Occlumency: Relax or resist? (Was: CHAPTER DISCUSSION: Chapter 29, Career Ad

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 118097


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:

<snip>

> Carol responds:

<snip>

> I ask only that if you're going to argue that my canon support is 
> inadequate that you produce your own canon support to oppose it. 
> Fair is fair, and there is really no other way to discuss a 
> literary work than to examine the text of that work.

The problem is, what's *really* being argued about here is not 
canon.  Nope.  It's about the proper interpretation of canon, because 
texts sure don't interpret themselves.  (I had a delightful 
archaeology professor who noted that 'facts do not speak for 
themselves'--this is in his spirit.  I hope.)

I think I posted on this a while ago, but I'll compress it.  I'm 
perfect happy to take it as canon that Snape says Harry must resist.  
That's canonical.

What's interpretive, **on both sides of the argument**, is the 
discussion of HOW to resist.  This is, in part, because there is no 
specification exactly of how to do this in the text.

The martial arts stuff is an application of things that work in real 
life to the text, in an attempt to explain how one goes about 
establishing mental resistance, why a particular model of relaxation 
is ideal, and why it is understandable that Harry failed.

It's not more canonical to say that Snape said X and Harry didn't do 
it and that's it and of story no explanation needed, because that has 
no more exegesis on method than the other position.  There's no 
canonical explanation of method, therefore we must argue it out 
interpretively.  And that's why one can argue against the position 
taken without having to cite chapter and verse of actual text to 
disagree with it.

-Nora has also played in the interpretation of texts and other such 
fun spectator sports