NP "the formerly colonised coming back to haunt us"

[jbor]

on 21/12/02 6:59 AM, Dave Monroe at davidmmonroe at yahoo.com wrote:

> But, again (and again and again and again ...) nor
> should one take the author's word as the last word.

Indeed. No-one is doing this, of course.

> Nor should one ignore the context(s) of production
> (which did here indeed include WWII, not to mention
> the events leading up to it).

The point made was that early versions of the saga were written while
Tolkien served in WWI.

I think what you might be getting at is the author's values and attitudes,
and how these might be reflected in the text. I agree that this is something
worth considering.
 
> Nor should one confuse statements about reception with
> those about production.

One can interpret any given text to be "'about'" whatever one likes, I
agree, but that doesn't render said interpretation a universal truth (N.B.
"The Affective Fallacy"). But I do agree that this is the issue, this
confusion of, or deliberate attempt to conflate, production and reception
(with, of course, the text itself at stake), so that any interpretation a
particular reader applies to the text (or, similarly, to the perceived
cultural, historical, biographical etc contexts of the text's production)
automatically becomes a valid and reliable (and unarguable) aspect or
attribute of that text. What is overlooked is that any interpretation of a
text is a text too, in and of itself, and subject to the same sorts of
"political unconscious" as any other text. Further, while the number of
interpretations of a text is possibly or potentially infinite, some of these
interpretations are bound to be mutually exclusive.

You asserted that TLOTR is indelibly and indisputably "'about'" WWII. I
assert that this is not necessarily so.

best