tZar
New Member
Hehe - and just to clarify: Reader response theory has nothing to do with deconstruction...
In short: deconstruction: we get what is from the text.
Reader response: we add what is not to the text.
-tZar
-
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On literary deconstruction
- Thread starter tZar
- Start date
Hehe - and just to clarify: Reader response theory has nothing to do with deconstruction...
In short: deconstruction: we get what is from the text.
Reader response: we add what is not to the text.
-tZar
Peder
Well-Known Member
But one is a lot easier to do than the other.
Or to put a little more seriously, I can easily understand reader-response theory (I think). Deconstruction I have not yet been able to wrap my mind around in the slightest. Despite your best efforts, I hasten to add. But your short note distinguishing the two was helpful and I now have more to ponder.
tZar
New Member
Okay – I decided to come up with (and steel) a couple of examples of deconstructed texts, just to show how and what to do with deconstruction. I will present different elements of what to look for in texts, and end up with a practical example of how to deconstruct a couple of texts – to the best of my capabilities. I must warn that the two texts in the end are read in Danish, and the translations are my own – but they are fairly common, and you should be able to find them online. Also for the Wordworth poem I have provided a link.
I must remind you that deconstruction is not a method, which you can apply to texts, but a way of reading, a sort of approach to the text!
In texts you can look for a set of conflicts of meaning:
1: Words having more that one meaning. When we read texts we encounter words, which can mean several things. Normally we decide on a meaning, which makes sense in the context, but now try to choose a different meaning for the word, and see if it does something to the text. An example Darrida uses is ’farmacon’ which can mean both ’poison’ and ’paraphernalia’. Thinking of Socrates, who drank a ‘farmacon’, it makes a great deal of difference which of the two the translator chooses to use!
2: Pending syntax. This is often seen when an author asks rhetorical questions. An example is Paul de Mans reading of ’Among School Children’ by Yeats, where he poses that the last line ”How can we know the dancer from the dance?” isn’t rhetorical!
3: When a text says something different from what it does. An example could be a text saying that it will not talk about something specific – and by doing so it is talking about that! Then you will often find that which is being said can change the text.
4: Inconsistency in the literally and the figurative. In ’L’aIsolment’ by Lamartines the speaker shouts: ”there is nothing common between me and Earth.” and goes on “I am like the withering leaf.”
5: Inconsistency in explicit arguments/claims and illustrative examples. In Wordworth’s ’Intimations Ode’ (536. Ode. Intimations of Immortality. William Wordsworth. The Oxford Book of English Verse). We see that the first stanza claims the fact of loss. In the fifth stanza the feeling of loss is expanded mythical, phylogenetic and ontogenetic to include the whole of mankind’s common experience. But then in the eighth stanza Wordworth undermines this narrative of loss by the invocation of the child. The seer of light is blind to its own ability to see!! The experience of blessedness sight, and the loss of it, seems like it have taken place as a real experience. The narrative about the loss of something is told retrospectively to explain the feeling of loss. What we have lost in the end of the poem is the loss itself!
6: Obscurity. Some poems and texts are simply not constructed to give a whole and clear meaning. But in the process of reading we are met by obstacles, which forces us to ask what the meaning is. Is the word ’continue’ a verb, transitive or intransitive, or an adjective? The text will show that it is not about something other then the activity of reading it. Sometimes we experience that searching for meaning is enlightening and meaningful.
7: Fictional self-interpretation. For lack of better words! Sometimes we encounter texts, which comment on themselves and give away their own interpretation.
Two examples: ’The Emperor’s New Suit’ by Hans Christian Andersen (I am Danish so That is what I know best) and ’The Minister’s Black Veil’ by Hawthorne.
First HCA ends the fairytale with a kid shouting ”But he isn’t wearing anything” thereby commenting on the reading as apparent. What is said is what is meant. We should not try to fabricate meaning beyond the words. The denial of a universally covered truth. Secondly Hawthorn goes in the other direction and says, ”I look around me, and look! on every face a black veil!” We are hidden from each other, meaning is behind the fabric. The revealing of a universally covered truth. In the first instance the reader is the kid/child, in the second the reader is the veiled writer. So in the first text the truth that is posed is the inevitable literally fact. In the second text it is the inevitably figurative truth. In both cases we are left to explain how something this apparent all of a sudden slips away between our fingers. The mystery is reinstated in a different place. Both texts let us question their own apparent definitive self-interpretation.
The first thing we notice is that both texts uses a lot of energy describing their own act of reading. The Minister is obsessed with the question: ”What does the veil mean?” Hawthorne steels the right interpretation by giving us the last line. But the reader gets it back by changing focus from the veil. Only while the veil is the mystery of the text, Hawthorne gets the last word. But by presenting the solution to the mystery of the veil, Hawthorne replaces the mystery of the veil by the mystery of the interpretation, as the subject of his reader’s interpretation activity. By asking ”What does the veil mean?” he replaces the question with a new one: ”What does it mean to ask, what does the veil mean?” what is it we actually do when we try to decide the question of meaning? The first thing we do is denying anything being literally what it says. The minister’s congregation cannot believe that the veil is really just a piece of fabric. That which prevents communication cannot be perceived as being without meaning. If that is so, then meaningfulness must seem to be a part of what blocks or veils meaning. And yet, in ”the Emperor’s New Suit” it is the lack of this veil, which has a need to be interpreted. Again literally does not let it self be grasped like that.
The denial of everything being literally what it is, is in both texts found in an inter-subject context, where meaning is interrelated with a figure of authority. The minister and the emperor is their subject’s guarantee that the social world is meaningful. Participation in this world entails the accept of official ways to deny things being literally what they are. This makes the child’s reading an asocial reading, a reading, which – even if correct – is outside this system, in which social meanings is negotiated. The ministers veil and the emperors suit is tests to see if their readers are suitable for membership of the society, which they are a part of. The reading thereby lies in a nervously self-scrutiny. Confronted with the text the readers search for meaning becomes a scrutiny of his own ’credentials’. The emperor’s ministers deny a simple literally meaning to deny the possibility of themselves being simple. The ministers veiled face forces the congregation to confront their own veiledness. In their desire to deny their own concealedness, they read the concealedness into the others, as a sign that he is concealing whatever they themselves must be concealing. By revealing on his deathbed that the veil did not veil anything, but instead revealed the fact of the veil being there, the minister places his symbols meaning, not in the symbol or his intentions, but in the readers blindness for their own misreading – their blindness for their own blindness. And yet, the minister fails to confront his own veiled image in the mirror. The reason is that if his own veils message is the exposure of the universally concealed, how can the veils meaning then avoid this self-blindness, which it says is universally? By living a life, which stands as a figure of misreading, the minister ends in his triumphant attempt to proclaim obscurity in a clear way, by being the only person who has not read his own figure ‘correctly’!
The emperors subjects veils themselves from the literally in the invisibility they see, while members of the ministers congregation, as they project their own concealedness in behind the veil, is blind to the possibility that nothing has been hidden – or that it is concealedness, which is being revealed. Both stories dramatize allegorical structures intrusion into ‘real’ life affairs. Socialisation is training in allegorical interpretation. But an allegory, which reveals that the act of reading consists of blindness to both what is meant literally and the fact that you allegorically denies what is meant literally, leaves us in a difficult position. If the emperors subjects and the ministers congregations blindness consists of forgetting ‘literally’ in the act of reading yourself in the text, do we not then suffer, as we read the texts as allegories of reading, by the same blindness in the second power?
Well this was to show a demonstration of how to deconstruct text. Again they may make sense or they might not – anyhow, I hope it will lead to a couple of comment.
I will still read this thread, but I am considering starting a new one on ‘new criticism’ or ‘reader response theory’ as they might be more easily accessible. If someone has a better knowledge of any of them, please go ahead and start the thread. I saw that Peder said he was strong on ‘reader-response’ that might make for an interesting new topic!
-tZar
I must remind you that deconstruction is not a method, which you can apply to texts, but a way of reading, a sort of approach to the text!
In texts you can look for a set of conflicts of meaning:
1: Words having more that one meaning. When we read texts we encounter words, which can mean several things. Normally we decide on a meaning, which makes sense in the context, but now try to choose a different meaning for the word, and see if it does something to the text. An example Darrida uses is ’farmacon’ which can mean both ’poison’ and ’paraphernalia’. Thinking of Socrates, who drank a ‘farmacon’, it makes a great deal of difference which of the two the translator chooses to use!
2: Pending syntax. This is often seen when an author asks rhetorical questions. An example is Paul de Mans reading of ’Among School Children’ by Yeats, where he poses that the last line ”How can we know the dancer from the dance?” isn’t rhetorical!
3: When a text says something different from what it does. An example could be a text saying that it will not talk about something specific – and by doing so it is talking about that! Then you will often find that which is being said can change the text.
4: Inconsistency in the literally and the figurative. In ’L’aIsolment’ by Lamartines the speaker shouts: ”there is nothing common between me and Earth.” and goes on “I am like the withering leaf.”
5: Inconsistency in explicit arguments/claims and illustrative examples. In Wordworth’s ’Intimations Ode’ (536. Ode. Intimations of Immortality. William Wordsworth. The Oxford Book of English Verse). We see that the first stanza claims the fact of loss. In the fifth stanza the feeling of loss is expanded mythical, phylogenetic and ontogenetic to include the whole of mankind’s common experience. But then in the eighth stanza Wordworth undermines this narrative of loss by the invocation of the child. The seer of light is blind to its own ability to see!! The experience of blessedness sight, and the loss of it, seems like it have taken place as a real experience. The narrative about the loss of something is told retrospectively to explain the feeling of loss. What we have lost in the end of the poem is the loss itself!
6: Obscurity. Some poems and texts are simply not constructed to give a whole and clear meaning. But in the process of reading we are met by obstacles, which forces us to ask what the meaning is. Is the word ’continue’ a verb, transitive or intransitive, or an adjective? The text will show that it is not about something other then the activity of reading it. Sometimes we experience that searching for meaning is enlightening and meaningful.
7: Fictional self-interpretation. For lack of better words! Sometimes we encounter texts, which comment on themselves and give away their own interpretation.
Two examples: ’The Emperor’s New Suit’ by Hans Christian Andersen (I am Danish so That is what I know best) and ’The Minister’s Black Veil’ by Hawthorne.
First HCA ends the fairytale with a kid shouting ”But he isn’t wearing anything” thereby commenting on the reading as apparent. What is said is what is meant. We should not try to fabricate meaning beyond the words. The denial of a universally covered truth. Secondly Hawthorn goes in the other direction and says, ”I look around me, and look! on every face a black veil!” We are hidden from each other, meaning is behind the fabric. The revealing of a universally covered truth. In the first instance the reader is the kid/child, in the second the reader is the veiled writer. So in the first text the truth that is posed is the inevitable literally fact. In the second text it is the inevitably figurative truth. In both cases we are left to explain how something this apparent all of a sudden slips away between our fingers. The mystery is reinstated in a different place. Both texts let us question their own apparent definitive self-interpretation.
The first thing we notice is that both texts uses a lot of energy describing their own act of reading. The Minister is obsessed with the question: ”What does the veil mean?” Hawthorne steels the right interpretation by giving us the last line. But the reader gets it back by changing focus from the veil. Only while the veil is the mystery of the text, Hawthorne gets the last word. But by presenting the solution to the mystery of the veil, Hawthorne replaces the mystery of the veil by the mystery of the interpretation, as the subject of his reader’s interpretation activity. By asking ”What does the veil mean?” he replaces the question with a new one: ”What does it mean to ask, what does the veil mean?” what is it we actually do when we try to decide the question of meaning? The first thing we do is denying anything being literally what it says. The minister’s congregation cannot believe that the veil is really just a piece of fabric. That which prevents communication cannot be perceived as being without meaning. If that is so, then meaningfulness must seem to be a part of what blocks or veils meaning. And yet, in ”the Emperor’s New Suit” it is the lack of this veil, which has a need to be interpreted. Again literally does not let it self be grasped like that.
The denial of everything being literally what it is, is in both texts found in an inter-subject context, where meaning is interrelated with a figure of authority. The minister and the emperor is their subject’s guarantee that the social world is meaningful. Participation in this world entails the accept of official ways to deny things being literally what they are. This makes the child’s reading an asocial reading, a reading, which – even if correct – is outside this system, in which social meanings is negotiated. The ministers veil and the emperors suit is tests to see if their readers are suitable for membership of the society, which they are a part of. The reading thereby lies in a nervously self-scrutiny. Confronted with the text the readers search for meaning becomes a scrutiny of his own ’credentials’. The emperor’s ministers deny a simple literally meaning to deny the possibility of themselves being simple. The ministers veiled face forces the congregation to confront their own veiledness. In their desire to deny their own concealedness, they read the concealedness into the others, as a sign that he is concealing whatever they themselves must be concealing. By revealing on his deathbed that the veil did not veil anything, but instead revealed the fact of the veil being there, the minister places his symbols meaning, not in the symbol or his intentions, but in the readers blindness for their own misreading – their blindness for their own blindness. And yet, the minister fails to confront his own veiled image in the mirror. The reason is that if his own veils message is the exposure of the universally concealed, how can the veils meaning then avoid this self-blindness, which it says is universally? By living a life, which stands as a figure of misreading, the minister ends in his triumphant attempt to proclaim obscurity in a clear way, by being the only person who has not read his own figure ‘correctly’!
The emperors subjects veils themselves from the literally in the invisibility they see, while members of the ministers congregation, as they project their own concealedness in behind the veil, is blind to the possibility that nothing has been hidden – or that it is concealedness, which is being revealed. Both stories dramatize allegorical structures intrusion into ‘real’ life affairs. Socialisation is training in allegorical interpretation. But an allegory, which reveals that the act of reading consists of blindness to both what is meant literally and the fact that you allegorically denies what is meant literally, leaves us in a difficult position. If the emperors subjects and the ministers congregations blindness consists of forgetting ‘literally’ in the act of reading yourself in the text, do we not then suffer, as we read the texts as allegories of reading, by the same blindness in the second power?
Well this was to show a demonstration of how to deconstruct text. Again they may make sense or they might not – anyhow, I hope it will lead to a couple of comment.
I will still read this thread, but I am considering starting a new one on ‘new criticism’ or ‘reader response theory’ as they might be more easily accessible. If someone has a better knowledge of any of them, please go ahead and start the thread. I saw that Peder said he was strong on ‘reader-response’ that might make for an interesting new topic!
-tZar
Peder
Well-Known Member
Minor comment, meaning major significance I suppose: My claim is not that I am 'strong' in reader-response theory, just that it is 'my favorite,' because I can easily create understanding in my own mind of what I think it is saying, whether or not I am correctly understanding what experts are saying it is. And my created understanding makes sense to me. Of course. So I think I understand what it is saying. At least until refuted.
But, a parting question: Are there sentences that cannot be deconstructed?
And if so, why not?
Or if not, why so?
But, a parting question: Are there sentences that cannot be deconstructed?
And if so, why not?
Or if not, why so?