Problems of Literary Theory

Problems of Literary Theory: The Problem of Meaning
Author(s): Catherine Belsey

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 14, No. 1, Problems of Literary Theory (Autumn,
1982), pp. 175-182
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Discussion
Problems of Literary Theory: The Problem

of Meaning
Catherine Belsey
O N THE EVIDENCE of this issue of New Literary History, the central

problem of literary theory is the problem of meaning. Even
where meaning is not the central question posed, as in Wil-
liam C. Spengemann's essay on nineteenth-century English, a more
than marginal concern is the matter of definitions, how they are ar-
rived at and what they imply. Three of the essays problematize
meaning explicitly; others take for granted quite distinct assumptions
about meaning-its location, its importance, its use.
This is no coincidence: to this important extent this collection of
essays seems to me exactly representative of the current problems of
literary theory. What divides empiricist criticism from formalism, and
both from poststructuralism, is centrally a debate about meaning; and
this debate cannot be resolved because what is at stake is a contest
between the different theoretical frameworks within which each
group conceptualizes language, subjectivity, and the world.
The problem of meaning matters because there is no neutral pla
from which to practice literary criticism unperturbed by this par
lar issue. To ignore the theoretical question is simply to fall back
unexamined assumptions. Even Stein Haugom Olsen, who wan
to stop looking for meaning in order to concentrate on literary a
preciation and human interest, would have to concede that what
meaning is taken to be is likely to form an element in any assessm
of the value and human interest of the text. To talk about readin
rather than meanings, as Jeffrey Stout suggests, is only to move
issue sideways a little, as he himself implicitly concedes.
The centrality of the quest for meaning in critical practice mat
too, because decisions on that issue determine, quite literally,
constitutes the work of the critic. Olsen argues that the proper ob
of criticism is the competent evaluation of the text and the uncov
of its concern with questions of how to live. In Britain we have b
progressively taken over, during the last fifty years, by a critical
course which focuses its attention on precisely these questions. T
of us who are trying to escape the stultifying dominance of Scru
would not wish the literary institution in the United States (or a
where else, for that matter) to submit itself to the same narrow
0028-6087/82/140175-08$1.00/0
Copyright? 1982 by New Literary History, The University of Virginia
176 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
definition of a fixed canon of great (moral) works by gre

whose qualities are fully appreciated only by readers posse
sensibilities, seen as innate though enhanced by correct t
trouble with the judgments arrived at by these sensibi
they are intuitive, explicitly antitheoretical, simply "recog
vious," not open to debate. As Brecht pointed out, once so
defined as obvious, all attempt to understand the wor
given up. But not, of course, all attempt to control it.
publishers' readers, review editors, and appointing com
whom the truth is obvious, not open to debate, do not im
quality of a nation's intellectual life. The "literary compe
invokes in support of his position seems to me dangerous
the Leavisian concept of the "fine mind." Both qualities a
by people one agrees with, and that is about as much as can
them.
Olsen's central case is that while it makes sense to talk about the
meaning of a metaphor, a sentence, or an utterance, it makes no sens
to talk about the meaning of a literary text. In the course of h
argument he makes some unconvincing points about meaning, an
these seem to me worth taking up, insofar as they represent com
monly held views. First, Olsen makes meaning appear very unprob-
lematic indeed: "For a competent speaker of a language it is intu
tively clear what are the words of a sentence, what are the meanings
these words, what are the relationships between them ... and what i
the meaning of the sentence itself." If only it were intuitively clear, w
should not have had so much trouble with "To be or not to be, that
the question." And how about "what rough beast, its hour com
round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" Or if literary
instances are a cheat, try "It is love which binds together the huma
family." To help diminish the different kinds of plurality of any o
these sentences, we should probably look to their contexts. Sentence
do not always signify as atomic units, any more than words do. For
Olsen, however, the context would presumably only confuse the issue
All the intuitive clarity with which he encounters sentences disappea
in front of the problem of the literary text, where it is not clear wh
can be identified as the unit of meaning: "Of the elements which ca
be understood as constituting a literary work, only a very few-e.g.,
metaphors, symbols-can naturally be said to have meaning. It is
odd to talk about the meaning of characters, situations, actions, set
ting, rhymes, rhythm, stanza form, and so forth, as it is to talk abo
the meaning of works." Odd indeed. But among the elements which
can be understood as constituting a literary work are words in a pat
tern of relationship and difference. By the time we identify charac
THE PROBLEM OF MEANING 177
ters, situations, actions, and setting, we have

meaning to the words and the relations between t
helpful to talk about the meaning of the character
question. The problem of meaning is perhaps bo
and simpler than Olsen indicates.
Jeffrey Stout advances the argument further by
the bases for conceding the plurality of the text.
is the meaning of a text?" might elicit answers of
terms of the author's intention, the external relations of the text,
or-though Stout does not use the term-the discourse the reader
brings to bear on the text in the process of producing a reading:
"Marxists will say that the meaning of a text is a matter of its position
in a context defined by the history of class struggle. A Freudian will
say that the real meaning is a matter of personality and family ro-
mance as construed by the devices of psychoanalytic theory." Read-
ings are not necessarily in competition with each other, he argues,
insofar as they emphasize different features of the text. Marxists,
Freudians, and, we might add, liberals and theologians all appropri-
ate the text in different ways, and to this extent there is no single
meaning.
Where, then, do readings come from, and how do we choose be-
tween them? Here, possibly, Stout's argument begins to lack speci-
ficity because it is inclined to depend on "interest," a plural signifier if
ever there was one. What matters is whether we find a reading in-
teresting, and this will depend on the extent to which we come to
share the interpreter's interests (and purposes). Sometimes readings
are just interesting in themselves because the people doing the read-
ings are interesting, too. And texts are (or can be) interesting: "The
more interesting the text, the more readings we shall be able to give."
I don't want to disagree with any of this, but some of the "myriad
Frenchmen" Stout rather airily alludes to have focused more specifi-
cally on the ways in which readings come from particular positions
and operate on behalf of those positions. Foucault, for example, not
satisfied with the liberal pluralism which endorses whatever the indi-
vidual finds "interesting," looks at conflicting readings as part of a
conflict of "interests" which is ultimately a contest for power. It is
perhaps a pity that Stout's reading of Ian Hacking leaves out of ac-
count the extent of Hacking's reading of Foucault, because Foucault's
work would enable him to take a serious and important argument
further than he does.
Ann E. Berthoff's project, on the other hand, is to reinstate mean-
ing (singular). She is opposed to subjective criticism and sees it as no
more than the obverse of intentionalism, both of them products of a
dyadic theory of communication: if the meaning of the

be located in the author's subjectivity, it must be in th
seems to me a persuasive point, but I am not equally p
the triadic theory of communication authorized by I. A
practice "a useful corrective."
It is here that we can identify the central problem
concept of meaning-not simply for Berthoff and Rich
for several contributors to this collection, but for cur
theory in general. Meaning is conventionally hypos
presence, never quite defined, understood as other
itself, but the source, paradoxically, from which lang
substance, its 1ife. Berthoff approvingly quotes Ric
sages" (his word for "what is meant"): "Messages are li
animated instances of meaning ... the signals which co
dead." The signals (words) are inanimate until the spir
life. Communication is the transmission of the messag
dressor to an addressee. "He may get it all wrong (and
there is an IT" (Richards). Elsewhere in Richards the m
as an "unembodied something"; and it is this shadowy,
essence which also haunts our critical theory and prac
The specter of a pure, conceptual intelligibility, a
soul," as Derrida puts it, of which words are only an e
the heart of our problems, because experience proclaim
cannot master it. As Robert R. Hellenga points out, "O
frequently outdistances our language. We fall in love,
inadequate to express what we feel." We know (empiric
means. And yet the terms Richards invokes, "IT," "som
on the way in which this hypostasized meaning defies f
theorization. His value judgments, however ("living,
no space for the primacy of the "signal," for the poss
form our experience takes is itself linguistically pr
"falling in love" be the same experience in a culture in whic
lary of romantic love did not precede the experienc
our vast heritage of lyric poetry, novels, films, and
defining and redefining the experience?
That is not to say, of course, that such cultures do n
relations, that babies do not have sensations, or that I ca
a sort of darkish-pinky-gray color that I cannot defin
words but could recognize if I saw it. (The model Ri
on always seems to be of this kind, with pregiven sense
and objects not far away.) But it is to suggest that "love
"sexuality," "freedom," and the host of other concepts
our experience do not simply exist-in the world or
waiting for us to find signals to transmit them t

contrary, according to the theory of meaning whic
productive, they are linguistically (and therefore
torically) constructed, differentiated, related. Hel
(cited by Hellenga) as she learns that words na
which is reborn as she names it, after its loss a
nineteen months, can be read as demonstrating th
guage. I suspect that it is something of this kind
tifies when he says, "Naming and seeing are not ind
Experience must be the most unreliable source of
duction that we could possibly have chosen. (For t
without enthusiasm to Hellenga's plan for a tax
experiences. Like an erotic manual, he explains.
that experience proclaims a pure, inarticulate m
struggle to express does not imply that we have to
confirm it. In practice, hypostasized meaning,
holds to, the meaning Stout wants us to play down
eliminate from literary criticism, can lead only to
On the one hand, meaning is seen as indisputably th
where? Not, as Olsen insists, in the characters. But
either, because in this model the words merely ex
present it. On the other hand, if it is not in the w
behind them, it ought to be possible in some sens
back of the text and submit it to independent analy
analyze? How can we analyze a meaning unless it c
the form of another set of words? But if a set of words is what is at
stake, what was the matter with the original set of words, namely, th
text? Alternatively, how can we analyze a spectral presence, a mysteri
ous "something"?
This is why so many of these essays are uneasy about meaning. Th
terms in which the concept is defined signal the hopelessness of the
undertaking, and in consequence seem to imply the end of literar
criticism. Richards, according to Berthoff, turned his attention awa
from meaning to the purposes language serves. Stout wants us to tal
about readings instead, though it is not quite clear where this will lea
us. Olsen wants us to give up the whole idea of meaning. And as Stou
points out, there is also a brigade of "textualists" who have eliminated
meaning (singular and plural) in its entirety.
Perhaps the central problem of literary theory, then, is that it lead
to a crisis of confidence in all that we have been doing. Since th
quarry we have taken for granted, the meaning of the text, appears
theoretically precarious, the only secure purpose seems to be the
scrutiny of our own subjectivities, a recourse evident in these essays i
the identification of a project for literary criticism

at best innocuous and at worst narcissistic. Th
knowledge and its variants. In empiricist theory
knowing subjects and objects of knowledge,
knowledge rendered harmless, unable to challen
world because the world is always excluded from t
ence of the undertaking. In Neal Oxenhandler's
tentialist psychocriticism, the phrase "we create ou
of reading) shows how the subject, by becoming t
action, expands to fill all the space available. Oxenh
make ourselves by liberating affect; Hellenga wan
the subject to be the object of our knowledge. The
tion which inevitably has considerable appeal to a
unable to justify itself as a knowledge of texts an
A criticism with a less subjective project, howeve
exert an influence on the world, must either adm
discard empiricism in favor of another theoretica
second alternative has the additional advantage tha
find a place for meaning, though this is a concept
never single, never fixed.
Saussure helps. Saussure conceives of the sign
something, of a meaning which is elsewhere. The
signified (meaning) with it like the verso of a s
language itself which signifies, which is the locatio
since, as Saussure pointed out, if meanings precede
is no reason why translation from one language
present problems, it follows that we learn to mea
learn to speak.
Saussure's model has since been rendered more
poststructuralist theory. The image of the sign as
though important as marking the place of the sig
implies a unitary signified for every signifier. La
sliding signified and Derrida's concept of differenc
signified, proposing a notion of meaning as always
contextually deferred. The signifier love remains
meaning varies in history and according to cont
signifier always carrying with it the multiple possi
tion it derives from the multiplicity of its existing
and metonymy put the signified in process throu
and displacement of meaning. If this is true of a si
document of the complexity of a text (Antony and
"The Good Morrow") cannot have a single mean
always plural, and each interpretation is produced
reading, even when the reader is also the author.
This is not to argue that there is no such thing as

vulgar reading of Derrida seems to urge. Stout's "te
appropriated poststructuralist theory for a prestructu
which ignores what is radical in Saussure. I want to su
Foucault who now most evidently points a possible wa
literary criticism, and it is perhaps a pity, though not
the literary academy has seized on Derrida as its po
hero. Derridean deconstruction can be employed on be
lenge to existing modes of thought and behavior, as is
excellent essay by Mary Jacobus in this collection. All t
ever, it is used precisely to draw the teeth of literary
depoliticize it in the interests of a radical subjectivism
ject, which leads only to endless rereadings that are fi
than celebrations of the wit and ingenuity of the read
To those who want literary criticism to remain inno
in an empiricist or a deconstructionist way, I can have
suasive to say, except perhaps to suggest that for anyon
white, heterosexual, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, empl
surely possible to imagine a world which would be
change. For the rest of us, Foucault's work, though it h
directly about literary criticism, offers, I believe, a w
the play of meaning in literary texts in the interests o
For Foucault the signified is inscribed in knowled
repositories simultaneously of meaning and power. Wh
in these knowledges is not their truth: meaning is guar
by consciousness nor by the world, since the signified
language is of a distinct order from both intention an
the contrary, in I, Pierre Riviere. . ., for example, the quar
meaning in its plurality of Pierre's Memoir, and the c
meaning, which was also a contest between medicine a
for control of Pierre himself. The knowledges Fou
produced in institutions; they generate practices; t
behalf of institutional power.
A knowledge (or a discourse) is a network of signifie
meanings may conflict with those delimited by the sam
other knowledges. "Class," for instance, has different m
discourses of Marxism and liberalism. Literary texts a
edges in this sense, and they do not constitute a know
literary criticism does). Instead they are made up o
knowledges-cosmology, medicine, law, sexology, and
a way that it is possible to build up from them a histor
tinuities in these fields. This does not imply that litera
the epochs they are produced by, or even the ideas of
but that insofar as they delimit-and problematize-t
subjectivity, sexuality, the family, or freedom, as

authorized in a specific period by knowledges which
with each other, so they relativize these terms, sh
instability, their discontinuity, their capacity for c
ing of the subject, say, or sexuality, has changed
change again. A Foucauldian approach to literar
possibility of a theory and practice of change.
The adoption of such an approach carries certa
course. First, literary criticism itself could not sta
tests for meaning it identified; it would not be able
impartial. As a knowledge itself, it is inevitably a lo
contests for power. Second, aesthetic evaluation
irrelevance: the boundaries of "literature" as a value, and indeed as a
category, would begin to waver as the quest for unstable meanings
moved outside "great art" and outside fiction. Thirdly, we should
have to abandon the pleasures of recognition of what oft was thought
(or felt) but ne'er so well expressed in order to seek out those elements
in a text which are most alien, most radically discontinuous with what
we take for granted.
The advantage of this approach, however, is that it offers a resolu-
tion not only of the problem of meaning, but of the accompanying
crisis of confidence which has generated the commitment to subjec-
tive criticism evident in so much recent theory and practice. The
alternative I am proposing is not a return to "objective criticism" but a
move beyond the empiricist framework of ideas, which gives us a
world consisting only of subjects and objects, into a problematic where
meaning is not spectral and singular but substantial and plural, produc-
ing and produced by power. Our interest in this alternative will de-
pend, I suppose, on whether we are prepared to believe that criticism
still has serious work to do.
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Problems of Literary Theory: The Problem of Meaning

Author(s): Catherine Belsey

Problems of Literary Theory: The Problem

O N THE EVIDENCE of this issue of New Literary History, the central

definition of a fixed canon of great (moral) works by gre

ters, situations, actions, and setting, we have

dyadic theory of communication: if the meaning of the

waiting for us to find signals to transmit them t

the identification of a project for literary criticism

This is not to argue that there is no such thing as

subjectivity, sexuality, the family, or freedom, as

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, CARDIFF

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