Canon disagreement; author intent

[dfrankiswork at netscape.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 39413

I wrote:
> 
> > What does it mean, and how is it possible to say, that say)
> > 'Dumbledore is evil' is an unlikely reading of canon, or a perverse 
> > one? How can we say that a given interpretation is 'subversive'? If 
> > I assert that the reading you find subversive is my instinctive 
> > reading (something of the sort must occur on the R/H - H/H divide, 
> > I think), are you reduced to saying 'fine for you, David', or have 
> > you any rational basis for persuading me different?
> 
Elkins replied: 
> Well, subversion itself is really in the mind of the beholder (as is 
> instinct).  
> 
> Indeed, my initial emotional response to the discovery that one of my 
> own instinctive understandings of the story ("Snape is still 
> emotionally invested in his old DE colleagues") was not only a 
> minority opinion, but also assumed by many to be deliberate 
> subversion, was to feel both taken aback and rather out of sorts.  
> (My secondary response, of course, was to become fascinated by the 
> issue and so to pester everyone on the subject until they all got 
> tired of it -- but that's just me.)   
> 
> One man's painfully earnest reading is another man's subversion.

I can see that the fact that people go for subversive (ie deliberately against their own instinctive reading) interpretation can lead to subsequent confusion when others fail to spot the deliberate element.

(Can I just mention what I never had time to before, that I concur with your view of Snape and the DEs, and always have done: indeed I think there is probably evidence in the form of my posts last year dealing with possible reasons for his nastiness to Neville (resents auror father) and reaction to hearing Malfoy's name (had really hoped Lucius had left all that DE stuff behind).  After all, the DEs are his own former self; to show no mercy now would imply he should have had none from Dumbledore.  These are books about good and evil, not political manoeuvring: Snape didn't cross the floor, he had a *conversion*.)

However, my real concern was opposing instinctive readings.  Now I begin to think about it, the term instinctive is a little seductive, isn't it?  Instincts are those things we did not need to learn.  Language (not the idea of it, but any specific language) is learned, as is reading.  If different readings really *were* instinctive, like different shaped birds' nests, we really would be just throwing rocks and saying 'tis, 'tisn't at each other - or ignoring each other.  (And to coin a phrase: they say Elkins is obsessed with getting to the bottom of things, but she's got *nothing* on David Frankis.)
> 
> So, yes.  "Fine for you, David" really is about as far as that 
> particular dispute can go.
> 
> Generally speaking, though, when people stand accused of favoring 
> "subversive" or "perverse" readings on this list, they respond by 
> trying to point out the ways in which the text does indeed support 
> their instinctive reading.  In short, they launch into literary 
> analysis.
> 
> Most literary analysis operates under the assumption that texts 
> suggest meaning to readers in accordance with fairly consistent and 
> predictable rules, and that that this process is therefore, while 
> admittedly not nearly as quantifiable as physics or chemistry, 
> nonetheless still *explicable.*  Literary analysis attempts 
> to "defend" a given reading by showing how the text adheres 
> to established rules of authorial conveyance.  

...and different people have different rules.  In the academic world (I presume) this is formalised into schools.  In the fandom, without a deal of forbearance, it degenerates into shipping wars.

These rules (almost certainly a partial and open ended set) are encapsulated in our 'instinctive' readings.  Where do they come from?  I would suggest two things: the way language is used to report and interpret reality, and then, almost certainly derived from this, the 'genre expectations' that we have.  Putting this together with Elkins' previous post on fannish reading, we now possibly have all the pieces in place for constructive debate on canon issues:

- the Potterverse is not real, it is an illusion created in the mind of each reader by the interaction of their 'rules' with JKR's text;

- therefore, any discussion of a supposed fact in the Potterverse must take account of potentially divergent rules - indeed, if we all have the same text (some debates in the past have been voided by the discovery that they turned on a difference between the US and the UK text: for an amusing example, search the archive on the words enervate and ennervate.), the only other source of difference must be in the underlying model of reality into which the rules translate the text in the readers' minds.

This has been very useful to me, because it helps me understand why canon is almost never any use in settling disputes.  In mature debates (not necessarily conducted in a mature manner!), one side will cite canon in support of their view.  The other side then 'explains away' that canon, and cites different canon, to be explained away by the first side in turn.  Neither side appears capable of stepping back and looking at the whole lot from scratch: because their rules have been internalised.  Even if a broadminded reader re-examines the text taking the opposing side's interpretation as a given  (oddly enough, if the Potterverse *were* real, this would be the approach suggested by the Popperian philosophy of science - I would be interested to hear if any fans have seriously tried this, e.g. a firm H/Her reading GOF determined to try to interpret everything in an H/R way), they will find themselves frustrated by their own rule system, which will keep forcing them back on to their former interpretation.

What these debates need to do, if the adherents of one interpretation really hope to win over any of their opponents, is to focus on the rules of interpretation.  The corollary is that one has to put one's own rules into play for negotiation, ie be prepared to be 'wrong'.  Note: I am not saying that all HPFGU debate should take this form; just that a fair proportion either consciously or unconsciously is trying to persuade the other side in an argument: such debaters may find themselves more effective if they take this approach, at the cost of sometimes having to change their minds.

> So, for example, while I did not myself find Draco/Hermione at all an 
> instinctive reading of the text, once I learned that so many people 
> had found it to be one, I was tempted to return to the text to try to 
> figure out *how* it had managed to suggest that possibility to so 
> many of its readers.  Similarly, while H/H is not at all an 
> instinctive reading for me, its vast popularity leads me to believe 
> that the text is indeed offering its readers *something* to support 
> that reading.  The shipping debates on this list offer quite a few 
> insights into the specific critical "rules" that have led so many to 
> come by this reading.

I would be interested to hear those insights (for both sides).  My own view is that the idea that JKR identifies with Hermione is a post hoc argument, not part of what fans would normally bring to the text.  The best I have been able to come up with is that it is related to readers' perception of the ideal relationship, i.e. the model of reality into which the rules translate the text.  This, IMO, counts for more than readers' experiences of romance.  However, my experience is different from yours: I usually become deeply frustrated because I *can't* infer the thinking behind the canon-based arguments, so these debates don't produce insight for me, they produce frustration.

Another hoary debate is over Hermione's age: is she nearly 11 or nearly 12 at the begining of PS?  It has produced some pretty impassioned writing on both sides.  However, when interested listies outside the debate asked (more than once) why it mattered, hardly anyone was able to explain it - only Penny really rose to the challenge, and she struggled, IMO.

> Of course, literary criticism is not a science but an art, which 
> means that not only the rules themselves but also the way in which 
> they are prioritized can vary tremendously depending on the "school" 
> of analysis one favors.  A Jungian critic will privilege certain 
> rules of textual suggestion very highly indeed, while devaluing (or 
> even rejecting completely) others.

Now, I couldn't possibly call myself Jungian, but it was great fun for me to throw out all my usual 'Faith' type of approach to the text and go overboard on a colourful manipulation of the symbolic material in my Hagrid, Sleeping Woman, and Sirus Black posts. (See messages 36704, 37446, and the last part of  38315.)  However, when people contested what I said, I found it hard to sustain the approach as my rules were pretty implicit - I couldn't access the ground of my feeling that Hagrid's gatekeeping functions are not the same as general foreshadowing, for example.

  Critical approaches also 
> change with the era, they go in and out of fashion.  As Penny pointed
> out, most of the popular schools of contemporary literary criticism 
> don't accord the author's conscious intent much pride of place at 
> *all* when it comes to prioritizing the rules.  The same could not be 
> said a century ago, and whether it will still hold true a century 
> from now is anyone's guess. Life is short, art long, and literary 
> criticism something in between.  ;-)

Ah, but we can put her intent into perspective.  It is another interpretation.  Whether it is authoritative or not is, I take it, a matter of reader choice, but we don't have to follow fashion.  If she is consciously aware of alternative systems of interpretation, she may find ways to force these to be self-contradictory, e.g. by making the direction of Hermione's affections explicit, or more subtly, by manipulating 'subtexts' to cancel each other out thus forcing the reader to re-evaluate their aproach to 'instinctive' reading.
> 
Elkins to me again:
> 
> I'd advise you to avoid the post-modern theorists.  They will likely
> distress you.

Ah, no, that would be a reason for reading them.  Either I face them at a time of my choosing, or I run away, and they catch me at a time when I least want it.

> After all, sollipsism is a *very* popular reading of reality among 
> the text's adolescent readership.  There therefore must be 
> *something,* either embedded in the text itself or in the way in 
> which the text interacts with cultural and societal factors, that is 
> serving to encourage that reading.  Right?  
> 
Ah, I think *that* is obvious.  JKR presents a world which is supposed to lie concealed in ours, and asks us to identify with a character who feels alienated in our world, and is suddenly introduced to the concealed one.  If we suspend disbelief far enough, then we may enter the concealed world - but we won't find anyone else there: solipsism.

Finally, Elkins, in an earlier post, wrote:

>  Authors are 
> very rarely the best interpreters of their own works, nor are their 
>interpretations necessarily any more valid than anyone else's. 
>Indeed, authors are often *notoriously* oblivious to the true import 
>of what they themselves have written. 

>  The fanfic writers on the list will surely back me up here. I 
> imagine that most of them have stories to tell about those times that 
>their readers have commented on a powerful running motif, or a strong 
>thematic implication in their work, and by doing so just *astonished* 
>them, because they themselves had no conscious awareness of having 
>put that in there at all. Everybody who has ever written fiction has 
>had this happen to them. It's par for the course. It is also, in my 
>experience, a large part of what makes the act of writing itself such 
>a profound and personal endeavor.

Not *that* notorious: it was news to me.  Thank goodness somebody mentioned it!  If so, writing is a very different endeavour from the one I conceived it to be.  Indeed I have less idea than ever what it is that authors actually *do*.  And it does put a very different complexion on the idea of authorial intent if authors themselves are prepared to admit that there are things in their works that they did not consciously put there.  None of the fanfic writers commented on this, IIRC, but I will take their silence as consent - I would welcome anecdotes offlist.

David


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