Beyond Synchronic/Diachronic
Published in
On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967-1998, Volume 1
(JSOTSup, 292; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 68-87
open footnotesThe moment I heard of the topic for this conference I knew the title of the paper I wanted to propose for it. Ungraciously perhaps, it was a title that called into question the theme of the conference, perhaps the conference itself. But at the same time, it was a title that was parasitic upon the theme of the conference, that could not have been invented had it not been for the existence of the opposition synchronic/diachronic that had given rise to the conference, and moreover, would, in all probability, not have been invented had the conference itself not been arranged. So while I want to question, perhaps subvert or deconstruct the theme of the conference, I also want to thank its organizers for the stimulus of the theme, for posing the topic as a debate, and for accepting my sachkritisch paper for it.
There were two reasons why I felt inclined to question the theme of the conference. The Þrst is a general view I now have of oppositional categories as such, especially binary oppositions, which I have come latterly to recognize as (1) an especially male, and therefore partisan and sectional, way of construing reality, and (2) a standing invitation to embark on a programme of deconstruction, that is, a testing to destruction of the adequacy of the logical coherence of the categories.
The second reason why I wanted to pose the possibility of a world 'beyond synchronic/diachronic' was a more practical conclusion I have come to: I have increasingly found that in exegesis and literary theory alike the distinction is, for me, constantly breaking down, that everything I most want to do myself is neither synchronic nor diachronic, neither one thing nor the other, but an indeterminate mixture of the two. Of course, the distinction could not possibly be 'breaking down' or 'open to question' or even 'deconstructible' if there was nothing in it in the Þrst place-that is to say, if it did not name certain apperceptions that are shared among us, certain working practices that have grown up among us, certain political parties and pressure groups indeed that earn their living and justify themselves to themselves on the basis of that very distinction. So I am far from denying the distinction or even arguing that it is a bad one. The worst I will say of it is that it is not good enough, and the most radical thing I will say about it is that it might be better to think of synchronic and diachronic as names for segments of a spectrum rather than the labels on the only two pigeonholes (or wastebaskets, if you prefer) for all that goes in the name of biblical scholarship.
1. The Concept of a Workshop
When the organizers of the conference asked me to transform my projected paper into the theme of a workshop, I agreed before giving it much thought, since I knew that it would be a quite difÞcult undertaking and the more I thought about the colder my feet would become. It was rather later that I also realized that the paper I could prepare for publication would need to be very different from a normal paper for a scholarly journal. This paper therefore has three elements in it: it is a brief account of the author's opinions on the subject (which you have now already read), a sketch of the principles and method of presentation used in the Kampen congress, and a report on the responses of participants.
In everyday teaching I make a distinction among four models of 'delivery' of a course. The models are: the lecture, the tutorial, the seminar, and the workshop. Some of the deÞnitions are by no means universally accepted, and in particular, my understanding of a 'seminar' seems to differ from that of most European colleagues; so I shall ask for the reader's patience while I spell them out.
In a lecture, I am doing the talking. Perhaps I will accept comments and questions from the class, but if there are more than 50 or so students in the class I will not, because the chances of a really useful question, that is, useful to the class as a whole, is not very high, and I am not happy wasting the time of the whole class in order to solve the difÞculty of an individual member of it.
In a tutorial, I expect to have from 5 to 10 students, on a theme that has been announced to them and for which they have done some preparation. I will expect to interrogate them about their understanding and to try to develop their own knowledge and skills through interacting with them, mainly on a Socratic model of question and answer, drawing out the implications and logical consequences of their responses. I will count on a great deal of student participation, but I will have goals of my own I will be trying to meet during the course of the hour.
In a seminar, I will be hearing a presentation from a student, a paper of ten minutes or an hour, which will at its conclusion be open for discussion and criticism from the class-and from me. The presenter will be 'sowing' (hence the term 'seminar') ideas in the class's mind and they, like good soil, will be growing those ideas. I for my part will be sleeping silently-which is what men do while wheat and weeds are growing (Matt. 13.25)-, and at the harvest, at the end of the paper, will be encouraging the class as a whole to gather the weeds and bind them in bundles to be burned, but to gather the wheat into the barn.
In a workshop, which I understand on the model of the workshops of the great painters, I will be attempting to have my pupils engage in the same activities as I their teacher am undertaking. They will be acquiring skills rather than knowledge, and the outcome of the workshop will be pieces of work, of similar design to those of the master, recognizably from the master's school even if not exactly of the master's quality.
In our scholarly congresses, the model of the lecture, which I suppose is the most ancient model of teaching, still prevails. Often indeed it seems as if the model of the lecture has been supplanted by that of the article for the learned journal, and the idea that one is making an oral presentation to a living audience seems not to have crossed the paper-reader's mind. However, the model of the lecture is followed in that the presenter has the lion's share of the time, and only one question, or peradventure a supplementary, is allowed from any member of the audience.
The model of the lecture of course assumes a great disparity between the lecturer and the audience in ability and knowledge, which is unrealistic, if not also a little offensive, at a congress of scholars. So I greatly welcome the movement towards the democratization of the scholarly meeting-for that is what it is-that is enshrined in this word 'workshop'. The workshop with other scholars must be, of course, very much more egalitarian than the workshops I set up with my pupils, for none of the colleagues at the Kampen meeting is remotely a pupil of mine. So the key undertaking of this workshop, the location of methods in biblical criticism on a synchronic/diachronic grid (see Handout 4 below), is conceived as essentially a collaborative enterprise-one that I conceptualized, indeed, so perhaps to that extent I am the 'master', but one that I forswore even attempting myself by way of practice before the meeting, so that I might experience the difÞculties of the task at the same time as colleagues.
2. The Workshops
In the original form of this paper, I set down my intentions and ambitions for the workshops before the meeting itself. Now that they have taken place, I have added short reports on the various elements of the programme.
The workshops are focused on several handouts, which put data in the hands of the participants, and enable all the participants to be on an equal footing, everyone in charge of their own learning.a. The Notion of Workshop
I suspect that there are several different views around on what constitutes a workshop, and that my conception outlined above may be a novelty to some colleagues. So I am putting in their hands a handout with three items: 1. A quotation from a popular art-history book about the workshops of Renaissance artists; 2. A quotation from a more scholarly book about Florentine artists' workshops; 3. The article 'workshop' in the Oxford English Dictionary, which distinguishes the meaning 'room in which manual or industrial work is carried on' from the meaning 'a meeting for discussion, study', and provides numerous quotations from texts ranging from 1582 to 1984 ce.
Handout 1 Workshops
Please list three respects in which workshops described and referred to below might be parallel to what we can do in this workshop on synchrony/diachrony, and three respects in which they would differ.
An artist of the Renaissance who was well known and had more commissions than he could carry out alone would normally have a workshop of assistants to help him. They would prepare the surfaces and mix the colours; and sometimes, if they performed well, they might be allotted minor parts of a work to do or a design to execute . . . Assistants would often graduate into pupils, who did more independent work reþecting that of their teacher. And in due course they would go out from the studio and set up on their own, producing work that was individual in style and more clearly distinguishable from that of their master.
Mark Roskill, What is Art History? (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976), p. 55.
The rule for artistic practice in the Renaissance-and for the most part still in the Baroque-was a workshop organization corresponding to the artist's general position in the social and economic sphere of the artisan class. It appears most closely comparable to production procedure, work allocation, and work organization as we still meet with them today in any small artisan's workshop. The master, directing and producing the main work, is at the head, with two, three, or more apprentices and assistants who help him out and thus for their part undergo their gradually progressing training (p. 310).
[E]ven the great and famous master was still at the same time a craftsman, like all the more or less inferior colleagues who participated along with him as well as they could in the same artistic Þeld. Sometimes . . . many parts of the picture execution . . . were also taken over from the master by the staff of pupils and assistants present in almost every workshop. Thus his personal achievement was conÞned to the truly essential and centered in the design process, the allocation and supervision of the assistants' work, the Þnal retouching, and the Þnishing of the whole (p. 324).
Martin Wackernagel, The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist:
Projects and Patrons, Workshop and Art Market (trans. Alison Luchs;
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981 [original, 1938]).
workshop [f. work n. + shop n. 3.] 1. a. A room, apartment, or building in which manual or industrial work is carried on.
1582 T. Watson Centurie of Love Ep. Ded. (Arb.) 25 Alexander the Great, passing on a time by the workeshop of Apelles, curiouslie surueyed some of his doinges. 1775 Johnson West. Isl. 132 (Ostig) Supreme beauty is seldom found in cottages or work shops. 1813 Clarkson Mem. W. Penn xviii. 335 All prisons were to be considered as workshops. 1865 Dickens Mut. Fr. i. ii, What was observable in the furniture, was observable in the Veneerings-the surface smelt a little too much of the workshop and was a triþe sticky. 1901 Act 1 Edw. VII, c. 22 §149 The expression 'workshop' means . . . any premises, room or place, not being a factory, in which . . . or within the close or curtilage or precincts of which . . . any manual labour is exercised.
b. transf. and Þg.
1562 T. Norton Calvin's Inst. Table s.v. Supper of Lord, The constitution which toke away from lay men the cup of the Lorde, came out of the deuells workshop. 1781 Gibbon Decl. & F. xvii. II. 62 note, Two accurate treatises, which come from the workshop of the Benedictines. 1814 Scott Wav. lii, Fergus's brain was a perpetual workshop of scheme and intrigue. 1838 Disraeli Sp. 15 Mar. in Hansard's Parl. Debates XLI. 939/2 To suppose that . . . the continent would suffer England to be the workshop for the world. 1878 Gurney Crystallogr. 8 The workshop of Nature. 1900 W.P. Ker Ess. Dryden Introd. p. xxi, If he cannot explain the secrets of the dramatic workshop.
c. attrib.
1869 J.G. Winton (title) Modern Workshop Practice as applied to marine, land, and locomotive engines. 1873 Spon (title) Workshop Receipts, for the use of manufacturers, mechanics, and scientiÞc amateurs. 1902 Daily Chron. 29 Apr. 3/5 The workshop system answers because the master works with his men, and gets the best out of them.
2. a. A meeting for discussion, study, experiment, etc., orig. in education or the arts, but now in any Þeld; an organization or group established for this purpose.
1937 N.Y. Times 1 Aug. vi. 5/3 The major requirement for admission to this Summer workshop is an approved project for which the applicant seeks aid and advice. 1938 L. MacNeice Mod. Poetry xi. 200 The communist poet, Maiakovski, established a 'word work-shop' . . . to supply all revolutionaries with 'any quantity of poetry desired'. 1952 L. Ross Picture (1953) 21 The elder Reinhardt . . . came to Hollywood in 1934 . . . For the next Þve years, he ran a Hollywood school known as Max Reinhardt's Workshop. 1959 Ottawa Citizen 14 Sept. 6/1 At a conference or 'workshop' on road safety sponsored by the Ontario Department of Transport recently, there was general agreement that much more must be done to improve driving standards. 1961 in B.B.C. Handbk. (1962) 36, I want to see a Television Workshop-a regular period in which everyone feels he can have a go without having to mind too much whether he is successful straight off. 1967 P. McGirr Murder is Absurd ii. 33 In college Kenny joined the . . . drama workshop and began work on a play. 1972 Computers & Humanities VII. 96 The participants then divided into four workshops and, after Þve intensive meetings, reconvened to present their Þndings at the fourth and Þnal plenary session. 1984 Times 17 Mar. 15/8 Priority bookings for their tastings, wine workshops and special dinners.
b. attrib.
1937 N.Y. Times 1 Aug. vi. 5/4 The importance of the workshop idea to American education. 1968 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 3 Feb. b 2/3 Local residents considered . . . 17 consumer protection items suggested by workshop groups conducted on Thursday. 1976 S. Brett So much Blood ii. 25 The Masonic Hall was not free for Charles to rehearse in . . . Michael Vanderzee had just started a workshop session . . . Charles . . . had no objection to . . . workshop techniques. They were useful exercises for actors. 1983 National Trust Spring 24/1 In the morning, group discussions were led by the Company's seven actor/teachers in a 'workshop' atmosphere concentrating on the social history of the early eighteenth century.Oxford English Dictionary
Report. Members of the groups noted as points of similarity with our intentions for our workshops the stress on production of a tangible result, the sense of co-operation and collaboration, the idea that a workshop is an occasion when 'everyone feels he [sic] can have a go without having to mind too much whether he is successful straight off' (the BBC manual), and the consciousness that, as Samuel Johnson put it, 'Supreme beauty is seldom found in cottages or work shops'-meaning that a workshop deals with imperfect and unÞnished objects (as distinct from the more Þnished and polished character of a scholarly paper, for example). Some members especially noted the 'word work-shop' of Maiakovsky, reported on by Louis MacNeice, the intention of which was to supply all revolutionaries with 'any quantity of poetry desired'; but we did not feel that our workshops were necessarily 'revolutionary' or that their aim should focus on quantity!
Among the dissimilarities that were noted was the relation of the master to the pupils, especially in the Florentine artists' workshops, and the obvious economic aspects of the workshops of artisans. On the other hand, by attending a workshop even a scholar in some sense puts himself or herself in the position of a learner, and submits for the time being to the authority and instruction of a 'master' (no less than if one attends the reading of a learned paper). And although our Kampen workshops did not have an economic goal in view, it would be unfortunate if scholarship never had regard to the Þnancial and socially useful aspects of its 'productions'. Finally, someone wondered aloud whether, since all prisons, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, are to be considered workshops, it might also be true that all workshops are to be considered prisons.b. Constraints on Learning
It is widely recognized among teachers and educationalists that the learning process can easily be hindered by emotional factors, both in the learner and in the learning context. Individuals' capacity and speed of learning is not simply a reþex of their intellectual ability, but is to some extent determined by their readiness or otherwise for a learning experience.
My suspicion is that the topic 'synchrony/diachrony' carries, for some people at least, quite a lot of emotional freight, since it has been constructed as a set of oppositions that encode differing scholarly practices. People even deÞne themselves as making methods enshrining one or other of these outlooks their life's work. So inevitably, very much personal investment attaches to any discussion of the topic.
Not much can be done in the context of a single collaborative session to allay fears, to dispel tensions, to reduce conþict, and so on; but one thing that can be done is to enable participants to recognize that they do have a prior personal and emotional relationship with the subject-matter (if they do) quite apart from, and underlying, the intellectual issues that are to be discussed. The hope is that by at least acknowledging to ourselves the non-cognitive aspects to the discussion they will have less power to intrude themselves into the discussion where they do not belong (no doubt they do belong in it at some points) and especially will not cripple the intellectual responses of participants.
In an attempt to uncover the feelings associated with this subject, I compiled a simple word-association test.
Handout 2 Word Associations
Which words, if any, do you associate with the term synchronic?
rigorous
easy
rigid
loose
novel
free
dangerous
exciting
cautious
controlled
authentic
orderly
modern
legitimate
penetrating
anxious
fresh
confrontational
welcome
cumbersome
trendy
unnecessary
traditional
primary
subjective
uninteresting
pacifying
left
right
old-fashioned
On the opposite side of the sheet, the list is repeated, but the rubric is different. It reads 'Which words, if any, do you associate with the term diachronic?'
Participants in the workshop are asked to review these lists privately, and tick any words that came into their minds as they thought of the concepts 'synchronic' and 'diachronic'. I told them that at the end of their review they would be told how to score their answers.
Report. The workshop members were remarkably docile in submitting to this exercise, which might not have seemed very 'scholarly'. I told them at the end that they should count the number of ticks they had written on each side of the sheet, and should add the two scores together. The scoring system was simple, I said. Any score higher than zero showed that one had an emotional relationship with the topic of the conference, and not just an intellectual interest in it. Their emotional investment in 'synchrony/diachrony' would almost certainly hinder their ability to deal with the subject intellectually. But it was too late, now that the congress had begun, to do anything much about it, since handling emotional conþicts and tensions can be a long process. All that could be done at this stage was to recognize the non-cognitive element in their approach to the subject.
My announcement of the meaning of the scores was greeted with much surprise and mirth, but no one seemed to deny the force of the exercise!c. Synchrony/Diachrony in Linguistics
Since the terms, and their opposition, were Þrst developed by Ferdinand de Saussure in his work on language, I thought it would be helpful to consider the original senses of the terms. This is not because I think that original senses should be determinative for how the terms are later used (and we are now of course more than a hundred years on from Saussure's coinage). Nor do I think that a historical structure to a study or a lecture or a workshop is necessarily a good one. It is just that I thought it would be interesting in the present context to resurrect Saussure, and let him speak in his own words.
Handout 3 Synchronic/diachronic in Saussure's Linguistics
The aim of general synchronic linguistics is to set up the fundamental principles of any idiosyncratic system, the constituents of any language state . . .
To synchrony belongs everything called 'general grammar', for it is only through language-states that the different relations which are the province of grammar are established . . .
The study of static linguistics is generally much more difÞcult than the study of historical linguistics. Evolutionary facts are more concrete and striking; their observable relations tie together successive terms that are easily grasped; it is easy, often even amusing, to follow a series of changes. But the linguistics that penetrates values and coexisting relations presents much greater difÞculties.
In practice a language-state is not a point but rather a certain span of time during which the sum of the modiÞcations that have supervened is minimal . . . (p. 101).[O]f all comparisons [to the distinction between synchrony and diachrony] that might be imagined, the most fruitful is the one that might be drawn between the functioning of language and a game of chess . . .
First, a state of the set of chessmen corresponds closely to a state of language. The respective value of the pieces depends on their position on the chessboard just as each linguistic term derives its value from its opposition to all the other terms.
In the second place, the system is always momentary; it varies from one position to the next . . .
Finally, to pass from one state of equilibrium to the next, or -according to our terminology-from one synchrony to the next, only one chesspiece has to be moved; there is no general rummage . . .
In a game of chess any particular position has the unique characteristic of being freed from all antecedent positions; the route used in arriving there makes absolutely no difference; one who has followed the entire match has no advantage over the curious party who comes up a critical moment to inspect the state of the game; to describe this arrangement, it is perfectly useless to recall what had just happened ten seconds previously. All this is equally applicable to language and sharpens the radical distinction between diachrony and synchrony (pp. 88-89).What diachronic linguistics studies is not relations between co-existing terms of a language-state but relations between successive terms that are substituted for each other in time . . . Phonetics-and all of phonetics-is the prime object of diachronic linguistics . . . (p. 140).
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics
(Introduction by Jonathan Culler; ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye;
trans. Wade Baskin; Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1974 [original edition, 1915]).
Participants in the workshop are asked to have a question in mind as they read Saussure: If Saussure's concern is language, and ours is the Hebrew Bible, what is it in our Þeld that corresponds to his Þeld? They should also note any points at which they predict that the Saussurean model will be especially relevant to Hebrew Bible studies, and any at which it may not be.
Report. I did not give much time for the discussion of this handout, but used it mainly to highlight the point that when we speak of 'synchrony/diachrony' in biblical studies, we are using Saussure's terminology in a transferred or metaphorical sense. And it is not self-evident what it is in our subject that corresponds to the synchronic state of a language in his usage. Perhaps we should say: it is a text that should be regarded as constituting a system, and any study of a text as a system is synchronic. Then study of the structure of the text, or of its narrative shape, or of its logic or its ideas or its theology as a system would count as synchronic. It is not implicit in the concept 'synchronic' that the result of such study must be that the text is a unity; a synchronic approach-that is, regarding the text as a system-could well lead to the conclusion that the text is poorly organized and does not constitute a coherent system but manifests unevennesses, contradictions and tensions.
If then we seek an explanation for such oddities in a text (though we are not obliged to seek explanations, which are almost certainly going to be hypothetical), we might have recourse to diachrony. It might be that the reason for a text's incoherence is that has evolved over time without a strong unifying shaping. But this is by no means the only, or even the most natural, way of accounting for unevennesses in a text. A text may well be a literary unity in the sense of having been composed by one person at one time, and yet manifest disorder and contradictions to some extent (student essays and even papers submitted for scholarly journals have been known to have such a character). But, as a matter of fact, diachronic studies in biblical criticism often seem to have taken their rise from observed deÞciencies in texts as systems-so much so that a plausible case can be made for saying that synchronic study always comes Þrst, whether logically or in practice.
As for 'diachronic' in itself, a purist view might be that, since 'synchronic' studies systems at a given point in time, 'diachronic' should compare systems across time. But it is very hard to envisage how this could be done, whether we are speaking of language systems or of texts. Saussure's formulation, that 'What diachronic linguistics studies is not relations between co-existing terms of a language-state but relations between successive terms that are substituted for each other in time', helpfully excuses us from the necessity of comparing states or systems and authorizes a focus on terms-that is, elements within systems that have undergone change over time. That is in fact how diachronic studies in biblical criticism have been carried out.
d. A Synchronic/Diachronic Grid for Methods in Biblical Studies
The next, and major, element of the workshop is designed to test the extent to which synchronic and diachronic procedures are implicit in current methods in biblical criticism. Participants are provided with a grid, having 'diachronic' and 'synchronic' as the two axes:
The task here is to plot several critical methods and practices on this grid according to the degree of importance diachronic aspects and synchronic aspects are thought to have. Participants should consider both the logical structure of a method or procedure such as textual criticism or source criticism and the praxis of those who work with such methods and procedures. Participants will work in groups of three for this exercise, allowing themselves a few minutes to reach a verdict on each method they review.
A checklist of critical methods and practices is provided with the grid. It reads:
Methods and Practices
source criticism
redaction criticism
rhetorical criticism
historiography
archaeology
lexicography
textual criticism
stylistics
new criticism
structuralism
feminist criticism
materialist criticism
psychoanalytic criticism
reader response
deconstruction
theologyother?
Handout 4 The Synchronic/Diachronic Grid
Since some colleagues may not feel entirely conversant with some of the methods in this list, and since the scope of some of them may be controversial, I have provided a handout offering brief descriptions of some of the more recent methods in biblical criticism. These descriptions have of course no authority beyond that of the authors of the text on the handout, but it would be desirable for colleagues in the workshop to accept the deÞnitions more or less at face value for the sake of the present exercise. Otherwise, the time of the workshop could be spent on agreeing a deÞnition of 'reader-response criticism', for example-which is not the purpose of the present workshop.
Handout 5 Methods in Biblical Criticism
Literary Criticisms No Longer 'New'
New Criticism
New criticism stands for an attitude to texts that sees them as works of art in their own right, rather than as representations of the sensibilities of their authors. Against the romantic view of texts as giving immediate access to the ideas and feelings of great minds, the new criticism regards texts as coherent intelligible wholes more or less independent of their authors, creating meaning through the integration of their elements. And against a more positivistic scholarship of the historical-critical kind, new criticism emphasizes the literariness of literary texts and tries to identify the characteristics of literary writing.
In biblical studies the term 'new criticism' has been rarely used, but most work that is known as 'literary'-whether it studies structure, themes, character, and the like, or whether it approaches the texts as uniÞed wholes rather than the amalgam of sources, or whether it describes itself as 'synchronic' rather than 'diachronic', dealing with the text as it stands rather than with its prehistory-can properly be regarded as participating in this approach.Rhetorical Criticism
Rhetorical criticism, sharing the outlook of new criticism about the primacy of the text in itself, and often operating under the banner of 'the Þnal form of the text', concerns itself with the way the language of texts is deployed to convey meaning. Its interests are in the devices of writing, in metaphor and parallelism, in narrative and poetic structures, in stylistic Þgures. In principle, but not often in practice in Hebrew Bible studies, it has regard to the rhetorical situation of the composition and promulgation of ancient texts and to their intended effect upon their audience. But, like new criticism, its primary focus is upon the texts and their own internal articulation rather then upon their historical setting.Structuralism
Structuralist theory concerns itself with patterns of human organization and thought. In the social sciences, structuralism analyses the structures that underlie social and cultural phenomena, identifying basic mental patterns, especially the tendency to construct the world in terms of binary oppositions, as forming models for social behaviour. In literary criticism likewise, structuralism looks beneath the phenomena, in this case the texts, for the underlying patterns of thought that come to expression in them. Structuralism proper shades off on one side into semiotics and the structural relations of signs, and on the other into narratology and the systems of construction that underlie both traditional and literary narratives
The New Literary CriticismsFeminist Criticism
Feminist criticism can be seen as a paradigm for the new literary criticisms. For its focus is not upon texts in themselves but upon texts in relation to another intellectual or political issue; and that could be said to be true of all the literary criticisms represented in this volume. The starting point of feminist criticism is of course not the given texts but the issues and concerns of feminism as a world view and as a political enterprise. If we may characterize feminism in general as recognizing that in the history of civilization women have been marginalized by men and have been denied access both to social positions of authority and inþuence and to symbolic production (the creation of symbol systems, such as the making of texts), then a feminist literary criticism will be concerned with exposing strategies by which women's subordination is inscribed in and justiÞed by texts. Feminist criticism uses a variety of approaches and encourages multiple readings, rejecting the notion that there is a 'proper way' to read a text as but another expression of male control of texts and male control of reading. It may concentrate on analysing the evidence contained in literary texts, and showing in detail the ways in which women's lives and voices have in fact been suppressed by texts. Or it may ask how, if at all, a woman's voice can be discovered in, or read into, an androcentric text. Or it may deploy those texts, with their evidence of the marginalization of women, in the service of a feminist agenda, with the hope that the exposing of male control of literature will in itself subvert the hierarchy that has dominated not only readers but also culture itself.Materialist or Political Criticism
In a materialist criticism, texts are viewed principally as productions, as objects created, like other physical products, at a certain historical juncture within a social and economic matrix and existing still within deÞnite ambits constituted by the politics and the economics of book production and of readerships. More narrowly, materialist criticism analyses texts in terms of their representation of power, especially as they represent, allude to or repress the conþicts of different social classes that stand behind their composition and reception.Psychoanalytic Criticism
A psychoanalytic criticism can take as its focus the authors of texts, the texts themselves, or the readers of the texts. Since authors serve their own psychological needs and drives in writing texts, their own psyches are legitimate subjects of study. It is not often we have access to the psyche of a dead author, but even if little can be said about the interior life of real authors, there is plenty to be inferred about the psyches of the authors implied by the texts. Just as psychoanalytic theory has shown the power of the unconscious in human beings, so literary critics search for the unconscious drives embedded within texts. We can view texts as symptoms of narrative neuroses, treat them as overdetermined, and speak of their repressions, displacements, conþicts and desires. Alternatively, we can uncover the psychology of characters and their relationships within the texts, and ask what it is about the human condition in general that these texts reþect, psychologically speaking. Or we can turn our focus upon empirical readers, and examine the non-cognitive effects that reading our texts have upon them, and construct theoretical models of the nature of the reading process.Reader Response
The critical strategies that may be grouped under the heading of reader response share a common focus on the reader as the creator of, or at the very least, an important contributor to, the meaning of texts. Rather than seeing 'meaning' as a property inherent in texts, whether put there by an author (as in traditional historical criticism) or somehow existing intrinsically in the shape, structure and wording of the texts (as in new criticism and rhetorical criticism), reader response criticism regards meaning as coming into being at the meeting point of text and reader-or, in a more extreme form, as being created by readers in the act of reading.
An obvious implication of a reader response position is that any quest for determinate meanings is invalidated; the idea of 'the' meaning of a text disappears and meaning becomes deÞned relative to the various readers who develop their own meanings. A text means whatever it means to its readers, no matter how strange or unacceptable some meanings may seem to other readers.
Reader response criticism further raises the question of validity in interpretation. If there are no determinate meanings, no intrinsically right or wrong interpretations, if the author or the text cannot give validation to meanings, the only source for validity in interpretation has to lie in 'interpretative communities'-groups that authorize certain meanings and disallow others. Validity in interpretation is then recognized as relative to the group that authorizes it.Deconstruction
Deconstruction of a text signiÞes the identifying of the Achilles heel of texts, of their weak point that lets them down. As against the 'common sense' assumption that texts have more or less clear meanings and manage more or less successfully to convey those meanings to readers, deconstruction is an enterprise that exposes the inadequacies of texts, and shows how inexorably they undermine themselves. A text typically has a thesis to defend or a point of view to espouse; but inevitably texts falter and let slip evidence against their own cause. A text typically sets forth or takes for granted some set of oppositions, one term being privileged over its partner; but in so doing it cannot help allowing glimpses of the impossibility of sustaining those oppositions. In deconstruction it is not a matter of reversing the oppositions, of privileging the unprivileged and vice versa, but of rewriting, reinscribing, the structures that have previously been constructed. The deconstruction of texts relativizes the authority attributed to them, and makes it evident that much of the power that is felt to lie in texts is really the power of their sanctioning community.
David J.A. Clines and J. Cheryl Exum, 'The New Literary Criticism', in
J. Cheryl Exum and David J.A. Clines (eds.),
The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible
(JSOTSup, 143; ShefÞeld: JSOT Press, 1993), pp. 15-20.
Report. This exercise, although somewhat artiÞcial, proved both interesting and useful; working in groups of three or four was crucial to the success of this element of the workshop. Colleagues were at times surprised to Þnd elements of the synchronic in procedures they typiÞed as diachronic, and vice versa. One group, for example, had quickly designated 'archaeology' as 100% diachronic, but on reþection recognized that studying Hazor Stratum VII, the disposition of its buildings, its water system and the like, can be a clearly synchronic activity. Another group found it interesting to consider in what sense textual criticism, which in principle seems to be a strongly diachronic procedure, could be said to be synchronic, in that it could be said to take its rise from a synchronic state of afffairs in which there are many texts of the same work, differing from one another in varying degrees. One group could not decide whether historiography was wholly diachronic or wholly synchronic. Others wondered if there was any method or procedure in biblical studies that was neither synchronic nor diachronic.
I had not realized before the workshops that the method of scoring needed some further reÞnement. What was the difference between scoring a method as (a) 5 on the synchronic axis and 5 on the diachronic and (b) 10 synchronic and 10 diachronic? We managed to convince ourselves that (a) means that half of the work in the method is synchronic and half diachronic, while (b) means that everything done in the method is both synchronic and diachronic.
All in all, I think that the exercise established the point I had set out to make, that a great deal of what we all do in biblical criticism has something of both diachronic and synchronic in it, and that consequently the idea of methodological tension in this regard is not a little false.
e. Synchrony/Diachrony as a Binary Opposition
Having now reviewed the functioning of the categories 'synchronic' and 'diachronic' in the methodology and praxis of Hebrew Bible scholarship, and having found (as I think we must) that most of what we do in biblical criticism has something of both elements in it, we next turn to the question whether synchrony/diachrony has been constructed (i.e. shaped in the scholarly consciousness) as a 'binary opposition' and whether we should approach such an opposition with the tools of a deconstructive criticism.
The next handout therefore offers some summary deÞnitions of deconstruction, together with a checklist of some of the primary binary oppositions that have come in for scrutiny by deconstructive critics. By this stage in the workshop, some light relief is long overdue, so the handout concludes with some lines from the brilliant and amusing book by the novelist Malcolm Bradbury, My Strange Quest for Mensonge, where the concerns of poststructuralist and deconstructed criticism are guyed in an affectionate (?) manner.
Handout 6 Synchrony/Diachrony and Deconstruction
Does synchrony/diachrony need deconstructing?
To deconstruct a discourse is to show how it undermines the philosophy it asserts, or the hierarchical oppositions on which it relies.
J. Culler, On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism
(London: Routledge, 1983), p. 86.[D]econstruction is a dismantling of 'the binary oppositions of metaphysics' . . . Of course, all oppositions are not created equal. 'Each pair operates with very different stakes in the world', as Barbara Johnson has observed.
Stephen D. Moore, Poststructuralism and the New Testament:
Derrida and Foucault at the Foot of the Cross
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1994), p. 45.In a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other . . . or has the upper hand.
Jacques Derrida, Positions (trans. Alan Bass;
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 41.Some classical binary oppositions
mind/body positive/negative
necessary/contingent object/representation
essence/accident text/interpretation
objective/subjective original/copy
reason/emotion text/context
literal/metaphorical conscious/unconscious
precise/fuzzy transcendent/immanent
history/Þction presence/absence
content/form male/female
central/marginal white/black
Has synchronic/diachronic been 'constructed' as a binary opposition?
There can be no doubt that any bright student or intellectually active person of the 1980s who is at all alert to the major development in the humanities, philosophy and the social sciences, or is just getting more and more worried why so many way-out mint-þavoured green vegetables are showing up in a salad these days, is going sooner or later, and far better sooner than later, to have to come to terms with a pair of thought-movements that are making all the contemporary running . . . Structuralism and Deconstruction . . .
[T]his radical new spirit in intellectual life touches on every aspect of existence, social and cultural, literary and artistic, linguistic and anthropological. Indeed it has been so successful that it is capitalizing its resources and spreading out into totally new areas, including cheap home-loans and cut-price airlines. We all have colleagues in academic life . . . who have tried to ignore the whole issue, keeping their heads in the sand and their noses high in the air . . . [T]hey have chosen to believe that the whole issue will in due course disappear, and we will soon be back in the safety of empirical common sense again. I have to tell these people . . . that they will have to think again . . . As François Mitterand was heard to say the other day, teasing at a shrimp vol-au-vent at some Quai d'Orsay reception to do with either the building or the cancellation of the Channel Tunnel: 'Aujourd'hui, mes amis, et aussi les anglais, nous sommes tous de nécessité structuralistes'.Malcolm Bradbury, My Strange Quest for Mensonge:
Structuralism's Hidden Hero (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), pp. 1, 3, 4.
Report. Like the handout on Saussure, this collection of texts was intended to raise questions rather than to lead to a solution. There was a prima facie case for regarding synchrony/diachrony as a classical binary opposition, since for many people the opposition is a strict one, and one of the terms is privileged. On the other hand, synchrony/ diachrony is unlike many of the binary oppositions mentioned above, in that it is by no means evident which is the privileged term in the dominant culture.
Nevertheless, the effect of our attempts to locate synchrony/diachrony on a grid (§e above) has certainly been to 'undermine the hierarchical oppositions on which it [the critical discourse in biblical studies] relies', in Jonathan Culler's terms, and so it appears that the procedure of the workshop has been deconstructive in the formal sense.f. Review of the Workshop: Task and Process
On the understanding that a cycle of learning is not complete until teachers and learners have reviewed what has taken place, participants are Þnally asked to consider the experience of the workshop with the categories of 'task' and 'process', and then to record their own initial evaluation of the workshop.
The following handout outlines the structure of this element of the workshop:
Handout 7 Task and Process
Task and Process
The learning cycle is not complete until the whole activity is reviewed.
For such a review, it can be helpful to distinguish task from process.Task
What is the purpose of the 'debate' synchrony/diachrony?What is the problem we were seeking a solution for in a workshop called 'beyond synchrony/diachrony'?
What conclusions could you say you have reached? In what ways have you performed the 'task'?
Process
What has been going on in this session apart from the achieving of the task?Note three things that have happened to (or within) you or the group / three experiences you or the group have had - apart from working on the topic.
Evaluation
Please write any evaluative comments, positive or negative, on this workshop.
Report. Members of the workshops seemed very open to the proposal that we should consider and evaluate the process as well as the task we had been engaged upon. Among the elements in the process that were identiÞed were: the participation of all the members of the workshops (and not primarily of the older men, which is what generally happens in scholarly interchange); the cross-cultural work and relationships that resulted from the presence in each group of both Oudtestamentische Werkgezelschap and Society for Old Testament Study members; the experience of group work which some found thought-provoking in the context of their own pedagogy; the sense of fun and the experience of laughter within a session of work (which seemed unfamiliar to some!).