Hubris and Hermeneutics
As one of the by-products of teaching my graduate methods course, my own scholarship and assumptions comes under the microscope as I take the questions we grapple with in class time and apply them to my own projects (both in the classroom and in my own writing).
This year, I’m struck by the issue of hermeneutics in historical interpretation — essentially, the belief that one has to see the past (or whatever culture one is studying) on its own terms; to understand the text (written document, image, series of actions) in the context of its creation.
As a teacher, I spend a great deal of time exhorting students to try and interpret their material through the perspective of the people we’re studying rather than simply dismiss the message of the past after cursory examination through the condescending lens of twenty-first century insight. But I’m still not sure that I’m doing this in the most helpful of ways.
Yes, women were hopelessly subordinated under sixteenth century law and custom. Yes, non-Christians were horribly treated in most of premodern Europe. But park your smug superiority at the door and get down to asking why and how people thought the way they thought in order to have done these things!
(Putting the question in that way is far less scary than exhorting students in the survey course to apply a hermeneutic approach to their analysis, by the way. I’m a bit more straightforward with the seniors and grad students, of course.)
That, however, opens up a whole different can of worms: charges of hubris and complaints of the impossibility of the task at hand. Who are we to think we can really understand this historical culture? Students complain that they lack the time and tools (background knowledge of the Bible, say, or languages) to truly interpret the past.
I have to admit, it’s sometimes staggering to watch an interpretative master at work, unpacking the allusions and assumptions implicit in a brief segment of text. To be suddenly confronted with all that you don’t know, ranging from the ridiculous (historical currency names and values) to the sublime (the legacy of Augustine or the contexts of Montaigne)? It’s humbling and more than a little bit intimidating, especially given that the vast majority of my students will get no closer to Thomas More after their graduation than watching him on The Tudors. I can’t expect them to plow through accumulated centuries of material in order to give his words context for a half-term essay.
At the same time, I want to encourage them to explore a little bit more and to venture a few interpretations of their own when they read, say, some of the justifications offered in Wyatt’s Rebellion or selections out of John Bunyan’s Memoirs without making the demands so unreasonable or the task so overwhelming that they do nothing at all. I’m just not sure that I’ve struck the proper balance. At least not so far!
Although I teach in an entirely different area, I find that I have very similar experiences when teaching research methods. Those classes always provide such a wonderful opportunity to reexamine my own methods and assumptions.
I think what’s complicated about this is that it works two ways. On the one hand, we want to avoid condescending to the past. On the other hand, it’s often useful to use conceptual frameworks from the present to understand the past. So we use contemporary conceptual and theoretical tools in a hermeneutic process. We hope those tools don’t do too much harm to the past.
[…] Hubris and Hermeneutics Janice Liedl muses on the problems of ’seeing the past on its own terms’ […]
I get this. It’s something I struggle with constantly, in part because I think it’s so important to try to this — and this is one of hte skills that we historians can try to teach. And that skill, of seeing the people of the past on their own terms, is the skill that I think is the single most relevant thing that we teach. But (and I feel a post coming on) finding the balance for the undergrads and the non-majors is a real issue…
[…] 24, 2008 · No Comments This was something I found on Sharon’s EMN, a very nice post about how teaching a graduate methods course has suddenly opened up a whole new line of reflection […]
Nice post, which I’ve blogged about at the Long 18th. If you’re interested in the methodological issues of teaching students disciplinary practices, there’s a good piece by Peter Seixas (focused on secondary school teaching, but still relevant) in JSTOR:
* The Community of Inquiry as a Basis for Knowledge and Learning: The Case of History
* Author(s): Peter Seixas
* Source: American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 305-324
* Published by: American Educational Research Association
* Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.uh.edu/stable/1163237
Best wishes,
DM