Fish's next move in his anti-formalist agenda is to deny the text as object, which was so important to Wimsatt and Beardsley and the New Critics. The objectivity of the text is an illusion and, moreover, a dangerous illusion, because it is so physically convincing. What exactly Fish means by this statement is somewhat unclear. It is the context that illuminates what he is driving at. But he does deny the text's independence as a repository of meaning.
Fish takes the idea of the hermeneutical circle seriously.
Indeed, the trick would be to find a theory that didn't work. The methods with which one approaches the text have already determined the outcome, one's presuppositions actuate the product. For Fish a text is only a Rorschach Footnote43 blot onto which the reader projects her self-understanding or, as we shall see, her culturally determined assumptions. The text contains nothing in itself, rather the content is supplied by the reader. It is the reader that determines the shape of text, its form, and its content.