One of the key domains in the world that is postmodernism is deconstruction. Deconstruction is the school of unthought suggesting that words do not have stable meanings. As we try to construct meaning in texts, we often see that meaning begin to unravel at the same time--thus de-construction. The cause goes back to Ferdinand de Saussure's distinction in language between a "sign" such as a letter or sound and that which is "signified," meaning. In most cases, the relationship between the two is arbitrary. The word "box" in English does not suggest either by the way the letters look or by the way it sounds what it might mean. In other words, there is no fixed relationship between a word and its meaning.
I personally tend to bring up another philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, at this point. Wittgenstein's greatest contribution to the philosophy of language was when he realized that words take on different meanings in different contexts. What does the word "fire" mean? We really can't know unless we know what "language game" we are playing. In other words, I need at least a sentence to know, and maybe more than a sentence.
Your first inclination might be, "Well of course I can tell you what the word fire means without a sentence. It is something that burns, has a orangish-yellow hue," etc... But what if the sentence I have in mind is the following: "I am going to fire you." How well does the burning, orangish-yellow definition suit this sentence. Unless you have just come off of a really bad week, I doubt the definition that first came to your mind corresponds to the needed definition for the word fire in this case.
We can easily show just how complicated the situation can become. "Ready, aim, fire." "I'm all fired up for the Truth Conference." "Come on, baby, light my fire." This last phrase in particular raises an even more significant issue. A non-English speaker might put this last sentence into Google and translate it. But there's a better than average change that they will end up with a puzzled look on their face. "Come forward, infant, ignite my" what? My match? My grill? Frankly, an American of fifty years ago might not make much sense of the sentence anymore than they might a phrase like "shock and awe," "google," or "blog."
Really to understand the sentence, "Come on, baby, light my fire," you need to know late twentieth century American slang and probably have heard a certain song by the Doors in the early 70's. Wittgenstein well put it when he suggested that we wouldn't likely understand a lion even if it spoke English, because we would not have a frame of reference from which to know what language games the lion's words were playing.
We could multiply many an amusing story at this point. At the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, the German demanding surrender from the American general found himself unable to interpret the response he received, "Nuts." What does that mean, thought the General and his translators? During my early days in England I felt the same way. I remember a particular night in particular I spent during my first week in England. All the words I heard around me were words I knew, but because I knew nothing of British TV or "football" culture, I really had no real idea what anyone was saying--it was similar to a feeling I would have in Germany a couple years later when everyone was speaking German all around me.
Now all of these things bear directly on the matter of the Bible. Most Bible readers are "pre-modern" on this score. They are unaware of just how ambiguous and potentially polyvalent (or capable of multiple meanings) these words of the Bible are. I was once talking to a Wesleyan about how our "tradition" understands the words of Scripture. At one point the person finally said, "Stop talking about our tradition. We just read the Bible and do what it says." This is a pre-modern understanding of the Bible's words, an understanding that is unaware of the role our cultural and personal environment inevitably plays in the way we understand words.
In the second half of this section, I wish to reflect on the potential ambiguity of the words of the Bible and the implications it has for reading the Bible in a postmodern age.
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4 comments:
I once commented to a woman who looked tired that she looked "knackered," since that's what I had taken the word to mean from the way I had heard it used. Her husband came up to me a few days later with a smile on his face and told me that the word often had the connotation of being tired from sex or something of that sort. He joked about how "cheeky" I had been with his wife.
Ken,
I am looking forward to your posts on this subject. Recently I finished Vanhoozer's "Is There a Meaning in This Text?" and Zimmerman's "Recovering Theological Hermeneutics" for a class. Derrida and co. drive me nuts.
Woody, I heard Don Carson make this point once about deconstruction. Edith may not know what Archie Bunker is saying, but the audience laughs because everyone else does.
I'm not arguing for complete pointless in search for the original meaning. My point is that it isn't nearly as certain as most think. I think Ricoeur also points out that language often has a referential function that grounds it far more than Derrida' tail chasing model would have us believe.
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