The Hidden Narrator: A Semiotic Reconstruction of the Narrative Actor Network

Abstract

The narrator is the organizing other. In a conscious interaction with the narrator the interpreter articulates and develops his identity. When an interpreter disregards the narrator, he perceives a situation as objectively there, he perceives a situation as "trivial" or as entirely a product of his subjectivity. When however an interpreter consciously interacts with the narrator, he acknowledges his sociocultural determination and can therefore further develop his socioculturally embedded subjective " theory". When an interpreter consciously attempts to escape this subjective theory, he enters the realm of the "aesthetic". In this paper an argument is developed that these complex relations between trivial interpretation, theoretical interpretation and aesthetic interpretation fit into a semiotic model. The model is introduced and summarized. The model is then used to explain how semiotic polyphony raises theoretical awareness, how theoretical awareness may open the realm of the aesthetic and how overlooking the narrator results in the trivial. These semiotics of the trivial are illustrated twofold. To underpin the relation to Western modernity we will briefly analyze the invisibility of the judge as a narrator in Western judicial argumentation. To underpin the relation to cultural literacy we will analyze the invisibility of the dynamics of the camera as a narrator in the Western world of moving pictures. Both " hide and do not seek" plays seduce the interpreter to disregard the indexical and symbolic in his interpretation. He disregards his ongoing dialogue with the organizing other. The narrator hides and the interpreter does not seek. To restore the awareness of the narrator requires forms of literacy.