----- Original Message ----- From: Una McCormack una@qresearch.org.uk
This last point is certainly true, but I still think it's impossible to
take
anything, including interpretations, totally free from context or value judgement. People make their interpretations for a variety of reasons
from a
variety of backgrounds, and unless they can somehow erase their minds totally prior to the interpretive act, this will inform their
interpretation
thereof.
I guess you could come up with some notion of implausible readings. How
you'd
judge implausible would be an interesting one.
I must say the whole Derridavian "nothing outside the text" approach reminds me of an exercise I once read in a book aimed at introducing teenagers to sociology/psychology; the exercise was to play a game in which there was one rule and that was "no rules allowed"-- the point being that before very long the kids started making up rules despite attempting not to do so.
At the risk of getting into philosophical areas here, also, this
viewpoint
has always struck me as very similar to that of Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued that "poetry is as good as pushpin [a kind of eighteeth-century children's game, as I understand it]."
But Bentham isn't a relativist - he makes value judgements on, as you say,
the
utility of the activity. I thought that point was meant to be that he
might
argue, for example, that football is 'better' than opera (more people get pleasure from it, it makes more money as a business, etc. etc. etc.).
He doesn't work for the BBC, by any chance :)? But it has to be said that later philosophers did use him to support the relativist position, IIRC.
Basically, by this analysis a Mills and Boon romance is every bit as literarily valid as a Shakespeare play. Which is something I've never been able to accept--
I guess since I'm invariably looking at this from the perspective of how
these
things are received, the reception of a romance by its readership is as interesting to me as the reception of a Shakespeare play.
Me too-- see my post to Neil on my first-year essay on soap opera. But also note the reception it got. Value is tied up with the culture.
and frankly, very few English departments seem to be teaching First-Year
Mills
and Boon, despite the litcrit movement.
They do in third year sociology <g> 'Reading the Romance', by Janice
Radway.
Ah, but we all know social scientists are more enlightened :). All the same, though, it's a *third* year course.
BTW, how many Cambridge first-years does it take to screw in a lightbulb? :)
ObB7: let's have a first-year course in "Reading B7." *I'd* attend...:)
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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