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Forthcoming. |
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The postmodern turn in philosophy and culture can also be characterized as an interpretive turn, as it brought with it new and radical conceptions regarding the place of interpretation in our discursive practices. This paper correlates different degrees of dominance assigned to interpretation with specific conceptions of the object. That is, the object, which is whatever the text is about, raises the problem of its relation to textuality (Is the object itself textual, is it prior to the text or does it transcend textuality?) and the way this relation between sign and object is approached determines the limitlessness or the limitedness of interpretation. The correlation between approaches to interpretation and positions regarding the status of the object within the interpretive game, has become most apparent since the advent of semiotic and poststructuralist views on culture. While in some domains of philosophy there are intense debates over the question of the perceptual exteriority of the object (e.g., is the object of perception already conceptualized, etc.), it is obvious that such questions become less feasible as we move from the linguistic turn to the interpretive turn, and submit to the tenets of the latter. As interpretation gains a more prominent place, the object gradually disappears from philosophical and theoretical considerations. In fact, as more and more emphasis is put on the priority of meaning in the construction of language, the object has become, in one formulation or another, identified with the Saussurian notion of the linguistic signified (the referent, denotatum, etc.); that is, the whole problem of representing the object with language is reduced to the linguistic relation signifier/signified while the object itself has in a way vanished. The object, as far as it is relevant to semiotic and poststructuralist positions, is there not to problematize representation but to complement the signifying system with a signified, meaningful object. There is yet a variety of ways for denying the object an existence independent of its linguistic representation. Although the exclusion of the object has not been invented with postmodernism, in the first section I will examine the implications of the postmodern rejection of all 'facts of the matter' on the notion of interpretation. In the second section of the paper I will examine some pragmatist varieties of resisting the ubiquity of interpretation in face of its imperialism in postmodernism. I will show that in none of these varieties is the 'disappearance of the object' regretted: once the reality of the object outside language has been denied, the very idea of an exterior object is bracketed. The remaining part of this paper will be dedicated to analyzing the notion of the Real, as developed in psychoanalytic Lacanian theory, as a philosophical alternative to both realist and anti-realist views on interpretation and as a productive way of defining the limits imposed on interpretation by the object. 1. The Postmodern case: the object as an effect of interpretive discourse The postmodern claims of the kind made by Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty, although not necessarily endorsed across the board, have gained considerable circulation since the mid-80’s. One of the successes that can be registered on the postmodern record is the radical change it has brought about in the way interpretation is viewed. From the nonprivileged place interpretation used to occupy as the 'other' of description or theory, interpretation has now moved to occupy its current place in critical discourse well-represented by the phrase 'interpretation goes all the way down'. As radical as this universalistic view of interpretation appears to be, it is shared also by theorists who do not subscribe to the whole gamut of the postmodernist position. Umberto Eco, for instance, believes that interpretation is a semiotic process present at the very core of the linguistic sign, while, at the same time, he rejects the idea that there is no truth to the text (Eco, 1984). The point is that both postmodernists like Rorty and semioticians like Eco, although differing on the notion of validation and verification in language use, share the view that the object, whether identified with meaning, fact or referent, is an effect created by discourse and not the cause of discourse and they hence share a totalizing picture that views signifying systems as wholly interpreting (other signs or other discursive practices) systems.Hence, although some aspects of interpretive universalism are rejected by philosophers and culture theorists alike, there is still ample evidence to a kind of consensus regarding the impossibility or even the undesirability of transgressing the text toward an object. Derrida, Rorty and Eco equally hold to the view that the notion of an object that transcends representation, or is prior to categorization, the notion of the thing in itself, is either meaningless or too evasive. My point is therefore, that the theoretical 'despair' that generates an interpretive universalism, is the direct outcome of a logic that identifies language as primarily meaning-imposing, that introduces interpretation as the inseparability between the signifiers of a language and conceptual meaningfulness. Within such a view of signified meaning as already comprehended in language, there is no place to assume in any formulation the exterior reality of an object. The idea of an object that is not comprehended by language and its conceptual mapping, is replaced by the idea that the object is what discourse effectuates: 'all objects ... are made by the interpretive strategies we set in motion.' (Fish 1980: 331). Semiosis is the process by which interpretation builds up a reality; the object (whether defined as a communal set of beliefs, as fact or meaning) comes after that process.(see for instance Umberto Eco The Limits of Interpretation. Indiana U.P., 1990, p.40). The conception of the object in purely semiotic terms means that we have nothing relevant prior or other than what the text creates as its world of referents, and there is therefore no point in aspiring to attain the one and only true interpretation of a text; all we can do is talk about a 'good interpretation for certain purposes' (Rorty 1991a: 89), or about an interpretation legitimated on the grounds of a specific encyclopedic competence (Eco). The problem of validating an interpretation is hence only secondary to the way the object is avoided in the account given to the interpretive process. This idea, that there is no object prior to representation or independent of linguistic mechanisms tied with the notion that all language can do is interpret, is what has been termed interpretive universalism (Hiley et al. 1991:7-8). This doctrine, as radical as it may sound, is hard, even impossible to refute because its imperialism results from a circular premise: since there is nothing outside the game of interpretation itself, nothing can privilege one interpretation over another and nothing can discern different discourses according to their different positions towards the object. Hence, there is no way we can define something as no-interpretation: any attempt to position something as the opposite or as being outside interpretation, will turn out to be taking place within the interpretive game. No wonder then that Rorty’s fantasy is 'that the very idea of hermeneutics should disappear, in the way in which old general ideas do disappear when they lose polemical and contrastive force - when they begin to have universal applicability.' (Rorty 1991b: 71). There are, then, two important implications to interpretive universalism: one is that neither philosophy nor the 'hard' sciences can provide principles that tell us which theory or which story (in science, history or anthropology) is a better one. That is, we have no criteria outside texts ( a world, truth, philosophy) to motivate the choice amonginterpretations: 'we can only compare languages or metaphors with one another, not with something beyond language called “fact”' (Rorty 1989: 20). In this, interpretive universalism refers to the impossibility of stepping out of the interpretive web in order to validate any given discourse. The second implication of this doctrine relates to the notion that since language and truth are equally human creations, dependent on discursive conventions and not on 'facts of the world', there is little point in trying to distinguish interpretive texts, those that tell one or another story about the meaning of something, and texts or other facts which are non-interpretive. This second aspect of the interpretive turn means that not only literary criticism and historiography but also philosophy and science are themselves to be regarded as interpretive disciplines, as hermeneutic practices, in need of theories of interpretation. The only thing that language, in all its varieties of use allows us, is to interpret, that is, to assign meanings to propositions with nothing to stop or restrict this procedure. Although both implications of interpretive universalism appear to emerge from the same anti-realist, anti-essentialist view of truth and of language-world relations, the one can go without the other. It is possible to maintain that there is no criterion to help us distinguish between true and false interpretations and at the same time hold that language can do other things besides interpreting. Yet, as shown above, the postmodernist can always be back on the attack and answer this reservation by blaming the pragmatist for being secretly an essentialist: you cannot assume a language practice which is not interpretive without assuming there being something outside language to describe or represent or theorize about. This line of attack shows to what extent in assuming that the object (meaning, fact, world, truth) is the effect created by semiotic processes of interpretation, the universalist doctrine is being thoroughly anti-realist in its convictions. Conversely, realists in this context are those that believe in the stable meaning of texts, a meaning which good interpretations must approximate. In other words realists toward meaning, of the E.D. Hirsh’s breed, do not view meaning as dependent on interpretive contexts. Hence from this realist point of view, the question of interpretation is also a question of the comprehension relations established between text and meaning. From this realist point of view, the object of the text (that is, its meaning constancies) can therefore be considered the cause of interpretation: that is, being independent of any particular interpretive discourse, a meaning constancy triggers, guides and determines the results of the semiotic processes which the text undergoes. The possibilities for putting constraints on interpretation, while embracing neither a realist position nor the postmodernist doctrine, are not easy to formulate or defend. My claim is that various attempts to limit interpretation, that is, attempts to avoid realism while resisting interpretive universalism, equally suppress the object. I refer here to pragmatist and semiotic approaches that resist interpretive universalism but do not propose any notion of the real as a constraint on interpretation. In this paper I will suggest that in order to resist what Umberto Eco has called semiotic drift, that is, the idea that by entering language we enter an unavoidable hermeneutic circle where nothing can limit the endless game of signification, we need a non-Saussurian conception of the object. I will claim that something indeed resists interpretation and resist the mechanisms of signification. These are not and cannot be solid facts of the world; nor are these things prior or external to language, nor a constant behind a variety of textual expressions. Rather these are the things we assume we see through language but which no linguistic contingency can control. The concept of the Real, which I address in the last section of this paper, suggests that once we enter language it is precisely there that we must acknowledge the limits of signification, whereby some things resist meaning and resist interpretive activity. |
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2. Whatever lies beneath interpretation Poststructuralism is not the only way to avoid the exteriority of the object to language. In what follows I will briefly point out that even in contexts where an attempt is made to limit interpretation, this is done by ignoring whatever can be included in the notion of an object that escapes or transcends interpretation. Semiotic and some pragmatic outlooks on interpretation often claim to restrict interpretation through the solidity of something that lies beyond representation. The contributors to the volume titled The Interpretive Turn (Hiley et al. 1991), attempt to find ways of constricting the interpretative drift because they recognize the fact that once it is assumed that all human activity is trapped in a hermeneutic circle, all claims to knowledge but also to any positivist conception of inquiry are undermined. Peculiarly enough, the interpretive turn has made philosophical discourse much more popular in other fields of humanistic inquiry because in a way the recent philosophical preoccupation with interpretation legitimates methods practiced in the so-called interpretive disciplines, that is, disciplines like literary studies or historiography. Both in philosophy and in literary theory there have been attempts to restrict the interpretive drift and it is at this point that the idea of looking for something beyond (or beneath or prior to) interpretation comes up. This is in my opinion the main problem with these attempts: the object of the Real cannot be the thing in itself present outside or prior to language; the only way to formulate the relations between interpretation and the object is by viewing the latter as the 'future anterior' of the text: as what is discovered as the product of discourse but is in fact invented in order to define its cause. In the cases I survey below, in order to limit interpretation one must accommodate the possibility of non-interpretive interaction between man and his surroundings.In the same collection mentioned above, Richard Shusterman addresses the sweeping interpretive drift in a paper aptly called 'beneath interpretation', in which he suggests a way of seeing that not all understanding is interpretation. The fact that all understanding is corrigible, perspectival, even prejudiced and selective, does not mean that all understanding is interpretation. What lies beneath interpretation is a prior level of understanding or perceiving. Although this perceiving involves active structuring it is not interpretation since only the latter implies deliberate or conscious thinking. Shusterman wants to establish a definition of an unreflective experience with texts or with other objects, an experience that lies outside deliberately produced discourse. Although understanding and interpretation are continuous activities, they should not be identified with each other and the distinction should not be collapsed. Other attempts to limit interpretation allow a meta-interpretive factor that directs and constrains the interpretive practice. There are, for instance, attempts within literary studies to distinguish between theoretical or descriptive activities related to texts and interpretive activities. In a paper typically titled 'Beyond interpretation' Jonathan Culler (1981: 3-17) calls for acknowledging what he calls dialectical criticism: projects that take literary modes of signification as their object. The dialectical relation between a literary work and socio-historical reality, or between textual meaning and textual opacity is a way of talking about interpretation without aiming to interpret. In a no less programmatic statement against interpretive universalism, Umberto Eco locates the limits to semiosis in semiotic procedures. This is a move analogous to that of pragmatists’ who position a pragmatic criterion as a constraint on tunlimitedness of interpretation (like, for instance, the notion of a formative context, as proposed by Dascal and Dascal (1996). Following Peirce, Eco indicates that semiosis is limited because during meaning-attribution what is relevant to a given universe of discourse is gradually decided. That is, against the phenomenon of a sign becoming in turn the expression of a further content ad infinitum, the process is halted when contexts restrict the possible connections between signs and content. Note that dependence on context can serve postmodernists like Rorty in order to relativize rightness of interpretation to a infinitely variable contextual horizon, while for Eco this dependence on context should put a halt to semiotic drift. For Peirce as for Derrida there is no reality, a signified object outside the text. Yet the unlimited semiosis of Peirce, unlike the semiotic drift of Derrida, affirms a principle of contextuality which links interpretation to a constraining principle: the idea of a community. The reality which restricts semiosis is a signified pseudo-reality built up by the community; the real is hence an agreed upon opinion of a community as it is constructed by discourse itself. 'the transcendental meaning is not at the origins of the process but must be postulated as a possible and transitory end of every process' (Eco 1984:41). Culler, Shusterman and Eco are equally involved in an endeavor to draw the limits of interpretation. Shusterman talks about a non-linguistic activity that lies outside interpretation and hence outside the search for meaning: for him the limits of interpretation are drawn by what lies outside discourse itself. Culler assumes the existence of a meta-language that is also meta-interpretive (it tells us, for instance, what interpretation is) and Eco assumes the existence of an extra-linguistic entity , the community, which is in fact the creation of interpretive processes. These are proposed as criteria for determining the range of feasible interpretations in a given context. In other words, either interpretation is restricted by exiting language, or by assuming that certain linguistic activities, such as theorizing or describing, do not aim or are not destined to interpret, or we can limit interpretation by showing that the semiotic game is not unlimited. Hence, we can either limit interpretation by saying that signification is not unbound or we can limit interpretation by saying tha t significance is not all we are after, or by saying that not all our understanding is achieved by way of language. The difficulty in finding the limit to interpretation (the limit = what restricts interpretation but also what interpretation aims to reach) is the result of identifying interpretation with meaning, of viewing interpretation as comprehension relations. The object is never viewed as relevant to the game of language, and is hence not considered a candidate in explicating the nature of interpretation. Even if not everything is interpretation, even if there are ways of restricting the imperialism of interpretation, this is done by way of exiting language altogether or by way of showing that language allows some mechanisms that are not interpretive because language itself imposes constraints on its possible games. The object is relevant to the game only in so far as it is the object caused by discursive practice, the object which is the outcome of comprehension. This seeing without the object means that we never face in these contexts the object which causes discursive practice and is also caused by this practice; the object constituted so that it becomes, through its own constitution, a restrictive mechanism on interpretation. Seeing with the object does not mean however that we acknowledge the object as a retroactive illusion, nor as a thing seen as it really is. In the next section I turn to discuss the Real which enter the discussion in order to show that there is an alternative to viewing the object as either an illusion or as a presence. The object is not prior to language, nor is it the effect of a particular language-game. Rather the object is the product of the very entrance into the dimension of language and it is also the cause of this entrance; it is only then, through this conception, that we can see how an object starts to interfere with the structures of signification. |
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3. The Real: the object as product of discourse The concept of the Real originates in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and is a concept that is both frequently misunderstood and that draws considerable objection. The philosophical objection to or ignoring of the concept of the Real is not accidental: since Kant, philosophical thinking stays content with giving up on the thing in itself in the name of what Kant called transcendental categories, and which later philosophers call concepts, schema or theories, or simply language. In other words, it seems that philosophical thinking, much before any sign of postmodernism put its mark on it, has taken what lies beyond representation, the thing in itself, as accessible only by way of concepts and language schema; other than that, that is, what lies beyond conceptualization, is irrelevant to philosophical inquiry. Moreover, psychoanalytic thinking since Freud, views the unconsious as the most relevant sphere where the reality of the object is to be considered apart from or instead of the sphere of cogito and perception. For philosophers such a supposition goes against commonsense. Thus, although philosophy of language or mind can dwell on questions regarding the relations between the perceptual and the conceptual, the only object relevant to these discussions is the object of perception (Ragland-Sullivan 1986:184). Any other notion of the object that exceeds the rational control of the perceiving and speaking subject as is viewed by many as a chimera, as something about which philosophy has nothing to say. Yet, the Real of psychoanalytic theory refers precisely to what appears to be missing from philosophical discourse whenever it becomes obvious that the mechanisms of language in themselves are insufficient in explaining things like the success of a theory, the acceptance of an interpretation, or the realism of a representation. Note that although in the following section I make use of Lacanian formulations , it is not my intention to explore the concept of the Real from a psychoanalytic perspective. Rather, I submit the Real to the philosophical discourse that debates the relations between language and the object. The Real, I will suggest, is where interpretation, in its all-pervasive characterization in today’s intellectual thought, stops, and where the chain of signifiers, the endless semiosis surrounding language games, comes to a halt. But let us return to our preliminary elucidation of the Real. 'Un discours se fonde...dans la mesure - relative - ou il organise la place pour ce qui lui echappe' (Baudry 1991: 183), is a statement that bluntly expresses why the Real, as part of the question of the symbolic order (i.e., the law and structure of the language dimension in Lacanian thinking), cannot be reduced to any familiar problem formulated in semiotic, metaphysical or linguistic terms. The link between the Real, the symbolic and the imaginary, the three Lacanian orders, is what produces an object, expressed in Lacanian terminology as the object a.The objet a, in its relation to the Real and dependence on language, is presented as an impossibility which is yet essential to the very order of the symbolic. But what is the ‘object a’, or the impossible Real? Following Baudry above we see that the thing which escapes discourse is both an object and a letter (une lettre): it has a place in discourse, it appears as a signifier, yet it resists the order of language. Also, the ‘object a’ has many meanings and none: it is what discourse is about, but it is also a void, a hole in discourse. It is what is produced by the very structure of language but which at the same time escapes this structure. None of these definitions however exhausts the meaning of the ‘object a.’ Whereas object in philosophy is often the effect created by the symbolic process, the Real refers to that which is part of language but which also escapes symbolization. In Lacanian terminology the ‘object a’ is made present in language by means of a split or a bi-partition it creates in the symbolic order, that is in the structure of language and its signifying mechanisms. The object, that which categories were intended to conceptualize, cannot be integrated in fact into the symbolic because its signifiers are undifferentiated (unlike signs which are logically differentiated by presence and absence, positive and negative), it is, in other words, resistant to meaning. This is why the object has to interfere with the language designed to represent it from within language itself. In other words although we cannot see beyond our conceptual frameworks, this does not mean that the very notion of the object has become irrelevant to our thinking since the Real is not integral to the symbolic. The Real introduces a different conception of the object by presenting it as the product, the remainder of discourse: something that imposes its being through the order of language but which language all the same, cannot contain. In psychoanalytic thinking the Real represents an element of disharmony, a hole in the symbolic; it shows itself through crucial ruptures in the language of the subject, as well as in scientific knowledge and other symbolic systems. The question is, how can anything reveal itself by resisting symbolization? The problem lies in the fact that formations of the Real cannot be introduced through meaning but through what escapes meaning. It is sometimes claimed that the real appears in the symbolic through a signifier cut off from its connections with the signifying chain, and hence meaning cannot occur (Grigg 1998: 59). Note that unlike the ethics of deconstructive aporia which poses a moment of fracture or split as part of the process of symbolization itself, Lacanian psychoanalysis poses a distance between the Real and its symbolization and, as noted by Zizek, a well-acknowledged interpreter of psychoanalysis, the moment of fracture is caused by the surplusof the Real over every symbolization. This surplus is what I believe philosophy misses when it only refers to whatever symbolization can contain. To acknowledge this surplus means that we come to terms with a kernel resisting symbolic integration and know that it is in this kernel, which meaningfulness cannot inhere, that shows interpretation as involving more than comprehension. It might mistakenly appear that both Lacan and post-structuralists equally deconstruct the whole triangle including the subject, language and the world of objects. Rorty for instance tells us that all we have is a web of beliefs and let us forget both the external world and 'that dubious interface between self and world called perceptual experience.' No substantial identity or consistency can be said to exist in these separate domains and rather than introducing a stable reference point, they tend to dissolve once we attempt to describe their relations. Of course, even for Rorty, not everything dissolves: we do have things like beliefs or contexts, determined by purpose or convention, which can motivate our interpretations; but the meanings we choose to attribute are never more than an unprivileged option. Yet in psychoanalysis every symbolic structure is seen as structured around a void which in is in fact a particular object impossible to be known. Here not everything can be dissolved into discursive contexts: as much as we attempt to interpret the object, the Real always returns in the form of a symptom.. The symptom, that impossible presence of the Real in the symbolic structure is both a presence and an absence and is therefore what cannot be dissolved through interpretation. The place of the symptom in the analysand’s discourse is the same as the place of the ‘object a’ in language. Note that in earlier psychoanalytic theory the symptom is still presented as what is addressed to the analyst to reveal its hidden meaning. At this early stage in Lacan’s thought the symptom is produced with an eye to its interpretation. 'As an enigma the symptom announces its dissolution through interpretation' (Zizek 1991: 206) through the verbalization of its meaning. Later this dissolution through meaning was questioned and it was noticed that despite its interpretation, the symptom does not dissolve itself. Without going any further into the reasons elaborated by Lacan for this resistance to meaning, suffice it to note the relevant conclusion that the Real somehow persists and does not dissolve through interpretation. The Real does not exist in reality and therefore has nothing to do with the type of realism that refers to the thing in itself as prior to language. Yet, although the Real cannot be said to exist in reality, it must be presupposed in order to account for its structural effects on symbolic reality. See how far this is from the poststructuralist rejection of any preconceived structural effects on signification: these can only result from presupposing that at the end of signification there is meaning, an ultimate signified or an object. That is, for the poststructuralist language breaks when we mistakenly assume that it is directed outward, that symbolization is systematized by some transcendental truth. For deconstruction or other poststructuralisms, this is the cause of fractures in the symbolic reality, fractures which only reflect on the nature of language, on the fact that language is a unsubstantial substance that cannot be unified. The Real of psychoanalysis has no ontological consistency but nonetheless it has certain radical effects on symbolic consistency, effects that reflect on what lies behind the signifiers of language. In other words, in order to explain the failures of language we need, in the psychoanalytic context, what is not language - an object. What disrupts symbolization in this case are not methods of structuring language (according to logocentric presuppositions) but the surplus of the Real that escapes symbolization, which is why the object of psychoanalysis is seen as a product and not an effect of discourse. Having established this preliminary distinction between ways of diagnosing the structure of signification, let us return to the relations between poststructuralism and the object and see why the object here must be suppressed. Poststructuralism denies any distance between text and commentary, between interpretation and the interpreted, because the text itself is already a commentary. What we conceive as the textual object, claims Stanley Fish, is already the consequence of interpretation. In other words, the text and its interpretation actually take place on the same level since they continuously produce each other. Disagreement in interpretation is hence not caused by different ways of referring to an object that lies outside interpretation, but by different ways of employing interpretive strategies. This view of interpretation, a view that takes the form of the claim 'there is no metalanguage' reflects on why poststructuralism is bound to suppress the object. It is precisely this view that will enable me to further elucidate the concept of the Real. For poststructuralists, text and interpretation contain and produce each other. When Rorty for instance tackles the question of genres of objects and distinguishes between lumps which are the physical objects of natural sciences, and texts which are the objects of cultural studies, he proposes grounding this distinction on the notion of intention which is itself the effect of interpretation. That is, the difference between the two kinds of objects, texts and lumps, lies in the place of an authorial intention which can determine the meaning of the textual object but has no relevance to the lumped object. Yet, as much as we can agree on this difference, claims Rorty (1991a), it relies on no more than agreement: on what we know or believe about different things, whether these are texts or lumps, and it is constitutby nothing more than a set of agreed upon propositions that we use in order to describe texts and lumps. We are likely to say Tolstoy intended to portray a complex atmosphere in his novel but not very likely to claim that nature intended water to be H2O. Hence for Rorty texts and lumps cannot be described by a meta-proposition which takes them as objects independent of interpretation, nor is the language describing them disturbed by the object itself. Texts and lumps are models of discourse and not objects: they are created by interpretation and modes of description, and at the same time they motivate interpretive activity. This continuity between text or lump and their own reading as such, this lack of distance between the object and the way it is described, reveals in a way an idealistic view of language as self-contained, self-reflective and self-sufficient, as an imaginary means of reflecting language’s own essence. Under this conception of language, the object cannot but be suppressed. In an analogous move Stanley Fish also obliterates the distance between the literary text and the socio-cultural procedure that produces readings of the text as literary. For Fish the significant factor as we saw above is what he calls interpretive community. Agreement over objects testifies to the ability of an interpretive community to constitute the objects upon which its members can then agree. The way in which an interpretation accounts for the object is not the object’s way, but the way of an interpretive strategy presently recognized as valid. The poststructralist way of dealing with the object is by placing it in parenthesis. This is achieved by assuming an imaginary relation of undisturbed agreement between textual facts, interpretive practice and interpretive community. Both Fish and Rorty introduce what seems to me to be an extraordinarily smooth socio-cultural mechanism of agreement and solidarity: the interpretive act is undertaken and completed with no interference from what lies beyond textuality and with no residue. Similarly to the way in which the subject imagines, while looking at his reflection in the mirror, that the image and the ego are one, that they are perfectly matched, so in the imaginary world of poststructuralism the metalinguistic position can be occupied by the text itself and the hermeneutic circle circles round and round undisturbed. Against the poststructuralist way I will contend that in the same way as the subject is not contained by its image and in fact has the unconscious as remainder (residue), so the text is not contained by its interpretation but in fact has the object as its residue. Poststructuralists sought to avoid metalanguage by conveniently imagining that it too can be materialized as text. But to occupy a metalinguistic position is unproblematic only when the object is suppressed. But this is absurd as Zizek himself points out: 'metalanguage is not just an imaginary entity. It is Real in the strict Lacanian sense -- that is, it is impossible to occupy its position. But, it is even more difficult simply to avoidit. One cannot attain it, but one also cannot escapeit.' By claiming that there is no metalanguage the poststructuralist takes an imaginary position whereby he assumes metalanguage can be avoided. Poststructuralism is also the philosophical school that most explicitly denies the existence of an object-language. As I already indicated earlier, in denying the relevance of the object to language the poststructuralist is not alone, but this is a side point. In any case, in opposition to philosophical thinking, in psychoanalysis the proposition regarding the object is reversed: there is no language without object. Assuming a position in language where metalanguage is either contained or ignored and assuming a position where the object is suppressed - are both equally imaginary positions of the philosopher. Both metalanguage and the object are real and not imaginary once we enter the order of the symbolic. In conclusion I will claim that the impossibility of avoiding the object has to do with the fact that language and its signifiers are assigned the function of representation, of standing for what is by definition, not language (and cannot be made into language). The object is hence by necessity introduced into language as the reason for its constitution but also as an impossibility, as an absence that is yet to be made present, to be represented by the signifier. In the same way that a metalinguistic position is impossible but also unavoidable, so the encounter between language and the absent object is an integral part of the very idea of using language. An object that requires representation but cannot be made present, is what obstructs any imaginary ideas about infinite semiosis. Language consists of signifiers that both signify and resist signification, and it is in these signifiers that we should look for a notion of the object that can present an alternative to the philosophical object. Note that symptoms of this resistance can be the very things poststructuralists perceive as evidence to the fallacious notion of the transcendental signifier. Repetition, endless connotation, ambiguity are all points at which the structures of signification stumble over the object which is both part of language yet cannot be contained by it. |
Works CitedJonathan Culler “Beyond Interpretation” in: The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Cornell U.P., 1981.Marcelo Dascal and Varda Dascal, “The Limits of Interpretation”, in J.Rozenberg (ed.), Sense and Nonsense: Philosophical, Clinical and Ethical perspectives. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996, pp.203-233. Umberto Eco, “Unlimited Semiosis and Drift,” in: Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Indiana U.P., 1984. Umberto Eco The Limits of Interpretation. Indiana U.P., 1990, p.40. Stanley Fish, Is There A Text in This Class?.Harvard U.P., 1980. D.Hiley, James.F.Bohman and R.Shusterman, The Interpretive Turn. Cornell U.P., 1991. Richard Rorty, “Texts and Lumps” in Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Cambridge U.P. 1991. |