personal responses: how was it for you?

[Paul Nightingale]

Terrance,

Yes, there's nothing wrong with readers responding any way they can. It's
better than no response at all, which is often the problem. Students
(probably of all ages - I teach pre-university) don't know what to say and
feel intimidated. What intimidates is the notion that they have to be
'right' and it doesn't matter what you tell them about there being 'no right
answers' etc. The education system is designed to measure, often very
mechanistically, and then exclude the majority from further participation
(another glib over-simplification, I know, and I dare say someone will now
accuse me of peddling cheap leftist propaganda): this includes prescribing
what to read and how you'll read it. Teachers of literature, often, cannot
be bothered to engage with critical theory; they promote personal response
on that basis, which is where I was coming from originally. This, I suppose,
is what I consider dishonest because self-serving. Students might deliver
imaginative readings against the grain; such analyses might be considered
'interesting' or dismissed as 'irrelevant'.

Apologies now - I haven't read Huck Finn in too long, and I always thought
Puddnhead Wilson was better, anyway.

In response to jbor,

My reference to 'the real world' was designed to avoid the accusation that I
was ignoring the importance of material circumstances - which is precisely
the point you make. I then proceeded to be flippant and struck the wrong
note (re comments about Laclau & Mouffe). I was also being flippant, I
suppose, and failing, when I argued that personal response theory was
obscurantist; this was designed to deal with the tired argument, usually
coming from anti-theory teachers, that theory is difficult and often
wilfully obscure (see the first paragraph above) when in fact the refusal to
attempt to deconstruct any argument on the basis that "this is what I think
and I'm entitled to my opinion" is what is truly obscurantist. Perhaps this
was a knee-jerk reaction (I've had so many years of this nonsense): I was
overlooking the pretty obvious fact that p-listers are far more broadminded
than that.

Well, have I avoided a flame war ...