When you read a book, do you spend all of your time dissecting the intentions of the author, using his historical and cultural context? If you said no, you’re like most people. If you said yes, you’re probably in college.
Most people read books however they want. They ignore the intentions of the author, historical and cultural context, and sometimes they can even ignore the other books surrounding the one book they are currently reading. And to be honest, as long as someone isn’t going around and publishing their reviews while pretending to be some great scholar (though there are plenty of those people), I think that can be perfectly fine. Why wouldn’t it be? (Okay, sometimes people twist it and ignore the author’s intent entirely—cancel culture, anyone?—but I’m talking about benign reinterpretation.) A book, article, or blog post has two sides to it: first, the author writing the thing, and then the reader, who has his own cultural and historical context. No one has a brain exactly like the author, and because of that, no one will interpret his ideas exactly the same way.
Readers of generally similar backgrounds, however, will interpret things in generally the same way. Students at secular universities might read The Iliad and decide that Achilles and Patroklus are gay, students at private Christian schools might read the same book and decide the relationship between the two men is platonic. And then there might be a third party who doesn’t care about Achilles and his sexuality and just wants to get the darn book over with because if I have to read yet another horrible death sequence. . .
I digress.
This brings me to our topic for today: Reader Response Criticism and its (possible) pitfalls.
When we last talked about Reader Response Theory, there was a pretty extensive discussion about Ideal/Informed Readers. Today, we’re going to be talking more generally about something called an interpretive community, one of the main points in Stanley Fish’s Reader Response Theory.
The basic idea of the interpretive community is that the readers, not the author, create the meaning of the text, because every single statement is contextual and will be interpreted different ways by different people. Interpretive communities are made up of people who share the same general interpretation of a work of art. To illustrate, let’s take the following sentence: “I never said she stole my money.” This sentence can mean several different things if different words are emphasized, but it would easily be understood if it were read in the context of a conversation. In the case of the interpretive community, it’s not the surrounding conversation that provides the context for specific works of art (e.g. novels and poems), but the reader’s own personal background and experiences. Remember those Christian students who think the Achilles/Patroklus bond is platonic? That’s right—they’re an interpretive community. Those students who believe that Achilles and Patroklus are totally gay? They’re an interpretive community too. Interpretive communities can be very small, like a group of friends who discuss literature together (the Inklings comes to mind), or it can be as big as a university, and everyone is in one.
I hear an objection. “Sometimes things are just easily understood without cultural context,” you say. “You don’t need to always be in an interpretive community.” After all, people of all kinds of different backgrounds tend to understand poetry written by soldiers in WWI—it doesn’t take any special ring of people to show you how that poetry is supposed to work. Fair enough. I may have been a bit misleading in my previous paragraph. Interpretive communities can be very small, but they can also encompass an entire language. Sure, these poems are easy enough to understand to the vast majority of people who can speak and write English. That’s an interpretive community, too, since they actually do have a relatively homogeneous background (at least, the native English speakers do). Obviously, there is diversity to this interpretive community, and it can become almost like a Russian nesting doll situation. See, for me, I’m part of the English speaking interpretive community, then the American interpretive community, then into a further subset that I would call “Christian,” and then. . . well, you get the idea. Basically, the communities have the potential to become concentric rings or venetian diagrams, with some bleed-through and overlap.
And this is where I see the potential for a problem, but this is also where I have to ask you to hang tight while we discuss one more idea. C.S. Lewis has an essay titled “The Inner Ring,” where he discusses the possible dangers of becoming exclusionary and closed off from others. He explains that every person has a special ring of friends, but the everyday politics that go on between people can create rings inside rings. Inside jokes and experiences can bond people in special ways, starting to make people feel like they belong to a special “club,” though the edges of the ring aren’t as defined as all that. There is nothing wrong with having friends—and even, to some extent, having a closer circle of friends within that ring. Besides, everyone wants to feel as if they belong. The problem is introduced when that Inner Ring preys on that desire. For a quick (and stupid) example (that Lewis definitely wouldn’t approve of, seeing as it’s way too obvious), in Mean Girls, Cady Heron becomes Regina George’s double. Cady ditches khakis and starts wearing miniskirts in an attempt to fit in with the “Plastics,” the popular girls who supposedly run the school. She changes who she is and gives up essential parts of herself to be in that group, which is the biggest problem of the Inner Ring. The ring of “Plastics,” however, is clearly defined. With life, you rarely find circles that obvious.
How does this relate to the interpretive community? Interpretive communities are pretty harmless, yeah? Well, usually. In my four years in college, though, I did pick up on a very subtle hint of “inner ringedness” while combing through scholarship and even when talking with friends. Scholars always tend to pontificate as if they’re right, which makes sense considering all the research and time it took to get where they are. The problem is, there are a few strains of academia that have difficulty with criticism, and the pesky thing about humans is they seem to have problems with criticism in general. Those kids who assume Achilles and Patroklus are gay? They’re missing out on an analysis of platonic friendship. Those Christian kids who argue they’re just friends? Well, they’re ignoring the fact that the Greeks didn’t mind a bit of homosexuality. Perhaps they aren’t so much interpretive communities as an interpretive ring.
But does that mean that every single person who belongs to multiple interpretive communities has to pay attention to what everyone else? No, of course not. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton: don’t be so open-minded your brains fall out. There are going to be some interpretations that are more correct than others, and there are going to be some interpretations that are so wrong that they should be dismissed completely. There’s no reason to accept everything everyone else says. How can one person go about being a part of an interpretive community and avoid the interpretive ring that begins to form later?
Perhaps we can pull a solution from Jordan Peterson, a popular psychologist and author. In his book 12 Rules for Life, Rule 9 states: “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.” This approach acknowledges that each person has their own preferences for their very own ideas and with the people who agree with them. It does, however, leave a bit of wiggle room for new thoughts—the small epiphany of, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that before.” Inner rings are basically inevitable and can be relatively benign, or they can force people to change their souls in order to be considered part of the group. Interpretive rings can be the same way, but with the added academic veneer. If they are allowed to form, interpretive rings can encourage people within to gaze sneeringly on the people without, as if they are too stupid to understand the “correct” point of view.
Now, obviously, the interpretive ring doesn’t exactly exist in scholarship. As far as I know, most people don’t pay much attention to Reader Response Theory, so they’re not very inclined to apply the ideas elsewhere. This might be completely misguided, but I have noticed a growing trend to close oneself off from people with whom they disagree, especially among the upper echelons of academia. In my own mind, this signals a shift from communities to rings, and it seems nearly inevitable. Don’t fall prey to the Inner Ring—there is no need to change your soul for others who don’t want to accept you. But don’t fall prey to the Interpretive Ring, either, by looking down on others and their ideas. Part of being human is being a lifelong learner.
Even if you dismiss others’ ideas outright, at least you know they exist now. In order to avoid shutting oneself off from other people and their ideas, it would be wise to listen to their arguments as arguments; don’t just listen in order to strengthen your own ideas. Remember, there’s no reason to stifle yourself just because the world wants you to remain inside an echo chamber. You’re just one person, after all, and it’s very unlikely you’re right about everything.
