Cheerskep errs again....I think. Barthes distinguishes the work (the physical thing) from the text (its reading or interpretive 'reality'). The work exists as a physical entity. That is why in art history, for example, one begins by describing the work and it's more or less standard practice in all interpretation. Cheerskep wants to keep the old way of merging work and text. I agree that making the distinction is not commonplace but I didn't say it was; I said the distinction was well-known to sophisticated people (let's call them informed people in the arts). Barthes, more than most, fully understood the slippery nature of words and presumptions about their uses. That's why he takes us through a carefully modulated argument that I, arrogant student that I am, blithely summarized as hinging on a distinction between work and text. Cheerskep actually reinforces Barthes when he says that actors can express different intonations of a given text that enable different meanings to be made. Fine. But why not go to the next, more precise step, and say that all readers are actors and each of them creates the text they recite by examining the same work?
When you read a book, you are not proscribed from any interpretation of it. Which is ot to say that all interpretations are of equal quality, interest, use, or have what the pragmatists call, to ise an all-American metaphor, cash value. I think Barthes has done us a great favor by discriminating between the stability of the work and the instability of text. Also, no neurologist I've read tries to equate neurons or cognitive brain structures with thoughts. Neurons are ot thoughts. They are like the work, the physical stuff, and thoughts are the texts, what neurons enable and thus what are interpreted as thoughts. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Tom McCormack <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, November 15, 2012 11:30:35 PM Subject: Re: Error and quality On Nov 12, 2012, at 7:00 PM, William Conger wrote: > I think Cheerskep is very wrong in his assumption that 'sophisticated people' > assume a 'fact of the matter' or inherent essence re quality in art. If William took 'regularly' to be equivalent to 'always', I faltered when I said sophisticated people "regularly" assume that either "high quality" is present in a work or not -- in other words, that its "high quality" is either the fact of the matter or not. Instead of saying 'regularly', I'd have made my point clearer if I said sophisticated people "very frequently" assume this. Michael Brady, when he expresses astonishment that people can't discern the distinction between mediocrity and "high quality" in "art" does seem to me to be assuming that a fact of the matter obtains here. Another person might word it: "The fact of the matter is that this painting by Rembrandt is art and that one by Kinkade is not." In truth, I often have the feeling William himself believes this as he articulately extolls the virtues of Rembrandt compared to what he terms "kitsch'. I still think my final question has interest. Even a quality like "great replication" will be said to be a matter of subjective opinion. Some sophisticated people will claim there is greater "replication" in an Al Hirschfeld or Picasso distortion than in a meticulously "replicative" portrait. And if some standards for "replication" could be agreed upon, their status as necessities in a work for it to have "high quality" is mere stipulation. Stipulation is not creation. William writes further: > "I think sophisticated art folks are well aware of the poststructuralist turn in > the arts, now lasting over 20 years. Cheerskep's favorite trope is actually old > hat in the art and lit world. Quality must be a condition of 'text' and text is > separate from the work; text is always constructed subjectively and has no > ontological existence. I think the go-to guy here is Barthes." In that paragraph, I can honestly say I don't know what he has in mind when he says, "Quality must be a condition of 'text' and text is separate from the work; text is always constructed subjectively and has no ontological existence." It's easy to defend a usage of the word 'text' that in effect conveys exactly the opposite of William's assertion. For example, it's notorious that two different actors uttering exactly the same "text" -- that is, the same words -- can use utterly different tones, stresses, and inflections, resulting in an entirely different impact on the audience. One could go on to say that rather than being separate from the work, the text of a poem IS the work. So the text is never constructed subjectively by the audience. One could also reject the assertion that anything "constructed subjectively" has no ontological existence. Suppose I claim that an idea is an entity, a feeling is an entity, a pain is an entity. It seems to me unacceptable to assert none of these "exist" because they are only mental entities, not, say, material. Even the physicalist, who denies that consciousness is non-material, that is, who asserts that all those allegedly conscious entities the dualist believes in are really just pieces of material neural tissue in the brain, would balk at William's locutions. When William says that anything constructed subjectively doesn't exist, a great many neural scientists are likely to object to William's wanting to close down their shop. And so on. The point of my paragraph is not to insist William can't be thinking clearly. Instead it's my effort to call attention to how precarious it is to assume what one is saying is surely clear, and to be understood as I understand it, with no difficulty. I could demolish my own lines there just as easily. Barthes did not own the word 'text'. He might devise an erudite notion that he, Barthes, will have in mind every time he uses the word 'text'. And he might say this IS the text. But if he believes that, he doesn't know his own subject: How language works. > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Tom McCormack <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Mon, November 12, 2012 4:55:58 PM > Subject: Error and quality > > Underlying Michael's question -- Why is it people can't distinguish between > "mediocrity" and "high quality" in "Art" -- is the assumption that there is a > "fact of the matter" about the "quality" in any given work. > > "Sophisticated" people regularly assume there is such a "fact of the matter", > and usually their response to anyone who disagrees is a sneer: "Well, if you > can't see that WAITING FOR GODOT is high quality art, God help you." > > If such a savant does move beyond sneer to specifying alleged evidence, the > evidence always can be ultimately exposed as a stipulation and not a > mind-independent "fact of the matter". Even then the stipulation is usually > vulnerable to reasonable dispute. Take Michael's suggested example -- great > replication. When "is" something "great replication"?
