Usually by text, we mean anything in written form. In the modern contexts anything can be a text. Text need not be written. Stanley Fish in his epoch making work ‘Is There a Text in This Class?’ breaks all conventional notions about the ‘text’. No one has raised more serious questions against the existing notions about text than Fish did. Fish threw a stone into the water the waves of which has not yet stopped.
For every idea there needs to be an inspiration. Here the ‘Newton’s apple’ came from a student. She was a former student of Fish. She asked one of his colleagues a simple question on the first day of a new semester. This was her question: “Is there a text in this class?” Suddenly the professor replied, “Yes it’s the Norton Anthology of Literature.” How innocent? The student then corrected the teacher. “No, no. I mean in this class do we believe in poems and things, or is it just us?”
We don’t know whether any student had asked a question like this in reality or not. However the question itself proves really helpful to define Fish’s argument. According to Thimothy Bagwell, this is an “example of language’s inherent ambiguity.” I said the professor was innocent to answer like this. But how far is it true? From the professor’s perspective he said the correct answer. Because he took the word “text” in its ordinary sense. But the girl intended to ask the professor of his position in this issue. We can interpret the question in a different way and give a different answer.
So Fish says that this is what happens mostly in the case of texts. Texts produce multiple meanings. This is the same when it comes to defining the text also. We will be in the position of the professor who gave an innocent answer. And this is the danger of defining text. If a text can be interpreted in quite different ways, then it will be even more difficult to define what a text is. However the text has so many dimensions.
Thus different scholars of different times interpreted ‘text’ in different ways. Socrates never wrote anything but his disciples like Plato wrote and kept his philosophy for future generations. Plato himself was not ready to attribute any truth to the ‘text’. Because he considered them to be unreal, twice removed from reality. Epicurus’s concept about knowledge was that “"if several theories are consistent with the observed data, retain them all". However he wrote 300 books but we have only three letters of him because all other works had been burnt by his opponents! But we often forget this simple fact about the ‘text’ that it can be burnt!
Indians too had this tradition of orally transmitting the text to the next generation. Most of our ancient literature was preserved and transmitted to the next generation orally. It was only later that they came to be written. The westerns had the tradition of dialectics in the field of philosophy. That is the conflict of concepts and formulation of new theories. This was done as a clash of thesis and anti-thesis. But then a new theory will be formulated from the synthesis of this thesis and anti- thesis.
We too knew this dialectical method. But from Gupta dynasty onwards, we cannot see any progress in the field of philosophy. Instead of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis, we see thesis, interpretation(known as ‘Bhashya’), and interpretation of interpretation(known as ‘Teeka’). So we cannot see any new philosophies emerging here during the middle ages. Our six systems of philosophies have been formed before the Gupta dynasty. But after that no new systems of philosophies emerged in India. (Here we do not consider the philosophies of the Bhakti poets and Renaissance leaders as totally new.)
And we know our ancient literature only through interpretations, especially that of Sankara and his desciples. This continued even in the modern age through Sri. Aurobindo and Dr.S.Radhakrishnan. Because of their interpretations, our land came to be known as a land of idealism and the East vs West was considered as a conflict between idealism and materialism. However recently there had been some changes in this notion. We don’t really know what Upanishads or Brahmasutra said but we know what Sankara said about Upanishads and Brahmasutra. The same is true with Gita also. So this shows us another aspect of text. The reader doesn’t have the freedom to interpret the text as he likes or he is unable to understand the text as it is. Because when we read Upanishads or Brahmasutra, we read it with the accompaniment of Sankara’s commentary. Then we understand it from the viewpoint of “Advaitha Vedanta”. So the reader doesn’t have any freedom to interpret the text in his own ways. This is in complete contrast with what Fish said. So I would like to state that ‘the text’ not ony produces different meanings, it sometimes restricts the readers from producing a different meaning.
So it will be nice to look at the issue of conditioning of the text through interpretations. Also a study on some of the texts from Indian mythology will prove helpful in understanding how text changes over the ages. We know how the meaning of the text changes depending on the viewpoint of the reader. So here I would like to state that not only the meaning, the text itself changes through the ages. And I would like to illustrate this taking some examples from ‘Myth and Relity’ by D.D.Kosambi especially from his comments on the transformation of the myth of Lord Siva and ‘ Bhagavad Gita’. Because of the limitations of space I cannot write about ‘Bhagavad Gita’, so I have to conclude this showing some pictures from ‘Myth and Reality’ that shows how the image of Lord Siva changed from time to time and reached the present concept.
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1)A three faced figure of Indus valley civilization which resembles Lord Siva.
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2) Killer of Mahishasura (Idonesian Painting, A.D 8th Century)
3) Parvathi trampling the dead Siva! (Kalighat painting)
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4) Lord Siva with family and friends (‘Sivapanchayathana’)
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5) Siva as Nataraja (A bronze statue from the South)
6) A dancer with mask (A French Ice-age painting)
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7) Dancing Ganesa (son of Lord Siva, A bronze statue from the South)
8) A monstrous dancer of France in the Ice Age
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8) An emblem from the Indus Valley Civilization. It is a combination of a man and tiger.
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9) Ardhanareeswara (Part of the body of this God is that of a woman. It is believed that this is a combination of Lord Siva and Parvathi)
All these pictures contributed to the making of the concept of Lord Siva. We can see how the image of Lord Siva(text) had changed during centuries and reached the present state.
I would like to conclude this by saying my concept of text.
1) Text is something that represents a reality, concept, etc.
2) It can be interpreted in different ways.
3) Text reflects the ideas, views, beliefs, and concepts of the society in which it is produced. In short it has an ideology (or ideologies) in it.
4) It can absorb new meanings when it passes through the ages.
5) Thus it can have newer meanings.
6) Ultimately it is not only the reader that determines the meaning of the text. Along with the triangle of text, reader, and author at least one more element should be added – ‘History’.
7) Thus reader is not a God.
Bibliography
Kosamby,D.D. Myth and Reality. Trivandrum:Mythri Books,2006.print.
Bagwell, J.Timothy. “Who’s Afraid of Stanley Fish?”. Poetics Today. Duke University Press, Vol.4,NO. 1 (1983). 27/10/2011.
Culler,Jonathen. “Stanley Fish & the Righting of the Reader”. Diacritics. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 5, No.1. (1975). 27/10/2011.
W, Edward Said. “Response to Stanley Fish”. Critical Inquiry. The University of Chicago Press, Vol. 10, No.2 (1983). 27/10/2011.
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