Aseneth’s Transformation by Walter de Gruyter

Author:Walter de Gruyter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

4.3Blending Theory and Performative Speech Acts

As I have pointed out earlier, the heavenly honeycomb, an important object pertaining to Aseneth’s transformation, became manifest in Aseneth’s storeroom in response to speech acts uttered by the man who came from heaven. In order to shed light on this event, which could be regarded as an instance of magic,645 I present some insights into speech acts, in particular performatives.646

In his book How to Do Things with Words, J. L. Austin drew attention to utterances which performed a speech act simply by being voiced, such as I declare …647 Searle developed Austin’s work further by illuminating the conditions under which actions could be performed simply by describing doing them.648 Although performatives often consist of first-person utterances, they are not limited to them. In the adequate social contexts, and depending on the appropriate authority, speech acts may bring about institutional facts,649 e.g., this meeting is adjourned. More interesting in this context, however, is the emphasis on the idea that the performative capability of supernatural beings differs from that of human beings, because the former are able to change brute facts.650

In order to differentiate between descriptions and performatives, Searle focused on the “direction of fit between Word and World.”651 As regards descriptions, the word is supposed to fit the world, real or imagined, which means that a description can be true or false (“I have stepped on your staff and broken it”). Directives, on the other hand, attempt to change the world to fit the words (“Break your staff!”). Performatives also aim at altering the world to fit the words, but whereas directives depend on an action on the part of the addressee, performatives assume that the speaker’s utterance is all that is necessary to let the world fit the words. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s book The Two Towers, Gandalf breaks Saruman’s staff by uttering a performative speech act: “He raised his hand, and spoke slowly in a clear cold voice. ‘Saruman, your staff is broken.’ There was a crack, and the staff split asunder in Saruman’s hand, and the head of it fell down at Gandalf’s feet.”652

Drawing on blending theory, Eve Sweetser has related Searle’s work to “the distinction between two possible directions of causal and ontological relations between two mental spaces,”653 i.e. the representation and the represented space. If the representation (utterance or picture) fits the represented space, the relation between the two spaces is depictive or representational. If, conversely, the “represented space is taken as fitting (being causally influenced or changed by) the representation, then the relation is performative. The act of representation, by its performance, constitutes (or performs as a causal agent in) the structure of the represented space.”654 As I will demonstrate below, Sweetser’s work on performatives may illuminate the scene where the heavenly honeycomb suddenly appears in Aseneth’s storeroom.655

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