Against 'Text-Centred' Interpretation; or, a Panagyrik upon the Esteemable Subject of Common Sense, so Lacked by Everyone

The following was originally intended as a comment about a post titled 'The Invisible Blogger' (which can be found here: http://snarkyoptimist.blogspot.com/2010/03/invisible-blogger.html )
written by a friend of mine. I have deemed this response so necessary, and the currents I therein detect both so contrary to reason and inimical to human freedom, that I have decided to make a post of it.

Now, there are two different contentions which my friend conflates here:

Contention the first: That the purpose of a blog is to convey information to people, thereby provoke some kind of engagement with that information, ideally creating an attitude, action or series of actions as a byproduct of this engagement. This is pretty straight forward, and is, more or less, the aim of all writing. Writing is the technology we use to transcribe speech, and no one employs any technology just for shits and giggles; technology is by nature teleological. Even, if one writes out of sheer vanity (as I do) there is still a target reaction which I aim at eliciting in my audience (whether or not I succeed is another matter entirely).

Contention the second: That there may or may not be an 'objective meaning' in a piece of writing, but this consideration is secondary to its impact; 'because intent does not equal content'. [Italics not my own]. Further, that a reader's interpretation of a written passage is not necessarily invalid, nor even of less value than that of the writer: in fact, it is more important, because giving the author 'complete authority on what their writing means is to squash discussion and limit the potential of the text'.

My response to all this is threefold:
a) adopting this mentality paves the way to manifold violations of human rights
b) there is indeed a meaning in every text, and that interpretation is an entirely separate, if not always irrelevant issue.
c) that is is a writer's job to limit text


Firstly, by privileging a reader's interpretation of what a righter says, we are handing over an unreasonable amount of power. If any more than a handful of writers believed that such a degree of power resided with the reader, there would be no journalists, anywhere. Just imagine, you write a blog post...say...justifying the consumption of horse meat (who could imagine such a horrific thing!) and your readers take you to be offering incitement to commit acts of animal cruelty. Maybe you write about how you think that Canada needs to very clearly delineate and legislate it's beliefs, and stop according so much respect to foreign cultures just for the sake of their oddity when their mores are very clearly contrary to, and in danger of destroying our way of life. But your reader on the other hand knows (better than you) that you are actually discriminating against or inciting hatred against the islamic faith and takes you to the rampantly abused human rights tribunal. Or perhaps you write a newspaper article about Hezbollah, and you are jailed for supporting the state of Israel; because, after all, Hamas knows what you mean better than you do! (see: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2644160). Cool with all this so far?


Next: years ago I read a book called 'Validity in Interpretation' by an E.D. Hirsch Jr. [buy it here: http://miniurl.org/3wJ ] I forgot everything about it till I read my friend's article a few days ago. Was the book of inferior quality or was it not worth remembering? Absolutely not. On the contrary, this little book is so correct in it's debunking of nonsense of this kind that it seemed like common sense. I didn't recall having read it, because the question of meaning in writing is so painfully obvious [to a positivist like myself] that I confess I was honestly shocked by the fact that anyone who has ever spoken to me could set down such an irrational theory of meaning. I don't know whether this has been occasioned by carelessness, the relaxed vigilance at the gate of possibility in English departments everywhere (watch your average English student miraculously perform miracles that even the most erudite positivist philologist would claim impossible! Let us no longer be bound by reason! The impossible - not the mere improbable, but that which is actually logically impossible - shall henceforth be performed before our very eyes!), or if this is particularly endemic to Ottawa (after all, Francophones do seem more susceptible to embrace nonsense like this). Just because someone like Derrida, Barthes or Eagleton have published books doesn't make them authorities on this matter; we are all educated, and therefore equally prone to saying extremely stupid shit.

Hirsch distinguishes between two things (which above I noted that our Snarky Optimist has conflated): meaning and significance viz. what a text means and what a text means to you are to entirely separate matters. Let me explain: I once had the misfortune of seeing Shostakovich's Ledi Makbet Mtsenskovo Uyezda. The only scene which I enjoyed was a satirical portrayal of the Soviet police. It wasn't funny. Not even a little bit. But I could not contain my laughter. It reminded me of the police force in Flann O'Brien's outrageously funny novel, The Third Policeman. My reaction, in this instance, was utterly unrelated to the stimulus which caused it. This is fine, and happens to everyone. But to mistake our reactions as something that stems directly from, or is inherent in a text is utterly absurd!

Now, I agree that misreadings have their uses. After all, the history of thought (excepting that which is inferred by anthropologists) is a history of misreading. Tracking people's inability to access the meaning of a given text is both interesting, and an extremely useful tool that can describe (among other things) what has gone horribly wrong with the world (and perhaps some of our few successes). e.g. we can explain the French revolution by a widespread misreading of Rousseau, and the second world war, by a frighteningly correct reading of Hegel and Fichte.


Lastly: while my friend would have us writers hand over the reigns of discussion to people incapable of leading, I hold that the very act of communication assumes the power of the writer. The writer chooses words, and, excepting a few trashy 20th century poets, he does so for a reason; would it surprise you to discover that the entire opera Bukowskii was in fact written in conjunction with my dog, tearing (after his own wont) words out of a dictionary I left lying on the ground? Yeah...I wouldn't be either. If I say to you that 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune', I am limiting your response; you cannot say 'Pizza? That is an excellent idea! I'll grab the phone. Shall we order wings too?' Writers select words from a wide range of them and set them down in particular orders to communicate specific things signified by those words. This itself is an act of limiting. Now, a writer may or may not have specific ends in mind: I write with the intent of converting my reader to my (and the quite obviously correct) view, my friend writes with the aim of increasing awareness about constructive applications of technology and other such things and causing people to give thought to such matters. Just because a writer may not tell you what to think, does not mean that his meaning is at all variable.

Observe:

scientist - someone who introduces combinations of known quantities in a planned-out situation with the end of causing something to occur in a manner hypothesized.

mad scientist - someone who introduces combinations of unknown quantities into the first situation at hand in order to see shit happen.

Every writer, like every legit scientist, sets out with a very specific purpose. He may not always - in fact he may never on a single occasion - achieve the desired result, however, authority of the writer in deciding meaning and directing discussion is enshrined in the very nature of language. Were it not, I might has well just give you a dictionary and tell you to make what you damn please of it.

You Can Only Ride My Rocket If You're Under 25 And No One's Watching...

I`ve never liked Adam Giambrone. Ever since he, aged 12 (or something ridiculous like that), was appointed head of the TTC, he`s proved even less capable than Italians, twelve year olds, and TTC chairpersons usually are. But today, I`m not angry with him. I don`t care really. I`m grateful that he won`t end up mayor of Toronto (the centre of the universe, for those of you who aren`t aware). What bothers me today is the way that his recent scandal has been portrayed in the media.

I opened the Toronto Star - that veritable bastion of English style and insightful opinion - And found the lead article began: `In making the decision of a lifetime, Adam Giambrone lived through a long, dark night of the Soul`. Really? A long, dark night of the soul? La noche oscura del alma? So what you are trying to tell me is that Mr. Giambrone's decision to withdraw from the mayoral race after it became known that he's been fuckin' more people than he's supposed to be is quite like, no, exactly like, St. John of the Cross' mystico-spiritual disembodied soul-journey to union with God. I couldn't have put it better myself...if I was a moron.

Since I am not a moron, let's see if I can't find a better (maybe even less arbitrary) literary allusion that would actually be relevant here:

'Mr. Giamboner, that magnanimous descendant of Remus, city councillor, TTC chair and great hope of some many experts who believed he's be mayor, told them it was over'.

The reference, of course is to Catullus 58; the magnanimous descendant or Remus is a Roman, whose cock is 'being milked' by the poem's subject, a woman being derided for her whorish ways. This is fitting because of a) Giambrone's Italian heritage b) it was his illicit sexual adventures that got him into the mess c) because everyone loves Catullus d) all of the above.

Furthermore, my mind is absolutely boggled by the fact that one would expect anything different from a) an Italian and b) a guy who isn't even married to the woman he's supposed to be banging. Firstly, Italians, from time immemorial, have been unable to keep it in their pants - watch HBO or read Tacitus if you don't believe me! Secondly, I will concede that my diction here is 'not with the times', but why would a man living in sin, refrain from further sin? Just throwing it out there...

Why I Hate The Olympics (But Wouldn't If This Were Berlin 1936)

As a sometime athlete, I know how exhilarating it can be to face off against the world's best. Back in my fencing days, one of the people I trained with was ranked 3rd in the world in the under 19 category. She routinely destroyed me. Several times, I got my ass handed to me at the Ontario provincials. There is nothing comparable to world class athletic competition - for athletes, at any rate.

My hatred, then, for the Olympics stems not from a hatred for athletes or athletic competition, but from the view that it does not make sense for all nations to host them and fund them with tax money. The government, as far as I am aware, is making no efforts to allow me to maximize my excellence as a scholar of arcane languages, or compete against other knowers of the arcane; unless we are willing to assert that athletes are more valuable than scholars (or bricklayers, or plumbers, or waitresses, or teachers, &c.) Since, in Canada, for the most part we are too timid to assert any sort of values (we love everyone and think everyone is equal!) this seems unlikely. And of course, there's also the fact that amateur athletes, unlike garbage truck drivers, glass-blowers, and other people with jobs, don't contribute much to the economy.

Under what conditions can such an ostentatious waste of government funds be justified? Under conditions wherein a nation has a vested interest in demonstrating its superiority over the world e.g. Nazi Germany getting ready to take over world world. Though, I confess, these last few years, Canada's 'top men' (pronounced as emphatically as in the second last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark) have ceased running their foreign policy ideas by me, I suspect that Canada is not gearing up to invade the world. Canada will never assert that it is the superlative at anything (except providing not great but good enough ish health-care) so I'm puzzled by this. In fact, Canada is too much of a pussy to invade itself. That's why in thirty years, after a long wait, the civil service so loved by one of my friends will finally be universally available in both of Canada's national languages: arabic and farsi.

Therefore, since I know it would be unrealistic to expect Canada to suddenly regrow (unfortunately, nationalism is less hardy than cancer) its nationalism (which it gave up with its racism forty years ago) I will settle for a cessation the ostentatious waste that is Canada`s pretend-nationalism. Please, spend my tax money on health care, education, infrastructure, or national defense instead of building a giant causeway inviting Islamic militants to blow themselves to heaven, once again distracting the world so that Russia can invade a worthless country while the world's eyes are elsewhere, and stop pissing away money on a bunch of faggoty athletes that make even shooting rifles look gay.

English Majors; and, why they are seldom to be trusted.

Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don't try it. You should leave that to people who haven't been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers.

There are very few people less qualified to speak, write, or even think about English literature than those who pretend to study it. To put it mildly, barring one acquaintance of mine, they are all imbeciles. The reason for this, aside from the genuine stupidity of some of their lot, is that they think it can be managed by people who can speak English; this is not necessarily true. In fact, this is rarely true. In fact, it is no more true than my driving a car makes me competent to talk about the intricacies of engineering and mass producing an internal combustion engine.

Let us look at a specimen of fairly straightforward 18th-century English prose.

I have observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a Book with Pleasure 'till he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of a mild or cholerick Disposition, Married or a Batchelor, with other Particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author. -from The Spectator no. 1 (Thursday, March 11, 1711) Addison

Now, let's pretend that we're English majors:

"From this text, we can see that tacit racist assumptions underly early 18th century ideas about authorship. The implication of this first sentence is that a reader would not like a book written by a black man, as it must be inferior to the writing of a 'fair man'. Addison will then set out some biographic details in order to allay the readers fears that he may be one such inferior writer"

The problem with this analysis, of course, is that it is absolute bullshit. Our little English major sees the words 'black man' and immensely, modern racial discourse is what is afoot in his little mind. Aside, of course, from the fact that racism, as we know it, was rather unknown to the early 18th century (being, in it's present form, a byproduct of late 18th and 19th century imperial colonization), there is an exceptional meaning that this phrase carries, which can only be recognized by an educated (a "led out of ignorance by instruction in the Latin language") man.

Observe Catullus 93

Nil nimium studio, Caesar, tibi velle placere
nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo.

Which we will very liberally translate:

Frankly, Caesar, I don't care whether or not you like me
And I don't give a flying fuck whether you're a white or black man.

As Caesar's pigmentation was not a matter of debate among the romans of the late republic (either way, it seems he was not at all shiny but of a lustreless complexion), we know that what is meant here is something more akin to the distinction between good and bad. The idiom in Latin, 'albus an ater sit non curo' merely means 'let him be x or not x, it makes no difference to me'. The word alba also means 'favourable' (since white sparrows - alba avis - were used in divination).

So Addison, it seems, was not a racist. Or maybe he was, I don't care. Merely, the opening of The Spectator no. 1 is definitely not evidence that he was. It is, on the contrary, evidence that he has read Catullus (and, we can surmise, other books as well).

English cannot be profitably read by those who do not understand, at the barest minimum, Latin and French. So, my little English majors, either learn something, or put a sock in it.

De Officio; or, An Anatomy of the Civil Service

The cant of Semitic speech metaphorically extends physiological words and gives them a whole slew of applications. For example, the Akkadian word rēšum, Hebrew ראש Arabic رأس all mean head; in addition, these are frequently used to mean things like 'top', 'beginning' - and thus, Jews celebrate the Head-of-the-Year in September - 'person', 'the principle amount of a loan upon which interest is paid', 'slave', &c.

The present article is about another such word: išdum (dual: išdān; plural: išdātum). This word is Akkadian and the body part to which it refers is the buttocks. It is metaphorically extended by the ancient Semitic speakers of Mesopotamia to mean 'base', 'foundation', and, my favourite, 'administration', which might perhaps best be rendered by our present English 'civil service'. We, of course, have an English parallel; we may refer to power as having it's 'seat' somewhere. After all, assuming you are sitting down, it is your bottom which is propping the rest of you up. [You physiscists will likely be displeased with this; however, chairs are inanimate and as such are less apt to influence human speech habits than animate things like, say 'people' (and their bottoms).]

A king's administration (a government's civil service) is undoubtedly the foundation upon which gubernatory power is consolidated; without the ability to excecute policies, any office can be invested with whatever powers you will without being in any way effective. So, while I affirm the necessity of the civil service and am grateful for the fact that here in Canada, we have a pretty good one (go to Italy if you don't believe me), I do hope that I may be permitted to civilly remind said servants that it would behoove them to occasionally remember that they are naught but the government's ass.

De Barbarum Conundro

Since it is likely that my appearance will give the reader cause to suspect me of partiality in this matter, I will begin by offering the best defense for being clean shaven that I can.

The best argument against the whiskers is probably that which stems from natural rights; it is a classically liberal defense and runs, more or less, as follows: whiskers have the right to do what they please; they may choose to abide where they wish, they may practice what faith they will, they may engage in free enterprise if it suits them, &c. Of course, all this, provided that they do not infringe upon the rights of anyone else. The problem of course, is that when they choose to take up residence on a man's face, they violate the rights of that man in one very significant way viz. the right to bear children. Though it speaks to the irrational tastes of women that such a sign of virility is so thoroughly shunned, the fact remains that once whiskers begin to bivouac upon a man`s cheeks, his every attempt to procreate will be foiled. Thus, since an encamped army of whiskers upon a man`s face prevent him from sowing his seed, he has every right to attack with any arma (I can`t imagine any tela being effective) at hand. Of course, though the severity with which whiskers are commonly treated may be lamentable, retrograde, barbaric, or what you will, it seems that men are perfectly justified in dealing thusly with them.

Now, why then, should any man conceed large tracts of his face to such an (alleged) enemy? Because the complex ecosystem of a man's face can be much benefited by the presence of such creatures. Just as trees, as we all know, produce invaluable oxygen for our planet, so do whiskers produce esteemable virtus for our comportment. Especially given the inherantly feminine nature of intellectual and cultural activity (recall, it was Šamhat who first initiated Enkidu into human culture), it behooves men, particularly those who fancy themselves the slightest bit intelligent, to counteract this femininity with an equal or more potent dose of manliness. Men, reclaim your humanity, and engage with human civilization on your terms! Let not the sheath of a woman's body be the gateway through which you must crawl to touch and contemplate beauty! (Oh dear, how very Neoplatonic of me...)

The Cult of Modern Politics

Lately I've been reading a little bit of political science. Not super recent political science - because most of that is noobish, nescient (non-alliterative) nonsense - but perceptive stuff: Joseph Schumpeter, Michael Oakeshott, &c. I also read, a few months ago, a paper by Richard Hofstadter The Paranoid Style In American Politics

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html

What have I synthesized from the aforementioned readings? That Oakeshott's claim, that over the last few centuries European rationalism, on account of its very flawed tenets concerning the nature of human knowledge-aquisistion and customs, has occasioned a fragmentation in the both the left and the right's view of political events over time - and that this alters the nature of the very process of governing, is absolutely true. I will explain why this is even scarier than Oakeshott lets on:

Since governing cannot be viewed by a rationalist as an organic process that grows, adapts, and mutates over time, it fragments - each of the film's frames is viewed individually, as a photograph. The process of governing becomes a series of reactions to crises, real or imagined. The two-party democratic system (we may here include Canada) has very well adapted itself to this conception. Every election campaign is run with the following formula:

"My opponent, X, has not/is not/will not adequately dealt/deal with crises y,z, &c. I will. Vote for me, or doom impends"

The crises, may of course be real: the present recession, the war in Afganistan, the war in Iraq. The problem, of course, lies in the fact that modern political institutions would be unable to function without these. I doubt very much that there will ever be a pax Democratica; democracy needs war, disease, economic failure, injustice, &c.

Unlike the ancient millenarian cults (Christian, Judaic, or whatever) of the ancient world, the cult of modern politics is not merely psychotic; it is destroying the world in order to create the very fear which enables its survival.