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The conflicting claims of these four "unities" have been forcefully and amusingly presented in James McLaverty's rehearsal of the old analogy of Theseus' ship, except that the distinction between Content and Material is fudged.[52] Suppose that Theseus sets sail, says McLaverty, in a ship which after a while undergoes repairs. Say further that the ship eventually is so repaired as to have had all its material parts replaced. Is it still the same ship? The unity of Function would say yes, but the unities of Content, Material, and Time would say no. Suppose further, that someone gathered up the discarded parts of Theseus' ship and reconstructed the original ship; would the old reconstructed ship be Theseus' ship or the new repaired one? The unity of Function, if considered in the light of Continuity, would say the repaired one was the ship; but in the light of identity of Function it would say the old reconstructed ship had as good a claim. The unity of Material would support the old ship's claim, while the unity of Time would insist that three versions of Theseus' ship existed: the old one that had been Theseus' ship but which no longer exists, the repaired one Theseus now sails, and the reconstructed one which is not identical with the original ship though made of the same materials in the same configuration.[53] What happens if Theseus sells his ship and it becomes a cargo boat? Or what if a new owner also named Theseus uses it for the same purpose it originally served? Is that possible? Etc.

The main difficulty with the analogy is that in the case of the ship, the material being is the ship, while in the case of literary works, the physical document—the Material Text—is but a representation of the

Work. If Theseus were to say, "No, that ship reconstructed from old material is not my ship," we would believe him only if we vested authority for the naming of the ship in Theseus (the author, as it were). The Material Text—whether it is the Author's or the publisher's, whether it represents Version 1 or n, whether it is accurate or corrupt—is a necessary representation without which the Work cannot be experienced, but it is not identical with the Work, for no particular copy of the Work is needed for the Work to be experienced.

We see in this way of putting the problem the beginnings of an answer to the question, "What difference to a deconstructive reading of the Work does it make what Text is used?" For we see that the structure of the Work (that which the reader takes to be the work) depends upon the structure of the Material Text (the Linguistic Text in Semiotic form contained in a particular document). And we see further that the Material Text is not one unproblematic transparent "voice" but the "spoor" so to speak of a multitude of speakers working at various times and places combining their efforts in the Material Text. Which of these voices is to be centered in order that it may be decentered? Which self is to be focused on as self-subverting? The voice that is foregrounded by one particular Material Text may not be the same as that foregrounded in another. A deconstructive reader might not care for one reading more than another; indeed, he could not and remain true to his principles, but his understanding of the process of constructing meaning for a given text will depend to some extent on the particular Material Text he is exposed to. One can see, therefore, that a concept of authority underlies the way in which the Unities are employed to identify a "voice" or a "text" for the work by identifying an Utterance.

McLaverty, following the lead of James Thorpe[54] and Jerome McGann, places coalescence or Utterance of the work at publication, referring to stages of composition as moments of "pre-utterance." He is led to this, I believe, by the analogy of Theseus' ship. The parts of the boat removed and replaced are no longer the boat because they do not function as boat. And the boat does not function as boat until it is completed and launched. I suppose with boats, one knows if they function by putting them in the water. But works of literary art are not boats. The question of coalescence of a Work as a Version is a matter of opinion and judgment. Versions are not facts to be discovered about works; they are, rather, concepts created and put there by readers as a means of ordering (or as justification for valuing) textual variants. To say that an editor who had edited from the manuscripts a pre-publication version

(such as Hans Gabler's edition of Joyce's Ulysses) has prepared a "preutterance text" is to evaluate his work by a particular conjunction of the four unities and condemn it a priori. One may do that, but it is not a purpose of this taxonomy to encourage such judgments. Rather its purpose is to describe more accurately what judgments are being and can be made concerning the identity of copies of a work. Perhaps the most useful way to use the term Utterance is to say that each utterance has its intentions and its "social life" (i.e. the purpose for which it was released, and the context, moment and form in which it was designed and launched). Regardless of what decisions are made about the identity of a Version, when that tenuous issue is settled there remains the original question concerning works and versions: How accurately does the Material Text represent the Version or Work? Are there errors in the text?

All of this points, it seems to me, to an overwhelming conclusion concerning the concepts of Works and Versions—a conclusion that is consonant with the three fundamental propositions of this study. The concept of Work and, even more so, the concept of Version depend on Reception Performance just as much as on Creative Performance. If the reader must decide whether a Version is in fact a Version, its functional existence is determined by the reader. Creative performances, the idea of the Work as an Utterance of the author, and the idea of intended meanings are all Reader constructs. All the reader has is the Material Texts and whatever information about their provenance and alternative embodiments he has managed to scrounge up. The term Work helps him separate this mass of material from other masses relating to other works; the term Version helps him sort through this mass of material. He does so by classifying Material Texts according to the structure of Versioning that, to his perception, best accounts for the materials at hand. In short, the reader becomes the "functional authority" for the Work and its Versions. It would seem, therefore, that ideally the reader should have ready access to the evidence that would fully inform his or her decisions. Hence the importance of scholarly editions that foreground rather than submerge the evidence for Versions. T. H. Howard-Hill, contending that "uncertainty is a condition of mind and is not inherent in circumstances," recommends that "editors move with confidence and resolution like Tamburlaine," not like "Hamlets, shillying and shallying between this and that."[55] But if in his resolve an editor unwittingly stands in for all readers, making the decisions and producing a single reading text that purports to have reduced the Work to a book (the text that is the work), that editor has misrepresented the work, not refined and purified it.