Browsing by Subject "Hermeneutics"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Disciplined by democracy: moral framing and the rhetoric of Red Letter Christians.
    (2010-03) Boerboom, Samuel Isaac
    In this dissertation I study both the textual reception and rhetorical production strategies of the Red Letter Christians, a discourse community whose identity is linked to these very same strategies. I contend that the Red Letter Christians engage in biblical reading strategies that make them distinct from other politically liberal or progressive religious groups. The Red Letter Christians employ a moral frame based on their particular reading of the Bible. Embedded in the notion of "conservative radicalism," such a moral frame asserts a dedication to timeless principles and truths authenticated by the gospel accounts of Jesus while it simultaneously upholds a passionate defense of social justice and the activist need to engage in political action in the present. Such a moral frame is biconceptual, expressing both conservative and progressive dimensions of moral social action. Due to the biconceptuality of the Red Letter Christian moral frame, Red Letter Christians often stress the importance of humility and non-partisan dialogue. Critics of the Red Letter Christians from both the political left and the right argue that such discourse is often incomprehensible and obfuscates the political positions the group defends in their rhetoric. I assert that in spite of their common reception as a religiously liberal group, the Red Letter Christians offer a model of discourse that at its best authenticates and otherwise justifies a model of post-partisan discourse that re-imagines religion's role in public political discourse.
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    Interpreting across the abyss: a hermeneutic exploration of initial literacy development by high school English language learners with limited formal schooling.
    (2010-07) Watson, Jill A.
    The presence of older learners with limited formal literacy and schooling in U.S. high schools constitutes an intense and unique instance of the encounter of contextually oriented oral indigenous culture and the distanciated culture of high literacy and digitacy. Drawing on the work of Walter Ong, Marshall McLuhan, and others, I describe the distance between the noetic lifeworlds of orality and literacy as a semiotic abyss across which interpretation is difficult but necessary. The scholarly stance required is one of humility--to fail to engage the alterity of orality with sensitive attunement is an act of continued imperialism, which is morally unacceptable, epistemologically naïve, and ecologically suicidal in cognitive and natural terms. Following Marie Battiste, Enrique Dussel, David G. Smith, and others, this philosophical study locates the phenomenon of initial literacy development by high school English language learners within the history of Western epistemology, colonialism, and globalization, in particular the legacies of Kant's logic of emancipative reason, transformed in school contexts into a logic of sacrificial reason wherein the primitive ways of orality are sacrificed to hyperliteracy in the environment of reified, standardized education in the United States. Illustrative anecdotes, poetry, and assertorial argument are used to evoke instances of the encounter or orality and literacy in school settings. Refuting the primacy of both idealism and positivism in society and education, the study is inspired both topically and methodologically by hermeneutics, the ancient art of interpretation, as a way of articulating the fusion of horizons between severed hyperliteracy and oral ways of knowing in context, so that a conversation regarding the role and instruction of literacy remains unforeclosed and capable of sustaining a common future in which oral and literate noeses are respected. A pedagogy of reciprocity between orality and literacy is proposed as a path to the practical survival of older oral newcomers who must acquire the artificially-toned manners of representational culture, and to the ontic survival of the hypostacized Western self trapped in triumphal determinacy.
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    An interpreting animal: hermeneutics and politics in the human sciences.
    (2010-09) Gimbel, Edward William
    Beginning with a historical study of the human sciences' position between the natural sciences and the humanities, this dissertation examines the consequences of the fixation on questions of method that has characterized this positioning. Drawing on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I illustrate how it is that methodological concerns can serve to obscure other, more fundamental concerns. Gadamer uses Aristotle's ethics to make this point about method, and I take the further step of bringing this intersection of Aristotelian ethics and Gadamerian hermeneutics to bear productively on the human sciences. The result of this work is an approach to the human sciences characterized less by attention to methods and more by appreciation of ends. I argue that in the development of what I call "political teleology" the human sciences exploit their particular strengths, and find their political import.
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    Poetics of transparency: hermeneutics of Du Fu (712-770) during the Late Ming (1368-1644) and Early Qing (1644-1911) periods
    (2012-08) Hao, Ji
    Traditional Chinese poetry and poetics demonstrate a strong belief in the idea of transparency: within the Chinese tradition poetry was often considered as a transparent medium which grants reader a seemingly unmediated access to the historical past and the poet's mind. In their discussion of this transparency, modern scholars tend to either dismiss it as a hermeneutic fallacy or accept it as historically true nature of traditional Chinese poetry. This study draws attention to the "thickness" of such transparency as reflected in the hermeneutics of China's greatest poet Du Fufs poetry during the late Ming and early Qing periods. The dissertation consists of two parts: textual hermeneutics and life hermeneutics. Part I "textual hermeneutics" concentrates on the hermeneutic shift during the late Ming and early Qing. Such a shift is characterized by objection to previous Du Fu hermeneutics especially Song commentatorsf interpretations on Du Fu. Chapter 1 gives a general picture of this hermeneutic shift and discusses three major strategies adopted by Ming-Qing commentators. I also analyze the overarching principle embraced by many commentators during this tme: yi yi ni zhi. Chapter 2 offers a case study of Jin Shengtan's commentaries on Du Fu. Jin elevates jie from a general interpretive approach (as opposed to zhu) to a well-defined approach which presents an interesting picture of how he deals with the hermeneutic past as well as defining relationship between self as reader and Du Fu as author. Part II "life hermeneutics" focuses on "life hermeneutics" and begins with an examination of life hermeneutics of Du Fu during the Song dynasty. Chapter 3 discusses Qian Qianyi's interpretation of Du Fufs poetry. Qian's changing relations with reading Du Fu at different stages of his life serve as a unique example for us to examine complexities of life hermeneutics during the late Ming and early Qing periods. Chapter 4 investigates Ming yimin's practice of life hermeneutics and their attitude towards loyalty as well as how the Qing official ideology intervenes in the interpretations of Du Fu during the Kangxi (1654-1722) and the Qianlong (1711-1799) period.
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    Reading for the minor: methodological considerations in the work of Paul Beatty, Erika Lopez, and Beau Sia
    (2012-10) Hoagland, George Q.
    This project attempts to identify and mitigate one problem that arises when comparatists neglect to consider their own methodological situations in relation to the texts they compare. The comparative literature research presented here emphasizes comparison as an interpretive process that must begin with a thorough critique of the comparatist's own reading circumstances; that is, it suggests how comparison should explicate the affinities between reader and text before it emphasizes affinities between texts. The explication process outlined here is termed "reading for the minor," and this project examines selections from three contemporary authors, Paul Beatty, Erika Lopez, and Beau Sia, to show how the concept of minority is integral to both the production and reception of texts in comparison. Understood as an entangled reading process that exposes negotiation as a key method for subjective formation, reading for the minor analyzes the role of authority in interpretive strategies while it promotes the political reality of plural interpretations. These interpretations derive from networked readings and readers, and point to a reading social that situates hermeneutic practices within a hegemonic domain. Investigating limitations imposed by literary categories including genre, representation, and history, this project posits work by the three aforementioned authors as examples of minor literary production as well as examples of work that invite minor readings. The works' multiple minor configurations point to this entangled reading process that binds readers to their texts and sets the process of comparison in motion.