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Hermeneutics and Post-Modernism: Can We Have a Radical Reader-Response Theory? Part I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Paul R. Noble
Paul R. Noble
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, Suffolk College, Rope Walk, Ipswich IP4 ILT
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Abstract

This paper argues that if Stanley Fish's postmodernist hermeneutics is correct then it has far-reaching consequences for Biblical Studies, because it licences radical reinterpretations that traditional approaches would consider inadmissible. The theory is then tested out by examining Fish's own attempts at radical reinterpretation. Following a methodological discussion of the criteria by which his exegesis should be assessed, a wide-ranging survey of Fish's examples shows that they consistently fail to support his claims, and that the nature of their failure suggests that his hermeneutical theory is seriously flawed. This is further proved by showing that Fish's theory entails an extreme form of solipsism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 419 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 In this article I will be concerned with (what I shall call) the ‘reader-centred hermeneutics’ of Fish's later (post-1975) writings, rather than his earlier ‘reader-oriented criticism’. I intend to discuss the latter in ‘Should Stanley Fish's Reader-Oriented Criticism “Catch On” in Biblical Studies?’ (forthcoming).

2 Thiselton, Anthony C., New Horizons in Hermeneutics (London: HarperCollins, 1992). For Thiselton's explanation of the ‘socio-pragmatic’/‘socio-critical’ distinction (which appears to be an interesting development of the traditional distinction between exegesis and eisegesis into a form more relevant to the current hermeneutical debate) see especially pp. 6, 7, 27f., 379; on Fish see especially pp. 515f., 537–50.Google Scholar A similar criticism of Fish has also been made by Jeanrond, Werner G., Text and Interpretation as Categories of Theological Thinking (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), pp. 112f.Google Scholar

3 See ibid. p. 549; I have removed Thiselton's italics from some of the quotations.

4 Moore, Stephen D., Literary Criticism and the Gospels: The Theoretical Challenge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 120–6.Google Scholar

5 Other scholars who regard Fish's hermeneutics as having important insights to offer biblical studies include Adam, A. K. M., ‘The Sign of Jonah: A Fish-eye View’, Semeia, 51 (1990), 177–91;Google ScholarBurnett, Fred W., ‘Postmodern Biblical Exegesis: The Eve of Historical Criticism’, Semeia, 51 (1990), 51–80;Google Scholarand Porter, Stanley E., ‘Why Hasn't Reader-Response Criticism Caught On in New Testament Studies?’, Literature and Theology, 4 (1990), 278–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See especially Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 318–21, 370;Google ScholarDoing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), pp. 14f., 26–9, 153–7, 322–5, 347–51, etc.Google Scholar

7 Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 26.

8 Ibid. p. 351; cf. pp. 467, 522, 524, and Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 370.

9 E.g. Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 143, 323, 344, 347f, 350, 437f.

10 Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 322.

11 Ibid. p. 330.

12 See especially Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 344f.

13 I am grateful to DrDavies, G. I., and to DrBrett, Mark G., for their comments upon earlier versions of the material in this section and the next.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Fish, , Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 174;Google Scholaralso his article ‘Fear of Fish: A Reply To Walter Davis’ (Critical Inquiry 10 (1983–1984). 695–705), pp. 700–2.Google Scholar

15 Ibid. P. 330.

16 The contrast that Fish makes between poems and assignments in this respect (ibid. p. 330) turns on a confusion between what is permissible in reading an assignment-text and in carrying out the assignment.

17 See Fish's illuminating discussion in Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 120–32.

18 Ibid. p. 324.

19 Ibid. p. 327.

20 It has also been criticized by Scholes, Robert, Textual Power: Literal Theory and the Teaching of English (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 156–61, andGoogle ScholarDavis, Walter. A., ‘The Fisher King: Wille zur Macht in Baltimore’ (Critical Inquiry 10 (1983–1984), 668–94), PP. 670f. Neither Scholes nor Davis, however, adequately shows how thoroughly untenable Fish's interpretation is; nor (more importantly) do they sufficiently consider the methodological issues involved, nor grasp the implications that Fish's failure at this point has for his broader project.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 E.g. ibid. pp. 322, 327, 329.

22 See Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 345–9; Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 103–10, 186.

23 Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 347; cf. the supposed parallel he draws between Augustine's typological interpretations and ‘any [other] set of interpretive strategies’ in ibid. p. 170.

24 Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 113; Fish, of course, utterly rejects such positivism.

25 Ibid. p. 194.

26 Cf. his comments in Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 281–8, 297–8, 307–10; and Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 127–9, 184–5, 295–6, 358–9.

27 Fish would doubtless object that I am begging the question here because my appeal to ‘the given’ is a classic example of the positivism that he rejects. I shall consider this issue in detail in Part II of this article; suffice at this juncture to say that I reject the hard-and-fast dichotomy between ‘the given’ and ’the interpreted’ which gives Fish's charges of positivism their force.

28 Scholes, Robert, Textual power, p. 158;Google Scholarpace Davis, who seems to think that Fish's directing his students to interpret the text as a poem was sufficient to ensure that it would be so interpreted (‘The Fisher King’, p. 671).

29 Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 9.

30 Cf. Fish's example from Some Like It Hot (see Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 295). The joke in this line, of course, is that dismissing Lemon's ‘argument’ as ‘[an] irrelevance’ is absurd; but absurd interpretations are really of no use to Fish.

31 For examples, see Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 345–9; Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 76–8, 104–9, 186.

32 Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 346.

33 For some trenchant comments on the severe problems that Fish would encounter if he tried to carry through the reinterpretation he envisages of Pride and Prejudice (Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 347f., 349f.) see Davis, Walter, ‘The Fisher King’, pp. 683–7. Fish's response (‘Fear of Fish: A Reply to Walter Davis’) does not address these points.Google Scholar

34 Chapter 12 of Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 247'93; for other examples see ibid. pp. 106, 186–93; Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 272–4, 339–42. For some interesting commentary see Booth, Wayne C., “A New Strategy for Establishing a Truly Democratic Criticism”, Daedalus 112 (1983), 193–214.Google Scholar

35 Ibid. p. 250.

36 Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 180.

37 See ibid. pp. 255f.

38 Ibid. p. 288.

39 Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 305–9; for further examples see ibid. pp. 274–7, 281–92; Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 37–42, 128–9. ‘Jacobs—Rosenbaum…’ also belongs in this category.

40 Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 129; what eventualities ‘mutatis mutandis’ is intended to cover is left totally obscure.

41 Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 173, italics added; cf. pp. 178f.

42 As Fish himself puts it at one point: ‘[W]hatever is invoked as a constraint on interpretation will turn out upon further examination to have been the product of interpretation’ Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 512.

43 See Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 321; cf. Lentricchia, Frank, After the New Criticism (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 148.Google Scholar