K O D I K A S / C O D E Volume 40 (2017) · No. 3 - 4 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen What are we appealing to? A semiotic Approach to the Notion of Context in literary Studies Sebastian Feil (Augsburg) Against the background of the ongoing trend in literary and cultural studies to “ contextualize ” objects of study in relation to other material and for a certain purpose, the paper examines the notion of context in literary studies 1.) from a disciplinary point of view and 2.) from the vantage point of the analytical topic of borderline vagueness and its (implicit) treatment in Peircean semiotics. After showing that the notion of context does not lack any sharpness of definition, and, therefore, cannot be any further clarified, it is argued that the persistent methodological shortcomings of contextualization are due to the inherent vagueness of the phenomenon of context itself. Any perceived uncertainty about correct procedures of contextualization is neither a matter of increase in precision nor of quantitative considerations, but the result of a fundamental indecisiveness rooted in the phenomenon of context. It is consequently best dealt with by an appeal to generality, understood in terms of Peircean semiotics as the further reduction of interdisciplinary and intersubjective boundaries. Borderline vagueness proper involves a lack of communication (and isolation of research), which is why the paper argues against any such psychologism and for the application of stricter procedures of semiotic generalization to any given approach to interpretation and terminological work in literary and cultural studies. 1 A contested extension? Perhaps the most salient feature of our ongoing inquiry into the concept of context is the fact that there is absolutely no terminological problem. The popular Oxford Dictionary of English offers us sound definitions according to which “ context ” is 1.) “ the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood ” and 2.) “ the parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning. ” And likewise, in its use in literary studies, the intension of the word “ context ” is enviably clear-cut and almost completely exhausted by the general definitions major encyclopedic resources provide (which, incidentally, do not stray very far from definitions in general dictionaries). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms expands the ODoE notion (leaving out “ immediately ” ) by stating that contexts are “ those parts of a text preceding and following any particular passage, giving it a meaning fuller or more identifiable than if it were read in isolation ” and by adding that contexts comprise “ any part of - or the whole of - the remaining text, or the biographical, social, cultural, and historical circumstances in which it is made (including the intended audience or reader) ” (Baldick 2001: 50). In the same vein, the German Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie defines “ Kontext ” as “ das die Bedeutung wesentlich mitbestimmende sprachliche oder kulturelle Umfeld ” (Müller 2008: 379) and the comprehensive Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft ’ s basic definition of the term (hinting at the quantitative framework in which reasoning about context very often takes place) simply reads: “ Die Menge der für die Erklärung eines Textes relevanten Bezüge ” (Danneberg 2000: 333). We know quite well what “ context ” means. This also holds true with regard to the extension of the term “ context ” : It is easy to point out that something generally is the context for something else when you perceive that something in such a relationship. This may be one reason why the appeal to context is so attractive and oftentimes so fruitful. In general, the threshold for convincing people that one thing stands in relation to another is relatively low. Consider the case of irony: Pointing out that some interlocutor has missed the irony of an utterance because they failed to consider the correct context (or the context correctly) is something that everyone is able to do and that almost every interlocutor will accept if vaguely made plausible to them. We recognize a context when we see one. Yet, if debates involving the term “ context ” ensue, they are concerned with the extension of the term (to the point where a reference work like the Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms does not even define the term intensionally, cf. Lee 2006: 33 - 34). These debates are generally of a normative nature and home in on the question: Given that contexts surround (a literary text) and provide additional information (to better understand a literary text), to which objects should the term “ context ” extend? The Reallexikon lists four types of extensional possibilities that fall under the term “ context ” in literary studies: intratextual (relation to linguistic antecedentia and consequentia), infratextual (relation to mereological scope), intertextual (relation by similarity) and extratextual (relation by influence and authorship) (cf. Danneberg 2000: 333 - 336). Such specification locates the extension of the “ something more ” that context is somewhere between the immediate surroundings of a text and the infinite surroundings of the extratextual world. Accordingly, the text turns into the site (or intersection) of various overlapping limits imposed on it by these different contexts (cf. Danneberg 2000: 336). In turn, these contexts, if rendered precise, limit the infinite possibilities of meaning a text holds. While Lutz Danneberg (among others) takes it for granted that a distinction between text and context exists and is vital to any discussion of the notion of context (2000: 336), others have shown that, when subjected to the proper amount of reflection, such a distinction collapses. From a systems-theoretical point of view, Oliver Jahraus demonstrates that “ contextuality ” is a (perhaps the) fundamental condition of textuality itself because of 1.) a text ’ s general embeddedness in communicative processes (cf. 2007: 30) and 2.) the necessary precondition of interpretability (cf. 2014: 153). Any given text (and certainly, any literary 222 Sebastian Feil (Augsburg) text) organizes what Jahraus calls “ individual generality ” 1 : It mediates between what is external to the text and its individual expression in such a way that what is external to the text is what constitutes it and makes it possible in the first place. The idea that there is no sharp distinction between text and context bears a striking resemblance to general ideas of poststructuralism and its focus on purely formal systems of signification, if only for the fact that both approaches are not primarily concerned with the possibility that a certain culture may well have habits that determine what a text is, e. g. printed words on pages, bound or loose, and derive certain ideas from those habits, e. g. that a text ends where the material ends. Jonathan Culler suggests the term “ framing ” as a substitute for “ context ” in order to stress that contexts are “ nothing tangible, pure articulation ” (1988: ix), “ boundless ” , “ infinitely expandable ” and thus necessarily “ produced ” (1988: 148). All one gets to do, to put it in Coleridge ’ s words, is to “ break off the series ” (1907: 187), not “ arbitrarily ” , but as “ one reaches a point where further contextualization seems unproductive ” (Culler 1988: 148). It seems that “ framing ” (i. e. “ context ” ) is conceptualized as something like a “ willful imposition by a subjectivity of a theory on the texts ” (Miller 1980: 611), an intentional force that acts against what Umberto Eco calls “ hermetic ” or “ paradigmatic ” drift: “ from similarity to similarity everything can be connected with everything else so that everything can be seen as a sign standing for something else and every thing [sic! ] is the sign of another ” (Eco 1995: 206). Culler, as it were, recognizes “ that symbols are paradigmatically open to infinite meanings ” precisely at the cost of not being “ syntagmatically, that is, textually, open [. . .] to the indefinite, but by no means infinite, interpretations allowed by the context ” (in the words of Eco 1990: 21) and are only held in check by the productiveness of a given interpretation. 2 The distinction in question corresponds roughly to what Danneberg calls the intraand infratextual context (concerned with how a text is internally organized) and the interand extratextual context (concerned with how the text is organized in relation to the world): “ Die Möglichkeiten der Bildung inter- und extratextueller Kontexte sind unbegrenzt ” (Danneberg 2000: 336), but Culler suggests (at least implicitly) that this characteristic may also apply to intraand infratextual contexts. 2 Contested methods? In an article on the relationship between context and practice of interpretation, Danneberg points out that contextualization may be perceived as problematic when the purpose of the invocation of a context and the selective procedures that lead to the establishment of a context are insufficiently clarified (1990: 89 and 93). The possibility that they may indeed be insufficiently clarified in turn poses a problem for Culler ’ s idea of the productiveness of interpretation, which stands in opposition to the idea of the possible falsity thereof. Once we see off the idea of a possible syntagmatic elucidation of what a context should contain in favor of the other idea, namely that contexts primarily need to include (or signification can 1 “ Der Text - und insbesondere der literarische Text - ist die Organisationsform des individuell Allgemeinen ” ( Jahraus 2014: 149). 2 Thus, he allies himself with Rorty and his criticism of Eco ’ s idea of overinterpretation (cf. Rorty 1999: 131 - 147). What are we appealing to? A semiotic Approach to the Notion of Context in literary Studies 223 be cut off at) what is practically required, we have shifted our focus from what is analytically sound to what needs to be done synthetically. The appeal to context is always also an appeal to methodological presuppositions: It is within particular contexts of research - and this includes such things as the goals, policies, and positions of researchers - that it is possible meaningfully to decide which contexts we wish to foreground as particularly relevant, and which ones could, for the moment, ‘ in this particular conjuncture ’ , be left unexplored. (Kovala 2014: 167) It may strike one as peculiar that decisions regarding contexts are to be settled by an appeal to other contexts. It was in fact Stanley Fish who prominently championed such an approach. His concept of an “ interpretive community ” (1980) represents the idea that agreement about the meaning of something is absolutely unproblematic if all the people that agree are of the same mindset. The basic prerogative for such absolute understanding is that “ interpretive activities are not free ” but constrained by “ the understood practices and assumptions of the institution and not the rules and fixed meanings of a language system ” (Fish 1980: 306). Peter Brenner takes this to be nothing but a more narrow version of the reader-response Erwartungshorizont (cf. 1998: 131) while Timothy Bagwell criticizes Fish for not providing “ any account of how new systems of interpretation come into being ” (1983: 128). This is why it is so hard to argue with Fish: Beyond the general assumption that there certainly are professional presumptions and alliances, there is no way of telling what exactly lends credibility to such a community and its supposed methods. Danneberg, in a Wittgensteinian way, reminds us of the importance of explicitness: Even though there are no “ natural ” boundaries that constrain the contextualization of texts, contexts of research provide shareable presuppositions concerning the “ Rekonstruktions- und Darstellungssprache ” (1990: 102), and if different people use the same words, these words can be deemed to mean the same things (or have the same thoughts or feelings). Yet, even if methods are made explicit, what settles their validity? Kovala draws on Lawrence Grossberg to highlight the function that power has in that regard: “ wherever people and practices are organized around particular contradictions, there are multiple, differential relations of power involved ” (2014: 166). But in order to make these relations explicit, any investigation is “ dependent upon an analysis of the specific, concrete conjuncture ” (166) of the power relation in question, i. e. on the actual context of power in the medium of a fixed text, which under the basic hermeneutic condition that “ writing is self-alienation ” (Gadamer 2004: 392), brings us, more or less, back to the beginning. Once more, one is required to determine the intra-, infra-, inter-, and extratextual contexts that allow for an analysis of what constitutes the context of power that constitutes the meaning of a text, or cut off the process of signification either arbitrarily or after reaching the threshold of productiveness (which, in turn, begs the question and so forth ad infinituum). In the following, I will try to show where these debates concerning the extension of the term “ context ” and the corresponding methodological problems derive from objectively. I believe they are in part due to the objective vagueness (also known as borderline vagueness) of what I would term, for lack of better words, the phenomenon of context by which I mean that “ context ” always has a reality (or better perhaps, actuality) corresponding to it. From that point of view, the source of dissatisfaction with the term “ context ” does not so much lie in language but rather in the object itself, or more precisely, in the object ’ s vagueness. 224 Sebastian Feil (Augsburg) 3 But what is vagueness? In analytical philosophy (and Peirce ’ s pragmaticism, as we shall see), vagueness is a term describing a particular form of indeterminateness that is to be differentiated from other forms of indeterminateness such as ambiguity and, in particular, generality. Ambiguity is usually easily sorted out: The decision between “ bank ” and “ bank ” is very easy to make and really only requires a very slight increase in information on the part of the speaker. The same applies to generality. The proposition “ Our money is not safe in the bank ” does not depend on additional information for it to be precise. Insofar as it expresses a general mistrust in the financial system, it extends to all banks that store money. But to what extent do we have to increase the length of a seat for the chair to end and the bench to begin? In the logical tradition, vagueness proper was first appropriated by means of the so-called “ sorites paradox ” (from greek sorós: heap). The basic question underlying this paradox is where to draw the line between F and -F if -F+1=-F, -F+2=-F, -F+3=-F etc. resulting in -F +x=-F (x being small incremental steps towards F) even though the proposition -F +1.000.000=F is simultaneously true. In the case of a heap of straws, for example, we are certain that a continuous increase of the number of straws results in a heap. However, it is impossible to determine the exact straw that turns a collection of straws into a heap of straws (similarly, it is impossible to determine the exact hair in the sink that turned a head of hair into a bald head). More generally, “ vagueness stems from an indeterminacy over the number of applications required to settle whether a given proposition P is legitimately true or legitimately false ” (Agler 2010: 94). Such fuzziness is decidedly not a matter of missing information: Borderline vagueness is not a type of indeterminacy thought to be subjective and eliminable upon an increase of information about the speaker ’ s intention. Instead, in addition to borderline cases, one feature that distinguishes vagueness from a type of indeterminacy known as “ uninformativeness ” is that the extensions of vague predicates are objectively indeterminate (or resistant to inquiry). Vagueness is distinct from uninformativeness because the latter kind of indeterminacy is subjectively indeterminate and dispensable upon an increase of information about the world or the mind of a language user. (Agler 2013: 206, original emphasis) Depending on the point of view, the objectivity of vagueness is either a matter of linguistic or epistemic bias or a feature of the objective world as such (cf. Sorensen 2012). This means that either language, our cognitive abilities or the world as such lack sharp boundaries. Whichever flavor of vagueness philosophers adhere to, it is uncontroversial that thresholds for propositions involving “ vague predicates are not just unknown, they are unknowable ” (Sorensen 2001: 3). So far, it has always been possible to point out inconsistencies in one theory with the help of another and thereby question the approach to resolving vagueness in any theory (cf. Sorensen 2012). It seems that the resolution of borderline vagueness is in some way itself dependent on a concept of productiveness. Delia Fara (2000) has discussed this under the headline of “ interest-relativeness ” and draws attention to the fact that vagueness generally dissipates according to the satisfaction of our interests. For Fara, vagueness itself is an interest-relative phenomenon that hinges less on the fuzziness of the boundary but on the “ boundarylessness ” (2000: 48) of vague concepts (the fact that they are continuous in some respect). Nevertheless, she generally What are we appealing to? A semiotic Approach to the Notion of Context in literary Studies 225 concedes with the basic idea that “ vague predicates seem to us to be always ‘ tolerant ’ of small changes without always being tolerant of large ones ” (2000: 49), but traces the root cause of this to the idea that vagueness “ has a traceable source in the vagueness of our interests ” (2000: 49). Thus, the desire to drink a cup of coffee in the morning is generally satisfied by a vague amount of ground coffee beans as well as a vague amount of water (if you spill a couple of beans or a few drops or even a sip of water, you will generally not replace them). The reason for this, as Fara explains, is that other concepts like “ purpose ” or “ efficiency ” play a major role in that undertaking, thus rendering technically different amounts of ground coffee and water the same (cf. 2000: 68). While the idea that vagueness is the result of contextually variable interests is generally sound, there is no way to determinately fix what is meant by “ interest ” and other supposed context-fixing concepts. This is the basic version of the criticism that Rosanna Keefe (2007) holds against contextual theories of vagueness (among them Fara ’ s version). In her paper, she addresses two contextualist arguments: 1.) that vagueness emerges contextually and 2.) that fixed contexts alleviate vagueness. By establishing that “ the contextualist is committed to extremely frequent changes in context about which we cannot know, but which result in changes of extensions of our predicates and truth-values of our sentences ” (2007: 287), Keefe mounts the charge of psychologism on the side of the attributor. 3 She stresses that even “ if we fix the context, we still face the phenomena of vagueness, including the sorites paradox ” , that there is no way to fix a context in such a way that the sorites paradox itself disappears and that, therefore, “ the appeal to change of context will not help when we are considering the sorites series all at once ” (Keefe 2007: 290). Theoretically, vagueness is effective independently of specific (even if not outside of fixed) contextual configurations and is not resolved by an appeal to context, because even if we fix a contextual configuration, we can only do so in relation to a local comparison class, and thus, by appealing to another context. From that perspective, borderline cases are “ inquiry resistant ” in such a way that “ inquiry resistance typically recurses ” and that, “ in addition to the unclarity of the borderline case, there is normally unclarity as to where the unclarity begins ” (Sorensen 2012: n. pag.). This theoretical mise en abyme has some but no ultimate consequences for practice, since, generally, “ language-users can prevent the absurdity of the sorites conclusion by choosing one legitimate sense from an assortment of other legitimate senses without commitment to sharp semantic boundaries ” (Agler 2010: 94). In fact, “ language-users are unaware that their language practices allow for a more inclusive set of legitimate senses than they are consciously prepared to admit ” (Agler 2010: 94). One ’ s resolution may be the other one ’ s deferral, since language users are generally unaware of all the possible senses that a predicate or proposition holds. Thus, Roy Sorensen writes in Vagueness and Contradiction: 3 This is a problem that epistemic contextualism has to deal with as well, since shifting “ features of the putative subject of knowledge (his/ her evidence, history, other beliefs, etc.) or his/ her objective situation (what is true/ false, which alternatives to what is believed are likely to obtain, etc.) ” to “ features of the knowledge attributor(s) ’ psychology and/ or conversational-practical situation ” (Rysiew 2011) is just trading one appeal to context for another one. What has been gained (freedom from the shackles of “ hermeneutic ” divination and historicism) is traded in for subjectivism in the present. 226 Sebastian Feil (Augsburg) When philosophers describe a case as borderline, they normally express global pessimism about attempts to learn whether it is an F or a non-F. No one can learn the answer to questions such as Are prisoners of war residents of an alien country? and Are skis vehicles? In contrast, the pessimism conveyed in most ordinary uses of ‘ borderline case ’ is local. We are free to recruit a secondary answer system that can handle the question. (Sorensen 2001: 23, original emphasis) In practice, David Agler argues, “ questions about the legitimate truth or falsity of P are settled at a meta-level that is much higher than semantically required ” , so “ rather than stating ‘ s is a legitimate sense of ’ tall ‘ that would render P true ’ , [language users] ascend to a higher meta-level and say ‘ there is a legitimate sense of s, which is t, such that s is a legitimate sense of ’ tall ‘ that would render P true ’” (2010: 94). If we take this everyday method of deferring vagueness (which is precisely the fixing of one context by another more comprehensive context) to its logical conclusion, we are looking for a “ secondary answer system ” (in Sorensen ’ s words) providing guidelines that allow us to avoid the pitfalls of methodological psychologism. In Peircean semiotics, such guidelines are usually assembled under the key term “ generality ” . 4 Why “ context ” is vague Before looking into the ways in which Peircean generality can be considered to alleviate the relativism of acritical references to the phenomenon of context, a survey of what could be considered an acritical reference is in order. As we have seen, literary theory has to deal with a great many (sometimes conflicting) extensions of the term “ context ” . My point so far has been to say that uncertainty as to what should be included under the term depends in large part on what I have termed the phenomenon of context and I will go on to say that it is precisely the phenomenal configuration itself that causes the uncertainty. In short, I believe that the uncertainty of what should extensionally be contained in the term “ context ” is more or less a direct effect of the phenomenon ’ s borderline vagueness. At the most basic level, an analytical distinction can be made between contexts that are formed according to the formal properties of the text and the world and contexts that are formed according to the will (or fancy) of some intentionality. In the literature on the matter (as far as we have reviewed it), the former is characterized by the attempt to list the varieties that are comprehensive of the extension of the term while the latter draws attention to the fact that formal determination has its limit in the subjectivity of individuals or groups. The problem of context then consists in the unfortunate circumstance that determination by an intentionality is somehow required for formal contexts to come into existence, but can necessarily only come at the cost of a loss of formal cogency. This is one striking similarity between context and vagueness. It is quite unclear where we are to draw the line in order to render precise the meaning constituted by a context. There is always the possibility that we forgot to include something or that we just need to include a little more. Consider the idea of the “ intratextual ” context. Historically, the attempt has been made to render meaning more precise by distinguishing between “ contextus proximus, proprior und remotior ” (Danneberg 2000: 335). This is certainly an appropriate subdivision in that it draws attention to the fact that proximity to the word or passage that is to be contextualized is of importance. What it cannot tell us is how far “ closest ” , “ closer ” and “ further ” are supposed to What are we appealing to? A semiotic Approach to the Notion of Context in literary Studies 227 be. More generally, elements of intratextual contexts such as the sentence 4 , the paragraph or the chapter fulfil the same function in that they provide structural divisions that guide interpretation almost universally. Referring to such elements alleviates the vagueness inherent in the formation of an intratextual context insofar as they are an appeal to the author (or editor) of the text. Without such intentional structures, there is nothing that lends authority to an intratextual context and, by extension, this applies to the infratextual context as well. For it is either the intentional parts of the text that are related to the whole or an arbitrary number of elements that, logically considered, appeal mostly to the taste (the a priori preconceptions) of the interpreter. Moreover, if the infratextual context bears on classificatory contexts such as genre (as Danneberg 2000: 336 suggests), it has to reach beyond the text by analogy. The ascription then takes place through some form of similarity it shares with an interor extratextual context 5 and according to beliefs about classificatory conventions that settle relevance beforehand. In turn, this raises the question as to the definiteness of the classificatory context, where intentional structures become much harder to discern. For example, take the context “ adventure literature ” 6 . According to Hans-Otto Hügel (2003: 91 - 93), one basic distinctive feature of the genre is concerned with a story ’ s protagonist, who is either the “ chivalric type ” or the “ merchant adventurer type ” . Both are generally associated with principles of which one is the negation of the other. While the medieval adventurer (say, for example, Iwein) is to face incalculable dangers on a developmental journey back to court and courtship, the (often seafaring) entrepreneur (of Robinsonian ilk, but without the pietistic deserted island) is supposed to approach his journey with a plan in mind and still be able to spontaneously avert possible risks associated with it. Hügel takes this to mean that the genre-related development of the modern adventure is characterized by an increase in the protagonist ’ s self-consciousness and sprawling self-positing (cf. 2003: 92) as the result of the development of the popular adventure form. This triumph of autocracy over heterocracy is so complete that, for Hügel, modern adventure has become the emblem of modern individualism (cf. 2003: 93). 4 Propositional sentences are peculiar in that they present us with the basic logical framework which, according to the Frege/ Wittgenstein context-principle (cf. Frege 1960: XXII; Wittgenstein 1974: 18), is the foundation of meaning as such. Here I am referring to sentences more in their “ graphic ” sense as elements that are, at least since the advent of modernity, identified by writing/ printing conventions (e. g. Cerquiglini 1999: 1 - 12). 5 While this distinction makes sense in order to stress the distinction between a more or less individual reference to context (i. e. intertextual contexts consist of selections of other texts of the same logical value) whereas extratextual contexts are formed by appealing to more or less abstract texts, I think that there is general agreement on the matter that none but the most basic intertextual references (e. g. graphemic similarity) are not also extratextual references. Or conversely, none but the most basic extratextual references (e. g. appeal to immediate feelings) are, at least in research, not also intertextual references (i. e. mediated in some formal way). 6 This is not an attempt to settle the question as to what constitutes adventure literature, but an exemplary train of thought that I believe represents exemplary practical considerations regarding the process of fixing an extratextual context for the interpretation of a literary work. It may be that an extratextual context poses less problems, but I believe that something is wrong if it does not pose any problems at all for I think, with Peirce, that indubitability is always the result of acritical reasoning. I will not claim that my example covers all cases of interand extratextual contexts. I can respond only to specific objections made explicit. 228 Sebastian Feil (Augsburg) Adhering to this dichotomy made explicit by Hügel, Michael Nerlich shows that the chivalric and merchant adventure type are continuous. He thinks adventure ’ s overemphasis on individualism is responsible for stabilizing the capitalist system and he thus deems it anti-liberal and potentially responsible for fascist ideology (cf. 1977: 11). Volker Klotz, on the other hand, demonstrates that in order to establish a coherent picture of “ adventure literature ” , one must go even further back than the Middle Ages, a view which Mikhail Bakhtin in “ Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel ” (1981: 84 - 258) and Paul Zweig in The Adventurer (1974) share (for different reasons) and which Nerlich (1977: 14) and Hügel (2003: 91) reject as untenable universalism. For Klotz, adventure literature is a sort of subversive proto-literature that opposes what he calls the psychological novel of bourgeois liberality by valuing consistency higher than innovation (cf. 1979: 19). In Klotz ’ context, adventure literature is then a sort of unmasking of capitalism in that it reaches out to history (and beyond) in order to show that what is perceived as the individualism of the bourgeois literary field is, in fact, a mere replication of capitalism ’ s individualistic drive within the confines of the pseudo-autonomous space of the self-styled literary vanguard (cf. Klotz 1097: 19). While these theories of the adventure are all formally coherent within the confines of what they include (i. e. they accord to the subjective taste of an intender or community, very obvious in Michael Nerlich ’ s case), they are highly contradictory in relation to each other, to the point where value-ascriptions such as “ support ” or “ opposition ” of capitalism are formally contrary but at the same time equally possible. Likewise, “ increased selfconsciousness ” is not applicable definitively. Edmond Dantès, the Count of Monte Christo, is merely lucky to gain access to a treasure (without which he could not have set his plan of domination in motion). Conversely, the supposedly premodern Odysseus is famously polytropon (literally: many-wayed) and shows great cunning in dealing with Polyphemus, the cyclops, and great stupidity in revealing his identity, an instance which can easily be taken as an indication of self-positing, and which does not disappear when considered against the backdrop of the whole story. While there are “ super-individual ” influences (Athena and Poseidon, for example), they are rarely directly connected to these instances of self-positing. Quite often, the story in its entirety does not warrant decisions on the parts, for decisions on the parts are required beforehand in order to form the entire story, and one general conflict in modern hermeneutics is precisely the question whether the process of cycling between the parts helps to better understand the whole or merely to understand it differently. Extratextual contexts (like “ adventure literature ” ) involve subcontrary-forming propositions (i. e. some features count towards the context “ adventure literature ” and some features do not count towards it and we cannot tell which) to an extent that they cannot be ignored. They betray a fundamental uncertainty of contextualism in general: There “ is always more evidence that may bear in some way or another on the meaning [. . .] at issue ” (Culler 1988: 148). As pointed out earlier, this conclusion leads Culler to the realization that contexts are “ not saturable ” , i. e. “ never complete ” (1988: 148). I think this is an oversimplification. Understanding context is not a matter of saturation in such a way that we lack information (although we might) which, once acquired, will saturate the context, or will not saturate the context because we can always acquire more information. Already when choosing what to What are we appealing to? A semiotic Approach to the Notion of Context in literary Studies 229 include in the context that is supposed to support an analysis, the ‘ shiftiness ’ of contexts affects the known knowns. Consequently, a context is not indeterminate because it is incomplete, but because there is uncertainty about which parts - out of all the pieces of information already available - can and should be included so that the context leaves no doubt as to its productiveness for the task at hand. The problem I see is that the appeal to context is, for the reasons given, not a solution to any problem, especially if the appeal to context is merely a gesture of circumspection, as Samuel Weber seems to think: Denn derjenige, der sich auf Kontext beruft, darf sich als umsichtig ansehen: er deutet an, daß er nicht eigensinnig und beschränkt, sondern weitblickend und großzügig ist, weiß er doch, worum es geht; er kennt anscheinend zumindest die Umstände und stellt die Sachen an ihren rechten Ort. (Weber 1980: 45) On my account, the appeal to context will remain a mere gesture of circumspection as long as there is no way to tackle the problem of vagueness which accompanies contextualization. I think genuine circumspection comes quite naturally when a description covers as many cases as possible and therefore suggest the appeal to generality (a central concept in Charles Peirce ’ s semiotics) as a supplement for and alternative to contextualization. 5 The appeal to generality In “ Issues of Pragmaticism ” , Charles Peirce formally differentiates vagueness from generality: Perhaps a more scientific pair of definitions would be that anything is general in so far as the principle of excluded middle does not apply to it and it is vague in so far as the principle of noncontradiction does not apply to it. (Peirce 1998: 351 - 352) This definition seems ambiguous: The principle of non-contradiction (PC) demands that -(F ∧ -F) while the principle of excluded middle (PEM) demands that F ∨ -F. Their respective negations are (1) F ∧ -F for the PC and -(F ∨ -F) for the PEM. But if the negation applies to the conjunction/ disjunction of the two predicates, the wording “ does not apply ” could also mean that (2) if the PC does not apply, then -(F ∨ -F) and if the PEM does not apply, then F ∧ -F. Given that Peirce held that the “ principles of contradiction and excluded middle do not stand at all upon the same plane ” , and since “ no philosopher has yet been found to maintain that any proposition is in precisely the same sense absolutely true and false at once ” (1989: 242), thereby rejecting the “ position that there are true contradictions ” (Agler 2013: 200), it seems safe to assume that version 1 of the negation is correct, since version 2 suggests that one principle is merely the rejection of the other. Some further clarification is provided by Agler, who sorted through the literature on the matter and concludes: Peirce understood LNC as a statement concerning the fact that internal negation is a subcontraryforming operation on vague utterances, and LEM as a statement concerning the fact that internal negation is a contrary-forming operation on general utterances. (Agler 2013: 201, LNC=law of noncontradiction=PC; LEM=law of excluded middle=PEM) A more general way of putting this in terms of Peirce ’ s general semiotics is to say that vague propositions are indeterminate as regards their identity in such a way that they do not meet 230 Sebastian Feil (Augsburg) the criteria for “ genuine ” signs (cf. Peirce 1931 7 : 5.68). They allow for multiple choices (because a fundamental uncertainty about the borderline exists) which are not truth-apt. As Frederik Stjernfelt puts it: They are ontologically may-bes, and a may-be does not exclude the correlated may-not-be: whether any single subject instantiates a given may-be or not cannot be decided on the basis of the may-be. The fact that PC does not apply thus refers to the modal character of the entities of Firstness, and its logical expression is that “ S may be P ” and “ S may be non-P ” may both be true. (Stjernfelt 2007: 17) Vagueness is the effect of meta-level possibility, which means that “ it may be true that a proposition is true and that a proposition is false ” (Peirce 1998: 352), but there is no point of reference from which to determine what is actual or general. Vagueness does not merely affect precision, it denies precision. There is no way to render something precise that is involved with a vague concept or in a vague proposition. Generality, to which the LEM does not apply, is different in such a way that generality and vagueness are “ mutually exclusive of each other ” (Agler 2013: 201). Nevertheless, they are connected, continuously, by the idea of absolute determinateness: The actual individual existence of Secondness, by contrast, may then be defined by its adherence to both of the principles of contradiction and excluded middle, because individuality taken as complete determination of all properties must obey both principles. The determinateness of Secondness thus forms the third member of the triad vagueness-determinateness-generality. A completely determinate individual must possess the property P or its contradictory non-P (PEM), but not both (PC) [. . .]. (Stjernfelt 2007: 19) While vagueness may be the cause, generality is the necessary result of any given semiotic process. Moreover, semiosis is guided by generality in such a way that the “ expression of determination which is either full or made free for the interpreter ” is as precise as possibly conceivable if it succeeds in the “ creation of an ens rationis out of an epos pteroen ” (Peirce 1998: 352). Semiosis is successful when it converts “ meaning not dwelt upon but through which something else is discerned ” into “ meaning upon which we rest as the principal subject of discourse ” (CP 1.83). Semiotic inquiry necessitates abstraction, which serves the purpose of converting “ winged words ” (or “ acritically indubitable ” propositions, Peirce 1998: 350) into propositions that can be reasoned with and on which critical doubt can rest. 8 Another way of putting this is to say that “ winged words ” , despite the fact that they apply to all cases that they cover, are accidental or “ degenerate Thirdness ” , “ where we conceive a mere Quality of Feeling, or Firstness, to represent itself to itself as Representation ” (CP 5.71). Vagueness must be submitted to “ further determination [. . .] in some other conceivable sign ” , and it most definitely does not “ appoint the interpreter as its deputy in office ” (Peirce 1998: 351). This is what generality does. In Peircean semiotics, interpretants (signs that are the resulting interpretations of other signs) representing progress of interpretation appear in three general ways: immediate, 7 Collected Papers: henceforth abbreviated as CP. 8 Peirce defined critical doubt in opposition to “ paper doubt ” (which denies that immediate experience is logically valid) as “ real and living doubt ” (Peirce 2011, 42) which is stirred up if an actual problem arises. This separates his thought from varieties of rationalism that propose to doubt all knowledge systematically and from a single vantage point (e. g. the subject in René Descartes ’ rationalism). What are we appealing to? A semiotic Approach to the Notion of Context in literary Studies 231 dynamic and final. Immediate interpretants are constituted by the “ Quality of the Impression that the sign is fit to produce ” while dynamic interpretants represent “ whatever interpretation any mind actually makes of a sign ” (CP 8.315). Final interpretants then are the only element in Peirce ’ s semiotics that say anything at all about the quality of finality in the reasoning process. Derrida (in the Grammatologie) is correct in saying that “ Peirce va très loin dans la direction de ce que nous avons appelé plus haut la dé-construction du signifié transcendental, lequel, à un moment ou à un autre, mettrait un terme rassurant au renvoi de signe à signe ” (Derrida 1967: 71). At the same time, he perhaps overlooks the fact that in Peirce ’ s theory any reference from sign to sign does come to an end, more or less reassuring. “ [S]ymbols grow ” and “ come into being by development out of other signs, particularly from icons, or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of icons and symbols ” (CP 2.302). Hence, an estimation like UweWirth ’ s to the effect that “ [s]ince the object of representation as well as its interpretant is ‘ nothing but a representation ’ , there cannot be, at least if we take Peirce seriously, anything ‘ outside semiosis ’ : neither an ‘ absolute object ’ nor a ‘ final interpretant ’” (Wirth 2003: 36) is incorrect. Wirth refers to the first part of that important expression of Peirce ’ s notion of the object but ignores the latter part: “ The object of representation can be nothing but a representation of which the first representation is the interpretant. But an endless series of representations, each representing the one behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object at its limit ” (CP 1.339). The reality of the absolute or dynamic object, “ the Object as it is regardless of any particular aspect of it, the Object in such relations as unlimited and final study would show it to be ” (CP 8.183), is one limitation that generality is implicated in and, in turn, provides for the semiotic process. The in-between consists of “ a series of representations ” whose purpose is to transform the object as generally as possible into a final interpretant. Thus, every semiotic process necessarily constitutes the general structure of the mediation between an object that is not entirely representable (hence, vague to some degree) and its interpretation by generalization: The Final Interpretant does not consist in the way in which any mind does act but in the way in which every mind would act. That is, it consists in a truth which might be expressed in a conditional proposition of this type: ‘ If so and so were to happen to any mind this sign would determine that mind to such an such conduct. ’ By ‘ conduct ’ I mean action under an intention of self-control. No event that occurs to any mind, no action of any mind can constitute the truth of that conditional proposition. (CP 8.315) By distinguishing “ any mind ” and “ every mind ” , Peirce presents us with a variation of the distinction between vague and general hypotheses. In the same way in which vagueness is fixed in generality by repeated actualization, the repeated acts of arbitrary minds give rise to regularities that extend beyond individual applicability, i. e. interpretation (of signs by other signs) necessarily tends towards generality that mediates aspects of the (vague) object (hence, symbols grow). Regularities between minds are primary, they are the foundation on which Peirce ’ s anti-psychologism rests and it “ is precisely because such concepts are underdetermined, schematic, unsatiated, general, multiply realizable [. . .] that they may appear identically in the minds of different language users ” (Stjernfelt 2013: 102). Indeed, perhaps the most central purpose of Peirce ’ s semiotic endeavor is to describe how 232 Sebastian Feil (Augsburg) indeterminateness that can never be fully specified is to be rendered in such a way that it may cover as many cases as possible. This particular endeavor has its most condensed formulation in the pragmatic maxim, restated in “ Issues of Pragmaticism ” : The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all general modes of rational conduct which, conditionally upon all the possible different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of the symbol. (Peirce 1998: 347) If disputes about vagueness are to be settled, according to Peirce, they can only be settled by an appeal to generality. If this may appear to come at the cost of a loss of plurality of meaning, bear in mind that any plurality of impression is coordinated by more general impressions. If this seems unsatisfactory, bear in mind that, far from solving the sorites, the appeal to a general semiotics only alleviates indecision, but cannot do away with it. Generality is thus another facet of contextualism (generality is, after all, another form of indeterminacy), but one that helps to organize contextuality in a meaningful way. 6 Possibilities for literary studies What I have termed the “ appeal to generality ” is an attempt to evade psychologism and positivist empiricism and insists on the fact that “ the idea of a general involves the idea of possible variations which no multitude of existent things could exhaust but would leave between any two not merely many possibilities, but possibilities absolutely beyond all multitude ” (CP 5.103). Traditional areas in which generality is really efficient are, of course, mathematics and logic. As soon as facts about the empirical world enter the equation, the obvious problem is that giving an account of the generality of anything would be complicated and “ would require volumes rather than a paper ” as Frederik Stjernfelt (2013: 99) put it with regard to the generality of perception. This is mainly because, much like contextualism, the validity of generals naturally hinges on perpetual scientific inquiry. Within the spatial constraints of this paper, I can only hint at possible starting points for such an investigation. We have already seen that basic conventions like sentence structure or text structure enable generality in that they are unanimously considered the bedrock of shared agreement on what constitutes written communication. Every variation of necessities such as these can perhaps be considered to elucidate a certain conventionality, but only the remotest of arguments would suggest that such variations seriously invalidate the conventions, since any such interrogation can only function in relation to the conventions in question. So, very often, an appeal to context is already an appeal to generality. If the desired effect of an appeal to generality is to limit the possible choices that constitute the vagueness of contexts, one obvious thing to do is to force investigation into provisional hypotheses about what Martina King and Jesko Reiling (following Michael Titzmann) call “ kulturelles Wissen im Grad der Allgemeinheit ” (2014: 22). For example, the context “ adventure literature ” might gain precision by reference to a simple hypothesis that most, if not all, researchers could share: “ All tokens of adventure literature share the idea that in order to deal with something unexpected, one has to act upon it. ” This proposition covers the entire distinction between “ heterocracy ” and “ autocracy ” and every possible What are we appealing to? A semiotic Approach to the Notion of Context in literary Studies 233 distance of the protagonist from “ home ” , and makes mereological decisions much easier to handle: Without even considering any possible external influences, does the protagonist act upon the unexpected? If not, we are not dealing with a token of adventure literature. And if this is indeed the case, that makes the story at least similar to an adventure story precisely in that general regard (and not in some specific regard). If such similarity then means that adventure literature is linked to other genres (e. g. the Bildungsroman) and to narration centered on one central protagonist in general, this just makes it all the more interesting (especially also for historical purposes). This may appear very rudimentary, especially because, on the one hand, it does not appeal to some absolutely indubitable universal law 9 and, on the other, it does not cover all of the richness that is “ adventure literature ” . But with context, such richness is precisely the problem and it may be argued that respect for individuality does not coerce anyone to think about individuals exclusively. Moreover, general propositions enable genuine communicative discourse in the first place, because they are designed to include what is presumably shared between interlocutors (or interscriptors) so that any such proposition genuinely “ extends to the interpreter the privilege of carrying its determination further ” (Peirce 1998: 351). The problem of context is to no small degree a problem because the field of literary studies lacks genuinely general points of reference (and those that used to exist have carefully been deconstructed as “ totalizations ” ). Interestingly, wide-spread agreement on the matter that “ literature ” is something categorically different from other things or does things categorically differently than other media is perhaps responsible for the lack of a distinguishable object of study. There is no entirely convincing notion of literature and the question “ What is literature? ” appears to be answered best by way of the pragmatic route (cf. Jannidis et al. 2009: 33), which naturally presents us with the somewhat paradoxical collateral problem of contextualism: Even though there is agreement on certain tokens that are definitely part of the context “ literature ” , there is general unclarity as to what typically constitutes the context “ literature ” (to paraphrase Jannidis et al. 2009, 31). Thus, any concept of literature as a set of prototypes that are connected by family resemblance (cf. Jannidis et al. 2009: 29) profits from a thorough consideration of the degree of “ prototypicality ” involved. A possible preliminary question could be: What differentiates specifically literary imagination and fiction (e. g. Wolfgang Iser), a literary system of actions (e. g. Siegfried Schmidt) and literary interpretability (e. g. Oliver Jahraus) from the more general practices of imagining, communicating, inventing and interpreting? Often the attempt has been made to start out with the more general accounts and to show how these practices change in the context of “ literature ” (which, of course, begs the question: “ Literature ” is not a satisfactory answer to the question “ What is literature? ” ). Another criterion frequently put forward is literature ’ s constitutive textual mediality. But it 9 It may even contradict another general assumption that everything is historically contingent. Yet I think that if you are engaged in the study of adventure literature, you will recognize that such a proposition is appealing to a certain extent. Except for Bakhtin ’ s “ greek romance ” (which ironically is a model case of what he calls “ adventure time ” ), there are very few adventure stories so called that do not adhere to this description. In fact, congruence with everyday experience may help in determining exactly why stories like Lewis Carrol ’ s Alice are “ adventure literature ” . 234 Sebastian Feil (Augsburg) may well turn out that this presumed exclusive mediality hinges on much more general modes of mediation 10 , so that the richness of the act of reading is itself coordinated by much more general means of communication and perception. 11 Instead of refining or further expanding the context along the lines of such focal paradigms, a reversal of these typical strategies could prove illuminating by applying said or similar general notions to representative arguments for literature ’ s uniqueness. The predicted outcome would be a more distinct picture of what forms the fundamental presumptions that every mind shares and the extent to which acquired habits of thinking about literature and reacting to literature play a role in the discussion as to which concept of literature is valid for as many people as possible. The ideal that knowledge must be generally open to as many people as possible is central to Peirce ’ s thought on scientific inquiry: It seems to me that we are driven to this, that logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall not be limited. They must not stop at our own fate, but must embrace the whole community. This community, again, must not be limited, but must extend to all races of beings with whom we can come into immediate or mediate intellectual relation. It must reach, however vaguely, beyond this geological epoch, beyond all bounds. He who would not sacrifice his own soul to save the whole world, is, as it seems to me, illogical in all his inferences, collectively. Logic is rooted in the social principle. (CP 2.654) Philosophers of science frequently situated their criticisms of objectivity and reality within the context of “ democracy ” and pointed out that science does not act according to the will of the people, but according to a self-fabricated construction of a society that is itself controlled by experts (e. g. Feyerabend 1984: 7 - 13, or more recently, Latour 2004: 10 - 18). Consequently, what appears as problematic is not the idea of reality itself, but the fact that it is, more often than not, constructed to exclude the majority of people. 12 Peirce treated this “ problem of authority ” in “ The Fixation of Belief ” and outlined four general epistemological modes or mindsets: the “ method of tenacity ” , the “ method of authority ” , the “ a priori method ” (an allusion to philosophical idealism: the “ method of good taste ” ) and, finally, the 10 Lambert Wiesing, for example, draws on Husserl ’ s anti-psychologistic disctinction between “ Genesis ” and “ Geltung ” in order to elucidate the point that material production brings forth something that is generally valid irrespective of the context of its production. Media of all types thus function by what he calls “ Selbigkeit ” (Wiesing 2008: 243), i. e. the idea that something unchanging (not merely similar) exists across all reproductions of any mediated token of meaning which enables its communicability in the first place: “ keine materielle Eigenschaft erklärt, warum etwas Text ist ” (Wiesing 2008: 246). 11 Frederik Stjernfelt has made such an attempt by pointing out the vital role the stratum of “ schematized aspects ” has in Ingarden ’ s account of “ Unbestimmtheitsstellen ” (cf. 1972: 278 - 307) for the conception of literature as “ thought-machine ” (Stjernfelt 2007: 360). Whereas for Iser (in opposition to Ingarden), the indeterminacy of the literary work is due to the “ Kombinationsnotwendigkeit ” (1994: 284) of the “ given ” and the “ determinate ” (schematic aspects), Ingarden actually conceived of the literary work as coordinated by strata of “ continuous generality ” (Stjernfelt 2007: 360). Phenomenologically, “ literature interferes with reality ” (Stjernfelt 2007: 363) precisely because it is organized in the same way as ordinary perception is, as a lively “ Quasirealität ” (Ingarden 1972: 295) which submits the reader to the actualization of generality, so that without the aspects, there would be no experience of the work of literature at all. On a more critical note, the question remains the whether the experience of literature is based on permanently fixed schematic aspects or on the practice of habitually treating an unspecific subset of texts as experiences of “ quasi-reality ” , whereas other texts are treated as reality proper. 12 I think it is safe to say that Stanley Fish ’ s “ interpretive community ” is such a construction. What are we appealing to? A semiotic Approach to the Notion of Context in literary Studies 235 “ method of science ” (Peirce 2011: 42 - 49). It is obvious that, for Peirce, science is precisely the exclusion of power (in its various subjectivist manifestations) from inquiry and he derives from that his central imperative maxim: “ Do not block the way of inquiry ” (Peirce 1998 b: 48). While knowledge is context-bound, inquiry is limitless. In order to avoid blocking the path, knowledge needs to be opened up to “ further determination by the interpreter ” . One very productive procedure in support of this endeavor is, somewhat paradoxically, generalization. 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