What can be scenically presented or dramatized in focalization are the contents of individual takes and their construction in the mind. The un- derlying perspective or focalizing mind itself with its architecture can only be reported upon in summary mode, being a set of general features. As we have seen before, it is up to the reader to make further inferences on the nature of a given focalizing mind from what and how it focalizes. Consequently, further questions about the nature of the focalizer as tex- tually represented have to follow the structure of narrative discourse and not psychology. Maximally, the following narrative instances can func- tion as focalizers: a narrative agent or story world participant; some anon- ymous position in story space (Claude Simon’s O in La bataille de Pharsale, Banfield’s [1987] empty deictic center); a hypothetical agent inside story space (Herman’s [1994] hypothetical focalizer); and, in my view, some kinds of narrators all the time and all narrators on some oc- casions. With so many focalizing instances, is all information in narrative focalized, as Ronen (1994) and Ouelette (1996) claim? Here opinions vary. If focalization is defined as a relation between narrated domain ele- ments and a mind inside this domain (Prince’s [2001] internal focal- ization), then precisely all information coming through minds inside this domain is focalized, and that’s it. If, however, focalization is defined as a relation between narrated domain elements and a mind inside the narrated or narrating domain, then information coming through narrators who are or were members of the narrated domain they are reporting about may be considered focalized, at least in the sense that it comes from a person- alized instance or center of awareness. On the other hand, no one would consider information coming from an omniscient impersonal voice or speech position focalized, as this kind of narrating function is incom- patible with any notion of a restricted experiencing mind or an embodied and situated center of awareness. But even here there is an exception: in- formation coming from such a voice can be considered focalized if the voice pretends to look at events through the mind of one or more story world participants, a phenomenon dubbed “reflectorization” by Monika Fludernik (1996).
Two cases that have evoked lots of controversy, but for opposite rea- sons, are the anonymous focalizer and the personalized narrator. The first, because it is not a textually inscribed speech position, and the other because, according to scholars like Chatman (1986) it is nothing but a speech position. Let us begin with the anonymous focalizer.
4.1 The Anonymous Focalizer
In many cases we encounter in fiction a passage that looks like a take on a given spatio-temporal situation from some inside subject position, as in- dicated by scenic immediacy, deictics and so on. But no story world par- ticipant is textually indicated as the observer-experiencer or origin of this take. So who sees then? In such cases we sometimes postulate a nameless observer as the focalizer. Monika Fludernik (1996) suggests we call this operation “figuralization,” as we are attributing to some anonymous observer figure the information in question. Let us not forget, however, that this observer is a mere interpretive Hilfskonstruktion, the product of an operation of naturalization. But what does this anonymous observer or witness position, which Herman (1994) has dubbed “unspecified virtual witness,” mean? We are in fact claiming that the specific nature of the given information can be realistically motivated by positing as its origin a standard observer position on the scene whose location can sometimes be pinpointed. Following Herman’s notion of hypothetical focalization we could also say: this is what would be seen by whoever, any human ob- server, including the reader, if they were located at this space time posi- tion. All the same, whether or not a given passage represents a take to begin with, and, if so, whose exactly, are often interpretive and context- dependent decisions, and we may arrive at no clear answer or at several alternate equally plausible ones. Also, the transition from one take to an- other, or from a take by one person to that by another, are often textually unmarked and subject to interpretive debates. Such indeterminacy is the constructive principle of Vargas Llosa’s novel Conversación en la Catedral, for example.
4.2 Narrators as Focalizers?
Quite probably, no issue in focalization theory has generated more con- troversy than whether or not narrators can be focalizers. I believe the question is wrongly put. After all we are dealing with artificial artistic
constructs, not with facts of nature. I think the question should accord- ingly be reformulated as follows: in what cases is it meaningful or fruitful to consider a narrator as a focalizer as well, in view of our initial defi- nition of focalization. I believe it makes perfect sense in some cases, and the categorical refusal to do so stems from a failure to distinguish between role or function and individual and to realize that a focalizer or a narrator are not flesh and blood monolithic entities which remain constant throughout, but artistic constructs which can repeatedly change roles in the course of a text according to the author’s informational needs at each juncture. The one thing everybody agrees on is that only a personalized or individuated narrating instance with a clear I-here-now Ich-origo, self reference, subjective semantics etc. can function as a potential focalizer. Beyond this I think it is better to distinguish situational varieties rather than jump to universal claims whether or not narrators can function as focalizers. There are three varieties I can think of right now: – The first and most obvious case, ignored by most narratologists, is a narrator, who is also observer or agent in the narrated sphere, reporting on events and situations taking place in the narrated sphere simultaneously with his act of narration. In this case, person, time and place of narrator and narrative agent are clearly the same, and the individual cannot but report events and entities, including himself, as he observes and experi- ences them at the moment of narration. Such a narrator fulfils two distinct functions, saying and seeing, and must function as focalizer, focusing on the setting, other agents, or himself qua agent, since focalization is his only way to acquire any knowledge of the world around him as it unfolds. – An individuated narrator who is currently reporting on earlier events or situations in the narrated domain in which he acted as observer or agent is the standard case. Obviously, such narration involves current acts of re- call whose content are earlier acts of witnessing or experiencing. As agent or observer of the events as they occurred, this narrator qua story world participant was clearly able to focalize. So our problem concerns not this, but rather the status of his current acts of recollecting and reporting on his own past acts of focalization. Are they too acts of focalization? I think the answer depends on the kind of current mental activity. Recall can be a distanced analytic retrospective summary “I saw X, I experienced Y”, which is not focalization since it lacks the immediacy and experientiality essential to focalization. But recall may also be more like an attempt to re- live or re-experience the original act of focalization or sensory experience and its resultant take, effecting a mental shift of deictic center. A clear in-
dicator of this kind of recall is the switch from past to present tense. In Proust’s famous madelaine scene, the narrator starts by “one day in winter, on my return home.” He then describes dipping the cake in the tea and sipping the tea: “I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea…I drink a second mouthful” (Proust 1981: 48). Following Edminston (cf. 1989: 739–42) one could say that the narrator now adopts the intradiegetic vision of himself then, presenting his own mental activity and view of others (and himself) at the moment of the event. The narrator restricts himself accordingly to the experiencing self then with its deictic center, in a word, not doing any further retrospective information processing. (On this point see also Shen [2003].) I feel very strongly that it would be quite sensible and useful to include this kind of recollection under focalization. It goes without saying, though, that all acts of recollection of any kind are fallible, since memory is an active faculty, not a passive slate.
– Chatman, the great enemy of narrator as focalizer, remarks that a narrator could look at events and existents in the discourse world or space of narration he occupies, to the extent that this world is fleshed out (cf. 1990: 143–44). The same observation has been made by James Phelan (2001), a friend of narrator as focalizer. This rare agreement opens up a third area of narrator as focalizer. Any individuated narrator, whether or not he is a participant in the narrated domain, can always be considered a focalizer when his object of attention is his current situation as narrator, his activity of telling and so on. The specification and emphasis on the narratorial sphere at the expense of the narrated, on the narrator’s imme- diate context and his writerly activities, has a long history going back at least to Cervantes (cf. Alter 1975), and is a hallmark of postmodernism. As Brian Richardson points out in his paper in the present volume, even the anonymous teller at the beginning of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness per- ceives immediate sights and sounds, including the voice of Marlow, on the boat on the Thames, and can therefore be considered a limit case of focalizer.