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Home , Hermeneutics, Historicism, Interpretant, Paul de Man, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson

STRUCTURALISM,POST­ networks" and computer communica­ AND tion in poststructural attitudes but at the same time new ways of NEW HERMENEUTICS taking in consideration the fundamental of fictional . Eberhard Lammert1 Structuralism, Abstract Poststructuralism and New Hermeneutics When in European scholarship natural have separated from The three in the title of this 1 during the 19 h century the lecture are not all of the same quality. of hermeneutics won the Words with the endings -ism, -isme, distinctive m ark characterizing the -ismo or -ismus refer in most European special methods of the humanities in to a way of thinking, a contrast to explanation practiced by or even a conviction shared by natural sciences. The high esteem in a group of people in order to agree on a literary studies for the individuality of thing or even on all the phenomena of a poet or writer implied that the most the world. This applies to modes of important aim of understanding and viewing life like and interpreting was to find the author's but also to the world's secret intenti on. Maintaining the results great , Catholicism or of such in li terary studies Buddhism. If a community of people necessarily must remain subjective or c hoose such a concept in order to even ideolog.ically determined made the distinguish itself from perhaps Russian formalists- -late r the predominating directions, then under structurali sts from Prague and Western certain circumstances it might take on Europe- -try to find a more scientific belligerent traits, and at the same time constitution of a poetic text. strengthens the communal conscious­ ness of the people that gather under this This lecture intends to describe the name. development of the different methods during the last decades up to the point The concepts of 'structuralism' and where you find analysis of " 'poststructuralism' also follow this rule. In the of , they

1 designate an epoch in which at first E~eritus Professor of German and Com­ linguists and then academic and parative , Free University of Ber­ theorists of li terature decided to treat lin and Director of the Center for Literary their objects in a new way, in sharp Studies, Berlin; Former president of Free distinction to the previous in Uni versity of Berlin(1976-1983) these disciplines. The fact that poststructuralism follows structuralism

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shows, moreover, that even its own arms against hermeneutics, as they have adherents accorded it the status of done several times since the early only for a limited time. twentieth century, it can only be a matter of either simply an attack on the Concepts with the suffixes -ics, -ique, way hermeneutics was practiced at that -ica or - ik describe in most European time or an attack on hermeneutics itself, languages an area to whic h people, with the accusation that even if the observing and organizing, have applied interpretation of texts is a life practice, boundaries; and they thereby describe it could never lead to a result upon which conceptually or practically with this doubts could not be cast, and therefore area. Subjects like physics, economics, it has no c laim to be a sc ience. can do this, but ways of Scientifically exact research into texts thinking and working like engineering, can only yield on their tactics and can, too. composition and at most, ask why they must be interpreted in order to be In this series, hermeneutics designates understood. the special ability of people to interpret texts, that is, to uncover and make In fact, the group of young linguists and comprehe ns ible the message or the literati that came together at the that is contained in a beginning of the First World War in the text-particularly when this text contains Russian city of Saint Petersburg wanted holy or magic messages from another to mount an attack against both: they time or a nother world, or has been were battling against writte n in a fore ign . In exploited for the purpose of supporting contrast to the -ism concepts, this is a all sorts of theses on philosophical or capacity that is needed everywhere and , and they insisted that at all times. In fact, from the earliest the specific form of poetic language, not on, there were medicine men its , is the onl y legitimate and later magicians, monks and of scholarly analysis. If one takes scholars who aw religious tidings in into account that hermeneutics - the astrological , the flight of birds or precepts of textual interpretation - has handed down from past ages, a history of at least one and ha lf and who even predicted the future from thousand years in Europe alone, from them. Ever s ince c ultures gave the earl y Christian church father themselves , they have had to be Augustine onwards, and that in the interpreted by lawyers and judges in second half of the twentieth century, the each case in order to administer . Italian It is evident that poems that express d escribed hermene utics as the their message in images and rhetorical fundamental method of all the human figures challenge one to interpret them. sciences (Teoria generable della But each is basically already the lnterpretazione, Milano 1955), then the inte rpretatio n of a text, and thus a extent of the affront becomes evident: hermeneutic act. for the structuralists, in the name of a more exact scientificity, fought a pitched Therefore, when structurali sts ri se up in battle against a study of literature that

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lends the appearance of scientific to that which is always only a In , such lattice forms occur subjective interpretation. In fact, the rise particularly in crystals in which of the exact sciences - and in Western molecules of different elements come since the l91h century, it was together according to a particular increasingly claimed that only , in order to bring into being a measurable results could guarantee the formation that has its own forms of objective 'truth' of a thing- played a construction and usually a beauty of its significant role in the frequent revolt own too. It is also significant that the against textual interpretation as the most molecules of a crystal structure can important practice in academic literary become mobile at certain temperatures. practices. We address this point during the What do structuralists mean when they transition from structuralism to want to limit academic dealings with poststructuralism. In any case, one can literature? In Roman times, the word see from this that the structuralists are 'structura' already meant, first and thinkers of system. Unlike the foremost, 'masonry'. Masonry does not positivists, they are interested not as consist of one stone, but of a myriad, much in the individual elements of the and each stone does not sit firmly in the language and their historical wall where one sees it; instead it is held development, but rather in the functions in place by the mortar in which the that a segment of the whole text - a bricklayers have laid it. Something of 'Lexie,' as would call the human work that is the only thing it later - performs in a phrase or a that can produce such a structure coherent . Such segments can obviously sti II adheres to this archaic be arranged parallel to others in order concept of 'structura'. Instead of this, to strengthen a motif, or in opposition the structuralists were particularly fond to another motif or can also be nodes in of using the image of a woven web or a whole network of relations that holds lattice work in order to show the a text together. uncircumventable uniqueness of a text. Such lattice work also plays a On one point, however, there appears to s ignificant role for authors in the be agreement between the observation second half of the twentieth century, for of such a text structure and that which a example in Alexander Kluge's structural hermeneuticist makes his task. And that analysis of the battle of Stalingrad in his is that both inquire of a text, as it lies novel Schlachtbeschreibung (Oiten, before them, not just about its material 1964), as he describes in hundreds of composition - stone or paper, notch or individual enlistments the turn of the of ink, vocabulary and grammar, Second World War and the defeat of the but also about that which it represents German Sixth Army, or for the lyricist beyond its outer composition. For a text Paul Celan, who conceived of his is not merely an object. A text is also poems as a cage of language in which is always a for something else that it kept the millionfold death the Holocaust itself is not, and it is precisely this other brought upon European Jewry. which must be excluded from it. For this

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, that which, since , has With these almost irreconcilable foci of held true for all objects cannot be said knowledge, the young advocates of a of texts: "their form is the mode of text analytics and the traditional appearance of their content." What custodians of a he rme neutic study of holds true for a text is rather "its form is literature were at opposing poles from the mode of appearance of possible each other around 1920, and even in the contents." For th is reason, in reverse, the year 1966, which is to say a decade after content of a linguistic expression can Emilio Betti's renewed proclamation of also occur in different forms, such as in hermeneutics as the foundation of all · a and in a poem. human sciences, Michel Focault made it c lear in his of the The advocates of the aesthetics of Human Sciences (Les Mots et les genius who the tone in the West from Choses, 1966; The Order ofthings, the eighteenth unti I the beginning of the London 1970) what new tension the twentieth century really did believe that structuralists had conjured up: "Le every genuinely poetic text was unique, partage entre !'interpre tation et Ia its content and its form corresponded formalisation - il est vrai qu'il nous perfectly to each other. But those authors presse aujourd'hui et nous domine"­ who stood for this aesthetics also "The disparity between interpretation suggested as a rule to their hearers or and formalisation menaces us today and readers that they should refrain from any dominates us." word of interpretation of their own, in pious awe of a poetic text. We now ask ourselves why this tension at the beginning of this century had to Apart from such sacrali sation of the arise and prevail for the larger part of poetic text that happens wherever the century and even perhaps until takes over the role of rel igion as today? For this, first we need to take a announcer of truth, structuralism on the glance at the older of the two activities, one side and Hermeneutics on the other the history of textual interpretation. In side pose quite different questions to a so doing, I shall mention only briefly text. Structurali sm asks "What is this the developmental stages of text?" hermeneuti cs asks "What does hermeneutics that were crucial for the this text say?" Moreover, structuralism antagonism that e rupted in the asks " In which forms do sounds, twentieth century. written c haracters, grammatical, stylistic and also semantic elements of As it did in other cultures in Europe too, the present form of language create a the canon of the Holy Scriptures, connection that lets itself be addressed therefore principally the , provided a a poem, for example?" Hermeneutics, the impetus for the development of more in contrast, asks in addition: "What and more techniques of interpretation in sense and which meaning can be the courses of the centuries. The word deduced from the interplay of the sounds of God and his prophets required and the written c haracters, the into the language and into the grammatical, the stylistic and the of all later generations. This zeal semantic elements as a whole?" to understand as exactly as possible what

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God had to say to man was carried over Halderlin more in reverse into the into the eighteenth century, when the message of his own philosophy. poet was proclaimed the "second maker" or a "Prometheus second under Of course, Heidegger was not alone in Jove," to the wish to penetrate as deeply this ambition to put himself, interpret­ as possible into the secret message of ing, in the place of the writer. In some the poetic word. It was not by chance scholars of literature, in particular those that for this reason, around 1800, the who interpret poetry in their own lan­ theologian F riedrich Daniel Ernst guage, this end stage of Schleiermac­ · Schleiermacher became the founder of her's hermeneutic recommendation a new hermeneutics, for which he became pe rverted into the habit of drafted two main rules: firstly, the justifying their own Weltanschauung must cast off his own with the words of poetry, and for this and entirely assume that of reason, in not a few cases they willingly the writer. Secondly, the interpretant fell prey, precisely under the dictation­ should determine the meaning of each ships or dictatorships of the twentieth and every word "in accordance with its century, to the prevailing . companionship with the words that surround it." This second rule is the By the turn of the century, t he beginning of tenets of composition that di stinguished philosopher and already around 1800 were also paving theoretician of knowledge Wilhelm the way to structural analysis of poetic Dilthey had further developed texts. Schleiermacher's hermeneutics into general precepts for the understanding However, it was principall y the first of texts and had even used these tenets goal, to approach as closely as possible of unde rstanding to categorically the assumed opinion and disposition of distinguish the process of knowledge of the author, that became dominant and what is called the humanities from the even the ruling one in the time to come. explanatory procedure of the natural Middle communities were founded sciences. Dilthey's tentative to rank a who, under the continuing dominion of poem according to the power of the aristocracy, sought a replacement for expression with which a poet processed the unattainability of their own his experie nces did not have less political ri ghts in honouring t heir important consequences. Overzealous Dichterfursten,poet-princes, and after interpreters derived a privileged position the turn of the century this also increased for the artist in from hi s the tendency of the scholarly study of standard work, Das Erlebnis und die li terature to focus the interpretation of Dichtung (Leipzig, 1906; a poem or a tale on the question as to and poetry), and two decades later, this "what the poet wants to tell us." In bestowal of a special power of 's Halderl in linguistic expression on the artist interpretations, this awe of the word of became for the Italian philosopher and the poet seemingly reached its climax theoretician of poetry when even the philosopher transformed a criterion by which poetry could be with his archaic language the verses of distinguished from 'non-poetry'.

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towards an autonomous 'science' of This idealisati on of the artist's literature to the radical demand for prescribed by S c hle ie rmac her but artistic autonomy, which the " L ' art pour afterwards crassly radicali sed was one l 'art" movement of the turn of the pill ar of the edif ice into whic h the century had already served up. However, poeti c he rmeneutics of the twenties while the proclamation of the autonomy had comfortably settled itself. Then of art quickly found advocates not just othe r pilla r was t he c laim of the a mong artists, but also in the text-interpreting scholar of literature to intellectual avant-garde, this demand to deli ver t he o ne correct a nd valid treat texts as autonomous creations and in terpretation of the poet's work and to give solely of their artistry, ideas through congeniality with him. came into direct collision within the It was precisely these two pillars that human sciences with the prevailing we re assaulted, first by the Russian historical evaluation of all cultural Forma li sts a nd the n by the struc­ phenomena. tura li sts, in order to can-y into effect a new theory of poetic language and also With the 'Socialist ' that it a new aestheti cs. In thi s way, the study prescribed, the Soviet regime had of I iterature was to be freed at the same forthwith silenced the Formalists or time from letting its objects be exploited driven them out of the country. for extraneous purposes, for example for However, very shortly after, in Prague, psycho logy o r f or the hi story of a group of exiles came together and gave ideas; it was to have nothing but the their theory on the systematic character compositi on of literary texts and their of the lite rary work the n a me constitution as its object, and thus prove 'structuralism' for the first time. More itself to be a n exact a nd not just distinctly tha n before, the Prague essayisti cally practised science. structuralists protested against the susceptibility to of the In their attempt to give the study of traditional methods of interpretation, literature a syste m atically defined and in turn they saw the mselves as object, the Formali sts, a nd later the speakers for the literary avant-garde of structurali sts too in sisted on their time. , born in distingui shing the uniqueness of poetry , and Rene Wellek, born in as sha rply as p ossible from other Vienna, later made their universities on lingui stic expressions . In so doing, the east coast of the USA, Harvard and howe ve r, they were not betting on a Yale, into the most active centres of a special inspiration of the poet, as their structuralist study of literature and from oppone nts were doing, but on poetry the re g ave importa nt impetuses to distingui shing itself by a special system French structuralism. Stricter than their of ling uistic e le me nts fro m othe r Petersburg forerunners, they insisted on fo rms of linguistic expression and on a statistical and thus quantitati ve the p artic ularity of thi s system evaluation of their observations, and guaranteeing its aesthetic effect. with such 'measuring work' they could then deli ver practical proofs too for the O ne is tempted to relate this impulse thesis that a poetic text disposes of a

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quantitatively richer and therefore more contrast too Jakobsen plays out compact network of relations, i.e. consistently - do not appear in the repetitions, parallels or oppositions, than second part of the sonnet as real figures; other texts written only for the purpose rather they become only additional of conveying messages. characteristics for the attitude of the cats, cited as , so that the This constitution of poetic texts, for listener or the reader can imagine the which the Berlin linguist Manfred noble nature of the cats. The structural Bierwisch introduced the concept of analysis may well bring the words 'cats' "over-structured sorts of text," and 'sphinxes' into an exact formal permitted the phonetic, grammatic or relation to each other, but it cannot rhetorical relations of a text parcel to distinguish whether the text in actual other parts of the text to be revealed and fact makes both into its or uses th ereby to de monstrate its artistry the only one as a for the other. without making any statement about the In order to recognize a metaphor, i.e. a subjectively felt meaning. This took figurative meaning, as such, one must place, for example, in the famous interpret it, and thus the structuralist structural analysis that Roman Jakobsen J akobson also becomes an interpreter carried out with Le vi-Strauss on working hermeneuticallly in the Baudelaire's poem Les Chats. They description of the relation between the showed that in this poem hardly a single two thematic nodes of the texts. phenomenon of the text remained isolated and that it was not just paired Even more than in Jakobsen's linkings that were to be encountered, but Baudelaire or Brecht analyses, in the whole series of parallel and contrasted most extensive of all the existing linkings. empirical structural analyses, which Roland Barthes undertook on a However, it is precisely in the title forty-page short story of Balzac's (S/Z, figures of this famous sonnet, in the cats Essai, Paris 1970), it becomes clear that and their arrangement in the text, that another defect of structural analysis is the limits of thi s structural mode of not to be remedied, and that is the more observation can be shown. Jakobsen and or less complete arbitrariness in the Levi-Strauss prove in their analysis that choice of elements to be investigated, the cats appear in the first quartet of the so that there can be no question of sonnet and dominate the first half of the mathematical rigour in the poem and the sphinxes take on this role demonstration of a poetic text as principal figure in the second half of composition in Barthes either. the poem, mythic figures, with whose dignified and mysterious attitude the Now, one could say that the rows of cats are at the same time compared and pillars of a Greek temple derive their explained. The appears beauty not least from a barely perfect. But the cats in the first part of noticeable irregularity in the way they the sonnet really are cats: the pride of are placed, and a "beau desodre," a the house. In contrast, the sphinxes in beautiful disorder" was considered to be their existence under the open sky- this aesthetically appealing even by the

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French classicists. But here we have written such "static poems," as Gottfried something e lse: in thi s structural Benn later called them, in order to a nalysis, Roland Barthes claims the secure their autonomy from any definite same autonomy with which the artist interpretation. For nothing can prevent brings his work into being for the scholar the fixing of a text in the direction of a of literature too. But that also means that particular point better than a complete the results of his analysis cannot be 'ob­ balance of the parts. Even the structure jectively' secured at all, but remain- if of a crystal has no beginning and no end, not to the same extent as the search for but it does have a very distinctive · the 'meaning' of a text - subjective and middle. This distinction of the middle thus not repeatable in the strict sense, comes into being through the network as a scie ntific experime nt is. The of the connecting lines between reason for this, in turn, is- and thus the individual members of the text assigned tables are turned - that Barthes, the to each other densest towards analyst, and after him others, taking even the middle, because more connecting greater , will decide arbitrarily lines intersect there than at any point in which element they will find significant the text that lies closer to the ends. for their investigation. Parodoxicall y, Therefore there is actually a mathemati­ however, such a decision - even if cal reason why structuralist analysis Roland Barthes makes it as it suits him, always imputes particular significance as he says - has as its prerequisite an to the middle of a poem. even more unconscious total interpretatio n of the text, as the Enough about , though. In hermeneutic ci rcle does too. And thus opposition to this distinction of the every sttuctural analysis necessarily has middle is the fact that every text, a hermeneutic prelude. whether it is read in silence or listened to, has a temporal duration and for this Derrida's a nd 's reason, only reaches its semantic climax poststructuralism made a of this shortly before the end, especially when Jack. A peculia r characteristic of it is a play or a . But even a structuralist analyses, hardly noticed poem, particularly a funny one, often until now and nowhere justified, does not reveal its wittiness until the last consists in raising to particular verses. How does a structuralist go about importance the exact middle of a poem describing such textual movements? or a piece of . This is connected to And how does he deal with the the static mode of observation that also circumstance that after a text has been relates the beginning and the end of a written down once, it can be understood text to each other in a similar , differently, in accordance with other as if they were to be read at the same relations, in short, read differently by time, in order to investigate the whole anyone who reads it Later? The answer text for its symmetries and crossover can be short: time, and in particular, connections. Numerous examples of this every new reader or listener sets the text can be found not onl y in Jakobsen and in motion. Roland Barthes; already the symbolists among the lyric ists have actual ly Let us have recourse once more to the

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example of crystal structure. If one heats hardly a sing le centre remamtng a crystal, if one adds new, additional completely changed in them that is still e nergy to it, the apparently fixed recognizable. molecules of the crystal structure are set in motion, if necessary to the point at Certainly such a theory of the movement which they become fluid. If they are left of texts bears the traces of its time in a alone for a while, they will become fixed century in which all the conditions of again, but probably in a different form. li fe have u ndergone continually accelerating change. One can discern in Some readers of 's work it echoes of the dissolution of the great have wondered why he attributes so historical and philosophical theories, much importance to the date when a text according to which the course of world is written. There are weighty historical history - from to for thi s attention to the date, for - could be explained by one principle he is fixing the holocaust as the fact to for generations. Nonetheless, it also end all fixed forms of assertion about reflects the increasing protest against the human being. On the other hand in his concentration of the life of the mind in a text moves in time, a few large cities of western civilisation. from the date it was written onwards. Roland Barthes himself grappled with With the energy he expends on it, every the intellectual leaders of a conservative new reader that encounters it increases whose capital was Paris. its mobility, lets details in it be weighted Jakobson, Levi-Strauss and Wellek had d iffere nt ly, creates new relations to change continents; Jacques Derrida between them. They can be those the comes from Algeria. text suggests to him, but also those that also means that texts move when a he selects by himself with the arbitrari­ reader reads them with different eyes ness of an autonomous text user. He and they really start to move when they destroys the text with his reading energy change from one to another. The and constructs it anew. That is the birth unrelenting and also relentlessly of deconstruction out of the spirit of changing reforming ofliterary motives, structuralism, and thus a text also at last the changing meanings of the words, the necessarily acquires its history. modes of expression and historical figures and in the end, the exchange Levi-Strauss already investigated the between cultures as a process in which most persistent , the , many people participate simultaneously, and in so doing, he realized that in time both actively and passively, can actually they take on other forms, even in archaic be understood with this theory. cultures in which all the customs and forms of life remain almost unchanged Hermeneutics' turning away from for generations. Thus they adjust to new focusing its attenti on exclusively on the technical inve ntions but also to the author and transferring it to the reader irritations of former fixed beliefs and -a turn which it too went through in the thereby are sti II recognizable as the same seventies and which put it in a position myths. However, in the long term, even to recognize the change in meaning that in such narratives, there is every literary work goes through in the

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cour e of its hi story - also had the of deconstruction to the point when their consequence that now it is no longer the proponents de mand the same autonomy one 'correct' meaning of a passage in a for a scholarly procedure that poets text tha t determines the aesthetic claimed one and a half centuries ago in ranking of a work of art but precisely the name of the aesthetics of genius. Art the potential wealth of meanings. For and science therefore no longer appear after this modern turn of hermeneutics, to be quite as much at odds with each the work of art that only le ts one other in this new freedom of approach meaning be recognized is, in the end, of to a given text as they still appeared to lesser aestheti c quality. Once the motive be at the beginning of the century. whic h provides the basis for such a tendenti ous work of art disappears, then In his book La condition postmodeme it neccesarily loses its meaning and can (Paris, 1979), Jean-Fran9ois Lyotard ex­ therefore be forgotte n. On the othe r pressed the susptcton t hat hand, a work of art, from which one can poststructuralism's mode of workin g cull ever ne w meanings from generation a rose out of the disconte nt with to generation and possibly from century western metaphysical thought. But what to century because its ambiguous text is remains when the study of li terature can open to new interpretations - such a only make at best interim statements work of art i more likely to have the about a text as soon as it goes beyond a chance to outlive time, and the continual simple inventory and when the question renewal of its concrete meaning lends as to what the author really wanted to it, in the end, a sort of 'eternal ,' say has also become unimportant to it? like that whic h Gilgamesh or Homer's epic or even the sphinx of G izah have Nevertheless, the ever new of for a ll time. a text and the careful observation of its ',' which is to say its in­ It shows that with hindsight of the terrelations with other texts, can be used hi sto ri cal m oveme nt of a te xt the to c rack open vi ews and supposedl y immovable front between which have become conventional and structurali sm a nd hermeneutics have also to open public debate on the life­ loosened up. By recogni z ing the questions of a generation to new ideas. potential multiplicity of meanings of a Even careful interpretation concerned text, hermeneutics can now work on about securing its observations can them more empirically than it was able develop a performative strength in this to d o before, and the rby loses that way, which is to say it cannot only re­ d iv inatory tra it that Ka rl Vie tor, a port on how it found the text, but also, German scho la r of lite rature w ho with this information, it can significantly emigrated to the States, in memory of change its effect on succeeding readers. the aesthe ti c of genius, was still The eventful history of influe nce of ascribing to all poetry interpretations in much-quoted poetry like Shakespeare's the middle of the century. In reverse, or Goethe's Faust is in large part those poststructurali sts who have raised determined by their interpreters. For "anything goes" to the status of a they have always equipped the programme have carried on the practice character of these literary models anew

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with properties that were to make them subversive and again and again they into a model for their own time or which baffle the purposes for which they have are to serve as warnings. been claimed.

The Belgian Paul de Man drew a most It is not superfluous to remark that this explos ive conclusi on from the theory of the subversiveness of all texts transformational capacity of literary is closely !:inked to the knotty problem texts after he left Europe and settled of the biography of Paul de Man. For down in the States in the very place in the claim that a binding statement can wh ich Derrida's teachings on never be gained from texts can be read deconstruction had allied themselves at the same time as a self-defence with most intimately with the ramifications which he distances himself from his own of Prague structuralism with the Yale texts which he as a young author in critics in New Haven. It was not by Nazi-occupied had written chance that Paul de Man used Nietzsche against the Jews. It really is worthwhile to develop his theory of the of almost every time to trace radical text the text. Nietzsche had already spoken theories right back to the life- circum­ of the "dance of the spirit with the word" stances of their creators. ("Tanz des Geistes mit dem Wort") before the turn of the century and in so Once having arrived at this extreme doing, given the earliest impetus for all point, the poststructuralist refusal of any theories whic h presuppose the unambiguous statement about a text had transformation of the meaning of texts. to challenge a counterposition and bring Paul de Man the n radicalised this into the arena a hermeneutics that once mobility to the poin t where he was able more took the content of a text seriously to formulate the thesis that no text can and also its historical force of evidence. ever be fixed to a parti cular meaning. It had moved into its basti ons on the other shore of the North American On a verse from the poem Among School continent, in Berkeley, and deployed the Children by William Butler Yeats, "How "New " against the "free can we know the dancer from the play in the blue" ofpoststructuralist Yale dance?" Paul de Man demonstrated that critics. The first to employ this name was only the reader- the "dancer" himself ­ Stephen Gree nblatt, in order to determines the meaning of the text (Al­ char acterise a collection of his legories ofR eading, New Haven 1979). Shakespeare essays as studies that also In so doing, not only is creative focus on the social surroundings and the performance imputed to the reader, but information on contemporary forms of the text has become a vessel from which rule in the Shakespeare plays when even opposing meanings can be culled. describing their powe r of poetic However, in de Man's work, the texts expression (Shakespearean Negotia­ receive an entirely new quality: newly tions, Berkeley 1988). Later, Greenblatt read, they incessantly undermine the cited "studies in cultural poetics" as the claims that were made until then about direction in which academic work on them, and the audacious that literature could go to gain a ne w fo llows therefrom runs: texts are always interest in the of present

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civilization, but also a new incitement of literature to recognize the culture of to critique of it present condition. The a society by its symbolic forms and considerable distance of this new type actions, and so by its and by its of hermeneutics from the old kind of literature, too. By dedicating itself to the historicism can be recognized in that socia l and intellectual powe r of there, hi stori cal forces that have an expression of literature, and comparing effect on a text took on the status of a its role in different cultures as my historical fact, while colleague Chetana's new project does, inherits from structuralism the it is on the point of winning its way back conviction that the construction of from a mere practice centering on texts historical events themselves are the to a in the full meaning results of interpretations of history, thus of the term. from texts and discourses, that each in their respective times set the tone for a T he new responsibility that thus while. I might mention in passing that devolves upon the study of literature Foucault too spent some years in stands out in bold relief world-wide, but Berkeley as a guest and his thesis of the in particular where the technical and power of dominant discourses which economical development of the li ving fiction follow or resists has clearly also conditions of a population has suddenly had a strong influence on the hermeneu­ changed and not only the traditional tic goals of New Historicism. cultural values but also the concept of a common culture as such is pushed into But the theory of the constant the background in favour of the deconstruction of texts has had a strong material gain that individual members effect on these theses too. Greenblatt of society gain from this change. passes in review, for example, the repeated accounts of an attack in This development also requires a new November 1586 on the west African attitude from the human sciences, coast in which the white crew of a shi p toward the change in forms of life which that was part of an expedition fleet fell brings with it the accelerated change in upon on the native population, driving technical living conditions in the domain them ou t and p lundering them. The of culture. For the new technical media different degrees of attention devoted to have also had a considerable influence this act, which was on ly briefly on the treatment of literary texts, and mentioned as a matter of course in while it is still being debated whether a contemporary accounts, but was dealt new television culture fundamentally with in detail and problematised in changes the forms of contemporary dramas, gives him the society, compute r culture has already opportunity to draw out in ways quite provided a new yardstick for the different from the structuralists the development of the arts and their particular c haracter and poetic potential for new interplay. li terature's special function in society. It is therefore not surprising that the Different routes have converged to make most recent attack on hermeneutics it the new task of the academic pursuit comes from the domain of technology

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itself and that it c limaxes in the accusation that all interpretation of a text We will leave aside the question as to is onl y speculative if it does not take whether it is really true or not that Franz into account as well the tools or Kafka gave his prose new forms and his instruments with the help of which a text a new Favon when he had comes into existence and circulates. This recourse to the typewriter because his new call to make the research on the fianc?e for a time, Felice Bauer, knew devices and the technologies with which exactly how to use one. At least it is an texts come into being into a principal interesting avenue into the intimate · object of the study of literature can also sphere of literary work that one could be traced back to the great 'pre-thinker' follow. In any case, like this, Kittler (Vordenker) of the twentieth century, prolongs Foucault's discourse theory Friedrich Nietzche, and indeed, to his into the industrial age, and as more and lapidary remark: "With a typewriter, one more people, at least in Europe and in thinks differently than one does with a the USA, only e ncounte r spoken, goosequill." written or performed literature through the , the proponents of this In a book, entitled Aufschreibesysteme, new materials science of literary study 1800/1900 (Munchen 1985; Discourse can also claim to contribute with their Networks 180011900, Stanford 1990), work to public communication and to Friedrich Kittler, professor at the active participation in the forming of Humboldt U niversity in Berlin, literary life in the technological age. described the change in devices that served to convert texts into print then If we look back at the debates that and now. Here too a new interest in the under changing names threw into transformation in cultural technologies question the traditional art of textual has taken the place of a merely interpretation a nd its theory, speculative hermeneutics and again, this hermeneutics, as the most respectable happens not least in order to limit its task of the study of literature, we can subjectivity and to guarantee a generalize with two observations: constrastingly more 'objective' scientificity. Hermeneutics, as Kittler 1. New theories and attacks on tradi­ writes too, however, is "the least tional forms of scholarly work are verifiable" of a ll the cultural techno­ almost always related to new logies, and therefore no longer capable necessities of life, which the earlier of survival without supplementation in forms of learning are no longer the age of technology. capable to cope with. As fiction prefers to make its object those It really seems ·like a liberation that social conflicts which have neither scholars of literature can concern been resolved by political instances themselves not onl y with the invisible or by the sciences, such debates take deep layers but also with the tangible place even in the study of literature externals of a text and make statements more frequently and with more which have the exactitude of scientific vigour than in other disciplines of statements. the human sciences. It is precisely

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the mo t recent attacks on a T he debates of the last decades have hermeneutics that does not take the dispensed entire ly with the notion that technical metamorphosis of our the scientific in vestigation of a text can civilization sufficiently into account clearly fix what a text - and what is that bring to our notice that it is high more, a poetic text - really says. And time th at the huma n sciences yet a burning question remains if we adjusted the m selves to the want to carry on the interpretation of technical of modern life . literature as a responsible contribution to human civilization, and that is the · 2. It has turned out that hermeneutics question: how can a text contain truth, itself ha fundamentally changed if it can change colour like a chameleon under the vari ous attacks by the in different li ghts? And what good is a Forma lists, the Structuralists and text at all, if it doesn't tell the truth? under the playful excesses of poststructuralism. From the security I remembe r when my youngest with whi ch its intellectual leaders daughter was barely three years old, she still believed that the author's used to call me in to her every evening inte ntion fixes for all time the before she fell asleep, and w ith meaning of a text at the beginning the ingenuous command "Tell me of the century, the relentless something" she awaited a story from me. questions as to the constitution of She got one, an endless story with lots te xts and later t he shifting of of animals and their adventures, but I attention from author to listener or cannot imagine that she would have reader have had the effect that slept peacefully afterwards if I had told aesthetic as much as e thical her at the end every time, "That's how interpretation of texts reckons with the story goes, but don't believe a word a multitude of changing meanings of it; it was onl y a text." and in doubtful cases, ascribes a special quality to precisely that text There are many linguistic ways to make that in the course of hi story has a text believable. A whole branch of again and again permitted new knowledge, "persuasive ," has interpretations. With this, the notion come into being in order to collect them of the participation of the listener and to test their effect. But what has to or the reader in the history of texts happen, so that a text can reall y contain has changed a great deal: the new a truth and does not simply sound as if hermeneutics no longer sees them it does? It has to unfold a bit of life as mere! y receivers of a message with what it says and the way in that the poet announces to them. which it says it, a reality that the listener Their role has become significantly recognizes as his own, or, like the fairy more active, for their reading sets tale or the tales of wonders, it has to the text in motion, accentuates it arouse the li stener's secret fears or anew and gives it an additional or desires and make them clearer to him even an altogether new meaning. than he can himself. This was the way Friedrich Schi ller explained our

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enjoyment of even tragic events that take own life each time. And for this reason, place in the theatre before our eyes. all attacks on hermeneutics in the name A text is true when it makes one of an exact science can change and understand one's own life better. renew hermeneustics, but they cannot However, in order that it can do this for get rid of it. And that is alright, because many people, it mu st and can be true in even a three-year-old child needs it in different ways in each case. But to do order to be able to sleep peacefully. th is, it requires an interpretation of one's Translated from German by Fiona Greenwood

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