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kwheeler's picture

Reader-response and the Keres Indian Tale

It was really interesting to see some of Schweickart’s ideas about reader-response theory put into practice in Allen’s three interpretations of Gunn’s translation of the Keres Indian Tale. If the message conveyed through an Indian Tale is manipulated by a white-male reader then it follows that a white-feminist reader’s interpretation will be just as biased. That the feminist reading Allen gives falls short of (what she dictates to be) the true meaning, is evidence of how much interpretation lies with the reader in such situations. It happens with the Keres Indian Tale that the feminist reading is closer to the “Feminist-Tribal Interpretation” because of what Allen attributes to a resemblance between women’s culture and tribal culture. However a feminist reading will not always be more correct than that dictated by a patriarchal society. This further stresses the importance of reading with a consciousness of the reality of bias that is involved with reader-response, and that no one reading of a text is necessarily correct. How does this relate to Sosnoski’s ideas about falsificity, and the need to rid our minds of the duality of correct versus incorrect and Kauffman’s ideas about ridding the equation of personal testimony? What gives Allen the authority to say that Gunn’s translation is incorrect?

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