….Gadamer’s so-called “problem of application” can be understood as the problem of adapting the meaning of a text to a specific interpretive instance — to the concrete historical situation of the interpreter…

But Gadamer is wrong, bless him…

…going beyond an author’s original intentions in order to make a text mean something more than the author meant, is changing the text, not properly “interpreting” it. This act of “creative supplementing” is thus an act of creative writing, producing not a new interpretation of the author’s text, but a new text entirely. In Gadamer’s view, however, not only are will still interpreting, but the discrepancy between what the author intended and what we interpret the text to mean points to the “true centre of hermeneutical enquiry,” since “the task of an historical hermeneutics” is “to consider the tension that exists between the identity of the common object and the changing situation in which it must be understood.” Instead of two different texts, Gadamer sees one text (the “common object”) with two different meanings. But how do these two different meanings come to count as two accounts of the same text? That is, what is common in Gadamer’s “common object”…? Not intention, certainly, since the reader’s interpretation and the author’s intention no longer jibe. So what, then…?

…What is required for the hermeneutic notion of application to work, it seems, is this: a criterion of textual identity that allows a text to remain the same while its meaning changes. But in what circumstances might it seem plausible to say that the verbal “meaning” of a text or utterance transcends the author’s intentions — that a text can mean more than it was intended to mean…?

…Here, the challenge of “interpreting” history is revealed: either we believe history (as events) to be intended (which commits us, if only retrospectively, to some sort of teleology) — or else we believe it to be purely intentionless (which commits us to the idea of its “accidental” nature). To interpret events we believe to be intended is to presuppose an agency behind those events — and so our job as interpreters becomes to “decode” historical “signs.” To “interpret” events we believe to be accidental is to provide our own creative agency to those events — to turn historical “marks” into historical “signs” by ascribing to those marks “signifieds.” For those who believe in the teleological narrative of historical occurrence, particular narratives of history are essentially “true.” That is, the “meaning” of particular narratives correctly (and indexically) points to the intentions assumed to generate them. But those who do not believe in a teleological schema for historical occurrence are necessarily committed to the belief in history as cosmic “accident” (unintended), and so must attribute any “meaning” attached to historical narratives to a secondary agency — man, or language. To say this, however, is to say that all “meaning” is subjective and contingent. Which is itself to say that all historical knowledge is based on a subjectivity that, by virtue of its acceptance, acts conventionally as “fact.” But if “fact” is merely conventionalized subjectivity, and conventionalized subjectivity is determined by the propositions of a given language at a given historical moment, then clearly “facts” are themselves contingent — subject to change as conventions (and languages) change. To construct an identity on subjective conventions (history) is to construct an identity on contingent propositions. Which means that an identity which appeals to history or heritage (a history or heritage without a teleology — a pre-existing or metaphysical intention) is never essential. Non-essential identities (identities that are socially constructed) can therefore never be exclusive; all such identities require is a belief in the propositions that construct them — beliefs open to anyone with the capacity to acquire and internalize them. Which is not to say we can’t exclude, but rather that to exclude at all is to deny the logic of the construction to begin with. It is rank hypocrisy.

…Which means that if race, for instance, is non-essential — if race is a social construct rather than a condition of biological determinism (and there is no such thing as, say, “white” blood) — than I can choose my own race by simply adopting the belief systems that underlie a particular identity narrative… …Which means today, I can choose to be Black. So let’s do it.

…Statistically speaking, of course, this choice makes me a Democrat — at least until I’m able to adopt a new political identity. So in keeping with my own dream logic, allow me to say this: “Drop dead all you rightwing wingnut yuppie greedbags! Bush lied, people died, Halliburton Halliburton Halliburton Halliburton!

“Rummy most go. Long live the Dowd! Long live the Dowd Long live the Dowd….!

“(Oh, and please try not to raise taxes too much if you can help it…)….”

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update: And then the alarm went off. I must say, I never thought my wife looked much like the Tin Woodsman before. But now…