![]() ![]() ![]() When trying to think about what uncertainty means in my work, this story came to mind because it conveys the basic paradox of literary scholarship: talking about the meaning of the text while both recognizing how subjective and constructed it is, yet at the same time recognizing its very real impact. “Oh, it’s turtles all the way down,” her friend replies. ![]() “So what’s the core?” the other person asks, “what’s the rock bottom of meaning?”. In our version, one person is trying to explain to her friend how meaning is constructed: one term rests upon another one story refers to endless others language itself – from an impossibly early age – can only convey concepts that are structured and framed and limited by the very use of language. However the story about the turtles is rather simple and can be read in any number of ways, where the basic metaphor is the same: the world is carried by one turtle, who is carried by a slightly larger turtle, who is carried by an even larger turtle, etc. If I remember correctly, it was related to Derrida’s famous quote “there’s nothing outside the text”, a saying so potent that I won’t even attempt to explain its influence on literary theory (and postmodernism at large). ![]() One of the stories I recall most vividly from my literary theory class is the one about the turtles. ![]()
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