Post-Modernism Post

Steve Himmer at OnePotMeal responds to my question for AKMA. Steve writes (forgive the long quote):

Yes, we need to recognize that using the POMO toolkit we can dismantle anything down to its core and beyond, and the beyond includes dismantling the theory itself … But if we decide that deconstruction does offer something worth pursuing, than we have no choice (as I see it) than to determine our arbitrary starting point and deal with that shortcoming in our theory and work by acknowledging the deconstructable method by which we arrived. It’s not an ideal solution, but it is a real one, one which offers an escape (albeit tenuous and temporary) from the quagmire of spiraling questions upon questions.

In effect, then, what we are saying is, ‘I am choosing to start my questioning here, and these are the results of that beginning… these may not, however, be the results I would get if I started my questioning there, which is just as valid a launch-point as here. That, I think, is the value of treating all interpretations as fictive…

To which I respond: Well done! My only quibble is with the word “choose” since our starting point is not a matter of choice. I am an American, 20-21st Century, English-speaking Jewish man, and I can never escape that starting point. Even if I rebel, I do so as an American, 20-21st Century yada yada. And while it’s possible to transcend and transform one’s situation to some degree as Newton and Picasso did, it still occurs within the situation: Socrates’ pal Alcibiades couldn’t have been Newton or Picasso. So, not all starting points are equal because only one of them is mine. (And, of course, I am that starting point’s more than it is mine.)

Tom has also replied to my question for AKMA. He wonders whether I’m too focused on “hermeneutics,” i.e., the study of the act of interpretation:

…much of what is original in lit-crit and lit-theory in the past 25 years or so has more to do with an openness to the act of reading in a broader sense than “just” interpreting the “meaning” of a text. Genial insights into the subtle arsenals of poetics and rhetoric suggest that the encounter with a text is less than adequate to the extent it focuses exclusively on what can be said “in other words.” That is, the effort of rigorous translation leaves out something essential to the experience of reading, and to the generation of audiences.

Great point. I need to think about it more. My initial reaction is to clarify what I mean by “interpretation.” I don’t mean in the way in which a translator interprets. Rather, I take it as “taking something one way and not another.” The “taking” absolutely doesn’t have to be intellectual or linguistic. That’s why hermeneutics (in my understanding) applies not only to texts but also to things — I take the twig as a way to scratch my back although tomorrow I might take it as kindling. (The Deconstructors have proposed — haven’t they? — that the entire world is a text; I’d lean the other way.) But Tom’s comment is deeper than that and this is a hook I don’t want to squirm off of.

Tom also questions whether I’m dismissing the folks worth reading (Walter Benjamin and Derrida are Tom’s examples) by equating them with the nattering “neener neener”s. And this is one hook I think I can clear safely: I wrote my 1,600 question to AKMA precisely because I don’t dismiss those others. Sorry if I implied otherwise…

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