Jackie Trono - Homo narrans?

A few weeks ago, Dr. Redick mentioned (and we briefly discussed) Walter Fischer’s work, “Narration As a Paradigm of Human Communication.” (Fischer’s work is available [in segments] on the WebCT site for our class.) Here, Fischer presents his argument for the primacy of the narrative paradigm over the rational-world paradigm. Each paradigm comes with its own presuppositions and implications about the nature of humans and their interpersonal interaction.

The rational-world paradigm presupposes five things, according to Fischer. They are: (1) humans are essentially rational beings, (2) discourse that features clear-cut inferential and implicative structures is standard, (3) the conduct of argument is situational, (4) rationality is determined by subject-matter, knowledge, and argumentative ability, and (5) the world is a set of logical puzzles that are solvable by analysis and reason. With these five presuppositions in mind, one can see that the rational-world paradigm suggests that argument is the means of being human; thus, being rational or learned means being competent in argument.

On the other hand, Fischer’s narrative paradigm presupposes that (1) humans are essentially storytellers, (2) “good reasons,” which vary in form among situations, genres, and media of communication, are standard, (3) the practice of good reasons is ruled multifariously by history, biography, culture, and character, among other forces, (4) rationality relies on the nature of persons as narrative beings, and (5) the world is a set of stories to be chosen to further the process of continual re-creation. Arising from these presuppositions is the concept that narrative rationality operates by identification rather than deliberation. According to Fischer, there are three reasons why narrative is more universal and efficacious than argument. They are: (1) narration comes closer to actual experience of the world, (2) narrative probability and fidelity are innate, not learned, and (3) narration works by suggestion and identification. As Fischer writes, “stories are enactments of the whole mind in concert with itself.”

I’m not sure with whom I side on the subject of the fundamental state of man. Fischer would have us view man as Homo narrans, man the storyteller. The wider world has us as Homo sapiens, man the wise. In a recent discussion with Dr. Teschner, he suggested that perhaps we are really Homo ludens, man the player. The shift in emphasis from Fischer to Teschner is that man either mediates his experience through language, through reflection, or that he simply acts. In the course of his essay on the narrative paradigm Fischer quotes Heidegger: “We are a conversation…conversation and its unity support our existence.” Do I agree with Heidegger? Here, I recall Dr. Redick’s reading of Helen Keller’s ascent to knowledge through language. Dr. Redick claimed in class that we cannot have differentiated knowledge without language, and I suppose I agree. Notably, however, all of us have had experiences we would refer to as ineffable. Yes, this is a word for the experience, but it really tells us nothing of the experience except that ineffability, our inability to articulate its contents, is its main feature linguistically. In many cases ineffable experiences are the most behaviorally altering in one’s repertoire. Considering Heidegger again, I’m still uncertain. I do think that there is more to the human experience than the constituents of his language would allow. Perhaps the ineffable experience is incommunicable, but I don’t think that its incommunicability in any way diminishes its efficacy.

What is more primary – man’s status as an active/productive creature or his status as a linguistically-mediated/narrative being? Is there a hard distinction between the two states? I find this topic enthralling and yet I feel no closer to a clear answer after countless hours of consideration. I suppose that’s one of the larger problems for humans in general. We have these experiences, we reflect on them, we mediate them with language, but the speed at which we process the experience never nears the speed at which we have new experiences that we must then reflect upon and mediate with language. To confound the problem further, the process often occurs in a random order, e.g. we reflect upon a previous experience, try to mediate it with language, and create new complex metaphysically problematic experiences. There is a mysterious interplay among these states of man, and I don’t know that I’ll ever feel satisfied as to its solution.