著者

萩原 俊治

出版者

大阪府立大学

雑誌

言語と文化 (ISSN:13478966)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.4, pp.293-317, 2005-03

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As I had stated in my two previous papers, i.e. You name it therapy, but I name it violence-The first violence of narratives and Oh, my bear, not be so nice to me... -Levinas and Marx, narratives work as 'the first violence', which consist of two conditions: 1) not fully listening to another's narrative and 2) imposing one's own narrative on others. In such narratives I have included literary works, theoretical works, our daily gossips, songs, etc. As a result, people whose narratives are not listened to and who are forced to accept another narrative, will be frustrated and use on others or on themselves 'second violence', namely physical, verbal or mental violence: murder, suicide, fighting, cursing, battle, indulgence in alcoholic drinks or drugs, etc. Why do we become frustrated? Of course, it is so natural that, when someone does not fully listen to you and imposes his own narrative on you, you become frustrated. But, why? In this paper I try to explain it more clearly using the concepts of Henri Bergson in his Essai sur les donnees immediates de la conscience. It is my intention to resolve `the first violence' more fully. Yet, from my observation, very few people will agree that Bergson's concepts are 'decent'. For example, even S. K. Langer, who highly evaluates Bergson's thought, regards one of his main concepts 'pure duration' as 'dream'. Still I can affirm surely that at least the concepts in his Essai sur les donnees immediates de la conscience are decent. I stand by this because in his Essai Bergson deals with our daily ability, i.e. the ability to live in duration, to grasp our inner and outer world as quality or as quantity. For example, when we are in the mental disorder 'depersonalization', the ability to live in duration and to grasp our inner and outer world as quality is lost. From my point of view, the very existence of such disorder shows clearly that Bergson did not fictionalize his Essai. Bergson says in his Essai that 'deux corps ne sauraient occuper en meme temps le meme lieu (two substances cannot occupy the same place at the same time)', i.e. every substance has impenetrability to each other. According to him, in our consciousness, a word also works like a substance, i.e. every word has impenetrability to every other word. For example, when we refer a creature before us as 'a dog', we cannot refer it as `a cat'. Like this, two words would not occupy the same place at the same time. From my point of view, every narrative, which is formed by words, would also work like a substance, i.e. when we form a narrative about an incident, we would not allow another narrative to be formed. If we do form the opposite about it, people would regard us insane. As we are not insane, we would not tell two narratives about an incident at the same time. This is what I call the impenetrability of a narrative, from which each narrative works as nonactive violence to another narrative told at the same time: the former inevitably excludes the latter and the reverse is also true. But when we make a false or incorrect narrative about an incident or someone, the narrative will work as active violence, because, excluding some correct narrative about them, we deal with them unfairly. From my point of view, most of these false or incorrect narratives are brought from secondhand information, which we don't grasp from an incident or someone as quality. Upon interpreting more precisely the intrinsic quality of each person or incident and tell narratives about them, the more near we approach the real facts of the person or incident. Often though, we neglect their, or its, quality and, thereby, make incorrect narratives. Regarding such incorrect narratives, I introduce in this paper a Japanese sociologist's statement about autism.