Constructions of the read, construction of th writer
HDCS6 who-is-at jetson.uh.edu
Sat, 16 Dec 1995 14:30:52 -0600 (CST)
Chuck's message brings to the forefront an issue I have been thinking
about through this discussion of meaning and reading, and indeed every
time the issue of dialogic communication with a text comes up (please keep
in mind that my knowledge of Bahktin is, to say the least, limited).
But it seems to me that reading a text is always, or almost always
discussed as an inidividual relationship with the text. Yet it seems
to me that when a writer writes it is more than as a cooperative
venture than an attempt to get into an individual relationship with
they reader (this may not include the really great writers such
as Dostyevsky or Garbriel Garcia Marquez who are able to develop a
sort of mystical relationship with the reader...bu I am convinced
that there are issues at play with these types of texts that we
may never be aware of). But for the most part, when people write
it seems to me they write in an effort to become part of whatever
cooperative audience they are writing to, and individual relationship
be damned. Some writers are aware that their text will be used
as an instrument, and the way it is used will have a great impact
on the way it is interpreted, but more often than not the writer
has to consciously push this idea to the back of his or her mind,
and forge ahead in what he or she believe is the best mode the
speak to the cooperative, and hopefully establish some type of
beach head in the cooperative/historical meaning of the subject.
And it also seems to me that when we critique the writing of
our students or our colleagues it is in terms of how it fits into
cooperative meaning making. How then do we turn around and say
that a reader makes whatever sense he or she wants of the text,
that it is all based on the way it is interprets it. Of course the
individuals do have their own personal sense of the text, but if
it is not within the confines of the cooperative/historical meaning
that the author is writing to, then the reader is not engaged in
the same type of acitivity as the writer and is not engaging
in the activity in the same cooperative as the author. Then
why read the book at all? I can use a computer for a paper weight,
but I can probably find better paper weights.
Michael Glassman
University of Houston