I lose interest in blogs quickly, mostly because I write to get feedback and typically don't get it. I lost interest in this blog last year, but conversations with my good friend JD about hermeneutics brought me back for a few cursory posts.
I'm about 85% percent sure that I will abandon this blog and blogging altogether. I have already eliminated Facebook from my life and cut back on my text messaging. I am too suspicious of the ephemeral nature of the digital word to embrace it fully. I am too interested in the projects that I am currently pursuing professionally, not the least of which was the recent acceptance of my essay on Flannery O'Connor's "A View of the Woods" into an upcoming book of O'Connor essays.
Frankly, the internet bores me more and more everyday. I find myself turning away from the digital more and more, and towards enjoying art and music, reading and a good movie. Yes, some of these things are delivered to me digitally, but only as a matter of convenience. My iPod gives me a choice as to what to listen to, for which I am thankful - have you listened to commercial radio lately? I recently went to the Art Museum here in Cincinnati. They have special exhibits by Nick Cave, Picasso, and Monet right now. Get off your ass, America. Get out of the house.
Once upon a time, the bourgeois went to the art museum. Now, they play on their iPhones and tablets, their laptops and PCs.
I'm going to the art museum as soon as I'm done writing this chapter of my thesis.
Fuck the bourgeois.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Interpreting Political Slogans; Mirroring Society
I'm excited to see what campaign slogan President Barack Obama's team chooses this time around. Politicians so often understand where our society and our collective understanding are at its weakest, and they aggressively leverage those gaps to put across a message that demonstrates what interpretive dunces we are.
For instance, "change we can believe in." The interpretive potential of that phrase is porous. Conservatives complained that the phrase meant nothing, but they didn't get it: it meant whatever the receiver wanted it to mean. After eight years of Bush, everyone was a bit tired, so the Republicans indulged themselves in a bit of fantasy, choosing John McCain in an effort to see what may have happened in 2000 if he had won in South Carolina. Obama was far from the obvious choice through much of the Democratic primaries, but the strength of his promise of change resonated with people who were ready for any alternative to President Bush. The fact that no one was very specific on what that change entailed didn't phase us; we were hungry for change and leapt at the first chance we got.
McCain and Company's slogans of "maverick" or "rogue" (in Sarah Palin's case) were just as nonsensical, or porous with interpretive potential, as Obama's. In what way is being a maverick or a rogue a good thing, in and of itself? Mavericks and rogues can be pesky people to deal with at best; at worst, they're pure nightmare. The problem with American politics isn't that the meaning of government word and deed is absent; it's that it mirrors our flimsy society. Everywhere we turn for messages that flatter ourselves and our ideas about the world. We don't want messages that are easy to interpret; we want messages so vague we can interpret them the way we want without feeling the rub the comes with twisting the meaning of something to fit the interpretation. The way that liberals and conservatives alike have come to interpret "change" since President Obama's election are both correct: Obama has delivered the change he promised, a nightmare to conservatives and (mostly) a satisfaction to liberals. (We'll forget those who think he hasn't brought enough change; that's not an interpretation so much as an unrealistic dream suitable for only the fringes of any movement. Perhaps it's a fundamental misinterpretation of the political system in America, but I digress.) No one argues with change; we just take its meaning differently depending on our presuppositions.
This current election cycle is mostly focused on the Republicans right now, but there is a disastrous lack of message that is already fuzzing the actual issues facing us. The issue right now is that we all recognize that our system is broken, and that the challenges facing us are great. The Tea Party and the Occupy movement both understand the problem, but their ideas of solution are radically different. No viable candidate has made the connection that Americans of the right and left are both angry about the same things; rather, the slogans and the messages are specific enough to tickle the ears of the faithful and vague enough to allow for wide interpretive room of the merely curious. Perhaps if we were more secure in our identities apart from groups and labels that we feel we must join or parrot, we would have the strength and courage to interpret the signs of the times and the words of our leaders, wannabe or otherwise. But instead we seek meaning externally, and therefore we fall prey to the words of those whom we wish to identify with, and meaning is deferred. The interpretive process breaks down again.
For instance, "change we can believe in." The interpretive potential of that phrase is porous. Conservatives complained that the phrase meant nothing, but they didn't get it: it meant whatever the receiver wanted it to mean. After eight years of Bush, everyone was a bit tired, so the Republicans indulged themselves in a bit of fantasy, choosing John McCain in an effort to see what may have happened in 2000 if he had won in South Carolina. Obama was far from the obvious choice through much of the Democratic primaries, but the strength of his promise of change resonated with people who were ready for any alternative to President Bush. The fact that no one was very specific on what that change entailed didn't phase us; we were hungry for change and leapt at the first chance we got.
McCain and Company's slogans of "maverick" or "rogue" (in Sarah Palin's case) were just as nonsensical, or porous with interpretive potential, as Obama's. In what way is being a maverick or a rogue a good thing, in and of itself? Mavericks and rogues can be pesky people to deal with at best; at worst, they're pure nightmare. The problem with American politics isn't that the meaning of government word and deed is absent; it's that it mirrors our flimsy society. Everywhere we turn for messages that flatter ourselves and our ideas about the world. We don't want messages that are easy to interpret; we want messages so vague we can interpret them the way we want without feeling the rub the comes with twisting the meaning of something to fit the interpretation. The way that liberals and conservatives alike have come to interpret "change" since President Obama's election are both correct: Obama has delivered the change he promised, a nightmare to conservatives and (mostly) a satisfaction to liberals. (We'll forget those who think he hasn't brought enough change; that's not an interpretation so much as an unrealistic dream suitable for only the fringes of any movement. Perhaps it's a fundamental misinterpretation of the political system in America, but I digress.) No one argues with change; we just take its meaning differently depending on our presuppositions.
This current election cycle is mostly focused on the Republicans right now, but there is a disastrous lack of message that is already fuzzing the actual issues facing us. The issue right now is that we all recognize that our system is broken, and that the challenges facing us are great. The Tea Party and the Occupy movement both understand the problem, but their ideas of solution are radically different. No viable candidate has made the connection that Americans of the right and left are both angry about the same things; rather, the slogans and the messages are specific enough to tickle the ears of the faithful and vague enough to allow for wide interpretive room of the merely curious. Perhaps if we were more secure in our identities apart from groups and labels that we feel we must join or parrot, we would have the strength and courage to interpret the signs of the times and the words of our leaders, wannabe or otherwise. But instead we seek meaning externally, and therefore we fall prey to the words of those whom we wish to identify with, and meaning is deferred. The interpretive process breaks down again.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Interpreting Cultures: The Other Side of Multiculturalism
In 1958, Chinua Achebe published his first novel, Things Fall Apart. Raised in a Nigeria that was still under British colonial rule, in the novel he portrays the ancient culture of the Ibo (or Igbo) peoples as it deals with forced change under the invading Brits, based on events that happened two generations before his. The colonists are not content to merely conquer, but also bring their culture into the world of the Ibo: their government, society, and religion. Conflict abounds in the novel, of course, but careful readers have noticed that Achebe is not merely portraying the white devils destroying a pure tribal culture; rather, he portrays significant fissures already at work in the Ibo people before the British colonists arrive.
Achebe himself has said something to the effect of not wanting to portray either Ibo or British culture in the book as inherently good or evil, but rather two portray two cultures which both have strong points and weak points. He wanted Westerners to understand that the Ibo culture was a culture much like any other, with better angels and a few demons as well. The conflict of the two cultures as the book moves towards its ending portray what Rene Girard has called the "sacrificial crisis," a moment of chaos that comes upon a culture that has lost its differentiation. Once undifferentiation abounds, violence, specifically of the sacrificial nature, must come in to restore order.
The reader of Things Fall Apart is forced to interpret the events of the novel in light of the way that Achebe portrays the two clashing cultures. I do not believe that the author ever dictates the way a text must be read, but I think the sensitive interpreter should keep in mind Achebe's statement that he was merely trying to portray two cultures that he has experienced the way that he sees them. He is neither a champion of the colonial system, nor an apologist for pre-colonial culture. Rather, the novel presents a world in which conflict is unavoidable, where old systems will topple and collapse and be replaced by new systems, at great cost culturally, emotionally, psychologically, and even in lives lost.
This is a long-winded way of saying culture must be interpreted. Now, I am willing to admit that I believe some cultures are superior to other cultures, as gauche and un-PC as it may be, but I am also much more sympathetic to what I see as positive aspects in foreign or exotic cultures. The reason that I can continue to be such an American character in so many ways (enjoying my cheeseburger and Coca-Cola, for example) while looking for value, truth, and meaning in other cultures is because I have taken the lesson of Achebe's novel to heart. Sure, Africa may not have produced a Mozart, but it did give us those seductive polyrhythms that animate the jazz music that I love so much, from Jelly Roll Morton to Elvin Jones.
Yet, sometimes we can feel so close to a foreign culture that we feel that we can pass judgement on it from the place of superiority, even when we would spurn such judgement applied to other cultures. For instance, I think the Western practice of monogamy (and here I mean one spouse - I'm not talking sex) is far superior to the polygamy practiced by the Ibo culture in Things Fall Apart. Many sensible Westerners would agree with me, but perhaps some would chasten me not to be so judgmental. From the lofty position of multiculturalism, we can condone things in other cultures that we would never allow in our own. And that's fine, for what it is. But let's bring it closer to home.
Recently, on YouTube, a hacked-off father named Tommy Jordan posted a video of him reading a post his daughter had written complaining about her parents that she had posted on her Facebook account. (That's a messed-up sentence). The girl clearly sounds disrespectful, and I understand why he is upset. His response is to teach her a lesson, something that it would seem sorely needs to be done, and he does so by firing seven or eight (much like Dirty Harry, I lost count) hollow-point .45 bullets into her laptop. Effective grounding technique, sir.
Many frustrated parents applaud Mr. Jordan, and I can also understand why they do. But just as many people are appalled, it would seem. And I can imagine many of their criticisms (and have read a few that anonymous souls have shared with the world on the internet). But, at the end of the day, most people are going to criticize Tommy Jordan based on a few simple cultural signals that he sends.
He speaks in a Southern accent. He is an obvious gun enthusiast (other videos portray guns and shooting as well). He is wearing a cowboy hat and smoking one of those nasty cigarette things. And although he does not strike me as unintelligent, he does not seem to be an intellectual exactly. Simply put, Jordan is a Southerner, with attitudes and thoughts typical of many Southern men (although I doubt how many would take their actions quite as far as he did).
People are appalled at the violence. I will admit that I find it shocking and a bit extreme, and I highly doubt I would ever take the punishment of one of my own children to that extent. I'm sure some feminists out there are churning out an article on how this is an example of extreme patriarchal control, and how the laptop is merely avatar of his daughter, his shooting of it the expression of his subconscious desire to shoot his daughter. Many are concerned that his frustration is the repression of a not-too-well controlled homicidal impulse.
These part-time pundits posting on the interwebs are interpreting the cultural signs of Mr. Jordan's appearance, manner of speaking, and actions in the video. Although a fair amount of the worldview of people like Tommy Jordan I neither agree with nor appreciate, I also understand his type of people. I grew up surrounded by them. They are largely law-abiding citizens. Their appreciation of and use of guns usually comes with a strong respect for the power of that weapon and the sense that there are right and wrong times to use it. They typically do not act this extreme perhaps, but I highly doubt Jordan is going to go on a shooting rampage anytime soon (Falling Down, this ain't). I don't look at Tommy Jordan and see someone I would like to share a beer with anytime soon, but I also don't look at him and worry about the future of our society, either. He is just representative of a certain culture.
And it is a culture that gets very little respect. Actions like Tommy Jordan's may not earn it respect, but Southern culture in general (not just that of white male Southerners) is foreign to most Americans, and they sit in judgement of it, whereas they would not sit in judgement of equally foreign cultures. Perhaps it is because something about Southern culture is American enough that other cultures of the United States feel that it is not as foreign as it really is; but what I think we see here is rank hypocrisy. I think all cultures are up for judgement, across the board. I am far more appalled by religious practices such as the immolation of live widows during the burial rites of their deceased husbands than I am by Tommy Johnson unloading a clip of hollow-points into his daughter's laptop. If anything, I appreciate his lesson (for all of us) about the importance of ownership. It isn't until we realize the value of ownership that we then realize how worthless ownership is compared with the intangibles that stick with us - love of others being the most important.
When I see Tommy Jordan's video, I know he is trying, in his own perhaps deficient way, to show his daughter how much he loves and cares about her. This is going to be completely foreign to a broad swath of Americans. We don't live in a country of two Americas (sorry John Edwards), we live in a country of many Americas. The melting pot ain't so melted yet.
This is not an apologia for Mr. Jordan's pigheaded behavior. This is a plea to eschew hypocrisy in interpreting culture. If you can say that Tommy Jordan is wrong for blowing away his daughter's laptop (I personally would have enjoyed him chopping it up with an axe and lighting it on fire more from a visceral standpoint), then I can say it is wrong for certain African and Middle Eastern cultures to practice the vile ritual of female circumcision. There is something fundamentally illiberal about the lack of consistency in interpreting culture that is on display in the reactions of many to the events portrayed in this video. Don't forget context next time you find yourself in the hermeneutic spiral; but have the strength of your convictions to apply your interpretations across cultures consistently.
Achebe himself has said something to the effect of not wanting to portray either Ibo or British culture in the book as inherently good or evil, but rather two portray two cultures which both have strong points and weak points. He wanted Westerners to understand that the Ibo culture was a culture much like any other, with better angels and a few demons as well. The conflict of the two cultures as the book moves towards its ending portray what Rene Girard has called the "sacrificial crisis," a moment of chaos that comes upon a culture that has lost its differentiation. Once undifferentiation abounds, violence, specifically of the sacrificial nature, must come in to restore order.
The reader of Things Fall Apart is forced to interpret the events of the novel in light of the way that Achebe portrays the two clashing cultures. I do not believe that the author ever dictates the way a text must be read, but I think the sensitive interpreter should keep in mind Achebe's statement that he was merely trying to portray two cultures that he has experienced the way that he sees them. He is neither a champion of the colonial system, nor an apologist for pre-colonial culture. Rather, the novel presents a world in which conflict is unavoidable, where old systems will topple and collapse and be replaced by new systems, at great cost culturally, emotionally, psychologically, and even in lives lost.
This is a long-winded way of saying culture must be interpreted. Now, I am willing to admit that I believe some cultures are superior to other cultures, as gauche and un-PC as it may be, but I am also much more sympathetic to what I see as positive aspects in foreign or exotic cultures. The reason that I can continue to be such an American character in so many ways (enjoying my cheeseburger and Coca-Cola, for example) while looking for value, truth, and meaning in other cultures is because I have taken the lesson of Achebe's novel to heart. Sure, Africa may not have produced a Mozart, but it did give us those seductive polyrhythms that animate the jazz music that I love so much, from Jelly Roll Morton to Elvin Jones.
Yet, sometimes we can feel so close to a foreign culture that we feel that we can pass judgement on it from the place of superiority, even when we would spurn such judgement applied to other cultures. For instance, I think the Western practice of monogamy (and here I mean one spouse - I'm not talking sex) is far superior to the polygamy practiced by the Ibo culture in Things Fall Apart. Many sensible Westerners would agree with me, but perhaps some would chasten me not to be so judgmental. From the lofty position of multiculturalism, we can condone things in other cultures that we would never allow in our own. And that's fine, for what it is. But let's bring it closer to home.
Recently, on YouTube, a hacked-off father named Tommy Jordan posted a video of him reading a post his daughter had written complaining about her parents that she had posted on her Facebook account. (That's a messed-up sentence). The girl clearly sounds disrespectful, and I understand why he is upset. His response is to teach her a lesson, something that it would seem sorely needs to be done, and he does so by firing seven or eight (much like Dirty Harry, I lost count) hollow-point .45 bullets into her laptop. Effective grounding technique, sir.
Many frustrated parents applaud Mr. Jordan, and I can also understand why they do. But just as many people are appalled, it would seem. And I can imagine many of their criticisms (and have read a few that anonymous souls have shared with the world on the internet). But, at the end of the day, most people are going to criticize Tommy Jordan based on a few simple cultural signals that he sends.
He speaks in a Southern accent. He is an obvious gun enthusiast (other videos portray guns and shooting as well). He is wearing a cowboy hat and smoking one of those nasty cigarette things. And although he does not strike me as unintelligent, he does not seem to be an intellectual exactly. Simply put, Jordan is a Southerner, with attitudes and thoughts typical of many Southern men (although I doubt how many would take their actions quite as far as he did).
People are appalled at the violence. I will admit that I find it shocking and a bit extreme, and I highly doubt I would ever take the punishment of one of my own children to that extent. I'm sure some feminists out there are churning out an article on how this is an example of extreme patriarchal control, and how the laptop is merely avatar of his daughter, his shooting of it the expression of his subconscious desire to shoot his daughter. Many are concerned that his frustration is the repression of a not-too-well controlled homicidal impulse.
These part-time pundits posting on the interwebs are interpreting the cultural signs of Mr. Jordan's appearance, manner of speaking, and actions in the video. Although a fair amount of the worldview of people like Tommy Jordan I neither agree with nor appreciate, I also understand his type of people. I grew up surrounded by them. They are largely law-abiding citizens. Their appreciation of and use of guns usually comes with a strong respect for the power of that weapon and the sense that there are right and wrong times to use it. They typically do not act this extreme perhaps, but I highly doubt Jordan is going to go on a shooting rampage anytime soon (Falling Down, this ain't). I don't look at Tommy Jordan and see someone I would like to share a beer with anytime soon, but I also don't look at him and worry about the future of our society, either. He is just representative of a certain culture.
And it is a culture that gets very little respect. Actions like Tommy Jordan's may not earn it respect, but Southern culture in general (not just that of white male Southerners) is foreign to most Americans, and they sit in judgement of it, whereas they would not sit in judgement of equally foreign cultures. Perhaps it is because something about Southern culture is American enough that other cultures of the United States feel that it is not as foreign as it really is; but what I think we see here is rank hypocrisy. I think all cultures are up for judgement, across the board. I am far more appalled by religious practices such as the immolation of live widows during the burial rites of their deceased husbands than I am by Tommy Johnson unloading a clip of hollow-points into his daughter's laptop. If anything, I appreciate his lesson (for all of us) about the importance of ownership. It isn't until we realize the value of ownership that we then realize how worthless ownership is compared with the intangibles that stick with us - love of others being the most important.
When I see Tommy Jordan's video, I know he is trying, in his own perhaps deficient way, to show his daughter how much he loves and cares about her. This is going to be completely foreign to a broad swath of Americans. We don't live in a country of two Americas (sorry John Edwards), we live in a country of many Americas. The melting pot ain't so melted yet.
This is not an apologia for Mr. Jordan's pigheaded behavior. This is a plea to eschew hypocrisy in interpreting culture. If you can say that Tommy Jordan is wrong for blowing away his daughter's laptop (I personally would have enjoyed him chopping it up with an axe and lighting it on fire more from a visceral standpoint), then I can say it is wrong for certain African and Middle Eastern cultures to practice the vile ritual of female circumcision. There is something fundamentally illiberal about the lack of consistency in interpreting culture that is on display in the reactions of many to the events portrayed in this video. Don't forget context next time you find yourself in the hermeneutic spiral; but have the strength of your convictions to apply your interpretations across cultures consistently.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Interpretation: Is that All There Is?
In 1969, Peggy Lee recorded a song by Lieber and Stoller (legendary rock 'n' roll songwriters) called "Is That All There Is?", in which the singer recollects significant life experiences, followed by a sort of Joycean reverse-epiphany, where she realizes that the experiences are invariably disappointing, leading her to ask "is that all there is?" The chorus is remarkable:
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends,
Then let's keep dancing.
Let's break out the booze and have a ball,
If that's all there is.
The song quite intelligently presents a profound philosophical issue (really, a religious issue) in a way that resonates with listeners of all different types of background and intelligence. It's no easy feat to present the struggle to find meaning in life, dealt with by Plato, Boethius, Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Camus with varying levels of success, in four minute pop song. Go over to YouTube and check it out...after you read this.
The reason I wanted to lead off with a reference to a little gem of popular music from about 40 years ago is because it leads into an interesting question. If the hermeneutic task extends from texts to all of life, if indeed there is nothing but interpretation, then we have a right to ask ourselves, "is that all there is?" It leads into the final verse of Miss Peggy Lee's song: "I know what you must be saying to yourselves: if that's the way she feels about it, why doesn't she just end it all?"
I've grown to see value in the work of Jacques Derrida, but my first brush with his thought inevitably left me feeling a little bit existential. Could that really be it? Is that what the Western tradition has come down to, binaries deconstructing themselves? Of course, this sells frere Jacques and his ideas a bit short, but it does lead me to wonder if all these theories are ultimately destructive. If interpretation is all there is, where was humanity before the seeds of hermeneutic theory were first developed by Schleiermacher in the 18th century?
If I didn't think that the task of interpretation was embedded in the thought of philosophers and thinkers stretching back to late antiquity, I would abandon it, of course. I am one of those pesky types who thinks that truth is truth, and we've all been batting at it, but never quite been able to get our mitts on it as a race. I'm not interested in developing the implications of this for religion, but I think that truth can be found in a variety of places and in a variety of cultures and traditions. Where ultimate truth resides is a question I can leave for another day.
Ultimately, everything might be interpretation, but that doesn't mean that we have to ask "is that all there is?" Although E.D. Hirsch maintained that the way to discover the validity of an interpretation was to discern the meaning of the author, I prefer Paul Ricoeur's move (as he titles his subheadings in Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning) from "guess to validation," from "explanation to comprehension." These are important moves; I will deal with these ideas in a later post.
This is a very rough sketch of an overall defense of interpretation as a practice which adds meaning to life, which is not antagonistic or destructive to ancient wisdom. I do not advocate blind loyalty to a tradition (in this case, I suppose, the so-called "Western" tradition), but part of the task of hermeneutics as I see it requires continuing interpretation of the ideas that have lead us to where we are today.
A hermeneutics of development and continuance will allow us to approach the hermeneutic task in such a way that it could conceivably offer answers to the question "is that all there is?"
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends,
Then let's keep dancing.
Let's break out the booze and have a ball,
If that's all there is.
The song quite intelligently presents a profound philosophical issue (really, a religious issue) in a way that resonates with listeners of all different types of background and intelligence. It's no easy feat to present the struggle to find meaning in life, dealt with by Plato, Boethius, Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Camus with varying levels of success, in four minute pop song. Go over to YouTube and check it out...after you read this.
The reason I wanted to lead off with a reference to a little gem of popular music from about 40 years ago is because it leads into an interesting question. If the hermeneutic task extends from texts to all of life, if indeed there is nothing but interpretation, then we have a right to ask ourselves, "is that all there is?" It leads into the final verse of Miss Peggy Lee's song: "I know what you must be saying to yourselves: if that's the way she feels about it, why doesn't she just end it all?"
I've grown to see value in the work of Jacques Derrida, but my first brush with his thought inevitably left me feeling a little bit existential. Could that really be it? Is that what the Western tradition has come down to, binaries deconstructing themselves? Of course, this sells frere Jacques and his ideas a bit short, but it does lead me to wonder if all these theories are ultimately destructive. If interpretation is all there is, where was humanity before the seeds of hermeneutic theory were first developed by Schleiermacher in the 18th century?
If I didn't think that the task of interpretation was embedded in the thought of philosophers and thinkers stretching back to late antiquity, I would abandon it, of course. I am one of those pesky types who thinks that truth is truth, and we've all been batting at it, but never quite been able to get our mitts on it as a race. I'm not interested in developing the implications of this for religion, but I think that truth can be found in a variety of places and in a variety of cultures and traditions. Where ultimate truth resides is a question I can leave for another day.
Ultimately, everything might be interpretation, but that doesn't mean that we have to ask "is that all there is?" Although E.D. Hirsch maintained that the way to discover the validity of an interpretation was to discern the meaning of the author, I prefer Paul Ricoeur's move (as he titles his subheadings in Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning) from "guess to validation," from "explanation to comprehension." These are important moves; I will deal with these ideas in a later post.
This is a very rough sketch of an overall defense of interpretation as a practice which adds meaning to life, which is not antagonistic or destructive to ancient wisdom. I do not advocate blind loyalty to a tradition (in this case, I suppose, the so-called "Western" tradition), but part of the task of hermeneutics as I see it requires continuing interpretation of the ideas that have lead us to where we are today.
A hermeneutics of development and continuance will allow us to approach the hermeneutic task in such a way that it could conceivably offer answers to the question "is that all there is?"
Monday, March 14, 2011
Interpretation in a Digital Age
I got to the bottom of this little YouTube debacle: remember this? You should, it was just posted less than 36 hours ago. "Tamtampamela" is a YouTube user who has been posting videos putting forward an outlandish, religiously fundamentalist viewpoint that sounds ridiculous.
Because she means for it to sound ridiculous.
Because she is a troll.
From a little research I did, it appears that she is a regular contributor to the forums on the Landover Baptist website, where she is known as a specific kind of troll called a "Poe" (don't ask me why), someone who satirizes an absurd position, usually of the fundamentalist variety, with such a straight face that you cannot at first blush tell the position is being satirized - hence showing the irony inherent in fervently holding to a belief that most people, even religious people, think is ridiculous.
What does this have to do with the stated intentions of this blog? Simply put, the majority of people who have seen her video have fallen for her troll. With the forty or so previous videos she has done over the past year plus (true troll dedication), it was just a handful and little harm was done. But in this video, by taking on such a sad event and giving voice to a position so controversial, harm is being done. A true asshole, knowing that this troll is "Pamela Foreman" who lives in Tampa, has been putting an address and phone number for a person with the same name in Tampa all over the internet. Only problem is, its not her, and this innocent woman and her family have been threatened and the sheriff's department is protecting her.
Simply put, "Tamtampamela" is able to carry off a only slightly wacked version of a viewpoint we are all familiar with and most of us aren't wise to the deception. I'm not saying this to criticize those who were taken in. I was myself, initially. But further investigation (which I don't have time but do have the curiosity for) revealed the true nature of what was going on.
The school of poetical explication founded by the authors of the book "Understanding Poetry," Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, says that the poem should stand on its own as a subject of interpretation, and that while knowing the historical background, author's biography, or what-have-you may shed interesting light, a good interpretation will stand or fall on how well it interprets the text itself, first and foremost. Although this school, called the "New Criticism," has come under fire in the decades since its appearance, it is still a very common-sense and sensible starting point for interpreting not only a poem, but any text.
With a video such as the one we have here, such an interpretive strategy is untenable. The level of irony is compounded by the postmodern moment that we're living in. I don't mean postmodern in a trendy, Parliament-cigarette smoking way. I mean it in the way that Jean-Francois Lyotard meant it when he speaks of the "self-adjustments the system undertakes in order to improve its performance." Postmodernity is marked by what Lyotard called a "legitimation crisis," and this applies not just to the legitimation of science but also of religion. The system's self-adjustments have lead to a ton of amazing products and technologies, but it has also lead to a self-adjustment in religious systems, of which a fundamentalist attitude has become more prominent, rising to meet the challenge of our pluralistic, postmodern, de-legitimized world.
Which makes videos like this very hard to interpret accurately.
I realize that by saying something like this video could be interpreted accurately, or that one interpretation could be more accurate than another, I am somewhat out of step with this moment in intellectual history. So be it. As long as a human can look at a disaster like the earthquake in Japan and feel sadness and empathy, can be moved to pray, send money and materials, and even go over and help in person, we live in a world where the legitimation crisis hasn't fully overtaken everything, where a semblance of right-and-wrong are still recognized, where perhaps even accuracy can be valued (if not truth itself).
But all this digitized content that floods our consciousnesses night and day makes it hard sometimes to recognize the humanity in others. And this girl, for the sake of a practical joke, has removed the humanity from her digital persona and given the world a fake shell of a human parroting other human shells.
As my friend JD said, "It's hard to be human in a post-human world."
Because she means for it to sound ridiculous.
Because she is a troll.
From a little research I did, it appears that she is a regular contributor to the forums on the Landover Baptist website, where she is known as a specific kind of troll called a "Poe" (don't ask me why), someone who satirizes an absurd position, usually of the fundamentalist variety, with such a straight face that you cannot at first blush tell the position is being satirized - hence showing the irony inherent in fervently holding to a belief that most people, even religious people, think is ridiculous.
What does this have to do with the stated intentions of this blog? Simply put, the majority of people who have seen her video have fallen for her troll. With the forty or so previous videos she has done over the past year plus (true troll dedication), it was just a handful and little harm was done. But in this video, by taking on such a sad event and giving voice to a position so controversial, harm is being done. A true asshole, knowing that this troll is "Pamela Foreman" who lives in Tampa, has been putting an address and phone number for a person with the same name in Tampa all over the internet. Only problem is, its not her, and this innocent woman and her family have been threatened and the sheriff's department is protecting her.
Simply put, "Tamtampamela" is able to carry off a only slightly wacked version of a viewpoint we are all familiar with and most of us aren't wise to the deception. I'm not saying this to criticize those who were taken in. I was myself, initially. But further investigation (which I don't have time but do have the curiosity for) revealed the true nature of what was going on.
The school of poetical explication founded by the authors of the book "Understanding Poetry," Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, says that the poem should stand on its own as a subject of interpretation, and that while knowing the historical background, author's biography, or what-have-you may shed interesting light, a good interpretation will stand or fall on how well it interprets the text itself, first and foremost. Although this school, called the "New Criticism," has come under fire in the decades since its appearance, it is still a very common-sense and sensible starting point for interpreting not only a poem, but any text.
With a video such as the one we have here, such an interpretive strategy is untenable. The level of irony is compounded by the postmodern moment that we're living in. I don't mean postmodern in a trendy, Parliament-cigarette smoking way. I mean it in the way that Jean-Francois Lyotard meant it when he speaks of the "self-adjustments the system undertakes in order to improve its performance." Postmodernity is marked by what Lyotard called a "legitimation crisis," and this applies not just to the legitimation of science but also of religion. The system's self-adjustments have lead to a ton of amazing products and technologies, but it has also lead to a self-adjustment in religious systems, of which a fundamentalist attitude has become more prominent, rising to meet the challenge of our pluralistic, postmodern, de-legitimized world.
Which makes videos like this very hard to interpret accurately.
I realize that by saying something like this video could be interpreted accurately, or that one interpretation could be more accurate than another, I am somewhat out of step with this moment in intellectual history. So be it. As long as a human can look at a disaster like the earthquake in Japan and feel sadness and empathy, can be moved to pray, send money and materials, and even go over and help in person, we live in a world where the legitimation crisis hasn't fully overtaken everything, where a semblance of right-and-wrong are still recognized, where perhaps even accuracy can be valued (if not truth itself).
But all this digitized content that floods our consciousnesses night and day makes it hard sometimes to recognize the humanity in others. And this girl, for the sake of a practical joke, has removed the humanity from her digital persona and given the world a fake shell of a human parroting other human shells.
As my friend JD said, "It's hard to be human in a post-human world."
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Reason and Intuition
Gary Wills, the historian, was being interviewed by Charlie Rose. I think the year was 2004, and though my memory may be faulty, he was speaking on his recent biography of St. Augustine and translation of the Confessions. Rose put a question to him about religious knowledge being discredited in a day and age of reason and science (a familiar old sawhorse) and Wills pointed out that knowledge comes to us through more than reason. "Poetry is a form of knowledge."
I remember that quote well. It was an 'a-ha!' moment for me, because it expressed for what I had been feeling and searching. Science and religion, many religious apologists try to express, are complimentary modes of knowledge which, taken together, present a complete (or "completer," if that's a word) picture of reality.
That's not a bad way of thinking about it, but it leaves the hermeneutical question wide open. Is it reality that science and faith give us together, or is it that reality is being interpreted by science and religion? If the interpretive tool of science is applied to reality, it gives us one picture. If religion, a different interpretive tool is applied to that same reality, we will have a vastly different picture. In the end, perhaps they are complimentary. But there is also a certain rub that will not allow them to sit as easily next to one another as religious apologists would like.
This is what bothers the Richard Dawkinses of the world about the claims of religion: they see, rightly so given their perspective, a rival account of reality. To a certain extent, it is true. But what they fail to do is account for the value of intuition in giving us purchase on a valid interpretation of reality.
Broadly, the claims of science can be thought of as "reason" and the claims of religion can be thought of as "intuition." Many a hard-headed scientist expresses frustration at the dreamy musings of the poet (a form of religious reflection, after all) but Dawkins waxes perfectly poetic himself while describing the cosmos in The Blind Watchmaker. Likewise, the poetry of John Donne, whether his more bawdy rhymes or his religious poetry, is the work of an intellect which was the rival of any 17th century scientist.
Perhaps we are getting back to the idea of "complementary windows on reality." That might be all I'm saying, but I think expressing it that way fails to render some of the richness of intuition's ability to render reality. Scripture, read proscriptively, is more of a "reasonable" book (in any religion); but read more poetically (regardless of one's belief), we begin to see it attempting to intuit the reality which lies beyond the measure of science, however the concept of "science" might have been rendered at the time of the scripture's writing.
John Ralston Saul's book Voltaire's Bastards put to bed exactly why reason plagues us: not because it is bad, but because one tributary of knowledge, he says, has swollen to become a river. Hence the rise of the bureaucrat, the technocrat, the expert, etc. (Perhaps John Lennon was intuiting this when he sang, "Expert, textpert, choking smoker, don't you think the Joker laughs at you?" The specter of Death (the Joker) hanging just beyond the "expert," laughing because he realizes that reason ultimately fails at the moment of passing...anyway, just a thought.) Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue posits a similar argument.
To move forward in this debate, religious thinkers need to acknowledge the interpretive validity (and sometimes dissonance) of science, and scientists likewise need to allow for intuitive expressions as providing a unique and valuable interpretation (also sometimes at loggerheads with science). Compatibility is a chimera, but that doesn't mean that work can't continue in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Robert Duncan, a poet whose religious thought turned towards gnosticism, writes in his poem "The Structure of Rime VII": "The Rime falls in the outbreakings of speech as the Character falls in the act wherefrom life springs, footfalls in Noise which we do not hear but see as a Rose pushd up from the stem of our longing." Although probably only Duncan knows exactly what he meant (actually, probably not even him), the idea of poetry - of speech, and all that comes with it - being connected to the murky origins of life, noises that we see, longing - all these are areas which, like it or not, are veiled somewhat from our rational perceptive powers. It takes the individual with a mind's eye view to "peer" into the dusky elements of existence and make connections that are perhaps far too tenuous for the rigor of the scientist, but can still rise to his intellectual heights just the same.
Do the poet and the astronomer peer at the same reality from their different perspectives? I don't know, but I'm not about to discount the value of what both of them see.
I remember that quote well. It was an 'a-ha!' moment for me, because it expressed for what I had been feeling and searching. Science and religion, many religious apologists try to express, are complimentary modes of knowledge which, taken together, present a complete (or "completer," if that's a word) picture of reality.
That's not a bad way of thinking about it, but it leaves the hermeneutical question wide open. Is it reality that science and faith give us together, or is it that reality is being interpreted by science and religion? If the interpretive tool of science is applied to reality, it gives us one picture. If religion, a different interpretive tool is applied to that same reality, we will have a vastly different picture. In the end, perhaps they are complimentary. But there is also a certain rub that will not allow them to sit as easily next to one another as religious apologists would like.
This is what bothers the Richard Dawkinses of the world about the claims of religion: they see, rightly so given their perspective, a rival account of reality. To a certain extent, it is true. But what they fail to do is account for the value of intuition in giving us purchase on a valid interpretation of reality.
Broadly, the claims of science can be thought of as "reason" and the claims of religion can be thought of as "intuition." Many a hard-headed scientist expresses frustration at the dreamy musings of the poet (a form of religious reflection, after all) but Dawkins waxes perfectly poetic himself while describing the cosmos in The Blind Watchmaker. Likewise, the poetry of John Donne, whether his more bawdy rhymes or his religious poetry, is the work of an intellect which was the rival of any 17th century scientist.
Perhaps we are getting back to the idea of "complementary windows on reality." That might be all I'm saying, but I think expressing it that way fails to render some of the richness of intuition's ability to render reality. Scripture, read proscriptively, is more of a "reasonable" book (in any religion); but read more poetically (regardless of one's belief), we begin to see it attempting to intuit the reality which lies beyond the measure of science, however the concept of "science" might have been rendered at the time of the scripture's writing.
John Ralston Saul's book Voltaire's Bastards put to bed exactly why reason plagues us: not because it is bad, but because one tributary of knowledge, he says, has swollen to become a river. Hence the rise of the bureaucrat, the technocrat, the expert, etc. (Perhaps John Lennon was intuiting this when he sang, "Expert, textpert, choking smoker, don't you think the Joker laughs at you?" The specter of Death (the Joker) hanging just beyond the "expert," laughing because he realizes that reason ultimately fails at the moment of passing...anyway, just a thought.) Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue posits a similar argument.
To move forward in this debate, religious thinkers need to acknowledge the interpretive validity (and sometimes dissonance) of science, and scientists likewise need to allow for intuitive expressions as providing a unique and valuable interpretation (also sometimes at loggerheads with science). Compatibility is a chimera, but that doesn't mean that work can't continue in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Robert Duncan, a poet whose religious thought turned towards gnosticism, writes in his poem "The Structure of Rime VII": "The Rime falls in the outbreakings of speech as the Character falls in the act wherefrom life springs, footfalls in Noise which we do not hear but see as a Rose pushd up from the stem of our longing." Although probably only Duncan knows exactly what he meant (actually, probably not even him), the idea of poetry - of speech, and all that comes with it - being connected to the murky origins of life, noises that we see, longing - all these are areas which, like it or not, are veiled somewhat from our rational perceptive powers. It takes the individual with a mind's eye view to "peer" into the dusky elements of existence and make connections that are perhaps far too tenuous for the rigor of the scientist, but can still rise to his intellectual heights just the same.
Do the poet and the astronomer peer at the same reality from their different perspectives? I don't know, but I'm not about to discount the value of what both of them see.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Egypt. (It was inevitable.)
The human drama of the tumult in Egypt is part of what makes the story so fascinating - Christiane Amanpour told to leave, Anderson Cooper attacked, clashes with police, oodles of rock throwing. President Mubarak's vacillation. And on and on...
But, the reason that the story is truly persistent as a topic of discussion is because it is next to impossible to interpret the various signs that are present in the story.
We understand instinctively in an event like this why abstract notions of sign/signifier meaning fail us. Perhaps the signifier "cat" is arbitrarily placed on that animal we are so familiar with, but my cat is still real, call him what you will. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Sure, but what is the outcome of all this in Egypt to be? A country in which terrorist have a stronger foothold? Or another repressive government? Or the chance for freedom for the ordinary citizens who seem to make up the majority of the protesters?
The exact nature of the protests, the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the exact nature of the Brotherhood itself compound the interpretive hazards exponentially. President Obama has tried to have it both ways, encouraging Mubarak to step down while telling the protesters to slow their roll a bit. Conservative pundits and politicians are divided over this - some want to promote democracy and see this as a democratic revolution, some are afraid of Al Qaeda gaining ground in the area through the Muslim Brotherhood.
The very interpretation of democracy, a truly abstract concept that nevertheless has real-world consequence, is under and behind any conversation and action that we will undertake in America towards this event. I remain hopeful that this is real democratic revolution in action, and that the outcome of all this will be more freedom.
But the reason I am hopeful in this way is not because I am knowledgeable enough to interpret even half of the events in Egypt. It is because I believe that people basically want to be free to determine the course of their lives - an interpretation of human nature that owes much to The Enlightenment and rationality in general, shockingly new concepts in our history.
But, the reason that the story is truly persistent as a topic of discussion is because it is next to impossible to interpret the various signs that are present in the story.
We understand instinctively in an event like this why abstract notions of sign/signifier meaning fail us. Perhaps the signifier "cat" is arbitrarily placed on that animal we are so familiar with, but my cat is still real, call him what you will. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Sure, but what is the outcome of all this in Egypt to be? A country in which terrorist have a stronger foothold? Or another repressive government? Or the chance for freedom for the ordinary citizens who seem to make up the majority of the protesters?
The exact nature of the protests, the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the exact nature of the Brotherhood itself compound the interpretive hazards exponentially. President Obama has tried to have it both ways, encouraging Mubarak to step down while telling the protesters to slow their roll a bit. Conservative pundits and politicians are divided over this - some want to promote democracy and see this as a democratic revolution, some are afraid of Al Qaeda gaining ground in the area through the Muslim Brotherhood.
The very interpretation of democracy, a truly abstract concept that nevertheless has real-world consequence, is under and behind any conversation and action that we will undertake in America towards this event. I remain hopeful that this is real democratic revolution in action, and that the outcome of all this will be more freedom.
But the reason I am hopeful in this way is not because I am knowledgeable enough to interpret even half of the events in Egypt. It is because I believe that people basically want to be free to determine the course of their lives - an interpretation of human nature that owes much to The Enlightenment and rationality in general, shockingly new concepts in our history.
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