Re: I'll tell you what it's all about....

J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Fri, 20 Nov 1998 17:24:51 -0500 (EST) 

Gawd, Scottie, what's grotesque and insightless is to hold to a position
without examining it rationally first.  I've only met one educated person
(educated in critical theory, that is--which implies a degree of
education in philosophy as well) that still hold to authorial intent.  He
was a PhD by the name of Sam Overstreet that I argued with on a different
mailing list.  

He argued "for" authorial intent better than anyone I've ever met--more
intelligently, etc.  But in the end the most he could affirm was "some"
anchoring of the text to its author--not an absolute one.

It's simply the epitome of arrogance for any author (and Everyone on this
list is an author--no?  An author of posts.  Communication is
communication) to think they so control a language they neither created
nor really significantly influenced that they can determine with absolute
certainty the meaning of even their own words.  

Language is something we've been given, not something any of us as
individuals own absolutely.

But it is good to hear from you again :)

Jim 

On Thu, 19 Nov 1998 23:20:10 +0000 Scottie Bowman <rbowman@indigo.ie>
writes:
>    '...That is saying that you are looking for messages that aren't 
>there.
>    The author creates the character and their actions and their 
>reasons
>    for their actions.  The author knows what the character is feeling
>    because he is the character (especially in jds case)...'
>
>    Although I'm not altogether clear about other bits of your 
>message,
>    that one quoted above seems to me, at least, to be indisputable.
>
>    Having had no contact with academic linguistics before joining
>    mailing lists such as this one, I was bemused, amused, amazed by
>    the evidently fashionable view that the interpretation of a text
>    or the projection onto it of private fantasies by any jumped-up
>    Tom, Dick or Harriet is potentially as valid as that intended by
>    its author.
>
>    I can see how attractive this must be in a society - such as the 
>US
>    or Australia - where a remorseless egalitarianism lays its dead 
>hand
>    on the artist ìn his special role as elite avatar - one only to be
>understood
>    with the most ardent, humble devotion.  It remains a position
>    of grotesque & insightless impudence.
>
>    Scottie B.
>
>

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