Fish—“How to Recognize a Poem When You See One”

With the use of an anecdote from his teaching career, Fish argues that the meaning of a text is neither objectively embedded in stone within it, nor subjectively placed on it by individual readers, but rather that “interpretation is not the art of construing but the art of constructing. Interpreters do not decode poems; they make them.” To illustrate this point, Fish relates how he tricked students in a class on 17^th century English religious poetry into believing that a list of names he had written on the board for a previous class’s assignment was actually a poem. As soon as he told them this, the students immediately began to ascribe symbolic meanings not only to the names themselves, but to the actual appearance of the list on the board, eventually creating a very sophisticated interpretation of the “poem.” (Professor Shea had us play around with this idea in his “Stylistics” class where we took pieces of prose and recast them as poetry, and vice versa; although we didn’t interpret the texts we “created,” it did cast light on the issue of form creating meaning. This is a very entertaining exercise, by the way).

Fish further points out that although it could be argued that the list of names was actually an assignment, even the “objective” nature of an “assignment” is a created one—one that has to be learned. It is not instinctive knowledge even to be able to read a list of names on a board and understand their meaning; “one must be already equipped with the concepts of seriality, hierarchy, subordination, and so on…” These are all concepts we take for granted, just as we take it for granted that a poem has certain characteristics we can recognize, and that we can identify one text as a poem, and another as prose. “The conclusion, therefore, is that all objects are made and not found, and that they are made by the interpretive strategies we set in motion.” Further, “if the self is conceived of not as an independent entity but as a social construct whose operations are delimited by the systems of intelligibility that inform it, then the meanings it confers on texts are not its own but have their source in the interpretive community (or communities) of which it is a function.” Thus, Fish addresses the opposition between those who argue that all interpretation is subjective and those who argue that it is objective, by proposing that this is a false dichotomy—there can be no separation of subject and object because we all share common ideas and assumptions about texts: not just how to interpret them, but their very existence and/or acceptance as interpretable texts. (It could be said that Fish argues that we discover the meaning of texts neither outside nor inside of ourselves, but that we encounter texts much as we might an acquaintance with whom we strike up a conversation. Although there are some rules about the conversation we can take for granted, we don’t know exactly where it might lead or what information we might garner, and we create the conversation together, like a dance).

The relevance of Fish’s thesis to genre seems obvious; we create genres as a way of making meaning, using shared assumptions and concepts. Even the concept of “genre” itself is an assumption—is there a reason we need to classify texts? We assume there is a good reason to define a genre, but as soon as we start to do so, as we did with fairy tales, it becomes obvious how very slippery categories are, and we can see how the boundaries of a genre can start to dissolve. When this happens, anxiety sets in. We need to get it right when we write a fairy tale (or a novel, or academic paper, scientific report, etc.). For instance, this from Wikipedia’s article on fairy tales: “Although the fairy tale is a distinct genre within the larger category of folktale, the definition that marks a work as a fairy tale is a source of considerable dispute.”

One of the things I liked about this article is how Fish obligingly alludes to different champions of objective and subjective interpretation (Abrams, Hirsch, Reichert, Graff; and Holland, Bleich, Slatoff, and (sometimes) Barthes)—where the issue appears to be “will texts be allowed to constrain their own interpretation or will irresponsible interpreters be allowed to obscure and overwhelm texts[?],” (the question is that of the former group of proponents of objective interpretation) enabling me explore both viewpoints without confusion or fear. I think by reframing the issue and eliminating this dichotomy, Fish gives the reader permission to relax into interpretation without a sense of transgressing some norm (which is ridiculous on the face of it—is it possible for anyone to be an “irresponsible” interpreter? Whose needs is s/he betraying?). (I could argue (as I seem to do in my question #4 below) that Fish actually does open up the door to “irresponsible” interpreting of texts (since he tells us we are bound by implicit concepts from which we cannot free ourselves even if we wanted to because without them we could not make any sense of a text, irresponsible or no, and therefore we are free to pretend that we wander willfully through a text while at the same time knowing that we will never actually be able to stray from a predetermined path—somewhat like the safe thrills we experience while riding a roller coaster or watching an action movie) but I have to admit that the idea of “irresponsible interpreting” fills me with joy, and so my argument would be suspect).

Questions:

1. What is the fear of solipsism and the “unconstrained self” that Hirsch and others feel (i.e., “irresponsible interpretation”) based on and what is at stake in defining these terms and concepts (see page 1029)?

2. If we all see texts through a lens of shared assumptions and concepts, is there any interpretation that is unique and/or original?

3. If assumptions and shared concepts change over time (which I think they do), doesn’t this imply that texts also change their meanings? And if this is true, doesn’t this imply

4. That there is a certain meta-subjectivity to interpretation? Or is this merely an academic quibble, because isn’t the final question

5. What is the use of the classification of texts in order to facilitate or initiate interpretation? Or put another way, why is it important (or is it?) to classify texts, since Fish’s article implies that these classifications are fictitious or illusory? But apparently this isn’t the final question, because I also ask myself

6. What is at stake in classifying texts as one thing or another? In other words, why is there a dispute about whether a text is a fairy tale or not, or whether it is poetry or prose? Is it because without a definition of what kind of text it is we are reading, we don’t know how to interpret it? Or whether it is worth our time to interpret it at all? Did Fish’s students feel they had wasted their time in interpreting a list of names as profound religious poetry, or did the very act of interpretation create meaning that was perfectly valid, true, and relevant to their lives in some way?