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

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

Because most people can't grok that a work/text/parole can "be about" things other than what the author/creator/speaker intended?

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.)

Shhhh, you'll give them more motivation!

[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.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

You do still have to describe a mechanism by which welcome mats are about chicken beheadings. Somewhere back along that line of mechanism there has to be an intentional act on the part of a human being - it may be an act of interpretation or it may be some other act, but somewhere there has to be an intention, otherwise you can't say the mats are 'about' chicken beheadings, there is just some coincidence involving chicken beheadings. Of course, the mere act of you having discovered that there is that coincidence may be sufficient intentional interpretation that you can make the claim.

There is also the fact that most people lose interest in a discourse if intent is not obvious and near the surface, since intent is the only thing they have any control over. People like control.

[fandrogyny.livejournal.com]

Thank you for summarizing so neatly a problem I've been trying to describe to myself without success.