[HPFGU-OTChatter] Hermeneutical Circles (was Re: Wondering)

[Lee Kaiwen]

Del:
  > The thing is, though, that I *did* make that distinction, right from
  > the first post.

Celoneth:
  > Things don't always come across written as you mean them - the fact
  > that so many people were confused by your post is evidence of that.

This discussion has been fascinating to me on several levels, but one is 
at the level of hermeneutics.

I've made no secret of the fact that I found Del's posts perfectly 
lucid, and it never occurred to me for a second that she was equating 
homosexuality with hebephilia. From parallel private e-mail discussions 
I've been having, it's also clear that I'm not the only one who did.

However, a number of folk in this list did not, and hence Del is busy 
defending herself against a slew of things she says she did not say. Del 
insists she was perfectly clear in her distinctions, and the problem 
lies with people misreading her posts. Others insist the fault is Del's 
because she was unclear.

So how is it that some find her posts clear, while others do not? I 
think the problem is that this whole discussion is running around in one 
big hermeneutical circle. One of the fundamental insights of 
hermeneutical theory is that the responsibility for determining the 
meaning of a text rests neither solely with the author nor with her 
readers, but is in fact a product of a dialog between the two. Both 
author and reader bring to that dialog a unique set of experiences and 
outlooks which shape both what is said and how it is interpreted (one 
recent post, for example, insisted Del should have been more aware of 
the larger context in which her posts were seen; Del replied that she 
knows nothing of that context because she doesn't run in those circles 
and therefore cannot be held responsible for them).

I find myself wondering whether JKR has been having similar "issues". 
The way she views her characters, because she created them and has so 
many more ideas about them than what ended up in the canon, seems at 
time to be in stark contrast to her readers' views of them. A prime case 
in point is JKR's expressions of puzzlement over the strength of many 
readers' reactions to the Snape character. JKR thinks he's heroic; many 
readers find him creepy and disgusting. The mere fact that so many 
people can read the same books and have such contrastive reactions is 
simply a reflection of the varying backgrounds we all bring to the 
hermeneutical dialog.

I think it would help tremendously if we all stopped and reflected a bit 
on the fact that this IS a dialog we're engaging in, and that it is not 
only perfectly possible, but almost inevitable, that an author's words 
will mean something different to us than they do to the author, and no 
one is to blame.

--CJ