Overinterpretation

The article addresses the relationship between open and closed texts. The aim of the
study is to analyze the specifics of relationship between the open and closed text in the general context of communication between the author and the reader. While supporting mainly U. Eco’s concept in our article, we furnish it with the analysis to four approaches of openness/closedness, which we have singled out. Openness/closedness is conceptualized in several ways; firstly, as an ontological perspective reflecting the opposition between communication parameters, specifically the text-as-process and the text-as-outcome; secondly, as interpretation procedures that are commonly applied to the articulation of all texts, regardless of their form and content; thirdly, as the ontological and technological potential of works’ physical unfinishedness that invites the recipient to engage in a co-authorship (e.g., ‘the work-in-movement’ and hypertext); and fourthly, as the ability of a text to provoke multiple or unambiguous interpretations. We also demonstrate that the way of text’s functioning is determined not only by the addressee's attitude to it, but text itself, in return, stimulates this attitude, predisposing to it by its specificity (as informative or artistic, kitsch or art, hypertext or linear text, digital or analog). However, as we explain in the conclusion, the dialectic of openness/closedness can affect the distinctness of these dichotomies: The text can use its openness manipulatively, which turns it into a closed text.

Andrzej Wajda's "Wedding" is one of the director's greatest works and undoubtedly one of the most appreciated works of Polish cinematography. This film is not only an adaptation of S. Wyspiański's drama, but also an independent work that goes beyond the content of the playwright's work. This approach by Wajda was treated ambiguously by critics. The article by Seweryn Kuśmierczyk "Andrzej Wajda's Wedding as a Mandala" approaches the interpretation of the film from an unexpected angle. The author proposes to look at Wajda's work through the prism of the mandala structure.

В статье обсуждаются разные трактовки интерпретации, которые толкуют ее как универсальный метод гуманитарных наук. Особе внимание уделено трактовкам У. Эко и Э. Бэтти, которые хотя и не согласны между собой, однако противопоставляются философскому или аналитическому пониманию интерпретации, которое мы называем в статье апроприационистским. Присущий апроприационизму способ интерпретировать прошлое нередко грозит сверхинтерпретацией, за что он критикуется сторонниками контекстуализма. Мы анализируем интерпретацию через призму трех предложенных нами скептических аргументов, «концептуальный релятивизм», «горгианские умы», «часть и целое». Скептические аргументы часто используются в философии как дополнительный фильтр для проверки состоятельности тех или иных концепций, и хорошо видно, что контекстуалистская концепция интерпретации этот фильтр не проходит. Тезисом, что апроприация действительно является сверхинтерпретацией, можно принять лишь с той оговоркой, что для строго философского способа рассуждения и изнутри апроприационизма другой вариант интерпретации будет несостоятелен. Ключевые слова: интерпретация, сверхинтерпретация, скептические аргументы, апроприационизм.  // The paper discusses various approaches to interpretation, which understand it as a universal method of the humanities. Particular attention we paid to the interpretations in U. Eco and E. Batti, who, although do not agree with each other, however, are opposed both to the philosophic or analytic understanding of interpretation, which we call the appropriationist approach. The way of interpreting the past inherent in appropriationism often threatens with overinterpretation, for which it is criticized by adepts of contextualism. We analyze the interpretation through the prism of three skeptical arguments we offered, "conceptual relativism", "Gorgians' minds", "the part and the whole". Skeptical arguments are often used in philosophy as an additional filter for testing the consistency of the concepts, and it is clearly seen that the contextualist concept of interpretation does not pass this filter. The thesis that appropriation is indeed a overinterpretation can be accepted under reserve that for a strictly philosophical way of reasoning and from within appropriationism, another version of interpretation is inconsistent.

The article addresses the relationship between open and closed texts. The aim of the
study is to analyze the specifics of relationship between the open and closed text in the general context of communication between the author and the reader. While supporting mainly U. Eco’s concept in our article, we furnish it with the analysis to four approaches of openness/closedness, which we have singled out. Openness/closedness is conceptualized in several ways; firstly, as an ontological perspective reflecting the opposition between communication parameters, specifically the text-as-process and the text-as-outcome; secondly, as interpretation procedures that are commonly applied to the articulation of all texts, regardless of their form and content; thirdly, as the ontological and technological potential of works’ physical unfinishedness that invites the recipient to engage in a co-authorship (e.g., ‘the work-in-movement’ and hypertext); and fourthly, as the ability of a text to provoke multiple or unambiguous interpretations. We also demonstrate that the way of text’s functioning is determined not only by the addressee's attitude to it, but text itself, in return, stimulates this attitude, predisposing to it by its specificity (as informative or artistic, kitsch or art, hypertext or linear text, digital or analog). However, as we explain in the conclusion, the dialectic of openness/closedness can affect the distinctness of these dichotomies: The text can use its openness manipulatively, which turns it into a closed text.

In this article Serhiy Kvit clarifies the concept of the “hermeneutics of style”. It was presented in his book of the same name published this year by the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Publishing House. The concept is related to such key notions of philosophical hermeneutics as “hermeneutic conversation” and the “hermeneutic phenomenon”, established by Hans-Georg Gadamer. On the other hand, the concept is directly related to the European essayistic tradition and corresponding “essayistic turn” in Martin Heidegger’s thinking. Author also examines terms such as “humanness” and “essayism”, and will also make an attempt to review Umberto Eco’s term of “overinterpretation”.

This paper looks at the dangers of such pursuits of “epistemic purity” and the potential violence it quietly embodies, in theory and otherwise. From Macaulay’s “Minutes” to Foucault’s overhaul of the episteme, when systems of thought meet, a degree of “violence” inevitably ensues. And while the notion of “epistemic violence” can be used in unearthing the silent “obliteration of the trace of the Other” or in uncovering the instability of the “norms”, to argue that it is plausible any longer to live in such splendid isolation as to be unexposed to stranger systems of thought is perhaps to tread into troubled waters, to perhaps engage in a different game altogether.  If it is crucial that one must pause to raise the question of practising theory, it is vital also to realise that at times it is nearly impossible to tell what exists merely “in theory” from what does not. As was clear from the discourse of Orientalism, a framework could serve both as an explicator as well as a justifier of a text (Orientalising the Orient, in the process), mutating into a strange beast that implodes the causal-effect binary into a single self. It is, then, only natural that the musings on the practicality of a theory would be entwined with the question of its uses and its abuses. In the classic chapters on the dream-work in The Interpretation of Dreams, for instance, Freud develops the notion of "over-determination" as the principle of fabrication of the images in the dream-text. How does interpretation avoid the fiery, lulling cesspit of over-interpretation? Central to it is the question of “epistemic violence” that is frequently accused of being akin to “intellectual imperialism”.

KEYWORDS: EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE, SYSTEMS OF THOUGHT, THEORY, PRAXIS