Ever since Richards proposed the concept of the “pseudo-statement,” the characteristics of literary language seem to have gained a relatively deep revelation. But so long as language is merely “statement,” even a “pseudo-statement,” it still remains entangled in the truth or falsity of the content of the statement, and can only be a tool of statement, a tool for communication and reference. This view of language at the same time means that literature can never, in the end, break free of the status of a tool of cognition or a tool of ideology. The speech-act theory Austin proposed completely subverts the traditional view of language, and also provides literary studies with a brand-new angle for re-examining literature and literary language. When our thinking shifts from discursive statement toward the discourse-act, the appearance of literature too undergoes an important change: literature is no longer merely a tool for cognizing reality or a tool of ideology; it itself becomes an act and an event, becomes the mode of human existence, becomes the human's spiritual home.
I
In How to Do Things with Words, Austin proposed the famous speech-act theory. He holds: to say is to do. To speak is not merely to say something; it is at the same time to perform a certain act. “Such as: to say something is to do something; in the process of saying something we are doing something; and even by saying something we do something.” (1) In Austin's view, performative discourse and constative discourse are hard to distinguish; there is no absolute standard of distinction between the two. The common situation is that one and the same sentence is often used to express two kinds of different discourse: it is both performative discourse and constative discourse. In the overall speech situation, the overall speech act is the only actual phenomenon, while statement and description are only two kinds among the many discourse-acts, and have no unique position within the discourse-act. Austin further subdivides the discourse-act into the “locutionary act,” the “illocutionary act,” and the “perlocutionary act.” He calls the act of “saying something”—complete, conforming to linguistic convention and having grammatical meaning—the “locutionary discourse-act”; in a specific context, the act this discourse-act performs by virtue of social “convention” he calls the “illocutionary discourse-act”; and the “perlocutionary discourse-act” refers to the fact that, after the speaker says something, it can usually also produce a certain influence on the feeling, thought, and behavior of the listener, the speaker himself, or others. As for the performative function of the different types of language, this is called “illocutionary force”; it does not refer to the content stated by the discourse, but to the force the speaker endows the discourse with in order to express an intention. Concerning whether a discourse can successfully perform a certain act, Austin proposed the following conditions: there exists a recognized, conventional procedure that can bring about a conventional effect; the discourse itself accords with this procedure; on a specific occasion, the specific persons and the specific situation must suit the requirements of the specific procedure; and this procedure must be carried out by all the participants correctly, completely, sincerely, and personally and seriously. He holds that whether a discourse can be successfully performed does not depend on truth or falsity, but on whether the felicity conditions are met, on whether the participants treat the discursive performance seriously. “If a performative discourse is uttered non-seriously—in situations such as stage dialogue, composing poetry, or personal monologue—then this performative discourse will, in a certain peculiar way, be hollow or void.” (2) Because literary discourse does not meet the above felicity conditions and lacks the principle, it cannot successfully do things with words; therefore, Austin excludes literary discourse from his theoretical horizon and devotes himself to the study of daily discourse.
Austin's way of expounding the speech-act theory is itself rather meaningful. On one hand, he holds that in a certain situation one and the same sentence simultaneously has the characteristics of both performative discourse and constative discourse, and that we cannot sharply separate the two types; on the other hand, when he begins to expound the speech-act theory, he again divides discourse into the performative sentence and the constative sentence and treats them separately, starting from the performative sentence to expound the doing-things-with-words act of discourse, and then gradually overturns the standard of distinction between the two kinds of discourse that he himself proposed, directly pushing the speech-act theory toward all discourse. This seemingly self-contradictory statement and unique mode of exposition contains Austin's profound understanding of the discourse-act. In fact, in the concrete process of doing things with words, the modes in which the locutionary act, the illocutionary act, and the perlocutionary act are connected with the discourse itself are different. For example, in the following performative sentence:
At the wedding, the bridegroom says: “I do (take this woman to be my lawful wife).” Its locutionary discourse-act is precisely the saying of this sentence; the act is directly and completely manifested through the discourse. At the same time as the bridegroom says this sentence, he also performs the illocutionary discourse-act: he makes a “reply” to the celebrant (or priest), makes a “promise” to the bride, and makes a “declaration” to all the wedding participants. On this specific occasion of the wedding, this act is utterly different from usual; it contains a sense of sanctity, responsibility, and happiness experienced as never so intensely before. Thereupon, this discourse-act, together with the wedding procedure, constitutes the act of marriage, and his identity also changes from this woman's lover into her husband. This is to say, the illocutionary act has a conventional illocutionary force; its performance must be based on context and social convention. The bridegroom's discourse-act not only moves himself but also fills the bride's heart with trust, happiness, and pride, and infects the other wedding participants, pushing the festive atmosphere to a climax. All of this, and so on, is the perlocutionary act. The locutionary act is inscribed in the discourse, while the illocutionary act is not necessarily completely inscribed in the discourse; it must simultaneously depend on context and social convention, and is a conventional act. As for the perlocutionary act, it can be obtained wholly or partly through non-discursive means, and it is also not conventional—it is not a conventional act. In the above example one can see that, from the locutionary act and the illocutionary act to the perlocutionary act, their inscription in the discourse decreases in turn, while the indeterminacy increases in turn. This also means that only by selecting a typical performative sentence can the discourse-act possibly be clearly analyzed as a whole, while the discourse-act contained in a general sentence—especially the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act—can hardly be given a complete, determinate interpretation directly from the literal meaning. Austin's interpretive strategy originates precisely from this.
On the relation between the discourse-act and discourse, Ricoeur also made an exposition. He holds that, just as language is realized in discourse, transcending itself as a system and realizing itself as an event, discourse too, by entering the process of understanding, transcends itself as an event and thereby becomes meaningful. The transcendence of the event by the help of meaning is a characteristic of discourse itself. It proves the intentionality of language, as well as the relation, within intentionality, between the intentional act and the intentional object. On this basis, Ricoeur, on the basis of Austin's analysis, regards the discourse-act as a hierarchical system distributed across three different levels and subordinate to the proposition. He holds that the locutionary discourse-act is externalized in the sentence as a proposition; only the propositional sentence can be recognized and re-recognized. It appears in the form of an expression, able to transmit its own meaning to others. Therefore, the locutionary discourse-act corresponds to the sentence structure, and can be displayed and recognized through the sentence. The illocutionary discourse-act can also be externalized through grammatical paradigms (various moods of emotion, such as the indicative mood, the imperative mood, and so on) and other procedures, which mark the force of the sentence's doing things with words and are thereby recognized. Appropriate syntactic marks constitute a marking-system that in principle makes possible the fixation of the illocutionary act and the illocutionary force. But the illocutionary act, after all, is another act different from the saying itself; for sentence-types other than the performative sentence, although the illocutionary act leaves marks on the discourse, it is often only some grounds, and not a direct, complete manifestation, and whether it can be successfully performed must also depend on context and convention. The perlocutionary act is the component most difficult to inscribe. In the perlocutionary act, the discursive aspect of the discourse is least; it is discourse as a stimulus. The discourse seems to operate in an energetic mode; it operates by directly influencing the feeling and emotional attitude of the interlocutor and others. The above three levels of discourse-act, together with writing, constitute a hierarchical relation: “Through the possibility of writing, the externalization of intention produces inscription; and the propositional act, the doing-things-with-words act, and the perlocutionary act, to an ever-lower degree, are susceptible to the influence of the externalization of intention.” To completely grasp the meaning of discourse, one cannot stop at the literal meaning, cannot attend only to discursive statement, but must attend to and understand the discourse-acts at all levels, regarding them as an integral system of acts. So Ricoeur says: “I give ‘meaning’ a broader connotation; it covers all the aspects and levels of the externalization of intentionality.” (3)
When the theory of the discourse-act is introduced into the field of literary study, it at the same time gives us an important enlightenment: since the meaning of discourse is built on the basis of the system of discourse-acts, then, if we explain the meaning of literary discourse merely on the basis of the literal sense of the discourse or by valuing only the meaning-expressing act, we are bound to abridge and distort the system of discourse-acts, and its illocutionary discourse-act and perlocutionary act are then often partly missing or wholly omitted, becoming the “residue” of interpretation and excluded from the generation of meaning. To completely possess the meaning of literature, one must plunge into the system of discourse-acts, follow the unfolding, interweaving, and mutual action of discourse-acts, savor them carefully, and listen attentively to apprehend the mystery within. In this way, we also enter the domain of literary hermeneutics.
II
Here, what must first be solved is: can the discourse in the literary fictional world successfully perform a discourse-act, and how does it perform a discourse-act? Indeed, the commands, promises, bets, verdicts, gifts, and other performative discourse in literary works have no real performative ability; they are, just as Searle says, a kind of “pretending” or “imitating” discourse-act, unable to be effectively performed in the real world. But this does not show that literary discourse therefore loses the ability to perform acts. We should, aimed at the concrete use of discourse in literature, distinguish what acts, after all, literary discourse can perform, and under what conditions these acts are successfully performed.
Because literature is built on the basis of human experience—although as an imagined fictional world it is utterly different from the real world—it also refers to the social convention of the real world, and constructs the literary fictional world by following social convention. Otherwise, literature loses its credibility and intelligibility. From this angle, within the literary fictional world, performative discourse such as commands, promises, bets, verdicts, and gifts can likewise effectively perform discourse-acts by reference to social convention. For example, the protagonist in Ivan Bunin's story “Zakhar”—that tall, sturdy “genuine Russian” Zakhar—once he says “let's do as you say” and agrees to a preposterous bet (to drink three liters of vodka within one hour), has already made a promise to the others, and with his discourse constitutes a “contract.” Under the egging-on and teasing of the bystanders, he drinks three liters of vodka in one go, gets so drunk that he can no longer control himself, and finally loses his own life. It is precisely Zakhar's acceptance of the bet and the bystanders' discursive provocation that together brew a tragedy. These discourse-acts are effective for the characters and the world of the work, and become an important impetus driving the development of the story. Only, for the human living in the real world, including the reader in real life, they have no direct effect. Because the reader lives in the real world, the above discourse-acts act only upon the fictional world in which they themselves are located, and cannot transcend the fictional world to effectively enter the real world. However, although these discourse-acts lack direct effectiveness for the reader, the reader still views and understands the discourse-acts within the fictional world by reference to social convention, expecting them to be effectively performed in the fictional world.
For the reader, the performativity of literary discourse exerts action on a most important level: this is what Genette calls literary discourse performing the act of “producing a fictional work.” (4) Literary discourse, with its own act, declares to the reader: to construct a literary fictional world, while at the same time inviting the reader to imagine this world together with the discourse. It is precisely the constructiveness of the literary discursive performance that opens literary imaginative activity, leading the reader into the literary fictional world full of novelty and surprise. On one hand, literary discourse, as the act of declaring the construction of a fictional world, summons the reader to unfold imagination and jointly participate in literary fictional activity. On the other hand, discourse also, with illocutionary force, to some degree modulates the way the reader participates in the literary fictional world, modulating the relation between reader and the literary fictional world, the reader's position in the fictional world, the distance between reader and the various characters of the work, and so on, so as to obtain a specific reading effect. When the reader is attracted by literary discourse, enters the literary fictional world, and lives in this world, the commands, promises, verdicts, gifts, and other discourse-acts within the literary fictional world begin to constitute a direct or indirect influence on him. Because, while the reader lives in the literary fictional world, the acts and events occurring before his eyes are closely related to him; he is attracted, influenced, and moved by the various acts and events, and even participates in these acts and events, personally experiencing, viewing, and undergoing them.
Contrary to this, if the reader breaks off cooperation with the above literary discourse-acts and no longer jointly participates in literary fictional activity, then the literary fictional world shrinks, and all the other possibilities are thereby canceled. The performance of the various literary discourse-acts must take the construction of the fictional world as its premise. This is to say, the act of literary discourse constructing the fictional world is the most fundamental discourse-act of literary activity; only when this discourse-act exerts action, the reader responds to the summons of this act, participates in the construction of the literary fictional world, and lodges in the literary fictional world, can the other discourse-acts be truly effectively performed and constitute a substantial influence on him. When the reader finishes reading and returns to the real world, although this influence is somewhat diluted by the change of environment, it still, because the literary experience has stamped a mark on his heart, influences his thought and behavior to varying degrees, becoming the impetus driving him to participate in social practice. It must be pointed out that herein there exists a transformation between two different worlds (the literary fictional world and the real world), and what connects the two worlds is the reader and the discourse itself. The change in the relation between reader and discourse causes the change in the mode of the discourse-act, and also leads to the transformation between the two worlds. The reader's aesthetic emotion originates from the literary fictional world, and the response it arouses can only be psychic and imaginative; once the reader wants to make an immediate practical response, he must return to the real world, return to the real body. At this point, the boundary of the two worlds restricts him and inhibits his real behavior. The boundary between the literary fictional world and the real world is precisely the important mechanism by which the appreciation process of the literary work establishes “aesthetic psychic distance,” and also the transitional bridge from aesthetic appreciation toward ethical practice.
Since, in the literary fictional world, literary discourse can perform discourse-acts in its specific way, including the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act, then literary interpretation cannot stick only to discursive statement, but should grasp the system of discourse-acts as a whole.
III
In a literary work, literary discourse is a continually-occurring, intricately-interwoven dynamic system of discourse-acts; it tells us soul-stirring “events,” constructs a colorful “world,” a literary fictional world full of vitality; at the same time, it exercises illocutionary force, inviting the reader to jointly participate and guiding the way the reader engages with the literary event and the literary world. Literary reading and interpretation are precisely the activity in which the reader coordinates with the discourse-act, follows the unfolding of discourse, jointly constructs events, experiences events, creates the world, immerses himself in this world, and experiences meaning. This is precisely the way modern hermeneutics interprets the meaning of a work. Viewing literary-meaning interpretation from the angle of discourse-act theory naturally knocks open the door of the discipline of modern hermeneutics; and modern hermeneutics, in turn, provides the possibility for us to grasp literary discourse and its system of discourse-acts as a whole. In the field of literary study, the theory of the discourse-act and modern hermeneutics are inwardly connected, mutually supplementing and mutually illuminating each other. This method of literary interpretation also resembles the traditional path by which ancient Chinese scholars interpreted literary meaning.
Traditional Chinese literary study, on one hand, values textual collation, philological verification, and the investigation of sources and origins; for the language and its written forms that have already been fixed, it has made, with painstaking effort, extremely deep inquiry and obtained quite considerable results. On the other hand, toward the interpretation of the meaning of a work, it holds a cautious attitude, avoiding arbitrary far-fetched interpretation and hasty conclusions; rather, it stresses repeated recitation and immersed apprehension, and once it suddenly attains understanding and has it clear in the heart, it only goes so far as to comment in a few words. This mode of interpretation is precisely based on the apprehension of the complexity of discourse. The literary text, as a linguistic formation, exists objectively, has already been fixed by writing, and can naturally be subjected to collation, verification, and investigation. But from the angle of the literary discourse-act, it is again fluid and changing; the discourse-acts continually unfold, conflict, adjust, and gather, continually generate and suddenly vanish, hard to grasp, indeterminate, ineffable—and this determines the uniqueness of the mode of literary-meaning interpretation: it cannot make rigid prescriptions by cognitive means, but can only, through chanting and recitation, follow the unfolding of the discourse-act, concentratedly experience the literary event, and savor and apprehend that endlessly-flavored realm of meaning.
Gadamer says: “Poetry does not describe or signify a being, but opens up for us the world of the divine and of the human. The statement of poetry is speculative only when it is not the copying of an already-existing reality, not the reproduction of the appearance of the species (Species) in the order of essence, but the manifestation of a new appearance of a new world in the imaginative medium of poetic feeling… to take the words of poetry as the intensification of daily conversation… to take linguistic expression (Zur-Sprache-kommen) as the true process of the language-event—then we thereby prepare the ground for hermeneutic experience.” (5) Literary discourse, as a unique act, has as its main purpose not the copying of or reference to the already-formed real world, but mainly the constructing, with words and events, of a linguistic world, a linguistic world interwoven with discourse-acts, full of discursive clashes, and conjuring up novel events and appearances. This world, for the human, is both novel and steady; it is fully free, is originally the human's home of existence, and opens up for the human's existence an infinitely vast space of possibility. From this angle, the process of literary discourse creating the fictional world is precisely the “sacred event” that truly belongs to the human.
When we regard discourse as a tool of statement, discourse is always entangled with reality, closely or distantly, always intending, in this or that way, to refer to reality, and the evaluation of discourse is often a judgment of truth and falsity. The theory of the discourse-act subverts the traditional view of language and lets us see another important face of discourse that has been concealed: “Discourse is constituted by signs; but what discourse does is not only to use these signs to determinately refer to things. It is precisely this ‘not only’ that makes discourse the irreducible element of language and discourse; it is precisely this ‘not only’ that we should display and describe.” (6) The “not only” that Foucault speaks of, transcending the sign's determinate reference to things, is precisely the fruit of the discourse-act. The unfolding of the discourse-act generates infinite opportunities and infinite possibility; it no longer goes to fish up those dead linguistic concepts, no longer binds itself to existent things, but continually overflows, breaks through, generates, and renews, leaving concept and thing to create a living discursive world and to seek its own spiritual home. This is also the reason Foucault calls discourse “discursive practice.” The theory of the discourse-act lets us realize: “To understand a text is not to discover the inert meaning contained in the text, but to reveal the possibility of existence indicated by the text.” (7) At the same time, we also see: when people's focus of attention shifts from “discursive statement” toward the “discourse-act,” the method of literary study also cannot but undergo a fundamental change accordingly, realizing the transformation from “epistemology” to “ontology.” Because the relation, implied by discursive statement, between discourse and reality hints to the researcher to investigate the reality that discourse represents, and to go on to cognize and evaluate reality; while the discourse-act poses a broader demand to the researcher: no longer merely sticking to the literal meaning of discourse, and no longer merely focusing on the reality that discourse represents, or how, after all, discourse represents reality (that is, ideological character), but first of all to experience events and construct the world together with the discourse-act. Thereupon, the behavioral mode of discourse becomes the mode of human existence; the world constructed by discourse becomes the human's spiritual home; and the understanding of discourse and the world it constructs becomes precisely an exploration of the possibilities of the human's own existence.
Here, there exists a paradox: when we “read” a literary work, the entire system of discourse-acts unfolds, and the constructiveness of discourse is often in the dominant position; it invites the reader to participate in constructing the fictional world of the work, while at the same time drawing the reader into the experience of the fictional world. But when we “study” a literary work, viewing the work's discourse with an objective, detached attitude, the system of discourse-acts dissolves; the illocutionary discourse-act and the perlocutionary act are distorted or lost; the activity of discourse constructing the fictional world can no longer be formed or is interrupted; while the statement-character and reference-character of discourse again occupy the foreground position; discourse no longer exerts an integral action as a system of acts, and often only the discursive statement and its semiotic characteristics remain. This is precisely the trap of which the interpretation of a work's meaning must beware. “To possess aesthetic experience means to pass through the domain of cognition and enter the domain of force.” (8) The interpretation of literary meaning must be built on literary reading and its “construct,” because literary meaning is generated precisely at the moment of reading-experience.
IV
Since the behavioral mode of discourse is precisely the mode of human existence, then what kind of existential possibility, after all, does literary discourse provide for the human? It should be said that this is a marginalized mode of existence, and also an idealized mode of existence.
When literature disparages the dominant position of discursive statement and strengthens the constructiveness and illocutionary force of the discursive performance, the discursive activity becomes more complex and more unstable. The shift of focus and the transformation of intention between the performativity and constructiveness of discourse and its statement-character and reference-character also become more flexible. On one hand, “literature is the expression of doing things with words; that is, the word operates in its own way, regardless of what the writer's intention is.” (9) It unfolds the discourse-act, tells the literary event, and constructs the literary fictional world. In the process of discourse constructing the fictional world of the work, the relation between discourse and the real world is temporarily suspended, and its referential function is interrupted. The reference of literary discourse “is broken off from the reference of daily language. Through fiction and poetry, a new possibility of being-in-the-world is opened up within daily reality.” (10) In the literary discursive world, the human both belongs to the discourse-act and possesses the discourse-act; human and discourse mutually dialogue and mutually arouse, mutually act and mutually influence, mutually generate and mutually fuse. The human participates in the activity of discourse constructing the world, while at the same time dwelling in and roaming this discursive world, freely living in this literary fictional world jointly created by human and discourse.
On the other hand, the literary discourse-act does not discard discourse's statement and reference to the real world. No matter what kind of world literary discourse constructs—even an aestheticist or surrealist or magical or absurd one, for example Mallarmé's “Sea Breeze,” Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, and so on—it can never, in the end, strip away the right of discourse to state and refer to reality. So Ricoeur further says: “In the metaphorical discourse of poetry, referential ability is combined with the disappearance of daily referential activity; the enlightening creation of fiction is precisely the path of redescription: it combines the manifestation of reality, expressed by language, with creation.” (11) The act of literary discourse constructing the fictional world temporarily suspends the daily reference of discourse; however, it thereby provides the possibility of regaining a new referential goal and a new referential mode, which Ricoeur calls “metaphorical reference.” Then, when discourse re-states and refers to the real world, the relation between human and discourse changes again. The human transcends the activity of constructing the discursive world, separates from the literary fictional world, and begins again, through discourse and its constructs, to state and refer to the real world, to cognize and evaluate the real world; and at this point, the human himself has also already taken a foothold in reality. The whole literary reading process is full of the transformation between two worlds, namely the literary fictional world and the real world. This means: in literary discursive activity, the human both lives in the literary fictional world and lives in the real world; the human is constantly crossing between the two worlds. Therefore, the human in fact lives at the boundary of the two worlds, simultaneously possessing the two worlds. The complexity and changeability of the discourse-act provide the human with the most diverse existential possibilities and the most open horizon of life.
Just as discursive statement and reference are generally conceptual activities that appeal to the human's consciousness and reason, the illocutionary act and the perlocutionary act of discourse are often non-phrasal and non-conceptual; they constitute an illocutionary force, and therefore can directly appeal to the human's heart, emotion, and the unconscious. Throughout the literary discursive activity, the human lodges at the boundary of consciousness and the unconscious, of reason and the non-rational; all his psychic content—including consciousness and the unconscious, reason and emotion—is fully mobilized, excavated, and drawn into the literary discursive activity, into the creation of the fictional world and the understanding of real meaning. If the illocutionary force that the literary discourse-act has draws the human into the literary fictional world, lets him live within it and be intoxicated in it, the human then opens his heart to receive the favor and emotion bestowed on him by the discursive world, deeply experiencing the events he undergoes and all he faces; then, the statement and reference of discourse again awaken the human's reason, re-endowing literature with the cognitive function and the critical function. And the literary discourse-act's opening of the human's heart and arousing of the heart's force precisely provide the precondition for the opening of the real world—this is also what Heidegger called “the opening of the earth” and “the manifesting of truth.”
The unique relation in which the performativity and constructiveness of literary discourse mutually entangle with its statement-character and reference-character determines the marginal nature of literary activity. Whether author or reader, one lives precisely between the literary fictional world and the real world, between the unconscious state and the conscious state, between sensibility and reason, between experience and cognition, between emotion and thought, between creation and evaluation; it is the transformation and interweaving of various modes and states of activity, a continual transition and boundary-crossing. Literary discursive activity creates for the human the most rich and varied being-in-the-world, creates an ideal existence that comprehensively possesses the human himself and realizes the possibilities of the self.
Abrams points out: “Our use and understanding of language is not a science but a practice.” (12) The performativity and constructiveness of literary discourse mutually interweave and transform with its statement-character and reference-character, continually changing and coordinating the relation between human and discourse and the world, constituting relations of belonging and appropriation while also creating distanciation. This is precisely the dialectical relation of belonging, appropriation, and distanciation in the interpretive process that Ricoeur speaks of. In literary discursive activity, while the human belongs to and possesses the discourse-act, and belongs to and possesses the literary fictional world, he creates various kinds of “distanciation”: the first is that a distanciation is constituted between the fictional world created by the discourse-act and the real world. For the real world, the literary fictional world is always “another” world that has been transformed and recast, an artificial, unreal world of otherness. The second is that a distanciation is also constituted between the human's mode and state of existence in the fictional world and his mode and state of existence in the real world. The literary world, as an imagined fictional world, gives the human an ideal free existence; this mode of existence differs from the human's determined, already-formed historical existence. The human should rightly possess the two kinds of experience—real and unreal, mutually connected yet mutually different—and must supplement, contrast, criticize, and fuse these two kinds of experience, so that the human becomes a complete, sound human. The third is that, when discourse is in the activity of statement and reference, a distanciation is again constituted between the human and the discourse itself. The human no longer belongs to or possesses the discourse together with it, but pulls a distance away from the discourse, taking discourse as a tool to represent and refer to the real world. “The concept of distanciation and the concept of belonging are, in this sense, dialectically paired: that is, through the distanciation-relation that fluctuates between far and near, we belong to a certain historical tradition. Interpretation is precisely making the far (in time, geography, culture, and spirit) become near.” (13) In the complex, changeable literary discursive activity, it is precisely this continually-forming belonging, appropriation, and distanciation that jointly open up the path for understanding.
V
Literary discourse as a written text is usually silent; it quietly awaits the reader's arrival. Only the reader endows it with life and restarts the discourse-act. It should be said that each reading of a literary work is a re-saying, the re-generation and unfolding of the discourse-act in the “present.” From this angle, literary discourse as an act is always present, here-and-now; it can only be revived at the moment the reader opens the book to read, performing its own act along with the progress of the reading activity, carrying out a live performance and exercising its present power. This present-ness and now-ness of the literary discourse-act provide a profound root for the “contemporaneity” of the literary work.
Gadamer once discussed the problem of aesthetic contemporaneity. He holds that the peculiar existence of the art-work cannot be split from its presentation; it produces the unity and selfhood (Selbigkeit) of structure only in its presentation, and the presentation of the work can only occur in the here-and-now of the appreciator's “personal participation,” in the here-and-now of the appreciator's viewing; no matter how remote the source of the work, it begins to present only in the here-and-now of viewing, and appeals to the appreciator. Therefore, Gadamer says: “Between the art-work and its viewer there exists an absolute contemporaneity; although historical consciousness continually strengthens, this contemporaneity still continues to exist irresistibly. The reality and the presentational force of the art-work cannot be confined to its original historical horizon, in which horizon the viewer is the contemporary of the author. It seems exactly the opposite: it is precisely by relying on artistic experience that the art-work has its own existence. Only in a limited sense does the art-work retain its own historical origin within itself.” (14) Because literature is a linguistic art-work, it is not piled up from verbal concepts, but is a world constructed by the literary discourse-act; the present-ness and now-ness of the discourse-act are precisely the root of the contemporaneity of the literary work.
But in narrative literary works, the situation thereby becomes very complex. Generally speaking, the novel tells of “past” events; its “narrative time is past, except for the presentation of dialogue and external and internal monologue.” (15) Because the events the narrator tells can only be events that have already occurred before his telling and are known to him; otherwise, he has no qualification and cannot narrate. Once the narrated “past” event and the “present” narration coincide in time, then there occurs what Mark Currie calls “narrative shipwreck,” and no further narration is possible. Ricoeur, in turn, reveals the temporal characteristic of narrative from another angle. He says: “Narrative excludes the present tense, the future tense (the present of the future), and the perfect tense (the present of the past)”; “all narrative, even narrative of the future, narrates the non-real, as if the non-real had already become past.” (16) Ricoeur further analyzes the cause of the temporal characteristic of narrative and points out that the fundamental reason lies in the fact that these tenses orient toward a relaxed attitude. Telling of the “past” separates the narrated world from the environment surrounding the narrator and the listener and from the real events they directly attend to, thereby creating a relaxed attitude. This also provides an important condition for creation and appreciation.
In this way, conflicting temporal relations are created across the level of discursive statement, the level of the discourse-act, and the level of narrative time. On the level of discursive statement, both content and form are inscribed with the historical mark of the specific age in which the author wrote the work. What the author attends to, the content he states, and what mode of statement and what linguistic form he uses, all inevitably bear the imprint of the writing time (the past time), prompting the reader to trace back that bygone historical moment. But from the level of the discourse-act, the discourse-act occurs along with reading; it is an act unfolding right in the present, with now-ness. The discourse-act occurring in the present helplessly draws the reader into the literary fictional world being constructed before his eyes, intoxicating the reader in the experience of this very moment. The empathy occurring between reader and the world of the work, the mutual fusion of reader and the characters of the work, all determine that the act of discourse constructing the literary fictional world necessarily occurs in the present of the reader's reading, is the present act in which the reader personally participates at this moment. And what narrative tells is again often the past. It pushes the reader toward the past, pulling a distance away from reality and the present, breaking direct connection, creating temporal and spatial distanciation. Moreover, on the grammatical level (such as verb tense, mood, adverbs, and so on), the author can also create another temporal characteristic. Therefore, the multiple temporalities constitute the extremely complex temporal distanciation of literary reading and the tension formed thereby. If the present-ness and now-ness of the discourse-act, with their enormous illocutionary force, attract the reader to personally experience the literary event, to live with passion in the literary fictional world, dispelling temporal distanciation, thereby making the reader's experience intimate and profound, then the historicity inscribed on the level of discursive statement strengthens historical consciousness, intending to make the reader trace back that specific historical situation and regain a historical foothold; while although the level of narrative time also stresses the past and creates temporal distanciation, it is often mainly not for returning to the historical situation—on the contrary, it intends to pull a distance away from reality, to wash off the utilitarian aim that has stained the self. These different temporalities at different levels continually change the reader's existential state, change the reader's relation to the discourse-act, the fictional world of the work, and the historical situation. Sometimes the reader fuses with the discourse-act and the fictional world of the work; sometimes he pulls a distance away from all this and stands outside it; sometimes the reader transcends real relations and the historical situation; sometimes he returns to history and strives to restore historical memory. In this complex, changeable temporal relation, in the transformation between fusion and distanciation, between dwelling in history and transcending history, literary interpretation finds the most favorable conditions for itself.
VI
Rosenstock-Huessy says: “Speech is the mother of the human… Language itself is maternal, the womb of time, in which the human is created and continually re-created… all true saying re-shapes both the listener and the speaker… it makes our heart itself become a creature… the occurrence of all meaningful events comes from speech… only in a saying to the soul that combines universal validity with the concreteness of the here-and-now situation does the soul awaken.” (17) Language is the mother that gestates the human; the human lives in language as he lives in air, and cannot be apart from language for a moment. Language is shaping the human at every moment. But language's shaping of the human lies mainly not in its semiotic character, not in the linguistic sign-system's distinguishing and delimiting the human's world and the human's position in the world, but in the concrete use of language, in the fact that discourse is an act that constitutes the human's discursive practice. It is precisely the human's discourse-act that effectively organizes and improves human social practice, and goes on to effectively change the relation between human and world. Through the discourse-act, the human shapes the human's world, while at the same time shaping the human himself.
Then, how, after all, does the discourse-act shape the human? On this, Benveniste made a good exposition. In Problems in General Linguistics, Benveniste points out that the human gains subjective experience precisely through speech activity, and establishes himself and constructs subjectivity in speech activity. He says that the speaker always uses a deictic word “I” to refer to the self that is speaking; at the same time, each time this stating-“I” discourse-act is re-produced, for the stater it is a new act; it each time makes the speaker enter a new moment, enter a different construction of situation and discourse, enter the different relations of “I” and “you” and “he.” This “I” is precisely the center-point at which I construct the world; from “I” I measure and dominate time and space, make evaluations according to the nearness or distance of the object to “I” or “you,” establish a coordinate-system of time and space, and determine a position for each object, while also determining the self accordingly. In this way, the continually-proceeding discourse-act again and again arouses “I,” while also, explicitly or implicitly, setting up “you” and “he,” and bringing “I” into new time, new situation, and new relations. So, concerning the personal pronoun, Benveniste says: “So long as one person utters them, he takes them up, and the pronoun ‘I’ changes from an element of the paradigm into a unique appellation, and each time produces a new person. This is the realization of an essential experience; people cannot imagine a language lacking the tool to express this essential experience.” (18) Through the discourse-act, the human gains essential experience, gradually establishes the world of “I” and the position of “I,” establishes the boundary by which “I” is both distinguished from and connected with “you” and “he,” and establishes the irreducible, incommensurable individual existence of “I.” One may say that anyone exists, in an individual way, as an “I” counterposed to “you” and “he”—and this fact reflects a linguistic correspondence-structure inherent in discourse.
There is a great distinction between literary reading and daily discursive activity. The daily discourse-act is often face-to-face communication, while what literary reading faces is the text, and not another living interlocutor. The so-called “dialogue” between reader and work in fact has only a metaphorical sense. However, even so, we can still regard literary reading as a dialogue, only that this dialogue has its uniqueness. The discourse of the literary text is originally silent; the discourse-act must be started by the reader to occur, and must have the reader's cooperation to unfold and construct the literary world; therefore, the literary discourse-act does not simply belong to the discourse itself—it is at the same time an act in which the reader participates and cooperates. The reader starts the literary discourse-act, while the literary discourse summons the reader's cooperation. The literary discourse-act is mutually acted upon, mutually adapted, mutually generated, and jointly unfolded by reader and the discourse of the work. As Mark Currie says: “Narrative and narrative reading are in a mutually-dialogic relation; the two mutually depend on each other—neither with you nor without you (nec tecum nec sine te). They also seem to be sewn together, unable to be torn apart or separated. Narrative cannot speak for itself; it needs reading to speak for it, and reading is forever a rewriting. But reading cannot completely freely interpret the text, cannot say whatever it pleases. Reading always sways between the two poles of objectivity and subjectivity. Reading creates narrative, and reading is likewise created by narrative.” (19) From this angle, literary reading, rather than being a dialogue, is better called the game that Gadamer holds it to be. The reader entering reading, that is, beginning a game according to the rules of the literary discourse-act, is both a participant in the game, immersed in the game, and at the same time a bystander, quietly viewing the whole game-performance.
As a participant in literary activity, the reader deeply plunges into the literary fictional world, and may fuse with a certain character of the work, dwelling in this character's position to experience events, undergo events, share its sorrows and joys, and associate, dialogue, conflict, and reconcile with the other characters in the fictional world. As a bystander, the reader stands at the edge of the literary fictional world, quietly viewing all that occurs in this world, and this bystander again often can hardly avoid the influence of the narrator. Because the narrated events, situations, and objects of the work are in the reader's foreground position, while the narrator himself is in the background position; when the narrator is relatively stable, and there is no metanarration deliberately stressing the narrator and the narrative act, the narrator easily becomes unconscious, and the reader is unwittingly substituted into the narrator's position, viewing directly from the narrator's angle. Both roles of participant and bystander are concentrated in the single reader; they mutually fuse and continually sway from one pole to the other, and this change is always, to some degree, modulated by the specific discourse-act. For example, the concise, vivid, forceful description of Lu Xun's story “Storm in a Teacup” creates a sense of being-on-the-scene that lets the reader view as if personally present. But the humorous and cold discourse of the work, while telling us the story, also, with illocutionary force, maintains the distance between reader and the world of the work, letting the reader be more a bystander of the events than a participant who personally experiences them. Moreover, the third-person narrative the work adopts also, with a detached attitude, forcefully aids this reading effect, and makes the reader unconsciously, from the narrator's perspective, look down upon the tragicomedy enacted by the multitude in the novelistic world and discern the bad roots in them. The discursive style of Yu Dafu's story “Late-Blooming Cassia” is utterly different; that emotion-overflowing discourse like flowing water and the first-person internally-focalized narrative technique both, with enormous force, draw the reader into the literary fictional world, even making the reader fuse with the “I” to personally experience and undergo, deeply infected by the emotion of the work. Faulkner's story “The Bear,” in turn, perceives the world through the protagonist, a boy, Isaac McCaslin; that rugged, unbridled narrative full of the breath of the wilderness and the numinous draws the reader into the realm in which human and nature are blended into one, letting the reader be strongly attracted by the protagonist, to the point of fusing with him and fusing with nature, living nakedly in this great forest. But on the other hand, the work also has a detached, hidden narrator, who from time to time refers to this protagonist as “he”; this again re-disassembles the reader from the protagonist, disassembles him from the world the protagonist perceives, creates a distanciation among reader, protagonist, and the world of the work, and pulls the reader back to the bystander's position, to the position the narrator occupies, constituting a multiple horizon. In the reading process, the reader wanders between participant and bystander, between narrator and narrated, between self and other. In short, the discursive style and narrative strategy of the literary work all, with illocutionary force, modulate the way the reader enters the literary fictional world, modulate the reader's role-transformation among participant and bystander, narrator and narrated, self and other, and adjust the reader's being-in-the-world, thereby influencing the whole reading process and reading effect.
“All human experience, whether active or passive, is in essence thoroughly ambiguous. This ambiguity originates from the fundamental finitude and historicity of our existence.” (20) From this angle, literary discursive activity is an extremely important supplement to daily discursive activity. The extremely complex mode of action of the literary discourse-act makes it possible for the reader to change the relatively stable position of “I” and the individuality of “I” established by daily discursive activity, to break through individual self-centeredness, to let the reader transform into another individual—a character or narrator in the fictional world, an “other”—and to stand on the other's standpoint, viewing, experiencing, and thinking everything from the other's angle and in the other's way. This greatly expands the human's mode of existence, provides the human with infinitely diverse existential possibilities, and thereby re-shapes the human's self. Just as in the “enlarged mode of thought” that Hannah Arendt proposed, literary discursive activity strengthens the communicative understanding between human and human, strengthens the human's reflective understanding of the self, and makes it possible for everyone to possess a broad, generous heart that embraces many others.
In The Consequences of Enlightenment, Cascardi says: “In hermeneutics, the human demands truth but is given a sign; when the human again demands to replace this sign with truth, he is given yet another sign; in fact, it seems the sign is ‘always already’ in the position of replacing truth. Thereupon, hermeneutics, in a dialectical way, makes the human attain this idea: truth itself is a sign, or what Nietzsche described as a ‘mobile army of metaphors.’” (21) When language is regarded merely as a sign, the human indeed cannot break free of this lamentable cycle. But in fact, besides the semiotic character, language is at the same time a system of acts, whose concrete use is precisely the unique discursive practice; it modulates the relation between human and reality, taking the discourse-act as the lead to make the human approach reality, attempting various ways of engaging with reality and opening up truth. Likewise, when we combine the theory of the discourse-act with literary hermeneutics, we will also open up a new path for exploring truth and display a new world.