The Reader, or: Imposture

Abstract

When one decides to leave the doxic conception of interpretation where the author is given pride of place, the temptation is to go, for reasons of symmetry, straight to the opposite pole of the communicational exchange and place the burden of meaning squarely on the shoulders of the reader. The reader’s response it is that gives meaning to the text, and interpretation is no longer reconstruction. The immediate danger is interpretive anarchism, and the immediate problem is the formulation of the constraints that limit the infinite proliferation of ‘anything goes’. The usual answers, which we have already sketched, are to be found in intertext, in tradition, in the mutual beliefs that foster convention, in all that goes under the name of encyclopaedia. Proliferation there is, but within strict limits: midrash is tolerant, but not unto Ettleson.