CCWP05: Making Sense: Perspectives On Interpretation

Preparation for Thursday 3 Feb/ Friday 4 Feb

During our meeting today, we have examined some instances in which, according to your opinion, Freud and Jung's interpretation of dreams did not work in exactly the way the two authors thought it would and some of your reasons for holding this opinion.Thegoal of this exercise is to give you an idea of what a promising opportunity for an essay would be by starting a dialogue between you and the texts and between different parts of the texts.

I will try to outline the process that we have been following:

1. we started from an understanding of the theories;
2. we went on to a close reading of one or more dreams;
3. we undertook this close reading with a view to discovering where the theory in our opinion falls short of interpreting the dream adequately, or where the actual interpretation of the dream falls short of the theory;
4. we tried to explain our reasons for thinking that this is the case;
5. we went on to examine how and where in Freud's and Jung's texts we could see them most closely objecting to our view;
6. and finally, we tried to respond to these objections, noting that often the most effective move to do this was to refer back to the text of the dream.

Then we approached the Browning and Goldhagen texts with a view to establishing the authors' two different perspectives based on close reading of two short excerpts. What we did in class was what we should do with the rest of the readings: watch out for common elements that are interpreted in different ways and for how the authors convey and justify their interpretations.

In the case of Browning and Goldhagen, the common element was quite obvious: the texts provided two different narrations of the same events. But in order to be able to compare two interpretations meaningfully, it is not always necessary to rely on such anevident connection. For our next meeting I would like you to readsome excerpts from the Arendt and Milgram texts. The two books from which the excerpts are taken offer evidence and interpretations of two very different objects: an experiment about obedience conducted in a psychology laboratory, and the personality and motivations of the man who was responsible for the logistics of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann. I would like you to examine the ways in which evidence is presented and interpretation is conducted in each of the two texts (these will vary because the two texts concern themselves with very different objects and belong to different genres), drawing up a list of some of the most important moves that the authors make (presenting evidence, discussing evidence, suggesting connections and explanations and so on). I would also like you to reflect about how these two very different texts can be connected, not by way of their overt subject matter like Browning's and Goldhagen's, but by way of the issues that they raise and of the fundamental problems with which they concern themselves.

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem; please read pages:
     18 (§1, to "indictment."),
     21 (1st complete §, to "(Sic!)"),
     22-23 (from "Throughout the trial" to "of the whole case",
     37-38 (from "The reason he became so fascinated", at the beginning of the new §, to "an 'idealist' "),
     41-45 (from "Bragging" to "out of gear" end of last complete § on p.45),
     46-50 (from "Is this a textbook case", beginning of last §, to the end of the chapter),
     81-83 (from "Globocnik, when Eichmann" near the end of p.81, to the end of p.83),
     92-93 (the passage in big brackets in the photocopies),
     100-101(from "The meeting [the Wannsee conference, when the official decision to exterminate all the Jews in Europe was taken in January 1942] lasted no more than an hour", near the end of page 100, to the end of the passage in brackets),
     111-112 (the passage in brackets),
     120-123 (the passage in brackets),
     130-131(the passage in brackets),
     132-134 (the passage in brackets),
     230-231 (the passage in brackets).

Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority; please read pages:
     1-12 (Chapter 1),
     27-32 (Chapter 3),
     132-134 (The Agentic Shift),
     143-168 (from The Agentic State, p.143, to the end of Chapter 13).