Chiasmus and Culture Studies in Rhetoric and Culture
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Chiasmus and Culture Studies in Rhetoric and Culture Edited by Ivo Strecker, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Addis Ababa University, Stephen Tyler, Rice University, and Robert Hariman, Northwestern University. Our minds are filled with images and ideas, but these remain unstable and incomplete as long as we do not manage to persuade both ourselves and others of their meanings. It is this inward and outward rhetoric which allows us to give some kind of shape and structure to our understanding of the world and which becomes central to the formation of individual and collective con- sciousness. This series is dedicated to the study of the interaction of rhetoric and culture, and focuses on the concrete practices of discourse in which and through which the diverse and often also fantastic patterns of culture – including our own – are created, maintained and contested. Volume 1 Culture & Rhetoric Edited by Ivo Strecker and Stephen Tyler Volume 2 Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life Edited by Michael Carrithers Volume 3 Economic Persuasions Edited by Stephen Gudeman Volume 4 The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture Edited by Christian Meyer and Felix Girke Volume 5 Astonishment and Evocation: The Spell of Culture in Art and Anthropology Edited by Ivo Strecker and Markus Verne Volume 6 Chiasmus and Culture Edited by Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul Chiasmus and Culture ■ ■ ■ Edited by Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com First published in 2014 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2014 Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chiasmus and Culture / edited by Boris Wiseman and Anthony Paul. pages cm. -- (Studies in Rhetoric and Culture; 6) ISBN 978-0-85745-960-2 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-961-9 (ebook) 1. Rhetoric--Social aspects. 2. Chiasmus. 3. Interpersonal relations and culture. I. Wiseman, Boris, editor of compilation. II. Paul, Anthony, 1941, editor of compilation. P301.5.S63C48 2014 808--dc23 2013022494 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed on acid-free paper. ISBN: 978-0-85745-960-2 hardback ISBN: 978-0-85745-961-9 ebook Contents ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ List of Figures vii Introduction 1 Anthony Paul and Boris Wiseman Part I ■ The Pathos of Chiasmus 1. From Stasis to Ékstasis: Four Types of Chiasmus 19 Anthony Paul 2. What is a Chiasmus? Or, Why the Abyss Stares Back 45 Robert Hariman 3. Chiasmus and Metaphor 69 Ivo Strecker Part II ■ Epistemological Reflections on Chiasmus 4. Chiasm in Merleau-Ponty: Metaphor or Concept? 91 Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel 5. Chiasmi Figuring Difference 116 Stephen Tyler 6. Forking: Rhetoric χ Rhetoric 124 Philippe-Joseph Salazar vi ■ Contents Part III ■ Sensuous Experience Mediated by Chiasmus 7. Chiasm in Suspense in Psychoanalysis 143 Alain Vanier 8. Quotidian Chiasmus in Montaigne: Arguing Impotence 148 and Suicide Phillip John Usher 9. Travestis, Michês and Chiasmus: Crossing and Cross-Dressing 161 in the Work of Néstor Perlongher Ben Bollig Part IV ■ Chiastic Structures in Ritual and Mytho-Poetic Texts 10. Parallelism and Chiasmus in Ritual Oration and Ostension in 187 Tana Wai Brama, Eastern Indonesia E. Douglas Lewis 11. Chiasmus, Mythical Creation and H.C. Andersen’s ‘The Shadow’ 219 Boris Wiseman, followed by a ‘Response’ from Lucien Scubla Notes on Contributors 239 Index 243 Figures ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Table of ‘sample meaning schemata’. 79 Thought Picture 1A. An illustration of the rhythm of 117 Hegelian dialectic. Thought Picture 1B. ‘A rendering of Heidegger’s attempt to 118 orient the relationship between identity and difference’. Thought Picture 2. ‘A more revealing figuration of Hegel’s 119 solution’ producing ‘a figure of total difference’. Thought Picture 3. The conjoined triangles of Thought 120 Picture 2 reconfigured as two intersecting spirals. Thought Picture 4. Continuously intersecting spirals 121 transformed by chiasmic crossings. Thought Picture 5. Imaginary ‘line of flight’ abstracted 122 from the chiasmic intersections in Thought Picture 4. Figure 6.1 Miro’s Fourche. Philippe-Joseph Salazar, extract 136 from diary, 1987. Figure 10.1 The mahé Tana Wai Brama before the gren mahé in 1980. 191 Figure 10.2 Mo’an Rénu Tapo, the principal chanter and ritualist of 194 clan Tapo, at home in his lepo (STA clan house), Hila Klo’ang, Tana Wai Brama, 1978. viii ■ figures Figure 10.3 Mo’an Rénu Tapo and E.D. Lewis near Watuwolon, 196 Tana Wai Brama, 1980. Figure 10.4 Chiasmic cooking of rice at the foot of the grave of Mo’an 213 Rapa Ipir Wai Brama, the source of the domain of Tana Wai Brama, Munéwolon, 1979. INTRODUCTION Chiasmus in the Drama of Life Anthony Paul and Boris Wiseman ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ The essays in this volume are concerned with chiastic inversion, and its place in social interactions, cultural creation and, more generally, human thought and experience. They explore from a variety of angles what the unsettling logic of chiasmus has to tell us about the world, human relations, cultural patterns, psychology, and artistic and poetic creation. They treat chiasmus not only as a figure of speech, but as a generative principle, an aesthetic idea, a method of composition, a tool of ideological manipulation, a matrix of social interaction, a philosophical problem, a metaphor, an elemental image or sign. At many points they engage in dialogue with one another as well as with key thinkers and authors who have written about or under the inspiration of chiastic logic. The claims we are making for chiasmus may seem surprising in the light of the somewhat shadowy and far from distinguished status of this figure within traditional rhetoric. As Anthony Paul remarks in his essay in this volume, the history of chiasmus is easily told, since it was only in the late nineteenth century that some scholars began to think it could be anything more than a local decorative literary effect. Even today, anyone who has heard of chiasmus is likely to think of it as no more than a piece of rhetorical playfulness, a lively figure, at times challenging, useful for supplying a memorable sententious note or for performing a terpsichorean pirouette of syntax and thought. It is the aspect most emphasized in handbooks of style and rhetoric. Surveying the figures of rhetoric in The Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham says of chiasmus (without naming it): ‘Ye haue a figure which takes 2 ■ Anthony Paul and Boris Wiseman a couple of words to play with in a verse, and by making them to chaunge and shift one into others place they do very pretily exchange and shift the sence.’ Chiastic patterning was indeed frequently and at times almost obsessively employed in this spirit in the courtly and ornamental poetry and prose of the English Elizabethan period, so it is entirely natural that Puttenham should have thus emphasized the playful and ornamental possibilities of the figure. But precisely four hundred years after the publication of his book, Katie Wales (A Dictionary of Stylistics 1989) defines chiasmus in essentially similar terms: From Gk meaning ‘cross-wise’, chiasmus is a rhetorical term to describe a construction involving the repetition of words or elements in reverse order (ab : ba); also known as antimetabole. It is often used for witty or aphoris- tic effect: so Michelangelo is reputed to have said: Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. Syntactic inversion is common in the couplets of eighteenth-century [poets] Renown’d / for conquest, and in council / skilled (Addison: The Campaign). The persistently restricted perception of chiasmus has meant that such atten- tion the figure has received within literary and rhetorical studies has been narrowly focused, failing, one might say, to participate in the spirit of chiastic inversion and allow the questioner to be questioned by his own object of attention. However, one area in which chiasmus has demanded and received a good deal of attention is that of biblical studies. The large-scale chiastic or concen- tric structuring of biblical and other ancient and pre-modern texts (Homer, Beowulf) is well known (these texts make much use of sequences of the type: a,b,c,d,e → e,d,c,b,a usually termed ‘extended chiasmus’). Here, chiasmus is indeed linked to broader cultural, historical and anthropological consider- ations. In particular, the literature in this area raises the key question of the uses of chiasmus as a mnemonic device. The challenge here is to understand the place of chiasmus in forms of recollection that are different to our own, in the constitution of another kind of memory, principally an oral memory, which has its own supports and modes of functioning. Edwina Palmer has identified chiastic features in a Japanese poem-song dating from around ad 714, belonging to the Fudoki genre of eulogistic provincial descriptions – features that she suggests are a vestige of Japan’s pre-literate oral heritage. Through a sophisticated form of punning based on symbolic substitution and chiastic reversal (Palmer 2000: 81) the place name of the Womë-no moor is transformed into a cryptic reference to a song for omi purification rites. Chiasmus, here, has a quite different status than in the Western rhetorical tradition evoked above. It is an integral feature of an ancient poetics, albeit one unfamiliar to the vast majority of Western readers.