"Is There a Meaning in this Text?", Chapter 7
Vanhoozer has (re)covered the author and the text and now sets out to deal with the reader. A quick summary: Vanhoozer is an hermeneutical realist and rationalist: he believes that texts have meaning that is knowable, being grounded in the communicative agency of the author. Texts are communicative acts that "with matter (propositional content) and energy (illocutionary force)...and direction (perlocutionary aim)" (367). So, what about the reader? "If there is a meaning in the text, is there a right (and a wrong) way to respond to it?" (368). Reading is not passive, whether one is reading for the text's point (illocutionary force) or for its perlocutionary effect (transformation). So, does a reader have an obligation to the text? Vanhoozer says yes, and, perhaps for just a time as this, focuses on the other of the text: "My thesis is that in reading we encounter an other that calls us to respond" (368). He takes the following steps in laying out this belief: First, what is the reader's relationship to the text? Second, is there a proper way to read a text, in light of the reader's inherent biases? Third, how does the reader's freedom relate to the text? By this Vanhoozer asks whether one can read for different purposes and with different methods and still "obey" texts. With all these moral questions, Vanhoozer asks what role the Holy Spirit plays in making ethical interpretation possible.
Readers can be users, critics, or followers. Users do just that: use the text. Texts have no right and can be manipulated and controlled by the reader to their own gain. Reading is purely pragmatic, completely amoral. Vanhoozer puts Richard Rorty in this category.
Critics stand in a privileged position of power against the text, evaluating and lining up reasons for dispensing with its claims from specific positions (feminist, womanist, etc.) (372). This is different from a reader who views a personal presence in the text, needing to be shepherded and obeyed. Both aim to be ethical in their reading--one by deconstruction and liberation from the text's claims, the other by taking the text seriously and justly and incorporating it into one's life. There are those, of course, who believe that ethical interpretation involves both reading and critiquing. Finally, as interpretation has grown, so has deconstruction; deconstruction is no longer simply about the text, but about undoing certain interpretations, as well.
Followers have a complex relationship with the text. As Ricoeur noted, reading is always a struggle with the text. This involves, first, a reception. The text must have its say; its allusions must be tracked down; its words used as the author would have defined them. Ricoeur also notes that readers must "expose themselves to the effects of the text" (375). How does the text impinge on the reader? Texts, by means of this exposure, allow the reader self-examination. This is the ultimate effect of a text. The text is like musical score that is followed, but with which one must break relationship should it become harmful. One keeps company with a text for a certain while. So, how does one decide whether or not to become friends with a text? Vanhoozer lists four virtues of interpretation: honesty--acknowledging one's biases; openness--willing to hear other ideas; attention--focusing on the text, not its pragmatic use; obedience--reading it, as best one can, as the author intended.
But is it possible for readers to be followers? Is Levinas right that reason and interpretation simply end in self-absorption? This has implications for translation, of course. Does the translator betray the text and deconstruct it as they engage in translation, or do they translate a (potentially) unethical aim, one that the author wished to encourage? Vanhoozer, going back to the communicate act, believes translation should match the impact the author wishes to have. This means that readers and authors enter into covenants of communication: mutual responsibilities and commitments. Vanhoozer suggests it is always valuable to respect others, even the immoral aims of immoral authors. We must respect the communicative agent's intention, as it is part of the communicative act.
With ethics in mind, then, Vanhoozer suggests that readers are both servants and lords of the text. They are servants in that the meaning that they acknowledge the matter of the text and subject themselves to its force. They read as the author intended. This is understanding the text. However, readers are also lords of the text. Readers judge a text's significance and morality. One is able to disagree with a text, perhaps from a privileged vantage point, but only after one has stood under it.
This dynamic relationship between a text and reader means that reader may actually find his/herself in the text. The text is then reading them. In this way Ricoeur says that a text could give a self, in ipse, to the ego, the idem. Reading, then, has all sorts of struggles--historical, moral, linguistic, cultural, etc. To be able to read in light of these struggles, Vanhoozer suggests is a spiritual exercise and perhaps fruit of the Spirit. The remainder of the chapter, which I will not explore, lays out this process for the Christian in community.
Readers can be users, critics, or followers. Users do just that: use the text. Texts have no right and can be manipulated and controlled by the reader to their own gain. Reading is purely pragmatic, completely amoral. Vanhoozer puts Richard Rorty in this category.
Critics stand in a privileged position of power against the text, evaluating and lining up reasons for dispensing with its claims from specific positions (feminist, womanist, etc.) (372). This is different from a reader who views a personal presence in the text, needing to be shepherded and obeyed. Both aim to be ethical in their reading--one by deconstruction and liberation from the text's claims, the other by taking the text seriously and justly and incorporating it into one's life. There are those, of course, who believe that ethical interpretation involves both reading and critiquing. Finally, as interpretation has grown, so has deconstruction; deconstruction is no longer simply about the text, but about undoing certain interpretations, as well.
Followers have a complex relationship with the text. As Ricoeur noted, reading is always a struggle with the text. This involves, first, a reception. The text must have its say; its allusions must be tracked down; its words used as the author would have defined them. Ricoeur also notes that readers must "expose themselves to the effects of the text" (375). How does the text impinge on the reader? Texts, by means of this exposure, allow the reader self-examination. This is the ultimate effect of a text. The text is like musical score that is followed, but with which one must break relationship should it become harmful. One keeps company with a text for a certain while. So, how does one decide whether or not to become friends with a text? Vanhoozer lists four virtues of interpretation: honesty--acknowledging one's biases; openness--willing to hear other ideas; attention--focusing on the text, not its pragmatic use; obedience--reading it, as best one can, as the author intended.
But is it possible for readers to be followers? Is Levinas right that reason and interpretation simply end in self-absorption? This has implications for translation, of course. Does the translator betray the text and deconstruct it as they engage in translation, or do they translate a (potentially) unethical aim, one that the author wished to encourage? Vanhoozer, going back to the communicate act, believes translation should match the impact the author wishes to have. This means that readers and authors enter into covenants of communication: mutual responsibilities and commitments. Vanhoozer suggests it is always valuable to respect others, even the immoral aims of immoral authors. We must respect the communicative agent's intention, as it is part of the communicative act.
With ethics in mind, then, Vanhoozer suggests that readers are both servants and lords of the text. They are servants in that the meaning that they acknowledge the matter of the text and subject themselves to its force. They read as the author intended. This is understanding the text. However, readers are also lords of the text. Readers judge a text's significance and morality. One is able to disagree with a text, perhaps from a privileged vantage point, but only after one has stood under it.
This dynamic relationship between a text and reader means that reader may actually find his/herself in the text. The text is then reading them. In this way Ricoeur says that a text could give a self, in ipse, to the ego, the idem. Reading, then, has all sorts of struggles--historical, moral, linguistic, cultural, etc. To be able to read in light of these struggles, Vanhoozer suggests is a spiritual exercise and perhaps fruit of the Spirit. The remainder of the chapter, which I will not explore, lays out this process for the Christian in community.
Labels: hermeneutics, Meaning in this Text, PhD, Vanhoozer
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