Original Sin

Talking with my brother Tim the other night about crazy weather, climate change, and gas. I said that I have no real doubt that human ingenuity and technology will move humanity away from the need for massive amounts of oil to consume. Our conversation continued:

"I fully expect that oil will become less and less necessary, but what I wonder is... is..." I stopped, thinking for the right words to use.

Tim helped fill them in. "...is whether the cure might be worse than the disease."

"Exactly."

"It will be. It's called original sin."

Bingo. Just one reflection of the damned state of the world outside God's intervention.

"Is There a Meaning in This Text?", Chapter 4

After exploring the undoing of the author and the book, Vanhoozer turns his exploration of contemporary hermeneutics to the reader: meaning is found neither in the text, nor behind the text, but in front of the text says this age (148). This is because the reader is no longer an observer, detached from the text, but a participant in its meaning.

While texts are written to elicit specific responses from ideal readers, this ideal reader does not exist. All readers are situated and, as a result, do not see texts as they are meant to be read. As a result, all meanings of texts have their readers' influence. Vanhoozer sums this up by saying, "Instead of reading conforming to the text, the text conforms to the reading" (152).

So, then, how should a reader act? A reader can participate with the text by reading it to form a coherent whole, governed by the text; she can create the text's whole; she can be formed by the world the text describes. (For example, a person can study a piece of Bach music; a person can study a Bach piece that is shaped by their own setting; or, a person can perform a Bach piece.) Taking this question further, Is there a morality involved in reading? Should readers read to describe texts? evaluate texts? use texts? By undoing the text, the reader is free from the power of the text and can interpret it to different ends. The end that Vanhoozer discerns in postmodernity is liberation: freedom from author and freedom from text. However, this liberation is strange because it allows a certain "violence" to be done to the text; it can be misused; the author is silenced. But even more importantly, if there is no meaning in the text, then texts should not have an impact on readers. Texts should not be able to form readers.

Perhaps the idea of freedom from texts is a bit confusing. Here we should note that for Derrida texts are not just pages with black ink printed on them. 'Texts' are those things we interpret. And, as Derrida says, 'nothing is outside the text.' All of life is interpretation. But applying this directly to written texts helps make the point of liberation: Why should Shakespeare be required reading? Why does the Bible have 66 books? [That's my own question that reflects my own theological commitments.] Those who read the texts establish the canon, the standard, are themselves historically and culturally situated. You now see why "different readings" become necessary: how does one read a text, like a biblical letter, from a feminist point of view when the letter is written in a patriarchal society? Is such a reading fair? Is such a reading necessary to bring a text down from its hierarchical thinking and apply it accurately?

Most of us don't read just on our own, though. We belong to literary communities: churches, companies, countries, etc. Stanley Fish is the main guy here. Communities shape how we read and how we construct a text's meaning. [Think about being in a church where you hear, say, an apocalyptic text preached as pure prophecy with strong reaction from the audience. It's quite possible that neither the audience nor the preacher would interpret the text in that way outside a church service and outside each other's company.] But what's good for the goose is good for the gander! Communities don't just create texts. Texts create communities. Whether or not that church just mentioned knows it (or reflects it!), the biblical text has shaped it and brought it together. In other words, texts kick back against readers!

Because of this dynamic relationship, the reader's relationship to the text is a live question. And the questions that Vanhoozer wants us to ask--what's the morality of reading?--become legitimate. How do you fight fair with texts? How do you undo their ideology? How do you get shaped by them, especially when one can no longer make dogmatic claims to purely objective knowledge? For the postmodernist, deconstruction is the answer to this how: deconstruct texts as they have been written; deconstruct the authors who wrote them; deconstruct the people who read them. This humble (?) pursuit takes the other with utmost seriousness. But is there really an "other" there at all? Isn't the author an other? Isn't the text an other? Aren't readers others? Does a hermeneutics of suspicion help us to live graciously? [My rhetoric may have gotten the best of me in the last few sentences.] Vanhoozer thinks not, and engages in a reconstructive proposal in part two that resurrects the dead author (chapter 5), redeems the unbound text (chapter 6), and reforms the meaning-making reader (chapter 7).

"Is There a Meaning in This Text?", Chapter 3

These posts should come a little quicker now as I have finished reading this mammoth, but beneficial and important, book. Of course, that's not couting the two week hiatus for a honeymoon. :)

Chapter 3 is entitled, "Undoing the Book: Textuality and Indeterminacy." Following from Vanhoozer's discussion of the author, he now explores deconstruction's impact on the text: if the author is deconstructed, can the text survive on its own?

So, what is a text? For Roland Barthes, a text is not the product of an author, but a "network of diverse cultural codes" (105). But some even deny it "substantial presence" at all. The text is the product of the person reading; it is the reader's playground of meaning. Then there is also a middle ground (held by Gadamer and Ricoeur) that the text provides a "well" of meaning; it has intentions on its own, apart from its author, but is not open to any meaning whatsoever: its meaning is co-created by the text and the reader. Vanhoozer thinks this falls apart, however, and allows the reader to be the author of a certain text had they written it.

Derrida provides another approach to the text: grammatology. Because writing separates the author from the text, Derrida doesn't believe that Ricoeur's autonomy of the text takes its autonomy seriously enough. So, Derrida wants to analyze texts outside hermeneutics and interpretation. This study, "grammatology," emphasizes that there is nothing in the text to study except relations between signifiers. There is no end to the text: there is no such thing as a "book." The writing keeps going on and on and on. (Vanhoozer notes that "text" comes from the latin "textere" to weave.) Texts have "iterability": the ability to be iterated again and again in non-identical ways.

Very well. But if the text does have meaning, what sort of meaning does it have? Do we interpret spiritually? Allegorically? Literally? Vanhoozer discusses these, and other options, but goes deepest into literal interpretation. He distinguishes this from "literalistic" meaning, which would exclude figurative interpretations. Literal meaning is the plain, proper, meaning, which takes into account figures of speech, metaphors, etc.

But what about metaphor? Is there such a thing as literal language if language is metaphorical? Since metaphors by definition are malleable, do they reflect the fluid nature of meaning? This is Derrida's belief: there is "no non-metaphorical way of speaking about the world" (131). This implies that meaning is also a matter of invention.

So, Vanhoozer asks if interpretation must simply be agnostic. Is one interpretation better than another? Is there a stable meaning to be discerned or is all writing simply interplay with no reference outside language? Here Vanhoozer draws three options: Interpretation can be absolute, anarchic, or adequate.

Absolute interpretation believes that one can obtain pure, objective knowledge of the text. There is an objective "standard by which to measure our truth claims and our interpretations" (136). Our own vantage points do not interfere with our knowing.

Against absolute interpretation, there is anarchic interpretation. This reacts against the authoritarian nature of absolute interpretation and affirms that everything is interpretation; interpretation is invented. This means that literary criticism becomes a form of "play." Everyone can play this game, but no one can "win." Words--signifiers--are always in interrelational activity, but never refer to something beyond themselves. Interpreters simply devise a new type of relation as the text's meaning. The skeptics, therefore, believe that interpretations are about power and clinging to socio-political power. This means that deconstruction aims to keep meaning destabilized in order to ward off the authoritarian nature of absolute interpretation.

But is there middle ground? Vanhoozer believes so and offers just a taste here. Adequate interpretation affirms that while interpreters may not--cannot--know everything about a text, they may know enough to understand and react to it appropriately. There is such thing as "responsible" interpretation. While meaning may be inexhaustible, Vanhoozer says this does not mean it is indeterminate (139). While God is Father is a metaphorical statement [I think Crusty Guy might want to critique that a bit!] and, as a result, has multiple correct uses, it cannot mean just anything.

So, Vanhoozer concludes: "Texts may be determinate enough to convey meaning without being specificifiable enough to overcome all ambiguity" (140). Literary knowledge is "both adequate and provisional." It is sufficient to being claimed as knowledge, but open to correction and supplementation.