Pruebas para la unidad de coincidencia multicanal

'•'Abraham A. Moles, Infornuitinnsllieorio initl iisthciiachc \Yahrnehinunf!, tran.sl. by Kw HOIIKC (Cologne. 1(171 ), p. 22.

84 The neality of Fiction

Joyce's Ulysses. The repertoire of this novel is not only derived from a great number of different systems, but is also presented in such density that the reader finds himself being constantly

disoriented. The problem lies not so much in the unfamiliarity of the elements, for these in themselves are not difficult to identify, but in the intermingling and the sheer mass, which cause the repertoire itself to become increasingly amorphous. Not only are the elements themselves recoded, but they all seem devoid of any identifiable frame of reference. And so, even where the repertoires of sender and recipient partially overlap, the incoherence and density of realistic details and literary allusions make all points of contact too tenuous to hold onto. If the overlap, however, is diminished, the repertoire tends to be robbed of one of its usual functions—to provide the framework for the communication of a message—and instead it serves to turn attention to the process of communication itself. Commu- nication depends upon connections, and the repertoire of Ulysses is confusing precisely because we cannot establish reliable connections between the diverse elements. Furthermore, although each chapter, through its individual style, seems to offer its own possibilities of connection, the immediate change of style in each subsequent chapter automatically undermines those possibilities.

Two closely related consequences arise from the fact that the communicatory function of the

repertoire moves into focus and itself evolves into a theme: first, the lack of any connecting reference produces a gap between the different elements, and this can only be filled by the reader's imagination; second, the different connections suggested by the changing styles of the chapters bring about a continual change in the direction of these imaginings—and, for all the individuality of their contents, this change of concepts remains an intersubjective structure of communication in Ulysses. The continual shift from one interpretative pattern to another is the method used by Joyce to enable his reader to experience everyday life. For everyday life itself consists precisely of a series of constantly changing patterns.

The repertoire of this novel both reflects and reveals the rules that govern its own communication. The reader is made aware of the basic features of his mode of perception: porous selectivity, dependence on perspective, habitual reflexes. In order to orient ourselves, we constantly and automatically leave

things out, but the density of the repertoire in Ulysses prevents us from doing this. Furthermore, the successive changes of style, each restricted to its own perspective, indicate the extent to which perception and interpretation depend upon the standpoint of the observer.

A glance at the extremes on either side of the scale (e.g., socialist realism on the one

hand. Uli/.<s.ias on the other) will show that the reader mav

The Repertoire 85

duces and confirms familiar norms, he may remain relatively passive, whereas he is forced into intensive activity when the common ground is cut away from under him. In both cases, however, the repertoire organizes his reactions to the text and to the problems it contains. Thus we might say that the repertoire forms an organizational structure of meaning which must be optimized through\the reading of the text/'4 _{This optimization will depend on the .reader's own degree of awareness and on}

his willingness to open himself up to an unfamiliar experience. But it also depends on the strategics of the text, which lay down the lines along which the text is to be actualized. These lines are by no means arbitrary, for the elements of the repertoire are highly determinate.

What is indeterminate—to the extent that it is not formulated—is the system of equivalences, and this can only be discovered by the optimization of the structures offered. As the repertoire is usually characterized by a form of recodification, it supplies its own context of dominant, virtual-ized, and negated possibilities of meaning, and the meaning becomes the reader's own experience in proportion to the degree of order which he can establish as he optimizes the structure. The meaning must inevitably be pragmatic, in that it can never cover all the semantic potentials of the text, but can only open up one particular form of access to these potentials. As we have seen, this access is not arbitrary, thanks to the repertoire's organization of possibilities into a range of meanings stretching from the dominant through the virtualized to the negated. But the pragmatic meaning can only come into being through a selective realization of this range, and it is in this realization that the reader's own decisions come into play, together with an attitude provoked in him by the text toward the problems thrown up by the repertoire.

The pragmatic meaning is an applied meaning; it enables the literary text to fulfill its function as an answer by revealing and balancing out the deficiencies of the systems that have created the problem. It makes the reader react to his own 'reality', so that this same reality may then be reshaped. Through this process, the reader's own store of past experience may undergo a similar revaluation to that contained within the repertoire, for the pragmatic meaning allows such adaptations and, indeed, encourages them, in order to achieve its intersubjective goal: namely, the imaginary correction of deficient realities.

r_'4_{I use the term structure here in the sense outlined by Jan Mukafovsky, Kapitel aus dcr Poetik (Frankfort, 1967), p. 11:} "Another basic feature of this structure is its energetic and dynamic character. The energy of the structure is derived from the fact that each of the elements in the overall unity has a specific function which incorporates it into the structural whole and binds it to that whole; the dynamism of the structural whole arises out of the fact that these individual functions and their interacting relationships are subject, by virtue of their energetic character, to continual transformations -'...- - —I—i.. •',... n...i.. :...\r •...i... ,,.,... ,if ,_,„..., . _...( _ •

FOUR

STRATEGIES

THE TASK OF THE STRATEGIES

THE REPERTOIRE of the text is made up of material selected from social systems and literary traditions. This selection of social norms and literary allusions sets the work in a referential context within which its system of equivalences must be actualized. The function of the strategies is to organize this actualization, and they do so in a variety of ways. Not only do they condition the links between the different elements of the repertoire, thus helping to lay the foundations for the production of equivalences, but they also provide a meeting-point between the repertoire and the producer of those equivalences, namely, the reader himself. In other words, the strategies organize both the material of the text and the conditions under which that material is to be communicated. They cannot therefore be equated exclusively with 'representation' or with 'effect', but, in fact, come into operation at a point before these terms are or can be relevant. They encompass the immanent structure of the text and the acts of comprehension thereby triggered off in the reader. The organizational importance of these strategies becomes all too evident the moment they are dispensed with. This happens, for

instance, when plays or novels are summarized, or poems paraphrased. The text is-practically disembodied, being reduced to content at the expense of effect. The strategies of the text are replaced by a personal organization, and more often than not we are left with a peculiar 'story' that is purely denotative, in no way connotative, and therefore totally without impact. Now as the equivalence system of the text arises out of the combination of its elements, and as the reader himself must actually produce this system, it follows that the strategies can only offer the reader possibilities of

organization. Total organization would mean that there was nothing left for the reader to do and, furthermore, that the combination of elements, together with their comprehension, could be defined in a total manner.

Strategies 87

Such total combination and comprehension may be possible in scientific texts, but not in literature, where the text does not reproduce facts but at best uses such facts to stimulate the imagination of the reader. Indeed, if a literary text does organize its elements in too overt a manner, the chances are that we as readers will either reject the book out of boredom, or will resent the attempt to render us completely passive.

The strategies can generally be discerned through the techniques employed in the text—whether they be narrative or poetic. One need only think of the panoply of narrative techniques available to the novelist, or the dialectical patterfi employed by the sonneteer. However, our concern here is not with the techniques themselves, but with the structure underlying them. What is this structure? The question is a complex one. It must be borne in mind that not only do the strategies organize the references of the repertoire, together with the possibilities for their comprehension, but they also have to fulfill the function of what is called the "accepted procedures" in the speech-act model. These incorporate all those rules and processes that must be common to speaker and listener if the speech act is to succeed. But in a fictional text, which by its very nature must call into question the validity of familiar norms, how can this 'common ground' be established, in order for the communication to be 'successful? After all, the ultimate function of the strategies is to defamiliarize the familiar.

THE OLD ANSWER: DEVIATION

The problem posed by this generally accepted function of the strategies has led to the structuralist model of deviation. We cannot here enter into the diffuse and often barren discussion on the 'poeticity' of a text through deviation, but it is important for us to bear in mind the limitations of the deviationist model if we are to transcend it in our search for the structure underlying the strategies. Deviation as a central condition of 'poeticity' has long since been denigrated as "deviationist talk,"1 _{but as an explana-}

tory hypothesis it still lingers on, as can be seen even from the work of Lotman.

The deviationist model was given its classic outline by Mukafovsky in his 1940 essay "Standard Language and Poetic Language":2 _{"The violation of the norm of the standard, its systematic violation,}

is what makes possible the poetic utilization of language; without this possibility there

'See Stanley Fish, "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics," New Literary History 2 (1970): 155. For a broader

discussion on the Stylistics of deviation, see also Raymond Chapman, Linguistics and Literature. An Introduction to Literary Stylistics (London, 1973).

2_{Jan Mukafovsky, "Standard Language and Poetic Language," in A Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Paul L. Garvin, ccl.} (Georgetown, "1964), pp. 17ff.

88 The Reality of Fiction