The politics of interpretation: Carter, Dunn and Mao Tse Tung (part 2)

November 5, 1:41 AMSt. Louis Presbyterian ExaminerAlicia Donathan

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Tyranny of interpretation: Muzzling the crowd?
"Day of Silence 2008," Wikipedia commons

In part one, we noted that the cry, "Out of context!" has become an overused defense when public figures are confronted with the challenge to take responsibility for their own words.  We saw that while it is certainly possible to take someone's words "out of context" in such a way that distorts their true meaning, like Paul's misinterpreters did, it is also possible to propagate a false interpretation by claiming to be taking the speaker in context.  Or, put negatively, it is possible to attempt to silence opposition by firing the "out of context" attack upon them, without ever actually showing how the context clarifies the meaning.  We noted that as Christians who are familiar (as faithful audiences of Scripture) with the reader's assumption of access to a speaker's meaning, we should not let "out of context" claims go by without a full explanation.

It should also be noted, briefly, that it is not only Christians who have the ability to understand these things.  Understanding the mutuality of meaning is in principle open to all people.  However, as Christians we have the preeminent example of the mutuality of meaning in the Holy Scriptures: even when the authority of the Speaker (the Holy Spirit via the Prophets and Apostles) is absolute, the audience still interprets, and indeed has both the right and the duty to interpret.  So as Christians, we are in a unique position to understand the mutuality of meaning.  And we ought to see more clearly than anyone else that meaning is the shared property (or experience) of both speaker and audience, not merely one or the other.

This leads to the deeper consideration that this "out of context" defense brings forth: hermeneutical competence. When public figures or their defenders use the "out of context" defense, it raises the question of who is competent to interpret. Do a speaker's words belong exclusively to him forever? Is the speaker the only person ever qualified to explain his own meaning? Or are hearers competent to understand and explain a speaker's meaning? Issues of class and status enter here as well. When Jimmy Carter lectured his interviewer about her research skills after being questioned about his racism remarks, he not only implied that she hadn't done her homework (checked the original context of his remarks); but more fundamentally, the conversation left the impression that ordinary people (reporters, journalists, men-on-the-street) were not necessarily competent to interpret the words of public figures like Carter. After all, ordinary folks would (and did) hear Carter's words to mean that anybody who disagreed with Obama strongly was a racist. But according to Carter, that interpretation is entirely wrong. Yet how could any normal person have been expected to interpret him otherwise? They couldn't; the upshot of all this is the right of ordinary people to interpret what they hear from public figures in a common sense way, and with a measure of independence, is undermined. In its place, we have the speaker claiming exclusive rights to his own interpretation--to the degree that, in Carter's case, he can make his words mean the opposite of what they appear to mean. This is nothing short of tyranny.

And Carter is not alone in this attempt at hermeneutical tyranny. Then-presidential candidate Obama silenced a reporter who dared to ask him to take responsibility for his own words concerning single-payer health care, effectively evading responsibility and acting as though he never said the things he did in fact say.

At its worst, this sort of one-way interpretation (speaker to audience) is truly tyrannical. It is a method used by the powerful to attempt to evade responsibility for their own words, disclaim their own agenda, silence challengers and dissenters, control information and opinion, and flatly lie with impunity. The recent controversy over Anita Dunn's quotation of Mao Tse Tung is a classic example of this disturbing tendency at work. Dunn's defense was, predictably, to claim the remarks were taken out of context and were actually intended to be ironic. If that defense were accepted as the final word of interpretation, this would be an example of hermeneutical tyranny. But the competence of the crowd means that ordinary folks are able to look carefully at the context, and at Dunn's claims, and conclude that her attempt to interpret her own remarks in a less disturbing light is doesn't hold up to scrutiny. This careful interpretation by a reader demonstrates the competence of the audience. The juxtaposition of the Chinese dictator and mass murderer with Mother Theresa is the irony (if it can be called that). But Dunn's admiration for Mao and commendation of him as a source of wisdom is, unfortunately, disturbingly serious in the context. (Either that, or she has extremely bad comedic delivery [and taste]; in which case, audiences and critics are hardly to blame for being disturbed. She is to blame for being a very bad communicator.)  If Ms. Dunn had been allowed to be the final authority in the interpretation of her own words, she would have exonerated herself. But the audience is always competent to interpret, and in cases like this, it's a good thing, too.

Importantly, even if the audience had not had access to the original context, the interpretation would have been sound. That is to say, access to the original context is not a trump card. Sometimes it can clarify meaning. But even if an audience has no access to context, and the speaker or some minority does, the audience still has a right to interpret without original context. Indeed, half of our interpretations would be impossible if this were not so.

Context is important and will always be important. But it is of relative importance. More urgently, it is incumbent upon public figures to respect the intelligence and hermeneutic competence of the ordinary public. It is the responsibility of such figures to respect the public's interpretations, and the interpretations of ordinary folks, as legitimate. Public figures must take responsibility for their own words, being willing to admit mistakes, make retractions, apologies, and disavowals when appropriate, rather than dodging responsibility by attempting to delegitimize the interpretations of the public. The crowd must always be treated as a competent interpreter. This means the crowd can make mistakes, be mislead, or even be willfully ignorant; but they can never be dismissed as incompetent, and the speaker can never claim exclusive ability to decipher the meaning of his own words. Communication is mutual, and meaning is communal. This means that words do have inherent meaning, accessible to the whole community, not some private meaning that only the speaker understands. Meaning cannot be tyrannized by either the audience or the speaker, but belongs to both.

As Christians we should understand this basic truth about communication, and we ought to refuse to allow "out of context" to become a trump card. We ought to be careful to require an explanation when it is used.  We should also remember that, as with Scripture, context is something, but it's not everything. And we ought always to remember that the authority of the speaker does not extend so far as to deny the audience the right of interpretation. We, the audience, ought to be treated as legitimate interpreters, who deserve real explanations that respect the interpretations of the crowd.  Because we know these things, we ought to be able and willing to speak against hermeneutical tyranny, especially when it comes from political leaders and influential public figures.