Focusing my jumbled thoughts

Such a jumble of thoughts today. I can't seem to corral them.

It was helpful to read something challenging while in the waiting room at the repair shop today waiting for news on my car's engine light issue. (Money. Bleh.)

The something challenging was this hermeneutics text. The author this time is discussing the locus of meaning - is it in the author, the reader, or the raw text? She quoted a line about the "reader model" that I liked:

"Readers may control texts, but that does not lead to anarchy, because interpretive communities control readers." --- Robert Fowler

Hm. Interesting notion. It's fairly easy to see how that would work in the church. Not quite as easy in a secular setting. I suppose a book club or discussion group would work similarly. The fringe interpretation gets mocked or repudiated or censured or marginalized. Especially if the group is cranky. ;)

The church sure seems to be that way on interpretive issues; it generally doesn't handle dissent well. Tends to brand people as heretics. Burns them at the stake now and then.

She goes on to use a little metaphor I thought was helpful:

"The search for authorial intention as defined in the nineteenth century might be compared to approaching the text as a window. The text was understood as a means to understanding the world of the author (history) and the mind of the author (personality or psychology). Textual autonomy, however, understands the text to be a picture, a work of art to be studied and appreciated in its own right, rather than for what it can reveal about the situation or intention of the author. Finally, a singular focus on the reader's role has been likened to the text as mirror. In the end, the interpreter does not see a pristine text, but the reader's own reflection in relation to the text."

Hm. I get that analogy. It's good.

But it's wrong. :)

I think instead it's a YouTube video clip. :P

You've seen them. Somebody captures an interaction between two people (usually funny or violent or sad) and puts it on the web for people to see.

I think it's like that. When we look at a text, we observe a "communication event" between the original author and the addressee (original intended reader.) All else is our reaction to what we see in that clip. We may have a visceral reaction or a thoughtful reaction or no reaction.

We may also have something we take away from the viewing. We may learn something. We may be able to apply something to our own situation or life. Or not. That is in our control.

And, in keeping with her notion of "reading communities" above, we may be told by our particular community (or its leader), what our take-aways *ought* to be. Some seminar leaders do that; I hate it. Don't tell me what my takeaways are. Those are YOUR takeaways, not mine, big shot. I'll think for myself, thanks. But sometimes I need to hear it anyway, so that I don't miss something crucial or go off randomly like a loose cannon.

And, speaking of a "communication event" (a term I think I just coined!), I have this notion that I will trot out with the professor Thursday night, and see if it's original and worth writing a paper on, or if I will see it explored later in the class.

To me, the "original communication event" is something that occurred in history, and is bounded in history by the time span that runs from original composition, to the reading of it by the addressee(s). In this original event, meaning is shaped by author and reader through the speech-act model discussed in a prior post. You remember... locution, illocution, perlocution, electrocution... :P

Anything else is a follow-on communication event, in which meaning is necessarily shaped by the new reader, since the new reader is an observer of the original event, and controls the degree and method of their engagement with it.

In Biblical Hermeneutics we must overlay this idea with the uniquely biblical notion of inspiration. If the author was inspired by an infinite, personal God who transcends time and culture, then we have another dynamic at work with a longer horizon and broader scope than the original communication event.

Now, meaning, in the inspired text, written by the inspired author, can echo through time and space to each and every new reader (whose reading may also be inspired in the present), regardless of their cultural and historical context.

And the game is on. :) We'll see what the prof says.

In the meantime, I am the prof tonight. Last class of Math 151 before the final. Buckle up, students! It may be a bumpy ride.