Self-Reflexive Adaptation: The Significance of "Mesearch"

I was intrigued to read a recent article in the Times Higher Education Supplement (19 March 2015) about the rise of “mesearch” as an academic field of study.  Created out of a desire to deconstruct academic master narratives, it can be best defined as a study of “the intimate and inextricable connections between […] life experiences […] and academic research.”  This requires individuals to write about the uniqueness of their experiences in terms of encountering literary and other texts and articulating them through their bodies, their psyche or other aspects of one’s personality.  Such approaches prove exceptionally useful in articulating one’s sense of self; but often they can be dismissed by one’s academic colleagues as “inappropriate.”  The attempt to force a wedge between self and scholarship can be ultimately incapacitating: “The duality of research as, on the one hand, a process of engagement led by rationality and, on the other hand, a disavowal of me and my irrational and unconscious emotions and senses, evoked bodily responses.  These responses have no physical explanation, but at the same time they have a physical manifestation.”  To deny the element of the personal in academic research can prove debilitating.  On the other hand, to acknowledge the importance of the “I” can enhance our practice at three different levels – with oneself, with one’s research and through interaction with learners.  Our teaching can prove better, more meaningful and more engaged, because we are researching at the same time – in other words, providing that crucial link between teaching and research that often seems sadly absent in contemporary academia.  bell hooks once wrote: “The classroom […] remains a location of possibility […] we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart […] to move beyond boundaries, to transgress.  This is education as the practice of freedom.”  “Mesearch” provides that vital component of defining who we are and what we teach and research.

Since the traumatic experience of my cancer treatment last year, I have become more and more aware of the importance of “mesearch.”  Using the theories of Piaget and Jerome Bruner as a guide, I have come to understand how “adaptation studies,” is not simply restricted to the process of transforming texts but requires us to (re)consider the relationship between the self and the text.  How we view the text, and how we are transformed by it, is even more significant than looking at how the text itself is transformed across media.  The word “text” is also highly ambiguous; it doesn’t just refer to the written text used in film and television adaptations, but can apply to any object we encounter.  Learners can be considered as texts; so can other works of art such as paintings, music – even food.

Perhaps more importantly, I have come to understand that “mesearch” is not just confined to the academy, but can occur at any time.  It is part of a process of lifelong learning, based on the belief that we are continually adapting to changing situations around us.  Hence “mesearch” can be perhaps more precisely defined as the study of a continuous process of self-adaptation.

I became acutely aware of this process at work when I recently visited the Nev Gallery in Ankara to view the paintings of the Turkish artist Selim Cebeci.  The works were fascinating in themselves; the artist possesses a unique quality to capture people involved in a series of domestic tasks – cooking, conversing, or sitting by the window – with their faces illumined in a variety of light and shade.  He values the ordinary, and by doing so transforms it into the extraordinary.  As I considered the paintings, however, I became aware of how Cebeci asks us to enter into an unspoken conversation with his subjects (and, by extension, Cebeci himself).  We bring to mind similar domestic situations that we have experienced in the past, and use them to evaluate the subjects represented in his work.  In that process of evaluation, we respond at a visceral level to color, light and shade, the thickness of the paint, and other artistic techniques, as well as to the “stories” told in the painting.  This process of communication between artist and viewer is emotional rather than detached; we value the immediacy of our responses. 

As I walked round the gallery, I became aware of how Cebeci’s work stimulated me to reflect on my past experiences of similar domestic experiences and re-evaluate them.  Did I adopt the same poses when I sat by the window?  Was I as fond of spontaneous conversation as his subjects seemed to be?  And were the subjects of such conversations “important” or simply “trivial”?  Did it really matter?  By encouraging me to reflect in this way, Cebeci was helping me to continue the process of “mesearch”; to understand at a deeper level how I was redefining the narratives by which I make sense of the world around me, and hence performing a process of self-adaptation.  This process has been well explained in Jerome Bruner’s seminal work on adaptation studies.  Once I had quit the gallery, I wrote down some notes in my diary, which later encouraged me to listen more closely to what my learners were saying (or not saying) in class. 

“Mesearch” might be considered “unacademic” or “unscholarly” by many of our colleagues, but to me it is exceptionally liberating, forcing me to consider at a deeper level my rationale for doing research (am I doing it just to further my career, or can it help me to grow as a personality) and reconsider its relationship to my pedagogic practice.  It helps me to understand how and why adaptation studies is such an important area of academic inquiry – provided, of course, that we are prepared to move away from that rather tired nexus of literature-film-media.  

More on Adaptation Studies, Case-Studies and "Theory"

I am encouraged by the level of comments generated by an earlier post on the subject, where I concentrated on the importance of recognizing cultural difference, as well as relating adaptation studies to Jerome Bruner’s notion of story-making.

In re-considering the relationship between the “theoretical” and “practical” aspects of adaptation, I was reminded of a panel, staged in Ankara in 1997, designed to look at the “theoretical” and “practical” aspects of cultural studies.  At that time I was quite vehement in my opposition to postcolonial theory, based on the belief that, as the Republic of Turkey had never actually been colonized, it had little or no significance in the local context.  Those local academics who practiced it might have willingly allowed themselves to be colonized by western-originated theories.  I asserted instead that perhaps we should concentrate on the “real business” of inter- and/or cross-cultural analysis.

Now the intellectual pendulum has changed completely.  Perhaps we need to theorize a little more about what “adaptation studies” actually is, and the effect not only on the texts adapted, but on those who instigate the adaptive process – writers and other creative personnel.  Perhaps this can be accomplished through a profusion of case-studies, or perhaps we need to stand apart slightly from the minutiae of what is “gained” and “lost” through adaptation and consider in more abstract terms questions such as “why adaptation?” 

This may involve a rethink of the way we “do” adaptation studies.  In looking at how source-texts are transformed – in the media, for instance – maybe we need to move away from plot and/or characterization and focus instead on the relationship between psychology and adaptation, and the way in which that relationship influences the ways in which a text is transformed.  The rationale behind this approach is based on the belief that “adaptation” is something unique, different from “translation” or “appropriation” in its emphasis on the ways in which human beings learn how to make sense of the world around them (as Piaget has repeatedly observed).  On this view an adapted text represents something of an intervention, a comment on the world in which it has been produced as well as received.

In this model, the question of equivalence is irrelevant; the adapted text is a text in its own right, produced for quite different purposes to the source-text.  Textual analysis might be significant, but only insofar as it helps us to understand the purposes of those involved in the adaptation.  Authorial intention is fundamental, despite what Patrick Cattrysse tells us.  More importantly, by looking at how the adaptation has been received by audiences, critics and other members of different groups, we can understand the importance of cultural difference; what a screenplay writer intends, and how an audience responds to that intention, are often completely different.

In terms of the debate I engaged with many years ago, the issue of “postcolonialism” retains its significance, based on the belief that different readers and audiences have different views of what the term involves.  By comparing and contrasting such views, through discussion and/or analysis, we learn to “adapt” our views of what postcolonialism actually is.  Through such discussions, we are inevitably conducting inter- and intracultural analysis.  There is no real distinction between “theory” and “practice” in this model; they are simply two sides of the same intellectual coin.

The same process also applies to the case-study.  If that case-study addresses the issue of “adaptation” and what it involves, rather than simply conducting a comparative analysis between source- and target texts for their own sake (i.e. what is “gained” and “lost”), then it has the potential to make a serious contribution to our theoretical understanding.  Likewise a theoretical analysis of adaptation that uses case-studies to make its points helps us to appreciate better the transcultural possibilities of the discipline.  There is no real binarist distinction between “theory” and “practice”; the two are inseparable.

I think I have really come to understand this in a recent graduate course conducted with teachers of English, where they use their classroom experiences of how their learners tried to adapt (or failed to adapt) to a text as a basis for re-evaluating their pedagogic practice.  This kind of reflection helps them to become more “adaptive” in orientation, and thereby appreciate better the link between adaptation studies and psychology.  I wonder if the same happens in the media studies classroom?  I do hope so.   

Adaptation Studies and the "Much Maligned" Case-Study

I’ve recently received two calls for papers that both imply that there is something intellectually questionable about the case-study model of adaptation.  One describes it as “much-maligned”; the other calls it “rather limiting and limited,” especially when compared to the “big questions” of adaptation, the history of adaptation, and on adaptation as scholarly practice.

Patrick Cattrysse has a lot to answer for.  In his recent Descriptive Adaptation Studies (2014) he derides the “endless accumulation of ad hoc case studies,” which hitherto have dominated much adaptation studies research, and advocates instead a general focus on “corpus-based research into wider trends of adaptational behavior and the roles and functions of sets of adaptations.”  He cites my edited collection Adaptation, Translation and Transformation (2012) as an example of the former approach, in which the various contributors offer diverse interventions as to what the terms “adaptation” and “translation” might signify in various contexts, and how practitioners have tried to develop a relationship between the two.

What disturbs me about all these observations is that they assume some kind of binary opposition between the particular and the general; the particularized “case-study” cannot address the more “general” questions of adaptation studies and its future theoretical developments.  Such oppositions, I believe, inhibit rather than benefit future research, as they impose a western-originated framework on a discipline which, by its very nature, should be transnational in focus.

My attention was drawn once again to this issue yesterday, when I visited the Ankara State Museum of Painting and Sculpture (Ankara Devlet Resim ve Heykel Müzesi).  Opened in 1930 in a purpose-built structure, it houses a rich collection of Turkish art from the late nineteenth century to the present day.  As in all museums, the work of individual artists is prominently on display; they include Şeker Ahmet Paşa, Zekai Paşa, Halil Paşa, İbrahim Çallı, Hikmet Onat and Namık İsmail.

What is perhaps more significant, however, is the purpose for which the museum was intended.  Opened by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, it was designed to foster the cultural development of the nation by providing an outlet for artists to show off their work.  This was considered highly significant: many of them had studied abroad, and Atatürk wanted to show how they had absorbed the lessons of other artistic traditions (in the west and elsewhere) and used them to create new forms.  The exhibits show distinct Impressionist, Cubist, and Dadaist influences, for instance.

Although the individual artists adapted their knowledge to create idiosyncratic, often striking works, their paintings served a more general purpose of advancing the nation’s sense of cultural well-being.  On this view, the relationship between general and particular is not oppositional but symbiotic; one cannot exist without the other.  As I walked around the gallery, looking at the paintings with subjects as diverse as Anatolian landscapes past and present, İstanbul sea-views, Ottoman dignitaries and Atatürk himself, I could not help but recall how many creative individuals practiced (and continue to practice) their work in the belief that they are serving the nation.  They might be recognized as artists in their own right – great actors, film stars, painters, and so on – but they also claim a higher purpose. 

While Ayşe H. Köksal is right in claiming that this model can be considered exclusivist insofar as it is designed “not so much to shore up an existing [Ottoman] social order as to provide the script for a new [Kemalist] one” (although this is not always the case), the fact remains that the case-study (in this case, the individual art-work contained within the framework of the Ankara State Museum) tells us a lot about the relationship between adaptation and cultural politics.  Moreover this model is defiantly transnational; how many other regimes have employed similar strategies in order to reinforce state ideologies?

In Making Stories (2002), Jerome Bruner offers a model of adaptation based on an interplay between individuals and the communities they inhabit.  Individuals learn how to “adapt” to their environments through socialization – learning behavioral, artistic and psychological conventions.  At the same time they initiate a process of adaptation within their environments through a variety of strategies, including cultural products such as films, paintings, or plays.  These products can help transform the way people think about the world around them.  This continual process of give-and-take - of individuals adapting to and at the same time inspiring others to adapt – is how societies evolve.

To think otherwise – by favoring a “general” at the expense of a “particular” focus on adaptation - is to re-invoke a colonialist way of thinking which adaptation studies consciously seeks to avoid, as its practitioners try and find ways of understanding one another, as well as looking for transnational and transdisciplinary models.

I appreciate the amount of work being undertaken in the discipline, but I wish that some of the thinking could be a little more “out of the box.”

Adaptation and Power

The politics of power might seem an odd subject to discuss in relation to adaptation – unless, of course, we look at the ways in which socio-political conditions shaped the ways in which a text was transformed.

But perhaps there is another way of looking at this issue.  I was struck by this as I read a comment made on one of my pieces by a colleague; although I had quoted Jean Piaget’s views on adaptation as a psychological process, he insisted that “adaptation is text.”  I was a little puzzled by this observation, until I realized that he was simply rehearsing the basic premise behind most of the “adaptation studies” as currently practiced (and published).  The process of textual transformation predominates, with the bulk of attention being devoted to the shifting relationship(s) between source and target texts.  I am not trying to denigrate this mode of analysis (I still employ it myself in many of my writings), but I would argue that this is only one of a plurality of possible approaches available to anyone interested in “adaptation studies.”  I am also interested in the psychological aspects of adaptation, which only have a tenuous relationship to the idea of “text” – unless we interpret that term in its broadest sense to cover any phenomenon we encounter, both human as well as non-human.  I would prefer to use the term “encounter” rather than “text,” so that we can allow for a plurality of viewpoints as well as prioritizing individuals as authors of their particular stories (which we might define more precisely as modus operandi).

The term “plurality” is important here: to insist that “adaptation is text,” while allowing for no other (re-)constructions does not allow for individual possibilities, and risks imposing the kind of limiting discourse on a discipline that by its very nature resists such limitations.  To put it another way, we are allowing ourselves to be guided by our peers, rather than trusting in ourselves and our own judgments.  We are willingly subjecting ourselves to an external author, rather than accepting the fact that we are authors of our own stories.

The importance of this dictum was brought home to me as I received the latest issue of my departmental journal, the Baskent University Journal of Education (BUJE) (http://buje.baskent.edu.tr/index.php/buje/issue/current).  The majority of the articles employ a basic methodology of using statistical surveys and questionnaires to prove a particular educational point, based on the belief that education studies are “scientific” and can therefore be proved through hard evidence.  My contribution, written to mark the passing of Talât Saït Halman, a poet, translator and all-round Renaissance man as well as being the Turkish Republic’s first Minister of Culture, uses a variety of evidence to emphasize the importance of randomness in education; by acknowledging the unpredictable or the unplanned, we can learn how to enjoy ourselves and learn as a result (http://buje.baskent.edu.tr/index.php/buje/article/view/65).  I am not claiming for one moment that one approach is academically “better” than another, but rather allowing for the existence of both.  Giving individuals the space to grow, think, or adapt in their own way not only helps to develop self-determination, but allows for the development of spontaneous thinking – the possibility of creating “Aha” moments, through which we discover something about ourselves and our relationship to the work we are doing.

What I am arguing for is that adaptation studies is not just something we practice in the academy, but rules every aspect of our own lives.  It helps to bridge the gap between “work” and “play,” “home” and “school” or “office,” “science” and “art,” and by doing so helps us to reflect on the viability of such binary oppositions.  Perhaps we need to develop alternative ways of thinking and being, both inside and outside the classroom or the academy.  If such is the case, then we need to set aside any pre-ordained or pre-learned definitions of what adaptation “should” or “shouldn’t” be (which symbolize the powers trying to rule the way we think), and work out our own ideas.  By doing so we come to accept that change rules our lives: what we think adaptation represents for us today might not be what we think tomorrow.  The prospect is an enticing one – well, for me, at least.  

Adaptation Studies and Active Literacy

Despite having written and published extensively in the field of adaptation studies and pedagogy (including two co-edited volumes THE PEDAGOGY OF ADAPTATION and REDEFINING ADAPTATION STUDIES (2010), as well as ADAPTATION STUDIES AND LEARNING (2013)), I have hitherto found it difficult to address the question posed by Thomas Leitch in his FILM ADAPTATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, about how to use adaptation studies to promote “active literacy.”

For Barton Palmer, writing in Film Quarterly, this model represents a form of “Deweyesque engagement in rewriting” – which I take to mean a form of education designed to promote individual talents, as well as an ability to use such talents for the greater good.  Adaptation enables learners to experience and interact with the curriculum, as well as experiment for themselves in writing and learning.

In general terms, this is a laudable aim; but I have always wondered how this “active literacy” could be assessed.  In ADAPTATION STUDIES AND LEARNING, Tony Gurr and myself suggested that this should be done collaboratively, with learners and teachers participating in a give-and-take process of evaluation, eventually arriving at some consensus of opinion.  This might sound laudable in theory, but might be difficult to achieve in practice, especially when educators are faced with large classes at the undergraduate level.

After having read Stephen Apkon’s inspiring book THE AGE OF THE IMAGE: REDEFINING LITERACY IN A WORLD OF SCREENS (Farrar, Strous & Giroux, 2013), perhaps I am now in a better position to understand how “active literacy” might be encouraged in the classroom.  Apkon argues persuasively that, in a world that is awash in visual storytelling, we have to redefine our pedagogical approaches to take into account how storytelling works in the human brain, and on the practical value of literacy in real-world situations.

Rather than confining ourselves to written assignments, we should encourage learners to research, write, revise, edit and produce videos, using archival material as well as their own ideas.  This form of assignment teaches learners “not only how to read and write, but also how to listen and speak, in all the media that really matter” (212).  We do not need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak (by rejecting written assignments altogether), but we need to redefine our educational methods through the prism of visual communication.

Modes of assessment should encompass familiar criteria – problem-solving and group participation – but also assess performative potential: visually-oriented projects can inspire a form of creative expression that some learners have never previously discovered.  Giving them the chance to show off their work in public, as well as perform in front of the camera, can inspire the kind of self-confidence that simply does not exist with exclusively written activities.

Perhaps more significantly, Apkon argues that visually-oriented activities help to establish relations between learners across social and cultural boundaries.  The realities of problem-solving, planning and communication (all part of the experience of filmmaking) provides a catalyst for the development of critical life-skills and “the kind of social and emotional learning our schools do not provide” (217).

Apkon offers a five-point plan for measuring visual literacy.  He believes that, when they graduate at the secondary and/or the tertiary levels, all learners should be able to:-

·        Write a script for a short video segment;

·        Shoot a coherent piece of film narrative with the correct literate elements of expression;

·        Edit video out of raw material into a persuasive argument;

·        Access channels of distribution, including the Internet;

·        Critically understand and deconstruct visual media.

Such objectives mesh in with the objectives of twenty-first century learning, as defined by the National Council of Teachers of English in 2008: learners need to a) develop proficiency with the tools of technology; b) Build relationships with others to solve problems cross-culturally and collaboratively; c) Analyze and evaluate multiple streams of information; d) Evaluate multimedia texts; and e) Design and share information for global communities for a variety of purposes.

In this educational model, “adaptation studies” not only requires learners to rewrite source-texts, but they have to learn how to adapt to one another.  Likewise educators have to redefine their roles; they are no longer sources of knowledge but participants in the collaborative process, guiding learners as well as offering encouragement in their own processes of self-discovery.

“Active literacy” as defined by Leitch and filtered through Akpon’s suggestions, emphasizes the importance of activity; everyone has to be involved in the process of creation, in the belief that their work is not just designed to pass exams (or obtain good grades), but represents a positive contribution towards cross-cultural understanding.  The Internet and/or social media provide an invaluable means to facilitate this process.  Adaptation studies not only involve a process of personal development but should foster the desire to share one’s insights and/or cultural products with others.  As the old saying goes, two heads are better than one.

Beyond Adaptation

I recently came across an essay "Beyond Adaptation" by Mark Fortier in a recently-published anthology OUTERSPEARES: SHAKESPEARE, INTERMEDIA AND THE LIMITS OF ADAPTATION (U. of Toronto P., 2014).  I review the entire volume elsewhere, but this piece deserves particular attention.

Fortier claims, erroneously I think, that "most scholars of reworkings of Shakespeare have adopted a more or less limited sense of adaptation" - a concept different to parody, travesty and sequel insofar as it focuses on notions of textual equivalence, a concept which for Fortier "has a bit too much of the bureaucrat and the bean counter about it" (373).  The author prefers to borrow from Derrida, who apparently conceives adaptation as not only "particular works of secondary creation" but involves "the very possibility of culture going forward" (374).

Nonetheless Fortier manages to detect three types of textual and cultural activity that might be considered "beyond adaptation" - creating completely new work, looking at work that doesn't change, and those works that have entered into oblivion.  Shakespeare's work, he believes, contains a dismissal of the new, a mainly futile longing for constancy, a fear of change, and an expectation of oblivion (381).  So long as we speak of Shakespeare, however, the oblivion has not come and we are not beyond adaptation (384).

Many of these statements seem to be problematic, suggesting an a priori acceptance of certain (western formulated) concepts that betray a resistance to the adaptive process.  Cultures not only go forward; they can develop sideways, backwards, at a tangent - whatever direction those who inhabit such cultures choose to go.  Individuals make their own decisions as to how to adapt to their communities; likewise communities are reshaped to accommodate individual wishes.  Cultures change as a result of this two-way process; but do not necessarily go forward (a particularly Enlightenment-based concept).

I must confess to being a little confused as to what "beyond adaptation" signifies.  If, as Jean Piaget has suggested, adaptation is a process fundamental to existence, then it follows that we are perpetually adapting.  We cannot escape it, even if we want to.  Through adaptation we come to embrace different views of Shakespeare: the views I adopted of Hamlet when I was eighteen (when I wrote an essay claiming that Hamlet was not the hero of the play) are not those I possess at the moment, after having written a book on the old Shakespearean actor-manager Donald Wolfit.  If that is the case, then perhaps we should set aside the term "beyond adaptation" and replace it with "within adaptation," implying that we are always in dialogue with the texts we read, watch and engage with at whatever level.  Exactly how we make sense of them is up to us.

Adaptations and Palimpsests

Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation (2006, 2^nd ed. 2013) offers the term “palimpsest” to describe the way we experience adaptations.  The term usually represents a manuscript (usually written on papyrus or parchment) on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased.  She identifies adaptation as a form of intertextuality, in which we experience adaptations as palimpsests through our memory of other works that resonate through repetition with variation.  A palimpsestuous adaptation is an incestuous palimpsest of the original text.

Hutcheon’s arguments have been developed by Thomas Leitch, who argues that any adaptation is haunted by traces of many other texts.  The term palimpsestuous occurs where the history of a text, although partially erased, nonetheless leaves certain traces.  Hence adaptations are repetitions, bringing together the comfort of ritual and recognition with the delight of surprise and novelty.  They are repetitions with differences, spicing up familiar ideas with new interpretations.

I wonder what both Hutcheon and Leitch would make of Rick Whittaker’s 2013 novel The Honest Ghost, comprised entirely of sentences appropriated from over five hundred books.  The author limits himself to using three hundred words per book, never taking two sentences together and never making any changes to punctuation.

The novel concerns the search of a protagonist for meaning in his (or her life).  S/he interacts with a lover called David, a lonely female (Eleanor) and a son (Joe), but can never find any sense of fulfillment.  There are certain incidents that take place; several meetings; and numerous dialogic exchanges; but we are left at the end with a sense of incompleteness.  The novel doesn’t seem to have an ending.  The technique is deliberate on Whittaker’s part, as he shows how words simply cannot sum up an individual’s emotional and physical experiences.  We may communicate with one another, but there are parts of ourselves that are perpetually unknowable: words cannot tell us anything about them.  Hence the conversations in the novel resemble a series of verbal games, in which the narrator sometimes tells us that s/he has made sense of the world, only to be frustrated a few pages later.  The conversations with the other protagonists prove equally inconclusive; no one, it seems, can enjoy a fulfilling relationship.  Perhaps the book’s most telling line occurs when one character tells the narrator to “please, please, please, please, stop talking” – suggesting that words have little or no capacity to sum up anyone’s feelings.

If such is the case, then the conventions associated with the story – the beginning, middle and end – are equally meaningless.  No one can make sense of their lives, so how can they say that their search has “ended”?

Superficially Whittaker’s technique would seem to vindicate Hutcheon’s and Leitch’s observations insofar that we are encouraged to identify the source of some (or perhaps all) of the quotes that comprise his text.  A handily provided index at the back of the volume makes this task even easier.  Looking up the quotations gives us the pleasure of familiarity, as we are introduced to a variety of sources ranging from classical texts through James Joyce and Alan Bennett.

Yet the experience of the novel is profoundly disorienting.  The text might comprise a series of familiar quotes, but Whittaker assembles them into an unfamiliar form that makes us understand two things: 1) that there is no such thing as an “original” text in any adaptation, but a variety of source-texts; and 2) that the unique quality of adaptation lies in an ability to disrupt our feelings of recognition (i.e. that we might identify the source-text) and demonstrate instead how a series of intertexts have been reshaped into a completely new literary or dramatic form.  Whittaker has created a new narrative that forces us to contemplate the shortcomings of all languages to sum up experience.  Rather we should try to look behind the words and try to contemplate what people are trying to think (even though they might not know what they are thinking themselves).

On this view, a palimpsestic text is something that challenges our tendency to look at phenomena in terms of binary oppositions (“original” vs. adapted text, for instance) and consider every text on its own terms as a new and highly suggestive piece.  Reading The Honest Ghost is not an easy experience, but one that proves highly satisfying in the end.