STANLEY Fis Is There a Text in This Class? 1980 nediu ofa fixed and dete 19605 « number of Ar om model ally happens to readers, oho are, afterall, not merely passive receptacles. What (as 0 “reader-response” logy, oF con- that analyses of the formal regarils readers as, Reading is an activity, a proc he developing responses of the reader in relation to the For him, the key word is “experi “The Experience ofargument that the reader- andons literature to idio public ant com In his“ «an explanatio the new semester colleague at Johns Hopkins Un wa approche hy a stadt who, a ltr ut a tne our fom me She pt ohm what hk you wuld age a pert cage forward gusto: “le thre a etn ths ls?” Responding witha con dence so perfect that he was unaware of it although in eli the story, he ment wing te apy lege i "es ology of Literature,” whereupon the trap (set not by the stu. dent but by the infinite capacity ek Pees capacity of langage fr bing appropri) was sprung: "No, no she sae" mean inthis lasso we believe In pane and or is it just us?” Now it is possible (and f tempting) to re igs oi for many tempting) to ead hanced aan ilstation of the dangers ut follow pen letering pope ike me who pr the ny ofthe an he ava eterminate meanings but in what follows I wil ty to ead lean anil ion of ow bases sear ofthese dangers tiny the charges levied against what Meyer Abrams as recently New Readers (Derrida, Bloom, 0 poeta W invetermin norms and words und calm of id_undecidability igno: they eon .” embedded in lan; iat eaniaee here a text in this class? mee’ re readers and no one of them is literal. But the answer suggested by my 575 stances assumed by my colleague (I don’t mean suming them, but that he was already stepping, wit obviously a question about whether or not there is a required tex! particular course; but within the circumstances to which he wa his student’s corrective response, the utterance is just as obvious! about the instructor's position (within the range of position: temporary literary theory) on the status of the text. Notice that we de have here a case of indeterminacy or undecidability but of a determinacy a decidability that do not always have the same shape and that can, and i instance do, change. My colleague was not hesitating between two (or possible meanings of the utterance; rather, he immediately apprehen What seemed to be an inescapable meaning, given his prestructured under standing of the situation, and then he immediately apprehencled another in tescapable meaning when that understanding, was altered. Neither meaning was imposed (a favorite word in the anti-new-reader polemics) on a more normal one by a private, idiosyncratic interpretive act; both interpretations. ‘were a function of precisely the public and constituting, norms (of langu and understanding) invoked by Abrams. It is just that these norms are not ‘embedded in the language (where they may be read out by anyone with su ficiently clear, that is, unbiased, eyes) but inhere in an institutional structure within which one hears utterances as already organized with referenc certain assumed purposes and goals, Because both my colleague and his stu- dent are situated in that institution, their interpretive activities are not fre but what constrains them are the understood practices and assumptions the institution and not the rules and fixed meanings of a language system. ‘Another way to put this would be to say that neither reading of the q ght for convenience’s sake label as “Is there a text in th 7 bbe immediately av. tion —which we class?” and “Is there a text in this to any native speaker of the language. “Is there a text in this class?" isi pretable or readable only by som already knows what is included lunder the general rubric “first day of class” (what concerns animate students, what bureaucratic matters must be attended to before instruction begins) and who therefore hears the utterance under the aegis of that knowledge, which is not applied after the fact but is responsible for the shape the fact immedi “ls there a text in t there a text in this class?”, would be to someone who was not already aware of the disputed issues in contemporary y. Lam not saying, th. for some readers or hearers the strict oF pure sense, fers from whom the int shapes it had, in a temporal succession, for my colleague. It is pos example, to imagine someone who would heat of intend the question as inquiry about the location of an object, that is, “I dhink I left my text in thisSTANLEY Fisit endless successi (erance has an infinite plu example, however it might be extended, sug tions T have imagined (and nt the utterance would be in the ways in which category of the normal ranscendent in force and so perdurable ; some institutions or forms of life a that for a great many people the meanings they enable seem takes a speci t to see that they are the pro is an important one, because it accounts for the success which an Abrams: rdinary language and argue from that understanding to iy feo ma er words, salva posible oor and rk" tes ta id “Is there a te» oo a have sendy ben mutable onsen. oral ak coking aa Pearane or nonapperance at they have a meaning that Hirsch can then cite as obvi in another context and obser fed correctly the air is crisp" he performance by an instrument or instruments Hirsch’s way would hhas no contextual setting, ¥Y agreement as to its meaning must be because of the utter contextual properties. But there is a contextual setting and the sign ofits pres {is precisely the absence of any reference toit. That is, its impossibl sentence independently of a contes tence for which no context has been specified, we wi the context heaable We 10 Be laboriously explain Someone capable of hearin this lass? who wa ready capable of hearin sr (Ones herbi by578 _Stanuey Fist Is Tu Hirsch invokes a context by not invoking it; by not with circumstances, he directs us to imay we as he has assumed them her words are perfecth inthe crcumstancesin which it Shei doug i aking him to imagine other circumstances in which imagine itis already to have Clear. Nori it that the w ‘a shape that seems at the moment e a é es j pe that se 7 i to be the only one add ("No, No, I mean to those other circumstances by pick : umples? First of al ing them out from an inventory 0 nes, For this to be the neither my colleague nor the reader of Hi a : eee ees i . neither my college nor the reader of Hire ssetece is costained by the there would have to be an inherent rel between the words tocontero : speaks and a particular set of circumstances (this would be a higher le P pa Cralism) such that any competent speaker of the language heart ordls would immediately be referred to that set. But have told the Several competont speakers of the language who simply didn’t gett, and friend—a professor of philosophy —reported to me that in the interval be- tween his hearing the story and my explaining it to him (and just how I wa uestion) he found himself asking “What For atime atleast he remained ab only to hear “Is there a text inthis class" as my colleague frst heard it the ‘ditional words, far from leading him to another hearing, only aware of his distance from it. In contrast, there are those who not ct the story but get it before [tll it tha is, they know in advance whi thing as soon as I say that a colleague of mine was recently asked, "Is there a text in this class?” Who are these people and what is it that makes 4 IUCNo, Ne, mean in tisha do we Bebe in their comprehension ofthe story 0 immediate and easy? Well one could ne hg ut) ar therefore mus no Bre Ht, without being the least bit facetious, that they are the people who come to collec ors waiting to be as hear me speak because they are the people who already know my pos ive a position). That is, they hear, “Is 25 it appears at the beginning ofthe anecdote awe en from square oe and inde he ver was {or for that matter as a title of an essay) in the light of their knowledge of eee what Lam likely to co with it, They hear it coming from me in crcumstanc > why bele nor “fee” ever Ihe ee as ould poss Which have committed me to declaring myself on a range of issues that are Tes that assumption rather than his performance within ft by the student's correction. Sh wrong word because hearer first serut implies a two-stage procedure in which a reader or izes an utterance and th that one hears an utterance wit letermining, a knowledge of its purposes and conce is already to have assigned ita shape and give ing is determined is only a pr determination has not yet been made, an oe yk - and 1 am saying that ‘was finally able to hear it in just that way, as coming from Twas there in his classroom, nor because the words of the studlent’s question pointed to me in a way that would have been obvious to but because he was able to think of me in an office three doors students that there are no determinate meanings and an illusion, Indeed, as he reports it, the moment on consisted of his saying to himself, rot say this becaus diately discer speaks) of her int kind of thing is a function ind therefore 1e text (his one of Fish’s victims! sto correct himself he fied her as such but because his ability to see her as such informed his per- Which her question eee Then oF the structure of interests from ception of her words. The answer to the question “How did he get from her ation Of now be does fie rena ease cuuctly what bee does and the words to the circumstances within which she intended him to hea them?” is first considering the ways best be answered by that he must already be thinking W 5 fe didn't doit by attending able to hear her words as referring to them, The question, then, must be Heart do ty atten ing to the ie al meaning of her response, That jected, because it assumes that the construing of sense leads to the id ase in whi someone who has ben misunderstood cles tion of the context of utterance rather than the other way around. Th plicit, by varying or adding to her words in rnot mean that the context comes first and that once it has been identified such a way as to rencler their sense inescap. sscapable, Wit circumstances of construing of sense can begin. This would be only to reverse the ordprecedence, whereas precedence is beside the point because the tw would order (the identification of context and the simultaneously. One does not say “Here I am in to determine what these words mean.” To be in a situation is to see the words, these or any other, as already meaningful. For my colleague to realize that he may be confronting one of my victims is atthe same time to hear what she says as a question about his theoretical beliefs, But to dispose of one “how” question is only to raise another: if her words do not lead him to the context of her utterance, how does he get there? Why did he think of ing students that there were no determinate and not think of someone or something else? First of all, he might well have. That is, he might well have guessed that she was coming from an other direction (inquiring, let us say, as to whether the focus of thie to be the poems and essays or our responses to them, a question in the sarne nt from it) or he might have simply J, confined, in the absence of an ex- concerns and unable to make any wer words other than the sense he originally made. How, then, did ? In part, he did it beca it; he was able to get to context because it was already part of hi for organizing the world and its events. The category “one of Fish’s victims” was one he already had ind didn’t have to work for. Of course, it did not always have him, in that his World was not always being organized by it, and it certainly did not have hhim at the beginning of the conversation; but it was available to him, and he and all he had to do was to recall itor be recalled to it for the meanings it subtended to emerge. (Had it not been available to him, the career of his ld have been different and we will come to a considera. ference shortly.) » however, only pushes our inquiry back further. How or why was called to it? The answer to this question must be probabilistic and it be ns with the recognition that when something changes, not everything y colleague's understanding of his circumstances is of this conversation, the circumstances are still un ‘ones, and within that continuing (if modified) un- derstanding, the diections in thought might toe ate ala soe ho ied He ln queton | something to do with university business in gener ture in particu ience that are likel .goes-on-in-the-other-classé ne of those other by a route that is neither 0 actio making of sense) occur situation; now Ican begin derstood to be academi litera the organizing rubrics associated with these areas is “what. asses is mine, And so, ing of what his student Of course that rot gory “one of Fish’s ready available to him as a device for Producing intelligibility. Had that device not been part of his repertoire, had tne Tues Crass? 58l because he never knew i The answer is th place, proceeded at all, which does not mean that one is trapped for gories of understanding at one’s disposal (or the categories at whose dispos but that the introduction of new categories or the expansi include new (and therefore newly seen) data must always ce the outside or from what is perceived, for a time, to be the outsic event that he was unable to identify the structure of her concems b had never been his (or he ils), it would have been her ob| to him, And here we run up against another instance of the problem we been considering all along. She could not explain it to him by v. adding to her words, by being more explicit, because her words wil intel they are supposed to co knowled: h they issue. she would have to back up to some point at which there was a shared agre nable to say so that a new and wider b agreement cou icular case, for example, she begin with the fact that her interlocutor already knows what a text is; th .bout it that is responsible for his hearing of her i jassroom procedures, (You will ren nger my colleague but someone who that way of thinking that she mm labor to extend or ¢ by pointing out that there those who think about the text in other ways, and then by trying te find a egory of his own understanding, which might serve as an analogue to th derstanding he does not yet share. He might, for example, be familiar w hose psychologists who argue for the constitutive power of perceptio he has a way of stion as one ab "he" has always been a matter of dis and skeletal, because it can only be fleshed out after a determination of the particular beliefs and assump that would make the explanai ccessary in the first place; for whatever they we kd dictate the strategy by w plant or change them. It is when such a strategy has been successful thy mport of her words will becom ated or refined them but because they will now be read or heard within the same system of intelligibility from which they issue, In short, this hypothetical interlocutor wi same point of comprehension my colleagu 's when he is able to say to himself, “Ah, there's one of Fish’s victims,” al say something very different to himself if he says anything at all. The difference, however, should not obscure the basic similarities between the two exp ences, one reported, the other imagined. In both cases the words that a tered are immediately heard within a set of assumptions about the d The example must re in time be brought to thecould possibly be coming, and in both cases what is re- that the heal ring occur within another set of assumptions in relation ne words ("Is there a text in this elass?”) will no longer be the just that while my colleague is abl shat rele calling to mind a context of ut the repert to moet that requirement by a aon a part of epera, standin most be expanded inlet contets that shold he some day be nan aclono able to call it to mind. a sain he woul be The distinction acquire is between already having an ability and having to acaui ly an essential distinction, because the routes by ; re hand, and learned on the other are so similar. They ae sit because they are similarly not letermined by words. Just as the student's words will not ditect my co league to a context he already has e league fo a context he already has, so will hey fail to direct somone not fur= termination mean that the route one travels is he change from one structure of unclerstanding to another but a modification of the interests and concerns that are al- nd because they are already th ready in in place, they constrain the di- tion of their own modifical in both cases the hearer is already ion informed by tacitly known purposes and goals, and in both cers up in another situation wh , se purposes some elaborated relation fo contrast, ast, oppesition, expansion, extension) to those they supplant. The oe relation in Which they ald nolan noe latin a all is as tha in one case the netwonk of lt textas an obviously physical abet tothe question of isa physical objet) hasalrendy been articulated althouph time; election i always curring), while in the forks the busines ofthe teacher (here the with what vale given between the two cassis hatin reither ie sces as ue tumbleto the context of is that she cou inte that tnd indeed, had my clleague remained puzzled (had he simply nat thoughtol me) would haeteee ae essary forthe student to bring him along ina way that sulshable rom the way she would bringsomeone tenes By beginning with he shapeot Thaw and goals stand in student) who begins, necessarily, The he peck is anecdote that its rela- in the classroom and in literary criticism ‘may seem obscure. Let me recall you to it by recall y it by recalling the contention of Abrams and others that authority depends upon the existence of a determi nate core of meanings because in the absence of such a core there is no ner. ‘mative or public way of construing what anyone says or writes, with the result that interpretation becomes a matter of individual and private Construings none of which is subject to challenge or correction. In htexany 583 criticism than any other, and in the classroom the student who says my interpretation i as yours. It isa shared basis of agreement at once guiding interpretati mechanism for deciding between interpretations that a total relativism can be avoided. But the point of my at in thi the sea change of situations, in any situation we might imagine of the utterance is either perfectly clear or capable, in the course of being clarified. What is it that makes this possi is not the “pow and norms” already encoded in language? How does communi ‘occur if not by reference to a public and stable norm? The answer, im everything | have already said, tions and that to b ation is already to be in possession of (or possessed by) a structure of assumptions, of practices understood to be vant in relation to purposes and goals that are already in plac within the assumption of these purposes and goals that any utterai ‘mediately heard. I stress immediately because it seems to me that the probl ‘of communication, as someone like Abrams poses it, is a problem o ‘cause he assumes a distance between one’s receiving of an utter determination of its meaning —a kind of dead space when one ha: he task of construing them. If there were such ‘a moment before interpretation began, then it would be necessary to ha ‘course to some mechanical and algorithmic procedure by means of whi ‘meanings could be calculated and in relation to which one could recogni mistakes. What I have been arguing is that meanings come already © lated, not because of norms embedded in the language but because lang 's perceived, from the very first, within a structure of norms. , however, is not abstract and independent but social; and therefo it is not a single structure with a privileged relationship to the proces communication as it occurs in any situation but a structure that ‘when one situation, with its assumed background of practices, purposes, al ven way to another. In other words, the shared basis of ageve never not already found, although itis, lysis has been to show that whi id in the argument to which conclusion, nothing more than a sophisticated version of the relativism they fear. It will do no good, they say, to speak of norms and standards that a context specific, because this is merely to authorize an infinite plun norms and standards, and we are still left without any way of adjudic between them and between the competing systems of value of which are functions. In short, to have many standards is to have no standards at a ‘On one level th beside the point. Itis unassailable as a gener clusion: the positing of context- or institution-specific norms surely rStantey Fi 585 idity would be recognized by ever is beside the point for any part colleague and his student, who are abl about one ai ions, not, one for whom, forts are constrained by the shape of an independent consequence, their shared understanding of what could possibly be a the same shape f an asituational norm would be in the sense that his would be impaired. the practice of mea is too. We see then that (1) communication does occur, despite the abse an independent and context-free system of meanings, the is communication do so confidently rather ig in question is community property, as, in a sen led by a new set as unexamined and und The pois re is never a moment when ‘consciousness is innoces rego categories of thought are operative at a given moment doubted ground, me s " minate meaning would ice that had its s it and constrain interpretation, but if the example \d obviously I think it my lenging, but consoling —not to worry. ’ his preundrstanding ofthe inert that could possibly animate the speech of someone fanctcning institution Of acdemic Ameri, tere property of one in parla Bt their assumption i 9 habitual a to beSecond Edition Falling into Theory CONFLICTING VIEWS ON READING LITERATURE Davin H. RicuTer With a Foreword by Gerald Graff D000 Beprorp/St. MarTINn’s.