Postmodern approach to a Text

What is a Text?
In its older and still most common sense Text means written words, usually words given some kind of
authority. Editors preparing literary editions or historical documents seek a text "most nearly
representing the author's original work" (Oxford English Dictionary). For literary scholars a text is a work
of literature; for historians, a text is a historical document; for musicologists, a text is the words to a
piece of music.

How a Text is understood?

Scholars make sense of literary texts using a combination of hermeneutic and structuralist approaches.
Hermeneutics, a method of interpreting meaning in written texts, arose as a means of explicating the
Bible. While we still speak of a biblical text and a commentary attached to it, today hermeneutics covers
the interpretation of any text, biblical or otherwise. The meaning of a literary text is usually a kind of
paraphrase, using other words to express what is said and what is implied in the reader's confrontation
with an author's text: what the text is "about." Most of what goes on in undergraduate literature
classes, for example, is practical criticism of individual poems, short stories, and novels-what they mean,
what they are about-and professors always are returning to the texts, the words on the page, for
evidence. These days, individual texts are almost always considered in their historical contexts. The idea
that literature inhabits an eternal realm of its own is no longer given credence when interpretive
practice is brought to bear on texts. Structuralist approaches, on the other hand, are not concerned with
unique meanings in individual texts. Instead, structuralist strategies probe relations and patterns among
a group of texts and particularly in "the conditions [of writing and reading] which make literature
possible" (Culler 1975:viii). Structuralists not only discuss literary conventions, such as plot, but also
theorize about communicative acts in general. Semiotics is a kind of structuralism.

Postmodern view of a Text

Three basic principles underlie the post-modernistic critique of literary interpretation (and, by
extension, other social sciences).

First Principle

The first is that one should have no compunctions about taking a philosophical approach. There is no
point simply in juxtaposing one text against another. This does not however invalidate the need for, or
the utility of, an attempt at deep analysis beyond the texts workable surface. [T]he most powerful and
apposite readings of literary works may be those that treat them as philosophical gestures by teasing
out the implications of their dealings with the philosophical oppositions that support them (Culler,
1982, p. 149).

Second Principle

The second is that the structuralist tradition gives short shrift to other alternative accounts, which
simply are different, or potentially even more explanatory. An unequivocal interpretation of a text is a
privileged reading that simply suits our purposes whereas to be authentic in (our) postmodern
condition is to admit the indistinguishable fictionality of all interpretive models (Waugh, 2001, p.
304).

Paul Ricoeur (1970) originated this critique of structural discourse. Any attempt to discern the meaning
of a text hypothesizes a gap between its real meaning and its apparent meaning. Consequently one
believes the text presents us with a challenge to believe that [its] true meaning emerges only
through interpretation (Stewart, 1989, p. 296). We become suspicious of the text. What is required
in order to alleviate this hermeneutics of suspicion is a radical critique of the very possibility of
understanding and interpreting the text, to begin with (Gadamer, 1984, p. 73).

Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and Heidegger all engaged in this style of analysis. It leads, however, to another
problem, which is that each of them perpetuated singular world-views, inconsistent with the others.
This argument now primarily is associated with Jacques Derrida (1967) and deconstructionism. For
example, Homer schematized persons into heroes and everybody else. Dantes paradigm was sinners
versus saints. Western philosophy is based on the concept that individuals are rational, which entails
its opposite; and the Judeo-Christian traditions views of all of us as creatures of God. All these
destructive discourses and all their analogues are trapped in a kind of circle (Waugh, 2001, p. 354).
None is transferable or for that matter even intelligible to any of the others. Rather than adding up to
a composite whole, they cancel each other out. Derrida characterizes this as a demand for
narrative. However, No one inflection enjoys any absolute privilege, no meaning can be fixed or
decided upon. No border is guaranteed, inside or out, (1979, p. 87, p. 78). (1)

Derridas theme has been echoed in the works of philosophers in the British-American academic
community such as Richard Rorty (1981). Says Rorty, both contemporary analytic (e.g., Wittgenstein)
and continental philosophy (e.g., Heidegger) offer parallel deconstructions of philosophys traditional
claim to privilege, to be the discipline that adjudicates the claims to knowledge advanced by the others.
There is no such foundation to knowledge. Each discipline offers its own way of knowing, and
philosophy should not place itself in a position of privilege vis--vis these ways of knowing (Dasenbrock,
1989, p. 9).

In the social sciences, Max Weber averred that nature is blank a tabula rosa, with universal and
unconditionally valid laws. (2) We then in turn impose culture onto it and culture recursively makes us
the types of beings we are. To continue with the above example, there really were heroes for Homer
and there really were sinners for Dante. The Greeks had heroes (instead of saints) with their respective
attributes because thats what challenged them as they existed in their spatio-temporal environment.
Someone like Odysseus is both a cultural precipitate and a cultural catalyst. Homers template has no
inherent or atemporal meaning. It pertained, to the extent it did, only to the culture he described.
Different cultural perspectives best are regarded as typological categorizations or ways of parsing
nature.

Third Principle

A third problem is that of the authors intent, to the extent it is possible even to hypothesize such a
state of mind. Most structuralist readings depend on extra-textual evidence and biographical facts
about the authors life. They frequently however do not support the proffered interpretation, or
beleaguers it even further because they are inconsistent with the text itself. Under Derridas view the
author cannot control the meaning of the text, since it functions autonomously from authorial intention.
A text can have multiple meanings, one of which might be intended, but none of which uniquely are
compelled.

Dreyfus colleague at Berkeley, John Searle, addressed this issue in the context of his theory of intention.
In his influential debate with Derrida, Searle (1994) says there are two ways to interpret a text: one
based on literal sentence meaning and another based on speaker meaning. Under the former, the
meaning of the text consists in the meanings of the words and sentences of which it consists. The
latter is what the writer intends to mean (within the confines of the language and background
assumptions of which the text is a narrative). In this second sense one must insist on understanding
the authors intentions in understanding the text (p. 652).

Searle invites us to consider a hypothetical case where one comes across a series of marks on a beach
somehow comprising the words to a verse of Wordsworths poem A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal.
[T]hese marks certainly look as if they constituted a sentence composed of English words, but it isnt
necessary for them to have been produced intentionally (p. 649), unless they were. [D]ifferent tokens
of a sentence type can be uttered on different occasions with different intentions (p. 658), some of
which might be opaque (as with this particular example). These different approaches are not necessarily
incompatible. They are not competing answers to the same question, but noncompeting answers to
quite different questions (p. 655).
Searle can be read as supporting a structuralist program. If the meaning of a text can be derived from
its words and sentences then it may cohere into a single, intra-textual perspective (subject to Derridas
critique). One also can appeal to the authors overt statements and background for evidence as to what
he or she meant. Even on this second definition, though, most structuralist readings fall short simply
because the lives of authors have numerous internal inconsistencies and contradictions.

(An example for understanding-

An Example Herman Melvilles Moby Dick

To illustrate these principles further I will consider Herman Melvilles Moby Dick. One way to read Moby
Dick is as a critique of monotheism or onto-theology (that is, the idea that the being of specific entities
can be explained in terms of other specific entities, such as a god). Theology () is discourse
about god or gods religion, conventionally understood. Onto-theology defines a god as the originator
of being. In the Judeo-Christian Tradition the God of Abraham and Moses produced or caused
everything that is. Taking a post-modernist view, however, referring to God simply is telling a story
tracing one form of entity (us) back to its origin with some other entity (God).

From the post-modern standpoint this conceptual misunderstanding has pervasively infiltrated the
Judeo-Christian literary and narrative tradition and its metaphysics (Heidegger, 1955). Classically,
metaphysics (also a Greek word) is the study of being as such, the first causes of things or things
that do not change (Ingwagen, 2007). It establishes the conceptual parameters of intelligibility by
ontologically grounding and theologically legitimating our changing historical sense of what is
(Thomson, 2000, p. 297). Each culture has its own metaphysics. By codifying and disseminating an
understanding of what entities are, metaphysics provides each historical epoch of intelligibility with its
ontological bedrock. And by furnishing an account of the ultimate source from which entities issue,
metaphysics supplies intelligibility with a kind of foundational justification that Heidegger
characterizes as theological. Theology reflects a series of historical transformations in our
metaphysical understanding of entities are (Thomson, 2005, p. 8).

The development and progression of Western metaphysics (since the ancient Greeks and the archaic
Israelites) has resulted in a proliferation of distinctions such as reality versus appearance and the
rational versus the irrational, all of which Heidegger rejects. It is a short step from Heideggers
definition of onto-theology to include monotheism in the sense of Abrahamic religions (primarily
Judaism and Christianity, but also never mentioned by Heidegger Islam) (Westphal, 2001, p. 9 16;
Crowe, 2007, p. 187). (3)

Under this polytheistic interpretation, Melville is against onto-theology. The primary evidence of this
tendency is Ahabs folly of attributing cognition to an insensate beast. To set forth several more: there
is no single right perspective to describe the whale its image cant be depicted while it is in its
natural habitat (the ocean) and it loses its shape on land (Chapter 55, Chapter 56). Science doesnt
understand it and is unable to explain its migratory patterns, social behavior or even physiology
(Chapter 79). It moves its tail unpredictably in myriad different directions (Chapter 86). It is covered
with hieroglyphic scars (so for that matter is Queequeg). It is white the absence of color (Chapter 42).
Its spout cant be distinguished against the backdrop of sea and sky (Chapter 85). The sound it makes
when spouting is a kind of white noise. The whale skeleton of the Bower in the Arsacides (Chapter 102)
is both a cathedral and a prison. The trees surrounding it rustle like a weavers loom, the sound of
which also is white noise. We are immersed in it and deafened by it as it obscures the meaning of
individual discourse, just like we are blinded by the whiteness of the whale (Chapter 42).

Contrasted with the whales relentless monochromaticity are various other phenomena suggesting the
plentitude of nature. To cite several examples: Pip hopefully spots a swarm of multitudinous, God-
omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the rmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw Gods
foot upon the treadle of the loom (Chapter 93). When Ahab nails a doubloon to the mast (Chapter 99),
each of the sailors has a different perception of its nature as a talisman. Even the whales spout acts as
a prism, breaking white light into the colors of the spectrum. The colors of this rainbow invite a plethora
of different explanations. The Bower of the Arsacides is a colorful carpet, woven by God. A weaver
God who reveals the rainbow facilitates this polyglot understanding. By focusing intently on one
objective Moby Dick Ahab loses visibility of everything else. The whale is white only for those who
want for it to have a settled meaning, which it doesnt have. These reference points are evidence of
Melvilles endorsement of an essentially polytheistic perspective. (4)

We know as a matter of his biography however that Melville was nurtured in orthodox Calvinism by his
Dutch Reformed mother and minister; yet by the time he wrote Moby Dick, he had not only lived among
cannibals and whalemen but had swam through libraries (McIntosh, 1986, p. 23). His interest was not
so much to attack traditional ideas about God with the object of replacing them with better ideas,
such as polytheism. Rather, his mission is prophetic, that of calling us to a deeper life (Herbert, 1986,
p. 113). (5) His revolutionary impact upon the novel form does not derive from Christianitys absence
a formal experimentalism released from the grip of conventions that have their roots in a defeated
Protestant orthodoxy but precisely from its continued presence (Franchot, 1998, p. 157) (emphasis
added).
Such a program hardly can be interpreted as anti-onto-theological. Melvilles quarrel with authority
was a complex affair, and to strip his profoundly symbolic writings down to theological allegories is
reductive (Bezanson, 1953, p. 268). He rejects the simplifications, reductions and isolations of
dualisms such as monotheism versus polytheism. In its place he substitutes a language of wonder that
preserves a fascination with the particulars of the natural world while simultaneously embracing and
critiquing our assumptions about it (Luck, 2007, p. 5). This enables us to see outside of our traditional
ways of thinking about religion and spirituality (Coffler, 2006, p. 112). In addition to encountering the
realm of the transcendent, Melville also wanted to dramatize [both the] parallel failures of human
striving (Ahab) and knowing (Ishamel) (Buell, 1986, p. 61) (emphasis added).

The ideal culture Melville envisions is one that permits these different perspectives to cohabitate, or in
which they become entirely irrelevant. Melville is not an individualist or personality driven. Nor is
he some kind of a latter-day ecologist, concerned only with mans depredations against nature. (6) He is
far more concerned with achieving a balance between purposeful human action and the world that
constrains it including not only nature, but also human culture, history and conventions.

Culture is produced by human social interactions such as the squeezing of the hands (Chapter 94). On
such occasions we attune ourselves to social practices and become sensitized to the corresponding
intuitions they evoke. They are created, manifest themselves, and we are aware of them (to the extent
we are) only within the space of this clearing. They are a precipitate of dwelling, standing against the
homelessness of wandering and an individualistic stance towards the world. (7)

Although not referring to Melville, two modern social theorists have expressed this idea with particular
clarity: Robert Bellah and Charles Taylor. In his essay Civil Religion in America (1967, p. 175), Bellah
elaborated on Rousseaus definition of civil religion, redefining it as a collection of beliefs, symbols,
and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity. It is neither sectarian
nor in any specific sense Christian.

According to Taylor (1989, p. 512), We are now in an age in which a publicly accessible cosmic order of
meanings is an impossibility. (8) As a result, we have tended to displace in importance the sense of
belonging to large scale collective agencies (Taylor, 2007, p. 484). This is contrary to our nature,
because to make the demand for meaning is not an optional stance. It is central to our humanity (p.
584), and cultural institutions are an indispensable matrix of civilizational order (p. 491). Any
contemporary definition of self requires answers totally dependent on cultural or moral contexts,
frameworks, or orientation human categories of personal and social action, of value (Tauber, 2006).
This is appropriate because (man) is a self-interpreting animal. He is necessarily so, for there is no such
thing as the structure of meanings for him independently of his interpretation of them; one is woven
into the other (Taylor, 1987, p. 46). (9)

The outcomes envisioned by Bellah and Taylor do not imply an anti-onto-theological critique. They do
not iterate a rigid monotheism or an anti-onto-theological opposition to it. As if anticipating Bellah and
Taylor, Melville does not fault monotheism per se. All religions employ a controlling hierarchy; with
narrow doctrines that restrain and control peoples choices and lives. But Moby Dick should not be
read as depicting a battle between good and evil with Ahab as the human hero trying to destroy the
symbol of evil in the whale. Ahab may be a madman who is convinced that he has the right and the
power to pursue his personal goal as symbolized in Moby Dick, a mere creature in nature that has little
or no interest in humans. But this isnt Melvilles point. What is wrong is any form of religion that
structures the world in such ways as to be available to empower an Ahab, who believes that he has the
knowledge of good and evil and may act for the rest of his society, nation, or the world (Elliott, 2005,
pp. 190 191). In juxtaposing Ahab against Moby Dick, Melville forces the reader to contemplate the
Absolute suddenly placed in what appears to be the ordinary contingencies of life, and then to consider
the consequences (Obenzinger, 2006, p. 181). All of which illustrates Melvilles conception of a
dynamic clearing situated beyond the categories of faith. (10)

Melville also suggests a resolution of the apparent impasse between monotheism (as embedded in the
Judeo-Christian Tradition) and the more authentic understanding of being. In this respect, while it is
(trivially) true that no single artist can ever represent an entire culture, there is a profound sense in
which Melville is truly representative of the kind of humanity that gives meaning to culture (Bryant, p.
4). Moby Dick conceives one last and greatest quest for a whole vision of a whole world (Grenberg,
1989, p. 93). )