Response 1: Culler's Presupposition and Intertextuality

There are times when you read a book, you feel like you have read the book before. There are also times when you read a book, you find some words or terms you are not familiar with. What do you do? Have you ever tried reading another book with more detailed explanation about such terms? If you haven’t, then you should. Basically, this is what intertextuality is. When you are reading certain book, your mind will direct you to certain texts you have read before, that’s why you might feel like you have read certain sentences in the text you’re currently reading or you are quite familiar with the topic. As for the need for a more detailed explanation of certain terms in a book, reading another book might help you understand the terms better. In fact, a text has infinite intertextuality, meaning that the text can be related to any other texts. However, it is not possible to find the origin of certain text. There is no such thing as originality in intertextuality because as Culler have stated, “The study of intertextuality is not the investigation of sources and influences.”. It rather allows us to decide which texts we should read next

             The same thing goes to your writing. When you keep on reading books from certain author, or different authors of the same genre, your writing might get affected in a way that someday your writing might refer to certain text you have read before, either unconsciously or intentionally. It is because you cannot write about something without being influenced by your writing’s precursor texts, as Bloom has stated in A Map of Misreadings, “you cannot write or teach or think or even read without imitation, and what you imitate is what another person has done, that person’s writing or teaching or thinking or reading.” (1975: 32). Then how about the case of plagiarism? When you are writing about the same topic that has been written before, say, for your thesis, isn’t it possible for you to be accused for plagiarizing someone’s writing? Well, it depends on how you convey your ideas into writing. We are allowed to write about something that has existed before (in fact, considering the infinity of intertextuality in a text, our ideas have most probably been used before), but you definitely need to use different discourse. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” mentioned something about the relation between the past and the present, that “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past”, which means each texts will unavoidably related to each other, that the texts are trying to communicate with each other. The previous texts written in the past will influence our writing in the present time, but the newer texts will somehow renew or upgrade the content of the precursor texts. We modify what has been written and produce a new text. However, this will then lead to people’s judgements of our writings. Comparison with the previous author is inevitable as we write about something that has been written before. Eliot said a good poet is he who least resembles anyone else. We can say it depends on how good we produce and differ our works using the same “materials” from precursor texts.

Culler also said that we have to consider readers’ knowledge. A text is somehow readers’ and author’s presupposition. An author produce a text with expectation that the readers already have certain knowledge, that’s why there are things he only mentioned briefly, and there are things he further explained, depending on his writing’s focus and for whom he writes. As for the readers, they will have predictions of what will be written in a text they are reading.

Here is an example. Jonathan Culler’s Presupposition and Intertextuality was definitely not made to be read by an elementary student. The text contains matters that an elementary student might not understand about. As Culler have mentioned in the text

“When someone speaks or writes, his discourse makes a decision about a general and implicit contract, about what is known and what will be significant, about the state of literary studies as manifested in the intersubjectivity of his audience.” (p. 2)

He could have used simpler sentences if he had meant the article to be read

by an elementary student, considering the child’s knowledge. It is the same thing when we re-read or re-watch a fairytale once we fond of when we were just kids. A 5-year-old watching Snow White would be happy as the story ended with a happily-ever-after when the prince kissed Snow White. Then years later, say, you are now 20-year-old college student majoring in English Literature and have read a lot of texts and now have developed a critical thinking as some courses demanded you to do so, you watched Snow White once again, do you think you will have the same reaction? Most definitely, you will start judging here and there, making comments about how stupid Snow White is to just leave and follow someone she barely knows and how ungrateful she is to leave the seven dwarfs once she found the love of her life. You might never have such thoughts when you were kids, but as you grow older, you will develop an ability to critize something that you don’t feel right.

            Now, when it comes to comparing two texts and pointing out the texts’ similarities and differences, we have to consider the reliablility of the texts itself. Comparing two texts may lead us to making a decision on which text is more credible and reliable (Himawan’s “Inventiveness in Intertextuality”). However, I believe comparing two texts can help us to see things in different ways as the texts convey the same message with different discourses. Also, the texts then will complete each other’s missing part for the intertextuality in every texts is infinite. You may find something that’s not available in the first text when you read the second text, and vice versa. Although probably the references of every texts does define the text’s reliablility, we can always check the references of the texts’ references until we find the texts which are more reliable.

Works Cited:

Culler, Jonathan. 1976. Presuppositions and Intertextuality. Vol. 91, No. 6, Comparative Literature. London: The John Hopkins University Press.

Elliot, T. S. 1982. Tradition and the Individual Talent. Vol. 19, pp. 36-42, Perspecta. United States: Yale School of Architecture