Interpretation is the way the readers, consciously or unconsciously, see the text. When I say ‘see’, I mean it in its broad sense including reading in the first place. In critical readings, interpretation is the third step after reading and understanding. The aim of this essay is to discuss the process of interpretation, its necessity and validity. Besides, it tends to answer the questions: is interpretation an avoidable process or an unavoidable one and thus, is it conscious or unconscious? Let’s agree first, about the following icons I am going to use in this essay: the literary text as an example of the text, since everything is a text. The writer is the producer of the text no matter what its nature is, musical, cinematic or architectural...etc. and the dealer is the one who deals with the text, and accordingly, interprets it.
The process of interpretation of texts is unavoidable, meaning the reader or the dealer with the text will intentionally or unintentionally interpret it whether or not his/her interpretation is valid, logic, and reasonable. What distinguishes academia from other domains of life is that it gives the chance to each one to interpret the way he/she pleases, but it accepts only the valid and logical interpretations. It is needless to be mentioned that interpretation is out of the writers will and thus, it is the property of the interpreter par excellence. Paradise Lost(1667), for instance, has been interpreted in two different ways, while some claim it is about the story of Adam and Eve, others said that it has nothing to do with that, but rather, it is about the contemporary life in England during the life of the writer. John Milton might not have neither Adam and Eve nor the contemporary life in England, in mind when he wrote Paradise Lost.
When I said above, that interpretation is the third stage after reading and understanding, I meant exclusively, written texts. Interpretation is very much broader than that, and faster than that. It is the attitude the dealer immediately has after dealing with the text. Obviously, that sort of dealing is relative in terms of its speed, its depth and its validity. So, the way the literary text is interpreted is not necessarily the same way a movie, a musical song, or architectural status...etc. is interpreted. The way, for instance, a person located on the earth sees the moon is not the same way another on another galaxy sees the same moon. The locatedness, here as one of factors intervening in interpreting texts on which we are going to talk later on in more details, oriented, to some extent, the interpretation of the two people about the size of the moon as well as its farness.
The process of interpretation is unavoidable and thus, is necessary. One may ask why don’t we interpret the text the way its producer wanted? The answer is simple, for the intentions of the producer when he/she produced his/her work are untenable; and it is on this point that Reader Response theoerists relied in theorizing the issue. The same point also pushed Russian Formalism pioneers to treat the text as sui generis, as an independent entity that has nothing to do with its producer. The interpreter is free while his interpretation is supported by the text, and not the producer, for the producer vanishes and the text, thanks to interpretation, remains. “to exist is to interpret.” If we agree that the interpreter is free, we can ask : Is interpretation, as a process, free?
According to theorists and critics, or let’s say academia in general, the process of interpretation is not free. The interpreter is free only within the logic, within the text, and within his/her own conventions and ideology. Interpretation is both time and space bound, for the interpreter is, at the end of the day, a human being and influenced in a way or another by what is going around him. The personal, the social, and the global factors and conditions are explicitly or implicitly appearing on the interpretation. Finally, in academia interpretation is nothing unless it is realized by both the content of the text interpreted and the conventional logic, because logic itself is relative. Interpretation after all is relative, what is a logical interpretation for someone may not be logical for another; and what were considered reasonable interpretations in the past, may no more be reasonable ones nowadays. The multiplicity of interpretations of Quran, for example, is an obvious epitome of the relativity of the process. In spite of its relativity and uncertainty, interpretation is still the fundamental factor for texts to be and continue.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 8:25am
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