Mini-Rant

[alixtii]

Why can't people distinguish describing a discourse and ascribing intentionality to those taking part in the discourse? To use a completely neutral example, if I say "All welcome mats are really about chicken beheadings," I don't mean "Everyone with a welcome mat is necessarily thinking about chicken beheadings." Indeed, it may be the case that no one with a welcome mat is thinking about chicken beheadings. That doesn't eliminate the possibility that the overall welcome mat discourse is linked in some way to the cutting off of chicken heads.

To reduce a discourse to the intentions of its participants is to eliminate the entire need for the disciplines of psychology and sociology, not to mention literary analysis, critical theory, and the various interdisciplinary approaches (feminist theory, queer theory, post-colonial theory, etc.).

You are not the discourse. I am not the discourse. We aren't even the discourse. We produce the discourse, and are constituted within it. There's a difference, no?

Comments

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Because "ascribing intentionality" is one of the basic principles underlying our understanding of how we communicate with each other? Gricean maxims and all that? "But I didn't mean it!" is rarely a convincing claim, at any age.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure I follow you; your last sentence seems to undermine your first two, or at least to render the basic principle underlying our understanding suspect. (Which I suppose it is.)

We don't do it often, but we are able to attribute to texts intentionality of their own, for example when we say "That doesn't mean what you think it means."