Paul B. Armstrong

In Defense of Reading: Or, Why Reading Still Matters in a Contextualist Age

Suspicion of reading as a lived experience is a consequence of the rhetorical success of a few key arguments that together have defined a critical landscape dominated by various forms of contextualism. Where the contextualist consensus prevails, reading is tacitly or explicitly regarded as an epiphenomenon, inasmuch as the real locus of meaning-creation is elsewhere. The essay analyzes three core contextualist doctrines (about consciousness, history, and the status of the subject) and argues that they need not delegitimate the experience of reading. Rather, in each case the defining assumptions and beliefs of contextualism require attention to reading in order to do their interpretive work. Giving reading its due may also have a corrective function to the extent that contradictions caused by its neglect have thwarted an understanding of issues such as the relation of form and history, the status of the aesthetic, and the disciplinary purpose of the lettered humanities. Recognizing reading as the hidden ground of our critical and theoretical activity can help get us past various conundrums, impasses, and dead ends that haunt our profession.

The Conflict of Interpretations and the Limits of Pluralism

The debate about validity in interpretation has pitted monism against pluralism. Some theorists insist that any literary work has a single, determinate meaning, and others argue that there are no l...

Being "Out of Place": Edward W. Said and the Contradictions of Cultural Differences

As an outspoken public intellectual who has not shied away from controversy, Edward W. Said has been at times a polarizing figure. His critics are often so ready to discredit him that they pay no attention to the complications and ambiguities of his thought, and his defenders can be so protective of his reputation that they lose patience with dissent. The critics seem eager to play “Gotcha,” and the defenders consequently may regard criticism as a betrayal. The controversy ignited by Said’s memoir, Out of Place, illustrates this polarization all too clearly.1 In the relatively short time since the memoir’s publication, the escalating violence in the Middle East and the nationalistic intolerance brought on in the United States by the 11 September 2001 attacks seem to have made it even harder to analyze and evaluate the implications of Said’s life and work with the scrutiny and the attention to complexity that his own eloquent defenses of the work of criticism call for. My intent is neither to attack Said nor to glorify him but to analyze his life story in all of its contradictions, along with his writings on issues relevant to that story, for the purpose of illuminating the problem of how