ABSTRACT
This chapter defines undecidability as a specific form of uncertainty and as an analytical and critical concept. Undecidability is defined as a specific sustained, productive and delimited form of uncertainty and distinguished from cognate terms such as ambiguity, indistinction, and, most importantly, indeterminacy, which is an unlimited and unproductive form of uncertainty. The effect of reader-engagement and the distinctive affective dimension is explained; and the central problems and (seeming) contradictions of the concept of undecidability are discussed, most significantly the question of whether or not interpretation entails a resolution of uncertainty and interpretive tension.
The chapter provides a specific and new theory of uncertainty and interpretation. Undecidability forms part of a mode of interpretation and reception by which the reader engages reflectively and critically with the various meanings of a literary work. Reading takes form here as an interpretive oscillation between the specific options of meaning established by the use of undecidability in a literary work, but also between the readerly synthesising of the contradictory options of meaning and acceptance of their unresolvable tension, and between a recognition of the historical specificity and objectivity of the text and an acknowledgement of the qualities of openness and unfinishedness.
