Abstract
This chapter outlines three themes that it takes to be central to the conception of narrative fiction as an autopoietic system: closure, observation and coupling. Closure refers to the processes by which a system such as a narrative distinguishes itself, through its own internal operations, from its environment. Observation refers to the emergence and vicissitudes of linguistic function in the artistic text, function being dependent on the proliferating, recursively embedded perspectives at stake in narrative fiction (perspectives of readers, narrators, characters). Coupling refers to the constraints that interacting autopoietic systems impose on one another, and how this process should be understood in relation to narrative—either in terms of interactions between reader and text, or between broader autopoietic systems of perception and communication. These themes are explored with reference to Aristotelian narrative theory, the functionalist semiotics of Jan Mukařovský and the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann.
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Notes
- 1.
I am writing here about narrative fiction—that is, narratives that distinguish themselves as “made” in the sense of “made up”: they involve artistry and constitute works of “art”. This raises the question of the use of narrative forms in non-artistic and non-fictional contexts. There is not space in this paper to address this question directly, but I take it that it could be handled in terms of the poly-functionalist view of language set out in Sect. 3 of this paper.
- 2.
Luhmann acknowledges Saussure as a source for his “difference-theoretical” approach to systems—that is, the notion that the operations of social systems are based (like Saussure’s langue, or language-system) on difference (Luhmann 2013, pp. 44–45).
- 3.
Mukařovský was influenced by the functionalist semiotics of Karl Bühler (1990): I discuss the significance of this influence in the following section.
- 4.
This identification can be seen in the idea that an insult to the one is an insult to the other—hence laws against “desecrating” the flag in, for example, the United States.
- 5.
Mukařovský’s argument that the aesthetic function tends to generate polyfunctionality can be compared to Meir Sternberg’s “Proteus Principle” concerning narrative—the idea that narrative is characterised by a many-to-many correlation between form and function (see Pianzola, Chap. 8 in this book).
- 6.
A different formulation of the same point, from a phenomenological perspective, can be found in Mikhail Bakhtin’s essay “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity”, where he describes the asymmetric relation between a self that is the unique origin of a subjectivity and a self that presents itself as an object to that subjectivity: there will always be an “excess” of the one over the other, whereby the “horizon” of the subjectivity exceeds that of the self that it encompasses as object (Bakhtin 1990, pp. 22–23).
- 7.
In narrative fiction, Luhmann’s stricture concerning the “isolated phenomenon” or “singular event” can be applied even to those features that Barthes (1986) groups together under the term “reality effect”—that is, “realistic” details or specifications that are deliberately inconsequential to the plot or theme: here, as Barthes points out, the apparently “singular event” authenticates the “realism” (the “referential illusion”) of the narrative considered as a totality, as a singular, whole aesthetic sign: these details “say nothing but this: we are the real; it is the category of ‘the real’ (and not its contingent contents) which is then signified” (Barthes 1986, p. 148).
- 8.
Mimēsis is often given in English as “imitation”, which has somewhat belittling connotations that don’t do justice to the key role that he saw it playing in human cognition and development. Here I follow Stephen Halliwell (1986) in preferring the term “mimetic representation”, in which an iconic or imitative aspect is understood.
- 9.
Bühler points out that the etymology of common Indo-European words for “sign” (e.g., Zeichen (sign), σήμα (sign), δείξις (pointing), signum, etc.) characteristically refers to “a showing (or a revealing) of things to the viewer, or the other way round, leading the viewer (the viewing gaze) to the things” (Bühler 1990, p. 44).
- 10.
“Aristotle conceives of the tragic emotions not as overwhelming waves of feeling, but as part of an integrated response to the structured material of poetic drama: the framework for the experience of these emotions is nothing other than the cognitive understanding of the mimetic representation of human action and character” (Halliwell 1986, pp. 173–174). The “Poetics” should be read in the context of Aristotle’s wider views about the positive role played by the emotions in cognition (Belfiore 1992, pp. 181–225).
- 11.
Elizabeth Belfiore has drawn attention, in particular, to the role of the notion of philia—roughly “kinship”, though extending to other relationships of mutual obligation and respect (Belfiore 1992, pp. 70–81): “Philia is of primary importance in Aristotle’s theory of tragedy. Because the individual parts of the plot and the plot structure as a whole involve philia, it determines in large part the emotional response of the audience” (p. 70).
- 12.
One of the key benefits, for Aristotle, of mimetic representations is that experience of their sustasis helps us better appreciate the systems and structures found in the natural world and in ourselves (Belfiore 1992, pp. 68–70). As Belfiore summarises Aristotle’s perspective: “We understand systematically, and this know ourselves, through contemplation of the natural ‘systems’ (or ‘structures’: sustēmata, sustaseis) in nature that are imitated in craft products” (Belfiore 1992, pp. 69–70).
- 13.
This is not to imply that there is a stable “symmetry” to the coupling of perception and communication in art: indeed, there may be a “runaway” gearing towards perception in the art system—hence modern art in which the demands of perception test the limits of communication (Umberto Eco’s “open work”—e.g., James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake) (Luhmann 2000, p. 77).
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Lively, A. (2018). Closure, Observation and Coupling: On Narrative and Autopoiesis. In: Walsh, R., Stepney, S. (eds) Narrating Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64714-2_9
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