The Problem of Meaning

ATHERINE BELSEY declares that central of literary theory is the of What is this problem? Belsey does not say, though she does say that it is the issue on which empiricists, formalists, and poststructuralists all disagree, that it is not possible responsibly practice literary criticism unperturbed by this issue, and that decisions on the issue determine, quite literally, what constitutes the work of the critic. Now this sums up quite neatly the view I wish to oppose. I do not deny, of course, that many disputes in literary theory nowadays involve the term meaning. That they do is obvious. I do deny, however, that the various literary theories are usefully viewed as competing attempts to solve something called the of meaning. It is no accident that Belsey never clearly specifies a particular issue worthy of this awesome title, for there is no such thing. That is to say, there is no problem of meaning in literary theory for exactly the same reason and in precisely the same sense that there is no problem of separating the zoologists from the baseball players. Zoologists say that bats are winged beasts of the night. Baseball players say that bats are wingless inanimate instruments used for striking baseballs, water coolers, and pitchers who throw high and tight. But this does not constitute a disagreement. How can we tell? Only, I submit, by eliminating the term bat and seeing whether we can identify a common subject matter in the vicinity for zoologists and baseball players to debate. Needless to say, a given zoologist and a given baseball player might still be found to disagree about something. They might, for example, have a moral dispute over what sorts of bats one ought to be interested in-over whether zoology or baseball is a fitting pursuit for an adult in our day and age. Yet no one would be inclined to say that they would then be disputing the of bats. My proposal for literary theory was to eliminate mention of meanings and to see whether of meaning could still be formulated. I concluded that it could not. Belsey suggests that my proposal only moves issue sideways a little. If my paper implicitly concedes this, which I doubt, let me explicitly withdraw the concession here. My claim is that there is no issue of the sort Belsey seems to have in mind-nothing sufficiently identifiable to be moved a little this way or that. I happily concede that acceptance of my proposal

Epistemology · Meaning (existential) · American and British Literature Analysis · American Sports and Literature · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis · Philosophy