10/29/07
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Today in class you probably thought I rambled on and on with no direction. In all of that mush and misunderstanding and cut-off phrasing was actually "something" inside of my head. Maybe I would've been better drawing a picture or writing you guys a poem. How do you know if what you heard was what I meant? You don't. How do you know that I knew what I wanted to say? I don't. How do you know what I wanted to say was REALLY what I wanted to say? You don't, and I really don't. All of what I (and I hope people, in general, otherwise I'm heading towards a dizzying future) say is just riding on a hope that we stay in some sort of horizon of hoped understanding. Thats what I think horizon is. Am I wrong? Are all the sounds we produce just a hoped possibility that the paroles will turn into a formed langue? Look up "Hugo Ball" on google and you'll quickly find out that "elephant turnip paperclip" must have some sort of meaning! It comes from a brain (or a brian?) and all of those neurons, they work together, well, if not in some sort of order! Nothing is random! I guess then I would say that there is one (very complicated) original meaning for a text that we can never really comprehend nor ever figure out, but it is there! It is the intent of all of those cells working and processing together, in a moment, for the work of writing, and once it's out there, there go all the other brains of the world into which it dissolves to be processed, moved around, and spit back out--for a brand new work that emerges in all that processing!
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8 comments:
If I'm understanding you correctly--and we know how hesitantly such an assumption can be made--it seems like you're saying that the text (and perhaps the meaning of a text) arises from a specifically (unique?) coded moment of cognitive chemistry; the language that might otherwise seem like nonsense to writer, reader, and critic alike is transformed into a decipherable, significant communication.
My questions to you, then: Can the moment be repeated, even by the writer? Is it really possible for the reader to "de-code" the text?
Do we read to find what the author says (physical text), what s/he means (the code), or to learn to understand *how* the text communicates meaning (to learn to use the code)? Or something else?
You say that you think there is "one (very complicated) original meaning for a text that we can never really comprehend nor ever figure out" which is nevertheless present. Why, then, create literature if meaning cannot be reproduced within the reader?
To respond, meaning then may not come from just the complete understanding of all the conditions of the text. We can never know all of that. I don't even think we read to decode. First of all, texts are written (at least we'd hope) with some sort of reason in mind. Now, we can't come to "exactly" what that writer had in mind, but we can somewhat get pricks of clues of direction, based on our own cognitive experience. The writer knows that not everything inside of his/her head will be transported, for that you'd need some sort of futuristic video machine, which none of us have. The reader is thus left to reconstruct from the language given their own meaning, which may or may not coincide at all with the writer. Just in the way when one speaks you can decipher what they say into language, but since language is so limited, you will never get a perfect mental image in your head of their mental image. But we keep on talking, and people keep on listening...
I think this thought process is really interesting. I believe you're trying to say that we will never be able to decode the original intent of the author and completely understand/comprehend the full meaning of the text. I also think that what you're saying is this occurs daily, even when one person is trying to communicate to another the exact original meaningof the person speaking will never be completely understood by the person listening. It appears to me you don't put much faith into communication and being able to transfer emotion from person to person.
The part where I'm confused is when you start talking about meaning. You said we will never be able to get meaning from the complete understanding of the text. But, we can still recieve meaning from partial understanding of the text?
So, my question is this: If we do not need complete comprehension of a text to gain meaning out of it, then should we read for the intent of deciphering meaning out of the text at all? Is there another way to read literature, in which we abandon most of the worries and concerns surrounding comprehension?
In response to Renee's question, I do agree that meaning is reproduced within the reader. My concern, however, is that there will came a point somewhere down the road in which nearly every literary work will have innumerable meanings. Then, someone in a literary class years from now will raise his or her hand and remark, "Oh wait, we should probably think about the meaning that the author was trying to convey."
I'm not sure how--or if--that concern can be resolved, but I do think that while readers can infer their own meanings, a considerable amount of discussion needs to be given to the author who put a great deal of time, thought, and energy into his or her literary work.
I'm still curious about my last question: if it is impossible, as all seem to assent to some degree, to arrive at the *precise* meaning that the author intended, why create literature? Do authors *know* that their supposed attempts to spread their personal meanings to others will invariably fail to some extent? And, if they do, why continue what Marcus accurately described as an energy-exhaustive process of artistic reproduction?
Cognitive scientists and memeticists, among a slew of others, have started examining the relationships between our thought processes, communication, and expressions of culture; in doing so, they have drawn comparisons of the development of both language and culture to the development of biological organisms through evolution. Crazy idea: what if this cultural tool--language, as specifically used to communicate what we identify as "literature"--really is an evolutionary development? And what if the "goal" of any individual work of literature is really no more complex than that of any organism or gene--to reproduce?
How much control do we really have?
The evolution idea is intriguing to say the least, but the more I think about it, the more I'm willing to agree. I think avid readers--if not all readers, I suppose--have some sort of innate tendency to analyze texts in such ways that new new interpretations emerge (essentially, we want to help literature "reproduce"). It is easy to see why, from this perspective, many readers are not content with one or two widely-accepted interpretations of a work. Because of this innate tendency, we may feel it necessary to challenge one interpreatation of a work versus another. Sure, this may mean "x," but it could also mean "y" or "z."
Is this desire to disagree part of a general human desire to rebel against what is said? We can guess there was a certain combination of social factors that played into the interpretation of a text, but we will never come to a conclusion of exactly what that interpretation was. In an english department, we are bombarded with the "correct" interpretation and the bad and incorrect ones, and how to figure out what is good and bad. Are humans just going to disagree (some humans) and not be content with the authority? Again. Social. Social. Social. I cannot say that word enough when someone interprets a text.
I'd like to go back to the question that Renee posed at the end of her last comment:
"What if this cultural tool--language, as specifically used to communicate what we identify as "literature"--really is an evolutionary development? And what if the "goal" of any individual work of literature is really no more complex than that of any organism or gene--to reproduce?"
I think the metaphor is rife: An individual deposits a work of literature (in an analogy to a sort of fish spawning) to as widespread a community as he can, hoping that his main ideas or themes or messages or meanings or what have you within the work will take hold in the minds of his readers, hoping that they will live in at least a few of those readers to be repeated and spread further. There's a great risk that the work will take root nowhere and the content will become extinct as other works are favored and propagated, furthered.
It's also quite comparable, I believe, to the human desire to procreate: organisms wish to see the best of themselves present in an offspring. Authors create texts, hoping them to be representations of the best parts of themselves, and see them exist successfully among the community.
As our resources have increased throughout time, we as a race have removed natural selection; for the most part, everyone has an equal shot at life, no matter if they are strong or weak, have good traits or bad. As a result, there has been an even-ing of status of life. As resources for the propagation of literature have increased throughout time (moving from rare animal hide parchment where only the most valuable texts could afford to be recorded to a time where literally every piece of writing can be saved and distributed, through digital means or otherwise), we have likewise removed this natural selection of text: the most importantis not the only text that survives; everything does. Every text, now, has an equal chance at life just like every person does. A similar even-ing of the literature has also occurred as a result, I feel--there is less and less of a clear-cut "great" literature the farther one approaches the present from the past. This explains why it is less easy to distinguish contemporary works that deserve to be in a popular "master" canon, because unlike in older times when the bad and the weak were weeded out, now we have no means with which to weed, so it's more difficult to distinguish.
I think we'll have to wait until the contemporary works become older, to see which ones survive, to see which are weeded out, in order to tell which belong in the canon.
Kyle
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