PENTECOST 2007 SPECIAL EDITION

ISSUE 10 - ISSN 1448 - 6326

Useful Tools or Questions of Control

Edmund A. Parker

Abstract

It is often the case that an institution begins its life delivering the outcomes it was established for, but then, in its later development, becomes an inwardly focused system that exists for the maintenance of its own existence. This paper suggests that a parallel can sometimes be drawn with literary, linguistic and academic theory. These theories can begin their journey in a viable way, but then in the hands of some practitioners they may shift to become tools that seek to control how research is done. In effect they then become so value laden that research is distorted. Three major issues need to be addressed: questions of content and development, questions of power and control, and homeostasis and feedback loops.

Questions of Context and Development

1. Theory as Hypotheses

Peter Barry suggests that the 1980s saw the high-water mark of literary theory.[1] He proposes that it was both fashionable and controversial as a topic.

The simple answer is that after the moment of theory there comes, inevitably, the 'hour' of theory, when it ceases to be the exclusive concern of a dedicated minority and enters the intellectual bloodstream as a taken-for-granted aspect of the curriculum. At this stage the glamour fades, the charisma is 'routinised', and it becomes the day-to-day business of quite a large number of people to learn (or teach) this material.[2]

This is the normal way ideas and procedures enter the academic and literary stream. They begin, develop, become refined, and then operate as established ways of function. My point is not to quibble with any of this process, the issue I seek to raise is that as hypotheses become more accepted and reified there is the potential for these approaches to shift ground and become controlling systems in their own right.

2. Theory as Useful Tools

Even a cursory glance across the field of literature will show just how useful these literary, linguistic and academic theories have become. We will foreground two examples. Feminist reading of texts has clearly sought to bring a balance into the reading of literary and biblical texts. Deconstruction, on the other hand, has sought to show how easy it is for a text to be dragged off centre by the very process of centring.

Feminism challenges the gender assumptions, particularly concerning women that operate in writing and reading texts. Feminists react to texts that see men as prototypical and women as derivative (it is almost like saying that men are necessary, while women are contingent).

Deconstruction exposes the slippage inside texts showing that meaning is not guaranteed because assumptions and structures are not as stable as often supposed. Brian Moon gives a clear example:

a.      civilised human beings do not kill

b.      we are civilised human beings

c.      we know that the enemy is uncivilised and inhuman, because they are killers

d.      we are justified in killing the enemy because they are uncivilised and inhuman[3]

What deconstruction does is to cast a critical eye over the centring processes often associated with binary opposites. One of the binary opposites tends to be centred, while the other is marginalised. One is seen as better, the other is seen as deficient in some way. In deconstruction, the task is to show that there is a hidden logic in the task of centring – that it is not value-neutral. This hidden logic is then dismantled. Furthermore, the centred term is shown to be dependant on the marginal or non-centred term in an unexpected way.

3. Theory as Ideology

There are two issues here that need some consideration. The first is the search for an adequate definition of the term 'ideology'.[4] The second is to show how a worthwhile theory can metamorphose into a rigid control system.[5] This can happen without any deliberate attempt being made by its exponents to make it do so. No individual can escape from their present ideological concerns. This is because no person exists in an ideological vacuum. Ideologies may, however, be changed according to new information or altered thinking.

The problem of below the surface issues is scrutinized in the work of Roland Meighan.[6] He examines such things as the hidden curriculum in an educational system.[7] Many variations are determined by where one starts – presuppositions are significant.[8] Such things as an authoritarian stance versus non-authoritarian, autonomous versus democratic are examined. Page 179 of his book has a series of dichotomous approaches:

teacher-centred         v         child-centred open teaching            v         closed teaching meaning receiving      v         meaning making authoritarian              v         democratic traditional                  v         progressive transmission              v         interpretation open schools             v         closed schools dependent study        v         autonomous study

Whenever someone adopts a position or a stance, it can be said in one sense that that person has adopted an ideology. Often scholars and teachers are afraid to own the concept of ideology, maybe because they see it as not too far removed from indoctrination. Words can acquire and take on a range of meanings that are odious or incriminating. However, ideology is not of itself a bad thing, because in fact no-one can stand on value-neutral ground without an ideological view somewhere colouring the outcome of their thinking, writing or speaking. It becomes more difficult to accept when it becomes burdened with issues of manipulation and control. In such a case ideology then becomes indoctrinatory.

Ideology is not just something that happens in the hand of an author. There are at least the following frames of reference:

*         the ideological situation from which the author prepares and presents a text

*         the ideological issues presented in a given text or artefact

*         the ideological perspectives from which a reader or consumer of a text operates

These may not always be explicit but they are certainly implicit. The three components together are sometimes referred to as ‘ideological criticism’.[9]

Although it may not always be possible to state exactly what is ideological, what can be stated is that an idea, a text or a theory can be twisted or manipulated to bring a desired or expected outcome. Someone once said, "If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything."[10] This needs to be kept in mind when considering where a particular theory or practice sits on the continuum between ideology and a disinterested approach (interest shown, without undue bias). Davis and Schleifer point out that Elaine Showalter suggests that literary criticism is positioned between “ideology and the liberal ideal of disinterestedness.”[11] K. M. Newton states that “literary criticism is thus revealed as a struggle for power among parties which are in a position to use only rational argument and rhetoric as a means of persuading sufficient numbers to support them in order to achieve a majority.”[12]

Early in his book, Barry examines several issues that lie back of post-world war 2 development of literary theory. He elaborates some of the major underlying principles, and in a simplification summary, suggests the following significant points

Politics is pervasive,

Language is constitutive,

Truth is provisional,

Meaning is contingent,

Human nature is a myth. : [13]

Each one of these points needs some further elaboration:

Politics is pervasive --- It is important to realize that politics does not just happen within political parties. All systems have their control points, even those that claim that they don't. This political quality pervades all human systems and institutions. It would be naïve to think that humanly devised literary theories are immune from contamination and are value-neutral.

Language is constitutive --- Language is always subjective, there is always contingency. Ambiguity is part of the scope of any language system. It is within this dynamic language complex that all theories and communication systems are constructed and constituted. Dictionaries do not, in fact, tell us what words mean. Rather, they give us examples of how words are used. Context is the significant issue in giving form to word meanings. This becomes clear if one looks at an unabridged dictionary, e.g. the Oxford.

Truth is provisional --- Truth too is contingent. To seek for a single unifying truth is like a search for utopia or erehwon (nowhere spelled backwards). Functionally, it may be worthwhile to seek for a set of truths, but to seek for the Truth (captial T) as a stand-alone seems futile. Each truth is dependant on another truth – none stands alone in an unassailable position.

Meaning is contingent --- Meaning also is contingent upon the relationship between the reader, the text, and the author. There is no ultimate authority that says what a narrative text means, even in spite of the "canned" school-type texts for rapid learning or for examination preparation.

Human nature is a myth -- Human nature itself is never value neutral. Often in our world of today there is a eurocentric and an androcentric approach - white and male! No person comes to any position in life as a 'clean slate' - all of us have been coloured by our past experiences. In this context, literary theory impinges upon our humanness and our vulnerabilities. Hence it is possible for theory that is good to be transformed into something that is not useful because it has lent a manipulatory hand in making a text a controlling device. Brueggemann makes a very telling observation in his response to a consultation on renewing Biblical interpretation. Speaking of Derrida he says:

… I am very interested in the question to what extent Derrida is simply a French intellectual and to what extent he is doing a very Jewish thing toward Christian hegemony.[14]

He also says:

First of all, I think in feminist or liberationist hermeneutics what we are basically talking about is reading by people who have been wounded by the world or who have been wounded by an authoritarian church, and who cannot readily submit to any of those readings that appear to be hegemonic.[15]

Again he comments:

… several people have observed about the energy of interpretation that is taking place in Africa. I am sure that is variegated and complex, but I want to suggest that what we may be seeing in the African church is a kind of interpretative energy that is post-colonial. It is a rereading of the text that is not submitted to our western colonial habits.[16]

Theories developed in the latter part of the twentieth century have contributed so much to our ways of understanding, and have themselves been reactions to previous theories that, at times, were too controlling and ideological. Barry's discussion of liberal humanism, particularly concerning the Cambridge scholars F. R. Leavis, William Empson and I. A. Richards (along with T. S. Eliot), shows how that it (liberal humanism) had a powerful influence on the teaching of English (worldwide) up to the 1970s.[17]

My point is not that the new theories are necessarily ideologies, but that in the hands of some writers and exegetes they have been made to serve their own ideological purposes. Colin J. D. Greene comments:

Even within contemporary theology there are those who are suspicious of the claim that history mirrors reality. Rather, it is claimed that history merely portrays ideological self-interest and the inevitable bias of one cultural aspiration over and against another.[18]

He also states:

Within the confines of postmodern theory, universality has given way to particularity and the recognition of the importance of cultural contexts as critical evidence of the sociological and political conditioning of all our knowledge, both past and present.[19]

A wide-ranging collection of contingencies comes together to enable such theories to function. This is not a bad thing in itself. Rather, it can act to facilitate creative writing, reading and understanding of texts.

Tools should not be abandoned because of misuse, neither should literary, linguistic and academic theories be discarded because of abuse. It would be wrong to ban hammers because the next-door-neighbour used one to kill his wife. Similarly, it is equally wrong to reject modern literary theories because of perceived misuse.

In an essay Jennifer Howard suggests that we have come to a time of literary theory fragmentation.[20] She examines a number of “critical twists and turns”:

-    1916 Ferdinand de Saussure with his “language as a system of signs”

-    1941 John Crowe Ransom “articulates some of the formalist principles behind the New Criticism”

-    1957 Northrop Frye “challenges the New Criticism” emphasizing such things as “archetype, myth, and genre”

-    1963 Richard Hoggart founds the “Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies” at Birmingham University

-    1966 the conference at Johns Hopkins University “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” (Jacques Derrida presented a significant paper “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”)

-    1968 Roland Barthes “pronounces ‘The Death of the Author’”

-    1969 Michel Foucault presents his essay “What Is an Author?”

-    1973 Harold Bloom publishes “The Anxiety of Influence” and Paul de Man writes “Semiology and Rhetoric”

-    1978 Edward Said’s “Orientalism puts postcolonial studies on the map”

-    1979 Sandra M Gilbert and Susan Gubar “marks a milestone in the popularization of feminist literary criticism”

-    1982 Stephen Knapp and Walter Benn suggest that “the whole enterprise of critical theory is misguided”

-    1986 J. Hillis Miller “delivers an address ‘The Triumph of Theory’”

-    1987 The discovery of the “anti-Semitic wartime journalism of Paul de Man” (done posthumously) and its repercussions

-    1990 Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity”

-    2001 “The first edition of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism” (2,524 pages)

-    2005 “The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, …tells the New York Times, ‘Nobody needs French theory’” [21]

Maybe Howard has claimed too much in her title: the fragmentation of literary theory. What appears to have been the heyday of literary theory of the 1980s has passed, and more ordinary times have arrived. Theory is no less important, but it is not now held in awe. It is used for is value and not now because of its iconic status.

Questions of Power and Control

1. Issues of Personal Power and Insight

When discussing personal power and insight, it may be useful to examine the educational values of Habermas as they have been developed by Professor Terry Lovat of The University of Newcastle, Australia.[22] If literary theory is just another way of filling heads with knowledge it has basically failed as an educational tool of worth. Literary theories that only create room for fancy or clever readings may not be useful. However, if a literary theory can contribute to the making of meaningful and worthwhile readings it then has come to the position of contributing to human knowledge and understanding.

Lovat indicates that at the time when Bloom's distinctions of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains in education were being challenged, Habermas put forward a concept of education and learning that focused on (1) technical knowing, (2) interpretive knowing, and (3) critical knowing.[23]

According to Habermas, any area of study reveals three distinct types of human interest, and each type of interest leads to a 'way of knowing'. The first interest is in technical control which leads to an empirical type of knowing: at this point, the learner wants answers to questions, wants to know the rules and the laws which govern any discipline….

The second interest is in the inner workings of any discipline, which leads to an interpretive type of knowing: here, the learner wants to understand, to make links between one thing and another, to be on the inside of the subject: in this regard, it is a little akin to Stenhouse's 'Initiation' and 'Induction' functions….

It is in the third interest that the distinctiveness of Habermas can be seen. Over and above the interests in technical and interpretive understanding, there is the quest for what he terms emancipation. People yearn to be free, and to form their own opinions, to think for themselves. Knowledge is only truly knowledge when it liberates us from what he calls 'bondage to the past'.[24]

Habermas also placed special emphasis on the notion of 'praxis' in contrast to theory alone. When critical reflection takes place in combination with theory and practice, and the intent is to bring about change, then emancipation can happen. Lovat maintains, "The idea, again, is that education is of no value if it only fills heads with a set of information or even fills hearts with predictable and stereotyped attitudes. Education, ultimately, must give people power and the will to improve the human lot … in that sense its ends are quite unpredictable."[25] This enables Lovat to call it “the sharp end of education.”[26] It is a time when change happens, when barriers are broken down, when new structures are set in place, and to use Lovat's expression, "new lights going on in people's minds."[27]

Clearly, in the contemporary educational environment, mere cleverness for cleverness' sake is not a profitable way to go. It is important that understanding and application should move in the direction of empowerment and emancipation. Authenticity and autonomy for each person is the optimal way to proceed.

2. Control Devices

The setting forth of a point of view should be done in such a way that it is not made to appear as the logical outcome of some theory or theories. These theories contribute to the “dress” in which it is presented, not the essence of the idea(s).

I will take a point of view that is linguistic in nature that illustrates my argument that theory can control outcomes, even to the extent of being wrong. Many Biblical scholars have used the aorist in Greek to convey concepts that are not intrinsic to the aorist, but rather are issues growing out of the semantic context of the New Testament text. Frank Stagg drew attention to this problem in 1972.[28] Daniel Wallace while admitting that "Stagg went a bit too far at times" in a footnote on the same page says, "unfortunately commentators and pulpiteers still repeat the same error more than twenty years after Stagg's article appeared, of saying such things as 'the aorist means momentary action,' or 'the aorist indicates a once-for-all idea."[29]

It would appear that some use the invalid theory of momentary or once-for-all action of the aorist because it sits closely with their theological ideology. It cannot be said that the aorist from a theory position supports their argument. It can only be said that the context and the semantics may demand such a point of view, and that aorist has been seen by the author as the best way of conveying it. If the etymology of the word aorist is examined, it consists of the alpha privative and a word that designates an horizon or boundary. Thus, if we are not falling into the trap of root fallacy, the concept presented by the aorist is stated without any ordinary horizons or boundary strictures being placed upon it. Wallace says:

The aorist normally views the action as a whole, taking no interest in the internal workings of the action. It describes the action in summary fashion, without focusing on the beginning or the end of the action specifically. This is by far the most common use of the aorist, especially with the indicative mood.

The constative aorist covers a multitude of actions. The event might be iterative in nature, or durative, or momentary, but the aorist says none of this. It places the stress on the fact of the occurrence, not its nature.[30]

Here we have an illustration of how a theoretical point of view (that turns out to be invalid) has, for some New Testament scholars, been allowed to drive the interpretation of biblical passages. Stagg gives many examples of misuse by reputable scholars.

This then brings us to consider issues of meta-control.

3. Issues of Meta-Control

It appears that sometimes theory becomes something like a black box. In electronics a black box is a general term for a device that does complicated things, but for general usage the serviceman only needs to know what the input connections and the output connections are plus the service parameters. This is not good enough for a viable use of literary, linguistic and academic theory. The exponent needs to be aware of the meta-text that lies behind the usage level of the theory. Brian D. Ingraffia writes:

And as Barth and Bonhoeffer have so forcefully reminded us, religion is humanity's most powerful idol. Thus Updike's divinity school professor correctly understands the meaning of the biblical narrative when he criticizes the graduate student trying to prove the existence of God. 'You're trying to make God stand at the end of some human path … You're building a Tower of Babel.’ [31]

It is an important step for any exegete to recognize the subjectivity of their processes.[32]

We should not make the mistake of thinking that contingency in the task of interpretation invalidates the process. In fact, it highlights the very human nature of the task. Subjectivity is not a way of relativising a text to make it say anything. Exegesis needs to serve the task of bringing one to a critical knowing in Habermas/Lovat terms.

Homeostasis and Feedback Loops

Good functional systems have in-built feedback loops that produce either negative or positive feedback. Negative feedback has the purpose of putting on the “brakes” in some way, whilst positive feedback uses the “accelerator” to give further impetus. Each of these sub-systems has the purpose of maintaining a healthy and well functioning major-system. It is at this juncture that the point of this essay needs to be stated again: theory at its best operates as a powerful and useful tool that brings enhancement of outcomes, but it must always remain a tool, not a straitjacket. There must always be feedback loops that continually critically observe the way the theory functions in bringing about a good outcome. Sometimes, there needs to be a cautionary attenuation of the usage of theory, whilst at other times the theory needs to be allowed to bring to the light of day the full range of issues being addressed.

A classic example is the way that logical positivism controlled theoretical thinking for a long period of time. From a definitional point of view logical positivism did not stand, but it tended to sweep all before it while it held a position of credence. (The definition that verification was either analytic or empirical did not stand up to the test of its own criteria.) Logical Positivism basically gave pre-eminence to the analytic and the empirical and rejected anything that was metaphysical.[33] However, it still has repercussions in the discussions of religion and theology today, even by many that have rejected it in what they would say was a categorical way.

Another area, that illustrates our point, has been the hegemony of historical critical approaches to understanding. Though still of great value, the heavy-handed controls of almost two centuries have had to be relaxed. The shift in biblical studies towards more literary critical approaches has brought about a change in attitude. Text is important as an artefact and the reader is important in the issue of textual meaning. The issue is not just one of authorial intent that can often lead to the intentional fallacy.

In the past, historical criticism had tended to place most of the focus on the author of the text, on authorial intent, and on the time of the writing of the text. This shift away from the historical critical pre-eminence was seen by many as a vote of no-confidence in historical criticism. In The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, the editor, Professor John Barton, states:

When this book was being planned, some advisers suggested that there should be no chapter on historical criticism at all, since it was now entirely passe. Against this I have tried to show that 'historical' critics raised (and raise) issues that should still be on the agenda for the student of the Bible, and which will not go away.[34]

Some three years later, Barton co-edited The Oxford Bible Commentary with Muddiman. They wrote, "They [the authors of the commentary] are, however, united by an approach that we have called 'chastened historical criticism'."[35] The over-exuberance of some scholars in the historical critical approach to text has led to a number of possible abuses. Barton enunciates four major areas of concern:

(i)    The almost singular and myopic approach focused in genetic questions - those questions that have to do with when and how the book was written, as well as who were the expected first readers. With this type of approach some scholars tended to think that they had done the work of interpretation when they had answered these questions. In reality there was much more that needed to be done. This failure of onward movement has been highlighted in some Pentateuchal studies particularly with the JEDP emphases, along with some gospel synoptical studydealing with Matthew, Mark and Luke. [36]

It could be said that historical criticism addressed itself almost entirely to the question of how we came to have the Bible, and when it had solved this problem, saw little else for the biblical scholar to do.[37]

(ii)   Next, was the issue of original meaning. Because of its concern with the past, historical criticism "tended (it may be said) to be interested in the 'original' meaning of the text, what it had meant to its first readers, and not what it might mean to a modern reader."[38] In this approach there was often the usage of intricate and sophisticated methods, particularly "philological and linguistic studies."[39] One illustration given by Barton concerns the meanings of the terms bishop and deacon then and now.[40] It was not so much an abuse of philology and linguistics per se, rather it was an abuse of claiming too much for the methods implemented.

(iii)  Then came the issue of historical reconstructions. It was not just an interest in history, but the method of reconstruction of history that turned out to be the problem. This was evidenced particularly in some German biblical scholarship. Barton lists five names as examples: W. M. L. de Wette, Julius Wellhausen, D.F. Strauss, Theodor Mommsen and Leopold von Ranke.[41] With these reconstructions the ideologies and the methodologies of the modern authors were allowed to over-ride the intent and the comment of the original writers. An interesting example is that of Wellhausen when he wrote Prolegomena to the History of Israel. He had intended to set out the order and historical implications of the JEDP sources (or some other configuration of the four) as a necessary precondition to writing the succeeding volume of critical history. He did not begin writing this following volume, presumably because he could not work out the prolegomena to his complete satisfaction.[42]

(iv)  The problem of disinterested scholarship. The presence of the observer makes a difference, even when strict scientific protocols are adhered to.[43]

Perhaps most important of all, historical criticism was meant to be value-neutral, or disinterested. It tried, so far as possible, to approach the text without prejudice, and to ask not what it meant 'for me', but simply what it meant. Against any 'pious' reading, a historical-critical enquiry is guided by a desire to discover the facts as they actually are, as in Ranke's famous dictum that the historian's task is to establish the facts about the past 'as it actually was' (wie es eigentlich gewesen).[44]

There are two issues of exclusivity that become apparent within the deficiencies of the historical critical approach. The first is the forms of exclusivity that were often attributed to the methodology of historical criticism. Some of these flawed foundations have been exposed in the four points given above. The second problem of exclusivity is that historical critical approaches sought to block out the human observer with a so-called “value-neutral” methodological approach.

The contention of this essay is that the following theories, like historical criticism, need to be subjected to critical surveillance:

·         structuralism ·         post-structuralism and deconstruction ·         postmodernism ·         psychoanalytic criticism ·         feminist criticism ·         new historicism and cultural materialism

·         Marxist criticism ·         lesbian/gay criticism ·         postcolonial criticism ·         stylistics ·         narratology ·         ecocriticism[45]

It is not the purpose of the paper to examine each of these in a critical way. However, it is not too much to suggest that all literary, linguistic and academic theories must be subjected to ongoing critical scrutiny. They are never an end in and of themselves. Historical criticism has done and will continue to do many good things for scholarship, but it has needed the criticism that has brought it to a chastened position.

Conclusion

Literary, linguistic and academic theory has brought us to where we are today in the study of biblical narrative texts. Literary theory needs to be held up to constant ongoing evaluation both as to the theory and the usage of that theory. We can never do without it, but it should never be an end-in-and-of-itself. Feyerabend said it well:

I want to defend society and its inhabitants from all ideologies, science included. All ideologies must be seen in perspective. One must not take them too seriously. One must read them like fairytales which have lots of interesting things to say but which also contain wicked lies, or like ethical prescriptions which may be useful rules of thumb but which are deadly when followed to the letter.[46]

The thrust of this essay is not to abandon theory, but rather to use it wisely and with understanding. Blind usage of literary theory is not a helpful way to go.