WHAT END DOES POST MODERNISM SERVE?

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Originally Posted by blp

I know enough to understand your example, but I don't see how it backs up your argument. You seem to be talking about a kind of game of interpreting texts to say things they manifestly didn't mean. If that acknowledgement is being made, it's hardly going to make the interpretation stick. It's also a somewhat localised example that doesn't prove that anything like all postmodern critics are doing this.

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I didn't and wouldn't suggest that all of any kind of critic does any one thing in particular. Rather than me trying to explain the full range, I would suggest that you read "The Limits of Interpretation" by Umberto Eco. Postmodernist critics often do play "a kind of game of interpreting texts to say things they manifestly didn't mean." There are works that are open to a wide range of interpretation, but for most works the range is very limited. To try another example, when I heard a Marxist interpretation of Aphra Behn's "Oroonko", I laughed, because that wasn't what she was writing, the critic was imposing his opinion on the text.

In my opinion, Postmodern is a situation. When a person is about to say something (of the past, of the future, of the present, of anything) to someone else, and suddenly that person say "...aw, forget about it" and he is responded by an "..mm" and then there is silence, that is how the situation called postmodern is like.

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Originally Posted by bhekti

...aw, forget about it" and he is responded by an "..mm" and then there is silence, that is how the situation called postmodern is like.

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A lot of my own writing's like that.

I tried to post a blank post, to signify silence. But that's too minimalist for this forum. You'll just have to imagine it.

Start now.













And end here.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

I didn't and wouldn't suggest that all of any kind of critic does any one thing in particular. Rather than me trying to explain the full range, I would suggest that you read "The Limits of Interpretation" by Umberto Eco. Postmodernist critics often do play "a kind of game of interpreting texts to say things they manifestly didn't mean." There are works that are open to a wide range of interpretation, but for most works the range is very limited. To try another example, when I heard a Marxist interpretation of Aphra Behn's "Oroonko", I laughed, because that wasn't what she was writing, the critic was imposing his opinion on the text.

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This has been my experince in grad school completely. Yes they do. Postmodernist critics impose meaning to a text, rather than derive meaning from a text. I'll have to check out the Umberto Ecco book, or is it an essay? And I've said it before (to those not aware, you might find the Language as Control thread interesting), surprise-surprise, what the critics always find is a reflection of their ideology.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Postmodernist critics impose meaning to a text, rather than derive meaning from a text.

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We all impose or construct rather than derive meaning. I assume the reason that you think that meaning is somehow set within a text is because you see meaning as pre-linguistic. Meaning is not something which the author wills, some wordless act which is then fixed for all time in a set of material signs called the text.

Your view that meaning is like the kernel of a nut and that ‘objective’ critics help reveal that meaning is as permeated with ideological assumptions as any other. You are claiming, in effect, that your own reading is free from all political contamination and that others’ readings are ideological.

“The idea that there are non-political forms of criticism is simply a myth which furthers certain political uses of literature all the more effectively. The difference between a ‘political’ and a ‘non-political’ criticism is just the difference between the prime minister and the monarch: the latter furthers certain political ends by pretending not to, while the former makes no bones about it. The difference between a conventional critic who speaks of ‘the chaos of experience’ in Conrad or Woolf, and the feminist critic who examines those writers’ images of gender, is not a distinction between ‘non-political’ and ‘political’ criticism. It is a distinction between different forms of politics – between those who subscribe to the doctrine that history, society and human reality as a whole are fragmentary, arbitrary and directionless, and those who have other interests which imply alternative views about the way the world is.

The feminist critic is not studying representations of gender simply because she believes that this will further her political ends. She also believes that gender and sexuality are central themes in literature and other sorts of discourse, and that any critical account which suppresses them is seriously defective. Similarly, the socialist critic does not see literature in terms of ideology or class-struggle because these happen to be his or her political interests, arbitrarily projected onto literary works. He or she holds that such matters are the very stuff of history, and that in so far as literature is an historical phenomenon, they are the very stuff of literature too. What would be strange would be if the feminist or socialist critic thought analyzing such questions of gender or class was merely a matter of academic interest – merely a question of achieving a more satisfyingly complete account of literature. For why should it be worth doing this? Liberal humanist critics are not merely out for a more complete account of literature: they wish to discuss literature in ways which will deepen, enrich and extend our lives. Socialist and feminist critics are quite at one with them on this: it is just that they wish to point out that such deepening and enriching entails the transformation of a society divided by class and gender. They would like the liberal humanist to draw the full implications of his or her position. If the liberal humanist disagrees, then this is a political argument, not an argument about whether one is ‘using’ literature or not.” Terry Eagleton

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Originally Posted by Virgil

As I've made clear elsewhere, I have a problem with it's application to understanding literature and art in general.

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And this is the aspect of your approach I find most problematic. You’ve certainly made clear that you do have a problem with it but nowhere have you justified that through logical argument. I do not know why you cannot see that your own reading practices are no less the product of ideology than any other.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Somewhere on another thread someone who shall be left unnamable (please excuse me; I've been wanting to use that pun for a long time ;) ) asked if all interpretations of a work were correct and if some interpretations were wrong. He answered his own question by saying some interpretations could be wrong; not all interpretations are correct. Yes, I agreed.

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I still think that some interpretations are worthless – ‘uninformed and ignorant’ I said. But that doesn’t mean that I think that some interpretations are political and others objective.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

The application of post modern criticism is by its own definition a projection of ideology into a text.

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Where is your evidence for this?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I think that that leads to a poor understanding of a work.

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If ideological readings lead to poor understanding, then your own readings must be included. Your own approach is ideological.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I was also asked somewhere, why am I offended by post modernism. I'm not offended by post modernism the theory per se, but I am offended by critics of any stripe who redefine the work as they want to see it.

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Isn’t that what we all do, ultimately? It just isn’t possible to make a complete distinction between ‘what the text means’ and ‘what it means to me’. There surely isn’t one, pure and uncontaminated meaning of Hamlet that exists independently from all the thoughts we’ve ever had about it.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

Au contraire, postmodern critics impose their idealogy on a text. That isn't necessarily bad, if it is done well, but too often it means that someone will use a text as a vehicle for pushing idealogy that is not in the text, claiming that it is in the text.

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Please explain to me what is in a text. Your position supposes that some people know what is in a text while others merely force their own meanings into it.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

Which brings up semiotics as applied to interpretation. In semiotic theory every sememe implies all other sememes, thus a text implies the rest of the world. The question when interpreting a text is whether one is interpreting the text or a text that is implied by the original text. It can be amusing to interpret a text in a way that is barely connected with the original text, but it isn't useful,

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What do you mean by ‘useful’? What, for that matter, is the use of Literature? Perhaps that question and the more basic one of ‘What is Literature?’ deserves a thread by itself.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

but there are literary works that demand interpretation and in which the author didn't give a clear indication of meaning. One example that comes to mind in Coleridge's "Kubla Khan". I wrote an interpretation of it last Fall in which the poem is basically about sexual intercourse - the second stanza describes the act, the third stanza reflects on it and is a plan to write a poem about it, and the first stanza sets the scene. That poem is sometimes interpreted as a discussion of poetic creation and sometimes as a dream of unconnected images. I don't know which interpretation is correct, i.e., what Coleridge intended, but I can see validity in each of those interpretations, but I think that my interpretation fits the text better. I did not impose meaning on the poem, I extracted meaning from the poem.

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How can you say that? If it’s true then the ‘meaning’ of sexual intercourse must already have been in the text, otherwise how can you extract something that isn’t there?

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Originally Posted by PeterL

A postmodern critic would be more likely to impose meaning on the poem.

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That’s precisely what you’ve just done, surely? – You are choosing one meaning over another. You can’t have it both ways – either there is an objective meaning in the text or the text is a linguistic construct capable of generating many meanings. You speak of what Coleridge ‘intended’ as if that would give us access to the ‘actual’ meaning. Yet if readers don’t bring their own meanings to the text, then any meaning that is not one that was fixed there by the author would have had to have been generated elsewhere. Unless Coleridge ‘meant’ sexual intercourse, your meaning has been constructed, not extracted.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Please explain to me what is in a text. Your position supposes that some people know what is in a text while others merely force their own meanings into it.

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Language, any language, contains a set of signs with commonly agreed upon meanings. A text contains a collection of such signs arranged by the author in a meaningful way. A reader reads the text and usually understands what was written. Some people will read the text and consider the signs to mean things that are other than the commonly agreed upon meanings.

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What do you mean by ‘useful’? What, for that matter, is the use of Literature? Perhaps that question and the more basic one of ‘What is Literature?’ deserves a thread by itself.

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I mean useful in understanding a text according to the commonly agreed upon meanings of the sings in the text.

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How can you say that? If it’s true then the ‘meaning’ of sexual intercourse must already have been in the text, otherwise how can you extract something that isn’t there?

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Correct, my interpretation was of what the text says.

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That’s precisely what you’ve just done, surely? – You are choosing one meaning over another. You can’t have it both ways – either there is an objective meaning in the text or the text is a linguistic construct capable of generating many meanings. You speak of what Coleridge ‘intended’ as if that would give us access to the ‘actual’ meaning. Yet if readers don’t bring their own meanings to the text, then any meaning that is not one that was fixed there by the author would have had to have been generated elsewhere. Unless Coleridge ‘meant’ sexual intercourse, your meaning has been constructed, not extracted.

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I agree. I am of the opinion that Coleridge wrote a deliberately obscured poem about sexual intercourse. By using figurative language and allusions he made the poem obscure. I didn't impose meaning on it, I read what was there and saw figurative language that had been interpreted differently by others. The author is essential to any text. If the author writes something and readers understand it as meaning something else, then the author didn't make it clear and/or the readers were flawed. Readers must bring their knowledge of language and of the world when they read anything.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

This has been my experince in grad school completely. Yes they do. Postmodernist critics impose meaning to a text, rather than derive meaning from a text. I'll have to check out the Umberto Eco book, or is it an essay? And I've said it before (to those not aware, you might find the Language as Control thread interesting), surprise-surprise, what the critics always find is a reflection of their ideology.

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The Limits of Interpretation is a book. I have to reread it, too.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

Language, any language, contains a set of signs with commonly agreed upon meanings. A text contains a collection of such signs arranged by the author in a meaningful way. A reader reads the text and usually understands what was written. Some people will read the text and consider the signs to mean things that are other than the commonly agreed upon meanings.

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I agree up to a point but the key thing to remember is that those ‘agreed upon’ meanings are not forever fixed (otherwise how do you explain the fact that within the same language the meanings of some words change over time?). Why those changes occur is what’s interesting.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

I mean useful in understanding a text according to the commonly agreed upon meanings of the sings in the text.

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What are these ‘commonly agreed upon meanings’? Who has agreed upon them? Why have they done so? Again, you are not remembering that meanings change.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

I agree. I am of the opinion that Coleridge wrote a deliberately obscured poem about sexual intercourse.

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So all other readings of this poem up to the moment when you articulated this interpretation are actually ignorant of the text’s ‘real’ meaning? Yours is the definitive meaning (i.e. according to what Coleridge actually thought). What happened to all the ‘commonly agreed’ meanings that existed before your meaning?

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Originally Posted by PeterL

By using figurative language and allusions he made the poem obscure. I didn't impose meaning on it, I read what was there and saw figurative language that had been interpreted differently by others.

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Why did they interpret them differently? Is there no relevance in the fact that you are reading the poem over two hundred years after he wrote it (and therefore you both occupy very different linguistic worlds)? Perhaps this poem by Billy Collins might be interesting:

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

The author is essential to any text. If the author writes something and readers understand it as meaning something else, then the author didn't make it clear and/or the readers were flawed.

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You have a view of language as something utterly transparent, as if the world just exists and we describe it with words. I suggest you read the ‘Language as Power’ thread. It contains a lot of what could be repeated here. Roland Barthes famously declared ‘The Death of the Author’ and while this has not become a universally accepted position, it does profoundly challenge the idea of literary creation to which you subscribe.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

Readers must bring their knowledge of language and of the world when they read anything.

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What knowledge of language? What knowledge of the world?

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

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Hey, give the author credit, even if it's yourself. This is great.

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Originally Posted by blp

Hey, give the author credit, even if it's yourself. This is great.

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I did put the author – Billy Collins. If I could write like that, I’d be elsewhere. ;)

Weird, don't know how I missed that. Just looking for it at the end or under the title I guess.

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I tried to post a blank post, to signify silence. But that's too minimalist for this forum you'll just have to imagine it."

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I get the sense you wrote this was an attitude of contempt. I have seen a lot of that on different threads by different people. I just don't understand why a person joins a forum and having read the creator's rules and such and agrees to them then makes comments continually in a sort of complaint against it. It seems so unkind somehow.
If I am wrong please accept my deepest apology. It just seems like it.