Teorías evolutivas del desarrollo

This section investigates Eco’s claim that readers gain pleasure from their logical and perceptual defeat. I begin by clarifying exactly what Eco means by this defeat—the reader’s inability to conceive of an impossible fictional world. I am in favour of the idea that readers can, to some extent, conceive of absolute impossibilities, so I offer a different suggestion. I argue that, instead of being unable to conceive of impossible fictional worlds at all, readers are unable to conceive of impossible fictional worlds with the same intuitive ease as they can possible fictional worlds. Readers cannot grok impossible fictions, and this changes the nature of their engagement with them. This is still a defeat, but in a weaker sense than Eco’s original claim.

Eco writes that the reader is logically and perceptually defeated. Which endeavour has the reader been defeated in? Given Eco’s comments, the most reasonable answer is that the reader fails to conceive of an impossible world (Eco 1994: 76). According to Eco, readers endeavour to conceive of the world represented by a fiction. However, Eco claims that in the case of impossible fiction this effort is interrupted. The Model Reader is not capable of conceiving of the world represented by an impossible fiction, and so is defeated in the effort to do so (Eco 1994: 76). This does not imply that the reader cannot access or enjoy the fiction at all. The notion of defeat is with regards to the attempt to conceive of the fiction. A reader who is defeated in the attempt to conceive of a fiction may still develop an appropriate impression, and she may find the experience stimulating or pleasurable. In this context, then, the terms ‘defeat’ and ‘failure’ are not pejorative or dismissive. Instead they refer exclusively to this inability to conceive of the fictional world.

It is not clear whether Eco is correct to claim that a reader cannot conceive of what is represented by an impossible fiction. While the received wisdom in analytic philosophy is that the absolutely impossible is inconceivable, Gendler and Stock both argue that readers

119 can, to a degree, conceive of impossible fictional worlds (Gendler 2000; Stock 2017). This question is developed further in the next chapter. However, I argue that even if readers do conceive of impossible fictional worlds while reading impossible fiction, they do so differently to how readers conceive of possible fictional worlds. I return to the notion of grokking a fiction: while readers can grok a possible fiction (and perhaps impossible fictions which conceal their impossibilities), they cannot grok recognisably impossible fictions. I take it that conceiving of a grokkable concept is phenomenally different to conceiving of a non- grokkable concept. A reader may be able to conceive of a box which is empty and has something in it, but she cannot do so with the same intuitive ease as she can conceive of an empty box. This means there are two claims to be made about the reader of impossible fictions: a stronger claim and a weaker claim. Eco’s strong claim is that readers are unable to conceive of impossible fictional worlds, and so are defeated in their attempts to do so. My weaker claim is that readers are unable to grok fictions which they recognise to be impossible, and so they are defeated in their attempts to conceive of impossible fictions as they would possible fictions.

Maison vindicates my weak claim, but Eco’s arguments are important for showing

why this is the case. In particular, Eco’s claim that memory plays a key role in identifying impossible fiction is borne out. This is because the reader of Maison is required to keep track of the statements made about various characters, places and events if she is to recognise the contradictions thrown up by the fiction. Maison is difficult to follow—the narrative moves fluidly from scene to scene, without exposition or explanation. Doležel describes it as ‘a sequence of drafts, with recurring cuts, new beginnings, corrections, deletions, additions etc. (1988: 493, Doležel’s italics).’ If she does not maintain focus, the reader is likely to be confused by these shuffled, unfinished or corrected lines of narrative. Only the attentive reader (which includes but is not limited to Eco’s Model Reader), one who keeps track of the events of the novel, will recognise exactly which elements contradict other parts of the story. However, it is this attentive reader who is best positioned to recognise that she cannot grok the fiction. The inferences which a reader is usually able to draw from fictions are not so easily drawn from Maison, as the novel does not follow the logical laws which these inferences are built upon. A typical inference such as ‘Mannaret is talking to the police, therefore Mannaret is alive’, taken for granted in other works of fiction, cannot be made of Maison. If inferences such as this are part of the conception readers usually form of fictions (which I think they are), then Maison cannot be conceived of in the same way as works of possible fiction.

Whether Eco is correct or not about the reader’s ability to conceive of an impossible fictional world, the reader has been defeated. She recognises that her original goal,

120

engaging with Maison as she would a standard fiction, cannot be attained. In the following chapter, I partially retract the claim that readers cannot engage with impossible fictions as they do possible fictions (§5.5). I discuss cases where readers are able to do just that. However, for the purposes of this section, it is sufficient to say that Maison is not one of these cases. It is labyrinthine enough that the reader is very likely to be defeated in her attempt to conceive of Maison as she would a standard fiction. This defeat may occur quickly, or she may spend a considerable amount of time attempting to grok the fiction. However, the notion of defeat is important, as it is only when she stops trying to interpret the impossible fiction as she would a possible fiction that the reader is able to begin normalisation.