Titling At Windmills
I’ve written before about my restlessness about naming my project. In that post, I describe my eventual contentment with the designation ‘differential hermeneutics’; it’s fair, it does the trick, and people already associate it with me. At one point I considered including in the monograph version an entire chapter of possible titles, with the explanation for it and the reason it ultimately doesn’t work as a designation.
So, for instance, I’ve written about my approach as sensual hermeneutics, because it places a greater emphasis on sensing than does an approach to interpretation that treats reading as a transparent, obvious datum. Plus, if it were on the cover along with a salacious image, the book might sell more copies! But the downside of ‘sensuous’ is that (a) it’s a bit of a distraction, and (b) it describes but does not define what I’m up to.
That led me to think, ‘Maybe “sensational hermeneutics”!’ It’s still jazzy and perhaps even more clever; but again, it falls short of a clear indication of what’s going on.
‘White Hermeneutics’ does well for pointing (in a way) to the political cast of my work, except that I’m not about White hermeneutics itself, but only pointing the Whiteness of conventional hermeneutics (yesterday, maybe, someone on my FB timeline mourned [not in the following words] the imposition of White hermeneutics on aspiring Black preachers) — if conventional hermeneutics are White, then Whiteness must be optional for people of colour. But that takes the part for the whole: my project isn’t about White supremacy in hermeneutics, but about why the dominant culture shouldn’t demand that everybody (else) kneel before their eminence. It’s not Male Hermeneutics, or Straight Hermeneutics, or First-World Hermeneutics (and I wouldn’t presume to call it Feminist or Womanist, or LGBTIQA+ or Two-Thirds World hermeneutics); it’s an account of the difference.
Anyway, feel free to join in with unsatisfactory titles yourselves. When I think of any others, I’ll add them in the comments.