Just as the Structuralist
approach to literature emerged as a reaction to the stringent isolation of the literary
text by the New Critics, in the last thirty years several critical theories have arisen to
challenge the structuralist perception that meaning is delimited -- that author, text, and
reader are all manacled -- by metatextual sign-systems. In different ways, these
Post-Structuralist theories have sought to recover and appreciate anew
how writing and reading are dynamic and creative activities.
Because a variety of distinctive critical approaches can be labeled post-structuralist, it
is difficult to describe general post-structuralist qualities without oversimplification.
Still, most post-structuralists continue to use semiotics to describe and assess the
experience of literature. However, while structuralists generally see the sign-systems within a given work as unified,
consistent, and stable language codes, post-structuralists see a given work's sign-system
as inherently dynamic, even unstable. This instability allows both the reader and the
writer room for more creative activity and involvement in the delineation of meaning.
In general, the post-structuralist understanding of the dynamism of the literary
sign-systems can take two directions. One post-structuralist line of argument asserts that
the sign-system of a piece of literature is unstable because the privileged nature of a binary
oppostion (BO) inevitably shifts. The positive value apparently assigned to
one sign of a BO can reverse itself. This inversion or reversal of values at crucial
points in a text is called deconstruction.
A deconstructionist approach to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, for instance,
could explore how the positive value in the light/darkness BO of the novel shifts from
light to darkness. Light is initially associated with the good (with civilization), but by
the end of the novel one could argue that plunging into and accepting the "heart of
darkness" (thus rejecting civilization) becomes a positive learning experience. The
tendency of the sign-system of the novel to deconstruct itself thus explains or at least
illustrates how Kurtz remains a kind of hero for Marlow. For the deconstructionist reader,
this quality of the text may also reflect the author's deep-seated ambivalence toward the themes of the
narrative. Or the text's deconstruction of itself may point to the dynamic and pivotal
role that the reader has in shaping the meaning of the literary work, in deciding which
(if any) signs to privilege.
This new awareness of the opportunities of readership has been explored in a variety of
ways collectively labelled Reader-Response
criticism. For the reader-response critic, the sign-system of a piece of literature is
necessarily unstable because that system is in part shaped and determined by the reader's
recognition of and/or participation in it. Thus, different reader's respond differently to
a given text because, although they read the same words, those words may be part of
different languages (sign systems) for them. From this reader-response perspective,
literature essentially involves a discourse
between the text and the reader. Different assessments of this discourse have defined an
assortment of stances for the reader in relationship to the text, as well as distinctive
levels of power for the reader over the text. These types of readership include the ideal reader, the intended reader, the real reader, the implied
reader, and the resisting reader.
Among important studies of literature reflecting this reader-response focus are
Stanley Fish's Self-Consuming Artifacts (1972), Wolfgang Iser's The Implied
Reader (1974), Judith Fetterly's The Resisting Reader (1978), and Umberto Eco's
The Role of the Reader (1979). For more introduction to literature as a transactional discourse, see the critical
summaries of Wolfgang Iser's "Readers and the Concept of
the Implied Reader" and Louise M.
Rosenblatt's "The Quest for 'The Poem Itself.'"
Whatever the particular approach of post-structuralist critics, the aesthetic
experience of literature is essentially defined as a tension, dialogue, or debate over the
meaning and value of the "signs" that comprise the textual system of language.
Moreover, in this discourse the reader is not just an observer of but also a key
participant.
updated 07/30/99
