Parte de libro
Phenomenology of the book and hermeneutics of the text : touching and interpreting space
Registro en:
978-1-66691-489-4 (impreso)
978-1-66691-490-0 (online)
Autor
Díez Fischer, Francisco Martín
Institución
Resumen
Abstract: Books are an essential part of our daily literate culture. In them we find the
places where the histories and thoughts of both individuals and societies
endure. In them, imaginary subjects and different generations meet. In them,
the transmission of knowledge and ideas take place. These are roles that are
determined more by the textual content than by the book itself. A book whose
text cannot be read is apparently a worthless space.
In the realm of philosophy, hermeneutics stresses the primacy of the
text over the book. One of its creators, Hans-Georg Gadamer, considers all
interpretation as a dialogue whose interlocutor model is the text: “The most
important thing is the question that the text puts to us” (Gadamer 2004, 366).
The text is a Socratic interlocutor that bursts in with a questioning voice and
speaks to the reader, so that he stops listening only to himself. Its alterity
resists the reader’s immediate comprehension of it and suspends his previous
expectations of interpretation. It opens him to dialogue. It both transforms the
reader and makes him a co-player of the game of interpretation, generating,
as well, a place for this playful encounter to happen.1 Thus, philosophical
hermeneutics ensures the textual primacy. The text—published or not in a
book—is the privileged referent of interpretation because it is both the visible
presence of the language of words and the audible presence of its voice.
Comprehension and interpretation apply to the content that is decipherable
for the reader (that appears to his eyes and speaks to his ears). Hermeneutics,
thus, rarely applies to the materiality of the book.