semiotics

[Paul Mackin]

On Dec 14, 2005, at 2:17 PM, Ghetta Life wrote:

>
> Yust telling you, as a freind, posting a message like this (endless  
> & formless) just begs one to delete it before reading..
>
> Ghetta

That'd depend on one's motive for reading p-posts. Writer intention  
is a weak sister compared to reader intention and privilege.

Why read a p-post:

Learn something (every so often)

See who's at it again

Amusement

Penance

Sadomasochism

To feel superior

Offering it up

Inadvertence

Boredom



>
>> From: John Doe <tristero69 at yahoo.com>
>>
>> So, by YOUR reasoning, the content of your e-mail
>> response to me is: " Scupza was like oil, painted
>> upwards of my vestibular clamshell,and freezone pizza
>> rubric deflated tire over the right stance; pollywogs
>> twiddle in their polian glee, but sinks my heart as
>> waterfalls - the loon that laughs, the babe that
>> bawls, is skittering under sticky-note pads..."
>> etc......your argument ignores the obvious; sure,
>> readers will bring their own takes on certain terms,
>> which,due to their ambuguity, leave certain meanings
>> "open"...but, and your own statements betray it, there
>> is also the intended meaning; how would ANY
>> communication occur, if everyone saw EVERY item as
>> completely "open" to interpretations other than those
>> in mind of the writer? Clearly YOU must read recipes,
>> instructions for use on the back of products; do you
>> always question the intended meaning of THOSE "texts"?
>> ...a text is not a device for generating
>> interpretations;there is always the
>> "what-the-writer-had-in-mind" just as you had "in
>> mind" certain things and not others when you wrote
>> your reply; that Theory stuff sounds all sexy in a
>> thesis, but try convincing yourself you DON'T have
>> intentions when you write or that most of your peers
>> won't arrive at the same gist...I didn't glean from
>> your e-mail that it was "about" the post Civil War
>> Reconstruction plans of the United States Government
>> for example...what interpretations can be safely
>> EXCLUDED (trillions at least ) far outnumber what
>> interpretations can  be sanely affirmed in any given
>> instance...the Umberto Eco example of Casanove hardly
>> exemplifies an absurd, wildly arbitrary guess at a
>> POSSIBLE, and I stress POSSIBLE, meaning;apparently no
>> reader thought the "meaning" was really : ' a palace
>> made of green Jello' and this extreme "interpretation"
>> only serves to show that theory aside, in PRACTICE, if
>> we are honest with how our minds are decoding when we
>> read, there is a rather limited range of sensible
>> meanings from any given 'text'...very
>> limited...occasional discoveries like the Eco example
>> are normal and may or may not be revealing of the
>> author's incorporation of subconcious associations..in
>> some cases yes, in others no...hermeneutics has
>> asserted this since post-scholastic days at
>> least...this trend in Theory is so much fun these days
>> because it allows people to feel "empowered" rather
>> than "under the spell" of the writer;We Don't Want the
>> Writer Telling Us What to Think, blah blah blah...it's
>> so ecumenical and socialist...Yay!....Look Folks! -
>> Even the Author Has No Real Control Over His
>> Material!!! Yeeeeee Haaaaaa!....I hope they don't feel
>> that way next time they read a recipe for how to cook
>> Sea Bass.....perhaps TheoryHeads should ask themselves
>> what happens mentally when a Reader interprets a
>> technical manuel or a set of instructions on how to
>> program a DVD player before they go making Grand
>> Unified Theories on literary "texts"....ever wonder
>> about that? Waht, exactly, is the difference between a
>> novel and a technical manuel? If Theory can't answer
>> or even address that problem, it has rather little
>> credibility trying to explicate the interpretive
>> process of fiction....and my final caveat concerns not
>> what Goes On in the interpreting mind of an
>> Intellectual, who presumably has a lot of associative
>> resources in his mind when reading a fiction work to
>> play with, but how about what goes on in a border-line
>> retarded person when he reads Moby Dick? Barthes was
>> so stupid he never stopped to consider that if he's
>> gonna make generalizations about the Human Thought
>> Process Engaged in the Act of Reading a Text, he'd
>> better not ONLY look at other educated high-I.Q. types
>> just like himself; he'd better account for less gifted
>> people, because, if you deign to generalize about the
>> Human mind, it includes non-intellectuals as
>> well..other wise you are NOT really thinking through
>> your premises; you're only talking about your own
>> "kind"....you're talking to your own fan club...when
>> fiction writer sits down to write a novel he is not
>> deciding to contrive a "device"; ( meta-fiction
>> writers aside, and even Barth and Coover have Intent
>> )Faulkner didn't write "devices"; he expressed the
>> human motivations and actions of "all these characters
>> living in my head , clamoring for articulation"...that
>> perhaps may strike you as a completely foreign notion,
>> since you seem to feel that writers are mere
>> transceivers and not Creators....but the majority of
>> novel writers in history would find this idea of
>> "there is no 'I' behind the text" as psychologically
>> untenable...ironically the very writers we read (
>> again, except for post-WWII representatives ) would
>> find all this as horseshit;Theory just grew bored and
>> unhappy with the idea that writers are Directors of
>> Their Created Worlds, so it jumped on a new view,
>> that's all...in thirty years it will be something
>> else; meanwhile fictin writers will feel the way they
>> always felt when rendering the imaginary worlds in
>> their minds....
>>
>>
>> --- "
>
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