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November 14, 2006
in mckee's oversimplified universe
McKee, Alan. Textual Analysis: A Beginner's Guide. Thousand Oaks: Sage. 2003.
...some things are still true (even if his articulation of them exhibits poor grammar):
"We can never just describe a text, because every description is an interpretation, there are always many possible description/interpretations of each text" (80).
"We can make educated guesses about likely interpretations of a text by familiarizing ourselves with relevant intertexts" (114). --he suggests immersion in a culture as "the best way to get a sense of the dominant discourses circulating in [that] culture" (106).
"tricks" he suggests for textual analysis ("to help you see how sense-making practices are working") include "exnomination" (from Barthes, meaning "'outside of naming'")--identifying and examining the presence & significance of unmarked categories--and the "commutation test," "a thought experiment where you replace one element of a text with a similar but different part of culture" (s.a., his example, "what happens if you swap the male and female roles in the 1995 Hollywood film Boys on the Side?")(106-7).
Posted by ttobryan at November 14, 2006 01:13 PM