Hermeneutics of suspicion

Last updated

The hermeneutics of suspicion is a style of literary interpretation in which texts are read with skepticism in order to expose their purported repressed or hidden meanings. [1]

Contents

This mode of interpretation was conceptualized by Paul Ricœur, inspired by the works of what he called the three "masters of suspicion" (French : maîtres du soupçon): [2] Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche, [3] : 33, 35  who, he believed, shared a similar view of consciousness as false. [4] Ricœur's term "school of suspicion" (French : école du soupçon) [5] refers to his association of his theory with the writings of the three, who themselves never used this term, [6] : 32  and was coined in Freud and Philosophy (1965). [3] [6] [7] : 2  This school is defined by a belief that the straightforward appearances of texts are deceptive or self-deceptive and that explicit content hides deeper meanings or implications. [1] [8]

Overview

Hans-Georg Gadamer, in his 1960 magnum opus Truth and Method (German: Wahrheit und Methode), offers perhaps the most systematic survey of hermeneutics in the 20th century. The title of the work indicates his dialogue between claims of "truth" on the one hand and the processes of "method" on the other—in brief, the hermeneutics of faith and the hermeneutics of suspicion. Gadamer suggests that, ultimately, one must decide between one and the other when reading. [9] : 106–107 

Ruthellen Josselson similarly writes, "Ricoeur distinguishes between two forms of hermeneutics: a hermeneutics of faith which aims to restore meaning to a text and a hermeneutics of suspicion which attempts to decode meanings that are disguised." [10] [11]

According to literary theorist Rita Felski, hermeneutics of suspicion is "a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths." Felski further writes:

[Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche] share a commitment to unmasking 'the lies and illusions of consciousness'; they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths… Ricoeur's term has sustained an energetic after-life within religious studies, as well as in philosophy, intellectual history, and related fields. [12]

Felski also notes that the "'hermeneutics of suspicion' is the name usually bestowed on [a] technique of reading texts against the grain and between the lines, of cataloging their omissions and laying bare their contradictions, of rubbing in what they fail to know and cannot represent." [13] In that sense, it can be seen as being related to ideology critique. Felski has built on Ricœur's theory in outlining her influential theory of postcritique. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

Deconstruction is any of a loosely-defined set of approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences which take precedence over appearances. Since the 1980s, these proposals of language's fluidity instead of being ideally static and discernible have inspired a range of studies in the humanities, including the disciplines of law, anthropology, historiography, linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, LGBT studies, and feminism. Deconstruction also inspired deconstructivism in architecture and remains important within art, music, and literary criticism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans-Georg Gadamer</span> German philosopher (1900–2002)

Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method, on hermeneutics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literary criticism</span> Study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Though the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermeneutics</span> Theory and methodology of text interpretation

Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, as well as philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate comprehension fails and includes the art of understanding and communication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Ricœur</span> French philosopher (1913–2005)

Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur was a French philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutics. As such, his thought is within the same tradition as other major hermeneutic phenomenologists, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Gabriel Marcel. In 2000, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for having "revolutionized the methods of hermeneutic phenomenology, expanding the study of textual interpretation to include the broad yet concrete domains of mythology, biblical exegesis, psychoanalysis, theory of metaphor, and narrative theory."

<i>Against Interpretation</i> 1966 collection of essays by Susan Sontag

Against Interpretation is a 1966 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including "On Style," and the eponymous essay "Against Interpretation." In the latter, Sontag argues that the new approach to criticism and aesthetics neglects the sensuous impact and novelty of art, instead fitting works into predetermined intellectual interpretations and emphasis on the "content" or "meaning" of a work. The book was a finalist for the Arts and Letters category of the National Book Award.

Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory that emphasizes each particular reader's reception or interpretation in making meaning from a literary text. Reception theory is generally referred to as audience reception in the analysis of communications models. In literary studies, reception theory originated from the work of Hans-Robert Jauss in the late 1960s, and the most influential work was produced during the 1970s and early 1980s in Germany and the US, with some notable work done in other Western European countries. A form of reception theory has also been applied to the study of historiography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gianni Vattimo</span> Italian philosopher and politician

Gianteresio Vattimo is an Italian philosopher and politician.

Freudo-Marxism is a loose designation for philosophical perspectives informed by both the Marxist philosophy of Karl Marx and the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. It has a rich history within continental philosophy, beginning in the 1920s and 1930s and running since through critical theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheldon Pollock</span> American scholar of Sanskrit

Sheldon I. Pollock is an American scholar of Sanskrit, the intellectual and literary history of India, and comparative intellectual history. He is the Arvind Raghunathan Professor of South Asian Studies at Columbia University. He was the general editor of the Clay Sanskrit Library and the founding editor of the Murty Classical Library of India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hermeneutic circle</span> The process of understanding a text

The hermeneutic circle describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. The circle is a metaphor for the procedure of transforming one's understanding of the part and the whole through iterative recontextualization.

<i>Truth and Method</i> 1960 book by Hans-Georg Gadamer

Truth and Method is a 1960 book by the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, in which the author deploys the concept of "philosophical hermeneutics" as it is worked out in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927). The book is considered Gadamer's major work.

Rita Felski is an academic and critic, who holds the John Stewart Bryan Professorship of English at the University of Virginia and is a former editor of New Literary History. She is also Niels Bohr Professor at the University of Southern Denmark (2016–2021).

<i>Knowledge and Human Interests</i> 1968 book by Jürgen Habermas

Knowledge and Human Interests is a 1968 book by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, in which the author discusses the development of the modern natural and human sciences. He criticizes Sigmund Freud, arguing that psychoanalysis is a branch of the humanities rather than a science, and provides a critique of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Jean Grondin is a Canadian philosopher and professor. He is a specialist in the thought of Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Martin Heidegger. His research focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, German classical philosophy and the history of metaphysics.

<i>Freud and Philosophy</i> 1965 book by Paul Ricœur

Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation is a 1965 book about Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, written by the French philosopher Paul Ricœur. In Freud and Philosophy, Ricœur interprets Freudian work in terms of hermeneutics, a theory that governs the interpretation of a particular text, and phenomenology, a school of philosophy founded by Edmund Husserl. Ricœur addresses questions such as the nature of interpretation in psychoanalysis, the understanding of human nature and the relationship between Freud's interpretation of culture amongst other interpretations. The book was first published in France by Éditions du Seuil, and in the United States by Yale University Press.

In literary criticism and cultural studies, postcritique is the attempt to find new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique, critical theory, and ideological criticism. Such methods have been characterized as a "hermeneutics of suspicion" by Paul Ricœur and as a "paranoid" or suspicious style of reading by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Proponents of postcritique argue that the interpretive practices associated with these ways of reading are now unlikely to yield useful or even interesting results. As Rita Felski and Elizabeth S. Anker put it in the introduction to Critique and Postcritique, "the intellectual or political payoff of interrogating, demystifying, and defamiliarizing is no longer quite so self-evident." A postcritical reading of a literary text might instead emphasize emotion or affect, or describe various other phenomenological or aesthetic dimensions of the reader's experience. At other times, it might focus on issues of reception, explore philosophical insights gleaned via the process of reading, pose formalist questions of the text, or seek to resolve a "sense of confusion."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans-Herbert Kögler</span> German-American philosopher

Hans-Herbert Kögler, is a German-American philosopher.

Hermeneutics of faith, the counterpart to hermeneutics of suspicion, is a manner in which a text may be read, "a hermeneutic not of irresponsible iconoclasm, nor of prideful play, but of charity and humility." It was the traditional or predominant way of reading the Bible for at least the first fifteen hundred years of Christian history. Both interpretive approaches combined are necessary for a complete knowledge of an object.

References

  1. 1 2 Felski, Rita (2011). "Suspicious Minds". Poetics Today . 32 (2): 215–234. doi: 10.1215/03335372-1261208 .
  2. ↑ Ricoeur, Paul (2013). Le Conflit des interprétations. Essais d'herméneutique. Paris: Média Diffusion. ISBN   978-2-02114500-7. Quote. 1st ed: 1969.
  3. 1 2 Ricoeur, Paul (2008). Freud and Philosophy. An Essay on Interpretation. Denis Savage (transl.). New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. pp.  33, 35. ISBN   978-8-12083305-0. 1st ed: 1970.
  4. ↑ "The Homme Fatal and the Subversion of Suspicion in 'Mr Brooks' and 'The Killer Inside Me'." AU: UQ.
  5. ↑ Ricoeur, Paul (2014). De l'interprétation. Essai sur Freud. Paris: Média Diffusion. ISBN   978-2-02106836-8. Quote. 1st ed: 1965.
  6. 1 2 Ricœur, Paul (2008), p. 32.
  7. ↑ Dole, Andrew. 2018. Reframing the Masters of Suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, p. 2.
  8. ↑ Robinson, G. D., Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion: A Brief Overview and Critique, University of Toronto Press .
  9. ↑ Jasper, D., A Short Introduction to Hermeneutics (Louisville, KY & London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), pp. 106–107.
  10. ↑ Josselson, Ruthellen (1 July 2004). "The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion" (PDF). Narrative Inquiry. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 14 (1): 1–28. doi:10.1075/ni.14.1.01jos. ISSN   1387-6740. Archived from the original on 6 February 2016.
  11. ↑ Scott-Baumann, A. 2009, Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion , London & New York: Continuum.
  12. ↑ Felski, Rita (2012). "Critique and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion". M/C Journal. 15 (1). doi: 10.5204/mcj.431 .
  13. ↑ Felski, Rita (Autumn 2011). "Context Stinks" (PDF). New Literary History . Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. 42 (4): 573–91. doi:10.1353/nlh.2011.0045. S2CID   201779165.
  14. ↑ Giusti, F., "Passionate Affinities: A Conversation with Rita Felski", Los Angeles Review of Books , September 25, 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.