SOURCE: Juhl, P. D. “Stanley Fish's Interpretive Communities and the Status of Critical Interpretations.” In Comparative Criticism, edited by E. S. Shaffer, pp. 47-58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

[In the following essay, Juhl counters Fish's theory of interpretation, which proposes that each textual reading is affected by the interpretive community to which that reader belongs, and instead notes that literary interpretations can, indeed, be objectively evaluated.]

I. INTRODUCTION

Over the last decade Stanley Fish has developed a theory of interpretation which is in effect a new version of the hermeneutic circle. In the following, I shall offer a few considerations in support of the view that this new version of the hermeneutic circle is no more convincing than the old. If I am right, then these considerations provide evidence that literary interpretations can, at least in principle, be objectively confirmed or disconfirmed.

On Fish's view, what a ‘text’ means depends on your ‘critical perspective’, ‘interpretive strategy’ or the ‘interpretive community’ you belong to. In fact, there is no text at all in the sense of some stable ‘entity’ identical for all interpreters. According to Fish, the text you interpret is constituted by your interpretive assumptions (i.e. those of the ‘interpretive community’ you belong to). So that two critics who construe a poem differently are not talking about the same thing. Furthermore, the assumptions involved in your interpretation of a work determine what the relevant ‘internal’ as well as ‘external’ facts are. Consequently, an interpretation cannot be objectively confirmed or disconfirmed, since there are no ‘objective’ facts to which anyone can appeal. (All page references to Fish's work (see n. 1) will be given in parentheses in the text.)

II. ARE CRITICS WHO DISAGREE ABOUT THE MEANING OF A TEXT OPERATING WITH DIFFERENT CONCEPTS OF MEANING?

Let us then examine Fish's central contention, namely that there are no facts to which we can appeal in an attempt to confirm or disconfirm an interpretation because what the facts are is determined by the ‘interpretive strategy’¹ or ‘interpretive perspective’ (pp. 341, 347) of the critic who advances an interpretation.

One way to construe Fish's claim would be to take him to be saying that two critics (employing different ‘interpretive strategies’) who interpet a text differently are in effect operating with two different notions of meaning or interpretation. If this were true, then Fish would be right in claiming that a disagreement between the two critics is in principle irresolvable. I shall argue that typically critics do not operate with different notions or meaning.

Consider Fish's example of a dispute concerning Blake's ‘The Tyger’:

In 1954 Kathleen Raine published an influential essay entitled ‘Who Made the Tyger’ in which she argued that because the tiger is for Blake ‘the beast that sustains its own life at the expense of its fellow-creatures’ it is a ‘symbol of … predacious selfhood’, and that therefore the answer to the poem's final question - ‘Did he who made the Lamb make thee’—‘is, beyond all possible doubt, No.’ In short, the tiger is unambiguously evil. Raine supports her reading by pointing to two bodies of evidence, certain cabbalistic writings which, she avers, ‘beyond doubt … inspired “The Tyger”’, and evidence from the poem itself. She pays particular attention to the word ‘forests’ as it appears in line 2, ‘In the forests of the night’: ‘Never … is the word “forest” used by Blake in any context in which it does not refer to the natural, “fallen” world.’

(p. 48)

The direction of argument here is from the word ‘forests’ to the support it is said to provide for a particular interpretation. Ten years later, however, that same word is being cited in support of a quite different interpretation. While Raine assumes that the lamb is for Blake a symbol of Christ-like self-sacrifice, E. D. Hirsch believes that Blake's intention was ‘to satirize the singlemindedness of the Lamb’: ‘There can be no doubt’, he declares, ‘that “The Tyger” is a poem that celebrates the holiness of tigerness.’ In his reading the ‘ferocity and destructiveness’ of the tiger are transfigured and one of the things they are transfigured by is the word ‘forests’: ‘“Forests” … suggests tall straight forms, a world that for all its terror has the orderliness of the tiger's stripes or Blake's perfectly balanced verses.’

(p. 339)

And Fish concludes: ‘What we have here then are two critics with opposing interpretations, each of whom claims the same word as internal and confirming evidence. Clearly, they cannot both be right, but just as clearly there is no basis for deciding between them’ (p. 340).

I take it that what Fish wants to say is that (1) given Raine's reading, ‘forest’ will ‘obviously have one meaning’ while given Hirsch's reading, it will equally ‘obviously’ have another meaning, and (2) that there is no way even in principle of deciding between the two interpretations of ‘forests’.

But is there really no way of deciding between them? And not just in fact, but in principle?

To begin with it is worth noting that this is not a case in which the facts differ under the two interpretations. Both Raine and Hirsch give an interpretation of the use of the word ‘forests’ in the poem which accords with their respective readings of the whole. And both provide evidence for their interpretive claims about the word ‘forests’ other than their interpretation of the whole.

The question, then, is whether or not it is reasonable to suppose that the evidence they are providing is in some relevant respect independent of the interpretation which it purports to confirm. Fish clearly holds that it is not.

Raine claims that ‘Never … is the word “forests” used by Blake in any context in which it does not refer to the natural, “fallen” world’ (p. 339) and Hirsch asserts that ‘“forests” … suggests tall straight forms, a world that for all its terror has the orderliness of the tiger's stripes or Blake's perfectly balanced verses’ (p. 339).

At least on the face of it, it seems that neither of these facts is logically dependent on the interpretation for which it is adduced. Both Raine and Hirsch give evidence about Blake's intention, evidence based in the first case on Blake's use of the word ‘forest’ elsewhere and, in the second, on facts about the word ‘forest’ which Blake can be presumed to have known.

Even if you decide, say, in favour of Hirsch's reading, it clearly does not follow that it is no longer a fact (if it is a fact), or indeed no longer relevant, that the word ‘forest’ is never elsewhere ‘used by Blake in any context in which it does not refer to the natural, “fallen” world’ (p. 339). It is simply that you have decided that there is weightier or better evidence for a different reading.

In other words, the facts adduced by Raine in support of her interpretation do not cease to be facts or evidence as to what the poem means, if we decide in favour of Hirsch's reading. Hence what the facts are does not change with the new interpretation. Rather the two critics appeal to different sets of facts in support of their respective readings. (Of course, what the facts are might change, if, for example, Hirsch challenged Raine's claim as to the use of the word ‘forest’ elsewhere in Blake. But that is not at all the same as saying that a different reading necessarily changes the facts.)

Thus it might appear that the two critics are operating with different notions of meaning (and interpretation); so that what, or some of what, for Raine counts as relevant facts (i.e. as evidence) will not so count for Hirsch and vice versa.

If this were true, then it would be clear why interpretive disagreements would be in principle irresolvable. Critics are then simply making different kinds of claims about a given work. But then it would be difficult to see why critics would suppose, and especially continue to suppose, themselves in disagreement once they became aware that they were operating with different rules as to what counts as evidence for the meaning of the work.

Fish's talk of ‘interpretive strategies’ (p. 347), of ‘interpretive procedures’ (p. 345), of ‘interpretive principles’ (pp. 339, 341), and of the critic as the ‘maker and unmaker’ of the ‘rules’ of the game of criticism (p. 367) suggests this interpretation of his thesis. But what about disagreements between adherents of the same interpretive strategy, say, reader-response criticism? Since Fish appears to hold that no interpretive disagreement can be resolved ‘by reference to the facts’ (p. 338), he is committed to the claim that in every interpretive disagreement, the critics involved are in effect operating with different concepts of interpretation.

But this does not seem to be the case. All of the facts that are adduced for an interpretation in the examples Fish gives are evidence of the author's intention. Furthermore, Fish himself seems to believe that a statement about the meaning of a literary work is a statement about the author's intention (pp. 161, 345, 347).

If this is true, then Fish's thesis that interpretive disagreements are in principle irresolvable entails the claim that it is in principle impossible to determine (objectively) what an author intended.

III. WHAT DOES ‘IS THERE A TEXT IN THIS CLASS?’ MEAN?

One problem is that Fish's own example of an utterance of the sentence ‘Is there a text in this class?’ seems to conflict with this claim.

The example goes as follows:

On the first day of the new semester a colleague at Johns Hopkins University was approached by a student who, as it turned out, had just taken a course from me. She put to him what I think you would agree is a perfectly straightforward question: ‘Is there a text in this class?’ Responding with a confidence so perfect that he was unaware of it (although in telling the story, he refers to this moment as ‘walking into the trap’), my colleague said, ‘Yes; it's the Norton Anthology of Literature’, whereupon the trap (set not by the student but by the infinite capacity of language for being appropriated) was sprung: ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I mean in this class do we believe in poems and things, or is it just us?’

(p. 305)

Whereupon Fish's colleague understood the question ‘correctly’ and answered it.

This certainly appears to be a case in which we can, and not just in principle but in fact, determine what a man intended to convey by an utterance. For I take it that if Fish's colleague had persisted in his initial interpretation of the question, or if an innocent bystander had taken it to be a question ‘about the location of an object’ (p. 307), they would have been wrong, they would have misinterpreted the utterance. And we could have shown them their mistake by appealing to what they too would recognize, or be able after some explanation to recognize, as the facts of the situation.

But if it is possible in everyday life to determine objectively what a man intended, why not in literary interpretation?

Fish says that ‘sentences emerge only in situations, and within those situations, the normative meaning of an utterance will always be obvious or at least accessible, although within another situation that same utterance, no longer the same, will have another normative meaning that will be no less obvious and accessible’ (p. 308).

Is it then that literary works are not tied to situations in the way utterances are and that consequently critics are free, in their attempts to understand the work, to posit whatever situation they like, i.e. whatever situation their institutional assumptions allow?

But (a) Fish explicitly denies that sentences ever exist in a state in which they are not ‘already embedded’ in ‘some situation or other’ (p. 307); and (b) the very notion that an author has an intention in writing a work involves the idea of what Fish calls a ‘situation’, i.e. one determined by the knowledge, beliefs and assumptions of the author. Hence if we can in everyday life determine objectively the correct situation (context) of an utterance, why not in literary interpretation?

If it is true, as Fish seems to believe, that what a work means is logically tied to the author's intention, then Fish is quite right that there is ‘no reading, however outlandish it might appear [which] is inherently an impossible one’ (p. 307). Which is to say that there are (virtually) no a priori constraints on what an author could have intended and hence on what interpretations of a work are possible. Or, to put it in Fish's terms, this means that there are no a priori constraints on what ‘interpretive strategies’ (i.e. interpretations) can become recognized by the interpretive community.

But notice that nothing follows from this as to the in principle resolvability or irresolvability of interpretive disputes by an appeal to facts. That such disputes are not in principle resolvable objectively (by an appeal to facts) follows rather from Fish's crucial claim that what the (relevant) facts are is determined by the interpretation a critic holds, i.e. that the interpretation produces a text which obviously means what the interpretation claims. For if that is true, then there is no way in which an interpretation can be challenged by an appeal to facts (which the defender of that interpretation cannot but recognize as such). And if you add to this Fish's premise that what a work means is what the author intended, then you get the claim that it is in principle impossible to determine (objectively) what an author intended (and hence what a literary work means).

Now, in a sense, Fish's crucial claim that an interpretation determines what the facts are is quite correct. But it will be instructive to see just what that sense is, because we will then see that Fish has not quite shown what he thinks he has.

IV. DO INTERPRETATIONS CREATE THEIR OWN FACTS? TWO OUTLANDISH INTERPRETATIONS AND THE COMMON GROUND

Let us suppose that an ingenious revolutionary young philosopher—critic enters the scene, bent on shaking the literary-critical establishment out of centuries of lethargy, and proposes an extremely elaborate interpretation of Homer's Iliad (or whoever created it) as a parody of Finnegans Wake. On Fish's view it should follow that we cannot in principle show, by appealing to facts, that this reading is wrong or even implausible, objectively less likely to be right than some (any) other reading of the Iliad.

But can't we? Can't we appeal to lots of facts? Such as that despite an extensive search, no copy of Finnegans Wake was found in Homer's library?

Of course, Fish could argue that the reason why we can rule out objectively this interpretation is that there is no ‘presently recognized interpretive strategy for producing the text’ (p. 347) as a parody of Finnegans Wake. The trouble is that this would beg the whole question, since to say that there is no ‘presently recognized strategy for producing the text’ is to say that we couldn't even conceive of this interpretation as an interpretation (p. 357). But can't we?

What then of Fish's view that the interpretation creates its own facts and hence that we can't rule out this or any interpretation by appealing to facts (recognized as such by both parties)? And yet in a sense Fish is right. For although the task is not a mean one, our young philosopher—critic can do it. And he can do it by making an enormous number of utterly ‘outlandish’ assumptions about the author of the Iliad, his life, his knowledge of facts and languages, his idiolect or cryptolect, his beliefs, as well as about the tradition which seemingly depends on him so heavily. All sorts of things would have to be explained, or rather explained away, and could be explained away even if those explanations would strain our credulity. The point is: we couldn't convict the interpretation of error by appealing to facts.

Of course, that wouldn't make the interpretation any less preposterous in our eyes—preposterous, because it, or the assumptions it involves, conflict with some of our most firmly held beliefs. For whoever may be the author of the Iliad, we would have difficulty believing that it was not written some time before 1939.

So what does this show? It shows that the existence of facts depends ultimately on agreement, on shared beliefs and assumptions about what counts as a plausible explanation of certain kinds of facts, about what it means to be an author, about what language a particular author writes in, about the tradition, etc. Of course, when a new interpretation is recognized, some of these beliefs and assumptions change, are modified; but this is rarely so fundamental a change that there is no longer a sufficient range of agreement, a sufficient common ground, to make it in principle, though usually not in fact, possible to determine objectively whether an interpretation does or does not correspond to what the author intended.

Consider Fish's example of a non-ironic reading of Pride and Prejudice (pp. 347-8). Fish claims that the time is ripe for the ‘discovery’ of a non-ironic Austen; it would, according to Fish, take the following course:

It would begin with the uncovering of new evidence (a letter, a lost manuscript, a contemporary response) and proceed to the conclusion that Austen's intentions have been misconstrued by generations of literary critics. She was not in fact satirizing the narrow and circumscribed life of a country gentry; rather, she was celebrating that life and its tireless elaboration of a social fabric, complete with values, rituals, and self-perpetuating goals (marriage, the preservation of great houses, and so on). This view, or something very much like it, is already implicit in much of the criticism, and it would only be a matter of extending it to local matters of interpretation, and specifically to Mr Collins's list of reasons which might now be seen as reflecting a proper ranking of the values and obligations necessary to the maintenance of a way of life.

(pp. 347-8)

Notice that here there is independent evidence for the new interpretation, namely the letter, lost manuscript etc., i.e. facts which are recognized as evidence for the new reading both by the critic who is proposing it and by at least a good many of the other workers in the Austen industry. Furthermore, the new interpretation accords rather well with a view ‘already implicit in much of the criticism’ (p. 347); and thus ‘it would only be a matter of extending it to local matters of interpretation’ (p. 348).

So how does this example show that the new reading creates its own facts and can therefore not be confirmed or disconfirmed by an appeal to facts? After all, as we have just seen, there is not only the initial piece of independent evidence (the letter, lost manuscript, etc.), but the assumptions about Austen's view of life, her beliefs, values, and so on which are implied by the new reading are, in Fish's own words, ‘already implicit in much of the criticism’. Hence there would be very few, if any, facts which the new reading would create, i.e. which would not be recognized as such given the assumptions already held by many Austen critics.

This is not an accident. What it show is the considerable degree to which critics who propose new readings of a given work nevertheless share the assumptions implicit in previous criticism.

Suppose, for example, that there were no independent evidence for the new reading, no letter, no lost manuscript, no contemporary response to support it. And suppose that Austen expressed nothing but contempt for ‘the narrow and circumscribed life of a country gentry’, its values, rituals, and self-perpetuating goals; suppose she never had a kind word for marriage, great houses, etc. Imagine countless dialogues with contemporaries (recorded by her secretary) defending those values, rituals; i.e. marriage, great houses and so on. And suppose she were offered gratis a magnificent country house and estate which satisfied all her (other) demands but which she turned down with the contemptuous words: ‘You couldn't pay me to live in the country!’ Suppose further that she displayed in her own life, in what she chose to do, with whom she chose to associate, what goals she chose to pursue, an obvious disdain for the country life.

In this case, the discovery of a ‘non-ironic Austen’ would be somewhat unlikely. And it would be unlikely not just because a critic who entertained the idea would realize quickly that it would be difficult to persuade others of it, but because he would have a hard time persuading himself of the idea.

The reason for this is that given his assumptions and beliefs, he would find it difficult to explain away all the facts which by hypothesis presently support the traditional reading. Consequently, if someone did propose this kind of interpretation, we could indeed disconfirm his reading by appealing to facts, since as a matter of fact, he would—as a result of the common ground of beliefs and assumptions—recognize those facts as evidence against his reading.

But if the beliefs and assumptions we share make it possible, at least in principle, to determine objectively what an author intended, then why are we apparently unable to resolve existing interpretive disagreements? Don't these show that a critic who proposes a given reading is indeed prepared to make or revise whatever assumptions necessary to render his reading reasonable?

Not necessarily. It may very well be that the facts which we have and which are recognized as such by both parties in a particular interpretive controversy just do not in fact allow us to resolve the controversy, although if additional facts were discovered or if the facts were other than they are, we could resolve the disagreement objectively.

Consider again our non-ironic reading of Pride and Prejudice by a critic blissfully ignorant of most of the facts I have assumed above. How far is this critic likely to go in a controversy with others who dismiss his reading by appealing to the facts about Austen's life, beliefs, values, etc. as expressed or recorded elsewhere?

The critic might challenge the standard interpretation of those (non-literary) writings in which she expressed her opinions about the life of a country gentry; he might construe many of them (all?) as being ironic—but then suppose that no contemporary ever interpreted her in that way, even though many of them spoke to her face to face about such matters frequently. Are they all wrong? Also, there is the (recorded) fact that Austen expressed disdain for the values of the country gentry in the way she led her own life.

The critic could challenge the countless dialogues with contemporaries recorded by her secretary (who incidentally indicated explicitly Austen's non-ironic tone and manner). The critic might claim that Austen's secretary made them all up or falsified them or that she was consistently mistaken about the lack of irony. But then suppose we have independent confirmation, records kept by the other participants in the dialogues.

Our critic might dismiss the story about the country house as an amusing fabrication. But again we might have independent evidence by people who were there—are they all lying? Hallucinating?

The critic could challenge every single one of the facts we might hypothesize and in that case we couldn't show that he was likely to be wrong by appealing to facts he recognizes as such; i.e. he could challenge all of our explanations of the facts as evidence against his view.

And yet we can always introduce new facts which will force, if he persists, to resort to ever more ‘outlandish’ explanations. How far is anyone likely to carry this process? Surely not very far. Simply because he would have a hard time persuading himself of his interpretation.

If what I have suggested is true, then, except in extremely rare instances, there is sufficient agreement to enable us, in principle, to determine objectively what an author intended and hence which interpretation is correct. The reason we cannot in fact resolve many existing disagreements is simply that we do not have enough suitable facts—a lack which, as we have seen, is not, except in extremely rare instances, the result of insufficient agreement in basic assumptions and beliefs.

V. ABRAMS, HIRSCH AND SOME IMPLICATIONS OF FISH'S THEORY

I shall conclude by saying a word about Fish's advice to Abrams and Hirsch and about a few implications of Fish's theory.

Abrams and Hirsch have objected to Fish's theory on the grounds that if it is true, then there is not even in principle a way of showing that one interpretation of a work is any more plausible or more likely to be correct than any other (pp. 305, 359).

Fish's answer to them is ‘not to worry’ since ‘the shared basis of agreement sought by Abrams and others is never not already found, although it is not always the same one’ (p. 318). And elsewhere: ‘… in the system I have been describing, any movement away from the text is simultaneously a movement toward it, that is, toward its reappearance as an extension of whatever interpretation has come to the fore’ (p. 358).

The trouble with this reply is that it is no reply at all. But then again it is difficult to see how Fish could reply to Abrams and Hirsch since they are simply stating an obvious consequence of Fish's theory.

On Fish's view, you can't move ‘away from the text’ since any interpretation you might dream up will create its own text. Which means that there will be as many (different) texts as there are interpretations. Consequently, any interpretation that is coherently formulable will be exactly right. And not just that, we can ‘always [be] certain’ (p. 365) that we've got it exactly right.

Of course, to reassure Abrams and Hirsch that things are not as bad on his theory as they look, Fish talks about institutional constraints, i.e. the dependence of critics on ‘institutional assumptions’; but then he also claims that ‘any interpretation one puts forward, no matter how “absurd”, will already be in the game (otherwise one could not even conceive of it as an interpretation)’ (p. 357)—hardly a conclusion Abrams and Hirsch will find terribly reassuring. In any case even if somebody could come up with a reading which violates institutional assumptions, it is clear that if an interpretation creates its own text and its own facts—as Fish holds—then there is certainly no objective way in which we could show that the reading was somehow amiss.

It is difficult to see, furthermore, how Fish can account for ‘the very real sense we all have, both as critics and teachers, of advancing toward a clearer sight of our object’ (p. 359) if the object changes as interpretations change. Similarly, though it is obvious why Fish should suppose, or rather be certain, that his ‘reading of Paradise Lost is the correct one’ (p. 359), it is much less obvious how he can hold that anybody else's interpretations, including those of his students, are any less correct—since, on Fish's own assumption, they are construing a different text, and in particular a text created by their readings.

Also, if Fish wants to say that they are wrong, then he would have to give up any (real or imaginary) advantage which he claims for his Persuasion model over the Demonstration model of critical activity in explaining the ‘performance of men like Sidney, Dryden, Pope, Coleridge, Arnold’, since Fish too would then—inasmuch as his readings differed from theirs—have to regard them as quite mistaken in their views of what various works mean.

Again, when I change my mind as to what a work means, I regard my earlier reading as incorrect in some respect—something difficult to explain if indeed I am no longer reading the same text, i.e. if the change in my interpretation entails a corresponding change in the text.

VI. CONCLUSION

I have argued that while Fish is right in claiming that the existence of facts depends ultimately on agreement, on common assumptions and beliefs, there is in fact a sufficient common ground at any given time to make it in principle possible to determine objectively what an author intended and hence what a literary work means.

I have tried to show this by showing that we can construct a set of facts about the life, beliefs, values, attitudes, and so on, of the author of Pride and Prejudice which would in practice allow us to rule out objectively a non-ironic reading of the work as incorrect. Of course, a critic could always refuse to accept our explanation of the facts as postulated. But we can always introduce new facts which will, if he persists, force him to resort to ever more ‘outlandish’ explanations. Furthermore, a critic who, under the circumstances, continued to reject our explanations of the facts would, in a clear sense, cease to live in the same world we do.

I don't wish to claim that the notion of the world he would be inhabiting is unintelligible. No doubt we could conceive of a culture in which things were as they appear to the critic here. But to say that our standards of right and wrong, correct and incorrect interpretation are culture-bound is uninteresting for our purposes. For the doctrine of the hermeneutic circle, including Fish's version, makes a claim about what can and what cannot be said or done within our culture.

Now what I have shown for the non-ironic reading of Pride and Prejudice can clearly be shown for any interpretation of any literary work simply by constructing (hypothesizing) a suitable set of facts for that work. Consequently, there is a sufficient common ground of assumptions and beliefs such that we can in principle always determine objectively what an author meant and hence what a literary work means. The reason why we cannot resolve many existing interpretive disagreements is, therefore, not some difficulty in principle about determining what an author meant, but rather a lack of the right facts—facts which we could in principle always have, but which, fortunately or unfortunately, we rarely possess in practice.

Note

1. Stanley Fish, Is There A Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), p. 346.