Thresholds

"Thought of the Week" for September 8, 2003

"Decontextualization" of a text

...An essential characteristic of a literary work, and of a work of art in general, is that it transcends its own psycho-sociological conditions of production and thereby opens itself to an unlimited series of readings, themselves situated in different socio-cultural condition. In short, the text must be able, from the sociological as well as the psychological point of view, to 'decontextualize' itself in such a way that it can be 'recontextualised" in a new situation -- as accomplished, precisely, by the act of reading.

Paul Ricoeur. (1981). Hermeneutics and the human sciences. New York: Cambridge. (p. 139)

Comment:

Texts transcend their authors, opening unlimited readings

by Reg Harris

Copyright © 2003 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated October 2007. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.

Ricoeur's point seems to be that once a text (novel, etc.) is committed to writing it transcends its immediate situation (context, author, etc.). Because of this context-transcendent quality, the text opens itself to infinite readings, interpretations and meanings. It "decontextualizes" itself from its original context, allowing the reader to recontextualize it within his or her own context. Thus, a text has the potential to transcend its own author, to be able to open meanings beyond what the author intended.

This idea is significant when we look at reading as a fusion of horizons: the horizon of the text (not necessarily the horizons of the author) and horizon of the reader. In the case of Shakespeare, for example, the bard is not in our classrooms to explain exactly what he intended. Hamlet, let us say, must stand alone as we read it 400 years after its creation. Certainly we have a wealth of information to contextualize the text in Elizabethan England, but even that information must be understood through the mind of a reader in the 21st century. It can only be understood this way. (Even when we try to determine what Elizabethans were thinking, we are making this determination through our current understanding of their understandings).

In this sense, then, the author looses claim to the meanings of his or her work once it is committed to paper. Of course, we must attempt to consider the writer's intents if we are to fully understand the text, but addressing those intents is not the first role of the reader or the educator. The first role is to attend to meanings unfolded when the reader's horizon of understanding engages with the text. The reader brings her own context to the text (history, needs, fears, etc.), and it is at this level that the text has its first meaning. This is the level of individual, pre-reflective engagement.

On this level, the text means what the reader intends it to mean. The text is decontextualized because it lacks the original web of relationships (between author, culture and reader) that gave it the author's meaning. It is recontextualized because it occurs as a phenomenon within the web of relationships that constitute the context of the reader's world. In this recontextualization, unintended meanings unfold between the reader and the text. These unintended meanings are usually the first meanings the reader in her experience with the text, and for the educator who is interested in the student's individual journey, they are the most important meanings.

In short, texts, and the great texts in particular, adapt themselves to any context. They can, when they fuse with the reader, open wonderful opportunities for understanding and being. A text, when allowed to engage itself authentically with the human mind, gives the reader new options for seeing himself or herself and the world, new options for being in the world.