Ron writes:
>Warren apparently questions the reliability of my argument because of
the use of these modest >interjections ["I feel and I believe"]. Had he
been more familiar with the history of rhetoric and >had he been a bit
more familiar with the ways in which writers try to give validity to
their >position by assuming a modest pose.
Ron's use of hedges such as 'I believe' and 'I feel' reduces the
epistemological status of his propositions to mere opinion and
individual judgement. When making grand dismissive claims such as the
ineffectiveness of the process of categorization, as he does in the two
extracts reproduced below, then more is required than a constant appeal
to mere opinion. Ron's dismissive language is unsubstantiated and
unconvincing. How does Ron's "somewhat confounded" state of mind reduce
the importance of categorization? And does his "belief" in and of itself
demonstrate that unreliable narration is an open concept and cannot be
defined?
The only argument he presents is to compare unreliable narration to art.
But art and unreliable narration are not of the same logical type. Art
is a more primitive (fundamental) logical type than unreliable
narration, a more specific logical type.
As a more primitive type, 'Art' is more encompassing than 'unreliable
narration'. Unreliable narration is vastly different in level and scope
that Art (as I pointed out in a previous post, unreliable narration is a
precisely delimited concept). Ron therefore commits a fallacy in
reasoning by simply comparing them as if they are the same. Art may well
be an open concept, but this does not mean that unreliable narration is
also an open concept.
Ron's comments:
I am somewhat confounded by those who wish to categorize and then
subcategorize different types of unreliability, offering classifications
which invariable create more subclassifications because as they try to
keep one chicken in the coop all the others are running out.
[Art] cannot be defined. Each definition tries to close down the
concept, circle wagons around it, but invariably fails. I believe the
same to be true of trying to define the "Unreliable narrator"
Warren Buckland
Associate Professor, Film Studies
Chapman University
School of Film and Television
One University Drive
Orange
CA 92866
USA.
phone: (714) 744 7018
fax: (714) 997 6700
Editor, "New Review of Film and Television Studies":
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/17400309.asp
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