Of cabbages and kings

It’s time to start talking language again, so I’ll begin by harkening back to the early days. This excerpt comes from a 2006 post in response to “Thersites,” in which the plump community college new historicist decided he’d tackle what he referred to as the “standard simplification” of intentionalism. My response should refresh some basic insights into our relationship with signs and signifiers.

*****

update:  Thersites replies, first by [contemporaneously] quoting from [my 2006 post]:

Intentionalists are well aware of (and dutifully acknowledge) the social conditions [convention, context, multiple authorship, presumption of agency, inter- and intratextuality, etc.] necessary for the communication of meaning. In fact, the notes themselves address (and critique) how this common sense observation is made into an interpretive paradigm and then “used to justify the marginalization of the “author” (along with originary intent), and to expand “meaning” beyond any coherent parameters (meaning as untethered from authorial intent).

—then arguing:

The standard oversimplification. There is just far more to any linguistic exchange that takes place in the real world than can be accounted for through “authorial intent.”

Literature is a case in point, indeed THE case in point for, well, literary analysis. JG says he is talking about “interpretation in general, and applying general principles to literary texts as well as any other text.” This is exactly the problem. As I said, this approach “elides the entire history of how literature came to be constitued as a unique social field explicable by the specific rules (descriptive more than prescriptive) that in fact define it.” Literary texts are NOT “any other text.”

He says he answers this objection by refuting Derrida and Culler. Which is nice, but I’m not making a deconstructionist argument, something that should be obvious to anyone who recognizes where phrases like “exterminate the brutes” (all of them!) come from. Sheesh. (I’m not making any sort of new critical or romantic argument about Great Literature, either. )

JG’s approach ultimately ends in a refusal to say anything actually insightful or perceptive about literature, or even authors. It’s not that he’s wrong, it’s that he’s… dull. And leaves the door open to some bad-faith and noxious kinds of arguments. I’ll get to that later. Meanwhile, my opinion of the sentence I quoted stands, notwithstanding JG’s refutation of something I wasn’t talking about.

Quickly, because I’m on my way to a Rockies game:

1) Thersites’ first claim:  “The standard oversimplification. There is just far more to any linguistic exchange that takes place in the real world than can be accounted for through ‘authorial intent.’”

True and false. We can (and do) do many things with texts “in the real world” that don’t take into consideration authorial intent.  But again, that’s not in dispute.  The question is, what makes those things we do which don’t take into account authorial intent come to count as “interpretation”?  Again.  I implore you, Thersites:  read more.  All of this is covered quite thoroughly in my notes.

2) Thersites’ second claim: “Literary texts are NOT ‘any other text.’” Here, Thersites’ is claiming a special status for literary texts, though it is not clear on what he is basing this rather interesting ontological distinction.  Presumably, he wishes to say that we do different things with literary texts than we do with other kinds of texts.

To which my reply, once again, is…and?  I thought I’d addressed this clearly enough by highlighting the response to Culler (ignore Thersites’ red herring about my trying to pigeonhole him as a deconstructionist; I’m not, nor are such labels important here, though his initial appeal to the “social conditions necessary for the communication of meaning” indicate he is an adherent of one of the “reader response” schools), but evidently Thersites needs me to zero in more:  here is my direct address to the assertion that literary texts, because they are placed in an interpretive context with different expectations from other texts (which doesn’t make them different, I would argue—only differently situated—but we’ll grant Thersites his peculiar ontological tic), cannot be treated similarly, and are open to “more” meaning than, say, street signs.  Once again, and with feeling!:

What I would argue, however, is that while interpretive assumptions may indeed be institutionally (and thus impermanently) sanctioned, “meaning” is not a product of particular assumptions, but rather a product of the intention to signify. If by “interpretation,” we mean we are seeking a text’s meaning (what the addresser meant by the signs she used) then what we are after is, in fact, stable. That institutions can adopt illimitable interpretive assumptions, then, simply means that at different times we believe we can do different things with texts, depending upon the assumptions employed at a given interpretive moment. But the force of this (accurate) claim does nothing to alter the meaning of the text under investigation; instead, it testifies to a kind of ingenuity which seeks to equate incorrigibility with absence — and therefore to equate whatever proves non-provable with the necessity of its provisionality.

3) Thersites’ third claim:  “JG’s approach ultimately ends in a refusal to say anything actually insightful or perceptive about literature, or even authors. It’s not that he’s wrong, it’s that he’s… dull. And leaves the door open to some bad-faith and noxious kinds of arguments. I’ll get to that later.”

Well, whether or not I have anything insightful or perceptive to say about literature is a matter of opinion; a noted Renaissance scholar, for instance, was very excited about my take on The Prince (I read it as a parody on Renaissance advice manuals, though through Hutcheons, and a bit differently than Mattingly); and I think the discussion of In Cold Blood, Ragtime, Beloved and Portnoy’s Complaint toward the end of the notes is very interesting, though of course, I’m biased.

My students found it interesting, though—as did they being taught intentionalism through a study of Curious George.  But it takes a great deal to titilate Thersites (“GOLDSTEIN EATS PASTE!  OPEN THREAD!”), so I am willing to grant that perhaps he truly is bored by what I have to say.

However, lest we miss it in all the self-serving verbiage, Thersites does note “It’s not that he’s wrong, it’s that he’s… dull”—which means we’re making progress. 

Although I would have preferred “right” instead of “not wrong.” But again, that’s just me nitpicking.

As to the claim that certain ideas about interpretation “leave the door open to some bad-faith and noxious kinds of arguments,” well, I couldn’t agree more.  As regular readers know, I believe that ideas of interpretation that proceed from an incoherent base in linguistics are dangerous and lead us toward an interpretive environment where meaning is “made” in the person of the interpreter, but can be ascribed, conveniently, to the author (if one so wishes), or else be said to exist independently of the author.  That’s trying to have your cake and eat it to, and it leads to a situation in which meaning is necessarily relative, having nothing concrete to anchor itself to.

Intent—whether it is the intent of the original author or the intent of the interpreter—is what provides marks their signification, and so a text its “meaning(s)”.  Thersites calls this a “standard oversimplification”—though he doesn’t say how or why, except to note that we can do more with texts than appeal to an author’s intent.  But again, so what?  Yes, we can make paper airplanes out of the pages of Ulysses or origami out of the pages of Moby Dick—neither of which changes the fact that, for purposes of interpretation, what I take pains to describe in my notes is the process of making and interpreting meaning.

But please, let us continue….