Here’s my simple definition of a Rant: a contextually aware and critically informed look into culture.
Here’s my simple definition of a Regime: the dominant beliefs that inform and guide a collective approach to reality by a group of people.
Why pit the former against the latter? For instruction and delight.
Let’s consider a quick example.
The word wherefore means what for or, more precisely, why. When Juliet asks, then, “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” she isn’t asking where the appealing lad is physically located at the moment. (The standard joke being hiding in the bushes below her balcony.) Instead, Juliet is a teenager waxing philosophical. She’s wondering about the existential fact of this charming boy—what makes him Romeo and why—that’s distinct from his problematic family name of Montague—a social convention that’s in conflict with her own family name of Capulet.
Hey, wait a minute. Does this mean that Juliet might be on a small Rant against the Regime of medieval Verona? Hmm...could be.
By recognizing about Romeo that “Thou art thyself, though not a Montague,” Juliet separates the person of the boy from the custom of naming that marks him. Just as “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Juliet understands that Romeo Montague by any other name would be just as hot—and, more to the point, not trigger a societal hullabaloo for her to hook-up with as a Capulet. Is Juliet signaling that she and her boyfriend are not so much “star-cross’d lovers” as they are, in fact, victims of a repressive cultural environment?
Again, hmm...could be.
A good question to ask at this point is am I overthinking this. Am I giving a medieval Italian adolescent credit for too much brainwork? The answer is sure, I might be. Reading too much into a cultural situation is always a possibility. But let me suggest that an even better question to ask at this point would be: Is this kind of social observation, even denunciation, beyond the reach of the playwright who created Juliet? The answer to that question, resoundingly, is: hardly. The works of Shakespeare are chock-full of this kind of stuff. You can’t throw a rock in his plays or poetry without hitting an interesting idea.
So Shakespeare is offering playgoers an astute critique of upper-crust society in medieval Verona? Well, no. Not really. Shakespeare likely knew little more about medieval Verona than you or I. It’s a good bet, though, that Shakespeare is offering his audience some intriguing insights into 1590s London. That is, into the Regime dictating social behaviors in their time and place.
So, let’s get this straight. Shakespeare might be on a bit of a Rant against his local Regime? Yeah. Could be. That’s what I’m suggesting.
Hmmm...
But wait. There’s a bit more. Hang with me. Things are about to get even more complicated.
Of course, to know for sure what Shakespeare meant to say in his now-famous speech by Juliet, we’d have to ask the playwright himself. “Hey, Shakes,” as I call Bill in my head, “just what in the hell did you mean by putting all that brainy Wherefore jabber in the mouth of a rambunctious 14th-century-ish Verona teen?” Bill’s answer? Nothing, of course. That informational ship sailed on 23 April 1616. But, come to think of it, even if Bill could answer us, would he necessarily know exactly what he meant to say in that speech? Did he have one hard-and-fast meaning in mind? A few? Any, really? Maybe he was just riffing tropes at that point to fill up a bit of stage time. Or maybe he was being a sexist lout, ridiculing poor Juliet by having her spout ideas that his patriarchally trained audiences easily would diagnose as beyond her tiny female ken. Who knows? And that’s just the point. Nobody knows. Not even Bill.
Moreover (which means, in argument-speak, watch out), even if Bill did have one hard-and-fast meaning he intended all audience members to carry away from Juliet’s speech, how could he reliably predict—let alone control—that every person who ever saw or read his play would grasp that single meaning? Obvious answer: he couldn’t.
Wherefore?
Because when we watch or read Romeo and Juliet, we respond to Shakespeare’s text, not to Shakespeare’s intended meaning for that text (a meaning, you’ll recall, we can’t even ask Shakespeare about). Therefore (which means, I win), when we watch or read Romeo and Juliet, we inescapably bring ourselves to that Word Party. As a result, the meanings we formulate from Juliet’s speech—inescapably—are our own. Ours and our personal and cultural predispositions. The text certainly helps guide our responses. But Billy-Boy, Wee-Willy, the Bard himself, has nothing to do with it anymore.
As Neo says: Whoa...
Head spinning a little? Mine too. Ain’t it cool? In cultural theory terms, this idea of the reader having as much or more or absolute control of textual meaning over the author goes by the name of Reception Theory or, my preference, Reader Response Theory. This theory has and continues to ignite riots and fisticuffs within English Departments throughout the Western World! Fierce and bitter warfare rages over the concepts of authorial intention and stable meaning. Spoiler Alert: the culprit behind all the thoughtcrime I will be committing in this Substack is none other than, as I call it fondly in my head, RR Theory. It is a diagnostic game-changer.
I’ll end my quick example here. But in future posts we’ll explore in more detail the big ideas outlined above. (To include those fundamental terms Rant and Regime.) For now, though, you have an important decision to make: Do I want to keep reading this Substack?
If you do, here’s what’s on offer. A weekly mosh-pit of inexactitude, like the mess above. A luring-into the marshlands of undecidability by a Substack will-o’-the-wisp. A dark wandering in the cerebral labyrinth of linguistic-cultural power and play. Most of all, an intensive pondering of the sobering yet freeing possibility that there is no Meaning...only meaningS.
So read on at your peril. And, I hope, glee. And if you haven’t already, please take a look at my “About” page. There I describe more fully just what in the hell I’m up to. (As if it matters. You will be the judge of that.)