Meaning, Understanding, and the Politics of Interpretation
ABSTRACT: In his essay "The Politics of Interpretation: Spinoza's Modernist Turn," Berel Lang attributes to Spinoza the view that interpretation presupposes or implies a political framework-in effect, that interpretation is itself a politics. The thrust of Spinoza's argument is against "interpretation from authority," i.e., against the view that the meaning of a text can be determined by an external authority. Understanding cannot be coerced, according to Spinoza. In my paper I attempt to make the relationship between reader and text even more direct and "free" than it is in Spinoza. I argue that any approach (such as Derrida's) which posits an interpretation between reader and text places constraints on the notion of a democracy of free readers. I argue that in a truly literate democracy readers have the right to claim that they have understood or grasped their texts without having any kind of intermediary placed between themselves and their texts, regardless of whether this intermediary takes the form of an external authority (in Spinoza's sense) or an interpretation (in Derrida's sense). In the course of the paper I draw upon Michael Dummett's philosophy of language in order to critique the "humpty-dymptyism" of the interpretationist school. I place myself firmly on the side of Alice in Through the Looking Glass, and spend some time discussing the significance of the difficulties which she experiences with the nonsense poem, "Jabberwocky."
Most philosophers of language who have referred to the confrontation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Chapter Six of Lewis Carroll's book, Through the Looking-Glass, have used that famous scenario to illustrate certain cont...
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... the meaning of the text.
I began by saying that while Alice is right about something, she is also wrong about something. I want to conclude by suggesting that while Humpty Dumpty is wrong about nearly everything, he is right about one thing. 'The question is,' said Humpty, 'which is is to be master - that's all'. If our politics of interpretation is democratic, then the reader is to be master of the text in the sense of having full and direct access to its meaning, free from the constraints imposed practically by external authorities or theoretically by cognitive pluralists.
Bibliography
Carroll, Lewis (1929) Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, London: Macmillan.
Lang, Berel (1990) The Anatomy of Philosophical Style, Oxford: Blackwell.
Spinoza, Benedict de (1951) A Theologico-Political Treatise, trans. R.H.M. Elwes, Dover: New York.
Such charges have received insufficient response from deconstruction's top theorists who, though they define and redefine the basic tenets of their approach, fail to justify such an approach in the world. They have explained their purpose, but not their motivation. With this desperate need in mind, then, embarking on any new piece of deconstruction poses a twofold demand: to not only seek to unfold new facets of a text (or texts) through a deconstructive lens, but to aim that lens outside of literature and show its implications in society, away from any ivory tower.
One of the key characteristics of Carroll's story is his use of language. Consequently, much of the nonsense in Alice has to do with transpositions, either of mathematical scale or in the scrambled verse parodies. As an illustration of mathematical scale transposit...
Deep-seated in these practices is added universal investigative and enquiring of acquainted conflicts between philosophy and the art of speaking and/or effective writing. Most often we see the figurative and rhetorical elements of a text as purely complementary and marginal to the basic reasoning of its debate, closer exploration often exposes that metaphor and rhetoric play an important role in the readers understanding of a piece of literary art. Usually the figural and metaphorical foundations strongly back or it can destabilize the reasoning of the texts. Deconstruction however does not indicate that all works are meaningless, but rather that they are spilling over with numerous and sometimes contradictory meanings. Derrida, having his roots in philosophy brings up the question, “what is the meaning of the meaning?”
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford, 2011. Print.
reader creates “supplementary meaning” to the text by unconsciously setting up tension, also called binary opposition. Culler describes this process in his statement “The process of thematic interpretation requires us to move from facts towards values, so we can develop each thematic complex, retaining the opposition between them” (294). Though supplementary meaning created within the text can take many forms, within V...
"Any critical reading of a text will be strengthened by a knowledge of how a text is valued by readers in differing contexts."
The “hermeneutic activity –the practice of close reading” (373) is what Love evaluates next. The practice of close reading became the framework of hermeneutics in the early 20th century and has been the foundation of text evaluation since then, no matter what different literary approaches and cultural changes were present, since “the richness of texts continues to serve as a carrier for an allegedly superannuated humanism”(373). Her own assertion regarding the interpretation of texts can be interpreted in sev...
The notion of the author has often been disputed when it comes to critical literary studies. The argument centers around one basic question: Should the author be considered when looking at a text? There are numerous reasons given as to why the author is important or why the ...
North Korea is very mysterious and isolated from the rest of the world. Very little is known about what actually happens in the state. This isolation began in 1945 when Kim Il-Sung came to power of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (also known as North Korea). He started a reign of rule that was based on self-reliance. It began the Kim dynasty, a period of extreme authoritarian rule. Although it is called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, citizens have very little rights and no choice in their leader. Ironically, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea comes in last of 167 countries in the democracy index. (“Liberty and Justice for Some”) Under the rule of Kim Il-Sung, Korea entered the Korea War, which strained relations with other countries. North Korea then grew more into isolationism and more into poverty. Under the rule of Kim Jong-Il, North Korea became very involved in nuclear weapons that resulted in strained relations with the United Nations and its member states. When Kim Jong-Un came into power, the citizens have suffered from lack of rights and crimes against humanity. The Kim dynasty has harmed North Korea’s citizens and its chances of becoming a world power.
It can be argued that North Korea has been a totalitarian state since the formations of the Democratic People’s republic of North Korea on September 9th 1948. In 1949 Kim-il sung became the chairman of the workers party of Korea. Throughout 1949 Kim-il sung’s power began growing rapidly, as he created totalitarian rule in North Korea and eliminated any other parties that stood in his way. Kim-il sung became the Prime Minister of North Korea from 1948-1972. In 1972 he became president and ruled as such until 1994. Finally, he was made the Eternal president of North Korea for eternity. Kim-il sung ruled as a cruel totalitarian leader using fear as a tactic to force other to believe in the false accusations he was saying. An example of this was that he said the diseases that were spreading across North Korea were intentionally caused by the United States. When people didn’t believe him he created a large purge to force people to accept his remarks. Kim-il sung also used prison camps to get rid of anyone who opposed him. When Kim-il sung died his son Kim-Jong il too up power of North Korea in 1994. ...
Lewis, Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. New York: Oxford, 2009. Print.
Finally we can say that the discussion in the class and the differences in the interpretations showed us clearly the differences between the perceptions of the readers on the same work. In the lights of the reader-oriented theories one can claim that there is no single truth or meaning derived from the text, the responses will change as the readers change.
The characters in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are more than whimsical ideas brought to life by Lewis Carroll. These characters, ranging from silly to rude, portray the adults in Alice Liddell’s life. The parental figures in Alice’s reality portrayed in Alice in Wonderland are viewed as unintellectual figures through their behaviors and their interactions with one another.
When we interpret a text, we bring our own hopes, fears, joys and beliefs to the forefront, despite our claims of intellectual objectivity, and what is at stake is not just an evaluation of the work itself, but often an evaluation of our political, social, psychological and emotional identities. What we see or read into a text can become a kind of experiment, a literary depiction of the way we see, or would like to see, and interpret ourselves and our world. Often, in the course of interpreting, we feel compelled to name and label both writer and text in order to talk about them in ways that make sense to us, and in order to pinpoint them in relation to ourselves. When we label anything, we attempt to control or own it; we assign values or a set of rules to that person or object. What is lost in that process...
Richard Morton, (December, 1960). "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass". Elementary English. 37 (8), pp.509-513