Stanley Fish Turned Careerism Into a Philosophy
“Meanings are not extracted but made.” How do we decide on meanings or their validity? It depends. On what? It depends on what you bring to a text: what your training is; what issues bother you; what “interpretive strategies” you use; and—in general—what “interpretive communities” you belong to.
This is a version of “different folks, different strokes,” which Fish basically admits. One group of scholars uses this approach; another uses that approach. “Those outside that community will be deploying a different set of interpretive strategies.” The question of which is true does not interest Fish. Disputes about what a text means devolve into group membership. How do you settle disputes? You don’t. You check the membership card. You make certain you are talking to an ally. “The only ‘proof’ of membership is fellowship, the nod of recognition from someone in the same community, someone who says to you what neither of us could ever prove to a third party: ‘we know.’ I say to you now, knowing full well that you will agree with me … only if you already agree with me.” Group thought and solidarity trump everything... More than fifteen years ago, Alan Sokal, a professor at NYU, pilloried the literary theorists in what became a famous put-down. He submitted to a leading journal of literary theory an article of high academic balderdash that heavily cited French pooh-bahs. After it was accepted and published, he revealed the prank.