Re: Try listening to the real ideas and ignore vitriolic attacks

Jim said:

<< Robbie -- what happened to your other name? :). I kinda miss it. >>

I accidentally sent a message from the wrong address.

And then:
<< I've offered quite a few specific answers to your question, actually,
even one recently, I think. They mostly revolve around the ideas that texts
are multivocal and not univocal, and that insisting on authorial intent is
to insist upon one meaning. >>

You have certainly explained the assertion, or what the assertion is, but
have not so far as I remember explained the grounds upon which we can make
the assertion. I think such demonstration might well be too much to ask on
a listserv, but though you have gone to considerable lengths to explain the
assertion in detail, you haven't so far as I remember answered the question:
"WHY should I believe this?"

And:
<< Of course, and we went over this ground before, an author can intend
multiple meanings within a text, but he/she cannot possibly intend all
possible meanings of a text, especially since some are mutually exclusive.
>>

We have gone over that assertion before (in great detail), and it might even
be a true assertion, but I don't think the truth of it was ever demonstrated
or argued for entirely persuasively.

You said, for instance, and very carefully elaborated, that texts are
multivocal and not univocal, and that insisting upon authorial intent is to
insist upon one meaning, that mutually exclusive meanings preclude the
possibility that an author intended them. But suppose someone says, no,
texts are univocal. Suppose one says, rather, that you right, texts ARE
multivocal, but that's irrelevant and a governing intent allows it. Suppose
one says that authors can very well intend mutually exclusive meanings. You
asserted that authorial intent is unknowable on the basis of x, y, and z --
but the basis of x, y, and z was not always clear, and sometimes the
necessary consequence of the assertion upon x, y, and z was not clear.
These are things that need to be very clear to constitute an answer to: "Why
should I believe this?"

I won't explain or defend any of these objections further (I am not
presenting myself as making these objections at the moment), because I don't
want to and currently am quite unable to get into this again. My point is
only to maintain that no demonstration was given, no explanation of the
basis of the assertion was given. They might be true, but they were not
(for lack of time, for lack of capacity in the medium, for whatever)
demonstrated to be such.

-robbie
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Received on Wed Mar 5 17:00:33 2003