Neri/OT: Intro/Theorising

[nrenka]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Talisman" <talisman22457 at y...> 
wrote:

<snip>

> It is axiomatic to say that most readings are mediocre, conformist 
> and therefore, bound in ideology.  In the context of this series, 
> we could say these appropriations are Muggle readings. 

Ah, the invocations of ideology.  But if we're going to play that 
game, we might as well play it in its most up-to-date form, no?

Which means that *everyone* is working from an ideological reading.  
This whole idea that there are those who can 'see through' ideology 
is but a vain delusion.  Outliers like to delude themselves into 
thinking that they are the non-conformist posessors of truth, on the 
avant-garde edge; but the postmodern student of Jenkins knows better.

<snip>

> Though eventually even the  hoi polloi come to see that Earth 
> revolves around the sun.  (Usually after the theorist is good and 
> safely dead.) To the extent that they must, the masses will be seen 
> absorbing radical ideas slowly and only after constructing careful 
> explanations that will protect the larger social construct from too 
> much upheaval.

Ooh, it looks like someone has been reading Kuhn, too.  Again, such a 
bias it is, the assumption that the radical is always going to be 
eventually accepted by those too slow to have appreciated it at the 
time of its naissance.  I wonder at the attribution of such agency to 
the masses, as well.  Do they get together in little groups?  Is it 
them, or the Zeitgeist?

> Inasmuch as Paul Ricoeur has been invoked, perhaps you were 
> actually advocating a more vigorous role for his alternate 
> character, Suspicion. Rather than being something to avoid,  
> Suspicion is an essential tool for piercing self-delusion.  
> Suspicion is not Faith's enemy, for he may well be the only
> entity with a chance of making an honest woman of her. Though, as 
> he emanates from the same source, there is no guarantee.

Suspicion is also, however, an excellent tool for *confirming* one's 
own particular self-delusions.  Witness the progression (or don't; 
it's pretty sad) of Freudian literary criticism throughout the 
century.  Oh, those men (and a few women) of suspicion, uncovering 
what is *actually* going on in all of those texts.  Or take the 
Marxists, with their ultimately reducible insight into all 
literature.  You know it's a book in trouble when you need another 
book just to understand it, pace Jameson.

Suspicion is very good at telling the analyst that he is right--there 
is something underneath the surface of what that pesky author (who 
doesn't really exist now, anyways; except if you want any kind of 
standpoint epistemology, he rises from the grave, of course) is 
writing.  No one else can see it, the blind fools!  But the gifted 
analyst of insight knows what is really there, underneath the 
obfuscatory nods to traditional hegemony.

There is a role for both Faith and her brother Suspicion in the grand 
scheme of things.  I suspect, however, that one of them will be 
somewhat more productive in the long run, when the good 95% of the 
theories are drowning in the Bay or moping sadly upon the GARBAGESCOW.

Castles in the sky look nice, but you can actually live in a hut on 
the ground.

-Nora gets back to watching Ramsey resurrect the author (and the 
reader-with-a-history, to boot)