Notes toward a reflexive model of textuality

Reflexivity: Social Sciences. Applied to that which turns back upon, or takes account of, itself . . .esp. methods that take into consideration the effect of the personality or presence of the researcher on the investigation.

—Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed.

“A Reflexive Sociology means that we sociologists must . . . acquire the ingrained habit of viewing our own beliefs as we now view those held by others.”

—A. Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, 1970

“[T]he person producing the theory is included within the subject matter he attempts to understand. The usual term for this kind of approach is ‘reflexive’, a word which has begun to appear in the human sciences . . . but which has long been implicit in social theory.

—R. Holland, Self and Social Context, 1977

I. Pre-structuralist (positivist, essentialist) theory of a text (and of knowledge):

1. A text is the stable child of an author’s stable self. It has a stable meaning, a universal or essential meaning, one might say. The successful reader of a text is he or she who understands the essential meaning that it embodies. When we read a text we enter into a sort of communion with its author. A good text, the product of a good, intelligent author, “tells things as they really are.” This is, we believe, normal. It is common sense. It is a view pervasive among students.

And it is also wrong.

This model of text, and of knowledge, assumes a relation between words and things that is demonstrably false. This is why I begin some undergraduate courses with Edward Said’s introduction to Orientalism (1978). We need not think very hard to see that the great humanist writers of the European tradition when they turned to the “Orient” were not (no matter what they intended) actually writing about the Orient. Orientalism is a discourse that, from where we stand, from the position we are able to adopt, is demonstrably false, at least about the subject it intends to be about (and thinks it is about). Ezra Pound’s “Noh,” or Accomplishment is not nôgaku, clearly. Tsvetan Todorov’s analysis of French representations of Bulgaria is fairly determinative here (in Les morales de l’Histoire, 1991, The Morals of History, 1995). Professor Sadria’s question about T. W. H. Crossland in the May 31 seminar is precisely the point.

2. If it is true that all texts function in something like this way, that there are no essential and universal meanings, only contexts from within which meanings are constructed (and I want to say that this is the case), then several obvious questions present themselves:

•In what ways are our own texts and our own discourses false?
•Who profits from the belief that they are “normal” and “true”?
•Who is excluded (i.e., not allowed to speak) if they are taken to be (misunderstood to be) “normal” or “true”?
•What are the consequences of that exclusion?

II. Meaning

Structuralism: The elements of language (and of thought) acquire meaning not as the result of an essential connection between words and things, but as parts of a system of relations. In regard to a traffic signal, for example, no necessary relation exists between the signifier ‘red’ and the signified, ‘stop,’ no matter now ‘normal’ it feels. The insight of structuralism is that all signs are like this. And that all language, all representation, consists only of signs, not of essential connections between language and the world.

The so-called post-structuralist understanding adds to the equation the insight that signs themselves are not stable or, put another way, that just as no essential connection exists between words and things, no essential connection exists between signs and meanings. Meanings are dependent upon the context in which signs and texts are read. No central position may be established from which to judge the “true meaning” of a sign or, therefore, a text. The meaning of the sign and of the text exists in the context of its reading.

A recent Tokyo performance of The Merchant of Venice provides as case in point.

In the act of constructing a text an author assumes a reader who exists within the same relational system, but if the text is read by a reader whose meanings have been constructed in a different relational system the meaning of the text changes.

III. Toward a reflexive theory of text and of knowledge

1. All text has an inside (an us, a self, an included) and an outside (a them, an other, an excluded). In other words, all text is ideological, whether it is intended to be or not. Another way to say this is that all text is political, intertwined with structures of power, whether it is intended to be or not. Among the most basic of included / excluded dichotomies (or ‘oppositions’) is (included) those who accept the ideology, and (excluded) those who do not. Another is (included) those who are in no way harmed by, or who in some way profit from the ideology, and (excluded) those who are in some way harmed by it.

2. All text is a code, as well. Another of the basic included / excluded oppositions in any text is (included) those who understand the code and (excluded) those who do not. Texts are perhaps most powerful when the code is hidden, that is, when those who can decipher the code do not realize that it is a code. Another way to say this is that texts are at their most powerful when the them (the other, the excluded) is hidden.

IV. Establishing a position:

1. We cannot adopt toward a text an “outside position” that is not itself a (constructed) text, which like all texts has an “inside” and an “outside.” Another way to say this is that there is no stable “central” position (Christianity, Marxism, neo-liberalism, capitalism, democracy, Tokyo, Chuo University, this class) from which to view a text or a discourse. Each position is itself a constructed text and (representative of) a constructed discourse. Another way to say this is that each position is itself a set of codes that may be viewed from an outside position that is itself another text, another discourse, another set of codes, another “normal,” another “true.”

2. Questions that may be (and should be) asked of any text:

Who is representing what to whom?
Who are the included?
Who are the excluded?
Is the Other hidden?
Is the Other allowed to speak?

Particular questions that can be asked of a text you construct.

Who is representing what to whom? (From within which discourse are you positioning yourself? To whom are you speaking? To which discursive community do they belong?)
Who or what is excluded by your text? Who or what is the Other? What are the consequences of your exclusions?