Re: again ?
J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Thu, 02 Jul 1998 13:55:52 -0400 (EDT)
On Thu, 02 Jul 1998 17:29:04 +0000 Scottie Bowman <bowman@mail.indigo.ie>
writes:
>
> '...One of the things I admire most about deconstruction
> is the way it sublimates the authority of the author...'
>
> What does that mean, Will ?
>
> Scottie B.
>
THINGS I LIKE ABOUT THIS DISCUSSION:
1. It got Scottie vocally involved.
2. It go Will's Hackles up. That NEVER happens :)
3. It provides a forum for meaningful discourse about deriving meaning
from texts.
Now I'm-a-gonna use that forum...
First off, Scottie, many of my ideas were culled from a fellow Brit--C.S.
Lewis. He's pre-deconstruction, actually--pre-reader response, for that
matter. He's a contemporary to I.A. Richards, another Brit, wrote
_Principles of Literary Criticism_, spent half the book talking about
something else entirely. You'd like it :).
Lewis was BOTH a published author of fiction AND a noted literary critic
at the top of his field in his day. He spoke from both sides of the
fence, and knew that he was not the source of the meaning of his text.
He looked to his contemporaries to help provide that. This isn't to say
he had no concept of the meaning of his text, just that he didn't see
himself as the final voice on the subject. He did share frustration
yourself and all the other published authors on the list feel when some
readers Just Don't Get It, and in the face of these types of readers I
understand your chagrin. We're crediting idiots with genius, it seems.
Scottie, you don't have to treat all readers with equal seriousness.
So it is possible to be a widely published, well noted author and
disagree with your position. But I guess it takes a background in
critical theory to do so :)
Another Brit comes to mind...TS Eliot. Well, he doesn't count, he a
transplanted colonist :)
So this isn't necessarily something limited to France and the States,
although I'm willing to tolerate snide remarks directed toward the States
provided you have good enough insults about the French. That, in my
opinion, makes EVERYTHING worthwhile :)
Now, I think modern critical theory is missing it too in some ways. See,
when we argue Author vs. Reader as far as the origin of meaning in a
text, we're still placing the meaning of a text in a Subject--a person.
I believe the meaning of a text resides in THE TEXT as interpreted by the
READING COMMUNITY to whom it was written (not any single individual, but
a community of individuals over a period of time).
Let me put it another way. The meaning of a text resides in its
language. Language is bigger than any one of its users, but only as big
as all of its users put together, past and present. Authors are subject
to the fact that language is bigger than they are, just as readers are
subject to that fact. Neither can Make a text Mean Anything they want.
But any person can influence language by pressuring it in the presence of
the community, changing it. It happens regularly, in fact.
Since a single text can be read across many different reading
communities, many different meanings are possible, some sometimes
contradictory. I would give first place to the community to which the
author wrote--the community of which the author was a part.
Now in the light of this, Matt's question was pretty on target. Ok, yes,
there IS a difference between an apple painted by Cezanne and a critic
commenting on it. BUT, whenever we talk about deriving meaning from a
text, we FACE THE SAME ISSUES either way. We have to decipher the
criticism just like we have to decipher the painting. Text is text on
that level.
The effect upon the Decipher-er (forgive me :) ), is different in each
case, but the issues are very, very similar.
Jim
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