Indeterminacy

=Definition=
 * Indeterminacy** is a movement characteristic of many avant-garde artists. The work of poets like Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound relate to one another due to their indeterminacy. Indeterminacy may be recognized as the condition that precipitates undecidability. Essentially, indeterminacy works by having several meanings being evoked all at once but all held in potential: they never ripen but instead hint at a ripening (and often negate the ripening of other potential meanings). Therefore, even to decide on a particular reading, for instance if the poem has multiple meanings, would be fruitless because no one meaning reaches full development. This dynamic between the contents of the poem and the possibilities of the poem are what characterize indeterminacy.

Indeterminacy is the technique that evokes an undecidability within a text. It usually comes about by having threads with competing meaning that cancel each other out. More importantly, Indeterminacy is the notion that the meanings are never fully realized; they remain in an embryonic state such that the reader can make out glimpses and flashes of meaning but can never bring them fully to the fore.

General Overview
In order to have a clear understanding of what //in//determinacy is, it is proper to look at its opposite, determinacy. In a philosophical sense, determinism can be characterized rather analytically as such: "The //world// is //governed by// (or is //under the sway of//) determinism if and only if, given a specified //way things are at a time//, the way things go //thereafter// is //fixed// as a matter of //natural law//." What is being stated by this definition is that at any point in time, there is a determining relation between what came previously while at the same time, the current moment - along with all previous moments - hold a determining relation with all future moments. If we are to extend this to the field of literature and poetics, then rather than having natural law dictating causal relations, we are left with linguistic, cultural, and rhetorical laws acting as the determining force. So, if we consider the set of content that a piece of literature has, then this set determines the meaning conclusion that we make as a result of this set. Therefore, it could be argued that - while under the assumption of literary determinism - that only one meaning can be brought about by a specific set of content and possibly cultural background as well.

In the field of poetics, indeterminacy is the implicit rejection of the above claim through various techniques. This is not to be confused with ambiguity which will be discussed below. This involves weakening or breaking the connections between word and referent, in effect making the linguistic reference indeterminate. More specifically, we are left with a set of content each one pointing to possible referents and meanings. It is the striking sense of undecidability that leaves the reader compromised. This creates a sense of uncertainty of meaning and this uncertainty of meaning creates flashes of foregrounded and back-grounded sub-meanings all plausible and contradictory at once.‍‍‍

Indeterminacy is a movement which resembles ambiguity; literature that is indeterminate leaves the translation from referent to reference up to the reader, and does not present a straightforward message or possibly even one message at all. One of the most famous examples of indeterminacy is Gertrude Stein's line, "A rose is a rose is a rose." This line is an example of a writer breaking from the expectation of the rigid rules of linguistic reference. The line allows for subjective interpretation within the context of the work, allowing for multiplicity of meaning. Indeed, we are left with a series of roses all pointing at each other; rather than having this linguistic expression pointing at a specific rose in time and space, we have several possible roses being foregrounded and back-grounded simultaneously. The mistake one therefore has to keep oneself from making is deciding what the text means or is communicating in a definitive way. Rather, Indeterminacy prevents a text from being "nailed down." It's open indefinitely for interpretation, which is meaningful in that it lends to reaching more individuals. Writers may utilize the types of linguistic ambiguity in order to create indeterminacy, but all cases of ambiguity are not indeterminacy proper.

"Indeterminacy, in literature, the multiplicity of possible interpretations of given textual elements. The term was given its literary meaning by deconstruction theorists. Indeterminacy is similar to ambiguity as described by the New Critics, but it is applied by its practitioners not only to literature but also to the interpretation of texts." =Linguistic Ambiguity=

In the field of linguistics there are two types of ambiguity: lexical and structural. Lexical ambiguity deals with the fact that there are a number of words which are spelled the same and/or pronounced the same, but have different meanings (leaves/leaves; two/to/too; face/face; etc.). When a word appears that may mean one of a number of things, this is referred to as being lexically ambiguous. Structural ambiguity occurs when, through the phrasing of the sentence, one of multiple things may be meant. This often happens in cases where a prepositional phrase may correspond with the sentence's noun phrase or verb phrase. A (somewhat morbid) sentence linguists often use to demonstrate both types of ambiguity is "The boy hit the girl with the bat." In this case, lexical ambiguity is occurring with the word "bat," because this can either refer to a club used in baseball, or a winged mammal. The structural ambiguity occurs in the constituent "with the bat." Because this could be connected to the verb phrase ("hit") as a prepositional phrase, or the object noun phrase as an extension of the noun phrase ("the girl").

The following diagram shows one possible structure for the sentence : To make the distinction between ambiguity and indeterminacy more clear, Jay Atlas, in //Logic, Meaning, and Conversati////on//, provides two important examples. The first example is an example of ambiguity where ambiguity is defined as having two competing meanings but one must actively choose one of the meanings in order to get a complete expression. Like the sentence noted above, we must either link the prepositional phrase with the verb or the girl in order to come to a consensus as to what it means. The example Atlas provides is the woman/hag illusion. Atlas' point is that when one focuses on a specific part of the image, we are aware of a certain understanding of it: if we look to the left of the image, we are more inclined to see the young woman, and if we look near the bottom we are more likely to notice the old woman. Therefore, like the sentence above, we are forced to choose a reading that leads us to a specific meaning. Atlas contrasts this with the Necker Cube, but a Necker Cube that he himself devised: the double Necker Cube. Atlas proposes that the indeterminacy (his terms underdetermined) of the Necker Cube is evidenced by the way the directionality of the cubes spontaneously flip from one view to another; It is difficult to maintain one reading of the picture because all readings want to be read at once: you have to lose focus in order to see the readings rather than focus. Therefore, Atlas' analysis of the Necker Cube is very similar to the analysis of indeterminacy noted above in that, it is not the case that there are several meanings that we can get if we just focus a certain way (woman/hag illusion) but instead, it is the competing meanings that make it indeterminate. Even though we are looking at the same series of lines, any choice we make is immediately cancelled out by its competitors; the do not fade into the background like the young woman or the old woman.

=Marjorie Perloff and Indeterminacy=

Marjorie Perloff, an Austrian-born American literary critic, discussed the concept of indeterminacy in her work //The Poetics of// //Indeterminacy//. In this book she compares the symbolist literary tradition with what she calls the "other tradition," which she would say is characterized by indeterminacy, or "undecidability." In her list of writers that used indeterminacy to effect she included Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and others. For instance, Gertrude Stein makes language her play thing and actively breaks down the syntax and meaning making relations that language often uses to function. In her work, //Tender Buttons//, she uses competing predictions in order to make several unfulfilled meanings come about. She says, "A kind in glass and a cousin...an arrangement in a system to pointing." If we look at any individual word - or even set of words - it is difficult to maintain a single reading. For instance, we look at, "A kind" and expect the preposition "of" to signifying a set. However, instead we see "in" which classes without expectations but matches the following word "glass." Similarly, when we see a system of arrangements, we expect the system to be of something as well: some kind of set. Again, Stein breaks our expectations and instead makes the system "to pointing." This mixture of predictability and the breaking of these predictions makes Stein's work exemplar of indeterminacy.

William Carlos Williams also wrote at times in such a way that does not allow for the conventional interpretation of a work. The traditional way in which a reader looks at a text analytically, by piecing together all the individual units of meaning, loses it's power when dealing with some of Williams' work. In his piece //SPRING AND ALL// we see in multiple sections Williams' manipulating how words sound and are arranged in meaningful ways. At one point it breaks into an interesting format which only adds to the ambiguity:

> >> Nobody to say it-- > Nobody to say: pinholes Thither I would carry her among the lights--

In this section the reader is faced with two dilemmas. First, the structure of the verse is oddly formatted, while reading, whether aloud or mentally, one must decide how to read the passage to themselves. Which words belong together in a phrase? Where are the appropriate breathing moments? Secondly, the lexical ambiguity of the words themselves present a challenge. We see indeterminacy breakthrough with the word "pinholes". It appears to lack relevance to the preceding seven words in the poem. This is carried on in the next two lines as well. We know not who "she" is nor do we know the meaning or the location of "the lights". An individual's reading of this poem would drastically differ from another's interpretation of this particular text. The reader places strong ties on the meanings of the specific words, yet struggles to come up with a compositional meaning due to the author's decision to write in such a way that constricts ones ability to make a definite decision about the content of the poem. =Sigmund Freud and Indeterminacy=

In Freud's work //Interpretation of Dreams//, he discusses a concept occurring in dreams that is much like indeterminacy. He uses multiple examples of reading something within a dream in order to illustrate this phenomenon. In these cases, the dreamer reads something but is uncertain if they are reading one thing or another, such as reading a sign which might say "You are requested to shut the eyes" or "You are requested to shut one eye." He posits that neither one can be taken to be the true reading or experience, but rather both must be accepted simultaneously. Freud succinctly explains this concept in this passage from Chapter 6: "[W]hen in narrating a dream the narrator is inclined to employ the alternative either-or: "It was either a garden or a living-room," etc., there is not really an alternative in the dream-thoughts, but an and- a simple addition. When we use either-or we are as a rule describing a quality of vagueness in some element of the dream, but a vagueness which may still be cleared up. The rule to be applied in this case is as follows: The individual members of the alternative are to be treated as equal and connected by an and.[sic] ."

= References =

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