ENG4013 - The Text and The World - Update

So, basically I was in the ballpark with my understanding of Bennett and Royle's direction.

Dr. M started talking about semiotics, which helped clarify where B&R were coming from when they talk about language. The idea is that everything is based on systems of arbitrary signs and that signs only have meaning in relation to other signs, and that these signs are what make up "language" in the B&R sense.

To illustrate this, Dr. M talked about traffic lights. The colors of the lights (red, yellow and green) don't have any inherent meanings, only meanings we've agreed to accept (red = stop, yellow = slow down, green = go). Another culture or group of people might use blue to mean "slow down". Then, to illustrate that signs can be reinterpreted and given "heretical" or "different" meanings, he mentioned the joke about "yellow means 'go faster'". Then he extended this to other sign systems and said it was possible to have "heretical" readings of other signs. In the novel we're reading, "Alias Grace", he described how Grace's reading of class, gender and other "languages" of the mid-19th century was "heretical" because she did not accept the stereotypical interpretations (for example, that female servants were prone to promiscuity).

So, to the extent that we interpret everything in terms of signs and their relationship to other signs, that is, language, the world is always mediated by language.

The place were I still don't agree is the view that

The "fiction of immediacy" extends from this to say not only can we not reach beyond the text of the "alternate universe" of a piece of writing, but also to say that we cannot reach beyond the text of what we perceive (everything is based on signs, hence is language, hence is a text) to anything deeper or transcendent. In my view, this eventually has to say (relativist, poststructuralist, existential, whatever) that there is nothing outside what we perceive or will eventually be able to perceive or describe in language -- there is no transcendental (God, Truth, Reality), only realities and truths and maybe gods. This is also what Derrida meant by no "outside-text" in the B&R translation.

Finally, the idea that a text undermines the notion of the world... This seems to have two flavors. One, because one can apply a "heretical" reading to any text, that reading can revise, restate or bring about change in how others view the text, destabilizing the world. This kind of action is seen whenever social attitudes change (be that for better or worse). Second, because the world is perceived through text, they can't really be easily separated and the notion that there is something outside text is weakened.

While I understand all this intellectually and can probably apply the basic ideas within the space of literature (we can find different meanings in books, readings should attempt to be aware of the signs they implicitly reference, etc.), that doesn't mean I accept it as the way I want to live my life. Relativism taken to its logical end means there can be no judgment of right and wrong because everything is relative to the individual and the individual's perceptions and interpretations. When that happens there can be no crime. Rape, murder, cruelty to animals, flying planes into buildings, it's all good.