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Structuralism, Poststructuralism and New Hermeneutics

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Structuralism, Poststructuralism and New Hermeneutics STRUCTURALISM,POST­ networks" and computer communica­ STRUCTURALISM AND tion in poststructural attitudes but at the same time new ways of hermeneutics NEW HERMENEUTICS taking in consideration the fundamental ambiguity of fictional writing. Eberhard Lammert1 Structuralism, Abstract Poststructuralism and New Hermeneutics When in European scholarship natural sciences have separated from The three concepts in the title of this 1 humanities during the 19 h century the lecture are not all of the same quality. concept 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 languages to a way of thinking, a contrast to explanation practiced by lifestyle 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 materialism and interpreting was to find the author's existentialism but also to the world's secret intenti on. Maintaining the results great religions, Catholicism or of such research 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 other 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 "discourse 'poststructuralism' also follow this rule. In the history of philologies, they 1 designate an epoch in which at first E~eritus Professor of German and Com­ linguists and then academic critics and parative Literature, 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 tradition in Uni versity of Berlin(1976-1983) these disciplines. The fact that poststructuralism follows structuralism Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 05:47:06AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities 4.1, 2001 shows, moreover, that even its own arms against hermeneutics, as they have adherents accorded it the status of truth 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. aesthetics can do this, but ways of Scientifically exact research into texts thinking and working like engineering, can only yield information on their tactics and dialectics 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 knowledge 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 poetry being writte n in a fore ign language. 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 cultural history, and they insisted that at all times. In fact, from the earliest the specific form of poetic language, not cultures on, there were medicine men its meaning, is the onl y legitimate and later magicians, monks and object of scholarly analysis. If one takes scholars who aw religious tidings in into account that hermeneutics - the astrological signs, the flight of birds or precepts of textual interpretation - has writings 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 laws, 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 justice. Italian philosopher Emilio Betti 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 reading 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 54 Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 05:47:06AM via free access Structuralism, Poststructuralism and New Hermeneutics lends the appearance of scientific certainty to that which is always only a In nature, 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 science since the l91h century, it was together according to a particular increasingly claimed that only system, 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 will 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 Roland Barthes 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 statement. 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 trace 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 sign 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 55 Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 05:47:06AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal ofHumanities 4. 1, 2001 reason, that which, since Aristotle, 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 speech and in a poem.
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