“Once the subject-object dichotomy was eliminated as the only framework within which critical debate could occur, problems that had once seemed so troublesome did not seem to be problems at all. As an advocate for the rights of the reader, I could explain agreement only by positing an ideal (or informed) reader in relation to whom other readers were less informed or otherwise deficient. That is, agreement was secured by making disagreement aberrant (a position that was difficult to defend since the experience with which one had to agree was mine).” -once again: from Stanley Fish’s intro to his Is There a Text in this Class…
I mainly bring this quote in to emphasize the overlaps at work between Fish’s literary criticism and philosophy, as well as to redeem myself to my Deleuze and Pragmatic habitations (or playgrounds if you will (which I have been pestering with it.
It’s all there. And the mention of the subject-object dichotomy pretty much cues us in to it. But I would note how in this quote:
"Once the subject-object dichotomy was eliminated as the only framework within which critical debate could occur, problems that had once seemed so troublesome did not seem to be problems at all.”
:Fish basically turns to the same solution as both Deleuze and Rorty did: resorting to the materialism of thinking of humans as nodes in a complex system. And as this quote shows:
“As an advocate for the rights of the reader, I could explain agreement only by positing an ideal (or informed) reader in relation to whom other readers were less informed or otherwise deficient. That is, agreement was secured by making disagreement aberrant (a position that was difficult to defend since the experience with which one had to agree was mine)."
:he did it explicitly for the perfectly democratic purpose of undermining the old Platonic notion of knowledge being some kind of corporate hierarchy justified by some transcendent criteria. However, here he is more Deleuzian than Rortyan in that he is looking at the relationship between text and reader and their given interpretive community as a kind of interaction of systems whereas Rorty worked in the more superficial, accessible, and practical expressions of that interaction of systems. Still, we must admire Rorty for his ability (in the sense of a generous teacher: much like Jaspers (to explain that expression in historical terms.