Power and Responsibility in Biblical Interpretation

Reading the Book of Job with Edward Said

Alissa Jones Nelson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317544012
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

'Power and Responsibility in Biblical Interpretation' addresses the interpretive challenges now facing much biblical interpretation. Incorporating the methodologies of poststructuralism, postcolonialism, and liberation theology, the study presents a possible methodology which integrates scholarly and vernacular hermeneutics. The approach is based on the theories of Edward Said, adapting his concept of contrapuntal reading to the interpretation of 'Job'. The book sets this study in the broader context of a survey of current work in the field. The analysis of 'Job' examines the possibilities for dialogue between those interpretations that view suffering as a key theme in the book and those that do not. Interpretations of the 'Book of Job' are then compared to the psychology of suffering as experienced in various contexts today. The conclusion argues for pedagogical reform based upon the ethical and interpretive insights of contrapuntal hermeneutics.

Part I

Chapter 1

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO EDWARD W. SAID: A REVIEW OF SAID’S CONCEPTS OF SUBJECTIVITY, POWER, INTELLECTUAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE SECULAR

At the outset, it will be useful to ground our study and interpretation of Edward W. Said’s hermeneutical praxis. As a basis for our explorations of Said’s contrapuntal approach, this chapter endeavours to lay a conceptual groundwork upon which to build our understanding of Said. To that end, those concepts that are considered most important to his unique perspective and the approaches arising out of it are introduced here, together with relevant criticism of Said’s work. This chapter will also treat those aspects of Said’s personal, political and existential commitments that are relevant to the issues at hand. At the conclusion of this chapter, the reader will have a solid foundation from which to venture into more specific considerations of Said’s thought.

The Foundation: Orientalism and Objectivity, Knowledge and Power

In his widely acclaimed and controversial book Orientalism, Edward W. Said lays the foundations for his theory of the inherent relationship between knowledge and power, particularly in colonial contexts.¹ Said asserts that all knowledge is, at bottom, interested, and that objective knowledge, no matter what the subject under consideration, is impossible. Intellectual debate carries on under a false dichotomy between objectivity and subjectivity, and “whereas we are right to bewail the disappearance of a consensus on what constitutes objectivity, we are not by the same token adrift in self-indulgent subjectivity.”² The choice between objectivity or subjectivity as polar opposites ignores the fact that there is a middle ground between the two, in which knowledge is neither fully objective nor fully subjective, but contains elements of objectivity and subjectivity which must be foregrounded and critically investigated.

Nevertheless the determining impingement on most knowledge produced in the contemporary West … is that it be nonpolitical, that is, scholarly, academic, impartial, above partisan or small-minded doctrinal belief. One can have no quarrel with such an ambition in theory, perhaps, but in practice the reality is much more problematic. No one has ever devised a method for detaching the scholar from the circumstances of life, from the fact of his [sic] involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a class, a set of beliefs, a social position, or from the mere activity of being a member of society … [T]here is such a thing as knowledge that is less, rather than more, partial than the individual (with his [sic] entangling and distracting life circumstances) who produces it. Yet this knowledge is not therefore automatically nonpolitical.³

Said further asserts that any European knowledge of the “Orient” or the “Oriental”⁴ is necessarily compromised by Europe’s history of colonialism in the Orient no less than by its current neocolonial interests in those parts of the world whose domination produces material benefit for European and North American nations.⁵

Thus Said sees no opportunity for objective knowledge of other social worlds. All knowledge is “interaction … (usually) for a purpose here.”⁶ Knowledge is, in fact, a matter of hermeneutics. To quote Atif Khalil, “[A]ny epistemological encounter with the Other is hermeneutic, since the Other is interpreted through one’s own Self … What is alien is made intelligible through the familiar.”⁷ Such epistemological encounters are dependent on what Said calls “interest,” a term which, for him, encompasses everything from a conscious will-to-power to “an ambition to serve as a bridge of understanding between this culture and that.”⁸ All knowledge is therefore compromised, not only by direct political involvement but as a necessary result of the contextual situation of the person who produces or acquires knowledge. Orientalism “is, above all, a discourse that is by no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political … power intellectual … power cultural … [and] power moral.”⁹ This “uneven” exchange is an unavoidable result of the (often underestimated) strength of discourse in European and North American social worlds.¹⁰

In conjunction with questions of objectivity and subjectivity in the production of knowledge, Said also addresses the issue of universality. Said laments the “almost complete lack of universals” in the modern world, “even though very often the rhetoric suggests, for instance, that ‘our’ values (whatever those may happen to be) are in fact universal.”¹¹ In opposition to this rhetoric, universality in Said’s thought has an ethical and humanitarian, rather than an intellectual, role to play. Said’s account of knowledge emphasizes “the interaction between universality and the local, the subjective, the here and now.”¹² Universality is not properly a function of scholarship but rather of scholarly involvement in concrete social realities. “Universality means taking a risk in order to go beyond the easy certainties provided us by our background, language, [or] nationality, which so often shield us from the reality of others. It also means looking for and trying to uphold a single standard for human behavior when it comes to such matters as foreign and social policy.”¹³ Universal knowledge is therefore “a concept of justice and fairness that allows for differences between nations and individuals, without at the same time assigning them to hidden hierarchies, preferences, [or] evaluations.”¹⁴ This is the interaction between the universal and the local that Said’s concept of knowledge initiates. Universality has a special meaning in the context of knowledge, which, as Said asserts, has its proper goal in the alleviation of human suffering. The task in this case is

to give greater human scope to what a particular race or nation suffered, to associate that experience with the sufferings of others … This does not at all mean a loss in historical specificity, but rather it guards against the possibility that a lesson learned about oppression in one place will be forgotten or violated in another place or time.¹⁵

Thus Said does not deny universality or the concept of truth. His interest lies in examining the relationship between truth and universality and the application of concepts in particular, subjective spaces. Said conceives himself as “asking the basic question for the intellectual: how does one speak the truth? What truth? For whom and where?”¹⁶ These questions are foundational to Said’s thinking about the relationship between knowledge and power.

Said finds support for his theories about the inherent connection between knowledge, perspective, interpretation, and power in works as diverse as those of Vico,¹⁷ Nietzsche,¹⁸ Merleau-Ponty,¹⁹ Conrad²⁰ and Foucault.²¹ He applies these theories particularly to the interpretation of texts and to the role of the literary critic. Said argues that “[n]o reading is neutral or innocent, and by the same token every text and every reader is to some extent the product of a theoretical standpoint, however implicit or unconscious such a standpoint may be.”²² The question of the interests of the text is as relevant as the question of the interests of the reader or critic. Said identifies three essential questions that draw attention to these interests: “Who writes? For whom is the writing being done? In what circumstances?”²³ Textual criticism necessitates the discovery of those elements which constitute a “standpoint” and which are too often “implicit or unconscious.” In the act of interpretation, “someone, an authoritative, explorative, elegant, learned voice, speaks and analyzes, amasses evidence, theorizes, speculates about everything – except itself. Who speaks? For what and to whom?”²⁴ These are questions to be asked of both the text and the interpreter. Said does not, however, argue that degrees of neutrality in critical discourse are impossible to achieve. He accepts the possibility of some degree of critical objectivity arising in proportion to the historical distance between interpreter and text.²⁵

While it is true to say that because a text is the product of an unrecapturable past, and that contemporary criticism can to some extent afford a neutral disengagement or opposed perspective impossible for the text in its own time, there is no reason to take the further step and exempt the interpreter from any moral, political, cultural, or psychological commitments.²⁶

Such a full exemption is detrimental to interpretation and, Said asserts, is all too common in contemporary European and North American scholarship.

In Said’s view, the illusion of interpretive neutrality can only be combated as it is recognized and acknowledged as an illusion, as the intellectual takes into account her or his own context as a determining factor in her or his work. Thus the solution to the problems inherent in Orientalism is “methodological self-consciousness.”²⁷ Those who attempt interpretation need, “first of all, a direct sensitivity to the material before them, and then a continual self-examination of their methodology and practice, a constant attempt to keep their work responsive to the material and not to a doctrinal preconception.”²⁸ Only by recognizing these inherent limitations of context can one begin to consciously resist those limitations, though in this view such resistance involves acquiring further self-knowledge, which, as with all knowledge according to Said’s theories, is inherently interested and subjective.

Perhaps the most important task of all would be to undertake studies in contemporary alternatives to Orientalism, to ask how one can study other cultures and peoples from a libertarian, or a nonrepressive and non-manipulative, perspective. But then one would have to rethink the whole complex problem of knowledge and power.²⁹

Said sees this “complex problem” as one that affects the work of literary criticism generally and postcolonial literary criticism in particular.

In traditional Euro-North American study of the Orient, it is the responsibility of the so-called expert to initiate his or her fellow citizens, to present the Orient for evaluation and judgement, to impose order on it, and to represent it;³⁰ this is not a neutral or objective endeavour,³¹ as all “representations have purposes.”³² Representation is the ideological criterion that enables domination. The status of the expert in (formerly) colonial societies often allows him or her to effectively make of the Orient whatever he or she wishes it to be. “Knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, in a sense creates the Orient, the Oriental, and his [sic] world” for those European and North American audiences.³³ Thus Orientalism is essentially “intellectual power.”³⁴ The power to represent becomes the power to skew, to caricature, to dominate. The danger of this type of representation is in allowing truth to become “a function of learned judgment, not of the material itself.”³⁵ This danger is also inherent in the entry of postcolonial texts into the academy. Any analysis or representation of a text that is attempted from a position of power risks the imposition of meanings on the material rather than th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II Interlude: Why Job?
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of Biblical References
• Index of Key Terms
• Index of Authors