MDDM Ch. 72 Dixon and the slave driver

[owen j mcgrann]

what follows might be anathema to the more ardent postmodernists on the list...

the text exists without you.  i don't mean that the atoms that comprise the 
book continue to exist when you have left it; i mean that the ideas and 
characters and plot (or lack thereof) continue without your 
presence.  sure, when you read the book you bring to it your own past and 
you interpret the book in a semi-esoteric way.  this is a valid insight 
presented by postmodern thought.  however when the idea is pushed it 
becomes absurd: like some bizarre observer created quantum metaphysical system.

if we assume that the text does not exist without you then literature 
becomes a solipsistic endeavor.  the point of literature, i would venture, 
is community.  if the text does not exist without you, then this community 
seems logically impossible - if everybody's reading is the correct reading 
then i, as a writer, will give up writing because my part of the whole 
affair is worthless.

i find it philosophically lazy to assume that any reading of a text is just 
as good as another reading.  everybody's reading is *valid*, but that does 
not mean that there is equality in validity.  the point of writing, as far 
as i can determine, is to communicate *something* - whether this is a 
philosophical idea, a feeling, the belief that nothing is communicable, the 
point is communication.

robert brandom has made steps beyond the linguistic solipsism of extreme 
postmodernism in _Making it Explicit_ and _Articulating Reasons_ 
articulates what he calls inferentialism.  that is, language (and 
literature, i would argue) works because, though we all have different and 
individual pools of knowledge from which to draw, we are able to draw on 
knowledge common to most or all of us.  such is literature: literature 
works because we are presented with a text written within this field of 
assumed common knowledge - from this we each bring our own strengths and 
weakenesses in terms of the knowledge pool that the author used in the 
creation of the novel.  each reading is a valid exegesis, but those with a 
better foundation in the knowledge pool of the author are able to 
articulate a more refined and robust reading than someone unfamiliar with 
the knowledge.

yes, the text exists without you - there are thousands of other people 
engaging with the text; to think that the text exists in the world only 
when you read it is solipsism and rejection of community and 
commonality.  i feel this is inherently egocentric and selfish view of 
literature and the world, not to mention a refusal of engagement with the 
human community.



 >You seem rather choosy about what to include your pluralism.

pluralism is intrinsically choosy.  pluralism allows for various 
interpretations, it does not say you have to endorse all of them - that 
would be subjectivism.  isaiah berlin offers throughout his oeuvre 
articulations on pluralist thought - his essay "Two Conceptions of Liberty" 
is particularly instructive.  when we look at the values and rights that we 
hold to be ends in themselves (liberty, justice, life, etc.) we find that 
these ends-in-themselves infringe on each other.  a society with absolute 
justice would make absolute liberty an impossibility.  what pluralism does 
is recognize the many options possible for creating a society with these 
ends-in-themselves - it doesn't say that all are equal.  in fact, we have 
to choose one of these possibilities while at the same time realizing that 
it is only one possibility and may turn out to be lesser than another.

sorry for the rant.  the literary analysis on the list is generally pretty 
good, but christ guys, the philosophy is really sloppy...

- owen

the box o' info -
x5451 box 1633
thestranger.org

"i was curious and eager to know only what
i believed to be more real than myself."
         - proust: in search of lost time
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