The sense of the intact and the deconstruction of the self: Story as redemptive mediation

The sense of the intact and the deconstruction of the self: Story as redemptive mediation The notion o f s e l f is p o se d as a problem atic which m ay fru itfu lly be approached by a d o se exam ination o f the m eaning o f what story is. The prob lem atic is reso lved to som e extent by the argum ent that story encom passes both the sense o f the intact a n d the trace o f decom truction . B ecause the s e l f indicates not only the em pirical but also the num inous and ineffable, its relation to story is considered in term s o f redem ptive value. The m ediative values o f story are d iscussed by referring to the s e l f as writer, reader a n d narrative. Because story o ffers an endless p o ssib ility o f im age a n d sequence, its co-dependence w ith s e l f o ffers hope, possibility, a n d consequently, an im m inent redemption.


Introductory
The trite but essential aphorism on which this article is based is that life is indivisible.The persuasion o f vitalism is difficult to overcome even if it is granted that it is cerebral activity which has wrought the greatest changes in humanity.If this starting point is accepted, it becomes clear that language remains problematic, the discussion o f which consequently proliferates in the spheres o f both linguistic theory and literary theory.These spheres o f theory are enabled and constructed further, as insights and comments continue with structural formation o f these two established pillars o f perspectives on language.Thus they remain firm areas o f abstruse scholarship and deliver few ideas powerful enough to make influential impact in any general way beyond academic discussion.
The purpose is to pose the question o f what is left intact at this time in post modern life.If academic discourse is permitted to become a mere fragment o f life, obscured within specialisation, obfuscated by personal agenda and private Koers 61 (4) 1996:511-520 purpose, it clearly loses the import o f attempting to grapple with the inscrutable mysteries o f life.I am interested in the solid refusal -the noli m e tangere -made by the ir reducible phenomenon o f the defiant self which baffles because o f the limitations o f intellectual questing.It is tm e that Christ offered this refusal in connection with his resurrected body before any assumption had been made.The question o f whether the resurrected self has any relevance to the deconstructed self may not be impertinent.But if the self can be processed in both (and possibly more) o f these amazing ways, the word loses integrity and becomes a psychic strategy instead o f a spiritual unity.The incorruptible self then becomes something o f a Holy Grail to which my being-in-itself is bound by quest rather than experience.
If I am a disciple o f Gramsci, I admit that my sense o f self is entirely contextual, that I can be distanced from the hegemonic, and simply play the institutional games from a lofty viewpoint o f disengagement and consequent emancipation.For the professional teacher, loyalty to the intact is imperative.It is the definition o f the intact which is problematic.Academic and scientific research, especially at the conceptual level, that refuses to be touched to the quick, misses its own intrinsic ethic.Yet, by definition, the intact remains intact either by deliberate or unconscious choice.
N evertheless I wish to affirm that the irreducible aspect o f the self is not entirely inscrutable.It seems to me that De Sausurre's time-honoured distinction between langue and parole has been appropriated without due concern for and recognition o f the organic integrity which exists as intrinsic basis for this distinction.That organic unity may be explored by examining the self-consciousness and un-self consciousness o f the self paradoxically within the impulses and cognition o f the vital body, at once producing hegemonic and em ancipatory awareness.
Academia does her students a disservice if she does not instill in them the paradoxical mixture o f passion and precision in reading and interpreting the text o f their individual experience.Reader-response theory impresses on us that such reading and interpreting are not passive but in fact, w orld-constructing, or, a term which is more modest, formative.
But how is the " irreducible s e lf ' to be approached?In the Zen tradition, Bankei's "Unborn" remains inscrutably clear.In humanistic psychology, R oger's "becoming" indicates the value o f significant personal change.In the Christian perspective, the idea o f incarnation brings home to this body, these hands, this skin, this alertness-and awareness-producing serotinin within, the organic unity o f body, soul and spirit.
I would like to suggest that the defiant self, subdued beneath obfuscation and deferment, finds a voice in the creativity which is the genesis o f literature.Defiantly, creatively, the intangible announces its presence in the virgin paper o f the unborn and the waverings o f becoming.Resting in the vehicle not o f analytic discourse but o f story it finds contact with the formative constraints o f time and being.The current practice o f using fiction as a model for philosophical process indicates that the story-tellers and writers may have at their disposal a natural means o f going where philosophers, in all their history, desired to but could not go-Thus w hat is at stake here is an understanding o f what story means.Such an understanding will be approached from the perspective o f bibliotherapy, the field in which meaningfulness and story seek not only contact but indeed fruition as a result o f the effort o f human integrity to express the inexpressible.

Foundational concepts of story
An important shift underlying the field is the move from the book, as such, to the story, the dynamic o f engagement between mind and narrative.In the view o f Stutterheim and Pretorius, bibliotherapy need not be strictly related to book form.
Bibliotherapy can be defined as the use of printed or non-printed material, fictitious or didactic.It is a process of interaction between reader and reading matter aiding the therapeutic process (Stutterheim & Pretorius, 1993:9).
It is contended that this definition is an oversimplification: the process is not simply between "reader and reading-material" .The reading material, or more specifically, story, has therapeutic value rooted in the ontic structures o f consciousness, incorporating affective as well as cognitive structures.The crucial issue is to ask w hat sort o f a concept story is.Theories o f narratology (e.g.Labov, Brem onde, G enette, Greimas) and theories o f psychoanalysis (e.g.Freud, Jung) are too prolific to review succinctly for the purpose o f offering analysis o f theoretical compatibility o f a multitude o f points o f departure.W hat is at stake is the uncovering o f meta-theoretical constructs o f story.It may be fruitful to regard the underpinnings o f story as organic rather than structural.This means to say that the essential story, the m ylhos is a G estalt and that to analyse, dissect or otherw ise disturb its intrinsic cohesion is to arrive not at an understanding o f story, but o f a dism embered and dead body.Edw ards (1984) defers funda mentally to subjectivity when he refers not outside o f but within the m ythos to carry out an understanding o f story.His poetics o f story is not an analysis, but a deepening o f sensitivity to mythic origins.
Story, as the fiction o f a fallen w orld rem ade, is in fact alw ays in dan g er o f losing the w orld by substituting itself, w hatever its intention, o f eventually d issatisfying its readers through its u nreality (E dw ards, 1984:90).Josipovici (1973:48-49) falls with equal helplessness back to mythic rather than narrative values o f story in discovering his meta-theory: " In order to help man see where his salvation lies God has written two books.The first o f these is the Book o f Scripture, which reveals to those who read it aright the w orking o f God in m an's history." There is, however, a second book o f which God is the author, as Josipovici suggests: " ... the Book o f Nature ... As God w orks through history, so he works through the world around us." M arshack (1972:283) suggests that story is not merely a schema o f narrative, but in fact a cognitive tool which finds a correlate in brain functionality.It is that natural path between experience and consciousness which has been (fortuitously) carved into stone and written on paper.
Far from finding its origin in a technology o f mind, story is more like that which has resulted in an aw areness which depends on a genesis which is both inter-and intra-personal.The poetics o f story are not to be teased into a definition o f advent: they are to find a way into the natural world, not the false world o f striving mankind, but the created world o f the C reator by a grace which fascinates and captures the alertness o f the individual to himself.To put this in another way, the intellectual quest cannot be divorced from the whole o f meaningfulness and isolated in an ambitious but necessarily fruitless way, but must find a harmony with a spiritual context which is to be perceived subjectively.Egan (1989:2) states that "the story form is a cultural universal ... the story is not just some casual entertainment: it reflects a basic and powerful form in w hich we make sense o f the world and experience" .
The relation between story and salvation may not be entirely tenuous.Although it takes a considerable leap from the conceptual to the spiritual, this is the exact place where the individual finds the invitation to participate in the writing o f his own fiction.Such an ultimately dem anding but subtle task may be deferred only by an overwhelming historiography.This means to say that meaning is no abstraction but a fundamentally individual experience o f ultimacy.W here such a sense o f ultimacy capitulates to a self absorbed by the mass, or an in stitutionalised self, or a conceptualised self that does not know the freedom o f the imagination, the story may be said to be incomplete.The sense o f beginning and ending which are necessary elements o f story are recognised to the extent that they are recognised by the artistry not o f ponderous logic but the sharpness o f intuition.A more direct way o f putting this is to say that the enlightening story, the crux o f realisation which is always ju st out o f reach but which breaks into verbalised aw areness from time to time needs an approach not o f deliberate and clumsy demystification but o f a more humble honouring.
The story is found when it is honoured by the imagination.The imagination relaxes into the story.No amount o f scientific hammering will yield any story.This kind o f affirmation serves as challenge not to the validity but to the authority o f scientific discourse.Put more bluntly, it may be stated thus: the ultimate paradigm o f discovery and knowledge is not one o f adherence to depersonalised analysis o f structured and patterned concepts thus forming a theoretical view, but by active participation in the uncontrolled and gratuitous formation o f the negotiable construct, the self.Essentially, story is the story o f the self.

Story and self
N ell's com prehensive work, Lost in a Book (1988), sets out the various levels of neurological arousal and descriptions o f mood which prevail when one engages with story (Nell, 1988:199-225).The point to be made here is that these levels and descriptions strongly suggest a relativisation o f identity to mood and altered states o f consciousness.The firm attachment between mood and language may be a suitable point at which to locate the rubric -the story -o f individual meaning.The noli me tangere, no matter whether construed as the disappearing laughter o f the trickster, the unapproachable virgin, or the secrets o f the old fathers, is the secret which the self holds dear and will not surrender except in oblique ways.One cannot switch on the floodlight to exorcise the demon of distrust.N or does one walk on w ater to disaffect the demon o f unbelief As in Y eats' Long-Legged Fly, the mind that moves upon silence is the mind that attem pts to penetrate the intact, and finds that it is not action, but contemplation which discovers the inexpressible things o f the self.
The self is the truest image o f God in which mankind is made because o f its intense privacy and yet its vivid generosity o f possibility.Its proliferate capacity for relationship, imagination and creativity is matched by its stubborn refusal to yield up its hidden heart.All stories are stories o f the self, reflecting the mundane and the magnificent, the intense and the diffident.No argument can suffice to establish the validity o f such a claim, since faith, at this point, is persuaded not by logical conclusiveness, but by a creative act o f imagination.Does deconstructing the self penetrate the sanctity o f the self?The discussion of the self finds interest largely within religious and phenomenal contexts; there have also been those like Hume who have denied the self a sensate location and have relegated it to the abstract and ineffable.In the Hindu tradition o f "That art thou" , the Brahman-Atman synthesis, the self and God are identified as one.In the Christian tradition, the self has been regarded as a nexus o f evil which must Koers 61 (4) 1996:511-520 The sense of.theintact and the deconstrnction o f the self: Story as redemptive mediation be surrendered to the Spirit o f Christ for the work o f redemption.St. Paul in his letter to the Romans attem pts to deal categorically with the self and finds that the position is w retched because o f the inability to choose conclusively either for good or for evil without the gracious intervention o f Christ.Zen teaching has it that the illusory boundaries o f the self are banished in the inarticulate experience o f Satori, the enlightenment to the obvious.
So while philosophy must find the word abstruse, and religious viewpoints offer a variety o f positions, literature signals the presence o f the self in m edias res, contemplating, reflecting and communicating.Noli me tangere is the hallmark not only o f human presence but also o f the questions put to the expression o f human presence.The difference is one o f style: while critical theory prowls and stalks, creativity dances, sings and plays.The sense o f the intact self is currently challenged by the imperative not only to contextualise but also textualise the self.But if the self is to be textualised, the discourse, w ords and linguistic clues are bound by rhetoric, the coherent and cohesive sense o f which is the irreducible mystique o f the self.The argument here is that the self is revealed when its story is told.Psychotherapists will have no fight with the statement that the self is highly and often unconsciously selective about telling its story, even to itself.The key issue here is that o f risk.Proven theory know s no risk: that is the precise point o f its scientific status.But this is not the methodology o f the forming self.The reified self is a mere caricature o f the self: the saved self is not the living, struggling self poised on the edge betw een preverbalisation and the declared, done and dead, no-more-excited self.The discussed self is not worth discussing and the analysed self is truly in need o f redemption.The story, the m ythos o f the self is not the self but the disappearance o f the self into the (spiritual) world which is the context o f the self.The mythos, the avenue o f escape, is the text, the linguistic signals o f the story which tells o f the trace o f the self.Thus the self is never the living, slipping and sliding self.The moment it is spoken o f it becomes the crucified self, in danger o f a bright-eyed and determined theory o f self.Killed off by discourse, it is better left dead, to await the resurrection o f a glimpsed recognition which honours the fact that the dead are beyond grasp.
The clear point to emerge from this attempt to allude to the unapproachable self is that the m ystertum o f the self and the m ysterium o f story are mutually implied.That human aw areness cannot be reduced to theoretical constructs does not imply that the margin o f experience between aw areness and spirituality is undiscussable.
For any amount o f fruitful or fruitless purposes, self, story, experience and spirituality may be discussed.But that is not the point.The point is that story is praxis, an indicator o f context and activation within context.To ask what the context o f story is, is to head directly for the limits o f language.On a theoretical basis, the more com prehensive approaches may well be found in the discourse o f cognitive anthropology, beginning with Lévi-Strauss (1973) and moving from there to contemporary writers such as M arshack (1972) or Bloch (1991).The purpose o f story is not to abstract but to change, in fundamental w ays, the typically human sense o f self.Ascribing such change to artistry, Padavano (1979:6)  Thus the hallmark o f effective story is irrevocable change within the conscious ness o f the individual.The essence o f story is the residue o f irrevocable trace, an amalgam o f thought, belief, mood and attitude.Although story may lead to intellectual and emotional conviction, it is not to be equated with conviction, since it is a praxis o f the imagination, which is independent o f logic.The question o f whether conviction is to be regarded as rational or irrational is pertinent at this point.The question may be answered in this way: since in formation is always incomplete, axiomatically, conviction must always involve premature closure.Closure, however, is a function o f rationality.Imagination know s nothing o f closure.Story does not convert, it merely changes.Story, as focus and vehicle o f change, eclipses the self at the intense risk o f the anomie o f impersonality.Thus the enigma o f the unconscious marriage between story and self defies definition and can only be expressed in the surprising movement o f the present.The philosophical issue is not the question o f priority o f existence or essence but the issue o f experience needing a mediating rubric.According to M arshack (1972:133) Stone Age man knew no discontinuity between explanation and story.The essential mbric o f explanation which story serves has not changed, although human mentality certainly has.The problem o f discussing contem porary story, within the fashionability o f post-modernism, is the problem o f change itself being so elusive that intellectual activity becom es a logjam, not because o f a lack o f impulse or movement, but because o f a proliferation o f subtle data.Story, however, does not take cerebral activity as a sole starting point.Organically constituted, story follows the geography o f the body, moving betw een aw areness and image, accountable to the intellect only on the basis o f accuracy o f sensate description.All else is mere intellectualism, which, as a science, is defiant o f the sense o f the intact, and can have no truck with w hat is essentially mystical.The sense o f self which is at stake here is not the consciously intact self, which is always false because o f necessarily premature closure, but the unconsciously intact self, recognised as such by the conscious self, and respected as such, because the story o f the apprehension by the conscious self o f the unconscious self is the story o f irrevocable change.How such change may be the meaning o f the redemption o f the self will be discussed in the next and final section.

Story as redemptive mediation
Put bluntly, story is an account o f the self by the self to the self.It is crucial to realise that the self is an artificial concept, referring to ontic relativity where boundaries between individual, other and community are blurred since reference to self is always creative as well as quasi-definitive.It is assumed that such an account is not done in a private language and is not to be reduced to a psychologism.Story and utterance not to be divorced.The theory o f condensed sub-vocalisation is relevant to the organic nature o f story, if story is to be rooted to the body, and not merely conceptualised as an abstracted series o f mental acts.
N arrating is nev er innocent and the narrative th at fram es a n o th er allow s the w riter to d ram atize the results o f the telling.A nd this no dou b t signals to the read er that the tale told can and should react on his ow n life: that literature is n o t inconsequential (B rooks, 1994:77-78).
If the dynamics o f the self adopt the roles o f w riter, reader and narrative, but escape the confines o f privacy by being subject to utterance, self-change becom es open to scrutiny and discussion.The point o f this section is to offer a point o f contact between such articulated change and spirituality.The reason for this is to test the sense o f privacy against the imperative o f ultimacy.If story is a product o f both the intact and the generous soul, it is the path tow ards the boundaries o f interpretation which are the basis o f value.Here language loses everything except aesthetic value.... is there possible experience pre-or n on-linguistic?If I w ere put to it I should argue that although m ost o f w hat enters experience is not m erely linguistic, w hatever enters experience does so in and w ith language, that in this sense w e inhabit the w orld linguistically.But even i f w e gran t that w e m ay experience som ething in the utter absence o f language: still, i f an experienced presen t is not sim ply a disasso ciated 'n o w ' but con tain s a vestige o f m em ory and a leaning into anticipation, th en an incip ien t narrative form w ill be im plicit in it, o f w hich n arrative language is the irreducible linguistic expression.H ow ever w e settle the qu estio n about non-linguistic experience, there is still an intim ate relation b etw een sto ry telling and the aesth etic form o f experience its e lf (C rites in W iggins, 1985:32).
The link between story and spirituality contains elements both o f poetics and aesthetics in the foundational quest for redemption o f awareness.Such redemp tion is not seen here as some kind o f quasi-theological abstraction, but as a coherent but rare intuition o f the dynamics o f vitalist depth.The vehicle o f language in this regard is not fruitful if used in a purely intellectualist way: the details o f spiritual awareness, teased out into story, offer not dogma but recognition o f individuality and singularity against the backdrop o f communality.The argument here is that it is precisely such recognition that is the closest understanding o f what story is.When one experiences the sense that one is known, to another, to oneself, even to the Divine, one is changed.W hen the therapeutic values o f story are served, not only individual aw areness but also communal aw areness is offered a moment o f irrevocable change, the essence o f which is potent generosity, the highway o f hope.It may not be denied that the zone between the writer and the reader is hazardous, and that misinterpretation is unavoidable.But this may be put down to immaturity o f spiritual formation rather than paucity o f meaningfulness.In any case, meaningfulness is no abstraction o f experience, but indeed, too detailed to be apprehended -let alone comprehended in a purely intellectualist way.The affirmation which is made here is that story and spiritual formation are co-dependent.Spiritual formation in this sense refers to that change which happens conjointly with utterance o f that which is unconscious or secret to the individual.In other words, that which is intact, that which may be deconstructed and that which is narrated have in common an unknown area o f potential revelation.This area is not only unknown but also unknowable since revelation is not epistemic but prophetic.H ere at last is the clear link between prophetic language and redemption.
Again, the basic argument is that story is concerned with change, and change in turn with individual awareness.The crucial issue is the narrative that expresses the change, in w ays which are both oblique and clear.W hereas the latter is accessible to the intellect, the former is organically shrouded in visceral experience.Story, the G estalt which encom passes the entire organic experience, portrays and hides the m ysterium but allows, within this paradox, endless possibility o f sequence and image.It is this possibility to which aw areness is called, and to declare in acts and utterances o f courage the realisation o f life in the created order.
It may be said, then, that story is that which mediates between the self and the world.In itself, story holds promise o f creation, but not without the risk that attends the creative act.Its redemptive action is implied in its metaphoric play and especially in its fluency o f value impact.The parables o f the N ew Testament are a case in point.It is instructive to note that the very incarnation o f the Divine life taught by means o f story.To hammer home the point, the story o f the crucifiction and resurrection is best approached not by resorting to classifications either o f fact or fiction, but by participation in the passion and promise o f the Divine love which is both revealed and hidden within a fathomless grace.
puts the matter thus: H ow do w e change the vision o f the people?It is love that art and religion have m ost in com m on.The artist convinces us o f the truth b y dealing w ith us holistically.A rtists try to m ake us feel the truth.G ood art gets the truth inside us on a level d eeper than the surface o f our m inds.O n this level, truth is m ost irresistible.T he m ind m ay not only resist the truth b u t m ay even accept it and keep it at a personal distance.L ogical co nvictions are not necessarily existential im peratives.T he artist m akes us nostalgic for the b eauty w e have m issed, the life w e have forfeited, the m eaning w hich som ehow eluded our grasp.A rt haunts us w ith the spectre o f a lost hum anity and bids us return to paradise.