This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Michael Hardy (talk | contribs) at 21:42, 12 August 2003. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 21:42, 12 August 2003 by Michael Hardy (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Stanley Fish (b. 1938) is a professor of English literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Considered a leading scholar of Milton, he is best known for his work on interpretive communities, an offshoot of reader-response criticism that studies how the interpretation of a text by a reader depends on the reader's membership in one or more communities defined by acceptance of a common set of foundational assumptions or texts. This work can be viewed as an explanation of how meaning is possible in the context of a particular interpretive community, even if one accepts the deconstructionist position that there is no single privileged reading of any text.
He has said that deconstruction
- "relieves me of the obligation to be right . . . and demands only that I be interesting."
Charles Murray calls that "a silly thing for a grown man to say and a criminal thing for a teacher to say." Given Stanley Fish's complicated relationship with deconstructionism, it is not clear whether his statement is intended as an argument for or against the practice.
Stanley Fish has written extensively on the politics of the university, having taken positions justifying campus speech codes and criticizing political statements by universities or faculty bodies on matters outside their professional areas of expertise.
External links
Entry for Stanley Fish in the John Hopkins University Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism.