Ethical Judgments Presuppose Minds:

A Response to Henrik Skov Nielsen's "New Ethics, New Formalism"

Jan Alber

University of Freiburg

1.    Narrative Theory and Poststructuralism

I would like to begin my response by pointing out what I consider to be a fundamental discrepancy between narrative theory, on the one hand, and poststructuralist thought, on the other.[1] Narrative theorists assume that the categories they use for the analysis of narrative texts have a certain temporary validity. For example, rhetorical theorists such as Jim Phelan argue that the ethical principles that they use in order to judge "the ethics of the telling" and "the ethics of the told" have a relative (but no absolute) trustworthiness.[2] Similarly, cognitive narratologists (such as Monika Fludernik, David Herman, and Manfred Jahn) assume that the scripts, frames, and schemata[3] that they use in order to make sense of narrative texts have a certain limited validity (Fludernik 1996: 43-46).

Poststructuralists (such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Julia Kristeva), on the other hand, argue that each signified (signifié) is always (or perhaps always already) a signifier (signifiant) and that meaning is always indefinitely deferred. This assumption then leads to a process of dissémination in which everything becomes a free-floating signifier and every reading a misreading. According to Derrida, "there is no transcendental or privileged signified and [...] the domain or play of signification henceforth has no limit" (1994: 152). Because of this fundamental discrepancy, I feel that combining narratological expertise with poststructuralist insights is like trying to build a house out of thin air: the two paradigms are ultimately incommensurable. 

In 1996, Andrew Gibson tried to fuse poststructuralism and narrative theory in his Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative. However, the result was disappointing. As Ansgar Nünning has shown, Gibson

[...] simply substitutes new, suggestive, and somewhat fanciful terms for quite well-defined narratological concepts: 'force' (Rosset) for 'form,' 'inauguration' (M. Serres) for 'representation,' 'hymen' (Derrida) for 'thematics,' 'chora' (Kristeva) and 'dialogics' for 'voice,' and 'aion' (Deleuze) for 'event.' (Nünning 2003: 253)

It is also worth noting that the only concrete suggestion concerning the actual analysis of narrative texts can be found on page 259, where Gibson suggests (quite vaguely)[4] "to register [...] elements of monstrous deformation in narrative and explore their implications" (1996: 259).

When one compares the deconstructionist Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative with the numerous descriptive categories for the analysis of postmodern and unnatural narratives as they were developed by narrative theorists such as Brian Richardson (1987, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2006), Jan Alber (2002, 2009a, 2009b), Henrik Skov Nielsen (2004), and Rüdiger Heinze (2008),[5] I think it is immediately obvious that the latter approach is much more productive. In contrast to Gibson, narrative theory offers new analytical tools and concepts that can help us to make sense of postmodern and unnatural narratives. 

2.    The Ethical Turn in Literary Studies

In his paper, "New Ethics, New Formalism," Henrik Skov Nielsen argues that the ethical turn in literary studies has brought narrative theory and poststructuralism together. However, to my mind, Derrida is not particularly useful in the area of ethical judgements either, which might explain why he is completely absent from Dorothy Hale's 2007 article "Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel" that Nielsen discusses in his paper.

Furthermore, it is very telling that Hale at one point poses the following question: "Can the humanist values of readerly emotion have a positive political value after poststructuralism?" (2007: 190; my italics, J.A.). That is to say that Hale's discussion of new ethicists such as J. Hillis Miller and Judith Butler takes place in a post-deconstructive age, i.e., in an age in which former poststructuralists "return to ethics" in an attempt "to recuperate the agency of the individual reader or author for positive political action but also [.] to theorize for our contemporary moment the positive social value of literature and literary study" (Hale 2007: 188).[6] 

The fact that this return to ethical questions takes place in a post-poststructuralist age makes perfect sense because as Frederick Aldama has shown in his new book, Why the Humanities Matter (2008), Derrida is incapable of making ethical judgments because the notion of faith, which plays such a crucial role in Derrida's later (and supposedly ethical) writings, is ultimately elusive and nothing but yet another free-floating signifier. Derrida considers all social interactions and activities as being operated by discursive forces that are ultimately ungraspable. At one point, Derrida explains that his ethical position "amounts to saying: 'Believe what I say as one believes in a miracle'" (1998: 63). And this statement is obviously not a very convincing basis for ethical judgments. As far as ethical questions are concerned, we do not have to believe in miracles. Rather, we can use our intuition as well as feelings, emotions, compassion, and our knowledge about ethical standards and principles to arrive at certain moral convictions.   

If one accepts Nielsen's analogy with Joanne K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, then Derrida is hardly "the Lord Voldemort of narratology" or "He-Who Must-Not-Be-Named," as Nielsen has it. From my perspective, Derrida has more structural affinities with Professor Trelawney. This teacher of Divination at Hogwarts, who makes her first appearance in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), does not really do any harm but she also does not do any good: the students and the teachers at Hogwarts consider her to be a harmless fraud. As a matter of fact, she is interesting and non-conformist but completely useless because the students never learn anything from her, and I think that this is also a pretty fair characterization of Derrida's writings. His work is also interesting and non-conformist but practically quite useless.

I would like to argue that the very ideas of ethical readings and 'the reader as judge' presuppose at least some kind of thinking human subject that has certain intentions and can make ethical judgements. From my perspective, the free-floating signifier that the self becomes in poststructuralist thought cannot have moral convictions or make ethical judgements because this decentred, unstable, and heterogeneous entity is doomed to noting the eternal deferral of meaning in all areas of human existence. "Discourse," Michel Foucault tells us in The Archeology of Knowledge, "is not the majestically unfolding manifestation of a thinking, knowing, speaking subject, but, on the contrary, a totality, in which the dispersion of the subject and his discontinuity with himself may be determined":

The analysis of statements operates therefore without reference to a cogito. It does not pose the question of the speaking subject, who reveals or who conceals himself in what he says, who in speaking, exercises his sovereign freedom, or who, without realizing it, subjects himself to constraints of which he is only dimly aware. In fact, it is situated at the level of 'it is said' (on dit). (Foucault 1972: 55, 122)    

Similarly, Jacuques Derrida's attack on origin in Of Grammatology (1967) denounces all questions of intentionality as metaphysical ones: the subject is dead and we must not think of it any longer. The subject that I have in mind does not necessarily have to be the traditional Cartesian one, which is separate, singular, and coherent. However, this subject or self has to be able to think and reflect about moral questions and to arrive at certain tentative convictions on the basis of which he or she makes decisions.[7]

I agree with Henrik Skov Nielsen and Dorothy Hale who argue that we can and should make ethical judgments when reading narratives. But, in contrast to them, I do not think that poststructuralism is of any help in this respect. From my perspective, narratives always invite us to enter the realm of the ethical through the experience of Otherness. For Emmanuel Lévinas, the encounter with the Other implies responsibility and thus an ethical standpoint: "The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness" (1969: 150). Narratives constantly confront us with the world views of others - characters, narrators, and texts as a whole - and urge us to reflect upon our own ethical positions. We always compare our horizons with those of others when we read but also when we discuss narratives; and this is ultimately an ethical process. In the words of Heinz Antor, "we have to seek out what is different from us and compare our ways with those of others. We must get rid of any anxiety of influence and willingly embrace the unfamiliar" (1996: 73).

3.    Steen Steensen Blicher's Short Story "The Parson at Vejlby" (1829)

The nineteenth-century short story "The Parson at Vejlby" (1829) by the Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher also invites us to make ethical judgments. However, in contrast to Nielsen I do not think that the major question that this particular narrative raises is the question of who is guilty and who is innocent because the answer to this question is very simple: I would like to argue that Morten Bruus is guilty because he kills a servant and buries him in the parson's garden, which then leads to the innocent parson's being sentenced to death. That is to say that Morten is responsible for the death of two innocent people as well as for the grief of the parson's daughter.

In the figure of the narrator, the short story additionally illustrates that

(1)   we might potentially be wrong in our ethical judgments; and

(2)   we have to be very careful and meticulous in the process of making ethical judgments.  

One might thus read "The Parson at Vejlby" as an allegory[8] on the reading process that highlights how difficult it is to make ethical judgments. The text invites us to identify with the narrator, and we gradually learn that the way in which he arrives at his verdict is rather problematic because he is rather careless in his investigations and far too quick in his judgments.

Nielsen would perhaps argue that this is exactly the lesson that deconstructivism teaches us: everything is free-floating and we can never really be sure of what we think or think that we know. However, I think that a poststructuralist would not even be able to make an ethical judgment in the first place. More specifically, I think that if you do not believe in anything, not even in the existence of yourself (because this self is nothing but the intersection of various discourses), then you cannot say very much about narratives. In particular, you cannot make any ethical judgments because ethical judgments presuppose thinking minds that are capable of arriving at certain (tentative) moral convictions.

To summarize: I agree with Nielsen's argument that ethical judgments should play an important role in our analyses and readings of narrative. And since we finally live in an age that has left deconstructivism and the Professor Trelawney-like Derrida behind, this has now become a rather attractive possibility.   

Works Cited

Alber, Jan (2002) "The 'Moreness' or 'Lessness' of 'Natural' Narratology: Samuel Beckett's "Lessness" Reconsidered." Style 36.1: 54-75. Reprinted in Short Story Criticism 74 (2004): 113-24.

--- (2009) "Impossible Storyworlds - And What To Do With Them." Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 1.1.

--- (2009b) "Unnatural Narratives." The Literary Encyclopedia. <www.litencyc.com>

Alber, Jan, Stefan Iversen, Henrik Skov Nielsen, and Brian Richardson (2009) Ed. "Dictionary of Unnatural Narratology." 

<www.nordisk.au.dk/forskningscentre/nrl/undictionary>

Aldama, Frederick Louis (2008) Why the Humanities Matter. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Antor, Heinz (1996) "The Ethics of Criticism in the Age After Value." Why Literature Matters: Theories and Functions of Literature. Ed. Rüdiger Ahrens and Laurenz Volkmann. Heidelberg: Winter. 65-85. 

Blicher, Steen Steensen (1829) "The Parson at Vejlby." <http:// gaslight.mtroyal.ca/vejlby.htm>

Bové, Paul A. (1995) "Discourse." Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Letricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 50-65.

Derrida, Jacques (1994) "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences [1966]." Modern Literary Theory: A Reader. Ed. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. London: Arnold. 176-91.

--- (1997) Of Grammatology [1967]. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

--- (1998) "Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of 'Religion' at the Limits of Reason Alone." Religion. Ed. Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1-78.

Fludernik, Monika (1996) Towards a 'Natural' Narratology. London and New York: Routledge.

Foucault, Michel (1972) The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Harper and Row.

Gibbs, Raymond W. (2005) "Intentionality." Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Ed. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan. London: Routledge. 247-49.

Gibson, Andrew (1996) Towards a Postmodern Theory of Narrative. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Hale, Dorothy J. (2007) "Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel." Narrative 15.2: 187- 206. 

Heinze, Rüdiger (2008) "Violations of Mimetic Epistemology in First-Person Narrative Fiction." Narrative 16.3: 279-97.

Kindt, Tom, and Hans-Harald Müller (2006) The Implied Author: Concept and Controversy. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Lévinas, Emmanuel (1969) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Transl. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. 

Nielsen, Henrik Skov (2004) "The Impersonal Voice in First-Person Narrative Fiction." Narrative 12.2: 133-50.

Nünning, Ansgar (2003) "Narratology or Narratologies? Taking Stock of Recent Developments, Critique and Modest Proposals for Future Usages of the Term." What is Narratology? Ed. Tom Kindt and Hans-Harald Müller. Berlin: de Gruyter. 239-75.

Phelan, James (2005) Living to Tell about It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

--- (2007) Experiencing Fiction: Judgments, Progressions, and the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Richardson, Brian (1987) "'Time is Out of Joint': Narrative Models and the Temporality of Drama." Poetics Today 8.2: 299-310. 

--- (1997) "Beyond Poststructuralism: Theory of Character, the Personae of Modern Drama, and the Antinomies of Critical Theory." Modern Drama 40: 86-99.

--- (2000) "Narrative Poetics and Postmodern Transgression: Theorizing the Collapse of Time, Voice, and Frame." Narrative 8.1: 23-42.

--- (2002) "Beyond Story and Discourse: Narrative Time in Postmodern and Nonmimetic Fiction." Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Ed. Brian Richardson. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 47-63. P

--- (2006) Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.