Author: AKMA

We got out of bed at 5:30 Eastern Standard Time, and arrived here in our hotel in San Diego at about 5:00 Pacific Time. We’re as worn out as you might think, but the travel went smoothly and we’re only weary, not vexed or abandoned. We’ll go downstairs for a small dinner in a few minutes, then we’ll see if we can stay awake past eight o’clock.

Since it cost too much to have a projector for the Society of Anglican and Luthern Theologians (they charge academic theologians the same rates they charge corporations — go figure!), I made handouts of selected images from Magritte and Krazy Kat to illustrate my talk for Friday. Margaret prompted me to provide an outline of take-away points to accompany the images. Rather than paste in the whole durn lecture, I’m posting the emphasis points here.

The proposition: Renounce hermeneutics that posit subsistent meaning as a check on wayward interpretation; adopt a hermeneutic that accepts semiotic abundance.

 René Magritte’s sketches and language paintings undermine the facile assumption that words constitute a privileged domain of subsistent meaning. These works defy conventional premises about how words and images effect meaning.

 George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comics similarly play against conventions about meaning and identity – all the more pognantly when we read them in the context of Herriman’s own life and cultural context. The brick  figures as a pivotal element in the discourse. Ignatz means the brick as an effectual expression of his fathomless aversion to Krazy; Krazy construes the brick as a token of love.

 Hence, I suggest that we treat words not as the archetype of normal communication, but as an exceptional case of the utterly general phenomena of meaning and interpretation. Everything signifies. We ascribe meaning; meaning does not subsist.

 Hence, I suggest that we move from a schema that presupposes a determinate “meaning” that constitutes a discernible property, toward a schema that operates more openly on the terrain of semiotic uncertainty. Think of meaning as a venture, as a gamble; granted the possibility that you may be misunderstood, what can you do to minimize that chance? What stakes ride on your expression?

 Hence, granted that everything signifies, we are caught up in interpretive conflicts and divergent signifying practices all the time. Interpretation is not simply words about words, but it encompasses the lived identities by which we express what matters most to us (and what we don’t care that much about).

 Biblical injunctions to “walk in truth,” “do the truth,” capture this admirably.

 This interpretive mode befits Anglican (and Lutheran?) theology better than does the dominant convention of supposing the existence of subsistent meaning as a check on interpretation. We cannot use the [alleged] truth of a “plain meaning” against our interlocutors; rather, we exemplify the truth so as to make meaning plain to them.

I don’t talk much about signifying practices in the lecture, which is a weakness in a way, since the argument concerning meaning and embodiment relies on the concept of signifying practices for its support, but I only have forty minutes or so to talk. In a more nearly perfect world, the other theologians would be richly versed in what I’ve written on this topic, but I doubt I can count on that in this case.

Now I need to refresh my recollection of Paul Ricoeur, since a respondent to the Reading Scripture book has asked the authors to describe their projects with relation to Karl Barth and Ricoeur. It’s a good question, but my memory’s a bit hazy.

Many thanks to the Princeton Emergent Cohort for their generous patience, for helpful questions, for the wonderful phrase “ambient signfication,” and for their encouragement. More later, sleep now.

Margaret and I will fly to San Diego tomorrow, and she’s printing out boarding passes now. Except I should have couched that in the singular; according to our airline, I will have to check in at the airport. We’re trying to figure out what about me merits this special attention, but at least you all can be assured that our government is making sure that Christian pacifist hermeneuticians pass Homeland Security muster before they board your transcontinental flight.

I’m generally a union guy, so I would be inclined to support the WGA anyway — but especially since I’m a writer of a sort myself, I wanted to take up the handsome banner that someone over at the WGA Supporters’ LiveJournal page provided and show my support for the Writers Guild (thanks for the pointer, Jeneane!).

I was a little trepidatious about the “Pencils Down,” “Black Tuesday” aspect of the call to arms, since I have a sermon to finish for this afternoon, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to make some progress on book reviews and my Matthew project, but so far I haven’t seen any instruction that says I’m not supposed to write today. I promise that I won’t compose anything for film or video production.

Through a miscommunication, it seems as though all my archives — every link that has ever been made to a previous post that pointed here — all have been obliterated in the transition. I will see what can be done about this.
 
Later: Partly fixed.

Thanks to Kevin, who was one of the chorus of voices who shouted out in horror when I expressed the intention to switch from Moveable Type back to Blogger. He checked in with me about my design desiderata, humored the stipulation that he honor the Official Color of the Disseminary, and so on; then yesterday and today prepared and installed the new, improved WordPress version of my blog, with comments again! And tabbed back pages! And I’ll put back a blogroll sometime!

And as a parting note, I submit the above blurry photo I took while I was waiting for water in the cafeteria lunch line today. Since you probably can’t read the caption from the photo, I’ll provide it for your bemusement: “We would rather see your soda on the floor then you. Please report all spills immediately.” As Margaret said, “We would rather see your soda on the floor then you, than see you on the floor then your soda on top of you.”

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Happy Easter, everyone! That’s what’s most important.
 
Of less significance was my experience this evening singing the Exsultet for the Easter Vigil. It’s my favorite point of the church year, and Jeanette very kindly invited me to chant the Exsultet this Easter. I practiced and practiced it, which was fine with me because I love the setting — gave it three run-throughs just before the service. Then, in the dark of the service, with only the Paschal Candle and the hand candles of the congregation, my music went missing. The Master of Ceremonies leaned over and suggested that I go ahead and start it from memory.
 
It would be inexact to suggest that I panicked; “panic” would imply chaotic behavior, shrieking and so on. I sang the bits I remembered, and I interpolated notes for the bits I didn’t, and non-musicians who didn’t know what had happened didn’t notice. The musicians (who could tell a mile away, I’m sure) were very patient and generous with me, and in the end, all that really matters is that we proclaimed Christ is risen! with fervor and joy.
 

Really, I’d be blogging more — even live-blogging sessions — if my battery connection weren’t broken. I may borrow Margaret’s iBook for tomorrow’s “blogging panel” just for verisimilitude.

We arrived safely, with very smooth travel connections (apart from Pippa’s smoothie, erm, disagreeing with her in a near-projectile manner; all well after it departed).

But my iBook battery isn’t charging, so I’ll only be online in dribs and drabs for the time being. I tried resetting the PMU with a restart-hold-down-the-power-button maneuver; if someone has a better idea, please leave a comment (iBook G4 2004, running 10.4.2, battery doesn’t charge although the cord checks out and it seems to be operating fine while plugged in — just not charging the battery). Everything was working fine till I installed the World of Warcraft game, Joi. . . .

So I finished [mostly] my paper at midday, taught the Early Church History class (Augustine on Pelagianism always gets resistance), came home, and now I have to pack and get ready to fly to Philadelphia. It’ll be busy, but at least I no longer dread my Monday-morning presentation.

And there’s now time for me to return from my blog-absence, which is somewhat incongruous since one of my conference appearances will be on a panel discussing. . . . blogging. There’ll be two papers, then a panel involving Tim, Stephen, Torrey, Edward, James, and me.

You can tell I’ve been offline a lot when it takes me more than twenty-four hours to link to Boing Boing’s coverage of the new Barenaked Ladies album-on-a-flash-drive experiment (I’d link to their version of the story, but they don’t seem to provide permalinks). Jeff Pazen emailed me, because he connected this development with my previous posts about the coming wave of ultra-miniature, cheap, capacious media players. On that count, BNL are on the right wavelength, and Cory (I think) misses the point when he asks, “how many 128MB sticks can you usefully own?” I can manage a great many more flash drives than I can, for instance, pre-recorded CDs, but I have hundreds of CDs lining my dining-room wall (CDs that I hardly ever play, now that I’m mostly oriented toward mp3 selections).

Chris Heard tagged me for one of those “reveal all sorts of trivial secrets” memes, in which I usually don’t participate — though for the sake of showing that I’m not totally a humorless old grump, I’ll answer one part of the questionnaire.

Five things I would do with a lot of money
1. Get out of debt
2. Send money to the Gulf Coast and Pakistan
3. Underwrite formal online publishing a la The Disseminary
4. Take time off to work on all the writing projects on which I’m way behind
5. Depending on how much money was left over, I’d like to buy a retreat center, equip it with a good theological library (and broadband wifi, of course), and host scholars who need a quiet place to write.

Later: Was I really so out of it that I didn’t hear that David is getting a PowerBook?

I’m a big target for cartoons lately; Jane thinks I don’t need a book entitled Aerobic Preaching (if you subscribe to preachingtoday.com, you can see it here), Laura calls my attention to this (presumably referring to my own lecturing capacity), and Bob Carlton notes this all-too-apposite church sign.