Articulating a Hermeneutic Pedagogy:The Philosophy of Interpretation

PETER SOTIROU

Composition studies has recently begun to examine in some detail thephilosophical antecedents of its pedagogies. Mariolina Salvatori has shownhow a phenomenological understanding of reading significantly redefineshow students in composition and literature classrooms read and write.Timothy Crusius has begun to examine a composition classroom that trans­lates philosophical hermeneutics into its practices. Louise Phelps has reliedextensively on Paul Ricoeur in her investigations of composition studies,even making Ricoeur the theoretical base for her Compositionas aHumanScience. And, Thomas Kent has recently shown how Donald Davidson'sphilosophical concept of externalism (itself a form of philosophicalhermeneutics) responds to the internalist or subjectivist premises ofexpressivism, collaborative learning, and social constructionist pedagogies.All of these works exemplify what Ann Berthoff has recently said abouthermeneutics: "Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation and, assuredly, wemust find a central place for interpretation in our teaching" (281).

My intent in this essay is to extend the work of these scholars who havebegun to investigate composition studies from a philosophical perspective.I want to articulate the significant premises of a hermeneutic pedagogy as Ihave experienced them in mycomposition classrooms. Hermeneutics isnowbecoming amultidimensional investigationwithvarious interpreters-MartinHeidegger, Paul Ricoeur, Donald Davidson, to name a few-and the peda­gogicalconclusions that one drawsfrom each of these philosophers willdifferin significant ways. I want to foreground the hermeneutical conclusions ofHans-Georg Gadamer as I attempt to articulate the salient features of ahermeneutic pedagogy.

In Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, particularly as it is investi­gated in his magnum opus Truth and Method, several concepts emerge thatprovide for significant classroom translations. Understanding, interpreta­tion, and application are interconnected activities for Gadamer, and thisconnectedness helps us re-see the nature of reading and writing in theclassroom. ' Further, Gadamer understands the activities of reading andwriting as forms of dialogue-a to-and-fro movement between question and

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answer inwhich the question has ultimate priority. These central Gadamerianconcepts have thus allowed me to reconsider the nature of the essayassign­ment and how I evaluate it. Finally, in my articulation of a hermeneuticpedagogy, I have come to see how it differs significantly from the currentpedagogies of our field-particularly those informed by expressivism andsocial construction.

Gadamer on InterpretationCentral to Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is the emphasis he placeson understanding and interpretation. His concept of textual interpretationis greatly influenced by Heidegger, particularly Heidegger's treatment ofunderstanding in Beingand Time. For Heidegger, understanding has itsorigin in his concept ofDasein:one's ongoingencounter with theworld-one'squestioning of it, questioning of others, and questioning of one's own being.Heidegger refers to Dasein as "Being-in-the world," and he suggests theimpossibility of separating human consciousness from one's encounter withthe world, or the inability of separating subject from object. In so doing,Heidegger avoids the traditional philosophical dichotomy between subjectand object. Further, for Heidegger, it is understanding which is the ongoingmanifestation of Dasein. He also notes that understanding, like Dasein, isnever fixed, that it is transformed in each historical moment. Finally, forHeidegger, understanding is always dependent upon and shaped by theobject-or the world that the human being encounters. For Heidegger, then,understanding (rather than the subject or object) is the philosophical ground,

. or the ontological given,upon which he begins his investigations inBeingandTime.

Gadamer also assumes that understanding isthe prior phenomenon thatinforms his hermeneutical investigations-or his philosophical study oftexts. For Gadamer, understanding is a social activity, or as he says in Truthand Method,a "sharing in a common meaning" (292). Gadamer posits thatthe human being isalwaysunderstanding and understands byparticipating ina conversation with what he or she experiences. In regard to the reading oftexts, then, the significant event for Gadamer is the understanding thatoccurs between reader and text, or the conversation that takes place betweenthem.

Where does interpretation fit into Gadamer's hermeneutical scene?Gadamer is clear that interpretation is a special kind of understanding, buthe is equally clear that it is not a tool for understanding. In TruthandMethodhe notes, "Interpretation is not a means through which understanding isachieved; rather, it enters into the content ofwhat is understood" (398). ForGadamer, to call interpretation a tool for understanding is to distort andsimplify its much more intimate relationship to understanding. Gadamer'savoidance of the term toolreflects his consistent distrust of methodizing anyreading or writing activity. To make any interpretive activity a tool is to

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destroy the conversation which is unique to each reader's understanding ofa text. Gadamer's position here is significant, for it shows how anyhermeneutical term for him is constantly re-seen in the activity of inter pre­tation. Such a movecallsinto question anyinterpretive theory that reifies thecodes and conventions that readers and writers use to interpret a text.

Gadamer agrees with Heidegger, who saysthat interpretation is simply"the working-out of possibilities projected in understanding" (189). Adefinition of interpretation thus emerges that one can translate into theclassroom. Interpretation is the activity articulating the meanings of expe­rience so that one can say that interpretation makes understanding moreexplicit. Further, interpretation can be seen as the linguistic manifestationof understanding which is alwayscontextualized, alwaysan understanding inrelationship to something else. As a linguisticactivity,interpretation iswhatteachers and students experience when they examine texts.

Just as interpretation works alongside understanding, so does Gadamerinclude application as an activity that works along with (neither before norafter) understanding. Application is another interpretive concept thatspeaks forcefully to the composition classroom. Like understanding andinterpretation, application co-occurs with the other two hermeneuticalactivities so that these three activities comprise, as Gadamer notes, "oneunified process" (Truth 308). Application for Gadamer is what locates theinterpreter and the text within the historical moment, so that applicationallows the interpreter to appropriate what he or she reads into his or herpresent historical situation. Because of the temporal nature of application,Gadamer can conclude that a text "must be understood at every moment, ineveryconcrete situation, in a newand different way" (309). Application thusgives to every reader a necessary participation in the act of reading becausewithout the reader's history, the text cannot speak. This notion of applica­tion is the one that Salvatori foregrounds in her composition classroom.Gadamer also makes misunderstanding an essential element in textualinterpretation. This move again has significant classroom translations. Inregard to Friedrich Schleiermacher's hermeneutics, Gadamer notes that hismajor contribution was the premise that "what follows automatically ismisunderstanding," not understanding (Truth 185). Student and teachermisunderstandings, then, become necessary activities in interpreting texts.No longer is misunderstanding seen as an impediment to interpretation.

To misunderstand a text is also related to Gadamer's conception of fore­understanding, or the reader's understanding of the entire text. Gadamernotes,

A person who is trying to understand a text is always projecting. He projects a meaningfor the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text .... Workingout this fore-perception, which is instantly revised as he penetrates into the meaning, isunderstanding what is there. (Truth 267)

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In misunderstanding a text, a reader projects a "meaning of the whole," whichis not supported by what the reader experiences as he continues to read.Misunderstandings are thus always revised by the text, or using Gadamer'sphrasing, by "what is there."

Finally, understanding, interpretation, application, and misunderstand­ing are closely connected to the dialogical scene that Gadamer uses todescribe all hermeneutical activities. Gadamer's dialogue is alwayscharac­terized bya partnership of two. In reading a text, the partnership involves thereader and the voice-like character of the text. Gadamer affirms that forunderstanding to occur, neither participant must dominate the dialogue;rather, both must allow the other to speak. Gadamer also emphasizes thatreading is a particular form of dialogue or conversation. Though he findsface-to-face dialogue as the source from which the reading activity emerges,he is clear that texts speak differently from face-to-face participants inconversation. He notes,

The mode of being of a text has something unique and incomparable about it. It presentsa specific problem of translation to the understanding. Nothing is so strange, and at thesame time so demanding, as the written word. (163)

The hermeneutic challenge for Gadamer's reader in interpreting a text is tomake a mute text speak. He is clear that it is never in reciting a text that a textspeaks, but in translating it-in allowing the silent voice of the text to speakas the reader vocalizes or subvocalizes: "The word 'recite' should make usrealize that speaking issomething quite different. Reciting is the opposite ofspeaking" (548).

Gadamer further argues that in interpreting a text, a reader glimpses intothe dialogical movement of all human thought. He notes, "Nothing is sopurely the trace of the mind as writing, but nothing is so dependent on theunderstanding mind either" (163). Moreover, Gadamer contends that thereader cultivates an "understanding mind" through "a heightening for theinner ear-that is, the ear that readers use to listen to the text's silent voice(547). Reading and writing are thus disciplined hermeneutical activities.

Gadamer also uses face-to-face conversational terms to describe how areader experiences a text. For Gadamer, the text is like a "Thou" -which "isnot an Object;it relates itself to us" (358). For everyclaim the reader makes,the Thou of the text makes a counter-claim. And interpretation can onlydevelop through the I's revision of the thou's claim. In this re-vising activity,interpretations are made and remade. It is important to note here thatGadamer is not equating the text's voice with a human Thou; rather, hespeaks of the text metaphorically: its response to the reader is like a Thou.Gadamer also affirms that effective interpretation recognizes rather thancontrols what the text has to say,Byrecognizing the text as a Thou, the readerwillingly places his or her interpretations at risk, allows his or her under­standing to be seen as misunderstanding. In this sense, Gadamer's

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hermeneutics is also ethical. In establishing this dialogical scene between theI and Thou, Gadamer can conclude that interpretation never ends; textualmeaning is never exhausted because readers continue to bring their uniqueand changing historical perspectives to the texts they examine.

Finally, Gadamer makes his concept of play prior to interpretation,understanding, application, and dialogue, for all are manifestations of play'sto-and-fro movement. In his thorough-going treatment of play in Part I ofTruthandMethod("Playas the Clue to Ontological Explanation," Gadamerargues that play is not simply the rules of the game, nor is it controlled by theplayer; it is neither dominated by the subject nor the object. Rather, "in eachcase what is intended is to-and-fro movement that is not tied to any goal thatwould bring it to an end" (103). Textual interpretation, as a kind of play,becomes a dialectical movement without end. Further, the player's subjec­tivity disappears as it focuses on the object of the game, for "playing is alwaysa playing of something" (107). The reader, for example, as a type of player,does not bring a successful strategy to unlock the text's meaning or to "winthe game," for "the purpose of the game is not really solving the task, butordering and shaping the movement of the game itself' (107). By assigningto play an ontological priority, Gadamer can thus avoid the subject-objectdichotomy that he sees has dominated Western philosophy. Similarly, byseeing textual interpretation as an activity rather than as a separate subject(reader) and object (text), a hermeneutic pedagogy can also avoid, as Kenthas noted, "the Cartesian claim that a split exists between the human mindand the rest of the world" (57). A hermeneutic pedagogy thus begins withfundamentally different premises from those of current composition theo­ries.

A Hermeneutic ClassroomIt seems to me that Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, particularly hisphilosophical understanding of interpretation, forcefully speaks to the com­position classroom, and it is my intent in this part of the essay to show howGadamer's hermeneutics has interpreted my classroom experiences.

In a classroom foregrounding interpretation, the teacher assumes thatthere is no ultimate, immanent meaning in a text, that it is the activity ofinterpretation which continues to generate new textual meanings. Ratherthan asking students to tell me what the text means, I ask them to articulatewhat it says to them. In a classroom where interpretation takes center stage,the significant participants are alwaysreader and text. Students may collabo­rate with others in determining meaning, but it is ultimately the meaningwhich each student takes from the text that he or she articulates. The teacherencourages each student to participate in interpreting the text from his or herperspective because without this individual response to the text, interpreta­tion cannot occur. This is a daunting yet empowering understanding forstudents because they come to realize that they cannot locate meaning within

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the text itself, or solely through the teacher's interpretation, or only throughthe consensus of their peers. Rather, each student engages in dialogue withthe text-learns how to open a text, how to recognize what it says to him orher, and how to place his or her fore-understandings (often misunderstand­ings) at risk.

Further, the teacher does not come to a composition classroom withheuristics or tools that students can faithfully use to make texts mean. Thereare no routine waysto interpret a text or to applywhat a text saysto one's ownlife. These effective reading waysemerge as the student, peers, and teacherexamine each text, engage it in conversation. The teacher also allows forstudents to misunderstand a text, to re-vise what they had to say. Studentsare, in fact, encouraged to realize that only in initially misunderstanding atext can they participate in the activity of reading. What the teacherforegrounds are the questions that the teacher and the students ask about thetext, for the teacher realizes that it is in questioning that the dialogue betweenreader and text begins and continues. The teacher also encourages studentsto see how interpretations can end with a question, and that in responding toa text, one never fully interprets it.

In a composition classroom that foregrounds interpretation, it is textsthat drive the course, for in responding to a text a student is most effectivelyable to understand his or her interpretive ways. Teachers and studentsunderstand that interpretation is an open activity,enriched byquestions andcounter-questions. And composition courses are often more successfulwhen students examine texts treating a similar topic, for then they can bringtheir interpretations of one text to another, and they can then revise theirreadings of previous texts. Though reading texts on a similar topic will notprovide ultimate answers for students questioning this topic, it will enrichtheir interpretations. As they continue to read and write in such a course,they will be encouraged to revise the questions they pose. By focusing oninterpretation in the composition classroom, the teacher encourages aspecial kind of collaboration. Students are encouraged to question the textcollaboratively, but they are reminded that the interpretive group as well asthe text have something to say. Interpretation is thus not merely groupconsensus; rather, the group serves to question and revise each reader'stextual interpretations.

Similarly, the teacher sees interpretation not as the sum total ofwhat thegroup says,but as the particular response that each student finally brings tothe text. The teacher keeps in mind that interpretation isa dialogical activity:the reader responding to the text, the text responding to the reader. Theteacher is constantly faced with the challenge of listening to several indi­vidual conversations within the conversations of the collaborative groupsand those of the entire classroom. Further, in a classroom foregroundinginterpretation, individual responses are encouraged, but they are always inrelationship to the text the student is reading and to the student's responses

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to the textual interpretations of peers and the teacher. A classroomforegroundinginterpretationassumesthat knowledgeisnevercreatedsinglybut in dialoguewith others.

InexaminingmyclassroomexperienceswithToniMorrison'sSula, Icanmore concretelydemonstrate myunderstandingof the hermeneutic class­room. I teach Sula in my second semester first-yearcomposition course,whereI focuson the topicof the modernandpostmodernhero. Mystudentsread playsbyArthur Miller,short storiesbyEudora Welty,Sula,the poetryof EmilyDickinson,and a Third Worldnovel:ThingsFallApartby ChinuaAchebe. Throughout the course,we considerhow the characters in theseworks manifest various kinds of heroism. In my classroom, Sula is aparticularlycontroversialcharacter,one that manyof mystudents refusetosee as heroic. Theyare horrifiedat her showing"interest" in her mother'sviolentdeath byfireand areequallyindignantthat shestoleher best friend'shusband. Sulagoesagainstmanyofmystudents' mostfundamentalbeliefs.Yet, other students are deeplyimpressedwith Sula,seeingin her indepen­dent power the makingsof a new Americanfemale hero. The responsesbetweenthese twogroupsof studentsare alwaysimpassioned.

Sula is a powerfulinterpretivemediumbecause it showsmy studentshow careful reading necessarilyinvolvesresponsesto the text as well as totheir ownbeliefsand an ensuingre-assessmentof their beliefs. Manyof mymost angrystudentswant to selectthe mostdamagingevidencein the novelto judge Sula. Yet, I encourage these students to consider additionalevidence,particularlythe narrator's commentthat Sulaisan "artist withnoart form." And, ultimately,I askthem:What does the narrator mean byanartistwithoutform? Ialsoencouragethemto respondto the novel'sending:withSula'sbest friendNel,whohaslosther husbandto Sula,thinkingaboutwhat Sulagaveto her and to others, not about what she took away.

I encouragemystudents to recognizethe narrator asa Thou. I askthemto incorporate the narrator's evidence,ambiguousand open though it maybe,intotheir interpretationsofSula. BycharacterizingSulaasan"artistwithno art form," the narrator, mystudentsrealize,is neither praisingSulanorabsolvingSulaofher anti-socialbehavior.Thenarrator's commentsremainopen-encouraging mystudentsto questionand counter-questionwhat thecharactermeansto themand to the narrator. Further, asI continueto teachSula,it ismystudents' interpretationsofSuIa that allowmeto reexaminemyownambivalenceto her character.

Thus, the questions I ask are necessarilyopen. Similarly,the essayquestions that students write about in a hermeneuticclassroomfoster thequestioningandcounter-questioningofa textor issue.Studentsare encour­agedto analyzethe gapsinthe textstheyexamine-sfurtherquestionsthat thetextdiscloses.Moreover,teachersandstudentsin a hermeneuticclassroomconsiderthese gapsas necessaryissuesin the essaystheywrite. Suchessayassignmentsthus encouragethe differencesin student responses to these

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open issues. For example, in asking students to write on Sula as "an artistwith no art form," I am encouraging them to redefine, from their ownperspectives, the concept of the artist and apply this understanding to Sula'scharacter. Though there are no "right" answers to a question such as this,there are "true" interpretations, directed by the students' understanding ofthe questions they ask of the text. In a hermeneutic classroom, therefore,students and teachers examine the significance they assign to their textualinterpretations. In creating essay assignments in a hermeneutic classroom,the teacher encourages students to explore the suggestive, metaphoricalcharacter of language. That is,the teacher encourages students to explore themultivocity of words and phrases rather than their univocal understanding.

In evaluating student essaysin a hermeneutic classroom, teachers there­fore examine the waysthat their students analyze language's evocative natureand how this multivocity opens the text for their students' further question­ing. Throughout, the teacher sees each student's writing development asunique, not merely in how it approximates the accepted "academic" voice ofcollege discourse. The teacher's focus is consistently on the meaningpossibilities of the text, not on the a priori clarity that expository writingseemingly demands.

Further, in the hermeneutic classroom, the teacher and student peersaccept the commonplaces that student writers bring to their textual re­sponses. The writer's beliefs are accepted because readers of student textsrealize that to silence what a reader brings to a text is to prevent textualdialogue. What Gadamer saysabout the relevance of commonplaces in hishermeneutics applies equally well to the hermeneutic classroom:

There isalwaysaworldalreadyinterpreted,alreadyorganizedin itsbasicrelations,intowhichexperiencesteps as somethingnew,upsettingwhat has led our expectationsandundergoingreorganizationitselfin the upheaval.. .. Onlythe support of familiarandcommonunderstandingmakespossibletheventureinto the alien.... (Philosophical15)

In evaluating a student's text, a teacher therefore refrains from calling astudent's belief a cliche, yet a teacher can ask a student how a particularmoment in a text calls a student's belief into question, thus encouraging thestudent to place an accepted belief at risk. In the hermeneutic classroom, ateacher understands that neither the teacher nor the student's peers canchange a student's belief by simplydiscounting it. Gadamer has consistentlyshown that an interpreter's beliefs are revised within the dialogical encoun­ter; and, further, he adds that it is only in the interpreter's familiar under­standing of experience that the questioning and transformation ofbeliefs arepossible.

Though commenting on student writing foregrounds the possibility formeaning and for its revision, the evaluator also considers surface errorconcerns ..As Facts,ArtifactsandCounterfactshas shown, even many surfaceerrors reveal a student's attempt at making meaning (Bartholomae and

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Petrosky 199-226). So in the hermeneutic classroom, teachers initiallyconsider the surface error as a student writer's way of disclosing meaning.Teachers can thus see some surface error correction as a less mechanical task.Yet, other surface errors comprise the techneof writing and are not legiti­mately part of textual interpretation. In Part II of Truth and Method,Gadamer locates three major Aristotelian divisions of knowledge: episteme,demonstrableknowledge;phronesis, moral knowledge; andtechne,the knowl­edge of one's craft (312-24). To build a kitchen from blueprint specificationsis for Gadamer an example oftechne,different in kind fromphronesis,whichcan never bring an accurate blueprint to an understanding of a human issue.Courage, for example, is constantly redefined in its praxis. The interpreterbrings an image, rather then a blueprint, of courage to the particularexperience questioning courage. In a hermeneutic classroom, the questionsthat teachers ask of their own and their students' interpretations invariablylie within the discipline ofphronesis.

Yet, technical issues are often also part of the hermeneutic classroom:how to save a document on a word processor, how to cite sources on theWorks Cited page, and so on. Here the dialogue ofquestion and answer is notthe most effective way to teach. The user's manual has procedures for howto save a document on a computer that a student can learn either by readingthe manual or bybeing taught them in lecture. In the hermeneutic classroom,the teacher knows that the teaching ofwriting procedures ispart of a separatediscipline of knowledge and thus teaches this part of the course differently.These technical aspects of writing are driven by rules, blueprints, thatstudents need to copy faithfully into their texts. Further, in evaluatingstudent writing from these technical concerns, the teacher can simply identifystudent responses as right or wrong, and the student can mechanically correctthem. These technical aspects of student writing take up much less teachertime in introducing them and much less student time in correcting them.

In the hermeneutic classroom, the teacher keeps in mind the clearphilosophical distinction betweenphronesisand techne,so that issues whichbelong to the study of phronesisare not incorrectly considered part ofwriting's techneand evaluated inappropriately.

Experiencing Reading, Writing, and Language PhilosophicallyThe teacher in a hermeneutic classroom soon realizes that its necessaryactivities (reading and writing) and its medium (language) have philosophi­cal significance. For Gadamer, reading, first and foremost, involves a"heightening for the inner ear" (Truth547). Reading involves a special typeof listening, one that hears the voice which translates the text. This voice isa construct of the reader's and the text's voices. The reader's task isan intenseand easily distracted listening. Without the extra-linguistic cues of face-to­face conversation, student readers often face a mute text. In the hermeneuticclassroom, the teacher realizes the unique conversation that reading is and

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attempts invariousways,whichdependon the classroommoment,to makethe text lessmute.

Student readerscannotappreciatetheir "heighteningfor the inner ear"bythe teachershowingthemwherethetextspeaks.Rather,the teacherinthehermeneutic classroomis facedwith the much more challengingtask ofexaminingthe questionwhichthe studenthasaskedof the text,and encour­agingthe student to seehow(it) the answerto thisquestionhelpsopen thetext. If the student'Squestiondoesnot further his or her reading,then theteacher must encouragethe student to revisethe initialquestion. In theseinstances,the teacher'sauthorityismostkeenlytested:studentsoftenwantthe teacher to read the text for them, while the teacher encourages thestudents to let the text speak for themselves. Here, teachers and studentsboth experienceGadamer'sI-Thouconceptoftextualunderstanding,fortheteacherrecognizesstudentsasparticipantscapableofmakingthe textspeak.When students make the text speak,then the teacher canat last enter intotextualconversationwith them. Studentpeers canalsofoster this recogni­tion of student authorityover texts.

In the hermeneuticclassroom,readingis neverseenas a technicalskillof decoding. It is not in recitinga textthat studentsevercomeupon textualunderstanding but in responding to it. Reading is thus an art whoseperfectionisneverachievedbutwhosepossibilityfor furtherunderstandingisopenboth to student readersand the teacher. Thosestudentsand readerswhocanexplorethe powerof readingin its praxis(rather than in a manualof readingdo's and don't's) willcontinue to developas readers. Also, in ahermeneuticclassroomreadingandwritingareconsistentlyseenasintercon­nected,concomitantactivities.As onereads,onewrites,either informallyorformally. A reader's unwrittentranslationsof the textwhile readingare acontinuedrewritingofthe text,andtheyare inkindlikewrittenparaphrases,summaries,or evaluationsof the text. That whichiswrittenis simplymoreformal,more studied and revised. For Gadamer,readingis alwayswritingbecausethe text is alwaysalreadyrepresentedin writing'svariousforms.

Gadamer givesan exampleof how humans think, and it providesaphilosophicalexplanationofwhyreadingis interconnectedto writing. Henotes,

Let us take a well-known example. When I hear a tone, the primary object of my hearingis obviously the tone. But I am also conscious of my hearing of the tone, and by no meansonly as the object of a subsequent reflection. A concomitant reflection always accom­panies hearing. A tone is always a heard tone, and my hearing of the tone is alwaysintrinsically involved. (Philosophical123)

In a hermeneutic classroom,writing alwaysbecomes the "concomitantreflection"or "theheardtone"ofreading.Thereisnotemporalrelationshipbetweenreadingandwriting;that is,readingdoesnot comebeforewriting.As concomitantactivities,readingandwritingnecessarilyaccompanyeach

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other in textual interpretation. In this regard, the teacher in a hermeneuticclassroom foregrounds this philosophical understanding of reading's inter­connections to writing. The teacher realizes that by encouraging students totranslate their reading through writing about it, they are also mirroringthought's dialectical movement. Thinking always involves a reflection onsomething, and it is manifested in the to-and-fro movement between experi­ence and the thinker's concomitant translation of it.

Just asreading andwritingabout textsplaysacentral role ina hermeneuticclassroom, so does its medium, language. For Gadamer, language alwaysprovides the possibility for understanding, and for this reason Gadameraffirms that users of language are "always already at home in language"rather than merely on the wayto language (Philosophical63). Words do notserve as a signs to particular meanings outside of language; rather, allmeaning is possible because meaning isalso inside language. This is the basisfor Gadamer's and Heidegger's concept of the hermeneutic circle (Truth265­77). For this reason, teachers in a hermeneutic classroom assume the powerof language as an expressive medium. Their concern is with the ways thattheir students can best express their meanings through language, and theynever assume that language is an impediment to their students' thinking.Further, teachers find examples of language's expressive and elucidatingpossibilities through the texts students read and write. They show how eachword, phrase, or sentence is a unique expression, never equated with asynonym. Throughout, teachers in a hermeneutic classroom see language asa multivocal, fluid medium rather than a restricted, univocal relationshipbetween words (signifiers) and meanings (signifieds),

Hermeneutic Versus Expressivist and Social Constructionist PedagogiesThe details of this hermeneutic pedagogyhelp teachers and theorists re-seecurrently practiced pedagogies. The consistent focus of a hermeneuticpedagogy is its steady gaze at the text and its emphasis on textual andclassroom conversation as a partnership of two. Gadamer's hermeneuticscontends that conversation is not orchestrated by several voices; rather, itbegins with the often overlooked commonplace that one can only listen toone person and engage in one conversation at a time. A hermeneuticpedagogy thus assumes that texts are always interpreted by two partners.Moreover, only one listener, rather than a group of listeners, is engaged inconversation with a partner at any interpretive moment.

These interpretive assumptions respond to, and ultimately call intoquestion, expressivist premises. Proponents of expressivism like PeterElbow assume that knowledge originates from the self, not in the selfsencounter with others, so that he can say,"Language is the principal mediumthat allowsyou to interact with yourself (55). Such a pedagogy rewards thosestudents who can create their own dialogues, particularly those who haveread widely and are familiar with the wayswriting topics are generated and

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texts are written. In beginning with the self, expressivistsignore the power ofthe reader-text encounter to disclose meanings. Moreover, an expressivistpedagogy minimizes the dialectical structure of thought, seeing knowledge­making, not as a to-and-fro movement between subject and other, but as auniverse unto itself within subjective consciousness.

Similarly, collaborative learning pedagogies begin with the self; ratherthan a single self, collaborative learning theorists are concerned with thecollective self, as Kent has shown in "Externalism and the Production ofDiscourse" (60-61). Knowledge isnot generated through a dialectic betweenthe self and the world but through the collective decisions of the group.Further, in collaborative learning pedagogies, the individual reader's re­sponse to the text no longer plays a central role in meaning making. If a textis examined in a collaborative group, its meaning is determined bywhat thegroup says it means.

Social constructionist pedagogies, pedagogies James Berlin refers to as"social epistemic," are in a sense the results of these collaborative decisions.A social constructionist pedagogy assumes that the knowledge a studentreceives is produced by the groups to which he or she belongs, or by theirparticular discourse agreements. Stanley Fish is an articulate spokespersonfor the social construction of literary knowledge, and what he saysaboutliterary meaning effectively summarizes what social constructionists likeJames Berlin and Patricia Bizzell are saying about the composition class­room. In his Is Therea Textin ThisClass?he emphasizes that "meaningscome already calculated, not because of norms embedded in the language,but because language is always perceived, from the very first, within astructure of norms. This structure, however, is not abstract and independentbut social" (318). It is the reader's use of these historical and social givensthat forms the meaning he or she makes from a reading. Speaking likeKenneth Bruffee, Fish further argues that meaning alwaysreflects a "collec­tive decision ... a decision that will be in force only as long as a communityof readers or believers ... continues to abide by it" (109). And like Elbow,Fish contends that meaning is an internal matter (albeit collective), that isthen imposed upon the world.

In a later essay,"Change," Fish attempts to establish a more fluid notionof interpretive communities. Here, he concedes that the standards of theinterpretive community are always subject to change, yet he continues toplace this change squarely in the hands of the interpretive community, not inthe interpretive event. He notes that the community "is an engine of change,an ongoing project whose operations are at once constrained and the meansby which those constraints are altered" (429).

One sees this same social focus on meaning making in Berlin's social­epistemic pedagogy. Where Fish locates meaning in the decisions of theinterpretive community, Berlin assumes that meaning emerges from ideol­ogy, so that his pedagogy "situates rhetoric within ideology, rather than

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ideology within rhetoric" (477). For Berlin, ideology is a social given, not abody of knowledge continually revised by each interpreter. The goal ofBerlin's pedagogy is to critique established ideology and thus to "liberate"the student and teacher from domination by it, so that Berlin can concludethat his "social-epistemic rhetoricviews knowledge as an arena of ideologicalconflict" where this conflict allows students and teachers to "become agentsof social change rather than victims" (489,491). Yet, Berlin does not explorewhat comes after the student's and teacher's ideological liberation. Doesideology lose its domination once it has been critiqued? Or in beingliberated, does one simply replace one ideology with another? As Gadamerhas shown in his response to Jurgen Habermas, critique does not lead toliberation but rather to more critique (Truth567-68). For Gadamer, it isinterpretation,rather than liberation from ideological domination, whichremains.

Patricia Bizzell has recently examined the details of her social construc­tionist pedagogy in "Power, Authority, and Critical Pedagogy." Her goal,like Berlin's, isfor her student to become "an active register, a politically alertor critically conscious citizen" (67). And Bizzell articulates the desiredresults of her pedagogy: "I want my teaching to have political impact and Iwant schooling in general to work for radically democratic ends" (67). To thisend Bizzell favors a canon for her composition classroom of Americanpolitical documents which would show her students and teachers the differ­ences and similarities in the political beliefs of its American theorists andconstituen ts.

A hermeneutic composition pedagogy would also encourage the use ofreadings on a common topic, as I have previously discussed in my course onthe hero. Yet it would never conceive of ideology as a monolith, nor wouldit prescribe a set of learning goals. Teachers would allow their students'interpretations to develop individually. In a hermeneutic pedagogy, studentsand teachers may be loosely seen as members of an interpretive or discoursecommunity, yet each member necessarily manifests his or her interpretationof what this membership entails, never giving a single group opinion.Though the language students and teachers understand is informed by thelanguage they identify with, theirs is never identical with the community'slanguage. That is, the language of each social or interpretive group is neverfinally fixed;each member presents his or her interpretation of the group heor she belongs to or wants to belong to. Further, in a hermeneutic pedagogy,change is a natural result of each reader's interpretation of a text. What ahermeneutic pedagogy foregrounds is not a collective body which decidesupon change, but an individual reader who revises his or her interpretationsin order to best understand a given text.

A hermeneutic pedagogy responds to writing-across-the curriculumpedagogies in a similar fashion. When a discipline is understood simply as aset of reified codes and conventions that students "master" in order to

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become a functioning member of that discipline, then the necessary elementof interpretation is lost as students respond to texts in their field. In ahermeneutic pedagogy, students and teachers consistently re-presenttheirinterpretations of the codes and conventions that describe their particulardiscipline. Arabella Lyon comes to a similar conclusion in her critique ofdiscourse communities, investigating how "a writer adapts conventions forpersonal and disciplinary aims" (282). This isnot to saythat ina hermeneuticpedagogy the social contributors to meaning are ignored. Gadamer carefullyforegrounds what he terms "historically effected consciousness" in anytextual interpretation. Each interpreter brings personal history (ideology,traditions, and so on) to the text, and Gadamer affirms that without thisparticular history, an individual interpretation issilenced. Yet,what Gadameremphasizes about historically effected consciousness is that it is never areified set of assumptions, but one that is constantly changing. In terms ofreading's influence on transforming one's beliefs, Gadamer argues that one'shistory is invariably revised by how one interprets the texts of history.

In a very important sense, a hermeneutic pedagogyserves to mediate theexpressivist and social constructionist positions. A hermeneutic pedagogydoes not deny that one's history is essential to meaning making. Yet, it doesnot assume that one's history or ideology is the sale contributor to meaning.Moreover, like the expressivists, hermeneutic theorists assume that the selfdoes influence the understanding of this history; in order to interpret thehistories of others, an interpreter recognizes his or her beliefs and placesthem at risk. What hermeneutic theorists assume is that both the self andsociety are necessary participants in the activity of interpretation, yet theycan only emerge within this activity. So reader and text are never constructsthat can be understood as single, independent forces. Bymaking this move,theorists in a hermeneutic pedagogy can locate authority both in the readerand the text, or both in the student and the teacher. James Crosswhiteexamines the multidimensional nature of authority in "Authorship andIndividuality: Heideggerian Angles," where he uses Heideggerian phenom­enology to understand the authority that both the text and the readerexperience in the composition classroom. Crosswhite has a concern similarto mine with some social-epistemic pedagogies that ultimately see individu­als as "Objectsproduced by social powers" (94).

In a recent article, "The Future of the European Humanities," Gadamerdiscusses the self and the other in regard to Europe's intellectual future, andI think that it speaks powerfully to the hermeneutic classroom. He affirms,

However,one maystill say this: Onlywhere there is strength, is there tolerance. Theacceptanceofthe other certainlydoesnot meanthatonewouldnot beconsciousofone'sown inalienableBeing. It's rather one's ownstrength,especiallyone's ownexistentialcertainty,whichpermitsone to be tolerant. (206)

Gadamer's insights here introduce a daunting, yet necessary, challenge tocomposition teachers: they must work toward developing authority in their

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students'responses,becausetheseteachersrealizethat onlywithinavoiceofauthority can a student become tolerant of other, often discordantvoices-those of their peers,of their teachers,andof those in the textstheycontinuallyinterpret. In a hermeneuticclassroom,one wayto developasenseofstudentauthorityandstrengthistoencouragestudentstobringtheirbeliefs to the texts they interpret and to encouragethem to revise thesebeliefsas theyrespondto the voicesofothers. The persistentquestionthatone asks in a hermeneuticclassroomand one that is found so often inGadamer'shermeneuticsis:Whatdoesthe textmeantoyou? To ignorethenecessarydialogicalparticipationbetweenselfandother (readerandtext)isto silenceoneofthesenecessaryparticipantsin the ongoinghumaneventofinterpretation.

LosAngelesCityCollegeLos Angeles,California

Works Cited

Bartholomae, David, and Anthony R. Petrosky. Facts,Artifacts,and Counter/acts. UpperMontclair, NJ: Boynton, 1986.

Berlin, James A "Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class." CollegeEnglish50 (1988): 477­94.

Bertholf, Ann E. "Rhetoric as Hermeneutic." CollegeCompositionand Communication42(1991): 279-87.

Bizzell,Patricia. "Power, Authority and Critical Pedagogy." JoumalofBasicWriting 10.2(1991 ):54-70.

Crosswhite, James. "Authorship and Individuality: Heideggerian Angles." JournalofAdvancedComposition12 (1992): 91-109.

Crusius, Timothy W. A Teacher'sIntroductiontoPhilosophicalHermeneutics.Urbana: NCIE,1991.

Donahue, Patricia, and Ellen Quandahl, eds. ReclaimingPedagogy:TheRhetoricof the Class-room. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1989.

Elbow, Peter. Writing WithoutTeachers.NewYork: Oxford UP, 1973.

Fish. Stanley. "Change." SouthAtlaniicQuarterly86 (1987): 423-44.

-. Is Therea Textin ThisClass?Cambridge: HarvardUP, 1980.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. "The Future of the European Humanities." Hans-GeorgGadameronEducation,Poetry,and History:AppliedHermeneutics.Ed. Dieter Misgeld and GraemeNicholson. Trans. Lawrence Schmidt and Monica Reuss. Albany: State U of NewYork P,1992. 193-208.

-. PhilosophicalHermeneutics.Trans. David E. Linge. Berkeley: U of California P, 1976.

-. TruthandMethod. (2nd Rev. ed.) Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. NewYork: Crossroad, 1991.

Heidegger, Martin. BeingandTime.Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. NewYork:Harper, 1962.

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Kent, Thomas. "Externalism and the Production of Discourse," JournalofAdvancedCompo­sition12 (1992): 57-74.

Lyon, Arabella. "Re-Presenting Communities: Teaching Turbulence." RhetoricReview10(1992): 279-90.

Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: New American, 1973.

Phelps, Louise Weatherbee. Compositionas a Human Science:Contributionsto the Self­Understandingof a Discipline.New York: Oxford UP, 1988.

Salvatori, Mariolina. "The Dialogical Nature of Basic Reading and Writing." Bartholomae andPetrosky 137-66.

-. "Pedagogy: From the Periphery to the Center." Donahue and Quandahl17 -34.

Rhetoric Society of America

The Rhetoric Society of America invites you to join or renew member­ship. Membership in RSA (regular $20, student $5) includes asubscription to the RhetoricSocietyQuarterlyand an invitation toRSA's biennial conference.

RSQ, under the editorship of Eugene Garver and Philip Keith, pub­lishes articles on rhetorical theory, criticism, history, pedagogy, andresearch, as well as bibliographies, book reviews, and notes on pro­grams and conferences.

RSA was organized in 1968 for the advancement of the study ofrhetoric. The current RSA board of directors includes Lisa Ede,Michael Halloran, Nan Johnson, Michael Leff, Carolyn Miller, JamesJ. Murphy, Gary A. Olson, Marie Secor, Kathleen Welch, and past­presidents Richard Leo Enos and Winifred Bryan Homer.

Rhetoric Society of AmericaDepartment of PhilosophySt. Cloud State UniversityS1.Cloud, MN 56301-4498