Reader Response: CDSD

the one or two times I encountered reader response criticism when an english major weren't very theoretically developed, so I never had much more sense of how to do anything with it. the perhaps banal way of putting what I got was 'sometimes the way we initially respond to texts can be critically illuminating, even if the readings are wrong'. this seems to me a pretty loaded way of putting things, but the prospect of making it less loaded with eliminating all scraps of substantial content from the idea makes me sigh.

it turns out, though, that without any extra baggage, and with a much more entrenched skepticism of 'right readings', as a critical starting point I like this a lot, and the prospect of having no further guidance doesn't bother me because I want the development of a piece of reader-response criticism to come from within, so I can just figure out where to go with it on my own.

a few months ago I ran across a book of theoretical work on reception theory (not fish), and was sort of excited to actually learn something about it. that excitement died quickly. one way to develop the initial stance of reader-response criticism is to attach it to some account of what people are like, psychologically, sociologically, whatever. then a great deal can be said about the significance of their initial readings. unfortunately the theories of what people are like will be crap.

(this reminds me of something noel carroll writes in 'mystifying movies', his attempt to get rid of all basically continental-tradition film theory. I suppose he gets it from the film theorists, who got it from someone else, but I don't know about that. but he says one thing this certain collection of film theories often needed recourse to was a 'subject platform' (or maybe it was 'subject positioning') - some kind of theory of what people are like so something general could be said about what happens when they watch movies. though this seems related to what I just said above, it seems substantially different for reasons I can't think of.) (some platforms would be a psychoanalytic account of the subject, or a feminist one.)

Is reception theory often confused with fish? I mean, I don't really know what it is, but obviously my vague idea is way off the mark...