I
ground this reading of reader-oriented criticism in a particular
text, Rudy Wiebe’s The Mad Trapper. Positioning this
novel as representative of the contradictory characteristics
of all texts--”always already” open to multiple interpretations--I
use these multiple readings both to examine and undermine the
novel and Reader Response/Reception theory. Situating and problematizing
my own discourse by examining its pedagogically-questionable
origin, I begin my reading of both Reader Response and the novel
with a Phenomenological investigation into intentionality and
the construction of the reader’s consciousness. I then move
to a reading of Reception theory which, by examining The
Mad Trapper’s textual conditions of production and dissemination
to the reading public, works to undermine Phenomenology’s problematic
stance. Since both of these theoretical readings are premised
upon notions of a unified and coherent self, I further explore
their implications by discussing at first general theories of
subjectivity and The Mad Trapper, and then finally making
a reading of both Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and The
Mad Trapper. I intend that this multiple reading of both
theory and text, by utilizing interpretation’s inherent yet
often unacknowledged multiplicity, undermines the dominant objective
and authoritative interpretation of traditional critical practice.
