Is that an objective realization?
>The catch, though, is that while everything is subjective, we
>(humans) form interpretive communities where we treat
>interpretations "as if" they were objective. We look up at the
>sky and say "That's blue." Blue, of course, is subjective, and
>there's no way we could really "prove" that the blue I see and
>the blue you see are objectively the same, but we've made a sort
>of compromise [the interpretive community] to agree that "The sky
>is blue" so we can talk about it and other blue things and not
>spend all our time arguing what blue is.
Well, there's the Newton/Goethe controversy here. Does the particular
frequency of a light wave determine color or is it determined by how the
subject perrceives it? I'd say objective blueness is provided by the light
wave while the blue that one sees is a subjective matter.
>Extending this to text, Fish argues that what formalists (who
>roughly say meaning is embedded in the form of the text and can
>be unlocked by the reader) are utterly wrong. Form is just a
>function of reading within a certain interpretative model. His
>famous example of proving this is where he listed the names of
>several theorists on the board as a reading assignment for one of
>his classes. The names were still on the board when the next
>class--a 17th century religious poetry class--came in. He told
>the religious poetry class the names were an obscure 17th century
>religious poem and the class proceeded to spend the entire period
>building a critical analysis of the previous classes assignment
>*as if it were a poem*.
Is this proof in an objective sense? I don't see how it proves anything.
Though it might say something about religious poetry students:)
tj
>Were they "wrong"? Fish would say no, because they made it a
>poem by their act of interpretation. There cannot be a wrong
>interpretation (because that would imply an objective right one
>out there that you could compare yours to).
>However--and this applies back to my own class--they may be
>"wrong" in the *context* of the standards of the interpretive
>community they are in. "Kingston is confusing" is not a wrong
>interpretation (because there can be no such thing as a wrong
>interpretation). If the student were to say that to another
>student (i.e., someone in their same interpretive community) then
>that might be a perfectly valid response. But, it is not
>sufficiently rigorous analysis in the average university's
>interepretive community. So while you cannot argue that it is
>*objectively* wrong, and while it may meet the criteria of the
>"18-year old inexperienced reader" interpretive community, you
>*CAN* argue that it does not meet the criteria of the "academic
>university" interpretive community. While an interpretation may
>be valid in one interpretive context, it could be invalid in the
>other.
>
>With this in mind, we could define "learning" as the process of
>shifting from one interpretive community to another, a process by
>which the same text may take on new meaning by the application of
>the new interpretive model. As a freshman comp teacher, one of
>my roles is to guide the students into a new interpretive model
>(a model which is more widely accepted as valid in the university
>than the one they normally arrive there with).
>
>This is really a meta-cognitive step. They have to first be able
>to "acknowledge" their own interpretive model as just that--an
>interpretation. Hence my suggestion that they consider that
>their "confusion" is not a weakness of the writing (i.e. an
>objective problem in a static text), but a weakness of their
>reading (i.e. a problem in their dynamic reading/intepreting
>process). You have to first get them to acknowledge that the way
>they interpret it on their first read is NOT objective fact.
>
>And you'd be really surprised by how many freshman think that if
>they don't "get" the meaning then it is either (a) not there, or
>(b) "hidden." This "hidden meaning" idea is widespread, a result
>of formalism that treats texts as objects encoded by the author
>and subsequently decoded by the reader.
>
>Fish is a reader-oriented critic. The author and intentionality
>are irrelevant in his view; meaning is constructed by the reader
>only. So, actually, when you said I was putting the burden on
>the reader, in a way I was.
>
>The typical response to "meaning is constructed by the reader
>only" is cries of SUBJECTIVISM WILL LEAD US TO UTTER RELATIVISM
>AND MEANINGLESSNESS. Which normally is a pretty valid response,
>IMO, but in Fish the idea of interpretive communities deflates
>that rebuttal. It is *theoretically* possible to devolve into
>relativistic meaningless, but *practically* it is a moot point,
>because to get anything done we have to put aside subjectivism
>and utter relativity and agree to behave "as if" certain things
>were objective (language, meaning, etc.). That doesn't mean they
>*are* objective, but it's the next best thing.
>
>The reason I am so fond of Fish is that his ideas embrace the
>multiplicity and subjectivity and *play* of the
>deconstructionists, but temper it with *practicality*.
>
>Basically, what Fish (and I) are saying is "Yup, the world is a
>totally subjective place with no objective meaning, but that
>doesn't get us anywhere interesting, so instead let's pretend
>that things have meaning."
>The easy stuff (the sky is blue, things fall down not up, "cat"
>means a furry four-legged feline not a leather foot covering,
>etc.) we don't have to bicker over because just about everyone is
>included in that interpretive community from birth. It's only
>when we get to the not-so-easy stuff: how a text makes meaning,
>how we define what life is, etc. that our normally useful
>interpretive community standards breaks down and we have to start
>bickering.
>
>The key is to remember that what we are bickering over is never
>objective fact, but just which interpretive model is going to
>prove the most effective. I think that is the "transformation of
>critical practice" that deconstruction always brings around.
>It's just that most deconstuctionists seem to toss the baby out
>with the bathwater; Fish gets rid of the bathwater (objectivity),
>but let's us keep the baby (practicality and meaning).
>
>Though, I think it does make the baby a little more ethereal than
>she was before.
>
>This was probably way more of an answer than you wanted, and I'm
>not even sure if it answered your question, but I'm really trying
>to avoid reading my freshmen's work this morning & this was more
>fun.
>
>
>
>--
>Greg Ritter
>gritter@hibbs.vcu.edu
>ritter@urvax.urich.edu
>
>
tj twp@shore.net
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
/I dream of things /
\that never were and\
/ask - why not? /
\ Bobby Kennedy \
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