Edward Said on Contrapuntal Reading

George M. Wilson

Philosophy and Literature, Volume 18, Number 2, October 1994, pp. 265-273
(Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/phl.1994.0025

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/416160/summary

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 George M. Wilson

EDWARD SAID ON CONTRAPUNTAL READING

Edward Said's rich and powerful new book, Culture and Imperial-
ism,1 offers, as one strand of its multifaceted discussion, method-
ological reflections on the reading and interpretation of works of
narrative fiction. More specifically, Said delineates and defends what he
calls a "contrapuntal" reading (or analysis) of the texts in question. I am
sympathetic to much of what Said aims to accomplish in tiiis endeavor,
but I am also puzzled about some key aspects of his proposal. I will
begin by presenting a brief sketch of my understanding of what a
contrapuntal reading involves, and I will tiien explain some of the
doubts and puzzlement I feel. Unfortunately, there is much that Said
says about even diis limited topic that I will have to by-pass, but I hope
to say enough to initiate some helpful discussion of the issues. I should
note that aldiough the topic of "contrapuntal reading" recurs with
significant emphasis throughout his book, Said's direct explication of
the enterprise is scattered across several chapters, and the relevant
remarks tend to be, in each instance, fairly brief. Given this state of
affairs, I have tried to extract a reasonably unified account from a wide
range of passages, and I hope to have done so as sympadietically and
accurately as possible. Nevertheless, die fact remains that what follows is
my reconstruction of the view diat Said adumbrates.
Contrapuntal readings are meant to interweave, mutually qualify,
and above all, superimpose die legitimate claims of internal or intrinsic
readings of a work, on the one hand, and the claims of various forms of
external critique, on the odier. Such readings rest upon the fact that
any literary fiction refers to or depicts a complex of materials that have
been drawn from the actual world, e.g., actual people, places, institu-
tions, and practices. These items are taken up and variously deployed

Philosophy and Literature, 1994, 18: 265-273

266Philosophy and Literature

within the wider imaginative project of the work. It is crucial to this

deployment tiiat the intended audience can be expected to bring to the
text a set of background "attitudes" concerning die relevant real world
materials, and tiiat diese beliefs, concerns, ideological presuppositions,
etc., are elaborated widiin die work's embedded patterns. Thus, die
text is anchored in what Said calls "a structure of reference and
attitude," and diis structure constitutes die base from which a contra-
puntal reading chiefly proceeds. Reading contrapuntally, interpreters
move back and forth between an internal and external standpoint on
the work's imaginative project, with special attention to the structure of
reference and attitudes it contains. From an internal standpoint,
interpretation aims at explanation of the work's narrational, rhetorical,
and linguistic strategies, an explanation that respects the strategies and
die density of the textual elements tiiey implicate. It is important that
the internal standpoint articulate die work's vision as compellingly as
possible, not only because diis has an obvious interest of its own, but
because the persuasiveness of commentary from an external standpoint
depends upon giving full credit to the sophistication of the text. (We
will return to diis point shortly.)
An external standpoint examines the problematic seductiveness of
die work's capacity to guide its audience's responses and seeks to define
die limited degrees of freedom widiin whatever complexity it estab-
lishes. By reminding us of information about the structure of reference
that die work ignores, distorts, or minimizes and by reminding us that
the structure of invoked attitudes has plausible alternatives that the
work has effectively excluded, die external standpoint situates the text
critically within a wider field of imaginative possibilities. As Said
formulates the point, we read from an external perspective "... with an
effort to draw out, extend, give emphasis and voice to what is silent or
marginally present or ideologically represented" in die work" ( CUfI, p.
66).
In elaborating the account above, I have spoken of "intrinsic read-
ings" of narrative fictions, and it will help to fill in my sketch if I specify
the fairly standard conception I have in mind. Said does not address
diis as a separate topic, but I believe that die following remarks are fully
compatible with what he seems to presuppose. In reading a story, it is
fictional for the reader that he or she is learning of a sequence of
narrative events, and die reader is generally licensed to ask after
explanations of why and how the fictional history transpires as it does,
where diese explanations are to be framed in terms of the "implied"
 George M. Wilson267

workings of the fictional world. The agents, events, and situations of

that world are configured into various significant connections, and it is
this network of fictional explanatory connections that readers try to
infer. In searching for a global meaning of the work, audiences hope to
arrive at a surveyable pattern of narrative-based explanation and thus to
survey the narrative events in a manner that opens them up to plausible
perspectives of moral, psychological, or political evaluation. When they
read from an internal standpoint, readers employ a framework of
explanatory background assumptions and normative principles diat
they take to be authorized for the work in questionauthorized,
perhaps, in the light of the author's intentions concerning such
matters. However, when these same readers move contrapuntally out-
side dieir internal standpoint, they will knowingly adopt explanatory
and evaluative frameworks that depart more or less radically from
anything that the author or the intended audience could be expected
to endorse. And they will do so on the grounds that the alternatives
chosen are relevant to the questions raised by the work and arejustified
by what is independendy known or seriously contended about its real
world references. Within die internal dimension of a contrapuntal
reading, one constructs the articulated upshot of participation in an
authorized game of make-believe.2 Within the external dimension,
one's reading rides piggy-back upon diis participation and is responsive
to whatever grounds one has for rejecting or, at least, resisting full
involvement in the imaginative enterprise encouraged by die text.
As I mentioned earlier, Said does not attempt to work out in detail an
explicit account of contrapuntal analysis. It is clear, in fact, that readers
are intended to be instructed by the various extended examples of the
practice diat he provides. The first such extended instance is given in
his commentary on Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, and it is die special
role of this analysis to initiate readers into the metiiods and rewards
diat contrapuntal reading purports to offer. This sample interpretation
does seem to me to be highly instructive, but I think we are taught
equally about the prospects and the problems diat a contrapuntal
strategy engenders. Since Said discusses die novel at some lengtii, I will
consider only some of the arguments he puts forward, but, for reasons
I will subsequendy explain, die issues tiiat emerge are, in my judge-
ment, symptomatic of deficiencies or lacunae in his overall account.
Said reminds us that Thomas Bertram, Sr., the owner of Mansfield
Park, is also the owner of extensive plantations in Antigua. In fact,
through most of the first half of the book, he is absent from his home
268Philosophy and Literature

and from England because he has had to attend to his troubled

business affairs on that island. This absence is crucial to die early
development of the plot. Because he is away and his rather stern
domestic management has lapsed, die normal ordering of life at
Mansfield Park is falling into serious disarray. The situation is dire:
heavy and improper flirting has been dangerously intermixed with
indecorous preparations for an amateur theatrical. Fortunately, Mr.
Bertram returns from his journey just in time to rout the imminent
production and to quash die immediate causes of this decline into
impropriety.
As Said notes, references to Mr. Bertram's Antigua holdings are
relatively few in number, and they are made almost in passing. For
example, it is never explained just what business it is that calls him to
his plantation, and we learn nodiing about how this business is
resolved. From Austen's point of viewor so it seemsthe visit to
Antigua is little more than a plot device designed to motivate Mr.
Bertram's lengthy absence, and tiiat absence is made to last just long
enough to build to a significant mid-point crisis. On a standard reading
of the novel, the fact tiiat it is at his Antigua plantation that Mr. Bertram
is occupied appears to be incidental to the main narrative and tiiematic
concerns.

However, Said's contrapuntal analysis of Mansfield Park insists that we

are not to accept die targeted fictional fact as being merely incidental
in diis way. If the book invites us to unthinkingly and unblinkingly pass
over die point that the economy and well-being of Mansfield Park
substantially depends upon a distant Caribbean plantation, we are
required to resist this heavily freighted invitation. And this is so, Said
contends, because we need to reimagine the novel in full cognizance of
the imperialistic presuppositions that lie only thinly buried beneath the
apparently casual references to Mr. Bertram's overseas ventures. What-
ever Austen did or didn't know about British colonialism in the
Caribbean and elsewhere, we know that Mr. Bertram's fortune is
sustained by the exploitation of foreign territory, the oppression of
native peoples, and, more specifically, upon slavery among the workers
on his land. Out of all these matters and more, in the novel only die
question of slavery flutters equivocally into sight for just an instant and
then immediately disappears.3
Now, it is important that we be tolerably clear about what is supposed
to be at stake in connection with a contrapuntal reading here. We can
surely grant that Jane Austen and her readers accept, apparently
 George M. Wilson269

without hesitation or demurral, most of the ideological underpinnings

of British imperialism in the early 1800s. Moreover, as Said repeatedly
points out, this situation remains largely unchanged as we pass through
the ranks of major and minor British writers during the century. Said is
also absolutely right to claim diat it is disturbing to observe how
thoroughly even the crudest presuppositions of empire are left unques-
tioned widiin English literature despite die wealth of liberal and
humanistic values diat much of this literature supports and even
celebrates. Still, as deplorable as this massive historical circumstance
may be, it is by now a familiar fact that the English public, from
economic top to bottom, were deeply and unreflectively imbued with
the precepts, perceptions, and assumptions diat underwrote for them
the legitimacy of colonialism. It is really not surprising to discover that
a stringently imperialist ideology recurs in work after work during the
period in question. It may shock for a moment that even Jane Austen is
implicated in the framework of imperialist thought, but, having regis-
tered the shock, we should conclude that it would be more amazing if
she were not. Suppose, therefore, that all of this is granted. Neverthe-
less, none of these reflections do much to clarify the more particular
promise that contrapuntal readings of Mansfield Park and otiier canoni-
cal novels will alter, in substantial detail, our comprehension of fine-
grained narrative development, How, according to Said, is this elabo-
rate counterpoint of interpretative vision supposed to be achieved?
In his analysis of Mansfield Park, Said advances several lines of
commentary that might seem to help us with this question. For
example, he suggests that we should view the heroine, Fanny Price, as a
value-laden import into the Bertram household. That is, much as
imports from the Antiqua plantation are needed to support the
domestic arrangements at Mansfield Park, so also, but in a complemen-
tary fashion, Fanny should be seen as the bearer of resources from
outside which serve to reconsolidate and strengtiien the Bertram
family's power and standing. Working from this analogy, Said is able to
read much of Fanny's story as a kind of allegory of the Bertram's
unacknowledged dependence upon die wealtii and otiier goods that
tiiey must regularly appropriate and employ. He says, "It is no exaggera-
tion to interpret the concluding sections of Mansfield Park as the
coronation of an arguably unnatural (or at very least, illogical) prin-
ciple at the heart of a desired English order" ( Cfl, p. 87) .
However, the comparison of Fanny to exports from Antiqua strikes
me as thin and arbitrary. It is simply too easy to propose linkages of this
270Philosophy and Literature

ilk and to spin alternative "allegories" from them. First, the sense in
which Fanny has been imported into die Bertram circle is equivocal. It
is true that they have brought her from her home in Portsmouth to live
at Mansfield Park, but it is also true diat die Bertrams are her kinshe
is their niece and cousin. Second, and more important to present
concerns, it is arguable tiiat Fanny embodies die natural piety and
virtue diat give moral sense to Mr. Bertram's principles and a spiritual
foundation to die proper way of life at Mansfield Park. Of course, the
influence of this piety and virtue has been, like Fanny herself, neglected
and misunderstood by die Bertrams. It takes the sundry disasters
occurring toward die end of the novel to recall them to the true nature
and importance of these underlying values. If one chooses to adopt diis
analogy instead, one will not be inclined to view Fanny as an import
from outside, but rather as die unlikely receptacle of the values that
have always supplied die Bertrams with their solidity and strength as a
family. When the hearts and heads of others have been temporarily
distracted, it is Fanny who holds fast to the family's ethical heritage. At
any rate, this suggestion, quite different in force from Said's, seems at
least its equal in plausibility.
Said also elaborates a different proposal that is considerably more
promising. Our basic conception of Mr. Bertram and all tiiat he stands
for in the novel can seem to be transformed if we attempt to grasp and
assess die character of the man while bearing sharply in mind the
implications of his undepicted role as owner of a plantation in Antigua.
On the whole, the book treats him as a worthy and honorable person.
In particular, it endorses the strictness of his management of Mansfield
Park. The estate will not run properly without his constant surveillance
of its daily affairs, without his rigorous regimentation of his family's
behavior, and widiout die overall discipline he enforces. The novel
plainly demonstrates die vigilance that is demanded if plausible but
pernicious direats like the Crawford siblings are to be rebuffed. And
yet, when we imaginatively consider what Mr. Bertram's surveillance,
regimentation, and discipline might amount to in the Antiguan con-
text, we can easily form a vivid idea of how his stern, uncompromising
'virtues' could have a darker, more disturbing cast. Said suggests tiiat we
should view Mr. Bertram's rule over his plantation as a natural exten-
sion of the regime he has established at Mansfield Park. But, die
former, we may be sure, will not have been tempered by familial
affection nor by the laws and civilities that govern genteel life in the
English countryside. Thus, according to Said, we are licensed to use our
 George M. Wilson271

presumptive knowledge of Mr. Bertram's activities in Antigua to fill out

our sense of his values, attitudes, and temperament. When we do
refashion our moral portrait of him in this manner, the novel's largely
benign conception of the man will be significandy disturbed.
In some ways, it seems to me diat diis proposal has considerable
force, but, at the same time, it is also difficult to place it coherendy
within a broader reading of the novel. Let me offer just one illustration
of what I have in mind. Said nowhere mentions the fact that Jane
Austen renders some stern judgments of her own about Mr. Bertram,
and one can wonder where these judgments fit within a contrapuntal
reading in Said's mode. For instance, it is made very clear diat Mr.
Bertram has enthusiastically pushed his oldest daughter into a disas-
trous marriage widi a rich and fatuous neighbor, and his entiiusiasm for
her nuptials derives significandy from the prospect of the vast, adjoin-
ing properties that die united families will control. Similarly, Mr.
Bertram turns rather ferociously upon poor Fanny when she perspica-
ciously rejects Henry Crawford's proposal of marriage. In his view,
Fanny has been offered a starding promotion in wealdi and social
standing, a promotion to which she has no natural claim, and her
perversity in refusing the offer moves him to considerable harshness
towards his niece. There is no question but that Austen shows Mr.
Bertram to be seriously wrong in his actions andjudgments in diese two
cases. He is convicted, at a minimum, of greed, pride of place, cold
insensitivity, and a considerable degree of outright cruelty. Mr. Bertram
is supposed to be a "good man," but, in these matters and some otiiers,
he is unambiguously condemned. Now, if we are reading Mansfield Park
contrapuntally, it seems as if we should be allowed to employ diese
indictments to condition and modify our sense of the novel's relations
to its Antiguan references. If Mr. Bertram is found to be at fault within
his own family in the ways just described, why shouldn't we extend the
verdicts and read him as even more strenuously faulted for his conduct
as a colonial exploiter? Certainly, diese very same "faults" would yield
much graver consequences when exercised at his West Indian planta-
tion. On Said's approach, as we have seen, we are entitled to bring our
knowledge of British imperialism to bear upon our assessments of Mr.
Bertram when he is portrayed at home. This is held to be a reasonable
extension of our background knowledge into our imaginative involve-
ment with the story. But then, why isn't it equally legitimate to bring the
novel's negative moral judgments to bear upon the character when we
imagine him in his business in Antigua? Isn't diis an equally reasonable
272Philosophy and Literature

extension from the contents of the novel to our broader impressions of

the implicit background? And, if this kind of extension is sanctioned,
do we have in Mansfield Park a very early exemplar of an anticolonial
novel, albeit one that is framed widiin the trappings of a domestic
moral tale?
Naturally, I regard diese last interpretative suggestions to be as
absurd as Said himself would take diem to be. Nevertiieless, I don't see
that diere is anydiing in Said's discussion of and metiiodology for
contrapuntal reading that would rule diem out. We cannot object, as we
might naturally wish to, diat the whole subject of Antigua in Mansfield
Park is too incidental to bear this sort of interpretative weight. As I
indicated earlier, Said insists that the topic is not to be dismissed upon
these grounds. What troubles me, in this and other of Said's examples,
is die following. For all the merit of Said's objectives in developing die
concept of contrapuntal reading, the constraints he appears to recog-
nize upon acceptable analyses are far too weak. Given the goal of
opening up a work to a range of alternative external perspectives,
readers are permitted to employ any background assumptions and
evaluative principles that have some relevance to some facet or dimension
of the work. After all, even perspectives that are severely marginalized
widiin die work are to be admitted. What is more, readers are not to
rely upon their normal perceptions concerning the relative weight and
importance ofvarious elements in the text. And, finally, diere can be no
overall requirement that contrapuntal interpretative views must be
consistent with die work taken in its entirety. The contrapuntal reader
will often take special interest in the contradictions that a text can be
forced to reveal. But then it is no wonder that, when these and similar
constraints have been dropped, readers find tiiemselves floundering
among a confusing modey of radically diverse possibilities. (I have only
hinted at the ease with which a host of possibilities can, with a litde
ingenuity, be constructed.)
The chief difficulty, in my opinion, is not that there are somehow too
many possibilities, as if we knew the number of satisfactory readings
tiiat a work can generate. Rather, we should be troubled by the
following consideration. Whenever we have a particular, powerful
contrapuntal reading, such as the ones that Said produces in his book,
it is usually a minor exercise to conceive of alternatives which appar-
ently have equal force and epistemic status but which also contradict or
stand in significant conceptual tension with die original. And dien,
viewing die overall situation from diis perspective of interpretative
 George M. Wilson273

conflict, it is likely to strike a reasonable critic that the choice of any

one of the competing readings will be arbitrary and tendentious. It is
liable to seem that each of the alternatives generated is less die result of
sensitive but responsible attention to the text and more the product of
an adamantly insisted upon outside agenda. Since Said, in his impres-
sive investigations, plainly wants to avoid this insidious appearance, he
needs to tell us more about die nature and evidential requirements of
interpretation in the style he favors. He needs to fill out, as he has not
yet done in Culture and Imperialism, the conditions that a convincing
contrapuntal reading must satisfy.

Johns Hopkins University

1.Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993).
2.Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational
Arts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), on games of make-believe, pp. 35-43
and 51-54; on authorized games of make-believe, pp. 397-98.
3.Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 198.