Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory Terry Eagletons Literary Theory

In 1918 Europe lay in ruins, devastated by the worst war in history. In the wake of that catastrophe, a wave of social revolutions rolled across the continent: the years around 1920 were to witness the erlin !partacus uprisin" and the #ienna $eneral !trike, the establish%ent of workers& !oviets in 'unich and udapest, and %ass factory occupations throu"hout Italy. (ll of this insur"ency was violently crushed) but the social order of European capitalis% had been shaken to its roots by the carna"e of the war and its turbulent political after%ath. *he ideolo"ies on which that order had custo%arily depended, the cultural values by which it ruled, were also in deep tur%oil. !cience see%ed to have dwindled to a sterile positivis%, a %yopic obsession with the cate"ori+in" of facts) philosophy appeared torn between such a positivis% on the one hand, and an indefensible sub,ectivis% on the other) for%s of relativis% and irrationalis% were ra%pant, and art reflected this bewilderin" loss of bearin"s. It was in this conte-t of widespread ideolo"ical crisis, one which lon" pre.dated the /irst 0orld 0ar itself, that the $er%an philosopher Ed%und 1usserl sou"ht to develop a new philosophical %ethod which would lend absolute certainty to a disinte"ratin" civili+ation. It was a choice, 1usserl was to write later in his The Crisis of the European Sciences 219345, between irrationalist barbarity on the one hand, and spiritual rebirth throu"h an 6absolutely self.sufficient science of the spirit& on the other. 1usserl, like his philosopher predecessor 7ene 8escartes, started out on his hunt for certainty by provisionally re,ectin" what he called the 6natural attitude& the co%%onsensical person.in.the.street belief that ob,ects e-isted independently of ourselves in the e-ternal world, and that our infor%ation about the% was "enerally reliable. !uch an attitude %erely took the possibility of knowled"e for "ranted, whereas it was this, precisely, which was in 9uestion. 0hat then can we be clear about and certain of: (lthou"h we cannot be sure of the independent e-istence of thin"s, 1usserl ar"ues, we can be certain of how they appear to us i%%ediately in consciousness, whether the actual thin" we are e-periencin" is an illusion or not. ;b,ects can be re"arded not as thin"s in the%selves but as thin"s posited, or 6intended&, by consciousness. (ll consciousness is consciousness of so%ethin": in thinkin", I a% aware that %y thou"ht is 6pointin" towards& so%e ob,ect. *he act of thinkin" and the ob,ect of thou"ht are internally related, %utually dependent. 'y consciousness is not ,ust a passive re"istration of the world, but actively constitutes or 6intends& it. *o establish certainty, then, we %ust first of all i"nore, or 6put in brackets&, anythin" which is beyond our i%%ediate e-perience) we %ust reduce the e-ternal world to the contents of our consciousness alone. *his, the so.called 6pheno%enolo"ical reduction&, is 1usserl&s first i%portant %ove. Everythin" not 6i%%anent& to consciousness %ust be ri"orously e-cluded) all realities %ust be treated as pure 6pheno%ena&, in ter%s of their appearances in our %ind, and this is the only absolute data fro% which we can be"in. *he na%e 1usserl "ave to his philosophical %ethod pheno%enolo"y ste%s fro% this insistence. <heno%enolo"y is a science of pure pheno%ena. *his, however, is not enou"h to resolve our proble%s. /or perhaps all we find, when

we inspect the contents of our %inds, is no %ore than a rando% flu- of pheno%ena, a chaotic strea% of consciousness, and we can hardly found certainty upon this. *he kind of 6pure& pheno%ena with which 1usserl is concerned, however, are %ore than ,ust rando% individual particulars. *hey are a syste% of universal essences, for pheno%enolo"y varies each ob,ect in i%a"ination until it discovers what is invariable about it. 0hat is presented to pheno%enolo"ical knowled"e is not ,ust, say, the e-perience of ,ealousy or of the colour red, but the universal types or essences of these thin"s, ,ealousy or redness as such. *o "rasp any pheno%enon wholly and purely is to "rasp what is essential and unchan"in" about it. *he $reek word for type is eidos) and 1usserl accordin"ly speaks of his %ethod as effectin" an 6eidetic& abstraction, alon" with its pheno%enolo"ical reduction. (ll of this %ay sound intolerably abstract and unreal, which indeed it is. ut the ai% of pheno%enolo"y was in fact the precise opposite of abstraction: it was a return to the concrete, to solid "round, as its fa%ous slo"an 6 ack to the thin"s the%selves=& su""ested. <hilosophy had been too concerned with concepts and too little with hard data: it had thus built its precarious, top.heavy intellectual syste%s on the frailest of foundations. <heno%enolo"y, by sei+in" what we could be e-perientially sure of, could furnish the basis on which "enuinely reliable knowled"e could be constructed. It could be a 6science of sciences&, providin" a %ethod for the study of anythin" whatsoever: %e%ory, %atchbo-es, %athe%atics. If offered itself as nothin" less than a science of hu%an consciousness hu%an consciousness conceived not ,ust as the e%pirical e-perience of particular people, but as the very 6deep structures& of the %ind itself. >nlike the sciences, it asked not about this or that particular for% of knowled"e, but about the conditions which %ade any sort of knowled"e possible in the first place. It was thus, like the philosophy of ?ant before it, a 6transcendental& %ode of en9uiry) and the hu%an sub,ect, or individual consciousness, which preoccupied it was a 6transcendental& sub,ect. <heno%enolo"y e-a%ined not ,ust what I happened to perceive when I looked at a particular rabbit, but the universal essence of rabbits and of the act of perceivin" the%. It was not, in other words, a for% of e%piricis%, concerned with the rando%, fra"%entary e-perience of particular individuals) neither was it a kind of 6psycholo"is%&, interested ,ust in the observable %ental processes of such individuals. It clai%ed to lay bare the very structures of consciousness itself, and in the sa%e act to lay bare the very pheno%ena the%selves. It should be obvious even fro% this brief account of pheno%enolo"y that it is a for% of %ethodolo"ical idealis%, seekin" to e-plore an abstraction called 6hu%an consciousness& and a world of pure possibilities. ut if 1usserl re,ected e%piricis%, psycholo"is% and the positivis% of the natural sciences, he also considered hi%self to be breakin" with the classical idealis% of a thinker like ?ant. ?ant had been unable to solve the proble% of how the %ind can really know ob,ects outside it at all) pheno%enolo"y, in clai%in" that what is "iven in pure perception is the very essence of thin"s, hoped to sur%ount this scepticis%. It all see%s a far cry fro% @eavis and the or"anic society. ut is it: (fter all, the return to 6thin"s in the%selves&, the i%patient dis%issal of theories unrooted in 6concrete& life, is not so far fro% @eavis&s naively %i%etic theory of poetic lan"ua"e as e%bodyin" the very stuff of reality itself. @eavis and 1usserl both turn to the consolations of the concrete, of what can be known on the pulses, in a period of %a,or ideolo"ical crisis) and this recourse to 6thin"s the%selves& involves in both cases a

thorou"h"oin" irrationalis%. /or 1usserl, knowled"e of pheno%ena is absolutely certain, or as he says 6apodictic&, because it is intuitive: I can doubt such thin"s no %ore than I can doubt a sharp tap on the skull. /or @eavis, certain for%s of lan"ua"e are 6intuitively& ri"ht, vital and creative, and however %uch he conceived of criticis% as a collaborative ar"u%ent there was in the end no "ainsayin" this. /or both %en, %oreover, what is intuited in the act of "raspin" the concrete pheno%enon is so%ethin" universal: the eidos for 1usserl, @ife for @eavis. *hey do not, in other words, have to %ove beyond the security of the i%%ediate sensation in order to develop a 6"lobal& theory: the pheno%ena co%e ready e9uipped with one. ut it is bound to be an authoritarian theory, since it depends wholly on intuition. <heno%ena for 1usserl do not need to be interpreted, constructed this way or that in reasoned ar"u%ent. @ike certain literary ,ud"e%ents, they force the%selves upon us 6irresistibly&, to use a key @eavisian word. It is not difficult to see the relation between such do"%atis% one %anifest throu"hout @eavis&s own career and a conservative conte%pt for rational analysis. /inally, we %ay note how 1usserl&s 6intentional& theory of consciousness su""ests that 6bein"& and 6%eanin"& are always bound up with one another. *here is no ob,ect without a sub,ect, and no sub,ect without an ob,ect. ;b,ect and sub,ect, for 1usserl as for the En"lish philosopher /. 1. radley, who influenced *. !. Eliot, are really two sides of the sa%e coin. In a society where ob,ects appear as alienated, cut off fro% hu%an purposes, and hu%an sub,ects are conse9uently plun"ed into an-ious isolation, this is certainly a consolin" doctrine. 'ind and world have been put back to"ether a"ain at least in the %ind. @eavis, too, is concerned to heal the disablin" rift between sub,ects and ob,ects, 6%en& and their 6natural hu%an environ%ents&, which is the result of 6%ass& civili+ation. If pheno%enolo"y secured a knowable world with one hand, it established the centrality of the hu%an sub,ect with the other. Indeed it pro%ised nothin" less than a science of sub,ectivity itself. *he world is what I posit or 6intend&: it is to be "rasped in relation to %e, as a correlate of %y consciousness, and that consciousness is not ,ust fallibly e%pirical but transcendental. *his was a reassurin" sort of thin" to learn about oneself. *he crass positivis% of nineteenth.century science had threatened to rob the world of sub,ectivity alto"ether, and neo.?antian philosophy had ta%ely followed suit) the course of European history fro% the later nineteenth century onwards appeared to cast "rave doubt on the traditional presu%ption that 6%an& was in control of his destiny, that he was any lon"er the creative centre of his world. <heno%enolo"y, in reaction, restored the transcendental sub,ect to its ri"htful throne. *he sub,ect was to be seen as the source and ori"in of all %eanin": it was not really itself part of the world, since it brou"ht that world to be in the first place. In this sense, pheno%enolo"y recovered and refurbished the old drea% of classical bour"eois ideolo"y. /or such ideolo"y had pivoted on the belief that 6%an& was so%ehow prior to his history and social conditions, which flowed fro% hi% as water shoots forth fro% a fountain. 1ow this 6%an& had co%e to be in the first place whether he %i"ht be the product of social conditions, as well as the producer of the% was not a 9uestion to be seriously conte%plated. In recentrin" the world upon the hu%an sub,ect, then, pheno%enolo"y was providin" an i%a"inary solution to a "rievous historical proble%. In the real% of literary criticis%, pheno%enolo"y had so%e influence on the 7ussian /or%alists. Aust as 1usserl 6bracketed off the real ob,ect so as to attend to the act of knowin" it, so poetry for the /or%alists bracketed the real ob,ect and focused instead on the way it was perceived. 1 ut the %ain critical debt to pheno%enolo"y is evident

in the so.called $eneva school of criticis%, which flourished in particular in the 19B0s and 1940s, and whose %a,or lu%inaries were the el"ian $eor"es <oulet, the !wiss critics Aean !tarobinski and Aean 7ousset, and the /rench%an Aean.<ierre 7ichard. (lso associated with the school were E%il !tai"er, <rofessor of $er%an at the >niversity of Curich, and the early work of the (%erican critic A. 1illis 'iller. <heno%enolo"ical criticis% is an atte%pt to apply the pheno%enolo"ical %ethod to literary works. (s with 1usserl&s 6bracketin"& of the real ob,ect, the actual historical conte-t of the literary work, its author, conditions of production and readership are i"nored) pheno%enolo"ical criticis% ai%s instead at a wholly 6i%%anent& readin" of the te-t, totally unaffected by anythin" outside it. *he te-t itself is reduced to a pure e%bodi%ent of the author&s consciousness: all of its stylistic and se%antic aspects are "rasped as or"anic parts of a co%ple- totality, of which the unifyin" essence is the author&s %ind. *o know this %ind, we %ust not refer to anythin" we actually know of the author bio"raphical criticis% is banned D but only to those aspects of his or her consciousness which %anifest the%selves in the work itself. 'oreover, we are concerned with the 6deep structures& of this %ind, which can be found in recurrent the%es and patterns of i%a"ery) and in "raspin" these we are "raspin" the way the writer 6lived& his world, the pheno%enolo"ical relations between hi%self as sub,ect and the world as ob,ect. *he 6world& of a literary work is not an ob,ective reality, but what in $er%an is called @ebenswelt, reality as actually or"ani+ed and e-perienced by an individual sub,ect. <heno%enolo"ical criticis% will typically focus upon the way an author e-periences ti%e or space, on the relation between self and others or his perception of %aterial ob,ects. *he %ethodolo"ical concerns of 1usserlian philosophy, in other words, very often beco%e the 6content& of literature for pheno%enolo"ical criticis%. *o sei+e these transcendental structures, to penetrate to the very interior of a writer&s consciousness, pheno%enolo"ical criticis% tries to achieve co%plete ob,ectivity and disinterestedness. It %ust pur"e itself of its own predilections, plun"e itself e%pathetically into the 6world& of the work, and reproduce as e-actly and unbiasedly as possible what it finds there. If it is tacklin" a Ehristian poe%, it is not concerned to pass value.,ud"e%ents on this particular world.view, but to de%onstrate what it felt like for the author to 6live& it. It is, in other words, a wholly uncritical, non.evaluative %ode of analysis. Eriticis% is not seen as a construction, an active interpretation of the work which will inevitably en"a"e the critic&s own interests and biases) it is a %ere passive reception of the te-t, a pure transcription of its %ental essences. ( literary work is presu%ed to constitute an or"anic whole, and so indeed do all the works of a particular author) pheno%enolo"ical criticis% can thus %ove with aplo%b between the %ost chronolo"ically disparate, the%atically different te-ts in its resolute hunt for unities. It is an idealist, essentialist, anti.historical, for%alist and or"anicist type of criticis%, a kind of pure distillation of the blind spots, pre,udices and li%itations of %odern literary theory as a whole. *he %ost i%pressive and re%arkable fact about it is that it succeeded in producin" so%e individual critical studies 2not least those by <oulet, 7ichard and !tarobinski5 of considerable insi"ht. /or pheno%enolo"ical criticis%, the lan"ua"e of a literary work is little %ore than an 6e-pression& of its inner %eanin"s. *his so%ewhat secondhand view of lan"ua"e runs back to 1usserl hi%self. /or there is really little place for lan"ua"e as such in 1usserlian pheno%enolo"y. 1usserl speaks of a purely private or internal sphere of

e-perience) but such a sphere is in fact a fiction, since all e-perience involves lan"ua"e and lan"ua"e is ineradicably social. *o clai% that I a% havin" a wholly private e-perience is %eanin"less: I would not be able to have an e-perience in the first place unless it took place in the ter%s of so%e lan"ua"e within which I could identify it. 0hat supplies %eanin"fulness to %y e-perience for 1usserl is not lan"ua"e but the act of perceivin" particular pheno%ena as universals an act which is supposed to occur independently of lan"ua"e itself. /or 1usserl, in other words, %eanin" is so%ethin" which pre.dates lan"ua"e: lan"ua"e is no %ore than a secondary activity which "ives na%es to %eanin"s I so%ehow already possess. 1ow I can possibly co%e to possess %eanin"s without already havin" a lan"ua"e is a 9uestion which 1usserl&s syste% is incapable of answerin". *he hall%ark of the 6lin"uistic revolution& of the twentieth century, fro% !aussure and 0itt"enstein to conte%porary literary theory, is the reco"nition that %eanin" is not si%ply so%ethin" 6e-pressed& or 6reflected& in lan"ua"e: it is actually produced by it. It is not as thou"h we have %eanin"s, or e-periences, which we then proceed to cloak with words) we can only have the %eanin"s and e-periences in the first place because we have a lan"ua"e to have the% in. 0hat this su""ests, %oreover, is that our e-perience as individuals is social to its roots) for there can be no such thin" as a private lan"ua"e, and to i%a"ine a lan"ua"e is to i%a"ine a whole for% of social life. <heno%enolo"y, by contrast, wishes to keep certain 6pure& internal e-periences free fro% the social conta%inations of lan"ua"e or alternatively to see lan"ua"e as no %ore than a convenient syste% for 6fi-in"& %eanin"s which have been for%ed independently of it. 1usserl hi%self, in a revealin" phrase, writes of lan"ua"e as 6confor%in"F in a pure %easure to what is seen in its full clarity&. 2 ut how is one able to see so%ethin" clearly at all, without the conceptual resources of a lan"ua"e at one&s disposal: (ware that lan"ua"e poses a severe proble% for his theory, 1usserl tries to resolve the dile%%a by i%a"inin" a lan"ua"e which would be purely e-pressive of consciousness which would be freed fro% any burden of havin" to indicate %eanin"s e-terior to our %inds at the ti%e of speakin". *he atte%pt is doo%ed to failure: the only i%a"inable such 6lan"ua"e& would be purely solitary, interior utterances which would si"nify nothin" whatsoever. *his idea of a %eanin"less solitary utterance untainted by the e-ternal world is a peculiarly fittin" i%a"e of pheno%enolo"y as such. /or all its clai%s to have retrieved the 6livin" world& of hu%an action and e-perience fro% the arid clutches of traditional philosophy, pheno%enolo"y be"ins and ends as a head without a world. It pro%ises to "ive a fir% "roundin" for hu%an knowled"e, but can do so only at a %assive cost: the sacrifice of hu%an history itself. /or surely hu%an %eanin"s are in a deep sense historical: they are not a 9uestion of intuitin" the universal essence of what it is to be an onion, but a %atter of chan"in", practical transactions between social individuals. 8espite its focus on reality as actually e-perienced, as @ebensrvelt rather than inert fact, its stance towards that world re%ains conte%plative and unhistorical. <heno%enolo"y sou"ht to solve the ni"ht%are of %odern history by withdrawin" into a speculative sphere where eternal certainty lay in wait) as such, it beca%e a sy%pto%, in its solitary, alienated broodin", of the very crisis it offered to overco%e. *he reco"nition that %eanin" is historical was what led 1usserl&s %ost celebrated pupil, the $er%an philosopher 'artin 1eide""er, to break with his syste% of thou"ht. 1usserl be"ins with the transcendental sub,ect) 1eide""er re,ects this startin".point

and sets out instead fro% a reflection on the irreducible 6"ivenness& of hu%an e-istence, or 8asein as he calls it. It is for this reason that his work is often characteri+ed as 6e-istentialist&, in contrast to the re%orseless 6essentialis%& of his %entor. *o %ove fro% 1usserl to 1eide""er is to %ove fro% the terrain of pure intellect to a philosophy which %editates on what it feels like to be alive. 0hereas En"lish philosophy is usually %odestly content to en9uire into acts of pro%isin" or contrast the "ra%%ar of the phrases 6nothin" %atters& and 6nothin" chatters&, 1eide""er&s %a,or work ein" and *i%e 2192G5 addresses itself to nothin" less than the 9uestion of ein" itself %ore particularly, to that %ode of bein" which is specifically hu%an. !uch e-istence, 1eide""er ar"ues, is in the first place always bein".in.theworld: we are hu%an sub,ects only because we are practically bound up with others and the %aterial world, and these relations are constitutive of our life rather than accidental to it. *he world is not an ob,ect 6out there& to be rationally analysed, set over a"ainst a conte%plative sub,ect: it is never so%ethin" we can "et outside of and stand over a"ainst. 0e e%er"e as sub,ects fro% inside a reality which we can never fully ob,ectify, which enco%passes both 6sub,ect& and 6ob,ect&, which is ine-haustible in its %eanin"s and which constitutes us 9uite as %uch as we constitute it. *he world is not so%ethin" to be dissolved a la 1usserl to %ental i%a"es: it has a brute, recalcitrant bein" of its own which resists our pro,ects, and we e-ist si%ply as part of it. 1usserl&s enthronin" of the transcendental e"o is %erely the latest phase of a rationalist Enli"hten%ent philosophy for which 6%an& i%periously sta%ps his own i%a"e on the world. 1eide""er, by contrast, will partly decentre the hu%an sub,ect fro% this i%a"inary position of do%inance. 1u%an e-istence is a dialo"ue with the world, and the %ore reverent activity is to listen rather than to speak. 1u%an knowled"e always departs fro% and %oves within what 1eide""er calls 6pre. understandin"&. efore we have co%e to think syste%atically at all, we already share a host of tacit assu%ptions "leaned fro% our practical bound.upness with the world, and science or theory are never %ore than partial abstractions fro% these concrete concerns, as a %ap is an abstraction of a real landscape. >nderstandin" is not first of all a %atter of isolatable 6co"nition&, a particular act I perfor%, but part of the very structure of hu%an e-istence. /or I live hu%anly only by constantly 6pro,ectin"& %yself forwards, reco"ni+in" and reali+in" fresh possibilities of bein") I a% never purely identical with %yself, so to speak, but a bein" always already thrown forwards in advance of %yself. 'y e-istence is never so%ethin" which I can "rasp as a finished ob,ect, but always a 9uestion of fresh possibility, always proble%atic) and this is e9uivalent to sayin" that a hu%an bein" is constituted by history, or ti%e. *i%e is not a %ediu% we %ove in as a bottle %i"ht %ove in a river: it is the very structure of hu%an life itself, so%ethin" I a% %ade out of before it is so%ethin" I %easure. >nderstandin", then, before it is a 9uestion of understandin" anythin" in particular, is a di%ension of 8asein, the inner dyna%ic of %y constant self.transcendence. >nderstandin" is radically historical: it is always cau"ht up with the concrete situation I a% in, and that I a% tryin" to surpass. If hu%an e-istence is constituted by ti%e, it is e9ually %ade up of lan"ua"e. @an"ua"e for 1eide""er is not a %ere instru%ent of co%%unication, a secondary device for e-pressin" 6ideas&: it is the very di%ension in which hu%an life %oves, that which brin"s the world to be in the first place. ;nly where there is lan"ua"e is there 6world&, in the distinctively hu%an sense. 1eide""er does not think of lan"ua"e pri%arily in ter%s of what you or I %i"ht say: it has an e-istence of its own in which hu%an bein"s co%e to participate, and only by participatin" in it do they co%e to be

hu%an at all. @an"ua"e always pre.e-ists the individual sub,ect, as the very real% in which he or she unfolds) and it contains 6truth& less in the sense that it is an instru%ent for e-chan"in" accurate infor%ation than in the sense that it is the place where reality 6un.conceals& itself, "ives itself up to our conte%plation. In this sense of lan"ua"e as a 9uasi.ob,ective event, prior to all particular individuals, 1eide""er&s thinkin" closely parallels the theories of structuralis%. 0hat is central to 1eide""er&s thou"ht, then, is not the individual sub,ect but ein" itself. *he %istake of the 0estern %etaphysical tradition has been to see ein" as so%e kind of ob,ective entity, and to separate it sharply fro% the sub,ect) 1eide""er seeks rather to return to pre.!ocratic thou"ht, before the dualis% between sub,ect and ob,ect opened up, and to re"ard ein" as so%ehow enco%passin" both. *he result of this su""estive insi"ht, in his later work particularly, is an astonishin" crin"in" before the %ystery of ein". Enli"hten%ent rationality, with its ruthlessly do%inative, instru%ental attitude towards Hature, %ust be re,ected for a hu%ble listenin" to the stars, skies and forests, a listenin" which in the acid words of one En"lish co%%entator bears all the %arks of a 6stupefied peasant&. 'an %ust 6%ake way& for ein" by %akin" hi%self wholly over to it: he %ust turn to the earth, the ine-haustible %other who is the pri%ary fount of all %eanin". 1eide""er, the lack /orest philosopher, is yet another 7o%antic e-ponent of the 6or"anic society&, thou"h in his case the results of this doctrine were to be %ore sinister than in the case of @eavis. *he e-altation of the peasant, the down"radin" of reason for spontaneous 6preunderstandin"&, the celebration of wise passivity all of these, co%bined with 1eide""er&s belief in an 6authentic& e-istence.towards.death superior to the life of the faceless %asses, led hi% in 1933 into e-plicit support of 1itler. *he support was short.lived) but it was i%plicit for all that in ele%ents of the philosophy. 0hat is valuable in that philosophy, a%on" other thin"s, is its insistence that theoretical knowled"e always e%er"es fro% a conte-t of practical social interests. 1eide""er&s %odel of a knowable ob,ect is, si"nificantly, a tool: we know the world not conte%platively, but as a syste% of interrelated thin"s which, like a ha%%er, are 6to hand&, ele%ents in so%e practical pro,ect. ?nowin" is deeply related to doin". ut the other side of that peasant.like practicality is a conte%plative %ysticis%: when the ha%%er breaks, when we cease to take it for "ranted, its fa%iliarity is stripped fro% it and it yields up to us its authentic bein". ( broken ha%%er is %ore of a ha%%er than an unbroken one. 1eide""er shares with the /or%alists the belief that art is such a defa%iliari+ation: when van $o"h shows us a pair of peasant shoes he estran"es the%, allowin" their profoundly authentic shoeness to shine forth. Indeed for the later 1eide""er it is in art alone that such pheno%enolo"ical truth is able to %anifest itself, ,ust as for @eavis literature co%es to stand in for a %ode of bein" which %odern society has supposedly lost. (rt, like lan"ua"e, is not to be seen as the e-pression of an individual sub,ect: the sub,ect is ,ust the place or %ediu% where the truth of the world speaks itself, and it is this truth which the reader of a poe% %ust attentively hear. @iterary interpretation for 1eide""er is not "rounded in hu%an activity: it is not first of all so%ethin" we do, but so%ethin" we %ust let happen. 0e %ust open ourselves passively to the te-t, sub%ittin" ourselves to its %ysteriously ine-haustible bein", allowin" ourselves to be interro"ated by it. ;ur posture before art, in other words, %ust have so%ethin" of the servility which 1eide""er advocated for the $er%an people before the /uhrer. *he only alternative to the i%perious reason of bour"eois industrial society, it would appear, is a slavish self.abne"ation.

I have said that understandin" for 1eide""er is radically historical, but this now needs to be 9ualified so%ewhat. *he title of his %a,or work is ein" and *i%e rather than ein" and 1istory) and there is a si"nificant difference between the two concepts. 6*i%e& is in one sense a %ore abstract notion than history: it su""ests the passin" of the seasons, or the way I %i"ht e-perience the shape of %y personal life, rather than the stru""les of nations, the nurturin" and slau"hterin" of populations or the %akin" and topplin" of states. 6*i%e& for 1eide""er is still an essentially %etaphysical cate"ory, in a way that 6history& for other thinkers is not. It is a derivation fro% what we actually do, which is what I a% takin" 6history& to %ean. *his kind of concrete history concerns 1eide""er hardly at all: indeed he distin"uishes between 1istorie, %eanin" rou"hly 6what happens&, and $eschichte, which is 6what happens& e-perienced as authentically %eanin"ful. 'y own personal history is authentically %eanin"ful when I accept responsibility for %y own e-istence, sei+e %y own future possibilities and live in endurin" awareness of %y own future death. *his %ay or %ay not be true) but it does not see% to have any i%%ediate relevance to how I live 6historically& in the sense of bein" bound up with particular individuals, actual social relations and concrete institutions. (ll of this, fro% the ;ly%pian hei"hts of 1eide""er&s ponderously esoteric prose, looks very s%all beer indeed. 6*rue& history for 1eide""er is an inward, 6authentic& or 6e-istential& history a %asterin" of dread and nothin"ness, a resoluteness towards death, a 6"atherin" in& of %y powers which operates in effect as a substitute for history in its %ore co%%on and practical senses. (s the 1un"arian critic $eor" @ukacs put it, 1eide""er&s fa%ous 6historicity& is not really distin"uishable fro% Ihistoricity. In the end, then, 1eide""er fails to overturn the static, eternal truths of 1usserl and the 0estern %etaphysical tradition by historici+in" the%. (ll he does instead is set up a different kind of %etaphysical entity 8a%n itself. 1is work represents a fli"ht fro% history as %uch as an encounter with it) and the sa%e can be said of the fascis% with which he flirted. /ascis% is a desperate, last.ditch atte%pt on the part of %onopoly capitalis% to abolish contradictions which have beco%e intolerable) and it does so in part by offerin" a whole alternative history, a narrative of blood, soil, the 6authentic& race, the subli%ity of death and self.abne"ation, the 7eich that will endure for a thousand years. *his is not to su""est that 1eide""er&s philosophy as a whole is no %ore than a rationale for fascis%) it is to su""est that it provided one i%a"inary solution to the crisis of %odern history as fascis% provided another, and that the two shared a nu%ber of features in co%%on. 1eide""er describes his philosophical enterprise as a 6her%eneutic of ein"&) and the word 6her%eneutic& %eans the science or art of interpretation. 1eide""er&s for% of philosophy is "enerally referred to as 6her%eneutical pheno%enolo"y&, to distin"uish it fro% the 6transcendental pheno%enolo"y& of 1usserl and his followers) it is called this because it bases itself upon 9uestions of historical interpretation rather than on transcendental consciousness. *he word 6her%eneutics& was ori"inally confined to the interpretation of sacred scripture) but durin" the nineteenth century it broadened its scope to enco%pass the proble% of te-tual interpretation as a whole. 1eide""er&s two %ost fa%ous predecessors as 6her%eneuticists& were the $er%an thinkers !chleier%acher and 8ilthey) his %ost celebrated successor is the %odern $er%an philosopher 1ans.$eor" $ada%er. 0ith $ada%er&s central study *ruth and 'ethod 219J05, we are in the arena of proble%s which have never ceased to pla"ue %odern literary theory. 0hat is the %eanin" of a literary te-t: 1ow relevant to this %eanin" is

the author&s intention: Ean we hope to understand works which are culturally and historically alien to us: Is 6ob,ective& understandin" possible, or is all understandin" relative to our own historical situation: *here is, as we shall see, a "ood deal %ore at stake in these issues than 6literary interpretation& alone. /or 1usserl, %eanin" was an 6intentional ob,ect&. y this he %eant that it was neither reducible to the psycholo"ical acts of a speaker or listener, nor co%pletely independent of such %ental processes. 'eanin" was not ob,ective in the sense that an ar%chair is, but it was not si%ply sub,ective either. It was a kind of 6ideal& ob,ect, in the sense that it could be e-pressed in a nu%ber of different ways but still re%ain the sa%e %eanin". ;n this view, the %eanin" of a literary work is fi-ed once and for all: it is identical with whatever 6%ental ob,ect& the author had in %ind, or 6intended&, at the ti%e of writin". *his, in effect, is the position taken up by the (%erican her%eneuticist E. 8. 1irsch Ar, whose %a,or work, #alidity in Interpretation 219JG5, is considerably indebted to 1usserlian pheno%enolo"y. It does not follow for 1irsch that because the %eanin" of a work is identical with what the author %eant by it at the ti%e of writin", only one interpretation of the te-t is possible. *here %ay be a nu%ber of different valid interpretations, but all of the% %ust %ove within the 6syste% of typical e-pectations and probabilities& which the author&s %eanin" per%its. Hor does 1irsch deny that a literary work %ay 6%ean& different thin"s to different people at different ti%es. ut this, he clai%s, is %ore properly a %atter of the work&s 6si"nificance& rather than its 6%eanin"&. *he fact that I %ay produce 'acbeth in a way which %akes it relevant to nuclear warfare does not alter the fact that this is not what 'acbeth, fro% !hakespeare&s own viewpoint, 6%eans&. !i"nificances vary throu"hout history, whereas %eanin"s re%ain constant) authors put in %eanin"s, whereas readers assi"n si"nificances. In identifyin" the %eanin" of a te-t with what the author %eant by it, 1irsch does not presu%e that we always have access to the author&s intentions. 1e or she %ay be lon" dead, or %ay have for"otten what she intended alto"ether. It follows that we %ay so%eti%es hit on the 6ri"ht& interpretation of a te-t but never be in a position to know this. *his does not worry 1irsch %uch, as lon" as his basic position that literary %eanin" is absolute and i%%utable, wholly resistant to historical chan"e is %aintained. 0hy 1irsch is able to %aintain this position is essentially because his theory of %eanin", like 1usserl&s, is pre.lin"uistic. 'eanin" is so%ethin" which the author wills: it is a "hostly, wordless %ental act which is then 6fi-ed& for all ti%e in a particular set of %aterial si"ns. It is an affair of consciousness, rather than of words. Kuite what such a wordless consciousness consists in is not %ade plain. <erhaps the reader would care to e-peri%ent here by lookin" up fro% the book for a %o%ent and 6%eanin"& so%ethin" silently in his or her head. 0hat did you 6%ean&: (nd was it different fro% the words in which you have ,ust for%ulated the response: *o believe that %eanin" consists of words plus a wordless act of willin" or intendin" is rather like believin" that every ti%e I open the door 6on purpose& I %ake a silent act of willin" while openin" it. *here are obvious proble%s with tryin" to deter%ine what is "oin" on in so%ebody&s head and then clai%in" that this is the %eanin" of a piece of writin". /or one thin", a "reat %any thin"s are likely to be "oin" on in an author&s head at the ti%e of writin". 1irsch accepts this, but does not consider that these are to be confused with 6verbal

%eanin"&) to sustain his theory, however, he is forced to %ake a fairly drastic reduction of all that the author %i"ht have %eant to what he calls %eanin" 6types&, %ana"eable cate"ories of %eanin" into which the te-t %ay be narrowed, si%plified and sifted by the critic. ;ur interest in a te-t can thus only be in these broad typolo"ies of %eanin", fro% which all particularity has been carefully banished. *he critic %ust seek to reconstruct what 1irsch calls the 6intrinsic "enre& of a te-t, by which he %eans, rou"hly, the "eneral conventions and ways of seein" which would have "overned the author&s %eanin"s at the ti%e of writin". @ittle %ore than this is likely to be available to us: it would doubtless be i%possible to recover e-actly what !hakespeare %eant by 6crea%.fac&d loon&, so we have to settle for what he %i"ht "enerally have had in %ind. (ll of the particular details of a work are presu%ed to be "overned by such "eneralities. 0hether this does ,ustice to the detail, co%ple-ity and conflictive nature of literary works is another 9uestion. *o secure the %eanin" of a work for all ti%e, rescuin" it fro% the rava"es of history, criticis% has to police its potentially anarchic details, he%%in" the% back with the co%pound of 6typical& %eanin". Its stance towards the te-t is authoritarian and ,uridical: anythin" which cannot be herded inside the enclosure of 6probable authorial %eanin"& is brus9uely e-pelled, and everythin" re%ainin" within that enclosure is strictly subordinated to this sin"le "overnin" intention. *he unalterable %eanin" of the sacred scripture has been preserved) what one does with it, how one uses it, beco%es a %erely secondary %atter of 6si"nificance&. *he ai% of all this policin" is the protection of private property. /or 1irsch an author&s %eanin" is his own, and should not be stolen or trespassed upon by the reader. *he %eanin" of the te-t is not to be sociali+ed, %ade the public property of its various readers) it belon"s solely to the author, who should have the e-clusive ri"hts over its disposal lon" after he or she is dead. Interestin"ly, 1irsch concedes that his own point of view is really 9uite arbitrary. *here is nothin" in the nature of the te-t itself which constrains a reader to construe it in accordance with authorial %eanin") it is ,ust that if we do not choose to respect the author&s %eanin" then we have no 6nor%& of interpretation, and risk openin" the flood"ates to critical anarchy. @ike %ost authoritarian re"i%es, that is to say, 1irschian theory is 9uite unable rationally to ,ustify its own rulin" values. *here is no %ore reason in principle why the author&s %eanin" should be preferred than there is for preferrin" the readin" offered by the critic with the shortest hair or the lar"est feet. 1irsch&s defence of authorial %eanin" rese%bles those defences of landed titles which be"in by tracin" their process of le"al inheritance over the centuries, and end up by ad%ittin" that if you push that process back far enou"h the titles were "ained by fi"htin" so%eone else for the%. Even if critics could obtain access to an author&s intention, would this securely "round the literary te-t in a deter%inate %eanin": 0hat if we asked for an account of the %eanin" of the author&s intentions, and then for an account of that, and so on: !ecurity is possible here only if authorial %eanin"s are what 1irsch takes the% to be: pure, solid, 6self.identical& facts which can be uni%peachably used to anchor the work. ut this is a hi"hly dubious way of seein" any kind of %eanin" at all. 'eanin"s are not as stable and deter%inate as 1irsch thinks, even authorial ones and the reason they are not is because, as he will not reco"ni+e, they are the products of lan"ua"e, which always has so%ethin" slippery about it. It is difficult to know what it could be to have a 6pure& intention or e-press a 6pure& %eanin") it is only because 1irsch holds %eanin" apart fro% lan"ua"e that he is able to trust to such chi%eras. (n author&s

intention is itself a co%ple- 6te-t&, which can be debated, translated and variously interpreted ,ust like any other. 1irsch&s distinction between 6%eanin"& and 6si"nificance& is in one obvious sense valid. It is unlikely that !hakespeare thou"ht that he was writin" about nuclear warfare. 0hen $ertrude describes 1a%let as 6fat& she probably does not %ean that he is overwei"ht, as %odern readers %i"ht tend to suspect. ut the absoluteness of 1irsch&s distinction is surely untenable. It is ,ust not possible to %ake such a co%plete distinction between 6what the te-t %eans& and 6what it %eans to %e&. 'y account of what 'acbeth %i"ht have %eant in the cultural conditions of its ti%e is still %y account, inescapably influenced by %y own lan"ua"e and fra%es of cultural reference. I can never pick %yself up by %y bootstraps out of all that and co%e to know in so%e absolutely ob,ective way what it was !hakespeare actually had in %ind. (ny such notion of absolute ob,ectivity is an illusion 1irsch does not hi%self seek such absolute certainty, lar"ely because he knows he cannot have it: he %ust content hi%self instead with reconstructin" the authors&s 6probable& intention. ut he pays no attention to the ways in which such reconstructin" can only "o on within his own historically conditioned fra%es of %eanin" and perception. Indeed such 6historicis%& is the very tar"et of his pole%ic. @ike 1usserl, then, he offers a for% of knowled"e which is ti%eless and subli%ely disinterested. *hat his own work is far fro% disinterested that he believes hi%self to be safe"uardin" the i%%utable %eanin" of literary works fro% certain conte%porary ideolo"ies is only one factor which %i"ht lead us to view such clai%s with suspicion. *he tar"et which 1irsch has fir%ly in his si"hts is the her%eneutics of 1eide""er, $ada%er and others. /or hi%, the insistence of these thinkers that %eanin" is always historical opens the door to co%plete relativis%. ;n this ar"u%ent, a literary work can %ean one thin" on 'onday and another on /riday. It is interestin" to speculate why 1irsch should find this possibility so fearful) but to stop the relativist rot he returns to 1usserl and ar"ues that %eanin" is unchan"eable because it is always the intentional act of an individual at so%e particular point in ti%e. *here is one fairly obvious sense in which this is false. If I say to you in certain circu%stances, 6Elose the door=& and when you have done so i%patiently add, 6I %eant of course open the window&, you would be 9uite entitled to point out that the En"lish words 6Elose the door& %ean what they %ean whatever I %i"ht have intended the% to %ean. *his is not to say that one could not i%a"ine conte-ts in which 6Elose the door& %eant so%ethin" entirely different fro% its usual %eanin": it could be a %etaphorical way of sayin", 68on&t ne"otiate any further&. *he %eanin" of the sentence, like any other, is by no %eans i%%utably fi-ed: with enou"h in"enuity one could probably invent conte-ts in which it could %ean a thousand different thin"s. ut if a "ale is rippin" throu"h the roo% and I a% wearin" only a swi%%in" costu%e, the %eanin" of the words would probably be situationally clear) and unless I had %ade a slip of the ton"ue or suffered so%e unaccountable lapse of attention it would be futile for %e to clai% that I had 6really& %eant 6;pen the window&. *his is one evident sense in which the %eanin" of %y words is not deter%ined by %y private intentions in which I cannot ,ust choose to %ake %y words %ean anythin" at all, as 1u%pty.8u%pty in (lice %istakenly thou"ht he could. *he %eanin" of lan"ua"e is a social %atter: there is a real sense in which lan"ua"e belon"s to %y society before it belon"s to %e. It is this which 1eide""er understood, and which 1ans.$eor" $ada%er "oes on to

elaborate in *ruth and 'ethod. /or $ada%er, the %eanin" of a literary work is never e-hausted by the intentions of its author) as the work passes fro% one cultural or historical conte-t to another, new %eanin"s %ay be culled fro% it which were perhaps never anticipated by its author or conte%porary audience. 1irsch would ad%it this in one sense but rele"ate it to the real% of 6si"nificance&) for $ada%er, this instability is part of the very character of the work itself. (ll interpretation is situational, shaped and constrained by the historically relative criteria of a particular culture) there is no possibility of knowin" the literary te-t 6as it is&. It is this 6scepticis%& which 1irsch finds %ost unnervin" in 1eide""erian her%eneutics, and a"ainst which he wa"es his rear"uard action. /or $ada%er, all interpretation of a past work consists in a dialo"ue between past and present. Eonfronted with such a work, we listen with wise 1eide""erian passivity to its unfa%iliar voice, allowin" it to 9uestion our present concerns) but what the work 6says& to us will in turn depend on the kind of 9uestions which we are able to address to it, fro% our own vanta"epoint in history. It will also depend on our ability to reconstruct the 69uestion& to which the work itself is an 6answer&, for the work is also a dialo"ue with its own history. (ll understandin" is productive: it is always 6understandin" otherwise&, reali+in" new potential in the te-t, %akin" a difference to it. *he present is only ever understandable throu"h the past, with which it for%s a livin" continuity) and the past is always "rasped fro% our own partial viewpoint within the present. *he event of understandin" co%es about when our own 6hori+on& of historical %eanin"s and assu%ptions 6fuses& with the 6hori+on& within which the work itself is placed. (t such a %o%ent we enter the alien world of the artefact, but at the sa%e ti%e "ather it into our own real%, reachin" a %ore co%plete understandin" of ourselves. 7ather than 6leavin" ho%e&, $ada%er re%arks, we 6co%e ho%e&. It is hard to see why 1irsch should find all this so unnervin". ;n the contrary, it all see%s considerably too s%ooth. $ada%er can e9uably surrender hi%self and literature to the winds of history because these scattered leaves will always in the end co%e ho%e and they will do so because beneath all history, silently spannin" past, present and future, runs a unifyin" essence known as 6tradition&. (s with *. !. Eliot, all 6valid& te-ts belon" to this tradition, which both speaks throu"h the work of the past that I a% conte%platin", and speaks throu"h %e in the act of 6valid& conte%plation. <ast and present, sub,ect and ob,ect, the alien and the inti%ate are thus securely coupled to"ether by a ein" which enco%passes the% both. $ada%er is not worried that our tacit cultural preconceptions or 6preunderstandin"s& %ay pre,udice the reception of the past literary work, since these pre.understandin"s co%e to us fro% the tradition itself, of which the literary work is a part. <re,udice is a positive rather than a ne"ative factor: it was the Enli"hten%ent, with its drea% of a wholly disinterested knowled"e, which led to the %odern 6pre,udice a"ainst pre,udice&. Ereative pre,udices, as a"ainst ephe%eral and distortin" ones, are those which arise fro% the tradition and brin" us into contact with it. *he authority of the tradition itself, linked with our own strenuous self.reflection, will sort out which of our preconceptions are le"iti%ate and which are not ,ust as the historical distance between ourselves and a work of the past, far fro% creatin" an obstacle to true understandin", actually aids such co"nition by strippin" the work of all that was of %erely passin" si"nificance about it. It %i"ht be as well to ask $ada%er whose and what 6tradition& he actually has in

%ind. /or his theory holds only on the enor%ous assu%ption that there is indeed a sin"le 6%ainstrea%& tradition) that all 6valid& works participate in it) that history for%s an unbroken continuu%, free of decisive rupture, conflict and contradiction) and that the pre,udices which 6we& 2who:5 have inherited fro% the 6tradition& are to be cherished. It assu%es, in other words, that history is a place where 6we& can always and everywhere be at ho%e) that the work of the past will deepen rather than, say, deci%ate our present self.understandin") and that the alien is always secretly fa%iliar. It is, in short, a "rossly co%placent theory of history, the pro,ection on to the world at lar"e of a viewpoint for which 6art& %eans chiefly the classical %onu%ents of the hi"h $er%an tradition. It has little conception of history and tradition as oppressive as well as liberatin" forces, areas rent by conflict and do%ination. 1istory for $ada%er is not a place of stru""le, discontinuity and e-clusion but a 6continuin" chain&, an ever. flowin" river, al%ost, one %i"ht say, a club of the like.%inded. 1istorical differences are tolerantly conceded, but only because they are effectively li9uidated by an understandin" which 6brid"LesF the te%poral distance which separates the interpreter fro% the te-t) thus it overco%es . . . the alienation of %eanin" which has befallen the te-t&. 4 *here is no need to strive to sur%ount te%poral distance by pro,ectin" oneself e%pathetically into the past, as 0ilhel% 8ilthey a%on" others had believed, since this distance is already brid"ed by custo%, pre,udice and tradition. *radition holds an authority to which we %ust sub%it: there is little possibility of critically challen"in" that authority, and no speculation that its influence %ay be anythin" but benevolent. *radition, $ada%er ar"ues, 6has a ,ustification that is outside the ar"u%ents of reason&. 6*he conversation that we are&, was how $ada%er once described history. 1er%eneutics sees history as a livin" dialo"ue between past, present and future, and seeks patiently to re%ove obstacles to this endless %utual co%%unication. ut it cannot tolerate the idea of a failure of co%%unication which is not %erely ephe%eral, which cannot be ri"hted %erely by %ore sensitive te-tual interpretation, but which is so%ehow syste%atic: which is, so to speak, built into the co%%unication structures of whole societies. It cannot, in other words, co%e to ter%s with the proble% of ideolo"y with the fact that the unendin" 6dialo"ue& of hu%an history is as often as not a %onolo"ue by the powerful to the powerless, or that if it is indeed a 6dialo"ue& then the partners D %en and wo%en, for e-a%ple hardly occupy e9ual positions. It refuses to reco"ni+e that discourse is always cau"ht up with a power which %ay be by no %eans beni"n) and the discourse in which it %ost si"nally fails to reco"ni+e this fact is its own. 1er%eneutics, as we have seen, tends to concentrate on works of the past: the theoretical 9uestions it asks arise %ainly fro% this perspective. *his is hardly surprisin", "iven its scriptural be"innin"s, but it is also si"nificant: it su""ests that criticis%&s %ain role is to %ake sense of the classics. It would be difficult to i%a"ine $ada%er "rapplin" with Hor%an 'ailer. (lon" with this traditionalist e%phasis "oes another: the assu%ption that works of literature for% an 6or"anic& unity. *he her%eneutical %ethod seeks to fit each ele%ent of a te-t into a co%plete whole, in a process co%%only known as the 6her%eneutical circle&: individual features are intelli"ible in ter%s of the entire conte-t, and the entire conte-t beco%es intelli"ible throu"h the individual features. 1er%eneutics does not "enerally consider the possibility that literary works %ay be diffuse, inco%plete and internally contradictory, thou"h there are %any reasons to assu%e that they are. G It is worth notin" that E. 8.

1irsch, for all his antipathy to 7o%antic or"anicist concepts, also shares the pre,udice that literary te-ts are inte"rated wholes, and lo"ically so: the unity of the work resides in the author&s all.pervasive intention. *here is in fact no reason why the author should not have had several %utually contradictory intentions, or why his intention %ay not have been so%ehow self.contradictory, but 1irsch does not consider these possibilities. *he %ost recent develop%ent of her%eneutics in $er%any is known as 6reception aesthetics& or 6reception theory&, and unlike $ada%er it does not concentrate e-clusively on works of the past. 7eception theory e-a%ines the reader&s role in literature, and as such is a fairly novel develop%ent. Indeed one %i"ht very rou"hly periodi+e the history of %odern literary theory in three sta"es: a preoccupation with the author 27o%anticis% and the nineteenth century5) an e-clusive concern with the te-t 2Hew Eriticis%5) and a %arked shift of attention to the reader over recent years. *he reader has always been the %ost underprivile"ed of this trio D stran"ely, since without hi% or her there would be no literary te-ts at all. @iterary te-ts do not e-ist on bookshelves: they are processes of si"nification %ateriali+ed only in the practice of readin". /or literature to happen, the reader is 9uite as vital as the author. 0hat is involved in the act of readin": @et %e take, al%ost literally at rando%, the first two sentences of a novel: 6 M0hat did you %ake of the new couple:N *he 1ane%as, <iet and (n"ela, were undressin".& 2Aohn >pdike, Eouples.5 0hat are we to %ake of this: 0e are pu++led for a %o%ent, perhaps, by an apparent lack of connection between the two sentences, until we "rasp that what is at work here is the literary convention by which we %ay attribute a piece of direct speech to a character even if the te-t does not e-plicitly do this itself. 0e "ather that so%e character, probably <iet or (n"ela 1ane%a, %akes the openin" state%ent) but why do we presu%e this: *he sentence in 9uotation %arks %ay not be spoken at all: it %ay be a thou"ht, or a 9uestion which so%eone else has asked, or a kind of epi"raph placed at the openin" of the novel. <erhaps it is addressed to <iet and (n"ela 1ane%a by so%ebody else, or by a sudden voice fro% the sky. ;ne reason why the latter solution see%s unlikely is that the 9uestion is a little collo9uial for a voice fro% the sky, and we %i"ht know that >pdike is in "eneral a realist writer who does not usually "o in for such devices) but a writer&s te-ts do not necessarily for% a consistent whole and it %ay be unwise to lean on this assu%ption too heavily. It is unlikely on realist "rounds that the 9uestion is asked by a chorus of people speakin" in unison, and sli"htly unlikely that it is asked by so%ebody other than <iet or (n"ela 1ane%a, since we learn the ne-t %o%ent that they are undressin", perhaps speculate that they are a %arried couple, and know that %arried couples, in our suburb of ir%in"ha% at least, do not %ake a practice of undressin" to"ether before third parties, whatever they %i"ht do individually. 0e have probably already %ade a whole set of inferences as we read these sentences. 0e %ay infer, for e-a%ple, that the 6couple& referred to is a %an and wo%an, thou"h there is nothin" so far to tell us that they are not two wo%en or two ti"er cubs. 0e assu%e that whoever poses the 9uestion cannot %ind.read, as then there would be no need to ask. 0e %ay suspect that the 9uestioner values the ,ud"e%ent of the addressee, thou"h there is not sufficient conte-t as yet for us to ,ud"e that the 9uestion is not tauntin" or a""ressive. *he phrase 6*he 1ane%as&, we i%a"ine, is probably in "ra%%atical apposition to the phrase 6<iet and (n"ela&, to indicate that this is their

surna%e, which provides a si"nificant piece of evidence for their bein" %arried. ut we cannot rule out the possibility that there is so%e "roup of people called the 1ane%as in addition to <iet and (n"ela, perhaps a whole tribe of the%, and that they are all undressin" to"ether in so%e i%%ense hall. *he fact that <iet and (n"ela %ay share the sa%e surna%e does not confir% that they are husband and wife: they %ay be a particularly liberated or incestuous brother and sister, father and dau"hter or %other and son. 0e have assu%ed, however, that they are undressin" in si"ht of each other, whereas nothin" has yet told us that the 9uestion is not shouted fro% one bedroo% or beach.hut to another. <erhaps <iet and (n"ela are s%all children, thou"h the relative sophistication of the 9uestion %akes this unlikely. 'ost readers will by now probably have assu%ed that <iet and (n"ela 1ane%a are a %arried couple undressin" to"ether in their bedroo% after so%e event, perhaps a party, at which a new %arried couple was present, but none of this is actually said. *he fact that these are the first two sentences of the novel %eans, of course, that %any of these 9uestions will be answered for us as we read on. ut the process of speculatin" and inferrin" to which we are driven by our i"norance here is si%ply a %ore intense and dra%atic e-a%ple of what we do all the ti%e when readin". (s we read on we shall encounter %any %ore proble%s, which can be solved only by %akin" further assu%ptions. 0e will be "iven the kinds of facts which are withheld fro% us in these sentences, but we will still have to construct 9uestionable interpretations of the%. 7eadin" the openin" of >pdike&s novel involves us in a surprisin" a%ount of co%ple-, lar"ely unconscious labour: althou"h we rarely notice it, we are all the ti%e en"a"ed in constructin" hypotheses about the %eanin" of the te-t. *he reader %akes i%plicit connections, fills in "aps, draws inferences and tests out hunches) and to do this %eans drawin" on a tacit knowled"e of the world in "eneral and of literary conventions in particular. *he te-t itself is really no %ore than a series of 6cues& to the reader, invitations to construct a piece of lan"ua"e into %eanin". In the ter%inolo"y of reception theory, the reader 6concreti+es& the literary work, which is in itself no %ore than a chain of or"ani+ed black %arks on a pa"e. 0ithout this continuous active participation on the reader&s part, there would be no literary work at all. 1owever solid it %ay see%, any work for reception theory is actually %ade up of 6"aps&, ,ust as tables are for %odern physics the "ap, for instance, between the first and second sentences of Eouples, where the reader %ust supply a %issin" connection. *he work is full of 6indeter%inacies&, ele%ents which depend for their effect upon the reader&s interpretation, and which can be interpreted in a nu%ber of different, perhaps %utually conflictin" ways. *he parado- of this is that the %ore infor%ation the work provides, the %ore indeter%inate it beco%es. !hakespeare&s 6secret black and %idni"ht ha"s& in one sense narrows down what kind of ha"s are in 9uestion, %akes the% %ore deter%inate, but because all three ad,ectives are richly su""estive, evokin" different responses in different readers, the te-t has also rendered itself less deter%inate in the act of tryin" to beco%e %ore so. *he process of readin", for reception theory, is always a dyna%ic one, a co%ple%ove%ent and unfoldin" throu"h ti%e. *he literary work itself e-ists %erely as what the <olish theorist 7o%an In"arden calls a set of 6sche%ata& or "eneral directions, which the reader %ust actuali+e. *o do this, the reader will brin" to the work certain 6pre.understandin"s&, a di% conte-t of beliefs and e-pectations within which the work&s various features will be assessed. (s the readin" process proceeds, however, these e-pectations will the%selves be %odified by what we learn, and the

her%eneutical circle %ovin" fro% part to whole and back to part will be"in to revolve. !trivin" to construct a coherent sense fro% the te-t, the reader will select and or"ani+e its ele%ents into consistent wholes, e-cludin" so%e and fore"roundin" others, 6concreti+in"& certain ite%s in certain ways) he or she will try to hold different perspectives within the work to"ether, or shift fro% perspective to perspective in order to build up an inte"rated 6illusion&. 0hat we have learnt on pa"e one will fade and beco%e 6foreshortened& in %e%ory, perhaps to be radically 9ualified by what we learn later. 7eadin" is not a strai"htforward linear %ove%ent, a %erely cu%ulative affair: our initial speculations "enerate a fra%e of reference within which to interpret what co%es ne-t, but what co%es ne-t %ay retrospectively transfor% our ori"inal understandin", hi"hli"htin" so%e features of it and back"roundin" others. (s we read on we shed assu%ptions, revise beliefs, %ake %ore and %ore co%ple- inferences and anticipations) each sentence opens up a hori+on which is confir%ed, challen"ed or under%ined by the ne-t. 0e read backwards and forwards si%ultaneously, predictin" and recollectin", perhaps aware of other possible reali+ations of the te-t which our readin" has ne"ated. 'oreover, all of this co%plicated activity is carried out on %any levels at once, for the te-t has 6back"rounds& and 6fore"rounds&, different narrative viewpoints, alternative layers of %eanin" between which we are constantly %ovin". 0olf"an" Iser, of the so.called Eonstance school of reception aesthetics, whose theories I have been lar"ely discussin", speaks in *he (ct of 7eadin" 219G85 of the 6strate"ies& which te-ts put to work, and of the 6repertoires& of fa%iliar the%es and allusions which they contain. *o read at all, we need to be fa%iliar with the literary techni9ues and conventions which a particular work deploys) we %ust have so%e "rasp of its 6codes&, by which is %eant the rules which syste%atically "overn the ways it produces its %eanin"s. 7ecall once %ore the @ondon >nder"round si"n I discussed in the Introduction: 68o"s %ust be carried on the escalator.& *o understand this notice I need to do a "reat deal %ore than si%ply read its words one after the other. I need to know, for e-a%ple, that these words belon" to what %i"ht be called a 6code of reference& that the si"n is not ,ust a decorative piece of lan"ua"e there to entertain travellers, but is to be taken as referrin" to the behaviour of actual do"s and passen"ers on actual escalators. I %ust %obili+e %y "eneral social knowled"e to reco"ni+e that the si"n has been placed there by the authorities, that these authorities have the power to penali+e offenders, that I as a %e%ber of the public a% bein" i%plicitly addressed, none of which is evident in the words the%selves. I have to rely, in other words, upon certain social codes and conte-ts to understand the notice properly. ut I also need to brin" these into interaction with certain codes or conventions of readin" conventions which tell %e that by 6the escalator& is %eant this escalator and not one in <ara"uay, that 6%ust be carried& %eans 6%ust be carried nowOP and so on. I %ust reco"ni+e that the 6"enre& of the si"n is such as to %ake it hi"hly i%probable that the a%bi"uity I %entioned in the Introduction is actually 6intended&. It is not easy to distin"uish between 6social& and 6literary& codes here: concreti+in" 6the escalator& as 6this escalator&, adoptin" a readin" convention which eradicates a%bi"uity, itself depends upon a whole network of social knowled"e. I understand the notice, then, by interpretin" it in ter%s of certain codes which see% appropriate) but for Iser this is not all of what happens in readin" literature. If there were a perfect 6fit& between the codes which "overned literary works and the codes we applied to interpret the%, all literature would be as uninspirin" as the @ondon >nder"round si"n. *he %ost effective literary work for Iser is one which forces the

reader into a new critical awareness of his or her custo%ary codes and e-pectations. *he work interro"ates and transfor%s the i%plicit beliefs we brin" to it, 6disconfir%s& our routine habits of perception and so forces us to acknowled"e the% for the first ti%e for what they are. 7ather than %erely reinforce our "iven perceptions, the valuable work of literature violates or trans"resses these nor%ative ways of seein", and so teaches us new codes for understandin". *here is a parallel here with 7ussian /or%alis%: in the act of readin", our conventional assu%ptions are 6defa%iliari+ed&, ob,ectified to the point where we can critici+e and so revise the%. If we %odify the te-t by our readin" strate"ies, it si%ultaneously %odifies us: like ob,ects in a scientific e-peri%ent, it %ay return an unpredictable 6answer& to our 69uestions&. *he whole point of readin", for a critic like Iser, is that it brin"s us into deeper selfconsciousness, cataly+es a %ore critical view of our own identities. It is as thou"h what we have been 6readin"&, in workin" our way throu"h a book, is ourselves. Iser&s reception theory, in fact, is based on a liberal hu%anist ideolo"y: a belief that in readin" we should be fle-ible and open.%inded, prepared to put our beliefs into 9uestion and allow the% to be transfor%ed. ehind this case lies the influence of $ada%erian her%eneutics, with its trust in that enriched self.knowled"e which sprin"s fro% an encounter with the unfa%iliar. ut Iser&s liberal hu%anis%, like %ost such doctrines, is less liberal than it looks at first si"ht. 1e writes that a reader with stron" ideolo"ical co%%it%ents is likely to be an inade9uate one, since he or she is less likely to be open to the transfor%ative power of literary works. 0hat this i%plies is that in order to under"o transfor%ation at the hands of the te-t, we %ust only hold our beliefs fairly provisionally in the first place. *he only "ood reader would already have to be a liberal: the act of readin" produces a kind of hu%an sub,ect which it also presupposes. *his is also parado-ical in another way: for if we only hold our convictions rather li"htly in the first place, havin" the% interro"ated and subverted by the te-t is not really very si"nificant. Hothin" %uch, in other words, will have actually happened. *he reader is not so %uch radically upbraided, as si%ply returned to hi%self or herself as a %ore thorou"hly liberal sub,ect. Everythin" about the readin" sub,ect is up for 9uestion in the act of readin", e-cept what kind of 2liberal5 sub,ect it is: these ideolo"ical li%its can be in no way critici+ed, for then the whole %odel would collapse. In this sense, the plurality and open.endedness of the process of readin" are per%issible because they presuppose a certain kind of closed unity which always re%ains in place: the unity of the readin" sub,ect, which is violated and trans"ressed only to be returned %ore fully to itself. (s with $ada%er, we can foray out into forei"n territory because we are always secretly at ho%e. *he kind of reader who% literature is "oin" to affect %ost profoundly is one already e9uipped with the 6ri"ht& kind of capacities and responses, proficient in operatin" certain critical techni9ues and reco"ni+in" certain literary conventions) but this is precisely the kind of reader who needs to be affected least. !uch a reader is 6transfor%ed& fro% the outset, and is ready to risk further transfor%ation ,ust because of this fact. *o read literature 6effectively& you %ust e-ercise certain critical capacities, capacities which are always proble%atically defined) but it is precisely these capacities which 6literature& will be unable to call into 9uestion, because its very e-istence depends on the%. 0hat you have defined as a 6literary& work will always be closely bound up with what you consider 6appropriate& critical techni9ues: a 6literary& work will %ean, %ore or less, one which can be usefully illu%inated by such %ethods of en9uiry. ut in that case the her%eneutical circle really is a vicious rather than virtuous one: what you "et out of the work will depend in lar"e %easure on what you put into it in the

first place, and there is little roo% here for any deep.seated 6challen"e& to the reader. Iser would see% to avoid this vicious circle by stressin" the power of literature to disrupt and transfi"ure the reader&s codes) but this itself, as I have ar"ued, silently assu%es e-actly the kind of 6"iven& reader that it hopes to "enerate throu"h readin". *he closedness of the circuit between reader and work reflects the closedness of the acade%ic institution of @iterature, to which only certain kinds of te-ts and readers need apply. *he doctrines of the unified self and the closed te-t surreptitiously underlie the apparent open.endedness of %uch reception theory. 7o%an In"arden in *he @iterary 0ork of (rt 219315 do"%atically presu%es that literary works for% or"anic wholes, and the point of the reader&s fillin" in their 6indeter%inacies& is to co%plete this har%ony. *he reader %ust link up the different se"%ents and strata of the work in a 6proper& fashion, rather in the %anner of those children&s picture books which you colour in accordin" to the %anufacturer&s instructions. *he te-t for In"arden co%es readye9uipped with its indeter%inacies, and the reader %ust concreti+e it 6correctly&. *his rather li%its the reader&s activity, reducin" hi% at ti%es to little %ore than a kind of literary handy%an, potterin" around and fillin" in the odd indeter%inacy. Iser is a %uch %ore liberal kind of e%ployer, "rantin" the reader a "reater de"ree of co. partnership with the te-t: different readers are free to actuali+e the work in different ways, and there is no sin"le correct interpretation which will e-haust its se%antic potential. ut this "enerosity is 9ualified by one ri"orous instruction: the reader %ust construct the te-t so as to render it internally consistent. Iser&s %odel of readin" is funda%entally functionalist: the parts %ust be %ade to adapt coherently to the whole. ehind this arbitrary pre,udice, in fact, lies the influence of $estalt psycholo"y, with its concern to inte"rate discrete perceptions into an intelli"ible whole. It is true that this pre,udice runs so deep in %odern critics that it is difficult to see it as ,ust that a doctrinal predilection, which is no less ar"uable and contentious than any other. *here is absolutely no need to suppose that works of literature either do or should constitute har%onious wholes, and %any su""estive frictions and collisions of %eanin" %ust be blandly 6processed& by literary criticis% to induce the% to do so. Iser sees that In"arden is a "ood deal too 6or"anicist& in his views of the te-t, and appreciates %odernist, %ultiple works partly because they %ake us %ore self.conscious about the labour of interpretin" the%. ut at the sa%e ti%e the 6openness& of the work is so%ethin" which is to be "radually eli%inated, as the reader co%es to construct a workin" hypothesis which can account for and render %utually coherent the "reatest nu%ber of the work&s ele%ents. *e-tual indeter%inacies ,ust spur us on to the act of abolishin" the%, replacin" the% with a stable %eanin". *hey %ust, in Iser&s revealin"ly authoritarian ter%, be 6nor%ali+ed& ta%ed and subdued to so%e fir% structure of sense. *he reader, it would see%, is en"a"ed in fi"htin" the te-t as %uch as interpretin" it, stru""lin" to pin down its anarchic 6polyse%antic& potential within so%e %ana"eable fra%ework. Iser speaks 9uite openly of 6reducin"& this polyse%antic potential to so%e kind of order a curious way, one %i"ht have thou"ht, for a 6pluralist& critic to speak. >nless this is done, the unified readin" sub,ect will be ,eopardi+ed, rendered incapable of returnin" to itself as a well.balanced entity in the 6self.correctin"& therapy of readin". It is always worth testin" out any literary theory by askin": 1ow would it work with Aoyce&s /inne"ans 0akeQ *he answer in Iser&s case is bound to be: Hot too well. 1e

deals, ad%ittedly, with Aoyce&s >lysses) but his %a,or critical interests are in realist fiction since the ei"hteenth century, and there are ways in which >lysses can be %ade to confor% to this %odel. 0ould Iser&s opinion that the %ost valid literature disturbs and trans"resses received codes do for the conte%porary readers of 1o%er, 8ante or !penser: Is it not a viewpoint %ore typical of a %odern.day European liberal, for who% 6syste%s of thou"ht& is bound to have so%ethin" of a ne"ative rather than positive rin", and who will therefore look to the kind of art which appears to under%ine the%: 1as not a "reat deal of 6valid& literature precisely confir%ed rather than troubled the received codes of its ti%e: *o locate the power of art pri%arily in the ne"ative in the trans"ressive and defa%iliari+in" is with both Iser and the /or%alists to i%ply a definite attitude to the social and cultural syste%s of one&s epoch: an attitude which, in %odern liberalis%, a%ounts to suspectin" thou"ht. syste%s as such. *hat it can do so is elo9uent testi%ony to liberalis%&s obliviousness of one particular thou"ht.syste%: that which sustains its own position. *o "rasp the li%its of Iser&s liberal hu%anis%, we %ay contrast hi% briefly with another theorist of reception, the /rench critic 7oland arthes. *he approach of arthes&s *he <leasure of the *e-t 219G35 is about as different fro% Iser&s as one could i%a"ine the difference, stereotypically speakin", between a /rench hedonist and a $er%an rationalist. 0hereas Iser focuses %ainly on the realist work, arthes offers a sharply contrastin" account of readin" by takin" the %odernist te-t, one which dissolves all distinct %eanin" into a free play of words, which seeks to undo repressive thou"ht.syste%s by a ceaseless slippin" and slidin" of lan"ua"e. !uch a te-t de%ands less a 6her%eneutics& than an 6erotics&: since there is no way to arrest it into deter%inate sense, the reader si%ply lu-uriates in the tantali+in" "lide of si"ns, in the provocative "li%pses of %eanin"s which surface only to sub%er"e a"ain. Eau"ht up in this e-uberant dance of lan"ua"e, deli"htin" in the te-tures of words the%selves, the reader knows less the purposive pleasures of buildin" a coherent syste%, bindin" te-tual ele%ents %asterfully to"ether to shore up a unitary self, than the %asochistic thrills of feelin" that self shattered and dispersed throu"h the tan"led webs of the work itself. 7eadin" is less like a laboratory than a boudoir. /ar fro% returnin" the reader to hi%self, in so%e final recuperation of the selfhood which the act of readin" has thrown into 9uestion, the %odernist te-t e-plodes his or her secure cultural identity, in a,ouissance which for arthes is both readerly bliss and se-ual or"as%. arthes&s theory is not, as the reader %i"ht have suspected, without its proble%s. *here is so%ethin" a little disturbin" about this self.indul"ent avant."arde hedonis% in a world where others lack not only books but food. If Iser offers us a "ri%ly 6nor%ative& %odel which reins in the unbounded potential of lan"ua"e, arthes presents us with a private, asocial, essentially anarchic e-perience which is perhaps no %ore than the flip.side of the first. oth critics betray a liberal distaste for syste%atic thou"ht) both in their different ways i"nore the position of the reader in history. /or readers do not of course encounter te-ts in a void: all readers are socially and historically positioned, and how they interpret literary works will be deeply shaped by this fact. Iser is aware of the social di%ension of readin", but chooses to concentrate lar"ely on its 6aesthetic& aspects) a %ore historically.%inded %e%ber of the school of Eonstance is 1ans 7obert Aauss, who seeks in $ada%erian fashion to situate a literary work within its historical 6hori+on&, the conte-t of cultural %eanin"s within which it was produced, and then e-plores the shiftin" relations between this and the chan"in"

6hori+ons& of its historical readers. *he ai% of this work is to produce a new kind of literary history one centred not on authors, influences and literary trends, but on literature as defined and interpreted by its various %o%ents of historical 6reception&. It is not that literary works the%selves re%ain constant, while interpretations of the% chan"e: te-ts and literary traditions are the%selves actively altered accordin" to the various historical 6hori+ons& within which they are received. ( %ore detailed historical study of literary reception is Aean.<aul !artre&s 0hat is @iterature: 219B85. 0hat !artre&s book %akes clear is the fact that a work&s reception is never ,ust an 6e-ternal& fact about it, a contin"ent %atter of book reviews and bookshop sales. It is a constitutive di%ension of the work itself. Every literary te-t is built out of a sense of its potential audience, includes an i%a"e of who% it is written for: every work encodes within itself what Iser calls an 6i%plied reader&, inti%ates in its every "esture the kind of 6addressee& it anticipates. 6Eonsu%ption&, in literary as in any other kind of production, is part of the process of production itself. If a novel opens with the sentence 6Aack sta""ered red.nosed out of the pub&, it already i%plies a reader who understands fairly advanced En"lish, knows what a pub is and has cultural knowled"e of the connection between alcohol and facial infla%%ation. It is not ,ust that a writer 6needs an audience&: the lan"ua"e he uses already i%plies one ran"e of possible audiences rather than another, and this is not a %atter in which he necessarily has %uch choice. ( writer %ay not have in %ind a particular kind of reader at all, he %ay be superbly indifferent to who reads his work, but a certain kind of reader is already included within the very act of writin" itself, as an internal structure of the te-t. Even when I talk to %yself, %y utterances would not be utterances at all unless they, rather than I, anticipated a potential listener. !artre&s study, then, sets out to pose the 9uestion 6/or who% does one write:&, but in an historical rather than 6e-istential& perspective. It traces the destiny of the /rench writer fro% the seventeenth century, where the 6classical& style si"nalled a settled contract or shared fra%ework of assu%ptions between author and audience, to the in"rown self.consciousness of a nineteenth.century literature ineluctably addressed to a bour"eoisie it despised. It ends with the dile%%a of the conte%porary 6co%%itted& writer, who can address his work neither to the bour"eoisie, the workin" class, nor so%e %yth of 6%an in "eneral&. 7eception theory of the Aauss and Iser kind see%s to raise a pressin" episte%olo"ical proble%. If one considers the 6te-t in itself as a kind of skeleton, a set of 6sche%ata& waitin" to be concreti+ed in various ways by various readers, how can one discuss these sche%ata at all without havin" already concreti+ed the%: In speakin" of the 6te-t itself, %easurin" it as a nor% a"ainst particular interpretations of it, is one ever dealin" with anythin" %ore than one&s own concreti+ation: Is the critic clai%in" so%e $odlike knowled"e of the 6te-t in itself, a knowled"e denied to the %ere reader who has to %ake do with his or her inevitably partial construction of the te-t: It is a version, in other words, of the old proble% of how one can know the li"ht in the refri"erator is off when the door is closed. 7o%an In"arden considers this difficulty but can provide no ade9uate solution to it) Iser per%its the reader a fair de"ree of freedo%, but we are not free si%ply to interpret as we wish. /or an interpretation to be an interpretation of this te-t and not of so%e other, it %ust be in so%e sense lo"ically constrained by the te-t itself. *he work, in other words, e-ercises a de"ree of deter%inacy over readers& responses to it, otherwise criticis% would see% to fall into total anarchy. leak 1ouse would be nothin" %ore than the %illions of different, often discrepant readin"s of the novel which readers have co%e up with, and the 6te-t

itself would drop out, as a kind of %ysterious R. 0hat if the literary work were not a deter%inate structure containin" certain indeter%inacies, but if everythin" in the te-t was indeter%inate, dependent on which way the reader chose to construct it: In what sense could we then speak of interpretin" the 6sa%e& work: Hot all reception theorists find this an e%barrass%ent. *he (%erican critic !tanley /ish is 9uite happy to accept that, when you "et down to it, there is no 6ob,ective& work of literature there on the se%inar table at all. leak 1ouse is ,ust all the assorted accounts of the novel that have been or will be "iven. *he true writer is the reader: dissatisfied with %ere Iserian copartnership in the literary enterprise, the readers have now overthrown the bosses and installed the%selves in power. /or /ish, readin" is not a %atter of discoverin" what the te-t %eans, but a process of e-periencin" what it does to you. 1is notion of lan"ua"e is pra"%atist: a lin"uistic inversion, for e-a%ple, will perhaps "enerate in us a feelin" of surprise or disorientation, and criticis% is no %ore than an account of the reader&s developin" responses to the succession of words on the pa"e. 0hat the te-t 6does& to us, however, is actually a %atter of what we do to it, a 9uestion of interpretation) the ob,ect of critical attention is the structure of the reader&s e-perience, not any 6ob,ective& structure to be found in the work itself. Everythin" in the te-t its "ra%%ar, %eanin"s, for%al units is a product of interpretation, in no sense 6factually& "iven) and this raises the intri"uin" 9uestion of what it is that /ish believes he is interpretin" when he reads. 1is refreshin"ly candid answer to this 9uestion is that he does not know) but neither, he thinks, does anybody else. /ish is in fact careful to "uard a"ainst the her%eneutical anarchy to which his theory appears to lead. *o avoid dissolvin" the te-t into a thousand co%petin" readin"s, he appeals to certain 6interpretative strate"ies& which readers have in co%%on, and which will "overn their personal responses. Hot any old readin" response will do: the readers in 9uestion are 6infor%ed or at.ho%e& readers bred in the acade%ic institutions, whose responses are thus unlikely to prove too wildly diver"ent fro% each other to forestall all reasoned debate. 1e is, however, insistent that there is nothin" whatsoever 6in& the work itself that the whole idea of %eanin" bein" so%ehow 6i%%anent& in the te-t&s lan"ua"e, awaitin" its release by the readers& interpretation, is an ob,ectivist illusion. It is to this illusion, he considers, that 0olf"an" Iser has fallen prey. *he ar"u%ent between /ish and Iser is to so%e e-tent a verbal one. /ish is 9uite ri"ht to clai% that nothin", in literature or the world at lar"e, is 6"iven& or 6deter%inate&, if by that is %eant 6non.interpreted&. *here are no 6brute& facts, independent of hu%an %eanin"s) there are no facts that we do not know about. ut this is not what 6"iven& necessarily or even usually %eans: few philosophers of science would nowadays deny that the data in the laboratory are the product of interpretation, ,ust that they are not interpretations in the sense that the 8arwinian theory of evolution is. *here is a difference between scientific hypotheses and scientific data, thou"h both are indubitably 6interpretations&, and the uncrossable "ulf which %uch traditional philosophy of science has i%a"ined between the% is certainly an illusion. 8 Sou can say that perceivin" eleven black %arks as the word 6ni"htin"ale& is an interpretation, or that perceivin" so%ethin" as black or eleven or a word is an interpretation, and you would be ri"ht) but if in %ost circu%stances you read those %arks to %ean 6ni"ht"own& you would be wron". (n interpretation on which everyone is likely to

a"ree is one way of definin" a fact. It is less easy to show that interpretations of ?eats&s 6;de to a Hi"htin"ale& are wron". Interpretation in this second, broader sense usually runs up a"ainst what philosophy of science calls the 6underdeter%ination of theory&, %eanin" that any set of data can be e-plained by %ore theories than one. *his does not see% to be the case in decidin" whether the eleven %arks I have %entioned for% the word 6ni"htin"ale& or 6ni"ht"own&. *he fact that these %arks denote a certain kind of bird is 9uite arbitrary, a %atter of lin"uistic and historical convention. If the En"lish lan"ua"e had developed differently, they %i"ht not) or there %ay be so%e lan"ua"e unknown to %e in which they denote 6dichoto%ous&. *here %ay be so%e culture which would not perceive these %arks as i%prints at all, as 6%arks& in our sense, but see the% as bits of black i%%anent in the white paper which have so%ehow e%er"ed. *his culture %ay also have a different countin".syste% fro% ours and reckon the% not as eleven but as three plus an indefinite nu%ber. In its for% of script, there %ay well be no distinction between their words for 6ni"htin"ale& and 6ni"ht"own&. (nd so on: there is nothin" divinely "iven or i%%utably fi-ed about lan"ua"e, as the fact that the En"lish word 6ni"htin"ale& has had %ore %eanin"s than one in its ti%e would su""est. ut interpretin" these %arks is a constrained affair, because the %arks are often used by people in their social practices of co%%unication in certain ways, and these practical social uses are the various %eanin"s of the word. 0hen I identify the word in a literary te-t, these social practices do not si%ply drop away. I %ay well co%e to feel after readin" the work that the word now %eans so%ethin" 9uite different, that it denotes 6dichoto%ous& rather than a kind of bird, because of the transfor%ed conte-t of %eanin"s into which it has been inserted. ut identifyin" the word in the first place involves so%e sense of what its practical social uses are. *he clai% that we can %ake a literary te-t %ean whatever we like is in one sense 9uite ,ustified. 0hat after all is there to stop us: *here is literally no end to the nu%ber of conte-ts we %i"ht invent for its words in order to %ake the% si"nify differently. In another sense, the idea is a si%ple fantasy bred in the %inds of those who have spent too lon" in the classroo%. /or such te-ts belon" to lan"ua"e as a whole, have intricate relations to other lin"uistic practices, however %uch they %i"ht also subvert and violate the%) and lan"ua"e is not in fact so%ethin" we are free to do what we like with. If I cannot read the word 6ni"htin"ale& without i%a"inin" how blissful it would be to retreat fro% urban society to the solace of Hature, then the word has a certain power for %e, or over %e, which does not %a"ically evaporate when I encounter it in a poe%. *his is part of what is %eant by sayin" that the literary work constrains our interpretations of it, or that its %eanin" is to so%e e-tent 6i%%anent& in it. @an"ua"e is a field of social forces which shape us to our roots, and it is an acade%icist delusion to see the literary work as an arena of infinite possibility which escapes it. Hevertheless, interpretin" a poe% is in an i%portant sense freer than interpretin" a @ondon >nder"round notice. It is freer because in the latter case the lan"ua"e is part of a practical situation which tends to rule out certain readin"s of the te-t and le"iti%ate others. *his, as we have seen, is by no %eans an absolute constraint, but it is a si"nificant one. In the case of literary works, there is also so%eti%es a practical situation which e-cludes certain readin"s and licenses others, known as the teacher. It is the acade%ic institution, the stock of socially le"iti%ated ways of readin" works,

which operates as a constraint. !uch licensed ways of readin" are never of course 6natural&, and never si%ply acade%ic either: they relate to do%inant for%s of valuation and interpretation in a society as a whole. *hey are still active when I read a popular novel on a train, not ,ust a poe% in a university class. ut readin" a novel re%ains different fro% readin" a road si"n because the reader is not supplied with a ready.%ade conte-t to render the lan"ua"e intelli"ible. ( novel which opens with the sentence: 6@ok was runnin" as fast as he could& is i%plicitly sayin" to the reader: 6I invite you to i%a"ine a conte-t in which it %akes sense to say M@ok was runnin" as fast as he couldN.& 9 *he novel will "radually construct that conte-t, or if you like the reader will "radually construct it for the novel. Even here it is not a %atter of total interpretative freedo%: since I speak the En"lish lan"ua"e, the social uses of words like 6runnin"& "overn %y search for appropriate conte-ts of %eanin". ut I a% not as constrained as I a% by 6Ho E-it&) and this is one reason why people often have %a,or disa"ree%ents over the %eanin" of lan"ua"e they treat in a 6literary& way. I be"an this book by challen"in" the idea that 6literature& was an unchan"in" ob,ect. I also ar"ued that literary values are a "ood deal less "uaranteed than people so%eti%es think. How we have seen that the literary work itself is %uch less easy to nail down than we often assu%e. ;ne nail which can be driven throu"h it to "ive it a fi-ed %eanin" is that of authorial intention: we have seen so%e of the proble%s of this tactic in discussin" E. 8, 1irsch. (nother nail is /ish&s appeal to a shared 6interpretative strate"y&, a kind of co%%on co%petence which readers, at least acade%ic ones, are likely to have. *hat there is an acade%ic institution which powerfully deter%ines what readin"s are "enerally per%issible is certainly true) and the 6literary institution& includes publishers, literary editors and reviewers as well as acade%ia. ut within this institution there can be a stru""le of interpretations, which /ish&s %odel would not see% to account for a stru""le not ,ust between this readin" of 1olderlin and that, but one wa"ed around the cate"ories, conventions and strate"ies of interpretation itself. /ew teachers or reviewers are likely to penali+e an account of 1olderlin or eckett becasue it differs fro% their own. 7ather %ore of the%, however, %i"ht penali+e such an account because it see%ed to the% 6non.literary& because it trans"ressed the accepted boundaries and procedures of 6literary criticis%&. @iterary criticis% does not usually dictate any particular readin" as lon" as it is 6literary critical&) and what counts as literary criticis% is deter%ined by the literary institution. It is thus that the liberalis% of the literary institution, like 0olf"an" Iser&s, is in "eneral blind to its own constitutive li%its. !o%e literary students and critics are likely to be worried by the idea that a literary te-t does not have a sin"le 6correct& %eanin", but probably not %any. *hey are %ore likely to be en"a"ed by the idea that the %eanin"s of a te-t do not lie within the% like wisdo% teeth within a "u%, waitin" patiently to be e-tracted, but that the reader has so%e active role in this process. Hor would %any people today be disturbed by the notion that the reader does not co%e to the te-t as a kind of cultural vir"in, i%%aculately free of previous social and literary entan"le%ents, a supre%ely disinterested spirit or blank sheet on to which the te-t will transfer its own inscriptions. 'ost of us reco"ni+e that no readin" is innocent or without presuppositions. ut fewer people pursue the full i%plications of this readerly "uilt. ;ne of the the%es of this book has been that there is no such thin" as a purely 6literary& response: all such responses, not least those to literary for%, to the aspects of a work which are so%eti%es ,ealously reserved to the 6aesthetic&, are deeply

i%bricated with the kind of social and historical individuals we are. In the various accounts of literary theories I have "iven so far, I have tried to show that there is always a "reat deal %ore at stake here than views of literature that infor%in" and sustainin" all such theories are %ore or less definite readin"s of social reality. It is these readin"s which are in a real sense "uilty, all the way fro% 'atthew (rnold&s patroni+in" atte%pts to pacify the workin" class to 1eide""er&s Ha+is%. reakin" with the literary institution does not ,ust %ean offerin" different accounts of eckett) it %eans breakin" with the very ways literature, literary criticis% and its supportin" social values are defined. *he twentieth century had another enor%ous nail in its literary theoretical ar%oury with which to fi- the literary work once and for all. *hat nail was called structuralis%, which we can now investi"ate.