HERME(NEW)TICS: TOWARD A REINVIGORATION OF INTERPRETATION

A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for ^ the Degree 30

<20% Master of Arts

In ■ ms English: literature

by

Tyler Andrew Heid

San Francisco, California

May 2016 Copyright by Tyler Andrew Heid 2016 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Herme(new)tics: Toward a Reinvigoration of Interpretation by Tyler

Andrew Heid, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English:

Literature at San Francisco State University.

Wai-Leung Kwok, l Ph.D. r>u U Associate Professor of English Literature

Lehua Yim, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English Literature HERME(NEW)TICS: TOWARD A REINVIGORATION OF INTERPRETATION

Tyler Andrew Heid San Francisco, California 2016

The Humanities are in crisis. Dwindling funds, shrinking enrollments, and a general air of irrelevance have taken a toll on the disciplines, none more so dian Literature. For centuries, hermeneuticists have stymied tliis slide, generating codified practice for literary interpretation akin to die replicable, verifiable and heavily funded hard sciences. In the early 1970s, Paul Ricoeurs seminal essay “The Model of die Text” marked a high point for literary mediodology’s practical interventions, demonstrating relevant praxis by which valid applicability of literary sciences might be acknowledged. Modem hermeneuticist Gayatri Spivak holds die contemporary helm of literary teaching, but die interim departure from Ricoeurian hermeneutics has forced literary study onto a course diat aligns more widi die stultifying religious practice of lectionary reading dian widi interpretation. Scenes of teaching, represented through literary simulacra, will help understand literature’s current condition, and demonstrate a hopeful reinvigoration of hermeneutic interpretation to answer its decline.

I certify diat die Abstract is a correct representation of die content of this thesis. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to all those who supported me through this process, and who gave me a much needed push from time to time. To my partner, family, friends, colleagues, and professors, know that you have my gratitude and my acknowledgment Uiat I couldn’t have done it without you. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1...... 1

The Scene of Teaching ...... 1

Ricoeurian Hermeneutics and the Legitimacy of Interpretations...... 4

Spivak and D isgrace - The Privileged Intertext...... 14

Interlude...... 46

Chapter 2...... 48

Interpretation Off-Campus...... 48

Circling Back (Hermeneutically)...... 66

Works Cited...... 74 1

I

T h e S c e n e o f T e a c h in g

The problem with literary interpretation is that it does not occur in a vacuum. The

context for the continued existence of literary interpretation is universally and persistendy

die university - there, procedures are taught and practiced, colloquia are held to validate or

undermine particular methods, and the next generation of teachers receives its training.

The interpretive procedures we will explore in this text find iheir genesis and iheir

application in those hallowed lecture halls. But die university is a place of intense

competition, for students, faculty, and disciplines alike. In a material world where the means of existence come from a shrinking, central pool, it is up to disciplines to prove dieir worth - to justify their continued existence - which sadly equates to their profitability for die university.

This real material problem pits apples against oranges, in many cases. Often, the

“natural” or “hard sciences,” recently re-coined as STEM education1, receive die bulk of endowment to die detriment of the human sciences. Profitability is certainly a factor behind diis common vein in die university funding structure, especially at research institutions where die promise of licensing and patents presents a much greater return on investment dian a freshly minted literary dieory - but diere is more to it than just die money.

1 Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education. 2

Verifiability and concrete validation are the hallmarks of the STEM fields. The universal method of the natural sciences, the “Scientific Mediod,” is based upon die verification of particular guesses. Above all, though, the validation of scientific process comes through die independent replication of results, resulting in a ratification of the knowledge gained through its practice. Through diis replication a legitimacy of science is reached, “proof’ is achieved that is undeniable and by all accounts objective. This lack of proof, diis failure of scientific legitimacy, is and has been a persistent plague upon the humanities - literary interpretation in particular. Where scientific inquiry is universally and necessarily provable, literary understanding is “singular and unverifiable,” to borrow

Gayatri Spivak’s succinct description (Spivak 23). It exists in a realm entirely apart; it is not a science based “on evidentiary ground,” but a knowledge proven only by its very practice, or as Spivak calls it, the “setting-to-work” (23).

Enter hermeneutics.

“Hermeneutics” unto itself is nearly indefinable -though it is first and foremost an interpretive mediodology. It’s also a philosophical mode. It’s also a way of understanding how language functions. It’s a way of understanding how meaning is made. It’s how we take arbitrary marks on a piece of paper and transform them into works of art. It’s one of the earliest attempts to model die cognitive-perceptual apparatus native to human beings. It’s a millennia long effort to interpret interpretation, in whatever form.

But to return to diat primary concept, it is a methodology. In his paper “The

Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,” Paul Ricoeur writes: “I 3

assume that the primary sense of the word ‘hermeneutics’ concerns the rules required for tlie interpretation of the written documents of our culture” (91). This methodological invocation of a set of “rules,” of a methodology for a replicable and verifiable procedure, harkens to that scientific method; and while there is surely a traceable origin for this human tendency to fetishize verifiability, emerging with the post-Enlightenment rationalism that is the cornerstone of modem Western epistemic mode, lived experience should tell us as much.

In many ways, hermeneutics, since the emergence of scientific practice, has been an attempt to “raise” literary interpretation to a place of verifiability, equivalent, though not equal, to the scientific method. To that end, hermeneuticists and literary scholars have been trying and testing, implementing and rejecting, interpretive methodologies with varying degrees of rigor and specifity.

In this work I place diree of those methodologies, three that have defined and characterized reading practices across literal millennia but are critical to understanding the modern state of literary practice, into conversation: Paul Ricoeur’s model of hermeneutic interpretative practice, the liturgical reading that comes out of the lectionary, which is used by a vast majority of Christian denominations worldwide, and Spivak’s intertextual deconstruction. For Spivak an attempt to throw off the yoke of scientific legitimacy altogether is paramount, but ultimately weakens the foothold that literary reading has to stand in academia. For the lectionary, legitimacy is maintained by the tight control of interpretive practices, cyclically providing and maintaining an “acceptable” reading that 4

exists outside the purview of validation - seemingly in opposition to the academic problem, but we will suss out their interrelatedness. Hermeneutics, though, specifically the attempt by Paul Ricouer to institute a codified version of literary interpretation dirough an understanding of human action, attempts to provide an answer to the very real problem of delivering replicable interpretation to a society that thirsts for verifiable results.

R ic o e u r ia n H ermeneutics a n d t h e L e g it im a c y o f I nterpretations

One of die great difficulties that faces literary study, due to the seeming impossibility of its “scientific” validation, is its perceived inapplicability outside of its context at the university. I’m sure many will confirm my experience, of being asked, upon describing oneself as a student of literature, if I plan to read poems for a living, or become a novelist. Apparendy, those are die two vocations available to one who elects to study literature. In “The Model of die Text,” Ricoeur works against this common misconception.

Even die tide, “Meaningful Action Considered as a Text,” begins this work of providing a new interpretation of die literary discipline as applicable to the understanding of

“meaningful action[s] ” at large.

His work, though, centers on a conviction not unlike die one from Spivak diat we have above: literature is not like science. Paul Ricoeur emerged from a long line of interpretive practitioners who’d been working on this concept, namely Hans-Georg

Gadamer, whose work T ruth a n d M eth o d unequivocally revokes the necessity to measure

(lie value of literary interpretation against die fetishized “mediodological ideal of science” 5

(Ormistead 198). But to limit the scope of his intervention into hermeneutic practice,

Ricoeur opts for the work of Wilhlem Dilthey as artificial brackets for his text.

To establish the science-like “rules” of hermeneutical interpretation, Ricoeur draws forth, from the long line of hermeneutic methodology, llie concept of A uslegung, roughly translated as exegesis, or textual interpretation - for our purposes, we will simply refer to it as interpretation. This concept of interpretation is differentiated from understanding

( Verstehen), which is defined as “the recognition of what a foreign subject means or intends on the basis of all kinds of signs in which psychic life expresses itself’ (Ricoeur 91). One can view this division of understanding as a facet of phenomenological hermeneutics, then, or the philosophical branch of hermeneutic methodology by which Husserl, Heidegger, and a whole host of Others undertook the codification of a methodology for their explorations of subjective comprehension.

We will mostly leave that strand unfollowed, by Ricoeur’s direction, and turn down the interpretive route - “[Interpretation]implies something more specific: it covers only a limited category of signs, those which are fixed by writing” (91). As we turn to die literary version of hermeneutics, Ricoeur is careful to broaden the interpretive horizon, die applicability of his burgeoning methodology, by declaring diat “writing” should be understood as “all sorts of documents and monuments which entail a fixation similar to writing” (91). In diis calculated maneuver, Ricoeur has applied a tourniquet to diat whole unwieldy limb while opening another vein to die potential import of his mediodology. 6

The primary alternative artifact implied by “all sorts of documents and monuments” is, of course, meaningful action. To outline die circumstances which permit him to arrive at this supposition would be a project unto itself; in place of that project, a brief recitation will have to do. The course by which he lays out the definition of meaningful action as a textual object is itself a hermeneutic enterprise, as he vacillates between die hyper-specificity native to particular dieories and die grand narratives of

Western philosophy. He depends upon die linguistic speech act theory, specifically Emile

Benveniste’s definition of the sentence as die basic unit of a discursive act, to differentiate discourse from language-systems as an event or referential usage characterized by four criteria: temporality, self-referentiality, reference to a world, and exchange widi an “other”

(Ricoeur 92).

The next natural step is to take tliis broad determination of meaningful language and zero in on die target of literary hermeneuticists: “die written documents of our culture,” and their analogues (Ricoeur 91, my emphasis). The requisite temporality is most easily substituted, as it is a concept as old as writing itself - which Ricoeur hints at widi his intertextual play to Plato’s Phaedrus (93). Writing substitutes for spoken language by a

“fixation” or “inscription” of a discursive act, repeatedly referred to as “intentional exterioization,” which in itself presents a whole host of philosophical quandaries; Ricoeur relies again upon speech act theory, this time the practically applicable taxonomic version devised by Austin and Searle that categorizes discursive acts as locutionary, illocutionary, 7

and perlocutionary,2 to settle die issue (93). The quesdon he devises for differendadng discourse from inscription is, “What does writing fix?” (93).

Ultimately, he concludes diat all diree of those aspects of a discourse-event are captured in die instance of inscription (Ricoeur 94), which he sums up beautifully by drawing upon a distinct though interrelated epistemological system, phenomenological hermeneutics. Taking a word from Husserl, he declares diat, “In short, what we write, what we describe, is the noem a of the speaking” (93, my emphasis). So even though he’d seemed to leave Husserl behind in die diversion from phenomenology described above, his drawing in diis term noema, used by Husserl to describe die substance of our thought, die very materials of our conscious mind by which we perceive and create meaning, demonstrates a hermeneutical mediodology of holding multiple competing practices in a useful suspension.

In this elaboration on the distinction between discourse and inscription, Ricoeur gives a nod to die standards by which modem scholarly work is judged - verifiability, a la the scientific method. He codifies the mediodology where he writes: “It is necessary to understand by die meaning of die speech act, or by the noema of die saying, not only die sentence, in die narrow sense of the propositional act, but also the illocutionary force and even die perlocutionary action in die measure diat these diree aspects are codified [and] gathered into paradigms” (Ricoeur 94). He uses language that tiptoes the borders of

2 The act o/saying, what we do in saying, that which we do Assaying (Ricoeur’s summary, 93-4). 8

scientific study: “measure,” “codified,” “paradigms.” The application of this practice, lie argues, has the consequence diat inscribed noema, textual objects, “can be identified and reidentified as having the same meaning” (94), quite plainly describing an approach that fulfills diat scientific requirement of replicability.

Meaningful actions are similarly fixed to make them scientifically useful objects

(Ricoeur 98). Simply put, actions carry the same locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary characteristics as a discursive speech act, but have a permanency more similar to an inscribed text, which enacts the detachment and objectification of die noem a, die “meaningfulness,” particular to a specific action. Actions are locutionary because they can be “identified and reidentified” as a certain action, the “what is done” of action running parallel to die “what is said” of text (Ricoeur 99). They are illocutionary because particular actions have particular consequences, “constitutive rules” that are paradigmatic of the undertaken action. Interestingly, Ricoeur does not explicitly touch on the perlocutionary parallel between a discourse-event and action-event, perhaps because the “effect” of an action is a given. The “what is done in saying and b y saying,” a challenge to parse for the speech act, are nearly indivisible for an action-event, as what is done b y an action is a direct product of what is done in an action, or at least at first glance.

The second characteristic of discourse, self-referentiality, is better understood as a non-totalized system of communication. Where language is a totality unto itself, discourse by its very nature has a speaking-subject. Perhaps we should usurp Ricoeur’s description as

“self-referential” with “subject-generated.” It’s die generation, Ricoeur argues, that 9

distinguishes discourse from text, as die intentionally exteriorized object in die discursive

subject-generated speech act is indivisible from die subject - as Ricoeur points out, in

spoken discourse diere is almost no distinction between the hearer asking, “’What do you

mean?’ and ‘What does diat mean?”’ (Ricoeur 95). For text, “the audior’s intention and

the meaning of die text cease to coincide” (95). “What the text says,” he argues, “no matters more dian what the author meant to say, and every exegesis unfolds its procedures within die circumference of a meaning diat has broken its moorings to die psychology of its audior” (95). Separated from diose physical cues which guide the hearer toward understanding die exteriorized intention of a speaker, “intonation, delivery, mimicry, gestures,” the interpreter is granted die opportunity to access a “purer” version of the noema when it is freed from the speaking-subject - Ricoeur calls it die “actual spirituality of discourse” (95).

Action likewise achieves a freedom in its event, which Ricoeur terms

“autonomization” (100). Embedding action in a logic of social phenomena, Ricoeur points out the disjunction between the agent of an action and its consequences (101). He

concedes that many actions, simple actions specifically, exist in a self-referential void like discourse, where “die meaning and intention coincide or overlap” (101). Complex events, though, have an audiorial genesis as difficult to determine as “audiorship in some cases of literary criticism” (101). The nature of social action and interaction conforms to the vasdy complex model of Geertzian webs of signification, described in some detail below. That

social web, much like die epistemological web, is “a place of durable effects, of persisting 10

patterns” (101). Where a text physically persists, the noema it transmits are part of the social web of knowledge, “an action leaves a ‘trace,’ it makes its ‘mark’ when it contributes to die emergence of such patterns, which are die docum ents of human action,” and which are temporally separated from their origin, just like inscribed texts (101). The intent of the primary actor in an action-event is separated from the interpretation of its effects.

The tiiird transferred characterstic of Ricoeur’s methodology is the reference to a world. For discourse, diis world is “the |ostensive| situation common to the interlocutors”

(Ricoeur 95). This ostensive situation is lacking in text - no commonality can be assumed.

Instead, Ricoeur argues diat in die same way that text “frees” its noema from “mental intention,” inscription “frees its reference from the limits of ostensive reference” (96). This liberation, which encapsulates Spivak’s mediodology of “intertext,” opens up reference to the repertoire that we bring to die act of reading. Instead of being limited to die world common to interlocutors, die textual world is “die ensemble of references opened by die text” (96). “To understand a text is at die same time to light up our own situation,” he elaborates, in a one so beautiful it simply cannot be overlooked. In anodier phenomenological nod (and notably another reference to the spirituality of die interpretive act), he concludes diat “the spirituality of discourse manifests itself through writing, which frees us from the visibility and limitations of situations by opening up a world for us, diat is, new dimensions of our being-in-the-world” (96). His hermeneutic movement takes him 11

back up to Heidegger3, the clear origin for this phenomenolgoical handling of “being-in-the- world,” all the way to Enlightenment thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt, “for whom the great justification of language is to establish the relation of man to the world" (Ricoeur 97). In this last reference, Ricoeur makes a quick grasp at literary relevance, and perhaps takes an equally quick dig at some of his contemporaries.

For an action-event, quite simply put die “importance” of die action “goes ‘beyond’ its relevance to its initial situation. Like die melding of the illocutionary and perlocutionary forces shown above, an action’s autonomizalion and noematic persistence are inextricably tied. “The meaning of an important event,” he writes, “exceeds, overcomes, transcends the...conditions of its production and may be reenacted in new...contexts” (102-3). In a markedly tootiiless analogy, compared to the zeal he brings to describing the power of a text to “open up new worlds,” he simply declares a parallel power in action, in fact slipping a bit into textual dependence, where he writes diat, “a work does not only mirror its time, but it opens up a world which it bears within itself’ (103).

The final paradigm of Ricoeur’s equation is exchange with an “odier.” The distinction here is probably exacdy as you imagine it. In an awesomely dramatic line,

Ricoeur declares that by inscribing a speech act “die narrowness of the dialogical relation explodes (97). When the audience is “whoever knows how to read” instead of “an

3 Heidegger riglidy says—in his analysis of Being and Time—diat what we understand first in discourse is not another person, but a project, that is, the outline of a new being-in-die- world. Only writing, in freeing itself, not only from its author, but from die narrowness of the dialogical situation, reveals this destination of discourse as projecting a world (Ricoeur 96). 12

[addressed] interlocutor,” the noema is free for access to any who can gain access to the monument of its creation (97). The “copresence of subjects,” as he calls it, is no longer a condition for gaining understanding, which again draws forth his preoccupation with “the spirituality of writing” (97). In markedly spiritual act, die noema of the subject, die meaning of an intentional exteriorization, transcends time, space, reference and even understanding to reach an “unprivileged addressee” (97), where it is encountered not as anodier person, but as an “outline of a new way of being-in-the-world” (96).

This is well understood widi action as well, as the impact of action is “addressed to an indefinite range of possible ‘readers’” (103). He declares that human action is an “open work,” subject “fresh relevance” produced by the “present praxis” determining interpretation, die metiiodology by which we comprehend, understand, and interpret.

The recitation of Ricoeur’s logic for the transferability of metiiodology of textual interpretation was necessary to lead us to diis point: his actual metiiodology. This has been a demonstration of the praxis of his craft, but the undercurrent of a direat was generally omitted from my summarizing. Yet, it cannot be ignored that Ricoeur’s codification of a metiiodology are efforts to combat die degradation of the value of training in literary interpretation. We will look at some contributors to this decline, but let us first consider

Dilthey, llie hermeneuticist Ricoeur has selected for himself as paradigm.

Dildiey’s life’s work was dedicated to raising the “human sciences” to the standards requisite to the “scientific method.” Though he argued that the social sciences were inherently distinct from the “natural sciences,” hermeneutics was, for Dilthey, a 13

methodology diat would respond to die “problem of die greatest significance,” he search for a “mediodological certainty upon whedier or not die understanding of individual existence may be raised to general v a lid ity (Dildiey 101, my emphasis). But in Ricoeur, diat call for a “scientific” mediodology is answered in this movement from discourse to text to action. Where for Ricoeur, “Science is another ‘language game’ based on quite different semantic moves” (98) for Dilthey “any model of explanation is borrowed from a different region of knowledge, that of the natural sciences with their inductive knowledge” (Ricoeur

104). Despite this criticism, Ricoeur finds value in a reevaluadon of the relationship of understanding and explanation. By the inscriptive objectification of actions, Ricoeur argues,

“a kind of objectification which makes possible a scientific approach somewhat similar to the natural sciences, in spite of the logical gap between N a tu r\{\h e natural)] and G eist [(the social)], factual knowledge and knowledge by signs” (104). Literary interpretation’s scientific problem is ameliorated by the objectification that occurs, for Ricoeur, in a realm unto itself, die realm of “signs.” That diis process occurs solely in the realm of signs means that “there is no transfer from one region of reality to another, from the sphere of facts, let us say, to the sphere of signs,” granting literary interpretation an internal consistency on the level of the scientific method4 (105). This internal consistency opens up the possibility of

4 From this ‘objectivity’ derives a possibility of explaining, which is not derived in any way from another field, diat of natural events, but which is congenial to this type of objectivity. Therefore diere is no transfer from one region of reality to another, from die sphere of facts, let us say, to die sphere of signs. It is within die same sphere of signs that die process 14

codified “explanatory procedures,” which in turn lead to replicable - and scientifically validated - interpretive results (105).

Which raises a question: where do we find these objects for study, these monuments of human action, of inscribed events that critically “mediate5” a transfer from comprehension to explanation (105)? And where do these explanatory procedures come into being?

In texts, of course. And in die classroom. And in any scene of teaching.

Let us take, then diree literary monuments diat encapsulate bodi the mediation and the explanatory procedures: J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's

Tale, and a few selections from the world’s most popular pedagogical text, T h e B ib le.

These texts will grant us access to objectified human action, and give us some understanding of how we learn - and how we teach - die “explanatory procedures” of our interpretive faculties.

Spivak and D i s g r a c e - The Privileged Intertext

One of our scholars, Gayatri Spivak, will leave the scientific question as setded to

“suggest that the discontinuities between the etiiical and epistemological and political fields

of objectification lakes place and gives rise to explanatory procedures. And it is within this sphere of signs that explanation and comprehension are confronted (105).

5 In this way the mediation offered by these objectifications appeared to be more important, for a scientific purpose, dian the immediate meaningfulness of die expressions of life for everyday transactions (104). 15

are tamed in the nestling oflogic and rhetoric in fiction” (Spivak 18). In other words, fiction acts as a simulacrum through which we can simulate experience in an attempt to reconcile the ethical with die epistemological or political, disregarding entirely die question of interpretive validity.

Where Ricoeur sought to reconcile die nonverifiable nature of literary knowledge by providing replicable praxis, Spivak’s handling of diat very real issue is to simply dismiss it. Where she writes that the knowledge gained through literary interpretation is inherently

“singular and unverifiable,” she speaks from die privileged position of one who has had a lifetime to build the “evidentiary ground” on which diis damaging assertion stands (23). I call it damaging because, radier than bolster the defense of literary practice developed by generations of hermeneuticists, Spivak hands unqualified ammunition to literary oppositionists. For her, literary study’s value is obvious and innate, but we cannot ignore that her assumed value is also inextricable from the decades she’d dedicated to developing her impressive and dazzling intertextual practice. Rather than coming to the defense of literary interpretation by a propagation of a concrete, replicable mediodology, Spivak hopes to prove its value by showcasing her singular and unverifiable brilliance. From the current measure of die academic Zeitgeist, it is a fair inference that her point has not landed.

As a means of communicating her supposition, Spivak’s essay “Ediics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of Teaching” gives us a demonstration of the interpretive faculties gained in the pursuit of a literature agree. As above, Spivak has a clear 16

vision for the purpose of the study of literature, that is, to “tame” the “discontinuities between the ethical and the epistemological and political fields” by tacit delivery of the conventions of “logic and rhetoric” via the medium of “fiction,” a concept taken, she states, from Jacques Derrida’s White Mythology (Spivak 18). To begin to understand this vision, we must consider what, for Spivak, is the ethical, the epistemological, and the political. She is so kind as to provide a comparative matrix at die outset of her essay when she writes, “It is practically persuasive diat the eruption of the ethical interrupts and postpones die epistemological—the undertaking to construct the other as object of knowledge, an undertaking never to be given up” (Spivak 17).

We will try to sort diis statement out for ourselves, but in truth, she discourages us from enacting our own explanatory procedure when she immediately follows the above with, “Levinas is die generic name associated widi such a position...aldiough neither interruption nor postponement is mentioned,” then, “That connection is made by

Derrida” (Spivak 17). By die structural proximity of her declaration, diat die “undertaking

[isl never to be given up,” to the trail of breadcrumbs diat led her to that forceful imperative, her reader is forced to acknowledge the implicit recitation of a literary-critical tradition by the invocation of those names—implicit because of her absolute refusal to explain—marking an assumption of literary critical expertise on die part of her implied reader6. This assumption already begins to undermine her interpretive codification.

6 For discussions of n arrativ e participants, refer to Seymour Chadiman’s “paradigm of narrative structure,” as reproduced in Suzanne Keen’s Narrative Form. 17

Despite this figural alienation, tackling that sentence does yield some insight. At first

read, die fragment following (he em-dash would have us read die critical “undertaking” as

referring to “the epistemological,” a typical use of that punctuation being the modification

of die immediately preceding sentence-object. However, familiarity with epistemology leads

one to believe that the inclusion of “the other” in that framework induces a specificity of

meaning undermining that sentence as a possible definition of “the epistemological,” as

epistemology refers to the understanding the formation of knowledge in general7. However,

that definition can be saved if the reader considers “the other” to mean anything outside of

the subject-I, which would hold with die Kantian understanding of experience as an

antithetical construction of self and “other.” That may be die case, but alternatively the

referent could be “the eruption,” which would make sense in the context of “an

undertaking.” As is presented, it is not possible to say which is the referent for diis critically important fragment.

Moving back to move forward, die text’s first words, “It is,” confound the reader by

initiating die reading widi a non-referential pronoun, denying the interpretive act diat leads

to immediate understanding - instead, we are immediately wondering, “What is It, and why is It ‘practically persuasive’?” Careful re-construction of diis grammatically bizarre

sentence shows the nominal phrase following die determiner “that” is probably the referent of It, which would have us treat die concept of “die eruption” as the subject of the

7 From die Oxford English Dictionary: “The theory of knowledge and understanding, esp, widi regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the disctinction between justified belief and opinion” (OED). 18

sentence. The eruption itself is grammatically constructed to rely on its subordinate

subjects, the ethical and epistemological, and in a way diat does not permit those two to stand as nouns. The nominal phrase then is indivisible—the noun referred to by that pronoun “It” is the concept “diat die eruption of the ediical interrupts and postpones die epistemological.” Rewritten, we can understand the sentence now: “That the erupdon of die ethical interrupts and postpones die epistemological is practically persuasive.” In diis context, “pracdcally” likely means “practicable” or “reasonable” radier dian partial, which would mean tiiis postponement of die epistemological by die eruption of the ethical is useful toward a persuasive end.

This does littie to clear up the referent of die critical “undertaking,” which leads back to the aforementioned trail of breadcrumbs. As it stands, coming to an accurate understanding of this sentence on its own is utterly impossible widiout bringing die foreknowledge of die rabbit-holes from which Spivak yanked diis theory. I suppose we should consider her kind for at least directing us to die texts we must visit in order to understand her opening declaration.

In diis challenging, alienating, brilliandy constructed sentence we can see praxis of the theory she puts forth in diat very inscription: “This is sometimes the task of the literary academic,” she writes, “To restore reference in order that intertextuality may function; and to create intertextuality as well” (Spivak 19). Intertextuality will be key to die texts discussed in diis essay, and for die functioning of those texts in turn, so we will be well served by taking a moment to understand it. 19

Intertextuality, for all its similarity to Ricoeur’s third criteria of meaningful action, can be better understood by putting it into contact with a theory from another scholar,

Clifford Geertz, who described the process of interpreting any single text as “thick description” (Geertz 6). Thick description is an attempt to understand all of the manifold components that contribute to die interpretation of a text, be they historical, contextual, or situational. Thick description is couched in cultural anthropology as a methodology for determining meaning. An extended discussion of that methodology is below8, but suffice it

8 Geertz takes the sample of a closing right eye and discusses how thick description permits the potential interpretation of that closing right eye as an involuntary spasm (a “twitch”) or an act of meaningful communication, a la discourse (a “wink”) (Geertz 7). In this effort to account for context and culture, Geertz argues dial we’re given “a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which [actions] are produced, perceived, and interpreted, and witiiout which they would not in fact exist” (7). W e’re given, dien, a method by which we can begin to uncover some of the latent connections diat lead us to the meaning-making that we do via interpreting action - all day, every day, not just when we’re engaging in the act of reading.

These latent connections, when taken all together, are what Geertz calls “webs of signification” (Geertz 5). In one of the favorite lines I’ve encountered in all of my studies, die full context for that description of connections reads: “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance that he himself has spun” (5). He declares this theory as grounded in semiotic theory, but this declaration requires furtiier interpretation to be properly understood. Man, in this circumstance, is singular and plural, depending on where you happen to be directing your attention. At first read, I see myself as die singular spider, suspended in die center of a web I create in the act of reading a text. But the more I read, discover, and understand, the more I recognize diat I am ignorant of so many of die strands diat make up die web in which I’ve become suspended.

Am I instead an individual lly, then, caught in this web, mostly blind to those strands and ignorantly awaiting die moment diat die spider will come and cut me lose from die web that permits my ability to understand and interpret? Some moments of reading certainly feel 20

that way; but a fly has no agency, while I can pick and pull and follow those strands as far as our written history will permit me. I am not without die ability to follow diose strands, to in fact do my own weaving, and not just in die ignorant thrashings of captured prey diat rents a hole, but with purpose and design.

I find my sole-self at some intersection between die two, but even diat is not satisfactory. As Jean-Francois Lyotard describes us, we, human individuals, are “the nodal points of specific communication circuits” (Lyotard 15). That would locate us somewhere in the vicinity of those knots, then, that bind die web together, passing around knowledge as a node in a circuit board moves charged particles. But we are not limited to one knot; in fact, any semblance of understanding would be impossible if we were. We have the capability of freely shifting between knots, and in fact determining how those knots are tied and where. W e’re more like an electron, existing in many places all at once. We are a Schroedinger’s cat of potential comprehension existing at all points and none simultaneously, depending on the moment of reading and the context that creates the necessity of understanding.

But if “Man” is taken as a plural, as a species as a whole, we can wididraw from diat terrifying conceptualization in quantum mechanics and comprehend that web of signification as die sum of human knowledge and experience. The web, as a collective epistemology rather than an individual one, permits an individual to move freely about its sticky strands and follow diem as he pleases. Our species is die collective weaver of that web, with individuals acting as the knots diat hold us and our understanding togedier. Texts, too, act as diose nodal points for transmitting understanding, and in fact hold a privileged position over individual human beings because dieir presence is permanent and dieir content is unchangeable, at least relative to die short-lived and fickle existence of a human’s life.

But what evidence is there for this latter rendering?

I must admit, in introducing Geertz’s complementary dieory I withheld die fact diat neither “diick description” nor “webs of signification” are theories diat originate with Geertz. Geertz readily admits this fact. Though his whole paper is foundational of die utility of “thick description,” he admits that die notion is borrowed from Gilbert Ryle (Geertz 6). That man is suspended in webs of signification, he writes, is a belief diat comes to him from the groundbreaking sociologist Max Weber (5). Weber’s theory is heavily dependent upon his contemporary, the semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure, whose ideas in turn were 21

to say, if you’d prefer to skip that Derridean footnote, that thick description provides a methodological model by which the practitioner attempts to trace any and all influences that are significant to the interpretation of an inscribed monument of human action. If you were to map these connections, you would have what Geertz calls “webs of signification.”

The meta-explanatory relevance is detailed in the footnote below.

But there are practical reasons I’ve spilled all diis ink over Geertz’s webs of signification. First, it provides our own epistemic foundation for understanding Spivak’s implications when she is discussing—and creating—intertextuality. And, as Geertz’s model of webs of signification illustrates, die implications are vast and profound.

Second, it helps us understand Spivak’s second stated answer to the question posed above concerning the purpose of studying literature:

derived from Immanuel Kant, whose ideas came from Descartes, whose ideas came from Hume (big leap), whose ideas came from Aristotle, whose ideas came from Plato, whose ideas came from Socrates, whose ideas are somewhat difficult to trace because the paper trail kind of falls off thanks to that whole B.C. thing, but even he declares that they originated with odier thinkers.

You can see from this incredibly cursory handling of die tradition of western philosophy that following a single strand in diis web of signification will swiftly take us back to the pre- classical era and the foundations of western philosophy. So when you’re reading Geertz, you’re not just reading Geertz, you’re reading Geertz, and Ryle and Weber and Saussure and Kant and Descartes and Hume and etc. etc. etc. And as we’ve seen, when you’re reading Spivak you’re reading Levinas and Derrida, and that is only in the first sentence. Pull on one strand of die web, and the whole of western philosophical tradition can be revealed in die vibrations. 22

“I will continue to want to say that fiction can offer us an experience of the

discontinuities diat remain in place ‘in real life.’ That would be a description of

fiction as an event—an indeterminate ‘sharing’ between writer and reader, where the

effort of the reading is to taste die impossible status of being figured as object in the

web of die odier” (Spivak. 18).

In restatement and expansion of her version of literature’s facility, Spivak’s theory can be put into an intertextual relationship with Geertz’s to show their parallel significance.

Accepting literature as simulacrum of experience, the above quote, contextualized by

Geertz, begins to show what exacdy we attempt to simulate in the act ofliterary reading: “to taste the impossible status of being figured as object in die web of die other,” quite like the

Heideggerian project, via Ricoeur, of “projecting a world.” Working backward in Spivak, diougli, this fictive complex activates a “taking aboard” of die “figure of the T as object”

(18). Moving back further still, diis figure “I” is shown to be a borrowed concept from

Levinas, where the figure I as object is alternatively defined as the “object-man.” This object-man, in turn, is the “beginning of all knowing” (18), or in odier words, the foundation for epistemological development. That Spivak elects die word “web” to describe this epistemic matrix illuminates die intertextual relationship to Geertz.

In that context, we can understand Spivak’s stated literary purpose of “tast[ing| the impossible” as an experiential movement enacted to grant access, limited by the descriptor

“taste,” to the epistemic structure (or web of signification) of an “odier,” an inherently impossible task because diere is no experience accessible to us of outside of our own 23

episteme, outside our own web of signification. In enacting this access through reading, an

intertextual relationship is generated between writer and reader that takes the impossible

and makes it momentarily possible. “Reading,” says Spivak, “in diis special sense, is sacred”

(18). It is intertextuality—or Ricoeur’s “projecting a world,” or epistemic access, or

revelation of webs of signification, depending on whichever signifier suits your fancy—diat

makes it so. To summarize, Spivak’s intertextuality is die theory of webs of signification in

praxis and webs of signification are a model of the epistemic intertextuality native to human

thought.

To employ this sacred mode, Spivak engages in plural intertextual readings in her

text. She provides a purpose for her readings: “[To] locate...representations of what may be read as versions of die ‘I* figured as object and weave die representations togedier as a warning text for postcolonial ambitions” (Spivak 18). It is not diis warning but die weaving

diat will hold the focus of our exploration, and perhaps glean our own warnings. We will light upon the novel discussed diere-in as die primary Active simulacrum to act out our own reconciliation of die ediical witii the epistemological and political.

Of the eleven9 non-critical source-texts diat Spivak winds togedier, J.M. Coetzee’s

D isgrace and a poem of Rabindradi Tagore’s take a privileged position when she writes,

“IIntertextuality] will help us coast dirough Tagore’s India [and] Coetzee’s Soutii Africa”

(Spivak 19). She describes a scene where a chemist relies on dance and Mozart’s D on

9 At least eleven, I should say. The texts are so intertwined and her analysis so tiglitiy weaved that I continue to uncover intertextual reference even now. 24

G iovanni to weave an intertextual clothe of meanings inaccessible outside of their interrelatedness. I will not duplicate them here, because diose meanings themselves are unimportant—we focus here on die pro ced u re for coming to diose meanings. The meaning-making moment in die intertextuality is described by Spivak as “[giving] the lie”

(Spivak 19). This is intertextuality at work, she writes, when “die chemist gave die dancer die lie...for die movements he spoke of made die dance possible, so did the dancers give

Mozart the lie by taking away his plot. Yet each gained somediing as well” (Spivak 19). This strikes me as a bizarre declaration of die falsehood inherent to intertextual analysis. Like anachronistic readings, die utility of intertextual reading is thrown into question, saved only by the addendum diat “each gained somediing.” I suppose we must consider whether that somediing gained is justification for intentionally misleading readers—do die ends, a broadened understanding, an expansion of an episteme, justify false means? This is not a universally answerable question—no catholic affirmation or negation.

This intertextual moment, of the chemist’s performance, is justified in Spivak’s eyes. In further analysis of die “somediing gained,” Spivak finds diat “it did not work completely” (Spivak 19). “Mozart is too elite for a radical New York audience,” she writes, revealing many of her own prejudices, “They did not catch die allusion” (19). It is only when the “boring literary academic” “restores reference,” the purpose as identified above, diat the intertextual meaning is brought to life (19). She is gratified by the choreographers reaction, that they “melted in gratitude” (19). Self-satisfaction aside, Spivak’s implication, or rather, explicitly stated belief, is diat it takes a literary academic to illuminate intertextual 25

connections so that laymen may have momentary access to the brilliance native to an expert reader of texts.

She elaborates, turning her attention back to the inscribed monument: “In order to do a good job with the Tagore poem, I have to read Kabir carefully” (Spivak 19). Leaving die problematic of a “good job” reading, we can see her privileging die intertextual procedure practiced by literary academics. Her implication is diat only an expert reader of texts, such as her, and not the “radical New York audience,” a stand in for people in general, can acknowledge the purpose of die lies produced in intertextuality and glean from diem a Gestalten comprehension which may lead to their own explanation.

Anodier expert reader of texts wends his intertextual way into Spivak, Coetzee’s protagonist David Lurie. Spivak grants to this character a description of “a middle-aged male professor land] sentimental consumer of metropolitan sex work” (Spivak 20). There is a dash more nuance in Coetzee’s description of him where we’re given a glimpse of his professional history:

Once a professor of modern languages, he has been since Classics and Modem

Languages were closed down as part of the great rationalization, adjunct professor

of communications. Like all rationalized personnel, he is allowed to offer one

special-field course a year, irrespective of enrollment, because that is good for

morale. This year he is offering a course in the Romantic poets. For die rest he

teaches Communciations 101, ‘Communication Skills’, Communications 201,

‘Advanced Communication Skills’” (Coetzee 3). 26

While I am not familiar with the term “great rationalization” nor the structure of South

African post-secondary educadon to speak directly on diose subjects, their effect is similar enough to the American “crisis in the humanities” discussed in the introduction diat he can be the simulating subject of die contemporary professor. We will leave this for now, though, and turn our focus to David Lurie as an expert reader of texts and a poor reader of people. Elect die Ricoeurian or Spivakian version of literary simulacrum, the result is die same; David Lurie treats the people in his life as characters to interpret, their actions as plot points to be mapped and analyzed. And for us, we can see the competition between different models of explanatory procedure, inscribed in the monumentalization of Lurie’s action.

In one particularly poignant moment, his daughter rails against diis habit he has developed in his literary training:

You behave as if everydiing I do is part of die story of your life. You are die main

character, I am a minor character who doesn’t make an appearance until halfway

dirough. Well, contrary to what you diink, people are not divided into major and

minor. I am not minor. I have a life of my own, just as important to me as yours is

to you, and in my life I am the one who makes decisions (198)

David Lurie has become so ingrained in his Romantic version of interpretation diat his daughter must castigate him diat he may recognize his active refusal to transposition himself into her web as a figure-I. In a failure to engage her explanatory procedure, Spivak accuses him of “profound misunderstanding” (Spivak 22). And David Lurie’s reaction to this call to 27

a reckoning? To aggressively deflect her call to understanding in the terms she, and Spivak, use against him: “An eruption? Is this not an eruption in its own right?” (198, my emphasis). While Lucy had begged oil his persistent questioning, of why she hasn’t revealed her post-assault pregnancy to him, “Because [she] couldn’t take one of Ibis] eruptions,” David Lurie defensively retreats behind that word to turn it against her (198).

However, the common signification they explicitly share, as interlocutors, fades in his attempt to repossess diat term where it shows Spivak’s signification creeping in. Spivak calls this a failure of intertext. Ricoeur’s explanatory procedure, though, would have us explain this moment as an example of a statement’s illocutionary force failing to be “rescued” by the context of discourse. Witiiout the inscription of the conversation, the context, and die internal action diat fails to emerge in tiieir discourse (his in tern a l dialogue), there is no intertextual interpretation to fall short by Spivak’s standards.

Lucy’s intention was limited to denying provocation, to preventing yet anodier violent outburst of moral indignation over the horrors her body had been subjected to. The eruption, though, for David Lurie is Spivakian, an eruption of the ethical interrupting and postponing his epistemology - an interruption he is, by all accounts, unprepared to bear. It is in response to his own labeling of her forceful assertions as an interruption that he employs her to stop, saying, “That’s enough, Lucy,” and reasserting his Romantic epistemic mode onto her, physically, as the superior male, by “taking her hand across die table”

(198). He quickly ends die conversation, forcing her to restate her intentions, and replying:

“’Very well. This has come as a shock to me, I confess, but I will stand by you, whatever 28

you decide. There is no question about that. Now I am going to lake a walk. We can talk again later.’ Why can diey not talk now? Because he is shaken. Because die re is a risk that he too might erupt” (Coetzee 198-9). We see, even in his attempts to understand, to be supportive, that he does not recognize the eruption he flees is taking place within him; he still considers himself die slighted man fleeing die hysterical woman by agreeing her to silence. Ratiier dian permit an ethical eruption postponing his epistemology, he labors to postpone the ediical in maintenance of his epistemic web. He flees the risk of his own potential eruption.

But diis does not fit widiin the paradigm of Spivak’s simlucram theory. Shouldn’t

David Lurie, expert reader of texts, practiced literary communicator, also be an expert reader of people in the real world? It is not merely an intertextual breakdown, but a failure to apply any sort of codified interpretation to the actions that confront him.

Perhaps an answer can be found in his first—failed—attempt to seduce his student,

Melanie Isaacs. The whole scene unfolds in an intertextual shambles: Byron clashes with

Rich, Jazz is rejected for Classical, Classical is in turn put down as “out of practice,” dance,

“not dancing,” on cassette, carrying die “evanescent” qualities of a “stroboscopic camera.”

But it is in the description of his literary epistemology diat his Romantic training, his weak explanatory procedure, comes to bear: “In my experience poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response. Like lightning. Like falling in love” (Coetzee 13). His failure to account for intertextuality is poignant in diis instant where he reveals the foundations ofhis interpretive procedure. David Lurie is an 29

expert Romantic reader of texts, a Byron enthusiast cut from the Byronic clothe, where emotive inspiration and instantaneous, profound understanding comes to the reader as if

God-breathed. His persistence as a brooding anti-hero throughout die novel buttresses diis vision. But his version of explanation is regurgitation, not procedure. David Lurie, a product of die old school of literary training, is a marked failure of literary training - if we all read as he does, perhaps the diminishment of the humanities is not such a bad tiling.

Where he does attempt to draw on intertextual procedure, though, he falls on his face. In his final push toward seduction, he calls up Shakespeare’s first sonnet: “’From fairest creatures we desire increase/ he says, ‘that thereby beauty’s rose might never die’”

(Coetzee 16). Had he been more aware, he may have heeded her comment moments before that she was through widi Shakespeare (14). Had he been more practiced, he may have anticipated what he came to realize in the moment following his utterance: “Not a good move. Her smile loses its playful, mobile quality. The pentameter, whose cadence once served so well to oil the serpent’s words, now only estranges” (16). His intertextual ineptitude would have him lubricate his language like die first seducer - perhaps if he’d considered it, he’d have recognized that turning a phrase like a biblical villain wouldn’t encourage a young, modern woman to debauch herself.

Later, upon successfully completing his sordid mission, he further reveals his literary epistemology—in the first scene of his teaching:

‘We don’t have Alps in diis country, but we have the Drakensberg, or on a smaller

scale Table Mountain, which we climb up in the wake of the poets, hoping for one 30

of those revelatory, Wordsworthian moments we have all heard about.’ Now he is

just talking, covering up. ‘But moments like diat will not come unless die eye is half

turned toward die great archetypes of the imagination we carry within us’ (Coetzee

23).

W e’ve already been granted a cursory view of David Lurie as a Romantic in the brief recitation of his course asppointments, but in diis scene-of-teaching were shown die penetration of diat literary tradition into his interpretive epistemology. According to Paul

Ricoeur, that Romantic tradition served an aporetic purpose of a self-validiting epistemology. As he writes in his work “Metaphor and die Main Problem of

Hermeneutics”:

Romanticist thinkers meant that the understanding of a text...necessarily involves

precomprehension which expresses die way in which the reader has already

understood himself and his world. Therefore, a kind of circularity occurs between

understanding a text and understanding oneself. (106)

In light of diis conceptualization, we can see diat David Lurie forcibly instituting die precomprehension of himself as die Romantic seducer upon his charges in the effort to justify the violation of his student within die Romantic paradigm. His aim is to institute the poor interpretive training he’d been given, not subject given noema to rigorous procedure.

Rather than diat, he persistently identifies himself as the Byronic hero during his second conquest over Melanie, aligning himself to that seamy poet in the parallel understanding of their actions: “Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to die core” 31

(Coetzee 25). Much later, in the recollection and attempted comprehension of his daughter’s assault, we find the implicit justification of his behavior where he thinks:

“Among the legions of countesses and kitchenmaids Byron pushed himself into there were no doubt those who called it rape. But none surely had cause to fear that the session would end with her throat being slit” (160). This twisted reconciliation of his own behavior, of evil by degrees—and his die lesser, marks the stubborn persistence of subjecting his action to a thorough interpretation, in turn refusing Spivak’s ethical eruption, electing instead die strict adherence to his interpretive precomprehensions. In keeping an eye turned toward “the great (Romantic] archetypes of die imagination,” he enacts the circular maintenance of die web of signification through which he, the supposed expert reader, “has already understood himself and his world,” even in die moment his daughter grants him the opportunity to re-position himself within hers.

So far, we’ve been discussing the danger of refusing codified interpretation and the failure to account for intertextuality. Ironically, in that same scene of teaching, David Lurie prefaces a potential danger of intertextual exchange. He draws his students’ attention to (he disfiguration diat occurs by die over-application of die intertextual procedure, resulting in what he sees as a “profound misreading” of the real person, Byron, and of die texts attributed to him:

’As we saw last week, notoriety and scandal affected not only Byron’s life but the

way in which his poems were received by die public. Byron die man found himself 32

conflated with his own poetic creations - with Harold, Manfred, even Don

Juan’(31).

At least in this moment, we see an attempt to reach a “valid” reading. The expert reader, in this instance of instruction, warns his students against the misinterpretation of textual works native to die procedure of intertextual interpretation. However, his later discussions of

Byron die man, such as die one above where David Lurie emphasizes the violence of

Byron’s lascivious nature, would have us acknowledge an implicit disbelief in his own teachings, though not as an effort to “give the lie” to broaden understanding, but as a product of die failure to account for himself in die figure-I of an alternative interpretive web.

That accounting does slip into his epistemic web from very early on, though he forestalls the cognizance of it until nearly die conclusion of die novel. The first poignant instance of its success comes in die recognition of die textual alteration of his relationship widi Melanie. The onset of disciplinary protocols, once his indiscretion has come to light, shows a literal textualization of himself and his former “lover.” With the documents before him, he tries to imagine the turn of events diat has resulted in his current censure. He creates a scene of coercion: Melanie, unwillingly at most, benignly at the very least, as pressured by her fadier and her cousin to bring the complaint against him.

Yet he cannot deny die literal textualization of the girl and himself, nor die explanatory procedure diat it evokes from him. Despite die colorful narrative he contrives, he cannot deny die textual evidence before him: “Finally, at the foot of the page, die date 33

and her signature: die arabesque of die M, the /with its bold upper loop, die downward gash of die I, the flourish of the final s” (Coetzee 40). From M to s, the girl’s self- actualizadon as textual object places him, unwillingly, into her epistemic web. He cannot refuse the alternative interpretation any longer, “The deed is done” (40). In that instance he can no longer deny the understanding that conies from the evidentiary exchange before him: “Two names on the page, his and hers, side by side. Two in a bed, lovers no longer but foes” (40). David Lurie has an opportunity, in this moment, to enact a counterfocalization as reaction to his own failure of reading (Spivak 22). The best he can muster, diough, is a momentary glimpse into Melanie’s web, which he violently casts oil in his persistent refusal to admit to any wrongdoing.

Spivak’s criticism of David Lurie revolves around diis notion of counterfocalization.

In a complex and nuanced intertextual exercise, Spivak aligns Coetzee’s Lucy to

Shakespeare’s Cordelia, of K ing L a w (Spivak 20-2). The justification for her intertextuality is around die shared signifier “nodiing” and diat it signifies absolutely disparate concepts.

“If Lucy ends widi nodiing,” she writes, “Cordelia in the text of K ing L ear begins with the word nodiing” (20). For Cordelia, Spivak interprets that “[nodiing] signifies the withholding of speech as an instrument for indicating socially inappropriate affective value” (20). For

Lucy, she interprets “[nodiing as] die casting aside of the affective value-system attached to reproductive heteronarmativity as it is accepted as the currency to measure human dignity”

(21). In a seeming reversal, she identifies Lucy’s nothing as “ an originary ‘nothing,’ a scary beginning,” implying, if we take that widi her above comparison of the two women, diat 34

Lucy ends by finding in her violation an inviolate state of beginning. Spivak claims diis as an instrumentalizadon of reproduction, which in turn acts as a “refusal to be raped” (21). If this seems complex, prepare yourself: we are only at the beginning.

These two are further layered in an intertextual relationship to Tagore, whose poem interrupts diese moments of analysis by literal physical interjection. In a movement akin to David Lurie seeing die two names on die page-in bed togedier, Spivak aims to force an epistemic eruption in her reader by die physical insertion of Tagore’s text. The first instance of such comes in the reproduction of the quote on which she enacts her intertextual reading of Lucy’s nothing, reproduced below in full10. In reading this passage, I began to understand Spivak’s understanding of the intertextual procedure as “giving the lie.” Perhaps diis speaks to my own ignorance or failure to comport myself as an expert reader, or perhaps it is a product of my reading Spivak’s work in advance of the novel, but when Spivak says diat, “These are some of die daughter Lucy’s last words in die novel,” then delivers to her reader the passage exacdy as it is reproduced here, I believed diat quote from Tagore was a part of Coetzee’s text (20). In discussion I learned I was not the

10 “It is as if she has not hear him. “Go hack to Petrus, ” she says. Propose the following. Say I accept his protection. Say he can put out whatever story he likes about our relationship and I won’t contradict him. I f he wants me to he known as his third wife, so be it. As his concubine, ditto. But then the child becomes his too. The child becomes part o f his family. As for the land, say I will sign the land over to him as long as the house remains mine. I will become a tenant on his land. ’... ‘How humiliating, ’he says hnally .... ‘yes, [she saysj I agree, it is humiliating. But perhaps that is a good point to start from again .... T o start at ground level. With nothing. N ot with nothing but. Widi nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity. [204-05; emphasis mine[

Apomane liote hobe tahader shobar shoman.” (Spivak 20) 35

only one who believed as much. I did not accurately place diese two in an intertextual relationship, diat the translation of Tagore—“you will have to be equal in disgrace to them all”—informed and expanded the comprehension of Coetzee, but was duped into believing that Spivak’s intertextual procedure was product of a relationship Coetzee intended, like the chemist intended die allusion to Mozart to inform the comprehension of his work, which die expert reader uncovered, not created from out of the blue (20). Giving die lie, indeed.

In further intertextual creation, Lucy’s parallel nature to Cordelia aligns widi a parallel relationship between David Lurie and Josef K. of Franz Kafka’s T h e Trial. She provides a lengthy quote, excerpted here, reproducing die final moment of that novella where K. meets his end. I’ve included her subsequent analysis as well:

‘With failing sight K. saw how die men drew near his face, leaning cheek-to-cheek

to observe the verdict. “Like a dog!” he said; it seemed as though the shame was to

oudive him.’ [231|

This is how Lurie understands Lucy’s remarks about ‘nothing but.’ Not as a

beginning in disgraceful equality but the end of civil society (with the withdrawal of

the colonizer?), where only shame is guaranteed continuity. This is a profound

misunderstanding. (Spivak 22)

That profound misunderstanding, Spivak argues, is die fault of the non-inlertextual reader, and an intentional provocation of the author to drive us toward intertextual interpretive procedure. As she writes, “When Lurie asks...‘like a dog?’ Lucy simply agrees, ‘Yes, like a 36

dog.’ She does not provide (he explanation that die reader who can work intertextuality will provide, /.ear and The Trial are not esoteric texts” (Spivak 22). In this moment, Spivak again reveals die shades of arrogance diat cropped up in her deigning to restore intertextuality for die radical New Yorkers: sure, T he T rial and L ea r m e arguably accessible texts, but to rely on the assumption diat a “good job” reading will inevitably result in die restoration of die relationship diat she has created strikes me as terribly ignorant.

Her methodology is wonderful, the procedure admirable. But Spivak, it seems, has been blinded by her own brilliance.

As she continues with her privileged intertextual reading, she says of Lucy’s “Like a dog:” “These may be Lucy’s last words, but the novel continues, focalizing Lurie loving dogs, avoiding bathos only by his obvious race-gender illiterary, as we counterfocalize the absent Lucy” (Spivak 22-3). Again, we’ve caught her giving the lie, as diose are far from die last words of the novel, anodier duplicitous moment, augmenting comprehension, perhaps, but inherently untrue.

In fact, Lucy and her father have two additional conversations, the last words she utters carrying an absolutely disparate significance than die one Spivak would have us take from her explanation; not “Like a dog,” but, “Will you come in and have some tea?”

(Coetzee 218). David Lurie, in this moment, achieves a nominal transposition into his daughter’s web of epistemic significance, as a visitor, on a “new footing,” in a “new start”

(218). Why does Spivak insist on denying him diat, instead declaring diat he barely skirts

“bathos only by his race-gender illiteracy,” and declaring a persistent counterfocalization in 37

the absence of Lucy, an absence she has fictionalized (Spivak 23)? In those last pages,

David Lurie comes to acknowledge the “profound misunderstanding” that had persisted in his epistemic interpretation no further dian Spivak’s excerpted passage, eventually enacdng the complete ediical eruption and resultant epistemological interruption in die final, heartbreaking moment of actualizing his love in an alternative epistemic web—by giving it up.

I’ve been looking for justification for diis deception, for evidence that it is in keeping with some critical theme of Coetzee’s text, but I am stymied. In fact, I continue to arrive at just die opposite, on and evidentiary grounds. Spivak argued that it “is a setting-to- work of what in the secular imagination is the literary impulse: to imagine the odier who does not resemble the self...for the secular imagination, die transcendental narrative is just that, a narrative, singular and unverifiable” (Spivak 23). Traces of diat literary impulse have been stated tiiroughout diis paper to this point, in particular the moment when David Lurie refigures his relationship widi Melanie within her epistemological web through die forced intertextuality enacted by die document of his indictment. Could that refiguration be limited to diat moment, or subde to the point diat Spivak has overlooked it entirely? This breakdown of Spivak’s intertextual methodology is utterly confounding, as her intellectual posturing belies the utter breakdown of a verifiable explanatory mode.

In fact, furtiier review shows diat moments of epistemic transposition appear diroughout die novel, both in David Lurie’s tacit acknowledgement of their refusal, as discussed at lengdi, and in increasingly successful moments. 38

Despite David Lurie’s significant failures to accurately read die people around him, diose moments do occur. On meeting Bev Shaw, he immediately places her in an intertextual relationship:

He recalls die story of - who was it? St. Hubert? - who gave refuge to deer that

clattered into his chapel, panting and distraught, fleeing the huntsman’s dogs. Bev

Shaw, not a veterinarian but a priestess, full of new age mumbo jumbo, trying,

absurdly, to lighten the load of Africa’s suffering beasts. Lucy diought he would find

her interesting. But Lucy is wrong. Interesting is not the word (Coetzee 84)

This religious allusion will serve the later efforts of this paper, but for now we can see die imposition of comprehension via intertextual exchange at die conclusion of this quote. He does not know the word, cannot explain yet, but his understanding of Bev is product of placing her into an intertextual web, of engaging die very explanatory procedure diat Spivak says he lacks. By doing so, he transcends die understanding that Lucy has provided for him to a fuller, more nuanced reading of Bev; even if he does not yet have access to it, he at least can acknowledge that it is diere.

Bev Shaw initiates another epistemic transposition for him, this time in succession to die assault on his daughter. “ You don’t understand, you weren’t there, says Bev Shaw”

(Coetzee 160, original emphasis). This moment is in a physical intertextual reference to die justification of his rape discussed above, where he draws upon the Romantic Byron as paradigmatic for his own rape-like behavior. Perhaps beyond that, it is an intertextual moment with his past self, diat violendy sexual man, diat permits the setting-to-work of the 39

literary impulse: “Well, she is mistaken. Lucy’s intuition is right after all: he does

understand; he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be there, be die men, inhabit

them, fill them with die ghost of himself’ (160). In diis somewhat grotesque moment,

David Lurie can align himself, find himself, refigure himself as I, within the epistemic web

of die rapists that assaulted his daughter. This time, diough, he is able to identify the hole

diat makes his transposition incomplete, inadequate: “The question is, does he have it in

him to be the woman?” (160). At this point, we’re given a resonant “No” when he writes a

well-intentioned but utterly misguided letter to his daughter “from the solitude of his room”

(160). He has at least attempted to carry out die explanatory procedures that would grant

him access to his daughter’s epistemic web. In response, intertextual in its own right for the

literal medium, of a letter slipped beneath his door, she identifies him as “one of the three

chimpanzees, die one with die paws over his eyes” (160). His obstinate refusal to embrace

the literary impulse is clear where she writes, “You do not see this and I cannot make you

see. It is as if you have chosen deliberately to sit in a comer where the rays of die sun do

not shine” (160). It is not intertext he fails to understand, but die world opened up by diat

intertextual action.

He final comes to understand diis world-projection through his own intentional

exteriorization. In writing die operetta on Byron, he comes to a reconciliation of his etiiic with an alternate epistemology. As he envelops himself in die task of creating diat

inscription, voices come to him unbidden, music springs forth as if by divine inspiration.

“So diis is art, he diinks, and this is how it does its work! How strange! How fascinating!” 40

(Coetzee 185). What a hizarre recognition for an expert reader of texts! What had he been working with, if not art? In this epiphanic moment, the life he had known is shown to have crumbled around him, his house in a shambles: “The refrigerator is empty, his bed is unmade; leaves chase across the door from the broken window” (185). None if diis is any concern to him, though, as he’s caught up in the intertextual web of his own weaving, “He spends whole days in die grip of Byron and Teresa” (185). His indifference is summarized in a synoptic quote, miscontextualized but perfectly apt for this new circumstance of capitulation to an epistemic otherness, as it captures die odierness that he confronts within himself: “No matter, he diinks: let the dead bury dieir own dead” (185).

W e’ll revisit this invocation of the synoptic gospel in a moment, but let’s leave off from stacking biblical allusions for a moment. Above, I pointed out that David Lurie cannot transpose himself into his daughter’s epistemic web, but he does gain some - limited - access to a deeper understanding of Bev Shaw by his ability to situate her in an intertextual relationship. That capability nearly reaches fulfillment in die creation of his operetta, but isn’t fully realized until the final scene of the novel where he gives up a dog he has grown to love to die eudianizing needle, with the promise of the incinerating flames close behind.

In his first scene of assisting Bev in her veterinary clinic, she directs him to “think comforting thoughts” because the dogs, attuned to signals we humans cannot perceive, will smell and react to his thoughts. He dismisses die idea derisively: “They can smell what you are thinking: what nonsense!” (81). After die attack, diough, after that eruption of his 41

ethical understanding of diings, he questions that dismissive epistemology; in fact, he lights upon it in a moment diat presages the eventual reconciliation of his interpretive methodology with his daughter’s reality: “My daughter, he diinks; my dearest daughter.

Whom it has fallen to me to guide. Who one of tiiese days will have to guide me. Can she smell his thoughtsF (156, emphasis added) While he cannot understand her, does not

“have it in him to be the woman,” he can at least begin to move toward her by calling up die explanatory procedure that Bev Shaw has implanted in him and attempt to reach a comprehension of his daughter within it; and he is rewarded by that procedural exercise, that submission to the literary impulse, by the tacit acknowledgement that perhaps she can smell his thoughts, even if they are not yet true to circumstances: “Halfway home, Lucy, to his surprise, speaks. ‘It was so personal,’ she says. ‘It was done widi such personal hatred’”

(156).

But that instance that shows his development also shows that it is yet incomplete.

Directly after this instant, where Lucy acknowledges David’s momentary epistemic openness and invites him into her web by her first relation to him of that awful moment as the subject of extreme hatred, he reverts to the Romanticized ideal of dieir relationship and of himself as die sage and practiced reader, of texts and of her, his daughter:

“’There are tilings you just don’t understand.’

‘What don’t I understand?’

‘To begin with, you don’t understand what happened to me diat day...you diink

you understand, but finally you don’t. Because you can’t.’ 42

’On the contrary, I understand all too well,’ he says. ‘I will pronounce the word

we have avoided hitherto. You were raped. Multiply. By three men’

‘And?’

‘You were in fear of your life. You were afraid that after you had been used you

would be killed. Disposed of. Because you were nothing to them.’

‘And?’ Her voice is now a whisper.

‘And I did nothing. I did not save you.’” (157)

In this, the episode of David Lurie’s great “confession,” his own “nothing” fails to align with the “nothing” that the attackers made of Lucy, inviting Spivak’s criticism of his profound misreading (Spivak 22). That conversation exemplifies Spivak’s argument diat “D isgrace is relentless in keeping the localization confined to David Lurie” (22). It is moments like this, where David Lurie reverts to his explanatory methodology of the pontificating professor.

He actualizes die rape for himself by the professorial pronouncement and subsequent contextualization of that word, as if he stood before “the bored youth of the country”

(Coetzee 71), in a refusal to accept the ethical eruption, Spivak contends, diat provoke the reader to counterfocalize. “No reader,” she writes, “is content with acting out die failure of reading. This is the rhetorical signal to the active reader, to counterfocalize” (22). Yet, the practiced reader can find in diis moment the bubbling up of the counterfocalization in

David Lurie’s actions, without dependence upon “rhetorical signals” or die “prim phrase

‘dramatic irony’” that Spivak was taught to label such a literary circumstance with “when 43

[she] was an undergraduate,” not unlike David Lurie (22). For in the conversation detailing

David Lurie’s failure to reposition himself in an alternative epistomology, there is the literal interruption of him doing just diat .

In die block quote above, I have provided an elliptical intrusion diat physically divides the conversation. On die page of the novel, there is such an intrusion, but it does not require literary training or practice with critical jargon to see - only a sensitive eye and a willingness to see the literary impulse enacted with its own simulating matrix. Lucy declares to David, “Because you can’t,” at which “He slows down and pulls off the road. ‘Don’t, says Lucy. ‘Not here. This is a bad stretch, too risky to stop.’ He picks up speed, [and continues widi die argument] “On die contrary, I understand all too well’” (Coetzee 157).

This presents a dilemma, an eruption of Spivak’s insistence that David Lurie persistendy fails to counterfocalize, for in die physical interruption of the conversation diat demonstrates her argument the echoes of his momentary counterfocalization, his refiguration of himself in Lucy’s web, though inaccurately, by the utilization of Bev Shaw’s epistemology, show die expansion ofhis own epistemic horizon. It’s so subde diat if you blink you might miss it, but not so subtle diat the average reader can’t see that David Lurie has already begun to gain access to his daughter’s epistemology by diis moment of unspoken obeisance. And one does not need to know L ear or Kafka to feel the shifting tides this father and daughter are caught in - the assumption that one does is a great disservice to literary practice. 44

In die final scene of die novel, David Lurie’s ability to counterfocalize is demonstrated as complete, or as near to complete as one can hope to achieve. In a heart­ rending scene, David Lurie has reached a reconciliation of die epistemic Nothing that his daughter has come to know dirough her ethical eruption. A gesture he had formerly dismissed as fudle and cruel, in its way, he has come to adopt as his own: “He and Bev do not speak. He has learned, by now, from her, to concentrate all his attendon on die animal diey are killing, giving it what he no longer has difficulty in calling by its proper name: love”

(Coetzee 219). Finally, he can understand, can fully transpose himself, into the epistemic web of die odier by adopting her codified explanatory procedure. Just as he has come to a reckoning that “a time must come” for him to give up a little dog he has come to love, we can see how adept he has become at refiguring himself in that scene, and die one directiy preceding where he comes to new terms with his relationship with Lucy, as a visitor, discussed at lengtii above.

Yet there is an important allusion in this moment, one that shows that despite how far he has come there is still an intertextuality diat he cannot fully utilize, cannot turn to refiguration but is caught up in the way it has been handed to him. He has been refigured in die epistemic web of his daughter, of Bev, even of love itself, but there remains an epistemology diat refuses to be interrupted: that of die immortal soul. Early on, prior to his first visit to Bev’s clinic, he declares the following to his daughter: “’The Church Fathers had a long debate about [dogs], and decided they don’t have proper souls,’ he observes.

‘Their souls are tied to their bodies and die with them’” (Coetzee 79). This final moment, 45

of giving up die litde dog he loves in an act of love, shows diat the most he can manage is a deep-seated ambivalence. The litde dog, eager in his ignorance to “follow his comrades,” is understood as unable to interpret die smell of die clinic, “die smell of expiration, die soft, short smell of die released soul” (219). That ambiguous description is followed by diis description of what happens in diat room, of somediing “unmentionable:” “Here the soul is yanked out of die body; briefly it hangs about in die air, twisting and contorting; dien it is sucked away and is gone. It will be beyond him, this room that is not a room but a hole where one leaks out of existence” (219). This remains as die unimpeachable intertext -

David Lurie, Coetzee, Spivak, from them no inclination arises to question die sanctity of die soullessness of the creatures he loves—only an enduring ambiguity, a persistence of non-existence. David Lurie cannot disfigure himself from die decisions of the “Church

Fadiers” nor the provided intertextuality of dieir interpretive procedure, cannot find himself in an epistemic web free from that influence despite his deep desire to do so. On diat account he is left trapped, a fly and not a spider in an alternate epistemic web, carrying his sacrificial lamb, his scapegoat, to the altar of his own ultimate failure to act out die self­ figuration of I. The helpless fly, he will cany diose he loves to the hole where they leak from existence and usher diem to the flames that diey may be burnt, burnt up.

So let die dead bury their own dead. 46

Interlude

Up to lliis point, we have explored in some detail a fictive rendering of literary training, for better or for worse depending upon where you choose to stand. David Lurie, though, is more dian a battleground for competing modes of interpretive methodology. As literary interpretation does not occur in a vacuum, neither does die university; neither does an academic exist independently from the epistemic webs of knowledge and learning that pervade a given society. Subject to die pressures and wills of popular opinion and public perception, the trajectory of die university - and die temporally privileged positions of the disciplines on its campus - is a product of its time and of the atmosphere of knowledge at large.

For all die post-enlightenment emphasis on verifiability, die interpretation of one text in particular has historically maintained a validity that exists outside of the bounds of rigorous verifiability and replicability. That text is the most prevalent in our society, and is arguably die most widely interpreted text of all time. The scenes of teaching, both between its pages and in die hallowed halls where its interpretation is given voice, reveal a self- validation diat ultimately undoes the need for a mediodology for interpretation, or at least cordons oil interpretive facility to die domain of a narrow hegemony. That text is, of course, The Bible.

David Lurie is a product of this literary practice. As noted again and again, despite die employment of figural alienation and epistemic transposition that hermeneutic procedure has let us identify in David Lurie’s progress as an interpreting being, to die very 47

last word he remains inextricably caught in die interpretation provided by “die church fadiers” (Coetzee 79). He can reimagine himself, reimagine die practices of his religion, but in the final moment where he actualizes his epistemic suspension, he announces an immutable epistemology conditioned into him via an unquestionable and unverifiable interpretation: “Somediing happens in this room, something unmentionable: here die soul is yanked out of the body; briedy it hangs about in die air, twisting and contorting; then it is sucked away and is gone. It will be beyond him, this room that is not a room but a hole where one leaks out of existence” (Coetzee 219).

Understanding some of the tradition of the mediodology surrounding The Bible, where hermeneutics finds its genesis, will help us understand how David Lurie can in some ways make so much progress but ultimately reverts to this singular interpretive mode, and how that interpretive mediodology manifests in a “leakjingl out of existence.” Exploring an additional fictive simulacra, Margaret Atwood’s canonical work The Handmaid’s Tale, will, like Lurie for hermeneutics and intertext, let us actualize a world where this brand of interpretive mediodology is not only privileged, but is the sole and singular scene ofliterary teaching. In die end, the juxtaposition of these literary mediodologies will show diat, perhaps, die chasm between tlieir consequences is not as wide as one might assume. 48

II

Interpretation O ff-Ca m p u s

When Jesus11 set about his wanderings, amid performing miracles of healing, convening with long-passed prophets, and feeding the multitudes, he somehow found the time to gadier a collection of proselytes. Jesus, a brilliant and charismatic speaker, was not known for his subtlety when gaining diese followers. To one potential adherent, who wished to bid his family adieu, he said, “No man who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (New International Version, Luke 9.62). To anodier, he warned, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but die Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Luke 9.58). And to anodier, who wanted to followjesus but needed to bury his just deceased father, Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke

9.60).

Thanks to die Revised Common Lectionary\ we know to intertextually embed diis passage at die end of a series of selections from die following: 2 Kings, Psalm 77, 1 Kings,

Psalm 16, Galatians, and finally, Luke. Those readings are not complete, but a patchwork of snippets gleaned for their import13. These fractured texts delve into topics on spiritual

11 Historical, figural, or literary - take your pick. For the most part, this paper will treat Jesus with intentional ambiguity so as not to color your interpretation. 12 The RCL was created in 1983. The revision was the product of a collaboration between the North American Consultation of Common Texts (CCT) and die International English Language Liturgical Consultation (McLean, footnote 49). 13 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14, Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 , 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21 Psalm 16, Galatians 5:1, 13-25, Luke 9:51-62 {Revised Common Lectionary) 49

leadership, unanswered prayer, freedom through self-realization-particularly its limitations, and, eventually, the demands and “single-minded faithfulness” that Christianity demands of its followers (Cousar, et. al. 401). In its p ro p e r place in this intertext, Jesus’s admonition of the man who would bury his freshly-dead father serves the carefully calculated indoctrination of the Revised Common Lectionary’s adherents.

Let us pause for a moment and establish exacdy what this didactic liturgical text is.

Briefly, from B.H. McLean, “The Revised Common Lectionary specifies for each Sunday of the year one reading from die Old Testament, Psalms, die epistles, and the Gospels, respecdvely, in a diree-year cycle” (McLean 49). Lectionary, taken more broadly, is a text diat prescribes particular readings for worship on a given day, a practice originating in

Talmudic tradition and widely adopted in Christian dieology. In fact, most Protestant denominations adhere to die RCL“, and the Cadiolic Church has its own version, die

Roman Cadiolic Lectionary, which means a sweeping majority of Christians are receiving their Biblical prescriptives dirough some form of lectionary.

B.H. McLean argues, in a reading inspired by Derrida’s work on speech-act dieory in Limited, Inc., that diis lectionary practice contributes to an “open-ended” interpretation of texts where the “fuller sense” of The Bible can be accessed through non-contextual reading (McLean 49). In this understanding, the manufactured intertextuality of the

14 Including, but not limited to: Baptists, Anabaptists, Anglicans, Disciples of Christ, Christian Brediren, Christian Reformed Church, the Episcopal Church, Mennonites, Lutherans, Evangelicals, Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Unitarian Universalists, Mediodists, and United Mediodists (“Search Tips,” Vanderbilt). 50

lectionary opens up the audience to readings diat are not relative to die context of dieir creation, nor to their relationship to one another. As McLean writes, “Not only do biblical texts have historical contexts that differ from o u r contexts, but their individual historical contexts differ from one molher”(49, original emphasis). Mclean notes a chronological and contextual manipulation, elaborating on that difference to describe a mode of reading where “the weekly churchgoer is taken from one discontinuous block of three texts to anodier, knowing diat the intervening historical and cultural gaps will never be filled in”

(49). What is gained, and what is lost, in die willful suspension of inquiry conditioned into die interpretive practice of die “weekly churchgoer?” He goes on, “Like childhood memory, the lectionary creates dramadc shifts in time, profound breaks in narrative sequences, and ruptures in historical causality” (49).

In light of these few sentences, biblical interpretation manifested through die false intertextuality of the lectionary can be read as a Spivakian attempt to “give the lie,” but in a dghdy controlled interpretive procedure. McLean’s election to describe diis procedure as evocative of childhood memory evokes die prelapsarian state of an ideal and imposed naivete. The reader of the lectionary surrenders control absolutely, disregarding die contexts of their text and granting authority to die church so completely diat “time can run backwards” (Mclean 49). When this discontinuous, decontextnalized procedure is elected,

“it is almost inevitable that [scripture] will be interpreted in light of our own modern contexts” (49). This last, according to McLean, is what is gained. 51

Accepting that, what is lost? In purely quantitative terms, 87 percent of The Bible, according to the calculations from biblical scholar Robert P. Woznak15. Perhaps diis is a better opportunity to consider what is gained, as such a limited reading, over the span of three years, opens die door to impose a “fuller sense” of a text according to the needs of a particular set of interpretive practitioners: the Christian oligarchy. Accepting for die moment diat scripture is die infallible word of God, to take it in bits and pieces, as determined by a group of white-robed men established in the United States in the 1960s and constantly modified for die needs of a modernized world, is undeniably die work of man. This group, the Consultation on Common Texts, describes themselves as “an ecumenical consultation of liturgical scholars and denominational representatives from the

United States and Canada who produce liturgical texts and curate a diree-year lectionary in common use by Christian churches worldwide” (Coniniontexts.org16). It would be remiss to overlook diat “curat[or],” dieir self-selected identifier, is defined by the OED both as “a person appointed as guardian of die affairs of someone legally unfit to conduct him- or herself, such as a minor, an insane person, etc.” and as “one who has die cure of souls”

(OED). Like the textual simulacra we will explore momentarily, the ecumenical consultation holds a monopoly on biblical interpretive procedure with the casual implication that their work is in protection of an incapable audience.

15 "An Introduction to the Homily" by Robert P. Woznak, pg. 75, says, "The new Lectionary [Sundays and Special Days, not Daily] contains approximately 13 percent of The Bible - 6 percent of the Old Testament (not counting die Psalms) and 41 percent of die New [Testament]." As quoted by die Vanderbilt RCL service (“Search Tips,” Vanderbilt). 52

At risk of opening another rabbit hole, I cannot help but point out the colonial nature of this self-identification. For a group of North American, singularly white, western ideologues to prescribe die “proper” interpretation of scripture reeks of a catiiolic colonialism of its readers minds, bodies and souls. And widi the audiority of “the word of

God,” the granted interpretation takes on its own unimpeachable character.

In opposition to diis lectionary-based interpretive practice, a literal recontextualization of biblical passages, as in, reading diem in their actual and complete literary context, shows a quick reversion to an actual “fuller sense” of biblical meaning, irrespective of the interests of die church’s governing body. Employing a hermeneutic methodology restores the referentiality that Spivak requires of a rigorous interpretive practice. A particularly poignant example is a non-lectionary reading of the Ten

Commandments, the supposed foundation for Christian, and de-facto Western, morality:

David Clines asserts diat these commandments are not timeless, etiiical maxims:

when considered in terms of dieir original h istorical contexts, it is clear they were

intended to serve the interests of married, male, elite, Israelite property owners. In

odier words, the Ten Commandments functioned, historically, as part of a structure

of oppression. (McLean 66)

McLean puts up diis reading as an absurdity, a dangerous misappropriation of sacred scripture to serve an ulterior motive. Surely, such an argument can be put fordi concerning the carefully censured version of die Ten Commandments diat is put up for consumption by parishioners. 53

According to Proper 22 of Year A of the RCL, appropriate reading of die Ten

Commandments in Exodus 20 takes the following shape: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20. As such, die text reads as die prescriptive list we know so well, “Thou slialt not x, y, or z.” Clines’s logic is apparent, as diose interdictions clearly favor the Israelite17, married18, the landed19, and die ruling class20. That first prohibition (reproduced below), most important for its position in the order of the commandments and for the proportional volume of die text it occupies, continues with an abolishment of “idol|s|, whether in the form of anydiing that is in heaven above, or diat is on the eartii beneath, or that is in the water under the eardi” (Exodus

20:4). While diat proscription should raise eyebrows concerning die practices of canonization and veneration, and pretty much die entirety of Vatican City, it is the sentiment that did n o t make it into the RCL diat should grab our attention.

The two omitted lines, Exodus 20:5-6, reveal much of the character of die Judeo-

Christian god and carry heavy implications for the severity o f‘His’ demeanor:

You shall not worship diem or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a

jealous God, visiting die iniquity of the fadiers on the children, on the third and the

fourth generations of diose who hate Me, but showing loving kindness to

thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

17 20:3 you shall have no odier gods before me. 18 20:14 You shall not commit adultery, 20:17 you shall not covet your neighbor's wife 19 20:17 You shall not covet your neighbor's house...or ox, or donkey, or anydiing that belongs to your neighbor. 20 20:17 or male or female slave 54

Which characteristics do you think the Consultation on Common Texts sought to bar from potential interpretation by their adherents? That God declares himself jealous? That mere thousands, and not the billions of Christians currently adhering to Christianity worldwide, will bask in his favor? That punishment of the non-believer will be doled out not only to the skeptic, but to his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, irrespective of the beliefs they hold?

The irony of the charges leveled, of die “in iq u ity of the fadiers,” is impossible to ignore for that word’s implications of “gross injustice” and its etymological roots as a negation of fairness (OED). Perhaps it’s this disregard for fairness, for equality, for die right to due process, that die Consultation deemed potentially incompatible widi die post-civil- rights, post-enlightenment, Western audience. While it’s impossible to say what was explicidy decided - because die Consultation on Common Texts meets stricdy behind tightly closed doors - certainly they would have sought to keep from dieir congregation the unavoidable implication: [that their God is kind of a dick.]

The second glaring RCL omission of the Ten Commandments concerns die day of the Sabbath, and what activity is permitted then: nodiing, really, but worship. I have a harder time understanding die import ofleaving out diese few lines, beginning: “The sevendi day is die sabbath of die Lord your God, in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter” (Exodus 20:10). Sure, the western ideal of the self-made man, working tirelessly to pull himself up by his bootstraps, is incongruous to this obligatory day of rest. Even more compelling, though, and in line widi Clines’s argument of die Ten 55

Commandments as a vehicle of oppression, comes with the extension of diat obligation to rest to “your male or female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you”

(Exodus 20:10). To be charged to hold a day of rest, a day for family, may be met with some mild version of reluctance; but to be denied die absolute dominion over your subordinates, your beasts of burden, be they man or otherwise, on any day of the week, is categorically un-American.

You may be thinking right now that The Bible is a widely available text, interpretation of which is available to anyone who cares to pick up a copy. And true, The

Bible is generally understood as die world’s most readily available text, with over live billion copies printed21. But this was not always die case.

The history of how The Bible reached its current manifestation is long and nuanced, but much of its journey was presaged by the very biblical text we discussed above: diose Ten Commandments. The RCL prefigured the long history of tight control of die possibility to interpret the sacred word of God; in advance of Moses’s delivery of the word of God, “the people stood at a distance,” marking a physical separation between them and the God they seek to follow (Exodus 20:18). And when he brought the word to them they said, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die”

(Exodus 20:19). This, the Consultadon deemed worthy for their RCIj—that to seek personal communion with God is punished with deadi, enacted by invidious God himself.

21 Except, possibly, for Quotations from Chairman Mao, which is in itself an edifying parallel (Fu, 186). 56

God’s unabashed declaration ol Moses as his sole and singular interpredve arbiter is repeated over and over in the communication of die covenant, the “deal” between God and die people, perhaps at no moment more poignandy when God is “quoted” as saying outright: “You shall worship at a distance...Moses alone...shall come near the Lord, but they shall not come up near, nor shall die people come up widi him” (Exodus 24:1-2).

Moses, the prophet, is interposed between the people and their God, though it’s interesting to note that there is no clear speaker in the narrative; the audior speaking for God is absent from die biblical text. As Moses had the sole access to God’s wishes, we should assume that the eventual authorial inscription of this narrative should be traced back to Moses himself through die mystic oral tradition of the Torah.

In diat place of interposition, Moses delivers the covenant, which is shockingly specific, when read in its original context, and of a singular focus: amassing conspicuous wealth - so that God “may dwell among [die people]” (Exodus 25:1-8). Among die artifacts required by the God of Moses: acacia, silks, incense and fragrant oils, fine furs, precious stones, altars for burnt and blood olTerings, and, above all, gold—pure gold, gold wrought into idols of cherubs and shaped into blossoms and branches (Exodus 25). Perhaps God forgot his earlier maxim—diat no idols shall be created in die form of anydiing in heaven, eardi or below. All told, God required something like 6,000 pounds of precious metals to adorn his first tabernacle, diat of Moses and Aaron (Exodus 38:24-29).

And to Moses and his brother, Aaron, God decreed that they be draped in die finest garments and adorned with ornaments of pure gold-described in minute detail- 57

crafted by the most skillful artisans (Exodus 28). God requires it, “that they may minister as

priest to Me” (Exodus 28:3). Not to be forgotten, Aaron’s sons are to be consecrated in like

finery that they may minister to God in their turn. Without such adornments, God will

strike them dead (Exodus 28:43). And they shall eat the finest food, consecrated for the

Lord, and any remainder shall not go to the hungry but be burned, naturally, because it is

sacred and would likewise prove fatal to the unworthy (Exodus 29). And this shall continue

in a hereditary succession, in “statute” from God put down in the covenant to continue forever (Exodus 28:43). How lucky, how blessed is the family of Moses and Aaron, to be delivered from the clutches of slavery to the servitude of God.

Finally, when that tabernacle was completed in all its glory, die covenant of God was housed behind diick, luxurious veils, that the people might be kepi safe from the word of their God (Exodus 40).

And so a literal physical separation of the people from dieir God was effected, enacting a personal alienation from die genesis of dieir ideologies - unrevoked until the

Reformation thousands of years later.

We can take a modern manifestation of this dual alienation in the literary simulacrum provided by Margaret Atwood in her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. In brief,

Atwood shows a near-future dystopian society with a rigidly stratified social structure, justified by the attempts to realize a universally “Christian” America - known in diat universe as The Republic of Gilead. The social stratification applies only to men, though, with women as chattel to their male counterparts. There is a f urther complication, diough. 58

Due to some undisclosed but ubiquitous outbreak of a sterilizing agent that makes

reproduction a near impossibility, fertile women are given to men higher up on the social

strata as “handmaids,” that diey may utilize them as broodmares.

In service to the current intertext under construction, there is a scene that should

take or attention: die interpretation of scripture as justification for “the Ceremony,” the

perverse scene of copulation that anchors the entire narrative.

Like Moses’s covenant with God, The Bible is kept from laymen diat they might read from

it themselves and direaten Christian rule with novel interpretation. Also like die scriptural

covenant, certain ceremonial fineries are on display: “He crosses to the large leatiier chair

reserved for him, takes die key out of his pocket, fumbles with the ornate brass-bound

leatiier-covered box that stands on the table beside the chair” (Atwood 87). Like die

tabernacle, die “large leather chair” is reserved for die ordained, a sacred spot only to be

filled by tiiose consecrated by die written word of Christian law. The “brass-bound leather-

covered box” is a paltry stand in for the solid-gold finery of the ark, but in an America where food is tightly controlled and beef, in particular, is an extreme luxury, leatiier is a

lurid show of wealth. The additional fact that the tabernacle was covered all over widi a

“tent of goat’s hair” brings a certain analogue to these dual divisions of a people from tiieir

ideology.

The interpretive moment comes: “He inserts the key, opens the box, lifts out The

Bible, an ordinary copy, widi black cover and gold-edged pages” (Atwood 87). Unlike

Moses’s devotees, diough, tiieir physical separation is not self-imposed nor intimately 59

desired (except maybe for the common goal of self-preservation _ see discussion of Exodus

24:1-2 above). Atwood is unafraid to provide an alternative logic for this physical control of the text: “The Bible is kept locked up, so die servants wouldn’t steal it,” she writes, describing a very literal concern for the physical protection of that valuable text (87). She continues, though: “It is an incendiary device: who knows what we’d make of it, if we got our hands on it? We can be read to from it, by him, but we cannot read” (87). It’s hard to imagine a world with such a tightly controlled interpretive procedure applied to the world’s most widely available text, but as we’ve seen there is plenty to read diis mediodological imposition as a component of modern Biblical interpretation. And aside from the content based precedent, as discussed with Moses’s strict control over interpretive practice, diere is a historical pattern to this methodology as well.

The question posed above, “Who knows what we’d make of it?” was one that plagued die Church for centuries. An adroit but messy answer was elected, not unlike the patterns from Moses and die Republic of Gilead: control access to die text. Instead of physical access to the text, diey controlled the language in which it was printed.

The publication history of The Bible is an interesting one, and follows a remarkable arc in some of its early iterations: In 382 A.D., Saint Jerome produced a translation of The Bible from die Greek known as die I^itin Vulgate. In die following hundred years, the text had been translated into as many as 500 languages, according to

The Bible historian and rare Bible dealer John L. Jeflcoat, III. With the increasing availability of the scripture and the dawning acceptance of the Protestant doctrine of Sola 60

Scriptura, the church felt their grip weakening. In response, an ecumenical council was convened in die middle of the 16lh century: the infamous Council of Trent. Their first order of business: to proscribe the possession of any version of die Holy Scripture outside of die I^atin Vulgate. To hold any other version of the text was condemned as heresy. Like in Atwood’s world, a simple logic was invoked - that in diat era speakers of Latin, outside of the church fathers, were few and far between. As University College of London professor and literary scholar David Daniell neatly summarizes it, “This was a convenient way of controlling the public; if diey could not read Latin, they could only do as they were told” (Daniell 2).

From Daniell comes an interesting detail concerning this recitadon of the Latin version of the scriptures: “Sadly even many of the priests had little idea what diey were reading as few of them knew proper Latin” (Daniell 3). This detail appears in our simulacrum as well, where we get a glimpse into die liturgical indoctrination of the handmaids: “For lunch it was the Beatitudes. Blessed be this, blessed be that. They played it from a tape, so not even an Aunt would be guilty of the sin of reading. The voice was a man’s” (Atwood 89). Like so many early priests, blindly acting as mechanisms of control for the abiding hegemony, the Aunts who train the handmaids unquestioningly accept tiieir position as minor nodes in the web of intertextual oppression.

In counter-reformation Europe, the punishment for the heresy of reading any scripture oilier than die L atin Vulgate was to be burned alive (Daniell 2). One promoter of

English translations was even reported to have been burned alive on a pile of original, 61

hand-written versions of die first translation from John Wyclifle (Jefieoat). As that translation illegally propagated dirough Europe, an earlier ecumenical council posthumously declared Wycliffe a heretic, so the Pope ordered that his hody be exhumed, burned, and his ashes dirown into a river; so great was dieir anger at his ad'ront to their absolute control of the text (Jeffcoat). These displays of die horrors faced by an opponent of die Church served as a public warning to any who would question their will. In Atwood’s world, subversive acts were decisively and publicly punished. Dissidents are strung up on hooks embedded in what was once the wall of Harvard Yard, hung in antipodean relief to die facade of die chapel across the square.

Despite die danger, our literary protagonist maintains a deep desire to possess the scripture diat governs her life, likening it to that universally understood need, hunger: “He’s like a man toying with a steak, behind a restaurant window, pretending not to see the eyes watching him from hungry darkness not three feet from his elbow” (Atwood 88). Like

Moses, a mineral relationship reappears where Atwood describes die listener’s physical response as, “Leanfing] toward him a little, iron filings to his magnet” (88). As Moses’s covenant brought a glut of precious metals, the austere world of Atwood’s handmaid will make do with iron. A magnet, though, has die power to repel as well as to attract; the physical and spiritual alienation is likewise maintained. Their parallel need and desire, to

Moses’s followers, is outlined when our protagonist declares: “He has something we don’t have, he has the word” (88). 62

The Commander begins to deliver his sermon, and: “It’s die usual story, die usual stories. God to Adam, God to Noah. Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth”

(Atwood 88). Then, finally, we are given the scriptural justification - or ecumenical sanction, if you please - for the grotesque social structure diat reduces women to wombs, a memory tied to a certain scene of teaching:

Then comes die moldy old Rachel and Leah stuff we had drummed into us at the

Center. Give me children, or else I die. Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld

from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilbah. She shall bear upon my

knees, that I may also have children by her. And so on and so fordi. We had it read

to us every breakfast, as we sat in the high school cafeteria, eating porridge and

cream with brown sugar (88-9).

Exploration of die scripture will bring its own understanding, but first the delivery - food metaphors again abound. The scripture itself is remembered as “moldy old stuff,” but is sweetened by the brown sugar they’re fed each morning. An intertext is fashioned for these women by which their very sustenance, the stuff of their life, is inextricably tied to the scripture forced into diem by the incorporeal voice of die reading man. And as the overseeing Aunts like to remind them, “[They’re! getting the best” (89).

The scripture presents a difficulty because as it exists, in its totally in scripture, it does set a precedent for the bizarre social structure Atwood depicts (Genesis 30). Cognitive dissonance abounds for the modem, Western reader. Perhaps Atwood’s dark, fictional 63

prognosis isn’t actually too far removed from a world where a literal reading of scripture is the preeminent determination oflife and law. W e’ve already seen diat the Ten

Commandments, when taken in their original context, should be understood as maintenance of the hegemonic system favoring wealthy, Israelite males - If this scripture can be reinterpreted as the foundation of die modern “Christian” edios, why can’t we be taught to extend our interpretation to die maintenance of a system diat keeps women as breeders? The question, naturally, is raised: is such a social system, based on the manipulation of a literal interpretation of scripture, possible?

I recently had die pleasure of attending a talk given by Margaret Atwood. In speaking briefly on The Handmaid’s Tale, she said somediing diat cemented itself in my mind, at die time for its humor but on further reflection for its poignancy.

The anecdote she gave was in response to a question on why she thought the novel was so popular and so relevant, all these years later. Some part of that response, in her meandering answer, came in a clearly well-rehearsed statement diat I remember widi the utmost clarity. She quoted from “critical responses” in her slow, deliberate voice: “In

England, they said, ‘It’s a jolly good yarn.’ In Canada, they said, ‘Could this happen to us?’

In America, diey said, ‘ How long have we got?

At die time I had a good laugh, along widi the rest of die audience, impressed more widi her impeccable comedic timing than by die import of her statement. But while working through diis project, the pall cast by diat comment became darker and darker.

The humor was replaced widi die question: Why did diat resonate so strongly with the 64

audience of 1200? What, in her clever quip, struck such a sonorous chord? I’m reminded of a quote, attributed to Mark Twain by his friend Opie Read in his book Mark Twain and

I: “ [Humor is] the good natured side of any truth” (Read 34).

It only takes a brief examination to understand where the truth of diis comment lies, and it’s not merely in die historical - and modern - antecedent of our deeply misogynistic culture. America, a country founded on the ideal of religious freedom, is a devoutly Christian country. The depdi of diat devotion is revealed in the annual religious aggregation, die “Values and Beliefs” poll, perfonned by the polling company, Gallup. At the time of publication of TheHandmaid’s Tale, Gallup reported that a staggering 40 percent of Americans believed diat The Bible was “the actual word of God, and should be taken literally, word for word” (Gallup 2014). The latest poll available, from 2014, reveals that proportion has been reduced to a still significant 28 percent, which is actually back up from the all time low of 27 percent(!) recorded in 2001 (Gallup). However, when the provision that “The Bible is die actual word of God, but multiple interpretations are possible” was put forth, 75 percent of polled Americans selected diat option, only a marginal reduction from die 80 percent who selected that option in 1985 (Gallup). The implications of this poll are astounding - widi nearly a third of people taking a word-for- word literal interpretation of The Bible, it is a wonder there aren’t more gilded tabernacles scattered about (though the wealth amassed in Vatican City makes up for the deardi many times over). 65

But this is where the lectionary makes an all-important intervention - are

Americans actually reading The Bible, the scripture as it was “given by God,” or are they receiving die version created by the North American Consultation on Common Texts that

“gives die lie” to their brand of Christianity through a carefully crafted intertext? The sheer magnitude of adopdon by American churches, as discussed above, would indicate die latter.

The precedential scripture from The Handmaid's Tale is a clear example.

Delivered in Cycle A, Propers 12 and 13 (i.e. die first year of the three year cycle, spread over 2 weeks), the provided scripture glosses over the whole messy business of Jacob impregnating his wives’ handmaids. The story commences with Jacob being rewarded, for all his hard work, by Laban gifting him his second daughter, so coveted by Jacob (Genesis

29:28). The following week, we pick up widi Jacob fleeing Laban’s territory widi his two wives, two handmaids, and a gaggle of eleven children (Genesis 32:22). That bit of text, those few chapters of fear and jealousy and sanctioned infidelity, while so critical to the world of Atwood, doesn’t fit die modern edios the church seeks to engender in its adherents - thus, expunged.

W e’re served here to reiterate McLean’s interpretation of what is gained from this practice: that “when The Bible is read this way, it is almost inevitable that it will be interpreted in light of our own modem contexts” (McLean 50). Also gained, die alienation from die text diat a third of Americans understand as the actual, literal word of tiieir God.

Also gained, “the lie” of a provided interpretation, molded for “our own modern contexts,” 66

and deemed acceptable by die Consultation on Common Texts. Also gained, die unquestioned acceptance of that interpretation, by cyclically apodictic and widely held authorization diat “All scripture is God-breadied” (2 Timothy 3:16). In this circumstance of teaching, arguably one of the most prevalent scenes of teaching - certainly in America and likely in the world - Ricouer’s question of “What does writing fix?” is irrelevant - in fact, the prescriptive application of interpretive meaning enacted by that mediodological practice does not leave room to even approach diat question. As in Atwood’s world, die strict control of interpretive methodology eliminates the very practice of reading diat makes room to approach die “sacred” in the first place.

C ir c l in g B a c k (H ermeneutically )

Let us end in the beginning, working our way back there through our textual simulacra, as a way of reaching an interpretation of how so many millions have been convinced that their version of truth, ratified in a cyclical version of self-authorization, is diat which is interpreted from dieir pedagogic text and not that which has been provided for them by an interpreting hegemony. How have learned citizens, of die masses and the university alike, permitted an epistemological reality where “the meaning of meaning is itself compromised” (Spivak 27)?

To reach an understanding we must return to the classroom, which for our purposes encompasses everything from diose literal university lecture halls to diose scenes of Moses’s intentional didacticism. You’re probably beginning to feel exhausted by the 67

blunt implications of the latter; the parallel significance of interpretive practice in Atwood’s world is obvious - die rigorous maintenance of a prescribed interpretive methodology is die rigorous maintenance of a particular epistemology. For David Lurie, and for Spivak, the waters are muddier. The point of their intersecdon, of die moment where their intertextuality lets us give the lie from one to die odier, will help clarify.

The interpretive product, though singular and unverifiable, is surprisingly straightforward. David Lurie, in spite of Spivak’s protestations otherwise, learns to enact the disfiguration from his interpretive mediodology to enact a refiguration in alternate webs of signification - his daughter and Bev Shaw’s, bodi. The last scene discussed in die previous chapter, however, shows a mediodology so deeply ingrained diat, despite his intentional, actualized figural self-alienation, their remains what I described as an “umimpeachable” intertext - die provided word of die “Church Fadiers” (Coetzee 79). Despite die massive gains lie’s made in accessing an alternative epistemology, that final, heart-wrenching scene shows the maintenance of the prescribed belief that his meaningful action, of “giving up” the little dog he loves, will release the dog’s soul from its body to be sucked into the abyss of non-meaning.

David Lurie, though, seems to prefigure just die opposite much earlier in die novel when, in his Romantic didactic mode (“He is getting carried away; he is lecturing”), he describes a scene where “die gods are dead,” when Lucy tries to describe the ordeal lie’s brought upon himself as “scapegoating:” 68

I don’t diink scapegoating is the best description...Scapegoating worked in practice

while it still had religious power behind it. You loaded the sins of the city on to the

goat’s back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed. It worked because everyone

knew how to read die ritual, including the gods. Then the gods died, and all of a

sudden you had to cleanse the city widiout divine help. Real actions were

demanded instead of symbolism. The censor was born, in the Roman sense.

Watchfulness became the watchword: the watchfulness of all over all. Purgation was

replaced by die purge. (91)

So much in this liny block of text - so many lies we can transfer between our texts: a prescribed practice, “while it still had religious power behind it,” that the body politic can light upon as a means of reaching an understanding of dieir own actions; a common interpretation, a universal, but prescribed, methodology where “everyone knew how to read die ritual,” which in its turn enacts a verification of diat ritual, and a ratification of its product as fixed, meaningful and actual; the abrupt deadi of the gods, when that interpretive methodology is undermined by a fresh desire for meaningful action - meaningful action that can be in its turn interpreted through die “fuller sense” of censorship and purgation; an emetic recitation of a methodology for interpreting meaningful action.

For all of this significance, though, all the plucking of these strands of a great epistemological web of signification anti the textural weaving of the many texts and teachings that we’ve been exploring, it’s perhaps the successive declarations that is most 69

important for our hermeneutic wanderings: that “he is getting carried away; he is lecturing”

(Coetzee 91). The creation of diis intertext, it should be understood, cannot be separated from David Lurie’s preeminence as scholar and professor. When he begins to interpret

Bev Shaw as “part of die repressive apparatus,” Lucy is quick to correct his clouded reading, obscured by die height of his position atop the ivory tower: “Bev is in awe of you!

You are a professor. She has never met an old-fashioned professor before. She is frightened of making grammar mistakes in front of you” (91). At diat moment, where she is pushing him toward an accurate reckoning of his critical position as an arbiter of interpretive practice, forcing him to confront his own professor-ness, they are interrupted by the men who will, by their violent and horrible assault, make room for the completion of that critical turn. As Spivak says, “die novel and Lurie part company, precisely on die issue of reading, of control” (24).

Spivak creates her own simulacra for understanding her professor-ness, that in its own turn marks a dissociation between the author and the interpretation of her work.

Spivak sends up a vignette from some time she spent teaching in India. Spivak’s stated intention is to describe a place for literary reading. She describes a scenario where students’ interpretive “silence,” understood as a breakdown of comprehension, is played out in a failed attempt to proceed from understanding to explanation, to borrow phrase from

Ricoeur. Spivak’s solution is to turn toward the humanities. She writes, “The humanities— training in literary reading in particular—is good at textural exchange. Each discipline has its own species of ‘setting-to-work’—and the texture of the imagination belongs to the teacher 70

of literary reading. All good work is imaginative, of course. But the humanities have litde else” (26). As for the silences, the failure to reach understanding, she simply declares diat,

“Training in literary reading can prepare one to work at these silences” (26). Perhaps it is merely a rhetorical concession to limit the realm of the humanities to “the texture of die imagination,” hut this concession serves to validate that argument of literature’s detractors that its scope is minimal. Her solution to diis issue, of die disjunction between meaning and interpretation, is for “the globally beleaguered state to institute civil service positions diat will call...upon interested humanities professionals from the highest ranks to train ground- level teachers” (Spivak 29).

This solution, diough, is for a world projected by its own unreality. What good is the methodology of literary reading when literary reading is a methodological practice alienated from its own means of actual existence? In the world projected by Spivak’s text, interpretive practice is a panacea for understanding, for inequality, for an aggressive insertion of the epistemological into die ethical. But, as we know, die world where literary mediodology is held in such high regard (hat such a reinvigoration of ils practice could be realized is a fiction. Spivak argues for a replication of her mediodology almost in die same breadi diat she describes it as a practice reserved for the intellectual elite. Her own relations of interpretation, ofliterary methodology, belie her statement that “[t]here is no possibility of die emergence of die etiiical when the writing subject’s sense of superiority is rock solid” (27). Her ideal of trickle-down training in her intertextual interpretive mode eschews die reality of the very students and teachers she invokes in her scene of teaching, 71

distancing those students, teachers, and herself from reaching a moment where the ethical can interrupt die epistemological. In die end, the effort to arrive at a replicable praxis through her intertextual methodology is as stultifying for interpretation as the rigidly controlled practice emerging from die church.

She is on to somediing, though, even if her idealistic view of interpretative practice is impracticable; which brings us back to Ricoeur and his practice-driven hermeneutic.

While Ricoeur embraces an intellectual rigor that rivals Spivak’s, on display dirough his deft handling of literally diousands of years of interpretive metiiodology, his work does not enact the violent dismissal of an inability to reach explanation as a failure: it proposes a metiiodology where the very act of giving die space to attempt an explanation, by whatever procedure, works against die violence of foreclosed meaning. He writes, “As the model of text-interpretation shows, understanding has nothing to do with an im m ed ia te grasping of a foreign psychic life or with an em o tio n a l identification with a mental intention.

Understanding is entirely m ed ia ted by the whole of explanatory procedures which precede and accompany it” (Ricoeur 116, original emphasis). Ricoeur’s methodology does not demand recall upon examination the morning after a lesson; it does not demand the strict adherence to a set of principles diat reinforce a predetermined meaning; nor does it rely on the fetishized ratification of knowledge. Ricoeur’s hermeneutic method, ratiier, calls for the attempt to place oneself into alternate webs of signficialion through die four hermeneutic principles diat permit an internal, and variable, consistency of interpretations; to hold meanings in suspense that diey may work in concert; and to engage with text and action 72

alike with a “personal commitment” that makes interpretation possible in the first place

(Ricoeur 116). This last, I believe, is sublated in Spivak’s intertextual practice, but its sentiment is buried beneath the irreplicable interpredve metiiodology diat she demonstrates.

The power of Ricoeur’s methodology to permit the suspension of multiple meanings also gives it a characteristic that may appear counterintuitive - it is somewhat benign. In diis sense, hermeneutic’s willingness to vacillate between multiple and potentially disparate meanings means it does not pose a great threat, at least initially, to die interpretive hegemony reified in lectionary reading. This may come as a surprise after the handling of lectionary from above, but consider that this very principle on display. While the interpretive practice developed from religious reading is demonstrably dangerous, it is also so widespread and unimpeachably indoctrinating that it cannot be ignored as a factor in the maintenance of literary study at large. A practice diat does not pose an immediate tiireat, and in fact, permits the verification of that brand of interpretation answers the real problem presented by preserving the practice of interpretation in a world diat doesn’t see its value. However, die training diat diis interpretive practice engenders, including that

“personal commitment” that is an irreducible component, can propel the individual to an understanding and a validity outside of the context of a provided explanation.

And finally, in terms of diat validity, tiiere remains an open question. Despite

Ricoeur’s attempts to codify procedure such diat interpretation verges on “die scientific,”

Spivak’s attestations diat such a comparison is invalid, and lectionaries handling of diat 73

issue by exploding it altogedier widi a cyclical internal validity, literary interpretation’s value lies outside of its verifiability. In answer to this, I point to the potential for die proliferation of Ricoeurian interpretive practice. Spivak’s method, as I’ve said several times, is admirable and impressive but not readily teachable - die anecdotal relation of her own scene of teaching should show us as much, as should die scenes where she creates intertext, and where she builds a distressingly singular interpretation of a universally valuable text.

Ricoeur’s, though, presents a scaffold, through four teachable and specific practices, in their own turn subject to subjective interpretation, that opens up the construction of infinite new worlds, each arrived at dirough a common mediating interpretive mediodology.

And maybe, in the end, once this hermeneutic has had a chance to percolate anew through our educational system such that its procedure is a common practice, we will communally acknowledge that literary interpretation is indeed not a verifiable practice.

Then, though, we will have the first-hand experience of its value. 74

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