Textual Analysis. Week 4.
For this session we read Catherine Belsey’s chapter ‘Textual Analysis as a Research Method’ (2005). Belsey (2005), comes towards a text from a psychoanalytic point of view. Psychoanalysis starts with a problem, and tries to solve it. There are two people in a psychoanalytic encounter: the patient and the analyst. Psychoanalysis views analysts as an interpreter of a patient as there is a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved. Therefore psychoanalysis is almost like textual analysis in that it involves the ‘analysis’ and search for ‘deeper meanings’ and a solution to an apparent ‘problem’.
The session aimed to look at what textual analysis actually is and how this method can be employed to analyse texts in detail. The session also aimed to teach us how detailed readings of texts are conducted and how different methods of reading/analysis can create different outcomes.
For this session, we were urged to think about the following three questions:
1. What features in a text do we look for when we want to analyse it in detail?
2. ‘Interpretation always involves extra-textual knowledge.’ What does Belsey mean by this?
3. How would you (as a reader) characterise your relation to Belsey’s text? (see section IV of her chapter).
Belsey’s (2005) chapter detailed her analysis of a painting and how she went about analysing the possible meanings of the picture. She described how she researched the painting, how interpreting the painting involved knowledge from elsewhere – such as knowledge of ancient Rome (as the author was analysing a painting of Tarquin and Lucretia by Titian), or knowledge of intercourse or rape (as the picture depicted the rape of Lucretia). These knowledges can come about from our own embeddedness within culture, particularly a culture where you find information from television programmes, conversation, books, education and general knowledge.
The information that I came away with from Belsey’s (2005) chapter was:
In order to analyse a text we need to ask/know/think about:
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What is going ‘on’ in the text/picture/film/transcript or whatever media you are analysing? You need to think literally and then expand on this to think about things that may be hidden or not as obvious. Who is the intended reader/viewer/listener? What effect is the author looking for – can this be discerned from whether they are using first/second/third person (in a text or sound recording) or from what techniques they are using?
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Use your knowledge – whether academic, general or otherwise. We need to be critical of our own knowledge as it may be rather subjective – although subjective knowledge can often be a positive thing. It can be possible to use instinct and then follow up these instincts with reading about them to find out if these instincts could be a possible reading.
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How does the text present the characters or subjects of the piece?
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Where are our sympathies invited to lie?
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The researcher must think about debating their own first impressions in order to think about other multiple meanings.
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Picking out certain aspects of the text/image/film/media and put this together with a research interest. Refer to Belsey (2005: 157).
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Research is expected to add something new to an academic field. Expected to be original or to expand on another piece of research, to be independent. However, despite this originality, it does not mean that research has be completely and totally different from other research. It most likely expands on previous research, looking at something that may be missing or not fully explored.
As Belsey (2005) explains, as researchers, we cannot interpret something without knowledge from elsewhere. This knowledge can come from secondary resources (books, film, education, television programmes), personal experience, or general knowledge from wider culture (other books, art, news, everyday occurences and so on).
The first impulse of many researchers when they come across something unfamiliar is to look it up on the internet or in another book, in the library, in bibliographies, from recommendations from other people and so on. It may all be useful if it leads to further textual analysis of that particular text. However, Belsey (2005) explains that we must not take other people’s word for it, and must consider their contribution carefully, with the pros and cons of each contribution.
Belsey (2005), in her method of textual analysis, explains that it may be more conducive to textual analysis to use secondary sources sparingly. Since when analysing a text, a researcher is trying to find something new or different, other people’s sources may hinder rather than help this. Researchers and text analysers need to come to their own conclusions, first and foremost. Belsey (2005) also suggests to write hypotheses/questions and try to answer them yourself before looking at secondary readings.
In the session, there was discussion of de Saussure’s (1916) theory of semiotics, signs and signifiers. For example, ‘toilet’ would be the signified whilst the signs on the doors of the toilets would be the signifier (the sign for ‘men’s’ or ‘women’s’). We all understand these signs and there are a number of ways to signify something, which therefore means that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary.
de Saussure (1916) said that what is important is what underlies language and vocabularies. Saussure basically said that language is a signs system in which the sign is made up of the signifier and and what is signified. This theory is important because it underpins the idea of textual analysis, indeed, any analysis. If a sign did not have an underlying meaning, there would be no need to analyse something to find what underlies it.
Levi-Strauss developed de Saussure’s theory of semiotics by viewing language as a sign system through inclusion and exclusion. In some cultures you do not use words in the way that other cultures do. All languages, however, have a structure of sentences; the point at which we get from sentences to meaning is about genre.
Text is anything that you can read and it is possible to read any sign system (such as film, text or art). A text means nothing to you if you are not familar with the medium in some way – for example, someone who has never played music before will find that a music scale will not mean anything. ‘Artefacts’ can include literature, paintings, interviews (transcripts/notes/recordings), photos, and so on. All these artefacts are sign-systems that we can interpret. They can also tell you a lot about a culture, in the way that they employ signs (for example, the sign for mens/women’s toilets are different in other cultures).
This session made me think about how I analyse texts and bring certain knowledge to my analysis of these texts. I have had experience of textual analysis, but did not think that being critical about texts and arguments and analysing texts was a particular discipline or method in it’s own right. For this reason, I found the session useful for thinking about ways in which I can analyse anything deemed a text: in particular, interviews, emails, questionnaires or letters that I will need to analyse for my dissertation. Coming from a sociological background, I also found it useful to look at analysis in a different way, other than those methods employed in sociology.
Bibliography
Belsey, C (2005) ‘Textual analysis as a research method’. In Griffin, G (ed) (2005) Research Methods for English Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Reading Women. Week 3.
Provisional Abstract for Pearce Article (As a Practice on Writing Abstracts)
This chapter examines whether it is possible to find a position for oneself in the complicated navigation of author/text/reader that literary critics and feminist readers/writers undertake. Who or what is responsible for the meaning of a text? The writer attempts to explain these difficulties and how it may be possible, as feminist readers and critics, to both be aware of the positioning of the reader within the text and also finding our own meanings located in the text. To illustrate these difficulties, the writer provides a detailed example of her own forages into reading: both as an academic seemingly unaware of her positioning as woman within classical male authored texts and therefore not the intended reader, and also as a feminist reader and critic criticising texts authored by men that exclude women readers. The author argues that we may be empowered and yet disempowered by a text, because it may have many interpretations. We must try to reconcile the personal demands of reading a text with the professional demands of literary criticism. The author concludes that, for her, the text has renewed authority; whilst we, as readers, have a dialogic relationship with the text, we are still positioned by it. As feminist readers, we must therefore be more reflexive in our methodological leanings: we should admit our lack of control in the reading process when writing.
My Own Reading Autobiography
My reading autobiography has been a long and interesting journey. It started when I was young and my parents used to read Winnie the Pooh to me at bedtimes. My most recent recreational book was ‘Eclipse’ by Stephenie Meyer, a book about vampires and werewolves. My reading tastes have changed and expanded considerably; although these have tended more towards specific authors rather than a particular genre. I have read books from both less ‘well known’ authors (Joanna Russ, Trudi Canavan etc) and ‘well known’ authors (such as George Orwell, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, The Brontes, and Anne Rice et al).
Up until two years ago I read a large selection of writing from male authors. However, with my changing ideas about how I wanted to escape and how I felt I needed to relate to characters, whether this is by some personality characteristic or whether they were a woman, my reading became much more selective and defined. I began to read much more writing by women authors, in particular, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, Trudi Canavan, Anne Rice and Kelley Armstrong.
‘My’ genre tended to skirt along the edges of science fiction and fantasy, and many of these women authors fed my addiction for women positive science fiction and fantasy. It is not the only genre I read from, but it is the one that I find myself most drawn to. Most of the books have a strong emphasis on independent, strong and interesting women characters. Some of these books did not concentrate particularly on women characters, but I felt more at ease because the writer was creating a perspective that smashed those stereotypes of male ‘macho’ mentality or female ‘femininity’.
One such book was ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ by Ursula Le Guin. This particular book imagined a world where the inhabitants could change their gender according to particular points in their lifespan or culture even, and the political and social limits are pushed when a missionary arrives from another world in order to learn about their culture and ways of living (and to ask if they are interested in trading with this other planet). I had a hunger for books that intellectually stimulated and interested me. It seems that both the text and the reader give something to the experience of reading: the text ‘speaks’ to us but nobody can have exactly the same experience of one text.
The problem with the genre of science fiction and fantasy is that, obviously, it has been a genre closed to women in the past. The realms of science fiction have been associated with the supposed ‘masculine’ traits of adventure and exploration, but I am quite sure that women also find exploration and adventure interesting! Feminist writers found that science fiction and fantasy can be a fulfilling and useful genre for writing as it allows the writer to imagine worlds where anything could be possible, which is evidenced in feminist dystopian and utopian writing. The most famous of these are ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ by Marge Piercy and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood. Reading from this genre of feminist science fiction and fantasy has shaped the way I feel as a reader, and how I approach other texts. I am less interested in books that do not seem to speak to me as a feminist and as a woman.
Books that I have previously read I now recognise as not ‘addressed’ to a woman reader, therefore being exclusive, and have stereotypical and narrow ideas of what it means to be a woman; and although I recognise that the historical context of a novel is important, as a recreational reader I feel that we are allowed to be selective. In academic areas however, if you need to read a book that does not address you as a reader, it may be that reading feminist texts and being critical will allow us to recognise (as Pearce has) that we are both positioned by a text and we have a dialogue with it.
Reflections on Session
Thinking about the ways in which our readings of texts is subjective and influenced by our identities is something that I previously had not thought about so much. Where we are in our lives and what our experiences have been have influenced how we read texts, what we choose to read, why we read them and what we hope to find within a text.
My own experiences with reading and the type of texts I am familiar with influence unfamiliar and new texts that I read, or will be reading. For example, it is a popular pre-conception that science fiction and fantasy writing do not have much to offer a feminist reader, due to the mostly male presence and patronage of these genres. However, the genre can be said to have offered exciting possibilities for the portrayal of feminist issues and women - as can be seen with Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series and Charmed.
My searches for new and interesting science fiction and fantasy books have meant that I have found many books that may be considered feminist in some ways: central women characters, feminist themes and so on. I have also thought about how science fiction and fantasy genres could be a useful tool for feminist utopian writing or feminist issues; indeed, it already has been, with such books as Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy, and Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
However, I am wary of stating that science fiction and fantasy (and horror) can be a catalyst for exploring feminist issues. It has been the case that the majority of science fiction and fantasy has excluded women and addressed a ‘male’ reader, as Pearce (1995) says about her own reading experiences. It has been my experience that women writers of science fiction and fantasy often seek to address this silence and exclusion – as can be witnessed by Kelley Armstrong, Trudi Canavan, Ursula Le Guin and Marge Piercy.
Bibliography:
Hennegan, A (1988 ) ‘On Becoming a Lesbian Reader‘ In Radstone, S (ed) (1988 ) Sweet Dreams: Sexuality and Popular Fiction. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Pearce, L (1995) ‘Finding a Place From Which to Write: The Methodology of Feminist Textual Practice.’ In Skeggs, B (ed) (1995) Feminist Cultural Theory: Process and Production. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
