vogmae |
Singing essay home
"In the opening pages of this book, the first power of fiction, it was claimed, was the power to theorize itself, and the second (which amounts perhaps to the same thing), the power to control its own impact through situational self-definition. The third power is the one claimed by the stories studied at some length in the previous chapters and the novels more briefly evoked here: it specifies fictional "impact" in terms of the power of seduction. But whereas the power of text to theorize itself and the power of self-definition are analytic powers, the claim to seductive power is a claim of perlocutionary force, another kind of power. It is not self-directed but other-directed; and it is definable as the power to achieve authority and to produce involvement (the authority of the storyteller, the involvement of the narratee) within a situation from which power is itself absent. If such power can be called the power of seduction it is because seduction is, by definition, a phenomenon of persuasion: it cannot rely on force or institutional authority ("power"), for it is, precisely, a means of achieving mastery in the absence of such means of control." [211-2]
"Denial of seductive intent signals respect of the reader's desires: but this is, in fact, a recruitment of the reader's desire (the desire not to be seduced) and the trust thus gained can then be channeled in the direction of the narrative's own program ("understanding," "textual simplicity," the aesthetic of "noise," or whatever)." [218]