Gebruiker:Mister detextification/Kladblok

Detextification is an approach to identify and overcome a certain tendency typical of the highly literate way of structuring thought - especially vis-a-vis prosaic text, in order to grasp the way of structuring thought in contexts of the spoken and heard word or the concrete and everyday lifeworld. The academic mindset is structured by abstraction or critical thinking. One can point to the lemma or a given definition: the description is such that it seems to be valid for everyone, everywhere, and every time. This is also the case for this kind of knowledge as a whole. The mindset of the spoken and heard word is governed by metonymy (pars pro toto) being bound to the collective memory of the participants involved deeply rooted in their concrete lifeworld. For example, "9/11" are not two numbers or a random date, but has become a pars that evokes the experiential totum of the attacks on the New York Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001 and the enormous effects thereof. Detextification can be applied in contexts in which the mindsets behind both media interfere. One can point to the study of ancient literacy and biblical scholarship, which is based on the present availability of ancient documents as text and at the same time has to do justice to their original fuctioning as public reading or oral performance. One can also think of the role of text in public speaking and preaching, but also in policy making, law and lawsuit, theories on communication, and philosophy.

Detextification as approach

When processing prosaic text, a highly trained reader asks the question: What does it mean? In view of this intellectual activity and the related question, elements such as media (text), subject in actu (reader), way of structuring thought (highly literate mindset), and perspective taken in the realm of history (writer) are implicit. However, these elements are constitutive of the experience of the concrete situation in which the reader exists. In detextification, these aspects of the realm of history are explicated and turned into questions. One has to ask regarding documented or used concepts, terms, theme's, presuppositions, metaphors, gestures, symbols, etc.: How does it mean, to whom, in what state of mind, from whose perspective(s) and for what purpose? Instead of readers, we have to become reconstructive historians describing a certain historical event, which is determined by the process of reading and the related way of thinking.

Origin of detextification

The approach emerges from studying the media functioning of the Bible in present-day biblical scholarship as conducted in Oral Performance and the Veil of Text: Detextification, Paul’s Letters, and the Testcase of Gal 2-3. It is common opinion in biblical scholarship that the biblical documents functioned in a historical context dominated by the spoken word. Detextification is the result of addressing the complex relation between this formally acknowledged functioning in the original oral setting and the daily praxis of current biblical scholarship in which these documents function as autonomous texts in an ever-expanding universe of text, detached from its original oral delivery. The argument is that, in addition to the difference in media (oral performance there-and-then versus reading text here-and-now), it is crucial to differentiate the mindsets behind these media as well. A highly literate reader in the present structures thought differently from someone in the past who is formed by oral-aural communication. The leading question in detextification is, when applied to the biblical documents: How can a biblical scholar here-and-now relate to the text of the letters of Paul (in a printed or digital version) in such a way that he or she can understand how the apostle envisioned his original addressees to understand the documented words (structure their thoughts) in the event of delivery? Contrary to the question What did it mean/does it mean?, one should ask: How to understand how they understood?

"Text" in detextification

The Bible, as millenium-old source of Western culture, is pivotal for grasping the vista in detextification. In line with the communis opinio in biblical scholarship, originally a performer embodied the message to actual participants in the moment of delivery. This is oral-aural or body-to-body communication. Therefore, the process of composition was governed by anticipated participation, that is, the composer anticipates the rather specific participation (framing) of his intended addressees of certain terms, themes, metaphors, (fragments of) narratives, (fragments of) syllogisms etc. This entails a process of syn- and antonymous metonymy in combination with collective memory. In his article “What is a text? Explanation and Understanding,” Paul Ricoeur identifies this kind of writing as "the inscription of living speech," in which discourse is presenting the concrete lifeworld to the actual participants in a certain way. Etymologically speaking, one can refer to such documents as textum, that is, the weaving together of speaking and writing in which the latter is determined by the former. In his historical analysis, Ricoeur continues by stating that "writing" emancipated into "text" when the discourse in writing becomes abstracted from the "circumstantial milieu" (concrete lifeworld): "The eclipse of the circumstantial world by the quasi-world of texts can be so complete that, ... the world itself is ... represented by writing in lieu of the world presented by speech" (emphasis original). Therefore, "[a]utonomous text functions independently or severed from the circumstantial milieu (presence), while it can represent - according to its own rules - reality in total (representation/representing presence)." This is eye-to-text-area communication. The text area has to confine the attention of the reader within its bounderies. Other sensorial input has to be excluded: "Vision transforms into hypervisuality: the seeing in itself becomes abstracted - that is, drawn away from the perception of the concrete lifeworld in its primary and naïve sensorial way." In this way, text becomes the present portal to the realm of representation. Passing through, we can see the essence. At the same time, our senses and imagination become dampened, we loose touch with the individuality of the concrete lifeworld. Therefore, the functioning of this media is power as well as veil. When we turn to the biblical documents once more, it becomes clear that these texta function already for centuries (if not millenia, see 2 Peter 3.15-16?) as texts. Detextification is about addressing the implied media muddle and showing a way out.

"Knowing subject in actu" as third constituent of history

Detextification is about the tension between presence and representation, concreteness and abstraction, beyond versus on the level of text, or the realm of history and the realm of extra-historical thought. In detextification, the first part in these heuristic and synonymous dichotomies is stated to be leading: prior to every abstracted thought or formal knowledge, there is human existence in the concrete lifeworld; one relates primarily to the world by means of the senses or ones body (think of a newborn baby). As a result, in detextification, past as well as present are both considered to be realm(s) of history. Detextification implies, therefore, a gap: this is the gap between the realm of history and freischwebendes Denken. Once we differentiate between these two realms, it becomes clear that in the highly literate mindset it seems inevitable that the latter (extra-historical thought or the tendency to abstraction) determines the grasp of the former (realm of history). This becomes clear in the standard dimensions by which we define (the realm of) history, namely 'time' (then versus now) and 'space' (there versus then). In the light of detextifying the Biblical documents, it becomes clear that another dimension is pivotal as well: the 'knowing subject in actu.' Namely, detextification is based on the thesis that every media asks for its own mindset. More so, the approach of history as constituted by 'time' and 'place' is typical of the highly literate knowing subject. When we explicate the dimension of 'knowing subject in actu,' explicit description of the mindset in the realm of history involved has to be incorporated. In this way, the mindset of the academic reader as knowing subject in actu vis-à-vis text - which is typical for the present-day Western framing of history - can be made subservient to understanding the way in which other 'knowing subjects in actu' are intended to understand (for example, the original addressees of Paul's letters in the moment of the oral performance of his letters in distinction from a highly trained reader of the Biblical text asking: What does it mean?).

Examples of detextification

Biblical scholarship (1): "oral performance" on and beyond the level of text

In biblical scholarship when studying "oral performance," "media" is the key notion to use. On the level of text, this term is widely accepted and adequate. The intellectual movement of textualizing history, which is inherent in detextification, however, urges to push such concepts beyond the level of text. In this way, it becomes clear that it remains to a high degree freischwebend: there is a fundamental difference between the situation that, for example, someone reads the words "oral performance" on the level of a scholarly publication - as referring to that specific media - and a situation in which that same person is exposed to an oral performance in real time - that is, beyond the level of text. The latter experience involves all the senses; it takes necessarily place in a communicative situation in which one does not relate to reality via text but participates in it: one does not represent, but is present. Eye-to-text-area communication is changed into body-to-body communication. A different mindset is involved. More so, when the "media" on the level of a biblical scholarly publication refers to, for example, the "oral performance" of the letters of Paul, one also has to relate this distinctive mindset to a different knowing subject in actu, that is, the intended original addressees there-and-then. As a consequence, the given and dominant question "What does it mean?" can be transformed into "How does it function, to whom, in what mindset, and from whose perspective[s]?"

How to do detextification?

[Under construction]