Bourdieu argues that cultural consumption is due to “our need to place ourselves within social hierarchies” (Moran, 72), and that this same need is transferred to how we read texts. In a previous course I learned the use the term “subject position” to frame the specific position that a person inhabits within a culture. For example some of my subject positions are female, white, college student, teenager, creative nonfiction writer, and so on. These subject positions each have a type of hierarchy be it gender, racial, or some other aspect of culture that influence how I read a text.
For example, on the social hierarchy that pertains to gender, I’m female, which sets me at a lower level then the men within this culture. I’m also a feminist who believes that women should be treated as equals to men, but also as equals to each other. (There’s a form of internalized misogyny where women feel like they have to put down other women. It’s most often seen in comments like “I’m not like other girls.”) Coming from this subject position, this place in a social hierarchy, I read the end of Joan Didon’s “Marrying Absurd” skeptically. She ends this essay with “Another round of pink champagne, this time not on the house, and the bride began to cry. “It was just as nice,” she sobbed, “as I hoped and dreamed it would be”” (Slouching toward Bethlehem, 83). In this piece Didion looked into the culture and business of Las Vegas weddings and deemed them absurd. She calls it impulsive (81) and has negative opinions about it throughout the piece. For this reason, I think that Didion is poking fun at this bride, who’s pregnant, newly married, and crying about how lovely her wedding was. Didion doesn’t point to the groom or the father to make this final point. She goes to the bride and looks down on her for her choices.
Here, Didion has her own constructed hierarchy that she’s somehow better than this other woman. But in my mind, the bride and the writer are on an equal, and Didion isn’t using her writing to present herself in a feminist way, to support equality. I’m annoyed at Didion’s treatment of another woman, and I believe that she should have looked closer at her language in this piece. However, that is solely my point of view that comes from my position in this social hierarchy. Someone else, who is positioned differently than me, might see this scene very differently. They might read this scene as a hopeful ending, where Didion changed her mind and decided that the marriage culture in Las Vegas wasn’t so bad at all. Or they might read this ending as how Didion’s perspective is only one of many to think about in regards to this subject matter. The different readings could continue on. Ultimately, our social hierarchies inspire how we read texts and offer an explanation as to why we read them differently from each other.
That’s very true, the social hierarchies we put ourselves into definitely affect the way we interpret text. Do you think there are interpretations that are “more correct” though? And if so, what makes an interpretation more or less “correct”? Should the author’s motive play a significant role in our interpretation of the text? Does the author’s motive matter more than our personal social hierarchies?
Do you see empathy as a way of bypassing these hierarchies? Being able to place yourselves in another’s shoes in order to fully understand their position in life is no easy task but it can allow you to see things in a different way, in order to both write a scene like the one discussed above and to interpret it.
What I’ve always thought of the subject of interpretation is that your view isn’t set in stone, or completely determined by your social hierarchy in this case. It is heavily influenced by it, to be sure. But I think with interpreting scenes the most effective way to do it is to look at it through different “lenses,” placing yourself in a different position, even if it’s uncomfortable, and seeing what about the scene changes. You had a very fair reading of the scene in the social hierarchy of a feminist, but when you approach it again you are in no way bound to that reading; pretend you’re a mysoginist, or even someone who’s goal in life has always been to get married and have children.
Using a little empathy (and a whole lot of guess work) can allow us to see the scene through different lenses and give us the benefit of several interpretations. In response to Simone, my opinion the author’s intentions are important in some aspects but during interpretation we should take time to look at the scene on its own and without any influence of whatever intentions may or may not exist. Unless they are right there next to us telling us what they had intended, we are left to our own devices to figure out what is going on; if the message isn’t clear enough to be derived without us being told it’s there then maybe something more important is going on that the author didn’t intend