Reference

Reference is one of the most important concepts in literary studies, routinely invoked in theoretical discussions since the rise of poststructuralism in the 1970s. Derrida and those who follow his general approach, in particular, take for granted the view that reference is a reductive notion since it limits the range of possible textual interpretations and the free play of language; it does this, they say, by privileging an element drawn from the social or historical context and making it the foundation on which interpretations are based. But this view of reference is both narrow and misleading, since a much richer conception of it can be drawn from such thinkers as the late-19th-century pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce as well as realist philosophers from the Anglo-American tradition who started writing in the second half of the 20th century. According to this conception, literary reference points not to a “thing,” or what Derrida calls a “sensible presence,” but rather to a complexly mediated object of knowledge, an object that is a part of an epistemic field that includes the written or oral text. Elaboration of this epistemic account of literary reference, illustrated through a comparison of two 19th-century realist novels from India where one comments on and corrects its predecessor, provides a more adequate theory than the simple and schematic view poststructuralists rely on. It shows how such a theory of reference can be a valuable, and even an essential, component of literary studies and can indicate how literary interpretation is related to other epistemic practices in human societies, including explanatory work done in the social and natural sciences.