semiotics

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 14/12/2005 Michael J. Hußmann wrote:

> [...] The authors claim to a
> privileged interpretation is quite hollow; after all, his subconscious
> may have been playing tricks on him, and some seemingly absurd
> interpretation by some reader may be nearer to the truth than the
> official interpretation. Not that we (or even the author) would ever
> know for sure. (When Pynchon did comment on his works, as in the
> introduction to "Slow Learner", how many even cared? When his comments
> supported their interpretations, readers chose to believe him, and if 
> he
> contradicted their beliefs, they explained his comments as tongue in 
> cheek.) [...]

Ain't that the truth. It's the extreme viewpoints -- that everything 
means everything on the one hand, and that meaning is always and 
ineluctably fixed to one author-itative construction on the other -- 
which are balderdash. Affective Fallacy and Intentional Fallacy, 
respectively.

Just as one reader can accept or reject what a writer intended to mean 
(or thought s/he intended to mean), so can a subsequent reader (or the 
writer him/herself) accept or reject the meaning/s that first reader 
extracted (or thought s/he extracted) from the text. And no writer 
starts with a blank slate anyway. They're always writing about 
something, i.e. they're reading something, attaching significance to it 
or extracting from it, whether it's the drive-by that happened at 
Wal-Mart yesterday, a coincidental correlation of phonemes, or the 
meaning of life, the universe and everything. Blame is asserted, a good 
(or bad) pun is made, or God is invoked. Or not. Or the reader doesn't 
care for it. Or doesn't get it. Or it's (intended to be, or perceived 
as) ironic. Or the writer's (or reader's) own biographical obsessions 
and hang-ups start to colour, consciously or unconsciously, everything 
s/he writes/reads. Or ... and any combination/s thereof ...

The two acts -- writing and reading -- are interconnected. The act of 
writing is also an act of "reading" -- events, people, situations, 
beliefs, prior texts etc. And the act of reading is also an act of 
"writing" -- or rewriting -- the text. "Writing" and "Reading" don't 
exist independently, in some sort of binary opposition to one another.

best