My previous post began to look at the role narrative plays in the act or presentation of collections. In that post I said that maybe narrative is used to clarify the intention of collector, to make clear why the collection was made. This week we are asked a similar question and so instead of starting over again, I want to just comment on a comment that was made on the previous post.
The comment: "JM said...
An interesting take on collections and narratives, and certainly one that I can get behind. Although I was being all selfish and thinking that the reader/viewer/visitor of the collection is the one who ultimately makes the narrative, I see the power of the narrative for the collector to do just what you said, to fill in the gaps. Then again, that assumes there will only ever be the one narrative: the collector's."
In the original post I neglected to see the role of the audience as a reciever. I argued that the audience, through mis-interpretation, required of the collecting party a narrative to justify the actions, but I didn't neccessarily consider the audience's role after the narrative has been told. I would, to some degree, agree with JM's "selfish" impulse to think that the audience (reader/viewer/visitor) makes the narrative. Reception of a narrative is certainly an often private and individual act (albeit, maybe influenced by social factors) and so a presented narrative is definately going to be different for different people (I don't think that a narrative has one, true meaning). Where I disagree with JM is in the final statement. A narrative presented by the collector does not constitute only one narrative. The collector, knowing that they need to explain their intentions for the collections, creates an accompnaying narrative. That narrative attempts to "fill in the gaps." But, when the narrative reaches an audience, it is recieved by the audience, and interpreted. The act of interpretation then creates a number of derivitive narratives: narratives that come from the original, but are changed by the audience. Therefore, even though the author has created one narrative, there is not only one exisitng narrjavascript:void(0)ative.
So, is the act of narration in vain? I don't know. What I do know is that the act of identifying authorial intention often turns into the act of interpretation.
I still think that narrative is possibly used by someone to clarify (refer to previous blog), but I see that that clarification might not necessarily work as intended, for the simple fact that just as the original act (the one that required a narrative) was intepretated by an audience, the resulting narrative is likewise exposed to intepretation.
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3 comments:
I'm glad you questioned that last sentence because I'm looking at it going "what the fuck did I mean by THAT?" because truly I don't know. I mean, a not-so-insignificant portion of my theoretical approach to topics/problems/etc is informed by the notion of gaps/blanks filled in by the reader (thank you, Wolfgang Iser). So yeah. No clue. Although I still stand by everything else I wrote. :)
No doubt (presumptuous, and contestable)that meaning is made in reciprocity between writer and reader. My post to Tim last time (cryptic as always) was meant to show that once you unleash a narrative it is suspect. Much like any writing, once it is out there it immediately becomes only one possible narrative when many more are possible. Writers can be especially sensitive to this, and sometimes leads to writers' block (what I call cleaning the house to avoid writing).
I am thinking about the Miller reading about Joseph Banks when I consider the attempt to construct a plausible narrative as similar to the collector's task--to make fragile, instable, and isolated fragments mobile, stable, and (plausibly)combinable.
Tim,
I like the way you're using the blog to deepen your ideas, ie, taking off from your previous post, including responses to others' responses, etc.
It seems as though you are now seeing a collection as a "text" in the way it functions as a site of interpretation and individual narration. Although, I am not so quick to collapse the two...but you've given me something to think about.
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