Answering ‘Who am I?’, portraying the world and finding ourselves

“A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Over the years he fills a given surface with images of provinces and kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, rooms, instruments, heavenly bodies, horses, and people. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.” ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Epilogue

I walk the same three mile triangular walk almost every day – in exquisite Northumbrian countryside. The following question popped into consciousness; “From whence does the landscape come in which I walk.” Not long after the question arrived I came across a wonderful paper by Sarah (Sally) Hill of the University of Auckland (?). She heads up her paper with this;

It seems to me an interesting idea: that is to say the idea that we live in the description of a place and not in the place itself, and in every vital sense we do.
-Wallace Stevens

However reality like meaning made of texts is not only a matter of personal construction as David Chandler;

The range of theories about where meaning emerges in the relationship between readers and texts can be illustrated as a continuum between two extreme positions respectively, those of determinate meaning and completely ‘open’ interpretation, thus:

* Objectivist: Meaning entirely in text (’transmitted’);
* Constructivist: Meaning in interplay between text and reader (’negotiated’);
* Subjectivist: Meaning entirely in its interpretation by readers (’re-created’).

Chandler points out that the reader is less passive, more active across the continuum toward the subjective.

From The Act of Writing Daniel Chandler http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/act/act.html

References

“Landscape,Writing, and Photography”by Sarah (Sally) Hill of University of Auckland

SEE also http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/55.2/articles/parker.asp

SEE previous posting re Triadic Forms

‘You browse, therefore I am.’ Paul McIlvenny

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