The funny thing to me about Saussure is it seems he’s a bit poststructuralist himself. (Not that I’ll presume to know too much about Poststructuralism yet as we’ve still yet to get there.) But isn’t his biggest theme pointing out the paradox of how language is arbitrary, illogical, and doesn’t have much of a “structure” in terms of what we would generally assume? Well, whether that’s Structuralism or not, it’s certainly quite interesting. (Again, I’m probably just misunderstanding my terminology and –isms here, but whatever.) I do get that Saussure is structuralist because ultimately he’s still breaking everything down into its structure, and focusing on structure. It’s just cool that he’s so conscious of how structureless things begin to appear when you do that.
This theme of structure imposed on a structureless world really intrigues me. “Language works out its units while taking shape between two shapeless masses [thought and sound]” (Saussure 856)…basically, without language we have nothing that appears at all logical. Or maybe it’s more that once we have it, it’s hard to imagine anything else that could appear to make any sense, although obviously animals and nature do without it. (Urge to jump ahead to Lacan rising.) In any case, I suppose this is the point – language does give us structure, but because thoughts and sounds don’t tend to have much structure on their own, language needs to create one for them (for the most part) arbitrarily. In the end, it’s really just a case of “whatever works” – any language or system of signs can achieve meaning equally well in their own unique ways. The important thing is that there is meaning.
I liked the way we discussed Saussure’s sign in class and took it beyond just language and into the realm of imagery, especially in regards to advertising. The whole idea that the signifier can provoke millions of signifieds is probably the most intriguing part about the sign. We never just think of a word’s definition alone, we think about other things it relates to, both from context (what Saussure calls “syntagmatic relations”) and from what it makes us think of in our own heads, from our own experience (what Saussure calls “associative relations”).
One minor critique of our in class discussion though – we didn’t use Saussure’s diagram of the sign, and I feel it’s kind of important. In fact, I think we made a mistake in class, as I’m pretty sure at one point we said something along the lines of the signifier gives us the signified, but it doesn’t go the other way?* That’s the whole point of the arrows in Saussure’s diagram, isn’t it? As he says “The two elements [signifier and signified] are intimately united, and each recalls the other” (Saussure 853) (italics mine). This is why Saussure’s diagram is so important, because it makes the point that both signifier and signified are a part of the whole sign, and they are both equal parts that work backwards and forwards to create meaning.
(*I do apologize if I’m remembering this wrong, I just seem to remember we said something like this and it just didn’t seem quite right.)
And lastly, the idea that “in language there are only differences” (Saussure 862) and that whole idea of binary opposition and such is really interesting. Saussure says language is a “form and not a substance” (863) and those terms confused me until he goes on to say “all the mistakes in our terminology…stem from the involuntary supposition that the linguistic phenomenon must have substance” (863). Again, it’s that whole illusion of logic, of the sign not being arbitrary. Basically, meaning ultimately comes from the signs interacting, not the signs themselves.
Frye
I just wanted to touch briefly on Frye, even though this is getting a little long. One of the most intriguing things he brought up was ritual’s importance in human life. “It is the deliberate expression of a will to synchronize human and natural energies…in ritual, then, we may find the origin of narrative” (Frye 1310). This, and this whole paragraph, is beautiful, and oh so true. It shows how natural storytelling is for us, how whether it’s ancient myths, or religion, or any type of fiction at all, the drive is to create rhythm (as Frye says) in our lives…that structure in a structureless world. (This is beginning to sound like Existentialism, actually, but that’s a whole nother theory.)
As for the question posed in class about whether or not it’s possible to find a story without any archetypes, I’d have to say no. I feel like if you did, then could you even still call it a “story”? I think our definition of story implies at least the use of some kind of archetype, whether it’s just the fact that there’s a character doing something in some order…or at least I think people will always be able to find some kind of archetype that would fit for any given situation. Also, as Prof. Haake likes to say, “stories aren’t about the world, they’re about other stories.” I’ve always had mixed feelings about this statement, but I think it’s generally true, and what Prof. Haake’s point is is that archetypes are basically our language as writers, just as much as language itself. To tie Saussure back in, they’re conventions we use to create meaning, and we use them because they work. Without them, wouldn’t stories just be formless masses, just as thoughts and sounds would be without language? I think this is debatable, but it’s not a bad way to think of archetypes, and makes sense to me.
This also makes me think of Jung. Frye brings him up, and although he didn’t mention this theory, it made me think of Jung’s personality types. I’m a huge fan of the Myers-Briggs, and it’s really interesting because personality types are really archetypes applied to human psychology. This begs the question, can we reduce human beings’ personalities to archetypes? I personally think they can work more or less, and again theorists and psychologists stress that these things are always on a continuum. The interesting thing to note I think is that we can always make them work, and, again, I think humans tend to want to fit things into patterns. That’s the significant thing about archetypes, and stories in general (and theory, psychology and philosophy themselves)…that we are naturally drawn to patterns and logic.
Even when there’s none. Especially when there’s none.
---
Works Cited
Saussure, Ferdinand De. “Course in General Linguistics.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. 850-66. Print.
Frye, Northrop. “The Archetypes of Literature.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. 1304-15. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment