Much of the work in DisciplineOfEnglish.co.uk is centered around a critical perspective that requires more reading, more tracing, more historical contexts, more structural connections. Whether it be the factual defining characteristics, the historicity of sign systems, or the cultural theories which have all now been detailed extensively here – where ever you turn within this virtual department at all times it is proposed that meaning comes from outside the text; that meaning can only be properly inferred by cross referencing. This perspective leans upon Michael Faucult and the concept of genealogical transmissions, or genre theory which leans upon taxonomies of texts. This creates a paradox however; if reading, meaning and pleasure relies upon some wider knowledge of other texts, why do so many people (and children especially) enjoy reading in the absence of this genealogical or taxonomical structuralism? If meaning could not be constructed without this relational system of encoded signs, how did the first texts convey meaning? Reader-Response theories posit the opposite; that the text is not a reliable conveyor of meaning at all and that we learn to ‘see’ a particular reading because of who we are…
An admission; when reading to my children the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne or C.S.Lewis, I am rarely scaffolding their reading, interpretation or comprehension with some structuralist references… Good lord I hope that no reading of Dickens is interrupted by reference to the Reformation, Industrial Revolution and rise of the middle classes. Connecting Dickens backwards to Thackeray, Bronte, Austen, Richardson and Dafoe who each develop the theme of ‘becoming’ might make the text more ‘consequential’ – but at what cost?
So, we simply read. This act of simply reading is problematic. In what way is ‘simply reading’ of equal social value to ‘simply doing advanced physics’? How does it contribute to the economy of analysis? This question goes to the heart of the identity of Literature, and DoE.co.uk places academic value in almost all circumstances as the methodological knowledge and critical language.
Rick Rylance, in Debating Texts engages with the perspective of Reader-Response in section five; Interpretations, Contexts and Readers. The opening problem is; does meaning exists in the mind of the interpreter, or in the thing being interpreted? It is a philosophical question that moves between the need for anaytical tools used to access meaning, or simply an alert an enquiring reader who constructs meaning.
Much of this curriculum builds upon the idea that meaning is within the text, and the analytical tools are taught as discrete units of knowledge – a structuralist or formalist perspective. But poststructuralism shows us how meaning is unstable, plural or divergent, despite the writers best efforts.
Rylance demonstrates the problem of divergence through a line of Robert Burns; “O, my luve’s like a red, red rose”. Love is like beauty? Health? Romance? Or love is like a Lancastrian? Or love is like the Labour Party? Love will last a week then wilt? Which of these does Burns intend? Rylance asks; “For who is to adjudicate amongst these divergent readings without appeal to something beyond his or her interpretive frameworks?” p151.
What gives validation to any one interpretation, the interpretive framework, is really a wider interpretive community. An interpretation is correct if enough people read it in the same way. The community is self-validating, but the individual is not. Rylance reprints Stanley fish;
“Any procedure that attempts to determine which of a number of readings is correct will necessarily fail,” p155. “Any evidence which is brought to bear in the course of formalist analysis – that is, analysis generated by the assumption that meaning is embedded in the artifact – will always point in as many directions as there are interpreters. Not only will it prove something it ill prove anything,” p156.
Take for example, the uncertainty as to whom we should ascribe blame in Macbeth; Is Macbeth to blame? Is Lady Macbeth to blame? The Witches? What about Duncan himself for being too trusting? What about a culture that propagates murderers and murders?
The ambiguity invites judgement, because any evidence that participates in the debate is ultimately blurry or indefensible. Actually, we participate in value-judgements; we readers decide which of the many evidences ranks highly based on some internal criterion.
“This transferring of responsibility from the text to the reader is what the [text] asks us to do – it is the essence of their experience… by fixing the sense of the lines is to give responsibility back [to the text]. The text, however, will not accept it and remains determidnly evasive… [The text] confirms the impossibility of extracting some moral formula” p157.
Readers must manage the text for themselves, and choose outcomes for ourselves. The fear however becomes of ‘interpretive anarachy’.
Fish dissolves the fear of interpretive anarchy by suggesting that the reader is already present within an interpretive community, we readers are the product of interpretive communities. How do we know if / that we are members of the community? Fish, continues the paradox of avoiding proceduralising meaning and concludes merely that ‘if you know, you know’. There is no proof nor measure or admittance to the community, but the very nature of two people coming to agreement over the meaning of any on thing is all that is needed to assure us that we are part of that community.
But… and yet but… The function of these essays is guided by Anderson and Krathwohl’s delineations of knowledge; facts, concepts, procedures and metacognitions. Procedures require some guidance, rules and steps to follow, and I fume against the notion that reading for meaning, interpretation, and interpretive communities is ‘intuitive’ and unknowable. To assume to places the academic study of Literature in some closed community where one cannot be told the ‘right words’ but if you can say those ‘right words’ would allow you access. Fish would argue that we are part of interpretive communities already and don’t need to be invited in – but this is not the experience of many students. Many feel they do not have the ‘sixth sense’, nor the ‘stonemason’s handshake’ that authorises their interpretation – they want to be actively invited into the community by being taught the procedure, process and steps to follow.
Fish tells us that critics should be more concerned with the structure of the reader’s experience and less the structures available on the page (p157). In this instance, we are far less likely to make a “spectacular failure” in interpreting the “fleeting readings” available to a reader.
“While we may be able to extract from [the text] a statement affirming [a theme], we are not allowed to forget the evidence that makes the extraction so difficult,” p159. “In the procedure I would urge, the reader’s activities are at the centre of attention, where they are regarded, not as leading to meaning, but as having meaning. The meaning they have is a consequence of their not being empty; for they include the making and revising of assumptions, the rendering and regretting of judgements, the coming to and abandoning of conclusions, the giving and withdrawing of approval… The solving of puzzles,” p162
A reader-response review is focused on the experience of the reader, but not the self – the critic is looking at other readers and how or why they come about their conclusions. The obvious question then is; how can we presume to know, or to describe the reader’s (singular or plural) experience? Especially when, as Fish himself says is “the action of the mind which its possession makes possible for one reader, and impossible for the other” p163. The possession of the mind makes the process of comprehension some subjective experience that is not possessed universally, but uniquely, and the critic has no greater access to the internal experience of the individual reader.
I take this as a paradox, that if the reader’s experience is insular and unknowable, then interpreting the reader is not more reliable than interpreting the text. There is no authorised reading of text, there is no authorised reading or the author, there is no authorised reading of the reader. And this is the crux of many theoretical positions in Literature Studies or Critical Reading – the premise of the theory might be agreeable but the act of solving the text still comes down to some intuitive sixth sense of interpretation.
I am strongly inclined to facilitate the needs of the students, to act in sympathy with their needs, and to proceduralise the act of the reader response theory – partly because I don’t feel to have been taught the pin number myself, and have gotten into the club like a hitman in a waiter’s suit. What should students do when reading or analysing a text?
Putting attempts to resolve the objection with the following:
“to construct the profile the profile of the informed or at-home reader is at the same time to characterise the author’s intention and vice-versa, because to do either is to specify the contemporary conditions of utterance, to identify, by becoming a member of, a community made up of those who share interpretive strategies,” p163.
The interpretive community really is another way of asserting the different contexts, periods, eras or politics in which the reader participates with the text. This surrounding context contains cultural groups of people all motivated by some shared cultural experience. It is the reader’s context, and participation in this culture that trains the way we interpret texts – that interpretation belongs to, or comes from these contexts is the core nature of reader-response theory. The reading we produce is motivated not by some profound truth within the text, but by the conditions within which we read.
This is ultimately why we continue to talk about literature. The text does not contain within it some knowable, singular meaning. If this was so, then we would be able to read a book, know the meaning, and no future contention would be necessary – it is a solved puzzle and we are no longer interested in someone else also solving the puzzle. There are different ways of solving the puzzle, and different solutions, which are each produced by different readers. If all readers were the same, then there would be a single solution. Interpretive communities is a plural and divergent system.
Fish explains his procedure when reading toom “to perform certain acts” that are not done after reading, but during:
- to find themes
- to confer significance
- to mark out formal units
Fish provides the example or a Christian (or any religious) interpretive community, who have been taught that all texts, scripture and indeed the world, when read properly, all convey the meaning of God’s infinite love and power. When a reader finds a text that does not match the outcomes, it has to be seen as a text that does not conventionally match the outcomes – it gets there figuratively. The interpretive community will investigate and find the meaning that best fits their training (that God’s love is in all things). This continues today when religions attempt to internalize the work of Darwin, Hawkins, germ theory etc. Readers are often incapable of drawing conflicting conclusions. Arguments ensue over who is correctly perceiving the text – in the case of origins / genesis, both rationalism and creationism claim the authority of perception.
Interpretive strategies are learned, and the critic should be aware of who is learning what, from where, and how it is the context around the reader doing the interpretation, not the reader himself. So as we are seeing interpretations, we are seeing where a reader comes from. Readers obtain decoding strategies from their learning, in which significance is seen based on experience. Fish frequently refers to his own work as ‘making the text disappear’, and what is left is the reader – we are not really interpreting texts, we are interpreting readers.
How might we proceduralise this for students? I propose the following:
- Recognise that texts, evidence and words have a plurality of meanings.
- Account for the variations of interpretations, without arguing for a single meaning intended by the author.
- Be aware of different readers, having different, divergent experiences – readers come from shared space which builds decoding strategies. By shared spaces and interpretive communities, I propose the following clarity by way of example:
- religious groups,
- political affiliation,
- class and demographic groups,
- educational level,
- sex and gender,
- ethnicity and nationality,
- subcultures,
- Attribute each interpretation to interpretive communities – what will a shared space come to say about a text that is different from other shared spaces?
- Argue that texts are ambiguous, often by authorial design and always by the failure of language.
- Argue that the point of ambiguity and plurality of meaning is to create debate, friction and opposition – the greater the ambiguity, the greater the debate, the longer the text lives on after reading.
- Literature thrives off of symbolic ambiguity. Language texts thrive off of grammatical certainty. The differing function of Language and Literature texts is not to be conflated.
Going back to the question of blame in Macbeth. We might observe how a masculine community might attribute blame upon Lady Macbeth, we might observe this to be a misogynistic or patriarchal community (though one should be careful not to be pejorating). We might observe how a community might attribute blame upon the Witches, we might observe this to be a group that is more likely to believe in the powers of the occult. Another group might attribute blame upon Macbeth, and maybe this is a feminist group.
And this isn’t just theoretical and academic. I am aware of students being removed from GCSE Literature classes on religious grounds, because the ghosts and curses are seen as occult temptation away from spiritual purity. I have known students removed from cooking lessons on grounds of ‘clean’ eating. We see hostility in the streets over football allegiance, clothing choice and music preference.
Each group obtains their interpretation through a culture of experience. It is not especially subjective because it is not the point of view of the individual but the structures of a community. It is given credibility as an interpretation because of the quantity of people who might agree.
The critic cannot know for certain which interpretive community is interpreting ‘correctly – ultimately meaning is not to be found in the text but to be created by the reader. The critic accounts for this plurality, is aware of the tension that cannot be resolved from within the text, and disposes of their own personal ‘reading’.
Reader-response theories then require less of the formalism or structuralism that this curriculum typically presses for, but is still an academic perspective to apply, and it has real world application too.
Leave a Reply