"Behind the text" and "In the Text"
One of first questions for hermeneutics is,
What actions are performed in the making and the use of text?
Actions acquire meaning from their functional relationship to other actions. In order to grasp the meaning of a text, therefore we need to go outside the text as well as inside it.
To understand the text, Schleiermacher says "
"the interpreter must put her/himself
both objectively and subjectively
in the position of the author."
Schleiermacher was referring to author in a printed mediated world - no different for the interpreter in a electronic/digital one.
Speaking on the author the more we know about him/her, the better equipped we are for interpretation . Therefore we must proceed methodically employing all tools of historical research as we reconstruct the life -world behind the text.
After preparing my hypertext proposal I have come to know a "few things" - hyperlinks if done well can direct the reader to what is meaningful rather than being confronted with a whole lot of different approaches.
The illustrations and referencing in an encylcopeadia, footnotes in an article are not that different from electronic hypertext. I agree with Bulkeley
"each reader comes to the commentary witrh different prior knowledge and experience, therefore each needs a different set of information in which Hypertext links allows."
Interpretation though like artistic creating (done with Hypertext), is a form of human action and is thus subject to the same vicissitudes and open to the same possibilites in all human actions
We recognize that that we do not come to these biblical texts "fresh" and that we are not the first ones to read these texts and struggle with their relationship to faith and practice and that we are part of a global community of believers who over time have returned again and again to these text for stability and challenge and encouragement.
Electronic hypertext has the capacity to confront authors with the ability to bring the text to life thereby extending their readers to create an awareness of their own hermeneutical processes.
Te atapo - the dawn
2 Comments:
Dont you think Schleiermacher's idea of the author really changes in a digital enviroment? Digital for me creates three different authors;
1. The texts original author
2. The creator of the hypertext who chooses how and where the text appears- creates the texst a new
3. Like you say in your previous post, the reader becomes an author as well- in a non linear way, start from a point of chioce, and ends anyway or choose not to end at all is ending means reading the whole text.
Which of the authors are you talking about?
I think Schleiermachar's author is the creator of all text whether it be the original, the new or the reader. Although each separate author may move towards different outcomes.
My whole reasoning is centred on the creator or author of the new text being able to step out of one's own frame of mind into that of the original author using of course different exegetical/ hermeneutical tools.
To a degree it involves a hermenetic of suspicion.
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