Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§5.6 The Flight from History
the shift from author to reader, from reading behind the text to reading in front of
the text, from text as window to text as mirror. This hermeneutical shift is epitomised
in reader-response theory, which no longer sees meaning simply 'in' the
text, let alone in reference 'behind' the text, but meaning as created by the reader
in the act of reading. Texts do not make meaning; readers make meaning. Texts do
not dictate to readers; readers dictate to texts. In Stephen Moore's words, 'Prior to
the interpretive act, there is nothing definitive in the text to be discovered'. 144
Meaning is not in the past (when the text was produced) or in the text as an
object, but meaning is produced in the reader's present when the text is read
(Murfin, 142). For reader-response critics meaning is not a content in the text
which the historian simply discovers; meaning is an experience which occurs
in the reading process. 145
There is an obvious threat in all this to any ideas of canons for agreed
meanings. If all meaning is contingent to each individual act of reading, then it
would appear that every man, every woman makes his or her own meaning, and
there are no generally acceptable criteria to enable us to judge whether one reading
is good or bad, wise or foolish, or better than another. In postmodernism pluralism
is all. However, in the debate over reader-response theory two constraints
have been put forward. One is the perception of reader-response as more of a dialogue
between text and reader, where the text has to be 'heard' and listened to,
lest reader-response deteriorate into the straightforward manipulation of the text
to speak to the reader's agenda. In his debate with Stanley Fish, Iser in particular
wishes to maintain an objective status for the text, that there is a 'given' to be
'mediated': 'the "something" which is to be mediated exists prior to interpretation,
acts as a constraint on interpretation'. 146
The other is Fish's own recognition that reading is not a wholly isolated, individual
experience. In his most influential work, he has emphasized that any reading
is conditioned to at least some extent by the reading or interpretive community to
which the individual reader belongs. 147 This emphasis is fairly easily integrateable
with Hans-Georg Gadamer's emphasis that the interpreter and the act of interpretation
are themselves caught up in the flow of history, that historical text and inter-
144. Moore, Literary Criticism 121. See further 71-107.
145. G. Aichele, et al, The Postmodern Bible (New Haven: Yale University, 1995) 42,
citing R. C. Murfin, 'What Is Reader-Response Criticism?', in Heart of Darkness, ed. R. C.
Murfin (New York: St. Martin's, 1989) 139-47. See further Aichele 24-38.
146. Aichele, Postmodern Bible 41, citing W. Iser, 'Talk Like Whales: A Reply to Stanley
Fish', Diacritics 11 (1981) 82-87 (here 84).
147. S. Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities
(Cambridge: Harvard University, 1980).
95