The Blind Spot in Death and the King’s Horseman

In Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida argues that the writer doesn’t have full control over the meaning in the language he or she uses. He writes, “the writer writes in a language and in a logic whose proper system, laws, and life his discourse by definition cannot dominate absolutely” (1825). This idea is similar to a fish swimming in a fishbowl. Because the fish is in the bowl, his world is defined by the bowl, and his understanding of that world cannot get outside the bowl, so he can only partially understand the concept of the water that fills the bowl. Because human beings operate within language and cannot get outside it, they will never fully understand it and therefore cannot fully control their use of it. This relationship between writer and language creates a “blind spot” wherein the writer “lets himself be determined by that very thing that he excludes” (1830). In other words, the blind spot in language permits texts to operate in contradictory ways uncontrolled by the author. Therefore, it’s partly due to the nature of language that basing interpretation on author intent is a fallacy, although Wimsatt and Beardsley don’t go that direction. This blind spot moves the burden of interpretation to the reader, who, because no “transcendental signified” or exact meaning exists (1825), is also only partially equipped to render an interpretation in language. The fact that language thus “deconstructs” itself can be illustrated through analysis of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, which both undermines and reinscribes authoritative power structures.

In the Author’s Note appended to Death and the King’s Horseman, Wole Soyinka decries the misuse of plays that involve colonial themes because “they acquire the facile tag of ‘clash of cultures’” (3). Instead, Soyinka prefers productions of his play to emphasize “the play’s threnodic essence” or, per the footnote, the play’s exploration of death (3). In other words, Soyinka would prefer interpretations focus on art rather than on politics. Unfortunately for Soyinka, in Derrida’s model the author’s interpretation becomes one among many.

“Ideology and Tragedy” by Biodun Jeyifo represents one example of an interpretation that critiques Death and the King’s Horseman on a political basis. Jeyifo argues that the “clash of cultures” theme that Soyinka rejects actually masks “the real, objective differences between conflicting groups and classes within the indigenous system” and thus supports “class rule” (171), so Soyinka has himself made a mistake in depicting the events because he should have been focusing on and urging more equity within the class distinctions existing in the native culture. Jeyifo’s interpretation could be supported, for example, by the depiction of the police officer Amusa, as we have discussed in class: is it an oversight that Soyinka depicts Amusa speaking pidgin throughout the play when the other African characters seem to code shift successfully from perfect English spoken to one another as a translation of the native language to perfect English spoken to the colonizers? Perhaps Soyika is blaming Amusa for his go-between position caused by the colonial presence in Nigeria, which suggests a callous kind of class judgment on Soyinka’s part. This kind of judgment would be consistent with the fact that the deaths of Elesin and his son Olunde at the end of the play potentially bring the traditional, authoritarian civilization back into order. This order is demonstrated by a version of the suicide ritual occurring in Elesin’s prison and Elesin’s successful suicide there. Iyaloja’s focus on “the unborn” in the last line of the play (63) suggests a forward view that indicates perhaps tradition was finally satisfied in this instance.

However, and again regardless of the author’s interpretation of his work, the play contains elements that could result in an equally defensible but contradictory political interpretation. This interpretation relies on elements of the dialogue where the native characters explain the events. For example, the Praise-Singer says, “this young shoot [Olunde] has poured its sap into the parent stalk, and we know this is not the way of life” (62). This image of sap moving from child to parent indicates that the ritual has not occurred properly, so the world lost its sense of order. Similarly, Iyaloja blames Elesin’s ultimate death on the colonial people: “No child [Pilkings], it is what you brought to be, you who play with strangers’ lives, who even usurp the vestments of our dead” (62). Iyaloja’s criticism of Pilkings indicates the events represent something for which to criticize him, which also indicates they have not brought order. In this case, rather than reinscribing traditional hierarchies the deaths of father and son have inaugurated a revolution from which a new culture will emerge, which requires a different interpretation of Iyaloja’s focus on “the unborn” at the end (63). In this case, the unborn may be responsible for an altogether different society, which could be more equitable although no details provide evidence either way.

These contradictory readings resulting in narratives of authority or lack of it may be read back in a self-reflexive way onto the author himself. Just as the play inspires contradictory versions of the traditional culture’s authority, so does the play illustrate the contradictory role of the author in his own creation. While the play emerged from the creative genius of Wole Soyinka who has a right to his own interpretation of his work, the playwright himself has a “blind spot” that cannot allow him full authority over his own creation. Thus, his own work “deconstructs” his power and makes room for the reader to exert his or her ideas.

Works Cited

Derrida, Jacques. “From Of Grammatology.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. 1822-30. Print.

Jeifo, Biodun. “Ideology and Tragedy.” The Truthful Life: Essays in a Sociology of African Drama. London: New Beacon, 1985. Rpt. in Death and the King’s Horseman. By Wole Soyinka. Ed. Simon Gikandi. New York: Norton, 2003. 164-71. Print.

Soyinka, Wole. Death and the King’s Horseman. Ed. Simon Gikandi. New York: Norton, 2003. Print.

Kill the Author!

I subscribe to the belief that readers can’t really discover the intent of authors. The words of a text aren’t enough to indicate what the author was trying to do. It’s entirely possible that an author was trying to do one thing and ended up doing something completely unexpected. It’s also possible that the author couldn’t even tell you what he was trying to do, or if he did, he might not remember correctly. Therefore, I share the formalist assumption expressed by William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley that “the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art” (1374-75). The words “available” and “desirable” are key. The intent is not available to readers, even if we ask the author.

Moreover, going off on a wild goose chase after the author’s intent as the key to understanding is not a desirable form of interpretation because it wastes time away from the text, and getting a juicy tidbit about the author’s intent may seem to close off all other possible interpretations. As Roland Barthes writes, “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing” (1469). Interpretation is so much more complex and open-ended than the intent-only method allows. While knowing an author’s biography is useful, I don’t think it should end interpretation. Rather, it’s just one of the many tools the reader can bring to bear on interpretation.

I diverge from the formalists by valuing the reader’s role in interpretation. While the formalists eliminate the psychological/affective problems associated with the reader’s response by assuming a unitary “sufficiently informed” reader (Wimsatt & Beardsley 1399) who should arrive at the standard interpretation of great works, I don’t think texts have single meanings. Based on my experiences, I am likely to have a different reading experience not only with each text but with each time I read the same text as my “horizon of expectation” shifts (Jauss 1554). My understanding of the reader’s experience represents another reason why the author’s intent cannot determine interpretation: even an author who fully understands his own intent can’t predict how his text will affect me as a reader.

For all these reasons, I tend to avoid language in analysis that indicates I know the author’s intent. Instead, I talk about texts and what they do, and I talk about readers and how they might interpret texts. I’ve essentially killed off the author.

Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing provides a metaphor for the death of the author in the disappearance of the narrator’s father in the Canadian bush. We could read the father as the author and the narrator’s search as the reader’s attempt to make meaning from a text. Textual interpretation literally occurs in the novel when the narrator takes a look at her father’s papers. She reads the author’s various sketches of hands with numbers and words, as well as some “stiff childish figure[s],” and because she “can’t make sense out of them,” she thinks, “he might have gone insane” (69). In this example, the author is absent, if not dead, and the daughter is searching for his intent in producing such odd drawings. Because she doesn’t understand them, she jumps to the conclusion that the author must be crazy.

Yes, this isn’t a typical moment of literary analysis because the narrator is trying to find the author, not just trying to interpret his texts, and typically, we don’t jump to the insanity conclusion in interpreting literary texts. We assume the text has some basic literary quality, or otherwise, we wouldn’t analyze it. However, I think the metaphor of the search comments on reading. One might connect my equation between author and father to Derrida’s phallogocentrism, which implies a stable truth associated with patriarchy. In Atwood’s novel, the absence of the father suggests there isn’t a stable truth, there isn’t an author whose existence will explain everything. Instead, we’ve got fragments of meaning that need to be pieced together. This is the task of the narrator in the rest of the book, and it’s also the task of the reader in reading about her experiences. In the end, it’s the interpretive work, reading, and not the missing father that’s ultimately important.