Overview

On narrative consists of transcripts of the symposium “Narrative: The Illusion of Sequence” held at University of Chicago on October 26-28, 1979. This conference discusses many ways of looking at narrative and of sequence, specifically looking beyond the classic Arisotelian aesthetics. This is made up of several different essays which address different perpsectives and characteristics of narrative.

Notes

Hayden White: The Value of Narrative in the Representation of Reality

Narrative is the transformation from knowing to telling. Compare this to the issues of setting, game, etcetera. “Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling, the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific.” This is a bold proposition, but one that White is going to critique. (p. 1)

Referring to semiotics: in narratives form is highly important. Narrativizing is different from telling. According to Barthes: “Narrative is translation without fundamental damage.” Compare with translation in other forms. What defines fundamental damage? Refusing narrative indicates an absence or refusal of meaning itself. (p. 2)

White discusses works of linguists/philosophers. Differential between narrative and discourse, structuralism, etcetera. Notes: Jakobson, Benveniste, Genette, Todorov, Barthes. (p. 3)

White begins on how narrative relates specifically to histories, and method of narration alters perception of events. This is especially relevant in anything that is a story that is nonfiction. Fictive elements naturally arise in process of telling. White notes terms: There are referents of a discourse, tellers of the narrative. The story itself is artificial, as real events cannot “speak themselves” (p. 4) White addresses histories next, and examines distinctly non-narrative types of them. Some concerns: accuracy, objectivity, correctness, adaptation, etc. Notably forms such as the chronicle an annals. (p. 5)

What is Kariotic time? Vs Chronological time?

White discusses a portion of the annals which represents time in a peculiar and unsettling way: This has a distinct lack of agency or social center, but has no shortage of years. Events just seem to happen. Are some games like this? (p. 11) Narrative requires a subject. Subject requires a law or order, requires difference between self and other. (p. 12) Narratives depend on the notion of a plot, which likens content to sorts of ideals. “This is why the plot of a historical narrative is always an embarassment, and has to be presented as ‘found’ in the events rather than put there by narrative techniques.” (p. 20)

Narrative is a moral judgement, as is film, and all other forms of communication. So too must be simulation! (p. 22)

Discussion of the development of the Id as a narrative structure (p. 27) Freud’s other discussions fall in line with Newtonian physics, likening to operations of human condition as part story, part machine. (p. 28)

Roy Schafer: Narration in the Psychoanalytic dialogue

This is about the use of narration in psychoanalysis. A few interesting tidbits are in here… The Freudian drive is a narrative subject. (p. 37) can’t seem to find much more than that…

Frank Kermode: Secrets and Narrative Sequence

Kermode discusses sequence and means of thinking about stories and such. Motivators, causes of action: Ethos, Dianoia, Mythos. Action occurs because it is motivated by various means, moral issues, character, and also (beyond Aristotle) mythic reasoning. Plot/Action relates to Narrative/Telling. Way events are told compares “Teases out of us thought” vs “Sort of makes us think”. Difference is in how we percieve and are forced to interpret. This interpretation does not depend on narrative sequence, but does depend on relation and association. Compare serious games. (p. 80)

Both interpretation and construction of narrative involve extraction of relevant messages, properties, objects. There is the same selectiveness in simulation: translating means and properties. Where conflict over the final means and interpretation gives way to secrets. These are hidden terms in simulation, black boxes, but is born in the conflict of illusion of narrative sequence. Kermode discusses stories with properties of plot. “Good readers may conspire to ignore these properties; but they are relevant to my main theme, which is the conflict between narrative sequence (or whatever it is that creates the ‘illusion of narrative sequence’) and what I shall loosely, but with pregnant intention call ‘secrets.'”(p. 81)

Conflict of story vs interpretation. There are facts from the story, and then what is between them. Fact vs metaphor, allegory. What is the unit of event? These are put through interpretive systems (layers of them) by reader and context. Narrative IS the product of presentation and interpretation. This definition does NOT rule out simulation or anything interactive. Think “The Sims”. Kermode does not actually say this, but does come close. (p. 83)

The unreliable narrator: Does not need to be a false narrator, but unreliable in terms of inclusion of extraneous information, or leaving out information. Difference between reader’s perspective of relevance and the narrators. (p. 86)

Consider diagetic ghosts and phantoms; information not logically includable in regular course of narrative. Surreal imagery is specialized application thereof. Usually these can be interpreted away or ignored. How do we construct these in games? Dreamy imagery in tabletop roleplaying, etc? (p. 88) Metaphorical secrets form deliberate ambiguity. This serves as direct invitation for reader. This directly applies to tabletop, secrets may coalesce, but this impedes on their nature. (p. 89)

Nelson Goodman: Twisted Tales; or, Story, Study, and Symphony

Distinction here is event and sequence. The order independent of sequence of telling is derived from contextual cues and background knowledge. Goal for observer is to order them. (p. 100)

Goodman examines a significant number of paintings that depict stories, multiple perspectives on the lives of saints in medieval artwork, wherein the saint appears multiple times in different locations in the paintings. This discussion applies narrative analysis to still images. The analysis is not precisely rational, but neither is it inappropriate, as visual spatiality relates to time. (p. 109)

Ordering is a definitive characteristic of narrative. All narratives may survive some reordering, but survival is interesting point. Can identify reordered sequences that no longer can be identifiable as narratives.

Seymour Chatman: What Novels can Do That Films Can’t (and Vice Versa)

Narrative demands a dual time order, event and reading. Compare encyclopedic nature of readings with discourse time. In film and other structures (games?), order is mediated. Maybe fixed, or encyclopedic, or both. Paintings, novels, films, reference books, histories… (p. 118)

Chatman discusses Cinderaella as transmediated: “Narratologists immediately observed an important consequence of this property of narrative texts, namely, the translatability of a given narrative from one medium to another: Cinderalla as verbal tale, as ballet, as opera, as film, as comic strip, as pantomime, and so on.” This sort of translatability is of great interest in the structuralist movement. The differences between media are, of course, highly significant. (p. 118) It is still interesting to note that each of these media express narratives, and preserve the meaning of narrative sequence. Games and interactive domains are not bound to the notion of sequence, and thus are made difficult.

The presentation of details: Small and alternately ambiguous details may follow from written text. Film enables realism, but importance of details is complicated by wealth of information. Visual, filmic language is used for ordering and explaining details. This is of great relevance to cybertexts and games, especially in games which strive for realism. Realism adds additional confusion and complicates purpose and message of the text. (p. 121)

“Why is it that the force of plot, with its ongoing march of events, its ticking away of storytime, is so hard to dispel in the movies? … The answer may have something to do with the medium itself. Whereas in novels movements and hence events are at best constructions imaged by the reader out of words, that is, abstract sybmols which are different from them in kind, the movements on the screen are so iconic, so like the real life movements they imitate, that the illusion of time passage simply cannot be divorced from them.” Compare with the relationship of time and progress in games and cybertexts. (p. 126)

Chatman discusses specifically one film, Partie de Champagne (1936), in great detail. He discusses the voyeurism of the male characters in the film, and mentions its portrayal of the gaze as compensating for the camera’s sexless objectivity. This, as we know, is a highly dubious claim.

Victor Turner: Social Dramas and Stories about Them

Turner discusses in this essay the notion of a social drama and how the drama is related and chronicled. Turner starts with the Ndembu of northwestern Zambia, and the forms and ritualized structures of social drama that they enage in, and then brings this back to western culture, specifically examining the Wategate scandal as a social drama. Turner begins by comparing “emic” and “etic” perspectives. The former explores things within the context of a specific culture or domain, and the etic perspective is alien and external. (p. 141)

The social drama is continuous and event based. As such, it is distinctly non-narrative. The drama has four phases: Breach, Crisis, Redress, and Reintegration or Recognition. “Social dramas occur within groups of persons who share values and interests and who have a real or alleged common history. The main actors are persons for whom the group has high value priority.” Turner differentiates types of groups and social relevance, “Most of us have what I call our ‘star’ groups or groups to which we owe our deepest loyalty and whose fate is for us the greatest personal concern.” This can be explored in a multitude of ways. One is the types of groups of real people around games, how they play games, and for online ones, groups within the game worlds. From a simulation perspective, this offers a great deal of insight in how to relate different social structures in game worlds. (p. 145) “… we find symbolic equivalents of sibling rivalry and parent-child competition among star groupers.” (p. 146) The notions of loalty and alignment to different groups are of a great deal of interest and concern from the perspective of simulation. Group dynamics and relationships are highly symbolic.

Within groups, a dramatic breach (of a norm, morality, law, custom, etiquette, in public arena) can occur as a result of various forces: “This breach is seen as the expression of a deeper division of interests and loyalties than appears on the surface.” (p. 146)

There is an emphasis on action within the social rama: Resources are applied towards dramatic means. (p. 148)

Real drama requires a symbolic rhetorical structure. This needs performers (via rituals) to formalize and legitimize dramatic form. Stage drama and social drama play off each other and build upon one another in order to create a working dramatic convention. This connects highly to Baudrillard, who argues that the difference between symbolic and real drama is eroded to the point where they can no longer be distinguished. (p. 151)

Turner discusses the interpretive process of the drama, and how symbolic dramas are reflective of our own lives, raising consciousness and informing cognition under the rhetorical infrastructure that the drama creates. Turner explores how meaning arrives through narrative interpretation of dramas, via ordering the drama according to the four form structure. (p. 152)

The social drama is the originating structure for many cultural performances. These are things such as rites of passage, and rituals. Turner has described ritual as “perscribed formal behavior for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in invisible beings or powers regarded as the first and final causes of all effects.” This persists in opposition to Sir Edmund Leach who frames it without the religious context: “stereotyped behavior which is potent in itself in terms of the cultural conventions of the actors, though not potent in a rational-technological sense.” Ritual is nontheless performance and enactment and not primarily as rules or rubrics (!). Sequence is intrinsic in performance and ritual. (pp. 155-156) We can think of this as a framework for contextualized behaviors, where groups and space allows this sort of symbolic enactment. The question is what is the symbolic language of these groups and how do they relate and compare with others?

Overview

Radway examines the role of romantic fiction in the space of popular literature. She finds that romantic fiction fulfills the needs of middle class women whose needs are not being met by their marriages and roles in life. Radway is approaching this from the perspective of feminist criticism, but finds the role of the romance is extremely nuanced and complex. It is impossible to tell whether romantic fiction is ultimately empowering or disempowering to women in these situations.

Romance serves as an interesting object of study in the analysis of adaptation and simulation, as it is an example of a means of simulation (romances immerse the readers in highly structured operational worlds) that serves an interesting purpose for the readers. Initially it seemed that this would be an interesting text to consider in the aim of extending adaptation games to a broader audience (which did turn out to be the case, Radway describes several concrete things romance readers get out of their fiction), but it also is highly important from the perspective of model reinforcement within simulations. Romances satisfy women’s needs that are not met by patriarchy, yet the texts reinforce that patriarchy is the ultimate happiness and satisfaction. What features of simulation could be employed to subvert this process rather than reinforce it?

Notes

Radway starts by discussing her process as ethnography, and describes Geertz’s take on it as a constructive approach. There is a conflict between empiricism and constructionism, representation and interpretation. The question is ambiguous how much we construct a culture by reading it, versus how much we can observe objectively. (p. 5) The reading process (with romance especially) is a form of construction, to readers serves as a declaration of independence. Communities form around collective interpretation of works. (p. 7) Radway is especially informed by Nancy Chordorow’s work revising Freudian psychology. By that, the way reading serves as need fulfillment illustrates the gap in social structure. (p. 13)

The publishing institution, in its early development, leads to disposable, serial, “formulaic” paperbacks. There is established an orthodoxy of formula and format. (p. 29) Gradually, the publishing system develops a “semiprogrammed issue”, which is a product that has content, but is primarily established by format. Readers know what they are going to get. The need for this relates to middle class anxiety (Paul Fussell reference!) relating expectation to product. Product is content to satisfy expectation. (p. 45)

Dot’s incipient feminism: ostensibly conservative, but espouses progressive ideas in her values. Reflects complex social value system. Views independence and marriage/patriarchy as compatible, wheras feminist crituque does not. Reading is seen as an active activity, rather than a passive one. There are active components in selection of material, and interpretation of such material. (p. 54) One of the important qualities of romance: what it is like to be an object of love / romance. Question of identity and perspective in the view from the heroine; vicarious sensation. (p. 64)

The sexuality of the romance is nurturing in nature, and needs to be uplifting in the end. Successful romances need to pay explicit attention to emotions to be appealing to romance readers. The female sexual emotions revolve around some of the following: Hesitancy, Doubt, Anger, Confusion, Loss of control, Exhiliration. How would these be expressed in a digital form? Requires emotional representation. (p. 70) The most important quality of a romance is a happy ending. This completes the cycle of support and redemption. There is a complex understanding and set of requirements for romance to be successful (or not objectionable). Must reinforce happy monogamy. (p. 74)

There is a matter of relative independence at work in the reader’s minds. “The Smithton women seem ot be struggling simultaneously with the promise and threat of the women’s movement as well as with their culture’s now doubled capacity to belittle the intelligence and activities of ‘the ordinary housewife.'” There is strong importance of the assertion of the heroine’s uplifting identity and intelligence, even though she is shown to be vulnerable and needing to be loved. “In the utopia of romantic fiction, ‘independence’ and a secure individual ‘identity’ are never comprimised by the paternalistic care and protection of the male.” (p. 78-79)

Domestic dynamics of reading (as compared to TV, etc) are an expression of privacy, and essentially resented by husbands. The standard role of motherhood and wifeness requires an effacement and abnegation of self. This contrasts with strikingly solitary and private activity such as reading. In role where women spend all their time caring for others, reading is a self-care activity. (p. 92) Reading is escapism, but also compensatory: relieving tensions, diffusing resentment (!), indulging fantasy. Essentially ‘harmlessly’ expressing suppressed emotions. (p. 95) Romance also considered to be a kind of “education” but this is at peculiar odds with fantastic nature.

The ideal romance challenges the traditional gender roles [before submitting to them?]. Several examples given describe highly independent and tomboyish heroines. (p. 125) Ideal romance tends to subscribe to a Proppian narrative grammar. These still have other themes, but ultimately subscribe to the following model (p. 134):

1. The heroine’s social identity is destroyed.
2. The heroine reacts antagonistically to an aristocratic male.
3. The aristocratic male responds ambiguously to the heroine.
4. The heroine interprets the hero’s behavior as evidence of a purely sexual interest in her.
5. The heroine responds to the hero’s behavior with anger or coldness.
6. The hero retaliates by punishing the heroine.
7. The heroine and hero are physically and/or emotionally separated.
8. The hero treats the heroine tenderly.
9. The heroine responds warmly to the hero’s act of tenderness.
10. The heroine reinterprets the hero’s ambiguous behavior as the product of previous hurt.
11. The hero proposes/openly declares love his love for/demonstrates his unwavering commitment to the heroine with a supreme act of tenderness.
12. The heroine responds sexually and emotionally.
13. The herione’s identity is restored.

Male characters in ideal romances have peculiar characterization. There are double perspectives, must have exemplary or exceptional status as heroes. The male is initially distant or aloof (not nurturing) and later becomes converted or is realized as nurturing. This forms peculiar expectation/fulfillment pattern that implies a thing or two about the husbands in the readers’ marriages. (p. 140)

The ideal romance implies inevitability of love and resolution. The failed romance suggests work and struggle is neeeded to maintain status quo or bar disaster. The labor of the failed romance mirrors the work exerted by the readers as wives and mothers. The structure of the ending is what will allow a text to “make it” to be classified as a romance. (p. 162) Another failed romance, “The Court of the Flowering Peach” makes explicit the fantasy nature of the romance. Implies that the ideal relationship and romance is ephemeral and/or impossible. Sounds like a great story, but fails the happy ending requirement pretty bad. (p. 175)

Earlier, the romance was described to be held by its readers as an educational experience. The escapism is at odds with the education and knowledge building of the real world. After all, ideal world is fantasy and definitionally not real, so how does it build knowledge about the real world? (p. 186) Readers assume straightforward and unambiguous prose. When readers intend to read works, they do not want convoluted subtext and meaning, but rather clear prose/instruction. This reflects sim games without reflection of the rule systems or meanings. Rather, value or rule system is assumed or taken for granted, never addressed explicitly. (p. 190) Romance follows peculiar strain of detail and realism (as compared to the realism of the novel as described by Ian Watt). Descriptions and scenes are heavy with detail, but of setting, not of character or mood. References to Umbert Eco’s idea of “the technique of the aimless glance”. (p. 194) There is a Jane Austen reference! Austen is hard to understand by readers, they wish to be passive recipients of the story, rather than an active interpreter. (Note that this is at odds with claims made earlier) (pp. 197)

Romances work in a storytelling cycle. Since this is semiprogrammed issue, most of the stories are variations on same theme, are essentially retelling tropes with variations, as in the oral tradition. This falls back to the notion of Barthes’ mythology. Umbert Eco points this out explicitly concerning retellings of Roland the Paladin. “Therefore, the act of retelling that same myth functioned as the ritual reaffirmation of fundamental cultural beliefs and collective aspirations.” (p. 198) The mythological sameness of the romantic heroines is predetermined. There is rigid cultural role establishment. The act of reading is a partial protest, but reaffirms the culturally defined female role. (p. 208)

Romance relates to Jameson and the utopian movement. (p. 215) Mass produced art has a cultural power (ideology of contemporary cultural forms), consider other mass produced art, such as games. “If we can learn, then, to look at the ways in which various groups appropriate and use the mass-produced art of our culture, I suspect that we may well begin to uderstand that although the ideological poower of conteporary cultural forms is enormous, indeed sometimes even frightening, that power is not yet all-pervasive, totally vigilant, or complete. Interstices still exist within the social fabric where opposition is carried out by people who are not satisfied by their place within it or by the restricted material and emotional rewards that accompany it.” (p. 222)

Okay, I’ve got my readings plugin set up. The full bibliography can be seen on the bibliography page, and I’m about to start putting up readings. Hopefully this won’t turn into a big mess.

It’s odd to be writing about this, at least before I make a full reading post about the book. Currently I’m in my strange postit note phase of going through the text. Right now I’m reading a book from my school’s inter-library loan, and it’s about roleplaying and doing some cultural studies stuff around that. Good stuff, since there are very few academic publications on the subject of tabletop RPGs.

One of the essays in the book really caught my attention, though. Not because of its content, but how it was written and it seemed extremely odd. I have no objections to researchers using their personal experiences in analyzing roleplaying games. Those of us who are in the position to research RPGs are no doubt doing so because of some personal history or attachment. And, while the recounting personal experiences and analyzing them does not have the ring of sophisticated research, it can still be a very successful way to communicate and get a point across. Perhaps this is the dilemma of the sociologist: with a broader understanding of interaction, it becomes difficult to observe oneself both with critical distance and with personal closeness.

The article in question is “Social Events and Roles in Magic” by Csilla Weninger, documenting a game of Magic: The Gathering using semiotic and situational analysis. The dynamics of human interaction mediated by tabletop games is not central to my research interest in them (I’m interested in world building and how people work with simulations and systems), but this article was fascinating from the perspective of documenting personal experience. I am pleased with her article, and the way that she slices analysis of a card game into several contexts: the teaching event, the game itself, the research event, and the family event. Separating these and examining how the frame shifts from interaction to interaction is very important. The game in question was played with her husband as an odd hybrid of a research cross leisure activity. This is the sort of event that I can imagine myself being a part of, especially with the odd conflicting dilemmas regarding what to do or think about from moment to moment.

Weninger’s article is odd, though, because there is a clear conflict between her academic and analytic tone as compared to the deeply intimate and personal interaction that she is actually describing. She does not come forward with her thoughts and intentions in the article when discussing herself, but rather attempts to interpret what they are given the evidence in the recordings. Part of this, I’m sure, is good protocol, but it seems irrepressibly awkward. I have to imagine that if I were in the situation of analyzing a game session that I was participating in or running, would have to be full of my personal thoughts and ideas taking place as relates to the game. As a reader, I think there are important observations to be made about this fascinating intersection of moments, but they are obstructed by the distance.

There will be a lot of posts appearing soon.

Not that there will be any new… content, per se, but there will be more posts. What is going on is that I am changing my reading lists and reading annotation business to be integrated with WordPress via a plugin of my own design. I was looking at Rob Miller’s Now Reading plugin, which is very nice, but ultimately looks more suited towards casual readers than those building bibliographies.

Anyway, there are 66 items in my current readings repository, and with this new system it will be possible for me to make more with relative ease.