Almost five months ago I read a line in Richard Bauckham's "John for Readers of Mark" (1997) that stopped me cold - that John's audience would not be likely "to know from oral Gospel traditions" that Jesus' ministry in Galilee "followed the imprisonment of John". The day I read that, I blogged about it, here. But I kept re-reading the chapter. Bauckham was talking about reader knowledge and oral tradition, but my mind was thinking in terms of memory theory. He suggested John 3:24 enabled Mark's readers to realize the story was "still in the period between Mark 1:13 and Mark 1:14".
He was so right and so very wrong at the same time. And I hadn't expected that. But that's not why this surprise was such a strange experience for me.
On the one hand, this was personal. I have shared the experience of sitting down at a desk with papers all spread out, figuring out how the chronology could/would align, that is, of course, assuming the content itself to be valid. In fact, for those who accept historicity of the datum in question, Bauckham is absolutely correct that John 3:24 enables us to fit that episode between Mark 1:13 & 1:14. For those of us who can sit down and examine these things with materials and sophistication, these are valid points to observe. In some ways, I'd been waiting a long time to find anyone else writing intelligently about this kind of undertaking.
On the other hand, to speak in such terms sounded almost as if Bauckham thought John's readers were sitting down to access the Gospel texts like we might today. Honestly, it began to seem that RB wasn't nearly as interested in what John's readers did with Mark as he wanted to suggest that it's what we should be doing with the Gospels. So while I trusted that his thesis was sincere, and that he knew ancient readers weren't working on texts quite like modern folks do. What kept bothering me, at the most basic level, was neither of those points. The troublesome idea was that RB was suggesting John's original readers could do this kind of precise feathering in their minds, simply because they had previously read or listened to readings of Mark.
This was no longer a question of the early christians' knowledge, literacy or scholarship. This was now a question of memory. Of course, in 1997, RB wasn't talking about "memory" and if I'd discovered this article some years previously, I wouldn't have been thinking about memory. But to consider in practical terms what readers knew about history, about stories, about the past? That's a memory issue.
On the one hand, it made sense for Bauchkam to frame the issue as a question of familiarity. It's about "the way in which John's narrative would be read/heard by an audience very familiar with Mark." Rather than promoting harmonization, he suggests readers "familiar with Mark" could easily see the two narratives as being "complementary". Again, the historical combination in view here is an idea well worth promoting, these days. But is this what early christians were doing back then? In less than 25 pages, I counted eighteen times RB talks about what was or wasn't "familiar". Again, it's obvious RB wasn't actually suggesting they were sitting down at desks using modern methods to test the compatibility of chronological references in the Gospels. But then, what exactly did he think they were doing?
Familiarity is about what someone knows well from experience. It's about what someone, or what some group of people, collectively, remembers from personal experience. But memory isn't quite so photographic. And even if they had memorized Mark's narrative sequence verbatim, that still isn't quite the same thing as equating it to "the past" (neither the remembered past nor the actual past). The challenge for me very quickly surpassed figuring out what Bauckham really thought they'd been doing. The important question, in the light of both memory and narrative theory of recent years, was to ask for myself: what did *I* think that John's readers had actually been doing.
Bauckahm's salient point is to look at John 3:24 and inquire. "For John had not yet been thrown into prison". What is that clarification doing here?
Later on, Bauckham correlates the accounts of Jesus' feeding the 5,000 and points out that the fourth gospel next features Jesus speaking of John the Baptist in past tense, while Mark's Gospel places the beheading of John just before that miraculous feeding. It's at this point Bauckham lost me, and convinced me for certain that another hypothesis is required, when he said, "readers/hearers are likely to have been very familiar indeed with the narrative sequence of the only written Gospel they had previously known." (emphasis mine).
Oh, good grief! Chronology and historical reference do not simply equate to a narrative sequence. I've blogged about this many times in years past and a few times more recently. I'm according this topic new vigor, of late, but it's hardly a new opinion of mine. At any rate, while the "narrative sequence" of John's death and feeding the 5,000 isn't a valid reason to conclude anything about history, the contingency of John's death, as a necessary precursor for subsequent developments, absolutely is a valid reason.
It's not about one particular picnic, although if we grant the picnic historicity then it's popularity wouldn't hurt. But that's just to be fair. No, what is far more important is that there are clues in the background of that story and the subsequent narrativizations which follow that story in all four of the Gospels. There are aspects of historical context which befit a time after John had been killed. If Antipas started looking for Jesus because John was dead; If Jesus crossed over to Bethsaida because Philip's region was safe; If the advancing plot - Jesus skirting around Galilee for a while and then finally heading into Judea - reflects all of these details in a historical progression of developing circumstance; If all that has merit, then - and only then - can we begin to work with the idea that John's narrative at this point may align in some ways with Mark's narrative at this point.
But again, the realistic push from all this, for Bauckham, seems to remain focused on what we can do with our historical study of these texts, today. And I'm for that. But these days I'm more interested in considering what the Gospels' original readers may have remembered.
If John's original readers were able to make use of the reference at 3:24 - and it's existence alone seems like a good enough reason to suppose that (the writer expected, at least) that they could - then perhaps my illustration of contingency, above, might also illustrate how we ought to expect readers to mentally join together such particular "plot points" of two narratives.
We do not become photo-mnemonically "familiar" with the "narrative sequence" of two texts.
Rather, we remember the basic contingencies of a story. Then, hearing a new version of that story, we can compare only the logical consequence of events, using one previously remembered rendition to judge the contents of a current oral performance presenting a second version of the same basic story.
It's obvious Bauckham wanted to work from the text, and for various reasons. But at one step he said readers "knew" that Jesus' rise to popularity in Galilee had corresponded with John's imprisonment, saying this reader knowledge was not from oral tradition but from familiarity with Mark. And then we find Bauckham's hypothetical audience has remembered an entire "narrative sequence" verbatim, from simply hearing a text (however repeatedly) but somehow this same remembering audience cannot hold in mind a simple one-to-one correspondence between major contingencies, simply because those stories were renditions from non-text-based oral tradition?
On that day, I felt I'd determined something for sure that I'd been leaning toward for a while. A story's audience doesn't remember verbatim any narrative sequence. We don't remember full narratives. We remember contingency.
That one thought has governed virtually all of my thinking in daily research, since then.
**********
And now we come to the part of this post where most who are still reading will jump off.
For the five people who may come along someday in the near or far future, and actually care strongly about such things... Or on the random chance that something happens to me and none of this comes to a culminating fruition... In other words, so that someone else can pick up where I leave off if they care to... And since this is far shorter than sharing the dozens and dozens of pages I've journaled since then...
Here is a timeline of my tweets since that day. Most of them are directly relevant here.
No, seriously. I've been using twitter since then as a "poor man's copyright" and as a personal trail of breadcrumbs for the development of my thinking. Like a blog, it's also a challenge to post tentative thoughts that were clear and succinct and worth sharing. By that measure, of course, perhaps not quite all the below tweets should be here. But here they are. Soon, hopefully, I'll get back to making progress on the substantive arguments I've been tentatively building and sharing here, recently. From March 18 to August 3, many of the blog posts (also tweeted below) are related, as well.
This probably ought to be a book, or three. But someone else may have to write it.
This probably ought to be a book, or three. But someone else may have to write it.
I admit, this feels slightly ridiculous, but that's what time capsules are like.
Without further ado... Here's the relevant tweet archive:
Jesus and John's Dungeon Days: Did oral
tradition align Jesus' chronology with John's… http://goo.gl/fb/fPFI7
A "narrative sequence" is linear and
selective, distinctly unlike real time event sequence. But technically, the
term is redundant.
To narrate is to sequence. Even
"nonlinear" n's are linear to the reader, a literary time-traveler
whose wristwatch is the page count.
Contingency is what links story with history.
Fate vs Agency. Some see winners & losers, some see *how* the cards were
played.
Misapprehending contingency leads to the
'Great Man' theory. Cause of change? Alexander. Napoleon. Reagan. Perception
> Bias.
Perception bends storytelling like gravity
bends light. Was Jesus THE cause of his movement or were conditions 'just ripe
for it'? Yes.
"the [ancient] author cited texts from
memory.. often introducing a slight change to show that he had done so"
Grafton, via Whittaker
Constructive Misquotation in Antiquity: This
is not a paraphrase, not a mistake, not an… http://goo.gl/fb/oMbVA
Narrating the past engages reader memory to
gain credibility. No audience is wholly ignorant of attention worthy
non-fiction.
A story of the past must challenge and affirm
audience memory. The more it aims to challenge, the more it needs to affirm.
It should therefore be axiomatic that history
writers always bear in mind some accounting for non-ignorant readers.
*Assuming the story in question proved relevant or worth preserving or was at
least recognizably about the past. #tautology #axiom
The Future of Historiology: Where is the study
of "doing History" headed? Three books I've… http://goo.gl/fb/M8sLv
The narcissist sees past and present in his
own image. Mature historical thinking teaches us to do the opposite. -
S.Wineburg
A Liturgy of Literality… Uniformity in
Language… & Protestant Positivism: The more Christians… http://goo.gl/fb/AjzHU
for a historian of memory, the
"truth" of a given memory lies not so much in its
"factuality" as in its "actuality". - Jan Assmann, 1997
Why is Nazareth not Amazed?: Luke 4 *doesn't*
say the Nazarenes were amazed at Jesus… http://goo.gl/fb/bC4x3
To explain is to redress the surprising until
it seems unsurprising. Shallow history is therapy for the traumatically
perplexed. (1/2)
(2/2)
To research is to review the familiar until it becomes unfamiliar. Mature
history tests our ability to fathom differentiation.
Chronology in the Fourth Gospel: As Narrative
isn't quite History, so narrative Sequence is… http://goo.gl/fb/heVJ8
Time is an aspect of narrative, not nature. We
debate this bc Physicists struggle to accept that much of what they do is
Poetic.
"Light is both wave and particle" is
science and poetry. To understand and describe the indescribable, a Physicist
must be a Poet.
Memorialized causality typically refracts
genuine temporal contingencies. Narrative propter hoc, ergo historical post
hoc.
T/F? For a historical narrative to be
competitively plausible, it must frame itself within a recognizable chronology.
T/F?
Present Needs that drive Antiquarianism:
History "for its own sake" isn't popular until it… http://goo.gl/fb/Cs6eD
Inasmuch as theologians have undertaken to
account for implications found in the Gospels, it seems fitting for historians
also...
Impressionist horses beat realist unicorns.
Narrator: "propter hoc". Ergo, post
hoc.
The claim 'A caused B' fails immediately if an
audience knows B preceded A. Credibility depends on aligning with recognized
timelines.
"Writing something is almost as hard as
making a table. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard
as wood." GGM
to transform something fantastic into
something credible, tell it straight, like reporters and country folk - GGM
"A genuine historical approach should
allow for change and innovation as well as indebtedness and derivation..."
Larry Hurtado
A world of constant change. A deep
psychological need for stability. Well played, God. #HoldMeJesus
Time is a Story. Position is Relative.
Relationship is Activity. Movement is Change. So if God is and does, then
Everlasting is Dynamic.
Chronology (chronography) is contrary to real
temporality. - Ricoeur
If we think in pictures, do they move or are
they GIFs?
Are non-static visual memories more like a
motion picture or a graphic novel?
Ancient reckoning by regnal years was most
concise accounting of major continuities AND contingencies. Stability,
Turnover, Stability, ...
A.U.C. (Roman Chronology) was a radical shift
in timekeeping, asserting state continuity as supreme despite leadership
turnover.
In History & Memory, major contingencies
sequence themselves, leaving Emplotment to characterize and embellish, or else
entirely fabricate.
D.K.Goodwin may/must Emplot Lincoln's journey
from Emancipation to Ammendment, but she cannot alter that sequence.
"Inherent Contingency"
For a contingent sequencing to be false, the
contingency must be fabricated, but if the contingency is historical, then so
is the sequence.
The "contrived connections" of
Emplotment sometimes create sequence but sometimes merely build upon inherent
contingency.
Any Social Memory aims at continuity, so its
acknowledged discontinuities must reveal key historical contingencies, too big
to ignore.
If any point I just tweeted has already been
argued, then please, someone please tell me where...
Basic Chronology is not troubled by narrative
selectivity. We build upon the inherent contingency of reliable claims.
Pulpit & Cathedral were once High
Technology, the cutting edge device for mass communications in late antiquity.
A congregation being an audience is like a
dinner party sucked into their phones. Disengage from the stage. Gather
together.
five Impressionist Horses vs one Realist
Pegasus: Which painting best represents what horses… http://goo.gl/fb/B3ziQ
A non-fiction artist must alter genre &
style to fit substantive essentials. Otherwise, just write fiction. - Pyne,
Voice & Vision
"Falsifications to make a text 'read
better' are the result not of too much literary imagination but of too
little." Pyne, Voice & Vision
Willful ignorance is intellectually
invincible. And so is determined belief.
Be deeply skeptical and keep a positive
attitude. Doubt, but hope. Build. Don't destroy.
On some level, History is just Literature plus
Logistics. #oversimplified
#butonlyslightly
#whengrantingtextualreliability
*if there are such things as social and emotional
and ideological "logistics". #sotospeak
If God's name is not hallowed, then whose
kingdom is it you expect is coming?
Contesting History's Banishment of
Characterization: In once sentence: Biography is valid, so… http://goo.gl/fb/vcgCG
Our concept of Time is an illusion created by
stories. Linear sequence is a restriction natural only to word flow.
Four Ways the Gospels Chronologize: OR: How
Historical Fiction and Non-fiction Narratives… http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls
The Gospels and Forrest Gump: Storytelling
within the boundaries of Historical Background http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls
The Gospels and Forrest Gump: Setting Stories
against History's Backdrop http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls
Gump saw Elvis, JFK, Nixon; Jesus met JtB,
Antipas, Pilate. This is how historical narratives chronologize http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls
What if most chronology is informal,
non-numerical, and literary? http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls
4 ways the Gospels Chronologize Story:
Numbers, Names, Death & Irreversibility http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls
Historical narratives and how they informally
chronologize http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls
on Sculpting Motion, or Narrating the Past:
Quoting Jean-Paul Sartre in his conclusion of… http://goo.gl/fb/E3L4p
1776, in London. The Americans declared
Independence. Also, Gibbon published The Decline and Fall of the ***** Empire,
Vol.1
Understanding Time: Time is a central aspect
of Narrative, and Narrative is the primary… http://goo.gl/fb/lkamn
Carr observed that historians "must work
through simplification, as well as through the multiplication of causes".
And often, they do. (1/2)
So if simplifying causation is what historians
do (or did) then we "must" un-simplify, but not discard, such kinds
of explanations. (2/2)
"Professor Popper uses
"historicism" as a catch-all for any opinion about history which he
dislikes" (Carr, 1961) Rawr. Fshhht. #lovethis
Determinism: "If that had been different,
this would be different." Realism: "If that had different, this MIGHT
be different."
Carr disclaimed determinism by discussing
"might-have-beens", but said different results *would* have required
different causes. Um. Dude?
Carr, contra "Cleopatra's Nose",
rightly sees accidents as causality, yet misses the point. We cannot account
for all causes. Or free will.
Carr's advice, balanced, is good. Past
developments had causes which we may observe but not fully prioritize.
(Necessary. Never Sufficient.)
Carr is absolutely correct that
"accident" causality prevails among history's "losers". And
Marx (optimistically?) minimized "chance".
Carr brilliantly compares his critics'
objections to causality (vs free will) to religious objections (vs divine
will). #FalseDichotomies
"when somebody tells me that history is a
chapter of accidents, I tend to suspect him of intellectual laziness or low
intellectual vitality"
Carr: prioritizing causes is historical
interpretation (yes) and accidents are causes (good) but accidents make poor
interpretation (Whaa?)
Carr was not defending the possibility of
historical knowledge but the right of historical authority, caring less for
History than Story.
Carr rightly decried overemphasis on accidents
but trivialized them categorically - not defending causality but his own
storying preference.
Carr's open insistence that History should
teach lessons shocks me, but I suppose promoting 'relevance' was fairly
conservative in '61. (?)
Final thought - it's fun to see the holes in
this debate anticipating both chaos theory and talk of emplotment. A History of
Historiography!
Just finished Live Tweeting my reading of E.H.
Carr's famous fifth chapter (on Causation) in What is History? (1961) #nowthistooishistory
One more fun quote: "The nightmare
quality of Kafka's novels lies in the fact that nothing... has any apparent
cause" #trueenough
#OOHscary
Narrative is linear. The past is continuous.
Chronology is #piecewise.
How to further Historical Thinking?: If
"logistics" can be applied to social change… http://goo.gl/fb/QfWOX
"Fabula" - a memorial trace of a
story that remains with the reader Mieke Bal, Narratology (3rd Ed.)
"Only through stories and histories do we
gain a catalogue of the humanly possible." - Vanhoozer, on Ricoeur http://bit.ly/RRk5s1
"Ricoeur answers Kant's query: What is
Man? by reading stories and histories which display the whole gamut of human
possibilities." (2/2)
"The Gospels and Acts... theological
documents, their accuracy cannot be taken for granted" As opposed to
non-theological ancient docs?
Correlation/Causation, Post hoc/Propter hoc,
subsequent/consequent. A claim of the latter *DOES* at least evidence the
former.
Purported causation is at least evidence of
correlation. Blame or credit depends at *minimum* on position and timing.
Purported Causation, as Evidence of
Correlation: Bad history often builds on good chronology… http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
Spin doctors muck less with chronology. They
usually depend on it. http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
"Propter hoc", ergo post hoc.
Historical fallacies as evidence of #RememberedChronology
http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
Is Yoko to blame? No. But that bad history
sells well because it's built upon good chronology. http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
Eisenhower campaigned on TV in '56, but JFK
got 70 mil. views. Who did you think was first? #RememberedChronology.
http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
Narrators inflate causality. Necessary becomes
Sufficient. Thus, purported causation may imply actual correlation. http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
Rock 'n Roll predates Elvis Presley, but not
as far as most people knew. #RememberedChronology
http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
Past narratives are most vulnerable on event
sequence. Good & bad histories all build on #RememberedChronology
http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
#RememberedChronology
is kind of mostly a narrative thing. http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
Before Reagan, Cold War. After Reagan, No Cold
War. That's BAD HISTORY... but a recognizable chronology. http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
"One needs to show, on any hypothesis...
how we ended up with all the ancient portraits that we have." - Steve
Mason (2008)
Scholars cherry picked Josephus bc he
"was not viewed as an intelligent craftsmen" but we must explain how
J came to his views - Mason (2/2)
Historical narratives set stories against the
known past. http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls #RememberedChronology
Narrative vs Chronology in the Fourth Gospel http://goo.gl/fb/heVJ8
Storytelling within the boundaries of
Historical Background http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls #RememberedChronology
Chronology in the Fourth Gospel is NOT the
same as Narrative Sequence http://goo.gl/fb/heVJ8
Forrest Gump saw Elvis, JFK, Nixon; Jesus met
JtB, Antipas, Pilate. http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls #RememberedChronology
I don't always get by @TCULibrary but whenever I do they are
always fantastic!!!
"Propter hoc" ergo, post hoc.
Purported causality implies actual correlation. http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
#RememberedChronology
Necessary though not sufficient - Inflated
Causality builds on reliable chronology http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
The writer has rhetoric and the reader has
memory. Their interplay *IS* the tension between narrative and irony.
...because a writer attempts to be definite
and precise, but a reader's knowledge is always fuzzy and personalized. (2/2)
Spin doctors engage reader memory to gain
credibility. Bad history builds on good timelines. http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
#RememberedChronology
Consequent or Subsequent, a proffered
causality expects audience agreement on timeline. http://goo.gl/fb/VYTAI
#RememberedChronology
Narrative agendas have to contend against
audience memory. Most obvious pitfall? Sequence. http://goo.gl/fb/FYTAI
#RememberedChronology
One psycho-social advantage of causality is efficiency.
With reasons for things, there's less to explain, less to remember, less to
re-tell.
If it walks (&tc) like a duck, it might
not be a duck, but it should be impossible to conclude that nobody *thought* it
was a duck.
Ricoeur: "Knowing that people of the past
formulated expectations, predictions, desires, fears, and projects..."
(1/2)
"...is to fracture historical determinism
by retrospectively reintroducing contingency into history,” - Ricoeur (2/2)
If the first hearers of Gospel texts had been
oral tradents, how much of the plot line ('fabula') had been spoilered?
Did the first hearers of Gospel texts have any
prior knowledge about Jesus or his basic life story?
What narratives are neither rhetorical nor
historical?: Narrative criticism seems designed to… http://goo.gl/fb/dnDw9
Don't most historical narratives deliberately
engage reader knowledge about the past? http://goo.gl/fb/dnDw9
"Not being what it is a picture of is not
a defect in pictures" - Arthur Danto, Narration and Knowledge (ch.7)
"an artist who thinks of painting as
actually duplicating his subjects... does not want to do art, he wants to be
God" - Danto, N&K ch.7
How can Irony oppose Narrative when we've had
ironic narrators? True authority can be interrupted & contradicted, yet
maintain perspective.
What if Irony only opposes Narrative when we
insist on a single story, a single voice, a single author?
Found online: "I went to a talk about [X]
which was very interesting, but of course I mention it here only to
nitpick."
It is what it is, if you know what I mean, but
don't take my word for it.
"The relevance of dramatic irony for
historical narratives is obvious... the gap between intentions and
outcomes." - Martin Jay
Political statements of police states are
polyvalent statutes against the polyform status of hoi polloi statures. But
people aren't stable.
Language is for (1) representing reality and
(2) achieving social objectives. Our management of this tension defines our
position in life.
"to understand unintended consequences
makes sense only if we can identify what the original intentions were" -
M.Jay, translating W.Booth
No irony w/o authorial intention - Booth, on
any Text :: No irony w/o action having intention - Jay, on the Past
"Skinner’s stress on the matrix of
necessary conventions in which acts take place allows us to get beyond... (1/2)
...the idea, as he puts it, that 'every agent
has a privileged access to his own intentions'" - M.Jay
Exercise: write a story without time-words
(hour, day, time, a while, etc) in which a precise amount of time, having
passed, matters.
Fiction is History's "compliment and ally
in the universal human effort to reflect on the mystery of temporality."
P. Ricoeur, via H. White
Early Jesus FAQs: How did Jesus engage
thousands? Consider the twelve. When asked about Jesus… http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
"There is no relation which... makes one
idea more readily recall another than the relation between cause and
effect." Hume
The earliest stories about Jesus are whatever
Galileans told one another about Jesus while he was still alive. http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
Which FAQs did Jesus' disciples hear most? The
Gospels might know. http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
"our physical experience of motion in
space is the source of our conceptualization of a temporal sequence."
M.Horsdal, Telling Lives
"Community FAQs" asked of Jesus'
disciples, as loosely preserved by the Gospels http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
Jesus' Disciples must have fielded FAQs. The
Gospels likely preserve some of those Questions. http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
Do questions for Jesus in the Gospels
*represent* FAQs actually fielded by Jesus' Disciples? http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
The *kinds* of Frequently Asked Questions actually
fielded by Jesus... AND his Galilean entourage. http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
Suppose the Twelve fielded FAQs with varying
answers. The FAQ patterns may be preserved in the Gospels. http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
in a certain way, Homer's Odyssey is only a
rhetorical amplification of the statement, "Ulysses comes home to
Ithaca" - G.Genette
Dramatic Irony is frequently temporal. Not
merely what did characters know, but *when* did they know it?
When the crowd had to ask Jesus' disciples
about Jesus, what were their FAQs? http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
What questions did people ask Jesus'
disciples? Gospel traces of Jesus Community FAQs http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
Archelaus' brief reign and the district of
Galilee - an exercise in rhetoric, irony and… http://goo.gl/fb/VnRtG
Causality and Story-shaped Memories: We
observe subsequence, perceive it as consequence, and… http://goo.gl/fb/5Rp9c
Story - a coping strategy to deal with the
fact that we'd like to remember the past but there's too much of it.
Narrative as Sequential Art, always
"linear" to the audience http://goo.gl/fb/hnoCY
Narrative - story Narration - storytelling
Narrativity - story-likeness Narratology - soup to effing nuts
Two NF Rules - Don't make stuff up & don't
omit relevant stuff. Otherwise, DO craft your presentation artfully. Capture
whatever you can.
A Jesus made in our image will die with our
movement. The Jesus who Resurrects is not ours but God's. The Gospels'
otherness reveals him.
Ankersmit's philosophy of history began from
"the fact that historians were quite successful at what they did" http://bit.ly/1nvLKHL
"Ankersmit tries to assimilate the useful
aspects of the linguistic turn to the current body of historical theory" http://bit.ly/1m2v0Xl
"the real revolution over the past 40
years or so in historical theory has not been postmodernism [but] memory
studies" (2/3)
"we are now in the post-postmodernist
period of historical theory – hadn’t someone better tell the
postmodernists?" (3/3)
If someone is twisting the past to suit a
present agenda, their methodology isn't the problem. http://bit.ly/1uV1Uyt
Purporting causation *is* evidence of
correlation. Bad history often relies on good chronology. http://bit.ly/1qDm2rf
Memory & Narrative, 1: A story is a coping
strategy to deal with the fact that we'd like to… http://goo.gl/fb/5HxPo
The author can choose his disguises, but never
to disappear - Wayne Booth, 1961
"We're bound to learn from the past... we
might as well try to do so systematically." J. L. Gaddis
"maps have in common [w/] the works of
historians, a packaging of vicarious experience" John Lewis Gaddis
"The philosophy of history has had far
more attention than its philology." http://goo.gl/fb/M8sLv
Gaddis: "historical sciences"
include geology, astronomy, paleontology, evol.biology – deriving processes
from structures (& vice versa)
Recognizably "historical" narratives
*must* conform in *some* ways with reader knowledge. #RememberedChronology
If you know the basic outline of a character's
personal history, then story-location can indicate historical-time. (1/2)
Alexander at Pella. Napoleon on Elba.
Washington at Valley Forge. JFK in Dallas. Story location --> #RememberedChronology
(2/2)
Archelaus, in Judea, had not yet sailed to
Rome. Story location --> Chronological Moment (3/2!)
And thus, Galilee was still a 'merh'
(district, subregion) of the kingdom. So God, in Mt.2:22, *foreknew* Galilean
independence. (4/2!!)
A rhetoric of historical narrative plays on
reader knowledge. I re-emplot your mnemonic outline of history, your fabula of
prior chronicles.
The historical background in Mt.2 is not
merely scenery or symbol. It engages reader memory of a watershed year for
dramatic-ironic effect.
Questons posed to Jesus in the Gospels... as
written up FAQs the twelve had to answer when Jesus wasn't available. http://goo.gl/fb/WqCJ5
Memory & Narrative, 2: Intentional
remembering requires efficiency. That's my primary… http://goo.gl/fb/CUj0o
Is it possible that the nature of Memory is
responsible for the invention of Story? http://goo.gl/fb/CUj0o
20th century: social science sought Newtonian
predictability while actual sciences embraced storying. Meanwhile, history
became literature.
Chaos theory scuttles forecasting in soc.sci.
& history, except in *retrospect*, so Narrative can be a
"sophisticated research tool" -Gaddis
Gaddis - re: learning no lessons from
'accidental causation', Carr "managed to confuse not only his readers but
himself."
The Gospels and Forrest Gump: How writers
chronologize historical narrative http://goo.gl/fb/X7wls
Gaddis: "I would go so far as to define
the word 'context' as the dependency of sufficient causes upon necessary
causes." Wow.
Who would bother explaining "how we got
from A to B" unless their audience already knew *something* about points A
and B?
A sequence is a story but a plot makes it memorable.
#intention
#projection
#causation
Connectedness makes remembering more efficient.
"The king died and the queen died"
makes 4 points to remember: King died, queen died, this is connected, which
thing happened first. (1/3)
Introduce causality - "The queen died of
grief when the king died". Now story-memory requires only two points: what
happened & why. (2/3)
Since causality implies both connectedness and
order, it facilitates efficient remembering of multiple details as one single
story. (3/3)
To chronologize any historical narrative is to
interact (knowingly or otherwise) with an audience's memory of pivotal
transitions.
Memory & Narrative can rescue "Reader
Knowledge" from Positivism. Historical characters/events invoke
story-shaped memories, not "facts".
Historical writing is constrained by what
writers believe readers think they recall. Surviving texts have often picked
'low hanging fruit'.
Historical narrative (Def'n): a foregrounded
emplotment, fiction or non, set [w/in or vs] a mnemo-chronicle (fabula) of a
recognizable past.
Historical fiction and non-fiction narratives
can be analyzed similarly in terms of the relationship between foreground and
background.
Memory & Narrative can rescue "Reader
Knowledge" from Positivism. Historical characters/events invoke
story-shaped memories, not "facts". 2
Memory & Narrative, 3: We design stories
to accommodate mnemonic limitations. We pass on… http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Causality, Narratology & Memory - Why do
we construct "Why" stories? Maybe bc they're more memorable. http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Story aids Memory. What if Memory defines
Story? http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
To me, the phrase "women in the
pulpit" is a bit like "slaves running the plantation". #slowdown #thinkaboutit
#radical #notradical
What if Narrative strengthens Memory because
we designed it to do so in the first place? http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Causality implies sequence, creates cohesion.
Narratives are built for enabling Memory. http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Consequence implies sequence, which makes
remembering easier. Perceiving causality makes a story remember-able. http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Forster, Chatman, Hume & Heroman -
Narrative highlights causality to accommodate our mnemonic limitations. http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Narrative is the servant of Memory. http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Storytelling distorts memory, sometimes on
purpose, to gain memorability. http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Memory & Narrative, 4: Stories, like maps,
always bear some distortion. A key difference… http://goo.gl/fb/5MDMti
Plot, Causality, Narrative, Memory. http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Story condenses the Past to facilitate Memory,
and Story does this most efficiently via Plot, via Causality. http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Stories self-distort to gain memorability. http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Remembering is driven by present needs, and
the primary need of Remembering, itself, is efficiency.
Mnemonic Time is divided by contingencies of
widest impact. Before we had kids. Since 9/11. Back in high school. While John
was imprisoned.
Post #4, Memory & Narrative Plot as the
stability within variations. http://goo.gl/fb/5MDMti
Memory & Narrative, Post #4 CLEANED AND
UPDATED Historical emplotment works against Mnemonic chronicles. http://goo.gl/fb/5MDMti
In historical narratives, foreground and
background may correspond roughly to sufficient and necessary causes, a plot
and its context.
In historical narratives, ideally, the
foreground contains the authorial emplotment and the background evokes or
confronts reader memory.
What if "fiction vs non-fiction" is
the wrong dichotomy for analysis of narratives set in the past?
I have constantly rewritten my autobiography.
Occasionally I even put some bits into prose.
Narrative Chronology is memory based &
specifically relative. Formal accounting, in non-official discourse, is
comparatively rare.
Time is a literary convention. Time only
exists in the stories we tell and the physics equations we write.
Mt.2's Plot Device is not that Herod's death
gets Jesus back from Egypt, but that Egypt freezes #StoryTime until Archelaus'
infamous debut.
Summarizing or Rewriting the Gospels is
unconscious, personal, inevitable. A commonplace, it happens mostly without
proper guidance.
The child must be told, sometimes, where to
look. The adult matures, gradually, by learning how to see.
All narration is chronological as performance,
and sequential as art. http://goo.gl/fb/hnoCY
Memory & Narrative, 5: Causality tends to
be a central feature of memorable stories. To have… http://goo.gl/fb/0QoVJ4
Memory & Narrative, 5 Oversimplified plots
are rememberable. http://goo.gl/fb/0QoVJ4
Historians' narratives feature complex
causality. Mnemonic narratives prefer to oversimplify. http://goo.gl/fb/0QoVJ4
John was a preacher, imprisoned &
executed. These 3 contingencies make 1 historical outline, anchoring the
Gospels' #RememberedChronology.
The synoptic plot line simplifies Jesus'
timeline to fit audience memory of his geographical identity: from Galilee,
crucified in Judea.
Stories self-distort to increase memorability.
http://goo.gl/fb/vJVwg0
Marianne Horsdal - "continuity and change
are indissoluble" (e.g. children growing); People are always "in a
state of becoming."
Velocity and acceleration make sense, but the
third removed function, a curve measuring m/s/s/s is meaningless. (1/2)
And that's how I feel when reading a
commentary on a commentary on a commentary of a (dubious to begin with) textual
phenomenon. (2/2)
Jumping from narratology to philosophy... #sundaynightblues
#closingouttabs
"All of our understandings of time are
relative to other concepts such as motion, space, and events." Lakoff
& Johnson, P. in the Flesh
Time: "that which is measured by regular
iterated events" Also: "time is conceptualized through the comparison
of events" Lakoff & Johnson
L&J - the Cartesian coordinate plane
"allows us to use the metaphor that times are locations in space"
Yes!! Graphs & equations = Literature
L&J: Time is a metaphor. Taken literally,
it leads to silliness. General relativity puts past & future 'all at once'
& rules out Big Bang.
L&J: Much truth is expressed through the
metaphor of Time. We cannot think about time without metaphor.
L&J: "Does time exist..? We reject
[this] loaded question. The word time names a human concept... yet it structures
our real experience"
Time to make the doughnuts. Lakoff &
Johnson are spot on for Time. Philosophy in the Flesh So many books, so little....
Relativity is the *objective* standard of
*all* measurement. Comparison is king.
"Story" is Subjective, Temporality
is not: I've been enjoying David Herman's work on the… http://goo.gl/fb/23tPoe
Loving John Pier's "After this..."
in Theorizing Narrativity. Must read more Meir Sternberg and begin Brian
Richardson, Emma Kafalenos.
Posit standard forgetting as a fractal,
inverted. Temporal re-orientation reduces *sets* of changes to 'transition
points'. Ad infinitum.
Memory as temporal re-orientation: minor
contingencies as short-term 'landmarks' in time, subsuming gradually into
definitive transitions.
Thus, Memory as the machine that transforms
chaos into "plot", an outline for autobiog. narrativizing. *Tweet 3
of 3, in hindsight
An obituary synopsis, Directions given
succinctly, Recounting the day at bedtime, Strongest memories of a given
vacation; All 4 show...(1/2)
...how Memory/Story reduces life experience to
broadest consistencies and most drastic transitions, w/ or w/o special bonus
features. (2/2)
The 'story' of memory can be somewhat
predictable. Mnemonic 'discourse' is not. Basic distortion, kinda. Cultivated
re-narrativization, not.
Memory & Narrative can rescue "Reader
Knowledge" from Positivism. Historical characters/events invoke
story-shaped memories, not "facts". 3
As Matthew uses Herod's death to move the
story's location, Egypt is a filler that moves the story up to Archelaus' time.
"The value of information does not
survive the moment... A story is different. It does not expend itself" -
Walter Benjamin, 1936
"how a society chooses to remember her
origins betrays a great deal about her current stage of development"
Anthony Le Donne
PLOT has ruled histories because causality
embeds sequence, and thus progressive development. Only change leaves a record
of TIME.
"Periods, like centuries, are arbitrary
divisions for convenience" - Barzun & Graff (1970) Yes indeed, but I
say... (1/2)
Contingencies of wide impact are convenient
for arbitrating divisions, as mnemonic end points between relative
continuities. (2/2)
Periodization is bad storying because it
begins and ends with contingencies, each of which is more like a climax. (1/2)
Better histories can center on a transition,
beginning from a prior equilibrium & ending 'in media res' of the next
major 'period'. (2/2)
9/11 did not begin an historical period, but
gave climax to previous developments which, altogether, set conditions of
subsequent dynamics.
Periodization seeks to historicize equilibria.
In full contrast, proper Narratives center on meaningful transitions, carrying
readers (1/2)
from the status quo ante towards a transformed
situation. History is best as meta-dynamic. What altered the *conditions* of
change? (2/2)
Memory focuses on equilibria while History
must address punctuation. Yet, memory bounds each continuity between 2
sequenced contingencies.
Memory focuses on continuity, as defined by
the presence or absence of contingent effects. Periodization is good for
nostalgia.
History as Memory should avoid relying on
narrative. Periodization is a collage, an assortment, a category of
experiences. But... (1/2)
History as Narrative *should* emphasize
memorable transitions, the widespread contingencies by which one period gave
way to another. (2/2)
No comments:
Post a Comment