CCWP05: Making Sense: Perspectives On Interpretation

Topical Introduction

Cultures achieve cohesion and permanence by focusing around a set of "classical" texts, values and institutions which are perceived as possessing lasting importance and deemed worthy of exerting their influence on the minds and lives of human beings. Each subsequent generation in a given culture must come to terms with these "classics" (which include sacred texts, codes of law and canonical works of art) and strive to make them relevant to its own historical and existential predicament, often by endowing them with a meaning which is at least partly different from the one they possessed for their original audience. This process of negotiating and constructing meaning is what interpretation is about. From its origins as a technical discipline chiefly concerned with the Bible, legal texts and Greek and Latin literature, Western hermeneutics (the science of interpretation) has evolved into a general theory positing interpretation as a defining mode of man's being in the world. Far from being limited to sporadic efforts to make sense of old and unfamiliar cultural artifacts, interpretive issues are indeed crucial to defining our relationship to any text, experience or phenomenon: our selection of evidence, the inferences we draw from it and the ideas about reality we consider whimsical or well-founded, interesting or uninteresting are all framed by (generally implicit) notions of how interpretation should be conducted and of its legitimate aims and outcomes; moreover, the ability to interpret data in a reliable and original way is rightly regarded as a vital component of expertise in any scholarly or professional field.

The aim of this module is to allow students to evolve their own notions of a valid and interesting interpretation by engaging with various theoretically and historically significant instances of the interpretive process. Prolonged and systematic reflection on this issue will also deepen our understanding of nonfiction writing: from first engaging with the sources to conceiving and arguing a thesis, all stages of the argumentative process are built around acts of interpretation; becoming aware of those acts, which are often only half-conscious and seldom talked about, and of the role our assumptions, values and choices play in their unfolding, will help us become not only more effective but more responsible and honest writers.

Rhetorical Introduction

The purpose of essay writing is to present an audience with an interesting and convincing account of the writer's interpretation of some aspect of reality. Students will learn that all interpretation is founded on observation, and that the act of extracting single observations from a continuous whole, such as a text, an experience or a phenomenon, though rooted in objectivity, is an arbitrary and subjective act which they must learn to become conscious of and to accept responsibility for. The act of drawing inferences from observations, though certainly intersubjective (inferential principles are generally shared by members of a culture and thus seldom need to be made explicit) is of course ultimately just as arbitrary; the interpretation resulting from these two acts is therefore inextricably rooted in the individuality of the subject that produced it, and in the culture that helped shape that individuality. The inability to recognize that observation and inference are rooted in individual choices and peculiarities that the audience does not necessarily share, and that therefore need to be made explicit, results in solipsism; the impulse to escape from the responsibilities of subjectivity, to seek refuge in what cannot be refuted because it is self-evident to all, results in tautology, Not surprisingly, tautology and solipsism are two of the most widespread and pernicious causes of bad writing.

In the course of this module students will learn to recognize the two preliminary moments of the interpretive process both in others' and in their own writing, to acnowledge their inevitable limitations and to accept responsibility for them. Through being confronted with different opinions in group discussions and through exposure to texts whose assumptions and preoccupations they do not initially share, they will become familiar with other ways of making sense of data and will have a chance to make room for them in their own way of looking at the world, thus making it, if not less arbitrary and subjective, hopefully a little less limited. But most of all, the course meetings will provide an emotional and intellectual environment which will make it possible for students to recognize their unique individuality as a resource, for the optimal use of which they are responsible both to themselves and to the world, and to accept the need to explain it to others, and to account for their uses of it, as part and parcel of that responsibility

By considering examples of excellent essay writing in several fields, and by seriously engaging with the same issues the authors were serious about, we will deepen our perception and refine our judgement in matters of style, argument and intellectual honesty and rigour. While continuing to employ useful rhetorical keyterms for our analyses, we will go beyond the common notion of thesis, argument, evidence, structure and style as discrete elements to be circumscribed and isolated in texts to realize how good essays achieve stylistic excellence and argumentative strength by a synergy of rhetorical and conceptual means in which no word is empty or unneeded because each one is chosen to do justice to the writer's inner vision and to help convey it to the audience. The broad range of disciplines, periods and styles we will examine will broaden our view of the possibilities for excellence in nonfiction writing by helping us realize how widely diverse rhetorical stances and argumentative strategies can be equally effective in serving the aim of conveying intellectually challenging ideas and of allowing the audience to gain a clear perception of the writer's values and motive. Students will be encouraged to develop their own standards of excellence in style and argument beyond the boundaries of the course materials by analyzing texts they love and admire to find out "how they work". The ultimate rhetorical goal we shall strive to achieve is the compelling and memorable harmony of expression and thought which is the hallmark of intellectual integrity.

Unit 1 Interpretation: Some interesting cases

In this introductory unit we will consider concrete and vivid instances of interpretive divergence, success, and failure drawn from the work of great Western 20th-century authors and embodying crucial hermeneutical questions, such as the relationship between text and context, the difference between interpreting and decoding, the role and responsibility of the interpreter, the uncertain boundaries separating intepretation from overinterpretation, and the possible effects of interpretation on its object. The literary nature of the examples will enable us to engage straight away with the fundamental issue of the mediating role of the author and with the layered interpretive situation that we are inextricably involved in whenever we read about interpretation, and thus attempt to interpret an interpretive process which is presented to us through someone else's interpretation. The practice we will get in drawing up our own criteria for negotiating our relationship with the author, and the questions this will raise, will help us become more conscious of the challenges and opportunities of our own role as authors, of the need to establish our credibility, and of the various strategies we can employ towards this end. It will also prove invaluable in later units, where we will consider texts whose genre and structure make the presence of the author much less conspicuous, but which it would be terribly wrong to consider as objective and direct representations of reality. We will also come to appreciate the relevance of cultural and historical context to the correct decoding of any text; we will learn to become aware of when we do not possess enough information to read a text with understanding and we will negotiate practical criteria for deciding how much is enough. During a session at Central Library we will become familiar with reference works and research procedures enabling us to fill in quickly and reliably the background we miss.

A few short and focused theoretical texts highlighting some basic theories, premisses and keywords will provide a useful background for the construction and testing of independent hypotheses on the nature, structure and function of interpretation. All texts will be read by all and extensively discussed in class; students will select two to write about in their first essay.

Rhetorical Objectives for Unit 1

• Advancing beyond a first impression to recognize what is really at stake in a text.
• Acknowledging the role of cultural and historical context in shaping meaning.
• Learning to base inferences on observations and recognizing:
  1. how observations are rooted in the individual peculiarities of the observing subject and,
  2. how inferences are based on inferential principles that can - and should - be made explicit and are open to debate.
• Recognizing the role of the audience in the argumentative process and accepting the writer's freedom and responsibility to construct his own audience.
• Becoming familiar with the argumentative uses of stylistic means.
• Analyzing arguments and use of evidence and evaluating their adequacy or inadequacy as proofs of a given thesis.
• Recognizing assumptions, premisses and keywords.
• Using spontaneous reactions like surprise, anger, skeptcism, interest or boredom as starting points to develop a focus of interest.
• Learning how to recognize a promising question.
• Moving from a question to evidence to a thesis
• Modelling writing as a process starting from ignorance and curiosity and ending in revision.

Reading list for Unit 1

• Jorge Louis Borges, Collected Fiction, selections
• Friedrich Dürrenmatt, "A Dangerous Game"
• Stanislaw Lem, "The Idiot", from A Perfect Vacuum
• Marcel Proust, Jean Santeuil, selections
• Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, selections
• Anthony Robbins, Unlimited Power, Chapter 14 "Metaprograms"
• Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, selections
• Invented Reality: How Do We Know What We Believe We Know? ed. Paul Watzlawick, selections

Unit 2: Variability in interpretation: what is at stake?

1. Making sense of the irrational: the interpretation of dreams in Freud and Jung
2. Coming to terms with the unthinkable: historical interpretations of the Holocaust

In this unit we will engage specifically with the question of interpretive variability in a given scholarly field. We will examine concrete instances of diverging interpretations centering around two issues of uncommon intellectual, emotional and moral significance: the effort to reclaim from random meaninglessness the uncharted territory of dreams making it subject to some form of rational scrutiny, and the psychological no less than scientific need to explain what to its witnesses and victims appeared as the most inexplicable event in the whole of Western history: the cold-blooded murder of millions of innocent civilians planned and executed by the government and citizens of the most civilized nation in Europe. Students will select one of the two issues as the basis for their second essay, but all texts will be read by all and extensively discussed in class. The work of Freud and Jung on the one hand, and of some of the most original historians and theoreticians of the Holocaust on the other, will lead us to a deeper appreciation of the range of interpretive possibilities inherent in a given body of evidence, as well as providing us with diverse models of intellectual and stylistic excellence which will help us further our development as thinkers and writers. Most importantly, we will learn to recognize and question the assumptions behind each interpretive stance and to view differences in interpretation not as a squabble over technicalities of no significance beyond the narrow circle of the "experts", but as evidence of a deep and wide-ranging contrast between divergent, and sometimes incompatible, visions of the world.

Rhetorical Objectives for Unit 2

• Recognizing that questions are more important than answers.
• Appreciating the reasons for disagreement on an issue.
• Underestanding the reasons behind different interpretations of the same body of evidence.
• Recognizing that in any given intellectual field of endeavour there are as many good styles of writing as there are sound ways of thinking.
• Using the work of previous writers as a means to shaping an independent position.
• Learning how to use counterevidence and counterarguments as a means to refining a previously one-sided or simplistic position.
• Defining and applying personal standards of excellence in nonfiction writing.
• Acknowledging the role individual choice plays in all stages of writing and becoming conscious of one's own choices and of the motives behind them.

Reading list for Unit 2

• Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures to Psychoanalysis, selections
• C.G. Jung, from The Collected Works of Carl Gustav Jung, selections
• Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, selections
• Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, selections
• Cristopher Browning, Ordinary Men, selections
• Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, selections
• Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority, selections

Unit 3 Researching interpretation: some sample issues

In this unit students will work with specialists from other NUS departments in investigating the role of interpretation in defining issues and in solving real problems in research. In class we will consider texts exemplifying instances of conflicting interpretations of fundamental ideas, data or keyterms in a number of disciplines and engage with their theoretical and practical consequences for professional practice and scholarly research. Colleagues from several areas will work with me at locating promising research topics, defining the reading list and assisting the students with their topic-related questions and difficulties. Possible topics will include:

Law: Who has rights?

Rights are a key concept of national and international law. Over the last few decades, legal studies have witnessed a lively debate centering on the possible extension of this concept to new subjects, such as animals, future generations and the environment. This of course involves reinterpreting the concept to apply to new situations, and discussing whether this is an admissible interpretive procedure in the broader context of the tradition of legal thought.

Law: The new frontiers of patent law.

Patents were introduced in the middle of the 19th century, at the height of the industrial era, to safeguard the intellectual property of mechanical inventions. In the last decade the concept has been extended to include individual property of objects previously explicitly excluded from patenting such as medical procedures, living beings and their descendants and even traditional knowledge such as how to make curry. Is this interpretation of patent law acceptable? Is it useful to society as a whole? Are there alternatives?

Computer Science/ Neurology / Linguistics: Why computers can't talk (yet?).

Our lack of success in teaching computers to understand human language can tell us a lot about the way we humans go about the incredibly complex activity of making sense of what other people say.
(A similar project could involve vision instead of language)

Medicine: The nature of illness in Western, homeopathic and Chinese medicine.

Different diagnoses and treatment of the same disorder in these three systems depend on different ideas of how the human body functions, and on different visions of illness and health. Each system has its own medical semiotics in which the same symptoms can take on entirely different meanings, and observes signs that the other two do not notice and therefore cannot interpret.

Psychology: Ideas of mental health

From 19th century diagnoses of "moral insanity" to the postmodern therapeutical contract in which the patient is invited to spell out the aims of the treatment and thus his or her own conception of health, psychological theory and therapeutical practice have never been able either to elude or to solve the problem of mental health, the most basic and most important assumption underlying diagnosis and treatment.

Rhetorical Objectives for Unit 3

• Learning how to consider data and ideas from within the framework of a given discipline.
• Acquiring a passive and active competence in the specialist vocabulary of a given discipline.
• Understanding and applying the rules and conventions of scholarly debate in a given field.
• Appreciating the practical significance of disagreement on theoretical issues and its consequences for concrete scholarly and professional practice.
• Gaining some perspective on the significance of historical issues in the present-day shape and priorities of professional and scientific communities.
• Learning how to express opinions and judgements so as to speak to the values and concerns of the specialists of a given discipline.
• Appreciating how technical language acts as a filter for thought by facilitating the expression of some well-defined classes of ideas and data while inhibiting that of meanings that transcend or question the boundaries of a given discipline.

A Post-Script:
Rhetorical Readings for "Making Sense: Perspectives on Interpretation"

The readings for the course have been selected with a view to presenting students with a varied selection of examples of great contemporary nonfiction writing. Rhetorics is the art of argument: in real life the use of rhetorical means is always subordinate to the achieving of some argumentative aim; accordingly, the most profitable and memorable understanding of the rhetorics of a text arises from serious and deep-felt engagement with the point it is trying to make. In analyzing the content, theses and motives of set texts we will constantly consider how their form and structure influence our understanding and opinion of the matters they deal with, how rhetorical moves always have argumentative significance, and how different relationships to the subject or to the audience, different disciplinary conventions or different temperaments can result in a wide variety of different, but equally effective, stylistic and argumentative strategies. This descriptive approach to rhetorical instruction will be complemented by class sessions in which individual students will volunteer to analyze and discuss short excerpts of nonfiction writing they admire in order to demonstrate its excellence and effectiveness and to draw from them rhetorical lessons they will be encouraged to apply in their own writing.

The prescriptive use of rhetorical readings will be reserved to a later phase, when students have identified, in their cover letters, through class discussion of their drafts or in conferences, some of their rhetorical problems, have become aware of their role in hindering expression or communication and are willing to spend time and effort working on them. These readings will be presented to individual students in response to specific problems and their relevance will be made explicit through a variety of exercises focusing on them but geared to the individual needs and abilities of each student and taking his written work as their starting point. Of course I cannot anticipate at this stage what rhetorical problems and shortcomings will need attention in my students' work nor what readings will prove most effective for dealing with them; I will work with with my colleagues in the Writing Programme at selecting a broad range of suitable readings, in designing exercises and in testing and evaluating their effectiveness.

Manuscript Format for Writing Activities and Essays

On this module, you will complete three essays and several writing activities building up to the three essays.

1. All essays and writing activities should be printed in a legible size 12 font, in permanent black ink, double-spaced, on one side of white paper. In addition to the hard copy (but not instead of it) you should also send first drafts and revisions to me by Microsoft Word attachment over e-mail. Never use floppy discs. Always remember to number not only pages but paragraphs.

2. Use a 1.5-inch margin on all sides.

3. For all written work you hand in, please insert in a single-spaced block in the upper right-hand corner of your first page:

   your name as it appears on your matriculation card
   the course code and title
   my own name
   your seminar group number
   the title/number of the writing activity or the essay number, indicating whether it is a first draft or a revision.

   Begin with your opening paragraph or the essay title two double spaces beneath this single-spaced block of information; double-space the text. Number the pages at the bottom and use a paper clip to keep them together. Do not staple them together.

   With each first draft you submit, you are required to submit a letter to me answering some very definite questions about your essay. A blueprint for this letter will be distributed and discussed in class.

   Always turn in the first draft of your essay (with my comments on it) along with your final version.

4. Always proofread your work carefully; do not rely on your computer's spell-check. Make a habit of consulting a dictionary whenever you are in doubt.

5. Always keep a back-up of all writing that you submit.

Office Hours

If you would like to talk to me about the course in general or about any aspects of your writing, I will be available to meet with you by appointment during my office hours (posted on my office door) or at a time that is mutually convenient. Please be punctual for all appointments. And, please call me if, due to unforeseen circumstances, you are running late or have to cancel an appointment.

E-mail

I check my e-mail account regularly every morning and often in the evening. Please check your own e-mail daily. If you don't yet have an e-mail account, please acquire one immediately. You will be responsible for information (administrative details, reminders, brief notes, etc.) that you are relayed through it.

Writing Programme Policy on Attendance

Because instruction in the Writing Programme proceeds by sequential writing activities, your consistent and punctual attendance is essential.

Excused absence

An excused absence (from seminars, writing conferences, and panel discussions) is an absence covered by (1) a medical certificate (a copy of which you must submit to your tutor immediately upon your return to University); or (2) a letter from the Dean (covering special events such as athletic meets, debates, concerts, and conferences).

Unexcused absence

All other absence will be deemed unexcused. You are allowed one unexcused absence over the semester. Two unexcused absences will result in a warning letter, which could result in your being officially excluded from the course and failed. This is in keeping with University policy, as indicated in the NUS Arts & Social Sciences 1999-2000 handbook, p.19, section 18 (a) and (b).

Writing Programme Policy on Meeting Deadlines

Because your Writing Programme module is a planned sequence of writing, to pass the course, you must write all three essays within the schedule of the course, and not in the last few days of the semester, after you have fallen behind.

All deadlines in the Programme are firm, because the essays build on each other. Late work will not be accepted. If you have a legitimate reason for not being able to submit a piece of work on time, please contact me before the due date of the assignment, providing the necessary documentation - from your doctor in the case of a medical emergency; your parents in the case of a family emergency; or the Dean of your Faculty in the case of other university commitments.