Postmodern Hermeneutics

[Jaltus]

Postmodernism is often painted as the movement to do away with absolute truth. While that is in some sense true, it is also a rather biased and narrow view of the movement.

Postmodernism is most concerned with dealing in narratives instead of metanarratives. There is no such thing as an overarching theme to all of life. Instead true meaning can only be found in individualized occurrences. In reading, what matters is not authorial intent, nor the text itself, but the event that occurs when one reads the text. Thus the reader is the true author, since meaning is found only in interpretation, not in writing.

If meaning can be found only through interpretation, and a text can be read against the intention of the author, then does the text itself really matter?

You see, if the text cannot even be a bound on meaning (such as Derrida argues), then why have a text at all? It seems to me that the event is in the mind of the reader and has no need of the text, so the reader becomes a thinker and the text is powerless to do anything.

In other words, Postmodern hermeneutics do not just place most of the power on the reader, it destroys reading for the text is no longer needed. Postmodernity, instead of being a way to realte to others in a limited sphere becomes the final acknowledgement that you can relate fully only to yourself.

Think of how language games became the major principle of deconstructionism. The idea here is that each part of language, instead of having a true correspondance with one object, is instead a referrent to what it is not. Thus, blue is defined not as blue, but as not red, not green, not yellow, etc. A thing has no meaning unless it is in an opposing relation to something else. Thus, definitions are constrained to the negative, a thing is composed only of that which others are not. A thing exists not in itself, but only in negative relation to others.

Thus, each part of language is a referrant, and so language never gets to the signified, it deals only with signifiers. Blue does not mean blue, it means not other colors. Thus, language is always a step removed from actuality.

If language is always a step removed from actuality, then communication is always a step removed from actuality for all of communication deals with language, even if it is nonverbal.

What this does is, instead of freeing the individual from large scale meaning, it reduces the individual to only personal meaning, for how can one truly relate to others, truly know them, if one is always at least one step removed from actuality?

You see my problem now? Postmodernism does not promote cultural interaction, it promotes personal culture such that no true communication can take place since the actual cannot be realized outside of one's own self. There can never be true connection between people.

This means that postmodern thought is essentially a new way to enforce a strict individualism that acknowledges that there can never be a connection between two different people. Not only do different cultures become the other (done by superceding metanarrative with narrative), but now each individual is stranded alone since all people become others.

Postmodern thought lends itself toward personal isolation and radical disenfranchisment of the community.

This relates to hermeneutics for it is through the language games that one becomes truly isolated.

Perhaps I am wrong and there is a way out of this, but I cannot help but see this movement as one, not about community, but about personal selfishness. All people become others and the individual is stranded in isolation, all because language has no external referrant, it just refers to more language.

[dublczek]

:thumb:

Martin Buber's I and Thou.

:smile:

Nice to meet you too.

[themuzicman]

Jaltus,

Just as with the rest of the postmodern movement, the root is found in man's desire to justify himself, his desires, his actions, and ultimately his sins by redefining the world around himself to create a world where he is good enough in his own eyes, and where his sins are rationalized away, and the evils around him are sufficiently condemned, and anyone who challenges his little world is a bad person.

Thus, social morality becomes this ever shrinking overlap of individual postmodern definitions of right and wrong, and in the case of hermeneutics, "scripture" becomes an ever shrinking overlap of individual postmodern interpretations.

And, as such, you're right. The text will become more and more useless.

Michael

[TheFiveSolas]

Jaltus:
If language is always a step removed from actuality, then communication is always a step removed from actuality for all of communication deals with language, even if it is nonverbal.

What this does is, instead of freeing the individual from large scale meaning, it reduces the individual to only personal meaning, for how can one truly relate to others, truly know them, if one is always at least one step removed from actuality?

You see my problem now? Postmodernism does not promote cultural interaction, it promotes personal culture such that no true communication can take place since the actual cannot be realized outside of one's own self. There can never be true connection between people...

...This relates to hermeneutics for it is through the language games that one becomes truly isolated...

...All people become others and the individual is stranded in isolation, all because language has no external referrant...

And this is the most devastating critique of the postmodern view. It reduces itself to absurdity since its adherents use LANGUAGE in order to COMMUNICATE to others the idea that LANGUAGE is utterly subjective/isolated. In other words, they use language, which they claim has no external (objective) referent, as a means of getting across a point that they consider to be OBJECTIVELY true.

If that is not self-refuting I don't know what is.

[Bib Lit Major]

OF course, we could always take the postmodern critics' articles and books and read them and conclude that the only way one can make meaning out of what they wrote is what happens when a person reads and experiences their texts.

I sincerely doubt that postmoderns would greatly appreciate or find legitimate, an interpretation of their text by a reader who says that the true meaning of what the postmoderns wrote is that true meaning is found in what a biblical author intended to convey and not what the reader experiences from the text.

[quetzalphoenix]

Yesterday @ 06:26 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=108983#post108983)
Jaltus:

Think of how language games became the major principle of deconstructionism. The idea here is that each part of language, instead of having a true correspondance with one object, is instead a referrent to what it is not. Thus, blue is defined not as blue, but as not red, not green, not yellow, etc. A thing has no meaning unless it is in an opposing relation to something else. Thus, definitions are constrained to the negative, a thing is composed only of that which others are not. A thing exists not in itself, but only in negative relation to others.

Thus, each part of language is a referrant, and so language never gets to the signified, it deals only with signifiers. Blue does not mean blue, it means not other colors. Thus, language is always a step removed from actuality.

If language is always a step removed from actuality, then communication is always a step removed from actuality for all of communication deals with language, even if it is nonverbal.



What would your alternative understanding of language be? Or would you agree in this picture of language and disagree in application?

Personally, I think die-hard postmoderns know the critique that they are self-refuting and isolationist...and don't care, and are happy to "play" the game of interpretation, because with meaning out the window, it is absurd regardless (unless, of course, you belong to a hegemonic, totalizing interpretive community such as Christianity...then you're dangerous).

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

Deconstruction as constructed by Derrida, springs from the phenomenological tradition via Heidegger, whose ideas extended beyond language. His project involved the deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence. The problem Derrida raised is not only that we cannot use language because meanings are always diffused and never fully present, but that we ourselves are composed of language; our very "selves" are taken to be no more than provisional constructions. The knowing subject is thereby called into question and the entire western philosophical tradition is taken to rest upon a fiction.

Postmodernism is relativism. And deconstruction merely accentuates the ambiguities inherent in human language, taking the anomaly for the meat of the matter. Logic, on the other hand, attempts to minimize ambiguity so as to bring clarity. Both Heidegger and Derrida display mystical qualities that have been aptly compared with, interestingly enough, apophatic mysticism, as in Pseudo Dionysius. One can intentionally flout ambiguity or one can minimize it so as to suit one's purposes. One must ask what the purposes are.

As usual, Christian theologians and biblical scholars find themselves at the hind-end of these intellectual currents. They arose in philosophy, then wended their way to literary theory and art criticism, and, at long last, to---the theologians and biblical scholars....

[Socrates]

Today @ 04:05 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=109037#post109037)
TheFiveSolas:

And this is the most devastating critique of the postmodern view. It reduces itself to absurdity since its adherents use LANGUAGE in order to COMMUNICATE to others the idea that LANGUAGE is utterly subjective/isolated. In other words, they use language, which they claim has no external (objective) referent, as a means of getting across a point that they consider to be OBJECTIVELY true.

If that is not self-refuting I don't know what is.

This has to be the death knell of postmodernism. Even in application, post-modernists are inconsistent. E.g. many of them are university lecturers, and maybe under contracts for a salary of, say, $100 k (I have no idea about American universities). Suppose the university finance officer told them, "According to you, the meaning of a document is up to the reader. Well then, to me, this means that the university doesn't have to pay you your last month's work. And since this is the contract's meaning to me, you have to do without." Wouldn't the postmodernist squeal about what the contract really means!

A big hoot exposing postmodernist pretentiousness was when NYU Physics Professor Alan Sokal submitted a totally meaningless paper to a postmodernist journal, and it was published! See www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/

And finally, if you want to write a postmodern essay, there's a site that will randomly generated one for you! www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/

[Pilgrim]

The text is still essential because in the post modern view one still has to have something to interpret.

But what I am wondering about is how this plays into modern psychology. They say that the fundamental cause of psychosis is that individuals mis-interpret the actions of those around them.

Jaltus point's out that our very selves are in essence, language. So perhaps the sudden burst of psychiatric and psychological problems in the 2nd half of the 20th century have to do with an un-reasoned acceptance of a post-modern hermenutics which is applied not only academically, in the sense of books and writing, but to our interactions one with another.

[Vorkosigan]

Soc....Sokal's paper was a media-inflated piece of crap that didn't do what it set out to do. Sadly, he didn't do the research, and failed to deal with the crowd he needed to deal with. At several meetings in upstate NY where I saw him speak and elsewhere many of us tried to convince him that he needed to actually do the work -- you can't write a parody of S&T studies (which his wasn't anyway, he got the target wrong) and then say that you've refuted something, nor does putting it in an obscure and non peer-reviewed journal do that -- but old Sokal knew better. That's why he faded from the scene, impotent, intemperate and confused, like a little boy who has gotten attention by shouting obscenities, and the really important work was done by Gross and Leavitt and others, which I am sure you have read.

But for those of you who want the real geld, and not media puffery, the book you want is Higher Superstition, a gem among gems. An absolute rip on postmodern scholarship and science studies.

The best book on postmodernism I know is David Harvey's the Condition of Postmodernity which is often used as a text in courses on it. It contains definitions, discussions, lists, imagery and other great stuff for understanding this misguided but important sociocultural movement.

Vorkosigan

[Pilgrim]

How come people always want to read books "about" something rather than the books "of" something.

I mean why not just read Derida? Or Heidegger? Go straight to the horses mouth for once.

It's like really conservative Christians mouthing off about Barth because they read a book about Barth. If they actually read Barth they might get a whole different understanding.

Same with postmodernism.

Of course a previous poster was correct in saying that we are a little late for this band wagon. The rest of the world was dealing with post modernism a long time ago and we are just now getting on the band wagon.

[Jaltus]

I personally believe that language is other referrential. If I say blue, I mean blue, I am making a positive statement, not a negative one.

I think Derrida and thus Postmodernity's concept of language being one step removed is based on the concept of critical skepticism. If I say me, I not only mean not you, I actually do mean me. Definition is not only keeping something seperated, it is also saying what it is. A completely negative definition gives but an outline, a positive definition fills the outline in.

I think language refers to something outside itself, and thus I think that people can talk about things instead of talking only about language. Communication is not a word game, it is a conceptual game, and those concepts relate to real things.

Per,

I do have to say one thing, though, and that is the Postmodern movement is based more strongly on Wittgenstein than on Heidegger (and why can't they just be Jones and Smith? Good grief, I cannot spell their names!). Witt, IIRC, coined the term "language games."


When all is said and done, I tend to agree with some current scholars that postmodernity is just going to be seen as an undercurrent and brief response to modernity. The truth is that modernity will always hold on because science cannot exist without it, or at least is not practicible without it as a foundation. Yes, foundationalism is not only valid, it is a prerequisit for science as a discipline. If you do not have a founjdation of rationalism, science is no longer practicible.

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

Hey Jaltus,
I'd say that postmodernism is quite a bit bigger than either Wittgenstein or Heidegger, but Derrida's deconstruction, as a specific project, was largely lifted from Heideggerian phenomenology and enhanced, despite its affinity with the latter W. In philosophy, one can speak of a general bifurcation between continental thought, which was influenced heavily by Husserl's phenomenology, and the Anglo-American tradition. Both sides, however, have come under Wittgenstein's spell....

[Socrates]

Today @ 01:51 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=109956#post109956)
Vorkosigan:

Soc....Sokal's paper was a media-inflated piece of crap

Piece of crap, yes—that was the whole point!!

that didn't do what it set out to do.

It did—it was published, although it was crap as you say, showing up the pretentious of postmodernist academia.

None other than Dawkins, whom I thought was one of your heroes, had great praise for what Sokal did.

But for those of you who want the real geld, and not media puffery, the book you want is Higher Superstition, a gem among gems. An absolute rip on postmodern scholarship and science studies.

Hokay, you've got me interested—what more can you tell us?

The best book on postmodernism I know is David Harvey's the Condition of Postmodernity which is often used as a text in courses on it. It contains definitions, discussions, lists, imagery and other great stuff for understanding this misguided but important sociocultural movement.

Is this pro-postmodern, but presenting the case well? Looks like we agree that it's misguided anyway :thumb:

[Vorkosigan]

It did—it was published, although it was crap as you say, showing up the pretentious of postmodernist academia.

It was published in an obscure journal, whole, and only because Sokal insisted on it. They thought he was some kind of nut.

None other than Dawkins, whom I thought was one of your heroes, had great praise for what Sokal did.

I do not slavishly follow what others I admire do and I doubt you do either. I deeply admire Joseph Needham and Dorothy Day but I am not a Communist or a Catholic. In any case, when have I ever expressed an admiration for Dawkins?

Hokay, you've got me interested—what more can you tell us?

The authors are working scientists who show that the postmodern critiques of science are wrong on the facts, wrong on the understanding, and wrong on interpretations. Devastating. The difference between them and Sokal is that they went out and read the primary texts and interact with them, rather than writing a parody and then declare the whole thing is a farce. The prose of Higher Superstition is clear and strong:

"The attempts to read scientific knowledge as the mere transcription of Western male capitalist social perspectives, or as the deformed handicraft of the prisonhouse of language, are hopelessly naive and reductionistic. They take no account of the specific logic of the sciences and they are far too coarse to deal with the conceptual texture of any category of important scientific thought." (p.40)

"feminist science-critics... are governed by the impulse to take language very seriously, even when it is clearly metaphorical or simply whimsical... The tendency to construe colloquialisms as tokens of deep epistemological error has been a ceaseless element of feminist criticism, and one of the most fatuous." (p.123)

They also hit on the racism of post-modernism. Discussing Afro-centrism, they write

"Somehow, the condescending belief has taken hold that black children can persuaded to take an interest in science only if they are fed an educational diet of fairy tales." (p.208)

and end with:

"The central ambition of the cultural constructivist program - to explain the deepest and most enduring insights of science as a corollary of social assumptions and ideological agenda - is futile and perverse. The chances are excellent, howerever, that one can account for the intellectual phenomenon of cultural constructivism itself in precisely such terms." (p.69)

Is this pro-postmodern, but presenting the case well? Looks like we agree that it's misguided anyway :thumb:

I wouldn't call it "pro" but it gives a sympathetic account of the whole phenomenon from many different angles. In response to the post above, it shows why you should read a book about something as well as a book of something. Reading Derrida would be nice, but you wouldn't get a picture of post-modernism in art or other fields. A good survey work accomplishes what reading the basic literature cannot.

Vorkosigan

[Bib Lit Major]

Jaltus: :thumb:

How could we define a bird by what it isn't (able to do)?

It isn't a fish
It isn't a mammal
It doesn't always swim, though it occasionally does
In most species, it doesn't dig holes in the ground
It isn't able to live on Mars at the time of this publication
It can't write out the formula for Einstein's theory of Relativity

Etc.

How much easier it is to define it as a type of animal that, in most cases, flies; in most cases, it has feathers; it has wings; it has a beck or a bill for a mouth!

[Socrates]

Today @ 08:18 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=110364#post110364)
Vorkosigan, replying to:

Socrates:Hokay, you've got me interested&;#8212;what more can you tell us?

The authors are working scientists who show that the postmodern critiques of science are wrong on the facts, wrong on the understanding, and wrong on interpretations. Devastating. The difference between them and Sokal is that they went out and read the primary texts and interact with them, rather than writing a parody and then declare the whole thing is a farce. The prose of Higher Superstition is clear and strong:Yep, that's the sort of thing I was after, and I see your point that there are better ways to critique PM. :thumb:

[quetzalphoenix]

I've been reading Kevin Vanhoozer's "Is There a Meaning in This Text?" for an upcoming class in hermeneutics. It's a helpful review of major po-mo strands and (IMHO) a good proactive Christian response.

I don't know if I'd entirely blame Wittgenstein for po-mo criticism, because I think he can be read in a way to salvage realism and language's contact with reality. The problem may be that he leaves room for relativism, for forms of life and language-games being the rock-bottom of our foundations. I like Thiselton's appropriation of Wittgenstin (and J.L. Austin and Searle's speech-act theory), which I think helpful in correcting some assumptions about the way the biblical text works which lean too heavily on the Enlightement.

Course, I'm just beginning my search for how meaning works... a recovering English major discovering there is life outside of the text...

[Jacob]

05-27-2003 @ 05:26 PM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=108983#post108983)
Jaltus:

Postmodernism is often painted as the movement to do away with absolute truth. While that is in some sense true, it is also a rather biased and narrow view of the movement.


...


Perhaps I am wrong and there is a way out of this, but I cannot help but see this movement as one, not about community, but about personal selfishness. All people become others and the individual is stranded in isolation, all because language has no external referrant, it just refers to more language.

First, excellent synthesis.

Even so, I disagree slightly on your conclusion. Yes, it is about personal self-centeredness, but I think there is desire for community within postmodernism. That they can divorce their interpretaion from the author's intent does not mean that they don't buy into the interpretation of some community. They are skeptical of actually finding truth, but they want to find others who share their opinion/interpretation.

If someone is truly postmodern, I view them as very much like someone who would be "pre-modern". They're somewhat tribal --following their "community", not because it is the best, or right, but simply because it's their community. They also don't care what your microscope (or technology or logic) indicates about their viewpoints and practices. But they may still be interested in investigation of practical issues. "Don't give me your theories, just show that it work".

In some ways, I think postmodernism is doing the church a great favor. We don't trust the conclusions of modernity either. With the postmodern person, we don't have to argue about questioning the viewpoint of the technology "experts". I think there are themes within postmodernism that can help the church to win people to Christ.

By the way, it is postmodern hermeneutics which has been infesting the courts in the US for several decades. While this has helped to elevate the voice of those minorities who have been mistreated, it also leads to absurd findings on many "Constitutional" issues.


Jacob

[John D. Brey]

Hi Jaltus,





Jaltus>Postmodernism is often painted as the movement to do away with absolute truth. While that is in some sense true, it is also a rather biased and narrow view of the movement.<

I would say that Postmodernism attempts (and rightly so) to do away with the idea that "truth" has “presence” . . . presence for instance, in text.

Jaltus>In reading, what matters is not authorial intent, nor the text itself, but the event that occurs when one reads the text. Thus the reader is the true author, since meaning is found only in interpretation, not in writing.<

The reader is not “the true author” --- true --- but his “engagement” (even in the matrimonial sense) with the text authors a new text, i.e., the interpretation that is the consummation of his engagement with the text. ---- It’s impossible to read a text without creating new text: the interpretation of the original text.

Jaltus>If meaning can be found only through interpretation, and a text can be read against the intention of the author, then does the text itself really matter?<

Obviously text matters! --- It’s just that “text” is the daughter of a thought. As such, all words must be engaged and impregnated with the epistemological content of whoever chooses to court the words of any text. ---- This is the necessary erotic that makes Derrida’s take on text work.

Jaltus>You see, if the text cannot even be a bound on meaning (such as Derrida argues), then why have a text at all? It seems to me that the event is in the mind of the reader and has no need of the text, so the reader becomes a thinker and the text is powerless to do anything.<

This is where the erotic of any viable hermeneutic comes into play. The reader indeed possesses an epistemological context that will have its way with the text (it’s topside of the missionary position), but the fusion of reader context, and writer text, can only lead to new text, offspring! --- The writer contributes 23 chromosomes, and the reader contributes 23 chromosomes, and the offspring is the new text (generally called “interpretation”) that is born of the sexual fusion of writer and reader.

No man is so uncaring for his daughters that he will not be willing to change something of himself for their benefit. In this way, the sexual dynamic is established that causes “truth” to evolve through dialogue. ---- But it (truth) can never stop evolving, else it dies to its truthfulness. It must keep moving forward in dialogue else it finds itself caught between crosscurrents . . . as it once found itself caught between wooden cross-members!

Jaltus>In other words, Postmodern hermeneutics do not just place most of the power on the reader, it destroys reading for the text is no longer needed. Postmodernity, instead of being a way to realte to others in a limited sphere becomes the final acknowledgement that you can relate fully only to yourself.<

Wrong. ---- Postmodern thought rightly acknowledges two concepts so profound and so unquestionably true that only where the veil remains intact in the mind can a person remain oblivious to something so obvious!


---- 1). Once a writer puts text on page he looses control over the offspring of the text. His daughters (the immanence of his thoughts: his words) are free to be engaged by whomever chooses to engage them. And – even if the father of the words should engage his own daughters (a form of incest that is not immoral) the offspring of that engagement will not produce clones of his original daughter. --- In other words, a writer (and we should all know this from experience) never produces the same thought by reading even his own writing. There are always three persons engaged in dialogue: the writer, the reader, and the truth evolving in the dialogue. Ergo, all dialogue evolves. The idea that text can make thought static is absurd and pathological!

---- 2). Since point one is true, no interpretation of a text can be considered to be literally true. “Truth,” is not in interpretation, or text . . . it is the life that moves through dialogue. --- This point is so obviously the case, that the fact of the matter, that almost no one understands something so obviously true, lends immeasurable weight to the idea of original sin, and the wretchedness of fallen mankind!


The binary nature of the world is beyond dispute! --- And again, it’s only the wretchedness of man that disallows us to move on from that so obvious point to some point beyond the oblivious nature of most human dialogue!

Jaltus>Think of how language games became the major principle of deconstructionism. The idea here is that each part of language, instead of having a true correspondance with one object, is instead a referrent to what it is not. Thus, blue is defined not as blue, but as not red, not green, not yellow, etc. A thing has no meaning unless it is in an opposing relation to something else. Thus, definitions are constrained to the negative, a thing is composed only of that which others are not. A thing exists not in itself, but only in negative relation to others.<

If I were to ask the “average” thinker to engage in a thought experiment: You have an absolute state in which there are only two variables, white, and black. Remove the white and what do you have? --- To a man the answer is black. ---- But since white and black can only gain their sense of “being” through opposition, to remove one of the two leaves nothing! You need at least “two” things to have “being-ness” or existence.

Jaltus<Thus, each part of language is a referrant, and so language never gets to the signified, it deals only with signifiers. Blue does not mean blue, it means not other colors. Thus, language is always a step removed from actuality.<

Barth’s negative dialectic in a nutshell!


Jaltus>If language is always a step removed from actuality, then communication is always a step removed from actuality for all of communication deals with language, even if it is nonverbal.<


Yes. We are trapped in the Fallen world; a world based on a sacramental protocol that demands us to deconstruct, or destroy, in order to keep life evolving toward a teleological parosia: “By dissolving us, He establishes us; by killing us, He gives us life” (Barth).


Jaltus>What this does is, instead of freeing the individual from large scale meaning, it reduces the individual to only personal meaning, for how can one truly relate to others,<

---- Only through the diffusive fusion that we call sexuality! --- Two gene machines attempt to fuse: and now there are three instead of One. ---- Two language machines attempt to fuse word and thought: now there is a new text: the interpretation that resulted from the sexual fusion of the two!

Jaltus>You see my problem now? Postmodernism does not promote cultural interaction, it promotes personal culture such that no true communication can take place since the actual cannot be realized outside of one's own self. There can never be true connection between people.<

Diffusive fusion. My desire for a woman is so intense that I try to put myself into her and take her into myself. I want to fuse with her. But out pops a product of my desire that looks nothing like either of us; genes going back generations, dormant till now, make themselves felt!

His desire for fusion with the Word of God was so intense that Luther tried to put himself into the Word and take the Word into himself. Out popped a product of his desire that looked nothing like him, or the Word as it had been presented to him. Concepts generated by Paul, dormant in the text, were born again in Luther.

Jaltus>This means that postmodern thought is essentially a new way to enforce a strict individualism that acknowledges that there can never be a connection between two different people.<

---- Not unless the “two different people” get naked. And there is the rub . . . the sacerdotal exegete is a priestly pervert who locks the word up in a lexicographical chastity belt while he engages in homoerotic hermeneutics!

We must learn to have legitimate sexual encounters with text. Until then we do nothing but fondle text in order to stimulate onanistic hermeneutical tendencies!

Jaltus>Perhaps I am wrong and there is a way out of this, but I cannot help but see this movement as one, not about community, but about personal selfishness. All people become others and the individual is stranded in isolation, all because language has no external referrant, it just refers to more language.<

Adam can’t seem to get the human race back between his legs. --- It’s too late for that. Inflation is the norm in a fallen world. ---- And as Derrida rightly points out, silence is often the loudest modality of speech!

You can have legitimate intercourse with words (and monogamy in issue of words and text is an abomination according to the word of God), or else we can practice a priestly celibacy, i.e., we can veil our homosexual hermeneutical tendencies in religious garb!







John Brey

[shunyadragon]

Postmodernism is often painted as the movement to do away with absolute truth. While that is in some sense true, it is also a rather biased and narrow view of the movement.

Postmodernism is most concerned with dealing in narratives instead of metanarratives. There is no such thing as an overarching theme to all of life. Instead true meaning can only be found in individualized occurrences. In reading, what matters is not authorial intent, nor the text itself, but the event that occurs when one reads the text. Thus the reader is the true author, since meaning is found only in interpretation, not in writing.

If meaning can be found only through interpretation, and a text can be read against the intention of the author, then does the text itself really matter?

You see, if the text cannot even be a bound on meaning (such as Derrida argues), then why have a text at all? It seems to me that the event is in the mind of the reader and has no need of the text, so the reader becomes a thinker and the text is powerless to do anything.

In other words, Postmodern hermeneutics do not just place most of the power on the reader, it destroys reading for the text is no longer needed. Postmodernity, instead of being a way to realte to others in a limited sphere becomes the final acknowledgement that you can relate fully only to yourself.

Think of how language games became the major principle of deconstructionism. The idea here is that each part of language, instead of having a true correspondance with one object, is instead a referrent to what it is not. Thus, blue is defined not as blue, but as not red, not green, not yellow, etc. A thing has no meaning unless it is in an opposing relation to something else. Thus, definitions are constrained to the negative, a thing is composed only of that which others are not. A thing exists not in itself, but only in negative relation to others.

Thus, each part of language is a referrant, and so language never gets to the signified, it deals only with signifiers. Blue does not mean blue, it means not other colors. Thus, language is always a step removed from actuality.

If language is always a step removed from actuality, then communication is always a step removed from actuality for all of communication deals with language, even if it is nonverbal.

What this does is, instead of freeing the individual from large scale meaning, it reduces the individual to only personal meaning, for how can one truly relate to others, truly know them, if one is always at least one step removed from actuality?

You see my problem now? Postmodernism does not promote cultural interaction, it promotes personal culture such that no true communication can take place since the actual cannot be realized outside of one's own self. There can never be true connection between people.

This means that postmodern thought is essentially a new way to enforce a strict individualism that acknowledges that there can never be a connection between two different people. Not only do different cultures become the other (done by superceding metanarrative with narrative), but now each individual is stranded alone since all people become others.

Postmodern thought lends itself toward personal isolation and radical disenfranchisment of the community.

This relates to hermeneutics for it is through the language games that one becomes truly isolated.

Perhaps I am wrong and there is a way out of this, but I cannot help but see this movement as one, not about community, but about personal selfishness. All people become others and the individual is stranded in isolation, all because language has no external referrant, it just refers to more language.
This extremely negative view is a good way to begin a debate, but it does not in anyway give an accurate portrayal of postmodernism

[shunyadragon]

Hi Jaltus,





Jaltus>Postmodernism is often painted as the movement to do away with absolute truth. While that is in some sense true, it is also a rather biased and narrow view of the movement.<

I would say that Postmodernism attempts (and rightly so) to do away with the idea that "truth" has “presence” . . . presence for instance, in text.

Jaltus>In reading, what matters is not authorial intent, nor the text itself, but the event that occurs when one reads the text. Thus the reader is the true author, since meaning is found only in interpretation, not in writing.<
Adam can’t seem to get the human race back between his legs. --- It’s too late for that. Inflation is the norm in a fallen world. ---- And as Derrida rightly points out, silence is often the loudest modality of speech!

You can have legitimate intercourse with words (and monogamy in issue of words and text is an abomination according to the word of God), or else we can practice a priestly celibacy, i.e., we can veil our homosexual hermeneutical tendencies in religious garb!







John Brey




Great post! Nice metaphors. I have learned a lot from following this debate and it is nice to see some balence.