Shinto

Echo and Narcissus as Amaterasu and Susano in a Mirror

Painting by John William Waterhouse

Before I go on to talk about the next part of Amaterasu and Suano-o I would like to reiterate the relevance of John Brenkman's paper (1976) "Narcissus in the text," which is hailed as a great example of Derridean deconstruction (Culler, 1993)

Derridean deconstruction has two interlinked aspects. One is a rhetorical analysis of Western philosophy, the other a theory about our attitude towards the media, -phonemes - of Western language. Derrida argues that Western philosophers use certain rhetorical techniques in order assert the descriptive power of Western alphabetic/phonetic languages, and their absolute truthiness. The rhetorical endeavour, would be deception that Derrida attempts to expose, is called logo-centrism.

Derrida claims that western philosophers from Plato to Searle set up a dichotomy between two types of language, and then trash one side of the dichotomy, making it a sort of scapegoat to the truthiness of the other side: the phonemes in mind, that might grasp ideas, the logos. E.g. Plato and others point to, bah, writing and compare it to speech (and thought) and claim that writing is just, an inferior concrete copy of speech, which when it occurs in mind is complete free of the constraints of the physical world, enabling it phonetic speech to express pre-existing ideas. Or Searle talks about "speech acts" like writing, another form of dirty, worldly, speech that does things. E.g. "I promise," and "I bet," which as well as being speech also perform an action. These performatory speech acts are compared with pure descriptive, truthy speech, that express true ideas about the world. In each case, philosophers create an unequal dichotomy to bolster the continued belief in the power of phonetic speech to grasp chimerical "ideas." Derrida points out that, rather than being inferior and excludable, writing, speech acts are essential, both in that they are needed in rhetoric as sacrificial victims or straw men, and because in fact all speech is always part corporeal (like writing) and always partly an act (like speech acts). And that is Derrida in my nutshell.

While Freud uses the Myth of Narcissus to explain how children first start identifying with their image in mirrors - an example he tells us of self love, he does not go into detail about the myth nor does he mention the other major character Echo, at all. Brenkman does a good job of deconstructing the Myth of Narcissus.

As is predicted would be his downfall (don't let him see his reflection! said the sage), Narcissus falls in love with his reflection. Narcissus love for a mere image, is raised almost as an object of ridicule and used as a name of a disease to this day. At the same time, all this time Echo, who only appears in the myth's dialogue, repeating the words that Narcissus speaks, is seen as a tragic figure, who dies of unrequited love for a narcissist. Brenkman points out that this myth shows the same rhetorical techniques and objectives as pointed out by Derrida in Western philosophy. There are two copies of Narcissus. His image and his echoed words. His image is trashed as being (as images are always trashed as being) mere image. His words however, taken female form, are seen as coming from a real, good, loving supernatural person, with not merely the power to copy, but to speak and say the truth of her love. Brenkman could have argued that the myth of Narcissus gets in at the ground floor of Western philosophy (as seen by Derrida) in that it is the first to displays all the deconstruct-able rhetoric, and intent to deceive. At the same time Brenkman could also have pointed out that the myth gives the game away, laying its cards on the table, and deconstructs itself: Echo is called echo! It inscribes itself with a warning to all now and future Narcissists, "look at my trick ye mighty, and be aware."

The structure of the myth of Narcissus is as follows
1) Narcissus's image is just a copy, a bad copy, a deceptive copy. It is certainly not alive. It is a nothing, a chimera allowing gross and misplaced self love.
2) Narcissus's phonetic speech is truthy. Though "it" is only a copy of what Narcisuss says, "it" is not an it at all but being, a tragic, supernatural being that loves, means, meaningfully loves the protagonist.
3) But even though it is the speech that, as always, comes out the winner, the image plays an essential part of the story. The image is the scapegoat, the nub of jokes, that nasty deceptive bit to be Derided (Derrida's pun). The image is needed both for the suspension of unbelief, and for subsequent defamiliarization (Brecht) to take place.
3.1) If it were just a story about some "echo" loving some guy, no one would be able to see the echo as a person at all, let alone a tragic hero.
3.2) If it were not for the mirror image, then we would never be able to come back to the realisation that, "oh ****! Echo is just a copy. She is not, we are not, really people at all!"(1)
4) Echo is Narcissus, queered. Echo is just Narcissus's speech, but she is also a woman.

This structure is the precise opposite of what seems to be being played out in the Myth of Amaterasu and Susano.

There is two type of copying, one trashed, the other lauded as real, one male one queered, and the whole thing providing an opportunity for self-realisation. I will cover it in my next post to the Shintoml mailing list.

Notes
(1) Everyone has seen Sixth Sense? Lacan claims that we just speech, just a copy, and in that sense, always, already dead.

The above is based upon my paper "The Structure of the Kojiki and the Specular Self of the Japanese" (in Japanese), and personal experience.

Posted by timtak at March 4, 2011 02:22 PM