There's a very interesting study of Hamlet made by Vygotsky in his
Psychology of Art. He also writes about the play-within-the play
and the various political and
> social uses to which Shakespeare's plays were put, even in his lifetime.
> Narratives as imaginary worlds At 11:49 PM 8/31/97 +0000, Ana S. wrote:
>
> >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