25 September 2015

on perusing yet again the "news"

Back when I was working for my pointless degrees, it was common to state that, when encountering a new 'text', the reader/interpreter/perceiver did not work towards an understanding, but from one. At the time I thought those who held that position- who were inevitably left in the political spectrum, simply because almost everyone in the department swung left- were projecting, because it was clear that was what they themselves did. For a feminist, every book and poem we read... was about the role and oppression of women. For Marxists, the class struggle. For deconstructionists, every text was a re-enactment of the interplay of signifies and signified, wherein meaning is opposite or non existent.

And so on.


As I said, I had thought this was a left imposition or projection, claiming that all readings are a projection of the reader's interpretive praxis, wherein the final meaning or lack thereof was always already in place before the reading was begun, in order to justify or cover what they themselves were so obviously doing. now I am not so sure. All sides are constantly projecting what they believe to be already there when they encounter some new event or information. How else could Francis not mention abortion and religious liberty yet simultaneously lecture congress on those topics? How else could I read today that, depending on the source, all the party leaders won the debate? None of that was what happened. All of that was what the interpreters decided what happened because their stunted ideologies told them so, even before any of these events occurred.

"News".  "Interpretation".  The words are profaned.  These writings are nothing of the sort.  They are all the echoes of the single thoughts ringing in closed minds.

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