User:KYPark/1975/Sperber

Rethinking Symbolism: © 1974 Dan Sperber (trans. Alice L. Morton, 1975)

Preface

What is a theory of symbolism? What conditions must it fulfill? What general properties must it account for? The notion of symbolism itself will not be defined, but only circumscribed in the course of the argument: it will be shown how a set of diverse phenomena (from myths to linguistic figures, from religious rituals to the gestures of courtesy) may be approached in the same way.

This work is informed by a view of anthropology that I state briefly without additional justification: human learning abilities are phylogenentically determined and culturally determinant. They are determined in the same way for all members of the species; they do not therefore determine cultural variations but only cultural variability. Cultural variability is at once made possible and constrained by human learning ability. Anthropology has as its object this possibility and these constraints.

In this perspective, the most interesting cultural knowledge is tacit knowledge - that is to say, that which is not made explicit. When those who have this knowledge are able to make it explicit, I shall speak of implicit knowledge. When they are incapable of this, I shall speak of unconscious knowledge.

Explicit and expressly-imparted knowledge may in principle be learned by rote, and it is therefore only direct evidence of the quantitative limits of human learning ability. Conversely, tacit knowledge may in no case be acquired by rote; it must be reconstructed by each individual; it is therefore direct evidence of specific learning abilities, of a qualitatively determined creative competence.

For the study of tacit knowledge the basic data are intuitions, they are the judgments that the members of a cultural group systematically express without elaborating on the underlying argument. For example, the members of a society agree that a given phrase is insulting in a given situation, but they are incapable of defining entirely the criteria on which their judgment rests. Explicit cultural knowledge makes sense only in as much as it is the object of an underlying tacit knowledge. Thus proverbs, whose statement is part of explicit cultural knowledge, are the object on the one hand of a generally implicit gloss; on the other, of an unconscious knowledge that determines the exact conditions in which their use is appropriate, and the symbolic nuances it is proper to bring to their interpretation. The task of the ethnographer is to explicate this sort of tacit knowledge. The task of the anthropologist is to explain what makes it possible -- that is to say, to describe the universal conditions of its learning.

Symbolism is paradigmatic in this respect, for its explicit forms are unintelligible by themselves and their study has always presupposed the existence of an underlying tacit knowledge. But what is the nature of this knowledge and what is its relationship to explicitness? The most generally accepted answer is the following: the explicit forms of symbolism are signifiants (signifiers) associated to tacit signifies (signifieds) as in the model of the relationships between sound and meaning in language. In the first three chapters, I argue against this semiological view. In the last two, I develop a cognitive view and show in particular that symbolic interpretation is not a matter of decoding, but an improvisation that rests on an implicit knowledge and obeys unconscious rules.

By asserting that symbolism is a cognitive mechanism, I mean that it is an autonomous mechanism that, alongside the perceptual and conceptual mechanisms, participates in the construction of knowledge and in the functioning of memory. On this point I differ from semiological approaches which see symbolism above all as an instrument of social communication. Indeed -- as we shall see -- symbolism plays a major role in social communication, but this is not a constitutive function from which the structure of symbolism could be predicted.

Further, I suggest as a possible hypothesis that the basic principles of the symbolic mechanism are not induced from experience but are, on the contrary, part of the innate mental equipment that makes experience possible. On this point, I differ from behaviourism in psycholgy and cultural relativism in anthropology (or at least from their most dogmatic forms), two views according to which not only knowledge, but also the principles of its organisation, are uniquely determined by experience. These views are based on unjustifiable a priori assumptions. If the general principles of symbolism are in fact as I describe them, it is not clear what, in experience or in instruction, would determine their acquisition; the hypothesis of their innateness is therefore in no way implausible.

I have not tried to write an erudite work and the reader will not find here any history of theories of symbolism. Many important authors are not even mentioned and at least one -- Sigmund Freud -- is only cited for a minimal and marginal part of his contribution to the study of symbolism. I have used the views of my predecessors when it seemed useful to discuss them without, however, trying to do justice to them; nor have I tried to analyse in depth the concrete examples that I use as illustrations. This is particularly true of the date borrowed from the culture of the Dorze of southern Ethiopia whose guest I was.* These data will be treated in a more detailed manner in another work.

Back matter

In this brilliant, original and witty book, Dan Sperber outlines a general theory of symbolism.

In the first three chapters he vigorously argues against the prevailing 'semiological' conception of symbols -- the idea that symbols have meanings in much the way that words do. Among versions of this idea, he criticises the 'cryptological' conception typified by Victor Turner; and also Freudian views. His criticisms extend to Levi-Strauss's theories: while accepting the basis of structuralism, he rejects Levi-Strauss's interpretation of it as a theory of meaning.

Sperber gives a cognitive account of symbolism by which symbols represent knowledge, but knowledge is knowledge not of things or of words, but of the memory of things and words, of conceptual representations. It depends on processes of displacement of attention, and of evocation; it is an improvisation which rests upon implicit knowledge and obeys unconscious rules. The author's conclusions point the way to discovering the role that innate, cultural and individual factors play in a symbolic knowledge. This lucid and stimulating contribution draws upon a range of anthropological and philosophical traditions and on the author's own field work among the Dorze of Ethiopia.

'The author of this attractive contribution to an ongoing debate currently holds a research post in the ethnological laboratory of the University of Nanterre. He received his anthropological training at the Sorbonne and at Oxford and has had several years' research experience among the Dorze of Ethiopia. He combines Cartesian rationality with British sceptical empiricism...

The merits of his essay are of several kinds. It is short; it is lucid; it is elegant and witty; it is concerned with a theme which is central to current interests not only of anthropologists but also of linguists, philosophers, theologians, and literary critics of all kinds. It is also very ambitious. Sperber is offering his readers a prolegomenon to a "general theory" of symbolism...'

Edmund Leach, The Time Literary Supplement

[My boldtype and hyperlinks]

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Notes

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown
	< Alfred Whitehead
	< Émile Durkheim 
	> Raymond Firth, LSE 
		> Edward Leach, LSE
	- Bronislaw Malinowski, LSE
		> Edward Leach, LSE 
			> Dan Sperber
	- Claude Levi-Strauss
	- Carl Gustav Hempel

Did he cite Ogden & Richards (1923) The Meaning of Meaning?

User:KYPark/1975/Sperber

Table of Contents

Preface

Back matter

See also

External links

Notes