A resistant reading, a concept partly formulated by
Judith Fetterley, is a reading of a text which moves beyond the dominant cultural beliefs to challenge prevailing views. It means to read a text as it was not meant to be read; in fact reading the text against itself.
Textual example
By way of illustration, consider
Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell (; 31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend ...
's poem ''
To His Coy Mistress
"To His Coy Mistress" is a metaphysical poem written by the English author and politician Andrew Marvell (1621–1678). It is considered one of Marvell's finest and is possibly the best recognised carpe diem poem in English.
It was written d ...
''.
A resistant reading may develop from an alternative reading, pointing out how the
representation of
gender
Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
in the poem furthers the notion of gender as
binary opposition
A binary opposition (also binary system) is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the system of language and/or thought by which two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one ...
s, the male is active and powerful, the female is passive and marginalized. As such, it will be read by readers who share
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
views of the world as a place structured by
gender inequality
Gender inequality is the social phenomenon in which people are not treated equally on the basis of gender. This inequality can be caused by gender discrimination or sexism. The treatment may arise from distinctions regarding biology, psychology ...
and discrimination against women. For example, Marvell's representation of
heterosexuality
Heterosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or Human sexual activity, sexual behavior between people of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or ...
in the poem may be read as being exploitative, based as it is on the persona psychologically terrorizing the woman. Marvell depicts his persona as attempting to have the woman submit as a result of the fear he seeks to instill within her; Marvell's vivid and confronting
image
An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or Three-dimensional space, three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be di ...
ry is most significant and not accidental:
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
My ecchoing Song: then Worms shall try
That long preserv'd Virginity:...
Historical Approaches
Theories of resistant reading have been identified in a number of historic approaches to the question of interpretation.
Michel de Certeau
Michel de Certeau (; 17 May 1925 – 9 January 1986) was a French Jesuit priest and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences as well as hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnology, and religion. He was known ...
describes reading as wayward act that refuses to follow the prescriptive protocols of others. Readers 'move across lands belonging to someone else,' writes de Certeau, 'like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves'.
Roger Chartier has argued that reading is something that 'only rarely leaves traces, that is scattered in an infinity of singular acts, and that easily shakes off all constraints.' A number of historians of reading have elaborated on the idea to interpret readers of the past. Bill Bell, for example, has discovered a range of resistant hermeneutic strategies across nineteenth-century communities, from emigrants and convicts to polar explorers and troops in the First World War.
Importance
Resistant reading is an element of some current critical and interpretive repertoire. It is worth considering whether
diegetic
Diegesis (; , ) is a style of fiction storytelling in which a participating narrator offers an on-site, often interior, view of the scene to the reader, viewer, or listener by subjectively describing the actions and, in some cases, thoughts, o ...
border crossing always strengthens the potential for resistant reading (as might seem intuitively likely, given that readers are moving in and out of the story), or whether on some occasions it might trigger the reverse effect.
[Journal of Literacy Research, Spring 2003 by Mackey, Margaret]
See also
*
Judith Fetterley
* ''
The Resisting Reader'' (1977), by Judith Fetterley
* Robert Belton, ''
Sights of Resistance: Approaches to Canadian Visual Culture'' (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2001).
*
Postcritique
In literary criticism and cultural studies, postcritique is the attempt to find new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique, critical theory, and ideological criticism. Such methods have been characterized as a ...
References
Literary criticism
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