Symptoms, Artworks and the Limits of Narrative

Abstract

In the light of Michel Foucault's description of the modern as the age of history, this paper argues that narrative operations occupy a privileged place in our episteme. On the basis of Arthur Danto's Narration and Knowledge (1985), which characterises narrative as an explanatory account of changing, coherent past events, this paper concludes that difficulties with definition, temporal organisation and the causal can be expected to emerge as problematic for narrative operations. The detailed account of the psychoanalytic symptom and the modernist artwork, combined with an analysis of the uses to which narrative operations are put by Freud and Foucault, which follows, confirms that taxonomic and temporal stability are indeed essential to the age of history. This paper finally suggests that if the psychoanalytic symptom and modernist artwork's capacity to silence narrative stem from their failure to meet a set of specific distinctions – such as those between past and present, action and event, percept and concept – then what this narrative failure reveals is no less than the modern form of the distinction between culture and nature.

Opsomming
In die lig van Michel Foucault se beskrywing van die moderne as die tydvak van die geskiedenis word in hierdie referaat geredeneer dat narratiewe ondernemings 'n bevoor­regte plek in ons episteem beklee. Op grond van Arthur Danto se Narration and Knowledge (1985), wat die verhaal karakteriseer as 'n verduidelikende verslag van veranderende, samehangende gebeurtenisse van die verlede, word in hierdie referaat tot die slotsom gekom dat daar verwag kan word dat struikelblokke rakende definisie, temporele orga­nisasie en die oorsaaklike as problematies vir die vertelhandeling te voorskyn sal tree. Die uitvoerige verslag van die psigoanalitiese simptoom en die modernistiese kunswerk, tesame met 'n daaropvolgende analise van die aanwending van narratiewe prosedures soos deur Freud en Foucault benut, sal bevestig dat taksonomie en temporele stabiliteit beslis noodsaaklik is vir die era van die geskiedenis. In hierdie referaat word ten slotte voorgestel dat indien die psigoanalitiese simptoom en die modernistiese kunswerk se vermoë om die verhaalkuns die swye op te lê voortspruit uit hulle onvermoë om 'n stel spesifieke onderskeidings die hoof te bied – soos die tussen die verlede en die hede, handeling en gebeurtenis, persepsie en konsep – dan is dit wat deur die mislukking van die verhaalkuns blootgelê word niks anders as die moderne vorm van die onderskeid tussen kultuur en natuur nie.