Intentional Fallacy
In discussing changing roles of authors and readers on the “read-write web,” I’ve raised the notion of intentional fallacy. Before I post something on next week’s readings, I think it may be useful to point to some readings on this topic. The phrase is commonly attributed to Wimsatt and Beardsly, who wrote an essay on the subject about the same year Vannevar Bush was musing about the “memex.” Their article is available via UBC VPN on JSTOR here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27537676
Another key article related to this topic, of course, is “Death of the Author” (Barthes, 1968). Here’s an excerpt (one can easily find the whole thing through a Google Scholar search):
“. . . a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. . . . Classic criticism has never paid any attention to the reader; for it, the writer is the only person in literature. We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favor of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (Barthes, 1968).
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” 1968. Trans. Richard Howard. The Rustle of Language. New York: Hill, 1986. 49-55.
In asking students to determine authorial intention, it might be argued that instructors attempt to assume the authorial mantle of power. Meantime, the “birth of the reader,” as Barthes terms it, has given rise to a new school of criticism: “reception” or “reader response” theory (e.g., Hans Robert Jauss), and the question that has been raised by some English educators in light of this trend is “does the empowerment of the reader result in the subversion of serious literary criticism and lay the ground for an ‘anything goes’ style of response?” If so, where does that leave the teacher of literature, who is no longer positioned as the keeper of knowledge about literary texts and instead seems poised to be the mediator of response?
In fact, the debate isn’t very far removed from questions arising in education circles in relation to how social media and folksonomic trends in knowledge creation and distribution are displacing traditional didactic models of teaching.
4 comments
1 Super G { 11.21.09 at 2:47 pm }
Since I first encountered the theory of “reader response” I have easily accepted it, as it seemed to merely flesh out and name the way I felt about literature analysis anyway. As an English Literature teacher, I have tried to steer away from bestowing “my (or whoever’s interpretation” of a text upon the students, and rather encouraging them to come to their own conclusions. How do I avoid total classroom chaos? The learning outcome goals shift to the ability to support their ideas. If they can support their idea, no matter how far fetched or wild it may seem at first, I feel they have met the goal. After all we are supposed to be teaching students “to think” not just to memorize “correct” answers.
2 Heidi { 11.23.09 at 1:23 pm }
I think this is one of the most important questions to be thinking about today. In my writings I have argued for a decentralized approach to teaching and learning, aligned with a “rhizomean curricular landscape” (Aoki), but I do feel it all comes down to some sort of balance in the end. The main thing is for us all to be thinking about these concerns, however, I question if teachers need to be taught how to teach in this decentralized environment, especially considering that most of us grew up with a traditional centralized learning environment. There is value to what “the author” has to say and this informs how we decide what our purpose of knowledge is, right? We can’t lose focus of the content of what we teach; the pedagogical tools should support the content.
3 TMD { 11.24.09 at 6:27 am }
We’ve made off-the-cuff comments we regret. In the moment we may protest: “sorry, that’s not what I intended.” Or our views change and our past writings don’t reflect our present understandings. As Ellen observed, we as writers and orators are not always the best judges of our own intentions. And our readers and listeners are not necessarily the best judge of our intentions either, no matter how skilled they might be. To make matters more difficult, how do we take account of the various intermediaries in publication? Without documentation, for example, how could a reader know a scene had been added (or deleted) at the request of an editor or political leader?
Evidently intention is a highly complex notion. Law is the field that’s likely given most thought to it, and anyone familiar with that field even on a lay level knows that proving intent is not an uncomplicated matter.
All this doesn’t mean authorship and authors are unimportant, in spite of the strong rhetoric of the articles to which I alluded in the post. Indeed, many vibrant fields of literary criticism are greatly concerned with authors and the processes of authorship. What it does mean is that we acknowledge that texts and the production practices underlying them are complex, and that they can mean in multiple ways across different contexts and depending on the lens (theoretical, sociopolitical, etc) through which they are viewed.
So the question is not, “What did the author intend here?” It is, “What is conveyed here?” Or, “What influences (literary, sociopolitical, etc) are apparent here?” Or, “What is the reception history of this text?” Or, “How do you imagine it might have been received by readers in different temporal or geographical contexts?” And so on. Significantly, some of these questions are inherently concerned with authors as they are positioned in particular historical moments and subject to particular influences. And so the only valid question left in the English teacher’s bag is not, “What does it mean to you?” The field of literary criticism is robust and varied, rigorous and challenging, and there is plenty of room for teachers at any level to facilitate critical thinking through engagement with literature or any other form of art.
Having said all that, I’m still trying to figure out what this guy intended 😉 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxvE5JC4zgI
4 Jeff Miller { 11.24.09 at 6:41 pm }
Hilarious, Teresa! I’ve always misunderestimated him, too!
Jeff
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