ETI 309--Introduction to
Contemporary Western Literature
Literary Theory IV:
Reader Response, Post-Structuralism,
Deconstruction, Postmodernism
Reader-Response Criticism

Reader-response criticism

arose in the 1960s and '70s, in response to formalist
interpretations of literature

focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work
(in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention
primarily on the content and form of the work or the author)

recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts "real
existence" to the work and completes its meaning through
interpretation.

argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in
which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, textrelated performance.
Reader-Response Criticism

Central assumptions:

Meaning is not something that is contained within a text or
that can be extracted from it.

The literary text possesses no fixed and final meaning or
value; there is no one "correct" meaning.

What a text does is more important than what it is.

Literature is a performative art and each reading is a
performance (meaning is produced by readers working in
conjunction with the structures of the text.
The Problem of Meaning in Literature
Three essential issues:

Meaning is 'social', that is, language and conventions work only
as shared meaning, and our way of viewing the world can exist
only as shared or sharable. When we read a text, we are
participating in social, or cultural, meaning. Response is not
merely an individual thing, but is part of culture and history.

Meaning is contextual; change the context, you often change the
meaning.

Texts constructed as literature, or 'art', have their own codes and
practices, and the more we know of them, the more we can
'decode' the text, that is, understand it - consequently, there is in
regard to the question of meaning the matter of reader
competency, as it is called, the experience and knowledge of
decoding literary texts.
Reader-Response Criticism

How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?

What does a phrase-by-phrase analysis of a short literary text, or
a key portion of a longer text, tell us about the reading
experience prestructured by (built into) that text?

Do the sounds/shapes of the words as they appear on the page
or how they are spoken by the reader enhance or change the
meaning of the word/work?

How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader's
response is, or is analogous to, the topic of the story?

What does the body of criticism published about a literary text
suggest about the critics who interpreted that text and/or about
the reading experience produced by that text?
“My Papa's Waltz” by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Structuralism vs. Post-structuralism

Structuralism, a fashionable movement in France in the 1950s,
studied the underlying structures inherent in cultural products
(such as texts), utilizing analytical concepts from linguistics,
psychology, anthropology etc. to understand and interpret those
structures.

The structuralist movement emphasized logical and scientific
results. Many structuralists sought to integrate their work into
pre-existing bodies of knowledge.

Post-structuralism, which emerged in France during the 1960s, can
be understood as a body of distinct reactions to structuralism.
Post-structuralism

Post-structuralism holds that the study of underlying structures is
itself culturally conditioned and therefore subject to myriad biases
and misinterpretations.

To understand an object (e.g. one of the many meanings of a
text), it is necessary to study both the object itself, and the
systems of knowledge which were coordinated to produce the
object.

In this way, post-structuralism positions itself as a study of how
knowledge is produced.

Two key figures in the early post-structuralist movement were
Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes.

The post-structuralist movement is closely related to
postmodernism—but the two concepts are not synonymous.
Post-structuralism

The approach concerns itself with the ways and places where
systems, frameworks, definitions, and certainties break down.

It maintains that frameworks and systems are merely fictitious
constructs and that they cannot be trusted to develop meaning or to
give order.

In fact, the very act of seeking order or a singular Truth (with a
capital T) is absurd because there exists no unified truth.

Post-structuralism holds that there are many truths, that frameworks
must bleed, and that structures must become unstable or
decentered.

Moreover, post-structuralism is also concerned with the power
structures or hegemonies and power and how these elements
contribute to and/or maintain structures to enforce hierarchy.
Post-structuralism

By questioning the process of developing meaning, poststructural theory strikes at the very heart of philosophy and reality
and throws knowledge making into what Jacques Derrida called
“freeplay.”

in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University, Derrida delivered a lecture
titled “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences” in which he challenged structuralism's most basic
ideas.

Post-structural theory can be tied to a move against
Modernist/Enlightenment ideas and Western religious beliefs. An
early pioneer of this resistance was philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche. In his essay, “On Truth and Lies in an Extra-moral
Sense” (1873), Nietzsche rejects even the very basis of our
knowledge making, language, as a reliable system of
communication.
Post-structuralism

Below is an example of some language freeplay and
a simple form of deconstruction:

Time (noun) flies (verb) like an arrow (adverb clause) =
Time passes quickly.

Time (verb) flies (object) like an arrow (adverb clause) =
Get out your stopwatch and time the speed of flies as you
would time an arrow's flight.

Time flies (noun) like (verb) an arrow (object) = Time flies
are fond of arrows (or at least of one particular arrow).
Post-structuralism

Post-structuralists assert that if we cannot trust language
systems to convey truth, the very bases of truth are unreliable
and the universe—or at least the universe we have
constructed—becomes unraveled or de-centered.

Post-structuralism holds that we cannot trust the sign = signifier +
signified formula (of structuralism); that there is a breakdown of
certainty between sign/signifier, which leaves language systems
hopelessly inadequate for relaying meaning so that we are in
eternal freeplay or instability.

It is important to note that deconstruction is not just about tearing
down; through deconstruction we can identify the in-betweens
and the marginalized to begin interstitial knowledge building.
Modernism vs Postmodernism

With the resistance to traditional forms of knowledge making
(science, religion, language), inquiry, communication, and building
meaning take on different forms to the post-structuralist.
modernism
postmodernism
romanticism/symbolism
form
purpose
design
hierarchy
centering
genre/boundary
semantics
metaphor
paraphysics/Dadaism
antiform
play
chance
anarchy
absence
text/intertext
rhetoric
metonymy
Post-Structuralism and Literature

If we are questioning/resisting the methods we use to build
knowledge (science, religion, language), then traditional literary
notions, including the narrative and the author are also thrown
into freeplay.

Narrative: the narrative is a fiction that locks readers into
interpreting text in a single, chronological manner that does not
reflect our experiences. Postmodern texts may not adhere to
traditional notions of narrative. (e.g. in the final sections of The
French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles steps outside his
narrative to speak with the reader directly)

Grand narratives are also resisted (e.g. the belief that through
science the human race will improve is questioned). In addition,
metaphysics is questioned. Instead, postmodern knowledge
building is local, situated, slippery, and self-critical (i.e. it
questions itself and its role).
Post-Structuralism and Literature

Post-structuralism rejects the idea of a literary text having a
single purpose, a single meaning, or one singular existence.

Instead, every individual reader creates a new and individual
purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text.

A post-structuralist critic must be able to utilize a variety of
perspectives to create a multifaceted interpretation of a text,
even if these interpretations conflict with one another. It is
particularly important to analyze how the meanings of a text shift
in relation to certain variables, usually involving the identity of the
reader
Post-Structuralism and Literature

Because post-structural work is self-critical, post-structural critics
even look for ways texts contradict themselves.

Author: the author is displaced as absolute author(ity), and the
reader plays a role in interpreting the text and developing
meaning (as best as possible) from the text.

In “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes argues that the
idea of singular authorship is a recent phenomenon. Barthes
explains that the death of the author shatters Modernist notions
of authority and knowledge building.

Lastly, he states that once the author is dead and the Modernist
idea of singular narrative (and thus authority) is overturned, texts
become plural, and the interpretation of texts becomes a
collaborative process between author and audience.
Post-Structuralism and Literature

In the post-structuralist approach to textual analysis, the reader
replaces the author as the primary subject of inquiry. This displacement
is often referred to as the "destabilizing" or "decentering" of the author,
though it has its greatest effect on the text itself.

Without a central fixation on the author, post-structuralists examine
other sources for meaning (e.g., readers, cultural norms, other
literature, etc.).

A major theory associated with Structuralism was binary opposition.
This theory proposed that there are certain theoretical and conceptual
opposites, often arranged in a hierarchy, which human logic has given
to text.

Post-structuralism rejects the notion of the essential quality of the
dominant relation in the hierarchy, choosing rather to expose these
relations and the dependency of the dominant term on its apparently
subservient counterpart. The only way to properly understand these
meanings is to deconstruct the assumptions and knowledge systems
which produce the illusion of singular meaning.
Post-Structuralism: Typical questions

How is language thrown into freeplay or questioned in the work? (e.g. note how
Anthony Burgess plays with language (Russian vs English) in A Clockwork Orange,
or how Burroughs plays with names and language in Naked Lunch).

How does the work undermine or contradict generally accepted truths?

How does the author (or a character) omit, change, or reconstruct memory and
identity?

How does a work fulfill or move outside the established conventions of its genre?

How does the work deal with the separation (or lack thereof) between writer, work,
and reader?

What ideology does the text seem to promote?

What is left out of the text that if included might undermine the goal of the work?

If we changed the point of view of the text - say from one character to another, or
multiple characters - how would the story change? Whose story is not told in the text?
Who is left out and why might the author have omitted this character's tale?
On Interpretation

To "interpret" something means that we make sense of
something. The second we ask "What does it mean?" or the
moment we try to "understand" something we experience, we are
in the realm of interpretation.

We order it, group it, and ultimately try to relate it to what we
already know in an effort to integrate it (texts that refuse to be
integrated within our frame of reference remain "too difficult" or
"not understandable").

We don't "discover" meaning as much as we "construct"
meaning, for the reader is the one who makes the connections.
On the other hand, the author provides a kind of "field" or
parameters that the reader works with, so the text can't just
signify "anything."

Compare a story to the night sky. The configuration of stars is
preset, awaiting a reader, but the reader makes the connections
to create meaningful constellations.
On Interpretation

As Robert Scholes points out, "the major function of
interpretation is to say what a previous text has left
unsaid: to unravel its complications, to make explicit
its implications, to raise its concrete and specific
details to a more abstract and general level."

In other words, when we read a story about two kids
in a forest who meet a lady who wants to eat them,
we make sense of that story by interpreting it. We
say it is a story about poverty, justice, greed, feudal
society, hope and victory, childhood anxieties, or
abuse, etc.
On Interpretation

Remember that interpretation is not a matter of just
thinking hard or thinking well. It's not really a matter
of "digging deeper" or "dissecting" either.

Instead, interpretation relies on a methodology, lens,
perspective, and frame of reference, principles of
classification, or interpretive framework, which allow
us to see different aspects of what we are studying.

By "methodology" or "lens" what’s meant is the way
we gather materials, what we "count" as evidence
(what we see as relevant or important), and how we
talk about what we see. In brief, a method is defined
by our goals and the questions we ask.
Sources

Cuddon, J.A. (1999) Dictionary of Literary Terms
and Literary Theory. UK: Penguin Books

Macey, D. (1999) Dictionary of Critical Theory. UK:
Penguin Books

Bertens, H. (1999) Literary Theory. London and New
York: Routledge

http://home.mesastate.edu/~blaga/theoryindex/inter
pretatiox.html

http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/rr.php