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1 Self-Consciousness, Embodiment, and the Narrativizing Self N o t e s 1 Self-Consciousness, Embodiment, and the Narrativizing Self 1 . Fitzgerald critiques contemporary metaphysics and argues for physiological psychology as a basis for future metaphysics. 2 . Other key meditations on this methodological issue include James 1884, Dewey 1886, Bain 1893, and Ladd 1913. 3 . Rick Rylance offers an excellent account of associationism in Victorian Psychology and British Culture, 1850–1880. 4 . I n Popular Fiction and Brain Science in the Late Nineteenth Century, Ann Stiles describes the biological determinism of late-nineteenth-century neurology, particularly in relation to cerebral localization. Stiles explores how selected Gothic romances reacted to this determinism. 5 . By 1903, Ladd felt that psycho-physical parallelism had been dominant “a decade or two ago” (374). He emphasized the complexity of the stream of con- sciousness, and emphasizes a “real dynamical connexion” between “observed changes, produced by other things upon the thing-like body, [and] . changes in self-conscious states” (376). 6 . Others wondered in the pages of MIND , “Is Bergson’s Philosophy Monistic?” (Radhakrishnan 332). 7 . Chapter 3 of this study features and extended discussion of Joyce’s engagement with Bergson. See pages 79–80. 8 . Behaviorism, which became the dominant theoretical approach in American psychology, rejected introspection (and the problem of perspectives) altogether. As a methodology, behaviorism has infamous limitations while also providing some useful insight. 9 . The standard analogue of this is from chemistry: when you combine carbon atoms in a certain way, you get coal; in another, diamond; in still another, graphite. In this view, the properties of coal, diamond, and graphite could not be predicted by the properties of the atom. 196 Notes 10 . That is, how does this image correspond to or differ from the accumulated generic image, and what causal logic might reconcile them as part of the same framework? 11 . In its implication of a hierarchical, linear developmental arc from embodi- ment into abstraction, Ward’s model is reductive of experience. He does not consider the implications of his observation that higher-level abstraction is continually influenced by the organic sensations. He does not trace out the instability implicit in his “purely formal notion of a subject or pure ego” beyond the bounds of self-consciousness. He does not link the inchoate nar- rativity implied in proliferating self-images to the precipitation of personhood, nor does he consider the agency of narrativity as a locus for a sense of mastery or identification. He does not link personhood to shifting social contexts. He does not consider the possibility of discordant self-images, in which one’s pre- vious self-formulation is recognized as a form of bad faith. He does not con- sider how, within experiences of alienating or discordant self-consciousness, the correlation between primary affectivity and embodiment might lead to a renewed identification with the body (death drive). 12 . There were other perspectives that maintained the importance of self-consciousness while rejecting idealism. S. H. Mellone, for example, advo- cates rejecting the transcendental self, and believes the empirical self should go along with it. He believes that “the real self is that which is known and realized or lived in and through the actual process of conscious life” (Mellone 1901, 323). Mellone views self-consciousness as a product of the tendency of knowledge to go beyond itself, and thus holds an expansive view of the possible access to truth in self-consciousness. 13 . Royce views normal self-consciousness as a matrix of narrative processing, with self at the center: “the self of normal self-consciousness . is felt at any moment as this relatively stable group of inner states; it is also felt or conceived as the supposed spontaneous controller of the general or of the principal cur- rent of successive conscious states; it is remembered or expected as the past or future self, which is taken to be more or less precisely the same as the present self; and finally, it is viewed as having a curious collection of exterior func- tions that involve its actual value, potency, prowess, reputation, or office, in its external social relations to other actual or ideal selves, e.g., to its neighbors, to humanity at large, or, in case one’s faith extends so far, to God” (438). 14 . The inward turn of modernism is related to the methodology of introspection associated with psychology. Introspection was one approach, along with new experimental procedures. While its comparative advantage or disadvantage was often debated, it was consistently understood as what we colloquially call an “approach”—that is, a way into understanding particular dynamics, rather than a totalizing method. The use of introspection to capture aspects of con- sciousness is not unlike the way interior monologue emerges in fiction. Inner speech crept out of quotation marks through free indirect discourse before being expanded to consume the diegetic world of the story. This involved an alternating formal structure between the character viewed within experi- ence (in action) from outside and from within. As such, it involved building a Notes 197 portrait of volition and conduct that was multifactorial, and it was conducive to tracking continuities between the physical and mental. 15 . Galen Strawson has described self as a particularly malleable concept, verging on meaninglessness, because of the multiplicity of types of self that have been asserted in philosophical writings on the subject. 16 . Siegel is describing Dieter Henrich’s and Sydney Shoemaker’s positions, rather than asserting his own. 17 . Deleuze’s model is not simplistic: he views the self’s interaction with the other as crucial to self, seeing “the Other as the expression of a possible world ” (261). For Deleuze, “the I and the Self . are immediately characterized by functions of development or explication: not only do they experience qualities in general as already developed in the extensity of their system, but they tend to explicate or develop the world expressed by the other, either in order to participate in it or to deny it” (260). 2 Minding the Gap: Embodiment, Narrativity, and Identification in UNDER WESTERN EYES 1 . Michael Greaney focuses on the plot level, arguing that “in a culture of sur- veillance and superstition, Razumov is a blind spot, misread by the Russian authorities, by his would-be comrades, and, inevitably, by the first-time reader of the novel” (160). 2 . C o n r a d d e s c r i b e s Under Western Eyes as “the sustained psychology of a mood having its origin in a crime.” This chapter focuses upon Razumov’s individ- ual psychology and mood, rather than any collective psychology or mood. An oft-cited line from one of Conrad’s letters announces that the novel is “concerned with nothing but ideas, to the exclusion of everything else.” This would appear to be a problem for my emphasis upon embodiment and ontol- ogy. However, given the full quote—“I am concerned with nothing but ideas, to the exclusion of everything else, with no arrière pensée of any kind”—and thinking of it along with his statement about psychology, we see Conrad here distancing himself from readings of the novel as political statements (October 20, 1911, letter to Garnett; from Critical Heritage 236). Other critics who have offered political readings tend to implicitly agree, focusing upon the operations of the political and the fundamental unreadability of the novel as a coherent political statement. For a concise summary of influential political readings of the novel, see Greaney (153–5). This chapter supplements political readings by looking at the operations of ideas as part of experience in psychological and physical terms. 3 . Edward Said notes this change: “the dramatic protocol of much of Conrad’s fiction is the swapped yarn, the historical report, the mutually exchanged leg- end, the musing recollection . [which] implies . a speaker and a hearer . If we go through Conrad’s major work we will find, with the notable exception 198 Notes of Under Western Eyes , that the narrative is presented as transmitted orally” (qtd. in Greaney 3). 4 . This chapter focuses upon the materiality of identity in the St. Petersburg sec- tion of the novel, and the narrativity and sociality of identity in the Geneva section. While this division occurs for convenience, it also roughly tracks the emphases of each section. 5 . A note on method: my approach is to draw out how this novel creates an implicit, partial model of how consciousness works and what functions it fulfills. In pur- suing this goal, my reading of Under Western Eyes differs significantly from polit- ical and deconstructive readings of the novel. It considers dynamics, processes, and change involving identity, identification, thinking, and embodiment. 6 . By asserting this shift, I am offering a somewhat different perspective from crit- ics who emphasize epistemological problems throughout Conrad’s work. John Peters offers a useful summary of these perspectives (124) in his work Conrad and Impressionism , and he himself argues that the novels contain a “common element” of demonstrating that “the epistemological process is individual, and [Conrad’s] impressionism leads to human subjectivity” (123). Peters’ interest in the subjectivity of what we know is based upon factors (“physical circum- stances”) that make his interest in the “uncertainty” and character of knowl- edge complementary to my interest in how Conrad evokes the production and functionality of consciousness. 7 . That is to say, plotting involves a movement into instability followed by resolu- tion into relative order. 8 . S e e p a g e s 3 4 – 3 5 . 9 . Razumov’s delayed decision sounds a familiar note to Conrad scholars. Like Jim, Razumov arrives at consciousness of a choice he has made retrospectively (Jim, famously, only realizes he has jumped off the Patna , abandoning a ship full of helpless passengers, after the fact.
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