holland, norman - transactive criticism

8/10/2019 Holland, Norman - Transactive Criticism

1/13

The New Paradigm: Subjective or Transactive?

Author(s): Norman N. HollandSource: New Literary History, Vol. 7, No. 2, Poetics: Some Methodological Problems (Winter,1976), pp. 335-346Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468509.

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2/13

The New

Paradigm:

Subjective

or Transactive?

Norman . Holland

AM MOST GRATEFUL

to

the

editor

for

asking

me to

comment

on Pro-

fessor David Bleich's

bold,

wide-ranging paper.

And

thank

you,

David Bleich, forlaying it on the line to literary ritics n general as

you

laid

it

on the line in

June

1971

to this

iterary

ritic n

particular.

As

you

know,

the

shift

n

perspectiveyou

then

proposed

led me

to

a

profound

turn

in

my

own

thinking

about

"objectivity."

I

hope

it does the

same

now for other critics

nd theorists

f

literature, or,

as a

group,

we

have

a

way

to

go

before we

can

say

we have

fully

absorbed the

world view

es-

tablished

by developments

n

early

twentieth-centuryhysics,

mid-century

biology,

the

philosophical

statements that have

accompanied

them

or,

I

would

add,

the

growth

of

the social

(human)

sciences since the late

nine-

teenth

century.

I

am

thinking

f

psychoanalysis,

f

course,

but

also of

the

relativism

mplicit

in cultural

anthropology,

he

linguistic

demonstrations

(by

Whorf

and

Sapir)

that

language shapes

our

perceptions,

and,

in

particular,

the

nearly-a-century

f

powerful

research

by

psychologists

f

perception

("transactional

psychology"),

all

leading

to

an

overwhelming

demonstration

that

"perception

is a constructive

ct."

At

the

moment,

however,

my impression

s

that

many,

perhaps

most,

literary

ritics clutch the old

paradigm

and the illusion of

objectivity

ike

a

security

loth.

Is

it

our

fig

leaf

that

we

hang

onto

it

so

tightly

nd

so

obviously?

The

experimental

psychologists

how

the

same

tenacity

for

a

nineteenth-century odel of science,but theyneed thatsupposed respecta-

bility, suspect,

more

than we do-now.

I

think

once we

required

New

or formalist

criticism as

a corrective to a

long

period

of critical self-

indulgence

in

impressionism

nd

naive

applications

of

history.

Now,

how-

ever,

we can afford to

recognize

that

even

the

strictest extual

criticism

expresses,

willy-nilly,

he

critic's

characteristic

tyle.

We

can

go

on to the

next

steps,

ike

learning

how to think nd write n

this

new mode

or evalu-

ating

structuralist

nd semiotic

developments

as

to

the

degree

to which

they

accommodate the

omnipresence

of

individual

styles

of creation and

re-creation.

ProfessorBleich

has set

out

the

issues, however,

and

I

cannot

see how

any

well-informed

person

in this

last

quarter

of

the

century

can

gainsay

his

fundamental

point.

He

may

find

my drawing

"auxiliary

concepts

and

constructs" from

dentity heory

and

clinical

experience

too

complicated.

I

may

find

his

statement

of

paradigm

too

simple.

We

nevertheless

hare

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3/13

336

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

one

basic,

rock-solid

greement:

a

profound

change

has

taken

place

in

our

expectations

of

"objectivity,"

and

the old

faith will no

longer

support

recentdiscoveriesor structuremeaningful problemsin this last quarter of

the

twentieth

entury.

Further,

this

doubting

of

objectivity

s

becoming

an

important

iterary

groundswell,

visible,

for

example,

in

the

recent

issue

of

College

English

devoted to

"

'The'

Reader,

and Real

Readers,"

several

seminars

on

this

issue

at

the 1975

Modern

Language

Association

meeting,

the movement

in

the

schools

toward

"response-centered"teaching,

and,

of

course,

in

a

variety

f

writings:

David

Bleich's

fine,

practical

book,

Readings

and

Feel-

ings,

Murray

Schwartz's

theoretical

essay,

"Where

Is

Literature?"

and

my

own recentwork,Poems in Persons and 5 Readers Reading.2 All question

the

importance

of the

"objective"

text

in

determining

iterary response

compared

to

the

personality,

xperience,

or skills

the reader or member

of

the audience

brings.

David Bleich

calls

this

approach

to

reading "subjective."

I

call

it

"transactive,"

for

reasons

I shall

shortly

ive.

First,

however,

would like

to

propose

a

term.

If

you

write on

literary esponse

or

experience, you

are

plagued by

the

lack of

a

word.

Its

absence

has become

all

the

more

annoying by

these new

discoveries

about

the

ways

we

create

literary

x-

periences. We have no term fora personwho is respondingto a literary

work.

Reader limits

one to written

texts-what

about

the

spoken

poem?

Audience

seems too

closely

limited

to

film

and

theater,

and one

is

forced

to

construct

cumbersome

singular,

member

of

the

audience.

The

OED

offers ent as a

suffix

denoting

a

personal

or material

agent.

Then,

if

novelist for one

who creates

novels,

I

propose

novelent

for

one who

re-

creates them

as he

reads

or

hears them read.

Drama

and

dramatist

would

yield

dramatent;

essay, essayist,

ssayent;

poetry,

poet,

poetent,

and so on.

But

for

the one

word

needed,

I

suggest

iterent: one

who

responds

to-

re-creates-literature. At any rate,I shall try t out.

David

Bleich

persuaded

me in 1971

of

the

importance

of

the

literent's

"subjectivity."

That

is,

he

got

me to

recognize

what now seems so obvious

and familiar

that

I

wonder

why

I

argued

so

long

and

so

strenuously

with

him,

namely:

books

do not have

fantasies or

defenses

or

meanings-

people

do.

To

understand

responses

to

literature,

had

to concentrate

not

on

the text alone or

the

literent

lone

but

on

the

transaction

by

which

we literentsbuild

fantasies,

defenses,

and

meanings

from

the

materials

literature ffers s.

Once

I did

this,

and

Murray

Schwartz

and

others

at

Buffalo's

Center for

the

Psychological Study

of the

Arts found

that we

could discover

the

intricacies of

that

transaction n

precise

detail. More-

over,

what

we saw

for

iterature

eemed to have

a

completely

general appli-

cation. We were

dealing

with

a

general

theory

of

the relation of

per-

sonality

o

perception.

This

generality

came

about

because,

once we

began

thinking

transac-



4/13

THE NEW PARADIGM

337

tively,

we

found

a

great

deal

of

prior

research to

confirm nd structure

what

we were

observing

n

literents. Some came

from

the

psychology

of

perception,and more fromrecent psychoanalytic psychology. One can-

not

know

reality

I

would

agree

with

Bleich)

apart

from

oneself and one's

own

way

of

knowing

things,

ncluding

oneself.

I

would

add,

however,

that one

cannot know

oneself

without

drawing

on

things

one has

learned

from he world-out-there

mother,

food,

and

sensory epresentations).

This

is

the

meaning

of the

psychoanalytic

oncept

of

self-object

differentiation.

Beginning

about

the

eighth

month

of

life,

the

child

first

earns a

reality

by

the absence

of his

nurturing

Other.

By

learning

to conceive

of

that

Other

as

separate,

he

learns

to

conceive

of himself as a

Self.

Many peo-

ple (among

them

Piaget)

have

now

supported

this

dea

by

direct

observa-

tion

of

children,

and

I

think

this

is

what Professor

Bleich

adopts

in his

own ideas about

symbolism.

It

is unfortunate

therefore that

Bleich

dismisses D. W. Winnicott's

"potential

space"

so

curtly.

Winnicott does

much more than

describe

"a

certain

form f infantile

behavior,"

as

David Bleich

says.

He has

found the

origin

and

ground

for

a

human

adaptation

fundamental

to

all

ages

and

profoundly mportant,

s

Murray

Schwartz

showed,

to

the

study

of

litera-

ture.

True,

the

"potential space" begins

with

mothering,

but

in adult

life,

as Winnicott

says,

"It

is

here

that

the individual

experiences

creative

living." "This intermediate rea ofexperience

.

is retained n the intense

experiencing

that

belongs

to

the arts and

to

religion

and

to

imaginative

living,

and

to creative

scientific

work."4

(Think

of

being

"absorbed"

by

art,

thought,

or

work.)

In

effect,

n

the

early

transactionsbetween

child

and

mother,

we

learn

how

to

transact

everything

lse.

In child

develop-

ment,

then,

final

reality

is

neither

"objective"

nor

"subjective"

but the

transaction

between

them,

between the me and what

I

relate to

as

not-me.5

Beyond

Winnicott

or

childhood,

Heinz

Lichtenstein's

theory

of

identity

and

identity

maintenance

provides

a

way

of

further

xploring

and

articu-

lating that potential space with adults. Preciselybecause I came froma

tradition

of New

Criticism,

found I could

translate

Lichtenstein's

con-

cept

into

operational

terms: we

can

arrive at

someone's

identity y

inter-

preting

their behavior

for an

underlying

hematic

unity

ust

as

we would

interpret

literary

ext

for

centering

heme.6

Given

such

an

identity

heme,

discovered how

to

analyze

writers'

nd

literents'

creations and re-creations of literature with

precision.

People

express

a

whole

life-style

nvolving

a

long spectrum

of human

activity-

cognition, sexuality, political

beliefs,

intelligence,

education,

or

interper-

sonal

relations-in the

literary

ransaction,

nd

they

do so within

certain

general principles. I could fleshout David Bleich's proclamation of "the

primacy

of

subjectivity,"providing

both a

theoretical

base and

a

wider

application

for his

intuitions bout

response.

In

"Delphi

seminars" at

our

Center,

Murray

Schwartz,

David

Willbern,

Robert

Rogers,

and

I

have

been

able

to catch these

re-creative transactions in slow

motion,

as it

were,

demonstrating

to students and teachers alike how we all transact



5/13

338

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

literary

works

and

one another

in

the vocabularies and

grammars

of

our

several

dentity

hemes.7

Very briefly, he literent (or the perceiver of another person or any

other

reality)

comes

to

that

other

reality

with

a

set

of characteristic

expectations,

typically

a balance of

related desires and fears. The

per-

ceiver

adapts

the

"other"

to

gratify

hose

wishes

and minimize

those

fears

-that

is,

the

perceiver

re-creates

his

characteristic

modes

of

adaptation

and defense

(aspects

of

his

identity

heme)

from

the

materials literature

or

reality

ffers.

He or she

projects

characteristic antasies

nto

them

(and

these

fantasies

can

also

be

understood

as

aspects

of

identity). Finally,

the

individual

may

transform these

fantasies

into

themes-meanings-of

characteristic

oncern

(and, again,

these

themes and

transformations

an

also be

understood within

the

individual's

identity).

One

can remember

these four

aspects

of the

transactionbetween

perceiver

nd

perceived

in an

acronym:

we

perceive

DEFTly--through

defenses,

xpectations,

fantasies,

and

transformations.

All,

however,

are

aspects

of a

single

principle:

we

perceive

so as

to match our

identity

hemes

(the

essential sameness

of

our-

selves)

as

best

we can from

the

mixture of

matches and

mismatches our

environment ffers.

Because

DEFT,

or the

principle

of

identity

re-creation,

comes

from

recent

(and

rather

unfamiliar)

psychoanalytic

hinking,

t

is

easy

to miss

itsgenerality nd importance. It is, so faras I know,the onlypsychologi-

cal

theoryoffering comprehensive

account of

the

way

our

personalities

affect

our

perception

and

interpretation

f

experience

(including

literary

experience).

Further,

once

we

see

how

perception replicates identity,

we

can interrelate

someone's

interpersonal,

political,

sexual,

or

intellectual

acts

through

a

concept

of

personal

style

(identity)

to

his

or

her

ways

of

creation and re-creation. A

richer kind

of

"Life and

Works"

has

become

possible,

because we

have

found a form

that underlies

many

kinds of

transaction

between

self

and

other,

even

interpersonal

relations

(as

in

the

"Delphi seminars").

Bleich

may

find

this

principle relating perception

to

personality

com-

plicated-actually

it

is

not

difficult

nce

one has

worked with

it

a

little.

In

any

case,

DEFT

is too

important

o

be

put

aside so

easily,

for

t

is

the

first

rticulation of

a

truly

new

paradigm.

What we

think of as the sci-

entific

chievement

of

the last three

centuries rests

precisely

on

the

belief

that we

cannot

talk

rigorously

about

individuals;

that

therefore true

knowledge

requires

the

splitting

of

the knower

from

the

known

or

"ob-

jective"

reality

from

"subjective."

The

principle

of

identity

re-creation,

however,

makes

it

possible

to

speak

rigorously

if

holistically)

about

indivi-

duals. It thereforemakes unnecessary he Cartesian cleaving of the world

into

"objective"

and

"subjective"

realities.

Rather,

we can

recognize

that

"objective"

studies

of

reality

such

as

science)

are

simply

pecial

kinds

of

perceptual

transactions.

Science ceases to

be the norm to

which other

disciplines

must

aspire

(as

the New

Criticism so often

did),

and

becomes

a

special

case of

a

general

transaction

between

Self

and Other

that

all



6/13

THE NEW PARADIGM

339

humans

experience

all

the

time. Instead

of

two

ways

of

perceiving

reality,

one

"objective"

and one

"subjective,"

we have

only

one

way-transactive

-and various limitations ndividuals may put on theirtransactionswith

reality.

From

this

more advanced

perspective,

Bleich's resolute

accenting

of

subjectivity

ver

objectivity

eems but a

first

tep.

Once I

worked

within

that

choice and

saw

the

articulation

of

subjectivity

through identity

theory,

also

began

to

see

the

change

in

paradigm

differently.

do

not

think we are

simply

shifting

rom an

objective

to a

subjective

view of the

world.

Rather,

I

think

we are

giving up

the

assumption

that

underlies that

false

dichotomy.

The new

paradigm

we

are

beginning

to

accept

is:

one

cannot

separate subjective

and

objective perspectives.8

From

this

point

of

view,

it now seems

to

me that Bleich has

simply

not

been radical

enough.

He has

not

gone

to

the

roots

of

the

existing

para-

digm.

That

is,

he

has

accepted

the

dichotomy

on which the

old

view

rests-that

there are two

equally

possible

alternatives,

an

objective

view

of

the world and

a

subjective.

Then,

rejecting

the

objective,

he

is

left

only

with the

subjective.

This

lands

him

in

the

thicket

of

extreme

Berke-

leyan

idealism:

"An observer is

a

subject,

and his

means

of

perception

define the

essence

of

the

object

and even its existence

to

begin

with."

Dr.

Johnson

will

kick that stone

again,

and

we

will

have the usual

thumping

argumentsabout the persistent here-ness f tables and chairs.

Further,

if all acts

are

subjective,

then

Bleich

has

not

really

changed

anything,

any

more than

Bishop

Berkeley

did

with

esse est

percipi.

He

has

only

supplied

a

universal

predication,

as

if to

say

all

human acts take

place

in

real

time

or

involve human

neurons.

As

Tweedledum

and

Tweedledee

knew,

nothing

s

changed, really,

by

discovering

the

universe

is

only

the

Red

King's

dream.

Instead

of

a

paradigm "sufficiently

pen-

ended to

leave

all

sorts

of

problems"

(Kuhn),

the word

subjectivity

be-

comes

a

thought-stopper.

To be

sure,

if one

is as

skilled

as

David

Bleich,

one

may marvelously

intuit relations

between literents'

perceptions

and

their

nner

thoughts

bout

deeply

personal

things,

s in

his

sensitive

essays

and

his book.

But

one

can

never nterrelate

hose ntuitionsmore

generally

since

the label

"subjective"

(as

Bleich

uses

it)

leads to no further

iffer-

ences

among

acts.

Merely

calling

reality

"subjective"

leads

to

the

familiar

dead-end

of

solipsism

or extreme dealism:

one

can draw

no distinctions

between

unicorns and horses

or

President

McGovern

and

President

Ford

(or,

for

hat

matter,

President

Washington).

Another

trouble,

of

course,

is

that

if

we

stop

with the

simple

idea

that

subjectivity

s

"paramount,"

we

have

no

satisfying

way

of

accounting

for

the various kindsof relationsbetweenmysubjectivity nd the world "out

there" of

Hamlet,

Dr.

Johnson's

tone,

other

people

(with

their

subjectivi-

ties),

or our

necessities.

If

we

are

only

subjective,

we

can

feel

hunger

and

its

cessation,

but

can we know food?

If

so,

how? How

could a

purely

subjective being adapt

to or

master realities

beyond

his own

imagination?

How can literents

espond

to texts-out-there?

he

label

"subjective"

does



7/13

340

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

not

let

us discover

the

complexities

of

personal

perception,

because

it

obscures

the difference

etween the

act

of

perception

and the

object

of

theact.

The

psychoanalyst George

S. Klein

was

one

of

the

most

cogent

and

thorough investigators

f

the

overwhelming

effect

motives

have

on

per-

ception.

He

puts

the

question.

"How is

it

that,

if

motives influence

per-

ception,

we

can

perceive

so

effectively?

.

.

There is in

fact

impressive

evidence

that

actions

based on

perception

are

efficiently

oordinated with

the

attributes

f

objects

toward

which

action

is

directed.

Perception

can

do its

job

of

discrimination

remarkably

well. It creates

workable

notions

of

what

things

are in

accord

with what one

wants,

of

where

things

re to

be seen

when one wants

them."'9

t

seems to

me we will

answer Klein's

question,

not

by looking

wholly

at the

perceiver

nor

wholly

at the

objects

perceived

but

at

the

transaction

between

them.

If

we

simply ay everything

we

know

or do is

"subjective,"

then

we have

no

way

of

accounting

for

the

outward,

ntersubjective

ffectiveness

f

such

admittedly

subjective"

acts as

perception,

adaptation,

or communication.

Professor Bleich

says

we can

establish common

worlds

of

thought

and

sense

"by

extended

negotiation

among

the

perceivers."

Yet,

again,

in

a

solipsistic

world where

we are all

simply

"subjective,"

I

do

not

see how

such

negotiations

re

really

negotiations,

r

(in

the

word

I

prefer)

trans-

actions. In fact,Bleich's failure to take advantage of these new discoveries

about

identityreplication

and

DEFT

perception

leave

him no

way

at

all

to account

for

the re-creation

of

private

experience

into

intersubjective

consensus.

Further,

Bleich's

own

examples

of

"subjectivity"

answer

better to

a

transactive

paradigm

which locates

fundamental

reality

in the relation

between

the

me

and the

not-me than

they

do

to the

one-word

abstraction.

Language

is

not

"subjective."

English

grammar

existed

before came and

will be here after am

gone-but

I

do

not know

English

apart

from

the

way

I

speak, hear, or,

in

general,perform

t

to

replicatemy

own

identity.The fundamental

reality

s the

way

I

re-create

my

personality

as

I

use

English.

In the same

way,

I

use the

resources

f

my

body

to

structure

nd

achieve

inner

and

outer

states. In

effect,

my body provides

me with

a

symbology

and

a

syntax.

This

is

the

thrust

f

Piaget's

example

of

the

sixteen-month-

old

girl

who used

the

opening

of her

mouth to understand

the

opening

of

a matchbox.

An

ear or

an

arm

would

not have

provided

a

suitable

resource.

A

teddy

bear

would

not

have been

describable

by

a

mouth.

Another child

might

have

used hand or

eye.

It

is

the

transactionbetween

this child and the resourcesof theworld (body,matchbox) as theyrelated

to her

that

is

the

fundamental

reality. By

close

observation,

can discover

how this child

expressed

her

identity

n

her

bodily

achievement

of

the

innerness

f

this

object..

We

circle back

to the same

problem again

and

again

with Bleich's

insistenceon the

dichotomy

between

subject

and

object

and his choice of



8/13

THE NEW PARADIGM

341

the

subject.

The

"primacy

of

subjectivity"

will

not account for

relations

between

subjectivities

and

other

entities,

either

physical

or

subjective.

How can one square Piaget's or any biologist's concept of adaptation with

the belief

that the

subject's

"means

of

perception

define

the essence

of

the

object

and even

its

existence

to

begin

with"?

Yet I can

understand

symbol,

daptation,

the child

with

the

matchbox,

and even that

sentence,

once

I

concentrate

on

transactions between

Self

and Other within

the

principle

of

identity

e-creation.

I can

explore

those transactions

n

great

detail and

generality,

but

I cannot

for

the life

of

me

(and

that is

the

appropriate

oath for

this

problem

of

adaptation)

see how

the

unitary

term

ubjective

will

explain

as

much.

I can summarizewhat I am sayingmostdirectlyby resorting o a series

of

simple

equations.

The

Cartesian

paradigm

on

which

the

three

centuries

of

classical

science

rest

can be

stated:

(1)

Perception

Pobj

+ Psubj

Within

this

paradigm,

I

attain

objectivity by subtracting

the

subjective

from

both

sides

(for

example,

by

restricting

myself

hrough

the

procedures

of

science)

:

(2) Perception Psubj - Pobj

Thus,

in

the

July

1975

Scientific

American,

I

read

of

a Harvard

astrono-

mer

rejecting

a

piece

of

research for "intimationsof

subjectivity."

The trouble

is,

how do we subtract the

subjectivity

out?

Doing

so

involves

us

in

a

perception

of our

own

perception,

and

it,

too,

must have

its

subjective

and

objective

components:

(3)

Perception

(of

perception)=

P(P)obj

+ P(P)subj

And to

sort those

out

would

involve

us

in still another

mixture

of

sub-

jective

and

objective

and

so

on into

an

infinite

regression.

In

practice,

of

course,

people try

o

minimize the

element of

subjectivityby

following

rules

such

as the ethics and restrictions f

experimental

science

or

the

formalist

iterary

ritic's demand

that

one

pay

attention

only

to the text.

But these

rules are

not

themselves

sacrosanct.

They

only express

para-

digms

by

which

a certain

group

of

practitioners

define

themselves

(as

"Copernican"

astronomers,

quantum"

physicists,

r "New"

critics).

One

cannot

elude

the

subjective

element

in either

one's choice

of or

one's

per-

spectiveon such rules. Further,because uncertainty nd randomnesshave

become so

important

to

physics

nd

adaptation

so fundamental to

biology

in this

century,

and

because

(more

recently)

we

have

begun

to

know

something

about

how

literents

re-create

literature,

those

rules have

be-

come

very

much

open

to

question.

At

this

point

Bleich

takes this

questioning

to mean there is no such



9/13

342

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

thing

as

objective

perception.

He

accepts

the

dichotomy

ssumed

in

(1),

which

is the root

of

the

trouble,

but he

rejects

its

variant

(2),

making

Pobj

equal zero. Hence,

(4)

Perception

=

Psubj

This,

as

I

have

said,

is

not

an

adequate

paradigm

for

explaining

how

per-

ceptions

get

"negotiated"

into consensus or

express

other

things

besides

raw

personality

("subjectivity").

How can

there be a

consensus

like

"Darwinism"

or

"New Criticism" if

each

member

of

the

consensus

is

responding

only

to

his

own

inner

promptings?

What

an

extraordinary

o-

incidence theywould represent The odds mustsurelybe veryhighagainst

such

consensuses, if,

for

example, meetings

in

my

department

are

any

sample

of

the

difficulty rofessors

find

in

negotiating agreement

among

personal points

of

view.

It

is

well

to remember the wisdom

of

Max

Planck:

"A

new truth does not

triumph

by

convincing

its

opponents

and

making

them see the

light,

but

ratherbecause

its

opponents

eventually

die."

10

Tenacity,

not

negotiation,

s

the human

style,

for

we use the

ideas

we hold

to re-create ur

very

dentities.

In contrastto

Bleich,

the

position

and

my

colleague

Murray

Schwartz

take

is that

(1)

itself

mplies

an error.

(3)

shows

that one cannot

simply

remove

Psubj

from

Pobj,

not even in the physical sciences and certainly

not

in

human sciences

or

interpretive

rts

like

literary

criticism.

Ample

reasons

and

numerous

examples

are

given

by

Kuhn,

Piaget,

and

many

authorities

besides those

Bleich

cites

(Cassirer,

for

example,

Dewey,

Langer

-or

Whitehead

properly

understood).

Rather,

Psubj

and

Pobj

cannot

be

separated,

and

(1)

should

be

replaced

by:

(5)

Perception

f

(Pobj,

Psubj)

Perceptionis a functionof both its objective and subjective components.

A

mere

plus

sign expresses

that

function

misleadingly,

or

it

suggeststhey

can be subtracted

or

separated

from

each

other.

In

fact,

t

seems

to

me

that

it

is

precisely

he use

of

the

adjectives

"sub-

jective"

and

"objective"

that

leads

to

misunderstanding

his new

para-

digm

and

approach

to

literature. The words themselves

muggle

in

the

assumption

that

the

two

can

be

separated.

According

to

my

American

Heritage Dictionary,

"OBJECTIVE:

Of

or

having

to

do with a material

object

as

distinguished

from

a

mental

concept,

idea,

or belief."

"SUB-

JECTIVE: . . . Proceeding from or takingplace within an individual's

mind

such as to

be

unaffected

by

the external world." To add

to

the

murk,

when

used

adjectivally,

they imply

a

neutral noun which

can

be

interchangeably

ither

(or

neither?):

subjective/objective

perspective,

or


reality,

r


state of mind.

(Thus,

the nouns

subjectivity

nd

objectivity

ntroduce

the

same

assumption

as



10/13

THE

NEW

PARADIGM

343

the

adjectives.)

Since these

words

presume

precisely

the matter at

issue,

the

highly

suspect postulate

(1),

I

think

they

are

poor

tools with which

to approach a discussion of that postulate or a new paradigm squarely

contrary

o

it,

based

in

the

inextricability

f

"subjective"

and

"objective."

Those

words

will

only

muddle

our

dearly bought

twentieth-century

nowl-

edge

that science itself s

relativeand

our more recent

discovery

f

methods

to

explain

our different

xperiences

of literature.

"Subject"

and

"object"

may

still

be

useful,

but I

prefer

self"

and "other"

or

"me"

and

"not-me"

because

they bring

no

confusing

bstractions

or

adjectives

with them.

Further,

in

place

of

Bleich's

"subjective

paradigm,"

I

propose

the

following

paradigmatic

assumption.

In

the

terms

of

our

equations, per-

ception is a functionof identity I) and the resourcesoffered y reality s

they

relate to that

identity

Ri,

which is

"environment"

as

Bleich

defines

it).

Hence:

(6)

Perception

=

f(I,

Ri)

Perception

means:

the

individual

apprehends

the

resourcesof

reality

in-

cluding

language,

his

own

body, space,

time,

etc.)

as he

relates to them

in

such a

way

that

they

replicate

his

identity.

Then,

I

define

identity

operationally:

it

is the

unity

one

discovers

in an

individual's

behavior

(just

as one would look at a

literary

text for

unity). Naturally,

one

pursues

this

nquiry through

one's own

identity.11

Fundamental

reality"

thus

becomes

a field of

interactions

between selves-identities-and

other

entities, nimate,

inanimate,

and

symbolic.

It

is

the

transaction between self and other

which

is

paramount.

Transactive

(instead

of

subjective)

denotes

a

genuine change

in

para-

digm:

the

assumption-or recognition,

I

think-that

humans

cannot

separate

subject

and

object,

no

matter

which we value more:

what

we

know

is

the transaction between self

and

other-but

we can

know

that

transactionvery ubtly nd intricatelyndeed.

"'Reality,'

"

writes Heinz

Lichtenstein,

"is

the

product

of

a

complex

process

of

actively

'fitting'

reality

to

the

given

circumstances

of one's

existence-namely,

to

make

possible

for the

individual 'the sense

of

one-

ness

of man

among

men.'

"

"There can

never be an

'objective

sense of

reality,'

only

one

selectively

hosen

by

unconscious

intent'-one

which ex-

cludes other

aspects

of

realityexperience

and

defines dentities

n

its own

specific

way,

as

every

shared

sense

of

reality

must do."

Reality

"is,

in

other

words,

a

'tendentious'

perception

of

reality, itting

he

need

of

those

who 'promote' it at a given time and place. It is 'tendentious' even ifwe

acknowledge

that

only by

this

'shaping'

of

the

sense

of

reality

are

we

enabled to

live

as

humans."

For

literary

critics,

this

paradigm

leads to

important

new

inquiries,

for

"it is

through

anguage

that

a

political

and

social order is

imposed,

which derives from

the shared sense

of

what is

real

among

those whose

'language' prevails."

And

similarly,

"Psycho-



11/13

344

NEW LITERARY

HISTORY

analytic

theory

needs to

apply

its

very

own

principles

to the

analysis

of

the

unconscious

determinants f

realityperception-not

just

of

an

individual,

but of the shared realityof one's historical existence."

2

These are but

two

possibilities

(political

and

psychological)

among

the

many

large

"problems"

(in

Kuhn's

sense)

the

new transactive

paradigm

suggests.

There

is, however,

one

particular problem

that

always crops

out

among

literary

cholars

in

a

discussion

of

Bleich's, Schwartz's,

or

my,

or

anyone's

focus on

the

literary xperience

as such.

That is

the

problem

of

the re-

currence

of

responses.

One can no

longer

sustain

the

idea

that

"objective"

factors

determine

response.

How

then do

we

critics

explain

the

com-

monalities

of

response?

Most educated

literents

would

regard

Paradise

Lost as

an

epic

but not

"L'Allegro."

An

overwhelmingmajority

of literents

prefers

Hamlet

to

Titus

Andronicus. ProfessorBleich

says, "Only

through

interpersonal

nd intercommunal

negotiation

does

any

particular

form

of

knowledge

come

to

prevail."

True

enough,

but

it seems to me

that

his

insistence

on

"subjectivity"

obscures

that

process. Subjects,

he

says,

"de-

fine

the essence of

the

object

and

even its

existence

to

begin

with."

I

think

know

what

he

means,

that

I

create

my

own

Hamlet

each

time I

experience

it,

but

it sounds

as

though

he

thinks

created the

Hamlet

all

those other

literents

prefer

to

Titus The

mere choice of

"subjectivity"

over

"objectivity" yields,

so

far as

I

can

see,

no

way

to articulate those

puzzlingly interlockedphenomena, the variabilityand regularityof re-

sponse.

By

contrast,

the

transactive

paradigm points

directly

into

this issue.

First,

each of

us

accepts

external

knowledge

or

the

opinions

of

others

as

we find

we

can use

them to

re-create our

several

identities

a

transactive

account

of

Bleich's

"interpersonal

and intercommunal

negotiation").

But

second-why

can

some

works

or

ideas

be

accepted by

many people

and

others

by

only

a

few?

Evidently

a

text

rewards

some structures n

my

re-creation of it

and

not

others,

and

I

favor

some

structures

nd not

others.

Sometimes the text and

I

match

and

sometimeswe

don't.

Because

many

literents o or do not share

my

experience,

we come to the

question

of

Hamlet

and Titus.

Bleich,

Schwartz,

I,

and

others have

all

grasped

the literent's

role

in

that

re-creation

of

identity

which

is the

literary

transaction

(all

in

our

characteristically

different

ways,

to be

sure).

Now

we need

to

look

at

that

transaction the other

way,

at

literature's

role.

What does a text

make

possible

for

a literent?

Why,

when

confronted

with

Hamlet

and

Titus,

do so

many

literentswith

different dentities all

jump

the

same

way,

ike

Maxwell's

demons?

Under the old objective paradigm, centuriesof criticshave looked for

the

answer

"in"

Hamlet

or

Titus-and

not found

it.

"Subjectivity"

seems

to me

only

a first

tep away

from

this

false trail

and

toward more fruitful

inquiry.

In

the

transactive

paradigm,

the

question

becomes still

more

pointed:

What can

I

(or

you)

find

operating

in

people's

relations

to

Hamlet

that will

explain

why

so

many

different

iterentsfromso

many



12/13

THE NEW

PARADIGM

345

different

imes,

places,

and

cultures

can

re-create their

differing

dentities

from

this

one

set

of

symbols?

What

is

it

in

people's

relations

to Titus

that

inhibits that re-creation? As I see it, I need to look for the answer not

"in"

the

texts nor

"in"

the literents ut

"in"

their-but

first

f

all,

my-

transactionswith the

text.

In the

briefest

terms,

"objective"

literary

criticism seeks

out

the re-

currences

in

literary

response.

Thus

structuralist,

henomenological,

and

semiotic

approaches

as

well

as the more

familiar

formalist

criticism

are

all kin:

they

ll

claim

intersubjective

alidity

n the

manner of

the

natural

sciences,

often

simply assuming

a

uniformity

f

response.

Bleich's

"sub-

jective"

criticism

eeks out the

variations

in

literary esponse,

nd

they

are

far greater than "objective" criticsseem to realize. Finally, however, it

is

only by

means

of

a

transactive

paradigm

that

one

can

consider

both

variations and

recurrences

r,

more

exactly,

the recurrences

n

response

as

interactions

mong

variations.

How do

we do

this?

Right

now,

I'm

not

sure,

but

I

know

I

shall con-

tinue to

explore

these

questions.13

They

admit

(in

David

Bleich's

words)

an

invigorating

activity

of the

intellecting

mind

adapting

itself to

onto-

genetic

and

phylogenetic

demands." In

my

terms,

hey

make

possible

an

exciting

re-creation

of

our

identities s

we transact

literature,

psychology,

literary theory,and ourselves. In these transactions, look forwardto

future

discussion with

David

Bleich,

both on

and

off the

printed page,

for

have

learned

much

fromhim

in

the

past.

CENTER FOR

THE

PSYCHOLOGICAL

STUDY

OF THE

ARTS

STATE

UNIVERSITY OF

NEW

YORK,

BUFFALO

NOTES

1

I

have chronicled this indebtedness n

"A

Letter to

Leonard,"

Hartford

Studies

in

Literature,

5

(1973),

9-30.

2

David

Bleich, Readings

and

Feelings:

An

Introduction

to

Subjective

Criticism

(Urbana,

1975);

Murray

M.

Schwartz,

"Where

Is

Literature?"

College

English,

36

(1975),

756-65;

Norman N.

Holland,

Poems in Persons:

An

Introduction

to

the

Psychoanalysis

of

Literature

(New

York,

1973)

and

5 Readers

Reading

(New

Haven

and

London,

1975).

The last

three

items come

from

the

so-called

"Buffalo

school

of

psychoanalytic

critics,"

and

David Bleich is an

Associate of Buffalo's

Center for the Psychological Study of the Arts.

3

While

this

essay

was in

manuscript,

David Bleich called

my

attention to

Louise

Rosenblatt's

Literature

as

Exploration

(New

York,

1938),

which

anticipates

two

of

my

favorite

terms

for this

process:

re-creation and

transaction. Rosenblatt

recognized

that

each literent

ctively

resynthesizes

he

text.

Lacking in-depth

case

studies

of

reading

transactions

or

an

adequate

psychology,

however,

she

simply

concluded that

the text's

causal role

in

the transaction

equaled

its

perceiver's.



13/13

346

NEW ITERARYISTORY

4 "The

Location

of

Cultural

Experience"

(1966)

and

"Transitional

Objects

and

Transitional Phenomena"

(1953)

in

Winnicott's

Playing

and

Reality (London,

1971), pp. 103,

14. Schwartz

(in

"Where

is

Literature?")

extends

the

concept

to

literentsnd literature.

5

Roger

Poole,

so

heavily

relied on

by

Bleich,

actually develops

the

philosophical

correlative

of this

developmental discovery,

transactive

epistemology

f relation-

ship,

not

simply subjectivity. Murray

Schwartz

discusses the

cited

passage

in

"The

Space

of

Psychological Criticism," Hartford

Studies

in

Literature,

5

(1973),

X111.

6

Lichtenstein's

key

article is

"Identity

and

Sexuality:

A

Study

of

Their Inter-

relationship

in

Man,"

Journal

of

the American

Psychoanalytic

Association,

9

(1961),

179-260.

The

reader will find a

variety

of

restatements f Lichtenstein's

theories n

my

works cited

above.

The

centrality

f Lichtenstein's

theories n

the

work of

the

BuffaloCenter

does

not stem from

he

accident

of his

physical

presence

here, although that is a coincidence for which we are repeatedly grateful.

7 Norman N. Holland and

Murray

M.

Schwartz,

"The

Delphi Seminar," College

English,

36

(1975),

789-800.

8

See

my

contrast

of "additive" and "subtractive"

epistemologies

n

5

Readers,

pp.

281-83.

9

George

S.

Klein, Perception,

Motives,

and

Personality (New York, 1970), pp.

257,

46.

10

Scientific

Autobiography

and

Other

Papers,

tr.

Frank

Gaynor

(New

York,

1949), pp.

33-34.

11

See

my

"Unity

Identity

Text

Self," PMLA,

90

(1975),

813-22.

12

"The

Challenge

to

PsychoanalyticPsychotherapy

n a World in

Crisis,"

Inter-

national

Journal of

PsychoanalyticPsychotherapy,

(1973),

149-74,

165-68.

13

As

in

"Hamlet-My

Greatest

Creation,"

Journal

of

the American

Academy

of

Psychoanalysis,

(1975),

419-27,

and

Norman

N.

Holland and

Leona

F. Sher-

man,

"Virtualites du

gothique,"

Romantisme

Noir,

ed.

L.

Abensour

and F.

Charras

(forthcoming,

aris:

L'Herne,

1976).

holland, norman - transactive criticism

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