The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

What's the proper use of this term?

 
Ostension is basically: narrative becomes action. Ostension is defined by Linda Dégh and Andrew Vázsonyi as "presentation as contrasted to representation (showing the reality itself instead of using any kind of signification)." Or, as Jan Harold Brunvand describes it, "sometimes people actually enact the contents of legends instead of merely narrating them as stories." It isn't about, like, random coincidental predictions in literature: it's when people, BASED UPON THE STORY, actually DO something.

Ellis's example is legend-tripping, which is a super-common form of ostension. You hear a narrative about a haunted or otherwise weird place, and then you go there to see what happens. Legends are folk narratives that take place in real time/space and are told as believable in a real-world sense--it's an invitation to consider the possibilities of truth in the world of lived experience, as opposed to cosmic truth (myth) or fictional truth (folktale).  Ostension usually occurs with legends—since the performance of ostensive acts is intended to produce real-world results, it makes sense that the narratives chosen for performance usually make some claim to real-world truth.

Visiting a supposedly haunted place is classic: you hear the legend, you travel to the designated place, you perform any actions specifically required in the text (stop in the middle of the bridge, turn off all the lights, say "bloody mary" three times, whatever), to bring about the desired results. That's ostension. Paranormal researchers act ostensively all the time: they hear about places reputed to be haunted, and they go there. Basic ostension. Many things that paranormal researchers do to protect themselves from ghosts are also ostensive: salt? garlic? holy water? religious symbols? All based on legendry.

Another very well-known form of ostension among folklorists is "criminal ostension"--basically, when people use folk narratives as an inspiration/template/script/alibi for criminal or anti-social acts. Did your parents ever check over your Halloween candy for poison? They were acting ostensively: "poisoned Halloween candy" is a widely circulated narrative wherever trick-or-treating is practiced. There are only two known cases of "poisoned Halloween candy," and they came along decades after the legend started circulating. In one, a child died after accidentally ingesting an adult's drug stash; the family attempted a coverup by claiming poisoned Halloween candy. In the second, more famously, a child was deliberately poisoned by his father, who had laced several Pixie-sticks with cyanide; as with the other case, the legend was used in order to throw suspicion away from the actual perpetrators. That's criminal ostension.

I have no idea why people would use "ostension" for literary coincidence--the point of ostension is that the existing folk narrative is used as a *script* for later action. Stretching it to include the Poe story as some kind of emblematic form of ostension is ridiculous. Horror stories about shipwrecked sailors resorting to cannibalism were super-common, bc how else are you going to survive if you're trapped in a lifeboat?  It was a reasonable fear. There weren't that many actual court cases, because sailor-cannibals rarely lived long enough to tell the tale and be prosecuted for it. And "Richard Parker" was a ridiculously common name, so. Now, if the actual sailors had taken the fact that one of them was named Richard Parker as, like, a sign that if they ate him they, like Poe's characters, would survive, then that would be closer to ostension. But as far as it goes, coincidence is the only real answer given the evidence.