Page 143 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

118 Guy Poitevin

The diachronic layout of the components—the order of interlinking—
can be compared to the progressive unfolding of a dramatic perform-
ance till a satisfactory resolution or equilibrium is reached. As in a play,
the end of an act or sequence often appears as a switching point to
which the next one is linked by some imperative nexus. The latter is
often an inversion or an abrupt reversal of situation, as if the whole story
had to develop and progress through a chain of ups and downs linked to
one another by an internal logical necessity. ‘To explain a narrative is to
grasp this entanglement, this fleeting structure of interlaced actions.…
The application of this technique ends up by “dechronologising” the
narrative, in a way that brings out the logical underlying narrative time’
(Thompson 1981: 156).

Myth as Meaning, Self-understanding:
Second Cognitive Strategy
The second cognitive strategy seeks insight and understanding with
reference to reality beyond the discourse. The narrative as discourse
shapes a world of its own not for itself, but for sharing a vision with
interlocutors. The intention of the discourse is fulfilled only with
the understanding by someone of what it signifies about something.
Beyond and through its very internal sense—an a-temporal object,
cut off from historical moorings and pertaining to a sphere of pure
ideality—the narrative as a new event of discourse may always project
ahead meanings and historical messages. The text of the myth is then
no more its object, only its mediation.
Our question now is: How does one understand what the text means
to tell us after we read what it says? How does one lift the suspense
that intercepts the references of the text? For the reflective philosophy
of P. Ricœur, the understanding of the meaning of a text culminates
in self-understanding. An approach labelled ‘appropriation’ leads
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to that achievement. ‘By “appropriation”, I understand this: that the
interpretation of a text culminates in the self-interpretation of a subject
who thenceforth understands himself better, understands himself
differently, or simply begins to understand himself’ (ibid.: 158).
Three distinctive but correlated notions signal three stages of pro-
cessing: (a) the notion of appropriation as counterpart of the timeless
distancing that turns a myth into a text; (b) the notion of structure or