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Article Excerpt
The narrative paradigm, explicated predominantly by Walter Fisher (1984; 1985; 1987), has spawned much research in the field of rhetoric. While many productive studies have come forth out of this research project, insightful criticisms and responses have also been volleyed in regard to potential weaknesses of this paradigm (Rowland, 1989; Turpin, 1998; Warnick, 1987). While many issues of narrative theory and practice have yet to be settled, an important limitation of the narrative paradigm is noticed by Kirkwood (1992), who voices the concern that it is too stringently aligned with conservative issues in regard to a rhetoric of possibility; instead of allowing for audiences to accept new stories that challenge their values, this paradigm seems to allow audiences the choice of accepting narratives that resonate ("ring true") with their existent values and beliefs.
A type of text that could potentially expand the narrative to include possibility and novelty, Indian philosophical narrative, has been granted little research space in the narrative paradigm. Research that has focused on ancient Indian rhetoric, a sub-category of eastern rhetoric, has largely eschewed focus on the narrative paradigm as a theoretical guide (Gangal & Hosterman, 1982; Kirkwood, 1987; 1989; 1990). While not absolutely unique to this culture, ancient Indian narratives frequently enshrine many didactic elements, myriad contradictions, and mythic traits that often confound and inspire western (1) audiences (Babbili, 1997; Matilal, 1992), offering an excellent resource for the expansion of narrative theory. These archaic religious/philosophical texts are increasingly making their way over into the non-eastern world; for instance, Feuerstein (1983) points out that the Bhagavad Gita is published in more than thirty languages and in more than a thousand individual editions; indeed, this Indian narrative is the second most translated book in the world after the Bible (Minor, 1982; 1986).
These types of works often enshrine "foreign" ideas and values, yet the western world's interest in them continues to grow. One can observe these Indian texts as functioning rhetorically in three distinct contexts (at minimum); they addressed audiences closer to their actual composition in ancient India, they continue to address Indian audiences immersed in the text's native Lebenswelt, and they can address audiences removed in time and culture from their origin. It is this last category that is of utmost importance for this article; what demands critical study is how such texts can become so popular and be sustained at a high rate of translation in the non-Indian world (Paine, 1998; Sharpe, 1985). They are offering western (non-Indian) audiences values and beliefs about the world that differ from received ideology, and as such, function in a rhetorical fashion. (2) Thus, critical reflection on how these narratives function is warranted as an extension to the narrative paradigm. The central concern is how these ancient (and foreign) texts can be accepted by western audiences and how they can consequently affect the audience's values and beliefs, especially given Fisher's reading of fidelity in narrative assessment.
This article will demonstrate one possible way that ancient Indian didactic texts (such as songs of praise, or "gitas"), can revise the current understanding of the narrative paradigm to allow for the introduction of new values and narratives to an audience. While texts from other cultures may also be employed in order to expand the narrative paradigm, these ancient Indian texts provide an important opportunity in their extreme combination of increasing popularity in the west, and their employment of contradiction and novel values. Following previous research on the Bhagavad Gita (Stroud, 2001; 2002), this inquiry utilizes the examples of the Avadhoota Gita and the Devi Gita to demonstrate the niche for possibility that can be delineated in narratives and their possible effects on a foreign audience. These texts are what I label as multivalent narratives; by enshrining coexisting and conflicting value structures within their narratives, they expose audiences to new values and ideas while not alienating them through extreme novelty. A value structure is a textual edifice, composed of various statements, that judges or pronounces certain actions and beliefs as "good," "desirable," "right," etc. Such a value structure is an important part of a narrative that is either accepted or rejected by audiences as offering good reasons for belief and/or action. In order to demonstrate and explain these concepts, it is first necessary to discuss the reasons why the narrative paradigm, as defended by Fisher (1987), seemingly precludes a rhetoric of the possible. After this exigence is exposed, proposed solutions to the challenge of possibility will be discussed, both from within the field of rhetoric and from related disciplines; these solutions, it will be noted, fail to cope with the mechanisms at work in the Indian didactic texts in question. Following this, some distinctions will be made between the meaning of multivalent narratives and polysemic texts. The selected Indian narratives will be analyzed, with implications being drawn as to how they function to expose their potential audiences to novel value structures and ideas. Poulakos (1984) ends his article on the Sophists and Aristotle with a call to explore the relatively unexamined practices of the Sophistic rhetoric of possibility; this inquiry answers that call, albeit with a focus on the possible within Indian narratives.
Problems with Narrative and Possibility
Fisher (1987; 1989) envisions his project of the narrative paradigm as a reaction against the dominant rational world paradigm that privileges logic over narrative forms of discourse. Discussing the basis for a theoretical rebellion against this paradigm of rationality was MacIntyre (1981), who indicated, "man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal" (p. 201). Taking this foundational link to human narration, Fisher (1984) argues that the dominant paradigm for human interaction, the rational world paradigm, was overly limiting and did not address all aspects of human communication. Thus, in Fisher's (1987) seminal work, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action, he proposes that human communication takes the form of a narrative or story that can be examined and criticized accordingly. Fisher conceptualizes this "narrative rationality" as being roughly equivalent to a neo-Kantian "form of experience"--he argues that all individuals and all cultures view communicative practice as a narrative. These narratives are stories or discourses that potentially contain good reasons to act and/or believe--as Fisher (1987) shows in his own analysis, this ranges from political messages to more traditional literary texts (including Death of a Salesman and The Great Gatsby). Thus, narrative rationality addresses how humans are motivated to change, modify, or strengthen their will to action and/or their beliefs toward some aspect of society. Even though Fisher (2000) is moving his research toward the ethical implications of narrative theory, his central idea of narrative has been and still is responsible for much research with the narrative paradigm, both in regard to theory and to critical practice (Bass, 1985; Deming, 1985; Lewis, 1995; Rosteck, 1992).
Fisher (1987) summarizes his narrative paradigm by drawing attention to its fundamental presuppositions:
(1) Humans are essentially storytellers. (2) The paradigmatic mode of human decision making and communication is "good reasons," which vary in form among situations, genres, and media of communication. (3) The production and practice of good reasons are ruled by matters of history, biography, culture, and character.... (4) Rationality is determined by the nature of persons as narrative beings. (p. 64)
Thus, narration is fundamentally linked to the ontology and practices of human society. Fisher continues by defining "narrative beings" and the ways that narratives are judged:
[they are identified by] their inherent awareness of narrative probability, what constitutes a coherent story, and their constant habit of testing narrative fidelity, whether or not the stories they experience ring true with the stories they know to be true in their lives. (p. 64).
It is important to note that this reading of narrative includes all types of communication--from political speeches to novels to philosophical dialogues, Fisher (1987) argues that the two criteria of narrative assessment are employed by any given audience in deciding whether a given message contains reasons for belief and/or action. It is on this foundation that Fisher develops his theory of narrative in all of its mature aspects, and through which problems concerning the rhetoric of the possible intrude.
Fisher's explication of the narrative paradigm and how individuals evaluate narratives seems to preclude new narratives from gaining a strong adherence from the audience. The audience seems to accept or reject narratives based upon their "ringing true" with the audience's past experiences, values, and beliefs. Indeed, individuals are said to judge a narrative based upon "what they perceive as the true and the just" (Fisher, 1987, p. 67, emphasis added). Here the important factor is the self-referential faculty of judgment exercised by the audience; the narrative is judged as being "good" or "bad" based upon what they believe is the case; hence, new possibilities and values may be screened a priori from adoption by the audience due to this de facto criterion of held beliefs. Fisher, explaining narrative fidelity in greater detail, summarizes this concept, indicating, "the principle of fidelity pertains to the individuated components of stories--whether they represent accurate assertions about the social reality and thereby constitute good reasons for belief or action" (p. 105). Again the criterion of judgment is seen to reside in the audience's conception of social reality; even if one assumes this conception is open to an "objective" evaluation by the audience member, this social reality will still be conditioned by the specific culture and lifeworld in which he or she finds himself or herself. Possibility in the form of foreign ideas and values is precluded by this aspect of the narrative paradigm; one's social reality will not contain many of the aspects that are important in foreign social realities, thus leading (under Fisher's line of thought) to a rejection of those novel ideas.
Fisher's (1987) process for judging fidelity and the values of a narrative also excludes novelty and possibility. The fourth step in Fisher's "logic of good reasons" is "the question of consistency: Are the values confirmed or validated in one's personal experience, in the lives or statements of others whom one admires and respects, and in a conception of the best audience that one can conceive" (p. 109)? This conception of fidelity is endemic to Fisher's theory and serves as a stumbling block for the introduction of novelty through narrative; the criterion is self-referential in regard to what; makes a story "good." The theory indicates that one examines his or her own life (or the lives of others one is familiar...
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