Wed Jan 22 05:04:05 1997

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From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" 
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Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 09:58:06 +000
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Patrick Durusau responds to my post about postmodernist theory & TC 
in part:

> One of the literary critics who I assume Hurtado would include in his
> et. al. is Stanley Fish.  Interested text critics might want to read his
> _Is There a Text in This Class_ and _Doing What Comes Naturally_ before
> accepting these remarks as reasons to dismiss deconstructionism as
> unworthy of their attention.  

Yup.  I agree. Fish gave lectures at the U of Manitoba during my 
tenure there, and so I think I have some idea of his views, and I 
stand by my statements.  I have not "dismissed deconstructionism as 
unworthy", but have warned about embracing the approach uncritically. 
 Deconstructionists and other "postmodernists" rightly point to the 
complicated process involved in reading, and rightly emphasize the 
role of readers and reading communities--no problem there.  But the 
more radical theorists celebrate this difficulty and effectively deny 
any relevance or possibility of attempting to gain access to the 
author(s) of a text, thus effectively denying the huuman communiction 
process that lies at the basis of all humane sciences.  If students 
of this strand of theory haven't picked this up, I beg to suggest 
further reading.
> 
> Hurtado also says: 
D. continues: 
> I have not read any postmodernist critic that denies that books are
> indeed written by authors.  It is the leap from this physical "fact" to
> a reading of the text that claims to have the same epistemological class
> as the fact of writing that causes concern. 

And I know of no responsible interpreter who would make the same 
epistemological claim for his/her interpretation as he/she would for 
the existence of the text!  Let's not erect straw men.  My point was 
that authors and speakers use language (and written language signs) 
to *communicate meaning*, and any theoretical construct that denies 
or disdains this is both misguided and anti-human.  I am by no means 
the only (or best read) person to make basically the same criticism 
about the solipsistic tendency of radical postmodernist theory. 

> I do not think that textual criticism can claim to be a "historical
> question" unless text critics are simply concerned with "texts" as
> artifacts.
But reconstructing the text-as-artefact is *exactly* a key aim of 
textual criticism:  i.e. the aim of reconstructing the text of the 
4th century (ala Hort) or the 2nd cent, or the "autograph"--these are 
all this kind of text-as-artefact question.

> (I am ignoring for this 
discussion the abandonment of the
> "history as given" model by historians.)  
If D. here alludes to a 19th cent. von Rankian view of history, this 
is another straw man, which I am glad he chooses not to employ.

 >Most 
of the text critics on
> this list are concerned with not only the "text" as artifact but also
> with its relationship to other texts and ultimately, an interpretation
> of the text.  Postmodernist literary criticism does not mean that text
> critics must/should abandon their favorite techniques or methods.  It
> does mean that textual critics should examine the epistemology that
> underlies claims to know the meaning of a text when it was written,
> considering that the text was written in a 2nd language of the critic,
> some 1900 years more or less ago, in completely different social and
> cultural settings and preserved only in incomplete copies.

Yes, of course!  We all need to be continually urged to humility in 
our claims to understand (a good Christian virtue!).  And all the 
specific difficulties D. mentions are evident.  But these in no way 
justify the *theoretical* construct that denies the *validity* of 
the  attempt to wrestle with these difficulties and (with all due 
humility for each attempt) seek to overcome them to some degree in 
the effort to understand something or someone, and not simply offer 
"interpretations" whose only claim to value (a la Fish) can be that 
they are entertaining or innovative.  There is a *serious* leap in 
logic here, if real difficulties involved in reading/understanding an 
ancient text (e.g., cultural and linguistic distance, uncertainty of 
the textual reading, etc.) are taken as a basis for disdain toward 
the approach to texts as vehicles of meanings that can come *to* us 
and not simply *from* us.

Selah,
Larry Hurtado
  
L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: 0131-650-8920
Fax: 0131-650-6579
E-mail:  L.Hurtado@ed.ac.uk

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