Nate Schmolze
http://www.geocities.com/nate_schmolze/
schmolze@students.wisc.edu
*
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Smagorinsky [mailto:smago@peachnet.campuscwix.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2000 5:29 PM
To: xmca@ucsd.edu
Subject: Fwd: peter's april discussion paper
my apologies for not responding to this, and other comments about my
paper...i'm under a crunch right now that won't clear up for a month at
least. hope to have something to say eventually in response to the many
thoughtful responses to my paper.
Peter
>>11 april 2000
>>from peter jones, sheffield hallam university
>>dear folks
>>another dollop of stuff i'm afraid.
>>On the April discussion paper (If meaning is constructed, whats it made
of?)
>>Congratulations to Peter on a provocative and stimulating paper on this
very
>>difficult subject. Just to stir things up a bit more, Ill offer a
dissenting
>>point of view on the main issue addressed by the paper: what (how?) do
texts
>>mean? Peter refers to Bakhtin in his discussion, but I dont think his view
of
>>this problem is Bakhtinian. Im going to refer to Voloshinovs text
Discourse
>>in Life and Discourse in Art which addresses quite directly Peters
question .
>>In fact, Peter, I would be very interested in your views on Voloshinovs
text
>>in relation to your own. Voloshinov develops his own conception of
producing
>>(and understanding) texts through a critique of two different ways of
>>understanding the meaning, or aesthetic value of a work of art (of any
kind).
>>The first - the fetishization of the artistic work artifact - restricts
>>attention purely to the work of art itself, so that the socio-cultural,
>>communicative nature of the artistic artefact is lost. This is like the
view
>>that Peter is mainly reacting against - ie a view in which meaning somehow
>>inheres in the work independently of writers and readers and their shared
>>business. The second view restricts itself to the study of the psyche of
the
>>creator or of the contemplator (more often than not, it simply equates the
>>two). For it, all art is exhausted by the experiences of the person doing
the
>>contemplating or doing the creating. I would suggest to Peter that his
>>conception of the reading process, despite the many qualifications he
>>introduces in relation to the social and cultural nature of the process,
>>falls
>>very much in line with this second view. Peter is claiming that
understanding
>>the meaning of a text is the construction of a new text by the reader. The
>>reader does not uncover or decipher a meaning embedded in the text since
the
>>text itself is not meaningful. What happens is that readers compose a text
of
>>their own in the transactional zone and it is this new text which becomes
>>meaningful. Thus, readers do not interpret the text (following
Rosenblatt);
>>what they interpret - what serves as the basis for meaning - is their
>>associations with the text, rather than the text itself. What they
interpret
>>is not the text, but their own responses (evocations) to the text, which
take
>>the form of a new textual composition. A number of questions arise here.
If
>>the text being read is not itself meaningful, why is the text which is
>>produced
>>in response meaningful? In other words, if the meaning of (original
written)
>>text X lies in its evoked text Y, where is the meaning of Y? How is it
that
>>text Y can be a repository of meaning and not X? This position, it seems
to
>>me, has something in common with those theories of perception that say
>>that we
>>do not see objects but rather we see images of objects. Similarly, we
>>dont get
>>the meaning of a text but we get another text (and so on); I dont
interpret
>>the text, I interpret my own interpretation of a text etc. Voloshinovs own
>>solution to the problem is to see art (of whatever kind) as a special kind
of
>>communicative interrelation which is realized and fixed in the material of
a
>>work of art. The meaning of the work lies neither in the material per se,
>>nor in the mind of the creator, nor (if you will allow me) in the text
evoked
>>by the material in the mind of the reader. The meaning of the work lies
>>in the
>>relation between all three. I think Peter would agree with this, and I
>>think he
>>says something like this in his paper. But for Voloshinov, understanding
>>a text
>>is not creating another text containing everything evoked by the first,
>>although we may well (have to) do this to grapple with the texts meaning,
as
>>part of a discussion (for example) of what the text is about, and its
>>implications etc. The role of the reader is not primarily in this process
of
>>creating a new text. Rather, the text has already been written for a
reader
>>(with a reader in mind) - ie the readers role is already built into the
>>text itself. Understanding the text is trying to re-create, reproduce that
>>communicative relation between writer and reader already embodied or fixed
in
>>the material; understanding a text means trying to make the text speak to
us,
>>trying to reproduce or become that reader addressed by the author through
the
>>text. Verbal discourse, as Voloshinov puts it, is like a scenario of a
>>certain event. A viable understanding of the whole import of discourse
must
>>reproduce this event of the mutual relationship between speakers, must, as
it
>>were, reenact it, with the person wishing to understand taking upon
himself
>>the role of the listener. A little bit further on he puts it this way: In
>>poetry, as in life, verbal discourse is a scenario of an event. Competent
>>artistic perception reenacts it, sensitively surmising from the words and
the
>>forms of their organization the specific, living interrelations of the
author
>>with the world he depicts and entering into those interrelations as a
third
>>participant (the listeners role). Now by listener, Voloshinov does not at
>>all mean the actual people who in fact made up the reading public of the
>>author
>>in question, but the listener whom the author himself takes into account,
the
>>one toward whom the work is oriented and who, consequently, intrinsically
>>determines the works structure. This, I suggest, does not mean creating
our
>>own text, which takes us away from the actual material in which this
specific
>>interrelationship of creator and reader is fixed. To understand a text
(let
>>alone appreciate it, enjoy it, be enraptured by it, or disagree with it
etc)
>>means not to distance ourselves from its form, from the words and the
>>forms of
>>their organization, including rhythm, rhyme, meter, epithet, metaphor,
>>etc but
>>to increasingly feel those social interrelations through that very
material.
>> From this point of view, the relations between verbal art and the
>> plastic arts
>>become clearer I think. To understand, to appreciate, to enjoy a painting,
a
>>sculpture or a piece of music does not mean to interpret a text (of
whatever
>>kind) evoked by the original work, but to see, to feel, or to hear in
>>(through)
>>the very material, the very body of the artistic work, ourselves being
>>addressed about something, and to feel that voice which addresses us.
Verbal
>>art is rather like sculpting in speech sounds (or writing). A text is an
>>objectivity, a product of objective social interrelations which takes the
>>form
>>of an irreducibly sensuous, sonorous, beautiful, ugly etc thing. To
>>appreciate
>>it involves absorbing it with our senses and imaginatively reproducing
>>its form
>>which is the very form of this interrelation itself. Where is the meaning,
>>then? The same place as its beauty, its emotional and intellectual power:
>>It is
>>in the work (the text) itself; indeed, it is the text itself, where a
>>specific
>>interrelationship between writer, reader, and hero has been fashioned into
a
>>meaningful, communicative thing. Romantic or what??
>>Best wishes to all
>>P
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