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At this point I would like to examine some of the influences of modernism, from a sociological perspective, on hermeneutical theory and the discipline of literary criticism, especially as it relates to the work of Stanley Fish. Most of this analysis, and even the approach itself, is indebted directly or indirectly to Peter Berger's seminal work, The Homeless Mind. Following Max Weber he defines modernization as "the growth and diffusion of a set of institutions rooted in the transformation of the economy by means of technology."Footnote120 The rise of the modern state finds a number of carriers of modernity, among them are technological production, capitalism, and urbanization, factors that are also major lines of continuity between modernism and post-modernism. These institutions affect the way in which we view and interact with the world. I will attempt to examine some of the influences of these carriers of modernity on the field of literary criticism.
"Historically, the modernizing institutions par excellence have been modern industrial capitalism and the modern bureaucratic state," according to Berger.Footnote121 These modernizing factors have contributed to a shift in the understanding of concepts such as authority and truth a shift similar to that experienced in philosophy which has moved from an emphasis on universal essence to the existing individual. Sociologically these factors can be seen primarily in the political and economic arena in which power is no longer vested in the divine right to rule but with the consent of the governed.
The rise of capitalism has dramatically changed the old hierarchical institutions controlled by church and king and has given rise to modern democracy. Capitalism's ability to "universalize" the market has undermined the hierarchy of the past and brought about a new world. Jane Tompkins catalogs the change in literature, with specific reference to her reader-response perspective, as a result of the changed social order brought on by capitalism:
But, once authors become dependent for their means of support upon the sales of their printed work, the personal relation to their audience is severed and the relationship becomes more purely economic. Manuscripts no longer circulate by hand among a coterie of friends and associates; poems are no longer read aloud in groups; sonnets are not exchanged among acquaintances. Instead, literature assumes the fixed condition of print. The literary work becomes endlessly reproducible, available to anyone who can read. Hence, the possible distance in time and space between the originator of the work and its readers becomes virtually limitless.Footnote122
This certainly has implications for the way in which a work is interpreted. Anthony Thiselton commenting on the rise of reader-response theory says, "In a commercial world too, the consumer decides what is to be offered and what is marketable, and what is marketable becomes 'what is'."Footnote123 What the consumer wants becomes what is true as the power lies with the purchaser, the demand with the consumer. This brings us to the influences of democracy which follow upon capitalism and bring another set of factors to bear on the interpreter. But first let us examine some of the influences of modernity on truth and authority.
It is a political Democracy that most accurately reflects the conventional beliefs regarding language and truth as its laws and social mores are, at least theoretically, determined by consensus. Capitalism and Democracy having brought about the demise of the old order based on a transcendent authority, promote an authority rooted in the people. It is an authority that is universal and like the marketplace rests on capital. Thus the old authority rooted in God, in transcendent unchanging principles, has given way to a new order founded upon rationality which in a Democratic society often degenerates into popular opinion, a fear with which Plato was not unfamiliar. The new order stands against the old with its authority rooted in the transcendent. It rebels against any sort of hierarchy either in society, the market, or the academy. As Gadamer has pointed out, the denigration of authority was a prejudice established in the enlightenment.Footnote124
This anti-hierarchical sentiment finds expression in philosophical terms through the death of the Author. Nietzsche proclaimed that God was dead and it was not long after that the notion of an author lost its meaning. Thus the demise of the Author has led to the demise of the author in the field of literature. Roland Barthes has written that "to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God. . . "Footnote125. The post-modern society would prefer an unfixed, conventional view of language and truth because what is not "fixed" can be changed. And it can be changed because the power to do so resides with the society or the interpretive community.
Thus Fish is able to claim with Foucault that the author is a creation of the reader. He is a fiction which is easier to live with than without. But ultimately Fish would claim there is no author because to quote Barthes, "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing."Footnote126 Once an author is conceded then an authority figure stands over the reader, alternately approving or condemning whatever meaning the reader takes from the text. She is no longer free and equal but instead subordinate to the will of the author, an authority figure reflective of Western patriarchal society.Footnote127 Conversely, to deprive a text of its author is to deprive it of its intentionality as well as its meaning which makes it easier for a hermeneutic such as Fish's to appear.
Democracy is a value laden institution. It consciously promotes individual freedom, self rule, and equality and these values in turn affect the way we look at the world. America, especially, has seen an increased emphasis placed on individual freedom, the ability to choose one's own destiny, with its right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness" often to the detriment of social responsibility. These values affect the way we look at the world and produce an anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian zeitgeist as the power resides with the people. David Wells says that it is "not simply a political system but an entire worldview and for whom, therefore, culture and truth belong to the people."Footnote128
In Berger's analysis of modernity he contends that the individual in modern society lives in a "plurality of life-worlds," by which he means that one's life is fragmented into various differing parts without the ability of each of those parts to interact with one another. Therefore the typical worker's occupation will seldom if ever come into contact with his family life. This scenario can be, and is, multiplied in a world of increasing complexity. "A fundamental aspect of this pluralization is the dichotomy of private and public spheres."Footnote129 Thus the distinction between public and private life becomes a reality in the modern world.
One of the effects of pluralization is, in Berger's analysis, secularization and the privatization of religion. Because religion cannot compete in a pluralistic society, while maintaining peace and harmonious relationships, it becomes increasingly a matter for discussion at home, although this is more the case for American than European communities. The same processes at work to take religious discussion out of the public arena (freedom of religion as seen in the separation of church and state is one of our most cherished values) have also worked to take notions of "truth" from the public arena. As with religion, "truth" has become privatized and expressions like "what is true for me" become commonplace. The very idea that one religion could be true for me while another is true for you, undermines the concept of truth as an objective reality, something which was highly prized under the rubric of modernism. Thus in the post-modern world, the concept of truth becomes private property or immanent. The privatization of which I am referring goes hand in hand with the values of a democratic institution.
One of the results of "cognitive bargaining" in the modern world as a result of the dichotomy between public and private worlds is the subjectivization of truth. One may wonder whether the roots of existential thought cannot be traced to the rise of modernity, which is not to say that it is an asymmetric relationship. (That is not to say strictly that modernism produced existentialism, but that each affected and fed off of the other.) Referring to the fragmentation of the modern identity due to the loss of a cohering world, Berger says, "The modern individual's experience of a plurality of social worlds relativizes every one of them. Consequently the institutional order undergoes a certain loss of reality. . . . the individual's experience of himself becomes more real to him than his experience of the objective social world. Therefore, the individual seeks to find his 'foothold' in reality in himself rather than outside himself."Footnote130 This puts the modern emphasis on existence over essence in a new light. It is not surprising then to find religion, philosophy, and literary theory placing the emphasis more on subjective experience and working to validate that experience. As W. John Harker has said:
So it was that the world seemed less certain. The philosophical reality of logical positivism the psychological certainty of behaviorism, the linguistic "common sense" of sensorially received language, and even the unassailable objectivity of scientific method all fell before competing movements in their respective disciplines, movements which had in common an appeal to the inner consciousness of man as the determiner of relative meaning, rather than an appeal to external observable, analyzable phenomena as the determiners of an objective reality.Footnote131
As truth has become privatized, knowledge has undergone a correlative process of democratization. Whereas at one time truth belonged to the transcendent realm that was fixed and unchanging, it has in the post-modern world become immanent. Knowledge, as with everything else in a capitalistic society, is spoken of in terms of "ownership." This is not a coincidence. Whereas democracy begins with an ontological egalitarianism (that is, all people are equal beings), when transcendence is lost, epistemological egalitarianism results, in which each person has an equal right to make truth claims. Thus the proliferation of opinion polls in which the opinions of those less "informed" are equal to those more "informed," in which the unreflected upon opinions are weighted equally with those that are carefully considered. And it is often these kinds of opinion polls that determine, indirectly, public policy. Likewise, talk shows have become increasingly popular as they have become increasingly ludicrous and regardless of their claim, each one is on an equal footing epistemologically as "everyone has a right to an opinion." Again, Thiselton referring to the rise of reader-oriented hermeneutics says, "Such a move also coheres too neatly with the trend towards social egalitarianism in an age which transfers any notion of 'privileged' knowledge on the part of an author or a sacred text to the shared contributions of pluralist reading communities."Footnote132
It is exactly this privilege knowledge that Stanley Fish's theory transfers to the possession of the reading community. For Fish it is the reader's perspective within his own context that is normative. As the concept of "author" has gone by the wayside there is therefore no longer any need to access what the meaning was in its original context, the reader's context takes precedent. Indeed, for Fish the reader's context is all that is accessible. It is not surprising therefore that Fish's theory would be labeled subjective by his critics, a criticism Fish strongly denies. Peter Kivy maintains that subjectivity is exactly one of the consequences of Fish's critical theory. Appropriately he says that once a reader sees things from Fish's perspective there are no longer any constraints:
For once one sees . . . that the 'rules' and 'procedures' of criticism are not the universal rules and procedures for finding out the truth of some matter or other, but the changeable rules and procedures for making things. . . one will hardly take the rules and procedures as presently constituted, as overriding constraints on what one can or cannot make of a text. . .Footnote133
Once the "myth" of objective and attainable truth has been exploded, there is no longer a belief in a truth that can be obtained by reason. Reason is just another attempt at "metanarrative," another attempt by the powerful to control societal values. Instead truth is a socially constructed cultural given. Truth becomes immanent residing in each individual culture or person. No one has any greater claim to truth than any other as each is on an equal status epistemologically. As Stanley Fish says,
. . . the claims of objectivity and subjectivity can no longer be debated because the authorizing agency, the center of interpretive authority, is at once both and neither. An interpretive community is not objective because as a bundle of interests, of particular purposes and goals, its perspective is interested rather than neutral; but by the very same reasoning the meanings and texts produced by an interpretive community are not subjective because they do not proceed from an isolated individual but from a public and conventional point of view.Footnote134
As we saw earlier, language and literature become a means of promoting ideology as each community represents its own interested viewpoint. Eagleton, a Marxist, claims that literature has always been the means of enforcing a particular ideology on a people for the purposes of exploitation. "Literature, in the meaning of the word we have inherited, is an ideology. It has the most intimate relations to questions of social power."Footnote135 And he discerns this perspective in the work of others such as Jacques Derrida, "deconstruction is for him an ultimately political practice, an attempt to dismantle the logic by which a particular system of thought, and behind that a whole system of political structures and social institutions, maintains its force."Footnote136 If nothing else, at least literary criticism has become an arena in which ideological warfare is waged. Thus Marxist, feminist, African-American and every other interpretive grid competes for validity in the democratic market. It is probably no mistake that each has seated itself in a pedagogical role because in a democracy legitimation comes through the will of the people and education is one of the principle keys to that will.
Democracy coupled with another carrier of modernization, urbanization, has worked to promote pluralism in the modern world. The West has in the past fifty years seen a staggering increase in contact with other cultures, influenced as well by technological advances which have made such contact easier. It is increasingly acknowledged that we live in a "global village." Chicago boasts a greater population of Poles than does Warsaw. Rogers Park on the North side of the city is said to be one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the country where over one hundred languages are spoken. This ethnic differentiation, which contributes to an already fragmented society, provides the opportunity for contact with various cultures, their religions, as well as their national literature.
One of the results of this increased contact has been to dethrone the assumed superiority of our own culture. Berger states that "pluralization has a secularizing effect" because the individual is forced to take cognizance of others who do not believe what he believes and whose life is dominated by different, sometimes contradictory, meanings, values and beliefs."Footnote137 These differing if not contradictory meanings, values, and beliefs lead to a cognitive bargaining in which each one's beliefs become less certain, in which more latitude is given to opinions that differ and which leads to the notion that truth is relative to one's socio-historical perspective. Thus, much of the Western ideology has come under attack, ironically from those within the culture. Pluralism and relativism have produced a widespread hesitancy to affirm anything whose origin is in Western culture while at the same time maintaining an obsequious posture toward minority and non-Western ideas. Berger calls this a "failure of nerve" and maintains that, "It is not the first time in history that a cultural elite has stood in the forefront of those who would give up their society."Footnote138
It is by no means accidental that Fish's reader-response thesis has arisen in such a pluralistic age. Even in the academy there are numerous and competing schools of thought. Graff comments that "Fish's concept of interpretive communities was enormously suggestive. . . particularly in an age of competitive academic interpretive schools. . .".Footnote139 As this cognitive bargaining takes place between cultures and viewpoints a certain leveling occurs on the epistemological plain. It becomes more plausible to maintain such a thesis as Fish's.
Harker in chronicling the decline of New Criticism due to its narrow views of literature and heavily pedagogical nature makes an insightful statement. "Yet these internal flaws may not in themselves have been sufficient to bring down the New Criticism had they not become increasingly apparent during a period when public verse and public criticism were becoming antithetical to the increasingly introspective, relativistic spirit of the times."Footnote140
Fish's critical theory accurately reflects this relativistic spirit of the times. The idea that truth is an historically conditioned notion that does not transcend cultural boundaries is by definition relativism.
Within a community, however, a standard of right (and wrong) can always be invoked because it will be invoked against the background of a prior understanding as to what counts as a fact, what is hearable as an argument, what will be recognized as a purpose, and so on. The point, as I shall later write, is that standards of right and wrong do not exist apart from assumptions, but follow from them, and, moreover, since we ourselves do not exist apart from assumptions, a standard of right and wrong is something we can never be without.
Fish's writing smacks of relativism and indeed it is something of which he has often been accused. James Battersby points this out in his article "Professionalism, Relativism, and Rationality" published by the Modern Language Association. It is interesting to note however that Fish believes that he has insulated himself from the critique of relativism by positing his interpretive community theory. In an introduction to one of his reprinted articles in Is There a Text in This Class? he maps some of the course his mental activities have gone through over the years. He says,
I was thus flirting with a relativism that would be removed only when the notion of interpretive communities, grounded in a bedrock of belief, allowed me to preserve the distinction between the fictional and the true by understanding it as a conventional or community-specific distinction rather than as one rooted in nature and eternity.
It is as if he believes that group relativism is any less relativistic than what occurs on an individual basis. But regardless of whether it is relativism prompted by one's subjective consciousness or endorsed as a group activity relativism is still relativism by any other name. As one of Fish's critics wryly comments, "I find no comfort in the fact that my arbitrary assumptions come from an institution rather than from myself."Footnote141
But relativism as a philosophical perspective or hermeneutic presents a number of other problems. David Hackett Fischer in his book Historian's Fallacies shows even less patience with this form of error than he does most others. Fish's argument for the ungroundedness of the interpretive community, which takes full flower in his article entitled, "Anti-Professionalism," leaves itself open to the critique of historicism, that whatever is is right.Footnote142 And Gerald Graff levels this very critique against him in his response to "Anti-Professionalism." But Dr. Fischer appropriately comments that the end result of such a view is that, "It would prevent any moral judgment against the filth which flowed from 'the innermost individual character' of many Nazi beings."Footnote143 If, with Fish and the post-moderns, we are unwilling to apply any transhistorical standards to our or any other cultures' conduct we have fully embraced relativism.
Relativism, regardless of the form, comes under the age old criticism of being a false objectivity. As Battersby has said, "the view that all our ideas are historically or professionally conditioned is itself not historically or professionally conditioned."Footnote144 In other words, relativism claims that all truth is relative except for the claim that "truth is relative." And here we are in the same predicament the post-modern critics want to free us from, that is a metanarrative, a story that explains all other stories. But maybe Fish will argue that of course relativism is only my socially constructed reality, true only for the culture in which I live. This then is an agnostic position regarding possibility of knowing truth instead of the claim to knowledge which relativism definitely makes.
Fish's response to this criticism of his position is to argue again that the critic is hopelessly mired in his own foundationalist paradigm.Footnote145 His claim is that it is illegitimate for the foundationalist to criticize his position because the foundationalist belongs to a different community with different interpretive assumptions and his position can only be understood from within Fish's position. Battersby responds,
My answer, of course, is that self-refutation owes no special allegiance to foundationalism or essentialism. As a standard, it serves many causes on many fronts. It belongs to the class of transparadigmatic criteria. . . . it has our interest because it is a strong standard, capable of leading to a deep objection.
If we are willing to engage in anti-rationalist practices by denying the principle of self-contradiction, as Derrida is and as Fish is apparently wont to do, we are in grave danger. Fortunately, the danger and mortality will belong to the position that is in contradiction with our form of life.Footnote146
One of dangerous aspects of relativism is that it bears an element of truth. It is certainly true that one's perspective and context controls, to a large extent, one's opinion. It is also true that different cultures and time periods emphasize different standards depending again on their cultural context. It does not however follow that all truth is relative. The relativist attempts to reason from what appears true in specific cases to what is true universally. This is both fallacious and self-stultifying.
Berger draws an interesting insight in The Homeless Mind that I believe applies to philosophical relativism and post-modern thought. His thesis is that modernity has caused a homelessness that is deeper than social dislocation.
The 'homelessness' of modern social life has found its most devastating expression in the area of religion. . . . The age-old function of religion--to provide ultimate certainty amid the exigencies of the human condition--has been severely shaken. Because of the religious crisis in modern society, social "homelessness" has become metaphysical--that is, it has become "homelessness" in the cosmos.
It is at this very time of metaphysical homelessness that post-modern theories such as Fish's with his focus on the individual reader's consciousness and the ungrounded nature of interpretive communities has appeared.
Post-modern literary criticisms fit nicely into the new intellectual paradigm. While Deconstructionism works to undermine classical Western thought based on the principle of non-contradiction, reader-response theories serve to legitimate whatever interpretive paradigm a particular "interpretive community" brings to the text. Thiselton writes, "If reader-oriented literary theory has become entangled with philosophical contextual relativism and post-modernism, meanings of texts are not only contingently plural in the history of interpretation and textual reception; they are irreducibly plural in principle as a hermeneutical axiom."Footnote147 Thus pluralism is the order of the day. And it is no accident that reader-oriented hermeneutics sprang up at a time of increased pluralism. In a pluralistic world it is difficult to maintain any kind of traditional value structure as contact with other cultures inevitably leads to "cognitive bargaining," in which the ideas of each culture contaminate that of the other.Footnote148
Pluralism, then has influenced this epistemological crisis in thinking whereby no group of people, at least those "properly" educated, are willing to pass judgment on another culture, thereby claiming implicitly a superiority of one culture to another. Relativism and modern language theory as well contribute to the current situation. There is no longer a belief in a truth that can be obtained by reason, as reason is just another attempt at "metanarrative." Instead truth is a socially constructed cultural given. Truth becomes immanent residing in each individual culture or person. No one has any greater claim to truth than any other as each is on an equal status. But the free-market of ideas is not necessarily a bad market to be in as long as some criterion exists for establishing truth. But once reason is thrown out as a fair and impartial judge, no purchasing power remains in the market except by power or consensus (this is the very point of modern language theory--"truth" exists only by consensus).
Battersby, p. 54.
Berger, The Homeless Mind, p. 9.
Ibid., p. 102.
Tompkins, p. 222. This is of course no different than ancient times. Any time something is written it is liable to be copied and the author has thereby lost a certain amount of control over the original.
Thiselton, New Horizons, p. 503.
Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 279.
Barthes, "Death of the Author," p. 143. I am indebted to Kevin Vanhoozer for this insight.
Ibid., 147.
But one of the results of Fish's thinking is to sever the author from her words which makes no one responsible for those words. This is however not the way we live, especially in such a politicaly correct ere.
Wells, p.189.
Homeless Mind pp. 64-65.
Berger, The Homeless Mind, p. 77-78. It is interesting to note that Kierkegaard was not only reacting to Hegel but also against cold bureaucratic church of his native Denmark.
Harker p. 363
Thiselton, p. 503.
Kivy, p. 61.
Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 14.
Eagleton, p. 22. Cf. Fish, p. 111.
Ibid., p. 148.
Berger, The Homeless Mind, p. 80.
Berger, A Far Glory, p. 64.
Graff, "Response," p. 110.
Harker, p. 362.
Stecker, p. 229.
Fischer, p. 156
Ibid.
Battersby, p.56. Fischer also comments that, ". . . relativists all argued that they and their friends were exempt from relativism in some degree," and cites Cushing Stout that it is "a form of intellectual suicide," p. 42.
Fish, "Resistance and Independence: A Reply to Gerald Graff," p. 119.
See Kivy, p. 64.
Thiselton, New Horizons, p. 473.
The term is Berger's.
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