[ChrisW]

Over on the Death of the Author thread, I suggested a way of looking at the debate that I hoped might be worth pursuing. Because it was a considerable departure from the discussion up to that point, I thought it would make sense to start a new thread.

The idea was to start with a set of fairly commonsense perceptions and assumptions about texts, meanings, language and interpretations that one might expect a theory of interpretation to respect and account for. I’ll mention some and I invite others to add to the list. No questions are being begged in setting these common sense perceptions out and asking for the theory to account for them, because the theory can, instead of explaining how the perception is true, may explain why we have the perception even though it is false. These common sense perceptions may conflict – in which case, the challenge is to decide which perception to reject or to find a way that both can be true.

Here are a few such perceptions grouped as much as possible into puzzles:
Puzzles and questions:
I
1. If I utter the sentence ‘John is fat’ today, and you utter the same sentence tomorrow. The conventional meaning of our utterances are the same. Yet it is possible for our individual utterances to mean different things. We may be talking about different Johns, or one of us may be using the sentence ironically.

2. We tend to believe that speaker’s or writer’s intentions are what go beyond the conventional meaning to determine the meaning of this individual utterance (the “speaker meaning” in Paul Grice’s terminology). There’s a conventional meaning and then there’s what the speaker means by it.

3. A full interpretation of a text or utterance will go beyond the conventional meaning to discover what the speaker intended to convey by that utterance.

4. Yet, this makes the hearer or reader appear to be a mind-reader – how can you know my intentions apart from what I actually say? And if you can, why do I need to talk at all?

5. And when it comes to reading “literary texts”, we often put aside the author’s own remarks about his intentions (as well as information about his biography, etc.) as irrelevant to our reading. If the meaning of the text were determined by author’s intention, then we would not put this information aside.

II

1. Novels, plays and poems, have an overt meaning, just as a treatise or a letter to a friend might. But interpreting this overt meaning is not all there is to interpreting such a work. Such works have “deep meanings” which they convey by means of the overt meaning. Interpretation of such texts is aimed at seeing this deep meaning through the overt meaning, and most argument between critics will focus here.

2. Yet if a literary interpreter is able to state this deep meaning declaratively, he either loses much of what is important about the “deep meaning” or he doesn’t

3. If he doesn’t, then why didn’t the author just write what the critic wrote rather than bothering with indirection?

4. So, either the critic’s attempt to understand the deep meaning kills the deep meaning, or the novelist’s work is unnecessarily roundabout. So there appears to be no place for literary criticism of a fairly traditional sort.

III Some plays, poems, novels, etc. are better than others. (How can this be? By what right can we declare this?)

IV Some interpretations are better than others. (How is this possible?)

V Some uses of speech to persuade or convince are more honest and rational than others, and honest, rational persuasion respects the autonomy of the person persuaded, while dishonest persuasion does not. (In this respect dishonest persuasion resembles coercion, though it is not the same thing.) Plato marks this distinction as the difference between "philosophy" and "rhetoric". (What is the difference between rational, honest persuasion and the other kind?)

And here are some constraints on theories of language and interpretation:

VI Speech and writing would never have developed just so we could write and discuss novels, poems and philosophical treatises. The primary uses of speech and writing are practical. A theory of interpretation or of language itself that makes it difficult to see how people ever understand each other seems to face a great deal of evidence that people DO understand each other (as evidenced by the success of their coordination of plans. Also a theory of interpretation of literary works ought to grow naturally out of interpretation of simpler, more practical sorts of interpretation.

VIII Babies learn language – if our theory makes this seem impossible, then we are in trouble.

IX Much of our knowledge (e.g., skill-knowledge, knowing how to do something) and much of our thought is non-linguistic, and much communication is non-linguistic (expressions, body language).

X Other minds are knowable. We do often know what other people think and feel. At the same time, our knowledge of our own minds is itself fallible (e.g., self-deception is possible).

XI Nearly all of our knowledge depends upon probabilistic inference (induction), not on deduction from a priori first principles. Induction is inference to the best explanation, and is necessarily dialectical (theories compete by raising problems for each other on their own terms).
[In line with XI, none of the "constraints" above are to be taken as first principles, but rather as things we have reason to believe based on background theories. All are up for debate themselves.]

As soon as I can get to it, I want to discuss structuralism and deconstruction.



[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited March 31, 2004).]

[ChrisW]

An argument (inspired by constraint number XI above) that we should not let structuralists and post-structuralists stand in the way of developing a more commonsensical theory of interpretation:

Structuralism is a theory of language primarily, and by extension, of representation and meaning in general.
Derrida assumes structuralism as an account of meaning and derives from it conclusions which conflict rather radically with the rest of our beliefs about understanding and interpretation.
He takes this as a reason to reject these other beliefs, but it is equally a reason to reject structuralism. If I start from the assumption that the earth is flat, then we can't believe in our pictures from the moon or in a number of other things we accept, but why shouldn't we reject the view that the earth is flat instead?

Presumably there is some evidence for structuralism, but whatever this evidence is, it has to be balanced against the evidence against structuralism. And if Derrida is right about the radical consequences of structuralism, then there seems to be a lot of evidence against structuralism. If there are other theories of language and meaning which are otherwise as well supported as structuralism and which permit us a fairly unproblematic understanding of each other, we should prefer those theories.
And if there are no such theories yet, we should be trying to develop them rather than accepting the wild consequences of the first theory we ever tried.

It could turn out that structuralism is our only option (or that all other theories have even more implausible consequences), and that therefore we are stuck with Deconstructive skepticism. But until we've tried out some other options, we have no reason to accept structuralism or the consequences Derrida derives from it.

Derrida's argument should not, then, stand in the way of our trying to find a more commonsensical theory of interpretation. Derrida's views are supported only insofar as we try to work out such alternate theories and fail.

[I think I can offer a more specific argument against structuralism based on a problem about how babies learn language, but perhaps the above argument is enough for the moment.]

[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited March 30, 2004).]

[ChrisW]

By the way, please feel free to continue any discussion from "Death of the Author" on this thread (if that's convenient), whether it connects with what I said at the beginning of this thread or not.
I regard this as a continuation of that thread.

[Tim Love]

On a first pass I found much to agree with. My eyebrows raised at
I.3. A full interpretation of a text or utterance will go beyond the conventional meaning to discover what the speaker intended to convey by that utterance. - in many circumstances we work this way (in order - as IX - to improve our odds of "probabilistic inference") but the arts in particular (and perhaps "Modern Art" moreso) host many challenges to this approach. Even a text's "conventional meaning" can be hard to pin down unless one's happy to accept that knowing the meanings of the words (which may be overlapping, in motion, in different fonts/colours, etc) suffices.
II.3 Novels, plays and poems, have an overt meaning, just as a treatise or a letter to a friend might. - do they? Depends what you mean by "overt meaning". Test cases include Theatre of the Absurd, or some things on http://www.blazevox.org/

[ChrisW]

Hi Tim,
Thanks for coming over and having a look and raising a few questions!
First, I want to say that I regard all of the claims above as commonsense views. I treat commonsense views, not as the final word, but as the starting points for theory (just as sense perception and common sense are the starting points for science). Where we end up, in trying to resolve the puzzles that arise out of those assertions may be quite different (in both science and in our theory of interpretation).
Second, I should probably have inserted a hedge into those statements -- something that put aside until later, the possibility that an author might, in full awareness of our usual critical practice, try to frustrate that practice. Works of art which are themselves based upon post-modern theories must especially be put aside at the beginning, but we can't put them aside forever.
Along with avant garde art and theater of the absurd, I would include zen koans. Looking ahead to what I expect my final theory to say about them, I would interpret koans as attempts to "say the unsayable" -- to communicate a meaning or a state of mind which cannot be put into words by means of words -- words which frustrate our attempts to make sense of them. (I suspect that avant garde art is often attempting something similar -- and that it must still be regarded as a form of communication, though one which works by only appearing to have an intermediate meaning). On such an account, the koan ends up being "parasitic" on our ordinary attempts to make sense of the "overt meaning." If people always spoke in koans and we got used to this, we would not try to make sense of them anymore, and then the frustration required to convey the unsayable meaning would disappear and we could no longer communicate this unsayable meaning. The same goes for avant garde art (I suspect) and this gives rise to a paradox: what do you do when the avant garde becomes the norm?

It occurs to me that Derrida should be viewed as himself in the tradition of the koan -- attempting to frustrate our attempts to make sense of texts and of the world (just another text), perhaps for the sake of some unstatable form of enlightenment (or is the enlightenment simply a recognition of how our attempts to make rational sense must fail?). (I've been trying to learn about Derrida and the other post-modern thinkers, but let me admit that so far I have not actually read any of his texts directly.)




[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited March 31, 2004).]

[epigone]

Just a quick hit and run.

I am generally suspicious of theories that present themselves as being based in common sense. I spent an uncomfortable semester studying with Ronald Dworkin, who contends that his own interpretive and moral theories are based on fundamental propositions about which we all agree. If you point out to him that we don’t all agree with those propositions, he just looks annoyed.
In any case, your set of common-sense propositions sets up a number of difficulties that common sense is largely unable to resolve.

There is also, I think, an asymmetry in the way you introduce the subject-matter and the way you treat deconstruction. You begin with “common-sense” observations in the hopes, I take it, of building on interpretive strategy based on those observations. But when it comes to deconstruction, you start with the conclusions and dismiss it as not being based on common sense. To the extent that I find deconstruction compelling, it is because my “common sense” observations about how language works (or fails to work) coincide with those on which deconstructive theory is based. And I continue to find aspects of deconstructive theory compelling even if I do not embrace radical skepticism. In short, I do not think such radical skepticism is a necessary outcome if one starts from the following simple propositions about language and culture:

1. language communicates meaning through recognized pairs of binary oppositions;
2. the binary pairs depend on one another for their ability to communicate meaning;
3. we tend to order binary pairs hierarchically without recognizing their interdependence.

The profound linguistic philosopher, Arlo Guthrie, sets forth the same common-sense view in a live performance, encouraging his audience not to worry about the neutron bomb because “you can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in” and if we’ve got the neutron bomb (which is bad), it won’t be long before we have the un-neutron bomb (which will be good).

epigone

[ChrisW]

I had thought I might explain more specifically what is implausible about structuralism, but I've run across an account of Barthes' "Death of the Author" essay (not the essay itself, I'm afraid), which I thought might be worth talking about. It is in "Teach yourself Postmodernism" by Glenn Ward (one of the "Teach yourself" series). I'd be inclined to turn up my nose at anything with such a title, but I have found it quite helpful.

Ward starts with three "slogans" from Barthes, which he motivates and explains:
"The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author."
"The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture."
"It is language which speaks, not the author."

The motivation Ward supplies is that Barthes wants to critique the romantic conception of the author -- not so much ordinary authors, but the genius -- and to give the reader something to do besides passively receive the great man's wisdom. I'm certainly sympathetic to this motivation, but we can achieve it without so radically inverting our picture of how we interpret texts.

In explicating the first "slogan", Ward gives the following view of the picture Barthe is reacting against (I paraphrase for the sake of brevity):
An individual author has an inspiration -- this is a fully realized, non-verbal idea.
He then encodes this idea in a medium (language in the case of writers), so that others can understand him.
The reader receives this meaning more or less passively, simply inserting his understanding of definitions and grammar to decode the text.

If I had to choose between this picture and Barthes' view of reading, I'm not sure which I'd pick, but fortunately, I don't have to.
It IS ridiculous to think that Shakespeare's inspiration for Hamlet is a complete text of Hamlet in mentalese (the language of the mind), which he then simply translates into English. Presumably, he starts with an inchoate sense of Hamlet the character and of his situation. He starts planning out what might happen and at some point he starts to write. As he writes, he may find that some of the plans he made ahead of time don't fit the character as he has started to develop on the page. He has the sense that the character is refusing to do what he (Shakespeare) had planned, that the character wants to do something else. Shakespeare may not know what the character wants to do for a while -- he may flounder about trying different things. Eventually, he hits on something that seems right, and keeps on writing. But perhaps on looking again, he decides this was also not something Hamlet would do. He tears up those pages and goes back again. When he's finally finished a draft, he may go back and rewrite more -- eliminating contradictions etc. He may put it on stage and find that some parts aren't working and rewrite again. Finally, either because he's satisfied or because he has no more time, he lets it go and starts a new play.

It is possible of course that he may write in white heat and never have to change a word, but even in this case, he still feels that the play is revealing itself to him as he writes -- it isn't that he just knows ahead of time all that will happen, and then simply translates this knowledge into English.
Does this glorify the author too much -- make him too godlike? If we restrict ourselves to masterpieces, maybe. But Shakespeare wrote Merry Wives of Windsor as well as Hamlet, and it's not ridiculous to think that Kenneth Branagh improved Henry V by some judicious cutting. The author's brilliance and knowledge may need the supplement of something like good fortune to produce a masterpiece, and even most masterpieces are not perfect (I think Tolstoy's passages on history in War and Peace are too long and that his appetite for such reflections exceeds his philosophical prowess).

Authors are not so much in control, nor are readers so passive as the supposedly "standard" picture suggests. First of all, the reader, on my view is not merely inserting his knowledge of grammar and definitions into the text -- rather he is forming a theory about what the author intended a reader to understand and testing it against the text. Coming up with a theory involves a good deal of imagination and creativity. Second, a reader should not sit passively at an author's feet, absorbing the great man's wisdom -- she should argue back, testing the author's sense of what the character would do against her own sense of how people behave.
(These activities are actually interrelated -- arguing back against one's understanding of the author may help one see that the author actually meant something else.)

My account of the author's work (in the particular case of a piece of fiction) does give a role to non-linguistic thought. Shakespeare's understanding of human motivation on this picture is non-linguistic, or at least inarticulate(like most "skill-knowledge" or "how-to" knowledge). But this knowledge serves as a guide to his writing, not, implausibly as a pre-existing text of Hamlet in mentalese. And the process of revision I described, shows how author's intentions can gradually become clearer to the author himself during composition and rewriting. To read a text through the lens of its author's intentions is not to decide what the author had in mind before he ever put pen on paper. It is rather closer to what he had in mind when he decided "yes, this is what I wanted to write" or at least "this is as finished as I can make it" (though much more would need to be said about this).

OK enough for now. I'll say more about Barthes' other slogans later (unless y'all beg me not to).

[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited March 31, 2004).]

[ChrisW]

Very quick reply to epigone:

I don't intend to "base my views on common sense", if common sense is to be regarded as foundational. I treat common sense as a group of appearances, which a theory ought to try to explain and make coherent.
You are exactly right that these phenomena give rise to puzzles which common sense cannot itself resolve (as I tried myself to point out), and that starting with common sense, we can end up with some very radical theories. The natural sciences start with the phenomena of sense impressions and our natural commonsense reasoning about the world, but they end up with some quite radical conclusions (which nonetheless EXPLAIN these sense impressions and why our commonsense reasoning works most of the time in our actual circumstances.

And then, I had no intention of dismissing deconstruction. My conclusion is only that while we are forming our view of interpretation, we can ignore challenges from those who take structuralism as a foundational truth which undercuts these appearances. My theory must in the end compete against the deconstructionist's theory.

I see it this way: minimally, a scientific theory that tells us that there are 27 dimensions must be able to tell us why there only seem to be 3. A theory of meaning that tells us that we never understand each other must have a pretty good account of how we manage to get along without understanding each other. More than that, I'd suggest that a scientific theory ought to be able to persuade people who start with a commonsense view of the world why we need 27 dimensions or why we should believe in genes or natural selection. I also think a theory of meaning that rejects much of common sense ought to be able to show us commonsense thinkers why we must reject common sese about meaning. If there is another theory that is closer to commonsense, the more radical theory should be able to defeat that theory, not on its own radical assumptions, but on the assumptions that the theory itself would grant.

I would like at some point to explain what I think is wrong with structuralism. The part of structuralism that I have the best arguments against is its attempt to make sense of meaning in a world-independent, non-referential (and holistic) way.
Interestingly, you do not appeal directly to this feature in your account of what is plausible in deconstruction.

The assumption about binary opposites needing each other is a part of common sense (though not as hard to give up as the claim that we often understand one another). I accept it as such, though of course, I reserve the right to account for it in ways that do not give rise to deconstruction.
(Well not so quick after all...sorry)

[This message has been edited by ChrisW (edited March 31, 2004).]

[epigone]

This time it really will be quick (I hope).

What if we usually understand each other about mundane things ("I'm going to the store") but really do not understand each other about complex literary and philosophical texts ("Was Rousseau a radical democrat or a proto-fascist")? While I think humans are capable of communicating simple thoughts, I think we need a theory to account for why we have such a hard time communicating complex thoughts and postmodernism helps me there.

And yes, although I did not include it in my sampling of common sense propositions, common sense may very well persuade us that in general, there is no relationship between the signified and the signifier. That is, the fact that we name an object a "chair" does not tell us anything about its qualities.

epigone

[Robt_Ward]

Chris,

You said "Does this glorify the author too much -- make him too godlike?"

On the contrary, it does the opposite. In the picture you paint of Shakespeare's mode d'ecrire, the characters have a life independent of his "plans" for them, such as they may be. And this is common to many, if not most, authors of fictiona nd drama (at least the good ones): they set out with some notion of where they're going, but the characters sieze control and take them somewhere else, as often as not. In this sense, the author is in no way a "god"; he is in some ways relegated to the position of "scribe", reporting on the activities and thoughts of his characters.

In an analogous way, it's my frequent experience, when writing a poem, that I think I know what I am saying (or what I intend to say or what I want to say) but the poem reveals otherwise to me. And it is therefore often the case that the act of writing the poem makes me aware, for the first time, of what I really feel/believe/think.

What this says about the validity of the author's "intentions" I am not quite sure...

(robt)