Robin,
You say:
“Once we deny that there is any possibility of misreading - that, at an extreme, "All readings of a text are of equal value" - then the possibility of dialogue leaves by the window.”
But why is dialogue important anyway? Shouldn’t enjoyment of a text by the individual matter more? I can see that this might put critics out of a job but is that a good enough reason to argue against it?
You say:
“At the end of the day, one (for the moment) line of a text rather than another must be printed, one set of stage actions performed, or one set English words chosen to represent an Italian original. When I was, in an earlier incarnation and for my sins, lecturing on literary theory, I'd pick a crux from the end of _King Lear_ to illustrate this. "Prithee undo this button" -- which button, Cordelia's or Lear's? A plausible case can be made for either, but on stage one must be chosen -- either the actor playing Lear gestures towards the dead Cordelia, imagining she is alive (the Lear Still Deluded reading), or he gestures towards his own throat (the Lear Asking For Help reading). The act of interpretive choice has consequences. It is, of course, possible to blur the stage business, by leaving the line ambiguous (which seems to me, in editorial terms, comparable to failing to footnote a problematic line of a text rather than, at the least, indicating there is a problem there).”
This relates to the practicalities of staging plays and editing translations. It bears no relation to the experience of reading poetical texts, and finding consensual meanings in them.
You say:
“This, among other reasons, is why I prefer Foucault's retort, in "What Is An Author?" to the text by Barthes which provoked Foucault's response. I hadn't realised, which seems possible from the tone of part of this discussion, that Barthes' "Death of the Author" could still be considered holy writ -- it's not as if Foucault's challenge is particularly new. It was, after all, first delivered as a lecture in 1969, two years after Barthes' piece appeared.”
You forget, though, that Foucault has been criticised for his inconsistencies by various critics. One in particular, Alexander Nehamas, criticises him especially for his assertion that the "author" only emerged during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of oppression. He also criticises Foucault's historical reductionism, since Foucault based his description of the emergence of the author by just treating one aspect of ownership, namely, ownership through penalisation. So your using Foucault to criticise Barthes is problematical at best.
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