Mr. Fish believed that writers were not the ones who give meaning to there work. Instead, he saw the readers of the work giving the text meaning through the influences of their interpretive communities. I think this is very true. He viewed the work of the writers only as invitations to potential readers, to invite them to bring their interpretive communities rules to the text so that it may gain meaning. So, what the writers are really doing here are advertising their ideas and stories in hopes that people will have something to say about it. With this view, Mr. Fish is saying that the more a work is read by different cultures, the more meaning it garnishes and the lesser read works are basically meaningless. This seems like a very Darwinian idea. It actually kind of worries me when I look at the number of sales a series like Twilight boast.
What Mr. Fish means by communities could be a particular college and the way the students learn and accept what is taught to them or it could mean the entire education system of our country. I suppose it could even mean chat rooms, forums, and blogs and so forth. These communities that read and study whatever it is they are reading and studying are what gives those texts meaning. If what Mr. Fish is saying is true, then there is no text that has meaning in and of itself. The text only gain meaning when it is filtered through communities. I suppose though, that rather than being filtered through a culture, the text could be helping to filter the communities.
Below are two links to articles I found interesting:
An interesting article on grammar.
Fish on academic freedom
No comments:
Post a Comment