Discussion of the Book Is there a text in this class? The Authotiry of Interpretive Communities

I am currently a graduate student at the University of New Mexico.  I am taking a class on literature.  We have been discussing the meaning of texts.  We started the semester by discussing Professor Rosenblatt.  Now we are all reading different texts.  To discuss these texts and we are using a blog format.  I am new to blogging so this will be a fun and new experience for me.

A little about my background, I am currently teaching a chemistry, physics and senior math class.  I took a literature class to incorporate literature into my science classrooms.  I also took some AVID training to start learning about “marking” up the text.  By annotating students can pick out meanings from their texts.  This was important for me to implement in my classroom with the Common Core Standards being in effect.

I also think it is important to incorporate literature and not just informational texts into my classroom and that is why I took this literature class.

The book I will be discussing will be Is there a Text in this class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities  by Stanley Fish Publisher: Harvard University Press (June 25, 1982) ISBN-10: 0674467264 · ISBN-13: 978-0674467262

While I skimmed through the book I see that it is a collection of previous papers by Stanley Fish.  I will pick a few articles and discuss them further.  The first article/chapter will be How to Recognize a Poem when you see one.  In this article Fish describes how our interpretation is dependent on our interpretation culture.  We do not come up with individual interpretations but our culture is what shapes our interpretation.  We are all in an interpretive community and this shapes us even if we are not aware of it.  He applies this theory to how we see poems.  When do we know it is a poem?  We all know what poems are so we are shaped before we even look at the poem.

What I got out of this paper was Fish described interpretation and thus meaning as not being random, but being a product of your culture.   The culture changes so the interpretations can change but they are not wrong.   

After I read the article I also read a few reviews on Fish.  The one I liked was by Liz Herrin.  She brought up a few points I did not think about as I was reading the article.  She was right that Fish only used concrete examples to explain his theory.

http://voices.yahoo.com/the-question-identity-culture-through-works-57889.html (Liz Herrin’s thoughts)

Since this is my first time reading Fish I will continue on with the articles and maybe his theory will become clear to me as I continue on in the book.