare the shamans who want to go in to her, so that they will abandon their intention of mollifying her. A long way in the passage itself there is a big black dog, and he too keeps watch to see that none but the greatest shamans, of whom he is afraid, get into the house. Nuliajuk herself lives with Isarrataitsoq: "the one with no wings, or the one with no arms"a woman, but nobody knows who she is. She has the same husband as Nuliajuk, and he is a little sea scorpion. A child, too, lives with Nuliajuk; she is called Ungaq: "the one who screams like a child"; it is a baby that was once stolen from a sleeping mother when her husband was out hunting at the breathing holes. This is all we know of Nuliajuk, the sea spirit, who gives seals to mankind, it is true, but who would much rather that mankind, from whom she once received no pity when she lived on earth, perished too. It is clear from the text that Nuliajuk must be considered one of the lowest-ranked members of Netsilik society. She is a female child and orphaned as well. It is surprising that she is alive at all and was not victim of infanticide. As female, child, unbetrothed, and orphaned, she would stand out as the most marked member of the Netsilik society. The cruel death at the hands of her society is probably, in their minds, something that should have happened long ago. But an interesting transvaluation occurs in the myth. Through her cruel death Nuliajuk becomes the mother of the sea beasts and, as mistress, controls the land animals as well. In short, "she obtained great power over mankind. ... She became the most feared of all spirits, the most powerful, and the one who more than any other controls the destinies of men." According to the Netsilik cosmology there are only three really great spirits that rule earth and mankind: Nuliajuk, Narssuk, and Tatquq, but Nuliajuk is considered the most powerful (Rasmussen 1931:224). She vigilantly and mercilessly watches over taboos, visiting any violator with great misery (1931:224). She is all-knowing and can make the sea animals visible and hence easy to hunt, or invisible and allow mankind to go hungry and cold (1931:224). This great and cosmic power of Nuliajuk creates a "tangled hierarchy" (cp. Hofstadter 1979:10) within the Netsilik culture of an almost vertiginous nature. The lowest member of society becomes the highest, most powerful cosmic force in Netsilik culture. The dirt of society becomes at once its guarantor and its possible destroyer. The cosmic rules the social and so the girl-childspirit rules mankind; but within the social, the man rules the girl-child. As the social ladder is descended, one suddenly finds oneself climbing up the cosmic one. As the cosmic ladder is descended, hierarchies are inverted, the direction down is the direction up; the lowest rung suddenly becomes the highest rung. This tangled hierarchy is exemplified also at other levels. The primal violence against Nuliajuk is transformed into the possibility of a primal violence against mankind. She is the observer of taboo transgression and welcomes the opportunity to do violence to social transgressors, to a society that condemns her kind to an inevitable violence. Here we witness the struggle between a social hierarchy that imposes an order which ensures violence to its lowest members, and the incorpora-
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tion of that hierarchy within the cosmic one, ruled by the social equivalent of the lowest member of Netsilik society, a ruler who awaits with relish her opportunity to do violence against those who disobey the very dictates of that social-orderimposing hierarchy. Paradoxically, social and economic well-being depends on observing the taboos enforced by a sea spirit whose social equivalent would be the lowest in the cultural hierarchy. It is as if the great violence of female infanticide, of the lowly position of the unwanted female, is compensated by her apotheosis as a cosmic force. But I think it would be a mistake to treat this as an example of catharsis, or an inverted form of ideology which actually supports the status quo by giving subordinates an innocuous superiority in myth. This is the case simply because the superordinates of Netsilik culture believe in the power and the existence of Nuliajuk. Rasmussen asked one of his informers, Qaqortingeq, what he desired most in life: the answer was a continued abundance of food, clothing, no sadness or pain or diseases, excellence in hunting ability, and the same thing for his kin. Rasmussen asked him how he would attain these. Qaqortingeq's response: "I must never offend Nuliajuk or Narssuk" (1931:224-25). Here the man who can, at his whim, determine whether a female infant shall live or die is humbled by the female-child-spirit. Netsilik culture is permeated by a radical violence: a violence against those that violate the social order by a former citizen of a culture which did violence against her. This tangled hierarchy is witness to a certain ambivalence present in the Netsilik hierarchy, an ambivalence between the maledominated hierarchy of the Eskimo's social and economic world and the possibility of its transgressionof a world with inverted relations. This tangled hierarchy suggests that indeed myths do play out the fundamental tension between the order-giving hierarchy and its possible transgression. At the basis of myth production is an original sense of violencea violence created by an imposing order: in creating value, i.e., difference, order violates an unmarked condition. Thus the existing order is also always already faced with its counterpart, or its destruction. C. The Ambivalence of Hierarchy: A Reading of a Tlingit Myth Consider the following Yakutat Tlingit myth, the first in the Raven Cycle (Laguna 1972:44ff.): Raven [Yel] is Moon's [Dis] nephew [Moon has control over all water and power to make floodsas indicated in most versions]. Moon is extremely jealous of his wife, and puts her in a box, hoisting her to the ceiling each time he leaves his house. This is done so his nephews cannot have sexual relations with her. Moon had a sister and he ordered his slaves to kill his sister's children. Moon's sister left the house and went to the beach and began to weep over her misfortune. Suddenly Killerwhale came to her and asked what was wrong. She explained her situation. Killerwhale told her that when the tide goes out to pick up a rock big enough to swallow. She found such a rock, heated it up and swallowed it. After this she became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy. She hid with her boy in a cave until he grew up, old enough to use a bow and arrow. Shortly
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after this he shot a [mud] duck. His mother skinned it and he told her to crawl inside the skin. He shot a snipe, skinned it and placed himself in the skin. Raven then returned to his uncle's hut while he was out, and told his slaves to cut down his wife. He took her out of the box and pulled out the hair under her arm pits, and burnt it. Moon saw the smoke and hair and yelled out "someone has my precious stuff." This angered Moon and he caused the flood to occur. All the people were destroyed, but Raven's mother was saved because she floated in the duckskin and Raven simply flew above the water. The Yakutat Tlingit are divided into two moieties, the Raven and the WolfEagle; they are exogamous and matrilineal, though patrilocal. The moieties are divided into clans, which are ranked, generally, on the basis of wealth, and sometimes martial courage (Oberg 1973:19; Jonaitis 1977:17). The clans are further divided into houses, which are ranked along the same principles, but where wealth and property predominate. There is always one house of highest rank (Oberg 1973:40). Moieties are important as ceremonial units, but clans are the political units, and within clans, the housegroup is the most important for economic and political security (Oberg 1973:29). Within the moiety, a person calls his own people 'friends', those of the opposite moiety 'opposites' (Swanton 1970:424). "Clan solidarity is more apparent than real, for the element of rank is so strong that out of it crystallizes definite classes (Oberg 1973:41). Class lines run across clan and moiety, "and form a unit probably stronger than the clan itself" (Oberg 1973:41). The anyeti (nobleman) in every village consists of the upper end of the two moieties, made up of the paired leading houses in the two highest clans (1973:41). The yetsati of the leading house is called the ankaua (rich man), and serves as the ceremonial leader. There are only two ankauas in each village, and these are the heads of the leading class of the two moieties. The most important kinship relation, politically and economically, is that between nephew and uncle (kak), generally the mother's oldest brother. At a certain age, a boy leaves his mother's house and stays with his mother's brother, since the son is not of his father's moiety and clan (Oberg 1973:25). If he does not move to the house of his uncle, he is considered a "sissy." The father has little say in the upbringing of the boy. The kak is responsible for the education and enculturation of the boy, and at the uncle's death, the oldest nephew inherits his uncle's property and position and the political intrigues of the house. At one time it was apparently the custom that the nephew would marry his uncle's widow (Laguna 1972:480). In general, "spirits descended in one family from uncle to nephew" (Swanton 1970:466). It is through the mother and the uncle that a man receives his status, rank, and wealth. The uncle is more or less the guardian of the wealth for his nephew, as one informant put it (Laguna 1972:480). The chief of the household is called "everybody's uncle" (Laguna 1972:464). Since rank and social standing were the most important aspects of hierarchical organization, even "uniting Ravens with Wolves, clan with clan, lineage with lineage, and individual with individuals, across moiety lines'' (Laguna 1972:463), and rank and social standing were determined through the relation between uncle and nephew, it appears that such a relation was the very core, the very fabric of Tlingit society.
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As educator, the uncle's treatment of the nephew was harsh, forcing him to swim in freezing water, and run the beach every day, ending with a thorough lashing with switches, until he could stand it no more. There is an incident cited by Laguna (1972:480) in which the uncle actually stabbed his nephews for their supposed cowardice during such training. Despite these cruelties, later, as the boy matured into a young man, the relation between the two grew into one of mutual respect. The ideal marriage was between the uncle's nephew and his daughter. The relation between the nephew and the uncle's wife was friendly. She could go camping with the nephew or spend a few days out fishing (Laguna 1972:480). It was possible for the nephew to sleep with his uncle's wife, and the informants relate that the uncle was not supposed to be jealous of such affairs, even though he would kill any other man suspected of adultery with his wife (Laguna 1972:481). If the uncle/nephew relation is at the core of the social structure of the Tlingit, then the Raven myth completely inverts the normal relation between the two. By killing his sister's sons, Moon hopes to prevent the possibility of spiritual and material descent through the hands of his nephews, hence the continuation of the Tlingit (in some versions, motives for the killings are economic: the desire to keep the possessions for oneself). Moon is a man of obvious wealth, since he has slaves, and is also apparently the yetsati, since he has the power to order the slaves. There is no reason not to suppose that he is an ankaua as well, since in many versions of the myth the people as a whole fear him. This places Moon in the most prominent status of the Tlingit, that is, he is the most unmarked, or normative person. For this reason, his refusal to allow proper descent to occur is all the more radical. Moon's actions, in effect, threaten the very fabric of the Tlingit society. The violence done against his nephews is, in fact, a violence done against the social values of the Tlingit. There are some secondary inversions that also occur. Typically, the uncle is not supposed to be jealous of the nephew's relations with his wifeeven to the point of sexual relations. But this is obviously not the case within the framework of the myth. There is a more interesting inversion, however. The Tlingits call illegitimate children nitc ka yadi, 'children of the empty beach'. Along with the slaves, the illegitimate child is considered the lowest of the poor and lowly (Laguna 1972:462). As an indication of this, they always sleep toward the front of the house. Thus Raven embodies a feature that classifies him within the lowest ranks of society. There are other characteristics of Raven, displayed in the Raven Cycle, which reinforce that image. He is lazy and gluttonous, two characteristics which the Tlingit absolutely abhor. He is transsexual and homosexual, since he changes into a woman in order to marry his father. He is a trickster and causes both pity and ridicule among the raconteurs. He is a cheat, a deceiver, a thief, and a cannibal; his name is defiled by other mythic characters (Raven-poop). He is the epitome of dirtiness (Laguna 1972:844). Consequently, whereas Moon is the most unmarked or normative, Raven is the most marked or nonnormative. Despite these marked characteristics of Raven, he is revered among the Tlingit as "the creator or rather the organizer of the present state of things, both in the
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natural and the artificial world" (Swanton 1970:454). After the flood, he was responsible for the division of clans, the organization of the Tlingit people. His myths are used to justify clan prerogatives and the use of the crests, and so serve as an ideology of the rich and powerful. Yet given his especially marked characteristics, he is also a hero of the weak, the poor, and the subordinate. He is an inspiration to the underdog. As one informant put it: "today poor people can be just like Raven" (Laguna 1972:843). This clearly makes Raven an ambiguous, liminal figure. The narrative of the myth is based on a lack/liquidation-of-lack scheme. Moon initiates a lack (the killing of nephews), which establishes a marked condition. This lack is liquidated through the intercession of Killerwhale (the crest of the opposite moietyWolf-Eagle), which leads to the birth of Ravenand the liquidation of the original lack. Raven punished Moon by violating his wife, which leads to the destruction of the old order, consequently creating another lack. This leads, as the other myths in the cycle relate, to a new order, i.e., the liquidation of a lack. The normal ranking relations between the uncle and the nephew, given the markedness features of Raven, make the hierarchical inversion of displacement in the myth clear. The highest, most unmarked member of society, Moon, the uncle, the yetsati, the ankaua, is responsible for its destruction; the lowest, Raven, is responsible for its re-creation and reintegration. The myth performs a transvaluation in which the very principles of the hierarchical organization of actual society are inverted or displaced within the mythic framework. Violences and actions which would be abhorred in Tlingit society are precisely the devices, within the myth, necessary for its organization, and the means which effect a literal reevaluation of the social values. This Tlingit myth especially clarifies the ambivalence of hierarchy, for it shows that the violation of the actual, present hierarchy is the means for establishing that hierarchy; and so the tension between an order-giving hierarchy and its violation is intertwined in the makeup of the myth. D. The Ambivalence of Hierarchy and the Directed Determination of Interpretation: A Reading of a Myth among the San Blas Kuna Howe and Hirschfeld (1981)in a study of a San Blas Kuna mythargue that although the myth is ambivalent in terms of the kind of hierarchy it is advocating, the interpretation of it most often sides in favor of the existing hierarchy: "Through our analysis we suggest that manifestations of ideology such as this myth, although they often embody a biased or one-sided point of view, can also provide valid insights into the cultures that produce them and suggest some of the ambiguities and quandaries of social life as they are felt by people of both sexes" (1981:293). The San Blas Kuna inhabit a long stretch of Panama's Caribbean coast. They are matrilocal, and thus senior men and women can use the labor of their sons-in law in exchange for their daughters. However, there is a village endogamy, and upon marriage, the young men live only a few hundred yards away at most, returning to their parents' home almost daily. When not occupied with their fathers-in-
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law, they often continue to work with their own fathers and brothers (Howe and Hirschfeld 1981:301). Socially, Kuna women have a much stronger position in their society than have many peasant and Indian women in Latin America. Kuna women can own land and houses and participate in the running of their households. For these reasons, they have a tendency to be outspoken and assertive (Howe and Hirschfeld 1981:299). On the other hand, men dominate public life and occupy the most important political and ritual roles, even those concerned with female puberty. Overall, they retain more influence and authority than women (Howe and Hirschfeld 1981:299). Economically, men are associated with the forest and the sea. Crops, game and fish belong to the men until they bring them home; men dominate in the production of food, women process and distribute it and so are associated with the kitchen (Howe and Hirschfeld 1981:305; cp. J. Brown 1970:5763). Much of this analysis serves as background for the following myth collected by Howe and Hirschfeld (1981:29497): A married couple living in the village of Sokkupti on the river of the same name had four sons. As the boys grew up, their father bathed them in medicine, making them the sort of hardworking producers who bring home great quantities of game and plant crops in abundance. Because of this all of the men who had grown daughters wanted the boys as sons-in-law. But when prospective parents-in-law went to ask for them, the boys' parents always refused by saying: "Let me tell you something. I've raised my boys since they were small . . . I didn't raise them for someone else . . . I didn't bring them up for someone else to be eating well because of them." To keep the boys from wanting to marry, their parents gave them medicine to drink and bathe in which made them uninterested in women. After the medicinal treatments had continued for some years, however, the boys found even their own mother and sister repulsive. Because of this the boys resolved to flee and ended up at the headwaters of the Sokkupti River. There they set to work again and, again, they were tremendously productive, planting crops and shooting much game, so much so that the pelts from the animals were blocking up the river. One day, when they returned to their house, the place seemed different. They saw that things were already prepared for them, food was cooked, the house was swept, things were ready. Some of the cut-up meat was taken. They smelled their mother's repugnant smell and left immediately, traveling to the headwaters of another river; and the mother wept at losing her sons again. At their new home the boys hunted and planted as before. One evening when they returned home they noticed that things were different. The boys saw that someone had planted flowers . . . the place smelled fragrant. They noticed that cotton had been scattered under their hammocks. Food and drink were prepared. The boys wondered who had been there, suspecting that it might have been their mother once again. The next day they resolved to catch the person who kept coming there. One of the brothers was chosen to stay and hide himself behind a tree near the house. Toward noon he heard someone making a noise. The boy looked up and saw a golden platter coming down from above. The platter seemed to shine as it came . . . it was lighting everything up. The platter came close to the ground, a ladder dropped down, and four beautiful girls descended. As the platter flew away again, the girls went into the house,
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where they began to comb the seeds out of the cotton and spin it, each of them in one of the boys' hammocks. They were making each other laugh: "This is my husband's hammock," one said. "This is my husband's." The girls then swept, cooked, made banana drink, planted flowers and then they went down to the river to bathe. Afterward they came back, ate, rested in the hammocks again, and finally, shortly before the boys were due back, the platter returned to carry them away. When the three brothers returned, they pestered the fourth to tell them what had happened, but he insisted that they eat first and only afterwards narrated the day's events. Skeptical of what he told them, they left another brother the next day, who saw exactly the same thing as the first. When the other boys returned, he insisted in the same way that they eat first before hearing what happened. The brothers decided that on the next day they would all stay at home to catch the girls. They hid on the four sides of the clearing, arranging to signal the moment for rushing them by calls and whistles. The boys watched the girls go through the whole day's routine, until the girls were resting in their hammocks in late afternoon. Then one of the boys whistled and another made a hollow sound, and charged the girls, each one grabbing a girl in a hammock. The girls, however, turned out to be extremely strong, and one by one they outwrestled the boys, fleeing to the platter, which had returned. The youngest boy, who held on to his girl the longest, called for help to his brothers, and as the platter flew off, together they subdued her. She then told them to let her go: "I'm already stained with the smell of your skin, so where could I flee to get away from you?'' The brothers decided that the eldest among them should marry the girl, who told them that her name was Inanatili. She answered that she should marry the youngest, who not only caught her but was also the husband for whom she was sent to earth, and the boys agreed to this arrangement. At first the boys left one of their number behind each day to guard Inanatili, but she assured them that the platter would not return and reminded them that she had been caught by the smell of their skin. She went on to berate them, saying that if they had not been impatient and frightened the girls away, all of them would have married, because Great Father [the principal Kuna deity] had sent them to earth to comfort the boys. She told them that she and her older sisters were star girls from the star village at the headwaters of Olokerkekkatiwar in the world above. She added that she and her sisters often came down to earth when the moon was full to gather materials for their medicines to make their hammock-weaving go faster. At some point during the following year the boys returned to their natal village with Inanatili, and there she had a daughter. As the child grew, Inanatili sang to her daughter while swinging in the hammock, and since the women of that era did not know how to sing lullabies, they learned from her as she sang. After a few years, the child fell sick, and although Inanatili went repeatedly to a medicinal curer to get medicines for her, eventually the little girl died. In those days women did not know how to mourn properly. Inanatili taught the women as she mourned for her daughter. And in that way Inanatili brought good weeping. Ostensibly the myth concerns the violation of a social norm by parents of four sons, and the consequences of that violation. For selfish reasons, the parents refuse to give up their sons for marriage. The sons are most productive and the parents wish to keep their labor for themselves, thus disrupting the normal procedures. The parents ensure that the sons will stay with them by the application of medicines to their sons which inhibit the desire for women. As Howe and Hirschfeld empha-
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size, "the result of this superendogamous antimarriage is a household viable for production but not for procreation" (1981:302). However, the parents' plan backfires and the sons leave home because they cannot stand the smell of their own mother and sister. Thus, not only do the parents lose their sons, the women of the village lose potential husbands. The sons establish their own household without women; but their overproduction is without a purpose. Production without the framework of reproduction becomes wasteful. The products of their successful hunting and agriculture seem to be wasted ("the pelts of the game killed by the boys blocked up the river"). At this point God intervenes by sending the star girls to the boys. If this had been successful, the results would be a superexogamy, between heaven and earth as well as between villages (Howe and Hirschfeld 1981:303). But this plan also goes awry and the scenes that follow indicate a reversal of normal marital procedures among the Kuna: the girls come to the boys' house, instead of the converse; the boys grab the girls, instead of the opposite procedure; this takes place during the day, rather than at night; it takes several boys to subdue one girl, as opposed to an actual marriage where it takes several men to catch the groom. Finally, the youngest in each sibling set marries, in reverse of the usual order (Howe and Hirschfeld 1981:303). Upon the return of the brothers and Inanatili to their original home, still the household that is established is marked. Although it now includes both men and women, brothers are together instead of sisters, and the wrong brother marries first. In effect, the absence of parents to arrange these things has probably led to such anomalies. With the death of Inanatili's child, the purpose of the household seems to vanish. One thing that is clear about the myth is that the disruption of norms is mostly the fault of men, and the attempt to reestablish them is mostly the effort of the women. The father wishes to keep his sons for himself; the boys leave the village and establish a household without women; they also foul the plans of the star girls and the Great Father. The mother tries to entice the boys back to the household by performing household duties for them in their new camp; the star girls attempt to marry the boys. The myth also seems to emphasize the value of reproduction over food production: the latter without the former is useless. Moreover, the star girls appear to be superior to the boys in many respects: they are stronger (they beat the boys in wrestling); they have a certain cultural superiority (Inanatili directs the order of the marriage); Inanatili introduces the rite of mourning. In other words, the young female, whose marriage and even puberty rites are controlled by men, attempts to reestablish the norms violated by older males and their male offspring. It is the young who teach the old and the females who correct the males. The young female, who is the lower element in matrimonial exchange, is the savior of a culture and society disrupted by older males and their male offspring. What is especially interesting about this myth is the context of its interpretation. In public performances, the sakla, or chief, chants the story to the men, women, and children of his village in the meeting hall. After this recital, a secondary leader,
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called an arkar, interprets and retells the story in spoken Kuna (Howe and Hirschfeld 1981:298). In one performance the arkar drew two lessons: (1) God wants us all to marry, and (2) everyone should work as hard as the characters in the myth. Another arkar concluded that women should be sure to mourn like Inanatili and to perform their household duties. Moreover, parents should not attempt to break up matches desired by their sons. In other words, the function of the interpreter is to shortcut any ambivalence here by providing an interpretation which reinforces the dominant rules and values of the culture, meaning the superiority of men in these matters. Fernandez (1965) makes the same point in his study of a reformative cult among the Fang in the Gabon in Africa. There is little discussion of cultural meanings except by the cult leader. Attempts to raise such questions are overtly discouraged, since they are correctly perceived by cult leaders as a threat to their cult. Given free rein, such questions can easily lead to an attempt to set up a new group, a trend paralleled in every hierarchical religion. As Eliot Chapple remarks about Fernandez's study: "The only permissible interest in symbolic meaning is to learn the leader's latest pronouncements. To be the recipient of 'wisdom' (and the responder) is tolerable and necessary. Adopting another interaction form might affect the ritual. In other words, only the leaders may use ideology since this is how they maintain their hierarchical position" (1970:31 5). In this case a "semiological reduction" occurs, to use the phrase of Braudrillard, in which ambivalent signs (= symbols) are eliminated in favor of a reduction of one difference over another (1972:98ff.).27The semiological reduction always implies hierarchization, so that interpretation which authorizes an interpretation without the mediation of participation and discourse in effect creates a "symbolic violence" (Bourdieu 1980:219). As Braudrillard writes: The rationality of the sign is rooted in its exclusion and annihilation of all symbolic ambivalences on behalf of a fixed and equationed structure. .... Once crystallized in this exclusive structure, the sign aligns its fixed field, resigns the differential, assigns Sr [signifier] and Sd [signified] each its sphere of systemic control. Thus, the sign proffers itself as full value: positive, rational, exchangeable value. All virtualities are shorn in the cut of structure. (1972:149) Extrapolating from Peirce's theory of determination, it can be argued that legitimate interpretation should be distinguished from forced or directed determination. Since the symbol is articulated by a set of conventional interpretants it contains a certain ambivalence. Determination is the process of removing ambivalence, i.e., decreasing the latitude of interpretation. But if such a decrease is enacted through authority, in which the speaker ex cathedra sends a message to a set of auditors, such determinations are forced, directed, and nondialogic. Where determination is a shared discourse among speakers and auditors, there is the possibility of legitimate interpretation. The myth ambivalently displays the rules and values which organize the culture. Legitimate discourse allows the possibility of reflection by means of articulating the tensions which frame that ambivalence, and coming to some resolution about them. Directed determination or interpretation, on the other
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hand, creates ideology, i.e., the explicit use of a determination to dogmatically reinforce a certain hierarchy. In general, interpretation becomes directed or ideological when, as Rossi-Landi argues, there is at least one of the following present: (1) control of the codification, (2) control of the channel of transmission, or (3) control of interpretation (1974:1973). In other words, communication is directed when there is authoritative (nondialogic) control over how the story is told, when and where it is told, and how it should be understood (cp. Prower 1986:l05ff.). "What the myth does," as Howe and Hirschfeld emphasize, "is to dramatize and work through the tensions inherent in Kuna matrilocal residencethe problems it creates by depriving parents of their sons and forcing brothers to separate. At the same time, however, it demonstrates the unviability of the alternatives to matrilocality, all of which lead to an imbalance between production and reproduction" (1981:304). So, in general, the myth is read "as an account of the inevitable failure of attempts to override or ignore the necessary separations and disjunctions of Kuna life" (1981:313). But, also, ''overtly the myth presents the sisters as celestial and fully cultured human beings, superior in important ways to their intended husbands reflecting, we suggest, the relatively strong position of women in Kuna society" (1981:321). But it is precisely this reading that is suppressed in its official interpretation. If the myth exemplifies tensions, it is precisely these tensions that ought to serve as the basis of reflection. When interpretation fails to take advantage of such ambivalences it reduces itself to ideology.
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NINE Myth and Culture among the Bororo The Pragmatics of the Myth A. The Question of Ideology A classical interpretation of myth suggests that it embodies the ideology of a culture. Thus, for example, there is the claim that myth serves as a collective representation (Durkheim 1912), or a charter (Malinowski 1926), or distorted inversion (Marx and Engels 1857), of an underlying social reality located either within economic-productive interests, or in social relations. In this case, so it is argued, myth is a (distorted, inverted, displaced) signans of a real (social, economic) signatum. But the ambivalence of hierarchy present in myth suggests an attenuation of this thesis: if anything is ideological it is the interpretation; the myth expresses the tension between a hierarchy and its alternative, rather than a clear and unambiguous representation of a social or economic order. The classical analysis of myth as ideology is wrong in two senses: it is neither always a reflection of socio-economic reality, nor always a determined ideological reflection of the existing hierarchical order. In a tradition stemming from Durkheim and Mauss, extended and refined in the work of Granet (1934) and Gernet (1968), myth is articulated in terms of an ideology which serves as a collective representation of an underlying social reality. Firth, paraphrasing Durkheim, writes: But whatever be the specific forms and functions of myth, in general they are reckoned to embody a system of beliefs common to the society, and to express and support a set of common basic social ideas and values. So much of the modern treatment of myth goes back to the analyses of Durkheim that we may once again adopt his statements on the Warramunga rites and say that the mythology of a group perpetuates traditions which express the way in which a society represents man and world .... (1967:284) A myth is a symbolic, idealized representation of the social reality to which it is organically related. Society is not a symbolic order. Rather, society is the reality from which and for which mythologies engender representation: ". . . this reality, which mythologies have represented under so many different forms, but which is the universal and eternal objective cause of these sensations sui generis out of which religious experience is made, is society" (Durkheim 1912:418).
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Myths as products of society are the means by which society re-creates itself in symbolic form; yet "a society can neither create itself or recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal" (1912:422); "a systematic idealization is an essential character of religions" (1912:421). Because society is the cause of mythological representation, and the latter is at the same time an idealized symbolic reflection of society, then "if, in the midst of these mythologies and theologies we see reality clearly appearing, it is nonetheless true that it is found there only in an enlarged, transformed and ideological form" (1912:421). In analyzing myth as a symbolic order which represents a social reality, Durkheim, as Marshall Sahlins points out, "formulated a sociological theory of symbolization, but not a symbolic theory of society. Society was not seen as constituted by the symbolic process; rather, the reverse alone appeared true" (1976:116). Ideologies are symbolic manifestations of social realities. Malinowski is more severe in his analysis of myth in its relation to social norms. Myths are not representations of norms, nor does he give them the symbolic import which Durkheim and Mauss give them in relation to those norms; rather, "studied alive, myth . . . is not symbolic, but a direct expression of its subject matter . Myth fulfills in primitive culture an indispensable function: it expresses, enhances and codifies belief. . .. it is . . . a pragmatic charter of primitive faith and moral wisdom" (1926:101). Myths serve as sanctions and justifications for social rules and social order (1926:107), "to glorify a certain group, or to justify an anomalous status" (1926:125), and, "especially where there is a sociological strain, such as in matters of great difference in rank and power, matters of precedence and subordination. . ." (1926:126). Myths are ideologies in the sense that they serve directly the practical, economic, and political interests of the powerful within each sphere. In this sense, such a theory allies itself with much of the post-Marxist interpretation of ideology as interest theory. But Malinowski also points to an interpretation of ideology, which Sutton et al. (1956) call strain theory, developed out of Parsons's theory of systems. In the interest theory, ideology serves the struggle for advantage by the socially powerful. The strain theory does not restrict ideology to the strong. Rather, ideologies spring from the chronic malintegration of society due to insoluble antinomies. Ideology is the product of discrepancies among goals within different interests and desires. The poor and ordinary imagine the wealthy and famous to be unhappy; the struggling, unrecognized artist as upholding aesthetic integrity against the recognized but corrupt artist; the exploited soldier risking life for the good of his country. "Ideology is a patterned reaction to the patterned strains of a social role" (Sutton et al. 1956:307-308). Clifford Geertz suggests that the functions of ideology based on the strain theory may be divided into four: Firstly, there is the cathartic function, through which emotional tension is displaced onto symbolic enemies that are ideologically defined (the Jew, the bureaucrat, the Black, the immigrant, etc.). Secondly, the morale function serves to sustain individuals or groups in the face of chronic strain by legitimizing their activities in terms of having higher values than the group with which
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they are in conflict (e.g., the snobbery of intellectuals toward those who make more money). Thirdly, ideology may serve a solidarity function, organizing a social group against any other. Finally, there is the advocatory function, i.e., ideology as articulation of a group's constitution and goals as designed for competition in the ideology marketplace. It is clear that peoples often use their myths to justify an existing social hierarchy, i.e., that which is to the advantage of the politically, economically, or socially stronger, or use them in support of a certain political strategy (Nilsson 1972). But myths and rituals are often used by the socially weak to make their position appear the stronger, a thesis supported by Victor Turner (1969). An interesting example of this possibility is found among the Bemba, as reported by Mary Douglas (1968). The Crocodile clan uses the Bemba myths to joke and ridicule about how its ancestor ate members of the Fish clan's ancestry. The Fish clan retorts by saying this proves their superiority over the Crocodile clan since the latter are dependent upon them for food. As a source of ideology, i.e., as directed or nondialogic interpretation, the myth can serve both the subordinate and the superordinate, and seems quite able to satisfy the various cathartic and morale functions as well. However, for the one it may mask hierarchical relations that really exist in other cultural spheres; yet for the other it reinforces the same. Though this may appear to lead to an equilibrium, in effect, it only reinforces the hierarchy (cp. Wilden 1981). The interest theory recognizes hierarchy, but sees ideology only as the advantage of the stronger. Strain theory recognizes the varied uses of ideology, but considers these uses from the perspective of an equilibrium model rather than within the framework of an existing hierarchy. As catharsis, the ideologies of the weak may reinforce existing social hierarchies that perpetuate their condition; but in performing solidarity or advocatory functions they may threaten the recognized hierarchy. Despite the extremely strict and brutal repression of all artistic, literary, and political activities of Solidarity by the Polish government, they have allowed punk rock to thrive in the clubs, despite its apparent antigovernment tone. This is precisely because it serves a cathartic function, according to government officials (Solidarity Bulletin 1983). I think that, again, as in the controversy between Girard and Turner analyzed above, the strain (or consensus) theory and the interest (conflict) theory are focusing on one or the other aspects of the ambivalence inherent in any order-giving hierarchy. For example, according to Craib (1984:60), whereas consensus theory views norms, values, and commitments as the basic elements of social life, conflict theory sees interests as basic; whereas conflict theory sees social life as coercive, hostile, and antagonistic, consensus theory argues that social life is based on reciprocity, cooperation, and consensus. In general, consensus theory finds that social systems are integrated, based as they are on legitimate authority; conflict theory argues that social differentiation involves power and that social systems are malintegrated, leading to change. To put it differently, consensus theory sees transvaluation as a process which displaces but ultimately reinforces existing hierarchies, while conflict theory suggests that transvaluation is the means by which a culture resolves the conflicts pres-
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ent in any culture. My proposal is that some cultures or subcultures use transvaluation primarily in the first sense, and that some cultures are witness to both processes, or that some symbolic systems within a culture use transvaluation in the second sense. In other words, the purpose of transvaluation is dependent on many factors, but any transvaluation will be witness to the ambivalence inherent in the hierarchy it revaluates. The symbol system which articulates any level of a culture is protean and liminal. This relates to the difficulties of any ideological theory of myth, as analyzed by Marshall Sahlins. Such theories work on two assumptions: (1) that there is a stratum of society which is more real than any other in the sense that it serves as the cause or informs all other stratathis is society (Durkheim) or the sphere of production (Marx); and (2) that such a stratum is nonsymbolic or objective, in the sense that it is the signatum of which everything else is its signideology is an ideal reconstruction of a real entity. The first assumption rests on a Western bias, inherent within the culture system as such, that productive interactions dominate all other forms of interaction; the second rests on the dualistic view of the sign and symbolic interaction as an ideal rather than a real process: The 'symbolic' has been for the most part taken in the secondary and derivative sense of an ideal modality of the social fact, an articulate expression of society, having the function of support for relations themselves formed by real-political or real-economic processes. Thus incorporated in the received dualism, the symbolic order becomes the ideology of social relations rather than their quality. (Sahlins 1976:117) To some extent this theory rests on a semiotic dualism, not tenable from the perspective of Peirce. The meaning of the signatum is found in the process of its representation, not in the object represented. The object is given its order via its interpretation and representation. Sahlins, I think, suggests the same thing. Sahlins criticizes the received view expressed in assumption 1 (above) by arguing that production is mediated by a cultural semiotic logic. In Culture and Practical Reason, he analyzes the clothing system in Western societies for just such purposes, to demonstrate that ". . . production is the realization of a symbolic scheme" (1976:181). For example, he demonstrates how distinctive contrasts in objective features, as in line, color, or texture of garments, "signify differences in social meaning" (1976:189), such that the "clothing system acts as a veritable map of the cultural universe" (1976:179), communicating "a parataxic set of properties concerning age, sex, activity, class, time, place and other dimensions of cultural order" (1976:192). In general, by the systematic arrangement of meaningful differences assigned the concrete, the cultural order is realized also as an order of goods. The goods stand as a object code for the signification and valuation of persons and occasions, function and situations . . . production is thus the reproduction of the culture in a system of objects. (1976:178) As Baudrillard puts it: "ideology can no longer be understood as an infrasuperstructural relation between material production (systems and relations of production) and a production of signs (culture, etc.), which expresses and masks the
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contradictions at the 'base'" (1972:143). 28Culture is an integrated whole; what integrates it is that meaning which gets expressed through the semiotically organized properties of its aspectsthrough the semiotically organized properties of produced goods, ritualized action, and narrativeswhich, in turn, give expression to one another. The manner in which production is symbolized is a sign of class differentiation, just as class differentiation serves as a sign of production. The line (in art, clothing, etc.) in its different physical and spatial possibilities may signify gender, but "each is the signification of the other and each stands to the other as a physical sign whose meaning is being determined. .... As we understand the difference in line to be a distinction of sex, so we understand the distinction of sex in terms of line" (Sahlins 1976:195). But this hermeneutic, in which the whole signifies the part and the part the whole, must be tempered by the realization that there is a hierarchy of parts in relation to the whole: ". . . the cultural scheme is variously inflected by a dominant site of production, which supplies the major idiom of other relations and activities. One can thus speak of a privileged institutional locus of the symbolic process, whence emanates a classificatory grid imposed upon the total culture" (Sahlins 1976:211). In Western societies this is, indeed, the sphere of production; in nonWestern societies the focus is on kinship (1976:211). But it must be made clear that such hierarchies "have to do not so much with functional dominance as with structural" (1976:211). These insights, however, must be attenuated by some additional complications. Sahlins supposes an isomorphism between the various aspects of culture, yet there is a hierarchical ordering of these spheres, a line of vectorial force directed by the dominating one. Unlike Durkheim, Sahlins does not see ideology, superstructure, as a reflection of social reality or infrastructure, but he does see (in Western culture) the semiotic ordering of production, reflected in all other cultural spheres. But if such semiotic ordering is hierarchical, one must examine this symbolic logic not simply within its logical framework, but also its evaluative-hierarchical component. Moreover, it is often the case that one cultural sphere is not in a simple one-to-one relation with other spheres; rather, the isomorphism may be complicated by inversions or distortions, i.e., displacements, that occur. Although Marx may have been wrong to invoke the distinction between infra- and superstructure, still he may have been correct about its manner of displacement: If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their life-processes as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process. (1857:47) If Marx is correct in his analysis in this respect, then the notion of isomorphism must not be thought of simply in terms of a one-to-one correspondence, a pure reflection of one in the other, but also in terms of inversions and displacements of values; in effect, one cultural formation may serve as a transvaluation of another. One must not only articulate the symbolic logic of fashion systems, but explain why, for example, adolescents and nonworking women of high income are the most
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"fashion-conscious." This is not a question of social psychology, but a question of the valuative role or purpose that such systems play within the cultural whole, i.e., it is a question of the pragmatics of the symbol system. In the case of punk rock fashion, one can suggest that since, firstly, adolescents lack familial, occupational, and political status, fashion serves as a condensation of status. Moreover, in such expression, they at the same time displace, i.e., invert, the fashion values and norms of those who do have such familial, occupational, and political status. This creates a number of important issues that I hope to resolve through an analysis of the culture of the Bororo of South America. Firstly, the claim that myths are ideological in the classic sense supports two principal theses, both of which I wish to refute: (1) the myths belong to a superstructure which reflects and supports an infrastructure, principally the economic sphere. That is to say, the economic sphere is the dominant site of value production. And (2) this classic position suggests that myth qua superstructure is symbolic, while the infrastructure involves processes that are nonsymbolic. I will argue, based on a Peircean semiotic, that, on the contrary, the so-called infrastructure is as symbolic as is the superstructure. Secondly, as against a reading of the Bororo by T. Turner, I hope to make it clear that the economic is not the dominant site of value production among the Bororo, that to the extent that the cultural system is symbolic as a whole, so too is the value system. To give some validity to these two hypotheses, let me use a set of parameters, the male/female opposition, and observe their transvaluations as they are filtered through the various cultural levels of the Bororo. I have chosen the male/female opposition for a number of reasons. Firstly, as an opposition it is universal; secondly, because there are easily recognizable biomorphic differencesfor example, the woman's ability to bear and give birth to children versus its lack in men, the presence of a penis in men versus its lack in women, etc.I hope to show that these biological distinctions are clearly re-presented and reorganized by the culture. In Bororo society fishing is the prerogative of men (Crocker 1985:5859). Skill in hunting is practically the essence of the Bororo criterion for masculinity (Crocker 1985:57), and defines the Bororo as fishers, gatherers, and hunters (Crocker 1985:70). In fact the Bororo call themselves Orari Mogo-doge, "those who dwell near the surubim (a large catfish)" (Crocker 1985:26). "Aboriginally the Bororo were hunters and gatherers who cultivated maize, which seems to have been a ceremonial food, rather than a daily staple. As their name for themselves hints, they were above all fishermen. ... Their traditional village sites were always near the confluence of the Sao Lourenco or other large rivers with a small stream" (Crocker 1985:29). It is clear that for the Bororo the economic division of labor is not determined by any ecological factor of their environment, or any biological capacity of the male. There are many societies living in similar environments in which women do the fishing, as among the latmul (cp. Bateson 1936:143f.). As studies have shown, Bororo society could live on horticulture alone (which actually provides 50 percent of the protein) and could support a population as large as 2,000, but
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it could not survive on hunting-gathering alone (Carneiro 1960; T. Turner 1979). Yet meat is considered the preferred food of the Bororo. This raises the question whether it is preferred because it is more vital to the physiological well-being of the community, or because men are responsible for its acquisition. As Terence Turner argues, "the collective trekking pattern must be regarded as a cultural choice rather than a result of ecological necessity" (1979:150). It must be supposed, then, that the economic division of labor is socially constrained rather than naturally determined. Rather than social divisions between sexes being based on natural categories, the "natural" categories fisher/nonfisher are socially determined. Turner argues, "the system of family, kinship and domestic group relations tends to become the dominant framework for the organization of subsistence activities. The division of economic labor is a division of labor according to sociological functions" (T. Turner 1979:154). Socialization within the household repeats the male/female differentiation (T. Turner 1979:153). Females are primarily child caretakers, men are viewed as hunters and providers, house-builders, etc. Boys are marked with special education and differentiation from the household. Girls, on the other hand, are continuously associated in their socialization with the household (T. Turner 1979:153). Through this process boys are dissociated from the natal household and reassociated with the moiety system. In effect, the socialization process within the household allows intergroup (moiety system) domination over the intragroup (household), simultaneously reflecting the male-dominant, female-subordinate value systemthe purpose is social control (T. Turner 1979:156). The continued co-residence of the daughters would make it possible for their parents to surrender their family control over them only by slow degrees, exacting in return the maximum amount of deference and assistance from their husbands, and above all preventing the husbands from removing the daughters from the household to join other residential groups. This solution consists, then, of the establishment of matri-uxorilocal households linked to one another through the exchange of men as husbands. It should be clear that this "uxorilocal solution" consists essentially of parlaying the control men are able to exercise over women within the family at the level of the primary relations of material production and early socialization into control over other men (sisters' and daughters' husbands) exercised at the higher level of the reproduction of the family unit as a whole (T. Turner 1979:159). Put succinctly, Turner's argument suggests that the Ge-Bororo social structure is so designed as to give the older generation males social control over the younger men and women. The locus of this control is the extended family (as opposed to the immediate nuclear family). The moiety system repeats this strategy of control by again creating patterns of dominance and subordination over younger men. The Ge and Bororo social structure is a political economy based upon the exploitation of young men and women actively engaged in producing the basic social units of human production (that is, nuclear families of procreation) by older men (and to a lesser extent older women), who form dominant
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"claims" by virtue of their control of the crucial means of production (in this case, the obligatory setting of the productive activity in question), the residential household. Uxorilocality is the formal principle through which this control is exercised. (T. Turner 1979:168) Thus the "infrastructure" of the Ge-Bororo society finds its locus in the extended family, through which systems below it are informed with its valuative organization and above which systems (such as the moiety system) reflect the self-same principle of organization. The male dominance over the collective hunt, then, is the means by which the father-in-law can maintain his control over other members of the household (T. Turner 1979:78). The dominance of men over women in Ge society cannot be understood as an accidental by-product of the social division of labor, or still less, of the bio-material factors which provide its most general set of constraints. It should rather be seen as a social value which informs the pattern of the distribution of tasks within the division of labor. (T. Turner 1979:156) Thus, ultimately, material production is subordinate to another mode: ". . . the primary raison d'etre of the forms of material production should be sought, not in terms of economic needs, but of the requirements of supporting the structure of the relations of production in the dominant sector" (T. Turner 1979:177). It demonstrates "the manner in which subdominant productive modes are restructured to conform to the requirements of the dominant mode" (1979:178). Thus the extended family must be considered the dominant site of value production. However reasonable Turner's schema is, there are a number of difficulties. Firstly, at least for the Bororo the structure of the household is not clearly male-dominantas Jon Crocker argues. If Crocker is right, this would suggest that the dominant site of value production, at least for male/female distinctions, does not lie within the extended family. Secondly, there is something tenuous about arguing that the value structure of the household organizes the economic division of labor. The evidence which Turner gives is slight, based mostly on the evidence of the father-in-law's control of the collective hunt. There is more evidence to suggest that the division of labor is defined more in terms of religious-spiritual values than in terms of the socialization processes. Let me begin with the first point. If Turner were correct about the extended family as a dominant site of value production, then one should suspect a clear-cut dominance of the male over the female at all levels; but this is not the case. Crocker paints a picture of the household as a relatively constant source of fighting and bickering, mostly between husband and wife, on the one hand, and between siblings on the other (1985:86). Marriages are very unstable and there are high divorce rates. The stable core of most Bororo households is a matrilineagea grandmother, mother, daughter, together with their husbands and immature or unmarried offspring (1985:75). The matrifocal group is the fundamental social unit, the context of physical existence and socialization (1985:74, 78, 84). The husband is generally obligated to build a hut for the wife on a spot that belongs to her clan or subclan, and this generally deter-
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mines the dominant woman of the household (1985:87). Thus, the uxorilocal residence ensures that a husband enters into a situation of some subordination which he literally builds for himself. Although the husband does the hunting and fishing, the spoils are generally public property, in the sense that these must be shared in communal fashion with the proper lines of clan and moiety distribution; on the other hand, the dominant woman of the household is in control of her garden, which she treats as private propertythis is so despite the fact that the men will help with clearing and other chores. The garden is the most constant, irreducible economic unit in daily affairs (Crocker 1979:269). Although the male provides the meat protein, the woman is in charge of its distribution, and many disputes arise between husband and wife over her niggardly distribution of these goods to his clansmen. In general the female head of the household is the woman who assumes responsibility for ensuring that the household accomplishes its corporate and ritual obligations, for coordinating its resources, including the assigned labor of its members (Crocker 1985:87). Such women, as Crocker notes, "are apt to be dynamic personalities . . . often they dominate privately if not publicly, their husbands" (1985:87). For these reasons there is often great conflict between husband and wife, and, for the same reasons, friendly relations are often established between the wife's father and the wife's husband, i.e., a kind of bond between men within the household against its material chief (Crocker 1985:9495). It is no wonder that Crocker depicts such an intolerable life for the in-married male: Once established within its feminine dominion, men find themselves menaced by cosmological dangers and caught up in social strife. Obliged by the principles of Bororo structure and political self-interest to maintain cordial relations with their male affines, they must undertake the economic maintenance of the entire household, including its aged and young dependants and the unmarried adult sisters of their spouse. They must accomplish the bulk of the work necessary for the group's fulfillment of its ceremonial duties, using up in the process their own scarce non-utilitarian wealth. The natal household continues to demand their active participation in its affairs and a share of their productive effort. Their performance of these manifold obligations is roundly criticized on all fronts. Their wives deceive them facilely with their own brothers, and then complain about the husband's inadequacy as a provider of food and of such goods as dresses, cooking pots, and blankets. . . . [It is not] surprising that most men cannot long endure their conjugal situations; they return to the men's house, only to commence a new marriage some months later. It is not that the males cannot survive economically without a wife, quite the opposite. But the social system is predicated on the necessity of having affines . . . and above all sons. (Crocker 1985:97) Rather than finding the source of the economic division of labor in the household, what is found is an inverted, displaced reflection. It cannot be supposed, as Turner does, that male dominance is a constant value that is reflected on every social level. Along with the dismissal of that hypothesis, also the hypothesis of a
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cultural center out of which everything else is reflected must be modified. It must be supposed that there are many relative centers to the production of values. The communal level influences the relations among members of the household through their clan and moiety ties. The focus of this influence is the socialization of the male child. As Crocker emphasizes, matriliny is more functional than real; it is not from the descent line of some ancestress but from clan type that a male receives his identity (1985:32). Although the woman is material head of household, it is the oldest male consanguineal relative that is the titular head; his duties include the making of ceremonial items and knowledge of the clan's myths, dance steps, etc., and general esoterica about the clan (Crocker 1985:87). Control of the communal aspect of the household, its clan title, its esoteric and ceremonial cultures is in male hands. Even though the boy identifies with the mother's clan rather than the father's, nonetheless, the cultural and social aspects of the clan are the male's prerogative. The boy generally learns the spiritual and ceremonial culture of the clan from his mother's brother (Crocker 1985:90). This sort of knowledge belongs to the sphere of masculinity, even though it is handed down by someone in the mother's clan. Coincident with this framework is the importance of dissociating the male child from the household. ''Boys are marked with special education and differentially from the household . . . as young women, girls make the transition from their natal families of procreation without ever detaching themselves from their primary association with this interfamily level of structure" (T. Turner 1979:153). In contrast, young men approach their adult family roles as fathers and husbands from the vantage point of a primary association with extrafamilial levels of social organization, viz., moiety interaction (cp. T. Turner 1979:1 53). After puberty and initiation, the boy must leave the parent's household and move to the men's house. The Bororo claim that after initiation they would be ashamed if their son saw them copulating. But the same proscription does not apply to girls, even after puberty (Crocker 198 5: l06f. ). It is clear that such a strategy does a number of things. Firstly, it clears the boy of any maternal influence; after initiation he is introduced into the male world, the world of clan and moiety and ceremony represented by the men's house, which lies at the center of the village, as opposed to the women's households which lie on the periphery. The men's hut has two entrances, which open out to each of the two moieties, thus spatially representing the men's house and the moieties as male territory. Secondly, the strategy of the separation of the boy from the household inhibits conflict with the father. Since Bororo society is strictly exogamous, and the father is a member of the opposite moiety, there is no sexual competition between them. The sexual domains of father and son are mutually exclusive (Crocker 1985:109). This is perhaps one reason why father and son are generally on good terms and form intimate relations (Crocker 1985:103). The communal level of the moiety dissociates the young boy from the mother's household and into the male group and, at the same time, displaces the relation between male and female into the competitiveness and hierarchical exchanges between males within the moiety system. The communal system, in turn, gives the boy sexual dominion over the women of his
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opposite moiety, which is sometimes literally practiced, so that men or young boys living in the men's house acquire many sexual liaisons (Crocker 1985:109f.). Not only does the moiety system in its communal aspect, i.e., its suprahousehold aspect, exclude women, it provides the legitimate means of sexual dominance over them. Within the communal level, clans and moieties enter a remarkable system of hierarchical exchanges and reciprocities which define both the political and the spiritual spheres of their domains. The important ceremonial function of representing a totem can only be performed by men (or by older, desexualized women) and thus excludes women in principle. When the most powerful aroe spirit, the aiji, is represented, women are even excluded from witnessing the representation (Crocker 1985:105). This creates a system of reciprocities among the men. Thus although the aroe or spirits of Itubore and Bakororo belong to the clan Aroire of the Tugarege moiety, they are represented by the Bado Jeba Xebegebuwuge clan in the Exerae moiety (Crocker 1985:268). This is but one example of a series of interconnected asymmetrical reciprocities that occur. Even revenge-killing for a Bororo killed by a non-Bororo must be done by a member of a moiety opposite the victim's moiety. At funeral rites, a person of the opposite moiety represents the dead man (Crocker 1979:262). A member of the Exerae calls the ritual hunt, but it is the Tugarege that tell him when to do so (Crocker 1985:298). Status is achieved through ownership of the more powerful totems, as well as the right to represent the more important totems of the other moiety. The village chief is always chosen from a particular clan in the Exerae moiety (Lévi-Strauss 1955:224). The aroe spirits are owned by the Tugarege moiety, but the bope spirits (their polar opposite) are owned by the Badojebagi of the Exerae moiety. Only a Tugaregedu can become a bari (a shaman of the bope); but only Exerae become an aroetawa (shaman of the aroe). Although there is reciprocity, the reciprocity is defined within the framework of a certain valuative asymmetry. As Crocker argues: Whichever Bororo dyad is considered, whether male-female, younger-older, village center-village periphery, domestic unit-corporate group, father-son, aroe-bope, or selfalter, the two poles do not basically oppose each other in a symmetrical, like-against-like fashion, but relate as logical complements, essential to each other's categorical attributes. Bororo structure rests, it seems to me, on the fundamental "unlikeness" of the dyads which generates its dialectical processes. . . . it is this asymmetry which is basic to many features of their dual organization. . . .(1979:299-300) Crocker gives a characterization of Bororo society which contravenes Turner's schema to some extent. Rather than a set of values constantly reflected at every level of the social structure, with the extended family as the dominant site of value production, one finds instead a series of levels which conflict with one another and whose conflict within each level is either successfully ameliorated through asymmetrical reciprocity, or unsuccessfully so. Men escape the material dominance of the female household to acquire sexual dominion over the female at the level of the moiety. The relatively friendly relations between the nonconsanguineal males
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of the household are a reflection to some extent of the avoidance of conflict between males at the moiety level through the reciprocal but asymmetrical exchange of functions and duties. Whereas in the household the sphere of action is a constant conflict between male and female because of the inclusion of both within the activity of sexual and material production, the moiety effects a relative exclusion of the female from that sphere of action and, at the same time, enjoins a set of complementary relations between the males of the society. The household is a source of constant strife and instability, the communal, one of relative harmony. I want now to turn to the second issue with Terence Turner's schema, mentioned earlier. I have still not accounted for the division of labor at the level of food gathering. This requires an examination of the religious and cosmic system of the Bororo. The Bororo religious system is based on two principles, the aroe and the bope, which are consistently asymmetrical. The bope provide the life-force (raka) in all living things; they are associated with change, especially natural change. They cause rain, thunder, lightening, seasons, floods, and drought. Their domain is the sky and the earth. Bope are ugly, hot, and smell of jerimaga (decay). They cause menses in women, but also its cessation. They live in constant association with man and are thought to be the principal cause of affliction, both physical and social. For this reason they are more relevant to the immediate life of the Bororo (Crocker 1985:125). Meri and Ari are the prototypical bope. Meri, as a mythological figure, is responsible for the creation of most natural phenomena, and his actions, his incest, thievery, greed, treachery, and lying are the systematic inversion of what the Bororo consider proper moral behavior (1985:13738). The aroe, on the other hand, are nominal, permanent essences, free from raka. As opposed to the bope, they eat very little and are relatively celibate. They are beautiful and white, rather than ugly and black like the bope, and they live underneath the earth; unlike the boPe, they remain distant from the community, only entering during their ceremonial representations. The aroe provide the conceptual and taxonomic framework for the Bororo; they provide the categories in which social differentiation and identity exist, and order all perception (Crocker 1985:270). Men flee bope but ceremonially represent the aroe. The mythological aroe Itubori and Bokoro institutionalized the moieties and devised, generally, the organization of society (Crocker 1985:267). Every death is ascribed to the bope, but death frees the soul to reside with the aroe (Crocker 1985:284). In general, these characterizations suggest that the aroe are an unmarked spiritual category, while the bope are marked. A good example of this asymmetrical complementarity of the two principles is found in the comparison of the characteristics of the shamans that represent each principle, the bari, the shaman of the bope, and the aroe etawa-are, the shaman of the aroe. In terms of initiation, the bari smells a rotting corpse, denies cultural sexuality, masters fear of fire, becomes insensibly possessed, while the aroe etawa-are smells "sweetness," accepts "unnatural" sexuality, masters repugnance of ugliness, dies and is reborn. In terms of their duties, the bari eats dangerous foods, works at night, for individuals, in the periphery, goes above, to the heavens, actively battles with bope and saves aroe; the aroe etawa-
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are, on the other hand, refuses dangerous food, works during the day, for the community, goes below, to water, and saves raka. In terms of their attributes, the bari is sexually active, poor, powerful, while the aroe etawa-are is sexually inactive, rich, and knowledgeable. Religious principles undeniably constrain and direct the hunting activities of the Bororo. They not only contribute to the definition of what is edible, they determine the procedures for butchering, cooking, and distribution of the food as well. "Bororo dietary priorities reflect a range of taxonomic and symbolic systems, in which the perceived attributes of various species are also associated with various principles as categories in their cosmology" (Crocker 1985:157). The aroe/bope markedness serves to generally divide those animals which are considered good to eat from those which are forbidden to eat, or which are used for purposes other than nutrition. The foods of the bope (bope ure) are considered to be the most desirable, best tasting, and vital for the maintenance of the raka of hunters and other relatives (Crocker 1985:143). Any Bororo who must go for more than a week without eating these foods feels himself deprived and malnourished (Crocker 1985:143). Although the bope ure are considered the most important foods, they make up only one-quarter of the protein for the community; fish other than the three bope species provide nearly 50 percent. The ultimate importance of this food is so great that Crocker goes so far as to argue that "matrimony is defined by the husband's responsibility to procure bope ure and the wife's to cook it properly" (1985:164). The bope ure are defined as the foods preferred by the bope, who have dominion over this food. Man and bope enter into a kind of contract in which certain parts of these foods hunted by men are given ritually to the bope through the medium of the bariin exchange the bope do not harm men. These foods (the favorites of Meri) include deer, tapir, capivora, rhea, seriema, wild pig, genepapo fruit, and quince (Crocker 1985:135). These foods are preferred because they are full of raka, the vital force of the soul. However, there are many animals classified as bope ure which are so identified with the bope, that is, are ''themselves bope," that they are too dangerous to eat: vultures, hawks, and owls, for example. Some bope ure, such as the alligator and pirarucu, are especially dangerous and must be butchered carefully, with the most powerfully dangerous organs being especially treated by the shaman (Crocker 1985:144). Religious principles also constrain the butchering of the animal. For example, in butchering the tapir, the shaman first carefully sections the vertebral column, so that each section contains a single bone (Crocker 1985:143). Then the head is cut up, slicing away the sides and removing the tongue, eyes, and brain. Each part of the animal dissected out has a specific name, "given it by the bope." The shaman mediates between the people and the bope. He assures that the bope get their due and, by following the prescribed practices of butchery, mollifies the powerful raka of the bope ureenough so that the food is safe for human consumption. The aroe animals, on the other hand, are used mostly for ceremony. The "themselves aroe" are never eaten: harpy eagle, flamingoes, herons, macaws, anaconda. Rather, the aroe animals, especially aroe birds, are useful for ceremonies and social functions (Crocker 1985:278). But there is great reluctance in this, since
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"it seems pointless to hurt such beautiful things," as the Bororo say, and these animals are used only for urgent ceremonial needs. There is also a third class of animals that are hunted not for the sake of food or for ceremonial use, but as "revenge animals." Since all death is attributed to the bope, the death of a person must be "revenged," cosmically speaking. At the funeral rite, there must be a representation of the dead man or woman by a member of the opposite moiety. This, as Crocker claims, is "the constitutive act for Bororo society." It defines the central relation between moieties, and establishes a man's position as "the pivot in the dynamic equilibrium between bope and aroe'' (Crocker 1985:280). The representation is called the aroe maiwu (new soul) and failure to carry out one's duties to the represented is the highest moral offense (Crocker 1985:280). The representative is always male, since only men can interact with aroe. One of the aroe maiwu's principal functions is to slay an animal of revenge. This is not done for the purpose of nourishment but for religious purposes: with the success of the hunt the dead man's aroe is finally immortalized (Crocker 1985:283). The animals chosen are consistently carnivorous, the jaguar being exemplary since it is the most beloved of the bope (1985:287). As opposed to the collective hunts which characterize the procurement of the bope ure, these sorts of hunts are carried out singly, jaguar against hunter. This perhaps contributes to the fact that "slaying a jaguar is final and convincing proof of a man's raka" (Crocker 1985:287). It is as if the slaying of an animal so closely associated with the bope and raka revitalizes the raka of the hunter. Although this sketch of the organization of hunting, butchering, and cooking by religious values demonstrates that economic activity is constrained by those values, i.e., that the set of differences found in the animal world is transvalued by the religious system, I have still not completely accounted for the sexual division of labor in this respect. No doubt other aspects of the culture contribute to and constrain the food gathering activities: there are social considerations, e.g., the ritual chief of the Bado Jeba Xobugiwuge calls the collective hunt, but the members of the opposite moiety, the Tugarege, tell him when to announce the hunt (Crocker 1985:298); or, on the other hand, certain kinds of ecological constraints, e.g., lack of game, may limit the fulfillment of ritual duties (Crocker 1985:327). This is explained, I think, in the fact that such sorts of hunting are sacred activities and not profane. To the extent that all sacred activities are the domain of men, they are exclusively the function of men. "All aspects of the ritual hunts are rigidly forbidden to women and uninitiated boys.. . .Structurally, the interdiction expresses in effect the opposition between the 'profane' feminine domain of the village periphery, where the organic processes of eating, sexual intercourse, childbearing and death go on, i.e., all the marked activities associated with the bope, and the 'sacred' masculine village center, consecrated to the representation of the transcendent and immortal aroe forms," i.e., the generally unmarked and finally normative conditions of the Bororo (Crocker 1985:301). In effect, then, the definition of masculine/feminine rests on the religious distinction sacred/profane. The dealings with the spiritual, religious principles are exclusively male. Only men can represent the aroe in ritual and cere-
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mony, and the most powerful aroe, the aije, cannot even be seen in representation by women and children (Crocker 1985:105). The procurement of the bope ure, as spiritualized food, is therefore the sacred activity of the men; the representation of the dead soul of either male or female can only be the privilege of the male. Any other dealings with these spirits in terms of sickness or affliction is the concern of the male shamans, either the bari or the aroe etawa-are. The bope and the aroe principles combine in different intensities within the culture of the Bororo. Their most intense admixture is in the household, where the forces of raka, associated with bope, play out their functions of eating, sex, procreating, dying. The household is the place where the Bororo both acquire raka and watch it dissipate through the very activities which originally gave it impetus. Procreating is the loss of raka for the procreator. Indeed, the constant source of conflict and affliction between husband and wife is a manifestation of the bope itself. Yet the household is also the manifestation of the aroe, in the sense that, qua clan and moiety, it defines the social essence of its residents and their singular processes. As one moves from the center of the activities of life in the household, one moves away from the profane to the sacred, from the marked to the unmarked, and to the level of the moiety, the men's house and the ceremonial center of the village. There aroe, masculinity, predominates and the permanently social categories and spiritual essenses are defined, represented, and lived out. It is through the center of the village that access to the realm of aroe is made. From the other direction to the natural world outside the village, the element of bope mostly predominates, with its elements of flux and change and food-gathering, and there, too, these religious forces, manifested in animals, are also the domain of men. The household, in constant flux, change, instability, and conflict, is the domain of the bope, and women, life, children, affliction, sex, eating, dying are associated with the bope. The level of the moiety is relatively reciprocal, stable, and immutable. There is very little cosmical conflict hereit is the spiritual site of the aroe. The moiety is sandwiched between the aroe and the household. It is the site through which the aroe enter the life of the village, and, reciprocally, it is the protective and representative feature of the aroe. The household, on the other hand, the domain of the women, is sandwiched between the male domain and the domain of the bope. The bope enter into the community through the household, where they can create life and take it away, cause affliction and conflict. The domain of the woman, then, is at a site bordered by two opposing spiritual forces and is contained and constrained by these as well. The woman is excluded from the ceremony of the aroe and from the hunting of the bope ure, and the village is organized by an explicit metaphor of the religious belief system of the Bororo. B. The Teleology and Pragmatics of Bororo Myth The previous analysis argued that the economic sphere of activity, far from being the dominant site of cultural values, is itself informed by value systems from outside its sphere of influence, primarily in terms of the religious system of the Bororo. The question at present is how do the various strata of a cultureits economic
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and social, political, and religious lifeinteract to form the value basis of the culture? It may not be too unreasonable, for the sake of analysis, to divide Bororo culture into five basic strata: Ecologythe immediate environmental conditions; the flora and fauna, their availability; the geography and climate. Economicfood gathering, hunting, fishing, cultivation, butchering. Householdresidence, marriage, eating, sex, procreation, childbirth, child-rearing, child education, food cooking and distribution. Communaltotem ownership, clan and moiety relations, obligations, and duties. Cosmicreligious beliefs, shamanism, rituals, ceremonies, and cosmology. I would argue that these strata form a hierarchy which serves to (1) define the domain of each stratum, and (2) determine the relative influence and in-formation of each stratum over another. For example, in gathering food, the economic is concerned with the acquisition of protein, the household with its consumption; the communal is concerned with its proper distribution; the cosmic defines which protein is edible and which is not, and the methods for its acquisition and butchering. The economic stratum indeed participates in a tangled hierarchy in which the other strata of the culture contribute to its makeup and organization. The most basic biological need of the species is thus not a simple task of getting protein and eating it, but is rather mediated by the cultural whole. The ecology acts as an indexical anchorage: certain kinds of vegetation exist rather than other kinds, the geography is of a certain type, a delimited set of animal species is present. But the culture selects and combines these features in patterns that do not exist naturally; that is to say, the patterns would be altered or modified when placed in the context of a different culture. The tapir is not just a tapir, that is, an ungulate of the family Tapiridae, it is precisely a bope ure. What exists naturally undoubtedly acts as a constraint on the cultural organization of that nature, i.e., as an indexical anchor, but the culture reevaluates, i.e., transvaluates, its organization. One can suppose that each stratum of the culture contains a pattern of organization based on certain kinds of indexical constraints. The natural environment will contain certain species of animals, with certain anatomical characteristics and certain kinds of habitation. These indexical constraints, as they relate, say, to the cosmic stratum, provide part of the vocabulary for their religious usetapir instead of seal. Thus the pattern present at the cosmic level may be constrained to some extent by the natural conditions of the environment. But as the culture engages the environment, it reevaluates or transvaluates the relations between these indexical constraints in its own image. Other strata may also contribute secondary or tertiary transvaluations, depending on their hierarchical influence. Though certain indexical features of the ecology are found at the basis of the final pattern, that final result is culturally conditioned (fig. 53). Similarly the case for the biology between male and female. Whereas biology imposes certain indexical anchorsfor example, the ability to bear children, the
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Figure 53. The rules or patterns of one cultural level may be seen as the superimposition of rules at other levels. provision of a certain anatomy, etc.each stratum of the culture engages these indices in a certain transvaluation: only men can hunt, descent is matrilineal, only men can represent the aroe. Figure 54, on the other hand, shows how these various strata interact in a tangled hierarchy that shows valence but no dominant center. They are tangled in the sense that no one stratum serves as the ultimate (non-semiotic) signatum or center, but all strata are filtered through each other. If the household is the domain of women, then the cosmic reorganizes this stratum as a sphere of activity for the bope; yet the opposition between male and female, the life of the household, is reflected in the conceptualization of the aroe/bope distinction, a difference between procreation and decay, and non-life and permanence. The various strata form a hierarchy in the sense that there is a certain asymmetry among the strata. Given this picture of cultural organization, myths function in the following way. As my analysis of narration has suggested, myths are ready-made devices for transvaluating the various value-structured, rule-governed patterns that inform each cultural stratum. Given the three phases of a narrationthe disruption of a hierar-
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Figure 54. Cultural levels interact in an "impossible" relation, resulting in a "tangled hierarchy." There is a certain valency but with no clear center of value production. Figure drawn by Susan Berry. chy, the creation of a crisis, and the outcome of that crisisthe primary function of myth is to place these values and rules in a crisis, much in the medical sense where a malady reaches a point that will determine whether the patient will survive or not. In that sense myths are critical, for myths walk the line between the cultural value and its antipode. Rather than being part of a cultural stratum, myths lie at the interstices of the strata; they are in that sense liminal and ambivalent. One might even say they are proto-Socratic: myths act as gadflies to the culture, their purpose in life is to disrupt the conventions of the culture, to dismantle complacency. For this reason they are dangerous symbols and must be quickly put to death through incorporation into the culture by means of interpretations which seek to destroy their ambivalence. The myths of the Bororo may be divided into two types: myths of crisis and myths of stasis. The first type is concerned with the value-structured, rule-governed
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pattern of a particular cultural level as it appears in crisis. That is to say, the narration of the myth begins with the breakdown, or the transgression of the rules which organize that particular level, of the culture. It ends with the possibilities peculiar to the kinds of narrative transvaluation outlined before. The hierarchy may survive the transgression as a kind of test of its rightness or durability (romance); the transgression may lead to tragic results, either for the transgressor or for the hierarchy transgressed, or bothi.e., complete anomie. The transgression, especially if the antagonists are compared in age or generations, may result in the victory of youth over the older transgressor, yielding the present order, or restoration of a previous order coincident with the present one. Myths of stasis, on the other hand, generally narrate the transition from the lack of a certain order or rule or feature or condition to its adoption or institutionalization. In other words, a myth of stasis accounts for the origin of a practice or rule within a certain cultural level. 1. MYTHS OF CRISIS a. Myths of a Tragic Economy Consider the following tale found among the eastern Bororo: Myth 102. The Fishing of the Women For many days in succession the men went fishing without success. As they sadly returned empty-handed to the village at nightfall, they were made sadder by the ugly looks and the bad reception the women gave them. Finally the women, upset at having no fish, challenged the men to a contest to see who could catch the most fish. So one morning all the women went to the river and called the otters with loud cries. The otters came quickly and, after hearing what the women wanted, dived into the water and caught a lot of fish. The women returned to the village loaded down, to both the admiration and the shame of the men. The next day the men tried their luck again, but they caught nothing and had to return emptyhanded. The following day the women, scornful of their husbands, again caught a lot of fish with the otters' help. Because of the women's continuing success and their own failure, the men began to suspect a trick. The chimango assumed the task of clarifying the matter. Cautiously following the women as they went to fish, he saw what happened. After his discovery he returned to the village and called the men together to discuss what was to be done. It was decided that each man, to be ready for the following day, was to prepare a rope made with birdlime. When the women returned the men all remained silent, and the women began to complain about their indifference. The next morning the men went fishing. Carrying their ropes, they went to the river and called the otters, as instructed by the-Chimango. The animals, thinking the women were calling them, came out of the water as usual. When they came very close the men jumped on top of them, threw their ropes around the otters' necks, and strangled them; only one got away. Having succeeded so well in their enterprise, the men returned to the village satisfied, after agreeing not to speak to the women, who again jeered at them. The next day the men in turn laughed at the women when they returned from the river with almost nothing. When they called the otters, only one of them had come. Angry at having been discovered they plotted revenge. They prepared a drink from piquia nuts, but they did not remove the numerous small thorns surrounding the seed. The men drank the liquid,
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but the thorns stuck in their throats and made them choke. They began to say "U,u,u,u," in order to get the thorns out, so they were changed into peccary which also say "U,u, u,u." (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:194-95) The tale begins with a certain lackthe inability of men to get fish. Since the Bororo men define themselves in terms of their fishing ability and the source of protein it affords, this indeed is a significant crisis. The Bororo women cross the division of labor and attempt to perform the men's dutiesand with success. But this leads to apparently disastrous, tragic results. Firstly, the success of the women and the failure of the men leads to emotional turmoil: the men become ashamed and the women more and more scornful of the men. The men eventually suspect "trickery"; its discovery leads to the slaughter of the women's helpers. The women, in turn, seek revengea cycle of lex talionis is created. The women change the men into pigs. One is here witnessing the tragedy of transgression, the violation of an economic hierarchy which clearly defines the division of labor. When this hierarchy is violated, there is anomiea cycle of violent revenge, the destruction of the household and the economy. The otters, the fishermen's resources, are dead, the husbands are transformed into pigsthe women are left alone without household or food source. A second, related version (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:192-93) adds another social dimension to the myth, already implied in the first version. In this case adultery is the means by which the women achieve their fishing success. In this version their culpability is stressed ("the shameless traitresses"). Here there is an evaluation of the action by the narrator, rather than its depiction. That otters may be seen as competitors with humans for fish adds weight to the women's adulterous transgressiona kind of economic betrayal compounded by a political and social one. On the agential level there is a marked relation between the man as fisher and the woman as food-preparer; there is a hierarchy, a division of functions which is overturned within the actantial framework of the myth. This disruption of the hierarchy transforms the amity of the economy into one of enmity between subordinates and superordinates. The narrative level, rather than depicting the restoration of this original hierarchy, instead unfolds a tragic story, a radical disruption of the fundaments which hold together the Bororo economic hierarchy. Yet, the myth could give sway to an altogether different interpretation. At the same time, the myth demonstrates that it is quite possible for resourceful women to fish successfully. In effect, there is no physical limitation on women in this respect. In one sense it is only because there is such an (arbitrary) rule that there is tragedy. If fishing were not the prerogative of men, there would seem to be no compelling reason for women not to fish. In the end, the violation of the economic rule leaves women alonewithout men they appear to be socially disenfranchised, although it is possible that now here is the beginning of social autonomy or a society where male/female values are reevaluated. Women have the opportunity to start society anew.
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When I read this tale to an audience, many of whom were women, most laughed and chuckled when they learned the men were changed into pigs. These same people were clearly disappointed when the first interpretation (the tale as a tragedy) was given, being much more satisfied with the second (the myth as an indication of a new order). This suggests to some extent the ambivalent reading of the text. Whereas the Bororo see it as an important moral urging against a cross-division of labor, nonBororo may see it as an overprotection of male-oriented values. b. The Tragedy of the Household: Too Much for Oneself, Too Little for Others The following myths concern the breakdown of the proper distribution and sharing of food within the household: Myth 103. The Woman Cibairágo and Her Husband Júre A woman named Cibairágo, who belonged to the subclan of the Bokodóri Eceráe Cobugiwúige, regularly received from her family many of the fish and animals they caught on frequent hunting and fishing expeditions. Despite the abundant supplies, she cooked only a very small amount of meat for her family. Since she offered no explanation of her strange conduct, the Bororo decided to investigate the mystery. They called upon a boy from the Bokodóri Eceráe Cebegiwúge subclan and instructed him: "Today, instead of going hunting with us, you will stay in your hut pretending to be ill, but you must watch everything carefully." As soon as his companions had left the boy lay down and pretended to be asleep. Cibairágo immediately cooked the meat she had received and placed it on a mat. When everything was ready she struck a bell, and instantly the snake Júre appeared, hurried over to the woman who was sitting on the mat, and had intercourse with her. After that he gorged himself on the prepared meat, even licking up the fat and drinking the broth. When his appetite was satisfied he left. No sooner had Júre left than the Indians returned from their hunting and learned from the watchful boy what had happened while they were gone. They handed over the kill to Cibairágo but asked her not to cook it until the following day. As soon as it grew light the next morning they sent the woman to harvest corn in the field. While she was gone they prepared the meat according to their own taste and placed it on the mat, as Cibairágo had always done. To complete the trap one of the men put on a woman's belt, painted himself with urucú, sat down on the mat, rang the bell, and waited. Without even an inkling of what was about to happen to him Júre hurried to his supposed lover, and when he was ready to have the usual intercourse the Indians killed him by striking tremendous blows with their clubs. Then they cut off his head and hung it over the place where Cibairágo usually sat. When this was done they wanted to leave at once, but first they asked the boy who had pretended to be ill to stay with the woman when she returned. Arguing that she would mistreat him, he tried to refuse. "Don't be afraid," they insisted, "If by any chance Cibairágo tries to take revenge, flee at once to the plaza, and if you should feel very hot and thirsty imitate the call of the dove and we will immediately send a soothing rain." Then, playing a trumpet, the Indians, transformed into hawks, flew up to the sky. When Cibairágo returned soon thereafter and sat down in her usual place, she noticed that her relatives had already gone away and that the boy who remained offered her only a little bit of the meat that was left. Suddenly she felt drops of blood falling
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on her legs. Looking up, she saw the head of her lover suspended above her, swinging back and forth. She at once realized what had occurred and swiftly put the blame on the boy who, in order to avoid the consequences of her anger, ran to the plaza. Since it was very hot, with the sun shining in all its intensity, he called as the men had taught him, and the rain fell abundantly from the blue sky, accompanied by the call of the Butáodóge, the rain spirits. (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:196-97) As the myth mentions, the woman belongs to the Bokodori Exerae clan of the Exerae moiety. Since her lover, Jure, a red-black anaconda, is an aroe totem belonging to the Kie clan, also of the Exerae moiety, and since the Exerae and Tugarege moieties are strictly exogamous, it must be supposed that the transgression of Cibairago is also one of incest. Thus she deprives her household of their proper share of food, which can be assumed to have both nutritional and ceremonial significance, for the sake of her incestuous lover. The results are again tragic. Her lover is killed, the revengers transform themselves into hawks, the village is vacated, and the woman is left alone. Cosmically, the transgression yields the affliction of cold, wet weather, brought on by the Butao-doge, a species of bope (cp. Crocker 1985:346n.5; Lévi-Strauss 1964:50-51, 213, 215). This social transgression has more implicit cosmological significance. The various species of the Butao-doge cause all degrees of rain and windy weather, lightning and thunderbut especially in their manifestations as affliction for the Bororo (Crocker 1985:130). Rainbows, however, are the only aspect of weather not caused by the bope. They are, instead, the aroe of the anaconda (Jure). This aroe does not like too much rain and causes it to stop by projecting itself through the heavens (Crocker 1985:130). The social transgression in this tale has absolute cosmic significance which introduces an affliction upon the Bororo and sets the cosmic forces, aroe and bope, against one another. Yet it is clear that there is an ambivalence here. The men of the village ally themselves with the bope, the Butao-doge, against the woman. Yet culturally, it is the male who is most closely associated with the aroe and the women with the bope. Here the woman seeks to mate with an aroe, and the men seek to murder or dissociate themselves from the aroe, Jure. Thus, whereas the conflict between male and female corresponds in the culture to a conflict between aroe and bope, community and household, spirit and nature, here the roles are reversed. The myth imaginatively constructs a world in which the religious assignments of aroe and male, bope and female are reversed and, consequently, possible. Yet, the cosmic conflict between rain and rainbow is built out of the social conflict between the woman's incestuous transgression and those members of the clan who are offended by such a transgression. The social transgression disrupts the cosmic as wellthe order of the culture is so integrated into the cosmic fabric that each social transgression has cosmic consequences. The next two myths also concern the improper distribution of food within the household. Myth 18. Origin of the Stars In the past the women went to look for corn but they found very little, only a few ears each. Then they took a boy with them, and were more fortunate, finding a lot of
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corn. At the place where they found the corn, they used it to make bread and cakes for the men, who had gone hunting. The boy managed to steal a large quantity of corn kernels from the women, and in order to conceal the theft he packed the grain into pieces of wild cane which he had prepared for just that purpose. Returning to his hut, the boy pulled out the corn and gave it to his grandmother, to whom he said: "Our mothers out there in the forest are making corn bread; you make some for me, because I want to eat it with my friends." His grandmother did it for him. When the bread was ready the boy and his friends ate it; afterward they cut off the woman's arms and cut out her tongue so that she couldn't tell anybody about the theft or object to what they had determined to do. For the same reason they cut off the tongue of a beautiful domestic parrot and set free all the birds raised in the village. The boys had resolved to run away to the sky, fearing the anger of their fathers and mothers. Going to the forest they called the hummingbird, put the end of a very long rope in his beak, and instructed him: "Take this rope, fly away with it, and tie one end of it to the top of this vine; fasten the other end, which we will tie around your leg, firmly to a big tree up there in the sky." After the hummingbird had done as he was told, the boys, one after another, climbed up the vine, using its naturally knotty trunk as a ladder; then they caught hold of the rope that the bird had tied to the top of the vine. When the mothers returned and could not find their children, they asked the old woman and the parrot: "Where are our children? Where are our children?" But neither the old woman nor the parrot could answer. One of the mothers, going out into the open, saw the rope leading up to the clouds and on it the long line of boys climbing up to the sky. When she told the other women they all ran to the woods and began to call the boys affectionately to come down, but the youngsters paid no attention and continued to climb. The mothers began to cry, begging the boys to come back home and live with their families. The boys not only remained deaf to their mothers' pleas but actually began to climb faster. The women, seeing that their pleas were useless, began to climb up the vine themselves; from the vine they were able to catch hold of the rope and started after their sons. Since the boy who had stolen the corn was the last one in line, he was the last one to reach the sky. When he got there he looked down and saw the women clinging to the rope, one after the other. So he cut the rope and all the women fell in a jumbled heap to the earth, where they changed into animals and wild beasts. As punishment for this monstrous act and for their ingratitude, these wicked boys were condemned to look fixedly at the earth every night to see what had happened to their mothers. Their eyes are the stars. (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:47-48) In this case the transgression is made by the son against his mother's right to distribute the food properly, and against the matrilineal core of the family. The result again is social disaster and cosmic consequences. The grandmother is mutilated, the women transformed into animals, and the boys become stars, forever banished from the Bororo and made to witness the effects of their transgression. The narration in this case already includes an evaluation and interpretation built into its constitution: "As punishment for this monstrous act and for their ingratitude, these wicked boys were condemned to look fixedly at the earth every night to see what had happened to their mothers." There is no way to tell whether this was a traditional part of earlier stories, or a standardized interpretation which became part of the story. In any case the interpretation fixes the address of the taleit
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is meant for boys who might contemplate such transgressions. Yet why does the grandmother aid them in their transgression? The threat of violence against her is not clear before she makes the cakes. Could it be she saw no harm in making the cakes? Why is it that despite the monstrous deeds of the boys, the women appealed to them affectionately to return and risked their lives to get them to return? Perhaps the great transgression of the boys was to react so excessively to their household transgression. After all, was their original crime so great that their punishment would have been unbearable? For a few cakes they mutilated their grandmother, transformed their mothers, and banished themselves. The clan's lineage is destroyed by excessive reaction to the thought of punishment for transgression. Just punishment should never be excessive and the clan which creates excessive punishments promotes the possibility of a radical anticipation of that punishment by its younger generation. There is also a lesson here for parents and the older generation. The following myth organizes the pattern of the transgression differently: Myth 19. The Origin of the Stars and of Certain Animals Every time the women went to the corn plantation they came back to the village empty-handed, without so much as an ear of corn for their husbands and children. To insistent demands they replied: ''Be patient a little longer; the corn is not yet ripe." One day an intelligent little boy began to doubt the sincerity of his mother and the other women. Waiting until they left for the field one day, he armed himself with his little bow and arrows and followed them. Near the plantation he clearly heard the rhythmic pounding of the pestle and the women's merry laughter. When he went closer the women discovered him and exclaimed to his mother: "Look who's here! It's your little boy!" Then, amiably inviting him to help himself to roast corn, cakes, and a corn drink, they generously gave him some of everything. But the boy thought to himself: "What liars you are! You have so much, and you say there's no corn!" After eating his fill the boy began to play, hunting lizards and running after them into the cornfield, where he was hidden from prying eyes. There he gathered a lot of ripe corn and hid the grains inside his hollow bamboo arrows. Returning to the women, he found them getting ready to go home, empty-handed as usual. They made the boy promise not to say anything to the other Bororo. In return for his silence he would be allowed to accompany them freely to the field and enjoy the food they prepared. But since he was not at all interested in spending his time with the women, he decided never to go back to the field. His mother, fearing that he might talk, tried to force him to go, but when her son kept resisting her efforts she lost her calm and began to beat him mercilessly. The boy pretended to be bleeding copiously from the mouth. In fact, forseeing that his mother might punish him, he had earlier filled his mouth with red clay; when he spat out the clay mixed with saliva he gave the impression that he was vomiting blood. Alarmed by the spectacle, the other women persuaded the boy's mother to refrain from further violence. All the women then returned to the field. Free from his mother, the boy happily joined his playmates, to whom he said: "Friends, come over here, all of you! See how much ripe corn there is in the field!" He took the kernels from his arrows, and with the corn the boys made gruel and broth. After considering how best to take revenge on their mothers, the boys finally decided to hide in the sky. They immediately made a very long rope to climb up on, and then they asked all the birds that were good fliers to tie one end of the rope to a secure place
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in the sky. When none of the birds was able to carry out the task, the boys appealed to the little hummingbird. Needing no persuasion, he quickly flew up until he reached the sky. He returned exhausted, fainting at the boys' feet. They revived him by fanning him and asked: "Did you manage to reach the sky and tie the rope firmly?" "Yes," he replied jokingly. ''I tied it lightly to an old sucupira tree stump." Satisfied with their first success, the boys noticed that only an old woman and a parrot remained in the village as sole witnesses to their actions, for the other women were all in the field and the men had gone hunting. To prevent the woman and the bird from telling what they had seen, the boys tied them up and cut out their tongues. Then, carrying the youngest boys on their backs, the older boys began to climb up the rope. By the time they were halfway up, the women had begun to return to the village. Finding it silent and deserted, without the merry noise of children's voices, they went at once to the old woman and bombarded her with questions. Unable to answer, she simply raised her eyes to the sky. At this indication the women looked up and saw their sons, climbing rapidly. They called lovingly to the boys, offering them their breasts, but in vain, for the boys continued to flee toward the sky. The women started after their sons and had come up right behind them when the last boy, jumping into the sky, quickly turned and cut the rope. It fell and all the women came tumbling down with it. Then an extraordinary thing happened: the women who remained in a sitting position while falling were transformed into tapirs, wild boars, peccaries, pacas, agoutis, and capybaras. The rest, falling into trees, turned into monkeys, howler monkeys, coatis, coendous, small and large anteaters, white monkeys, and tayras. Also, those who kept their waist bands well in place during their fall turned into animals without tails. Those whose bands came loose in front and were hanging down in the back were transformed into animals with tails. The rope on which the boys climbed up is the present-day "ladder liana." It is still marked by their footprints, and the stars that glitter at night are the handsome faces of the sons of the Bororo. (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:49-50) The agential features between mother and son are transformed in different ways by the actantial roles found in Myths 18 and 19. In Myth 19 the actantial roles of the dramatis personae are the opposite of those found in Myth 18. In Myth 18 the boys are the social transgressors, greedily hoarding the corn for themselves and violating the right of the women to distribute the food properly. In Myth 19 the women are the transgressors; they greedily hoard the corn for themselves and refuse to distribute it properly, deceiving their husbands and children in the process. Because of this transgression and the violence of the woman to her child, both social and cosmic consequences result. The women not only lose their children but are themselves transformed into animals; the children seek refuge in the sky and become the stars, this time, as opposed to Myth 18, as a safe refuge from their victimization by the women. But underlying this interpretation in Myth 19 lies a similarity in theme with the preceding tale. Here the women are punished not so much for their greed but for the violent punishment of the boyagain an excessive reaction to a minor transgression and the fear of punishment. Instead of a place of punishment and banishment, the stars are now viewed as a refuge from excess rather then a punishment
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for excess, as indicated by the tenor of the last phrases: ". . . the stars that glitter at night are the handsome faces of the sons of the Bororo." They are no longer the saddened, alienated eyes of transgressors. If becoming stars is both good and bad, then being stars has an ambivalent character. Exclusion from culture in and of itself is ambivalentthe good is not defined from the viewpoint of the culture, but from some extracultural consideration. c. Myths of Bad Community In the following myths of crisis, the transgressions center around the transition from household to moiety: these transgressions include varieties of incestfather-daughter, mother-son, members of the same moiety. The first myth that belongs to this category is still transitional. I think it may actually be considered as two separate tales, the first part concerning the transgression of communal rules, the second, transgression of household ones. Myth 37. The Origin of Sickness In ancient times the Indians suffered no illnesses; they lived happily, free from any diseases. As it happened, a youth from the clan of the Bokodóri Exerae did not spend his afternoons and nights merrily in the central house of the village; instead, he lay near the fire and slept in the hut of his clan. The boy's grandmother used to sleep alone in the hut on the other side of the fire. Since she neither approved nor could see what her grandson was doing, one night she got up and tiptoed over to the boy. She began to bother him in his sleep by breaking wind, which produced a bad smell near the nose of the sleeping youth. She did the same thing every night. The youth heard the noises and smelled the bad odor during his sleep, but they did not bother him. His friends, however, noticed that he was getting thinner and was wasting away before their eyes, and he feared that it was because of the bad smell and the noises in the night. So he decided to be on the alert to see what was causing the offensive odor and the noises. The following night, while he was snoring, pretending to be asleep, his grandmother got up, went over to him, and again repeated her actions of previous nights. When the boy opened his eyes he saw his grandmother going back to lie down. He said to himself: "Oh! Is it you, my grandmother? Well then, you won't do this again without punishment!" The boy went back to sleep. The next day he got up as if nothing had happened and began to repair his arrows. He also made a new arrow with a triangular point. At nightfall he held the weapon under his mat and lay down, pretending to be asleep. Although the fire was flickering, it was still fairly dark in the hut, so he removed the arrow and prepared to strike a blow at his grandmother. The old woman, who had already slept a little, got up and very slowly approached her grandson. When she had lowered herself enough to do as she wanted, the boy thrust the triangular point of the arrow through her so violently that her intestines fell out and she died. The grandson called the okwáru, the enokúiri, the gerego, and the bokodóri, four different species of armadillo, and told them to dig a large hole in the hut in the place where the old woman had slept. When the animals had finished their work, the boy buried his grandmother in the hole and put a mat over the grave so that nothing would show. He was afraid that the other Indians would disapprove of what he had done. The day before the night when the boy killed the old woman, the Indians had gone
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fishing. They threw pieces of a poisonous plant into the river and then returned home to wait. After a little while they went back to the river and found many fish on the surface. They gathered up the fish, carried them home, and ate them. The next day the women went to the river to collect more dead fish, and the granddaughter of the murdered woman wanted to go with them. As she wanted to leave her son with her grandmother, she shouted outside the hut: "Grandma! Granny! My grandmother!" Hearing no answer, she shouted again and again: "Granny! Granny!" Angry because her grandmother didn't answer, she scolded the old woman and left, carrying her son along and following her friends. Near the fishing place she left her son on the branch of a tree to await her return. But the boy changed himself into a termitary, commonly called "house of termites." The boy's mother reached the river and saw many fish floating on the surface of the water. The other women took the fish and returned to the village without eating them; the mother, on the contrary, greedily ate many of the fish. Suddenly her stomach started to grow and, overcome by terrible pains, she began to moan; with the moaning, sickness afflicted every part of her body. As she went home, still groaning, she was spreading diseases of many kinds all along her way. When she arrived at the village the Indians fled from her, but the ills that she had brought forth caused the sickness and death of many Orarimogo. Because of her, many diseases exist today. Everybody was angry at the woman and wanted to kill her, but no one had the courage to get close to her. Finally her two brothers, Birimoddo and Kaboreu, prepared two wooden daggers and went to kill their own sister, who was also called Birimoddo, a name used by both men and women. One brother cut off her head and threw it toward a lake to the east, saying: "Uuu, uuu, oh oh oh, au bo, oh au bo." He stuck his dagger into the ground. The other brother cut off the woman's legs and threw them to the west into a lake, saying: "Uuu, uuu, oh oh borabo, oh borabo." He also stuck his dagger into the ground. (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:84-85) Let me consider the second part first. The sister of the killer of her grandmother (Birimoddo) violates two rules of the household. As principal caretaker of the child, she abandons him, which, in the context of the tale, seems to be for the purpose of greedily hoarding and consuming the fish killed by the men, again a transgression of the proper distribution of food in the household. In another version, the abandonment of the boy is especially stressed (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:82). In that version the boy wails and cries and he, in effect, commits suicide by calling upon the bokomu-doge bopi to pierce him with pointed sticks to transform him into a termite hill (something usually associated with the bopi spirits). The tale remarks in a moral tone: "In this way they would punish his inhuman mother by depriving her of her son." Thus in her hurry to greedily consume the fish, not only does she lose her son, but she introduces diseases to the Bororo where before there had been none. Again it is the improper distribution of food that introduces a devastating cosmic consequence. As a result, her brothers, Birimoddo and Kaboreu, must kill their own sister. It is not clear which of the brothers is the killer of his grandmother, although Lévi-Strauss suspects Birimoddo (1964:60ff.; cp. Crocker 1985:107108), since Birimoddo is a name associated with Baitogogo, etymologically associated with being 'a shut up recluse'. Although there is no explicit incest, the boy Birimoddo,
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from the Bokodori Exerae clan, refuses to go to the central men's hut. Refusing to do so (and assuming he has been initiated) is tantamount to refusing to participate in the communal society of his clan and moiety (cp. Lévi-Strauss 1964:60ff.). It was mentioned earlier how the boy's socialization process requires this separation (Crocker 1985:107). It is the means by which the father-son established complementary sexual dominion over women, and the initiation of duties and obligations for the boy's clan. In this case the boy refuses exogamy and duty to his clan and moiety, hence the reaction of the grandmother, who tries to drive him from the household. Flatulence is a stench (Jerimaga) associated with the bopi and is socially controlled and a source of shameit is beneath the dignity of noble persons, who chew certain berries to make sure that such occurrences in public are rare (Crocker 1985:107, 133, 161). The boy's refusal to leave the house leads to tragic consequences. He kills his grandmother, and her death is indirectly responsible for the death of his nephew. In killing his sister he completes not only the destruction of the matrilineal core of his clan, but also the loss of his nephew, i.e., the male continuation of the clan. Both the older and the younger female generations of his clan, as well as its masculine future, are lost. The ambivalence of the myth is generated out of the right of a murderer and de facto transgressor of communal exogamy to kill his sister for the introduction of diseases for which he himself is partially to blame. On the one hand, the woman is severely and cruelly punished for her misdeed, while the man is not punished for his; moreover, there is the tenor of the myth which suggests that such a task is heroic. Yet if the murder of the grandmother is somehow justified, does this mean that refusal to participate in communal exogamy is not a radical transgression? The myth seems to condemn activities which constitute the very fabric of the culture-exogamy. Whereas this myth concerns the refusal of the boy to participate in the communal level, the following myth focuses on the father's refusal to allow his daughter to become a wife: Myth 100. The Story of the Woman Ararúga Páru The Indian Butóre Kuriréu gave his daughter Ararúga Páru in marriage to Aráru Kuriréu, who loved her very much. The father-in-law, however, did not want the couple to have sexual relations, so every night, whenever the boy wanted to initiate something, he revived the fire, brightly lighting up the inside of the hut. As an extra preventive Butóre Kuriréu made the girl wear a belt with pendants of wild-boar claws. Thus every time the husband wanted to caress the girl the rattle of the claws awakened her father, who then warned his son-in-law not to exercise his marital rights. But one night Aráru Kuriréu found his wife without her belt and was easily able to sleep with her. Then he realized that her father had had relations with her before him. Furious at the discovery, he at once plotted revenge. He went hunting and killed a fat heron, which he cleaned and filled with the fat of the entrails, mixed with the pith of a gourd. Then he went away. His father-in-law, seeing a bird so nice and fat, could not resist temptation: he cooked it and ate it greedily. He had not quite finished eating the fowl when sharp abdominal pains made him cry out that he had been poisoned by his son-in-law. That night he died.
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Losing no time, the murderer took his wife and left the village. But Ararúga Páru sensed that the journey was bound to end badly, for the dead man was a spirit shaman and would take revenge on his assassin wherever the latter was. So she warned her husband: "Don't be careless; be on your guard, for my father was evil and very powerful." Concerned for her husband's life, she walked ahead of him in dangerous places and, when he lost his arrows in dense thickets or inaccessible places, she picked them up. One day, when the couple came to a riverbank, Aráru Kuriréu decided to shoot at a shoal of silvery piraputanga fish, despite his wife's apprehension. He missed his shot and the arrow fell into the middle of the river. Immediately he ran to retrieve it, deaf to his wife's pleas not to expose himself to danger. As he ran into the water he stepped on a bank of quicksand, which rapidly swallowed him up to his neck. In despair Ararúga Páru cried: "I told you so! Before you die at least give me something to remember you byyour belt, or your bracelets, or your armband, or your lip pin!" "No," replied Aráru Kuriréu, "I won't leave you anything, for I don't want you to marry these ornaments." But the woman was insistent, making one last plea: that he give her his earrings. Tired of her begging, Aráru Kuriréu acquiesced, and before drowning he instructed her: "Continue your journey. Visit the clans of my friends Cibaiwu, Otokóe, and Kúje, but remember that the path leading to their village goes past the house of Rie. Be careful not to make a mistake. You'll see that the first one has his face painted red and has straight hair and white skin; the second also has straight hair and white skin, but the lower part of his face is light yellow; Kúje likewise has a light complexion, but his hair is wavy." Placing her husband's earrings in her basket, Ararúga Páru abandoned him and resumed her journey. After walking a long time she heard merry conversation and laughter behind her. She tried to find out where it came from, and she discovered two beautiful á children in the basket on her back. She understood at once what had happened: her husband's earrings had impregnated her and she was the mother of a pair of healthy twins. After the little boys had grown up a bit, they would walk ahead of their mother and eat everything they found in order to satisfy their appetites. When they reached the foot of a huge jatoba tree they took a tasty fruit and split its strong shell to get at the sweet pulp inside. Suddenly there appeared an old man who was the spirit of the jatoba. He went over to the woman and said: "Why do you eat what belongs to me? I like this fruit very much. Go away! And may your children be attacked by wasps!" this was the first plague that he called forth, but it was in vain; the woman replied: "What you say is useless, for the wasps are my totem." [Ciriwóre makes a number of other curses which Ararúga Páru wards off in a similar way. Eventually there are curses that she is unable to answer, for she cannot hear them because of the noise made by the boys.] Finally the old man stopped talking, and Ararúga Páru, filled with forebodings of danger, took the children and continued her search for her husband's friends. The three walked a long distance through an arid region, and the children began to feel thirsty. When they least expected it they found a small pool of water, and against the advice of their mother they dipped into the pool to refresh themselves. No sooner had they entered the water than an eel caught and devoured them, leaving only their little lungs, which at once floated to the surface. The woman cried and cried, and alone she continued her search for the friends of her husband. She reached a village, and immediately a man emerged from his hut, went toward her, and asked: "Where are you going?" she replied: "I'm looking for Cibaiwu, Otokóe, and Kúje, who are friends of my husband." The Riefor it was none other
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than hetold her a lie: "I am the very person you are looking for." Although she realized that the man was not telling the truth, she slept with him. At daybreak her host said to her: "I'm going hunting to get us some food. Stay here, and don't go into the forest." Closing the door tightly he asked his mother not to look into the hut, but as soon as he had left the old woman, unable to restrain her curiosity, looked in and saw Ararúga Páru, all decorated and painted like a bride. She understood everything, went to the woman, and said: "My daughter-in-law, let's go out and watch the dance of the boys while I begin to delouse you." They went out and sat down on the ground, leaning against the wall of the hut. As the boys passed before them, the old woman said to Ararúga Páru: "There's Cibaiwu; look at Otokóe and Kúje." Imagine the joy of the woman at finding her husband's friends! She was so happy that she joined the boys in their dance and, as soon as it was over, went with them to the central hut. Meanwhile Rie had returned from his hunting expedition. Seeing the house completely empty, he realized that his order had not been obeyed. He did not believe his mother when she claimed that she had not even looked into the hut. At once he began to consider how to take revenge on his rivals. He filled his stomach with coroatá fruit and immediately began to belch. Then he went over to Cibaiwu, Otokóe, and Kúje, who were asleep, and vomited the sticky fruit that he had eaten into their faces. They were disfigured at once, and their hair turned white. In the morning Ararúga Páru saw the damage that Ríe had done. She led her merry companions to the river, washed them, and massaged their stomachs with her feet. In this way she managed to remove all the ugliness from their faces and to restore the color of their hair. Then she happily returned to the village with them. (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:18790) The father-daughter incest prevents the consummation of the marriage; enmity is created between the daughter's father and her husband, where there should be amity. As Crocker argued, it is this relation in the Bororo household that is generally the most friendly. The discovery of the incest leads to the revenge killing of the father. Husband and wife flee the village, and the uxorilocal residence of the clan is displaced, thus leading to the death of the husband and his sons. But after escaping from Rie, Araruga Paru finds safety with the friends of her husband. According to the Encyclopedia Bororo, it appears that Araru Kurireu belongs to the Tugarege moiety, the Iwagudu-doge clan (Albisetti and Venturelli 1969:1180). Kurireu seems to be one of its eponyms. Also, one of Araru Kurireu's friends, Kuje (carassaw), is an aroe of the Iwagudu-doge clan. This would, in all likelihood, make Araruga Paru a member of the Exerae moiety. Indeed, the Enciclopédia Bor6ro claims that she is a member of the Bokodori Exerae (Albisetti and Venturelli 1969:1180). Her father belongs to Iwado (Albisetti and Venturelli 1969:1200). Since she is warned to avoid Rie (armadillo), araroe of the Bado Jeba Xobugiwuge clan, her husband's interdiction is tantamount to the avoidance of incest. But because of her incest with her father she is marked in many respects; she is able to transgress without consequence to herself. She is the daughter of a powerful shaman (a bari, we must suppose); she is impregnated in a most unusual way; she has twins; she is able to ward off to some extent the curses of a bope spirit; she dances with the boys and visits the men's house. Marked as a victim of social transgression she embodies characteristics and powers that enable her to survive while others around her perish. Despite her travails, the innocent victim of incest prevails. Despite his
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guilt, the transgressor of such rules is able to get revenge against the one who justly punished him. Whereas the first myth involved the refusal of an initiated boy to participate in the moiety system, and the second a father's refusal to participate in it, the third concerns mother-son incest: Myth l05. The Legend of Geriguiguiatugo or Toribugo A long time ago the forefathers were preparing a penis sheath for the initiation of a youth. Among the women who went to the forest to look for palm leaves to make the sheath was Korogo. There she was seduced by Geriguiguiatugo, her son. When she returned home her husband, Bokwadorireu, noticed that bird feathers of the type used for ornamentation by the young Orarimogodogue men were stuck to her belt, and he suspected what had happened. He called upon the nearby Indians to dance the iparereu dance of the boys so that he could find out who had seduced his wife. He was sure that the boy who showed up at the dance bedecked with fine white bird feathers would be the guilty one. During the dance, performed by youths wearing the ornaments of their choice, Bokwadorireu looked closely at the dancers to see who was wearing bird feathers on his arm. To his distress only his son was so decorated. Unable to believe that his son was the guilty one, he asked the Indians to dance again. As they did so, he looked again at their ornaments to find out which dancer had his arms decorated. Again only his son had feathers on his arms. So the father angrily ordered his son to go to the place of the souls to steal the bapo rattle from them. [The youth seeks the advice of his grandmother, who suggests that he seek the aid of the hummingbird. The bird flies to the dwelling place of the aroe and successfully steals the bapo rattle.] Bokwadorireu next sent his son to fetch him the small rattle of the souls, certain that this time the souls would kill the boy. [The youth again seeks the advice of his grandmother, who suggests that he seek the aid of the blue ground dove, which flies to the dwelling place of the aroe and successfully steals the small rattle of the souls.] The father next told his son to return to the place of the souls to get the souls' buttore. [The boy again seeks the advice of his grandmother, who tells him to seek the aid of the locust, who steals the buttore from the aroe.] When Bokwadorireu saw Geriguiguiatugo return, he cursed his son and said: "Come! Let's go together to the nest of the red and yellow macaws." Before leaving, the boy ran to his grandmother and said: "Granny, father said that he wants to go with me to the nest of the macaws." The grandmother didn't know how the boy could avoid this new danger, so she was slow to answer. The boy began to get impatient, but soon his grandmother gave him her walking stick and said: "Drive this stick firmly into the macaw nest." The boy took the stick and went with his father to the foot of the rock where the nest was. The father found a long tree trunk, placed it against the cliff, and told his son to climb up. When the boy reached the hole in the rock where the macaw nest was, the father let go of the tree trunk so that his son would fall and be killed. The boy, however, quickly stuck his grandmother's magic wand into an opening in the rock and remained secure there holding on to it, swaying from side to side and calling for help while his father returned to the village. After a few moments the boy, looking upward, saw a thick vine was hanging from the wall within reach of his hand. He grabbed hold of it and pulled himself up over the edge of the rock. Calming down a little after the scare and the exertion, he felt hun-
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gry. With the twigs of small bushes that were growing on the rock he made a bow and many arrows and began to hunt lizards, which were numerous there. After eating some of those he killed he tied the rest to his belt and to the bands the Orarimogo wear on their upper arms and ankles and took the lizards with him. They began to decay and to smell so bad that he felt faint and fell unconscious to the ground. Vultures and other scavenger birds, attracted by the odor, flew over the boy and ate the lizards. The birds attacked the boy on the buttocks, but he was able to frighten them off with a switch. Later, however, they returned and continued to peck at his behind until they had picked him completely clean there. They grabbed him with their beaks by his belt and by the bands on his arms and legs and carried him upward, holding him tightly in their beaks. They flew for a long time, finally putting him back on the ground at the foot of the steep cliff where the macaw nest was located. When the boy came to he felt as though he had awakened from a long sleep. As he was hungry, he began to eat some of the fruit that was abundant in that area, but whatever he swallowed came out again immediately because the birds had eaten away his buttocks, including his rectum. Fortunately he remembered a legend his grandmother had told him about someone who had remedied the same problem by remolding the missing parts of his body with a pogodori tuber. So the boy used a tuber to form new buttocks for those that were missing. Afterward he began to eat again to see whether his body was functioning as it should. When he saw that it was, he went to look for his village, but he could not find it because the Indians had moved. Geriguiguiatugo wandered around for many days, searching constantly for the way that would lead him to the new village of the Orarimogo, but he could not find it. Finally he noticed holes made by a walking stick and human footprints which he immediately recognized as those of his grandmother and of his younger brother. Although he felt a strong desire to be near his grandmother, he didn't want her to see him right away; he wanted to play with her a little. So he changed himself into a lizard and ran between her and his little brother. The old woman, startled, asked her little grandson: "What was that?" The boy said: "A lizard went by here." Then a kukága (another lizard) went by them and again the old woman asked: "What was that?" Her grandson answered: "A wood lizard went by." Other animals went by them until, nearing the village, they saw nothing more. The boy, however, did not go into the village with his grandmother and his brother; instead, he stayed outside and remained in animal form. Before separating from his grandmother, he told her to keep a little distant from the others in the village. When Geriguiguiatugo got to the Bororo village with his grandmother and his little brother, a terrible storm hit; it rained so heavily for most of the night that all the fires of the Indians were put out. At daybreak there was noisy confusion while everyone was looking for fire, but no one had any except Geriguiguiatugo's grandmother. Everybody went there to get fire; Kiareware, the wife of Bokwadorireu, also went to the house of the old woman and saw the son of Bokwadorireu and of Borogo, his other wife. After getting fire she returned to her hut and told her husband that Geriguiguiatugo, whom he had tried so hard to get rid of, was still alive. As if nothing had happened, the man took his rattle and went out to meet his son in the ceremonial manner. Geriguiguiatugo, however, could not forget the wrong his father had done him and made plans to get revenge. He walked through the forest one day with his little brother to look for a strong forked branch which, mounted on his head, would resemble the horns of a deer. He looked for a long time and finally found a sucupira tree, which would serve his purpose. Returning home, he said to his little brother: "Go to our father and tell him to send the Indians on a deer hunt." The boy took the message to his father,
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who did as he was asked. Geriguiguiatugo also went with his brother. When all were in their places, surrounding part of the forest, Geriguiguiatugo said to his brother: "Go and see where our father is." After changing himself into an agouti, the little brother carried out the order and upon returning described the position of his father. Geriguiguiatugo put the forked sucupira branch that he had prepared on his head and asked the little boy: "Does it not look like the horns of a deer?" "Yes" he answered, "very much like them." Geriguiguiatugo then changed himself into a stag and ran straight at his father with so much speed and such violence that Bokwadorireu had time neither to defend himself nor to run away. The deer attacked him ferociously, suspending him in the air on its strong horns and then throwing him into a nearby lake. The piranha souls fell upon him and in a short time there was nothing left of him but bones picked clean. Only his lungs floated to the surface, and they were changed into an herb whose leaves, similar to a lung, grow on the surface of the water. Upon returning to the village Geriguiguiatugo also took revenge on his father's two wives. Thus ends the legend that gave rise to a lengthy song called "Xobogeu" of the clan of the Páiowe, to which Geriguiguiatugo belonged. (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:205-208) This is truly one of the more ambivalent myths of the Bororo. For, on the one hand, it condemns the father to punishment, yet the father is seeking the just punishment of his son; on the other hand it makes the actions of the transgressor appear heroic. Lévi-Strauss also notes the moral tone of the tale, which seems to sanction Geriguiguiatugo's incestuous actions (1964:48). The household is strangely divided: the grandmother, who is the mother of the violated woman, aids Geriguiguiatugo against his father, when she should be aiding the father in the boy's punishment (as she does in Myth 37 above). Geriguiguiatugo belongs to the Paiwe clan. The bird and grasshopper helpers are the aroe of his moiety, yet they aid him in stealing from the aroe. The deer and the piranha, which are implicated in the death of the father, are aroe of the father's moiety. The failure to successfully punish the boy for his crimes against the culture work to the culture's advantage, for now the Bororo have acquired certain artifacts from the aroe; yet such an accomplishment violates the domain of the aroe. But even though there is an advantage at the cultural level, the Bororo lose at the ecological level with the introduction of winds and rain into their environment. However, as Crocker has noted, this myth is cited consistently as the explanation for exogamy: When I first began to inquire into the issue of "why matriliny?" among the Bororo, informants usually responded that "there is nothing for the child in his (or her) father's clan," which I took to be a strictly jural interpretation emphasizing the importance of the normative capacity of the maternal group, with its integrated icons and cosmological orderings. When later, pursuing the matter, I received a very standardized reference to a myth, I was at first inclined to accept an indigenous de facto attitude of acceptance of tradition and its incomprehensible dictates. But the myth proved consistently to be the one used by Lévi-Strauss as his "reference myth" within the Mythologigues series [the present one under considerationJ.L.]. . . . This myth recounts a patricide occasioned by the son's supposed intercourse with a father's wife and his father's ultimately disastrous
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efforts to avenge himself. Informants' repeated references to it as a justification for matriliny now seem to me to express a view that only such a principle ensures that father and son should not be competitors for the same resources, and institutes a state of social arrangements in which they can indeed be cooperative and mutually complementary statuses. (Crocker 1979:294) On the basis of this reading of the tale, the consequences of Geriguiguiatugo's actions are too difficult to tolerate, for they create a conflict between the father and the son, a relation which is a representation of the relation between the moieties within the household, and the only relation within the household which is typically congenial. The peace of the communal relation is disrupted and the friendliness of the father-son relation is destroyed. Myth 25. The Legend of Baitogógo This legend concerns the origin of water and the use of ornaments. The Indians don't know who created the world and nature or who created them. Our ancestors said that the liana came out of the ground spontaneously, and that the jatoba appeared later; that is why it is so large and majestic a tree. Then the vegetation that grows in swampy places came up because of the newborn waters. The Indians say that Baitogógo (an aroroeddo, the chief with the highest authority) caused water to appear for the first time. It happened in this way. Baitogógo's wife, who was of the Bokodóri Exerae, went with other women to look for fruit in the jungle. Her son, crying, said to her: "My mother, I'm going with you." "You are not coming with me." But the child, without being seen, followed his mother, who beneath a cumaru tree was raped by an Indian of the Kie. (This was a grave offense not only because of the adultery, but also because of the infraction of the rigorous law of exogamy, for the Indian of the Kie and the woman of the Bokodóri were both Exerae.) When the child saw his mother violated, he ran back to the village and told his father what had happened. Their father, seizing his bow, said: "Let's go there. I want to see that man." When they arrived the father shot many arrows at the man. [He shot him in the shoulder, arm, thigh, buttocks, leg, and face. A shot to the back killed the man.] After killing the man, Baitogógo took his wife and led her back to the village and during the night, when she was asleep, he strangled her with his bowstring. Afterward he called four types of armadillosthe bokodóri, the gerego, the enokkúri, and the okwdruand made them dig in the place where his wife slept; then he buried her in this hole. He covered her body with earth and put a mat on top so that the other Indians would not discover his terrible deed. [In the morning the boy asks his father for his mother. The father first tells the boy that she went to get water, then to the bathroom, then to look for wood and fruit. Each time the boy searches for her but fails.] Baitogógo, who had had two wives, was sitting outside the hut one day with his surviving wife. His son transformed himself into a bird and began to sing: "É,é,é,é." He flewoff in search of his mother, but as he started out he let a little excrement fall on the shoulders of Baitogógo, who asked his wife: "Look what fell on my shoulder." His wife looked and said: "Someone has thrown excrement on you." The husband replied: "Wash it off." She tried to remove the excrement but it wouldn't come off, so her husband ordered: ''Wash it again." She complied, but her effort was useless; the dirt simply wouldn't wash off. "Wash harder." But the excrement, instead of disappearing, began to grow onto Baitogógo's shoulders; it grew so much that it became one of these huge jatoba trees.
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Deeply ashamed, Baitogógo said to another Baaddageba, Akarúio Boróge: "You rule over my people now. Cast me out; I cannot stay among Indians with a tree on my shoulders. " Baitogógo left the village and walked for a long time. When he became tired he sat down to rest, and it was then that he created water. At the place where he sat down a lake appeared; when he got up and walked farther in the same direction, a river began to flow; wherever he extended his arm, a lake gushed forth; wherever he pointed, a river would begin to flow. It is because of Baitogógo that there is so much water today. But as the water ran, forming lakes and rivers, the tree on his shoulders gradually diminished in size until it disappeared altogether. Since the place was beautiful, Baitogógo decided to live there, but he found it necessary to make the ika flute of the Bakoróro and many ornaments. Then feeling the desire to return to the village he had abandoned, he went back there. When he got near the village he began to play the flute. It sounded like this: pupupupupU, pupupupupU, pupupupU, pU, pU, pU, pU, pU. He looked like the Bakoróro, wearing his ornaments and carrying and playing the flute. The Indians who were listening to him came nearer, but he wanted to go back to his home because it was prettier there. Again he told his Baaddageba friend Akarúio Boróge: "You must rule over our people; I will return to my home and will never come back to the village again." Akarúio Boróge replied: "I will go with you." Baitogógo answered: "No, don't come.'' Akarúiio Boróge asked him: "Is the place where you live beautiful?" Baitogógo answered: "Yes, it is very beautiful, and it is mine alone." Akarúio Boróge, along with many other Indians, wanted to follow Baitogógo to the beautiful place. As the place was far away, it took the Indians many nights to get there. Before departing, they left their fathers in charge: Baitogógo gave power to his father Bakorokuddu and Akarúio Boróge to his father Akarúio Bokodóri, two Exerae men who belonged to the two clans that still keep the obligations of Baaddageba today. Baitogógo, Akarúio Boróge, and the Indians who went with them lived for a long time in the new region, where they made many ornaments they hadn't had before. After a long time they returned to the old village to give their friends all the ornaments they had learned how to make. When Bakorokuddu, from inside his hut, saw the travelers coming, he ran to his friend Akarúio Bokodóri and told him: "Your sons are coming." When Akarúio didn't answer, Bakorokuddu went out for another look; he returned and again said: "Oh, Akarúio Bokodóri! Your sons are here." So Akarúio Bokodóri got up and went to have a look; seeing the returning Indians adorned with feathers he became afraid and wanted to hide in his hut. Bakorokuddu said: "Stay here. Don't run away." Akarúio Bokodóri stayed to receive the visitors, and when they came up he said: "Did the Bakoróro arrive?" He questioned them further: "Who are you?" They answered their fathers: "We are the Bakoróro and the Itubóre." Akarúio Bokodóri then sang to them [a traditional chant]. After finishing his song, Akarúio Bokodóri wanted the newcomers to give him all the ornaments they had brought with them; he didn't kill those who brought many ornaments, but he did kill those who brought only a few. (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:58-61) With the discovery of the rape and incest, a cycle of revenge is created. Baitogogo kills first the rapist and then his wife. His son makes a jatoba tree grow on his shoulders. This leads to self-banishment and a period of wandering, during which time Baitogogo causes lakes and rivers to appear. Eventually the tree disap-
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pears. His self-imposed exile is permanent, but he does return, in a period of reconciliation, to present ornaments. Thus the rape leads to the loss of wife and home, the antipathy of the son, and permanent exile, as well as the loss of the highest position in Bororo society, the aroroeddo; Baitogogo's return to the village and those that follow him to his place of exile means also the loss of political power for the Tugarege moiety. His social transgression leads to the introduction of a cosmic event and, on the social level, the loss of political power. Although, in one sense, the tale is morally exact in having Baitogogo punished by his son, it is precisely by means of this punishment that Baitogogo gains ascendancyhe lives now "in a beautiful place," he is able to make many new and marvelous ornamentsperhaps a sign of cultural superiority. Yet the departure of the sons and the transfer of power to the fathers creates a rift at the communal level, in two senses: as an exchange between father and son, it gives power to the opposite moiety; as a separation of father and son, it creates two competing societies and their enmity is clear in the last lines: "he [the father] didn't kill those who brought many ornaments, but he did kill those who brought only a few." The acts of incest and murder create an antinomy between father and son, on the one hand, and between moieties on the other. Yet at the same time it creates the possibility of ornaments and bodies of water. In the end, the tale unfolds an ambivalence between the normally friendly relations between father and son and between moieties. The underlying theme of the myth uncovers a hostility, distrust, and enmity in those relations. The myths of crisis present a context of examining the consequences of the antipodes of good Bororo values: greed, incest, cruelty, adultery, murderthat is, the characteristics of the bopi. The consequences ostensibly recommend the following set of rules: goods should be distributed fairly and dutifully, according to the conventions; incest should be avoided; murder is wrong; excessive punishment should not be practiced. Yet, the value of these rules is not a clear gestalt through which their antipodes serve as a background. This would have the effect of reducing the tales to parables or allegorieswhich they certainly are not. The background sometimes comes to the fore, what should be condemned is sometimes condoned, the apparent villain is sometimes the hero, good things sometimes result from bad actions, and bad things sometimes happen to good people: the bopi and the aroe are intertwined in a fundamental ambivalence. In this case the interpretation is not self-evident and must struggle with its oppositewhat if these rules are not followed? This makes the myths of crisis dangerous symbols, and so they prompt an interpretation which either never questions what it claims to be self-evident-these rules are goodor, its interpretation must lay such ambivalence to rest by means of some justification. These rules are certainly beneficial to follow, and it is these rules which precisely constitute much of the good character of Bororo society; the myths, however, form a framework through which their mundaneness is exchanged for the chaos of crisis, and the possibility of their understanding and justification.
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2. MYTHS OF STASIS The myths of stasis, as opposed to those of crisis, are concerned with the establishment of a custom, ritual, or possession. Whereas myths of crisis are concerned with the transgression of the rules which organize a certain social leveland the subsequent consequences of that transgressionmyths of stasis are concerned with the establishment of those rules. The principal example of these among the Bororo concern the ownership of the aroe totems and the rights to their representation. Figure 55 schematizes this arrangement. But this exchange between finders of the totems and owners has inherent asymmetries. Clans from Tugarege moiety always are finders of totems which are given to clans of the Exerae moiety. In the one case where an Exerae finds a totem (a member of BJXo) it is given to another Exerae clan. In the list of totems given by Crocker for each of the clans, the Tugarege "own" more totems in the following categories: birds (2:1), animals (2:1), vegetables (7:1), fish (2:1), environmental features and astronomical features. Cultural ornaments are about equally divided, but the Exerae "own" more spirits than do the Tugarege (5:1). Yet, according to myth it is Baitogogo, a member of the AR clan of the Tugarege who, although at one time the political chief of the Bororo, became ruler of the aroe spirit world, and seceded his right to rule to his father, a member of the Exerae moiety. The epitome of the bopi spirits, Meri and Ari, are owned by the Exerae, but the cultural heroes are owned by the Tugarege. C. Cultural and Cosmic Crisis and the Teleology of the Myth The cosmic world of the Bororo consists of two primary forces, the bopi, ugly, greedy, lusty, concrete, who are the primary sources of social affliction, and the aroe, the dead souls, freed of the element of raka, which most characterizes their marked opposite, the bopi. The mythology of the Bororo reflects this division yet conjoins these primary forces in a certain ambivalence. There are two sets of heroes-Meri and Ari, most representative of the bopi (aroe of the Exerae), and Bakoro (Baitogogo) (Birimoddo) and Itubore (aroe of the Tugarege). Within the context of the myths, Meri and Ari exhibit behaviors that characterize them clearly as antisocial and marked. They are vicious murderers (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:17ff.), thieves, and liars (Wilbert and Simoneau 1983:36-37), commit incest, and generally do harm to the Bororo. As paramount bopi they are exemplars of antisocial behavior. Yet their cosmic power is great. They can cause floods, winds, storms, put out fires, and give order to many cosmic and natural phenomena. As orderers of the natural cosmos they are at the same time the prototypical transgressors of the cultural universe. On the other hand, the cultural heroes, Bakoro and Itubore are recognized as cultural heroes. That is, they live within Bororo society, yet it is precisely because of their social transgressions that cultural (and sometimes natural) phenomena are created. As opposed to their marked counterparts, these cultural heroes are associated with the aroe spirits and the domain of dead souls.
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Moiety and Clan Divisions of the Bororo Exerae Bado Jebage Xebeguwuge (BJXe) Kie (K) Bokodori Exerae (BE) Bado Jeba Xobugiwuge (BJXo)
Tugarege Iwagudu-doge (I) Aroroe (AR) Apiboroge (AP) Paiowe (P)
The Exchange of Totems in Bororo Mythology Myth Finders/ Receivers/ Totem Givers Owners P BJXe Meri/Ari I BJXe Meri/Ari AR K Bokwagboa Kubeo I AR Bamboo I AR Arrows I P Acuna feathers I BJXo Jaguar P AR Aije BJXo BJXe Heron and ibis AR BE Wild dogs WS = Wilbert and Simoneau (1983) CA = Colbacchini and Albisetti (1942) AV = Albisetti and Venturelli (1969)
WS
CA
AV
95-96 196-197 97-98 931-932 101-102 363-364 106 111 107 29-30 107-108 451-452 110 263 118 119 120 32 147-148 437-438
Figure 55. Moiety and clan divisions of the Bororo and the exchange of totems in Bororo mythology. Both the natural order and the cultural order are created out of violent transgressions of cultural rules or by beings who in essence exemplify anticultural behavior. The violators of proper order are at the same time the ones who institute it, and so a tangled hierarchy is created which frames a certain ambivalence between the order-giving hierarchy and its transgression. The Bororo cosmos, both natural and cultural, is an order built upon transgression and violence. Every transgression of the cultural rules introduces a new phenomenon: ornaments, wind, rain, lakes, water, songs, dances, political rights, totem ownership, etc. Myth is this place where such dialectical relations operate. It is that imaginative space in culture which openly transvaluates order; mythic narration with its structure of hierarchical crisis is tailor-made for the displacement of the cultural values which constitute its framework. But what is the function of such transvaluations? I have tried to argue that myths are not ideological in the classic sense, i.e., a legitimation of the rules, hierarchies, and values that constitute a nonsymbolic
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socioeconomic sphere; rather, interpretations authorized by those who are superordinate in existing hierarchies perform that function. Moreover, at least in the case of Bororo society, such spheres are just as symbolic as the religious spheres. What is witnessed is an interrelation among levels that involves a tangled hierarchyan interrelation that is no doubt hierarchicali.e., one that has a certain vector of valency, but which nonetheless exhibits a certain ambivalence in regard to these hierarchies. Interpretation is required precisely because of this ambivalencethis kind of indeterminacyto use Peirce's languagedemands interpretation. But usually it is a very cautious interpretation, because myths are dangerous symbols, and their dangerous elements are excised from that interpretation: the use of authority and limitations placed on participation in interpretation do the job, but they crush the instinct for a communal investigation and dialogue of these matters. Rather than ideological, the myth is transvaluativeit hides yet reveals possibilities. Myth exhibits the Protean-like character of transvaluationit is a shape, or better, a value-shifter rather than a value-producer. Consequently, its function will shift according to the dynamics of the culture as a whole and according to the individual storytellers and interpreters. As Barbara Herstein-Smith suggests: a recognition of the variety of possible narrative transactions, and the range of interests that narratives may thereby serve should encourage us to acknowledge and explore the multiplicity of functions that may be performed by narratives. . . . We would accordingly be less likely to expect to find any single fundamental political purpose or psychological fact of narratives, whether it be . . . to reinforce ruling ideologies or to subvert them. . . .(1980:235) Just as Peirce and Saussure recognized an objective and subjective teleology involved in any sign system, so we should recognize in myth and its interpretation a variety of functions, dependent on the interests and goals of its listeners and interpreters, but constrained by the objective telos of the narration itself.
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TEN Transvaluation and Transformation The Question of the Origin of Myth There appears to be a remarkable similarity between the Netsersuitsuarssuk tale of the Netsilik and the myth of the "fisherwomen" of the Bororo cited above. In the Netsilik myth, N cannot hunt seals; his wife refuses him water on that account; by means of his helper, the bear, he regains order over his household and his hunting ability is restored and enhanced. In the Bororo version, the men of the village cannot get fish; the women, with the help of the otters, are able to obtain many fish; but the men kill the otters and the women change the men into pigs. Similarly, the Tlingit myth about Raven, cited above, is comparable to one found in Hesiod: [Rheia, the sister of Kronos, bears him a number of children. Afraid that these children might usurp his power, he swallows them as they are born. Distressed, Rheia confers with her parents, Gaia and Ouranos, who hide her in the countryside until she delivers Zeus. Lyktos hides Zeus in a cave in a cliff. Rheia wraps a great stone in baby-clothes and presents it to Kronos as a decoy. In the meantime Zeus grows to manhood; Kronos vomits up the stone and then his progeny. A war begins between Kronos and the Titans and Zeus and the Olympian gods. Zeus is victorious and gains the title of the greatest of the gods. ] (cp. Hesiod, The Theogeny, lines 455-505). The similarities between these myths are quite striking. The differences reside mostly at the level of the narrative elements. Instead of uncle-nephew, there is a father-son relation at the core of the story. This may be due to the difference between a matrilineal and a patrilineal kinship system. Both myths concern the death of the leading villain's sister; although in the case of the Greek myth, the sister is also the villain's wife. There are also striking similarities in the narrative elements, especially the stone; however, the myths differ in their employment of the stone within the narration. In the Greek myth, the stone is swallowed by Kronos when given by his wife Rheia; in the Tlingit myth the stone is swallowed by Moon's sister in order to become pregnant. The cave plays the same role in each mythit is the hiding place for the threatened child. There is of course a difference in the
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motivations of the principal villains: Moon kills his nephews to prevent them from having sexual relations with his wife; Kronos's motivation is to prevent his kingly overthrow. But the themes of the myths are quite similar: a member of the older generation threatens to kill off his successors. What accounts for the similarities between these myths despite their great geographical disparity? Of the first set, the Netsilik myth is found in the northernmost regions of Canada, the Bororo myth in the Amazon region of South America; of the second set, the Tlingit myth occurs in the Alaskan panhandle, the Greek myths in the Mediterranean region. The striking similarities in these and other geographically disparate myths have given rise to two radically opposed hypotheses. The first, diffusionism, argues that equivalence is due to the transmission of the tale along certain well-defined migration routes. Innatism, on the other hand, as found in the work of Jung and Campbell, suggests that similar myths arise spontaneously in different cultures because of an intrinsic connection between the psyche of Homo sapiens, that is, a "collective unconscious," and the symbols which are its conscious manifestations.29 Strictly speaking, both hypotheses could account for the phenomena under question. There is good evidence for the diffusionist thesis, but suppose for a moment that it is given every empirical confirmation. Suppose that it were possible to date the origins of the culture that originally told the basic myth and its transmission to the Greeks and then to the Tlingit culture, assuming that there were divergent migratory paths from a central culture. This may, in fact, have been the case. Yet although the diffusionist hypothesis could account for the existence of relatively equivalent mythic elements in Tlingit culture and Greek culture, it still leaves unanswered two basic questions: (1) how did the original myth originate, and (2) why did the Tlingit version embody the transformations that it has? To argue that the similarities are due to the transmission of a central story through various cultures, geographic locations, and time differentials is similar to arguing that language universals are due to the transmission of core linguistic structure from an original language. It simply sets back the question of origin one step further. Secondly, although it can answer the question of similarities, it is not quite equipped to account for the differences among myths. Innatism could possibly give an answer to the first question, but there are many possible versions of innatism besides Jung's theory, and there is no compelling reason to adopt the theoretical apparatus of psychoanalysis to explain it. However, between these two radical hypotheses of diffusionism and innatism lies a mediate position, formulated by Lévi-Strauss in that massive study which composes the Mythologiques, and which attempts to give answers to the questions which diffusionism cannot answer, and which, at the same time, avoids the pitfalls of an innatism of the Jungian type. One of the basic principles of myth for Lévi-Strauss rests on the notion of opposition. Indeed, it may be argued that opposition is myth's primum mobile: It cannot be said purely and simply of the world that it is: it exists in the form of an initial asymmetry, which shows itself in a variety of ways according to the angle from
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which it is being apprehended: between the high and the low, the sky and the earth, land and water, the near and the far, left and right, male and female, etc. This inherent disparity of the world sets mythic thought in motion. . . . (1971:603) Or, put otherwise, "it is through the systematic application of rules governing opposition that myths come into being, develop and are transformed into different myths which in turn also undergo transformation" (1971:603). Although opposition is the prime mover of myth, the particular formation of a myth is due to the peculiar transformation of these oppositions: "Mythic thought operates essentially through a process of transformation" (1971:675). The rules of transformation are the familiar ones that populate the four volumes of the Mythologiques: contrariness, contradiction, inversion, symmetry (1971:675). These are principles that are a part of Lévi-Strauss's myth analysis, beginning with what he later calls his "paradigmatic study'' of myth exemplified in "The Structural Study of Myth" (cp. 1964:307), all the way to his "syntagmatic" study found in the Mythologiques. In the early paradigmatic phase we are told more than once that "mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution (1955:224). Or, as in his critique of Propp, he attempts to see the narrative structure of the folktale not as a likely sequence of thirty-one functions but as a set of transformations, metaphorically mathematical, i.e., inversions, negations, and complements of a central function. Overall, just as within the context of the narrative structure of a single myth, "the purpose of the myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction" (1955:229), its more global purpose is "to come to terms with history, and on the level of the system, to reestablish a state of equilibrium capable of acting as a shock absorber for the disturbances caused by real-life events" (1971:607). In terms of the process of transformationand within a relatively local framework of myths within one cultureeach of the myths can be viewed as a transformation of another. For example, M1, M2, and M5 of The Raw and the Cooked, myths of the Bororo that I have already examined, entail a certain set of transformations. In M1 (1964:35-36; Myth 102 above), a boy commits incest with his mother, the father seeks revenge by sending him on dangerous tasks, which he accomplishes with the aid of his grandmother; the boy finally kills his father and his mother as well. In M2 (1964:49-50; Myth 25 above), a young boy witnesses his mother's incestuous rape by a member of the same moiety. His father kills his wife and the rapist. The boy succeeds in having his father banished from the village. In M5 (1964:59-60; Myth 37 above), a grandmother tries to kill her grandson by flatulence, because the boy refuses to leave the family house for the men's house (i.e., a refusal to participate in exogamy). The boy then kills his grandmother. The structural core of these myths has to do with an "improper conjunction," viz., incest, and then a "disjunction" which is "mediated": in M2, the disjunction of nature and culture, mediated by the cultural ornaments; in M5, the disjunction of life and death, mediated by diseases. "M1, M2, M5, have in common only certain features of a central core which can be syncretically reconstituted as follows: at the start incest-that is, an improper conjunction; at the conclusion, a disjunction that takes
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place thanks to the appearance of an agent that acts as a mediator between the two poles" (1964: 64). Transformations between these three myths can occur in different respects, as Lévi-Strauss argues. M1, which is the deprivation of food supplied by a sister, is transformed into M2, which is the deprivation of a mother who supplied food, which, in turn, is transformed into M5, the absorption of anti-food (intestinal gas) supplied by a grandmother. In addition, M1 can be viewed as the inability to retain food consumed and, consequently, transformed into M5, the inability to evacuate food consumed (1964:63). However, when these Bororo myths are compared with myths in the neighboring Ge region that are understood as transformations of Bororo myths, the latter, especially M1, undergo a more comprehensive interpretation. The general strategy of such a technique is made clear in The Origin of Table Manners. By persistently going over and over the same myths, or through the incorporation of myths that are new (but belong, from the formal point of view, to the same set, in so far as they can be shown to be transformations of the preceding ones) structural analysis follows a spiral course. It seems to be going round in circles, but the aim is always to reach ever deeper layers of the mythic structure, into the heart of which it probes and all the properties of which it gradually penetrates. (1968:469) In regard to these Ge myths (M7, M12), which concern the origin of fire, LéviStrauss proposes to establish "that in all these instances we are dealing with the same myth, and that the apparent divergences between the versions are to be treated as the result of transformations occurring within a set" (1964:136). M1 appears differently now: it is a myth which explains the origin of wind and rain, i.e., in an inverted fashion, the origin of fire (1964:137). Although the origin of fire is explicitly absent from M1, it is implicitly present, as indicated by the fact that in one scene in the myth the return of the hero accompanies a wind and rain that puts out all the fires of the camp, except his grandmother's. Thus, just as in the Ge myths, where the jaguar is considered the master of the fire, in M1, Geriguiguiatugo is consequently also the master of fire. Even the etymology of the hero's name (gerigigifirewood; atugojaguar) suggests such a connection (1964:138): ". . . we do not need any further proof in order to accept the fact that the Bororo myth (M1) belongs to the same set as the Ge myths and constitutes a transformation of the same themes" (1964:138). These themes he lists as follows: (1) a weakening of the polar opposites in regard to the origin of fire; (2) an inversion of the explicit etiological content, which in this instance is the origin of wind and rain: anti-fire; (3) the initiation of the hero who occupies the position attributed to the jaguar in the Ge myths: master of fire; (4) a correlative inversion of the relations of kinship: the Ge jaguar is the (adopted) father of the hero, whereas the Bororo hero, who is congruous with the jaguar, is a (real) son of a human father; (5) a mutation of family attributes (equivalent to an inversion): in the Bororo myth the mother is "close" (incestuous), the father "remote" (murderous); in the Ge versions, on the contrary, it is the adopted father
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who is "close": he protects the child like a motherhe carries it, cleans it, satisfies its thirst, feeds itand against the motherwhom he encourages his son to wound or killwhereas the adopted mother is "remote," since her intentions are murderous. (1964:13839) The study of these transformations continues in The Raw and the Cooked, so that what becomes clear in the analysis is a system of Ge myths, S1, explaining the origin of fire and cooking, and another, its inversion (Bororo), S-1, explaining the origin of water (1964:296). But if the Bororo myths are a transformation of the origin of (cooking) fire, the Tupi myths are shown also to be a transformation of the Ge myths in terms of the origin of meat for cooking. The key myth in this respect (M14) provides the link in this transformation. Whereas the jaguar is a beneficent brother-in-law (a giver of wives) and provides men with fire for cooking, in exchange for a wife received, the wild pigs, whose origin serves as the theme for the Tupi myths examined, are the animal embodiments of the malevolent brothers-in-law, who refuse food (1964:91). In turn, the Bororo myths concerning the origin of adornments can be seen as a transformation of the Tupi myths, since adornments come from non-edible parts of the animals (skulls, feathers). "The critical contrast between the means of cooking and its opposite (i.e., water) has therefore simply been transformed into a contrast between the substance (for cooking) and its opposite" (1966:27). As he writes, "By turning back upon itself from the point of emergence of one of its elements (the episodic appearance of a wild pig), I reconstituted, in The Raw and the Cooked, a second mythological system, relating to the origin of wild pigs, that is of meat: the subsistence and precondition of cooking, just as fire was the means and instrument of cooking in the first system" (1966:29-30). Out of the first system emerges a second one, whose transformations are as follows: the Ge myths which concern the origin of cooking (fire) are transformed into the Bororo myths concerning the origin of anti-cooking, namely, water. The Ge myths, which are concerned with fire as the means of cooking, are transformed into the Tupi myths which concern meat (as the substance of cooking). The Tupi myths concerning the origin of meat as a cooking substance are transformed into the Bororo myths as the origin of adornments, i.e., the anti-matter of cooking (1966:26-27). The system S1, S-l is embedded within a second system, S2, S-2. Continuing with this strategy, Lévi-Strauss argues that since myths concerning the origin of meat are associated with tobacco, "tobacco therefore emerges in S2 as an instrumental term" (1966:30). Interestingly enough, the myths which concerned the origin of honey generally form an inverted set in relation to those about tobacco (1966:27). Thus the opposition, honey/tobacco, creates a new system, S-3, S3, into which the other two sets are embedded. Just as S3 can be seen as a transformation out of S2, so S-3 is a transformation out of S-2. The proof of this is that honey is generally a means of the origin of adornments, and myths that deal with the origin of honey have a transformational relation to those myths (1971:99). As the analysis begins to incorporate more and more regions within the Americas, the interrela-
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tions between the systems develop in the following way, as outlined by Lévi-Strauss in The Origin of Table Manners: The opposition between the raw and the cooked which provided the title of the first volume was an opposition between the absence or presence of cooking. In the second volume, I took the presence of cooking as given, in order to examine its periphery: the customs and beliefs concerning honey, in the hither side of cooking, and, on the far side, those relating to tobacco. Proceeding along the same lines, this third volume has been concerned with the outer limits of cooking which have a natural aspect, namely digestion, and those with a cultural aspect, and which extend to table manners by way of recipes. The latter, as it happens, belong to both categories in that they prescribe the cultural elaboration of natural substances, whereas digestion stands in a correspondingly symmetrical position, since it consists in the natural elaboration of substances previously treated by culture. As for table manners, they belong to what might be called a secondary cultural elaboration, in which the manner of eating is compounded with the method of preparation. (1968:470) There is, however, a shift of emphasis in the last volume of the Mythologiques, The Naked Man. Lévi-Strauss attempts to prove that there is a kind of "echo effect," in a relatively defined geographic area of North American mythology, of the basic armature of the South American myths described above. Not only are the reference myths of The Raw and the Cooked "literally repeated" (1971:29, 35), but there is a homology between their armatures (1971:100, 147). Firstly, instead of myths concerned with the origin of honey, the North American myths are concerned with saltbut since both are considered condiments, they can easily be seen as transformations of one another (1971:100). But, more important, just as honey, in the South American myths, is seen as the means for the origin of adornments, salt in the North American myths is the means for the origin of adornments. The lefthand side of the armature in each region parallels the left-hand side in the other. Similarly, the right side of the armature also finds a parallel in the North American myths (1971:101). Moreover, the central core of this armature, myths concerning the origin of fire, is directly transformable into the Loon Woman stories characteristic of North American regions (1971:173, 11113). Lévi-Strauss neatly summarizes this in the following way: . . . if, in tropical America, there is a myth, B, which is a transformation of a myth, A, and a myth, C, which in turn is a transformation of myth, B, a myth A' homologous with A has only to exist in the northern region west of the Rockies for us first to deduce, and then to confirm, that myth A' implies B', which is a transformation of it just as, in South America, B was a transformation of A. The same thing happens in the case of C and C' and the parallels can sometimes be carried even further. (1971:500) The implication of this is quite clear and quite astonishing. Since the armature demonstrates that the myths are transformations of one basic myth (the reference myth), and since myths in different regions parallel that armature, then all myths within both regions are simply transformations of one myth. Although this explains the 'how' of the myths, that is, the means by which a
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particular myth develops as a transformation of other myths, it does not, as such, explain the 'why' of those transformations, nor does it account for the origin of the reference myth. Lévi-Strauss attempts to answer these questions in the following way. The 'why' question has both a synchronic and a diachronic answer. Synchronically speaking, transformation is a result of the native impulse of the (unconscious) mind: ". . . I recognize that a particular pattern, however basic it may appear to be, usually gives rise to its opposite, either through an immediate, mirror-image effect, or as the ultimate outcome of a process of elaboration" (1971:619). In other words, binary operations, such as opposition and the resultant process of transformations, are the natural constraints placed upon any material received by mythic, or for that matter, human, thought. If, as Lévi-Strauss argues in The Raw and the Cooked, ". . . myths signify the mind that evolves them by making use of the world of which it is itself a part" (1964:341), then mythic thought proceeds in a manner similar to the way in which language is organized, as pairs of oppositions and contrasts (1964:341). Myths, as products of the mind, must reflect the organizational constraints of the mind and, so, in a Kantian sense, the image of the world it creates is already inherent in the structure of that constraining unconscious (1964:341). The second, diachronic answer results in a modified diffusionist theory of the origin of the transformations. Based on the work of L. S. Cressman (1956), Lévi-Strauss argues that the area in North America from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, between the 40th and 50th parallels, "seems to be one of the oldest and most regularly inhabited sites in North America" (1971:14). Since South America was peopled by way of North America (1971:631), then it must be supposed that the mythic systems of South America must be, in a sense, a distant mirror of the more original systems found in North America. The Oregonian area "seems like a kind of original centre of North American cultures, the point at which in the past they were perhaps all linked to what we might callgiving concrete expression to an abstract ideatheir umbilical cord" (1971:605). If this hypothesis were true, the myths of this region "would represent the best preserved, the richest and still living, forms of a system which gradually broke up as it spread eastwards and northwards, so that what we found in the heart of South America was no more than its scattered remains, as they were after being carried for centuries on successive waves of migration" (1971:605). The second, diffusionist answer dovetails with the first, innatist answer. The diffusionist hypothesis could account for the actual physical reasons for the parallel in armature between the North and South American myths; the innatist hypothesiswhich sees mythical thought as a system of transformational constraintscould account for the systematic interconnection between these myths despite their geographic and temporal distance. The two answers together avoid the pitfalls of either hypothesis treated as the sole answer to these questions: the similarity between geographically disparate myths can be accounted for without resort to a more speculative, Jungian-type hypothesis of spontaneous generation; yet the innatist constraints upon original sources still allow one to see these diachronic ele-
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ments organized into a systematic whole, whose rules can be fairly well articulated. Unlike Jung, Lévi-Strauss argues that core similarities among myths are due to their transmission from other sources; but unlike the diffusionists, he argues that their processes of transformation are tied to an innate structure of the human unconscious. Lévi-Strauss's diffusionist-innatist hypothesis gives an answer to the second question I posed above, viz., why are myths in different geographic areas roughly similar?, i.e., how do we account for transformations between myths? However, it still does not answer the first question, viz., how did the original myths originate? Lévi-Strauss gives the following answer to that question: In the last resort, there is only one absolutely undecidable sequence in the case of each mythological system. When reduced to its essential features through a series of transformations, this sequence boils down to the expression of an opposition, or, to be more accurate, to the expression of the opposition as being the initial datum. In the last part of this volume, it has been demonstrated that several hundred stories, apparently very different from each other, and each extremely complex in itself, proceed from a chain of interlinked statements: there is the sky and there is the earth; between the two there can be no conceivable parity; consequently, the presence on earth of that celestial phenomenon, fire, is a mystery; since celestial fire is now present here below on the domestic hearth, it must have been brought down from the sky by an expedition which went up from earth to fetch it. (1971:602) The genesis of myth is based on a principle consistently present in Lévi-Strauss's entire corpusa conflict, contradiction, or opposition is the primum mobile for stories that attempt to resolve it. Their resolution is constrained by the mind, so that "the problem of the genesis of myth is inseparable, then, from that of thought itself. . ." (1971:603). Together these various answers given by Lévi-Strauss to the questions I have posed create the following picture. The 'stuff of myth is transmitted according to the diffusionist hypothesis; its organization and transformation, however, are constituted by unconscious thought, which, when faced with an original conflict or contradiction, generates a primary myth about the problem. These are eminently reasonable solutions to the questions that have been posed about myth; yet there are a number of difficulties with the answers. There is, of course, the common complaint about the nebulous character of Lévi-Strauss's notion of transformation and its concomitant "logical" operations (cp. Maybury-Lewis 1969; Diamond 1974:306-308). Lévi-Strauss's notion of transformation is so broad, the notions of "opposition," "inversion," etc., so imprecise that interpretations can often be called into question: ". . . his interpretations of myths may be no more than something he chooses to read into his own manipulations of them, a sort of intellectual haruspication" (Maybury-Lewis 1969:155). Another difficulty with such notions is their abstract, formal quality. The ethnographic material is used by Lévi-Strauss as an instrument for articulating or justifying the purely abstract structural properties of the myth; the symbolic character of this material for this
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culture is lost to its function as an exemplar of the general structural relations of a supposed unconscious Mind operative in all cultures. The structural analysis of Lévi-Strauss gives us a glimpse of a universal structure, so generalized and abstracted that it could, in fact, be found (with the right kind of manipulative interpretation) to be present in any myth; but the cost is the loss of the symbolic character of these mythic elements which animate and make these myths significant for a particular culture. As Maybury-Lewis argues: . . . the "armatures sociologiques" to which Lévi-Strauss does link the myths are extremely general and abstract, consisting mostly of combinations built out of oppositions such as conjunction/disjunction, male/female, kinship/alliance. Most myths could be expressed in these terms, especially if the oppositions are assigned as arbitrarily or even as metaphorically as Lévi-Strauss assigns them. . . . Virtually any society could be shown to be appropriate for any myth, provided that the tellers lived in the proper environment. (1969:157) I think that the difficulties inherent in Levi-Strauss's structuralist analysis can be overcome by replacing the notion of transformation with that of transvaluation. The latter type of analysis requires a closer tie to the value system of the culture in which the myth operates. Since the valuative character of opposition is more sensitive to cultural context, it cannot become so abstracted as to lose its link to that culture. The system of value relations gains its clarity from its interaction and relation with other levels of the cultural system, rather than in terms of a formal process. The great advantage of Lévi-Strauss's notion of transformation is that it strikes out a path between the radical theses of the innatist and diffusionist accounts; but its disadvantage lies in the somewhat vague quality of the path's direction. On a more specific level, a transvaluative analysis could give an account of the similarities and differences between the sets of myths given in the beginning of this chapter in the following way. Diffusionists are no doubt correct in arguing for the transmission of a basic core between similar myths in geographically disparate areas. But in accounting for the differences and transformations of similar myths, a transvaluative analysis would take the following approach. In earlier chapters, I emphasized the difference between three levels of the myth: the first, the agential level, concerns the composition of the elements of the mythsthe kinds of agents, their environment, and the material which they use, lose, gain, or exchange in the course of the narrative action. On the second level, the actantial level, the narrative defines the various roles that agents play in regard to one another: helper or enemy, victim, villain, and hero. Finally, at the third level, there is the development of the story within the framework of a narrative type. These three levels interact hierarchically so that valuative differences at the more elementary levels are incorporated into valuative differences at higher levels, such that a certain valency in one is given a valuative reorganization and direction in another.
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Myth 1
Myth 2
Level1 Agential Level2 Actantial Level3 Narrative Type Figure 56. Table for the comparison of myths. With this in mind one could compare myths in terms of these three levels (fig. 56). Thus, for example, a comparison between the Netsilik and the Bororo myth cited above might be as follows: At the first level there are obvious eco-cultural differences: fish instead of seals, bears rather than otters. The economic differences between the two cultures account for the differences in economic roles: seal-hunters on the one hand, fishermen on the other. The greatest similarity between the two tales lies at the second level, i.e., in terms of the dramatic roles each of these agents plays. Both myths tell the story of heads-of-households who cannot hunt/fish. There is a conflict between husband and wife, whose antagonism creates the tension of the tale; the bear/otter is the mediator of this conflict. But the third level demonstrates a radical difference in narrative type. In the Netsilik tale the original hierarchy, although initially disrupted, is restored and enhanced by the end of the tale; in the Bororo myth, the story unfolds the tragic consequences of the disruption of the original hierarchy. A similar analysis is possible in the case of the Tlingit/Greek myths. Instead of an uncle-nephew relation, there is in the Greek myth a father-son relation, undoubtedly due to the difference between a matrilineal and a patrilineal kinship system (cp. Vernant 1974:45). Both myths concern the murder of a sister's children (although in the Greek myth the sister is also wife to the villain). There are similar elements in the storythe use of a stone and a cave. There are similarities at the second level as well. In each case the father/uncle attempts to kill off all inheritors of his position; it is in each case the sister's children; one surviving boy succeeds in overthrowing his wicked senior. The cave plays the same role in each myth, as safe haven for the surviving child; but the stone has an inverted relation in the two myths. In the Tlingit myth, Raven's mother swallows the stone in order to become pregnant; in the Greek myth, Kronos swallows a stone, substituted for Zeus. Finally, the myths share similarities at the level of narrative type. Both depict the overthrow of an older-generation hierarchy by a younger generationa demise and deterioration of an oppressive hierarchy. In each case the transvaluation accounts for the differences in a core structure of a tale which was undoubtedly transmitted in two different directions from a cultural center. It accounts for these differences not in terms of abstract formal rela-
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tions, but in terms of actual cultural-valuative relations. The symbolism of the myth is embedded within the culture which defines the valency of the mythic elements, and characterizes the social teleology of the narration. Even within a set of myths within the same culture, "transformations" among them may be seen as transvaluations. In the Bororo set which concerns incest (Myth 105, Myth 100, Myth 37, Myth 25), the valuative relations between father/son, mother/son, father-in-law/son-in-law, husband/wife, grandmother/grandson, are transvaluated at the second level with some variety. In one myth the grandmother is ally to the grandson, in another, his potential murderer; in another she is maimed by her grandson. In one myth the mother hoards the son's food; in another the son hoards the mother's food. The valuative tensions between these dramatic roles are redirected within the narrative type, which usually unfolds the tragic consequences of the violations of the rules that order the relations between the agents. Rather than mere logical or formal relations, each transformation represents a transvaluation, a transgression of a value structure that has its consequences. Permutations do not form a logical set but an axiological set, and the myth elaborates over and over again the consequences of the violation of its value axioms. This suggests a hypothesis concerning the origin of myth. As opposed to the cognitive account given by Lévi-Strauss, viz., a contradiction, a puzzle, a dilemma, and its solution in myth, rather, a transvaluative strategy would suggest an alternative more closely tied to the rules and values of a culture. For example, since every culture has a kinship system with its concomitant lines of power ascendancy, then any culture could, in principle, formulate a myth that concerned its transgression. That is to say, rather than the myth having its origin in a psychic structure, no matter how its unconscious character is defined, i.e., either as a Jungian or a Lévi-Straussian type, it has its origin in the universal aspects of cultural structure. The origin of the myth would be found in the tension between the violence imposed by an order and the violence of its possible transgression, something which is mirrored in the very structure of narration. Asymmetries, whether biologically generated or culturally imposed, create value. Thus one person can be ranked over another, differences marked, reciprocities become ordered within the framework of that ranking and markedness. But for each new asymmetry or value there must be a test, it must prove its legitimacyeven if it is just the right of the stronger. Myths are the overflow, the symbolic fallout of these asymmetries. The symbolism of these asymmetries is resignified, transvalued, in the myth. It reproduces them, but initially ambivalently so. Its tradition of interpretation may determine a specific sense, but only by means of hiding its ambivalence. The question of the legitimacy of value is displaced in myth, but an interpretation will seek to become determinate by displacing this original ambivalence.
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Conclusion At every moment in its development semiotics must theorize its object, its own method and the relation between them; it therefore theorizes itself and becomes, by thus turning back on itself, the theory of its own scientific practice. . . . As the place of interest between various sciences and a theoretical process always in the course of development, semiotics cannot reify itself as a science, much less as the science. It is rather a direction for research, always open, a theoretical enterprise which turns back upon itself, a perpetual self criticism. Julia Kristeva The goal of ethical criticism is transvaluation, the ability to look at contemporary social values with the detachment of one who is able to compare them in some degree with infinite vision of possibilities presented by culture. One who possesses such a standard of transvaluation is in a state of intellectual freedom. One who does not possess it is a creature of whatever social values get to him first: he has only the comprehension of habit, indoctrination and prejudice. Northrop Frye The history of metaphysics is a history in search of immediacy, knowledge without representation, the presentation of truth without sign, symbol, or mediation. As Henri Bergson defined it, "metaphysics . . . is the science which claims to dispense with symbols," its proper kind of knowing found in acts of intuition, the immediate grasp of reality. Whether it is in the form of Plato's overdramatic "flash of understanding," described in the seventh epistle as something which "blazes up in the mind," as it exerts all its power to the limit of human capacity, flooding it with "insight"; or Augustine's verbum mentis as the image of the Word of God; or Descartes's innate ideas which conveniently justify a mathematized Christian ontotheology; or the absolute knowing of Hegel; or whether it is in the form of Husserl's "principle of principles,'' or Russell's principle of acquaintanceall these examples of immediacy, intuition, are mirages more illusory than any characterization of appearance given by these metaphysics of presence. In disavowing the symbolic in favor of a privatized form of nonmediation or direct intuition, they devalue the function of mediation, the function of the symbol as a call to discourse. It is not surprising that all claims to nonmediation are effected within the privacy of the ego divorced from community: either in the singular insight or the witness of revelation. I have argued that the symbol as mediation is
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a blessing rather than a curse, for it demands interpretation within the community, not in the sense of the dogmatization of interpretation ex cathedra, but as a public discourse. Such claims to nonmediated cognitions are promoted by a false metaphysics of the sign, i.e., as expressed in the deconstructionist critique of the metaphysics of presence: the sign always points to a real which is nonsemiotic. But it falters on the basic paradox of that thesis: if appearance is a sign or manifestation of the real, then the real can be known through the appearance, in which case it is mediated knowledge; or if it assumes that the real can be directly, immediately apprehended, then it assumes a prior acquaintance with the real which enables it to know the real as such. But that act already assumes what it intends to prove. All apprehension requires a medium, whether language, cognition, or any special faculty invented by metaphysicians. Without that medium, agency is nothing; with that medium all apprehension is necessarily mediation. To claim a nonmediated act is to make a leap of impossible trajectory. The great insight of semiotics, especially as expressed in the early work of Peirce, is that mediation, signification, representation are not only facts of being human, but the only means of coming to know the realthe real is bound up with the process of semiosis. The meaning of the referent is not the referent but is found in the process of semiosis. Peirce's notion of translation becomes a central idea in this respect; it establishes the sign-signatum relation, at more formal levels, as a series of rules through which the sign, in the context of purposes, values, and a community of inquirers, attempts some determination of interpretation. I have argued that the general framework of translation becomes more comprehensible as transvaluation. Under this concept sign translation is read as valuation of the signatum within the latitudes of the sign. Valuation and signification become one and, consequently, the sign can be read as part of the order-meaning giving process of interpreting agencies. In the sign, then, one reads the order of things in its local, global, or cosmic significance. When applied to the study of myth, transvaluative analysis gives it a certain kind of estimation, one which focuses on its relation to the cultural whole. Myth is seen as a displacement of the rules and values which impose an order on the culture. Within this framework it suspends these rules imaginatively out of their typical employment and reanimates them, simultaneously reevaluating them, within the narration of the tale. My book is, in part, an attempt at developing reconstructive explanations for the origin, structure, and teleology of the myth. In regard to the question of origin, evidence from the functions of ritual, as elaborated in the work of Girard and Turner, suggest that the tensions between hierarchies that impose order and the possible violence that results from their disruption are responsible to some extent for formations such as ritual and myth. Violence or the threat of violence lies at the heart of mythic narration. 30 Looking backward from the description of narrative types as found in the work of Fryetragedy, comedy, romance, satire/ironythe myth can be analyzed into the various strategies for reorganizing, narratively speaking, the tensions between hierarchical order and hierarchical disruption. At the
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core of the myth lies a hierarchical crisis which displays an ambivalence concerning the hierarchies it represents. The asymmetries created either biologically or culturally are transvaluated in the context of the myth. The question of their legitimacy is played out again and again. This coheres with the general narrative structure of myth, developed, on the one hand, negatively out of a criticism of the formalist-structuralist program of Propp, Lévi-Strauss, Greimas, and Bremond. In concentrating on the formal properties of relations between elements in the myth rather than their valuative tensions, these studies have difficulty accounting for the dynamic and general coherence of the myth. When supplemented by a transvaluative analysis it is clear that the general narrative structure of the myth seems to play about one principal rule: the narration begins with a disruption of a hierarchy, leading to a hierarchical crisis, and ending in various strategies which characterize narrative types: the destruction of the hierarchy, its reintegration, or its reestablishment. This general narrative structure indicates that it is ready-made for the function of transvaluating the rule-ordered hierarchies that constitute the culture. Analyzed into its various levelsthe narrative elements and their narrative rolethe myth shows a greater tie to the particular cultural framework in which it operates. What one witnesses in the myth is a displacement of the rules and values that constitute the culture into the creations of the imagination. Both the origin and the structure of the myth point to its function. As the most comprehensive transvaluative device in a culture, the myth serves as the source for examining values and the rules that encode them. But I have emphasized that the ambivalence of the myth (or the body of the myth) prevents it from becoming treated as ideology in the classical sense, i.e., as a legitimation of the values and rules of the dominant hierarchy. It is a certain kind of interpretation which creates ideology, i.e., one which directs communication by the authoritative control of one or more of the following: the mechanisms of encoding, i.e., how the story is told, including the right to add or alter the content; the control of its transmission, i.e., when and where and by whom the story is told; and the control of interpretation, how the text is to be understood. This implies the question concerning the nature of legitimate interpretation. The Peircean framework suggests that genuine translation, interpretation, determination, involves a dialogic principle, one which recognizes the right of participation by all in that process. Moreover, such translations must be open to refutation, established nonauthoritatively, subject to doubt, and in some general sense publicly verifiable. Translation is dialogic, free of constraint, and communal. In the context of communication, Peirce claims that there are three interpretants: the intentional interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the utterer, the effectual interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the interpreter, and the communicational interpretant, or cominterpretant, which is a determination of a domain common to both speaker and interpreter (1906b:196). In this case, degenerate communication occurs when either the effectual interpretant is directed by the speaker or the intentional interpretant by the interpreters. Only when the cominterpretant guides communication, i.e., the sphere created by dialogue, can
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genuine communication and nondirected interpretation be possible. When the latitude of interpretation is diminished by force or direction it fails to be genuine; only when such decrease is affected by consensus can such determinations be considered genuine and dialogic. This, of course, sounds much like the familiar position of Habermas and Apel, where the former argues that "the structure of communication itself produces no constraints if and only if, for all possible participants, there is a symmetrical distribution of chances to choose and apply speech acts" (1971a:137). This symmetry of interpretation implies that all potential participants have the opportunity to proffer interpretations and explanations, a chance to express criticisms and attitudes, and the freedom to propose regulations for the discourse, as well as freedom to obey or refuse others which might be suggested (cp. J. B. Thompson 1984:266). But unlike Victor Turner's communitas, this is not some utopian ideal, but acts more like a formal condition for genuine discourse. It is not a community without hierarchy, but one which has established hierarchies legitimately. The community of Pierce and Habermas is dialogue free of communicative distortions, not a community in which all are de facto socially equal. The idea that myth is ambivalent and, consequently, genuinely symbolic, since it calls for interpretation, suggests some kinship with deconstruction. After all, the concepts of deconstruction, the pharmakon, trace, etc., are exemplars of ambivalence and characterize liminality: If the pharmakon is "ambivalent," it is because it constitutes the medium in which opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links them among themselves, revises them or makes one side cross over into the other (soul/body, good/evil, inside/outside). . . . The pharmakon is the movement, the locus, and the play: (the production of differance. It is the differance of difference. It holds in reserve, in its undecided shadow and vigil, the oppositions and the differends that the process of discrimination will come to carve out. Contradictions and pairs of opposites are lifted from the bottom of this diacritical, differing, deferring, reserve. Already inhabited by differance, this reserve, even though it "precedes" the opposition between different effects, does not have the punctual simplicity of a coincidentia oppositorum. .... The pharmakon, without being anything in itself, always exceeds them in constituting their bottomless fund. (Derrida 1972:127) The process of deconstruction is familiar enough, and consists of three stages (cp. Liszka 1983). Firstly, the reversal of the existing oppositional hierarchy, signified/sign, speech/writing, accomplished by identifying the dominant with its subordinate: in a classical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful co-existence of a vis-á-vis, but a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc. ) or has the upper hand. To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment. (Derrida 1972a:41) The second phase is that of the "neither...nor," the liminal phase, the examination of the "betweenness" of the opposition, a use of concepts (pharmakon, supple-
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ment, hymen, difference) which are neither one nor the other, but the possibility of the opposition. The third phase involves the transgression of the liminal stage, of the neither... nor: To remain in this phase is still to operate in the terrain of and from within the deconstructed system. By means of this double and precisely stratified, dislodged and dislodging writing, we must also mark the interval between inversion, which brings low what was high, and the irruptive emergence of a new "concept," a concept that can no longer be and never could be included in the previous regime. (Derrida 1972a:42) But this new "concept" remains vague and it is questionable whether or not deconstruction will remain confined to the second phase, from which it can act only in the role of inverting hierarchies and neutralizing them, constantly displacing power. As Frederic Jameson suggests, Derrida's "philosophic language feels its way gropingly along the walls of its own conceptual prison . . ." (1972:86). The tool which deconstruction brings to interpretation is the ability to subvert dominant hierarchies and to expose the vault of ambivalence which is the genuine character of the symbol. But its fault lies in its tendency to linger, if not become entrapped, in this vault of ambivalence. The critical approach to the symbol sees its ambivalence as a motivation for engaging in dialogue rather than remaining at the interstices of such ambivalence. Critical semiotic is interested in consensus, in the context of undistorted or nondirected communication and, of course, to that extent, in exposing distorted communication. Derrida forms one side of an extreme with Plato. In the Republic, Plato determines the rules for admitting poetry and music into his city. Plato is anxious to sanitize Homer and Hesiod or any other poet so that there can be no other interpretation except the following: God is good, men should always act virtuously, acting virtuously is always beneficial. In Plato's city, mythos is so radically constructedeven to the point where the imitation of vice is censoredthat any poem or drama or lyric could not admit any other possible interpretation. But what would such an artificial imposition of univalence in interpretation, such an elimination of ambivalence yield? It removes the struggle of the rule or value with its opposite, it fails to tell us why something is good and only says that something is good. The ambivalence of the myth serves to create struggle and conflict so that, in the end, the goodness of the rules and values must stand on their own worth. In that way they become legitimate; otherwise they become the monotone of dogma. But as Rousseau pointed out, even those stories which are specifically intended to teach a moral lesson often unwittingly support the opposite, as in La Fontaine's parable "The Crow and the Fox." When the Fox acquires the Crow's cheese by playing on the Crow's vanity, the moral of the story emphasizes the vanity of vanity. Yet as Rousseau remarks: Follow children learning fables; and you will see that when they are in a position to apply them, they almost always do so in a way opposite to the author's intent, and that instead of looking within themselves for the shortcoming that one wants to cure or prevent, they
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tend to like the vice with which one takes advantage of others' shortcomings (1762:115). In the case of this particular fable, the child will often admire and attempt to emulate the Fox rather than reflect on the pitfalls of vanity. Even where the tale is directed and apparently univalent, ambivalence creeps in. Critical semiotic is not interested in the re-creation of ambivalence, but is motivated to remove it; not by directing interpretation, but through dialogue. It does not seek to shortcut ambivalence by means of univalence. Firstly, it wishes to replace narrative symbolics with reasoned discourse, which, as Habermas characterizes it, "resides in the fact that the reciprocal behavorial expectations raised to normative status afford validity to a common interest ascertained without deception" (1973:108). Secondly, it does not seek to create a directed interpretation, but realizes that this interpretation "would be possible only in the form of a practical discourse among the very individuals or groups involved" (1973:117). In this respect, the myth itself, as a vault of ambivalence, is never ideological; rather, a certain directed interpretation of it usually is. Undistorted discourse, within the domain of an ideal speech community, then serves as the measure of the ideology of any of its interpretations. The difference between the interpretation that would be achieved in an ideal speech situation and the one proffered for cultural consumption would serve, then, as this measure (cp. Habermas 1973:112-13). For this reason, critical semiotic is not interested, as various sorts of hermeneutics are, in just continual conversation, producing a polyvalence of the text. Ultimately, semiotics argues for the possibility of consensus as the condition for interpretation. Critical semiotic is juristic: its mode of interpretation seeks a consensus achieved through a fair, deliberative process, one in which a symmetry of speech-acts is assumed, where evidence as presented by the text is weighed, argued, and assayed. But precisely for this reason it does not seek to agree about the meaning of the text. Its interest lies in the use of the text to articulate what the text is about. As Prado writes, "if fiction does enrich us, it must somehow operate as does descriptive, assertive discourse'' (1984:88). The traditional division between logos and mythos need not be antithetical. Myth should be seen as a prologue to discourse; discourse can be viewed as reasoned elaboration of the values and rules found in myth. Where myth no longer generates discourse, it becomes the static repetition of dogma; where discourse fails to avail itself of myth and fable, it loses the chance to regenerate itself, and severs the tie to community. In the end, true art, true myth, is moral, transvaluative, not because it intends to teach its audience a lesson, but because it should engender evaluation.
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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Notes 1. Hempel's model of explanation is certainly not free from controversy. Compare the work of Wesley Salmon, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (1984), and Bas van Fraasen's critique of the latter in The Scientific Image (1980). Compare also William Seager, "Scientific Explanation and the Trial of Galileo" (1986), for an excellent summary of the problems and a criticism of van Fraasen's account. 2. Wallace Martin has likened the "covering law model" approach to a number of narrative theories (cp. 1986:188). 3. Compare, for example, Anna Rooth's remarks: "The very small number of myth types under which the 300 versions [of creation myths in North America] can be classified, the fixed geographical areas to which these types belong, and the congruence of the types in detail-motifs show that these types are traditional forms of fiction with geographic boundaries, just like any other form of culture. These facts should be taken into account by those scholars who regard oral literature or traditional fiction as a spontaneous art whose expression can take any form anywhere at any time, and who, without further investigation, regard the resemblance between myths as the result of Elementargedanken or archetypes in the ancestral memory" (1957:508). 4. This is somewhat comparable to Habermas's notion of "rational reconstruction," although he suggests that such rational reconstruction is not characteristic of sciences that develop nomological hypotheses, but that it is possible for linguistics, phonology, and anthropology (1976:167-68). 5. Today we know that such laws do exist, but the inability to use them to make predictions is due to the inherent chaotic character of the phenomena. This suggests the counterargument that certain sorts of phenomena are unpredictable not because of our present state of knowledge, but because the phenomena themselves are inherently chaotic. Yet, as Crutchfield et al. (1986) have shown, chaotic phenomena can be articulated in a way so as to show some order through the notion of "strange attractors." 6. For an assessment and summary of the criticisms of Habermas, see Dallmayr 1973 and Bubner 1970. 7. For a criticism of Habermas's use and interpretation of Freud, see Giddens 1977:160ff. 8. For a criticism of the notion of subjectivity, see Howard 1973. 9. For a detailed account of the various versions of the Oedipus myth, see Edmonds 1985. l0. I am primarily interested in what Peirce calls the final interpretant. Peirce defines it as the habitual or rule-like effect it has on interpreting agencies (cp. 1909a:110). For the controversy concerning this classification of Peirce's interpretants, see Fitzgerald 1966:78ff., Short 1981:213ff., and Liszka (forthcoming). 11. This position, then, would reject outright the thesis that intensions, meanings, can be reduced to a purely extensional language (as in Carnap), or, for that matter, that of a canonical language which can do without intensional structure (as in Quine), since any relation between sign and object is always mediated by the interpretant. But for the reason that the relation between sign and interpretant is mediated by the object, Peirce's theory would reject the possibility suggested by Derrida of a critical language sans signified. Peirce's theory suggests instead a compound dialectic in which sense (the relation between sign and interpretant) is always already mediated by the object, and where reference is always already mediated by sense. This circle is not vicious but is made benign by means of the interpretant, which seems to pick out the referent of a sign and organize its sense. As Skagestad writes, "Peirce was fully cognizant of the objection which was to be eloquently put by Russell in
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his criticism of Frege, namely, that within one and the same language the reference of a term can be picked out only through the meaning of that term, and the meaning of the term can be specified only through a description of its referent" (1981:129). 12. This gives Peirce's sense of 'translation' a much different import than found in Quine. Quine's notion is bound up with notions of analyticity and synonymy, whereas, although Peirce's sense of translation does sometime focus on translation as 'equivalence', primarily sign translation suggests the dynamic growth of a sign's meaning, i.e., from less elaborate to more complex, or from indeterminate to determinate. Thus, the indeterminacy of translation for Quine has to do with the incommensurability and undecidability between competing theories or differing languages, while for Peirce the indeterminacy of translation means that for any one theory or meaning there will always be a better one. As Robert Almeder argues in regard to the comparison between Quine and Peirce: ". . . we can grant that Peirce was well aware that physical theory is underdetermined by observational data (7.117). But that there could be unto eternity mutually compatible, but empirically equivalent, translation manuals for current theory is something he could not endorse because it would be inconsistent with his view that science, unto eternity, is progressive. . . .the ontological upshot of the indeterminacy [of translation] thesis is something that Peirce would not endorse" (1980:44) (more on this below). On the other hand, Jakobson's sense of translation, as the translation of one system into another, e.g., in the case of language, from signans to signatum, i.e., from nonmeaningful diacritics to meaningful distinctions, is a sense implicit in Peirce. In this case, translation is viewed in its synchronic function rather than just its diachronic one. Given a semiotic structure, such as language, at any one time in its diachrony or growth it can be viewed as a hierarchical coordination of levels, i.e., as translation. (see chapter 2 below). 13. Fitzgerald (1966:73) mentions the following qualifications to this claim: (1) when the interpretant is triadically produced but is not predominantly thirdness, we have a "sign in the broad sense," and (2) where the interpretant is either a First, Second, or Third, but is not triadically produced, it is only a "quasi-sign." The evidence for (1) is given in ( 1904:8.332) and the evidence for (2) is given in (1905a:5.473). The meaning of (1) is clear, when the interpretant is a feeling, or a single action, although it is not a third in and of itself (e.g., as a habit of action or a proposition might be); nonetheless, it is triadically produced (e.g., the way in which listening to La Mer by Debussy may produce the feeling associated with watching the sea). This would obviously not violate the claim that the interpretant is triadically produced. It is quite possible to have interpretants which are not thirds, such as feelings or actions that are nonetheless triadically produced. However, Peirce seems to suggest that there is a species of sign, "quasi-sign,'' whose interpretant is not triadically produced. This seems to suggest that not all interpretants are triadically produced. The examples given by Peirce of what he calls "quasi-signs" are a thermostatic heating system and a Jacquard loom, i.e., a loom which has an automatically regulated head for weaving complex patterns (1905a:5.473). That is, automated regulation is "an idea opposed in our minds to that of semeiosy" (1905a:5.473). That such automatic regulation, or computer activity, or certain kinds of animal communication should be considered a kind of sign activity different from human sign activity is probably correct; but whether the nonhuman types involve interpretants that are not triadically produced is another question (cp. Seager 1988). 14. Compare this concept of indeterminacy with its sense as found in the Romantics (cp. Todorov 1978:80ff.). 15. This invites comparison with Quine's account of vagueness (1960: 126-29). For Quine both singular and general terms can be vague, but their vagueness is due to the vagueness of their reference: "a singular term naming a physical object can be vague in point of the boundaries of that object in space and time, while a general term can be vague in point of the marginal hangerson of its extension" (1960:126). The possibility that vagueness is due to the rights of interpreters and auditors, i.e., in terms of the pragmatics of its use, is
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not suggested. Moreover, vagueness is not a property of predicates or intensions; rather, Quine attempts to retranslate this as the vagueness of reference. 16. There is one avenue which I have not explored in this respect and is articulated by Emmanuel Prower (1986:27ff., 120). Prower interprets Peirce's notion of ground as a "superordinate abstractive, selective semiotic principle which regulates the valuation and selection of linguistic elements by making pertinent . . . only those predicates of a sign's object which are relevant to the signifier of the sign" (1986:129). In this case, the ground acts like a grid for transvaluation. This is reinforced by Abraham Kaplan's claim that "all icons are icons of value, in so far as the characters by which the icon resembles its referent are the grounds of the latter's value" (1954:463). In this case the notion of "ground" may serve as a prototype of my notion of "transvaluation." 17. Baudrillard suggests a Marxian framework for Saussure's theory by claiming that exchange value is to use value what signifier is to signified (1972:127). Roy Harris discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the economic model, presented here, and distinguishes it from the geometrical (interface) model (cp. 1987:122ff., 220ff.) for understanding the notion of value. In the geometric model (Saussure i. 1906-191l:112-13), Saussure likens value to the intersection of two amorphous planes, joined by an arbitrary cut across their masses; or, similarly, he likens value to the cut on the recto of a page which simultaneously affects the verso of the page. As Harris emphasizes, "the interface analogy presupposes a state of affairs in which two intrinsically unstructured media (thought and sound) are brought into contact and from this contact a system of values somehow emerges" (1987:122). This stresses that the two planes are "totally amorphous, and structured only as a result of the contact between them" (1987:220). Harris's complaint is that "it does not explain very satisfactorily how mere contact between intrinsically amorphous substances can automatically produce a structured system" (1987:220). This is supplemented by the economic version, which has a distinct advantage. According to Harris, in the economic analogy "there is 'contact' between two already independently structured systems, one monetary and the other comprising goods and services. Striking a balance of correlations between units in two separate systems, according to this second metaphor, is what produces a third system of values, which did not exist before" (1987:220). In this last sense we can understand value as the reorganization of two systems by means of their correlation, a concept which is a precursor of what I later call transvaluation. 18. Examples typical of this trend were the so-called "solar mythologists," led by Max Muller; cp. Richard M. Dorson (1955) for an overview of this position. 19. This, of course, has some parallel to Aristotle's classic analysis of tragic plot into complication, peripety, and denouement; however, the present analysis, by articulating it in terms of hierarchy, transforms the general import of such an analysis. 20. This calls for a comparison with the popular distinction between story (fabula) and plot (sjuzet), or what Chatman calls story and discourse (1978:19ff.). Story is the content of the narrative expression, the what in a narrativethe set of events and actors, combined in a setting. Discourse is the form of that expression, the manner in which the set of events and actors is organized (1978:23). I am purposively refraining from the canonical use of these terms since they place somewhat of a restriction on the point I wish to make. Such a division suggests that a relatively inchoate set of elements (character and action) is organized by means of the plot. What I wish to convey, instead, is the principle of a hierarchical integration, in which elements which are already hierarchically organized are reorganized or transvaluated into a higher organization. The story/plot distinction suggests an artificial distinction between a formless content and contentless form. I want to show instead a more organic relation between the culturally preorganized nature of the agents and events and their transvaluation by means of the plot. In this case the criticism of Propp's formalism, from which this division is developed, applies also to this distinction. For a clear summary of these definitions and related ones and their criticism, see Martin 1986: 108ff.
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21. Compare Walther Burkert's thesis that "tale structures, as sequences of motifemes, are founded on basic biological or cultural programs of actions" (1979:18). 22. Compare Wallace Martin's assessment of von Wright in regard to a theory of action and its relation to narration (1986:189). 23. Bruner later calls this position flawed (1984:168-69). It is wrong, not in the sense that there is no isomorphism between the structure of grammar and the structure of language, but in terms of their causal relation. In the early papers, Bruner believed that grammar emerged from a prior appreciation of action on the part of the infant. This developed a kind of protolinguistic knowledge which was converted into case grammar (1984:169). But since grammar can realize the categories of this logic of action in several ways, this suggested that a particular grammar was not a natural fit with the grammar of action, but a particular grammar was used as an instrument to express the logic of action: "speech acts develop and then use grammar as their instrument" (1984:172). In this case the grammar of a language may realize the grammar of action in several ways, but their isomorphism must still be assumed, otherwise it could not act as an instrument of action. In another paper, Bruner argues that "there is no 'natural order' in action that tells you the order of corresponding elements in a sentence. .... It is the familiarity and structure of the request formats that frees him [the child] and guides him in finding the linguistic procedures required" (1982:11). 24. This would parallel to some extent the distinction between "events" and "existents" in Chatman (1978:19), but not precisely, since events are further subdivided into "actions" and "happenings" and existents into ''characters" and "settings" (1978:19). 25. Compare also some of the preliminary studies made by Silverman (1971:23336). 26. There is even a claim that the lack-lack liquidated schema is the most basic mechanism of biocybernetics (cp. Luthi 1973:292). 27. Baudrillard's concept of symbol as "ambivalence" is highly suggestive to me, yet the notion of ambivalence is not welldefined by him. On the one hand it is defined positively by example; a wedding ring is symbolic because it "symbolizes a relation," as opposed to an ordinary ring which signifies an object of consumption (1972:66). This suggests that the symbol, such as a gift, is an interpersonal exchange not mediated by objects, i.e., it 'symbolizes' the relations between persons. Negatively, symbols are opposed to signs which create a "semiological reduction," i.e., the element of ambivalence in favor of a reduction of one difference over against another (1972:98-99). It seems then that symbolic exchange is not made within the framework of a hierarchy, whereas sign exchange always codifies the interrelation in terms of some hierarchy. But surely a wedding ring, as well as any gift, signifies hierarchy as well. See Bourdieu 1980:219. Whereas Baudrillard gives us a nebulous concept of ambivalence in symbolic terms, Robert Merton gives a clear analysis of social ambivalence in nonsymbolic terms (1976). The relation between Merton's concept of ambivalence and ambivalence in the myth as proposed here would make an interesting study, but a diversion too great for present purposes. 28. Indeed, Baudrillard goes so far as to say that "the object is nothing. It is nothing but the different types of relations and significations that converge, contradict themselves and twist around it, as such, the hidden logic that not only arranges this bundle of relations, but directs the manifest discourse that overlaps and occludes it" (1972:63). 29. Thus Campbell: "Why is mythology everywhere the same, beneath its costume?. . . [Myths] are spontaneous products of the psyche and each bears within it, undamaged, the germ power of its source" (1949:4). 30. This thesis is, of course, suggested by Walther Burkert (1972:1ff.).
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References References in the text are indicated by (author, original date of publication: page or paragraph number). Any changes in this format are indicated after the name of the author as he or she is listed below. Aarne, Antti. 1911. "Verzeichnis der Märchentypen," Folklore Fellows Communications (3) (Helsinki). Albisetti, Cesar, and Angelo Venturelli. 1969. Enciclopédia Boróro. 2 vols. (Mato Grosso, Brasil: Regional Museu Dom Bororo). Almeder, Robert. 1980. The Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield). Altschuler, Bruce. 1978. "The Nature of Peirce's Pragmatism," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 4(3):147-75. Andersen, Henning. 1974. "Markedness in Vowel Systems," in Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Linguists. Vol. 2, edited by L. Heilmann (Bologna: il Mulino), 91-96. ______ 1975. "Variance and Invariance in Phonological Typology," in Phonologica 72, edited by W. Dressler and F. Mares (Munich: Fink), 67-75. ______ 1979. "Phonology as Semiotic," in A Semiotic Landscape, edited by S. Chatman et al. (The Hague: Mouton), 377-81. . Ms. "Language Structure and Semiotic Processes." Andrews, Edna. 1984. A Theoretical Foundation for Markedness: Asymmetry in Linguisticsfrom a Mathematical Perspective. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms). Apel, Karl-Otto. 1967. Der Denkweg von Charles S. Peirce (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). Refer- ences to the English translation, Charles S. Peirce: From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism, translated by John Krois (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981). ______ 1972. Transformation der Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). References to the English translation, Towards a Transformation of Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980). ______ 1984. Understanding and Explanation, translated by G. Warnke (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Armstrong, Nancy. 1977. "Character, Closure and Impressionist Fiction," Criticism 4(19):317-37. Augustine. i.400-416. De Trinitate. Quotations from the English translation, On the Trin- ity, translated by A. W. Haddan, in Basic Writings of St. Augustine, edited by W. J. Oates, Vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1948), 667-878. ______ i.401-415. De Genesi ad literam. References to the English translation, On the Literal Interpretation of the Genesis, translated by J. H. Taylor, 2 vols. (New York: Newman Press, 1982). Balikci, Asen. 1970. The Netsilik Eskimo (Garden City, N.J.: The Natural History Press). Barthes, Roland. 1964. Éléments de Sémiologie (Paris: Editions du Seuil). References are to the English translation, Elements of Semiology, translated by A. Lavers and C. Smith (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967). Bateson, Gregory. 1936. Naven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Battistela, Edward. 1986. Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language (manuscript). Baudrillard, Jean. 1972. Pour une critique de l'économie politique du signe (Paris: Gallimard). References to the English translation, For a Critique of the Political Econ-
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______ omy of the Sign, translated by Charles Levine (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1981). Beidelman, T. O. 1966. "Swazi Royal Ritual," Africa 36:373-405. Bendix, Edward. 1966. Componential Analysis of General Vocabulary: The Semiotic Struc- ture of a Set of Verbs in English, Hindu and Japanese (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Bischoff, N. 1975. "Comparative Ethology of Incest Avoidance," in Biosocial Anthropology, edited by R. Fox (London: Malaby Press). Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. Le sens pratique (Paris: Minuit). Bowerman, Melissa. 1970 Learning to Talk: A Cross Linguistic Study of Early Systematic Development. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Brakel, George. 1983. Phonological Markedness and Distinctive Features (Bloomington: In- diana University Press). Bremond, Claude. 1973. Logique du récit (Paris: Seuil). ______ 1976. "The Morphology of the French Fairy Tale: The Ethical Model," in Patterns of Oral Literature, edited by H. Jason and D. Segal (The Hague: Mouton). Brock, Jarrett. 1979. "Principal Themes in Peirce's Logic of Vagueness," Peirce Studies 1:41-50. Brown, J. 1970. "Sex Division of Labor Among the San Blas Cuna," Anthropological Quar-terly 43:57-63. Brown, Roger. 1973. A First Language (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). ______ 1973a. "The Development of Language in Children," in Communication, Language and Meaning, edited by G. Miller (New York: Harper and Row). Bruner, Jerome. 1977. "The Ontogenesis of Speech Acts," in Social Rules and Social Conduct, edited by P. Collett (The Hague: Mouton), 88-108. ______ 1982. "The Formats of Language Acquisition," American Journal of Semiotics 1(3):1-16. ______ 1984. In Search of Mind (New York: Harper and Row). Bubner, Rudiger. 1970. Hermeneutik und Dialektik (Tübingen: Mohr). Burchfield, Robert. 1985. "An Outline of the History of Euphemism in England," in Fair of Speech: The Uses of Euphemism, edited by D. J. Enright (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 13-31. Burkert, Walther. 1972. Homo Necans (Berlin: de Gruyter). References to the English trans- lation, Homo Necans, translated by D. Bing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). ______ 1979. Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press). Campbell, Joseph. 1949. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. References to the 2nd edition, 3rd printing (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973). Carnap, Rudolf. 1961. "Preface to the Second Edition," The Logical Structure of the World, translated by R. George (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). Carneiro, R. L. 1960. "Slash and Burn Agriculture: A Closer Look at Its Implications for Settlement Patterns," in Man and Cultures, edited by A. F. C. Wallace. Carroll, Michael. 1978. "Lévi-Strauss on the Oedipus Myth: A Reconsideration," American Anthropologist 80:805-814. Cassirer, Ernst. 1925. Philosophie der Symbolische Formen. References to English translation, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, translated by R. Mannheim, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955). Chapple, Eliot. 1970. Culture and Biological Man (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston). Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press). Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Colbacchini, Antonio, and Cesar Albisetti. 1942. Os Boróros Orientais, Orarimogodogue dePlanalto Oriental de Mato Grasso (Rio de Janiero: Companhia Editora Nacional).
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Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect (New York: Cambridge University Press). ______ 1983. Language Typology and Linguistic Universals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Craib, C. 1984. Modern Social Theory (New York: St. Martin's Press). Cressman, L. S. 1956. "Klamath Prehistory. The Prehistory of the Culture of the Klamath Lake Area, Oregon," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. (46). Crocker, Jon. 1979. "Selves and Alters Among the Eastern Bororo," in Dialectical Societies, edited by D. Maybury-Lewis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). ______ 1985. Vital Souls (Tucson: University of Arizona Press). Crumrine, N. Ross, and B. Macklin. 1974. "Sacred Ritual vs. the Unconscious: The Efficacy of Symbols and Structure in North Mexican Folk Saints' Cults and General Ceremonialism," in The Unconscious in Culture, edited by I. Rossi (New York: Dutton), 179-97. Crutchfield, J. P., J. Farmer, N. H. Packard, and R. S. Shaw. 1986. "Chaos," Scientific American 255(6):46- 57. Culler, Jonathan. 1975. Structuralist Poetics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press). ______ 1981. The Pursuit of Signs (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press). Dallmayr, Fred. 1973. "Critical Theory Criticized." Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2(3). D'Anglure, B. S. 1967. L'Organisation sociale traditionelle des esquimaux de Kangiqsujuag (Quebec: Noveau-Quebec). Darnton, Robert. 1984. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic). ______ 1984a. "The Meaning of Mother Goose," New York Review of Books 31(1): 41-47. Deladelle, Girard. 1976. "Peirce ou Saussure," Semiosis. 1:7-13. ______ 1976a. "Saussure et Peirce," Semiosis. 2:18-24. Derrida, Jacques. 1967. De la Grammatologie (Paris: Les editions de Minuit). References to English translation, On Grammatology, translated by G. Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). ______ 1967a. L'écriture et la différance (Paris: Editions du Seuil). References to the English translation, Writing and Difference, translated by A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). ______ 1972. La Dissémination (Paris: Editions due Seuil). References to the English translation, Dissemination, translated by B. Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). . 1972a. Positions (Paris: Les editions de Minuit). References to the English translation, Positions, translated by A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Dewdney, J. 1986. "Computer Recreations," Scientific American 255(4):20-28. Dewey, John. 1931. "The Development of American Pragmatism," in The Philosophy of John Dewey, 2 vols., edited by J. McDermott (New York: Capricorn, 1973). ______ 1946. "Peirce's Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought and Meaning," Journal of Philosophy 43(4):85-95. Diamond, Stanley. 1974. "The Myth of Structuralism," in The Unconscious in Culture, edited by I. Rossi (New York: Dutton), 292-335. Dorson, Richard. 1955. "The Eclipse of Solar Mythology," in Myth: A Symposium, edited by T. Sebeok (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 25-63. Douglas, Mary. 1968. "The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception," Man (Sept.):361-76. Dray, William. 1957. Laws and Explanation in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Dundes, Alan. 1975. Analytic Essays in Folklore (The Hague: Mouton). Dunn-Rankin, Peter. 1978. "The Visual Characteristics of Words," Scientific American 238(1):122-31. Durkheim, Emile. 1912. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. References to the En-
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glish translation, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, translated by J. W. Swain (London: Hollen Street Press, 1957). Eco, Umberto. 1979. A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Edmunds, Lowell. 1985. Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Ekman, Paul. 1971. "Universals and Cultural Differences in the Facial Expressions of Emotions," in Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, edited by J. Cole (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Epstein, Joseph. 1984. "Sex and Euphemism," Commentary 77:55-60. Fernandez, James W. 1965. "Symbolic Consensus in a Fang Reformative Cult," American Anthropology 67(4):902-928. Ferrara, Fernando. 1974. "Theory and Model for the Structural Analysis of Fiction," New Literary History 5:245-68. Firth, Raymond. 1967. Tikopia Ritual and Belief (London: Simson and Shand). Fitzgerald, John. 1966. Peirce's Theory of Signs as a Foundation for Pragmatism (The Hague: Mouton). Freeman, M. 1971. "A Social and Ecologic Analysis of Systematic Female Infanticide Among the Netsilik Eskimo, "American Anthropologist 73:1011-1018. Freud, Sigmund. 1900. Die Träumbedeutung. References to English translation, The Interpretation of Dreams, translated by J. Strachey (New York: Avon, 1965). Frye, Northrop. 1957. The Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1960. Warheit und Methode (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr). References to English translation, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1975). Gallie, W. B. 1952. Peirce and Pragmatism (Harmonsworth, England: Penguin). ______ 1952a. "Peirce's Pragmatism," in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by P. Wiener and P. Young (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Gentry, George. 1952. "Habit and the Logical Interpretant," in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by P. Wiener and P. Young (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press). Gernet, L. 1968. Anthropologie de la Gréce antique (Paris: Plon). Giddens, Anthony. 1976. New Rules of Sociological Method (London: Hutchinson). ______ 1977. Studies in Social and Political Theory (London: Hutchinson). ______ 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (London: Macmillan). ______ 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outlines of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press). Girard, René. 1972. La violence et le sacré (Paris: Editions Bernard Grosset). References to English translation, Violence and the Sacred, translated by P. Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). Gombrich, E. H. 1972. Art, Perception and Reality (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Goodenough, W. H. 1956. "Componential Analysis and the Study of Meaning," Language 32:195-216. ______ 1970. Description and Comparison in Cultural Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Goudge, Thomas. 1952. "Peirce's Theory of Abstraction," in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by P. Wiener and P. Young (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Granet, M. 1934. La penseé chinoisie (Paris: Plon). Greenberg, J. 1966. Language Universals (The Hague: Mouton). ______ 1978. "Introduction," in Universals in Human Language, edited by J. Greenberg (The Hague: Mouton).
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Greenfield, P. M., and J. H. Smith. 1976. The Structure of Communication in Early Language (New York: Academic Press). Greenlee, Douglas. 1973. Peirce's Concept of the Sign (The Hague: Mouton). Greimas, A. 1966. Sémantique structurale (Paris: Larousse). ______ 1970. Du sens (Paris: Seuil). ______ 1976. Maupassant. La sémiotique du texte: Exercises pratique (Paris: Seuil). Griffin, Jasper. 1985. "Euphemism in Greece and Rome," in Fair of Speech: Uses of Euphe-mism, edited by D. J. Enright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Guttgemanns, Erhardt. 1975. "Fundamentals of a Grammar of Oral Literature," in Patterns of Oral Literature, edited by H. Jason and D. Segal (The Hague: Mouton). Habermas, Jürgen. 1968. Erkenntnis und Interesse (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). References to En- glish translation, Knowledge and Human Interests, translated by J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). ______ 1971. Theorie und Praxis (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). References to English translation, Theory and Practice, translated by J. Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press). ______ 1971a. "Vorbereitende Bermerkungen zu einer theorie der Kommunikativen Kompetenz," in Theorie der Gesellschaften oder Sozialtechnologie-was leitet die Systemforschung? (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). ______ 1973. Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). References to the English translation, Legitimation Crisis, translated by T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975). ______ 1976. "Was Heisst Universal Pragmatik?" in Sprachpragmatik und Philosophie, edited by K. O. Apel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). References to English translation, Communication and the Evolution of Society, translated by T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press). Haley, Michael. 1988. The Semeiosis of Poetic Metaphor (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, in press). References are to the manuscript. Harris, Roy. 1987. Reading Saussure (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court). Hedges, James. 1976. "Whifflecate: A Folk Euphemism," American Speech 51(3-4):282-83. Hempel, Carl. 1965. "Aspects of Scientific Explanation," in Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press), 331-496. Hénault, Anne. 1983. Narratologie, sémiotique générale: Les enjeux de la sémiotique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Hendricks, 0. 1982. "Structure and History in the Semiotics of Myth," Semiotica 39(1/2):143-50. Hernstein-Smith, Barbara. 1980. "Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories," Critical Inquiry 7(1):213-36. Hilpinnen, Risto. 1982. "On C. S. Peirce's Theory of the Proposition: Peirce as a Precursor of Game Theoretical Semantics," Monist 65(2):182-88. Hockett, C. F. 1955. A Manual of Phonology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1979. Gödel, Escher, Bach (New York: Basic). Holenstein, Elmar. 1976. Roman Jakobson's Approach to Language: Phenomenology and Structuralism, translated by C. Schelfert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Howard, Dick. 1973. "Politics in Search of the Political," Theory and Society 1(3). Howe, James, and Lawrence Hirschfeld. 1981. "The Star Girl's Descent: A Myth About Men, Women, Matrilocality, and Singing," Journal of American Folklore 94(373): 292-321. Jakobson, Roman.. 1929. "Structuralism," CIN (Oct. 31). ______ 1929a. "Uber die heutigen Voraussetzungen der russischen Slavastik," Slavische Rundshau 1:629-46. ______ 1932. "Zur Struktur des Russischen Verbums." Reprinted in Jakobson 1971, 3-15. ______ 1932a. "Zur Struktur des Phonemes." Reprinted in Jakobson 1962a, 280-310. ______ 1944. "Franz Boas' Approach to Language," International Journal of American Linguistics (lo). Reprinted in Jakobson 1971.
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______ 1953. "Results of a Joint Conference of Anthropologists and Linguists," International Journal of American Linguists 19(2). ______ 1962. "Zeichen und System der Sprache," Schriften zur Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung (IV) (Berlin). Reprinted in Jakobson 1971. ______ 1962a. Selected Writings: The Phonological Studies, Vol. 1 (The Hague: Mouton). ______ 1965. "Quest for the Essence of Language," Diogenes (51). Reprinted in Jakobson 1971. ______ 1971. Selected Writings, II: Word and Language (The Hague: Mouton). ______ 197l a. "Problems in the Study of Literature and Language," in Readings in Russian Poetics, edited by L. Matejka and K. Pomorska (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). ______ 1976. Six léçons sur le son et le sens (Paris: Editions de Minuit). Page references to English translation, Sound and Meaning, translated by J. Mepham (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978). ______ 1976a. Main Trends in the Science of Language (New York: Harper and Row). ______ 1977. "A Few Remarks on Peirce, Pathfinder in the Science of Language," MLN 92:1026-1032. Jakobson, Roman, and M. Halle. 1956. Fundamentals of Language (The Hague: Mouton). References are to the second edition (1971). Jameson, Frederic. 1972. The Prison House of Language (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Johansen, Jorgen. 1985. "Prolegomena to a Semiotic Theory of Text Interpretation," Semiotica 57(3/4):225-88. Jonaitis, Adona. 1977. The Relations Between the Social and the Shamanistic Art of the Tlingit Indians, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University. Kant, Immanuel, 1762. Logik. References to the English translation, Introduction to Logic, translated by T. Abbott (New York: Philosophical Library, 1963). ______ 1781. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Quotations from English translation, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by N. K. Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965). Kaplan, Abraham. 1954. "Referential Meaning in the Arts," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 12(4):457-74. Katz, J. 1972. Semantic Theory (New York: Harper and Row). Kirk, G. S. 1970. Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Berke- ley: University of California Press). Kloesel, Christian. 1983. "Peirce's Early Theory of Signs (1863-1885): The First Barrier," American Journal of Semiotics 2(12): 109-120. Kolaga, Wojciech. 1986. The Literary Sign: A Triadic Model. Prace Naukowe Uniwerstetu Slskiego, Nr. 750 (Katowice: Uniwersytet Slaski). Kripke, Saul. 1972. Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Kuhn, Thomas. 1977. Essential Tension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Laguna, Frederica de. 1972. Under Mt. St. Elias: The History and Culture of the Yakutat Tlingit. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Vol. 7 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press). Lee, R. 1968. "What Hunters Do for a Living," in Man the Hunter, edited by R. Lee and I. DeVore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 30-48. Lehrer, A. 1974. Semantic Fields and Lexical Structure (London: American Elsevier). Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1949. Les structures élémentaires de la parenté. References to English translation, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, translated by J. H. Bell and J. R. von Sturner (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969). ______ 1955. "The Structural Study of Myth," Journal of American Folklore 78(270):428-44. References to reprint in Structural Anthropology, vol. 1 (New York: Basic, 1963), 206-231.
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______ 1955a. Tristes Tropiques (Paris: Librairie Plon). References to English translation, Tristes Tropiques, translated by J. and D. Weightman (New York: Athens, 1974). ______ 1956. "Les organisations dualistes existent-alles?" Bijdragen tot de taal-, und-, en Volkenhende (12). References to English translation, "Do Dual Organizations Exist?" in Structural Anthropology, Vol. 1, translated by C. Jacobson and B. Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 132-66. ______ 1960. "L'Analyse morphologique des contes russes," International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 3:3-36. References to English translation, "Structure and Form: Reflections on a Work by Vladimir Propp," in Structural Anthropology, translated by M. Layton, vol. 2 (New York: Basic, 1968), 115-45. ______ 1962. La Penseé sauvage (Paris: Librairie Plon). References to English translation, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). ______ 1964. Le Cru et le cuit (Paris: Librairie Plon). References to English translation, The Raw and the Cooked, translated by J. and D. Weightman (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). . ______ 1966. Du Miel aux cindres (Paris: Librairie Plon). References to English translation, From Honey to Ashes, translated by J. and D. Weightman (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). ______ 1968. L'Origine des manieres de table (Paris: Librairie Plon). References to English translation, The Origin of Table Manners, translated by J. and D. Weightman (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). ______ 1971. L'Homme Nu (Paris: Librairie Plon). References to English translation, The Naked Man, translated by J. and D. Weightman (New York: Harper and Row, 1981). ______ 1972. "Structuralism and Ecology." Address delivered to Barnard College, March 28. Reprinted in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 7(2) 1979. Liszka, James Jakób. 1978. "Community in Peirce: Science as a Means and as an End," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 14(4):305-321. ______ 1983. "Derrida: Philosophy of the Liminal," Man and World 16:233-50. ______ Forthcoming. "Peirce's Interpretant," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. Luthi, M. 1973. "Allgemein biotisch," Deutsche Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 2:280-96. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Malinowski, B. 1926. "Myth in Primitive Psychology." Reprinted in Magic, Science and Religion (New York: Doubleday, 1954). Malkiel, Y. 1959. "Studies in Irreversible Binomials," Lingua 8:113-60. Maranda, Elli, and Pierre Maranda. 1971. Structural Models in Folklore and Transformational Essays (The Hague: Mouton). Maranda, Pierre. 1985. Semiography and Artificial Intelligence," International Semiotic Spectrum (4) (June):1-3. Martin, Wallace. 1986. Recent Theories of Narrative (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press). Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1857. Die Deutsche Ideologie. References to English trans-lation, The German Ideology, edited by C. J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1974). Maybury-Lewis, David. 1969. "Science or Bricolage," American Anthropologist 71(1):114-21. References to reprinted version in Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Anthropologist as Hero, edited by E. Hayes and T. Hayes (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1970). Merton, Robert. 1976 Sociological Ambivalence (New York: Free Press). Mill, John Stuart. 1841. A System of Logic, in Philosophy of Scientific Method, edited by E. Nagel (New York: Hafner, 1955). Morris, Charles. 1964. Signification and Significance (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Neaman, Judith, and Carole Silver. 1983. Kind Words: A Thesaurus of Euphemism (New York: Facts on File Publications).
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Nida, E. 1975. Exploring Semantic Structures (Munich: Fink). Nilsson, Martin. 1972. Cults, Myths, Oracles and Politics in Ancient Greece (New York: Cooper Square Publications). Noricks, Jay. 1985. "Native Speaker Componential Models: A Method for Elicitation," Ethnology (24). Norris, Christopher. 1983. The Deconstructive Turn (London: Methuen). Oberg, Kalevero. 1973. The Social Economy of the Tlingit Indians (Seattle: University of Washington Press). Ogden, C. K., and I. A. Richards. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning. References to the 8th edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967). Palmer, F. R. 1981. Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pei, Mario. 1973. Double Speak in America (New York: Hawthorne). Peirce, Charles Sanders. References to Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, and A. Burks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931-1958), are indicated by (CP); references to Writings of Charles S. Peirce, edited by E. C. Moore, M. Fisch, et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), indicated by (WCSP); references to Semiotics and Significs: The Correspondence Between C. S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, edited by C. Hardwick (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), are indicated by (LW); references to New Elements of Mathematics, vols. 1-4, edited by C. Eisele (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), are indicated by (NEM). Manuscript references are to Richard Robin, Annotated Catalogues of the Manuscripts of Charles S. Peirce (Amherst: University of Massachussetts Press, 1967). ______ 1865. "Harvard Lecture X," (WCSP) 1:272-86. ______ 1865a. "Logic of the Sciences," unpublished MS (WCSP) 1:322-36. ______ 1866. "Lowell Lecture VII," (WCSP) 1:454-71. ______ 1867. "On a New List of Categories," Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 7:287-98 (CP) 1.5451.567. ______ 1867a. "Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension," Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 7:416-32 (CP) 2.391-2.434. ______ 1867b. "On the Natural Classification of Arguments," Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 7:261-87 (CP) 2.461-2.516. ______ 1868. "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man," Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2:103-114 (CP) 5.213-5.263. ______ 1868a. "Some Consequences of the Four Incapacities," Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2:140-57 (CP) 5.263-5.317. ______ 1868b. "Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Cognition," Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2:193-208 (CP) 5.318-5.357. ______ 1868c. "Letter to the Editor," Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2:190-91 (CP). ______ 1870. "Description of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives Resulting from an Amplification of the Concepts of Boole's Logic," Memoirs of the American Academy 9:317-78. ______ 1871. "Review of Alexander Fraser's The Works of George Berkeley," The North American Review 113:449-72 (CP). ______ 1873. "Time and Thought," ms. (CP) 7.346-7.357. ______ 1873a. "On Representations," unpublished ms. (WCSP) 3:62-65. ______ 1873b. "Of Logic as a Study of Signs," unpublished ms. (WCSP) 3:82-84. ______ 1873c. "The Copula and Simple Syllogism," unpublished ms. (WCSP) 3:82-84. ______ 1877. "The Fixation of Belief," Popular Science Monthly 13:470-82 (CP) 5.358-5.387. ______ 1878. "The Probability of Induction," Popular Science Monthly 12:1-15 (CP) 2.619-2.644. ______ 1878a. "Deduction, Induction and Hypothesis," Popular Science Monthly 13:470-82 (CP) 2.619-2.644.
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______ 1880. "On the Algebra of Logic," American Journal of Mathematics 3:15-57 (CP) 3.154-3.251. ______ c. 1890. Unpublished ms. ______ c. 1890a. "A Guess at the Riddle," unpublished ms. (CP) 1.354-368, 1.373-375, 1.379-416. · ______ 1891. "The Architecture of Theories," Monist 1:161-76 (CP) 6. 7-6. 34. ______ 1892. "The Law of Mind," Monist 2:533-59 (CP) 6.214-6.237. ______ 1892a. "Man's Glassy Essence," The Monist 3:1-22 (CP) 6.238-6.271. ______ 1892b. "The Reader Is Introduced to Relatives," The Open Court 6:3416-8 (CP) 3·415-3-424· ______ c. 1893. Grand Logic, unpublished book (CP). ______ c.1893a. "Short Logic," unpublished ms. (CP) 2.435-2.444. ______ 1893. "Association and the Law of Mind," unpublished ms. (CP) 7.463-7.467. ______ 1893a. "The Connection Between Mind and Matter," unpublished ms. (CP) 6.272-6.277. ______ c. 1894. "The List of Categories: A Second Essay," unpublished ms. (CP) 1.300-1.301, 1.293, 1.303, 1.326-329. ______ c. 1895. "The Art of Reasoning," unpublished ms. (CP) 2.297-2. 302. ______ c. 1895a. "That Categorical and Hypothetical Propositions Are One in Essence," unpublished ms. (CP) 2.332-356. ______ c.1895b. Unpublished ms. (NEM) 4. ______ c. 1896. "The Logic of Mathematics," unpublished ms. (CP) 1.417-520. ______ C.1897. Untitled, unpublished ms. (CP) 2.227-229. ______ 1898. "Detached Ideas in Vitally Important Topics," Cambridge Lectures, Lecture 3 (CP) 5.574-604. ______ 1898a. "The Logic of Events," unpublished ms. (CP) 6.214-6.237. ______ 1901. Contributions to Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, edited by James Baldwin, vol. 2. (CP) various. ______ c. 1902. "Minute Logic," unpublished ms. ______ c.1902a. "Syllabus," unpublished ms. (CP) 2.274-7, 2.283-4, 2.292-4. ______ c.1902b. Unpublished ms. 599. ______ c. 1903. "Nomenclature and Divisions of Triadic Relations," unpublished ms. (CP) 2.233-2.272. ______ c. 1903a. "Logical Tract No. 2," unpublished ms. (CP) 4.418-4.507. ______ c. 1903b. "Nomenclature and Divisions of Dyadic Relations," (CP) 2. 571-3.608). ______c. 1903c. Unpublished ms. 478. ______ c. 1903d. "Lectures on Pragmatism," (CP) 5.14-5.206. ______ 1904. Letter to Lady Welby, Oct. 12 (LW). ______ c. 1904. Kaina stocheia, unpublished ms. (NEM) 4:14-263. ______ 1904? Unpublished ms. 515. ______ 1904?a. Unpublished ms. 516. ______ 1905. "Issues in Pragmatism," The Monist 15:481-99 (CP) 5.438-462. ______ 1905a. "A Survey of Pragmatism," unpublished ms. (CP) 5.464-496. ______ c. 1905b. "Consequence of Critical Common-Sensism," unpublished ms. (CP) 5.502-5.537. ______ 1905c. "What Pragmatism Is," The Monist 15:161-81 (CP) 5.411-437. ______ 1905d. "Pragmatism, Prag(4)," unpublished ms. (CP) 5. 502-5. 537. ______ 1905e. Unpublished ms. 283. ______ 1906. "Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmatism," The Monist 16:492-546 (CP) 4.530-572. ______ 1906a. "The Basis of Pragmatism," unpublished ms. (CP) 5.549-5.573. ______ 1906b. Draft of a Letter to Lady Welby, March 9 (LW). ______ 1906c. Unpublished ms. 292.
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______ 1906d. ''Phanerscopy," unpublished ms. (CP) 4.1-4. 10. . 1907. Unpublished ms. 318 ______ 1908. Draft of a Letter to Lady Welby, Dec. 24, 25, 28 (CP) 8.342-379. ______ 1908a. Letter to Lady Welby, Dec. 14 (LW). ______ c. 1909. "Some Amazing Mazes, Fourth Curiosity," unpublished ms. (CP) 6.318-348. ______ 1909. Letter to Lady Welby, Feb. 24 (LW). ______ 1909a. Unpublished ms. 634. ______ 1909b. Letter to William James (CP) 8.314. ______ u. Unpublished ms. (CP) 1.350-352. ______ u.a. Unpublished ms. 596. ______ u.b. Unpublished ms. 717 (NEM) 4:307-312. ______ u.c. Unpublished ms. 165 (NEM). ______ u.d. Unpublished ms. (CP) 8:177-185. Pottier, Bernard. 1965. "La definition sémantique dans les dictionaires," Travaux des linguistique et de litterature 3(1). Pound, Louise. 1936. "American Euphemisms for Dying, Death and Burial," American Speech 11:195-202. Prado, G. C. 1984. Making Believe: Philosophical Reflections on Fiction (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press). Prieto, L. J. 1966. Messages et signaux (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). Propp, Vladimir. 1928. Morfol6gija skázki. References to English translation, Morphology of the Folktale, edited and translated by L. A. Wagner, 2nd ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968). . ______ 1928a. "Transformations of the Wondertale," translated by C. H. Sevenson, in Theory and History of the Folktale, edited by A. Liberman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Prower, Emmanuel. 1986. "C. S. Peirce's Semiotic and the Degeneration of Signs." Dissertation (Silesia: University of Silesia). Quine, Willard van Orman. 1960. Word and Object (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press). Ramanujan, A. K. 1986. "Who Needs Folklore?" Paper presented at the 15th Annual Conference on South Asia (Madison, Wisconsin, November 7). Rasmussen, Knud. 1931. The Netsilik Eskimos. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-24. Vol. 8, Nos. 1 and 2 (Copenhagen: Glyndendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Verlag). Rawson, Hugh. 1981. A Dictionary of Euphemism and Other Doubletalk (New York: Crown). Riches, David. 1974. "The Netsilik Eskimo: A Special Case of Selective Female Infanticide," Ethnology 13(4):351-61. Ricoeur, Paul. 1969. The Symbolism of Evil, translated by E. Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press). . ______ 1984. Temps et récit, Vol. 2 (Paris: Editions du Seuil). References to English translation, Time and Narrative, translated by K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Rochberg-Halton, Eugene, and Kevin McMurtrey. 1983. "The Foundations of Modern Semiotic: Charles Peirce and Charles Morris," American Journal of Semiotics 2(1-2):129-56. Rooth, Anna. 1957. "The Creation Myths of the North American Indians," Anthropos 52:497-508. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Rosenbleuth, A., N. Wiener, and J. Bigelow. 1943. "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology," Philosophy of Science (10).
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Rossi-Landi, F. 1974. "Linguistics and Economics," in Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 12, edited by T. Sebeok (The Hague: Mouton). Rousseau, Jean Jacques. 1762. Emile. References to the English translation, Emile, translated by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979). Safire, William. 1980. On Language (New York: Times Books). Sahlins, Marshall. 1976. Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). . ______ 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). Salmon, Wesley. 1984. Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Saussure, Ferdinand de. i. 1906-11. Cours de linguistique générale. References to English translation, Course in General Linguistics, edited by C. Bally and A. Sechehaye, translated by W. Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966). . ______ u. "Notes inedites de F. de Saussure." Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 12(1954). Savan, David. 1976. An Introduction to Charles Peirce's Semiotics (Toronto: Toronto Semi-otic Circle). Scheffler, Harold, and Floyd Lounsbury. 1971. Sirono Kinship: A Study in Structural Semantics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall). Schwartz, Barry. 1981. Vertical Classification (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Schwartz, Barry, A. Tesser, and E. Powell. 1982. "The Perception of Social Dominance," Social Psychology Quarterly 45(2):114-20. Seager, William. 1986. "Scientific Explanation and the Trial of Galileo." Paper delivered at the Philosophy of Science Conference, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia (April). . ______ 1988. "Peirce's Teleological Signs," Semiotica 69(3/4):303-314. Sebeok, Thomas. 1979. The Sign and Its Masters (Austin: University of Texas Press). Shapiro, Michael. 1983. The Sense of Grammar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Shepher, Joseph. 1983. Incest: A Biosocial View (New York: Academic Press). Short, T. L. 1981. "Semiosis and Intentionality," Transactions of the Charles Sanders PeirceSociety 17:197-223. Silverman, Martin G. 1971. Disconcerting Issue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Skagestad, Peter. 1981. The Road of Inquiry: Charles Peirce's Pragmatic Realism (New York: Columbia University Press). Smith, John E. 1978. Purpose and Thought (New York: Yale University Press). Solidarity Bulletin. 1983. (New York: Committee in Support of Solidarity) November 9. Stetter, Christian. 1979. "Peirce und Saussure," Kodikas/Code 1:124-149. Sutton, F. X., S. E. Harris, C. Kaysen, and J. Tobin. 1956. The American Business Creed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Swanton, John. 1970. Social Conditions, Beliefs and Language Relations of the Tlingit Indians (New York: Johnson Reprint Co.). Thompson, John B. 1984. Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Berkeley: University of Califor- nia Press). Thompson, Stith. i. 1933-36. Motif Index of Folk Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966). Todorov, Tzvetan. 1978. Symbolisme et interpretation (Paris: Editions du Seuil). References to the English translation, Symbolism and Interpretation, translated by C. Porter (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982). Treisman, Anne. 1985. "Properties, Parts and Objects," in Handbook of Perception and Human Performance, edited by K. Boff, L. Kaufmann, and J. Thomas (New York: Wiley). . ______ 1986. "Feature Analysis." Paper presented at the University of Toronto, Jan. 29. Treisman, Anne, and G. Gelade. 1980. "A Feature-Integration Theory of Attention," Cognitive Psychology 12:97-136.
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Treisman, Anne, and H. Schmidt. 1982. "Illusionary Conjunctions in the Perceptions of Objects," Cognitive Psychology 14:107141. Treisman, Anne, M. Syles, and G. Gelade. 1977. "Selective Attention and Stimulus Integration," in Attention and Performance, edited by S. Dome (Hillsdale, N.J.:Erlbaum), 333-61. Trubetzkoy, N. S. 1975. Letters and Notes, edited by R. Jakobson (The Hague: Mouton). Turner, Terence. 1979. "The Ge and Bororo Societies as Dialectical Systems," in Dialectical Societies, edited by David Maybury-Lewis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 147-178. Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Tylor, E. B. 1871. Primitive Culture (London). van Fraasen, Bas. 1980. The Scientific Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Vernant, Jean-Pierre. 1974. Myth et société en Grèce ancienne (Paris: Editions Maspero). References to English translation, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, translated by J. Lloyd (New York: Humanities Press, 1980). von Wright, Georg. 1971. Explanation and Understanding (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press). Waugh, Linda. 1976. Roman Jakobson's Science of Language (Lisse: de Ridder). ______ 1982. "Marked and Unmarked. A Choice Between Unequals in Semiotic Structure," Semiotica 38:299-318. Weinrich, U. 1966. "Explorations in Semantic Theory," in Current Trends in Linguistics, edited by T. Sebeok, Vol. 3 (The Hague: Mouton). Werner, Heinz. 1957. "The Concept of Development from a Comparative and Organismic Point of View," in The Concept of Development, edited by D. B. Harris (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957), 125-48. Wilbert, Johannes, and Karin Simoneau. 1983. Literature of the Bororo Indians. Latin American Studies, Vol. 57 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin America Center). Wilden, Tony. 1981. "Semiotics as Praxis: Strategy and Tactics," Recherches semiotiquel Semiotic Inquiry (1):1-34. Williams, Joseph. 1957. Origins of the English Language (New York: Free Press). Winch, Peter. 1958. The Idea of a Social Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Woodburn, J. 1968. "An Introduction to Hadza Ecology," in Man the Hunter, edited by R. Lee and I. DeVore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 49-55. Zunde, Pranas. 1980. "A Semiotic Approach to Information Value," in Semiotics 1980, edited by M. Herzfeld and M. Lenhart (New York: Plenum).
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Name Index
A Almeder, Robert, 222 Altschuler, Bruce, 22 Andersen, Henning: on rank in phonology, 68-70 mentioned, 49-50, 60, 62, 74 Andrews, Edna, 64 Apel, Karl-Otto, 12, 217 Aristotle, 223 Armstrong, Nancy, 134 Augustine: on interpretation of the Bible, 11-12 mentioned, 214
B Balikci, Asen: ethnography of the Netsilik, 145-155 Barthes, Roland, 53 Bateson, Gregory, 169 Battistela, Edward: on definition of markedness, 62-63, 64 Baudrillard, Jean, 162, 167-168, 223-224 Bendix, Edward, 68 Bergson, Henri, 214 Bigelow, J., 8 Bischoff, N., 7 Blake, William, 2 Bourdieu, Pierre, 162 Bowerman, Melissa, 118 Brakel, George, 64 Bremond, Claude: analysis of fairy tale narrative, 112-116; mentioned, 216 Brennen, Susan, 86 Brock, Jarrett, 34, 36 Brown, Roger, 117-120 Bruner, Jerome: on Roman Jakobson, 48, 62 And case grammar, 117-120 Bubner, Rudiger, 221 Burchfield, Robert, 90 Burkert, Walther, 111, 117, 223-224
C Campbell, Joseph, 224 Carneiro, R. L., 169 Carroll, Michael, 105
Cassirer, Ernst, 1 Chapple, Eliot, 162 Chatman, Seymour, 223-224 Comrie, Bernard, 64 Cressman, L. S., 209 Crocker, Jon: ethnography of the Bororo, 169-202 Crumrine, N., 107 Crutchfield, J. P., 221 Culler, Jonathan, 99, 129
D Dallmayr, Fred, 221 D'Anglure, B. S., 53 Deladelle, Girard, 53 Derrida, Jacques, 217-218, 221 Descartes, René, 214 Dewdney, J., 86 Dewey, John, 47 Diamond, Stanley, 210 Dorson, Richard, 223 Douglas, Mary, 169 Dundes, Alan, 112, 126-127 Dunn-Rankin, Peter: on letter discrimination, 71-73 Durkheim, Emile: on myth and ideology, 164-169
E Edmunds, Lowell, 221 Ekman, Paul: analysis of the facial expressions of the primary emotions, 78-86
F Fernandez, James, 162 Ferrara, Fernando, 134 Firth, Raymond, 164 Fitzgerald, John, 222 Freeman, M., 148 Frege, Gottlieb, 221 Freud, Sigmund, 13, 15, 87, 89 Frye, Northrop: on typology of narratives, 129-134 mentioned, 214-215
G Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 10 Gallie, W. B., 19, 45 Geertz, Clifford: on ideology, 165-168 mentioned, 2
Gentry, George, 22 Gernet, L., 164 Giddens, Anthony, 6, 13, 14 Girard, Renè: on ritual and violence, 134-141 mentioned, 166, 215 Goodenough, W. H., 123 Granet, M., 164 Greenberg, Joseph, 66, 123 Greenlee, Douglas, 23 Greimas, A. J.: analysis of narrative, 109-112 mentioned, 216 Guttgemans, Erhardt, 109
H Habermas, Jürgen, 1, 6, 13-14, 217-219, 221 Halle, Morris, 61-62 Harris, Roy, 53, 223 Hedges, James, 91 Hegel, Georg, 214 Hempel, Carl, 2-3, 221 Hendricks, O., 100 Hernstein-Smith, Barbara, 202 Hesiod, 203, 218 Hirschfield, Lawrence: ethnography of the San Blas Kuna, 158-163 Hofstadter, Douglas, 154
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Holenstein, Elmar, 62 Homer, 218 Howe, James: ethnography of the San Bias Kuna, 158-163 Husserl, Edmund, 214
J Jakobson, Roman: and interpretation of Peirce, 48-53 mentioned, 7, 62, 87, 117, 120, 222 Jameson, Frederic, 218 Jonaitis, Adona, 156-159 Jung, Carl, 2, 4, 209
K Kant, Immanuel, 31, 45, 209 Kaplan, Abraham, 223 Kloesel, Christian, 21 Kolaga, Wojciech, 23, 43 Kripke, Saul, 34 Kristeva, Julia, 214
L Laguna, Frederica, 155-158 Lee, R., 146 Lévi-Strauss, Claude: analysis of narrative in myth, 103-110; and transformation, 203-216 on origin of myth, 208-211 mentioned, 7, 9, 117, 164, 170, 196-197, 216 Liszka, James Jakób, 44, 196, 221 Lyons, John: typology of lexical opposites, 64-68, 123
M Malinowski, Bronislaw, 164-169 Malkiel, Y., 66 Maranda, Elli, 107-109 Maranda, Pierre, 3, 6-7, 9, 107-109 Martin, Wallace, 99, 221, 224 Marx, Karl, 13, 164-169 Maybury-Lewis, David, 210 McMurtrey, Kevin, 46 Merton, Robert, 224 Mill, John Stuart, 5 Morris, Charles, 46-47 Müller, Max, 223
N Neaman, Judith, 93 Neitzsche, Friedrich, 87 Nilsson, Martin, 166 Norricks, Jay, 123 Norris, Christopher, 34
O Oberg, Kalevero, 156-159 Ogden, C. K., 53 Origen, 11 Orwell, George, 65
P Palmer, F., 123 Parsons, Talcott, 165 Paul, the Apostle, 11 Pei, Mario, 92, 95 Peirce, Charles Sanders: his theory of the interpretant, 19-57 relation to Roman Jakobson, 48-52 and Saussure, 53-60 mentioned, 6, 14-15, 70, 162-163, 167, 202, 215-216, 221-222 Plato, 2, 21, 214, 218 Plautus, 130 Prado, G. C., 219 Propp, Vladimir: analysis of narrative in folktale, 99-103, 113-116 mentioned, 105, 109, 112, 120, 216, 223 Prower, Emmanuel, 223
Q Quine, Willard van Orman, 34-35, 43, 221-222
R Ramanujan, A. K., 15 Rasmussen, Knud: ethnography of the Netsilik, 145-155 Ricoeur, Paul, 2, 12, 102, 111-112 Richards, I. A., 53 Riches, David, 147-148 Rochberg-Halton, Eugene, 46 Rooth, Anna, 221 Rorty, Richard, 10, 26 Rosenbleuth, A., 8 Rossi-Landi, F., 163 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 218 Russell, Bertrand, 34, 214, 221
S Safire, William, 93 Sahlins, Marshall, 165-169 Salmon, Wesley, 221 Saussure, Ferdinand de: on linguistic value, 33-57 and Peirce, 53-60 mentioned, 7, 202, 223 Scheffler, Harold, 123 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 12 Schwartz, Barry: on social perception, 74-78 Seager, William, 221, 222 Sebeok, Thomas, 7 Shapiro, Michael, 53, 62, 68-69 Shepher, Joseph, 7 Short, Thomas, 221 Silver, Carol, 93 Simoneau, Karin, 182-202 Skagestad, Peter, 22, 26, 221 Smith, John, 37 Stetter, Christian, 53 Strawson, Peter, 34 Sutton, F. X., 165 Swanton, John, 156
T Terence, 130 Thompson, J. B, 217 Thomspon, Stith, 100 Todorov, Tzvetan, 222 Treisman, Anne, 63-64 Trubetzkoy, N. S., 62 Turner, Terence, 169-178 Turner, Victor: on ritual, 134-141 mentioned, 166, 215, 217
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V van Fraasen, Bas, 221 Vernant, Pierre, 212 von Wright, Georg: analysis of action, 117-120 mentioned, 4, 8, 24, 224
W Waugh, Linda, 62, 63 Werner, Heinz, 78 Wiener, Norbert, 8 Wilbert, Johannes, 182-202 Wilden, Anthony, 166 Williams, Joseph, 93-94 Winch, Peter, 6 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 6 Woodburn, J., 146
Z Zunde, Pranas, 45
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Advances in Semiotics Thomas A. Sebeok, General Editor
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Subject Index
A abduction: as a species of inference, 26, 29, 31-32 abstraction: as a semiotic operation, 30-32 agon, 130-133 ambivalence: of hierarchy, 155-158 in Tlingit myth, 155-158 in Kuna myth, 158-163 and directed determination, 158-163 and deconstruction, 217-218 sociology of 223 in Baudrillard, 223 mentioned, 164, 167, 202, 213, 216, 217, 219, 224 amplification: as a semiotic operation, 30, 32 anagnonrisis, 130, 132 analogy: as a species of inference, 30, 32 Apo, the, 136-137 archetypes, 4-5 argument, 27 ascent: as a semiotic operation, 30, 32 asymmetry, 50, 62. See hierarchy axiology, 125-127, 213 See also value
B Bemba, the, 166 Bororo, the: mythology of, 169-202, 206-207, 213 political economy of, 169-178 and sexual division of labor, 169-178 and masculinity, 169 and agriculture, 169-178 and fishing, 169-178 and hunting, 169-178 and household, 170, 172, 174, 184-189 socialization of, 170 and marriage, 171 and matrilocality, 171 and ritual, 172-173 and kinship, 172-173 and exogamy, 173-174 dual organization of, 174 religion of, 174-178
and food, 174-176, 178, 186-189 and cooking, 177-178 and incest, 189-199 totems, of 200-202 mentioned, 124, 136
C cause, 5, 8, 9, 24-25, 119-120 chaos, 221 community: speech, 32-35, 43-45, 219 and consensus, 32-33 and determination, 36-45 and the real, 44 and truth, 44 and purpose, 44 and value, 44 and directed determination, 158-163 and translation, 216-217 and interpretation, 216-219 mentioned. 215 connotation. See sense correlation. See isomorphism crisis: as function of myth, 16, 181, 218-219 in narrative of fairy tale, 113-115 in Bororo myth, 181-182, 200-203 mentioned, 216 critical theory: and explanation, 12-14 and hermeneutics, 12-14 See also semiotic, critical
D deconstruction, 217 deduction, 26, 29-30, 32 denotation. See reference depletion: as semiotic operation, 30, 32 depth. See sense descent: as semiotic operation, 30-32 determination: and consensus, 32-33 and discourse, 32-33 and generality, 32-33 as relation between speaker and auditor, 32-33, 36 and speech community, 32-35, 43-45 and vagueness, 32-33 and proper names, 33-35 absolute, 34-36 relative, 34-37
and purpose, 34, 36-37, 42 and collateral experience, 35 and demonstratives, 35 and interpretant, 38-42 and reference, 38-42 and translation, 41-43 and self-control, 44 directed, 158-163 dialogue, 216 See also community; determination; discourse differance, 217 difference. See opposition diffusionism, 4, 204, 209-213, 221 discourse, 214, 219, 223. See also community; determination discovery: as inference, 30, 32 displacement: in myth, 14, 168, 215-216 in dreams, 87 in tropes, 87-96 types of, 89-93 See also hierarchy; markedness; rank; transvaluation
E euphemism: as symbolic transvaluation, 87-94 types, 89-90 and displacement, 89-94 and markedness, 89-94 and rank, 89-94 See also vulgarism evaluation, 6, 14, 16, 219 See also rules explanation: general character of, 1-14 and the D-N model, 2-3, 221 and probability, 3 and retrodiction, 4 and prediction, 5 and rules, 5-9, 14 reconstructive, 5-9, 14, 221 and cybernetics, 8 and systems theory, 8 and teleology, 8-9 and hermeneutics, 9-14 and critical theory, 13-14 extension: as semiotic operation, 30-32
F
fable, 218-219 fabula, 223 fairy tale: analysis in Propp, 99-103 rule of narrative in, 116 Fang, the, 162 function. See teleology functions: in Propp, 6-7, 101-103, 113-116
G Ge, the, 170-178, 206-207 See also Bororo, the generality. See vagueness generalization, 30, 32-33 ground: in Peirce, 223
H hermeneutics: and explanation, 9-14 and critical theory, 9-14 and edification, 10 and wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein, 10, 12 and the Bible, 11-12 mentioned, 1, 2, 219
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hierarchy: in language, 50, 62-96 in narrative, 113-132 and ritual, 131-141 in determining narrative types, 133-134 and violence, 134-141 tangled, 154-155, 178-180 and ambivalence, 155-164, 167 mentioned, 15, 166, 215-216 See also markedness; rank
I latmul, the, 169 ideology: classical theory of, 164-169 and consensus theory, 165-169 and myth, 165-169 and strain theory, 165-169 and catharsis, 166 and interest theory, 166-168 and the Bororo, 169-178 mentioned, 154-155, 162-163, 178-180, 202, 216, 219 incest: in Bororo myth, 189-199 mentioned, 15 induction, 26, 29-31 inference: in Peirce, 26-31 information: as quantity of the interpretant, 19, 27-32 innatism, 204, 209-213, 221 interpretant: as sign translation, 19-57 as principle of synthesis in semiosis, 19 and information, 19, 27-32 and reference, 19-44 and sense, 19-44 as habit, 22 and infinite progress, 22 and transvaluation, 61-96 isomorphism: in language, 49-50, 223 mentioned, 117, 168
J judicial system: and sacrifice, 138-139
K Kuna, the San Blas: mythology of, 158-163 and directed determination, 158-163 and ideology, 158-163
and kinship, 158-163 and marriage, 158-163 social economy of 158-163
L language: and rules, 6, 7, 49 and the interpretant, 48-52 structuralist theory of 48-69 and grammar, 49-57, 61-70, 118-121 and the lexicon, 49-57, 61-70 and morphology, 49-70 and phonology, 49-70; and value, 53-69 as model for transvaluation, 61-69 and markedness, 61-68 oppositions in, 65-68 and rank, 68-70 and tropes, 87-96 laws: and explanation, 2-8 liminality, 181, 218 lógos, 1, 219
M markedness: defined, 64-65 in perception, 63-64 minus interpretation of, 64-65, 121 and neutralization, 64-65 and optimality, 64-65 and simplicity, 64-65 and unrestricted distribution, 64-65 zero-interpretation of, 64-65, 121 and lexical opposites, 65-68 and rule of assimilation, 68 in letter discrimination, 71-73 in social perception, 74-78 in perception of the facial expressions of the emotions, 78-84 in caricature, 86-88 in euphemism, 87-96 in metonym, 87 in vulgarism, 87-96 in hyperbole, 96 in litotes, 95-96 in narrative, 113-128, 145, 149-150 normal, 121-122 normative, 121-122 in Netsilik mythology, 145-152
in Tlingit mythology, 155-157 in Bororo mythology and religion, 175. See also hierarchy; rank; transvaluation metaphysics, 214 metonym, 87-89 myth: explanation of, 1-14 function of, 14-16, 178-202, 213-216 and teleology, 15, 145, 178-202, 205, 215 as dangerous symbols, 16, 202 and narrative, 99-163 Greek, 122, 203-204, 213 Netsilik, 145-158,204-205 as transvaluation, 145-219 an ideology, 153-155, 177, 219 and ambivalence, 154-163 Tlingit, 155-158, 203, 213 Kuna, 158-163 Bororo, 169-202, 206-207, 213 as displacement of rules and values in a culture, 201, 216 origin of, 203-213, 215 rules of transformation in, 205-209
N narrative: function of, 14-16, 178-202, 213-216 as transvaluation, 15, 87, 99-209; 117 in Propp, 99-103, 113-116 in Lévi-Strauss, 103-109 in Greimas, 109-112 in Bremond, 112-116 rules for structure of fairy tale, 113-116 and markedness, 113-128, 145-163 and rank, 113-128, 145-163 general structure of, 117-128 and hierarchy, 117-128, 132-163 and mythemic sequence, 117-121, 129, 150-151 agential level of, 121-125, 129, 145, 211-213 actantial level of, 125-129, 211-213 rules for determining dramatis personae in, 127-128 type, 128-134, 211-213, 215-216 and comedy, 129-134 and irony, 129-134 and romance, 129-134 and satire, 129-134 and tragedy, 129-134 and violence, 132-141 and ambivalence, 154-163
narratology, 99 Ndembu, the, 137 Netsilik, the: mythology of, 145-158, 204-205 and hunting, 146-148, 152-153 and kinship, 147 and marriage, 147-148 and taboos, 147, 154 and infanticide, 148 and Nuliajuk, 148, 153-155 and Narssuk, 149, 154 Nuiato, the, 123
O object. See reference objective idealism, 48, 50 Ojibwa, the, 121 opposition: in origin and function of myth, 8-9, 209-211 and binarism, 48-52 in phonology, 48-52, 61-69 and difference, 53-60 and markedness, 61-69 types of lexical, 65-68 antonyms, 66 complements, 66 morphologically related, 66-67 directional, 67 hyponymy, 68 nonbinary, 68
P pathos, 131-133 pharmakon, 138, 217
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plot, 223 polyvalence, 219 pragmatism, 20, 22, 42 prescission, 31-32 probabilistic network: Propp's functions as, 6 proposition, 27-28 purpose. See teleology
R rank: defined, 68-70 and the rule of assimilation, 68 and phonemes, 68-70 and vowels, 68-70 in social perception, 74-78 in perception of facial expression of emotions, 78-86 in caricature, 86-88 in metonym, 87-89 in euphemism, 87-96 in vulgarism, 87-96 in hyperbole, 95-96 in litotes, 95-96 in narrative, 113-128 hyponymic, 124 in ritual, 134-144 See also hierarchy; markedness; transvaluation reciprocity, 127, 138-139 reference: in Peirce, 19, 25-30, 36-41 and transvaluation, 70-73 in tropes, 87-96 mentioned, 14-15 restriction: as semiotic operation, 31 ritual: and violence, 134-144 and judicial systems, 138-139 and sacrifice, 138-139 in Girard, 134-144 in Turner, 134-144 rules: and explanation, 5-10 and evaluation, 6 and sanctions, 6 and value, 6-7 and language, 6-7, 49 and incest, 7, 15 in the interpretation of the Bible, 11 in narrative, 113-116, 127-128
concerning the general structure of fairy tale narrative, 113-116 for determining the dramatis personae of a fairy tale, 127-128 mentioned, 14-16, 165, 215-219
S self-control, 16, 20, 44 semiological reduction, 162-163 semiotic, critical, 16, 218-219 sense: in Peirce, 19-37, 221 sign: and reference, 14-15, 19-41, 22 and rules, 19, 25 and sense, 19-37 and information, 19-40 and interpretant, 19-44 and translation, 19-47 and truth, 20 and the real, 20 and purpose, 20, 24, 26, 38, 56-67 and science, 21 and self-control, 21 and symbol, 21, 25 triadic structure of, 23-24, 222, 261 and dyadic relation, 24, 26 as inference, 26-31 and community, 32-35, 43-45, 219 and determination, 32-34 and quantifiers, 33-34 and proper names, 33-35 and value, 45-47, 53-57 and signatum, 49-57, 163 and signans, 49-57, 163, 223 and signification, 53-57, 167 Sirono, the, 123 sjuzet, 223 statistical generalization, 6 story, 223 structuralism, 48-57 structuration, 13-15 subjectivity, 221 Swazi, the, 139 symbol: myth as, 16, 202 special character of, 23-26 triadic structure of, 23-26 and tropes, 87-96 and culture, 164-177 and clothing, 167-168
and metaphysics, 214-216 mentioned, 8, 14-15, 26, 164, 214-215, 218, 224 See also sign
T teleology, 8-10, 15. See also explanation; myth; narrative teleonomy, 8-9 term, 27 Tlingit, the: mythology of, 155-158, 203, 213 and class, 155-158 and kinship, 155-158 and marriage, 155-158 and Moon, 155-158 and rank, 155-158 and Raven, 155-158 transformation: as opposed to transvaluation, 203-213 rules of, 205-209 transgression, 15, 140-141, 154-155, 201, 218 translation: and the interpretant, 19-52 and pure rhetoric, 26 and inference, 26-31 and transitive relation, 28 and equivalence, 29 and community, 32-35, 43-45, 215-217, 219 and purpose, 45-46 and value, 45-47 synchronic, 48, 117, 222 diachronic, 48, 222 and language, 51-57 transvaluation: defined, 70-73 as based on phonological model, 61-70 and the interpretant, 70-73 in letter discrimination, 72-74 in social perception, 74-78 in perception of facial expressions of emotions, 78-86 in caricature, 86-88 and displacement, 87-96 and dreams, 87-89 and metonym, 87-89 in vulgarism, 87-96 and hyperbole, 95-96 and litotes, 95-96 in narrative, 113-214 types of narrative, 129-134 and myth, 145-202
and transformation, 203-213 See also hierarchy; markedness; rank tropes. See euphemism; metonym Tupi, the, 207
U univalence, 219
V vagueness, 31-36, 222 Value: linguistic, 53-57, 61-73 and hierarchy, 62-92 and markedness, 62-96 and rank, 62-96 and displacement, 85-96 in Greimas, 110-112 in Bremond, 112-113 and axiology, 125-127 violence: and hierarcy, 134-144 in ritual, 134-144 mentioned, 154, 201, 215 vulgarism, 16, 87-96
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