LACAN AND MEANING
SEXUATION, DISCOURSE THEORY, AND TOPOLOGY IN THE AGE OF HERMENEUTICS
CHAPTER 2
WITHDRAWALS FROM MEANING
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content is either affirmed or denied. Significantly, Iser argues that what is denied nevertheless remains in view. This remainder modifies the reader’s attitude towards the text and gives rise to additional structural gaps. The implication is that these gaps are not the same for all readers, as if having been pre-programmed by the author. Rather, their appearance varies according to the particular relation the reader strikes to the text. Ingarden may conceive indeterminacies as determinately positioned in the text’s structure. But for Iser, indeterminacies are themselves indeterminately positioned. Different readers thus forge different constitutive paths through the text. Accordingly, they each experience their own unique sequence of images through which the text’s meaning comes alive in their imaginations.
An objection might be raised at this point. A text may very well point to a subset of ideal meanings identical and transcendent to all individual readings. But there is no guarantee that they will be grasped as such. Perhaps surprisingly, the work of Jauss can be mobilized to address this issue. On the face of it, this does not seem possible. Jauss’ method of assessing the meaning of a text, almost exclusively in terms of the reception it receives by its readers, raises serious concerns. For without a corresponding analysis of textual structure, his methodology seems subject to all the vagaries of psychologism. But given that a text’s collective reception is the focus, his admittedly more pragmatic phenomenology can serve as a supplemental check or yardstick against which individual readings might be measured.
More specifically, Jauss curtails the threat of psychology by describing public reception against the literary, aesthetic and cultural expectations accompanying the appearance of a given work of art. This allows him to set up evaluative criteria to better determine its artistic character. For instance, if a text cannot be said to have disappointed its public, it is likely to predominately hold entertainment value for receiving consciousness. But if the disparity between its expectation and actual reception is so great as to register profound disappointment, the text may later prove to be an initially misunderstood masterpiece. This suggests the importance of establishing the original set of expectations for the text. Comparing its current reception with the way it was initially received raises the possibility of reading differently. This possibility is made all the more palpable when a series of historical receptions also exist, along with receptions of texts similar to the one in question. Faced with this wealth of differing reading experiences, it becomes obvious that objective meanings embodied in texts are not always immediately accessible. So similar to Ingarden’s findings, if the objects most appropriate to the text are to be recognized, the reader must actively read rather than passively receive. The broader implications of Jauss’ work lie with the need for interpretive theory to factor collective reception into an individual reading. This would help isolate the text’s ideal meanings, and thereby create a vantage point from which to confidently adjudicate the interpretive findings of other readings.
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