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Nov. 13th, 2003 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaSnippage from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
black_dog (in italics):
(Edited--put behind an LJ cut because reallyreallylong--apologies!)
The best books do open a new imaginative world to a reader, excite them with an expanded sense of possibilities, and this perhaps engenders a complicated reaction in the reader: first gratitude for the gift, a sympathetic racing of the imagination among the possibilities raised by the book. But that's followed, perhaps, by a wish to be co-creator
Yes--that is exactly what I had in mind. Some of us might even say that the reader is by nature a co-creator. (*Thumbs nose at anti-theorists*) But however much the reader may wish to assume or share (even usurp) an authorial position, it isn't possible, beyond a limited point. And even if we could, we would still be unsatisfied, because the desire of the reader for More Book is insatiable. The cleverest authors are those who know how to stir that hunger over and over. (Witness the children who read HP 10 and 15 and 20 times, as my far-from-gullible nephews have done.)
RE ... locating the motivation for fanfiction in this tension -- in reader's desire to directly appropriate a story that has been important to them, to rebel against the haughtiness of the lover/author and insist on the validity of his or her own imaginative reaction to the materials. I'd like to think further about two of your points: first that the "transgressive" nature of this appropriation is responsible for the attraction of fanfiction to transgressive themes, and second that "open" readings are a legitimate subversion of the power position of the author.
I would say that the desire to own the text is both a desire to rebel against the power of the author *and* a desire simply to own something of great value. (If we could eat the Mona Lisa in order to possess it, we probably would.)
In both cases, I think that rather than categorizing transgressive readings as "primary," I'd almost prefer to locate them as one point on a range of possible responses.
A flexible continuum is always better than a set of rigid categories.
So I think it's legitimate to rewrite canon in a way that spites or defies or merely riffs on the original author, but it's also legitimate to look for canon validation of an original insight, and it's yet again legitimate to make canon at least provisionally normative, and try to work strictly within its bounds.
Indeed. In the democracy of reading, there are few kinds of reading that are illegitimate, though some may irritate the original author more than others. Which is why one can really go to town with a dead author, like Shakespeare.
We could try to identify "inappropriate" or "illegitimate" readings of HP (including fanfics). I myself have little use for the ones involving squidsex. There is something to be said for drawing a line, and saying: No, that is too far removed from what we understand of the author's intent; it injures the original book to abuse it so. But there are two problems with such lines:
1) you will draw yours in a different place than I draw mine. So the correct line will be drawn only when I am king of the world. This is true, of course, for all lines and all books, not just HP.
2) It does not, in fact, injure the book if other readers abuse it. In the case of JKR, there are some 5 million+ intact copies of the original, safe and secure from all attempts to get Harry into bed with Draco.
Not that I think you are advocating such firm delineations. But the principle is a tricky one. Better, perhaps, to say that some interpretations stick close to the text, while others are a form of fiction--something between fanfic and critical assessment.
[snip]
... it would not offend me at all, for example, to hear you say that depending on the background of the characters, homosexual attraction, especially unexpected attraction, has a unique ability to code transgressiveness, to upend identity and call expected social roles into question. That's just true to experience, I think.
Fair enough. As a trope it may be a little overused by now, but the idea is still a fertile one. I especially like your earlier phrase, that, traditionally, "homosexual experience was defined by an oscillation between concealment and coded revelation." That is a spectacular formulation, which I intend to steal at every opportunity. (More on Oscillations later.)
You further said that "the flashing of this signal can feel like an erotic act itself, a directly sexual tease." And that is as good an example as I can imagine of the erotic power of the text. Any text that captivates the reader's mind.
You then ask: "Is there a correlation between being drawn to their "transgressiveness" and being deeply unsatisfied with JKR?"
Here I have to say that I am not, myself, unsatisfied with JKR, or (for the most part) with canon, so you are taking the idea of the function of transgressiveness in a new direction here. It may bear fruit, but I think the correlation you draw is perhaps a little too schematic, or programmatic. I should try again to read Underwater Light and Love Under Will--the truth is that I haven't gotten far with either of them. There is clearly an impulse in fanfic to "adjust" those aspects of canon that we wish were different--not because they are badly drawn, but because we want what we want, and JKR does not always choose to satisfy us.
The most obvious case in point being the death of Sirius, which happened too soon, or should not have happened at all, or should have happened differently, or whatever. How many new Sirius/Remus fics blossomed after OoP was published?
I wonder, really, if "transgressiveness" and an inclination to "open" reading are more highly correlated with each other than with any particular rejection of JKR's world.
Yes, I think so.
To return to your metaphor of author and reader as OTP, JKR may be encouraging a relationship that is explicitly a sentimental education, that is meant to empower the "subordinate" lover's freedom to undertake future emotional adventures, in a no-regrets kind of way.
That is crediting me with more than I had thought of, but I like it. If the OTP is reader/book, then every book is, in a sense, a picaresque novel of sentimental education--the education of the reader, of course. We poor dumb Candides are led Shandily by the nose through the book, falling hopelessly in love with it, chapter by chapter, and learning, ruefully, that the moment the hero and heroine (or other hero) fall happily into one another's arms, we are doomed to be abandoned.
To me, this explains the power of the romance genre--and by romance I mean everything from the cheapie Harlequins in the supermarket to War and Peace and Antony and Cleopatra. It explains why nearly all fanfic is preoccupied with Harry's love life, despite the fact that in canon he has none (yet).
This morning I wrote an absolutely stunning, witty, incisive response toblack_dog's earlier comments on slash-friendly codes, as well as some further pursuit of ideas floated by chresimos and sistermagpie. I am pretty sure it was the cleverest thing I have ever written in my life; which is to say: LJ erased it.
Will try again tomorrow.
black_dog (in italics): (Edited--put behind an LJ cut because reallyreallylong--apologies!)
The best books do open a new imaginative world to a reader, excite them with an expanded sense of possibilities, and this perhaps engenders a complicated reaction in the reader: first gratitude for the gift, a sympathetic racing of the imagination among the possibilities raised by the book. But that's followed, perhaps, by a wish to be co-creator
Yes--that is exactly what I had in mind. Some of us might even say that the reader is by nature a co-creator. (*Thumbs nose at anti-theorists*) But however much the reader may wish to assume or share (even usurp) an authorial position, it isn't possible, beyond a limited point. And even if we could, we would still be unsatisfied, because the desire of the reader for More Book is insatiable. The cleverest authors are those who know how to stir that hunger over and over. (Witness the children who read HP 10 and 15 and 20 times, as my far-from-gullible nephews have done.)
RE ... locating the motivation for fanfiction in this tension -- in reader's desire to directly appropriate a story that has been important to them, to rebel against the haughtiness of the lover/author and insist on the validity of his or her own imaginative reaction to the materials. I'd like to think further about two of your points: first that the "transgressive" nature of this appropriation is responsible for the attraction of fanfiction to transgressive themes, and second that "open" readings are a legitimate subversion of the power position of the author.
I would say that the desire to own the text is both a desire to rebel against the power of the author *and* a desire simply to own something of great value. (If we could eat the Mona Lisa in order to possess it, we probably would.)
In both cases, I think that rather than categorizing transgressive readings as "primary," I'd almost prefer to locate them as one point on a range of possible responses.
A flexible continuum is always better than a set of rigid categories.
So I think it's legitimate to rewrite canon in a way that spites or defies or merely riffs on the original author, but it's also legitimate to look for canon validation of an original insight, and it's yet again legitimate to make canon at least provisionally normative, and try to work strictly within its bounds.
Indeed. In the democracy of reading, there are few kinds of reading that are illegitimate, though some may irritate the original author more than others. Which is why one can really go to town with a dead author, like Shakespeare.
We could try to identify "inappropriate" or "illegitimate" readings of HP (including fanfics). I myself have little use for the ones involving squidsex. There is something to be said for drawing a line, and saying: No, that is too far removed from what we understand of the author's intent; it injures the original book to abuse it so. But there are two problems with such lines:
1) you will draw yours in a different place than I draw mine. So the correct line will be drawn only when I am king of the world. This is true, of course, for all lines and all books, not just HP.
2) It does not, in fact, injure the book if other readers abuse it. In the case of JKR, there are some 5 million+ intact copies of the original, safe and secure from all attempts to get Harry into bed with Draco.
Not that I think you are advocating such firm delineations. But the principle is a tricky one. Better, perhaps, to say that some interpretations stick close to the text, while others are a form of fiction--something between fanfic and critical assessment.
[snip]
... it would not offend me at all, for example, to hear you say that depending on the background of the characters, homosexual attraction, especially unexpected attraction, has a unique ability to code transgressiveness, to upend identity and call expected social roles into question. That's just true to experience, I think.
Fair enough. As a trope it may be a little overused by now, but the idea is still a fertile one. I especially like your earlier phrase, that, traditionally, "homosexual experience was defined by an oscillation between concealment and coded revelation." That is a spectacular formulation, which I intend to steal at every opportunity. (More on Oscillations later.)
You further said that "the flashing of this signal can feel like an erotic act itself, a directly sexual tease." And that is as good an example as I can imagine of the erotic power of the text. Any text that captivates the reader's mind.
You then ask: "Is there a correlation between being drawn to their "transgressiveness" and being deeply unsatisfied with JKR?"
Here I have to say that I am not, myself, unsatisfied with JKR, or (for the most part) with canon, so you are taking the idea of the function of transgressiveness in a new direction here. It may bear fruit, but I think the correlation you draw is perhaps a little too schematic, or programmatic. I should try again to read Underwater Light and Love Under Will--the truth is that I haven't gotten far with either of them. There is clearly an impulse in fanfic to "adjust" those aspects of canon that we wish were different--not because they are badly drawn, but because we want what we want, and JKR does not always choose to satisfy us.
The most obvious case in point being the death of Sirius, which happened too soon, or should not have happened at all, or should have happened differently, or whatever. How many new Sirius/Remus fics blossomed after OoP was published?
I wonder, really, if "transgressiveness" and an inclination to "open" reading are more highly correlated with each other than with any particular rejection of JKR's world.
Yes, I think so.
To return to your metaphor of author and reader as OTP, JKR may be encouraging a relationship that is explicitly a sentimental education, that is meant to empower the "subordinate" lover's freedom to undertake future emotional adventures, in a no-regrets kind of way.
That is crediting me with more than I had thought of, but I like it. If the OTP is reader/book, then every book is, in a sense, a picaresque novel of sentimental education--the education of the reader, of course. We poor dumb Candides are led Shandily by the nose through the book, falling hopelessly in love with it, chapter by chapter, and learning, ruefully, that the moment the hero and heroine (or other hero) fall happily into one another's arms, we are doomed to be abandoned.
To me, this explains the power of the romance genre--and by romance I mean everything from the cheapie Harlequins in the supermarket to War and Peace and Antony and Cleopatra. It explains why nearly all fanfic is preoccupied with Harry's love life, despite the fact that in canon he has none (yet).
This morning I wrote an absolutely stunning, witty, incisive response to
black_dog's earlier comments on slash-friendly codes, as well as some further pursuit of ideas floated by chresimos and sistermagpie. I am pretty sure it was the cleverest thing I have ever written in my life; which is to say: LJ erased it. Will try again tomorrow.
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-16 08:59 am (UTC)One interesting difference though, is in the distinction we make (or don't make) between the interpretation of a text and its approppriation for one's own imaginative purposes. I think your response consistently treats these two mental movements as interchangeable -- such as when you illustrate legitimate and illegitimate "readings" of JKR by using the example of "writing" about squidsex. To you, I think, appropriation and interpretaion are the same thing and are both subsumed under the heading of appropriation -- fully driven by the reader's agenda, subjective, unbounded.
Where we differ, and where I end up getting pointed to and stared at as "untheoretical" -- :)(it would be fairer to say that I am un-poststructuralist) is in seeing an interpretive challenge as something that is distinct from a literary appropriation and that is something that has its own value and its own rules.
One can find authorial intent to be a fallacy and still, like the New Critics, believe that the artifact itself constrains possible interpretations; one can focus on reader response and still believe that generating this response is a technique and can have an intentionality behind it. One can believe that intent may be ultimately undiscoverable in principle but can be approached convergently, though careful marshalling of argument and evidence.
The difference between interpretation and appropriation, I think, is not a normative matter but simply a matter of where one chooses to turn one's attention at any given moment -- I'm making no anti-theoretical claim except that an engagement with intent should not be excluded. I may well believe that arguments that repress both the author and the idea of deliberate artifice tend to tolerate a great deal of weak and sloppy reading, but we haven't established even that that itself is a bad thing.
Ultimately my interest in intent is grounded in a desire to get out of my own head. I think it is undeniable that in encounters with forceful, other people we somehow, by inference or observation, come into new insights that that the unconstrained play of our own imaginations would not have generated. I make no theoretical assertions about the process; I simply insist on it as a matter of experience. And I think that reading with the hypothesis of intent, reading with a suspension of appropriation and a deliberate if temporary submission to another sensibility, is a good mirror of this kind of interpersonal encounter, and has similar good effects.
I don't have a background sufficient to argue this point with appropriate reference to the body of relevant theory, but as always, anything I assert I assert for the pleasure of being (possibly) contradicted, and I welcome the chance to attempt to dodge your return fire!