TEXT??

No wonder when Stanley Fish made a remark: “The objectivity of the text is an illusion”.  Dictionaries define text as: the actual words of an author’s work; the main body of printed or written matter on a page; a scriptural passage chosen as a subject. Some also give an extended meaning as ‘theme’ or ‘topic’.  Anything that can be interpreted as text. Thus anything that has a scope for interpretation is a text.

Stanley Eugene Fish  is one of the chief proponents of a school of literary criticism known as reader response criticism. In fact, the school of reader response critics has even been referred to as the “School of Fish” . As the name might suggest, reader response criticism emphasizes the role of the reader as crucial in determining the significance of a text. To a critic of this type, reading is seen as an activity which makes meaning in a text rather than a passive function which derives meaning from a text. In his book Is There a Text in This Class?, Fish has collected a number of his most important essays and articles in an attempt to chart the progress of his evolving interpretive method.

Reader-response criticism shifts the attention from the writer to the reader. It is based on the assumption that the meaning of a work emerges when the reader responds to it. Needless to say the readers to respond in various ways and their response cannot be regarded as objective enough for the purpose of interpretation. Moreover, the text can never restrain the unexpected interpretations given to it.

          The critic Isor, observes that the text being a product of the author’s intentional act and intellectual achievement can restrain its unexpected interpretations, or misreading to a greater extent. Yet the text will surely contain gaps or intermediate areas which the reader can fill with anticipatory and retrospective processes of the activity. The author’s intentional acts can only limit speculation and encourage creative additions.

          Structuralists also hold the opinion that sense is to be made out of a text by a competent reader with his assimilation of literary conventions. Jonathan Culler considers diverse interpretations more or less impossible, but Roland Barthes is convinced that as many alternative meanings as the structures permit can be elicited from a work. The structural delusion that meanings are fixed by formal structures are totally annihilated by the poststructuralist theory of deconstruction.

          The deconstructionists rest their conclusions on differences. Davis Bleich stresses the subjective nature of interpretation dependant on the attitude and personality of the reader. Norman Holland, a psychoanalyst, affirms that the interpretation is the net result of transaction between the fantasies expressed by the author and those expected by the reader. It does without saying that no two readers can arrive at identical interpretations, for no two personalities are alike.

          Stanley Fish,  proponent of affective stylistics, analyses the process of reading. The text is taken in  word after word , anticipations corrected at the completion of various phases like the end of a paragraph or chapter, and finally anticipations are revised wholly in the light of reading. This is the interpretation of the text by the reader. It may be different from the intended meaning of the author; but if any mistake or misapprehension is found, it can be attributed to the author’s incompetence to communicate himself without any ambiguity. Fish goes to the extent of suggesting formation of interpretive communities with the adequate reading strategies to form a set of community assumptions so that the vagaries of temperament or the competence of the reader is not the deciding factor. Generally the response of the readers vary according to the ideology and the bias of the race or the class to which the readers belong. 

            Fish’s idea that a text, though fixed at a certain time and place, can change over time brings up the concept of “context”. In other words, everything is always already in a context, and it is because of this context that sentences have meaning.

                                  Fish takes his argument a step further by contesting the distinction between direct and indirect speech acts. Direct speech acts are ones in which the meaning of the utterance is clearly imbedded in its “text.” Indirect speech acts are ones in which the meaning lies outside the “text” but is understood by the hearer due to a shared contextual understanding with the speaker. In both cases the contextual understanding of the utterance is typically considered to be subject to “normal” circumstances. In other words, the hearer knows what the speaker is talking about, whether he uses direct or indirect language, because the utterance and its reception occur in a situation that lies in the realm of both parties’ understanding. It is this idea of normal circumstances with which Fish takes issue. He says,

 “ . . . I am making the same argument for ‘normal context’ that I have made for ‘literal meaning’ . . . There will always be a normal context, but it will not always be the same one”

In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context. But this interpretation itself is an act of producing text. Thus anything can work out as a text. It need not be a written form, instead it can appear in multifarious ways.

         Paintings are potent for enabling myriad interpretations. They are the kind which goads us to visit the past, recall moments described in history as tragic and irreparable.  The “speaking tree”  by the Delhi based Gulam Mohammed Sheikh did exactly that. Here, the artist culminates all his experiences of hope and despair. He mixes the nostalgic past with the painful present.

       Signs and symbols are the objective texts. They are accepted by a group and thus given validity. For instance flags, stand for unity, harmony, loyalty, patriotism etc.

       Audio and visual media can serve as texts. Sometimes they inspire us,  they have the ability to yank us. In fact they create an ideal space for us within which we choose to live. But they can throw us out of this  comfort sphere also. Even the zapping of channels can be interpreted, hence the TRPs.

       Thus anything that which can be interpreted can be called as ‘text’.

BIBILIOGRAPHY. 

Fish, Stanley Eugene. Is There a Text in This Class?, Cambridge: Harvard, 1980

      

            CHINUA ACHEBE Things Fall Apart

Part  I  of  Chinua  Achebe’s  first  novel  Things  Fall  Apart  plunges  the  non-native  reader  into  the  world  of  the  Igbo,  with  detailed  descriptions  of  the  people’s  customs , beliefs  and  ceremonies.  Seamlessly  woven  into  the  narrative  fabric  are  accounts  of  the  Feast  of  the  New Yam,  the  negotioatian  of  bride  price  , the  ceremony  of  the  egwagwu ( ancestoral spirits)  the  nso-ani (sacrileges)  of  committing  violence  during  the  Week  of  Peace,  and  so  on;  these  details  together  with  the  numerous  proverbs  function  to  create  a  rich , vivid,  portrait of  traditional   Nigerian  culture.  The  writer’s  intimate  acquaintance  with  Igbo  culture  is  signaled  by  the  ability  to  closely  document  such  beliefs  and  practices.

            Critics  have  interpreted  the  narrative  voice  as  emanating  from  the  inside  of  the  author.  The  voice  can  be  a wise  recreation  of  the  persona  which  is heard  in  tales,  history, proverbs  and  poetry  belonging  to  an  oral  tradition.  Yet this   assertion will not  stand  the  test  of close  reading;  the  narrator  frequently  stands  apart ,  becoming  an  observer,   rather  than  an  implied  participant  unlike  authors  like  Ngugi  does.  The  phrases  like  “other people”- here the narrator is aligned more closely with the non-native readers than with the Igbo perspective, it is a sort of  a mediating role.

GABRIEL OKARA "The Mystic Drum"

               Gabriel Okara, the Nigerian poet and novelist, has infused his poetry with images of  his Nigerian delta birthplace and his writing welds the concept of his native language Ijaw with the English vocabulary. “The Mystic Drum” is an African poem both in content and form. Being an African, Okara goes back to his roots in history, religion and culture and folklore. Through its image and symbol, rhythm and tone, the poem expresses the subtle nuances of an African experience. In a way this poem justifies the modernist dictum, ‘ A poem should not mean, but

be’ . In African folklore, the beating of drums has ritualistic, and therefore mystical significance. The beating of the drum unites the mind and heart of the drum beater with the outer world of nature. But the idea of cosmic unity in the poem does not lasts long. There is an end to this beating of the drum. The poem’s thematic emphasis is not upon how man and nature became one when the mystic drum beats within him; but it’s about the brevity of this experience. The return to the reality, makes the poet sing : ‘ never to beat so loud any more’. 

            Here there is the dialectic between tradition and influences. There is no overt references to the neo-colonialism or cultural imperialism, and unlike Ngugi, Okara does not relate the problem of culture to the economic sphere.

WOLE SOYINKA  “ To My First White Hairs”

                Wole Soyinka’s “ To My First White Hairs”, presents the basic African theme of black verses white in a modernist expression using image and symbols. Soyinka, like Ezra Pound seems to present a picture of a black man’s thick curly black hair in the first part of the poem. The sudden appearance of  three white hairs announce the arrival of old age. This acceptance of age and maturity  that comes with the white hairs speaks the presence of the white minority in the black majority of African community. The absence of the white hairs, accentuates the reality of the blacks. Using symbolism the poet suggests a possibility of accepting the whites. The dialectic of affirmation and negation is evident in the last part of the poem where the poet renders an obscurity by the acceptance of the supremacy of the colonizers.

ARAVIND ADIGA  The White Tiger

Aravind  Adiga in his debut novel The White Tiger, which begged  him Man Booker Prize 2008, created two different India’s in one: “an India of Light and an India of Darkness”. (14) It is the India of  Darkness which is focused by the novelist articulating the voice of silent majority, trying to dismantle the discrimination between the “Big Bellies and the Small Bellies” (64) and create a society based  on the principles of equality and justice. Balram Halwai , the  protagonist is a typical voice of underclass metaphorically described  as “Rooster coop” (173) and struggling to set free from age-old slavery  and exploitation. His anger, protest, indulgence in criminal acts, prostitution, drinking, chasing, grabbing all the opportunities, means  fair or foul endorse deep-rooted frustration and its reaction against  the “haves”. Bloody acts, opportunism, entrepreneurial success of  Balram, emergence of Socialists in India alarm that the voice of the  underclass cannot be ignored for long. The novel is centred on Balram Halwai, a son of a rickshaw puller,destined to make sweets becomes Ashok Sharma. His transformation from Munna—Balram Halwai—White Tiger—Ashok Sharma is the blue print for the rise of underclass. Balram is the strong voice of underclass in which marginal farmers, landless labourers, jobless youths, poor, auto and taxi drivers, servants, prostitutes, beggars and

unprivileged figure.

 

          The secrets of success in a modern globalized world has summed up in the last section of the novel. Murder, manipulation, malpractices, opportunism, bribery, absconding police and judicial proceedings all are justified for success and teaching based on the facts of life. The novel tells  us that India is not shining and despite its claims of a booming economy, it is still heart of darkness,

which it has been since time immemorial.