"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.
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.
Labels: hermeneutics, Meaning in this Text, PhD, Vanhoozer
posted by Aaron Perry at
11:44 AM
2 Comments:
AP--
Does Vanhoozer discuss analogical language at all? For example, I don't think that God is Father is metaphorical, but analogical. Thus, he is not a Father in the same way (i.e. identical) humans are fathers (and mothers) but our use of "father" about God is still true in some substantive, even literal, albeit analogically literal, sense. I take this to be Aquinas's understanding of analogy in the prima pars. I am using Gilson and Burrell's interpretation of Aquinas here who are two good scholars to follow.
Also, could you say more about why Vanhoozer thinks that Gadamer and Ricoeur fail? I tend to think their work is quite insightful and often true; they are both constructionist and realist.
Tim F.
Hey Tim,
I feel like I would not do justice to Vanhoozer to answer the question of analogy, simply because I can't remember and a quick look through the index doesn't mention it. He believes that language is a reliable vehicle to refer to something that is not language, so I expect that analogy would make its way in, but I just can't remember.
Vanhoozer thinks that Ricoeur's work for giving the text its own autonomy ultimately leads too much to reader-response. The reader ends up being the author again. He grounds his interpretation of texts in discerning the communicative intention of the author. The text is basically a speech-act with locutions (words), illocutionary force (the point of its writing; what the author was wanting to do), and perlocutionary effects (what happens as a result of reading the text). Because the text is so grounded, you can see that a text that is free-floating, or autonomous, is too much distanced from the author.
He opposes Gadamer because there is still a fusing of horizons between text and reader. This is obviously better than deconstruction for Vanhoozer, but he still wants there to be better or worse interpretations, something that he thinks a fusion does away with.
I think Vanhoozer would do well to be more careful with what he means by "text." He means it as a literal text--an author's writing--almost always. This is not, however, what others (Derrida) mean by it.
I think that Vanhoozer has a point with written texts, although I also like Ricoeur here. I think Ricoeur's thought is more accurate when speaking of texts as events or other non-written texts.
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