>Jay Lemke wrote:
>
>> I think we have often here written about our basic sense that one of the
>> great powers of semiotic mediation (inseparable from material-technological
>> mediation) is that it allows us to overlay the absent-imagined upon the
>> present-perceived. This happens in play insofar as play-events and
>> play-acts have _meanings_ that go beyond, that build on top of, their
>> immediate and present-time interactional forces. In play, a consistent
>> second-meaning world, a 'conceit' or 'allegory' for the present and
>> visible actions is built on top of the first-meaning world.
>
>The concept of 'allegory' is precisely the one I used in my doctoral
>thesis "Metaphor Beyond Play". But I used it in a very particular way -
>to distinguish between the "full" metaphor (defined as a comment upon
>reality which originates in the fictive plane of play) and allegoric
>play content which may but also may not directly refer to the present
>"reality". I think it is a two step process in which the first step
>consists of building a play world (fictive plane). The play-world does
>not necessarily involve a transfer back to the reality, although it is a
>"model", a "map", a "scenario" or a "script" by its very nature of being
>a deliberate construction.
(here is the whole purpose of narrative--its pragmatic function which
justifies its existence)
> At that point I think, we can call it a
>potential allegory, although the motivation to construct it may not
>involve a deliberate wish to comment upon the present (real,
>experiential, visible).
(Exactly. One of the interesting things about George Lakoff's discussion of
cognitive metaphors is precisely their preconscious function: The
metaphor/analogy is required BEFORE the thought--just as Vygotsky pointed out.)
> But once created, the play world affords the
>next step: making a comment upon reality from the ficitve/play world.
>And this affordance, I think, is its allegoric or metaphoric potential.
Which leads to Ana S.'s next point:
>> I _think_ that it works similarly even in un-reflective modes, when we
>> don't NOTICE that our past changes along with our present -- as when happy
>> times get that extra nostalgic sheen by present circumstances...
>>
>This is an issue I am trying to understand. It seems that there are two
>ways (modes) of reconstructing the past/present/future. One is more
>un-reflective as you put it, another is more reflective. Or, in another
>way, one is more like looking at a distance, looking from here (present)
>into the past/future as if they were "physically" distant and
>untouchable. (Like you can not undo breaking the favorite glass in
>1977!). The other is more involved, more like actually "walking through"
>the past/future, "being there". And although you cannot "undo" physical
>events that transpired or you cannot know tomorrow's winning lottery
>number, you can still "do" a lot. It is the same as constructing the
>play frame and actually playing it (not just planning it). What it does,
>this "walking in time", is that it allows us to re-conceptualize and
>re-relate to some events. And that actually changes our present.
Isn't the issue here one between functions of the metaphor? There is the
metaphor which enables activity--as Hamlet's playlet, by making visible the
evil of his Uncle the king's murder, thus creating a sense of guilt in the
king, enabled Hamlet to act--and thus is not reflective, but constructive of
thinking. I am sticking to narrative, of course, but Vygotsky's quote of
Mendelshtam at the beginning of chapter 7 in *Thought and Language* states
this more clearly. The other activity is reflective--say, for example, me
watching *Hamlet* and thinking just what this "the play's the thing wherein
I'll catch the conscience of the king" idea really implies.
> What is
>less apparent (because of the concept of the physical time we
>religiously believe in) is that this process of constructing the
>past/future and walking in them is always a SOCIAL activity. I cannot
>elaborate here, but you hit it right in the center by mentioning Slavoj
>Zizek's work:
>
>> Slavoj Zizek has some interesting ideas of how it works on a collective
>> level, how nationalism returns to the traditions of a past that never
>> was... but now IS, in present practices.
Precisely--and what *was* past is all too easily remediated into
pseudo-science and pseudo-morality. Transposing this from nationalism to
current--and sad--events, a reporter's comment about Diana being only
comparable to Evita, especially after her untimely death, knocked me out of
my unconscious empathy with the moment into my own reflective state. She,
and Evita on a lesser, pre-television scale, are secular reconstructions of
the suffering Madonna, people recreated into a transnational mediating
symbol: "our lady", with all the associated maternal projections; the woman
whose own care is frustrated by the brutal, and implicitly paternal, evil of
our world. Diana was a dionysian creation/projection through which the
world discovers its own compassion and suffering. Here is a massive social
artifact, a leviathan so large that it tyrannized and overwhelmed its human
signifier. And now the photographers and press take on the mask of the
negative paternal leviathan, for a time. I could go on casting this global
play--but enough; it is inevitable, but it is sad that people must be
consumed for our collective identity. Wouldn't it be nicer if the play
could be conducted through imaginary figures? Or is it really necessary
that our play extend directly, preconsciously, into our own lives? As a
character on a television show said in a recent episode (Xena, for inquiring
minds!), "be careful what you pretend to be, for that is what you will
become"--with all the power of creation and destruction, of happiness and
cruelty, that follow from that choice.
Doug