Re: Intense!

Sonny, I think your reading of Scottie's "intent" is pretty well dead on.

I think John G's. posts have been pretty useful too.

Gasp.

There are times that authorial intent matters and times it does not.

If you want to make a statement about the author's character based upon the
author's writing, you dang well better establish some criteria for determining
"intent" within a fairly sizeable ballpark and follow it closely.

People wanting to accuse Scottie of being a "racist" are making a definite
statement about Scottie's "intent" while writing. In other words, they believe
that Scottie deliberately intended, at the moment of writing, simply to insult
and disparage people of certain strains of belief (Muslims, Jews, and
Atheists). They assume that the inflammatory nature Scottie language requires
that he could not have any other intent.

I accuse them of a failure of the imagination.

The sense in which intent "does not matter"?

If you're simply trying to determine the "meaning" of Scottie's post purely
based upon the "words" he wrote in that one post. There's just no use. It
would be a failed enterprise. The ambiguity would be too unavoidable, and to
choose between one of several conflicting readings would require something
outside the text, some grounding, something other than what Scottie actually
wrote -- such as knowledge of his personality, temperament, etc.

Jim

Sundeep Dougal wrote:

> Reading my post to the list makes me want to underline the need on my part
> for a re-read before hastily pressing the send button.
>
> On Matt's rejoinder, that authorial intent is not of "much use", I would
> want to ask, "to whom?" The author, in my humble opinion, is not really
> feeling wronged or misunderstood.
>
> My humble thesis, actually, posited, as has been confirmed by Scottie, that
> he couldn't care a flying flame bait if people took offense or not,
> deploring, what he quoted as, the 'the crybaby culture of hurt feelings
> ...'.
>
> People got offended? Life is tough, he would probably mutter, along with
> some other imprecations.
>
> That, Matt, I would conclude, was his intent. He likes them shaken and
> stirred.
>
> Sonny
>
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Received on Thu Dec 26 23:03:40 2002