microsoft word tai.docx corresponding author: dr. nancy j. moules email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics april 22, 2015 ©the author(s) 2015 editorial: aletheia remembering and enlivening nancy j moules dedicated to dr. tyrone dang (april 19, 1956 november 10, 2014) in choosing the cover of our new book, conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015), we wanted to showcase a word that seems to be at the heart of hermeneutic work. the word that came to mind was the ancient greek word aletheia. aletheia is a word that is about unconcealment. the word is the opposite of lethal (dead) – aletheia then means to enliven. it is also connected to the mythical river of lethe in hades: the river of forgetfulness – a river that, if crossed, erased memory. aletheia is the antithesis of this: it is about remembering. in its unconcealment, enlivening, and remembering, aletheia brings moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 editorial 2 2 home what may have been lost, forgotten, deadened, or concealed in our “simply getting by.” the work of hermeneutics is the work of aletheia. i have a friend that i have known and loved for close to 30 years. he was an award winning family physician and internist in hawaii and he is also one of the fathers of my godson, thanh. ty had a most interesting history. some of his “stories” i have heard over time and i am sure that they have shifted and changed in my mind as all good stories should. i do not then offer this editorial as a biography on his life but rather a “remembering” of him and an unconcealment of the story of him in my mind and experience. ty lived in vietnam with his siblings and his parents. he was the 8th of 10 children. during the vietnam war and the fall of saigon, ty and his parents and siblings experienced famine, abuse, and incarceration. ty himself tried to escape many times and was caught and sent back to jail. his sisters and brothers escaped in awful circumstances under torture of thai pirates and other perils. ty, like eight of his siblings, made it to the united states and from there he pursued degrees in pharmacology and medicine, finally settling in honolulu where he adopted and coparented his son, thanh, from vietnam. ty’s escape from vietnam and his rescue by a german fisherman has been documented in newspapers. his story from childhood to adulthood has been retold in other forms and i had the privilege of receiving hundreds of reflective emails from ty about his life experience and how he looks on it now. what mattered always to him was family. i offer this one. our fourth attempt to escape from vietnam. ma had arranged for me, phuc, hoa, and his wife may, to leave. quick goodbye, in the dark of night, shiny tears like pearls in ma's eyes, looking at her sons. not one, but three pieces of her guts, blood were torn, not in succession, but altogether. bye, ma. i am in a lot of pain, too. we got into a trap soon after we left home. the troubling, vicious red light circling the ocean dark, like red blood pulsating from an open wound, appeared, closer and closer. then stopped, the ocean seemed all red. my heart sank when they boarded our boat. phuc took a beating for being the oldest. the pacific now had ma's blood in it. we were still in handcuffs when the sun rose above the thatch hut where we spent the night. a long yellow school bus is awaiting. time seemed still, stretching in the denied reality. and we were taken to a place called b5, the notorious re-education camp outside of saigon. for the next six months, we spent our time in the inner camp to be interrogated. we were separated in different sections. phuc threw the last glance at us, the younger brothers, loving and pained looks... i am so sorry, so sorry... i did not see him and hoa again for a while... moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 editorial 2 3 by october, i was shaved, completely diseased (scabies, typhoid etc.) and no more information to extract out of a 90 lbs. body, ma and ba bought our way out to the labor camp section of b5. the table in the visit room was rough, as wide as an ocean, ma sat there. she looked at me, wordless, tearful, the soft, round teardrops that were sharp, tearing me inside too, ma. we shared the same guts, face, heart, even the laughter. december 1979, we came home. ma’s hair had turned silver from black. an eight-month insomnia, punctured with the sound of mango leaves touching the ground. ma would get up thinking they were our footsteps coming home night after night. the house seemed cold and big. i crawled underneath the bed and slept there for the next two months, fearing the nightmares of the camp would come and take me in my sleep. and again, i left saigon. april 1981, on the day ma brought me into this world, i became a refugee in malaysia. tears of joy, ma, and a few black hairs back in the jungle of white, funereal hairs. phuc is now gone, and i am here thinking about what ma must have felt as a mother, each and single heartbeat, every time disaster struck... have you ever regretted bringing me into this world that was full of deaths, destruction and sufferings? suffering no more, phuc is gone, so is ma. the last of her i saw in a dream, black hair cascading like waterfall, spinning on one foot, and smiling at me. i hope that was where phuc belongs now, with ma/ba. he came home. before tai was diagnosed, he purchased a beautiful home in hawaii kai, which he remodeled. he told me he wanted this to be his family’s “ancestral home” – a place where his family was welcomed and that held the ground of honoring the past, remembering the past, and unconcealing the pain. i told him that what he was doing reminded me of aletheia and he loved the idea, so much that he ordered a sign to be in his home. in his hawaii kai home, this sign was as you entered the door of his home. moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 editorial 2 4 ty was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in april 2013 – april mattered to him – it was the month he was born, the month he left vietnam, the month his mom died, the month he was diagnosed, the month he was told he was in remission. he would never die in april; he died on november 10, 2014, while at work at his family practice office, which he never gave up. ty was mischievous. he was a coyote and a raven. he knew hermes intimately. he could make the best of us blush. but he always saw and spoke truth, for what it is. ty knew the hermeneutic call of aletheia. a part of the reason that we live in this world is to experience the terrible hermeneutic angst of remembering. there are times we wish to swim the river lethe and forget, and there are times we are afraid we already have and we clamour to reclaim what is lost from memory. there are things we wish would no longer live and things we want to keep alive forever. in hermeneutic understanding, we know that things must be awakened, recalled, remembered, and suffered. it is why we embrace with “trembling and fear” (with all due respect to kierkegaard) that which we have to be prepared to meet in this kind of research. we have to face the living presence of what we come to suffer or as kearney and caputo suggest – a preparedness to meet the stranger at the door who may be kind or may be a monster. there is hospitality to aletheia – an openness to what might come to, and maybe enter, the door. last week, i received a package from hawaii with the sign enclosed the same week that our book went to press. the sign hangs now just inside the front door of my home. thank you ty. i remember you. microsoft word jardine editorial corrected proof.docx corresponding author: dr. david w. jardine email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 24, 2024 ©the author(s) 2014 guest editorial this is why we read. this is why we write david w. jardine discussion bears fruit. the participants part from one another as changed beings. the individual perspectives with which they entered upon the discussion have been transformed, and so they have been transformed themselves. this, then, is a kind of progress—not the progress proper to research but rather a progress that always must be renewed in the effort of our living. h.g. gadamer (2007, p. 244) from hermeneutics as a practical philosophy. in response to reading jodi latremouille’s “my treasured relation,” christine mciver, ceo and founder of kid’s cancer care foundation of alberta who lost her son, derek, to cancer, sent the following email to dr. nancy moules, this journal’s editor: the piece by jodi latremouille. i read a lot of this stuff, so much it’s in danger of becoming a blur. this is exceptional. i am going to share it with our staff if that is okay. she writes exactly how i think. in paragraphs full of description and illustration – and then words that hit the moment. i was surprised at the moment of shelby’s death, i was overcome again with the very same pain and sadness as when derek died. this writing…it is so good. illustrates the journey perfectly. it needs to be seen. there is, here, something deeply recognizable to those of us who work with the living and the dying and the dead, something that nebulously defines being part of a profession. it is something we need to admit because its admission is a vehicle to its remedy—“ a progress that always must be renewed in the effort of our living.” there is a certain ennui here, something like having experienced too much, having seemingly heard it all before, something like the exhaustion of efforts to name this pain, this suffering, and how language itself seems to start to wear thin and then wear on you over time, wear you out. this is the secret lot of nurses and teachers, of parents and doctors--perhaps a secret lot of being human itself. the effort of our living can lose its power jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 editorial 1 2 to renew. we can become halt and the glow of language that once bound us together in commiseration can burn out, and us with it. we lose our avail. i’m reminded of this passage from david g. smith: “education is suffering from narration-sickness,” says paulo freire. it speaks out of a story, which was once full of enthusiasm, but now shows itself incapable of a surprise ending. the nausea of narration-sickness comes from having heard enough, of hearing many variations on a theme but no new theme. (smith, 1999, pp. 135-136) why do we write emails in response to reading jodi latremouille’s work? why am i compelled to write about earth cousins and now this little editorial? this compulsion is part of why attention is given in truth and method (gadamer, 1989, p. 60) to “[immanuel] kant's doctrine of the heightening of the feeling of life (lebensgefühl).” despite gadamer's detailed caveats about this notion, it is one of the deep sources of hermeneutic work, percolating up through husserl's ideas of lived experience and the life world. part of the orbit of hermeneutic research is to revive in writers and readers the possibilities of our commiseration. hans-georg gadamer (1986, p. 59) called it the opening up of “free spaces” and learning, in consequence, how we might then shape our lives in light of such possibilities, forging, if you will, “new solidarities” (p. 59). this, then, is the other clue i got from christine's email about why we read, why we write, why this journal--the hit, the moment. this is the aesthesis of aesthetics, as james hillman (2006, p. 36) noted, “which means at root a breathing in or taking in of the world, the gasp, “aha,” the “uh” of the breath in wonder, shock, amazement, and aesthetic response.” hermeneutics lingers about the in-breath where something hits us and wakes us up out of our melancholia over the wearying sameness of things. it is where our living can become spacious and open and full of possibility again, and we no longer feel locked into the often-panicky confines and immediacies of our circumstances. this, too, is why some writing can be properly called beautiful, that is, precipitating of such aesthetic arrival even when it speaks of sad departure. references gadamer, h.g. (1986). the idea of the university--yesterday, today, tomorrow. in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds. & trans.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (pp. 47-62). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h.g. (1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed., j. weinsheimer & d.g marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h.g. (2007). hermeneutics as practical philosophy. in r.e. palmer (ed.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 227-245). evanston, il: northwestern university press. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 editorial 1 3 hillman, j. (2006). anima mundi: returning the soul to the world. in j. hillman, city and soul (pp. 27-49). putnam, ct: spring. smith, d.g. (1999). pedagon: interdisciplinary essays on pedagogy and culture. new york, ny: peter lang. microsoft word old dog, same trick.docx corresponding author: david w. jardine university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics november 26, 2014 ©the author(s) 2014 guest editorial: old dog. same trick. david w. jardine your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end. ross to siward, on the death of siward's son. macbeth, act v, scene viii give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. malcolm to macduff. macbeth, act iv, scene iii “the individual case . . . is never simply a case; it is not exhausted by being a particular example of a universal law or concept” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 39). there is no such a “thing” as sorrow or grief. it is always this lamenting in this arc of telling, of seasons, of breath and faces. to paraphrase john caputo (1993), sorrow always involves proper names; grieving is always one's own and, one way or another, in one shape or another, “from it no one can be exempt” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 356). that we might commiserate in such matters is not made possible by each of us deflecting upwards into some governing concept or essence or law or theme under which our sorrows fall. my sorrow does not find much voice or relief in such falling. it is not given words but is taken away and rendered and handed back as bones. “the rule does not comprehend it” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 39). we don’t experience our affinity via this abstracting route. commiseration cannot be sought in experiencing ourselves as examples or instances. affinity is, instead, a lateral pass, one of kinship, kindness, love. in these matters, i am always, for good or ill, someone, full of gesture jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 editorial 2 2 and just this word and withholding and waiting and perhaps embrace. and just this error of having waited too long full of good intent. all this. i find myself nearly apologizing to some of the people who’ve read this. this work is hard to bear and, if it works (and it doesn't always work, and its working is in the hands of those to whom it is addressed), it’s hard to put down. and i’ll admit that there is a resounding joy to it precisely because of this. “free spaces” (gadamer, 1992, p. 59) and some relief, some lifting and lightening, some setting it down by taking it up and setting it down in words. so yesterday, november 3, 2014. father and grown daughter outside the bragg creek vet’s place, big and old great pyrenees on a leash, matted and woolly and friendly and black and white. big splayed paws a good six inches across. well trod and often. inside to buy dog food, and, i’d say by her age and carriage, a woman and wife and mother, a bit in tears as she and the doctor emerge from a side room. yep. got it. it’s time, it seems. and that semblance swirls up and around in the air. made sure i stopped on the way back to the truck to tell the old thing that he’s a good dog. a little unspoken thanks. you need to thank your teachers, but the best thanks is turning away and practicing the teaching. the language of this intimacy is a rough ride. every pull towards generalities feels like a betrayal and yet i must give sorrow words. i can “identify” with that spot these neighbors seem to be in, but that word is too easy to use, too flip. part of it is the coming due of the silent bargain some of us have made with these domestics. i remember a black-humored version laughed over years ago with friends: “don't worry. when the time comes, i will kill you.” hah! yes. i will. i promise. i can identify with the spot they are in precisely because of how we are identical. our cases are incommensurate and that is how we are the same. that is how each new case is an act of revival and rejuvenation, not just repetition. that is how our kinship remains alive, there in that unspoken parking lot. our kinship is not identity under a rule but is had in, and through, the incommensurate and stubborn grace of particularity. we lean towards. we hear beckons. we are properly stilled and summoned. this child, this patient, this turn of phrase in a text, this upwell of warm air coming up off the wood for winter, that old fido full of specific fidelities and keeps of memory, makes me stop over it and wait for what is to come. thus our cases, each intimate, need names and faces and occasions to be what they are. sit. stay. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 editorial 2 3 ivy. that was my dog’s name. ivy, right there all over again, up and run in that chance morning meeting of pets and coos and matted feet and leash pulled taut in the air of coming grief. ivy’s flesh being only half torn to bits by an inefficient cougar that didn’t finish the job. the weight of her in my arms, tipping back in blood and glazed look and the sizzle-panic nickelspittle rush for what turned out to be useless help. my being drawn to this morning event is thus a lateral pass. it is not a passage through some shared “identity,” but a passage into the passible kinship of the flesh, the eyes that see ghosts shimmering around and nearing from all directions, the big long nose arced up and sniffing something in the air. beheld in my arms. my bones start tearing, but hush now. there is a secret pleasure here, too, to be near this happenstance, this teaching, this moment, and to write in order to stay near and draw others near. say it, then. almost jealousy. that they have such luck to have such proximity to such a great teacher. good boy. i remember after ivy was half-killed and we had to put her down. that’s such a phrase. it summons gravity and the falling of flesh to the earth. but it also says that we had to put her down, because if we didn’t put her down we couldn’t bear the weight of it. and those post-traumatic reveries, still close and fraught and suddening, still imagining her running towards me down off the green hill, and having to say, again: “no, ivy. go.” good girl. references caputo, j. (1993) against ethics: contributions to a poetics of obligation with constant reference to deconstruction. bloomington, in: indiana state university press. gadamer, h.g. (1989). truth and method. new york, ny: continuum books. gadamer, h.g. (1992). the idea of the university--yesterday, today, tomorrow (pp. 47-62). in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds. & trans.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics. albany, ny: suny. microsoft word jardine corrected proof.docx corresponding author: dr. david w. jardine email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 24, 2014 ©the author(s) 2014 some introductory words for two little earth-cousins david w. jardine out from behind his oxygen mask as if he were just my good old, familiar little earth-cousin. from jodi latremouille, “my treasured relation” cancer really is one of “those” words. two days ago, an old friend, fernando, died of it, and the funeral is this thursday, january 23rd--lung cancer come down hard and fast, as it often does. and then there's me at 8 years old and my mother, 1958, undergoing a radical mastectomy. drawn living room curtains for weeks, a big wicker laundry basket full of neighbors’ tiny presents, one to be opened each day, smells of soaps and lotions and other notions, meant to help stretch out time’s lingering, i guess, and to show wee affections without words, without “that” word. easy to recall how many had to disappear from view, unable to be present to such things. understandable in its own sad way. makes my own skin lesions over the past couple of years seem quite silly in comparison, not only because they are less severe and the suffering is near nil (although hearing “that” word chills nevertheless), but because, at the level of our living and dying, cancer is always incomparable. it follows an old gadamerian (1989, p. 39) adage: “the individual case . . .is not exhausted by being a particular example of a universal law or concept.” my doctor and i joked about how this could be some sort of long-in-arriving anniversary--maybe even the summer of 1958, too much sun swimming at the second tower with my brother and father in burlington, and the great peels of skin afterwards. funny how cancer takes its time sometimes, sometimes as fleet as the quick of life itself, and sometimes, well, as sheer chance would have it, my mother lived till 2002. of course, as jodi latremouille’s wonderful, heartbreaking writing “my treasured relation” demonstrates, broad, universal concepts and images and ideas are always needed in the act of jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 1 2 articulating one's experience. we always run the risk of using words that can be understood differently than we meant. this circumstance is in the very nature of writing and reading itself and it is why the mens auctoris is not the lynchpin of hermeneutic work (gadamer, 2007, p. 57). it is also why hermeneutic research is so bloody difficult. you have to be disciplined and rigorous and attentive to handle this circumstance gracefully and well. remaining true to the intimacy of this “special case” (gadamer, 1989, p. 39), dear shelby, is an especially difficult form of research that requires generosity, patience, perseverance, discipline, stillness and wisdom (6 aspired to “perfections,” [sanskrit: paramitas; see tsong-kha-pa, 2000, 2002, 2004]). all clustered, of course, around impermanence. “we will have to hold firmly to the standpoint of finiteness” (gadamer, 1989, p. 99), both in the topics we consider and in the expended breath of our consideration itself. why? because the topic of a hermeneutic study is finite as is our insight into it. “future generations will understand differently” (p. 340) and therefore, the purpose of a hermeneutic inquiry is to “keep [the topic] open for the future” (p. 340). we already know this. cancer will never leave our consciousness. there are myriad ways of experiencing it, articulating it, investigating it, naming it, and these have cascaded down to us over time, admixed, sometimes battling each other, sometimes quelled, finally, in the soft presence of death. we can never say once and for all what needs to be said, and the worlds of swimming and breast cancer in 1958 have turned out to be something different than we could have imagined. “it would be a poor hermeneuticist who thought he could have, or had to have, the last word” (gadamer, 1989a, p. 579). in this sense, “my treasured relation” is hermeneutic in its best light. it is intent on remaining true to the “stubborn particularity” (wallace, 1987) of the case while, at the same time, drawing us into the worlds of its orbit in which we, as readers, already live. and, at once, it casts us back on our own life in this troubled life world--all this with an eye to both the opening this topic and “find[ing] that opening in each of us” (wallace, 1987, p. 13), as readers, where we can experience our own “miraculous returns” (p. 13) to the lives we have already been leading. this complex and pitched spiral of effects that defines the rigorousness of hermeneutic inquiry has an axis. its goal is to remain true to its object, and jodi latremouille's writing finds this sweet and aching spot. it seeks the address of this case and that's what compels our attention and makes this compelling break out beyond the confines of the case to something that feels universal. but this is no longer a slippery universal full of romantic woozyness. it is a universal that has been, in the best senses, humiliated by the case. life. childhood. illness. relations. suffering. all these become disciplined and strengthened by the case itself. “it is truly an achievement of undemonstrable tact to hit the target and to discipline the application of the universal” (gadamer, 1989, pp. 39-40). without this discipline of application, phrases like “childhood leukemia” loses the function of “responding and summoning” (gadamer, 1989, p. 458). they become hard categories of illness, and our responses to them become subjectivized into nothing but “moist gastric intimacy” (sartre, 1970, p. 4). these are the two extremes that hermeneutics avoids, and the two degradations that it can fall into when it fails. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 1 3 jodi latremouille's work thus reminds us of a hermeneutic truth, that one must avoid the temptations of casting our eyes too high. and, as with another recent piece of writing (latremouille, in press), her work reminds us, too, of another feature of hermeneutics: to be properly understood and articulated,. . . locales of intimacy don't lend themselves to forms of research that demand generalities or methodological anonymity as is proper to various social sciences. they demand a form of research that is proper to the object of its concern--an old aristotelian idea, that knowledge must “remain something adapted to the object, a mensuratio ad rem” (gadamer, 1989, p. 261). (jardine, in press) a good interpretation must be adapted to the object it is considering. pediatric oncology can be understood as a medical condition and, understood as such it summons a certain way of writing/speaking/investigating that is proper to that object. but the cancer of a child is also understandable as a sphere of treasured relations filled with this child and no other. this is also what it is. in this case, precisely as in the case of medical research, good writing seeks its proper measure in this object of consideration. there is no battle here between types of research and all that worn-out piffle about qualitative and quantitative. one of these is not the “secret measure” (gadamer, 1989, p. 112) of the other. both forms of writing and research are “objective” in the sense that both seek to cleave properly to the object each is considering. both seek to do justice to the thing and bring it to an illumination proper to it. both therefore are “hermeneutic” in the sense that they both heed the demand of the mensuratio ad rem. differently put, not only is all oncology hermeneutic (moules, jardine, mccaffrey, & brown, 2013). cancer, as it actually lives in the world (of families, of medicine, of nursing, of philosophy, of economics, of the tremors felt over diagnosis, of the bedsides, of the ways the word can find air in some settings of fear and trembling) is myriad in its being. it therefore requires myriad articulations in order to be properly understood in its fulsome being. “only in the multifariousness of such voices does it exist” (gadamer, 1989, p. 284). hermeneutic work always involves the application of particular cases to the universals (concepts, images, hopes, desires, ideas, rules, laws, principles, themes, procedures, guidelines, expectations voice and unvoiced, and so on) that have come to guide our lives, demanding of them that they listen to the difference that the case portends and don't turn away to heavenly, self-enclosed ideation (jardine, 2013). but it involves another form of application. “understanding always involves something like applying the text to be understood to the interpreter’s present situation” (gadamer, 1989, p. 308). in reading this paper, i’m blessed with the meeting of these two earthcousins that make me remember that i, too, and however near or distant, am a third earth cousin in this fatal round. interpretive work is meant to be read interpretively. read this and let yourself be third. references gadamer, h.g. (1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed., j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 1 4 gadamer, h.g. (2007). classical and philosophical hermeneutics. in r.e. palmer (ed.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings, (pp. 41-71). evanston, il: northwestern university press. jardine, d. (2013). guest editorial: morning thoughts on application. journal of applied hermeneutics. retrieved from http://jah.synergiesprairies.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/52. jardine, d. (in press). in appreciation of modern hunting traditions and a grouse’s life unwasted. one world in dialogue. moules, n.j., jardine, d.w., mccaffrey, g., & brown, c. (2013). “isn’t all oncology hermeneutic?” journal of applied hermeneutics. retrieved from http://jah.synergiesprairies.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/43. latremouille, j. (in press). a modern hunting tradition. one world in dialogue. sartre, j.p. (1970). intentionality: a fundamental idea in husserl’s phenomenology. journal for the british society for phenomenology, 1(2), 3-5. tsong-kha-pa (2000). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment. volume one. ithaca, ny: snow lion. tsong-kha-pa (2002). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment. volume three. ithaca, ny: snow lion. tsong-kha-pa (2004). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment. volume two. ithaca, ny: snow lion. wallace, b. (1989). the stubborn particulars of grace. toronto, on, canada: mcclelland & stewart. microsoft word latremouille corrected proof.docx corresponding author: jodi latremouille email: jodilats@gmail.com journal of applied hermeneutics january 24, 2014 ©the author(s) 2014 my treasured relation jodi latremouille i have always wanted to write about my cousin shelby, but whenever i try, the words just don’t seem to do justice to my cousin who never grew up. i want to make him live again in this story. but mostly, i would just really like to not cry today. shelby was born to my aunt, with too much life ahead of her, and so he was raised by my silentstoic, gentle grandfather, dave and leona, the asthmatic, arthritic heart-young grandmother, with more love in her than those sick lungs could handle. this little boy was never formally diagnosed, as he never got the opportunity to spend much time in school, but looking back now, i know that he did indeed have certain cognitive delays, which i did not, and still cannot, name. nor do i want to. socially-constructed deficiencies are not lovable. to me, he was just shelby, even though on that level beyond the one that we talk about, we all knew that he didn’t function in quite the same way we all did. shelby was diagnosed with something, though. he was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of five. his childhood years were a blur for all of us. waiting and hoping, trips to vancouver through the fraser canyonand later, over the coquihalla, stays at the ronald mcdonald house, fundraising projects, months in isolation units, missed school, missed life, latremouille journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 2 2 hours and hours stalking and thrashing in the shallow end of the backyard pool: daring us to venture near him. a wheelchair-bound, abbreviated trip to disneyland, make-a-wish dream visits with hulk hogan and trevor linden, birthday pizzas delivered by none other than raphael the teenage mutant ninja turtle, and a failed autologous bone marrow transplant. we were told that shelby was going to receive a “miracle cure,” a treatment that my 11-year-old brain understood in the following terms: the doctors would take a massive needle that would suck the bone marrow from his spine, purge it of cancer cells with radiation, and return it back to his body with another massive needle, with the expectation that the healthy bone marrow would regenerate and grow, filling his spine with healthy bone marrow. my sister and i have always wondered if our matching needle phobias were inspired by bearing witness to our cousin’s medical treatments. i learned the language of platelets and prednisone and blood counts and spinal taps and we-still-have-hope and in/remission/out and chemo and things-are-not-looking good and be-nicer-he’s-sick and making time count. no, wait a minute time counted us by appointments and remissions and birthdays and good days bad days and one more day. we counted everything except time. i now understand this “miracle cure” autologous bone marrow transplant the way the doctors and all the adults in the room did, as what it was in those days, as more of a “last ditch experimental treatment.” shelby spent three months in complete isolation while the bone marrow was being purged of cancer cells. in order to visit him, we had to wash our hands to the elbow with stinging, sharp-smelling disinfectant soap, walk through the sliding door into the closet-sized “isolation chamber,” wash our hands again for several minutes, don plastic shoe coverings, plastic clothing, and face masks, then enter through a second sliding door, careful, fearful, not to get too close. we could touch his hand, but hugs were out of the question. we just couldn’t risk it. he was my alien-cousin, a lovable monster descended from another planet, participating in an experimental study, peering out from behind his oxygen mask. then i would hear his muffled, cheerful gravelly voice, saying “hi, jode!” as if he were just my good old, familiar little earth-cousin. at latremouille journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 2 3 age ten, he was much more subdued, resigned to the treatments, than he had been in the early years. six-year-old tornado. “i am a dinosaur and i am going to smash you!” pierced. “i am a lion and i am going to eat you!” swearing. “shit! i hate you!” despising his cruel saviours. “i am jake the snake and i am going to do a d.d.t. right on your head!” restrained. “i am going to ride my snowmobile all the way back to merritt and you will never find me again!” my sister and i spent many hours with shelby through the years, his contracted playmates, and i think our company probably was one of the reasons my grandmother was able to maintain some semblance of sanity. he was a challenging kid to begin with, prone to temper tantrums and boiling-over fits of anger. and having to be stuck with needles, of varying diameters, on a daily basis, was, and still is, unfathomable to me. anyone who had to go through all of that would, understandably, be just a little “on edge.” my mother would send us over to grandma’s house every day after school until we became too busy with our extracurricular lives; in the later years we would squeeze in weekend sleepovers and pool parties when we could. the two girls would play duck hunter and super mario brothers for hours and hours on end, while shelby wrestled in the background with his stuffed animals and teenage mutant ninja turtle figurines, shouting out the play-by-play, occasionally jumping off the couch and squashing us flat-out under his roly-poly body, making us gasp under his weight, begging to be freed, to breathe again. on the day of my 8th birthday party, all of my friends had come over to celebrate. of course, shelby was invited. it was a glorious spring day at the “fox farm,” our 5-acre mountainside hobby farm, perfect for badminton on the lawn and hikes up the mountain to the magical forest. my father had installed a rope swing in the woods about 200 metres above the house. all of the kids were taking turns. one of the less experienced “city slickers” lost his grip and launched himself into space, then landed softly, unbelievably, gracefully, like a ski-jumper on the steep landing slope, sliding down the leaf-strewn mountainside straight into an anthill. one girl forgot the only safety rule (to launch yourself away from the tree in a circular trajectory), and flew straight out from the tree, then straight back in, smashing into the tree trunk. we watched her float in slow-motion horror, and then cringed in sympathy, shielding our eyes and turning away, wincing at the inevitable “thud.” we turned back and peeled our hands from our eyes to watch her loosen her grip and slither listlessly off the rope into a weeping heap at the base of the tree. only two casualties this time. not bad. shelby was down at the house, as it was too difficult for him to hump all the way up the sidehill to the rope swing. i am pretty sure that what we did that day was my idea. one of us ran down to the house to grab a bottle of ketchup. we chose a “victim,” smeared the ketchup on her, and started hollering. “shelby, help! tracy fell off the rope swing and she’s bleeding!” i heard him, latremouille journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 2 4 out of sight near the house, yelling, “what? oh no! i’m coming, jode!” and we were all snickering and jeering, until we saw him emerge over the hill, panting and crying, wheezing, tripping over sticks, stumbling up, knees dirty, nose running. distraught. our laughter froze instantly to silence. he had brought a tea towel. i didn’t know what he thought he was going to do with that. i guess… i suppose… that was the funny part. it was just a joke. for his 10th birthday, our family bought him a funny little voice-activated yellow plastic sunflower in a funny little plastic green pot that danced a herky-jerky hula, its funny little happy sunglassed face bobbing along to the mini pops singing their funny little-kid version of “karma chameleon.” that flower was cool, man. totally rocked that song. in order to get it into the room we had to unwrap and open up the package, then wipe down every single surface with the disinfectant, including the batteries. the nurses brought it in for him, as that day he was having a “bad immune system day.” we smiled through the window as he tried it out, grinning from cheek to soft, chubby cheek. we could see him laughing through the glass, and in my head i could hear his hoarse, breathless chortle. my mom picked out that flower for him. i am sure she thought it would cheer him up. it did; she nailed it out of the park. he loved that flower. all the days of his life. because you should never grow out of silly little things. shelby finally did make his escape. we were called in to visit him in the hometown merritt hospital. i knew it was bad, because any self-respecting version of hope would have bundled him up in her arms and magically swooped him all the way back up and over the winter-blizzard highway to vancouver children’s hospital. bloated, drained, cushioned by crisp white pillows and our false cheerfulness. distracted by niceties and pain. we, the kids, protected, excluded. unaware but still knowing. just a short visit. tired. ready. calm. barely eleven years old. selfless. raspy. “have fun skiing tomorrow, jode.” big, soft, squishy, forever hug. latremouille journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 2 5 we knew things were bad when we were allowed to hug him. wait, hold it, hold on, for him. cry in the backseat on the way home. look out the foggy window at the hazy, unending night. shelby died on a blowing-snow january night, at the age of 11. i was 12 years old. i got my first menstrual period the day of the funeral. what a day for firsts. i wasn’t particularly afraid or ashamed, as some young girls were back in the days before moms were supposed to be a girl’s best friend and talk about, oh, about just absolutely everything! i had read about it in a book somewhere, and had some “samples” stashed in my bathroom cupboard. i was just, oh, just annoyed, awkward and lonely. i just wasn’t ready to grow up, not just yet. shelby’s neighbour and best friend in the whole entire world, a mature young woman-ish, kind, gentle 12-year old robyn, who didn’t have to be his friend, with two perfect, large fake front teeth that got knocked out years ago in a biking accident riding down “suicide hill” by our neighbourhood school, who felt-penned a massive “hulkamania!” poster for shelby’s best-day-ever and who probably got her period (light-years) months before me, and who i imagined would know exactly how to handle her newfound womanhood gracefully, (she didn’t. she told me so years later.) was beside herself after she returned from viewing his body. his vancouver canucks jerseyed, google-eyeballed disneyland-goofy capped, painless body. “that’s the first time in his life that he has ever been alone.” she wanted to wait with him in that room until the service began. our great-aunt was asked to perform the eulogy, and my narrow little 12-year old self was disappointed in the choice, expecting that she just way too stuffy and stodgy to do my hilarious, ridiculous, lovely little cousin justice. my mom had written the eulogyoh, it was just so perfect and i didn’t want it spoiled by someone who didn’t know him just the way we did. i think back now and realize that my pin-curled aunt was probably the only one in the entire jam-packed room of 300 people who was tightly wound enough to hold it together for the entire speech. latremouille journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 2 6 and she re-called him to a “t”. a “d.d.t.,” that is: “i know that shelby is up there in heaven, riding his snowmobile and doing d.d.t.’s on all the angels.” shelby was the exception. to everything. he was the beautiful little monster who reflected back to us who we really were. we were rude, wild, loud, unfiltered, imaginative, hungry, hurting, scared-cruel dreamers. that is what love does. it makes us want to do justice. without justice we are merely co-existing. waiting for the reward. labelling. judgingand moving on. i will never move on. i want to make him live again. my treasured teacher. my relation. alien-cousin. brother. heart-swelling baby dinosaur. lion. hulk. bio jodi latremouille is a graduate student in the werklund school of education at the university of calgary. she is an entrepreneur and a social studies and literacy teacher. microsoft word editorial.docx corresponding author: dr. n. j. moules faculty of nursing, university of calgary calgary, ab email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics december 10, 2011 the author(s) 2011 editorial on applied hermeneutics and the work of the world nancy j. moules, graham mccaffrey, angela c. morck, & david w. jardine the journal of applied hermeneutics features the work of hermeneutics in its application to the lived realities of our professional and personal lives. as cited in our homepage, at its best, hermeneutics is not about hermeneutics. it is when hermeneutics is actually put to work through the act of interpreting something that its strengths and character appear. our intent is that the journal will offer the opportunity to publish work that reflects the subtlety and suppleness of engaging a topic anew and making it visible in the work of application. we believe that hermeneutics is always at its best when it disappears and living topics show up in all their complexity and ambiguity. hermeneutics, as a philosophy, has been studied and enacted for years from theological, theoretical, methodological, historical, and philosophical lenses. for the past several decades, practices such as nursing, education, social work and psychology, to name a few, have been turning their attention to hermeneutics as a way to explore these complexities. in education, for example, hermeneutics began in earnest with the reconceptualist movement in the early 1970s (e.g. pinar 1975/2000) and the work of maxine greene (e.g. 1971), which went back to the late 1960s. in nursing, in north america, hermeneutics was taken up as a research approach since the 1980s by some beginning thinkers such as allen (1995), benner (1985,1994), chesla (1995), and diekelmann, allen, and tanner (1989), yet threads of hermeneutics have always been situated in nursing thought and practice. engaging hermeneutics as a research approach holds an inherent sensibility with these practice disciplines. nursing, social work, education, and psychology have always been intrinsically interpretive in the nature of their practices. this is not necessarily a methodological claim, but a substantive one. research and practice, at their core are “socially structured, meaning-generating and perspective dependent” pursuits (allen, 1995, p. 181). they share a deep kinship or in other words a “double hermeneutic necessity” (p. 181) that co-exist interdependently. this does not diminish, negate, or limit the need for other methodological considerations. rather, the moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 vol. 1 2 claim of this journal is simple and slightly audacious: whatever methodology we choose or are required to choose to study the ins and outs of our respective professions, our day to day work is itself hermeneutic in character. as practitioners, we are situated in the middle of ongoing and multifarious negotiations of mutual and self-understanding, and understanding is necessarily connected to interpretation (gadamer, 1989). the kinds of discretion that are called forth in our practices are about making sense of particulars, putting them in context, assigning relevance and meaning, and acting on the implications of that meaning. this is an interpretive practice that occurs in a shifting in-between, in the middle of relationships, contexts, and particularities. as such, practitioners are brokers of understanding (moules, 2000). for example, in nursing, there is no such thing as an uninterpreted observation. even the measure of an elevated blood pressure is contextualized. is the patient anxious, in pain, upset? educators, therapists, psychologists, social workers, and nurses innately are always in the process of contextualizing, appreciating that “facts are not separate from the meaning of facts” (walsh, 1996, p. 233). understanding occurs through language and in tradition (walsh, 1996), and practice disciplines have long known this interpretive tradition. “interpretation is an interaction between a historically produced text and a historically produced reader” (allen, 1995, p. 175). nurses, for example, recognize the importance of history how a disease developed, what symptoms came first, and when and they know how to “read” this history into its current context of particularities. hermeneutic understanding enables us both to value history in this complex, clinical sense, and to go further to consider what it might mean to “take” another’s history or to explore what is included or excluded by our histories. educators, too, know that students as well as teachers come to school with complex and mixed personal and family histories and ancestries. more than this, however, the knowledge entrusted to and explored by students and teachers in schools is itself a complex of living ancestries. coming to teach and learn in ways that do justice to these complexities faces students and teachers alike with an ongoing hermeneutic task, or according to kearney, a hermeneutic wager: how to take up the wealth of the world’s knowledge in all of its often contradictory complexity and not betray it with the simplicities of the old, tired industrial model of education. differently put, nursing and education, to use these two sites as examples, are, in their very practices, deeply interpretive disciplines wherein the work of something like hermeneutics is already at work. moreover, both of these disciplines have been faced directly with the co-opting of these interpretive practices by the technologies of medicalization on the one hand and the often-angry vagaries of “tradition education” on the other. therefore, the kinds of knowledge that come from hermeneutic research is knowledge that can be obtained, appreciated, and used by practice professionals, for we can have access to this kind of knowledge, and more importantly, we can know what to do with it, given practice legacies of interpretive wisdom. this coming to know is itself a legacy of practices that must be practiced in order for us to become practiced in them. it is not that these disciplines have decided that hermeneutics is a viable research methodology among others for studying their practices. it is that these disciplines have recognized that their practices are already deeply hermeneutic. the discipline of hermeneutics, with all of its long histories of controversy, contention, imagination, and thought, thus provides these practice disciplines with a form of self-articulation, clarification, and questioning that is already amenable to how such disciplines live and work in moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 vol. 1 3 the world. hermeneutics also provides detailed critiques of the inadequacies of natural science models of thinking and understanding to such lived practices. this recognition of an inner kinship is how “applied” is to be understood in the term “applied hermeneutics” drs. nancy johnston, deborah mcleod, and nancy moules established the canadian hermeneutic institute in 2009, with its inaugural 3-day meeting in halifax, nova scotia, canada. the intent of the institute was to bring together scholars of hermeneutics and hermeneutic research across disciplines in creative dialogue and conversations of philosophy, research, and practice. the first visiting scholar was dr. david jardine, professor in the faculty of education at the university of calgary. in 2010, the institute was hosted in toronto with visiting scholar, dr. john d. caputo, professor of religion emeritus at syracuse university and the david r. cook professor of philosophy emeritus at villanova university. in 2011, dr. richard m. kearney, charles h. seelig chair of philosophy at boston college and visiting professor at university college dublin, was the visiting scholar for the institute held in calgary, alberta. dr. kearney initiated the idea for a journal that could showcase the work he heard from institute participants of bridging philosophy and practice. dr. caputo’s observation, that was mirrored by dr. kearney’s in the following year, was at first a surprise and then a gracious appreciation about how hermeneutics had “found its way” into practice disciplines such as nursing, education, social work, and psychology. they both expressed a profound awareness of the ways we were teaching hermeneutics, how students were taking up the ideas, and how we were using the philosophy of hermeneutics to guide research in our disciplines. dr. kearney suggested the idea of establishing a journal that would demonstrate how hermeneutics does not simply reside in philosophy but can be applied to living aspects of the world in such a way that human conditions and experiences can be understood differently and practice can be changed. as we launch the journal of applied hermeneutics, we proudly offer the first paper as an invited essay on diacritical hermeneutics by dr. richard kearney. in this paper, kearney expands on his project of diacritical hermeneutics that he introduced in strangers, gods and monsters (2003). this is a philosophical paper, and yet it quickly becomes clear that this is a philosophy of care, of urgent concern for questions of how we live in the world as beings of sense and flesh, and how we can search for justice and reconciliation in situations of fear and conflict. dr. kearney’s commitment to addressing these concerns is demonstrated by his involvement in drafting proposals for a northern ireland peace agreement in the 1990s, and more recently in the guestbook project, creating openings for dialogue across historical, cultural, and ideological divides (examples of this work can be found at: http: //www. bc.edu/schools/cas/guestbook). for those of us working in practice disciplines, seeking ways of better understanding what it is we do, and how to fulfill our obligations to those we meet in our work, the dialogue between philosophy and practice can be a powerful source of creative possibility. dr. kearney’s paper presents a valuable resource for our efforts to further the work of applying hermeneutics and stands as an inspiring opening to this new journal. we are delighted to offer this venue of shared and open publication of work that matters and makes a difference. in the complexity of our human lives and relationships, hermes is alive and well. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 vol. 1 4 authors nancy j. moules, rn, phd, professor, faculty of nursing, university of calgary, achf/achri nursing professorship in child and family centred cancer care, editor, journal of applied hermeneutics graham mccaffrey, rn, doctoral student, faculty of nursing, university of calgary, assistant editor and journal manager, journal of applied hermeneutics angela c. morck, rn, mn, doctoral student, faculty of nursing, university of calgary, assistant editor and journal manager, journal of applied hermeneutics david w. jardine, phd, professor, faculty of education, university of calgary acknowledgements a special thank you to dr. david w. jardine the ultimate teacher of hermeneutics who has shaped so many of our lives, scholarly endeavors, and thinking. thank you to assistant editors and journal managers: graham mccaffrey, rn, doctoral student, faculty of nursing and angela morck, rn, mn, doctoral student, faculty of nursing, university of calgary for actually making this online journal come to life and “work”. also thank you to judy powell, journals manager and project coordinator, and jeff liske, software developer, synergies project, libraries and cultural resources, university of calgary in their guidance about how to do this. references allen, d.g. (1995). hermeneutics: philosophical traditions and nursing practice research. nursing science quarterly, 8(4), 174-182. benner, p. (1985). quality of life: a phenomenological perspective on explanation, prediction and understanding in nursing science. advances in nursing science, 8(1), 1-14. benner, p. (1994). interpretive phenomenology: embodiment, caring and ethics in health and illness. thousand oaks, ca: sage. chesla, c.a. (1995). hermeneutic phenomenology: an approach to understanding families. journal of family nursing, 1(1), 68-78. diekelmann, n., allen, d., & tanner, c. (1989). the national league for nursing criteria for appraisal of baccalaureate programs: a critical hermeneutic analysis (pub. no. 15-2253). new york, ny: national league for nursing press. gadamer, h-g. (1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.) (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. greene, m. (1971). curriculum and consciousness. teachers college record, 73(2), 253-270. kearney, r. (2003). strangers, gods and monsters: interpreting otherness. new york, ny: routledge/taylor & francis group. moules, n.j. (2000). nursing on paper: the art and mystery of therapeutic letters in moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 vol. 1 5 clinical work with families experiences illness. (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of calgary, calgary, ab, canada. pinar, w. (1975/2000). curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualists. reissued in 2000 as curriculum studies: the reconceptualists. troy, ny: educator’s international press. walsh, k. (1996). philosophical hermeneutics and the project of hans-georg gadamer: implications for nursing research. nursing inquiry, 3(4), 231-237. microsoft word klingle batman template.docx corresponding author: kirsten klingle, m.ed. email: kirsten.klingle@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics july 1, 2015 ©the author(s) 2015 batman and the sticky-fingered maiden: psychology as an interpretive practice kirsten klingle abstract this paper is a short reflection on the nature of psychology as an interpretive practice by exploring the question: how, if at all, does interpretation apply to the field of psychology? this author presents the notion that interpretation is relational and that both client and therapist histories shape the individual’s ways of interpreting experience and prejudices that arise in therapeutic practice. keywords interpretation, psychology, hermeneutics if interpretation, as a concept, were a living breathing being, i think it would be female. i think she would be exceptionally quiet, often speaking in a whisper and wearing fuzzy white slippers so as to tread lightly and not give away her presence. i like to think she would have sticky fingers from venturing into many unknown and mysterious places and would be found exploring secluded nooks and camouflaged caves places of darkness that yearn to be exposed and lit from within. her very presence would be experienced by some as desirable, and by others as unwelcome given her tendency to ignite a chemical reaction. she would have a womb filled with preconceived notions, understandings, misunderstandings, personal histories, and internalized beliefs all bumping up against one another like a metal vessel filled with atoms. in the field of psychology, interpretation is an omnipresent force that psychologists and clients alike must appreciate and revere, as this sticky-fingered maiden is a lingering and necessary ingredient for human connection. klingle journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 5 2 interpretation: the significance of relationships interpretation, as i see it from a hermeneutic perspective, is closely bound up with how we understand and make sense of experience. we can only truly and deeply understand experience if we enter into the interpretation of it, and yet we can only interpret an experience if we have some understanding of it. this understanding need not always be in the form of personal experience, as understanding may come from hearing the experience of another. nevertheless, the relationship between interpretation and understanding is both iterative and symbiotic. to add to the complexity of this matter, interpretation also seems to be deeply embedded in relationships. as a counselling psychology student, i believe we (psychologists, also referred to throughout as therapists or practitioners) are constantly in a state of interpretive practice as we seek to understand not only our own experiences, but also the experiences of another, our clients. in this way, the focus is on interpretation as inextricably linked to and enrooted in interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. we are in something, and that which we are in is relation to the self or another. in a similar vein, we humans, along with our experiences, do not exist in a vacuum. we are constantly being shaped by other inhabitants and the greater world around us, while at the same time shaping others. the practice of psychology, more specifically, can be thought of as a microcosm whereby this interaction between two beings has the power to shape and change both parties. for this change to take form, the psychological practice depends on the porosity of humans, that we can be touched, moved, and transformed by our own experiences and by bearing witness to the experiences of others. in so doing, we may enter into the experience of another yet we continue to remain grounded in our own bodies and within our own mind. in other words, psychologists can listen with openness yet we can never escape the fact that we hear and process all things interpretatively. interpretation in psychology turning briefly to the literature on psychotherapy, the term “interpretation” is also described as a technique used by the therapist in an effort to extend and deepen understanding. patterson (1974) had this to say about interpretation: clarification responses deal with what is explicitly and implicitly in the client’s behaviour, verbal and/or nonverbal. interpretations go beyond this, involving a contribution by the therapist. in interpretation, the therapist adds to what the client is saying, going beyond the client’s verbalizations and putting in something of his own. (p. 110) porter (1959) also attempted to elucidate this concept of interpretation in psychology. as he explained, therapists move beyond reflecting and towards interpretation when their motivation changes. as porter stated, the difference is not in what the therapist says. the difference is in the therapist’s purpose when he says it….when the therapist utters some words which are a construing of what the client or patient has expressed and it is the therapist’s purpose to be asking of the client or patient whether or not the construction put on the client’s expression was the klingle journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 5 3 meaning intendedthat’s a reflection. when the therapist utters some words which are a construing of what the client or patient has expressed and it is the therapist’s purpose to be informing the patient what meaning his expression holds regardless of his, the patient’s, intended meaningthat’s an interpretation. (p. 57) this distinction between reflexive and interpretive practice seems to highlight the notion that practitioners are deeply intertwined and invested in the therapeutic process their voices, experiences, and perspectives are of value in shaping the therapeutic alliance and the therapeutic journey. the therapist is not simply a parrot tasked with repeating key statements or offering rephrased summaries constructed by the client. nor is the therapist a detached and all-knowing being shrouded behind a screen as in the days of freud. instead, both client and therapist bring forth their experiences, past and present, along with their interpretations of these experiences. in so doing, the interaction is a prosperous one as both parties offer something to the other, and both potentially reap the rewards of such an encounter. histories: owning our suitcase what might the interpretive practice look like in the therapy room? could interpretive practice be as basic as offering the client a metaphor for their experience? i would argue yes, it can be that simple, but like most things in life it can also be far more complex. by offering our interpretation of what the client brings forth, there is the possibility to change, make anew, or shift ever so slightly the client’s way of seeing his or her own experience. yet the interpretive practice of psychology also allows for a rich bi-directional change, wherein the therapist too is transformed as a result of the interaction. this process is layered and somewhat convoluted. as the client interprets his or her experiences through a particular frame of reference (taking into account, either consciously or unconsciously, the historical, social, emotional, cognitive, and cultural contexts), therapists too enter into relationships with a particular frame of reference from which to understand and interpret their own and the clients’ experiences. we create and carry with us our histories, and return to these stories of the past often, perhaps without knowing. put another way, both therapist and client enter to the therapeutic interaction with a metaphorical suitcase full of past “stuff.” for some this stuff may include positive experiences, such as a healthy and happy childhood filled with memories of feeling loved and cared for. yet the suitcase may also be filled with negative stuff, such as past hurts and experiences of abuse. for most of us, the suitcase is filled with both types of experiences the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. with this in mind, psychology, as an interpretive practice, is about recognizing the significance of our suitcase and how the contents of this suitcase shape and influence our interpretations. prejudices: batman for you, batman for me when thinking about how best to illustrate psychology as an interpretive practice, i am reminded of my work with one client, “miles,” a 36 year-old male. miles had a dream of becoming a stand-up comedian and worked hard at this pursuit, often devoting hours to perfecting his craft. klingle journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 5 4 however, he made little in the way of income and was forced to live at home with his parents as a result. early on in our work together, when asked about what he would like to get out of therapy, miles stated, “i want to become my own batman.” batman. bat man. a man who is a bat? a bat who is a man? there is so much in the word and there is so much in the meaning of the word that could be unpacked. dialoguing with a client allows me, the therapist, to do just that. i can not only check for clarification (e.g., asking “batman like the cartoon?”), but i can also deepen and enrich my understanding by asking questions that bring the topic to life such as “what does batman represent to you?”; “what does it mean to become your own batman?”; and “how will you know if and when you have become your own batman?” entangled in all of this, of course, are my own beliefs about and past experience with batman. for me, having been raised by a strong feminist mother, i was always told that i am no different from my male peers. as a result, at the age of seven when springtime approached and my mother needed to purchase new rubber boots for me she bought the boots that were on sale black, matte rubber boots with a batman symbol affixed to the front for all to see. i was mortified. i wanted sickly-sweet bubble gum pink boots with sparkles yet i was stuck with these black batman demon boots. batman, for me, will be forever tied to this experience of wanting to embrace the feminine yet being forced to look like a boy. according to my female peers at the time, batman was stupid and as a result of wearing these batman boots i, too, was stupid. i felt set apart from other girls, flawed, and disgusting. batman represented shame. so, when miles brought up this desire to become his own batman i interpreted it, perhaps without consciously knowing, from a place of past hurt. however, this is not what batman represented for miles, quite the opposite in fact, as i would come to learn in the later sessions. for miles, batman was a symbol of independence; he was a hero, a respected, valued, and contributing member of society. batman was also confident and acted selflessly for the good of others. these were all attributes that miles venerated and sought to embody. because of this experience with miles, i was forced to open up my suitcase, take a critical look, and dig around a little. as a result of our ongoing dialogue about becoming his own batman, miles would open up and unpack his own suitcase, in turn exploring the notion of what it means to be masculine and challenging what he believed to be the dominant discourse of hegemonic masculinity. as it relates to the interpretive practice of psychology, we both came to this therapeutic experience with our own “stuff” and yet we left through the same door, slightly changed, but headed in different directions. to suggest psychology is an interpretive practice is to explicitly bring to light the relevance of the ineradicable, ever-present sticky-fingered maiden. she is such a constant that we may very well forget her presence, similar to the way in which we tune out the nearby conversations in a café or habituate to the smell of coffee as it wafts through the room. while it may be true that she sometimes sit in the corner of the therapy room seemingly inconspicuous, at other times she will be positioned in front of, or in between, the client and therapist ensuring her presence is not overlooked. no matter our acknowledgment, she will persist always and in all ways. klingle journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 5 5 references patterson, c. h. (1974). relationship counseling and psychotherapy. new york, ny: harper & row. porter, e. h. (1959). critical incidents in psychotherapy. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. microsoft word mouleseditorial.docx corresponding author: dr. nancy j. moules email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics july16, 2012 the author(s) 2012 editorial dr. david jardine and the “descartes lecture”: twenty years of miraculous returns nancy j moules in 1995, i was a master’s student in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary taking my first graduate nursing course in qualitative research. our professor, dr. marjorie mcintyre, informed us that she had invited a professor from the faculty of education for a guest lecture. she had become acquainted with dr. david jardine’s hermeneutic endeavor through a mutual teacher and outstanding scholar, dr. ted aoki. dr. mcintyre advised us in advance to “expect the unexpected” and that there was the potential of our worlds being shaken up over the three hours with dr. jardine. on the day he was to lecture, i arrived to class early to find a somewhat unconventional looking man in leather pants and bare feet, fiddling rather ineptly with the technical equipment in the room and i wondered if he was the media person who was setting up the equipment for class. once the rest of the class arrived, dr. mcintryre introduced this barefooted, long haired man as dr. jardine and turned the class over to him. for an hour and a half, we were transfixed, gently, yet almost audaciously and sometimes boldly invited into a philosophical and historical vortex that spun us around, indeed turning our taken-for-granted and assumed worlds and understandings upside down. dr. jardine began the class with the reading of the late bronwen wallace poem, “appeal,” taken from her collection of poetry, the stubborn particulars of grace” (1987). he started by taking us into the ordinary, everyday world we all recognized and then he took us back through history to show how we got to where we could recognize such a thing and recognize such a thing differently. after a tracing of this history and an understanding of how, in fact, the natural and human sciences bifurcated and ended up in a place of shadows, truth, imitation, and certainty, we took a coffee break and returned to room to bring our topics to the discussion. the topics that showed up in this discussion were issues of human concern hermeneutics applied to the moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 7 2 worlds of practice professions: nursing, social work, education, and psychology to name a few. dr. jardine gently cradled our topics and with the skill of a master interpreter helped us see what was beneath the obvious, what was addressing us, what we were not hearing in the “data,” and what the topic was asking of us. he ended the class with the final poem in wallace’s (1987, pp. 110-111) book, called “particulars,” the last stanza of which reads: and to say for myself, just once, without embarrassment, bless, thrown out as to some lightness that i actually believe in, surprised (as i believe they were) to find it here, where it seems impossible that one life even matters, though like them, i’ll argue the stubborn argument of the particular, right now, in the midst of things, this and this. i completed my phd in 2000 (with dr. janice bell as my supervisor), conducting a gadamerian hermeneutic study, and like my contemporaries, like those students before us, and the many students to come, i was exquisitely mentored by dr. jardine in hermeneutic understanding, tradition, and how to conduct “good” research which did not misappropriate or betray this tradition. in 2004, i began teaching the master’s level qualitative research course in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary, and in the same year, dr. dianne tapp and i developed a course in hermeneutic phenomenology (binding, moules, tapp, & rallison, 2007). in 2010, i began teaching the doctoral level qualitative research course. in all of these three courses and in every offering of them, i have invited dr. jardine to attend as a visiting lecturer, using the 3 hours to offer his “descartes lecture” as i have come to call it. this past winter, i asked permission to tape the lecture, had it transcribed, and suggested david submit it to the journal of applied hermeneutics as an invited submission. hundreds (if not thousands) of students across disciplines have heard this talk over time, some many times, as i have known of students who have taken david’s courses, and returned to audit them several times because of what they gain from them. with each offering of this lecture, the talk is somewhat different; something new emerges. i personally have heard it over two dozen times, and i am as transfixed every time, as much as i was the first time. this lecture is a legacy that i am proud to publish in our journal. what happens in the second part of the class after the lecture is what is more difficult to describe and why we chose not to transcribe that part of this recent class that we recorded. the students disperse at the coffee break, heads spinning, sometimes looking like deer in headlights. they return to class after the break, with their topics of research or study trying to take hold of something, trying to find traction. it is here that we see what wallace (1987, p. 13) wrote in appeals: as if they hoped to find that opening in each of us from which, long after we’d been told what happened next, they could begin their slower, more miraculous returns. the topics showed up: all the unsettling, upsetting, exuberant conversations about nurses working with children who die; domestic violence; the love of teaching children to learn to love math; the responsibilities and decision making of nurses who work triage in emergency departments; the inescapable human dramas of aging, dementia, love, death, suffering, and joys. as each topic found its moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 7 3 way into the conversation, hermeneutics joined it and, as is the case with all good hermeneutic work, hermeneutics itself disappears as the topic, and the topics themselves come to light through the delicate, rigorous, and courageous work of interpretation. this is work that makes sense only in the face-to-face encounter that cannot be captured on tape or in description; it is the real work of hermeneutics. it is the miraculous return of the topic, where there really is no “method” to it. it is the arrival of understanding that happens with an acute attentiveness to the topic, and a practiced art of strengthening. the openings the students and their topics sought were portals that hermeneutics and aletheia offer an enlivening and remembering of something that was forgotten, lost, or left. there is a buoyancy in this part of the class as we realize that all of this tradition and history and oppression is, in fact, joyous, enlightening, and offers something. this second half is different every time, but there is something present that echoes gadamer’s (1989) words: …in deciphering and interpreting...a miracle takes place: the transformation of something alien and dead into total contemporaneity and familiarity…that is why the capacity…to understand…is like a secret art, even a magic that frees and binds us. (pp. 163-164) like all good magic, some things cannot be explained, or should not be explained. dr. jardine came to the faculty of education at the university of calgary in a somewhat “roundabout” way. he completed his undergraduate degree in philosophy and religious studies in 1973 at mcmaster university in hamilton. his ma supervisor was g.b. madison, who brought hans-georg gadamer to mcmaster while david was studying there. professor madison had paul ricouer as his supervisor in paris. david’s phd supervisor, dr. dieter misgeld, had studied under first gadamer and then habermas. dr. jardine started at the university of calgary in 1986. professor jardine has published 83 refereed journal articles, 35 book chapters, and 8 books on ecological, philosophical, hermeneutic, and buddhist studies of various facets of educational theory and practice. i have no doubt that dr. david jardine will, in time (in his lifetime, i hope) be renowned as one of the most astute and profound hermeneutic scholars and prolific writers of the past three decades. for now, i am content to proudly call david my teacher, my mentor, my colleague, and my friend. references binding, l., moules, n.j., tapp, d.m., & rallison, l. (2007). hermeneutic musings on learning: the dialogical nature of teaching interpretively. journal of educational thought, 41(2), 179-189. gadamer, h.g. (1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.) (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. wallace, b. (1987). appeal. in the stubborn particulars of grace (pp. 11-13). toronto, on, canada: mcclelland & stewart. wallace, b. (1987). particulars. in the stubborn particulars of grace (pp. 110-111). toronto, on, canada: mcclelland & stewart. microsoft word strong corrected proof.docx corresponding author: dr. tom strong email: strongt@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics april 13, 2014 ©the author(s) 2014 twins philosophically separated at birth? a review of groundless ground: a study of wittgenstein and heidegger tom strong review groundless ground: a study of wittgenstein and heidegger lee braver cambridge, ma: mit books, 2014 isbn-13: 978-0262526043 370 pages keywords heidegger, wittgenstein, postfoundationalism, review groundless grounds is all we have ever had, which proves their adequacy. lee braver, 2014, p. 215 the modern scientific project aimed to get things right using proper names that could be mapped on to foundational knowledge, yielding what hillary putnam (1981) critiqued as an unattainable “god’s eye view” of reality. both born in 1889, both initially seduced by a philosophical dream of articulating foundational reality, and each to become one of the 20th century’s most influential philosophers, ludwig wittgenstein and martin heidegger are typically regarded as having very different philosophical projects, though each attacked science’s purported “ground.” wittgenstein, protégé of bertrand russell, took logical positivism to what many saw as its analytical apex, only to later quite publicly abandon this approach for a view of meaning grounded in “language games.” heidegger, protégé of edmund husserl who had been aiming to make a strong journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 6 2 science of subjectivity with his phenomenology, reformulated subjectivity as “being,” invoking temporal, contextual, relational engagements and performances. in their respective intellectual journeys, both wittgenstein and heidegger took head on the notion that science and philosophy could correctly name and map the foundations of reality. my personal interest in braver’s (2014) groundless grounds relates to how interpretive ideas can be adapted to frontline helping practices. i have grown increasingly concerned about how philosophy of science arguments keep being used to suppress an interpretive and relational approach to practice (e.g., strong & busch, 2013). modern “r”ealist science is alive and well, promising practitioners and the public that human problems can be correctly named and mapped on to foundational knowledge from which prescriptive solutions are warranted. underpinning scientific arguments of this kind is a view that objective (i.e., untainted by human meaning and contact, see daston & galison, 2007), knowledge is obtainable and should trump any forms of knowing developed through human interaction. this particular philosophy of science is antithetical to any notion that interpretive, relational work could be ethical, valid, or helpful. without strong counter-arguments to bolster an interpretive and relational approach to helping, such notions of helpfulness can seem easily discreditable in these days of evidence-based practice. needed by the modern science approach, it seems, are “how-to” scripts and foundational knowledge to guide one’s helping; less important are the pragmatic immediacies of humans relating and understanding. my understanding of the postmodern and social constructionist upheavals in late 20th century human science and service work was that different, relational grounds were becoming accessible to family and narrative therapists like myself. however, in the early stages of self-identifying in this way, i felt inadequately grounded in interpretive ideas that could shore up a compatible philosophy of science that supported this approach to practice, and so i read (lock & strong, 2010). my reading inevitably brought me to wittgenstein and heidegger as key thinkers whose ideas had applicability to my preferred ways of practice. lee braver’s groundless grounds is an ambitious and groundbreaking volume for making rigorous comparisons of two intellectual giants seldom juxtaposed. this would not be a good introductory book to the thinking of either wittgenstein or heidegger (see monk, 1990 or richardson 2012, for their respective biographies), and is targeted more for those who have been rewarded by reading wittgenstein’s (1953) philosophical investigations or heidegger’s (1962) being and time. as any reader of their books can tell you, the challenging prose of each book is compounded by the counter-intuitiveness of their revolutionary ideas. many readers are unaware of how steeped they are in the foundational grounding of modern science, that reading either (later) wittgenstein or heidegger can initially leave them feeling their intelligence is being insulted, until unrecognized, bedrock assumptions, get dislodged with vertigo-inducing consequences. it is the comprehensiveness and brilliance with which both wittgenstein and heidegger took on their respective philosophical projects that makes them the 20th century’s most influential philosophers. braver’s project, which in my estimation succeeds well, is to bridge what each thinker was doing, finding parallels in wittgenstein and heidegger where former scholars saw distinct, possibly incommensurable, ideas and approaches. braver helps readers move through some of the most obvious parallels accessibly and informatively. while wittgenstein launched his philosophizing down the foundational path with his analytic philosophy classic, tractatus logico-philosophicus, he abandoned this direction bestrong journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 6 3 cause of its idealizations, and lack of hubris (philosophers cannot articulate a foundational urlanguage of science). like heidegger (though there is only one cited instance of wittgenstein mentioning him at a meeting of the vienna circle), both turned to how people did everyday life using means and terms that were real for them. each philosopher adopted an anthropological stance, focusing on in many cases what polanyi (1967) would refer to as the “tacit dimension” of everyday life. in particular each was interested in how life was performed meaningfully (i.e., for the people so engaged) in taken for granted interactions. this interest is a striking departure from the atomistic views of prior thinkers, that discrete essences of meaning could be severed from the activities in which they find their immediate relevance and significance, and studied as foundational knowledge of material reality. both wittgenstein and heidegger took up linguistic views of meaning based on how words were used, as moves in “language games” (wittgenstein) or as “equipment” in teleological activities (heidegger). most important, however, for braver, is their antifoundationalism. it was this turn away from discoverable foundations which has drawn the greatest heat from critics. charges of relativism and nihilistic semanticism have been the usual first line of attack on those taking up the ideas of wittgenstein and heidegger. it is, however, precisely here that a new kind of grounding – a socio-cultural grounding – is central to the arguments of both thinkers. the grounds are participatory, relational interactions that, over time, acquire the force of habit, customs to which we hold ourselves and each other. this extends to the language we communicate in our interactions, situated evaluations of what is proper or good, and the (“foundationshaking”) disruptions caused when our interactions defy custom and expectation. the human world both wittgenstein and heidegger were pointing to cannot be atomized, its meanings and customs obtain through agreement and trusting perpetuation. there is a difference being inside and engaged with this human world than there could ever be if one took seriously the abstract, “objectively detached,” claims of the modern foundationalists, as braver (2014) underscores: this groundlessness would make thought viciously circular were we trying to enter it from the outside – if, that is, starting from the epistemological veil of ignorance, we were to try justifying the principle of seeking reasons. fortunately, being has “graced” us by “throwing” us into this circle in the first place…thrownness is a gift that enables, not an existential burden that compromises. (p. 202) braver is a clear and gifted writer, well up to the task of communicating the overlaps and complements he invites readers to find in the thinking of wittgenstein and heidegger, who, in his colourful prose, “dig up descartes to kill him off” (p. 8) or were “weaning us off the hunger for explanations” (p. 152). he is not without mild criticism for either writer, seeing in heidegger, for example, an obsession with phenomenological writing about “being” (braver: “even a committed heideggerian like myself must concede that his chronic invocations of being can approach selfparody, a kind of ontological tourette’s syndrome”, 2014, p. 130). wittgenstein imports an animalistic nature to account for human finitude, habitual interacting, and the animating impetus for such interacting (braver again: “wittgenstein wants to help us face the knotted squalor of the real, to force our heavenward gaze down to the detritus of practice”, p. 226). what braver does best is set up previously unconsidered juxtapositions, like this one on wittgenstein’s private language argument: “as wittgenstein’s ‘private’linguists can only introspect with public tools, so for heidegger ‘knowing oneself is grounded in being with’” (p. 165). strong journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 6 4 of course, there are differences between these two philosophical giants which are downplayed in braver’s book for the intended similarities and complementarities. wittgenstein grounds his view of meaning in language games, and apart from referring to these as habit-like, disregards the kind of historicism and “care” one finds in heidegger. later heidegger grew increasingly mystical and focused on poetic excellence, while wittgenstein turned his attention more fully on errors he saw in the philosophy of science. what braver has done is tapped obvious and not so obvious sources for key insights into where both men shared revolutionary projects of unsettling the much idealized ground of modern science. “groundless grounds” does not refer to an oxymoron; it speaks to the historical and cultural arbitrariness and seeming durability of a relational ontology that interpretive and other scholars are still coming to terms with. references braver, l. (2014). groundless ground: a study of wittgenstein and heidegger. cambridge, ma: mit press. daston, l., & galison, p. (2007). objectivity. new york, ny: zone books. heidegger, m. (1962). being and time (j. macquarrie & e. robinson, trans.). toronto, on, canada: harper collins. (original published in german in 1927). lock, a. j., & strong, t. (2010). social constructionism: sources and stirrings in theory and practice. new york, ny: cambridge university press. monk, r. (1990). ludwig wittgenstein: the duty of genius. new york, ny: penguin. polanyi, m. (1967). the tacit dimension. new york, ny: doubleday anchor. putnam, h. (1981). reason, truth, and history. new york, ny: cambridge university press. richardson, j. (2012). heidegger. new york, ny: routledge. strong, t., & busch, r. (2013). dsm-5 and evidence-based family therapy? australian and new zealand journal of family therapy, 34(2), 90-103. wittgenstein, l. (1953). philosophical investigations (g. e. m. anscombe, trans.). oxford, uk: blackwell. wittgenstein, l. (1961). tractatus logico-philosophicus (d. f. pears & b. f. mcguinness, trans.; introduction, b. russell). london, uk: routledge & kegan paul (originally published in german in 1921) microsoft word jardine.docx corresponding author: dr. david w. jardine email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics august 19, 2013 the author(s) 2013 guest editorial: morning thoughts on application david w. jardine the text . . .if it is to be understood properly i.e., according to the claim it makes-must be understood at every moment, in every concrete situation, in a new and different way. understanding here is always application. hans-georg gadamer (1989, p. 309) truth and method below is an amazing passage in light of gadamer’s thoughts on application and how interpretation makes little sense “in general.” its character only starts to appear once it is applied to a topic, a case, a locale, an instance. only in the face of the specific resistances and demands that the case brings, is interpretation able to “work.” the individual case is thus “fecund,” not only in the sense that its new arrival demands that what has been previously established open itself up to the arriving sense of potency and possibility and demand that the new case brings (thus demonstrating the deep and unavoidable impermanence of such establishments). it is also fecund in the sense that facing and working through such moments of arrival, again and again, is how getting “good” at interpretation happens it is fecund in relation to my ability to work interpretively. that is why it is always i, myself, who must take this venture. it is also why understanding a hermeneutic study requires precisely such a venture from readers. interpretation is, in this sense, an ongoing practice that takes practice to become practiced in. one’s “general” ability in this regard is the product of something specific being repeatedly practiced, and, therefore, it never becomes simply a method that can be handed over to someone unpracticed. it is always a practice whose practice can, and must be, cultivated in order to be understood. “understanding here is always application,” and this includes understanding a hermeneutic study and understanding how to “do” hermeneutic work. hermeneutic work is thus always both about application and cultivated at the locales of application. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 9 2 so, now, the amazing passage that parallels this hermeneutic arc. it is from volume two of tsong-kha-pa’s (2004), the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment, originally composed in 1406 ce: it is an extremely important point. if you train in these attitudes of impartiality, love and compassion without distinguishing and taking up specific objects of meditation, but only using a general object from the outset, you will just seem to generate these attitudes. then, when you try to apply them to specific individuals, you will not be able to actually generate these attitudes toward anyone. but once you have a transformative experience towards an individual in your meditations practice . . .you may then gradually increase the number of individuals you visualize within your meditation. (tsong-kha-pa, 2004, p. 35). this passage highlights why, earlier in this text, tsong-kha-pa stated that we must avoid falling into the “problems of peace” (p. 24). our professions teaching, nursing, counseling, working with troubled students in schools, or any other locale of interpretive venture in the face of some face in the world do not lead us to seek our own peace separate from the suffering of the world, but seek, rather, to “take on a life of suffering . . . in order to help all living beings” (p. 29). this is a life, shall we say, of enduring and undergoing, of venture, hidden as these images are in gadamer’s use of the term erfahrung for the sort of “experience” from which we might learn (with its etymological root fahren, to journey, venture, and its other derivative, vorfahren, those who have ventured “before” [vor-], i.e., ancestors). this is why gadamer (1989, p. 356) cited in this regard an idea central to his hermeneutics that is inherited from the greek tragedies of aeschylus (c. 525 bce): pathei mathos, “learning through suffering.” hermeneutically understood, our professions are not seeking theories or explanations or models or interventions that promise to pacify or cure the life-world and its woes. we know precisely how often such promises have not only come to grief but unwittingly caused suffering. we know, too, from alice miller’s (1989) work, how education in particular was once, and in many ways, still is, quite witting about such matters of inflicting suffering, as miller’s title announces, “for your own good.” still and all, and despite the understandable hesitancy that must surround our work, that work requires that we “remain in the realm in which beings dwell” (tsong-kha-pa, 2004, p. 30). we turn toward suffering, again and again. this is akin to hermeneutics persistently turning towards the lifeworld and not away from it to some edenic world of essences cast in peaceful, finalized composure; this is how hermeneutics takes on part of the phenomenological lineages of a return to lived-experience whilst jettisoning edmund husserl’s frightened desire to quell that life with the eidetic reduction. hermeneutics interprets, not in order to thematize, essentialize, or placate, but in order to let our troubles be what they are, thus ameliorating our fraught “if onlys” and therefore making clear-sightedness and welljudged action possible. letting it be what it is involves, in some sense, freeing ourselves from our attachment to it: “to rise above the pressure of what impinges on us from the world means to keep oneself so free from what one encounters of the world that one can present it to oneself as it is” (gadamer, 1989, p. 444). tsong-kha-pa does say, earlier in the text, that “those who have developed jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 9 3 the . . .spirit of enlightenment and [thus] aspire [to it], although they lack its application, still ‘shine’” (2004, p. 16). i think, with student teachers for example, who sometimes desperately ask where to begin, of how taking on the spirit of interpretability is the key (tsong-kha-pa calls this “aspiration”). it means, simply put, proceeding in light of an understanding of the interpretability of the world, seeking those dependent co-arisings that surround things, and resisting the logic of substance (gadamer, 1989, p. 242) and the temptations of reification (tsong-kha-pa, 2002, p. 120), both of which aim to suppress the uprisings of the world and seek false permanencies in this, the deeply human land of shadow. even if you have not often practiced the application of such a spirit and have not therefore, built up the composures of practice, still, it is in this spirit that one proceeds in the repeated practice of application. again, however, the repeated practice of application is essential: “if you have only an intellectual understanding of this spirit, then you likewise have only an intellectually understanding of what it means to be a . . .practitioner” (p. 17). it is always this child’s life, that parent’s woes, this client’s nightmare, that patient’s desire to let go in the face of impending death, that is key. interpretation always requires doing the work again in the face of the task we face. it is good to hear that: the more you practice these things, the more accustomed your mind will become to them, and the easier it will be to practice what you had initially found difficult to learn. (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 185-186) however, our proper relation to such matters must always and everywhere be rewon, here, and here. this is where is borne the deep hesitancy that is part of hermeneutic work (see jardine, in press), and about such hesitancy, both hermeneutics and buddhism are steadfast. our composure must always be re-gained, re-dedicated to the work at hand. our becoming experienced practitioners always involves venturing out all over again always having to suffer once again the exigencies of existence and their lessons and, as i have found in my own work, that there the fellowship (sangha) of such work is a great comfort. it is in this common fortitude or strength that the strength of hermeneutics lays, even though part of its demand is that i myself and no one else must take on this dedication and no one can take it on in my stead. it is with no irony at all, however, that tsong-kha-pa (2004, p. 182-207, emphasis added) names this “joyous perseverance.” it is thus that pathei mathos can shed something of its dour countenance. very early morning, bragg creek ab, july 16, 2013 biography david w. jardine, phd is a professor in the faculty of education at the university of calgary. references gadamer, h.g. (1989). truth and method. (j. weinsheimer, trans.). new york, ny: continuum books. jardine, d. (in press). “you’re very clever young man”: on the truth of suffering that lies at the heart of a hermeneutic pedagogy. in d. jardine, g. mccaffrey, & c. gilham (in press). on the pedagogy of suffering: jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 9 4 hermeneutic and buddhist meditations. new york, ny: peter lang. miller, a. (1989). for your own good: hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence. toronto, on, canada: collins. tsong-kha-pa (2002). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment. volume three. ithaca ny: snow lion. tsong-kha-pa (2004). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment. volume two. ithaca ny: snow lion. microsoft word estefan review.docx corresponding author: andrew estefan, rpn phd email: aestefan@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics june 29, 2015 ©the author(s) 2015 book review: “opus hermeneuticae.” the work of hermeneutics: a review of moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang andrew estefan the journal of applied hermeneutics serves as a gathering place for scholars from many disciplines to come together and think about how hermeneutics contributes to the exploration and development of disciplinary knowledge. this journal is part of a conversation that, to draw upon gadamer’s (1960/2006) ideas, has a “spirit of its own” (p.385). gadamer believed conversation had emergent properties, bringing into existence something that might not have been foreseen. i have taken great interest in the ways the conversation in this journal is unfolding. conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice is a timely and articulate contribution to this hermeneutic scholarship. read as a whole, the book is a thoughtful accounting of how one might imagine and enact hermeneutic research. the authors’ careful treatment of key philosophical work lends considerable credibility to their accounts of how hermeneutic research can be done. the book contains many examples, closely tied to philosophical and methodological concerns. conducting hermeneutic research is set out in ten chapters, with a foreword by american philosopher and continental philosophy expert, dr. john caputo. in his foreword, dr. caputo calls upon readers to engage with the book in a way that fits a broad hermeneutic agenda. we are being asked to “see the unseeable.” that which is unseeable is precisely so not because it is transcendental, but because of its immediacy. the work of hermeneutics involves doing. interpretation is active, alive, and engaged. moules and her colleagues ask us to see this, and they show us a way. estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 review 1 2 in their opening chapter, “coming to hermeneutics” the authors preface their work with acknowledgement of how being and knowing extends from the past into the present and, in turn, to imagined futures. their words remind me of how dewey’s (1938/1997) theory of experience links experience to history and remembering, and how this invites us into acts of imagination and wonder about possibilities and that which is to come. to engage with the world in this way calls forth humility and ethical obligations. against a background of rich traditions and histories, interpretations are moments in which we are able to think, see, and experience differently but never from a position of certainty or solidity. conducting research that builds upon history, tradition, and experience requires of us an effort to engage with the world in ways that open us to interpretations and also allow us to think and move around them. this book explores some murky territory for hermeneutics, that is, the possibility of a method for the conduct of hermeneutic research. to do this, the authors have very clearly moved from an engaging and illuminating account of the philosophical foundations of hermeneutic phenomenology through to examples of how hermeneutics is being enacted in the world. in their opening chapter, the authors clearly set the scene for tensions that arise between philosophy, topic, and method, and they return to show these tensions throughout the text as they describe and explain their research and practice. chapter 2 engages with the voices that have shaped the hermeneutic research landscape. of particular note for me is the careful attention to the confluences and departures in thinking between key figures who have influenced contemporary hermeneutic research. the ideas in this chapter, indeed throughout the book, are accessible to students and more seasoned academics alike. the historical tracing in this chapter helpfully clarifies what hermeneutics brings to understanding in a field of practice. chapter 3 is devoted to the work of gadamer. through a focus on his work, the authors weave a complex argument for the place of hermeneutics in human understanding and in inquiry in practice disciplines. chapter 4 extends the thinking in the previous chapter, by way of a “for and against” method. learners, as well as those engaged in hermeneutic work, will find a home in this chapter. the discussion here is suffused with the tensions of bringing together reticence about “method” with the necessary conditions for enacting the “doing.” the authors clearly evoke the troubles of subscribing to method scripts that privilege one type of knowing over another. by invoking dostal and gadamer, the authors shift our thinking from method in its conventional or prescriptive sense to recognition that method is a discipline of attending to “things.” this is an important shift in this chapter because it heralds for us a turn towards a different conception of what it might mean to be methodical. at the same time, the writing refocuses us to attend to things; in other words, giving primacy to the topic that hermeneutics sets out to engage, and in which it also lives. with attending to the topic as a central endeavor the authors carefully choose the term guidelines to escape the traps of the “methodological imperative” and to “steady the motion” of inquiry. the five guidelines in this chapter are extremely helpful. they read as principles rather than instructions that researchers can think with as they explore, inquire, and engage interpretively. chapter 5 invites readers to consider the address of the topic and in doing so, calls attention to an important premise of hermeneutic work: that hermeneutic inquiry begins in a world already estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 review 1 3 saturated. as we live and practice in this saturated world, sometimes we are given reason to pause, or we encounter a sudden change in direction that draws attention to something that we were previously unaware. in this book, the address is emphasized as a catalytic moment: it is the moment when understanding begins, it is a sensitization to the possibility of a topic for inquiry. address hones the mind and senses to notice as the unfolding topic weaves in and out of shadows. chapter 6 provides helpful advice and techniques for conducting interviews in hermeneutic research. the idea of crossing boundaries is invoked to explain that research conversations do indeed step over the boundaries of ordinary social conversation. the point is made that effective research interviews are skillfully enacted and purposeful. moules and her colleagues suggest some strategies for effective interviewing in hermeneutic research without lapsing into trying to define the “hermeneutic interview” and they are wise in their avoidance of making grand claims in this regard. in their care-full discussion, the authors go on to clarify an important point: that effective conversational interviewing in research is not the same as gadamer’s notion of the genuine conversation. the tensions between these conceptions of conversation are well played out in the text, and this is a particularly useful discussion for those who are new to hermeneutics as well as those seeking clear direction about how undertake a qualitative research interview. in chapter 7, data analysis is positioned as synonymous with interpretation. in order to analyze in a hermeneutic study, researchers must engage with data interpretively and this chapter grounds the reader in the theoretical and practical dimensions of interpretive practice. important questions about analysis are addressed in this chapter. for example: how far can one go with an interpretation before it extends beyond a defensible origin in data? why should a hermeneutic researcher be prepared to extend interpretations into broader social and theoretical landscapes? when do some techniques (like using metaphor and etymology) become limiting in their capacity to extend the interpretive endeavor? these are important questions for hermeneutic researchers to entertain and resolve in the process of designing their studies and inquiring into particular topics and phenomena. chapter 8 argues for interpretive writing as that which connects analysis to interpretation and as the medium through which hermeneutics can reveal itself. this chapter is very much a “show” rather than “tell.” the chapter draws heavily upon the doctoral research of two of the authors (mccaffrey & laing) to show possibilities for, and styles of, interpretive writing. both examples are strong and herein lies a risk for this text: that the exemplars offered could seem out of reach for some, because both mccaffrey and laing are accomplished interpretive writers. this risk is minimized in the glimpses the authors have provided into their thinking as they wrote and subsequently engaged with their interpretations. for me, this chapter calls forth a wondering about the experiences and phenomena that shape my own research inquiries. as i wonder, i recognize my entry into these curiosities and puzzles is different to how mccaffrey and laing approached theirs. as i result, i do not feel alienated from the text; instead i am prompted to imagine a different form of interpretive expression. thinking with the material in this chapter has been instructive and also freeing. the examples in this book are best read as invitations, not prescriptions, and, as with the preceding chapters, they open thinking space for interpretive practice rather than close it down. estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 review 1 4 the increasing uptake of qualitative research methods means that criteria for rigor in qualitative research continue to be explored and debated. in the context of postmodern sensibilities, it is no longer possible to retain confidence in a “one size fits all” approach to determining good qualitative work. the diversity of theoretical underpinnings, methods, and intents mean that panmethodological approaches to rigor will simply no longer do. chapter 9 titled, “the rigor and integrity of hermeneutic research” assertively dispels the notion that generalized criteria can be applied to hermeneutic research. the authors quote marguerite sandelowski (1993, p.2), who argues rigorous research as being that which maintains a “fidelity to the spirit…of the work.” if this is indeed what forms the foundation of rigor, the spirit of the work must be captured in criteria that pertain to the method. chapter 9 sets out considerations and criteria for rigorous hermeneutic research. these criteria make sense in the context of the theoretical and practical concerns already made explicit in the book. the coherence here is striking, and although some familiar terms of qualitative rigor appear in the chapter they are being moved in interesting ways that will provoke further conversations among scholars in hermeneutics as well as other qualitative approaches. in their final chapter, the authors address the “so what” questions associated with hermeneutic research. this chapter concludes in a way that reveals a further way this book might work in the world. in the apology, socrates explained his duty of being a cross-examiner of “the pretenders to wisdom.” moules and her colleagues cross-examine influential ideas about hermeneutic work and, in doing so, they open up something new, in light of what has gone before, exposing, revealing and concealing in an intelligent and elegant way. this is what happens when immersed in a world made knowable by hermeneutics. to conclude, conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice will be an influential new voice in the research methodology literature. this book is a product, in part, of concerns about method for hermeneutic research. dewey (1938/1997) emphasized how living things, such as people, attempt to turn the energies that act upon them into “means of [our] own further existence” (p.1). hermeneutics not only acts upon us, it is within us. hermeneutics is energetic, it is pervasive, and sometimes hard to capture as it hides amid the experiences of the world. moules and her colleagues go a long way towards harnessing hermeneutics in a way that leaves it free and unencumbered, but that makes possible a vision of how it might sustain us in research work. this book is an opus hermenuticae; it is the work of hermeneutics, and, it works. references dewey, j. (1938/1997). democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education. new york, ny: free press. gadamer, h.g. (1960/2006). truth and method (3rd ed, j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans). london, uk: continuum. sandelowski, m. (1993). rigor or rigor mortis: the problem of rigor in qualitative research revisited. advances in nursing science,16(2), 1-8. microsoft word moulesmccaffrey2015.docx 1 university of calgary, faculty of nursing corresponding author: nancy j. moules, rn phd email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 11, 2015 ©the author(s) 2015 editorial: catching hermeneutics in the act nancy j. moules1 & graham mccaffrey1 as 2014 came to a close, we sent to publication with peter lang publishers a book manuscript entitled “conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice” (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, in press). as we await publication, we have been reflecting on the very intense, important, and exceedingly difficult work of writing this particular book. we had the privilege of dr. john d. caputo writing a foreword to the book and he offered this remarkable comment saying that the book… catches hermeneutics in the act. it brings home in the most vivid way just what hermeneutics really is – in the concrete. its authors are concretely engaged and hermeneutically enlightened practitioners who are describing the difficult and delicate conditions under which concrete hermeneutical work takes place. (caputo, in moules et al., in press) these are humbling words that could not more clearly elucidate the difficulties that writing the book held – it was difficult and delicate work and, at times, it was wordless work, a challenge when you are trying to write a book! catching something is tricky business and especially tricky if what you are after is the exact opposite. we did not want to catch and entrap hermeneutics as a research “method” – we wanted to catch it “in the act” of the world – in the ways it allows things to act and exposes the action that is often just “lost to the work of simply getting by” (wallace, 1987, p. 12). caputo’s words go to the heart of the enterprise of applied hermeneutics and are an encouraging reminder of the newness and excitement of what that represents. caputo, as well as dr. richard kearney and dr. nicholas davey, have come to the annual canadian hermeneutic institute to share their expertise as hermeneutic philosophers, steeped in a long and profound tradition. in each case, they have told us that they approached the invitation with curiosity as to what scholars and practitioners in practice professions both wanted to hear from them, and what we could have to add to that tradition. each time, they have shared their knowledge, ideas, and thinking with moules & mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 editorial 1 2 exceptional generosity and they have “got it” – they have quickly seen that the interpretation of human encounters in the context of practice professions is as much a fit object for hermeneutic study as an artwork, a poem, or a religious text. having a glimpse of applied hermeneutics through the eyes of philosophical experts is at the same time gratifying and a stimulating reminder that we are working fresh ground, and it behooves us to keep working to be as exacting as we can about what we do. it is in this spirit that it felt timely to undertake to describe the work-in-progress that is applied hermeneutics in the fleshed-out form of a book. we proposed the book because we believed that something had to be articulated about how hermeneutics, particularly gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics (1960/1989), had something to say to practice professions about a way to approach research around human concerns. four academics (three nurses and one educator) endeavored then to find language that was “concrete” enough to be understood but did not fall into the trap of offering a prescribed method of conducting hermeneutic research. in chapter four of the book, we took up this issue of method as, rather than a set prescription, it is instead an act of being methodical and following leads. in his foreword, caputo reminds us of the etymological meaning of method: meta as making one’s way along a particular path (odos). gadamer (2007) suggested that “understanding is an adventure, and like any other adventure, is dangerous” (p. 243), but, in this book, we tried to suggest that understanding is the ultimate hermeneutic wager: that understanding matters and will make a difference in matters of human consequence of living well in conditions where suffering often exists. we tried to offer a prompt to conduct research that touches on human conditions of living: illness, schools, children, health, relationships, suffering, healing, and hope. this was hard work. balancing a description of how to conduct something without offering a map, guide, baton, or train engine conductor cap is challenging. in many ways, the work of hermeneutics as a research approach is somewhat intuitive, but we also believe it is something that can be taught, learned, and definitely practiced. writing the chapter about conducting interviews was an act of trying to capture the complexity, contingency, and fluidity of the interview. it is deeply responsive as is hermeneutics. there is no guide for an interview, no prior questions determined that will protect one from what is going to come in the interview. it is like describing art – here is how it appears right here and now, but if you turn to look at it from another angle or through another eye, its meaning changes. conducting an interview in a responsive mode requires tact, discretion, discernment, and skill. it requires a turn of head and turn of eye and ear. it is not easy to do and even harder to describe or teach. the chapter on analysis stopped us in our tracks. we know what we do when we are into the deep work of interpretation and we so often talk with students about how to begin this deep and involved work. interpretation is skilled, complex, and exciting work. to find language, though, to describe this practice was very difficult. we needed language that was at once concrete and yet complex. hermeneutic analysis (i.e., interpretation) is not easy; we could not sell it off as such, however we had to present it as something that is “doable” and something that can be learned and practiced. data analysis, like so much in hermeneutics, is most purely caught on the wing, in the intense back and forth of making sense of particular human situations. beneath the dry research terminology of data, are the stories, memories, thoughts, and feelings of people often recalling momoules & mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 editorial 1 3 ments of extremity in their lives. we bear a responsibility to hold those data and make good use of them, transforming them without traducing them, in our interpretations. that is the ethical heart of hermeneutic work. approaching the chapter on rigor and integrity of hermeneutic research felt like a revisiting of every proposal we have ever written, every presentation to scientists, or die-hard quantitative researchers, and a recalling of trying to defend something without being defensive (see for e.g., moules, jardine, mccaffrey, & brown, 2013). writing it, finding the words though, despite the difficulty, proved to be particularly affirming. we were not simply arguing for the rigor but really seeing it and, for once, actually believing in it with a conviction we had been shy about before. the same happened in the “so what” chapter – the understandable demand that the work matters and addresses what is at stake. what surprised us was the discovery that what is really at stake in this work is that it compels us to live in the world differently: the knowledge of knowledge compels. it compels us to adopt an attitude of permanent vigilance against the temptation of certainty. it compels us to recognize that certainty is not a proof of truth. it compels us to realize that the world everyone sees is not the world but a world we bring forth with others. it compels us to see that the world will be different only if we live differently. it compels us because, when we know that we know, we cannot deny (to ourselves or to others) that we know…(this) implies an ethics that we cannot evade…an ethics that springs from human reflection and puts human reflection right at the core as a constitutive social phenomenon. (maturana & varela, 1992, p. 245) the “so what” of hermeneutic research is inherently a social endeavor. though questions that guide hermeneutic research are vitally important, no less important is to answer these questions tentatively, openly, and with the hermeneutic humility that recognizes that no one question can be answered definitively once and for all. rather, hermeneutics “concentrates on the question of what happens to us when we ‘understand’” (davey, 2006, p. xi). hermeneutics compels us as researchers and users of research to live in the world differently, to realize that understanding is not, as davey (2006) invoked, just about interpreting the world but also about changing it. (moules et al., in press) hermeneutic questions are hard questions; hermeneutic understanding is hard understanding. yet, at the heart of it is the capacity to know and live differentlyto find language that works. we believe this book will make a contribution to our practices but we also believe it made a difference to our thinking and what is yet to come. applied hermeneutics, hermeneutics as a way of conducting research, is in one sense well established – there are many published studies, there are variant approaches in the literature (to which this book makes a substantial contribution), but set against the centuries-old traditions of interpretation of religious texts, or the philosophical development of hermeneutics it is still a new adventure. each publication in a practice discipline that stakes a claim as hermeneutic is still perceptibly defining the field. there is a degree of exposure in this – we have encountered scholars in the humanities who look askance at our travails in the world of hermeneutics, just as we are familiar with the objections of those who fetishize the scientific method in our own disciplines. it is only a hermeneutic truism, however, to say that there is more to learn, more to be done, and that even as we have tried to articulate how far we have come, the way ahead lies open. moules & mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 editorial 1 4 in this book, we strived to conserve the human conditions and sensitivities of our topics and, according to caputo, we offered “what the philosophers call the ‘hermeneutic situation’ in the concrete, glowing white hot and jumping off the pages of the philosophy books” (caputo, in moules et al., in press). references caputo, j.d. (in press). foreword: the wisdom on hermeneutics. in n.j. moules, g. mccaffrey, j.c. field, & c.m. laing, conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. davey, n. (2006). unquiet understanding: gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. new york, ny: suny. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (2nd rev.ed., j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.) new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h-g. (2007). the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (r. palmer, ed. & trans). evanston, il: northwestern university press. maturana, h.r., & varela, f. (1992). the tree of knowledge: the biological roots of human understanding (rev. ed.). boston, ma: shambhala. moules, n.j., jardine, d.w., mccaffrey, g., & brown, c.b. (2013). “isn’t all oncology hermeneutic?”. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 3. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5w95141 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (in press). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. wallace, b. (1987). appeal. in the stubborn particulars of grace. toronto, on, canada: mcclelland & stewart. microsoft word jardine 2015 corrected proof.docx corresponding author: david w. jardine email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics april 23, 2015 ©the author(s) 2015 a failed attempt to finish a thought left in mid-air by christopher hitchens david w jardine abstract this paper is a short reflection on the nature of hermeneutics and the strange joy and burden of writing. it focuses on a particular form of hesitancy, telling, and re-telling found in a short video clip featuring christopher hitchens. keywords hermeneutics, writing, christopher hitchens banish all dismay extinguish every sorrow if i'm lost or i'm forgiven the birds will still be singing. from elvis costello (1993), “the birds will still be singing” it is an odd thing when something you read or hear actually haunts you and bids remembering, repeated thought and writing, especially when that thing is precisely about being haunted, in a certain way, about hesitating and staying one’s actions. it is odd to have an idea, an image, an off-hand comment or a hunch stay with you despite its refusal to cede its secrets. this is part of the practice of writing. learning to let stay. it is an urgent patience, a weird joy. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 2 2 the late christopher hitchens is well known enough for me to not pause for long over his work except to say that his adamant critiques of religion (hitchens, 2007) and other forms of totalitarianism were complemented by the work of richard dawkins (2006) and hitchens received, quite near his death, the richard dawkins award at the 2011 texas free thought convention, one of hitchens' final public appearances. from that appearance: christopher hitchens: some of you know, i suppose you all know now, that the words of one of my favorite poets ernest dowson are quite often with me. dowson stole them actually from the roman poet horace: non sum qualis eram, “i am not as i was.” . . . . in the meantime, we have the same job we've always had. there are no final solutions. there is no absolute truth. there is no supreme leader. there is no totalitarian solution that says “if you would just give up your freedom of inquiry, if you would simply abandon your critical faculties, a world of idiotic bliss can be yours.” you will certainly lose the faculties, and you may not know as a result, that idiotic bliss is even more idiotic than it looks. but we have to begin by repudiating all such claims. grand rabbis, chief ayatollahs, infallible popes, the peddlers of surrogate and mutant quasi-political religion and worship-the dear leader, the great leader, we have no need of any of this. and looking at them, and their record, and the pathos of their supporters, i realize that it is they who are the grand imposters, and my own imposture this evening was mild by comparison. (godlessuk, 2013) the reason i mention the connection to richard dawkins in particular is because of what i find to be a still-amazing youtube video clip of hitchens and douglas james wilson (objectivebob, 2010). reverend wilson is the pastor at christ church in moscow, idaho, and has had many intense and easily accessible public debates and talking-head news encounters with hitchens. this clip is the final moments of a 2009 documentary collision: christopher hitchens, vs. douglas wilson (documentaryondemand, 2013). wilson and hitchens appear to be in the back seat of a car and hitchens mentions how those (like himself) arguing against the divine design of things still take seriously the hairsbreadth of (what he understands to be) happenstance of “the goldilocks effect,” of the earth being just right in its relation to the sun and its sustenance: “you have to spend time thinking about it, working on it. it’s not a trivial [thing]” (objectivebob, 2010). hitchens refers to having had a particular conversation with richard dawkins. then this: christopher hitchens: . . . and then at one point. i think this is not on camera, i said, if i could covert every one in the world -not convert, if i could convince -to be a nonbeliever, and i’d really done brilliantly, and there's only one left. one more and then it would be done. there’d be no more religion in the world. no more deism, theism. [pause]. i wouldn’t do it. [pause]. and dawkins said, “what do you mean you wouldn't do it?” i said, “i don’t quite know why i wouldn’t do it.” and it’s not just because there’d be nothing left to argue and no one left to argue with. not just that. though it would be that. somehow, if i could drive it out of the world, i wouldn’t. and the incredulity with jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 2 3 which he [dawkins] looked at me stays with me still. i’ve got to say. (objectivebob, 2010) as with dawkins’ look of incredulity, this clip now stays with me. thoughts first about the aesthetic “punch” that we often feel when we read or hear something: the word for perception or sensation in greek was aesthesis, which means at root a breathing in or taking in of the world, the gasp, “aha,” the “uh” of the breath in wonder, shock, amazement, and aesthetic response. (hillman, 2006, p. 36) tersely put, this is the reason for all those drudgery pages in hans-georg gadamer’s truth and method (1989, pp. 42-100) and his attempts to rescue this phenomenon of aesthetic address (p. 299) from its tragic subjectivization and marginalization in our understanding of the experience of truth. this video hits me still, and when i quickly re-created hitchens’ words for my son over the holidays just passed, all he said was “yep.” me too. i wouldn't do it. and “it would not deserve the interest [i] take in it if it did not have something to teach [me] that [i] could not know by [my]sel[f]” (gadamer, 1989, p. xxxv). but at first (and still), i just suspected this might be so, and hitchens did, too, in a way. he himself remembered and retold this story and told it, as you can see in the video, with the sly grin of suspecting there’s something to it a kind of coyote grin, a bit self-satisfied, a bit expectant, a bit joyous. were it just a subjective incident with no loft or pitch to it beyond “moist gastric intimacy” (sartre, 1970, p. 4), re-telling it seems very odd sheer self-indulgence and entertainment. on the face of it at least, this is “not just that.” why do we re-tell? trying, perhaps, to work it out or, better, to see if something works out if you work it a bit: “something awakens our interest" (gadamer, 2001, p. 50). “something is going on, (im spiele ist), something is happening (sich abspielt)" (gadamer, 1989, p. 104). a clue, then, to gadamer's (1989, pp. 101-134) deep interest in (what is at) play (spiel) (and, i guess, in my interest in that hitchens video). something is going on. i suspect. so then the risk you run as a writer: maybe not, but only staying put will prove the case for good or ill. then there is that sort-of hoarder/gatherer/rummager thing that writers do --me, with this clip, saving it, transcribing it, wanting to remember it, telling people about it. there is something here that i need to keep with me, something of the way this idea hangs in the air, somehow, and then, too, of what this hesitation means. lord knows i’ve tried: compassion? sympathy? extinction? like saving a rare bird? knowing that if no one now believes these religious texts they quote, if no one adores these images and ideas, then something is perhaps irretrievably lost? loss of “the other” as a loss of oneself? levinas and the horror of facing the last face? pity? that it jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 2 4 would say something too much, too unbearable of me should i proceed? what about the secondlast believer? bluntly put, yuck to all this. and hence the irony, that many drafts of writing have been deleted and these deletions seem to have simply increased the glowing attraction of this clip. “[it] compels over and over, and the better one knows it, the more compelling it is. this is not a matter of mastering an area of study” (gadamer, 2007, p. 115). this is why, as a writer, i have repeatedly found that it is not just a matter of paying patient attention to the world --to little happenings-by like this clip -but doing so as if i will be answerable in writing to such things as arrive in (and, i must say, in part because of) such patient attending. that prospect --of being answerable in writing --intensifies attention in a most delicious way. and then comes the odd hermeneutic fidelity of trying to not betray this hovering linger of words and images and appeal and grins, but trying to keep it safe, trying to let it stand in itself, in its own repose. and then that impossible task, of trying to write so that the linger itself will be a bit legible in what i then write. the task of hermeneutic writing is to not fall for the falsehood that this lingering is an error that writing might fix. it is, rather, a truth that unfixes writing, makes it loft and swerve and exaggerate unpinned. this, of course, is why hermeneutic research is always prone to the writer's indulgences. the aim of writing is not giving myself free rein (latin indulgere) but giving this free rein by finding what of this can be eked out in words: “i wouldn’t do it.” “what do you mean you wouldn't do it?” i don't know what i mean. maybe that just attests to the deeply buried hermeneutic assertion, that its work is not about what people or texts or things or signs mean, but about what might happen if they were true. “it is only when the attempt to accept what is said as true fails that we try to “understand" the text . . . as another’s opinion” (gadamer, 1989, p. 294). “a text is not understood as a mere expression of life but is taken seriously in its claim to truth” (gadamer, 1989, p. 297). in remembering, repeating, and caring for this chance little clip, it serves as a sort of sentinel waiting for an arrival that would bespeak its good sense. it is as if this tale itself provides a way to remain alert to the day-to-day events that come and go, as if it is waiting for its own reprieve, waiting to be called for, waiting to be recognized by some kin of the world-the off-hand event or bit of reading or news story or gesture of a child in a grade one class, that will summon it, finally, to be what it is. i'm waiting for it to lift off my shoulders in a flight of its own, this sorrow. told and retold in almost ritual repetitions, worrying over bones or the great and ancient monastic murmuring of texts out loud and under the breath, seeking the truth of what it repeats, seeks its redemption in words. monkish practices of scholarship. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 2 5 telling and re-telling are attempts to let it find its freedom from my own obsessive remembering of it within the confines of a life whose imposture is both too great and too small by itself to think this through. writing this aims to free me from it and to free it from me. “the aim of interpretation, it could be said, is not just another interpretation but human freedom” (smith, 1999, p. 29). to face these fleeting things and try to entail them with the right attention, the right affection, with a devotion that is not about deepening the attachments of believing (the first steps towards totalitarian solutions [see jardine, 2015]) but the wonder that just might turn attachment into love. the staying of hitchens’ words in the face the last person to be convinced is the same stay as the pleasure over not quite knowing why. however, i don’t quite know why. references costello, e. (1993). the birds will still be singing. from e. costello, the juliet letters. warner brothers cd #45180. lyrics by e. costello, copyright plangent visions music inc. dawkins, r. (2006). the god delusion. boston, ma: houghton mifflin. documentaryondemand (2013, april 20). colisao: ateu x pastor [video file]. (this is a subtitled version of collision: christopher hitchens, vs. douglas wilson. level4 studio, phoenix az. director: darren doane, october 27, 2009, asin: b002m3shto). retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jwysecocc8. gadamer, h-g. (1989). truth and method (2nd rev.ed, j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum books. gadamer, h-g. (2001). gadamer in conversation: reflections and commentary (r. palmer, ed. & trans.) new haven, ct: yale university press. gadamer, h-g. (2007). from word to concept: the task of hermeneutics as philosophy. in r. palmer (ed. & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 108-122). evanston, il: northwestern university press. godless uk (2013, june 30). christopher hitchens last public appearance dawkins award [video file dated october 8th 2011]. retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud973couvys. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 2 6 hillman, j. (2006). anima mundi: returning the soul to the world. in j. hillman, city and soul (pp. 27-49). putnam, ct: spring publications. hitchens, c. (2007). god is not great: how religion poisons everything, new york, ny: twelve books. jardine, d. (2015). an ode to xmas present. on-line: https://www.academia.edu/10101433/an_ode_to_xmas_present. objectivebob (2010, july 5). christopher hitchens makes a shocking confession [video file]. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9tmwfkdwiy. sartre, j.p. (1970). intentionality: a fundamental idea in husserl's phenomenology. journal for the british society for phenomenology, 1(2), 3-5. smith, d.g. (1999). pedagon: interdisciplinary essays on pedagogy and culture. new york, ny: peter lang. microsoft word mcconnellfinal.docx 1 faculty of nursing, university of calgary corresponding author: shelagh mcconnell email: mcconnsj@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics september 27, 2012 the author(s) 2012 the hidden nature of death and grief shelagh mcconnell1, nancy j. moules1, graham mccaffrey1, & shelley raffin-bouchal1 abstract western culture can be described as death-denying and youth-obsessed. yet this has not always been the case. only a few generations ago, death was very much part of life where people died at home with their families members caring for them. a shift occurred, in part, because of the unprecedented advances in medical science that the western world has seen over the past 40 years. health care professionals now have the knowledge and the technology to prolong life in ways that were previously not only unattainable, but inconceivable. regardless, the reality that death will eventually come for each of us has not changed; merely our perception of it has. this perception is influenced by the hidden nature of death in our society. this begs the questions: if death in our culture is something to hide, to conceal, and to keep secret, then what does that say about our ability to express grief? what does this mean for those who face it as part of their chosen profession? how might we understand the nature of suffering for those who turn toward the suffering of others? this paper interpretively examines the nature of hidden death and hidden grief in our society. keywords death, grief, hermeneutics, hidden, pediatric palliative care nursing death is the ugly fact which nature has to hide, and she hides it well. alexander smith through my* years of practice as an acute care nurse at a large pediatric hospital, i have often been in the presence of dying children and grieving families. i have learned how to care for these children and how to talk about death with their family members. i have also learned about the culture of hiding death and grief from not only other patients and families in the hospital, but also from my colleagues, friends, and family members. the expectation that nurses mcconnell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 11 2 and other health care providers are somehow immune to loss and grief intrigues me and has inspired me to examine death and grief beyond the confines of the hospital and to explore the topic within the larger context of society. western culture can be described as death-denying and youth-obsessed. as a result, people go to great lengths to disguise even the signs of natural aging. one quick look at popular magazines and television advertisements will support the truth in that statement. the natural process of aging is hidden and so, too, is the dying process and death itself. ever more, the elderly are hidden in nursing homes; the dying are hidden in hospitals and hospices. in fact, daniel callahan, a philosopher who has written extensively on topics related to ethics and health policy wrote that “the present period might best be characterized as a revolt against death itself” (callahan, 2009, p. 106). only a few generations ago, death was very much part of life. for instance, in canada in 1926, one in five children would not survive to their first birthday (statistics canada, 2008). as a result, just about everyone would have lost a child close to them: son, daughter, neice, nephew, or grandchild. by comparison, today in canada fewer than one in 100 children die before reaching the age of one (statistics canada, 2008). therefore, today fewer of us are directly affected by the death of a child. death was closer; death was familiar. family members cared for their dying loved ones at home. death was not a private loss but was taken as a blow to all those who survived, both family and strangers. death required public affirmation of human solidarity against a harsh and indifferent nature. it was not to be hidden: families should be there when death was at hand, and the door thrown open to neighbors and even those passing by in the street. (callahan, 2009, p. 104) death is no longer perceived to be so close. people do not seem to live with the “ancient belief that [death] is inevitable, an immutable and unchangeable fact and human fate” (callahan, 2009, p. 104). a shift occurred, in part, because of the unprecedented advances in medical science that the western world has seen over the past 40 years. health care professionals have the knowledge and the technology to prolong life in ways that were previously not only unattainable, but inconceivable. the reality that death will eventually come for each of us has not changed; merely our perception of it has. advancements in medical science and technology have given us a false sense of being able to defy death, to avoid it, and perhaps even to postpone it indefinitely. william haseltine, ceo of human genome sciences, once said that “death is nothing but a series of preventable diseases” (callahan, 2009, p. 107, citing fisher, 1999) which is absurd, but this statement does highlight our cultural desire to conquer all diseases. it also draws attention to our cultural expectations around death and dying—the expectation that the ultimate goal is to keep people alive at all costs. increasingly, we see examples where “our technology has surpassed our humanity” (ferrell, 2006, p. 927). we see instances where patients are kept alive through the use of machines and medication which surely prolong suffering and certainly do not prevent the patient’s inevitable death. the hidden nature of death the word “hidden” means “being out of sight, not readily apparent, concealed” (merriam-webster, 2012). as the word “hidden” is closely related to “conceal” it is also relatmcconnell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 11 3 ed to the idea of aletheia, which is the greek word meaning truth-as-unconcealment (online etymology dictionary, 2012). aletheia, whose etymological roots are connected to the word lethe, which literally means “forgetfulness, oblivion” (online etymology dictionary, 2012) is also, according to greek mythology, a river in hades. western society has become accustomed to the concealment of death from our lack of knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes of a funeral home, to our euphemistic language when talking about death, to keeping our grief out of sight. some may argue that death is not hidden in western culture as our fascination with death is obvious in popular media: from movies and television to crime novels and even in news reports. stories of death attract interest and attention, yet when it comes to the death of someone close to us, when it comes to experiencing a “real” death, this fascination is often replaced with not only grief, but also disbelief and a desire to hide from experiencing emotional pain. western society increasingly caters to this desire to hide and to avoid facing the reality of death and grief. for instance, this is demonstrated in the decreased popularity of open-casket funerals in favour of “soothing ceremonies of remembrance” (callahan, 2009, p. 103). i have attended many funerals, particularly of children who i came to know through my work as a nurse. frequently, the memorial services for children from traditionally western families have been focused on a “celebration of life” with photos and toys, but no caskets or urns to be seen. often at these services, those in attendance are somewhat restrained in their outward expression of grief. i have also attended opencasket funerals of children from other cultures where handling of the body was common as was the public display of grief. for instance, i attended one funeral where the mother literally screamed in emotional agony through the entire service and at one point actually got into the casket of her dead child. the image of that haunts me even today. i now wonder if that event was particularly troubling because of our society’s desire to hide death and grief. am i merely uncomfortable with being denied the protection and luxury of concealed death and grief? the hidden nature of grief if death in our culture is something to hide, to conceal, and to keep secret, then what does that say about our ability to express grief? the message is simply “in a word, dear friends, keep your grief to yourself” (callahan, 2009, p. 105). it would seem then that hidden death is accompanied by hidden grief. the expression of grief, even by those who are identified as the bereaved, is not welcomed to be openly displayed for all to witness. furthermore, grief in our society is expected to have a time limit, despite the research that would suggest that grief is never overcome, but adapted to (attig, 1996; moules, simonson, prins, angus, & bell, 2004; neimeyer, 2001). it would be impossible for me to recall all the times i have heard statements such as “my dad died six months ago and i thought my mom would be doing better by now” or “if her son died three years ago, then why is she still not over it?” as a result, grievers are forced to hide their grief to keep it a secret. despite the expectations of society to conceal grief, the expression of grief is not always hidden intentionally. grief has a way of evading description (moules et al., 2004) as it lacks clarity and is difficult to define just by its very nature (cowles & rodgers, 1991; jacob, 1993; rodgers & cowles, 1991). the challenge in articulating grief is apparent through the use of metaphors (e.g., mcconnell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 11 4 describing grief a journey, a neverending fall, or an uninvited houseguest) as well as silences when those suffering talk about their experience of grief (moules et al., 2004). this is the inarticulate nature of grief (moules, simonson, fleiszer, prins, & glasgow, 2007). it would seem then that grief itself at times seeks to be concealed. the obligation of those who face death even when our culture encourages us to hide death and grief, some people refuse to do so. in fact, they turn towards it. interestingly, “to hide” means not only “to conceal” but also “to turn away” (merriam-webster, 2012). there must be something special about those people who choose to go against the norm and face death, something different about those who choose to turn toward death and not hide from it. some people are attracted to professions that encounter death because they have a personal history of loss, while others have spiritual reasons for wanting to work with those who are approaching the end of their lives. having met a variety of professionals who care for the dying, i do not believe there is any one reason why people do this work. some nurses, physicians, social workers, and chaplains devote their life’s work to caring for the dying and the bereaved. others work hard at it, but after a few years they move on to other jobs. nevertheless, what i have experienced and observed when faced with death and dying is that there is the sense of obligation to the patient and family. “obligation” means “something one is bound to do,” a commitment, and a responsibility to another (merriam-webster, 2012). caputo wrote that obligation is a feeling that comes over us when others are in need (caputo, 1993). obligation happens before we enter the room and stand at the patient’s bedside (caputo, 1993). we are suddenly overcome by something that demands our response (caputo, 1993). the power of the obligation is strong enough to override our desire to run from the room, to cover our eyes, to pretend that death has not come to call. despite wanting to close the door and avoid witnessing tremendous pain and suffering, our sense of obligation will often take over and demand our presence. this is despite the fact that there may be no tasks to complete, no conversations to have, no charting to write. yet our sense of obligation compels us to remain at the bedside and to simply bear witness to what is transpiring. the term “bear witness” means “to testify” and “to authenticate” (merriam-webster, 2012). there seems to be an obligation to witness times of suffering and death. etymologically, the word “witness” is related to the word “martyr” (online etymological dictionary, 2012) meaning someone who constantly suffers (merriam-webster, 2012). in the current vernacular, being a martyr is not considered to be a particularly good thing; however, if we consider its use as someone who suffers with others, the term is particularly appropriate. i would be remiss if i did not also explore the meaning of “to bear” as i have with the word “witness.” the meaning of “to bear” is particularly appropriate in the context of supporting the dying and the bereaved: “to support a weight or strain” and, with this meaning, it is a synonym for “to suffer.” it would seem that suffering is a fundamental part of bearing witness as both words are linked to the word suffer. furthermore, the word “bearer” has the historical meaning of “one who helps carry a corpse to the grave” (online etymological dictionary, 2012). nurses usually do not literally carry a corpse to a grave. nevertheless, i do think the work of nurses, and othmcconnell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 11 5 ers who work with the dying, carry the patient and family through the experience by way of the care and presence we provide in times of suffering and grief. interestingly enough, if i take the word “bear” yet one step further and examine the homophone “bare” it further enriches the meaning of bearing witness. “bare” means “lacking appropriate covering” with synonyms such as “to uncover, to reveal, to expose, to uncloak” (merriam-webster, 2012). not only is “bearing witness” the idea of authenticating suffering, but also revealing the suffering through our presence. i have been a witness to dying and grief, but found i had neither words of consolation nor gestures of comfort. i could simply bear witness to be present, to carry, to authenticate, and to suffer. the hidden nature of working with the dying and the dead when we witness pain, suffering, dying, and death, we are changed. what does this mean for those who face it as part of their chosen profession? how might we understand the nature of suffering for those who turn toward the suffering of others? is this experience of witnessing suffering as complex as the experience of grief itself? i have spent my nursing career working with the pediatric palliative care population. while i had once aspired to be one of those nurses who spend their careers caring for dying children, i came to realize that this was not to be my journey. i am not one of those nurses. i am no longer able to sit with the dying and the bereaved. i have been with families in moments of intense grief and suffering. when i hear others talk of their experiences with the dying, my own stories begin to resurface, begin to reveal themselves. my own memories of suffering are no longer tightly contained in a box in my brain marked “i wish i could forget.” why is that? why not tell these stories rather than conceal them? is there a burden to these stories? does the burden lie in telling stories that others do not want to hear? as a newly graduated nurse, i very quickly came to realize that my friends and family were interested in the cute and uplifting stories about the children i cared for at the hospital. they were not, however, interested in the stories of death and dying. they did not want to hear about suffering and pain. the burden, then, is mine to carry—a burden that cannot be shared. even if i wanted to tell some of my stories, i would not know where to begin. such is the inarticulate nature of grief (moules et al., 2007). yet i have heard families of children who have died tell their stories. what makes my version of the story inarticulate? i want to understand this better. i had the opportunity to interview two of my colleagues on this topic for a research project. one nurse spoke at length about a palliative child with whom she had developed a special bond. the nurse even went so far as to say “[child’s name] and her family were like family to me.” then i asked her how she reacted when she learned of the child’s death, and she said that she was devastated by the loss and was overcome with sadness. then she quickly added, “but i don’t have grief.” why deny the existence of grief a universal human experience that is completely appropriate in the face of loss and death? perhaps nurses are not experiencing grief, but rather something else? if not grief, then what? or perhaps nurses simply believe that the ownership of grief is held by the patient and family and not by the nursing staff? this notion is consistent with some of the work of doka (1989) on disenfranchised grief. in the case of nurses, they are often not seen to be a member of the bereaved mcconnell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 11 6 family. therefore, they hesitate to express grief, thus often forcing them into silence (kuhn, 1989). when nurses experience loss through their work, they often believe that they neither have the right to grieve nor is it their place to do so (lev, 1989). even when nurses have developed a close relationship to a patient who dies, they are denied the opportunity to grieve; such is the hidden nature of nurses’ grief (clements & bradley, 2005). there may be something else at play here. the combination of the inarticulate nature of grief and disenfranchised grief would seem sufficient to begin to understand the phenomena. yet i am drawn back to the work of caputo on obligation. certainly there is an overwhelming sense of obligation to bear witness to death and suffering. however, in the context of nurses’ work, particularly in the acute care setting, there are also the issues of managing conflicting obligations, responsibilities, and expectations. the pain of turning towards death is intensified in the chaos of acute care. i vividly remember a shift when i was assigned three patients: two with treatable illnesses (one with a urinary tract infection and the other recovering from a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy) and one who was actively dying. i badly wanted to be available to the dying child and her family in those last precious moments. i wanted to have the time to try to make those moments count. yet because of my obligations to the other two children and their families, i kept being called away by those other responsibilities and compelled to respond to the demands imposed upon me. in comparison to the needs of the dying child, the demands of the other families seemed trivial. one father yelled at me for being 10 minutes late giving his son tylenol. because of our duty to protect the privacy of others, i could not tell him why i was late. i could not tell him that i was making hand and foot prints of a dying child. i wanted to scream at his selfishness, at the unfairness of parents having to watch their children die, and the failure i felt for not being able to protect a child from death the ultimate human failure. when grief refuses to remain concealed we all seem to play a part in this concealment. nevertheless, the stories of death, dying, and suffering live within us stories that may be hidden, but are never completely forgotten. we all carry grief. we all live with grief, which seems to need to expose itself every so often. i have worked very hard to keep my stories of grief hidden. even so, they find their way out. often at unexpected times, stories of grief take over my vocal cords and make themselves known to an unsuspecting audience. perhaps it is unnatural for grief to be hidden indefinitely for it is not its true nature. grief likes to appear and disappear as it sees fit. grief is a trickster. grief is unpredictable. it hides between our words, refusing to be captured, then comes tumbling out unexpectedly at another time. it would seem then that, on occasion, grief wants to be let out through our stories. in a sense, grief itself wants its burden to be shared. footnote *although this paper is co-authored, it is written in the first person of the first author: mcconnell. references attig, t. (1996). how we grieve: relearning the world. new york, ny: oxford university press. callahan, d. (2009). death, mourning, and medical progress. perspectives in biology mcconnell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 11 7 and medicine, 52(1), 103-115. doi: 10.1353/ pbm.0.0067 caputo, j. d. (1993). against ethics: contributions to a poetics of obligation with constant reference to deconstruction. bloomington, in: indiana university press. clements, p. t., & bradley, j. (2005). when a young patient dies. rn, 68(4), 40-43. cowles, k. v., & rogers, b. l. (1991). the concept of grief: a foundation for nursing research and practice. research in nursing & health, 14(2), 119-127. doka, k. j. (1989). introduction. in k. j. doka (ed.), disenfranchised grief: recognizing hidden sorrow. (pp. 287-299). new york, ny: lexington books. ferrell, b. r. (2006). understanding the moral distress of nurses witnessing medically futile care. oncology nurses forum, 33(5), 922-930. jacob, s. r. (1993). an analysis of the concept of grief. journal of advanced nursing, 18(11), 1787-1794. doi: 10.10461j.13652648.1993. 18111787.x kuhn, d. (1989). a pastoral counselor looks at silence as a factor in disenfranchised grief. in k.j. doka (ed.), disenfranchised grief: recognizing hidden sorrow. (pp. 287-299). new york, ny: lexington books. lev, e. (1989). a nurse’s perspective on disenfranchised grief. in k. j. doka (ed.), disenfranchised grief: recognizing hidden sorrow. (pp. 287-299). new york, ny: lexington books. merriam-webster, 2012. merriam-webster online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/ moules, n. j., simonson, k., fleiszer, a. r., prins, m., & glasgow, b. (2007). the soul of sorrow work: grief and therapeutic interventions with families. journal of family nursing, 13(1), 117-141. doi: 10.1177/107 4840706297484 moules, n. j., simonson, k., prins, m., angus, p., & bell, j. m. (2004). making room for grief: walking backwards and living forward. nursing inquiry, 11(2), 99-107. neimeyer, r. a. (2001). reauthoring life narratives: grief therapy as meaning reconstruction. israel journal of psychiatry and related science, 38(3-4), 171-183. online etymological dictionary, 2012. online etymological dictionary: http://www. etymonline.com/ rodgers, b. l., & cowles, k. v. (1991). the concept of grief: an analysis of classical and contemporary thought. death studies, 15(5), 443-458. statistics canada. (2008). canadian demographics at a glance. retrieved from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-003-x/91003-x2007001-eng.pdf microsoft word jardine 2016 coreected proof.docx corresponding author: david w. jardine, phd email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 28, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 “there will not always be teachers like this”: for g.b.m. david w. jardine, phd the buddha said, “because there will not always be teachers like this . . . make a painting in the gate-house of a five-part wheel of cyclical existence, around the circumference of which are the twelve dependent-arisings in both forward and reverse progressions.” the wheel of existence was then drawn. (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 325) it’s a funny thing, when one of your teachers dies, especially at a distance of days and lives and circumstances. i remember in 2002, preparing to give a talk to some gathering of the nursing faculty at the university of calgary when i found out that h.g. gadamer had died, cut off in his prime at 102 years. it had the effect of stilling and suspending what then followed, a talk that has since fallen from memory except for that suspense. the death of a teacher casts the teaching up into the air. a painting in the gate-house will not quite suffice. pictures can be deceptive, perhaps especially ones drawn from memory. now, early afternoon, saturday, january 16, 2016, another old teacher whom i haven’t seen in decades has died: dr. g. b. madison, most recently professor emeritus from the department of philosophy at mcmaster university, hamilton, ontario. he was my ma thesis supervisor and teacher and, for a brief while, friend. our paths separated years ago under circumstances best only hinted at. i can only attest to old memories of grad school and to the paths and prospects that opened up in front of me because of him, sometimes in spite of him, eventually without him. gary was my first example of a living philosopher, full-bodied, teasing, angry, insecure, grinning, playful, sharp, so sharp. eye-glint. pipe. beret. cane. the detail that he demanded and allowed in my tortuous parsing of the work of edmund husserl has held me in good stead ever since. he was the teacher i needed then, who jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 4 2 let me do what was good for me then and still: settling down and teasing every word. good practice. gary’s love of language and his example of how it teases us as much as, perhaps more than, vice versa – well, this repeated freshening fitted my musical ear. the play of language. studied melodies. it’s still how i write, how i think, how i think the world exists. my thesis (jardine, 1976) ended up 181 double-spaced pages, typed on a grey remington upright with carbon paper and a second sheet behind. 321 footnotes. i had a silly contest going with mark franklin, a fellow grad student, regarding who could have the most footnotes in the shortest amount of text. his thesis was on analogical language and the names of god (a great, indirect influence on my work still to come [jardine, morgan, & franklin, 1986; jardine & morgan, 1987a, 1987b; and far beyond this]) while mine had the ominous title of the question of phenomenological immanence. it sure is great to be in your early twenties. four twenty-page papers a term for years in a row. and the still rattling of lineages of work, delves, deep delves. grad school. feeling like i was on to something, in on some secret. hush, now. it’s one i still keep. for me, back then, it was a sort of late-60s dream come oddly, kind-of, true, sort of -a gathering of all those old conversations, night after night in the shade of 1967, 1968. reading alan watts. waiting. then philosophy and religious studies as an undergraduate. then a philosophy ma. phenomenology. great greased underlines of eugen fink’s (1970) spectacular 75-page book chapter, “the phenomenological philosophy of edmund husserl and contemporary criticism.” loving to read it precisely because it was so difficult and just the thing i needed. writing was still in its infancy, but it seemed an honoured and honourable practice, worth enduring being bad at, worth getting better. this, too, was part of gary’s orbit, a light i needed, cast in just the right direction and angle. some years later, it was gary who invited me to talk at the inaugural meeting of the canadian society for hermeneutics and postmodern thought (created by gary as a sub-division of the canadian philosophical society) in winnipeg, manitoba, summer of 1986, as part of what was then called learned societies conference. “you’d be just the guy to talk about hermeneutics and pedagogy.” well, okay, but not really. it was a terrible talk, frankly. i had been unemployed for just over a year and was facing, in the audience, not only my ma supervisor, but my ph.d. supervisor as well (dr. dieter misgeld, then of o.i.s.e.), as well as, gulp, the hiring committee that i was to have later met from the university of manitoba’s faculty of education. that meeting, i expect partly because of this talk, never took place. all this was agonizingly slowly to shift, because it was also in winnipeg in 1986 that i first met dr. david g. smith, where we recognized in each other a long-lost brother. misplaced glasses of wine with gary and john king (later of the university of calgary press) and david and others lost to memory in a lounge overlooking rising clouds of mosquitos on the river. happenstance. memory. mcmaster university, long evenings at the phoenix graduate student lounge learning to think as if our lives depended on it. and then summer picnics with gary and other students (including my dear gail –we’ve just celebrated our 42nd last december 28th), blistering hot southern ontario heat and cicada whines jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 4 3 (i recall it being 106 degrees fahrenheit one time) and drifting in small creeks, gary giggling at the sight of leeches, and, of course more mosquito-y air. grad school. it’s not that we’ve kept “in touch” at all over several decades now passed. this “in touch” in its colloquial usage isn’t all that is in effect with a teacher, not necessarily, anyway. memory lingers, and voice, and examples, and half-heard sentences or line traces through lineages, citations, underlinings. teachings, and manners of speaking, cadences of words, examples, unvoiced expectations and so on. i’ve always said to prospective teachers that we stand in front of our students, not just as purveyors of teachings, but as an example of how life might turn out. did i mention that gary, unlike so many others at the time in the philosophy department at mcmaster, seemed young, seemed nearly but not quite one of us, or at least facing our way? john thomas, lovely gracious man, full professor, dozing off mid-conversation during a meeting with him, as the late afternoon sun streamed through leaded windows in his corner office of university hall. ian and dave thomas’ father. plato scholar. gentleman. older. gary was 11 years my senior. it is important to consider slowly and well how good teachers set you free from themselves so that you can measure yourself against “the thing itself.” i noticed in gary’s self-composed obituary that “a sizable portion of his estate” was given to the brothers of the good shepherd, in hamilton, ontario. back in the day, i asked him about his for-me-strange holding together of catholicism and existentialism, philosophizing and what, belief? his response was just right: “the life-world is full of contradictions.” that response outlives him and i’ve carried it with me and, like most good teachings, it is still taking years to catch up to it. it still seems in retrospect that gary suffered this particular teaching more than i. circumstance. causes and conditions. too bad, of course, that the contradictions got to be too much between teacher and student. we parted ways decades ago. 35 years+ buddhism insists that good teachers are “pleased by practice” (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 179), so a brief recollection to end, on “the painting in the gate-house.” i recall in a class whose name and date have faded from memory, that gary drew a large rectangle on the chalkboard and asked us to populate it with every conceivable topic we could imagine from our experience of philosophical work. subjects, objects, sense data, god, mathematics, language, ideas, will, emotion, space, time, categories, existence and essence, thought and word, aquinas, immanuel kant, a.j. ayer (who had recently given a talk in convocation hall), images, “the emotions,” and cascades of other names and books and on and on, an ever-expanding picture of it all, in the corner of which gary wrote “etc.” in order to capture that its continuing is part of this picture as well. he then asked about the person making the picture and we sat and roiled and roiled and still roil in this lovely spot. back in that class, it seemed like effort to “get myself into the picture” – the effort at a selfenclosing philosophy that aims to “complete the picture” -is faulty because there is always an existential subjectivity who is picturing this “world picture” (heidegger, 1987). in our class, we tried mightily to add this picturing subjectivity to the picture, but, of course, ended up with a nebulous sense of subjectivity escaping the picture all over again. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 4 4 but, of course, me, at the time, charmed by edmund husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, imagined this nebulous sense to point to a transcendental subjectivity that beheld the world as an array of transcendental intentionalities. like this from that tortuous eugen fink chapter (1970, p. 110): the epoche is not a mundane inhibiting of the ontic and the intramundane belief in the being of the world. as the persistent and radical deactivation of the belief in the world, the epoche is the disconnecting of the belief in the human performer of beliefs, that is, the bracketing of the world-belief’s self interpretation by which it apperceives itself as being in the world. now . . . the true subject of belief can be uncovered for the first time: the transcendental ego, for whom the world (the intramundane subject and the totality of its objects) is a universe of transcendental acceptances. oh i just love reading that over and over! delicious and awful all at once, it still itches a scratch. so in retrospect, i think i’ve had all this somewhat upside-down. we don’t end up with a world-less (i.e., “not in the picture”) subjectivity standing in front of a picture that it is not part of. subjectivity is a by-product of picturing the world and is therefore precisely not something that eludes. it is dependently co-arising, so seeking some sort of recourse in subjectivity is, indirectly, seeking recourse in the penumbra of the very picture/picturing we falsely think we are turning away from in turning to subjectivity. it’s all imaginary, this cycle, this circling, this painting in the gate-house. wrought. getting caught in this circling is itself a by-product of a sense of threat, leading to contraction, reification, hostility, protectiveness, further waves of threat, and so on. and all this, i suggest, is because of a refusal, at to accept the first nobel truth, the reality that all life is suffering, and the squirms to avoid it that then arise: you must accept [suffering] when [it] arise[s] because (1) if you do not do this, in addition to the basic suffering, you have the suffering of worry that is produced by your own thoughts, and then the suffering becomes very difficult for you to bear; (2) if you accept the suffering, you let the basic suffering be and do not stop it, but you never have the suffering of worry that creates discontentment when you focus on the basic suffering; and (3) since you are using a method to bring even basic sufferings into the path, you greatly lessen your suffering, so you can bear it. therefore, it is very crucial that you generate the patience that accepts suffering. (tsong-kha-pa, 2004, pp. 172-173) gary faced something of this eventuality just now, just recently, as we all will. picturing his dying is good practice, but beware. the picture and the picturing and the picturer: all are empty of self-existence, as is this half-remembered reminiscence. i hope, still and now, that gary would have been pleased by this meagre attempt at practice, a little gift to that grin and glinted eye i can still picture in mostly fond, distant memory. those who know me well know full well how much i’d love to raise a glass in good cheer, but i can no longer bear it. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 4 5 references fink, e. (1970). the phenomenological philosophy of edmund husserl and contemporary criticism. in r. o. elveton, the phenomenology of husserl (pp. 73-148). chicago il: quadrangle books. heidegger, m. (1987). the age of the world picture. in m. heidegger, the question concerning technology and other essays (pp. 115-154). new york, ny: garland publishing. husserl, e. (1970). the crisis of european science and transcendental phenomenology. evanston il: northwestern university press. jardine, d. (1976). the question of phenomenological immanence. unpublished master's thesis, department of philosophy, mcmaster university, hamilton, on, canada. on line: www.digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/opendissertations/4567/. jardine, d., morgan, g., & franklin, m. (1986). analogy, self-identity and family identity: outline of research in progress. canadian journal of education, 11(4), 584-586. jardine, d., & morgan, g. (1987a). analogy as a model for the development of representational abilities in children. educational theory, 37(3), 209-218. jardine, d., & morgan, g. (1987b). analogical thinking in young children and the use of logicomathematical knowledge as a paradigm in jean piaget’s genetic epistemology. quarterly newsletter of the laboratory of comparative human cognition, 9(4), 95-101. tsong-kha-pa (2000). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lam rim chen mo). vol. 1. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. tsong-kha-pa (2004). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lam rim chen mo). vol. 2. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. corresponding author: n.j. moules email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics may 9, 2015 the author(s) 2015 out of order: to debbie and dave, chris and bill, mj and john katherine bright, merilee brockway, gelenn carrera, barbara kathol, elizabeth keys, nancy j moules, alexandra robinson, lorraine smithmacdonald, & anila virani (note: authors are ordered alphabetically, not in terms of contribution) abstract in this paper, a professor and a group of doctoral students reflect on the video out of order: dealing with the death of a child, treating the video as research on the topic of grief. the video was shown to the group and then all individuals offered pieces of interpretive writing to show their understanding of what the “participants” in the video were helping us understand about the topic. keywords grief, death of a child, hermeneutics, interpretation there is a film that continues to draw me (moules) as a nursing educator and as a researcher in the hermeneutic tradition. it is a film about the experiences of three dyads of parents who suffered the experience of having a child die1. this is a very local, personal film, made for therapeutic purposes to offer help to other parents experiencing the unimaginable and never expected experience of being a bereaved parent. as an educator and researcher, i choose this film deliberately it is poignant, powerful, painful, raw, and truthful. i have “used” it in classes on grief because it is so powerful. i have also repeatedly used it in graduate level research classes. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 2 i myself have likely watched this film close to 50 times and i know it almost by heart. i ask graduate students if we can treat this delicate and heartfelt video as akin to a transcript of an interview of what it is to be a parent whose child has died. in doing so, it opens itself to the “tragic and loving” relationship of language in interpretation (moules, 2002; moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). i offer this video to students as an invitation to interpretation in all of the rawness of transcripts and unfiltered words, tears, and disclosures. i invite them to take up one aspect of the film that addresses them; i ask them to go away and write about that thing that spoke to them. we part company for only about 45 minutes and then return to read aloud our interpretations. without exception, this process of giving ourselves over to the words of these parents, to try to find our own words to give them the respect and honor they ask of us, and then to read our own work aloud to others – to see how our words interact and our interpretations grow and change – is nothing short of miraculous. nothing is so purely the trace of the mind as is writing but nothing is so dependent on the understanding mind either. in deciphering and interpreting it, a miracle takes place: the transformation of something alien and dead into total contemporaneity and familiarity….that is why the capacity to read, to understand what is written is like a secret art, even a magic that frees and binds us. (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 163) i have been engaging in some version of this pedagogical exercise for many years. this year in a doctoral course on analysis in qualitative research, i listened on the edge of my seat with every sense attuned to these doctoral students read aloud their shy, awkward, beautiful, embarrassed, and humble responses to the video. we offer them here as one way that applied hermeneutic interpretation can take a shape. more, we offer them as a thank you to the parents who spoke their hearts in the video. “i could not stay where the policeman stood” lorraine smith-macdonald i could not “stay where the policeman stood.” it is a simple statement, a statement that on the surface means nothing. the policeman does not matter; he is only the bearer of bad news. it is what he says that matters. he is irrelevant. and yet, is possible that he represents more? that it does matter to say “i could not stay where the policeman stood”? to stay means “to cease going forward, to become halted.” this is the parody with death. when the recipient hears the death announcement, they often want to run, escape, and leave that place. and yet the reality of death is such that all of life (for that moment) has come to halt; it has ceased going forward. and it is not just in those initial moments. for many grievers, that experience is repeated over and over. they can no longer stay in the presence of those people, those places, and even those things that remind them of their beloved. they must go; they must leave; they must find new places, maybe even finding new ways to flee the painful reality of the death. the policeman cannot always be present. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 3 but as far away from the grief as the grievers run, there is always the experience of finding themselves stopped, halted. the policeman once again reappears. perhaps it is in our favorite shop, a song on the radio, a food we once ate together. grief always draws us back to the very place that it all began. grief requires us to stay where the policeman stood. we must hear what he has to say. we must in time come to accept and believe his words. in time, this tension between running and stopping will quiet, and one day even maybe even stop. then the griever can say “i stayed where the policeman stood.” the soft place of grief katherine bright “a soft place to land”… for couples that have lost a child there is no getting on with life. there is no choice to move on. if it weren’t for the restlessness that accompanies grief, these couples would have no momentum at all. but their grief doesn’t provide them with a distinct direction or destination. their grief feels more like the shock of being pushed out of an airplane and being out of control while they are freefalling through the air. as they are losing altitude, they have a sensation that they are searching for something. exactly what they are looking for is difficult to pinpoint. maybe it is a something, maybe it is a person, or just maybe it is just the desire to find something so that they don’t have to be alone with their thoughts. if someone is by his or her side, then he or she can share their loss or maybe to just tell them what they are going to do. but maybe that person won’t know what to do either, maybe that person will be just as lost as they are. maybe they are searching for their partner in order to come together rather than floating aimlessly on their own. but will they be able to hear their partner’s sadness? how can couples share the experience of a loss of a child so closely but suffer it so differently? maybe they both need a comfortable place to go and maybe it will be better to if they have someone with them when they find their soft place to land. maybe they will be that soft place to land for their partner or maybe the other person will be their comfortable place to stay. and just maybe the role of a safe place will be passed back and forth between the two partners. regardless, they hope to find their soft place to land. without words – merilee brockway this excerpt originated out of my need to make people feel better as well as my own reticence when interacting with people that have suffered a loss. what struck me from watching the video was the concept of understanding how people who have experienced the loss of a loved one need for others to understand them and what they have moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 4 been through. if not to understand, then it is to acknowledge their experience, to ask about how they are doing. dave suggested that in demonstrating understanding, people should provide less advice and more hugs. this is an interesting concept to consider. a hug is an affectionate embrace, the surrounding of one with another’s arms. to hug is to foster, to cherish, to enclose, to provide comfort. the word hug can also mean to think and consider. one can feel protected and safe within a hug; it can be a source of courage. a hug is a physical manifestation of the support, understanding, and protection that was called upon by many of the participants in this video. an embrace can say so much more than words and it will rarely offend. i think that, in avoiding the conversation of “how are you doing” when speaking to someone that has suffered a loss, we are protecting ourselves from discomfort, but also we may be acting out of fear of offending the person who had suffered the loss. perhaps in offering a hug, we can acknowledge the pain and loss they are experiencing, and provide the support, both physically and emotionally of which they are seeking. the embodiment of grief – barbara kathol grief has a visceral effect, a strong physicality as one moves through towards healing. recounting their experience of grief, the parents in the film used active, physical descriptors to tell their story. grief and sadness were experienced as overwhelming, over-taking, and encompassing their whole body. noting a lack of attention to how a person’s body experiences loss, hentz (2002) interviewed women who had experienced a significant loss of a loved one to discover “…the body memory following a loss…” (p. 161). hentz suggested that to study grief includes an understanding “…of the wisdom of the body as the natural self experiencing the world” (p. 164). free falling upon hearing the news of the loss of their child, the parents described a feeling of falling and collapsing. the parent experienced a physical descent, a sense of free falling without destination or purpose. the sense of falling was a manifestation of the overwhelming grief. the solid, comfortable ground of their lives was gone in an instant; the earth was pulled out from under their feet. “fell to my knees.” “needed a soft place to fall.” “pushed out a door at 30000 feet and free-falling.” listening to stories of loss, hentz (2002) sensed a “…physical knowing of the experience that was nonrational (sic) and noncognitive (sic)” (p. 162), suggesting that perception includes both the mind and the body. “perception and knowing occur through the body’s sensing the experience” (p. 164). the parents were experiencing grief through their bodies. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 5 moving forward as time passed, while the parents could move forward, they experienced an isolating and desolate struggle. “i was up and she was not, and vice versa.” “i was restless and had to keep moving.” “what are we moving on to?” there was a struggle with everyday life and how to live within their lives again. unique approaches helped each different individual: breathing the fresh air, taking comfort in going to mass, starting to listen. the slow path towards recovery was infused with physical sensations, moving towards a different place. hentz (2002) described, “…body memory…” (p.165) as a unique expression, a pattern of feeling where the person has the same sensation, relived as it was originally experienced. the women described hearing a song, coming into the season or day of the loss, seeing a phone number, all memories of the person but they also described the physical sensation associated with the memory (hentz, 2002). it was a physical connection to the earlier experiences, a body memory. beginning to ascend, together at different times, and in different ways, the parents described the physical sensation of being uplifted, of moving upward. parents used words connecting themselves with others. the words were positive and hopeful, suggesting a break from their desolation and loneliness. “joining hands and raising our arms and seeing the stars.” “starting to just listen more.” “we are ascending to the idea that we are not stopping here.” hentz noted that through listening to their bodies, the women in her study recognized the process of mourning and the cyclic pattern of time. “knowing the time was as the body perceived the time...the body just knew” (p. 169). “each experienced a process that had its own time and progression that could not be controlled through will or conscious awareness” (p. 169). without describing the physical toll grief has on a person, the parents all expressed their grief as a visceral, physical experience through the passage of time. free falling, moving forward, and beginning to ascend, together. cultivating spaces to nurture and nourish grieving – elizabeth keys the parents in this video spoke of finding unique spaces along their continuum of grief experiences. these spaces could be different physical locations in which to experience their grief, moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 6 a relational space in which to share grief, or a mental space in which new ideas and beliefs were cultivated. one couple contrasted their experiences of the physical spaces of which they sought. shortly after receiving the news of the death of their child, the mother settled on a single space – her child’s bed, while the father spoke of being restless and “pacing,” seemingly searching through multiple places for some elusive place where he could settle. another example of a physical space that seemingly nourished a mother’s grief was being outside, at the farm with the fresh air. relational spaces seemed to hold significance for the ability to nurture these parents’ grief. one of the fathers spoke of making space to experience grief differently than his wife, as a mother, would. for him, the relational space between a father and child held significance for opening up a unique space for grief. another father spoke of his wish that other people in the family’s life would join them in a relational space for grieving, rather than avoid it. one couple spoke of the ups and downs they would experience relating to one another’s grief, often not being in sync with each other’s struggles and occupying different emotional and mental spaces. these parents’ experiences seemed to allow the couple a chance to lean on one another and offer strength when their partner needed it most. other times, a partner may be so far away in a different mental or emotional space that the other would only be able to wait for the low to pass, until they were once again within arm’s reach to grasp on to, if only for a brief moment, and move on to exchange spaces. reordered worlds – alexandra robinson it was only a few weeks ago that i attended my father’s funeral. although it was, and is, hard to accept that we will not have his physical presence with us any longer, his funeral was a celebration of a life well lived. this is how it should be-it is the natural order of things. when parents lose a child, the order of life is abruptly disrupted and the bereaved parents are left to navigate a universe that seems to be governed by anarchy. one of the mothers described that upon learning of her daughter’s death, she felt like she “went into the twilight zone.” “you’re in shock, you don’t want to believe it.” you can’t run, there is nowhere to go, no place to hide from the storms of sorrow that have become the climate of this universe, this twilight zone. “you just can’t hide it.” and how could she hide with a “neon sign on her saying, ‘this person is in pain’ ”? “running away does not help, you need a safe haven, a soft place to fall.” what kind of universe is this that does not respect the correct order of life and death itself and then has the audacity to prescribe how to grieve and in what order? “each of us grieves differently, there is not a schedule, you can’t plan it, and you can’t fix it.” who are these people that give advice instead of comfort? they give advice like “you need to accept this or you need to get on with things…and we’re thinking, we don’t know that we want to get on with life…to say to accept it and move on is very cruel.” for him, it was a couple of months later, all alone on his farm when he finally wept for his daughter, wanting to feel the depth of his loss. he gave himself permission to grieve for as long as he wanted to. he welcomed that moment. they eventually surrendered to the new order of their world, a world where they outlived their children. shouting back with tears of remembrance, with rituals of remembrance, comforting one another, and celebrating the life that they shared together. celebrating her life was “the best thing we could have ever done for jodi, for the family, everybody was brought to the next level of moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 7 healing and we continue.” we accept that our world is forever changed and we will never be the same. “let this pain be our teacher.” having experienced the loss of their child, they have a better understanding of what life is all about. one father said he gained a new appreciation for young people. another said that he realized that he still had much to learn that his son already knew and understood and “ my son is helping me along the way.” another father reflected that they take comfort in appreciating that in the end, their daughter’s life was a picture of love and so “who am i to question?” the twilight zone of grief – gelenn carrera “knowing that you have lost a child is like going into the twilight zone” losing a child takes one to an area where nothing is certain anymore. the normal order of things would be for parents to die before children, but when the reverse happens, it takes away the normalcy of things. it makes one wonder if things will ever be normal again. life goes on, however, and for many parents who have lost a child, facing the realities of life without the child they have lost becomes the new normal. the unanswered question of closure – anila virani grief leaves us with unanswered questions. one of the unanswered questions is about closure. will these parents in the video ever get a closure or will they struggle till the day they die to get closure? finding meaning, seeing oneself as a better person after experiencing child’s death and celebrating the deceased child’s birthday, felt like examples of struggles, struggles to get closure. one parent in the video said she felt relieved and at peace after celebrating her deceased child’s birthday. one might argue that having family and friends over and remembering the memories of her child facilitates closure. however, is it really closure and is closure ever possible? one parent said moving on and getting on with life might bring a closure but struggled with what moving on would look like. one parent said if she had an explanation of why it happened from her deceased child who died by suicide (a letter or a note), she would have been better able to cope or may get closure. the oxford dictionary definitions for closure include: a feeling of finality or resolution, especially after a traumatic experience; a sense of resolution or conclusion; a thing that closes or seals something; an act or process of closing something. the word closure is form old french closure means fence or a barrier. in latin, clausura, from claus'closed', from the verb claudere means sense of "act of closing, bringing to a close." in legislation, closure means "closing or stopping of debate.” in gestalt psychology, it means a "tendency to create ordered and satisfying wholes." the parents in this video invited me to think that closure is about coming to terms with what happened. any act such as celebrating birthday or volunteering at youth camp that facilitates acceptance of what happened may bring closure and end the constant struggle struggle to deal with emotions, struggle to find a closure, struggle to disclose it to people, struggle to not to show moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 8 their pain. one parent said he used to believe that if you do good deeds in life, life will be without struggle but he realized he was wrong. we are meant to struggle. we are not meant to live without struggle. perhaps we are not ever to have closure over such an event and perhaps we do not even want it; we want to remember and stay connected. perhaps this is one of the lessons of grief. the gravity of grief – nancy j. moules “sorrow wears itself a hollow,” wallace (1985) tells us. their faces, lined with the hollow of loss, and wanting – of hearts broken, and presences missed – bear thin witnesses to the depth of sorrow carved out in their lives. david said it was like “freefalling without a parachute” and that he… had a clear answer…for the first time i wasn’t responsible for anyone else…i fell to my knees and felt the grief on me…and as odd as it sounds, i welcomed that moment cause i wanted to know in my soul and my heart that i had wept for my daughter. jody’s dad’s face welcoming the weight of grief called out other stories to me. “she would have been 12 this year,” a mother once spoke to me of her daughter who died at 6 years of age. and the mother who showed me the empty bird’s nest outside the window the day her 4-year-old son died. she spoke to me in a language i did not know and one i never hope to learn of her worry for the mother bird. she showed me the empty nest and broken heart of a mother. it calls out the story of my own son who lives under the damocles sword of heart disease. how does a parent learn to live a life of hollows and the gravity pull of grief? do we perhaps in encountering this unimaginable event learn that there are moments of hollows and gravitational pull, and there are moments of grace and love? and the next morning, i felt…love. i hadn’t felt love up until then. i’d only felt so much pain, but i felt love. through her tears and sorrow, debbie felt love. oh, “this gentleness we learn from what we can’t heal” (wallace, 1985, pp. 76-77). discussion this interpretive exercise in a doctoral level research class on qualitative research methods demonstrates the reflective capacity of “good data.” this is not about aggregate knowledge, moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 9 developing theories, looking for repetition to authenticate themes, or semantic coding. it is about these parents in these experiences and what they have to teach us, and others, about what it might be like to be a parent whose child dies. they do not answer that question “once and for all” there will always be other parents who unfortunately will experience the loss of a child and who will have their own experiences. good data in hermeneutic work are that which shed light on the topic and moves understanding along; it is not concerned with explanation but understanding (moules et al., 2015). good data invites reflection, the ability to think and write deeply on something that strikes us, rings true for us, or speaks to us (moules et al., 2015). this film in all of its pain and rawness is evocative and powerful. it is personal. i have been asked in the past why i use such a painful film for this exercise and my answer is simple. it is good. when we engage in qualitative research in applied disciplines (nursing, psychology, education, social work, etc.), the stories we invite and listen to are not always easy stories to tell or to hear. dr. john caputo in his foreword in the recently published book by moules et al. (2015) made the comment. …there is no theory, no body of principles, no rulebook, no set of universal norms that would enable us to “conduct” the interview recorded for us in chapter six with parents who have lost a child to cancer. the situation is steeped in an impenetrable mystery, a question to which there is no answer – why do children die? …the interviewer eases into the delicacy of a situation of unimaginable pain with “questions” that do no interrogate or objectify but create a space in which an unbearable suffering, an unspeakable pain, may find words. the words exchanged are gentle, sometimes hardly articulate, words that do not propose or defend thesis, words from the heart, from broken hearts. (caputo, in moules et al., 2015, p. xi) like interviews in our work, we have to be able to listen deeply and responsively (moules et al., 2015) to the data that come to meet us. we have to suffer it. we have to have the courage to hear such rawness and react and then respond to it. experience has something to teach us. these parents in the video, debbie and dave, chris and bill, mj and john, had the courage to speak to the unspeakable and unimaginable suffering of having a child die. they have and continue to teach us all. references 1 note: the film is called out of order: dealing with the death of a child ©, produced by calgary health services grief support program and the university of calgary. calgary, ab, canada. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzameaq7fni caputo, j.d. (2015). foreword: the wisdom of hermeneutics. in n.j. moules, g. mccaffrey, j.c. field, & c.m. laing, conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 10 gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (2nd rev.ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. hentz, p. (2002). the body remembers: grieving and a circle of time. qualitative health research, 12, 161-172. moules, n.j. (2002). hermeneutic inquiry: paying heed to history and hermes. an ancestral, substantive, and methodological tale. international journal of qualitative methods 1(3), 1-21. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. wallace, b. (1985). what it comes to mean. in b. wallace, common magic (pp. 76-77). ottawa, on, canada: oberon. microsoft word pelechcorrectedproof.docx corresponding author: sharon pelech doctoral candidate, university of calgary assistant professor, memorial university email: spelech@mun.ca journal of applied hermeneutics march 8, 2013 the author(s) 2013 teaching science as a hermeneutic event sharon pelech abstract in this article, the author explores the need for science education to be taught as a hermeneutic event, as opposed to a book of facts to be memorized. the fragmented, passive transmission of facts does not allow students to have a clear understanding of science, its’ traditions and how science lives in the world. reconnecting biology back into the world, and recognizing its creativity and uncertainty, will help students understand how science impacts their lives and the world. the author explores how, through hermeneutics, students can experience the living discipline of science, as opposed to learning about science. keywords curriculum studies, hermeneutics, high school biology, learning, philosophy of education, science education upon returning from their immersion week, the first year pre-service teachers in my secondary science curriculum course were excited to talk about their teaching experience, what went well, as well as some of the surprises and learning opportunities that arose for them. after 15 minutes of discussion, megan (pseudonym) spoke up and said “i asked my partner teacher whether i could talk to the biology students about the recent earthquake and tsunami in japan (that happened only days earlier). the teacher responded, ‘no, that is not biologically relevant; it is not in the curriculum.’” the class of pre-service teachers gasped and then a stunned silence settled onto the classroom. there was something in this incident that we knew did not feel right; the living discipline of biology that has been entrusted to us as teachers was not being honored (jardine, 2006). if we simply look at a few of the pictures displayed by the news stations from the japan disaster, we can easily see that pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 1 2 events such as this that address us are the reason why we teach biology, so that we can understand and be part of the world in which we live. an investigation of the alberta program of studies demonstrated direct links to the skills, attitudes, and content found within the mandated curriculum. instead, megan gave her notes on the respiration system and then a set of questions from the textbook, while the opportunity to root what we know about biology in the world was left behind. yet, at the same time as an experienced biology teacher, i could understand the response of that teacher. in a highly pressured world of heavy curricula, student/parent expectations, and the ever-present standardized test, this response was familiar to me. this moment made me wonder what makes it so that a teacher would feel necessary to respond this way. what is this saying to us about how science is seen in the school? “hermeneutics suggests that these striking incidents make a claim on us and open up and reveal something to us about our lives together and what it is that is going on, often unvoiced, in the ever-so commonplace and day-to-day act of being and being a teacher.” (jardine, 2006, p. 280). in this paper, i explore how science is commonly presented in schools and the impact this has on students in terms of their immediate understanding of science as a subject and, even more importantly, how this way of teaching ignores the urgent need to recognize that school science is perpetuating the conditions that contribute to the current ecological crisis. pretending that there is no ecological crisis is ignoring the inevitable where earth as a system will no longer be able to sustain life. orr (2004) argued that we are educating students as if there is no planetary emergency, or as if environmental problems will be solved by technology. taking science up as a hermeneutic experience can offer the opportunity to explore the complexity and interconnectedness of science with the world and allow student questions to be an opening to new understanding. hermeneutics recognizes that all understanding, including scientific, is “historical, linguistic and dialectical” (palmer, 1969, p. 212). through participation in the experience of science being a hermeneutic event, students may begin to be able to take up science as something more than “deadly dull information that [they] must consume” (jardine, 2003, p. xiv) and begin to understand science connected in its ancestry, traditions, interdependence, conflicts, ethics, and belonging in the world (jardine, 2003). common image of school science according to a study completed by aikenhead (2003), one of the key concerns regarding traditional science teaching is the “dishonest and mythical images about science and scientists it conveys” (p. 12). scientists are often presented as being objective and science and its methods provide absolute proof (mccomas, 1998). what is often lost with this vision is the tentativeness and creativity which are both key components of the process of science. one of the main culprits of this vision is the way laboratories and the scientific method is presented in science classes. in most science textbooks, a linear, lock-step, approach to the scientific method is provided that implies that all scientists follow a common series of steps to do research (mccomas, 1998). many students, in fact, are disappointed when they learn that scientists do not have a framed copy of the scientific method posted above their workbench (mccomas, 1998). the scientific method is presented in classrooms as predetermined, tidy, linear activities students must follow, and then write up to hand in for assessment. there is no imagination, creativity, or opportunities for discovering new ways of pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 1 3 understanding a concept. instead, students go away with an image of science that does not bear any relation to the lived world of science (blades, 2001). through a comparative analysis of three research projects conducted in england, sweden, and australia, lyons (2006) found that science students held three common views of science education. the first view is that science pedagogy is simply passive transmission of facts from teachers or textbooks to students. the second vision is that the content is irrelevant and boring. dewey described this in his article, child and the curriculum, in 1902. when science is presented as facts without any connection to students lives, it condemns the fact to be a hieroglyph… the most scientific matter loses this quality when presented in external ready-made fashion those things that are most significant to the scientific man, logic of actual inquiry… drop out. (p. 202) the third vision of science education that students commonly hold is that science is a difficult subject. this is not because the students found science intellectually stimulating, instead they described how science is full of terminology and, more importantly, that difficulties arise from the passive learning, memorization of facts, and the irrelevance of the content. lyons (2006) saw these common views as the primary reasons why students are disengaged in science, which has led to a dramatic decrease in enrolment into scientific fields throughout the western world. school science does not engage students in the living field of science as long as the curriculum remains content-driven and pedagogy is driven by standardized testing. blades (2001) described how, as a result of heavy amounts of content-laden curricula and a focus on testing, students’ questions are not allowed to be part of the process of learning science, that the only questions are the ones that are already provided by the teacher. capra (1996) argued that as long as we see information as something that is “lying out there to be picked up by the brain,” that we will miss the “whole network of relationships, a context, in which it is embedded and which gives it meaning” (p. 272). capra’s argument requires a break from the traditions of science education in which science classes are deeply entrenched. hermeneutics offers ways to connect science back to its field of knowledge by allowing students to become part of the conversations, traditions, and complexities of science as an event in understanding the world. [hermeneutics] provides a way to rethink what we experience in our day to day lives as teachers, what we understand teaching to be, … what we understand knowledge and tradition and language and conversation and … the methods of the sciences to be. (jardine, 2006, p. 269) a shift to hermeneutics by focusing on the ontology of teaching science, hermeneutics asks: how does science live in the world as an ongoing emerging discourse, and what traditions are a part of science education? furthermore, hermeneutics asks what does this conversation demand of me in regards to how i take up teaching science? “understanding is to be thought of less as a subjective act than as a participating in an event of tradition, a process of transmission in which past and present are constantly mediated” (gadamer, 2004, p. 291, original italics). understanding is both the goal and the path, so while scipelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 1 4 ence education often wishes to come up with a final, complete understanding, hermeneutics allows recognition that the process of understanding is never complete. the question then becomes: how do i proceed pedagogically when i understand that science education is not a thing with a final and definitive definition, but always in the process of becoming (smith, 1991)? in many current biology classes, information is given to students, and a predetermined set of questions are asked with predictable, predetermined answers expected. science is often mischaracterized as the application of techniques or calculation methods disconnected from the traditions from which they have come (crease, 1997). finding ways to bring these concepts back into the world, which includes their ancestry, memories that they evoke, and what truths they say about the world is essential to begin to understand the complexity behind why students seem disengaged in science. how can students connect with ideas that are unconnected to the world in which they belong? this is where hermeneutics can speak profoundly to science, by helping to find ways to root these scientific concepts back to the habitat from which they are part of, into what heidegger would call “being in the world” (as cited in kozoll & osborne, 2004, p. 158). being immersed in science as a living field means problems are to be understood more deeply, allowing a spontaneous and yet informed response to a question so that the knowledge can be used to respond to a question in a new and unanticipated way. by exploring in depth the many questions that emerged from the tragedy in japan, biology as a living discipline would open up possibilities and students would be able to see why this information is important and how it lives in the world. hermeneutics frames the possibility of teaching science as a dialectical perspective, where science is treated more as breaking open of questions (gadamer, 2004), as opposed to closing down the conversations by presenting science as a “celebration of closure... and of the end of interpretation” (donnelly, 2002, p. 147). the term bildung has a variety of meanings which imply formation, cultivation, and education (davey, 2006). bildung stresses that hermeneutic understanding does not find the end to a topic, but allows for a deepening of the experience which opens up the possibility for more questions and more demanding experiences. it is within this process where the rigour of the facts and information are required and are able to show how they belong in the world (davey, 2006). hermeneutics can replant the teaching of science back into the world in which the students and science as a field of knowledge are a part. it can help students explore how science presents a particular truth about the world and how they can explore the “perils and challenges of a materialistic account of the world” (donnelly, 2002, p. 149). accordingly, students can recognize how science lives as part of the world, and that it is not simply “storage of knowledge as is accomplished in a dictionary, a catalogue, etc.” (gadamer, 1992, p. 44). the historical, political and sociological aspects are all rooted within science itself, not as something separate to the body of knowledge that is considered science. with this, there is an opening and uncovering of "the ruling preconceptions of the moment [that] uncover new avenues of inquiry and thus indirectly be of service to the work of methodology" (gadamer, 1988, p. 289). hermeneutics also provides an opportunity to recognize “the inner interwoveness of one field of research with another” (gadamer, 1992, p. 45), which allows students to see how science as a field of knowledge is connected to the world and pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 1 5 invites students to become part of the conversation of science. “the history of mathematics or of the natural sciences is also a part of the history of the human spirit and reflects its destinies” (gadamer, 2004, p. 284). science and the students are both rooted within the same world, which means that science education becomes an opportunity for students to take part of the conversation as well as part of the understanding that is always already ongoing (gadamer, 2004). in my current doctoral research, which explores the question “what does it mean to teach biology well,” i interviewed both teachers and students to explore their experience of high school biology using a hermeneutic framework. one of the questions i asked both teachers and students was: “if teaching biology is mainly about memorizing facts then is teaching biology becoming redundant in the age of instant information through googling? what is the role of biology classrooms?” the responses from both students and teachers indicated that, in a good science class, there was something more happening than just amassing knowledge. there was the connection between ideas and theories and their lives that helped them understand the world of biology. they described how biology became a narrative that helped understand appreciate the complexities of the world. at the 2011 national science teachers association conference in san francisco, keynote speaker astrophysicist dr. jeff goldstein, director of the national centre for earth and space science in washington, dc, described how science taught as a “book of knowledge” did not do it justice, and in fact, was allowing the inheritance of science to be lost. instead, he argued that in order to continue the legacy of science exploration, we need creative imaginative people who wonder about the world. science teachers have to teach not only what we know about our world, but more importantly, how we have come to know it. the journey is where the science lives, and not in the isolated facts that have resulted from the journey. we need to understand where we came from and explore how each generation has added to the book of knowledge, which can then be passed onto the next generation. (re)visiting the biology classroom if we return to the classroom with the young student teacher but this time she was allowed to go ahead and talk to the students about the tsunami in japan, what would a classroom that takes up science hermeneutically look like? jardine (2003) asked us to recognize that the living discipline of biology goes beyond “fixed and finished givens that are beyond question and simply indoctrinate the young into such acceptance” and instead take up the discipline as “not fixed and finished but is rather, ongoing, still ‘in play’, still ‘open to question’ in our human inheritance” (p. 85). one way this could have been experienced is if megan had taken a picture on the internet of the tsunami as it hit japan and displayed it to the students, questions about the impact that this would have on the biological systems could emerge. for example, one picture shows an agricultural field, carefully manicured, with straight, well organized rows of crops growing beside large covered cultivated crops. the top half of the picture shows a black thick sludge of water filled with houses, vehicles and other debris sweeping over and swallowing the pristine fields. allowing the students to begin to ask questions about that one picture would open up the opportunity to understand the impact of that one moment of the tsunami on the ecosystems of japan. in many science classes, student questions are seen as a disruption. in a classroom where science was taken up hermeneutically pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 1 6 the questions would come to life and become a part of the discipline of science. as these questions emerge, the teacher’s role would be to pay attention to which questions were meaningful and rich to explore, and through this process, introduce the students to the field of biology emerging from their questions and their understanding of the world. often child-centered inquiry projects become shallow when a topic is given. students are asked select something that they are interested in and to go off on their own, research, and return to share this information. the students are fragmented into their own area of interests and often their inquiry remains superficial. to take up the topic hermeneutically, the focus has to be topiccentered, where students can take up the topic in multiple ways in order to understand the topic. the topic demands that the students and teacher pay attention to the discipline of biology it demands an academic rigour in order to understand and contribute to the ongoing conversation that this event calls up. as the questions surrounding the impact of the tsunami emerge from this one picture and as the teacher and the students explore the topic, it allows them to become part of the discipline of biology that is always already in the world, as a result the curriculum outcomes become re-rooted into the world in which they live. for example, the biology 20 alberta program of studies (2009) knowledge outcomes include biogeochemical cycles, ecosystems, and population change and equilibrium as a few examples that need to be understood in order to make sense of what is happening in japan as a result of the tsunami. a teacher who is open to allowing ambiguity, messiness, and complexity to live within the classroom, as opposed to being focused on finality and finding definitive answers would allow student questions to find a voice and a life in the discipline of science. as caputo (1987) reminded us, hermeneutics “does not lead us back to safe shores and terra firma; it leaves us twisting slowly in the wind” (p. 36) this is rooted in the complexity of where biology lives in the world. if students’ questions lead to the resulting nuclear plant destruction, the part of the program of studies (2009) that asks students to understand that “science and technology have both intended and unintended consequences for humans and the environment” has meaning and context from which to take up this understanding. questions on how we could come to the point where a nuclear power plant would be built on a major fault line in a country that experienced the bombing of hiroshima would emerge as part of the greater understanding of science. the connection of the curriculum to the world would, out of necessity, allow the students to: experience, to suffer, to endure, or undergo the arrival of an unfixed future and the questions it might hold, questions we might not have even imagined or desired. this open, living endurance, we suggest, is basic to the disciplines taught in schools. (jardine, 2003, p. 85) students would have the opportunity to realize that “even in the arena of making sense of the natural world, science is a limited discourse” (blades, 2001, p. 86). conclusion gadamer argued that the disciplines that we have been given responsibility for “live in their openness to being handed along” (jardine, 2006, p. 85) and are still open to questions, not only as part of our inheritance pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 1 7 but also where new understanding and learning emerges. clifford and friesen (2003) argued that “far too little of what most students do in school engages their imagination, fuels their passion to learn, connects them deeply with the world, or wins their hearts and minds” (p. 93). the work our students do is “memorizable… but it is rarely especially memorable” (jardine, 2006, p. 87). the implications of this goes beyond the classroom and trying to increase engagement which, although important, is only one piece of the interconnections that need to be explored as a teacher and a researcher. looking at the ecological implications of students being immersed in the discipline of science also helps the students to experience the interconnectedness of the world, so that they learn not about the earth but how they are part of the earth. capra (1996) wrote that the major world crises of our time are interconnected and interdependent, and recognizing that we cannot study these issues in isolation is essential. education is part of the perpetuation that allows the individualization and progress to be the primary discourse of the “developed” world. education, as it stands today, helps equip people to be more “effective vandals of the earth” (orr, 2004 p. 6). the tsunami disaster in japan is not just an interesting topic to help students become engaged in science, instead it demands that we bring forth the world of science and the understanding that emerges to help make sense of what is happening and where to go from here. this means that the topic demands the academic rigour and clarity that we, as science teachers, want the students to be able to leave the class with which includes not only the content, but the skills and attitudes that are part of the alberta program of studies. clifford and friesen (2006) asked, “what can happen in schools when teachers take seriously the power and the right of children to name and to shape their experience of the world?” (p. 94) what would have happened if that student teacher had the opportunity to explore the biological issues that the tsunami has brought forth? hopefully, some students would have understood why biology is an essential discipline in order to live well in this world what gadamer (1996) calls “being in the world as a wakeful presence” (p. 74). references aikenhead, g. s. (2003). review of research on humanistic perspectives in science curricula. paper presented at the european science education research association, noordwijkerhout, the netherlands. http://www.usask.ca/education/people/aiken head/esera_2.pdf alberta education (2009). biology 20/30 program of studies. edmonton, ab, canada: alberta education. blades, d.w. (2001). the simulacra of science education. in j.a. weaver, m. morris, & p. appelbaum (eds.), (post)modern science (education): propositions and alternative paths (pp. 57-94). new york, ny: peter lang. capra, f. (1996). the web of life: a new scientific understanding of living systems. new york, ny: anchor books. caputo, j.d. (1987). radical hermeneutics. bloomington & indianapolis, in: indiana university press. crease, r. p. (1997). hermeneutics and the natural sciences: introduction. man and world, 30, 259-270. davey, n. (2006). unquiet understanding: gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 1 8 new york, ny: state university of new york. dewey, j. (1902). the child and the curriculum. chicago il: the university of chicago press. donnelly, j. (2002). instrumentality, hermeneutics and the place of science in the school curriculum. science & education, 11, 135153. friesen, s., & clifford, p. (2003). hard fun: teaching and learning for the twenty-first century. in d. jardine, s. friesen, & p. clifford, back to the basics of teaching and learning: thinking the world together (pp. 89-107). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. gadamer, h.g. (1988). rhetoric, hermeneutics, and the critique of ideology. in k. mueller-vollmer (ed.), the hermeneutics reader (pp. 274-292). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h.g. (1992). the university of heidelberg and the birth of modern science (l. schmidt & m. reuss, trans.). in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds.), hansgeorg gadamer on education, poetry, and history. albany, ny: state university of new york press. gadamer, h.g. (1996). the enigma of health: the art of healing in a scientific age. palo alto, ca: stanford university press. gadamer, h.g. (2004). truth and method (j. w. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans., 2nd ed.). new york, ny: continuum. goldstein, j. (2011, march). it’s not a book of knowledge…it’s a journey. keynote presentation conducted at the national science teachers association conference, san francisco, california. jardine, d. (2006). on hermeneutics: “what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing.” in k. tobin & j. kincheloe (eds.), doing educational research: a handbook (pp. 269-289). amsterdam, the netherlands: sense. kozoll, r. h., & osborne, m. d. (2004). finding meaning in science: lifeworld, identity, and self. science education, 88(2), 157-181. lyons, t. (2006). different countries, same science classes: students' experiences of school science in their own words. international journal of science education, 28(6), 591-613. mccomas, w. f. (1998). the principal elements of the nature of science: dispelling the myths. in w. f. mccomas (ed.), the nature of science in science education (pp. 53-70). dordrecht, the netherlands: kluwer academic publishers. orr, d.w. (2004). earth in mind: on education, environment, and the human prospect. washington, dc: 96island press. smith, d. g. (1991). hermeneutic inquiry: the hermeneutic imagination and the pedagogic text. in e. c. short (ed.), forms of curriculum inquiry (pp. 187-209). albany, ny: state university of new york press. microsoft word jardineproof2.docx corresponding author: david w. jardine faculty of education, university of calgary, calgary, ab t2n 1n4 email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 12, 2012 the author(s) 2012 “the memories of childhood have no order and no end”: pedagogical reflections on the occasion of the release, on october 9th 2009, of the re-mastered version of the beatles’ sergeant pepper’s lonely hearts club band. david w. jardine “the memories of childhood have no order, and no end.” from dylan thomas’s (1954, p. 8) reminiscences of childhood we are no longer able to approach this like an object of knowledge, grasping, measuring and controlling. rather than meeting us in our world, it is much more a world into which we ourselves are drawn. [it] possesses its own worldliness and, thus, the center of its own being so long as it is not placed into the objectworld of producing and marketing. the being of this thing cannot be accessed by objectively measuring and estimating; rather, the totality of a lived context has entered into and is present in the thing. and we belong to it as well. our orientation to it is always something like our orientation to an inheritance that this thing belongs to, be it from a stranger’s life or from our own. from hans-georg gadamer (1994, p. 192), heidegger’s ways. reminiscence i all this is certainly more than twenty years ago today. grade 11 english class, winter 1967, some time after february 2, 1967. i’m mentioning this because i still remember that date, february 2, 1967, was when i first heard the latest beatles single, penny lane/strawberry fields forever, over an american am radio station that crackled its way to southern ontario, to burlington, one evening whose details are lost to memory. was it wbz from boston? and how we stood in doug’s rec-room, amazed, wondering whether we were actually hearing what we thought, or whether the radio was blurring in and out of the winter snowstatic, like old tv reception. good vibrations the previous fall of ’66 was strange enough. now this? what is this? part of it was the vertigo tremble of being near-17 in oh-so-fortunate days such as those and sensing all around secret and hidden worlds impending. glimmer of a sort of aufklarung with its double german roots of “enlightenment” and also “clearing up.” some lit cracks “break forth” (gadamer 1989, p. 458) in those clouds of winter static. openings. opportunity. possibilities, and “thereby possible ways of shaping our lives” (gadamer, 1986, p. 59). there. “through the recess, the chalk and numbers” (wilson & parks 1966). something secret. (“yo-da-lay-ee-who,” jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 1 2 sung right over that song-line). sometime in late-february that year, in our grade 11 english class, we were given reminiscences of childhood by dylan thomas to read with the horrifying and boring prospect of discussing it in the days to come. (school not yet ever experienced as a place of schola: “leisure,” and a place of "a holding back, a keeping clear” [oed]). unexpected, then, in reading this for school, this happens. i seem to already know intimately of this place of reminiscence. i “recognize [myself] in the mess of th[is] world” (hillman 1983, p. 49). how did this welshman know this of me? was i spotted unawares when i was lingering there? (aufklarung is not simply becoming conscious of threads in the world, but becoming, in all its myriad, self-conscious—not just spotting but being spotted, and spotting that, experiencing that i am experienced by others, that i am visible). dylan thomas has experienced me and now seems to write down heretofore secret trails of what i am. images of flying, in memory: over the trees of the everlasting park, where a brass band shakes the leaves and sends them showing down on to the nurses and the children, the cripples and the idlers, the gardeners and the shouting boys. (thomas, 1954, p. 8) and these specific streets, “inkerman street, sebastopol street” (p. 8), names whose very specificity made them both tangible and imaginable. nearby recesses. my self being formed right there, in front of me. like bankers, sitting, waiting, midst pictures of possible trims, straightrazor foamed clean-cut around the ears. and there, a “fireman turning off the hose and standing in the wet” (thomas, 1954a, p. 15) (safely rushed in from the pouring rain), from “a child’s christmas in wales” (which i quickly read next back then and not at all for school). very strange. nurses, imagined in memory with poppies in a tray in the park with old men and brass bands, my own old “dame school . . .so firm and kind smelling of galoshes, with the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom” (thomas, 1954, p. 7). lakeshore public school, built in 1923, red brick, facing lake ontario, “the singing sea” (p. 8) where by grade six we’d smoke stolen cigarettes and meet at the water’s lap edge, a “world within the world [into which we are drawn]” (p. 4), “secret” (p. 4), housing “its own, even sacred, seriousness” (gadamer 1989, p. 102). “a space specially marked out and reserved” (gadamer, 1989, p. 107). “this is for us, not for the 'others'. what the 'others' do 'outside' is of no concern to us at the moment. we are different, we do things differently" (huizinga, 1955, p. 12): and a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking [“a world wholly closed within itself, it is as if open toward the spectator in whom it achieves its whole significance” (gadamer, 1989, p. 109)]. (thomas, 1954a, p. 17) good heavens, there it is: “the wild boys innocent as strawberries” (1954, p. 6). what am i going to do with this secret? (“every game presents the [one] who plays it with a task” (gadamer, 1989, p. 107). jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 1 3 i ended up, of course, humming along in our grade 11 class as i read about hunchbacks and how “the boys made the tigers jump out of their eyes,” (thomas, 1954 p. 6) and “the smell of fish and chips on saturday evenings” (p. 7) (tethered later to even more dirty-secret beatle pies). and our teacher asking me about the humming song, and me telling him about penny lane and strawberry fields and how this reminiscence we were reading sounds so familiar, and him getting one of those purple smelly gestetner™ machine mimeograph sheets and telling me to take it home and type out the lyrics. and i did. and our teacher copied it out. and we looked there and then and long and hard into the deep face of the world that some of us were actually already secretly living in. ear whisper. remembered thus, our teacher to me: “you need to read more dylan thomas.” this is what he said in truth but it may not be what he actually said. i can’t quite remember but i remember it as clear as day, that invitation out of yet back into childhood sleepiness, out of and yet back into to play. and then. four months later, june 1 1967, a month to go before school is finally out, k. p. and i go into hamilton’s west end, kensington mall (a name worthy of wales or liverpool) to a record store, and buy sergeant pepper’s lonely hearts club band. not right away, but slowly, soon, there, some recognition, right above and between marlon brando and tom mix, themselves above the madame tussaud’s wax figures of the beatles reminisced from 1964. there. a round and unmistakable puffytousled face in black and white. there! dylan thomas. reminiscence ii we do not understand what recognition is in its profoundest nature if we only regard it as knowing something again that we know already i.e., what is familiar is recognized again. the joy of recognition is rather the joy of knowing more than is already familiar. in recognition what we know emerges, as if illuminated, from all the contingent and variable circumstances that condition it (gadamer, 1989, p. 114). the joy of recognition. the joy of knowing more. in blurry retrospect, this is the first time i remember having the experience of actually knowing something, of actually having read something “right” up out of my own according life. the pedagogy of this is important and almost intractable. “over and above our wanting and doing,” things sometimes “happen to us” (gadamer, 1989, p. xxviii). this, of course, is an insight long in coming and points to why i still remember this event, still call it to mind and make something of it, again and again, in such callings. “every repetition is as original as the work itself” (gadamer, 1989, p. 122). there are adventures in the world, secret places that will yield those secrets if i care to venture and do what the place requires of me when i arrive. our teacher seemingly “ignor[ing] the orthodox who labor so patiently trying to eliminate the apocryphal variants from the one true text. there is no one true version of which all the others are but copies or distortions. every version belongs” (thompson, 1981, pp. 11-12). a conspiracy, a common breath. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 1 4 it is as if i was, all those years ago, presented with a task that was wedded to a prospect, a promise, that settling here will bring unexpected yield, that staying here has a future (linked somehow to reminiscence, to a past’s future that is remarkably “standing” still “in a horizon of … still undecided future possibilities” [gadamer, 1989, p. 112]). still. this is how stillness anticipates. stillare “to drip, drop” (o.e.d.). every version belongs: “interweaving and crisscrossing" (wittgenstein, 1968, p. 36). undergoing an “increase in being” (gadamer, 1989, p. 40) in such interweaving. slowly becoming what it is. slowly become who i have become. crisscrossing. it would be a mistake for me to portray that june 1967 event simply as some thunderbolt flash of some sort of full illumination at the time in the mind and life of a 16 year old. i’ve since read of gadamer’s teacher, martin heidegger, and his oft-used image of lightning, where a territory gets suddenly illuminated and gathers into a place, a topos, a “topic” (see, e.g., caputo 1982, p. 195). this idea of an opening or clearing or field (see friesen & jardine, 2009) that suddenly opens up and illuminates, has long since haunted me. see, too, gadamer (1989, p. 21), on topica and the young needing images, like nurses selling poppies, for the formation of their memory. all this is of that reminiscence. slow emergence. flash and then slow glowing arrives, but only if i take on as my own the work of remembering. hermeneutics is a practice. an earthly sort of aufklarung. “you should read more dylan thomas” as a call to prayer, to practice, with a promise that something will yield through patience and “a continuity of attention and devotion” (berry, 1986, p 32). hermeneutics as an ecological practice. all the work i’ve come to do starts here, at this absent origin. after all, “understanding begins when something addresses us,” (gadamer, 1989, p. 299), but it only begins there. reading a child’s christmas in wales was compelled as a way to continue to remain in the same place and cultivate it a bit more, as is writing this paper, a gathering that is also a whiling (jardine, 2008), like the festive (gadamer, 1989, pp. 122-123) 09-09-09 release of the re-mastered sergeant pepper’s lonely hearts club band, its date echoing a white album yet to come back in early 1967. and, just to foolishly rub this wound, we are dealing with an event which itself was already about memory and reminiscence, in and of wales boyhoods, in and of liverpool streets and orphanages, in sound and shiny brass band accordances in edwardian suits, young men singing, in 1967, about being 64 (and how i’m now actually three years away!) and me, at that time, 16 going on 17, beginning to feel full-fledge the reminiscent pull of my own life, my own imagined childhood, now clearly ago, and slowly, slowly, drip-drop, becoming the sort of perhaps-never-was that i can henceforth live with remembering and recognizing thus. “to reconcile [my]self with [my]self, to recognize oneself in other being” (gadamer 1989, p. 13). it has taken years for that event to become what it was. read that again. it has taken years for that event to become what it was. what it is “what really happened back then in that english class or that ride to kensington mall?” becomes a more and more trivial question, because the question that drives here is “what has become of it?” even asking “what really happened?” is itself a formative act. this is how jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 1 5 memory works, because memory doesn’t just store information: it does work, and its workings are how it shapes the one remembering. this is why memory is always someone’s: whoever uses his memory as a mere faculty and any “technique” of memory is such a use does not yet possess it as something that is absolutely [one’s] own. memory must be formed; for memory is not memory of anything and everything. one has a memory for some things, and not for others; one wants to preserve one thing in memory and banish another. “keeping in mind” is ambiguous (gadamer, 1989, pp. 15-16). indeed it is. this ambiguity hides an oftensecreted mechanism of becoming myself right at the very moment when contingent and variable circumstances both fall away and gather up into illuminating recognition all at once. look there. wild boys, innocent. ambiguous, this keeping in mind. so, that “past” event’s eventfulness is recurrently experienced as “a task that is never entirely finished” (gadamer, 1989, p. 301). after all, here we are, writer and reader, 44 years on, still struggling with how and whether to learn to live with the entreaties of this event. “by forming the thing [i] form [my]self” (gadamer, 1989, p. 13), and by informing, now, in this writing, i set out for readers a gentle pedagogical demand on thinking, on memory formation and its ways. this: that “every word breaks forth” (gadamer, 1989, p. 458) thus. shush! this is the hermeneutic secret regarding pedagogy. every seeminglymoribund thread of every program of studies for every grade (and even grade 11 english class now 44 years ago) has secrets such as these, reminiscences to be had in the leisure of schooling. reminiscence iii spiel: origin: 1890–95; (noun) < german spiel or yiddish shpil play, game; (v.) < german spielen or yiddish shpiln to play, gamble. (www.dictionary.reference.com) and become in english parlance, in the great imac desktop dictionary definition: “a long or fast speech or story, typically intended as a means of persuasion or as an excuse but regarded with contempt or skepticism by those who hear it.” wild schoolboy ruses, then, little persuasions or excuses or deceits needed to make our way in the world down by lake-lap edge. but still, we secretly knew, i secretly knew that “something is going on, (im spiele ist), something is happening (sich abspielt)” (gadamer, 1989, p. 104). that’s why i ended up reading a child’s christmas in wales in short order back then, simply and only because the beatles fan in me seemed to have already read it. that, i expect (or, actually, hope in retrospect), is why our teacher ventured like he did. risking the wild that turned out to not only reveal but also revive a deep and hidden civility, an emergent culturedness (bildung) in that uprising that can save the world (of grade 11 english) from its too-often over-schooled moroseness. because the world is made by mortals it wears out; and because it continuously changes its inhabitants it runs the risk of becoming as mortal as they. to preserve the world against the mortality of its creators and inhabitants it must be constantly set right anew. the problem is simply to educate in such a way that a settingright remains actually possible, even though it can, of course, never be assured. our hope always hangs on the new which every generation brings. (arjardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 1 6 endt, 1969, p. 192) a triple rescue in this setting-right. thomas’s reminiscences of childhood is rescued from its moribund locale in the english grade 11 program of studies, that overloaded canon. it is awakened. beatles rescued from pop-culture momentariness. and me finding a place of comfort for my own awakening, finding my own strength strengthened, housed and cared for in the common embrace of these welsh and liverpool worlds. as i become myself, i also become unalone in this becoming. handed, and handed over to, an inheritance. both and always “in between” (gadamer, 1989, p. 109). all at once spotting and spotted. a great ecological convergence at the heart of coming to know. this, then, is the pedagogical task, working this out and thus working out a life. and in this working, preserving the world from the mortality of its creators and inhabitants while all that while becoming more and more mortal. “pathei mathos: learning through suffering” (gadamer, 1989, p. 356). reminiscence iv “something awakens our interest that is really what comes first!” (gadamer, 2001, p. 50). something awakens. something clears. aufklarung. the lane was always the place to tell your secrets; if you did not have any, you invented them. occasionally now i dream that i am turning out of school into the lane of confidences when i say to the boys of my class, “at last, i have a real secret.” “what is it what is it?” “i can fly.” and when they do no believe me, i flap my arms and slowly leave the ground only a few inches at first, then, gaining air until i fly waving my cap level with the upper windows of the school, peering in until the mistress at the piano screams and the metronome falls to the ground and stops, and there is no more time. (thomas, 1954, pp. 7-8) it is odd to have steeped meaning, wonderfully, both “soaked” and “softened” (o.e.d)-so long in this lane of confidences, these images, roiling back and forth in intimate relations of “responding and summoning” (gadamer, 1989, p. 458), of me being summoner and then summoned some, responding and feeling waves of resistance and response, memory and lapse, formative, shaping. glimpses of “the unsaid” (p. 458). you see, i could have sworn, starting this paper, that dylan thomas’ nurses in the park had poppies. they do not. and that there was an orphanage in wales, wasn’t there, like strawberry field in wild boy days in liverpool? no. thus i, too, have a secret. a new idea is never only a wind-fall, an apple to be eaten. it takes hold of us as much as we take hold of it. the hunch that breaks in pulls one into an identification with it. we feel gifted, inspired, upset, because the message is also a messenger that makes demands, calling us to . . .fly out. (hillman, 2005, p. 99) and when they do not believe me, i write my way down lanes of confidences. this is the secret. this reminiscent world is my first memory of a genuinely hermeneutic experience. such “experience has its proper fulfillment not in definitive jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 1 7 knowledge but in the openness to experience that is made possible by experience itself” (gadamer, 1989, p. 355). because i’ve dwelt in this territory for so many years, it has ripened such that i am now more susceptible to its summoning. “[this world] compels over and over, and the better one knows it, the more compelling it is. this is not a matter of mastering an area of study” (gadamer, 2007, p. 115) and yet it is something of ripe pedagogy at its best. something in me keeps expecting to see hans-georg gadamer’s face one day on that re-mastered record sleeve “record sleeve,” itself, of course, a reminiscence. a “have no end” the world, too, needs protection to keep it from being overrun and destroyed by the onslaught of the new that burst upon it with each new generation. (arendt, 1969, pp. 185-6) you all know that as a beginner one comes to find everything questionable, for that is the privilege of youth to seek everywhere the novel and new possibilities. one then learns slowly how a large amount must be excluded in order to finally arrive at the point where one finds the truly open questions and therefore the possibilities that exist. (gadamer, 1986, p. 59) “the memories of childhood have no order, and no end” (thomas, 1954, p. 8). but dylan thomas knew clearly of a secret order in the park, by the water’s lake lap, in the old woman’s scold. that ecological scold of wildness that comes in response to wild erupts, as simple, sometimes, as innocent boys humming tunes in school. or little children who laugh behind the backs of bankers. “to find free spaces and learn to move therein” (gadamer, 1986, p. 59). real possibilities that might just open up unseen unsaid worlds (“even though it can, of course, never be assured” [arendt, 1969, p. 192]). to re-cite: “and thereby possible ways of shaping our lives” (gadamer, 1986, p. 59), even though such shaping can never be assured. so, here’s to miraculous happenstance, the remembered ventures of a teacher, and the great lack of assurance that underwrites pedagogy at its best. i know that this age-old experience of being drawn into a world and finding myself already there is one that has been and remains a steadfast refuge and path of my own work, and a key to what i hope can happen in schools. here’s another small secret that isn’t much of a secret. it’s not just a hope. i’ve seen something of it happen in many dame schools, firm and kind. at least, that is what i remember through this recess of reminiscence. and when they do not believe me, i flap my arms and write out of the joy of recognition. the best news of all in this vague season is remembering such events and chancing to see their kin bubble up in kind in the lives of students and teachers. it has allowed me to still feel a bit of a wild boy, still somehow innocent as strawberries. bragg creek, alberta, december 21-31, 2011 jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 1 8 bio david w. jardine, phd, is a professor in the faculty of education, university of calgary. references arendt, h. (1969). between past and future: eight exercises in political thought. new york, ny: penguin books. caputo, j. (1982). heidegger and aquinas: an essay on overcoming metaphysics. new york, ny: fordham university press. friesen, s., & jardine, d. (2009). on field(ing) knowledge. in s. goodchild & b. sriraman (eds.), relatively and philosophically e[a]rnest: festschrifte in honour of paul ernest’s 65th birthday. the montana mathematics enthusiast: monograph series in mathematics education (pp. 149-175). charlotte, nc: information age publishing. gadamer, h. g. (1986). the idea of the university--yesterday, today, tomorrow. in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds. & trans.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (pp. 47-62). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h. g. (1989). truth and method. new york: continuum books. gadamer, h. g. (1994). heidegger’s ways. boston: mit press. gadamer, h.g. (2007). from word to concept: the task of hermeneutics as philosophy. in r. palmer (ed. & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 108-122). evanston, il: northwestern university press. hillman, j. (1983). healing fiction. barrytown, n.y.: station hill press. hillman, j. (2005). notes on opportunism. in james hillman (2005), senex and puer (pp. 96-112). putnam, ct: spring publications. huizinga, j. (1955). homo ludens: a study of the play element in culture. boston, ma: the beacon press. jardine, d. (in press). on the while of things. forthcoming in d. jardine, pedagogy left in peace. new york, ny: continuum books. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 1 9 online etymological dictionary (o.e.d.). access december 26, 2011 at: http://www.etymonline.com. thomas, d. (1954). reminiscences of childhood. in d. thomas, quite early one morning. new york, ny: new directions paperbook, p. 3-8. thomas, d. (1954a). a child’s christmas in wales. in d. thomas (1954). quite early one morning (pp. 14-21). new york: new directions paperbook. thompson, w. i. (1981). the time falling bodies take to light: mythology, sexuality and the origin of culture. new york, ny: st. martin's press. wilson, b., & parks, v. d. (1966). wonderful. lyrics by v. d. parks, © warner/chappell music, inc., universal music publishing group. wittgenstein, l. (1968). philosophical investigations. cambridge, uk: blackwell’s. microsoft word mccaffrey moules corrected proof .docx 1 university of calgary, faculty of nursing corresponding author: graham mccaffrey, rn phd email: gpmccaff@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 2, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 encountering the great problems in the street: enacting hermeneutic philosophy as research in practice disciplines graham mccaffrey1, rn, phd & nancy j. moules1, rn, phd abstract in this paper, we speak to tenets of gadamerian hermeneutic philosophy that “guide” our hermeneutic inquiry in research that seeks to understand the complexity of human experiences. in our conduct of hermeneutic research, we grapple with “great problems” and encounter the human difficulty of topics such as childhood cancer, grief, mental illness, education and schools, arts and humanities, and other topics that show up in practice professions of nursing, teaching, social work, or psychology. keywords hermeneutic research, hermeneutic philosophy, hans-georg gadamer, nursing, qualitative research, applied hermeneutics of all actions, those performed for a purpose have been least understood, no doubt because they have always been counted the most understandable and are to our consciousness the most commonplace. the great problems are to be encountered in the street. (nietzsche, 1881/1982, p. 78) in 2015, dr. john caputo introduced us to a society hosted out of villanova university called the north american society for philosophical hermeneutics (nasph), a society interested in mccaffrey & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 1 2 philosophical hermeneutics in particular that of hans-georg gadamer. the focus of the 2015 10th annual meeting was “the future(s) of hermeneutics” and we decided to submit a paper offering our perspectives and approaches that involve applied hermeneutics. although the paper was not accepted for the meeting, one of the authors (moules) attended the meeting and was surprised to find that many members of the group were aware of, and very interested in, the work that is being done in this area and, in particular, being done by the work of the canadian hermeneutic institute (chi) and the journal of applied hermeneutics (jah). through taking up the task of articulating what “applied hermeneutics” in practice disciplines means to a new audience, we subsequently realized we had also written a reflective account of developments in applied hermeneutics since the founding of the chi in 2009. what follows is a version of that account, published for the fifth anniversary of jah in 2016. in the ways we have embraced hermeneutics in an applied sense, hermeneutics is not really concerned with itself as a philosophy but rather with how we make sense of philosophy in a way that is applied in living examples. like the mandate of this journal, we take up gadamerian hermeneutics in its application to topics that inhabit our lives and professions, interpreting living examples of being in the world. this is the act of philosophy and catching it in the act and action of human concerns (caputo, 2015; moules & mccaffrey, 2015). what is the basis for our claim of a fit between hermeneutics and a practice discipline like nursing? one answer to this question is that the type of questions we endeavor to answer – or perhaps we should say, to respond to – hermeneutically are invariably about relationships. what, for example, are the effects of childhood cancer irrupting into a family, on grandparents, on the parental couple, on romantic/intimate partners of adolescents with cancer, on adolescent sexuality? gadamerian hermeneutics in particular, with its insistence on the centrality of dialogue in opening up understanding, both echoes the topic of interest and the means of generating data by interview. none of this is to say that we have a naïve understanding that dialogue automatically or smoothly opens the door to understanding; we are interested in our research in the said and the unsaid, in elisions, silences, and contradictions; we are aware of the distortions introduced into the possibility of “genuine conversation” (gadamer, 2004, p. 385) by power differentials and the prescriptive goals of the research interview. hermeneutics allows us – requires us to regard relationships as complex, dynamic, contextual, and historical and, in doing so, helps us to avoid the twin traps of complacently seeking our own goodness or berating ourselves for falling short of idealized conceptions of ourselves as self-sacrificing nurses or teachers. this is to consider dialogue and relationship literally as interactions between persons and, at this literal level, we speak to nietzsche’s claim that “the great problems are to be encountered in the street” (1881/1982, p. 78) or in the classroom, the hospital, or the living room amongst everyday interactions in which something is at stake for individuals. hermeneutics also allows us – requires us – to regard these interactions in the fullness of their historical moment and matrices of cultural associations. one of the weaknesses of much research in nursing that claims to be hermeneutic is that it misses this point and resides too much in the personal, ignoring gadamer’s admonition that “the self awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuit of historical life” (2004, p. 278). in exploring the relationships between nurses and patients on mental health units, for example, the hegemony of biomedical psychiatry is played out in the significance accorded to mccaffrey & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 1 3 the role of nurses in giving medications to patients. it is a role that is taken very seriously, a moment in which the nurse simultaneously exercises power over the patient and is acted upon (carrying out medical orders) since she or he will be called to account for omissions or errors. by contrast, the level of participation in therapeutic conversations with patients is highly dependent on local unit cultures and is often more or less optional and only weakly connected to the goals and aspirations of patients. histories of subordination, supervision, confinement, as well as weaker traditions of the therapeutic potential of language are enacted in everyday rituals that privilege certain activities over others. relationship is often the locus of hermeneutic application to practice disciplines around specific questions or topics, but we would argue beyond this for a more intimate and deeper sense of application in the nature of practice disciplines as such. we will explore this in terms of nursing since that is our discipline, but we would expect that teachers, social workers, or psychologists could make equivalent arguments. in truth and method (1960/2004), gadamer used the law as an exemplar for hermeneutics as an applied philosophy law being a well established branch of the human sciences as well as a respectable, bürgerlich profession. in his long subsequent career, he elaborated upon his hermeneutic philosophy to many different audiences, including physicians and some of those lectures were collected in the english volume the enigma of health (1996). medicine has also been studied through a hermeneutic lens by fredrik svenaeus (2000) who argued that clinical medicine should be seen as a practice “which can be best understood as an interpretive meeting between health-care personnel and patient with the aim of healing the ill person seeking help” (p. 2). although here he used the ecumenical expression “health care personnel,” he makes it clear throughout the work that he is talking about medicine, and that other disciplines such as nursing are treated, somewhat apologetically, as approximate sub-types of medicine. the view of nursing as existing in relation to medicine, if acknowledged as a separate discipline at all, is important from a hermeneutic point of view. we are able to hear ourselves and to reflect upon the place from which we speak by understanding ourselves as nurses in relation to other professions, other disciplines and our own histories. nursing as a discipline within academia continues to hold a somewhat provisional place. the idea that registered nurses should have a degree level education is still relatively new and is not always the case in every jurisdiction. when one of the authors (mccaffrey) was studying for his doctorate in nursing, he often encountered surprise that there was such a phenomenon as a phd in nursing. a sense of ambiguity in relation to the status of nursing is not simply a problem of those on the outside. amongst ourselves, nurses cannot resist picking at a wound of self-identity; new classes of graduate students, arriving as confident clinical practitioners, find themselves thrown back into the existential anxiety of the question, “what is nursing?” one of the reasons for this uncertainty is that nursing has one foot firmly in the natural sciences and one just as firmly in – what shall we say, the human sciences, the humanities, the geisteswissenschaften? the interrelation between what we do and how we do it – so immediately apparent in every patient's story of an indifferent or a compassionate nurse – is a vortex at the heart of nursing. we offer as a provisional answer to the question “what is nursing?” an acceptance of the ambivalence and the uncertainty, of the “flux” to borrow caputo’s term. under the influence of hermeneutics, we have come to understand nursing as a dialogue with itself before it is actualized in the dialogue between nurse and patient. against the essentializing voices in nursing that would say it is ultimately a matter of technical mccaffrey & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 1 4 proficiency, or of individuals having a compassionate nature, we say that it is a dialogue that has no last word. nursing is a condition of interpretive instability, saturated with possibility and concomitant anxiety, in the moment that it is both academic discipline and practice profession. having arrived at this point, which feels very abstract, nursing always has to manifest in practice according to the telos of helping patients (these are placeholder terms: “helping” being the broadest and simplest term to encompass the multivariate activities of contemporary nursing and “patients” standing, according to context, for client or family or community or simply person). flux is not the same as meaninglessness, and nursing is a recognizable human activity with the stamp of responding to needs related to health and illness. nursing is an embodied and enacted social function that entails distinct, if widely varied, kinds of actions, prescriptive legal and ethical frameworks of permission and obligation, as well as more subtle codes of language and behaviour. one of gadamer’s concepts that speaks most naturally to nurses is his retrieval of phronesis, or practical wisdom. nursing done well demonstrates the exercise of judgment in the moment, drawing upon knowledge of various kinds, and applying it judiciously and helpfully according to the contours of the unique instance. one of the authors (mccaffrey) was teaching a class of undergraduate students who were working in clinical placements in long-term care centres. during a discussion of how ethics entered into the formation of judgment for nurses, one student brought up an incident that she had found troubling. a healthcare aide had brought a commode (toilet in a chair on wheels) to a resident and because she could not find the pot that fitted into the commode, she had used a garbage can for the resident to urinate into. the student felt discomfited by seeing this, thinking that although it met a functional purpose, there was a falling away of respect for the dignity of the resident in the failure to provide the proper equipment. she had responded by going to find the pot that was part of the commode and using it correctly. we have described this minor incident from practice deliberately because it is minor; phronesis, however, does not demand grandeur of scale, or life and death consequences. it does demand a refinement of sensibility, an acuity of perception that has to be practiced over and over, so that it is precisely in the capacity to practice in the smallest of cases that it is more likely to be practiced at all. these understandings of nursing and of other practice disciplines have not been achieved easily or quickly. we are not philosophers in the strict sense of the discipline. we are nurses and educators. however, we study and teach on gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, and we apply philosophical tenets to our teaching, discipline, and our research. in 2009, drs. nancy johnson, debbie mcleod, and nancy moules co-founded the canadian hermeneutic institute (www.chiannual.com) with the intent to bring together scholars of hermeneutics and hermeneutic research across disciplines in creative dialogue and conversations of philosophy, research, and practice. each year we gather with a visiting scholar of hermeneutics: drs. david jardine, john caputo, richard kearney, james olthuis, gail weiss, nicholas davey, and jean grondin to date. during these gatherings we have discovered that these renowned scholars were sometimes surprised to find that nurses, social workers, psychologists, administrators, and teachers were interested in hermeneutics and perhaps even more surprised to learn that we had for over two decades been conducting research guided by gadamerian hermeneutics. in these meetings, as we speak to our topics of concern and research, there is a sense of what caputo (2015) identified as mccaffrey & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 1 5 the “‘hermeneutic situation’ in the concrete, glowing white hot and jumping off the pages of the philosophy books” (p. xi). dr. richard kearney aptly named this “applied hermeneutics” and encouraged us in 2011 to launch a journal, the journal of applied hermeneutics, which now moves to its sixth year of publication. the work published in the journal ranges from philosophical papers to more practical interpretations of aspects of our disciplines that speak to human conditions of living. in 2014, we along with two colleagues received a book contract with peter lang publishing to write conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). in the book, we speak to tenets of gadamerian philosophy that “guide” our approach to understanding the complexity of the human experience. we conduct research around topics such as childhood cancer, grief, mental illness, education and schools, arts and humanities, and other topics that show up in practice professions of nursing, teaching, social work, and psychology. in the discipline of nursing, we have been guided by gadamer’s work for over 20 years; the dissertations in nursing alone are prolific. some of the topics from our own faculty of nursing at the university of calgary that have been researched hermeneutically include: families and cardiac disease; therapeutic letters in family systems nursing; grief and family therapy; spirituality and family systems nursing; commendations in family systems nursing; advance care planning; experiences of families with children with progressive life limiting illness; buddhism and mental health nursing; vicarious trauma on nurses working in mental health; family systems nursing for families with a child with cancer; families living with a family member with treatable but incurable cancer; children’s cancer camps; family presence during resuscitation; sexuality, relationships and spinal cord injury; grandparents’ experiences of childhood cancer; impacts of deaths of children on pediatric oncology nurses; and many more topics that are too numerous to name and reference. we have several current studies looking at aspects of families’ experiences of childhood cancer, and the use of arts in teaching. in the book, we speak to starting from a place of philosophy: what does gadamer have to teach us about “being methodical and following leads” (moules et al., 2015, pp. 55-69)? gadamer certainly did not lay out a method for hermeneutic research. in fact, he might be surprised too to find it in nursing or in research at all. he did, however, offer ideas around universality and finitude, historically effected consciousness, language and linguistic being, conversation and dialogue, questions, play, prejudices, the hermeneutic circle, erlebnis and erfahrung, bildung, fusion of horizons, application and phronesis, and transformation into structure. each of these ideas has something to say to us in the conduct of good hermeneutic research. in the book, we suggest guidelines, not as scientific method, which gadamer questioned as the ultimate authority, but as an orientation for direction, much like stars serve for navigation, that which “serves to steady the motion of a thing or journey” (moules et al., 2015, p. 61). guidelines are not methodological imperatives. they are in the service of steady, dependable motion. they are not meant to displace good judgment or extinguish experience…offered in the service of practice and …of the phenomenon. (moules et al., 2015, p. 61) mccaffrey & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 1 6 the guidelines offered are: 1. the way of hermeneutic practice is determined by the phenomenon, not the method 2. hermeneutic practice requires a disciplined (phenomenological) focus on the particular 3. hermeneutic practice requires that we be vigilant and open in our encounters with the lifeworld 4. reading in the hermeneutic tradition involves a practice of learning to read self and world differently 5. the nature of hermeneutic practice is dialogical. (pp. 62-68) in our work of applied hermeneutics, we are addressed by topics of human concern and practice concern. we answer to this address in the sense of caputo’s ideas of obligation (caputo, 1993) and his thinking “in radical hermeneutics everything turns on saying ‘come’ to the coming of what we cannot see coming, of the unforeseeable” (caputo, 2015, p. ix). with this address, we seek out those who can best inform us around the topic – it may be participants who are interviewed (e.g., grandparents of a child with cancer) or it may be other literature, poetry, films, or documents. if participants are interviewed, we audio tape the interviews and transcribe them and then we approach the text hermeneutically, seeking understanding not explanation. this is not like analysis in other traditions and there are no procedural guidelines that save one from interpretation. it is not looking for themes that are determined or authenticated by repetition, nor is it looking for semantic codes, constructs, or theories. interpretation rather seeks to open understanding, to expose what was lost or forgotten or never seen. it is the work of aletheia. aletheia is a word that is about unconcealment…we have to face the living presence of what we come to suffer or as kearney and caputo suggest – a preparedness to meet the stranger at the door who may be kind or may be a monster. there is hospitality to aletheia – an openness to what might come to, and maybe enter, the door. (moules, 2015, p. 4) what we think caputo was referring to in the foreword of conducting hermeneutic research is the actionability of applied hermeneutics. when philosophy is taken to practice, to human contexts, situations, and suffering – to the great problems that are encountered in the streets, hospitals, homes, or schools it becomes more than words and ideas; it becomes alive, applied, and active. we think that understanding this very thing was at the heart of gadamer’s endeavor and is at the heart of research using hermeneutics. references caputo, j.d. (1993). against ethics: contributions to a poetics of obligation with constant reference to deconstruction. bloomington, in: indiana university press. caputo, j.d. (2015). foreword: the wisdom of hermeneutics. in n.j. moules, g. mccaffrey, j.c. field, & c.m. laing, conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice (pp. ixxiii). new york, ny: peter lang. gadamer, h-g. (1996). the enigma of health (j. gaiger & n. walker, trans.). stanford, mccaffrey & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 1 7 ca: stanford university press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/2004). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). london, uk: continuum. moules, n.j. (2015. editorial: aletheia – remembering and enlivening. journal of applied hermeneutics. editorial 2. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5qr4p68 moules, n.j. & mccaffrey, g. (2015). editorial: catching hermeneutics in the act. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy53n20w8 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. nietzsche, f. (1982). daybreak: thoughts on the prejudices of morality (r.j. hollingdale, trans.). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. svenaeus, f. (2000). the hermeneutics of medicine and the phenomenology of health. norwell, ma: kluwer academic. microsoft word venturato final pdf.docx corresponding author: lorraine venturato, phd university of calgary email: lventura@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics december 24, 2015 ©the author(s) 2015 towards a hermeneutics on ageing: or what gadamer can teach us about growing old lorraine venturato abstract ageing is one of life’s most pervasive shared experiences, and one that is imbued with social, cultural and bio-medical meaning. this paper begins a conversation on what hermeneutics and, in particular the philosophical hermeneutics of gadamer, can add to contemporary understandings of ageing. keywords ageing, hermeneutics, hans-georg gadamer it was the war in the pacific. silk stockings and a pink slip. a quick shimmy down a drainpipe in the middle of the night. she had seemed so old at 92. shrunken. somehow faded and less 60 years evaporated in a heartbeat and there she was. i saw her – finally. shining. somehow so much more ageing is one of life’s most pervasive shared experiences. from the moments we draw our first breath until we breathe our last however long that may be life is essentially a process of venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 9 2 ageing. indeed the etymology of age/ageing derives from the latin aetatem (nominative aetas) meaning a period of life, lifetime, or years. the association of ageing with old age, in particular, dates back to the 14th century (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ageing) though the term “old age” was not commonly used until the 1900s, with a sharp increase in usage post 1950. as such, the meaning of the word “ageing” has both ancient and contemporary roots. ageing is defined as an organic process of growing older over a period of time, and is akin to maturation or ripeness, a process of becoming old. legouès (in malabou, 2012) compared life to an aeroplane flight with take-off equating to childhood and youth, cruising with adulthood, and descent with ageing. it is also defined as the acquisition of desirable qualities through being left undisturbed for a period of time, as in the ageing of a fine wine or cheese (http:// www.finedictionary.com/ageing.html). however, there is also an association between the idea of ageing and decline of fading or weathering and the physical changes and appearance of old age that represent a palpable manifestation of the passage of time. i suggest that, in contemporary developed nations, this is the pervasive definition of the term “ageing.” over the years of working with older people and researching in the field of ageing, i have been exposed to many understandings of ageing some have required active interpretation, and others have been embedded in the takenfor-granted. ageing has many guises and is understood in a variety of ways. we are aware of chronological ageing as each year ticks by. this gives us a number that can indicate how long we have been caught up in the act of living. as a health care professional, i draw on an understanding of ageing that is biological and bio-medically framed – healthy ageing, normal ageing, and pathological ageing and a myriad of theories that seek to explain the degradation of cells and the wearing out of body systems over time, all of which inform my understanding of a physiological process of ageing as degradation and progression towards death. there are also social and cultural constructions of ageing ways in which ageing has become associated with wisdom and emancipation, as well as cognitive decline, frailty and illness, and death. there are critiques of social norms that drive youth-orientation (apparently its all elvis’s fault) and its resultant impact on ageing and older people; and “grey power” movements that seek to re-associate ageing with wisdom and challenge the negative social commentaries that position older people as vulnerable and a burden on society. these interpretations of ageing serve to shape our social and individual understanding of ageing. in this paper, i present my efforts to begin drawing together an understanding of ageing and old age, informed by the philosophical hermeneutics of hans-georg gadamer (1900 – 2002). in their book on gadamerian hermeneutic research, moules, mccaffrey, field, and laing (2015, p. 202) noted, “hermeneutic questions are hard questions; hermeneutic understanding is hard understanding.” accordingly, my efforts to develop a hermeneutic understanding of ageing is challenging in many ways. first, my understanding of ageing is shaped by social and biomedical interpretations. my education and professional socialisation deeply ingrains and privileges certain interpretations of ageing over others. this is an important acknowledgement in developing an understanding of ageing. for gadamer, any prior understanding of a topic, and the prejudices that we bring to a topic, venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 9 3 always inform our current interpretation and consequent understanding of it (gadamer, 1960/1989). as with “ageing,” the word “prejudice” is imbued with negative meanings in contemporary english usage. however, prejudice requires acknowledgement that we do not approach any topic as though it were a blank slate; rather, we approach a topic that is already saturated with meaning (moules et al., 2015). the challenge in this lies in the fact that many prejudices lie hidden in the everyday and taken-for-granted. as a health care professional in the area of gerontology, the topic of ageing is saturated with meaning, and a form of scientific political correctness that begs a counter to social and cultural discourses that still shape my understandings. so, while i have professional discourses and meanings that sit within my discipline and education, i am also aware of and subject to, at a more personal level, socially and culturally derived meanings that shape my personal experience of the phenomena of ageing. to step outside these interpretive limitations and be open to other understandings requires an openness to the other (gadamer, 1960/1989). davey (2006, p. xvi) noted, “openness to the other requires a particular refinement: the skill of being critically distant while remaining involved, attentive, and caring.” a second challenge in developing a hermeneutics of ageing lies in gadamer’s assertion that there can be no final word in hermeneutics and, therefore, no first word in hermeneutic understanding. rather, gadamer defined understanding as a relationship and as a dialogue (grondin, 1994), less like grasping content and more like a continuous dialogue. in this respect, a hermeneutics of ageing both arises from and informs the dialogue on ageing, while claiming to be neither the first, nor final word. the meaning of ageing will continue to evolve, and grasping for such an elusive meaning may be deemed self-indulgent at best. a third and final challenge stems from the primacy of the biomedical paradigm, which not only privileges certain lenses and interpretations of the topic of ageing, but also serves to limit our understanding of it. more concerning still is that such a dominant paradigm in ageing is selflimiting because it also constrains the possibilities for questions we might ask. for me, this has been a defining feature of this movement towards a hermeneutic of ageing, which started with a discussion with a colleague. in considering submitting an abstract for a presentation at the north american society for philosophical hermeneutics (nasph) 2015 conference, i commented to my colleague that i had nothing to present. her rather off-the-cuff response to “write a hermeneutics of ageing” left me reeling. it was the suddenness of the recognition that, in all my many understandings of ageing and despite having a research chair in gerontology and considering myself a hermeneut at heart, i had never considered how a hermeneutics of ageing might add to the dialogue and understanding of the topic. it was, as gadamer wrote, a call to action. gadamer (1960/1989. p. 299) also wrote “understanding begins when something addresses us.” my professional understanding of ageing began when i was a student nurse working in a nursing home in australia. (i use the term “professional understanding” here as, like most people, i had a concept of ageing that was socially and culturally derived, and that i brought with me into my professional role). the poem at the beginning of this paper is based on my journal notes following an evening shift where i spent time talking to mary, a frail 92-year woman. in hindsight, the moment marked a shift; it was a profound “aha” moment that re-charted my professional course. i realised that mary was more than the sum of her wrinkles, her pains, and her considerable venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 9 4 medications and, despite the ravages of time evident in faces and bodies, despite a range of illnesses and medical woes – all of which are fascinating to a nursing student – the person inside is always present and does not necessarily experience the ravages of time at the same rate and in the same way as the physical body. this was also the first time i saw mary as less “other,” and became aware of our similarities. until then, i had been lulled by the outward signs of her age into thinking of her as somehow intrinsically different to me. today, this has particular implications for my professional focus on the concepts of personhood and selfhood as they pertain to older people living with dementia and other forms of cognitive impairment. it also reflects what davey (2006, p. 117) referred to as “the hermeneutic experience of being addressed,” which includes a recognition that we are not as well acquainted with our topic as we assumed, and then forging ahead with a new apprehension. mary shared with me a story about an evening during the second world war. her story jolted me in much the same way my colleague’s remark about a hermeneutics of ageing jolted me years later. i remember thinking, how did i not “see” this before. it changed my understanding of ageing in a profound way and started a professional interest that continues today. davey (2006, p. 118) referred to this as a “phenomenological shift from absentmindedness to mindfulness” that occurs “when what we have unknowingly experienced as the everyday is transformed.” according to gadamer (cited in davey, 2006, p. 118), this transformation is associated with the greek goddess mnemosyne. he wrote “mnemosyne rules everything: to keep in memory means to be human.” mnemosyne was also the mother of the nine muses, who inspire and nurture creativity through the arts and aesthetic endeavours. gadamer’s reflections in this area stimulates thought in relation to the nature of understanding ageing, and concepts of self and personhood for older people with dementia, and offer insight into how our memories and our sense of the world or our ability to interpret and make sense of the world through our senses, as grondin (2015) stated – appears to be both diminished and intact in someone with dementia. while i may take some issue with gadamer’s statement that memory equates in some way to humanness, his work on aesthetics and understanding and his invocation of mnemosyne, have shaped my work with older people with dementia through creative attempts to generate meaning and understanding. this is probably most evident through a mixed research and creative arts project that occurred in australia in 2013/2014 (venturato, 2015). we used an interpretive photographic approach to understand the world of older people with dementia living in a nursing home. our project entailed collaborative work between two photo-documentarists, ten older people with dementia living in two nursing homes, and myself. this work culminated with a public exhibition and public forum, where a panel of “experts” discussed ideas of creativity and ageing. the work highlighted a number of aspects of living with dementia and served to open dialogue with families, staff, and management. it became evident that older people with dementia maintained capacity to interpret and generate meaning in their life in various ways and that memory, interpretation, and meaning were much more complex than the results of an mri scan or a mini mental assessment score. as a researcher, it was satisfying to witness “aha” moments in nursing home staff as they reconsidered what they knew about the residents in the project, and older people with dementia in general. perhaps more satisfying, was witnessing our participants fully addressed as whole venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 9 5 people, beyond the constraints of medicalised diagnoses and perceived limitations. davey (2013, p. 68) noted that gadamer recognises the ability of art to address those concerns that “define us as human beings” and to “transform our understanding of them.” indeed, art’s compelling power lies in its ability to clarify aspects of our everyday concerns which, without its intervention, would remain unresolved. unlike life, art offers meanings ‘with nothing out of place’. it is precisely because of the compelling interests which shape our human horizon that we are susceptible to art’s claim. (davey, 2013, p. 68) moules et al. (2015) offered an important insight into the way gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics can guide further understanding of ageing through offering a number of guidelines for hermeneutic practice. in the spirit of gadamer’s reluctance to provide a methodology for hermeneutics, the authors are careful to note that such guidelines do not represent an attempt at methodological imperatives or a final word on the practice of understanding through hermeneutic explanation. rather they offer a guide to practically derive interpretations, while maintaining a philosophical orientation towards the phenomena of interest. the first guideline offered by moules et al. (2015) encourages a focus on phenomena rather than method. thus, coming to a hermeneutics of ageing requires one to go beyond method, and to be more concerned with substance than procedure. this is not to say that anything goes, but that interpretation is framed around careful attention, creative construction of possibilities, and grounded in experience. the second guideline refers to the requirement for a disciplined focus on the phenomenon (the particular) (moules et al., 2015). we are addressed by something, and by something that is significant. this is a complex process whereby understanding is fuelled by the particular and conversely, the particular is fuelled by new understanding. they noted “it is the detailed familiarity of the cases that strikes us; it is the detailed strangeness of the case that surprises us” (moules et al., 2015, p. 64). this requirement for a disciplined focus on the phenomenon also entails a temporal dimension. a hermeneutics of ageing considers the past, present, and future in order to re-envision ageing in a way that is both familiar and new. the third guideline requires vigilance and openness in our encounters with phenomena. within this, there is recognition of the risk inherent in being open to the other, in being flexible, in opening our prejudices and pre-understandings and our assumptions to change. this requires vigilance and constant attention in developing openness. such openness requires practice and this is particularly essential when one is embedded in knowing the phenomenon and in particular, when situated as an “expert” in the phenomenon. rather, remaining open lies in positioning oneself as a learner, embedded in a continual process of curiosity and truth seeking. the fourth guideline encourages us to read the self and the world differently. in this respect, they urge us to read slowly and methodically, to read for possibilities, and to allow the phenomenon to open up. this is reading in a transformative sense, rather than the digestion and interpretation of meaning and intent learnt in the traditional or technical sense of reading. thus a hermeneutics of ageing would consider the prejudices or pre-understandings, our perceptions, and the contexts that shape our perceptions and seek to transform understanding through the interplay between venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 9 6 text, self, and world a fusion of horizons that supports the movement and expansion of understanding in light of its encounter with history and tradition (recognises the present through the past) and dialogue. the fifth and final guideline recognises hermeneutic practice as dialogical. in this respect, hermeneutics entails entering into a dialogical relationship that recognises, and is open to, the possibility that the other may be right. it maintains a continual movement between question and answer and recognises that such conversations are ongoing. in this respect, a hermeneutics on ageing does not seek to have the final word on ageing but to contribute to the on-going conversation. there are many other aspects of gadamer’s work that offer insights into understanding ageing; in particular, aletheia and bildung offer insights into new possibilities for thinking about ageing. as moules et al. (2015) suggested, the process of hermeneutic understanding requires patience and flexibility; it is slow, methodical, and continuously open to new possibilities. this work represents this first step into the development of a hermeneutics of ageing, as a counterweight to social and biomedical understandings. references ageing. (n.d). fine dictionary. retrieved from (http://www.finedictionary.com/ageing.html) may 31, 2015. ageing. (n.d). dictionary.com. retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ageing may 31, 2015. davey, n. (2006). unquiet understanding: gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. albany, ny: state university of new york press. davey, n. (2013). unfinished worlds: hermeneutics, aesthetics and gadamer. edinburgh, scotland: edinburgh university press. gadamer, h.g. (1960/1989). truth and method (2nd rev.ed., j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.) new york, ny: continuum. grondin, j. (1994). introduction to philosophical hermeneutics. new haven, ct: yale university press. grondin, j. (2015). keynote presentation at the canadian hermeneutic institute. may 20-22, 2015. halifax, ns, canada. malibou, c. (2012). ontology of the accident: an essay in destructive plasticity (c. shread, trans.). cambridge, uk, polity press. venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 9 7 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. venturato. l. (2015, in press). nurturing creativity and understanding in the care of frail older people. the arts collective. accepted for publication january 2015. microsoft word moulesetal2013.docx 1 university of calgary corresponding author: dr. n.j. moules email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics march 21, 2013 the author(s) 2013 “isn’t all of oncology hermeneutic?” nancy j. moules1, david w. jardine1, graham p. mccaffrey1, & christopher brown1 abstract in this paper, we describe an event during a pediatric oncology research meeting that prompted the discussion of the ways in which hermeneutics brings a different kind of understanding to both research and practice. we claim that oncology is the practical science of handling natural science research and as such practice in oncology is deeply hermeneutic in character in its recognition of the importance, vitality, and generativity of the “individual case” even in the face of amassed, verified, and aggregate knowledge that is given from the natural science research. oncology is always contingent, next case handling, and is not identifiable simply as something determined and guided by natural sciences alone. in the face of this, we propose that there is an obvious, profound, and natural fit of hermeneutic research in understanding the lives, relationships, suffering, and experiences that are affected by cancer. keywords childhood cancer, gadamer, hermeneutics, pediatric oncology, robert buckman the impetus for this paper arose during an alberta children’s hospital pediatric oncology research day in november 2012 in calgary, alberta where dedicated researchers presented the work they were currently conducting in efforts to cure, treat, and make sense of childhood cancer. most of the research presented was that of bench and natural science, understanding the progression of tumours, the impact of radiation on mice, randomized control trials, or evidence of the potential of a new chemotherapeutic agent. dr. nancy moules, alberta children’s hospital foundation and research institute nursing professorship in child and family centred cancer care, presented her research on understanding the impact of childhood cancer on lives and relationships, and her research approach of hermeneutics. in this context with this audience, it is a shared understanding that there is a very human experience of cancer and an appreciation that bench science offers one way of moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 2 knowing that must be translated in another kind of knowing that is handled in the day-today practical decisions, judgments about, and interactions with those undergoing such experiences. cancer is readily understood as an affliction that can affect all aspects of a person’s life, a phenomenon replete with complex and often contradictory cultural, historical, and personal/familial understandings, assumptions, hopes, fears, and expectations. there exists a whole world of lived experience that precedes bench science and provides it with the contexts of its application and the conditions of its value. moules, in her description of hermeneutics as a legitimate research method in understanding cancer, moved past the very public cry for finding “cures” for cancer and into the lives of people who have cancer, who may or may not be treated successfully, who may die, who may suffer losses to their sense of self, their body image, or their peace of mind. there is something inherently difficult when we add this mention of suffering. over and above the sought-for clarities of bench science, doctors, nurses, and other health professionals must learn to live with what they know and to handle this knowledge well, with a sense of dignity and proportion that is acutely aware that this knowledge inevitably invokes a whole life-world of experience and faces medical practitioners and patients and families alike with the experience of suffering. in the valuation of research that seeks for cure, there is hope and fear, and an awed waiting upon the presumed inevitable triumph of science. hermeneutics is a form of research into the effects of cancer on individuals and families, as well as the effects of cancer on those treating such individuals and families, a method that opens a way to inquiry into all of these considerations, in all their awkwardness and difficulty. yet, in this context, as in many others, hermeneutics is again and again required to account for itself, while all along addressing the suffering that is attendant upon childhood cancer. hermeneutics is frequently asked to live up to the ways, means, and methods of the natural sciences. in addressing the issue of numbers and power in this kind of research, moules briefly outlined some of the ideas in dr. david jardine's (1992) “the fecundity of the individual case” which demonstrated the strengths that surround hermeneutic work and the vital importance of hermeneutics as a way to understand the living character of our living professions. it is in the power of the particular in the recognition of one voice, one experience, one diminishment of suffering, one experience of healing that our professions have always found their real power and their real, living knowledge. it is in the moment of being present at the death of one child; or watching one patient walk for the first time on artificial limbs; or the privilege of being present while this family hears bad news or good news. it is in the richness of the power of these individual, particular moments of grace, kinship, and human relationship where the professions have always found their own graceful and powerful place in the context of one human life, here and now, in this, and this, and this (wallace, 1987). in this forum and in reaction to this sketching out of the nature of hermeneutic knowledge and its place in our profession, dr. peter craighead, professor and head of the department of oncology at tom baker cancer centre, rose and said, in response. “yes, this makes sense to me. isn’t all of oncology hermeneutic?” a part of this response was rooted in dr. craighead's respect for a recently deceased colleague. dr. robert buckman died at 63 years of age on october 9, 2011. a renowned medical oncologist, author, and comedian, dr. buckman was known for his unorthodox apmoules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 3 proach to illness and death. he was reported to have once commented that it was the individual person who changed his practice every time. in this regard, dr. buckman was arguing for something subtly hermeneutic about his practice and about the knowledge that arises only in practice. it was not simply that the individual patient was more important than his aggregate knowledge of oncology, but that the confrontation with the individual, the particular, always enlivened, challenged, and informed that very knowledge, keeping it awake, alert, and in proper perspective. he held his amassed professional knowledge with a certain readiness and “lightness,” as could always be seen from the often sheer delight with which he greeted “the next case.” the next case always seemed to arrive as an opportunity to open up his vast knowledge and to let it be susceptible to what enlivening difference this new arrival might make. he embodied this openness with his patients, with the general public, and in relation to his own suffering. dr. buckman provided us with a strong confirmation of the vitality and importance of hermeneutics to professional life and practice, as demonstrated in the title of one of his books, cancer is a word, not a sentence (2006). for the experienced practitioner, the arrival of “the next case” involves its arrival into a territory of knowledge and experience for which that case provides a live and rich occasioning of our attention. the experienced practitioner is one who must remain open to such arrivals and the differences that can be made to them, to us and to the life and wellbeing of the living discipline(s) we are inhabiting with our patients and their families. the word “case,” long since incorporated into medical, legal, and other professional speech, has this sense of arrival in its origin. case derives from the latin casus, meaning a chance, occasion, opportunity; accident, mishap. literally, it means “a falling.” in the 13th century, it had the meaning of “what befalls one” and in the 18th century began to be adopted by medicine (online etymology dictionary, 2012). a case is something that has befallen one. despite the professional control implied in the “case history” or the “case study,” when a doctor or nurse meets a person with cancer, something “befalls” the professional too. the next case of a patient is not simply an “existential” matter of it being this person and no one else, and therefore a matter of the irreplaceable life of this individual who is not replaceable in their suffering with anyone else. all this is certainly true. the issue is what difference it makes to those of us who already know much about such suffering, who have already witnessed a long line of symptoms and presentations and varieties of heartache or fear or bold readiness to do “battle” with the invader. the issue is how our knowledge is not simply “amassed verified knowledge” (gadamer, 1989, p. xxi) anonymously held in some figurative storehouse, so that this new arrival simply gets slotted into the right locale of that store. our knowledge is also a form of readiness for new experience it opens towards this new arrival in anticipation of being called to account, of being summoned and needing to respond professionally, “properly,” in ways that gadamer (1989) described as “relations of responding and summoning” (p. 458). this describes the profound vulnerability of our professional bearing that we deliberately make ourselves and what we know susceptible to the subtleties of what is arriving. more than this, it is because we are experienced that we are able to find this carrying of ourselves practicable, day-to-day. this susceptibility is a matter of how we experience our experience; whether we can see ourselves not only out of the authority of our expertise, but also as being experienced by the other. experience in this sense includes humility; it is permeable and reciprocal, and inevitably atmoules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 4 tendant upon that which it does not produce from itself and its own storehouse of knowledge. as gadamer (1996) noted in his essay hermeneutics and psychiatry, “…the doctor needs more than just scientific and technical knowledge and professional experience” (p. 172). the doctor or the nurse also needs a well-honed sense of practical knowledge and practical judgment, wherein individual cases are treated with a sense of proper proportion borne of practice itself (what aristotle called phronesis rather than techne). these two forms of knowledge are not in a battle with one another for the same territory or voice, but neither is one simply replaceable for the other or able to do the work of the other. “although the expertise of a technical knowledge...has a proximity to phronesis, technical knowledge does not ask the question of the good or the just comprehensively, or it does not allow us to act comprehensively in each situation” (gadamer, 2007b, p. 232). an experienced hematologist/oncologist colleague offered this view: i deal with very nasty malignant diseases. fatal if our therapies don’t work. each of these diseases can be categorized under broad headings and, as our knowledge advances, increasingly narrow subheadings. such a degree of organization implies that a process of inquiry about this disease has revealed enough to form the basis of a broadly accepted approach to the disease, a therapeutic plan, a management strategy. for many disease entities we have such an approach. “you have disease x and the book says do this.” it doesn’t always work as well as is hoped but at least we have a plan. this makes medicine sound quite formulaic and from a biomedical perspective this is what we strive for the magic formula. a moment of reflection will reveal that these formulae provide strategies for managing diseases. but diseases exist in people and our magic formulae rarely take that into account. hermeneutics provides a form of research geared to precisely such difficult accounting. it does so by reformulating what it means to “apply” what one knows in a specific case. it is not that those who practice within the natural sciences and help to develop such knowledge that provide formulae do not care about individual cases; they do this work because they care deeply. hermeneutics, however, maintains that the difficulty of these cases and the complexity of the human experience of them can be understood and known. science might question the study of such things as perhaps only subjective, private, and even indemonstrable, or that if they are to be studied, they must be subjected to the particular rigour of the scientific method. hermeneutics provides a way to study human experience that does not subject it to the demands of the natural sciences, but still provides dynamic, rich, compelling, and detailed understanding and description that leaves all of their difficulty and ambiguity in place and makes it available to thinking, communication, sharing, and a deeper understanding of, and sensitivity to, the subtleties of lived experience. hermeneutics also provides ways to improve practice through studies of lived experience by pointing to the layers of ambiguous entailment in which live with our patients – the coming of the death of a child is troublesome, terrible, surrounded by myriad tales, images, and fears. understanding this in detail improves the practice of oncology, not by “nailing down” something more securely but by honing and shaping our ability to be aware of and articulate our lived surroundings. in truth and method, gadamer (1989) demonstrated how understanding, in this hermoules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 5 meneutic sense, is “more a passion than an action” (p. 366). it is not the application of a rule to a case but more like the application of a case to a rule. our already established “magic formulae” must befall and respond to the demands that the new case brings and expects of such knowledge. this knowledge is something we must therefore “undergo,” something we must “suffer.” in choosing to work in an area such as oncology, one agrees to this hermeneutic wager, to a willingness to not only suffer but to “suffer together” in the way that moules (1999) wrote of compassion as a hermeneutic endeavor that is willful and deliberate. this is why gadamer suggested that at the heart of this living knowledge is an old greek adage: pathei mathos: “learning through suffering” (gadamer, 1989, p. 356), an idea itself inherited from the greek tragedies of aeschylus (c. 525 bce). the hermeneutic tradition recognizes that there is something inherently difficult and transformative in the act of becoming experienced in the ways of the world, and from such a process “no one can be exempt” (gadamer, 1989, p. 355). this claim about experience extends across the whole gamut of human life, from small, exhilarating interruptions of one’s expectations (moments of inquiry, learning, engagement, investigation, questioning) to traumatic experiences of mortality, impermanence, and illness (moments considered “life changing”). in all these cases, the learning and teaching that ensues is understood as “an adventure and, like any adventure, it always involves some risk” (gadamer, 1983, p. 141), including, of necessity, “moments of loss of self” (gadamer, 1977, p. 51) wherein who i understand myself to be and what i understand of the world might have to endure suffering change. this is why, as professionals, we are drawn towards the suffering of others because it is there that we experience a deep insight into our shared human lot. this, again, recalls the example of dr. buckman and his willingness to step into the suffering of others and to use his own suffering as way to help others. application is neither a subsequent nor merely an occasional part of the phenomenon of [hermeneutic] understanding, but codetermines it as a whole form the beginning. this does not mean that…he first understands [some pregiven universal] per se, and then afterward uses it for particular applications. rather, the interpreter seeks no more than to understand this universal -i.e., to understand what it says, what constitutes [its] meaning and significance. in order to understand that, he must not try to disregard himself and his particular hermeneutical situation. he must relate [it] to this situation if he wants to understand at all. (gadamer, 1989, p. 324) this next patient, this next presentation of symptoms, these next uttered words of concern, do not simply “fall under” general principles or established knowledge, but ask something of this knowledge. they ask of the general principle that it proves itself “in this case” to be adequate to such a case. this ability to deftly judge the relationship between established knowledge and the arrival of a new case is itself a type of practical knowledge that does not operate in the same way as the establishment of that natural scientific knowledge itself. it is, rather, a cluster of contingent practical judgments. one can become practiced in such judgments, but one cannot give a set of rules for how to make such judgments because those rules, in turn, would require cultivating, in practice, an understanding of their application. each patient is embarking on a difficult journey on a road that is unknown to them. a part of our responsibility as physicians is to prepare our patients for the journey and then walk with them. that moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 6 comes partly by providing them with insight about what may lie ahead and the likelihood of having to change plans according to what happens on the journey. the conversation needs to be ongoing and open-ended. things change. i start such a conversation by asking the patient and family to explain to me what they know about their disease and what is being offered. for me, it defines the starting point and strategy of our ongoing conversation and it is often a unique starting point and always a unique strategy. the hermeneutic object of interest is the ability, in practice, to recognize a case as a case of some general principle, as a case that exemplifies it, modifies it, defies it, or “nearly fits” or demands that our established knowledge gain more subtlety, differentiation, and acuity. this judgment is not a matter of simply applying the general principle to the case, but allowing the case to “speak back” to that already-established knowledge in such a way that the case puts the principle into question and demands that the knowledge already established gives an account of its applicability in the face of the demands made by the case: the ordering of life by rules of law…is incomplete and needs productive supplementation. at issue is always something more than the correct application of general principles. our knowledge…is always supplemented by the individual case, even productively determined by it. the judge not only applies the law in concreto, but contributes through his very judgment to developing the law. [our knowledge] is constantly developed through the fecundity of the individual case. (gadamer, 1989, p. 38) the individual case on which judgment works is never simply a case; it is not exhausted by being a particular example of a universal law or concept. rather, it is always an “individual case,” and it is significant that we call it a special case, because the rule does not [and cannot] comprehend [this individuality]. every judgment about something intended in its concrete individuality (e.g., the judgment required in a situation that calls for action) is - strictly speaking -a judgment about a special case. that means nothing less than that judging the case involves not merely applying the universal principle according to which it is judged, by co-determining, supplement, and correcting that principle. (gadamer, 1989, p. 39) negotiating this susceptibility of established knowledge to the arrival of the next case is the work of hermeneutics and it is the work of oncology. “the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (gadamer, 1989, p. 295). this is how professions, of necessity, are not simply the impervious and imperial wielding of “amassed verified knowledge.” professionals seek out instances of suffering or undergoing, instances of susceptibility where the locale of meeting a challenge to our knowledge is at once a locale of meeting our patient “in” this suffering, “in” the locale of taking seriously their arrival as requiring us, with all our aggregate knowledge of, and familiarity with, such matters, to engage this arrival. we, like them, must allow what we know to come into play with the person that has arrived with questions, knowledge, fears, concerns, evidence, foibles, resolve, and all the particularities of presentation. this is the negotiation that is at the heart of diagnosis, that our aggregate knowledge is not simply a slot into which the new patient fits, but is, rather, something that must, with great subtlety, respond well to that arrival and let that arrival do the work proper to its particularity. we know, as professionals, that we can, with those new to our profession, lay out the critemoules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 7 ria of a particular pathology, but we cannot outrun the difficulty of recognizing this case as an example of that pathology. i met with the patient and family to discuss what we had to offer to treat the leukemia and our chances of success. they asked insightful questions. i was told, “if my number is up there is nothing i can do about it but let’s try our best.” there was a peace in the room. the treatment went well at the beginning but then went off the rails. each challenge was faced with determination and a calmness as “the number” came up. our conversations had remained easy despite the increasing gravity of what we were discussing and often we had shared a laugh. after many weeks of struggle, the patient passed away with the family at their side. this is a practical form of knowledge that cannot be amassed theoretically, nor can it be simply handed over to another professional without that person having to now cultivate this knowledge for him or herself. a common adage in the work of oncology is the “experienced” practitioner. hermeneutics identifies how “becoming experienced” is not a matter of simply an increased expertise in “amassed verified [bench science] knowledge” (gadamer 1989, p. xxi) but an increased deftness in how one “handles” such knowledge in practice. being experienced does not culminate in knowing more and better than anyone else (the sort of required expertise in the “amassed verified knowledge” of one’s field requisite of being “knowledgeable in the field”). hermeneutics points to another vital and essential form of knowledge and experience that are not of the same kind of knowledge as this expertise. “experience has its proper fulfillment not in definitive [amassed] knowledge but in the openness to [new] experience[s] that is made possible by experience itself” (gadamer 1989, p. 355). an experienced doctor or nurse, therefore, is not simply someone who as been in such a profession for many years. being experienced, in hermeneutics, is connected with an old concept from the humanist tradition: bildung (bruford, 2010; gadamer, 1989; pinar, 2011; von humbolt 2000), a german term meaning self-formation, that is, the endured process of becoming someone in the act of coming to know about oneself and the world. this site of becoming someone is the site of pathei mathos because it requires a type of “undergoing” or “suffering” in which one risks becoming changed and having to live with the consequences. i met with the patient and family to discuss what we had to offer to treat the leukemia and our chances of success. they asked insightful questions. i was told, “if my number is up there is nothing i can do about it but let’s try our best.” there was palpable fear in the room and the patient looked truly terrified. the next questions were, “what will happen to me?” and “what are my chances?” i started over again and tried a different approach. the treatment went badly from an early stage. each challenge was faced with determination but the terror never left the patient’s eyes. i was never sure if my conversations were answering their questions or addressing their needs. after many weeks of struggle, the patient passed away with the family at their side. this situation started and ended the same as the one described before it, but in the middle of it something changed, something that called the oncologist to realize that no amount of amassed and aggregate knowledge or mastery of such knowledge, no “magic formulae,” could save the oncologist from the “deliberation and decision” to move and act differently in this case (gadamer, 1983, p. 113). gadamoules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 8 mer advanced the idea of hermeneutics as a condition of being human, an inescapable immersion in making sense of the world, but always finitely, always open to reinterpretation. this does not mean, however, that hermeneutic reflection is automatic. bildung demands effort and practice; hermeneutic experience has an ethical dimension of choosing to make oneself available to the difficulty of life, the pathei mathos. in this encounter, the oncologist persevered in the face of the disease, in facing the terror in the patient’s eyes, and in facing the fact that he could never be sure. concluding reflections when a diagnosis is confirmed for a patient, or particular symptoms are described as such, the oncologist is able to “hear” a wide range of possibilities and probabilities. there is an ability to know, from long experience, something of a patient's possible future(s) and possible future suffering in ways that someone without this expertise simply could not. this is not exactly the same as simply “having the facts” but rather knowing that the facts alone will not save you or address the situation. there is that wonderful/terrible weight of then having to decide what might be best to say or not say, to indicate, or clothe, or to be straightforward about. this sort of judgment and its soundness and trustworthiness is an amazing thing. as professionals knowledgeable in our fields, we sometimes hold back in having a patients bear all the weight of what could be said, not to be dishonest, but to be measured and to try to act properly, in proper proportion to the best reading that can given of the full breadth of the circumstances. this is something of why and how we are professionals and not only technicians in possession of amassed scientific knowledge: the way of life of human beings is not fixed by nature like other living beings. knowingly preferring one thing to another and consciously choosing among possible alternatives is the unique and specific characteristic of human being. the knowledge that gives direction to action is essentially called for by concrete situations in which we are required to choose the thing to be done and no learned and mastered technique can spare us the task of deliberation and decision. (gadamer, 2007b, pp. 230-231) even though we slowly, through practice and experience, become more receptive to the arrival of the next case and the difference it will bring, it always also feels like the first time as well; it feels brand new this family, that child, those odd descriptions of symptoms, real, imagined, dreamt, feared, or seen with terrible clarity. as buckman reminded us, walking into the room of the next patient will forever change our practices, but this requires an awareness that something has changed as well as an opening not to just find what fits with what we already know but what informs us anew. gadamer (2007a) suggested that “[the world] compels over and over, and the better one knows it, the more compelling it is. this is not a matter of mastering an area of study” (p. 115). this is the practical knowledge or “being experienced” that is the object of research in hermeneutic work and it: does have a certain proximity to the expert knowledge that is proper to technique, but what separates it fundamentally from technical expertise is that it expressly asks the question of the good--for example, about the best way of life [or about what course of action would be better than others]. it does not merely master an ability, like technical expertise, whose task is set by an outside authority [e.g., the methods of natural science in producing experimoules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 9 mental results, or the simple rote following of procedures in a hospital unit] or by the purpose to be served by what is being produced [e.g., given we have to reduce wait times, do this instead of that]. (gadamer, 2007b, p. 232) robert buckman knew something of suffering, but perhaps his greatest wisdom was that he did not claim to know it with certainty and finality, because he understood that that is not our lot, as humans, to know once and for all. even knowledge that has been pinned down with great precision by natural scientific methodology does not help us avoid having to decide, contingently and carefully, as to whether this is a case of that, and if it is, what we might now best do with those whose suffering is in our hands. buckman saw suffering as the thing that could only be approached through a hermeneutic wager that the next “case” would indeed change the face of understanding the minute the door was opened. oncology is world of discovery, of devout care and intense search for cure. the natural and biological sciences are responsible for significant decreases in cancer morbidity, long-term cure, and longevity of life. this world of science and discovery is vital but there is another world inherent in oncology a world of the individual case, the n=1. this is a particular world of suffering that is not disembodied or detached from the rest of the world of scientific discovery, for it is fecund with its own kind of discovery, where fear shows or it does not, and even if the outcomes are the same, the process of getting there never is. it is the argument for the innate fit of hermeneutic inquiry and research into the worlds of particulars, worlds that do not stand alone but have always something to say to the next door. authors nancy j. moules, rn, phd is a professor in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary. she also holds an alberta children’s hospital foundation/alberta children’s hospital research institute nursing professorship in child and family centred cancer care. david w. jardine, phd is a professor in the faculty of education at the university of calgary. graham p. mccaffrey, rn, phd is an assistant professor in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary. christopher b. brown, md, frcp is a professor in the departments of medicine, oncology, and biochemistry & molecular biology. he is affiliated with the southern alberta cancer institute. references arendt, h. (1969). between past and future: eight exercises in political thought. new york, ny: penguin books. buckman, r. (2005). cancer is a word, not a sentence: a practical guide to help you through the first few weeks. toronto, on, canada: key porter books. bruford, w. h. (2010). the german tradition of self-cultivation: 'bildung' from humboldt to thomas mann. cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. case. (n.d.). in in online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http;//www .etymonline.com gadamer, h.g. (1996). hermeneutics and psychiatry. in h.g. gadamer, the enigma of health: the art of healing in a scientific age moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 10 (pp. 163-174). stanford, ca: stanford university press. gadamer, h.g. (1983). reason in the age of science (f.g. lawrence, trans.). boston, ma: mit press. gadamer, h. g. (1977). philosophical hermeneutics. berkeley, ca: university of california press. gadamer, h.g. (1989). truth and method (j. weinsheimer, trans.). new york, ny: continuum books. gadamer, h.g. (2007a). from word to concept: the task of hermeneutics as philosophy. in r.e. palmer (ed. & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 108-122). evanston, il: northwestern university press. gadamer, h.g. (2007b). hermeneutics as practical philosophy. in r.e. palmer (ed. & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 227-245). evanston il: northwestern university press. jardine, d. (1992). “the fecundity of the individual case”: considerations of the pedagogic heart of interpretive work. british journal of philosophy of education, 26(1), 51-61. moules, n.j. (1999). guest editorial. suffering together: whose words were they? journal of family nursing, 5(3), 251-258. pinar, w. (2011). the character of curriculum studies: bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. von humbolt, w. (2000 [1793-1794]). theory of bildung. in i. westbury, s. hopmann, and k. riquarts (eds.), teaching as a reflective practice: the german didaktik tradition (pp. 57-61). (trans. by g. horton-krüger.). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. wallace, b. (1987). the stubborn particulars of grace. toronto, on, canada: mcclelland & stewart. microsoft word williamson editorial .docx corresponding author: w. john williamson, phd email: john.williamson@cssd.ab.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 11, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 guest editorial: preface to “a strange and earnest client” part one of the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery w. john williamson, phd ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to see is true. the names have been changed to protect the innocent (mytvmemories, 2012). this phrase, so familiar it long ago lapsed into cliché and parody, announced the beginning of every episode of the long-running, and decidedly un-ironic, police procedural television series dragnet. i revive it now, in its original earnestness to maintain that the story that i am introducing in this editorial is true as well. the story is part one of a serialized publication of my phd thesis a hermeneutic exploration of the educational category of slow learner written as a hardboiled detective novel in the style of raymond chandler (1888-1959). it is essentially a fictionalized and stylized narrative of my ongoing journey (through research and direct experience) into special education thought and practice as it pertains to students named “slow learners” and, more broadly at times, to educational classification and sorting. if the story has “worked,” the narrative should largely imply some justification for this approach. in this editorial, i articulate why i chose to present hermeneutic phenomenological research in this way. in my candidacy exam, i was asked about the hermeneutic warrant for presenting research in this way and my response, after invaluable participation and augmentation from my doctoral supervisor dr. jim field as a co-author, was published as a paper in this journal (williamson & field, 2014). this was a fruitful exercise as it helped me develop the set of hermeneutic principles that i tried to follow in composing the story as well as yielding several insights that made their way into the final novelization in fictionalized form. i return to some of the themes to offer the main hermeneutic warrant for this form of presentation in a piece of writing that stands alone as an introduction to part one of the novelization. it is also an opportunity to reflect back on the hermeneutic warrant for the piece as a completed work, a vantage only available upon completion. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 1 2 speculation in the williamson and field original paper, it was discussed how, while often imbued with artistic truth, fictional writing obviously surrenders some amount of what might be considered truth as correspondence. what is gained in this surrender is an abundance of speculation, an essential and life-giving characteristic of all acts of communication (gadamer, 2004, p. 452) as well as those of imagination (gough, 2008, p. 338). speculative flights of fancy help us see and understand differently and they occasion discoveries. speculation has been responsible for philosophical thought experiments that have helped us re-examine our behaviour and moral intuitions. singer (2009), for example, speculatively equated the reluctance of many in the developed world to do very much to help starving populations on the other side of the world with an urban citizen who encounters a child drowning in a shallow pond and willingly ruins a new pair of shoes to wade in and save the child. in doing so, he asks why if we would readily sacrifice the value of a pair of shoes to save a life in this situation, so few of us contribute this same monetary amount that we would spend on a new pair of shoes (which he calculates could go a long way in providing for an impoverished child) to eradicate the epidemic of extreme poverty across the world (pp. 1-5). mary shelley, in a query that continues to haunt bioethical reckoning, wondered what the consequences would be if a brilliant scientist usurped the power of creation (srour, 2008). beyond these tests of moral principles, einstein, as a generative scientist wondered impossibly if he could chase a light beam at the speed of light in a vacuum, whether the light would appear still or oscillating to him, and in this thought experiment found “the germ of the special relativity theory” (norton, 2004). in this particular circumstance, the issue in need of re-imagining is primarily a moral one. it involves a psychological category of students who cognitive tests (that the education system endorse as sacrosanct) evaluate as below average in full-scale intelligence and in need of additional support to succeed in school. despite this evaluation, slow learners are a group of students for whom the education system in alberta has ironically failed to provide any of the funding and support it offers other categories of students said to have exceptional needs. it is true that a special education/inclusive education system that claims to support students in reaching their full potential, but that often results in social exclusion and negative self-fulfilling prophesies has been often been a topic of more (ostensively) traditional academic research (e.g., armstrong, 2012; couture, 2012; gilham, 2013; graham & slee, 2008). though roughly conforming to expectations of standard academic formatting, much of this work is troubling, insightful, and highly original and i found several texts about the excesses and deficiencies of special education/inclusive education systems indispensable to my project. when it came to my particular topic, and my unique relationship to it, however, it was felt that much more could be “unconcealed” (heidegger, 1962, p. 147) via an additional speculative turn. as framed in the previous paper, this speculation was “what would happen if we perceived and treated mysterious gaps in programming for students the same way we treat hard-boiled mysteries involving crimes such as homicide, or in this particular case, missing persons?” what understandings might this occasion?” (williamson & field, 2014, p.15). williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 1 3 mysteries, hermeneutic and hard-boiled the concept of mystery is integral to this speculation, and is, indeed frequently discussed in hermeneutic philosophy (e.g., caputo, 1987; davey, 2006; gadamer, 2004). mystery, a word that means and/or has meant, “religious truth via divine revelation, hidden spiritual significance, mystical truth, secret rites, secret worship, to close or shut, a trade or craft, a secret or hidden thing, and most recently, a detective story,” (harper, 2001) fits very naturally into the philosophy of interpretation, the philosophy devoted to the humble and reverent study of the endless interpretability of the life-world. “mystery” is a rejoinder of the tendency toward positivism in the human/psychological/social sciences, a way of thinking that finds certainty in its knowledge claims through the reduction of the contamination of human complexity and through the disavowal of any kinship between the researcher and the studied (jardine, 1998). it is this positivism that can turn a concept like slow learner, arguably a useful tentative description of a certain style of academic struggle potentially leading to a set of assistive possibilities to explore in practice into a categorical enclosure that entraps student, his or her school career, and the staff that work with this student (mehan, herweck, & meihls, 1986). remarking on the difference between the interpretive and positivistic way of thinking, ricoeur scholar, blundel (2010), has noted a problem can be laid in front of me and examined at my leisure. a mystery on the other hand is something in which i am unavoidably implicated. it is not laid out in front of me but rather encompasses me in such a way that i find myself inside of it. (p. 60) this novelization also sought to integrate the philosophy of the hard-boiled detective with a hermeneutic appreciation of mystery. this is not a difficult integration as the concept of “hardboiled” functions not so much as an addition to hermeneutic thought, but more as a tool with which to affect a slight dusting off of hermeneutics to reveal something that was elemental all along. hard-boiled detective took a genre that had previously been characterized by quaint, though often well crafted, puzzle games that did little to speak to the deeper human experience or challenge the existing social order (williamson & field, 2014), and adjusted its outlook to reveal corruption, inequity, moral complexity, and something dark, tragic, and ultimately unknowable beneath all the provisional case resolutions. similarly, as caputo (1987) has reminded us, the function of hermeneutics is not to make our problems easier to deal with, like a benign and forgettable detective story might distract us from the worries of the day or like the reduction of teaching to a few sterilely understood techniques might distract us from pondering our awesome responsibilities as educators, but to “offer a reading of life…that restores life to its original difficulty” (p.1). beyond those which i that have already described, we will leave the reader to discover which hard-boiled difficulties related to this topic that the work unconceals. one thing i can reveal without spoiling any of the surprises, however, is something unexpected, and hard-boiled, that happened to me after i completed the work. i had during most of the writing held my topic, the category of “slow learner” in some ambivalence, thinking that even as it did not provide access to formal services, and even as it did sometimes result in self-fulfilling prophesies, that it at least pointed concerned educators in the direction of some students who needed support. but during my oral examination i was asked if the category “slow learner” held any continuing relevance in conversations about supporting students, inclusively, in alberta’s schools. before i knew it, i williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 1 4 heard myself saying “no” and then providing an explanation that i do not remember the details of but that an exam committee member told me basically suggested i’d like to see the category “blown up/destroyed.” like the leaps that detectives make, how and when i came to this intuition is still a mystery to me. while i had thought that during this journey i might discover many things to confirm my ambivalence about the label, i could not have predicted that, in the words of gadamer (2004), beyond my “wanting and doing” (p. xxvi), this work would lead me to this realization. i remain curious if readers will feel similarly. this hard-boiled intuition certainly has not made life any easier for me, as i continue to witness this label function as a currency in schools. a note on rigor researchers considering non-traditional approaches to presenting applied hermeneutic phenomenological research may be interested to note that, at least in my case, the approach called us toward rigor instead of away from it. a part of this was simply the pragmatic urgency to fight the inevitable perception that a member of the supervisory committee expressed memorably and candidly when he warned that readers might develop the prejudice that this “was just screwing around with a detective story.” beyond this, however, the two masters of hermeneutics and hardboiled mystery writing constantly pulled me in the direction of finding more difficulty, more messiness, and more uneasy interpretability in “the case of the appearing/disappearing slow learner.” from january of 2011 when i first arrived at the idea of approaching the research this way to april of 2015 when it was submitted, i researched, wrote, and rewrote this novelization in daily writing sessions, often experienced as grueling. in terms of sources, hard-boiled hermeneutics pushed me to interview eight teachers, administrators, or curriculum leaders, and twice interview a small class of four students who were labelled as slow learners. i drew on 18 years of experiential data as a teacher as well as experiential data from being a student with a learning disability and parent of a child with a disability. i studied disability history going back to medieval times, 100 years of programing for slow learners in alberta, and the most current (at the time) educational reforms in alberta and their relationship to slow learners and inclusive education. i reviewed and interpreted depictions of slow learners in popular media including the films forrest gump, and being there, and the novel lottery and read all the primary texts (alberta education documents, manuals for teachers, psychology texts) i could access about the supposed characteristics and needs of slow learners as well as related disabilities including learning disabilities and intellectual disabilities. heidegger (1962) and gadamer (2004) have both reminded us that a complete view of any scene is never possible, in part because different vantages unconceal different phenomenon, but i would like to think that at least from the vantages this particular approach provided that i, like the gumshoes in the novels that inspired me, left relatively few stones unturned. how the novelization works the narrative strategy used to present the research in this novelization involves depicting a version of myself, exploring my true concerns with exaggerated angst, in the role of a special education coordinator who hires a detective to find this category of students that the narrative claims have been lost. i explored my more critical side through the character of the incredulous detective, who plays the role of the provocateur, making observations and asking questions about williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 1 5 educational categorization, disability, and bureaucratic process. additional characters include informants to my research, whose names, indeed, have been changed, even as i tried to faithfully represent their actual beliefs about, and roles in, the educational drama of slow learners. it is with less verisimilitude that i, under their real names, people the story with various writers and thinkers who have guided my quest. by and large, the thoughts they express on this topic are my own hermeneutic appropriations – applications of their philosophy to topics they did not have opportunity to comment on more directly. additional characters include villainous personifications of the toxic institutional discourses and practices that i claim have led to the disappearance of slow learners. as mentioned, the story is written to, as closely as possible, resemble a hard-boiled detective fiction novel. to preserve narrative flow, there is an avoidance of parenthetical references, instead opting for footnoting to acknowledge the intellectual property of sources, demonstrate the robustness of the research, and, occasionally, to provide more elaboration on a particular theme than the action of the narrative would allow. whether the reader approaches these footnotes as a part of the first reading of the narrative, or reviews them later, i hope that they provide adequate conversation of the research that guided the interpretations of the larger narrative. publication and serialization when i began to explore the possibilities for finding an appropriate publisher for my work, the journal of applied hermeneutics stood out to me because of its history of publishing eclectic and often provocative hermeneutic scholarship. since its inaugural issue in 2011, this journal has provided readers the opportunity to engage with the theorizing of esteemed hermeneutic philosophers such as richard kearney and nicholas davey, leaders in the enterprise of bringing the wisdom of hermeneutics into professional practice such as david jardine and nancy moules, and a very wide range of intriguing applications of hermeneutics (for e.g., discourses of dementia, hermeneutic understandings of oncology, the value of specialized summer camps for children with cancer, genuine school inclusion of students with diagnosed behavioral disabilities, first nations education, and applications of buddhism to nursing). feeling that it might be overwhelming to the reader to open and engage with an entire novel, replete with academic footnotes, all at once, especially considering that readers often engage with digital copies of the journal’s articles, i considered the possibility of releasing it in several editions. i have always been intrigued with the victorian tradition of serialized novels and how it mirrored my own experiences as a child (before technologies allowed for binge watching) awaiting new episodes of my favourite television shows, particularly the “cliff hangers” that usually marked the end of one season and the painful wait for the next. i have also had similar feelings awaiting new releases of my favourite film franchises, and, returning more closely to the subject at hand, the newest novels by my favourite hard-boiled detective fiction authors, with the fresh hard-boiled dilemmas these works are sure to place in the familiar, oft put upon, character. with the advent of on-line technologies, i have learned that the serialized novel is experiencing something of a re-emergence. its popularity is coming from the ground up with amateur writers of fan fiction realizing unparalleled popularity with their serialized releases (streitfield, 2014), but also in new forms such as the serialized web comic homestuck, which is garnering millions of followers as well as favorable critical comparison to ulysses for its depth and complexity williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 1 6 (knode, 2012). additionally several prominent publishers are exploring serialized publication for their latest novels (alter, 2013). i proposed the possibility of a serialized release to the journal’s editor and was honored when this idea was favorably received. in a further innovation, dr. moules suggested we seek out the scholars from my committee, all important voices in applied hermeneutics or disability studies, and inquire if they would be interested in writing editorial introductions to frame and contextualize each new release. i was elated when all of them agreed, and feel that the commentaries these scholars will provide are as much cause for excitement and anticipation as the various parts of the novelization. a warning brace yourself for this journey. as detective max hunter remarks the mystery of the appearing/disappearing slow learner was, and is, a messy case and one that requires hard-boiled resilience. the world of educational classification can be dark and, in its own way, violent. be careful, however, not to become too hard-boiled as readers. the best operatives realize that, though it makes for greater suffering, a keen sense of empathy is not a weakness; it is an essential tool of the trade. there are, after all, missing persons to find. note from journal of applied hermeneutics editor, dr. nancy moules it is with excitement and the experience of privilege that we welcome the work of dr. john williamson in presenting his doctoral thesis in “instalments” in the journal, trusting that we capture the integrity of the mystery and rigor of his important doctoral research. this work won the 2015 university of calgary chancellor’s graduate medal. in future instalments as we engage in this hermeneutic mystery, we will offer, as editorial comment, reflections from the scholars who informed and vetted this work. references alter, a. (2013). the return of the serial novel. the wall street journal. retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/sb10001424127887324020504578396742330033344. armstrong, f. (2002). the historical development of special education: humanitarian rationality or “wild profusion of entangled events”. history of education, 31(5), 437-456. blundel, b. (2010). paul ricoeur between theology and philosophy: detour and return. bloomington, in: indiana university press caputo, j.d. (1987). radical hermeneutics: repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project. bloomington, in: indiana university press. couture, j.c. (2012). inclusion alberta’s educational palimpsest. ata magazine. 92(3). davey, n. (2006). unquiet understanding: gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. albany, ny: suny. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 1 7 norton, j.d. (2005). chasing a beam of light: einstein's most famous thought experiment. john d. norton. retrieved from http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/goodies/chasing_the_light/index.html gadamer, h-g. (2004). truth and method. (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). london, uk: continuum. gilham, c. (2013). the hermeneutics of inclusion. unpublished doctoral thesis. university of calgary, calgary, ab, canada. retrieved from http://theses.ucalgary.ca/handle/11023/828. gough, n. (2008). narrative experiments and imaginative inquiry. south african journal of education, 28, 335-349. graham, l., & slee, r. (2008). an illusory interiority: interrogating the discourse/s of inclusion. educational philosophy and theory, 40(2), 277-293. mystery. (n.d.). in online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mystery heidegger, m. (1962). being and time. (j.macquarrie & e. robinson trans.) new york, ny: harper collins. jardine, d. (1998). awakening from descartes nightmare: on the love of ambiguity in phenomenological approaches to education. in to dwell with a boundless heart: essays in curriculum theory, hermeneutics and the ecological imagination. new york, ny: peter lang. knode, m. (2012). homestuck is the first great work of internet fiction. tor.com. retrieved from http://www.tor.com/2012/09/18/homestuck-is-the-first-great-work-of-internet-fiction/ mehan, h., herweck, a., & meihls, j. (1986). handicapping the handicapped. stanford, ca: standford university press. mytvmemories (january 18, 2012) “ dragnet – the big winchester, from the nbc television episode first broadcast by march 4, 1954” retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4ju-9. singer, p. (2009). the life you can save. new york, ny: random house. srour, m. (2013). frankenstein: a novel every biologist should read. teaching biology. retrieved from http://bioteaching.com/frankenstein-a-novel-every-biologist-should-read/. streitfield, d. (2014). web fiction, serialized and social. the new york times. retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/technology/web-fiction-serialized-and-social.html?_r=0. williamson, w.j., & field, j.c. (2014). the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 1 8 interpretive mystery. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 4. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy53b5wq7 microsoft word laingfinal.docx corresponding author: catherine m. laing email: cmlaing@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics june 16, 2112 the author(s) 2012 in play, at play catherine m. laing abstract it is surprising for many people to learn how restricted children with cancer are, both in their daily activities as well as in the bigger, more significant events in their lives. the treatment for cancer often leaves children with significant immune suppression; exposure to any kind of virus or infection could lead to a life-threatening event. summer camp – a “rite of passage” for many kids – would be a forgone experience were it not for specialized children’s cancer camps. this paper is intended to interpretively examine the concept of play in relation to children’s cancer camps. much has been written about play both philosophically and scientifically, and while it might seem an obvious association, play and camp, i would suggest that like the word itself there is more complexity in this relationship than what first appears obvious. children play at camp, of course, but there is much “at play” in them when they attend camp. as gadamer (1960/1989) wrote, “something is going on…something is happening” (p. 104). keywords cancer camp, philosophical hermeneutics, play, the word “play” is deceptively ordinary. it likely conjures images of children, games, or a dramatic performance, however almost 100 definitions and idioms exist in reference to this word. we can play and be played, something can be at play or come into play, we can watch a play, play with words, play around, make a play for, or play along. play is “complex and slippery” (brown, 1998, p. 243) because the more one looks into, under, and behind the word, the more one discovers its history, roots, uses, and meanings. as a noun, play is defined as the conduct, course, or action of a game, or a recreational activity (merriam-webster, 2012). as a verb, it means to engage in sport or recreation; to move aimlessly about; or, to perform music or to act in a dramatic production (merriam-webster). etymologically, the origins of play are unknown but thought to come from old english plegian (verb), to exercise, frolic, perform music, and plæga (noun), recreation, exercise, any brisk activity (online etymology dictionary, 2012). throughout its etymological history, “play” has been closely connected to the world of children and make believe and has generally stayed true to its primary meaning (online etymology dictionary). much has been written about play both laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 6 2 philosophically (e.g., gadamer, 1960/1989) and scientifically (e.g., bjorkland & pellegrini, 2000; brown, 1998, 2009) to the extent that there now exists institutes and university programs devoted to the study of play. in this paper, i do not intend to comprehensively cover the vast literature on play, rather the intent is to interpretively examine the concept of play in relation to children’s cancer camps. it might seem an obvious association, play and camp, however i would suggest that like the word itself there is more complexity in this relationship than what first appears obvious. children play at camp, of course, but there is much “at play” in them when they attend camp. as gadamer wrote, “something is going on…something is happening” (1960/1989, p. 104). much of my interpretation will be rooted in philosophical hermeneutics as developed by the german philosopher hans-georg gadamer. it is important to note, before further discussion, what gadamer meant by play. gadamer’s work was written in german and later translated to english, and while play (the verb) and game (the noun), are different words in english, in german, it is the same word (e.g., play a game, ein spiel spielen). play, from a gadamerian perspective, is not about games per se, but rather more about what miller (1996) described as “leeway.” miller recounted a story of himself as a young academic under the mentorship of gadamer. he recalled asking the philosopher, “what is the point of play?” gadamer asked me if i rode a bicycle. i said that i did. then he asked me about the front wheel, the axle, and the nuts. he remarked that i probably knew that it was important not to tighten the nuts too tightly, else the wheel could not turn. "it has to have some play!" he announced pedagogically and a little exultantly, i thought. and then he added,” . . . and not too much play, or the wheel will fall off.” (conclusion section, para. 4) a leeway is an allowable margin of freedom or variation; the amount of freedom to move or act that is available (merriamwebster, 2012). perhaps it could be said that the intent of this paper then, is to explore the margins of freedom and variation to move and act to play that children have at cancer camp; to examine the space between where their restrictive lives at the hospital and home end, and where their lives at camp begin. playing at camp from a philosophical perspective i have memories of cancer camp watching these kids i knew so well outside of the hospital environment, some of who were at one point sicker than i care to remember in great detail, some whose number of days in hospital neared the number of days out of hospital, some who have since passed away. these memories (in italics) are disorienting cocktails of emotion and wonder, holding place cards in my mind of significant points in time. all are being utilized to illustrate the concept of play. i you could hear them coming before you could see them. the thundering clamor of the buses rolling along the bumpy dirt road leading to camp, and the voices, the cheering, the songs (a warbling hybrid of several, it seemed), the exuberation – all as if to say “we’re finally here!” as the buses turned the corner and the camp came into view, the promise of the week ahead took over any remaining restraint and the sound became deafening. one by one they exited the bus until a sea of bald heads, broviacs, and feeding tubes filled the empty, waiting space of camp. there was no mistaking – these kids were here to play. laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 6 3 play, according to gadamer (1960/1989), is not to be understood as something someone does, rather the structure of play absorbs the player into itself, freeing them from the burden of initiating play. it is movement without purpose or goal, renewing itself through repetition and absorbing the player into its movement. gadamer offered that it is only when a player loses him/herself in play that the purpose of play is fulfilled. play is not a disengaged exercise of subjectivity, rather it is something that has its own order and structure to which one is given over. it is not to be thought of as an object upon which a player (or spectator) acts, nor can it be understood as a subjectively determined activity. gadamer (1960/1989) maintained that "play is really limited to presenting itself. thus its mode of being is selfpresentation” (p. 108). it was interesting to watch the children exit the bus, some knowing what they were in for, others riding the wave of their peers’ excitement. there was an element of them “being taken over,” entering into a moment beyond their control – one in which they did not initiate or intend to enter – rather, it just happened to them. it was the beginning of something happening, something was at play here and looking back upon it, through this particular lens of philosophical hermeneutics, i can now see this moment differently. i can see the to and fro-ness of this moment, not from a game perspective, but from a losing of oneself to a moment, over and over, perspective. the children did not arrive at camp intending to absorb themselves, and fulfill the purpose of play by “losing themselves” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 102). rather, “over and above their wanting and doing” (p. xxviii) they entered into the margins of freedom and variation to move and act that they did not experience in their day to day life the leeway, the play of things. something was clearly at play. ii i watched her make her way up the ladder to the giant swing and giggled nervously. she was scared, you could tell. well, i could tell, because it was the same look she would get when i had to inject l’asparaginase into her thigh. i had seen that look 24 times, we counted one day. she was strapped into a climbing harness so i knew there was no way she could get hurt, but i’m not sure she knew that. the other kids, sensing her trepidation, buoyed her on with cheers of “you can do it!” and “you’re almost there!” finally, the countdown, “3…2…1…go!” and the swing was released, sending her on a giant arc back and forth through space and time, her face awash with exuberant bliss. central to gadamer’s (1960/1989) notion of play is the back and forth-ness, the “to and fro motion” (p. 104), where “what characterizes this movement back and forth is that neither pole of the movement represents the goal in which it would come to rest” (gadamer, 1986, p. 22). play appears as movement without purpose or end point, renewing itself through repetition. it takes on the burden of initiative, absorbing the player into its movement. play exists "to play." the giant swing, going back and forth with a momentum of its own, requiring no initiation or continuation to keep going on the part of the swinger, brings to mind gadamer’s (1960/1989) notion of the to and fro of play. “the structure of play absorbs the player into itself” (p. 105), however as mccaffrey, raffin bouchal, and moules (in press) noted, “there has to be more than one player, and there is a to-and-fro movement between players with a spontaneity and creativity in the motion of the play” (p. 12). this additional player can be metaphorical. what gadamer is referring to is that, in order for play to occur, something needs to respond to the person playing. it can laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 6 4 be a person catching a ball that has been thrown by another, or it can be the giant swing responding to the girl’s desire to swing. in some cases, as in rilke’s poem that is the epitaph in gadamer’s (1960/1989) truth and method, a person is drawn into a game, into play, without initiative or intention. catch only what you’ve thrown yourself, all is mere skill and little gain; but when you’re suddenly the catcher of a ball thrown by an eternal partner with accurate and measured swing towards you, to your center, in an arch from the great bridgebuilding of god: why catching then becomes a power – not yours, a world’s. (cited in gadamer, p. v) being “the catcher of a ball thrown by an eternal partner” illustrates the nature of being drawn into play without initiation. when we are engaged, we lose our subjectivity and become “played” by the game, subject, or conversation within which we are engaged. we do not consciously think, “here i am and i am caught up in this game” that awareness is lost. we have let go of ourselves being the ones responsible for conducting the way it goes. it is a curious thing, to consider what it is that gets lost when you lose yourself in something. when children are at cancer camp, i wonder if, when they lose themselves in play, they paradoxically find something else. perhaps with this losing of themselves, they are finding acceptance, joy, and confidence. iii “1, 2, 3, a-larry…” i hadn’t heard that rhyme since elementary school. no, before that. i thought it was “one of those songs” my mother had taught me, dating back (as far as i was concerned) to the olden days. “4, 5, 6, alarry…” while i knew the song, the game had changed i was trying hard to figure out these new rules. four kids were passing three balls among each other at increasing rates of speed seemingly trying to get each other to drop the ball. who knows the point, really, that’s irrelevant. i became comfortable with the mystery of it. “7, 8, 9, a-larry…” they seemed so engrossed in what they were doing, so serious. they didn’t hear the dinner bell ringing or the cacophony of general camp noise. they were taken over by the game. “10, a-larry catch me!” “play fulfills its purpose only if the player loses himself in play” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 102). gadamer noted that there is a seriousness to play that is required to make the play “wholly play” (p. 102). this seriousness, however, belongs to the play itself versus to the player. gadamer reminded us many times that the players are not the subject of play; “instead play merely reaches presentation through the players” (p.103). movement as such is the essence of play, which has no goal but constantly renews and repeats itself. there is a primacy of the game over the players and of the play over the consciousness of the player (gallagher, 1992). as such, it is not the player who plays the game, rather the game plays the player: “(a)ll playing is being played. the attraction of a game, the fascination it exerts, consists precisely in the fact that the game masters the players” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 106). this dominance of play over the consciousness of the player is easy to see when you look for it. i see it in my 2 year old when she plays “pretend”; i notice it in myself after the fact of being engrossed in a game, and i realize now that was what i was witnessing when i watched the game the children were playing at cancer camp. they were playing but there was also something at play in them. laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 6 5 i feel the need to name this to figure out what it is that is at play during these moments in these children. surrender, transcendence, giving-over, and vulnerability are all words that come to mind, however these words do not entirely capture what i think is happening, what is at play. perhaps gadamer would say the point is to realize that there is something at play here, and correctly naming it is not the spirit of hermeneutics. it is not about being right, rather hermeneutics is about finding an interpretation that is true of something. like art, play, and games share a to and fro movement not bound to a specific goal other than fulfilling themselves (gadamer, 1960/1989). it is what occurs when the game is in play that matters. over and above their wanting and doing, the player is taken over by the play which has no purpose other than to bring something forth (gadamer, 1960/1989). iv they were deep in conversation, it seemed. i don’t know what they were talking about but it was fun to watch them as they sat on the picnic table in their own world despite being amidst the chaos of camp. in my mind, i imagined they were discussing their diseases, how they were managing chemo, what it was like to be teenage girls without hair. in reality it was probably something much more “normal” than that boys or clothes, maybe. their expressions changed as they took turns being the speaker and the listener, and each seemed to take the role of listener very seriously. more serious than most teenage girls do, i think. i couldn’t help wondering, for the rest of that day, what were they talking about? gadamer (1960/1989) used the concepts of conversation and play to describe the dialogical nature of understanding. in comparing understanding with acts of dialogue and play, gadamer suggested that the process of question and answer, listening and speaking, and seeing others’ points of view enable us to reach new understandings (spence, 2005). when in a genuine dialogue with another, we try to understand how what the other person is saying could be right (gadamer, 1996). in a genuine conversation the concern is with the subject matter and with its possible truth (warnke, 1987). neither participant claims to know the truth, rather each is open to the other’s views. “thus, being in the play of different understanding makes possible a movement, on the part of the players, towards ways of knowing that extend beyond their current understandings” (spence, 2001, p. 627). watching the girls in conversation, the cadence of their dialogue having a visible, almost predictable “back and forth-ness” to it, draws attention to gadamer’s analogy of play having a dynamic and influx nature (spence, 2001). “the naturalness of the movement, the immanently dialectical relationships and the process of playing out possibilities” (spence, 2001, p. 627) has me play with the possibility that that is exactly what was really happening with these girls. perhaps they were playing with possibilities, trying on each others views, listening to hear if what the other was saying was true of something for them, or coming to new understandings. whether their conversation was “genuine” or “hermeneutic” in nature i cannot be sure. i can be sure, however, that in the back and forth, and to and fro-ness of their dialogue, something was at play. playing at camp from a scientific perspective v i remember the first time it dawned on me that kids with cancer don’t have the same kinds of childhoods as healthy children. you would think that would have been obvious but it didn’t occur to me until a few months into working with them. i overheard one mother laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 6 6 telling another about how much fun her child had at camp the previous year, and how much he was looking forward to the upcoming camp. “it was just so nice for him to do normal stuff, you know? like healthy kids. for once he wasn’t missing out on anything.” it is surprising for many people to learn how restricted children with cancer are, both in their daily activities as well as in the bigger, more significant events in their lives. the treatment for cancer often leaves children with significant immune suppression, meaning exposure to any kind of virus or infection could lead to a life-threatening event. pediatric cancer programs teach parents how and when to limit their child’s activities and exposure to others, and many families find their times of restriction far outweigh their times of freedom. school, social events, and birthdays are only some of the activities often missed because of their disease. summer camp (for healthy children) is another opportunity these children could never conceivably attend due to the risk of exposure to infection and also because of their associated medical complexities (e.g., central lines) that require care and attention. summer camp a “rite of passage” for many kids would be a forgone experience were it not for these specialized cancer camps. the importance of cancer camps can be further substantiated by what is known about play from the scientific community. “play, more than any other activity, fuels healthy development of children and, the continued healthy development of adults” (perry, hogan, & marlin, 2000, para.5). our bodies, minds, and words are all involved in play, and while the nature and complexity changes as a child grows, at the heart of play is pleasure and a powerful desire to repeat such activities (perry et al., 2000). it is through this repetition that mastery occurs, leading to accomplishment and self-confidence. from a neuro-developmental perspective, play is the building block to learning. we learn through repetition, and because of the desire to repeatedly engage in play, all learning emotional, social, motor, and cognitive – is fueled by the pleasure of play (perry et al., 2000). piaget (1962) proposed that it is through cooperative, social play that moral reasoning develops. the concept of play has been the focus of many research studies examining its effects on memory (greenough & black, 1992), growth of brain cells (gordon, burke, akil, watson, & panskepp, 2003; huber, tonini, & cirelli, 2007), intelligence (bjorkland & pellegrini, 2000; pellegrini & holmes, 2006; stevenson & lee, 1990), language (fisher, 1999; lewis, boucher, lupton, & watson, 2000), problem-solving (pepler & ross 1981; wyver & spence 1999), and mathematic abilities (wolfgang, stannard, & jones, 2001). children and adolescents lack the ability to communicate complex feelings through language. landreth (2002) wrote that because children’s language development lags behind their cognitive development, their ability to communicate complex feelings is best done through play. emotions such as frustration, sympathy, and ambivalence are difficult for them to express because of their concrete view of the world (landreth, 2001). playing allows for the expression of these emotions. play has biological, cultural, social, and psychological functions (landreth, 2001), and is considered of such importance that it is used as a therapeutic modality (called play therapy) in pediatric hospitals around the world. mcmahon (2003) wrote “we need to play…play is not a mindless filling of time or a rest from work. it is a spontaneous and active process in which thinking, feeling and doing can flourish since they are separated from the fear of failure or disastrous consequences” (p. 197). failing and disastrous conlaing journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 6 7 sequences are what children with cancer live with every day. play provides not only an escape from their disease but a way in which they can continue along the journey of being a child, learning what is required of them, mastering what they need to, and finding enjoyment along the way. gadamer (1996) stated that it is only through experiencing illness that we understand health. i would further this idea to mean that sometimes we can arrive at understandings though the negative understanding what is because of what is not. perhaps examining the absence of play playlessness could help to further the understanding of what is at play in children who attend cancer camp. brown (2009) offered a metaphor comparing play to oxygen “it’s all around us, yet goes mostly unnoticed or unappreciated until it is missing” (p. 6). his team’s research into violent criminals (most notably charles whitman, the texas tower mass murderer) found that “normal play behavior was virtually absent throughout the lives of highly violent, anti-social men, regardless of demographic” (p. 249). similarly, goodall (1986) wrote of the murder cannibalism by gombe female chimpanzees, noting that chimps displaying this rare behavior were ineffectively mothered, with early play and later socialization patterns constricted. it would indeed be a stretch to say that children with cancer, deprived of play, will become adults with violent tendencies, but as brown (2009) noted: i now perceive healthy varied play in childhood as necessary for the development of empathy, social altruism and the possession of a repertoire of social behaviors enabling the player to handle stress, particularly humiliation and powerlessness. i also have found that general wellbeing and play are partners, and that it accompanies the most gifted in their adult achievements: perhaps it allows access to the giftedness we all possess. (p. 250) perhaps it is more responsible to say that children with cancer who are deprived of play because of the limitations of their disease may not be getting the same chances as their peers to learn the skills they will need in adulthood, to learn about themselves and others, and to reach their full potential. some may defy the odds and do it anyway but i wonder, why would we take that chance? conclusion benner (1994) suggested that the understanding gained in interpretive inquiry is key to “becoming more effectively, skillfully, or humanely engaged in practice” (p. xv) and is a particularly useful approach when seeking to understand things that are taken for granted or assumed. play, i believe, is one of those taken for granted things. it is all around us, until it is not. like oxygen, its absence is noticed, not its presence. while this interpretive analysis was done without data or text generated through research, it has not been ex nihilo. my memories of camp and practice, combined with the lens of philosophical hermeneutics and other play research, illuminate the concept of play in such a way as to further the understanding of this concept (play) in this setting (cancer camp). i have likely not answered the question of exactly what is at play in these children when they attend camp, but it is my hope that this comes to light with my upcoming research. one dimension of play that i have not addressed in this paper but warrants consideration nonetheless is that of the ethics of play. vilhauer (2010) addressed this, noting that (p)lay has a global relevance in philosophical hermeneutics…play elucidates laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 6 8 the very process of understanding in general the understanding which stretches through all our hermeneutic experience, including our encounters with art, with text, with tradition in all its forms, with others in dialogue, and which even constitutes our very mode of being in the world. (pp. xiii-xiv) the ethics of play, according to gadamer (summarized by vilhauer), have three considerations. first, there are ethical conditions that must be met for genuine dialogue to succeed. second, there is an implicit value claim in gadamer’s work that genuine play is ultimately beneficial to our development as human beings. third, gadamer’s theory of understanding as a process of play is meant as practical philosophy to guide us in relations with others so that we may understand better. while beyond the scope of this paper, it is perhaps worth consideration for future researchers to address the ethics of play with respect to children with serious illness. gadamer (1960/1989) stated that "hermeneutic work is based on a polarity of familiarity and strangeness... the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between" (p. 295). it is fitting to think of play as existing in this “inbetween,” in the margins and leeway of familiarity and strangeness. in many ways, it is in the in-between that children and their families exist once they receive the diagnosis of childhood cancer. i believe it behooves those of us interested in working with these families to find ways to make it easier to live in this liminal space. we are no longer able to approach this like an object of knowledge, grasping, measuring and controlling. rather than meeting us in our world, it is much more a world into which we ourselves are drawn. [it] possesses its own worldliness and, thus, the center of its own being so long as it is not placed into the object-world of producing and marketing. the being of this thing cannot be accessed by objectively measuring and estimating; rather, the totality of a lived context has entered into and is present in the thing. and we belong to it as well. our orientation to it is always something like our orientation to an inheritance that this thing belongs to, be it from a stranger’s life or from our own. (gadamer, 1994, p. 192) references benner, p.e. (1994). interpretive phenomenology: embodiment, caring, and ethics in health and illness. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc. bjorkland, d.f., & pellegrini, a.d. (2000). child development and evolutionary psychology. child development, 71, 1687-1708. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00258 brown, s. (1998). play as an organizing principle: clinical evidence and personal observations. in m. bekoff & j.a. beyer (eds.), animal play: evolutionary, comparative, and ecological perspectives (pp. 242-251). boston, ma: cambridge university press. brown, s. (2009). play: how it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. new york, ny: penguin group inc. fisher, e. p. (1992). the impact of play on development: a meta-analysis. play and culture, 5(2), 159-181. gadamer, h. g. (1960/1989). truth and method. (2nd rev. ed., j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york: continuum. gadamer, h.g. (1986). the relevance of the beautiful and other essays (n. walker, trans.) boston, ma: cambridge university press. laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 6 9 gadamer, h.g. (1994). heidegger’s ways (j.w. staley, trans.). albany, ny: state university press. gadamer, h.g. (1996). the enigma of health. stanford, ca: stanford university press. gallagher, s. (1992). hermeneutics and education. new york, ny: state university press. goodall, j. (1986). the chimpanzees of gombe. cambridge, ma: belknap press of harvard university press. gordon, n.s., burke, s., akil, h., watson, s.j., & panskepp, j. (2003). socially-induced brain ‘fertilization’: play promotes brain derived neurotrophic factor transcription in the amygdala and dorsolateral frontal cortex in juvenile rats. neuroscience letters, 341(1), 17-20. doi:10.1016/s0304-3940(03)00158-7 greenough, w.t., & black, j.e. (1992). induction of brain structure by experience: substrates for cognitive development. in m.r. gunnar, & c.a. nelson (eds.), minnesota symposia on child psychology: developmental neuroscience (155-200). hillside, nj: lawrence a erlbaum associates. huber, r., tonini, g., & cirelli, c. (2007). exploratory behavior, cortical bdnf expression, and sleep homeostasis. sleep, 30(2), 129-139. retrieved from http://www. journalsleep.org /articles/300202.pdf landreth, g. 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(2006). the role of recess in primary school. in d. singer, r. golinkoff, & k. hirsh-pasek (eds.), play=learning: how play motivates and enhances children’s cognitive and socioemotional growth. new york, ny: oxford university press. pepler, d.j., & ross, h.s. (1981). the effects of play on convergent and divergent problem solving. child development, 52(4), 12021210. retrieved from http://www.jstor. org/stable/1129507 perry, b.d., hogan, l., & marlin, s.j. (2000). curiosity, pleasure and play: a neurodevelopmental perspective. haaeyc advocate. retrieved from www.childtrauma.org piaget, j. (1962). play, dreams and imitation in childhood. new york, ny: norton. play. (n.d.). etymonline.com. retrieved february 20, 2012 from http://www.ety monline.com/index.php?term=playplay. (n.d.). merriam-webster dictionary. retrieved february 16, 2012 from http://www. merriamwebster.com/dictionary/play laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 6 10 spence, d.g. (2001). hermeneutic notions illuminate cross-cultural nursing experiences. journal of advanced nursing, 35(4), 624-30. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2648.2001.01879.x spence, d.g. (2005). hermeneutic notions augment cultural safety education. journal of nursing education, 44(9), 409-414. retrieved from http://www.slack journals.com/jne stevenson, h.w., & lee, s.y. (1990). contexts of achievement: a study of american, chinese, and japanese children. monographs of the society for research in child development. 55(1-2), 1-123. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1166090 vilhauer, m. (2010). gadamer’s ethics of play: hermeneutics and the other. plymouth, uk: lexington books. warnke, g. (1987). gadamer: hermeneutics, tradition and reason. stanford, ca: stanford university press. wolfgang, c.h., stannard, l. l., & jones, i. (2001). block play performance among preschoolers as a predictor of later school achievement in mathematics. journal of research in childhood education, 15(2), 173180. doi:10.1080/02568540109594958 wyver, s.r., & spence, s.h. (1999). play and divergent problem solving: evidence supporting a reciprocal relationship. early education and development, 10(4), 419 – 444. doi: 10.1207/s15566935eed1004_1 acknowledgement: the author gratefully acknowledges the alberta children’s hospital foundation for their financial support of her doctoral study in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary microsoft word hodge corrected proof.docx corresponding author: nick hodge, edd email: n.s.hodge@shu.ac.uk journal of applied hermeneutics february 22, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 invited guest editorial lives worthy of life: the everyday resistance of disabled people nick hodge ‘spoiler alert’: this article speaks to that of dr. john williamson that is published in this years issue. i have made some effort to avoid revealing too much of the “plot” but those of you who prefer to enjoy the mystery of the disappearing/appearing slow learner as it is intended to unfold are advised to read williamson’s article before this one. i first encountered williamson’s work in the form of a phd thesis. i was captivated first by the concept, the originality of presenting research in the form of a detective novel. next by the beautiful artwork of emma williamson that adorns the cover and then once i began to read, as with every gripping thriller, i could not put it down. this work challenges fundamentally the expected form of the traditional social science thesis that nearly always starts with a context chapter followed by a review of the literature that gives rise to the research questions and then the methodology chapter and so on. all that i anticipated did not at first appear in this thesis and yet of course i then came to realise that it had been there all along: it had disappeared and then appeared again. lopez and willis (2004) called for researchers to be more explicit about their methodology to set out the philosophy and principles that inform and guide the study. max hunter is a bruised and cynical private detective who is in constant dialogue with himself and his client, williamson, the slightly worn down by the system but “hanging on in there” teacher. this creation of the detective is an inspired artifice. the discussions between the two characters allow williamson to lay out in detail before the reader every element of the research journey. we share each frustration and each wonder of discovery that happens within the research. in max, is embodied the very physicality of what it means to conduct a phd enquiry: the anxiety, the late nights sustained only by coffee, the trials of accessing participants, the compulsion to keep going no matter what, trying to appear like you know what you are doing when you have no idea where to go next, the confusion and uncertainty and the wondering whether any of it will ever come to hodge journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 2 2 mean anything. presenting research in the form of a novel reminds the reader that all reports on enquiry are constructed stories that are created and managed by the researcher. kvale (1996) argued that the job of the researcher is to make clear the links between the claims made and the evidence base that support them. then each reader must decide upon the reliability of research and evaluate to what extent he/she can recognise his/her own experience within it. i was a teacher in special education for many years before working at a university. for me, this research feels “real.” i recognise the teachers and the pupils who are “interviewed” by max and i can picture the spaces in which these meetings occur. the issues raised by staff and pupils are the ones that troubled me then in my practice as a teacher and continue to do so today. the work is made authentic for me through the level of detail provided, the reflections on the research journey expressed by max and williamson and i am convinced by the human but ethical natures of their characters as portrayed within the text. williamson is a very talented writer who is as at home constructing a novel as he is with more standard styles of academic writing. so this form of thesis would not work for every researcher but it has certainly highlighted for me the potential and value of thinking about ways of conducting and presenting research differently. this text encourages us to be creative and brave but above all reminds us of the need to be consistent, disciplined, and exact. in spite of not having specialist training nor undertaken a lengthy academic course max comes quickly to understand disability, something that some of those in education with many years of experience never seem to achieve. max is a “sucker for the underdogs” (p. 49), a freirean hero who is prepared to put himself at the disposal of others to expose the oppressive practices of the system (freire, 1970). max moves amongst those who have been expelled to the margins of society, constructed as non-producers, economic burdens on the capitalist state who are there and yet do not appear (sassen, 2014). max might not yet know about disability theory but he knows people. as a detective he researches the lived experiences of others. max listens and he considers. in the section of the story that williamson presents here, he sends in derrida and foucault to help max with understanding how the category of slow learner might have come to be formed and the role that the label serves in the regulation and limitation of children and young people. derrida and foucault take max to the “classification of disability research institute,” a private museum of disability history. so skilled is williamson as a writer that upon first reading about this museum i immediately tried to locate it on the internet in the hope that i could one day visit. it seemed to contain such important exhibits. immersed in the story, i ignored the clues that williamson provided to remind me that “everything is dangerous” (foucault, 1991, p. 343) and that we all need to remember to “watch our watching, to read our readings” (titchkosky, 2007, p. 3) as all may not be what at first it seems. the presence of derrida and foucault as max’s escorts around the exhibition or even the fictional nature of max himself perhaps should have warned me that there might not actually be a museum for me to visit but caught up in the drama i had let down my guard. when i realised my error the museum temporarily disappeared for me only to reappear in the form of all the research texts that have chartered the history of disability and which williamson has so thoroughly analysed. through the tour of the institute max comes to know the shocking and shameful history of disability. through photographs, personal accounts and “official” documentation max observes the systematic denial of the humanity of disabled people, dehumanisation through acts which mark out those who perpetrate them as well as those who suffer (freire, 1970). max learns that hodge journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 2 3 diagnosis, categorisation, and labelling “violently mark” and disable children and young people (goodley & runswick-cole, 2016, p. 1): labels are not the benevolent tools designed to support children and young people that many families and practitioners imagine them to be. instead they are revealed here as tools of the privileged within the capitalist state in order to contain (at best) and eradicate (at worst) those who are categorised as economic burdens on the state and polluters of the workforce (hodge, 2016). max witnesses how throughout history disabled people have been and are positioned as other and lesser. only the bodies that are capable of labour are deemed to have value; “not all bodies are equal, some matter more than others: some are, quite frankly, disposable” (braidotti, 2011, p. 216). disabled people are first cast as unfeeling “idiots (who) are insensitive to pain or temperature” (sward, 1917, p. 498) and then transmogrified into animals (williamson, 2016). zoomorphism serves to allow the maltreatment and expulsion of disabled people. animals can be dangerous beasts that need to be corralled and controlled and even destroyed if they do not earn their right to life or threaten the profit of a healthy gene pool. once disabled people are made animal, then the aktion t4 programme of nazi germany becomes possible. as max comes to learn, over 200,000 disabled children and adults were murdered through this programme in germany alone (seeman, 2005). stripped of their humanity these beasts and burdens were viewed by the nazis as “lives unworthy of life” (glass, 1999). max learns of these terrible accounts whilst in a museum. but euthanasia and eugenics have not yet been assigned to history. there is currently in development a fetal test for down syndrome that demonstrates the potential to be less intrusive and risky for pregnant women and their fetuses (gander, 2016). this was announced recently in the uk media with almost no challenge or protest even though the implications of the announcement are clear: more women are likely to access the test and more “lives unworthy of life” will be terminated. the conceptualisation of disabled people as beast and burden is equally persistent. this can be seen in the relentless vilification of disabled people in the united kingdom media as “shirkers and scroungers” (garthwaite, 2011, p. 369). a further example is the television documentary that presents dr. temple grandin, a highly respected academic who happens to identify with the label of autism, as “the woman who thinks like a cow” (bbc, 2006). as cattle are subject to inhumane forms of control such as electric prods to direct their movements, it is unsurprising that disabled children have been subject to the same practices as “tools” of learning (silberman, 2015). for max, the horrors to which he bears witness become unbearable and he feels compelled to leave the museum. the exhibits are brutal reminders of the devastating effects that the operation of power can have on lives made vulnerable. but within the history of disability can also be found hope and so the museum needs one more exhibit: the everyday resistance of disabled people. kitchin (1998, p. 353) defined resistance as “the opposition of power: the oppressed fighting back against the injustices imposed by their oppressors.” in the history of disability, kitchin recorded that such was the dominance of ableist ideology that by necessity acts of resistance by disabled people were for many years individual: actions range from living the lives they want, getting an education and a job, to having children, not hiding their ‘deformities’, rejecting ‘normalising’ treatment, battling against stereotypes and prejudice, and seeking to get ‘able-bodied’ people to accept them as they are… (p. 353) hodge journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 2 4 ryerson university hosts a virtual museum of disability activism and resistance. one exhibit captures examples of disability resistance in the stories of mathilda, audrey, and may. these three women were committed to the toronto hospital for the insane at the beginning of the 20th century and they remained there for most of their lives. without pay, they were compelled to work and it is estimated that between them they provided the state with 285000 hours of labour. effectively free “workhorses,” these women refused to be defined by their assigned status. instead, mathilda presented herself as an employee of the institute and asserted authority over her working space. may would wander the grounds of the institute in the early morning in spite of regulations that forbade it. women like these three resisted their oppression through pride in their work, forming communities and quiet subversion of oppressive regulations (stackhouse, n.d.). mcdonald, keys, and balcazar (2007), in more recent research with young disabled people, identified how they resist pejorative and disempowering cultural representations of disability. these include removing oneself from a negative environment and being selective about the spaces one inhabits. young people assert their authority to decide for themselves their identity and value regardless of how others appear to perceive them. they remind themselves of their worth through acts of positive thinking and turn potentially disempowering narratives into “prove them wrong” motivators that drive them on to achieve. other forms of resistance include fighting back verbally when encountering disabling attitudes from others and openly celebrating and highlighting one's “difference” (loja et al., 2013). in williamson’s research (2016), acts of resistance can be seen in colleen birdseye’s transcendence of her label (p. 3), the quiet but persistent challenge of the young man in asserting that his qualifications were of the required standard to register for an apprenticeship (pp. 4-5), arturo’s rejection of his assigned category and status (pp. 19-22) and the illustrations by the students of their talents in dance, sport, and juggling (p. 23). in the latter half of the 20th century, as part of a wider civil rights movement in some countries individual acts of resistance by disabled people developed into collective action (kitchin, 1998; köbsell, 2006; lord, 2010). in the uk in the 1970s, disabled people led the development of a new model of conceptualising and responding to ableist oppression: “the social model of disability” (oliver, 1996). this shifted the focus of disability away from individual impairment and on to the societal structures that impede the aspirations of people with impairments (goodley, 2011; mallett & runswick-cole, 2014). disabled people asserted new rights to decision making and placed themselves in positions of leadership within the organisations that represented them or started new groups of their own (leach, 1996). resistance to disability became more visible and demanded the attention of the world (köbsell, 2006). the exhibitions at the “classification of disability research institute” convey therefore the horror and shame of the dehumanisation of disabled people that has led to expulsion, confinement, and attempts at systematic eradication. what it does not capture is resistance and hope the refusal to submit to oppression by disabled people who assert their humanity within their everyday lives. williamson’s research and writing and his work as a teacher are also acts of resistance. like his hero max, williamson “doggedly” refuses to allow the slow learner to be expelled to the margins and made to disappear. instead williamson supports those labelled slow learners with telling their stories and thereby making known and validating their aspirations and the barriers that thwart them. disabled people and their allies continue to find new ways of hodge journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 2 5 challenging the insidious and omnipresent specters of ableism and normalcy. the digital age, for example, has provided a variety of creative platforms to capture and promote the lived experience of disabled people and represent the diversity and richness of these lives worthy of life (rice et al., 2015). in the uk, disabled performance artist liz crow drew attention to the crime of aktion t4 by sitting in a wheelchair, dressed as a nazi, on a plinth high above the crowds in london's trafalgar square (disability arts online, 2009). the continued attacks on disabled people by neoliberal-ableist governments that rob them of their incomes and deny them access to independent living mean that once again disabled people are corralled into large scale segregated living (goodley, lawthom, & runswick-cole, 2014; gradwell, 2015). all cities and towns require a history of disability museum that would record and display the shame of such practices, both past and current, but also celebrate the heroism of disabled people in resisting them. these museums would act as beacons of remembrance and a warning that we must all “watch our watching (and) read our readings” because “everything is dangerous.” references bbc. (2006). horizon documentary: the woman who thinks like a cow. first broadcast on 8 june 2006. braidotti, r. (2011). nomadic subjects: embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory (2nd ed.). new york, ny: columbia university press. disability arts online. (2009). news: liz crow reached the guardian’s ‘top 10 from trafalgar’ list. 12 december. accessed at http://www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk/liz-crow-reached-theguardian-top-10. foucault, m. (1991). ‘on the genealogy of ethics: an overview of work in progress’, interview with foucault. in p. rabinow (ed.) the foucault reader (pp. 340-372). london, uk: penguin. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. london, uk: continuum. gander, k. (2016). down’s syndrome test which is ‘safer and highly accurate’ approved for pregnant women on nhs. independent, 15, january. accessed at http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/safer-highly-accuratedowns-syndrome-test-approved-for-pregnant-women-on-nhs-a6813731.html. garthwaite, k. (2011). ‘the language of shirkers and scroungers?’ talking about illness, disability and coalition welfare reform. disability & society, 26(3), 369-372. glass, j.m. (1999). life unworthy of life: racial phobia and mass murder in hitler’s germany. new york, ny: basic books. goodley, d. (2011). disability studies: an interdisciplinary introduction. london, uk: sage. hodge journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 2 6 goodley, d., lawthom, r., & runswick-cole, k. (2014). dis/ability and austerity: beyond work and slow death. disability & society, 29(6), 980-984. goodley, d., & runswick-cole, k. (2016). becoming dishuman: thinking about the human through dis/ability. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 37(1), 1-15. gradwell, l. (2015). independent living fund from the sublime to the ridiculous? disability & society, 30(9), 1428-1433. hodge, n. (2016, forthcoming). schools without labels. in r. mallett, k. runswick-cole, & s. timimi (eds.), re-thinking autism. london, uk: jessica kingsley publishers. kitchen, r. (1998) ‘out of place’, ‘knowing one’s place’: space, power and the exclusion of disabled people. disability & society, 13(3), 343-356. köbsell, s. (2006) towards self-determination and equalization: a short history of the german disability rights movement. disability studies quarterly, 26(2), pages unnumbered. accessed at http://idis.uni-koeln.de/wp-content/uploads/kbsell.pdf kvale, s. (1996). interviews: an introduction to qualitative research. london, uk: sage. leach, b. (1996). disabled people and the equal opportunities movement. in g. hales (ed.), beyond disability: towards an enabling society (pp. 88-95). london, uk: the open university & sage. loja, e., costa, m.e., hughes, b., & menezes, i. (2013). disability, embodiment and ableism: stories of resistance. disability & society, 28(2), 190-203. lopez, k.a., & willis, d.g. (2004). descriptive versus interpretive phenomenology: their contributions to nursing knowledge. qualitative healthcare research, 14(5), 726-735. lord, j. (2010). impact: changing the way we view disability: the history, perspective, and vision of the independent living movement in canada. ottawa, on, canada: creative bound international. mallett, r., & runswick-cole, k. (2014). approaching disability: critical issues and perspectives. london, uk: routledge. mcdonald, k.e., keys, c.b., & balcazar, f.e. (2007). disability, race/ethnicity and gender: themes of cultural oppression, acts of individual resistance. american journal of community psychology, 39, 145-161. oliver, m. (1996). understanding disability: from theory to practice. basingstoke, uk: macmillan. hodge journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 2 7 rice, c., chandler, e., harrison, e., liddiard, k., & ferrari, m. (2015). project re-vision: disability at the edges of representation. disability & society, 30(4), 513-527. sassen, s. (2014). expulsions: brutality and complexity in the global economy. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. seeman, m.v. (2005). psychiatry in the nazi era. canadian journal of psychiatry, 50(4), 218225. silberman, s. (2015). neurotribes; the legacy of autism and how to think smarter. london, uk: allen & unwin. stackhouse, r.r. (n.d.). labouring. out from under: disability, history and things to remember (website). toronto, on, canada: ryerson university. accessed at http://www.ryerson.ca/ofu/exhibits/labouring.html. sward, m.r. (1917). the defective child. the american journal of nursing, 17(6), 496-501. titchkosky, t. (2007). reading and writing disability differently: the textured life of embodiment. london, on, canada: university of toronto press. williamson. w.j. (2016). the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery. part two: cells of categorical confinement. journal of applied hermeneutics. article 5. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5np1x18 microsoft word field editorial corrected proof.docx corresponding author: james c. field, phd email: jfield@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics may 13, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 invited guest editorial quaint memories of puzzling through mysteries james c. field the incompleteness of meaning and the finitude of understanding suggest that the subject matters (die sache) of understanding are mysteries rather than problems. mysteries are not subject to the methodological solutions problems are. a problem denotes a difficulty demanding a solution. mysteries however can only be understood more deeply. they are not to be explained away but are to be discerned as an ever-present limit to our understanding. they invoke an apprehension of a radical limitlessness. (davey, 2006, p. 29) i had the good fortune of supervising john’s thesis—a mysterious venture to be sure, because when we started, neither the path nor the destination were clear. memory and the workings of time have robbed me of the exact sequence of things--as ricouer (2004) noted in his last great work, there is a “shadowy underside to the bright region of memory” p. 21). the “bright regions of memory” that remain are what ricouer (2004) called the “memory-events,” where something in particular happened, and they arise in perception again, not as simple recollection, but as an “evocation of the absent-present” (p. 35). this is to say they re-occur as events, mixed inevitably with forgetting, imagination, and a trace of consequences. one suffers them, undergoes them in their “presence” anew. it must be said that the “suffering” involved in the case of remembering how john’s work unfolded is what ricouer (2004) called a “happy memory”: the joy and the learning that resulted from the event are fused to the occurrence itself, lending significance, supplying a surplus of pleasure, engendering, once again, the joy of “being there.” but enough of that, for this is not meant to be a treatise on memory, but a re-membering of what field journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 4 2 happened, and what was learned from it. i wanted to set out a brief description of what i mean by the phrase, i remember when i use it, not so much as a claim to recalling “exactly what happened,” for that is impossible, but more as an attempt to stay true to the shards that remain: what is still felt, the learning and thinking that persists, that is, the application of the memories that remains in play. i remember what was “there” from the very beginning of john’s dissertation, in the heideggerian sense, so also “not there,” but certainly “there enough” that it spoke the loudest to john, was this phenomenon that would not go away/constantly slipped away: those students designated by the system, by many of the teachers, by many of us in academe, as “slow learners.” there they sat, smack in the middle of john’s practice, staring back at him, calling out to him, but more pressingly, “calling him out,” as ricoeur (1992) might have said, and then disappearing. i remember being drawn into the topic, listening to john as he unfolded what he faced in his practice: these particular students were in a fix, and it wasn’t one of their own making. the stakes were high; these were largely forgotten beings, concealed in a system that recognized them, unofficially—but then, briefly revealed, quickly abandoned them to their own devices. many, far too many, of these students struggled silently and disappeared into oblivion, quietly jumping out, falling out, or being pushed out of the system. as john so passionately maintained, this was our loss as well: these were students with hidden talents, in need of cultivation, talent that john could see, and marvelously, helped me see. listening to john, i could sense his desperation and frustration; he wanted to help, and in his own way, in his own school, in a room that invited everyone in that needed help, he did. but that wasn’t enough, not for john, but more importantly, not for us, not if we were going to declare that we were educators that didn’t just care for those that did well, but also the less fortunate. ethically, we were enjoined by the topic. i remember in the process of listening, being summoned by this realization: these students were calling out to the part of our selves that was hidden from us, or at least from me. listening to john, my “slow self,” our slow selves, came into view, and a question bubbled up to the surface: which one of us can claim that he or she has never been a slow learner? who hasn’t been that character in a technologically-accelerated world that moves so fast as to be designated “posthuman” (kroker, 2014)? and then another question came, hard on the heels of the first: haven’t we always, when we try to understand, been slow learners? “the owl of minerva flies at night,” for all of us, does it not? more essentially, shouldn’t we all be slow learners? what is “dwelling” for heidegger, or “whiling” for gadamer, if not the necessary, slow, lived-through, suffered experience required to understand things differently? i remember the question of how to proceed rearing its head. what to do, with whom, when, and how much, in the face of this intriguing “practical mystery,” full of appearances, disappearances, dead-ends and detours? there was a point where the “method” for the study, and the structure and genre of the thesis were still completely undecided, not that we were dumbfounded, nor plunged into nietzsche’s abyss, because the topic had its solid leads, and its intrigue, but the way forward did not yet exist. this is where the experience of working this out really took on the shape of an adventure. we were being launched into something, and while i might not have realized it at the time, it was as romano (2012) wrote, a journey of no return. i no longer think of dissertations, nor being a supervisor, in the way that i did, there are now new possibilities in field journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 4 3 front of me. partly the need for adventure was of our own doing, because john had proposed, and i agreed, that he do something different, in form and in structure, with his dissertation. mostly though, i think we realized that we had to attend to this as a mystery, to remain true to its mysterious character, and not, as davey (2006) reminded us, treat what confronted us as a scientific problem to be solved through method, but rather as something that must be ventured into. i remember john’s e-mail proposing to do the dissertation as a hard-boiled detective novel, and it immediately struck me as the right thing to do. within the hour—at least as i remember it, i wrote him back and said, simply “go for it.” we were off, and i remember feeling ecstatic, but also, more than a little intimidated. i was haunted at times by questions, visited at late at night, as “hauntology” (kroker, 2014) is wont to do, with doubt: what if it didn’t work? what if we got half-way in, or a year down the road, and had to abandon the project entirely and start over? would the dissertation survive a train wreck like that? would john survive? would i? even if the work flourished between us, there was no guarantee that it would survive formal examination. the question of how a dissertation like this would be received was with us for a long, long time. would other academics see this as a foolish, undisciplined flight of fancy (we constantly asked, toward the end of the drafting process when the piece approached 400 pages, “who the hell will we get for an external”?), or would the rigor of the work be visible to an academic eye not familiar with the tradition and the genre? i certainly did not excuse myself from the ability or inability to see “goodness” or potential in a piece of work—blindness, as heidegger reminded us, is part of the human condition of caring deeply, of being right there for someone, fully and deeply engaged, with the best of intentions. i would have to be able to see and say something more than “go for it” at the bottom of every draft. was i up to this? was i up to helping john fulfill the hermeneutic warrants for the study, the requisites of a good hard-boiled detective mystery, as well as allow him to shape something that was uniquely “john’s,” and pass muster in academe? hmmm: the topic, had arrived, kept arriving in fact, in all its “horror and charm” (sartre, 1939). now this might sound a little overstated, it might fall prey too much to the work of imagination, so let me step back for a minute here to try to dispel the existence of states of boundless courage, blind faith, and recklessness on both our parts. i had been on john’s ma thesis committee, so i knew that i could bet on john’s capability as a writer and thinker, his solid understanding of what hermeneutics was about, and his capacity as a skilled, thoughtful, and careful practitioner. john did not pull the idea of doing a noir detective mystery out of thin air, or other places, for that matter, and i didn’t agree to go with him on this adventure simply because it was a bright, shiny, new idea, although that is exactly what it was. i am not sure how it became apparent in our conversations that both of us loved dark, detective mysteries, but i do remember rollicking discussions about them. i had been struck previously about the parallels of detective work with hermeneutics—careful, vigilant, disciplined inquiry, that slowly built its own case for proceeding by dogged, persistent fieldwork, dependent upon the clues that appeared, as questions, by the unanticipated events of the pursuit, by what the investigation revealed, and not by predetermined “police procedure.” good detective work, of the hard-boiled kind, was strikingly similar to what romano (2012) called “evential hermeneutics: elucidating the meaning of the human adventure using events as the guiding thread” (p. 48). the engine of this kind of hermeneutic inquiry is the “profound upheaval” that events provide, and what is revealed when things of import happen to us: field journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 4 4 existence, understanding, truth come into view as events that happen to dasein, and thereby to being as such. understanding is a work of truth; truth is uncovering. these existentials denote, in some way the very event of being. (p. 13) part of the courage to do this came through undergoing: talking things out, working back and forth from what hermeneutics required, to what “hermeneutics warrants” could be fulfilled by the detective noir, and to how to do the “non-fictional” things dissertations require: critical literature reviews, interviews, document analyses. i think the only thing we sacrificed, probably with a little too much glee, was apa style—that we had to sneak through the bureaucratic requirements of doing a phd. fortunately, we had a good committee that saw the value of the work and looked the other way, or maybe it might be more accurate to say they were dazzled by the brightness of the quality of the work, and the style fell into the shadows. one last important point to remind us all of the danger of a hermeneutics that simply ends in the bon homie of agreement: there was a threat to the study that made the hard-boiled noir, and a hard-boiled detective, necessary for both of us. we worried, familiar as we were with each other’s thinking, and with both of us operating out of the same hermeneutic tradition, that there was a danger that we had too much in common, took too many of the same things for granted, saw things too much in the same way. philosophically, theoretically, pedagogically, john and i were on the “same side,” we were for and against the same things. where was the other in our thinking, seeing and conversation? who or what would be “the event” that would shake us out of our slumber, keep us on the “right path of looking” (heidegger, 1999, p. 62), preserve, ironically, through endangering, the authentic, valid character of a journey? enter max, from the other side of town, who could show up at night, like lightening, and expose what was in the shadows of our taken-for-grantedness. you don’t have to like him, there were times that we didn’t, but he is as necessary to this story as trouble is to hermeneutics. i will leave you to him now, and the “horror and the charm” of his hermeneutic trouble-making… references davey, n. (2006). unquiet understanding. new york, ny: suny. heidegger, m. (1999). ontology-the hermeneutics of facticity. bloomington, ia: indiana university press. kroker, m. (2014). exits to the post-human future. cambridge, ma: polity press. ricouer, p. (2004). memory, history, forgetting. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ricouer, p. (1992). oneself as another. chicago, il: university of chicago press. romano, c. (2002). event and world. new york, ny: fordham press. field journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 4 5 sartre, p. (1939). intentionality: a fundamental idea of husserl’s phenomenology. journal of the british society for phenomenology, 1(2), 4-5. microsoft word laing final word.docx corresponding author: catherine m. laing rn phd email: laingc@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics august 5, 2013 the author(s) 2013 the island of misfit toys catherine m. laing & nancy j. moules abstract a philosophical hermeneutic study was conducted to understand the meaning of children’s cancer camps for children with cancer and their families. six families and five camp counselors were interviewed in order to bring understanding to this topic. while the research included findings related to the concept of play at cancer camp (both philosophically and theoretically); grief as something to live with versus “get over”; storytelling as a means of re-shaping and understanding traumatic experiences; and the solidarity of the community as one that creates intense, healing bonds, this paper details the finding related to the children and families experience of finding acceptance and fit at camp. keywords children’s cancer camps, hermeneutic research, pediatric oncology, pediatric psychosocial oncology in response to the stress of the childhood cancer experience, children’s cancer camps arose in the 1970s as a way for children and their families to escape the rigidity and severity of cancer treatment (bluebondlangner, perkel, goertzel, nelson, & mcgeary, 1990; kids cancer care foundation of alberta, 2012). cancer camps are designed to meet the needs of the whole family at each stage in the cancer experience from diagnosis through treatment, to survival or bereavement (kids cancer care foundation of alberta, 2012). in 2008, the eight camps across canada provided specialized oncology camps and community support programs to 5,252 children and their families – a 10% increase from the previous three years (canadian association of pediatric oncology camps, 2012). as more children are surviving childhood cancer, the need for specialized camps and community programs continues to grow. our intent in this paper is to describe one of the findings of the first author’s doctoral laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 8 2 research study that invoked philosophical hermeneutics as an approach to understand the meaning of children’s cancer camps for the child with cancer and the family. six families and five cancer camp counselors were interviewed in order to bring understanding to this topic. the doctoral thesis research included findings related to: the concept of play at cancer camp (both philosophically and theoretically); grief as something to live with versus “get over”; storytelling as a means of re-shaping and understanding traumatic experiences; and the solidarity of the community as one that creates intense, healing bonds. in this paper, we will detail the specific finding related to the children and families experience of finding acceptance and fit at camp. interpretive analysis um, i know this sounds really weird but sometimes i think of camp as the island of misfit toys cause there’s all something we’re all damaged in some kind of way, and then it’s just amazing to see the kids they’re so proud of who they are when they come to camp. the camper that comes to mind is liam…he’s just, i mean ah, he has his leg amputated and he calls his little stump tiny tim (laughs). i mean, outtrip [an overnight camping experience], like he was just telling a story and showing off tiny tim to all the campers cause they’re all curious about it…he’s just so proud of himself and i think it’s just fantastic to see, and it really inspires the other kids in the group. i noticed since he told his story other kids have come out of their shells and they’re just, they’re like, you know what, it’s ok to be who i am – something might not look quite right, but it’s ok cause we’re all here together. (counselor) the island of misfit toys was an addition to the classic christmas story of rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, originally airing in 1964. it is an island sanctuary where defective and unwanted toys are sent, including, among its inhabitants, a cowboy who rides an ostrich, a train with square wheels, a squirt gun that shoots grape jelly, and an airplane that cannot fly (wikipedia, 2012). i remember watching this show as a child, and feeling badly for these forlorn toys, rejected from santa’s sack because they were imperfect. it seemed unfair to me even at a young age that something could be rejected or excluded due to imperfections. the counselor’s comparison of camp to the island of misfit toys struck me as a perfect metaphor for what i had noticed at camp, but up until the point of her saying it, was unable to articulate. before further discussion, a closer examination of the word misfit is warranted. merriam-webster (2012) defines misfit as “something that fits badly,” or, “a person who is poorly adapted to a situation or environment.” it is an interesting word from an etymological perspective, with mis meaning “in a changed manner,” and with a root sense of “difference, change,” and fit, coming from the early 15th century, meaning “suitable” (etymonline, 2012). it is not my intention to dissect this word into infinitesimally small pieces, however, i wish to draw attention to something important as sometimes deconstructing words such as this offers a different lens from which to understand, or at least challenge, the traditional meaning. when one separates mis from fit, and examines them as two distinct words, the word misfit can be understood differently. misfit, from an etymological standpoint, can be understood as something, or someone, that is “differently suited” versus the traditional definition offered earlier of “a person who is poorly adapted to a situation or environment.” laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 8 3 cancer camp, like the island of misfit toys, offers a “sanctuary” of sorts, a place of belonging, acceptance, and safety. at cancer camp, there is no such thing as someone who does not fit in, in fact “usually the quirky kids get pulled into the group the fastest” (counselor). before examining this culture of acceptance and how these children are “differently suited,” it is important to first look at how it is children with cancer stand out and often feel un-accepted in the “real world.” 1 understanding fit: from misfit to fitting in mother (talking about the kids at camp): there’s a variety of different types of challenges and everybody just kind of accepts that that’s where they are, they’ve got theirs you’ve got yours and it moves on. everybody’s got their issues, they’re all quirky, they’ve all got their challenges, so what? father: but outside the general, you know, the outlook, um, it’s a little different, it’s a little more harsh, a little less acceptance. (parents of a child with a brain tumor) most of the families who spoke about camp being a place of acceptance had a child with a visible or behavioral difference that distinguished them from their peers. from loss of hair due to chemotherapy, to brain tumors, radiation therapy, or unrelated concurrent illnesses or syndromes (e.g., asperger’s/autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), most children who have experienced cancer have also experienced looking, 1 the “real world” is the language most children and families used in my interviews when describing life outside of the camp environment. i have chosen to adopt this language when describing the same. or being, different from their healthy peers at some point along the cancer trajectory. they have experienced a mis-fit in the real world, and all of the accompanying challenges. we know from the literature that “peer relationships are an important index of a child’s current social competence and psychosocial adjustment” (vannattaa, gartstein, zellerc, & noll, 2009, p. 303). establishing relationships with peers is a major developmental task of preadolescence and adolescence (sullivan, 1953) and provides an important context for learning social skills and mastering the complexities of cooperation and competition (hartup, 1999; rubin, bukowski, & parker, 2006). i offer that it is by being completely, unconditionally accepted at camp, that these children come to understand that they are differently suited to their environment. matthew got to be matthew, he wasn't judged. i mean they all have quirks – i mean some of them can't see and stuff – that cancer affects, so he didn't feel like he was standing out and he tried things. i mean he did the flying squirrel! (mother) according to chilean biologist humberto maturana, acceptance and love originate from the same source. he defined love as “the spontaneous dynamic condition of acceptance by a living system of its coexistence with another (or others) living system” (maturana, 1986, p. 59). love, he offered, involves “opening a space of existence for an other in coexistence with oneself on a particular domain of interactions” (p. 59). norris (2009) further troubled this notion of love by noting that in buddhist thought, the ability to open space is something that can be intentionally cultivated. from a biological perspective (maturana) to buddhism, there are parallels between love, acceptance, and space. i find this particularly fitting, given the landscape on which camp resides. it is open and spacious, as if to be the literal interpretation of laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 8 4 maturana’s notion of love. the open spaces of camp are defined by the structures around them the trees, the pond, the lodges, and the other various structures that occupy this space. it is in the empty spaces though, the “between-ness,” that brings to mind a poem in the tao te ching entitled the utility of nonexistence: though thirty spokes may form the wheel, it is the hole within the hub which gives the wheel utility. it is not the clay the potter throws which gives the pot its usefulness, but the space within the shape from which the pot is made. without a door, the room cannot be entered, and without windows it is dark. such is the utility of non-existence. (taoism information page, 2004) like the hole in the hub of the wheel, it is perhaps in the empty spaces of camp where the most value lies. the buildings, ropes course, and campfire pit provide the structure (spokes) around which the wheel turns. the essence of camp, however, lay in the spaces between, as it is here that acceptance and “fit” is found. it is not just the children with cancer who find acceptance at camp. siblings, too, described a sense of relief being in the camp environment: i like how, well, in my dorm we were talking about sometimes at school and stuff people don’t really know. they say, “oh we know what you’re going through” but they don’t really, so when we come to camp everybody knows what you’re going through and you like, fit in. (sibling) well, sometimes at school, when i was in grade one when it first happened [sibling diagnosed with cancer], people thought that um, like i had it, like it was contagious, like they could catch it from me, and everybody started avoiding me and stuff like that. but then it started to pass by, but i always remembered that. when i went to camp, it just went away, like i forgot about that. (sibling) i believe there is a profound change that happens to children when they are in an environment of complete acceptance. particularly when this environment is different from their real world, i suggest that there is something that happens to these kids that allows them to experience themselves differently. one of the counselors offered this example: i think the same self-confidence that i found that i gained over the years at camp you’ll see it in campers. you’ll have kids that come out and you can tell right away from the start that they’re the quiet kids, they’re a little bit more reserved…back at home they’re probably not the most popular kids ever, and by, you know, mid week once they’ve kind of been pulled in to the group by the other kids and just welcomed with open arms, they really start to thrive and their self confidence is apparent, and you’ll see these kids actually start to become leaders of the group. and even some of the kids who maybe have behavioral problems at home, um, getting a chance to be in an environment that’s so different from what they’re used to, and actually sometimes that extra energy that they don’t know what to do with they can place constructively. they really start to stand out and shine in terms of how they treat other campers. they take on this positive leadership role where they’re really helping the other campers out and it’s really cool to see these kids really…come into their own, and not have to worry about, you know, how cool they look or you know, clothes they’re wearing, or what they need laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 8 5 to be doing so that people accept them, and just actually getting a chance to figure out who they think they are, not who other people want them to be. (counselor) perhaps, like this counselor said, it is that these children – these children who are “poorly adapted to a situation or environment” (merriam-webster, 2012) are given space to figure out who they are, not who other people want them to be. they are provided with space within which they find they fit. the consequences of “fit” are seemingly endless, for it is from this i suggest that the tangible, perhaps even quantifiable, differences (e.g, increased self-confidence and selfesteem, quality of life, etc.) in the children arise. while these differences have been the focus of several research projects (e.g., balen, fielding, & lewis, 1998; ruffin, creed, & jarvis, 1997), i offer that it may be precisely why these presumably measurable constructs are not only difficult to quantify in this type of environment but also fail to capture the why of the difference. when i first started this research, i felt certain i would, at some point, be discussing the changes in the children, as a result of camp. indeed, these types of discussions happened frequently in my interviews and were captured in other ways throughout this research. however, the “results” of camp, the changes in the children, are what i now understand as the side effects. i believe the utility, the why, the reason for these changes, to be the space, acceptance, and fit that is experienced at camp. from acceptance and fit to recognition and understanding so when they’re here, it’s not that they’re the [only] family that’s dealing with it [cancer] and friends are all saying “oh i can’t imagine that, that’s so horrible” right? and they’re talking to people who say that they’ve been through it, they know exactly what they’re feeling and they know exactly what they’ve gone through, they know what they have to look forward to, so families can really talk to each other and relate, and that kind of makes this a really safe environment. (counselor) camp, never one to discriminate, opens its space of acceptance and fit not only to the children but also the parents. age and experience, however, position parents differently in the camp experience, and i believe they experience the acceptance and fit of camp in a different way than their children. i mean it’s neat meeting them [other parents] and hearing their stories and being able to share your story and having them understand it, you know. not having to, you know, explain every little detail. you can say well she went in and got her port accessed and got chemo and they go, oh yeah, ok. whereas, you know, you say that to somebody on the street and they go, huh? (parent) many parents told me that one of the best parts (often the best part) of camp, was the relationships they formed with other cancer parents. because other parents have “been there” and have likely experienced many of the same emotional responses and challenges that accompany the diagnosis of childhood cancer, they are in a unique position to establish a meaningful bond with other cancer parents (higgins, santelli, & turnbull, 1997). higgins et al. summarized that research indicates support offered from other parents increases parents' acceptance of their situation, increases parents' sense of being able to cope, and offers a unique form of support that would be unlikely to come from any other source. while the bonds created between the parents were strong, i came to understand the laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 8 6 formation and subsequent strength of these connections as a form of recognition. etymologically, the word “recognize” comes from the latin, recognoscere, from re“again,” and cognoscere – “know,” to recognize is to “know again, acknowledge, recall to mind, examine, certify” (online etymology dictionary, 2012). there was a process of “knowing again” in these families – knowing again the fear, the suffering, the sleepless nights, incessant worry, and all that comes with the diagnosis of childhood cancer. all of these handmaidens of childhood cancer require no explanation among this group of parents. there is no need to have to explain the severity of a circumstance because other parents at camp understand it intrinsically. they, too, have lived through experiences no one else could understand unless they were in the same situation. most parents arrive at camp not knowing any other parents, however, in the company of familiar strangers, a closeness quickly ensues. the gap of not knowing someone is filled by the recognition of experience, of “i understand.” dr. brene brown, in her 2012 ted talk entitled “listening to shame,” offered that the two most powerful words when we are in struggle are “me too.” “me too,” she explained, implies empathy, but i offer it implies not just empathy but also recognition. i extend this one step further. if i look back to what recognition means once again, to “know again,” it is conceivable that there is a recursiveness at play. parents, i have proposed, recognize (and hence, feel recognized by) other parents who have experienced childhood cancer. however, there is also an element of “knowing again” their own experiences. in other words, they are given an opportunity to “re-know” their experiences of childhood cancer. “like pulls like. we’re kind of mirrors in a way” (parent). mirrors, of course, reflect images and, in this case, the images being reflected back to the parents are of their own experiences having a child with cancer. these other parents, mirrors of themselves, can offer an opportunity to come to re-know or know differently how they experience this disease. it is known in the literature that parents of children with cancer often suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd) (bruce, 2006; lindahl norberg, pöder, & von essen, 2011; yalug, tufan, doksat, & yaluğ, 2011). kazak, boeving, alderfer, hwang, and reilly (2005) demonstrated the high prevalence of ptsd in their study consisting of 119 mothers and 52 fathers of children with cancer, where all but one parent had ptsd symptoms. likewise, alderfer, cnaan, annunziato, and kazak (2005) studied 98 couples who were parents of an adolescent survivor of childhood cancer. the adolescents had completed treatment an average of five years before the study, and although parents' ptsd symptoms were less common than those found in parents during the period of their children's treatment, in the majority of families studied, at least one of the parents had moderate to severe ptsd. perhaps then, through the opportunity to reknow this experience, to re-visit and remember, traumatic events and emotions are processed and internalized differently. i offer that it is during this re-visitation that healing occurs, and it is this that is behind the reason so many parents described the importance of connecting with other cancer parents. in recognition, they find healing. it is important to note while the majority of parents described the importance of connecting with other cancer parents, one parent found it very difficult. these mirrors, i learned, sometimes project back images that are too difficult to see: laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 8 7 some people, they take comfort in the fact that, you know, you’re not alone in the world, you are not the only person that’s gone through this thing. it’s, ah, but i’m not there, i don’t really want to ah, i don’t really want to be reminded. it’s still too fresh. (don, parent) this parent, don, talked about his “what if” moments the most terrifying moments during treatment when he knew that there existed the possibility of losing his child. these “what ifs” became paralyzing for him, even causing a period of severe depression at one point. while his child, now recently off treatment, is considered “cured” of cancer, for this father, his “what ifs,” his deepest darkest moments, are still close by, always hovering within arms reach, like a menacing thunderstorm. he told me about meeting another family at camp whose child was the same age and had the same diagnosis as his child. for this other family, however, it was clear that this would be the last camp their child would attend, as it was evident this child would not survive much longer. for don, facing that reality, recognizing in that family so much of his own experience, and being confronted by a family whose “what ifs” were coming true, it proved to be overwhelming. i was, you know i kind of take it on right, i can’t, i can’t just not feel bad for these people…you know. after imagining it so many times myself what it would be like for us… um, so, ah, so yeah, and then to see it realized in another family…that was…all those what ifs (tearful)…it’s hard. (don, parent) the deepest, darkest spots were described by many of the parents i interviewed, and almost all of them spoke about spending some time there, in those wells of despair. i puzzled over don’s situation, given he was the only parent that described not feeling the relief of connecting with other parents. other parents, i thought, could offer support for him, and surely he could find relief among these people he shared so much with just by virtue of having a child with the same disease. i will offer that, like anything else, camp is not for everyone. it is not a one size fits all, rather a one size fits most, and perhaps camp did not fit with don’s way of being. maturana would call this the way he is “structurally determined.” an individual’s biopsychosocial – spiritual structure is unique and is the product of the individual’s genetic history as well as his or her history of interactions over time (maturana & varela, 1992). in other words, don’s “structure” determines how he will respond to environmental influences, and which of those he will experience as meaningful. i am inclined to think there is another explanation, or another way to understand this. the “deep, dark spots” and “wells of despair” are accurate metaphors for what many parents experience at times throughout the experience of childhood cancer. they fall into a hole, surrounded by darkness, with no understanding of how to climb out. the journey out of the hole, i offer, is comprised of time, healing, adaptation, and sometimes even deliberate intervention (e.g., counseling, antidepressants). i believe that camp also offers a way out of this hole; it shines a light, throws down a ladder, and extends its hand to help the person out. for don, it is perhaps his propensity for deep empathy – the way he is structurally determined – coupled with the newness of the experience (his child had only recently finished treatment) that resulted in his reluctance to engage with other parents. perhaps, don was simply not ready to connect with other families on an emotional level just yet. it is conceivable that, as time goes on, he may be inclined to do this and could find great support among the other parents. camp does not force itself on anyone, however, and laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 8 8 like a cherished friend, it is there when and if it is needed. from recognition to understanding there is a subtle yet important difference between recognition and understanding. where recognition, as established earlier, means to “know again,” to understand is defined as “to grasp the meaning of” (merriam-webster, 2012). the word comes from old english understandan, meaning literally to “stand in the midst of” (etymonline, 2012). i think there is an implied courage when one “stands in the midst of” with another, when one understands. it made me wonder, though: why is it that these parents “understand” so well? is it simply having shared experiences or is there something else at play? i think the thing that we like the most about it is the fact that you can be with other families and you can actually talk over your situations. so you get the idea, cause your friends don’t really understand, your neighbors don’t really understand, so, but when you come together with other families, you know, our situations are all different but we all have a key factor that’s the same. (parent) and so they [other cancer parents] understand what you’re going through, the stresses of what you’re going through, you know, the hospital visits and all of that kind of stuff. (parent) while they did not term it as such, there is reciprocity to the type of understanding of which these parents spoke. they felt understood, as can be seen in the above quotes, but they were also understanding with respect to the other parents. it seemed to me like the two actions – being both the receiver and giver of understanding – were inseparable. two parents offered some insight into this when they told me what it is like talking with friends who do not have a child with cancer: mother: some people want to talk about it but i think in general most people really don’t. cause you know, in all honesty, it’s – especially when it’s friends with children – there’s always that, i don’t know, fear of the unknown, or – so i think it’s hard for them kinda, to reach out to you. father: but when you’re first diagnosed i think a lot more people want to know what’s going on. and then – two years down the road, they don’t realize you’re still in treatment, you’re still, you know – she looks healthy, she’s got way too much energy, so anyone who sees her has no idea she has cancer. mother: so if someone says something and you go, oh yeah, you know, abby is still in treatment or whatever, they go, what? what? i think it is interesting to look at the concept of understanding in a literal manner. if i choose to “stand in the midst of” with someone, to literally place my body beside theirs, an opening, a space, must necessarily be created for me to do that. this creation or opening of space for another is reminiscent of maturana’s (1986) definition of love, “opening a space of existence for an other” (p. 59). perhaps it follows then, that the understanding that occurs among this group of parents is so powerful because it is a form of love. i offer that this is indeed what is happening, and that this special type of understanding these parents have for one another, their courageous ability to “stand in the midst of” with each other, and the space they open for others to stand with them, is a form of love. “and they all love you [at camp], regardless of any circumstance, and no one should have to have a child that has cancer, it’s not fair” (mother). laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 8 9 it is well recognized that contact with other families with similarly affected children is often comforting because they have shared similar experiences (leonard, 1991) and that parent support groups (which, it may be argued, is informally what is happening at camp) have shown that parents gain increased skills, an increased sense of power and a sense of belonging by connecting with other families in similar situations (law, king, stewart, & king, 2002). camp seems to provide moments and opportunities for these types of interactions to occur that are unlikely to have happened elsewhere, and i believe it is by these families coming together in this environment that the deepest kind of understanding transpires, the kind of understanding that precipitates healing. concluding thoughts they [cancer families] come out to a place [cancer camp] where there’s a group of people that care specifically about them for no other reason than, i think, that they inspire me, you know. as to what they’re all going through and how they, how well they’re raising their kids and um, it’s just kind of different from regular life. and i think getting that chance to get away from everything they’re used to, and out to a spot where they’re not different, they’re not singled out, and ah, people are just there to look out for them and you know, make sure that they’re just enjoying themselves for once, i think is a really big deal for families. (counselor) there is an organic-ness to camp in the landscape certainly, but also in what is at play. naturally occurring interactions, activities, and moments in time where mis is separated from fit, and acceptance, recognition, understanding – all found in abundance at cancer camp – are for some individuals more powerful than any therapeutic intervention. like the poem in the tao te ching, the greatest utility of camp comes from the empty spaces, for it is in these empty spaces, so perfectly defined by the surrounding structures, that healing occurs. biographies catherine m. laing, rn, phd is an assistant professor in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary. nancy j. moules, rn, phd is a professor in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary. she also holds the achf/achri nursing professorship in child and family centred cancer care. acknowledgement this doctoral study was funded by a generous scholarship from the alberta children’s hospital foundation to which the authors express immense gratitude. references alderfer, m.a., cnaan, a., annunziato, r.a., & kazak, a.e. 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(2012). in wikipedia. retrieved from http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/rudolph_the_rednosed_reindeer_( tv_special) ruffin, j.e., creed, j.m., & jarvis, c. (1997). a retreat for families of children recently diagnosed with cancer. cancer practice, 5(2), 99-104. retrieved from http://www-ncbi-nlmngov.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/pubmed/911064 6 sullivan, h.s. (1953). the interpersonal theory of psychiatry. new york, ny: w.w. norton. taoism information page. (2004). retrieved fromhttp://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/t aoism understand. (n.d.). in merriam-webster’s online dictionary. retrieved from http://www. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/understand understand. (n.d.). in online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http://www. etmonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame= 0&search=understand&searchmode=none vannatta, k., garstein, m.a., zeller, m., & noll, r.b. (2009). peer acceptance and social behavior during childhood and adolescence: how important are appearance, athleticism, and academic competence? international journal of behavioral development, 33(4), 303-311. doi:10.1177/0165025408101275 yalug, i., tufan, a.e., doksat, k., & yaluğ, k. (2011). post-traumatic stress disorder and post-traumatic stress symptoms in parents of children with cancer: a review. neurology, psychiatry and brain research, 17(1), 27-31. doi:10.1016/j.npbr. 2011.02.007 microsoft word editorial moules (1).docx corresponding author: nancy j. moules, phd email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics june 8, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 editorial: following good leads nancy j. moules in publishing the serialization of dr. williamson’s the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery in the journal of applied hermeneutics in an unfolding of five installments, i have followed an interesting adventure, a mystery full of excitement, turns, breath-holding, unconcealments, and phenomenological pauses. there were many reasons that i invited and welcomed dr. williamson’s showcasing of his doctoral thesis in this journal in this particular format as exemplary of applied hermeneutics. however beyond my initial intentions, i am reflective of the results and implications it has had for me in my own thinking about doctoral hermeneutic research and of my own hermeneutic research. in no small part, it has reminded me of the necessary task in hermeneutics of following good leads. i first learned of dr. williamson’s proposal to present his hermeneutic study in the form of a hard-boiled detective novel through his doctoral supervisor, dr. jim field, who subsequently invited me to join john’s supervisory committee. the idea was exciting to me, provocative, creative, energetic and “dangerous” if it was poorly done. it was not. however, it did invoke a different sense of danger, a danger that is inherent in applied hermeneutic research a hermeneutic wager to take a risk. the danger i speak of here lies in the idea that when the work is done well, it involves unconcealment it is disquieting, disruptive, and evocative. john’s work is an example of applied hermeneutics: interpretation and understanding taken to practice, applied to a topic, and taking the wager to deconstruct and then re-construct. as professor hodge wrote in his eloquent editorial (hodge, 2016), this work is a reminder that hermeneutic work does not have to always be presented in the traditional thesis style but, if it is moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 5 2 presented differently, it has to be done well. it has to maintain scholarship, integrity, rigor, and an intellectual facility that cannot be “played with” in the sense of just having “fun for fun’s sake” as opposed to the carefulness of play in a gadamerian sense, where “the primacy of play over the consciousness of the player is fundamentally acknowledged” (gadamer 1960/2004, p. 105, italics in original). for gadamer, the significance of play is that when one is fully involved in play, it takes one outside of oneself and the game becomes more than a subjective experience. play at the same time requires seriousness to be properly absorbing but also frees the player into responsiveness to the flow of the game. play is not random: it has rules, participants, and a field of play but its possible outcome is open. (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015, pp. 42-43) the play in john’s applied hermeneutics is playfully serious. as i mentioned in a footnote of the first editorial for this work, dr. williamson won the 2015 university of calgary chancellor’s graduate medal and he won it for a reason. the work is taken seriously. the conceptualization and execution of a hermeneutic study presented in the form of a hardboiled detective novel did a remarkable mirroring of the topic itself. as professor hodge wrote, it allowed the topic to appear and disappear, just as the label of “slow learner” has done in the history of education, categorization, and disability studies. the scholarship, however, never disappeared. one might be lured and captivated by the story itself for periods of times almost believing the credibility of a museum of a history of classification of disability (hodge, 2016), but then a reminder came through the carefully footnoted academic and scholarly citatiousness of the work. williamson knew the work of scholars that shored up the “fictional” story that contained a very real topic. the theory and philosophy was never lost and also never compromised the story. this is work of literary genius, but herein lies the first sense of danger that i referred to: not everyone can do this. the danger lies in a possible misconception that hermeneutic work is superficial, an assumption that there is no method, there are no rules, no guidelines, or that “anything goes.” john reminds us that there is not only one way to work hermeneutically, or to apply hermeneutics in a research capacity as a “method.” caputo reminds us that method in the etymological sense is “making one’s way along (meta) the path (odos) to truth” (caputo, 2015, p. xi). in moules et al. (2015), the authors wrote of the idea of “being methodical and following leads” (p. 55) but what is perhaps missed in their discussion is that the leads have to be good leads! the “discipline of attending to things” (dostal, 2002, p. 251) involves a very careful discernment of the intention of the medium in which the work is shown. there are creative works that are very intentional and purposeful and they are presented in particular ways because they are consistent with the topic. as another example, i offer the doctoral work of dr. debb hurlock (2003; 2008) who was examining the use of bronwen wallace’s poetry in teaching nursing classes for deliberate pedagogic purposes. there are many poems in her thesis, including wallace’s but also hurlock’s own poetry and this makes sense. after all, her thesis is about the pedagogic possibilities that lie in poetry. i have, however, read other theses and even published hermeneutic papers where there is what appears to be random poems that are thrown in for some emphasis or attempt at moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 5 3 creativity that does nothing to enliven the topic being discussed. it appears instead that they are an effort to appear adventuresome, poetic, and interpretive, and that is somehow associated with thinking and writing hermeneutically. it is here where we run into the difficulty of our work being dismissed as trite, insubstantial, superficial, and sometimes just silly. this is the challenge i face with students who embark on hermeneutic research: constantly negotiating how to teach students to be care-full, considerate, discerning, attentive, and scholarly, while nurturing the capacity to think and write interpretively and taking some well-considered risks. this is a continual learning for me in my own work as well and what most often guides me is the constant presence of the topic on my shoulder asking if what i am doing, and how i am doing it, is taking me toward the topic or further away from it. max hunter, in his search for the disappearing/appearing slow learner, seems to know this. he is sometimes following bad leads that take him away what what he seeks, and often get him into trouble! as a skilled and hard-boiled detective though, he seems to catch himself in time and although he comes away a little bruised and worse for wear, he recovers his trail and seems to even know when he is getting close to something that is important. this is the work of interpretation in hermeneutic research. something in our interviews/transcripts might catch our attention and we are off on an exhilarating tangent and chase, finding dozens of books and papers that inform us about the interpretation and it is captivating and exciting and sometimes it works. other times, it really has been a bad lead and has taken us away from the mystery of the topic. a little battered and bruised, we have to give up the lead and all those hours of investigation, and head home to the data and start again. these are careful considerations that often cannot be done alone and need the help of others, just as max is saved by foucault and derrida, gadamer and heidegger, or colleen birdseye, just when he needs them! the serialization of this work offers an adventure that is fictional and yet it is not. it is a fictionalization of a very real topic and concern. this is what distinguishes this work as applied hermeneutics research that seeks to understand the complexity of human experiences and grapples with the great problems that we encounter in our everyday practices and lives (mccaffrey & moules, 2016). of all actions, those performed for a purpose have been least understood, no doubt because they have always been counted the most understandable and are to our consciousness the most commonplace. the great problems are to be encountered in the street. (nietzsche, 1881/1982, p. 78) dr. williamson takes us to the streets in a very literal sense in max’s hard-boiled detective work investigating the great problem presented in this work. in doing so, dr. williamson offers us a particularly good lead in his work, one that takes us closer to the possibility that applied hermeneutic work, when done well, can look different and still be scholarly and academic. it is a reminder to me that when one listens deeply to the topic, the topic has something to say about how it needs to be investigated and sometimes (or not) even found. moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 5 4 references caputo, j.d. (2015). foreword: the wisdom of hermeneutics. in n.j. moules, g. mccaffrey, j.c. field, & c.m. laing, conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. dostal, r. (2002). gadamer’s relation to heidegger and phenomenology. in c. guignon (ed.), the cambridge companion to gadamer (pp. 247-266). new york, ny: cambridge university press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/2004). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). london, uk: continuum. hodge, n. (2016). invited guest editorial. lives worthy of life: the everyday resistance of disabled people. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 2. hurlock, d. (2003). possibilities of a poetic pedagogy: “the movement by which a life gets changed for keeps.” (unpublished doctoral thesis). university of calgary, calgary, ab, canada. hurlock, d. (2008). possibilities of a poetic pedagogy: integrating poetry and professional education. saarbrücken, germany: vdm verlag dr. müller aktiengesellschaft & co. mccaffrey, g., & moules, n.j. (2016). encountering the great problems in the street: enacting hermeneutic philosophy as research in practice disciplines. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 1. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5dv1d51 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. nietzsche, f. (1982). daybreak: thoughts on the prejudices of morality (r.j. hollingdale, trans.). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. corresponding author: graham mccaffrey, rn, phd email: gpmccaff@ ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics october 25, 2016 the author(s) 2016 invited guest editorial: nursing as interpretation graham mccaffrey the two papers that correspond to this editorial were written by graduate students in a hermeneutic research class in the faculty of n ursing at the university of calgary. the class is one locus of the account of applied hermeneutics that has developed thro ugh the canadian hermeneutic institute, the journal of applied hermeneutics, and the book conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice (moules, mccaffrey, field & laing, 2015). the course is open to both master’s and doctoral students and is interdisciplinary, attracting students mainly from nursing, education, and counselling psychology, and occasionally from other disciplines including sociology, kinesiology, social work, and engineering. we teach about the philosophical background of hermeneutics, with a focus on gadamer, and then how concepts can be applied to the conduct of research. what brings the course to life, however, is the range of backgrounds and interests of the students that invariably create a culture of stimulating discussion as they – and the instructors – discover new ideas about their own interests through the encounters with cross cutting themes arriving from unexpected places. the first assignment given to students is to write a paper on the topic of, “nursing…counselling psychology … education… is an interpretive practice,” which is intended to help students to start putting together hermeneutic philosophy with their lived experience of, and expertise in, the practice of their own discipline and profession. the following two papers were both written in response to the question, by students in the master of nursing program at the university of calgary. both lead authors are nurses working in practice, and so each of them is intimately involved in a highly localized world of professional knowledge and application, as is evident from their writing. the settings are quite different, mental health outreach nursing for whitney mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 6 2 turcato and neonatal transport nursing for jaime caswell, yet they each succeed in showing the deeply interpretive nature of their work. if there is one concept that most comes to mind to me in reading their papers, it is phronesis or practical wisdom. each author presents a phenomenological description of an event in practice, capturing thought processes, actions, and the dynamic network of relationships in which practice is formed. these are not only descriptions of phronesis, but reports from inside events of phronesis, that vividly convey the nuanced and rapid way expert judgments of subtle human interactions come about in combination with the precise, and therapeutic application of technical knowledge. whitney turcato’s paper begins with a nurse being woken by a call from a client in the small hours. what happens next is a dialogue in which, as she goes on to explain, she already knows a good deal about the person on the end of the line and is able to interpret his words and formulate her own in the light of that knowledge. possibilities for hermeneutic work present themselves immediately, in dialogue as the means of understanding, in language freighted with meanings beyond and beneath the overt definitions of words, and in the question of reception raised by the irruption of the other into the nurse’s night. gadamer, kearney, and caputo, to name but t hree, are ready and waiting to provide ways into understanding what goes in the exchange. one of the aspects of the paper that struck me most forcefully on first reading, and on subsequent readings, is the use of humour. it is a good portrayal of the humour that passes between mental health nurses, as i know from my own practice, smoothly incorporated into the style of the narrative sections of the paper. the humour has something of the absurd, of laughing at human folly but not at any particular person; it has a bonding function between the nurses, and is underwritten by care and sensitivity towards the situation of the client. humour in mental health nursing is one of many potential theses that are seeded in the paper – if i were to continue along that path, i would start with gadamer’s discussion of play, then maybe read some beckett… jaime caswell demonstrates a similar gift for the phenomenological narrative. she takes the reader quickly into a working day in her lifeworld as a neonatal transport nurse. sections of her paper read as good nursing drama, giving out just enough information to the uninitiated to follow the action without slowing it down. within and beyond her narrative, there emerge problems embedded in everyday practices: the question of how to balance scientific knowledge and sensitivity to parents’ powerful feelings, the diplomacy of being the big city nurse in a smaller centre, all of this perceived, considered, and acted upon against the clock. towards the end of the paper, jaime shows us the image of the nurse handing the baby to the mother, and deftly plays with the literal and metaphorical senses of “handing over.” with this sensitivity to words, she introduces a mobilizing image, which again might be the seed of a potential thesis. in class, following jaime discussing this image, we found ourselves echoing the idea of handing-over in different contexts, involuntarily using the gesture of hands together, palms raised, offering up and passing on. thus, ideas are passed from practice to practice, person to person, and our horizons of understanding ripple and shift as new possibilities come into view. the purpose of the assignment is simply to have students reflect on their own area of practice, and to begin to explore the interpretability of the familiar. these two papers are fine examples of practitioners discovering for themselves, and for us as readers, the proliferative meanings hidden in everyday practices. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 6 3 references moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. microsoft word moulesetal corrected proof.docx 1 faculty of nursing, university of calgary 2 werklund school of education, university of calgary corresponding author: dr. nancy j. moules email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics april 23, 2014 ©the author(s) 2014 conducting hermeneutic research: the address of the topic nancy j. moules1, jim c. field2, graham p. mccaffrey1, & catherine m. laing1 abstract the conduct of research as guided by philosophical tenets of hermeneutics, in particular the hermeneutics of hans-georg gadamer, is a complex and sophisticated endeavor. in this paper, we offer that one of the things that guides the inquiry is the topic and that most often topics for discovery arrive with the experience of an address. we discuss the notion of the address of the topic, how a researcher discerns a topic to be studied and, from this address, develops appropriate research questions that help to inform how the study will be conducted. keywords address, gadamer, hermeneutic research, philosophical hermeneutics, phronesis, research topics, truth “understanding begins when something addresses us” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 299). the conduct of a research study, guided by the tenets of gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics, rarely has a definitive starting point or endpoint, but if one had to delineate a place where inquiry begins, it is often around the experience of being addressed personally about something at work in one’s life. an address is the feeling of being caught in some aspect of the world’s regard, of being called or summoned. in this paper, we speak to the experience and importance of the address of a topic in the working out of a hermeneutic inquiry. what is an address? addresses catch us off guard and break through our regular routines. they cause us to pause and take note, ask not that we speak or do something immediately, but rather that we stop and listen. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 2 it is through this process of listening, or what bruns (1992) called “reading with our ears” (p. 157), that the topic of inquiry arrives. to listen when we are addressed means that we are vulnerable and open, that we are prepared to be guided by a topic and its own form of address, rather than assumed versions of it, or by a pre-determined method. it is not the case that there is not a method in hermeneutics, but rather, that method serves the topic and is informed by the topic. the question becomes one of how we serve the topic in a disciplined way. how are we to be disciplined by the topic? in other words, the topic asks for rigour from us, an attentiveness, and a discipline to stay with it and stay true to it. an address functions to interrupt or unsettle our everyday taken-for-grantedness of things. this is why it arrives typically in the form of a question or set of questions. as dunne (1993) explained: “there is often a suddenness about it that makes us say that a question ‘comes’ to us, that it ‘arises’, or ‘presents itself’” (p. 135). there is a case, though, that an address might not always be sudden; instead, it may have lingered for years and nagged in maybe not quite noticeable ways. however, there is a process of actually “waking up” to this or starting to pay attention to it. bergum (1991) explained what it is that generates questions, and the effects they have: questioning indicates the existence of an unsettled issue, a difficult matter, an uncertainty, a matter for discussion. it also invites a reply, a dialogue, a searching out of opportunities and similarities. it opens possibilities and leads, in some sense, to uncertainty, for it throws what may have been thought secure into dis-equilibrium or imbalance. (p. 57) the address that occurs is a substantive one. we are hailed by subject matter, or better perhaps a subject that matters so that, when we are addressed, we are obligated to respond, not in “any old fashion,” but to respond to the best of our abilities, to do the right thing, in the right way, as gadamer would say. when a topic shows itself, it haunts us, because it also “hides” itself. it is, as bergum has alluded to, shrouded in mystery. as a result, we are called to the mystery of the topic, to do justice to the questions that it can raise in us, to approach it care-fully, with both curiosity and suspicion, suspense, and intent, discipline and free play. in hermeneutics, tenants with proper names inhabit topics; they are things of human concern, and also, things that have concern for us, that is, living things that literally make a difference in our lives. address, as experienced, can be a breathtaking and breath-sustaining gift. when it arrives it asks that the researcher suffer the mysteries of the topic and this means to put what they believe at risk, to be open to learning from risking what matters, and most importantly, to speak of this in human terms, to do well by “the tenants” that greet you at the portal. thus, the servitude demanded by a topic is not primarily methodical, but rather ethical in nature (caputo, 1993); it is a call of our conscience, that comes with an obligation to respond to the call of what should be done, and not simply, as in the natural sciences, what can be done. obligation is the event of someone; of something personal in the midst of this inarticulate hum…events happen anonymously, like the roar of the surf, while obligation is like the cry of a small child who has lost his way on the beach calling for help. (caputo, 1993, p. 246) moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 3 the obligation to respond to the call of the topic is not simply a question of "how do i broach my topic?” but rather, “how do i cultivate what is already there?" — existing, speaking, opinionated, teasing and teeming with mystery. in responding to this address, there is a sense of an opening, or as heidegger might have suggested, a clearing, and the promise of being transformed by a living, provocative conversation that was already underway. conversational topics, then, have entrails; they are historically located, and we must listen carefully to pick up on the entrails. in this way, the topics are not new; they are already at play. hermeneutic inquiry demands that, as late arrivers to a conversation, we both let what is at play move us forward, and that we join in moving it forward. the substance of a topic what constitutes a topic? in practice professions, such as nursing, social work, psychology, and education, topics are often grounded in the field of practice. they have a place, a geographical territory so to speak, in which they dwell. for example, a psychologist might be struck by the notion of shame in eating disorders, a nurse by the experiences of having nursed children who sometimes die, an educator by the coding and naming of “slow learners,” or a social worker by the issue of child abuse. practitioners suffer these things in their practice. within each practice, there are as many topics as there are questions, but not all topics are experienced as a form of address. even the ones that do address us are partially hidden from us because of our prejudices, as gadamer (1969/1989) would say, or to paraphrase heidegger (1962), by our practical involvement with the things themselves. to use his example, one cannot properly notice or understand running for the bus when one is running for the bus. one starts to notice a topic, when one is “pulled up short” (gadamer, 1969/1989), when we miss the bus, so to speak, and are left breathless in its disappearing exhaust. in the same way, one is not often aware of health except in its absence (gadamer, 1996). unless something like this happens to us – and we do not will it to happen we often continue in our practices in unquestioning ways, assuming taken-for-granted discourses and ways of being around what we do in everyday practice. after all, we have caught the bus many times have we not? we have been successful in our run. it is, however, the disruption of success in our everyday practices that allows a topic to emerge, in completely familiar, but also strange and disrupting ways. for example, one of the authors (moules, 2002, 2003, 2009a, 2009b) was involved in family therapy work and practiced using therapeutic letters as a routine part of the clinical work. it continued to amaze her to witness the power of the written communication in a practice that had its tradition in the power of talk, and yet the written communication seemed to have a different and sometimes even stronger influence. she was struck with how even family members who might not immediately been seen as particularly “literary,” were captivated by the letters and moved to extremes of keeping them in bedside drawers or, in one case, framing them. this disruption of the familiar and the kind of amazement that goes with it, a puzzlement, wondering, and passion for understanding, represents the call of topics. as we have said, discerning what constitutes a topic requires that we first listen to its call, and then to work out how we might best answer. at times, the topics are too immense and unanswermoules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 4 able; these do not lend themselves to a hermeneutic study. if the topic is, for example, “why do children die?” one can imagine that this is not a question that any amount of hermeneutic research (or any other kind of research) could offer an answer. however, inside of that existential and unanswerable question lies other topics and questions that can be addressed, such as “how might we understand oncology nurses’ experiences of working with children who sometimes die?” or “what is it like for the parents of children who die, or the grandparents of children who die?” each of these topics is different, but the same in this way: each requires the “voice of the other” (risser, 1997). for us to understand, each requires that we engage with those who have lived through the experience so that we might learn from them. topics involve a phenomenon or sometimes many phenomena, yet hermeneutic research is not the same as pure phenomenological research in that the goal is not to essentialize, define, or even simply describe the topic. the goal is not to carve away at all the extremities of the phenomenon of interest to reach an essence or core, to achieve an uncontaminated description of it stripped of its context. rather, the desire is to conserve the topic in all of its complexity, in the words of caputo, “ to restore it to its original difficulty” (1987, p. 1). as stated, very often our practices go unnoticed and unexamined, lost to discourse, assumption, and involvement; often they remain in the state of being taken-for-granted. when the address of a topic arrives, it troubles something and problematizes it. when this happens, the work becomes about “exoticizing the domestic” (white, 1993, p. 35), taking what is assumed and unquestioned and looking at it as something new and exotic. this involves looking at it from fresh perspectives, trying to understand it differently, while still preserving the topic’s integrity, the whole of it, as it lives in the world. the clay bowl resting on the table in front of me meets my eyes with its curved and grainy surface. yet, i can only see one side of that surface the other side of the bowl is invisible, hidden by the side that faces me. in order to view that other side, i must pick up the bowl and turn it around in my hands, or else walk around the wooden table. yet, having done so, i can no longer see the first side of the bowl. surely i know that it still exists; i can even feel the presence of that aspects which the bowl now presents to the lamp on the far side of the table. yet, i myself am simply unable to see the whole of this bowl all at once. moreover, while examining its outer surface, i have caught only a glimpse of the smooth and finely glazed inside of the bowl. when i stand up to look down into that interior, which gleams with curved reflections from the skylight overhead, i can no longer see the sunglazed outer surface. this earthen vessel thus reveals aspects of its presence to me only by withholding other aspects of itself for further exploration. there can be no question of ever totally exhausting the presence of the bowl with my perception; its very existence as a bowl ensures that there are dimensions wholly inaccessible to me most obviously the patterns hidden between its glazed and unglazed surface, the interior density of its clay body. if i break it into pieces, in hopes of discovering these interior patterns or the delicate structure of its molecular dimensions, i will have destroyed its integrity as a bowl; far from coming to know it completely, i will simply have wrecked any possibility of coming to know it further, having traded the relation between myself and the bowl for a relation to a collection of fragments. (abram, 1996, p. 51) moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 5 in looking to a topic, to understand a topic while conserving its complexity, we are not searching for an essence; rather this is an act of truth-seeking of looking for what might be true in the topic. this does not mean to imply that there is one “truth” to be known about topics but rather that we stay true to the work of aletheia in unconcealing topics in all of their messiness and richness. the hermeneutic notion of truth we admit, up front, that any discussion of truth is difficult and tricky, partly because truth in research, and this holds for a lot of inquiry that would be called “qualitative,” is often thought of only as correspondence between thought and world, between an “inner” and “outer” representation of the thing itself. there is no inner and outer in hermeneutic research, in the sense of an unbridgeable chasm between self and world. we are, as heidegger (1927/1962) maintained, always in the world, and hermeneutic research is always about understanding, about what it means to be in the world in a particular way. this is to say that, as practitioners, we are deeply involved in our practices, and it is only through our practical, everyday involvement that the truth, that is, the meaning of something, becomes available at all (heidegger, 1927/1962; wrathall, 2013). truth, at least the truth about being human and human practice, is also tricky because it is located in time and place. it can and does change (and stay the same) over time and between places. hermeneutic truth is plural, not singular, in this way: there is not one right way to help all patients recover from cancer, for example, or a single method for helping every child learn to read. at the same time, not every way is right. we can get it wrong; we can make people sicker in trying to help them heal. we can make learning to read impossible; while trying to teach, we can deceive ourselves thoroughly and fall into untruth (wrathall, 2013) in the very pursuit of truth. the history of nursing and education is littered with such examples. finally (here at least), truth is tricky in hermeneutic work because it disappears as it appears. we never get “the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” because truth is both revealed to us and concealed from us at once, as is the bowl in the abram’s (1996) example above. this is why gadamer, following his teacher heidegger, appropriated the notion of truth as aletheia, for hermeneutic work. hermeneutic work is more about conservation than preservation. to preserve something is to hold it in all its sameness, to protect and save it from spoiling, and changing, to kill it, whereas to conserve something means to keep it alive, to keep it from being damaged, lost or wasted (preserve, conserve, n.d.). in our efforts to conserve a topic, to not allow it to be lost or forgotten as something simply accepted, the unconcealment and enlivening that comes with truth necessarily comes into play. hermeneutics is the practice of aletheia, the greek word for “the event of concealment and unconcealment” (caputo, 1987, p. 115). heidegger referred to aletheia as unhiddenness, in relation to that which is hidden (coltman, 1998). aletheia first occurs when we are addressed, when something opens which was once closed, when we become aware of something that was not there as being there. aletheia can be represented by the metaphor of opening the lid of a well, of flipping the lid open and letting it rest so one can look into what lies beneath it. in this opening of one side, another side is closed, for with every opening there is closure and some things are necessarily left behind. aletheia comes from lethe, which is a river in hades, the water of which when drunk produces oblivion of the past; thus it is called the “river of moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 6 forgetting” (hoad, 1986). lethe is hiding, concealment, amnesia, and it is also tied, etymologically, to the word lethal. aletheia works against what is dead; it is about enlivening and remembering. aletheia is the clearing of things into the mystery beneath; it is the “ongoing, historical, epochal process by which things emerge from concealment into unconcealment” (caputo, 1987, p. 177). the three meanings then of aletheia are a portal or opening, an enlivening, and a remembering. when topics address us, they open something, they call on us to remember why it is that certain things matter, and they ask us to bring these things alive in the here and now of our lives. the centrality of the notion of phronesis to hermeneutic work gadamer was committed to staying close to concrete, factual life. his approach focused on understanding life as it is lived and, for gadamer, that meant achieving an understanding of how to act well in concrete, particular circumstances. this is why he based his notion of understanding on the form of knowledge the greeks called phronesis, because it provided him with a notion of practical knowledge, knowledge in action, that remains experiential through and through (davey, 2006). dunne (1993) elaborated: …phronesis is a habit of attentivenesss that makes the resources of one’s past experience flexibly available to one, and at the same time allows the present situation to ‘unconceal’ its own particular significance which it may do comfortably within the terms of one’s experience or else only by evincing as insight, which while it could not occur without one’s past experience, still transcends, and so enriches it. (pp. 305-306) so while it is true that we can be struck by something, addressed in a way that opens a topic for us, it is only through a “habit of attentiveness” that we can keep the topic open, that we can follow the direction implied in the questions that arise, and learn from the event of being addressed. the role of deliberation in this process is key, and holds an important position in gadamer’s (1989) description of phronesis. in the following, we offer examples of the work of phronesis in its experiential understanding of “life as it is lived” in everyday practices. examples of topics and how they arrived example a doubled and silenced: grandparents’ experiences of childhood cancer (moules, laing, mccaffrey, tapp, & strother, 2012; moules, mccaffrey, laing, tapp, & strother, 2012) working in pediatric oncology, both laing and moules know firsthand how cancer is a family affair. childhood cancer affects, not only a cell, but a body, a life, relationships, and communities. there has been much research done on the experiences of siblings of children with cancer and parents, but very little attention to the extended family, in this case, the grandparents. a part of the address of this topic was that, a few years ago, moules had the experience of having her only child in the intensive care unit due to an acute cardiac crisis. he is also the only grandchild of her parents and she became aware of how her parents were not only suffering and worrying for their grandson, but also their own daughter and her fears and concerns. they, however, did not want to burden her with their worries so this doubled concern was suffering silently and alone. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 7 grandparents of children with cancer live this duality and the study invited voice to an experience that had been, to some extent, silenced. example b “it’s not just camp”: understanding the meaning of children’s cancer camps for children and families (laing, 2012; laing, 2013; laing & moules, 2013; laing & moules, 2014; laing & moules (in press); laing & moules (in press)). laing credits a short film about cancer camp, shown in the second year of her undergraduate nursing degree, as the impetus to get into the field of pediatric oncology. it was a simple film showing children with cancer attending camp, supplemented by interviews with several children, and nurses who were attending as camp counselors. while the details are forgettable, she never forgot that moment in time when, as she described, “pediatric oncology chose me.” as she traversed through her clinical career in pediatric oncology, laing was struck by how important camp was for kids with cancer and their families. she never understood why camp was so important, why the kids started talking about summer camp shortly after christmas trying to gauge the likelihood they could go the same week as their friends, or that they wouldn’t be too sick to go for one of the weeks. while she did not understand why, the fact that camp seemed such a profound experience for most kids and families always stuck with her. after deciding to take on doctoral studies, and struggling at first to identify a topic for research, laing eventually came back to the idea of camp. she wanted to understand what it was that made camp so special, so important for these families, and why it mattered. it was camp, after all, that had claimed her in the first place. example c investigating the disappearance of the “slow learner” (williamson, doctoral study in progress) (williamson & field, 2014; williamson & paul, 2012a, 2012b). as someone who, as a student, struggled academically in ways that would align with alberta’s current definitions of educational disability, as a parent of a child with a down syndrome and as a teacher/coordinator of disability services at a large urban high school, williamson had been experiencing disability for most of his life. his impetus for entering doctoral studies was to interpret the assumptions and practices involved in working with slow learners, a particular category of students who are predicted by way of intelligence testing to struggle in school but for whom the albertan special education system has granted no formal support. williamson has been teaching in an instructional tier aimed at these students for many years and has come to see how this category on the border of disability exposes the frequent rigidity of educational thinking about disability and intellectual potential. though tools meant to address student diversity and disability categories can, ironically, become unwieldy, imposing further restraint on a system that is already too inflexible for all students. despite this, williamson has also been privileged to bear witness to the transcendent moments when generous teaching practices meet engaged learners and disability categories, at least in their deficit framings, disappear. it is the appearing and disappearing of categories that finally called out to williamson, who is also a life-long fan of detective fiction, as way of framing the complexities of this topic. he has chosen to present his research in this area as a detective story: “the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner.” moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 8 example d understanding nurse-patient relationships on acute mental health units, buddhist perspectives (mccaffrey, 2012; mccaffrey, raffin bouchal, & moules, 2012). while working in an interdisciplinary position on a mental health unit, mccaffrey was struck by contrasting perceptions of how nurses did their work. nurses saw themselves as having good therapeutic relationships with patients, while team members including occupational therapists, social workers and psychiatrists often felt frustrated that nurses seemed under-informed about patients and their work with them was undirected. after starting to explore more deeply the question of how nurses work with patients on mental health units, mccaffrey became aware of how much his nursing practice was informed by an earlier experience of working in a therapeutic community, in which relationship as the medium of care and change was paramount. the topic was, at the same time, formed by a study of zen buddhist traditions of thought and practice, which offered new ways of looking at nursing. obvious affinities between buddhism and nursing, such as practicing with suffering and compassion, became a starting point for deeper and more complex exploration. example e marked by loss: pediatric oncology nurses’ experiences of the death of a child (morck, doctoral study in progress). morck’s (2009) previous work, which will be described in the following section was looking at the emotional marks that happen to psychiatric nurses after hearing stories of trauma and suffering. as her clinical work shifted to the area of oncology rather than mental health, she became addressed by the impact on pediatric oncology nurses when children die as they can do in this population. the work of rashotte (2005) in dwelling with the stories that haunt us spoke to her about the ways that loss haunts and marks, not just the family of children with cancer, but also those professionals who care for them. speaking for the address how do you write about address? topics start somewhere and most often they start with an instance. this instance needs to be described in the work as a way of locating and populating the topic with a living example that shows it for all its power. an example of this is the paper published in the journal of applied hermeneutics, “isn’t all oncology hermeneutic?” (moules, jardine, mccaffrey, & brown, 2013). although the paper does not reflect a research study, it is a response to the critique that has been made about the relatively small numbers of participants that are often used in hermeneutic research, and an argument about the fit of hermeneutics as a research method that attempts to understand practice and phenomena that arise within practice. the authors of this work start by describing an instance that gave rise to the discussion – an arrival of the topic. in this case, the topic was about hermeneutics, numbers, power, and verification through numbers in contrast to the “fecundity of the individual case” (jardine, 1992). throughout the paper then, the discussion of theory and philosophy had to also be instantiated and the authors did so through two very powerful descriptions of the experience of an oncologist and his patients. in the introduction of topics in hermeneutic research, most often there is a story around the arrival of the topic, a narrative of dialectic with the topic and a reason as to why the topic matters moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 9 to the researcher and an instantiation of the meaningfulness and call of the topic. in a master’s thesis hermeneutic study by morck (2009) entitled “right there, in the midst of it with them”: impacts of the therapeutic relationship on nurses, she was attempting to understand the topic of the impacts on mental health nurses of hearing stories of pain, suffering, and trauma. in the thesis, she recounted being a young, new nurse and starting her work in a hospital inpatient mental health unit. very early in her career, she recalled encountering one of the patients she was working with cowering in the corner of her room. as she approached and engaged in conversation with the patient, she was to hear a terrible story of abuse where the patient claimed that the rain outside the window smelled of urine. following this seemingly incomprehensible statement, morck gently knelt down with the patient and asked her more about how the rain smelled like urine. the patient proceeded to tell her an event she remembered: she was five years old, just raped by her father and his friend, thrown down the steps, urinated on, and then they left out the door. it was raining outside. morck discussed how this instance was one of many that had a profound impact on her as a new and young nurse hearing of such suffering. hearing stories like this one and countless others was then the address that called her to her research, a topic full of complexity and obligation to do well with it. topics cannot just matter to the researcher alone; they must be something relevant in the world. they are not selfish indulgences, trying to work out something individually for individual curiosity and gain, but rather a working out that is meaningful in relation to the phenomena that surround it. it is not just morck who experienced the weight of hearing and bearing stories of pain and suffering but other psychiatric nurses who hear and bear the same responsibility and it is not just psychiatric nurses. social workers bear witness to stories of violence and abuse. teachers hear stories of children’s child abuse, stories of torture and escape from war torn counties. “vicarious trauma” (see for e.g., figley,1995; mathieu, 2011) is not owned by one profession. asking questions of the address: developing research questions out of topics, one needs to narrow and focus a research question. in hermeneutics, there is a particular kind of flavor to the question. one would not necessarily seek an ontological question such as “what is something,” as hermeneutics is not in search of phenomenological essences. it is not intended to shave off extremities to narrow something down to a definition of what it is or is not. rather than definition or explanation, it is in search of understanding and interpretation, looking for possible and good ways to understand a particular topic. more hermeneutic in intent than a “what is” question are questions that imply interpretation. a question such as “how might we understand the meaning of children’s cancer camps for children and families?” would be a question that aims for meaning, interpretation, and understanding rather than assessment or measurement of impact. in a similar way, hermeneutics does not set out to develop theories or templates so a research topic that might be described as, for example, “developing a theory of new social workers learning” would not be consistent with the way we have taken up hermeneutic research. the title of the study and the guiding research question then must show integrity with the philosophy that informs it. this is an important point of congruency. if one develops a question that is moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 10 unanswerable from a hermeneutic perspective, such as “why do children die?,” the credibility of the work is compromised and incomprehensible. the process of determining one definitive research question is often one that is under the gaze and demand of funding bodies and granting bodies, but in many ways, it is counterintuitive to hermeneutics. questions beget questions and the answer to a question is only one response. gadamer (1960/1989) suggested that hermeneutics is the answer to a question that could have been answered differently. the research question that began the research is sometimes forced to change, given the shifts in thinking that arise as the researcher engages with the data. research questions are only intended to guide the research and serve the topic and often as the study progresses, the question becomes clearer. speaking to the address: what constitutes data in hermeneutic research? understanding begins with an address but it only just begins there. understanding about a topic has to be cultivated. everything is potential data if it helps to further the interpretation of the questionability of the topic. data may come in the form of photographs, art, poetry, textbooks, policy, newspaper articles, scholarly literature, philosophical texts, literary texts, conversations, or any other medium. address spreads outwards as the interconnections of the topic become apparent. it is another mark of the relevance of effective hermeneutic work when a topic is seen to live in worlds of shared cultures. one can conduct a hermeneutic study without the traditional qualitative method of interviewing participants, but there has to be a good demonstration that researchers have gone beyond only their own perception and reflections of the topic. very often however, this kind of research strives towards involving conversation, the latin of which is “conversa” which means to turn around together. gadamer (1960/1989) took up the notion of dialogue as central to hermeneutics. hermeneutics is dialectic, a “fusion of horizons” which cannot happen alone. for example, to understand a topic such as grandparents’ experiences of childhood cancer, there are many portals of understanding but the most obvious is by engaging in research conversations with grandparents directly. as mentioned, often in hermeneutic research, data is collected through interviews. in conducting interviews, one must consider the issue of the selection of participants, and the nature, skill, and focus of interviews to collect rich data that is fertile for interpretive analysis, and very necessary in the conduct of this kind of research. understanding only begins with an address; the address then summons the researcher to move into the conduct of the study in order to obtain answers to the questions that arise. summary in the bigger picture of the conduct of hermeneutic inquiry, we start here with the experience of “address” the ways one is called by topics, invited into positions of curiosity and wonder, tethered by what is known, and untethered by the possibilities of what remains to be discovered. address is the call to disand uncovery, as well as the call to recovery of what was forgotten. it moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 7 11 is the beacon that summons and lures us to topics, but also the quiet warning and reminder that we are obligated to do well by them. references abram, d. 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(2013). the cambridge companion to heidegger’s being and time. new york, ny: cambridge university press microsoft word davey corrected proof final.docx corresponding author: nicholas davey, phd email: jrndavey@dundee.ac.uk journal of applied hermeneutics november 10, 2015 ©the author(s) 2015 a hermeneutics of practice: philosophical hermeneutics and the epistemology of participation nicholas davey gadamer’s “philosophical hermeneutics” leaves several unresolved questions inviting further development. (1) if scientific methodology is no longer the counter-balance to questions of procedure in the humanities, what can hermeneutics offer the sciences in grappling with the absence of certainty? (2) why does gadamer not develop the notion that understanding is a type of movement? what is understanding’s seemingly perpetual disquiet? (3) gadamer’s case that understanding is an event is part of his rejection of the kantian thesis that “knowing” is grounded in subjective consciousness. the question of how such events are generated is unresolved. placing the event of understanding in a linguistic horizon establishes its ontological pre-requisite but offers no insight into the mechanisms that have to be in place to facilitate its emergence. this paper will suggest that the notion of practice (itself a philosophical theme not extensively discussed in gadamer) offers three possible answers to these questions. (1) practice evolves notions of certitude other than those that are strictly epistemological. (2) practice is often driven by a quest for completion (vollzug) which proves instrumentally disruptive and a means to new insight. the drive for completion is a candidate for generating understanding’s disquiet. (3) practice facilitates not so much a fusion but a collision of horizons capable of generating unexpected transformations of understanding. all three answers suggest the development of philosophical hermeneutics into what will be termed a participatory hermeneutics. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 7 2 aims what is the future of hermeneutics? the aim of this paper is fourfold. 1. to use a discussion of the notion of practice to contribute to the current debate about the future of hermeneutics. 2. to present a discussion of practice as an element of a much larger project concerning recent philosophical challenges to both the methodological legitimacy of both hermeneutics and the cultural legitimacy of the humanities. 3. to confront those challenges in an attempt to restore faith in the cognitive content and cultural relevance of both hermeneutics and the humanities. 4. to offer a new hermeneutical approach to the understanding of the transformative effects of the practices that constitute these disciplines. the unifying argument concerns the need for philosophical hermeneutics to embrace an epistemology of participation to the end of re-building a notion of the hermeneutic subject in the context of a debate about the nature of practice loosely described here as those disciplines which depend primarily upon knowledge by acquaintance (savoir). the unresolved one of the unresolved questions in philosophical hermeneutics concerns the cognitive role of the subject. gadamer’s hostility to the kantian notion of subjectivity as the ground of knowing is well known. what is needed, however, is something that gadamer’s thought points to but does not fully articulate i.e., the notion of the subject as participant rather than adjudicator or judge. philosophical hermeneutics self-announces with a kantian question: what are the pre-conditions of understanding? the answer is shaped ontologically and derives from heidegger’s conception of being as eventual: the preconditions of understanding are ontological including tradition, language, and culturally received subject-matters (sachen). this, however, is no answer: the epistemological question is displaced by an ontological assertion. the consequence is twofold. (1) language becomes an all powerful super-subject (koegler, 1996) and (2) the role of subjectivity in understanding denied (kelly, 2004).1 this creates an obvious difficulty. if language generates substantive undecideables (polyvalent meaning), how are the undecided possibilities decided and acted on? are they self-selecting? arguably, practice invokes a notion of participatory intervention. does talk of participatory intervention imply a return to a notion of autonomous subjectivity? arguably, not. talk of subjectivity traditionally implies a co-relative notion of objectivity. however, contemporary science is increasingly calling into question the notion of an independent extra-mental reality. the notion of an “out-there” that is an objective co-relative to subjectivity is becoming unsustainable. what is emerging is a conception of actuality in which all 1 see koegler (1996, p. 116) kelly (2004, p. 103) 2 friedrich nietzsche; “the assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary: perhaps it is just as kelly (2004, p. 103) davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 7 3 entities are to varying degrees creatures of possibility. we might intuit this “new” objectivity as the sum of interactions between living processes. the conceptual links between interaction, hermeneutics and a participatory hermeneutics call out for development. this is the basis for the argument that hermeneutics should develop a participatory epistemology. from subject to participant and so, with regard to resolving the unresolved within philosophical hermeneutics, the following is an outline of a participatory epistemology. 1. the participant-subject is always ‘positioned,’ always a part situated in a larger nexus or whole. 2. the participant subject is an embodied subject, not standing apart from the sum of relations that constitutes its environment but simultaneously acting on and being acted on by it. 3. such a subject is always located within a situation that is both historical and linguistic and, in gadamer’s words, “to throw light on it (the situation) is a task that is never entirely completed” (1989, p. 269). 4. to be is to do: participatory-subjects are in effect clusters of activities, not beings that act but actions that have a being insofar as they are effective agencies: their essence is a consequential construct, an effect of and not a pre-requisite for action. 5. subject-participants are, to use nietzsche’s phrase, multiplicities that act as subjects but are not actual subjects. they are processes of assemblage or com-posure that gather received events and possible courses of action into one constantly revising story, identity, or practice.2 the consequences of a “positioned” subject for hermeneutical thought are suggestive. they imply that: 1. the experience of an embodied and hence situated subject is multi-registered, and not to be reduced to any singular mode of interpretation. though it may reflect a point of view, it cannot be reduced to a single perspective. 2. the situation of a participant agency is not subject to final description: if each and every cultural positioning is linguistic, its character can never be fully articulated. in language there is no final description of any position albeit that language will always seek the finality that is constantly inferred from it.3 3. because embodied experience will also be an experience of the temporal, that experience will also be perspectival i.e. characteristic of a specific temporal, spatial and cultural location. a given perspective is rarely self-transparent though its characteristics are often clearer when discerned from another perspective. there is always more to a positional centre than a singu 2 friedrich nietzsche; “the assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary: perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and our consciousness in general? … my hypothesis: the subject as multiplicity…the continual transitoriness and fleetingness of the subject”. nietzsche (1968, section 493). 3 gadamer contends in this context: “hermeneutic philosophy, as i envision it, does not understand itself on an “absolute position but as a path of experiencing. its modesty consists in the fact that there is no higher principle than this: “holding oneself open to the conversation” (gadamer, 2007, p. 34). davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 7 4 lar perspective can imagine. that participatory epistemology should (indeed, ought to) be invoked in favour of inter-disciplinary research is no surprise. 4. the situated subject is a dialogical, negotiable being. the other can see things about my perspective i cannot see: i need the other to present me with perspectives enabling me to think differently about the possibilities within my own. each (dialogical) position is unfinished and unfinishable, “constantly under pressure” to open itself to what is other than itself.4 5. the situated-subject is grounded in what transcends it. if a position’s character and possibilities depend upon the nexus of historical, linguistic and cultural horizons it is placed within, each “position” is dependent the sum of inter-actions it is part of. these five axioms of hermeneutical positioning have an interesting consequence: they suggest that reflection upon the nature of practice should be (or, stronger, is) the heart of a “philosophical” consideration of hermeneutics. the reason to support the claim and thereby strengthen the link between participatory epistemology and hermeneutics is as follows. 1. practices (in the various forms of understanding, interpretation, representation, creativity) presuppose positioning in the ontological sense outlined. 2. positioning within culture and language implies part-icipation. 3. participation is interactive: the part can change the character of the sum (whole): speaking matters because it changes matters. 4. practices are, then, vehicles of transformation, forming and yet formed by their participants. so, thinking through the relationship between participatory epistemology and hermeneutics opens three conceptual routes to articulating a hermeneutics of practice. towards a hermeneutics of practice the three routes to the prioritisation of practice as a hermeneutical thematic entail: 1. the replacement of the cognitive subject by participatory centres, that is subjects ontologically formed in and through practice. 2. practice considered as formative of the narrative-self or hermeneutic identity (ricouer), it is a source of effective and confident inter-action with other such subjects. 3. the collapse of the geistes-naturwissenschaft distinction, a corollary of which is the replacement of epistemological certainty with practical confidence. as these three routes conceptually entail each other, i shall deal with them collectively under the sub-themes of practice and its formative powers, uncertainty, and confidence. 4 see williams (2014, p. 122) davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 7 5 practice, uncertainty, and confidence “the most precious thing in life is its uncertainty” (yoshida kenko, essays in idleness, no. 7.) paradoxically, philosophical hermeneutics is built on an abandoned but still influential distinction between the certainties of science and the alleged uncertainties of the humanities. wilhelm dilthey is specifically criticized by gadamer for looking to the sciences for the certainties that life cannot provide: “dilthey’s need for something firm is explicitly the (his) need for protection from the frightful realities of life. …he expects the uncertainty and unsureness of life to be overcome not so much by the stability that the experience of life provides as by science,” (gadamer, 1989, p. 239). the question becomes how to reconcile “uncertainty” about existence with “confidence in existence”? an answer to the question indicates how practice can be understood as formative, indeed, as initiating a form of bildung. gadamer (1989) contends that “the certainties of science are different from the certainty acquired in life …” (p. 238) and, what’s more, “the unsureness of life is to be overcome by the experience of life that the experience of life provides …” (p. 239). what are these non-epistemic certainties and how does life provide them? the key to this is the expedition of practice itself. gadamer invokes tradition as a non-epistemic source of certainty or, rather, confidence. “tradition in the form of morals, religion and law, rests (in contrast to methodical doubt), on a knowledge that life has of itself” (gadamer, 1989, p. 238). uncertainty may be assuaged by initiation into the firmer structures of inherited thought though since when, it might be objected, is tradition a guarantor of stability? (dilthey’s loss of faith in theological tradition is a case in point). however, it is not the “values” transmitted by tradition that inspire confidence. rather, it is the practices the commitment to modes of doing that nurtures it. this suggests that it is practice-acquired-confidence that displaces the (unrealisable) epistemic quest for certainty.5 what is it that builds confidence in existence and displace the dissipating nihilism of hyperbolic doubt? what can we trust to and be confident of? gadamer answers, we can trust to language and tradition. the claim is an obvious re-working of heidegger’s notion of the existential condition of geworfenheit: the finding of ourselves inexplicably cast into the contingencies of language and cultural tradition. however, “certainties” are not simply acquired by immersion in tradition and language alone. the certainties of life are won: they are achievements, not the certainties of knowing but those of doing, of participation, and of involvement. the certainties of life are those emergent certainties won through confident engagement with various practices. practice forms the practitioner. practice is formative. practices involve repetition, memory, adjustment, failure and success: upon these rhythms the confidence to perform is built. participatory engagement with a range of practices enables the capacity and confidence to engage and develop. tradition and cultural horizons are the preconditions of practice but they do not build the certainties gadamer speaks of. it is the engage 5 the word confidence is built around the word faith (fide): to confide is it to have faith in who one confides in. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 7 6 ment with practice and the self-insight it affords that grounds the certainties and confidence of the practiced performer, whether artist, doctor or scientist. certainty and confidence is won through participation and engagement and not through the classical routes of epistemological detachment. this suggests that it is through practices that the identity of the practitioner emerges. if practices involve repetition, memory, adjustment, failure and success, a provisional narrative identity emerges. the individual centre (the situated subject) achieves a practical point of selfcomposure: the individual formation is a composition, an integration achieved in and through the skills of practice, a composition only arrived at indirectly. such a composition is a narrative identity: a centre of possibilities which is always open. this establishes a conceptual link with the notion of a situated subject. it is from within my practice that i have something to say, and can speak to that which allows me to speak. my narratively established identity offers direction and anticipation. living narratives are by definition on-going, incomplete, temporal projects. they offer a unique point of orientation inflected by their past and their implicit future (how they might unravel in the both the positive and negative sense). the point is that it is the poise and assuredness of the accomplished practitioner that affords a relatively stable narrative identity. however, we are always vulnerable to what we have confidence in. the vulnerability of practical understanding the poise and assuredness of the accomplished practitioner affords a degree of fulfilment. the confident practitioner is recognized as an effective member of a community of practitioners. yet such fulfilment is always momentary, local, and can be undermined at any moment. modes of narrative understanding, as well as analogical forms of reasoning and understanding, are particularly subject to internal deconstruction. the practical or narrative identity which participation in a practice affords is at the same time vulnerable to being deconstructed by the same horizons of meaning that enable its emergence in the first place. being a “situated subject” is not only to be enabled but also to be threatened by the linguistic and historical worlds one is located in. narrative identities are vulnerable to the infinite varieties of description (or counter-narratives) that being in a language world affords. narrative identities are “vulnerable” because they are connected with several horizons of anticipation and expectation. i might build a pattern of sense around certain linguistic meanings. the polyvalence of all meaning suggests that the same signs and symbols when placed in another pattern of sense can disrupt the pattern i have built. the practical identity that participation in linguistic horizons affords is at the same time vulnerable to the very horizons that enable it. there is an inevitable dialecticity to our participating in a sum of inter-active relations: what they enable (the emergence of a position), they can equally disable (deconstruct): what language gives, language can take away. an account of this dynamic is missing from philosophical hermeneutics, a striking omission in need of address. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 7 7 what keeps understanding moving? there is no account of this problem in gadamer’s hermeneutics and it is a question which must be confronted if we are to consider the question of understanding’s transformational power. having established that understanding, interpretation, and representation are practices, what makes such practices inherently unstable and vulnerable to change? returning to the discussion of narratives, narratives involve expectations and projections. in a sense, all narratives confess their unrealised nature. narratives are on-going stories: there is much within them that remains possible. narratives house intuitions of (albeit unrealisable) completeness. this exposes a formal tension in gadamer’s hermeneutics between epistemological completeness and aesthetic completeness (vollzug). formally, there is no end, no definitive, no final interpretation able to close a narrative. the reasons for this are clear: (1) the infinity of language horizons makes the task of interpretation endless, (2) the problem of incommensurablity (no interpretation can be fully adequate to its subject-matter) renders formal completion in interpretation impossible, and (3) the fact that participatory epistemology cannot transcend and fix the sum of world constituting relations means that other interpretations are always possible. yet there is a distinction between seeking for the (final) meaning of something (epistemological closure) and seeking for something that can bring meaningful (aesthetic closure). the artwork offers an appropriate model. artworks have a “sense”: no lines of meaning scatter within them. they are “closed circles of meaning, in which everything is fulfilled” (gadamer, 1989, p. 101) so that “more becomes known than is already known” (1989, p. 102). what comes to completion (vollzug) within an artwork is not the infinity of (indeterminate) meanings underwriting it. to the contrary, an artwork takes singular aspects from a subject-matter’s infinite horizon of possibilities and weaves them into a “meaningful whole” enabling the recognition of something as something with “its chance and variable circumstances” (gadamer, 1989, p. 102) removed. an artwork does not concretise all its possible determinations of meaning: a determinate set of possibilities is selected and rendered “whole.” it becomes seen as “aesthetically complete” (1989, p. 102), that is, … seen as “something” as if for the first time. the vorgriff der vollkommenheit emerges, then, as an hermeneutic a priori, an analytic condition of any experience of coherence. the anticipation of completeness is a consequence of interpretive engagement with the openended possibilities within a horizon. translating them into intelligible sequential structures, establishes narrative forms where none were previously were perceived. the anticipation is, in effect, that intuitive sense for where a work is going. the quest for aesthetic completeness within a practice is a quest for what might give sense to the indeterminacies at play within that practice. it is, we argue, the quest for aesthetic completeness that drives understanding’s disquiet. this gives an explanation of why aesthetic experience plays such a foundational role in philosophical hermeneutics. conclusion i have argued that a future for philosophical hermeneutics lies in the direction of a hermeneutics of practice. practices are, we contend, forms of “sense-making.” they represent different ways davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 7 8 of organising the indeterminacies of human experience. as modes of “sense-making,” they assume and pursue a completion (vollkommenheit) of meaningfulness. this brings us to a seminal point: it is not what a practice pursues that matters but that it pursues it. to put the point another way, it is often the emergent insights that a practice generates by default rather than the ones it anticipates that prove transformative. the condition of this possibility is ontological rather than epistemological. the situated practitioner or participatory subject is linguistically and culturally positioned. such positioning is always shaped explicitly and implicitly by the cultural and historical horizons that define it: explicit in that the horizons set the initial orientation of the practitioner and implicit in that orientation is subject to being changed by the emergence of unrealised nuances of meaning from within those horizons. it is a mistake to think of such positioning in a singular way, as if being situated only involved a single linguistic or historical horizon. the situated practitioner is more a point of transection between a variety of horizons; personal, professional, linguistic, literary, national, social, and philosophical. arguably, philosophical hermeneutics simplifies the number of horizons at play within understanding and as a consequence underestimates the transformative educational capacity of hermeneutical engagement. the situated nature of understanding means that it is always at a juncture of a variety of individual and cultural horizons. what enables transmission between different horizons concerns the formal operation of simile, metaphor, analogy, and the place holding function of concepts. because of the formal operations of language and thought, being situated as a participatory subject is always to be subject to having one’s understanding challenged and transformed. understanding is always at a juncture. broader cultural meanings presently unknown to me can impact on those within my own narrative and issues of personal narrative can unexpectedly transform how a wider cultural concern is grasped. to be a participant, to be positioned, is to be simultaneously open to deconstruction or re-construction in one horizon precisely because of its linguistic and conceptual connectivity with others. the quest for vollzug and vollkommenheit is instrumental in occasioning such orientational shifts. gadamer rightly insists that hermeneutical understanding is not a matter of grasping facts or intentions but a question of acquiring a sense of where an argument is going, a sense of what a work or practice is aiming at even though such ambition may not have, as yet, been achieved. having an anticipatory sense of where a project or a narrative might take us is key. in other words, although understanding may have a singular object (making sense of a particular text), understanding is never singular. we bring to any engagement a range of expectations and anticipations deriving from a variety of commitments. bringing to completion what remains at play within a narrative is key for, as argued above, it is the pursuit rather than the pursued that is critical. it is what the pursuit of completeness in one horizon inadvertently puts into play in other associated horizons of meaning that matters. because no horizon of meaning whether personal or historical can exhaust the possibilities for meaningfulness within it, the pursuit of completeness in one horizon may impact upon another, prompting unexpected and transformative patterns of sense to arise. each humanities discipline practises the impossible: the pursuit of an anticipated completeness (vollkommenheit). and yet, it is only in the controlled pursuit of the impossible that the unexdavey journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 7 9 pectedly possible can arise. in the horizons of language where the as yet unsaid can be as eloquent as the spoken, “things are always waiting to happen” and those things can be “gamechangers,” serendipitously rather than methodologically arrived insights capable of transforming a framework of understanding. hermeneutically constituted practices venture, then, controlled risk: the risk the over-turning of established narrative identities; the gain extending old identities in new ways or establishing new practices altogether. considered ontologically, a hermeneutics of practice is the key to understanding the transformative capacities of the humanities. we conclude that practices are forms of “sense-making.” they situate a participatory subject in horizons of linguistic and historical possibility. practices represent different ways of organizing the indeterminacies of human experience. as modes of “sense-making,” practices assume and pursue a completion (vollkommenheit) of meaningfulness. it is not what the practice pursues but that it pursues it that matters. the pursuit of interpretation’s end aesthetic completeness is but a means to induce a key effect i.e., achieving that transformation of understanding which is, arguably, the primary end of hermeneutics and the humanities (increasing the range of existential possibilities). in gadamerian terms, to play one must be in play for it is only by playing that one can put into play what is not yet in play. this is what a participatory hermeneutics demonstrates. references gadamer, h.g. (1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed., j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). london, uk: continuum. gadamer, h.g. (2007). the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings. (r. e. palmer, trans.). evanston, il: northwestern university press kelly, m. (2004). a critique of gadamer’s aesthetics. in b. krajewski (ed.), gadamer’s repercussions: reconsidering philosophical hermeneutics (pp. 103-122). berkeley, ca: university of california press. kenko, y. (1967). essays in idleness. the tsurezuregusa of kenkō (d. keene, trans) new york, ny: columbia university press. koegler, h.h. (1996). the power of dialogue. cambridge, ma: the mit press. nietzsche, f. (1968). the will to power. (w. kaufman & r. j. hollingdale, trans) london, uk: wiedenfeld & nicolson. williams, r. (2014). the edge of words. london, uk: bloomsbury. note this paper was first presented at the hermeneutics of practice workshop at the university of dundee, may 2015, and subsequently at the north american society for philosophical hermeneutics annual conference, philadelphia, september 19, 2015. microsoft word paul editorial corrected proof.docx corresponding author: jim paul, phd email: paul@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics april 7, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 invited guest editorial just saying: for h/heaven’s sake… here’s hoping -- “all hell could break loose!” jim paul bodies are not only biological phenomena but also complex social creations onto which meanings have been variously composed and imposed according to time and space. (karkazis, 2008) preface if you have been reading, to date, in the journal of applied hermeneutics, dr. john williamson’s phd thesis-come-novel serialized, then you have read, more or less, four texts: • guest editorial: preface to “a strange and earnest client” part one of the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery by w. john williamson [january 11, 2016]; • the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery. part one: a strange and earnest client [january 11, 2016]; • invited guest editorial. lives worthy of life: the everyday resistance of disabled people by nick hodge [february 22, 2016], and • the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery. part two: cells of categorical confinement [february 22, 2016]. my name is jim paul. i am the invited guest editorial provider for the third installment of john’s work titled part three: all hell could break loose. paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 3 2 editorial remarks part three is, in my opinion, methodological interpretive research magic, which carefully advances the investigation regarding the educational category of slow learners. the methodological magic is evident, in this section, in how max explores portrayals of slow learners in popular media, exposes john williamson’s deep implicated-ness with slow learners, opens up the archival history of slow learner as an educational label, and wrestles with the complex history of programming for slow learners in the province of alberta. as you will read, max is getting closer to revealing what is really at stake in the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner. so, here and now, i seek to make a case, in this editorial, that the content explored in part three is necessarily required regarding the case at hand, but the magic in this section is how the writing manifests as max’s internal and external voice didactically positions and re-positions a reader into and out of the content both intellectually and emotively. that invitation is achieved, i believe, in this section, because of how max exists, phenomenologically and hermeneutically, often at the same time, as teacher and learner. let me explain and let me begin where part three concludes as a clue that leads this editorial forward. (max) i pulled into the passenger drop off and thanked summit for his candor as he thanked me for the ride. before he got out of the car, summit gave me the names of a few curriculum leaders currently working with the k & e series of classes and told me where i could find them. then he offered a theory about how to find justice for slow learners that didn’t make much sense to me at the time. he told me to look to my own methods for an answer. i felt there was practical wisdom in so much of the rest of what he said; i hoped i might gather some more clues to shed some light on this last cryptic statement. (italics emphasis added, p. 55) “he told me to look to my own methods for an answer.” indeed. is it not attributed to socrates that… the unexamined life is not worth living. so, max… examined. max is a true hard-boiled mystery formula detective. true to intent and form, throughout a convoluted twist and turn, friend as foe, foe as friend, investigation all pales in comparison to his unrelenting quest for the discovery of and necessity to bring justice to the case at hand. as such, it is his very being, language, actions, and mere presence in the service of seeking justice for slow learners that seems to position him as a significant threat to all involved directly and indirectly in the case. as max digs deeper and wider into the case, in part three, the push-back against his investigation increasingly becomes more layered with twists and turns and, of course, max is routinely assaulted, captured, drugged, and beaten by a layered criminal element who seem to have vast political, economic and social powers. so, we, as readers, experience max as a quintessential hard-boiled detective who is deeply marginalized and often dark, vulgar and verging on being an illegitimate “professional” not unlike sleazy lawyers, or shady cops, or used car salesmen. however, it is also obvious that max lives as he chooses to. as well, embodied, again, in his life style is a rejection of the sanctioned and privileging modernity markers of standard decorum and normalized achievement. max is, paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 3 3 more or less, not a standard antihero as he moves beyond being merely an irritating grain of sand, and becomes a significant threat whereby the criminal rich, powerful, and beautiful attempt to draw max into their worlds and to use him for their own corrupt purposes. ironically, when max is invited in, he finds himself confirming that such worlds are riddled with what he knows already to exist categorical violence, layers of deceit and quagmires of corruption. still, max’s own storied marginality not only sustains him in such circumstances it continuously serves to feed his quest for contextual justice. while all the discoveries of villainy, duplicity, and corruption are necessary plot essentials, in part three, it is how the criminality element is threatened by max’s very presence that is directly linked to how max methodologically exists that also illustrates the life-blood of his hard-boiled being-ness. max, found wanting as a modern person, citizen, and as a regular detective, plays a complex and ambiguous adversarial role to hard-boiled villains at hand who are often disguised as seducers, or provocateurs, or even allies. what max reveals in the tangled layers of criminality evident in part three is that categorical evil has become essentially systemic within modernity’s operational and functional designs. it is max’s paradoxical mix of suspicion and respect, cynicism and honor, attraction and repulsion, brutality and sentimentality, and failure and success and his unrelenting need for justice served wrapped up in his own world of violence and treachery, that explicitly opens up the regimes of persuasive corruption and criminality evil endemic to modernity’s heavenly sought politically powerful, economically-divided, and hierarchical social orders. so, why can’t modernity, via its categorical guardians, deal with max if he is merely just another paper-tiger or glass elephant, antihero construct? simply, i believe, methodologically, as a socratic-like pedagogue, max opens, by drawing out, modernity’s dominating cartesian metaphysics of presence. modernity, and its institutional agencies and grand design discourses, seeks to continuously encode and decode humans into accepting the given commandment categories of rational-defined splits between mind and body, individual and collective, and between exposition-argumentation and narrative-description. remember, max has chosen to cast himself out of modernity’s heaven on earth, and in doing so, he seems to know that h/heaven and h/hell is a false dichotomy. max, crudely and rudely, like a displaced hell-boy in heaven, via his embodied and mindful pedagogic use of the ancient greek socratic method returns modernity’s scribal society (purves, 1990) and its split-inducing mechanisms writing and reading literacy and numeracy to their original, negotiable difficulties as categories of this-that, here-there, now-then, and i-you also as false dichotomies. again, how so? max is a socratic-embodied pedagogue even if he doesn’t know it; he is it… a solitary unified symbiotic learning-teaching presence. plato was teaching, then, precisely at the moment when the new technology of reading and writing was shedding its specialized ‘craft’ status and finally spreading, by means of the greek curriculum, into the culture at large. the significance of this conjunction has not been well recognized by western philosophers, all whom stand – to a greater or lesser extent within plato’s lineage. plato, or rather the association between the literate and his mostly non-literate teacher socrates (469?-399 b.c.e.), may be recognized as the hinge upon which the sensuous, mimetic, profoundly embodied style of consciousness proper to orality gave way to the more detached, abstract mode of thinking engendered by alphabetic literacy. indeed, it was plato who carefully developed and brought to term paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 3 4 the collective thought-structures appropriate to the new technology. (abram, 1996, pp. 108-109) it is plato’s teacher, socrates, who seemed to have understood that a radically different language game would mean a radically different form of consciousness, meaning-making, and determiners for what counts as sanctioned or not ways of knowing, doing and being. the movement from orality reality and its primary sensory-representational ways of storied knowing, doing and being to a referential, abstract alphabetic-phonic sign system would mean for all things – human and otherwise – a new world order riddled with penultimate categorization. in an old technology orality-based society, a speaker’s word-actions are birthed, developed and legitimated throughout oral exchanges within a speaker’s membership in a collective whereby ways of knowing, doing and being are learned. the teaching speaker and the listening learner as one is a necessarily present embodiment of the collective’s cultural practices, moralities and social customs. the socializing power of an orality-based collective lives in its method of inclusive induction for members which requires all present be spoken into the collective’s past, present and future. presence becomes the cultural methodological learning-teaching requirement. presence is the essential element of a reality metaphysics in orality-driven cultures whereby narrative as words, actions and images are presented as emotive storied expressions to all gathered. the wordimage-action performances are witnessed in the emotive moment and it is in this being situationally presence whereby understanding and meaning making regarding self, other and world via story-telling and story-receiving lives. embodied in the telling and listening relationship is a reciprocal responsibility to ensure connectivity between experiential understandings of pastpresent-future and self-other-world. in the specific arrangements of story-sounds, story-images, and story-performances, cultural virtues and vices are passed on as living entities. and herein lives a fundamental aspect of an orality-based society. the qualities of what it means to be right and wrong, good and bad, truthful and deceptive, or just and unjust and so on are intertwined with meaning derived, over time, as embodied in the specific storied-narrative contexts. all virtues and all evils and so on were situationally locatable in the stories told over and over from century to century as lessons to be learned and retaught. always, however, what counts as virtue or evil is explicitly defined experientially by the workings of the storied representational contexts. situations, meanings-derived, and the oral representations of those situations were one and the same. as such, in an orality-based culture, all vices and virtues are justifiably experienced as a storied-event alive with intent, meaning, understanding and impact. that is why, in the presence of a story, one becomes responsible to re-tell the story because the pedagogy of transferability demands it. socrates was an inherited storied-being. he was an orality-based human being. he was pedagogically presently to his student, plato, when the alphabet-writing-reading literacy technologies were emerging. however, as plato acquired these new technologies, he was also his teacher’s student. as socrates projected the alphabet literacies manifest as writing-reading would fix, concretize and render, ironically, orality and narrative as untrustworthy and an old technology. the new literacies required disciplined training in encoding and decoding and the future was to be one dominated by visible/see-able codes, policies, laws, commandments, rules and scripts. socrates challenged plato to understand the new literacies required a split between subject and object, and of writer-speaker from reader-listener and literally such gaps would lead to recognizable and measurable differences. as well, within the inherited recombinant and abstract paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 3 5 referential nature of the new literacies, socrates foresaw the directionality of the new literacy paradigm as preparing the ancient greeks to adopt the concept of “-ness.” that is, if the alphabet is referentially abstract, then reasonability indicates all things were conceptually referentially absent but gap oppositional definable as well. if “-ness,” like whiteness, chair-ness, or faithfulness, was a referential category, then it must have an ultimate, ideal and unchanging reality essence. everything and anything could have multiple shape-shifting forms, but only one true essence for example, water (h2o) may deceptively be a liquid or solid or gas. such a concept of “-ness” leads on quickly to ordering and cementing those now so obvious life-world dichotomies and polarities previously contextually and complexly storied but now seemingly just waiting to be named, grouped and declared categorically. philosophical, pragmatic, and natural sciences evolved to accomplish such a task to seek out, via hypothesizing, experimenting, or autopsies the discovering of the essential essence of everything on, under, or over this planet and its characteristic shape-shifter attributes and properties. it became the norm to imagine, dream, theorize, invent and meditate the existence of a perfect essence perfection unaffected by uncontrollable circumstances, or mutating contexts, or born-to-die bodies. descartes studied the ancient greeks and read plato and aristotle. he read about how alphabetic literacy emerged and the civilizing power it held, and the possibility of human beings progressing developmentally towards godly-heavenly perfection on earth or beyond. being cognitively reasonable, descartes dismissed plato’s teacher’s (socrates) thought and methods because they were, well, unusable in that they were storied and thus deemed illogical, emotional, and irrational. so, descartes confirms his head-selected, mind-verified and falsified ancient greek inherences and fixes western progress on one pathway forward, a cartesian modern world. a world whereby selected polarities and dichotomies become privileged and writing-reading literacies and numeracy must continue to be the definitive citizen-personhood sorting machine technologies regarding what constitutes inclusivity or exclusivity as a tribal member of western civilization. today, contemporary citizens and persons are awash in the normalcy of cartesian precise category developmental measurements. what counts as normal, verifiable, and justifiable progress and development for everything and everyone is to be sorted by gradations according to established and verifiable standards of necessary judgmental exactness within fixed and normalized categories. the need for constant reductive literacy/numeracy testing and the categorical judging of everything and everyone into elevated winners and grounded losers actually justifies itself as a legitimate process just look at the amazing progress of the west. this is systemic modernity, and it is protected by its guardians who are robotic discourse vampires selectively trained to suck the living blood out of every and each failed category thus ensuring each opposition pales in comparison to the desirable heavenly categories glorified by such unjust comparison. the institution of schooling becomes the primary literacies learning sorting machine. within the institution, mimicking modernity, the preferred and privileged discourses are numbers and exposition or argument word-thought-action arrangements. the motto for schooling becomes: one, two, three… testing, testing, testing. learners are measured and categorized according to their effective and efficient dexterity with literacy and numeracy. as well, today schooling’s mandate has a new partner digital and social media technologies manifest as popular culture is every bit or more effective as a trainer of the young within modernity’s design for perfection. media plays directly, experientially, to the minded-eye, but the message is the same regarding paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 3 6 how one must be if he or she is to achieve posthuman (hayles, 1999) perfection. as godly posthumans, via forever advancing communication and social technologies, we can achieve the dream of elevating ourselves, virtually and pragmatically, from that dead-weight tangible sensory ‘thing’, a decaying body, holding us down in everyway imaginable. with modern literacies technologies as elevated, abstract and ideal languages, human beings can take a rightful place as the ultimate abstract prime signifier a single solitary unified god-ness perfection incarnate. yes… max! max is basically, in my opinion, a throw-back to a narrative-based socratic human creature incarnate. he is self-authored as his own counterfactual and as such a storied o/other represented as a modern loser wrapped up in a disguising, imperfect body. yet, as a storied interruption max presents an unsettling and threatening presence to modernity and its guardians. he does not speak as they do he doesn’t use exposition or argument. i believe, he embodies the simple socratic method that evokes in all around him, more or less, to a greater or lesser degree, interpretive angst. perhaps, such a vibration is all that is need to move the categories of this-ness and that-ness. in part three, max consistently and continuously seeks out persons to engage. he asks all speakers to repeat and re-tell what they said. in doing so, he gets them to reflexively listen to what they were mouthing explanations, reasons, rules, justifications, and so on. in doing so, he socratic-like induces speakers to wonder or question, if only for a moment, about their own lack of being present in modernity’s objectifying knowing, doing and being design. once voice has been located and then dislocated via questions that come to rest in how justification for this or that might be understood in a moment, even modernity’s guardians’ catch a glimpse of how they have become essentially, as paulo freire once commented, narration sick. via max’s method, those he engages with friend and foe are re-located not in the abstract, but in a specific bawdy, emotive, complexly experiential context of a storied moment. in that moment justice, courage, strength and ethics slip out of their fixed scribal categories and are returned to their original contexts-specific difficulties. that is, in the evocative moment, one feels compelled to re-understand the categories that have been so taken for reasonable granted-ness. right and wrong, good and evil, or just and unjust are no longer universal abstract constructs, but contextually-specific living entities requiring personal re-authoring. max is a storied pedagogic moment. he is a threat to all those who must live, ironically, those stories advancing the story that humans are not essentially storied persons and citizens. postface in part three, max works his way through portrayals of slow learners in popular media culture that reveal more about modernity than slow learners, he attends to williamson’s deep, selfdeprecating, humbling, and storied implicated-ness with slow learners, and max investigates the archival ‘factual’ history of slow learner as an educational label, and concludes by attending to the “official” history of programming for slow learners in the province of alberta. however, in every situation where max takes up his case to examine slow learners, in part three, he subsequently tracks down or attracts a modernity guardian of the categorical status quo establishment or even resisters to that agenda. using a hermeneutic phenomenology-sympathetic socratic method, max calls upon every guardian and resister to lay bear their storied-ness or not, implicated-ness or not, in the case of slow learners. the beauty here is max uses the essential reflexive questioning method very well, because he doesn’t really know he is using it, but rather he is it. max is a walking and talking question mark, period. his mere presence demands a response! paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 3 7 when face-to-face with max those with criminal intent or those experiencing such intent, having reflexively, if only for a moment (because that is all it takes is a pedagogic moment) understand that they have authorial rights and responsibilities, and not to use them is to live a life unexamined. in this process, in this pedagogic context, all humans being, more or less, recognize, archetypically, we are all storied entities. max raises the interpretive possibility, again, if only as an in and out breath’s moment, of shaking the decontextualizing, objectifying fixedness of modernity’s meta-desires. max is the counterfactual who, in this case, truly and actually, and magically, reminds all presence that every grand narrative is nevertheless also a fabric of millions and millions micro-stories. slow learners are especially already storied persons. max’s storied presence brings into the reflexive light the real possibility that we all, categorically, could be otherwise, and we should be deeply shaken by the rigidity of modernity’s categories that prevent us from knowing that there by the grace of a magical outcome of nature and nurture, go i. the unexamined life is not worth living. how max is max pulls everyone friend or foe reflexively towards such an examination. seemingly, many of us are no longer able to or feel the necessity to do so; we are literate but deaf and dumb to what that really means to attend to self as other and other as self. here’s hoping, in part four, that max continues to be a methodological hell-boy cutting a swath of reflexive destruction through all those living in denial of s/self and s/self as o/other and that we are all symbiotic storied creatures and narrative beings and in and of itself that may be all we really are! “i sent my soul through the invisible, some letter of that after-life to spell: and by and by my soul return’d to me, and answer’d: ‘i myself am heav’n and hell’.” omar khayyam references abram, d. (1996). the spell of the sensuous: perception and language in a more-than-human world. new york, ny: vintage books. cawelti, j. (1976). adventure, mystery, and romance: formula stories as art and popular culture. chicago, il: university of chicago press. hayles, k. (1999). how we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and infromatics. chicago, il: university of chicago press. karkazis, k. (2008). fixing sex: intersex, medical authority, and lived experience. durham, nc: duke university press. kreeft, p. (2008). socratic logic: a long text using socratic method, platonic questions, and aristotelian principles (ed. 3.1). south bend, in: st. augustines press. purves, a. (1990). the scribal society: an essay on literacy and schooling in the information age. london, uk: longman group. pynchon, t. (1984). slow learner: early stories. boston, ma: little, brown & co. microsoft word williamson corrected proof final.docx corresponding author: w. john williamson, phd email: john.williamson@cssd.ab.ca journal of applied hermeneutics november 10, 2015 ©the author(s) 2015 the hermeneutics of poetry slam: play, festival and symbol w. john williamson abstract in this paper, i discuss poetry slam events as hermeneutic encounters. gadamer’s analysis of play, festival, and symbol form the theoretical basis of the discussion. exemplary data include my research into aspects of the history and ritual of slam as well as my experiential data as a spectator, coach of a poetry slam team of adolescents who compete in a provincial tournament for young poets, and as a slam performer. i contend that, despite slam’s occasional “silliness,” occasional problems of quality and fair play, and the insistence of many academics that it is not a worthwhile celebration of literature, poetry slam has the potential to create meaningful connections between diverse communities and tarry over language as a hermeneutic event. i note that, in an era where text is generated with increasing rapidity while our abilities to appreciate language as an event or as a means of connecting with each other are undermined, poetry slams might be the kind of festival we need to seek relief from these trends. keywords hermeneutics, gadamer, poetry, poetry slam, play, festival, symbol no props, no costumes, no nudity, and no animal acts. (canadian individual poetry slam 2015) we have seen that play does not have its being in the player's consciousness or attitude, but on the contrary, play draws him into its dominion and fills him with its spirit. the player experiences the game as a reality that surpasses him. this is all the more the case where the game is itself “intended” as such a reality—for instance, the play which appears as presentation for an audience. (gadamer, 2004, p. 109) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 8 2 i would like to think hans-georg gadamer (2004) would have been intrigued by poetry slam. the activity combines all the dynamic aspects of “play” he discussed in his opus, truth and method, with the interpretive and enterprise of artistic communication. the philosopher would have appreciated how the activity of poetry slam has given artists worldwide, whose voices might not be heard without this particular form of expression, the opportunity to speak their unique truths, earning self –affirmation of being messengers of import while also expanding the empathy and awareness, the horizons of understanding (p. 537), of those who are listening. finally, as one who often wrote about the hermeneutic character of social occasions, gadamer (1986; 2004) would have appreciated how poetry slams take on the familiar novelty of festivals. i first learned of poetry slam around four years ago, when i viewed the documentary “louder than a bomb” about chicago’s annual high school poetry slam competition (siskel & jacobs, 2010). i found the film‘s depiction of the courageous teams of adolescent poets, speaking out about personal vulnerabilities and social injustices within the collective of an artistic community that was both supportive and formally competitive, remarkable. it was likely this spark that led me to deepen my relationship with poetry slam as an active participant, through co-coaching teams of high school students in the can you hear me now provincial poetry championship and competing myself in adult slam series hosted by two local poetry collectives, the ink spot collective and university of calgary spoken word society. these experiences have, in turn, led me to reflect on the hermeneutic character of poetry slamming. in this paper, i will, from the perspectives i have experienced as a spectator, coach, and participant, undertake a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of poetry slam as a form of play, as an example of festival, and as a communal exchange of symbol. what is poetry slam? in 1984, marc smith, a chicago construction worker, came up with idea to enliven the poetry readings he was hosting at a local jazz club, the get me high lounge (burrows 2001). using terminology borrowed from bridge and baseball, and an olympic-style, zero to ten point scoring system (burrows, 2001), smith turned the readings into a competition in which poets were scored for their craft and performance ability by randomly selected audience members with the top poet of the evening earning a cash prize. though some poets balked at the imperative to “perform” rather than “read” their poetry (ya salaam 2001), poetry slam turned out to be a popular innovation in the spoken word poetry community, improving for many people the accessibility of an art form that they had come to view, perhaps due to scarring experiences studying it in public schooling (canadian individual poetry slam 2015), as stodgy and alienating. as burrows wrote, poetry slam “humanize[d] the poetry and [took] it out of its heretofore hallowed academic settings to become something that was owned by everyone -even the drunk and disenfranchised” (2001, para. 3). whether poetry slam has succeeded in “re-energiz[ing] the [larger] poetry scene,” (burrows 2001) or has simply grown into a popular genre of its own with little impact on other poetic arts, it has garnered a massive global following. myslam.net (2015), an international portal to support slamming worldwide, lists 40 separate countries that host poetry slams (2015). in many of these countries, including canada and the u.s., local competitions lead up to national and international williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 8 3 championships. you tube views and ted talks of acclaimed slam poets number from the hundreds of thousands to the millions, slam poetry has been lampooned in popular films such as 22 jump street (hill & tatum & lore & miller 2014), and incorporated into global events such as shayne koyzan’s 2010 performance of “we are more” at the opening ceremony of the vancouver winter olympic games. the rules of poetry slam are fairly simple. poets read or recite their work and are then judged on a numeric scale by previously (and randomly) selected members of the audience. poems must be original, though some limited sampling of other work for the sake of allusion is allowed. there is a three minute time limit to each poem, with a ten second grace period following, after which points are deducted (poetry slam inc. 2015). the prohibitions against props (this rule is serious, there really are deductions for using props), animal acts, and nudity (tongue in cheek) that i quoted at the beginning of this paper feature as well (canada individual poetry slam 2015). before the competition begins, the emcee will bring up a “sacrificial” poet a guest performer not entered in the competition who the judges will score in order to calibrate their judging (aptowicz 2008). the first round at a standard slam consists of performances by all the poets who registered to compete, with some slams eliminating the lower scoring poets in successive rounds and some slams not eliminating poets at all (aptowicz 2008). poetry slams can be individual or team competitions, and in the case of team competitions two or more poets can take the stage in a single round for group poems. at the end of a slam, the highest scoring poet, or team of poets, wins. though these rules and procedures are often quite thoroughly adhered to, the slam tradition has also long included an openly stated ambivalence to the competitive aspect of slamming with the emcees of events often reminding the audience that “the points are not the point; the point is poetry” during slam events (poetry slam inc. 2015). as an example of a poem performed at poetry slam, i humbly offer the only public performance of my own that i can tolerate looking at. please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ujyluuuuda slam as play taylor mali, one of the most celebrated poets to emerge out of the slam movement, famously reversed the generous mantra about the point being the poetry to “the points are not the point; the point is to get more points than anyone else” (poetry slam inc. 2015). though this was undoubtedly a somewhat tongue in cheek statement, not meant to seriously undermine the artistic comradery of “the point is the poetry,” there is truth in this quip. in reinforcing the idea that a poetry slam is a competition and that the poets do their best to win, mali evoked an essential aspect of gadamer’s (2004) hermeneutic play. seriousness is not merely something that calls us away from play; rather, seriousness in playing is necessary to make the play wholly play. someone who doesn't take the game seriously is a spoilsport. (p. 103) i have felt and sensed in other audience members some disappointment in watching slam performers not take their turns on stage seriously enough. i once watched a performer exhaust the williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 8 4 audience’s patience with a rambling five minute poem (incurring a full 5.5 points worth of deductions) that might have had something to do with the cosmos. his trespass was not so much in performing a poem that was hard to follow, which happens with enough frequency to be fairly forgivable when complex poems are performed out loud, it was in his participating while refusing to “play” by performing such on obviously non-competitive poem. conversely, having experienced poetry slam as a spectator, coach, and competitor, i can attest to the thrill of the competitive conversation when the poets take it seriously. as a poet and as a coach i have endured the intense suspense, and sometimes a slight sinking feeling, of having to follow an especially well-written and well-performed poem. does one follow a poignant, tragic poem with one that is even sadder? or does one “change things up” with a funny poem? on the subject of this dilemma, my daughter emma1, who was one of the competitors on the team i coached, once crafted a poem that made fun of some of the more maudlin and/or posturing tendencies certain sub genres of slam poems, with lines such as maybe you got the stadium heated with a poem full of flaming hip-hop anger, presenting your poem and condemning the norm which is ironic, since you can’t even form a rap that doesn’t conform to every tired cliché out there… (ucs spoken word, 2015) despite this poem being well received at noncompetitive open mike readings, it was tough for her to know when she should perform it in competition as it there was a risk that following anyone who had performed even a somewhat clichéd poem with sincerity with her satiric poem might seem mean and be poorly received. when i, as one of her coaches, suggested she perform this poem during the final round of competition in the can you hear me now, she declined, choosing instead a more personal and self-effacing poem that was well received by the judges and audience. i imagine that the suspense in this final round of the can you hear me now slam was palpable for everyone in attendance. for heightened connoisseurship and excitement, the volunteer judges from the earlier rounds were replaced with prominent local authors and poets, and the theatre at lord beaverbrook high school was nearly at capacity. the level of competition was high as the teams of poets who had shone in earlier rounds of competition went head to head in the final. as a coach, i remember earnestly whispering to my fellow coaches between the performances about our team’s poem selections as well as which of our poets we should send up to follow the various competing poets from the other teams. i remember desperately hoping we had made the right choices as i watched our poets take the stage. 1 with the exceptions of my performance video and one quotation from the published work of an adult poet, in order to showcase some emerging young poets, i have selected all of the exemplary quotations of poetry from adolescent poets who competed at can you hear me now. the poems were all performed at public events and my quotations are taken from publicly available you tube videos of the performances of these poems at can you hear me now and other venues. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 8 5 as much as i can attest to the excitement of slam poetry as a coach and competitor, i find the thrill of experiencing the “to and fro” competitive conversation as a spectator is almost as intense. for me, and, i think for many audience members, there is an unavoidable sense of being caught up in the moment, similar to what gadamer (1986), who appreciated tennis as a player as well as a spectator (dostal 2002), observed about viewers of tennis. we only have to observe on television the spectators of a tennis match cricking their necks. no one can avoid playing along with the game. (p. 24) although a little more time elapses between the verbal “volleys” and “groundstrokes” in slam poetry, when the poems stand out in their truth and intensity, the performances in their dynamism, and when the competition is very close, the feeling of being caught up is the same. slam as festival drawing on the theories of mikhail bakhtin, freitas (2012) wrote a thesis explaining poetry slam as a form of carnival and carnival as a form of resistance. as freitas (2012) explained carnival provides a time and place where the existing social order becomes 'uncrowned' and inverted through the practices of the participants allowing laughter and critique to challenge the dominant discourses. carnival relies on the participation of everyone at the event to create an alternative social order so that people can relate to each other on an equal basis during the carnival time. (p. 3) a detailed response to freitas’s claims is beyond the scope of this paper, but this passage does foreshadow aspects of my experiences with slam poetry as they might be understood from the vantage of gadamerian hermeneutics. while i agree with freitas that both the creation of a unique social order and the opportunity for free critique, or the speaking of truth to power are both essential aspects of the democratic potential of poetry slam, i will focus larger claim that poetry slam is a festive event. for gadamer (1986), the essence of the celebration of festival went beyond the temporary suspension of social roles, though it seems reasonable to suggest that he would have approved of the idea that this was an aspect in the larger essence. in his thinking, festival involved the suspension of temporality itself. though the scheduling of festivals is obviously dependent on the mundane processes by which we calculate time, the ritual of festival paradoxically depends on the rituals of “arresting” time, “allowing it to tarry,” and even “bringing it to a standstill” (p. 42). though, ironically, each poem in a poetry slam competition is meticulously timed, the larger enterprise still involves the setting aside on the part of the attendees, of an evening, or an entire weekend, to marvel at the power of poetic truth and experience themselves as a part of a common humanity, a whole unit of poetry. tradition plays a key role in this. this is most obviously reinforced by how every poetry slam is ostensibly governed by similar processes and rules. but beyond this, there are various traditions of audience participation in slam including the snapping of fingers as a means of expressing approval for an especially poignant line, instead of doing so through applause and potentially williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 8 6 drowning out the line to follow. throughout a slam event, the emcees will fire up the audience with the repeated call and respond of “i say poetry, you say rocks!” (felton 2015). antiauthoritarian, even regarding the authority that enables the event, the emcee at a poetry slam tells the judges not to be swayed by the audience and then in the next breath tells the audience that it is their job to sway the judges with their applause. in perhaps the strangest tradition, reflective of the ambivalence of “the points are not the point,” poets who exceed the time limit are penalized but also formally consoled, and the timekeeper is chastised, when after every time violation the emcee leads the audience in a chant of derision against the timekeeper, “you rat bastard bitch, you’re ruining everything for everyone... but it was well worth it!” (calgary spoken word society 2015). if these traditions seem a little silly, it bears mentioning that while the particular slam ritual only goes back three decades or so, the oral poetry/storytelling tradition and the call and response traditions that often accompany it wind back into antiquity (mello 2001). each set of traditions, even in this relatively new art form, builds a familiarity and an expectation around the event. in poetry slam, this expectation is that the event will bring forth something true, poignant, and unique. highlighting the tension between the unique and familiar that festival involves, gadamer (1986) used the example of christmas. it is an annual celebration of an event that happened two thousand years ago, and has developed its own unique rituals, and yet every christmas celebration is different than the last. symbol from a found poem in which calgary poet and poetry slammer tyler b. perry (2010) noticed a sign cautioning against disturbing nesting heron chicks and replaced “heron chicks” with students: students often fall accidentally or are pushed by their classmates. this is a normal occurrence. you may find young students on the ground that are not injured. this is normal. please do not disturb them. they are learning to fly. the currency of poetry is the symbol, and gadamer (1986) hauntingly, and with great relevance to this discussion, reminded us of the origin of concept of symbol. in the ancient world, a symbol was one piece of a deliberately broken object. it would be given to a guest by his or her host with the host keeping the other matching piece. it represented the hope that the two would meet again, and if they did meet that “the two pieces could be fitted together again to form a whole in an act of recognition” (p. 31). in this sense, the symbol acted as “a sort of pass used in the ancient world: something in and through which we recognize something already known to us” (p. 31). williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 8 7 when the poems at slams work, they work by this same process. as an audience member i have found myself listening to a poem with growing interest and recognition and then, though the exact moment can be hard to pin down, it has suddenly felt as if two pieces have been joined as the distance between me and the poem collapses. i have found the hairs on my body all standing on end, or my eyes welling up with tears, or uncontrollable laughter possessing me, or a lump of anger at some injustice the poet is describing make itself at home in my chest. it is often a particularly evocative use of figurative language, the use of symbolism, in a poem that gets to me, but even when a poet is being literal, frank, and very honest, the words have the same effect as symbol, the creation of a complete connection. i might not feel any more fractured than usual before an evening of poetry slam, but these senses of connection and completion are nevertheless the dominant things i experience when the poems are especially poignant. fragmentation the manner in which slam can build connections between poets and between poets and their audiences is all the more remarkable because there is no dominant age group, nationality, or gender to the people who attend poetry slams and no anthem to be written to directly address their shared history. indeed, the poets who are drawn to poetry slam, the style of poems they choose to perform, and the subjects they choose to write about have been described as very diverse (sunsetskyfire, 2014). aptowicz, in an interview with erlbaum, (2009) was emphatic about this, having noted “ranting hipsters, freestyle rappers, bohemian drifters, proto-comedians, mystical shamans and gothy punks have all had their time at the top of the slam food chain” (para. 5). related to gadamer’s earlier thoughts on symbol, a unifying feature of poetry slam, and its ability to connect with diverse audiences, is the openly stated vulnerability of the poets. drawing on the wisdom of aristophanes, as spoken in plato’s symposium, in a further analysis of symbol, gadamer (1986) has reminded us of the claim that (o)riginally all human beings were spherical creatures. but later on, on account of their misbehavior, the gods cut them in two. thereafter, each of the halves, which originally belonged to one complete living being, seeks to be made whole once again. thus every individual is a fragment. (pp. 31-32) though in plato’s symposium this myth is told in the context of a conversion specifically about the nature of love, it speaks more broadly to our existential character as beings who endure a sense of constant sense of fragmentation which we are always trying to resolve by connecting to others. in poetry slam the sharing of the poets’ vulnerabilities, read metaphorically here as their brokenness, the isolation one feels at the hands of fortune, or is made to feel because of injustice, provides the means by which the poet, and the listeners, who endure their own fragmentations, might feel whole again. i have seen this phenomenon at play, particularly, in can you hear me now where the adolescent poets offer up the very vulnerabilities that have often been the basis of their feeling fragmented and even marginalized and in doing so, experience empathy, welcome, and inclusion from their fellow poets and the members of the audience. some notable performances of this nature included michaela newman’s “my therapists keep asking about you,” about the suicide of the speaker of the poem’s stepfather and her trauma at the event and the complicated williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 8 8 ways she misses him (canyouhearmenow 2014) and “small” by kristiana sinding in which the diminutive speaker recalls how, after a frustrating childhood of being the “runt of the litter” she was, as an adolescent, told that she should be happy to be so small because small girls are desirable and that i should be glad to be so petite because i would be wanted because of the inferiority of lesser size because men will find me easier to pin, easier to grab, easier to dominate (2015) in defiance of this patriarchally insulting compliment the speaker of “small” then goes on to note, in mock apology, “sorry buddy but i’m not that into men.” in bethel afework’s (2015) “white girl,” the speaker lashes out at the hypocrisy of her “keeping it real” peers who mock her for not being “black” enough. “call me a white girl one more time, i dare you. call me an oreo one more time,” she challenges (canyouhearmenow 2015). in all three of these popular poems from the competition the brave recounting of experiences in which fate and/or prejudice made the poets feel particularly, even overwhelmingly fragmented was the basis of the shared feeling of emotional completion between the poets and the audience. having noted this, i should point out that while some of the best received slam poems are about very damaging experiences that the poets endured, the poems do need not be this intense to draw an empathetic reaction. well-crafted poems about smaller sufferings are well received too. popular poems at can you hear me now also included brianna lynn’s eponymous poem in which the speaker worries that her life is too boring to write a good slam poem about (canyouhearmenow 2014) and my daughter emma’s “adorable,” in which the speaker insists that her frilly style of dress and appreciation of artistic make up styles is a sign of confidence and not its lack (ucs spokenword 2015). i can attest to this feeling of emotional completion as a poet as well as a spectator. on the adult circuit my three most personal poems, about my frustrations with the special education labelling system in alberta and my own time in school dealing with a perceptual/motor skills disability, my introversion, and my fears of coming down with alzheimer’s as many of my relatives have, while being the most difficult to share have also been the ones that were best received by the audience. moreover, i felt the greatest sense of communion with the audience and my fellow poets, through their supportive listening, enthusiastic applause, and through the conversations many took the time to have with me after they heard the poems. when slam doesn’t play well i do not mean to overly romanticize poetry slam in this discussion. while poetry slam can, as i have claimed, reveal (and revel in) an artistic communion, this does not mean that it always does. there are many things that can thwart its hermeneutic transactions. without some measure of poetic craft, the recounting of a performer’s painful experiences can come off more as a primal scream, perhaps therapeutic for the speaker but shrill and alienating for the audience. as one of my fellow slammers remarked to me, some audiences can be too easily won over, snapping their fingers in approval of familiar clichés like “you have to live every moment like it’s your last” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 8 9 instead of original and honest writing. judges can fall to this tendency too, and in a similar vein can favor particularly dynamic performers instead of attending equally to the craft of the poems. as mali remarked in jest, sometimes the points do become the point for some of the performers in an excessive way and, when the competitive aspect is highlighted disputes ensue more frequently about the fairness of the competition, the quality of the judging, the quality of this or that poet, and the competence of the organizers. while these sorts of complaints unflatteringly emphasize the competitive aspect of poetry slam, they can also be rightful criticisms of the fairness of the events. the tendency towards “score creep” where regardless of the quality of the poetry the scores get higher and higher over the course of the evening, to the disadvantage of earlier poets is such a common problem that it has its own name and is even mentioned as part of poetry slam vocabulary in several books on poetry slam (aptowicz 2008; somers-willet 2009). despite the democratic corrective aptowicz (2008) mentioned, that any time a certain style of slam poetry seems to be at the “top of the food chain,” another style lays in waiting to overtake it, particular styles can become wearisome in the moment. another poet friend of mine has described his recent aversion to performances in the currently favored style involving the rapid delivery of cleverly connected words, with cadence that gives the suggestion that they are stream of consciousness occurrences, accompanied by aggressive gesturing. despite his admission that many of the poets who have this style are very talented, he has told me the style has become a barrier to his connection with their work. while it would be overreaching to claim these as beneficial aspects of poetry slam, in the hermeneutic sense imperfections are part of what gives an event its character. moules (2002) has reminded us that hermes, the messenger god hermeneutics is named after, does not always play nicely. he is a “trickster [with] with the character of complication, multiplicity, lies, jokes, irreverence, indirection, and disdain for rules,” (p. 3). similarly, gadamer (2004) has explained that a game consists of much more than the individual agency of its players, “it is the game itself that plays,” (p. 484). thus, in a larger sense, the sorts of problems that emerge in poetry slam can be seen as slam itself playing somewhat capriciously with the same participants it sometimes rewards with truth, communion, and conviviality. conclusion it seems to me that gadamer (2004) would have been sympathetic to the contention that for poetry to fully reach its potential to be meaningful that it has to be performed. describing dramatic performance, he wrote we have shown above that this kind of reproduction is not a second creation re-creating the first; rather, it makes the work of art appear as itself for the first time. (p. 400) i have experienced this on a practical level. when i was preparing to perform at my first slams, i chose some poems that i had written long before i had ever heard of these events. as i started to rehearse them, with the advice of a more experienced (and more skilled) poet, i discovered that they were too wordy as i’d originally written them. it was not possible to perform impactful readings of these poems without editing for concision, and i found the best way to edit was to practice performing the poems to test the effectiveness of any changes i was considering. i changed them further after public performances, using the “conversations” between my perforwilliamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 8 10 mances and the audience reactions and apparent understandings to enhance my meaning. my poems were not fully themselves until i had crafted them through performance. there are many, particularly in the academic community, who do not share the appreciation that i, and poetry slam’s many participants and spectators have for the activity (somers-willet 2009). harold bloom (in somers-willet 2009) famously dismissed the entire genre of poetry slam with his complaint that i can’t bear these accounts i read in the times and elsewhere of these poetry slams, in which various young men and women in various late-spots are declaiming rant and nonsense at each other. the whole thing is judged by an applause meter which is actually not there, but might as well be. this isn’t even silly; it is the death of art. (p. 21) i feel that bloom, and other scholars with similar opinions have misunderstood poetry slam’s potential. we live in an era where many feel that the pace and volume of text itself has become a threat. scholars worry that the distracting onslaught of words we subject ourselves to on social media and in our professional lives is “bad for our brains” (levitin 2015), and is eroding our ability to empathize (williams 2015). poetry slam provides opportunity to re-engage with, concentrate deeply on, and tarry over language as an event. in its festive aspect and in its fostering of human connection, poetry slam has reminded us that poetry is “play” and, moreover that it is the kind of “play” many of us need to feel more connected. as “play” tends to, it at times looks silly. but it is also deadly serious. acknowledgement i would like to acknowledge my slam comrades richard wagner, tyler b. perry, paul finkleman, and siobhan feeney, the members of the st. anne academic centre slam team of 2015, and all past and present coaches, volunteers and competitors in can you hear me now. references afework, b. 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[video file]. ya salaam, kalamu (2001). in defense of slam! nation. black issue book review. march 1, 2001. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2oiutqpr5i&feature=youtu.be&a. williams, a. (2015). do today’s tech-obsessed teens have less empathy? teenology news by teensafe. retrieved from http://www.teensafe.com/blog/todays-tech-obsessed-teens-lessempathy/. microsoft word newberryfinal.docx corresponding author: andrea m. newberry, faculty of social work, university of calgary email: amnewber@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics december 20, 2012 the author(s) 2012 social work and hermeneutic phenomenology andrea m. newberry abstract in this article, i discuss the connections between social work practice and interpretive approaches to knowledge building, introduce and situate hermeneutic phenomenology for novice social work researchers, and explore the fit between hermeneutic phenomenology and social work. in this paper, i also present a historical, methodological, and philosophical overview of the roots of hermeneutic/interpretive phenomenology from augustine to sartre. i advocate for the congruence between an hermeneutic approach and social work research due to its focus on inquiry as application, emphasis on the situated nature of human experiences, concept of attention to the unspoken or undisclosed, idea of the hermeneutic circle as a link between individual experiences and larger structures, fusion of horizons, and inclusion of the practitioner identity in research activities. keywords hermeneutics, interpretation, phenomenology, social work social work is interpretive and so emerges its affinity to hermeneutics and interpretive approaches to knowledge building such as hermeneutic phenomenology. in this article, i discuss the connections between social work practice and interpretive approaches to knowledge building, introduce and situate hermeneutic phenomenology for novice social work researchers, and explore the fit between hermeneutic phenomenology and social work. social work and interpretive approaches to knowledge interpretive inquiry is highly consistent with social work due to its inclusion of concepts of (situated) agency, closeness to subjects (with subjects understood as human actors), and a critical inter-subjectivity that seeks to disrupt oppressive social discourses through a hermeneutic understanding that connects newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 2 private troubles to public issues. with an ontological orientation that embraces truths over truth, and an epistemological approach emphasizing understanding and description over prediction and control (laverty, 2003), interpretive approaches allow social workers to appreciate human experiences in all their situated richness, without being compelled to make universal claims about the generalizability of findings. it is the relational, reflexive, artistic aspects of interpretative research that allow the depth and nuances of human experiences and social work interventions to really shine. human beings are subjects rather than objects and this existence of human agency means that there can be no absolute laws of human experience and behavior, as may be sought of phenomena in the natural sciences. while powerful external forces may exert themselves upon human subjects, the existential recourse to choice is ever-present, and subjects can and will respond to their environments in new and creative ways. heidegger conceptualized this poststructural understanding of choice as situated freedom, whereby human beings exercise free will in the context of their political, social, and cultural realities (lopez & willis, 2002). while recognizing factors that may influence human behavior, the social sciences must not follow the natural sciences in the pursuit of truth, generalizable to all times, places, and peoples. so critical is the belief in agency that, without it, the only role for social work would be at the macro level. social work is itself a constructed (and contested) activity (payne, 2005), in which practitioners move back and forth between the macro and the micro. despite its focus on structural issues (mullaly, 1997), social work is at the same time deeply concerned with the most intimate of human experiences. each encounter with a client (whether the client is an individual, a family, a community, or a classroom) is a new experience. in the context of working with individuals, in particular, failure to experience this newness with each new encounter alienates the social worker from the client, to whom the experience is profoundly personal. at the same time, an experienced social worker draws from the experiences of others like the client to break down walls of shame, loneliness, and hopelessness, and in doing so, situates the client’s own story in an everexpanding web of human concerns. social workers attend to each individual’s experiences, in order to honor the newness of the narrative. after understanding the clients’ narratives on their own terms (the idiographic), the social worker can reflect upon and share with the client knowledge that may be useful to the client’s own healing, and in particular that which connects private troubles to public issues, thereby reducing feelings of self-blame and isolation. the social worker is changed by each such encounter, entering the hermeneutic circle, and bringing new pre-understandings to each situation. in social work research, the social work researcher’s own prejudices (professional, experiential, and scholarly) facilitate understanding of how to apply an interpretation; in-depth knowledge of the social work field and social work education allow for suggestion of more specific and meaningful applications. in the following section, i introduce hermeneutic phenomenology in its historical, methodological, and philosophical context. this description is intended for novice social work researchers considering interpretive approaches for their work. newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 3 hermeneutic phenomenology in context phenomenology phenomenology, a philosophical approach to studying human experience, is oriented toward understanding the essence of the lived experience of a phenomenon (creswell, 2007; smith, flowers, & larkin, 2009; van manen, 1990). phenomenology has its roots in the greek words phaenesthai and logos (gearing, 2004; moustakas, 1994). phaenesthai means “to flare up, to show itself, to appear” (moustakas, 1994, p. 26); logos is reason. thus, the phenomenon is what appears in consciousness (gearing, 2004; moran, 2000; moustakas, 1994; van manen, 1990), and phenomenology is the reasoned study of what appears (gearing, 2004). hermeneutic and transcendental phenomenology. hermeneutic phenomenology is epistemologically and methodologically distinct from transcendental phenomenology, a theme i will return to later in this paper. to categorize the two traditions at a very superficial level, hermeneutic phenomenology is used to interpret the meaning of lived experiences and communicate the interpretation textually or symbolically, while transcendental phenomenology is based on discovering the objective universal essences of lived experiences and communicating them through pure description (beyer, 2011, creswell, 2007; van manen, 1990). hermeneutic phenomenology’s forefathers: a brief history from augustine to sartre hermeneutics is the tradition, theory, philosophy, and practice of interpretation (moules, 2002; smith et al., 2009). hermeneutic phenomenology, then, has its roots in both hermeneutics and phenomenology. therefore, to articulate hermeneutic phenomenology’s historical, philosophical, and methodological underpinnings, it is necessary to present the contributions of both hermeneutic and phenomenological thinkers. the hermeneutic and phenomenological projects have long and complex histories, making it difficult to identify their starting points. the word phenomenology first appeared in philosophical writing in the eighteenth century (moustakas, 1994, p. 26), and hermeneutics was introduced in theology in the seventeenth century (moules, 2002). given the scope of this paper and the need to balance breadth with depth, i have elected to start with augustine and end with sartre in the twentieth century. the inclusion of these founding influences relies on moules’s (2002) presentation of the “ancestral” roots of hermeneutic inquiry; my decision to include sartre is informed by smith et al. (2009). aurelius augustine, 354-430. the fourth/fifth-century christian bishop, theologian, and philosopher aurelius augustine had a profound effect on both heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology and gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics (grondin, 1991/1994). his work formed the theoretical basis for conceptions of the limits of language to express the inner world, the forgetfulness of language, and the relationship between language and tradition (grondin, 1991/1994; moules, 2002). the limits of language. according to grondin’s (1991/1994) analysis of augustine, the inner world, or “language of the heart” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 35) can never be fully expressed through language; “something more still to be said to in order to comprehend the matter fully” always remains (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 37). grondin explained augustine’s assertion that this is newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 4 because our means of communication have “something contingent or material about them” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 37). therefore, our inner worlds of experience can only be expressed imperfectly. an excessive focus on the propositional component of language contributes to this incomplete expression; for augustine, only through “embeddedness in dialogue” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 37) can language come closer to expressing our inner worlds. the power of the dialogical process is a concept developed further by gadamer in the twentieth century. phenomenology’s primary focus is on subjective, first-person experience; therefore, it is not surprising that later proponents of the phenomenological project took up language’s limitations for revealing the inner world. augustine’s work had a dual influence on later hermeneutic scholars drawing upon augustine, it became a “universal claim of hermeneutics that one can never say all that lies in inner speech” (moules, 2002, p. 4), but it was also recognized that “language is an instrument that mediates our relation to the world and to other minds” (mendelson, 2010, p. 33). language and tradition. augustine’s deliberations on language included meditations on its nominalistic nature in the greek tradition, whereby language, and propositional language in particular, has a singular and technical meaning and is therefore forgetful of itself (grondin, 1991/1994). the relationship between language and tradition, and the tradition that is carried within language, is a hermeneutic theme later picked up by gadamer, who credited augustine’s theological reflections in shaping his understanding (grondin, 1991/1994). martin luther, 1483-1546. the development of hermeneutics occurred alongside the rise of protestantism (grondin, 1991/1994; moules, 2002). german theologian martin luther had significant influence on the history of protestantism and the christian church and on the history of ideas more generally (grondin, 1991/1994). although luther’s initiatives to reform the church “laid the basis for a hermeneutic revolution . . . one might modestly inquire whether luther himself really developed a hermeneutic theory” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 40). luther’s sole professorial interest was scriptural exegesis, and he rejected philosophy as an empty scholastic pursuit (grondin, 1991/1994; moules, 2002). luther adhered to the principle of sola scriptura that is, the meaning of scripture, when read with faith and revealed through god’s grace, is selfevident and “wielded [the principle of sola scriptura] against tradition and the church’s magisterial establishment” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 40). luther’s most significant contribution to hermeneutics may have been the rejection of authority and tradition as the sole arbiters of (scriptural) meaning; four centuries later, in the twentieth century, gadamer returned to the idea of tradition and interpretation. friedrich daniel ernst schleiermacher, 1768-1834. the german theologian and philosopher friedrich schleiermacher has been credited as “one of the first to write systematically about hermeneutics as a generic form” (smith et. al, 2009, p. 22) and as “the father of contemporary hermeneutics” (moules, 2002, p. 4). he advanced an understanding of interpretation that included: the goal of determining the meaning of a text through reconstructing the intention and perspective of the author (and the possibility of understanding the author’s meaning better than he understood it himself), methods of grammatical and technical interpretation, a distinction between laxer and stricter practices of interpretation and a belief in misunnewberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 5 derstanding as the natural state from which interpretation proceeds, and clear identification of the relationship between the part and the whole (grondin, 1991/1994; moules, 2002; smith et al., 2009). reconstructed meaning. schleiermacher articulated the ideal outcome of interpretation of a text as a true reconstruction of the author’s intended meaning “what we are looking for is the very thought that the speaker wanted to express” (schleiermacher, 1809-1810, as cited in grondin, 1991/1994, p. 68). therefore, the best interpretation of a text is not that text’s meaning for the interpreter but rather the reconstructed meaning of the text from the perspective of the author achieved in its ideal form in an understanding of the author’s meaning that is superior to the author’s own. schleiermacher understood this to be an infinite task, as grondin (1991/1994) described: “the goal of understanding better, conceived in terms of an unreachable telos and the impossibility of complete understanding, bears witness to the fact that the endeavor to interpret more deeply is always worthwhile” (p. 71). grammatical and technical interpretation. for schleiermacher, grammatical interpretation involved finding the precise objective meaning of a text (as constituted by linguistic syntax), while technical (or psychological) interpretation addressed the special art employed by the author within the parameters of his linguistic tradition (grondin, 1991/1994). grammatical interpretation was therefore focused on the supraindividual linguistic patterns that shaped the text’s meaning, while technical interpretation was focused on the individuality of the text’s author (smith et al., 2009). stricter and laxer interpretation and misunderstanding as the natural state. schleiermacher differentiated between two purposes and methods of interpretation the laxer practice, which he associated with clarifying areas of textual misunderstanding (e.g., illuminating obscure scriptural passages), and the stricter practice, which assumed misunderstanding as the normal starting point against which a rigorous hermeneutics would guard at every turn (grondin, 1991/1994). schleiermacher’s assertion of misunderstanding, rather than understanding, as the natural state was one of his greatest contributions to the hermeneutic project. calling on the interpreter to question his own self-evident understandings at every stage to some degree foreshadowed husserl’s phenomenological attitude (although husserl was concerned not with the author’s intended meaning in a text but with letting objects and phenomena appear as they really are, untainted by the natural attitude). wilhelm dilthey, 1833-1911. wilhelm dilthey, a german historian and philosopher, began his study of hermeneutics after schleiermacher’s student, august bockh, introduced him to schleiermacher’s work (moules, 2002). dilthey’s conception of the human sciences as epistemologically and methodically distinct from the natural sciences and his advancement of lived experience as the basis for all understanding set the groundwork for the emergence of phenomenology. the natural versus the human sciences. dilthey advanced an epistemological and methodological distinction between the natural and human sciences (makkreel, 2012). the purpose of the natural sciences is explanation based on natural laws, dilthey asserted, while the purpose of the human sciences (the social sciences and humanities) is to develop an understanding of the meaning of history and human life (makkreel, 2012). the human sciences involve analysis of “the more complex networks of the historical newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 6 world and the actual givens of human beings” (makkreel, 2012, p. 10) rather than the artificial abstraction of mechanistic reality undertaken in the natural sciences; therefore, the laws discovered in the human sciences will always be partial and situated that is, the laws “will apply not to history in general, but to specific cultural systems or social organizations only” (makkreel, 2012, p. 10). dilthey sought to “conceptualize the human sciences as autonomous sciences and defend them from the encroachments of natural science and its methodology” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 84). lived experiences. dilthey’s focus on lived experiences was a central element of his philosophy (makkreel, 2012). in his view, lived experiences constituted selfgiven reality involving thinking, feeling, and willing (makkreel, 2012), that is, the facts of consciousness (grondin, 1991/1994). in order for the human sciences to extend knowledge beyond our own individual understandings, they “must be rooted in the original fullness and richness of our lived experience” (makkreel, 2012, p. 12). dilthey’s conceptualization of lived experienced formed the basis for the later development of phenomenology. edmund husserl, 1859-1938. transcendental phenomenology. the german mathematician and philosopher edmund husserl has been credited as “the principal founder of phenomenology” (beyer, 2011, p. 1). husserl developed transcendental phenomenology, an approach to understanding human experience that “has us focus on the essential structures that allow the objects naively taken for granted in the ‘natural attitude’ (which is characteristic of both our everyday life and ordinary science) to ‘constitute themselves’ in consciousness” (beyer, 2011, p. 3). transcendental phenomenology, meant to be a “rigorous science,” was husserl’s response to science’s neglect of the “specifically human questions” (husserl, 1954/1970, p. 7). understanding husserl’s transcendental phenomenology requires an appreciation of his theories about the life-world, the intentionality of consciousness, the natural and phenomenological attitudes, eidetic reduction, phenomenological reduction, and intersubjectivity, each of which i will discuss briefly in turn. husserl, who converted to protestantism in adulthood, was the son of non-orthodox jews. he was persecuted in nazi germany, losing his professorship and access to the university library (zahavi, 2003). more than 40,000 pages of husserl’s manuscripts were rescued and removed from germany by franciscan herman leo van breda after husserl’s death in 1938 (beyer, 2011; zahavi, 2003). unfortunately, almost the entire first printing of a posthumously published work was destroyed (zahavi, 2003). the life-world. the life-world, or lebenswelt, as originally conceptualized by husserl, is the pre-reflective, pre-theoretical world of everyday experience, and it is this world of immediate lived experience that is the focus of his transcendental phenomenology (van manen, 1990). the life-world is prescientific, and therefore stands in contrast to the scientific world: in our prescientific experience, the world is given concretely, sensuously, and intuitively. in contrast, the scientific world is a system of idealities that in principle transcend sensuous experience. whereas the lifeworld is a world of situated, relative truths, science seeks to realize an idea about strict and objective knowledge that is freed from every relation to the subjective first-person perspective. whereas the objects in the newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 7 lifeworld are characterized by their relative, approximate, and proximal givenness . . . the objects of science are characterized as relative, nonperspectival, univocal, and exact. (zahavi, 2003, pp. 126–127) the life-world, as the world of subjective human experience, forms the foundation for scientific ways of knowing (encyclopedia britannica, 2012). husserl’s transcendental phenomenology advanced the lifeworld as a legitimate focus for scientific inquiry. the intentional nature of consciousness. husserl wrote that all consciousness is directed, whether to real or unreal objects in the world (gubrium & holstein, 2000; zahavi, 2003), with the exception of nonintentional “units of consciousness” such as pain (beyer, 2011). intentional consciousness is always attached to an object in the world: “perception, thought, judgment, fantasy, doubt, expectation, or recollection, all of these diverse forms of consciousness are characterized by intending objects . . . the perceived, doubted, expected object” (zahavi, 2003, p. 14). husserl therefore asserted that to understand the nature of consciousness we must also analyze the object to which consciousness is directed (zahavi, 2003). for example, considering the fantasy of a unicorn, we cannot fully understand the form of consciousness that is “fantasy of a unicorn” without analyzing the intended object that is, the essence (or the horizons) of the unicorn (i.e., a unicorn is an imaginary animal; the unicorn is like a horse while not being a horse, etc.). the objects to which consciousness is directed are transcendent more than the “perspectival and horizontal givenness of the object” (zahavi, 2003, p. 95) as perceived or imagined by the subject. zahavi (2003) gives the chair as an example one cannot view the chair from the front and back simultaneously, but nonetheless the chair’s horizons include all of the possible appearances of the chair. the idea of perspectival and transcendent horizons is important in the development of the hermeneutic phenomenological project and must be considered an important influence on gadamer’s later theory on the fusion of horizons. the natural and phenomenological attitudes. the natural attitude is associated with everyday experience (smith et al., 2009). the natural attitude includes many features of our everyday internal worlds, such as our preconceptions, assumptions, constructions, internal beliefs, ego experiences, biases, culture, and judgments (gearing, 2004); and our “practical concerns, folk assumptions, and smattering of scientific knowledge” (zahavi, 2003, p. 11). husserl’s goal was to transcend the “naivety and fallacy of the natural attitude and to move, employing the classic greek dichotomy, from a naive doxa to an episteme, to philosophy as a ‘rigorous science’” (luft, 1998). the phenomenological attitude involves a disengagement from the natural attitude and a reflexive turn “as we turn our gaze from . . . objects in the world, and direct it inward, toward our perception of those objects” (smith et. al., 2009). husserl asserted that in order to objectively analyze the structure and content of consciousness, we must suspend the natural attitude; he developed eidetic and phenomenological reduction to support this “alteration of viewpoint” (zahavi, 2003, p. 11). eidetic reduction. eidetic reduction is an analysis aimed at elucidating the essential properties of an object or experience, those essences without which the object or experience would become something other than the object or experience it is (zahavi, 2003). for example, what are the essential qualities newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 8 that make a tree a tree, rather than a different type of organism altogether? eidetic reduction is intended to uncover the “invariant properties” that transcend the “subjective perception of individual manifestations of that type of object” (smith et al., 2009, p. 14). as a case in point, if i see a white tree, does that mean that to be a tree means to be white? or is whiteness a non-essential variant of being a tree that is, a subjective perception of an individual manifestation of being a tree? phenomenological reduction. phenomenological reduction involves the temporary suspension of preconceptions regarding the phenomena under study and is perhaps the most controversial facet of husserl’s phenomenology. this suspension of presuppositions, called the phenomenological epoche, facilitates “seeing things as they appear . . . returning to the things themselves” (moustakas, 1994, p. 90). phenomenological reduction is achieved through “bracketing” the “taken-for-granted world” (smith et. al, 2009, p. 15) in order to study the essences of phenomena (creswell, 2007). bracketing is a mathematical idea, in which bracketed content within an equation is treated separately (smith et. al., 2009); bracketing in phenomenology means to treat the natural attitude towards an object or experience separately from the phenomenological analysis so that the phenomenon can reveal itself “free of prejudgments and preconceptions” (moustakas, 1994, p. 90). subsequent philosophers such as heidegger and gadamer challenged the feasibility and desirability of bracketing in phenomenological inquiry. intersubjectivity. husserl articulated a complex theoretical model of intersubjectivity. husserl’s conceptualization of intersubjectivity was embodied, experiential, and constitutive (zahavi, 2003). according to husserl, it is through our own embodied subjectivity that we are able to recognize another’s embodied subjectivity as zahavi stated in his analysis of husserl, “it is exactly the unique subject-object status of my body that permits me to recognize another body as a foreign embodied subjectivity” (p. 113). additionally, according to zahavi’s interpretation of husserl, we each understand the other experientially and without access to the other person’s first-person subjectivity: “had i the same access to the consciousness of the other as i have to my own, the other would have ceased being an other and instead have become a part of myself” (zahavi, 2003, p. 114). this point is critical to husserl’s theory of constituting intersubjectivity; the transcendent world (i.e., the objective world) is only made available through intersubjectivity that is: objects cannot be reduced to being merely my intentional correlates if they can be experienced by others as well. the intersubjective experienceability of the object guarantees its real transcendence, so my experience (constitution) of transcendent objects is necessarily mediated by my experience of its givenness for another transcendent subject, that is, by my experience of a foreign worlddirected subject. (grondin, 1991/1994, pp. 115–116) husserl’s student heidegger also takes up intersubjectivity later in the phenomenological project. martin heidegger, 1889-1976. german philosopher martin heidegger was a student of husserl’s who aimed to extend the phenomenological project “heidegger’s approach to phenomenology is often taken to mark the move away from the transcendental project, and to set out the beginnings of the hermeneutic and existential emphases in phenomenological philosophy” (smith et al., newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 9 2009, p. 16). heidegger acknowledged husserl as a formative intellectual influence (smith et al., 2009), while husserl eventually publicly repudiated heidegger’s phenomenology, even referring to him as his antipode (beyer, 2011). key facets of heidegger’s phenomenology included an interpretive stance, a focus on being-in-theworld (dasein), the hermeneutic circle, visible and hidden meanings, and, later in his philosophical career, the role of languageeach of which i will discuss in turn. heidegger’s involvement with national socialism cannot be overlooked in phenomenology’s historical context, and so i will deal briefly with this significant shadow on the phenomenological project as well. interpretive stance. while husserl envisioned a phenomenology that would transcend the natural attitude of everyday life, including our prejudgments about phenomena, heidegger “questioned the possibility of any knowledge outside of an interpretive stance, whilst grounding this stance in the lived world-the world of things, people, relationships and language” (smith et al., 2009, p. 16). for heidegger, one’s foreconceptions, consisting of “prior experiences, assumptions, [and] preconceptions” (smith et al, 2009, p. 25) are brought to each new encounter. simultaneously extending and challenging husserl’s advancement of intentional consciousness, heidegger rejected the possibility of pure reflection because reflection, as a form of consciousness, is “intentional, and therefore never completely separated from the world” (levasseur, 2003, p. 414). dasein. husserl’s transcendental phenomenology was primarily focused on what can be: broadly classified as individual psychological processes, such as perception, awareness and consciousness. in contrast, heidegger is more concerned with the ontological question of existence itself, and with the practical activities and relationships which we are caught up in, and through which the world appears to us, and is made meaningful. (smith et al., 2009, pp. 16-17) therefore, heidegger’s philosophy revived “the ontology of the subject” (moules, 2002, p. 7). the subject of heidegger’s life work, being and time (1962/1927) is “there-being” (dasein), where dasein is the “uniquely situated” quality of ‘human being’” (smith et al., 2009, p. 16). heidegger asserted that dasein is fundamentally relational (intersubjective) dasein is being-with (smith et al, 2009). even being alone is being-with, albeit in a deficient way (smith et al., 2009). heidegger viewed death, and the resulting finiteness and uncertainty of being, as giving dasein a temporal dimension (smith et al., 2009). although dasein is fundamentally being-with, death is significant in that it is faced alone (smith et al., 2009). the nature of dasein presented a fundamental challenge to husserl’s presuppositionless phenomenological project-with dasein involving “the inherently social being who already operates with a pre-theoretical grasp of the a priori structures that make possible particular modes of being” (wheeler, 2011, p. 7). in opposition to husserl’s conception of the phenomenological reduction and the phenomenological epoche, heideggerian philosophy maintains that given the nature of our dasein, “we are unable to completely bracket prior conceptions and knowledge we are necessarily embedded in a historical context” (levasseur, 2003, p. 415). in heideggerian phenomenology, bracketing is considered a specious project (levasseur, 2003). heidegger further develnewberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 10 oped his theory on the role of preunderstanding (fore-conceptions) in his formulation of the hermeneutic circle. hermeneutic circle. the idea of the hermeneutic circle did not originate with heidegger, but it took on new meaning in his philosophy. whereas the hermeneutic circle was previously conceptualized in terms of the relationship between the whole of a text and its parts, or between text and tradition, with heidegger the hermeneutic circle becomes an “existential task with which each of us is confronted” (ramberg & gjesdal, 2009, p. 15). the hermeneutic circle involves an ever-increasing development of understanding as we revise our preunderstandings in light of new experiences: in the hermeneutic circle, we make progress toward sense and meaning by questioning prior knowledge, thus expanding into new horizons of meanings. yet, we never fully arrive, because to arrive would merely represent another stage of pre-understanding. instead, each turn in the circle opens new horizons and possibilities yet resists dogmatic conclusions, because the ongoing project of reflective questions keeps the possibility of new experiences and possibilities alive. (levasseur, 2003, p. 418) according to heidegger, our foreconceptions are necessary prerequisites to new understanding; all interpretations (and all understanding involves interpretation) flow from our presuppositions. appearance-the visible and the hidden. heidegger was interested in what it means for a phenomenon to appear-as explained by smith et al. (2009): “to say something appears suggests that it is entering a new state, as it is coming forth, presenting itself to us and in contrast to a previous state, where it was not present” (p. 24). this is clearly connected to heidegger’s interpretive stance and rejection of a presuppositionless phenomenology; this viewpoint on appearance suggests we cannot view phenomena objectively, because every time we view a phenomenon it appears anew. heidegger was also interested in what is not made visible in the appearance of phenomena what is hidden or concealed (smith et al., 2009). therefore, for heidegger, phenomenological investigation must consider both the manifest and the latent qualities of phenomena as they are revealed (smith et al., 2009). this idea has had important implications for hermeneutic phenomenology, and suggests, for example, that phenomenologists studying accounts of human experience must be alert to both what is being said and what is not being said about an experience. this is in contrast to husserl’s approach, in which the phenomenologist suspends the natural attitude and tries to see only what an object or phenomenon really is. a phenomenologist cannot identify what is not being revealed without recourse to his or her foreconceptions further differentiating heidegger’s interest in the latent content of appearances from a husserlian approach. language. grondin (1991/1994) observed a conscious movement in heidegger’s work towards the importance of language in being. in his later work, heidegger speaks more empathically of language as the “house of being,” yet his beliefs about the limits of language remain (grondin, 1991/1994). reminiscent of augustine, heidegger argued in the final words of the lecture considered to mark the end point of his thought: it is inescapably necessary to overcome the obstacles which make such a saying [of experience] obviously inadequate. newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 11 even the saying that occurs in the form of lecture remains an obstacle of this kind. its saying has been only in propositions. (heidegger, 1969, as cited in grondin, 1991/1994, p. 102) while heidegger gives increasing credence to the role of language in being, he also echoes augustine’s assertion that language is always an inadequate interpretation of inner experience. the importance of language in the hermeneutic phenomenological project is developed more deeply in gadamerian philosophy. heidegger and national socialism. accounts of heidegger’s philosophical work sometimes make mention of his nazi affiliations and sometimes do not. while some scholars present his philosophical ideas without reference to his nazi involvement, others believe his political activities were intimately tied to his philosophical project: everyone-great thinkers included-is capable of errors of political judgment, even egregious ones. however, the more one learns about the heidegger/national socialism nexus, the more one is ineluctably driven to conclude the philosopher himself perceived his nazi involvements not as a random course of action, but as a logical outgrowth of his philosophical doctrines. . . . as a concrete exemplification of eigentliches dasein or authentic existence.” (wolin, 1988, p. 136) while heidegger has been alternately held accountable and exonerated by scholars, the nature and meaning of his nazi involvement remains controversial, especially as it relates to his philosophy. it is fairly well accepted that he was a member of the national socialist party during his rectorship at freiburg university-during which time he gave pro-nazi speeches, eliminated democratic structures within the university, and initiated an end to financial aid for jewish students (peters, 2009). after the war, heidegger was investigated by the denazification committee at freiburg university and banned from teaching until 1949; in 1950 he was made professor emeritus (wheeler, 2011). scholarly attempts to exonerate heidegger have been challenged by the absence of any clear and complete repudiation of national socialism in his later works (wheeler, 2011). heidegger’s nazi involvement cast a shadow over more than heideggerian phenomenology, tainting the phenomenological project more generally (c.f. holmes, 1996). how are we to understand heideggerian phenomenology in light of heidegger’s national socialist activities? wheeler (2011) suggested: it would be irresponsible to ignore the relationship between heidegger’s philosophy and his politics. but it is surely possible to be critically engaged in a deep and intellectually stimulating way with his sustained investigation into being, to find much of value in his capacity to think deeply about human life, to struggle fruitfully with what he says about our loss of dwelling, and to appreciate his massive and still unfolding contribution to thought and to thinking, without looking for evidence of nazism in every twist and turn of the philosophical path he lays down. (pp. 91-92) while the relationship between heidegger’s philosophy and national socialism will likely remain controversial, his philosophical insights continue to influence the phenomenological project today. hans-georg gadamer, 1900–2002. the german philosopher hans-georg gadamer was a student of both husserl and heidegger (moules, 2002). his work is newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 12 known as philosophical hermeneutics, which is focused on understanding and interpretation rather than methodology (moules, 2002). key themes in gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics include methodology and the human sciences, language and conversation, understanding and application, history, and the restoration of prejudice (grondin, 1991/1994, moules, 2002). methodology and the human sciences. gadamer questioned whether acquisition of methods unique to the human sciences was a necessary prerequisite to the human sciences securing legitimate science status, and even whether methodology could be the sole arbiter of validity (grondin, 1991/1994). the hermeneutic task in relation to the human sciences is therefore not to develop a methodology for correct interpretation, but to “demonstrate the untenability of the idea of universally valid knowledge” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 107). the human sciences deal with a different type of truth than the natural sciences, and are better suited to a humanistic discourse than is the methodological, objectifying discourse of the natural sciences (grondin, 1991/1994). moules (2002) described gadamer’s interpretation of truth as “the event of meaning, rather than something of objectivity of repetition. to say that we uncover truth in understanding simply means that we have found a meaningful account that corresponds to experience” (p. 11). language and dialogue. language occupies a central place in gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. gadamer asserted that understanding is not something possessed by the individual, but rather something that emerges through participation in “meaning, tradition, and ultimately a dialogue” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 119). for gadamer, language and interpretation in the human sciences are understood in a dialogical, question-and-response framework because “to understand a text or an event is to understand it as a reply to a question” (grondin, 1999/2003, p. 125). here gadamer returns to augustine’s delimitations of propositional language, in comparison to the greater expressive potential of language embedded in the dialogical process. gadamer devoted significant space in his writing to reflecting on the nature of true conversation, both in form and purpose. genuine conversation, to gadamer, does not involve competing for the supremacy of one’s opinion; likewise, it is not a summative process in which one viewpoint is added to another (gadamer, 1970/2007). the focus of genuine conversation remains on the topic, and the conversational partners hold this topic in common (gadamer 1970/2007). for gadamer, “genuine conversation transforms the viewpoint of both. . . . [and] involves the shared interpretation of the world which makes moral and social solidarity possible” (gadamer, 1970/2007, p. 96). exploring a topic with a conversational partner in order to come to a better understanding of that topic’s meaning has been taken up as an interviewing strategy in hermeneutic phenomenology along with more traditional strategies aimed at soliciting experiential accounts (van manen, 1990). gadamer’s theory of fusion of horizons relates to both the expansion of understanding that emerges between dialogical partners in genuine conversation and the enlargement of knowledge that arises when an interpreter interacts with a text. in each case, each party (whether a person or a text) possesses its own horizon of understanding, and in a fusion of horizons, they merge to create a new, more expansive understanding of the topic (gadamer, 1977/2007). gadamer’s fusion of horizons has important implications for interpretive interviewers, because it suggests newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 13 the greatest knowledge will be created when both parties in a conversation actively contribute to creating meaning, rather than when the interviewer assumes an objective stance so as not to “taint” the findings or influence the interviewee. understanding and application. rather than approaching interpretation as a purely epistemological or intellectual pursuit, and application of interpretation as occurring after the fact (e.g., jurisprudence), gadamer conceptualized “understanding and application as indivisibly fused” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 115). understanding always involves “applying a meaning to our situation, to the questions we want answered” (grondin, 1991/1994, p. 115). central to the act of interpretation is the application of a past text or event to the present (grondin, 1999/2003), an application that is influenced by tradition, history, and custom-so that application becomes an extension of the dialogical search for meaning that precedes the interpreter (grondin, 1991/1994). history. as human beings, gadamer asserted, we are deeply rooted in history-or, as grondin (1991/1994) explained, “we belong to history more than history belongs to us” (p. 116). this means that that our knowledge of history or even of our own historical determinism is always less than the actual workings of history in our lives (grondin, 1999/2003). when writing about the role of history in interpretation, gadamer used the german word wirkungsgeschichte, a word that has proven difficult to translate into english (grondin 1999/2003). grondin (1999/2003) defended “the work of history” as the best translation-“the notion of work gives us a better idea that history is active in us, works in us or penetrates us, to a greater extent than knowledge can penetrate and suspect” (p. 92). in the human sciences, one of gadamer’s principles of the work of history involves the historiography of the topic (grondin, 1999/2003). every topic or research question, no matter how seemingly novel, is part of a larger history of interpretation-“a subject, a problematic, an interrogation will always be inscribed in a tradition, in a debate, of which we must take note” (grondin, 1999/2003, p. 93). the presentation of the historiography of a topic is common practice in the human sciences, usually taking the form of a review of literature leading to the research question (grondin, 1999/2003). prejudice. gadamer argued for the idea of prejudice to be restored to its preenlightenment meaning, before it acquired the negative associations it carries today that of erroneous, unjustified beliefs (gadamer, 1965/2007). in gadamer’s view, “prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. they are simply conditions whereby we experience something whereby what we encounter says something to us” (gadamer, 1965/2007, p. 82). gadamer captured the importance of this concept by saying, “it is not so much our judgments as it is our prejudices that constitute our being” (gadamer, 1965/2007, p. 82). this insight is fertile for understanding hermeneutic phenomenology the researcher’s ability to attend to a phenomenon and draw conclusions about it will necessarily be mediated by his or her prejudices (or pre-judgments). consider, for example, a hermeneutic phenomenologist studying anxiety how would he or she know to inquire about the embodied experience of anxiety unless he or she had prior knowledge (prejudices) concerning anxiety and physical symptoms? in this way, our prejudices will always shape our judgments. jean-paul sartre, 1905-1980. the french philosopher jean-paul sartre continnewberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 14 ued heidegger’s project of existential phenomenology, emphasizing our selfconsciousness and drive for meaning, which is expressed actively in the world through our projects (smith et al., 2009); sartre’s persistent concern with our being-in-the world (dasein) as mediated through our practical concerns (i.e., our projects) continued heidegger’s pragmatic philosophical approach to human experience (flynn, 2011). a few key components of sartre’s philosophy are particularly informative for the hermeneutic phenomenological project: human concern for becoming over being, nothingness, the direction of perception, and freedom (smith et al., 2009). concern for becoming over being. for sartre, human beings are preoccupied with our potential future selves, what smith et al. (2009) describe as “concern with what we will be, rather than what we are” (p. 19). human beings are constantly in process, and “the self is not a pre-existing unity to be discovered, but an ongoing project to be unfurled” (smith et al., 2009, p. 19). the hermeneutic phenomenologist is concerned with the projects taken on by human actors projects that are “embodied, interpersonal, affective and moral” (smith et al., 2009, p. 21). nothingness. sartre, reminiscent of heidegger’s visible and invisible in the appearance of phenomena, was concerned with what he called nothingness, that is, the equal importance of what is absent with what is present in “defining who we are and how we see the world” (smith et al., 2009, p. 19). if we are equally defined by the absent in existential phenomenology, the phenomenologist must consider what might be missing from any account of experience. for example, is belongingness what is absent in an account of loneliness? the direction of perception. we do not pursue our projects in a world that belongs only to us, and our relatedness to others shapes our perceptions of the world (smith et al., 2009). the direction of perception is a dual process encompassing both how the world changes as we perceive others in it, and how it changes us as we perceive ourselves being perceived within the world (smith et al., 2009). sartre’s extension of heidegger’s concept of worldliness to include personal and social relationships, and of experience as “contingent upon the presence and absence of our relationships to other people . . . is perhaps the clearest glimpse of what a phenomenological analysis of the human condition can look like” (smith et al., 2009, p. 20). freedom. existentialism emphasizes the freedom and responsibility of human beings to choose what they will become, but this freedom is situated in the complex biographical and social content of individual action (smith et al., 2009). sartre’s freedom is a salient reminder that human beings are subjects who actively interpret and construct the world (see also mead, 1962). social work and hermeneutic phenomenology i encourage social work researchers to consider hermeneutic phenomenology as an appropriate methodology for knowledge building in the discipline. several features of hermeneutic phenomenology seem especially suited to social work research, including its focus on inquiry as application, emphasis on the situated nature of human experiences, concept of attention to the unspoken or undisclosed, idea of the hermeneutic circle as a link between individual experiences and larger structures, fusion of horizons, and inclusion of the practitioner identity in research activities. newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 15 social work is an applied discipline with a focus on social justice, the pursuit of which is an obligation included in the code of ethics for canadian social workers (canadian association of social workers, 2005). according to davey (2006), “understanding does not merely interpret the world but changes it” (p. xiv). therefore, it is appropriate to include a focus on praxis in interpretation in social work research. madison (1990) stated “a good understanding will be “suggestive” or fertile in that it raises questions that stimulate further research and interpretation” (p. 30). heidegger used the term dasein (therebeing) to emphasize the profoundly situated nature of human experience and the relationships and activities from which experience and meaning emerge (smith et al., 2009). social work is a highly situated endeavor, composed of a complex web of relational, structural, practical, and axiological concerns; heidegger’s dasein is therefore a much more generative image for social work researchers than husserl’s pre-reflective lebenswelt. additionally, a hermeneutic approach allows engagement with participants in a meaningful way clarifying, wondering, and trying out interpretations in a way that creates a broader horizon of understanding than a strictly objective approach. utilizing a hermeneutic phenomenological approach allows the social work researcher to attend to what is unspoken, as well as what is spoken, and in doing so to invite the shadow side of social work back into the interpretation. many experiences where social work is situated involve pain and shame, and are not easily talked about in the larger societal discourse experiences such as trauma, mental health challenges, and abuse. most social workers are skilled in listening for both what is not said about these experiences as well as what is said an approach that can be extended into research activities. like social work, hermeneutic inquiry requires researchers to operate from a position of closeness to, and great sympathy with, their research participants and, at a deeper level, their human conditions of which the (social worker) researcher is an acknowledged part. detachment from clients may be a marker of burnout in social workers, and a willingness to enter into clients’ life worlds in a way that eases pain and facilitates positive change is required of social workers. entering with clients this way, often acting as a witness to both the darkest and most life-giving experiences of human life, changes the social worker in some very fundamental way. the committed social worker will enter again, and again, and again into these places, coming out each time as someone at least slightly changed. as social workers and clients bring their personal and practice experiences to each encounter, so too are they changed by each other a hermeneutic circle. social workers bring all of their humanness to their work with clients. the social worker’s own humanity is the foundation of all he or she will achieve as a helper, advocate, and witness. social constructionist perspectives, which are consistent with hermeneutic inquiry, recognize the socially constructed nature of reality and the inter-subjectivity of knowledge. the inter-subjectivity of the social worker and client is mirrored in the inter-subjectivity of researcher and participant. this “fusion of horizons,” as expressed by gadamer, refers to the fluid meanings, ideas, and experiences of participants, which are situated in a changing historical context (lopez & willis, 2004). much of social work practice, whether in a clinical, community, or educational contexts, is concerned with making sense of, and often newberry journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 14 16 transforming, painful social experiences (i.e., disrupting oppressive discourses). the hermeneutic approach extends these sensemaking activities to the research realm. cocreation of meaning is central to this approach. action is at the heart of social work social work is an applied discipline focused on change. in order for real change to happen, we must first create a different set of meanings about the situations we find ourselves in, and then take action to transform those situations. some narratives are more limiting than others, and social workers work with clients and the public to question limiting narratives and co-create new ways of understanding private troubles and public issues. as clients may be changed by their work with social workers, so too are social workers changed, often irrevocably, by their work with clients. the social worker, forging yet another professional identity as a researcher, cannot and should not shed the earlier practitioner self. the emergence of the novice social work researcher is another interpretative process in the web of self and profession, in which it is not enough to acquire technical competence. rather, the novice researcher is called to explore the values of their work and the values of the research endeavor to arrive at a beginning place of congruence and commitment. once again, a new self emerges from the old. note the joseph-armand bombardier doctoral scholarship from the social sciences and humanities research council provides support for the author’s research and scholarship. references beyer, c. 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(2003). husserl’s phenomenology. stanford, ca: stanford university press. corresponding author: whitney c. turcato, rn, bn email: whitney.turcato@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics october 25, 2016 the author(s) 2016 knowing people and interpretive practice whitney c. turcato, graham mccaffrey, & nancy j. moules abstract this paper is my response to the statement “all nursing is interpretive.” using an exemplar from my experience as an outreach nurse with the homeless population, i provide my perspective on how nursing is not only interpretive, but how interpretation is an integral component of nursing practice across practice settings. it is demonstrated that interpretation not only helps us to know people, but can also help us navigate our settings and at times keep us safe. it is written in the first person from the perspective of the first author. keywords hermeneutics, interpretation, nursing, mental health nursing, outreach nursing i (turcato) entered into my career as a mental health outreach nurse when i was a new graduate. i continued with outreach nursing until just recently. when i reflect back on the years i spent working alone in the community, i at times wonder how it was that i kept myself safe. there were many aspects of the job that were hazards to my safety. there were homicidal clients not wanting to take their medication, or unknown guests hiding under the bed. at times, violent pets would greet us at the door, along with intoxicated relatives. there may have been weapons in the home, and every once in a while a known drug dealer would make a cameo appearance during an inhome session. with little protection from these hazards, and the continuing presence of such hazards in current day outreach work, i have always found myself interested in how nurses maintain their own safety when working alone in the community. in conversation with these nurses, i have often heard that they keep themselves safe at work because in one way or another, they know the people with whom they work. in the following paper, i will focus on the outreach turcato, mccaffrey, & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 15 2 nurse’s work as an interpretive practice, and how this relates to the outreach nurse knowing their patient. throughout the paper, i will use an exemplar that is adapted from real practice in order to illustrate aspects of outreach nursing. the following is the beginning of my exploration of the outreach nurse using the lens of “nursing is an interpretive practice.” marvin is dying. again. the nurse glanced at the alarm clock on the side table. three thirty a.m. she knew the culprit, the one who had woken her from sleep by bringing to life her worn blackberry that her workplace had provided. “marvin…” she exhaled as she reached to answer the singing blackberry. “hello, you’ve reached the on call line, this is whitney.” she tried to sound inviting. “whitney, it’s marvin. i’m dying,” the nurse took an exasperated deep breath before replying; “you’re not dying marvin.” to which he predictably retorted “yes i am. i’m dying.” the nurse smiled a little. marvin, a 45-year-old aboriginal man, had always been one of her favourites. despite his weathered appearance, short temper, tendency towards alcohol and crack abuse and despite struggling with schizophrenia and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, marvin seemed to make friends wherever he went. she admired his spirit and his resourcefulness. “marvin, if you’re dying, then how are we going to go bowling tomorrow?” she was grateful she had something to distract him with. bowling happened to be one of marvin’s favourite activities, and the recreation group happened to be doing just that tomorrow afternoon. “we’re going bowling tomorrow ! yeah, sure, right, i’ll see you tomorrow!” and with that, he left the nurse to finish what was left of her sleep. perhaps the reader is disappointed by this nurse’s response. “she didn’t even complete a mental status exam” or “she should have assessed his physical well-being” are some of the critiques you could be making. perhaps the reader is afraid for this nurse’s license. “you can’t just ignore someone when they say they are dying!” perhaps you are wondering about the efficacy of bowling as an intervention to prevent imminent death. before you rush off to perform an internet search for scholarly articles pertaining to death and bowling, let me put these wonderings and worries to rest. this nurse was not acting negligently, she was not ignoring marvin’s concerns or mortality, nor was she slacking on her nursing duties. this nurse was providing excellent nursing care, utilizing an aspect of nursing that is everpresent and often overlooked. this nurse was interpreting. turcato, mccaffrey, & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 15 3 the interpretation of dying the next morning at the daily meeting, the nurse giggled and rolled her eyes when she told her coworkers about the phone call. they were all too familiar with the early morning calls from marvin. some of the team members reported being on the phone with marvin for up to twenty minutes trying to convince him that he was not dying. c learly, she had entered into a conversation that was there all along. the nurse shared her late night thought process. “i think that he’s becoming very lonely now that he’s out of the shelter and in an apartment by himself. he’s great at finding people to chat with during the day, but at night the on call line is his only source of human contact.” as stated in moules, mccaffrey, field, and laing (2015), “precisely because language is endlessly proliferative, any given word, statement, text or interpretation is finite within the world of meaning” (p. 36). the healthcare team was able to interpret marvin’s word “dying” to mean something that it does not conventionally mean. this was a man who was trying to convey his emotional pain to someone who could help and was able to do so because nursing is an interpretive practice. the popular perception of nursing is that we are in the business of knowing the anatomy of the human body, the diagnoses that ail our physical being, and the treatments that can be utilized to save lives. the truth is that nursing encompasses much more than anatomy, diagnosis, assessment, and treatment. n urses are in the business of knowing people. as nurses, we are constantly balancing what is tangibly in front of us, with what we are sensing, inferring, or interpreting. using our previous experiences with the client in front of us, or using experiences from clients who have been in front of us before, we are able to interpret further into what may be lying just under the surface. this knowing of people is not static, and is forever changing. knowing people is rife with interpretation. what we know of people now, or now, or now will contain different truths, and these truths will be different for each of us. these truths are contingent on context, histories, perspectives, and experience, and thus are ever changing and far from universal. listening to the spidey sense two months later, the nurse parked near the apartment building where marvin lived. it was time for their first meeting of the week. usually, they spent their hour catching up on what trouble marvin found himself in over the weekend, or what he’d been watching on t.v. they usually chatted while the nurse helped him tidy up his apartment, using this time as an opportunity to assess his mental status and general well-being. as the nurse entered the building, and approached marvin’s front door, she began to feel that something was different. something wasn’t right. she subconsciously felt for her worn out blackberry, making sure it was near her if she needed it. she knocked three, maybe four times. marvin wasn’t answering. the nurse remembered many conversations she’d had w ith her seasoned coworkers. they often spoke of that “spidey sense”when they were certain something was not right, although they couldn’t explain how they knew. they had encouraged her to always listen to those sensesbetter turcato, mccaffrey, & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 15 4 safe than sorry, they’d said. the nurse called the front desk at the office “hi, i’m just at marvin’s place. i’m going to try his front door, something’s not right and he’s not answering. can you stay on the line with me? just in case.” the secretaries were seasoned in these sorts of phone calls. the nurse pushed on marvin’s front doorit was unlocked and opened just far enough for the nurse to see inside. marvin was lying in front of the door face down on the tile. he was unconscious. each interaction that we have as nurses informs the next interaction that we have. we are in a constant state of gathering new knowledge and information, and it is with this new knowledge and information that our perspective is changed, and we are changed. not only are we changing as these events keep happening, but the world around us is also changing and evolving. o ur understanding is never static, and is always adjusting in relation to who we were then, who we are now, as well as what setting we were in then, and what setting exists now. this dance of temporality continues on; we collect new information and knowledge and thus a new perspective. all the while, new events happen around us, creating a new setting. in nursing, it is through this processthrough new interactions, new information, and new settings that we begin to know people. nurses are able to know that this heart rate is elevated due to nervousness, and not pathology or this baby’s cry is telling us something is wrong, or that marvin is lonely and not dying. we know these things not because we have concrete evidence. these things are not explicitly stated. we know these things because we are excellent interpreters. the emancipatory event once the acuity of the event had subsided, and marvin was away to the hospital to be cared for, the nurse had time to reflect on what had happened. at some point, she had sensed that something was different when approaching the apartment building. the nurse was addressed by an event of some proportion. this event made the familiar and comfortable world all of a sudden feel strange. the nurse’s way of being was disrupted, and that which she had taken for granted that she would arrive to marvin’s home and his home would greet her the same way that it had done for months priorwas suddenly something to be questioned. this sudden jolt forced her to step back from her deep absorption in the familiar world. the event ever so subtly asked her to examine from a different angle, and to interpret from a different vantage point. the event, however mysterious and evasive it may have been, revealed paths that she had not before noticed and she then exercised judgment and chose to explore a new path. this new path was illuminated only by the event. she was suddenly emancipated from the chains that she had been unknowingly bound by, and was able to keep herself safe. at times, nurses perceive the intangible, and are interpreting at a level that is even below consciousness and is almost innate. whether we call this our “nurses intuition” or the “spidey senses,” we are often reflecting after the event thinking; “how did i know that?” we are able to hear the unsaid, at times being completely unaware of the process that our e xperience is guiding us through; for examples: when a client walks into therapy and without tangible reason, we sense that something has shifted within them; when a patient walks into the waiting room, and the triage nurse senses an emergency before he collapses to the floor; when the outreach nurse knocks on a door, and knows something is wrong on the other side. when we reach a place turcato, mccaffrey, & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 15 5 where we are absorbed in our practice, the phenomenon of hearing the unsaid happens regularly, and at times appears to be a n innate sense. these instances happen across practice settings and can be said to be the essence of nursing as an interpretive practice. conclusion outreach nurses pride themselves on knowing the people that they work with in the community. the way that we know our patients is innately interpretive and is based in language, historical context, current settings, experience, and conversation. while the subject of knowing our patients as outreach nurses requires further inquiry, perhaps in the form of qualitative research, the above may serve as a platform for such further inquiry. it is also worth mentioning that this is one representation of how outreach nurses keep themselves safe while working alone in the community. it is one possible response to the statement “outreach nursing is an interpretive practice.” references moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. microsoft word hoveycraigfinal.docx corresponding author: richard hovey, phd email: rbhovey@gmail.com faculty of dentistry, mcgill university journal of applied hermeneutics february 7, 2012 the author(s) 2012 learning to live with osteoporosis: a metaphoric narrative richard hovey and robert craig abstract a philosophical hermeneutic research approach was chosen to explore the meaning of living with osteoporosis, a degenerative bone disease, through the narratives authored by twelve participants. the findings provided in this article offer a perspective of how one’s shifting sense of self-renewal was expressed through osteoporosis-specific metaphors, which explicated a transformative process of how one learns to live well with osteoporosis. three metaphors were identified and interpretively named the shattering, the surrendering, and the dance. consideration was given to how an interpretation of these findings, through metaphor, may benefit others living with osteoporosis, and how those diagnosed in the future can benefit from shared understandings and conversations about the meaning of living with osteoporosis. as persons endeavored to make meaning of living with their illness, metaphors provided a useful common ground and invitation for discussion, story-telling, and the development of supportive relationships – all implemented as educative methods to positively transition the impacted persons’ physical, emotional, and social traumas toward the possibility of self-renewal. keywords illness narrative, osteoporosis, metaphor, patient experience, philosophical hermeneutics, transformational learning theory language is the fabric that weaves individual lives in and out of the lives of others. (hovey & paul, 2007, p. 58) osteoporosis is sometimes called the silent thief because it steals-away bone mass without any discernible symptoms (osteoporosis canada, 2011). however, over time, when this illness manifests through its diagnosis, or from the first fracturing of the person’s bones, its capacity to disrupt and indiscriminately invade multiple dimensions of one’s health is often overwhelming (crossley, 2003; hovey & paul, 2007). when we are in good health, we take for granted our capacity to engage, move, work, socialize, and play almost effortlessly and without concern for active participation within our personal, physical, social, hovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 2 and relational worlds (hovey, 2012). however, a diagnosis of osteoporosis, with or without a bone fracture, can dramatically change one’s sense of self-efficacy and alter the ability to meaningfully participate in our lives (cripe, 2009; hovey, 2006). illness disrupts our lives and creates new personal narratives to describe how we engage in, and interpret, our world. from the inconvenience of a common cold or flu to a diagnosis of cancer, cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, or osteoporosis each presents a unique and specific set of reactions, perceptions, and expectations (fife, 1994; frank, 2009; hovey, 2006; hovey & paul, 2007; hydén, 1997; nielsen, brixen, & huniche, 2011; shapiro, 2011; solimeo, weber, & gold, 2011). the diagnosis, treatment, and possibility for recovery are contingent on multiple factors such as the extent and severity of the illness, the degree of vulnerability of the ill person, and possible restrictions for social engagement with others. communication within the context of the health care providerpatient relationship necessitates finding a common ground where the medical practitioner and the patient and family can achieve an understanding of what is happening to them. in this article, we describe a philosophical hermeneutic inquiry that explored the experience and meaning of people living with osteoporosis. our intention in this article is to offer insights and understandings from participants who have learned, or are learning to live, with osteoporosis, and with these insights, to better develop health care education, promotion, and practice initiatives that enhance the lives of people living with osteoporosis. we explored the transformative process of learning to share the collective understanding of others` illness experiences, and provide firsthand narrative accounts of persons living with osteoporosis. these perspectives offer new insights into how people learn to live with this chronic illness and help to interpret key lessons for those providing care (cripe, 2009; hovey, 2006; hovey et al., 2011). for persons living with osteoporosis and their families, the sharing of osteoporosis stories offers a possibility to connect with others both pragmatically and relationally – about the meaning of living with this illness (charron, 2006; hovey & paul, 2007). background persons living with a diagnosis of osteoporosis can be regarded as an illness to be treated, “within a medical system whose currency is diagnosis, difference is often defined through disease” (metzl & poirier, 2004, p. vi). in addition to the physical treatment of the illness, those impacted have also identified as persons living in a world comprised of relationships, families, social-relational networks, educational endeavors, work, activities, and self precariously hinged on the hope for a healthy and meaningful future (black, 2002; hovey, 2006; smith & sparkes, 2008). consequently, conversations about the impacts of osteoporotic symptoms on one’s physical well-being also commonly include references to the social, relational, and personal implications of osteoporosis on their previously-known ways of living their lives (hovey, 2006; metzl & poirier, 2004). having osteoporosis means that it is always on my mindand with the need to be careful, but sometimes you get thinking about something else and you start to do things as you always have and then you think:“should i be doing this?” the above quote from a participant illustrates the transition from being diagnosed with osteoporosis to living under constant vigilance with previously-taken-for-granted activities, in order to prevent further injury hovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 3 and suffering. osteoporosis can become a constant concern and through and its expression, the illness narrative helps in humanizing the experience (frank, 2009; tamas, 2009). as human beings we create narratives to interconnect and make sense of all aspects of our internal and external lives through humanizing narratives (hovey, 2006; hovey & paul, 2007). concerning illness narratives, frank (2009) reminded us, “…that all aspects of life need narration. to be human is not simply to live a life but to reflect on that life by telling it in multiple ways to multiple audiences, throughout the course of our lives” (pp. 187-188). the illness narrative becomes part of our inclination to humanize illness, rather than enduring the “dehumanization that [osteoporosis] patients have experienced at the hands of some medical practitioners and in the cultural imagination.” (deshazer, 2009, p. 216; hovey, 2006) the illness narrative becomes an opportunity, cathartically and therapeutically, for the person telling their experiences to help locate the illness within their life context and to help in the process of learning to live with chronic illness and to engage in self-renewal (fife, 1994; lange, 2004; rimmon-kenan, 2006). through the explication of illness narratives, the opportunity to learn with, from and about, those living with illness as a knowledgeable other person is created (hovey & craig, 2011). engagement with, and learning from, people living with osteoporosis affords the means to incorporate their narratives as knowledge that informs healthcare, illnessspecific education, and real-life priorities, providing support and hope during these new and confusing experiences for those following in the footsteps of being diagnosed with a similar illness. the illness narrative offers both general understandings of the traumas of being diagnosed with a serious illness, as well as a description of the illness’ particular symptoms and characteristics. the persons diagnosed with cancer, diabetes, heart problems, osteoporosis, and other illnesses will create narratives that are specific to their understanding and meaning of how their illness will influence the totality of their lives (hovey, 2012). methods the participants this philosophical hermeneutic research project took place in two major canadian cities. ethical approval was obtained from both the university of calgary and the calgary health region ethics review board. volunteer participants were recruited and after careful explanation of the parameters of the study, they signed an informed consent document. indepth individual interviews were conducted with 12 persons; one male and 11 female participants. participants’ ages ranged from 32 to 83 years, with a mean age of 61.8 years. the length of time living with osteoporosis – by approximate date of diagnosis – was from 2 to 30 years among participants (mean of 10 years). the age of being first diagnosed with osteoporosis ranged from 30 to 65 years of age, with a mean of 52 years of age. research approach the philosophical hermeneutics approach engaged involved the selection of participants who could best inform a perspective on a particular topic and invite a new understanding of it. in philosophical hermeneutics, interpretation is an ongoing process that begins with initial understandings of the research protocol and continues through the interview process, transcription, and textual analysis. these understandings are finally explicated through interpretive writing. this approach relies on a deep engagement with the topic and textual data, and attempts to generate new or differhovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 4 ent understandings through a circular interpretive movement from the narrative parts of the experience to the whole rather than extracting or codifying themes. philosophical hermeneutic participant interviews are semi-structured and conducted in a manner such as, to allow the meaning of the content and context of the experience to be fully expressed from the participant’s perspective, to remain the central topic of exploration. when participants tell of their personal experience out loudinto the worldit joins with the common experiences of others (davey, 2006; gadamer, 1989; kearney, 2003, 2011). the shared collective of unique experiences lead interpretively to an understanding that is respectful of both the singularity of people and their experiences of an event, as well as what is commonly understood when interpreted among many others who have shared in a similar experience. accounts of human experiences, however, are always interpreted from the participant’s social-cultural, historical, and other specific characteristic perspectives. the individual narrative becomes part of the common history of the participant group by showing how one narrative account is an instance of something that can be more commonly understood. it can be stressed, however, that research findings and current understandings are always only provisional to further interpretations. the philosophical hermeneutic research process is inclusive of other perspectives and understandings about a topic. the consequence is that, as narrative texts are read and re-read, they open up other possible interpretations and new understandings. kearney (2011) wrote that hermeneutics: …[r]efers to the practice of discerning indirect, tacit or allusive meanings, of sensing another sense beyond or beneath apparent sense. this special human activity may in turn call for a method of second order, reflective interpretation involving a process of disclosing concealed messages, either by a) unmasking covered-up meaning (hermeneutics of suspicion) or b) by disclosing surplus meaning (hermeneutics of affirmation). (p. 1) metaphor as common ground being diagnosed with an illness such as osteoporosis turns lives upside down. understanding a person`s unique experience necessitated the consideration of a three-part relationship, where one person comes to an understanding with another, engaging with that second person about a topic or conversation, which consequently leads to a new third aspect of the relationship: a shared understanding of the topic common to both participants. this is the work of gadamer’s dialogical hermeneutics: when two people understand each other, they always do so with respect to something and, in this project, the something the topic being understood was the experience of learning to live with osteoporosis (gadamer, 1989). it is through an interpretive process, where the experience of the individual narrative becomes located within others as a collective, that reveals the commonalities within the illness experiences of others and contributes to the collective experience of something through narrative and conversation (davey, 2006; frank, 2009; kearney, 2003). the experiences of the research participants presented in this article were articulated through interpretations of their illness experiences in order to create a common ground for the person and medical practitioner, and enhance the possibility for understanding of such a complex topic (gadamer, 1989; hovey, 2012; lakoff & johnsen, 2003; mccrickerd, 2000; sturmberg, martin & o'halloran, 2010). as gadamer (1989) stated, hovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 5 …if a person transfers an expression from one thing to the other, he [she] has in mind something that is common to both of them; but this in no-way needs to be generic universality. rather, he [she] is following his [her] widening experience, which looks for similarities, whether in the appearance of things or in their significance for us…this is its fundamental metaphoric nature. (p. 429) the utility of metaphor provided a vehicle in which the common encounter of living with osteoporosis could be represented within a context that was representative of the unique experiences shared by the participants (hovey, 2006; 2012). these experiences included the reality that an intended, expected, and anticipated life was interrupted by an unexpected, unplanned, and unwelcomed illness. osteoporosis became a serious disruption from a normal and predictable life journey to a transformative passage that involved suffering, courage, and commitment toward healing and self-renewal (gadamer, 1996; hovey, 2006; shenk, davis, & murray, 2008). findings transformational journeys: diagnosis to self-renewal chronic illness may “reduce a person to an exhausted heap, sunk into a sofa or a bed, helpless, weighed down by the unbearable weight of flesh, bone tired” (caputo, 1993, p. 208). i guess it was anger, i don’t know, maybe depressed; i quit the gym and i stopped exercising and i had been exercisingyou knowfor twenty-five years and then i ended up like this. so i just said ‘forget it’ and i stopped everything and i gained weight and i led a much more sedentary lifestyle now. i think that is all because i was very upset and i didn’t talk about it with anybody. shattering. a participant recounts the traumatic and disorientating moment of finding out that she had osteoporosis: “you know undoubtedly when you are first diagnosed it is very traumatic. have you ever seen snow white and the seven dwarfs? do you remember when the queen diverted to the witch? she looked exactly how it feels.” certainly, this participant was not describing a transformation in her appearance similar to that of the witch in the story; rather, in that moment, her quote provides insight into the powerful influence of her diagnosis in distorting her image of self. the participant described her situation emotively through metaphor, as a means of interpreting a wide range of experiences, which were concerning changes to their life since their diagnosis of osteoporosis. participants described the shattering effect of osteoporosis, not only of their own physical conditions, but also the impacts of diagnosis on their emotional and social-relational conditions (hovey, 2012). “i feel like a stupid, little old lady. i don’t think of myself as a little old lady but mincing along [on an icy path] trying to make sure that i’ve got my foot squarely planted so that i’m not going to take a topple.” in this case, the participant deals with both a new perception of herself of becoming “a little old lady” who now must be extremely cautious as she walks with uncertain footing, with a topple becoming a frightening and life-altering concern. a fracture sets into action several life-altering changes created by pain, possible deformity, social isolation, and an altered sense of identity (black, 2002; petrie & weinman, 2006; vitacca, isimbaldi, mainini, & melazzini, 2011). “i am sixtythree and i just turned sixty-three, but i did not think that ‘old’ happened, until you are eightyand so i didn’t intend to think about it [ageing] for a while.” consequently, the explanation of these journeys provided a porhovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 6 trayal about the complex series of progressions, adaptations, and new learning told by the participants. another participant detailed: “it is shattering when you are first diagnosed; you think, my god! i mean most people have this vision of the little old (osteoporotic) woman and the pain is tremendous.” metaphorically and practically, the experience of osteoporosis began with a shattering of bones, which represented the biomedical treatment of the illness, as well as how it influenced and shattered the social-relational aspects of participants’ lives. the shattering was not just about fracturing a bone but also being forced to live their lives differently as the participants became overwhelmed by fear, apprehension, and rapid changes to their perception of self and social identity (crossley, 2003; hovey, 2006; hovey & paul, 2007; kearney, 2003; smith, & sparkes, 2008;). there was also the accumulated frustration that came from living for many years with something unnamed before their osteoporosis was diagnosed and treated. it was traumatic! i was really upset because i could not ski and then i broke my ribs around that time too and so that further indicated that i had osteoporosis. then i broke two toes last year and i either have a broken or cracked rib right now so i just knowyou knowevery time one of these things happens it’s more loss and so you have to grieve. some participants described their initial fracture(s) as a complete surprise: “the fall was nothing.” they were unusual: “i was only lifting a box that i had always lifted;” a minor fall or a sudden, insignificant turn that resulted in a painful and disabling fracture. medical intervention provided crucial care after the shattering; healthcare practitioners eventually made the correct diagnosis, which then led to the appropriate treatment that promoted healing and the future maintenance of their bone density. one participant provided an account of the seriousness of osteoporosis; not the illness per se, but the pain associated with undiagnosed fractures: “i fell down one winter and i had to lie in the snow bank because i could not get up. every time i tried to get up, the pain was excruciating, and i would pass out from time to time. i thought this was a really dangerous situation, the wind was howling like mad, coming across the driveway onto the lane and sidewalk, and i was getting covered with snow.” although these participants’ medical needs were eventually met, finding support for their psychosocial needs was more difficult or nonexistent. a sense of not being heard resulted in stress, depression, and frustration, all of which have been felt by many individuals when time was not taken to fully explain the situation. one of the other things that stressed me [because of osteoporosis] was regarding my grandchildren. i can’t lift too much and i didn’t have it [osteoporosis] with the two oldest grandchildren, but the two youngest, i never related to or bonded quite as close to them because i could not lift them up or cuddle them. the implications of being diagnosed with osteoporosis, with or without fractures, meant the lives of theses participants were shattered, altered, and devastated. “i had no understanding of what i should be doing: ‘how can i help myself?’ i had no idea...” as well, pain medications had effects, “i find if i take too much pain medication it does go to my head. it makes me feel blocked.” the trauma of the diagnosis and fracturing were overwhelming conditions of the shattering. in this phase, the metaphor of being and feeling shattered, predominate as the biomedical aspects of the illness are at the forefront for the patient. knowing darn well if i slip and land on my butt i’m going to be two inches shorter hovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 7 when i get up because it is mostly my spine that is really bad. in addition, it was just that feeling of ‘i can’t be like i used to be.’ so influential is pain on us that we withdraw from all external experience of the world. every culture knows something of the profound internalization involved in suffering and the endurance of pain. here we face real difficulty, which is at the heart of learning to live with osteoporosis: the pain, fear of fractures, and an uncertain future (gadamer, 1996; hovey & paul, 2007; vitacca et al., 2011). someone’s suffering from the pain and discomfort of osteoporosis can be amplified by their sense of loss-of-self, where a person living with a chronic illness witnesses a previously held concept of “self” dissolve into another, less positive vision (elofsson & ohlen, 2004; hovey & paul). people without the capacity to develop an equally valuable and meaningful alternative self-concept may be more likely to succumb to the powerful emotions associated with loss of independence, social isolation, perceived changes in social interactions, and thoughts of being a burden to others (hovey, 2006; vitacca, et al., 2011). thinking about the self in this negative light creates profound emotional trauma and suffering that is not often recognized or purposely addressed within the biomedical view of the patient. the process of learning to live with osteoporosis involved a transformation from the ill patient to person living with osteoporosis. the initial focus on the physical manifestations of the illness the shattering centered on the humanistic, social, occupational, intellectual, emotional, and environmental aspects that challenged the participant’s participation within their day-to-day of being-in-the-world. surrendering. the next metaphoric interpretation revealed a second common experience that the participants identified as a critical period of transition as people learning to live with osteoporosis. this became a surrendering to the implications of osteoporosis as a life to be lived differently. this is not a negative surrendering as in giving up hope or losing a battle; rather, it means giving in to the functional reality of their situations with the inherent difficultly and uncertainty of attempting to negotiate and piece fragments of their lives back together as different. the capacity to let go of previously-held perceptions of oneself enabled the consideration of new possible ways of being in the world (rossiter, 2007). the participants who surrendered were able to consider and internalize new possibilities for themselves. during the surrendering phase, adaptation to change became the key element that influenced the reconstruction and perceived quality of their lives. faced with limitations, it became essential to make new experiences and activities meaningful. the pre-osteoporotic world needed to give way to the present. the familiar, anticipated, and expected day-to-day life was reassessed and a new perception of quality of life negotiated. surrendering to that which could not be changed opened up new possibilities. for one participant, working through living with osteoporosis meant meeting a patient advocate supporting others living with osteoporosis. i met someone, a person named em [an osteoporosis patient advocate] who was doing a walk across canada. my company was sponsoring her. i helped with the walk, got to meet em and speak to her, and got myself straightened out. she helped me to put things into perspective what i should be doing, how i could do better. well, it was very fortunate that i came to this understanding because em opened up for me a different and more hopeful vision of what it means to live with osteoporosis. hovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 8 personal self-renewal is contingent not only on learning how to manage the physical aspects of osteoporosis but also the other dimensions of health such as, emotional, social, occupational, environmental, intellectual, and spiritual implications (hovey, 2012). for another participant, finding a way to renew her sense of participation was through the acknowledgment that she could no longer be a physical gardener in the way she knew prior to living with osteoporosis. the substantial demands of gardening would be too risky. however, her surrendering provided an alternative means to continue her passion for gardening, which was to teach others. it is always a loss, but, i guess during my life i’ve had to cope with lossso you know you get quite good at it and so i said to myself, ‘i’ll find something else to do,’ and i’ll belong to the ‘green thumbs’ which you know we work in the greenhouses and we have a great time and i still do volunteer work teaching others how to garden. the transformational process is not a passive one as this participant explained: “the patient has to take charge. as an osteoporosis patient, you must take charge of your health, get all the information you can and then put it all together as a lifestyle for yourself. and it seemed to work well for me.” this participant’s surrendering to the reality of her osteoporosis reflected her transition to becoming an empowered patient: “patients don’t understand they think they have to be told what to do, they have to be compliant. i can be compliant, but i am not, because i question why i am doing anything. i don’t do something unless i know why.” the transformation of persons from shattering to surrendering meant finding meaningful ways of re-engaging their world. the transition between these phases is not absolute, as the person living with osteoporosis may find himself or herself cycling back and through each of these phases. although for the person living with osteoporosis a new fracturing of a bone would undoubtedly provide a possible setback within this process, the event is generally not new. as such, their accumulated personal and shared experience of living with osteoporosis and the gathering of valuable lessons and resources over time can help them to prevent and/or cope with future fractures when they occur. although the chronic illness cannot be healed, nor is full recovery from the illness a possibility, the person will often find a means to contextually re-interpret and re-negotiate their life with osteoporosis. life does reconcile with the illness, the pain becomes increasingly manageable, environments are altered for safety, relationships change and evolve, and the implications of living with osteoporosis are no longer unknown and uncertain. although the symptoms of osteoporosis may manifest for the person living with osteoporosis, the surrendering transitions them into a life where the illness is not always at the forefront of the person’s day-to-day world. when the person learns to lives with osteoporosis, it creates a partnership with the illness, one not by choice but through practicality, in which they can begin to move together in the world. dance. the dance represents a transformation from the initial shattering of the person’s life, through learning to work with osteoporosis, toward negotiating a partnership with the illness. the dance metaphorically represents the movement toward self-renewal through a dance with a new partner: osteoporosis. although the illness can only be managed but not cured, it does not have to preoccupy every moment and life-event within that person’s life. i have had to re-create my independence [from osteoporosis] in a different way. hovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 9 you have to be really creative. for example, i used to go cross-country skiing with a very nice group of people; i had to give that up so i had to find some substitute. i now go for walks and swim with another group of people. and i found that i had to substitute activities rather than cut out activities. you have to substitute what you liked to do with something else that you really like to do. the key is to find something else that is going to give you a sense of satisfaction from that activity. this participant’s description of what it means to willingly and mindfully let go of certain activities (surrendering) in order to discover new and meaningful others, is an example of the person’s transformation to new ways of life that may be better suited to living with osteoporosis. several participants also talked about the “gifts” of living with osteoporosis: the gift of very great friendships; i met so many wonderful people because of my osteoporosis. while working with osteoporosis canada, many of us supported each other and created a strong network of women helping others. we were a very experienced group, sharing what we knew and experienced about osteoporosis. giving back to others became an additional aspect of this transformational phase for many of the participants. one became an advocate and mentor to her family, friends, and others by telling as many people as possible about her diagnosis and what she has learned during her experiences. as a result of my unexpected diagnosis, i called my sisters who are both younger than me and said ‘listen, look at me. i’m the sign of health…’ where the both of them are not and nowhere as healthy as me. ‘and i’ve got osteoporosisso you better start pushing to find out if you got it.’ well sure enough, they have it (osteoporosis) and they have it worse than me and they are younger than i am. a relief… in that i was able to help them get onto the path of health. characteristically, the dance meant a transition and ‘letting go’ of some aspects of preosteoporosis life toward other possibilities, in order to be able to consider a new possible self (rossiter, 2007; shenk et al., 2008). “you can choose to dwell on your losses, or you can choose to do something positive. there are things i will never be able to do again. i would love to go skating, or play golf. my husband and i used to golf all the time. now i am scared to death to do it one mighty swing and i am back to where i was.” the idea of being cautiously attentive to one’s external world became extremely important. the dance with osteoporosis entailed (re) negotiating an altered future for many, including increased vigilance to the dangers present in their external environment, while finding new ways to engage in life. “if i choose to do more positive things, assessing the risks of what i do, i also choose to know what my losses have been and say, ‘okay, but i can also still do so many things’.” living well with osteoporosis means becoming a partner in the dance of life, no longer being led by the disease. discussion the physical symptoms associated with osteoporosis present a particular set of new restrictions, challenges, and acquired limitations for those affected. the transformative aspect of self-renewal begins with physical considerations because pain alienates one from oneself (gadamer, 1996). for the person living with osteoporosis, pain became an ever-present fear and substantive obstacle on the journey to self-renewal. as one participant shared, “the days i’m in a lot of pain, i just withdraw. i hovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 10 just lie down and when you are not yourself, so you tend to withdraw.” gadamer (1996) explained that, with … pain, we cannot see paths and solutions in advance, yet we must ask ourselves if there will not always remain new possibilities. we encounter for example the loss of personhood. this happens within medical science when the individual patient is objectified in terms of a mere multiplicity of data. but the question is whether the unique value of the individual is properly recognized in this process. (p. 81) a person suffering with the pain and discomfort of osteoporosis may often realize that the physical symptoms can be amplified by one’s sense of loss of self (black, 2002; elofsson & ohlen, 2004; hovey, 2006). those who lack the capacity to reconceptualize and reconfigure an equally valuable and meaningful self-concept are more likely to succumb to the powerful emotions associated with a loss of independence, social isolation, perceived changes in social identity, and the perception of becoming a burden to others (vitacca et al., 2011). thinking about oneself in this negative light can create profound emotional trauma that is not often recognized within the biomedical view of suffering (black, 2002; charmaz, 1983; hovey & paul, 2007; smith & sparkes, 2008; tamas, 2009). the findings from this research study can provide insight into the transformative aspects of people living with, and working through, osteoporosis in order to re-engage with their lives as meaningfully as possible. this reengagement enlisted a process of critical reflection, in which transforming one’s perceptive provided the opportunity to create new understandings of how one adjusts to living with osteoporosis and facilitates a process of self-renewal. in this regard, the process of learning to live with osteoporosis was described metaphorically as the shattering, surrendering, and the dance. this process, described using metaphoric images from participants’ narratives, aligned closely with the tenets of transformational learning theory (mezirow, 1995; mezirow, 2000). transformational learning theory suggests that transformative learning occurs when individuals confront and engage in critical reflection on disorienting dilemmas such as a diagnosis of a serious illness. this traumatic, disorienting diagnosis for participants was the shattering and the pain of the physical, emotional, and social-relational impacts of chronic illness and cancer. (brigham, 2011; fife, 1994; lange, 2004; merriam, caffarella, & baumgartner, 2007; mezirow, 2003) the transformation toward ‘working through’ osteoporosis meant an in-depth exploration of the illness’ meaning to those affected with consideration of the roles, relationships and actions required to achieve a renewed sense of personal identity (black, 2002; hovey, 2006; kearney, 2003; smith, & sparkes, 2008; weston, norris, & clark, 2011) this process of working through their diagnosis, and finding meaningful ways to re-engage in selfrenewal was identified by researchers as the surrendering. the kind of learning involved in this stage is one in which people living with the diagnosis of osteoporosis cannot return to how they once were. for such a renewal to occur, people learning to live with osteoporosis must negotiate and work through the chaotic disorder of their new worlds (merriam et al.; hovey; lange; mezirow). researchers, through the metaphor of a dance, interpreted the result of the negotiation toward self-renewal, where the person living with osteoporosis negotiates a way to move through life. this dance is one of grace and dignity where the person engages the world differently but with a sense of self-renewal. hovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 11 as biomedical diagnoses and treatment protocols for osteoporosis become more efficient and effective, our attention to the person learning to manage illness and its influences expands. living with a chronic health condition means that even when it is being wellmanaged, it is always present. the transformation of a life – from fracture and/or diagnosis of osteoporosis, to a functional and favourable result – cannot be described as a linear trajectory from diagnosis to cure. rather, the conversations described a series of interconnected experiences that have been – for the purpose of this article – defined as the shattering impact of diagnosis, the participant’s surrendering to a new reality and the partnered dance of living a renewed and significant life. learning to live with osteoporosis not only means learning to live with physical manifestations and symptoms but also with disquieted thoughts about the present and future. as the pain and discomfort subside, a space is cleared for the humanizing activities of self-renewal. as rossiter (2007) stated, … transition involves rehearsing attitudes and behaviours, visualizing oneself as having achieved a hoped-for goal represented by a possible self. rehearsing and visualizing enable one to assess one's own comfort with moving in that direction. it is at this point that some possibilities are discarded and others more fully embraced. (p. 93) the shattering, surrendering and the dance, as osteoporosis-specific metaphors, describe the transformative process worked through by all participants as part of their unique life experiences. as individuals who have shared in a common experience, each transformation and each step toward self-renewal depended upon a multiplicity of factors such as the severity of the symptoms; the individual’s personality; experience with resiliency and adaptation; levels of education, social support, medical support; and age at the time of diagnosis (hovey, 2006; vitacca et al., 2011). each individual experienced unique and widely-differing moments as part of living with osteoporosis, and yet the transformation towards a renewed reality through the development of new emotional and socialrelational experiences was shared among all affected. return to person centeredness patient/person centeredness calls for ethical consideration and an interdisciplinary approach to learn from those who have already experienced osteoporosis; to discover how they became able to live with their illness (beadle-brown & mansell, 2004; crossley, 2003; hovey et al., 2011). this research project provided the means to ask questions and collect instructive narratives meant to complement and extend objective medical discourse of chronic illness, treatment, and recovery. while changes to one’s physical characteristics and personhood occur slowly and over time, a diagnosis of osteoporosis can abruptly alter our perception of ageing (beadlebrown & mansell; black, 2002). in this article, we provide insight into the experience of learning to live with osteoporosis from the personal perspectives of those who have worked through this process and desire to share their experiences with other patients, healthcare providers, and those working with older adults. understanding the situation of others who have experienced the shattering, surrendering and the dance, as osteoporosisspecific metaphors, describe the transformative process worked through by all participants as part of their unique life experiences. hovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 12 traumas can help to create the possibility for better treatment and care, as well as engagement that is softer, more sensitive, and more humanistic. intervening, with a greater understanding of what it means to live with osteoporosis, can allow for specific educative and health promotional activities when, and as, they are needed. encouraging patients’ transformational progress toward self-renewal can not only enhance recovery, but also teach those living with osteoporosis to adapt to the shattering effects of chronic illness, not only to new symptoms and pains, but to a renegotiated way of living in their world. conclusion within our socially-constructed perspectives about those who offer knowledge, information, and education concerning illness experiences, we frequently defer to healthcare and research experts and their understanding of the patient experience. undeniably, healthcare experts’ knowledge and understanding of illness and treatment are invaluable to patients’ long-term recovery from the ‘silent thief of bone mass.’ what may be ignored in the medical process is that the person living with the illness truly becomes the expert of living with that condition. other ways of knowing and understanding which extend to the continuum of care can only be gained with the first-hand experience of something that happens to us or to others. these new and different everyday experiences, narrated from patients as lay-experts, inform the ontological perspective of living with osteoporosis. we need to consider the experiences people accumulate throughout their illness as knowledge guiding the development of health promotion, education, and health care practices, to inform recovery strategies and personcentered practices that enhance the lives of people living with osteoporosis (hovey & craig, 2011). the use of participant narratives to generate osteoporosis-specific metaphors provided an alternative and meaningful explication of the transformational process toward selfrenewal experienced by persons living with chronic illness. understanding the transformational processes (shattering, surrendering, and the dance) specific to this journey entails adopting specific learning and intervention practices that can anticipate and meet the patient/person’s learning needs as they are situated within the process of self-renewal (hovey & craig, 2011). furthermore, we offer in this research that all people learning to live with osteoporosis are multidimensional and dynamic, rather than static and predictable, with the capacity to meet significant challenges throughout their lifetime. from this perspective, the research participants living with osteoporosis revealed a transformative process of selfrenewal defined by the shattering, surrendering, and the dance; these metaphoric interpretations can provide others with the framework to engage in additional conversations about the meaning of living with illness, and the meaning of adapting to new ways-of-being. we issue the invitation to other researchers to interpret and share the diverse experiences of people living with osteoporosis, relying on their expertise of living with a lifechanging chronic illness. we should consider the experiences people accumulate throughout their lives as expert personal knowledge that may guide our approach to developing effective health promotion techniques, educational interventions, and self-management methods for those living with and those who will live with chronic osteoporosis in the future. through careful listening to these experiences, educators, health care providers, and promotion experts can begin to come to an understanding that will inform healthcare practices from a humanistic perspective. on pahovey & craig journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 3 13 tient/person centeredness, beadle-brown and mansell (2004) provided that “it is individualized, in that it is intended to reflect the unique circumstances of the individual person…in both assessing and organizing what needs to be done” (p. 1). in this study, a patientcentered approach for research provided new and different perspectives to inform and complement patient treatment protocols and practices going forward. by sharing the experiences of those living with osteoporosis with other patients, health care professionals, and educators, we can begin to truly understand the life-altering impacts of chronic illness, and allow others to follow in those welltrodden footsteps, softly and with purpose. declaration of conflicting interests the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. bios richard hovey, phd is an associate professor in the division of oral health & society unit, faculty of dentistry, mcgill university with an interest in understanding the experiences of vulnerable / underserved populations. robert craig, ba earned his bachelor of arts (hon.) from the university of toronto and is a researcher with a focus on interprofessional education, patientcentered care, and simulation in health care. references beadle-brown, j., & mansell, j. 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(2011). the invisible disease: making sense of an osteoporosis diagnosis in older age. qualitative health research, 2(12), 16921704. microsoft word gran corrected proof.docx 1 author address corresponding author: thorvald gran email: thorvald.gran@uib.no journal of applied hermeneutics may 12, 2015 ©the author(s) 2015 the process of speech-acting specifies methods for grasping meaning. ten operations. a contribution to hermeneutics1 thorvald gran abstract how does speech-acting theory explain the generation of meaning and meaningful collective action? what place does first person subjective experience have in the theory? what are some of the methodological implications of the theory? the purpose here is to outline the searlean theory of meaning formation and to draw some directions for research into meaning formation and organization from that outline. searle assumes a deep intentionality, a directedness towards the world of all the human capacities. searle asks: how do humans from external inputs from the world and through language produce knowledge of the world and organized projects that implemented change the world? reasoning implies meaning. reasons to act identify conditions of success = a meaningful act. research directions (10) are drawn from elements of the speech act theory: the locutionary process, status assignments and meanings, willfulness, types of speech acts, decision-making, and organization. keywords hermeneutics, speech acts, meaning formation, organization theory normativity and facts finding, interpreting, and understanding the meaning people attach to what they say, what they see and do is a major task in social science. those exercises can be termed hermeneutics. the task here is to investigate how speech-acting theory specifies those exercises. it is a first level gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 2 investigation, in the sense that it searches for the hermeneutic methods from a specification of main elements/concepts and relations between them in the searlean theory of speech-acting. a second level investigation would/should go deeper into the methods of interpretation deemed necessary by each of the elements of the theory. how we generate meanings and meaningful action is contested. one view is that we will never really know because meanings are everywhere, that every investigation has to start from existing meanings among humans and can never really get outside of them. moules, field, mccaffrey, and laing (2014) (quoting from david abram) used the example of a physical object, a bowl. we have to look at it from an angle, from a perspective. we can never sense it fully, see it as a whole. fleming, gaidys, and robb (2003) wrote of gadamer in the same terms: we are in history with values and interests, therefore objectivity is impossible: “according to gadamer (1993), we are all part of history and it is thus not possible to step outside history to look at the past objectively” (fleming et al., 2003, p.115). history is subordinated in our horizons, our perspectives. even our consciousness is in history, therefore our pre-understandings are the structure of what we see and understand. therefore, the method of investigation cannot get beyond co-production of interpretations between researcher and persons investigated = the method of conversation, turning things around together, looking at things from different perspectives. gadamer suggested that all understanding is dependent upon pre-understandings. there is a narrow relation between questions and understanding. however, reflecting on our pre-understanding makes a transcendence of them possible (fleming et al., 2003). searle (1995) agreed that pre-understandings are important – he called them first principles. he agreed that we are set in history and that meanings are all over where humans are. he posited that investigations imply perspectives, chosen angles. investigations imply normativity: what interests me; which questions do i want to address? however, he suggested that nature, including humans as biological creatures, functions without perspectives. normativity is not part of the physical-biological processes. they run their basic course independent of human subjectivity. we can, however, describe and even understand those facts and see their relations. contrary to brute facts of nature, social facts and institutions are constituted on perspectives, on our normativity and willfulness. moules et al. and fleming et al. cited above do not make that distinction. searle suggested that this difference between basic, brute facts and social institutional facts opens for investigations of the brute-social relations and for objective knowledge of how humans normatively generate meanings. dichotomies can be approached differently: for example (1) which side is true? moules et al. and fleming et al. seem to suggest that that perspectives influence seeing. therefore, all knowledge contains subjectively chosen perspectives and thus objective knowledge is, in this sense, excluded. judith butler (2003) assumed that acting is dramatizing conventions and that the idea of freely choosing how to act is an illusion, itself a dramatizing of a convention. we enact conventions. personal freedom is an illusion. charles taylor (1985) struggled with the dichotomy of language as either designation (signaling objects) or expression (articulating stories). he favored expressionism but cannot fully exclude designations. but dichotomies can (2) be approached in their relations. searle was mainly on that track. what is the relation between the subjectivity of gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 3 the mind and the objective world of physics and biology? what is the relation between the production of knowledge and the willful production of projects into the future -or the relation between cognition and volition? what is the relation between unregulated decision-making and institutional power? searle asked how, under which conditions, does human intentionality and language generate word/sentence meanings, agreements and social institutional facts. some of those conditions may be hidden, not experienced, even though they are at work. perspectives and interests are present when seeking knowledge, but perspectives and normativity are not part of, are not present in, the basic physical and biological processes. there is, in other words, a complex natural world without normativity. the human body is part of that world with consciousness, language, and the connected experience of time and freedom of choice. the task is to investigate interactions – how, for example, language produces insight into time, how sensing through processing of sense data can generate knowledge, or how ideas condition the biology of the brain. thus, we can discern two approaches to meaning, to hermeneutics: 1) normative positions or perspectives are inherent in all knowledge; objective knowledge is a false, science legitimating norm and 2) by investigating the relations between basic natural and constructed social facts, from different perspectives, and the conditions for the successful implementation of human intentions, objective knowledge of the meaning people/attach to their actions is possible. the task then is to try – at this first level to specify the searlean speech-act theory and to extract some ideas of how to go about investigating meaning formation and meaningful action. the intention is to take strong findings in the searlean philosophy of speech-acting and society and draw methods for research on meanings and action/organization from those findings. speech-acting, the locutionary process through intentionality to organization the construction of collective intentions through speech-acting is a wide and rich field of investigations (tollefsen, 2002). those investigations raise the question how speech-acting through assigned meaning organizes or constructs organization among people, or how speech-acting constructs social institutional facts (searle, 1995, 2001: tuomela 2013). how does human biology and use of language make collective intentions possible? humans are intentional creatures. through all their senses and capacities they/we are actively engaged in the world. humans can speak from practice and using abstract concepts, giving us time, otherand self-reflection and the possibility of making promises. intentions, contextually developed, drive speaking. words, or physical sound blasts are assigned meanings. the sounds we make are assigned status (searle, 1995). so things in the world can be named and investigated not only practically but systematically and logically. projects into the future – the expression of willfulness – can, through agreements, be constructed and described. we can make promises to each other to engage in projects. in this way speech-acting – sometimes generates a new organization, a new, functional, operative group. the basic element in speech-acting is the locution, a particular way of using words: a word or phrase. the locutionary process has two sides: the illocution the intention of the speaker and the chosen means, and the perlocution how the statement put forward is understood by the recipient of it and responded to. practical knowledge does not require a language. a creature just gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 4 knows, through sensed physical experience what to do in different settings from desires and fears. humans can work without having concepts on what they are doing. when the ability to use abstract concepts about things we experience and think – or language comes around, the ability to investigate reaches new levels and the ability to dream up and formulate – more or less realistic – projects into the future expands human creativity. speaking is acting, either in the sense of coming up with new insights, new knowledge, or in generating collective intentions and organization through agreements and promises or in creating disagreements, separations, and conflicts2. normativity is present where people are alive and acting. interests drive investigations. findings and factual statements are put forward for reasons. they describe things that for some are unknown. the findings can themselves be reasons for acting. when i say it is raining outside, when it actually is raining (intention 1), i might make the factual statement because i think you should bring your umbrella or put on a rain-coat (intention 2). by making the statement, it enlightens (intention 1) and organizes (intention 2). we go out with umbrellas. or, an example at a higher level of organization: if i am your boss, i call you into the office and say: “you are fired,” two things happen: (1) the statement changes the world, organizes, creates a new objective fact: from being an employee you are forcefully moved into the status of unemployed; and (2) it enlightens, it describes – in that moment – a new existing world. the rain statement is factual and it carries or is connected to a normative interest: bring umbrellas. the firing statement is different. it organizes directly, it creates a new fact, and it describes that fact at the same time3. a condition is that the person making the declaration has the authority and power to make it. therefore, declarations are how power is used. or declarations put power to work. so, the first suggested speech-act driven methodological operation in investigating meaning is: (m1) look at meaning as a form of intentionality; find the status people assign to words, sentence content, to persons, things and to action, how, under which conditions a deliberation leads to agreements, a common, a shared meaning. speaking is using concepts semantically and syntactically in a language. words and sentences are assigned meaning to sound blasts. sound h-o-u-s-e: meaning “building where people live” – in english. such conceptual meanings and the proliferation of languages have deep, long histories. searle has suggested that languages, because of their role in organizing societies, are ubiquitous and powerful institutions. languages express the presence of society. the ability to use abstract language is a universal human, biologically based, competence. it is an aspect or capacity of human consciousness. speaking is intentional, in the sense of directedness towards the world. speaking can be seen as a five step circular intentional helix process, meaning that the circles are not closed: (1) the intention to speak; (2) the purpose in speaking; (3) the choice of means, what to say; (4) saying it; and (5) registering the reception – and perhaps activating a similar circular and interactive process with the person spoken to (the locution, the illocution and the perlocution, reiterated). searle suggested that the assignment of meaning to something, driven by intentionality, is assigning a status to it: sound blasts assigned meaning; that a person is a teacher or a ring is a gift are status assignments, or formally as searle (1995) suggested: x counts as y in context c. speaking is an interactive process, between a biologically driven intentionality and a conscious process of choosing what to say, in deliberation, in a setting of multiple institutions. gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 5 (m2) ask/investigate how words/sentences are assigned status on both the illocutionary and perlocutionary sides. ask how deliberation affects the status assignments, bringing them together or creating status disagreements and conflicts. intentionality living creatures are thoroughly intentional, all their living aspects, all their senses, being directed at or into the world. intentionality is directedness. any state of a conscious body directed at something beyond itself is an intentional state. such a state has a content set in a psychological mode. a status assignment to sound-blasts, or the meaning of words and sentences, is a form of intentionality. propositional intentional states indicate or contain what will make them successful. they have what searle called conditions of satisfaction (cos). propositions (p) also indicate their relation to the world, whether they primarily are meant to describe the world or to change it. that relation searle called directions of fit (df). examples: p1: it is raining. the cos is that it actually is raining. the df is from the world to the proposition: given it is raining, the problem is to make a proposition that conveys that fact to those being spoken to. this df can be written from w à p.4 p2: we would like to see the labor party win the elections: df from words/the project to the world, to changing the world, or df: from p à w. meaning: a form of intentionality meanings, as status assignments, are produced through history and through deliberation, agreements, and institutions, and through the interplay of knowledge and projects – knowledge and politics and between brute natural and social institutional facts. some intentional states are generated from the ground up, without any external observer engaged in the process. the personal feeling of hunger is an example. searle called it an observer independent state of affairs or status assignment. what i mean when i say i am hungry is different. that meaning is observer dependent: dependent exactly on what i mean with the sentence i am hungry – for example, i would appreciate some food. some statements on intentional states are just metaphorical. as an example, the plant in the window is thirsty. searle (2001) noted that effective intentionality is dependent upon human capacities that allow for realization of the intention. voting by raising your hand depends on you having the biological and physical capacity of raising your hand. so it is across the board. searle called all these capacities for the background of intentionality. intentionality as living directedness is itself part of the background. it is an observer independent capacity. when a house (in english) is a building to live in, the meaning of house is intentionally developed over time in the language; we want house to mean a building to live in. when we consider saying: that is the house of the proust family, we evaluate the cos (1): example: are the people i am speaking to attentive to that statement now? if yes, i can/should make the statement. the cos (2) then is: do the people i am speaking to know the proust family? in other words, is the statement meaningful to them? the meaning of the statement is thus built through two cos evaluations. first (1) should i make the statement and then (2) related to the reception of the statement -or cos2 on cos1. meanings are not static. they are produced. some have a long and quite agreed upon history; others are generated here and now. abstract language and the observer independent capacity of intentionality are the basic conditions, on, and from, which meaning is built through speechgran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 6 acting. meanings are found through the applied cos, or the double cos: (1) the cos for making a statement and (2) the cos of made statement. (m3) investigate meaning through the cos people assign to their statements. investigate meaning through the direction of fit between world and mind. identify where the activity is, in formulating sentences about found world (knowledge), in formulating projects (directed at changing the world) or actually changing the world (organizing/reorganizing). direction of causation searle added a third concept: the direction of causation or dc. the distinction between fit and causation serves the analysis of the relation between brute facts and social/institutional facts, between the natural physical and the social institutional. intentional causation of action is a type of causation; it is a mental causation. it is defined as any causal relation between an intentional state and its cos: examples might be: a) a desire – thirst causes me to drink water. in that case, the intentional state causes its cos, the actual drinking; or b) the possibility of drinking water causes my desire to drink water. in this case, the dc is opposite: cos causes the intentional state. if we look at a desire as a subjective project, then the df is from the project (given) to (changing, adjusting) the world or df: from p à w. if we look at the desire as a fact, as a first person mental state, the desire causes the drinking. the desire is the world, the reality. it causes drinking as a subjective action. dc is from the world – the desire a fact w to action a, or from w à a. the cause is there, but it is often not seen. i feel thirst. i drink. i do not experience what is causing the feeling, the desire. there are things/processes in my body beyond my conscious experience causing the thirst. that makes the search and the drinking of water possible and in a way, necessary. for an intention, a project, to be satisfied it has to have a from p à w df – the p, the desire is there, given you have to find the water. the dc of the same project is in the opposite direction, from w à to action a. the thirst causes the action, the drinking. assigning or using meaning is thus a form of intentionality. meaning serves a purpose. (m4) investigate the cause of intentional states. they are often a necessary condition for the state of mind. they are often not consciously experienced. they are at work in physical and biological micro-processes. intentions when speaking together, deliberating, there might emerge an agreement to act together. the agreement can be termed a prior intention to the actual bodily action or cooperation, while the action, once started, is dependent upon often several adjusted, intentions-in-action. meanings seen as a form intentionality in projects, in willful, future-directed actions, can be seen as a chain of three causes: (1) from deliberations to agreements or prior intentions; (2) from prior intentions to intentions-in-action and (3) from there to bodily movements or – in general: action = intentions-in-action + bodily movements (searle, 2001, p.49). gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 7 actions are willful. you have to dare to act. for that reason there is a tsg from thinking about acting to actually acting, going into the bodily movements or the cooperation. in that gap, you reflect on what to do and you develop a reason for acting a special way and you convince yourself – and others perhaps – that it is a good reason. you can act by means of something or by way of something: turn off the light by flipping the switch (acting by means); vote yes by raising your hand (voting by way of). searle called the first action causal and the voting action constitutive. raising your hand or not constitutes voting (searle, 2001, p.52).statements can thus have regulative or constitutive meanings. (m5) separate prior intentions from intentions in action and see that there often is a rulefree tsg. separate regulative from constitutive statements. the latter, when effective, create social institutional facts. willfulness and rationality imply time-space gaps agreements generate obligations. obligations give reasons for acting. as an example (searle, 2001): wanting a glass of beer is seldom a product of an obligation. wanting a beer is most often a desire. so asking for a beer at a bar is most often a product of a desire. however, you are obliged to pay. that obligation is a desire-independent reason for paying. our membership in institutions – as rule systems generates generally desire-independent reasons for acting. institutions vary on how close their rules are to our desires. if you have a shop making a good profit, that institution is close to your desire for money. the policeman who puts you in jail for taxevasion – is a member of an institution in that situation very far from your desires. the jail pushes more and stronger desire independent reasons for acting on you than did the bill in the “bierstube.” most people are located in a set of institutions. their rules and demands vary and are often hard to compare. think of rules and demands made in families, firms, schools, the military, street gangs, cocktail parties, and doctoral promotions. however, acting demands a choice of which obligations, which institutions to honor in a specific situation. so how do we find out what to do? we make evaluations, develop and compare reasons for different possible and impossible actions. we compare the strength and weaknesses of the reasons. because the institutions cannot be uniformly compared we are, at least for some moments in a situation of genuine freedom. our choice in that time-space gap tsg is not a logical or computational deduction. a chosen reason is then an unregulated leap from open alternatives into the world in the form of a decision or an action. a decision-making rule for example family always first would eliminate the freedom, close the tsg. decision-making on what to do next, in the future has a project to world or word to world df. given the project, we try to adjust or change the world accordingly. knowledge and desires influence the evaluations, but choosing which institution, which obligations to honor, is in principle a desire-independent reason for acting. searle suggested that this capacity for acting on reasons is human rationality (searle, 2001). rationality unfolds in the tsgs between decisions and/or interventions/actions into the world. it is in the rule-free moments of evaluation of different institutional obligations that our freedom of will is active (searle, 2004). that whole process is language dependent, making it possible to reflect in time on what to do in the situation we are in. we have bodily desires that do not demand reasons to be acted on. therefore we do notneed to engage heavily in the meaning of desires. meanings are crucial in language and in the agreements that emerge from speech-acting. relations are constituted on meanings. gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 8 (m6) if human rationality is seen as the capacity for reasoned action, and if we see that acting on desires actually does not require reasons, then rationality unfolds in rule-free tsgs evaluating varying desire independent reasons to act in relations to others. we can specify the unfolding of rationality in gaps in a decision-making model: figure 2: a speech-act based model of decision-making. reasoning takes time time gap a gap b gap c intention 1: intention 2: intention 3: intention 4: to make its contents how impl implement decision ement? learning the contribution of this model to research on meanings is especially the concept of the tsg. decision-making takes time and has a period of prior reflection. in that period, the person moves /searches in for a moving but structured space of knowledge, interests, and institutions/rules. her institutions, whether freely chosen or pushed effectively onto her, carry or demand obligations (see for e.g., butler, 2003). but there is a new space – a gap in that time flow without rules, making a free and open reflection on the situation and potential tasks and decisions possible. the gap is such that finally making a decision is a leap into the world, a leap that is beyond deductions. we might say with charles taylor (1985) that the leap, the decision, is a product of a holistic evaluation. it is an expression, an articulation beyond designations. a good example of such speech-acting based decision-making emerges in lie (1985). he investigated the political process in norway between 1945 and 1950 when a struggle about norway’s position in the international contest between the soviet union and the usa unfolded. when lie (1985) is a good example it is because he makes use of detailed reports from the internal meetings of the social democratic labor party on norway’s international position. he demonstrated how a deep interest in socialism and a trust in the soviet union, strengthened by its major contribution to the struggle against nazi germany is confronted in the internal party meetings by new descriptions of soviet oppression of peoples in bordering countries. soviet allied communist parties in western european countries, including in norway, seemed to support the oppression. some labor party members chose exit and joined the soviet communists in norway. others wavered and withdrew into passivity, while still others gradually changed their opinion, and joined into the discourse on how western europe should respond to threatening soviet activity. lie compared the soviet international strategy to the emerging ideas of un solidarity, the establishment of the western union (benelux, germany, france, and italy 1951), the marshall gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 9 aid to europe and the idea of a nato alliance. gradually, through continued meetings in the party and in international meetings of socialist parties, the idea of a western alliance against soviet postwar oppression was consolidated. lie demonstrated the crucial role of the formal and informal meetings where knowledge is gradually forged about the real international and internal practice of the soviet union. gradually norway’s international position – either neutrality or siding with the western democracies is clarified and the western alliance gains support. micro materials from the meetings of the labor party continuously seen in their institutional and popular context in norway and elsewhere, give a deep understanding of the decision-making process, both in the party and, the next time around, in the open parliamentary decision-making. (m7) to understand social and political development, investigate reflections and speechacting in the tsgs between decisions and actions or interventions into the world through (powerful) meetings where people think, investigate and deliberate on politics and the means necessary for alternative routes of action. collective intentions generate groups and common meanings deliberations can lead to agreements. through agreements, people with varying and uncoordinated intentions come together in or under more or less well and commonly defined collective intentions. this might be seen as the trait of all sociality, of all social facts: common, shared intentions among two or more people, formed through speech-acting and dialogue in specific settings. for humans, the social takes on institutional form. institutions may be defined as rules or conceptually defined collective intentions. agreements create cohesion and give groups meaning. examples could be: institutions as rule: driving on the right hand side of the road; a functional institution or organization: a trading firm with the intention of buying and selling food in markets with a profit. without the abstract concepts – like rules, roads and trading firms there would be no common presence of such regulated driving or such trading firms. traffic would perhaps be dominated by the most powerful and trade would occur haphazardly. speechacting with the use of abstract concepts generates recognized collective intentions. speech-acting in this sense organizes, or through repeated similar agreements, creates institutions. speechacting might even be seen as the motor of organizing, or at least as the key technology bringing persons in context sensitive modes into groups either regulating or engaging in new practical activity. (m8) search for and investigate agreements as collective intentions, more or less clearly and commonly expressed. in the case of organizations: see them as prior intentions to action. study implementation through consecutive intentions-in-action. when you are investigating social relations, think beyond the subjective into the materiality of them. when speaking we put forward propositions (p) in a psychological mode (m), for example a friendly or an aggressive mode. the proposition (p) is thus an m function of p: m(p). we can identify modes of speech-acting at the group level: a routine mode, an operative mode, a learning mode, a planning mode, etc. in organization and innovation studies, we can investigate how such modes are set, managed, and changed. gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 10 in general, organizations, through different media, carry meanings and socialize (prospective) members into them. but speech-act theory suggests that organizations are no more or less than the projects people assign to them. it is agreements and status assignments that hold organizations together. power and sanctions can bolster them – for a while. knowledge and projects the distinction between knowledge and projects suggests that the two activities are qualitatively different; knowledge production is about the ability to use your senses, to investigate, to do research, to find indications of how that part of the world that interests you is structured, organized or how happenings function – how an organization for example affects the behavior of its members, how a certain amount of rain and air temperature affects movements in the protruding sections of the mountain man in western norway at present (30.10.2014) evaluated as a huge potential rock-slide into the nearby fjord. the knowledge project is closing in on the truth of things of interest – both agreements and mountain movements and keeping subjective interests and emotions of the researchers as far as possible from affecting the measurements and descriptions. the norm is truthfulness. project production, on the other hand, is different. projects often have a starting point or a background in knowledge of things and in desires – like for example the experience of a disaster – but projects, because their core meaning is to change the world, are normative. projects are willful. a project is a choice among alternative routes of action. projects thus have a subjective ontology. before they are realized they only exist in minds and agreements. somebody wants to build a new house or a political party wants to increase its votes in upcoming elections. the project norm is not truthfulness. project norms are engagement, mobilization, willfulness, realism and morals. project implementation is dependent upon operative competence, ability to organize. project competence and knowledge competence are thus interacting but different types of speech-acting. however, project competence is dependent on knowledge and knowledge is dependent on ability to organize relevant and realistic research projects. the meaning of a project is its relation to your interests and values. the meaning of piece of knowledge is its relevance to your projects. in human consciousness, the two processes unfold continuously, the senses engaged in finding where we are at every moment (knowledge) and our fantasy and willfulness engaged continuously in what to do next (projects). the social world is constituted on our perspectives, our norms, values and willfulness. the physical and biological world is not. its ontology is objective in the sense of not being constituted in any way by human subjectivity. some social facts are first person subjective, and in that sense beyond objective knowledge. agreements on the other hand are epistemologically open for objective descriptions. producing knowledge of any kind is no simple matter. in that process perspectives, fantasy, ability to articulate hypotheses, controlled use of methods, knowledge of relevant sources etc. is of importance. meaning is continually produced in the ubiquitous interplay between knowledge and projects, between “where i am” and “where to go next.” gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 11 (m9) separate knowledge production from project production and realization, and study how the two competences are related and interdependent. both brute and social facts are open for objective descriptions. five speech acts with different meanings searle has suggested that there are five types of speech acts (searle, 1979). they affect the production of meaning differently. assertives are typically about the world, both the social and the physical world. they are subservient to truth conditions, that the things asserted actually exist, that they can be registered and described in a meaningful way from the registrations. the df of assertives is from the world to words. directives stimulate and direct actions, a type of wielding power. their meaning is dependent upon their specificity. they are evaluated normatively. the df of directives is from words to world. the condition of their success is that people do what is directed, in effect that the words change the world. the third type is commissives, making promises and commitments. commissives create obligations. they suggest that a certain action will occur in the future. commissives are important for trust. their meaning is dependent upon type of action implied in the obligation. their value is dependent upon their importance in a life situation. the df is like for directives, from words to world, but in a different sense. while directives try to direct the action of the other, commissives that are sincere bind the future action of the person making the commitment. the cos is that the promising person does that which was promised. the fourth type is expressives. they give voice to an emotion. expressives can strengthen or weaken the feeling of community in a group. the meaning of expressives is exactly that function. expressives have no df. they emanate as such from a person to others. the fifth type is of special importance (searle, 2010). declarations have, as mentioned, a double function simultaneously. they change the world and describe it at the same time. their prime cos is that what is declared actually happens. “you are fired” is such a declaration, with cos that the employee accepts. but a secondary cos is that the person making the declaration has the authority to make such declarations. if the employee accepts, that authority (however limited) is in place. if not, the reason can be that the authority is not there or that the power supporting the continued employment of the person overrules the declaration. here, searle was close to judith butler’s thesis that acting is realizing/dramatizing conventions. the power of the firing agent is deeply dependent upon acceptance in society of that power. however, the speech-acting gaps of unregulated reflection suggest that no matter how strong the convention there is a room, a space for freedom to act in deviation from or in contradiction to the convention. the speech act theory thus solves – in embryo a problem butler’s strong conventionalism leaves unsolved: the creation of new institutions and new conventions. how agreements organize through disseminations new agreements occur in often densely institutionalized settings. it is, as butler underscored, interesting how values and power in that setting influence decision-making and personal thoughts and actions. it is also interesting how new agreements spread into the setting or meet gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 12 boundaries there. agreements themselves create boundaries. often they imply – in embryo – hierarchy, an unequal distribution of power between the members of the agreement. knut dahl jacobsen (1964) specified a set of concepts for analyzing how decision-making organizes, within the decision-making group and beyond it. he did not, at the time of writing, have access to the micro theory of speech-acting, but in hindsight we might call his understanding of decision-making as collective speech-acting or group speech-acting. in his study of how the organization of public administration of agriculture changed in norway in the 19th century, he suggested a scheme for the study of how decisions and agreements affect and construct group and extra-group activities. agreements organize directly and through disseminations. table 1: decisions have in-group and extra-group effects within-group: look for the distribution of: commitments, responsibilities, initiatives and information extra-group: look for spread or contraction of: legitimacy, decision acceptance, decision outreach and power source: knut dahl jacobsen 1964 iand we-modes speech-acting and agreements create social facts. the agreements often express a psychological movement of persons or groups from an i-mode to a we-mode of participation. agreements change relations, change our self-understanding. they connect us to others, they can construct an i-mode of participation in a group activity, as an example: i will do my part of painting the house. at a higher level, agreements can generate a we-mode of participation; for example: asked: “what are you doing?” answer: “we are painting the house” (tuomela, 2013). in both cases the house might well be painted, but the we-mode-understanding will imply a different responsibility for the overall task. a second example: “i am an employee of firm a and will do my part of the job for a wage” – an i-mode of participation. or; “our unit/organization is a cooperative; we are all members of the unit engaged in organizing, sustaining and doing the work.” agreements impact groups internally and affect their status externally. agreements most often also exclude, creating borders to the environment. agreements can imply hierarchy and oppression, however without the oppression very often being accepted by the oppressed5. (m10) agreements create new social facts, new institutions – not necessarily different from existing institutions and usually empower members to the agreement. but often agreements generate hierarchy and exclude values, interests and actual and potential participants. gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 13 multi-institutional contexts agreements can increase internal differentiation and hierarchic power. we can from these insights see an emergent more complex model of generative speech-acting, a model of how speech-acting generates organization (gran, 2014). speech-acting is intentional, is directed at someone, it functions through status assignments and flows through illocutions and perlocutions back and forth, some speech-acting resulting in agreements. speech-acting at the person to person level (micro) and at the collective level, as decision-making in groups (macro) takes place in institutionalized contexts. the subjectively honored institutions deliver commitments and responsibilities. speech-acting is the unfolding of rationality in the sense of searching for and generating desire-independent reasons for acting. because the setting is multi-institutional there is an element of freedom in time between interventions, generating responsibility, where the person is in search of the best reason for acting in a certain way, honoring one or a selected set of obligations. that freedom unfolds in a certain, more or less limited, tsg that is not ruleregulated. a rule would eliminate the freedom, would collapse rationality as the search for an acceptably reasoned action. the nexus of language capacity, speaking together and making agreements, where the agreements assign the conditions of their satisfaction, their realization can be seen as a motor of meaningful action and organization. at present the most general and powerful institutional context of speech-acting can be – and most often is the nation state. that institution is seldom deducted from and negotiated within common general norms, but created by fiat as a sovereign institution in a delimited territory that can be physically defended by the resources controlled by those who effectively initiate and take on state responsibility. in this way speech-acting theory is developed at two levels: micro and macro and at each level in a setting of actors in their institutional/historical context. table 2: levels and contexts of speech-acting acting in context of level 1 speech-acting interpersonal locutions, illocutions, perlocutions established collective intentions, institutions level 2 decision-making in groups/organizations intentions to act, collective decisions and their implementation established institutions and most generally of nation states demanding sovereignty meaning is assigning status to these actors and processes, to decisions and following actions. meaning is calibrated, the calibration is important for the power – and status of the different parts of the activity. meaning can be researched through the cos, the conditions of realization assigned to the decisions. conclusion: how speech-acting generates meaning and organization speech-acting is a theory of how humans generate meanings, the meanings of what they say, do and see/have in their surroundings. speech-acting theory is by implication for research on gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 14 meaning formation, a contribution to hermeneutics. meanings are historically produced. the searlean approach is to seek out the micro-processes that generate meaning – over time. sociology is related to biology. articulation is not separated absolutely from designation. institutionalized power does in no case completely eliminate subjective freedom. we apply perspectives, but they are not in the physical/biological world, making whole descriptions of objects and processes possible. subjectivity does not exclude objectivity. meaning is created through the use of language, where sounds become concepts when a status is assigned to them, and where persons and things gain identity the same way, through status assignments. statuses are products of spoken-about practices over time. persons become teachers, buildings become parliaments and metal is formed into artefacts. the general mechanism x counts as y in context c is at work. meaning can be approached from the context or from the subjectivity of the person: either, what is a common understanding of the role of a teacher, or how does teacher a in place b conceive of the contents of that label? meanings can be sought in the conditions a person or a group considers as success criteria for a planned practice. articulation (of the project) is important, but its meaning emerges more fully in the conditions defining success. speech-acting, through agreements creates or contradicts social facts. agreements are by definition collective intentions, more or less equally defined by the parties to the agreement. collective intentions constitute the social. the social in that sense has a subjective ontology. the social exists as agreements and disappears when agreements are eroded. in this sense, the social is different from basic processes in the physical and biological nature. they have an objective ontology. they are mostly beyond human constitutive influence. the structure of water and of light waves is beyond or below human creativity. however, agreements materialize through iteration and practice and (some) can be objectively described. so the subjective ontology can be combined with an objective epistemology. but meaning as such can hardly be materialized. meaning must be exposed and sought through speech-acting (widely defined as expressing a state of affairs). reiterated agreements create institutions. institutions can in general be seen as rules, agreements on behavior in varying contexts, and rules as institutions when the agreements reach a certain level of commonality and are respected and copied. organizations can be seen as functional institutions, which are as rule systems developed within a group that has a defined – collective – task. institutions are the materials of a society, of a culture. they are constituted, reproduced, and dismantled through the powerful medium of speech-acting. we can be and are pushed and socialized into institutions and we can enter them willingly. no matter how we enter, they generate – or force upon us obligations. in this sense, they are materials of rationality, materials – obligations we reason on when acting. institutions carry meaning. schools define the task of learning, the military the task of killing and defending national territories, the market the possibility of transacting to gain goods we want and give up goods we are willing to offer etc. institutions liberate and exclude. rules are often seen as constraints on acting. but in a deeper sense, rules generate new ways of interacting, making possible the production of artefacts and relations that expand human livelihoods. think of the huge step forward implied in the creation of schools. the idea emerged that instead of continual down to earth learning in practical activity, for example the father teaching the girl how to paddle a dugout boat as they actually used it, we gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 15 might gather youngsters in a community with a teacher or two, who had practical experience, who could do his/her own investigations into a practice and teach it systematically to the youngsters. the school was a new social institutional fact with a huge teaching advantage compared to the unorganized, individualized learning process. in this sense, the school was a social innovation that expanded and deepened the learning processes globally, and in its wake saw the creation of colleges, universities, and research institutes. in this sense the school was hardly a constraint, even if it did require some discipline from the teachers and pupils. so it is with most institutions. however, most institutions also exclude. private schools might say that only pupils who can pay can join, or only pupils from the community of the owners of the school can become pupils. electing a leadership of the school excludes other persons from that leadership. a firm selects some workers among many more candidates. a nation state might well exclude people from entering and national rules might make certain activity illegal, with dire consequences for those who act illegally. the is (at present december 2014) seem to consider killing people who indicate a religious belonging outside the religious and political bounds of is as quite legitimate. the american government in august 1945 considered it legitimate to drop an atomic bomb on hiroshima to end the second world war. functional institutions then may use terrible forms of hierarchic power to implement their values and goals. in this sense, oppression may be an ingredient of upholding institutions, maybe even a constitutive ingredient. nation states are perhaps those present institutions that most obviously have oppressive power, in the form of military and police, as a constitutive element of their mere existence. in this sense, we might say – in the present stage of nation state organization of politics, violence is lurking everywhere. human language use and the abstract concepts in it generate rationality: the ability of transcending stimulus-response and acting on reasons. in this sense, speech-acting is the motor of meaning formation and of institutions, the basic structures of any society (searle, 2010). endnotes 1 drafts presented for the pgi group, dao, university of bergen and at phd course bi, business university, nydalen, oslo, on invitation from professor tore bakken. thanks for listening, for good comments and suggestions. thanks also for valuable comments from two anonymous evaluators. 2 judith butler 1997 investigated hate speech from a speech-act perspective. her question is “what version of the performative is at work” – in hate speech. she contributed importantly to the discussion when does speaking become acting, and when does that acting become illegal. but butler criticized the idea that hate speakers are autonomous. rather they are enmeshed in power structures. she found support for that view in foucault: “grasp subjection in its material instances as a constitution of subjects.” so change of hate speakers implies change of power structures. this view makes butler unattentive to the searlean investigations of how speech-acting is managed by persons in interactions. it is a negative idealization butler says, to view speechacting as “sovereign action.” 3 searle 2010 suggested that such declarations are the most powerful speech-acts. 4 searle described the same relation as adjusting p to w or p à w or df as downward. gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 16 5 in my opinion searle had little time for the analysis of borders, hierarchy, and oppression. see gran (2011). references butler, j. (2003). performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. in p. auslander (ed.), performance: critical concepts in literary and cultural studies, volume 4 (97-110). london, uk: routledge. butler, j. (1997). excitable speech. a politics of the performative. london, uk: routledge. fleming, v., gaidys, u., & robb, y. (2003). hermeneutic research in nursing: developing a gadamerian-based research method. nursing inquiry, 10(2), 113-120. gran, t. (2014). organizational analysis. the generative speech act model. paper to the winir conference, london, uk, september 2014. gran, t. (2011). john searle on the concept of political power, the power of states and warmaking: why states demand a monopoly of the organisation and use of soldiers. journal of institutional economics, 8(1), 71-91. jacobsen, k.d. (1963). teknisk hjelp og politisk struktur: en avgjørelsesteoretisk studie av norsk landbruksforvaltning 1874-1899. oslo, norway: universitetsforlaget. lie, h. (1985). skjebneår 1945 – 1950. oslo, norway: tiden norsk forlag. moules, n.j., field, j.c., mccaffrey, g.p., & laing, c.m. (2014). conducting hermeneutic research: the address of the topic. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 7. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5mw28w9 searle, j.r. (1979). expression and meaning. studies in the theory of speech acts. new york, ny: cambridge university press. searle, j.r. (1995). the construction of social reality. new york, ny: the free press. searle, j.r. (2001). rationality in action. cambridge, ma:the mit press. searle, j.r. (2004). freedom and neurobiology: reflections on free will, language, and political power. new york, ny: columbia university press. searle, j.r. (2010). making the social world: the structure of human civilization. new york, ny: oxford university press. gran journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 4 17 taylor, c. (1985). human agency and language. philosophical papers 1. new york, ny: cambridge university press. tollefsen, d.p. (2012). collective intentionality and the social sciences. philosophy of the social sciences, 42, 323-355. tuomela, r. (2013). social ontology: collective intentionality and group agents. new york, ny: oxford university press. corre s ponding author: galicia s. blackman email: galicia.blackman@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics july 5, 2016 the author(s) 2016 secrets in the open: an exercise in interpretive writing galicia s. blackman abstract in this paper i present an exemplar of interpretive writing based on my engagement with the movie, my life as a dog. the film is a series of vignettes about ingemar, a young boy, who is processing the events which arise from the difficulties wrought by his mother’s illness. this is not the typical coming of age film where the child becomes an adult through the initiation into life’s painful circumstances. the film ends with the character still in his boyhood. nevertheless, the intermittent voice-over conveys the impression that ingemar is narrating in retrospect, in a build up to his emergence from a state of innocence to awareness, and acceptance of pain and loss. i attended to the principles of hermeneutic practice outlined by several scholars to frame my understanding of what it means to enter the hermeneutic circle to explore the topic which addressed me: secrecy. keywords secrets, hermeneutic circle, childhood, interpretive writing preface this interpretive response to the film, my life as a dog, was a requirement of coursework in a hermeneutic research course i was taking in my graduate studies. i approached the task with some concern over the similarities between hermeneutic research and literary analysis. however, as i proceeded with the activity, i noticed where i was straddling two ways of thinking: the way that i would normally instruct my literature students to respond to art in order to write the literary essay and what i came to recognize as the hermeneutic sensibility. there is an blackman journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 11 2 interconnectedness between these two ways of thinking but as i often tell my students: poetry, drama, and prose, are types of literature, constructed from the same building blocks but each is distinguishable as a particular art form. coming to hermeneutics as a novice, it is easy to be naïve and say, “it is just about interpretation” but i would argue it is about a kind of interpretation and one needs to be clear about the nature of that interpretation before calling it hermeneutics. i am grateful to dr. nancy moules and dr. graham mccaffrey whose comprehensive course on hermeneutic research helped me understand what it means to come to hermeneutic thinking and writing, and that ultimately, hermeneutics is practice-oriented. the film, my life as a dog, is centred around the twelve-year protagonist ingemar who lives with his mother and older brother. he gets into trouble easily and when his mother gently admonishes him for his quirkiness, he notices that she is ill. the film is crafted through a series of scenes which capture the chronology of the events leading up to ingemar’s unde rstanding that his mother has passed away. that chronologically is interspersed with short clips which function like flashbacks to a period of an idyllic time shared between ingemar and his mother. that recurring flashback with ingemar and his mother, laughing and talking, in a scene evocative of a summer day near a lake, is a contrast to the chronology of the film, where we see the mother deteriorating physically. the flashback also contrasts the increasing distance in the relationship between ingemar and his ailing mother. when the mother is getting ill to the point where she needs rest and she cannot parent well enough, ingemar and his brother are sent to live with relatives for a while and his beloved dog is reportedly sent to a kennel. throughout the film, he and his brother are moved around a bit, though not always together, and that creates a picture of a young boy tossed around, disconnected from his closest family members. ingemar goes to live with his uncle in a village with a mix of peculiar characters. it serves to distract him for a while, but when he returns to live with his mother and brother, the mother is obviously, chronically ill. the absence of his dog also serves to awaken his innocence. however, it is a while before ingemar comes to understand the painful reality. when he does, his uncle and the new relationships he has formed in the village, help him to attain a measure of peace and tranquility. secrets in the open in my caution to avoid succumbing to the inclination to respond to this film in the way that i would typically respond when conducting literary analysis, i tried to avoid the themes and motifs which were likely to evoke that kind of response. it was awkward to view the film and attempt to silence the jargon which most clearly helps me arrive at a deeper understanding. i cou ld not shut off that prejudice. that would have been counterhermeneutic. however, when i am with my niece and nephew (ages nine and eleven), i am not a language teacher. for the period of play with them, i inhabit a twelve-year old sensibility until my adult status is required. so for this task i did not seek to shut off my prejudices. instead i asked, what would my childlike self see? i kept waiting for sickan to reappear because i have a soft spot for creatures of the canine persuasion (a partiality from childhood). gadamer pointed to the paradox of the hermeneutic impulse that gets the inquiry rolling along, that “individual explorations necessarily start from the very limited experiences and fields of blackman journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 11 3 experiences” (1976, p. 18). my understanding is that hermeneutics, as interpretive inquiry, begins in the address of the familiar. jardine stated that interpretive inquiry is concerned with “the generativity of meaning that comes with the eruption of the new in the midst of the already familiar” (1992, pp. 51-52). when sickan failed to appear and i felt the familiar heartbreak of the loss of a beloved animal, in addition to all the other cha llenges facing ingemar, i started to notice the other instances where information was withheld from him. i began to wonder about the secrets in the film and i began to ponder even further, when does secrecy cease to be deception and when does it take on a poignant or dangerous overtone? as i mentally pulled out the instances of secrecy, i had to pause. i was on the verge of looking for a pattern in the examples and i would likely proceed to a conclusion as i am wont to do for literature. at that rate, i wou ld never enter the hermeneutic circle. however, if hermeneutic inquiry begins in data saturation (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015, p. 83), then i needed to look more closely at the examples of secrecy in the film and i found several. address of the topic i almost abandoned secrets because i thought i would have preferred an easier topic. i wanted to pursue something more familiar, more evocative, such as the rustic environment and the eccentricities of the characters. i was trying not to conduct literary analysis and uncertain that i had the hermeneutic tools at hand, i doubted whether i should follow the trail. however, gadamer cautioned that “avoiding misunderstanding cannot be regarded as the specific task of hermeneutics” (palmer, 2007, p. 87). i am beginning to see what caputo implied about the discomfort that initiates hermeneutic work, the paralysis that compels one to proceed with the topic (moules et al., 2015, p. xii). the topic was not allowing itself to unfold unless i did the work but it was preventing me from seeing anything else. the secrets did not have patterns and i had indecisions about what i construed as secrets in the film. there it was, the topic, in all its discomforting nakedness: what understandings about secrets are evoked from viewing this film? what meanings are confirmed and challenged by my understanding of secrecy? secrets have a peculiar association with childhood and i had deliberately entered a childlike sensibility when viewing the film. i wondered about when do we stop saying “let me tell you a secret” and begin saying, “can i take you into confidence about something” and how we go about distinguishing between lies and secrets. when does the word evoke something pleasurable and when does it veer into taboo terrain? up until this inquiry, secrets had been relegated to the sentiment moules et al. captured with the recognition that “when a term becomes widely assumed and taken for granted, it starts to slip away from us, unnoticed in plain sight like a comfortable pair of shoes” (2015, p. 152). i felt that i did not know enough about secrets to conduct an interpretive analysis of the topic. there was the literary analyst rearing its head. the term is familiar so i was not sure why i had trepidations. who among us has not used the phrase “it’s a secret” with awareness of the associations the phrase evokes? it is sometimes accompanied by the exclamatory “shh” or the imperative to be hushed. secrets are about the unknown, but they are distinguishable from mysteries because somewhere, someone “knows” the secret. some definitions give the term associations with concepts of exclusion, concealment, privacy, and division. blackman journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 11 4 i looked at book titles and the contexts where the term tends to be used. there were selfhelp books which offered to reveal the secrets to staying healthy or beautiful or young; there were other kinds of selfhelp books about the secrets to human behaviors or success; the whistleblowers who put out secrets that institutions, companies, and governments do not want you to know; the secret “truth” about ancient societies or ways of living different from what we know; secrets of the animal kingdoms; advice books for children about secrets that they should share; notions of secrets in romantic relationships and domestic contexts; secrets in health, employment, or academic situations. (i discovered that i really wanted to know the ancient secrets of the horse’s mind in a way that i had never known that i wanted to.) then there were books on secrets to writing pape rs and dissertations, but none on the secrets to hermeneutic interpretations of film. even caputo declared that he has not been given access to some big capitalized know-it-all “secret” in hermeneutic practice (2000, p. 1). the term secret is seductive a nd suggestive of something profound, special, and classified. attach the word “secret” to anything and it takes on proportions of grandeur. secrets are everywhere. at that point in the inquiry i could not tell if secrets were really in our everyday parlance or the topic was digging into my psyche to the exclusion of everything else. gadamer described what resembles my understanding of the address, “we are possessed by something and precisely by means of it we are opened up for the new, the different, the tr ue” (palmer, 2007, p. 82). entering the hermeneutic circle in moules et al., the hermeneutic circle is characterized as having two important stances: entering the circle, which is accomplished by responding to the call of the topic, and staying within the circle which entails discipline and rigor (2015, p. 122). to enter the circle, i had to phrase the question appropriately, with the hermeneutic nuance, and i had to look at the data, or the events in the film which offered insight about secrecy. what understandings about secrets did the events in this film reveal? i came to understand the rigor required of me as the care which one gives to the topic looking at data as a whole, the topic, and data in part, which is a particular instance (moules et al., 2015, p. 122). i collated the instances of secrecy which were most revelatory about the topic. several occasions in the film had secretive tones: the opening scene; the mother’s medical condition; the bed-wetting scene; the secret spot under the train track where he spends time with his best friend; the story he relates of his father has nuances of secrets concerning his father’s fate; the lingerie magazine which mr. arvidsson hides and pulls ingemar into his secret by asking him to read from it; the footballergirl’s hidden puberty, and sickan, who got this all started for me. the repetition in the voice-over “i should have told her everything while she still had the strength” is framed as a boy mourning the loss of a relationship and wishing that he had shared exotic stories with his mother. however, the ambiguity of “i should have told” is a phrase often associated with or evocative of secrecy. that voice-over phrase which is replayed several times in the film, reinforces the tones of secrecy surrounding the events in ingemar’s life. the opening scene comes across as a revelation of a secret. ingemar’s uncle has difficulty being blunt and escapes from having to tell what needs to be stated directly by declaring that ingemar blackman journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 11 5 knows already. he apologizes for having been unable to tell ingemar something which he seems forced to acknowledge at that moment. the film then unravels as a series of flashbacks which culminate in that point of the opening revelation. ingemar’s voice-over has the distant tone of the character played throughout the story, avoiding being blunt about the challenges he is facing and displaying coping mechanisms that seem a little odd. by the end of the film, positioning the opening scene becomes clearer. the revelation is about ingemar’s mo ther who has quite likely succumbed to her illness and it occurs right about the time that ingemar accepts that sickan will not be returning either. in my literary analyst mode, i would normally linger on the dramatic irony that the audience knows the mother is terminally ill from the first indication of disease, in the classic trope of juxtaposing childhood innocence and the coming to awareness of the unpleasantries of life which are archetypal initiation points. dramatic irony is a kind of secrecy from t he character, shared between the audience and the narrative structures. a hermeneutic inquiry asks something different of me. what does the secrecy around the mother’s illness suggest about secrecy? people are often secretive about their medical issues, even when these issues are not threatening to others. there is a social consensus that children are shielded from the bare facts of medical knowledge especially if that knowledge can disrupt their innocence. we believe in the importance of keeping children insulated from harsh realities and keeping secrets about medical difficulties in family members is a societal norm. that secrecy is usually also seen in financial matters and family disputes. the assumptions underlying these secrets is the societal consensus that children are not emotionally mature enough to handle tough experiences. perhaps certain events inevitably lean toward secrecy where children are concerned. there are at least two other instances of secrecy where it appears that children are protec ted from suffering. ingemar’s father is a mysterious feature of the film. we do not know exactly where he is and ingemar’s story sounds like a carefully crafted narrative given to him to protect him from the truth. this element of the film led me to consider how secrets are distinguishable from mysteries. can i say definitively that the father’s status is a secret? not quite. it resembles what i associate with secrecy: the unknown, a bizarre story, a failure to appear, but this element seems to linger in mystery. there is no concrete revelation which confirms my suspicion about the secrecy surrounding the father’s status. yet the frequent references to him suggest that his absence is a revelation of some kind. the other event which seems to protect ingemar from suffering is the absence of information about sickan. like ingemar, we are given a story about what will happen to sickan: he will be cared for in a kennel. however, the adults have not been forthcoming about what seems obvious to the audience, the mother is dying. is it possible that sickan’s fate is being kept a secret from ingemar to avoid hurting him further? that led me to consider that our understandings of secrets are often on the cusp of deception. there is no overt revelation about the dog’s fate, much like the status of his father but that does not diminish the element of secrecy. the uncle’s reluctance to respond to ingemar’s request to follow up on the dog is a kind of revelation. the other instances of secrecy had distinctive qualities which made it difficult to see a pattern in secrecy in the film. there, the flux of hermeneutic inquiry was giving me a dose of what it means to suspend my expectation and go where the data led me. the bed-wetting scene and the manner blackman journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 11 6 in which the boys tried to keep it a secret from the mother shed understanding on the element of secrecy that sometimes it is done to protect the self. others would consider it lying especially when one admits that the outcome of the revelation would mean some distress or discomfort for the keepers of the secret. the secret spot under the train track where ingemar spends time with his best friend is the poignant kind of secret, which is used to build intimacy, strengthen relationships, and there are no obvious risks. the lingerie magazine which mr. arvidsson hides and then he pulls ingemar into his secret asking him to read from it; the footballer-girl’s hidden puberty which pulls ingemar into complicity with her secrecy, also contain those nuances of the nature of secrecy, fostering closeness with others. the recurring voice-over, the image of ingemar in the summer house which looks like a kennel, the framing metaphor of the title, that ingemar is bumped around without being told much by the adult world, all evoke his similarity to being a family pet, a dog, loved and cared for but somewhat distant from the goings-on of the human world. secrecy fosters that distance. some of that distance is ingemar’s doing, because he declares that one ought to have perspective, but much of it is the adult world holding the child at bay. secrets are the adults’ ways of ensuring things do not get too out of control. considering ingemar’s odd little habits (such as his inability to drink from a glass when stressed) and the possibility that his childhood could be traumatized by the truth of what was transpiring, secrets seem like an expedient way of managing the situation. this raises even more questions: how do we use secrets to manage difficult situations and when do secrets become inflammatory in t hose situations? ingemar felt unloved, unwanted by his mother but it was obvious to the audience that she was just too ill to parent lovingly. the secrecy surrounding the gravity of her condition could have had the effect of isolating ingemar. secrets can create distance even when intended to mollify difficult situations. yet even though we “know” that, in some situations, it might even be an instinct to keep secrets to avoid hurting others. in trying to find the right voice or the appropriate language to clearly describe the understanding of the topic generated in the process as is recommended in moules et al. (2015, p. 122), i turned to the personal. last month when my mother “revealed” that she had ungone a medical procedure and the results came back fine, my first reaction was “why didn’t you tell me you were going to do it” and her response was simply that she did not want me to worry. that silenced me because she was right; i would worry because i do not handle medical issues very well. i was grateful for her secrecy and there i saw the instinct to shield others from discomfort as the adults tried to shield ingemar. secrets are by nature multilayered with meaning, never one thing or the other. considering ingemar’s stories and meanings of “secrets” whic h emphasize separation, one can see how secrets in lived experience are capable of divisiveness and effect hurt. conversely, in some of ingemar’s stories they engender comfort and intimacy. within the interpretive process secrets are fodder for the hermeneutic practice. they are about something. there is a phenomenon in the middle of it. they emerge from relationships. people have secrets from others. even though it is one individual holding the secret away from another ind ividual, there is an element of declaration to the self about the secrecy. the language we use to talk about secrets imbues them with inherent preciousness. we “guard” and “keep safe” the secrets, but that blackman journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 11 7 language can just as easily turn dark with “don’t say a word” and “be quiet” although each instance has its own flavor. secrets have a dialogical element: there is something which is kept, yearning to be shared in conversation with another. secrets can even have a diabolical element when they are used to sever connections instead of building intimacy. when they are perceived as willful deceptions they lose any magic they could have had. when they are used to con and exploit, they become toxic. secrecy can veer into meanings of deception and lying. to be on the side of the unknown can sometimes be a case of protection from an unpleasantry but it can also be seen a dark phenomenon when the unknown and subsequent “reveal” is dangerous or done carelessly. fortunately for the character, ingemar, the relevant revelations which induced deep hurt were buffered by a new life surrounded by gentle caring characters. this inquiry led me to consider the psychology of secrecy. i conducted a search for literature on the topic, perhaps in an impulse to conduct the dialo gue that is necessary when one is within the hermeneutic circle and i was on the verge of proceeding to what looked like a literature review when i encountered bellman’s the paradox of secrecy. then i recognized i was in a potentially dangerous zone of over immersion and i felt the tug of what jardine referred to as “knowing when to stop in the spinning out of implications of meaning” (1992, p. 59). i was finding it difficult to wrap up the understandings. how do i conclude in a way that does not have a strong whiff of literary interpretation? i could go on and on, or i could just stop here and acknowledge the ongoing nature of hermeneutic work. however, i could not leave the understandings lying around like puppies abandoned at a dog pound. moules et al. advised that they should not be “left there to dangle in an exotic display but must be brought back into the world where the topic is located” because deconstruction moves toward reconstruction (2015, p. 132). beyond the circle i cannot look at the concept of secrecy the same way ever again. considering the instances in the film, those i addressed here and those i briefly mentioned, i have come to several understandings of the topic. normally when one declares that one has a secret in possession the ins tinctive response is to persuade the secret-holder to reveal it. we usually want to know something once it has been imbued with the veneer of secrecy. secrecy has the quality of something which ought to be revealed eventually, whether that is done willfully or by happenstance. the unknown tends to be considered as mystery when the revelation has not happened. i was indecisive about whether to declare this understanding about secrecy and the reveal as a “finding” for this inquiry. i considered the researc h described in moules et al. (2015, p. 127) that grief is usually accompanied by the appearance of guilt, and tentatively latched on to this as support for my process. other inquiries will indicate other dimensions to secrecy that i have not considered here, but that is a recurring caveat when conducting hermeneutic research, that when we see one side, there is yet an unconcealed side. blackman journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 11 8 now, when i hear the word secret used in common parlance, i will wonder about the understanding attached by the user. is it a genuine secret, or is the word used for effect? what would make it genuine? is there something perverse in wanting to know a secret? or is there something anti-social when people are unmoved by the idea of the thrill of secrecy? this film led me to consider that the concept of secrecy when attached to childhood, carries connotations of protection from harsh realities, or the pleasures of having a world without the intrusion of meddling others (adults or other children). indeed, these understandings are also applicable to secrecy and adulthood but secrets take on darker tones in the adult world. this inquiry made me reflect on the concept of gossip and how it hinges on the concept of secrecy. as i found myself going out of the parameters of the film, i came to see why the hermeneutic inquiry is an immersion into the flux of being. understanding is not bound. there is still more to uncover. i thought about secrets in a way i have never had to do before. through the experience of interpreting the film, i am ineluctably altered in my relationship with the concept. in trying to cultivate the hermeneutic sensibility this section of the paper is a bit like a post-script. what has this exercise revealed to me? how is this kind of inquiry different from literar y analysis? these were some of the questions which accompanied me throughout my exercise as i tried to be true to hermeneutic praxis. i have been acutely attentive to the similarities between hermeneutic approaches and literary analysis but i wanted to guard against naiveté and the assumption that my eventual research with people, reading the texts of interviews, can be done like analysis of fictional text. initially i wondered, how i would divorce my literary inclinations from the hermeneutic circle. i found as i read more about the principles of hermeneutic practice that there were pointed differences. this film is not about secrets. secrets inhabit a small part of the narrative arc. they are not an overriding theme or motif. literary analysis would involve coming to a conclusion about the use of secrets as a motif, a statement about what secrets add to the narrative as a whole, and proceed to look at how the major elements of the film use the concept of secrets to strengthen the narrative. i cannot simply convert an expert discussion about dramatic irony into a hermeneutic exemplar. the hermeneutic sensibility requires something different of me. grondin described hermeneutic practice as “a matter of knowing limitations and humility” (2003, p. 25). the practice demands that i ask different kinds of questions. it expects me to attend to the meanings attached to the phenomenon of secrets. indeed, the hermeneutic sensibility requires humility. i had not thought much about the concept of secrets, in this way, until now, even though i have some understanding of the topic. i was reading several texts about hermeneutics as i sought to develop the hermeneutic sensibility for this paper. i wanted to get it “right” immediately. i was irritated with the similarities a nd differences to what i was used to in literary analysis. i was impatient to get past the plurality and write a coherent paper on secrets. i suspended my concern about the paper and turned to the topic. i had to relinquish some control. understandings could not be conjured and concluded neatly in the same way that i would write a film review. understanding is partial, incomplete, still evolving. i ought not to forget that this is a principle of analysis – every time you look at a text, further understandings will emerge. the hermeneutic sensibility requires patience. grondin’s blackman journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 11 9 almost confessionary tone that he was taken aback by gadamer’s declaration that the universal claim of hermeneutics was to be found in the “inner word” (1994, p. xiv), is a reminder t hat there is much to be discovered for practice and there will always still be more. i am a few months into reading the works of the prominent scholars of hermeneutics. i have been listening to youtube lectures, reading original works, reading critiques of these works, reading simple introductions to the major concepts, all in a view to saying, i know how to defend my choices. it has not felt sufficient yet. nevertheless, i do feel that it is not enough to read condensed versions of the main scholars or reinterpretations of their work. gadamer pointed out that “the claim of hermeneutics seems capable of being met only in the infinity of knowledge, in the thoughtful fusion of the whole of tradition with the present” (1960/2004, p. 337). in light of that i see the importance of attending to tradition and the need for more familiarity with the key thinkers. i cannot justifiably develop the hermeneutic practice without the hermeneutic sensibility which requires a historical consciousness of the scholarship. i know that there are other elements of the hermeneutic sensibility that need some tending but for now i am trusting the learning process, accompanied by caputo’s observation in moules et al. (p. xiii) that “hermeneutics does not shy away from the difficulty of life but summons the courage to deal with life in all its ambiguity” and jardine’s counsel that “we don’t fully know what it is because we don’t yet know what will become of it. and we don’t know this because it is still coming” (1992, p. 57). references bellman, b. (1981). the paradox of secrecy. human studies, 4(1), 1-24. doi:10.1007/bf0212 7445 caputo, j.d. (2000). more radical hermeneutics: on not knowing who we are. bloomington, in: indiana university press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/2004). truth and method (2nd ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h-g. (1976). philosophical hermeneutics. berkeley, ca: university of california press. grondin, j. (1994). introduction to philosophical hermeneutics. new haven, ny: yale university press. grondin, j., & plant, k. (2003). the philosophy of gadamer. montreal, qc, canada: mcgill queen's university press. hallström, l., jönsson, r., brännström, b., berglund, p., isfält, b., glanzelius, a., brömssen, t. v., & lidén, a. (1985/2003). my life as a dog. irvington, ny. blackman journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 11 10 jardine, d.w. (1992). the fecundity of the individual case: considerations of the pedagogic heart of interpretive work. journal of philosophy of education, 26, 1, 51-61.doi: 10.1111/j.14679752.1992.tb00264.x moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., & field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. palmer, r.e. (ed. & trans.) (2007). the gadamer reader: a bouquet of later writings. evanston, il: northwestern university press. corresponding author: jaime l. caswell, rn, bscn email: jaime.caswell@ ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics october 25, 2016 the author(s) 2016 neonatal transport nursing is an interpretive practice jaime l. caswell, nancy j. moules, & graham mccaffrey abstract in this paper, we offer a personal account of a neonatal transport nurse (trn) and the interpretive nature of the trn’s work. beginning at the start of a shift, the reader encounters the many ways in which the neonatal transport nurse interprets her surroundings, colleagues, patients, and circumstances, lending to how these factors are consciously and subconsciously engaged in the trn’s practice throughout a day’s work. keywords hermeneutics, nursing, interpretive practice, neonatal nurse, transport, nicu a common descriptor of the nursing profession is that it is a balance of art and science, and professionals within the field are guardians of the human experience at varying po ints along the health spectrum. to understand either of these fields demands an enormous amount of knowledge in contrasting areas. a common denominator can be found in interpretation. scientific interpretation is considered concrete, following universal rules, established truths and measured against standards. artistic interpretation is dynamic and holistic, subject to an individual’s lived experience, and freedom of expression. o n its own, scientific interpretation is efficient and effective, but without the artful knowing of a patient, the care provided is incomplete. n urses practice expertly within both arenas using interpretation as their guiding force. one could think that the neonatal transport nurse (trn) would be at a significant disadvantage caswell, moules, & mc caffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 16 2 in developing an interpretive practice beyond the scientific component. how could the nurse come to know a patient, hear their experience when they have none, understand the message beneath non-existent words and actions? don’t babies just eat, sleep, and have their diapers changed? where does interpretation live in that? an easy misconception to hold, perhaps, and one that is put to rest by reviewing the interpretive practice of a trn over the course of a twelve-hour day shift. 0655 it is an unintended advantage to any neonatal nurse’s development of interpretive practice that neonates have immature and fragile immune systems; it requires that every shift begins with a oneminute hand to elbow scrub prior to entering the unit. this ritual, performed shift after shift, becomes a meditative moment, one to reflect on the day to come, to what pat ient might be received into care, and to get a sense of the unit’s activity. the night shift is leaving and departing comments overheard shed light on what lies beyond the main doors. in those sixty seconds, an offering is made to the nurse: space and time to prepare for the patients and the work ahead. when tuned into this offering, the nurse in kind offers back a foundational minute of mindfulness. it is a moment that allows interpretive practice to come to the forefront. 0920 one of the three pagers clipped to the trn’s waistband alarms in a distinct pattern, and immediately communicates the potential of a transport within the catchment area of southern alberta. the transport team, comprised of physicians, registered nurses, and registered respiratory therapists (rrt’s), convene in the transport office to patch into the incoming call. a quick glance out the window to the heavy thundershowers readies the trn to the likely mode of ground transport, knowing that weather is a primary determinant in how quick ly the team will be available to the referral centre. with luck, the neonate on the other end of the phone call is not in too severe of distress, or very far away, as air travel is unlikely in stormy weather. the call is coming from canmore, alberta, a le vel 1 delivery centre about one hour away from the tertiary care neonatal intensive care unit (nic u) at the foothills medical centre in calgary, alberta. the trn knows that the physicians and nurses at this site are not specialists in neonatal care, but have competency at providing immediate resuscitative measures for the newborn. while a comprehensive report is received over the speaker phone, the trn is hearing a sense of urgency in the measured tone of the physician’s voice and an underlying tremble while reviewing the infant’s delivery. a true knot in the umbilical cord has resulted in a severely hypoxic and compromised baby at delivery. beyond the specifics of medical history and the interventions required for the newborn, the trn has interpreted that a diligent physician is very concerned for the newborn, and that the request for immediate assistance is not a light one; the health care providers to this newborn are at the limits of their capabilities. this knowledge drives the decision to gather resour ces quickly and dispatch sooner than the typical allotted departure time. caswell, moules, & mc caffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 16 3 all necessary standard equipment is packed, along with anticipated additional items possibly needed for a newborn with suspected hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (hie). en route to canmore, the calculated particulars of critical newborn care are completed, and an entry plan of care is discussed with the transport rrt partner, knowing the plan will evolve based on what is encountered on arrival. in this preparation, having not yet la ying eyes on the patient, the trn is demonstrating interpretive practice through anticipation. anticipation, arrived at by piecing together bits of information, knowledge and experience into a potential whole, is one spoke on the wheel of interpretive practice. the complementing side of this wheel spoke is flexibility, as the trn knows anticipation does not equate absolute truth. being prepared yet adjustable to work in the moment, not the hypothetical moment, is what will ensure the best care is provided for the criticallyill newborn. 1105 on arrival to the referral site, the trn sees at first look that the physical needs of the baby are being met; a cardio-respiratory monitor displays vital signs within normal limits, the warmer is at a low setting as required for babies with suspected hie, and an iv is in situ infusing an appropriate solution at an appropriate rate. the presumed father looks disheartened and worried standing guard over his flaccid, motionless baby girl, and the mother, lying in a hosp ital bed, is being attended to by her own nurses. an older woman is at her side, likely grandmother to the infant as she shares the same curly tresses with the mother. this immediate gathering of preliminary information in an unfamiliar environment with an unknown patient tells the trn several things: the newborn has been in capable hands with the canmore team, she has a family that is desperately worried for her, and she has been significantly compromised. the danger in these judgements is mistaking them for truths before verifying them. interpretive practice is witnessed in the trn’s ability to use the judgements as an entry point of care, affirming or dismissing them, and then building from them. during the trn’s assessment of the patient, discussion between the two health care teams flow back and forth, each piece of conversation building a more complete picture for both parties. reassurance is given to the canmore team that their skills were effective and appropriate. small pieces of teaching are inte rjected when needed, knowing this is best received in moments of camaraderie rather than in condescension. interpretive practice is implemented in relationship building, as the nurse knows a positive exchange will have impact on how the team is perceived, and could impact other newborns in the future. the trn considers the data collected on maternal and antenatal history and understands it for the basic information it conveys: the mother’s gravida, para status (number of pregnancies, number of live births) is g1 p0, had regular prenatal care, and normal antenatal scans. what this data captures but does not convey is that a young, married couple have been joyously expecting their first child for the past 38 weeks; 38 weeks in which the mother has taken care of herself and her pregnancy, attuned to her baby so much so, that when no movement was felt overnight, she rushed into the local hospital for a check-up. it is interpretive practice that enables the trn to appreciate what lies beyond the data to the human experience. it is in the observations of the caswell, moules, & mc caffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 16 4 people surrounding this baby that the trn has come to this understanding, knowing as well that similar data under different lived experiences will result in completely different families and how care will be best provided for them. through body language, the trn sees that the father needs to be engaged in his baby’s care, and involves him when appropriate. his eyes betray the strength he wants to show when asking why his daughter’s abnormal movements are considered seizures. the subtle, abnormal movements astutely observed by the trn and the quick response to draw up the appropriate medication demonstrates the impact proper interpretation of physical assessment can have on the necessary treatment of a patient. while addressing the seizure activity of the baby and taking in the non-verbal communication of the family, the nurse is preparing for another form of interpretive practice: how to inform the parents of what to expect for their daughter. translating the medical diagnosis, necessary interventions, and what the days ahead may hold, will be different for every patient and family. it is interpretive practice that enables the trn to choose what language, tone, and pace of delivery to impart that information. having stabilised the newborn and readying for departure, the trn prepares both mother and baby for their first hold. interpretive practice is not required to know a mother wants to cradle her newborn, but it reminds the nurse that the emotions of a post-partum, new mother deserve gentle, honest handling. during this first hold, the nurse intuitively steps back, giving space to mother, father, and baby to be a family. experience has proven that this precious, quick moment is more important than any further words. separating the baby from her mother is unwelcomed but necessary, so the baby is safely and quickly transferred into the transport incubator. interpretive practice happens in small moments, unregistered, but real and impactful, nonetheless. the team is on site for a little over an hour; in this time, a criticallyill newborn has been stabilised, teaching needs of the referral site have been addressed, while maintaining a positive working relationship as an ambassador for the tertiary care nic u, and trust has been established with two new parents who are absorbing the shock of their baby born criticallyill. the trn achieves this with deft capability and compassion, illustrating how neonatal transport nursing is an interpretive practice. 1510 on return to the nicu, hand over is completed and the newborn is no longer in the transport team’s care. while reviewing the transport log, the trn reflects on the trip: what was learned from this transport, this particular patient and family that can be carried forward to improve practice? what could have been done differently? what was done well? in this self-reflection, further evolution of interpretive practice is taking place, building off one experience, knowing it will further hone skills and knowledge for transports to come. as the trn looks out the office window to a sunnier sky, the transport pager beeps, and preparation to care for the next baby is already underway. caswell, moules, & mc caffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 16 5 microsoft word gilhamfinal.docx corresponding author: christopher m. gilham email: cmgilham@hotmail.com journal of applied hermeneutics february 9, 2012 the author(s) 2012 the privileges chart in a behaviour class: seeing the power and complexity of dominant traditions and unconcealing trust as basic to pedagogical relationships christopher m. gilham abstract through an anecdote, this interpretive work suggests that a chart on student privileges in a class for students with behavioural challenges led to an understanding of dominant traditions at play and the power such traditions can hold over educators. these complexly intertwined traditions included the efficiency movement, the norm, and market capitalism’s emphasis on personal rights. these traditions set the conditions for an abused and exclusive notion of privileges for particular students. this led the teacher and me to question of who decides student rights and for whom do such rights apply. we were then able to talk about how the teacher came to understand his students through pedagogical relationships built on trust rather than a singular belief in the rights of each student. this paper also attempts to show the above understandings involved an investigative labouring to dialogue with the topic and that such effort is worth-while because we were able to return to or recover some ‘basics’ within pedagogical relationships. keywords behaviour, discourse, interpretation, pedagogy, rights, special education, tradition, trust, all things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. ecclesiastes 1: 8 (king james version) the anecdote jakob was hurting others regularly. he was a grade 6 student in a designated classroom for students with severe social and emotional disabilities. the school had asked me to come in to help strategize because they felt his behaviours were too severe even for a setting designed to assist such children. soon after receiving the request for support, i met with the principal, assistant principal, resource teacher, and classroom teacher at the school. i arrived early, purposively. classrooms provide their own artifacts of a culture or evidence of how life might be for students who inhabit them, i believe. before everyone was present for the meeting, i walked out of the resource teacher’s office and headed down the hallway… the students are not here at this time as i gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 2 enter the room. it feels large for a class of eight students. several small windows allow just enough light in so the classroom lights can remain off. there is a large carpet, a comfortable reading chair, about ten separated student desks facing a cobra-like head of a smartboard projector and screen at the front of the room. there are bulletin boards on the walls of the classroom. i walk clockwise through the room, scanning the environment quickly. a large light green poster board sits on the fourth wall of my scan. it looks like a chart. i get closer to read the large dark text of the title: ‘loss of privileges’ oh no. i read more… 1) the privilege to eat lunch with peers will be lost for misbehavior. 2) the privilege to have recess will be lost for misbehavior. i am stuck. i feel despair and anger together. there is more on the list. this is enough though. i am captured as i have been captured so many times these past few years. it is not the first time i have seen similar kinds of ominous and universal warnings framed as special favors or advantages for special children. in this moment of being pulled up short and disappointed, a flood of thoughts arise. the privileges chart says to me that children in this room have behaviours which are to be pre-empted against with stern warnings of what may come. because of their exceptional status, they alone are ‘privileged’ for what would be in other cases with other students everyday occurrences like eating lunch with others. i see a structure that drips of exclusionary relations within a school community. i do not know how to reconcile the general term ‘misbehaviour’ with the specific ‘privileges’ of eating lunch with others or going out for recess. i wonder how we justify treating the difference labeled as ‘behavioural challenge or disability’ so universally and unjustly different than the rest of the students in the school? also, i want to know if eating together and playing outside are considered privileges in any official educational documentation in the province. i don’t know how pedagogical relationships can develop between students and teachers when threats like those of the chart are disconnected from the particular lives of complex children and their everyday occurrences. i struggle to hold a calm face. i want to tell the teacher this chart acts as a warning that most likely exacerbates the challenges this classroom is supposed to be positively supporting. over the past few years, charts like this have evoked an overall guiding question in my work in schools: is this what we ought to do about students identified as having severe social and emotional disabilities? i contain the emotional response of the immediate experience. i know it is a moment to be captured in writing. i need to wrestle with it, attempt to articulate it, take the time to reflect on it, open it up and expose it for myself and for others. i immediately decide i will do this. the nod part 1: an opening several days later i met with the school team again. i remember my mind was full of many of the thoughts above racing about trying to come forth clearly. at the same time, i tried to be tactful and to apply the right words at the right time in the right way. i had been thinking about positions i have been reading within gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 3 the field of disability studies in education (baglieri, valle, connor, & gallagher, 2010; ralston & ho, 2010; skrtic, 1995; thomas & loxley, 2007; valle & connor, 2011) and how this field arose in response to the negative pathology of traditional special education that often focuses mainly on the person of disability exclusively. disability studies provides a counterbalance to the deficit-based understanding of disability that permeates education. it is an interdisciplinary field in which disability is studied as a marker of identity–like race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation. disability is viewed primarily through a social lens, as a series of historical, cultural, and social responses to human difference... disability studies focuses on social relationships among people and the interpretation of human difference. (valle & connor, 2011, p. xi) recently, i have attempted to be more mindful of the pathological focus dominating special education in alberta. disability studies and hermeneutics have provided me with different ways of approaching my work with educators and students. in this second school meeting, we were once again discussing jakob and how we could best support him in the school. an opportunity arose for me to share my thoughts on the privileges chart. “because i care about this new relationship with you and the work we do, i want to tell you about something i saw in the classroom that really bothered me.” “shoot away. we want you to tell us what you see here.” “i’m not a fan of talk about privileges. i think it’s important to talk to students about their rights and the responsibilities that come with having those rights. if i were a parent of a child in the behaviour class, i would want to know why my child has privileges that probably the rest of the students in the school have as rights. what is it about my child that gives you reason to treat him as without certain given rights all the time?” to my surprise, heads nodded in approval immediately. it was as if i had hit on an idea they felt was just. a new space had been created for us to explore, discuss, and perhaps to come to an understanding. i believed i could now begin to ask the teacher what was at play with the posting of this privileges chart. later, i realized my thoughts about rights needed critical reflection too. privileges (from the latin meaning ‘individual law’) are defined as special rights, favours, advantages, or exemptions to particular individuals or groups (oxford online dictionary, 2012). hence, privileges are part of the rights discourse. in evoking student rights, i initially did not realize their connectedness to privileges. our western exaltation of rights as individual and inalienable can lead to an isolating subjectivism. one is able to hold whatever opinion or position they like without the ability of anyone else being able to offer arguments for or against others opinions (jardine, friesen, & clifford, 2006). this can have pernicious consequences; as a parent i could argue my child must have lunch and recess with others regardless of her actions. certainly, there would be times where it is unwise and unhelpful for some students to be with their peers. evoking children’s inalienable rights could be a barrier to considering what is best for her and the community of students she lives within. this was not what i wanted the school team to believe was my position on the privileges chart. the rights discourse can lead to a distorted and self-enclosed subjectivity devoid of gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 4 any ability to make truth claims (jardine et al., 2006). this self-enclosed state of individuals perpetuates an idea of freedom not capable of being accountable to others. david smith (2011) wrote of the gradual morphing of medieval christendom’s seven deadly sins into “…the easier virtues of contemporary capitalism (self-righteous rage against another in the name of personal rights…” (p.154). therefore, it is virtuous to act in defense of one’s rights even if it acts to push the defender further from his or her community. likewise, in the excess framing of the individual’s rights wise judgment on behalf of a community can be sacrificed. a personal or individual reign of rights is the measure of freedom. smith argued this same glorification of rights works at cultural and national levels. in the united states, this collective belief in inalienable individual rights has created a government that believes it can tell the world how to be free. professional authority also gets lost in the realm of opinion and rights (smith, p. 157). given this understanding of rights, i could more justly ask if the use of privileges in this classroom was best for this community of identified ‘behaviour kids.’ further labouring was needed. within the school board’s regulation 6001 on student discipline (cbe, 2008), principals can remove privileges from students on a short-term basis. however, mention is not made anywhere of examples of privileges nor is it defined in the first section of the document where terms are defined. i could not find any mention of similar privileges in the school act. in alberta education’s current three-part document titled supporting positive behaviour in alberta’s schools (2008), references to privileges are almost universally meant as extra or additional benefits used to proactively create positive relations between students and schools. some examples of privileges are given in these documents which do evince the ‘extra special’ nature of the rights given: “activities or privileges such as playing a game, sitting in a special place in the class, drawing, writing, colouring, going to recess or gym early, having extra computer time” (p. 62) and “tokens may be ‘cashed-in’ for ‘back-up’ reinforcers such as food, objects, activities or special privileges” (p. 65). then i found this: “a formal contract can be used to require a student to either demonstrate positive behaviour or face a negative consequence such as the loss of privileges (e.g., participating in lunchroom programs or extracurricular activities)” (p. 55). intertwined discourses of economic, legal, and behavioural traditions confronts us immediately through ‘formal contracts’ and token systems that can be ‘cashed-in.’ we can see through this current and official alberta education document that the privileges chart did not come to exist ex nihilo. a historically present and guiding mega discourse exemplifies this use of privileges thereby giving authority to their continued use. important questions were now howling at me. how did participating in lunchroom activities like eating lunch with others or going outside for recess become privileges? is it the case that we live in an educational system where doing something different at lunch than eating alone at a desk in a room is a privilege? what systems of student control and efficiency were at work here? what vestiges of an earlier mode of schooling children still runs deep in our modern system? generally, when rights for others are privileges to some we most often think of those who have lost those rights through a violation of the law, like criminals. it would be more natural to find a privileges chart in a jail where inmates have been found guilty of violating laws and therefore have had their rights suspended. for them, privileges are most often earned for more law-like behaviours while in jail. similarly, this classroom artifact appears to work prior to the violation of the law gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 5 by placing these particular students into an assumed prior status of guilt that has been given special dispensation via privilege to engage in what most would see as everyday healthy situations for and among children. in other words, the behaviour students’ behaviours will not be tolerated in the least. there has been an acceleration of control over these students in anticipation of the law-breaking behaviours the students will get into, assumedly. in the context of the education document referenced above, the formal contract was meant to be used when students presented with challenging behaviours. hence, it does not seem mere conjecture to state that students with behavioural issues can be given status akin to prisoners who are guilty with special privileges to be removed at the first violation of the school laws. if the status and chart or formal contract could only prevent such anticipated extremes all would be well; after all, who would want to lose the specially earned status--a status assigned by a pathological discourse of abnormality--of no longer being able to eat with peers or play outside at recess? a colleague in special education consulting would often tell others how he had ‘earned’ over fifty such ‘formal contracts’ in his years at school, all of them working to push him away from school rather than inspire or motivate to keep him in our formal places of learning. the contract and privileges chart speak of a power attempting to control students not understand or converse with them. what is communicated to only these kinds of labeled and constituted students with such tools in a hyper focused seemingly positively appointed way is that if you misbehave we will be quick to take you away from your peers. i suggest the very conditions of play and socializing that some ‘behaviour children’ need most is the very thing we hold above them waiting to be removed. such threatening signs can stranglehold hope for those used to living in schools and homes in often-hopeless ways. this artifact presents without goodwill towards those particular children. the privileges chart demands of us to ask rights and privileges written by whom and for whom? when set out into the educational world, the enactors of such regulations, best practices, and strategies must be interrogated. the rights discourse can be very powerfully held as an exclusion making or community dividing tool and this requires our vigilance. back at the second meeting, the teacher excitedly replied, “yes! i think so too. we had someone from the school board here last year telling us this was the way to do things so i was following that. but i completely agree with you.” it looked as though when he said that a tremendous emotional release occurred. more of the play of this teacher’s life in the classroom was coming forth. i felt an urgency to meet with him so we could explore how and why he followed the advice to post the privileges chart. in that moment of his emotional release, it also appeared as if he had an immediate recognition of the importance of what was said. this was a moment of having caught or re-captured an insight or knowledge or perhaps even wisdom held ready to burst forth like those delicately exciting and intensely memorable moments that happen between students and teachers in their acts of learning together: the rest of the children in the class caught alex's excitement. a space had opened and questions rushed in. just how many ways were there to make five? what if you were not limited to ones and twos? we were in, and the glances between us told the tale. as daniel (grade 4) once said about a similar moment in the classroom, “i can always tell we've hit something because you two [sharon and pat] look at each other in that way. (jardine, friesen, & clifford, 2008, p. 124) gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 6 we looked at each other that way in the meeting. in our nod of excitement, an understanding was brought to the surface again. surprisingly, this surfacing seemed so easily come by. as i laboured over this phenomenon, i began to wonder if perhaps this timely catch of what was thrown happened because life in the classroom for jakob and his peers was not well. life in the classroom was not working out as the teacher and the school administrative team had hoped. i was reminded of heidegger’s (1962) notion of the everydayness of things, like his example of the hammer“we do not ask what a hammer is for rather, we demand in certain moments to have the hammer. the hammer’s function is already understood, taken for granted, effective” (pp. 109 115). as wrathall (2011) noted of heidegger’s work on the concealing and revealing nature of truth, “...the style of being that allows things to show up as having an essence is most invisible when it is most effective, for example, we are captivated by things we are wholly absorbed in our dealing with them. that renders us unable to make ourselves aware of the understanding of being that is shaping our experience of the world” (p. 33). when the hammer breaks, one begins to notice the hammer and that which is hammered differently. intentionality arises to discover more or differently in order to work with that which was being hammered. the privilege chart as ‘hammer’ had broken. with the school team, there was a greater intentionality and openness to seeing possibilities or to seeing anew. maybe this openness had nothing to do with the privileges chart. maybe it was enough to have a strategist with them giving them advice for their time of crisis. for the school team, there was ripeness for possibility and renewal as a result of being pulled up short by the severity of the behaviours jakob displayed, i suggest. the nod came about for us easily. a kinship then emerged, a famil(y) iar sense of having been here before in our lives. i think we recognized from our past experiences as educators that progress in a kind of technical know-how for troubled youth–that know-how evidenced in the artifact–was not attained or achieved as a form of competency or mastery or as an objective and clear method to be applied. students often act beyond the wanting and doing (gadamer, 1975) of our attempts to control and predict their behaviour especially when we attempt to do so through a hyper structure like the privileges chart. perhaps we realized the chart was actually like a raised hammer ready to strike and this was the wrong way to support students. perhaps we knew this about the chart and the timing of this anecdote finally brought it to the open and stated it when the words could be heard by all of us. i was starting to understand the latter may have been at play. this was an unconcealing of the barrier-like, and disempowering play of, traditional discourses. our nods of approval demanded more from me. it was not enough to let my sharing and our collective sigh act as the final word. my interpretation of the chart and the events needed to be shared with the teacher. we needed to do some work within this experience. we needed to labour interpretively to bring this forth well. something had been noticed or nodded to; it was worthwhile to hold onto, pursue, and find ourselves more deeply immersed in it. what i needed to do was begin talking to the teacher about this nod and to explore the play of that artifact in the context of his life with those students in the classroom and school. hence, the nod was a return to conversation, dialogue, and ongoing understanding. we had once again come back to an original difficulty. this difficulty is to suffer through complex work with children in crisis. this whiling away (jardine et al., 2008, p. 223) with the experience–taking the time to gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 7 reflect on it and explore it–and this recognition that there was something important, something worth-while to dwell within, connected me to the topography of the efficiency movement led by frederick winslow taylor (friesen, jardine, & clifford, 2009; jardine et al., 2006, 2008; valle & connor, 2011). the privileges chart shared a similar tone to his important, society changing work less than 100 years ago: every day, year in and year out, each man should ask himself over and over again, two questions,” said taylor in his standard lecture. “first, ‘what is the name of the man i am now working for?’ and having answered this definitely then ‘what does this man want me to do, right now?’ not, ‘what ought i to do in the interests of the company i am working for?’ not, ‘what are the duties of the position i am filling?’ not, ‘what did i agree to do when i came here?’ not, ‘what should i do for my own best interest?’ but plainly and simply, ‘what does this man want me to do?’ (boyle, 2006, cited in friesen et al., 2009, pp. 151-152) clearly the voice of the artifact in the classroom wanted the students to behave well or to put it in the way it was written, to not misbehave or to do what they were told to do without question. this interpretive connection needed further investigation because the teacher also hinted at his discomfort with this way of controlling children. in the past 6 years, i have been in hundreds of classrooms supporting educators. i have been witness to an absorption into that which makes our work efficient, stems the flow of challenge and difficulty and ambiguity in learning. like the privilege chart demands, prior to behaving, a student must be aware that certain behaviours will be punished. therefore, we must make life easier for us all by making sure students do not behave in certain ways regardless of what needs might be communicated for example rest, or food, or time away from school work. there is the curriculum to get through, the lesson to be taught, seats to be sat in, and lines to stand straight within. the chart says, ‘this is what will get them into position for learning.’ yet the howling against such a method grows in numbers. i have seen this change over the years. complex students like these and the crisis educators find themselves in despair at what once captivated us, concealed from us a more basic (jardine et al., 2008) way of being with one another in learning. more and more of the teachers i meet in classrooms understand that children do not need universal laws imposed on them or reward and token systems to shape them. in jardine’s back to the basics (2008) we are provocatively asked to: imagine if treated these things as “the basics” of teaching and learning: relation, ancestry, commitment, participation, interdependence, belonging, desire, conversation, memory, place, topography, tradition, inheritance, experience, identity, difference, renewal, generativity, intergenerationality, discipline, care, strengthening, attention, devotion, transformation, character. (p. xi) as i will attempt to reveal, this teacher has imagined and lived in this kind of a basic way with his students and had to suffer through the power of these traditions held over him. there are also many in education who are attempting to hunt down this recent howling for the marginalized and overly fragmented student population with a renewed vigor for certain knowledge, especially in special education (gallagher, 1998; kauffman & sasso, 2006). some argue that we need to re-impose standards of verifiable, effective and, hence objective, practices if we wish to have special gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 8 education students succeed in schools (cook, landrum, tankersley, & kauffman, 2003; kauffman, crockett, gerber, & landrum, 2007). they argue that if only educators could follow the proper methods we could get things right for students. over the years, i have seen tools like the privileges chart cover up the deeper problems constitutive of special education like the glorification of mental measurement and pathological diagnosis as truths, as a discourse which venerates the normal (dudley-marling & gurn, 2010; foucault, 1977, 1999; skrtic, 1995; thomas & loxley, 2007; valle & connor, 2011). for example, i am constantly witness to teams of school psychologists spending their work time almost exclusively doing social-emotional and cognitive assessments so that school administrators can attach alberta special education coding status to students resulting in increased funding for the school and supports for the students now codified. the very system created to support students has resulted in its own army of expert mental measurers who could be directly supporting students in need but instead must spend their time churning out ‘ab-normal’ codification documents to meet the criteria for coding which in turn provides the primary funding for their employment, as well. it is a vicious cycle of production and consumption based on a notion of difference residing at two extremes of a constructed curve of population. the policy structure of special education in alberta glorifies these measured, expert truths as the truth of children who are not normal (alberta, 2010). the pathological approach reigns in special education. it is not that there is no truth in the psycho-educational pathology of children. the concern is with what this pathology conceals or hides in its dominance. the normal curve fragments communities into a binary of normal and abnormal. the abnormal are then further fragmented into smaller bits of diagnostic labels and categorized streams of cognitive and social–emotional abilities. there is an ever-increasing coding structure (winzer, 2009) ready to frame children in particular kinds of ways. in the attempt to capture freedom as everyone with their own unique and individual, right-given ways, we have created a diversity monster based on a normal curve created and defined in modern historical contexts (danforth, 2009; dudley-marling & gurn; thomas & loxley; valle & connor). with school psychologists, the production line has been removed or cut off from supporting students directly. echoes of the automotive line rush forth. some workers never see the product they co-construct in its fullness, complexity, and wholeness because in their tightly defined tasks those workers can only do what they are told to do. this policy driven dominant approach within the machinery of supporting and educating the ‘special’ or ‘exceptional’ is not working as evidenced by low high school completion rates (alberta, 2009) for severely coded students. i returned to the school two weeks later for yet another meeting. i entered the classroom and the loss of privileges sign was nowhere to be seen. in its place, was a sign telling students which activity centers they could go to when their work was completed. there were other new ‘signs’ about the room too. these signs spoke of kindness and caring and student engagement in learning. the teacher approached as i looked closely at these new signs. i hope you don’t mind me saying this. it warms my heart to see such renewal and hope in your classroom. i’m so glad that loss of privileges sign is gone. he smiled back and replied with enthusiasm, gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 9 i inherited that sign. i took it on because people told me to do so. your thoughts at the last meeting reminded me that there are many things i know to be true about this work that i had forgotten or felt i had to put aside. the nod – part 2: true conversation i sought ethics approval from the school board to interview the classroom teacher. one of my hopes with this writing was to more thoroughly clear the way so the teacher and i could interpret the experience together, to appreciate it more fully in its abundance. the event and this subsequent intentional act of research or explication through dialogue are pedagogic and thus fitting as hermeneutic. a hermeneutic notion of understanding is centered on the dispossession of understanding from its methodical, prepared self-security. it returns inquiry in education to the original, serious, and difficult interpretive play in which we live our lives together with children; it returns inquiry to the need and possibility of true conversation. (jardine, 1992, p. 124) as true conversation, i wanted to explore these questions: 1) what does the experience say to us about what we ought to do for students we have categorized in a particular kind of way? 2) what gets opened up or revealed via a description of the event and a conversation with an educator from within the event? prior to discussing the experience with the teacher, i asked him to read the above writing. i framed the writing as anecdotal, as a piece of short narrative intended to bring forth a particular thought or point clearly (pinar, 1995, pp. 438-439). this anecdote was intended to be an act of clearing the way in order to allow us to make sense of the particular experience, as if to say, ‘we got it and here’s what we think was at play’ (van manen, 1990, p. 204). this act of talking and writing about the experience and its complex connections is, in itself, a part of the interpretive, hermeneutic process. coming to an understanding includes me, the teacher and this writing, and the texts i have read and bring to the conversation. in this way, there is a field of knowledge we are in and explore (friesen et al., 2009). in this exploration, it is our ability to get into some of the thickness of the field, to dig our way around the thickets and needles, to stay together as we struggle towards an understanding, towards a mutual nod of recognition that makes this journey both worthwhile and ongoing. the chart was like a warning sign on a trailhead capable of stopping many in their tracks and turning them back to the comfort of what they had come from. for us, the sign demanded we take the risks inherent within the difficulty of this work. jakob demanded this. students in behaviour classes demand this. it is our responsibility to ask what is just about our work. these images of struggling in a dense and complex field to understand what we are immersed and absorbed in for the purpose of moving about well with one another is why interpretive work matters (jardine et al., 2006). through such a journey, i hoped the way would be further cleared for us to talk about possibilities as a shared hope through a renewed understanding of what we ought to do for students in our care. i hoped for the pedagogical act described as “fielding knowledge” (friesen et al., 2009, p. 156): within the apparently singular anecdote may lay a complex history–a field of knowledge–for us to explore. this singular case is not to be racked up as another example along a line of examples to make a statistically significant signifigilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 10 cance. the richness explored enlivens its ties to a greater topography, a greater field. we continued this conversation through a reading of the anecdote. once the teacher had read the anecdote, he replied quickly: …the privileges and loss of privileges is probably the thing that struck me most as being obviously something that i didn’t want to do in the beginning and it was highly recommended…and my instinct kicked in and said well, why didn’t i trust that, at least part way through last year?...i think it also harkens back to a lot of the things that were suggested to me last year when i began in this position; i think things that i don’t do anymore and i wouldn’t do and go against who i am as a teacher…also when i read this i thought “oh. what about all the good things i’m doing here?” i’m often criticized for being too soft and too sensitive and too ‘bleeding heart’ all the time…it’s been described to me that, “you need to be a police officer in certain cases with certain kids in certain times, not all the time.” the anecdote served its initial purpose, it seemed. the teacher felt the emotional heaviness of recognizing (re-cognition) the privileges chart anew. he had been teaching in ‘regular’ school classrooms for several years before entering this special education classroom. once there, he found that his wisdom gained through experiences had over the years was not supported. at this point, i realized more fully how his initial nod in the second meeting was a nod of recognition and release. the space was now cleared for further explication of what was at play in that classroom for him and the students and he began to share that play in our conversation. also, the anecdote revealed its limitations in what it conceals as a tool. as i visited this classroom more frequently, i realized the teacher does not live with his students in any way reflective or indicative of what the inherited artifact pointed towards. could this have been because i was present? in conversations with several other key people close to the teacher, they all shared that he had a cogenerative, community-building approach with the students in the class. still the inherited notion of the artifact was tied closely to the direction from ‘expert’ and ‘experienced’ others that he be like a police officer from time to time in his work with these students. what was inferred in this professional pressure? i asked him. unfortunately i know, i’m pretty sure it means, ‘you’re wrong and you need to do what i say and you have no choice’ in speaking to a child…i think they are also trying to convey that the child needs to know that you are in charge, you are in control…i would take a very different approach. i shared my burgeoning historical understanding of the dominant discourses i believed were at play. he replied: when you talk about the artifact being 'a taken for granted tradition' i'm reminded of how i incessantly questioned everything that was suggested (from worksheets on anger management to the loss of privileges sign) at the beginning and how much time people spent trying to convince me that working with 'these kids' was different and much of what i needed to do would be counter-intuitive. had i listened to my own intuitive wisdom i wouldn't have had any support because 'those in the know' would have shrugged helplessly, saying i didn't follow the advice given to me so why bother. my ideas of working with these kids were seen as naive and overly opgilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 11 timistic. i was so deep in self-doubt that it took a lot to resurface. although for some teachers the chart may be taken for granted as typical practice, this teacher felt otherwise because of his previous experiences teaching in ‘regular’ classrooms. yet the chart remained posted. he shared a feeling of being unsupported if he did not use the chart and therefore pressured or imposed upon despite his learned experience. doubt then crept in on him. since he began teaching in this class over a year and a half ago, he has often been ill. could the imposition of the chart as an overall approach to working with this fragmented and boxed-in population of psycho-educationally determined abnormality produce sickness in a teacher who does not wish to be this way with his students? not only was it suggested the teacher be more powerful over the children in his care contrary to what he believed he needed to be and do with students, he felt a similar exercise of power surrounded him in his new position. for a time, the teacher felt powerless to trust his own sense of what was just and caring for students. surfacing is an older, deeper controlling power over self and others in education. this truth came to light for us once again as if coming out of the long, deep shadow of a rational, technical age of school efficiency, the behavioural sciences, and a twisted logic within market capitalism that honours individual rights above and beyond community (friesen et al., 2009; jardine et al., 2010; smith, 2011). the power of this shadow in this context is not necessarily an intentional one, bent on ruining lives and subjugating others. in these long and varied travels, we have come to know something of narration sickness, and how a once enthusiastic tale of the ways of schools has become everincreasingly, nauseatingly numbing. we have been intimately involved with hundreds of teachers and students (as i have too) and have witnessed, first hand, an old tale, which was once full of enthusiasm, still holding sway; a tale of fragmentation, breakdown, linearity, and literalism, coupled with regimes of surveillance, management and its requisite standardization of assessment, and all the consequent sicknesses. students have become ill, dull, disinterested in the face of this tale. teachers, too, have become ill. and what is taken to be ‘learning’ has itself fallen pallid and weak, infected with a industrial assembly-line story-line that has trumped its own living ways. perhaps even more insidious is how the (often silent) dominance of this story-line allows for the assignation of blame for such ills on the sufferers themselves. (friesen et al., 2009, p. 149) (italics added) a pivotal leading figure in this movement was frederick winslow taylor, author of the scientific principles of management (1911). an industrialist, turned author and educational consultant for the us government, his work with industry and education on efficiency standards and practices became a cultural benchmark for what ought to be done in society (friesen et al., 2009; pinar, 1995; valle & connor, 2011). taylor was after efficient production at the cost of intelligent, thinking workers. what mattered was the precise and timely application of very specific skills or tasks in order to keep lines of production moving well. compliance was all that was needed. the idea that students should be doing exactly what we ask them to do and that educators should do the same is therefore not new. it is part of a historico-cultural tradition still numbing both students and teachers. i suggest this inheritance in education often exacerbates and amplifies oppositional behaviours in many students. in a recent discussion with gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 12 junior high school staff on the topic of oppositional behaviours, i asked a simple question: “if you were told all day by most of the adults in this building what you were to do and how you were to do it, how would you feel and respond? now imagine that as your overall, totalizing experience in schools or at work.” staff responses more than strongly indicated this was not acceptable. in their responses to the question, some staff seemed oppositional. i pointed this out to an ironic, fading laughter. “so why then,” i continued to ask, “do we think it is ok to do this to students, especially those we know are sensitive to this kind of control and telling?” unsaid was the answer i often run into, head-on, in schools: “because they need to respect our authority.” so it is that we stop at such statements, equivalent in every way to phrases like, “it is what it is”, and “this is the real world here.” here we have the taken for granted as simply the way things are. (friesen et al., 2009) in the face of such ominous dulling of the life and choices of students and educators, is it surprising to find behaviour classes filled with students who despise schools and teachers who no longer want to teach in them? when i met with the teacher and shared this writing, i told him i was worried about opening up a connection between his sickness and this historically situated ‘narrative sickness.’ he replied, no. this is ok. you would be right to bring this out in the writing like you have. this is true. it is true of me and the students. actually, thank you for this. since we began this conversation i’ve felt much better. when i first started i walked in here fresh and did not know what i was entering into so i sought help. i read. i stayed up many nights doing my own research thinking it through, talking it through with my sister and friends, thinking, ‘what could this mean?’ because i’m sort of a big picture person, i need to know what’s going on, where i need to go, what it all means…i had no training so from those people who had been in this area much longer than me giving me advice. the loss of privileges chart almost seemed like a structure. it almost seemed like something i was meant to have other things flow from and that was even explained to me before many other things i believe to be important to be thinking and understanding and doing. i felt like i had been patted on the head and told, “don’t worry dear. this is all you need to do. these kids aren’t going to make a lot progress. don’t worry about it.” that was said to me in a meeting last year and i just felt literally crazy, i felt actually crazy. i don’t even know what, this was no longer a teaching job… and people could say as much as they wanted to, “stop thinking about it” but i don’t think that was enough to sit back and think, “ah well. i’ll just sit back and deal with that tomorrow.” history tells the story of a long-standing tradition of viewing students like those in this teacher’s classroom in terms often synonymous with ‘badness’ and disrepute; vagrants, delinquents, waifs and strays, ragged urchins, guttersnipes, blackguards, reprobates, street arabs, incorrigibles, for examples (winzer, 2009). these were educational terms used to describe what we now label children and youth as having ‘social and emotional disabilities.’ the behavioural sciences are designed to intentionally prevent or remedy that which is out of the norm and in the subject: the abnormal or ‘dis’-abled. the privileges chart’s attempt to forewarn ‘behaviour students’ of what may come given their non-compliance is a tool of efficiency and standardization, meant for the classroom so that “…nothing happens that is not anticipated and prescribed (or gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 13 forewarned) in advance. no surprise endings.” (friesen et al., 2009, p. 154) (italicized comments are mine). if the regular classroom cannot do this well, then the unique classroom for behaviours will stress this work and make compliance a pre-requisite for returning to the normal. then, the hidden curriculum (pinar, 1995) of efficiency in regular classes becomes the given curriculum which has at its aim the normalization of students for their possible reintegration to the mainstream. as for the program of studies curriculum, the teacher shared that he was told to give the students worksheets and not expect much from students. the worksheets are also artifacts pointing to the efficiency movement embedded within the program of studies and in action within our classrooms (friesen et al., 2009; jardine et al., 2008). the assembly line metaphor is alive here. in the behaviour class, we could say we have a separate assembly line that is a fragment from the main line. this secondary line is intended to repair or fix that which is broken and thus fragmented so that it can be returned to the main line. after all, the stated goal of most behaviour programs is to reintegrate students back into ‘regular’ programming. this historically situated efficiency movement within schools can only return students to the main line of production and this will necessarily spit back out that which it produced in the first place unless a certain docility favouring the normal occurs. behaviour classes have also become places where at once we can comfortably say we educate ‘special’ students in community schools while those students are visibly divided from other students in their unique classes until such a time as they behave like those ‘normal’ students in the ‘regular’ school population. this process and conceptualization of students is deeply entrenched in the very common educational term ‘integration’ (winzer, 2009). this is an industrial version of schooling and it has been with us for over 100 years. over these past few years, as i have found my way around and within the topography of special education in schools it seems that once students enter these unique programs and their normalizing curriculum--once they leave the main line of student learning and production--the school community often detaches itself from the students. i have been witness to repeated conversations with educators in schools who claim these students ‘belong’ to the teacher of the behaviour program and not them. such empirical incidences demand us reconsider what it means when we say “we” and “our” students are part of school communities. are these healthy communities for all or convenient for most? hints of a resurfaced understanding, anew …there’s an interplay between the student, the teacher, all the personalities and that everybody needs to approach things with curiosity…there needs to be an amount of curiosity before there’s a passing down of that understanding and knowledge …so for me part of that year was trying to understand and so when i was trying to get a grip on it, i started to strip away all the things i knew to be wrong and i started to trust that the kids and i could figure it out. nothing i did with the class after that…after a certain point in the year last year, ever solely came from me...we made decisions together. so for me that was a moment, that was a turning point. that came about near the end of last year. after that, i didn’t think about the privileges chart. it just hung there. (teacher) despite these dominant historical traditions interwoven within education and special education, above and beyond this wantgilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 4 14 ing and doing of a structure which attempts to reproduce itself through its advocates, that which happens in the everyday interactions between these children and this teacher circumvents this very edifice. beyond structure, power, method, and the truths of how best to ‘manage’ kids, is what the teacher describes as his ‘intuition’ for a more humane way of being together. this intuition seems to be guided by a trust in himself and the students as well as a curiosity in and for the work of educating complex youth. he has learned this over the years as a teacher. experience in classrooms with students has helped cultivate wisdom in him. there is an awareness that no singular method, at least one centered on a notion of a dominating power over the children whose development is claimed to be challenged or special or exceptional, will do. such attempts at framing particular kinds of students as needing “policing” or using negatively driven, universal and tactless threats under the guise of privileged status will not do given his experiences with children already had. together, the teacher and i uncovered features of dominating ways of seeing and being with troubled students that we agree are not just ways of being with other human beings, especially children. we engaged in important interpretive work. this work allowed us the space or clearing to begin to speak of a deeper, richer, healthier wisdom gained and cultivated through our journeys with students. this wisdom spoke of goodwill, trust, and curiosity between an educator and his students. these re-emerged ways of being are ‘basics’ (jardine et al., 2008) worth cultivating. another moment of understanding arises within this: it is not that we recognized violations of students’ rights. we understood once again that being well with one another involves trust. trust is a basic to get back to in our work with students and one another. trust is required and is often laboured towards in healthy pedagogical relationships. without trust we are not able to dialogue or converse towards new understanding. with trust, we understand that we do have truthful wisdoms to share with one another. our professional, personal, and communal authority is restored with trust. the privileges chart speaks of mistrust--a pedagogical violence--present in our thinking about students with behavioural challenges. however, we can be well when there is unity between us (smith, 2011, p. 10). we might labour to get back to such basics. when we can do this in the context of an educational system striving for inclusion or for something more humane than the current codification of students and all that entails, then the question of what we ought to do for troubled students begins to be addressed justly, i propose. after much effort on all our parts to help jakob, he was beyond us at that time and he needed supports we could not provide. this too has been part of the suffering and understanding of our work. acknowledgements the author wishes to acknowledge drs. jim field, david jardine, and james paul for their intellectual contribution to this paper and reviews of earlier drafts of it. bio christopher m. gilham is a phd student in interpetive studies, graduate division of educational research in the faculty of education at the university of calgary. references alberta education. 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(2011). heidegger and unconcealment: new york, ny: cambridge university press. corresponding author: giuliana harvey email: giuliana.harvey@ ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics august 17, 2016 the author(s) 2016 intensive care unit nursing: an interpretable and hermeneutic practice giuliana harvey, dianne m. tapp & nancy j. moules abstract intensive care unit nursing is an interpretive practice. hermeneutics, as an interpretive philosophy, is an ideal approach to make meaning of the ambiguities that exist in t his intensive practice setting. this paper uses the underpinnings from gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to explore the idea that icu nursing is an interpretive practice. keywords hans-georg gadamer, philosophical hermeneutics, intensive care unit nursing nursing is one of the fine arts: i had almost said, the finest of fine arts. florence nightingale (1820-1910) the art of intensive care unit (icu) nursing refers to a professional discipline that skillfully gathers knowledge, interprets particulars, and then intervenes accordingly (benner, hooperkyriakidis, & stannard, 1999; carper, 1978). the adult icu attends to the acutely ill who require focused monitoring. since the birth of the first ic u in the 1950s, the technological advances and unique patient population make nursing work in this setting distinct (hay & oken, 1972; strauss, 1968). the craft of icu nursing lies with confronting the unpredictable human realities of suffering, loss, healing, and the possibility of bearing witness to the unexplainable (benner et al., 1999). the ongoing interpretation of each sound, smell, sight, and to uch is intrinsic to the care that icu nurses provide to patients and their families. as an icu registered nurse and current doctoral student, i plan to conduct a research study that harvey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 14 2 attends to the following question: how might we understand the meanings of work-related critical incident stress for rns working with adults in the icu setting? hans-georg gadamer’s (1900-2002) philosophical hermeneutics will be used to guide the exploration of this research question. hermeneutics, the art of understanding, is an interpretive and practical philosophy (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015) that recognizes all human experiences, such as those encountered by nurses in the icu, are rich and complex (holroyd, 2007; k inese lla, 2006). in hermeneutics “art is a concept, or rather an experience of truth” (grondin, 2003, p. 31). in this paper, i use underpinnings from gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to explore the idea that icu nursing is an interpretative practice. therefore, hermeneutics, as an interpretive philosophy, is an ideal approach to make meaning of ambiguities that exist in this intensive practice setting. as i write this paper, i recognize that understanding is related to interpretation (gadamer, 1960/2013). icu nursing is an interpretive practice. i have spent a significant amount of time considering this claim. to explore this idea i returned to the tradition of icu nursing by re-reading several of my old journal entries that had been written 10 years ago. as an ic u nurse, i would frequently take time to reflect and write about experiences that were mysteries, difficult to discern, and often morally distressing. mysteries can be understood; they reveal the incompleteness of meaning and that there is always more to be understood (davey, 2006). as i vividly read and recalled the details within each journal entry, i paused at various points that offered insight and perspective. one of the insights that became blatantly obvious was that numerous examples spoke to my interpretive way of being in clinical practice, particularly during situations that were ambiguous and difficult to discern. hermeneutics, like icu nursing, attempts to grasp and bring to light that which is fragmented and hidden (geanellos, 1998). a context is required to elaborate on the idea that hermeneutics is consistently at play within ic u nursing and thus, i will share a personal experience from one of my journal entries. “all experiences, in the hermeneutic sense, are learning experiences. our experiences serve to revise the way in which we understand our past and anticipate our future” (holroyd, 2007, p. 9). my journal entry: interpretation at play september 24, 2006. i received day shift report from jane (pseudonym) who took care of “jack” (pseudonym) and his family. jack, 56-years of age, was admitted to the icu after having fallen from his tractor as a result of a sudden and unexplained cardiac arrest. upon admission to the icu, jack was diagnosed with an anoxic head injury, several fractured ribs, bilateral pneumothoraxes, and an abdominal injury that required surgical intervention. jack had the abdominal surgery approximately six hours prior to my arrival and he remained intubated and mechanically ventilated. immediately after i received report i began my methodical and typical routine that involved: reviewing the alarm settings, zeroing the arterial and central venous pressure lines, examining the patency, drip rate, and calculations for each intravenous drip, conducting a thorough head-to-toe assessment, and attending to family. jack’s initial vital signs were within a targeted range and the rest of his assessment was unremarkable given the nature of his injuries. immediately after my initial assessment, i left jack’s bedside for 5 minutes to prepare his 2100 medications. upon my return, i heard the monitor alarms and noted a 5 mm hg drop in his systolic blood pressure (bp) that was now 80/56, and his heart rate increased harvey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 14 3 to 110 beats per minute (bpm) from 90 bpm. i immediately looked at his urine output, skin color, and adjusted his arterial catheter to ensure patency and accuracy of the bp. each of these objective assessment findings remained unremarkable. my initial concern was the possibility of internal abdominal bleeding, however, i could not rule out the possibilities of an undetected brain hemorrhage or a second cardiac event. despite the lack of evidence to support these possibilities, i suddenly became like a detective investigating a mystery and eager to uncover the truth. i began to increase the frequency of jack’s head-to-toe assessments to every 30 minutes rather than every 4 hours as initially ordered by the icu physician. my “gut instinct” told me “something” unusual was going on with jack’s physical status. within 10 minutes, i heard the monitor alarms for a second time and again noticed jacks systolic bp dropped by another 5 mm hg (75/34 mm hg) and his heart rate increased to 125 bpm . this time my assessment findings revealed: his abdomen was more distended, the urine output dropped to 10 mls/hour, and i was convinced that there was active bleeding in his abdominal cavity. i made the decision to collect blood from his arterial line so i could review his complete blood count, specifically his hemoglobin and hematocrit level. once the blood work results had returned from the lab, i informed the icu physician of the information. the physician ordered additional diagnostics that confirmed my initial suspicion, jack was experiencing an acute internal abdominal hemorrhage. within 30 minutes, jack returned to the operating room to have a general surgeon repair his abdominal bleeding. interpretation as a daily practice for icu nurses “hermeneutics begins with the premise that the world is interpretable” (moules, 2002, p. 4), and thus the day-to-day often taken for granted practices of icu nursing are also interpretable. the word hermeneutics means to interpret (oxford canadian dictionary, 2006) and is derived from the greek god hermes, a mischievous and cunning character who delivered messages of the gods to mortals (moules et al., 2015). his messages were often playful and obtuse, “enticing interpretation” (moules et al., 2015, p. 2). the etymological source of the word “interpret” originated in the late 14t h century and refers to the action of explaining the meaning of something (etymonline, 2016). the act of interpretation takes place through engagement and participation, by being in the world (davey, 2006). heidegger (1889-1976) used the term dasein or “being there” to emphasize that, by being in the world, one is always interpreting (annells, 1996; grondin, 2003). as an icu nurse by “being” engaged in the world of critical care, i was unknowingly making meaning of each patient care experience. there was a dialectical approach evident in my interpretation of jack’s situation. i consistently moved between the parts and whole of the experience to make meaning of his rapidly changing status. the dynamic and iterative process parallels the hermeneutic circle, a metaphor for conceptualizing understanding (debesay, naden, & slettebo, 2008; moules et al., 2015). the hermeneutic circle refers to the ontological structure for understanding (grondin, 2003; walsh, 1996). “the circle, then, is not formal in nature. it is neither subjective nor objective, but describes understanding as the interplay of the movement that takes place in language” (gadamer, 1960/2013, p. 305). for example, the changes in jack’s vital signs were not interpreted as simple numerical data, rather were explored through a historical and contextual harvey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 14 4 lens. according to gadamer (1960/2013), “understanding is, essentially, a historically-effected event” (p. 310). this lens was evident in my use of past trends and attention to the existing overall clinical picture, to make meaning of jack’s assessment findings. the changes in jack’s blood pressure and heart rate were understood relative to the color of his skin, the amount of urine output, and his central venous pressure. making meaning of jack’s changing status is an example of hermeneutic understanding. hermeneutic understanding complements scientific and diagnostic reasoning to make meaning, recognizing that science does not dominate the understanding and is only one component of the larger picture. combined with “scientific and technical knowledge there exists another body of knowledge that is not the result of proof and demonstration but is laid down by tradition, received wisdom, and practical experience” (davies, 2006, p. 40). hermeneutic understanding takes place by examining whole and parts, attending to history and context, in order to make sense of particulars and intervene based on the implications of that meaning (moules, mccaffrey, morck, & jardine, 2011). by re-reading my past journal entries, i have come to realize that hermeneutic understanding has always been inherent in my nursing practice. interpretation as a ritual for icu nurses hermeneutics seeks to question what is typically taken for granted (moules et al., 2015). i have often thought about the routine day-to-day practices as an ic u nurse that i considered habitual and conducted unthinkingly. for example, the beginning of each patient care experience consisted of a thorough and methodical assessment. my routine would begin with an evaluation of the patient’s physical and psychological status, as well as a review of the monitor alarms and the technological devices that were used for treatment, such as the ventilator. by revisiting my experience with jack, i began to wonder, is there meaning behind the rituals that we often take for granted? max van manen (2002) wrote about the importance of considering the meaning behind the ritualized experiences. “and yet, in each ritual there may exist traces of meaning that belong to the original phenomenon that gave rise to the experience” (van manen, 2002, p. 9). in an algorithmic manner, i completed my initial assessment of jack; this routine component of my clinical practice was significant. it offered me more than just a baseline assessment; it revealed what was familiar, foreign, common, and strange. my ritualized experience created a space for me to enter and remain in the hermeneutic circle for ongoing interpretation of the particulars. it was this ritual that presented me with clues to jack’s emerging mystery (the acute abdominal hemorrhage) as well as the questions and dialogue that accompanied. the dichotomy of familiarity and strange ness is at play in hermeneutic work (gadamer, 1960/2013). the understanding that emerges through each ritualized experience within the practice of icu nursing is interpretive and thus hermeneutic. interpretation in the form of practical wisdom patricia benner (1999) used the term “clinical forethought” to describe a nurse’s judgment and wisdom that are typically unexplainable, yet are pervasive in the logic of clinical practice (p. 64). while caring for jack, i recalled experiencing a “gut instinct” that was inarticulate; it was an intuitive sense that functioned like an alarm bell alerting me to “something.” i was unable to discern that “something,” but recognized there was value in attending to this instinct. knowing “how to distinguish… lies the true art” (gadamer, 1996, p. 19). intuition or “this experienced harvey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 14 5 based wisdom, refers to a knowing without necessarily having specific rationale” (benner et al., 1999, p. 64). nurses in the icu use clinical wisdom to interpret salient particulars and respond to possibilities in a timely manner (benner et al., 1999). engaging in clinical forethought requires judgment and an anticipation of potential clinical events using intuitive thinking (benner et al., 1999). i anticipated further diagnostics would be ordered by the physician thus, i collected blood from jack’s arterial line to obtain a complete blood count. the results from the blood work provided me with another piece to the mysterious puzzle, enhancing my insight into jack’s deteriorating status. i believe clinical judgment is inherently interpretive (e.g., hermeneutic), as it integrates various types of knowledge for new understandings to emerge. c linical judgment requires knowledge which is “abstract, generalizable, and applicable in many situations,” including intuition derived from practice and experience as one grasps clinical situations (tanner, 2006, p. 205). hermeneutics is what aristotle referred to as practical wisdom (phronesis) that is translated as practical knowledge and moral knowledge (grondin, 2003; moules et al., 2015). the term phronesis was used by aristotle to distinguish between contextualized and objective knowledge (moules et al., 2015). this is “a form of knowledge arising from experience that undergirds hermeneutic phenomenology” (moules et al., 2015, p. 24). practical knowledge demands judgment (moules et al., 2015) where “the knower is not standing over against a situation that he merely observes; he is directly confronted with what he sees” (gadamer, 1960/2013, p. 324). the work of phronesis penetrates through icu nursing and hermeneutic philosophy, it is a form of knowledge that emphasizes, “experiential understanding of life as it is lived in everyday practices” (moules, field, mccaffrey, & laing, 2014, p. 6). conclusion the art of ic u nursing is inherent in a discipline that engages in the event of interpretation, a process of ongoing discovery. making meaning involves “attention to the question of what it means to know and what kinds of knowledge are held to be of most value in the discipline of nursing” (carper, 1978, p. 13). the day-to-day work of nurses is “deeply interpretive” and “hermeneutic in character” (moules et al., 2011, p. 2). like hermeneutic understanding, nurses use various modes of knowledge to make meaning. re-reading my journals has offered me insight into the present and a glance at the future. when our past and present collide, we are invited to pause and take note. as an icu nurse, i am always knowingly or unknowingly interpreting using historical, e xisting traditions, and context to guide clinical possibilities. the practice of hermeneutics “ventures into the contextual world” encouraging us to to know differently (moules et al., 2015, p. 3). icu nursing is a “deeply interpretive discipline wherein the work of something like hermeneutics is already at work” (moules et al., 2011, p. 2). revisiting my past has revealed to me what was once concealed, that i am always already understanding, that my ic u nursing practice has been “already deeply hermeneutic” (moules et al., 2011, p. 2). references harvey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 14 6 annells, m. (1996). hermeneutic phenomenology: philosophical perspectives and current use in nursing research. journal of advanced nursing, 23, 705-713. retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(issn)1365-2648 benner, p., hooper-kyriakidis, p., & stannard, d. (1999). clinical forethought: anticipating and preventing potential problems. in p.b. (eds.), clinical wisdom and interventions in critical care: a thinking-in-action approach (1st ed.; pp. 63-88). philadelphia, pa: w.b. saunders company. carper, b.a. (1978). fundamental patterns of knowing in nursing. advanced nursing science, 1(1), 13-24. retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/advancesinnursingscience davey, n. (2006). unquiet understanding: gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. albany, ny: suny press. debesay, j., naden, d., & slettebo, a. (2008). how do we close the hermeneutic circle? a gadamerian approach to justification in interpretation in qualitative studies. nursing inquiry, 15(1), 57-66: doi: 10.1111/j.1440-1800.2008.00390.x gadamer, h-g, (1960/2013). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, eds. & trans.). new york, ny: bloomsbury academic. gadamer, h-g. (1996). the enigma of health: the art of healing in a scientific age. stanford, ca: stanford university press. geanellos, r. (1998). hermeneutic philosophy. part i: implications of its use as methodology in interpretive nursing research. nursing inquiry, 5, 154-163. retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/journal/10.1111/(issn)1440-1800 grondin, j. (2003). the philosophy of gadamer. montreal, qc, canada: mcgill-queen’s university press. hay, d., & oken, d. (1972). the psychological stresses of intensive care unit nursing. psychosomatic medicine, 34(2), 109-118. retrieved from http://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/pages/default.aspx holroyd, a.e. (2007). interpretive hermeneutic phenomenology: clarifying understanding. indopacific journal of phenomenology, 7(2), 1-12. retrieved from www.ipip.org interpret. (n.d.). online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=critical kinsella, e.a. (2006). hermeneutics and critical hermeneutics: exploring possibilities within the art of interpretation, qualitative social research, 7(3), 1-12. retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs http://www.ipip.org/ harvey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 14 7 moules, n.j. (2002). hermeneutic inquiry: paying heed to history and hermes: an ancestral, substantive and methodological tale. international journal of qualitative methods, 1(3), article 1. retrieved february 11, 2016, from https://www.ualberta.ca/~ iiqm/backissues/1_3final/html/mo ules.html moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., morck, a.c., & jardine, d.w. (2011). editorial: on applied hermeneutics and the work of the world. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5kd1qw9 moules, n.j., field, j.c., mccaffrey, g.p., & laing, c.m. (2014). conducting hermeneutic research: the address of the topic. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 7, 1-13. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/index moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. oxford canadian dictionary. (2006). paperback oxford canadian dictionary. don mills, on, canada: oxford university press. strauss, a. (1968). the intensive care unit: its characteristics and social relationships. nursing clinics of north america, 3(1), 7-15. retrieved from http://www.nursing.theclinics.com tanner, c.a. (2006). thinking like a nurse: a research-based model of clinical judgment in nursing. journal of nursing education, 45(6), 204-211. retrieved from http://www.healio.com/nursing/journals/jne van manen, m. (2002). ritualized experiences. in m.v. (eds.), writing in the dark: phenomenological studies in interpretive inquiry (1st ed.; pp. 9-25). london, on, canada: the althouse press. walsh, k. (1996). philosophical hermeneutics and the project of hans-georg gadamer: implications for nursing research. nursing inquiry, 3, 231-237. retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(issn)1440-1800 https://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/1_3final/html/moules.html corresponding author: david w. jardine, phd email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics november 22, 2016 the author(s) 2016 guest editorial: “the more intense the practice, the more intense the demons”: a few hermeneutic caveats david w. jardine the main title of this paper has served me as a warning for those interested in hermeneutic work, myself, of course, included. it is from patrul rinpoche (1808-1887) in his text “the words of my perfect teacher” (1998, p. 189) and it summons something of the intimate dangers of carefully studying and becoming familiar with the slipstreams of our lives, both those that live in us, and that we, wittingly or otherwise, live within. there are reasons for these dangers. hermeneutic begins by “giv[ing] up a special idea of foundation in principle” (gadamer, 1984, p. 323), that is, giving up the standard westernphilosophical escape mechanism that allows our studying to have, or at least hope for, solid, final, fixed grounding and therefore to gain confidence and stability by referencing some external, permanent, verity, or verities. it leaves us in an orbit of unheimlichkeit (heidegger, 1976/1962, p. 233) an “un-homelike-ness” in which we must give up such hopes. this, by itself, is vertiginous enough, because it means that hermeneutic study is inevitably haunted by the ghosts of doubt, affliction, exhaustion, fear, and failing. one must become accustomed to sensing that one’s efforts are not enough, that one just might be nothing more than an imposter in this work, work whose imposture is bound to be found out by someone who will trumpet foundational assurances about the topic i may have found so hermeneutically fleeting. two things, here. first, get used to it. second, you have myriad companions in this work, other homeless wanderers. they can’t remedy this situation, but they can commiserate and console and clarify this common lot. they can help you study this mess you’re in and not just suffer it. seek them out. these can be fellow students, scholars present or long-dead. hold your suffering in jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 7 2 common. compassion. even the crack of wood split for winter or the next pull of air, well attended, can help. “everything is teaching you. isn’t this so?” (chah, 2004, p. 5). but there is another layer here which, in part, bespeaks the proximity of hermeneutics to a phenomenological origin, but which also sharply cuts its cleave both to it and from it (see http://www.dabhand.org/wordstudies/cleave.htm for more details on this lovely dual-inverse meaning of cleaving). hermeneutic meditations are a bit like this: understand “meditation” as it is explained in dharmamitra’s clear words commentary (prasphuta-pada): “meditating” is making the mind take on the state or condition of the object of meditation.” (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 111) this bespeaks a whiff of an old aristotelian notion of mensuratio ad rem, that is, that our study must “remain something adapted to the object” (gadamer, 1989, p. 261) and not, instead, something that remains adapted to our methodology, or to the research granting agencies ideas of how to write up a legitimate proposal, or “to the wishes, prejudices, or promptings of the powerful” (p. 261), or to my own hidden or overt pathologies and desires. in this studied and practiced movement to take on the state or condition of the object, it can happen that the object starts to yield up depths and characteristics heretofore unnoticed or occluded. so, the first blush is that the topic we are exploring starts, shall we say, to “break forth” (p. 458) with angular, often suppressed, often pointed bloodlines of implication, contestation, and meaning. such yielding up means that the topic i am investigating starts running down variegated paths whose turns up ahead make me lose sight of what to do, where to go. “we must entrust ourselves to what we are investigating to guide us safely in the quest” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 378). but don’t be fooled, here. we must entrust ourselves even when and even though what we are investigating might unleash demons in us that need to be faced in order for us to proceed. when gadamer speaks of bildung (1960/1989, pp. 9-18), of cultivation and become hale and robust in a complex civil society, of becoming someone through the study one engages in, he’s not simply talking about going to art galleries and other “cultivated,” elitist pleasantries. he is talking about facing the mess of one’s life in our interactions with the world, letting the world in, and letting out our familial, inherited, secret demons to see whether they can live in the light of day: if you are frightened, wondering whether there is a demon in a strange cave at night, your fear is not dispelled until you light a lamp and carefully investigate whether it is there. (tsong-kha-pa, 2002, p. 334) as the object breaks forth, so, too, do i get heretofore secrets secreted, confidences betrayed. i find that my life has been fashioned and inhabited “beyond my wanting and doing” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. xviii). it is quite disturbing to find out that i may have been living a life that is far more unintentionally duplicitous than i hoped or imagined. i think back, over 30 years of work, to how many times http://www.dabhand.org/word%20studies/cleave.htm jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 7 3 those, myself included, who feel hermes rushing nearby and find that that rush unleashes hidden afflictions (e.g., jardine, 2016). the yielding up of the topic has a tendency to cascade back on my own meditations, beckoning the arousing of my own lived experience and my own deep, perhaps unexamined, complicities in and to these depths. hermeneutics thus dually cleaves to phenomenology: this is about my own lived experience as a writer, as a scholar and teacher and student, and the complicities and stubborn blind spots of the life i’ve come to live. but, in such cleavage, i realize that my own lived experience might reveal another level of blockage for which phenomenological descriptions of immediate experience falls bereft: false consciousness. in speaking with a student recently about his work, his responses to my queries and his emergent accusations set off in me a roiling resistance and measured and unmeasured response. my immediate, lived-experience became an outcome of feeling threatened and a withdrawal into self-protection (and then, unfortunately [but luckily briefly] lashing responses from within this coiled mess). we can follow freud, here, or jung, or tsong-kha-pa, or both paul ricouer and gadamer (1984) regarding the hermeneutics of suspicion, in witnessing that lived experience is often a gloss for deeply hidden afflictions whose spells need “break[ing] open” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 362). “neither the knower nor the known is ‘present-at-hand’” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 261) just lying there in the open fully clear and exposed and ready to tell, but is, rather, ensnarled in the world, duplicitous and hidden, not just present, entangled, not just selfexistent. supposed and however-deeply-felt phenomenological immediacy is revealed as profoundly mediated, profoundly dependently co-arising, profoundly in need, therefore, not of surface description but diagnosis, not just “seeing” but “seeing through.” “insight is more than the knowledge of this or that situation. it always involves an escape from something that had deceived us and held us captive” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 356). “breaking the spell” can sounds so trite, but as often happens in those children’s stories of spells cast and broken, the next gesture can be traumatic: oh dear, what have i done? what have i been doing, saying, thinking? i didn’t mean it! honest! thus, the poverty of the mens auctoris (gadamer, 2007, p. 57). there is no method here to help those new to such work to avoid this conundrum. “from it no one can be exempt” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 362), and the only recourse is practice, and that practice must always be done by me, by you, for only there does the locale of hermeneutics really emerge. when gadamer states that, in this work, “we become . . . closer to the real givenness, and we are more aware of the reciprocity between our conceptual efforts and the concrete in life experience,” this reciprocity is not a general or universal procedure, but is what is cleverly and tortuously translated in martin heidegger’s being and time (1962, p. 68, h42) as involving “in each case mineness [jemeinigkeit].” no one can become practiced in my stead. so, be careful, and realize that there are good reasons for many lineages of study to say that you must find a good teacher, a practiced teacher. there is a good reason for thinking of the practice of writing as part of the practice of research itself. play can outplay the players. you can be outrun, overrun, and such “experience[s] … [are] not something anyone can be spared” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 356). gadamer does say that “understanding . . . means that one recognizes that the other person could be right in what he or she says or actually wants to say” (gadamer, 2007, p. 117). however, part of the deceptively alluring face of hermeneutic work can jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 editorial 7 4 be the false hope that it just might be my turn to be the one who could be right. maybe i can finally tell my story and be heard uninterrupted. sorry to disappoint, but that is not how this work works. however, it may be why some hermeneutic ventures (including some of my own) can end with emotional fraught failure, having just aroused and incited fears of one’s demons without breaking them open enough to catch the light. references chah, a. (2004). everything is teaching us: a collection of teachings by venerable ajahn chah. victoria, australia: sangha bodhivana monastery. gadamer, h.g. (1984). the hermeneutics of suspicion. man and world, 17, 313-323. gadamer, h.g. (1960/1989). truth and method. new york, ny: continuum press. gadamer, h.g. (2007). the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (r.e. palmer, ed. & trans.). evanston il: northwestern university press. heidegger, m. (1976/1962). being and time. new york ny: harper and row. jardine, d. (2016). thoughts on thinking through regret and how afflictions can be teachers. in d. jardine (2016). in praise of radiant beings: a retrospective path through education, buddhism and ecology (pp. 223-236). charlotte nc: information age publishing. patrul (1998). the words of my perfect teacher. boston, ma: shambhala. tsong-kha-pa (2000). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lam rim chen mo) vol. 1. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. tsong-kha-pa (2002). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lam rim chen mo) vol. 3. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. microsoft word hovey et al final.docx corresponding author: richard b. hovey, phd email: richard.hovey@mcgill.ca journal of applied hermeneutics june 8, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 synergistic research in medical education: some philosophical reflections richard b. hovey, charo rodríguez, steven jordan, & angela c. morck abstract in this paper, we present and discuss the “synergistic research approach,” from quantitative and qualitative through mixed methods, as a term that refers to an academic endeavour in which researchers are not only committed to comprehensiveness and rigor, but also – and importantly – to excellence in peer processes that further enhance knowledge generation by emphasizing the philosophical underpinnings thereof. we outline the hermeneutic wager, which provides the philosophical grounds for synergistic research, and explain the reasons why we consider this perspective to be of particular interest in the health profession education field of inquiry. keywords synergistic research, medical education, philosophy of science, hermeneutic wager, personcentred care, research methods as in other health-profession domains, health profession education’s connection to empirical research, traditionally dominated by quantitative methods, has become increasingly open to qualitative research and mixed-methods approaches (lavelle, vuk, & barber, 2013; tavakol & sandars, 2014). positivist/post-positivist paradigms have framed research conducted in natural sciences, and provided the basis for the evidence-based trend in medicine, dentistry, and allied medical sciences. qualitative research approaches, the origins of which can be traced through their application within social sciences, have in turn shaped important medical movements, such as narrative medicine and professionalism. hovey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 9 2 concomitantly, the mixed-methods movement has forcefully emerged as a new orthodoxy in health, social and educational research, particularly since the 1990s. the mixed-methods research community has in fact been very successful in introducing mixed-methods studies and pragmatism as the third paradigm in education research (johnson & onwuegbuzie, 2004). as emphasized by creswell and garret, “[a]t this moment in the development of research approaches, the educational researcher needs a large toolkit of methods and designs to address complex, interdisciplinary research problems” (2008, p. 321). some view mixed methods as “direct descendants of classical experimentalism and the triangulation movement of the 1970s” and believe that they “presume a methodological hierarchy, with quantitative methods at the top” and “with qualitative methods playing a subordinate, ancillary role in illuminating quantitative data/findings” (denzin, 2012, p. 81). mixed methods researchers themselves, however, define their approach as “a movement that moves past the paradigm wars by offering a logical and practical alternative” (johnson & onwuegbuzie, 2004, p. 17), one which they view as superior to any purist approach for fulfilling research needs. despite its unquestionable popularity, mixed methods is, according to its tenets, a research movement that is still very much in development (tashakkori & creswell, 2008). this may be due, at least in part, to the controversy it has provoked (e.g., denzin, 2010; giddins, 2006; symonds & gorard, 2010). interestingly, although the reflexive stance displayed by some leading mixed methods researchers is laudable (e.g., bergman, 2011; creswell, 2011), a sort of purism can also be identified in this community of scholars: the same purist stance that they associate with scholars framed within the first and second research paradigms (johnson & onwuegbuzie, 2004) when they in turn state that research innovation, interdisciplinarity, and best ways to face complex problems seem only possible through mixed methods research (e.g., hesse-biber & johnson, 2013). advocating for synergistic research in health education our intention in this paper is to respectfully contribute to this debate by proposing a synergistic research approach to health profession education. two main, intertwined arguments support our proposal. first, in contrast to morgan (2007) who argued that there is “little reason why purely epistemological issues should be of major interest to social science research methodologists” because “that is the province of philosophers” (p. 68), we contend, with others, that this is precisely the researcher’s philosophical stance when conducting research that “fleshes-out” the research process and makes it truly substantive. in support of this position, see for instance vattimo (2011), who stated that we cannot simply accredit the truth of our practices to science or the application of science without appealing to what he terms “the paradigmatic horizon within which every correspondence is verifiable” (p. xxxiii). vattimo agreed with gadamer’s (1996) argument of practice, in terms of phronesis, that is to say that we should not merely accept a theory or research outcome as truth without paying heed to context(s) that require attention and a depth of understanding (lund, panayotidis, smits, & towers, 2012). secondly, at a more practical level, we view synergistic research as an academic endeavour that aims not only to examine complex problems in a comprehensive and rigorous way (something empirical researchers of any allegiance agree with), but also to emphasize excellence in peer processes whereby new knowledge is generated precisely by considering the philosophical hovey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 9 3 underpinnings of thereof. in an era in which specialization is rewarded everywhere and seen as preferable, the intention of synergistic research is to bring together researchers from different disciplines and experts in specific domains who hold uniquely different backgrounds and experiences and whose research may be framed in different paradigms, but who are united by their shared concern with the philosophy of research. synergistic research would therefore be instantiated in interdisciplinary research programs that, beyond the mere use of multiple toolkits for research, are respectful of different paradigmatic requirements for exploring the same phenomenon in a complementary, comprehensive, and inclusive manner. our advocacy for synergistic research in health professions education has an ultimate goal: to meet the imperative need to educate medical and other health providers in a way that enables them to overcome the current tension between science and care. as noted by dunn and jones (2010), “[w]e found that care and science logics coexist, moving through periods of balance and imbalance and residing in perhaps an uneasy tension that is not easily resolved in medical education” (p. 139). this is foundational to the understanding that a research project is not interdisciplinary if it merely borrows or replicates methodologies from different disciplines without truly understanding the philosophical and theoretical premises that are foundational and that provide rigor and substance. why the tag “synergistic” research? we adopted the term “synergistic” research to help describe this approach because it refers to a collective effect that is greater than the sum of our individual research approaches, pre-understandings, and epistemologies. etymologically, the term is derived from the greek word synergia, meaning “joint work, a working together, cooperation; assistance,” which is in turn derived from synergos, meaning “working together” (from syn“together”+ ergon “work”). in english, synergy commonly refers to an advanced effectiveness as a result of cooperation. this is more than a mere application of method but speaks to the possibility of an expanded horizon of understanding, through research that is at its core dialogical, open, and interdisciplinary (synergy, n.d.). if language matters – which it does – then the words we choose to name our research philosophy also helps to establish the quality of the team’s interactions: that is, how inclusive and relational the co-participants are with each other and, especially, with research participants (gadamer, 1960/1989; wittgenstein, 2009). researchers become aware that “understanding is not something that takes place at the end of humanistic research about an object, it stands at the beginning and governs the whole process of questioning, step by step” (gadamer, 2001, p. 50). within this research approach, we understand that the production of best or promising evidence needs to be inclusive of multiple epistemologies, ontologies, methods, statistics, narratives, analyses, and ways of knowing. research begins with a topic and defines how the questions of interest are to be researched through conversations with scholars from various disciplines, through education, and in particular through different ways of knowing. through researcher engagement focused on a common or shared topic, we can begin to think creatively about how to best answers questions that generate new knowledge together. by reifying methods, that is, by being method-driven and choosing the research method first and then aligning the topic to fit the method (even mixed methods), we can lose the very essence of what we are trying to understand. research… hovey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 9 4 is basically not a problem of method at all. it is not concerned primarily with amassing verified knowledge, such as would satisfy the methodological ideal of science –yet it, too, is concerned with knowledge and with truth. but what kind of knowledge and what kind of truth? (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. xi) philosophical underpinnings of research our philosophical orientation for synergistic research is grounded in hermeneutics, which advocates that subjectivity is not a barrier to superior objectivity, but rather an opening to it. subjectivity in the sense of having a distinct but negotiated point of view can be regarded as enabling a new and different understanding to emerge (davey, 2006; gadamer, 1960/1989). learning from the other occurs when the other challenges our knowledge, experiences, and preconceptions. the result of dialogical hermeneutics encounters are intended to leave both parties thinking in different and unexpected ways about the analysis given and received. the formal employment of part/whole figures of thought clearly contributes to the transformation of understanding, yet such transformation happens to us and in unpredictable fashion (gadamer, 1992). these we contend cannot be achieved by application of method alone, but are actively achieved through encountering and valuing other perspectives (theories). otherwise, learning may be mistaken for an affirmation of something already known, or for an extension of that knowledge, but not as new learning. to understand conscious subjectivity requires a “positive commitment to deepening and exploring its enabling assumptions suggests that objectivity can no longer be understood as the absence of subjectivity” (davey, 2006, p. 19). in other words, humans live and experience their world in context and interpretively; consequently all research, including those that methodologically strive for objectivity to determine truth, will always be influenced by the contextual disposition of human experience. philosophical hermeneutics distinctly assigns a dignity to the difference between researchers and their participants and/or patients, and contends that the differential space of the in-between has its beginning in the process of the hermeneutical encounter, which invites us to allow those who see and think things differently to expand our understanding (gadamer, 1960/1989, 1992). this is contrary to most traditional methodological research thinking, but intriguing: a process through which one does not deny, suspend, or bind one’s background and biases, but through which one strives to understand and use them, because it is through heterogeneity of thought and commitment to one’s discipline vis-à-vis others that sophisticated new and different understanding may be achieved. synergistic researchers are aware of the value of the relational within the research process and the need for conversation and reflection as essential properties to successful interdisciplinarity (hovey & craig, 2011). the hermeneutic wager the hermeneutic wager (kearney, 2010) is a means of assessing personal and professional risk of engaging within a synergistic research approach; because the researchers are interested in the same topic and each one is already an accomplished investigator with his or her own methodological expertise, this approach invites openness, authenticity, and a focus on the relational aspects of working together (treanor, 2010). however, our encultured ways of knowing and hovey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 9 5 understanding one’s role may provide hidden barriers to interdisciplinary research, a privileging of certain kinds of research methods or one’s perceived status within the research team (hovey & craig, 2011). inspired by kearney’s work (2010), we offer five conversation topics as a reflective process to co-create an interdisciplinary research team that is stronger, more creative, and has greater potential to understand complex health concerns: imagination, humility, commitment, discernment, and hospitality. the hermeneutic wager from richard kearney’s philosophy (2010) was adapted into an application or a practical approach to building interdisciplinary teams in research. this approach is relational as it helps to describe what each researcher brings to the table from their discipline specfic knowledge. the hermeneutic wager provides a philosophical-relational foundation from which a team can be built (treanor, 2010). this perspective aligns with the work of philosophy that as gadamer (1998) stated is “to clarify concepts, not to present a new body of knowledge through empirical research” (p. 101). applied hermeneutics is, in brief, a means to gain a deep understanding of a topic, human experience, or event. it does so through conversation with others, who can add other perspectives and understanding to a shared topic or experience of interest, such as the differences encountered when interdisciplinary researchers work to build their team. the hermeneutic wager is about decision-making and describes a conversational process to guide the interdisciplinary research team’s development and to build a highly functional team. in practice, the hermeneutic wager consists of five conversations that are not to be understood as a linear progression nor a series of graduated steps where when one is completed the team graduates to the next step and so on until all five have been achieved. rather, the five conversations of imagination, humility, commitment, discernment, and hospitality are circular in nature, as each one may resurface, again and again, during the building of the team and will last through the duration of the team’s tenure. the hermeneutic wager keeps the conversation alive, promotes understanding through the interpretation of new knowledge, and is open to differences among the team members. a wager also speaks to the individual team member’s perceived risk during their participation. the risk is weighed out through the participant’s capacity to change in order to contribute to the team as an equal. this may impinge of one’s socially constructed professional identity or perceived hierarchy and status. the hermeneutic wager’s conversations help to identify these risks personal and professional and bring them forward so that they can discuss and be addressed, rather than remaining hidden. imagination the first conversation invites imagination. for this, all members of the research team imagine what together they could accomplish as an interdisciplinary team with its advantages, challenges, and value. the research teams discuss strengths and limitations from multiple perspectives. these discussions are conducted openly and express pre-understandings, reflections, and attitudes from team participants. the intention of the imagining conversations was to begin to creatively explore potential interdisciplinarity without restrictions, limitations, or only discipline hovey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 9 6 specific encultured thinking. imagination is where ideas flourish, are discussed, and considered for their potential to exceed individual or siloed understandings. the imagination conversation introduces very little risk to one’s perceived research role. the intent is to explore, share, and envision. although this conversation is mostly hypothetical, it does provide a means to move from ambiguity to a shared perspective of what the interdisciplinary team and research could become. humility the next conversation, humility, entails reflection, both personal and professional, to see beyond encultured perceptions, personal/professional identity, wants, and needs and move toward what has been imagined through the previous conversation. humility invites generosity and thinking that enhances the potential openness to other perspectives, possibilities, and understandings. humility is meant to alert participants of their beliefs, values, and behaviours that might interfere with team building and function. this conversation for some participants may offer a higher level of risk. it calls into question participants’ ability to encounter and understand others perspectives that may be different than one’s own. the humility conversation also asks participants to reflect upon how they and others position within the interdisciplinary team. it entails a willingness to be open to other team members’ strengths and how these might be utilized within the team structure. this premises that at certain points during the research process some members will take a leadership role while, at other times, they will allow the strengths of others to come to the forefront and lead. the essence of this conversation is related to the etymological root hume meaning humanizing which can be found in humility, humour, and humanity (kearney, 2010). this speaks to the relational aspects of interdisciplinarity in which humility is about humanizing conversations and forming relationships that bring people together. commitment commitment provokes participants’ willingness to assume the risk associated with the team building process. commitment challenges participants to make explicit their intention to follow through with the process and is an essential condition for the building of highly effective interdisciplinary teams. without commitment from all team members, the process may stall in the superficiality of rhetoric or fail all together. all participants should now have made clear their intentions to continue or not with the team building and research. some participants will be fully supportive, while others may not, and some may remain undecided. if participants are aware of issues that create tension or divisiveness within the team, then specific measures to promote understanding can be taken. commitment to interdisciplinarity must be the unique motivational force that drives the responsibility and desire of team members to work together. this conversation asks participants to examine and be honest about their commitment to the team building process, to the interdisciplinarity nature of the team and research, and to the topic itself. the research teams utilize this conversation as a check in about how the team is progressing overall, but also as individual participants within the process. discernment hovey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 9 7 discernment refers to the reality of this team building and research endeavour -in essence, asks the practical question: does what the team has envisioned make sense? discernment challenges imagination because it recognizes that not all possibilities are equal, valid, or realistic. this conversation tempers commitment with the reminder that some wagers are ill advised, impractical, or that some participants may not be ready for the changes to personal/professional selves that the team and the research asks of them. this is the conversation where practical judgment and understandings are confronted and risks are discussed and weighed. discernment asks of participants to examine the enablers and barriers to the team working together and in bringing the research to fruition. it is a formative reality check designed to examine who else might need to be invited as new participants to the team if needed to address gaps in ability, knowledge, financial, or system support, access to the population of interest, or other practical process issues. the team is then asked to brainstorm (re-imagine) around resolutions and other resources that have been identified. discernment means to thoroughly examine its progress and make explicit the concerns before the team fails or falters. the practicalities of the research and the demands of team building initial enthusiasm dwindles if not championed or brought forward by all of the team members. hospitality hospitality means to welcome the research team building process with the participants respecting and honouring their diversity and an unconditional openness with all others with a desire to achieve something extraordinary. this conversation also describes the relational considerations of being with others to ensure the interaction between and among people is just, professional, supportive, and compassionate. hospitality works to keep the process open because interdisciplinary teamwork will always need ongoing and further conversations, research, practice, and engagement. hospitality can also be understood as the relational foundation that keeps the team going. it is the welcoming of, and expectation that there will be, bumps on the road for all research teams during their formation and while they as a team co-exist. it asks of team members to be open to differences in team member’s ideas and working styles. how this is brought to fruition will vary from team to team but at its core is a willingness to be open to learning from each other. these five conversations and reflections cycle back and forth as new considerations, issues, success, set backs or concerns arise. the hermeneutic wager should not considered a linear or sequential structure but rather as five interconnected conversations and reflections that serve to keep team members open and productive to discuss, address, and readdress topics while the team ebbs and flows in its processes. in sum, all members of the research team imagine what a synergistic research approach could accomplish, its advantages, challenges, and potential. all synergistic research team members are openly included in the discussion on its strengths and limitations. this way, all members get to express their own pre-understandings of, reflections on, and attitudes towards the research. the imagination phase subjects the participants to very little risk because this is purely an experience in exploration, sharing and envisioning. imagination’s primary purpose is to help people arrive at hovey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 9 8 a shared understanding and express their own ways of knowing and understanding research as interdisciplinary. this requires reflection, both self and professional, to see beyond encultured perceptions, wants, and needs toward what has been imagined through this activity. humility invites generosity and thinking that enhances being open to each other’s perspectives, possibilities, and modes of research. this challenges researchers to make their intention to follow through with the process explicit. it is an essential condition for the development of an interdisciplinary research project to take shape and find its place and culture within the established epistemologies of practice. all of the stakeholders have now made their intentions to act clear – some are supportive, others perhaps not, and others still remain undecided; however, by identifying the issues that create tension within the group, we can then take specific measures to promote understanding. commitment to synergistic research must be the unique motivational force that drives the responsibility and desire for researchers to work together. discernment acts as a reality check to ensure that the synergistic researchers are truly ready to move forward to face the challenges or risks. finally, hospitality keeps the conversation process open because interdisciplinarity will always need ongoing and further conversations and reflections about the research, practice, and engagement. conclusion we contend that synergistic research is essential to exploring health profession education issues that support practitioners in facing complex healthcare conditions where fragmentation of research fails to provide person-centred interdisciplinary health care. the theory (our professional and research methodological expertise and identity) and practice (our professional engagement with learners, peers, and ultimately patients) of research cannot reach its fullest potential without a philosophical foundation that underpins how we offer educational experiences, conduct ourselves as researchers, and focus on interdisciplinarity for enhanced clinical practice. the defragmentation of research means working with others who are different in their ways of knowing, understanding, and researching. working through difficult conversations – those that challenge or disrupt our habitual ways of knowing and researching – can produce new and different interdisciplinary understandings for enhanced human science research, education, and health professional practice. in closing, we advocate research that is interdisciplinary and conversational ways of teaching, learning, and researching through which we strive to become better at everything we do. bios richard b. hovey, phd is an associate professor of oral health and society, and director of faculty development at the faculty of dentistry, mcgill university. chair, mcgill group on transformational learning in health (tlh) charo rodríguez, md, phd is an associate professor of family medicine, and director of the family medicine educational research group (fmer), department of family medicine, faculty of medicine, mcgill university. she is also frq-s senior research scholar. member, mcgill group on transformational learning in health (tlh) hovey et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 9 9 steven jordan, phd is an associate professor and chair, integrated studies in education, department of education, faculty of education, mcgill university. member, mcgill group on transformational learning in health (tlh) references bergman, m.m. 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(2010). death of mixed methods? or the rebirth of research as a craft. evaluation & research in education, 23, 121-136. synergy (n.d.) in online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=synergy vattimo, g. (2011). farwell to truth. new york, ny: columbia university press. wittgenstein, l. (2009). philosophical investigations (4th ed.; g.e.m. anscombe, m.s. hacker, & j. schulte, trans.). west sussex, uk: wiley-blackwell. microsoft word laing corrected proof.docx 1 university of calgary corresponding author: catherine m. laing email: laingc@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 31, 2014 ©the author(s) 2014 stories from cancer camp: tales of glitter and gratitude catherine m. laing1 & nancy j. moules1 abstract each year in canada, approximately 1400 children and adolescents under the age of 20 are diagnosed with cancer. it is well recognized that childhood cancer affects the entire family, and innumerable challenges accompany this diagnosis. in recognition of the challenges that accompany this disease, cancer camps started in the 1970s to help children and their families escape the rigidity and severity of cancer treatment. very little is known about how camps affect these families, and to that end, a philosophical hermeneutic study was conducted to understand the meaning of children’s cancer camps for the child with cancer and the family. six families were interviewed to bring understanding to this topic, and while the research included findings related to the concept of play, fit and acceptance, grief, and community, this paper will detail the finding related to storytelling and the reshaping of experiences that happens by virtue of being at camp. keywords hermeneutics, storytelling, cancer camp, pediatric oncology in response to the challenges and stress of childhood cancer, children’s cancer camps arose in the 1970s as a way for children and their families to escape the rigorousness of cancer treatment (bluebond-langner, perkel, goertzel, nelson, & mcgeary, 1990; kids cancer care foundation of alberta, 2012). cancer camps are designed to meet the needs of the whole family at each stage in the cancer experience, including survivorship or bereavement (kids cancer care foundation of alberta, 2012). currently in canada, eight cancer camps provide service to 5,252 children and their families (canadian association of pediatric oncology camps, 2012), and as more children are surviving childhood cancer, the need for specialized camps and community laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 2 programs continues to grow (laing & moules, 2013). our intent in this paper is to describe one of the findings of the first author’s philosophical hermeneutic doctoral research around understanding the meaning of children’s cancer camps for the child with cancer and the family. while the doctoral thesis included findings related to: the concept of play at cancer camp (both philosophically and theoretically) (laing, 2012); the fit and acceptance that children and families find at camp (laing & moules, 2013); the solidarity of the community – the “camp family” – as one that creates intense, healing bonds (laing & moules, in press); and grief as something that children and families experience differently, this paper will detail the finding related to storytelling, both by children and parents, as a means of re-shaping and understanding traumatic experiences. background information and literature review while very few studies related to children’s cancer camps have been conducted, there are many anecdotal accounts of the benefit of cancer camps. a search of nursing, education, family, and psychology databases yielded 16 studies pertaining specifically to children’s cancer camps; in other words, very little is understood about the effects of cancer camps on the child and family (laing & moules, 2013). of the available literature, topics such as self-concept (benson, 1987; kessell, resnick, & blum, 1985; murray, 2001), psychosocial impact (packman et al., 2008; wellisch, crater, wiley, belin, & weinstein, 2006), medical knowledge (carpenter, sahler, & davis, 1990; bluebond-langner et al., 1990), and other measurable constructs have been examined. most studies report either a neutral (or undetectable) effect from camp, or a marginal improvement on the construct in question, most relating this to self-reported limitations of insufficiently powered sample sizes and lack of control groups. more research has been conducted in the fields of outdoor programming and therapeutic camping – a term used to describe a purposeful approach to recreation, often involving marginalized or vulnerable populations. a meta-analysis of outdoor education programs suggested that selfconcept, academic performance, leadership, interpersonal skills, personality, and adventuresomeness were all mildly positively correlated to outdoor programming (hattie, marsh, neill, & richards, 1997). recently, certain childhood disease groups have organized camps for children specific to their disease (e.g., camp huff n’ puff [asthma], camp maska [nephrology]). there has been a significant amount of research pertaining to these therapeutic camps (e.g., mishna, michalski, & cummings, 2001; walker & pearman, 2009; welch, carlson, larson, & fena, 2007), with most researchers concluding that these camps have a positive effect on the children for whom they are targeted. childhood cancer, however, is a unique disease, and with it comes unique challenges, differences, and outcomes that must be considered with respect to camp (laing & moules, 2013). to the best of our knowledge, this was the first qualitative study undertaken in search of understanding the meaning of these camps to children with cancer and their families. laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 3 research design method the research question for this study was, “how might we understand the meaning of children's cancer camps on children and their families?” this research was guided by philosophical hermeneutics, defined as the art, tradition, and practice of interpretation (gadamer, 1960/1989), as developed by hans-georg gadamer (1900-2002). hermeneutics is interested in human experience, and offers a way to know and understand the world and, thus, the topic (gadamer, 1960/1989). it is a sophisticated method of research and approach to understanding within the human sciences, and, particularly in health care, hermeneutics has been shown to have invaluable applied utility (moules, mccaffrey, morck, & jardine, 2011). hermeneutics helps us make sense of the particulars (moules, 2002) and arrive at deeper understandings of how children’s cancer camps, for example, impact children with cancer and their families. hermeneutics, as an approach to research, is an interpretive methodology, a reflexive inquiry, where the researcher is not considered a separate entity, or non-influencing factor, from that which she/he is researching. the “data,” ricoeur (1981) offered, never stand alone as their meaning depends on the researcher and the reader. hermeneutics seeks to understand rather than explain. recruitment of participants the appropriate individuals to include in a hermeneutic inquiry are ones that can best inform understanding of the topic (known as purposive sampling) as it is the researcher’s aim to elicit a richness of data through the experiences of the participants (laing & moules, 2013). the participants for this research included children with cancer and their families who attended the 2012 kids cancer care (kcc) foundation’s camp kindle in the summer camping season. seven families were contacted about participation in this study by the kcc family liaison, with 6 families (table 1) agreeing to participate (equaling 19 participants in total). upon stating their agreement to the family liaison, the interested families were then contacted by me (first author) to further explain the study. it is worth noting here for clarity, that for many families, cancer camp is not a one-time event. kids cancer care (like similar philanthropic organizations) offers weekend camps and other events throughout the year, in hopes to engage, support, and connect children with cancer and their families. data generation after informed written consent was obtained, i conducted semi-structured interviews at the location of the participant’s choosing (three interviews occurred in the participants’ homes, one interview was at a public library, one was at a local recreation complex, and one was at a coffee shop). each interview took 1 to 1 ½ hours, and was recorded and transcribed for ongoing analysis, and basic demographics of the participants were also obtained. after each interview, field notes were written to capture contextual details to assist with the data analysis. all interviews took place within one month of camp attendance. in addition, i attended camp as a participant observer on 6 occasions throughout the 2012 summer camping season which generated further data that was incorporated into the analysis. laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 4 table 1 participant characteristics analysis and interpretation of data data analysis is synonymous with interpretation in the tradition of hermeneutics (moules, 2002; moules, laing, mccaffrey, tapp, & strother, 2012), and arriving at interpretations is a rigorous practice bringing together knowledge, information, conversation, experience, and data. to understand the process of how interpretations are developed, the concepts of fusion of horizons and the hermeneutic circle merit discussion. the fusion of horizons, where “horizon” is a metaphor for how reality is perceived and interpreted (austgard, 2012), is the coming together of more than one understanding of the topic, coupled with the curiosity and desire of the researcher to understand the topic in a new way (binding & tapp, 2008; koch, 1996). the hermeneutic circle is the metaphorical representation of understanding the whole by grasping its parts and by comprehending the meaning of the parts, by considering the whole (crotty, 1998). this movement in and out of “parts and wholes” is circular, recursive, and involves the researchers as an integral part of the circle. the hermeneutic circle invites the researcher to consider the particulars participants family structure present at interview status original diagnosis family a mother child 1: 9y child 2: 11y child 3: 14 y mother, child 1, child 2, child 3 child 2 is cancer survivor x 10 years; 5th time at camp wilms’ tumor family b mother father child 1: 5y child 2: 8y mother, father, child 1, child 2 child 2 currently on active treatment; 3rd time at camp leukemia family c mother father child 1: 10y child 2: 12y child 3: 14y mother child 2 off therapy x 5 years; 4th time at camp brain tumor mcmahon family mother father child 1: deceased child 2: 9y child 3: 12y child 4: 15y child 5: 17y mother, father, child 2, child 3, child 4, child 5 bereaved family. child 1 passed away from cancer 6 years ago (aged 2 years); 6th time at camp leukemia family e mother father child 1: 5y child 2: 7y mother, father, child (age 7) child 2 had just completed active therapy; 2nd time at camp brain tumor family f mother father child 1: 9y child 2: 10y mother child 2 off therapy x 1 year; 3rd time at camp brain tumor laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 5 of the topic in the context of the familiar, and similarly, the familiar in the context of the particulars (gadamer, 1960/1989; grondin, 1999/2003; moules, 2002). this movement in and out of the data, extensive readings and re-readings, reflection, dialogue, and challenging taken-forgranted assumptions allows for consideration of that which might not have been initially visible, and enhances the understanding of the topic (laing & moules, 2013; moules, 2002). the remainder of this manuscript is related directly to the findings around the concept of storytelling that occurs at children’s cancer camps. it is appropriate that, at this point, hermeneutics, as a topic, will disappear into the background while the topic of storytelling takes center stage (moules, 2002). in the next section, we offer an engagement in the world of children’s cancer camps and the lives of these families who live with the diagnosis of childhood cancer. interpretive analysis children never get to the point, they surround it. the importance of the point is the landscape of it. you begin discussing “the rainfall of vancouver island” and somebody has an uncle who lives there. and there is an uncle in alberta who has a zillion cows, some chickens, and a horse (we get to feed the chickens and ride the horse), which brings us to an uncle in saskatchewan, who has a house where deer pass the kitchen window every morning (he take us out and shows us where they go). if there were no uncles on vancouver island it would never rain there. (stevens, 1981, cited in jardine & clandinin, 1987, p. 477) i heard stories from children during the research interviews but even more so at camp. on the way to and from activities, during activities, during mealtimes, during “quiet time” – stories filled any potentially quiet and empty space of camp. children told each other stories, they told the counselors stories, they told me stories, and at times, frankly, it was overwhelming and consuming for my quiet, adult nature, but the more i thought about it and watched what was happening, the more i was able to see how this normal, unassuming occurrence was serving a very important role. because, as stevens (1981) said, “children never get to the point, they surround it. the importance of the point is the landscape of it” (cited in jardine & clandinin, 1987, p. 477). laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 6 stevens’ (1981) poem, particularly the first four lines, has had me pause to consider “points” and “landscapes,” of stories. with children, the importance of the point is the landscape of it; in other words, it is in their stories where the value lies. so common were their stories, that i almost missed them. i almost did not appreciate their importance because they were so pervasive, much like when something is so common one stops “seeing” it after a while. the stories of these children were not “just” stories; there was a lot happening in these stories, however in order to understand the profundity of them, one must first appreciate the tradition of storytelling. storytelling is said to have been around since the development of language. it has been used for centuries as a vehicle of communication and a way of passing wisdom along through the generations (koch, 1998). “stories are how we learn. the progenitors of the world's religions understood this, handing down our great myths and legends from generation to generation” (mooney & holt, 1996, p. 7). they are an important form of communication through which individuals, communities, and society conveys important messages, entertainment, knowledge, and experience to others (bowles, 1995). stories assist with reaffirming our lives and experiences, helping us connect with our inner selves and others (atkinson, 2002). “stories” and “narratives” are often used interchangeably in the literature (riley & hawe, 2005). people lead storied lives (connelly & clandinin, 1990), and frank (2000) suggested that people convey and tell stories rather than narratives. wiltshire (1995) defined stories as personal experiences, informally and subjectively recounted, while rubin and rubin (2005) offered that stories are purposeful, and have the ability to change. narratives, conversely, have been defined as being more structured and formal (wiltshire, 1995), a partial and formed description of a larger story (rubin & rubin, 2005), and, with respect to research, structured and formal accounts containing researcher additions and omissions (east, jackson, o’brien, & peters, 2010). while i appreciate the distinction between the terms, for the purposes of this discussion, i have chosen to use the term story, as i believe it best speaks to the nature of what it is children and families are doing – they are telling their stories. the stories of the children: feeding chickens and riding horses perhaps most fittingly, it is appropriate that i begin this part of the discussion by way of a story, of sorts. when i interviewed the mcmahon1 family, the youngest child, christina, nine years old, sat quietly at the end of the couch near her dad. i was aware of her watching me, constantly, but she said little, usually being drowned out by her more gregarious older sisters and brother. she was wearing her camp shirt signed by fellow campers and counselors, and when i commented on it she beamed with pride, clearly happy i noticed. christina contributed little for the first twothirds of the interview, and i got the impression she was happy to sit on the sidelines. something happened, though, toward the end and christina, all of a sudden, dominated the interview. as i reviewed the transcript, i counted thirteen times she spoke in the last third of the interview, versus two times in the first two thirds. i offer the following section of transcript not for the content, specifically, but more for the “dynamic” of what was happening: 1 the mcmahon family has asked me to refer to them by their real names instead of using pseudonyms. laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 7 christina: also one of the things that i really liked was um, we were doing these super skills and i was in the studio and i learned a different way of finger-netting and um, these other people wanted me to show them how to do it, then all the people wanted to do it. cml (interviewer): so you got to teach everybody how to do it? christina: yeah, and well, i told one of the counselors how to do it and she, like, some people from my group, we added all ours together. older sister: tell her how long it was when you added it together. christina: um, well mine, it was like a square and i had different colors, red, purple, blue, and i could jump over it, and then a lot of people wanted me to make, help them make some, and then like, they had fun. cml: so you got pretty good at that! older sister: they like, linked all their finger-nettings together, it was from one goal post to the other goal post, it was long. christina: (laughing) yeah, it was long enough that like, a lot of people liked it, they had fun. and her group (pointing to older sister), they were doing face painting and they liked it. older sister: every day we would have a new theme so on the day of her show and tell we would have diva faces…glitter everywhere…and we had flowers, we did a tiger, we did an old man face… christina: um, there were other super skill groups like…(everyone starts talking at once, can’t make anything out). christina was engaged with me and telling me a story, her story, of something she did at camp. i, frankly, had no idea what she was describing at the time (it took me listening, and re-listening to the recording several times to understand what she was talking about). she talked quickly, her body leaning toward me, her eyes locked on mine, willing me to stay with her story. the kind of story nine year olds tell, with ambiguous beginnings, middles, and endings – the kind of story you need to “peripherally” listen to, because you lose the point when you listen straight on. the “point,” i realized, was about how she took a leadership role in her group, and taught others a skill she had mastered. the point for her, however, lay in the landscape of the story, the fingernetting, the colors, the fact that everyone had fun – not at all about mastery and leadership. both of christina’s parents commented on her sudden talkativeness during the interview: christina: some of these people, like, i’ve had the same leader for two years, for sparks and kindling 1, last year and this year, and we did the same thing, and well, i remember we did the scavenger hunt and we all had a lot of fun, like, we traded people – well, only my group and another group, and like, this one time it said “find a robot watch” and it was rocket’s birthday that day, and orca called over rocket and so we started singing happy birthday, and then we noticed the robot watch and were like, “oh, there it is!” and then the climbing wall, the giant swing, the zip-line, i hadn’t done the giant swing or zip line yet and it was a really good experience for me. father: you’re just a chatty cathy, i like this! mother: i’ve never heard you talk so much! her talkativeness was further punctuated after the interview was over and christina and her mother were showing me pictures and mementos of tanner, their child and brother who had died. laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 8 christina remained very talkative, telling me stories about how she would accompany her brother when he needed painful procedures, and how “they didn’t let anyone into the room, but they let me in because they knew i could help calm him down.” at one point, her mother said, “this is so unlike her. she never talks this much!” and i wondered about this for many days afterwards. something had happened there, something was going on, and i was reminded of gadamer’s words, “understanding begins when something addresses us,” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 299), but, as jardine (2012) pointed out, “it only begins there” (p. 4). in order to understand what is happening when we tell our stories, it is important to look beyond just the words. the stories we tell are not to say what we know, but to find out what we know, and in telling stories, “we try to make sense of life, like we try to make sense of a text when we interpret it” (widdershoven, 1993, p. 9). stories of illness (in christina’s case, of her brother’s illness) help make sense and give meaning to dramatic and confusing times of life (abma, 2005; bosticco & thompson, 2005). we are our stories, and abram (2010) reminded us that, historically, “spoken stories were the living encyclopedias of our oral ancestors” (p. 10), often carrying practical knowledge like instructions for the hunting of various animals, which plants were good to eat and which were poisonous, and how to construct a winter shelter. we come from a tradition of storytelling that served a practical purpose of how to live in the world. our stories today, though not often practical in the sense of how to construct a winter shelter or avoid consuming poisonous plants, remain practical in the sense of making sense and increasing understanding of personal experiences (frank, 1995), and promoting awareness of, and reflection on, life circumstances (carlick & biley, 2004). they still teach us how to live in the world, particularly when faced with the task of making sense of illness or tragedy. the process of telling a story is interesting, given the fallibility of memory is such that people remember a story the way they wish to remember it (kitzinger, 2004). stories are subjective, wrote sandelowski (1993), and they are influenced by environments, social situations, changing perspectives, the audience, and the purpose of relating the story. when telling a story, we make choices about what to include, highlighting some events and omitting others (bauman, 2004). it is precisely this, however, the subjectivity, inclusion or exclusion of events, and the personal choices that are made in the telling, that makes it a story. like christina, when these children told their stories, they were making sense of their lives. their stories were helping them process, understand, and deal with profound events – the kind of events, like being diagnosed with cancer as a child or losing a brother to cancer, that are difficult to make sense of, even for adults. i am not suggesting that their stories were always serious or even about cancer most of the time; i believe, however that, like christina, sometimes the landscapes of their stories, the hidden points, best seen by sideways glances, were what helped them reflect on, and make sense of, childhood cancer. camp provided innumerable opportunities, spaces, and places in which the children could fill with their stories, and it was as if, by the end, they had found a new way to live in the world. the storyteller does not stand outside of all stories as the purveyor who then decides what information to embody in a story but stands in the story as its teller. the story must be conceived as a recollection of community, a recollection of belonging together. everyone, teacher and child, laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 9 has a story to tell. the importance of the storytelling analogy is that it contains in itself the selfrecognition of being an analogy. of course, it must do this because, after all, what is a story but an analogy – an analogue which gathers for us, teacher and children, the most significant and true elements of our being in the world. (jardine & clandinin, 1987, p. 480) the stories of parents: “even the earth trembles now and again” (sogyal rinpoche, 1993) storytelling, or sharing of stories, does not just take place among the children, at camp. sharing of stories is another way in which parents too, benefit from the camp experience. i wish to tilt the angle of this lens, just slightly, and focus not as much on the stories of the parents, per se, rather on underlying message i heard from parents. i guess for me, points of gratefulness too, just that recognition of, and i don’t know how many times i said it, but the willingness of people to sacrifice their money, their time, whatever, so that people like us can have a safe place to go. i don’t know how many times i cried when i was there [camp] (crying). and, you know, i went up to [the people who spoke at the] grand opening and i just i thanked them, cause i said, you know what, like, so many people give of themselves and they’ve never been through it. and i guess i find that always an amazing thing that people are willing to do it. but i’m also very, very grateful because you know, with what we’ve been through, some of these experiences, we would’ve never been able to have without that. we just wouldn’t, and so you know, there’s definitely a huge element of gratefulness (teary). (parent) there was an underlying thread of profound gratitude among the parents of the children with cancer. this gratitude, i surmise, was about many things: for the camp itself, for their children being alive and able to participate, and even for the break from their daily lives and routines. it is the kind of gratitude that is possible, i believe, only when one is able to be truly present in a moment, aware of the finitude of life. tibetan buddhism calls this concept “impermanence,” and its doctrines teach of the value of impermanence, and the importance of accepting the impermanence of our lives. ask yourself these two questions: do i remember at every moment that i am dying, and everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that i am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? if you can answer `yes' to both of these, then you have really understood impermanence. (sogyal rinpoche, 1993, p. 27) i propose that many parents of children with cancer have a sense of impermanence that fills their lives. even in the face of statistics, claiming (in some cases) greater than 80% survival rates, once parents hear the words “your child has cancer,” they are forced to face and consider their child’s mortality. impermanence is not a concept only for parents of children with cancer, of course. we are all aware, to varying degrees, that our lives are limited and that nothing, in a sense, is forever. however, in this age of advanced medical technology, our youth-obsessed western culture is not inclined to often consider this. to acknowledge impermanence is to acknowledge death, and it is well documented that we, as a culture, do not do this readily. bayer (2004) reported that, in the united states between the period of 1997 to 2001, cosmetic procelaing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 10 dures increased 311% for women, and 256% for men. western culture, bayer surmised, is doing nothing to dispel fears of aging and death; if anything it is promoting and perpetuating it by continuously and unrelentingly placing such high value on the retention of youth. likewise, berger (2008) noted that youth is not only associated with beauty and illusory perfection, but also with vitality, defined as “how healthy and energetic – physically, intellectually, and socially – an individual feels” (p. 546). considering this definition of vitality, it is not difficult to see why one would fear aging and death in a culture that idolizes youth. these parents, i believe, are acutely aware of the impermanence of their child, and it is perhaps this heightened sense of impermanence and awareness of the fragility of life, that causes gratitude to the degree in which i experienced it in them. in our journey, i haven’t had a lot of connection with other people who had kids with cancer so it was pretty neat for me to be able to talk to people and, and have that um, commonality. yeah. and camp itself – i could go on and on – just, the way we were treated, the quality of the counselors, the staff. the only, the only thing i can equate it to is a mini version of, you know, disneyland, or that kind of thing – disney’s motto of “the happiest place on earth.” i mean that’s how, that’s how they are, and ah, yeah, again when you’ve been through hard stuff, being treated like that is just – i can’t say i was shocked, but it sure felt good. (parent) knowing that something will not last can be of benefit. when something is pleasant, knowing it will not last helps us to not take it for granted, be present with it, and appreciate it in the moment. when something is unpleasant, knowing that it will not last can make it more bearable. it can help us to appreciate the good, having experienced the bad. in the buddhist tradition, impermanence is one of the essential doctrines, or three marks of existence. it is the practice of recognizing that everything changes, and nothing has a fixed identity, or permanence. those who subscribe to the buddhist doctrine strive to incorporate it into their lives, using it as an instrument to penetrate deeply into reality, understanding that reality is never static, but is dynamic throughout. the realization of impermanence is paradoxically the only thing we can hold onto, perhaps our only lasting possession. it is like the sky, or the earth. no matter how much everything around us may change or collapse, they endure. say we go through a shattering emotional crisis…our whole life seems to be disintegrating…our husband or wife suddenly leaves us without warning. the earth is still there; the sky is still there. of course, even the earth trembles now and again, just to remind us we cannot take anything for granted. (sogyal rinpoche, 1993, pp. 25-26) parents, i have suggested, are acutely aware (either consciously or sub-consciously) of the impermanence that affects us all, but for most is a concept ranging from uncomfortable to terrifying. hand in hand with this awareness, i suggest, comes gratitude, albeit often at a deeply subconscious level. johnson (2009) noted that impermanence can inspire gratitude by reminding us that we are part of a larger whole. it reminds us to live life fully, each moment never to be duplicated, and never knowing when the end of our lives may be. johnson suggested that impermanence can remind us of the absurdity of life, pushing us to find a healthy balance between intentional living and not taking life too seriously. i want to be careful not to romanticize this notion too much. i am not suggesting that parents of children with cancer just accept what has laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 11 happened with a “whatever happens, happens” kind of approach. on the contrary, i believe that the perspective of impermanence and the feelings of gratitude seep in through the cracks, perhaps, like as cohen (1992) suggested, “there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.” camp cracks the shell of fear around parents of children with cancer, allowing the light, the gratitude, to get in, and to help unlock emotions that may, perhaps, have been locked away from the moment of diagnosis. quite simply, it feels better to be grateful than to have no gratitude. camp offers the opportunity to feel gratitude and express gratefulness. being grateful of something is indicative of a certain level of emotional health, of healing. when one is consumed with fear or anger, or full of stress, it is impossible to make room for gratitude. it is perhaps the ability to feel grateful for something, that lets a parent know they can get through the nightmare of childhood cancer. gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. it turns what we have into enough, and more. it turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...it turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. (beattie, 2000, p. 9) concluding thoughts o body swayed to music, o brightening glance, how can we tell the dancer from the dance? (yeats, 1928) we are our stories, and like the dancer and the dance, in yeats’ poem, it is difficult to differentiate ourselves from our stories. our stories link our past to our present (france & uhlin, 2006), and allow us to reflect on our world (frank, 2000; king, 2003). stories allow us to assert meaning on events, “so, one may review past events through narration and say, ‘oh now i see,' as if it were the first time” (churchill & churchill, 1982, p. 73). the telling of stories has been demonstrated to increase resilience (dean, 1995), insight (jackson & mannix, 2003), and hardiness (leseho & block, 2005). we live by stories, we also live in them. one way or another we are living the stories planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves. we live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. if we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives. (okri, 1997, p. 46). it is, perhaps, one of the greatest gifts that camp offers the children with cancer and their families – the space, time, and opportunity to tell their stories and to come to understand the meaning of childhood cancer differently. bios dr. catherine m. laing is an assistant professor in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary. laing & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 3 12 dr. nancy j. moules is a professor in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary. she also holds the alberta children’s hospital foundation and research institute nursing professorship in child and family centred cancer care. acknowledgement this doctoral study was funded by a generous scholarship from the alberta children’s hospital foundation to which the authors express immense gratitude. references abma, t.a. 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(1928). among the school children. retrieved from http://www.poemhunter. com/poem/among-school-children/ microsoft word kostouros corrected proof.docx corresponding author: patricia kostouros, phd email: pkostouros@mtroyal.ca journal of applied hermeneutics june 9, 2013 the author(s) 2013 my father was not my father: an attempted understanding through a ricoeurian lens patricia kostouros abstract in my phd studies, i was honoured to have been introduced to the scholar paul ricoeur, whose work became central to my dissertation topic. in this paper, i share the ways in which ricoeur’s conceptualizations of hermeneutic application to the human existence came to life for me. i use an existential event, discovering non-biological parentage, to bring forth my understanding of these concepts. ricoeur’s solicitation of the hermeneutic practice allowed me to see family events in a new light. it is my hope through my application of ricoeur’s work that others will interpret existential life events in new and exciting ways. keywords narrative-identity, ricoeur, self-understanding, temporality my other earliest memory is vague, no more than a distant feeling that i can sometimes seize, most often not. being so dimly remembered, perhaps it came first. i became aware of a voice inside my head. what is this, i wondered. who are you, voice? when will you shut up? i remembered a feeling of fright. it was only later that i realized that this voice was my own thinking, that this moment of anguish was my first inkling that i was a ceaseless monologue trapped within myself. taken from self, by yann martel, 1996 early in my life, i became aware of the narratives about my biological parentage. being the only blonde, blue-eyed, small person in our family, people often wondered if my father was actually my father. since i looked somewhat like my mother, it was only his contribution that was in question. at some point, around the age of four or five years, i remember my older sister telling me i was kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 2 adopted. while i tried hard not to believe her, there were signs everywhere that this narrative may actually be true. occasionally, i would ask my parents if this was actual, and typically, they would reassure me that i was fully theirs. to allay my concerns my father would tell me stories of how the greeks were originally blonde and blue-eyed until turkey invaded. hence, my “difference” was attributed to a recessive gene. i do not recall that these stories ever dispelled my suspicion; a simple glance at my family could easily confirm the concerns i expressed. my suspicions lingered throughout my life and eventually lead to a candid conversation with my father in my adulthood, prior to his death. at some point before my father died, he confided in me that my mother had had an affair and that i may not actually be his child. my relationship with my father had been rocky until i spent more time with him as an adult before he died. when he confirmed my existing suspicion, we decided that, biological or not, he was my father, a man i had come to know and admire. i put the biological parentage issue out of my mind for several years thereafter. however, after my mother died, i had regretted that i had not questioned her about the potential that my father was not my father and that i have a parent that may or may not know i exist. i suppose i hesitated discussing this with my mother because i typically found myself in an in-between space of already knowing but not wanting to confirm. perhaps the decision that, regardless of biology, he was my father was made more for him than me. perhaps the lingering childhood signs would not be eclipsed. after thinking long and hard, and being encouraged by my partner, i decided to have dna testing complete in order to give me a more solid answer. it was not so much a desire to find a biological father but rather to confirm what i already felt at times as a child; like i was tolerated, rather than i belonged. since my father had already passed away, i had to request a dna sample from my brother. my brother asked that i share the results, and knowing my family, if i shared with one, i shared with everyone. i agreed to share whatever information came my way. we retrieved dna samples, submitted them to the laboratory, and then waited patiently for the results. the letter finally arrived and i anxiously read the statistical analysis, thinking “okay, okay, but what does all this mean?!” finally, after synthesising the data there was my answer: only a .058 probability of full sibling-ship, likelihood “probability of relatedness, maternal half-siblings.” so it was confirmed, my father was not my father. my initial reaction was that this information should not really change anything. i already had an inkling about the results; however, i did start to hesitate when people would ask me about my last name and its origin. i would be pulled up short by questions about my heritage and often felt caught between answering that my father was greek, and being more reticent in my response, since i now know my father was not my father. the dna testing results created a watershed moment of understanding self and the narratives that existed about my heritage and in particular, being a blonde greek. i also began to wonder about whether my biology should or would trump the narratives i hold of being greek. how do i understand myself now, in light of this new information? does this new information change my attestations? do the years i spent thinking i was greek suddenly vanish or do they continue to reside inside me? does this existential event add to or limit my selfunderstanding? how might paul ricoeur’s theory explain this experience and the narrative self? in my address of these questions, i will bring to light ricoeur’s conceptualizations, while using my own experiences as a thread kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 3 that weaves these concepts together. i must confess however, that given the depth and breadth of ricoeur’s work, my ability to synthesize his theory and my experiences within these pages will be limited. ricoeur’s work offers a starting place for engaging the questions that surfaced for me as i confronted this new information. besides highlighting ricoeur’s concepts and the links to my selfunderstanding, what i present are the thoughts and questions that were raised as i searched ricoeur’s work for direction, some of which still linger unrequited. why use ricoeur’s hermeneutics? as i am now faced with the knowledge that my father was not my father, i am struck by the opportunity that this affords me. while the entire narrative about my background is not false, this event has fractured an existing narrative about who i am and how i came to be. ricoeur offers an interpretive slant that considers both self and others as well as time. for ricoeur (1992), hermeneutics, or interpretation, takes place indirectly and dialectically, by encountering symbols (reference that provide a detour) which are interpreted, reflected upon, and incorporated into the self. i had conflicting information as a child. i had the signs and symbols that i did not belong; after all i looked different. however, i also had dialogue from my parents that contradicted these signs. hermeneutics in general is known as an interpretive approach to a topic that allows the opening up of the world around us and to uncover and seek an understanding of the ways in which we live, engage and experience this world (gadamer, 2004). i needed a hermeneutic approach to interpreting the new and the old and integrate the new into an enlarged self-understanding. in his book oneself as another, ricoeur (1992) asked, “what sort of being is the self” (p. 297)? by asking this question, ricoeur took a critical twist in which he posited that knowing the self can only be accomplished through encountering one’s own self as well as others “that the selfhood of oneself implies otherness to such an intimate degree that one cannot be thought of without the other” (p. 3). by this statement, ricoeur (1992) referred to the otherness of the self. we belong and live communally and, therefore, we come into contact with others (other than self) in the world who inform us, and act as a mediating force, which could potentially create change in the self, as well as our ethical actions in the world (ricoeur, 1992). however, this mediating force is best accomplished when faced with difference; “as long as one remains within the circle of sameness-identity, the otherness of the other than self offers nothing original” (ricoeur, 1992, p. 3). i was clearly faced with difference in my family, but the narratives, which had a historical grounding, acted as a gatekeeper to further inquiry. ricoeur’s (1998) idea of self differs from the objectivist ontological stance; that is, things outside of us exist independently. instead, ricoeur (1992) understood that we are bound by the conditions around us and that these conditions create the perceptions of self and others and, therefore, we are created narrations. i bought the family narratives, for the most part, because i could then say i belonged, even if thoughts otherwise lingered. additionally, i could take up his work because ricoeur (1988) differed from others in his thinking about “being” in that he attempted to deal fully with the notion of time and its connection to our lived experience, and in order to understand time, we must understand time as an experience. since the chronology of time does not speak to our experiences of time, ricoeur’s ontological curve examined temporal experiences in particular, the language of time, for example in my wondering about the dna results, “it didn’t matter at the time,” or “i wonder now.” the way we take kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 4 the language of time and narrate our selfunderstanding was critical in ricoeur’s later work, according to most ricoeur scholars (e.g., andrew, 2001; hall, 2007; kearney, 2004; langdridge, 2004; mccarty, 2007; muldoon, 2002; 2006; pellauer, 2007). i understood myself as a blonde greek, my father disclosed information that increased my suspicions, but at the time of his disclosure, it did not matter. using language such as “then” and “now” allow our narratives to move through time. furthermore, ricoeur’s ontological shift about time related to moving from the “what” of time to the “who” experiences time. in doing so, ricoeur was able to link time and self to narratives. existential events “thus the imagined nothingness of the self becomes the existential crisis of the self.” (ricoeur, 1992, p. 168) i have identified the dna testing and the results i received as an existential event. i have done so because of what the event offered me. in some respects, this event has given me the opportunity to reinvent myself; to change my narrative, if you will. for example, i had already experienced a very challenging, difficult, and therefore, non-existent relationship with my older sister, and a rather disappointing relationship with my brother so when i received the results of my dna test, part of me was elated that i was not fully connected to these siblings. on the other hand, i never wanted my older sister to be right about me not being a “real” member of the family, and i was always trying to prove that i did belong. what would happen to everything for which i fought? my attestations were false, she was right, where does that leave me in terms of this family, since we no longer have parents to mediate the divide? i must consider that i cannot simply dismiss my past, since these family and cultural narratives contributed to how i came to be who i am now. according to ricoeur (1980), “no authentic anticipation of what we ‘may have to be’ is possible without borrowing from the resources of what we already ‘have been’” (p. 181). i was encountering difference in my family of origin. i have always been different from them. i have the opportunity now to own my difference, yet maintain some family narratives since these too exist. the term existential (n.d.) can be traced back to the work of kierkegaard and essentially means conditions of existence, and is an occurrence. perhaps, then, an existential event is one that “happens to us over and above our wanting and doing” (gadamer, 2004, p. xxvi). ricoeur (1984) described an event as something mediated and constrained. our experiences happen to us but they are temporal in that a subjective perception of an event will be dependent on our past and the appropriation of that event will influence our future. risser (1986) stated that the hermeneutic interpretation of event or experience starts from one’s perception and, in particular, suggested that once we experience something we cannot experience it again in the same way because “the experience changes the experiencer” (p. 44). how i as an experiencer might perceive an event will depend on prior conditioning. even though i was told i was a blonde greek, there were enough signs saying otherwise that made it possible for me to take up the dna testing. remembering that, according to ricoeur (1998), we are always “en route,” when we experience an event, our history, culture, and language will therefore be determined by some of what we perceive. being true to ricoeur, however, means that one must recognize that these perceptions are mediated through language, or rather, “all discourse is produced as an event...but understood as meaning” (p. 167). my sister’s accusations that i was kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 5 adopted eventually coupled with my father’s disclosure, produced the event of dna testing. a shaky foundation of self and belonging in this family already existed, but early on could be countered by attestations from my mother and father. receiving the results that i was not biologically related to my father answered for me some questions about our past relationship, but at the same time, my former perceptions of family began to crumble. ricoeur (2004a) referred to discourse as an event because it is referencing something “in the intention of saying something about something to someone: speaking is the act by which language moves beyond itself as a sign toward its reference and toward what it encounters” (p. 82). in other words, discourse, the use of language, is action. additionally, ricoeur (1984) wedded events and narratives in that one depends on the other since they cannot be mutually exclusive; an event will exist because it is narrated, and a narration exists because of the event. in particular, narratives are received and, therefore, narratives are always open for another’s interpretation of the narration. my sister’s accusations – you don’t belong; my emphatic protests – i belong. my attestations as a child of belonging however would only go so far since there were constant references otherwise, i don’t look like them. finally, ricoeur (1992) viewed human actions as similar to a text that can be interpreted. my father’s disclosure, an action; is this a space for interpretation of past events? ricoeur (1984) saw the usefulness of structuralism in the task of hermeneutic interpretation since structuralism assists with revealing the hidden structures in language and in recovering meaning. while language is primary to ricoeur’s hermeneutics, he does not subscribe to linguistics as a primary mode of analysis. rather, ricoeur stated that text, or discourse, “says something about something” (p. 78) and that references open up the world and our existence in the world. we rescue meaning by attending to the language used, and we interpret by attending to what language points toward. the dna results pointed to a truth. even though these results are definitive, it is possible to find meaning in my family experiences in a greek household. do these results have to unravel everything i understood about myself? in ricoeur’s (2004b) discussion about the intention of hermeneutics in relation to the interpretation of “every meaningful discourse” (p. 4), he stated: in fact, meaningful discourse is hermeneia, “interprets” reality, precisely to the degree that it says something of something. moreover, discourse is hermeneia because a discursive statement is a grasp of the real meaningful expression, not a selection of so-called impressions coming from the things themselves. (p. 4) in other words, we comprehend and make meaning of that which is in front of us which may open up existential possibilities. why didn’t my father support my extra-curricular activities? why would he look at me that ways sometimes? why would he leave the room? perhaps i have been given the opportunity to interpret family interactions in new ways, with a new understanding of my otherness. perhaps it is hard to pretend, when you believe that the child is not yours. i fondly recall the family talks we had at the kitchen table. my father would frequently make sunday dinners and we would sit afterwards and talk for hours. that is where i learned about the digestive usefulness of grand marnier, that anita bryant was an “idiot,” and that the boston bruins were the best hockey team in the nhl. these conversations, or discourses, were always about something, kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 6 and they laid down a foundation for how i take up the world today and shaped how i accepted or rejected my past. for example, while i am not a hockey fan, i do drink grand marnier. more importantly, i began to narrate the political world and my actions in it, based on these discourses around that kitchen table. one cannot simply narrate or frame, but, according to ricoeur (1998), context affects meaning, and thereby how and where the narration takes place and what the narration is about matters. in a dialogue about interpretation, ricoeur (1998) explained that, “sensitivity to context is the necessary complement” (p. 44). i do not look like them. ricoeur (1974) was clear to point out that “language is innocent – language meaning the tool, the code – because it does not speak, it is spoken” (p. 91). if narrative matters, as kearney (2004) argued in support of ricoeur’s position, then what we do with a narrative should also matter. therefore, the narrator, not just the narration itself, is in need of consideration since the narrator is an acting agent, a “who.” my father was an acting agent when he disclosed my mother’s affair. i was the acting agent requesting the dna test. i knew that taking this step would result in solidifying or fragmenting my self-understanding as a family member and could further unravel the sibling relationships. in taking up the focus on the concept of the “what” of the event, ricoeur (1992) reminded us that a “what” also has a “who,” and a “why.” in particular, during ricoeur’s reflections on selfhood, he expressed the importance of the “who” by talking about something that matters and distinguishing the differences between what and who, that is, “how can we ask ourselves what matters if we could not ask to whom the thing mattered or not? does not the questioning about what matters or not depend upon self-concern, which indeed seems to be constitutive of self-hood” (ricoeur 1992, p. 137)? at the time i decided biological or not, he was my father...i regretted not asking...how do i understand myself now in light of this new information? it is important to discuss intentionality in relation to this existential event since it connects ricoeur’s theory and the way in which existential events create or limit possibilities for self-understanding. when deliberating about intention, ricoeur (1992) referred to the importance of the “what” and “who” of action. ricoeur (2004b) stated that interpretation has an intention to match reader, “who,” and text “what,” “thereby incorporating its meaning into the present comprehension a man is able to have of himself” (p. 4). ricoeur would likely say that we know ourselves through our actions and our actions lead us toward selfnarration. narrating events narration, according to ricoeur (1984), involves emplotment; the making of an event into a story. a plot has a direction and according to ricoeur (1998), “an event must be more than a singular occurrence: it must be defined in terms of its contribution to the development of a plot” (p. 277). ricoeur (1984) described the importance of the plot having direction so that we follow along and by doing so we are able to make meaning of the story being narrated, in particular, to reflect upon the story, and to integrate the meaning made into our own existence and human action. however, ricoeur (1984) was also clear to point out that “emplotment is never the simple triumph of order” (p. 73). while my life has had a direction forward, it is in the backward glance to events along the way, the way he looks at me, my sister’s attestations, you may not be my child, that prompted the action of requesting a dna test which then leads to a continuation of the plot; the fragkostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 7 menting of my self-understating and reinventing myself. in his discussion of aristotle’s poetics, ricoeur (1984) described the art of composing as “organizing the events into a system” (p. 33) or, in other words, a plot or “muthos” (p. 31). since historical events are constructed narratives (ricoeur, 1988), the historian or narrator interprets that event and therefore, historical accounts, for example, turkey invaded greece, are not the same as natural events such as earthquakes. these historical accounts weave through our personal narratives to augment the plot we are creating about who we are and how we belong, greeks were once blonde and blue eyed; i should believe them. ricoeur (1992) recognized the opportunity for narrations to highlight human potential, and the possibilities for action. narratives assist in mediating events across time thereby creating a meaningful whole and recognition that reality may be temporal. my narrative as a greek existed temporarily and was established only through discourse; the signs said otherwise. ricoeur’s (1984) ideas about narrative took up history and fiction, both of which involve time. fictional narratives may draw on actual events, and they are representations of such. historical narratives may involve the recounting of empirical events (ricoeur, 1984). in order for historical events, for example, to be appropriately narrated it must remain in its context and contribute to a plot (ricoeur, 1984). ricoeur (1998; 2004c) argued that historical accounts are narrative in that they account for real events and those narratives that accompany them. in particular, ricoeur (1998) stated, “however fictional the historical text may be it claims nevertheless to be a representation of reality. in other words history is both a literary artefact (and in this sense a fiction) and a representation of reality” (p. 291). turkey really did invade greece hence my blondeness. the reality however, is that i am not an offspring of this greek man. ricoeur (1984) suggested that the past is only accessible to us through our narratives since “when it was present, this past was like our present, confused, multiform, and unintelligible” (p. 99). therefore, “there is only a history of the potentialities of the present” (ricoeur, 1998, p. 295). the present reality affords me the opportunity to reinvent my future identity to re-narrate myself. the narrated self we can see how ricoeur’s thinking about temporality affects the narrative self and the ways in which time folded upon itself, reflecting back, can create a discordant-concordant dynamic. in particular, entering into a discussion about the way in which we come to have stability as a narrated self through time, ricoeur (1992) distinguished the identity as having an ipse-identity and an idem-identity. he pointed out that these two parts are not necessarily found on a continuum, from one end of identity to the other, but rather contribute in different ways to an identity. additionally, he claimed that these two parts of the self both depart yet intersect and endure through time. narrative identity lies between ipse and idem identity and is mediated by them and links actions and ethics with identity since “there is no ethically neutral narrative” (ricoeur, 1992, p. 115). the ipse, also called selfhood (ricoeur, 1992), is the part of the self that is a reflexive being and has self-constancy. the term constancy in this context does not relate to a static composition but rather a self that is carried forward through time, thereby weaving through horizons of the past, present and future and through interpretations and reinterpretations. in my case, as an example, having thought i was greek sits in the past, now that i know my father is not my father. kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 8 how i bring the dna results into my present and future is a matter of how i might interpret what father means, or what it means to have been brought up in a greek household. ipse is also defined by ricoeur as one’s bond or making and keeping a promise. i shared the results of the dna testing as i said i would. in other words, the ipse relates to the human activities that are maintained as a claiming of the self to the self. for example, in relation to keeping one’s word, ricoeur (1992) explained that the ipse appears to “stand as a challenge to time, a denial of change” (p. 124), since keeping one’s word or promise is done so regardless of time or circumstances. a promise speaks to the esteem we give ourselves and to others, and recognizes that language is the place where we extend ourselves to others through time. ipse, therefore, is anchored in the presence of an other than self, since it is related to our actions. i shared the results of the dna testing. according to ricoeur (1992), it is at this juncture that ipse and idem depart. the idem, what ricoeur (1992) also called sameness, differs from the ipse in that the idem relates to the continuity of an individual’s dimensions over time. while there may be some changes over time to these features, they will always maintain some permanence; that is, time could be said to “threaten resemblance without destroying it” (ricoeur, p. 117). it was important for ricoeur to move beyond the mind-body dichotomy, where identity was concerned. idem, or personal identity, is not strictly substance, such as brain or body continuity, for example, i am blonde and blue eyed, but is also related to traits or habits that become incorporated into the self to the point where one is recognizable as the same through actions. ricoeur called the idem the “’what’ of the ‘who’” (p. 122). i am tentative with my older sister and always have been. according to ricoeur (1992), both idem and ipse have constancy, permanency in time, and while separate, they may overlap. ricoeur described that the ipse and idem sometimes overlap, and “this overlapping, however, does not abolish the difference separating the two problematics: precisely as second nature, my character is me, myself, ipse; but this ipse announces itself as idem” (p. 121). at the same time, however, these parts of our identity are separate, in that “keeping one’s word expresses a self-constancy which cannot be inscribed as character was…the perseverance of character is one thing, the perseverance of faithfulness to a word that has been given is something else again” (ricoeur, 1992, p. 123). since the ipse and idem are “two modes of being” (ricoeur, 1992, p. 308), they must find an accord, in that, the constancy of one relies on the constancy of the other, and, through contracting with one another the ipse and idem negotiate the narrated, capable self. at the time, since i was appreciating the adult relationship i had gained with my father, it did not matter if he was biologically connected or not. over time this changed for me. i had to negotiate between completing the dna testing and potentially breach my word, regardless you are my father, or if i my own curiosity, spurred by my never-ending suspicion, was honouring my need for selfunderstanding. time was also a factor since my brother was ill. negotiating the idem and ipse was necessary for my plot to continue. in a discussion about the “capable self,” ricoeur (1992) pulled in the concept of reflexivity and explained that our reflexive nature allows us to ask questions about identity, that is, the “who.” what does it mean now that i know i am not greek? does this information have to disintegrate my selfunderstanding? one of the ways in which ricoeur suggested that we know we persist through time is through such activities as speaking, action, and responsibility. there is a kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 9 certainty about our existence, which ricoeur called “attestation.” essentially, attestation refers to one’s ability to attest to his or herself and to the ability to be responsible for that declaration. i do belong; you may not be my child. ricoeur reminded us that, whatever we attest to, be it the world or self, attestation is mediated. the narrated self is fragile (ricoeur 1992). according to ricoeur, since we are narrating ourselves on both actual and constituted experiences, we are always becoming and constantly refiguring ourselves. however, by using either fiction or historical accounts, we are able to uncover meaning and transform ourselves. attestation helps us decide about conflicting accounts of the narrative self (ricoeur, 1992). to what can we attest? if i am confused, are there facts that i can orient myself toward that will assist with the conflict and, therefore, assist with settling on a particular narrative? i am blonde, i am not greek. i don’t look like him, he is not my father. nevertheless, according to ricoeur (1998), in order to attest, these facts or narratives must be acceptable and plausible. turkey did invade greece, could my difference be the result of a recessive gene? temporality, narrative, and action “...time becomes human to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode, and narrative attains its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal existence.” (ricoeur, 1984, p. 52) narratives or stories are the ways in which we make sense of temporality, that is, “the world unfolded by every narrative work is a temporal world” (ricoeur, 1984, p. 3). we are able to describe human actions through mimesis, a pre-figuring, configuring and refiguring of actions based on what has gone before, how we interpret the past, and where it takes us. we bring the past into the present to inform us and therefore, create narratives. in order to illuminate narrative activity and temporality, ricoeur (1984) described a “three-fold mimesis” (p. 52), which included mimesis1, mimesis2 and mimesis3. mimesis1 (pre-figuration) refers to our pre-understandings of practical action. three layers lie within memisis1 including the structural use of language in that language assists with the understanding of action. a second layer relates to the ways in which symbols assist in narrations, and the ways in which contexts will inform narrations. i don’t look like them, maybe my sister is right. finally, actions have a temporal nature as seen in the language of adverbs, for example, “now,” i am not greek, and “then” i am greek. mimesis2 (configuration) acts as a mediating role between memisis1 and memisis3 and assists the reader in following a plot. a plot then becomes configured when this mediating function “transforms the events or incidents into a story” (ricoeur, 1984, p. 65). emplotment refers to the ways in which we organize, or configure, activities into a plot. i was greek, i am not greek anymore. where does all my understanding as a greek now reside? finally, mimesis3 (re-figuration) refers to the ways in which a reading or interaction could influence a change or re-figure our being-in-the-world and allow possibilities to arise. what will i tell my grandchildren about their lineage? ricoeur (1984) explained that these forms of mimesis provide a creative tension that work together to relate time to narrative and create human time. in essence, ricoeur showed how these forms depend on one another in both time and narrative, in that “we are following therefore the destiny of a prefigured time that becomes a refigured time through the mediation of a configured time” (p. 54). concerned that he may be creating a vicious circle, ricoeur dealt with this dilemkostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 10 ma by discussing the transitory functions between the forms, or mimesis. while recognizing that the circular nature of narrative and time do not stop, ricoeur stated, “i would rather speak of an endless spiral that would carry the mediation past the same point a number of times, but at different altitudes” (p. 72). ricoeur’s (1984, 1985, 1988) work in his three volumes of time and narrative illustrated that historical accounts are more than facts since they are constructed and narrated events. narratives allow us to make sense of ourselves, and by organizing our life events into a plot, we humanize time that might otherwise become “fragmented moments” (kearney, 2002, p. 4). according to ricoeur (1988), time becomes humanized because we narrate and, therefore, we move time from the cosmos and merge with it into our lives. emplotment changes chronological time into relationships between humans and time and in particular, the beginning, middle, and end (not necessarily in that order) of a narration creates temporality, while at the same time it helps create unity. ricoeur (1985) suggested that narratives allow us to play with time, for example, our use of verb tenses. i have a father, i had a father, i am greek, i was greek. we are acting agents in human time, and our actions will leave its mark on historical time, which could then be brought into the future. my father’s disclosure, i opted for dna testing, and i will never be greek. we need chronological time in order to make sense of past and new experiences, to provide them a place in time, after my father’s death. the lived present allows us to have new beginnings, possibilities, and the “narrative identity continues to make and unmake itself” (ricoeur, 1988, p. 249). i can take up ricoeur’s linking of time and narrative, and unapologetically reconstruct a past narrative and change the mark i leave in historical time. ricoeur (1980) spoke of the telling and retelling of a story or narrative as one of the connections we have with temporality. for example, in the telling of a story he discussed the structure of a narrative as having a beginning, middle, and an end (ricoeur, 1980). when a plot is structured in such a way, there is what he called a “then” an “and then,” or a “so on” (ricoeur, 1980, p. 179), which are the connecting episodes that involve both plot (narrative) and time (and then). in this way, we follow along in present cosmic time even though a story may itself take place at different time. greece was invaded, that is why you are blonde. when a story is re-told, it changes its place in cosmic time. now the story has a history because of the recollecting that takes place. ricoeur (1980) suggested that the function of a narrative is related to human actions and that our actions lead to narratives that become temporal structures. in essence, ricoeur (1988) suggested, “we are affected by history and that we affect ourselves by the history we make” (p. 213). greece was invaded and therefore fewer blondes, but i see the differences in how you treated me, i want to know, i will do the testing, i am not yours. in relation to narratives and plots, ricoeur (1984, 1985, 1992) described a dynamic process involving concordant and discordant elements, that is, the arrangements of fact and reversals of fortune within a story. my sister was right. in much the same way, we construct our own stories and act as the characters within that story. i want to know for sure; my suspicions will not abate. we follow a plot and, through time, we weave the events that take place in our lives into a meaningful whole. i was a sibling and i am now a halfsibling. plot and character are dynamic elements of a narrative and “it is the identity of the story that makes the identity of the character” (ricoeur, 1992, p.148); however, these elekostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 11 ments must be credible. essentially, the character acts and is acted upon, and we evaluate the actions of the character, and in so doing we identify with the character and the story. ricoeur (1992) believed that human lives are readable, and are even more readable when the stories people tell of themselves are told through historical or fictional narratives, which, in turn, are interpreted into our own lives. the stories my father told me about greece being invaded were historical narratives which allowed an interpretation of greeks being blonde and blue eyed. therefore, i did belong, i was greek. these narratives of life are never complete, however (ricoeur, 1988), until the story is over. i’m going to die, you need to know, i may not be your father. ricoeur (1992) recognized also that our narratives are not created in a vacuum; we are enmeshed in prior stories and tradition along with others. we encounter others, within a cultural context and these interactions contribute to our own narratives. they say i am greek, i don’t look like them, i don’t want to be adopted, i want to belong. these interactions assist us in determining our actions. protests, asking parents. our narratives start to weave with those of others, and we create stories about our shared identity. i reflect on those discussions at the kitchen table. for example, my narrative is constituted by the fact that i am a sibling and have been told stories about what that means. additionally, we have a heritage. this heritage is constituted through historical narratives, having been told through the ages, for example, the way in which a father is taken up in a particular culture. therefore, the changes i encountered about the biology of my father becomes existential because of the meanings passed down, from not only my own family, but these meanings are also encapsulated in the narratives that have been told about fathers for centuries, for example, myths, particularly those stemming from a greek culture. we are affected by our past that is not created by us; we have a picture of the present mediated through our cultural landscapes. however, our actions throw us into the future and in doing so we potentially change ourselves. i have done the testing, i am not greek. we become actors in the world, while being constituted by our past; however, we also have freedom (ricoeur, 1992). all narratives, whether real or fictional, according to ricoeur (1992), have some ethical element. for ricoeur (1992), our human actions are located in time and space, and while time and space may act as a constraint, these root us and enable us to view a persistent self. additionally, ricoeur (1998) suggested that we recognize ourselves and take responsibility for our actions through self-examination. if i didn’t want the answer why did i do the testing? in short, ricoeur (1998) said that we learn about ourselves through acts that are exterior to the self, which then return to us, with information, through others or symbols. we then take that information, evaluate it, and examine it to determine meaning. does parental lineage matter? acting agents and human capability throughout ricoeur’s (1992) work, there is reference to an agent’s acting and suffering “for my part, i will never forget to speak of humans as acting and suffering” (p. 145). suffering comes from the misery experienced when the self is not yet realised, but it is seen in potential for action (hall, 2007). according to ricoeur (1988), we find axial moments, which give structure to time and connect us to events in historical time, moments that have left a trace, and “to follow a trace is one way of ‘reckoning with time’” (p.124). in order to “reckon with time,” we give utterance to events, and in particular speak of actions. actions move what is potential toward actuality. i may not be your father; my brother is ill, i should do the testing; i am not his. kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 12 actions leave a mark in time, a trace, much like a text is archived, and therefore, according to ricoeur (1992), human action can be interpreted. why didn’t my parents tell me? why did my father wait until he was close to death? why didn’t i ever ask my mother about my biological father? our actions, or inactions, can be interpreted. perhaps my mother’s guilt kept her from telling me; perhaps my father had a part to play in her affair; perhaps it did not matter to him either until we had a better relationship. actions, according to ricoeur (1992), can be studied “following a three-step rhythm: describing, narrating, prescribing” (p. 20). essentially, this process assists in moving from practice to ethics since prescribing involves judgment, “good” or “bad.” through narratives, we have received models or descriptions of how to act; through reading or dialogue we access our imagination and apply that to the real world and, therefore, we can act. my father was a generous man; it would not be outside of his character to welcome a child that was not his, even if i was a reminder for him of my mother’s infidelity. distanciation and appropriation in order to judge one’s act, or to examine one’s self, there needs to be a certain amount of distance. ricoeur (1992, 1998) used the term distanciation to describe the act of objectifying a text (or discourse, or self) in order for it to be liberated. once distanced, interpretation is no longer tied to the original intent and, therefore, can be brought forward to be made meaningful to the person in the present. it is not what the statistical analysis of dna results mean, but rather what they mean to me given my past and present, and what it means about my heritage. in the process of experiencing and interpreting an event, it is not necessarily the event that endures, but the meaning and “the interpretation becomes an event” (ricoeur, 1998, p. 185). what does having a father mean and what does having a greek father mean? in his discussion in relation to distanciation and appropriation, ricoeur (1998) explained that we do not “impose” ourselves on a text, but rather we “expose” ourselves in order to discover a “proposed” world (pp. 142-143). as we distanciate the original intention of the text, we expose ourselves, use our imagination (reflect), and we invite “new possibilities of being-in-the-world” (ricoeur, 1998, p. 142) and we become an enlarged self. while distance frees meaning, appropriation allows us to make the meaning familiar. in particular, ricoeur claimed that “distanciation, in all its forms and figures, constitutes par excellence the critical moment in understanding” (p. 113). action much of ricoeur’s (1984, 1985, 1988, 1998) work on narrative relates to the way in which we interact with a text. as we read, we also re-read ourselves through the varied characters and the plots. we evaluate the character’s actions and potentially “elevate them to the rank of persons” (ricoeur, 1985, p. 41). much like the reading of a novel, we respond to the people in our lives in similar ways. we interpret the actions of others and attend to the social and public spheres. inherent in our ability to be an acting agent is our corporeality. my body interacts in the world, and i have a “corporeal anchoring in the world” (ricoeur, 1992, p. 150.). human capacity is conditional since the body will be either active or passive depending on needs or desires and interactions with others (hall, 2007; muldoon, 2002). i could have chosen not to complete the dna testing and accepted a state of not knowing. our needs or desires have the potential to direct activity, while our bodily senses ground our existence in the world. furthermore, according to ricoeur (as kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 13 cited in kearney, 2004), our perceptions are subject to emotions. because of the early childhood distance i perceived our relationship in a certain way. as i got to know my father, as an adult, i became more emotionally connected. had i remained emotionally distant, the dna results may not have spurred me to wonder existentially about what it means to have been brought up greek, with a greek father. accordingly, our openness to the world and our ability to interpret and engage will depend on our affective perception. am i sad or happy about the dna results? affective perceptions will either open us to a world of possibility or limit openness due to vulnerability. i have a new understanding of being a half-sibling. i resent my sister for being right, and i will likely avoid her in the future. our freedom is revealed through our character. apparently, ricoeur (as cited in muldoon, 2002) believed that we want to represent our ideal self and strive toward happiness. the desire for happiness leads to our perception of possibilities for our human capacity (ricoeur, 1992). happiness, however, being an emotion, may be in conflict with reason and, therefore, contributes to our frailty. while we are cognizant of our frailty and we may feel misery because of it, these conditions, lead us to actions, and a will to respond. does the biology of my father matter? should i do the testing? what do i understand about myself now that i know i am not greek and only partially related to this family? what does it mean to be without a cultural lineage? ricoeur’s (1992) work pointed to the importance of choices and actions in the world with others. we exist with others and, our interactions with others can inform us when we reflect on our human capacity. narratives help us mediate within our public spaces. engagement with others is key to our selfhood (ricoeur, 1992), and narratives direct our action to live communally. what should i tell others when they ask about the origin of my last name? others can assist in attestations and verify truths. my brother’s dna is unlike my own. on the other hand, others could provide a different perspective. you are our child. self-understanding “...reflection is nothing without the mediation of signs and works, and the explanation is nothing if not incorporated as an intermediary stage in the process of self-understanding.” (ricoeur, 1998, p. 159). the past and present confront one another and merge together, and as we interpret the past, we bring new meaning made into the present, which leads to an increased selfunderstanding. self-understanding is mediated through reflection, and “the self of selfknowledge is the fruit of an examined life” (ricoeur, 1988, p. 247). when we reflect not only on ourselves but also on the community in which we live, we attest to ourselves about who we are and how we live. the external environment, our community or culture will validate this attestation, which over time will also lead to self-constancy. existential events offer opportunities for a re-reading of the self when examined for the ways in which narratives have shaped both the self and the interpretation of the events. existential events create a temporality of experience. time becomes humanized in the way that we respond to our history, bring it into the present and in consideration of the future. while engaged in this self-examination we may stay true to ourselves; however, we may also critique the narratives that have created who we are now, and through the dialect between present understanding and potential, we may become refigured, considering that “understanding is not concerned with grasping a fact but with apprehending a possibility of being” (ricoeur, kostouros journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 14 1998, p. 56). since we reside in both actuality and potential, we are always becoming. ricoeur and my self-understanding while i was narrated to believe that family is of the utmost importance, i had gradually distanced myself from my family for many years, that is, until my father became ill and i decided to return home. i had one opportunity to get to know him by means of having an adult relationship with him and i was willing to see where it would go, thereby being open to the possibilities. this prior distancing (distanciation) of myself from my family allowed me to face new experiences that were taken up (appropriated) into a newly developing identity. this process was not easy and it certainly was not fast, nor is it over. when i returned to victoria, i found a family that had remained closed, isolated, and stuck in the past (limited, misery). our relationships were frail for several years as we attempted to create new narrations out of our shared present. however, the narrations of the past continued to loom over us. eventually, as my father’s illness became more serious, he began to talk openly about his life. since i was the only family member willing to talk about death and dying, he shared many stories with me, many of which i was later honoured to share at his funeral. in particular, he told me that it was likely that i was not his child (existential event). while this fact had always been a rumour, it did not concern me so much in my past because in the past i had no real relationship with him (memesis1). then, suddenly, through our shared present, back in my family context as an adult (memesis2) i recognized him as a person, a father, who had not been there before. i knew then that i was going to miss him (mimesis3). this event helped me to reflect on the characteristics (ipse/idem) that i now possess, which are both inherited and mediated. when i consider the culturally and socially mediated values i possess, i know by letting go and rejecting some, while maintaining others, my narrated self has been moving forward through time and my identity has shifted. i continue to question what it means to have a biological lineage on this earth, that is, wondering if somehow it ties me to the human race in a certain way, or perhaps not knowing my biology creates more freedom and less othering (self and other than self). through a series of events, my relationship with my brother has become strained to the point in which we had not spoken for a long time. for certain, i have had no relationship to speak of with my oldest sister for many years. recently, i received a call that my brother had been diagnosed terminally ill. i needed to decide whether my ties to this family were strong enough to warrant a visit, particularly since i would likely encounter my older sister. i was called upon to muster up my human capacity to care (ethics and action). i went to victoria and visited my family. while visiting with my family, we had many conversations, some about death and dying, which brought us around to discussions about our parents. the dna test results were discussed and once again, particularly noting, that i was not biologically connected to my father, and that i was not greek (referent). while, in the past i had protested, i now knew (attestation/verification) that it was true that he was not my father; however, my protests continued, but changed, since, as my partner continues to remind me, “just because he was not your father, does not mean your father was not greek.” references andrew, j. d. 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(1986). hermeneutic experience and memory: rethinking knowledge as recollection. research in phenomenology, 16, 43-55. corresponding author: graham mccaffrey, rn phd email: gpmccaff@ ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics august 5, 2016 the author(s) 2016 compassion, necessity, and the pharmakon of the health humanities graham mccaffrey abstract health humanities is an emergent interdisciplinary field drawing on existing traditions of using resources from the arts and humanities in the education of health professionals. c ultivation of compassion is often cited, though not without some debate, as a fit goal for the health humanities. in this paper, i undertake a critical reappraisal of the presumed link between health humanities and compassion. firstly, i propose a model of the health humanities that takes up derrida’s figure of the pharmakon, as polyvalent medicine or poison (among other meanings). unlike derrida, however, i treat the pharmakon as a substance, even when referring to arts and humanities. i then offer examples of negative effects of the pharmakon that both attest to its potency and unsettle comfortable assumptions that it is necessarily benign. finally, i take up themes from simone weil’s reading of the iliad to propose that necessity may be a useful alternative, or addition, to the ways we think about the goals of the health humanities keywords health humanities, compassion, empathy mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 13 2 a drunkard i’ve never been an individual entity. sixty trillion cells! i’m a living collectivity. i’m staggering zigzag along, sixty trillion cells, all drunk! (from: what ? 108 zen poems by ko un, 2008, p. 39) health humanities is a recently marked out interdisciplinary field concerned with the use of resources from the arts and humanities in healthcare, and more broadly in relation to health. drawing on previous traditions of medical humanities, teaching practices in nursing and other disciplines, and arts based research, advocates for health humanities have staked out bold claims that the humanities can help to counter technical alienation in modern healthcare. there is a debated claim that health humanities help to foster empathy among students and practitioners in healthcare professions. in this paper, i add to the debate using the concept of the pharmakon to propose that if the humanities do indeed have effects, then these must be effects of substance, and effects that are potentially dangerous as well as beneficial. i give examples of the humanities being turned to sinister ends, yet not necessarily thereb y losing their link to empathy, and finally i propose that the goals of health humanities should include not only the stimulation of empathy or compassion, but also the recognition of necessity. health humanities note on empathy/compassion i consider empathy and compassion in the modern healthcare context to be functionally referring to the same phenomenon. in the disciplinary literatures, medicine has mostly latched on to empathy and nursing on to compassion, but they both seem to want them to mean a combination experience of emotional identification with another’s subjective situation and purposeful response to said situation. (compassion isolates suffering, but when empathy is talked about, there is an implicit assumption that anyone appealing to a health professional for help has some order of suffering, so even this apparent distinction is blurry). since it is actually so difficult to adequately capture in words the complex of emotions, thoughts, reasoning, bodily responses, decisions, and actions that comprise an event of empathy/compassion (and this only gets as far as the compassionate/empathetic actor, never mind what the intended recipient of the act perceives), it is worth bearing in mind that the taxonomic effort may itself be conditioned by the needs of medico-scientific rationalism. there is no consensus definition of empathy/compassion, and a whiff of moralizing essentialism in the literature (mccaffrey & mcconnell, 2015), not to mention at times more than a whiff of the quasi-religious (see for examples the grand transformative claims in armstrong, 2011 and krnzaic, 2015). empathy/compassion is not meaningless or irrelevant, but it is a phenomenon of human relating that is complex, culturally and politically inflected, contextual, dynamic and thus deeply interpretable. the strength and significance of the phenomenon are better sought in interpretive dialogue than in claims to final mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 13 3 definition. it is not a purpose of the present paper, then to decide between empathy and compassion, and throughout the body of the paper, i have mostly followed my disciplinary bias (as a nurse) by favouring the term compassion. amongst recent texts about the health humanities (and in one case, medical humanities), crawford, brown, baker, tischler, and abrams (2015) make the most unequivocal connection between humanities and empathy/compassion, describing reading as “a tool for broadening empathy” (p. 56) and more widely arguing that, “attention to literature and the arts can help to develop and nurture skills of observation, analysis, empathy and self-reflection” (p. 18). authors of a textbook of medical humanities make a very similar statement, with reflection repositioned as a means to cultivating empathy: “medical humanities attempts to cultivate certain key virtues in and values of medicine, such as altruism, empathy, compassion, as well as certain qualities of mind by means of various reflective, interpretive, and reflexive practices ” (cole, carlin, & carson, 2015, p. 10). jones, wear, and friedman (2014) take a more cautious attitude, questioning the easy chain of association that is set up in the literature from humanities, to humanism, to humane. however, while arguing against what they call “the instrumentalist justification” (p. 4) for the humanities, they replace it with “the intellectual practice of the humanities…which encourages fearless questioning…and refuses to accept the boundaries that science sets between biology and culture ” (p. 4). while it is worth questioning the word association trail from humanities to humane, in terms of instrumentality the authors only replace one functional purpose for the humanities in healthcare with a different one, and emphasize intellectuality to boot, which steers back towards the rationality of scientific medicine on its own terms. as an alternate strategy, in this paper i attempt to deconstruct the instrumentality of humanities in healthcare through an exploration of the pharmakon. pharmakon – definition and derrida pharmakon is a greek word with multiple meanings, including “drug” so it is the etymological root of the family of words to do with medications: pharmacology, pharmaceutical, pharmacist, and so on. meanings of pharmakon also include “poison, charm, spell” (barnhart, 2006, p. 785). derrida made much use of its polyvalent meanings in his essay plato’s pharmacy (1981), where he took up the use of the word in plato’s phaedrus in the context of socrates comparing a written text to a pharmakon. derrida’s essay is about the ambivalent and fissiparous effects of writing compared to speech and for him the potency of the word lies in “the regular, ordered polysemy that has, through skewing, indetermination, or overdetermination, but without mistranslation, permitted the rendering of the same word by ‘remedy,’ ‘recipe,’ ‘poison,’ ‘drug,’ ‘philter,’ etc” (p. 71). he acknowledged the more literal sense of pharmakon, but even then to establish it as an agent of double meanings and mixed effects: one must indeed be aware of the fact that plato is suspicious of the pharmakon in general, even in the case of drugs used exclusively for therapeutic ends, even when they are wielded with good intentions, and even when they are as such effective. there is no such thing as a harmless remedy. the pharmakon can never be simply beneficial. (p. 99) derrida, however, was much more interested in the linguistic play afforded by the use of the word in relation to language and emphasized its dynamic possibilities. “the pharmakon is the mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 13 4 movement, the locus, and the play: (the production of) difference. it is the differance of difference” (p. 127). he used two metaphors to underline the way in which pharmakon gets inside to have its effects, first as housebreaker: “apprehended as a blend and an impurity, the pharmakon also acts like an aggressor or a housebreaker, threatening some internal impurity and security” (p. 128), then as liquid: …the pharmakon always penetrates like a liquid; it is absorbed, drunk, introduced into the inside, which it first marks with the hardness of the type, soon to invade it and inundate it with its medicine, its brew, its drink, its potion, its poison. (p. 152) derrida was so taken up with the linguistic possibilities of pharmakon, however, that he insisted that it must be considered “a drug without substance ” (p. 142), “as antisubstance itself: that which resists any philosopheme, indefinitely exceeding its bounds as nonidentity, nonessence, nonsubstance” (p.70). for my purposes, i want to make use of the polysemic vitality of the pharmakon, while insisting on the pharmakon as substance. presented with a pharmakon, you have a choice whether or not to take it, but once taken it will change you, cell by cell. this is as true for compassion as it is for morphine, as true for reading a poem as it is for prozac. the neuroscientist antonio damasio (2012) has advanced a framework for understanding consciousness that posits an idea of human beings as physically interpretive organisms. human brains generate images in a constant stream that “are given saliency…according to their value for the individual” (p. 76). value is der ived “from the original set of dispositions that orients our life regulation, as well as from the valuations that all images we have gradually acquired in our experience have been accorded” (p. 76). another basic construct for damasio is that of map making, whereby images are arranged into varied and deeply complex patterns of meaning. in other words, while we have original dispositions rooted in the cellular makeup of human beings and genetics, our horizon of selfhood is constantly modified in exchange with social and cultural worlds, to which damasio, unlike other neuroscientists, accords great respect as the actual realm of human experience. curiously, he even slips into gadamerian sounding language, for example when he states, “our memories are prejudiced, in the full sense of the term, by our past history and beliefs” (p. 142) [italics in orginal]. the idea i am suggesting that we can think of the arts and humanities as mind-body altering substance is not all that surprising. we, as human beings, go to immense lengths to alter our consciousness as we find it. to alter consciousness is to alter the body and vice versa. there is the obvious category of mind/body altering substances, such as alcohol, tobacco, lsd, or heroin, but also foodstuffs (think of comfort food), then the activities we perform to feel good, running and exercise of all kinds (the so-called runner’s high), meditation, yoga, prayer, chanting, dressing up (or down), anything that causes sexual stimulation etc. if this seems to make humanities into more of a drug, then it also makes a drug into more of an idea; we already have a sense from the placebo effect that a drug’s efficacy can be an unstable compound of the drug and the idea of the drug. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 13 5 humanities as pharmakon it is now possible to restate the arts-compassion link in another way: that the arts are another kind of mind/body-altering substance. putting it more concretely, to posit that reading a novel, for example, is good for nursing students, is to claim it has a distant effect: the student who reads a novel in my course today will be more likely to experience the neurobiological/subjective event of compassion when caring for a patient in six months time. george steiner, in a polemic partly directed at derrida, spelled o ut the physicality of art, in this case poetry, and its effects: as the act of the poet is met – and it is the full tenor and rites of this meeting which i would explore – as it enters the precincts, spatial and temporal, mental and physical, of our being, it brings with it a radical calling towards change. the waking, the enrichment, the complication, the darkening, the unsettling of sensibility and understanding which follow on our experience of art are incipient with action. (1989, p. 143) richard kearney, in his essay on diacritical hermeneutics, discussed what he called “carnal interpretation” (p. 8) whereby “every carnal act and organ inscribes its own imaginaire” and “sensation is expression and expression sensation. flesh is word and word flesh” (p. 8). or as w.h. auden put it more succinctly in his elegiac poem on the death of w.b. yeats: “the words of a dead man / are modified in the guts of the living” (auden, 1939/2016). one implication of taking the arts and humanitie s seriously as pharmakon is to see that, like pharmaceuticals, they may have beneficial effects, negative effects, or both, or none at all. a pharmakon is an interpretive substance since it alters perception, however subtly, and perception, or how a person sees the world, affects how she or he acts in the world. the arts and humanities would not matter, and there would be no reason to include them in curricula of health professions, unless they are a kind of pharmakon, an active substance. pharmaceuticals, as the most literal descendants of pharmakon, are set around with rituals of protection, authority, and propriety. health care professionals are habitually shocked by the laity’s disregard for correct ritual, which is called non-compliance. the reason for the ritual seriousness is obvious, that pharmaceuticals are known to have real effects on human beings, and their proper use is intended to maximize therapeutic effects and minimize harmful effects, through welltargeted delivery of specific agents at optimal doses: hence the “10 rights” of medication administration (vera, 2012). the meaning of the effects is, however, interpretable. modern society has highly sophisticated structures of meaning to endorse what is or is not a desirable effect. during the course of writing this paper, the tennis player maria sharapova gave a press conference at which she admitted to testing positive to a performance enhancing drug called meldonium (guardian, 2016). it is a drug manufactured in latvia for short-term treatment of ischemia by increasing blood flow. sharapova said she had been taking it for 10 years on the flimsy grounds that she has a family history of diabetes. what caught her out, however, was not that her pretext is medically mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 13 6 questionable, but that there was a change in ritual and she missed it. meldonium was added to the list of banned substances for tennis on january 1, 2016 (guardian, 2016). to what degree she believed her own dubious rationale is irrelevant, because the structure of meaning for her sport shifted and what had been a matter of indifference (in terms of legality) became redefined as one of culpable harm. the pharmakon of arts and humanities is likewise embedded in structures of meaning, and rituals of usage, because it too carries the potential for potent effects that may be judged desirable or harmful. to illustrate this point, i propose three strong counter examples to the uncomplicated assumption in the health humanities that exposure to works of creative imagination has positive effects. poetry written by jihadists, and by radovan karadzic, the bosnian serb leader during the civil war in the 1990s, are examples of art expressly in support of destructive ideologies. however, they are also examples of art that makes appeal to compassion. the third example, of the goethe oak, is a brutally ironic example of the possibility that the arts and humanities may have absolutely no effect on ethical behaviour. isis, war crime, goethe oak father, i have travelled a long time among deserts and cities. it has been a long journey, father, among valleys and mountains, so long that i have forgotten my tribe, my cousins, even humankind. these are lines from a poem by osama bin laden, (quoted in haykel & creswell, 2015, p. 6), in which he recounts his journeys from country to country through the persona of his young son, hamza, and then explains in his own voice the reasons for their travails. first of these is the need to respond to “a world where the suffering of innocents, particularly muslim innoce nts, is ignored and ‘children are slaughtered like cattle’” (haykel & creswell, 2015, pp. 6-7). he then goes on to blame the “zionists” (p. 7) for their attacks on muslims, and arab regimes for their failure to come to their defence. there is an unmistakable appeal to compassion in the poem, to recognize the sufferings of children, and then to take action to relieve their suffering. it is crucially, however, an absolutely selective compassion from which the invitation to care for the suffering of one category of people is accompanied by murderous rage towards other kinds of people. haykel and creswell (2015) put jihadist poetry into wider contexts of the popularity of poetry in parts of the arab world, and its place as part of jihadi culture. they argued that poetry has a function in establishing the self-proclaimed isis caliphate as “a fantasy world of fluctuating borders where anything can happen, including the recapture of past glories” (p. 9). while from the outside, it is easy to dismiss jihadi poetry as mere propaganda, it is more than that within the structures of meaning by which islamists seek to legitimize themselves, their values, and their actions. my second example of the potentially dangerous effects of a humanities pharmakon is the work of radovan karadzic, who was found guilty of genocide at the international court in the hague in march 2016 (international criminal tribunal for the former yugoslavia [icty], 2016). before the breakup of yugoslavia and the outbreak of war, karadzic was a psychiatrist and poet, mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 13 7 apparently at the confluence of healthcare and humanities. his poetry, however, was an outlet for his serb nationalist politics, which brought him to the leadership of the self-declared bosnian serb republic in 1992 and to a new career of ethnic cleansing of bosnian croats and muslims (bbc, 2014). surdukowski, a doctoral candidate in law, wrote a paper for a legal journal before the start of the war crimes trial in 2009, arguing that the prosecution could “use karadzic’s texts and affectations to warrior poetry in the pretrial brief and in admitted evidence” (surduko wski, 2005, p. 677). his article’s title memorably begins with the question, “is poetry a war crime?” (p. 673). if the examples cited in the article are anything to go by, karadzic’s poetry has little literary merit, but is intended to valorize a narrative of victimhood and heroic revenge: when the time comes for gun barrels to speak, for heroic days, valorous nights, when a foreign army floods your country, and wreaks havoc and causes damage in it, that condition must be righted: then you roam your homeland on foot, and your boots fight side by side with you. (cited in surdukowski, 2005, p. 685) here again, however, the poetry has a different sense within a structure of meaning where historical memory, identity, and narrative poetic tradition are connected to a living cultural context. i do not know whether karadzic’s poetry ever was admitted as evidence into his trial; probably there was no shortage of other kinds of evidence that made it superfluous. the question in surdukowski’s title is meant seriously, however, acknowledging the power of poetry as incitement to action via impassioned response. w.b. yeats interrogated himself on this same question when he asked rhetorically in his poem the man and the echo (1938/1982, p. 393): did that play of mine send out certain men the english shot? it is the real possibility of incitement to action that makes a pharmakon of the humanities, and the moral indeterminacy of the action as such that holds out potential of both benefit and harm. my third counter example of the link between humanities and empathy runs in a different direction. the goethe oak was an oak tree in central germany, where goethe reputedly wrote poetry while enamored of a local noblewoman. through its association with the great poet, it became a symbol of german humanism and civilization. in 1937, the nazis built the buchenwald concentration camp at the site, and they chose to build around the oak since to them it symbolized a link between german high culture and their own ideology. to inmates of the camp, however, it stood as a positive symbol of a german culture that preceded, and would survive the aberration of nazism (neumann, 2000, pp. 178-9). the nazis’ appropriation of the goethe oak had nothing to do with the content of his work, and was a grotesque reading of themselves as readers of goethe, whereby “civilization” is apportioned by race and language, and not by the quality of relationships within a whole society. the symbol of the goethe oak standing in buchenwald ruptures the assumption of a straightforward link between humanities and humanemccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 13 8 ness. the examples above point to the potency of arts and humanities as substance, and as reminder of the possible differential effects and uses of the pharmakon. compassion, contingency, and weil’s necessity “they talk about a life of brotherly love show me someone who knows how to live it.” (dylan, 1979) the argument so far does not disprove or discount a connection between the humanities and empathy or compassion, but it does complicate the connection and counters the tendency to assume it is automatic. i retain a conviction that the arts and humanities do have a place in nursing education and research, but that there is a space for re-examination of why that should be so. not only is the pharmakon of the humanities a substance of polyvalent goals and effects, but the target of compassion is itself inherently unstable. compassion is a fugitive experience, a human response that may or may not emerge in any given situation. a healthcare system, however, has to provide a threshold of consistent response, which has to include technical competency and ought also to include a flexible responsiveness to individualized needs, based on understanding of individual histories and experience. that, i believe, is both an ethical imperative and a practical one since we know by now that technical capability alone is not a ll there is to helping people improve or maintain health. objectifying people does not help. if the presence of compassion cannot be guaranteed, however, nor can it be dismissed. there are claims in the nursing literature on compassion that it is something more like a steady state virtue humming in the background (bradshaw, 2009; mccaffrey & mcconnell, 2015). that, however, is to stray from definitions of compassion that more or less agree it requires the particular stimulus of another’s suffering. a constant outpouring of compassion, presumably in response to a constant awareness of suffering, is a condition of saintliness which i will not say does not exist, but i suggest is sufficiently rare that we can discount it for the practical purposes of running a complex modern healthcare system. the variation that some people possess a disposition towards compassion, which will be triggered appropriately on each and every occasion it is called for, is somewhat more attainable but again, i would suggest, beyond the reach of most of us. if compassion is not reliable as a resource for healthcare providers, it does not therefore follow that it can be dispensed with altogether as one physician author (faust, 2009) suggested, in favour of observab le, external signs of k indness. if compassion cannot be summoned to order, by the same token, it cannot be refused when it does arise. if compassion is not a necessary condition of providing high quality healthcare at any given moment, nor does it make sense to deny that it may deeply enhance an interaction or that the ideal of compassion may furnish a sustaining sense of meaning for the practitioner. in practice, however, compassion is best considered as a contingent event and as such, contingency should be brought into the remit of arts and humanities. contingency, however, implies its opposite : necessity. compassion as a contingent event, and the arts and humanities as pharmakon, unstable but offering as at least one of its effects a route into imaginative understanding of, and feeling for the other, both require context for their mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 13 9 appearance in human life. simone weil’s reading of homer’s iliad offers one way into articulating the context, the background for the contingencies of compassion and artistic effect. she arrived at her conception of necessity in contrast to force. for her, the iliad demonstrated the fundamental significance of what she called force, which she saw as malign since it is always directed towards the objectification of human beings. she saw force as the e ncompassing theme of the iliad, appearing in almost every relationship and most vividly of course in warfare. thus she calls the iliad “the purest and loveliest of mirrors” (1940/2005, p. 183). she defined force as “that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing” (p. 183, italics in original). weil does not talk about empathy or compassion in her essay. she does not address whether or not we as readers should identify with characters in the iliad for better or worse, or whether we would be any better off for doing so. she does, however, claim to find elements of thought that have been lost to modern societies. o ne is that force invites retribution and that individuals can move precipitately and unpredictably from perpetrator to victim, and become objectified either way. instead of a recognition of the relationships between things, “conceptions of limit, measure, equilibrium, which ought to determine the conduct of life are, in the west, restricted to a servile function in the vocabulary of technics” (p. 195). in modern society (our modern society, not weil’s mid 20t h century modern society), measure does indeed have a servile function in that it is supposed only to be a data processing tool, and yet the vocabulary of technics is so dominant that we are often put in the position of servants to the servile. the francis report (2013) in the uk about the mid-staffs hospital, where flagrant neglect of patients ran rife, showed that staff were spellbound by outcome measures while literally failing to see the faces of suffering patients. weil remarks that “prestige, from which force derives at least three-quarters of its strength, rests principally upon that marvellous indifference that the strong feel toward the weak, an indifference so contagious that it infects the very people who are the objects of it” (p 199). it also says something about how healthcare interactions are influenced by the prestige of technical medicine itself carrying both professional and patient along in its powerful undertow. weil nonetheless finds a redemptive aspect in the iliad in rare “moments of grace” (p. 208) when homer describes tenderness between husbands and wives, parents and children, or even mutual respect on the battlefield. “it is in this that the iliad is absolutely unique, in this bitterness that proceeds from tenderness and that spreads over the whole human race, impartial as sunlight” (p. 208). the poem’s bitterness “is the only justifiable bitterness, for it springs from the subjection of the human spirit to force, that is, in the last analysis, to matter. this subjection is the common lot, although each spirit will bear it differently, in proportion to its own virtue” (p. 211). she elsewhere used the phrase “the hand of necessity” (p. 201) for this subjection to matter. in another of her works, weil wrote that, “the sun shines in the just and on the unjust…god makes himself necessity. there are two aspects of necessity: it is exercised, it is endured: the sun and the cross” (2002, p. 43). necessity is “the re lationship of things” (p. 48) and for her, “obedience is the only pure motive” but “obedience to necessity and not to force” (p. 49). here weil appears to be making a distinction between the necessity that is “the relationship of things” (p. 48) and force which the subjection to matter played out in human action. force admits of exceptions to itself when people are able to connect to the even more fundamental power of necessity, as gadamer wrote, “over and above our wanting and doing” (1960/2004, p. xxvi). the pharmakon of the arts and humanities as substance reminds us of the same necessity, the same mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 13 10 subjection to matter, even when we are most tempted to fly away with the language of the spirit. it can at its worst be used to incite resort to force, but it can otherwise bring us back to the necessity we all share, “the relationship of things” (weil, 2002, p. 48) in which we live and die. out of this necessity, at times, appears the contingent event of compassion. conclusion there is no final conclusion, if conclusion means a new definition of health humanities, a new curriculum, a new moral imperative towards making health professional more empathetic. if anything, i have tried to inject some irony into the health humanities, a sense of the tragic that the scientific wo rldview so conspicuously (and dangerously) lacks, because it enjoins us to wait for science to fix everything – including the problems science created – while life rushes onward regardless. if poetry can be likened to a drug, likewise a drug can be likened to poetry. both are “modified in the guts of the living” (auden, 2016). there remain vexed questions of how best to administer the pharmakon of the health humanities to students who have widely divergent degrees of receptivity or compliance. while a didac tic novel like still alice (genova, 2009) has obvious relevance to students learning about people with dementia, it is poor literature. nonetheless, it does have traces of weil’s necessity, the brute materiality of a decaying brain lived out in a character, albeit a two-dimensional one for much of the novel. empathy may result in action, in doing well by others (where for health professionals, “doing well” is a highly complex bundle of technical, emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and ethical activity), but what the humanities first teach is the fact of relationship, of contact with the raw shock of the other. references armstrong, k. 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(2008). what? 108 zen poems. berkeley, ca: parallax. vera, m. (2012). the 10 rights of drug administration. retrieved from http://nurseslabs.com/10rs-rights-of-drug-administration/ weil, s. (2002). gravity and grace. florence, ky : routledge. weil, s. (2005). simone weil: an anthology. (s. miles, ed.). london, uk: penguin. yeats, w.b. (1982). collected poems. london, uk: macmillan. http://nurseslabs.com/10-rs-rights-of-drug-administration/ http://nurseslabs.com/10-rs-rights-of-drug-administration/ corresponding author: nancy j moules email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 16, 2017 the author(s) 2017 is it really “yesterday’s war”? what gadamer has to say about what gets counted nancy j moules, lorraine venturato, catherine m laing, & james c field abstract in this paper, the authors address the perceived recent trend of funding and publishing bodies that seem to have taken a regard of qualitative research as a subordinate to, or even a subset of, quantitative research. in this reflection, they pull on insights that hans-georg gadamer offered around the history of the natural and human science bifurcation, ending with a plea that qualitative research needs to be received, appraised, judged, and promoted by different lenses and criteria of value. keywords qualitative research, hermeneutics, rigor, narratives, experience, funding of research, publishing qualitative findings in february 2016, an open letter was published in the bmj where 76 senior academics from 11 countries challenged the bmj to reconsider their practice of rejecting qualitative research as low priority, lacking practical value and interest to readers, and being unlikely to be cited (greenhalgh et al., 2016). the published letter makes a compelling argument for the need for complementary perspectives that are embraced by quantitative and qualitative research methods, citing and commending organizations that lay claim to the idea that “quantitative versus qualitative is yesterday’s war” (p. 4). we applaud this letter and its intent, but offer that, from our perspectives, this “war” seems to have returned and seems to be alive and well today, unfortunately. we can only speculate on what drives the majority of funding agencies to fund primarily, if not exclusively, quantitative moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 1 2 studies. at best, to be funded, a study must contain “mixed” or “multiple” methods, whereby the qualitative aspect is generally a watered-down version of what could stand as a sophisticated method in and of itself, cobbled onto a quantitative study. for example, to have a study that is purely hermeneutic in nature funded by a major granting agency is becoming increasing impossible, it seems. yet, hermeneutics as a research method is a rich, sophisticated, welldocumented approach to the human sciences that is grounded in a long tradition of philosophical thought dating back to the greeks, manifested in over three decades of research in the human sciences (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). similarly, we run into the very problem that the authors (greenhalgh et al., 2016) identified with the bmj: getting published is becoming more difficult and, more often than not, the reviewers of submitted hermeneutic research manuscripts are guided by very different understandings, and regularly demonstrate an apparent misunderstanding of the purpose, substance, and contribution to the understanding that hermeneutics can make. in this paper, we take the stance that qualitative research addresses and answers different questions than quantitative research and it needs to be seen differently, and more importantly, evaluated differently. we draw on hermeneutic philosophy to offer some of the distinctions that hermeneutic research, as one example of qualitative work, can bring to knowledge. “what is established by statistics seems to be a language of facts, but which questions these facts answer and which facts would begin to speak if other questions are asked are hermeneutical questions” (gadamer, 2007, p. 84). gadamer reminds us that facts are important but also that there are different kinds of facts and different meanings of facts. the development of the natural sciences as a rigorous method comes with a history that has bequeathed to us a seemingly impenetrable order that is imposed in research. what imposed itself in the seventeenth century was a new concept of science. founded upon experimentation and mathematics, it was a new attitude focused on quantification that, in constant progress and lasting self-improvement, eventually transformed science into research. (gadamer, 1988/2016, p. 35) this new concept of science created a bifurcation whereby the human sciences became the country cousin to the natural sciences, at best being regarded as an inexact science and, at worst, as nothing of value beyond self-indulgent subjectivity. thus, “being subjective” (as opposed to being “objective”) was leveled as a criticism at qualitative research and any claims to truth were dismissed as soft, rigor was questioned, and the un-testability of the results posited as a serious limitation. moules was recently asked by a colleague, how she could prove that her interpretations in her research were true and, if she could not prove they were, was the research method more like religion than it was like research? forgotten in this question is what truth means and gadamer’s distinction between certainty and truth is useful here. what motivates the priority of self-consciousness over against the consciousness of things in modern thinking is the primacy of certainty over truth, which was founded on the idea of method in modern science…method has been understood as a path towards reaching certainty. (gadamer, 1975/2016, p. 128) moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 1 3 we think, in this instance, the challenge was based on the assumption that, in a religious sense, truth is aligned with faith, and faith is often critiqued as being blind. however, there are certain overlaps between faith in religion and openness in hermeneutics. both rely on an absence of certainty, an absence of proof, and on the possibility that what you find might be wrong. indeed, faith can only exist where there is uncertainty, and you cannot have faith without uncertainty. fanaticism, then the defining quality being extreme, uncritical, single-minded zeal (merriamwebster, n.d.) is the opposite of faith because of the degree of certainty required. you do not need faith if you are a fanatic because you “know” it to be true. a fanatic, as winston churchill said, “is someone who can’t change his mind and won't change the subject.” thus, certainty and proof are an anathema in both religion and hermeneutics and yet there is also truth in both. truth in qualitative work is often erroneously thought of as subjective correspondence between thought and world. hermeneutic truth is plural, not singular, in this way: there is not one right way to help all patients recover from cancer, for example, or a single method for helping every child learn to read. at the same time, not every way is right. we can get it wrong; we can make people sicker in trying to help them heal. we can make learning to read impossible; while trying to teach, we can deceive ourselves thoroughly and fall into untruth (wrathall, 2013) in the very pursuit of truth…. truth is tricky in hermeneutic work because it disappears as it appears. we never get “the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” because truth is both revealed to us and concealed from us at once. (moules et al., 2015, p. 76) when method leads us to certainty rather than truth, as in the way that interpretations that hold up are “true” of something that brings us closer to understanding the topic, then certainty closes off any further understanding. certainty is in alliance and partnership with agreement, and gadamer reminds us that mutual understanding does not imply agreement; in fact, if agreement exists, then there is no need to seek understanding as it has already been relegated to certainty (vandevelde & iyer, 2016). the provocative question asked by the colleague encapsulates the very critique that is often leveled at qualitative research and that ends up in a diminishment or dismissal of what it has to offer. sometimes, and more frequently it seems, it results in such studies not being evaluated as worthy of funding. an example we offer is a study that moules and colleagues have been trying to have funded for many years involving an examination of parents’ experiences of anticipatory grief of knowing their child is dying, in relationship to their experiences of post death grief. the reviews received on grant applications consistently suggest that, since the study was not going to involve any measurement of these experiences, the value of the study was questionable. there is much debate in the fields of thanatology, grief, and bereavement of whether or not measuring grief is possible but even with those who believe it is and that such a tool is valuable, there is consensus that the experience of grief is complex, immeasurable, deeply individual and experiential far beyond what any tool might discern. there are aspects of grief that can never be measured or, in some ways, ever articulated (moules, 2010). grief is a profound experience of suffering that invariably escapes our capacity to quantify. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 1 4 it is indeed true that experience and the natural sciences founded upon experience carry with them the following assumption about being of nature: that which is without foundation, the accidental, the miraculous has no place in it…it can be said, though, that experience teaches us precisely that unpredictable arbitrariness of human beings constantly intervenes in the course of nature. (gadamer, 1964/2016, p. 3) human experience, upon which qualitative research is based, is complex and often cannot be explained, and gadamer suggested that “the complex does not have the character of a connection between cause and effect in the way it underlies our knowledge and calculation of the course of nature” (p. 4). he challenged the fundamental assumption of science in being able to determine precisely both the cause and effect, claiming that the opposite is often true when it comes to experience: sometimes “small causes have huge consequences” (p. 4). for a full century, we have attempted to delineate the human sciences by contrasting them with the natural sciences, to the extent that the human sciences have been measured by the scientific character proper to the kind of sciences they are…now present-day researcher opine that both groups of sciences might eventually merge together again, but not because the so-called human science would in the meantime have become more exact but because the natural sciences themselves would have transformed. (gadamer, 1988/2016, p. 25) the demand for verification, correctness, and provability underlies the exactness of the natural sciences, and we concede that some things need to be exact and verified, but we offer that few things can be, and some need not be. gadamer harkens us back to the idea of myths. myths do not demand verification and they are not provable. “‘myth’ indeed means nothing other than narrative, but it is a narrative that authenticates itself, that is to say: a narrative that one does not attempt to authenticate and confirm” (p. 31), reminding us that aristotle claimed that it is “mark of the educated person to know of what to demand proofs and of what not to demand them” (p. 31). we do not need to demand proof of the suffering of parents who have lost a child to cancer (moules, estefan, mccaffrey, tapp, & strother, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c); we do not need to demand proof that children’s cancer camps make a difference in the lives of families experiencing cancer (laing & moules, 2015). we do not need to verify that relationships matter in teaching, or that children ought to be treated with respect, or that what they have to say about what they know is important, or that teachers need to listen carefully to those they teach. what we do need to do is to ask of these experiences, to probe them for what is meaningful, to make sense of what our patients or students live through, that is, we have to understand them so that we can help them heal and learn. in doing so, we have to better understand ourselves in relation to our patients or students and understanding, in relation to others, is not something that needs to be verified in a scientific sense. rather, understanding is about discovering the rich contours of the lives we inquire into, and what matters or does not matter, that is, what helps. when we examine our own understanding and praxis in the face of the suffering we encounter, and when we respond appropriately to the miracles and the mysteries that arise suddenly in the middle of our inquiries, hermeneutic inquiry can reveal things science cannot. these are narratives that authenticate themselves in relationships that teach or heal. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 1 5 we can formulate this concern about philosophy with the following question: can philosophy in the age of modern science be understood as something more than an 'ancilla scientiarum, the handmaiden of the sciences...called to service with the ceremonious name of "theory of knowledge"'? gadamer's answer to the question is an emphatic 'yes' because scientific knowledge can tell us nothing about human praxis at the individual and social level. (vandevelde & iyer, 2016, p. xxviii) when he [gadamer] speaks about how the human sciences cannot aspire to the same level of scientificity and objectivity of knowledge as the natural sciences, he is making a plea for the contemporary relevance of praxis against the exclusive power of epistemē and for the role of practical philosophy as it is embodied in the human sciences. this is how gadamer may concede the truth of the mocking remark made by the vienna circle about the human sciences being at most ten percent science when it comes to their scientificity. but he emphasizes that it is the other ninety percent that is the most crucial from the standpoint of human existence as it concerns shared living and solidarity. (vandevelde & iyer, 2016, p. xxix) returning to the question of faith, truth, and religion, it is possible that one can become a fanatical hermeneut, falling prey to the lure of certainty. let us be clear: we are not arguing here that qualitative research is better than quantitative. we are arguing that it is different and that it reveals equally important insights into practice, that is, it needs to be valued equally. it also needs to have its own rigor. moules et al. (2015) addressed the issue of rigor and validation in hermeneutic work in particular, suggesting that the rigor that is sought in interpretive research does not conform to that of being strict, inflexible, exact, precise, accurate, and rigid. it does, however, meet another definition of rigor which is the “quality of being careful” (p. 171). qualitative research must treat its topics care-fully (with care and fully), seeing validity that is located in being strong, powerful, robust, healthy, and telling (moules et al., 2015, p. 172). it should yield insight into the human condition. it should help us decide how we might live well with others, how we might, given their lives, help them heal or learn. the difficulty lies, however, in how to convince those we rely on for funding or dissemination that our work is underpinned by these traits and, more importantly, that these traits matter as much as measures of exactness, causality, prediction, and repeatability. twenty years ago, qualitative work was recognized as legitimate; the accessibility of federal funding was evidence of this. guidelines for tri-council funding in canada even added a chapter on evaluating qualitative work differently with different standards. publication in reputable journals did not require a desperate back-and-forth battle with uniformed reviewers. qualitative journals sprang up; qualitative research institutes blossomed, and it no longer felt as though we were in competition with our big city cousin. we can only speculate on what has made the pendulum swing again. in current times, it might be economically driven – hermeneutics does not produce jobs, new technologies, or cures. the increased emphasis on evidence-based practice may be a factor. this, however, begs the question: what counts as evidence? how is it that we have shifted from the original tenets of evidence-based practice as a trinity of research evidence health professional experience and judgment, and patient preferences to one that prioritizes only quantitative research? if evidence only lies in numbers, mathematics, statistics, and calculability, then it makes sense that the kinds of results that arise moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 1 6 from qualitative research hold little utility from this perspective. those results do not address causality or predictability; they do not speak to health economics or produce new drugs. rather, they help us understand what it means to be human and to live together well. is this enough? given that the state of the world does not seem to be a “scientific problem,” we think so. “to understand the other is truly a difficult art, but also a human task” (gadamer, 1988/2016, p. 39). gadamer (1988/2016) invoked as well the influence of modern technology as having played a factor in the objectification of the human sciences. “increasingly, even the sciences we call human sciences, share in the progress of this technological development of the means of knowledge and information” (p. 38). how much more complete is a computer generated index of today…but is it really only a progress…although all the information we need is available immediately, i wonder whether it is not better that, when having forgotten something, i have to look for it again and, perhaps, in the process find something other than what i was looking for. this is what we truly call doing research: to ask questions that always lead to further question, which we did not anticipate. we are now facing totally new possibilities for alleviating the burden on our memory. this entails that we no longer need our own mental power in order to reawaken what we have forgotten and we no longer nurture recollection…this situation cannot be totally different in the natural sciences…we have come so far with these new advances that research, which previously required twenty years, can now produce results with a computer in a matter of minutes. this has undoubtedly resulted in gains, but also in tasks that turn out to be evermore difficult when it comes to the rational application of our know-how. we only have to think of the beneficial wonder of forgetting and the transfigurative magical power of remembering. the retrieval of data from databases will not give us anything so felicitous. (gadamer, 1988/2016, pp. 38-39) in conclusion, qualitative research is not a “soft,” or “dumbed down” version of quantitative research. it is a different kind of research aimed, not simply at knowing, but more fully at living an ethical life as practitioners, something that cannot be achieved solely through science. if it is research aimed at helping us live well “with and for others in just institutions,” as ricoeur (1992, p. 352) suggested, then it cannot be submitted to an explanatory science that only accounts for causality and order. human sciences rather belong to orders that constantly configure and reconfigure themselves through our own concrete participation in them and thereby contribute to our knowledge about the human possibilities and normative commonalities that affect us. thus, the human sciences bring us before ourselves…of all the sciences, it is especially the so-called human sciences that contribute the most to the nurturing of these capacities. they force us to confront constantly in all its richness the entire scale of what is human and all too human. (gadamer, 1988/2016, p. 41) what it means to be human and “all too human” is what tethers qualitative research to the real world. qualitative research articulates human experience; it brings language to experience and then complements this articulation with a depth that helps us understand it. understanding what moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 1 7 it means to be human, and how we can help others flourish, is not a trite matter but, rather, a difficult, on-going human task, and no computer can relieve us from its burden. references fanaticism. (n.d.). in merriam-webster online dictionary. retrieved from https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/fanaticism gadamer, h-g. (2007). the gadamer reader: a bouquet of later writings (r.e. palmer, ed. & trans.). evanston, il: northwestern university press. gadamer, h-g. (1964/2016). is there a causality in history? in hermeneutics between history and philosophy: the selected writings of hans-georg gadamer, vol. 1 (pp. 3-12) (p. vandevelde & a. iyer, trans.). london, uk: bloomsbury. gadamer, h-g. (1975/2016). subjectivity and intersubjectivity, subject and person. in hermeneutics between history and philosophy: the selected writings of hans-georg gadamer, vol. 1 (pp. 125-137) (p. vandevelde & a. iyer, trans.). london, uk: bloomsbury. gadamer, h-g. (1988/2016). the history of the universe and the historicity of human beings. in hermeneutics between history and philosophy: the selected writings of hans-georg gadamer, vol. 1 (pp. 25-41) (p. vandevelde & a. iyer, trans.). london, uk: bloomsbury. greenhalgh, t., annandale, e., ashcroft, r., barlow, j., black, n., bleakley, a.,…ziebland, s. (2016). an open letter to the bmj editors on qualitative research. the bmj, 352, 1-4. doi: 10.1136/bmj.i563 laing, c.m., & moules, n.j. (2015). “it’s not just camp!” understanding the meaning of children’s cancer camps for children and families. journal of pediatric oncology nursing, 33, 33-44. doi: 10.1177/1043454214563934 moules, n.j. (2010). invited editorial. how do you feel something when there is no word for it? reflections on grief in brazil teaching, nursing, and research. revista da escola de enfermagem da usp (journal of school of nursing university of sao paulo), 44(2), 243-249. issn: 00806234 moules, n.j., estefan, a., mccaffrey, g., tapp, d.m., & strother, d. (2016a). differences and trading: examining the effects of childhood cancer on the parental subsystem. part one. journal of family nursing, 22(4), 515-539. doi: 10.1177/1074840716668102 moules, n.j., estefan, a., mccaffrey, g., tapp, d.tm, & strother, d. (2016b). taking one for the team: examining the effects of childhood cancer on the parental subsystem. part two. journal of family nursing, 22(4), 540-558. doi: 10.117/1074840716675985 moules, n.j., estefan, a., mccaffrey, g., tapp, d.m, & strother, d. (2016c). examining the effects of childhood cancer on the parental subsystem: implications for parents and healthcare moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 1 8 professionals. part three. journal of family nursing, 22(4), 559-578. doi: 10.1177/1074840716675986 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. ricoeur, p. (1992). oneself as another. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. vandevelde, p., & iyer, a. (2016). translators' introduction: hermeneutics at the crossroads between history and philosophy. in h-g. gadamer, hermeneutics between history and philosophy: the selected writings of hans-georg gadamer, vol. 1 (p. vandevelde & a. iyer, trans., pp. xvi-xxxv). new york, ny & london, uk: bloomsbury. corresponding author: william konchak university of iceland email: wik2@hi.is journal of applied hermeneutics october 19, 2017 the author(s) 2017 self-transformation: body, mind, and spirit william konchak abstract in this paper, i explore a conception of self-transformation that attempts to provide a holistic account covering a range of body, mind, and spirit. i draw upon kym maclaren’s exploration of the role of the body inspired by the work of maurice merleau-ponty (body); the hermeneutics of hans-georg gadamer (mind [language]); and ralph waldo emerson’s transcendentalism (spirit). i present the case that each of these approaches develops important aspects of self-transformation and can be seen as complementary. i explore this in relation to philosophy as a practical activity, drawing upon pierre hadot’s perspective of philosophy as a way of life. keywords hermeneutics, philosophy, philosophy as a way of life, phenomenology, transcendentalism pierre hadot’s conception of philosophy as a way of life is a vision of philosophy as a lived practice that transforms the philosopher, a perspective that he developed through his explorations of ancient philosophy (see hadot 1995, 1995/2004). in hadot’s view, this practical emphasis, although never completely lost in modern and contemporary philosophy, is something that should be rekindled. for hadot, theoretical discourse in ancient philosophy was not in the abstract but was used to support practical practices and self-transformation, and he writes “theory is never considered an end in itself; it is clearly and decidedly put in the service of practice” (1995, p. 60). within this conception of philosophy, both theory and practice have a place, but theory is to be used to support the practice of self-transformation. it is suggested that the thought of kym maclaren, hans-georg gadamer, and ralph waldo emerson all have affinities with this conception of philosophy in that the point of their perspectives are not to just espouse a konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 2 theoretical philosophy, but rather that it is intended to help promote change and selftransformation. thus, whether we are considering maclaren’s existential and bodily-based account (body, inspired by maurice merleau-ponty), gadamer’s self-understanding (mind [language]), or emersonian transcendentalism (spirit), it is suggested that each thinker provides an important theoretical orientation that may help to encourage self-transformation and, together, may contribute towards a holistic conception of self-transformation that covers body, mind, and spirit. maclaren kym maclaren, in her article “emotional clichés and authentic passions: a phenomenological revision of a cognitive theory of emotion,” articulates a bodily based conception of emotion, one that moves beyond “emotional clichés” towards what she calls “authentic existential passions.” her argument revolves around drawing upon a bodily based account of participatory experience, which questions and surpasses traditional dualistic mind and subjective based accounts of experience, pointing towards a bodily intelligence which emphasizes the interaction and co-evolution of meaning with the lived bodily experience of engaging with the world. although this account is nuanced, an important point she derives from this is that we do not consciously form all of our meanings; rather, many are passively received or co-evolved in relation to those around us and our bodily experience of interacting with the world and become habitual patterns. she relates this conception to emotions, which, in her view, are not sufficiently explained by cognitive accounts that focus on choice and conscious judgments, but rather, are more passively received in many situations from our previous patterns of engagement, and she writes “intelligent bodily responses to the environment are neither explicitly willed, nor the caused effect of unconscious thought processes; rather the sensed world, itself, motivates movement” (maclaren, 2011, p, 51, emphasis in original). in her account, in many situations we do not have an active choice, or to make such a choice may be very challenging because of our attachment to habitual patterns and how they may be held in place by the world around us and incline us in certain directions. an important concept she formulates is authentic existential passions, which she proposes is “a more radical conception of passivity and its role in subjectivity” (maclaren, 2011, p. 59). she relates this to genuine questions, which break apart habitual meanings and conceptions of self and how we live, and these are emotions that overtake us and are different from emotional clichés. emotions from authentic passions are like first order speech and she relates them to conceptions of primary and poetic language, creative meaning and authenticity, in contrast to second order emotional clichés that reinforce habitual patterns and talk. in respect to authentic existential passions, she gives the example of the death of a close loved one who was the center of one’s world, and the challenges of this, where one’s life and everyday routine was intertwined with another. in this situation, a person is faced with a crumbling world, but must carry on. the center of their life is gone which prompts not an isolated questioning, but a questioning of their life, which, for maclaren, calls for creative transformation, and to this end draws upon r.g. collingwood to suggest artistic expression as one means to accomplish this. it is through the expression itself that we may gain some distance from the experience and creatively transform our lives. maclaren describes an authentic passion: konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 3 this is what it means, i propose, to be put fundamentally into question, to live as a question, and thus to experience an existential passion. it is to be a subjectivity or an experiencing in which subject and object are not yet fully realized, in which how things mean and who one is are still in flux; it is to be an experiencing which calls not for a mere endorsement of familiar meanings, but for self-overcoming, for some creative form of expression in which a new grasp on the world is realized—however provisionally— and one newly “becomes oneself” (at least until the next breakdown of meaning). (p. 62) maclaren’s account of the transformative potential of authentic passions finds resonance with emerson’s perspectives. for example, he writes: the death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. (1983, p. 302) these challenging experiences can spur us towards growth and transformation and are not just something that is just intellectually engaged with, but are events that as we experience them have the potential to profoundly change us. in truth and method, gadamer also speaks of the importance of experiences of suffering and how we may not be spared the experience of having our anticipations frustrated, which may encourage an openness to new experience and a realization of our human finitude. gadamer discusses the experience of limitation more generally rather than more devastating experiences maclaren and emerson are thinking of, and he remarks that “every experience worthy of the name thwarts an expectation,” (1960/1989, p. 356) and later notes “the experienced man knows that all foresight is limited and all plans uncertain. in him is realized the truth value of experience” (p. 357). for gadamer, these smaller upheavals may encourage revising our prejudices towards broader and more fluid perspectives, a process of self-transformation. this process arguably has an affinity with philosophy as a way of life and is a life practice: insight is more than the knowledge of this or that situation. it always involves an escape from something that had deceived us and held us captive. thus insight always involves an element of self-knowledge and constitutes a necessary side of what we called experience in the proper sense. insight is something we come to. it too is ultimately part of the vocation of man—i.e., to be discerning and insightful. (p. 356) for gadamer, the approaches of cultivating openness and flexibility, which emphasizes openness and recognition of our human finitude, is a process that may lead to self-transformation and is an ongoing task that is never completed, a “vocation of man,” or, said another way, a “way of life.” thus, all three thinkers hold conceptions of the importance of openness towards new possibilities that can encourage self-transformation and have affinities with the approach of philosophy as a konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 4 way of life. i now turn to exploring further aspects of gadamer and emerson’s thought and considering how their perspectives may both differ from and complement maclaren’s. gadamer gadamer has concerns about excessive purposefulness and mastery, in respect to method and perspectives of scientism more generally. his hermeneutics provides an account of understanding that is self-understanding, meaning that we change in the process of interpretation. this is not something that can be willfully controlled, but has the character of an event, and is something that we participate in. for gadamer, at the heart of his approach is a sense of dialogue and openness to the other through conversation. an important part of this is learning to take the risk of being open and to embrace change and growth, and working towards this openness is fundamental to gadamer’s thought and can be seen as an important hermeneutic practice. for gadamer, humans are finite beings embedded within their language and tradition, which are flexible and dynamic and prejudices are positive in that that they are our entry points into understanding and they can evolve. although it is not possible to get beyond all prejudices, they can be brought into play to change one’s self-understanding, and through, for example, the transformative effects of openness to the other and by following the subject matter in conversation and interpretation, there can be a movement towards broader and more flexible perspectives. i will now turn to briefly to explore gadamer’s conception of the “i and thou” relation, which gadamer explores in relation to tradition, textual interpretation and people (see gadamer, 1960/1989), although the focus here will be verbal conversation. gadamer explains how there are three ways of approaching a thou, with the idea that one may learn to respect the other in openness rather than turning a relation towards one’s own ends. the first way is a type of predictive approach where one understands a person similarly to any other object, and seeks to predict behavior, and he remarks that “from the moral point of view this orientation toward the thou is purely self-regarding and contradicts the moral definition of man” (p. 358). if this approach is taken, there cannot be a true dialogue or openness to the other, as one is caught up in interpreting the other in terms of one’s own preconceptions and self-serving goals. gadamer points to a second way of relating “the thou is experienced and understood in that the thou is acknowledged as a person, but despite this acknowledgment the understanding of the thou is still a form of self-relatedness” (p. 359). although this is a more adequate way of relating to a thou than the first approach, it still has shortcomings. he gives an example of charity or welfare work, and contends that from this point of view there is a claim to know the thou better than they know themselves and that this is not a true listening because there is a claim to know the other in advance. this is obviously a more subtle failure. gadamer discusses a third way: in human relations the important thing is, as we have seen, to experience the thou truly as a thou—i.e., not to overlook his claim but to let him really say something to us. here is where openness belongs. but ultimately this openness does not exist only for the person who speaks; rather, anyone who listens is fundamentally open. without such openness to one another there is no genuine human bond. (p. 361) konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 5 openness involves being able to acknowledge one’s finitude and to recognize how one may be governed by prejudices. this involves a willingness to bring one’s prejudices into play by being open to the other and by following the subject matter, which may lead towards new perspectives. gadamer notes that this is not slavish obedience, but rather, “openness to the other, then, involves recognizing that i myself must accept some things that are against me, even though no one else forces me to do so” (p. 361). this approach of moving towards more open perspectives in relation to a thou could be seen as a type of practice that may encourage self-transformation. maclaren (2011) presents examples of how people are creating problematic situations based on their habitual responses, and also points to how potentially there could be far better interpersonal interactions. on her account, these routine responses are less a matter of choice or conscious awareness and more a way of following habitual patterns, where emotional clichés may be used by people in relationships to create and perpetuate unproductive relations that serve to keep them from deeper questioning. gadamer’s perspectives may help lead from habitual egotistic and limiting patterns towards more authentic and respectful dialogue. for gadamer, it is important to be open to learning and be willing to risk one’s preconceptions, to be open enough to know that one does not know and to be willing to ask questions, and the point in dialogue is not to win the argument but to engage in questions and answers, where the conversation partners need to be with one another and both directed by the subject matter. for gadamer, it is important to learn to listen to the weight of the argument, not try to argue the other person down, and there is an art of good questioning. the aim is for both speakers to come to agreement over the subject matter (keeping in mind that there will always be some differences), where they may move beyond previous points of view, a fusion of horizons. understanding of the subject matter takes the form of language and “is the coming-into-language of the thing itself” (1960/1989, p. 378). gadamer writes “every conversation presupposes a common language, or better, creates a common language,” (p. 378) which is worked out in conversation. this has implications for selfunderstanding and self-transformation, as “to reach an understanding in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s own point of view, but being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were” (p. 379). this points to the opportunity and risk, as we do not know beforehand which beliefs will be changed, where we can be surprised and “pulled up short” and our provisional meanings are re-defined, with the opportunity for expansion and enriched self-understanding. maclaren points to the role of others in expanding our perspectives and transformation, although her emphasis is primarily through “the ways that they themselves live toward us and our shared world, through their bodily intentionalities” (2009, p. 41). in this respect, it is suggested that gadamer’s perspectives provides a linguistically based account that compliments maclaren’s bodily based perspectives. now, maclaren’s account of the role of others is nuanced and she points to the potential limitations of our interactions as well: other people play an essential role in producing such a constrained situation—and thus they play a role in the production of compulsions and regressions—for they resist attempts at configuring the situation, and therefore rule out certain potential resources as not viable. but at the same time, others can lend us new existential resources for making sense of our situation. (p. 42) konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 6 thus, the other can either facilitate or constrain one’s freedom, and no doubt this is true whether we consider our community as linguistically, bodily based, or both. this is an important point, and what is one to do if the environment is not very supportive? for example, thoreau’s famous words “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” (1854/2004, p. 117) may point towards both individual choices and collective structures that may not support human flourishing in its fullest sense. emerson emerson’s transcendentalism gives a strong reminder of our own inner resources and why there is a need to listen within. with his conception of self-reliance, there is a strong rallying cry towards individual integrity, creation, and freedom and to move away from limiting habits and patterns. as maclaren (2011) points out, people are often caught within their habits, which may be reinforced and co-created by others. a strong emphasis in emerson’s thought is to work against this tendency. against following societal norms, he writes, “society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members” (emerson, 1983, p. 261); against our own habitual patterns asks, “why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place?” and later notes “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” (p. 265); and against following what others may impose on us, he remarks that “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind” (p. 261). he also recognizes that we may pay a price for following ourselves, as “for nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. and therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face” (p. 264). for emerson, humankind suffers from a general state of conformism and adults have largely lost touch with themselves. given this, we must rally ourselves from this false dependency and learn to cultivate the inner fortitude to listen to and follow oneself. in this process, we must learn to trust our own intuition to a greater extent and rely on rational perspectives and argument less. although friendship and learning from others were important for emerson, his conception of self-reliance provides important resources to encourage the individual impetus towards self-transformation, and he notes that “nothing can bring you peace but yourself. nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles” (p. 282). emerson is not pointing towards withdrawing from the world, but a way of being in the world that is true to oneself; for example, he writes “it is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude” (p. 263). now, although it is important for emerson to cultivate integrity whatever the external circumstances, there is also a strong emphasis in his thought towards manifesting ideals in reality, and in his later thought he was increasingly concerned about social causes, such as his support of the anti-slavery movement. for emerson, humans are connected to nature and it is helpful to go outwards toward nature, as it helps profoundly reconnect with oneself. for example, emerson writes “the ancient precept, ‘know thyself,’ and the modern precept, ‘study nature,’ become at last one maxim” (p. 56). he notes that “in the woods, is perpetual youth. within these plantations of god, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. in the woods, we return to reason and faith” (p. 10). for emerson, by poetically and profoundly encountering nature, one can be brought back to oneself. for example, he writes “the waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. it takes me by surprise, konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 7 and yet is not unknown. its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when i deemed i was thinking justly or doing right” (p. 11). conceptions of overcoming fear and being courageous are also important for emerson, as is a sense of cheerfulness and optimism. for emerson, the deeper one moves within, there is a connection to a public and collective power which we each can draw upon and each of us have an individual connection to this inner light, and there is compatibility between one’s own individuality and the divine, and one is being self-reliant by one’s deep connection and spiritual receptivity. although emerson is encouraging the receptivity to genius, this is what everyone has but few use, so there is a democratic emphasis in that this is possible for everybody to do, and if everyone or at least a critical mass did, society would be reformed. emerson (1983) writes: the things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of things as a tree bears its apples. a new degree of culture would instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits. (pp. 407-408) for all of emerson’s idealism, he was also aware of the challenges to achieve and incorporate these insights. he notes “our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences” (p. 385). emerson is a thinker of sudden epiphanies that may be integrated into oneself and one may grow from, but he is also well aware of the propensity to backslide. for example, he writes “well, in the space of an hour, probably, i was let down from this height; i was at my old tricks, the selfish member of a selfish society” (p. 205). emerson does not expect some final knowledge, as “the life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end,” (p. 404) suggesting a series of ongoing expansions where the self is redefined in a greater whole, placing an emphasis on flux and creative growth and becoming. emerson has an important place for receptivity and passivity, and he writes “our thinking is a pious reception,” (pp. 418-419) and of the “abandonment to the nature of things,” (p. 459) and that we must learn to trust our intuition. lawrence buell remarks that emerson “was drawn to models of conduct that deemphasized conscious choice in favor of attention to an inner voice” (buell, 2004, p. 73). each of us has her own path; for example, emerson (1983) writes “insist on yourself; never imitate” (p. 278). for emerson, creative expression is important and, as shown when he remarks that “the man is only half himself, the other half is his expression,” (p. 448) and his spiritual perspectives are in the here and now, as indicated when he writes “the invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common” (p. 47). although, as discussed above, for emerson a crisis or challenging situation may be a spur towards creative change, it is also vital to draw upon one’s own resources to encourage a meaningful life. in this respect, although profound receptivity is important for emerson’s thought, so is a concerted and conscious effort to help wean oneself away from habitual tendencies and encourage deeper reflection and receptivity. however, the model for this is not that of rational self-mastery (although this may play a part) that maclaren raises some concerns about, but rather konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 8 opening towards the experience of the authentic and spiritual depths of oneself and the creative impetus and change that comes from this experience. discussion although maclaren, gadamer, and emerson present different theoretical positions, selftransformation is an important aspect of all three thinker’s perspectives, albeit they go about it in different ways. in this section, i will explore an example of how each position may complement the others. although maclaren’s points to the importance of authentic passions, in her account, authentic passions are something that happen to us and are not of our choosing. as such, she does not suggest as a normative conclusion that we are to strive to be authentic and avoid emotional clichés. in this respect, she writes, “because we are habitual beings, we will always and inevitably experience emotional clichés” (maclaren, 2011, p. 63). maclaren, although raising concerns about cognitive theories of emotion, also points out that they have an important point in terms of individual choice and taking responsibility for our emotions. maclaren writes: an essential task, then, in dealing with our emotions is to ask what judgments they enact, whether the situation could have been determined in other ways, and what the particular route that we were compelled to take reveals about ourselves and our relations with our environment. through this kind of reflection, and through a commitment to developing new habits of making sense of ourselves, others, and the world, we can in fact transform ourselves and become people who are regularly moved to take up the world in ways that better recognize and respect the reality of our interpersonal situations and the people with whom we live. though we may be condemned to emotional clichés, we need not be condemned to constantly reiterating ourselves and reinscribing the same problematic ways of being with others (p. 63) however, she also recognizes the need for compassion in this process due to the challenges involved and the need for support and new resources to be established that promote transformation. maclaren (2009) discusses the process of becoming a subject and how this involves moving beyond absolute towards more relative and flexible conceptions of self. these points of view would seem to find resonance both with gadamer’s standpoint of moving past our dogmatic conceptions towards more open perspectives and emerson’s viewpoint of moving beyond our habits towards dynamic change and flexible perspectives that are always evolving. for both gadamer and emerson, like maclaren, the need to manage our everyday reactions, judgments, and prejudices are also important. to give a practical example, let us look at jealousy and competition in a broad sense, where someone has something that one wishes that one could have or one is too concerned about one’s standing in relation to others, too often leading to envy, anger, and resentment, this no doubt being a good example of an emotional cliché or of rigid representational thoughts or judgments. gadamer explains that for plato, the concern for the facts of the matter in the process of shared understanding excludes phthonos, which gadamer defines as: konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 9 phthonos (see the interpretation of philebus 48ff below)1 means concern about being ahead of others or not being left behind by others. as such, its effect in conversation is to cause an apprehensive holding back from talk that presses toward discovering the true state of affairs. so talk that is guided by this kind of consideration for oneself is characterized by a proviso: that the talk about the facts of the matter should reflect back on the talker in a way that distinguishes him or her in a positive way. this proviso prevents the talk from adapting freely to the connections in the subject matter and thus prevents, precisely, an unreserved readiness to give an account. (gadamer, 1931/1991, pp. 44-45) the concern here is that because of attachment to one’s own status in relation to others and conceptions of oneself, one may hold to dogmatic conceptions rather than staying with the subject matter and giving an account based on this. although this is from an early work of gadamer’s on plato, it is suggested that this may be an important aspect of a hermeneutic approach2 of moving towards more openness to the other in that it may help loosen reasons for holding onto dogmatic perspectives (e.g., competition with others, wanting to be ahead, etc.), helping to encourage self-transformation. for gadamer, the orientation of openness to the other and following the subject matter is something that must be continually worked at so that one does not blindly fall into repeating habitual judgments and prejudices; rather, one is to bring prejudices into play for potential revision. in his discussion of phthonos in his interpretation of the passages of the philebus mentioned above, gadamer seems to be emphasizing the problem of an ill-will towards others and competitive orientation, and he explains: so phthonos can be understood in the widest sense as: in being toward others, looking back at oneself and determining one’s being toward them on the basis of this concerned regard for oneself. its contrary can be understood, formally, as the absence of such a regard—not really as the “not begrudging” that looks back just as much but as a being toward something shared which is not contestable (is not withheld from the other person when one possesses it oneself); or, still more exactly, whose possession does not distinguish one of us over the other because it is something in which you and i are alike, are the same (psychē, auto). (p. 186, footnote 28, emphasis in original). in his interpretation, gadamer seems to be emphasizing moving past comparing and competing with others to both help reveal the subject matter in conversation and enable a reorientation towards things that are shared between people in their commonality. in respect to the latter, let us briefly consider gadamer’s aesthetics. for example, his conception of the festival is also a perspective that moves past our everyday purposes and identities towards more holistic experience and commonality, his conception of the tragic is something that points towards experiences that are common to all, and theoria with its emphasis on participation, more 1 pages 183-186, where gadamer explores phthonos further. 2 for example, dostal (2010) points to the importance of gadamer’s greek studies and especially those on plato for gadamer’s own hermeneutic thought. kidder (1995) writes: “it is recognized now that gadamer’s lifelong companionship with greek philosophy has profoundly affected his thought, such that it is impossible to understand his ‘original’ contributions in separation from his scholarly interpretations” (p. 83). konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 10 relational perspectives, and commonality also points in this direction (see gadamer, 1977/1986, 1960/1989). these are all conceptions that may promote a practical re-orientation away from perspectives such as competition and jealousy and their focus on things that some have to the exclusion of others, towards what people have in common. in this respect, gadamer’s emphasis here seems to be less on learning not to be jealous about specific things, but rather points towards a more radical re-orientation towards commonality, a shift that can be seen as part of the selftransformative practice of hermeneutics and part of a hermeneutic “way of life.” here hermeneutic theory informs hermeneutic practice. in respect to jealousy, emerson (1983) has a different account of how to look at the situation when we see someone who has something we do not, one that moves beyond envy: if i feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbours, i can yet love; i can still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. thereby i make the discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and the estate i so admired and envied is my own. (p. 301) on emerson’s account, when someone else has something, they have actualized it whereas we have this in potential. contributing to emerson’s conception is that our inner state of mind is reflected in our outer experiences and we are all divine and are interconnected, and so we can look towards our commonwealth to find resources. that is why emerson can write “the young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. they receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more” (p. 448). the moral of this for emerson is that we can learn from others, who remind us of our own depths and resources so that we can bring to expression a creative life in our own unique way, and if we all did this we would individually and collectively live richer lives. in this case, a situation that could “normally” elicit envy is transformed by having the resources to make a positive inner choice to reframe the situation, which may lead towards potential growth. maclaren (2009) draws on case studies with children experiencing sibling rivalry and jealousy at the arrival of a new baby in the family, and her interpretation points to the importance that those around them help give them opportunities to redefine their roles, the bodily aspects of this, and the positive transformation this may encourage. emerson’s approach is more oriented within a spiritual conception and individual choice, whereas maclaren’s is bodily-based and centered around on a change in the environment, but both point towards positive reframing that encourages positive transformation, and both point to resources in the environment that may encourage a change in our lived logic. in this respect, william james points to the importance of both the individual and community: “the community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. the impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community” (james, 1897/1956, p. 232). this brings us back to the importance of both making individual choices and developing supportive and compassionate communities that encourage positive individual and collective experience, and maclaren, gadamer, and emerson each have important perspectives to help encourage this. each thinker highlights important aspects and together provides a more holistic account of dynamic change and self-transformation which incorporates accounts of receptivity, conscious choice, experiences of interconnection (be they bodily, linguistic, or spiritual), profound experiences of nature and aesthetic experience, the need for both individual and collective impetus and support for change, and other aspects. this can be seen as part of a lived practice and philosophy as a way of life, where both individual and konchak journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 9 11 collective efforts may be made to work towards moving past dogmatic points of view (be they individual or collective) which may not serve, encouraging a move towards more relational perspectives and more meaningful relations that support individual and collective flourishing. conclusion in closing, maclaren, gadamer, and emerson all point towards developing more holistic conceptions of self and community that may help lead towards positive transformation. it has been suggested that these approaches can be related to hadot’s conception of philosophy as a way of life, where the emphasis of philosophy is to promote practical change, and how each of these three thinkers provides valuable resources in this respect. while maclaren emphasizes the body, gadamer language (mind), and emerson spirit, the divide between body/mind/spirit is somewhat artificial as these are all deeply intertwined, and each thinker has aspects to their thought that overlap and reach beyond this simple categorization. however, it is also suggested that there is an important point in emphasizing the differences as well, as each approach can reveal (and conceal) aspects of experience and taken together can provide a more holistic account of experience that may collectively encourage transformation and human flourishing. acknowledgement i want to thank david greenham for comments he made on an earlier version of this paper. this work was supported by the icelandic research fund (grant number 152521-051). references buell, l. 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(j. w. krutch, ed.) new york, ny: bantam dell. microsoft word humphriescorrectedfinal.docx corresponding author: joan m. humphries email: humphriesj@camosun.bc.ca journal of applied hermeneutics august 7, 2012 the author(s) 2012 like a melody it passes: dasein and perinatal well-being joan m. humphries abstract in this paper, the text found in johannes brahms’ wie melodien zieht es (like a melody it passes) serves as a metaphor for selected key ideas that comprise heidegger’s being and time. heidegger’s conceptualization of dasein (including being and temporality) is examined in the context of the poetry and applied to understandings of maternal emotional well-being. there is potential for increased insight based on analysis of these selected key concepts, which are described and related to the experience of becoming a mother. there is also significance in examining birthing because of current realities involved in maternity care, which include standardized approaches to care. the poetry of wie melodien zieht es guides the flow of ideas that are outlined during the paper. the need for enhanced authentic interactions between nurses and women in the perinatal period is exposed, engaging heideggerian thought as a framework for possible enlightenment. keywords birthing, brahms, breastfeeding promotion, heidegger, hermeneutics, perinatal health, poetry who can say why we connect ideas in the way that we do? hermeneutic scholar david jardine (2012) wrote of the “crisscrossing” that occurs when memories collide with current impressions, and create profound resonance. with that, there can be a suggestion of something transpiring that is pre-ordained, perhaps having to do with an understanding that seems as though it was meant to unfold in the form of a realization, and which presents itself joyfully. all of this occurs en route to a process of “becoming” and an “opening into" what may already be (jardine, 2012). i had such an experience when reading heidegger’s being and time (1927/2010) for the first time, because during that process, i could not ignore the other influences in my life that permeated my understanding of heidegger’s work. it happened, for exhumphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 2 ample, that at the same time as i was introduced to heideggerian thought, i was studying a piece of vocal music, written by johannes brahms (1833-1897) entitled wie melodien zieht es mir, or, like a melody it passes. in the context of my exposure to heidegger, the text of the song (written by the poet groth) appeared to me with unexpected freshness. more importantly, the meaning of the poetry aligned with my evolving understandings of heideggerian thought as reflected in stambaugh’s translation of being and time (heidegger, 1927/2010), the edition of that work that is referenced in this paper. the perinatal experience and the emotional well-being of women in the perinatal sphere are never distant in my attention as i engage in academic inquiry. the term “wellbeing” takes on a new significance following exposure to heidegger’s work, in which embedded underpinnings of being permeate understanding and thought. in the perinatal field, emotional well-being of women is often contextualized by care providers to conform to the accepted wisdom of bio-physical standards that distinguish “baby blues” from clinical depression. evidence-based assessment tools, such as the edinburgh depression scale, are often employed to ascertain which women fall into the category of clinical depression as compared with those whose feelings are deemed less worrisome (beck & watson driscoll, 2006; nicolson, 1998). however my history in working with women points towards a notion wherein there is more than a medical diagnosis, or lack thereof, to value about a woman’s emotional well-being, and her experience of her birthing. reading heidegger, in particular his attention to the unique histories that we live through, reinforced a thread of understanding about the magnitude of meaning that exists for a woman about her birthing experience, connecting with the central ideas of being and dasein that heidegger described. so, the fusion of three apparently disparate bodies of thought has presented as a “criss-crossing” around heideggerian philosophy, art song, and the birthing experience. in this paper, i use the poetry of wie melodien zieht es to guide a beginning approach to heidegger’s being and time, connecting the very deep and central human experience of birth with heidegger’s notions of being, dasein, and other key concepts that are central to that work. i describe how the interweaving of heidegger, brahms, and women’s experience of birth has influenced my impressions about current approaches to nursing care in the perinatal setting. initial reflections throughout the reading of being and time, i was aware of gleaning insidious understandings as the reading progressed, often in ways that were (and remain) difficult to articulate, but in ways that would flood my consciousness at unexpected times in my everyday life. the significance of these everyday awakenings has meaning, for according to heidegger, our lives are intelligible only through the interpretation of the everyday (dreyfus, 1992). however, paley (1998) speculated that heidegger’s views on realism and positivism have been largely misinterpreted by nurse scholars, who (according to paley) have the tendency to frame studies based in heideggerian philosophy in the paradigm of everyday “lived experience” only, thereby overlooking the realist possibilities that heidegger may have sanctioned. paley cautioned that any attempt to equate heidegger’s “everyday” meanings with a movement away from realism is a mistaken cartesian approach, since that stance would involve splitting experience away from reality. nonetheless i proceed, reasoning that humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 3 it is indeed my everyday lived experience of reading being and time that underpins my thinking, without presumption to authoritatively analyse the intentions of heideggerian thought in the context of realism, positivism, constructivism, or any other approach to the worldliness that heidegger envisioned. in this paper, in keeping with the notion of criss-crossing ideas and the experience of making meaning, i share the reflections (in italics) that shape my thoughts and depict a poetic-like interruption. i felt a sense meaning wash over me in this process. it’s not as though i would profess to regurgitate the meaning of heidegger’s work, but rather his words beckoned me, invited me, to recognize meanings of my own. sprinklings of familiarity tease me, they trickle ever closer, until i welcome the rhythmical dripdrop of revelation within me, infusing my most intimate self with floods of memories of what it is to be...lying on the grass as a child and gazing at the clouds rolling by.... and thinking “i am.” in hermeneutics, there is an underpinning of understanding concerning the part and the whole. the significance of employing this understanding can be far-reaching, for when considering any phenomena, our attention may be drawn to what may lie beneath, or around, what is easily visible to us. heidegger explained: apart from the fact that the moon is never wholly to be grasped even when it is full, the not-yet by no means signifies a not-yet-being-together of parts belonging together, but rather pertains only to the way we grasp it perceptually. (2010, p. 234) it follows that as i consider my nursing experience and academic focus, i am acutely aware of the profound challenges that women face in the course of the birthing experience, many of which may not appear with transparency or totality. among other concerns, i wonder how our maternity settings are able to address the complexity of birthing. my extensive experience as a registered nurse in the maternal/child field in canada fuels my perspective. my impressions have emerged over time while functioning as a nurse alongside midwives and physicians who share the culture of maternity care that currently exists, and who are also accountable to the systemic requirements that i describe. indeed, we live in a time where much of the nursing care has become driven by the desire to “normalize” the event according to a set of institutional policies and practices, which are based on statistical population health imperatives combined with overarching budgetary guidelines, all of which have the potential to be narrowly interpreted. i consider the seminal event that birthing represents in a woman’s life, and i wonder in what ways our efficient hospital processes interrupt the potential for accessing the depth of experience that has occurred for a woman in the course of the birthing event. jardine (1992) described the desire to understand experience, writing: understood interpretively, such incidents can have a generative and re-enlivening effect on the interweaving texts and textures of human life in which we are all embedded. bringing out these living interweavings in their full, ambiguous, multivocal character is the task of interpretation. (p. 51) buoyed by jardine’s urge to expose the multivocal character that i associate with birthing, i speculate that any disruption in the communion of the birth experience into behumphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 4 ing will indeed comprise a woman’s history. importantly, this history will be lived again and again, tempering a woman’s understandings, as her existence unfolds (bergum, 1989). being and dasein i work toward an understanding of heidegger’s ontological primacy of being. heidegger invites us to enter in to this understanding with the unique language that disrupts what may be taken-for-granted meanings. the distinctiveness of being seeps unapologetically into heidegger’s reconfiguration of the vernacular understandings of that word, while making explicit a centrality of human experience that he believes has been overlooked in philosophic thought from the ancients to today. heidegger’s focus on being is an idea that is at once familiar and distant, profound and yet everyday. to contemplate being a being is to confront the most basal of mysteries in life; that deep, unfathomable awareness of existence (dasein) that we live with, and live through. heidegger is clear that being, in a gestalt-like experience, marks ontological meaning in its purest, most superior sense. that understanding is distinguished from other philosophic thought by nature of that basic and essential insight. it is through his attempt to explicate being that heidegger is said to have altered the direction of philosophic thought, since his approach transcends historic tendencies to characterize knowledge and reality based on, for example, rational and perceptual binaries (blattner, 2006; caputo, 1987). heidegger was also antagonistic towards ethics as an uncontested entity, seeing them as embedded with value-laden and prescriptive rules for conduct (caputo, 1987). one appreciation pervades my quest to gain further understanding of being and dasein. that is, i recognize that heidegger’s dasein is described as though personified, and yet explained as ontologically constituted of self and being (blattner, 2006). dasein seems to assume a muse-like presence that is paradoxically integrated into self, into being. caputo (1987) noted: everything in being and time turns on getting this initial projection right. dasein must be cast in the appropriate terms, projected upon the being which lets it be the being which it is, lest the whole subsequent discussion founder. (p. 66) the possibility of this dasein, as though existence has a personality and a will of sorts unto itself, is an intriguing and playful approach, and sustains a thread of coherence for me. heidegger made a defining statement, however, when he wrote: “however, the ‘substance’ of human being is not spirit as the synthesis of body and soul; it is rather existence.” (p. 114. italics and quotation marks in original). in this statement, he interrupts any potential misconception that dasein could represent some form of dualistic presence. rather, we are invited to incorporate notions of dasein into a unified presence with self-and others-in-the-world (blattner, 2006). the song my exposure to many of heidegger’s german words in stambaugh’s translation of being and time made the study of the text of wie melodien zieht es all the more captivating. the initial insight was overwhelming as i practiced the song in preparation for my weekly singing lesson. i wonder, in retrospect if my exposure to german terms, in combination with the concurrent reading of heidegger, served as some kind of “preunderstanding.” in any case, when learning a humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 5 piece of music that is set with a text that is foreign to me, it is necessary for me to approach the somewhat onerous process of memorizing and pronouncing words in a language that i do not speak. as is the case for any music student, it was important to understand the translated version of the poetic text to the song, and it was in that process that i became awed as the translated words to the piece assumed a multi-faceted possibility for enhanced understanding of a deep human experience (see appendix 1). the following description summarizes the piece briefly: the message of a tear-filled eye is the subject of wie melodien zieht es mir, by klaus groth (1819-99). before closing on a major, the song's three varied verses each end on a different harmony, showing brahms' predilection for developing variation. (“johannes brahms. 5 lieder,” 2008) the poet groth lived before heidegger, but exposure to groth’s poetry prompted a certain resonance with the experience of reading heidegger’s being and time. by this, i mean that in both cases, some kind of understanding about the core of human experience entered into my personhood-my being-in ways that were surely authentic and deep within me. when encountering heidegger’s work, i was required to re-read many passages before i was able to grasp a sense of significance. the same repetitive energy was required in reading groth’s text. the beauty of braham’s melody, too, erupts after many exposures, with its twists and turns of musical splendour, linking the piano accompaniment inextricably with the lyric. all of it creates the potential for true ensemble, true unity, yet with unexpected harmonic resolution between the singer and the pianist. in reference to unity, heidegger stated: “in the everyday ‘just passing through life’ that takes care, dasein never understands itself as running along in a continuously enduring succession of sheer ‘nows’” (2010, p. 390). in that statement, heidegger cautions that unity of meaning demands something more than mere attention to sequence. rather, the stretching of perceptions of time and events must always be interpreted by dasein in the fullness of its existence, much like appreciation for the finality of melody in the context of its composites. for example, within any melody, there are notes that make up the phrase, and phrases that make up the melody, signifying a musical part that contributes a mysterious temporality, and lingers en route to the whole of the melody and the song. each note comes and goes quickly, each one replacing the last, while on its way to the whole phrase. the unity of melody is emerging. how fascinating is the miracle of melodic creation, replete with so many facets of individuality, sensibility, historical style, and other characteristics that speak to us, and access our experience of being! the above explanation of wie melodien, with regards to the predilection for creating variation in harmony, also resounds with meaning as i consider the meaning of my exposure to being and time. there were many twists and turns and forays into unexpected thought as the reading progressed, with all of them leading back to the perfection of dasein and being. indeed, these ideas offered something of a conceptual resolution for me, a return to something familiar, as is found in the unexpected but relieving sense of harmonic resolution that brahms offers in wie melodien. when considering my own musical sensibilities, it is often those unexpected harmonic resolutions that constitute any sense of beauty that i associate with a piece of music. so, too, is the sense of awe that unfolded for me in the humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 6 reading of heidegger, nudging me to contemplate yet again the miracle associated with that moment when birth occurs. the inevitable wonder surrounding the first cry and the marvel of a process that allows a woman’s body to house and release a new human life a new being reveals itself each time as an extraordinary experience. how can i describe the sense of unity that overcomes me? so many ideas, so many fragments to incorporate! but it cannot be about the conscious putting together, it must be about the momentthe gasp of recognition-the lightning bolt. there is surely mystery in all of this. heidegger and poetry a wonderful symmetry exists between poetry and heideggerian thought (heidegger, 1971). it seems that heidegger valued poetic thought and the exquisite possibility for the deepest of human expression that lies therein. the primacy and meaning that heidegger ascribed to art and poetry is exposed in heidegger’s (1971) work poetry, language, and thought. heidegger said: “art happens as poetry. poetry is founding in the triple sense of bestowing, grounding and beginning” (p. 75). he also wrote: singing and thinking are the stems neighbor to poetry they grow out of being and reach into its truth. (p. 13) as i read these words, i speculate that his words capture the trinity of connections that i make between poetry and mothers’ being that exist alongside song and the act of singing. i wonder further what personal truths about women’s birthing experience have the potential to be revealed. i consider the possible barriers to harmonious experience that results for both women and nurses based on the models that are currently conceptualized and practiced. groth, heidegger, and mother’s meaning revealing and concealing; a mother’s experience wie melodien zieht es mir leise durch den sinn, wie frühlings blumen blüht es, und schwebt wie duft dahin like a melody it passes softly through my mind, like the flowers of spring it blooms, and floats on like a fragrance the opening words to the poem are intriguing and invite further conjecture. the suggestion of something passing through one’s mind, such as a melody, invokes a sense of mystery. when contemplating the experience of melody, i am transfixed by the awareness of pattern that evolves in the process of melodic creation, harkening back to heideggerian references to the part and the whole. in the process of contemplating melody, there is indeed a sense of mutuality between the individual notes and phrases, and the composite melody that transpires as a result. i have come to consider that one of heidegger’s conceptual underpinnings is the notion of revealing and concealing, which suggests disclosedness, or sense of revealing (enthullen) that emerges from that which is hidden, constituting our being-in-the-world. in the context of my ruminations, the revelation concerns understanding, mood, and language. we are primordially familiar with our world, a situation that heidegger expresses as “primordial truth” (blattner, humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 7 2006). according to blattner, “primordial truth is the world disclosive function of our basic familiarity” (p. 13). heidegger posited: but what remains concealed in an exceptional sense, or what falls back and is covered up (verdeckung) again, or shows itself only in a disguised (verstellt) way, is not this or that being but rather, as we have shown in our foregoing observations, the being of beings. it can be covered up to such a degree that it is forgotten and the question about it and its meaning altogether omitted. (2010, authors’ italics, p. 33) women’s experience of giving birth can be likened to a primordial and transformational way of experiencing being. however, there is much that is revealed and concealed along the way. within groth’s poetic references to flowering and spring, too, there are suggestions of revealing and concealing, when considering that flowering reveals the potential of the bud, or that the inevitability of spring is hidden in the bleakness of winter. so too, the advent of motherhood may well uncover new and tender emotions toward the infant, reminiscent of groth’s suggestion of the flowering of something fresh and lovely, rife with the birth and re-birth that is associated with spring. bergum (1989) suggested: “the woman is changed by the experience of bearing a child. she is not a mere vessel, but is an active, growing, changing participant” (p. 154). “woman” becomes “mother” (bergum, 1989). with that unfolding, that revelation, a new mother may also experience the bleak fear associated with expectations for perfect mothering (wolf, 2010). i wonder if the deep and central need for women to assimilate and take-in the experience of birth has been overlooked by adhering to practices such as early discharge policy or “rooming-in” practices (wherein the infant stays in the mother’s room in spite of traumatic birth or caesarean section). i question how our hospital environments allow for revealing the difficulties associated with emotional recovery following a traumatic delivery. a woman’s recuperation from a post-partum hemorrhage, for example, or other complications of the birth experience, is linked with an increased incidence of post-partum depression (thompson, roberts, & ellwood, 2011; white, 2006). do those images further the notions of blossoming (the revelation of a flowering into motherhood) or do they “float” on some elusive odor, inclined to conceal and sublimate such possibilities as an emerging depression? in keeping with the attempt to envision the totality of a woman’s experience, whether a clinical depression has been diagnosed or not, it is reasonable to suspect that a woman will incorporate any distressing aspect of her birthing into her own history and continue to process its meaning for a long time to come. as i consider the current culture of maternity care, i think of other taken-forgranted practices that consume the efforts of nurses working in the perinatal field. the attention to the protection of breastfeeding practice underpins much of the support that is given to women by nurses in the hospital setting as well as the community. the rhetoric of breast milk superiority is revealed as the most important consideration for women in the early mothering experience, but what may be concealed is the need for consideration of individual contextual considerations around infant feeding decisions (humphries, 2011; humphries & mcdonald, 2012). where rooming in is concerned, the advantages are exposed as being important to a new mother’s ability to learn about her infant’s cues so that mothering and breastfeeding can be supported. while elements of this strategy are certainly important for many women, other advantages of the policy are not as easily revealed. for example, women humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 8 may share a room with another mother whose infant is up at night crying, minimizing the hope of sleep for all concerned. this in turn may motivate a woman to request discharge before she is quite ready in order to get home where she imagines she will be better able to cope. she might then be discharged before her transitional milk supply has been established, leaving her to face the unexpected feeding challenges associated with those adjustments in isolation. also, there are expectations for a practitioner regarding discharge parameters, for it is expected that women will be discharged as soon as is deemed medically appropriate (sadeh-mestechkin, walwsch, zeadna et al., 2007). the importance of emotional upheaval and sleep deprivation that accompany the early days following birth can be therefore concealed, undermined, and dismissed as part of the normal experience. the possible advantages to enhancing a woman’s capacities for coping by nurturing her and supporting her healing for a longer time period are trumped by budgetary imperatives for early discharge that may subvert the wishes of nurses and mothers who recognize a need for enhanced support. i have outlined the very external applications (or, ontic applications, as heidegger may describe them) of the words “revealing” and “concealing” as a way of describing my musings about women’s experience of birth in maternity settings. however, what may be closest to heideggerian thought, as well as the poetic notions of groth, involve what is transpiring on a very deep level a level that reflects what is revealed and concealed closer to a woman’s being-about the transformation into motherhood. oenninghodson (2007) offered insight into the complexity of maternal dasein when referring to a healthy third space that may exist between mother and infant, enabling each to develop a unique sense of self. in the context of this discussion, it is possible to connect that healthy sense of self with dasein. personal truths will reveal the meaning that a woman makes about motherhood, and that meaning will be profound and long lasting. the fragrance of her birth experience, whether that fragrance is sweet or pungent, will be inhaled and re-inhaled, with revelations punctuating the meaning of her existence--her dasein--over a lifetime. nurses’ encounters, too, will participate in the criss-crossing that will ultimately shape their impressions, as well as the impressions of the women they care for. bergum (1989) asked: “what does it mean to be a health care professional in the midst of women’s transformative experiences?” (p. 15). in partial response to bergum’s question, i suggest that women very often remember their nurses during the pivotal time of birthing. they recall the kindness or the insensitivity, or any number of nursing interactions, and they will incorporate their shared history with nurses into a dasein that becomes inextricably linked with the birth experience. indeed, a woman’s encounter with nurses in the perinatal period assumes a large profile in the meaning she makes of the perinatal experience (humphries, 2011). as a result of the relational interaction that occurs between nurses and women in the perinatal setting, women may enter into an everyday blossoming that unfolds with feelings of successful and blessed mothering. however, if nurses do not handle breastfeeding difficulties sensitively, or fail to recognize an emerging depression, there can be movement towards a concealed state, wherein a withering, or retreat occurs, and an erosion of self-confidence transpires (humphries, 2011; humphries & mcdonald, 2012; wolf, 2011). for some nurses, there can be a sense that adherence to guidelines for institutional humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 9 efficiency and best-practice guidelines conceal a personal opportunity for sensitive and individual advocacy. in fact, this notion was revealed to me after decades of floating on the odorous sensibility of efficiency and evidence-based practice, which is generally thought to offer excellence for nursing care in the perinatal setting. the screams of her birthing had been silenced by the cries of her infant, born blessedly healthy and now voraciously hungry. i encouraged her, i uplifted her, and i gave her confidence. “your milk will come in, the baby will latch, don’t give up,” was my assurance. the desperation of the labor was now surely forgotten-it had been, after all, three days since her emergency cesarean birth. i was cheerful and informative as i skillfully removed the staples from her abdominal wound, preparing her for discharge that day, not thinking until much later about the lost look in her eyes. perinatal worldliness, mood, and language doch kommt das wort und fasst es und fuhrt es vor das aug‘, wie nebelgrau er blasst es und schwindet wie ein hauch but the word comes and seizes it and brings it before my eyes like the gray mist it pales then, and vanishes like a breath. the metaphor of the melody continues to be engrossing as it relates to heidegger’s discussion of language and its complicity with both specific and broad constructs of linguistics and meaning. heidegger’s thoughts about language indeed add a further dimension to the notion of melody since language, like melody, is made up of individual parts that achieve meaning only in the completeness of the whole. according to blattner (2006), heidegger embraced “linguistic constitutivism,” (p. 98) a view that is shared by many 20th century philosophers, and one that acknowledges the centrality of language to our being-in-the-world. heidegger implied, however, that there is more to language than mere linguistics, and that any meaning associated with discourse must include the broader sense of the term language, and acknowledge the way that we speak (blattner, 2006). at the same time, then, the intentionality of language towards communication can be realized through art, dance, intonation, speed of speech, and other descriptors (blatter, 2006). i believe the temporality of language is thus revealed, by considering the complexity, contradiction, and possibility for alternative presentation that exists in the moment around language, but for which there is always a sense of completion that incorporates the history as well as the novelty of that moment. it is the completeness of communication that will shape the history of the birth event, aligning with the fundamental position that is assumed by language, understood in a broad sense, during the perinatal experience. in the passage above, groth’s poetry suggests a touch of the interrupted. something has been seized by the word, and i am infused with a sense of the authoritative voice. the melody is now disrupted by the lyrics. interweaving my thoughts around the perinatal encounter, it seems there are many words and messages that embody birthing, and many of them take on authoritative significance. there are written and unwritten words and messages that manifest through the guidelines and policies (as have been described) that underpin nurses’ approach to care. these words spring forth from the humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 10 posters on the wall about breastfeeding superiority, seraphic images of women breastfeeding their infants, information about how to care for the infant safely, words of caution from pre-natal education and a myriad of online influences that accompany a woman to her birth experience. there are also very important words that are not present, and equally influential, by nature of the fact that images or posters of bottles, latex nipples and formula are forbidden in maternity settings, in alignment with baby friendly initiatives (breastfeeding committee for canada, 2011). indeed, many women arrive at their birthing with a high level of anxiety around the responsibilities that await, after a pregnancy that has included a rigorous expectation of specific abstinences, avoidances, and worries over the health of the unborn infant brought on by increasing technological proficiency (wolf, 2010; wynn, 2002). is it possible that these experiences of pregnancy set the stage for an interrupted assimilation of the fetus into the mother’s being? is it possible that these words-these influencesseize the melody of motherhood and distort it into cacophony? heidegger’s attention to attunement and mood were concepts that took me by surprise as i read being and time. heidegger implied that the understanding of mood occupies a crucial place in conceptions of dasein, and he suggested that fear is an important component to understandings of mood. in his discussion of mood, heidegger used the term “attunement” to contrast any “turning away” from dasein. heidegger described those two ideas: in bad moods, dasein becomes blind to itself, the surrounding world of heedfulness, is veiled, the circumspection of taking care is led astray. attunement is so far from being reflected upon that, in the unreflected devotion to and giving in to the “world” of its heedfulness, it assails dasein. mood assails. (2010, p. 133) my surprise arose partially as i considered how mood is often taken up in an everyday interpretation of the word, usually implying a negative or positive judgment about a person’s orientation towards happiness. there is also an objectified, medicalized connotation that springs easily to mind, especially when considering the onset of a mood disorder in the perinatal period. it was intriguing to me that heidegger would attribute so much meaning to mood, an accessible idea that i had not expected to occupy such an intrinsic position associated with being. in fact, new insights emerge around attunement as a result of heidegger’s discussion of fear, anxiety, and the “turning away from and toward one’s own dasein” (2010, p. 325) that discloses mood. i see with a new lens the possibilities for meaning around fear and anxiety, as representing inauthentic (or turning away from dasein) responses to in-themoment situations, and the implications for mood that ensue. i am called again to examine the potential for regimented and possibly disruptive approaches to birth in the context of “turning away” from the deeply seminal and personal experience that birth is. heidegger’s reference to mood and its apparent relationship to our human perspectives give me pause, and i discern a coherent connection between his words and my ruminations about women and their birth experience. in particular, i connect the “grey mist” to which groth referred, with women’s experience of post-partum depression that i encountered in my hermeneutic study (humphries & mcdonald, 2012). in that study, i explored the experience of women who lived with mood disorders and who were not able to breastfeed their infants. their experiences had most often included humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 11 valiant attempts to achieve success with breastfeeding, but they had struggled with what heidegger may equate to the “presentat-hand” notions of breastfeeding (mcbride, white, & benn, 2009). in other words, these women were unable to incorporate the functional aspect of the breasts (or what heidegger may refer to as the “equipment” that breasts may signify) with the act of successfully breastfeeding. an integrated notion of dasein was compromised because of specific challenges these women faced, such as a failure to achieve a latch with the infant, or difficulties with achieving satisfactory milk supply from the breasts. in another crisscross of ideas, i think about the words emanating from breastfeeding promotional literature that haunted these women, especially references to the statistically derived advantages of breastfeeding towards enhancing the infant’s intelligence, preventing sudden infant death syndrome (sids) or reducing the risk for a multitude of other diseases. women suffered significant emotional distress as a result of their exposure to breastfeeding promotional literature when they, themselves could not breastfeed. heidegger’s resistance to the ethics of modernity (caputo, 1987) comes to mind as the widespread acceptance of “informed consent” in the context of infant feeding decisions emerges. in other words, it is assumed that by giving women the evidence about risks associated with not breastfeeding, ethical imperatives can be satisfied. groth’s poetry aligned with my interpretation of women’s confidence withering and “vanishing like a breath” while striving to fulfill expectations created by the language of best practice guidelines enacted by the nurses, and of breastfeeding promotional initiatives that they encountered in their communities. it was difficult to bear the suffering that was part of their experience. the academic language of postpartum depression in no way prepared me to be immersed in the pain of a fractured dream of motherhood... and i was left altered. so many of their worries centered on a sense of failure that they couldn’t feed their babies properly-so many words that had led them to their “truth” that by using formula they had damaged their beloved infants forever. maternal dasein and temporality und dennoch ruht im reime verborgen wohl ein duft den mild aus stillem keime ein feuchtes auge ruft. and yet there’s in the rhyme a fragrance deeply hidden that gently from a dormant bud is called forth by tear-stained eyes. i am now able to rest with groth’s poetry, which concludes in concert with the melodic resolution that is occurring simultaneously, depicting the bittersweet conclusion. what is “it” that passes like a melody? the reading and the re-reading of the poem led me through layers of possibility; ones that pertain to the disclosure of love, or the passage into wisdom, all the while employing the metaphor of the power of melody and lyrics to elicit human emotion. underscoring all possibilities, i believe, is the possibility for exposing truth. heidegger conceives of truth as something primordial, which is uncovered, disclosed, or revealed (blattner, 2006). in groth’s poetry, the initial fragrance was associated with sweet hopefulness that existed before the linguistic interruption. now, the hopefulness of spring exists through the lens of a tear-filled eye, suggesting more than one possibility for truth. for example, the tear could represent a loss of innocence and humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 12 the potential for melancholy that will accompany the revelation of spring; a symbolic reference to beginnings, birth, and re-birth. alternately, the tear may suggest a real and deep unity that has transpired, and in the context of the perinatal experience, a truth that depicts the bliss and splendor of mothering, expressed with tears that originate from an altogether experience of being. the dormant bud is “called forth” with immediacy and timeliness. heidegger wrote: “temporality temporalizes the world time, in whose horizon ‘history’ can ‘appear’ as an occurrence within time” (p. 413). in his discussion of temporality, heidegger identified, once again, that previous philosophic conjecture has not attended to what he considered to be essential: the finitude of dasein, the rhythmical, predictable and repetitive coming into and the passing through, as well as the final passing, which is death. importantly, heidegger equated temporality with being, that is, being is conceived only in context with a temporal structure (blattner, 2006). the imperative of assimilating history as part of the now, as heidegger suggested, has immense relevance for nurses who interact with women during essential perinatal moments, for the nurse and the woman will be forever linked in a shared history of that birth. heidegger’s departure from historically constituted philosophy, and the assertion of being may have the potential to influence those who offer care in the realm of birthing, for heidegger insisted that there is an inevitable return to notions of being. the circuitous revelation that comprises that return can inform nursing practice by keeping us ever mindful about the need to honor in-the-moment interactions, invoking a heightened but familiar sense of being-inthe-world, even while navigating the environment of health care, with all its technological and organizational imperatives. always and repetitively, and in all interactions, there is an opportunity to privilege the wonder of our dasein-our existence-allowing for revelation and meaning to evolve for each woman and each nurse who together traverse the profound experience of birthing. it is in this way that we are able to integrate our being with others, and conjoin the unique histories that are embedded in each of us. conclusion groth suggested that there is potential for the words to soothe and heal whatever interruption has occurred in the melodic stream. in the context of the perinatal experience, however, i am called to ask “which words?” are they the words of best practice policy and efficiency, of evidence-based guidelines, or are they the words of compassion and attention to each woman’s core experience? are they words of breastfeeding success rates, or are they words of comfort and respect for infant feeding decisions that have been tearfully made? how poignant is the loss of innocence, and the inevitable sadness that accompanies any disruption of a woman’s assimilation into mothering. my thoughts reside with the primordial experience that permeates the event of carrying and giving birth to a child, but i am also drawn to consider the experience of women for whom motherhood is mired in complexity and angst. from a heideggerian perspective, i wonder whether our health practices promote strength and attunement within notions of dasein and being for women. if so, the birth experience may draw forth tears of ecstasy and bliss. if not, the profound meanings associated with birth will be interwoven with the tear-stained eyes of regret. humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 13 references beck, c. t., & watson driscoll, j. 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(2007). early post partum discharge: is it possible? archives of gynecology and obhumphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 9 14 stetrics, 276, 65-70. doi:10.1007/s00404006-0296-y thompson, j., roberts, c., & ellwood, d. (2011). emotional and physical health outcomes after significant primary post-partum haemorrhage (pph): a multicentre cohort study. australian and new zealand journal of obstetrics and gyneacology, 51(4), 365371. white, t. (2006). postnatal depression and post-traumatic stress after childbirth: prevalence, course and co-occurrence . journal of reproductive and infant psychology, 24(2), 107. doi: 10.1080/02646830600643874 wolf, j. b. (2011). is breast best? united states of america: new york university press. wynn, f. (2002). the early relationship of mother and pre-infant: merleau-ponty and pregnancy. nursing philosophy, 3, 4-14. appendix wie melodien zieht es wie melodien zieht es mir leise durch den sinn, wie fruhlings blumen bluht es,und schwebt wie duft dahin: doch kommt das wort und fasst es und fuhrt es vor das aug‘, wie nebelgrau er blasst es und schwindedt wie ein hauch und dennoch ruht im reime verborgen wohl ein duft den mild aus stillem keime ein feuchtes auge ruft. like a melody it passes like a melody it passes softly through my mind, like the flowers of spring it blooms, and floats on like a fragrance; but the word comes and seizes it, and brings it before my eyes like the gray mist it pales then, and vanishes like a breath. and yet there`s in the rhyme a fragrance deeply hidden that gently from a dormant bud is called forth by tear-stained eyes. corresponding author: david w jardine email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 22, 2017 the author(s) 2017 thoughts on the return of yesterday’s war david w jardine abstract recent american events have tended to energize me and remind me of a wider swath about our circumstances. we find ourselves fighting this issue on methodological, epistemological, and ontological grounds, but it is also a matter of power and market driven distortions, of issues of gender and how marginalization works to blame precisely those it then victimizes, and on and on. in this paper, i take up some of these ideas. keywords hermeneutics, hermeneutic research, qualitative research, interpretive research, neoconservativism, research funding, dominant cultures who wants yesterday’s papers? nobody in the world. mick jagger and keith richards (1966) from yesterday’s papers i one characteristic of a dominant culture is that, because of its dominance, it no longer needs to give an account of itself or be concerned with its warrantability. it becomes the silently takenfor-granted “way things are” that, in relation to which, warrant is decided and determined. research, publication, funding schemes, even the categories of the forms one fills out, are unquestioningly based on the presumptions and requirements of natural scientific research. it is jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 2 not simply that funding is difficult to secure for interpretive work. it is that the very means of such securing are already, at the outset, cast against its case. more buried that this, however, and far more pernicious, is another level of dominance: the presumptions and procedures of quantitative research have come to define anything that does not fall in line with those lines of dominance. under the shadow of quantitative research, qualitative research is said to be about subjectivity, about telling your story, about making things up, about being unaccountably mushy and vague and undisciplined, about being irrelevant and selfinvolved, overly poetic, emotional, uninformed, having no proof (moules, venturato, laing, & field, 2017, p. 3), no generalizability, no reliability. it has little hope of publication. not of practical use. not of interest to readers (moules et al., 2017, p. 1). it is not especially fundable because it does not cleave to the dominant, recognized, and condoned fundamentals. interpretive research is, then and of course, treated as an object of weird suspicions, like a sort of cultish faith object, something lurking furtively in some liminal space outside the confines of the surveillances we’ve come to presume. it is out in the fields (latin paganus), trod the way of heathens, uncivilized, witches work with familiar cats. so, quantitative research not only “dominates the scene” (gadamer, 1986, p. 59) but, not coincidentally, has the character of “seiz[ing] upon and dominat[ing] things [with a] will-tocontrol” (gadamer, 1977, p. 227), thus casting its own shadow over that which slips out of its purview. the dominating character of quantitative research thus provides an equally dominant caricature of any alternative to it. sad to say, over many long years, i’ve seen purportedly “interpretive” work that has fallen hook, line, and sinker for this degrading, bullying caricature, and seen good hearted scholars get caught in the exhausting, unbecoming, and humiliating mugs-game of attempting to refine and upgrade the contours of this caricature, only to then get bowled over, over and over again, by stinging questions posed often out of sheer, i dare say deliberate, ignorance. more than once over thirty plus years, i have encountered people in positions of power (for example, external examiners on ph.d. examinations), literally say, “well, i’ve never heard of hermeneutics!” and who then take that statement as a fully adequate account of why no more needs to be said. students and scholars alike are then asked to give, over and over and over again, a detailed descriptions of a long and publically available history of interpretive work stretching back, in places, to aristotle, even to heraclitus, and up through the humanist tradition first wrought at the advent of modern science in 17th century europe, into late-19th century european contestations and detailed quarrels and concerns over the nature and limits of the human sciences, up through phenomenology, hermeneutics, into long and complex streams of refinement and differentiation over the course of the 20th and 21st century. and all this is the family tree, of course, to contemporary questioning of the value of “the humanities” in a world which is dominated by market-driven concerns for profitability, and which scoffs as any turbid and turgid and timewasting suggestions of the cultivation of character, thoughtfulness, and poise. and those demanding this account, over and over again, have no qualms in not remembering any of this the next time questions are raised regarding the legitimacy of interpretive work. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 3 such is the character of dominance. only those marginalized need to remember what has happened. those who are part of the dominant culture can always plead innocence without consequence. those marginalized must remember their own bloodlines as well as those of the forces of marginalization. the dominant need remember neither. dominance is somnambulant and forgetful by nature, but it sleepwalks and stalks. how’s that for “poetic?” it surely bodes that we are dealing with far more here than matters of research methods. it is no coincidence that first nations are speaking up in this fray, that ecological beckonings to heed what lies beyond our will to dominate are becoming increasingly urgent, that those excluded want “in” on what it means to be us. i could go on. we can’t pretend any longer that kin are arising here, around what only seems like yesterday’s war. ii those who have become marginalia to the dominant text have always murmured and have been repeatedly turned into a dirty little secret that might go away if we ignore it again. there is a war. it is nothing new. and the quiet urgency of fighting it remains steady and true. make no mistake. this goes well beyond issues of “research methods.” what is at stake in the marginalization of interpretive research is whether scholars have the freedom, and the intellectual and spiritual responsibility, to explore the lives, often “the pain” (sanders, 2016), of teachers, of students, of nurses and patients, and parents, and so on. these varied and varying explorations come via the tough, sometimes vague and nebulous, sometimes contradictory, doorstep stories that are told, voices caught in the confines, for example, of school hallways, stuck, equally, in the confines of the unvoiced and often unvoiceable ways in which schools have been shaped and thus shape teachers and students alike. likewise, parents who, in a moment of profound breathlessness, entrust their only child into the maw of medicalization. or who know in advance that they will outlive them. or who tiptoe their child behind the schoolyard gate and then have an unrecognizable child read back to them by the regnant regimes of schooling that often brook no quarter of response. the job of interpretive research is to go out into the wild “with [a] readiness to be ‘all ears’” (gadamer, 2007a, p. 189) and to gather what we can of the suffering of our living, the language that is used, the images that arise and fall, how and when the joy outbursts, the secrets, the hushed-ness of ordinary life lived. interpretive work is then charged with trying to give those stories a voice, to “[make] the text[s]…speak” (gadamer, 2007b, p. 189) by linking them up to the lifelines of the world, to the images and ideas and ancestries that we have variously inherited, so that their deep resonances can be made conscious. this is our work, as scholars, to search and re-search these mixed and convoluted inheritances for tales anciently told, for ancestors that have spoken and written about the matters at hand, so that the doorstep tale becomes a gateway into a jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 4 larger life, a larger living, a larger commiseration, and i can experience the confines of my own telling opening up beyond the stifle of my own joys and sorrows: i don’t want to “tell my story.” i want to be relieved of it by going to a place (ecos -, topos -/topica -) where i can meet others who can read me back to myself from beyond my own failings and limits and delusions, beyond the story i’ve presumed. (jardine, 2016, p. xvi) interpretive work is charged with not cleaning these stories up, blunting their sting, making them palatable, non-contradictory, smooth and easy. it is charged, instead, with “restoring life to its original difficulty” (caputo, 1987, p. 2), a restoration that is necessary because of the oppression and repression of the suffering and hope of, well, all of us, under falsely assuring rubrics and cold steel confidences and marketing gimmicks that want to hear nothing of our living and dying. through such bringing-to-awareness of the messes we are in, there is the possibility of some relief from, or at least some possibility of commiseration over, the only-seemingly-binding character of our living and our lives by studying the fabric of the world in which we are living and of which my own tale is simply a part: this fabric is more abundant, more forgiving and generous and difficult than any one of our lives alone can measure, so, in exploring these things, in studying thus in the presence and grace of each other, i can be relieved of some narrow confine of my “self” by working it out, not simply working on it. this is why [interpretive work] feels spacious even when that fabric binds and pulls at my attention. (jardine, 2016, p. xv) let’s be blunt, then: “the aim of interpretation, it could be said, is not just another interpretation but human freedom” (smith, 1999c, p. 29), hard-won and always in need of re-winning. as goes an old hermeneutic saw, every text, every tale told, can be read as the answer to a question that could have been answered differently and therefore, every reading of every text is possible, not necessary, thus issuing a sort of relief from what appears to be intransigent, dominant confines. the life-world is interpretable. interpretive work, therefore, is precisely of “practical value” (moules et al., 2017, p. 1). it is why hans-georg gadamer named hermeneutics a “practical philosophy” (2007a) with a “practical task” (2007c), because it casts us back into the trouble of living now having seen through and broken the spell of the dominant surface stories that have held us in thrall. when it is well done, it is “of interest” (moules et al., 2017, p. 1) to readers precisely because it is about their lived experience of being-in-the-middle-of-things (latin, inter + esse). i’m here reminded of an image from david g. smith that i’ve often cited, that casts this in light of his and my common work in pedagogy, in schools: “whether . . . life itself has a chance, or whether the surface is all there is” (smith, 1999, p. 139). jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 5 iii instead of taking on the terribly difficult work of venturing, deliberately and with all the poise that scholarship helps us muster, into the roil of living, those of us involved in interpretive research seem stuck, again and still, like recent elections have demonstrated, with having to spend our time going to fund-raising dinners that seem bent on ignoring those doorstep voices, those haunts of lives, in favour of kowtowing, as moules et al. show so well, to what wealthy donors want and how they want it served up: “an ordering of things according to the wishes, prejudices, or promptings of the powerful” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 261). we seem stuck, more than ever, with giving an account of what we are doing in such pernicious detail that we have little time to do any of the slow, meticulous work of thinking, of listening, of reading through the life and language we have inherited and the ancestors and elders who whisper, and therefore reading the world more acutely as a consequence. that is not what those invested in the status quo want. they want work that is compliant of this status. they do not want the suffering of life to become legible, especially to those who are suffering and who, in being asked to speak to their lives, just might have the chance to raise their heads out of the tangles when they realize what has been perpetrated, how they have been had by what passes for “the real world,” for being “just the way things are.” when such ideas were posed to an exhausted high-school teacher, he said of his hurry and exhaustion, “this is the real world.” he was, at first, shocked to hear my answer: the world of schooling is not “the real world.” it is just how the world has thus far happened to turn out, and the causes and conditions of such turning can be understood, unraveled, and we can unravel ourselves from this turning and, in small, sometimes quite meager and temporary ways (given the largeness of the looming of things), take a breath. this experience is immediate and intimate, but it takes repeated practice and hard study to release and realize this immediacy, and even then it is not released once and for all and it is easily and understandably frightened off. as the exigencies of every life rise up, so, too, rises up the tendency to retrench, harden and once again conceal. (jardine, 2016, pp. xvi-xvii) once i can get some distance from the doorstep of my own exhaustion, a glimpse is possible (a glimpse, daresay, that is precisely and deliberately prevented by the regimes of exhaustion themselves). the efficiency movement (jardine, 2016, pp. 179-192; kanigel, 2005; taylor, 1903, 1911), which took hold of education early in the 20th century, demands and produces exhaustion and rush in order to keep workers in line. thus, intimacy of this teacher’s expression of his livedexperience, in such an exchange, gets both confirmed and denied. his exhaustion seems even closer at hand, and, at the same time, he is allowed to experience some wider, more hidden truth about the arrival of his circumstances, a truth that was being blocked by the flat declarations about “the real world.” what he is experiencing is now experienced as possible (having arisen from causes and conditions that are not permanent and fixed) but not necessary (not just “the real world”). it is, that is, interpretable. this, of course, can increase one’s sorrow, finding out that the conditions of exhaustion remain dominant even though that dominance is now transparent. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 6 as david smith once said to me, interpretive work is not designed to give you a good night’s sleep. and when that high school teacher decried the lack of initiative in his students, i cited the originator of that very same efficiency movement, fredrick winslow taylor (who was hired by the united states department of education to re-think schools and make them more efficient): “we do not ask for the initiative of our men. we do not want any initiative. all we want of them is to obey the orders we give them, do what we say, and do it quickly” (cited in kanigel, 2005, p. 169, emphasis is mine). so, the intimately experienced lack of initiative of students is not just a subjective report by a particular teacher, nor is it simply a property of “kids these days.” in interpretive work, it is treated as a potential herald of multiple threads that have come to bind our living. to caricature it as “his subjective opinion,” or to pin it on the wantonness of today’s youth, are outrageous and profoundly illiterate attempts to marginalize these doorstep tales in precisely those ways that wish to keep them impotent and compliant and obedient and silent, that wish to prevent them from being interpreted as perhaps insightful about our circumstances and what we have forgotten. ask: who profits from the exhaustion of teachers, of scholars? who benefits from the well-trained compliance of students entering the world? who finds it worthwhile that a student learns full well that the only real question is “tell me exactly what you want and i’ll do it”? dominance. so, could this high-school teacher’s statement have been interpreted differently? of course. welcome to the tough work of interpretation that must, as part of its work, always try to make the case for why it makes the case the way it does, thereby sharpening and critiquing its own presumptions in light of the object being investigated and the ever-new circumstances of its appearance. what becomes visible that was once occluded? what is remembered in such an interpretation that has been forgotten? what now seem to be a living issue rather than something over and done with and dead? (see moules, 2015). under the heading of interpretive research there is a whole unruly family of ways to take up these questions of waking up and clarifying the conditions under which we are living. iv is it really “yesterday’s war”? what gadamer has to say about what gets counted thus raises and goes well beyond issues of “research methods.” but it is also about research and its ways and presumptions. as it articulates so well, there are very complex ontological and epistemological issues involve in this reputed war over research paradigms. that it could arise all over again as if we had never been through this before is one more example of that old adage, that when those who fought the war before and won the peace die off or fade from view, the prospects of a new war that remembers nothing of its cost, increase. i want to add to this conversation about these ontological and epistemological issues by thinking more about the object of investigation in interpretive work. qualitative and quantitative research are not warring over different ways, different methods, differing criteria of how to properly approach the same object. the object of each is different and each, i suggest, tries to measure up properly to its own. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 7 the object of investigation in qualitative research is not a “thing” with properties to be discovered and named under regimes of “control, prediction and manipulation” (habermas, 1972, p. 21), but is, rather, a long and contested, and emergent lineage of images, ideas, choices, possibilities, occlusions, inclusions, victories, defeats, silences and voices. the suffering of a young child, or the effort to learn to pronounce a new word (jardine, 2016, pp. 290-291), for example, is not a separately determinable object that somehow “is what it is” and is then, post hoc, voiced in various ways, seen from various perspectives, such that we could then somehow compare this variety to this pre-determined object. the object being considered by interpretive work is that very various-ness. “only in the multifariousness of voices does it exist” (gadamer, 1989, p. 284). and that variousness varies over time. this is its emergent, living, contested, nature. this is the “real world” of the life-world, to be thus. this is why gadamer (1989) cites the examples of law and art in order to try to get hold of the character of knowledge in interpretive work. in the law, a new case does not just fall under an old law, but calls that law to account for its governance. cases – those doorstep stories – are thus “fecund” (gadamer, 1989, p. 36). “interpret[ing]” such cases is “the furthering of an event that goes far back” (p. xxiv), summoning precedents or using old images or new nuances, unearthing the work, say, of f.w. taylor, and making the case for this surrounding of the case of a tale told in a high school hallway. the object under investigation in interpretive work is thus part of a living tradition, as is that interpretive work itself. as with, for example, the history of visual art, the arrival of picasso is not just the addition of one more case that falls under already-established rules and expectations governing “art history and technique.” the arrival of his work induced the disturbing, contentious disestablishing of those very rules and expectations, and then, of course, had a hand in the slow reestablishment of that very history, now revived by a new arrival, now no longer the tradition it seemed to have been. new things become precedents that were heretofore simply ignored or lost to memory. different things become “old fashioned” or no longer done. things that were once silent start speaking up. this is “the real world” of a living tradition in the life world, and to expect to have the fixity prerequisite of an object of the natural sciences is to violate what it is. we can read of a teacher who speaks of the experience of having a dying child in their grade two classroom and helping the children learn to live with this reality and to learn to live with it herself (see molnar 2016). we can recoil in witness of the case being made that the developmental readers used in schools (so ordinary, so de rigueur in their dominance of classroom practices in the early grades) have an affinity to issues of colonialism and the loss of the tracks of one’s people (tait, 2007). someone else writes of the loss of her cousin, shelby, to cancer (latremouille, 2014) and the parent of a child of the same fate, writes in response (see jardine 2014a, p. 1), and this beckoned me to suggest that “this is why we read. this is why we write” (jardine, 2014b). the investigation of such things must itself not demand that these things be differently than they are. this is why i hold this difficult passage from hans-georg gadamer (1989) so near and dear: knowledge [in interpretive work] is not a projection in the sense of a plan, the extrapolation of the aims of the will, an ordering of things according to the wishes, prejudices, or promptings of the powerful; rather, it remains something adapted to the object, a mensuratio ad rem. [this, please note, is true of and apparent in the natural jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 8 sciences as well as the human sciences. however, the object of the natural sciences is a different object, and therefore the measure of its adaptation is different; see below] yet this thing [in the human sciences] is not a factum brutum [a “brute fact” that “is what it is,” thus laying out the task, in the natural sciences, of finding and pinning down what it is] but itself ultimately has the same mode of being [being human]. [in the human sciences] neither the knower [the one doing interpretive research] nor the known [the object being interpreted] is “present-at-hand.” (gadamer, 1989, p. 261) a tough read, especially for anyone who thinks that, in interpretive work, you just get to say what you think and make things up. here is an elaboration of this passage, including a slightly different and illuminating translation of some of these thoughts. in interpretive work: both the one who understands and the thing that is understood “are” historically, that is, in the process of unfolding themselves over time, and neither the one who understands nor the thing understood “are” statically present [-at-hand] independently of each other. both “are” in their interactive development. hence, understand is still a mensuratio ad rem, as gadmaer puts it, or, in another traditional formulation, an adaequatio intellectus ad rem, except that the “adequation” of the intellect, its measuring and fitting of itself, is never to a timeless thing that always is what it is, some brute fact, “determinable” and independent of the one who knows it [or the lived circumstances in which that knower lives – knowing of picasso, e.g., is no what it used to be]. hence, i suggest that we might better speak of a reciprocal adaequatio intellectus et rei, of the temporary adequation of two entities, intellect [me attempting to hear of this teacher’s experiences with the full weight of what i know of our shared and contested intellectual ancestries] and thing [this story, here, now, pleading both up out of and to that ancestry], to each other, each in their particular historical development at the given time. (smith, 2011, pp. 24-5) part of interpretive work involves reading these passages of gadamer’s and smith’s with all the open-eared audacity that we try to give to our so-called “participants” in a research study, because each of these clusters of texts (“the literature,” the interpreter’s background study of the phenomenon being investigated, and the “data” [interviews, transcripts, anecdotes, written missives from participants, and so on) must learn to speak to one another if the interpretive study is to be successful. each clarifies and expands the other and frees it from its limitations. each relieves the other. the literature relieves the doorstep tale of its “my story”-ness by reading it out into a world of lost relations and occluded ancestries; and the doorstep tale relieves the literature of its moribund erudition and danger of closing the case, by calling it to account, here, now, the door just ajar. interpretive work therefore tends to sometimes be hesitant and indirect, not in an attempt to obfuscate an object that is itself clear, but in order to bring out the obtuse and myriad and unfinished character of the object itself. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 9 v after all, who is to say once and for all what might become of grief and how we live with it and talk about it and hide it and suffer it as the world shifts around us? who would have thought that this war would have reared up again and we’d have to parse our way through it all over again? years ago, in an informal conversation with hans-georg gadamer in his office at mcmaster university, he told me that the care-laden work of interpretation is “internal to being-in-theworld -a process of inner clarification – rather than its domineering father” (jardine, 2015, p. 16), and it has taken, it still takes some doing to learn to live with this gentle, encouraging admonition. interpreting our living is what living does all by itself. it is not the property of research. research is one of its cousins, one of its specialized forms. and, as david g. smith quipped years ago, once you kick the old man out of the house who could domineer over these matters of living, now what are you going to do? you can rest assured that there is no unifying methodology or realm of concern or emphasis or unanimity in interpretive work itself. it is quite akin to a family gathering whose kinships and claims to lineage and importance and urgency are always up for debate, the sort debates that only gatherings of relatives can betray. you can rest assured, as well, that some in this gathering will find this paper far too heated, while others will find it timid and cowardly. welcome to the life world, then, and to the unfortunate circumstance that always faces those marginalized, of being asked to fight a war premised on thin air. how about this? welcome, instead, to the doorstep and the troublesome invitation to step out into the wild of things. references caputo, j.d. (1987). radical hermeneutics: repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project. bloomington, in: indiana university press. gadamer, h-g. (1986). the idea of the university–yesterday, today, tomorrow. in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds. & trans.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (pp. 47–62). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h-g. (2007a). hermeneutics as practical philosophy. in r.e. palmer (ed. & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 227-245). evanston, il: northwestern university press. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 10 gadamer, h-g. (2007b). text and interpretation. in r.e. palmer (ed. & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 156-191). evanston, il: northwestern university press. gadamer, h-g. (2007c). hermeneutics as a theoretical and practical task. in r.e. palmer (ed. & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 246-265). evanston, il: northwestern university press. habermas, j. (1972). knowledge and human interests. boston, ma: beacon books. jardine, d.w. (2014a). some introductory words for two little earth-cousins. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 1. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/61 jardine, d.w. (2014b). guest editorial; this is why we read. this is why we write. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/64/pdf jardine, d.w. (2015). “you’re very clever young man.” in d. jardine, g. mccaffrey, & c. gilham (eds.), on the pedagogy of suffering: hermeneutic and buddhist meditations (pp. 1-18). new york, ny: peter lang. jardine, d.w. (2016). in praise of radiant beings: a retrospective path through education, buddhism and ecology. charlotte, nc: information age publishing. kanigel, r. (2005). the one best way: fredrick winslow taylor and the enigma of efficiency. cambridge, ma: the mit press. latremouille, j. (2014). my treasured relation. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 2. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/62/pdf molnar, c. (2016). hypoplastic left heart syndrome. in j. seidel & d. jardine, the ecological heart of teaching: radical tales of refuge and renewal for classrooms and communities. (pp. 8999). new york, ny: peter lang. moules, n.j. (2015). editorial. aletheia – remembering and enlivening. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 2. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/89/78 moules, n.j., venturato, l., laing, c.m., & field, j.c. (2017). is it really “yesterday’s war”? what gadamer has to say about what gets counted. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 1. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/140 sanders, b. (2016). bernie sanders’ revolt conversation. may 26, 2016. retrieved from http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017377444 http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/61 http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/64/pdf http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/62/pdf http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/89/78 http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/140 http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017377444 jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 2 11 smith, d.g. (1999). children and the gods of war. in d.g. smith, pedagon: interdisciplinary essays in the human sciences, pedagogy and culture. (pp. 137-142). new york, ny: peter lang. smith, p.c. (2011). destruktion-konstruktion: heidegger, gadamer, ricouer. in f. mootz iii & g. taylor (eds.), gadamer and ricouer: critical horizons for contemporary hermeneutics (pp. 15-42). new york, ny: continuum. tait, l. (2016). successful assimilation. in j. seidel & d.w. jardine, the ecological heart of teaching: radical tales of refuge and renewal for classrooms and communities (pp. 17-8). new york, ny: peter lang. taylor, f.w. (1903) shop management [excerpts]. retrieved august 14, 2010 from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/taylor/shop management/abstract.htm taylor, f.w. (1911). scientific management, comprising shop management, the principles of scientific management and testimony before the special house committee. new york, ny: harper & row. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/taylor/shop%20management/abstract.htm microsoft word gilham2final.docx corresponding author: christopher m. gilham email: cmgilham@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics september 21, 2012 the author(s) 2012 f r o m t h e “ s c i e n c e o f d i s e a s e ” t o t h e “ u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h o s e w h o s u f f e r ” : t h e c u l t i v a t i o n o f a n i n t e r p r e t i v e u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f “ b e h a v i o u r p r o b l e m s ” i n c h i l d r e n christopher m. gilham abstract in this interpretive essay, i attempt to unconceal the problematic history at play in special education in alberta today, with a focus on “behaviour students” or their norm-referenced disability status. a brief, but central, anecdote is used to help reveal some of the everyday problems that arise in education because of the behavioural disability framing of students. i suggest that these problems are examples of illich’s appropriated notions of iatrogenesis and counterproductivity. as an applied emancipatory action, i call upon gadamer and ricoeur to help me interpretively turn the common, everyday understanding of pathology and self in the context of others as possibilities for understanding “behaviour students” anew. keywords behaviour, coding, dignity, disorder, iatrogenesis, self-esteem, special education the concern with things which are not understood, the attempt to grasp the unpredictable character of the spiritual and mental life of human beings, is the task of the art of understanding which we call hermeneutics. (gadamer,1996, p. 165) hans-georg gadamer (1900-2002) described hermeneutics as an emancipatory and practical philosophy (1976, p. 17). as a strategist for emotional and behavioural disabilities (ebd) in a large urban public school board, i work with school teams to support their work with “behaviour” students. as a faculty of education phd candidate specializing in interpretive work, my understanding of “behaviour” students has profoundly changed. this emancipatory transformation, at the risk of oversimplifying, is largely the result of interpretively understanding the history of the spegilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 2 cial education work in which i have been immersed. special education, however, continues to dominate in educational understandings of difficult students. for most of the people i work with, this discourse is the unquestioned, accepted truth of students with “behaviours.” in this paper, i attempt to interpretively appropriate and explicate some of the history and current framing of this dominant discourse as applied to the lifeworld in which educators and students find themselves. i suggest the problems brought forward in this paper are an example of what ivan illich (1926-2002) interpretively argued as “iatrogenesis” (1975, p. 14) and “counterproductivity” (pp. 212-214). in opening up or revealing these problems, i hope to offer the possibility of further emancipating and transforming our understanding of difficult students in classrooms. a central and illustrative anecdote: sam overflows the frame around him the setting was a highly resourced classroom 8 students and 3 adults for young children with a particular severe physical disability. the administrator called me to help support her team with a student who was having severe behavioural difficulties. here is an important, telling segment from my observation notes: teacher asks sam to come up to the board: “come on sam. come here and give it a try.” sam looks around at peers. pauses. squirms in seat. flaps arms. puts fingers in mouth. sam gets up. slowly moves to front by teacher while looking at peers and adults. teacher encourages. “it’s ok sam. i’ll help you.” teacher asks sam to point to the numbers and count from 1 to 10. note: peers just counted as a group by 10’s to 100 and sam did not. sam takes pointer. teacher helps sam hold pointer. sam looks at teacher. sam looks at peers. sam looks around the room. teacher helps sam point to 1 and teacher says “1” sam says “1.” sam’s pronunciation is very difficult to understand. this pattern moves along to “5” when sam suddenly throws pointer down, stomps floor, cringes face. teacher: “sam, that’s not ok. we don’t throw things here in this classroom. you’re upset. let’s go sit down.” student aide comes over, standing close to sam. student aide reaches with her hand to take sam’s hand. sam pulls away and kicks student aide in the shin. student aide grabs sam by the arm, angry look on face and with sam resisting, pulls sam to his desk. sam is screaming out something which i can’t understand, and resisting. gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 3 teacher is now asking other students to follow along with her as she counts by 10’s to 100. sam is screaming at his desk. this pattern continued throughout the morning i was there. i observed sam’s anger over getting in line, snack-time, and getting dressed in his winter clothes for recess. he is a very complex little boy, full of frustration. consistently frustrated and angry children are not typical in this unique program. it is a program for a particular severe physical disability. the teachers and their administrator feel like they are not able to help a child like sam, which is the reason why they have called me in several times this school year. because i have helped many teachers with students like sam, the administrator also asked me to be part of a larger meeting aimed to help persuade the decision makers in the school board to consider changing the resourcing of the program. sam and some of his peers are students with severe emotional and behavioural disabilities (ebd) and might better be educated in a program for students with ebd, the school claimed. at this level, the school team believed they had reached a limit or a boundary which required different resourcing, or sam and others like him needed different programs that could best fit their “primary needs.” this term “primary needs,” common to us in education, reveals a part of what is at play in our thinking in special education. it hints at a logic structuring the possible ways we think about students. this logic enframes or encloses identity. for example, the current frame around the students in that class including sam is determined by the main physical disability coding placed on them as “kinds” (hacking, 2002, p. 110) of human beings. this limits the ways the school team perceives students, enabling the belief that a student like sam, who also presents with severe behaviours, cannot receive a just education in that specific program. put another way, a standardized slotting mechanism dependent on disability status, which is informed by psychiatry’s technical categories of human abnormality, and its influence in focusing our gaze in particular ways on student behaviours within classrooms does not seem to serve justice to sam and others like him. students who are complex, which most often includes severe behaviours, are beyond special education’s “wanting and doing” (gadamer, 1989, p. xxvi). given this, questions of concern lie within understanding this narrow logic. interwoven, historical logics unsettled then, overflowing the codification as it were, this brief anecdote is an example of the “untiring power of experience” (gadamer, 1976, p. 38). it portends a world much greater, more complex around it. within the anecdote, there are strong threads of both older and modern “logics” woven together plurivocaly (weinsheimer, 1991, p. 183). these “threads interweaving and crisscrossing” (wittgenstein, 1968, p. 32) form the greater rope-like manifestation or discourse of special education. there are other thicker strands intertwined with special education as well. framing students with ebd (and other diagnoses and codes) has been a response to these various historical traditions woven together. aristotle’s logic of a=a the current point of essential power in special education in alberta is coding. the severe ebd coding can only occur if a psychiatrist or registered psychologist diagnoses a gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 4 student with a disability found in the american psychological association’s diagnostic and statistical manual (dsm). the dsm clearly states that diagnosis is independent of the rest of the world. as laurence and mccallum (2009) noted, in the dsm-ivtr: …whatever their original cause, disorders must be considered “a manifestation of a behavioural, psychological, or biological dysfunction in the individual” and that neither deviant behaviour (e.g. political, religious, or sexual) nor conflicts that are primarily between the individual and the society are mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict is a symptom of a dysfunction in the individual. (p. x) key here is the structural logic within the definition. this logic removes the lifeworld and isolates the individual: the disability is inscribed on the person as an inherent abnormality found exclusively in the self. in other words, the functioning self is “out of order,” independent of the world. interpretive scholars have argued (jardine, clifford, & friesen, 2008; kearney, 2003, pp. xxi, 66) that the logic of an independent, self-identifying order can be read back at least to ancient greece as part of aristotle’s (384 bc-322 bc) logic in his work metaphysics. aristotle’s logic starts with a “first principle” which states: “it is impossible for the same thing to belong and not belong simultaneously to the same thing in the same respect” (aristotle, metaphysics. book iv 3 1005b19–20 in gottlieb, 2011). this is known as the logic of noncontradiction. such essential knowing could not contradict itself or be different than what we have claimed at the same time and space. for example, sam and his severe physical disability could not also be a severe emotional and behavioural disability. if his primary way of being in the program was through a severe ebd code, he could not continue to be in the program designed for his particular severe physical disability. this is the logic of codification and is evidenced in the ways for which students are programmed: severe physical disability = program for severe physical disability severe ebd ≠ severe physical disability therefore, severe ebd ≠ program for severe physical disability consequently, severe ebd = program for severe ebd in other words, if sam were to stay in the program for the severe physical disability the administrator, teachers, and school board officials would need to break out of this applied logic of non-contradiction. sam’s team and many of my peers in education would readily accept that sam is more complex than the singularity of the codification and the program as described on paper. yet, a consistent practice in education is to claim that sam needs something different than what can currently be provided for because educators are only prepared for the singular, primary codification or, more commonly, teachers in “regular” programming are only capable of working with mainly “regular” students. the inherited logic of a=a seems to profoundly limit educators’ ability to see and practice outside a singular conceptualization of the student with special education status (or not). this is a harsh generalization however, so i will strive to warrant it throughout this essay. gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 5 descartes’ isolated knowing rene descartes (1596-1650) inherited aristotle’s logic in his attempt to solidify the ground upon which humans could talk about knowing things with certainty. “cogito ergo sum” was the result of his thought experiment: “i think, therefore i am” (descartes, trans. 1988, p. 80) this “unshakable proof” for existence happened exclusively, according to this logic, in his mind at the exclusion of the lifeworld in which he was immersed (and thus the connection between his logic and the aristotelian first principle). descartes then went back to his experiences of the world with his new certain causal foundation for knowing which allowed him to continue to follow the aristotelian logic of a substance needing only itself to exist. this was a renewed interpretation of the non-contradictory principle through inner identity-making. understanding the world was a matter of breaking the world down into its essential features. in the breaking down towards certainty, the world emerged as differentiated objects for study, separated from a diminishing whole. auguste comte’s science, logical positivism, and behaviourism comte (1798-1857) believed that science no longer concerned itself with first causes. his emphasis on concrete observations and logical analysis of those observations led to what was called positivism (gadamer, 1982, p. 6). according to ivan illich (1926-2002), comte was also the first to take the then expanding use of the term “norm” and apply it to medicine in the “…hope that once the laws relative to the normal state of the organism were known, it would be possible to engage in the study of comparative pathology” (1975, p. 165). another radical step was taken by a group of thinkers who believed that statements about the world were nonsensical if they could not directly point to the observed, experienced world in a logical, propositional fashion. this was known as the correspondence theory of truth. humanity’s goal in the pursuit of truth is to simply describe everything as it is, via one singular universal and direct perception system of reality knowing. implicit in this system is the perceived direct literalness of human language which is to say: our speaking about the truth of things could never be speculative, poetic, metaphorical, “as” something (davey, 2006; weinsheimer, 1991, p. 129). as a result, the aesthetic loses its significant status as a bearer of truth and is relegated to an interpretation of subjectivity that seems powerless socially and communally. gadamer called this denial of interpretation and historical influence in all human sense-making as the prejudice against prejudice of the enlightenment period (gadamer, 2004, pp. 272-273). positivism was also taken up in earnest by ivan pavlov (1849-1936) and especially b.f. skinner (1904-1990) in their work on shaping behaviours through direct changes in the observable environment. any notion of the inner working of the human being such as mental events and meaning-making were considered fictional (phillips & burbules, 2000, p. 9). skinner’s work was embraced by education in its attempt to shape students into particular kinds of human beings so that learning and an instrumental, productive society could ensue (paul, 2004; phelan, 1996). positivist psychological theory of disruptive behaviour in school also embraces what is sometimes referred to as learning gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 6 theory. children’s unacceptable behaviour is learned behaviour and needs to be identified, monitored and redirected. this represents the skinnerian legacy in schools. baseline data are gathered, students are regulated, their behaviour modified until elimination of the unwanted behaviour is achieved. (slee, 1995, p. 96) hermeneutic philosopher, paul ricoeur (1913-2005), argued that behaviourism works as if human beings are technical, physical objects to manipulate. through such methodology, the experimenter an educator perhaps assumes she/he knows all the variables of the lifeworld of the object, a lifeworld only accounted for via the hard science of physics and chemistry for example and can, by changing such observable variables, extort the appropriate and hypothesized responses from the subject, a student for example (ricoeur, 2007, p. 188). i suggest this is a univocal power reflecting the inherited rationalist logic. the ancient-turned-enlightened logic persists today in special education, despite the various research paradigms that emerged within what is generally known as the postmodern age (sailor & paul, 2004, pp. 37-45). as kearney (2003) wrote: “contemporary thinkers have made much of the fact that the western metaphysical heritage, grounded in greco-roman thought, has generally discriminated against the other in favour of the same, variously understood as logos, being, substance, reason or ego” and “(m)ost ideas of identity, in short, have been constructed in relation to some notion of alterity” (p. 66). at play in emotional-behavioural disabilities today simplified and contradicting, sometimes paralyzing, binaries if we think about the dsm and the nature of coding in the context of sam’s anecdote through this historical weave, the same traditional enlightenment logic continues to be at play. knowing students is a matter of non-contradiction or identity. consequently, a fundamental binary logic of identity and difference sit as the magnetic-like forces upon which our understanding of students (and the world) either attracts to or repels. kearney (2003) and smith (2006) argued this logical binary has been inherited within the western discourse of good and evil, of the monsters among us. today, students with ebd are often seen as the monsters among us but on the margins within our schools, in jails and hospitals, too (gilham, 2011; jardine et al., 2008).i this inherited understanding of difference is different from a logic of conviviality, kin (jardine, 2012), and mutuality found in other cultures (smith, 2006, pp. 35-58). today special education in alberta insists on this logic of identity and difference. thus, one is either able or disabled, normal or abnormal. our observations of students in the unique program resulted in a contradiction within the inherited logic of equating objects with isolated essences or codes. sam presented more complexly than a singular corresponding code would allow, as evidenced in the singular programming present in the classroom and the teachers’ consequently enabled fears that they were not trained to teach students with severe behaviours (jeary, couture, & alberta teachers, 2009, p. 15). something comprehensive in our understanding of one another, of students in the greater context of a lifeworld has been lost in the reification of a category like ebd via the logic of non-contradiction and the dsm’s skinnerian-like descriptive gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 7 approach to constituting mental illness (greenberg, 2010, pp. 238-252) similarly, education’s misbehaviour is concealed in this focus on the disabled, isolated subject as object. illich (1975) profoundly captured what might be taking place: in every society the classification of disease-the nosography-mirrors social organization. the sickness that society produces is baptized by the doctor with names that bureaucrats cherish. “learning disability,” “hyperkinesis” (adhd today), or “minimal brain function” explains to parents why their children do not learn, serving as an alibi for school’s intolerance or incompetence. (p. 169) as a result “the sick person is deprived of meaningful words for his anguish…his condition is interpreted according to a set of abstract rules in a language he cannot understand” (pp. 170-171) and what was once a rich vocabulary people were able to use to talk about and express their suffering is lost, concealed, and taken over by the “increasing dependence of socially acceptable speech on the special language of an elite profession” (p. 171). gadamer (1996) described this technical knowing, yet limiting phenomenon, as the rational organization of science into a business-like model which has resulted in a general rule for the modern age: “the more rationally the organizational forms of life are shaped, the less is rational judgement exercised and trained among individuals” (p. 17). the above speaks to the arrival of my current work as a strategist, as well; schools believe they have lost all their means to “control” students with ebd coding and call in the “expert” representing the discourse of special education to show them the strategy, the method, the best practice through which control can be had once again. in the process, the question of codification and slotting into further special education status emerges, almost inevitably as a result of the perceived inability to deal with the difficulties students present to us, as a result of inherited ways of categorizing the world into either “this” or “that.” i can do “this with this,” but not “that with that,” it seems. what the experience with sam demands is …a redressing of the balance so as to arrive at a more ethical appreciation of otherness. such an appreciation reminds us that the human stranger before us always escapes our egological schemas and defies our efforts to treat him/her as a scapegoated ‘alien’ or, at best, an alter ego. openness to the other beyond the same is called justice. (kearney, 2003, p. 67) solution and results-focussed similarly, the inherited foundational logic and its application in scientific thinking insists that the goal of working with students with ebd must be solution or resultsfocussed, as soon as possible. in other words, we perpetually attempt to “re-code” the disability and associated strategies in the hopes that we will figure out and cure inappropriate student behaviours once and for all, such that difficult and ambiguous human behaviour will ultimately be consoled, such that nothing out of the social order of schools and classrooms could ever happen. there seems to be no room for an inconsolable approach to being with one another in special education (britzman, 1998, pp. 49-60). there is a concomitant ideal that progress is only measured in the reduction or elimination of behavioural issues in students, evidence of the impact behaviourism has had on special education. this can be seen through goals as measures of success in ingilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 8 dividual program plans (ipps) which often state the desired percentage decrease in unruly behaviour. moving, accelerating, and fragmenting targets in the detection of sickness medicine does two things: it “discovers” new disorders, and it ascribes these disorders to concrete individuals. (ivan illich, 1975, p. 92) depending on time and place, who and what counts as an ebd student differs, as well (winzer, 2009, pp. 129-153). the overall arching logic driving the belief in an autonomous inherent disability within students also conceals the historically-effected conditions under which students are seen as having this disability, by whatever names such inherent self-rooted behaviours have and will continue to be called over time. characteristically, educators were driven more by a search for specificity. the need to understand deviance led to a parsing of complex actions. as special educators broke diffuse generic concepts into specific categories, the terms for categorical definitions of exactly who was behaviourally disordered constantly expanded, collapsed, and were reenvisioned. descriptors and classification systems generally showed a murkiness that reflected both changing public morality and the subjective offerings of observers. in fact, the terminology used by the educational, legal, and correctional systems became so unclear and overlapping that a 1959 writer chided that “all of these categories, supposedly separate and distinct, represent a paragon of confusion since they may very well describe similar facts. (clayton, 1959, in winzer, 2009, p. 132) as a result of this persistent logic and others, there has been, overall, a manifold, accelerating increase in codes and programs for those codes. neat little boxes for the autonomously independent and isolated disabilities have become the norm within the abnormal. entering the logic of codification results in a perpetual, non-stop attempt to categorize everything humans do that is deemed excessive, inappropriate, or abnormal: for example, the effort is focused on what to call this behaviour, and how to describe its criteria in such a way that professionals can objectively assign this disability to others without having to talk about theories of the self, inner urges, and sufferings. illich argued (1975) that the entire modern medical profession was built upon a foundation of creating objective disease for the purpose of sustaining and enlarging the control and power of the medical bureaucracy. he took a much older and recognized medical phenomenon and applied it to the modern phenomenon i have been describing: “…an expanding proportion of the new burden of disease of the last fifteen years is itself the result of medical intervention in favor of people who are or might become sick. it is doctor-made, or iatrogenic” (p. 14) or, in other words, “all clinical conditions for which remedies, physicians, or hospitals are the pathogens, or “sickening” agents” (p. 27). in our education and special education context we could say that both the school system itself, infused with educational psychology’s power, and built upon an industrial model of schooling, is complicit as a “sickening” agent. illich argued it is not just school, but our modern industrial society as iatrogenic (p. 88) resulting in an entire population as disabled: “at each stage of their lives people are age-specifically disabled” (p. 79). gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 9 “just plain sick” gary greenberg (2010) in manufacturing depression summarized the consequences of having ebd categorized like index cardsii through descriptions of symptoms only: we are just plain sick. which means we can get better. we don’t have to look back at the fire that rained down on us or outward to the inhumanity inflicted in the name of prosperity or forward to the certainty of our own suffering. we don’t have to be stunned at the cruelty-or, for that matter, thrilled by the tragedy-of life on earth or worried that pursuing happiness the way we do is also pursuing destruction. we can be healed. we can get our minds to work the way they are supposed to. and then we can get back to business. (p. 314) as gadamer (1996) noted, this has become possible only in this technical age: “the intrinsic impossibility of simply making oneself an object to oneself emerges completely only with the objectifying methods of modern science” (p. 35). allen frances, once head of the now published dsm, is now adamantly opposed to the very idea of the dsm: “we’re being overdosed and overmedicated…we create a society of people who regard themselves as sick” (wente, 2012). some argue that in our hopes to pre-empt inappropriate behaviour we actually constitute more spaces through which we can marginalize children psychologically (laurence & mccallum, 2009, p. 7). being “just plain sick” assumes that our modern medical institution conceals what illich (1975) termed “the art of suffering” (p. 128), inherent to every traditional culture. suffering, as a performative activity in traditional cultures, allowed humanity to engage with life fully. to be in good health means not only to be successful in coping with reality but also to enjoy the success; it means to be able to feel alive in pleasure and pain; it means to cherish but also to risk survival… each culture gives shape to a unique gestalt of health and to a unique confirmation of attitudes towards pain, disease, impairment, and death, each of which designates a class of that human performance that has traditionally been called the art of suffering. (illich, 1975, p. 128) in the modern objectifying and levelling science of medicine, there is a “war against all suffering” which has “undermined the ability of individuals to face reality, to express their own values, and to accept inevitable and often irremediable pain and impairment, decline and death” (pp. 128-129). once categorized or codified, the object that becomes of the human being must now be repaired, healed, or managed in order to get back onto the assembly line of modernity. psychiatry struggled to survive within this modern objectification of illness and concealment of suffering. greenberg (2010) compellingly argued that the dsm was rewritten as a response to psychiatry’s near death in the 1970s at the hands of groups who would no longer tolerate injustices like the classification of homosexuality as a mental health disease, for example. psychiatry wanted to be like modern medicine and thus the dsm was re-written to allow for the application of diseases to be merely a matter of confirming symptomatic criteria (greenberg, 2010, pp. 238-252). this re-write of the dsm also has an early history attached to the emphasis on positivism seen at the time of comte through the work of emil kraepelin (1856-1926) (young, 1995, pp. 95-96). gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 10 diagnosing by symptoms as evidence of actual inherent illness or disease is the practice used today in school psychology, which is the necessary condition required for coding (alberta, 2009). stated differently, if an expert thinks a student meets the symptomology, validated by the reports of others around the student and forms of mental and behavioural measurement, then the student is diseased just as one might be diseased with cancer or diabetes. the goal in both diagnoses is to heal or manage such disease. along with greenberg and illich, i suggest that life’s difficulties, and the suffering that ensues is concealed by the push for dealing with these diseases and getting on with life, the life of production and consumption. shrinking “this,” expanding “that” i argue we are part of a descending ladder of further, smaller divisions of classifications or kinds or codes, a “typology of disasters” (ricoeur, 2007, p. 196) within which ebd is an even more contentious part. this complex series of logics inherent in the approach to student (and adult) behaviour remains the same and is, at root, a pervasive obstacle holding possibility for seeing and being otherwise chained in a cave of spinning suffering and sickness and fragmentation. the idea that health is a balance (gadamer, 1996, p. 19) of life within community is at stake here; any sign of suffering is often taken as disease, categorized and treated individually. illich (1975) wrote over 35 years ago: diagnosis always intensifies stress, defines incapacity, imposes inactivity, and focuses apprehension on non-recovery, and on one’s dependence upon future medical findings, all of which amounts to a loss of autonomy for self-definition. it also isolates a person in a special role, separates him from the normal and healthy, and requires submission to the authority of specialized personnel. once a society organizes for a preventive disease-hunt, it gives epidemic proportions to diagnosis. the ultimate triumph of therapeutic culture turns the independence of the average healthy person into an intolerable form of deviance. (p. 96) unsurprisingly, the extent of this prejudice extends to the ebd definition. in 1990, the united states’ new definition for ebd was immediately met with debate because, in the pursuit of measurable, objective proofs, “neither logical argument nor empirical studies supported a distinction between social maladjustment and emotional disturbance (see kauffman, 1993a)” (winzer, 2009, p. 133). at risk, as well, is our ability to see difference in others outside of the binary of a shrinking “this” and an ever expanding “that.” the norm retracts in the face of an ever-increasing abnormality. …as networks of governmental intelligibility grow more rigorous, and everincreasing numbers of categories of difference are created and deployed…and as new norms of conduct are fashioned and enforced, we should perhaps be concerned that this occurrence is likely to happen with ever greater frequency. it seems somewhat inevitable that tolerance for difference will decrease as the parameters of the normal are more and more tightly drawn and policed, and the consequence may be that more and more children find themselves placed outside the mainstream door. (tait, 2010, p. 91) american moves and ebd’s positivism the current situation is compounded by the influence of the united states political landscape on the educational system in alberta. gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 11 a larger more encompassing trend in western educational research has been driving for evidenced-based best practices that meet a gold standard of quantifiable research methodology (ady, 2006; baglieri, valle, connor, & gallagher, 2010; bennett & wynne, 2006; kauffman, crockett, gerber, & landrum, 2007) despite debate as to what counts under such a standard (ferri, 2011). as a result of this, a sharp shift occurred away from a re-conceptualized era of both post-positivist and interpretive and qualitative educational research (pinar, 1995) to a results-oriented, positivist-based research paradigm. this positivist return came as a result of several damning and damaging publications in the united states which scorned the failures of their educational system. as a result, the us government passed the “no child left behind act” of 2001 which became the focal point for the return to a positivistic educational framing: the passage of the no child left behind act of 2001 is the most obvious of these moves. the law calls explicitly and exclusively for the use of scientifically based research (a phrase used 111 times within it) as the foundation for many education programs and for classroom instruction. gardner (2002) suggested that the text of this law echoes a pervasive theme within current discussions of education in america. this theme is the continuing failure of educational research to improve the dire state of the american public educational system. (barone, 2007, p. 455) since the “science wars” of the 1980s, precipitated by the earlier work of philosophers of science like thomas kuhn (1970) and paul feyerabend (1975), there has been a shift towards an understanding that even science is value-laden (maxwell, 2009; paul, 2002). however, in the field of ebd, empirical, objective knowledge is still reified and highly sought after (paul, 2002, pp. 87-91). for example, in a three-part series in the journal of emotional and behavioural disorders, key figures over the past 30 years from this traditional field were asked what they believed were critical and promising moments for ebd work (zabel, kaff, & teagarden, 2011, p. 133). almost univocally, one of their greatest hopes was in applied behavioural analysis (aba is a direct descendent of skinner’s behaviourism) as a method of shaping and changing behaviour in problematic students. alberta education has embraced the positivistic approach with the support and publication of documents such as boats – behaviour, observation, assessment, teaching (2006) – and supporting positive behaviour in alberta schools (2008), for examples. in both documents the language of aba is prominently used: when inappropriate student behaviours occur, educators should collect data to determine the function of behaviour, those functions defined precisely into five essential categories, and then use aba like methodology to either reinforce positive behaviours or extinguish negative ones. the behavioural support plan, functional assessment report, and individualized program plan are further enactments and artifacts of a behaviourist approach to ebd. all this belies the logics of non-contradiction and reductionism enacted in a positivist behavioural framework. at stake as well then, is the possibility for a future informed by a critical assessment of the prejudices of the past: one of the serious costs of dropping anchor in operant waters is that students of the methods of behaviourism, and researchers given only positivist tools, lose the rich histories of culture and science gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 12 from which intellectual tools and moral compasses for the future are fashioned. (paul, 2002, p. 90) in other words, without being historically conscious of how education has arrived at its current places, educators run the risk of an ongoing sedimentation into what would become the taken for granted accepted practices of the day. as a result, only the special education experts with the expert, hard-core scientific knowledge of aba and aba-like methods can do the work needed for students with ebd. exclusionary practices are sustained via stratified forms of knowers and knowledge. “special education research has become self-referenced over the past three decades…this situation creates researchers who do not value, and are not prepared to negotiate, differences among different perspectives about knowledge” (paul, 2002, p. 85). rights as choice and defense alberta’s education system is a highpressure consumer-culture of educational choice: “forced to act as ‘citizen consumers’ (taylor and woollard, 2003), parents shop for the most promising educational opportunities for their children, and the schools try to attract the top students with enrichment programmes” (graham & jahnukainen, 2011, p. 230). families are swept up into this, hoping for further specialization (another form of fragmentation) for the personalized benefit of their children in the hopes they will be successful. along with this, comes an attitude to preserve or defend the norm for children. it is extremely common in my work for both parents and teachers to claim that students with ebd should not be in regular classrooms because it is unfair to the other children, to have to suffer that child. there are times when the safety of children is at risk so the claims are warranted. there are many times though when this is not the case. entrenched in this culture of choice and defence are localized notions of the norm: the belief that particular schools are meant for particular kinds of learning, therefore particular kinds of students, especially when “students who constitute a threat to the school in terms of reputation (academic or otherwise) are poorly viewed, which creates hierarchies of student value and innumerable incentives to shift undesirable students elsewhere” (ball, gillborn, & youdell, 2000, in graham & jahnukainen, 2011, p. 268). in many charter and private schools, coded students are often screened out. in the public system, i have been witness to school administrators not accepting students with ebd codes into their schools because those students did not live in the school’s designated communities. yet, there were many students attending these same schools from outside the designated community who did not have an ebd code. the a=a logic finds itself abundant in this market-driven consumer culture of choice and defence and also, at the same time, abundantly selective. some argue this neo-liberal, marketdriven social imaginary has dismantled a civil society human connection in preference to competitive individualism (slee, 2011, p. 38; smith, 2006). high stakes testing and accountability measures provide parents with what is considered rightful knowledge to choose the best education for their children. choice and competition as “approaches to social policy pit ‘different conceptions of rights against one another’ as individual competition for public goods works in direct contrast to ‘the idea that a universally accessible public education system ought to exist gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 13 which is available to any [persons] regardless…of economic means’” (davidsonharden & majhanovich, 2004, p. 270 in graham & jahnukainen, 2011, p. 280). at risk now in alberta is a further decline in the idea of a plural school community, in the very idea of “public” education. this individualism is oddly reversed and exacerbated in special education when the categories of ebd garner much attention through public sites. everyone seems to be able to make a claim about who may or may not have a disability (greenberg, 2010, p. 251). i am constantly deflecting teacher and administrator suggestions that their students have adhd or anxiety, for example. families often ask me if they think their child has a mental health disability. as laurence and mccallum (2009) wrote, “they (disability categories) are disseminated through a range of sites, including the mass media, so that although they may have begun as a norm implanted from above, they can be repossessed as a demand that citizens, consumers, survivors make of authorities in the name of their rights, their autonomy, their freedom” (p. xiii). furthermore, illich (1975) argued that the above phenomenon is a sign of a “morbid society” where: ...the belief prevails that defined and diagnosed ill-health is infinitely preferable to any other form of negative label or to no label at all. it is better than criminal or political deviance, better than laziness, better than self-chosen absence from work…social life becomes a giving and receiving of therapy: medical, psychiatric, pedagogic, or geriatric. claiming access to treatment becomes a political duty, and medical certification a powerful device for social control. (p. 123) coding’s in-efficiency movement the industrial production line model in education, a manifestation of the a=a logic, works tirelessly to meet the requirements for its own funding in special education. teams of school psychologists work almost exclusively on social-emotional and cognitive assessments so that school administrators can attach coding status to students which results in increased funding for the school and supports for the students now codified. a part of that funding provided by the codes also pays for the psychologists to do the work needed to acquire the funding. the very system created to support students has resulted in its own army of expert mental measurers who could be directly supporting students in need but instead must spend their time producing psychological assessments to meet the criteria for coding (janzen & carter, 2001). special education funding in alberta would better serve students who are diagnosed with emotional and/or behavioural disabilities if there was a base level of funding provided that was not attached to coding. schools would not have to engage in extensive, timeconsuming coding processes in order to access needed resources. it is highly detrimental to meeting students’ needs to have the funding system leading the pedagogical decision-making, labelling students inappropriately and watering down the real meaning of ‘severe disability’or ‘severe behavioural disturbance’, which has (and still is in many other countries/regions) been relatively rare and associated directly with mental illnesses (cole, visser, and daniels 2001). (wishart & jahnukainen, 2010, pp. 186-187) gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 14 the government’s own contracted research pointed this phenomenon out, as well (graham & jahnukainen, 2011). the norm: misleading logic and exclusion the self-fulfilling logic of a=a manifests in special education as the statistical norm. according to ricoeur (2007), assumed within this tool and its creation of the norm is a conflated, misleading logic: the statistical norm is a universal constant, and this constant is separate from the valuative, ideal aspects of the norm in a given culture for example, happiness or success (pp. 189-190). the norm is ambiguous precisely because the tools of mental measurement like the standard bell curve are at once both contingent and expressions of value. gadamer (1976) wrote: “one look at such fields of investigation as ethnology or history informs us that spaces and times produce highly different life-worlds in which highly different things pass as unquestioningly self-evident” (p. 189). in other words, the norm is relative to culture. “normality is not an observation but a valuation. it contains not only a judgement about what is desirable, but an injunction as to a goal to be achieved. in so doing, the very notion of ‘the normal’ today awards power to scientific truth and expert authority” (rose, 1989, p. 131 in slee, 1985, p. 20). medical science (and special education) then carries within it these fixed assumptions, substituting social norms for statistical averages. “what is now normal is behaviour capable of satisfying the social criteria for life together with others” (ricoeur, 2007, p. 192). in a society that sees the self as a rational, autonomous and freely choosing individual, anything outside of this social norm that requires assistance or control is seen as sickness. hence, to be healed is to be like others, to act like others. medicine then becomes an “obstacle to life” because “life presents itself as an adventure in which we do not know what is a test or trial and what a failure. life is always evaluated and this evaluation is always relative” (ricoeur, 2007, p. 190). in the physical world, there is no place for illness (only natural laws like gravity) but in the biological world, the world of life, there is no absolute definition of disease. this is especially the case with ebds which have changed over time and yet, psychiatry continues to “index card” mental health as sickness. according to ricoeur (2007), if one accepts that disease is not univocally understood, we are left with the idea that a human life that is abnormal or pathological is one that lives in a “shrunken milieu” (kurt goldstein not referenced properly, in ricoeur, 2007. p. 190). this is a claim about being in the world, not sickness. in special education, however, this idea of a shrunken milieu is often negatively read as sickness; therefore, being a student that requires severe and extensive support in his learning environment is to be a disabled student. this is because special education is founded upon a medical science which says so. put differently, the current discourse on pathology conceals the positive aspects of being a student who interacts with his world differently, in a “shrunken lifeworld” which as a form of existing or being in the world, deserves respect as a form of life with its own structure. this is a very important move on ricoeur’s part. in the interpretive tradition, he attempted to renew our understanding of pathology. pathos is “suffering” and logia is “to study” (harper, 2012). our modern understanding of pathology is the science or study of suffering, of diseases. this science has taken on a certain framing which i tried to illustrate above through the interwoven gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 15 historical logics. ricoeur however, brings back “logia” as “logos.” logos has not always been interpreted as an a=a analyticaltype proposition for understanding the world, including human beings. logos also can be read as “being” which is an ontological claim. “being,” in this renewed ontological reading, wishes to respect sam as a human life in the world, a world that both shapes and is shaped by sam and others around him. “being,” in this interpretive sense, entails the understanding that thought does not precede language. given this, language actually gives form to our understanding of the world. language is therefore constitutive and this action is not restrained within the mind of a reasoning being exclusively; nor is it free to be anything it wants. both the world and those who use language interact. being human is to be this being that is capable of bringing being to the world through its full, conscious immersion in the world. hence, ricoeur’s renewal of pathology admits that human beings suffer and we should study this suffering but we should carefully consider how we study because in the “studying” in the sense-making that takes place, like the use of the language of disability and coding there are moral implications for human beings. these moral implications should help guide our constituting language actions. with great caution however, this does not mean that choosing our words carefully is all that needs to happen, either. the words we use the language available to us is deeply impacted by the traditions around us. it is not as if, in simply changing names of ebds, we get around the deeper logic at play in what might normally be called ordinary language use. on the contrary, seeing the world differently requires seeing how it is that we are currently seeing and once this begins, new possibilities for understanding the world emerge, which is, at once, new ways to talk about others, like sam. in short, ricoeur (2007) and gadamer (1996) have led me to this understanding: pathology as “the study of the being of those who suffer” is very different from “the science of disease.” sadly though, in the anecdote, a student like sam cannot be seen as co-existing in a relationship with the world that is smaller or more dependent than the ways of being of other, differing students, or other forms of life, despite all of our dependencies in and on the world. it is no surprise that asking sam to count to ten an impossible task for him at this time would cause him intense frustration. the connection here to our understanding of teaching and learning is paramount. codification within the norm displaces the understanding that humans are different and interact with the world in different ways by identifying this difference as disability or dis-order. whose dis-order, i ask? today, as a result of the current system codification results in exclusion, the “social stigma par excellence” where “inferiority and depreciation are thus socially normed” (ricoeur, 2007, p. 192). counterproductivity and emancipation “the most primordial mode in which the past is present is not remembering, but forgetting” (gadamer, 1976, p. 203) in the entrenched historical logics of knowledge and what has become special education for students with ebd, limits are reached and exceeded between the current dominant ways of knowing students, and how students actually live in classrooms. another way of describing what i have attempted to explicate thus far is through ilgilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 16 lich’s (1975) notion of “counterproductivity”: “it exists whenever the use of an institution paradoxically takes away from society those things the institution was designed to provide” (pp. 212-213). in our industrial society, he wrote that people want “to be taught, moved, treated, or guided rather than to learn, to heal, and to find their own way” (p. 214) and “when perception of personal needs is the result of professional diagnosis, dependence turns into painful disability” (p. 219). the anecdote with sam is a particular site of heated contestation around this phenomenon. i suggest sam’s anecdote is a practical, real summons to those of us in education to question that which has been, and continues to be, accepted, and perhaps taken for granted as the only fixed ways of seeing and being with students. how much of what we do in special education actually takes away from what we want education to do in the first place? a great deal, i have suggested. the revealing of what is going on around us presently as an effect of our lived history is actually a way of taking emancipative action (gadamer, 1976, p. 18). this is an act of historical consciousness-revealing, cultivating our ability to see what is or should be questionable (gadamer, 1976, p. 13). this is also known as a “hermeneutic consciousness” which: …finds its paradigmatic realization in the interpreter’s awareness that the words and concepts he employs are historically conditioned and that they prejudice his interpretation. for this reason, he does not automatically accept their validity or assume their eternal verity; rather he inquires into their origin and history. (weinsheimer, 1991, p. 229) despite experience’s overturning actions, it is easy to fall back into the given of current ways of knowing the world because they are our traditions, our prejudices, our inheritances. i am often obliged to fall back within the given because it is the structure through which my work occurs most of the time. although these traditions structure our ways of knowing, they do not restrict us from knowing differently, however. gadamer (1976) argued that knowing these traditions as pre-judgements in our daily lives allows us to understand what is happening around us, and to be different (p. 9). possibilities emerge once we notice how we have become and are always on the way to becoming more than what we currently are. the challenge is to fuse the horizon of the past with the present, in anticipation of a different way of being tomorrow. one such possibility i discovered during this process of cultivating a historical consciousness is the case of finland (graham & jahnukainen, 2011). between 1994 and 2007, they have had a significant increase in the numbers of students placed in regular classes, a slight increase in students placed in special classes (located in community schools), and an actual decrease in students placed in specialized schools. finland, it has been suggested, does not have the same complex weave found here in alberta. some quick facts highlight the differences: 95% of children begin preschool at age 6. drop-out rate is 0.07%. high school is either through a vocational school or academic upper secondary, both starting at grade 10. 99% of schools are state or publicly run. no high stakes, standardized tests. gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 17 culture of deep respect for education and teachers: “pedagogical conservatism.” high degree of trust between educator, political leaders, and parents. curriculum is value driven: equity, participation, flexibility, progressiveness. education is seen as essential to social reform: they have been working on educational reform for decades. fiscal restraint has brought about changes in special education services. use a model of “part time special education” in community schools. as a result, only 6.4% of student population is identified as “special education” which is approximately half the rate in alberta. most of this student population is not in high schools and the retention rate is 89% compared with 70.4% for alberta. special education status is not determined by specialized assessment or diagnosis; it is determined first by teachers and parents who focus on student learning needs. every school of about 300 students has a full time special educator who works on reading, writing and arithmetic, especially in the early years. they are not part of the inclusion movement rather, their system is built on what they call “fully comprehensive schools” which embody the notion of “education for all.” the finland example shows the importance of seeing alberta’s special education context against other cultural contexts. seeing others and their ways of being with students helps inform our understanding of our current ways of being with students and how that could be different, as well. interpretive work acknowledges openly that our lives are “characterized by a great variety of personal, communal, national, historical and religious narratives” (davey, 2006, p.133). this plurality of human existence is why possibilities abound: our stuck ways of framing students are “susceptible to being disrupted” (p. 133). shared esteem or “ourselves as others” in modern society the “i” of our identity seems determined by a “complete selftransparency in the sense of a full presence of ourselves to ourselves” (gadamer & palmer, 2007, p. 239). i am what i see of myself as an independent, rationally acting and therefore free subject. however, the “i” of self is a work of memory and narration within a lifeworld with others (ricoeur, 2007, p. 196). one does not simply make oneself up even within the logic of a=a. even descartes’ logic could not refute that his thinking took place somewhere, at some time, under some conditions. a part of this dialectical action between world and self requires one to make sense of loss, to mourn those things wanted but not gained, had but lost. ricoeur (2007) called this the “double labor of memory and mourning that grafts together the sense of self-esteem” (p. 196). this self-recognition as a narrative capable of creating self-esteem is precisely at risk and “attacked in mental illness” (p. 196). following ricoeur (2007), i want to hinge this notion of self-esteem more clearly onto the role of others in the world around us: “self-esteem does not reduce to a simple relation of oneself to oneself alone. this feeling also includes, within itself, a claim to others. it includes an expectation of approbation coming from these others. in this sense, self-esteem is both a reflexive and a relational phenomenon, where the notion of gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 18 dignity reunites the two faces of such recognition” (p. 196). for students like sam, the relationship between himself and the adults around him at school requires what ricoeur (2007) called a shared or supplementary esteem. again, this requires us to recognize the pathological as more than just negative: it is renewed or strengthened as a smaller, different lifeworld for sam that is something other than “a deficiency, a lack, a negative quality. it is another way of being in the world. it is in this sense that a patient has dignity, is an object of respect” (p. 197). this shared esteem assists “the other to become more resolutely other” and as a result “allows the other to put greater pressure on the adequacy of my self-understanding” (davey, 2006, p. 249). this is to live in the world, with and for others with dignity, i suggest. at this point, i finish with ricoeur’s challenge for those of us in the norm: …to discern in the handicapped individual those resources of conviviality, of sympathy, of living with and suffering that are bound expressly to the fact of being ill or handicapped. yes, it is up to those who are well to welcome this proposition regarding the meaning of illness and to allow it to aid them in bearing their own precariousness, their own vulnerability, their own mortality. 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(1995). changing theories and practices of discipline. london, england; washington, d.c.: falmer press. slee, r. (2011). the irregular school: exclusion, schooling, and inclusive education. new york, ny: routledge. smith, d. g. (2006). trying to teach in a season of great untruth: globalization, empire and the crises of pedagogy. boston, ma; rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publishers. tait, g. (2010). philosophy, behaviour disorders, and the school. boston, ma, rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publishers. weinsheimer, j. (1991). gadamer's metaphorical hermeneutics. in h.g. gadamer, & h.j. silverman (eds.), gadamer and hermeneutics (pp. 181-201). new york, ny: london. wente, m. (2012). is anybody normal anymore? retrieved may 5, 2012, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opin ions/margaret-wente/is-anybody-normalany-more/article2423352/ winzer, m. a. (2009). from integration to inclusion: a history of special education in the 20th century. washington, dc: gallaudet university press. wittgenstein, l. (1968). philosophical investigations. new york, ny: macmillan. young, a. (1995). the harmony of illusions: inventing post-traumatic stress disorder. princeton, n.j.: princeton university press. zabel, r. h., kaff, m. s., & teagarden, j. m. (2011). an oral history of first-generation leaders in education of children with emotional/behavioral disorders, part 2: important events, developments, and people. journal of emotional and behavioral disorders, 19(3), 131-142. gilham journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 10 21 i"" " valle and connor note the school to prison pipeline for students with ebd. they are more represented in prison populations than any other current disability. ii emil kraepelin (1856 – 1926), contemporary with comte and positivism, set about to describe the mental illnesses he saw, thereby establishing an index or nosography of identifiable mental illnesses. greenberg (p. 70 – 71) describes how kraepelin actually did this on index cards and placed them in a ‘diagnosis box’. corresponding author: nancy j moules, rn phd university of calgary email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics november 1, 2017 the author(s) 2017 editorial: grief and hermeneutics: archives of lives and the conflicted character of grief nancy j. moules in memory of john william moules (july 13, 1925 june 1, 2017) kate beamer’s (2017) article, and coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry, in its raw grief, and thoughtful insight, brings to mind the hermeneutic capacity to understand grief as “not quite this and not quite that.” as much as i have studied grief from a hermeneutic research approach (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015), and i have counselled bereaved parents, and stood present with many parents at the death of their children, i have not personally felt grief in the way i do now, as five months later, i continue to interpret and re-interpret the death of my father, john moules. in my many writings of grief (see for e.g., moules,1998; moules, simonson, prins, angus, & bell, 2004), i focus on debunking stage model theories, and notions of acceptance and resolution moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 editorial 1 2 and, rather, offer an idea of grief as a biological, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive experience that “becomes an enduring, sometimes relenting, sometimes poignant, but always present part of the life of a person who has lost” (moules et al., 2004, p. 100). my studies and writings are primarily (though not exclusively) focused on understanding grief from the lens of parental loss. i am coming to know grief differently now. grief is not just about saying goodbye and hello (white, 1989; moules et al., 2004); it is not just about making and maintaining a connection to the dead person (klass, silverman, & nickman, 1996; moules et al., 2004), but it also involves something more complicated, especially in the death of a spouse, a parent, or perhaps a close friend – any loss other than the loss of a child. it involves moving back and forth between memory, love, anger, disappointment, reality, romance, gratitude, admiration, regret, and history. it is working through the conflicting things, memories, and emotions that sideswipe you when you least expect them. the death of a child is different from other deaths as i believe it involves the unconditional love that is often held for a child. i am not, by any means, claiming that parent/child relationships are not complex nor that the death of a child is uncomplicated, or even that it is the hardest death to deal with, but i have come to believe there is something that is different in the deaths of other loved ones in our lives who hold different roles than that of a child. in this editorial, i will address this from the perspective of a daughter who has recently lost a father. during the early weeks after my father’s death, a wise friend recommended a book to me written by plum johnson (2014), they left us everything: a memoir. in the book, the author writes of her experience of the deaths of her parents and the work of sorting through the archives of their lives in clearing out the 23-room house where they had lived for decades. i, too, experienced this act of sorting through the archives. along with my son, who has a much more discerning eye than me for what is important to keep, we saw both of my parents’ lives remembered, recalled, and enlivened – the work of aletheia (moules, 2015). an old steamer trunk, marked frosh, 1948, which marked the year my father graduated with a ba from mount allison university, sackville, new brunswick. he would have moved with this trunk from his home in sydney, nova scotia, in 1944. in the trunk was an old boy scout uniform, small; we cannot trace the date of when he wore it. there moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 editorial 1 3 are old pennants from his university and different places in canada, some of which we see hanging here on the walls of his dormitory room at mt. a., the photo taken in #239, 2 nd floor west, trueman house, 1947 (as indicated on the back of the photo). seeing them in full, if faded, colour in the trunk stood in stark contrast to seeing them in the black and white of the photo – the still, colourless memory of a colourful past, preserved in an old steam trunk, still imbedded with the pins that held them up on the walls of dormitory in 1947. in the lower level of the trunk, are more artifacts of their lives, and my brother and my lives all old toys my brother and i had as young children: two sets of a barrel of monkeys, old puppets, old memories. on top of the trunk sits our sick bed table, which would be brought to our beds with our meals when we were sick, and could be tilted up after the meal on which to play, draw, colour, or write. moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 editorial 1 4 inside another old steamer trunk, i find my last cast and leg brace when extensive treatment for my club feet was completed. faded signings on the cast are reminiscent of my past: geordie and richard mohl, dear family friends, both now deceased; “your brother, donald;” “love daddy.” there are many other archives too: all my dad’s past sermons for his church services, letters from his little sister hannah (now deceased), photographs of family, photographs of people we cannot identify: many weddings, baptisms, unknown faces where my father’s service as a clergyman put him present at important and memorable moments in strangers’ (to us) lives. there are things we cannot quite figure out or understand, and things that are somewhat disturbing. as johnson wrote, working through the archives of someone else’s life, especially one where you are a character in that life, is a complicated process and it is evocative and unsettling. it raises more questions than one even knows one has. she wrote: how could i still have questions? friends warned me of this. they said, “when your mother dies, you’ll wish you asked her some questions.” i had more than sixty years to ask questions, but the questions didn’t form until after she’d gone. now there are questions i didn’t even know i had. (johnson, 2014, p. 46) such is the nature of hermeneutics as well. understanding hermeneutically, researching hermeneutically, is complicated, evocative, and unsettling, often uncovering more questions than answering them. it is never a “neutral enterprise” (moules et al., 2015, p. 58). beamer links the idea of the hermeneutic address to that of humility, claiming that the same humility involved in conducting hermeneutic research lies also in the surrender to grief. grief is complex and complicated, never quite this or that; it is ambiguous and, like hermeneutics, it takes on that ambiguity with humility. beamer cites caputo’s foreword in the moules et al. book: “hermeneutics does not shy away from the difficulty of life but summons the courage to deal with life in all of its ambiguity. hermeneutics takes the risk of embracing the coming of what we cannot see coming” (caputo, in moules et al., 2015, p. xiii). moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 editorial 1 5 as much as i thought i knew grief, i surrender to the humility of it; i did not see what was coming. my son taught me to embrace, rather than discard, the treasures, artifacts, and archives of my father’s life. it takes courage to look at them, and courage to face the ambiguity of grief, the complicated nature of remembering and enlivening someone. relationships are never quite this or that either, and hermeneutics reminds us that the capacity to remain in this in-between is exactly what allows us to be open to what might come. patience. references beamer, k. (2017). and coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 10. johnson, p. (2014). they left us everything: a memoir. toronto, on, canada: penguin canada. klass, d., silverman, p.r., & nickman, s.l. (eds.). (1996). continuing bonds: new understandings of grief. philadelphia, pa: taylor & francis. moules, n.j. (1998). legitimizing grief: challenging beliefs that constrain. journal of family nursing, 4(2), 142-166. moules, n.j. (2015). editorial: aletheia remembering and enlivening. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 2. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/89/78 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. moules, n.j., simonson, k., prins, m., angus, p., & bell, j.m. (2004). making room for grief: walking backwards and living forward. nursing inquiry, 11(2), 99-107. white, m. (1989). saying hullo again: the incorporation of the lost relationship in the resolution of grief. in selected papers (pp. 5-28; m. white, ed.). adelaide, australia: dulwich centre. corresponding author: nathaniel g. samuel st. thomas university email: nsamuel@stu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics online date the author(s) 2015 re-storied by beauty: on self-understanding in the ricoeur-carr discussions on narrative nathaniel g. samuel abstract this essay examines the issue of self-understanding, following paul ricoeur who characterizes it as one of the three dimensions of a literary work. the essay places the issue in the context of ricoeur’s discussions with david carr on self-understanding or selfhood identity, demonstrating where the two theorists differ, but ultimately proposing how they complement each other to enrich the issue. i argue that the two converge at a significant point that selfhood-identity is mediated by a host of cultural artifacts, all experienced as narrative. i support this thesis by exploring the way in which the transcultural symbol of sharing a meal can mediate selfunderstanding, and occasion the narrative re-storying of a life. attending to the character of general loewenhielm in isak dinesen’s (1993) babette’s feast, i describe the feast as an event of beauty, arguing how this worked to restore a sense of unity to the general’s life. keywords self-understanding, identity, narrative, paul ricoeur, david carr, beauty, babette’s feast i wish to examine the issue of self-understanding in this essay, following paul ricoeur who characterizes it as one of the three dimensions of a literary work, besides referentiality and communicability (ricoeur, 1991a, p. 27). in particular, i place this issue in the context of discussamuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 2 sions between ricoeur and david carr. 1 admittedly, these discussions have previously (and accurately) been framed in terms of the question of referentiality (kearney, 2006). my aim here is to take up what i perceive to be another dimension of the exchange that of self-understanding or selfhood-identity – demonstrating where the two theorists differ, but ultimately proposing how they complement each other to enrich the issue. my point of departure will be ricoeur’s work on selfhood-identity, particularly his proposed role for literary fiction as mediating between “man [sic] and himself” (ricoeur, 1991a, p. 27). next, i bring david carr’s work particularly carr (1986) into conversation with ricoeur on the aforementioned themes. i argue that carr’s thesis on the self and narrative is not as far from ricoeur’s position as may be imagined. both theorists appear to subscribe to the narrative quality of human life as a first order, even before that life is represented in literary or historical fiction. this will serve as my first thesis in the essay. the second, and more significant, thesis concerns the way in which carr’s ideas can supplement ricoeur’s triple-mimetic model. i contend that the two authors converge at a significant point: selfhood-identity may be mediated by a host of cultural artifacts, themselves experienced as narrative. ricoeur invites this conclusion while maintaining the primacy of literary fiction by stating that fiction is the privileged mediation of self-understanding “among other [cultural] signs and symbols” that can also function in this role. by arguing that narrative is constitutive of all experiencing, carr’s work warrants the conclusion that these cultural symbols are efficacious in the formation of selfhood and society because they are narratively engaged. to elucidate this thesis, i turn – in the third section of the essay – to the description of the fabled banquet in isak dinesen’s (1993) babette’s feast, which i interpret as offering an example of a cultural artifact that mediates the coming to self-knowledge of the character general loewenhielm. my analysis will not be at the level of the text itself (textual criticism). rather, i examine the imaginary world unfolded by the text, focusing on the dialectic between general loewenhielm’s life and the events surrounding the feast. in the process, i describe babette’s lavish feast as an event of beauty, arguing how this worked to restore (refigure) a sense of unity to the general’s life, accompanied by an unexpected recognition of the permeability of daily life to a prodigal and transcendent grace. as such, babette’s sumptuous feast exemplifies how cultural artifact may serve a transformative and mediatory role in the process of selfunderstanding. ricoeur on self-understanding the problem of self-understanding, as conceptualized by paul ricoeur, stems from the difficulty (even impossibility) of answering the introspective who questions in life – notably: “who am i?” or “who is that person?” from experience, it may be apparent that answers to such questions are 1 the formal exchanges between paul ricouer and david carr have often been considered as a “debate” in the literature. for example, see (kearney, 2006, p. 477). i opt for the term “discussions” on the belief that, to characterize the discourse as a debate, places too much emphasis on the differences between the positions, rather than on the rich insights to be found in the convergences and divergences between ricouer and carr. samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 3 not simply reducible to what one does (by way of an activity or profession), or even to a person’s character, idiosyncrasies, and dispositions. to be sure, declaring an occupation (“i am a teacher”) or confessing a certain affinity (“i love being a parent”) may indeed reveal something of a person’s identity, but these assertions do not exhaust the mystery or indeterminacy of the consciousness that poses the question “who am i?” in the first place. identity is aporetic precisely because of its immanence and transcendence to the realm of action, disposition, and character. the question, therefore, of ascription locating the particular entity behind an action, disposition or character – remains intractable. in addition, ricoeur believes that the same can be concluded for the question of imputation – the assigning of moral significance to an action – that entails “accusation, excuse or acquittal, blame or praise” (ricoeur, 1991b, p. 191). imputation implies being responsible to the other who needs me, and who asks, “where are you?” (ricoeur, 1994, p. 165) the ethical response notwithstanding, there remains considerable mystery about this self who is called by the other. in light of this, the “who” question at the level of imputation becomes, “who am i … that … you should count on me?” (ricoeur, 1994, p. 168). the problem of identity is essentially a search for coherence or permanence-in-time. ricoeur’s conceptual framework casts the issue in terms of a dialectic of identity-as-selfhood (ipse) and identity-as-sameness (idem) (ricoeur, 1991b). selfhood-identity is what is at issue in human being, and ricoeur observes that it may be established anywhere along a proposed spectrum. at one end, selfhood coincides with sameness. the question of “who” is answered by an assertion of a “what” (ricoeur, 1991b, p. 198). at this limit, identity is described as absolute and immutable to evolving, exemplified by popular fairy-tale characters like the “big, bad wolf” or the “evil stepsister” (ricoeur, 1994, p. 148). ricoeur argues that everyday selfhood-identity is inadequately conceived at this end of the spectrum. approaching the other end of the spectrum, characterized for ricoeur by such virtues as selfconstancy, selfhood is entirely distinct from sameness. the merit of conceiving selfhood in this way is that the self is not simply reduced to matters of character. in fact, instability in a person’s perceived character would in no way be seen as negating selfhood. as stated before, one is always more than what one is or does. at the limit of this end of the spectrum, an identity constituted by sheer character-effacing change is indeed imaginable, if only realizable in the world of fiction. given this spectrum of possibilities, the issue of identity for ricoeur becomes “what sort of permanence [in time] is appropriate to a self?” (ricoeur, 1991b, p. 192). how is a sense of self retained in relation to these polar alternatives of “absolute identity” and “sheer change”? ricoeur’s answer: narrative configuration and refiguration. the narrative self exists between these poles, providing a sense of coherence and unity even through the volatility and discordances of life, without reducing personhood to fixity of character. hence, even in the midst of a crisis of self, one can still make the assertion “here i am!” and “here i stand!” before the “other” who calls me to account. ricoeur’s central thesis concerns the role that literary and historical fiction plays in mediating narrative identity. essentially, the existential aporia of selfhood-identity is “elevated to a new level of lucidity and also of perplexity” (ricoeur, 1991b, p. 195) that ultimately serve to illumine the very real process of self-understanding. here, the selfhood-sameness dialectic is subjected to samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 4 a myriad of “imaginative variations” from the structured plot and sedimented characters of the classic fairy tale, to the pastiche and disjointed plot of the stream of consciousness novel. the limit case of contemporary literary fiction is particularly important to ricoeur, because such novels serve to bring selfhood-identity into focus by “taking away the support of sameness” (ricoeur, 1994, p. 149). in this narrative genre, the relation between character and plot is inverted – the plot serves the character, and introduces such volatility that “the character in the story ceases to have a definite character.” 2 there is a seeming loss of identity evinced by the admission “i am nothing.” yet, the very fact that there is still a “who” that can assert, “i am nothing,” preserves the validity of the question of ascription. “who am i, who am nothing?” if anything, the limit cases of fiction demonstrate the persistence of the “who” question in fiction and in life. these limit cases also highlight the durability of imputation. the moral obligation to the other does not dissolve with loss of character or identity. the character development of the contemporary novel may rest on multivocality, but the characters themselves are not beyond the ethical import of their actions and decisions. in this case, ricoeur rephrases the question of imputation as: “who am i, so inconstant, that notwithstanding you count on me.” (ricoeur, 1994, p. 168) the limit cases from fiction serve to illustrate that, in both cases ascription and imputation the question of selfhood-identity persists, even when unmoored from sameness identity. the reader may recognize ricoeur’s triple-mimetic structure unfolding here. mimesis i (prefiguration) refers to the existential condition of the subject in quest of an identity, buffeted by the myriad of signs, cultural symbols, and life stories that constitute a social milieu. it forms the matrix within which the self must be identified within the dialectic of sameness and selfhood. mimesis ii (configuration) refers to the mediation of literary narrative, with its profusion of imaginative variations that present a virtual “laboratory of selfhood” to the reader. at the stage of refiguration (mimesis iii), the dialectic of selfhood-identity played out in multiplicity by diverse literary plot is appropriated in real life through reading. 3 in this way, the self “turns out to be a figured self” (ricoeur, 1991b, p. 199) transposed from the world of the text into reality, the question of selfhood becomes the horizon that keeps the hermeneutic engagement of text and the search for narrative coherence going. narrative thus plays a critical though not unique role in the discovery of the self. ricoeur (1991b, p. 198) reminds, “the self does not know itself immediately, but only indirectly by the detour of the cultural signs of all sorts which are articulated on the symbolic mediations which always already articulate action and, among them, the narratives of everyday life.” selfknowledge is in fact self-interpretation for ricoeur, and “self interpretation, in its turn, finds in narrative, among other signs and symbols, a privileged mediation” (ricoeur, 1991b, p. 188, emphasis added) 2 ricoeur provides the example of robert musil in the man without qualities to this end. see (ricoeur, 1994, pp. 148-149). 3 ricoeur’s theory of reading is made plain in this respect; reading affords an “exegesis of ourselves” – we read ‘ourselves’ when we read a work of literary or historical fiction. samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 5 of note in the last quote is ricoeur’s assertion that literary narratives constitute only one of the possible classes of cultural signs and symbols that mediate identity albeit a privileged one. ricoeur (1991b, p. 188) points to the “narratives of everyday life” as another mediating symbolic system. this includes, i suggest, the virtual stories that “play out in our head” and gives structure to daily action and human existence. it is precisely at this point that i find congruence with david carr’s thesis on the narrative quality of experience. the narratives of daily life, which give a sense of coherence and unity to life, are crucial in his discussion of referentiality, and his theory of self. carr on self-understanding carr’s work on narrative is a significant response to the assertion that “real events do not have the character of those we find in stories” (carr, taylor, & ricoeur, 1991, p. 160), a position he attributes to such theorists as frank kermode, seymour chatman, roland barthes, hayden white, and louis mink. accordingly, the narrative form of fiction, biography, and history is a feature of narrative composition and does not subsist in the reality that these discourses attempt to capture. in short, narrative form is imposed on reality. carr names this position the standard view. he counters, “narration, far from being a distortion of, denial of or escape from ‘reality’, is in fact an extension and enrichment, a confirmation, not a falsification, of its primary features” (carr, et al., 1991, p. 162). he draws on husserl’s theory of time consciousness to support his thesis, arguing that the criteria for having an experience at all is that the object of experience is foregrounded by what preceded it (retention), and by what is expected to follow (protention). this means that human reality can hardly be considered a sequence of discrete events. rather, we experience the events of life as “charged with the significance they derive from our protentions and retentions” (carr et al., 1991, p. 163). this protentional-retentional perception gives a unified, coherent and, hence, meaningful structure to individual experiences and events. on the more complex level of the experiencing of a whole life, the same kind of temporal reflective gaze operates, albeit on a far more comprehensive level. carr compares this temporal gaze to dilthey’s conception of besinnung, which entails a form of taking stock of what has gone before, anticipating what will come in the future, so as to shape present action. as such, the standard position of reality – as a discrete flow of events – misleads even at the level of a whole life. human reality is not simply meaningless temporal sequence. the one difference between literary narrative and life, carr points out, is that the former has a distinct author! life “fails to live up to the formal coherence and the clear-cut authorship of some stories” (carr et al., 1991, p. 166). he grants the standard theorists this point concerning the divergence of life and narrative. while there is continuity in the narrative form, the authorship of literary composition is far more refined, with the ability to choose which events are included in the plot so as to provide a logical and satisfactory progression to the story’s denouement. in life, however, the same level of choice is not there, “everything is left in…because there is no narrasamuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 6 tor in command, no narrative voice which does the selecting” (carr et al., 1991, p. 165). 4 he agrees with ricoeur on this point: we are not the authors of our life story. 5 we can narrate, but ultimately we do not choose the material or events that compose our life. neither can we see the conclusion. yet, this is not to say that no selection takes place in life. “our very capacity for attention, and for following through more or less long-term and complex endeavours [sic], is our capacity for selection. extraneous details are not left out, but they are pushed into the background, saved for later, ranked in importance” (carr, et al., 1991, p. 165). however, we make these selections from the perspective of a narrator, rather than that of an author. carr writes: unlike the author of fiction we do not create the materials we are to form; we are stuck with what we have in the way of characters, capacities and circumstances…. we are constantly having to revise the plot, scrambling to intercept the slings and arrows of fortune and the stupidity or stubbornness of our uncooperative fellows, who will insist on coming up with their own stories instead of docilely accommodating themselves to ours. and the fact that we are ourselves sometimes among that recalcitrant audience, that each of us has his own self to convince and cajole into line, puts paid to any pretensions we might have to anything like being author of our own lives: not only do we not control the circumstances, so that they conform to our plans; we do not control our plans, or even the self who plans, whose identity is threatened in the internal dialogue whereby we become our worst enemies. (carr et al., 1991, p. 166) life is an ongoing narrative and we are its narrators, sifting through its vicissitudes in search of a coherent and progressive story of our existence. therefore, the question of identity (or self-understanding) comes down to that of the coherence of one’s life story (carr, 1986, p. 74). from the perspective of an ever-changing now, we as narrators take stock of the experiences, events, actions, roles, practices, relationships that make up our lives (planned or contingent, short and long-term), through a temporal reflective gaze (besinnung) that seeks coherence and a sense of wholeness and meaning. carr describes this process of cultivating, maintaining, and restoring narrative coherence over a life as a struggle. as indicated before, personal stories frequently intersect, plans go askew, and daily life is subject to contingency, not the least of which is the ever-present threat of death. life is messy! as such narrative identity, understood in terms of the unity of the self, is something to be achieved (carr, 1986, p. 97). human beings do so to varying degrees of success, but the challenge endures literally until our dying day. with this thesis, carr departs from kant’s and hume’s idea that the self is ultimately “pre-given” – that it is the very condition for the possibility of experience (kant), or that it is not to be found in experience (hume). rather he insists that unity of self makes no sense unless it implicates the way in which that self is experienced. our experience of selfhood is ultimately tied to our experience of narrative coherence. 4 carr treats author and narrator as equivalent here. 5 ricoeur describes life in terms of co-authorship: “by narrating a life of which i am not the author as to existence, i make myself its coauthor as to its meaning” (ricoeur, 1994, p. 162). samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 7 comparing ricoeur and carr on identity and selfhood at this point, some interesting convergences emerge with ricoeur’s thesis on narrative identity and selfhood. first, carr’s observation of the messiness of life and the consequent challenge to narrative coherence and identity parallels ricoeur’s thesis on the interplay of concord and discord in life (ricoeur, 1991a, p. 31). for the latter, it is particularly the discordant in life – the contingent – that spurs us to restore a sense of coherence. the type of existential emplotment by which one’s identity is constituted, seeks to achieve a synthesis of very heterogeneous events and experiences that constitute daily life. second, ricoeur describes narrative identity as something discovered through a process of interpretation (ricoeur, 1991a, p. 32). the subtle difference with carr’s idea that narrative identity is something to be achieved is quite interesting. on the one hand, it may simply be a matter of semantics. there is considerable convergence in both authors position that identity is something that one works out. whether discovered or achieved, narrative identity is the result of an active process of meaning-making within the flow of events and experiences of life. on the other hand, there is a sense in ricoeur that narrative identity is not something that is entirely in our grasp. there remains a certain mystery to our being, which escapes even the meaning-making ability of our temporal reflective grasp. this point is made clear through ricoeur’s example of the limit cases of fiction, and by extension, the limit cases of life. recall that, at these limits, identity was divorced from anchorage to character and sameness. this is the dark night of identity when narrative coherence is muddled and the question “who am i?” resounds in the emptiness of appropriate answers. what this example of the dark night seems to suggest is that, even if a perfectly coherent life can be imagined, the question “who am i?” would still retain a measure of unanswerability. the question of ascription and imputation is not closed off by the power of our temporal reflective gaze. third, both ricoeur and carr seem to agree that selfhood entails taking up the responsibility for not only living one’s life story authentically, but for choosing that story wisely. as ricoeur points out, we are beings “entangled in stories” (ricoeur, 1991a, p. 30), and some measure of intentionality is involved in finding our own truth, or our unique guiding narrative. somehow “the wandering that may well result from the self’s confrontation with a multitude of models for action and life” (ricoeur, 1994, p. 167) must be halted. ricoeur (1994) further writes: between the imagination that says, “i can try anything” and the voice that says, “everything is possible but not everything is beneficial…” a muted discord is sounded. it is this discord that the act of promising transforms into a fragile concordance: “i can try anything,” to be sure, but “here is where i stand!” (pp. 167-168) at stake in the choice of life story is one’s responsibility to the “other” in life – family, neighbor, the stranger, the impoverished, and the earth. that is the pervading horizon for the search for selfhood – what kind of person for others do i understand myself to be, and do i want to be! however, carr and ricoeur diverge (among other places) on one essential point – the way in which narrative identity is established. ricoeur understands narrative identity as something samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 8 mediated. short of being paralyzed in the face of the myriad of stories that compete for one’s attention, human beings need the break from this existential realm to the imaginative thoughtexperiment realm of literature. the return to life (mimesis iii) will hopefully be from a more informed and wise perspective. in contrast, david carr does not explicitly establish the mediation of literature as necessary in the process of selfhood. rather, he emphasizes that one’s main task is “telling and retelling, to ourselves and to others, the story of what we are about and what we are (carr, 1986, p. 97). carr seems therefore to privilege the role of everyday life narratives in contrast to ricoeur’s literary narratives. carr’s thesis may, in the final analysis, suffer from this lack of a theory of literary narrative, particularly if it is to serve as a comprehensive narrative theory. this may be beyond what the author set out to achieve in his time, narrative and history; the work seems to be bracketed by the task of responding to the standard theoretic position (the “standard view”) that he outlines. carr makes little room for a determined questioning of how literary narratives relate to everyday life narratives, à la ricoeur’s triple-mimesis. that, in my opinion, is the most significant critique of carr’s ideas, if they are to serve as a theory of narrative. they may more adequately be conceived as a theory of life narrative, explicating how coherence/identity/a sense of selfhood is achieved on a day-to-day basis at the level of ordinary introspection. indeed, conceived as a theory of life narrative, carr’s work is of supreme importance. the average human being spends much more time in his/her head than in reading books. the kind of temporal reflective gaze by which carr asserts we pull together a life story, might better capture how the average persons finds meaning on an ongoing basis. 6 this discussion flows naturally into the following revelation: the inescapability from the cultural signs and symbols that mediate human life and understanding. this is where the divergence between ricoeur and carr’s position may be better perceived as characterized by nuance rather than discord. ricoeur argues for the privileged mediation of literature, but maintains that it is just that – a privileged mediation. in this way, he leaves room for other means of mediating narrative identity. he makes this point in a quote that warrants repeating. “self-knowledge,” he claims “is an interpretation; self interpretation, in its turn, finds in narrative, among other signs and symbols, a privileged mediation” (ricoeur, 1991b, p. 188, emphasis added). ricoeur does not elucidate on the constituent elements of the set of “other signs and symbols,” but the implication that mediation extends beyond the literary world is inescapable. the fact that cultural artifacts can shape human identity is implied in ricoeur’s mimesis i, which insists that human beings are birthed into a world of stories. we are beings-immersed-in-stories, and these stories set the symbolic landscape within which society and human relationship can 6 this, of course, is not to belittle the significance, or the interplay, of literary narrative. it is virtually impossible to escape being shaped by it (at least indirectly). even if one never read such an archetypal tale as the three little pigs, one could surely learn the benefits of proper planning from the mores and norms one’s socio-cultural milieu. but we do read, everything from novels to sacred texts, and so are directly shaped by the ethical-imaginary world of literature. notwithstanding, human reflection is far more prosaic than reading. samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 9 subsist harmoniously. 7 but it is also possible to arrive at this role of cultural artifact from carr’s thesis. indeed, one can extrapolate from his observation of the narrative configuration of human experience, events and actions, the conclusion that cultural symbols that shape human life can successfully do so because they are experienced as narrative themselves. they help story and restory our existence. they shape our reality as we engage them through the protentionalretentional gaze that unifies our experience. literary fiction is one such artifact that is particularly important in modern western post-enlightenment culture. but, the matrix of mediation can make room for other cultural forms that represent poetic configurations of life. a simple, yet powerful example is the transcultural symbol of sharing a meal. anthropologists would attest to the significance of communal dining in history. it is in many ways foundational to reinforcing the norms, codes, and mores that are the basis of family life, and more broadly human society. in what follows, i explore the way in which a meal can function as mediating self-understanding. my data is extracted from the plot of danish writer isak dinesen’s (1993) babette’s feast. as stated in the introduction, i approach the text at the level of the world being narrated, rather than at the level of textual criticism. in short, my analysis invites what keen (2006) calls narrative empathy: to get into the world of one of the characters in the plot – general loewenhielm – and the atmosphere of the fabled feast, so as to glean how the latter, as an event of beauty, worked to re-figure or re-story the general’s life. 8 babette’s feast dinesen situates her masterful narrative in a small, puritanical norwegian village – berlevaag – where two elderly sisters (martine and philippa) living a frugal existence, take into their home a french refugee (babette). after unexpectedly winning a large sum of money, babette prepares a prodigal feast of french cuisine for her hosts, crafted from the finest ingredients sourced from her home country. besides the two sisters, the guest list comprises a motley collection of villagers, united by longstanding allegiances to the deceased patriarch of their religious community (father to martine and philippa). 7 ricoeur (1971) has also ruminated on the nature of human action as a form of text. while he does not explicitly consider the ramifications of this thesis for his ideas on narrative, i suggest that, indirectly, his work on the textual qualities of action may provide theoretical grounds for considering how action – as cultural artifact and text – configures human life, and how it does so according to a narrative logic. 8 my choice of babette’s feast and my focus on general loewenhielm are for illustrative purposes. however, the choice is not arbitrary. dinesen’s classic tale is about how a transcultural symbol – a shared meal – may serve, through its consummate artistry, to refigure human life and clarify self-understanding. the meal’s symbolic potency is unveiled as the reader grows in appreciation of the storied lives gathered around the table. by focusing on the character of general loewenhielm, i am able to suggest one way that cultural symbols achieve the refiguring of life narratives – through aesthetic appeal or beauty. the general is particularly suited for bringing out this theme since he is the only one at dinner who truly appreciates the contingent bonanza of gustatory delights bestowed by babette’s hand. samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 10 also attending is general lorens loewenhielm – a well-decorated military-man, cultural aesthete and past suitor of a young martine. his significance to the dinner’s plot is that, among the guests, he is the only one able to truly appreciate the singularly splendid quality and contingency of the meal. indeed, this revelation occasions a remarkable turn in the general’s selfunderstanding and a move towards self-reconciliation. the remainder of the essay illustrates how the narrative of the general’s life was refigured by the deep aesthetic of babette’s feast. 9 general loewenhielm: refigured by beauty on page 44 of dinesen’s text, the general is portrayed as driving to martine and philippa’s dinner in berlevaag, having returned from a parisian post to recuperate at his aunt’s house. he is going through a dark night of identity. in the twilight of an acclaimed life, he broods over his own mortality, over the perspicacity of the decisions of his youthful self, and over the apparent vanity of his subsequent life. dinesen describes the general’s existential restlessness as an anxious musing: he was a moral person, loyal to his king, his wife and his friends, an example to everybody. but there were moments when it seemed to him that the world was not a moral, but a mystic, concern. he looked into the mirror, examined the row of decorations on his breasts and sighed to himself: “vanity, vanity, all is vanity!” (dinesen, 1993, p. 45) this discernment of a mystical dimension of life is evocatively captured elsewhere in the chapter through the metaphor of sight. in his youth, loewenhielm had chosen career over a labor of love for the beautiful martine. the older general now fears that, with this choice, he had forfeited the “gift of second sight” – the vision of life’s transcendent contours beyond the veil of daily and material concerns. having experienced deeply what the world had to offer (“first sight”), the general anticipates a deeper truth: that life was more than concern for wealth, adventure, and accolade. 9 i recognize that, in focusing on the general, i am neglecting the interestingly complex and nuanced lives of the other characters, including the ways in which the meal was pivotal to their own coming to renewed self-awareness. presumably, other themes besides beauty could be developed out of these narratives. for instance, analyzing how babette’s character was impacted by the meal would be intriguing, particularly in a conceptual framework that attends to the interplay of narrative and issues of power. preparing the feast was deeply cathartic for babette because her artistic genius was stifled by a life of servitude and austerity in the home of martine and philippe. unfortunately, this genius was only apparent to the general and, arguably, rendered subject to his validation. from an alternative standpoint, one may also argue that there is an exchange of power between babette and the general occasioned by the hospitality of the meal, with the latter’s felt-sense of superiority at the dinner table, in some respects, acceding with the recognition of the culinary mastery of the former. issues of gender relations, socioeconomic status, religion, culture and ethnicity all converge to shape the unique power dynamics that are central to dinesen’s story and that are impacted by the meal event. indeed, there are many possible directions to be taken in a discussion of power and the narrative overlays of meal and dinner guests. prudence dictates, however, that such treatments – compelling as they may be – are better served in a separate essay. samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 11 he approaches martine and philippa’s home hoping to expunge his existence of its inherent contradictions. he would experience again the sparse, rustic milieu that had once held love’s invitation – with its traditional meager cuisine of haddock and a glass of water. he would affirm how miserable such a life would have been. in this way, the brooding general would “make his account with young lorens loewenhielm… [and] let the youth prove to him, once and for all, that thirty-one years ago he had made the right choice” (dinesen, 1993, p. 46) when he spurned love and the simple life for career and glory. in terms of themes developed in this essay, one finds here an example of someone deeply at odds with the prevailing narratives of his life. he was, as ricoeur would put it, a being-entangled-instories: his life comprising a narrative imbrication of war glories, royal favor, a stable but unsatisfying marriage, career success and societal prestige, all tempered by a deep disquiet and an unreconciled story of long-lost love. general loewenhielm’s character exemplifies a life in search of a new narrative, or in search of re-storying. life, as a whole, is experienced as discordant, even when individual events (like a remembered dinner at paris’ café anglais) and life achievements (such as his military career) maintain their narrative cohesion, and even as the promise of a nascent wholeness (second sight) emerges in fleeting moments. there are strong resonances with both ricoeur’s and carr’s arguments here. the general’s eventual self-reconciliation would synthesize this heterogeneity of his life – with its discordant and concordant notes. narrative refiguring would also reconcile the general with the moral decision imputed to his younger self. in the crisis of self that ensued from his failed relationship with martine, the young loewenhielm made a vocational decision in favor of career. in essence, this is the “here is where i stand!” that ricoeur (1994, p. 168) states is the core assertion of moral selfhood. it is precisely this assertion that needed revisiting and reaffirming in the older general’s mind. babette’s feast occasioned this sense of narrative coherence that the general sought. but how did the meal produce a breakthrough in self-understanding? what elements specifically came into play? first, the feast could be considered as bringing together diverse constituents in a kind of plot. it brought together elements of surprise; mystery; delight; exquisite food; cheerless guests; puritanical villagers; an adorned general; diverse worlds (paris and norway); time remembered and time present; as well as the various aims, hopes, and fears of the participants. certainly, unusual and heterogeneous elements are being synthesized with culinary splendor into a unified story. it must also be pointed out that the feast was not simply reducible to a meal, however exquisite. it was rather the composite experience of food, fellowship, and festivity, which gave the event a layered, thick, and narrative quality. second, the general’s familiarity with the cuisine established the dialectic of concord and discord that unfolded with the feast. he knew the food intimately, having dined at the café anglais in paris where it appears babette was lead chef. he was the only one at the table that appreciated its exquisiteness and was at home with its subtleties. who else at the table knew (or cared about) veuve cliquot 1860? in effect, the meal allowed the general’s story of prestige and privilege to continue. yet, paralleling this congruence was a sense that the meal was misplaced. this was not a prestigious café in paris, but the humble abode of two lutheran sisters in berlesamuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 12 vaag. colonel galliffet and the other distinguished guests from memories of the café anglais were not at table. indeed, the lavish meal was seemingly squandered on the unsophisticated palettes of the villagers. this surprising and discordant coincidence of rich familiar fare with rustic setting occasioned a cathartic “pause” by the general. to make the point in terms of a key thesis in this essay: the multilayered feast was a compositional act that, in its enjoyment (akin to ricoeur’s reading-act in literary narrative), engendered a felt sense of wonder, surprise, and excitement that would compel a re-assessment (or re-figuration) of the general’s narrative understanding of life. his coparticipation (with the villagers) in the feast enabled the narrative re-figuring or re-storying of the general’s life. 10 the general’s felt-sense of wonder, surprise, and excitement effectively clued him into deep truths about the beneficence of life (what he calls “grace”). to be sure, a process of reflection accompanied the felt-sense. in effect, the general needed to make reasonable sense of the events as they were transpiring, even if he had already experienced an inner (pre-reflective) conviction of the presence of a new truth. the fact that refiguration emerged through employment of his mental faculties and through bodily awareness is significant, and is, i contend, consequent to the particular form of mediation – a feast. the distinct texture of the unique compositional artifact that is a feast – the gustatory delights and the relationships cultivated, furthered and restored – are all highly emotive of the embodied mind. it is also significant that the result of this sensing-reflective process is the recognition of a gift, or of a grace. 11 the passage in question, which heralds the general’s transition to refiguration, is memorable and poetic: we have all of us been told that grace is to be found in the universe. but in our human foolishness and short-sightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. for this reason we tremble … before making our choice in life, and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. but the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. see! that which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. for mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another! (dinesen, 1993, p. 52) 10 it is important to note that the general was not the author of the feast. indeed, the feast itself escaped the control of any one “author.” obviously babette played the central role in creating the meal. but the setting, ambience (or lack of it), conversation, relationships – everything that made the occasion into a feast – were co-authored by all persons present. 11 in a general sense, “grace” seems to refer in the text to a gratuitous gift or to the munificence of life. however, other interpretations, particularly religious interpretations, are proper to the text. samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 13 the gift of second sight had undoubtedly and unexpectedly erupted into his life at that moment. with it, he perceived a grace – a gratuitous largesse – permeating everyday moral concerns (the realm of first sight). and, again, it was the discordant-concordant feast (food, fellowship, festivity) that inspired this revelation. the fact that his new self-understanding entailed an unexpected transcendent dimension is remarkable. not only did the general evidence a re-storying of his life, but also the narrative unity of his life took on a new and unexpected trajectory in perceiving life’s innate sacramentality. indeed, i propose that it is the contingent quality of beauty in the meal that inspired the tangential break in the general’s life narrative. 12 hopefully this thesis is apparent from the arguments made so far. nonetheless, a certain rephrasing is warranted. babette reveals in the conclusion of the story that she is an artist. she is the creator of an exquisite meal, and the co-creator of a transformative feast that was efficacious in leading the spirit of the guests beyond the existential confines of place and time. it mediated the recognition that there was a transcending “more” to life. further, this “more”o was beyond the compositional grasp of babette or the dinner guests. it was certainly adventitious – the grace-full act of an ultimate author of life. in short, the desirability of the feast extended beyond the contours of the meal, to include what may be considered a contingent spiritual in-breaking. as such, i consider the feast to be an event of beauty – beautiful not only in the artistic qualities of the meal, but also in the eruption (from the general’s perspective) of an inspiring and reconciling truth. following ricoeur’s definition, the feast was an event inasmuch as it contributed to the unfolding of the plot of the general’s life. while the reconciliation occasioned by the dinner was largely unexpected, the evening takes on a certain “narrative necessity” for the general by the end of dinesen’s account. 13 but the feast was also an event of beauty, evoking gustatory desire, as well as a sense of wonder and awe. after all, the general himself describes the power of the chef of the café anglais (babette) to transform a dinner into “a love affair of the noble and romantic category in which one no longer distinguishes between bodily and spiritual appetite or satiety!” (dinesen, 1993, p. 52) and once more, it is the feast, understood now as a thing of prodigal beauty, which brought a sense of meaning to general loewenhielm’s life, rescuing him from its myopic interpretation. the sublime and mundane, transcendent and immanent, grace and human life, they all cohere in the narrative of the meal, to re-story a life. rich fare indeed! 12 there are strong spiritual resonances in babette’s feast that cannot be substantially addressed in this essay. indeed, my use of the term beauty may offer an entry point into a theological hermeneutic of dinesen’s text. for an extended treatment on a theology of beauty see hart (2003). 13 for more on ricoeur’s distinction between an event and an occurrence in terms of narrative necessity, see (ricoeur, 1994, p. 142) samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 14 summary i have attempted to address the issue of self-understanding, identified by ricoeur as one of the three dimensions of a literary work, through an examination of the ricoeur-carr discussions on narrativity. i concluded that the two authors converge at a significant point – that selfhoodidentity may be mediated by a host of cultural artifacts, which themselves are experienced as narrative. where ricoeur privileges literary and historical fiction as archetypal in his framework, carr mentions the role of everyday life narratives as playing the mediational role. my excursion into the world of babette’s feast through the eyes of general loewenhielm was meant to illustrate the thesis that a feast, as a cultural artifact of symbolic weight, can occasion the narrative re-storying of a life. the details of babette’s feast however reveal something particularly interesting – that sharing a meal is particularly potent because it may engage the individual’s entire corporeal existence – mental, physical, and spiritual. in this way the feast, as a cultural artifact, contrasts in its mediational role from literary text. for what the former loses to the latter in terms of a proliferation of “imaginative variations,” it gains, in its holistic engagement of the person. in short, mediation is channeled not simply through the employment of mental faculties, but also through corporeality, felt-sense, and spiritual sensitivity. this observation is an important extension of ricoeur’s and (to a lesser extent) carr’s theses. references carr, d. (1986). time, narrative, and history. bloomington, in: indiana university press. carr, d., taylor, c., & ricoeur, p. (1991). discussion: ricoeur on narrative. in d. wood (ed.), on paul ricoeur: narrative and interpretation (pp. 160-187). london, uk: routledge. dinesen, i. (1993). babette's feast. in anecdotes of destiny and ehrengard. new york, ny: vintage books. hart, d. b. (2003). the beauty of the infinite: the aesthetics of christian truth. grand rapids, mi: mich. w.b. eerdmans. kearney, r. (2006). parsing narrative story, history, life. human studies, 29(4), 477-490. keen, s. (2006). a theory of narrative empathy. narrative, 14(3), 207-236. ricoeur, p. (1971). the model of the text: meaningful action considered as a text. social research, 38(3), 529-562. ricoeur, p. (1991a). life in quest of narrative. in d. wood (ed.), on paul ricoeur: narrative and interpretation (pp. 20-33). london, uk: routledge. ricoeur, p. (1991b). narrative identity. in d. wood (ed.), on paul ricoeur: narrative and interpretation (pp. 188-199). london, uk: routledge. samuel journal of applied hermeneutics 2015 article 1 15 ricoeur, p. (1994). the self and narrative identity. in oneself as another, trans k. blamey, (pp. 140-168). chicago, il: university of chicago press. microsoft word kearney corrected proof version4.docx corresponding author: dr. richard kearney the charles b. seelig professor in philosophy philosophy department boston college, chestnut hill, ma email: kearneyr@bc.edu journal of applied hermeneutics december 10, 2011 the author(s) 2011 what is diacritical hermeneutics? richard kearney what is diacritical hermeneutics? first a brief word on what i mean by hermeneutics generally, then several words on the qualifier, diacritical.1 i understand hermeneutics as an art of deciphering multiple meaning. in its most basic sense this relates to the human capacity to have ‘two thinks at a time,’ as james joyce said. more precisely, it refers to the practice of discerning indirect, tacit or allusive meanings, of sensing another sense beyond or beneath apparent sense. this special human activity may in turn call for a method of secondorder, reflective interpretation involving a process of disclosing concealed messages, either by a) unmasking covered-up meaning (hermeneutics of suspicion) or b) by disclosing surplus meaning (hermeneutics of affirmation). in short, i understand hermeneutics as the task of interpreting (hermeneuein) plural meaning in response to the polysemy of language and life.2 hermeneutics, thus viewed, is an activity carried out in the name of its founding spirit, hermes: messenger of gods, guardian of thresholds, and carrier of cryptic codes. the three original disciplines of hermeneutics, formulated by friedrich schleiermacher in the 19th century, were theology, law, and philology. why these? because each solicited an interpretation of dual meanings: a) divine and human (theology), b) prosecutorial and defensive (law), c) ancient and actual (philology). all three disciplines called for a method of discriminating between different and often conflicting readings. wilhelm dilthey would add ‘history’ to the list as a universal human science devoted to reading between past and present; a science, which he saw as a model for a general hermeneutics of life as it interprets itself. whence the birth of philosophical hermeneutics. later, heidegger would broaden the definition further in speaking of an ontological hermeneutic committed to understanding the fundamental difference between being and beings a task based on a pre-understanding of our everyday existence as being-towarddeath. the famous hermeneutic circle. finally, and more recently, thinkers like gadamer, ricoeur, and caputo have augmented the contemporary project of philosophical hermeneutics in various significant ways (semantic, psychoanalytic, deconstructive). but what all these different hermeneutic movements share is a commitment to the task of adjudicating kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 2 between different levels of meaning. so where exactly does diacritical hermeneutics fit in? and how might it contribute to the hermeneutic legacy described above? i have already sketched my project of diacritical hermeneutics in the introduction to strangers gods and monsters and other related texts.3 but as john caputo has remarked, this project has, to date, been more performed than explained. i will attempt to redress the balance here by addressing the question under five main headings: 1) in the most obvious sense, dia-critical involves a critical function of interrogation. i mean this in the modern sense of the term from kant’s three critiques down to the more contemporary movements of critical theory from horkheimer and adorno to habermas and foucault. in this broad sweep, i would obviously include critiques of race, class, gender, power, and the unconscious: all critical philosophies, which carry on the legacy, amongst others, of the ‘three masters of suspicion’ (freud, marx, and nietzsche). in short, i understand critique here as both a) an inquiry into the conditions of possibility of meaning; and b) a critical exposure of ‘masked’ power in the name of liberation and justice. this latter more ethico-political aspect of critique is one i find lacking in most mainstream hermeneutic methods to date (dilthey, heidegger, gadamer) until we arrive at ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion and vattimo’s hermeneutics of subversion. 2) second, dia-critical involves the criteriological function of discerning between competing claims to meaning. this comprises hermeneutic retrievals of previous testimonies as well as future oriented projects utopian, messianic, eschatological. ‘emancipation is itself a tradition,’ as ricoeur says; it is a form of ‘anticipatory memory.’ the idea of emancipation does not erupt ex nihilo. it does not start with modern revolutions and the enlightenment; rather it draws from a whole palimpsest of prior narratives of liberation going back, in the west, to biblical stories of exodus and the socratic awakening. aristotle addresses the question of ethical criteria already when he remarks that if you wish to communicate the meaning of a virtue you recount the story of someone who embodies it e.g., achilles for courage, penelope for constancy, tiresius for wisdom. such narratives ancient or modern provide phronesis with exemplary paradigms by which to measure, judge, and act. otherwise how could one tell the difference between just and unjust actions? these differences require careful criteriological discriminations. and there are obviously other essential criteria apart from the narrative one mentioned (e.g., rational deliberation of rights, virtue ethics, pragmatist judgment, phenomenological intuition of values, spiritual exercises, feminist and socio-cultural critiques, wisdom traditions etc.). in short, pace deconstruction, i am not against criteria as long as they involve vigilant discernments and distinctions. 3) third, in keeping with the more precise dictionary definition of dia-critical, i refer to a grammatological attention to inflections of linguistic marks. in this technical sense, diacritics provides rules for differentiating between minute units of language (signifiers, graphemes, accents). think, for example, of the difference, which the following accents grave, acute, circumflex, and diaeresis make on the same letter in the french language: é è ê, ë. or think of how ‘où’ with an accent (meaning ‘where’) differs from ‘ou’ without accent (meaning ‘or’). these silent, discreet signs distinguish between values of the same character. small graphic demarcations thus serve to avoid confusion between otherwise identical letters, helping us differentiate between distinct meanings. more generally, in kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 3 structural and post-structural linguistics, diacritics denotes a way of reading differentially, across gaps and oppositions, in keeping with the saussurian maxim that language is a network of ‘differences without positive terms’. in these respects, diacritics is all about microreading. and here, i think, i share common ground with john caputo’s radical hermeneutics and jacques derrida’s deconstruction.4 4) in addition to this technical usage in linguistic and semiotic practice, diacritics also has the older diagnostic meaning of reading the body. the greek terms, dia-krinein and dia-krisis, referred to the medical or therapeutic practice of diagnosing symptoms of bodily fevers, colorations, and secretions. in this sense, the word designated the hermeneutic art of discriminating between health and disease. such a skill to read between the lines of skin and flesh in order to sound the movements of the soul (homeopathic or allopathic) was often a matter of life and death. needless to say, this model of micrological reading of somatic and psychosomatic symptoms has deep implications for the practice of philosophical reading in its own right. i agree with wittgenstein that philosophy is therapy. in sum, diacritical hermeneutics should do you good! 5) these four characteristics – critical, criteriological, grammatological and diagnostic comprise the basis of what i call, finally and most primally, ‘carnal hermeneutics.’ here we are concerned with a hermeneutics that goes all the way down. it covers diacritical readings of different kinds of others human, animal or divine. all with skins on. such carnal hermeneutics has a crucial bearing, to take just one example, on how we ‘sense’ subtle distinctions between hostile and hospitable strangers (the same term, hostis can refer to guest or enemy). and pursuing this example i would say that diacritical hermeneutics has two patron saints the god hermes and the dog argos.5 for if hermes discloses hermetic messages from above, argos brings animal savvy from below. the former guides our deciphering of cryptic masks and messages (hermes appears to baucis disguised as a beggar). the latter, argos, imparts a canine flair for recognizing the friend or enemy in the visitor (e.g., odysseus returned to ithaca to oust the suitors).6 diacritical hermeneutics may thus be defined as both sacred and terrestrial in so far as it ranges up and down in ascending and descending spirals from the highest hintings of the absolute to the lowest soundings of the abyss. while hands reach up, feet reach down. but no matter how high or low hermeneutic ‘sense’ goes, it never leaves us totally in the dark. it is not blind but half-seeing and halfbelieving. it is a sort of incarnate phronesis, which probes, scents, and filters. something akin to wittgenstein’s seeing-as in our most ordinary perceptions or heidegger’s understanding-as in our most basic moods (see his analysis of verstehen-befindlichkeit in being and time). this fundamental form of existential sensibility is further radicalized in merleau-ponty’s more embodied notion of ‘diacritical perception’ to which i shall return below.7 at this stage, and by way of addressing some of the more recent discussions of hermeneutics, we might ask how our fivefold model of diacritical hermeneutics compares with john caputo’s method of ‘radical hermeneutics’ inspired by derrida’s deconstruction. while the diacritical and radical approaches share a common commitment to micro-logical reading, there are significant differences. in contrast to deconstructive sanssavoir, diacritical hermeneutics practices a certain savoir, which goes beyond derrida’s maxim of ‘reading in the dark.’ diacritical savoir should, i suggest, be understood in its original etymological sense of tasting: sakearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 4 vourer, sapere, sapientia. it is not knowledge, in the purely cognitive or theoretical attitude (here i agree with deconstruction); but it is some kind of savvy nonetheless. sense as primal interpretation, reading between the lines of skin and flesh. a sensing, which makes sense in the three connotations of the french sens: sensation, direction, meaning. i am concerned here, in short, with a multilayered sensing which goes all the way up and down like jacob’s ladder from thought to touch and back again.8 meaning ascending and descending in open-ended spirals. * by way of elaborating further on the different inflections between diacritical hermeneutics and deconstruction let me explore for a moment the implications of what i call ‘diacritical sensation.’ i refer here, most simply, to familiar phrases like ‘i don’t know how to read you?’ or ‘your face betrays your feelings’ or the proverbial ‘the eyes are the mirrors of the soul.’ lady macbeth puts it well to her husband, ‘your face is like a book, my thane, where men may read strange matters.’ mostly such phrases are used in relation to facial expressions glancing or shading of eyes, widening of pupils, raising of eyebrows, altering of complexion, stiffening or loosening of lips, smiling or grimacing of mouth. but facial vision, as bearer of inner moods, deep feelings and moral emotions, is not the only medium of expression. in addition to our ability to see (or see through) we also have the ability to hear, touch, smell and taste. each sense has its own special savoir/saveur and is deeply structured in terms of body mapping, orientation and negotiation. sensing is never neutral. every sense possesses its particular symbolique, as levi-strauss demonstrated in his structural anthropology of la pensée sauvage. even the most basic culture of food is a way of carving up our universe into edible and inedible, raw and cooked, herbivorous and carnivorous, hostile and hospitable. matters of taste are often matters of inclusion and exclusion, even of life or death. and taste here is as literal as it is figural (since it subverts the distinction); or, more accurately, it is not just a matter of aesthetic indifference, as kant held, but of actual savoring upon the lips, tongue and palette. man is what he eats, as the old adage goes; but he is also how he eats. the contents of the menu are less important than how one chooses this dish or that, or mixes flavors and savors, or why one sits down to the meal in the first place. chaqu’un à son goût. taste is, perhaps, the primordial sense of carnal hermeneutics. the most alimentary is the most elementary. for tasting is already, ab initio, a transfiguring of nature into culture. it involves a splitting of the world into binaries which may remain opposed or symbolically combine.9 a dialectic of sundering and salvation through food is to be found in most wisdom traditions. adam and eve taste the apple. abraham and sarah dine with sacred strangers. krishna swallows the puff of rice giving fullness back to emptiness. jesus breaks bread in emmaus restoring his broken body. isis’s fish consumes the dismembered flesh of osiris. each great wisdom tradition is, it seems, marked by such moments of inaugural eating. let me say a few words about just one of these foundational scenes before returning to a more phenomenological account of diacritical sensation. * one of the oldest records of sacred eating, in the western indo-european tradition, is to be found in the taittiriya upanishad. here we read how the divine manifests itself in the offering and eating of food.10 ‘treat your guests like gods’ (1.11.2) when giving food, we are kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 5 told, for ‘that (food) is brahman.’ (3.1) the true self of mind and vital breath was considered to dwell within food, considered as an interconnection between the cosmic elements of air and earth. (3.9) the task of the host is to discern this culinary ‘correspondence’ and thereby recognize the god within the guest. offering hospitality to the guest is a sacred act in that it reminds us of the integrity of body and soul illustrated by the equation: food-true happiness-brahman. the upanishad concludes with a resounding paean to the transfiguring power of food. the self becomes sacred in a sacramental identification with eating: ‘i am food! i eat him who eats the food! i have conquered the whole universe! i am like the light in the firmament.’ (3.10.6) this ancient belief found classic expression in the formula: ‘anna (food) the first manifestation of brahman’; and it later became the basis for a long vedantic tradition of hospitality where saintly figures offer themselves as food and reveal themselves in the act of eating and being eaten. the unexpected guest (athiti) who asks to be fed is a god waiting to become manifest. in feeding the guest we greet the divine and taste its food. a primal act of carnal hermeneutics. we find clear affinities here with similar acts of sacred hospitality in biblical literature. recall again abraham and sarah feeding the three divine strangers at mamre (gen); or christ offering his body as eucharistic bread at the last supper and at emmaus; or returning as the stranger (hospes) who asks and receives food from passersby. (matt 25) i have treated such inaugural scenes of sacred transformation between hosts and guests elsewhere, so i will not dwell further on them now.11 suffice it to note that the sacred sharing of food is not confined to hindu or biblical traditions but is also to be found in buddhist, greek and other cultural myths of gods appearing as guests at the table of hospitality. on studying such recurring motifs one might be tempted to infer the existence of some trans-cultural, or quasi-universal, practice of gustatory hospitality. and one might be right. but such comparative theologies of the tongue themselves involve a work of diacritical hermeneutics a second-order methodical interpretation of first-order interpretations of carnal communication between hosts and guests.12 all such primal scenes of eating, across diverse religions and cultures, bear witness to common practices of tasting the divine in the human and the human in the divine. they offer us choice ingredients for a gourmet guide to the gods. delicate dégustations of hidden things. it might be noted, finally, that if gustatory hospitality is one inaugural practice of civilizations, sexual hospitality is another. note, for example, how in biblical scripture sarah and mary both experience ‘miraculous conceptions’ (sarah is barren, mary a virgin) when they receive strangers into their heartswombs (chora), while many heroines of hellenic, celtic and eastern mythologies have carnal congress with guests-become-gods. in such founding narratives, touch, smell, sight and sound are often synaesthesized with taste in the meetings of gods and mortals. from the beginning divinity becomes flesh in multiple ways. the polysemy of such primal enfleshment is, i submit, a key task of diacritical hermeneutics. * we do not, however, have to look to the ancient narratives to find evidence for the diacritical connoisseurship of the senses. we already find examples of such carnal hermeneutics in our everyday sensations. here we might take special heed of the pioneering phenomenology of merleau-ponty, and in particular his notion of ‘diacritical perception.’ this idea was first developed in his collège de france lecture courses, la conscience et kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 6 l’acquisition du language (1950) and le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression (1953, henceforth msme). borrowing liberally from saussure's notion that words only signify by virtue of their differences with other words, merleau-ponty argues that meanings are never given as isolated terms or objects but always as parts of a mobile interaction of signs involving intervals, absences, folds and gaps (écarts). this is not just a function of language, however, but the very structure of perception itself. insofar as perception is thus structured like language in its nascent state it is diacritical. here is how merleau-ponty puts it in an important note from his 1953 lectures: diacritical notion of the perceptual sign. this is the idea that we can perceive differences without terms, gaps with regard to a level (of meaning) which is not itself an object the only way to give perception a consciousness worthy of itself and which does not alter the perceived into an ob-ject, into the signification of an isolating or reflexive attitude. (msme, p. 203-204) in a subsequent note entitled ‘diacritical perception’ no longer merely a ‘notion’ but now a sensible quality of perception itself merleau-ponty adds this intriguing example. to see another’s visage is to interpret it carnally ‘as’ this or that form of expression: to perceive a physiognomy, an expression, is always to deploy diacritical signs, in the same manner as one realizes an expressive gesticulation with one's body. here each (perceptual) sign has the unique virtue of differentiating from others, and these differences which appear for the onlooker or are used by the speaking subject are not defined by the terms between which they occur, but rather define these in the first place. (msme, p. 211) this logic of diacritical perception is alien to the classical approach of difference presupposing identity. on the contrary, writes merleau-ponty, the identity of terms emerges in the tension of their differences, their contours arising from the encroachment (empiètement) of things on things. and here he coins the term ‘infra-thing’ in contradistinction to the old notion of discrete objective substances. here merleau-ponty departs from the aristotelian habit of defining something new in terms of a preexisting genre or foundation. diacritical perception through gaps reveals the inadequate character of the traditional one-to-one correlation between consciousness and object; such derived correspondence arises only in retrospect and ignores the fact that there never was an object in the first place but only several different infra-things, and at the very minimum a reversible interplay between figure and ground (fond). this plurality of infra-things is irreducible to the dualist framework of an isolated mind faced with an isolated object. diacritical perception is, merleau-ponty insists, the sensing of meaning as it expresses itself in the intervals between such infra-things of our experience. it involves our sense of identity through differentiation rather than differentiation through identity.13 our most basic carnal sensations may thus be said to be structured diacritically in so far as they are structured like the phonetic differentiations of language. “to have a body capable of expressive articulation or action and to have a phonetic system capable of constructing signs, is the same thing” (msme, p. 204). our body schemas, merleau-ponty claims, operate like phonetic systems which function according to principles of which they are not conscious (e.g., parole is not conscious of langue). but to compare carnal perception to linguistic structure in this way is not to reduce the latter to the former (naturalism), nor to kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 7 reduce the former to the latter (structuralism). nature does not make the body any more than it makes phonetic systems. and it would be a mistake to construe the perceptual capacity to play with principles of which it is not immediately aware as some kind of ‘unconscious.’ perception of figure is not simultaneously perception of ground but rather ‘imperception’: the sensing of the invisible in and through the visible, a ‘sentir en profondeur,’ by negations, absences, gaps (écarts). or as merleau-ponty puts it in gestalt language: “consciousness of the figure is consciousness without knowledge of the ground (fond)” (msme, p. 204). we may say therefore that diacritical perception witnesses the birth of expression, against an unformed background, as a meaning which begins and re-begins, an awakening which takes the form of a figure that is prefigured and refigured again and again, now fore, now aft, now here, now there.14 hence the importance of merleau-ponty’s metaphor of modulation: “consider sensation itself, the act of sensing (le sentir), as the intervening of a figure on a fond. modulation. as a sound modulates silence. as a color modulates an open space by varying it. every sign is diacritical” (msme, p. 206). and merleau-ponty adds significantly, “this is valéry’s idea,” thereby indicating that his use of the term ‘diacritical’ is as indebted to literary poetics as it is to structural linguistics. either way, this birth of meaning occurs not in the manner of a foundational cause (as in the old metaphysics) but as a diacritical play of visible and invisible, an embodied vigilance capable of signaling and resuscitating full being (l’être total) on the basis of a fragment (msme, p. 204205). this diacritical interplay between figure et fond represents an endless reversibility for what is one perceiver’s figure is another's fond and vice versa. the diacritical art of perception, enacted in the advent of sensing, ultimately amounts, in merleau-ponty’s view, to the displacement of natural cause by cultural expression. in the 1953 lecture notes, merleau-ponty offers one further telling illustration of the diacritical isomorphism of perception and language. he compares the perception of movement to the comprehension of a sentence. we only understand the beginning of a sentence from its end, he says, just as we only perceive movement in light of its goal. perception does not follow something as it displaces itself from one fixed place to another, as if one solid object succeeded another; it proceeds rather as a wave which stretches back and forth across distances in the same manner as a sentence circulates through a whole linguistic field. carnal sensation is a fold (pli) in the moving flesh of the world; there is no world without it and it cannot be without a world. “like signs in language,” writes merleau-ponty, “the points traversed in movement have only a diacritical value; they do not function in themselves as places but rather as passages in the same way as words of a sentence are traces of an intention which (invisibly) transpierces them” (msme, p. 205). or to put it another way, perception operates like language in that it does not confront an ob-ject head on, but senses things which speak to it laterally, on the side, provoking one’s ‘complicity’ in the manner of an ‘obsession.’ less objective than obsessional, then, the thing perceived ‘solicits’ us (valéry). like an epiphany that calls for remembrance (proust); or a poetic word which invites conaissance (claudel); or a pregnancy that yearns for birth and rebirth (bachelard); or a frosted branch whose every crystal signals a whole order of emergent meanings (stendhal). with all these literary analogies, merleauponty is suggesting that each perception of the world constructs itself on the basis of an emerging part which solicits our co-creation of this world; just as language constructs itself in terms of a circular movement between a kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 8 present part and absent whole. (merleauponty also uses here the analogy of a film montage where each frame functions in the movements between gaps across an invisible background). but it is important to remind ourselves here that the diacritical model of carnal interpretation is not a matter of voluntarist invention (à la sartre). it is not a question of reading into something but of reading from (à partir) something. we are solicited by the flesh of the world before we read ourselves back into it. carnal attention is as much reception as creation. we are far from idealism. and this is why i think merleau-ponty insists that the solicitation of our body schema functions symbolically, laterally, indirectly, like a sexual or ontological surprise. diacritical sensation, across distances and intervals, comes not just from us but from another person or thing that meets us ‘like a stranger in the dark.’ merleau-ponty again cites paul valéry to make his point. “a man is nothing so long as nothing draws from him effects and productions which surprise him” (msme, p. 205). but to be surprised one must be ready to receive, open to solicitation and seduction, prepared to partake of the thing sensed and symbolized. every sense, as merleau-ponty concludes, has its own symbolique. every carnal act and organ inscribes its own imaginaire. from sexual expression to the act of eating itself. nature is already culture as soon as we sense it as this or that. sensation is expression and expression sensation. flesh is word and word flesh. hence the significance of merleau-ponty’s description of perception in terms of a diacritical eucharistic communion: just as the sacrament not only symbolizes, in sensible species, an operation of grace, but is also the real presence of god, which it causes to occupy a fragment of space and communicates to those who eat of the consecrated bread, provided that they are inwardly prepared, in the same way the sensible has not only a motor and vital significance, but is nothing other than a certain way of being in the world suggested to us from some point in space, and seized and acted upon by our body, provided that it is capable of doing so, so that sensation is literally a form of communion.15 what we have here is a basic analogy of proper proportionality: a is to b what c is to d. namely, the sacrament of transubstantiation is to the responsive communicant what the sensible is to the capable perceiver. merleau-ponty goes on to delineate this quasieucharistic power of the sensible as follows: i am brought into relation with an external being, whether it be in order to open myself to it or to shut myself off from it. if the qualities radiate around them a certain mode of existence, if they have the power to cast a spell and what we called just now a sacramental value, this is because the sentient subject does not posit them as objects, but enters into a sympathetic relation with them, makes them his own and finds in them his momentary law.16 in other words, each sensory encounter with the strangeness of the world is an invitation to a ‘natal pact’ where, through what we might call ‘diacritical sympathy,’ the human self and the strange world give birth to one another. sacramental sensation is a reversible rapport between myself and others, wherein the sensible gives birth to itself through me. a fine example of carnal hermeneutics. everyday perception as exquisite empathy. * kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 9 let me add, finally, that because diacritical hermeneutics is carnal in the first and last instance it fulfills itself as applied.17 to say that understanding is incarnate is to say that it answers to the life of suffering and action. its application to human embodiment is its original and ultimate end. and here we return to its diagnostic role as a caring for lived existence a listening to the pulse of suffering and solicitation between one human being and another. and, at times, between human being and that which precedes and exceeds it. it is in the passages ‘between’ that the dia of diacritical takes on its full meaning. diagnosis calls for endless dialogue: between disciplines, between text and action, between word and flesh, and above all between human persons who give and receive wisdom, attention, and healing. notes 1this essay is a development of a talk delivered to the canadian hermeneutics institute at the university of calgary in june 2011. 2 this outline of a general philosophical hermeneutics is particularly indebted to paul ricoeur, in the wake of the prior formulations of hans-georg gadamer and martin heidegger. see also note 8 on ricoeur below. 3 for my previous descriptions of diacritical hermeneutics see the introduction to my strangers, gods and monsters (london: routledge, 2003); interview in my debates in contemporary philosophy (new york: fordham university press, 2007, p. 249250); ‘a dialogue in diacritical hermeneutics’ in le souci du passage, essays in honour of jean greisch (edited by philippe capelle, edition du cerf, paris, 2004); ‘entre soi-meme et un autre: l'herméneutique diacritique de ricoeur’ in ricoeur: cahier de l'herne (edited by francois azouvi and myriam revault d'allonnes , l'herne, paris, 2004); ‘eros, diacritical hermeneutics and god’ in philosophy today, vol. 55 special spep issue (edited by cynthia willett and leonard lawlor, 2011); and ‘diacritical hermeneutics’ in maria luisa portocarrero, luis umbelino, and andrzej wiercinski, ed., hermeneutic rationality/la rationalité herméneutique (münster: lit verlag, 2011), p. 177-196. i find my thinking on diacritical hermeneutics resonates, at times, with the recent work of jean greisch, merold westphal, peter kemp and david tracy. 4 i am particularly indebted to john caputo and jacques derrida on this question of micrological reading and the attendant notion of our textured experience as a basic form of écriture, which for me rejoins in interesting ways the old medieval idea of the liber mundi (‘semiological ontology’) and the earlier greek idea of the logos of nature as a primary tacit language (logos endiathetos) calling for a more articulate verbal language (logos prophorikos). heraclitus and the stoics were obvious proponents of this notion of logos-inphusis which, of course, was later retrieved in the christian notion of the ‘word made flesh’ (see augustine’s reworking of the stoic logoi spermatikoi) and the kabbalistic notion of the world as traced by the secret letters of creation (sefer yetsirah). in his late work, the visible and the invisible, merleau-ponty offers an interesting hermeneutic retrieval of the logos prophorikos/ endiathetos distinction from the point of view of what i am calling a carnal-diacritical phenomenology. see also his essays on embodied language in signs (in particular ‘indirect language and the voices of silence’) and our discussion below of his notion of ‘diacritical perception’ in his collège de france course notes of 1953. 5 the name of the dog, argos, who recognizes odysseus in bk 17 of the odyssey is derived from the greek word argos meaning gleaming, shining (from which the latin term for kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 10 silver, argentum, is derived). the word enargeis is used by homer in bk 16 to mark the ‘shining’ of the goddess athena which transforms odysseus from a beggar-stranger back into himself, but unlike the dog argos, his own son, telemachus, does not at first recognize his father, mistaking him instead for a god. it is telling, i think, that this connection between argos/enargeis and diacritical hermeneutics occurs in one of the oldest texts in western literature: a lesson in how to discern between mortal and immortal strangers through our carnal senses; indeed a lesson which, homer suggests, dogs may well have to teach men! i am grateful to richard capobianco for bringing this passage from the odyssey to my attention in martin heidegger, ‘on the question concerning the determination of the matter for thinking’, trans. richard capobianco and marie göbel, epoché 14(2) (spring 2010) p. 213-23. 6 it is telling that the first thing father and son do in the moment of mutual disclosure is to eat a meal, the two ‘strangers’ (hospes) becoming host (hospes) and guest (hospes) to each other. one finds a similar polysemy at work in the greek term xenos (stranger, guest, enemy). a good example of diacritical hermeneutics as hospitality (xenizein). see our discussion of these terminological and etymological variations of hospes, hostis and xenos in anatheism: returning to god after god (columbia university press, new york, 2010, pp. 27-28, 47-49). 7 we could also include here max scheler’s account of embodied ethical feeling in forms of sympathy, julia kristeva’s psychoanalytic reading of semiotic unconscious experience in desire in language and later work; and emmanuel levinas’ ethico-phenomenological analysis of pre-conceptual ‘sensibility’ in otherwise than being. see, for example, how levinas describes the relation of subjectivity as one of ‘sensibility’ and ‘vulnerablity’ to pleasure and pain (ibid., chapter 3) a form of radical carnal ‘contact,’ ‘proximity,’ and ‘exposure’ prior to intentionality and consciousness. “the exposure to another is,” he writes, “proximity, obsession by the neighbor, an obsession despite oneself, that is, a pain” (ibid., p. 55). levinas does not deny this is already a form of language: but it is language in its most primordial expression/obsession: an ethical ‘saying’ before the ‘said’ of thematization and representation, a language where the self does not give signs but is itself a sign of saying (ibid., p. 47). this is what levinas means when he says that sensing is ‘saying’ (le dire) or pre-thematic ‘signifying’ (signifyingness or signifiance). i am indebted here to james taylor’s essay, ‘after the modern subject: between activity and passivity in heidegger, levinas and gadamer’ in maria luisa portocarrero, luis umbelino, and andrzej wiercinski, ed., hermeneutic rationality/la rationalité herméneutique (münster: lit verlag, 2011). see also the recent phenomenological work of jeffrey bloechl on levinas’ notion of sensibility as well as the recent phenomenological writings of jean-luc marion on the erotic phenomenon, jean-louis chrétien on the mystical-poetic body and of michel henry’s phenomenology of life. michel serres’ work on the five senses, though not directly of the hermeneuticalphenomenological tradition, is also of relevance here. 8 for earlier sketches of a carnal hermeneutics of discernment see our strangers, gods and monsters, chapters 3-5 and 7; anatheism, chapters 1-2 and 5; and ‘at the threshold: foreigners, strangers, others’ in richard kearney and kascha semonovitch, eds., phenomenologies of the stranger: between hostility and hospitality (new york: fordham university press, 2011, pp. 3-29). one might also mention here the seminal work of my mentor, paul ricoeur, and especially his sketch of a phenomenology of the body in kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 11 freedom and nature: the voluntary and the involuntary (1960). in this volume, ricoeur states that human existence is torn between “two fundamental projects”, namely “the organic life” searching for immediate completion and “the spiritual life” of thinking aiming at the perfection of the whole. this ‘most primordial conflict’ epitomises “the disproportion of βίος and λόγος”. the site of this conflict between βίος and λόγος, he writes, is ‘my body’ and it is unbridgeable. the governing principle between the animal and the human is “my body” a point that is analysed in three sections of freedom and nature, i) “introduction: corporeal existence within the limits of eidetics”; ii) “body and the total field of motivation: the level of history and the level of the body” (4); and iii) “life: birth”. in the context of his subsequent work, fallible man (1960) while perhaps still under the formative influence of both edmund husserl’s phenomenology of leib and of gabriel marcel’s existential notion of ‘incarnation’ ricoeur takes “my body” to be “an originating mediator ‘between’ myself and the world”. and, he claims, it is precisely this body which provides the means for both acting in the world and distancing myself from the natural: it opens me onto the world, either allowing perceived things to appear or making me dependent on things i lack and of which i experience the need and desire because they are elsewhere or even nowhere in the world…in a word, my body opens me to the world by everything it is able to do. this analysis he concludes with the claim: “[my body] is implicated as a power in the instrumentality of the world, in the practicable aspects of this world that my action furrows through, in the products of work and art.” this shift from “my body” to the more linguistic functions of work and art (poetic language) already anticipates ricoeur’s hermeneutic turn in the sixties. ricoeur’s early phenomenology of the body remains, however, largely a promissory note. after his embrace of a hermeneutics of signs he rarely returns to an exploration of the flesh, though it is tempting to see his preoccupation with the relation between force and sens that is between an energetics of drive/desire and a philosophy of interpretation in freud as a gesture in this direction (freud and philosophy, 1965). his engagement with aristotle’s notion of cathartic passions in volume i of time and narrative (1983) and proust’s world of involuntary sensations and embodied epiphanies in volume 2 of time and narrative (1984) might well have been further occasions to sound a carnal hermeneutics of taste, smell and touch (proust’s own favored senses); but ricoeur opts instead for an ‘apprenticeship of signs’ which largely ignores the deeper opacities of the carnal unconscious. and his sustained fascination with spinoza’s conatus does not alas connect the ‘desire to be’ with an incarnate bearer of this desire. it is desire without skin. finally, though one’s hopes are revived somewhat when one comes to ricoeur’s mention of our ‘corporeal/terrestrial’ condition in study 6 of oneself as another (1990) and his dialectic of embodiment and alterity in the final study 10 of oneself as another, this turns out to be minimalist a five page adjudication between husserl and levinas on the other. it is more a mediation between two rival positions on the flesh as action/passion too much activity in husserl, too much passivity in levinas than a serious diacritical engagement with the enigma of enfleshment per se. (and this inspite of his invocation of ‘flesh’ in his summary list of imponderable others’ in the final paragraph of the book). work remains to be done on bringing ricoeur’s phenomenology of the body/bios/eros into fertile dialogue with merleau-ponty’s radical analysis of ‘diacritical perception’ and la chair. (i am indebtkearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 12 ed to timo helenius for several of these references). another missed dialogue that could be mentioned here is that between ricoeur and the feminist hermeneutics of the body running from luce irigaray and julia kristeva to judith butler and elizabeth grosz. see the timely essay, ‘understanding the body: the relevance of gadamer’s and ricoeur’s view of the body for feminist theory’, louise derksen and annemie halsema, in george taylor and francis mootz, gadamer and ricoeur: critical horizons or contemporary hermeneutics (continuum, new york, 2011). amongst other texts, they discuss ricoeur’s little known essay, ‘wonder, eroticism and enigma’ in cross currents, vol. 14, 1969. 9 see claude lévi-strauss, structural anthropology (new york: penguin, 1968). 10 see francis clooney, ‘food, the guest, and the taittiriya upanishad: hospitality in the hindu traditions’ in richard kearney and james taylor, ed., hosting the stranger: between religions (new york: continuum, 2010), pp. 139-146. 11 see chapters 1, 4 and 5 of anatheism. 12 for comparative cultural/religious examples of gustatory hospitality see also the recent essays of kalpana seshadri, andy rotman, joseph lumbard, and marianne moyaert in kearney and taylor, ed., hosting the stranger: between religions. the example of the classic graeco-roman myth of baucis and philomen is also relevant here in that it tells how this old poor couple became hosts to zeus and hermes who first appeared as beggars and only revealed themselves as gods when baucis offered them her best herbs and philomen his precious goose. here is a passage from ovid’s metamorphoses book viii which shows the central transformative role of ‘food’ in this primal scene of carnal hospitality. note the detailed description of the culinary preparation and offering of each dish, comprising a good portion of ovid’s short text: the old woman (baucis), her skirts tucked up, her hands trembling, placed a table there, but a table with one of the three legs unequal: a piece of broken pot made them equal. pushed underneath, it countered the slope, and she wiped the level surface with fresh mint. on it she put the black and green olives that belong to pure minerva, and the cornelian cherries of autumn, preserved in wine lees; radishes and endives; a lump of cheese; and lightly roasted eggs, untouched by the hot ashes; all in clay dishes. after this she set out a carved mixing bowl for wine, just as costly, with cups made of beech wood, hollowed out, and lined with yellow bees’ wax. there was little delay, before the fire provided its hot food, and the wine, of no great age, circulated, and then, removed again, made a little room for the second course. there were nuts, and a mix of dried figs and wrinkled dates; plums, and sweet-smelling apples in open wicker baskets; and grapes gathered from the purple vines. in the center was a gleaming honeycomb. above all, there was the additional presence of well-meaning faces, and no unwillingness, or poverty of spirit. meanwhile the old couple noticed that, as soon as the mixing bowl was empty, it refilled itself, unaided, and the wine appeared of its own accord. they were fearful at this strange and astonishing sight, and timidly baucis and philemon murmured a prayer, their palms upwards, and begged the gods’ forgiveness for the meal, and their unpreparedness. they had a goose, the guard for their tiny cottage: as hosts they prepared to sacrifice it for their divine guests. but, quick-winged, it wore the old people out and, for a long time, eskearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 13 caped them, at last appearing to take refuge with the gods themselves. then the heaven-born ones told them not to kill it. ‘we are gods,’ they said. (ovid, metamorphoses, bk viii: “philomen and baucis,” trans. anthony s. kline, university of virginia, 2000) in ‘departures: hospitality as mediation’, kalpana seshadri offers a hermeneutic commentary on an analogous story in the bhaghavata purana (bk 10, cantos 80-81). it relates how a poor man kuchela offers a meager bowl of puffed rice to his friend krishna who gleefully eats the mere nothing and returns the gift of a nothing that is the ultimate fullness. this emptiness in fullness recalls the emptying/filling wine bowl of philomenon and baucis, as well as the buddhist notion that ‘emptiness’ is the highest form of fullness. seshadri offers this commentary: the poor scholar (kuchela) gathers together, in a piece of clean sari torn from his wife's shoulder, a heap of puffed rice, itself borrowed from a kindly neighbor emptiness itself, rice with kernels removed, with nothing inside. and this he sets out to give to him, the friend who had the great capacity to receive...the friend sinks his palm in the heap of rice and opening his mouth wide eats a fistful with sheer delight, of the emptiness and the nothing, and reaches for more, and yet more...and as the friend empties the emptiness within the puffed rice, the scholar feels himself filling up. his satisfaction is immeasurable. incalculable happiness and fortune accrue to him, the more he gives of what he does not have, the more he finds himself receiving what he could not imagine. can something come out of nothing? is it possible to give, eat and be full of the nothing? is this the meaning of grace? and is this also the time of hospitality? ...later kuchela recalls that he had asked nothing, indeed he needs nothing... he is again blessed. (kalpana seshadri, “departures: hospitality as mediation” in richard kearney and james taylor, eds., hosting the stranger: between religions, p. 52). it might also be interesting to do a comparative analysis of the role of the goose as a sacred bird in other cultural-religious myths, for example, the “paramahamsa” in both buddhist and hindu scriptures, referring to the divinely enlightened sage. for kabir, the sihk-sufi-hindu poet, the hamsa or himalayan goose, was considered to be a wandering migrant soul who bore secret messages and we also find the goose-swan playing a key role in the rig veda story of puru ravas and his wife uruvasi. the goose that flies over mount kailash, and bathes in the lake of manasarova (the lake of the mind, manas) remained a recurring poetic theme. the gooseswan also plays a key role of 'transformation' in the popular story of nala and damayanti from the mahabharata as well as in the celtic and greek mythologies and popular folktales like grimm’s goose girl. i am indebted to my colleagues, francis clooney, jyoti sahi, joseph o’leary and kalpana seshedra for this and related information on buddhist and hindu narratives of hospitality. 13 i am indebted to emmanuel de saint aubert for bringing these passages to my attention, and especially those from merleau-ponty’s collège de france lecture notes of 1953, le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression (metispresses, geneva, 2011). in his “introduction,” 19 f, de saint aubert offers a very illuminating commentary on the importantance of ‘diacritical perception’ in the later work of merleau-ponty. see also here merleau-ponty’s essays on embodied language in signs (in particular ‘indirect language and the voices of silence’). i would also like to express deep gratitude here to my close colkearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2011 article 2 14 league and friend, kascha semonovitch, who first introduced me to the later course notes of merleau-ponty, especially those on ‘nature.’ 14 see our development of this play between prefiguration and refiguration in our poétique du possible (paris: beauchesne, 1984) and the god who may be (bloomington, ind.: indiana university press, 2001). see also paul ricoeur, time and narrative, vol. 1, chapter 3 (chicago: university of chicago press, 1986). 15 maurice merleau-ponty, phenomenology of perception (london: routledge, 2002), p. 246. one finds a moving poetic metaphor for this idea of sacramental sensing as transubstantiation in george’s herbert poem ‘love bade me welcome’ which concludes with the very carnal line: “you must sit down, says love, and taste my meat. so i did sit and eat.” see kascha semonovitch’s essay on this subject in ‘incarnate experience and keeping the soul ajar’, religion and the arts, vol. 14, no. 5, special issue: “hospitality: imagining the stranger”, ed. christopher yates (2010), pp. 515-690. see also the commentary on this poem as a phenomenology of the embodied stranger in our joint essay, ‘at the threshold: foreigners, strangers, others’, in richard kearney and kascha semonovitch, eds., phenomenologies of the stranger: between hostility and hospitality (new york: fordham university press, 2011), pp. 25-29. 16 merleau-ponty, ibid. for further elaborations of a phenomenology of flesh see the recent work of didier franck, renaud barabas, john manoussakis, anthony steinbock and jean-luc nancy (in particular corpus and noli me tangere: on the raising of the body, both fordham university press, 2008-2009). for a more feminist hermeneutics of embodiment, drawing from the continental movement of thought, see the seminal writings of luce irigaray and julia kristeva; and more recently the work of kelly oliver, karmen mckendrick, virginia burrus, judith butler and elizabeth grosz. there are interesting opportunities opening up here for dialogue between a hermeneutics of flesh and recent pioneering work on notions of embodied intelligence beyond the traditional sensation/cognition divide by thinkers like antonio damasio, evan thompson, george lakoff and mark johnson (see in particular lakoff and johnson, philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought, basic books, new york, 1999). 17 this idea of ‘hermeneutic application’ was originally formulated by hans-georg gadamer and later developed in an ethical direction by paul ricoeur and peter kemp (refiguration and attestation), in a political direction by gianni vattimo and santiago zabala (subversion and emancipation), in a religious direction by david tracy, kevin hart and merold westphal (fragmentation and community), in an eco-environmental direction by david wood, brian treanor and edward casey (earth works and borders) and in a therapeutic direction by james risser and nancy moules (healing, grief, and compassion). corresponding author: amie c liddle email: aemilio@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics february 27, 2017 the author(s) 2017 deconstructing the phenomenon of apology amie c liddle abstract within alberta health services, the alberta provincial patient relations department employs patient relations consultants (prcs) to assist unsatisfied patients, investigate healthcare related concerns, and facilitate resolution. the patients, who are referred to as complainants, interpret their experience and come forward with their complaint; the prc is responsible to then interpret the complaint and take it forward for redress. in doing so, offering complainants an apology is unavoidable. patient relations is an interpretive practice, however, and there are shortcomings when apology is inserted into the conversation. in this article, i deconstruct apology from a patient relations perspective. i draw upon concepts in richard kearney’s strangers, gods and monsters (2003), as well as the work of hans-georg gadamer and jacques derrida, to present an interpretive account of how the hospital is a host to strangers, and to patients. following an unsatisfactory experience or adverse event, the patients become complainants, or monsters. the prcs, who are also considered hosts, receive the monsters at their door and, in turn, they can become hostages to the monsters. in attempting to achieve “otherness” with the “monsters,” the phenomenon of apology is examined. keywords hermeneutics, deconstruction, gadamer, kearney, apology, patient complaints within alberta health services, the alberta provincial patient relations department employs patient relations consultants (prc) to assist unsatisfied patients, investigate healthcare related concerns, and facilitate resolution. in the process of managing concerns, the need for apology inevitably arises. in deconstructing apology in the context of patient complaints, i draw upon concepts in richard kearney’s strangers, gods and monsters (2003). one may think this is an odd selection since the phenomenon of apology that i am examining is in the context of liddle journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 3 2 healthcare; however, it is a particularly relevant text. in reading strangers, gods and monsters, i noticed that i was experiencing a dichotomous relationship with the content. i was not reading of strangers, gods or monsters; they were patients, hospitals, and complainants. i also draw upon the work of philosophers, hans-georg gadamer and jacques derrida, to present an interpretive account of how the hospital is a host to strangers, and to patients. following an unsatisfactory experience or adverse event, the patients become complainants, or monsters. the prcs, who are also considered hosts, receive the monsters at their door and, in turn, they can become hostages to the monsters. in attempting to achieve “otherness” with the “monsters,” i examine the phenomenon of apology. initial thoughts i consider my “truths” and understandings of the phenomenon of apology in the context of patient complaints. i admit, with the hesitation of insulting others, that i dislike the word and the notion of apology. in the past, i suppose that i viewed apology as a positive way to take accountability and repair relationships. however, my experiences with apology as a prc have left me with an alternate view of the word and the contexts in which it is used. as i assess the actions of my colleagues, tucked away in our cramped cubicle spaces, busy taking complaints like a call center, i am drawn to the sounds of apologies. i apologize, i am so sorry that this has happened to you, i would like to apologize, please accept my apology. we apologize, we are so sorry that this has happened to you, we would like to apologize, please accept our apology. i am disconcerted by the appearance that these apologies have as i watch my colleagues drawing the phones from their ears as complainants yell with vengeance. i observe consultants placing their heads on their desks or gazing out the window in a moment of solitude after each interaction. it is from these observations that i somehow have grown to dread the word apology or the very words, “i am sorry,” or “we are sorry.” in my opinion, apology from the perspective of a prc is much like that of an empty gesture or a campaign promise. if a prc was pressured into answering the question “are you truly sorry?,” i predict that the answer would undeniably be “no, i am not.” if we consider this plausible response, then who is really sorry and what is the meaning or purpose of the apology? in this paper, i deconstruct apology from a professional patient relations’ perspective. according to rolfe (2004), “deconstruction is the enemy of the authorized/authoritarian text, the text that tries to tell it like it is” (p. 275). it is not intended to undermine the power of apology within other contexts. deconstruction of a complex phenomenon such as apology is no easy feat, but an attempt to do so reveals the multiple meanings of this word. hospitality hospitals are places for individuals to seek medical attention for whatever may ail them. the word hospital is derived from old french meaning hospital, ospital, “hostel, shelter, lodging,” liddle journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 3 3 from late latin hospitale, “guest-house, inn,” noun use of neuter of latin adjective hospitalis “of a guest or host.” as such, a hospital by its historical meanings implies a place that is welcoming and hospitable. if a hospital is a hospitable space, then it has some connection with hospitality. interestingly, hostis is the latin root for both hospitality and hostile and can be used to identify both invitation and invasion (kearney, 2003). when patients arrive at the hospital, they are strangers at the door; they presume to be met hospitably. one would assume that this is, in fact, absolute hospitality, because no patient is ever turned away. absolute hospitality “requires one to give all one has to another without asking any questions, imposing any restrictions, or requiring any compensation” (westmoreland, 2008, p. 3). the hospital treats every being, from the wealthy business man arriving at the door with a heart attack to the wounded gang member left at the door, shot or stabbed. as kearney (2003) identified absolute hospitality is a ‘yes’ to the stranger that goes beyond the limits of legal conventions which demands checks and measures regarding who to include and exclude. it defies border controls. by putting in such a hyperbolic way, derrida bids us make a leap of faith toward the stranger as ‘tout autre’. a stranger always unknowable and unpredictable. a stranger of radical alterity. (p.174) the hospital is representative of a trusting place where caring nurses and doctors are prepared to address the needs of any stranger they encounter. society is also lead to believe that hospitals are safe and that we must trust healthcare providers. healthcare professionals are obligated by their professions to unconditionally respect all patients and their needs. “when there is a knock at the door, you don’t know whether the person is a monster or messiah” (kearney, 2015, p.174). essentially, the hospital represents absolute openness and caring of all strangers and it does not matter if they are sinner or saint. according to kearney (2015), respect for the individuality of each stranger is required for absolute hospitality to occur. “the master of the home, the host, must welcome the foreigner, a stranger, a guest, without any qualifications, including never have been given an invitation” (westmoreland, 2008, p. 4). absolute hospitality does not restrict the host to follow any particular laws or demands to permit the guest to enter. it is an unspoken, free, and open invitation without any boundaries. patient as the host unfortunately for some patients, hospital care does not meet their expectations; errors can be made when providing care to patients. the hospital, as a host, has not provided the hospitable services that were expected. according to westmoreland (2008), the risk of absolute hospitality is that it permits the possibility of violence. the act of being unconditionally welcoming or hospitable opens the door to violence. when an adverse event or unsatisfactory experience occurs, these can be considered acts of violence and, as such, absolute hospitality is disturbed. “interruptions. that which makes unconditional hospitality possible also allows for the impossibility of hospitality” (westmoreland, 2008, p. 6). liddle journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 3 4 as a result of adverse events or unsatisfactory experiences, patients are transformed; they may leave the hospital with altered bodies and emotions that cause them to become hostile. when this occurs, the patient is no longer a patient; he or she is now a complainant. the hospital is now held responsible for their physical and emotional injuries and, as such, is responsible to address the complainant’s concerns. complainants contact the department of patient relations to bring forth their interpretations of their healthcare experience. in this regard, the prcs can be viewed as another level of hospitality in the healthcare system that welcomes any stranger. it is understood that individuals contacting the department of patient relations are considered complainants, however, they are also strangers to prcs, as they have never met before. “the ethos of hospitality is never guaranteed. it is always shadowed by its twin hostility. in this sense, hosting others – aliens, foreigners, immigrants and refugees is an ongoing task; never a fait accompli” (kearney, 2015, p. 173). many complainants are only hoping to provide feedback related to their experiences. however, for others who have been harmed, they are angry, demanding apologies, and seeking personal justice. it is at this juncture that the prc is no longer a host, but a guest or hostage to the complainant. the wager of hospitality then becomes the wager of “hostipitality” (a coinage of derrida). we can’t talk about hospitality without the possibility of hostility and vice versa. in sum, host is a double term at the root of both hospitality and hostility. (kearney, 2015, p. 178) considering that host is a double term, it is important to recognize that even though a prc becomes a hostage on behalf of the healthcare organization of the complainant, there is an expectation that the consultant remain hospitable even in the face of hostility. “the host becomes the guest. likewise, the guest becomes the master of the home” (westmoreland, 2008, p. 6). “the host has welcomed into his home the very thing that can overturn his sovereignty. in welcoming the new arrival, the host has brought about that which takes him hostage” (westmoreland, 2008, p. 7). it is unknown which complainant will become the hostile hostage taker, and perhaps this unknown is the nature of welcoming strangers into complaint. according to westmoreland (2008), “in welcoming the other the host imposes certain conditions upon the guest” (p. 2). this would be considered conditional hospitality. i pose that complainants offer conditional hospitality. they do not, and cannot, offer absolute hospitality because they are unsatisfied and suspicious of the healthcare system. complainants are seeking answers to their questions and are making demands for a sense of self justice. complainants or monsters in a complaint conversation, i speculate that the angry patient now becomes the host, and prcs are the hostages. this relationship is contrary to the healthcare provider and patient relationship and begs the question: what have the patients become? the patients who have become angry complainants are now even more strange to healthcare professionals. “the disassociation of identity and presence and the concomitant juxtaposition with a new background are likely to occur whenever naming and identity labelling are involved” (gurevitch, 1988, p. 1192). liddle journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 3 5 through language, we can make others strangers. to call someone an angry complainant is not only implying fury; it also implies that the individual is not a patient anymore, and that he or she is no longer deserving of hospitality. not only does the label of complainant create a stranger, the language of complaint management is also a contributor. the three most common phrases documented in patient complaint files are: “the complainant alleges that…, the complainant remains unsatisfied despite all levels of the review process…, according to the complainant the care was unsatisfactory because…”. the tone and the choice of words documented by the prc is very formal and implies that the complainant is an outsider coming forth with a narrow and angry point of view. it could be further argued that, when an angry complainant comes forward, they are treated as less reliable historians of the complaint context and there is always an underlying questionability of how they may have contributed to their own situation. angry complainants evoke fear in the healthcare system with their demands, media threats, and unavoidable desire to seek revenge. as friedrich nietzsche stated “it is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge” (n.d.). we label threatening patients as complainants, and we fear the existence of complainants in the healthcare system. the complainants no longer resemble the patient in need of caring; they are fierce and strong like monsters seeking revenge. according to kearney (2003), we “attempt to simplify our existence by scapegoating others as ‘aliens’. in so doing we contrive to transmute the sacrificial alien into a monster” (p. 5). in healthcare, we do subconsciously reference angry and demanding complainants as monsters. for obvious reasons, we do not refer to them as monsters but the fear and anxiety that angry complainants provoke makes them the antithesis of what we deem a patient. according to kearney (2003), strangers, gods and monsters represent experiences of the extremity which bring us to the edge. they subvert our established categories and challenge us to think again, and because they threaten the known with the unknown, they are often set apart in fear and trembling. exiled to hell or heaven; or simply ostracized from the human community into the land of aliens. (p. 3) kearney (2003) suggested that monsters draw attention to how we perceive what is familiar and how we see the differences between same and other. monsters give us the choice to either try and understand what is strange to us or not to acknowledge or accept anything that is unfamiliar. according to kearney (2003), “we often project onto others those unconscious fears from which we recoil in ourselves” (p. 5). in healthcare, the complainants or monsters, are intimidating and rather than understand what is strange, it is common to dismiss or avoid the anger and conflict. “no matter how many times we demonize, divinize or simply kill off our monsters, they keep returning for more” (kearney, 2003, p. 34). this statement is elaborated upon by kearney referencing the work of timothy beal, and suggests that these monsters keep returning because they have something to say to us. “the key perhaps, is not to kill our monsters but to learn to live with them” (kearney, 2003, p. 62). i propose that this is why complainants return over and over again to the department of patient relations. angry complainants have something to say and it liddle journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 3 6 could be argued that we are not hearing or addressing the monster in right or just ways. the healthcare system is not making improvements to satisfy the complainants and, in turn, creating more monsters. myths of using monsters as scapegoats for things we fear is not limited to ancient times. in healthcare, we need to invite these monsters to tell us how we can be better and improve. scapegoating myths fail. a society can only pretend to believe in the lie because it is the same society that is lying to itself! hence the ultimately self-defeating nature of ideological persecution. this is born out of the need for constant renewal of the sacrificial act. the reliance on the alien-scapegoat never subsides at least not until such time we renounce our desire to always covert what the other has, and to accept one’s other as oneself. (kearney, 2003, p. 39) kearney (2003) wrote “for now what is needed, when confronted with extreme tendencies to demonize or defy monsters, is to look at our own psyches, and examine our own consciousness in the mirror of our own gods and monsters” (kearney, 2003, p. 43). “we refuse to recognize the stranger before us as a singular other who responds, in turn, to the singular otherness in each of us. we refuse to acknowledge ourselves as others” (kearney, 2003, p. 5). i offer that i, too, have been a monster, and would wager that we all have been, or will be, monsters in the context of healthcare. my 3-year-old daughter was ill and screaming in pain; by all accounts, her symptoms resembled that of appendicitis. as any parent would do, we went to the hospital. as i waited patiently for hours in the waiting room of the emergency department, i could feel my anger intensify. as feelings of frustration overwhelmed me, i approached the triage desk with a limp screaming child, i became a monster, demanding care. i was no longer satisfied with my host and lost the sense of absolute hospitality. in this situation, i felt a physical change, one that turned me into an aggressor. i moved from a stranger to monster, a complainant. i was not seeking hospitality at this point; i was demanding my position as the host. after the incident, i felt perplexed by the encounter. i am a prc and know the healthcare system, as well as the most effective ways to bring forth concerns. however, i was transformed and believed that i was righteous in my demands for healthcare services. otherness following an unsatisfactory experience or adverse event, the role of a prc is to engage in conversation and to understand the complaint. gill (2015) suggested that “(t)he first condition of hermeneutics is an encounter with otherness. an encounter brings our attention to something alien which, in turn, makes us become acutely aware of the situation less of our understanding and knowing” (p.15). when we attempt to understand something, we need to be prepared for it to tell us something new; however, this involves “an acceptance that the other person in his/her perceptive count in the dialogic deliberation” (p. 15). according to gill (2015), gadamer asserted that “openness to otherness calls for one’s capacity to attend to and listen to what addresses us in conversation” (p.15). liddle journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 3 7 the complainants interpret their experience and come forward with their complaint; the prc is responsible to then interpret the complaint and take it forward for redress. in doing so, offering complainants an apology is unavoidable. patient relations is an interpretive practice, however, and there are shortcomings when apology is inserted into the conversation with an angry complainant, a monster. the word “apology” is actually an etymological fallacy (sihler, 2000). apology is derived from the greek, ἀπολογία, apologia, with the prefix apo-, meaning “away or off” and combined with logos, or “speech.” the original meaning of apologize was “a speech in defense.” over time, the meaning had shifted as a self-justification to an expression of regret or remorse, “i am sorry,” which most often includes an explanation or justification. the literature in this area explicitly states that patients expect apologies and that apology in healthcare is necessary to redress complaints and acknowledge wrong doing (carmack, 2010; howley, 2009; robson & pelletier, 2008). lazare (2004) offered the following. one of the most profound human interactions is the offering and accepting of apologies. apologies have the power to heal humiliations and grudges, remove the desire for vengeance, and generate forgiveness on the part of the offended parties. for the offender they can diminish the fear of retaliation and relieve the guilt and shame that can grip the mind with a persistence and tenacity that are hard to ignore. the result of that apology process, ideally, is the reconciliation and restoration of broken relationships. (p. 1) considering this statement, apology, one simple gesture, appears to be both modest and powerful. however, apologizing in the healthcare discipline is not that simple. difficultly arises because healthcare providers must consider the litigious nature of the complaints. in alberta, the provincial legislature passed the “apology act,” which was an amendment to the existing alberta evidence act, r.s.a. 2000, c. a-18 (apology act, 2015). this statute was instituted to protect the actual act of apologizing from legal liability, and does not constitute an implied admission of guilt or fault. i pose the argument that, in the very act of placing protection around apology, a part of the intended meaning is stripped away. apology is no longer genuine and placed in the hands of the prc to deliver. to offer apologies, prcs are expected to achieve otherness. however, i argue that otherness cannot be achieved with monsters for two reasons: if prcs are managing thousands of complaints per year, how can otherness be achieved in every conversation and, further to this, how is apology authentic? the other reason is that otherness cannot be achieved with a monster because the monster does not hold an openness to apology and is therefore provoking the prc to offer a defensive apology. absence of openness the prc may very well be interested in what the complainant has to say, but is the information new or just “more of the same?” considering the multiplicity of complaints, i propose that there is no space for openness when the consultant is preparing for the opportunity to apologize and http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/humiliation.htm http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/anger.htm http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/revenge.htm http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/forgiveness.htm http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/fear.htm http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/guilt.htm http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/shame.htm http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/relationships.htm liddle journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 3 8 move on to the next concern that is in queue. the openness to work with the individual is lost when we only offer apologies because we believe that is what he or she wants to hear. gill (2015) suggested that, hermeneutical endeavour would be undermined if the interpreter were to concentrate on the other person, rather than on the subject matter. gadamer clarifies that it is not merely a matter of looking at the other person, but looking with the other at the thing that the dialogue partners communicate about. (p. 20) considering that prcs are offering an apology on behalf of another, are we really sorry? an apology should be both genuine and thoughtful. if prcs are consistently apologizing, one would assume that they are really not sorry; considering there are in excess of 9,000 complaints per year, there would be too much to be truly sorry for. the openness required for 9,000 conversations would be extremely difficult, even impossible, for any human being. defensive apology when a prc is presented with the monster who is angry and abusive, it begs the question, is the consultant now in defense mode? similarly, is the monster allowing the openness to receive an apology. “otherness and our openness to the other are absolute prerequisites for dialogic understanding to take place” (gill, 2015, p.16). apology is offered, but in a defense, and well beyond the context of otherness. early christian scholars identify that “apology,” in its original sense, was a function of “apologetics,” which was the discipline of defending a religious position (sihler, 2000). the term is still utilized today in politics and religion. in the political realm, apologetics is viewed as negative and is used to describe the defense of contentious actions or policies. according to apologetics, apologies are posed by an “apologist.” an apologist is an individual who provides justification for a belief. in being held hostage to the monsters, apology is used in its original sense, as the manner of defense for the organization. apology moves from the “i am sorry,” to the “we are sorry.” “we” identifies the system, and the authority of the hospital. this is a symbol of authority and removes the responsibility from the prc. there is no possibility for openness at this point on behalf of the consultant. the ethical considerations of hospitality require that sometimes you have to say “no”. we are often obligated to discern and discriminate; and so doing, one generally has to invoke certain criteria to determine whether the person coming in your home is going to destroy you and your loved ones or is going to enter in a way that, where is possible, is mutually enhancing. one never knows for sure, of course, what the outcome will be. it is always a risk. to cite derrida once more, the stranger who arrives into your home could be a murderer or a messiah. or sometimes, a bit of both. (kearney, 2015, p.177) liddle journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 3 9 the prc represents the healthcare organization, and, as such, the apologies offered and conversations held with complainants can be viewed as defensive strategies put forth by the organization. in other words, the role of the prc is that of an apologist. concluding thoughts in healthcare, we will always encounter “monsters;” however, we need to understand these monsters to establish otherness and make change. kearney (2003) suggested that if we are to engage properly with the human obsession with strangers and enemies – is a critical hermeneutic capable of addressing the dialect of others and aliens. such a hermeneutic would have the task of soliciting ethical decisions without rushing to judgement that is, without succumbing to overhasty acts of binary exclusion. (p. 67) i do not believe that, in healthcare, we are apologizing well; i propose that our apologies lack a sense of justice for others. i conclude that, as prcs, we are apologizing according to its original intent: as apologists and, in this position of defense, we are obliterating the possibility of openness. references apology act. (2015). alberta evidence act, r.s.a. 2000, c. a-18. alberta queens printer. retrieved from http://www.qp.alberta.ca/documents/acts/a18.pdf carmack, h.j. (2010). structuring and disciplining apology: a structurational analysis of health care benevolence laws. qualitative research reports in communication, 11(1), 6-13. doi: 10.1080/17459430903413432 gill, s. (2015). “holding oneself open in a conversation”: gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and the ethics of dialogue. journal of dialogue studies, 3(1), 9-28. retrieved from http://www.ghfp.org/portals/ghfp/documents/scherto_gill2015_jds_dialogue%20ethics.pdf gurevitch, z.d. (1988). the other side of dialogue: on making the other strange and the experience of otherness. american journal of sociology, 93(5), 1179-1199. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2780369 howley, m.j. (2009). the use of apology in health care. journal of medical marketing: device, diagnostic and pharmaceutical marketing, 9(4), 279-289. doi: 10.1057/jmm.2009.30 kearney, r. (2003). strangers, gods and monsters: interpreting otherness. new york, ny: routledge. kearney, r. (2015). hospitality: possible or impossible. hospitality & society, 5(2-3), 173-184. retrieved from: https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/10.1386/hosp.5.2-3.173_1 http://www.qp.alberta.ca/documents/acts/a18.pdf http://www.jstor.org/stable/2780369 https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/10.1386/hosp.5.2-3.173_1 liddle journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 3 10 lazare, a. (2004). on apology. new york, ny: oxford university press. moules, n.j. (2002). hermeneutic inquiry: paying heed to history and hermes. an ancestral, substantive, and methodological tale. international journal of qualitative methods, 1(3), 1-40. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1880/46345 nietzsche, f. (n.d.). retrieved from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/friedrichn395165 robson, r., & pelletier, e. (2008). giving back the pen: disclosure, apology and early compensation discussions after harm in the healthcare setting. healthcare quarterly, 11(sp), 8590. doi: 10.12927/hcq.2008.19655 rolfe, g. (2004). deconstruction in a nutshell. nursing philosophy, 5(3), 274-276. doi:10.1111/j.1466-769x.2004.00179.x sihler, a.l. (2000). language history: an introduction. amsterdam/philadelphia, pa: john benjamins. westmoreland, m.w. (2008). interruptions: derrida and hospitality. kritike, 2(1), 1-10. doi: 10.3860/krit.v2i1.566 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/46345 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/f/friedrichn395165 corresponding author: kari latvanen university of helsinki email: punnittusana@ gmail.com journal of applied hermeneutics july 29, 2016 the author(s) 2016 the symbolism of evil in the big book of aa kari latvanen abstract alcoholics anonymous (aa) describes itself as a “fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism” (alcoholics anonymous, 2010). the fellowship has millions of members all around the world and the number of independent aa groups is counted in tens of thousands. in this article, i try to understand the recovery from alcoholism in the fellowship of aa as a meaning giving process where the alcoholic is invited to interpret the founding text of aa, a lcoholics anonymous: the story of how more than one hundred men have recovered from alcoholism, and to appropriate the world that it opens in front of him. i focus on interpreting the symbolic language with which the big book of aa speaks of evil. i also explain how this symbolic language is related to recovery – i.e., how the alcoholic may find in the pages of the big book commonly shared symbols of stain, sin, and guilt which express his blind experience of evil. keywords hermeneutics, paul ricoeur, symbolism, evil, alcoholics anonymous, recovery alcoholics anonymous (aa) is best described as both a fellowship of alcoholics and a program of recovery from alcoholism (kurtz, 1979). as a social organization, aa exists in and through local meetings and the interpersonal relationships between members. it charges no dues or fees from members, and keeps no membership lists. the only membership requirement is a desire to stop drinking. latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 2 aa’s program for recovery is outlined in the famous twelve steps and it is basically a set of spiritual concepts and practices that have the purpose not of curing alcoholism, but of transforming the alcoholic. aa sees alcoholism as an incurable and progressive disease of the body, mind, and spirit, but the fellowship and program focus mainly on the spiritual aspect. the fellowship's understanding of alcoholism and recovery was first put to words in a coherent manner in a book titled a lcoholics anonymous – the story of how more than one hundred men have recovered from alcoholism (1939). the book is also known as the “big book of aa” and it is the basic text of aa in that it gives an account of the experiences of the original members of the fellowship concerning alcoholism and recovery. in the book, the founders try to interpret their experiences, put them into words, and thus make them understandable for themselves and their readers. the purpose of the book is presented in the first lines of the foreword to its first edition as follows: we, of alcoholics anonymous, are more than one hundred men a nd women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. to show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. for them, we hope these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary. (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. vii) the big book has been read and used by millions of alcoholics since its publication. it is usually the first piece of literature a newcomer is given. also, the text itself and other texts that focus on interpreting and clarifying the ideas presented in the big book are regularly read in aa meetings. the big book sets a kind of a standard for “good recovery” (mercadante, 1996, p. 12). in this article, i try to support the claim that recovery in aa is, in a very significant way, a hermeneutical process of meaning giving. it starts with the first step of the recovery program where the alcoholic admits to being powerless over alcohol, that is, interprets his or her situation according to the meaning of the step. then, as s/he proceeds in the program, the alcoholic learns to see his or her situation in regard with alcohol, himself or herself, other people and god in a new light. the big book supports this process by inviting the reader to interpret its te xt and to appropriate the world that it opens in front of the reader. the text uses various discursive procedures such as symbols, metaphors, and narration to show the world in a new light. o ne can even say that the text forces its reader to a hermeneutica l process of interpretation, because metaphors and symbols, for example, are such structures of signification that can be understood only in and through interpretation. i will support my claim using the conceptual and interpretive tools provided by paul r icoeur's theory of interpretation (ricoeur, 1976, 1981). ricoeur's theory of interpretation can help us understand recovery in aa for several reasons. firstly, ricoeur's theory helps us understand what interpretation is – and it does this in a way that is fruitful when we try to understand what role the big book plays in recovery. secondly, the theory shows how figurative language is used in order to create new meanings. thirdly, it gives us means for interpreting this figurative language. latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 3 i will demonstrate my claim by interpreting the symbolic language with which the big book of aa speaks of evil. o ne part of recovery has to do with dealing with the evil suffered and done by the alcoholic. the question concerning the alcoholic's guilt and responsibility has to be resolved by positing and articulating evil so that s/he can relate to it and its role in the world and in him or her. i will show how the alcoholic learns to see his or her obsession as a symptom of a spiritual malady, of pride, arrogance, and hubris through interpreting the symbolically rich text of the big book. this symbolism of evil gives meaning to the alcoholic's experience of evil. in addition, one can even claim that the symbolism of evil of the big book has a certain liberating power. the big book shows the world in a new light according to paul ricoeur, when discourse is fixed by writing, something important occurs in regard with the reference of the discourse (ricoeur, 1976, pp. 34-37, 94; ricoeur, 1981, p. 215). in spoken discourse, the interlocutors can anchor the discourse to the surrounding reality by for example ostensive indicators and definite descriptions. but the final referent of a text is, in ricoeur's words, “non-ostensive.” in a text, discourse exceeds the mere ostensive designation of the situation common to the interlocutors in the dialogical situation. the text does not point to the concrete world but to a world of its own. the text speaks about a possible world and about different ways to orient within that world. it re fers to different world-propositions and discloses a new way of being. the text constructs a world of its own and in doing so it also shows reality in a new light. ricoeur says that the text represents the world in a way that is not a mere shadow image of reality (pellauer, 2007, p. 69; ricoeur, 1976, pp. 40-41). he speaks of the text's way of representation as ”iconic augmentation” and uses the invention of oil painting by dutch painters as an analogy to describe what he means. o il painting enhances the contrasts, gives colors back their resonance and lets the luminosity within which things shine appear. it gave the painters a new optic alphabet with which they could write a new text of reality. painting for the dutch masters was neither the production nor the reproduction of the world but its metamorphosis. in ricoeur's words, “the inscription of discourse is the transcription of the world, and transcription is not reduplication, but metamorphosis” (ricoeur, 1976, p. 42). the idea of iconic augmentation points to how this metamorphosis is achieved by enhancing certain features of the universe so that the world can be seen in a new light (ricoeur, 1976, pp. 41 -42). iconicity means the revelation of a real more real than ordinary reality. iconicity is the re-writing of the world and writing is a particular case of iconicity. texts metamorphose or re-write the world by using various discursive procedures such as metaphors, symbols, and narration. metaphor, for example, is a deviant usage of predicates in the framework of the sentence as a whole (ricoeur, 1976, p. 50). a metaphorical statement invites us to make an interpretation where we see something as (ricoeur, 2008, pp. 168-169), e.g., alcoholism as an illness. symbols, in turn, are structures of signification in which a literal meaning designates another meaning which is figurative and which can be apprehended only latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 4 through the first (ricoeur, 1974, pp. 12-13; ricoeur, 1976, pp. 53-54). symbols, too, show us something as. in religious language, for example, the word “stain” is sometimes used to describe a situation where someone's relationship with the sacred is in some way “stained” (ricoeur, 1969, p. 15). as said, a text constructs a world of its own. the reader's task is then to open that world. according to ricoeur, the meaning of the discourse fixed by writing has to be actualized in reading (ricoeur, 1976, pp. 91-92). in understanding the text, we “follow its movement from sense to reference: from what it says, to what it talks about” (ricoeur, 1976, pp. 87-88). the final object of interpretation is the world that the text opens in front of itself. what must be interpreted in a text is “a proposed world that i could inhabit and wherein i could project one of my own most possibilities” (ricoeur, 2008, p. 83). we can now state that aa's big book is a text that constructs a world of its own by using various discursive procedures. the big book portrays a unique conception of what alcoholism and recovery are. in order to understand what the big book says and what it talks about when it talks about alcoholism and recovery, we, as readers, have to answer the challenge that the text sets to us. we need to open the world of the big book by trying to “follow the path of thought opened up by the text” and place ourselves “en route towards the orient of the text” (ricoeur, 1981, p. 162). this need for interpretation applies for every reader of the text. in this sense, every reader of the big book takes part in a process of interpreting the text which is similar to t he one that a recovering alcoholic goes through. even if we are not alcoholics we can, after interpreting the text, say: “i understand what it means to be in the world in the manner presented here” (k lemm, 1983, p. 144). but the recovering alcoholic in aa, may go a bit further and aim to appropriate the world of the big book. in appropriation, an imagined possible mode of being is made actual. that is to say, the recovering alcoholic may recognize the world of the text of the big book as his or her own and become what s/he truly is through that recognition (klemm, 1983, p. 144). interpreting the symbolism of evil sin, lack of moral sense, behavior disorder, illness, mental illness – these are some conceptions in which alcoholism has been understood in the course of history (e.g., fingarette, 1989; kurtz, 2008, pp. 91-108; mercadante, 1996; stolberg, 2006; tiebout 1999, pp. 5-12; vaillant 1983, pp. 15-44; white, 1998, 2000). they all include in somewhat unspecified ways the idea that the alcoholic is abnormal, deviant, sick – or even evil. not surprisingly, then, also the alcoholic may experience feelings of shame, worthlessness, guilt, or even fear and dread. a significant part of recovery has to do with the way evil is posited in regard with alcoholism and the alcoholic. is the alcoholic, for example, an innocent victim of a disease or is s/he to be held responsible for the condition? the question concerning the alcoholic's guilt and responsibility has to be resolved by positing and articulating evil so that s/he can relate to it and its role in the world and in him or her. latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 5 i will next try to interpret how the big book of aa gives meaning to the problem of evil associated with alcoholism. in the interpretation, i will apply paul ricoeur's analysis of the symbols of evil – stain, sin, and guilt – that are commonly shared in the western world. ricoeur presented his analysis in the book the symbolism of evil (1969). ricoeur argues that evil becomes evil only when the possibility of confessing it arises to human consciousness (ricoeur, 1974, p. 289; simms, 2003, p. 21). evil is always acknowledged and confessed through language. in fact, there is no direct, non-symbolic language of evil undergone, suffered, or committed. whether a man1 admits his responsibility or claims to be the prey of the evil taking hold of him, he does so first and foremost in a symbolism of evil. evil is known through its symbols, because such symbols – e.g., stain, sin, and guilt – provide the material out of which confession is to be constructed. for ricoeur, a symbol is “any structure of signification in which a direct, primary, literal meaning designates, in addition, another meaning which is indirect, secondary and figurative and which can be apprehended only through the first” (ricouer, 1974, pp. 12-13). symbols are, in a sense, two-dimensional; they have a linguistic or semantic side and a non-semantic side. in relation with the linguistic side of the symbol, we can talk about doublemeaning or first order meaning and second order meaning (ricoeur, 1969, p. 15; ricoeur, 1974, pp. 12-13; ricoeur, 1976, pp. 53-54). in addition to the primary, direct or literal meaning, there is a secondary meaning that is hidden and can be understood only through the first meaning. the primary meaning produces the secondary meaning, as the meaning of the meaning. interpretation of a symbol is the work of thought that consist in deciphering the hidden meaning in the apparent meaning, in unfolding the levels of meaning implied by the literal meaning. for example, the word “stain” means primarily “defilement” or “unclean” etc. (ricoeur, 1969, p. 15). but symbolically this literal and manifest sense points beyond itself to something that is like a stain or a spot. the non-semantic side of the symbol has to do with the fact that the linguistic element of the symbol points always to something nonlinguistic (ricoeur, 1974, p. 289; ricoeur, 1976, p. 54). psychoanalysis, for example, connects its symbols to hidden psychic conflicts and the history of religion sees in symbols a milieu of the manifestations of the sacred (ricoeur, 1976, p. 54 ). in religious language, for example, “stain” might point to someone whose situation in regard with the sacred is in some ways defiled or unclean. symbols demand to be interpreted. because they are equivocal, symbols and the structures of signification that are associated with them work only when their structure has been explicated. for any symbolism to work, a minimal hermeneutics is required (ricoeur, 1976, pp. 62-63). 1 in the following sections where i read paul ricoeur's texts and the text of the big book i will use the gender-specific pronoun “man” in order to be faithful to the original texts. aa's big book, for example, refers to alcoholics as “men” even though it acknowledges that women, too, can be alcoholics. latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 6 stain according to ricoeur, the language of confession is counterpart of the experience it brings to light (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 7-8). since the experience of evil is complex, the language in which it is expressed is also complex. ricoeur finds in the symbolism of evil three layers that intertwine with each other but can still be analytically separated according to how they posit evil in respect with the subject of this experience. the first, most archaic layer of the experience of evil is spoken of in the language of “stain” or “defilement” (pellauer, 2007, p. 36; ricoeur, 1969, pp. 25-26). ricoeur defines defilement as “an act that evolves an evil, an impurity, a fluid, a mysterious and harmful something that acts dynamically – that is to say magically” (ricoeur, 1969, p. 25). the idea of defilement includes the notion of a stain or blemish that infects from without. defilement is not a stain, but like a stain. it is a symbolic stain. it is an idea of a quasimaterial something that is harmful through its invisible properties and works in the manner of a force in the field of our undivided psychic and corporeal existence. the symbolism of stain is archaic and narrow in the sense that, at this stage, evil and misfortune are still quite the same (ricoeur, 1969, p. 27). evil and misfortune, doing ill and faring ill – suffering, sickness, death, failure are not yet distinguished from eac h other. all possible sufferings, all diseases, all death, all failure are transformed into a sign of defilement. this misfortune and suffering is interpreted as a punishment or a revenge (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 2930, 41). suffering is a punishment for the violation of an interdict or order. suffering is the price that has to be paid for the violation, to “satisfy” the claim of purity for revenge. this primordial idea of defilement connected to supernatural vengeance is felt subjectively as primitive dread. “man enters into the ethical world through fear and not through love” (ricoeur, 1969, p. 30), as ricoeur puts it. also, this dread is something more than fear of death or suffering. it is existential dread, or dread in the face of a threat which aims at a diminution of existence, a loss of the personal core of one's being. the dread associated with defilement is difficult to put into words, but it still needs to be expressed. defilement enters into the universe of man through speech, or the word, its anguish is communicated through speech. also, the opposition of the pure and the impure is spoken. “a stain is a stain because it is there, mute; the impure is taught in the words that institute the taboo,” says ricoeur (ricoeur, 1969, p. 36). the opposition of the pure and the impure raises the question of purification (ricoeur, 1969, p. 35). defilement is a symbol of evil, so it has to be dealt with symbolically. the ablution is a symbolic washing of the stain. but it is not produced in any total and direct action, it is always signified in partial, substituted and abbreviated signs. we speak of burning, removing, chasing, throwing, spitting out, covering up, and burying the evil. these are symbolic acts that stand for a total action addressed to the person taken as an undivided whole. the opposition between the pure and the impure is also social in nature (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 36, 39). a man is defiled in the sight of certain men and in the language of certain men. those who latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 7 have violated the order are removed from contact with their fellow citizens and excluded from public and sacred spaces. i noted previously that the dread and the opposition between the pure and the impure need to be expressed in words. ricoeur says that this dread also makes the defiled person conscious of himself (ricoeur, 1969, p. 41). consciousness discovers the unlimited perspective of selfinterrogation. man starts to ask questions like: “what sin have i committed in order to experience this failure, sickness or misfortune?” the meaning of the stain needs to be acknowledged and confessed. even though the confession of the stain is partly magical in nature, and a symbolic washing, the dread put into words also has an ethical quality (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 41-42). it is not only and simply a cry; it is also an avowal. as such, it involves a demand for a just punishment. man wants a just retribution. if a man sins and is punished, we really think he should be punished as he has sinned. retribution and punishment, when just, also bring back order (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 43-44). and true punishment is that which restores order and through this produces happiness. to suffer punishment and pay the penalty for one's faults is the only way to be happy. what is aimed at in vengeance and punishment is expiation. punishment is given in order to take away defilement. order is affirmed both outside of the guilty person and within him too. vengeance and expiation aim at amendment, the restoration of the personal worth o f the guilty person through just punishment. stain in the big book in the text of the big book of aa one can find a layer where alcohol and alcoholism are spoken of as magical powers that infect the alcoholic from without. recovery is said to start when the alcoholic admits to being “powerless over alcohol” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 71). the alcoholic feels he is ill in a mystical way that is inexplicable to himself, those near to him and even to the doctors that are treating him (alcoholics anonymo us, 1939, pp. 6, 17, 3, 37, 42). the big book presents alcohol as a substance that has the properties of a magical evil force. first, the alcoholic is absolutely powerless and defenseless against the first drink (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, pp. 24, 43). he feels that alcohol has taken his will power away in some obscure way: “o ur human resources as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly. lack of power, that was our dilemma” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 57). second, alcohol as a power is almost a demonic “cunning, baffling, powerful” force (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, pp. 70-71). chapter 11 has a telling description of the alcoholic’s experience of this power: “as we became subjects of k ing alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 165). one of the founders of aa, bill, recalls the experience of this force in the following words: “i had met my match. i had been overwhelmed. alcohol was my master” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 17). latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 8 the powerlessness that the alcoholic feels when confronted by the demonic power of alcohol evokes an indescribable dread in him. bill again: “no words can describe the loneliness and despair i found in that bitter morass of self-pity” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 8). moreover, this dread gets even apocalyptic tones in the big book: “...then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous four horsemen terror, bewilderment, frustration, despair” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 165). the similarities between a stain that inflicts a material substance, a disease inflicted in a human being and symbolical defilement are also noteworthy here. the big book portrays alcoholism as a disease that is a kind of curse inflicted upon the alcoholic. the other founder of aa, dr. bob, for example, speaks of recovery as release from a curse: “it is a most wonderful blessing to be relieved of the terrible curse with which i was afflicted” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 192). also, this curse is seen to be some kind of a punishment: “to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 56; italics mine). i noted earlier that the opposition between the pure and impure is communicated through words. the big book makes a clear distinction between those drinkers who are true alcoholics and those who are not. the true alcoholic is someone who cannot take even o ne drink without grave, often fatal, consequences: “...once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 33). alcohol is portrayed as a kind of taboo and the line is crystal clear: “these allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 4). the opposition between the pure and the impure is also social in nature and, not surprisingly, alcoholics evoke strong feelings of disgust and hatred in their fellow men. the alcoholic is maybe not totally excluded from the community, but he is bound to withdraw from social interaction gradually: “the less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 165). in the last stages of this social exclusion the alcoholic is shut out of all normal social interaction and lives in “health resorts, sanitariums, hospitals and jails” (alco holics anonymous, 1939, p. 120) if he manages to avoid the lonely destiny of an alcoholic death. so, the condition of the alcoholic is in part spoken of in the symbolic language of defilement. this language also applies for recovery. for example, as the alcoholic is confronted by the demonic power of alcohol, it is logical that he should turn to an even higher power, that is, god, in his need for help. the big book states that the alcoholic is beyond human help and that “his defense must come from a higher power” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 55). now, the obverse of the symbols of stain and defilement are such symbols as ablution and purification. in the big book recovery is spoken of symbolically in these terms. for example, in order to recover the a lcoholic has to “clean house,” that is, confess his wrongdoings, ask for forgiveness, and repair the damage done (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, pp. 95, 111). god is asked in the sixth step of the recovery program to “remove from us all the things which we ha ve admitted are objectionable” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 76). also, “the alcoholic problem” latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 9 is something that will, during the recovery process, be “removed” or “taken away” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 69). i noted earlier that punishment aims at restoring order and taking away defilement. in the light of this it is natural that the recovery program includes steps for restoring order such as the amendments of the steps eight and nine. the big book also makes an explicit connection between the restoration of the outer order with that of the inner state of the recovering alcoholic. his personal worth, selfesteem and social standing are restored as he goes on with his “housecleaning”: “we are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. (…) we w ill comprehend the word serenity and will know peace. (…) that feeling of uselessness and selfpity will disappear” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 96). sin according to paul ricoeur, there is a divergence in meaning between defilement and sin, and this confusion is inscribed in the reality of the feelings and representations of evil (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 47-50). the representations of sin and defilement contaminate one another sometimes to the point of becoming indistinguishable. for example, the assault o f demonic forces is often experienced as the counterpart of the absence of the god. in any case, the category that determines the usage of the notion of “sin” is that of “before” god. sin is also a dimension of the penitent's existence which opens up new possibilities for the examination of conscience and the interrogative thinking that goes with it. sin is foremost a fault before the eyes of god (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 50–51). this implies the idea of an anthropotropic god, a god who is essentially turned toward man. man finds himself implicated in the initiative taken by someone who is concerned about him. the experience of sin is found in a dialogical relationship, in the exchange between vocation and invocation (pellauer, 2007, pp. 36-37; ricoeur, 1969, pp. 50-52). the situation is centered in the word, in an utterance of god and an utterance of man. sin is a violation of the covenant, of a personal bond. the holy will is expressed in laws, commandments and other utterances and the “knowledge” of sin is in proportion to these utterances. the demand that god addresses to human beings is an infinite one and this creates an unfathomable distance and distress between god and man (pellauer, 2007, pp. 36 -37; ricoeur, 1969, pp. 55-56, 59). the consciousness of s in is also intensified by a tension between attempting to obey specific, finite commandments, and this infinite demand. the law expounds on how a person may be a sinner (through idolatry, filial disrespect, etc.), not that he or she already is one. this introduces a new tone to the feeling of the experience of evil, one of anxiety rather than terror or dread. this sense of anxiety is further intensified with the symbol of (a day of) judgment. sin is a violation of the bond between man and god (pellauer, 2007, pp. 36-37; ricoeur, 1969, pp. 69, 72). man does not listen and he revolts; god is jealous and angry. man is filled with pride and arrogance even though god is omnipotent. god gives the law that man breaks. sin is a loss of a personal or communal relationship, but the idea of a broken relationship also includes the possibility of repairing that relationship, the possibility of redemption, pardon, and return. a latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 10 broken bond is still a relation and, in the movement of invocation, the sinner becomes fully the subject of sin. sin also includes negative notions of missing the mark, rebellion, deviation, straying from the path, and even being abandoned by god (pellauer, 2007, pp. 36-37; ricoeur, 1969, pp. 79-81). the counterpoint of these is the possibility of seeking god, returning and being pardoned. but sin is not solely negative but also something positive (pellauer, 2007, p. 37; ricoeur, 1969, pp. 81-86). sin is experienced as something real. sin is something within the absolute sight of god and the consciousness of sin raises a need in the sinner to see the truth of his situation, to see the situation as seen by god. this seeing gives rise to self-awareness, to the question of the meaning of acts and motives. as such, sin is something that people can repent. as a positive force sin is also something “in which” man is caught (pellauer, 2007, p. 37; ricoeur, 1969, pp. 87-93). evil is something that captivates, binds, and possesses. the obverse of these symbols is liberation. the man held by sin is a man to be delivered, saved, bought back. sin in the big book in the big book, alcoholism is portrayed as an inexplicable and fatal illness that inflects its victim in a magical way. from the viewpoint of the symbolism of evil it is interesting to see how the text connects the idea of a curselike illness to the notion of sin. the big book presents the alcoholic’s drinking as a sign of deeper problems. the movement from stain to sin starts with the following words: “o ur liquor was but a symptom. so we had to get down to causes and conditions” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 76). what are these “causes and conditions?” the text says that the alcoholic's failure is caused by “self, manifested in various ways” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 76). the alcoholic is selfcentered and this egocentrism manifests itself commonly in such “character defects” as resentment, anger, selfishness, dishonesty, and fear. this self-centeredness is sin because it blocks the alcoholic off from god. i noted earlier that sin is foremost a violation of a personal bond. the big book says that the alcoholic in his pride and arrogance puts himself in the place of god: “first of all, we had to quit playing god” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 75). the alcoholic's drinking is a symptom of egocentrism, of arrogant disregard of god's will. a counterpoint, and as such, a condition for recovery, is humility before god. the recovery program suggests (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, pp. 71-72) that the alcoholic should turn his will and his life over to the care of god (step 3). he is also advised to humbly ask god to remove his shortcomings (step 7). moreover, he should seek through prayer and meditation to improve his conscious contact with god and pray for knowledge of his will for him and the power to carry that out (step 11). interestingly, the big book suggests that it is god's will that the alcoholic should follow the recovery program. the text says that god can and will relieve the alcoholic of his illness if sought. how one can find god is, according to the authors, the main object of the big book and the recovery program (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 57). also, those who do not recover are latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 11 “people who cannot completely give themselves to this simple program” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 70). the implication is clear. god wants to relieve the alcoholic if he follows the “god-given program” (kurtz, 1979, p. 187). whereas ideas of pride and arrogance point to something active and thus powerful, the alcoholics of the big book also speak of experiences of being lost and having gone astray. these symbols envisage a total situation, a state of being astray or lost, a state of alienation or dereliction (ricoeur, 1969, p. 73). the authors of the big book speak of their experience of the illness in similar terms. with the first step, the alcoholic admits to be powerless over alcohol and that his life has become unmanageable (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 71). he has lost “all the things worth while in life” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 28) and lives only to drink. correspondingly, recovery means taking steps in a new direction, trudging “the road of happy destiny” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 179). recovery is rediscovering life by seeking god (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 167). i noted earlier that sin is also something in which man is caught, something that binds. the idea of sin as a binding force is clearly expressed in the so called third-step prayer where the notion of sin as self-centeredness is combined with the idea of someone captive o f sin: “god, i offer myself to thee – to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt. relieve me of the bondage of self, that i may better do thy will” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 75, italics mine). the symbolism of delivery is thus strongly related to recovery in the big book. in the strategically significant “three pertinent ideas” recovery is expressly spoken of as relief. god will relieve alcoholism if sought (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 72). the symbols of stain and sin diverge in an interesting way when the big book speaks of recovery. recovery from the alcoholic illness is seen as a removing, rooting or taking away of sins or shortcomings but also as relief from the bondage of self and taking steps on a path towards a new vision and way of life. guilt according to paul ricoeur, “guilt” refers to a radically individualized and interiorized experience of the unworthiness at the core of one's personal being (ricoeur, 1969, p. 7). whereas “stain” and “sin” are objective in a way, guilt is the subjective awareness of the guilty man of his situation (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 100-101). the guilty consciousness confesses its guiltiness in a personal, internalized way (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 101-107). personal guilt arises the “i” that accuses itself by asking: “what is it that i have done?” the guilty consciousness feels the burden of evil and becomes the measure of evil. guilt also has degrees. while sin is a qualitative situation – it is or it is not – guilt designates an intensive quantity, capable of more and less. while a man is radically and entirely a sinner, he is more or less guilty. within a scale of offences, a scale of penalties is conceivable, too (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 108 -118). the metaphor of the tribunal is connected with the registers of the consciousness of guilt. latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 12 questions about which law has been broken and the true responsibility of the offender arise. the degree of guilt and the corresponding penalties are taken into consideration. a guilty consciousness can also be a delicate and scrupulous consciousness (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 118-138). ricoeur says that scrupulousness is the advanced point of guilt in that it carries to the extreme both the personal imputation of evil and the polarity of the just man and the wicked man. scrupulousness is a thoroughgoing and voluntary heteronomy, and pharisaism is an example of this mode of consciousness. to the pharisees, the torah is revelation and the revelation is torah. with scrupulousness we also get the idea of merit – the idea that the worth of a man issues from the worth of his acts. but pharisaism shows also the limit of this kind of religious scruple. here, the godman relation is confined to a practical relation of a will that commands and a will that obeys (ricoeur, 1969, p. 133). guilt can also become a curse and a hell of its own (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 139-143). this is because man is powerless to satisfy all the demands of the law. man will never be justified by the law because perfection is infinite and the commandments are unlimited in number. selfrighteousness, or the attempt to reduce sin by observance, becomes sin itself. this is the pauline “curse of law” (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 140, 142). most important in the symbolism of guilt, however, is that what is in question now is someo ne who is at the same time both captive of evil and responsible for it. ricoeur recapitulates this experience and his analysis of the primary symbols of evil in the concept of the servile will (ricoeur, 1969, pp. 151-152.). this concept, however, is not directly accessible. if one tries to give it an object, it destroys itself, for it short-circuits the idea of a free will and the idea of servitude. even though the concept of the servile will is inaccessible directly, it can be – and is – spoken of indirectly with the primary symbols of evil: guilt, sin and stain. these symbols intertwine so that even guilt cannot, in fact, express itself except in the language of “captivity” and ”infection” inherited from the two prior stages of sin and defilement. guilt in the big book the theme of the guilty consciousness revolves in the big book around the “moral inventory” of the fourth step and the confession of sins of the fifth step of the recovery program. the program suggests that (we) alcoholics should first do a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves” and then admit “to god, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 71). the idea of the moral inventory is to take an objective look, a god's gaze, at one's deeds. the big book compares this to a commercial inventory that a business takes (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, pp. 76-80). it is a “fact-finding and fact-facing process,” an “effort to discover the truth about the stockin-trade.” it should be a “searching” and “fearless” look at one's life. first, the alcoholic is advised to look at all those cases where his self-esteem, pocketbook, ambitions, and personal relationships have been hurt. he should also take a look at his own mistakes: “whe re had we been selfish, dishonest, selfseeking and frightened?” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 79). latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 13 the moral inventory is a thoroughgoing account of how the sinfulness of the alcoholic, that is his self-centeredness, manifests itself concretely in his life. the idea of the objective truth becomes the idea of the self-accusing consciousness that tries to measure its own guilt and responsibility. “where were we to blame?,” the alcoholics are urged to ask and also to list their faults before them “in black and white” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 80). this moral inventory is followed by the confession of the fifth step (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, pp. 84-85). this confession is first made to god, which accentuates the fact that the alcoholic is guilty before god. confession is also made to another human being and the reasons for this seem to be pragmatic. confession to another human being is a check against selfdeception and it also teaches the alcoholic “humility, fearlessness and honesty” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 85). release from guilt is achieved through repentance, forgiveness, and mercy. the moral inventory and confession are followed in the recovery program by steps 6 and 7 where the alcoholic turns to god and humbly asks him to remove his “defects of character” or “shortcomings,” that is, asks for forgiveness and mercy (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, pp. 88-96). the amends of step eight and nine are made in order to ask for forgiveness from those that the alcoholic has harmed and also to repair the damage done. the text says that the alcoholic will probably be forgiven by the ones he has harmed. it states with regard to the alcoholic’s experience that: “in nine cases out of ten the unexpected happens. sometimes the man we are calling upon admits his own fault; so feuds of years' standing melt away in an hour. (…) o ur former enemies sometimes praise what we are doing and wish us well. occasionally they will offer assistance” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 90). with god, the alcoholic can rely on forgiveness and mercy. as mentioned earlier, the big book states that god will release the alcoholic of his alcoholism if sought (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 72). release from alcoholism is interpreted also to be a sign of god's mercy and grace. regarding the theme of the guilty consciousness and particularly that of scrupulousness, it is interesting to note that according to the big book moral inventory, confession, repentance, asking for forgiveness, and making amends should continue on a daily bas is after the process has been started (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, pp. 97-98). the tenth step of the recovery program suggests that the alcoholic should continue to take personal inventory and, when he is wrong, should promptly admit it. he should also pra y for knowledge of god's will for him and the power to carry it out (step 11) and practice the principles of the recovery program in all his affairs (step 12). alcohol is a subtle foe and the alcoholics get only “a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of” their “spiritual condition” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, pp. 97-98). the big book seems to imply that the alcoholic is relieved of his condition through his actions, or works. this idea is also included in the conception that the alcoholic will recover by following the “god-given” 12-step recovery program. on the other hand, those who are bound to make the program itself a burden and a curse for themselves are advised against the sin of selfrighteousness. right after the presentation of the recove ry program the big book teaches the right attitude for the program: “no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 14 adherence to these principles. we are not saints. the point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. the principles we have set down are guides to progress. we claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection” (alcoholics anonymous, 1939, p. 72). (concerning works and faith, see also lobdell, 2004, pp. 203-237; mercadante, 1996, p. 96.) the symbolism of evil and recovery above, i have interpreted the symbolism of evil of the big book of aa. i have tried to decipher what the text says and what it talks about when it talks about the alcoholic's experience of evil by using such symbols as stain, sin and guilt. but what does all this have to do with the alcoholics of real life who may confront this symbolism on the pages of the big book or in aa meetings? first, the text of the big book plays an important part in recovery in that it proposes to its reader a new mode of being and a new capacity for knowing himself or herself – a new way of seeing the world. according to ricoeur “to interpret is to follow the path of thought opened up by the text, to place oneself en route towards the orient of the text” (ricoeur, 1981, p. 162). this kind of interpretation that complies with the injunction of the text, that follows the “arrow” of the sense of the text and tries to think accordingly, in turn, initiates a new selfunderstanding. thus, when appropriating the text, the reader is “enlarged in his capacity of self-projection by receiving a new mode of being from the text itself” (ricoeur, 1976, p. 94). according to ricoeur, interpretation is “the process by which disclosure of new modes of being – or if you prefer wittgenstein to heidegger – of new forms of life – gives to the subject a new capacity for knowing himself” (ricoeur, 1976, p. 94). ricoeur here opposes the self, which proceeds from the understanding of the text, to the ego, which claims to precede it: “it is the text, with its universal power of world disclosure, which gives a self to the ego” (ricoeur, 1976, pp. 94-95). the notoriously famous problem of the “hermeneutical circle” is stated on an ontological level instead of taking it to mean a subjectivistic coincidence of psyches or even the understanding of the intention of the author or the original readers of the text (ricoeur, 1976, pp. 92-94). the text of the big book provides the alcoholic a new way of seeing the world and being in the world. it accomplishes this by using various discursive procedures such as the different symbols of evil that i have interpreted above. this symbolism of evil gives meaning to the alcoholic's blind, equivocal, and scandalous experience of evil that would shut up in itself without it (ricoeur, 1969, p. 7). the recovering alcoholic finds on the pages of the big book commonly shared symbols of stain, sin, and guilt with which he or she can express the experience of evil associated with alcoholism. the primary symbols of evil give a metamorphosed transcription of the world. the alcoholic of the big book is cursed by a magical illness, overwhelmed by the demonic power of alcohol. s/he has also fallen into sin. his or her relationship with god is arrogant and defiant; s/he has set himself in the place of god. s/he is also captive of his or her own ego which manifests itself, for example, as fear, resentment, selfishness, and dishonesty when the alcoholic unsuccessfully tries to live by self-propulsion. latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 15 on the other hand, the symbolism of the big book also tells what recovery or release from the evil power of alcoholism is. the alcoholic has to admit his or her powerlessness over alcohol, respect the taboo, and refrain from the first drink. s/he has to confess his sinfulness and guiltiness, repent, ask for forgiveness, and repair the damage done. foremost, s/he needs to turn humbly to god and repair his or her relationship with him. moreover, one can claim that the recognition and confession of evil liberates in itself. according to ricoeur, evil and freedom are so closely linked that the two terms imply one another mutually (ricoeur, 1974, pp. 431-432). when a person takes upon himself the origin of evil s/he lays aside the claim that evil is a thing, something observable in physical, psychic or social reality. when s/he says: “it is i who have acted,” s/he asserts that there is no evil-being, there is only the evildone-byme. to take evil upon oneself is an act of language that imputes the evil act to oneself. this imputation posits in me the identity of the moral subject through past, present and future. i acknowledge that i could have acted and can act otherwise, freely. in this sense, one can claim that the symbolism of evil of the big book has a certain liberating power. even though the first, archaic symbol of stain posits evil to be a magical force that infects from without – alcoholism as a curse – the later, more advanced symbols of sin and guilt reveal this dialectic of evil and freedom. the big book portrays alco holism to be essentially alienation from the reality of self, others, and god (k urtz, 1999, p. 216). in order to recover, the alcoholic may follow the path of thought opened up by the text and find a symbolism that gives him or her the capacity to see alco hol, himself or herself, others and god in a new light. s/he may receive from the text a new mode of being. s/he may confess his illness, sinfulness and guiltiness and start to take responsibility for his past, present and future life. in the symbolic words of the big book s/he may “trust god and clean house” – and be “relieved of alcoholism.” references alcoholics anonymous. (1939). alcoholics anonymous. the story of how more than one hundred men have recovered from alcoholism. new york, ny: works publishing company. (reproduction published by the anonymous press.) alcoholics anonymous. (2010). information on a.a. retrieved from http://www.aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=1 fingarette, h. (1989). heavy drinking. the myth of alcoholism as a disease. berkeley, ca: university of california press. klemm, d. (1983). the hermeneutical theory of paul ricoeur. a constructive analysis. lewisburg, pa: bucknell university press. kurtz, e. (1979). not-god. a history of alcoholics anonymous. center city, pa: hazelden. kurtz, e. (1999). why a.a. works. the intellectual significance of alcoholics anonymous. in e. latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 16 kurtz, the collected ernie kurtz (pp. 177–228). new york, ny: authors choice press. kurtz, e. (2008). the collected ernie kurtz. new york, ny: authors choice press. lobdell, j. (2004). this strange illness. alcoholism and bill w. new york, ny: aldine de gruyter. mercadante, l. (1996). victims and sinners. spiritual roots of addiction and recovery. louisville, ky: westminster john knox press. pellauer, d. (2007). ricoeur: a guide for the perplexed. london, uk: continuum. ricoeur, p. (1969). the symbolism of evil. boston, ma: beacon press. ricoeur, p. (1974). the conflict of interpretations. essays in hermeneutics (d. ihde, ed.). evanston, il: northwestern university press. ricoeur, p. (1976). interpretation theory: discourse and the surplus of meaning. fort worth, tx: the texas christian university press. ricoeur, p. (1981). hermeneutics & the human sciences (j.b. thompson, ed.). paris, france: cambridge university press. ricoeur, p. (2008). from text to action. london, uk: continuum. simms, k. (2003). paul ricoeur. new york, ny: routledge. stolberg, v. (2006). a review of perspectives on alcohol and alcoholism in the history of american health and medicine. journal of ethnicity in substance abuse, 5(4), 39-106. tiebout, h. (1999). the collected writings. center city, mn: hazelden. vaillant, g. (1983). the natural history of alcoholism. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. white, w. (1998). slaying the dragon: the history of addiction treatment and recovery in america. bloomington, il: chestnut health systems. white, w. (2000). addiction as a disease: birth of a concept. counselor, 1, 46-51, 73. the twelve steps of alcoholics anonymous 1. we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. latvanen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 12 17 3. made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood him. 4. made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. admitted to god, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. were entirely ready to have god remove all these defects of character. 7. humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. 8. made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god, as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. microsoft word mccaffreyfinal.docx corresponding author: graham mccaffrey email: gpmccaff@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics september 27, 2012 the author(s) 2012 “the pure guidelines of the monastery are to be inscribed in your bones and mind” dogen (2010, p. 42): mental health nurses’ practices as ritualized behaviour graham mccaffrey abstract forms of practice among nurses on acute care mental health units present a way of revealing how different traditions and values are in play between nurses and also within nurses. this paper represents one interpretive theme from a larger, hermeneutic study of nurses’ experiences of nursepatient relationships on acute care mental health units, using buddhist perspectives as a resource for interpretation of interviews with nurses. understandings of ritual in the zen buddhist tradition and catherine bell’s (2009a) concept of ritualized behavior enabled an interpretive analysis of nurses’ activities as the expression and reflexive reinforcement of underlying traditions, values, and beliefs. in particular, nurses’ preferences among ways of relating with patients evinced contrasting background traditions of confinement and therapeutically directed engagement. keywords buddhism, hermeneutics, mental health, nurse-patient relationship, ritual introduction the theme of ritual arose from a broader study in which i set out to explore how buddhist thought might be applied to understanding nurse-patient relationships in acute care units, based on a series of affinities between nursing and buddhist thought, including a concern with suffering and compassionate response to suffering (mccaffrey, raffin-bouchal, & moules, 2012a). one of the other affinities i discussed is the emphasis on practice in nursing and buddhism. i used a text called instructions for the tenzo [head cook] (tanahashi, 1985) by dogen, the founder of the soto zen school in japan, to illustrate the point that in zen tradition an everyday task such as preparing a meal is at the same time a practice of awareness of self, others, and environment. from this, i develmccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 2 oped an exploration of ritual as a way of organizing practice. the research approach in my study was hermeneutics, drawing primarily on the philosophical hermeneutics of gadamer (1960/2005). after receiving ethics approval from the conjoint health research ethics board at the university of calgary, i interviewed four nurses with experience of mental health nursing on inpatient units. i then transcribed the interviews and analyzed the texts through processes of interpretive reflection, discussion, and writing. hermeneutics was a strong research approach for this question because of the basic structure of conversation that is “hermeneutics in practice” (palmer, 2001, p. 11). the figure of the conversation was replicated in the exchanges between nurses and patients as the topic of the research, in the research interviews themselves, and in the dialogue between contemporary nursing and buddhist thought (mccaffrey, raffin-bouchal, & moules, 2012b). gadamer, in his later work, expressed openness to world cultures, from the hermeneutic stance of creative engagement without a need or intent to subsume one worldview in terms of the other. “indeed, we in the humanities and social sciences need to accept our worldwide heritage not only in its otherness but also in recognizing the claim this larger heritage makes on us” (gadamer, 2001, p. 54). ritual: background one of the guiding assumptions of my research was that explorations along and across the borders between traditions and cultures can yield useful insights into one's home culture by affording opportunities to look at it from an unfamiliar point of view. in the course of analyzing the transcripts of the interviews, it became apparent that a phenomenon present in all of them was that of forms of organization of nurses' behaviour in the acute unit environment. for instance, nurses talked about the way that exchanges with patients about taking medications could be structured, from an authoritative “you’ve got to take this medication” to a more curious “can i ask you if you’re worried about something?” the difference is not only in the form of words, but also in the assumptions about where people stand in the unit, both literally in relation to the space and figuratively in terms of power and status. other examples included the organization of groups for different purposes, managing disturbed behavior, and the organization of a leaving party. i will discuss these in more detail. reflection upon the formation of activity, and the nurses' own comments about contrasting formations, their likes and dislikes and preferences, led me in turn to wonder about the idea of ritual as a means of shedding light on how the nurses saw themselves and others working in relationship with their patients. some nursing authors have addressed the question of ritual, for example with regard to practices around dying (o’gorman, 1998) or in an intensive care unit (philpin, 2007). philpin (2002) explored different meanings of ritual that have been taken up in nursing and social science literature. she noted that often ritual has been used as a pejorative term by nurse authors, to denote mindless routinized practice, and unscientific adherence to tradition, the way things have always been done, rather than an evidence based practice. philpin herself concluded that a study of ritual in nursing could open up "a rich source of insight into the meanings attached to the accomplishment of nursing care" (2002, p. 151). this, of course, reflects a wider debate about ritual which, as faure pointed out, “has had a bad press in the west, at least it has ever since luther” (2004, p. 161). my intention here is not to start from the assumption that mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 3 ritual must be mechanical, repetitive, and a substitute for lively thought. rather, like philpin i suggest that it is not necessarily like that, and if not, then what else may be said about it? traditions in play in mental health nursing i discovered that seeing behaviour as ritualized helped to clarify an underlying phenomenon of different cultures at play within the overarching term “mental health.” the significance of this for my research was to shift my thinking away from an idea of the singular nurse-patient relationship to a plurality of kinds of nurse-patient relationships, understood not simply as variations between individuals but as expressions through ritualized behaviours of different cultural currents operating on single units. the traditions i have in mind are, broadly those of confinement and of relational care with therapeutic intent. the tradition of confinement of the mentally ill tends to carry with it values of objectification of the other and considerations of safety as an end-stop argument (clarke, 2009). the contemporary hegemony of biomedical explanatory systems and treatments in psychiatry tend to support objectification through taxonomic diagnosis and separation of the biochemical from the realm of lived experience (aho, 2008). relational care with therapeutic intent, by contrast, emphasizes the effort on behalf of clinicians to arrive at some understanding of the patient’s world that can then be turned to account in working with the patient to improve his or her life and capacity for living well. i employ this somewhat unwieldy phrase to include both the importance of the relational encounter as a locus for practice, and the element of bringing a specifically therapeutic intention to bear. relationship in itself is not the point, since after-all, the orderly and the patient in the victorian asylum were also in relationship with each other. the second tradition has influenced nursing more or less directly through the psychotherapeutic traditions and modalities of talk therapy as well as by virtue of the basic presence of nurses alongside patients providing a natural setting for therapeutically-oriented encounters (peplau, 1952/1988). in particular, one of the participants talked about her experience of working with the tidal model (barker & buchanan-barker, 1995), which i will discuss later for the ways in which it served to highlight some of the cross-currents of these traditions in practice. ritualized behaviour my route into thinking about ritual, and finding creative ways of using it interpretively began with my own experience of being exposed to imported (from a western standpoint) forms of ritualized behaviour in zen buddhist practice. i will begin by discussing the significance of ritual in the zen buddhist tradition and then put this into a context of a western academic understanding of ritual by catherine bell (2009a, 2009b), using these perspectives as a stepping off point into the interpretation of the nurses’ experiences. as i write, i have just returned from a week-long sesshin, or intensive zen practice period in a forest by a lake in british columbia, canada. this form of practice entails a distinct change in the rhythms and activities of daily life. we rose to the sound of a bell at five am, took our places on meditation cushions and spent much of the day in sitting and walking meditation or in practical tasks like cooking and washing up. we practiced largely in silence apart from necmccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 4 essary functional exchanges, chants, or listening to formal teaching talks, and regulated our interactions with each other through formalized gestures like bowing, and by an effort to maintain awareness of oneself in space in relation to others. to begin with, there is an alien-ness to all this as one consciously tries to remember to bow in the right place or learn the steps of ritualized meals. it can seem arbitrary, even sinister, or just silly. then, over the course of a few days a greater naturalness emerges in living together in this way, along with a growing recognition of the functionality of these forms for focusing the mind in meditation while ensuring that participants are fed and sheltered and in the right place at the right time. the ritualization of everyday activities is thus one of the features of zen ritual, common to both rinzai and soto schools of zen. dogen wrote in his instruction to the tenzo [head cook], “when you wash rice and prepare vegetables, you must do it with your own hands, and with your own eyes, making sincere effort. do not be idle, even for a moment. do not be careful about one thing and careless about another” (tanahashi, 1995, p. 54). there is the ordinary task, and at the same time the expression of the value of meditative awareness. zen also has its formal ceremonies and symbolic objects but it is this aspect of infusing ordinary activity with the effort of awareness that connects it to understanding nursing activity. another aspect to note is that ritual is not an end in itself, a series of rote moves to be memorized and repeated, but part of the cultivation of a practitioner. reducing ritual to mechanistic habit, we fail to understand how a practice of ritual can bring about a disciplined transformation of the practitioner, in this case how zen ritual can give rise to zen mind. the key, of course, is the gradual, even imperceptible, scripting of character through mental and physical exercise. (wright, 2008, p. 11) my focus here is not on the soteriological goal of zen ritual, but on precisely this insight into how ritualized activity both reflects a framework of meaning and shapes its participants. in this view, ritual is not inevitably mechanistic, but has the dimension of a living process by which the person who enters into the ritual brings it into being through its enactment, and is simultaneously acted upon to shape his or her way of beingin-the-world. one important aspect of this perspective, which is consistent with the theme of non-duality in buddhism, is that it recognizes “the extent to which the mental and the physical are intertwined” (wright, 2008, p. 12). this reflects a shift away from earlier western understandings of zen as anti-ritualistic and as a discipline purely of the mind (faure, 2004), towards a “postcartesian” engagement with its “fundamental corporeality...as a specifically embodied practice” (wright, 2008, p. 13). when i come to look more closely at the experiences of nurses, it will become clearer how useful this insight is in remembering that the term mental health carries within itself the cartesian separation of mind and body, whereas the practice of mental health nursing is an embodied practice in which the placement of bodies within a specific physical environment carries meanings. it is only through actions and speech, flesh and blood and vocal cords that we recognize “mental” disorder and in turn work with it. catherine bell’s (2009a, 2009b) work about ritual further helps to build an understanding of how one might employ it as a conceptual tool for examining the actions of nurses on mental health units. this work is useful in trying to understand what is going on in ritualized behavior, and to link the idea of formation in zen ritual to the forms mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 5 through which nurses express the nursepatient relationship. she put forward a framework for talking about ritualization in which, “ritual activities are restored to their rightful context, the multitude of ways of acting in a particular culture” (bell, 2009a, p. 140). the framework is based on an understanding of human practice, with four characteristics. first of all, practice is situational, such that it cannot be properly understood outside of its particular context. for example, one of the study participants, looking back to an earlier stage in her career on an acute unit for adolescents talked about a leaving ritual, commenting about how she saw this in retrospect. one of the psychiatrists was going away and we did as a goodbye skit for him, ten of us pretended to be one of the kids on the unit...we'd step forward and we kind of acted out these kids...like, how disrespectful is that? she recalled that the participants and the psychiatrist all found it funny at the time. it seemed that looking back with the distance of time, the ritual appeared differently: the specific context of that place and moment had been lost. next, in bell’s account, practice is “inherently strategic, manipulative, and expedient” and “a ceaseless play of situationally effective schemes, tactics, and strategies” (2009a, p. 82). all of the participants talked at some level about the range of activities they were involved in as nurses on an acute unit. one of them gave an overview of some of the major approaches. there was the medical element physical obs, drugs in high quantities often when i look back on it, a lot of polypharmacy. there was a social component to it. the nurses in the unit that i worked in were very visible for the patients, you know, we were usually out and about with them doing something on the wards, so whether that was just sitting down with them and playing games, watching tv, seeing if they were concentrating, just sounding out some of those psychotic ideas that people were expressing through to behavioural work that we used to do we used to get patients in with ocd for example and we'd do quite a bit of stuff with them to try and limit the impact that that had on their day-to-day function. we'd take groups i used to run an anxiety management group. the way the participant expressed this list conveys the sense of a play of strategies, linked to the goals of monitoring and modifying disturbances in thought and behavior. the third characteristic of practice is “a fundamental “misrecognition’ of what it is doing, a misrecognition of its limits and constraints, and of its relationship between its ends and its means” (bell, 2009a, p. 82). this suggests that one cannot fully know what one is doing while one is doing it, and any later, purportedly objective reconstruction of the activity will miss the dynamic play of possibility that was present as it was happening. the element of misrecognition may go some way towards explaining how it is that in mental health nursing we cannot be sure our favoured therapeutic approaches are having the effect we desire, or if we do witness the desired effect, that it was our approach that brought it about. this appears as an element in the participants’ stories of relationships with particular patients that they believed were helpful, and yet these were stories without endings, in which the fruits of the relationship were unknown to the nurse. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 6 ...there are patients that i think i can say, probably yeah, what i did...made a difference to them but can i say what i did made a difference to what became of them? which was kind of the end of your question i can't because i really can't in my mind's eye think of, or see a patient where i really know what became of them. the fourth feature intrinsic to practice is what bell (2009a) called “redemptive hegemony” (p. 85), referring to patterns of power, dominance and subordination in our awareness of the social world, lived out through a range of activities. what makes this redemptive is that we derive a sense of meaning and purpose and of our place in the world from these patterns, which appear to us as “a natural weave of constraint and possibility” (p. 85). i found it interesting to notice that whereas none of the participants talked much about the role of psychiatrists, when they did make an appearance it was often to make something happen on the unit, or to stifle something from happening. one nurse recalled the psychiatrist for the unit: ...actually invited myself and [a colleague] if we wanted to learn group therapy, and do the training for it...so i think it might have been more invitational than self-selecting. it was seen as prestige too, yeah. another nurse, talking about a different unit, described how the psychiatrists’ priorities would take precedence over those of patients or nurses. and so the physicians will say, “whoa, it's to get them stabilized on this medication,” they sort of have their medical goals and um, while the patient, it might come up what their wishes are but a lot of times it's discounted. um nursing will bring up maybe their ideas, but in terms of a plan, half the time there isn’t, which is really very difficult to then do anything... in bell’s view, ritual has these four features of practice, but ritualization distinguishes itself from other forms of action when there is a differentiation between certain forms of action within a particular culture. ritualized activity comes into being in response to some situational and strategic need and is not therefore solely a matter of routinized behaviour. the next feature of ritualization in bell’s account is that of an open-ended dialectic of body and environment. i have already used the example of a zen sesshin to show how the detailed organization of bodies and gestures in space and time is simultaneously demanded by the environment, and creates the environment. the critical additional point here is the element of belief systems and power relations that underwrite ritualized activity. one would not for long put up with the finely regulated routine of a sesshin unless one had at least a basic sympathy towards the zen tradition. in turn, power relations are expressed through “the production of a ritualized agent able to wield physically a scheme of subordination or insubordination” (bell, 2009a, p. 100). thus, through participation in a ritualized activity, in a specific body-environment dialectic, one knows one's place, and this knowing is the expression of certain power relations (though recalling the characteristic of misrecognition, this is probably not construed by the participant at the time). “hence, ritualization, as the production of a ritualized agent via the interaction of a body within a structured and structuring environment, always takes place within a larger and very immediate sociocultural situation” (bell, 2009a, p. 100). one of the participants described an experience of arriving to work on an acute mental health unit in anmccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 7 other country that readily illustrates the point. i remember the first day that i turned up and the it was like it was a scene from one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, the whitewashed walls, the grilles on the windows, and the nurses in white dresses with their hats and the male nurses in all white but just with little shorts and knee high socks and white trainers and the aesthetic just didn't work for me...so i thought “i can't work here.” on top of which it was substantially gate keeping that the nurses were doing, there was no real therapeutic role for nurses in that kind of environment. this nurse worked on the unit for about two weeks, but by this account had the measure of the place at first glance. clearly implicit in this description is a tradition and set of beliefs that spoke eloquently through the environment, including the nurses’ dress, and the conditioned forms of nursing behaviour. in a kind of lived foucauldian (2006) flashback, the asylum, confinement, and psychiatric power are all present in the image of this particular unit. a further element in bell’s account of ritualization is that ritual asserts difference. it separates the sacred from the profane, or the clean from the dirty and such antinomies are basic to ritualized activity. more than this, however, the assertion of difference also tends to produce a hierarchy of oppositions, which are felt by its participating agents as another source of order and meaning. in sum, ritualization not only involves the setting up of oppositions but also, through the privileging built into such an exercise it generates hierarchical schemes to produce a loose sense of totality and systematicity. in this way, ritual dynamics afford an experience of order as well as the fit between this taxonomic order and the real world of experience. bell’s framework allows for the possibility of seeing everyday activity through a lens of ritualized behavior, and the use of ritual in the zen tradition makes this explicit. what the example of the sesshin also does is to show how the everyday can be rendered unfamiliar and thus seen anew. these understandings of ritualized behavior create a way of trying to bring unfamiliarity to the mental health unit environment in which nurses are immersed. different rituals, different traditions “some beings see water as wondrous blossoms, but they do not use blossoms as water. hungry ghosts see water as raging fire or pus and blood. dragons and fish see water as a palace or a pavilion...human beings see water as water. water is seen as dead or alive depending on the seer's causes and conditions. thus, the views of all beings are not the same. question this matter now.” dogen (2010, pp. 158-159). dogen’s poetic expression of how different interests and viewpoints give rise to different ways of seeing the same thing, even a taken-for-granted element like water, holds open the idea that different nurses see their role and hence their relating to patients in different ways. the zen perspective offers a way of looking at these everyday nursing activities as interconnected with the physical and social environment, and both expressing and cultivating values and assumptions. then, proceeding from the discussion of bell’s framework, there are a number of activities that participants talked about as part of their work with patients on acute care mental health units that i interpreted as ritualized behaviour. when seen in this way, mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 8 bell's analysis can be used to interpret activities for what they might disclose of a shifting plurality of cultures, expressing various traditions and values, within the ostensibly singular culture of nursing on a unit. this is especially clear-cut in the case of one unit, on which a relational model of care called the tidal model, created by a british nurse, phil barker (barker & buchanan-barker, 2005), had been introduced. i have quoted dogen, partly following barker’s penchant for aquatic metaphors, but as this quotation warns us, not all beings see water as water. it is this variation in perspective i want to try to convey. three nursing practices among the study participants, there were a number of distinct activities that they talked about as part of their work with patients, but within a single mental health unit. one, which they all addressed in some form, is the forcible constraint of a patient who is aggressive and seen as out of control. this is a version drawn from experience of an adolescent unit but one that is probably familiar to all nurses who have worked on acute units: we also and we used medications pretty freely if we saw a kid escalate, our first effort would be to try to talk them down...and then the next if it escalated the next thing it would be they would be given a choice would they like a pill or an injection usually chlorpromazine would be the sedative or haldol. and so we thought we were being benevolent by giving them a choice that they could choose the pill or their medication. if they refused, then security would be called in if there wasn't enough males on the unit to restrain them and then, i got to go into the med room to draw up the syringe and they're medicated. here, obviously, is a pretty raw exercise of power, but it is situational, strategic and stepped: talking first, then the more benign oral administration of medication, then the holding down to give an injection. gender relations also come into play in the mention of the assumption that male nurses would take the lead in the physical restraint or, in their absence security staff from the wider hospital community beyond the unit. what would be highly unusual outside of its context is, of course, everyday activity to nurses on acute mental health units. another nurse talked about trying to maintain a relationship with the patient at such a critical moment, seeing it as one episode in a continuing connection: ...at the time when you’re doing this you just gently and firmly remind them that i'm doing this for the best interest of you, myself and this unit. this is what needs to be done because it doesn't appear as though your behaviour can be maintained in a level that's safe on the unit and that’s it...this isn’t being done to punish you, this is being done to increase safety for the whole unit. in this way, the action can be understood as an example of the genre of rituals of affliction that attempt “to rectify a state of affairs that has been disturbed or disordered; they heal, exorcise, protect, and purify” (bell, 2009b, p. 115). it also shows the social aspect of ritual, which is apparent in the example of the sesshin. the actions of each individual take place within an unfolding of a community. in terms of the underlying history of mental health care, the raw exercise of power in the name of safety certainly manifests the confinement tradition. the nurse’s comments about contextualizing an event of restraint for the patient also reveal the presence of the relational-therapeutic perspective, taking account of what the mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 9 event may have been like for the patient. this is an example of what clarke referred to as “moral wakefulness” (2009, p. 28) even in the presence of the socially agreed upon necessity at times of forcible restraint. another kind of activity that was mentioned by most participants was running various kinds of therapeutic groups. these ranged from the theoretically sophisticated and formalized, to more improvised and pragmatic types of groups. the nurse who was invited by the psychiatrist to undertake group training recalled that, “we were really under the influence of the milan family therapy team at that time. the milan group had just come...and presented and so this is we were very much using that whole model of paradox, counter-paradox.” another nurse talked about establishing a weekend planning group for patients going out on pass with the unit recreation therapist. ...we sort of partnered up and thought it would be a great case for nursing and rec therapy to work together, and we sort of address rec therapy issues and nursing issues when people go for the weekend. she discussed the importance of partnerships with like-minded professionals on the unit as being a critical factor in the creation of groups like this. a different group, for family support, had been in abeyance without the motivation of the social worker who had started it: our previous social worker started the family support group, he then left, which is the reason why it kind of fell through, we tried to carry it so he initiated that, so it just kind of depends who's there again, fragmented right, depending on the interest level and motivation or whatever... going back to the situational and strategic aspects of ritualization, it is plain in these examples how a number of circumstances had to come together to bring about nurses’ participation in groups as an intentionally therapeutic way of relating with patients. not least of the circumstances is what these examples reveal about the coalescence of power and influence on units. whereas the therapy groups in the first example had the sanction of the unit psychiatrist and the participant remembered “it was seen as prestige, too,” the existence of the weekend planning group and the family support group were far more contingent upon horizontal alliances between nurses and allied health professionals. the groups appear to have existed only as long as the rationale, motivation, and energy to run them persisted in particular individuals without any institutional memory to hold them in mind. while organized group therapies clearly draw upon psychotherapeutic traditions, their voluntary and even marginal status within unit cultures suggests that the relational-therapeutic is politically weak relative to practices of confinement upheld by statutory fiat such as, in the jurisdiction in which i am writing, the mental health act of alberta. the third common type of activity as part of the nurse's role is the administration of medications. this did not figure all that prominently in the interviews, perhaps because it is such a taken-for-granted way of relating with patients. nurses have to follow clearly mandated steps, now computer based, in ensuring that patients are given (or at least offered) the correct medication at the correct time, and that this is accurately recorded. one nurse mentioned “thinking about doing my meds for the whole day” with the inference that this is one of the structuring routines of nursing time. each shift is marked out by the medication schedule of the nurse's assigned patients for that day, which entails mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 10 for example knowing that at breakfast time and lunchtime, there will be medications to give out. nurses are as much bound to this ritual as the patients. it is not surprising that negotiation over medications can become one common scene of dialogue between nurse and patient. participants identified different approaches to this on the part of nurses. one identified a kind of approach in which a nurse will say to a patient: “you have to take this medication,” and i think it's more the approach and the way things are said. “you have to take this medication,” well actually they don't and you know, just, it's “i know what i'm doing, i'm the expert here and you're gonna do what i say,” that authoritative kind of thing. sometimes you have to say “you have to take the medication” but you know, a lot of times they don't want to and “no, you have to” instead of – “can i ask if you're worried about something with the medication?” like i think it's the approach. another nurse made a similar point about trying to understand the context of a patient's behaviour before assuming that medication would be the best strategy to address the patient's situation at that moment: ...you have a patient who is schizophrenic and they're hallucinating and you can tell that they are distressed. so rather than saying like, sitting down and having that conversation or even walking beside them as they are pacing the hallway, “you seem to be getting a bit upset right now is there something i can do to alleviate some of your discomfort or have i totally misread the situation?” and then it gives them the opportunity to say “yeah, either i am totally upset or nah, i'm fine, don't worry about me i just want to pace.” “great, you know what, if you need anything let me know.” by contrast, she characterized a more perfunctory response, picturing the nurse sitting behind the long desk at the front of the unit, watching patients: “nursing from the desk, patient appears agitated. what’s going to be the next response? patient offered, you know, ativan or zyprexa.” what these accounts suggest is the degree to which nurses are bound by the activity of giving psychotropic medications, and if they often feel that patients must take them, they certainly feel that they must give them. they also demonstrate, however, that this compulsory element of practice can be a space of sympathetic curiosity and support for patients when nurses are prepared to exercise judgment about what is most helpful in a specific situation. traditions expressed through practices these examples of nursing activity, which can be understood as ritualized within bell's (2009a) framework, reveal the kind of sets of oppositions and contrasts that she saw as an element of ritual. one such opposition is that between voluntary and compulsory nursing activities that structure relationships with patients. in every case, group work, whether sanctioned by a psychiatrist or selfinitiated, was an optional activity. not all nurses chose to do it (all four participants gave instances of this). no one pointed out that they had to give (or more precisely, account for) medications, because they did not need to, it is a given. other sets of oppositions are at play in the activities described, and in all forms of nurse-patient relationship in the specific setting of the acute care mental health unit. these might include nursepatient, harm-safety, restraint-talking, on or off-unit, stigma-acceptance, and reasonmccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 11 unreason. ritualization serves both to define and to animate these antinomies. at times, they appear clear-cut and permanent, which may be experienced as a source of security or of frustration according to where one stands among the “binary oppositions [that] almost always involve asymmetrical relations of dominance and subordination by which they generate hierarchically organized relationships” (bell, 2009a, p. 102). the account from one of the participants of her experience working with the tidal model of mental health care exemplifies the dynamics of ritualization, and reveals a kind of multicultural complexity within a single inpatient unit. barker, the creator of the model, stated: the tidal model is a philosophical approach to developing genuine mental health care. it is less about treating or managing a form of mental illness and more about following a person, in an effort to provide the kind of support that might help them on the way to recovery. (barker & buchanan-barker, 2005, p. 17) one of the underlying assumptions of the model is that people are always in a state of flux. this means that when someone is admitted as a patient on a mental health unit, her or his experience matters, because the person's story conveys truths about the origins of present distress, and directions to its amelioration. the task of the nurse is to provide an environment of safety and support, while paying attention to the story and working with the patient to find a way through. the model has prescribed written forms that guide the nurse's conversation with the patient to create an initial assessment, and then in setting longer and shorterterm goals for recovery. an important element of the model is that the patient's own story, in his or her own words is recorded, written down either by the patient or the nurse and becomes a resource for the professionals involved in caring for the patient. forming and being formed understandings of ritual open up ways of seeing the tidal model not only as a technique for doing care, or even as a therapeutic intervention but as a means of forming the outlook and behavior of practitioners. this harks back to the quotation in the title of the paper, dogen’s injunction to his monks that “the pure guidelines of the monastery are to be inscribed in your bones and mind” dogen (2010, p. 42). put in a more contemporary voice, “the practices of zen ritual are forms of practical understanding and knowledge” (wright, 2008, p. 14). according to bell (2009a, 2009b), those who carry out rituals are not passive receptacles of tradition, but participants in the enactment and transformation of tradition. that is not to say that the process of transformation might not be slow, even imperceptible and unintended to those in the ritual, but to observe that ritual is formation, the formation of environments and the formation of participants. benner (2011), in her recent work, has also adopted the language of formation to describe how nurses develop as practitioners. she wrote, “the practice demands and resources and possibilities form [italics in original] the way the nurse is in the world and reveals new aspects of the world of nursing practice” (p. 348). when we pay attention to the actual forms of practice, it becomes apparent that the forms form us. the facticity of the noun becomes the activity of the verb. the doubling of identity in the word form corresponds with bell’s emphasis on ritualization over ritual, while recmccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 12 ognizing that without a defined activity ritualization slips away into generality. form has a third sense, which pertains to the tidal model, which is that of the piece of paper (or electronic facsimile) with predetermined content and intent. forms in this third sense also serve to form our behaviour and ways of seeing, by getting us to ask or to answer one question rather than another, or to focus our mind on certain parts of our experience. tellingly, the study participant typified some of her colleagues’ resistance to the tidal model in the belief that, “i don’t need a piece of paper to dictate what questions i ask a patient.” such nurses would, of course, be quite right to suspect they were being formed, indeed re-formed by this model (which is another kind of form) and its array of paper forms. one trouble with this objection is that in a regulated environment like a hospital, there is no choice between forms or no forms; at most there are only choices among forms. perhaps refusal is understandable as an exercise of symbolic resistance to bureaucracy, but actually it is to declare a preference for one form over another. in this case, the opposition between voluntary and compulsory activity was operative. there are hospital policies about how often nurses have to submit to the form of making an entry in progress notes, but while the introduction of the tidal model was accompanied with considerable effort by unit educators providing encouragement, education and support, it was an optional activity. the participant in the study who brought up the tidal model welcomed its introduction on her unit, and had been using it for about five years prior to the research interview. she said she found, “it was a great way to promote a conversation that might never have taken place.” this is an evocative statement, from the point of view of the recognition of the power of conversation that broadly underlies the traditions of talk therapy. it also echoes the importance of conversation in hermeneutics. it is even salutary to consider, negatively, the potential conversations that never take place if nurses do not ask, do not elicit the patient’s story, perhaps in favour of other narratives such as dsm iv diagnosis (american psychiatric association, 2000) or external observations of behaviour. the nurse mentioned, while recalling working with one particular patient, that another nurse, who was also caring for that patient during her stay in hospital “didn’t do tidal model.” this meant that she felt unable fully to share the work she was engaged in, and the therapeutic insights she was gaining in her conversations with the patient. she described the difference in approach as: where i was addressing a like in the here and now if everything has brought you here, how do we change? where you go to in the future? and this particular nurse went back and was like rehashing all the things that had brought her to that point. she said that the psychiatrist made a note in the chart that staff should not keep focusing on the patient’s childhood abuse because it was holding her back, this being the approach taken by the nurse who “didn’t do tidal model.” there is more to a conversation that is intentionally therapeutic than a nurse simply talking to a patient. an important distinction emerges between an attitude of respect for the patient’s own life story, in order to consider present and future in meaningful ways, and joining the patient (or even encouraging the patient) in staying stuck in memories of the past in a way that appears to be disabling. this can be motivated by compassion in the form of a feeling mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 13 of sympathy for the other’s suffering, but in itself it is not likely to be helpful for long. the significance of this reported disjunction between the nurses working with the same patient is what it suggests about different cultures among nurses on the unit, expressed through different rituals. the tidal model would involve the nurse sitting down with an individual patient, for some time, to work on the extensive initial assessment. the nurse’s questions would be shaped by the text of the model. the model itself, as barker pointed out above is the concrete manifestation of a certain way of regarding mental health, people suffering mental distress, and those who have undertaken to care for them. the idea of the person-as-flux is critical in being able to countenance possibilities. although identity is thus in a sense open, it is not a question of fake sameness the nurse is not the patient. the task of the nurse is to recognize the patient’s unique suffering, but not simply to identify with it. as for the rituals of the second nurse, it is harder to say. the nurse i interviewed characterized the opponents of the tidal model, as quoted above, as seeing themselves as resisting being dictated to. in the particular instance the participant talked about, there were obviously conversations going on between the patient and other nurses, raking over the history of abuse. it is usual practice for a nurse to meet with an assigned patient for a daily “one-to-one” with the patient. this is an individual meeting between nurse and patient, but beyond that there is little or no particular structure to what is said, or for that matter, what is the point. it may be that the one-to-one is a ghostly remnant of psychotherapy, a privileging of the private and personal conversation between a mental health professional and a patient. peplau (1989) pointed out that interactions are not an end in themselves: among the many factors that get in the way of therapeutic nurse-patient relationships are the expectations of nurses. one such expectation is that because a nurse spent a whole hour with a patient, she or he hopes and expects that a certain change would occur – but then it does not. in one workshop a nurse spent five minutes with a withdrawn patient, pummeling him with questions, expecting patient to talk, and when he did not, the nurse walked away. (p. 203) the one-to-one is a deceptively flat term, with an implied false equality in which it is impossible to know which one is the nurse, and which the patient. as peplau hinted, we always enter into encounters with our own attachments to what we think ought to happen, and if it does not, then we will tell ourselves a story about what went wrong. more often than not, it is the other person’s fault, but it could be a story about our own mistakes or inadequacy. either way, without some reflexive awareness of what one makes of an encounter, as opposed to considering it as a given, impermeable to interpretation, it is easy to get stuck. the one-toone links but it also isolates. it summons up an interaction between nurse and patient, yet simultaneously separates off the interaction. seen as the expression of the interplay of traditions, just as engaged curiosity may be brought to bear on the compulsory practice of medication-offering, here it may be that talk can be inflected with values of objectification and distancing. the idea of professional autonomy, present in the one nurse’s rejection of the tidal model speaks to the framework of the ritual of the one-to-one, to a cultural world being brought to life. in this world, however, what passes for professional autonomy may actually sanction power over the patient, and defensiveness about practice. it is a literal view mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 14 of autonomy, which is actually quite restricted. a more realistic and worldly view accepts that autonomy entails the responsibility to work with others, to recognize the interconnectedness of one’s activity. autonomy, to be effective, is enlivened through recognition of its limitations. in her account of working with the tidal model, the nurse described seeking connection along two vectors. one of these was the narrative vector already mentioned, the connection between past and future in the present, the connection between the question “where from?” and the question “where to?” dogen went even further than this idea of a linear connection in his essay called the time being (dogen, 2010). he saw our being as time, not merely in time. thus, “the time being has a characteristic of flowing. so-called today flows into tomorrow, today flows into yesterday, yesterday flows into today. and today flows into today, tomorrow flows into tomorrow” (p. 106). in this fluidity, nursing practice becomes oriented towards openness and the possibility of change, not only the future is open, but the past too that so often becomes frozen into our sense of an unchangeable identity. the second vector of connection is that of sharing the patient’s story and the story of her present as a patient, of the day-to-day flowing of her self-understanding. here the nurse met with disconnection between what i would characterize as different cultural understandings of nursing on the acute unit. she talked about being aware of expecting her work in eliciting the patient’s story, and using that to set goals, to be received differently in different places. she would strategize with colleagues about how to deploy information to have it heard: i think we’re doing good, i think we’re on the right track, but how do i put forward the information i have from tonight for tomorrow’s day staff? you know, and who do you think will actually listen to it? likewise, she would think about how to suggest to patients they should present the work they had done together so that the patient might have an experience of continuity. if i know there’s other nurses coming on for the next day and you know how you can see who will be working with the patient the next day and i know they are totally against the tidal model, i would never say to my patient, “tomorrow morning when you get up ask for the day focus sheet [one of the tidal model forms] and discuss with your nurse.” that just won’t happen. so then i’m basically saying there’s a huge disconnect on the unit. this is telling for the daily experience of practicing with two cultures. this was especially apparent for this nurse, where the tidal model stood as a distinct ritualization of the tradition of relational practice with therapeutic intent. nurses in the study described practices that expressed the confinement tradition for the most part at second hand. they were critical of ways in which they saw other nurses interacting with patients, but at times also recognized that they participated in practices more associated with confinement. cross-cultural nursing in this sense is a feature of acute care units, which are governed by external forces such as legally enforced compulsory admission and treatment of people in acute mental illness. such complexity cuts both ways. does it mean, for example, that the tradition of biomedical psychiatry, enacted through the compulsory ritualization of medication giving is not therapeutic? by this i do not mean the sense in which medications are themmccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 15 selves called therapeutic agents at the chemical level, but rather that medication-giving, even when done in the most perfunctory manner, takes place within networks of social relationships and meanings. does it mean that prioritizing the maintenance of a safe environment, at times restraining a patient who may well do harm to himor herself, or others, is not therapeutic for the collective body of the unit as well as the individual at that moment? at times, the participants made clear their preference for an approach that is inclusive, curious, empathetic, yet all of them also accepted the necessity in taking part in the harsher, more physical rituals of acute care mental health. it is worth noting too, the common concern that ritualization can tend towards literalism and routine. i talked with a colleague who had also had experience of working with the tidal model. she supported its intent, but had found that at times the pro forma questions were confusing to patients. she felt that sometimes nurses, especially those with less experience, were too dependent on following the forms, and getting the questions right and so lost sight of the individual experience, which is intended to be at the heart of the model. conclusion the use of bell’s framework of ritualization provides a way of reading back from nursing activities to the cultural variations, ideologies, and power relations that are at work on mental health units. this way of interpreting practice suggests that nurses, in their daily practice, negotiate between cultures, and move between cultures according to circumstances. these cultures are enacted in the detail of how nurses move in the physical environment, how they place themselves in relation to the desk that divides nurses from patients, who sits and who stands. this is the lesson that zen ritual shows us in its very unfamiliarity. the distance afforded by cross cultural seeing makes clearer how our rituals condition our way of being in the world, and our ways of seeing. it is not that some of us submit to ritualization, while others practice as free individuals. it is a matter of becoming more aware of the rituals we choose, and what kind of a world we wish to bring into being through them. the histories that are brought to life in the daily rituals of practice both precede contemporary mental health units, and extend beyond them into the institutions and policies that help to shape nurses’ experiences. we might ask, when considering the future of practice, what rituals do we want to see? which rituals are the most helpful to patients? these are questions that speak to the deeper values we believe are expressed through the social phenomenon of the acute mental health unit. while an exposition along the lines of ritualization can hopefully enable nurses to become more aware of choices they make in how to practice at each moment, there are broader implications for administrators and policy makers in confronting the way these cultural disjunctions are local manifestations of higher level tensions among the rhetorical strategies by which society thinks about mental illness and health care. acknowledgements no hermeneutic work belongs wholly to its author, and i wish to acknowledge dr. shelley raffin-bouchal, my doctoral supervisor, and dr. nancy moules, who was a very active member of my supervisory committee, for all their guidance and support in conducting the study from which this paper emerged. a version of this paper was presented by the author at the canadian hermeneutic institute, halifax, nova scotia, may 23, 2012. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 16 references aho, k. (2008). medicalizing mental health: a phenomenological alternative. journal of medical humanities, 29, 243-259. doi: 10.1007/s10912-008-9065-1 american psychiatric association (2000). diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). washington, dc: author. barker, p., & buchanan-barker, p. (2005). the tidal model: a guide for mental health professionals. new york, ny: brunnerroutledge. bell, c. (2009a). ritual theory, ritual practice. new york, ny: oxford. bell, c. (2009b). ritual: perspective and dimensions. new york, ny: oxford. benner, p. (1984). from novice to expert. menlo park, ca: addison-wesley. benner, p. (2000). the wisdom of our practice. american journal of nursing, 100(10), 99-105. clarke, l. (2009). the care and confinement of the mentally ill. in p. barker (ed.), psychiatric and mental health nursing: the craft of caring. london, uk: hodder arnold. dogen. (2010). treasury of the true dharma eye: zen master dogen’s shobogenzo (k. tanahashi, trans.). boston, ma: shambhala. faure, b. (2004). double exposure: cutting across buddhist and western discourses. stanford, ca: stanford university press. gadamer, h.g. (2001). gadamer in conversation: reflections and commentary. new haven, ct: yale university press. mccaffrey, g., raffin-bouchal, s., & moules, n.j. (2012a). buddhist thought and nursing: a hermeneutic exploration. nursing philosophy, 13(2), 87-97.doi:10.1111/j.1466 769x. 20 11.00502.x mccaffrey, g., raffin-bouchal, s., & moules, n.j. (2012b). hermeneutics as research approach: a reappraisal. international journal of qualitative methods, 11(3), 214-229. o’gorman, s.m. (1998). death and dying in contemporary society: an evaluation of current attitudes and the rituals associated with death and dying and their relevance to recent understandings of health and healing. journal of advanced nursing, 27(6), 1127-1135. palmer, r. e. (2001). introduction. in h. g. gadamer, gadamer in conversation: reflections and commentary (r.e. palmer, trans.). new haven, ct: yale university press. peplau, h. (1988). interpersonal relations in nursing. basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. peplau, h. (1989). selected works: interpersonal theory in nursing. new york, ny: macmillan. philpin, s. (2002). rituals and nursing: a critical commentary. journal of advanced nursing, 38(2), 144-151. philpin, s. (2007). managing ambiguity and danger in an intensive therapy unit: ritual practices and sequestration. nursing inquiry, 14(1), 51-59. doi:10.1111/ j.1440-1800.2007. 00354.x tanahashi, k. (1995). moon in a dewdrop: writings of zen master dogen. new york, ny: north point press. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 12 17 wright, d.s. (2008). introduction: rethinking ritual practice in zen buddhism. in s. heine & d.s. wright (eds.), zen ritual: studies of zen buddhist theory in practice. new york, ny: oxford. corresponding author: harris b. bechtol, phd sam houston state university email: hbb014@shsu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics march 20, 2017 the author(s) 2017 a hermeneutic phenomenology: the death of the other understood as event harris b. bechtol abstract this is a phenomenological description of what is happening when we experience the death of another that interprets surviving or living on after such death by employing the term event. this term of art from phenomenology and hermeneutics is used to describe a disruptive and transformative experience of singularity. i maintain that the death of the other is an experience of an event because such death is unpredictable or without a horizon of expectation, excessive or without any principle of sufficient reason, and transformative or a death of the world itself. keywords death, mourning, the other, event, phenomenology, derrida and you, o tree, whose branches already are casting their shadows on one poor body and soon will be overshadowing two, preserve the marks of our death; let your fruit forever be dark as a token of mourning, a monument marking the blood of two lovers. (ovid, 2004, 4.157-161) poetry, literature, and art in general have a unique ability to expose us to common experiences so that we see the heart of these experiences as we live them out in everyday life. art can function as a mirror of our deepest philosophical concerns by highlighting our average, everyday understanding of phenomena. though classified under myth, ovid’s account of how the mulberry tree came to bear red instead of white berries functions in just this way. he shows in the tragic love of thisbe and pyramus how the death of a loved one is carried by the world itself through the world’s own metamorphosis. death and world remain integrally bound so that the bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 2 loss of someone changes the world itself. this understanding of the relation between world and death at the turn of the first century is also part of today’s popular culture. the recent netflix series daredevil reflects back to us this average, everyday understanding of the transformative potentiality of the death of the other. when the questionable character, elliot grote, is killed by the marvel anti-hero the punisher, only three characters attend grote’s funeral: his legal representatives. father lantom, the priest presiding over the funeral, elaborates on this experience of death by highlighting this loss as more than just the loss of the person: “precious in the eyes of the lord is the death of his saints.” well, elliot grote was no saint. he was human—deeply flawed. every sunday, for as far as i remember, elliot would come here friendless and alone to sit right there in that pew. often, i would see him take whatever money he had—crumpled one hundreds, loose change, a rolex watch one time—and put it in the collection plate hoping for redemption, which would never come. praying for the light, but elliot died still in the dark with no one to mourn his loss except the three of you. and so, we might say one life gone, one sinful life, but one person is not just one person. in each of us, there is a world webbing out, reaching others. creating reactions. sometimes equal sometimes opposite. we rush to say one life gone, but each of us is a world. and today, a world has been lost [emphasis added]. (kelly, 2015) despite art’s ability to reflect back and highlight such experiences, it often does little to take us beyond their singularity. in a deeply important sense, any death is each time unique—chaque fois unique as jacques derrida says—so that any death is always already an experience of singularity that resists universalization. and yet such an experience of singularity to which art can expose us does not resist philosophical engagement. engaging such singular experiences philosophically requires that a way, path, or method be chosen that seeks neither to universalize nor exhaustively explain these experiences. undoubtedly, philosophy is wont to seek after the universal and the exhaustive, but this is not philosophy’s only concern. phenomenology and hermeneutics provide this way or path for philosophically engaging the death of the other in its singularity but without attempting to universalize the singular. through a phenomenological description of what happens when we survive, that is, live-on after, sur-vivre, the death of the other, we can provide the contours of and offer an interpretation of such an experience of singularity. the death of the other is, then, each time unique, but the repetition of such a common event allows us to describe some of the crucial and abiding structures of these events. each time unique, then, can be read as repetition of the same but always with a difference. this phenomenological description of surviving the death of the other offers an understanding of the relation of death and the world. by deploying event as a term of art from phenomenology and hermeneutics, i limn the lines around the abiding structures of an experience of the death of the other by providing an understanding of what happens when we live on after such death. with this description, the relation among death and the world begins to be understood insofar as the death of the other is more than just the loss of the person but also the loss of the meaningful contexts in which we find ourselves. in other words, the death of the other is a death of the world. 1 this 1 here, and throughout, i draw from jacques derrida’s insistence, “for each time, and each time singularly, each time irreplaceably, each time infinitely, death is nothing less than an end of the world” (sovereignties in question: the poetics of paul celan, ed. thomas dutoit and outi pasanen [new york: bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 3 phenomenological account provides an understanding of the transformative and disruptive potentiality of the event of the death of the other on account of its unexpectedness, its excess, and its transformation of the world in its happening. symptoms of an event: unexpected, excessive, and transformative considering that this description of the death of the other relies on the term event, understanding the symptoms of an event is necessary so that the importance of the description’s contours may come into full relief. the event as a term of art became popular around the middle of the twentieth century when philosophers in phenomenology and hermeneutics began exploring ontologies outside of traditional substance metaphysics, which many believe emphasizes the mastery of the human subject over the objects that stand over against it. substance metaphysical approaches, according to these philosophers, have been unable to engage with the most important aspects of life and being, which can be gathered under the heading of degrees or modes of givenness (marion, 2002a; gschwandtner, 2014). these philosophers are concerned with whatever exceeds the conceptual and linguistic horizons of subjectivity by either an excess of givenness or a givenness of recess. the name offered for such givenness is the event. yet the diverse group of philosophers concerned with such an event2 provides no universal definition that would capture the nature of an event. as jean-luc nancy (2000) aptly says, “[t]here is no event ‘as such’” (p. 169). nancy and others resist any definition of an event because an event is understood to be an experience of possibility, contingency, and singularity itself. all we ever have in terms of our experience of an event are our experiences of particular events. we can have many experiences of events, in this sense, but we never experience the event as such. thus, no universal, transcendent form of the event exists. only a plurality of singular events exists. attempts to universalize the singularity of any event are, then, resisted by these philosophers of the event. nevertheless, these philosophers often use similar language to describe what experiencing an event entails. for example, an event for these philosophers concerns a transformative moment when the “unexpected and unpredictable [disrupt] the normalized, neutralized, and forcibly pacified status quo” (zabala & marder, 2014, p. 9). and this disruption of a “singular occurrence” introduces “an element to our world or our situation that could not have been thought or predicated in advance and that, as soon as it has arrived, reconstitutes the previous relations between beings in a world because it interposes itself among them. thus, it changes and reconfigures the world” (van der heiden, 2014, p. 17). consequently, an experience of an event fordham university press, 2005, p. 140] emphasis mine). on the strange arithmetic of this phrase where each death is a death of the one world, see not only below but also harris b. bechtol “event, death, and poetry: the death of the other as event,” philosophy today (forthcoming) and dennis schmidt, “of birth, death, and unfinished conversations” in gadamer’s hermeneutics and the art of conversation, ed. andrzej wiercinski. 2 this group includes, but is not limited to, martin heidegger, especially his work from the mid 1930s where he focuses on das ereignis (the event) in conjunction with his career-long task of thinking the truth of being, along with the french reception of heidegger’s work by gilles deleuze, alain badiou, jacques derrida, jean-luc nancy, jean-luc marion, françoise dastur, and claude romano. in addition, john d. caputo’s recent work has made this topic popular for english speakers interested in continental philosophy. bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 4 has a “symptomatology” (derrida, 2001, p.105): we know when an event has disrupted the norms of everyday life because such a disruption carries common symptoms with it. with this, derrida’s own writing on events can be used to represent this largely agreed upon structure of an event as unexpected, excessive, and transformative. derrida enumerates numerous aspects of our experiences of events: surprise, exposure, unanticipatable (inanticipable), unforeseeable, without horizon, unpredictable, unplanned, not decided upon, unexpected, singular, impossible, and secretive. we can summarize many of these themes in his work under three major aspects: impossibility, secrecy, and symptomatology. the impossibility of an event acts as the condition from which the other aspects flow. for derrida says, “this experience of the impossible conditions the eventiality of the event [conditionne l’événementialité de l’événement] …. what happens, as event, can only happen there where it is impossible” (derrida, 2001, p. 96). he does not mean that an event is a logical impossibility. rather, the condition of an event’s possibility is found only in its phenomenological impossibility, that is, there where the occurrence of an event, the breaking in of an event into the status quo, does not accord with our horizons of expectation for an experience. an event is impossible in this sense because it is unanticipatable: its occurrence exceeds or even resists our horizons of expectation through which phenomena ordinarily occur for us. an event suddenly breaks in and surprises us because it cannot be seen according to these horizons of expectation. thus, derrida (2001) says that we must speak of “the im-possible event” where the hyphenation of this word indicates “not only the opposite of the possible” but also “the condition or the chance of the possible” (p. 101). this im-possible event is not, however, “inaccessible” because it still “announces itself … swoops down upon and seizes me here and now … in actuality and not potentiality …. it is what is most undeniably real” (derrida, 2005, p. 84). an event is possible there where it finds its limit in our various conceptual and linguistic horizons of rationality through which life becomes relatively predictable and stable. yet this does not mean that an event never occurs. rather, when an event arrives, its arrival disrupts the relative predictability and stability of everyday life. an event remains phenomenologically impossible to our expectations and known possibilities all the while bringing its own possibilities through which it appears. thus, derrida (2006) says, “it may be, then, that the order [of the event] is other … and that only the coming of the event allows, after the event, perhaps, what it will previously have made possible to be thought” (p. 18). only after an event can we then begin to think what this event has made possible on account of the new conditions of possibility that attend its arrival. with its possibility found in its impossibility, derrida points us to the second major aspect of an event: secrecy. an event is secret not insofar as it is hidden or clandestine but insofar as it “does not appear” (p. 105) in the way that we expect other phenomena to appear (derrida, 2001). as a phenomenological im-possibility, this non-appearance of an event removes it from any principle of sufficient reason or search for universal knowledge about the event. as such, an event remains “unexplainable by a system of efficient causes” (derrida, 1992, p. 106) because such a system belongs to our horizons of expectation through which life becomes relatively stable. accordingly, derrida (2001) says that if we can define an event with “one possible definition” it would be that “an event must be exceptional, without rule” (p. 106). an event obeys no rules or principles unless those principles are “principles of disorder, that is, principles without principles” (derrida, 1992, p. 123). considering that an event’s occurrence exceeds or resists our horizons of bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 5 expectation, the principles of its occurrence must be principles of disorder because its appearance disrupts our conditions of possibility for an experience. consequently, an event is an experience of the other that resists the hegemony of subjectivity. derrida utilizes this notion of the secret as a “way to let the other be, to respect alterity” (caputo, 1997, p. 180). an event as other can happen in the realm of the same, the realm of phenomenology, but when it happens there, it does not appear according to our expected principles for phenomena. it irrupts into the same as the other. thus, an event is irreducible to our phenomenological horizons that it interrupts and keeps open. it, then, appears without appearing. it shows up according to its own order or conditions of possibility and not our own. it appears as the correlate of an intention that cannot confine it. it surprises and exceeds us. as such, an event is a secret. for this reason, derrida insists that an event is also symptomatological. he uses this term not in any clinical or psychoanalytic sense. rather, he says that “this notion of symptom” (p. 105) comes from what he thinks about “verticality” (derrida, 2001). the arrival of an event is an arrival that “falls on me” (derrida, 2001, p. 97). he insists “on the verticality of this matter because the surprise can only come from on high” (derrida, 2001, p. 97). without this verticality, we could see an event coming on the horizon. we could expect an event. but, as we have seen, an event is precisely that which surprises and that which is an exception or without law. t hus, the symptomatology of an event suggests that an event’s arrival “can only give rise [donner lieu à] to symptoms” (p. 106) that befall us after the event’s occurrence (derrida, 2001). an event manifests itself only in symptoms: without horizon, surprising, unexpected, aleatory, excessive, transformative, etc. thus, if an event comes, a technological invention or a gift of forgiveness, for instance, it happens as a singular surprise, as “always exceptional” and “without rule” (derrida, 2001, p. 106). through its exceptional happening, an event as other enters phenomenality with a kind of “transcendental violence” (derrida, 1978, p. 123). 3 an event arrives in such a way that we can say something about the symptoms that have befallen us with its arrival. yet at the same time, an event arrives without arriving. the event still remains other and, thereby, secret and im-possible. while derrida’s work has proved helpful in understanding the largely agreed upon symptoms of an event, important differences in the philosophical approaches to the event remain. one such difference concerns the contrasting temporalities of an event: “following the event” and “awaiting the event in its imminence” (van der heiden, 2014, p. 137). some figures, for example, alain badiou, jean-luc marion, and claude romano, orient the temporality of an event around a past occurrence whose givenness causes us to return repeatedly to this occurrence in an effort to understand and mine its depths. consequently, these philosophers use birth as their primary figuration of an event. marion claims, for example, that i continually aim at my own birth “intentionally” by “wanting to know who and from where i am, undertaking research into my 3 here i am drawing on derrida’s account of transcendental violence in his essay “violence and metaphysics.” using husserl, he critiques levinas by saying, “[i]t is impossible to encounter the alter ego … impossible to respect it in experience and in language, if this other, in its alterity, does not appear for an ego (in general)” (p. 123). alterity, the other, must appear in the same, in phenomenality, for us to have any relation with or recognition of this other. yet such an appearance of the other in the same “in which the other appears as other, and lends itself to language … is perhaps to give oneself over to violence … an original, transcendental violence, previous to every ethical choice” (p. 125). bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 6 identity” (marion, 2002, p. 42). our life is “solely occupied … with reconstituting [our birth], attributing to it a meaning and responding to its silent appeal” (marion, 2002, p. 42). and yet other figures, such as martin heidegger, emmanuel levinas, jacques derrida, and jeanluc nancy, orient the temporality of an event around the advent of what is to come. death has, consequently, become an important figuration of an event for these philosophers. 4 yet the predominant approach to death has been through personal death or personal mortality. since at least plato, the history of philosophy has been preoccupied with the death of the self or one’s own death. heidegger’s existential analytic of dasein’s being-toward-death in being and time— where he argues that anxiety over one’s own death is our originary experience of death that exposes us to our own being, our relation to temporality, and our responsibility to become a self—has made this focus on our own death especially important. adhering to heidegger’s analysis, one’s own death can be understood as an event because our anticipation of this end engenders new interpretations of our being and of the meaning or being of things around us (polt, 2014). however, not until the works of levinas and derrida has this focus on our own death found important philosophical objection. they agree that our own death is not the most fundamental experience of death because the death of the other is more fundamental. as levinas (2000) says, “the death of the other: therein lies the first death” (p. 43). and they each maintain that the self is constituted first and foremost through its responsibility to the other. consequently, the death of the other is the “more originary experience” of death because it “institutes responsibility … in the ethical dimension of sacrifice” (derrida, 2008, p. 48).5 my “right to be” a self, then, “is already my responsibility for the death of the other” (levinas, 1989, p. 86). what remains to be done in this history of the event and its relation to death is to provide a phenomenology of the death of the other, in particular, that helps to understand this ordinary experience as an event. such a description would offer an account according to the symptoms of an event. consequently, the following describes the unexpected, im-possible arrival of the death of the other, the excessiveness of this arrival beyond our conceptual and linguistic horizons of rationality, and its transformative potentiality. the symptoms of the death of the other if the death of the other is an event, it must arrive without our ability to be ready for it. the death of the other must be an unexpected occurrence. this unpredictability is rather obvious in the case of tragic deaths. when parents must live on after the death of their own child, they are “experiencing the unimaginable and never expected experience of being a bereaved parent” bright et al., 2015, p. 1). as a bereaved parent, the natural flow of life has been brought to a halt: children are supposed to bury their parents—not the other way around. the natural flow of one 4 nancy does, however, admit, “in a birth or in a death—examples which are not examples, but more than examples; they are the thing itself—there is the event, some[thing] awaited, something that might have been able to be” (p. 167). 5 cf. derrida’s criticism of heidegger’s analysis of being-toward-death in aporias where he says, “[m]an, or man as dasein, never has a relation to death as such, but only to [the] perishing [of animals], to [our own] demising, and to the death of the other …. the death of the other thus becomes again ‘first,’ always first …. the death of the other, this death of the other in ‘me’ [in the experience of mourning], is fundamentally the only death that is named in the syntagm ‘my death’” (1993, p. 76). bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 7 generation to the next has unexpectedly been reversed. when lori and brian mcdermott lost their twenty-one year old daughter, maia, to a car accident, they comment that their past experiences of losing their own parents, grandparents, uncles, and cousins “provided little preparation for what [they] were now experiencing” (mcdermott & mcdermott, 2011, p. 12). the tragic loss of their child was unexpected and surprising, and their past experiences of death could not prepare them for this singular event. thus, we can say that sudden deaths surprise us because we did not see them coming, literally, and we could not have imagined them happening and especially in the way that they happened. however, the more planned, predicted, or imminent deaths of the other seem problematic. these deaths do not seem to be unpredictable, especially when we consider the instances of death where the other plans her own death on a particular date—as brittany maynard did on november 1, 2014—or when a doctor declares that a patient has a limited number of months left to live. this important difference between different ways that the other dies notwithstanding, all deaths of the other, even if imminent, remain unpredictable. after all, the focus with the death of the other is as much about the inception of this event when the other dies as it is about living on after this death, that is, surviving the other. whether the loss of the other was sudden or expected, one factical element pervades all of these experiences: those who survive the death of the other must live on in the world without this other. and this experience of survival is always unexpected because we can never be prepared for how the loss of the meaningfulness of things in our worlds will touch us after the other is gone. we can see from this experience the integral connection among the unexpectedness of the death of the other and its transformative nature. before turning to the latter directly, understanding the excessiveness of the death of the other will help us more fully appreciate its transformative potentiality. if the death of the other is an event, it must not only arrive unexpectedly but also excessively so. the arrival of the death of the other is excessive because it exceeds our conceptual and linguistic horizons of rationality. no matter how much factual information a person may have about when and how the other has died, the survivor continually comes back to the question, in one form or another, of why the other has died. in the wake of maia’s death, the mcdermotts express that “there is no reason for a loss that hurts this much” (mcdermott & mcdermott, 2011, p. 96). when tommy givens, “a baptist pastor’s kid, lifelong christian, former missionary and seminary professor,” survived his father’s death from lou gehrig’s disease, he describes his experience in this way: everything was the same, and yet his father was gone …. [tommy] stood in his parents’ living room where his father had just died—and wondered what to do next. ‘we were groping for what might help us navigate something very profound,’ [tommy] recalled, ‘something that would shape us for the rest of our lives.’ (thompson, 2015, pp. 23-24) regardless of the answers that tommy’s own faith had to offer him in this experience, he continued to grope for something that would make sense of it. belief in seeing the deceased again in the afterlife may assuage some worries in the survivor, but this belief does not help explain why the other has been lost. no exhaustive account or reasonable explanation placates the trauma and pain that accompanies this loss. even jesus, whom christianity claims to be both human and god and would, thereby, know the bliss that one of his followers would experience in bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 8 the afterlife, weeps when his friend lazarus dies. the death of the other resists any principle of sufficient reason, that is, resists this horizon of expectation as to why the other has died. we may certainly know what caused the death: heart failure, cancer, overdose, respiratory failure, etc. often these medical explanations can alleviate some of the pain, but none of nor all of them can cause us to stop asking why the other has died. these sufficient reasons cannot explain away the grief, pain, and trauma of this loss. suddenly, the survivors find themselves in the world of voltaire’s (1950) candide where the principle of sufficient reason has been reduced to a “pitiable state” (p. 29) unable to explain why this state of affairs “is for the best in this world” (p. 43).6 one phenomenological footprint for this excessiveness of the death of the other is the cyclical nature of the mourning or grieving process. we repeatedly return to the death of the other, perhaps even to its inception at the passage from life to corpse, in an effort to mine the depths of this event. yet we cannot reason our way through this event as evidenced by repeatedly living through and beyond this moment itself in our work of mourning. the death of the other is a traumatic event that, as such, “is not remembered per se, but recurringly relived” (jones, 2014, p. 141).7 the experience of the death of the other is relived “‘belatedly’ in the form of intrusive and uncontrollable flashbacks” (jones, 2014, p. 152). the survivors of the death remain unable “to integrate the experience into ordinary systems of personal history and meaning” because this trauma “short-circuits” the brain (jones, 2014, p. 151). the event “remain[s] stuck and never gain[s] access to the frontal lobes [of the brain], which is not only where language arises but is also the part of the brain that reasons and understands” (jones, 2014, p. 151). thus, we often hear from survivors who have lost loved ones that they cannot believe he or she is gone. they are struck by the reality of the other’s absence, by this absence’s facticity, but they fail to “‘believe in it,’ or say what it is” (jones, 2014, p. 152). consequently, these survivors tell and retell the story of the death of the other along with the stories about the life lived by the other who has been lost. the survivors find themselves mourning the loss of the other but unable to work fully through this loss. their past loss continues to haunt their present. thus, their work of mourning remains workless. as workless, their mourning is a negotiation between moving completely beyond their loss, in a sense forgetting the other who has been lost by interiorizing the other in their own memory, and what freud calls melancholia, that is, never coming to terms with the death of the other. derrida (2005b) maintains, in this regard, that a “certain melancholy must still protest against normal mourning” (p. 160) because the other as other can never be interiorized or appropriated to the subjectivity of the survivor. in the mcdermotts’ mourning of their daughter’s death, their mourning remains workless because “finding the balance between the ‘old normal’ and the ‘new normal’ would probably be a constant challenge forever more” (mcdermott & mcdermott, 2011). this cyclical, workless nature of mourning is a process that attempts to appropriate the unexpected loss of meaning or the unexpected absence made present in the world when the other dies. yet this appropriation always fails on account of the excessiveness of this loss beyond our reasoning and explanatory capacities. 6 exceptions to this might be when the deceased was a terrible person who mistreated or even abused those around him or her. in these cases, we might think that the death of such an other engenders a state of affairs that is for the best in the world. though this might be an exception, such a death would still come unexpectedly and be transformative of the world. 7 while jones’s account of trauma fits nicely here with this description of the death of the other as an event, she does not associate the trauma of the death of the other with this term of art event. bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 9 if the death of the other is an event, it must not only arrive unexpectedly and excessively but also with transformative, disruptive potentiality. when this event occurs, it transforms our meaningful contexts that have been constituted in relation to the other. in this transformation, we experience the death of the other as more than just the loss of the person because it is also a loss of the world. it is a death of the world. here the term world is understood phenomenologically as the context in which things and others have their particular meanings on account of the bequest of history, heritage, and tradition. thus, the world is understood as the meaningful contexts in which we find ourselves. while the earth on which we all live can be described as a world in this sense, this one world or context of meaning that we all share is at the same time many worlds. 8 thus, in life we find ourselves in many worlds in which things and people have meaning: home, work, the university, the study, the classroom, etc. and the constitution of these worlds, as both heidegger but more importantly nancy maintain, occurs always with the others with whom we are in relation. drawing on this understanding of the with-world or the world as co-constituted with others, the event of the death of the other not only shows us, often for the first time, that our worlds are always with-worlds but also marks our with-worlds with an absence of meaning or a givenness of recess. the death of the other, then, discloses both the birth of the world as a withworld and an end of the world. consequently, when the other dies, his or her absence is given to us or made present to us especially when we return to those places that mean the most to us on account of the moments we have shared in these spaces with the one who is now dead. the meaninglessness that attends the things in our world afterwards indicates how the death of the other is both an end of the world but also an origin of the world (derrida, 2005b).9 for example, when a loved one dies and you visit what used to be your (plural) favorite restaurant, now that he or she is dead, everything seems off, uncomfortable, or strange. “it just doesn’t feel the same without him/her,” we often hear from people in these situations. the food, though it is the same chef, ingredients, dish, and recipe, may even taste different. this alteration arises on account of the absence of the other that is made present at the restaurant. moreover, how often do we hear of a person or family moving houses after a husband, wife, partner, or child dies? the absence of the other is so present that it can become deafening in the house, making the house almost uninhabitable. when what we love is lacking, [t]he one who loves sees the world only through the absence of what he loves, and this absence … flows back on the entire world …. [t]he world has not disappeared; it remains present … but this disappearance [of what is loved] nevertheless strikes the appearance of the world with vanity. (marion, 1991, p. 136) the mcdermotts’ evidence this death of the world marked by the vanity or meaninglessness of things in their own experience of the death of their daughter. they describe this death as a 8 the german die umwelt captures this sense of world nicely because it denotes the world (welt) surrounding (um-) us. 9 here, i am drawing from and elaborating on derrida’s insight about how one of paul celan’s poems, “rams,” which concerns the death of the other, “says the world, the origin and the history of the world … how the world was conceived, how it is born and straightaway is no longer” (sovereignties in question, p. 162). bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 10 “shattering [of] our world” (p. ix) in which they have been “left behind … to adjust and find meaning” (p. xiii) in “a most unwelcome new world” (mcdermott & mcdermott, 2011, p. 3). after their loss on february 20th, they awoke to “a totally upended world” (p. 2) that they name “the post-220 world” (p. 27) and “the post-220 journey” (p. 35) (mcdermott & mcermott, 2011). but when they return to maia’s room and experience the presence of her absence through the things in her room, they recognize in this not only the end but also the birth of their world: when we opened the door and saw all of her things arranged as if in a state of permanent suspended animation, tears fell from our eyes and our hearts filled with sorrow. the still incomprehensible reality of it all hit us again: maia’s not coming back to finish reading that book by the bed, or go to the next class on her schedule, or use her computer to send us an email, or cuddle with all those pillows. (mcdermott & mcdermott, 2011, p. 28) they recognize that the book, the computer, the pillows, and the entire room has, or is, the meaning that it has on account of their relation with maia through these things. the mcdermotts recognize that “[d]eath sets a thing significant” (dickinson, 2013, p. 93) because, often, only when the other has been lost, do we then recognize that things like a book, computer, or pillows in a world have the meaning or significance that they have on account of the relation of these things with the one who has died. only then do we recognize the birth of the world as a withworld at the death of the world. the meaningful context of maia’s room and all of the things in it was co-constituted with maia—it is a with-world. however, with maia’s death, the meaningfulness of this with-world has been lost. her death marks a death of this world so that when they experience this post-220 world, they are experiencing the presence of maia’s absence through the recess of meaning or the meaninglessness of the things in their with-world without maia. in a sense not unlike the transformation of the mulberry tree in ovid’s poem, this absence made present in the world after the death of the other is a token of mourning that the world itself carries in the wake of the death of the other. to experience the death of the other, to undergo this event, is to survive a death of the world, and this survival, as we can see, extends beyond the moment in which the person is actually lost. consequently, this description of the death of the other shows that this event is not readily reducible to an inaccessible instant of passage from life to death but includes living on after the other is gone. the death of the other includes the aftermath, the shock, and the grieving of the loss of the person as well as the loss of what the world has meant to and with that person. the death of the other includes the grieving of a death of the world. after all, this loss of the world with the other is happening; for instance, in the instant that the funeral is being prepared and happening or tours of new houses are being given. thus, when the death of the other happens, occurs, breaks in, interrupts, or disrupts, it marks a transformation of the world. the pre-event world and the post-event world are radically different insofar as the meaning of the world, the world itself, has been lost. a “new order of [the] world” is at play when the other dies (bright et al., 2013, p. 6). therefore, when a husband, wife, partner, or child dies, those who survive this person often move houses because the presence of the other’s absence is suffocating now that the survivor of the other must carry on life in the house that he or she helped establish as the home, as one of the worlds for the family. for the loss that is experienced is the loss of what the world had meant to that person and what the world had meant to us, or to a group, on account of our relation with the now deceased. the being-with of the restaurant, the food, the house, etc. bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 11 includes the now dead other. so when we revisit those places where he or she used to be or that meant this or that to us on account of that person, we experience this absence, this token of mourning. the event of the death of the other transforms everything because the world means differently, worlds differently, in the aftermath or in the event of death. one of the most profound ways that the world worlds differently concerns the effect of the other’s death on the foundation of our temporal existence. certainly the death of the other is recorded as having taken place at a particular, temporal moment or now point: “the estimated time of death was…” “she was pronounced dead at…” time of death is codified on the death certificate. but the phenomenon of the death of the other as a whole is both inside time in this way while also outside of time. this death operates outside of time because in disrupting the world, this event solicits or shakes the foundations of our experience of temporality. on the one hand, the event of the death of the other “ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact” (blanchot, 1986, p. 1). death simultaneously ruins the world while leaving life intact. despite the fact that we may have just lost a loved one, a friend, a neighbor, a beloved pet, a mentor, god, etc., life continues as usual: the sun continues to rise, the weather continues t o change, and work must still be done. as the mcdermotts (2011) put it, “[t]he post-220 world still retained the entire pre-220 work world” (p. 35). when life seems like it should stop on account of the loss that has happened, life continues despite the death that marks a death of the world. life goes on in a way that “the new normal” becomes “facing the realities of life without” the other who has died (bright et al., 2015, p. 7). moreover, we now have myriad questions and problems to deal with: who’s the next of kin that we need to call? when will the funeral be? what do we do with the body: cremation or burial? what kind of music at the funeral? who will speak at the memorial? what about her car? how will the department recover from this? who will grade his students’ papers? am i ok? should i see a therapist? life continues intact but am i intact? will i recover? in fact, the wholeness of the self of those who survive this event may precisely be unwhole, incomplete, or fractured. death ruins everything, all the while leaving everything intact. death may leave everything intact but only in some incomplete way. we seek closure over the death of the other but, perhaps, we are never “to have closure over such an event and perhaps we do not even want it” (bright et al, 2015, p. 8). perhaps, the closure we seek when the other dies remains a lack of closure. such a lack could be a recognition that our mourning is workless. or, perhaps, this lack of closure could result from the reality that someone might be irrevocably ruined, driven mad, driven to his or her own end because of the death of the other. this is always a possibility. after all, one of the things for which we can never be ready is how the death of the world that attends the death of the other, which almost just is the death of the other, will touch us. consequently, the death of the other in its ruination of the world may be a surprise or something we did not see coming. “she was too young to die.” “we all knew he wasn’t in good health, but i still cannot believe he is gone.” “it just doesn’t make sense.” or simply, “why?” beyond this surprise of the event in its happening, the way in which everything is left intact may even surprise us. the alarm-clock goes off one morning months after she is gone and the first thought from the survivor is, “another day? do i really have to get up? why am i still like this?” thus, the restitution after the event of the death of the other may be a tragic one. and it may not be. both are always live options here because we are dealing with an irruption of singularity and contingency, that is, with an event. the rupture of the world surprises us. the continuation of life after this death surprises us. moreover, the rupture surprises in the bechtol journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 6 12 instant that the restitution surprises us. the death of the world with the other is taking place in the instant that we plan the funeral, look for a new house, distribute his students’ papers to be graded, visit our favorite restaurant for the first time post-event, etc. consequently, the rupture and restitution of the world after the event bleed into one another, overlap one another, or instantly take place with one another. the moment of the loss of the other, the inception of the event, becomes a past that will not stay put. this past moment of the event has returned, come again—revenir—like a specter or revenant come to haunt the present. and in its haunting, on the other hand, we are reminded not only of the loss of the other and the loss of the meaningfulness that attended our relation with her but also of the loss of the future. as the mcdermotts (2011) attest, “[i]t is now time to emerge and face a totally upended world and a future that had shifted 180 degrees [emphasis added]” (p. 25). the possibilities that we once hoped for in relation with the other are now no more. such possibilities are, as futural, constituted by their absence that we hope one day will become actual and present. but now that hope for the actualization of these possibilities is lost itself thereby re-doubling the absence that constitutes them. therefore, our temporal existence after this event of the death of the other is thoroughly out of joint (shakespeare & hubler, 1987). the present remains haunted by a past that draws us back to the moment of the inception of this event. and yet this past continually returns or comes again as if from the future because “the specter is the future, it is always to come, it presents itself only as that which could come or come back” (derrida, 1994, p. 48). moreover, the present is riddled with the absence of future possibilities once hoped for but now lost or gone with the death of the other. our experience of temporality is thoroughly solicited, fractured, and shaken by this unexpected and excessive event to the extent that the world, the with-world, we still share after this event will never be the same. the world may still be present but its presence is felt as the absence of the other who has died. such is this tremendous, monstrous, or ungeheuer event of the death of the other. acknowledgements i would like to thank my dissertation director, dr. theodore george, for helping me craft the major project out of which this piece has developed. also, many thanks go to billy daniel for reading an early draft of this paper and helping me develop my ideas further. 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(2014). introduction: the first jolts. in m. marder & s. zabala (eds.), being shaken: ontology and the event (pp. 1-10). new york, ny: palgrave. http://joynetanyathompson.com/2015/03/23/to-live-and-die-well-fuller-magazine/ corresponding author: nicholas davey, phd university of dundee email: jrndavey@dundee.ac.uk journal of applied hermeneutics september 28, 2017 the author(s) 2017 education and the formative power of hermeneutic practice1 nicholas davey abstract this paper seeks to clarify the educational role and effects of hermeneutic practice. the argument is that far from becoming irrelevant to the ever changing needs of the social economy, the humanities and especially the hermeneutic practices on which they depend, are vital to intensifying those processes of social and cultural renewal upon which the well-being of a community depends. keywords hermeneutics, interpretation, incommensurability, subject-matters, practice, education, social renewal statement of aims this paper endeavours to demonstrate that hermeneutic practices have indirect formative educative effects that are key to processes of social transformation and re-vitalisation. not only do hermeneutic processes interpret cultural change but they can initiate it. the argument does not seek to legitimise hermeneutic practice by subsuming it within a preferred educational ideology. this would instrumentalise hermeneutic practice as a means of achieving pre-defined objectives and render it a tool of social management. such an outcome could not have been further from davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 2 gadamer’s mind when he argued that the task of university education is to allow individuals to create their own free spaces and for them to move there in (gadamer, 1992, p. 59). it is precisely the non-utility of hermeneutic practices which make them so vital to education and to encouraging those processes of experiential transformation upon which cultural and economic rejuvenation depend. to understand the relevance of hermeneutic practices to both humanities education and the task of social renewal, we need to think about philosophical hermeneutics differently. we need to take a step beyond gadamer and consider the anthropological dimensions of hermeneutic practice and their effects. with this step, the educational and socially generative powers of hermeneutic practice will become apparent. this also has a bearing upon how post-gadamerian hermeneutics might develop. working within a heideggerian architectonic, gadamer establishes the philosophical preconditions governing the possibility of understanding. these articulated ontologically are that any literary or historical experience of meaning is preconditioned by the enabling fact of existence within the horizons of language and tradition. appropriately, the nature of cultural and historical transmission figures prominently in gadamer’s reflections. the argument that a cultural work is historically constituted by its effects is central to hans jauss’s and wolfgang iser’s development of reception theory. 1 the latter reveals what is missing from gadamer’s position: a clear account of how the processes of historical transmission work. this is not fully given by iser but his emphasis upon the effects of interpretation-practices moves in an appropriate direction. gadamer’s hermeneutics provides a classic explication of what hermeneutic practice pre-supposes but leaves the key question unanswered: what is it about the givens of tradition and linguisticality that render hermeneutic practice transformatively effective in experiential terms? what are the operative “mechanics” of hermeneutic practice through which its effects are generated? if we can understand the mechanics of hermeneutic practice, we can appreciate their effects and if we can understand how they are achieved, we can understand the pivotal educational importance of hermeneutic practice. the transformative effects of hermeneutic practice (and hence their educational significance) are a consequence of (1) interpretation’s anticipation of completeness being applied within, (2), the indeterminate horizons of linguistic meaning. the social and educational relevance of hermeneutics is a consequence of the productive tension between the aims of hermeneutic practice—the achievement of completion—and the environment of linguistic indeterminacy in which that achievement is pursued. the practice turn why the practice turn within hermeneutic reflection? without reflecting on the nature of hermeneutic practice itself we will fail to grasp its educational importance. to do this we need to think about hermeneutics slightly differently: we need to consider hermeneutic practices from the “outside” as it were, and seek to grasp the mechanisms which both institute and constitute hermeneutic experience. we need to ask not what these mechanisms are for but what do they do? to understand what something does, is to understand its effects. 1 see in particular wolfgang iser (2000), the range of interpretation, new york, ny: columbia university press. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 3 we must start to think of hermeneutics as something other than a variety of interpretive methods evolved toward pre-defined objectives irrespective of whether they be philological correction or the reconstruction of a rational intentionality. nietzsche was on to something when he commented, “the most valuable insights are methods”: the instituting of practices generates the valuable insight (nietzsche, 1968, sec 469). it is not the objective of a hermeneutic practice that matters but what the pursuit of that objective engenders irrespective of any prior intention. the social and educational importance of hermeneutic practices lies in their ability to induce serendipitous events which can have significant effects on the horizons of understanding within which they are applied. nietzsche’s observation that a thought strikes us of its own accord rather than when we want it to is correct (nietzsche, 1973, part 1, sec 17), yet, this does not mean that emergences or epiphanies of insight originate ex nihilo. to the contrary, they are an effect of the fact that the matrix of human understanding is instituted by a constant interplay of multiple horizons of understanding, some linguistic, some cultural and others biographical. the serendipitous emergences of insight are the effect of participating in the multiple horizons of understanding which constitute our lifeworld. if so, the question is how to keep these different horizons of understanding in play for it is from out of this play that the serendipitous event of transformative experience can arise. emergence and emergency the emergence of new insight and meanings is never ex nihilo but contextual: it presupposes intellectual, linguistic, and historical horizons from within which new perspectives arise. albeit that these horizons operate within historical a priori structures of reception, they are finite, permeable, and unstable. their instability reflects the fact that their constituting subject-matters are open-ended frameworks of meaning constantly susceptible to re-interpretation. such indeterminacy of meaning is vital to the humanities allowing its meanings to alter and accrue historically: it always permits something more to be said and the disclosure of unexpected determinations of meaning that the contingencies of our historical or linguistic location often prevent us from seeing. put another way, the effects that hermeneutic practices achieve depend on the contexts of linguistic indeterminacy in which they operate. the productivity of hermeneutic practice (its ability to disrupt established meanings and create new ones) is dependent upon an incommensurable relation: the horizon of linguistic indeterminacy in which hermeneutic practices operate, will always be at odds with the quest for completeness they pursue. at least three factors render this incommensurability productive: the pursuit of excellence within a practice; the quest for a firmer grasp of a founding truth within a practice; and, finally, the generative capacities of interpretative practices themselves. with regard to excellence, hermeneutic practices also generate instability within received horizons of understanding because of their normative nature. alasdair macintyre suggests that practices have built into them socially developed expectations of excellence (macintyre, 1993, p. 187). excellence is always contentious and by its nature provokes disagreement and debate. what is more, contested traditions are more often than not intellectually vibrant ones. however, it is not just the normative quest for a more articulate interpretation that drives a hermeneutic practice; it is also the incompleteness of its grounding understanding. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 4 concerning the quest for a firmer grasp of a founding truth, no historical community owns its truths or meanings. each requires historical time to fill out their content. as rowan williams argues, “there is an indefinite time opened up for (the) reception and interpretation (of such truths); (their) object is located outside the closures of specific conflicts and settlements of interest” (williams, 2012, p. 15). precisely because no community can assert complete authority over its truths without denying their transcendent nature, that community is exposed to recognizing the possibility that a foreign tradition may hold an unseen aspect of its own founding truths. the impetus to closure (which is not to say it is achievable) produces instability: by seeking in the foreign a completer understanding of its own position, a community opens itself to truth claims other than its own. turning to the generative capacities of interpretive practices, the fragmented nature of experience also has us looking for threads of narrative completeness so that we can make sense of our historical predicament. gadamer talks in truth and method of an anticipation of completeness whereby we strive to eliminate the undecided and ambiguous in experience and achieve a completion of meaning such that no lines of meaning scatter in the void (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 113). the point is not whether such a completion can be achieved but that such quests often provoke new and unexpected alignments of the part-whole relationships that constitute human experience. interpretation emerges as a practice of proliferation generating additional possibilities from within the subject-matters shaping our horizons. in summary, we have argued that the conditions governing the emergence of new insight and meaning involve the following. (1) hermeneutic practices always operate contextually within horizons from which new perspectives arise. (2) practices are normative in that they seek from within their operational horizons more precise articulations of their subject-matters. (3) the impetus to completeness drives a practice to confront alien perspectives. (4) hermeneutic differentials (the incommensurable gap between how a subject-matter is conceived and how it is applied) renders interpretation not a practice of closure but one of proliferation. the dynamics of proliferation relate to the incommensurability at the heart of hermeneutic practice. the infinity of meaning that constitutes the linguistic horizon of understanding spurs hermeneutic practices toward a completer grasp of their incompletely grasped truths. yet, precisely, because of the infinite relatedness of linguistic meaning, the more hermeneutic practices seek closure, the more they open other possibilities of meaning capable of challenging the truths they have a slim grip on. no practice owns its subject-matter. the indefiniteness of meaning surrounding them allows them to function more as open constellations of concern rather than as determinate concepts. i might as an 18th century aesthetician believe that the pursuit of beauty embraces a humanizing concern with balance, harmony and proportion. the author of the iliad knew otherwise: helen of troy’s beauty is connected with disharmony, misery and war. any cartesian or idealist aesthetician advocating the humanizing virtue of beauty must also contend with its darker maddening powers. the ability of hermeneutic practices to generate meanings does not just depend upon their subject-matters standing in an opaque field of meaning. it also requires that different fields repeatedly inter-penetrate one another. subject-matters always reside in other words. they are in davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 5 rosenzweig’s term “indefinable:” temporary historical articulations of meaning that because of the inter-relatedness of all linguistic meaning, contain an infinity of possible meanings yet to be drawn out from them. it is also clear that linguistic meanings can cross and penetrate multiple horizons of concern. like concepts, they “cut-across one another” (wittgenstein, 1967, p. 379). nothing is commoner, wittgenstein argues, for the meaning of an expression to oscillate, for a phenomenon to be regarded sometimes as a symptom, sometimes a criterion, of a state of affairs (p. 438). a shift of meaning, a new semantic emergence, in one horizon can create an emergency in another. does this introduce an insurmountable negativity into the argument? the capacity of hermeneutic practices to generate disruptive effects within established bodies of meaning seems to concede the critical case to post-structuralist and deconstructive critics of hermeneutics and the humanities. in formal terms, it would appear that deconstruction is indeed correct. the finite nature of understanding combined with the infinite horizon of linguistic meaning conspire to guarantee that there can be no final interpretation. nevertheless, the finitude of understanding allows accrual and exchange between perspectives. however, the inconclusive openness that deconstruction derides in hermeneutics is precisely what an education in the humanities depends on. indeed, from within the perspective of the humanities, the demand for certainty and a final interpretation is incoherent. an end-interpretation which realized all the possible determinations of a subject matter’s meaning would foreclose those free spaces of possibility from within which new learning and action may arise. furthermore, in times of social and economic upheaval it is precisely the practices that question institutionalized understandings and open new possibilities or understanding that are needed. the capacity of hermeneutic practices to achieve unintended effects that place our perspectives in a new light accords them the agency of change. coming to understand through the temporal diversity of experience a greater number of a subject matter’s possible determinations, allows that subject-matter to become in gadamer’s phrase “more what it is.” this, however, is not the only salient educative point. the drive by hermeneutic practice to overcome the differentials of understanding may productively displace established perspectives on canonical texts (and thereby remind us of the finitude of our judgment) but it affects another more personal dimension of our understanding. when i write about a certain philosophical problem professionally, i do so from within a specialist academic practice with a well-defined objective: to achieve a more adequate understanding of a hermeneutic issue. blanks in an interpretation may need filling out and, for the sake of its credibility, inconsistencies removed. this formal exercise does not just take place within the horizon of philosophical tradition but also within the existential horizons of my understanding. these horizons are not discrete. like concepts and subject-matters, they interleave and over-lap. linguality guarantees this. questions of what it means to be a good husband, a good citizen or a european are not just for moral and political philosophy. they are questions which probe my self-understanding and identity. as wittgenstein remarks, subject-matters and concepts “cut-across one another” (wittgenstein, 1967, p. 379). a shift of meaning in one horizon can create an emergency in another. the anticipation of completeness is not just a feature of academic practice but a projective structure within all human experience. experience is full of contradictions, unresolved questions and unrealized expectations that we yearn to make sense of, complete and fulfil. the partial coherence of such experience suggests the possibility of an as yet undiscovered insight that might render the presently incoherent, narratively coherent. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 6 the horizon of academic life may (because of professionalization) be increasingly separated from that of the everyday but gadamer’s notion of linguality shows that it is not. what sensitizes me to the discovery of new meanings and to changes in established ones is that as a human being of incomplete experience, i am always alert to the configurations of meaning that might make sense of a key problem or difficulty. an anticipation of completeness is as cardinal feature of lived-experience as it is of reading a novel. this suggests that whilst the anticipation of completeness drives hermeneutic practice toward a fuller articulation of a subject-matter’s meaning, its generation of new meanings might have unanticipated consequences for my selfunderstanding. this offers purchase on the questions of how hermeneutic practices produce unexpected effects within the matrix of understanding. the argument returns us to the two operative principles (1) the indeterminacy of linguistic meaning and (2) the impetus to completion. hermeneutic effects the unexpected effects of understanding are the result of what is already at play within our hermeneutic horizons. this involves the indeterminacy of linguistic meaning and the drive to completion. regarding (1), the indeterminacy of linguistic meaning; the principle establishes the logical basis of the claim that by virtue of being a language speaker i am connected to networks of meaning i am not presently conscious of. in other words, the transformative effects of hermeneutic practice are a consequence of the inter-relatedness of linguistic meaning. only because the term “leisure” is already etymologically connected to the latin scola could the discovery of that connection transform my hitherto limited grasp of the word. the term has little to do with modern notions of relaxation but more with achieving a freedom from everyday labors in order to learn and contemplate. it was an inarticulate anticipation of a better account of aesthetic disinterest that prompted an enquiry into the connections between leisure and disinterested looking. hermeneutic practice did the rest. because of the etymological connections between leisure, scola and seeing disinterestedly, a new meaning of aesthetic community arose. the point is simply this: the transformative effects of this localized hermeneutic practice were the direct consequence of that practice’s anticipation of completeness exposing and animating hidden conceptual connections within the indeterminate horizon of linguality. it is the pursuit of a better, more comprehensive interpretation which can both expand and unsettle commitments to meaning in the horizons within which that completer interpretation is pursued. this re-iterates the observation that hermeneutic practice is performative: it produces emergent phenomena capable of equally expanding and disrupting established meanings. a key meaning of the verb to educate is to draw or lead out. hermeneutic practice achieves this. a hermeneutic account of education will have little to do with technical training but more to do with freeing spaces in which new alignments of meaning can arise. concerning (2) the capacity of the impetus to completion to induce unexpected effects in the matrix of understanding; some of wittgenstein’s comments about interpretation are insightful. in zettel he comments, 1. …to interpret, to give the final interpretation which is not a further sign or picture, but something else—the thing that cannot be further interpreted. but what we have reached is a psychological, not a logical terminus. (wittgenstein, 1967, p. 231) davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 7 2. what happens is not that this symbol cannot (logically speaking) be further interpreted, but: i do no (more) interpreting. i do not interpret because i feel at home in the present picture. when i interpret, i step from one level of thought to another. (1967, p. 234) that hermeneutics grants (a) that all linguistic meaning is indeterminate and (b) that there is no end to interpretation, seems to render the drive to completeness logically futile. it is, however, not the achievement of completion that matters but what the quest for it gives rise to, its effects, as it were. wittgenstein recognises this. that there is no end, logically speaking, to the ways a symbol may be interpreted does not mean that a practical closure of interpretation is impossible. wittgenstein’s remark that i do no more interpreting when i have reached a psychological terminus clearly implies that i stop interpreting, that i reach a sort of hermeneutic (though not a logical) terminus. the question is, what is it that induces me to stop? gadamer might argue that i stop interpreting when the text or art work speaks to me, that is, when a certain hermeneutic closure of meaning occurs. for wittgenstein i stop interpreting when i feel at ease within a certain framework of meaning: i know how to move around it as if i were at home within it. practical closure is achieved: no longer am i standing outside a framework of meaning analysing it, as it were, but have returned inside it and know how to proceed according to its rules. i do no more interpreting because of something already at play in my understanding. it is precisely because i carry within me a whole range of unanswered questions and unresolved experiences that i am vulnerable to the sudden emergence of an image or phrase which can unexpectedly bring those experiences and questions into a meaningful frame. this does not imply that the meaning of ambiguous text or experience has been found. as wittgenstein’s position implies, the text logically speaking can always be further interpreted. nevertheless, the fact remains that i stop interpreting and i refrain from further hermeneutic activity and arguably i do so because a chance epiphany of meaning answers an unresolved ambiguity active in my horizons of understandings. furthermore, the quest for closure in one framework may give rise serendipitously to a whole range of unexpected associations of meaning which though they might not achieve the sought after closure in one discourse might nevertheless resolve ambiguities in other horizons of concern. an example might be instructive. what did nietzsche mean when he asserted that it was of the utmost importance to give style to one’s life? pursuing this question will give rise to a parallel concern with the shaping power of narrative structure. style and narrative both offer ways of giving unity to multiplicities but, as always, the question is which structure to choose? argument is truly engaged: followers of galen strawson on the one hand and alasdair macintyre on the other dispute whether with human life becomes insufferably restricted by the imposition of a narrative structure upon it, or becomes quite unintelligible without it. strawson’s scepticism reflects a criticism made of gadamer. when gadamer argues that an encounter with art reveals the “hermeneutic continuity of human existence,” he has no right (it is claimed) to assume without warrant that life has such a continuity. now, it would be churlish to suppose that these issues concern just academic charge and counter-charge. they also speak to how we orientate ourselves to experience. a chance remark of wittgenstein offered a serendipitous solution to both the formal and existential dimensions of nietzsche’s question. the key hermeneutic point is that the remark could not have done so had my academic and personal horizons not already attuned me to the possibility of an answer. wittgenstein remarks that “seeing life as a weave” implies a “pattern” that “is not always davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 8 complete and is varied in a multiplicity of ways” (wittgenstein, 1967, p. 568). the argument is, then, that there is no narrative or style to be imposed on life; there is no continuity which a life has. much rather, it is a question of drawing out the implications of those possibilities already at play within one’s horizons. it is the ever changing patterns of one’s involvements that gives sense to, give style to a life, not any narrative imposed upon it. the question of what style to adopt for one’s life arguably disappears. it becomes a question of becoming more what one is, that is, of pursuing the concerns and interests already at play within one’s existence. the salient point is that nietzsche’s question and its existential implications sensitize and pre-dispose me to wittgenstein’s remark. i am hermeneutically primed to be receptive to it for it offers a way of closing the problematic that nietzsche’s question opened. i no longer interpret nietzsche’s question because i have found a way of living within its entailments. formally speaking, my way of living with nietzsche’s question does not constitute a logical terminus to its interpretation. the indeterminacy of linguistic meaning implies that the nature of the question and its possible answers always remain open. yet the hermeneutic effect (my response) is not arbitrary: it touches on sensitive issues within my existential horizons. wittgenstein’s remark meets what my anticipation of completeness strives for. however, though the solution may fit the needs of my present existential horizons, it always remains vulnerable to the challenge of future experience. education: hermeneutics as disruption at the heart of this argument is an anthropological speculation: change and its challenge is fundamental to human existence. gadamer indicates that understanding is never stable but always reflects the type of beings-in motion that we are (gadamer, 1989, p. xxx). what he describes as the negativity of experience—the capacity of change to disrupt expectancy—has always disturbed human beings. academia is not immune from such disruption. there is no doubt that the global economic crisis and the merchandising of university education pose serious challenges to the teaching of the humanities. their lack of obvious material productivity in a shrinking economy questions their contribution to social wealth. however, educating communities only in today’s productive technologies in effect condemns them to future redundancy. it is the capacity to meet social and economic change that matters, not the shortterm ability to render oneself safe from a challenge that will always return. the contrast between technological and humanities based education is in this respect stark. the implementation of technological systems demands the elimination of chance and disruption. the well-being of the humanities demands the opposite: the generation of chance and disruption. only in times of paradigm crises are technological disciplines forced to re-appraise their operating parameters where as in the humanities, the dynamics and context of hermeneutic practice guarantee to keep their self-understanding in permanent crisis. this is a point of dual importance. 1. the significance of hermeneutic practice within the humanities is that it offers experiences both of change and disruption and of learning how to control such “negativity of experience” in safe and creative ways. this is the vital relevance of the humanities to the social economy: using personal experience it teaches how to react positively and creatively to the demands of radical change. in times of crisis who is more deployable: those trained in systemized logics of the same and the repeatable or davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 9 those who have acquired the disruptive skills of creative thinking and who can confront difference, disruption and change? if humanities academics thought more of the hermeneutic effects of their practices, their economic and social value would be self-evident. 2. from an anthropological perspective, the provocation of change is fundamental to the development and testing of human capacities. francisco varela, the brazilian phenomenologist and anthropologist, speculates that if human beings had a fixed essence with a determinate set of response repertoires, human survival in a world of constant flux would have been comprised long ago: “living systems are autopoietic insofar as they have no essence that they could appeal to or draw from in order to function” (varela, 1979, p. 107). “as the system has no essence, it must avail itself of… previous behavioural patterns and processes potentially all the efforts it has made to ensure self-maintenance” (iser, 1968/2000, p. 105). for michael oakeshott, we are essentially narrative creating creatures, continually assessing collected experience discursively. the importance of hermeneutic practices within the humanities is that they institute mechanisms for constantly probing received wisdom. their importance for education and social rejuvenation resides in their capacity for generating controlled disruption. part of the persuasiveness of varela’s argument is that it links gadamer’s account of education with its idealist background. varela presents the organic nature of human life as a system that “has no goal outside itself.” “it must take up what it has already developed earlier as guidance for maintaining self-organisation” (iser, 1968/2000, p. 105). “recursive history allows the system to reactivate its own past as an interlocked history of structural transformations” (p. 105). these remarks compare well with gadamer’s presentation of bildung as the self-formation of human beings through self-education, a complex notion which has roots in philosophical romanticism. bildung is not achieved in the manner of a technical construction, but grows out of an inner process of formation and cultivation, and therefore remains in a state of continual bildung… like nature, bildung has no goals outside itself… in having no goals outside itself, the concept bildung transcends that of the mere cultivation of given talents. (gadamer, 1989, p. 11) bildung is not a point of graduation, more a mode of being that knows how to keep the different horizons informing experience in constant play. the play is crucial for, as we have argued, it sets the circumstances out of which unexpected hermeneutic effects can arise. in hermeneutic workshops in the essay the idea of the university gadamer asserts that the very task of university education is to “find free spaces and learn to move therein” (1992, p. 59). education is thus a matter of finding the “truly open questions and therefore the possibilities that exist.” moving into this openness is a passage into something more than something known, more than something davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 10 learnable “… it is a passage into a place where something happens to us” (p. 59). gadamer’s invocation of the “free space” offers a useful summary point for our argument. 1. the “free space” gadamer’s speaks of is the space of hermeneutic inter-play between the indeterminancy of all linguistic meaning and the impetus to completion. 2. the impetus to completion seeks to actualise many of the possibilities for meaning held within the indeterminate horizons of language. hermeneutic practice is educative in that it draws out possibilities for new insight from what is already at play within our personal and collective horizons of understanding. 3. hermeneutic practice is attentive to that space of inter-play. within that space, hermeneutic practice is a way of encouraging the emergence of new modes of understanding by reason of our involvement in that space and not because of any deliberate intention. there is an obvious critical riposte. how can such spaces be free when all cultural, linguistic spaces are determinate spaces? they cannot be, by definition, pre-suppositionless spaces. if they were, they could not be places of possibility. skorupski comments that after kant, “truly free thought… must investigate the conditions of its own possibility.”2 gadamer describes the task of hermeneutics as enquiring into the very conditions of understanding. free thought for gadamer is not a question of pre-suppositionless understanding but of freeing thought from being exclusively concerned with the everyday in order to allow that which is already at play-withinone’s thinking to unfold its possibilities. this indicates how close gadamer remains to lessing and humboldt and their notions of history as the self-education of mankind. as john burrows observes, this concept (bildung) contained, or could be invested with… the pre-supposition of an inner, spontaneous vitality, and of an, underlying coherence or pattern working itself out through an immense diversity and gaining nourishment from it, and of a creative, reciprocal relation to experience, in which even error and suffering were made meaningful through the concept of education. (burrows, 1969, p. xviii) the parallel with gadamer’s hegelian notion of the negativity of experience and its classical roots in aeschylus’s conception of pathei mathos is striking. however, the useful aspect of this critical riposte is that offers the occasion to re-emphasize that gadamer’s appeal to a situated free space is an appeal to set free the possibilities that are already within our hermeneutic horizons. in this respect, gadamer’s free space is closer to heidegger’s notion of an “opening” or clearing. the freedom of the open consists neither in unfettered arbitrariness nor in the constraint of mere laws. freedom is that which conceals in a way that opens to light, in whose clearing there shimmers that veil that hides the essential occurrence of all truth and lets 2 john skorupski, why read mill today? (london and new york: routledge, 2006), 6. i am indebted to robert stern’s “hegelian metaphysics,” oxford scholarship on-line (sep. 2009): doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199239108.001.0001. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 11 the veil appear as that which veils. freedom is the realm of destining that at any given time starts a revealing upon its way. (heidegger, 1977, p. 25) these remarks emphasize that freedom and free thinking involve not a vacuous, presuppositionless space but rather an acceptance of that which comes to and unfolds before us as a specific and actualisable set of existential possibilities. these remarks might strengthen the charge that the “free space” in question is the unfree space of tradition but, as we have commented, a truly pre-suppositionless space would be a space without possibility and, hence, without the opportunity for action. without the exercise of hermeneutic practice, the generation of new insight is seriously diminished. a hermeneutically orientated education has to aspire to the public and private pursuit of those “free spaces” capable of drawing out those yet to be realised possibilities already at play within our various horizons of understanding. a hermeneutically orientated education would entail the acquisition of those modes of attentive looking and reflection attuned to keeping those horizons in play. by perpetuating such movement, hermeneutic practice would create the conditions whereby emergent and transformative insight arise by default of engagement and participation rather than by deliberate planning or intention. in so far as such a mode of education initiates its participants in processes of extensive, profound but controlled intellectual and personal change, it is hard to think of what greater relevance to the practical and spiritual health of society the humanities could have. a virtuous practice we have argued that hermeneutic practice involves the inter-play of the indeterminacy of all linguistic meaning with the impetus to completion. the impetus to completion strives to actualise anticipated possibilities for meaning held within the indeterminate horizons of language. hermeneutic practice is educative in that it draws out both anticipated and unexpected insights from what is already at play within our personal and collective horizons of understanding. as a way of encouraging the emergence of new modes of understanding, hermeneutic practice also generates its own effects. we might call these effects the virtues of hermeneutic practice. what virtues does the practice hermeneutics instill? the key dispositions are: 1. a sensitivity to how the local and particular is resonant the transcendent. the quest for completeness in horizons of linguistic indeterminacy necessarily leads to the emergence of meanings other than the expected. the emergence of such disruptive moments explodes the cogito of everyday consciousness and exposes it to the speculative reality that transcends each and every ego. hermeneutics gives expression to a philosophy of praxis that opens self-consciousness to the speculative dimensions of the speech-created world that transcends it. hermeneutic practice respects the local and particular as a gateway to the speculative reality beyond it. 2. a faith in the always-more to be seen or understood. attention to hermeneutic detail encourages a patient reflective distance, an awareness that what a hermeneutic experience reveals of a work’s meaning is never complete or final. hermeneutic practice cautions against any rush to judgment: no text or art work discloses itself completely; there is always something more that can be said. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 12 3. a readiness for the unexpected. exposure to the unexpected hermeneutic emergence does not deny the need for planning in any enterprise but recognizes that planning can have unexpected consequences and be frustrated by unforeseeable events. the incommensurability between the indeterminacy of linguistic meaning and the impetus to completion enables the humanities to become workshops for generating and coping with the unpredictable. 4. an open and patient disposition toward the possible. hermeneutic practices encourage opening not toward emptiness but toward hitherto unseen possibilities within the seen. hermeneutic practices reveal how all emergent phenomena can be other than how they present themselves. no interpretive task can formally be judged complete in that a text or artwork can always in principle reveal other of its aspects. learning within the humanities is never complete. 5. a willingness to take part in communicative exchange. although philosophical hermeneutics correctly emphasizes that dialogical exposure to pre-suppositions other than one’s own can make one think differently about one’s initial points or orientation, the very act of participating in dialogue can have unintended effects. a certain accidental turn of phrase or a chance association of images can offer surprise closures of meaning within a certain horizons of expectancy. not only is individual participation a force for collective emergence but simply by being willing to speak we can unbeknown to ourselves help others to come to an unexpected understanding. 6. a courageous openness to experience and inter-disciplinarity. a hermeneutic orientation to leaning becomes ever more conscious of the fact that experience concerns the process of drawing out the possibilities that are already at play within one’s horizon. this implies a willingness to think differently about one’s involvements, and to adopt different experiential and intellectual perspectives toward them, precisely to the end of finding in them unseen or overlooked aspects. a hermeneutic approach to education is acutely aware of the constant need for circumstances and experiences that force us to think differently. hans-georg gadamer’s inter-disciplinary hermeneutics can be understood as an eloquent protest against the limitations of living only one life.3 7. a modesty of disposition to the unknown and the unexpected. the “negativity of experience” always offers a painful reminder that we are not gods, that we are only too capable of getting it wrong, that we do not know it all, and that (thankfully) horizon of learning is always open. 8. a detached but committed attentiveness. hermeneutic practices establish a “free space” whereby the movements of the subject-matters that constitute our personal and collective lifeworlds can be discerned. attending to movement in one horizon can induce transformative change in another. the impetus to completion drives hermeneutic attentiveness. hermeneutic experience teaches, however, that rarely is it the meaning pursued that is productive but rather the transformative meanings which 3 to compare gadamer’s stance with that of alexander humboldt, see the latter’s the limits of state action. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 13 the quest gives rise to. participation within the various horizons of understanding is key. an open conclusion the well-being of a tradition as well as of the horizons and concerns of a spectator require that they remain in motion. movement, as gadamer, insists is the life of the human spirit. intellectual and creative renewal depends upon a degree of disruption. the vitality of social and economic endeavour let alone that of university education, demands adaptability and the skills of thinking beyond the restraints of the customary and the expected. exposure to the strange and unexpected can be unsettling, but as gadamer suggests, no one can be protected from experience (gadamer, 1989, p. 356). in an environment of change, a creature formed by dint of experience survives only by constantly questioning and testing its expectancies. here, the social and economic significance of the humanities can be effectively and emphatically asserted. the practice of hermeneutic attentiveness across the humanities requires controlled environments within which participants can safely expose their cultural expectancies to the unexpected and test their capability for transformative response. it is impossible to predict the nature and extent of the challenges that the future holds but the quality and depth of response will be key. if transformative experience arises when the horizons of meaning attached to cultural works collide serendipitously with those of the spectator, the extent and creativity of the spectator’s response will be informed by the width of the cultural horizons they can draw on. the value of discipline canons is not that they perpetrate exemplary practice but that they lay down in the spectator the foundations of response-repertoires that only the future will probe and test. not to invest in the attentive practices of the humanities; not to nurture the ability to dwell within spaces of hermeneutic challenge, and not to teach how to be patient in developing as yet unknown but wished for responses to such provocations, is to disinvest in our collective ability to respond creatively to the inevitable challenges of the future. notes this was first presented as the keynote paper at the north american society for philosophical hermeneutics annual conference, roanoke college, september 13, 2014. references burrows, j.w. (1967). editor’s introduction. in w. von humboldt, the limits of state action (pp. vii xlv). london, uk: cambridge university press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (2nd rev.ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h-g. (1992). on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (d. misgeld & g. nicholson, eds. & trans.). albany, ny: state university of new york press. heidegger, m. (1977). the question concerning technology and other essays (w. lovitt, trans.). new york, ny: harper row. davey journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 8 14 iser, w. (1968/2000). the range of interpretation. new york, ny: columbia university press. macintyre, a. (1993). after virtue: a study in moral theory. london, uk: duckworth. nietzsche, f. (1968). the will to power. london, uk: weidenfeld & nicolson. nietzsche, f. (1973). beyond good and evil. london, uk: penguin. skorupski, j. (2006). why read mill today? london, uk: routledge. stern, r. (2009). hegelian metaphysics. oxford scholarship on-line. accessed from doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199239108.001.0001. varela, f.j. (1979). principles of biological autonomy. new york, ny: elsevier north holland. williams, r. (2012). faith in the public square. london, uk: bloomsbury. wittgenstein, l. (1967). zettel. oxford, uk: blackwell. corresponding author: theodore george, phd department of philosophy, texas a&m university email: t-george@tamu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics december 23, 2017 the author(s) 2017 grieving as limit situation of memory: gadamer, beamer, and moules on the infinite task posed by the dead theodore george abstract in this paper, the author turns to hans-georg gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to examine the experience of grieving. specifically, the author argues that grieving may be grasped as a limit situation of memory. this approach suggests that grieving cannot be adequately captured by a stage model theory but, instead, poses an infinite task that is fraught with difficulty and ethical demands. the author develops this approach in reference not only to hans-georg gadamer but recent research by nancy moules and kate beamer. keywords gadamer, philosophical hermeneutics, grief, memory one of karl jaspers’ most influential ideas is that human beings can become aware of decisive terms of their existence through “limit situations” (jaspers, 1969). by this, jaspers has in mind that the character of existence becomes clearest to us through the most extreme moments of our lives; that we can learn something decisive about what it is to be human, to be a person, to be a self, when the situations we find ourselves in press us to the very limits of our existence. of course, jaspers’ notion of the limit situation plays a specific role in his own program of research. but, in the days, weeks, and now months since my father’s death, i continue to come back to the idea that we can, and perhaps should, also identify as a limit situation the experience of grieving. george journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 11 2 specifically, i wish to suggest that grieving may be grasped, at least in part, as a limit situation of memory. while the raison d’être of this short piece is to reflect a little on this idea, it is not difficult to see why one might come to believe that grieving presses the possibilities of memory to the brink. for, whatever else grieving involves, grieving confers to memory the monstrous challenge of cherishing, protecting, and fostering a relation with one who, because dead, is no longer able to relate to us, as they say, in the flesh. obviously, this short piece can only be considered preliminary and exploratory, given that i do not situate my considerations within the larger context of current debate on grieving. i have, however, found orientation in (and will refer to at least tangentially) kate beamer’s essay, “and the coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry,” as well as nancy moules’ editorial piece, “grief and hermeneutics: archives of lives and the conflicted character of grief,” both found in this issue. * * * it should not surprise us that gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics sheds light on some of the limits at issue in the experience of grieving. this is not only because of gadamer’s relation to jaspers—the fact that gadamer held jaspers in esteem (grondin, 2003, pp. 209–210) or that gadamer has suggested affinities between his approach and jaspers’ notion of situation, (gadamer, 2003, p. 301). more still, gadamer’s elucidation of our efforts to understand brings into focus something of a limit situation of memory that speaks to the experience of grieving. this limit situation derives from gadamer’s claim that memory is not to be grasped first of all as a “psychological phenomenon,” but, rather, as “an essential element of the finite historical being of human being” (gadamer, 2003, p. 16). gadamer, we recall, eschews pretenses of knowledge claims that purport to transcend all historical conditions. quite to the contrary, he argues that the hermeneutical experience of understanding remains always conditioned by what he calls prejudice, or, historically inherited meanings that not only limit but first make possible our efforts to understand and, moreover, abide even when our efforts to understand unfold and come to fruition. our efforts to understand neither aim at, nor admit of, indubitable foundations of knowledge, but, instead, seek always to discern and develop novel insight from out of the inherited meanings that have survived across what he once alludes to as the conflagration of history (gadamer, 2007, p. 200). “we understand in a different way,” as gadamer puts the point, “if we understand at all” (gadamer, 2003, p. 297). as his elucidation suggests, however, our efforts to understand are thus really nothing else than efforts to recollect, to collect again, always in new and different manners, meaning that remains available to us from the past. that gadamer’s elucidation of hermeneutical experience points to a limit situation of memory is apparent from his description of understanding as an infinite task. our efforts to understand never admit of finality or closure. this is, first of all, because hermeneutical experience is characterized by the facticity of existence (gadamer, 2003, p. 254). the situations we find ourselves in constantly shift, change, and evolve, so that we are led to bring novel questions to bear on our efforts to understand new matters as well as matters that we have already sought to understand before. over the course of our experience, though, we find that we seek to understand george journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 11 3 some matters over and over, while others fade from focus to fringe. this, in turn, is because such matters prove to be relevant time and again, perhaps even in unexpected ways; and, however often we return to them, our efforts to understand them seem always genuinely to yield something new, something different. no matter how much our situations shift, change, and evolve, there appear to be certain life events, certain encounters and relationships with others, certain texts and works of art, that are inexhaustible in their significance. it is here, in our efforts to understand such matters of inexhaustible significance, that gadamer’s approach suggests a limit situation of memory. if our efforts to understand are nothing else than attempts to recollect, as gadamer suggests, then matters of inexhaustible significance are not only so indispensable that we return to them time and again. moreover, at the same time, these matters are likewise impossible to recollect with any finality and closure. gadamer’s approach to the motif of memory helps, i think, give contour to the limit-character of grieving. in my experience of my father’s death, much of my grieving has coalesced in efforts to understand. these efforts include the imponderables—why now? why cancer? how do i understand this sadness? how do i understand myself, all my aspirations and insecurities, my relations to kin, kind, and community now that my father is gone? but these efforts are also directed more concretely toward what can perhaps be grasped as texts left behind by my father’s death or in reference to what moules calls “archives of lives” (moules, 2017). as for moules, so for me too, my father’s death has deposited troves of materials in my life—in my case, legal documents, his books (sometimes dog-eared or with notes in the margins), his military keepsakes, magazine article cutouts with features about him, his law firm, or members of his family, photographs, and, of course, too, ashes of his remains. if my grieving has taken shape in efforts to understand, however, this process is perhaps best grasped in terms of the limit situation of memory. already, it appears that my experience of my father’s death will prove to be an event inexhaustible in significance to me. in this, however, my efforts to understand and, with them, to remember my father, also already strike me as an infinite task, at once indispensable and impossible to bring to a close. * * * the idea that grieving can, at least in part, be grasped as a limit situation of memory also brings important further considerations to mind. first, this idea may contribute to discussion (or, in any case, at least suggest further evidence) of beamer’s (2017) and moules’ (2017) rejection of stage model theories of grieving in favor of the idea that “grief is an experience that is ongoing, that changes in nature over time, but that involves a continuing relationship with the deceased” (moules, simonson, prins, & angus, 2004, p. 2). as moules furthers this approach in her editorial, grief is “complicated”; “it involves moving back and forth between memory, love, anger, disappointment, reality, romance, gratitude, admiration, regret, and history” (moules, 2017, p. 2). the idea that grieving is bound up with a limit situation of memory, too, recommends not a stage model but, instead, a more expansive conception of grieving. for, if grieving involves us in a limit situation of memory, then grieving poses an infinite task, and thus not one that can be reduced to a predefined series of stages and predetermined terminus. grieving remains unending george journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 11 4 because, as a limit situation of memory, it can become as necessary for our lives as it is impossible to finish with. it can be necessary whenever the death of another person (but perhaps not only a person) proves to be a crucial event in our lives—whenever, that is, another person’s death becomes a question for us that we cannot help but pose to ourselves and to the world we find ourselves in. and, whenever grieving thus becomes necessary, it is just as much impossible to finish with. when the death of another person proves to be relevant for so many of the situations we find ourselves in, when it proves to be a renewed source of meaning and orientation, and, with this, of joy and sadness, then, in such a case, grieving is not something to get through, get past, or get over, but, rather, becomes an integral part of one’s life. the idea that grieving can, at least in part, be grasped as a limit situation of memory may also give further contour to what beamer takes up in reference to the “trickster” figure in the folklore of many cultures (beamer, 2017, p. 4; cf. moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015, p. 2). in this, beamer takes her point of departure from an intense experience she had after her spouse’s funeral of what she describes in terms of the coyote figure of the trickster. on the impetus provided by this experience, beamer draws an analogy between aspects of the practice of hermeneutic research and the experience of grieving, arguing that both, like coyote, are unpredictable, unfold in surprises, and that, because of this, both require the virtues of patience, humility, and openness (beamer, 2017). while beamer’s approach far exceeds the scope of my reflections in this short piece, it is hard for me not to make a connection between her idea that grieving is inhabited by a trickster and the notion of grieving as a limit situation of memory. in this, i wonder whether the trickster may be said (or said also) to carry out her pranks precisely at this limit. as the situations we find ourselves in constantly shift, change, and evolve, so too our attempts to remember. we attempt to recollect different matters, or the matters we have recollected before collect themselves in novel and different manners, often without warning and in surprising ways. and, too, the matters themselves may be filled with tricks: perhaps, we recollect something in one manner, trusting our memory of it, only to find in the next moment that this recollection contained a ruse, say, that one aspect of what we remember turns out really only to distort or conceal another more crucial aspect. the idea that grieving is bound up with a limit situation of memory may, finally, also lead us to a consideration of the ethical profile of our relation to the deceased. the consideration i have in mind is perhaps drawn out most fully in jacques derrida’s approach to the death of the friend in his essay, “rams: uninterrupted dialogue – between two infinities, the poem.” it is not insignificant for my brief remarks here that derrida first developed these reflections on the death of the friend on the occasion of gadamer’s death. in “rams,” derrida cites a passage from paul celan’s poetry to help describe the experience of the death of a friend. the passage reads: “the world is gone, i must carry you” (derrida, 2005, p. 141). there is much to be said, and much has been said, about the occasion of derrida’s “rams” and his use of celan’s poem, not to mention celan’s poem itself. what strikes me within the present context, however, is that the verb “to carry” invoked by celan provides something of a motto for the ethical profile of grieving. while our friend or loved one is still alive, our relation is, or at least can be, carried out by us both, mutually, and in the flesh. once our friend or loved one is dead, however, our relation can no longer be carried out by us both in the flesh but must rather be carried on only by the survivor, george journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 11 5 and only in memory. if grieving involves us in the limit situation of memory, and, indeed, a limit that makes of grieving an infinite task, then this entails the ethical demand to carry the memory of the dead. the difficulty of this ethical demand is, no doubt, indicated by the fact that it refuses to be addressed in predictable stages and, for that matter, resists ever being completely fulfilled. the difficulty of this demand is further indicated by moules’ suggestion that grieving is complicated, as well as beamer’s suggestion that a trickster is at work (and play) in our efforts to grieve. the demand to carry the memory of the deceased is as arduous as it is perilous, fraught with jeopardies, as well as with an entire round dance of thoughts, emotions, and ups and downs. yet, it should be mentioned that the verb “to carry,” both in english and in celan’s original german (tragen), also connotes the anticipated arrival of new life. to carry, this also means: to be pregnant with an unborn child, to hope for and tend as best one can for livebirth, and to prepare the world for the child’s arrival. if celan’s poem speaks to the ethical demand to carry the memory of the deceased, then his turn of phrase suggests that this demand is as much about the future as the past. in this, the ethical demand to carry the memory of the deceased into the future is, at the same time, a promise of novelty, both for ourselves and for the memory of our friend or loved one as we seek to carry on unaccompanied. references beamer, k. (2017). and coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry. journal of applied hermeneutics. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5n010b1 derrida, j. (2005). rams: uninterrupted dialogue – between two infinities, the poem. sovereignties in question. new york, ny: fordham university press. gadamer, h-g. (2003). truth and method (2nd rev.ed; j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h-g. (2007). word and image: ‘so true, so full of being. in h-g. gadamer, the gadamer reader: a bouquet of later writings (richard palmer, ed.). evanston, il: northwestern university press. grondin, j. (2003). hans-georg gadamer: a biography (j. weinsheimer, trans.). new haven, ct: yale university press. jaspers, k. (1969) philosophy, (vol. 2, e.b. ashton, trans.). chicago, il: university of chicago press. moules, n.j., simonson, k., prins, m., angus, p. & bell, j.m. (2004). making room for grief: walking backwards and living forward. nursing inquiry, 11(2) 99–107. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5n010b1 george journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 11 6 moules, n.j. (2017). grief and hermeneutics: archives of lives and the conflicted character of grief. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5h708h8 http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5h708h8 microsoft word mcinnes corrected proof.docx corresponding author: dr. brian d. mcinnes university of minnesota duluth email: bmcinnes@d.umn.edu journal of applied hermeneutics july 11, 2013 the author(s) 2013 saving culture through language: a hermeneutic phenomenological study of ojibwe language immersion educator experience brian mcinnes abstract with the near extinction of many tribal languages at the present, language immersion education offers considerable promise for the revitalization of ojibwe culture and identity. through a series of structured interviews and longitudinal text-based dialogue, eight educators from three schoolbased programs described the lived practice of working with language and culture in language immersion education. this study principally revealed how the lived experience of ojibwe language immersion educators is important, challenging, and rewarding. the dynamic synergy of culture, language, and content that happens in ojibwe language immersion requires competent and creative educators who are knowledgeable about language, cultural traditions, and teaching practice. this study concludes by noting how the lived experience of immersion school practitioners as cultural workers is marked not only by excellence in practice and professionalism, but by dedication, responsibility, and hope for the future of the culture, language, and tribal nation itself. keywords first nations education, hermeneutics, indigenous language, language immersion, language revitalization, phenomenology revitalization of the ojibwe language is among the most important issues facing anishinaabe communities in canada and the united states. speaker numbers are approaching historically low levels, with many communities having only a handful of fluent speakers remaining. the creation of enriched second language programs in schools represents one widespread attempt to revitalize language and culture (mccarty, 2003). language immersion education is one such model that employs a second language to teach academic and cultural knowledge throughout the entire day. indigenous peoples such as the maori, native hawaiians, haudenosaunee, navaho, and arapaho effectively employ language immersion as a part of their revitalization efforts (aguilera, 2008; hinton, 2001; hornberger, 2008). a focus on culture is an important component of immersion education programs, particularly so for indigenous languages (fortune & tedick, 2008). a limiting factor for many indigenous immermcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 2 sion efforts is the lack of licensed educators who possess the necessary linguistic and cultural competencies required for such a position (hinton, 2003; reyhner, 2003; richards & burnaby, 2008). the professional and personal lives of many immersion teachers often become intertwined, and the long hours and hard work are often accompanied by a deep commitment and a sense of satisfaction. the teaching staff in many indigenous immersion schools is composed of individuals from a variety of educational and linguistic backgrounds. university-educated second language learners with advanced degrees work alongside traditionally educated first speaker elders. understanding the experience of the few individuals presently engaged in ojibwe language immersion instruction is important to helping communities retain and recruit personnel and to ensuring that this system of education maintains a sense of quality, growth, and sustainability. this hermeneutic phenomenological study explored the experiences of ojibwe language immersion educators implementing culture-based content within a schoolbased setting. as a former ojibwe language immersion teacher, and a current teachereducator of students who would one day like to be ojibwe language teachers, this study was an important opportunity to explore the unique experience of those dedicated individuals who are making the language immersion experience possible in schoolbased programs. educator perspectives were collected through semi-structured small group discussions and analyzed using van manen’s (1997) interpretative framework. initial themes were discerned from significant statements made by participants and were later refined into a number of essential themes through hermeneutic dialogue with participants, thematic analysis, and participant and researcher hermeneutic reflection. hermeneutic phenomenology phenomenology is concerned with the meaning of real world experiences toward a given phenomenon (creswell, 2007). van manen (1997) noted the focus of phenomenological inquiry is to discover the essence of lived experience, or “that which makes a thing what it is” (p. 177). phenomenology is a methodology dedicated to understanding the everyday lived experience of people in myriad situations and environments. hermeneutics, described as the science of interpretation by brian smith, is “a systematic approach to interpreting a text, firstly analyzing the whole text, then parts of the text and comparing the two interpretations for conflicts and for understanding the whole in relation to the parts and vice versa” (1998, p. 125). van manen (1997) described his approach to human science research as a synthesis of each respective paradigm: it is the phenomenological and hermeneutical study of human existence: phenomenology because it is the descriptive study of lived experience (phenomena) in the attempt to enrich lived experience by mining its meaning; hermeneutics because it is the interpretive study of the expressions and objectifications (texts) of lived experience in the attempt to determine the meaning embodied in them. (p. 38) as a methodological framework for research, the use of hermeneutic phenomenology has specific implications for both the collection and analysis of data, as well as a broader philosophical orientation that focuses knowledge building as a pedagogical act. both the researcher and the participants are involved in the exploration and interpretation of the phenomenon of study (wojnar & swanson, 2007). this is particularly important to an indigenous research study that values the importance of dialogic mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 3 conversation between the researcher and participants. as a research methodology, hermeneutic phenomenology is not characterized by static procedures or approaches. a discovery orientation is necessary, as is a willingness on the part of the researcher to be open to new and unexpected findings (finlay, 2009; lauver, 2010; laverty, 2003). van manen suggested the researcher should be sensitive to emergent needs, and not be “obstructed by pre-conceptions and theoretical notions” (1997, p. 184). laverty (2003) summarized van manen’s (1997) approach as requiring “an ability to be reflective, insightful, sensitive to language, and constantly open to experience” (p. 16). the present study employed laverty’s (2003) flexible approach to building understanding “using whatever approaches are responsive to particular questions and subject matter” (p. 16). hermeneutic text and language “for research purposes lived experience has to be fixed in texts, which then always needs interpretation” (lindseth & norberg, 2004, p. 148). robertson-malt (1999) noted the strength of a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology in moving beyond “the superficial explanation or description of an experience that the ‘text’ first offers” (p. 292). the interpretation of text necessarily involves that experience be contextualized within “the world of language and social relationships, and the inescapable historicity of all understanding” (finlay, 2009, p. 11). the social context, or lived experience, of language use is particularly important within the dynamic and complex relationships that comprise indigenous language revitalization. as stated by van manen (1997), “the object of human science research is essentially a linguistic project: to make some aspect of our lived world, of our lived experience, reflectively understandable and intelligible” (pp. 125-126). in the production and interpretation of texts referencing lived experience, acknowledging the significance of the language used is an integral part of the overall conceptual design. ricoeur (1981) affirmed the “lingual condition of all experience” (p. 115) and van manen contextualized the central place of language within hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry: we are able to recall and reflect on experiences thanks to language. human experience is only possible because we have language. language is so fundamentally part of our humanness that heidegger (1971) proposed that language, thinking, and being are one. (1997, pp. 38-39) hermeneutic phenomenology is attentive to the notion of multiple interpretations, metaphor, analogy, and the range of meaning that language provides. gadamer (2004) wrote, “in language the order and structure of our experience itself is originally formed and constantly changed… it is from language as a medium that our whole experience of the world, and especially hermeneutical experience, unfolds” (p. 453). context of the study the study is dedicated to the describing the cultural and language-based experiences of ojibwe language immersion educators who are currently employed in p-12 licensed programs. the challenges posed for indigenous language immersion educators are many, and the qualifications necessarily high. bringing together the voices of practitioners from the field is a powerful way of generating some collective understanding of our work and needs. the linguistic and cultural interpretations being made within immersion schools today will have great implications for the sustainability of both mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 4 language and culture. nieto (2010) referred to the role people play as “agents of culture” (p. 136) who have responsibility for the creation and transformation of cultural reality. indigenous immersion practitioners are cultural agents by vocation, working to adapt ancient linguistic and cultural codes for a dynamic present and future. gaining an understanding of immersion teacher experience through collegiality, friendship, and conversation is a means of describing a challenging practice in a constructive and hope-giving way. an ojibwe language immersion school is defined in the study as any school-based program that is committed to teaching subject content matter through the ojibwe language 100% of the time. the programs included in this study include both on and off-reservation programs, and include children of primarily indigenous but also non-indigenous descent. the study refers to first nations people using the terms indigenous, native, or the ojibwe language term anishinaabe. methods specific procedures the study involved interviewing small teams of ojibwe language immersion educators about their experiences integrating culture-based programming within a language immersion program. teaching teams from three similar, but separate schools, were included to allow for a broader range of perspectives and experiences. follow-up dialogue with individual participants occurred after the initial team interviews. study participants eight participants who presently work in ojibwe language immersion programs were included in the study. each of these individuals is a first or second language speaker of ojibwe and has direct experience as an immersion educator or support person. participants ranged in age from young adults to tribal elders and included three men and five women. half of the participants have teaching degrees or certification attained through formal education programs. the others achieved state-based teaching qualification through eminence credentialing in indian language or culture. all participants are ojibwe anishinaabe people and are enrolled in a minnesota, wisconsin, north dakota, or ontario tribal community. data collection procedures the research process used a combination of small group interviews with teaching teams, hermeneutic interviews with individual participants, and reflective journaling by the researcher. initial interviews were completed within the first two months of the study, and reflective journaling and hermeneutic interviews occurred over the next six months. small group interviews. small group interviews comprised the primary means of data generation and collection. i served as the facilitator or moderator of the small group discussions in the protocol, but also engaged in parts of the dialogue as a coparticipant. all questions were asked bilingually, and participants were informed they could choose whatever language they wanted to use in whole or in part for each answer. interviews were audio recorded with field notes taken by myself. all interviews were transcribed in a line-by-line format, and i completed any required translation from ojibwe to english. member checks were used to ensure validity. i asked participants to share their experiences and perspectives on how cultural content may best be integrated within an immersion school setting. hermeneutic interview reflection. as a part of the interpretative process, i reviewed mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 5 interview-generated materials with participants. hermeneutic conversation took place through a series of oral and electronic exchanges during the study period. checking the accuracy of the transcript and any translations i made were key initial tasks. the hermeneutic conversation was moreover focused on reviewing the thematic summary that had been compiled by myself. both revisions and additions to the thematic content resulted in a process whereby both the interviewer and the interviewee weighed the appropriateness of each item by asking, “is this what the experience is really like?” (van manen, 1997, p. 99). this stage of the research design is oriented as an interpretive conversation wherein both partners selfreflectively orient themselves to the “interpersonal or collective ground that brings the significance of the phenomenological question into view” (van manen, 1997, p. 99). the electronic nature of the text-based dialogue was true to the hermeneutic orientation of the research design. reflective journal. i maintained a reflective journal throughout the research process. although bracketing is not a part of an interpretative phenomenological approach, grbich (2007) added, “you will need to keep a reflective journal recording your own experiences, personal assumptions and views” (p. 91). hermeneutics suggests the assumptions, perspectives, and biases of the researcher are not only embedded in the study but, as laverty (2003) noted, are “essential to the interpretive process” (p. 17). data analysis and interpretation within hermeneutic phenomenology, data analysis and interpretation is a longitudinal process. the process of analyzing language and identifying thematic content began during the first interview and continued until the end of the study. interview text from the small group discussions and hermeneutic conversations was put through an interpretive process that “aimed at generating a deeper understanding of the topic by facilitating a fusion of the world views of both participant and researcher” (smith, 1998, p. 124). there was some important common ground between the participants and me: all belong to the ojibwe nation, work in ojibwe immersion, and speak both english and ojibwe. although hermeneutic phenomenology is not intended to adhere to any strict procedures by definition, some guidelines for data collection and analysis originate in the six key research activities listed by van manen (1997): 1. turning to the phenomenon, which seriously interests us and commits us to the world. 2. investigating experience as we live it rather than as we conceptualize it. 3. reflecting on the essential themes, which characterize the phenomenon. 4. describing the phenomenon through the art of writing and rewriting. 5. maintaining a strong and oriented pedagogical relation to the phenomenon. 6. balancing the research context by considering parts and whole. these six activities formed the basis for the analytic framework used in the study. the first and second of these research themes were particularly important to the development of the study. the experience of the indigenous language immersion educator, as culture agent, is of deep interest to the participants and myself alike. this profession requires a holistic investment of spirit, heart, mind, voice, and hand. one’s personal and professional lives become intimately and necessarily intertwined in such an involved job capacity. as one participant noted in hermeneutic discourse: this is like nothing else i have ever done. i’ve been a teacher before but not like mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 6 this. it takes every part of me: my spirit, my heart, my mind, my body. i breathe and sleep and dream this stuff now. sure it’s hard but i can see my life, our lives, our peoples’ lives and hopes and stories going into the future now. that’s why it means so much, that’s the why behind it all. notably, the experience being investigated is profoundly lived by all involved in the study. while a focus on one’s conceptualized or idealized practice versus one’s lived practice is a potential caveat in any such discussion, the common truths that emerged from the small group conversations were mutually grounding for all participants. as one team member summarized, “this has been helpful to me to understand all the ways i am not alone in this and to keep the big picture in mind. it is good to know that my co-workers also feel and go through these things.” thematic analysis. van manen stated that the identification and reflection on themes that characterize the phenomenon is a vital research activity (1997). thematic reduction and analysis is a core part of any phenomenological study albeit with differing approaches to achieving each (finlay, 2009; laverty, 2003). van manen further noted, “phenomenological themes may be understood as the structures of experience. so when we analyze a phenomenon, we are trying to determine what the themes are, the experiential structures that make up the experience” (1997, p. 79). the production of interview texts is precursor to the analysis process. van manen (1997) suggested three key ways of isolating or identifying themes from the text: 1. the wholistic or sententious approach. 2. the selective or highlighting approach. 3. the detailed or line-by-line approach. because of the length of the interviews, and the number of lines of text that were generated from each conversation, the second of these approaches was selected as an efficient and practical way to determine thematic content. based on the selective or highlighting approach, several of what lauver (2010) described as “significant statements and key words” (p. 292) were coded from the verbatim texts. these significant statements were reworded as initial themes that were ultimately summarized as essential themes. these major or essential themes were shared with the participants as a part of member checking, as well as to ensure their continued participation and reflection. the procedure suggested by robertson-malt (1999) was applied at this point in the study: these themes (essentials) were then revisited with the participants, who at this point of the study became co-researchers through their validation and guidance of the emergent themes. during this phase i worked with individual participants in an effort to weigh the appropriateness of each essential item by asking: ‘is this what the experience is really like?’ (p. 295). it was an emotional journey for many participants, with several commenting that this research protocol was a necessary intervention to understanding what their work was truly about: we find ourselves so extraordinarily busy, with teaching, with curriculum writing, with translation, with talking with parents, with making up words, with trying to make sure these kids feel and learn why we are doing this . . . that we never have a chance to really think through or describe or understand our purpose and what all this really means. this is the “step away” from the work mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 7 that was needed to see it all and reinvigorate as well. determining, summarizing, and writing essential themes was an iterative process that took many drafts. in this regard, van manen’s fourth key research activity of describing a phenomenon “through the art of writing and rewriting” (1997, p. 30) was fulfilled. the extended dialogue with participants, and a constant revisiting of the original research questions throughout this phase, ensured that van manen’s fifth key research activity of “maintaining a strong and oriented pedagogical relation to the phenomenon” (1997, p. 31) was also achieved. van manen’s sixth key research activity, considering parts and whole as a means of establishing research context, was key to the ultimate refinement and determination of thematic content. differentiating between incidental and essential themes is a vital determination in hermeneutic phenomenology (van manen, 1997). this process is a part of the hermeneutic circle, whereby the dialectic consideration of parts and whole is key to the process of developing an understanding of the phenomenon: the hermeneutic circle is a metaphor for understanding and interpretation, which is viewed as a movement between parts (data) and whole (evolving understanding of the phenomenon), each giving meaning to the other such that understanding is circular and iterative… understanding emerges in the process of dialogue between the researcher and the text of the research. (ajjawi & higgs, 2007, pp. 622-623) following the suggestion of robertson-malt (1999), “commonalities in essential themes between the various interviews were identified which guided the uncovering of . . . essences” (p. 295). the determination of a final number of essences is “seen to reveal the essential nature of the lived experience” (robertson-malt, 1999, p. 295), or as noted by van manen, “transform lived experience into a textual expression of its essence in such a way that the effect of the text is at once a reflexive re-living and a reflective appropriation of something meaningful” (van manen, 1997, p. 36). as noted by ricoeur (1981), “the reference of the linguistic order back to the structure of experience (which comes to language in the assertion) constitutes, in my view, the most important phenomenological presupposition of hermeneutics” (p. 118). an extra interpretive lens was required in the co-translation of material from ojibwe to english. once ideas from practice were transmitted into words, and the thematic summaries of those words agreed upon, then began the task of interpreting these constructs into english. although a step removed from the original discourse, translation may have been strengthening to the interpretive process. as noted by one participant, “it’s always difficult to turn the words into english, but it’s something we have to do to help others understand. it’s helpful to us as well, as we really have to be deliberate in what words we choose. i’m more careful with english when i’m translating than when i’m just speaking it.” study findings data collected from the small group interviews, individual hermeneutic conversations with participants, and the researcher-kept phenomenological journal were used to generate 32 initial themes that were further summarized to eight essential themes. from the different interviews there were a total of 332 significant statements: (a) 101 from site one interview, (b) 114 from site two interview, and (c) 117 from site three interview. initial themes were derived from a single significant statement or several related mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 8 significant statements. the process involved constant interaction between the data and myself as initial themes were combined, separated, entirely reworked, or refined. van manen explained that it was an expected part of the reduction process: “theme formulation is at best a simplification. we come up with a theme formulation but immediately feel that it somehow falls short, that it is an inadequate summary of the notion” (1997, p. 87). all initial themes were revised several times. each of the three teaching team interviews shared 25 of 32 initial themes in common. no additional themes were suggested by any of the interview participants. a difficulty cited by almost all participants was the lack of broad understanding even within their immediate school communities about the nature of their work. participants related that the recent emergence of their programs meant there is little established definition for their lived practice, and little opportunity to reflect on its meaning or purpose. almost all participants noted considerable dissatisfaction that the traditional experience of world-language immersion educators was often generalized to include indigenous language immersion practitioner experience and work. as summarized in my research journal, our work is categorically different in indigenous immersion. we have the same content obligations and language fluency requirements . . . but there is an expectation (and need) from our communities of our students achieving true cultural competency (not just knowledge of cultural products or practices, but at the deeper level of cultural perspective). to accomplish this, we have to be people who live this worldview – if we are to ever hope for the children to do the same. this means significant learning and transformation for most of us – not only in learning new things, but also in terms of divesting the experience of colonization that has in part made us who we are today. this may also mean changing what it means to be “a teacher.” essential themes after the final list of initial themes was derived from interview and hermeneutic conversation data, further reduction was necessary in order to generate a list of major themes. table 1 lists each of the essential themes identified in the study. the listing of major themes is representative of key facets of immersion teachers’ experience teaching culture and language. table 1 essential themes of immersion educator culture and language experience and source initial themes 1. indigenous language immersion educator experience is inclusive, broadening, holistic, and supports the cultural, linguistic, content knowledge, and identity needs of participants. 2. indigenous language immersion educator practice requires the collaborative effort of students, staff members, parents, community members, language learners, and language speakers. 3. indigenous language immersion teachers must have or attain the requisite skills, knowledge, understanding, and materials to be effective. 4. the teaching of language and culture is complicated within indigenous language immersion educator practice by schoolbased structures. mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 9 5. culture, language, and academic objectives must be clearly defined and prioritized within indigenous language immersion educator practice. 6. indigenous language immersion teaching experience is challenging, important, and rewarding. 7. indigenous language immersion teaching requires learning from others and connecting with the past and present for the future. 8. indigenous language immersion educator experience is about leadership, nationhood, spirit, and hope. an explication of each essential theme is made in the following section. direct reference is made to initial themes from which essential themes were derived. indigenous language immersion educator experience this first essential theme speaks to the definitional and applicative foundations of immersion education teacher practice. not only is such practice supportive of the needs of students, there is tremendous benefit for practitioners involved in the delivery of culturally based programs. importantly, indigenous immersion education systems need not necessarily be confined to reservation settings alone. the key idea noted by one participant is that “ojibwe language immersion is for everywhere in this modern world.” participants reported identity development for indigenous children is at the heart of the immersion effort. they reported that non-indigenous children who participated in immersion programs gained a greater appreciation and acceptance of native peoples, cultures, and communities: the thing i saw as a change in a nonnative child this year was that american indians are around and okay in this world too, outside the reservations: “you’re anishinaabe and i like you.” we can make big impacts on those people who might have some negative stereotypes they are carrying around. immersion education is demonstrably improving intercultural competency for all students by offering strong culture and language programming. one teacher noted that students were interested and appreciative when exposed to world languages such as spanish and chinese. the programs surveyed in the study are obligated to fulfill general state academic standards. each of these schools has a set of english language testing instruments that are used as a part of standardized testing. programs have to demonstrate that they are meeting the academic needs of students through such testing protocols. my research journal noted this challenge of practice midway throughout the study in that, “all teachers feel the stress of having to educate children in the target language only to be measured by their performance on an english-language standardized test that does not represent the way the children think or relate knowledge.” despite the struggles, participants reported that working in an immersion program is beneficial to creating a supportive network for practice. immersion creates a language community that brings together people for the main purpose of using the target language and practicing cultural norms. speaking one’s language and knowing one’s culture leads to lifelong fulfillment in terms of identity: in knowing my language and culture i know that i am anishinaabe no matter where i am at, and i am proud to be anishinaabe no matter where i am. that is mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 10 something special we can give our children, that powerful feeling. all of the educators valued having a place to go on a daily basis where they are able to converse with so many adults and children who are interested in, and value, the native language. while not all elements of cultural and linguistic experience can be a part of school life, staff members and students benefit greatly from the rich community expression that has developed in these centers. indigenous language immersion educator practice facilitates collaborative effort the revitalization of an indigenous language is a worthy endeavor that often reconnects people with a language from which they are two or three generations removed. there are many different roles that need to be played in the creation and maintenance of a speaking and learning community. indigenous immersion educators play a lead role in these intentional communities, and often help coordinate the efforts of others such as elders, parents and community members. participants broadly agreed that the involvement of families and community members is both important and meaningful to everyone involved, but that the burden of this organization often falls on them to arrange. immersion school teachers spend a great deal of time with children, often teaching both core and specialty subjects. one participant explained that immersion teacher work transcends the work requirements he had as a regular teacher in the state system. this is particularly true in that there is more than academic content that we are trying to get across in our practice: i want to see them stand strong as anishinaabe people. i really do care a lot about those children that i instruct. i don’t think of it as just teaching those children, they also teach me about the way that i am as an anishinaabe person and how i must continue to be a kind and good individual. time is not necessarily the critical variable in establishing meaningful relationships; rather, it is the care, attention, motivation, and effort that children observe and experience that helps make the practice of ojibwe language immersion educators so extraordinary. requisite skills of effective immersion language immersion teachers immersion teaching work is necessarily complex due to the unique intersection of language, culture, and academic content objectives. a shortage of individuals who are highly proficient speakers, knowledgeable of traditional native culture, and either licensed or trained as classroom teachers has been a limiting factor in either the opening or growth of each school: it is not just the language; there is a reason why they must be taught about cultural ways. like the drum or the pipe, there is a reason why they must know about these things. it is not enough to speak the language well as one must know how to use it. the language is a spiritual language, you have to know about it, and what the language means. indigenous language immersion teacher practice is dependent upon a proficient knowledge of the language and cultural skill. having a rich cultural base ensures that the language continues to be spoken with its original quality and repertoire of meaning: this is especially important at the present when so much innovation and change is required for linguistic and cultural survival. mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 11 given the present climate of standardized testing and required content standards, mastery of western or mainstream knowledge is a significant part of immersion school life and practice today. schools are mandated to procure highly qualified teachers, so licensure is increasingly important. all participants asserted that licensure should not be the determining or primary qualification for being able to work in an immersion school: it was almost as if i could not trust myself to be of any help as i lacked a teaching license. i was only able to speak the ojibwe language well. this was all that i felt i knew, that anishinaabe ojibwe language. this was all. i didn’t have an understanding of teacher training, and i didn’t have any professional experience. i went ahead and did my work there well though. immersion schools have responded to the need for professional teacher skills by bringing in professional presenters and encouraging staff members to seek relevant in-service opportunities. while there seems to be broad agreement that language and cultural skills are important and should be increasingly recognized, professional teacher programs can help educators meet the unique challenges of working with children in school-based settings. while each of the ojibwe language immersion schools offer in-service opportunities for staff members throughout the year, the responsibility of acquiring necessary core skills rests with teachers themselves. none of the individuals interviewed in the study felt fully prepared for the diverse set of responsibilities and duties in ojibwe language immersion work at the onset of their careers. participants commented on the need for increased language, culture, or pedagogical knowledge. even after many years in the field, teachers still felt they only knew a little about how to best do immersion instruction. participants agreed that finding the right ojibwe words, or words that children can make sense of, is an ongoing task in every subject area they teach. consulting with teammates, elders, and other immersion professionals is a useful means of finding a way forward in these circumstances, but this requires that indigenous immersion teachers be active in their pursuit of knowledge. one participant noted that something as basic as knowing how to ask for information and navigate one’s way through the cultural matrix of a community is a learned skill that takes perseverance and determination. the teaching of language and culture within school-based structures the difficulty of transforming mainstream school-based programming into a culturally and linguistically indigenous oriented system has been taken on by a number of dynamic teams working in ojibwe language immersion. elders and first speakers work alongside language learners to create spaces where the ojibwe language is used to describe all school-based routines and activities in an indigenous way. all participants felt that the cultural value of mutual collaboration and cooperation is at the heart of every ojibwe language immersion classroom. while ojibwe language immersion programs are using many of the same physical and organizational structures as other schools, the way that educators feel they are using them is fundamentally different. wrote one participant, “we don’t just learn about culture in our classroom, we live culture.” over the course of research-based discussions, participants identified several limitations to school-based programming. however, immersion educators focused more on the possibilities for cultural growth mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 12 and awareness than the limitations. almost every classroom begins each morning with a thanksgiving speech and an offering of tobacco. entire programs come together for this event, and children share the responsibility of helping start the day. children spend a lot of time outdoors, and most programs have an environmental focus that ties in strongly to indigenous life-ways. field trips, visits from community members, and an attempt to link cultural themes to academic content are important ways through which immersion teachers feel they are staying true to the program mission in their practice. participants note that children commonly learn about practices such as drumming, singing, offering tobacco, harvesting wild rice, making maple syrup, trapping, beading, and dancing. one teacher related that the children learned to treat the drum respectfully once they better understood how it was to be used and a little about how it is made. culture, language, and academic objectives defining and balancing cultural, linguistic, and academic objectives in indigenous language immersion education is a vital point of practice. all teams felt that academic content standards or language objectives were available to them. for ojibwe language immersion teachers to act as true cultural workers, clarifying what is meant by culture determines whether or not students learn about simple artifacts or are ultimately exposed and encouraged to adopt authentic perspectives and worldviews. decisions about culture also have direct implications for what is taught, particularly if a school or language immersion practitioner is observant of an indigenous epistemology. the broad sentiment was that it is better to be clear about what can and will be accomplished rather than teach culture in a mitigated and indiscriminate manner. culture is often framed in terms of products, practices, and perspectives within second language and culture pedagogy. these designations have been helpful to some participants in creating learning standards or goals that can be achieved within a school-based context such as lesson or unit planning. one participant related it in the following way: i try to use that approach when we talk about culture. there is an object that is used, there is a thing you do, and then there is a certain belief you have associated with that so that is what i try to do as i am teaching. and you can do a lot with that by having the actual objects in your classroom, making the objects yourself, and talking about how those three bigger ideas are interrelated. a common theme for all participants is that language and culture are mutually dependent, and ultimately inseparable. language immersion systems explore each of the three main facets of culture: if we have an immersion program, we know our teachings and where our language came from and that is one of the most sacred and holy experiences of ours. how powerful that is. i mean we always say, “you can’t take the culture out,” but you literally can’t. to try to pull that out and take pieces and parts of it out won’t work anyway, so culture is going to find a way in. a number of participants described their belief that many aspects of culture cannot or should not be talked about using english. the ojibwe language is the natural form of expression for ojibwe culture and is inherently oriented to teaching all aspects of cultural and community life. challenges present themselves in the transition to school-based systems of teaching and learning and the western knowledge-based mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 13 academic standards upon which the majority of the instructional program is based. each teaching team noted that academic content, linguistic, and culture-learning goals are not always mutually supportive. quite often the words required to talk about a modern-day concept are not readily available. participants believed there is a beneficial thrust to invent new words and uses of the language to ensure future viability. while all participants noted it is exciting to be at the forefront of such a movement, it is also a profound responsibility to be shaping the way the language will be spoken in the future: “i work with my classroom elders the best i can in this regard, and modern dictionaries are helpful. it is worrisome though that what i teach my students may shape the future of how our language is spoken.” the teaching teams consulted in the study endeavor to achieve content and language learning objectives through a cultural framework of practice. this requires considerable planning work to ensure each goal is evenly represented. rewards and challenges of indigenous language immersion teaching experience one of the most striking features of each teaching team interviewed was how resolute and committed they each are to fulfilling language and content goals in a way that is culturally authentic and adaptive. the resultant work responsibilities are far beyond what might be expected of a regular classroom teacher: • translating content standards and concepts; • determining cultural inclusiveness and appropriateness; • researching and developing requisite vocabulary; • authoring curriculum units; • developing comprehensive assessments; • learning the local language and culture of the community; • gaining the trust of elders and the community; and • serving as a role model for culture and language. the exhausting regimen of language immersion instruction work is not for everyone. all of the teaching teams represented in this study have experienced significant attrition with the high workload being a suggested contributing factor: language preservation efforts place tremendous pressures on teachers of language. the pressures of setting and students affect who will teach and the skills that are needed… this is true in all teaching fields, but even more of an issue in native american language owing to the small numbers of fluent speakers, the task at hand, and the lack of clarity in the field. (silverthorne, p. 106, 1997) it takes a remarkable individual with the required skill set for the job as well as the ability and determination to handle a demanding work assignment. a special resilience might be necessary given the number and type of criticisms that participants described over the course of the study. ojibwe language immersion teaching work is a challenging profession. serving such a broad range of stakeholders often means being subject to multiple criticisms. participants identified a number of criticisms that make their jobs difficult. these range from concerns about materials or assessments, the quality of dialect or language used by staff members, to the authenticity of cultural expression. the use of print and audiovisual multimedia resources in schools continues to be perceived as a threat to the oral tradition by many community mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 14 members. further community concerns reported by participants included the quality and limitations of student language use. what is important, participants believe, is that students are learning the language and finding enough value to want to use it every day. ensuring that children authentically adopt a comprehensive indigenous perspective is much more complex than simply gaining an appreciation of worldview. while language immersion teachers do their utmost to maintain a native perspective in their practice this can be difficult given the limitations of available resources: say we are talking about the solar system and we have come to a discussion of what we are going to say about this. what are our teachings about this? our elders say we don’t know anything about that. where do we go? that is when we reach out. that takes time. we must be careful to design lessons so that whatever we put forth is accurate. earning the respect, trust, and support of the community is both an associated responsibility and a reward for an ojibwe language immersion educator. the active role an immersion teacher plays in revitalizing indigenous culture through language fits well with nieto’s description of an “agent of culture” (2010, p. 136). immersion programs and situations are intentional ones. a conscious decision has to be made to both create and maintain a speaking environment that would not otherwise exist for students. the goal of the efforts is for the intentionality aspect of speaking to one day become unnecessary: it is like what was said about speaking our language, where it just becomes the norm of behavior again instead of the extraordinary where our anishinaabe life would just be there. it’s a part of our lives and it’s expected, you know? many participants described how fulfilling it was to see children take the lead on ceremonial protocols that were needed in the school and community. it is through the voices of the children that classroom practitioners can hear the words of school elders, or perhaps one’s own parents or grandparents, continue on. being an immersion teacher is a tremendously challenging, important, and yet rewarding position. as noted by one participant, it makes those difficult moments worth it when you get those affirmations from elders, or the moments when the children go and use the language all on their own. there is something about that sound. maybe we are lucky that we get to see stuff that maybe most people don’t get to see? we are unbelievably lucky. connecting with the past and present for the future as a system of education that is founded on culture and language, it is essential that traditional ways of speaking the native language form the basis for new innovations. while new linguistic forms and meanings are an inevitable part of language change (llamas, mullany, & stockwell, 2007), underlying meanings, or the spirit of the language, should be preserved throughout surface changes. immersion school practitioners rely heavily on the contributions of elders and master speakers to achieve the best quality of language in the classroom. written resources are useful sources of language samples and vocabulary choices. it is the attendant elders and master speakers, however, who give each program the context for how to interpret and use language. this is particularly important when increasing numbers of language teachers are second language learners themselves. mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 15 the team approach to classroom instruction is an effective way of capitalizing on the collective skills of staff members. younger staff members noted how working with elders is a rewarding and fulfilling experience. one of the young participants shared that being involved in language immersion has been powerfully reconnecting for herself and her family: my grandmother went to boarding school so did not feel comfortable passing on the language… when i had this opportunity given to me i just said that this was something i was passionate about for her and for my family and my community and for myself. i thought that it was something that needed to be done. another team member affirmed that working with elders on a day-to-day basis is a valuable way to receive ongoing guidance, particularly about developing words and learning how to use them: this is a discussion that we started to have with the elders, and what we are after is what are the true anishinaabe ways of doing and when is it appropriate to talk about x, y, or z. i don’t know if anyone has ever made any serious study of this, but i think it’s something that we are very interested in doing to get back to how we should be. the work between classroom elders, master speakers, and younger or second language learner teachers is a mutually rewarding partnership that strengthens the program for everyone involved. ojibwe language immersion educators are on the cusp of creating a meaningful future for the culture and language through the dynamic work of the present. indeed, indigenous immersion schools are a cynosure where traditional concepts and beliefs meet the demands of new categorizations and definitions of knowledge. cultural and linguistic practices can be adapted to fit the routines and structures found in schools. all participants affirmed how some creative effort can find the application of western concept knowledge standards in traditional activities such as the moccasin game, maple syrup gathering, or snowshoeing. connections have to be thoughtfully made to ensure that authentic cultural perspectives remain a part of the instruction and approach. learning what the past and present have to teach in preparation for the future is the best means of creating a system of education that is culturally sustainable and authentically indigenous no matter what surface changes arise. leadership, nationhood, spirit, and hope participants summarized the concept of language revitalization for indigenous people as the restoration of identity through culture and language. a school-based language immersion approach takes advantage of contemporary organizational systems to teach children in a culturally and linguistically rich environment. the intention is not to replicate english language education within a native language, but rather to create a broad reinterpretation that is consistent with an indigenous understanding of the world: the whole reason for doing this isn’t just about helping kids be successful in school. this is a nation-building project. this has to do with more than just learning your academics and being able to go to college and having a successful career later, this has more to do with waking our people back up again and realizing that our language and who we are is at the root of everything that gives us a right to claim to be anishinaabe. mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 16 indigenous language immersion work was described as a part of the larger movement to restore a broad sense of identity such that indigenous nationhood critically means something in the future. nationhood and identity are more than a tribal membership list or blood quantum calculation. language and culture must be at the heart of an education system that has identity restoration as a goal. one participant asked a profound question in this regard: “how could i be anishinaabe if i did not know the language and culture?” the language teachers in the three schools surveyed for this study are at the forefront of a bigger movement of selfdetermination and empowerment through education. participants shared that starting each school was at times a slow and difficult process. the process of creating the schools took great acts of courage, faith, and leadership. i reflected in my hermeneutic journal about leaving canada because of the leading efforts of native language educators in the united states. for ojibwe anishinaabe people in canada it seemed there had been a lot of discussion for a long time, but nothing ever happened. when i was asked to go work for this new, small program in the u.s. i was hesitant but intrigued. here was an opportunity to do something i had dreamed of for years. when i visited the school, and saw the incredible potential that was there to actually make a real and lasting difference, i knew what my decision must be. being a leader in the indigenous language immersion movement has meant enduring challenges and in some cases personal sacrifice. but the tremendous sense of belief in what is being accomplished is a powerfully motivating force for ojibwe immersion educators. it also inspires hope in the communities that benefit from the existence of one of these school-based programs. hope for a positive future is at the very core of indigenous language immersion educator practice. hearing the native language spoken openly by children after decades of silence is a goal all teaching teams aspire to achieve. in the teaching of culture with and through language there is the hope that native children will develop a deep sense of traditional identity and values. some of the traditional perspectives study participants desire for students to develop include (a) kindness, (b) strength and resilience, (c) mutual cooperation, (d) selfreliance, (e) respect for one another, (f) diversity, and (g) belief in oneself. learning these values is meant to strengthen the sense of nationhood over the long term and to help children develop resilience to some of the negative stresses of community life: these are the kind of things that we need to get back to the days when our people had better manners and self-awareness. of course math and reading are important, but nothing is so important as cultural understanding. that is what is going to give the children deep roots so when the winds of drugs and alcohol and identity start blowing they’re not going to be so shaken as if they weren’t so deeply rooted. for non-native children and families who participate there is the hope of developing long-term mutual respect and appreciation of both languages and cultures. hope of a better future is at the root of immersion practice and implementation. a significant theme that characterizes indigenous language immersion practice is the belief in the role of the spirit. the ojibwe language is a highly spiritual one that is recognized as both a special gift and a responsibility by the community. spiritual mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 17 leaders believe that this is a time of sacred prophecy when things that have been lost or stolen throughout history will be renewed for the benefit of humankind in the future (benton-banai, 2010). language is a key to cultural learning, and it is within the spiritual teachings of the language that native identity exists. while individual stories differ, ojibwe language immersion teaching practice is powerful spiritual work that is deeply reconnecting and grounding: this entire journey of learning language has been more of a spiritual thing for me too. it’s not just going and learning a new word. it is a spiritual process for me, so i know what you mean when you say having a spiritual connection is important. the elements of leadership, hope, and spirit are important in the practice of indigenous language immersion educators. these educators are proving that while schoolbased learning is a compulsory activity, it is not necessarily one that is devoid of connection to language, culture and identity. we want students to come away with a real sense of who they are and a real sense of pride that we have something beautiful to offer to the rest of the world. we are part of this for a reason; we were put here for a reason to maintain balance in the world. we need to reclaim it and remember what that is and when it comes time to share it we need to be ready to do it and to have a good sense of who we are as a nation and that we are a distinct people on this earth. we are beautiful and just as valuable, and our gifts are as valuable as anything else that is on this world. as native peoples continue to define and redefine education systems, the role and place of language immersion education will become increasingly important. a generation of children who are empowered with their culture, language, sense of identity, and belief in their place in the world speaks to a future led by strong leaders. indigenous language immersion education is about nationhood, and as the experience of ojibwe immersion educators suggests, it is about hope. conclusion the study was born out of a personal desire to better understand the experience of a small but extraordinarily committed group of ojibwe language immersion educators. the research helped define many of the elements of ojibwe language immersion educator practice, but moreover framed the unique purpose and benefits of such efforts in teaching content and language framed by culture. the hermeneutic phenomenology of practice included the voices of several leading ojibwe language immersion educators, and drew upon my own experiences in the field. as we examined our thoughts, feelings, understandings, and perceptions about our practice through text, a number of unique revelations emerged from both our collective and unique individual experiences. the research protocol did not represent a “step back” or separation from the busyness of such intense practice; rather, it was a profound opportunity for deeper engagement with our respective thoughts and our community of practice and support. the practice of indigenous language immersion educators committed to the teaching of culture and language within school-based systems is an important, challenging, and rewarding experience. in a time of rapid cultural and linguistic change, language immersion teaching teams endeavor to create a positive future that is grounded in traditional cultural perspectives while meeting contemporary information needs. the knowledge requirements of native language immersion educators are great and mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 18 in continual need of advancement. the dynamic synergy of culture, language, and content that occurs on a daily basis in schools requires competent and creative educators. while a difficult and profound responsibility, these educators are rising to the challenge of the experience with integrity, respect, honor and dedication. the collaborative efforts that are led by these talented educators in their community and school-based programs is ensuring that future generations of ojibwe children will be proficient in their language and confident in their cultural identity and place in the world. references aguilera, d. (2008). academic success and cultural resiliency: language immersion education among indigenous communities. emigra working papers, 48. issn 20133804. ajjawi, r., & higgs, j. (2007). using hermeneutic phenomenology to investigate how experienced practitioners learn to communicate clinical reasoning. the qualitative report, 12(4), 612-638. benton-banai, e. (2010). the mishomis book: the voice of the ojibway (2nd ed.). st. paul, mn: university of minnesota press. creswell, j.w. (2007). qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. finlay, l. (2009). debating phenomenological research methods. phenomenology & practice, 3(1), 6-25. fortune, t.w., & tedick, d.j. (2008). one way, two-way and indigenous immersion: a call for cross-fertilization. in t.w. fortune & d.j. tedick (eds.), pathways to multilingualism: evolving perspectives on immersion education (pp. 3-21). tonawanda, ny: multilingual matters. gadamer, h. (2004). truth and method (2nd ed. j.w. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. grbich, c. (2007). qualitative data analysis: an introduction. thousand oaks, ca: sage. hinton, l. (2001). language revitalization: an overview. in k. hale & l. hinton (eds.), the green book of language revitalization in practice (pp. 3-18). san diego, ca: academic press. hinton, l. (2003). how to teach when the teacher isn’t fluent. in j. reyner, o.v. trujillo, r.l. carrasco, & l. lockard (eds.). nurturing native languages (pp. 79-92). flagstaff, az: northern arizona university. hornberger, n.h. (2008). can schools save indigenous languages? policy and practice on four continents. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. lauver, l.s. (2010). the lived experience of foster parents of children with special needs living in rural areas. journal of pediatric nursing, 25(4), 289-298. laverty, s.m. (2003). hermeneutic phenomenology and phenomenology: a comparison of historical and methodological considerations. international journal of qualitative methods, 2(3), 21-35. lindseth, a., & norberg, a. (2004). a phenomenological hermeneutical method for researching lived experience. scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 18(2), 145-153. llamas, c., mullany, l., & stockwell, p. (2007). the routledge companion to sociolinguistics. new york, ny: routledge. mcinnes journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 19 mccarty, t.l. (2003). revitalising indigenous languages in homogenising times. comparative education, 39(2), 147-163. nieto, s. (2010). language, culture, and teaching: critical perspectives (2nd ed.). new york, ny: routledge. reyhner, j. (2003). native language immersion. in j. reyner, o.v. trujillo, r.l. carrasco, & l. lockard (eds.). nurturing native languages (pp. 1-6). flagstaff, az: northern arizona university. richards, m., & burnaby, b. (2008). restoring aboriginal languages: immersion and intensive language program models in canada. in t.w. fortune & d.j. tedick (eds.), pathways to multilingualism: evolving perspectives on immersion education (pp. 202-221). tonawanda, ny: multilingual matters. ricoeur, p. (1981). hermeneutics and the human sciences: essays on language, action and interpretation. new york, ny: cambridge university press. robertson-malt, s. (1999). listening to them and reading me: a hermeneutic approach to understanding the experience of illness. journal of advanced nursing, 29(2), 290-297. silverthorne, j.a. (1997). language preservation and human resources development. in j. reyhner (ed.), teaching indigenous languages (pp. 105-115). flagstaff, az: northern arizona university. smith, b.a. (1998). the problem drinker’s lived experience of suffering: an exploration using hermeneutic phenomenology. journal of advanced nursing, 27(1), 213222. van manen, m. (1997). researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy (2nd ed.). london, on, canada: the althouse press. wojnar, d.m., & swanson, k.m. (2007). phenomenology: an exploration. journal of holistic nursing, 25(3), 172-180. corresponding author: david w. jardine, phd retired, university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics february 5, 2018 the author(s) 2018 guest editorial: “it’s february. it won’t last” david w. jardine preamble . . .the survivors stepping forward for their moment, blessed by our terrible need to know everything. (wallace, 1987, p. 48) do you have a picture of the pain? (ochs, 1967) the following small reflection was written around a year ago, but it has taken on new urgency for me with nancy moules’ (2017) and kate beamer’s (2017) writing late last year, and my own more recent (jardine, 2018), slightly unexpected response. the crux is this: why dwell on these matters? perhaps writing relieves the writer, but why then read? why listen to sufjan stevens’ (2015, 2017) songs about the death of his mother, or, even more harrowing, mount eerie’s (2017) songs about a wife lost to cancer, and a young child and husband now a bit lost in the world? it is not just a matter of empathizing or deep emotion, although it certainly is all that. it is also a chance for interpretive practice at a relatively safe distance, at relatively safe extent. to witness the careful articulation of suffering through reading writing (or listening to songs) that allows me to hold it at arm’s length or let it come nearer if and as i’m able. there is something important to be said for practicing while we can, and not waiting for events that might just overwhelm my own composure altogether. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 1 2 “it’s february. it won’t last” . . . the lord of yogis, sri jagan-mitrananda, says: lord of the earth, while this borrowed body is still healthy, without sickness or deterioration, take full advantage of it, acting in order to end your fear of sickness, death, and deterioration. once sickness, aging and deterioration and the like occur, you might remember to practice, but what can you do then? (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 157) while driving east into calgary for a bird watching class in a park along the bow river, around 8:20 am, someone on the local cbc am radio was speaking about the weather forecast – very strange indeed, february 8, 2016, 14 degrees celsius, with higher temperatures forecast for the next two days. the sun was flooding into the car window as we drove, more buttery-coloured every day. a great relief as we sighed into it. and the person on the radio says “my mantra right now is repeating ‘it’s february. it won’t last.’” yes. it is. and yes, it won’t. “familiarize yourself with it repeatedly. we call this repeated familiarization meditation” (tsong-kha-pa 2000, p. 110). yes. it is. and yes, it won’t. this is an increasingly familiar sort of “pop”-usage of the term “mantra,” meant to indicate a deliberately repeated phrase to calm the mind and prevent attachment. so, it was not exactly improperly used on the radio: don’t get used to this warm weather. don’t get fooled and drawn into a spell of anticipation and eventual regret. it is not going to last. i guess the pop equivalent is bursting someone’s bubble. of course, the trouble is that, improperly wielded, it becomes the sour-puss downer for all occasions: don’t enjoy that meal, it won’t last; don’t enjoy this life, it won’t last. from a buddhist point of view, however, this can be a good mantra if it is well practiced. it is trying to keep me alert and to prevent mere absorption in the whirling of the world. it is attempting to short-circuit or prevent future disappointment caused, not by today’s nice weather and the upcoming forecast, but caused by becoming falsely attached to it and then suffering the woe of its inevitable disappearance. there is a sort of cycle, here, that is profoundly commonplace. my hope for this weather to last forever (based, i supposed, on the lusty animal body wanting winter to end, wanting that vague threat lifted so i can let go into the winds and ways) causes me to grab at it, and grabbing at it jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 1 3 gives rise to a false feeling of prospective permanence, of “lasting,” thus accelerating the grasping and becoming attached to what is, in fact, an illusory reification of my own making: [it’s] like trying to grab cornstarch dissolved in water, the faster and harder and more desperately we try to seize these matters and cling to something permanent, the more substantial they feel and the more is aggravated our desire to grip even tighter. (jardine, 2012, p. 219) you can tell from this metaphorical sketch how easy it would be for ever-increasing panic to ensue, desperation to take over, and ever-accelerating pursuit to occur. over the course of 30 years of involvement in education and schools, this metaphor has been handy to have. too often i’ve witnessed the ravaging of attention that comes from this accelerated distraction, and too often i’ve seen how deliberately it is manipulated just under the surface of attention (jardine, 2016). the problem is, once “inside” this wheeling, the wheeling sustains itself and can only imagine relief inside of its own orbit of pursuit. this is why buddhism is often portrayed as a denial of desiring and why it might seem that enjoying this warm february air would be shunned. “my mantra right now is repeating ‘it’s february. it won’t last.’” “detachment” from this go-round– another commonplace coinage in describing buddhism - means precisely the opposite of what is easily supposed. such detachment is easily imagined to be a form of disaffected and dour countenance, a flatness of emotion and a sort of distance and dismalness. this is, i think, an incorrect reading of what buddhism requires and what purpose a mantra might serve. it imagines buddhism from inside the orbit of that in relation to which it is, in fact, exorbitant. once “detached” from the illusory belief that this weather might last forever, that this streaming sun might lift my seasonal, old english, grevoushede, once and for all, i can now, instead, utterly adore this warm sun far more profoundly than if i had simply glommed onto it in mindless “enjoyment.” this passing light becomes profoundly intense and surrounded with a penumbra of stillness, immediacy and radiance because it won’t last, not in spite of this fact. this is a phenomenological fact of meditative practice, that adoring radiant beings –like the smell of that aspen just cut from the tree the moths got last fall -is always under the caution of not simply falling for it and failing to remain alert to its ephemerality. fugitive. not lasting is what it is and experiencing it otherwise falsifies it under the weight of my meagre desires. “my mantra right now is repeating ‘it’s february. it won’t last’,” properly practiced, lets it be what it is. it releases it from my dour countenance and animal threat-body. it releases me from it as well. in such detachment, two things happen simultaneously. first, this warmth becomes itself, untethered from hopes for the future or laments for the past. “the existing thing does not simply jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 1 4 offer us a recognizable and familiar surface contour; it also has an inner depth of self-sufficiency that heidegger calls ‘standing-in-itself’” (gadamer, 1977, p. 226). with practice, i can learn to experience this warmth detached from me meddle. it becomes radiant (jardine, 2016). it “breaks forth as if from a center” (gadamer, 1989, p. 458). second, in such (however momentary) detachment, i become what i am: here, now, animal-body facing the sun and feeling the rouse of light, letting it be, letting it “stand in itself” and therefore letting myself stand there in its presence. my experience of this warmth becomes radiant. that is to say, it draws me out of my own wintery self-enclosure. it feels so good. but wait. also, here, “if you are obstructed . . . you will continue to think that you will remain in this life” (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 145). say it. this awash of warm butter sun might just be the last one i ever experience. now i can love it and not simply be attached to it. you can’t love something that you are attached to. by exercising the muscle of detachment –i’d call it the muscle of interpretation that “break[s] open the being of the object” (gadamer, 1989, p. 360) and shows its dependent co-arising, and thus shows the delusions of “substance” (p. 242) -this miniscule moment of disillusion, of (oh so trivial) suffering -“it’s february. it won’t last” -becomes an occasion for of practicing detachment in a case that is what bar-talk calls “a cheap round.” it doesn’t hurt so very much, and the payoff, if it leads to continued practice, is extraordinary: while this borrowed body is still healthy, without sickness or deterioration, take full advantage of it, acting in order to end your fear of sickness, death, and deterioration. once sickness, aging and deterioration and the like occur, you might remember to practice, but what can you do then? (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 157) the suffering induced by paying serious attention – interpretive attention --to this radio-friendly mantra is profoundly small, but, using this small gift as a locale for practice, frees its warmth from the captivity of ego-driven panic and attachment and, however momentarily, frees me from my fears of impermanence, of passing. take full advantage. references beamer, k. (2017). and coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 10. accessed on-line: http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/157. gadamer, h-g. (1977). philosophical hermeneutics. berkeley, ca: university of california press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method. new york, ny: continuum press. http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/157 jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 1 5 jardine, d.w. (2012). pedagogy left in peace: on the cultivation of free spaces in teaching and learning. new york, ny: bloomsbury publishing. jardine, d.w. (2016). in praise of radiant beings: a retrospective path through education, buddhism and ecology. charlotte nc: information age publishing. jardine, d. w. (2018). sunflowers, coyote, and five red hens. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 4. on-line: http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/167 moules, n. j. (2017) editorial. grief and hermeneutics: archives of lives and the conflicted character of grief. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5h708h8 mount eerie. (2017). a crow looked at me. compact disc. p.w. elverum & sun recordings. release date: march 24, 2017. ochs, p. (1967). crucifixion. from p. ochs (1967), the pleasures of the harbor. compact disc. a&m records. stevens, s. (2015). carrie and lowell. compact disc. asthmatic kitty records. catalog: akr099. release date: march 31, 2015. stevens, s. (2017). the greatest gift. mix tape. outtakes, remixes and demos from carrie and lowell. compact disc. asthmatic kitty records. catalog: akr134. release date: november 24, 2017 tsong-kha-pa. (2000). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lam rim chen mo). vol. 1. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. wallace, b. (1987). the stubborn particulars of grace. toronto, on, canada: mcclelland & stewart. http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/167 http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5h708h8 microsoft word hackettproof.docx corresponding author: j. edward hackett southern illinois university, carbondale doctoral candidate, editorial assistant library of living philosophers email: jhackett@siu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics march 15, 2013 the author(s) 2013 scheler, heidegger, and the hermeneutics of value j. edward hackett abstract in this paper, the author examines two different phenomenological frameworks for values: heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology and scheler’s phenomenology. given the popularity of hermeneutic phenomenology inspired by heidegger’s efforts, the author openly questions if values can be accommodated in that framework. the author suggests that those paying attention to the lived-experience of values consider scheler’s phenomenology of value as a more refined alternative to make sense of value-experience and cultural practices more generally. keywords ethics, givenness, heidegger, scheler, value in this paper, i explore the possibility of how value can be given in both heidegger and scheler. the “how of givenness” is the manner in which some thing can be given, or accessed phenomenologically. thus, if we take a look at both scheler and heidegger, we can address their conceptions of phenomenology as limiting and enabling the givenness of value. on a whole, phenomenology’s development issues more from heidegger’s influence than scheler. heidegger interprets value as present-at-hand and i argue this follows from the limits imposed by his hermeneutic phenomenology. values are ontic for heidegger. in scheler’s magnum opus the formalismus, he is silent on what values are exactly, but describes them as given. scholars familiar with scheler’s work will note that many times in the formalismus, scheler will assert the ideality of value and refer to the rank of values as an eternal order. however, he will never spell out the ontological nature of value nor how it is that they are eternal. thus, if we can establish the givenness of value itself and what that requires independently of either phenomenology, then we can recommend either heidegger or scheler’s phenomenological approach. thus, this paper is not an analysis of the historical relation between scheler and heidegger. rather, this paper works out value’s givenness itself in relation by considering two phenomenological frameworks together. hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 2 after working out value’s givenness and seeing which phenomenology can best accommodate value, i will show the applicable upshot of scheler’s thought to an applied problem. i will show that disagreements over the management and accessibility to health care in the united states invert the absolute value and overwhelming fullness of persons. this example serves to show the theoretical benefit of adopting a hermeneutics of value rooted in scheler’s thought more generally and further evinces the problematic silence plaguing heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology about the prominent role values play in our experience at a fundamental and ontological level. introduction to the problem scheler offered tiny clues in the formalismus as to what he thought phenomenology could do for him. these insights were given in the introduction between the central preoccupations of method. for heidegger, phenomenology was the way into working out the problem of being in his fundamental ontology in being and time, yet the problem presented itself when heidegger construed phenomenology as a hermeneutic turn. while scheler was not necessarily preoccupied with method in the same way heidegger responded to husserl, scheler can still be analyzed in terms of what he claimed about phenomenology in the formalismus. primarily, scheler was interested in developing his personalism against the background of kant’s moral philosophy. we must look passed the formalismus. heidegger was preoccupied with method, but heidegger’s “method” comes across indirectly as a consequence of interrogating dasein about the question of the meaning of being and the history of ontology. in what follows, i want to ask the questions: what is the givenness of value? how is value experienced in its givenness? if i can answer these questions, then it is the phenomenological criterion of value itself that can answer which phenomenological framework better suits value’s givenness. i will first discuss scheler and then move to heidegger. i. scheler’s intuition of essences scheler’s conception of phenomenology is given in chapter 2 of the formalismus. in the formalismus, he outlined his concepts of the a priori and phenomenological intuition, or what he called “essential intuiting” (wesensschau). scheler designated “as ‘a priori’ all those ideal units of meaning and those propositions that are self-given by way of an immediate intuitive content in the absence of any kind of positing” (scheler, 1973a, p. 48). like husserl, phenomenology is opposed to the natural attitude and is therefore a special type of experience (frings, 1996, p. 18). in the natural attitude, we regard phenomena as a natural fact described by the sciences, and in this standpoint, phenomena are described from a third-person perspective. the natural attitude seeks only to describe from an objective or impartial perspective. it does not pay attention to how phenomena are disclosed to us in the first-person perspective, and the natural attitude takes for granted the senseconstituting role of subjectivity in experience. the natural attitude reveals phenomena in their non-experienced features and has, therefore, a skewed interpretation. phenomenological description is the attempt to render experiential elements clear that undergird and constitute experience itself as we truly live through them by remaining true to both the subjectivity of the experiencer and the enjoined constituted object. if i told my wife that love is merely the evolutionary adaptive strategy to facilitate human pair-bonding and that we need not concern ourselves with the actual content of love (as it is lived), i would seriously disregard what it means to be in love in the first place. moreover, the thirdhackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 3 person perspective does not and cannot address what it is like to be in love. 1 thus, scheler opposed the propensity of the natural attitude to posit and take for granted the origins of how acts constitute the meaning of phenomena. instead, meaning-constitution of an act can only be apprehended in absolute immanence and we must pay specific attention to what is given in experience. what is given in experience is how a phenomenon is lived through within experience. for scheler, attempting a description is more line with an attitudinal approach than a well-established method. this also marks a considerable difference between him and husserl. …phenomenology is neither the name of a new science nor a substitute for the word philosophy; it is the name of an attitude of spiritual seeing in which one can see or experience something which otherwise remains hidden, namely, a realm of facts of a particular kind. i say attitude, not method. a method is a goal-directed procedure for thinking about facts…before they have been fixed by logic, and second, of a procedure of seeing… that which is seen and experienced is given only in the seeing and experiencing of the act itself, in its being acted out; it appears in that act and only in it. (scheler, 1973b, pp. 137138) for scheler, phenomenological description is about describing the sphere of acts in which we experience the world. as products of “spiritual seeing,” these descriptions aim at the primordial acts prior to all other cognition and experience. in such a way, the phenomenologist attempts to retrieve the “most intensely vital and most immediate contact with the world itself, that is with those things in the world with which it is concerned and these things as they are immediately given to experience” (scheler, 1973b, p. 138). experience, according to scheler, means the immediately given nature of phenomena and these phenomena “are ‘in themselves there’ only in this act (scheler, 1973b, p. 138). it is only within the sphere of acts in which we have a living contact with the world, and it is only as a unity of these acts we experience each other as persons. for scheler, the immediate apprehension of whatness/essence cannot be disclosed by scientific thinking at all. instead, the content of that immediate apprehension is what enables our efforts to understand science. essences reveal the intelligibility and meaning of the world given in experience. then, science is an abstraction of phenomenological experience. in scheler’s terms, “we can also say that essences and their interconnections are a priori “given” “prior” to all experience” (scheler, 1973a, p. 49). scheler equated phenomenological intuition with phenomenological experience (scheler, 1973a, p. 48). in phenomenology, this connection between act-center and the world is collapsed in how experience is undergone, and this is called “intentionality.” the act-center is consciousness of something. anytime i am fearful, i am fearful of the spider. when i perceive, i am perceiving the tree. there is no moment in which consciousness is not taking an object. thus, we are constantly undergoing moments of intentional relation with the world, and it is phenomenology that attempts to retrieve how it is that experience is undergone by careful attention to what we intuit as given within this intentional structure. scheler’s term for intentionality that emphasizes the constant unfolding linkage of acts and the world is interconnection. an essence is not mysterious for the phenomenologist. instead, essence refers only to ‘what-ness’ of a thing (was-sein). for scheler, it does not refer to a universal or particular concept of a thing. for example, if i have a hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 4 blue thing in front of me, the essence “blue” is given in the universal concept of the thing as well as the particular experience of the thing in question. therefore, the essence is the whatness that carries over into both the universal and particular conception of a thing. in this way, the phenomenological essence is neither a particular thing, or a universal abstraction or ideality. instead, the phenomenological essence is the mode of givenness exhibited within experience and these modes of givenness constitute experience of the phenomenon as such. therefore, it is wrong to say that the phenomenological content can be reified to support any particular ontology, and this is the reason why philip blosser articulated the weakness of scheler’s thought and relationship it has acquired in relation to heidegger’s fundamental ontology. on this, blosser wrote …the chief defect of scheler’s phenomenology, like all philosophies of value, was the weakness of his treatment of the ontology of values. the insufficient development of this fundamental aspect of value theory has left it especially vulnerable in a philosophical climate that has been distinguished, since the 1930s, by the major “growth industry” of heideggerian ontology, making this appear probably the most critical defect of scheler’s formalismus. (blosser, 1995, p. 16) blosser is not alone in his assessment. in addition, stephen schneck claimed “(i)n accepting phenomenology, scheler was already steeped in the life philosophies and was committed to an unrefined metaphysical position to an as yet undefined metaphysical position” (schneck, 1987, p. 31). scheler’s sense of ontology remained tenuous and was not fully developed in the formalismus in a complete sense. support for this interpretation can also be seen in what little scheler wrote about essences. essences fill out both sides of the interconnection in terms of acts and propositions. let me describe the latter. scheler wrote whenever we have such essences and such interconnections among them, the truth of propositions that find their fulfillment in such essences is totally independent of the entire sphere of observation and description, as well as of what is established in inductive experience. this truth is also independent, quite obviously of all that enters into causal explanation. it can neither be verified nor refuted by this kind of “experience.” (scheler, 1973a, p. 49) in other words, essences locate the interconnections between what is given originally prior to experience to such an extent that this originally prior sense is independent of the empirical determinations about experience. however, he did not develop what it means for phenomenology to be independent. the term “independent” follows from scheler’s description of “immanent experience.” by immanent, he meant “only what is intuitively in an act of experiencing” and by contrast, “non-phenomenological experience is in principle an experience through or by means of symbols and, hence mediated experience that never gives things “themselves” (scheler, 1973a, p. 51). thus, phenomenological descriptions are independent from mediation of any symbols, or representations. in other words, they are not conditioned in any way, and immanence can only be disclosed to acts of experience, the being-in-an-act of experience. while scheler may not have developed how phenomenological descriptions are independent from the empirical sciences, scheler did develop what he meant by phenomenological independence in other works. in his lehre hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 5 von den drei tatsachen, scheler described three levels of “pure facts.” first, the pure fact must identify a positive something (etwas) as the sensory function through which this intuitive identity is established will be varied. second, pure facts must serve as an ultimate foundation of the intuitive identified essence despite the changing nature of sensory content in which they are first experienced. finally, the pure facts must be independent from the symbolic order in two ways. first, they must be independent from “the symbols with which it is possible for us to designate them” and second, they must be independent from “the symbols which are used in presenting the facts of which they are parts” (scheler, 1973c, p. 299ff). if they are independent, then the connection between act and object must be independent as well, and this will allow the phenomenological descriptions to represent “what is not given in person” to others when sharing phenomenological results with others. phenomenological facts are disclosed in acts but without any mediation. in this way, scheler described the essential interconnections that are possible to address phenomenologically. (1) the essences (and their interconnections) of the qualities and other thingcontents (sachgehalte) given in acts (things-phenomenology) (sächphanomenologie); (2) the essences of acts themselves and their relations of foundation (phenomenology of acts or foundational orders); (3) their interconnections between the essence of acts and those of things [zwischen aktund sachwesenheiten] (e.g. values are given in feeling, colors in seeing, sounds in hearing etc.) (scheler, 1973a, pp. 71-72) scheler’s ontological commitments are inadequately developed, and this makes them unclear. did scheler want to secure an ontological underpinning for his personalism from the brief treatment he gave it in the formalismus? a passage in the phenomenology and the theory of cognition provides support to such a reading linking his phenomenological efforts to future efforts of ontology. “essential connections and essences have an ontological meeting from the start…the ontology of the spirit and world precedes any theory of cognition” (scheler, 1973b, p. 158). here, scheler emphasized the independence of phenomenological description from the causal sciences, in particular various epistemic theories of cognition, must first presuppose the phenomenological priority of how spirit and world are first encountered in conscious acts. those very same acts are accessed through the essential intuiting of the phenomenological attitude to render it clear how being-in-an-act relates to the world. in concluding this section, i explained some of the problematic features that accompany scheler’s thought about experience and how phenomena are given. i find scheler’s formalismus wanting because by itself the language of phenomenology cannot get us very far when it concerns the ontology of value unless phenomenology becomes ontology. clearly, heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology provides an example of how phenomenology breaks into ontology, and it is where i turn to next. ii. heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology heidegger operated with a more skeptical, but equally complex conception of phenomenology. for scheler, phenomenology accesses the foundations of meaning in personal acts that later become concealed and taken for granted in the empirical sciences, or what he called “mediated” through signs and symbols. heidegger denied that a conception of phenomenological experience can access immehackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 6 diately pure phenomena. for him, the hermeneutic conception of phenomenology that arose in being and time conceives of the possibility of givenness as that which is always mediated, but brought into the clear. this difference will become apparent as i explain it from section 31 and section 32. moreover, such focused attention on these two sections will illuminate methodological commitments heidegger’s thought never abandoned. in what follows, i pay special attention to how this conception of phenomenology arises within the project of fundamental ontology and being and time as a whole. an entire work could trace out the consequences of hermeneutic phenomenology. such an effort is certainly beyond the task of this work, but it is important also to keep in mind the methodological differences between scheler and heidegger before any exposition of scheler’s concepts and subsequent remedy can be introduced to the problem of dearth of value in heidegger’s fundamental ontology. a central feature of heidegger’s fundamental ontology qua phenomenology involves the analysis of human beings not as epistemic agents, but as “dasein.” dasein is being-in-the-world (sein-in-der-welt) and his name for “us.” heidegger sought a solution to the meaning of being in the very being that can pose the question before itself. it is therefore within dasein (what heidegger used as a phenomenological term to stand for any being that can pose the question of its own existence to itself) that this concern arises. dasein is described as being-in-the-world. by understanding dasein as being-in-the-world, heidegger explicated the question of being in terms of the practical orientation we exhibit towards the world and others. at the same time, being-in-the-world is a collapse between dasein and world. we come to understand ourselves only in light of the everyday contexts we find ourselves already in. we do not know a hammer from the detached perspective as just another epistemic object. rather, we know the hammer from the contextual significance it possesses in a nexus of instrumental relationships in which it is used. thus, phenomenology attempts to bring to light that which is concealed over or taken for granted. phenomenological description brings into explicit relief the hidden contexts and purposes that underscore practical interaction with the world. this point can only further be clarified if we explain understanding. under a hermeneutic conception, dasein is centrally characterized as understanding, but as i have already emphasized this conception of understanding does not mean understanding only as knowledge. understanding is not primarily a formal conception of knowledge that epistemologists analyze and consider primitively basic to human experience. rather, understanding is the implicit intelligibility that characterizes human activities as meaningful and already familiar in practice. when we understand objects, we understand them as neither objects with external properties, nor an explanation that attempts to stand over a phenomenon in a transhistorical sense either (heidegger, 1962, p. 182/143). instead, understanding is a primordial disclosure of possibilities of the world as a whole or the possibilities that pertain to my self-understanding as a historically mediated being thrown into the world. ontically, we often claim “to understand something” but for heidegger we have to be clear. the ontic interpretations are those concealed over in the public cliché attitudes and natural attitude in husserl and scheler. ontic explanations are unexamined and offer no primordial investigation of a fundamental ontology that hermeneutic phenomenology can. heidegger offered a fundamental ontology through a hermeneutic phenomenology. he hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 7 described the ontological facticity of dasein as the structure of care (sorge). in the structure of care heidegger described understanding as an existentiale an ontologically constitutive characteristic of dasein at precognitive the layer of experience. through the existentiales, one experiences the world. accordingly, understanding is not a competence, but being as existing, or what we might call a being-possible. it is a way of existing. a candidate passage might help clarify: in understanding, as an existentiale, that which we have such competence over is not a “what”, but being as existing. the kind of being which dasein has, as potentiality-for-being, lies existentially in understanding. dasein is not something present-at-hand which possesses its competence for something by way of an extra; it is primarily being-possible. (heidegger, 1962, p. 183/143) as seen above, dasein is its “possibilities,” and those possibilities pertain not only to itself but how it understands being as existing, as it already is thrown into the world. these possibilities are never independent of the world in the way we described in scheler. in other words, heidegger does not think that possibilities are “free-floating potentiality-forbeing in the sense of the liberty of indifference” (heidegger, 1962, p. 183/144). in this way, possibilities are not like the “propositionalized” maxims of kantian moral philosophy that have their source in something else other than being-in-the-world. instead, dasein is ontologically understood as its possibilities. however, possibilities come already furnished in a world not of our own making. heidegger wrote as the potentiality-for-being which is is, it has let such possibilities pass by; it is constantly waiving the possibilities of its being, or else it seizes upon them and makes mistakes. but this means that dasein is being-possible which has been delivered over to itself thrown possibility through and through. dasein is the possibility of being-free for its ownmost potentialityfor-being. its being-possible is transparent to itself in different possible ways and degrees. (heidegger, 1962, p. 183/144) in other words, dasein is an undetermined potentiality full of possibilities it may choose for itself. sometimes, it will make mistakes in that choosing, but it seizes upon those possibilities nonetheless. accordingly, dasein must be handed over to itself as a field of potential possibilities it may choose, and the formation of these possibilities is not completely within human control. there is a world already underway we are born into. we are thrown into the world. there are legacies shaping the direction and field of history i must and cannot help but respond to in my vocation. when i teach philosophy, i have come to expect that students from poorer areas have less developed writing skills on average than those that come from more affluent areas. while this is not always the case, a part of this problem places undue burdens on me as a teacher of philosophy in a public american university. i have to work harder at getting clear what a text says to my students due in large measure by their lack of preparation for university life. i have to develop cultural references that might be analogous to the life of students far removed from philosophical texts. these legacies of under-preparation, failing high schools, and open admissions subsist even if i had never chosen to be a philosopher teaching at a public university. in another sense, however, these possibilities are mine and mine alone. i am the one who was assigned such and such a course with enrolling first-year students. all of these factors shape my situation. as heidegger insisted, it is a matter of “degree.” hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 8 dasein is thrown, and thus understanding takes into account the whole of a situation, and has a basic idea of its capabilities already but possession of this self-knowledge is not guaranteed. dasein can fail to recognize that it is essentially its ownmost possibility. understanding can go astray. heidegger summarized his complete definition of understanding: “understanding is the existential being of dasein’s own potentiality-for-being; and it is so in such a way that this being discloses in itself what its being is capable of” (heidegger, 1962, p. 184/144). to unpack this conception, dasein is that which has its own being as it issue for it. we are in possession of our own possibility. this possession is not mysterious, but it is a structure exhibited in our everyday daily experience. in this way, the possibilities are concrete. in an intimate way, we know what we are capable of since an intimate familiarity with our own being is disclosed in a very practical orientation towards the world. let me take stock of what has been established thus far. for heidegger, possibilities were not a deliberated choice, or a detached belief that will inform action later on. these possibilities are concretized in a particular context of significance. these possibilities are already present in a world we are thrown into, and the possession of these possibilities occur in matters of degree. these possibilities are always relative to a worldly situation. understanding is always practically-oriented in a context this is what heidegger meant by calling the projected understanding a “for-thesake-of-which” (heidegger, 1962, p. 182/143). by being constantly affixed to the worldly concrete possibilities and situational character, heidegger introduced a distinction between factuality and facticity. let me explain the distinction. many past thinkers have argued what is possible by connecting those inferences about possibility to what someone is “factually.” for example, aristotle’s doctrine of natural slavery in the politics largely depends on metaphysical assumptions. (aristotle, 1254a, pp. 28-32) for aristotle, a thing possesses its nature inherent within it, and as such, the distinction between those that rule and those that are ruled inheres in the nature of individuals. in another way, the pseudoscience of phrenology in the 19th century “secured” the truth of racist attitudes. in addition, understanding “agency” in moral philosophy has gravitated towards attempting to construct moral theories by first examining how humans operate socially through social psychology.2 this is an attempt at establishing what we are factually rather than looking at how it is we exist as being-in-the-world. the latter emphasizes the facticity of human life over what aristotle, pseudoscience or the use of moral psychology can do for us in ethics. the point in raising these examples is to open up dasein’s worldly structure but at the same time being aware of what heidegger is not claiming. dasein could never be discerned from what it is factually. instead, “dasein is ‘more’ than it factually is, supposing that one might want to make an inventory of it as something-at-hand and list the contents of its being… ” (heidegger, 1962, p. 185/145). therefore, again, dasein cannot be known by simply listing off the properties of its being as a scientific perspective might insist. instead, heidegger’s analysis is an existential-ontological account of how the projection of self-understanding can become “what it is by becoming what is possible for it to be” (hoy, 1993, p. 181). in order to understand what one may become, interpretation is required since we must be able to interpret the already possessed conception of who we want to become. for my purposes here, the possibilities can thus be interpreted as “modes of givenness” and interpretation imposes the limit of how those modes of givenness can be understood. hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 9 by interpretation (auslegung), heidegger meant a practically-oriented capacity of understanding to bring into view the parts and wholes of an entire possibility and context. put another way, interpretation is the development of the understanding’s projection upon what is inherently possible. in heidegger’s words, an interpretation is “the working out of possibilities projected in understanding” (heidegger, 1962, p. 189/148). thus, we must already have a worked out understanding of possibilities prior to interpretation since interpretation is grounded in the understanding. understanding is never generated out of interpretation. instead, understanding is the prereflective, pre-linguistic, and pre-cognitive practical orientation that makes it possible to interpret the world at all. we understand aspects of the world already; we understand something-as-something. when i engage in reading a book, i understand the book as something to be read. the book occurs in the in-order-to relationships that constitute the whole world and the possible interpretations of it: that which is disclosed in understanding that which is understood is already accessible i such a way that its ‘as which’ can be made to stand out explicitly. the ‘as’ makes up the structure of explicitness of something that is understood. it constitutes the interpretation. (heidegger, 1962, p. 189/149) in other words, there is an implicit background to the world, a nexus of practical relationships behind understanding and interpreting the world that heidegger called the “totality of involvements.” i possess an intimate familiarity with many of these practical relationships already. for heidegger, we are born into a world already underway within its own historicity and, likewise, all interpretations are a working out of projective understanding in that historicity and totality of involvements. the totality of involvements is always understood not as a grasping of facts independently of that historicity and already understood contexts of significance. instead, the totality of involvements is what heidegger called “ready-to-hand” (zuhanden). we do not apprehend properties about objects outside of the interpretively-laden contexts we inhabit. such an apprehension would exemplify what heidegger called “present-at-hand” (vorhanden). moreover, this holds for value too. as heidegger put it, “in interpreting we do not throw a signification over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it…” (heidegger, 1962, p. 190/150). in other words, interpretations cannot get outside of the contextual significance. instead, this hermeneutic threshold holds for value. for instance, values are not disclosed as a mind-independent property through a type of moral intuition.3 in the totality of involvements, there are three pre-linguistic/precognitive features that condition interpretation and further the hermeneutic threshold already described. as heidegger put it, “an interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending” (heidegger, 1962, p. 191/150). first, there is fore-having (vorhabe). we have a prior understanding that does not stand out clearly from the background. we understand the bridge is something to cross prior the practical involvement of driving. secondly, there is fore-sight (vorsicht). this is the act of appropriation in which the interpreter brings into relief an already understood but veiled aspect of a thing, and this is what is responsible for conceptualization of a thing for interpretation. finally, heidegger described fore-conception (vorgriff). this is the already decided and definite way of conceiving the thing to be interpreted “either with finality or with reservations; it is grounded in something we grasp in advance—in a foreconception” (heidegger, 1962, p. 191/150). hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 10 all three factors describe the fore-structure. these three features constitute the hermeneutic threshold that interpretation imposes upon what is possible for us. hermeneutic phenomenology is not simply a description about the limits of understanding and interpretations. those are certainly part of it, yet it is more. for me, hermeneutic phenomenology is the fusion of the asstructure and fore-structure in heidegger. the fore-structure is the particular way in which the whole “must already have understood what is to be interpreted” (heidegger, 1962, p. 194/152). hermeneutic phenomenology is the descriptive attempt to bring the as-structures and fore-structures together in which together they form an articulation.4 the as-structure is the thing “as its own” but such a thing is given as part of a contextual whole. their togetherness delimits how projective understanding actually works. in projective understanding, …entities are disclosed in their possibility. the character of the possibility corresponds, on each occasion, with the kind of the entity which is understood. entities within-the-world generally are projected upon the world—that is, upon the whole of significance, to whose referencerelations concern, as being-in-the-world, has been tied up in advance. (heidegger, 1962, p. 192/151) in other words, projective understanding is limited by the part-whole relation disclosed in the as-structure and fore-structure. to say that understanding works out possibilities for interpretation within the partwhole relationship is not to commit oneself to circular reasoning. it is not a “vicious circle” as heidegger insisted. instead, interpretation is an effort to see more than simply an ideal of knowledge operating as pure philosophizing but rather “a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing” (heidegger, 1962, p. 195/153). heidegger’s phenomenological description of understanding limits the very possibility of phenomenological ontology itself. more generally, many philosophers have imposed the standards of deductive rigor upon discourses in philosophy. these rigorous discourses attempt to get at the truth of a discourse. yet, such an imposition of an ideal of knowledge is still a species of projective understanding. in the crisis of the european sciences, husserl phenomenologically retrieved how the sedimentation of historical meaning in galileo had “mathematized” nature to the point that nature itself could only be understood scientifically as an event within space-time.5 such events could not be given any other way. quite similarly, heidegger’s insistence on the priority of practical engagement with the world is a similar insight. heidegger’s efforts return to what is given, and at the same time, the return establishes a limit that neither understanding nor interpretation can surpass. this would include how values could be given, if at all. iii. phenomenological tensions the differences in these respective philosophies illustrate two ways values can be interpreted. first, scheler’s silence on the ontology of value follows from his phenomenological attitude. from the earlier passage, scheler regarded the “given only in the seeing and experiencing of the act itself.” in the sphere of acts, we could discern the essences of things, but this essential insight cannot glean any ontological insight. scheler was a thoroughly committed pure phenomenologist at that point, and the ontological neutrality of the attitude of “spiritual seeing” does not seek to delimit that which can be given. scheler’s insistence on the immediate givenness of value through emotional intuition expresses that spirit may discern the what-ness of a phenomenon, yet we are never told anything about what eshackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 11 sences are anymore than how it is that values are given as an eternal a priori order of ranks. on the other hand, dasein cannot immediate intuitively apprehend a phenomenon. according to heidegger, all understanding is – to put it in scheler’s words – “mediated” through “signs and symbols.” therefore, it is clear that insofar as the analysis regards the formalismus and being and time, there are clear contradictory commitments to either a phenomenology that can discern essences immediately through intuition or a hermeneutic phenomenology in which the understanding works out its interpretive possibilities mediated through the as-and-fore-structures of experience. if someone is given the choice between these two approaches, the question can be asked: which approach allows for a better understanding of value’s givenness? in the nature of sympathy, scheler argued that existence is pervasively already mooded that is to say, scheler’s insistence that affectivity pervades human life is that such affectivity is being-in-the-world. i offer the following passage as evidence of this interpretation: …the value-qualities of objects are already given in advance at a level where their imaged and conceptual features are not yet vouchsafed to us, and hence that the apprehension of values is the basis of our subsequent apprehension of objects. (scheler, 2008, p. 57-58) we are actively borne into a world engrossed in an emotional tonality. human life is thoroughly “mooded” in scheler. consequently, there is agreement with the heideggerian insistence on dasein as being-in-the-world, and how the care structure unfolds emphasizing “moodedness.” scheler’s analysis takes affectivity farther than being and time. he gives full phenomenological independence to affective intentionality whereas moods are just one existentiale in the care structure. for it is our whole spiritual life and not simply objective thinking in the sense of cognition of being that possesses “pure” acts and laws of acts which are, according to their nature and contents, independent of the human organization. the emotive elements of spirit, such as feeling, preferring, loving, hating and willing, also possess original a priori contents which are not borrowed from “thinking”, and which ethics must show to be independent of logic. there is an a priori ordre du coeur, or logique du coeur as blaise pascal aptly calls it. (scheler, 1973a, p. 63) scheler considered the experience of affectivity as the basis for all other experiences. in heidegger, the moods are experienced in much the same way as scheler. they are a copenetrating part of the structure of care. moods come from behind us, without our control, and we are constantly delivered over to them. every situation is mooded, and therefore given as already mooded as such. in this way, both scheler and heidegger emphasized the same primordial level of affectivity in which all situations and the world itself is disclosed. yet, there is a striking difference between both phenomenological approaches. in scheler, the emotions form an independent autonomous logic disclosed in the structure of intentional acts. in heidegger, the moods work alongside the other existentiales. this autonomous logic is the reason why schelerian phenomenology is capable of grasping the values intended in emotions more fully than heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, and explains why heidegger could not adequately grasp values in the everydayness of dasein. the givenness of value-qualities in experience, when successfully bracketed phenomenologically, perdure. that is, values are given as a form of intransient permanence as evidenced in acts of love. these acts are of spirit, hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 12 and they disclose values as objectively valid in their own way. consider the experience of love. love is a personal intentional act that opens up the grasp of value’s givenness of another’s spiritual essence. these others could be other persons, an anonymous other – such as other americans, or maybe an idea like justice. either way, the structure of love is the same intentional act and offers us phenomenological insight into the experience of values itself. in love, i will adopt a permanent intransient orientation to sacrifice all my effort to bring the other to proper fruition. i will not attempt to control, manipulate, or dominate this other. control, domination, or manipulation would only attempt to bring about an imposed conception of what the other should be rather than allowing the unique other to be. hence, love is the movement or ascendancy of scheler’s value-rankings that allows the valued good to become more than what it is, and at the highest level is the absolute value of the person. being capable of experiencing value’s givenness requires eliminating any mediation such that the experience can pick upon value’s overwhelming fullness. the overwhelming fullness of value’s givenness is a conceptual feature of value itself. it could be proposed that heidegger picked up on the givenness of value as a form of permanence, but heidegger held value to be an ontic phenomenon that naively regard values as present-at-hand. as heidegger first mentioned ethics in being and time dasein’s ways of behavior, its capacities, powers, possibilities, and vicissitudes, have been studied with varying extent in philosophical psychology, in anthropology, ethics, and ‘political science’, in poetry, biography and in the writing of history each in a different fashion…only when the basic structures of dasein have been adequately worked out with explicit orientation towards the problem of being itself, will what we have hitherto gained in interpreting dasein gets its existential justification. (heidegger, 1962, p. 37/16) for heidegger, ethics is but one example of an ontic interpretation that does not go far enough in elucidating the being of dasein. heidegger thought that various ontic interpretations of dasein’s possibilities had been overlooked and concealed over. in a sense, heidegger was correct, yet had heidegger explored the ground of values as “felt in experience,” he would have gleaned scheler’s insight. i hope the reader understands i am not simply “playing up” scheler, but offering the givenness of value as a reason to regard scheler’s phenomenology more sophisticated on this point. phenomenologically speaking and independent of scheler, values are given as enduring beyond contexts of significance. if i face a similar situation later on in life, then ceteris paribus the same value will apply to the same context of significance. hence, we can understand it when scheler claimed that the determinate order of values “is independent of the form of being into which values enter no matter, for instance, if they are present to us as purely objective qualities, as members of value-complexes (e.g., the beingagreeable or being-beautiful of something), or as values that ‘a thing has’” (scheler, 1973a, p. 17). heidegger had only picked up on the givenness of value partly. indeed, values are given as a presence perduring throughout time because the act-center of persons realizes them into time as goods.6 the act-center of persons in realizing values exceeds representation, and so too do the values realized by persons. an example might prove helpful. scheler stated that values only matter in relation to the dignity of a person, and this is the highest value (which for scheler is the value of the holy). therefore, if i enslave another person, i disregard how he is given to me in experihackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 13 ence as a person. this insight is gleaned in the emotional apprehension i have in relation to a person. the dignity of a person does not come to us through the a priori form of the moral law as a kantian would insist. instead, the inviolable sense of the person is given in her inexhaustible richness as a wholly unique individuated being. the person emanates outward phenomenologically as absolute and unique. it does not matter if we are talking about the slaves of ancient egypt, or slaves in the american south of the 19th century. in all instances, the value of the person is felt in experience. there is no mediation of the value attached to the holy sense afforded to person. in much the same way, levinas insisted on the transhistorical absolute value of the other. it is therefore no mistake that levinas and scheler insisted on the trans-historical and therefore trans-mediated sense that the other person possesses. no ethics can get off the ground if there was not a phenomenological givenness of the person and value itself. in short, ethicists assume the phenomenological existence of values and persons as a basis for their own inquiry. a heideggerian might counter we have simply paid too much attention to the asstructure, the immediate immanence of a person without paying attention to what context or fore-structure that allows us to make such claims as when scheler opens in the second preface to the formalismus with “the spirit behind my ethics is one of rigid ethical absolutism and objectivism” (scheler, 1973a, p. xxiii). consequently, it is no accident that the next sentence follows as “my position may in another respect be called emotional intuitionism” (scheler 1973a, p. xxiii). by contrast, one could agree with gadamer’s sentiments surrounding scheler’s thought. scheler’s major ethics merely “fused the tradition of catholic moral philosophy for the first time with the most advanced positions in modern philosophy” (gadamer, 2008, p. 135). by “modern philosophy,” gadamer referred to phenomenology and its supplementary role to a metaphysics informed by philosophical anthropology. scheler’s contribution is downplayed if a hermeneutic phenomenology in either gadamer or heidegger’s formation succeeds. yet, hermeneutic phenomenology is limited by its inability to capture the absolute immanence of value-experience. there is no mediation in scheler’s thought of value experience. this follows from scheler’s commitment to a phenomenology of essences expressed in the interconnections between emotional acts and value-correlates. interconnections are, like essences, “given”. they are not a “product” of “understanding.” they are original thinginterconnections [sachzusammenhänge], not laws of objects just because they are laws of acts apprehending objects.7 they are “a priori” because they are grounded in essences [wesenheit], not in objects and goods. they are a priori, but not because of “understanding” or “reason” “produces” them. the logos permeating the universe can be grasped only through them. (scheler, 1973a, p. 68) the givenness of value shares in a completely different mode of givenness more than heidegger could anticipate in being and time and this is why it is unfair to insist upon the hermeneutic threshold without fully paying attention to the how-of-givenness and what that how-of-givenness entails for value in particular. the givenness of value could only be articulated in a phenomenology of emotional life where they are experienced directly. for instance, if i find myself likely to eat fish from lake erie, i will refrain. lake erie is very polluted, and the game wardens in pennsylvania near presque isle warn of the dangers. the fish are given as threatening my health. moreover, i come to value my health over the pleasurable desire to eat fish. i choose the vihackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 14 tal value of health over the lower pleasurable value. to experience value is to be thrust in situations in which values are given in relation to each other, and the phenomenological evidence of preferring acts indicates the higher values are chosen at the expense of those experienced as lower. some might be dissatisfied with my interpretation that heidegger missed out on the givenness of value. it is not enough to elicit the motivations for why a philosopher has defended a particular conclusion. herein, i have offered the givenness of value as its own evidence and this is why if a moral phenomenology is to take shape, the phenomenology in question cannot adopt a heideggerian frame. instead, a moral phenomenology can only be founded on a phenomenology open to value in the first place, and unlike heidegger, scheler phenomenology accommodates value’s givenness. however, there are some limitations even to scheler’s approach. scheler provided an account of moral phenomenology that disclosed the how-ofgivenness of values. however, in his ethics, he never provided a clear account as to what the content of values are, nor how that content is experienced. instead, we know what value might be operative in a particular valuecomplex or situation and the phenomenological form of moral experience more generally. i feel a calling of the holy and the values correlated to spiritual feeling but there are no specific duties or prescriptions as to how i instantiate that calling in my actions. with its dearth of a prescriptive element, scheler’s moral phenomenology cannot take the form of a particular moral theory that privileges ways to decide what i ought to do, and by “moral theory,” i mean a philosophical method that provides agents with set procedures for moral deliberation, e.g., kant’s categorical imperative or mill’s greatest happiness principle. at best, scheler might endorse some type of virtue ethics in which phronesis is involved in apprehending what values are salient to a particular value-complex, duty or person, but this is a topic for another time.8 in this paper, i have urged two conclusions regarding the differences spelled out between scheler’s intuition of essences and heidegger’s hermeneutic turn. first, i have argued that the experience of value could not help but be given in terms of its presence-athand nature. persons and values, when viewed within time, resemble presence in the heideggerian sense because of the excess of givenness overtakes the phenomenal appearance and that overwhelming giveness of value is given immanently without mediation. heidegger’s insistence that values are ontic follows from heidegger’s incomplete grasp of how values are given in experience. the intransience of value is simply the manner in which it is given in experience. scheler’s silence about the ontology of value in the formalismus is a product of seeking a phenomenological basis for ethics. put simply, when we engage in phenomenological description, we are not to assume anything prior about the phenomenon, but let the phenomenon show itself from itself. from this phenomenological neutrality, scheler cannot settle anything about the question of values ontologically, but unlike heidegger, scheler’s phenomenology can capture the givenness of value. scheler can say how values are experienced in emotional intuition in preferring, loving, and hating, and that there may be lessons to learn from heidegger. heidegger’s efforts to “ontologize” phenomenological inquiry about factical life is a model for how scheler’s efforts may be better developed though my audience must wait for another time to address the heideggerian suggestions for scheler’s metaphysics yet to come. at present, scheler’s approach is more amiable to the givenness of persons and values and for hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 15 this reason. scheler’s approach should be regarded as the better hermeneutic framework whenever such frameworks concern values in lived-experience. iv. application in this last section, i hope some of my efforts have opened up eidetic seeing about values. the earlier sections provide reasons why we ought to favor scheler’s phenomenology of value over and above heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. scheler’s unique vision for a phenomenology of value has intellectual merit. his phenomenology of value accommodates the very experience of values. this unique vision is superior to heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, and the overall ambition of this essay has appealed to the phenomenological evidence of value itself as a way to decide this issue. for nonphenomenologically-inclined thinkers, such a solution may seem rather obtuse. put differently, the interest in hermeneutic approaches to problems of human experience cannot accommodate the experience of values if hermeneutics is restricted to embody heideggerian-inspired approaches. i choose to address heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology since heidegger’s thought has inspired so many. beyond the concerns with “theory,” let me provide an example why this insight is crucial to those interested in hermeneutic method and application to cultural practices. over the last four years, health care accessibility has been the subject of intense debate in the united states. ever since the passage of the affordable care act (aca hereafter), the politics of the united states have been divided between those that think reform need not involve any alteration of how health care is made accessible in the united states via private companies and those that believe in public insurance. until the aca, a person’s ability to access health care service depended very much on whether one’s job provided health care insurance. in the united states, private companies provide insurance benefits attached to one’s employment. for the underemployed, the jobless and those with preexisting conditions, these people cannot acquire insurance easily or not at all, and the only recourse these at risk populations is to access health care services provided by the emergency room in the hospital. federal law prohibits hospitals from turning away anybody, but this option often puts the uninsured in extreme financial debt if the problem is severe, and hospitals will not go out of their way to serve the uninsured. in january 2014, however, the aca will require all americans to purchase insurance and employers of all types will be required now to offer insurance. this requirement is called the “universal mandate.” let us, now, assume that one wanted to interpret this political situation. in light of feelings of the uninsured prior to the affordable care act, a heideggerian frame could pick up on the anxiety felt of those in the situation. the anxious mood and suffering of one’s health might reveal aspects of our finitude, even possibly revealing aspects of our own being-towards-death depending on the severity of one’s health problem. anxiety can individuate the experiencer and even arrest us from our immersed social self to the point where we achieve an authentic existence (eigenlichkeit). yet, anxiety is not love. anxiety only brings to light my possibilities for action as a finite being and, in its deepest revelation about my own possibilities in the call of conscience. i am not called to serve others as much as i am only aware of myself as anxious. my own freedom and the tenuous resolve to face my situation constitute all i am capable of doing. applied to one’s personal health, this deep revelation of anxiety can only inform me as to how i relate to the environing world. for scheler, anxiety is felt in the vital sphere of values. love allows us to ashackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 16 cend past this value sphere and acquire knowledge of values beyond the personal individuated experience anxiety causes within us. heidegger has no order of preferring within his limited conception of hermeneutic phenomenology to acquire knowledge of values beyond the personal individuated experience of anxiety. love allows us to grasp higher values and realize them in the service of the other. reliant upon scheler’s act of preferring, or what we could call value-ception (wertnehmung), persons can glean the values given in our experience of the world whereas heidegger can only pick up on the moodedness of a situation as it pertains to dasein’s concern only, but not the value-correlates attached to those moods. in this way, heideggerian hermeneutics could not do appropriate justice in understanding the moral imperative necessary to engage in a political dialogue about how best to solve the anxiety of having little or no reliable access to health care services. love is the name of those intentional acts where we ascend in scheler’s value rankings to the highest value of the person. in this way, love enables the growth beyond the vital sphere to solving the problem felt in the vital sphere. we can see this insight in kenneth stikkers’s work on scheler. he wrote contemporary western culture, for example, is to be understood as an utilty-value ethos increasingly dominated by economy what scheler describes the “ethos of industrialism” and to grasp this fact is to gain the single most penetrating insight into that culture. (stikkers, 1986, p. 250) in light of this passage, stikkers continued and showed what the idea of economy looks like as we ascend in value. starting from the lowest value at the top and ascending in love, economic concerns look very different at every level. love is the grasping of higher values over lower ones, and the movement in the various value-spheres, as the example of economic concerns below, would be based on love that would eventually culminate in the holy. thus, economics understood through the various value-spheres in scheler’s thought would resemble the following schema. pleasure: hedonistic consumerism utility: as measured, e.g., by money units vital values: as found in the original life communal meaning of “oikonomia” viz., care of the home spiritual values: e.g., when economies primary interest is justice the holy: e.g., when labor is experienced as participation in god’s ongoing creation and as an act of creation. (stikkers, 1986, p. 251) the aca’s universal mandate that everyone buy public insurance is based on love. if healthier people buy into a nation-wide insurance pool, the cost of uninsured people will no longer drive up costs for those that have insurance, and the universal mandate compels obedience so that more people can afford to purchase it. the aca is motivated by providing access to the economically disenfranchised already tending both towards the spiritual value of justice and the holy. contrary to ascension, conservative advocates mostly favor an entirely free market solution. such solutions privilege the management of one’s home and projection of one’s own self-interest against what would be in the interest of others. the fact that the universal mandate compels people by law to purchase a service they might not want or need is interpreted as going against their own selfinterest. in the vital sphere, we can feel the value of anxiousness, but anxiousness, as i criticize heidegger is self-referential. the violation of liberty often spoken about by opponents of the aca is based on a conception hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 17 of liberty-as-self-interested. yet, the entire system prior to the aca viewed the uninsured as people incapable of paying and excludes them economically. to this day, the health care system seeks to profit from treating patients as consumers rather than the individual person. v. conclusion when it comes to value-experience, there are few approaches in philosophy that can thematize experience. phenomenology is one approach to describing lived-experience.9 yet, the lived-experience of value is unique. values have a special mode of givenness, and as such, the phenomenological commitments of scheler and heidegger prevent or enable that mode of givenness to be seen. in this essay, i argued that if we pay attention to the givenness of value itself as an enduring immanent presence, i can determine which approach can accommodate the givenness of value. as a phenomenologist, i want to allow for the phenomenon of value to shine forth on its own merits, and i devoted considerable attention to see how value could manifest in both approaches. in heidegger’s thought, values are either not gleaned at all or only partially. the principal figure in the development of twentieth century hermeneutics is heidegger. heidegger also eclipses the importance of scheler’s phenomenology, and yet only in scheler’s phenomenology is the core of value-experience truly manifest. for those outside of philosophy but still interested in the application of hermeneutic insight into cultural practices are better served by adopting scheler’s phenomenology when addressing the reality of valueexperience. i attempted to show this insight in the example stikkers applied to economics itself. this application allowed for us to see that despite the prominent appeal of heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, scheler’s phenomenology of value allows for a deeper insight into cultural practices. references blosser, p. (1995). scheler’s critique of kant’s ethics. athens, oh: ohio university press. frings, m.s. (1996). max scheler: a concise introduction into a great thinker. milwaukee, wi: marquette university press. gadamer, h.g. (2008). philosophical hermeneutics (d. linge, trans.). berkeley, ca: university of california press. heidegger, m. (1962). being and time (j. macquarrie & e. robinson, trans.). new york, ny: harper & row. hoy, d.c. (1993). heidegger and the hermeneutic turn. in c.b. guignon (ed.), the cambridge companion to heidegger (pp. 170-194). cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. scheler, m. (1973a). formalism in ethics and the non-formal ethics of value: a new attempt toward the foundation of an ethical personalism. evanston, il: northwestern university press. scheler, m. (1973b). phenomenology and the theory of cognition in selected philosophical essays (d. lachtermann, trans.) (pp. 136201). evanston, il: northwestern university press. scheler, m. (1973c). the theory of three facts. selected philosophical essays (d. lachterman, trans.) (pp. 202-287)). evanston, il: northwestern university press. scheler, m. (2008). the nature of sympathy (p. heath, trans.). new brunswick, nj: transaction publishers. hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 18 schneck, s. (1987). person and polis: max scheler’s personalism as political theory. albany, ny: state university of new york press. stikkers, k.w. (1986). ‘ethos,’ its relationship to real and ideal sociological factors in scheler’s philosophy of culture. listening: journal of religion and culture, 21(3), 243252. notes 1 the priority of this type of act is central to the entire sphere of moral experience in scheler. 2 the turning point of this in the most recent literature and attraction to social psychology would probably be gilbert harman’s “moral philosophy meets social psychology: virtue ethics and the fundamental attribution error” in proceedings of the aristotelian society 99 (1998-1999): pp. 315-333. it is fair to say that this probably goes as far back hume. in his treatise of human nature, hume’s attempt at describing the moral sciences attempts to discern limited to normative theory by appeals to hume’s psychology about sympathetic identification. 3 this holds really for any conception of philosophy that apprehends or discovers mindindependent truths. such examples in some moral philosophy disobey this hermeneutic threshold that heidegger sees as constraining all inquiry. r. schafer-landau is the most recent defense of moral intuitionism in his moral realism: a defense (oxford: oxford university press, 2003). similarly, this hermeneutic limit has consequences for any realism about science, art, ethics or wherever such efforts attempt at grasping the structure itself without seeing such efforts as operative in a context already. these conditions also elicit heidegger’s suspicion about metaphysics and why it is that we must call for the de-structuring of metaphysics. 4 it is no surprise that so much time is spent on logos as a gathering together (legein) and letting-be in heidegger’s essay early greek thinking. 5 it is fair to say that beyond a transcendental idealistic phenomenology, husserl’s draw to sedimentation is an influence of heidegger’s hermeneutic turn. 6 this is a point of contention in parvis emad’s brilliantly argued heidegger and the phenomeology of value (torey press: glen ellyn, il, 1984). in that work, emad thinks the difference between heidegger and scheler turns on scheler’s acceptance of traditional concepts of the person that presuppose a temporality of presence. heidegger, emad insists, works out a completely different account of temporality that questions scheler’s acceptance of a traditional metaphysics concealed in his commitment to intentional acts as products of spirit (and likewise the whole of western metaphysics for that matter). “the atemporal nature of spirit is clearly manifest in its sole representative, the act. the nature of act is such that it does not exist in time. to use scheler’s terminology, acts exercise their influence into time without being extended in it…like the tradition criticized by heidegger, scheler is unaware of the subtle, hidden and elusive role of time” (p. 47) while i do not have the space here to revisit the entire presentation of emad’s argument, emad’s book only takes up the heideggerian confidence in that line without asking first what the givenness of value is itself. the alternative explanation for hackett journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 19 scheler’s lack of awareness about time is simple. values are given in such excess that, like persons, they exhibit a type of givenness that cannot be captured in time. the givenness is a vertical dimension, given in height and only partially understood in the horizon of time articulated in hermeneutic phenomenology. 7 on its own laws apprehending objects would be a form of naïve realism or version of either epistemic or moral intuitionism. 8 while i do not have time to review the literature on this point, i am especially attracted to eugene kelly’s recent efforts to marry virtue ethics, scheler, and hartmann. for more information on this view, see his “between scheler and hartmann: some problems of a material value ethics” in ethics and phenomenology. ed. mark sanders and j. jeremy wisnewski (lanham, maryland: lexington books, 2012): p. 3956. those parties interested in scheler may also read his “on the rehabilitation of virtue” trans. eugene kelly (2005) in american catholic philosophical quarterly, 79(1), 21-37. 9 american pragmatism is the other side of philosophy that regards experience as primary. microsoft word mitchell et al corrected proof.docx corresponding author: gail j. mitchell email: gailm@yorku.ca journal of applied hermeneutics june 12, 2013 the author(s) 2013 dementia discourse: from imposed suffering to knowing other-wise gail j. mitchell, sherry l. dupuis, & pia c. kontos abstract the authors revisit the troubling discourse surrounding the diagnosis of dementia. a critique of the predominant words and images in health care literature, public discourse, and policy is considered from multiple angles. the authors link the dominant words and images with a form of inter-relational violence. contrary images grounded in research and experience offer a different view of what it is like to live with a diagnosis of dementia—a view that is life-affirming and based in relationality and possibility. concepts of embodied selfhood and knowing other-wise are portrayed as doorways to transforming a discourse of violence toward a discourse of compassion and ethical relating. keywords dementia discourse, suffering, embodied selfhood, knowing other-wise in our experience, the diagnosis of dementia, especially alzheimer’s disease (ad), in western society continues to initiate a totalizing process involving suffering, discrimination, isolation, and, in many situations a violence of inter-relating. our purpose in this paper are two-fold. first, we will re-visit the troubling relationship between the dominant medical discourse and consequences for persons with dementia, family care partners, and healthcare workers. second, we will build on the notions of relationality (dupuis et al., 2012a; greenwood, loewenthal, & rose, 2002), embodied selfhood (kontos, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2012; kontos and naglie, 2007a, 2007b, 2009) and knowing other-wise (olthuis, 1997) in order to heighten attention to the ethical responsibilities we all have to persons with dementia. to begin, we show how the discourse surrounding dementia is in large part responsible for reproducing the violent and othering (olthuis, 1997, 2000a, 200b) processes that accompany the label of dementia and disclose how this discourse imposes a suffering of personhood that has yet to be deterred. an alternative discourse of possibility and knowing other-wise (olthuis, 1997, 2000a, mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 2 2000b) is presented as a viable option to shift societal and professional assumptions and prejudices. we concur with several other authors (see for e.g., dupuis, wiersma, & loiselle, 2012b; herskovits, 1995; mintz, 1992; sabat, johnson, swarbrick, & keady, 2011) that the dominant discourse of dementia, coupled with the medicalization of aging, reproduces dementia and human suffering through a totalizing disregard for another’s embodied personhood and the relationships that sustain one’s sense of self-with-other. critical scholars, such as behuniak (2011) who tackled the social construction of persons with dementia as the walking dead or zombies, kontos (2004) who challenges the cognitive foundation of personhood, and dupuis et al. (2011, 2012a, 2012c) consistently dialogues with, and learns from, persons diagnosed with dementia and their families, and remind us of the power of words and how words shape actions in society. language matters and, when used in certain ways, can be dangerous and harmful. language shapes the way we see and frame the world. “what is named [is] noticed; what is not named is unlikely to be seen” (davis, sumara, & luce-kapler, 2008, p. 15). thus, language has a profound impact on how we come to understand things, shaping our assumptions and perceptions. these assumptions influence how we act in different situations and how we are with others (davis et al., 2008; mintz, 1992). the language surrounding dementia has serious implications for how we see and engage with persons diagnosed with some form of dementia, especially azheimer’s disease (dupuis et al., 2011, 2012b; jonas-simpson et al., 2012; mitchell et al., 2011; mitchell, dupuis, & jonas-simpson, 2011; naue & kroll, 2008; sabat et al., 2011). one of the most serious issues relates to how personhood of those diagnosed with dementia is represented. in this paper, we bring forth images and representations from the health and lay literature about what it is like to live with dementia. we review what some outsiders think it is like to live with dementia and consider the dominant discourse that surrounds the dementia diagnosis. serious attempts to counter the dominant discourse are considered as are the experiences of stigma from persons living with dementia. our personal insights and understandings as informed by experience and complexity science are considered before introducing the idea of knowing other-wise and the call for new discourses based in hope and possibility. dementia and personhood what are the images of personhood for those diagnosed with dementia? popular literature and social media portray frightening images of ad. in 2004, a published book titled, death in slow motion: a memoir of a daughter, her mother, and the beast called alzheimer's (cooney) captures the gruesome portrayal of a medical diagnosis. the canadian newspaper, the globe and mail, ran a story called doomed from birth to death (a. mcilroy, may 7, 2007) about a woman born with down’s syndrome, who later developed ad. other titles, such as the living dead: alzheimer’s in america (lushin, 1990) and that cranky old cat may have alzheimer’s (fujita, 2012) layer on the fearful and negative messages about dementia. these images, coupled as they usually are with the tragedy discourse of being doomed, gutted, ravaged, taken over by a beast, and turned into the living dead, perpetuate a deep and pernicious fear of, and disregard for, persons with dementia. legal and medical scholars have contributed to questioning the personhood of those diagnosed with dementia. ponder the mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 3 views of medical philosopher brock (1988) from his consideration of justice and dementia. i believe that the severely demented, while of course remaining members of the human species, approach more closely the conditions of animals than normal adult humans in their psychological capacities. in some respects the severely demented are even worse off than animals such as dogs and horses who have a capacity for integrated and goal directed behavior that the severely demented substantially lack. the dementia that destroys memory…destroys a sense of personal identity across time and hence they lack personhood. (p. 87) twenty years later, an ethicist and advisor to the british government suggested that persons with dementia may have a moral duty to die, especially if they are wasting human and fiscal resources (malpas, 2009). debates continue over issues of personhood, human rights, and the meaning and awareness of self. the assumed loss of self with cognitive impairment can be traced to the 17thcentury rise of the “modern self” where the self and brain became consubstantial, or identical in substance (kontos, 2004; kontos & naglie, 2009). this ideology laid the foundation for the modern view of person as autonomous, rational, and cognitively determined. the equality of brain and self(hood) underpins the predominant biomedical approach of attributing personhood to a body part, the brain, and human actions to be diseasebased behaviours (dupuis et al., 2012b). we deeply appreciate the valued work of health professionals, but the practice of dividing humans and reducing human expressions and experiences to bodily functions and behaviours spread through multiple health care disciplines in their languages, activities, and practice protocols. this spreading, a kind of colonization, also seeps into policies and government regulations in the languages and prescriptive codes used to assess quality and compliance. finally, the seepage penetrates societal and marketing realms in its relentless domination, one that objectifies and problematizes lived experiences such as aging (estes & binney, 1989; kaufman, shim, & russ, 2004) and grieving, to name just two. kemmis and mctaggart (1988) described the interdependent relationships between language/discourse, activities/practice, and social relationships/organisation in the process of institutionalization. the language we use, over time, gradually becomes institutionalized into accepted patterns of discourse, which shape our activities and practices (i.e., how we act) and our social relationships and organization (e.g., how we relate). these interdependent processes are reflected in figure 1. the intermingling and interpenetration of values, words, and actions are undeniable. as olthuis (1997) noted, “knowledges cannot be and never were neutral, dispassionate, disinterested” (p. 2). there is an overabundance of compelling examples about how medical colonization and its discourse has infiltrated human mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 4 life and impacted human lives, especially for persons living with dementia (dupuis et al., 2012b; herskovits, 1995; sabat & harré, 1994; sabat et al., 2011). health professionals contribute to human health and wellbeing in many ways, but the consequences of biomedical colonization perpetuate dehumanized healthcare for persons with dementia evidenced by such practices as infantilization, intimidation, stigmatization, and objectification (herskovits, 1995; kitwood, 1997; mitchell, dupuis, & jonassimpson, 2011; sabat et al., 2011). policy documents and public health forecasters fuel this fear by conjuring up images of the epidemic taking over, the tsunami heading our way, the rising tide of dementia. in marketing with techniques that highlight the most debilitating, demeaning, and despairing fears of alzheimer’s disease and related dementias – the tragedy of it is emphasized and fear is commanded before compassion or even empathy. healthcare journals and texts represent persons diagnosed with dementia as dements, victims, diseased, disoriented, departing, devoid, irrational, disruptive, and uncontrolled. consider these titles: “dementia and the phenomenon of social death” (sweeting & gilhooly, 1997) and “beyond appearances: caring in the land of the living dead” (dunkle, 1995). even authors advocating for revolutionary change in dementia care practices and policies, do not step away from the medical discourse. consider the following description from authors advocating for social justice in dementia care (dilworthanderson, pierre, & hilliard, 2012). alzheimer’s disease is a progressive brain disease that destroys brain cells, causing problems with memory, thinking, and behavior, which affects the ability to work, socialize, and care for oneself. as the disease progresses, alzheimer’s patients increasingly need assistance with basic activities of daily living (adls), such as eating and dressing as well as functions that enable them to live independently, including shopping and managing money (i.e., instrumental activities of daily living [iadls]). in the final stages of the disease, patients require 24hour care. (p. 28) although these authors make an impassioned case for social justice in care and service for persons with dementia, and even though they address stigma and stereotype as forms of social injustice, they do not critique the medical discourse that strongly contributes to the stigma and stereotype of dementia. once diagnosed with dementia, persons and their feelings, actions, and expressions become symptoms within a problematized field of possibility. if persons with dementia express feeling healthy and well, they are judged as being in denial. if they are having trouble remembering details but fill in the gaps to save face, they are said to be confabulating. if they get angry with the way in which health workers are providing care, then they are labeled as aggressive and may end up being restrained and isolated. other scholars have also noted this totalizing process of labeling and problematizing that engulfs a person’s entire life and relationships with others (see for example, dupuis et al., 2011, 2012b, herskovits, 1995; jonassimpson et al., 2012; sabat et al., 2011; whitehouse, 2008). fazio and his colleagues (1999) describe the process of dehumanization in dementia that starts with predominant discourses and labeling and ends with the complete objectification that regards persons as no more than stages of disease and deficit. this dehumanizing process creates suffering by devaluing persons and rupturing relations with the social world; it is a process that mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 5 damages one’s sense of self, leading ultimately to the loss of selfhood that is so widely thought to be caused by neuropathology. alarmingly, the medical colonization has seeped into the social and personal fabrics of contemporary society. the messages are clear and the impact profound. if we all live long enough, the odds are that we too will be diagnosed with dementia. there are strong advocates for diagnosing predementia so that drugs can be started early but this raises ethical concerns and complexities (see leuzy & gauthier, 2012). would we not all have pre-dementia? medications too can be a form of violence—to both the physical body and one’s selfhood and relationships. moynihan and cassels (2008) claim that the drug companies are selling sickness and making a fortune doing it. and, their predominant marketing tool is fear— fear that we too will get dementia, or depression, or some other dysfunction and become like them (herskovits, 1995). but are we not already like them? “do we not all have memory loss?” (basting, 2009). basting helps us see that forgetting is an aspect of being human. we all forget but it is only pathologized with a diagnosis of dementia. if we are the ones contributing to the social construction of alzheimer’s disease, is this not irrational and degrading to humanity? in our experiences, many family care partners also express the othering discourse about their parents or partners. families have expressed to us that they do not believe there is anything left of their loved one no feelings, no relationship, just a desire to get them in a home (see for example, dupuis et al., 2011). this is consistent with a study of more than 100 caregivers for family members in australia. authors reported that less than 50 percent of participants believed life with dementia was worth living and many considered the person socially dead and thought about or wished for the person’s physical death (sweeting & gilhooly, 1997). and the medical colonization of old age and dementia is seen in the everydayness of life for many older persons residing in long term care homes, in our protocols and standards, our assessments, and policies. wiersma and dupuis, as an example, described five socialization processes of mechanical and regulatory procedures -placing the body, defining the body, focusing on the body, managing the body, and relating to the body – used in long-term care homes to create “institutionalized bodies” or what foucault (1977) termed “docile bodies”. colonization is also seen in these settings in the overuse of medication, the use of geri-chairs, side rails and other physical restraints, in the violence of policies and surveillance that leave many direct care providers with moral residue (webster & baylis, 2000), fear, and guilt of knowing that health care should look a lot different than what is being delivered in canada (kontos, miller, mitchell, & cott, 2011; mcgilton, sidani, boscart, guruge, & brown, 2012). long-term care policies do not help. as an example, the ontario long term care act (2007, 2011) is a lengthy document with hundreds of rules and expectations. many relate to the facility, food preparation, plans of care, assessments, and so on. neither the importance of personhood nor the idea of quality relationships are addressed in the act, except for definitions of abuse that attempt to protect residents. however, even then, and we quote: “physical abuse does not include the use of force that is appropriate to the provision of care or assisting a resident with activities of daily living, unless the force used is excessive in the circumstances” (p. 1). it is extremely troubling to realize that the imposed suffering for persons with dementia in our health care system that is mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 6 unnecessary, unethical, and cruel is not addressed. the act focuses on task completion, regulation, compliance, assessment, logarithms, evidence, and enforcement. this reality coupled with narrative accounts from those who provide direct care (see for example, deforge, van wyk, hall, & salmoni, 2011; kontos, et al., 2011) paint a dark, and indeed alarming picture of how far we are from providing compassionate and loving care based in quality relationships. and other authors have raised similar concerns about the absence of relationships in our evidence-based world of healthcare (mitchell, in press; slife & wiggins, 2009). it is our contention that we must shift this violent approach to the care of persons, and especially those with dementia. we must rebel against the suffering we are inflicting on others and the suffering it creates in our own lives (malpas, 2012). other countries, such as denmark, have a totally different approach to dementia care that is far more humanistic and relational. a recent cbc production with leaders in dementia care in a denmark facility reported that instances of problem outbursts were very rare and when they occurred, were considered a failure of relationship, not a disease process (wells, 2012). we would be remiss to not address the complex realities and losses that do accompany the diagnoses of dementia for individual persons and those closest to them. there are deep losses of familiar patterns, routines, ways of relating, and shared remembrances. families often describe feeling trapped and fearful of the realities they see unfolding realities that can increase isolation, loss of friendships, stress, and moments of sheer frustration. but, there is also the reality that the person with dementia is still an embodied being who expresses selfhood and desires, suffering and joy. our concern is that the losses experienced are far more profound when experienced within a totalizing culture that stigmatizes aging and dementia through the tragedy discourse and leads to dehumanizing practices such as objectification, exclusion, silencing and so forth. what would it mean to persons and families experiencing these realities and losses if their communities embraced difference and supported personhood and inclusion? for those of us who are involved in the care of persons with dementia, we have opportunities and obligations to try to make things more humane and compassionate, to work towards the creation of communities in which “all kinds of methods create all kinds of situations in which each of us finds relationships where our gifts are recognized and magnified” (mcknight, 2005, p. 117). countering the dominant view: calls for dignity and relationality some scholars have endeavoured “to restore dignity and resuscitate the humanity of individuals diagnosed with alzheimer’s” (herskovits, 1995, p. 154) by focusing on the subjective experience of dementia, the nature of personhood and the self, and the socio-cultural context of disease definition, rather than on neuro-psychological deficits (see for example, dupuis et al., 2011, 2012a, 2012c; jonas-simpson & mitchell, 2005; kitwood, 1995, 1997; kontos, 2005, 2012; naue & kroll, 2008; sabat et al., 2011; sabat & harré, 1994). the importance of tom kitwood’s (1995, 1997) work cannot be overestimated in terms of the pioneering work he did in the area of personhood and dementia. kitwood began with the assumption that the loss of self commonly associated with dementia was due more to a failure of understanding and care than to a structural failure of the brain. focusing on the social environment of care, kitwood described a host of ways in which persons with demenmitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 7 tia are depersonalized, invalidated, and treated as dysfunctional. our individual and collective efforts have focused on a re-visioning of the self in alzheimer’s disease and we strongly challenge the assumption that the loss of self is a direct consequence of a degenerative process in nervous tissue. like others (see for example, herskovits, 1995; kitwood, 1995, 1997; sabat et al., 2011), we purport that the debasement of personhood is more likely affiliated with the ways persons relate with those diagnosed with dementia. there is little agreement on what the diagnosis of dementia means beyond the neuropathology and there is remarkable diversity in how neuropathology is manifested in individual lives and patterns of living (herskovits, 1995; whitehouse, 2012). further, neurologists now indicate that even persons who have the brain pathology, may not develop the symptoms of dementia (black, 2013). in our re-visioning efforts, we have argued for an expansion of the discourse on selfhood in dementia to include embodied selfexpression (kontos, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2012; kontos & naglie, 2007a, 2007b, 2009), authentic partnerships, (dupuis et al., 2012a), and a focus on the human being and his or her lived experiences and quality of life (jonas-simpson & mitchell, 2005; mitchell, dupuis, & jonas-simpson, 2011). based on empirical research with persons with moderate-severe cognitive impairment, kontos (2004, 2005, 2006, 2012) and kontos and naglie (2007a, 2007b, 2009) illustrate how the engagement of selfhood with the world consists primarily in their essential corporeality of being-in-theworld. the expressiveness of persons with dementia discloses a cultural particularity that is shaped by socialization, but the expressiveness is always embedded in situational unities that call forth bodily movement and gestures. these situational and embodied expressions of self persist despite even severe cognitive impairment. in other words, many life patterns and ways of relating continue to be expressed in the presence of dementia because fundamental aspects of selfhood are embodied and not defined by cognitive function. kontos illustrated how persons with severe dementia continue to express themselves in significant ways through their bodies as demonstrated in social etiquette, affection, friendship overtures, concern for appearance, engagement in religious and artistic practices, expression of physical needs and discomforts, aversion to particular foods, and dispositions that convey one’s prior vocation (kontos, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2012; kontos, miller, & mitchell, 2010; kontos & naglie, 2007a, 2007b, 2009). the importance of the body for these expressions is powerfully illustrated in the following example: a male resident with severe cognitive impairment living on an alzheimer support unit who had lost the ability to talk and feed himself would hit other residents on the head before taking his seat at the table (kontos & naglie, 2007). once a connection was made between the fact that he would always remove his hat before entering the dining room, and that the residents at his table whom he would hit were wearing a hat, it became clear that his ‘aggressive behaviour’ was related to his prior longstanding respect for the etiquette of removing one’s hat before dining. despite severe cognitive impairment, he still retained the ability to express himself through nonverbal behaviour. another example highlights the intersections between social class and gender, showing the ways in which embodied selfhood in dementia continues to express class habitus through habitual manners and gestures, including ones in relation to dress. consider mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 8 the following observation from an alzheimer support unit in a long-term care facility. string of pearls molly’s wheelchair looked enormous next to her thin and shriveled body. her legs had severely atrophied leaving a seemingly two-dimensional form. were she able to stand, she’d be no more than five feet tall. her face was heavily wrinkled but her skin soft, resembling a peach. her hair was uniformly white which accentuated her china-blue eyes. the back of her hands was the most vivid testament to the near century she had lived. the skin was thin revealing a network of bones and purple veins. her hands shook as if powered by an invisible gentle motor. despite her withered appearance there was an indescribable elegance to her. i noticed this in watching molly as she was brought to the dining room. once her wheelchair was positioned at the table a bib was fastened around her neck. molly then carefully unfolded her napkin and placed it on her lap. even though the use of the bib made the need for a napkin redundant, she nonetheless insisted in observing this table etiquette. as a health care aide was feeding her, cereal dribbled from molly’s mouth and coursed down her chin. when the health care aide tried to give her another spoonful molly wrinkled her forehead and gently pushed the woman’s hand away. molly then lifted her bib to her mouth to wipe the cereal. it was only after her chin was clean that she accepted another spoonful. one might expect indifference from a woman who has lost the ability to feed herself and yet molly’s insistence to adhere to a sense of social grace and her attention to neatness, suggested a strong and continuing presence. she closed her eyes slowly and opened them again releasing a deep sigh. she then looked around the table as if for the first time noticing that there were others seated with her. she patiently waited to make eye contact with each of them to acknowledge their presence. then reaching her wavering hand to the back of her neck, she struggled to pull something from underneath her bib. extending her arm appeared to cause her pain and discomfort and yet she persisted. molly eventually revealed a string of pearls she was wearing that had been covered by her bib. she allowed the pearls to pass through her long slender perfectly manicured fingers placing them ever so delicately atop her bib. with this simple gesture, molly emerged from her world of decrepitude, incontinence, dementia and helplessness. (kontos, 2006, pp. 197198) relating with persons with dementia requires recognition and support of the existential expressiveness of the body in its relation to the world, and our unique and shared socio-cultural ways of being-in-the-world (kontos, 2004). it is our experience, in bearing witness to persons with dementia, that a significant amount of suffering is linked with the way the tragic and the horror-filled words and images, that are common place in social and medical literature, get imposed on individuals living with dementia. we reflect our fears on persons and that fear disrupts relationships and opportunities for learning and knowing other-wise. in our work with families living with dementia (dupuis et al., 2012a), one person with dementia described her experience in the following way: mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 9 the person that has the disease are sometimes treated like they’re not here anymore….i think that’s very bad because we definitely are still here. and we might not have all our capabilities up there as we used to have…., we might not have great days all the time but sometimes we do, and i think that should be encouraged and try and make people more aware of what goes on with people with alzheimer’s instead of just saying oh they’ve got alzheimer’s, so i guess they’re not with the program anymore…., a lot of people i know will just walk by me or go the other direction if they see me now because they think i’m not the same person, which i’m not but i’m still here and i can still talk you know. (pp. 428-429). another stated: “many think it is the disease that causes us to withdraw, and to some extent i believe this is true. but, for many of us, we withdraw because we are not provided with meaningful opportunities that allow us to continue to experience joy, purpose, and engagement in life” (dupuis et al., 2012c, p. 240). persons living with dementia tell us about this suffering in their pleas for inclusion, respect, and love: i want others to know and treat us as if we are whole people. we are not half full or half empty. we will never, ever be a shell of ourselves. later in the disease you may knock on my door and i may not answer, but that doesn't mean i'm not home. i am still richard. i am still wholly and fully a human being. i have a right to privacy, dignity, respect, and i am still able i believe perhaps in ways that you cannot appreciate because you don't have dementia. i am still able to appreciate myself, to love, and need to feel love, i am in short no different than you except i have dementia probably of the alzheimer's type. my world is full and complete, it fills my mind, it fills my days, and it's only the professionals and caregivers who remind me of parts of my old world that i cannot access, or i'm confused about. (taylor, 2009, p. 47) malpas (2012) provokes us to think more deeply about suffering and to consider that suffering is “a form of distress that is directly related to one’s sense of personhood” (p.11). our sense of wholeness and of hope is linked with how we and others view and judge our personhood. further, he reminds us that we are all interwoven tapestries that have formed over time and that continue to form through the relationships in now moments. our embodied selfhood is an expression of our relationality with others, with our memories, our hopes, and in the places we find ourselves. malpas says that places are not “containers but openings of actions and movement” (2012, p. 12) places are where compassion dwells where relationships dwell. deeper understandings of living with dementia we have many years of work, practice and research, with persons who live with dementia and their families. over this time, we have learned some things that are not commonly known or acknowledged. first, we have seen that dementia is a very dynamic and fluid phenomenon that is not, as portrayed in the medical and societal discourses, a progressive, irreversible decline of one’s humanity. in our experience, persons with dementia frequently fluctuate moment to moment, day to day, and week to week-among multiple realities interspersed with moments, sometimes shocking moments of mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 10 clarity in the present now. even in the latest stages of dementia, persons have moments or times of clarity that cannot be explained by medical science. secondly, while our work has taught us that persons living with dementia do suffer with all the losses and restrictions that typically accompany the diagnosis of dementia, there are also continuing relationships and love, persisting patterns of one’s values and activities, and moments of humor, joy, and peace. further, there is also new learning and emergent possibilities that happen when living with dementia. the dominant discourse has done a thorough job of portraying the loss and decline, the bitter and the tragic. and, they have relatively ignored the continuity, love, and growth that also exists in life with a diagnosis of dementia. some people and groups have advantage with the dominant discourse as noted previously, political and financial benefits can accompany the tragic portrayals. the third thing we have learned is that people with dementia often live in a world without the boundaries of time, place, and sometimes person. the boundaries that we construct and rely on to separate things like time, place, and person shift with dementia, the boundaries and barriers become more fluid, and less defined such that the person before you, is all at once, in the instant of the now moment; the person before you is a unity of everyone they have been over a life span. past, present and future are experienced together. a woman recalled from one of our practices showed this great expanse of being as she spoke about being a child waiting to sit in her dad’s dentist chair, a mother with growing children, an aging and loving widow, and an old women waiting to be called home. she moved effortlessly in her speech from one scene to the next with no boundaries or limitations of who she was. she was all she had been and all she was becoming there in one instant of being and expanding. this phenomenon of disappearing borders and boundaries may actually herald a different and more transformative process of human aging. there is at least one theory, gerotranscendence (tornstam, 1996, 2005; tornstam & tornqvist, 2000), that suggests some qualities of aging as described by older people in sweden, sound something like the disappearing boundaries with dementia. older persons in sweden also describe a greater connection with the cosmos; connecting and reconnecting with loved ones and memories; and redefinitions of time, space, life, and death. the point we are trying to make is that the process of aging and death is not yet understood; beyond physical changes aging is still a mystery. there is the possibility that the disappearing boundaries of time, place, person currently designated as symptoms of brain disease and dementia, may in fact be markers of a natural transformation that occurs with aging. another theoretical frame offers important insights about the complexity and relationality of human being and the universe. complexity science and relationality complexity science with its core idea of relationality is changing how we think about and relate with persons with dementia. we offer a sketch of how complexity science is helping us to understand dementia and then we turn to several philosophers who have advanced the relational nature of selfhood and the opportunities that many health providers are not yet realizing. we will then explore more fully the notion of the relational self and dementia. complexity science is a conceptual frame that is informing research and practice mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 11 in multiple disciplines, including education, healthcare, physics, and biology (uhl-bien, marian, & mckelvey, 2007; westley, zimmerman, & patton, 2006). there are many sources of complexity thinking that expand understanding of relationality, and possibility in healthcare and education in particular (see for example, davis & sumara, 2012; davis, sumara, & luce-kapler, 2008; doll, 2012; doll, fleener, truit, & st. julien, 2008; mason, 2008; ricca, 2012). “the central ideas of complexity science are that human beings and the universe we inhabit are living systems, complex adaptive systems where mutual process, non-linear change, networked connections, and transformations continually bring forth new realities and new possibilities” (mitchell, jonas-simpson, & cross, 2012). concepts informed by complexity include: emergent growth, mutuality, relationality, non-linearity, and unpredictability (ricca, 2012). complexity science helps us see that there are multiple nested realities emergent over time that co-exist and co-influence through relationships. in figure 2 we offer an image of how nested realities might be conceptualized for persons living with dementia. as portrayed in this figure, a person experiences dementia within a particular family, community, culture, and history. people have relationships with particular memories and dreams, with favourite foods and people, with preferred routines, habits, and life patterns, with familiar and often comforting music and images. the opportunities to engage with persons with dementia have yet to be fully articulated and mobilized into practice arenas. indeed, instead of attending to ways of relating with persons with dementia, in order to preserve and extend their relational selves, regulatory bodies and clinical assessments and protocols are compressing all forms of relating and reducing life in long term care homes to tasks and duties, “bed and body work” (gubrium, 1975), creating “institutional bodies” (wiersma & dupuis, 2010). indeed, recent literature suggests that some direct care providers who care for persons with dementia in long term care are either afraid to care for residents, fearful of doing what people want them to do (deforge et al., 2011) or workers break the rules to do what residents want and live with the fear of being caught and punished (kontos et al., 2010). mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 12 figure 2. dementia & other-wise: an emergent opportunity for wisdom and ethical relating dementia and the relational self we believe that the consequences of the rampant medicalization of later life is a form of violence. the violence is expressed and lived out through image, language, and action in all aspects of our contemporary world. we refer again to figure 2 as a way to think about and see this cone of violence that dominates dementia care in the west, and to also show that there are other alternatives to consider and create. we can attend to relationships in all their complexity and mystery with persons who live with dementia. the question before us is how to move the predominant cone of violence portrayed in the diagram toward the opposing realm of compassion and knowing other-wise? olthuis (1997) proposed that being other-wise is a commitment to being-with and ethics is the responsibility we bear to love another. the question of whether one needs to love to practice knowing other-wise is perhaps debatable. at the very least a core of deep compassion for other human beings is foundational. knowing other-wise is an opportunity to see difference as potential wisdom instead of something to be changed or fixed. if we truly believed that difference is a space of potential growth, an opportunity for engagement and expansion of our own understanding, then how might we approach others? for olthuis (1997), we would approach with a humble curiosity, an open and non-judgmental invitation for the other to reveal who they are in the moment of their own unfolding. one can imagine that such an approach with persons diagnosed with dementia would stand in sharp contrast with contemporary practice protocols and policies. post (2000) conquers: “rather than allowing declining mental capacities to divide humanity into those who are worthy or unworthy of full moral attention, it is better to develop an ethics based on the essential unity of human mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 13 beings and on an assertion of equality despite unlikeness of mind” (p. 5). we wish to build on the ideas of knowing other-wise proposed by olthuis (1997, 2000a, 2000b) and hart (1997), by suggesting that embodied selfhood provides a foundation for an ethics of mutuality. embodied selfhood extends olthuis’ sensory knowing through the articulation of a synthesis of bodily and social being. we are embodied, complex beings who co-evolve with others in the universe. bringing persons with dementia into this space of embodied coevolution deepens and enriches the moral imagination and thereby enables possibility for relationality and compassionate care. although not yet acknowledged as fully participating partners in olthuis’ (1997, 200b) symmetry of mutuality, if difference is the space of emergent wisdom, then persons with dementia create even more potential space and opportunity for developing wisdom and for knowing other-wise. a commitment to knowing other-wise, of embracing dementia as a place of difference and space for learning can provide one pathway toward a more compassionate, wise, and ethical world. the places we live and the relationships that form there either contribute to and respect our personhood, or they deny our personhood and inflict suffering of the deepest kind. and one further point, for staff who work in long term care and who witness the suffering imposed by a culture of care that objectifies and denies the selfhood of others, staff too become depersonalized and distanced in their work. work that should be about nurturing embodied selfhood and relationships, becomes work about bodies and tasks (gubrium, 1975; wiersma & dupuis, 2010). calls for re-thinking complexity and other-wise there are gifted scholars and geriatric specialists who are now questioning the boundaries between normal aging and this process that medicine has labeled a disease. peter whitehouse (2008) is one such scholar and he has published a controversial book called the myth of alzheimer’s disease. some cultures view dementia as a natural part of the life journey (ikels, 1998). the call for action is certainly to ease the pain and unnecessary suffering for persons diagnosed with dementia, or any mental illness for that matter. as a society we need to be more open, more compassionate, more curious about the differences that surround us when persons age or experience different realities. instead of violating others, we could be learning, and growing, and loving others in far more ethical and compassionate ways. transformation of how we care for those living with dementia is needed and must begin with interrogating and changing the language and discourse surrounding dementia. because of the harm and suffering evoked by the current powerful fatalistic and destructive discourses, fazio and his colleagues (1999) emphasised the need for positive alternatives to describe the experience of dementia. they emphasized: “as words change, so do perceptions, and as perceptions change, so do actions” (p. 5). alternative discourses challenge what is known and provide new possibilities for being and relating. as kemmis and mctaggart (1988) noted “to change the culture of our groups (let alone whole institutions or society more broadly), we must change ourselves, with others, through changing the substance, forms and patterns of language, activities and social relationships which characterize groups and interactions among their members” (p. 17). mitchell et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 14 cathie borrie (2010a, 2010b), an advocate for both people with alzheimer’s and their care partners, herself cared for her mother with alzheimer’s disease for many years and wrote about how she came to reframe dementia for herself (see borrie, 2010a). she became intrigued with her conversations with her mother and began to tape record their interactions. although in the beginning she saw her mother’s speech as garbled talk, nonsense, she began to see the poetry in her mother’s words. in reframing how she saw her mother’s words, she learned to be truly present with her mother rather than correcting and judging. in thinking differently about her interactions with her mother she learned to listen attentively rather than dismiss. she learned that all actions are imbued with meaning and are a means of communicating. her mother’s words became an unexpected gift and cathie has recently published her mother’s words so that others can see the poetic and celebrate the eccentric realities of dementia (see borrie, 2010b). i felt free, free and undivided, free as a bird! that i done, free and undivided, i feel refreshed. free to flap my arms like a bird. go where i want to go. do what i want to do. we close with an appeal for a more critical stance toward our practices and discourses. the predominant discourse surrounding dementia is entrenching those diagnosed in a cone of violence and fear. we need a more critical examination of our policies and standards and to rebel against those that diminish personhood for others and ourselves. we all need to promote a more curious and open frame of thinking about aging and life with dementia. recent developments in understanding complexity concepts, relationality, and embodied selfhood can inform different ways of thinking, feeling, and acting with persons with dementia. finally, we need to create language that inspires and enables respect, love, creativity, and compassionate relating. we need to fill in the spaces of knowing other-wise with what we come to know when embracing difference with persons with dementia. biographies gail j. mitchell, rn, phd. professor, school of nursing; director/chair york-uhn nursing academy. york university. sherry l. dupuis, phd. director, murray alzheimer research and education program; professor, department of recreation and leisure studies, faculty of applied health sciences, university of waterloo pia c. kontos. phd. research scientist, toronto rehabilitation institute, university health network. associate professor, dalla lana school of public health, university of toronto. references basting, a.d. 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(2010). becoming institutional bodies: socialisation into a long-term care home. journal of aging studies, 25(1), 278-291. microsoft word williamson part 1.docx corresponding author: w. john williamson, phd email: john.williamson@cssd.ab.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 11, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery part one: a strange and earnest client w. john williamson abstract max hunter, a west coast private detective, receives a call from john williamson, a special education teacher / coordinator requesting his help to find the educational category of slow learners. he journeys to calgary and visits williamson in his school. after some discussion max agrees to take the case. max meets an informant with a surprising connection to the case, and finds some key clues, as well as peril, during a visit to the public library. keywords fiction, hermeneutics, mystery, slow learners, psychology, education for jacob i it was a messy case. they can all get messy, but this one got under my skin. i never should have agreed to it that day i got the call. maybe i hadn’t had enough java that day and my sense of danger was still in glorious repose. i was, to be sure, already tired as i squeaked open the door of my office; already tired as i slouched into my desk. i hadn’t had any business in a week, but i was still luxuriating in the rewards from that last case: a bruised jaw, a torn rotator cuff, a fractured love life, and a slight dimming of my already flickering pilot light of hope. i’d been paid out alright in everything but fees, and even as i pondered the toll the last case had taken on me, i knew i would need a paying job soon. the rent for the office was due and the dust bunnies in my care needed to be provided for in the style they’d grown accustomed to. i was torn between brewing a pot of java or treating myself to a drink from the office bottle in the bottom drawer of my desk. i just sat there, staring at the wall, waiting to see which impulse prevailed. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 2 i was watching some ants skittering up the wall like they were racing toward some kind of bounty. it might have been a speck of sugar from that day the week before when i threw my mug of java against it. the one to bring it back to the queen would win a knighthood. above them a spider cruised along her web. they were racing toward her too; they were just too busy to notice. i didn’t have the heart to tell them. the unfolding drama was interrupted by the ringing of my phone. i picked up and was about to announce myself when the voice on the other end beat me to it. “is this mr. max hunter?” i’d considered asking if he was a tax collector or jealous husband but he sounded worried and i didn’t think a crack like that was necessarily appropriate. i answered to the affirmative. “it’s john williamson. i am calling from calgary, alberta, canada. i’m a teacher. i teach special education. actually, i sort of coordinate special education at my school. some of my students, the slow learners, they’ve all disappeared, and it’s not just here, it’s all across the province.” “so call the police. i’ve heard the mounties always get their man.” “i can’t, they don’t handle cases where metaphysics are involved.” i had no idea what he was talking about, but he sounded firm on the point. i switched gears. “why me?” “i was told you were hard-boiled.” he’d done some research. this impressed me, slightly. “can you afford me?” “your usual rates are kind of steep for my department budget, but i need a professional on this case, and i have some money left. you’d have to save every receipt for expenses, and, i’m sorry to say this, pay for your own drinks.” “i’m willing to meet to hear more, but no promises.” at least it would get me out of the office, and away from that bottom drawer. “thank you, mr. hunter. that’s all i ask. i’ll meet you at my school next tuesday, during the first morning tutorial at 7:56 a.m., and make sure you park in visitor, not teacher parking, and make sure to sign the book with your license plate number, make and model of car, and the staff member you are visiting and time of arrival and be sure to collect a visitor badge.” “can someone frisk me too?” i asked, mocking the formality of the proposed liaison, candidly relieved by the prospect of employment despite my insouciant reply. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 3 so the buick and i made our way to calgary. as a west coast hard-boiled detective, i hail from the state of frontier depravity and i can handle the elements.1 still, it was warmer where i came from, and maybe everywhere else too, than it was at this frozen city my potential client had summoned me to. in anticipation of this trip, i’d found the removable extra layer of insulation my trench coat came with and zipped it in, but it wasn’t enough. from the first time i stepped out of the buick, the cold assaulted me with the dull brutality of an overzealous cop beating a suspect with the los angeles yellow pages. dive hotels, on the other hand, are the same everywhere; they smell funny but the hosts don’t ask a lot of questions. after checking in, i let myself into my room with some difficulty. i had been given one of those computerized card keys. i swiped it three times, failing every try. i was just about to kick down the door when i realized i had it upside down, corrected the problem and the door popped open. when i saw the room i wondered why they had bothered with the fancy lock. everything in it, including its present occupant, was cheap, run down, and worthy of neither stealing nor protecting. i sat on the slab they’d made out to be a bed, poured myself a double from the bottle in my suitcase and thought about the case. he’d said they’d all disappeared. “disappeared, like a fist when you open your hand,” i thought.2 i wondered where they’d gone. was foul play involved? after a restless night, the morning imposed itself on me cruelly. during the night i’d dreamt i was at the dinner table, a shrill voice was telling me, “don’t let your meat touch your potatoes; don’t let your potatoes touch your peas …” over and over again. i looked down, fork in hand, and tried to follow the instructions, and make sure my portions were orderly. my plate was filled with hundreds of tiny children dressed in white, brown, and green skittering across the plate with the unsettling speed of fleeing mice. just as i was beginning to recover from this dream and slip into a more peaceful sleep, the four-dollar travel alarm i had brought along woke up and began pecking at my brain. reluctantly rising, i used excessive force to disengage the alarm and i brewed the complimentary two-cup java bag i found in the heavily calcified machine on the other side of the bed. i choked down the rancid results, quickly showered and shaved, and headed off to my appointment. ii it was an older school but reasonably well maintained. graduation pictures hung on the hallway walls. looking at forty years of cohorts, i noted that some hairstyles get reincarnated every twenty years while some run their course and are heard from no more. the hallways were wide. i later learned this was to enable the movement of large pieces of industrial equipment and such things and this feature was typical of all schools built at the time due to extra federal sugar for the industrial arts.3 indeed, the school had several large industrial arts laboratories and i wondered if i might be able to get a cheap haircut and maybe an oil change for the buick, which were two bits of professional maintenance i had been putting off before i left. it seemed weird to see so many students milling about chattering, eating, jostling, talking or texting on their smart 1 hamilton (1987, p. 5) 2 see hammet (1930, p. 61). the simile is borrowed from this source. 3 norman (1984, p. 45) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 4 phones, and to hear a band playing down the hall, while a basketball team practised in the gym at a time of day when i might be barely out of bed, wondering over java if i should bother to shave or not. still, maybe this was typical. williamson met me at the office. i gave my prospective client the once over. he was of average height and build, dressed in beige corduroy pants slightly frayed at the bottom, and brown boat shoes and a blue sweater. if he was meeting the requirements of some kind of a dress code with that outfit it was one i couldn’t comprehend. he smiled as he shook my hand in greeting; it was a sad smile. clumsily, he only connected with a third of my hand so while his grip had adequate pressure it was more like a thumb shake. his eyes, like two dirty blue puddles on cracked white concrete, looked worn out. he awkwardly handed me a business card. he made a hell of a first impression; i thought he’d starve in a sales job. the job title on his card was stupid too – diverse learning coordinating teacher. as i was glancing at the card, williamson observed some students playfully shoving each other in the hallway. he watched for a while, decided to ignore them, and took me downstairs to his room. as we walked, he told me a little about himself. he said he’d been teaching for seventeen years, fifteen of them at his current school. he’d done various things at his school including teaching some regular english language arts courses and acting, as far as i could tell, as a sort of a broker for students who worked with community employers as a part of their high school programs. some of these students just worked at regular jobs, but some did this as a part of accreditation for regulated trades like mechanics or welding. lately, he’d been in charge of coordinating services for students who were seen as having various exceptional or additional needs, and there were quite a few such students at his school. the one common thread in his career, he said, was that ever since he began at his current school he’d been working directly with slow learners as a part of his job assignment. i made a mental note of all of this but didn’t know enough about the case yet to ask any questions. we came to williamson’s room. a title above the door of the room read, rather presumptuously i thought, “the learning centre.” it seemed a larger than average classroom and a lot was going on in there. some students were sitting in desks completing assignments occasionally asking a staff member for help. there were twelve desktop computer stations along the wall. at the desktop stations, students were doing research, on-line courses, word processing, and a few appeared to be discreetly watching music videos or playing games. a rather fidgety student, wearing earphones, sat with her desk pulled up to the corner walls of the room, completing a worksheet by locating answers in a large textbook labeled, simply, foods. a cluster of students sat at a table along the other wall, and were taking turns receiving tutorial help in math from a female staff member who, williamson later told me, had a knack for helping students in this discipline. the room broke into five smaller rooms at the back, an office, and four quiet work spaces for students which williamson told me had once been storage areas before being retasked for their present purpose. in the middle of these, another assistant was reading an english exam out loud to two students. williamson sat me down on the other end of his desk near the back of the main room of the learning centre. he said he liked to work in the main room instead of the small office behind him so he could stay in touch with what was going on in the room. he shoved stacks of paperwork, large folders with students’ names on them, booklets entitled ‘individual program plan’, and other booklets entitled ‘referral for support’ to either side of the large desk, forming a valley through which we better could see at each other as we talked. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 5 “so tell me about the slow learners,” i began. “who exactly are you talking about? and, where do you think they went?” “there really isn’t a clear answer to either question. psychology tells us slow learners are …,” he replied, and then he resorted to making finger quotation marks in the air, “individuals whose i.q.s, you know, their measured intelligence quotients, are one but not two standard deviations below the mean – in the low average range between 75 and 89.” he closed his finger quotations as he elaborated on the data. “two deviations would mean they had intellectual disabilities. they don’t; they are only one deviation below. but they’re supposed to learn slower than ‘average’ students and need extra help.”4 “that sounds like it came out of a textbook,” i observed. “who do you think slow learners are?” “well, i end up reading the files of the kids i work with, and a lot of the kids who struggle do seem to have i.q. scores in that range. but i think it’s more complicated than that....” something was wrong with that. i thought for a second and then it came to me. “what do you mean you work with them? i thought they all disappeared?” “i guess i have to tell you they haven’t exactly physically disappeared like i might have implied on the phone,” he admitted, “in fact, some of them are probably working in this room right now.” suddenly my mind was full of hornets. my hand itched to slap him. clients hold out on me all the time, it’s a convention of the genre, but i’d never had one try to hire me to find something he knew was right in front of him before. through clenched teeth i demanded why he had dragged me out to this frigid city just to waste my time on such a case. before he could answer i thought better of the question, the mysteries of the human heart being what they are, and i muttered something about being on my way home and expecting to be paid well for, as i put it, dropping everything to come up to take on this case. then i got up to begin the long journey back to the bleak predictabilities of my own dark city, the violent streets i travel on, alone and unafraid, the equally complex but more interesting femme fatales, my dingy apartment, my decaying office and, of course, my bottom drawer. williamson stood too. looking stricken, he began to desperately plead for me to stay. “you don’t understand, the slow learners might not have physically disappeared, except for the ones who have dropped out of school, but they have largely disappeared from the talk, or discourse of special education, here and all over the province, and i think that’s pretty important. look, i’m sorry i oversimplified things. please, you’ve come all this way, just hear me out for a little while longer before you decide.” i didn’t have much to lose in staying another minute, i concluded. when i later told the story of this wasted trip, this foolish client, i thought, the more details i could offer, the more i might be likely to hear one of my favorite phrases, ‘on the house,’ from sympathetic bartenders. besides i was curious about something he said. 4 see king (2014) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 6 “so what if nobody talks about them?” i argued. “the kids are here. you try to help them, and it looks like things are going ok in your resource room (i’d heard that term from a previous client and felt a tinge of pride in being able to talk to this specialist in his own lingo). so, what’s the problem?” williamson grimaced and beckoned me to go with him to the private office space behind him. flustered, he tried several keys on his key ring until he found the one that opened the office door. he let us in and shut the door behind us. i considered remarking that it’s always the last key you try but then thought better of it. “careful what you say,” he cautioned earnestly, “these are high school kids; some of them have had bad experiences in resource rooms in junior high and elementary schooling. so, we call this room a learning centre not a resource room. and the kids aren’t forced to come. it’s up to them to come for help, and we don’t just help the so-called ‘special needs kids,’ we help anyone who drops in and….” i cut him off before he could say anything more. he had misled me into making the trip down here and now he was getting pedantic. “whatever, your learning centre. i get it. the kids come; you help them, whatever they’re labeled, no real mystery, end of story.” “no, it isn’t the end of the story. the kids with other exceptionalities like autism, intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities, mental health issues, and attention deficit disorder have special education codes. we have to write individual program plans (ipps) to describe the types of specialized support they will receive, and special funding is attached to them. alberta education releases resource manuals to describe how to best help these kids, school districts hire consultants to help us help them, they receive accommodations on tests, like readers or scribes, to help level the playing field.5 even the most rigid teachers know that it’s expected that they do something more for kids with specific disabilities. slow learners don’t have any of these guarantees.” “should they?” “well, maybe. the kids i work with, the ones who fit the profile, seem to have a pretty rough time with school. extra resources to help a struggling kid are always nice.” “you seem hesitant. what’s the downside?” “labeling practices haven’t necessarily been wholly beneficial in special education.6 i think it’s unlikely that adding one more ‘official’ label would solve very much. i’d like the additional resources, but do we have to call everything that might cause a student to struggle ‘a disability’ 5 see alberta education (2006, pp. 1-3). in their general manual on accommodations alberta education has defined an accommodation as “a change or alteration in the regular way a student is expected to learn, complete assignments or participate in classroom activities.” some assessment accommodations defined in this manual include allowing breaks during a test, reducing the number of questions, breaking a test into parts and administering them at separate times, and / or providing a reader or a scribe. 6 see mehan, hertweck, & meihls (1986) and couture (2012, p. 54) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 7 in order to get the resources? also, how would i know if there aren’t a bunch of other kids out there with the same i.q. levels who are doing just fine in school? i might only end up working with the slow learners who are struggling. the population of students with this cognitive profile might be too diverse for the label to mean much of anything.7 still i think we need something more than what we currently have for these kids.” this was getting worse and worse. he’d misled me into coming, lectured me on terminology and now it seemed like he wasn’t even completely sure he wanted me to solve the case. seeking some kind of satisfactory answer i pressed on. “well, do you want me to find where the idea of a slow learner went or not?” “i do, but after you find it, i want you to help me decide how we should bring it back to the school. what aspects of ‘slow learner’ should be downplayed? what is of worth in the idea? what helps us teach kids?” i brought up something else that was still troubling me. “i still don’t get it. why me? i’m just a wise-cracking shamus. aren’t you worried people won’t think you take this thing seriously if you put me on the case?” “look, maybe i need you because you’re a wise-cracking shamus. seems like a lot of people who work in this field, myself included, can be pretty earnest about things. maybe your approach is a good way of being heard, of pointing out some of the problems without being totally depressing. maybe ‘care’ is a better concept than ‘take serious’. i care deeply about this issue. the opposite of care isn’t humor, it's indifference, inaction….” “i’m not your hired clown. if all you want is to change the tone, you can do that yourself.” “it’s more than that. i need you. i can’t do this on my own. i need your distance from the case. i’m researching in my own backyard here, closer than even that in some ways.” i found this last statement cryptic but allowed my potential client to continue. “i need you to ask questions i wouldn’t be comfortable asking, to go places i can’t go. i’m stuck here all day, but i’m guessing you like to work by moving around a lot.8 you’re going to have to look for this in some weird places, maybe some dark places.” “that’s the first thing you’ve said that makes any sense to me. but there’s something more isn’t there?” williamson looked down. he spoke in a small voice. “it hurts. there are some things about special education that hurt me to talk about. i need your help. i need your strength.” i didn’t know if i should pursue this line of questioning anymore. as a detective i felt i ought to. as a man i was beginning to feel that i’d prodded this guy enough for the day. a student knock 7 claypool, murusiak, & janzen (2008, p. 434) 8 schmid (2008, p. 99) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 8 ing on the door broke my reverie. he wanted williamson to help him track down some answers in a welding textbook. they’d obviously done this sort of thing a lot before. williamson excused himself, said we could talk more in a minute. as he walked back to his desk with the student, all the nervous tension he’d been showing in our conversation seemed to drain out of his body. it seemed that in the moments when was working directly with these kids he was freed, temporarily, from having to worry so much about them. he pulled up a chair and he started helping the student, not doing it for him but giving him some clues. he reminded him to look for key words from the question and gave him hints like telling him the page numbers or even paragraphs where the various answers were hiding, so the student didn’t have to reread the whole chapter looking for every answer. every now and then he would read a section out loud and the student would write down the parts that he thought were the answers. this method didn’t exactly look like rocket science, but it seemed to work. they were both at ease, joking a little even as they worked together. i figured i’d learned all i was going to by watching williamson and the student work together, so as they continued, i grabbed a booklet with his school’s logo off the bookshelf in the back office and skimmed through it. it turned out it was a registration booklet intended to guide students, and the parents and teachers who advised them, in selecting courses. i was surprised to discover that there so many tiers of academic courses offered at each grade level. if i counted advanced placement,9 which according to the booklet was supposed to be an enhanced but not entirely separate curriculum, there were four levels of english language arts available for grade ten students. i assumed the bottom level which was numbered “10-4” was for slow learners. math, science and social studies all appeared to work on the same tiered principle, with a class coded as “10-4” representing the lowest-skilled tier in each discipline.10 having completed his brief session of tutorial help, williamson returned to the back office. “kind of funny he asks me for help on welding theory, williamson noted as he returned to the office. “i’m all thumbs.” i had figured that out from the thumb shake, “i don’t have a clue about welding. but i find the text pretty straightforward.” “it must be sad when kids are that over their heads in a class.” i speculated. i thought i’d said something appropriately sympathetic but williamson didn’t like that very much. “he can handle the class. the welding teacher says he is one of the best welders in there, but he has a hell of a time with the bookwork. this is what he wants to do. we can help him here, but i hope he makes it through the college component of his welding ticket. it would help if he had a formal learning disability they have good disability services in the trades schools. he could have things read out loud to him. but he doesn’t, so i don’t know if he’ll be able to get this kind of help in his technical training. i’ve read his file, according to his i.q., he’s just a slow learner.” “here we go.” i thought. i felt an even worse hard luck tale coming on. 9 calgary board of education (2004, p. 1) 10 alberta education (2014, pp. 1, 6) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 9 “another time i sat with a girl and her parents while the psychologist reviewed the results of psychometric testing,” williamson began, confirming my suspicion. “we had sent in a referral for testing because she was struggling in all her classes. her esl (english as a second language) teacher said she was way behind her peers in learning english, especially when it came to reading and writing, and she was failing almost everything else except for cosmetology and math. well, the psychologist put her i.q. around seventy, but said her adaptive functioning was too high to put her in a special ed. class.11 that made sense too. she was very competent at most of the other things we would expect kids her age to be able to do and she was quite gifted in some things. she had held down a part-time job for more than a year, and often took care of her younger sisters at home. she was doing great on the hands-on assignments in her cosmetology class. she probably spent an hour before school every day on her clothes, hair and make-up. she had a real knack for that sort of thing she always looked so glamorous. anyhow, the psychologist then told us this kid was reading at a grade one level. she said the only way we had any hope of getting her through even the lowest level of classes in the ‘regular education’ tier of instruction would be to do an extensive remedial reading intervention with her, at least an hour a day of one on one work for an entire semester. even after that, she told us we would probably have to continue to have an assistant reading all her tests out loud with her for better understanding and we’d likely have to scribe major writing assignments with her. do you know what our psychologist said the only problem would be with providing these interventions?” i was pretty sure i could guess but the question sounded rhetorical. “she said the district couldn’t officially provide any of these services. we couldn’t be funded for any teacher assistant time to get someone to work with her and no one from the special education team would even be available to come out to help us set up a reading program, because according to the testing she didn’t have a learning disability or an intellectual disability. she was just a slow learner who was very behind in reading.” this was a good story. i was beginning to understand some of williamson’s frustrations, but i still didn’t entirely trust him. some things still didn’t make sense. “wait a minute,” i asserted, “i thought you said nobody uses the term ‘slow learner’ any more. sounds like your psychologist does.” “i’m sorry. sure the psychologist uses it but in terms of funded services offered, special education programs or alberta education’s published best practices for helping these kids, the phrase ‘slow learner’ vanishes into the air. it’s weird so much of the vocabulary of educational psychology is pretty common vocabulary with teachers in schools too, but other than that specialized use i talked about, this one just gets skipped”.12 11 see alberta education (2012, p. 3). the special education class was for students with mild intellectual disabilities. the diagnosis of mild intellectual disability requires both an iq in the 50 to 75 (plus or minus five) range and a demonstration of adaptive behavior, as measured by a standardized inventory, in the delayed range. therefore, as in this case, a student whose iq falls in the intellectual disability range, but who has high adaptive functioning also falls into the ‘slow learner grey zone’. such a student would be predicted to struggle academically, but would be ineligible for many support services. 12 claypool, murusiak, & janzen (2008, pp. 434-435) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 10 williamson was then briefly distracted glancing through the large window of the office to the outer room. he wasn’t needed, though. numbers were thinning out. several of the students were ambling out, and some actually appearing to thank the staff members who had been working with them. “classes start in five minutes,” williamson informed me. “well, i’m sure cases like the one with that girl are pretty rare,” i speculated, resuming the conversation. “actually, i’ve looked it up. according to some, it’s pretty common for a psychologist to be caught in the position of recommending services for a slow learners even while knowing the children won’t qualify because they don’t ‘technically’ have disabilities.”13 i was becoming more interested in spite of myself. i take a sick pleasure from twisted cases, the absurdity of human arrangements, like we’re all very young children dressed up in grown up clothes, inventing a game with no object and then arguing about the rules. this case was starting to sound especially twisted. i still thought he was holding out on me, though. “supposing, just supposing, i do agree to take the case. do you have any idea where i should start looking?” “actually, yes. i think you first need to go back and see if you can find ‘slow learner’ or something like it, some basis for what we now think of as ‘slow learner’ in the past.” “how far back do i need to go?” “you’ll have to rely on your instincts for that, i’m not really sure. i bet some aspects of this label go a long way back.” “where else do i need to look?” “well, even though we don’t hear the term in schools, ‘slow learner’ seems to pop up pretty often in the news stories, in popular fiction, and even in movies. i’d take a look there. see how popular culture constructs the idea.” i liked the sound of that. i had a lot of former clients in hollywood. williamson continued, “then, there’s a series of classes for struggling students. they’re called knowledge and employability, or k & e, classes. before that it was called the integrated occupational program, or iop. they don’t use the words ‘slow learner’ anywhere in the curricula for these courses, but “low average i.q.” is mentioned as a criteria in admittance. the criteria also mentions that students who take k & e are all supposed to be well below grade level in their academic skills and at-risk of not completing a high school diploma.”14 13 ibid. (p. 44) 14 alberta education (2008, p. 41) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 11 i shouldn’t have been surprised by this gem, but i was. i’d almost agreed to the case and then he handed this to me. “hang on,” i interjected, “there’s a program for these kids? a special education program? you keep telling me they’ve disappeared but these kids keep popping up all over the place! i have some advice for you; it’s pretty technical but let’s see if you can grasp it. you don’t look for things that aren’t lost! i’ve been trying to tell you this since i got here. are you a slow learner too, williamson?” all of a sudden i was fixing to leave again, feeling some pleasure about getting this parting shot in. williamson didn’t care for this remark. briefly the mild-mannered teacher’s eyebrows bunched together forming the familiar vertical and horizontal creases between his eyes and his lips tightened. then, after a minute, his mood shifted without improving as his eyes and mouth drooped downward and he sort of hugged himself involuntarily. “look,” he said sadly, “i appreciate that you’ve come a long way and this is an unusual case for you. maybe i’m an annoying client too.” i could have corrected him, he was only a potential client, but i said nothing. “you’ve earned the right to call me anything you want. please, though, just think twice before you casually throw out a label that my kids didn’t choose to have as your favorite insult, like it stands for everything that’s disagreeable.” despite williamson’s unassertive posture, i felt i was being corrected. probably his standard reaction to anyone who indulged in politically incorrect special education talk in his room. i thought he was going a bit overboard. after all, he did seem pretty slow to understand my problems with this case. sure, there might have been a trace of derision in my choice of words, but i thought i was mostly being literal. just then, williamson recovered himself slightly as he smiled a strange smile. “besides, you’ve proven my point,” he remarked, “i’m guessing your business doesn’t take you to schools very often but i bet it’s not the first time that you’ve called someone that. however distorted, this phrase is clearly out there in the big bad world so why isn’t it in here,” he gestured around his room, “more?” he’d hit on a sort of interesting point. i was proud of him. i decided to stay another minute. “anyhow, you don’t understand, those classes aren’t a program. they’re just a series of classes. and schools don’t have to offer them, they’re optional. they’re not in special education; they’re in the vocational education area.15 they’re supposed to be better paced for slow learning students and more connected to the practical use of what’s being taught, more hands-on. there are some problems though, with these classes. one of the main ones is that the students who complete these classes don’t get a full high school diploma, they get something called a certificate of achievement.16 i’ve never thought that was right. a lot of the kids and their parents aren’t very fond of this distinction, they find it demeaning. i’ve always thought a lot more students could benefit from these classes than the few who end up enrolling in them and less kids are signing up for k & e classes at my school every year. from what i can tell, school districts around here aren’t that crazy about k & e either. several schools in this city that specialized in k & e have been shut down recently and a lot of composite schools are no longer even offering discrete k & e classes to slower learning students in their populations either. at best, they’re borrowing from 15 ibid. (p. 41) 16 ibid. (p. 21) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 12 the k & e curriculum to make the work easier for slower students in large, faster-paced high school diploma level classes, which i’m not sure are the safest places for slow learners. but it’s hard to justify separate k & e classes of seven or eight students to administrators who are worried about regular education class sizes of forty students. they’d rather just use the k & e teachers as regular teachers to keep these numbers down. i’m constantly hearing we just need to offer the weaker students the k & e curriculum in the regular classes.” “why do you think it’s a bad idea to offer classes that combine the k & e kids with the regular students?” i asked. “it’s not always a bad idea, i mean the education system is always supposed to be getting more inclusive for everyone, and the k & e students are in a lot of the regular classes, like option classes and religion classes, if it’s a catholic school, with everyone else. but, and i know this doesn’t make me sound very inclusive, there’s some things about large core classes, you know english, math, science and social studies, how they’re set up and how they’re often taught, how they’re assessed, that can make them unsafe places for slow learners. these were the sorts of classes k & e students have been meeting failure in for their whole careers, before coming into k & e.” just then the laser printer a student was trying to print something out on made a grinding sound followed by a series of beeps. williamson’s colleague was still working with the math students, so he had to go over and fix the paper jam. he came back and starting talking immediately, now seeming to rush his words a bit. the pre-school tutorial period would be over any minute. “so you definitely need to look into k & e. and for that matter, maybe you need to look into some formal special education programs, or in some formal special education labels too.” “why would i do that?” i asked. “you said slow learners can’t be found there.” “i said slow learners can’t officially be found there, but don’t be so sure. besides, if you are looking for a suspect on the lam, doesn’t finding out where he didn’t go, and why, sometimes lead you to where he is?” though oversimplified, this was sort of true, and i indicated my acceptance with a slight nod. “oh, and one more thing,” my potential client cautioned, “there’s something else, you can’t go into this unarmed, it’s too risky.” “gotcha. i’ve got a sidearm in my luggage back at the hotel. i call her candace.17 she gets cranky if i don’t take her out once in a while.” “please don’t talk that way in my learning centre, it’s violent and misogynistic.” i chose not to comment on the kinds of video games i saw the kids playing, so furtively, on the computers when we came in. williamson seemed to have a pretty selective understanding of what happened in his learning centre. he continued, “besides, that’s not what i meant. you are going to need to be armed with some sort of research philosophy, some kind of method.” 17 see jackson (2014, p. 359). in the television series based on mickey spillane’s popular detective novels, the protagonist, mike hammer affectionately names his large sidearm ‘betsy’. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 13 “what do you know about detective methods?” i demanded. “a client sees a couple of actors in the movies playing good cop / bad cop and he thinks he knows how detectives work. my methods are my business.” “i don’t know about being a detective,” williamson admitted, “but this is an educational research issue, and i know that can get messy and convoluted. a topic like this, i’d think begs for some strategy that helps you work with language and metaphysics, keeps you moving forward practically instead of getting lost in all of it. something that enables you to avoid the false clues and see what’s hidden.” “don’t try to impress me with this talk of educational research,” i warned. “i know jargon when i hear it. it sounds more like you’ve been reading too much sherlock holmes. you think it’s some kind of method or set of principles that helps you sort out the real clues from the red herrings. i don’t adopt any one method because if i did i might miss things. that’s where most of the police i work with, even the sharp ones, go wrong. i keep my mind and my eyes open, i wear out my shoes, i ask a lot of questions, and i know when to grease palms and when to twist wrists. and i have experience. i rarely begin investigating any two cases the same way, but in the end i usually get my clients the truth, sometimes more than they can handle. so, i won’t be told by any client how to work. i’ve turned down better paying and better looking clients than you when they tried to make similar demands. you want me, this is what you get.” i hadn’t intended to reveal that much but conversing with this schoolteacher had somehow brought out the lecturer in me too. “i don’t want to argue,” he said wearily. “but this is a special case. one that’s going to involve parsing a lot of knowledge claims you’ve never heard before. please, just consider some interpretive method to arm yourself with, or to add to your toolbox or whatever.”18 i could tell by his metaphors he had gone from making a demand to offering a suggestion. i could ignore a suggestion, so i was content to leave it at that. even though i had no intention of following up on whatever he was recommending, i kind of liked the toolbox idea. i didn’t want to hear williamson talk about it anymore, but i filed it in my mental gallery of curiosities. i changed the subject by asking if there were any other leads i should check out. “well, you might want to talk to some other teachers to clarify if this disappearance is as serious a concern as i think it is. you might want to find out if they’ve heard ‘slow learner’ as a concept as rarely as i have, and find out how they manage with students with this profile, without having much by way of resources or guidelines to help them. also, maybe some other researchers have done similar investigations or, at least, related work. i can’t be the only one who has ever noticed this disappearance. you need to check that out.” “anything else?” 18 “i would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area...,” foucault (1974, pp. 523-524). williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 14 “that’s pretty much all i can think of. there’s probably all sorts of places you’ll end up going that i haven’t anticipated but that’s all i have for now.” there was still one thing i didn’t understand. “i’m sure this has been bothering you for years; so, why do we need to investigate this now? why not last year? why not next year?” “like i said i’m getting worried for k & e. right now we have separate k & e classes in every core area, but i don’t know how long we’ll be allowed to sustain this with the low enrolments we’ve been having. i’m afraid the slow learners will just get dumped in regular classes with no additional supports one year, and the numbers of students registered for k & e will be so low there won’t be anything i will be able to say to stop it. that and i’m finding it harder to work through the frequent lack of resources and understanding of what these kids need lately.” “that’s rough, princess. i suggest a few doubles after work. you’ll sleep like a baby and be too numb to be so bothered the next day.” he looked pained, again. this was sort of fun. i thought i might have to take the case just so i could offend his sensibilities for a few days. if he’d hired me for my misanthropic tendencies, i’d make sure he got his money’s worth. if i took the case that is. he recovered some of his dignity and, once again, clarified. “well, it’s not just that. i’m hearing of some new things going on in special education. many of the researchers who look at special ed., not to mention the students, parents, and teachers who are stakeholders in special education, have been saying it’s too regimented, too much based on a deficit model, and more medical than educational. they’ve been saying this in the field for years.19 alberta education is starting to listen. they might finally be looking critically at some past or current practices and attempt to move away from the formality of codes and disabilities. i don’t know as much about all this, except that part of the aim is to make school more flexible for all learners. i hear they’re looking not only to reform special education, but the whole alberta curriculum to promote this kind of flexibility.20 i want to make sure the needs of slow learners don’t get forgotten in these changes.” “i get it. when they start digging the past mischief up, you want to make sure they find all the bodies.” i’d startled him again with my choice of words; it was too easy. with summoned patience he clarified, “well, maybe that’s necessary as a beginning, but i’m more worried about making sure the needs of slow learners are addressed in whatever new system they come up with.” so here it was; the crisis i’d been waiting to hear about. there was some urgency here. it was more than this strange man’s trepidations. there might really be something i could help solve here. i was curious, and something about those stories williamson had been telling got to me. i weighed my options. what was the worst thing that could happen? actually that wasn’t the right question. the worst thing that could happen was that i would freeze to death chasing down 19 alberta education (2009a, pp. 2-3) 20 alberta education (2009b, pp. 5-8) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 15 empty leads and not be discovered until the spring thaw. but the case seemed interesting enough, some wrongs to right and some rent money to earn along the way. it might have just been the bad coffee from the hotel, but i felt a twinge in my gut telling me that i ought to help this guy. just then, another crisis. the bell williamson told me would ring soon – did. williamson and i watched through the office window as a new set of kids began to filter into the room. “my homeroom class,” williamson told me. i could see he had to get back to work. looked like our meeting was coming to an end. he needed an answer. i wanted to say something hopeful, but i still wanted to hear him beg one more time before i agreed. “that’s not a bad start williamson. the parts that make sense, i mean. a better collection of leads than i normally get.” he actually blushed. “thanks. like the kids, i guess, i may need help but i’m not helpless.” sounded like he’d said that before. “will you please take the case?” “one hundred and twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses.” we shook hands to seal the deal. williamson’s aim seemed to have improved since his last attempt at the social convention with me a few minutes ago in the main office. he managed to made contact with all of the appropriate digits this time. iii sitting in the buick with windshield wipers fending off a slow but insistent snowfall, i realized i had no idea where to start. i had to do something though. a paying case is always good, but i didn’t want to be stuck in this city any longer than i had to and this unnaturally early meeting had left me with a lot of day to work with. more often than not, i like to work by stirring things up instead of piecing things together, looking hard at what comes to the surface, but i didn’t even really know where to stir. i knew i wouldn’t be going to the methods store or wherever williamson thought i would go to find some kind of research method. i’d be just fine without any of this, i didn’t get hard-boiled overnight and besides, i always had candace if i got myself into trouble. williamson had lent me his public library and university library cards so i could get up to speed on the case. i had a roughly similar general appearance, aside from being slimmer and better dressed, and i thought maybe a nice warm library might be a good place to check up on some of the facts of williamson’s story. i still didn’t entirely trust this strange, earnest client. he seemed, at times a moralizing boy scout, at other times a delusional fool. what kind of man hires a detective to look for an educational category? still, every now and then i thought i heard in things he said echoes of some of the same “fierce grief” i feel.21 grief over not fitting in, or not buying in, being too troubled by all the little wayward things others take for granted, having a nose too sensitive to the rot. in the sick little world where i operate, the sheen of nobility this gives me is about as useful as a cereal box sheriff’s badge. i wondered what it did for williamson. 21 hamilton (1987, p. 25) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 16 i drove to the downtown public library, and then, annoyed, progressively further away from the library as all the nearby lots were full. i reluctantly parked in a lot that was neither close nor affordable and walked several chilly blocks. reaching my destination, i passed through a metal detector overseen by an ancient sentry. i’d guessed there might be such security and begrudgingly left candace locked and lonely in the trunk of the buick. i found a computer station to work at in a row of cubicles near the back of the library. i sat myself down in a little patch of heaven, a graffiti-strewn cubicle with chipped particle board and a hard plastic chair and a desktop computer with greasy keys and a smudged screen. i began to look up subjects on the library computer. i thought maybe i’d verify what williamson had begun to tell me about slow learners in our first meeting. it was weird, as soon as i entered the phrase “slow learner” the library catalogue computer seemed to slow down. despite this, i managed to locate a recent book on the topic in their holdings. it was called slow learners: their psychology and instruction,22 and a copy was available at this branch. i left my trench coat on the chair to mark my place and walked up the stairs, retrieved the book from one of the shelves and returned to my station. i noticed that while i was upstairs, i had acquired a neighbor in the cubicle beside me. he didn’t seem particularly sociable or even conscious. a head of matted hair rested, facing away from me, on a huge fleshy forearm. a formless grey overcoat concealed the rest of my companion’s appearance, but i could detect the sickly sweet smell of rot. classy joint. the cover of the book depicted a child of twelve or thirteen sitting backwards on a chair, maybe to emphasize his perceived backwardness as a slow learner. he was staring out at me with a look that was both forlorn and somewhat vacant. reading the introduction, i noticed that the authors authoritatively stated the i.q. levels williamson had only mentioned approximately. also, i observed they seemed to think they had pretty much everything else figured out about slow learners too. the experience of educators confirms that there are many children who are so backward in basic subjects that they need special help. these pupils have limited scope for achievement. they have intelligence quotients between 76 and 89 and they constitute about 18 percent of the total school population. these students do not stand out as very different from their classmates except that they are always a little slow on the uptake and are often teased by the other students because of their slowness. they are quite well built physically but rather clumsy and uncoordinated in movement. they are no trouble in school. although much of the work is difficult for them, they are patient and cooperative …they need help in the form of special class [sic] in ordinary school. most slow learners struggle along in ordinary classes failing to have the special attention which they need.23 “wow,” i thought, “could it be true that almost a fifth of the students in any given school are just like this?” that smelled funny so i checked out another source on the computer. this time an 22 see reddy, ramar, & kusama (2006). 23 ibid. (p. 4) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 17 article written by an american psychologist answering a series of faqs or ‘frequently asked questions’ about slow learners on the website “schoolpsychogistfiles.com”.24 a “slow learner” is not a diagnostic category, it is a term people use to describe a student who has the ability to learn necessary academic skills, but at rate and depth below average same age peers. in order to grasp new concepts, a slow learner needs more time, more repetition, and often more resources from teachers to be successful. reasoning skills are typically delayed, which makes new concepts difficult to learn. at this point, the website quoted the same iq numbers that williamson and the previous book mentioned. but then the writer made this interesting clarification: those who fall two standard deviations below the mean are often identified as having an intellectual disability (iq below 70). a slow learner does not meet criteria for an intellectual disability (also called mental retardation) [sic]. however, she learns slower than average students and will need additional help to succeed.25 all this sorting into cozy little boxes was making me miss my little warm hotel room. i was tired. i noticed my companion in the next cubicle had disappeared; i chided myself for missing this when it happened. still, he’d seemed harmless. i gave myself a couple of quick slaps to the face and concentrated on my search again. i was looking for a different perspective on this classification process and found a study in an online journal that offered just that. this article was pretty technical. still, i was able to piece together that these authors didn’t like how psychologists and educators, in their opinions, often overused the idea of “low average” in describing the traits and needs of students. low average, i realized, described the very same iq range as slow learners were said to have. they said low average carried the risk of being a self-fulfilling prophecy for children without the benefit of being a label that leads to additional services. in addition to this, the authors did an interesting experiment. they found one hundred and ninety-six archived i.q. tests from a private clinic in an urban centre in alberta and rescored these tests using a different scoring system that was also considered acceptable in the field. they found that a full eighteen percent of the classifications changed by one category, from low average to average for example. no wonder these slow learners were elusive. you could make them come and go by how you scored the test. the authors who did the rescoring experiment, like williamson, were pretty critical about the practice of denying struggling students’ special education services on the basis of their low average iq tests. i wondered why this would even happen. i found an answer to this, though not a very satisfying one, in the psychologist’s website i was looking at earlier. it was in her answer to an f. a. q. “if these students struggle so much, why do are they often not eligible for special education?” special education services are provided for students who have a disability. slow learners typically do not have a disability, even though they need extra support. cognitive abilities are too high 24 king (2014, para. 1) 25 ibid. (para. 2) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 18 for these learners to be considered for an intellectual disability. however, the abilities are usually too low to be considered for a learning disability. consider that a learning disability consists of discrepancies between average abilities and below average academics, coupled with a processing deficit. schools often look for a discrepancy between a student's ability and where they are performing. slow learners tend to perform at their ability level, which is below average. to the disappointment of many, slow learners often do not receive special education services.26 i was still a little shaky about the claims these sources were making about this group of students, but now something new was bugging me too. if i had it right, it seemed strange to me that in many jurisdictions a special education system had evolved such that it routinely excluded from special services a whole group of learners that the intelligence tests it seemed to value so highly predicted would struggle at school. where have the slow learners gone, indeed? maybe my foolish client was on to something after all. a little thrill of danger ran down my spine. i scrolled back through some psychology websites without, i didn’t think, learning much of direct relevance. then it occurred to me that i did know, from my conversation with williamson, a place where some of the slow learners in alberta had gone. it was an instructional tier offered to struggling high school students in some schools. williamson seemed to have mixed feelings about it. then again, i didn’t know what that meant either. williamson seemed to have mixed feelings about everything. i typed in knowledge and employability (k & e) classes and then, remembering the name of the previous slow learner program my client had told me about, i added “integrated occupational program (iop)” to the search too. i got several hits. i clicked on the information manuals for both programs and briefly scrolled through them looking for descriptions of the sorts of students they were intended for.27 though i was only skimming to get to the part about enrolment criteria, i couldn’t help but notice that the manual for the old program, iop, was much thicker, containing a lot more advice about how to support these students. i wondered why, but i put that question on the back burner. both manuals were pretty consistent with what the psychology books had said about slow learners as well as what williamson had told me. the recommended populations for both k & e, and iop before it, were supposed to have low average iqs, show up as behind grade level in their skills and grades in their core subjects, be more adept at concrete learning, and be at risk of not being able to complete the regular high school diploma. i selected the third item down called “accountability pillar results for annual education results report” because i wanted to know who was accountable for these classes.28 i always wanted to know who was accountable. i was rewarded with a complex document showing various statistics about student achievement, and about parent and student perceptions about the general quality of education in the province. “dead end,” i thought. it wasn’t telling me anything about k & e or slow learners. i was about to close the site when i saw the phrase ‘high school completion rate’. this seemed important, but why? i remembered williamson griping that the students who took this level of classes left school with a credential called the k & e certificate, a credential widely seen as less valuable than the alberta high school diploma.29 surely if there were even half as 26 ibid. (para. 3) 27 alberta education (1989, p. 3) 28 see alberta education (2010) 29 alberta education (2004, p. 10) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 19 many slow learners around as the previous data claimed, and they really did have as tough of a time in school as the information about the categories suggested, these k & e classes would be an inevitable path for many of them. the completion results would surely show a significant minority of alberta’s students earning the k & e certificate instead of the high school diploma. i started to look at the stats on this. now that i was in the right section they were easy to find, but not so easy to believe. in 2009, 30,689 students completed high school in three years having earned a high school diploma; 305 completed earning a k & e certificate of achievement. in 2008, 30,500 students completed high school with the diploma, 266 completed with the certificate in the same year. in 2007, 30,105 diplomas, 255 certificates.30 i rubbed my eyes and looked again, i thought maybe i’d missed a zero. if up to eighteen percent of students were slow learners why were less than one percent of students completing high school with the credential intended for slow learners? “maybe the high school diploma route isn’t so bad for them,” i thought. “maybe most of the slow learners manage to scrape through at the higher instructional level.” but what if they didn’t? i looked at the dropout rates for the same five years. for several years running, a quarter of the year’s cohort of potential graduates had not completed high school within the three expected years; completion rates rose a little to eighty percent when another two years beyond the expected three were added.31 i wondered how many of the dropouts were slow learners? “how do students get lost?” i pondered for a second. i realized one of the main ways was by not completing school. the mystery was coming into focus for me. i felt all tingly; the hairs on the back of my neck were standing at attention. my tingly feeling was suddenly joined by a duller and more menacing sensation, a large arm encircling my throat. so eager had i been to begin my investigation, put this case to bed nice and early, i hadn’t taken a wary enough look at my foul neighbor at the next computer station and now he was choking me from behind. the full force of the rotting stench hit me with the last breath i was able to take before he cinched my throat shut. as massive, fleshy arms tightened around me, i brought my feet up to my desk and pushed backwards with all my strength. the desk thudded against the wall, giving me what i thought was good leverage for dislodging my assailant, but he easily absorbed the force and the chokehold just got tighter. my peripheral vision beheld a close-up view of a pallid, shapeless face and a staring eye, black as an eight ball. i wrenched to one side, and the hold just got tighter. i looked to the entrance of the library; the ancient guard was asleep in his chair. straining, i gripped my assailant’s thumb and upper wrist with both hands and tried to wrench it backwards to break his grip. his skin felt cold, and a large pulpy wad of it tore off and skidded across the cubicle. it came to rest on the upper left corner of the computer keyboard, concealing the escape key. in the reflection on the monitor, i saw his wrist glowing faintly pink in the spot i attacked, i guessed maybe there might be a beating heart under all that, but he was otherwise unharmed and constricting my neck more tightly than ever. a brightly colored figure flickered in and out of my range of vision but i wasn’t sure if it was real. someone had a problem with me investigating this category – i wondered who? my indignation at the story arriving at this point was short-lived as everything went black. 30 alberta education (2010) 31 ibid. (p. 4) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 20 i was in a lineup outside a factory, waiting to be measured. a machine was doing the measuring. once i was measured it would put me in a box. depending on which box i was in, the machine would pick me up and push me through one of five chutes and down one of five tracks for further assembly. it was a big factory and the chutes were too small to enable a long look down the lines. beyond the first few stations, i couldn’t see where any of the tracks were leading. i arrived at the machine. a pair of mechanized arms with a crudely marked stick measured my height and width. a box was selected from a shelf overhead and lowered to the ground. i lay down, curled in the box. my arm stuck out. instead of lifting my box onto the shelf as it had with the others, the mechanized arm tried to push my arm back down into the box, but it still stuck out. a mechanized arm held my human arm. a mechanized arm drew a line across my human arm. a mechanized arm held a dull saw, i wriggled my human arm to escape. “mr. hunter!” “mr. hunter!” williamson was shaking my arm trying to rouse me awake. i was in a coffee room inside what was likely the private staff area of the library, laid out on a threadbare couch. someone had loosened my tie and collar and someone had, apparently, poured a couple of teaspoons of drool into the lapel pocket of my blazer. williamson told me that a little girl who had wandered away from her mom had reported to her mother that a man was being attacked by some kind of monster at the back of the library. she, i realized, was the brightly colored blur i’d seen; at least i’d kicked up enough of a fuss to attract her attention. though not entirely comprehending her, her mom had roused the security guard from his slumber to check out whatever her daughter had thought she’d seen. before the guard got to me, my assailant had apparently escaped undetected. i’d been found unconscious at the cubicle, but they assumed the little girl, whom i owed my life, had only imagined the monster. the staff, used to people falling asleep in the library, had assumed i had a temporary ailment brought on by recreational overindulgence or professional overwork, and that i needed no medical intervention except for rest. perhaps due to my professional appearance, in lieu of calling the authorities, they had kindly moved me to this couch to sleep off whatever i had. williamson’s business card had fallen out of my pocket, so they called him to retrieve me. i was really out of it. the diabolically cold weather, the early morning, the educational research and the apparent zombie had all conspired to put me out for several hours. it was now four o’clock. i had a glass of water and assured the staff i was ok. williamson asked me what had happened, but instead of explaining it right there, i asked him to take me somewhere licensed and seedy, where our conversation would not be overheard by interested parties. it wasn’t hard to find such a place. on the short but chilly walk there, my wet lapel pocket froze, and i felt a sliver of ice near my heart. a few patrons glanced up at us with tired hostility, and glanced down again into their beer. we had to step lightly over several spots of uneven tile, found two stable barstools that were unoccupied and sat. an indifferent server wiped the scratched tabletop, leaving a sheen of grease from her cloth, and then she vanished into thin air, like the slow learners i was looking for. i counted nine dead flies in the lamp overhead. williamson looked uncomfortable. this place was perfect. as we waited for the waitress to return, i told williamson how i’d been attacked. his face assumed a distressed countenance and he asked for more details. i told him he’d need a drink to help him absorb the news and got up to order from the bar. he reluctantly agreed but asked me if williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 21 i thought it was wise to be drinking after losing consciousness like i had. i told him i get knocked out often and that this was my standard treatment. i had a shot of something that burned pleasingly at the bar and returned to the table with a pint for each of us. i took a long swallow and told him what i’d learned about the case so far. i told him i thought i was off to a good start before being attacked. he fidgeted. then i told him about how my assailant resembled nothing so much as a zombie. he stopped fidgeting and began shaking. i described my objections to my own perception of this, “it doesn’t belong. sure, i often experience this world as a place gone all wrong, but that’s just being realistic. there’s no room in my thinking for monster stories.” williamson’s face reddened and he glared at me. “i told you this was dangerous territory and to look into a research method. i said it was very important. you ignored me. look where that left you, senseless in a library. that zombie–like thing did you a favor; you were in too deep too soon. who knows, maybe it was even trying to warn you about something.” “i think i did well,” i protested. “i confirmed how slow learner is defined, at least psychologically, and more about the problems with the category that you were trying to explain to me. i saw how few students complete the k & e certificate provincially.” remembering himself, williamson took a deep breath and settled down. “i am surprised the completion rate is that low,” he admitted. “but that just helps confirm my suspicions that a lot of slow learners are disappearing. it doesn’t really explain why. and you tipped someone off about our investigation and let them get the drop on you. you’ve got to be more careful. a dead shamus isn’t much use to me.” he took another copy of his business card out of his wallet. i wondered if he was secretly excited to finally have someone to hand them to. he wrote a name and address down on the back of it and handed me the card. he said he’d met a teacher at a session at a conference that might have some insider knowledge of where the slow learners had gone. her name was colleen birdseye. he gave me an address to look her up. he said that talking to her would probably be a safer lead to follow up while i got my bearings on the case. he told me to call him when i’d learned ‘something useful’ and then got up to leave, leaving a half-empty pint behind him. the waitress returned from oblivion and i asked her for a menu. my ordeal had left me hungry. i ordered a club sandwich that i hoped wouldn’t be too vile and another beer to sit on its shoulders and hold it down just in case.32 soon i’d have to trek back to the buick. i might even get to try out my technique of scraping ice off the windshield with an almost maxed out credit card. i looked at the flies in the lamp again, sleeping the big sleep,33 basking in the warm white light. lucky devils. iv 32 chandler (1964, p. 9). the personification about the sandwich is borrowed from this source. 33 chandler (1992, p. 230) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 22 i drove to the address on the card. it was six blocks off the main drag in a partially hidden little strip that also contained a pawn shop and a used books and trading cards store. i had to turn hard when i finally spotted the place out of the corner of my eye, and the buick slid on the ice for a minute before it found its traction again and took me in. i parked and entered a gym. i’m six feet when not slouching, and solid enough too, but the muscle-bound gargoyle at the reception desk looked to have eighty pounds on me. beside him, the computer, the phone, and the desk all looked like toy versions of themselves designed for toddlers already being trained for the high power business world. still, he’d been domesticated for customer service, and when i asked if i could just observe the class for a while, being interested in maybe signing myself up as a student, he assented with a friendly smile. i thought if i asked if he could crush my head for me too he would have agreed with equal sociability. the gym smelled of seven brands of fermenting sweat. on a mat to the right was a fit, diminutive girl with dark hair restrained by a functional ponytail. she was wearing thai boxing shorts and a t-shirt that read, “if you had any questions in the academy you had to wrestle plato.” she was taking turns practising a sparring move with a much larger man. it involved a hip throw followed up with an arm wrenching submission hold. she executed her turns with the ease of putting on a coat, but her partner was less graceful. she had to coach him through every turn. i could see a hint of tightly controlled aggression in her throws, despite her patience with her partner. i was getting a little dizzy watching all the flipping when, mercifully, they took a break. her gym bag, which she now approached to get some water, was along the main wall near where i was watching from. i went over to her. “looks like your partner is a pretty slow learner,” i remarked. “we’re all slow learners at something,” she replied. “besides he’s new.” “still, he’s twice your size and you can’t weigh much more than a buck-ten. and you’re a girl. what a loser.” “this stuff isn’t so easy to pick up on at first,” she said. “i bet i could do better,” i challenged. by then her partner had moved on to the heavy bags, gloved up, and looked to be investing much thought in the simple combinations he was arhythmically throwing. she brought me out to the mat and challenged me to attempt the same throw on her. a good right hook and a few dirtier moves were more my style, but i’d grappled my share too, and expected little resistance as i attempted the toss. suddenly, though, i was trying to hoist a five-foot two hunk of lead. next, i was seeing an exit sign upside down, thudding onto my back, and feeling my arm straightened and bent slowly back the wrong way. decorum demanded i should tap her to submit at this point, but i had one more shot left. “did k & e make you this tough?” i gasped. confused, she released her grip. i sat up and rubbed my arm. i explained how williamson, whose name seemed to register on her, had sent me to her to find out if she’d seen the slow learners. she agreed to meet me for coffee when the class was over. for the next twenty minutes, she williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 23 kicked some focus pads with a trainer, each strike bursting like a firecracker, and i stood along the wall and rubbed my arm some more. i followed her to a chain coffee shop back along the main drag. we milled through the ordering line obtaining a milk and a coffee respectively. i offered to buy her beverage but before i could insist she flipped me a gold-colored coin with a bird on it. we found a table. looking a little less spartan with an oversize hooded sweatshirt and a friendly smile on, i realized she was rather pretty. i could also read from her eyes that she beheld me in only professional curiosity, which was fine with me. i didn’t want any distractions on this case. i wanted out of this city. “you look pretty strong,” she remarked. “i didn’t expect you to be that easy to throw.” “well, you took me by surprise,” i had to admit. “and besides, i’m always tougher in the last reel.” wearying already of this small talk, i asked what she knew about where the slow learners might be. “right here, maybe,” she said with just a hint of irony. “they thought i was a slow learner when i was in school.34 i was placed in the integrated occupation program when i was in junior high school. this was years ago when it first came into the alberta education system.” if it weren’t for the way she said it, i would have said williamson had found me the perfect informant, a self-described slow learner. she’d been in the programs. maybe she’d seen some other slow learners along the way. i tried to engage her in talk of her own experiences a little, to tease some more information out of her. “i don’t get it. you don’t seem that slow to me. how could that be? how did you end up there?” “i … uh … couldn’t read. i basically got through elementary school without being able to read. just faking my way through it. then i came to calgary in grade seven and they tested me and found i had a grade one-ish reading level. i could pick things up if i had to, but my comprehension was really low. i had a huge gap in my learning. and they did tons of testing and then they threw me in iop. they thought that was the best place for me. and then the iop people said ‘she’s not iop’ so they threw me in gifted education. and then they finally gave up on me.” “you mean they finally just let you be? do you mean things got better?” “no. i mean i dropped out. i didn’t finish high school. all my learning, i did as an adult. i think that’s what happens with a lot of our kids.” i didn’t know who the ‘our’ were. i assumed it was all the teachers who worked with slow learners. she continued, “the shuffling around and the stigma that goes with k & e, i mean that was with iop too. if you were in iop you were one of 34 aside from some fictionalization to locate them as characters in the narrative, the opinions given and experiences described by teachers, students, administrators, and curriculum leaders are from my interviewees and any character located in a realistic role in education is based on an actual interviewee. i interviewed eight teachers, administrators or curriculum leaders, and four students. for the character named colleen birdseye, as well as the later interviews with the group of students, i took the quotations directly from transcripts of our audio-recorded conversations. for all other interviewees, the quotations were reassembled based on my notes of our conversations. in all cases the quotations were verified with these sources before being used in this work. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 24 those kids. the stigma that goes with that program prevents kids that should be in there from going in there.” “but you’re a teacher now, and that takes a degree, doesn’t it? how did you get back into the school system?” as well as thinking a story like this might help me track down slow learners or at least understand how students got called slow learners, i was genuinely curious. “well, i was working in a mechanics shop. that was what i was going to be. that was my plan, so i didn’t think dropping out of high school would have a huge impact on going to sait or my apprenticeship.35 so that was what i was going to do but i had a really bad injury on the job – wheelchair and everything, so i couldn’t do the job anymore. i could now obviously, but i couldn’t physically pick anything up then. i was like, ok what am i going to do with my life? so, i went to mount royal college as a mature student and failed miserably a few times, but back then that college was really good with students with learning gaps and they worked with me, and i finally started to see success at school. that was, let’s see my daughter was two then, so i would have been twenty-two. and i went from there. i just got better as a student as the years went on.” “do you think your experiences are pretty typical? are lots of bright kids with learning issues like you had misplaced in k & e?” i realized i was asking my questions two at a time now, but i was excited. i was in the middle of the tempest of category confusion that i’d been learning about. williamson had found me a good informant. colleen birdseye took a sip of her milk. “well that’s always a big argument for not placing in k & e. a k & e student is not a learning disabled student. there’s this distinct higher / lower hierarchy between ld and k & e and i think it does a few injustices.” i discerned that ld probably stood for “learning disabled” as colleen birdseye continued to explain the injustices of the hierarchy. “one, it assumes that a student who is at a k & e level can’t have a ld because they aren’t smart enough, which is completely false. most of the kids i’ve taught in k & e have learning disabilities as well. and, it again perpetuates that idea that if they’re in k & e they can’t do anything else. whereas if you’re just coded with a learning disability, you’re capable of doing everything as long as you have the right accommodations.” williamson had mentioned accommodations to me as well but i forgot what they were so i asked. colleen birdseye explained that they were things like providing students with extra time on tests, access to a staff member or technology to read tests out loud, and / or a scribe to record their writing for them. these things were supposed to make things fairer for students with disabilities, but not change the difficulty of the tests or assignments on a conceptual level. i thought for a second this was a pretty sweet deal for the disabled kids. but then i wondered why there was a whole institutional process just for qualifying for these things. i’d known some keen-eyed p.i.’s who avoided reading like it was consumption, and almost all my colleagues dictated their letters to a secretary; if they could afford one. not me, i could barely keep myself on the payroll so i did my own clerical work. that, and i found the rhythm of pounding on the computer keys relaxing’; like a little army of speed bags to bip bip with my fingers. as a p.i. who didn’t use those socalled accommodations then, i was in the minority. as for time, we billed by the day, extra time williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 25 was always better, at least until the client ran out of money or patience. that was just how we did it. so this concept of accommodation was foreign to me. as i considered this, i felt a teacher’s eyes on me and realized my mind was wandering. i apologized, and said it had been a long day and pleaded that my informant continue explaining her concerns. after a minute, she did. “my issue is this hierarchy between seeing a better person and a not-as-good person. there’s certainly issues with being learning disabled too, but with k & e it’s often viewed as kids that aren’t worth putting the effort into.” “sounds like you think that it isn’t strictly slow learners who end up being placed in k & e classes,” i paraphrased, just to keep the conversation going. then i came up with another question. “does the concept of slow learner affect your work in any way?” “the term itself? it doesn’t impact me, i wouldn’t say. it does impact people. when i have a k & e student, i have to be aware they’re a k & e student, but at the same time i run a classroom that is diversified anyways, personalized anyways. actually personalized, not just the word personalized because it’s trendy. i mean i’ve taught classes – i had one class that was a 30-4, 30-2, and 30-1 class and, honestly, i loved it.35 it didn’t matter if it was kids in 30-4 or 30-1, they all needed personalization for their learning.” i had no idea what all the levels she was reeling off meant; it was like alphabet soup, but with numbers, to me. but i thought asking her to clarify might have been a further distraction. with all this confusion of definitions and talk of personalization, i was already worried she was being kind of cagey about whether or not she’d seen the slow learners recently. maybe williamson was wrong in his recommendation, and i had followed him by being wrong in my initial impression that this was a good informant. it sounded like she didn’t even believe in the category. it was time for a blunt question to see. “is there such a thing as slow learners?” i asked. “i did presentations and stuff at teachers’ convention on k & e learners. ‘the k & e learner’ and that kind of thing. one of the big things that i always tried to focus on was what k & e is now; and, if people really want to teach it, this is what they need to keep in mind, it is complex learners you end up working with. you could have a gifted kid in a k & e class who has decided to swear at the teachers way too many times or hasn’t handed stuff in, so they assume they don’t understand. being aware of that when you’re teaching and giving the kids a chance is what matters.” that wasn’t a straight answer either. this was all very interesting, but i wasn’t sure it was much use in my search for the slow learners. it seemed every time i brought up some kind of problem related to teaching slow learners, something that might help me track them down, she acknowledged it, sure, but then got quickly back to talking about the teaching practices she thought were good for slow learners and maybe every student. was she being cagey, or did she just think it had more to do with teaching? i tried to use this teaching idea to challenge her sense of pride to loosen things up. “does it affect how you’re perceived as a teacher, working with k & e students?” 35 alberta education (2014, pp. 1, 6). the provincial english language arts curriculum is tiered into a more academic grade 12 english course, 30-1, a less academic course 30-2, and the k & e level 30-4. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 26 “yes, definitely. the most obvious was when my school district closed down two k & e schools, one of which i was teaching at. coming out of the k & e schools that got closed down, you were ‘must place’ in new schools. coming from k & e, you’re seen as ‘less than’ as a teacher. in general, you’re not seen as a capable teacher of so-called ‘regular kids’, so definitely it changes the perception.” something bothered me about her use of the phrase “k & e school.” i made a mental note to think more about it and follow it up if needed, but i wanted to maintain the momentum of the conversation, so i said something agreeable instead of questioning her on this. “yeah, williamson says even though he’s been to grad school, he thinks people still talk to him slower because he’s in special education.” this wasn’t strictly speaking true but it seemed like something williamson might say. she laughed. it was a nice laugh; all amusement, no malice. i tended to prefer a little malice. “yes, exactly, they assume ‘you’re not as smart as us’. and even teaching style – i tend to teach in an inquiry style of learning, and very art-based, and a lot of art brought into the classroom. and that’s seen as fluff learning. ‘you’re a k & e teacher and you don’t understand how to teach.’ well, yeah, i do actually.” i thought i caught an edge to her voice – that i had her for a minute – but she’d stated this all so matter of factly, no derision. and there she was talking about teaching style again. why did teaching style matter so much? what tack to try next? maybe if i kept working the critical angle i could get her mad, and get her to point the finger at someone or some problem instead of all this talk of teaching styles. i remembered what i had read about the k & e completion rates. “if you go with a strict iq level, maybe 10 to 15 percent of students would have the iq levels of k & e students,” i began, “but only one percent or less of students graduate with the k & e certificate. why?” “i think it goes back to that stigma. back when i worked in the one of the k & e schools before they shut them down, my daughter was at a junior high here in calgary. she was in at the guidance office because she was in trouble for mouthing off or something. and she was told – and this counselor didn’t know where i taught – she was told if this behavior keeps up you will be in one of those schools taking k & e and you won’t graduate. from a guidance counselor. when it’s coming from that level, and it’s not only parents who see it as a bad thing to get a k & e certificate, but other staff members see it as well, and kids don’t want to do it. so you end up with kids who go into -2 levels and aren’t able to do it and end up dropping out, maybe they end up taking the 2 level three times and are seen as behavior problems for not handing in their work. but it’s never seen as ‘if they were in k & e they could experience some success.’” number soup again. i could only assume that this “-2’ was the next level up from k & e. “does there have to be a k & e certificate?” i asked. i was thinking maybe if there was no certificate, the system would have no choice but to make more room for slow learners in the diploma route. were the slow learners hiding, or being hidden, in this obscure series of classes? williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 27 “i don’t know,” she admitted. “it’s a hard call,” she said after a pause. “i don’t even know if a high school diploma is even a necessary document. these kids, any kids, here’s what they’ve been able to do. a transcript will show these are the courses they’ve had successes in. at the end of the day, does it matter if they get a piece of paper signifying graduation too? i do think it’s important if they have a high school diploma that they continue to have a k & e certificate or some kind of completion certificate so these students that struggle in the so-called regular program are seeing an alternative with an end in sight. but i really don’t think either the certificate or diploma should be there. this is what they’re capable of doing, these are the courses they’ve shown success in. the transcripts themselves are enough information for colleges and universities and employers to decide if students qualify.” this conversation was taking on the pattern of an epic film. it started with a battle, offered a bit of hope, and then a dash of disappointment, and now here i was getting excited again about what she was telling me. school closures, bad stigma, and the idea of no diploma, i was feeling that same thrill of danger i began to feel in the library. it was more than the stories giving me this sense, i realized. i felt as though i was being watched. i looked around. a shady figure in a trench coat was watching me through the window of the coffee shop. noticing me noticing him, he began to retreat up the road. my conversation with colleen birdseye was important, but if i could catch this guy, i thought, it might break the case wide open. if i could find out who’d been out to get me ever since i typed ‘slow learner’ into the library catalogue, then maybe i could find out if someone was out to get slow learners – not only letting them fall through the cracks, but pushing them through. in twenty seconds i explained i had just realized i was late for another appointment, apologized for cutting this session short, and ran out of the coffee shop. it was snowing lightly again when i got outside, like salt falling from a gummed-up shaker. three streetlights up, half a block ahead, i saw that i hadn’t lost him. the trench-coated figure was pacing efficiently up the street. looking down for a second at his footprints in the skiff of snow that covered the sidewalk, i noted with surprise that they looked perfectly linear and every step appeared to cover exactly the same amount of distance. for several blocks, up streets, around corners, i strode to catch up, finding it hard to match the pace without breaking into a conspicuous sprint. for a while i remembered myself, taking in the road numbers, mailboxes, weird buildings, any other mental bread crumbs i might leave to find my way back. it grew too difficult as i strained to keep up. just as i started to close the distance between us, i skidded on some ice on the sidewalk, and fell on my backside and elbow. cursing, i rose to my feet and looked for my quarry. he had escaped into the shadows as i was falling. i looked around – i had lost my bearings too. with a few wrong turns, i made my way back to the coffee shop, walking away from the dimly lit sub-streets towards the bright traffic lights and billboards of the main drag. colleen birdseye’s car was gone. i heard a rattling in my shoe, and for a second i imagined my little toe had broken off in the cold, until reason took over and i understood a pebble had probably found its way in during my failed pursuit. i reached my car, scraped the window with the almost maxed out credit card, and drove to my hotel. i staggered wearily past a dozing desk clerk and down the hall. fumbling, and then finally inserting the key card correctly with frozen fingers, i made it into my room. i got under all my blankets, still wearing a suit soiled with the dirt of three falls during the day. i briefly pondered having a drink from the bottle in my suitcase before exhaustion bested williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 28 me, just like the library assailant, williamson’s friend, and the fleet-footed stalker had, and i fell asleep. to be continued… acknowledgements i would like to gratefully acknowledge drs. jim field, nancy moules, jim paul, and chris gilham; professor nick hodge, tracy williamson, em williamson, beth tobiasz, pat calon; all of the participants in the interviews conducted for this research; and my students. references alberta education (1989). integrated occupational program: manual for administrators, counsellors and teachers: interim 1989. edmonton, ab, canada: crown in right of alberta. https://archive.org/stream/integrateoccupation89albe#page/14/mode/2up. alberta education (2006). alberta education: selecting accommodations and strategies. edmonton, ab, canada: government of alberta. alberta education (2008). information manual for knowledge and employability courses. edmonton, ab, canada: alberta education curriculum branch. http://education.alberta.ca/ media/524889/infomanual.pdf. alberta education (2009a). setting the direction for special education in alberta: a review of the literature. edmonton, ab, canada: alberta education. alberta education (2009b). setting the direction towards a system re-design. edmonton, ab, canada: alberta education. alberta education (2010). accountability pillar results for annual education results reports (aerr), 2008, 2009, 2010. edmonton, ab, canada: alberta education. alberta education (2012). special education coding criteria. edmonton, ab, canada: government of alberta. alberta education (2014). provincially authorized senior high school courses and course codes including k–12 withdrawn courses and programs. edmonton, ab, canada: alberta education. https://education.alberta.ca/media/9118204/ coursecodes2014.pdf. calgary board of education (2004). advanced placement. calgary, ab, canada: cbe program renewal and media services. chandler, raymond (1940). farewell my lovely. new york, ny: ballantine. chandler, raymond (1964). the lady in the lake, in the raymond chandler omnibus. new williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 3 29 york, ny: alfred a. knopf, project gutenberg canada. http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/chandlerr-ladyinthelake/chandlerr-ladyinthelake-00-h.html chandler, raymond (1992). the big sleep. new york, ny: first vintage 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(2008). manhood, modernity and crime fiction. in p. stoneley & c. weinstein (eds.) a concise companion to american fiction 1900 – 1950 (pp. 94 112). oxford, uk: blackwell. corresponding author: joan m humphries, rn phd university of victoria, camosun college email: humphriesj@camosun.bc.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 8, 2018 the author(s) 2018 my life flashed before my eyes: hermeneutic reflections on time joan m. humphries abstract the everyday experience of time can be disrupted by the events in our lives, and disquiet notions of predictability about the passage of time. in this work, i describe an alternate experience of time passing that occurred in the context of a car accident. the phrase "i saw my life flash before my eyes" situates the varietal experience of time in human existence, and invites the use of chosen hermeneutic tenets to explore the phenomena. i describe the mysterious personal experience of time associated with the accident, as well as varietal experiences of time that occur for people during hospitalization, relating to experiences of nursing practice. the tension associated with the temptation to apply scientific explanations to metaphysical questions, and the inevitability of accepting ongoing wonder about the mysteries of time, are featured throughout. keywords time, hermeneutics, nursing, philosophy, human science, metaphysics several years ago, when crossing the street as a pedestrian, a car struck me. i learned later that the driver was 18-years-old, and was distracted by conversation with her boyfriend, who was sitting in the passenger seat. as a result, she did not see me crossing the street, and because she was travelling so quickly, i did not see her in time to get out of the way, either. the important caveat to this account is that i am fine. i often wonder about the young girl who accidentally hit me. i imagine that she was a new driver, much like my own children, who were also new drivers at the time of the accident. i suspect she was distressed by the accident, just as i readily acknowledge my own distress. however, the most significant source of contemplation for me involves a peculiar experience of time that permeates my memory of the moment of impact, humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 2 when i had the experience of having my life flash before my eyes. the influence of the trauma to which i refer has appeared and subsided over the years. the meaning of the accident to the fullness of my life experience reveals and conceals itself in interesting and unexpected ways. i think, in retrospect, that i was somewhat oblivious to the physical trauma of being hit by a car in the weeks and months that followed. instead, i remember somewhat eagerly re-telling anyone who was interested, that in the process of the collision – the time between the impact and the time i landed on the pavement, “my life flashed before my eyes.” months after the accident, a hermeneutic mentor encouraged me to write about that experience, but it is only now, after several years have passed, that i attempt to ascribe meaning to that strange phenomena. i ask myself why it has taken so long. i suspect that it had to do with waiting until i had a sense of how to approach the experience. it has taken time to feel ready, but i am now prepared to employ selected tenets of hermeneutic thought to guide the possibility for deepened understanding. elements of time, awareness of time, and personal readiness associated with the healing character of time, emerge in the exploration. i am aware, as i use the phrase “i saw my life flashing before my eyes,” that many others have experienced what i did, since that phrase is not one that i constructed. i borrow the phrase, because it is a way that others have described the “reality-defying” event of having life and time manifest in another realm. it was almost as if a form of time travel occurred during the experience i am about to describe. certainly, the depth of thought that occurred, and the images that appeared for me in those few seconds that made up the event, defy notions of linear time, “real time,” and the workings of the clock. some context of the incident is important. my husband and i were visiting the city of my childhood home on the rather somber occasion of having a final family reunion with my elderly mother, who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. my three children were all students at distant universities and we had arranged for them to fly to see their grandmother for the last time. as i crossed the street on that auspicious day, i had just visited my mother in hospital, and was about to greet my daughter who was arriving from the airport. she was to meet me at the hotel that was just across the street from the hospital. the accident i remember waiting for the light to turn green. there were a number of people waiting with me on this busy downtown street, replete with six lanes of traffic to traverse. when the light turned, i stepped onto the pavement, walking briskly in anticipation of seeing my daughter, and glancing to the right towards the hotel, attempting to catch sight of her arrival. behind me, at that moment, i heard the forever-anonymous male voice yell, “hey!” interestingly, the memory of his warning did not arise in my recollection until weeks later. that detail, which was not initially accessible, wormed its way back into my recollection after some time had passed. but warn me, he did, although it was clearly too late, for immediately, the impact of the car, coming from the left, assaulted my being with a totality, and an intensity that remains difficult to articulate. the experience of a car crashing into my body was an overwhelming sense of defenselessness and resignation that permeated my being. i experienced an embodied understanding of the body’s fragility – of my body’s fragility in a moment in the history of the universe –and i felt an humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 3 association with some kind of existential “mocking.” it was as if a voice was reminding me of my hubris, and the inevitability of the end of existence. there was an urgent moment of reckoning with…my creator? the universe? the fates? so formidable was the impact that i succumbed immediately to the inevitability of the event. i do not remember the pain of the collision as much as i remember the acknowledgement that this would be the occasion of the end of my life. i saw, in that instant, the experience of my life, almost as if it were displayed on a multi-dimensional collage before me. the near-death experience i had as a young child in a drowning accident scripts my earliest memory. in the moment of impact, i mused about the “stolen” nature of my life, since that childhood tragedy shaped a worldview that i later associated with “survivor guilt.” in the moment of impact, my thoughts went to that occasion, the marker of my beginnings. the next thoughts were for my children, gathered on the occasion of a family farewell to a beloved grandparent. but i saw them as the children that i had raised, not only the vision of young adults that permeated the occasion of our reunion. their childhood essences were part of my projection, and their lives, too, presented themselves as beings that i knew as infants, children, and now adults. i grieved for them, for they would be incredulous at my death, and i lamented that the unexpected nature of the accident would traumatize them for the rest of their adult lives. i thought of my husband, ever cautious and careful, who would be frustrated that i did not see the car coming, and look to reasons as to why this accident occurred and why it should not have. i pictured my dear mother, lying in her hospital bed such a short distance away, in the hospital where i was born. i could have seen, had i been able to focus, the room of my birth, the site of the old case room. i had always known where to spot the room at the hospital where i was born, and in this suspended instant, i visualized the ironic cycle that comprised of both the beginning and the end of my life in perfect circuitous proximity. i pictured my mother’s bewilderment, and her thoughts for my entire family, robbed of their mother/spouse/sister. mom would be sad to have a child’s death precede her own. i knew, too, that she would reconcile the event as god’s will and prepare to greet me in the afterlife. there was a flash of personal disappointment, too, for my untimely demise would mean a lost opportunity to begin my doctoral work, since i had just learned that my application to begin a phd had been accepted. i remember the irritation of contemplating a project left unfinished. while all of these thoughts whirled through my head i was only dispassionately aware of what was happening to my body in the physical world. bursts of visual images accompanied the assault, including a peek at the driver– a terrified looking girl at the wheel, her face displaying the shock and horror of what had transpired because of her distraction. i sensed the feeling of flying through the air, seeing my life, and my body, from a distanced perspective, and i marveled at the random nature of my departure. then, there was communion with the ground. i glimpsed the undercarriage of the car, and the knowledge that i would now be run over. it was at that moment that i mourned the loss of my life, and the absurdity that it would be this way that my life should end. from start to finish, this event could not have lasted more than three or four seconds, and yet, i know with curious assurance that the thoughts i described occurred with the acuity that i recount. it was as if my life flashed before my eyes in those few seconds, uncovering more than would humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 4 ever be possible in real time, but parading before me, nonetheless, with surprising depth and complexity. by way of completing my story, i was, in the end, not run over. i had landed on the pavement, on my side, in time for the driver to stop. at that point, there was a deadening and confusing silence for what seemed, again, to defy notions of time. i lay on the pavement waiting for someone to say: “call an ambulance.” instead, after what seemed to be an interminable period of inaction, i heard a fragile voice from afar repeating over and over “are you ok? are you ok?” i imagine, in retrospect, that it was the voice of the young driver. the trauma in her voice, in my recollection, was palpable. i was unable to respond since the pain associated with the accident had now announced itself with unquestionable authority. still i waited for someone to say, “call an ambulance.” and still, there was no move to do so. from the distance, i heard a voice say, “turn her over.” the de-humanizing reference to “her” was not lost on me, since i longed for someone to approach me, the person on the pavement in that place and time, hold my hand, and offer connection. instead, i croaked “no, leave me be. i shouldn’t be moved.” i had processing to do, lying on the pavement. for one thing, i had to find a way to cope with the worst pain i have ever experienced. more importantly, though, i can also honestly confess, that in addition to dealing with the searing pain, i indulged in the need to savor the incredible gift i had been given. part of me was positively giddy at the realization that for the second time since the drowning accident that signified the beginning of my memories, i had narrowly escaped, on this day, the end of all memories. i knew that whatever injuries i had sustained would pale against the alternative possibility of the death that i had accepted as my fate, only seconds ago. had it all occurred in a far-off realm, in a parallel universe, where time takes on an alien dimension? the simultaneous experience of overwhelming pain and glorious giddiness are an interesting pairing to contemplate, but it was my reality as i lay on the pavement, musing about the fleeting nature of existence, and the reprieve from the inevitable that had blessed me on that day. after what seemed to be a ten-minute lapse, but which was likely under a minute, i heard someone finally say, “we’d better call an ambulance.” after what seemed to be a thirty-minute wait, but which was likely only five minutes, the ambulance arrived. hermeneutics and time “how did it get so late so soon?” ― dr. seuss why is it important to explore my alien experience of time, which appeared at a critical juncture of my life, and presented as an unrecognizable and unsettling perception? grondin (2003) asked “can the interpretative-the hermeneutic-really be overcome?” (p. 12). his question is thought provoking, for it implies that interpretation occupies a very basic aspect of our human approach to understanding, and in my case, the desire to understand meanings associated with my strange experience of time. heideggerian language suggests that in the fullness of dasein – our existence we are unable to avoid interpreting the facticity into which we are “thrown” in the world-thatis-already-there. in other words, the everyday realities of our circumstances will always provide the backdrop for our inevitable interpretations. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/61105.dr_seuss humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 5 the alternate experience of time has the potential to disrupt the security of our everydayness, and beckons an attempt to rationalize, or “scientificize” the disquiet. what scientific explanation might there be for such an uncommon experience of time? did i hit my head and not know it? did i dream it? have i embellished the memory over time? heidegger decries the yearning to ascribe universal truths to metaphysical questions. in fact, heidegger’s being and time (originally published in 1927) had, as its central impetus, a desire to “alert us to the radical temporality of all being and destroy all illusions about supratemporal permanence” (grondin, 2003, p. 2). the centrality of heidegger’s message stemmed from a desire to launch philosophical thought away from the attempt to create universal solutions for unsolved metaphysical problems (grondin, 2003; sherratt, 2006). the unlikeliness of finding a scientific “explanation” for the mysteries associated with time passing, therefore, are remote, and perhaps address grondin’s query as to whether the interpretative can be “overcome.” would it be possible for me to overcome the temptation to interpret, in scientific or other contexts, what it meant to glimpse a foreign dimension of time? would it be possible for me to dismiss the event without ongoing contemplation about its peculiarity? the influence of the event on my life, and my attempt to interpret meaning in this writing, suggests that i cannot. i am drawn to heideggerian and gadamerian explications of time, wherein there is a suggestion that time does not exist in a linear or chronological way, but rather in an “altogether” way, where dimensions of time present as one. heidegger (1927/2010) stated: “in the everyday ‘just passing through life’ that takes care, dasein never understands itself as running along in a continuously enduring succession of sheer ‘nows’” (p. 390). in that statement, heidegger emphasized that dasein accepts all temporal interpretations, but embraces them in the fullness of existence. it seems, then, there is more to understand than the “succession of nows” such as the listing of events or the cataloguing of statistics. instead, the promise for hermeneutic interpretation is to rest and pause, allowing the meaning to come into view. it is possible to understand being, then, as comprising, in each moment, our past, present, and future. heidegger (1927/2010) extended that conceptualization by asking, “does time itself reveal itself as the horizon of being?” (p. 415, author’s italics). heidegger’s question draws attention to the intractable relationship between being and time, and reveals with succinct luminescence, the vision of our existence as experienced by time. heidegger also hinted at the impossibility of conceptualizing time as a linear framework, by suggesting: initially, time presents itself as an uninterrupted succession of nows. every now is already either a just now or a right-away. if the characterization of time keeps primarily and exclusively to this succession, then, in principle, no beginning and end can be found in it as such. every last now, as a now, is always already a right-away that is no longer, thus it is time in the sense of the no-longer-now, of the past. every first now is always a just-now-not –yet, thus it is time in the sense of the not-yet-now, the ‘future.’ time is thus endless ‘in both directions.’ (p. 403, author’s italics, author’s quotation marks) the notion of one’s life, as part of the “history of the universe,” might therefore be understood in a way that defies grandiose connotations associated with such a statement, but rather, alludes to the infinite characterization of time, made manifest in the context of our existence, and our being. humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 6 the notion of life “flashing” before our eyes, summons a certain alignment with the “flash” of hermeneutic understanding to which caputo (1987) referred, when he described the lighteninglike occasion of understanding. blattner (2006), too, referenced the “altogether” gasp of recognition-the fusion of horizonsthat accompanies understanding and meaning. there is familiarity with those notions, and it is possible to reflect on what happens when we interpret a flash of insight into the course of everyday navigations. the prospect is also elusive, since an altogether gasp of understanding can be hard won. it seems that, in the use of the word “flash,” there are implications of immediacy. furthermore, in all hermeneutic conceptualizations of existence (dasein) there are existential implications regarding heidegger’s suggestions of human finitude. understandings of finitude underscore the meaning of the “flash,” which is always experienced in the context of our finite existence. the flash can be understood, too, by uncovering dimensions that transcend the limitations of linear assumptions of starts and finishes, timelines, and other familiar conceptions of time passing. a multidimensional “mind map” thus replaces the vision of a “roadmap” in my conceptualizations. deliberation the meaning of my reflection about the accident then, is not at all clear, but this insight fits well with the general incentive of hermeneutic reflection. in other words, my exploration need not be an impulse to reconcile, or to experience closure about this mysterious occurrence of time, nor is it an impulse to solve metaphysical queries that i distil into the question: how can time be experienced, in the everyday, with such variation, given the finite and static ticking of a clock that marks its passage? caputo (1987) reminds us, “the point is to make life difficult, not impossible – to face up to the difference and difficulty which enter into what we think and do and hope for not to grind them to a halt” (p. 7). it seems, then, that there is purpose in dwelling in the difficult questions that encompass our human passage through life, including the invitation to remain open to the mysteries that elude place and time. notably, the process of hermeneutic interpretation, and the skill embedded in that process, must not amount to abstract theorizing (crotty, 2010; laverty, 2003). as gadamer (1976/2004) stated: “for the interpreter to let himself be guided by the things themselves is obviously not a matter of a single, ‘conscientious’ decision, but is ‘the first, last, and constant task’” (p. 269). husserl’s plea to remain focused on “the things themselves” (the lived experience as opposed to theoretical abstraction) supports heidegger’s proposition that our lives are intelligible only through the interpretation of the everyday (dreyfus, 1992). to repeat, the notion of dasein invites a view of existence that is finite, but non-linear. the possibilities for understanding such an idea include seeing the “now” as a composite of experience. understanding time by invoking heidegger’s attention to finitude, historical situatedness, and a sense of “running toward death” (caputo, 1989; grondin, 2003), as well as heidegger’s tragic conception of dasein, serve as a “penetrating glimpse into the radical temporality and angst of human existence” (grondin, 2003, p. 145). these are ideas that capture a perspective of time that resonates with the experience of seeing one’s life flash before one’s eyes, for in those moments, the race towards death appears comprehensible. as such, inexplicable presentations of time serve as lived examples of the perception of time that humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 7 heidegger explored. they are but a glimpse, however, and punctuate dasein infrequently, creating, perhaps the temptation to explain, interpret, and understand them when they arise. the precipice of understanding i believe the experience, and the recollection of it, uncovered a space for me to consider other time-related understandings of dasein, relating to my everyday nursing practice. hermeneutic scholar and philosopher, dr. walter brogan, suggested that living on the threshold – being always open to possibility is a position that reflects the need for careful contemplation, in order to savor the dialogical space that defines the threshold. this liminal space, in turn, creates a precipice for infinite contemplation about meaning (dr. walter brogan, personal communication, june 9, 2017). for example, while practicing nursing in the clinical setting, i can recall countless episodes where the issue of time, in people’s experiences, created dimensions of disquiet. persons waking from a general anesthetic will “lose” awareness of the several hours that passed during the surgery, and may worriedly perceive that they are waking before the surgery has begun, or that they are awakening during the surgery. in another recovery-room experience, i recall the poignancy of a woman waking from her anesthetic with tears streaming down her face. in the course of her short anesthetized procedure, she had “seen” and visited extensively with her deceased son. the assurance that she held about the reality of the encounter left us both altered. it seems that many new mothers, when clutching their newborns for the first time, are engaging in a trajectory of that infants’ existence, as though their child’s life is unfolding before them in those first instants, rife with imaginings and projections of what the child’s existence will entail. these, and so many other varietal perceptions of time, whether time accelerates, grinds, or is altogether “missing,” are part of the human health and healing experience, so much so, that the mysteries may appear as commonplace to health care providers, who become familiar with the phenomenon as everyday observations. however, individuals who have experienced the wonder of life flashing before their eyes, or lose time, or find themselves relegated to another place where time takes on a different meaning, may be disquieted, and struggle to reconcile an inexplicable experience. the tendency for caregivers may be to theorize about patients’ agonizing experience of the slow passage of time, and search for scientific explanations about such metaphysical wonderings. in the moments that i awaited the ambulance, for example, the torment of enduring time reflected an experience of time that alternated, again, from the cornucopia of images that were compressed into the preceding moment. i continue to muse about the contrasting projections of time that accompanied the entire experience. nurse scholars have considered the meaning of time in the context of the human health experience. for example, nursing theorist rosemary parse’s theory of human becoming served as a framework to explore the phenomena of time passing (thoun, 2002). thoun pointed to the advantage of seeing time as a “unitary” phenomenon, in contrast with “newtonian” visions of time, around which time is viewed as objective, linear, and continuous. thoun suggested: the newtonian notion of time subverts the phenomenology of lived experience and quality of life. nurses who strive for understanding of lived experiences and loving humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 8 participation with others in practice are uniquely positioned to provide an opportunity for release from the restrictions of linear time. while each person defines and lives time passing in her or his own way, the awe and wonder of rhythmic, unitary time offers the possibility of experience that is rich with process and possibility, mystery and surprise. (p. 318) with these words, thoun (2002) locates possibilities for nursing practice within a “unitary” vision of time, aligning with heideggerian notions, wherein time transcends the series of “nows” and assumes understandings of time as contingent on a particular conception of human existence, wherein existential meaning is possible in each moment of interaction. there are, therefore, fascinating possibilities for each participant, in each moment, in the context of the health-caring experience. the attempt to articulate phenomena of time, using the conventional descriptions of past, present, and future, are limiting, and summon a frontier wherein alternative expectations of time can present as a way to enrich human health encounters. thoun emphasized that nurses enjoy considerable opportunity to release the restrictions of linear time, in the context of the health and healing experience. however, caputo (1987) cautioned: finally, we come up against the mystery itself, the unencompassable depth in both things and our (non)selves. and then we are brought up short. that, it seems to me, is where hermeneutics leads us: not to a conclusion which gives comfort, but to a thunderstorm, not to a closure, but to a dis-closure, and openness toward what cannot be encompassed, where we lose our breath and are stopped in our tracks, at least momentarily, for it always belongs to our condition to remain on the way. (p. 214) there are, therefore, few comforting strategies or practicalities associated with the work of contemplating the mysteries of time, but rather a commitment to remain, as caputo (1987) described, “on the way” to infinite interpretations and possibilities. it bears echoing that the expression of “life flashing before my eyes,” has a tradition of understanding from others in countless other contexts. recognizing the expression of a life flashing before one’s eyes is therefore familiar in our consciousness as a possibility that awaits for meaning to come into view. indeed, the promise for hermeneutic interpretation is to rest and pause. i remain on the precipice of understanding, knowing that this extraordinary experience is embedded in my historicity, my tradition, and occupies the status of remaining, always, “on the way.” connecting with the everyday in the following poem, tolkien (1954/2001, pp. 83-84) touches on the multiplicity of time, and the perspective of “self” in the context of time. self becomes the mediator of time spent; conjuring memories that relive the deep comfort that can permeate the everyday. in those moments, there is a suggestion that notions of past, present, and future conjoin – that one can contemplate the historic while simultaneously anticipating future contentment. an interesting insight looms. as was the case for me during those few seconds following the impact of the car, the voice of the fireside philosopher in the poem below contemplates the end of his existence with curious acceptance in the midst of concurrent deliberations, capturing with simplistic humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 9 elegance, the existential character of our perceptions. the poet celebrates the textures of life by referencing past, present, and future, as well as the inevitability of death, and hints at the possibilities for perceiving the simultaneity of time. i sit beside the fire and think of all that i have seen of meadow flowers and butterflies in summers that have been of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair i sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that i shall ever see for still there are so many things that i have never seen in every wood in every spring there is a different green i sit beside the fire and think of people long ago and people that will see a world that i shall never know but all the while i sit and think of times there were before i listen for returning feet and voices at the door ― j.r.r. tolkien (fellowship of the ring) what mysteries accompany the seasons of our existence, and how easily these exquisite moments of deep existential awareness are subsumed by the machinations of the everyday! such is the stuff of hermeneutic notions of aletheia, wherein emerging meaning surfaces at unexpected junctures, only to recede again, when the everydayness of life assumes its stature. aletheia, or the event of revealing and concealing (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2014), presents rhythmic companionship to discovery that may surface, disappear, and become replaced by something new. heidegger (1927/2010) hinted at the elusive nature of discovery by saying: this nearest and elemental way of dasein encountering the world goes so far that even one’s own dasein initially becomes ‘discoverable’ by looking away from its ‘experiences’ https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/656983.j_r_r_tolkien humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 10 and the ‘center of its actions’ or by not yet ‘seeing’ them at all. (p. 116, author’s italics, author’s quotation marks) i return, always, to the gift that accompanied my unusual experience. by looking away from rationality, and linear notions of time and existence during those few seconds when my life flashed before my eyes, i am able to glimpse the unexpected and unplanned profundity of encountering cherished individuals, meaningful life events, hopes, dreams, and disappointments. the experience will undoubtedly alter the way i conceive my existence for the rest of my days. however, i am not served with a conclusive offering. rather, evolving understanding is contingent on ongoing unrest, as well as enduring openness, about the mystery that accompanies a foray into an unfamiliar dimension, and an enigmatic human experience of time. references blattner, w. (2006). heidegger's being and time (1st ed.). new york, ny: continuum international publishing group. caputo, j.d. (1987). radical hermeneutics: repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project (1st ed.). bloomington, in: indiana university press. crotty, m. (2010). the foundations of social research: meaning and perspective in the research process (3rd ed.). london, uk: sage. dreyfus, h. (1992). division 1. being-in-the-world: a commentary on heidegger's being and time (1st ed., pp. 1-9). cambridge, ma, london, uk: the mit press. grondin, j. (2003). hans-georg gadamer: a biography (joel weinsheimer, trans., 1st ed.). new haven, ct: yale university press. heidegger, m. (1927/2010). being and time (e. stambagh trans.). albany, ny: suny. laverty, s. (2003). hermeneutic phenomenology and phenomenology: a comparison of historical and methodological considerations. international journal of qualitative methods, 2(3), 1-29. retrieved january 7, 2018 from https://sites.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/2_3final/pdf/laverty.pdf moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. sherratt, y. (2006). continental philosophy of social science (1st ed.). new york, ny: cambridge university press. tolkien, j. r. r. (1954/2001). the ring goes south. in the lord of the rings. the fellowship of the ring: book two (3rd ed., pp. 83-84). new york, ny: harpercollins. https://sites.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/2_3final/pdf/laverty.pdf humphries journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 1 11 thoun, d. (2002). time passing: a parse research method study. nursing science quarterly, 15(4), 318-326. doi: 10.1177/089431802236797 corresponding author: david w jardine, phd retired, university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics april 16, 2018 the author(s) 2018 “asleep in my sunshine chair” david w. jardine abstract this paper takes up themes from kevin aho's (2018) paper and links its explorations of the history of neurasthenia to the nature and aim of hermeneutic inquiry itself. keywords neurasthenia, hermeneutic method, hermeneutic topics, aletheia, energeia ("aliveness"), depression, naturalistic reductionism rifling through two-hundred-year-old diaries, unfurling bundles of love-letters like flowers, saying every name in an orphanage registry under my breath, getting lost in a farmer’s field, gingerly lifting leaves long folded with perfumey motes, falling asleep in my sunshine chair, drooling spittle puddles onto a crackled map of nunsmoor. the stories i stumbled across in the archives were often painful, shocking, and occasionally joyous. at first, they seem far away but after a short while they begin to move closer (or maybe it’s we who are moving?) and i begin to comprehend, just barely, a great aliveness. (dawson, 2013/2015) “the joy of recognition” kevin aho’s (2018) “neurasthenia revisited: on medically unexplained syndromes and the value of hermeneutic medicine,” was a real pleasure to read – that odd scholarly pleasure of not only delicious and meticulous detail, but, with this, feeling folds of intimate, unspoken inheritances peeling back and away, almost from the inside out. “the joy of recognition is the jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 7 2 joy of knowing more than is already familiar” (gadamer, 1989, p. 114) while, in the same breath, experiencing the familiar now almost-embarrassingly brought to life, enlivened, by this “more.” that this particular inheritance of neurasthenia can wake up and i can feel how it has always already “draw[n me] into its path” (gadamer, 2007, p. 198) is both startling and humiliating. it “begin[s] to move closer” and then suddenly jumps up, animate and feral and afoot. i wake with a start from my sunshine chair. that i’ve been long familiar with what is wonderfully called in old english grevoushede makes reading about “the deficiency or exhaustion of . . . ‘nerve force’” (aho, 2018, p. 1) a bit like reading an historically detailed, almost-autobiographical reading of how my own life might have already been lived “beyond my wanting and doing” (gadamer, 1989, p. xxviii). darning needles i’ve just been writing another piece and exploring, in part, an old term used by my grandmother to name dragonflies: “darning needles.” this, in fact, originates in old, shall we say, “folktales” meant, i expect, to simply frighten or reprimand: the devil’s darning needles . . . sew up the mouths of scolding women, saucy children, and profane men. even more sinister is the belief that the devil’s darning needle will enter a person’s ear and penetrate the brain. (mitchell & lasswell, 2005, p. 20) the reference to dragonflies and darning has to do with their hovering, criss-cross, back and forth movement over open fields like the darning of the toes of socks that i’m old enough to recall my grandmother hunched over. weaving. latin textus, now re-read in reverie. “dragonflies” was, for me as a child (and lingering since), enough of a name to keep me rather alert. something about silent, hovering needles, though, was a different matter. the point was received as a boy even though the folktale history was never mentioned and probably not even explicitly known, even though it haunted the tale being told. reading about it recently wasn’t exactly a surprise, and yet it was. the joy of knowing more. i mention this because of the nebulous ways in which the images and ancestries and mixed and muddled language of the life-world, as kevin aho demonstrates, find their way down to us, more often than not, apparently (but not actually) untethered from the links that bore them here. hence the work of hermeneutics. many of us might have obscure memories of our forbearers talking about delicate or weak nervous conditions, of “the miseries” or the like, or, as my wife’s grandmother called one malady “weakness in the body” -full of that now-strange, victorian distancing and repression. there is even an old, apocryphal joke/non-joke about victorians covering up bare table legs with linens for fear of offense (the guardian, n.d.). that distancing that is caught in the objectifying phrase “the body” is itself a mixed and muddled sign of a sort of nervous exhaustion the remembering of which moves it closer and enlivens. reading aho’s piece also reminded me a bit of reading alice miller’s for your own good (1989), and discovering already-all-too-familiar images of the punishing of willful (“saucy”) jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 7 3 children – breaking their will, darning up their mouths -found in late-19th century “black pedagogy” manuals: it goes without saying that pedagogues not infrequently awaken and help to swell a child’s conceit by foolishly emphasizing his merits. only humiliation can help here. (from the encyclopedia of pedagogy, 1851, as cited in miller, 1989, p. 22) one of the vile products of a misguided philanthropy is the idea that, in order to obey gladly, the child has to understand the reasons why an order is given, and that blind obedience offends human dignity. i do not know how we can continue to speak of obedience once reasons are given. these [reasons] are meant to convince the child, and, once convinced, he is not obeying us but merely the reasons we have given him. respect. . .is then replaced by a self-satisfied allegiance to his own cleverness. (the encyclopedia of pedagogy, 1852, as cited in miller, 1989, p. 40) this would have been the imaginal atmosphere in which my grandmother was raised and taught and thereby my parents and thereby, well, here we are. in the work i have done in schools, these images are both repressed and rife even though we think of ourselves in education as encouraging precisely aliveness, independence, and thoughtfulness. a link lingers here of regarding a fear of the wild, and the need to domesticate, to tame and tether. bubbling nearby this, of course, are the root fears of “aliveness” that have led to our current ecological circumstances. this sort of unravelling and explicating in aho’s work is precisely one of the goals of hermeneutic work in general. we can easily be unwittingly held fast in the binds of these ancestral tethers even though – perhaps especially when and because – they have fallen from memory, fallen from view, become sewn up and hence “unspeakable.” “insight . . . always involves an escape from something that had deceived us and held us captive” (gadamer, 1989, p. 357). it should be noted, however, that gadamer’s point is more complex than it might seem, perhaps more complex than he intended. the deception is not that what has captured us is simply false and that the work of hermeneutics is to disprove something. the deception is that what has captured us in nets of numbing familiarity and goes-without-saying-ness is ontologically reified into what is presumed to be simply “the way things are” (aho does a nice job of exploring some of this in his explorations of “naturalism” and the nature of “scientific/biological reductionism”). it is this capture itself that is false – the amnesia-like forgetting, the sleepy taken-for-granted-ness that can lead to believing, for example, that only a biological/medical description is a description of what is. the deceit is in thinking that what is in fact a possible way of giving an account of some phenomenon is not only necessary (i.e., simply “what is,” simply “objective”) but precisely thereby exclusionary of all other ways of making sense of our suffering. that is the captivity that hermeneutic insight aims to free us from. in that freedom, biological and naturalistic accounts do not disappear in favor of “lived-experience.” rather, these very accounts finally appear as just and precisely that: accounts of our lives that arise in relations of dependent co-arising with specific and identifiable domains our language, our hopes, our jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 7 4 presumptions, our time, and in light of inherited regimes of methodology, warrant and accountability. energeia and aletheia so, in reading aho’s lovely piece, something popped up that i have found to be perennial in hermeneutic work: that the topic of a hermeneutic study (in this case, the long and involved, livewire history of neurasthenia), and something about the nature of hermeneutic understanding itself tend to have an often-secret affinity. i can only sketch some speculative ideas here, and beg forgiveness in this regard. i am on the verge of being guilty of avoiding precisely the sort of exemplary and careful work found in kevin aho’s work that led me here in the first place. one of the threads of hermeneutic insight is that human consciousness tends towards a certain sleepiness and lethargy regarding the ancestral currents that “bear us forward in their fine, accurate arms” (wallace, 1989, p. 49). lethargy, lethe, forgetfulness, lethality. a certain “weakness” (greek, astheneia) and heaviness and blandness and flatness and closure, where potentiality, possibility, interpretability, questioning, and venture, seem not only too exhausting to contemplate but, worse yet, simply uncalled-for in light of what moribundly “is.” it was martin heidegger (1962) who first gave contemporary hermeneutics hints of the numbing effects of what he called “idle talk,” (p. 211 ff.) “levelling down” (p. 127) and the stitched-up-mouths effects of the “it goes without saying” and “everybody knows” familiarities that come from the sways of the “they-self” (p. 163 ff.; see jardine, 2018). in light of such interpretive weakness and weakening, the world itself seems precisely equally not in need of my own interpretive energetics. as with depression, this is not merely an internal pathology or state, but is experienced as precisely in sync with a depressed world that has no openings, no hidden bloodlines and memory. as james hillman (2006, p. 30; see jardine, 2016) put it so deftly, “sickness is now ‘out there’” and any attempts to then simply turn “inwards” and cure ourselves of our grievousness can end up leaving in place an objectified codification of our suffering in the ways and means of the world itself. differently put, and following george m. beard’s (1881, p. vi), insights, “neurasthenia is not the result of some new organic pathology but of ‘modern civilization [itself]’” (aho, 2018, p. 2). so, when we then read “neurasthenia revisited: on medically unexplained syndromes and the value of hermeneutic medicine” we can start to sense that those very closures (of our own pathology and the closure that the world itself invites and promotes and sustains) are themselves open to interpretation, and to the slow unwinding of ancestral threads, of live bloodlines, of movement instead of “sedimented” intransigency and inertness: to use the hermeneutic adage, the world has become open to interpretation [to exactly the extent that i am open to the interpretability of the world]. and here is the great, seemingly paradoxical situation: “keeping ourselves open” and "keeping the world open" (eliade, 1968, p. 139) are the same thing. as we become experienced, having cleaved with affection and made ourselves “roomier,” the world's roominess can be experienced. (jardine, bastock, george, & martin, 2008, p. 53; cited in jardine, 2016a, p. 81) jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 7 5 even the insistent reductionism of naturalism is itself an old wives’ tale oft told and re-told, often precisely as a condescending rebuke to the sauciness, the scolding, the profanity, that can seem to come with hermeneutic insight. and hence the great irony, that the opening of such burgeoning alertness regarding neurasthenia is precisely what tends to fail under the shadowed suffering of neurasthenia itself. that is why, in reading kevin aho’s piece, i found myself searching out this: i take a different approach to the question of what truth, aletheia, or unconcealment, really means. i invoke the concept of energeia here, which has a special value because in dealing with it we are no longer moving in the realm of sentence truth [to which reductionist and naturalistic means and measures might apply]. with this new conceptual word aristotle was able to think a motion [a movement, motility, animation] . . . something like life itself, like being aware, seeing, or thinking. all of these he called “pure energeia.” (gadamer, 2007, p. 213) in an alternate translation, sheila ross (2006, p. 108) renders part of this passage as “something like aliveness itself” and she links it directly to the sort of whiling or “tarrying time” (p. 108; see jardine, 2008; ross & jardine, 2009) requisite of interpretive work. as aho’s piece shows, lingering intently over this long and long-buried history with the sort of loving suspicion of interpretive insight wakes it up and simultaneously wakes up in us our deeply suppressed complicity in its wakes. “it is only through these shared self-interpretations that we can experience and make sense of our suffering” (aho, 2018, p. 12) and, i suggest, this very “making sense” is itself something of an alleviation of precisely that which it studies. it is not just that we can counterweight the reductionist and naturalistic accounts of our ennui with those of living accounts of those living with such matters. in interpretive work, as aho’s piece demonstrates so vividly, those very reductionist and naturalistic accounts themselves come alive. they are not just the inert, dominant accounts of “what is.” instead, we see that they themselves have dependently co-arisen out of (and into) our living, in response to circumstances and streams and forces and hopes and desires. “they begin to move closer,” just as we, now, are moving. reifying reductionism into feigns and sought-for objective permanence is thus foregone in favor of arising and perishing, since even our confidence in and need for such reification comes and goes. “gadamer explains [that] aristotle apparently coined [energiea] in his exploration of the question of the being of becoming” (ross, 2006, p. 107). suffering itself is impermanent as you continually experience whatever suffering is appropriate to you, you absolutely must know how to bring it into the path. if you accept the suffering, you let the basic suffering be and do not stop it, but you never have the suffering of worry that creates discontentment when you focus on the basic suffer. since you are using a method to bring even basic sufferings into the path, you greatly lessen your suffering, so you can bear it. (tsong-kha-pa, 2004, pp. 172-173) jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 7 6 the energeia that comes from the interpretive venture is not just a way to study one’s grevoushede through studying the dependent co-arising of its ins and outs and the intimate body auras of its licks and shifts and criss-crossing darts and darnings. interpreting it can also help ameliorate it to some small degree. even my own decision to not use the phrase “seasonal affective disorder” and to come to deliberately call it, instead, “seasonal affectedness” allowed me, in some small way, to side-step or at least deliberately and consciously interrupt the pathologies of disorder and to more deeply experience how profoundly well-ordered is this seasonal affectedness. “disorder” was simply an added layer of, following tsong-kha-pa, a sort of “secondary suffering” that, in fact, masked and occluded the “basic suffering” and did not allow it to be brought onto the path of interpretation, the path, that is, of un-reifying its grip on me and my grip on it. key to hermeneutic work, then, is that “the concept of substance [permanence, the a=a of objectivism and reductionism] is . . .inadequate. [there is a] radical challenge to thought implicit in this inadequacy” gadamer (1989, p. 242). part of the challenge to thought is that grief and suffering themselves, like depression or nervous exhaustion, have no substance. from robert bly (n.d., p. 11): “grief is not a permanent state; it is a room with a door on the other wall.” our relation to grief is an “infinite task” (george, 2017) taken on by a finite being. but this is not because grief is permanent but precisely because it isn’t. it is, rather, perennial, seasonal in its affectedness. go through the door on the other wall and, sure enough, another waiting room in which things will once again accrete, forgetting will again accrue, and then, also sure enough, coyote will rustle in the bushes outside (see beamer, 2017) and the whole thing, all over again, will jump up unexpectedly when something just happens to happen, slobbering spittle on your face and then biting down hard and fast into the quick of memory. welcome. again. this is the tough work of hermeneutic insight: the first noble truth is all about accepting or welcoming unsatisfactoriness or suffering (dukkha) rather than trying to resist it. you will notice then that its nature is to change and drop away. (sumedho, 2010, p. 37) it drops away, arises, drops away, providing we remain, as steadfastly as we can, ready to escape its capture all over again. so, don’t sit too long in that sunshine chair. you’re apt to fall, like me so very often, again and again, into asleep and spittle drooling, only to be startled all over again. references aho, k. (2018). neurastenia revisited: on medically unexplained syndromes and the value of hermeneutic medicine. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 6. retrieved from https://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/174/pdf jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 7 7 beamer, k. (2017). and coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 10. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5n010b1 beard, g. (1881). american nervousness, its causes and consequences: a supplement to nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia). new york, ny: g. p. putnam’s sons. bly, r. (n.d.). when a hair turns to gold. st. paul, mn: ally press. dawson, r. (2013/2015). from the liner notes to his cd the glass trunk. domino records, rewigcd95. eliade, m. (1968). myth and reality. new york, ny: harper & row. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method. new york, ny: continuum books. gadamer, h-g. (2007). the artwork in word and image: “so true, so full of being.” in h-g. gadamer, the gadamer reader: a bouquet of later writings. (r. palmer, trans. and ed.; pp. 195224). evanston, il: northwestern university press. george, t. (2017). grieving as limit situation of memory: gadamer, beamer, and moules on the infinite task posed by the dead. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 11. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/163 heidegger, m. (1927/1962). being and time. new york, ny: harper and row. hillman, j. (2006). anima mundi: returning the soul to the world. in j. hillman (2006), city and soul (pp. 27-49). putnam, ct: spring publications. jardine, d. (2008). on the while of things. journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies, (4), 1-15. february 2008. on-line: http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/jaaacs/vol4/jardine.htm jardine, d. (2016). “sickness is now ‘out there.’” in d. jardine (2016), in praise of radiant beings: a retrospective path through education, buddhism and ecology (pp. 167-172). charlotte, nc: information age publishing. jardine, d. (2016a). “subjectivity is a distorting mirror.” in d. jardine (2016), in praise of radiant beings: a retrospective path through education, buddhism and ecology (pp. 79-82). charlotte, nc: information age publishing. jardine, d. (2018). two tics. on-line: https://www.academia.edu/36311315/two_tics.pdf jardine, d., bastock, m., george, j., & martin, j. (2008). “cleaving with affection”: on grain elevators and the cultivation of memory. in d. jardine, p. clifford, & s. friesen (eds.), back to http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5n010b1  http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/163 http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/jaaacs/vol4/jardine.htm https://www.academia.edu/36311315/two_tics.pdf jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 7 8 the basics of teaching and learning: "thinking the world together" (2nd ed.; pp. 11-58). new york, ny: routledge. miller, a. (2002). for your own good: hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence. toronto, on, canada: farrar, straus and giroux. mitchell, f., & lasswell, j. (2005). a dazzle of dragonflies. college station, tx: texas a&m university press. ross, s.m. (2006). the temporality of tarrying in gadamer. theory, culture & society, 23(1), 101–123. ross, s.m., & jardine, d. (2009). won by a certain labour: a conversation on the while of things. journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies, 5(1), 1-33. on-line: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/jaaacs/article/view/187678/185780 sumedho, a. (2010). don’t take your life personally. totnes, devon, uk: buddhist publishing group. tsong-kha-pa, (2004). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lam rim chen mo). vol. 2. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. the guardian. (n.d.) notes and queries. on-line: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1324,00.html wallace, b. (1987). the stubborn particulars of grace. toronto, on, canada: mcclelland and stewart. http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/jaaacs/article/view/187678/185780 https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1324,00.html microsoft word jardine2final.docx corresponding author: david w. jardine email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics july 16, 2012 the author(s) 2012 the descartes lecture david w. jardine a brief foreword after the fact we ought to be like elephants in the noontime sun in summer, when they are tormented by heat and thirst and catch sight of a cool lake. they throw themselves into the water with the greatest pleasure and without a moment’s hesitation. in just the same way, for the sake of ourselves and others, we should give ourselves joyfully to the practice. kunzang pelden (b.1862, tibet) the nectar of manjushri’s speech (2007, p. 255) i felt compelled to introduce this lecture transcription with this passage because, well, it’s hilarious and true, and might serve to offset some of the necessary dourness in what follows. it really does capture something of the sheer buoyancy and joy of interpretive work, despite all its setbacks and suffering and difficulty, despite the dark shadows that sometimes surround it, and how it, necessarily and unavoidably, summons the lord of death. because these elephants, just like us, are living beasts, so, just like us, neither the torment nor the great pleasure will last forever. even so, i understand that great snorfling, that parched grey meat, hot sun and cracking skin, that trumpeting pleasure, and the coolness of that plunge. it certainly is strange, however, to read a written transcript of an extemporaneous talk whose breath has passed into thin air. i must say that, reading this, i feel a bit like a grandparent who got to drop in and get the grandkids all excited, but then gets to leave when the hard work sets in. the students in this class might have found parts of this talk arousing, amusing or inciting, but, as h.g. gadamer (1989, p. 299) said, so simply and so clearly, understanding is only just barely beginning when something addresses us and catches our attention. then, the difficult work of composing yourself and composing your thoughts, of writing, of speaking, of shaping and forming, of finding out what the ancients have taught us about the locales of our living, and making a case for the truths and falsehoods of those teachings, of now, here, in these difficult times, telling the truth about what you've witnessed--all these set in hard and fast and linger far after the thrill is gone. that elephant abandon is very attractive at first blush, but it is one great image of the dangers of the pretty, deceptive face of interpretive work. this work makes you susceptible to becoming "like the leading edge of water running downhill--you go anywhere you are led, taking anything said to be true, wantjardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 2 ing to cry when you see others crying, wanting to laugh when you see others laugh" (tsong-kha-pa [1357-1419], 2004, p. 222). no matter how long i do this work, i still can fall prey so easily to such furtiveness and distraction, a sort of floating, brainstem-storming connectionism that, in the end is simply selfindulgent, self-aggrandizing, and, frankly, cowardly. i know this too well: "using only joyous perseverance you will end up exhausted" (tsong-kha-pa, 2002, p. 62) and exhausting the patience and good will of your friends and of your work itself. practice is needed that seeks wisdom in the midst of this onrush. after the gold rush "something awakens our interest that is really what comes first!" (gadamer, 2001, p. 50)--hermeneutics faces us with the deep, scholarly question: what the hell is going on? it rears up as a path that must be followed, a lead that must be trailed, a task that must now be undertaken, of finding out, of investigating, of questioning and facing the afflictions that swirl around the topic, the topography i have chosen to travel--my own deeply personal afflictions in terrible concert with the afflictions of the world i am investigating. it comes on like a summons with my name on it, my life at stake. "do not place your hopes on sheer determination" (tsong-kha-pa, 2002, p. 62). only repeated practice will help, full of citatiousness, study, and a deepening knowledge of the ancestral lineages that we have often unwittingly inherited, that need to get committed to memory or written out and savored and read to friends and neighbors. hermeneutics, thus, involves a dedication to the careful, suspicious reading and re-reading, interpreting and re-interpreting the texts and textures of our individual and common lives and worlds. and then, in the middle of all that, hermeneutics demands that i take on the task of composing myself while composing something about this world, while writing a "hermeneutic study." "i compose this in order to condition my own mind" (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 111) and through such conditioning and composition, i always hope to provide some relief to the suffering and affliction that has spellbound me and my chosen profession. this is the unspoken vow. and this is a warning that knows no heed: once you catch sight of that water and its promise of relief, you might find that you can't turn back, that you can't undo the glimpse, that you've taken the vow without knowing it and that you're tethered to it even if you can't then fulfill what that vow demands. one common, lovely, terrifying complaint: there are signs everywhere. everywhere. how do i get it to stop? remember, then, this is not just a matter of quelling the rampaging elephant with calmness and quiet: "no matter how long you cultivate serenity, you can only suppress manifest afflictions; you cannot eradicate their seeds. you need to cultivate insight" (tsongkha-pa, 2002, p. 22). hermeneutics demands that we go through these afflictions (erfharung) and seek the aid of those who have gone before (vorfahrung) and in this, seek insight, wisdom. hermeneutic work is meant to induce and encourage others on this way. this is why it whiles and gathers and waits. this is why there is something pedagogical about it. one more corkscrew, then. after all that, hermeneutics slams us with this: there are so many things that could be said, so many possibilities, so much that could be read and learned, so much of an overwhelming cascade--everywhere! what should i do? well, welcome to grad school, that most opulent life of leisure and opportunity (latin schola, meaning "leisure," root of "scholar" and "school"). i'm reminded of how the great tsong-kha-pa (2000, pp. 117-128) berates readers for wasting this rare gift lost in the flurry of more meager things. to paraphrase jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 3 george harrison, that is not what we are here for. here, where, despite the often-gnawing circumstances that surround us, we face the question of what needs to be said here, now, right in the middle of these troubling causes and conditions: we should have no illusion. bureaucratized teaching and learning systems dominate the scene, but nevertheless it is everyone’s task to find his free space. the task of our human life in general is to find free spaces and learn to move therein. in research this means finding the question, the genuine question. you all know that as a beginner one comes to find everything questionable, for that is the privilege of youth to seek everywhere the novel and new possibilities. one then learns slowly how a large amount must be excluded in order to finally arrive at the point where one finds the truly open questions and therefore the possibilities that exist. perhaps the most noble side of the enduring independent position of the university—in political and social life—is that we with the youth and they with us learn to discover the possibilities and thereby possible ways of shaping our lives. there is this chain of generations which pass through an institution, like the university, in which teachers and students meet and lose one another. students become teachers and from the activity of the teachers grows a new teaching, a living universe, which is certainly more than something known, more than something learnable, but a place where something happens to us. i think this small academic universe still remains one of the few precursors of the grand universe of humanity, of all human beings, who must learn to create with one another new solidarities. (gadamer, 1986, p. 59) but here is the good news, and a bit of a hermeneutic secret. all that hard, scholarly, detailed, difficult work, all that effort of practice, and reading and re-reading, of struggling to understand, to open up free spaces, real possibilities of shaping our lives, where understanding might grow and compassion might last, of underlining and hunting for sources, of page numbers and names and seeking out bibliographic trace-lines, and thus slowly composing oneself while composing an interpretive work-all this ends up cultivating and deepening your ability to experience and share precisely that elephant abandon and joyousness. "[this world] compels over and over, and the better one knows it, the more compelling it is" (gadamer, 2007, p. 115). only now, we experience that joy and abandon as it really is, in the full knowledge of the flesh and its passing. hermeneutic work treats its topics like works of art that gather up our festive returns, topics that, in return for our attention and devotion, begin to glow in response to the attention we have bestowed upon them: hugh [of st. victor (1096-1141)] begins to explain what wisdom does. the sentence begins, sapientia illuminat hominem, "wisdom illuminates man" . . .ut seipsum agnoscat, "so that he may recognize himself." once again, in this rendering, translation and exegesis are in conflict, and the english words chosen could easily veil the sense that interpretation can reveal. enlightenment in hugh's world and what is understood as enlightenment now are two different things. the light, which in hugh's metaphoric usage illuminates, is the counterfoil of the eighteenth-century light of reason [a child of the cartesian lineage talked about below]. the light of which hugh speaks here brings man to a glow. approaching wisdom makes the reader radiant. the studious striving that jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 4 hugh teaches is a commitment to engage in an activity by which the reader's own "self" will be kindled and brought to sparkle. (illich, 1993, p. 17) what wonderful images and ideas. what joy to know that it will take me years, maybe more years than i have, to be equal to a text like this. this is love and affection. that texts and topics and works become more radiant and compelling the more we experience them and take care of them, until finally they start to stand there without us, "works" in whose light we are then cast. what in the world would we do if this were true? how would our lives be lived if this were a possible way of shaping ourselves? just imagine trying to seek out this sort of experience and trying to practice it. that is what hermeneutics requires of us. it requires reading as if our lives depended on it. so right here, that frankly stupid divide between scholarship and practice, between academic work and "the field" finally starts to let go of its grip. "all texts are instructions for practice" (tsong-kha-pa 2000, p. 52): it is like showing a horse the racecourse before you race. once you have shown it, you then race there. it would be ridiculous to show the horse one racecourse and then race on another. similarly, why would you determine one thing by means of study and reflection, and then, when you go to practice, practice something else? (p. 52) here's one more secret about hermeneutics. it culminates, slowly, into the insight that this world will be fine without me, and the great sense of relief that can slowly come from this insight, the great sense of setting down the panicky task of mastering things and feeling somehow essential to their continuance. that is what it means to truly understand something in the hermeneutic sense. this is part of the elephant's cool plunge. all this is cast in the shadow of my own impermanence and mortality and there is relief to be had in this insight, this admission. "take this feeling of letting go as your refuge" (chah 1987). if we were not finite, none of this wonderful, ambivalent work of loving attention and composure would be necessary. if we were not finite, none of this would be possible: that which is not split does not have to be rejoined, thus going by way of ambivalence circumvents coniunctio efforts of the ego ["a hitherto concealed experience that transcends thinking from the position of subjectivity" (gadamer, 1989, p. 100), …hermeneutic experience] because by bearing ambivalence, one is in the coniunctio itself ["the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between." (gadamer, 1989, p. 295)]. this way works at wholeness not in halves but through wholeness from the start. the way is slower, action is hindered, and one fumbles foolishly in the half-light. this way finds echo in many familiar phrases from lao tzu, but especially: "soften the light, become one with the dusty world." (hillman 2005, p. 41) so, "cultivate love for those who have gathered to listen" (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 64), but a great part of this love means taking some care, warning, chiding, admiring, not abandoning those who are just beginning, working through what are slowly becoming known to be intimate afflictions tied to deep sources, causes and conditions, and sometimes overwhelming consequences. hermeneutics, like these buddhist sources i've been citing, is adamant about the importance of finding a teacher (tsong-kha-pa, 2000, p. 6992) and about taking refuge in a community of others seeking to do this work (in budjardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 5 dhism, this is one of the "three jewels": community, sangha), whether these be classmates, or, for me this summer, tsong-kha-pa, my own light summer reading that i've re-read, now, seven times. again, be careful. as a teacher in tsong-kha-pa's lineage warns, watch out for that pretty face and that rushing cool lake allure: "the more intense the practice, the more intense the demons," this from patrul rinpoche (1808-1887) in his the words of my perfect teacher (patrul, 1998, p. 189). all this, of course, is why what happened next in this graduate class in the faculty of nursing where this talk was held, is the real site of all the hard, meticulous and sometimes agonizing work involved in cultivating a genuine, sustainable and livable love for those who have gathered. this, in fact, is why this text ends so abruptly, because what happened next is itself a sort of un-shareable secret. it is the time of all those small back-and-forth words, small gestures, little referentialities, silences, little ventures and retreats, looks of panic, great laughter and relief, patience, anger, and on and on, where things start to happen and gather and work. pedagogy. it is when tales of abuse, of addiction, of children dying, of overwhelming busyness, of black humor, of strokes, and family gatherings and hope and love and despair come forward into the open space, and the tough work, the real work, of building new solidarities begins. two quick words of thanks, then, to end this foreword. first my sincere thanks to shelagh mcconnell for having the great patience to transcribe this talk with great skill. you saved me the unbearable task of hearing my own voice sound like a stranger's. and second, to nancy moules who has given me so many leisurely opportunities to practice these words that still seem to come out so half-clumsy, so, well, elephantine, too often with little cool water in sight. our friendship and our shared dedication are a great comfort and a great refuge. the descartes lecture i’ve been working here in the faculty of education since 1986. the types of work that have evolved in those intervening years have been really an interesting thing to witness. i expect that all of you in different ways have seen something of this in your own professions and own ways through the world, how some sort of shift seems to be in the air or wants to be in the air-about what knowledge is, how knowledge works, who is in charge of it, what it means to demonstrate what you know, what counts, what is needed in these strange and rushing times, and so on. this has been set up in the past, as you all know, as paradigm wars or the old, exhausted quantitative/qualitative arguments and debates. the good news is: that fight is over. because part of that fight was premised on an attempt for the interpretive disciplines to demonstrate a certain legitimacy to, you know, figure out how to get "dad" to love and respect me. there was some headway made in certain quarters, and in other quarters, he just got more and more pissed off. so you know, the really interesting news after all these years for me is that interpretive work needs to be good, but it doesn’t need to demonstrate to those who don’t want to do this type of work that it should exist. if you do a statistically based study, you don't have to prove to me that statistics is a worthwhile discipline. you don’t. it’s taken for granted that, well, too bad, there it is. same with interpretive work. you don’t have to justify its very existence, even though, with some granting agencies, some tenure and promotion review boards, and some supervisory committees, this demand still arises. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 6 you know: "tell me about this 'hermeneutics.' i’ve never heard of it." oh well, okay, i guess that will be my problem….again. it’s only been around for 115 years in its contemporary version. but you know, patience is apparently a virtue, even though having always to be the patient one is a pain in the ass, but you know, anyway, this is the situation we are in, always feeling like the upstart. this isn't just an accident of circumstance, because, of course, hermes was a trickster, an annoyance who would never lie but never tell the whole truth either, a bit of a flit, a bit of a flirt. this is but one more sign of the continuing dominance of natural-scientific work, that it can always demand that other forms of work "show their papers" like at a border crossing, but it never has to show its own papers. hermes was the god of borders, but his role, much to the annoyance of the border patrols, was to keep the gates open. the type of work you’re dealing with in this interpretive research course didn’t just arrive in the world. it has an immediate legacy that goes back to 1900 and just before, maybe 1870: dilthey, schleiermacher, and so on. and it has a mediated history that goes back perennially from there to all those moments of facing the world and our peculiar lot in it, of needing to read the sacred text for some signs of how to understand our contemporary woes. midrash. part of what we all face, in this faculty and in mine, is that we live in a world in which some forms of discourse have become dominant. and we all know that natural science discourse has become powerful and predominant. and for good reason--it's so confident, so sure of itself, it has lead to such spectacular things. look, see…computer. it's actually taping my voice and will download onto a thing that you can carry in your pocket. it has found cures. and so pervades the predominance of natural science discourse, its forms of knowing, methodologies, its presumptions, its hopes, its desires, and so on. this isn't and shouldn't be a surprise to any of us. and it’s not an issue. natural scientific research methodologies and discourses are not an issue. this isn’t an argument about quantitative work versus qualitative work. but there is an argument that needs to be understood and articulated. it’s an argument about dominance and what falls into shadow under such dominance, what has been lost, forgotten. because, as ecology has taught us in this past several decades and as many of us knew far before then, having a dominant or invasive, or pernicious, or exotic species in a certain place can sometimes take over and choke out the possibility of anything else. and, therefore, in the long run, in a lot of those cases, it can come to choke out the conditions of its own survival through its very act of domination. monocultures are unsustainable. being concerned about the dominance of naturalscientific discourse is therefore an act of love, an act directed at sustaining its well-being. it has lost any sense of proportion, any sense of having a place in our lives. it has taken over and become, well, monstrous. this is a very, very interesting phenomenon. ivan illich called it counter-productivity: up to a certain point such "advancements" and "progress" and "expansion" and "standardization" and "centralization" are sensible. but after a certain point, the way he put it was, the various ways of working in the world begin to create the very thing that they were designed to solve or to resolve. they begin to create the very thing they are trying to fix. that’s why school is producing ignorance, hospitals are producing super-bugs, and deerfoot trail is producing traffic congestion. it was great for a while, right? however, these things reach a certain level where, because of their predominance, they start to unwittingly work against jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 7 the very conditions under which they were working in the first place. so what i want to talk to you about today is not natural science methodology, quantitative methodology, but its dominance and how that dominance has affected us and affects what you want to do in this class, what it means then to try to articulate something other than that dominant paradigm. one of the things about a dominant discourse that is important to remember is that those caught up in that dominant discourse don't have to understand any of this. but there is something more troubling at work here. not only does a dominant discourse get to speak, and to get funded, to act and to be in positions of power and judgment which marginalize other forms of work, other ways of speaking and thinking and researching. a dominant discourse displays the depth of its dominance in its ability to define and shape the nature and limits of any resistance to that dominance. its dominance is had in its unquestioned ability to characterize and speak on behalf of that which it is not. just like the british got to speak about africans, or teacher gets to name children and their special needs and no one gets to speak back (speaking back simply indicates that that child has "oppositional defiance disorder"). it is a very interesting relationship which hints at how all this is not simply an issue of "research methodologies" at all, but something older, more dangerous, and pervasive. i want to elaborate this phenomenon of dominance one step further at the front end here because this will, you'll find, be where the really difficult work in this class will have to be done if you are going to understand interpretive work. because of the dominance of natural-scientific discourse, that discourse provides a lingering image of what it would mean to do any other sort of work. all too often over these past 25 years i've see professors and students working with an illinformed image of interpretive work that is simply a projection of what the dominant voice of natural-scientific work allows alternatives to be. it's about telling your story. it's about people's experiences. we all have our own point of view. it's subjective, its personal, touchy-feely, wholeness, mush, and it's easy because you just say what you think, right? all of that and much more, is the dominant discourse’s story about what you could possibly do if you don’t do natural scientific research. if we are objective, you guys must be subjective. if we are hard, you are soft, if we have outcomes, you have poetic suggestions and temptations, and so on. but here is where it gets awful. those doing interpretive work start to fall for this. then what happens is that interpretive work starts weakly parroting concerns that are not indigenous to its difference: how many people should i interview? how do you look for themes? what about generalizability? how do you prove that this is not just "your interpretation"?...and so on. because we've understood our own work weakly in the shadow of quantitative work, we fall prey to further weakening by the questions that then arise out of that weakness. and so part of the alertness that i expect this course is about and that good interpretive work must take on as part of the work itself, is about working on our own ability to remember what has happened to us in our attempts to do something different than the dominant discourse allows. this is why you'll find that in interpretive work there is a vivid interest in history, not in order to "understand the past" but to decode our present circumstances and revive our current memory loss. because the ditch that is really easy for this work to fall into is wide and powerful to the extent that we give way and if we don’t remain alert, we can end up falling for precisely the meager and weakened caricature version of what we do in jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 8 interpretive work that has been "granted" to us by the presumptions of the sort of work we wish to step away from. this is just like nurses falling prey to the caricatures that doctors can have of them and their work, or teachers falling prey to the belittling of their practical knowledge in the face of standardized provincial examinations and the fraser institute's calls for accountability. in other words, this class isn't just about research methodologies, but about a structure of our lives, our living, that we have inherited and need to start decoding. just a warning, then, that this isn't a situation that you fix up at the front end of an interpretive study so that you can then proceed free and clear of it. you never get free and clear of the world. it is persistent--what is this about, where did this come from, how did we end up speaking like this in this world of ours, what do we do now? this ongoing decoding and the stumbles and recoveries it requires, is the work itself. in my profession for example, the troubled child that can’t pay attention is named that way by the very system for whom troubledness is already pathologized from the outset and so we don’t actually need to listen to that child because we already know what they could possibly legitimately say--this "code" or that one. we once named them "wild and willful" so they could be punished and have their wills broken (see alice miller's work on "black pedagogy"). we now name them adhd so they can be medicated. and that’s what dominance does i already know in advance what you can possibly say to me, so you really don’t need to say anything because you’ll either say what i already know or you’ll be wrong. the only reason for you to speak is so that i can find the right slot, not so i can ever question that slotting itself. that is a given, the "outcome" of research. the only issue now is "which slot." i will admit that that slotting might be in error or that i've mischaracterized the slots and perhaps there should be more or less or different ones, but the correcting of that error means that in the future, it will be less likely for correction to be needed--the goal being to put an end, via dominance, of that which resists that dominance, either through sacrifice (you will be eliminated if you resist--kicked out of school, put in a home, medicated into oblivion) or salvation--you will be saved if you don't resist. resistance is futile because even resistance has been coded. this reminds me of why libraries were burned down by christian and muslim groups back in the 11th century in northern africa and southern europe. they realized that all the books in there either say the same things as the bible/koran, and therefore the library's collection was not necessary, or those books say something different than the bible/koran and, therefore, that collections were heretical. either way, just burn them down. differently put, interpretive work is very interested in normativity, dominance, issues of identity (cultural, linguistic, personal, gendered, even the great divide of the ill and the well, the quick and the dead) and how these things gets sorted out, and by whom, and to what ends, and so on. the sheer naive innocence we have about words, ideas, images, has to be interrupted, as does the sheer confidence that this is just a technical problem, and that technology will save us, or science or medicine or education. people will die and stupidity will win out almost every time. these are our real circumstances. everything is contaminated, embedded, interdependent, and nothing is what it seems on the calm surface. that is why interpretive work is interested in things like the leveling of thinking and idle chatter and how familiarity can breed contempt, and the like. that is why interpretive work has helped us understand that not only is natural-scientific work dominant on the scene of research. it is an act of domination--knowledge as dominion. and again, any form of thinking and study jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 9 that is not premised on dominion gets cast as fuzzy, soft, feminine, weak, emotional, subjective, and, in the end, self-indulgent. just like hermeneutics! okay, so i want to talk today then a bit about our amnesia. one thing that happens in a lot of research methodologies is that we believe at the outset that they are simply something that someone can tell you how to "do": here’s how you do it and then you do it. right? and we find ourselves in a position at the university and in schools, and then lots of other quarters, that if a research methodology asks something more than that of me than that, then something weird is going on. and one of the things about interpretive work that is so painful is that at the outset it demands that we stop thinking about what to do and start to think about what’s already been done to us and how it’s ended up this way and why we talk about kids or patients or clients like this or that, and where those images and names and taken-for-granted practices came from and what they are dragging along with them. like david smith said, underneath the calm and cool and familiar and taken-for-granted surface of things, whether life itself has a chance, or whether the surface is all there is. but what very often happens in our culture is that we orient to simply what's next to accomplish and skip from surface to surface. everything seems to be about just staying calm and afloat on the surface. just letting it go by and saying, well, as a high school teacher said to me recently (and i’ve heard this dozens of times), "you don’t understand, this is just the real world. this is just the way things are." right? it’s just the way things are. you're reading too much into it because there isn't anything really there. the surface is all there is. and all we can do is keep going because if you slow down, you're sunk. well, one of the fundamental beliefs in interpretive work is that this isn't simply "the way things are." this is how things turned out, and there are reasons that things turned out this way and not some other way--there are voices there, stories, things that have been forgotten and silenced and marginalized, hopes that have atrophied or been suppressed. not thinking about these matters, exploring them, "researching" them, doesn't mean that the world is not full of implications on our very lives and the lives of our students and patients and friends. and because of that, the very confidence with which we do what we do is surrounded by failure, by exclusion, by erasure, by lost dependents, by amnesia. and, therefore, to actually understand what we’re doing is to try to wake up and understand the fixes we are in, where they came from, and what might now be possible, what freedom or refuge we might want or need in the middle of all this. wanting to try to wake up from this amnesiac state is a life-long task. and it’s also the definition of the tragedy of human life because, you know, now, at this is the tail-end of my career, i’m now starting to figure out that schools are pretty much the same as they were when i started thinking and writing about these things. there is a strange message here, that this work of thinking about our lives--well, not everyone is interested, not everyone is up to that task, and this has always and everywhere been true. you are here in this opulent position of grad school, where you've decided, whether you know it or not, to stop slumbering. and even though part of what comes to consciousness is that this venture is joyfully hopeless, even though we know we won't somehow finally succeed, still, that is the direction that interpretive work deliberately and bloody-mindedly faces: trying, again and again, to remember these threads of inheritance that we’re dragging with us, what they’ve done to us, and how our work gets shaped by those things whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we exjardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 10 perience it or not, whether we care or not. that’s why this work isn’t about telling me about your experiences. because our experiences are manipulated and designed and destined to forget very often. this is why this work isn't about securing some safe place from which to launch a methodology, because it is about being implicated without having meant or intended to be, without knowing it, without deserving it. this is why hermeneutics infuses in phenomenology's interest in "lived experience" the terrifying prospect of "false consciousness," where lived experience often hides darkness under its bright presence. so i want to start off by sketching out a very simple example that comes from a scenario in the classroom. think of a situation of a teacher who’s been in a school for quite a while and has taught in that school for several years and a new student comes into the classroom and the teacher automatically recognizes she taught the older sibling of this new student three years ago when the two children’s parents were breaking up. things didn't go well. so up wells the strife of that past event and becomes something of the surrounding of this new student, and even the efforts to hold this at bay have their own complex surroundings of past experiences-professional development seminars bent on detailing how to deal with such uprisings in yourself as a teacher-"ten tips for tough teaching," and so on. even the old saw of "every child is an individual" is profoundly full of ancestral ideas, voices, controversies and the like, even though we might not experience these immediately, they are the undergrowth that is part of the fertility in the soil we inhabit. so when the separate and single event of this one child arriving occurs, we all know that there is no such thing, actually. echoes from the classroom across the hall where this child was taught last year; a blue file folder with too much and too little information, faint memories of staff room conversations long forgotten. it may take a long time to work through, to work out or unravel, and so the memories of the teacher and the presumptions of the teacher and the past experiences of the teacher all get tangled and ignited under the auspices of what was supposed to be a single event. now that other teacher who taught this new child last year across the hall was once a friend of the principal who has since transferred, and last year's vice-principal is now the principal. it was she, as vice-principal, who had to "deal with" this student last year, troublesome, with a file "this thick" and they had an ipp (individual program plan) for him as prescribed by alberta education, mandated under a program of studies written by "those guys" up in edmonton (whom the nowtransferred principal slavishly admired and the new principal wants to set to the side in favor of a more "inquiry based" approach to teaching and learning). and, of course, surrounding those guys in edmonton, as well as this "new" thing, "inquiry," are tangled in arrays of influences, affiliations, research, histories old and new, sob-stories, exaggerations, frustrations, success stories, hopes and desires and fears, and the like. causes and conditions all the way down. now yet another new student comes in the room with his parents, and we all know, intimately and with great familiarity, that this doesn't simply add "one more thing" into the mix but in fact cascades through that already tumultuous mix, making each of the already roiling arisings tangle and untangle and thread and unthread, all over again. it's just like a new child in my family wasn't just "one more," but actually rattled back through those relations that were already ongoing, and actually transformed me into a father and my father into a grandfather and made my father's fathering of me an issue that it hadn't quite been before. nothing is every just "itself." jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 11 now, there’s no sense going on and on about an example like this because it’s all too ordinary for words in some ways-at each moment, we end up with these clusters of dependent co-arising that rise and fall, come forward and recede, undulating, remembered, forgotten, resolved. and we all know that you can become practiced in finding your way through these things artfully, professionally and well. it is like imagining running down a crowded sidewalk. you can't exactly give rules for how to do it, but it can be done, and even if you run into someone, we know, within negotiated parameters, how to correct this error and carry on--apologize, explain, and off we go. the principal relates to the ministry, the ministry's mandates guide the teaching of the child, the child relates to the new child, the new child is in the school of the principal, the parents, the leg bone's connected . . . thigh bone, hip replacement. it’s so ordinary, that its fabric and its workings, fall from sight very easily. it’s just normal, right? now it’s hard to believe, but this phenomenon was downright revolutionary when it entered explicitly into the history of research/philosophy around 1900. edmund husserl, in 1902, wrote the logical investigations--one of the founding documents of contemporary phenomenology, and he formulated the idea of--this is the technical term he uses: it is called everyday life. or in german: the life-world, lebenswelt. the life world… like, well, this. just everyday, ordinary, simple, negotiated, complex, multivocal, populated sites of action and agency, of words and images and ideas and projections and secrets, of past experiences and desires, of market manipulations and media events, kings and queens and great urban bustles, and hospitals and schools...great big institutions forged with forgotten memories and hopes and aspirations, with all the ordinary charts and graphs, political suasions, issues of advocacy and accountability, cultures and multicultures, gender roles and disputes, heat and little light, economic pressures, lies and truths, facts and fictions, and on and on and on. all this mess. so in walks this second child into the classroom [laughs]. this is what husserl got a glimpse of, that even the small event of a child walking into a classroom happens right in the middle of this whole tumultuous world with all the implicate orders of causes and conditions, all the mixed cultural memories, all the old decisions about schools and grades and everything all jumbled and all attached. ordinary. the life world. and you can add in here too all the arrays of labels that can be used to name this kid—i love the latest one, "oppositional defiant disorder," where you not agreeing with me labeling you has a label. or "learning delayed" or "gifted." and then even the controversies that these labels are not meant to be casually used like this. . . but husserl identified a thing he called "flowing in," where the specialized discourses produced of the natural sciences' sorting mechanisms start to become part of the ordinary coinage of everyday life. like "normal." and with this also comes the swirl of things we've given up: "retarded," for example...we still carrying the entrails of what we've left behind, so we add "wellness" to "health" because it seems like a good idea, and we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these terms, too, will wear out, and like beehive hairdos or discoballs, we'll wonder what in god's name we were thinking sometime in the foreseeable future and that this will happen no matter what we do. so you can see how even our language ("that kid must be gifted") --that terms like these in elementary school or high school just waft out into the world and become common coinage as if we don’t need to think about anything. we come to believe that words are jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 12 innocent. it’s just "oh he’s gifted…oh, right." and everybody knows exactly what you mean until you start talking about it and then it gets complicated. that’s why the familiarity of the life-world is such an interesting thing. when you ask people to actually give an account of what another person means when they say "gifted" you end up getting a glimpse of this thick, contentious, ambiguous, contradictory fabric of the life world--what husserl called sedimented layers of sense pile one atop the other and completely obvious until some interruption occurs. the stories start rolling out about the troubles people have had with these labels, and these stories are always more variegated, ambiguous, multiple and heated than the labels themselves. and then, even when some interruption of this familiarity does occur, we tend, for the most part, to do our best to do repair work so we can get back to not thinking about it anymore, get back to finding it obvious. just get better labels so we can get back to not having to think about these things. now, this is where i want to talk particularly about some threads of this complex, contradictory inheritance that we’re all living in the middle of. how did it turn out that, in the midst of all this, natural-scientific discourse became dominant? and, therefore, what is interpretive work, anyway? we need to go back to around 1640. two things. first, remember that we're searching for something about the dominances and amnesia we've learned to live with and have inherited. second, from what we've already seen, there really is no such beginning date, actually. because to actually pinpoint where these ideas would have originated is both important to do and fruitless at the same time. it has this funny aspect to it, because every time you turn around, things unravel and get away again. the gate gets left open. but the reason i am pointing out 1640 is because there was a very clear articulation of a very important shift, philosophically, in europe and in this is buried something vitally important about our current lot. rene descartes' meditations on first philosophy and his discourse on method were both composed around this time. and he had a very interesting purpose for writing these treatises. we have to remember that trying to name this purpose and trying to explore its consequences is not an attempt to find out who the bad guy was, but to find out who our relatives are. genealogy. because descartes' purpose was actually really interesting. he looked out into the world he inhabited and the shifts and changes that were at hand--the shifting power of the church, the burgeoning arising of new sciences, world wide exploration and rising self-consciousness of modern europe, and suggested that if we’re going to understand what’s happening to us and if we’re going to provide some continuity and stability to these freshly emerging new ventures (in particular, what became known as modern science), we’re going to have to find out how to stabilize our relationship to these matters, and find some sort of solid, reliable foundation, some platform, something on which our work can reliably rest. because, as goes the ancient adage, if you don’t build on a foundation then everything you build will be as weak or as solid as the foundation you build it on. and so if we don’t find a solid foundation for this new human venture, we’re going to end up having it collapse on us in all sorts of random and different ways. we’re not going to get anywhere because it’s going to keep eroding itself and so on. so, right off the bat, descartes is interested in the foundations that lie at the advent of modern science, what we've inherited as quantitative research natural science research. his initiating gesture was to ask jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 13 "what is the foundation upon which we should build?" sound familiar? now the interesting thing to realize is that the initiating concern of descartes was an ancient initiating concern. what’s first? what’s most reliable? what’s most solid? what’s most true? what’s most unshakeable? so, in fact, we get in descartes’ work, an echo of ancient religious traditions trying to find out what the foundation of the world is. as we all know, the wise man doesn’t build his house upon the sand. do you remember that old hymn? i can just barely remember it. he builds it on the rock. in other words, foundations are important and they always have been, and even though descartes' efforts were directed towards erasing any old reliances; those very efforts are themselves old and reliant. this is an old, old story, this story of starting anew, and this new story of starting anew casts a new light on something that is age old and makes us able to look at this old thing anew. ta-da! hermeneutics! okay, so, here at the origin of modern science you have the equivalent of a religious invocation. where is my rock? my wife just told me, by the way, jesus decided to build his church with peter (petros) as its foundation--which is the same root as “petrified” meaning "rock. " i just found that out a couple of weeks ago. this is why interpretive work is often really, oh hell, i just thought it was the guy’s name. but it’s not. and what a coincidence that jesus would have picked him, eh? on this rock i will build my church. in other words, right in the presence of all that seriousness that we've lived with ever since, including all the literal-mindedness of fundamentalism, was a beautiful, funny play on words. it’s a good joke actually. i’ll build the church on petros. of course! like i said, that was two weeks ago. this is what you have to get used to when you do interpretive work. that the world has these infinite layers of meaningfulness, that nothing is what it appears to be, and you'll have to get used to being humiliated over and over and over again. humility, humor, humus, being human, earthiness, laughter. when the laughter arises, it's like a secret clue that something is going on beneath the surface calm. like the little anecdotes told in the staff room, or the "there was this patient, once . . . ". yep! all that too! clues. the good news here is that everything, everything, is more interesting than it appears to be. so now descartes is in this conundrum. in education, we call this conundrum the debate over going "back to the basics." and there’s something good about that call. there’s something good about saying “what are we doing?” "should we keep doing this?" "or are we in trouble, on the wrong track?" this, again, is an old story in the life-world, repeated in many ways, and even schools are organized to "start all over again" every september, or every january 1st--clean slates, square one, washing away sins. dead ordinary, this. going back to basics. great thesis topic. what's basic in pediatric oncology, that firm spot where all this rests? not just drugs, not just treatments, not just families and the shadow of death over the young, not just that parents should die before their children, not just that everyone is going to live forever or die eventually. where is peter? so remember, right there at the advent of modern science was something akin to a religious invocation. this is why fundamentalism and foundationalism are of so much interest in interpretive work and why interpretive work is not fundamentalist or foundationalist. it knows that any claim for something being first is familiar, familial, an old story ambiguously akin to other. one more "once upon a time" caught in the fabric of the life world. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 14 so descartes took upon himself this really interesting, brand new age-old task. he decided that he would examine everyday life and all the forms of knowledge and appearances of knowledge and the interdependencies of knowledge and claims to knowledge that he came upon, all the opinions and evidence and superstitions and worries and declarations. all of them. he did this in order to find out whether there was something in everyday life that could be relied on as an unshakeable foundation of how to proceed. he decided to do this in a way that seems abstract at first. he said "i’m going to look at all of these oneby-one"-he called this process "methodical doubt." his premise here was simple but important to stress: if it’s possible to doubt this or that form of knowledge, we’d better not use it. so, i’m walking over here and i’m assuming that the chair is where i see it to be, right? it would be goofy to be walking over here to doubt that, or to doubt that that water bottle i'm reaching for isn't there. but it’s possible to doubt it. i could be hallucinating; i could be dreaming. last night i dreamt about doing this class and i was as convinced then as i am now. so you look out into everyday life and you go…okay we’d better not place our confidence on everyday perception, because if you get drunk or you put one hand in cold water and one hand in warm water and then put them both in the…right? one hand will feel cold, right? so perception is…no, you have to be careful! it can mislead. it can't be trusted because it is possible to be misled. i might be dreaming all this. it's possible. so this is what he did. okay, then he said "well, well, what about everything my parents told me? " anybody want to guess? i don’t know about your parents…[student: "they were wrong?" (laughter)]. it's even worse that than! they may have been right and i could have simply misunderstood them. i could be wrong about them being wrong! it could have been me! you see, that doubt is possible. they could have been perfect in their knowledge, but i don’t know for sure that i understood them properly. and they could have been imperfect in their knowledge, right? so he says, oh you can’t do that…. this won't provide a solid foundation on which to build, what my parents taught me. what about everything we read from the ancients? aristotle, plato, all those texts that we have inherited. well, there could have been bad errors when the text was translated from greek into latin, and so on. they may have been deluded. i might be incapable of understanding, may have read it the wrong way. and even if i've read the commentaries, this or that commentator may have been nuts, or motivated by lust or desire or selfaggrandizement. so descartes kept going through all of this. what about everything my teachers told me? what about everything that people say on the street? go back to that example in the classroom. what the principal says? what the former principal says? what the parents contend? the child's experience? the education textbooks? the ministry of education? the latest research? older research? the newspaper? the fraser institute? my own opinions? what? who? the doctor, the patient, the drug salesman, the janitor? i can't even be trusted to read the word of god in a way that is beyond doubt...literacy, translations from aramaic, the interventions of the church in editing things, my own feeble memory! all these familiar ways of the life world can’t be relied on unshakably and as you can see…guess what? descartes discovered that the foundation of the world is not in the world. sound familiar? every single religious tradition has said this…just remember, again, we’re at the advent of modern science. just don’t forget that. that’s why this is so interesting. i cannot find the foundation of the jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 15 world in the world because everything in the world can possibly be doubted. so i can’t go to the world to find the foundation of the knowledge of the world i am trying to build. so this puts descartes in a really interesting position because now he’s sitting by his fire going, well--i remember doing this several time in the sixties--uh-oh, now what am i going to do? because that very thing, the ordinariness of everyday life, that, when i was part of it, was so ordinarily reliable, ends up, because of its very ordinariness, to not be what i need. what do i do? why am i doing this process? this is crazy. i’m going to go nuts. uh-oh. every tether to the world is not to be trusted. he became cut off from every worldly recourse, isolated, severed. in retrospect, this sounds a little crazy, but it’s also an amazingly courageous thought experiment. it’s partially a recapitulation of what most teenagers go through or what everyone goes through when a kid dies, or a parent dies, or a job is lost, or when you leave home and find yourself adrift form all those old comforts. very ordinary, but descartes radicalized this process. where you have this collapse of the familiar certainty that used to cocoon you and make you feel comfortable and it all of a sudden evaporates. it's ecclesiastes. descartes, like that old text, is doing this to himself on purpose. it’s very, very interesting to have done—to try to be deliberate about this. it really is the sort of courageousness that any spiritual discipline requires. shedding the vestments of the world, cutting away, burning away, washing anything that cannot withstand this methodical doubt. purification rituals. baptismal images. umbilical severances of old reliances. old stories, these. so he ends up going, "okay, maybe i should push this further. maybe all of that confidence i have about going through this process of doubt should also be cast into doubt. maybe that’s not reliable either. maybe i’m just nuts. maybe i’m just crazy." and so he ended up in this spot that kept getting smaller and smaller. and he ended up saying, "maybe i’m not doing this process at all. maybe i’m not even doubting the world. " and he got stuck, as we all know, in this really tight curve. "i doubt that i'm going through this process, but i am doubting that i’m going through this process. okay, maybe i should doubt that, but if i do that…?" so it ended up that i can’t doubt that i’m doing this because if i’m doubting that i'm doing this, then i'm doing this, and i can’t get out of that because if i try to get out of that, then i’m trying to get out of it. it sounds like a parlor trick: if i doubt that i'm doubting, then i’m doubting, so i can't doubt it. this is where the old saw that everyone knows about descartes then comes from: he said "i doubt" and doubting is a form of thinking, and therefore, i am thinking and even if i doubt, it is still true. therefore, i am thinking. "i think, therefore, i am. " cogito--like cognition--and ergo [therefore] "i am," in latin, sum. this is kind of like the mona lisa of philosophy-that painting that has become such a visual cliché that's really hard to actually see anymore. everybody’s heard this thing so often, cogito ergo sum, "i think, therefore, i am," that it’s become almost laughable to hear, but in fact it was a really interestingly, weirdly accomplished outcome of trying to find an unshakeable, indubitable foundation. after doubting every single thing in the world, his own doubting of the world showed itself to be indubitable. only once he had completely cut himself off from every escape route through the world did he find the foundation, deep inside himself, inside this abstract presence of himself to himself, "i am." because even if i affirm that "i am not," i am affirming and therefore i am. so what we ended up inheriting from descartes was this really interesting new thing that hadn't quite been imagined this way before: an experience of "myself" as a jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 16 "subject," an "i" that is present to itself with great clarity and distinctness, that is "worldless" and that assuredly is even if everything else is erased. this is new. and yet it is not new. this echoes, of course, the idea of a soul that is "in" the body but not "of" the body. right at the moment of trying to found natural science, descartes hit deep well water. so, now, descartes starts to look at the characteristics of this foundation that he has found through methodical doubt. it is clear and it is distinct. it is singular, it’s selfidentical, and is not confusable with anything else, not attached to anything else, separate, severed off from anything else, decontaminated (mary douglas said that the unclear is the unclean). remember that all descartes is affirming here is "i am." i may not know who i am beyond a shadow of a doubt. i may have a fairly good idea, but not beyond a shadow of a doubt. i may not know what i am. i am not even sure i know where i am, but i always and unshakably do know that i am. in other words, sheer self-identical existence with no properties. i am. singular, univocal, clear, present, without contradiction or duplicity. whatever i am, i am. so you get this really weird abstract version of identity that has no substance to it: whatever this identity might turn out to be (since we don't know what it is, let's simply call it "x"), i know beyond a shadow of a doubt that x=x and this is singular, self-identical, pure and clean and clarified. sheer self-identicalness. okay, old testament, exodus 3:13-3:14. coming down from the mount with the commandments, moses asked god who shall i say has sent me? "and god said unto moses, i am that i am: and he said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of israel, i am hath sent me unto you." just a reminder this is the origin of modern science. just thought i’d mention that again. so what we get in descartes’ work is a reaffirmation of an old story at the same time as we get an affirmation of something "otherworldly," purged of everything old and worldly--sheer existence: i am. so now he’s got himself inside of himself, completely detached from the world and its ways, having found the unshakeable foundation. now it’s not like the world actually ceased to exist in this whole process of methodical doubt. it just slowly and methodically turned into something increasingly unreliable and shaky. so, now here, right here, is the big turn. these new sciences of his time are purporting to investigate the world and they need a foundation that is solid. but the world they are investigating isn't going to give it to them. descartes realized that he can turn his attention back to the world, but now he has to be very careful not to lose what he has won. we don’t want to turn our attention back to the world and get re-absorbed back into that fray of the world and its amnesia, into its forgetfulness, its contingencies, and ambiguities, into its presumptions and start acting on the basis of that because that’s not true to the foundation that has been established. in other words, if i’m going to go out into the world, i have to go out into the world with an eye to the foundation that i have found in my process of methodical doubt, this x=x clarity. if i am going to find any "truth" in the world, i have to demand of the world the same thing i demanded of myself with methodical doubt. what the world really is in truth is not that messy fray of ambiguity and doubt and interrelatedness. if i go out into the world and see something shakable or dubitable, then it’s not real, it's "unfounded." if i go out into the world and see something ambiguous, it’s not real. because to be real is to sit on the foundation and to sit on the foundation is to sit on a self-identical clarity that’s unambiguous and uncontaminated. therefore, anything in the world that admits of ambiguity, multiplicity, jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 17 interrelatedness, interdependence, metaphor, analogy, all those forms of…. well, shall we say, mess? no! truth is not a mess but is rather clear and distinct. therefore if there is any truth to be had about the world, the truth of the world is not a mess. because the truth has to live up to something that is not a mess-the foundation. therefore, when i find my way back out into the world, i have this new demand now that i make upon everything i meet. i do to everything that i meet in the world the same thing that i did to myself. anything that’s doubtable is eradicated; anything that’s ambiguous is eradicated; everything multiple or attached to something else is eradicated. everything has to become, like i did, "itself" and not something else. whatever this thing is that i am investigating in the world, it is what it is and it is not something else. as with my own purified self-identity, i demand such purification from the things i meet: x=x, whatever else may be. so just like a new (but not so new) image of the human subject appeared in the world, now something else new arrives: "objects." in other words, only things which can stand up against methodological doubt (the latin is something like thrown against, oband -iacere) are real, because only they replicate the hard-won truth of the "i am"-singular, separate, clean, clear, distinct, without contaminating relations. so what now happens of course is that descartes starts to say whatever there is in the world, in truth it is self-identical, self-contained, not attached to anything else. descartes ends up quoting aristotle. the term for this in greek philosophy is "substance." "a substance is that which requires nothing except itself in order to exist." that’s his paraphrase of aristotle 3rd century b.c. metaphysics. a "substance" is that which requires nothing else except itself to be what it is in truth. therefore, the initiating presumption of our ventures out into the world is that if we want to know about the truth of that world, we have to cleave off everything we want to investigate from everything it is attached to, every relation it has made, in order to try to get some determination of what the truth of that thing is, and all the subsequent relations of that thing with other things themselves have to be clear and distinct. because its truth is its substance, its self-identicalness, its "x=x." now, just on the side here, this is sounding a little abstract [laughs]. just a little…. this poor child [points to a student in the class] was having trouble learning to read and you [points to another student] were her teacher last year and i’m her teacher this year. and her parents have just come in and they want to know what’s going on. i make a case for her trouble being one thing and you make a case citing some other things. the principal who is also in the room, because that’s what they do, says, "well look, you said one thing, you said another. whatever her reading trouble is, it is what it is. right?" everybody knows that: it is what it is (x=x, even if we can't agree on what this "x" might be). so if it is what it is, and the two teachers contradict one another, the contradiction can’t be in the thing because the thing is what it is. if the thing is what it is, then the contradiction…the contra is in the diction. not in the thing. either you’re right or i’m right or both of us are wrong or we have specified things enough, but things are what they are. the actual trouble in learning to read can’t be ambiguous-it is what it is. that’s what this means. it’s a weird kind of common sense confidence that when we run into ambiguity, something with multiple versions or debates, that it can’t actually be. it must be a mistake of some sort. or lack of diligence or all sorts of stuff. sensible in its own way. so here’s what happens in education. in 1900, somebody publishes an essay called "the child. " a week later, somebody says, jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 18 you know, young kids are like that, but that’s not a really good description of older kids. contradiction. the contradiction can’t be in the thing because things are what they are. there must be two things. so the next week two books get published: "the young child" and "the older child." you can see where we’re headed, right? and then somebody says, well young boys are like that, but young girls aren’t exactly like that. contradiction. there can’t be a contradiction in the thing. there must be two things. next week, four books get published: "young girls," "young boys," "older girls," "older boys." actually, you know, the description you have for young boys is appropriate for boys of a lower socioeconomic status. but in rich families… so what starts to happen then is a process of investigation that purports something, finds a contradiction, bifurcates the thing, and causes two new studies or four or eight or twelve. in other words, now, if you look in quantitative journals in education, you’ll get papers like "the sub-nominal coding level of storyschemata structure in young boys of aboriginal decent in urban settings from 1915 to 1918: new wine in old bottles? " --i made that up, but you wouldn’t quite know it! so what you get in an attempt to protect the purity of the origin from getting contaminated, you get (in your profession more than mine) these titles that become more and more exotic trying to describe something more and more simple, singular and ordinary. more and more particular and straight forward. more and more carefully divided off from anything else. the simple logic of substance, x=x, finds, in travelling the world, that it must constantly divide. so you get this really weird condition of constantly having to qualify your work in order to preserve the purity of the first principle. because if you didn’t have "aboriginal" in the title you’d be confusing one thing for another and things themselves, in principle, aren’t confused so there must be two things. so what we get is this proliferation, which is in the natural sciences, that the natural sciences are profoundly good at. proliferation of specification all with an eye to preserving this first principle, x=x. this is why natural-scientific research must always be "up to date," because it is constantly shedding the encumbrances of ambiguity and hidden contradictions. oh i didn’t mention this. see this baby here [x=x]? this is called the principle of identity. it’s the central principle of formal logic, aristotelian logic. and until speculations about set-theory in the 1930s, it’s the first principle of mathematics. the first principle of mathematics: if you come across an x, x is always x. you might not know what x is, but x is x is x. in working through an algebraic equation, x stays steady inside that equation when you go to another equation, this equation is not that equation, but inside this new equation, x is x--an unknown (not sure what x is) constant (x is x). the principle of identity unfolds into the principle of non-contradiction (something cannot both be x and not be x), which unfolds into the principle of excluded middle, from which unfolds the whole discipline of mathematics. starting with the principle of identity, every step in a mathematical proof participates in the clarity and distinctness of that first principle. each step is clear and distinct. therefore--finally, we've ended up with the origins of quantitative research that dominate our professions--if i go out into the world armed with mathematics, i take with me that hard-won truth of the cogito. as long as i can proceed mathematically, every step participates in the clarity and distinction of the first step. you have to mathematize anything you meet in the world in order for the world to live up to the foundation you have won. welcome to the origin of quantitative research. based on the origin of "i am." if someone asks about the legitimacy of a quantitative study, all you need to say is "i am has sent me." there's just one more hint regarding some of the heat that comes off jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 19 this silly quantitative/qualitative debate. interpretive work seems chaotic, like all hell breaking loose, heathen, pagan--both these mean "of the fields," by the way, outside of the capital (where the sovereign "i am" holds sway). okay, so, just a few more little steps. well, sort of little steps. because the logic we’re talking about here, this logic of doubt, withdrawal, self-clarification, and the subsequent dispensation of that clarity as a demand made upon things--this is far more widespread than in the natural sciences. it’s important then to realize that this movement of condensation, the collecting together of confidence then issuance of confidence with great confidence has analogies historically and philosophically that we need to face up to because the dominant discourse of the natural sciences has kin and brethren that it doesn’t know it has and i just want to talk a little bit about what those are. we've got to explore something of the terrible heat we often feel when we try to interrupt this cartesian logic. okay, remember that i’m doing this for the world’s own good. if this selfidenticalness is actually the world’s foundation of truth, then demanding this of the world is an attempt to help the world live up to its own truth and to help it discard those elements that are not part of what it truly is. or to put it differently, the world is full falseness and fallenness, amnesia and sin and carnality, lies, deception, ambiguity, messiness, contradiction. and in order to understand the truth of the world is to save it from itself by demanding that it shed that which is not essential to its substance. i come in the name of truth. so there is, in this movement, an often hidden sense of its beneficence behind all of it. or to put it another way, i’m doing this for your own good. i’m trying to save you from your own encumbrance that you don't even know that you have. you all know the term used when you have something in your quantitative research design that you forgot to control for and your results end up with this uncontrolled thing in them messing up your results? contamination--your results can easily be contaminated. so, all of this is a type of purification ritual -descartes' methodical doubt was a purification ritual. descartes sought the foundation of modern science in something akin to a purification ritual, as does every natural-scientific study that follows it. the life-world needs rescue from itself. more strongly put, these studies are salvational in their design and intent. okay, so, purification, salvation, decontamination, the getting-rid-of outliers, the pulling of things into line, eradicating that which will not submit. as if this is the way that the world actually exists…separate, selfidentical substances, whose relationships to one another are all post-hoc. remember that? objects. then we have to realize that in order to get the world to be like this, we may need to render it like this in order to save it from its untruth and render it into its truth. steps. i know what’s true. i know what the foundation is. i know what’s most real. i know what it is to be a human being and venture properly in the world and be concerned after its truth. therefore, when i venture out into the world and i run into people who do not understand this, it is my moral obligation to take with me something of this lesson i’ve learned--to india or to africa or to north america. and, for their own good, i must let these people i meet know that if they mistakenly feel at home here in this mess, they are not actually, really "home." you’re actually away from home, immersed in the blood body of the world, without the "i am" to guide you. home is actually "over there," in england, under the crown (like the crown of consciousness, victoria as the "i am" of the empire). so out here in the wilds, i’ll put in a home office, and you’ll have to get a pass that requires you to jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 20 home in on where home really is, that marks you as being protected under the crown--like a pass-port to pass through the portal, showing your "identity," your "identification." now i’m doing this for your own good. i’m helping you to become civilized. i’m helping you cleave to the truth of things. and so, one the analogies that we’re dealing with here is colonialism. a couple of centuries earlier than descartes, just prior to isabella giving the contract to columbus in 1492, the jews and the moors were expelled from the south of spain because isabella realized that until we become ourselves and no others (until a=a), we won’t be strong. only when we become strong can we then head out and build an empire. and so we "self-clarify" by purging ourselves of everything we are not--we become a self-identical nation-state purged of all contamination. so we kick out all the jews and the moors or worse, sometimes we kept them here and kicked them out in a different way-the inquisition was a purification ritual demanding singularity. we do this for their own good of course, too. by the way, two weeks after columbus got his contract with isabella to sail west, a guy named nebrija, whose name is still on many libraries in spain, a grammarian who went to isabella and said, basically, that until you have a single language in your kingdom, you cannot have an empire. and, therefore, you need to standardize, clarify and decontaminate and universalize castilian spanish and make it mandatory for everyone in your purview to give up the vernacular in order to be considered part of the kingdom. so to speak. so language itself was standardized by becoming singular, unambiguous, not multiple anymore, and this was done as a way to launch the colonial confidence of spain westward. language becomes singular and self-identical. x=x. this is exactly the same as the move to strip first nations kids of their language and their family names, again for their own good. it is exactly the same. and we'll have no moors and jews in our midst, no "others." purification, with, like descartes methodical doubt, a move inwards towards the clean and clear and distinct self-identity requisite of this new phenomenon in the world: the nation-state. the very idea of a nation-state is premised on this state of singularization, and dumping our contingent relationships to the diversity and multiplicity in our midst, telling it to either smarten up or leave. this is canada, mr. singh, you better either become one of "us" or go back where you came from. so, purification, standardization, expulsion, what else? this founding of the nation-state in spain doesn’t just back away into itself. it backs away, "founds" or "grounds" itself, and then launches back out into the world. this is the same analogous movement as the origin and launching of modern science. because modern science will go out and demand mathematicity from the world in the same way that the spanish would go out and say "christian or not?" enrique dussel talks about the dual myths that arise here: the myth of sacrifice or the myth of salvation: i will save you (by making you into me) or i will kill you (but sacrificing you will be for your own good, so sacrificing you will save you, because if you're not me, you're already living in untruth anyway). george bush: you are either with us, or you are with the terrorists. okay, so now, purification, colonialism, standardization. through clarification, "we" control the right of passage to the truth--the "colon" through which you must pass in order to pass. so then, when the british empire starts collapsing and retreating, what happens? all sorts of brown people pass with their passports through the portal and "come home." they show up at england's door saying "hi mom. we're home!" yes, that’s a rite of passage, that things must "pass through" the narrows of mathejardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 21 matics--colon. in fact, “christophe colon” is columbus’s real name, which is just unbelievable. but in order to be a citizen of the world, his name had to be latinized. because of the roman empire and the centrality of latin, latin made you a citizen, civilized-these colonizing demands are age-old. carolus linne became linnaeus right, because you weren’t a citizen of the world until your name, even your name, was rendered under a universal standard, latinized. this is why learning latin was linked to be a civilized and educated person--still at work in my own days at school, this still lingered. (the grammar of our civility (pearcy, 2005)--very interesting book by the way). so this is a really old, interesting story. to find out that this guy linnaeus wasn’t really linnaeus, it was linne. and he had to give that up in order for him to properly be himself. which, again, is why first nations children in canada had their names and language removed as an act of beneficently saving them from themselves. it is also why their land was privatized, because then, land gets linked to ownership, and ownership is linked to rights of governance or domination over that land, so property ownership became identified, in the us, for example, with the right to vote. only as a property owner is the dominance of my "i am" able to manifest. ok, so, yes, copyright laws. okay, let’s just keep going a little bit further here. it’s not that i and things in the world don’t have relationships, but they’re all post-hoc. they’re all "after the fact" of things and selves existing separately, divided off. that is existing indivisibly. that is individually. as with descartes, we now take these truths to be self-evident. contemporary notions of individualism, this is where it starts. this is what the autonomy and selfdetermination and individuality that underwrites contemporary democracy, this is where it comes from. so, now, if you go back and see all these autonomous beings all of whose relationships are post-hoc, and that is after the fact of their autonomy, everything is revocable and provisional, including your culture, right? so this is where we get modern versions of multiculturalism. where your culture becomes a "choice" made by someone who is really and truly autonomous individual, not really a moslem or a jew. you’re an individual and then, in "our" culture (which now isn't a culture among others, but simply an expression of the way things truly are), you get to choose the practices of your culture or not. but these choices are now post hoc, after the fact, simply personal and subjective, because only the relationships that themselves can be mathematized are "real" or "true" relationships. so then you not only get frequency and repeatability of relationships or they’re not real, you also get the enumeration or mathematization, of all these relationships. these are all zero sum relations that can be quantified. in other words, the community is full of autonomous "x=x"s and the real relationships between these autonomous individuals are only those that can be mathematized. so, first of all, everyone gets one vote and then we add them up. it's only fair. it has nothing to do with who you are, what you know, whether you have any sense at all regarding what a good choice might be. after all, who am i to say? i'm just one more voter, and whoever gets the most wins. parallel to this, community becomes identified with the market, because now you get relationships of ownership (by an "i am") and then the only "real" relationships are those that can be measured, so community becomes commerce between autonomous "i am" owners-persons. that’s why you guys are called clients and customers of the university and it’s all about choice and individual freedom. this is where the discourse is coming from…so you also get the market, and you also get capitalism as a standardized system of exchange that slowly jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 22 starts to replace the messiness of barter and the commons. check out the history of the enclosure movement in europe, privatization, taxation, where commoners who worked the commons became tax paying employees, and the land became owned. market economies and capitalism are premised on this new sense of individuality. purification, colonialism, individuality, privatization, democracy, market economies, multiculturalism. but then, because of all this--and we're still experiencing this day to day-we get these strange senses of alienation from our community and from our work that now has become distant, disembodied, standardized rulefollowing, so you end up with karl marx critiquing the alienation of workers. and also, given that we’re all, in reality and in truth standing separately from each other, we also now need a mathematized/medicalized understanding of our sinful and lusty relations to each other or our sense of depression and alienation. freud: no more fucking in the bushes! well, you’re still fucking in the bushes, but now you’re unhappy about it because you all know that it’s contamination, but it is no longer a church matter full of snakes-in-thetrees storytelling superstition reprimands, but is now medicalized syndromes that have mathematized our sin, coded it into identifiable dsm-iv slots. wellness! a personal matter. even better! self-improvement is sold back to us as a cure for the ails that that selling has caused. colonialism, capitalism, democracy, individualism, psychologism, market economy… oh and by the way, i live in bragg creek and for your own good we’re going to cut those paths wider to prevent forest fires. to prevent forest fires means to prevent a waste of capital--new initiatives for clear cutting were fronted by forestry companies, so the material of the forest will still be logged safely, and so insurance companies are satisfied. so we have the beginnings of an ecological disaster here as well, severed from the world and then unhesitatingly ravaging the earth for its own good into board feet of consumable lumber. like quantitative research will invade the classroom and save the messy life worlds of children and teachers by building subdivisions. that wild itself has no truth in it. it becomes true only when it is civilized, when the rough beast of the bush becomes a trimmed british garden. only when the earth submits to god's command that we, in his name, have dominion over the earth--only then is it truly itself. so there it is again, ecologists sound romantic, hysterical, "spiritual" (i.e., messed up), but not in any sense true (since the criteria of truth is that things exist independently of one another, and claiming dependent co-arising cannot be true, only a blurring of what has been made clear-cut). just like these brown newcomers and their constant complaints about canada. shape up or ship out. okay, ecological ravaging is colonial is cartesian is the root of quantitative methodologies. the earth is private property because only when it is owned is it brought under the measure of an "i am" and only then is it in truth what it really is. native people are wrong and need to be saved from their silly ideas. they need to learn reserve. i know, it's not funny. okay, three more. if this is the way that people actually exist, then i’m just going to add a really interesting thing that happened in 1540 or about, and that is the printing press. which meant a couple of things. the ability to disseminate the written word quickly and easily. then you get the rise of literacy and an increasing suspicion of orality, storytelling, things passed from breath to breath, women talking in the woods, conspiracy. those nurses telling tales during the break, those teachers in the staffroom full of messy little anecdotes--nothing true there, onjardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 23 ly mostly women talking and talking. so the move from orality to literacy and the increased suspicion of muttering. literacy as a way to tame the wild, become civilized, civil. and also, right here, put up your hand if you’re a lutheran. any lutherans? okay… luther took it upon himself to translate the bible into german, into the vernacular and away from the standardization of the church because believers are individuals and must work out individually their relationship to god and its saving grace. no longer mediated through the mess of the world and churchy control, no longer through the line of saints and commentators and mediators or priests as your stand-in. so, thank you printing press, we’re going to give you each a german bible if you’re a german so that you can read it yourself. so you put a bible in each of these houses. to put it differently, protestantism doesn’t make sense without these: individuality, autonomy, "i am," and so on. protestantism needs cartesianism's loosing of individuality in a new way. this is why protestant churches have empty crosses and not crucifixes. the body of christ, the world-body, is now risen, absent. no more worldly images, no more statues and portraits, no more working our way through the bloody corpse of the life world. or to put it differently, that old life-world mess of a diagram that we were looking at before was very catholic. old council of nicaea arguments, back to 767 ce, about images and their dangerous allures--not just false, this, as we all sit groggy in front of the latest news. it's the trouble of danish cartoonists as well. remember this is the origin of modern science. okay, so protestantism and islamic iconophobias. the glance looking for truth must look "upwards" to the heavenliness of the "i am" and away from the mess of the flesh. and of course, if you’re going to put a bible in every house and have people read the bible themselves, they had better be able to read because it’s really, really important and if you can’t, you’re really in bad trouble. some origins of modern schooling began here and so now we’re back to the kid who is having trouble reading. meanwhile, of course, we've also become a culture that is simply slathered with rapid, seductive images and we think, now, that we can just toy with these things, like naive innocents, that somehow our "individuality" and "choice" is going to protect us from being led astray. hah! hilarious. we get alienated, severed from our surroundings and our earth selves and then, full of guilt, get emotionally caught up in reality tv as a sort of pornoreplacement for living a life. just like with the shows of african kids with flies on their eyes and sad faces: arms-length guilt-manipulated poverty porn. one more convoluted thread. last one, i promise. remember how nice it was when we started out and everything was fine? looks funny now--we just talked with one another, got our cups of coffee, joked, and settled in, and what starts to happen is that this ordinariness starts to look peculiar. this dominant discourse of the natural sciences starting to cast a shadow over the everyday life from which it has withdrawn and which it then renders into the objective world by mathematization. anything not mathematized starts to look different, look, well…wild and woolly and out of control, and chaotic--individual, personal, subjective, fanciful, random, idiosyncratic, and so on. so in schools if you talk about pursuing an adventurous inquiry with students, you're saying that the kids can now to whatever they want, right? because that’s what this means now, right? you do what you’re told (quantitative research) or you do whatever you want (qualitative research). these now seem like the only alternatives and this infests interpretive work itself: either jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 24 i just passively let my participants tell their story, or i tell mine. us and them. if we let go of mathematization, all hell breaks loose. see what just happened? if the opposite of doing what you’re told is to do whatever you want, you’ve left in place the idea of individuality, left in place that the only way out of individuality is mathematization, and then simply dropped the math. if you do this, any story that someone tells you is their own personal property and only they get to say what it means. so in attempting to get away from the dominant logic of the natural sciences, we leave it in place, accept all its premises, and then opt for the only opposite that that dominant logic leaves available. this is this weird double logic where the dominant discourse starts to say, “nurses, all they do is hang around and tell each other stories…and they just clean up after people and take care of them. they don’t know anything in that actual practice of nursing except what medical science has taught them. there is no knowledge in the life-world, just messy, uncivilized exchanges.” same goes for teachers: no sense talking to them about their classroom and what is going on because they are involved in it, caught up in its messy flesh, and therefore don't and can't know, in truth, what is occurring there. they are contaminated. so even if i collect these stories together in my interpretive research, i have to distill (purify) them into themes that are repeated, because repeatedness means (ac)countability, and frequency means some truth is there, something reliable. but the truth is not in the telling, but in the renderable essence that can be gleaned from it providing you speak with a statistically significant number of "participants." so students who want to do hermeneutics ask me, how many participants should i talk to? so you get all of these stories told by the dominant discourse of the natural sciences, not just about itself, but what you possibly could be doing if you weren’t doing that. this is the trick you have to remember. because when that happens, when we try to do interpretive work, we start to take on the language that the dominant discourse has left us with. if we’re not objective, what are we? subjective! and a lot of us go, "yep, you betcha, that's us." because what interpretive work must be, we are told, it’s subjective. and the dominant discourse, meanwhile is going, “oh, this is fantastic. perfect." because, in doing this, you have, in your very attempt to get away from the dominant discourse, confirmed that dominance by accepting the description of your own work that is supposed to be the alternative to the dominant discourse. remember, the dominant discourse of the natural sciences is not simply predominant. it is about knowledge-as-domination. or to put it differently, here's the difficult part of this course you're taking: interpretive work is not subjective, it’s not about personal experiences, it’s not about people telling their story and finding themes, that is all a crappy version of quantitative research that is found in almost every single book about how to do qualitative research. it is simply falling for the shadow-version of interpretive work that the natural sciences allow. hook, line, and sinker. you can look in textbook after textbook after textbook. they are simply full of nothing more than weak quantitative work in the guise of fuzziness, softness, resonance, feeling, emotion, or other such stupid things. women's work. touchy-feely. nurse-y stuff. interpretive work is about how to approach the life-world and understand its life without threatening it, and domination and demand. so, then, that last one i've promised too often, and then we can have a break. this is the one i always don’t want to talk about, but i am going to. on the one hand, material, the material world, the messy life world, blood and guts, trails of implication jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 25 and interrelation, innuendo, stories, fabrics, like text and textile, and we're caught up in this world, defined by it in ways that have already taken hold of us before we try to get ahold of them. implicated--like gadamer says, beyond our wanting and doing. materiality. and then, on the other, we have the pattern-the self-identical, the autonomous, the rendered into a=a, the clear and distinct and morally correct. mathematics is based on the recognition and clear and distinct repetition of pattern, right, replicability? repeated standardizable pattern is the only path to reliability. otherwise one's results are not reliable. materiality is unreliable. and remember, in such mathematization, "i" become "one." "i" must become anyone in order for my research results to be true. otherwise, i have contaminated those results. the methodology must be wielded anonymously. i must be completely and utterly replaceable. only when i am replaceable are the results i have found detachable from my finding of them. only then are then "objective." but we have to remember what this logic has left us with, that material needs pattern in order to understand its own truth. left to itself, the materiality of the world has no indigenous truth because it is simply caught up in its messy interdependences. it is blind, mute, unknowing, stupid, dull, full of torpid familiarities. unless the pattern of material can be gleaned, then we don’t know anything true about material. it’s just subjective then, right? or accidental, or anecdotal or whatever. so it’s important, it’s a moral necessity that pattern demand of material that the material live up to the demand that the pattern makes on it. and if it doesn’t, then it is refusing to be in truth, refusing to recognize its own truth, refusing to give up that which is not true of it, its accidentalness, its contingency, its earthboundedness. therefore, it is the moral obligation of pattern, if it has to, to impose itself on the material of the world for the good of the material of the world. not because it wants to be dominating or anything, but because it doesn’t understand this forceful imposition as an act of domination. it’s an act of salvation, of liberation. the colonizers in north america were always smiling. they always had good news, if you would only shut up and listen. the forceful imposition of pattern on material. so let's erase the letters that hide the truth here: pattern, pater, material, mater. at the advent of modern science, we have the old and familiar adage, that if she would only have fucking listened to me, i wouldn’t have had to hit her, but she just kept fucking talking and she wouldn’t do what i asked her to do, she kept talking back and kept fucking with me. so i had to stop her. i didn't want to, but it was for her own good. during his methodical meditations, outside of descartes' window, women were being burned as witches … . . . maybe we should get some coffee. references chah, a. (1987). our real home: a talk to an aging lay disciple approaching death. access to insight. retrieved from http: // www. accesstoinsight. org/ lib/thai/chah/bl111.html. hillman, j. (2005). senex and puer: an aspect of the historical and psychological present. in senex and puer (pp. 30-70). putnam, ct: spring publications. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 8 26 gadamer, h.g. (1986). the idea of the university--yesterday, today, tomorrow. in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds. & trans.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (pp. 47-62). albany, ny: suny. gadamer, h.g. (1989). truth and method. new york, ny: continuum books. gadamer, h.g. (2001). gadamer in conversation: reflections and commentary, (r. palmer, ed. & trans.) new haven, ct: yale university press. illich, i. (1993). in the vineyard of the text: a commentary on hugh's didascalicon. chicago, il: university of chicago press. kunzang pelden, k. (2007). the nectar of manjushri’s speech. boston, ma: shambhala books. rinpoche, p. (1998). the words of my perfect teacher. boston, ma: shambhala books. pearcy, l.t. (2005). the grammar of our civility. waco, tx: baylor university press tsong-kha-pa (2000). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lam rim chen mo). volume one. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. tsong-kha-pa (2002). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lam rim chen mo). volume two. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. tsong-kha-pa (2004). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (lam rim chen mo). volume three. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. microsoft word bjartveitpanayotidis corrected proof.docx 1 university of calgary corresponding author: carolyn bjartveit email: cjbjartv@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics april 1, 2014 ©the author(s) 2014 practicing palimpsest: layering stories and disrupting dominant western narratives in early childhood education carolyn bjartveit1 & e. lisa panayotidis1 abstract interpreting and contextualizing the meanings of spoken, transcribed, visual and embodied languages, we explore how the life stories of immigrant educators evoke socio-cultural and diverse imaginaries. we incorporate the greek practice of palimpsest a layering of stories, voices, fragments, and traces to understand forms of active becomings which provide possibilities for dissonance and transformation and treat the self as relational and inherently multiple. critically reflecting on this stratum of narratives and cultural understandings, we draw on the insights of several theoreticians and scholars to consider how the language of immigration, trauma, and displacement emerge in educators’ thinking about the curriculum they are given. in transcribing stories the participants’ and our own we heard “layered voices” (aoki, 2005) that pointed us to different understandings about the immigrant experience, the connections between the self and other and what it means for immigrant educators and students to live together in ece settings. keywords diversity; early childhood education; hermeneutics; identity; language; narrative embedded in the lives of the ordinary, the marginalized, and the muted, personal narrative responds to the disintegration of master narratives as people make sense of experience, claim identities, and “get a life” by telling and writing their stories. (langellier, as cited in riesseman, 2008, p.17) bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 2 introduction carolyn told lisa a story about the hermeneutic “event” that initiated her doctoral research study: c: five years ago, while i was teaching a child development course in an early childhood education post-secondary program, i was concerned when the administration gave me a single textbook, written by american authors, to use as the core curriculum. not long into the semester, i noticed that immigrant learners in the class had very different ideas about child development and childcare practices than those written about in the course textbook. l: what different ideas? can you give an example? c: well the text noted that western parents see a newborn’s erratic sleep cycle as a behavior problem that requires fixing through parental intervention and forcing infants to sleep through the night – this is a common western childrearing ideai. the authors noted that “in the majority of cultures in the world, babies sleep in the same bed with their parents, typically until they are weaned” (bee & boyd, 2010, p. 70). anyway, one day a major interruption happened in our class that completely changed the focus and direction of teaching and learning. l: go on! what happened next? c: well, an ethiopian student strongly disagreed with the american authors’ perspective and insisted she had experienced no adverse effects from co-sleeping with her mother from infancy to age seven years. her comment opened a floodgate of questions from other students who both agreed and disagreed with her views. it raised quite a stir in class! l: it sounds like your students came to recognize that non-western child rearing customs were represented as abnormal and in opposition to western practices which they deemed normative. through the syllabus students were not asked what they knew but told what to know – what counts as correct. c: exactly! and so for the rest of the semester, i used the course text to open conversations and i invited students to relate their own ideas and experiences to curricular and textbook topics. it was a wakeup call for me – for sure! i recognized the importance of listening to multiple voices and views instead of focusing on a single textbook or my own ideas. i understood how layering our personal stories (mine and the students’) with ideas from several texts and sources, disrupted dominant western narratives about children, childhood and early learning. l: so how does this story relate to your doctoral research? c: i now want to understand how immigrants position them/selves and juxtapose their cultural beliefs and understandings in a dominant western curriculum. my dissertation is bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 3 a collection of life stories mine as well as those recounted by seven early childhood educators who interpreted their biographical experiences through memories, imagination, reflection, and multiple (spoken, written, visual, and embodied) language modalities. in this paper, we critically consider how the interrelation or layering of stories and intercultural dialogue was invoked by immigrant early childhood educators and the researchers (carolyn & lisa) to construct and interpret life-stories narrated in conversation, written research transcriptions and visual images. understanding that our own attempts to work alongside and teach immigrant educators and students are not devoid of challenges and are always framed within western “master narratives” (langellier, as cited in riesseman, 2008) and notions of “whiteness and privilege” (carr & lund, 2007), we believe our struggles can be productive if we tell and attentively listen to stories about the “worlds we come from and those to which we will belong in the future” (henning & kirova, 2012, p. 238). in so doing, early childhood education (ece) classrooms and child care centers in canada might become places where cultures are shared and reconfigured even through opposition and disagreement with differences. after aoki, we understand difference according to “where you locate it, but it’s not either this or that; it’s the working together of both somehow, coming out of the two discourses and bumping into each other and not fitting at all” (smits, 2010, p. 16). etymologically defined, to lay is “to place on the ground (or other surface)” (oed). language digs below the “ground” so-to-speak, unearths buried meanings and creates possibilities for new stories, voices, and understandings to emerge. beyond simply relaying or communicating life stories, we envision layering as a penetrating and complex process, “that intertwines the self … and the other… – which in the hermeneutic language of hans georg gadamer is understood as… intersubjectivity fused in a ‘we’” (aoki, 2005, p. 212). understanding hermeneutics as an “art of deciphering multiple [and allusive] meaning,” philosopher richard kearney (2011, p.1) described it as a reflective, interpretive process that discloses concealed messages, by exposing “covered up” or “surplus” meaning. like kearney, we “understand hermeneutics as the task of interpreting (hermeneuein) plural meaning in response to the polysemy of language and life” (p. 1). furthermore, we explore how layering stories and cultures can, as a critical collaborative and conversational pedagogical and research praxis, disrupt dominant western ideals about children, childcare, and early learning. our critical questions focus on how culture and one’s life stories impact immigrant educators’ understandings of a western ece post-secondary curriculum. notably we focus on how the educators compare what they know about early years education, childhood, and childrearing from their own cultures with what they observe and experience in canadian schools and childcare centers. we ask: what is the role of stories specifically layering stories in shaping our hermeneutic understanding of cultural differences and the experiences of self and other? how does intercultural “polyphonic” dialogue of “multiple voices” (depalma, 2010) serve to situate early childhood educators ontologically (individually and collectively) through the process of interpretation and meaning making? some educators believe that erasing differences and implementing uniformity or likenesses within socio-cultural groups ensures peaceful, agreeable communication and encounters. mikhail bakhtin (1981) has emphasized that, “the collision between differing points of view on the bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 4 world …are pregnant with potential for new world views, with new ‘internal forms’ for perceiving the world in words” (p. 360). equally, failing to invite intercultural dialogue about difference and diversity in ece settings potentially create barriers, misunderstandings, fear, and conflict. through relating and layering narratives the participants’ and our own we “ground” or value the solidified understandings of self and other, thereby acknowledging differences. aoki explained “diversity not as something fixed but as something living dynamically in relation to other identities and the stories that carry those identities, so that the important space is one in which there can be interplay between those stories (smits, 2010, p. 16). listening to someone speak, we are aware of the visceral embodied performance of self and other giving resonance to diverse interdisciplinary languages and layers of meaning. cognizant of aoki’s (2005) caution of the dangers of “becoming the language we speak” (p. 23), we incorporate his notion of active becomings — a layering of stories, voices, fragments, and traces which provide possibilities for dissonance and transformation and treat the self as relational and inherently multiple. interpreting and contextualizing the meanings of written, spoken and visual languages we explore how the life stories of immigrant educators evoke socio-cultural and diverse imaginaries. as we listen to ourselves and others, we are vigilant of the work of language and the histories, narratives, and meanings that it offers up. “[the telling is] not just a record but a filling out … a record that will supplement or supplant other accounts. this possibility suggests a definition of narrative as it functions in the historical and cultural imagination: not just a story but a further story, a missing story” (wood, 2012, p. 131). palimpsest as a methodological and collaborative research praxis over the past years, we have shared many stories with each other about teaching, pedagogy, teacher education, and its relation to the expansive world in which such concepts are intricately entangled. through our conversations—a spilling of stories—we have come to see that we share a deep commitment to interpretive approaches, that is, an interest in human inquiry, understandings, meanings, subjectivities, and identities as they arise in our interactions with others in the lived world. in our work together, we incorporate the practice of palimpsest, as a way to underscore our collaboration and communion in an intensely interpretive and hermeneutic way of knowing and acting in the world. palimpsest, from the greek palimpsests’ means to “scrape off or smooth again.” once a matter of economic and practical necessity, given the scarcity of writing material, palimpsest referred to the process in which a piece of parchment containing earlier writing was scraped again in order to allow for new writing and thought. inherently an incomplete process, the remnants of the earlier notation often remained visible through the new writing. however, this erasure and re-surfacing also had critical political and religious implications for marginalized groups whose cultural beliefs could be effaced and ultimately subverted. from a contemporary perspective, kaomea (2003) has illustrated the need “to delve beyond surface appearances” (p. 15). calling on derrida’s notion of sous rature (under erasure), kaomea argued for the “defamiliarizing [of] dominant narratives,” as a way to counter colonized and oppressive relations in schools and classrooms. our dialogic and recursive approach to writing and thinking together seeks to echo the way our narratives are continually layered next to and upon one another. to retain the phenomenon of the event/experience, we overwrite each other’s sections, drawing out new questions and inquiries, bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 5 complicating our own and each other’s trouble-free descriptions. accordingly, our process of inscription evokes the fragility of our own knowing and the tentativeness of our conclusions. as the greek practice of palimpsest involved “scraping and smoothing” parchments, we recognize how language opens meanings and creates possibilities for new layers of stories, voices, and understandings to emerge. referring to narrative inquiry in human science research, catherine kohler riessman (2008) noted the term narrative can refer to various written and visual works that overlap – a layering of “stories told by research participants (which are themselves interpretive), interpretive accounts developed by an investigator based on interviews and fieldwork observations (a story about stories), and even the narrative a reader constructs after engaging with the participant’s and investigator’s narratives” (p. 6). we recognize “stories can be described not only as narratives that have a sequential and temporal ordering, but also as texts that include some kind of rupture or disturbance in the normal course of events, some kind of unexpected action that provokes a reaction and/or adjustment” (defina, cited in reiessman, 2008, p. 6). understanding that grand narratives are constructed by overlapping stories, we want to explore how practicing palimpsest – layering cultural and life experiences of immigrants – can effectively “scrape” away and even erase dominant western narratives. early childhood education scholars and researchers have raised important questions about storytelling and early literacy (bjartveit, 2011; carr & lee, 2012; paley, 1981; rodari, 1996), race and identity (grieshaber & cannella, 2001; macnaughton & davis, 2009) and diversity and difference (gonzalez-mena, 2008; pacini-ketchabaw with nxumalo, 2010). scholars and educators pursuing these issues reconceptualize the role of storytelling in supporting language learning, opening intercultural polyphonic dialogue and building equitable relationships in ece settings. we draw on the interpretive and layered theoretical understandings of several scholars (aoki, 2005; gadamer, 2004; kearney, 2002), whose nuanced writing on the critical implications of liminalities, the fluidity of becoming, as well as the political and socio-cultural implications of narratives have assisted our own understandings and interpretations especially around how the language of immigration, trauma, loss, displacement, as literal experience is manifest and reconstituted through these life stories. the participants, all immigrants and living in canada for more than two years, had recently graduated from a canadian ece postsecondary program and were working as preschool teachers and daycare workers in various early childhood settings. utilizing an interpretive narrative approach that included listening to and recording the autobiographical accounts, carolyn met with each participant on two separate occasions and documented the educators’ responses to questions relevant to the lifeworld of school, culture, curriculum, and their immigrant experiences. at the first meeting, carolyn offered each participant a copy of artist shaun tan’s graphic novel the arrival (2006)ii – an immigrant’s story of arriving in a new land hoping that it might initiate conversations and elicit questions. tan’s fantastical, yet realistic, images provoked discussion between the researcher and participants as they explored and imagined the inbetweens of past/present, reality/fantasy, race/identity and cultures. notably, carolyn did not ask the participants specific questions relating to the illustrations and encouraged them to engage bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 6 with and freely interpret the artwork according to their own ideas and experiences. following kohler riessman (2000), we recognize that [a]lthough dehumanizing research practices persist, feminists and others in the social sciences have cleared a space for less dominating and more relational modes of interviewing, which reflect (and respect) participants ways of organizing meaning in their lives (devault, 1999). we have made efforts to give up power, and follow participants down their associative trails. (pp. 2-3) in reviewing the transcripts of these interviews, we have come to see how language – written, spoken, visual, and embodied not only defines but also reflects culture (peterson & coltrane, 2003) and the self, and expresses it through metaphor. relaying their auto-biographical stories, the research participants situated themselves between past and present events and, in so doing, each developed “a sense of [their self] as a narrative identity” (kearney, 2002, p. 4). moreover we noted how the conversation itself directed the participants. carolyn recorded that “[a]s the conversations took hold …we often lost track of the time…as our dialogue transported us to foreign lands, deep into the past and forward to the future” (field note, april 29, 2012, p. 4). away from objective research approaches, carolyn attempted to balance deep listening and observing with ongoing fluid adjustment and redirection, as she recorded in a field note following her interview with research participant, aiko: i felt tension or a kind of wall in-between us. i found myself repeating and rephrasing questions in order to draw out responses … i sensed not only in what she said but in her pauses that aiko was cautious about what she shared and how she responded to my questions. i doubted that her immigrant experiences were all positive as she described them, which points to my own engrained [normative western] assumptions that the immigrant story is one of pain and suffering – the “single” immigrant narrative. (transcription, may 1, 2012. p. 44) we argue that no essentializing human universals exist or as chimamanda adichie expressed: “the single [immigrant] story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. they make one story become the only story” (2009, para. 24). rather than interpreting individual “cases,” we read a strong message of hope in the layered meaning of participants’ collective stories. hope is not only something we have as individuals but also it lives out in our encounters in and with humanity. practicing palimpsest erases and subverts western dominant narratives –what we continue to hope for and work toward (thompson & zizek, 2013). in the interviews, the action of uncovering truth [aletheia]— the event of concealment and unconcealment— contained in the transcriptions was arduous, time consuming, and demanded patience, empathy, and care. practicing palimpsest required “scraping and smoothing” reading and re-reading the transcriptions, analyzing the intercultural dialogue, remembering the moment of the encounter and remaining open to possible subverted meanings. we acknowledge palimpsest and storytelling as a research methodology that “pushes against the constraints of those traditions … in its explicit recognition of the use of the self as the primary research instrument bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 7 for documenting and interpreting the perspectives and experiences of the people and the cultures being studied” (lawrence-lightfoot & hoffman davis, 1997, pp. 13-14). away from the objective, pre-determined and static interview methodologies that are sometimes adhered to in educational research, we propose that storytelling as an element of narrative can be recognized as a legitimate form of research and classroom praxis. in layering personal narratives, researchers and participants interpreted their experiences and topics through multimodal languages and ultimately constructed new understandings and meanings about self and other (bjartveit & panayotidis, in press). educational researchers from a variety of fields have explored the possibilities inherent in using palimpsest as a metaphor, a theory, or a methodology for reading historiographies and other bodies of literature (diamond, arnold, & wearring, 1997; huyssen, 2003; kaomea, 2003; mcardle & piscitelli, 2002; powell, 2008; saunders, 2003). our contribution to the work on palimpsest in education is to highlight the ways in which palimpsest lends itself to a collaborative praxis in interviewing. layering stories of the self to understand identity and difference [e]very life is in search of a narrative…we all seek willy-nilly to introduce some kind of concord into the everyday discord and dispersal we find about us…in our own postmodern era of fragmentation …narrative provides us with one of our most viable forms of identity – individual and communal. (kearney, 2002, p. 4) working as a preschool teacher years ago, carolyn remembers her young students’ engagement and interest in stories and storytelling. she recalled when children imagined and told stories from the garden (bjartveit, 2011) and masterfully created characters with personality traits to which they related a mischievous squirrel, a bossy queen bee and a magical fairy, to name a few. through imaginary play and dialogue, the children layered their selves with the characters and constructed a different sense of identity while “trying on” various roles. one young boy, who against the wishes of his parents wanted to be a fairy, came to a different sense of his own identity by crossing and exploring gender roles. “self, in other words, is a story that is constantly being rewritten. the writing and rewriting of the narrative which is self is hermeneutical and cyclical in nature… self is a narrative which is constantly reinterpreted and rewritten by oneself” (kazmi, 1990, pp. 285 286). remembering how the children layered stories to understand identity and difference, carolyn related her personal story to the arrival, and envisioned the immigrant experience. inspired by tan’s visual poetry and the stories that participants told her, carolyn imagined her grandfather an immigrant from germany who arrived in canada in 1930. by placing a photograph of her ancestor between the pages of the graphic novel and sharing his story with the educators she interviewed, carolyn adopted the dual roles of researcher and participant. she became more than an empathetic listener and risked becoming known – an ontological exercise that involved opening herself up to others, exposing and “placing [or laying her/self] on the surface” (oed). in layering her story with the accounts of immigrant participants and tan’s story characters, the fragmented pieces of information that carolyn gathered about her grandfather from family members, record books, official documents, and photo albums pieced together differently and recreated the story of his arrival and adjustments to life in canada. embracing the complexity not bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 8 simplifying, reducing or ignoring the layers of multiple stories uncovered hidden meanings about her identity and others and re-invented the immigrants’ experiences. apart from coconstructing stories through the interpretation of visual, spoken, and written language(s), we believe that layering the self of researchers and participants can develop trust, open conversations, build relationships and exercise “compassionate knowing” (munro hendry, 2008, p. 24). when carolyn invited the participants to respond to tan’s illustrationsiii, interview questions, and conversations in visual, written and spoken languages, many of them chose to describe their ideas and experiences verbally and/or in written notes. jin, a music teacher from south korea, planned to write a song and create a storybook about her immigrant experiences. others talked about writing poems, or sketching/drawing whereas some participants said they were not “artistically inclined” and preferred to talk about their ideas. while many of the participants shared initial plans to create visual works, only sumiko, a participant from japan, drew a picture to represent her ideas. identity was a strong thread weaving through sumiko’s story and, following the interview, she gave carolyn her drawing depicting light and shadow – a metaphor representing how she had lost her identity in japan and in canada was trying to discover her/self [figure 1]. in the interviews, sumiko told carolyn she was struggling to understand how her culture influences her ideas and who she is. she was wrestling with her identity and wanted to focus on her/self rather than on cultural labels – specifically being japanese. in a field note (april 2, 2012, p. 4), carolyn described her conversations with sumiko as deep and painful: it is difficult for me to describe in words – the dialogue was rich, intense and raw. i felt like sumiko wanted to be honest and yet it was a strain at times for her to re-visit her lived experiences and to articulate her thoughts… her pauses were long and loaded and i included her expressions of “hmmmmm” and “uhhhh” in the transcription – indicators to me of her thoughtful moments and struggle. explaining her drawing, sumiko said that, although the central object does not change, shadows cast from it shift according to the direction and source of light. notably, the light represents, “environment, people, experiences, and culture” (transcription, april 25, 2012, p. 91) that influence and transform her identity, similar to the changing shadows in the drawing. when carolyn invited sumiko to further explain the metaphor specifically what changed the direction of the light and influenced her transformation she responded: s: oh for me [pause] moving – yes. but for me, the dynamics of people around me. [pause] but i’m still questioning myself that – [are] they really different from people in japan? people are people and i know that um there are many individual differences in each single, different person but am i just making an excuse or huh. [pause] i wasn’t able to create my own strong identity – this is what i’m feeling. why? c: in japan, you mean? s: in japan and even here maybe. i’m asking to myself, why? and maybe environment? but it’s an excuse and i’m blaming [pause] other people and something – hmmm. i just want to put the blame on something but not on me. it’s my responsibility to create my own life. it’s no one’s responsibility but it’s mine. so ... [pause] yes so why did i let othbjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 9 ers, environments or other factors um change my life or change me, myself? i didn’t need to let anything change me but something changes me and uh why is that? i don’t know. (transcription, april 25, 2012, pp. 91-92) figure 1: sumiko’s visual description of light and shadow as it relates to her cultural identity. bruner noted that “it is through narrative that we create and re-create selfhood, and self is a product of our telling and re-telling. we are… expressions of our culture. culture is replete with alternative narratives about what self is or might be” (2002, p. 86). sumiko articulated her own identity crisis by layering and imagining her/self as the main male protagonist in tan’s novel [figure 2]. tan’s drawing of the man struggling to understand a new language made an impression on sumiko. she said the immigrant character is frustrated about his inability to communicate and about losing his identity. she imagined the man knew who he was in his own country but when he came to the new land he no longer knew him/self. when carolyn asked sumiko if her experience is similar to the story character’s, she said that she lost her identity in japan and in canada continues to work out ideas about her/self (field note, april 25, 2012). sumiko related to the frustration and emotions represented in tan’s drawing: he’s so confused, worried, scared and he is frustrated because he wanted to say something but he was not able to say something. there is a gap between what he wants to say and what he is able to say. and uh he’s hopeless, frustrated because of lack of communication. and uh i think this page is the moment that his identity was taken away for the first time and he wants to prove it, he wants to prove his identity but he can’t and this is really scary to him ‘cause he is losing his identity. (transcription, april 24, 2012, p. 70) bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 10 figure 2: “[h]e sensed that he’s losing his own identity, i think. it’s really devastating, this is” sumiko (transcription, april 24, 2012, p. 70). apart from sumiko’s drawing, it was evident to us, in reviewing the interview transcriptions, that the visual was calling for words – asking or beckoning readers to place written text alongside tan’s illustrations. the post-it notes, many of which were written in point form, described immigrant stories of departure and arrival, family, emotions, adjusting to a new culture and identity [figure 3]. figure 3: the post-it note sumiko left on tan’s illustration (see figure 2) a trace of her/self and identity shilpy, a research participant from bangladesh, did not relate to the images in the arrival (2006) because she had few lived experiences to relate them to. shilpy emphasized that tan’s stories might be her mother’s or grandmother’s. although their experiences were not hers, they are bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 11 inscribed on her – especially the troubling accounts they told her about the war of independence in bangladesh during the 1970s. as shilpy looked at tan’s drawings she said, “i can’t explain because i have no language… it’s a kind of [a] story i know, telling something” (transcript, may 4, 2012, p. 68). shilpy verbally articulated her ideas and so we question why she said, “i have no language” and seemed lost for words. derrida (2000) stressed “what [we] don’t want to say or cannot, the unsaid, the forbidden, what is passed over in silence, what is separated off... all these should be interpreted” (derrida & dufourmantelle, 2000, p. 12). figure 4: “and this it’s a kind of story i know, telling something” shilpy (transcription, may 3, 2012, p. 68). shilpy left no post-it notes and expressed anxiety both in what she did and did not say about the illustrations. we believe the layers of visual and embodied languages her pointing gestures, sighs and silences were meaning/ful. having said this, we recognize that the process of layering may in itself be driven by western communication ideals and interpretations. this necessitates researchers to be self-aware conscious of dominant standards and beliefs, and open to immigrants’ diverse responses and modes of communication. we vacillate between our own stories and the participants’ accounts, recognizing that, in the past, we ourselves have misunderstood others based on wrongful interpretations of the stories they told. after kearney, we concur that “[t]he key is to let the other be other so that the self may be itself again…[o]ne of the best aids in this task is narrative understanding: a working-through of loss and fear by means of cathartic imagination and mindful acknowledgement” (kearney, 2003, p. 8). our literal and philosophical understanding of tan’s title the arrival exemplifies how interpretations differ and new meanings arrive in layering spoken, visual, and written stories. the arrival might refer to the immigrant experience of coming to a new land and/or to “the event” – the often-unpredictable coming of truth [aletheia]. however, who or what is arriving or coming? derrida said l’avenir refers to “someone who comes whose arrival is totally unexpected…. it’s the coming of the other when [we are] completely unable to foresee their arrival” (zeitgeist bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 12 films, 2002, 1:44). we recognize how, in relating to various illustrations and telling their stories, the participants “arrived at” different understandings of self and other and their lived experiences. ghiso and low (2013) emphasize that “‘arriving’ does not imply either an incremental shedding of one cultural identity in favour of another, or a static endpoint. rather… narratives showcase stories of struggle, loss, excitement and disjuncture, representing, through visual modalities, the nuance and contradiction of claiming transnational identities” (pp. 32-33). recognizing, too, that stories remembered are fragmented, we believe that some/thing true arrives through layering memories and accounts told in multimodal languages. jacques derrida explained his own resistance to storytelling: even when i confide things that are very secret i don’t confide them in the mode of a story. at times i provide certain signs, facts, dates but otherwise i don’t write a narrative. and so the question for me is the question of narration which has always been a serious question for me. i’ve always said i can’t tell a story. i’d love to tell stories but i don’t know how to tell them. and i’ve always felt that the telling is somewhat inadequate to the story i’d want to tell. so i’ve given up telling stories. i’ve just given up. (zeitgeist films, 2002, 33:45) if stories and the storytelling that ensues cannot be accurately told because events are forgotten or misrepresented and words /language misunderstood, we ask: is it better to remain silent and not tell them at all? here is where we take a turn from derrida. in recognizing that stories are incomplete not actual accounts but interpretations of life experiences we believe they must be told. the value of the “telling” is to come to an understanding about self, other, and events through language which "provides the mitte, the ‘medium’ or ‘middle ground,’ the ‘place’ where understanding…takes place” (gadamer, 2004, p. xvii). the continuous interplay of verbal, written, embodied, and visual languages one playing off of the other fill in missing pieces of narratives and accounts of events. layering stories told in multiple language modalities provided different meanings and deepened our understanding of the immigrants’ life-stories. recognizing difference and disrupting dominant western narratives in ece while interrogating master ece narratives and questioning “fixed representational forms of identity,” we agree with aoki that “identity-and differencemust always be understood relationally: identities with each other, against a background, in a context of contested meanings and possibilities” (smits, 2010, p. 16). per se, what does it mean to recognize difference in culturally diverse ece settings? secondly, “how can we articulate an explicitly intercultural ethic of dialogue?” (ganesh & holmes, 2013, p. 85). understanding how to “world” is in itself a multilayered concept and includes learning to be responsible, building relationships with others, negotiating interests, bringing others into our “common worlds” and practicing a “relational ethics” (taylor & giugni, 2012, p. 117). when carolyn invited participants to read the post-it notes left by others in the arrival, a type of intercultural polyphonic dialogue ensued. notably, participants spoke “from a fugal space ‘in between each other’ which is a communal space. they explore[d] an ‘interpersonal’ reality: a social reality that appears within the poetic image as if it were …aesthetically distanced, held bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 13 back, yet historically framed” (bhabha, 1996, p. 55). the participants’ strong interest in reading and writing post-it notes – traces and narratives of the self, related to tan’s illustrations was in itself note/worthy. the participants came together around shared communication – a dialogic context that is not between two selves but uses symbol (the post-it notes) as the other/self rather than a person. reading the notes, participant tina commented “we are one people in the real world and we feel the same things. we see the same things but we see them differently” (transcription, may 25th, 2012, p. 89). ultimately this “distanced” polyphonic dialogue interrupted the notion of a stereotypical “single” (adichie, 2009) or universal immigrant story and pointed to the participants’ unique and individual life experiences. now working as preschool teachers and childcare providers in canadian ece settings, immigrant participants observed and described childrearing and childcare practices that were different from their own. participant jin watched a caregiver at a daycare reprimand an african child, a new arrival in canada, for using her fingers to eat rice. jin commented that if the childcare provider had recognized and considered cultural differences, she might have allowed the child opportunities to learn about spoon feeding practices in western culture. instead, jin recalled hearing the caregiver comment to her co-worker: “oh their family doesn’t know how to use a fork and knives yet and she just grab the food like this – all over. she make a mess” (transcription, april 14, 2012, p. 38). tina was likewise troubled when she observed wastefulness and an excess of food and materials in the daycare where she works: “i would see lots of paper, recycled paper…everything was just too much! like full of toys, full of paper, full of food – they’d throw it away and…where i was coming from and the schools i was coming from [in zimbabwe] we grew up being resourceful” (transcription, may 25, 2012, p. 49). reading the participants’ accounts, we wonder how layering cultural ideas and understandings through dialogue might have created different outcomes to these experiences. veronica pacini-ketchabaw (2010) questions how “forces and intensities” that come together in dialogic encounters – when layers of life stories and cultures bump up against each othermight “be rearranged to create new movements and new arrangements… [and] slow down the forces that create binaries and centralisms and take them somewhere else where different arrangements would be intensified” (lenz taguchi, as cited in pacini-ketchabaw, 2010, p. 145). this requires educators to remain open to transcultural and contextual interpretations of language and narratives. diversity and difference should not be “interpreted as a technical problem to be fixed by our scientific gaze”, we recognize its critical importance in opening dialogue and coming to a “greater and deeper understanding” about self and other (panayotidis, 2011, p. 58). early childhood educators might also attempt to create spaces and opportunities for meaningful conversations and encounters to take place, so that relationships and communities can grow. while working as a preschool teacher, carolyn created a comfortable and welcoming space in the school for families to meet prior to and after program hours. as months passed, she noticed how the parents increasingly utilized the space and lingered there to talk, share ideas, and spend time together. carolyn specifically recalls how a family that had recently immigrated to canada from romania, established meaningful connections and friendships with other parents and children at the preschool. bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 14 educator maxine greene (1995) explained that “[d]emocracy… means a community that is always in the making. marked by an emerging solidarity, a sharing of certain beliefs, and a dialogue about others, it must remain open to newcomers, those too long thrust aside” (p. 39). we stress that further time and opportunities for dialogue are essential – children, parents, community members and educators should be invited to contribute and layer their diverse ideas on an on-going basis. we believe that inviting transcultural dialogue and building relationships in early childhood settings at all levels might serve to problematize dominant western early childhood discourses and connect educators, children and families in vital ways. it can potentially “world” a community and the curriculum, and create a pedagogical philosophy that acknowledges difference, diversity, and individuality. conclusion [w]e are surrounded by layers of voices…certain voices became silent and, hesitating to reveal themselves, conceal themselves. let us beckon these voices to speak to us, particularly the silent ones, so that we may awaken to the truer sense of teaching [and learning] that likely stirs within each of us. before we visit the place where the silent voices dwell, let us try to uncover layer by layer…from the surface to the place where teaching [and learning] truly dwells. (aoki, 2005, p. 188) in weaving together multiple layered narratives and our ideas about storytelling as classroom and research praxis, we hope to forge a deeper understanding of how the stories we tell can often depend on the people we are and want to be. such interrelations suggest to us that stories told and listened to are the wellsprings of life. while examining the always convoluted intersections between the self and the intercultural polyphonic dialogue and language that it may prompt, we seek to understand more fully aoki’s (2005) “zone of between” which serves to situate students and educators ontologically through the course of interpretation. we are, however, mindful of how what we speak, write, and create can reproduce worlds, understandings, assumptions, critiques, and possibly lead to colonialized or postcolonialized identities and subjectivities. we are critically attuned to the difficult and perplexing moments in teaching and learning alongside our students whether young children and youth in schools or adult learners in the postsecondary teacher education classroom. it is those difficult moments that unsettle us, cause us to worry, to wonder, and to reconsider what we thought we knew and perhaps importantly how we came to know. difficult moments are palpable, deeply residing in our bodies and producing uneasiness and discomfort. yet, as ann reynolds noted evocatively, “discomfort may be our only motivation to look harder at the agendas of pedagogical institutions and their devices, no matter how subtle. an assumption of universal appeal always masks a much more considered selectivity” (1995, p. 109). within this discomfort lies the possibility for critical teaching, a commitment to a rich curricula and inquiry-based teaching practice, which is apophatic; seeking to speak, write, and imagine the unspeakable and the unsaid. we argue for transcription (recording, writing, and interpreting) as a methodological practice of deep listening that incorporates all of the researchers’ senses and recognizes the rich and multiple modes of communication and language interpretations. as such, the notion of layering language, stories, and cultural understandings are interlaced through theoretical, methodological, and visual lenses. in interrupting interview protocols, we hope to further explore research practices that bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 15 include layering stories told in multimodal language(s), and cultural understandings that point to “a process of deep examination and penetration: an inquiry that is designed to uncover layers of mask and inhibition; a search for authenticity that is rich, ranging, and revelatory” (lawrencelightfoot & hoffmann davis, 1997, p. 139). language itself in its multiple modalities, layered with narratives, histories, and cultures potentially change our conceptions of relationality. in practicing palimpsest layering stories, including the participants and our own – and disrupting dominant western ece narratives, we encountered “layered voices” (aoki, 2005) that pointed us to different understandings about the “immigrant experience,” the connections between the self and other and what it means for culturally diverse teachers and students to live together in an always complex world. bios carolyn bjartveit is a phd candidate in educational studies in curriculum and learning and a sessional instructor at the werklund school of education, university of calgary, canada. her doctoral research focuses on the topics of teaching and learning and the complex intersections between the self (of students and educators) and the curriculum in culturally diverse early childhood education post secondary classrooms. cjbjartv@ucalgary.ca e. lisa panayotidis is professor and chair of educational studies in curriculum and learning at the werklund school of education, university of calgary, canada. she has written extensively on fine arts teacher education, historical thinking and consciousness, and curriculum theory and imagination. co-author of provoking conversations on inquiry in teacher education (2012, peter lang), her research has appeared in the journal of the canadian association for curriculum studies, media: culture: pedagogy, and journal of curriculum theorizing. elpanayo@ucalgary.ca references adichie, c. 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(2013). the privatization of hope. durham, nc: duke university press. bjartveit & panayotidis journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 5 19 wood, m. (2012). the other case. daedalus, 141(1), 130–138. yang, g.l. (november 11, 2007). stranger in a strange land. the new york times. retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/yangt.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print[cb1] zeitgeist films (producer) (2002). derrida [youtube video] retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctcpwjcc6co i although some western researchers argue in favor of parents co-sleeping with infants, the prevailing western dominant discourse remains – babies should not sleep in adult beds. mckenna and mcdade (2005) note that “there are many good reasons to insist that the definitions of different types of co-sleeping and bedsharing be recognized and distinguished…co-sleeping at the least in the form of roomsharing especially with an actively breast feeding mother saves lives, is a powerful reason why the simplistic scientifically inaccurate and misleading statement ‘never sleep with your baby’ needs to be rescinded, wherever it is published’ (p. 134). ii we would like to thank shaun tan and lothian books / hachette australia for permission to reproduce images from the arrival (2006). some reviewers have suggested that tan’s work exhibits and perhaps glorifies the complexities of immigration, creating a heroic ‘single’ story or liberal multicultural discourse of success. in a personal e-mail written to carolyn, tan wrote that he was intentional in this approach. he noted: “i … hope that my book adds a sense of narrative coherence to memories of real experience, that it in some way elevates the migrant experience beyond a set of day-to-day chaotic problems, and that it can be seen as something profound and even heroic” (personal correspondence, 07/01/2013). furthermore, new york times critique, gene luen yang (2007) described how tan’s graphic depictions fit the universal narrative of the immigrant’s arrival in america: “[the protagonist] sets up residence in a city that…resembles new york’s historically ethnic neighborhoods. by borrowing american imagery to communicate an otherwise universal story, tan highlights just how central the immigrant experience is to the way america defines itself”. iii in a forthcoming paper (bjartveit & panayotidis) we expand more fully on how the research participants translated their immigrant experiences through imagining and interpreting illustrations in shaun tan’s (2006) graphic novel, the arrival. microsoft word moules editorial.docx corresponding author: nancy j moules, rn, phd email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics october 27, 2018 ãthe author(s) 2018 editorial: watching my mother die – subjectivity and the other side of dementia nancy j moules & andrew estefan preamble: on subjectivity within research traditions, the construct of “subjectivity” is limited and contentious. subjectivity is often associated with the “personal” in ways that enable it to be diminished or reduced. a reductive perspective of subjectivity means that it is commonly understood as the realm of “personal opinions, assumptions, interpretations, and beliefs” as opposed to the more “objective” and, arguably lauded “observation of measurable facts” (https://www.diffen.com/difference/objective_vs_subjective). there is an inherent assumption embedded in critiques of subjectivity: if something is measured, it is fact; if something is felt, believed, or interpreted, it is not. qualitative research has been criticized for being too personal, too subjective (greenhalgh et al., 2016). research that focuses on experiences engages interpretation to make meaning of those experiences. quantitative research engages measurement to make meaning of phenomena. whereas the tools of the quantitative researcher are seen as a more reliable basis for articulation of “facts,” the interpretations of the hermeneutic researcher cannot (and should not) be measured in the same way. “the theory that everything is a matter of interpretation is called hermeneutics…there are no uninterpreted facts of the matter. every matter of fact is a matter of the interpretation that picks out the facts” (caputo, 2018, pp. 3-4). where this becomes problematic is that the worth placed on the different tools and practices of researchers means they are valued differently. hermeneutic research is easily reduced and dismissed as subjective accounts, and therefore not trustworthy or dependable. moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 3 2 addressing this issue seems to be an ongoing challenge that warrants attention (moules, venturato, laing, & field, 2017). subjectivity is a complex phenomenon and a misused term. the philosophical nuances of subjectivity are overlooked and ignored when it is reduced to simply mean “opinion,” or “experience.” although subjectivity incorporates both opinion and experience, it is also neither of these things. some philosophical ideas, such as personalism (for e.g.) reveal or suggest that subjectivity is, indeed, intersubjectivity because of the relational nature of humans. subjectivity must, then, have an external referent. can subjectivity qua subjectivity, therefore, ever be known? personalism also further troubles the idea of subjectivity because, to other “people” we are also objects. what, then, is the nature and experience of the object-subject? although we are not seeking to answer that question in this paper, we recognize that asking it is a challenge to common assumptions about subjective experience. “hermeneutics is the theory that the distinction between facts and interpretation bears closer scrutiny…no matter how loudly you proclaim you are just sticking to the facts, you are only raising the volume of your own interpretations” (caputo, 2018, p. 4). caputo’s words, here, remind us that subjectivity—the experience of self— is nested within and among our action in the world. human subjectivity informs our simple choice of what to eat for breakfast; it also informs the uptake of objectivist and constructionist thought. subjectivity is contentious because, in neoliberal, instrumentalist contexts (such as the professions), singular, subjective experience is perceived as lacking validity as a source of truth. subjectivity is, though, a form of becoming. for some theorists, like marcuse, subjectivity is the cultivation of radical, resistive subjectivities. in this way, subjective is not just “is,” but is shifting, and always forthcoming: a rich site for inquiry. take, also, ideas like bildung – the education within and through culture. bildung makes subjectivity more than simple opinion or the way the “other” sees it. subjectivity can be owned and named, we can articulate a self that engages with, and appraises, a world, just as others are at liberty and able to critique the existence of that self. the transaction here implies something beyond subjective opinion, but rather a negotiation of self, knowledge, and understanding between self and world. these conversations are not expressions of a solely subjective state, but an applied debate in which ontological and epistemological tensions are played out in both generative and constraining ways. when considering how it is, as people in the world, that we know, even apparently “subjective” judgments are problematic. taste, for example, is an aesthetic consideration. taste is the subjective experience of pleasure or displeasure; a person either likes something or they do not. people are, however, also conditioned to find some things pleasurable (a nice latte for example), and other things displeasing (like the smell of durian). the actual physical or physiological response of the body to certain stimuli is precisely that, a biological response that might contribute to a sense of subjectivity, but biology is not subjectivity in and of itself. the fact that around 10% of the population possess a gene that makes cilantro taste like soap is not a singular truth grounded in either objectivity (10% have the gene) or subjectivity (the experience and appraisal of cilantro is a negative one). therefore, an exploration of the nature and conditions of pleasure is needed in order to explore human experience. the exploration and the finding transcend the limits of moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 3 3 subjectivity as it is commonly understood. one might argue that the limits of science are similarly transcended in such a venture. the arguments that things (like findings in qualitative research) are “subjective” are based on superficial engagement with what subjectivity means. even if a singular person can be known as a subject with subjective experiences, it cannot by extension just be assumed that what a person says or otherwise expresses, or how they act, is subjective. for some theorists (consider psychoanalytic feminism, for example), subjectivity is always constituted. that is to say, it is of something and that something cannot be ignored, reducing subjectivity to a matter of taste, preference, or disconnected independence of mind over context. finally, the boundaries of subjectivity are cultural: the degree to which we experience ourselves as subjective entities is not stable across culture or context. as a result, the reducing of complex expressions of being or presence in the world, as well the meaning-making practices in which people engage, to opinion or anecdote is both naïve and a loss of potential to enrich how connections are made between people in their respective worlds. this editorial is about personal accounts of interwoven universal human experiences of loss, mortality, and grief. though one writes within the “limit situation” (george, 2017), the writing can be interpretively linked to the world – a world which is not purely “my own” but intersects others’ experiences so that it becomes recognizable and, in that sense, communal. this is at the heart of hermeneutics: a sense of recognizability and kinship. george’s (2017) beautiful article was in response to beamer’s (2017) and moules (2017) reflections of grief and loss but it was also about his experience of the loss of his father. this editorial is continuing the conversation. in hermeneutics, one’s experience is often a point of departure either as something to interpret or something that changes our interpretation of things (k. sweet, personal communication, july 25, 2018). in continuing this conversation of loss, mortality, and grief, moules takes on the experience of dementia and the limit situation of memory in the context of dementia. in watching someone experience dementia, there are moments of connection, lucidity, and recall, watching as things become altered (at best), attacked, and finally lost. as moules’ mother succumbs to the dementia that has claimed and robbed her, we are clearly aware that dementia is not suffered in the singular. moules, too, is suffering its claim and its theft of her mother and this experience is much more than “just subjective.” “if we truly understand what an interpretation is – which is what we do in hermeneutics – we would never say ‘just a matter of interpretation’” (caputo, 2018, p. 14). the other side of dementia i (moules) am watching my mother die. this is hard but not as hard as it is to watch her suffering in her dying – a suffering that dementia has imposed. i lose her over and over again every day. rarely now are there glimpses of my mom. i look deep into her eyes and cannot find her and she cannot find me either a deeper sorrow and suffering for her a deeper loss. dying is not such a bad thing. suffering is. moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 3 4 george (2017) reminded us of the limit situation of memory in grieving and i watch the betrayal of memory as dementia, against our will, robs her of her fight to hold on to what and who she knows, just as she knows she is losing all of it. there is a past that is being lost here, not just her past but my own as well, a past connected to others in our lives. i wrote the following in 2009 for my mother and her two sisters, as well as for my cousins. i read it at the funeral of my mom's eldest sister in 2010. our mothers’ kitchen tables we grew up lingering around the tables in our mothers’ kitchens. in our times together as families, our mothers, three sisters, cooked for us all, and then gathered together in the kitchen to do the dishes; simply a disguise to mark the work that had to be done… but really claiming the place where they could connect alone. i remember us as kids, hanging around, not really helping, but mostly wanting to catch a scent of something secret. in these curiously sacred, yet mundane times, we learned from our mothers how to move seamlessly from laughter to tears, teasing to supporting, listening to telling. we learned what it is to be connected, to be loyal to family. we learned how to love. we hung around hoping to catch a tidbit of gossip, a nuance of sex, a glimpse at the laughter that transformed their lives from minutia to perfection. but mostly we stayed to see who we would become, what we had waiting for us. we stayed to see the almost inexplicable moments when they were just themselves in a way with each other that no one else knew. in these moments, they were not mothers or wives. they were sisters. we grew up lingering around our mothers in the moments when they moved from being mothers to girls; to women who, over years of experiences and love and loss, still found something to laugh about. we grew up with the hope that we too would find tables that were strong enough to hold up such rich history and grounding trust that laugher would always be found, that teasing meant love, and that family is heart. we were well-fed at our mothers’ kitchen tables. my mom was able to attend that funeral and then she had the 5th of surgeries for her pituitary tumour – a craniotomy this time. i started to lose her then. dementia is a master thief; it is moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 3 5 stealthy at times, bold at others. it slips in quietly and proclaims itself loudly. this kind of insidious loss does not happen cleanly, and the tables begin to turn at some point. resetting the kitchen table the table has changed she can’t see it. he can’t hear it. she is no longer the person she thought she was and then she believes she has lost me as well as herself. i have to dig deep to find her. but there are moments when she shows… i make a random joke and she gets it. he doesn’t. the food gets worse; the meal is harder; there is less laughter. and i leave to come back to my own home realizing i miss her. and once again, see nuances and foreshadowing of what i am to become the set table that awaits me. my father died last year (moules, 2017), and my mother did well enough on her own until january 2018. then quickly it was long term care and a very rapid decline deep into dementia, such that she can no longer talk and she is receiving total nursing care. she knows who i am, but it is a limit situation of memory that has betrayed her and left me bereft before she has died. she is dying and i try to grasp george’s (2017) limit situation that gadamer invokes it give me comfort in his words of memories that are “inexhaustible in their significance” (p. 3), and how i am charged to carry the memory on my own: “the world is gone; i must carry you” (derrida, 2005, p. 141, citing paul celan). i think too of my friend, heather, who lost her daughter, danielle, last year on september 26, and my other friend, janice, who lost her son, jordan, last year on december 1, and the memories they carry of worlds gone. “the infinite task posed by the dead” (george, 2017, p. 1) is as limitless as are our efforts to understand (gadamer, 1960/2003). grief, like life, involves a radical and resistive subjectivity (sebba, 2012). grief is not just sadness, but sometimes it is relief; there is freedom with loss; there is laughter with tears, or as crist suggested “as soon as a newborn child feels the first touch of air it falls to crying. the sun must shine upon it for well nigh forty days before it starts to laugh. oh in this world, tears predominate over laughter” (crist, 2018, pp. 7-8, citing gadamer, 1996, p, 153, citing the poetry of friedrich von logau). during her life, my mother resisted being “the good minister’s wife.” she was, at times subversive and, for a woman of her time she may have been thought of as radical, albeit quietly and with careful purpose. recently, i have come to understand that even had she not resisted being the good minister’s wife, she could not have laid claim to such an moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 3 6 experience; some of the women of my father’s church can still not let go of their story of her as an unfitting minister’s wife. as her memories fail, my mother occupies a different resistive and radical subjectivity: she is the “i” without an “i.” this is not a simple subjectivity; it is being, becoming, resisting, and, ultimately, succumbing. we can set the loveliest of tables and we can invite the most loved of guests, but we cannot predict how well the meal will go we can only do the best setting we can as we carve out the futures for which we can only hope. postscript thelma irene moules died at 1215 a.m., september 1, 2018. we miss her. references beamer, k. (2018). and coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 10. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53317/pdf caputo, j.d. (2018). hermeneutics: facts and interpretation in the age of information. london, uk: penguin random house uk. crist. a. (2018). a hermeneutic approach to pain: gadamer on pain, finitude, and recovery. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 10. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53341/pdf derrida, j. (2005). rams: uninterrupted dialogue – between two infinities, the poem. sovereignties in question. new york, ny: fordham university press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/2003). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h-g. (1996). the enigma of health: the art of healing in a scientific age (j. gaiger & n. walker, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 3 7 george, t. (2017). grieving as limit situation of memory: gadamer, beamer, and moules on the infinite task posed by the dead. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 11. retrieved from https://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/163/pdf greenhalgh, t., annandale, e., ashcroft, r., barlow, j., black, n., bleakley, a., …ziebland, s. (20160. an open letter to the bmj editors on qualitative research. the bmj, 352, 1-4. doi: 10.1136/bmj.i563 moules, n.j. (2017). editorial: grief and hermeneutics: archives of lives and conflicted character of grief. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53316/pdf moules, n.j., venturato, l., laing, c.m., & field, j.c. (2017). is it really “yesterday’s war”? what gadamer has to say about what gets counted. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 1. retrieved from https://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/140/pdf sebba, f. (2012). testing the limit: derrida, henry, levinas, and the phenomenological tradition (s. barker, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. microsoft word williamsonpaulcorrectedproof.docx corresponding author: john williamson email: wjwillia@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics october 30, 2012 the author(s) 2012 the level playing field: unconcealing diploma exam accommodation policy w. john williamson and w. james paul abstract the authors, using a specific exemplar of standardized high-stakes testing and testing accommodations for learners with diagnosed disabilities in a canadian province, open up, for conversation and critique, the myth of the accommodations metaphor of “leveling the playing field.” by utilizing disabilities studies perspectives and literature, alternative interpretive readings of commonplace accommodations practices, as well as the experiential data of one of the author’s experiences managing exam accommodations at the school level, the authors critique the myth of reasonable, fair and equitable learner accommodations for those high schools facing standardized exit examinations. they also offer suggested alternative ways forward that they believe reconceptualize practices associated with framing accommodations for all learners and not just those deemed to have educational disabilities. when all learners are offered, without prejudice, diverse ways of demonstrating their learning, knowing, and achievement, then all students are engaged on level playing fields. keywords accommodations, alberta education, diploma exams, disability studies, gadamer, heidegger, level playing field 1my first experience with the concept of academic accommodation on diploma exams (mandatory exit exams alberta’s students are required to write) came twelve or so years ago when a colleague in counselling helped a student with a physical disability in my homeroom group apply to alberta education for extended time on his upcoming diploma examinations. the physical disability was due to a genetic condition that had caused the congenital amputation of some of his fingers. his application was initially rejected because his diagnosis was too old. my colleague helped williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 2 arrange for the student to see a physician who could verify that this condition was still disabling to the enterprise of writing, or, perhaps, we mused in sarcastic hyperbole, to verify that his lost fingers had not grown back since the last diagnosis. my colleague told me she was very tempted to send a picture along to accompany the more recent diagnosis in her letter of appeal. in 2012, 55,361 diploma examinations were written by students completing grade 12 courses in the province of alberta. these standardized tests are weighted at 50% of the students’ course grades in their grade 12 core subjects english language arts, mathematics, social studies and the sciences (alberta education, 2012). alberta education (2011) states the following reasons for these exams: • to certify the level of individual student achievement in selected grade 12 courses; • to ensure that province-wide standards of achievement are maintained, and • to report individual and group results. (p.1) coming at the end of their high school careers, in courses that are required both for graduation from high school and, often, as prerequisites for post-secondary pathways students hope to embark on, these exams are the very epitome of “high-stakes testing.” for students who have been supported in the classroom through differentiated instruction, including students with diagnosed disabilities, the prospect of writing these standardized exams under rigidly controlled testing conditions is daunting. focusing illustratively on some specific, diagnosable disabilities reveals some of the barriers to successful completion the exams would pose under regular conditions. for students with visual disabilities, standard print versions of the exams would obviously be inaccessible, but this is also true to some degree for students with diagnosed disabilities related to reading whose ability to interpret text would be hindered by their being asked to silently read some of the lengthy and complex exam booklets. the rigid time limits may also pose an unreasonable barrier for students with a variety of exceptionalities including slow processing speeds, physical disabilities related to writing, mental health issues and attention deficit/hyperactive disorder (adhd). these students need more time, either because it takes them longer to perform the academic tasks the exams required or because much of their writing time is inevitably lost to distraction or worry. the potential barriers that the standardized assessments under regular conditions pose to students with disabilities are a problem for the testers as well as the students. it is both an ethical concern in the sense that these barriers hinder the access to achievement opportunities for the students and a validity threat to anyone hoping to interpret data from these tests as they make it unclear whether a student’s performance on a particular assessment represented his or her actual mastery of course outcomes or only a shadow of what he or she was capable of (alberta education, 2006; webber, aitken, lupart, & scott, 2009). alberta education has formulated a comprehensive “response” system to address the potential barriers named above and to provide for reasonable accommodations for students writing diploma examinations to attempt to ensure that the diploma exams are administered equitably. this system is administered by the “special cases and accommodations division” of alberta education’s learner assessment branch. the concept of accommodation, as defined by alberta education, is important here. an alberta education (2006) “best learning practices” document entitled williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 3 “identifying student needs” defines accommodation as follows: an accommodation is a change or alteration in the regular way a student is expected to learn, complete assignments, or participate in classroom activities. accommodations include special teaching or assessment strategies, equipment or other supports that remove, or at least lessen, the impact of a student’s special education needs. the goal of accommodations is to give students with special education needs the same opportunity to succeed as other students. (p. 1) in the case of the province of alberta’s diploma exams, accommodations are available to help ensure that students with disabilities are treated fairly include the following: • audio cd versions of the exams; • extra writing time; • a scribe to record student responses; • large-print versions of the exams; • braille versions of the exams. (alberta education, 2011, p.12) the special cases and accommodations division, then, clearly articulates the principles that guide the provision of these learner accommodations claiming that the goal of accommodation is not to optimize performance but to level the playing field (emphasis added) by removing obstacles to performance that are inequitable. consequently, accommodations are neither intended nor permitted to: • alter the nature of the construct being assessed by an examination; • provide unfair advantage to students with disabilities or medical conditions over students taking examinations under regular standardized conditions, or • compensate for knowledge or skill that the student has not attained. (p.12) on this note, as illustrated in the anecdote at the start of this paper, the special cases and accommodations division requires various forms of proof to legitimate the status of students as having a disabilities. students with formal special education disability codes are required to document their codes and provide proof that they are consistently using the requested accommodations in classroom assessment. students with disabilities not recorded in the alberta education coding system need to provide formal diagnoses and proof of consistent use of the accommodations (alberta education, 2011). this approach seems thorough and balanced on a first reading. students with disabilities are not patronized with excessive help and do not receive unfair advantages over other students. they are simply held accountable for demonstrating their knowledge of the curriculum through means appropriate to their diverse learning needs. i can speak to the tangible relief many students and teachers i work with seem to feel knowing that going into these important assessments that students writing diploma exams will have the use of the accommodations they require. i can also speak to the impressions i have gathered over years of practice as to the efficiency and consistency with which the alberta special cases and accommodations division processes the accommodations applications and their willingness to work collaboratively when applications for accommodations were lacking. instead of rejecting these applications with no chance of appeal, they have often worked patiently to help me properly document students’ exceptionalities and proof of prior uses of accommodations so that many of the cases that were initially turned down were often eventually accepted. within the closed system of their own rules and procedures, special cases williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 4 and accommodations division often acts, from my observations, with professionalism, consistency, patience, and goodwill and this work undoubtedly benefits many diverse learners facing these high-stakes tests. as suggested in my example, however, despite the apparent successes i have encountered with this process of accommodation for diploma testing purposes, i have observed some problems as well. students who are eligible to receive accommodations, and who i feel would clearly benefit due the difficulties they experience, often refuse them. they refuse accommodations actively by saying they are not interested or sometimes, it seems, they refuse accommodations more passively through persistent failure either to obtain the necessary signatures from parents and teachers or to turn in the sections of the applications they are responsible for in time to meet the provincial deadlines. instead of being grateful for the accommodations, some coded students even seem resentful when i bring up the issues of their disabilities and the recommended accommodation for these disabilities, though, of course, i have no choice but to use disability labels. they are the currency required to obtain accommodations. the process of applying for accommodations is cumbersome, involving on my part the distribution, completion, gathering and faxing of hundreds of pages of documentation to special cases and accommodations every semester. time i spend engaged in this enterprise is time taken away from directly helping students with disabilities and other struggling students with their coursework. classroom teachers, who are an important part of the application team in the sense that they are required both to provide similar accommodations during classroom assessment and to work with the student to document the use of these accommodations, often seem resentful, too, not necessarily of accommodating the students but of the bureaucratic process. teachers who tend not to use strictly timelimited tests with students and/or who often read test questions out loud to students who are struggling to understand them are confused as to what constitutes a provable use of an accommodation in a diversified classroom where flexible assessment practices are neither formally announced as a departure from the norm nor limited to a limited set of eligible students, and the documents outlining the process of applying for accommodations (alberta education, 2011) provide no guidance on this. on the topic of eligibility, i often end up having to explain, with some difficultly, to students who are struggling in their classes and feel they might benefit from accommodations on their diploma exams, or teachers who are advocating for struggling students, why they too are not eligible for accommodations. actually, to explain this question from the apparent perspective of learner assessment/special cases is not difficult at all; for students with diagnosed disabilities, some aspects of the exams, such as time limits or the requirement to read silently, form unreasonable barriers that interfere with the assessment. for students deemed normal, even if they are struggling students who are thought normal, based only on a lack of a diagnosis to support the need for accommodation, the same aspects of the exam (silent reading, strict time limits) remain part of the curricular assessment and cannot be altered. doing so would give them an unfair advantage over other students. this, however, is not an intuitively satisfactory explanation to offer to students, parents or teachers and it starts to look even shakier if one questions the validity of educational labelling in the context of the ongoing controversies and definitional flux in the medical/psychological fields that inform the process (aaron, 1997; bienstock & harper, 2011; hacking, 1995; klassen, 2002; winzer, 2009). the claims to justice this policy makes also suffer whenever one simply wonders if there are, possibly, other ways of looking at williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 5 the needs of struggling students than through the lens of disability (clifford, friesen, & jardine, 2008; jardine, 2012). these concerns all coalesce into the question of whether or not the current policies of accommodation do enough to make diploma examinations a just experience for students who require them in order to be fairly assessed by the exams. a possible source of the resentment and confusion may have to do with a model/theory of disability that seems, quite clearly, to dominate the accommodations process but that has recently been frequently and openly challenged as an inappropriate way of interpreting disability or as a rubric to guide work with students with disabilities (alberta education, 2009; dunn, 2010; hibbs & pothier, 2005). the individual deficit model that special cases and accommodations division continues to use to determine which students are suitable applicants for accommodations, while once the dominant discourse in special education (winzer, 2009), has recently been criticized by stakeholders in special education as well as disability studies scholars as demeaning and exclusionary to individuals labelled as disabled and oblivious to the role of institutions in co-creating disabilities through exclusionary policy, stereotyping and the erection of unnecessary barriers (danforth & gabel, 2006; dunn, 2010; hibbs & pothier, 2005). critics note that despite the veneer of objectivity and scientific certainty with which documents such as the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (task force for dsm iv, 2000) and educational documents such as the alberta special education coding criteria manual (2010) describe disability as an individualized disorder, the social reality of disability is much more complicated than this. lest this concern seem excessively constructivist, it bears emphasizing that disability studies does not deny the reality that individuals have impairments that impact their lives, including their lives as students; rather, it sets out to critique what it claims to be dominant framings of these impairments as overarching, defining flaws or defects in individuals and the related social practices that disclose impairments through these negative framings (hibbs & pothier, 2005). it may be helpful to view this difference in perspectives hermeneutically, from a heideggerian (1962) understanding of “unconcealment” as well. as heidegger described in being and time, in a “clearing” (p. 133), a translator’s footnote encourages us to understand this in a literal sense as a space in the woods offering apparently unobstructed visibility of a thing, a thing may well be unconcealed or revealed but it still appears to us in a certain way that conceals other ways it may appear to us. in the “clearing” of the deficit model, in which people with disabilities have appeared or been disclosed as bearing individualized defects, “useful” technical knowledge has, admittedly, emerged about the nature of various impairments and about which accommodations might best assist people with these impairments. the enterprise of special education in general and, specific to this example, the process of diploma exam accommodation, depends on this knowledge (alberta education, 2006; winzer, 2009). other essential truths, however, are concealed by this disclosure, namely, the phenomenon of the discursive renaming/re-blaming of the institutional failure to be open, inclusive and convivial with a student who appears to learn differently as an individual defect solely lodged in the mind/body of the student (hibbs & pothier, 2005; jardine, 2012). the level playing field a closer examination of special cases and accommodation’s metaphor of the level playing field provides a hermeneutic unconcealing of the alberta education accommodation poliwilliamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 6 cy. seeming ostensibly in this case to indicate the state of fair and reasonable competition where no advantage is granted to either side “normal” or “disabled” learner -, this phrase “level playing field” has been used so often in conversations about ensuring equal competitive opportunities in a variety of contexts that it is easy to overlook its various foundational assumptions and associations. a very early use of the concept can be found in christianity’s bible, in the following piece of tactical advice: and the servants of the king of syria said unto him, their gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they. (1 kings 20:23, king james 2000 version) it is interesting to note that, in this quotation, the level playing field concept is not used as an invocation of fairness but as a strategic advantage that one side is seeking out over another in a test of even higher stakes than diploma exams, life and death combat. this meaning may linger as a reminder of the many ways this metaphor, which is now most often related to fairness, can still be used strategically. one might invoke ideas of fairness in order to gain advantage. notwithstanding this possibility, the level playing field metaphor with its implied imagery of sporting competitions where the levelness of the playing surface is of import tends to evoke notions of “fair play.” it also suggests the expectation that fair play is ensured by some sort of outside arbiter, a referee of one kind or another to hold everyone playing accountable to standards of play. in some ways, this metaphor does speak powerfully to the desire of, and for, a marginalized person to be included equally with, but not patronized or given advantage over, the normative group from which he or she was originally set apart in some field of endeavour. a discourse of moderation towards the more privileged other reassures that the marginalized party is asking for no more than fairness. the applicability of this notion of “level playing field” needs to be questioned in the context of the sufficiency of accommodation policies in levelling the playing field that is the diploma exam experience. “the level field?” the first notion that might be highlighted lest the frequent use of this phrase dulls the senses is that, in the present context, it is a metaphor equating the imposition of high-stakes tests on students with competition in a rulegoverned sport. the image of a field harkens to pastoral settings, in which members of a privileged leisure class partake in amateur sporting, such as games of croquet, cricket, or lawn bowling, or tennis. these participants attend in luxuriant solidarity to the rules of fair play that govern the gaming enterprise at play. competition is rightful and worthwhile, and it is assumed with the wilful naivety of class privilege that, even when the stakes are higher, the competition will be orderly and sporting. still, despite the façade of fairness the metaphor breaks down in a variety of ways when applied to high school high-stakes testing. first of all, aside from opting out of the widespread strong societal expectation of high school completion and, for many, the hope of advancing to some form of postsecondary education, the participants in this particular “educational sport” have no choice but to compete – and, to compete well. more apt comparisons than gentle sporting might be made to the privileged spectator/coerced participant relationship in sports of kings such as horse racing or gladiatorial combat. perhaps the recent dystopia novel and film, the hunger games (collin, 2008), in which working class adolescents were compelled to partake in “to the death” combat for the entertainment of a privileged class might also be a better williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 7 metaphor. while many would agree that competition is an integral aspect to the evolution of human experience, its value as a central theme of the educational enterprise is contestable. discourses related to high-stakes testing including “level playing field” uncritically advances competition, between students, between teachers and between school districts as an unequivocally positive phenomenon that will help ensure, in a (neo)classical liberal, capitalistic/marketing sense, quality education for all (gorlewski, porfilio, & gorlewski, 2012; graham & neu, 2004; kohn, 2000). a marxist reading of gladiatorial combat would point out that, other than earning the privilege to survive for another day, the gladiatorial combatant does not even really reap the fruits of his own victory. similarly, while the diploma exam writer’s transcript is certainly enhanced by a successful performance, these exams too speak of an alienation of labour. in terms of the exam as product, the student does not really choose to make it or how to make it and the fruits of the academic labour are certainly used for a variety of purposes external to the student involving larger “educational, economic and political establishments” (garrison, 2012, p. 19). admittedly, this marxist critique of assessment has its limits. it is obviously standard practice for the teacher as practitioner/authority to assert some control over the types of tests and assignments the students produce, as well as to use the results of assessment for a variety of purposes related to instructional planning, communication, and placement (webber et. al., 2009). in the case of diploma exams, however, the standardization of this control is well beyond the authority of the individual practitioner and the totality of the appropriation of the student work does need to be questioned. the process is characterized by a dehumanizing surrender in which the students submit to the examiner, a “documentable” self, (garrison, 2012) a surrender made all the more complete in the case of students with disabilities for whom this self is also documented as bearing deficits through the process of applying for accommodations. once this machinery of sorting and objectification is unconcealed, the pastoral characterization of the level playing field again seems less fitting. level? though the process of diploma exam accommodations does not promise to make the entirety of the school experience equitable for students with disabilities, merely the summative exams, the extent to which the larger playing field of public education may well continue to be tilted against students with disabilities bears comment. the exams do, after all, purport to test the success of these students in learning the larger program of studies. despite a vast and comprehensive system of targeted support for students with disabilities (alberta education, 2004), systemically the rates of high school completion remain much lower for students with diagnosed disabilities than for students with no diagnoses. specifically, according alberta education’s (2009) high school completion longitudinal study of the cohort of students who entered grade 10 in 2002, 79.5% of the non-disabled students completed after three years but only 56.5% of students with mild to moderate disabilities and only 32.3% of students with severe disabilities were able to complete in the same amount of time. though some of the same criticisms about flawed approaches to disability that i raise in this paper may apply to this apparent larger systemic failure to reach many of these learners in k-12 schooling, i only mention this concern in the context of the conversation about levelling the playing field of diploma examinations. is it naivety or hubris to claim that the final test of a k12 education that might have itself been inequitable for a student with a disability can realwilliamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 8 ly be made equitable by providing a few exam accommodations? in the sense of the cliché that the tail of diploma examinations wags the dog of classroom instruction, the familiar concern that teacher anxiety over preparing students for diploma exams often results in “teaching to the test,” or the use of superficial drill and skill teaching practices (alberta teacher’s association, 2009; friesen, 2010; kohn, 2000) is particularly worrisome when it comes to students with disabilities. it has been argued that students with learning disabilities are especially in need of rich, varied, multisensory experiences with curriculum and assessment (dunn, 2010; jacobs & dangling fu, 2012) and they may suffer disproportionality in classrooms where repetitive, narrow forms of teaching and assessment that mirror the diploma exams themselves are used in misguided efforts to prepare students for their diploma examinations. returning to the issue of the diploma exams themselves, exams such as the english language arts exam diploma examinations for writing arguably only test about a third of the actual high school program of studies. while outcomes related to effective composition apply to both the larger program of studies and the exams, other writing outcomes such as “use process oriented writing strategies” seem to have been replaced with noncurricular outcomes such as “generate ideas for writing quickly,” “produce a polished first draft,” and “write well under pressure” (slomp, 2007, p. 184). students with impairments related to spelling, writing, and anxiety while well-served by the generous, developmental, process-oriented approach to writing the program of studies for english endorses are hindered by the narrowed productoriented understanding of writing diploma examinations impose. the playing field, again, may be tilted against students with disabilities in the excessive emphasis of these high-stakes assessments on curricular and even noncurricular outcomes with which they are likely to experience the most difficulty. the power dynamics of accommodations policy too needs to be questioned in the context of the plausibility of claims to levelness. accommodations policies requiring extensive rules of application can, from a disability studies perspective, be understood as a bold exercise of institutional power and control on the self-identity of the individual with a disability (hibbs & pothier, 2005). the default position of the institution is to offer no accommodation and the general equity of the testing process for all is never up for debate. the student requiring the accommodation and the teachers facilitating the process are left with no choice but to endorse through their participation in the application process the institutional deficit-based understanding of disability and accept the rightfulness of the institutional approach to accommodation. self-advocacy, understanding, and requesting the supports that one requires to learn successfully is a common theme in working with individuals with disabilities (alberta education, 2003). the only form of self-advocacy the accommodations process makes available is the docile (foucault, 1977), self-application of a disability deficit label in order to be granted exceptional status. arbiters of levelness david jardine (2008) shared the following ecological vision of a process of differentiation and accommodation that works in fundamentally different ways than that of the diploma exam accommodation process. when i work in the garden with my seven-year-old son, i don’t send him off to a “developmentally appropriate garden.” i take him to the same garden where i am williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 9 going to work. now when we get there and get to the work that place needs, each of us will work, as each of us is able. we are not identical in experience, strength, patience and so on. but both of us will be working in the same place doing the real work that the garden requires. (pp. 111112) it bears consideration how much attention, tact, and prudence on the part of the parent might be required to render working in a garden with a young child a pleasant experience for both parent and child. as new life is occasioned by the work of the parent and child together in the garden, learning too is occasioned by this practical activity. as part of this practical activity, the parent learns through conversing with and observing his child. he learns how much intervention is needed to ensure the child is able to make a real contribution to the enterprise, as an energetic seven year old would be able to with proper instruction, but he also learns how to foster the child’s learning and enjoyment of gardening. he learns how much the child seems independently capable of and how much help he requires. though the situation calls for reflection, it is a reflection grounded in solidarity and practical activity, in which the parent may intuitively grasp instead of reasoning out that the way to familiarize his son with the motion of raking the garden is by guiding his first strokes hand over hand until the child begins to master the motion. in this pedagogy, there is something of heidegger’s (1962) “ready to hand” imbedded understandings, like those of the master carpenters engaged their trade. the practicing teacher, like the parent in the example, instructs and assigns work and observes and talks to his or her students in order to decide how much assistance and support each student will require. i look, with gratitude, on the contributions the medical and psychological fields have made to teachers’ understandings of which supports might prove most helpful for students with various impairments but i feel these types of accommodations should always be grounded in the world of the teacher practitioner working with students. while it is helpful to understand why, from a medical/psychological perspective, a student may require more time than most, a wise teacher should not need a note from a psychologist to know better than to rip an assignment out of the hands of a student who is still actively engaged in completing it, possibly even learning something from the task. the wise teacher, when assisting a student who is having trouble comprehending a passage from a text, does not need clinical verification to know that one way to help might be to read the passage out loud to the student, lest some previously unnoticed aspect of the text announce itself to the student when additional senses are recruited in his or her effort to understand. the medicalized, individual deficit model, in its reliance on experts to declare which accommodations are legitimate for diploma exams, disrupts the “ready to hand” application of supportive pedagogy and alienates the teacher from the practical work of determining which supports his or her students require in the classroom in which they work together. though it might be argued that there is some collaborative involvement of the classroom teacher in this process in that he or she is one of the signatories who must verify use of the accommodation in the classroom in order for the student to qualify, it bears asking what exactly the classroom teacher is being asked to collaborate in? does the signature of the classroom teacher help verify that it is abnormal for a teacher to offer, or a student to require, these forms of accommodation? does it verify that the students who are well-served by these accommodations bear defects, and that the legal/clinical intervention of this docwilliamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 10 ument on classroom practice is welcome and necessary? the teacher who wants to see his or her students receive accommodation is coerced into being a witness, though not an expert witness, in the process, but is otherwise devalued by the requirement of additional medical/psychological verification on the part of a more “expert” witness. the expert witness to the need for accommodation is the psychological or medical practitioner who, though he or she may have little or no actual experience working with the child as a learner, provides the documentation that confirms the disability status that makes available the accommodation. writing of modernity’s increased reliance on such experts when it comes to social determinations of import gadamer (1992) wrote: our society is not deformed just because experts are consulted and recognized for the superiority of their knowledge. quite the opposite. it is almost a duty for human beings to incorporate as much knowledge as is possible in any of their decisions. max weber’s famous expression "purposive rationality" [zweckrationalität] applies here. for weber demonstrated that there was a great danger implicit in those decisions which are determined by emotion or interest: in them the will to be rational is absent which would tie the attainability of the end to the rational determination of means. max weber saw a weakness in modern individualism because it permitted the subordination of the duty to know to the indeterminate authority of a good will, of a good intention, or of a pure conscience. (pp. 188-189) who/what is this pure conscience? any suggestion that the determinations of the types and levels of accommodation students require are messy, complicated and grounded not solely in clinical definitions but in lived experience in classrooms would be antithetical to quest for control and certainty that characterizes both the diploma exam experience proper (graham & neu, 2004) and its accommodation process (hibbs & pothier, 2005). as such, the gatekeeper of accommodation cannot be the student or the teacher, who are subjects being measured; it must come from the outside medical psychological expert and, ultimately, from the decision markers at special cases and accommodations who evaluate the applications. justice in the form of equitable treatment for the student does not emerge from within the messy solidarity in the work of learning in the classroom, it is administered prescriptively, from without by an outside, non-contaminated, medical/psychological authority. the referee or arbiter of the level playing field in this case is, in the cartesian tradition, a curiously disembodied presence with no direct observational connection to the “game” being played and with often a fairly limited relationship to the participant requesting accommodation. play? the presence of students using extra time can pose logistical difficulties in exam administration. as the students who qualified for extra time accommodation continued to write the morning examination well past 12:00 p.m., the exam administrator let students into the gymnasium for the afternoon exam and, once everyone was seated, proceeded to deliver instructions for the new exam over the microphone, all while the students receiving accommodations from the previous exam continue to write. on a different day, as the students who qualified for extra time continued to write the afternoon exam in their desks in the gymnasium, members of the basketball team began to, noisily, move the desks off to the side to make room for their evening practice. williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 11 in a shallowest sense that one type of “play” might be regulated activity like the basketball practise that began to happen during the exam, the characterization of the diploma examination as a form of “play,” in the “level playing field” seems to apply. gadamerian (2004) hermeneutics, however, reads play as much more richly than this, as an experience of movement, freedom, sharing, and infinite, pleasurable regress. play is the to and fro motion of a ball thrown in a game, or absent humans altogether, the play of light or the play of waves. in the shared project of meaning-making, play is how meaning is coestablished, challenged, enriched, and reestablished in conversation and, more broadly, in any interpretive activity. as a part of a festival, travelling players may put on a play in small town and in a strange alchemy the original truth of the play is preserved even as each individual spectator interprets it according to his or her own horizons. the play of festive occasions or holidays, regular events of irregularity, suspends the ordinary relations to time, allowing time to tarry as members take stock or their lives and perhaps even take occasion to think of their lives differently. though it seems to stretch plausibility to suggest that the diploma exam experience, or the diploma exam accommodation process have the potential to fully take on these richer forms of play, these understandings of play certainly point to how depressingly lacking “play” is in the playing field of diploma examinations. time to play if one is truly engaged in an academic subject, taking advantage of the opportunity to “tarry” (jardine, 2008) over an important, summative academic task for that subject might be seen as an honouring of that subject, not a defect in the individual. learner assessment’s framing of this desire, however, echoes the concerns of the early 20th century managerial scientist frederick winslow taylor (1911) that initiative and judgment about how to best perform a task, including how long it should take, are not the domain of the individual worker but the factory manager. in a managerial fetishization of baselines of normality, students are not even expected to do their best but to produce a baseline representation of their capabilities in a time-limited examination (melnyck, 2012). excellence is obtained through the managerial prodding of students and teachers towards ministry-set standards. no consideration is given to what conditions might actually inspire and enable students, as conscientious individuals, to craft their best work. this framing conceals wanting or needing extra time as conscientiousness and reveals it as abnormality. in the rights of passage that saw apprentices go into seclusion to prepare the master crafts which would testify to their readiness for full membership in the guild (a tradition that is still carried on in academic rites of passage at the graduate level of post-secondary education), the mysteries of the discipline are honoured in the expectation that within generous, if any, time limits the candidates will produce their best work (rutherford, 1987). in the diploma exam milieu, the framing of “extra time” through the deficit model and the sense of the students work as a baseline sample, strips both the students and the occasion itself of the dignity that might otherwise arise out of their diligent effort during this summative gathering in the name of the academic discipline. framing it as abnormal to need or want more time invites interpretations of students as others, for which normal expectations of care, tact, and civility need not apply. the accommodation of twice the writing time may render the examination an excessively gruelling experience. in such a case, the students’ optimal levels of concentration and focus abilities are exhausted long before the provided time is. the validity of tests to measure academic achievement is considered to be rewilliamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 12 duced if the examinations are too long (topper, 2001). if, as a thought experiment, examinations for non-accommodated students were deemed to be insufficiently comprehensive and subsequently lengthened and scheduled for a writing time of five or six consecutive hours instead of the current two to three hours one could imagine students, parents, teachers and other stakeholders in education complaining vociferously that this increase in testing time was not only a threat to the examination validity and reliability, but a cruel and unusual imposition on students. basically then, a length of test-taking time that would, hypothetically, be deemed draconian for a nonaccommodated students is offered as a fairness provision for an accommodated student, despite the fact that there is no indication that processing information more slowly increases one’s stamina for intellectual activities or reduces one’s vulnerability to fatigue. are these slower working students deemed to be superhuman in their ability to withstand lengthy examinations? does learner assessment’s parsimonious approach to the time accommodation “problem” trickle down to schools? it provokes suspicion as to whether the students truly need or deserve this time provision or if they are in fact playing the system and loitering. on an institutional level, are alberta’s accommodated students, past the end of the scheduled writing time for other students, given the same right to a silent and distraction-free writing centre, or as the examination winds down, do they begin to be treated, in some schools, as academic loiterers? in addition to the aforementioned examples in my anecdote, i have observed announcements being made to extra time students, near the end of their allotted additional time that they had “30 minutes left” and if they were not finished by then it was “too bad”, and i have wondered if this same stern warning would have been given near the end of the “normal” amount of writing time to the larger body of “normal” students still gathered. in order to, understandably, keep writing centres orderly and distraction-free, exam administrators often regulate no food or drink policies. is it fair that students writing for five hours instead of three held to these policies? does this encourage a system where exam supervisors eager to finally be released from the shifts they hoped would only last three hours repeatedly ask accommodated students if they are “done yet”? levelling for otherness • accommodations are neither intended nor permitted to provide unfair advantage to students with disabilities or medical conditions. (alberta education, 20112). • whatever you do, whichever battle you fight, whichever course of action you attempt, with what are you going to inform it all? the love of difference or the passion for similarity? the former – especially if it becomes socially contagious (through education, cultural action, political action) – leads to human life. the latter leads, in full-blown or latent form, to exploitation, repression, sacrifice, rejection. yes or no, can we live together in fundamental mutual recognition, or must we exclude one another? (stiker, 1999, p. 11) a colleague was assisting me in helping a group of students with diagnosed disabilities, in this case mostly made up of students with learning disabilities and behavioural/emotional disabilities, in the application process for accommodations on diploma examinations. he told the students, “it is really important that you advocate for yourselves by asking for accommodations because you look williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 13 so normal. when people see you they can’t tell anything is wrong with you. stiker presented the choice between love of difference and the passion for similarity as binaries and, in the interest of social justice, they are well considered this way. it seems, however, these differences sometimes blend into each other as well. “accommodation,” for example, in the less clinical sense means that which fulfills our most familiar needs such as those for food or lodging but it can also be defined as something that is granted, given up, or even sacrificed in negotiations between parties (oxford dictionaries, 2012). in strangers, gods and monsters, kearney’s (2003) insightful hermeneutic reading of these three eponymous interpretive alternatives to otherness in which the author, with some help from derrida, emphasized the slipperiness of hospitable acts such as accommodation when he wrote: derrida has much to say about such alien matters in on hospitality. generally understood the subject of hospitality is a generous host who decides as a master chez lui, who to invite into his home. but it is precisely because of such sovereign self-possession that the host comes to fear certain others who threaten to invade his house, transforming him from a host into a hostage. the laws of hospitality thus reserve the right of each host to evaluate, select and choose those he/she wishes to include or exclude, that is the right to discriminate. such discrimination requires that each visitor identifies him or herself before entering one’s home. and this identification process indispensable to the ‘law of hospitality’ (hospitalite en droit) – involves at least some degree of violence. (p. 69) the relative strangeness of these others, in this case, accommodated-for students, is reinforced by the ongoing norm-based discourses which themselves cast the “accommodated other” as the departure from the norm. these concerns have historically and continue to infuse public education, in particular thinking about students with disabilities (graham & slee, 2005). kearney (2003) identified strangers as a limit-experience to us “relatively normals” in that they challenge us to identify ourselves over and against others and, he noted, monsters pose an even stronger limitexperience in reminding us that the self is never quite safe, sovereign, or secure. this is a constant “there by the grace of god go i” moment. all of these anxieties resonate within the policy document from special cases and accommodation division (alberta education, 2011). even as this document grants under what conditions a student might qualify for testing accommodations, it also delineates when the accommodations will be refused. even as this document advances its reified notion of fairness for the accommodated student, it spells out its limits, sternly warning that no advantage will be given – the rules are sacrosanct. the rules and procedures, and the abuses that would constitute a breach of these rules, are minutely described for every believed necessary accommodation. the other, a contrived but seemingly necessary stranger or monster, self-identifies and he/she is invited into the “house” that is the institutional event of the diploma examinations. does the anxious host take hostages when these guests are judged to be a threat to the facade of fairness and openness that “all” guests – it is claimed by the house – have access to? like kearney/derrida’s “anxious host,” the testers know their obligations to these identifiable others but remain anxious. their hospitality is immediately tinged with a jealous protectiveness of the center, or the norm, or the proper and good. still, what is there to protect? perhaps it is test security, precision of measurewilliamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 14 ment, application rigour, observable governability and, above all, the reified concept of an equitable and equal level playing field of competition. disability rights have been hard won through a combination of the activism of people with disabilities and their supporters and legal challenges (hibbs & pothier, 2005; shannon, 2011, zelma, 2009). still, despite public claims from institutions that their responses to this activism are well-intended, they have often been characterized by “stubborn reluctance” (shannon, 2011, para. 1) or through institutional nods to public pressure more so than to clear commitments to inclusive policy (hibbs & potheir, 2005). this creates, at times, a tense relationship in which the rights-based discourse of people with disabilities and their supporters is met with a stern regulatory discourse on the part of the educational institution. policy makers in the educational institution spell out a regulatory process of application for accommodation that is more reflective of fear of legal action than of deeply held commitments to inclusion. under a deficit-based system where accommodations are only granted to those who are deemed categorically eligible, detailed written policy about how to seek accommodations becomes obviously necessary. the tone of such instruction, however, is often less than welcoming and a discursive shift often takes place in which the policy moves from describing how to apply for accommodations to a legalistic listing of the limits to accommodation and the failures on the part of the applicant that will result in ineligibility (hibbs & pothier, 2005). in the albertan diploma exam milieu, the special case division’s written requirements sometimes take on this officious tone. the intent is not to give “advantage” or “optimize performance,” (alberta education, 2011, p. 12) the documents caution, casting students with disabilities as potential cheats at the outset of the process. moreover, if the stringent documentation requirements, deadlines, and necessary signatures are not fully provided on the accommodations applications, “special cases and accommodations will not approve [the] applications” (alberta education, 2011, p. 16.). writing similar concerns about the rigidity of policy, demeaning reliance on deficit understanding of disability, and insistence on individual exceptional accommodation instead of broad institutional action towards inclusiveness students with disabilities at the postsecondary level face, hibbs and pothier (2005) provocatively title a book chapter “mining a level playing field or playing in a minefield?” alternatives i am convinced that even in a highly bureaucratized, thoroughly organized and thoroughly specialized society, it is possible to strengthen existing solidarities. our public life appears to me to be defective in so far as there is too much emphasis upon the different and disputed, upon that which is contested or in doubt. what we truly have in common and what unites us thus remains, so to speak, without a voice. probably we are harvesting the fruits of a long training in the perception of differences and in the sensibility demanded by it. our historical education aims in this direction, our political habits permit confrontations and the bellicose attitude to become commonplace. in my view we could only gain by contemplating the deep solidarities underlying all norms of human life. (gadamer, 1992, p. 192) i do not wish to simply raise a series of concerns about alberta’s diploma exam accommodations without suggesting interpretive and practical alternatives that might move the processes forward towards a more inclusionbased vision of diversity. it is through ongoing dialogue and keeping things in the realm williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 15 of possibility that we are best able to treat students as students, not as reified groups and, in doing so, strive toward more just policies and practices. it is fair to say that it is possible that educators have only begun to understand some of the institutional barriers many students face, our very definitions about who does or does not have educational disabilities are problematic, and that the current process of accommodations does not live up to the claim that is addresses issues of fairness for all students with disabilities. this is a significant minority of students often considered to be especially vulnerable to some of the negative consequences of high-stakes testing (ata, 2009; gorlewski et al., 2012, katsyannis et al., 2007, lin, 2009). if, therefore, there are problems ensuring fairness through accommodation, perhaps the fairest measure to accommodate for disabilities would be to discontinue diploma examinations for all students. when it comes to students with disabilities, and possibly all students, high-stakes tests may measure too narrowly, weigh too heavily, provoke unnecessary anxiety, evoke test disability instead of ability, accommodate too stingily and essentially work to hinder the right of the student to a rich, fair, and sound educational experience (disability rights advocates, 2001; katsyannis et al., 2007). in light of current alberta premier allision redford’s and her former minister of education’s recent statements questioning the high weighting of these exams and the controversies surrounding the effect of diploma examinations on the national competitiveness of alberta’s students in terms of securing post secondary scholarships and admission based on marks requirements (calgary association of parents and school councils, 2011), the suggestion that they be discontinued, while unlikely even under this regime seems a little less unthinkable. even the proposed changes of the weighting of exams, from 50% to 25% of the students’ final grades, while not eliminating any of the issues i have mentioned, might at least help on the level of harm reduction by lowering the stakes. in this vein, an extensive literature review of high-stakes testing and students with disabilities in american schools (katsyannis et al., 2007) recommends that states that insist on using high-stakes testing best level the playing field for students with disabilities and all students by “mak[ing] high school graduation decisions based on multiple indicators of students’ learning and skills” (p. 166). certainly in the alberta system, lowering the weight of this one controversial indicator would make greater space for other measures of student achievement. it seems unwise, however, to discuss pedagogic concerns such as these with “an all or none” approach when prudent educational researchers in alberta and other districts where high-stakes testing is used often accept it as not so much desirable, but as present for the time being, and choose to discuss good pedagogy under these conditions (friesen, 2010; gorlewski et al., 2012). though the alberta teacher’s association has never withdrawn its original objections to the use of high-stakes tests for grading students, it also remains engaged with alberta education as a participant in the discussion of how to make the tests as fair as possible for as long as they exist (ata, 2009). many students are presently impacted by these tests and related accommodation policies and we wish, therefore, to address the possibilities for a more just system of accommodation within the present reality of diploma testing. though this suggestion may at first seem at odds with the historical and inspiring struggle for equal rights for individuals with disabilities to achieve a “level playing field,” perhaps the notions of precisely quantifiable “equity” and “advantage” in terms of many of the accommodations more commonly offered needs to be revisited in light of the possibly more appropriate concepts named by disability studies scholars, williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 16 hibbs and pothier (2005), as accommodation within the standard and flexibility for all. this paradigm aims to make general instruction and assessment as accessible as possible instead of relying on a model of “individual exception to the general standard” (p. 199) and is, in fact, the model of accommodation the supreme court of canada recommends as the starting point for human rights legislation. speaking of university assessment, hibbs and pothier offered the example of how, instead of accommodating for the many types of disabilities that render time-limited tests inaccessible through individual exception, using take-home tests whenever possible provides the same accommodation more democratically, and without reliance on deficit labeling. while it is difficult to imagine take-home diploma accommodations, this vision does inspire speculation of practical application of these principles to diploma testing. with the rapid growth of accessibility technologies, any pc or mac user can now access features on standard software to read text out loud and can dictate orally to a computer that will translate his or her speech to text. with the passing of distracted driving legislation in alberta, which bans manual operation of smart phones and cellular phones while driving, many multi-tasking drivers are using handsfree, voice activated technologies, which are legally sanctioned as less impairing than hand held devices under the new legislation. understanding technological supports such as speech to text and text to speech through the lens of disability accommodation is becoming increasingly antiquated. alberta education’s special cases and accommodations division has worked very hard to ensure that no accommodations pose a validity thread to the “constructs” of the diploma examinations, so framing reading and writing options for all to include broadly optional audio cds and use of speech to text software would be no real threat. “broadening [these] definitions of reading [and] writing” for all students (dunn, 2010, p.18; see also edyburn, 2009) would not only eliminate an unnecessarily negative framing of impairments that impact reading and writing, it might grant many more students not an advantage, but a more flexible means to show their competencies. though this might be seen as undermining the importance of more primary, physical reading and writing skills, these things are still relatively ubiquitous in k-12 education and broadening the technological options students have to interpret the complex texts and produce the complex responses the examinations require seems unlikely to contribute to producing a generation of non readers/writers. opening up these options might be seen as a stance towards emerging technologies equivalent to alberta education’s eventual support of widespread use of word processing as an option for completing the written portions of diploma examinations. while at one time almost all students in alberta wrote diploma exams using pen and paper (hart, 1987) and many states and provinces still allow word processing only as a special education accommodation (katsyannis et al., 2006; lin, 2010), alberta education now makes this accommodation broadly available and their records indicate 80% of alberta’s students selected this technology for producing written responses on diploma exams last year (alberta education, 2012). we do not suggest that 80% of students may eventually choose to listen to the readings and dictate their responses on diploma exams, only that these options now broadly available on standard computing software should, like the option of word processing, be made available to any students who would choose to use them. as well, the issue of time needs to be revisited. when avoiding an individual deficit interpretation that sees the need for “extra” time as abnormal, the presence of a significant minority of students who seem to require more than the allotted three hours can re-emerge, unconcealed, as a problem with the length of the williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 17 assessments in general. this unconcealing may lead to learner assessment reconsidering the length of the exams for all learners. reframing these reading, writing, and time accommodations to allow for more flexible assessment conditions for all students would, for many students with disabilities, strip the layer of “governance of disability” (tremain, 2005) from the diploma testing experience. there would no longer be the need to self-identify given the broad availability of what were formerly accommodations. the application process for remaining accommodations, braille, and large print exams for example, obvious in their specificity to discreet impairments might be streamlined to meet the logistical needs of ordering more so than the complex burden of proof of disability and prior usage of the accommodations. i remain doubtful about whether diploma exams proper are an educational practice that is consistent with the values of inclusive education, or to put it another way: i question if underlying technologies of control, surveillance, and competition are things to which any student, least of all more vulnerable students, should be subject. still, if diploma exams are to remain, for now, as highly weighted academic tasks students are required to complete in order to graduate, ongoing critique is needed to ensure their consistency with the educational values of inclusive education the larger institution of alberta education purports to hold. significant re-design of the accommodations process and examination design and administration may help push diploma examination policy out of the individual deficit model and at least provide all students with greater access to, in the words of foucault (1988) various “technologies of the self” to select their preferred options for responding to the assessments, thereby mitigating, at least to some degree that impact of the larger “technologies of power” that characterizes the whole enterprise. acknowledgement i (john williamson) would like to gratefully acknowledge the mentorship of dr. jim field who has engaged me in conversations about justice for students when he taught me as an undergraduate, and then again during my m.a., and as he now continues to teach me as my phd supervisor. this article would not be possible without the seeds of thought and concern these conversations planted in me. references aaron, p. 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(2009). leveling the playing field special education and the law. nyu child study centre. retrieved from williamson & paul journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 13 21 http://www.aboutour kids.org/articles/ understanding_special_education_law note 1 this article contains frequent uses of experiential data written in the first person by the first author, john williamson, a high school teacher and site-based coordinator of special education services. for the sake of structural flow, we have chosen to use the first person voice throughout the piece though we also want to emphasize that this work reflects the ideas and concerns of both authors, the second of whom, dr. jim paul, comes to this issue as a teacher educator. corresponding author: kate beamer university of calgary email: kmbeamer@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics november 1, 2017 the author(s) 2017 and coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry kate beamer abstract in this article, i explore aspects of grief and the surprising mirroring of hermeneutic research and the experience of grief. neither grief or hermeneutic research are predictable, formulaic, or without surprises, and both require patience, humility, and an openness to what comes to greet us in the nature of aletheia. keywords hermeneutics, interpretive inquiry, grief, aletheia, i stood at the front of the hall, tracing the outline of your urn with my finger. a traditional urn did not seem to suit you, however much a container can depict a life, so i selected one made from bamboo, box shaped and tall, with trees carved into it. my fingers followed the indented grooves of the branches, rooting me to a place i did not want to be. two hundred people milled around behind me, but i only saw you. your face, encased by silver frames, holding our sons, arms around each other, smiling. we were happy. hands approached me from behind, resting on my shoulders. even in my cognitive distance, i could hear a semblance of reassurances: “you’ve got this;” “you’re such a strong woman;” “if anyone can do this, it’s you.” something outside of the funeral hall window caught my attention and my gaze shifted toward a rustling in the bushes. coyote. it was one of those bone chilling winters, a harsh climate, that provided comfort to me in its barren, hollow form. yet still, there was movement. after the memorial, i returned home to a now empty house and a flood of emails all containing the same theme: strength and resilience. i read them on my phone while lying on the floor, completely gutted, shaking, in the fetal position, wrapped in the blanket that you died in. their written depiction of me did not match what i saw beamer journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 10 2 in the reflection of the sliding glass door: a woman, broken, ripped open, heaving, a guttural cry sounding out from deep inside, hands entwined in snot soaked kleenex, trying to move my wedding band from my left ring finger to my right. how did i get here? how did we get here? and what am i going to do now? historically, grief has been conveyed as a temporary, sequential process that one endures for a period of time until it ceases, returning us to our “normal” selves (moules, 1998; moules, 2009; thirsk & moules, 2013). while this notion of staged grieving is becoming replaced by more current theories of grief that view it as an enduring and lifelong transformation of the self (moules, 1998; moules, 2009; thirsk & moules, 2013), the effects of the stage models are still influential in how many people perceive and process grief. grief is portrayed as something that we need to rid ourselves of through an unrealistic cloak of courage and detachment. words such as “resilience” and “strength” seem to denote a stance of success that are needed to conquer grief: “resilience, as an idea, carries an association with strength of will. to be able to resume an original shape in the aftermath of trauma is often considered laudable, and those who are able to ‘bounce back’ and recoil in the face of adversity should be admired” (thomas, 2016, para. 4). how can one possibly rebound from the sudden death of a spouse? as mentioned, grief has long been compiled into a staged sequential model (moules, 1998; moules, 2009; moules, simonson, prins, angus, & bell, 2004) that we are encouraged to “whip through” in order to “return back to normal.” but there is no return and, in my life trajectory, there was never a normal. two days after my husband died suddenly in his sleep, i was accepted into the doctoral program. i laugh a bit now, at the naiveté of my pre-grief written proposal. i was intent, focussed, strong, sure of myself, tenacious. i saw in myself then, the resiliency that i was supposed to possess now. i knew what i was going to do and how i was going to do it. i was going to grab research by the horns and show everyone that i knew exactly what i was doing. there was no doubt, no wavering, no openness to feedback. i had studied the topic of curricular interventions for child sexual abuse survivors in my master’s degree, and i was going to drive it home for my doctoral dissertation. this was my calling, where my strength lay, where i tread familiar ground. the certainty of the tone of my proposal seems foreign to me now—that was the voice of resilience and strength. but now…but now… everything is tethered together by cryptic threads that are rapidly dissolving with each out breath. now i live on shaky ground. my topic, my life, the reality as i once knew it, is crumbling beyond my control. the strength i once knew has been replaced by an uneasy vulnerability, and i rest in limbo, torn between the world i once knew and the one that is now consuming me. this was not the plan. but apparently, hermes had other plans for me, and perhaps this was the lesson. perhaps, i was being called. like life’s traumas, the hermeneutic address is something that can happen to us, without heed or warning. what we may have conceptualized as our topic might not be pursued in the manner that we initially had planned. sometimes, it is what bothers us the most, the thing that keeps us up at night, that nags us, provokes us, pisses us off, that ends up being our topic. it is the responsibility of interpretivists to listen to that call when it arises: as a practice, hermeneutics is not a neutral enterprise; we do not simply select a method and aim it at the work to accomplish something we want to do. rather, it is action called upon for the achievement of some moral good… it is a call that addresses us in the beamer journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 10 3 first person … what can i add to the larger conversation, in the discipline, that might help us see, think about, act differently toward the phenomenon? (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015, p. 58) everything i see now is tinted through a grief stricken lens. the resiliency in which i drafted my initial proposal has since left the building. what calls out to me now is not the same that had provoked me previously. the thoughts that keep me awake at night, the horrific images of your lifeless body covered in carefully placed sheets to hide the autopsy cuts, me throwing myself on top of you, pounding your stiff chest with my fists—the sheets falling to the floor; i have been ripped open to a point where everything looks different; everything has been marked by you. there is no return to a previous self, for this is where i live now. grief has affected my perceptions and understanding of the world, so it is inevitable that it will impact my topic of research; yet, it is not a temporal shift just as my grief is not a transient state. it is a new way of knowing. grief is not a temporal state; it is a transformation of the self: “grief becomes a permanent, enduring, sometimes relenting, sometimes poignant, but always present part of the life of a person who has lost” (moules, 1998, p. 148). part of accepting this transformation is surrendering to the fact that it is happening, and even though it is well beyond our control, that is okay. there is a belief in our society that if we do everything right, no one will suffer. it is supported by the paradigm that believes we can control and manipulate our worlds entirely—but there is nothing anyone can do to escape grief. death is not something that we can overcome. perhaps grief brings suffering that we can never escape because it also means we have lived and loved. perhaps it is in grief that we are still reminded about our nature of the lack of control over some aspects of our worlds, the nature of human suffering, and the ever-present possibilities of hope that allow suffering to be something beyond pain and anguish. (thirsk & moules, 2013, p. 93) there is nothing i can do to escape this. as i kept repeating to the police officers when they knocked on the door to tell me of your passing: “this is actually happening.” no amount of strength is going to change this. so, it is in this sheer state of vulnerability and woundedness that i realize, no, i have not “got this”—and i am starting to think that it is not only okay to feel this way, but also necessary. a certain humility is needed when conducting hermeneutic research in the same vein that ego has no place in grief. just as i must surrender to the process of grief, i must also be vulnerable in the calling of interpretive work. hermeneutics deals with life, in all of its complexities and messiness, in ways that many other methodologies do not recognize. therefore, when life shifts, when life gets complicated, when we are called to attend to a different dilemma than one first imagined, hermeneutics is there to embrace that. for hermeneutics thrives in the difficulties of life, demands that risks be taken to examine the ambiguity of life: hermeneutics is not a theory of knowledge but the art of life and death, and ranges over the length and breadth and depth of life. hermeneutics does not shy away from the beamer journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 10 4 difficulty of life but summons the courage to deal with life in all its ambiguity. hermeneutics takes the risk of embracing the coming of what we cannot see coming. (caputo, in moules et al., 2015, p. xiii) the art of life and death. when the trickster appears. when our world is turned instantly upside down, when the unforeseeable happens. these are the moments of address in which hermeneutics delves into and thrives. hermeneutics is not about deductively charging into the world, trying to prove its own theory. it is much softer than that. it is not about resilience or objective truth, it is about curiosity into life’s most complex and intricate experiences. when we set out to discover the truth about something, to learn its innermost essence, a sense of humility is required: “hermeneutical questioning is informed by a humility toward one’s own not knowing, a genuine curiosity toward what the other might have to say, and the goal of shared understanding – not simply taking information for one’s own ends” (moules et al., 2015, p. 42). if our intent when conducting research is to really understand something, then we must be prepared to encounter the unknown. in this way, it is no different from grief. this journey i have been placed on is not about being strong; it is about surrendering to this unchartered experience and trusting enough to let it move me to where i need to be. so, while vulnerability and humility are needed to truly listen to the call as it appears in our lives, so is a sense of bravery to follow that call, not knowing exactly where it will take us, but having the faith to know its importance. a compelling aspect of hermeneutics is its correlation between understanding and experience. we are situated in this life with our own personal, cultural, and historical experiences. what we experience in life often calls out to us as interpretivists. but what if that experience changes? what if something occurs to trump our past priorities of experience? what if what was once important fades softly into the back glow of another, more urgent experience? this grief, this deep well of seemingly endless grief has changed me. it directs my interests, has changed my perceptions on fairness, and sorrow, and hardship. in essence, my understanding has changed. how could it not? having the police come to my door, and tell me in front of our two small children that you are dead; watching my sons fall to the floor in confused anguish, falling alongside them in a heap of hysteria. being whisked off to identify your body, trying in a desperate attempt of preservation to crawl into your casket before you entered the cremator. clawing at the wood panels of the box as you proceeded to enter anyway. how could it not? this new form of understanding has direct implications on my topic of research, and by revisiting my topic through this new lens, i also have come to understand myself better. it is because our understanding is so directly tied to our experiences where the most precious form of knowing occurs: “all understanding is ultimately self-understanding” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 251). we are not stagnant in life, and neither is our topic. just as our experience grows and evolves, so does our understanding of our topical interest. our topics also have life, and cannot remain unchanged. new research may debunk our previous theories; different methodologies interpret different results. the researcher’s experience also has direct effect on the topic. while i still am in pursuit of the topic of child sexual abuse survivors’ experiences in schools, i approach it differently now, with more of a focus on the narrative nature of trauma, and with a gentler, more humble and curious outlook, knowing that i am not all knowing, knowing that the trickster is always waiting in the shadows to reinforce that humility if needed. we are always moving, but if we move in patience, it could bring us much closer to the truth than hardened strength and resilience ever could. beamer journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 10 5 instead of attending to research with some type of indignant fervour, what if it was approached instead with humility and patience? what if it was approached with the same resonance that i have learned to embrace grief? “patience, in its original meaning, was a virtue that enabled a person to overcome his suffering and, in some sense, enact understanding in the face of the faults and limitations of others” (thomas, 2016, para. 8). sometimes, in order to truly embrace understanding, we must put aside our preconceived notions and ego in patient perseverance of true understanding. what i have learned about grief as i meander on its journey is that there is no prescription; there are no five stages (moules, 1998; moules et al., 2004). grief does not proceed in a systematic format with shock followed by anger followed by denial. oftentimes it is more cyclical, one step forward two steps back. as soon as i feel that the anger has been conquered, it comes rushing back in grabbing me by the throat, urgent, overwhelming, and consuming. perhaps it is the trickster fooling me again. perhaps hermes is trying to tell me that the lesson has not yet been learned, that i am still on the brink of discovering. patience. patience recognises suffering in the difficulties of one’s life and that of another. …patience becomes a way of bearing sorrows. unlike resilience, which implies retuning to an original shape, patience suggests change and allows the possibility of transformation as a means of overcoming difficulties. it is a simultaneous act of defiance and tenderness, a complex existence that gently breaks barriers. in patience, a person exists on the edge of becoming. with an abundance of time, people are allowed space to be undefined, neither ending nor broken, but instead, transfigured. and it is an act of courage, because only the unknown lies on the other side of the threshold of events we seek to overcome. (thomas, 2016, para. 9) it is the same with interpretive work. patience is needed to understand the phenomenon, to understand our positioning in its interpretation. it also requires a sense of openness that is not characteristic in a stance of guarded strength and resilience. as soon as we have firmly established in our minds that that is the way that something occurs, we close off our likelihood of seeing other possibilities. we become resistant to change and potential truth. i could have easily prescribed myself to the common notion that grief occurs in temporary sequential stages that, once completed, would return me back to a sense of normalcy, back to where i was. but there is no turning back. instead, encapsulated in a state of egoless vulnerability, i opened myself to other forms of truth. there is always another way. yet it did take the death of a spouse to break down those walls of righteous indignation, of a sense of egoic mastery. but that is the way of the trickster. as soon as you think you have truly “got” or understood something, he is there to playfully tell you, “not so fast my child, not so fast.” it is important that both the experience of grief and the topics that drive us not remain hidden, but instead, needs to be uprooted from where it often resides, deep inside, and be unearthed. for what remains hidden, can never be brought to light. this is a hermeneutic concept called aletheia: [aletheia] is also connected to the mystical river lethe in hades; the river of forgetfulness – a river that, if crossed, erased memory. aletheia is the antithesis of this: it is about remembering. in its unconcealment, enlivening, and remembering, aletheia beamer journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 10 6 brings home what may have been lost, forgotten, deadened, or concealed… (moules, 2015, pp. 1-2) aletheia occurs when something that has been historically hidden, is brought to the surface: “aletheia works against what was dead bringing it to life; it remembers and unconceals what was forgotten or lost…” (moules et al., 2015, p. 3). hermeneuts often set out in pursuit of unearthing and revealing some of life’s most complex and intricate, often intimate, experiences. we need to unearth and reveal and remember in order to move forward, as we draw on our pasts to guide us. it is this concept of aletheia and remembering that is becoming more prominent in more modern theories of grief: “grief invites us to look back, to remember. we willingly and necessarily, in grief, walk back into time and history, recalling when the one who died was physically present. at the same time, however, we learn how to continue to live and to move ahead” (moules et al., 2004, p. 103). unearthing what was once hidden or what we wish could remain hidden is not always easy. eight months later, and i still wake up every morning expecting you to be there. in my fog of early morning grogginess, i roll over to reach for you. it is only when my hand grazes the empty pillow that i remember my reality. as much as i wish i could plunge into the river lethe and forget all that has happened, as much as i instinctually want to push these memories of you down so that they reside deep in unconscious remembering, i know that this is not the way. these memories and stories of you need to be unearthed. i do it for our children. i do it in honour of the love i have for you. a part of the reason that we live in this world is to experience the terrible hermeneutic angst of remembering. there are times we wish to swim the river lethe and forget, and there are times we are afraid we already have and we clamour to reclaim what is lost from memory. …in hermeneutic understanding, we know that things must be awakened, recalled, remembered, and suffered. (moules, 2015, p. 4) it is important to remember suffering. it guides me to being a better person; it is through suffering that we have the possibility of transformation, and as gadamer states, “a transformation into the true” (1969/1980, p. 112). many cultures possess stories of the trickster, that sneaky character who can pull the rug out from under you, teach you lessons and illuminate experiences. he goes by many names: coyote, raven, hermes, loki (“trickster,” n.d.). the trickster character has been used in folklore to demonstrate the impermanence of life, reveal secret or sacred knowledge (albeit indirectly), and instigate change. as the messages of the trickster are often indirect, interpretation is required in order to find the meaning behind the messages. indeed, hermeneutics is associated with the trickster hermes, who had “the capacity to see things anew and his power is change, prediction, and the solving of puzzles” (moules et al., 2015, p. 2). one cannot encounter the trickster without a sense of reverent humility. the trickster appears when a guide is needed, when inexplicable change occurs, when we seek meaning for events we do not understand: “the coyote or trickster, as embodied in southwest native american accounts, suggests the situation we are in when we give up mastery but keep searching for fidelity, knowing all the while that we will be hoodwinked” (haraway, 1988, p. 594). in order to best interpret the messages presented to us by the trickster, we must be patient and still enough to listen carefully. we must read the beamer journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 10 7 signs. we cannot hear the messages if we are wrapped up in an indignant shroud of strength. as often, it is in our most vulnerable state where true resilience is found. i sit here writing this one day after the worst mass shooting in modern american history. over fifty families instantaneously now join me in the grief journey. tomorrow there will be more. the wind whips at my windows, unruly, caused by an unexpected fall snowstorm. coyote howls. life is precious, fleeting, sacred. this is not where i thought my research was going to go, in the same vein that i did not know this is where my life was going to go. my life has now been divided into two parts: life with you, and life after you. i try to follow it as it ebbs and flows. a small settling of dust has accumulated on the tops of your framed pictures, and i know now that you have been gone for a while. it is my only indication that time has passed, as i live out each day in horrific presence of your absence in my world. but i also know that these feelings too will pass, and i will be propelled forward into a new state. i must be patient. i now approach my topic of research in a state of humility and vulnerability, seeing it differently, more clearly than before. for even in death, we can be given gifts of understanding. that is the way of the trickster. i cradle my topic carefully in my hands, the same way i held you as you lay on the metal gurney at the funeral home: gently, realizing the fragility and temporality and movement of life, knowing with acute awareness that how i approach this topic, will have implications. we are all called at different times and stages in life. coyote. the trickster. hermes. we must listen to these calls of life with the same urgency that we address what is calling to us in research. this is not about resilience or strength; it is about patient listening and openness. it is about unearthing what lies deep inside of us. perhaps our topic will change. perhaps, our existing topic will be given new life. perhaps it will be us who are changed through engagement with our topic. i now wear a necklace engraved with your fingerprint, the inside containing your ashes. it is all i have left of your bodily form. i run my fingers over it and am reminded of the movement of life. nothing is stagnant. nothing is solidified in permanence. we are in a perpetual state of motion, yet what propels us, what calls out to us may evolve and shift and, as researchers, as humans, we must heed that calling as if our life depends on it. as often, whether we recognize it or not, it does. references gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. haraway, d. (1988). situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. feminist studies, 14(3), 575-599. doi:10.2307/3178066 moules, n.j. (1998). legitimizing grief: challenging beliefs that constrain. journal of family nursing, 4(2), 142-166. moules, n.j. (2009). grief and families: applying the illness beliefs model to bereavement. in l.m. wright & j.m. bell beliefs: the heart of healing in families and illness (rev. ed.) (pp. 305-317). calgary, ab, canada: 4th floor press. moules, n.j. (2015). editorial. aletheia: remembering and enlivening. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 2. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5qr4p68 http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5qr4p68 beamer journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 10 8 moules, n.j., simonson, k., prins, m., angus, p., & bell, j.m. (2004). making room for grief: walking backwards and living forward. nursing inquiry, 11(2), 99-107. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. thirsk, l.m., & moules, n.j. (2013). “i can just be me”: advanced practice nursing with families experiencing grief. journal of family nursing, 19, 74-98. doi: 10.1177/1074840712471445 thomas, s. (2016). how patience can be a better balm for trauma that resilience. aeaon. retrieved from https://aeon.co/essays/how-patience-can-be-a-better-balm-for-trauma-thanresilience trickster. (n.d.). in wikipedia. retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/trickster https://aeon.co/essays/how-patience-can-be-a-better-balm-for-trauma-than-resilience https://aeon.co/essays/how-patience-can-be-a-better-balm-for-trauma-than-resilience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/trickster corresponding author: james c field, phd werklund school of education university of calgary email: jfield@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics march 12, 2017 the author(s) 2017 losing the so-called paradigm war: does our confusion, disarray, and retreat contribute to the advance? james c field abstract in this article, i argue that what is commonly lamented as the decline of qualitative research might be because of our own inability to reveal something true about being-in-the-world. four problems with qualitative work are identified: making what is obvious inescapable, confusion around what constitutes qualitative research and phenomenology, uniformed and disrespectful mixing of methods, and devolution into “little t” truth. i finish by calling for bold, evocative interpretation, and posing the question: what is the nature of the revolution that hermeneutics can foment? keywords qualitative research, hermeneutics, phenomenology mixed methods, bricoleur, multiple realties, truth after being a coauthor on an article in the journal of applied hermeneutics recently about the resurgence of positivist science, framed in terms of losing the war, i was left with a niggling feeling that has grown into an awful question that “cannot possibly be true, but just might be true.” it sits uncomfortably between knowing and not knowing, hope and dread. so, in this spirit, let me ask this dreadful question: what if the fact that qualitative research is “losing the war” is not simply because of some hostile take-over from science, or a creeping form of alt-right totalitarianism, (although i am sorely tempted to go with this interpretation), but because of our own failure, in far too many cases, to reveal, and to claim, boldly, courageously, something true, something that matters about being in the world and doing interpretive work? i can hear the howl that will go up in response to this question-assertion, and rightly so perhaps, from good field journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 5 2 folks who do good work. i submit this piece under a “guilty as charged” verdict, and i will have to wait; indeed, i look forward to what the “sentencing” might be. the trial is not over, i am sure. however, since i call for courage in doing interpretive work, i think it is time i heeded my own council. so, let me ask that we consider, briefly, the possibility that the enemy might be within. like the democratic party in the united states, perhaps it is time we stopped laying the blame for qualitative research’s decline entirely on someone or something else, and took a good, hard look at ourselves. i offer here an initial foray into what might be termed “the crimes we ourselves have committed.” making what is patently obvious completely inescapable, and/or finding exactly what we are looking for i remember the sting of the first phrase on one of my first graduate papers, from a supervisor whose style has long since disappeared: “this is all very literate,” he wrote in the margin of the third page, “the trouble is that you have made what is patently obvious completely inescapable.” an unkind remark perhaps, made over 30 years ago, but i think it is still a relevant and appropriate critique of far too much qualitative work. i read too many qualitative studies that end with “insights” like this: teachers need to develop relationships with their students; students need to trust their teachers; classrooms need to be safe spaces; principals need to support their teachers; and, hang on to your hats, staffs need to talk to each other. in short, a lot of wha t we know gets confirmed, but nothing new is revealed. part of the problem here might spring from devoting too much time and space in interpretive work to scientific verification, (or should i say lincoln and guba-fication?) and not enough to interpretive revelation. note what norylk and harder (2010) have to say about their review of 37 articles on phenomenological research: it is remarkable that many of the articles reviewed in our study drew on lincoln and guba’s criteria (1985) to evaluate or justify their research. these criteria are generic to qualitative research, and were not specifically developed to evaluate phenomenological work. (p. 428) yet they are. so, it raises the question of what we are up to when we do things like this, but it also might contribute to the “much ado about nothing “charge leveled earlier. could we be squeezing out controversies, contradictions, differences, and suddenly appearing, startling insights methodologically, through things like “member checking”? i see this procedure liberally employed in qualitative work, without much thought as to what it assumes convergence around a single point and, at the same time, what it might prevent. something happens when we switch our attention from the phenomenon (die sache selbst) to the method used to generate and or confirm the truth of die sache. oddly, the very thing that has to fall way, the procedure, so that what is revealed, the substance of the matter at hand can come into view, is brought back squarely into the field of vision. we switch our attention away from the truth, “the gleaming, glistening, shining forth,” to the how and the who of the truth. in these instances, we have failed to pull out the bottom card of the scientific enterprise: that it is method and tools that yield truth. personally, i have never understood how “member checking” establishes truth or rigor. it seems to me to sail too easily past a set of questions that should trouble us these days: have we checked field journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 5 3 for truth, or simply switched to detailing our relationship with our participants? if everyone agrees, then can we assume that it is the truth, or a truth we have found? what happens if there is disagreement, especially between the participants and the researcher? how do i treat that as a researcher? do i assume that either what i think or what my participants think, feel, or see is false? underneath these questions is the troubling question of authority: can i draw my own conclusions or insights as a researcher, or is what i have to say about a particular phenomenon confined only to what my participants attest to or agree with? i wonder if we have made the mistake of unwittingly ascribing to a simple formula: meaning=agreement= significance=truth? have we blocked a way to deeper understanding because “we are so accustomed in the contemporary world to think that the human being is the source of all ‘saying’” (capobianco, 2014, p. 92)? i think this state of affairs is exacerbated by too many of us doing research with folks who think, feel, see, and act exactly as we do: as members of the choir, we do research on the choir. little wonder, i suppose, that we often end up simply singing along, with the same old self. in this case, the projection of our pre-understandings are simply confirmed by the interpretations that return. we connect, we develop rapport, we commiserate, we become a community, and it all “resonates deeply,” to use a favorite term. but nothing happens in the research: there is no “thwarting of previous expectations,” gadamer’s now famous criterion for having any kind of experience, or dare i say, research “worthy of the name.” we may know more, as a result of the study, but do we understand differently? have we been clear about and committed to the difference? it seems to me that far too often, as researchers, we conduct our research unscathed, our viewpoints remain--expanded perhaps, but fundamentally intact. put differently, the inquiry turns out to be event-less. it constitutes research with others like the self, to find what we all deeply desire: the self-same. we ride our interpretive horses around the hermeneutic ranch without the experience of, in husserl’s evocative phrase, “being thrown from the saddle.” i think we have drifted too far away from the “life force of being,” (phusis) that ought to show up in our work, what heidegger repeatedly described as the gleaming, glistening, glimmering, glittering, glowing that is the manifestness of being to humans--the phos (light) at the very core of phainesthei (spontaneous emergence of the truth of being)—that calls forth from us wonder and astonishment and great joy, brightens, lightens and opens us, inclines our thinking toward thanking. (capobianco, 2014, p. 37) mixed (up) paradigms, approaches, and methods i use the phrase “mixed up” here, a little tongue in cheek, in three senses: first, there is a proliferation and confusion of approaches, paradigms, and methods within the so called “paradigm” of “qualitative research.” second, this condition exists within even a single tradition like phenomenology. third, it seems to me that there is a growing tendency to throw or stitch traditions together, in too many cases hastily and naively, and call the result “a mixed methods approach.” there is a kind of repetition at work here –manifesting itself in different ways. field journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 5 4 the first sense of mixed up comes from using the term “qualitative” to represent or claim a singular paradigm (given, 2017), or a “unified field” (denzin & lincoln, 2005). i cannot see how qualitative research qualifies as a paradigm--much less a side in a war--if by paradigm we mean, a single “disciplinary matrix-commitments, beliefs, values, methods, outlooks, and so forth, shared across a discipline” (schwandt, 2007, p. 217). it is a mistake to think that “qualitative research” represents any kind of commonly shared ontology, epistemology, or cosmology, given the contradictory mix of positivistic and interpretivist approaches housed within, given the cacophony of incommensurate ideas about what constitutes truth, reality, the object of study, even who the researcher and the participants are. i think the variance “within” qualitative research is just as deep and broad as the variance “between” the so called qualitative and quantitative paradigms. put a little more strongly, and bringing the “fight” and the “fault” home, the war is within, and not just between. perhaps i am being too harsh in my judgement here, but i think the term “qualitative” has become meaningless in signaling anything of significance when paired with the word “research.” worse, its use causes confusion for anyone seeking insight into the nature of interpretive work, especially in understanding what constitutes good work that one could depend upon. the second sense of mixed up is a particular instance of the first, i think, and arises from a deepening plurality of approaches, even within a particular discipline like phenomenology. sometimes the so-called authoritative qualitative sources simply get it wrong. here is the definition of phenomenology from the sage handbook of qualitative research: “phenomenology brings the observer’s equipment to the fore and makes it part of the equation of meaningful construction and participation” (p. 1007). now whose phenomenology would that be? certainly not husserl’s, nor heidegger’s, nor sartre’s, nor merleau-ponty’s, nor gadamer’s. when did phenomenology, even when it took its interpretive, hermeneutic turn with heidegger, shift its attention from the life-world to “my equipment”? as readers, we do not know—there is not a tradition, or traditions, or a lineage of ideas/thinking laid out for us. instead, we get this laundry list of people that is supposed to count, at least in the index, as a definition: “phenomenology is a complex system of ideas associated with the works of husserl, heidegger, sartre, merleau-ponty and alfred schutz” (p. 27). yes, i agree, it is —and where is it that we get to see, and thus come to know, this “system of ideas”? it is nowhere to be found. the point is that even the folks who should know, our qualitative neighbors and friends, do not know, or if they do, then worse, they have treated phenomenology badly, have disrespected its traditions, and failed to acknowledge its revelatory power. if our friends do not respect us, why would we expect our “enemies” to? related to this is what happens in the field with phenomenological research, illustrated by the norlyk and harder (2010) study, which set out to answer the question: what makes a phenomenological study phenomenological? apparently, we cannot tell: the analysis reveals considerable variation, ranging from brief to detailed descriptions of the chosen phenomenological approach, and from inconsistencies to methodological clarity and rigor. variations, apparent inconsistencies, and omissions make it unclear what makes a phenomenological study phenomenological. there is a need for clarifying how the principles of the phenomenological philosophy are implemented in a study before publishing. (p. 429) field journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 5 5 there it is again—that feeling of hope and despair. hope for the “methodological clarity and rigor” that exists, but despair for the variations, inconsistencies, and omissions that make it impossible to tell what makes for good phenomenological work. heidegger’s (1999) charge comes roaring back across the ages: “phenomenological research has sunk to the level of wishywashiness, to the level of the philosophical noise of the day…everything absorbs phenomenology… it is impossible to make out anything [definitive] about phenomenology” (p. 58). i am not arguing for sticking to or striving for some kind of non-existent, unattainable purity in doing phenomenological work. nor do i think we should be enslaved by our traditions -context, purpose, and people matter, and should make a difference to the why, what, and how of interpretive work. but i worry about the loss of identity and sense of goodness that seems to be occurring. something is wrong when phenomenological work confuses phenomenologists. we do not do ourselves any favors by publishing work that is not rigorous and clear, and i am not talking about the lincolning and gubafication of interpretive work, i am talking about doing work where the goodness “gleams, glistens, glitters, and glows,” where it “opens us,” and where it “inclines our thinking toward thanking.” the third sense of “mixed up,” as in mixed methods, is constituted by the mixing of techniques (in-depth interviews and surveys), approaches (phenomenology and grounded theory are a favorite, for example), and philosophical traditions (in the former instance, german idealism and quibbling, symbolic interactionists). the latter “mix,” between barney glasser and richard strauss, was in trouble from the start, and tellingly, did not last. but i digress. the point here is that such mixes-number charts and narratives, concrete particulars and abstract categories, existentialism and positivism, practical wisdom and scientific propositions, are often tossed together, at will it seems. all of this is apparently accomplished by an increasingly popular hero figure in qualitative research, the free-wheeling bricoleur, a qualitative researcher licensed, somehow, to deploy “whatever strategies, methods, and empirical materials are at hand” (lincoln & denzin, 2005, p. 4), someone who “stitches, edits, and puts slices of reality together” (p. 5). note: “the bricoleur explores the use of ethnography, pinarian currere, historiography, genre studies, psychoanalysis, rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis, content analysis, ad infinitum” (kinchloe, 2001, p. 687, my emphasis). in this superhuman capacity for ad infiintum, marvel at the bricoleur, the perspective-shifting, place-shifting, tradition mixing, tool-wielding, nietzschean “oberman,” an “action-hero” if ever there was one. should we be asking what it is that disciplines or should discipline the seemingly all powerful bricoleur? to whom or what do they answer or serve? what is it, if anything, that interrupts their will to power? does the “thing itself,” the world, have a voice, or vitality, or integrity that we need to preserve and be in the service of? to what extent does the world compose us, or are we the all-powerful “mix-masters”? where is the commitment from the bricoleur to “becoming indigenous to place” (kimmerer, 2015, p. 205)? on the other side of this, pointing not to the mixer but to the mixed, is the question of what is it that is being mixed? how? what does the mix produce—is it a whole or just the sum of disparate, conflicting parts? or am i being naïve here is something whole and integral too much to ask field journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 5 6 for in this post-modern, post-human, and now, post-truth world? has any sense of what bennett (2001) called “cosmological coherency” been abandoned? has the “fractured future” arrived, as denzin and lincoln (2005, p. 1123) claimed it would, and is it here to stay? if we are confused and fractured why would anyone look to or depend upon us? i do not agree with charmaz (2006), however popular she has become, when she attempts to stitch grounded theory together with constructivism and, in doing so, claims to be “marrying two contrasting and competing traditions” (p. 6). in such cases, we all should be asking, what kind of marriage is it that is based on competition and contrast? is it a marriage at all, or just conflictridden co-habitation? do in-depth interviews produce the same kind of knowledge as likert scale surveys? do they proceed from the same assumptions about the way human beings are? do they treat the object of study the same, or are there different objects of study entirely? do the mixes and mix-masters simply add up-is that what the verb “to mix” means? is “mixing” the right thing to do at all? i do not think so. i want to be clear: seemingly different things do fit together, numbers can inform interpretation, or vice-versa, for example. but i do want things to be carefully braided or woven, and not simply mixed or loosely stitched. i want fine cloth to be the result, and not some hastily sewn together swatches of wool and polyester. most importantly, i want the braider/weaver to be able to explain, as all good weavers can, the why, what, and how of the weft and the weave. a wonderful example of this, where the research traditions are carefully, knowingly, and respectfully combined, in startling, poetic fashion, is robin kilmmerer’s (2015), braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teaching of plants. it gleams, it glistens, and it shines forth. forfeiting ground to the march of “constructed, multiple realities” and “small t” truth there is also, embedded in this representation of the qualitative researcher as the bricoleur, the image of a reality constructed wholly by humans, a world of what latour (1993) calls quasi – objects, apparently subject to slicing, editing, and stitching according to human will. this is the problem that frightens me the most, and is the most life-threatening, in my opinion. it arises, partly at least, from playing it fast and loose with notions like “reality” and “truth.” the term “multiple realities” has become quite popular in the literature on qualitative research (see the assertion, commonly expressed in the theories of constructivism, for example). in most instances, i see it asserted, but rarely scrutinized or clarified, much less justified. i am afraid of statements, by researchers claiming to do interpretive work, like this: “the way we as researchers come to know reality constructs the reality we come to know” (usher, 1996, p. 39). hmm--what is it that the term “reality” refers to here? additionally, this seems to me to be a vicious circle, not a virtuous one, with no way out. even if there was a way out, how would we know if we simply and only construct the reality we know, and we can only know the reality we construct? forgotten in talk like this is the way history and reality construct us. are we prepared to give history, and the animate world, with its life-giving gifts, their due, and call them all constructivists? but hang-on, whose world, and whose reality am i talking about here—are there not multiple realities? field journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 5 7 my first encounter with the notion of “multiple realities” was with alfred schutz (1967), in his work on the phenomenology of the life world. schutz had something specific in mind when he used the term— “as finite provinces of meaning” (p. 232). he did not mean separate, distinct mental states, multiple, individual consciousnesses, or entirely separate, independently existing worlds. there was no “this is my reality” and “that is your reality” with schutz. that is, he was careful and discriminating when he used the term: the finite provinces of meaning are not separated states of mental life in the sense that passing from one to the other would require a transmigration of the soul…they are merely names for different tensions in one and the same consciousness, and it is the same life, the mundane life, unbroken from birth to death, which is attended to in different modification. (schutz, 1967, p. 232) quite often the “multiple realities” talk is paired with assertions like this in qualitative work: “there is no ‘big t truth’ anymore, it is all ‘little t truth.’” in the face of a statement like this, i want to ask: whose “little t” truth is the truth and reconciliation commission’s? is that a mistake in the title, flowing from an erroneous ontology it should be a small t instead of a capital t? should we treat what we are hearing in the testimony about the genocide of a people, as just one version of the truth among many versions? because if this is true, then what is my ethical obligation to the other and the call to action? if it is just “their truth,” how am i enjoined to and by the other, as ricoeur (1992) asked, “over and above my willing and wanting” (gadamer, 1960/ 1996, p. xvii) to respond? let me try to come at this a little differently. what truth is gadamer (1960/1996) calling for when he asserted that i should know myself such that “the text can present itself in all its otherness, and thus assert its own truth” (p. 269)? and what truth is it that gadamer speaks to when he asserted that the critical task of hermeneutics is “to know what is asked by the distinction in operating between true prejudices or those which guarantee understanding, and false prejudices, which bring in misunderstanding,” (quoted in grondin, 2003, p. 89)? is this just another “little t” assertion, or is it the case, because i have “my own truth,” that i get to decide that what gadamer is referring to is just one more “little t” truth among many? the trouble is that individuals, with their “own reality”, and their “own truth,” in an era of “post-truth,” do get to decide—that all muslims are dangerous, that women are second class citizens, that children are sketchy, deficient beings, that meningitis can be cured with hot peppers, onions, garlic, and horseradish, and that the world is simply there as standing reserve for our projects. but there are real consequences—there is that word again—culturally devastating, life, and planet threatening ones. so, at the risk of sounding like a closet positivist, let me make another bold claim: it is big t trouble that we are all in the face of our little t truths, because donald trump has been elected president of the united states, and we are living out our lives on a dying planet. admittedly, there is a complicated, dynamic relationship between big t and little t truth, one that needs to be carefully explored and worked through, but denying one and embracing the other does not get us any further down the road in deciding how to live well together on a planet and with people we are systematically degrading and extinguishing. but there i go again making big t claims. field journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 5 8 this brings me to the final (re)turn. i agree with the translators of the latest collection of gadamer’s work when they say: our societies are faced with this challenge where violence has become one of the arts of ‘praxes’ within traditional liberal democracies. this may be a challenge harder to face than the challenge of the sciences. can gadamer’s reading of history deal with alternate ‘readings’ and respond to them or engage them? (vandevelde & iyer, 2016, p. xxxv) how do we deal with alternate readings and understandings that are artfully and violently opposed? when interpretive conflict turns deadly, then what? should we all retreat into our own “little t” truths, or has this already happened? to some degree, i think it has. i see a real reluctance in interpretive work to defend any position fiercely and courageously, however dependent on time, place, and values it is, to draw a strong conclusion, even in the face of differing conclusions, to make any kind of bold ethical declaration about an “ought” or a “should,” however positional and contestable it might be. when we retreat, like a slow, fleeing army, from the world into the safe haven of “this is just my interpretation,” the “fading ethical intelligibility” (kroker, 2014, p. 43) of such a stance leads all too quickly to the ethical abandonment represented in the next set of statements: “who am i to judge?,” and “who am i to say?” the reasons offered for this kind of “refusal to be” are multiple: “it is hard to say, because it is all very complex,” and “things change so rapidly, that nothing holds,” and “there is no real solid ground anymore,” and “it all depends on your worldview.” i take all of these statements to be true, and i am not arguing for a lack of caution in making claims, or that tact and civility are not essential, or that being aware of the finitude and fallibility of being human is unnecessary, or that the claim the other makes on us is not tantamount to interpretive work, or even that it is not the case that truth occurs with untruth, to borrow from heidegger. but, by granting all of this, i do not think we have to make all our interpretations weak and wobbly in advance, or take back everything we say, in anticipation that we might have to change, or refuse to be bold, courageous, and evocative, because there might be another view. and please, please let us stop saying that we cannot generalize because our sample size is too small. how would we know, anyway? would that not require “a transmigration of the soul” (schutz, 1967, p. 232) to other places and times, to see and know if, in fact, what we had to say did or did not obtain? and have we not, in claiming this, made the kind of sweeping generalization that we were trying desperately to avoid in the first place? worse perhaps, does that mean we should put every sentence we utter in scare quotes? i understand that “giving oneself up to the argument of the other is an act of attentiveness” (davey 2007, p. 169), and that being attentive and open is a primary feature of interpretive work. i also understand that, in being attentive, something essential to hermeneutic understanding takes place in that “one is able to forget one’s own purposes” (gadamer, 1960/1996, p. 124). but i worry, especially in times like these, about “forgetting one’s purposes,” and constantly “giving oneself up to the argument of the other,” because it just might be that such a position, field journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 5 9 accepts, embraces and makes light of just what it should resist. it is tolerant of that which it should raise its voice in protest. it accepts just what it should defy. it lets violence off too easy. its notion of the justice of strife is that of a weak-willed judge. it has no nerve for a real fight, which means to resist the wasteful effects of suffering. (caputo, 1987, p. 285) perhaps it is time to consider what hermeneutics might look like in an era of post-truth, where the signs of a budding totalitarianism are unmistakable, in “a society whose members act and react according to the rules of a fictitious world” (arendt, 1948/1968, p. 62). perhaps it is time that any research “worthy of the name” of hermeneutics leads not to sunny skies and safe pastures, but to thunderstorms, as caputo, (1987, p. 214) has urged, steered not by the “calm hand that guides the ship through the waves” (gadamer, 1999, p. 246), but rather by heraclitus’s lightning bolt that flashes and takes our breath away (but does not make us run away). it is in this spirit that vandevelde and iyer’s (2016) posed their not-so-friendly question: “what is the nature of the revolution that hermeneutics, lying between philosophy and history, can foment” (p. xxxv)? references arendt, h. (1948/1968). the origins of totalitarianism, part three. new york, ny: harcourt. bennett, j. (2001). the enchantment of modern life: attachments, crossings and ethics. princeton, nj: princeton university press. capobianco, r. (2014). heidegger’s way of being. toronto, on, canada: toronto university press. caputo, j. (1987)). radical hermeneutics. indianapolis, il: indiana university press. charmaz, k. (2006). constructing grounded theory. thousand oaks, ca: sage. davey, n. (2007). unquiet understanding: gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. new york, ny: suny press. denzin, n., & lincoln, y. (eds.). (2005). the sage handbook of qualitative research. thousand oaks, ca: sage. gadamer, h-g. (1999). heraclitus studies. in d.c. jacobs (ed.), the presocratics after heidegger (pp. 203-247). new york, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1996). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. given, l. (2017). it’s a new year…so let’s stop the paradigm wars. international journal of qualitative methods, 16, 1-2. field journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 5 10 grondin, j. (2003). the philosophy of gadamer. montréal, qc: mcgill-queen’s university press. heidegger, m. (1988) ontology—the hermeneutics of facticity. bloomington, in: indiana university press. kimmerer, r. (2105). braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teaching of plants. minneapolis, mn: milkweed editions. kinchloe, j. (2001). describing the bricolage: conceptualizing new rigor in qualitative research. qualitative inquiry, 7(6), 679-692. kroker, a. (2014). exits to the posthuman future. cambridge, ma: polity press. latour, b. (1993). we have never been modern. cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. norlyk, a., & harder, i. (2010). what makes phenomenological work phenomenological? advancing qualitative methods, 20(3), 420-431. ricoeur, p. (1992). oneself as another. chicago, il: university of chicago press. schutz, a. (1967). collected papers, vol. 1. the hague, netherlands: martin nijhof. schwandt, t. (2007). the sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry. los angeles, ca: sage. usher, r. (1996). textuality and reflexivity in research. in d. scott & r. usher (eds.), understanding educational research (pp. 33-51). new york, ny: routledge. vandevelde, p., & iyer, a. (2016). translator’s introduction: hermeneutics at the crossroads between history and philosophy. in h-g gadamer, hermeneutics between history and philosophy: the selected writings of hans-georg gadamer, vol. 1 (p. vandevelde & a. iyer, trans, pp. xvi-xxxv). new york, ny & london, uk: bloomsbury. microsoft word moules editorial 2019 corrected proof docx.docx corresponding author: nancy j. moules, rn, phd email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 18, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 editorial: “protecting” the sufferer nancy j moules dr. jon amundson’s paper entitled the special obligation of the sufferer that launches our 2019 issue of the journal of applied hermeneutics is an important and provocative hermeneutic endeavor to understand our relationship with suffering and with those who suffer. in his creative, interpretive, and insightful way, amundson invites us all to think about suffering differently and also consider those behaviors in which we embark, in “good faith,” to try to support the sufferer. he challenges those often superficial and distantiated efforts to offer support, as well as those over-indulgent, and overly “helpful” attempts, invoking deep reflection on our responses and our efforts to “do the right thing.” then amundson takes a step further, a step that at first startled me, putting the obligation on the sufferer to finds ways to make others know how to respond. it reminds me, however, of one of the most important learnings that i have had over the past year. i have a dear friend who has been in my life for 43 years, much more than half of my life. a few years ago, she was diagnosed with a life-shortening neuromuscular degenerative disease. although her progress through the disease has been slower than some, it is progressive and it has insistently, against her will, taken away important and meaningful aspects of her life. i love this friend and i wanted, more than anything, to be here for her (and to be honest, for me, as well) during these years but i ended up, in spite of my intentions, hurting her and, in return, learning one of the most significant lessons i have learned about suffering. i had been experiencing a rough couple of years with parental caregiving and then the deaths of both of my parents over a span of only 15 months. during this time, my friend would occasionally text me, trying to connect. i would respond in cursory ways, briefly, with no details of my life – responses that not only did not invite engagement but in fact discouraged it. my rationale at the time was: i cannot talk to her; i cannot tell her what my life is really like right now because my suffering is nothing compared to what she is undergoing. in my mind, it would have been selfish and self-centered to burden her further with my affairs when she was dealing with enough in her life. i was “protecting” her. moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 editorial 1 2 eventually, my friend called me on my apparent lack of interest in connecting, in staying engaged. i told her exactly how i felt about not believing i had the right to complain and burden her with my life because, in comparison to hers, my concerns seemed minimal (older parents die, that is expected; i should just deal with it). my friend was hurt, and angry, and responded to me in a way that has changed me forever. she texted: “so, this fucking disease has robbed me of so many things and now you’re saying it’s robbing me of the chance to be a friend?” in the privilege of friendship, perhaps what is more important than having a friend is being one. i had forgotten this and forgotten that someone can be suffering immensely but still want and need to hold on to those things in life that hold meaning and that make them who they are. she has always been a friend to me in some of my hardest times and some of my happiest but here i was taking that right from her, removing what lies at the heart of friendship: being able to be one. as amundson wrote, we often do not know how to respond to suffering and in particular to the sufferer and we resort to platitudes akin to “let me know if you need anything; if there is anything i can do…” but we also resort to mechanisms of misguided protection. in doing so, without open conversation, we make huge assumptions about who needs to be protected from what. gadamer’s notion of genuine conversation (1960/1989) is absent and, like the famous gadamer and derrida dialogue, we enter into a behavior based on a “conversation that never happened” (bernstein, 2008). intentions cannot be read or assumed; only actions are obvious. i might have said to her something as direct as “there is a lot going on in my life right now. are you up to hearing about it?” hermeneutics asks this of us, demands it. it asks that we move beyond what we assume, unquestion, take for granted, and believe to be true into being prepared to be taught, to listen, to overturn things, and understand that we all have obligations in suffering. references bernstein, r.j. (2008). the conversation that never happened (gadamer/derrida). the review of metaphysics, 61(3), 577-603. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20130978 gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. microsoft word gallop corrected proof.docx corresponding author: cynthia j. gallop, phd email: cgallop@mtroyal.ca journal of applied hermeneutics july 17, 2013 the author(s) 2013 knowing nothing: understanding new critical social work practice cynthia j. gallop abstract individuals embarking on their journey to become professional social workers often state they feel as if they know nothing upon entering their practice. regardless of the number of years critical social workers have practiced, they are also thought to know “nothing.” by utilizing a philosophical hermeneutic approach i chose to recognize that new critical social work ideas, theories and practices come from something and somewhere (moules, 2002). this hermeneutic study involved interviewing six newly graduated social workers with a declared critical orientation. i asked these budding new professionals to describe what happens when they begin working in organizations that may or may not support a critical ideology and how this influences their practice. hermeneutic interpretations of the participant experiences suggest that this nothing is not devoid of meaning or method, but instead involves insinuating themselves and their ideas into their agencies in a delicate curvilinear manner. keywords critical social work practice, hermeneutics, research, social work practice exploring nothing one day while discussing my proposed doctoral project with a university instructor and colleague, she asked me why i would want to study the experiences of students or new graduates; “they know nothing,” she said. this word stayed with me for several weeks. it buried itself under my skin and wriggled about my consciousness. over and over, i asked myself how someone who works in an educational institution could say this about the individuals she sends out the door. why did we have these institutions if not to teach these new recruits something? yet, i recognized a truth to which she spoke. individuals embarking on their journeys to become professional social workers often gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 2 state they feel as if they know nothing upon entering their practicums, and later their practice. i have also heard this said about critical social workers because the theories are thought to be difficult to operationalize. critical social work practice involves adopting a political perspective and lies in the work of karl marx, antonio gramsci, the frankfurt school theorists, feminist theorists, and critical pedagogy theorist paulo freire. over the years, the term critical has come to define a number of distinct approaches, such as radical, structural, feminist, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive social work practice. as fook noted “…critical social work, as a coherent term, has only been used more explicitly in the last few years, mostly in literature from canada (e.g. rossiter, 1996) and australia (e.g. ife, 1997)” (2002, p. 124). in canada, critical social work theory and practice is closely identified with structural approaches developed by carniol (1979, 2005), moreau (1979), moreau and leonard (1989), mullaly (1993), and rossiter (1996). critical approaches to social work practice attempt to integrate professional social work values within personal, social, and political contexts (haynes, 1999). this approach to social work practice questions the validity of pathologybased social work perspectives and theories, and focuses on the oppressions that cause the private troubles or pathologies (rossiter, 1996). because of their suspicion and limited use of therapeutic models, graduates of critical schools are sometimes believed to be poorly prepared to directly improve their clients’ situation, compared to their clinical or generalist social work colleagues (sakamoto & pitner, 2005). regardless of what individuals call themselves upon graduation critical, generalist, or clinical they are all definitely seeking “something.” the word nothing originates from the old english word naping, which means “not one thing” (“nothing,” 2001). what became very clear to me after embarking on this research journey is that reality is not constructed ex nihilo but rather constructed from something. the form, organization, and something became my concern (pozzuto, dezendorf, & arnd-caddigan, 2006) for my doctoral research. still, i recognize that there is a substance to “nothing” that makes it difficult to articulate. i wanted to better understand why some forms of knowledge and practice are seen as something, and yet for some, critical practice might be seen as offering newly graduated social workers “nothing.” this paper is taken from one chapter of a doctoral work that attempted to understand both the nothing and the something of non-mainstream approaches to social work practice. in it, i found myself asking these questions: how might we understand how newly graduated social workers educated in a critical tradition experience their practice? what happens to these budding professionals when they begin working in organizations that may or may not support a critical ideology? do they end up pulling back into reserve and silence? do they acquiesce and become like-minded, or do they find new ways to practice that simply have not been captured by the research literature? given that mainstream social work and critical social work are informed by profoundly different ontological, epistemological, and political assumptions (campbell & baikie, 2012), the tension between these divergent understandings has also shaped the practice of social work. however, the growing neoliberal momentum toward theories and practices that bring order, predictability, and cohesion to our profession has begun to tip the balance in the social work profession in a manner that has had many in the field questioning who we are, and what we actually do. neoliberalism, which first began as a political economic practice, proposes that gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 3 human well being is best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills (harvey, 2005). in post-secondary institutions, neoliberal practices include a curriculum focused on competency based practice approaches over theoretical practice, the marginalization of practicum or field education programs, and an increasing division between academia and the field (morley & dunstan, 2013). direct social work practice in a neoliberal context includes an overall devaluing of social work knowledge and skills, and a preference for hierarchical relationships between service users and workers over collaborative relationships. it includes privileging technical skills over structural analytic frameworks (dominelli, 1996; healy & meagher, 2004; singh & cowden, 2009). this neoliberal environment also influences organizational practices by insisting on open competition in the allocation of funding to services in order to encourage leaner and more effective programs (healy & meagher, 2004). most importantly, adopting a neoliberal ideology and framework has meant the field’s move away from emancipatory change toward an increase in governmentality and economics (healy, 2009; jones, 2005; madhu, 2011). the theories that have become dominant in social work lend themselves to a neoliberal understanding of social work practice by legitimizing this practice. theories such as cognitive and behavioral, social learning, and attachment theories are all derived from empirical research (olsen, 2007) and, as such, appear to be predictable and reliable. they are believed to help social workers really “know” the problem they are addressing, as well as the solution. as such, they are becoming embodied in our professional psyche as “common sense.” currently, this approach to practice appears to be the only thing that counts as something. for any way of thought to become dominant, and believed to be the only viable course of action, it must appeal to our intuitions and instincts, to our values and our desires, as well as to the possibilities inherent in the social world we inhabit (harvey, 2005). it then becomes so embedded in common sense, it is taken for granted and not open to question (harvey, 2005). any thoughts or actions that fall outside this dominant belief will eventually fade away to nothing. although our overall profession claims social justice and human rights are the ideological underpinnings of good social work practice, too many social service organizations have become so far removed from the ethics of social work practice that they are unable to adequately support the staff, management, and students who desperately yearn to make changes. while institutions themselves are not practices, they embody them, nurture them, and sustain them (chan, chi, ching, & lam, 2010). much of our meaning making in the western world involves characterizing things as much by what is lacking or absent as by what is present (“nothing,” 2008). nothing can also serve as a marker for the absence of something. some might say newly graduated students lack knowledge, or they lack a certain amount of skepticism. they have not been hardened off to the realities of real social work. some pundits argue critical social work does not seem to relate to those things that are valued as real. i began to wonder if what is missing is the lack of freire’s concept of hope. these students may lack the pessimism, and the deterministic attitude that things can never improve. perhaps what is not there in these new professionals is the despair that we relabel burnout. gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 4 re-discovering nothing similarly to critical social work, philosophical hermeneutics can be a difficult and unwilling concept to define. however, moran (2000) described it, and gadamer’s (1900-2002) contribution, fairly succinctly by stating “hermeneutics is the art of interpretation or understanding, and, for gadamer, always signifies an ongoing, never completable process of understanding, rooted in human finitude and human linguisticality” (p. 248). i specifically chose to use a hermeneutic research method because it aspires to understand the everyday meaning of lived experiences (bosma, 2011). it is a research practice that attempts to uncover both the differences and commonalities of lived experiences (benner, 1994), and helps us discover all aspects of what those experiences are like (van manen, 1997). even though it is often assumed to be part of the technical-rational approach, practical knowledge is based on practice experience, which is co-created (pozzuto et al, 2006). as such, practice theories may also be viewed as stories of cultural interpretation (rossiter, 2005). we interpret our lifeworld within the boundaries of what we know and what we believe can be done. this criticality encourages us to look beyond what we believe we already know, and what we believe to be true. philosophical hermeneutics is a form of research practice that attempts to reclaim and retrieve the humanist approach to understanding, which includes an emphasis on rhetoric, judgement, and common sense. “…this kind of understanding comes not in the form of scientific explanation (erklärung) but as cultural understanding (verstehen)” (moran, 2000, p. 280). new graduates are different from social workers who have been in the field for a number of years. new graduates are also different from students. philosophical hermeneutics is a form of inquiry that embraces tension, because it recognizes anxiety, stress, and strain as parts of a potentially transformative process. using a philosophical hermeneutic approach to research helped me explore the gaps that exist in our critical education and practice; the gaps between what newly graduated critical social workers know and what they can accomplish. becoming and being are never ending journeys in hermeneutics. it is always double-pointed, to what was and what will be, and encourages us to look beyond ourselves (davey, 2006). for this study, i chose to target new graduates from schools who have a mission and mandate that incorporates a critical social work framework. although there are a number of social work schools in canada that offer varying types of critical social work programs, i chose to narrow my focus to two schools: carleton university and the university of victoria. in addition to having mission statements and mandates that encompass a critical framework, bob mullaly (2007), a well-known canadian critical social work theorist, identified these schools as being critical and/or structural in their curriculum content and focus. individuals who graduated with a bachelor of social work (bsw) degree within the last three years, who self-identified as critical and were practicing from a structural and/or anti-oppressive perspective were invited to speak to me about their experiences in the field. i contacted individuals at both institutions in charge of the alumni and student communication list, and asked them to forward my recruitment poster through their email listserve. i received two participants using this technique from the university of victoria. unfortunately, this strategy was not successful at carleton university. i acquired the remainder of my participants by contacting colleagues working in either a university gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 5 or human service setting and through referrals from my current participants. i received two participants through referrals from social work colleagues, and i received two other participants through referrals from current participants. as a critical social worker, professor, and researcher, i entered this study as an active knower within the critical social work field. i am also female, educated, middle-income, a mother, and also formerly a child who, similarly to some of my study participants, knew what it was like to grow up in poverty and want more from the world. since it was not possible for me to ignore my past experience and understandings or pretend they did not exist, i needed to keep them at the forefront of my awareness. as such, it was important to ensure i used a process that involved writing my thoughts, feelings, and apprehensions in a journal as they arose. immediately after every interview, i wrote memos on how i felt the interview went. in these memos, i wrote my reactions to our conversation and whether i was surprised, unsettled, or delighted by something the participant had said. the use of reflexivity also involves acknowledging the researcher’s voice, but not putting it before the participants (leitz, langur, & furman, 2006). my professional position as an experienced social worker and professor meant that my vantage point of this topic could be quite different from that of the participants. i was aware that this position could be a hindrance, since my participants could see my knowledge and experience as having priority over their experiences and understandings. i knew i needed to create an environment where the interview experience allowed my participants to really say something to me. i did not want to overlook their claims, or attempt to assimilate them into mine (schwandt, 1999) and i recognized that if i became too dogmatic in my beliefs i would not be open to new understandings (lawn, 2006). i made a point of letting each participant know during the interview that, although i consider myself a critical social worker, it has been a long time since i have been a newly graduated one. i also let them know that this project was not meant to determine whether critical social work works, or does not work. instead, i explained as openly and honestly as i could that i wanted to hear what they had to say about this topic, even if they might say something which with i did not expect or agree. being reflexive allows us to be open to dialogue at times when there may not have been an opportunity before (ringel, 2003). i was very fortunate in finding three male and three female social work graduates who had been educated in a critical tradition eager to share their thoughts and experiences with me. with the exception of one participant who was in his mid thirties at the time of our interview, all of the new graduates who volunteered for this research project were in their early to late twenties. three participants, two male and one female, were graduates from the university of victoria, and three participants, two female and one male, were graduates from carleton university. two of the six participants from carleton had recently completed their master’s of social work from a noncritical university in ontario. one graduate from the university of victoria went back to complete her master’s thesis at the university of victoria during this study. although they all described different reasons for choosing a critical social work program, every participant stated they practiced from a critical theoretical perspective, and to varying degrees believed in the approach. all six participants were working either part-time or full-time in the field at the time of the interviews. the breadth of practice experiences was quite diverse given the small number of gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 6 participants. the new graduates worked in government and non-governmental organizations, small grassroots agencies and large bureaucracies. the participants occupied frontline, community-based, policy, and international positions. they also worked in children’s services, mental health, and the disability fields. data gathering the data gathered for this research included eight audiotaped interviews and eight participant emails. six of the emails were received from each of the six participants prior to each interview. each note sent by a participant contained an acknowledgement of interest in the project, as well as a brief reflective statement as to why he or she had something to contribute to this topic. two pieces of data were follow-up emails sent by participants who, upon further reflection after our interviews, wanted to share some of their thoughts or insights. although a majority of my participants did not live in calgary, i was fortunate enough to be able to personally sit with each of them for at least one interview. i approached my interviews according to the word’s original etymology, as someone entering new territory (“interview,” 2001). dialogue is not predictable (lawn, 2006). because it is unrehearsed, i had no way to decide in advance which effort would keep me from going in a direction that may not serve the topic the best (schwandt, 1999). although i originally developed eight questions that focused on the original intent of this inquiry, i remained mindful that much of the success of this study rode on my skill as an interviewer. the majority of the probes i employed could not be determined in advance, and were instead developed over the course of the conversation (koch, 1996). i also could not predict, in a semi-structured interview, where each participant might take the topic. in response to each social worker i interviewed, and the subsequent unfolding of the inquiry, i managed to slightly alter my question sequence, and introduce two additional questions. by the time i interviewed my last participant, i had changed the sequence of two of my questions, and included two additional questions around the participants’ own personal stories and reasons for choosing a critical school. i made these changes deliberately, and with great care. i was acutely aware that good interviewing in a hermeneutic study involves a careful balance between staying focused on the original intent of the inquiry, but not so focused that the practice becomes a routinized method, rather than a practice of understanding (binding & tapp, 2008). data analysis hermeneutic analysis is in itself an encounter. although the actual practice is difficult to communicate (addison, 1999), getting into the hermeneutic circle has been aptly described as an organic and iterative process (bosma, 2011) of focusing on the whole and the part. being in the circle is disciplined yet creative, rigorous yet expansive….in this process there is a focus on recognizing the particular, isolating understandings, dialoguing with others about interpretations, making explicit the implicit, and, eventually finding language to describe language. (moules, 2000, p. 47) my analysis began with listening to each interview and making notes. i then listened to the tapes again once i had the transcriptions. i reflected on the spoken words, the subtle pauses and lengthy silences. i also focused on the laughter. i wrote my thoughts and my impressions. once an idea or speculation surfaced, i would begin to journal my newly gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 7 forming thoughts. as an idea or word emerged that made me take note, i would also discuss it with colleagues and sometimes turn to the literature to explore it further. i read and listened to each transcript in isolation. i also read them in relation to other transcripts. to be clear, this back and forth between different tapes and transcripts was not meant to find themes. instead, it was my attempt to “…bring forth general impressions, specific and recurring ideas, and perturbing and distinctive resonances, familiarities and echoes” (moules, 2000, p. 46). i was looking for a revelation, a striking disclosure that surprised and unsettled me (“revelation,” 2001). i was seeking an experience that drew my attention to the unique (lawn, 2006). interpretive writing the process of making something foreign or forgotten understandable is achieved through the interpretive writing process. interpretive writing has been described as an exaggeration of what it wants to be heard (moules, 2000; d.g. smith, 1991). to exaggerate is to “heap, pile, load, fill,” to bring together, and carry toward (“exaggerate,” 2001). it is the process of making our words weightier and stronger so that we may more readily pay attention to them. it is a practice that involves creating meaning, rather than reporting meaning. similar to the analysis process of reading and listening, interpretive writing involves a circular movement where one action begins to uncover then build upon another. after listening to audio-tapes, reading text, and consulting peers and mentors, i began to take my memos and my notes and turn them into interpretive text. i found particular addresses in the transcripts and then explored them further, in classical literature, and research literature. i took these words and began to tie them together by moving back and forth between my participant’s understanding, my understanding, and the literature’s understanding. i used mythology and etymology to help me turn these words into richer meanings. establishing authority, trust, and credibility authority does not come from our position; it comes from what we bring to the relationship (gadamer, 1975/1989). it is the questions we bring and the things we open up that give us authority (lawn, 2006). ultimately, i can only ensure the authority and trust of my readers if i am able to achieve a plausible interpretation, namely, providing enough contextual information in my writings that others are able to make similar readings (koch, 1996). the findings of this project should speak to people, and make them consider things in a new way that they previously understood differently. to achieve this goal, i followed a process that included keeping a reflexive journal (koch, 1996), and i solicited feedback and engaged in hermeneutic conversations with my interpretive doctoral colleagues and mentors (koch, 1996). these conversations were very helpful. they pushed me further into the hermeneutic circle by helping me uncover interpretations i had not yet considered (plager, 1994). in addition, i conducted follow-up interviews with participants to clarify and expand on my developing interpretations. sometimes these inquiries were fruitless and led me in the wrong direction. however, i recognized, as researchers, we must be willing to go backwards and make mistakes, and trust that this process may at some point keep us from going in the wrong direction (gardner, 2006). all of these activities helped me be mindful that i was researching what i intended, and that my findings reflected the original research question and purpose (binding & tapp, 2008). in some forms of qualitative research, consulting participants at the analysis stage to gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 8 see if the interpretations reflect their original meaning ensures credibility. the quest to recapture the original meaning has obvious benefits in that it leads us to assume there can be one correct meaning. however, the difficulty with this theory is that it has not been able to adequately explain the history of competing interpretations that have existed, and continue to exist in the world. as such, this validation strategy is questioned in hermeneutic research and was not used in the study. rather than attempting to reproduce meaning, hermeneutics focuses on coproducing it. instead, credibility can be attained by allowing other readers to view the responses, not to provide an expert evaluation of truth, but as an opportunity to open the circle from the narrowness of my vision and preunderstandings. this approach to credibility honours the hermeneutic conviction that all questions can be answered differently, and these differences are generative in nature (moules, 2000). it also reinforces the hermeneutic belief that understanding is an adventure and, like any other adventure, is dangerous. because it is not satisfied with simply wanting to register what is there or said there but goes back to our guiding interests and questions, one has to concede that the hermeneutical experience has a far lower degree of certainty than that attained by the methods of the natural sciences. (gadamer, 1997/2007, pp. 243-244) interpretations of nothing to insinuate oneself to “insinuate oneself” typically has a negative connotation in western society, as it is often thought of in terms of something deceptive or unscrupulous. according to the oxford dictionary, to insinuate oneself means to gain a more favorable position through deceitful manipulation (“insinuate oneself into,” n.d.). yet, insinuate is the word one of the new social workers from this study chose when describing his efforts to practice in a critical way. once i investigated the original etymology of the word, i actually found it more fitting. it dates back to the sixteenth century and means to “bring in by windings and curvings.” it is the “entrance through a narrow way, an ingratiating of oneself” (“insinuate,” n.d.). the word insinuate is also connected to snakes and serpents. snakes have the potential for great destruction. their ability to remain concealed for long periods of time, and then strike without warning, inspires fear in many, not just their prey. the forked-tongue, which allows them to find and track their victims (schwenk, 1994), is also used as an analogy to speak untruthfully or deceitfully (“with forked tongue,” n.d.). however, the snake’s story is not entirely one of surreptitious violence. because of its ability to shed its skin in the spring, a snake also depicts rebirth. as with most disasters, there is always an opportunity for renewal. consequently, the serpent is an ambivalent image, depicting both destruction and violence, or rebirth and renewal (knox, 1950). as such, it is often used as “the figure for the animistic recovery of a larger consciousness” (s. smith, 1991, p. 202). what has been recovered in this study is an understanding that practicing in a critical way is no longer simply seen as an experience of rising up and striking down. instead, a new understanding of emancipatory practice is emerging. it is that i really had to think differently about the role of leadership – of existing leadership and existing power structures – in affecting structural changes…like i think that when i first learned about this stuff, like i kind of thought there would be … like clients or like front line workers gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 9 rising up and, like, taking the reins of the system and making all the changes and everything, but the more of it i meet, like … i don’t meet very many clients in this job, i more meet front line workers, and the more obvious it is that they are like … even the most dedicated and passionate ones are really struggling just to like, to get through their big, thick work load, you know?...and like, even the ones who probably identify structural or like take the aop [anti-oppressive practice] stuff to heart, they talk like extensively about how difficult it is to put these things into practice and find … like find footholds and get support within their organization beyond lip service... this understanding of practice involves new critical social workers finding various footholds and slowly insinuating their theories and practice into conservative ideology and practices that are also insinuating. destruction and violence: neoliberalism as an insinuating practice a part of the philosophical hermeneutic project is to study how things in the world appear and at the same time are covered up. the greek referred to this study of reality and truth as aletheia. it is the dis-closing, uncovering, and dis-covering that which has been concealed. it is both the hiding and the revealing of the things themselves (moran, 2000). understanding the insinuating nature of domination and oppression is also an exercise in re-discovery. hannah arendt, a student of martin heidegger and karl jaspers, and a contemporary of hans-georg gadamer, was deeply impacted by the totalitarianism and destruction of the first half of the twentieth century. arendt proposed that philosophy emerges from the discrepancy between the world of appearances and the medium of words that support thinking. she discussed the problem of totalitarianism, and believed that it would only be possible in a modern society if “…everything – including our sense of reality – is managed” (moran, 2000, p. 299). arendt believed language becomes a powerful tool in the maintenance of the status quo through the use of rhetoric. because it relies on the art of persuasion, rhetoric is the ability to generate belief without knowledge. it also has the capacity to organize and discipline disparate individuals and groups (fontana, 2005). as such, arendt was very concerned with spin-doctors and speech manipulated by corporations in order to dominate our public space (tremblay, 2003). although western nations pride themselves on their dedication to freedom and democracy for every individual, in reality we may not be as unshackled as we believe. curving and winding: deconstructing and reconstructing discourse like arendt, gadamer also spoke of rhetoric and common sense, sensus communis, however, gadamer did not see these concepts as completely negative. instead, gadamer defended rhetoric by reminding his audiences that it has been a part of our social life since the days of plato and the sophists, when persuasion and public speaking were art forms. these were the days when rhetoric was part of a culture that created new and important understandings. as such, gadamer approached both common sense and rhetoric as necessary in the development of a community (krajewski, 1992), in that community is “…built not by the ‘true’ but by discussions of the ‘probable,’ and rhetoric deals in the ‘probable’ when proof is unavailable or inadequate” (krajewski, 1992, p. 346). the underlying assumption in gadamer’s rhetoric is that both actors enter into a genuine discourse, and no one person is meant to control the conversation. to be involved in gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 10 this type of genuine dialogue requires both a stance of indebtedness and critique, as well as trust and acceptance (moran, 2000). this becomes problematic when individuals and groups in positions of authority and power introduce jargon and euphemisms into the conversation. when doublespeak becomes part of the dialogue, the potential for a genuine event of understanding is eliminated, as is the possibility for transformation. the oxford dictionary defines doublespeak as “deliberately euphemistic, ambiguous, or obscure language” (“doublespeak,” n.d.). it is the communicative art of being able to appear non-influencing, while being influencing (epstein, 1999). one of the new critical social workers in this study appeared to understand his practice in terms of an aristotelian tradition of rhetoric. he definitely had an opinion, and wished to convince the service user of his thoughts and views. however, his practice was still an invitation in that he had made it accessible to the other by un-covering and re-vealing the underlying meaning of the document they were studying. …and so my role as advocate really becomes explaining in more accessible language for clients what their rights might be… i will help explain – what my understanding of what [the government organization] is asking for, and what is this question really trying to get at? this question is basically wanting to know whether or not your depression affects your ability to shower every day, and to what degree. which most people don’t understand, and they read the way the questions are worded – and the same with the disability tax credit and a lot of the other things i help people with – it is really worded with the assumption of someone having a physical ability and applying for these things, not having a mental health disability. and so, “oh no, i can physically get up and shower. yes, i physically can make dinner.” and i am, “yah, no, that is not what they are asking,” right? i get them to fill in the form but i make sure and i help them to understand, “well no, what they want to know is your depression or anxiety so debilitating that you are just not able to”? and they are like, “oh, well, yes,” and then they can answer that question. they are not lying and i am not telling them to lie, i am just helping them re-understand or better understand the question. what the participant has also just demonstrated is fook’s (2002) description of translation. this is a practice where “workers might see part of their role as transforming bureaucratic culture by valuing and translating between different discourses” (pp. 147-148). it is the practice of naming different terms or categories in order to alert people (in this case a service user) to different perspectives (fook, 2002). this new social worker became the interpreter by un-covering and re-vealing the doublespeak that was driving a bureaucratic agenda. at the same time, he was engaging in a dialogue that has the potential to create a new understanding of what it means to be someone living with depression, as opposed to someone who is diagnosed as depressed. this understanding moves beyond the beliefs held by the bureaucratic agency that created the mental health checklist. curving and winding: creating space in addition to concentrating on language and systems of oppression, a great deal of hannah arendt’s work focused on the possibility of creating space for action. for arendt, the term action referred to the activities of humans that can only be conducted once the demands of life have been met, such as a stable world within which they can achieve both group identity and solidarity (dietz, gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 11 1994). it is the collective condition where individuals are dependent on one another in order to achieve their true existence. similar to gadamer’s requirements for having a genuine conversation, action is an activity that comes from without and, as such, can only exist in the world with others (williams, 1998). it represents the activities needed to fend off our rising alienation (dietz, 1994). arendt was very concerned with how modern society limits or restricts the space required to achieve action (moran, 2000). as such, arendt wrote considerably about the need for citizenship and participation in democracy, which in greek is known as polis. “for arendt the greek polis opened a space where humans could freely interact with one another” (moran, 2000, p. 312). it is the space between people, or the condition that is needed for democracy and human freedom. it is the space where an emancipatory action may appear, and be recognized by the public (moran, 2000). over the years, our polis, our space that exists between people and groups, has been reducing in size. in reality there is very little space left in the field of social work, just enough for technical fixes. the limited space has also made it more likely that the social work profession will focus on individual problems. when an individual who is seeking support is given the messages “‘you can do it, you can have it, it is up to you to pull yourself together to get the skills, to learn the stuff, get on with our life, do it!’” (epstein, 1999, p. 10), there is very little room for democratic action. given the limited space to exercise citizenship and democratic participation, arendt was acutely aware that not everyone is capable of action, since it involves risk. this is the “real world” box that many of us, at various stages of our lives and practice, find ourselves in. instead, individuals who are inclined toward action are those who want to make a new beginning (moran, 2000). critical social work students are taught the importance of attempting to understand and create this democratic area. they are taught that their job requires more than just inquiring into someone’s life (chambon, 1999). transformative knowledge and practice is meant to disturb commonly held beliefs and ways of doing. this action of creating democratic space involves engaging in a practice of working within and against the rules. the winding and curving of critical social work practice is an attempt to create the space to maneuver in the real world. it is the space through which to negotiate the hegemonic and destructive forces. as many know, organizational change is never easy. however, this new social worker described his practice of creating opportunities for new understanding at the management level of different human services agencies. and they had a webinar for senior managers and they were using my research in the thing which was really cool and really nice to see them, like quoting sentences, so that is nice. but yah, folks said they really found it helpful and picked up ideas, you know? every once in a while i will get a newsletter from an agency or a set of agencies that are merging and they will say, “look, we read your thing and this is what we came up with.” he was also able to create some space in his own small, but growing organization. now we are a very small organization and i was the third employee they hired – they are only about four years old – so i’m currently working with a consultant to write all our organizational policies because we don’t have any policies yet, because until a couple of years ago it was gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 12 all being run out of my boss’ living room. yah! it was like a very small …and they … so i have been trying to work like equity based policies into the policy framework so the organization has some… you know, it is a small thing, like three people, but i think that is good to try to … try to … because that is going to be the institutional memory to some degree, so i have been able to insinuate myself into kind of a critical junction in the organizational development. yah, so i have been trying to slip ideas that i think are really important into the framework… so i will say, “hey, what about this? should we do this? should we have some kind of socially responsible investment policy?” and he will say, “yah, why not? let’s do that.” this participant was able to insinuate his critical ideas at an opportune time in other organizations and his own. specifically, he was able to create space for critical ideas by identifying parts of the organizational system that were open to influence. in the business community, this is called a high impact strategy, which is meant to overcome organizational apathy and inertia (godkin & allcorn, 2008). he understood that it was important to act now while the organization is small and still developing. to wait meant his organization might be at risk of developing a policy memory that is solely focused on neoliberal ideology. curving and winding: approaching from the bottom and the top because there is such a strong focus on social justice in the critical social work field, there can be a risk for those practicing in the field to assume the moral high ground, and conceptualize critical practice as a war in which there are only two sides, those who are in favor of social change, and those who oppose it. this is what fook (2002) called “dichotomouus thinking” (p. 72). it involves practitioners constructing the self as the binary opposite of the other. this type of thinking can be quite harmful since it divides us all into enemies and allies. as noted by the participant below, he appeared to understand the need to avoid oppositional thinking. despite some of the critical social work rhetoric he faced while in school, he managed to elude understanding his practice as an us versus them, or bottom versus top approach. instead, he focused on searching for the opportunity for a slight transformation. often the movement is small, a slight twist or bend. it is almost imperceptible. … well i guess another bias that i picked up at [the critical school] was like an aversion to marketing and like anything that has to deal with the business side of social service stuff. i had a prof who was really, really good at it – the prof i had at [a non critical social work program] was really good –…something she was really big on was marketing your skills as a social worker, and really taking that step to brand yourself essentially…now this was like in the context of health social work or places where social workers are like guests in the system, like hospitals. and…like, a lot of people don’t know why we are at hospitals and a lot of staff at hospitals don’t really understand why social workers are there. and from what i understand there is a lot of, like, i guess, there is just a lot of tension. and social workers often feel like they have to justify why they are there and that brings a lot of resentment, i guess…yah, so her whole thing was if you are going to be in a place like that you can’t expect, you know, like a doctor who is given all the power and all the glory to just get why you are there. and you have to like, actively identify people who don’t get it and who are powerful and like, get them on your side, you gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 13 know? show them why you are valuable in terms that they can understand why you are valuable, which is really like a kind of … it is using all your social work skills in a professional context, right? so i thought that was really, really brilliant because if … if you want to increase the … i think social workers have a lot of … we have a lot of like, value to bring to any workplace and especially the ones where people don’t think we are valuable. you know, where people aren’t in crises all the time. this participant is actively engaging in changing the perception of some individuals who are in positions of power. to do so, he appears to understand he needs to use the methods of the “enemy,” such as branding. according to the online business dictionary, branding is a business marketing process that involves “…creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers’ mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers” (“branding,” n.d.). in this case, the participant was focused on creating an image of a social worker as a valuable asset to any organization, whether the agency is involved with acute cases or not. in addition, he understood he needed to target individuals in positions of power and authority in order to spread this message to others and create a loyal following. this new social worker described several instances in his practice where he curved and wound his critical practices and knowledge around the exclusionary practices of his hierarchical and bureaucratic organization by utilizing mainstream methods his audience could appreciate. rebirth and renewal: shedding rarely is destruction seen as a positive or hope(ful) proposition. however, hannah arendt spoke of the hope or opportunity that comes at the end. she believed that “…every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning; this beginning is the promise, the only ‘message’ which the end can ever produce” (arendt, 1951, p. 478). in order to challenge existing hegemony and achieve ideational change, a new philosophy is needed, one that involves deconstructing and challenging our own power and authority as social workers, and reconstructing it to be productive (healy & leonard, 2000). transformative practice approaches the current hegemonic state as inherently social, rather than natural (robinson, 2005), and as such recognizes that it can be changed. similar to its philosophical ancestors, critical social work practice is also focused on rebirth and transformation. “a critical reflective approach holds the potential for emancipatory practices (fook, 1999) in that it first questions and disrupts dominant structures and relations and lays the ground for change” (fook, 2002, p. 41). a part of freeing ourselves from hegemonic forces is expending an effort to free us from gramsci’s “common sense” (robinson, 2005), as this participant demonstrated when she questioned other social work colleagues’ sense of fatalism the belief that the world has been, and will always be, the same. [social workers] often think of what is available, which is never enough. it is never going to be adequate and it is not … it is not okay to stop there and i think that if we stop dreaming big and actually saying, “this is what the people need”, rather than, “this is what you can have”, there won’t ever be changes. right? gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 14 gramsci discussed the possibility of transformative practice in his concept of “good sense.” it is the critique of common sense that comes from within the subaltern group that has escaped dominant philosophies. good sense is too minimal to create a new philosophy (robinson, 2005), but it has a criticality that allows for disruption of common sense and the current status quo. as such, good sense may be seen as the starting point to something larger (robinson, 2005). it is “the beginnings of the new world, rough and jagged though they always are…” (gramsci, 1971, p. 343). it is the type of sense-making activity that brings the promise for something more. rebirth and renewal: rebuilding similar to gadamer’s genuine conversation, the consciousness-raising process is meant to be a mutual one, based on respect and a genuine desire to impact and be impacted by the other. consciousness-raising involves sharing expertise, learning from one another, and joint action (allan, 2003). critical social workers are taught to approach this type of practice from a voluntaristic, rather than deterministic, stance (fook, 2002). when working with colleagues, the practice involves negotiating multiple meanings, and recognizing the many different ways of knowing and understanding. most importantly, it involves having an attitude of respect and excellent active listening skills (allan, 2003). all of these practices involve the subtle, small, but deliberate, movements that expose the falseness of the view of the world from the top. when people are debriefing or discussing, or writing case notes that is where i think that my skills kind of pop up and that is where i start going, “well did you ever think about this”? … like there was one kid and they were all talking about how they couldn’t believe that the mom – she was a single mom – was reading her six – six or seven [year old] – stephen king novels, and that was his bedtime stories and there was a lot of pathologizing going on over what kind of mother she was, blah, blah, blah. so i just kind of threw it out there, “well have you ever thought about the fact that maybe” – they were in extreme poverty – “she can’t afford to buy numerous books? she is either …” – they were an indigenous family – “… maybe she was never raised in a family where they had children’s books read to her so maybe she doesn’t actually even make that connection that, you know, they might be [inappropriate], or maybe she is struggling so much the only time she gets to read or stop and sit down” – because the kid was super hyperactive – “she wants to read her own book because she is sick and tired of reading kid’s books and the kid will only sit down if she is reading to him so she reads him her books, and she is just not making those connections that stephen king is a little gory for a six year old.” you know? it might not be that she is actually trying to harm her kid, or a neglectful parent, or whatnot. like there might be misunderstandings or lack of resources, like there are all these other options and she might just need to be redirected that, “here is a few children’s books, why don’t you read these to him”? you know? “or help him”? you know? “you do half an hour of reading with him and then he has to figure out some time he can do something on his own so that you can read for half an hour.” so just little miniscule things. the “little miniscule things” means having the will to question or resist dominant discourses, and create the space to encourage others to follow suit. as fook (2002) suggested, these destructive discourses are only as gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 15 powerful to the degree to which they go unquestioned. in this case, the participant rejected the “bad mother” discourse and searched for other plausible explanations. she also found the space to encourage her colleagues to see the possibility of a different interpretation. this is the conversation that has the potential to transform a “bad mom” into a human being in need of a bit of time, and a few resources. this critical social worker was attempting to create a new understanding, one where the perspectives of individuals on the margins are no longer subjugated or disruptive, but instead are the perspectives that are also constitutive and primary (hartsock, 1990). instead of searching for a totalizing solution or grand fix, the “little miniscule things,” the slight action, or the small questions might become the opportunity for rebirth and transformation. new critical social work graduates, because of the limited expectations others have for them and they sometimes have for themselves, in some ways have the luxury of moving in small steps, rather than always expecting to save the world in one heroic leap. it is more about making space in the world than it is about completely altering the world in which we are. a study conducted by whitmore, calhoun, and wilson (2011) investigated the question “how do you know you are making a difference?”(p. 437). this was an advocacy project focused on changing policies, laws, practices, and improving citizen engagement in canada. in this study, the researchers found their participants were also keen to celebrate all small endeavors in an effort to avoid getting bogged down by the bureaucracy and uncertainty of their work (whitmore et al., 2011). these new critical social work graduates appear to understand that there is no complete and total fix to our current world state. while always in motion, their movements are deliberate, slow, undulating. perhaps the movement inspires more of a hybridization of our current understanding, instead of understanding their practice as something that must fix the world, or save others. a new critical understanding of practice might include reflexive deconstruction and reconstruction motions. this is an understanding where critical social workers might act as both translators and scholars interested in having a genuine conversation. although they are wary of the ideology and practices of those in positions of power, it is also a practice that includes using some of the mainstream tools to overcome the problems of subjugation. finally, this understanding might help new graduates find some satisfaction with the small movements, while still looking for opportunities for greater change. postmodern critical social work approaches have refocused from broader political and structural problems, to more local forms of change in an effort to allow more individuals and groups to be part of the continuum of social change. these small-scale localized activities are still respected for their radical potential. in addition, structural approaches to social work practice do not endorse one particular way of working over another. this is due to “…a dialectical view that the personal and political are fundamentally connected, working with individuals, families, groups, organisations and communities are all regarded as containing possibilities for practice” (allan, 2003, p. 53). as with the serpent analogy, there can be no dichotomous understanding here. although there is overt and covert manipulation and destruction, there is also the opportunity for new growth and transformation through the slow, steadfast curving and winding through our current reality. although these small insinuating movements are effective at weaving through gallop journal of applied hermeneutics 2013 article 16 contrary and dominant ideology and practice, they are always at risk of being lost or scattered without the opportunity to build social cohesion and combat isolation (allan, 2003). one of the great merits of a neo-liberal ideology is its ability to ontologically hijack ambivalent or diffused agendas (carey, 2009). in order to continue these small insinuating movements, perhaps what is needed is more opportunity to discuss these “little miniscule things” with other like-minded social workers. this might be the only opportunity for these little dialogues to turn into more comprehensive conversations, and bigger ideas. finding something the question of nothing can only arise if there is already some understanding of what “it” is (bowie, 2010). as such, the field of social work may not necessarily be concerned with what new critical social work graduates are, but instead what we can do with them. many critical social work educators …strive to facilitate learning environments that privilege: the active creation of collective knowledge over the passive giving and receiving of pre-determined knowledge; contradiction over certainty, surfacing assumptions over learning “the facts,” searching for understanding over finding the truth; exploring questions over finding answers; staying with discomfort over seeking comfort; dialoguing over debating; working collaboratively over working competitively. (campbell & baikie, 2012, p. 78) still, we know the educational practices are falling short of this ideal due to pressures to conform to neoliberal ideology, epistemology, and practices. unfortunately, for the new critical social work graduates, much of what they can do does not fit into a neat knowledge application box. perhaps we are fools to believe we are looking at nothing. instead, human service organizations or social workers steeped in a neoliberal mindset might simply be blind to what critical social work graduates are, and what they have to offer. specifically, margolin (1997) has argued “…that social workers blind themselves to how professional practice perpetuates and expands social injustice in order to do what we do” (as cited in olson, 2007, p. 60). individual social workers and human service organizations that are steeped in neoliberal ideology and practice are powerful in their stance and pursuit of conditions of certainty. however, their persistence has not eradicated other ways of knowing and other ways of practicing. philosophical hermeneutics helps us recognize that the self exists in a multiplicity of unfathomable and unstable relationships. because of the nature of our current understanding of reality and perspective, many who are blind might not be aware of this type of non-mainstream presence (davey, 2006). as such, for some who are blind, the practice experiences of critical social workers have no essence. as a field, we might have also blinded ourselves. however, there are those who are willing to see this nothingness as something other than a vacuous abyss. for these individuals, this space might be interpreted as a generative one, as aletheia. it is a space that makes room for the emergence of new interpretations and new practices. references addison, r. 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(n.d.). in oxford dictionaries online. retrieved from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/englis h/forked?q=with+forked+tongue#forked__2 microsoft word morck corrected proof .docx corresponding author: angela c. morck, rn phd email: amorck@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 11, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 right there, in the midst of it: impacts of the therapeutic relationship on mental health nurses angela c. morck, rn, phd abstract mental health nurses are frequently confronted by intense emotions within the therapeutic relationship. in this philosophical hermeneutic inquiry, five mental health nurses were interviewed to extend our understandings of how nurses are impacted by the interplay with the often emotion-laden narratives of their patients. findings exposed the nurses journeyed between fluctuating needs to separate and protect their private from their work life. in order for this fluctuation to occur, they developed a sense of the world as requiring a sanctuary. this ontological place of home is the extent to which they felt safe and sheltered in order for this process of awareness of self as person and self as nurse to unfold. this research brings to the forefront the ways in which mental health nursing practice, education, and research are reciprocally moved by the practical day-to-day activities of being in therapeutic relationships. keywords mental health nursing, therapeutic relationship, hermeneutics, narratives, distress mental health nurses frequently confront situations in their work that elicit intense emotions in both their patients and themselves. nurses can unexpectedly find themselves in perilous territory. warne and mcandrew (2005) reminded us that it is the nurse’s responsibility to “acknowledge the complexity of the human experience and to navigate the therapeutic relationship” (p. 683). what happens, however, if the navigators find themselves in uncertain waters, in danger of being pulled under, or in peril of drowning in the intensity of emotions? my intent in this paper is to morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 2 provide an overview of the findings of my philosophical hermeneutic master’s research (morck, 2009) exploring the understandings, meanings, and processes by which mental health nurses take up and navigate the illness and life narratives of their patients. there was a focus on discovering the impact this position as listener of often emotion-laden narratives has on nurses and their ability to be present within the therapeutic session, and ultimately what the impacts are on the therapeutic relationship. background and literature review the relationship between nurse and patient is central to the practice of mental health nursing. this therapeutic relationship has been deemed the “essence” (forchuk, 2002, p. 93); “crux” (peplau, 1962, p. 53); “core” (college of nurses of ontario, 2006); and the “heart” (perraud et. al, 2006, p. 224) of the discipline. peplau has been credited as the “mother” of modern mental health nursing and bringing the nurse-patient relationship forward and central to practice (forchuk, 1994; tomey, 2006). the relationship between nurse and patient was developed in predictable stages and viewed as helping relationship wherein the exploration of the patient’s feelings and concerns leads to personal growth in both patient and nurse. the nurse remained aware of his/her own needs but there is a detachment of self-interest to become an agent of change for the patient (peplau, 1988, 1992; tomey, 2006). this belief is also reflected in the work of orlando (1961) who stressed the reciprocity of the therapeutic relationship and believed the nurse and patient represented a dynamic whole each affecting the other. travelbee extended and synthesized the interpersonal relationship theories of peplau and orlando (tomey, 2006). her work was an admonishment to the premise of remaining emotionally uninvolved with patients (shattel et al., 2007). the therapeutic use of self is a fundamental characteristic of a nurse and that a therapeutic relationship is deliberately and consciously planned. emotional involvement is necessary to establish a relationship; complete objectivity is neither possible nor desirable (tomey, 2006). beyond the phases and progress of the therapeutic relationship, what happens in the relationship has been explored in attempts to understand how it is helpful to the patient (forchuk & reynolds, 2001; hagerty & patusky, 2003; walsh, 1999). hagerty and patusky (2003) challenged forchuk and colleagues focus on the linearity and temporality of the therapeutic relationship with a reconceptualization on human relatedness. as in the broader psychotherapy stream, current nursing theory on the therapeutic relationship has become increasingly focused on integrative relational approaches situated in postmodern, social constructionist, and feminist perspectives. the therapeutic relationship has come to be viewed with a collaborative nonhierarchical stance that involves a weaving of the nurse’s expertise with those of the patient (wright, watson & bell, 1996). mental health nurses journey with, and learn from, people experiencing mental distress (barker, 2001). there is an interconnectedness of the relational commitment and an acknowledgement of self and other (hartrick doane & varcoe, 2007) and an appreciation of the moral space of the therapeutic relationship (bergum, 2004; macdonald, 2006). in alternate attempts to delineate components of the therapeutic relationship, other concepts studied have included empathy (hardin & haralis, 1983); connection (miner-williams, 2007; wiebe, 2001); commitment and involvement (morse, 1991); transference (evans, 2007); nurturance (raingruber, 2003); and boundaries of the relationship (austin, bergum, nuttgens, & morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 3 peternelj-taylor, 2006; milton, 2008). therapeutic relationships have also been explored in the context of a variety of patient populations, clinically depressed (beeber, 1989), and with suicidal individuals (sun, long, boore, & tsao, 2006). these studies, while emphasizing the importance of therapeutic use of self and the development of relationships with patients as the core of mental health work, do not address the meanings of the relationship for the participants, nor do they identify the skills that the nurses used to develop and maintain the relationships. while seemly central to mental health nursing practice, the therapeutic relationship has continued to remain elusive. nurse scholars have long attempted to portray and illuminate its complexity. while we know a great deal about what patients want and what nurses are supposed to do within in a therapeutic relationship, we continue to know very little about the meaning of this everyday experience for mental health nurses. the majority of current research has been conducted on the concepts held within the relationship. while these investigations have been vital in revealing the complexity of the relationship, they have failed to explore its meaning to, and impact on, mental health nurses. this gap opens space for an interpretive look into these phenomena through conversations with nurses who live within the everyday experience of the therapeutic relationship. research design method this research project was guided by the philosophical hermeneutics of hans-georg gadamer (1900-2002). gadamerian hermeneutics was chosen because it specifically seeks to understand and interpret language and experience. as a sophisticated research approach to understanding within the human sciences, hermeneutics has been shown to have invaluable applied utility (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). gadamer asserted the task of hermeneutic understanding lies in the attempt to grasp the “unpredictable character of the spiritual and mental life of human beings” (gadamer, 1996, p. 165). i would further that so too is the task of mental health nursing. mental health nurses are situated in the midst of stories, of lives lived in shifting contexts, histories, and relationships. the given task is to navigate situational particulars, and through interpretation place these particulars into an understood whole (moules, 2000, 2002). as a broker of understanding (moules, 2000) the researcher is not considered separate from, nor a non-influencing factor of the research, but rather a vital component of the understanding offered. recruitment of participants after ethical approval was obtained from the university of calgary conjoint health research ethics board (chreb), participants were garnered through a purposive selection to provide a detailed rich encounter of their experiences with the topic. inclusion extended to any nurse registered with the college and association of registered nurses of alberta (carna) and presently working in the calgary health region in a mental health clinical practice area. five mental health nurses agreed to participate in this research study, met the inclusion criteria, and were interviewed. morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 4 the field of mental health is a small community, and to heighten anonymity only a brief snapshot of the participant group is offered. all five were registered baccalaureate prepared nurses who received their training in canada. the length of their nursing practice varied from two to eight years. two of the participants came from other specialty areas prior to working in mental health; the remainder worked in mental health since the completion of their undergraduate degrees. all five participants have worked on in-patient hospital units with one participant now working in a community based out patient program. all five are women, in their late twenties to mid-thirties, with varied cultural, spiritual backgrounds, and beliefs. data generation after informed written consent was obtained, i conducted semi-structured interviews with individual participants at a mutually agreed upon time and location. each interview took between one to one and one half hours and was audio recorded. basic demographics of the participants were obtained at the time. the interviews were then transcribed verbatim into written text for ongoing analysis. field notes were written after each interview to capture contextual details and beginning interpretations. analysis and interpretation of data the process of data analysis and interpretation began with the research interviews. aligned with the tenets of philosophical hermeneutics, the research process was guided not by methodological procedures but rather by thoughtful systematic attention to the topic (moules, 2000; moules et al., 2015). the fusion of horizons provides a description of how understanding comes together. hermeneutics thus provides an opening into the understanding of an experience of something by being present and aware of the pre-understandings brought into a topic. the hermeneutic circle provides a descriptor of movements between the part and the whole. this movement from the specific to the general, from the general to the specific is an attempt to understand the whole in terms of the detail, and the detail in terms of the whole. it becomes a circular process of movement back and forth that leads to understanding (gadamer, 1989). reading, re-reading, and writing formulate an understanding of the parts and creativity is emergent with the reconstruction of the whole in a meaningful, purposeful, insightful way that offered understanding about the topic (jardine, 1992). the remainder of this manuscript offers an overview of select findings and interpretations. it ventures into the world of mental health nurses entwinement with the often emotion laden narratives of their patients. this venture necessitates a change of rhythm, tone, and form that matches these experiences. at this juncture, philosophical hermeneutics upholds and supports while giving way to the voice of the topic. interpretive analysis the shelter of home i think ...it is very important for nurses to be able to have these relationships with our patients and that it isn’t necessarily something that can be taught. i think it is one of those morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 5 things that you learn in the fundamentals of what a nurse-patient relationship should look like and you find your own way from there. mental health nurses journey with, and learn from, people suffering mental distress. in this process, there is a continual involvement and immersion in the narrative of others who are attempting to make meaning of what is happening to them (barker, 2003). these journeys, and the therapeutic relationships in which they dwell, are complex, dynamic, contextual, and full of impact. there exists no topographic map or perfect formula that can be taught and reproduced; it is rather about joint discoveries with our patients and finding our own way as nurses. finding our own way evoked, to me, a discovery journey of self and our place as mental health nurses in the world. it is also a journey of language, conversation, and uncovering new, or perhaps different, understandings of dwelling in the place of our patients’ narratives. ultimately, this journey as mental health nurses of the therapeutic relationship has been about finding a way home. what, however, is the connection between the concept of home and mental health nurses speaking about the impacts of the therapeutic relationship? i heard in their words the subtle, yet clear, call of wounded-ness. wound is related to the latin orificium meaning an opening or portal to a new way of understanding (oxford english dictionary, 1971). it was through this portal that the voices spoke of a struggle to find shelter from the onslaught of emotive narratives and of an impulse to return to a place of safety. to me, home is this haven in the turbulent seas of postmodern chaotic life. home embodies safety, the familiar, the comfortable, and ease. it anchors place, identity, and self by providing a locale perceived as ours (reinders & van der land, 2008). when however your chosen vocation is to listen to the painful, evocative, and often disruptive narrative of others this disruptive force can and does invade your at home way of living. there is no way coming into mental health i ever felt, i mean and maybe it wasn’t realistic, may be it was the idealizing of a brand new student, but did i ever think it would impact my home life this much? even knowing i was the kind of person to take stuff home, i never thought it would impact my life this much. this stepping into the life of another and the opening of your home, your being, to another is the working realm of a mental health nurse. people are constantly being confronted by life situations that cause disruptions to their comfortable, familiar, at home way of living (svenaeus, 2001). life’s stressors, large and small, positive and negative, have the potential to create unrest, concern, and distress. in this instance, the self as nurse was being brought home into awareness as self as person. henderson (2001) spoke of the recursive nature of the nurse-patient relationship, and of the inherent risks and rewards to both professional and personal self of this occupation of care. the therapeutic relationship was described as containing intrinsic tensions and pitfalls of emotionality that were left to the individual nurse to mediate. i think in this work you kind of need to for self preservation, you kind of need to be able to turn off or otherwise there is the risk of bringing it, all of that, information, or whatever it, whatever the word is for it, home with you. i can see how people would become overwhelmed and burdened if you can’t if you can’t leave that at work. morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 6 preservation is the act or process of keeping something safe, or from injury, destruction, or decay. self-preservation is part of an animal's instinct that perpetuates survival. it is also a condition of being human. as humans we are subject to typical biological responses to threats (stress reactions, fight and flight, adaptation, and renewed homeostasis). pain and fear are parts of this mechanism. pain causes discomfort so we endeavor to stop the pain while fear acts as a warning to seek safety and protection from difficulties and danger (donatelle, munroe, munroe, & thompson, 2008). there was a need to keep safe and to seek shelter and a place of refuge from work. in this sense, preservation also afforded a sense of self-observation, watchfulness, and guardedness. there is also an element of covering, concealment, or camouflage in an attempt to diminish detection and the perceived threat to self. in this, the partition of self as nurse and self as person are separated and protected. with the shutting of the door a measure of self-protection is afforded in the holding of fears, anxieties, and worries of work at abeyance. there is a requisite need for separation and sheltering of the emotional self in the need to retreat homeward into a familiar way of being in the world (dreyfus, 1991). we filter our sense of refuge and self-preservation through cultural norms and social constructs. our sense of a niche of safety and respite, and how we can adapt ourselves to it, is formulated through our relationships with others and our community. to me, this is reflected in an etymological meaning of separate to understand. in this sense, separation is derived from old english understandan meaning to comprehend, or more precisely, to stand in the midst (oxford english dictionary, 1971). maybe it is avoidance of, or maybe it’s a way of retreating into your life, like okay, i need macaroni or whatever, right, because your life is a lot more safe than their life, because their life is scary. in retreating homeward and reviewing her life as safer than her patients’ lives, this participant was attempting to understand, to separate out her life in order to make sense of what was happening to her. as she reviewed the situation, she remained and stood in the midst of her relationship with her patient. through this search of discovery, and preservation of the house of our being, we learn to care about our home, not just its content, but also its context (svenaeus, 2001). when you provide treatment to someone as a nurse, you are offering to them comfort, care, and connection. if this is turned on self, in terms of retreating to a place of refuge, one can be seen as needing to retreat into self, to “lick one’s wounds in private” before reentering the community. this speaks to the fundamentals of mental health nursing that one must know oneself, reflect in order to reach out and be an effective nurse (peplau, 1988). additionally, we are called to know explicitly that this work will be challenging, not only in a physical sense, but also in a guarding of one’s house. home is thus a metaphoric foundation that provides us, as mental health nurses, a safe place to reflect, process, and honor the work of that day. fragmented images: reflections of home it’s so fascinating for me to reflect on myself and what do i think about the world and what do i think about my life. i think my biggest fear was that i would keep taking stuff home and i would just crumble, like, i would just be unable to cope with my own stuff now, in my own life. morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 7 the work of a mental health nurse is situated in a face-to-face meeting with another through the medium of the therapeutic relationship. this requires a movement and opening of self and yet simultaneously a reaction toward self-protection may occur. to mitigate the intensity and sense of dis-ease that ensues, there may be an impulse to avert one’s gaze. this shielding of vision, as if peering through a mirror or window, assuages the images and creates a barrier (levin, 1989). while mirrors or windows are reflective and representative images, by design, they also refract and distort. in choosing to mirror one’s own life with the conflicted life of the other, a sense of protection is afforded in the distortion. this comparison with another caused this participant to reevaluate how she should be as a nurse. she began to review her conceptualizations of what it meant to be strong and protected. she saw value in opening herself and revealing part of herself to her patients even while being cautious of what this could mean for her. i think i used to feel like i don’t want to be vulnerable around patients because i need to be strong and they need to get help from me...now i feel like it’s okay to let them know that you’re a human being and that you have your vulnerabilities. vulnerability is often perceived in our western positivistic thinking as a frailty, a fatal flaw or weakness. it is related to the latin vulnerabilis, meaning to wound or open (oxford english dictionary, 1971). to levinas (1996), this opening of self, being susceptible to physical or emotional injury in being vulnerable, is the inescapable call revealed in the face of the other. this sense of vulnerability does not point to frailty, dependence, or loss of social autonomy. rather, it is connected to recognition of the suffering of another. we are signifying an openness and nearness available for the other. according to levinas (1996), it is the pivotal loci of responsibility for another human being. as nurses, we need to be able to listen to the otherness first in ourselves before we can truly be open to another. protection can thus be reconceptualized as a repetition of the ethical conditions of vulnerability and an “apriori proof of vulnerability itself” (frank, 2004, p. 48). intertwined in the therapeutic relationship, this vulnerability was evident in how nurses are influenced by their interactions with their patients. i don’t know how you work with people who have a mental illness and not end up taking some of it on, cause even as a human being you do that let alone someone sharing their most intimate insecurities and behaviors and thoughts. david hilficker, an american physician who left his prominent minnesota practice to work with the poor of washington d.c., has often written of his experience. in his attempts to respond to the wounded and chaotic lives of his patients, his own chaos was triggered. this has caused him to alter his perceptions of himself as a healer. “all of us who attempt to heal the wounds of others will ourselves be wounded. it is after all inherent in the relationship...in healing we ourselves take on the wounds of others” (hilficker, 1994, p. 39). hilficker perceived that we are all vulnerable beings, each harboring our own brokenness. while this brokenness inextricably binds and entangles us with one another, it does not diminish the risk (hilficker, 1994). rather, it morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 8 allows us to be open to the deserving values and responsibilities to the risks of being human (frank, 2004). this is, however, not an easy process. the ensuing anxiety and fear left this participant feeling exposed, open, and unguarded without shelter or defense. this is not what i signed up for. you want to help people, but i don’t want to be a victim in the process, and so i was just thinking, maybe i’m not psychologically strong enough for this job, maybe i’m just not cut out for this area. i just, i remember driving home thinking this isn’t for me; this isn’t what i want to do. whether or not she was cut out for work as a mental health nurse began to take hold, as she questioned her abilities, resilience, and competence at work. it reflects an inner questioning tension of “am i good enough, doing the right thing?” she began to only view herself as not fitting the social and cultural expectations of what a nurse is cut out and templated to be. many of the nurses in this research questioned their own competence and wondered if they could have or should have done a better job of protecting themselves form harm. we are encouraged as nurses to listen carefully to our patients to garner a full description of their history and situation. reaching the details of their stories involves “getting to know a patient as a human” (peplau, 1989, p. 218) and “talking with that person, in an investigative, purposive way, listening carefully, all the while being intellectually active and interested to know more” (peplau, 1989, p. 218). peplau (1962/1989) viewed the therapeutic relationship through a scientific lens in encouraging us to be objective, impartial, and to step back from the situation (gallop & o’brien, 2003; rogers, 1995). there exists a tensioned pressure of detachment yet demonstrative concern, interest, and care (henderson, 2001; vandermark, 2006). rogers (1995) claimed our language in mental health is laden with an us/them split. we, as nurses, behind the desk, hold the pretense of having no difficulties, while imploring our patients to discuss whatever issue holds our attention at any given time. she argued that it is this entrenched belief of “well nurse, ill patient” that has continued to foster the image of the self contained, unaffected nurse. beyond this, it is the nurse’s responsibility to not only navigate the therapeutic relationship but also to save both parties from the vulnerabilities, hurt, and losses that may ensue. she likened this scenario as the nurse being responsible for “holding two stories, or two plays, together” (rogers, 1995, p. 319). the juggling of these two stories, of nurse and patient, can become precarious and blurred. while the stories and situations are often emotionally charged, nurses are required to be attentive, attuned to hear the story, and provide safety through containing the story and the expressed personal suffering (gallop & o’brien, 2003; warne & mcandrew, 2008). this participant echoed this tensioned position in her encounter with a patient that left her feeling vulnerable. it was almost like a sense of weakness, if you get overwhelmed by the stories or what you see out there...there is some sort of weakness if you can’t handle it. morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 9 becoming emotionally overwhelmed by a relationship with a patient was a weakness or frailty in her professional identity. this prevailing view of a professional nurse as detached and self-aware perpetuated her own doubts about herself as competent (dowling, 2006). the culture of mental health nursing has predicated a belief about the right amount of emotional involvement, with detached empathy and conscious rational detachment (henderson, 2001; warne & mcandrew, 2008). while there exists an acknowledgment that the therapeutic relationship affects both parties, the ideal remains for the responsible nurse to use theoretical concepts to guide the patient to health. the nurse remains depicted as a detached removed expert. this has fostered the belief that one is able to grasp this theoretical construct and has perpetuated the reluctance to acknowledge when things in the relationship are not as they should be (dowling, 2006; gallop & o’brien, 2003; warne & mcandrew, 2008). while protective, windows also distort and alter in their reflective projections. in entering mental health nursing, we have taken on a particular window that has wittingly and unwittingly become our lens on the world. lenses may provide protection or alter our perceptions without our being consciously aware of them doing so. we are always under this influence of history, and traditions of our chosen profession, situated in it and can not extricate ourselves from it (gadamer, 1989). homesickness and masked messages mental health nursing is not a landscape of black and white, or diagnostic certainty. rather, it is imbued with the rich vibrant colors that lie in-between, interlaced with infinite shades of gray. there is no map of the human psyche, no chart to follow to find one’s way through and back home. it can be an easy day’s wander, or a shared descent into black depths of human despair. it is a landscape filled with separation, and protection, where emotions and frailties of the human spirit are positioned against societal norms and expectations. can there be any wonder that those who wander this land become momentarily or otherwise overwhelmed? this is a land of paradox: of the need to open oneself up, yet keep oneself safe and separate, to maintain professionalism yet be vulnerable. it is, as warne and mcandrew (2005) articulated, working at the edge of the abyss. i question if, to be more precise, mental health nursing requires a jump into the midst of the abyss, in the space between realms. in this opening to other, and the inherent vulnerability, there is a wish to retreat to a familiar way of being, a place, we trust to be safe. homesickness is essentially the universal impulse to be home. in this premise, i am not referring to a physicality of home but rather the ontological search for a place in which being can be (dreyfus, 1991). the germanic heimlich, or canny, means familiar, close, while the not-at-home, unheimlich, or uncanny, means that which is out of the ordinary, unhomely, strange, and frightening. true home requires an effort to both embrace and ultimately integrate the heimlich and the unheimlich, the familiar and the strange in order to become more authentically at home with ourselves and the world (dreyfus, 1991; harries, 1978; woolley, 2007). in all professions and communities, there are teachers and inheritances. ghosts, strangers, tricksters, and monsters drift in the liminal. their presence is at times to scare us, at times to impose and unsettle, calling our attention to the particularity of their presence and arrival. they speak to teach us something of ourselves (jardine, 1994). according to kearney (2003) morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 10 most strangers, gods and monsters, along with various ghosts, phantoms and doubles who bear a family resemblance are deep down tokens of fracture within the human psyche. they speak to us of how we are split between the conscious and unconscious, familiar and unfamiliar. (p. 4) for freud (1919, cited in woolley, 2007), the not-at home experience of wandering in the liminal realm involved a perceived element of magic or supernatural. it is a return of the dead in spirit or ghostly forms to frequent ones home. it is a haunting. we don’t share these stories with each other about that client that made us want to leave mental health. there is this culture or code of silence around that sort of stuff. some how you will be viewed as inadequate if there was a client that kind of got on top of you like that. in the boundary-laden space of the therapeutic relationship, these participants had been affected and have wrestled with the inherent implications. according to them, a code of silence exists in mental health nursing. we do not speak about the negative impacts of the therapeutic relationship, nor its marks and impressions. this code of silence is a strong social relationship that functions to internally sanction and control, while evoking support from its members, the nurses. the most renowned version of a code of silence is the omerta of the italian mafia. omerta means manhood, and refers to the need for a man to resolve his own problems whilst maintaining a stoic silence (oxford english dictionary, 1971). the code of silence and the coinciding fear of being viewed as inadequate, incompetent, or lacking ability has marked these nurses. a code of silence functions by controlling and internally policing its members. a deviation from expected norms heralds a consequence and punishment. within mental health nursing, it has been shown that a key strategy for controlling nurses who deviate from socially acceptable norms has been to label them as over involved with their patients. additionally, nurses have been described as vulnerable, weak, or having their own psychiatric problems. these strategies, along with the maintenance of silence, have perpetuated the code upon the nursing profession (dowling, 2006; handy, 1991). several of the participants were besieged, haunted, by concerns of how they were being interpreted by their colleagues. according to them, to be considered incompetent threatens professional identity and integrity of self. nurses may perceive other nurses’ intimacy with patients as over involvement and thus deviant because of our socialization to believe so. there persists an inconsistency between theory and practice that may affect our identity and in turn impact those for whom we care. this may be evident in the rigid interpersonal behavior or in nurses distancing themselves. fear of disclosure of self and affective responses have encultured a uniformity or sameness. we, as individuals, can find or lose identity in social groups such as nursing. as a defense mechanism, the individual may become part of the collective think and therefore complicit in a collusive agreement of silence albeit often running below one’s level of consciousness (dowling, 2006; handy, 1991). i mean you have to put on a mask around here that you’re doing good work and you’re not experiencing any ill side effects because of it. morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 11 this participant had learned that, in order to survive, she was required to repress her internal burden of feeling overwhelmed. she felt the need to mask, hide, disguise herself, and her internal fears that she was not doing good work. this was, at once, a protection of self to hide what she believed would place her on the outside of the boundary with her colleagues and place her in a vulnerable situation. she had become rote, mask-like, and hidden. her emotional face was hidden behind a pretense of professional competence and sameness. this sense of wearing a mask evoked to me a monere, or an omen or warning (jardine, 1994). while at once frightening, they are meant to provoke thought and challenge elements of the “taken-for-granted” (jardine, 2006). “like monsters in fairy tales, they wouldn’t whisper to us or stop us in our tracks if they didn’t have something to tell us” (jardine, 2006, p. 271). with it arrived an opportunity for me to reflect upon my own involvement with the demands of this topic and my history as a mental health nurse. “opportunities are not plain, clean gifts, they trail down dark and chaotic attachments to their unknown backgrounds, luring us further” (jardine, 1998, p. 154). the monsters that bring these openings to understanding need not look monstrous to teach (jardine, 2006). at times, monsters appear in the tear-rimmed eyes of a young girl. yesterday, such a monster came calling and demanded i retrace my steps and history. when i began my career as a mental health nurse, i felt totally inadequate in my ability to hear the stories of certain patients. i recall in my second week of work walking in to a room to find my patient huddled on the floor in the corner, a sharpened shard of glass running across her exposed wrist. she was silent, eerily so. i managed to convince her to hand me the glass and while i examined and bandaged her wrist she began to speak. she shared with me the image of her at five years old lying at the bottom of the stairs. her father and his friend had just finished raping her and were urinating on her tiny body. it was raining that day she said and today the rain falling outside her window smelled of urine. she kept repeating: “why can’t the rain wash away the smell?” she did not expect an answer. i certainly did not have one to give. that was not what troubled me. i did, however, struggle with keeping my presence with her, with listening to what she was saying and to resist the urge to run terrified from the room with fists jammed in my ears to stop the flow of traumatized hearing and the evoked images. over the years, the struggle quieted. i no longer felt the visceral impact of emotion overtake me. i congratulated myself in being able to push it away, place it aside. this image of my patient became just another story in a repertoire of pain filled stories of which i had been a part. i did not realize that i too had donned a mask. i had become a complicit silent partner, maintaining and perpetuating the code. i wore this mask with unseeing eyes, not realizing its presence or its influence in my relationships with my patients. yesterday, a trickster loosened the mask and it became visible. a young girl stared at me as she explained why “daddy hurt me down there” and then she began to scream. the haunting primal sounds were echoed by the trail of blood dripping from her face, and pooling in her lap. it was an image best forgotten, yet it lingered, played with me as i walked home. it brought me back to the beginning, to the call of this topic area and to the feeling, the impact, of being in that first room. after two months and pages of analysis, it beckoned. i had not realized how i had turned from the face of emotion until it would not stop looking at me. so here, in the in-between of self, my analysis began anew, with a monere, a lesson from hermes that broke open and shattered my pretense of skating the surface of relationship. morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 12 filled with a sense of repulsion, of wishing to distance myself from the task, it was time to follow the lure down into the powerful current of relationship and follow the tears (jardine, 1994). masks hide us away, keep us separate but also hold in, hide, and perpetuate our suffering. with the opening of tears, we have discovered a portal to that which has remained hidden about our practice as mental health nurses. in this way, “dwelling with the stories that haunt us” (rashotte, 2005, p. 34) has the capacity to read us anew but also to bring us to places of untold danger. such is the paradox of the in-between. rather than accept the mask, we are called to interrupt our taken for granted experiences and to discover what lies beneath. in the realm of the liminal, in the in-between filled with monsters, ghosts, and shadowed teachers, the participants found themselves in new ways. they bumped up against themselves in an unmasking of emotional encounters within the therapeutic relationship. there had come a recognition that emotions stay close to home, exist in the being human, and in the ordinary day-to-dayness of being a nurse. it brings it back to being human because you are able to see that yes ok somebody else had this reaction as well. it is human, it’s ok or it is normal. this participant’s words have begun to reveal a conscious awareness of the dialectic between home and not at home, the canny and uncanny (woolley, 2007). it reveals the inherent paradox of being a listener of narrative as a mental health nurse, exposing self to anxiety, and the need to simultaneously protect self from the induced fear. the extent or measure by which we are able to unify the paradox of existence is the extent to which we are authentically home, gedankengang, the process of consciousness becoming home with itself and its environment (hayes, 2007). for the participants, this process of consciousness involved means of finding ways to cope with the anxiety and fear they faced in their ways of being in the world as mental health nurses. they were attempting to find a balance, as well, between home and work, familiar and unfamiliar. to me, this represents a quest for a return to a state of homeostasis, and recognition of the passages, potentials, and possibilities of finding self along the way. homeostatis: finding balance, finding home homeostasis originates from the greek homos meaning equal and histemi to stand. in essence, it is to stand equally so as to maintain a stable, constant condition (oxford english dictionary, 1971). to stand equally and be afforded a sense of equilibrium requires a contemplation of the finitude of our existence and an awareness of the possibilities of life. we are able to discover our own individuality, authenticity, and conscience through accepting and moving through, or despite, fear and anxiety (dreyfus, 1991). to gadamer (1996), this “equilibrium which we call mental health is precisely a condition of the person as a whole being who is not simply a bundle of capacities; such equilibrium concerns the totality of a person’s whole relation to the world” (p. 56). we are always living disrupted as a being in the world. each new episode that pulls us from our familiar and sets us to wander the in-between holds the potential to teach us about our selves and offers to navigate our way through and back to a sense of familiar and homeness (dreyfus, 1991; svenaeus, 2001). learning how we negotiate the leaving of home, the return, and the journey in morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 13 the in-between speaks to us of our wish to be authentic and genuine. to gadamer (1989), this is likened to becoming experienced, getting to know the landscape of mental health nursing, its hazards, joys, histories, and traditions. it also predicates that we are aware that we continually shift and live in the in-between of past and future. which each new situation, our past is redefined and our “future exists as a space in which the unfulfilled potentials of past understanding can be realized” (davey, 2006, p. 61). in this continual renewal of self and becoming experienced comes a discernment of one’s potentials as a nurse, but also an awareness of one’s limits and need to protect self. for this participant, there came an understanding that her energy and giving of self was finite. she needed to be able to extricate herself from a particular situation before she was overcome. k: he wanted me there and so i’ll sit there. at some point you do draw the line though, there are some people who want you to sit in their misery forever and you’ve just kind of get out of there and say i’m done. i’ve given you what i can give you today. a: and what is that like to say i’m done? k: that’s tough to say, because i’m here to help you but, i can’t sit here with you anymore in this hopeless, miserable place, and so i’m going to leave you here. and you feel like you’re kind of abandoning somebody in that place. a: so do you believe that that’s part of that discernment we learn about the wading in or the skirting around, is learning how to walk out of that place of misery? k: yeah. and i guess i really didn’t think about wading in as often. i was thinking about it more about wading into the past and wading into the traumas that have happened in the past, but sometimes you’re wading right into the present and, yeah, you have to wade in and then you have to figure out to get out. in her words, it was a navigation of knowing how to get in, to develop a therapeutic relationship with her patients, and then an awareness of when the work was complete, how she could get herself out intact. there is a sense of balance here of knowing she was responsible for the therapeutic relationship but at the same time aware of her own needs as a nurse and as an authentic human being. in this sense of equilibrium, of potential and limits within the therapeutic relationship, her abilities as a nurse were sustained and she was able to offer her patients lessening of their suffering. she realized she needed to find a way to get out, and to get the impact of the narrative out of her to enable her to re-enter the relationship with renewed energy. this is not balance as is commonly understood within western culture or nursing literature. it does not predicate a need to separate work from home life, or afford equal amounts of time to leisure activities to clear ones mind. this is a sense of equilibrium closer to the one gadamer (1996) brought forward as a sudden reversal of awareness. there is held within this view a connection to the buddhist sense of nothingness containing everything (vandusen, 1998). in the maze of narratives that exist in therapeutic relationships, there also arises recognition of the delicate balance of truly being at home. as mental health nurses, we listen to and are situated morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 14 in often-emotional evocative narratives with a patient. with each new arrival, our equilibrium is unexpectedly shifted and redefined as it tumbles over onto our at home way of being (gadamer, 1996). in this struggle to realign balance, there is a need to accommodate this new weight. this requires holding the narrative long enough to acknowledge and witness its presence but not so long as to injure self by its absorption into one’s being. this living of equilibrium and the swinging pendulum divide of separation and protection predicated a need to get the narrative out. for all five participants, this need to get the narrative or emotion out was consistent. i think one of the most important parts of mental health nursing is the other mental health nurses that are in the room just as much as you are, doing the things that you’re doing, and talking to them. we absorb the stories of our patients and what’s going on, but then we, we talk about it with each other. i think if you didn’t have that, nobody would survive this job. you need a strong team and you need the other people to hear you and relate. there is a sense here of us as mental health nurses holding the stories of our patients. as intimated, the stories are absorbed, held inside as perhaps could be equated to a vessel, bowl, or container holding something of value. helen bamber, who at the age of twenty left her sheltered london home to sit with the wounded skeletons of bergen belsen spoke of this idea of holding. she had no training, no experiences that could for her reconcile the images and words barraging her first days at the newly liberated camp. she recognized that what she could offer was her presence, and “to receive, not to recoil, not to give the sense that you were contaminated by what you have heard but rather that you were there to receive it all, horrible as it was and to hold it with them” (belton, 1999, p. 23). for the five nurses in this inquiry, the need to have others who understood their work, standing beside them, holding alongside, helped them endure and sustain their ability to be in relationship with their patients. it became a sense of holding the story together such that the burden was lessened. the rough ground of home i don’t think it gets carried by the listener the same way…it is the same thing where you just have to get it out… i almost think that part of that is coping. if you’re using humor to get it, get it out, if you’re angry... i don’t say that to that patient. none of that comes back to that patient and i can maintain my professionalism with that patient and i can also just kind of get it out and then become who i really am. we are always in the midst of becoming who we are. it is a journey of alienation, of going where we are not and returning changed. in this intertwining of narrative journeys, there arises recognition of the delicate balance of true home. it is a dynamic, rhythmic movement that is open to the future as a possibility of the past. there exists a difference of understanding the black and white of a given situation and the relevance and opening of understanding that comes with viewing the colors in-between. there is recognition that empty and full, separation and protection are not polarized opposites, but rather two sides of a swinging shifting arc of perpetual motion. to gadamer (1994), “being is more than simple ‘presence’,... it is also just as much ‘absence’, a morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 15 form of ‘there’ in which not only the ‘there is’ but also withdrawal, retreating and holding within are experienced” (p. 180). we stop at times along this movement journey. in times of deep suffering, or loss of way forward, we linger. perhaps it is in these times, when motion stops, or when the rebound of movement stalls that we feel stuck, or in the vernacular of mental health nursing, are “burnt out.” this sense of humanness, of becoming who we are and living our life, does not promise that we shall always be happy, or safe from harm and danger. rather, it forwards an authentic way of being at true home with self as nurse and self as person (dreyfus, 1991; gadamer, 1994/1996). there is a reciprocal relationship between the experience of being at home, canny, familiar, and the not-at-home, uncanny, unfamiliar. some of our most powerful experiences of “being” happen between the homes interior and exterior, in the in-between (dreyfus, 1991; harries, 1978; woolley, 2007). these stances are in continual flux, changing, striving, and creating self and those around us. they inform and establish our means of being authentic with ourselves and for those for whom we care. it is our encounters with others in language that we discover our historical, social, and traditional horizons and our home of meaning (gadamer, 1989; heidegger, 1962). it is also, too, in these moments of encounter and the openness of self that we are deeply vulnerable and subject to attack, wound, and suffering (davey, 2006). however, if we become open to suffering as inevitable to being human we may be afforded a portal to new experiences and understanding. in this way, suffering, or the sense of to undergo a situation, is how we might come to know the meaning of the human condition and develop compassion (caputo, 1987; hilficker, 1994). in order to be open to this flux of separation and protection, we develop a sense of the world as requiring a sanctuary. this ontological place of true home is the extent to which we feel safe and sheltered in order for this process of becoming to happen (harries, 1978; woolley, 2007). concluding thoughts the topic of this inquiry focused on the impacts of the therapeutic relationship as experienced by mental health nurses. in going into the everydayness of their practice, in the space they exist in relationship with their patients, i aimed to extend our understandings. further discourse about the meaning of the therapeutic relationship, and its impacts on not only the nurses’ home lives, but also their nursing practices brings to the forefront the ways in which nursing practice, education, and research are reciprocally moved by the practical day-to-day activities of being in therapeutic relationship. mental health nursing is a relational practice. beal et al. (2007) asserted there exists “no doubt that the therapeutic relationship creates the foundation for care, continuity and recovery. everything flows through this relationship. when the therapeutic relationship fails, it causes great pain, when it succeeds it is experienced as transforming” (p. 16). within the therapeutic relationship, there is a supportive space of listening created within which our patients can begin to make sense of their world and heal. it requires a commitment and a risking of self. morck journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 2 16 there is an enormous amount of writing which concerns the therapeutic relationship in the nursing and psychotherapy literature. much of this writing has affected the professional practice of nurses. the concept of the therapeutic relationship that is mutual and reciprocal has found its way into nursing literature. however, as was evidenced by the way it was spoken to by the participants, there appears to be a gap between how it is understood and how the parameters and reality of mental health nursing allow it to be. with the legacy of detachment and emotional reserve, the tendency may continue for nurses to not share the stories with one another of how they are affected by relationships with their patients. with this, continues the feelings of isolation and hopelessness that were evidenced in several of the participants. we need to enable a place and space of safety to begin dialogues about these topics with one another. the code of silence and the mask of suffering need to be brought out from their shadowed corners and challenged. to not do so will continue to push to the boundary those who dare to speak of their suffering within the sanctum of the therapeutic relationship. these complex and often emotionally laden experiences of mental health nurses require consideration from continuing professional education, professional associations, and hospital administration for support and shelter. in these times of increasing patient acuity, nursing shortages, and an aging nursing population, there becomes an even greater need to protect these practicing nurses so that they do not, as many before them have, leave the doors of mental health behind (cna, 2008). references austin, w., bergum, v., nuttgens, s., & peternelj-taylor, c. 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(1996). beliefs: the heart of healing in families and illness. new york, ny: basic books. corresponding author: david geoffrey smith, phd emeritus, university of alberta email: paramita@telus.net journal of applied hermeneutics february 1, 2018 the author(s) 2018 experience and interpretation in global times: the case of special education david geoffrey smith abstract this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the international symposium for qualitative transformation of the paradigm of educational practice and special education, busan national university, south korea, april 16, 2006. the symposium was sponsored by the korean research society for phenomenological and hermeneutic practice, and the research institute for special education of busan national university. keywords special education, interpretation, hermeneutics, experience, globalization, research theory, invalid “special education” is focussed on the education of those deemed special in some way. in english, the word special has many meanings, such as “outstanding or exceptional,” “specific rather than general,” “for a particular purpose,” “denoting education for children with particular needs, e.g., the handicapped,” “a special person or thing, such as a (police) constable or dish” (concise oxford dictionary, 9th ed.). what may be most relevant to the question of paradigm transformation in education, however may be the connection of the word “special” to the word “species,” from the latin specialis. if special education is in any way linked to species differentiation, the implication easily slides into considering people regarded as “special” to be a different kind of species than everyone else, than those who make up the norms of society. it is this implication that i wish to address here. it is an implication that cuts deeply into many of the historically derived philosophical assumptions underpinning western theories of education, such smith journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 5 2 as aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction (a cannot be a and b at the same time), and his theory of substance stating that a thing is most itself when it is disconnected from every other thing. the problem with this understanding of specialness is not only that it leaves people in their specialness, literally in their distinctive species categorization; the worse thing is that, in such a condition, special people lose their pedagogical capability, that is their capacity to address the world from a common ground. if you are deaf, you are deaf; if you are blind, you are blind; if you are deranged, you are deranged, gifted gifted, but so what? maybe “normals” can assist you in your deafness, your blindness, your derangement, or even your giftedness to help you to adjust to life with normals, but the fact that you are “species specific” means that there is a line dividing us that cannot be breached. just as you are most yourself in your blindness, your deafness, or your derangement, so the rest of us are “ourselves” in a completely different way. it is this way of thinking that needs to be deconstructed, especially in the context of “global times” wherein the current theory of “difference” provides a justification for imperial aggression against others seen as a threat to one’s own truth. being able to see the world as one, as a single reality, is a necessary condition for perceiving how it is that the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the healthy and the infirm all participate and share in an organic unity that now requires a new kind of theorization within the various domains of the human sciences including education. this leads to my second interest in the symposium title, “…the qualitative transformation of the paradigm of educational practice.” we know from the history of research theory that the turn to qualitative methods began around the mid 1970s. there was a reaction against the limits of what could be learned about human life through statistics and the methods of “rigorous science.” the development of the new human sciences drew inspiration from the neo-romanticism of nineteenth century germany, and philosophers such as wilhelm dilthey (1833-1911) and edmund husserl (1858-1938), which led to the existentialism of heidegger (1889-1976) and sartre (1905-1980), and the hermeneutic/interpretive work of h-g. gadamer (1900-2002). dilthey was the first to distinguish between the natural sciences (naturwissenschaften) and the human sciences (geistesvissenschaften). “nature we can explain,” he said, “but human life we must understand (verstehen).” such understanding should be built on a more concentrated attention to “lived-experience,” to how people actually experience their lives in the world before any theorizing about it. husserl’s famous dictum, “to the things themselves,” was a sort of battle cry against the metaphysical formalisms of immanuel kant, whose philosophy of idealism had dominated europe since the eighteenth century. it is from this root in german romanticism, then, that phenomenology, as studies of experience, and hermeneutics as interpretation of experience, arose along with later developments in narrative methods, ethnography, and other research approaches now generically termed as “qualitative.” i am trying here to contextualize qualitative research historically because of my conviction that we need to move beyond methodologism if we are to address the most pressing problems in education today, including special education. i tell my doctoral students that their most important research commitment should not be to “method” but to “interest.” in other words, what in the world is demanding your interest? following that interest will, itself, provide at least part of the answer for how it should be investigated. correct method cannot be determined in smith journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 5 3 advance of an encounter with the subject of interest – that is a central insight from gadamerian hermeneutic/interpretive philosophy. another reason for locating qualitative research in the tradition of german, or european, romanticism is because there are ethnocentric biases in it that impede an appreciation of a broader understanding of “world” that is necessary in global times. two biases in particular need naming. one arises from the fact that qualitative research is posed as a binary to quantitative research. in the traditions of strict science, quantitative research operates out of the eighteenth century european enlightenment belief in universal reason. once things are proven scientifically to be true, they are true for all time, and thence form the basis of the “new” scientific culture. this is still the dream that underwrites techno-industrial culture, and is the foundation of science as the legitimizing basis of western imperialism as a form of universal truth. “make the whole world look like america” said george w. bush. of course this is nonsense, but all the more frightening because it is backed up by the military and technical apparatuses that science can produce. so, if not universal reason, then what? well, the binary is qualitative research, or as van manen (1984) once called it, “a theory of the unique.” questions about the generalizability, reliability, and validity of qualitative research still permeate the literature, and doctoral examinations of theses approaching research qualitatively. but qualitative research is precisely not interested in generalizability per se; its primary interest is individual. all of the answers given in response to the question of how then qualitative research might be relevant to a broader world have had difficulty in articulating just what it is that gives qualitative research its power, and i think this has something to do with the way any theory of the unique privileges difference over commonality. the best qualitative research might be more like outstanding literature: on reading it, you feel joined to the broader world in new and refreshing ways. unfortunately, much qualitative research does not achieve this bridging, mainly because, i believe, it has sought its impetus not from the broader world in which it is invested but from an understanding of human subjectivity divorced from politics, philosophy, history, etc. this is ironic, given that qualitative research has its origins precisely in husserl’s call to return to the world -(ger. zu den sachen selbst). it is this recovery of a broader sense of the world that is what qualitative research needs in order to enhance its relevance. i have read many qualitative dissertations over the years, but even the best ones leave me wanting a more urgent connection to the great issues of our time. more on this later. the second ethnocentric bias of qualitative research as a theory of the unique, or of difference, has been touched on above, and resides in the roots not just of european romanticism but within the euro-american tradition generally. this bias has been named by latin american philosopher enrique dussel (1995, 1996) as the problem of subjectivity, and it inhabits the euro-american imagination at the deepest levels. there is not space here to elaborate dussel’s historical tracings of the trajectory of european subjectivity. suffice it to note that so many of the paradigmatic philosophical positions operating in the world today are grounded in an acceptance of the self as the free and definitive arbiter of experience. this is true whether one refers to descartes’ “i think therefore i am,” adam smith’s logic of “self-interest,” or darwin’s evolutionism as a justification for “private” enterprise and individual self-development. dussel’s point is that, in anglo-american public rhetoric, “freedom” is the primary buzzword, but in actuality, it is smith journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 5 4 subjectivity that is the motive force. this is what accounts for the contemporary inversion of values whereby in the name of freedom, over 500,000 iraqi children can be murdered by the enactments of british and american foreign policy (mcmurtry, 2002). if freedom as an ideal is conflated with my subjective determinations of what is necessary for my survival, then the sacrifice of others has its own legitimacy. hence, dussel argues that killing and various forms of genocide are precisely the organic obverse of a subjectivist, self-enclosed logic of freedom. this helps to explain how, for example, the bush administration, like others before it, can commit gross atrocities throughout the world without any sense of guilt or remorse. this entire discussion now brings me back to my opening remarks about special education. if qualitative research is to “transform” the practice of education, two things have to happen. the first is to continue to affirm the originating gesture of the human science tradition, which is the turn to experience. this certainly was a major breakthrough in terms of providing the means for exploring and articulating what it is like to live in the world in one’s given situation, whether a school, a hospital, or a home. much has been learned over the last fifty years or so about the dayto-day realities of human life from this contribution. the second requirement is to broaden the hermeneutic/interpretive vision of qualitative research to better elucidate the political, philosophical, and cultural grounds out of which the subjectivity of experience is formed. without this last gesture, subjective experience remains both selfenclosed and then left dangling helplessly in the winds of broader worldly events. american zen (ch’an) writer, charlotte joko beck (1989, p. 28), has said “unless you are aware, you produce illness.” without recourse to forms of worldly understanding that might heal the wounds of which it speaks, qualitative research runs the risk of remaining stuck in its (european) romantic origins. in a way, the designation of “special” as a form of “species” is linked to this challenge. qualitative research in special education cannot rest simply with a detailing of how, for example a deaf person experiences deafness or how a teacher of handicapped children experiences her work. such studies must continue, but they must also be linked to deeper appreciations, which i will now try to discuss under the topic of “global times.” “globalization” was a significant topic after the fall of the berlin wall and the destruction of the soviet union in the late 1980s. the end of the cold war inspired a frenzied lather of excitement amongst the corporate, political, and military elites of the anglo-american alliance. they saw their chance at capturing the entire globe within the web of their particular theory of economic determinism, the last residual theory of the european enlightenment’s dream of universal reason. hence, 9/11, as a semiotic event, was produced by the us government itself as a pretext for invasion of iraq, afghanistan, and now perhaps iran and syria (ahmed, 2002; chossudovsky, 2003). the fact that the war went badly is a sign of the futility of its original conception, and i believe the world is currently witnessing the death-throes of the last great empire of western “civilization.” we all need now to be asking about the necessary conditions for shared global futures. my point is that the necessary conditions must include a re-thinking of the basic epistemologies that inspired and nurtured western culture to its imperial heights but now are revealing their fundamental inadequacies. i have already referred to aristotle’s theory of substance and principle of non-contradiction which privilege separation and difference. also easily traced are smith journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 5 5 the various philosophies of liberalism that underwrite the concept of the free autonomous person. another source resides in the judeo-christian tradition itself and its concept of divine chosenness. that story begins with god choosing abraham and his seed forever to be a “light to the nations” (isaiah 51:3-5) implying the rest of the world is in darkness. a later christian formulation says that “many are called but few are chosen” (matthew 22: 13-15), and historically this text has inspired anxiety and neurosis from people’s fear of not being among the chosen. the theology of divine chosen-ness is especially pernicious when it is assumed that physical disabilities may be a sign of not being among the chosen. according to that theory alone, either disabled people, blind people, the deaf, and mentally handicapped all received their shape, character, and situation because they lie outside the plan of divine choice (how could a perfect god make imperfect beings?) or they must wait in hope to one day join the community of the well, but always outside looking in. this same problem resides in western theories of national and cultural development. your lack of development is a sign of your exclusion from the club, the club of the chosen. if you want to be selected to join the club you must first take on its ways and manners of being. as madeleine albright, secretary of state during the clinton administration said to the harvard graduating class of 1997: “today i say that no nation in the world need be left out of the global system we are constructing…. every nation that seeks to participate and is willing to do all it can to help itself will have america’s help in finding the right path” (cited in spring, 1998, p. 8, italics added). the original biblical words “many are called but few are chosen” were directed at a poverty-stricken person who received an open invitation to a wedding feast but then was refused admittance because of not wearing the right clothes. again, the point of all the political references above is to underscore how it is that the way we address special education needs to be put in the context of how we understand the broader world in which students, parents, and teachers conduct their lives. so, if special education paradigms are constructed mainly through the interpretive frames and languages of the dominant western tradition, then, when that tradition itself reveals its own pathologies, as it is now doing on a global scale, special education, like all academic areas in the same tradition, inevitably is inhabited by problems it cannot solve from within itself. it needs an other, which can be defined as that which lies “outside” of the limits of what may be known or understood at any particular time. of course, in terms of the principle that i am promoting here, namely that there is only one world and each of us is connected, or interconnected within it, means that the other is never actually “outside” anywhere, because there is no “other” place to reside outside of the fullness of life as it fully exists. by extension, what is required of us to heal ourselves is actually fully available to us at all times because it is always present in the world somehow. the fundamental problem pertains to matters of perception, openness, and appreciation, or, in the language of wisdom traditions, of how to overcome one’s ignorance rooted in illusion or delusion. a common strain of ignorance may interpret disabled people as products of divine choice, which can further intensify their victimhood within normative culture. in asian traditions, the philosophy of karma can operate in a similar way. “karma” names the relationship of cause and effect, especially in the moral realm. if bad things happen to you, it is because you did something bad, not necessarily five minutes ago, but perhaps many years ago. smith journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 5 6 indeed, karmic influences can go on for generations. at the university of alberta, i have developed a graduate seminar called “teaching as the practice of wisdom” in which we study day-to-day encounters through the prisms of the world’s great wisdom traditions, such as taoism, buddhism, confucianism, sufism, and aboriginal spirituality. one day, a student arrived in class, and when i asked, “how are you today?” she broke out in tears. “my husband just left me after eighteen years of marriage,” she said. a chinese student in the class who had been studying falun gung philosophy, based on taoism, immediately said, “that means you must have done something bad a long time ago!” not very comforting words for someone feeling deeply betrayed and abandoned. the asian law of karma has its equivalents in the judeo-christian tradition through various theologies of divine retribution. god takes vengeance on people when they are unfaithful to their covenant, and this is taken as a reason for illness and catastrophic political events. the consequences of “sin” (which literally means “missing the target”) can be felt into the third and fourth generations (exodus 20:5). this view is beautifully repudiated in the mythical story of job, the world’s most godly, faithful man. in spite of his deep faith, he suffered misfortune and illness. he protests to god, claiming his own goodness: “have i denied anything to the poor…? have i eaten my food alone, not sharing it with the fatherless?” (job 31:16). in reply, god refuses such self-justifications, pointing to job’s ignorance: “have you ever commanded the morning, or shown the dawn its place?” (38:12). in the end, job is contrite, accepting the life he has been given, in all its mystery: “i spoke of things i did not understand, too wonderful for me to know” (42:3). the point of this ancient story is that human suffering cannot be reduced to a simple question of “why?” far more important is to affirm the goodness of life in spite of all human persuasions to the contrary. yes, there are profound connections between our actions and their long-term consequences, and it is important to be mindful of this at all times. but to say that we are always ultimately responsible for what happens to us is to place too much faith in the human capacity to correctly interpret human events. many things that happen in life simply cannot be explained by human interpretation; to argue that they can is a sign of what the great buddhist scholar and teacher, d.t. suzuki (in thompson, 1987), called “the homocentric fallacy” – the idea that the whole cosmos has its centre and reason for existence in humanity alone. so, if western reason through its enlightenment traditions of science, including the qualitative human sciences, is incapable of explaining or even “understanding” the full meaning of human suffering, as embodied by those who come to be known as special education students, for example, and the asian law of karma can unfairly interpret misfortune in a way that actually increases people’s suffering: how shall we approach those sometimes named in english as “invalids?” that word alone points in an important direction that is related to the quantitative/qualitative debate. “validity” in statistical research design is a measure of the degree to which an instrument actually measures what it is supposed to be measuring. so, does a particular test in math actually measure a student’s math ability, or really only his/her test-taking ability? in the context of our discussion here, whether a person is “valid” depends on the construct of what a person is ideally supposed to be. otherwise they are in-valid; they are invalids (see jardine, 2000). but such a claim itself is only valid if the original ideal construct itself is justifiable in some way, again relying on a judgement that is necessarily conditioned by time, place, and culture. smith journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 5 7 in the context of what i am proposing here, the world cannot be divided between persons who are valid and those who are invalid. either we are all valid, or all invalid, and indeed i would argue that we are all invalids. every one of us fails in some way to live up to any ideal, whether religious or secular, that human beings have been able to construct for themselves. but it is precisely our shared invalidity, our shared experience of falling short, indeed, our shared suffering, that can be the source of a new common bond between persons. this suffering cannot be interpreted precisely, because as the story of job suggests, it is not for us to know. our work is to accept life itself as a gift and to appreciate it as such, no matter how difficult it seems to be on the surface. when i am in difficulty, what is most helpful from friends and others is not, s o much, advice, interpretation, hard solutions. what is most helpful is simple friendship, arising out of openness, generosity, and for-itself goodness. of course, expertise is often necessary, but not the necessary pre-condition, which is compassion, meaning, “suffering with” (> latin, com “with”, pati pass“suffer”). the great indian social activist, mahatma gandhi (1967, p. 112), once said, “intelligence without compassion is diabolical.” kindly allow me to relate a short personal story. my first job as a new graduate with a ba degree in social science and english literature was as a child care worker with emotionally disturbed children in a residential treatment centre. most of the children suffered greatly from the consequences of physical or mental abuse, autism, schizophrenia, and other dis-orders. for me, the most startling revelation was that those workers most effective with the children were not the most educated or sophisticated, but those who simply extended the hand of human friendship to the children, accepting them as brothers and sisters of the same human family. i do not wish to reduce this complex matter to mere sentiment, but i do wish to note that those workers who, with their advanced degrees in behavioral psychology or other forms of therapeutic protocol, tried to “bring the children around” to some preconceived normative ideal – these well-meaning people were less “effective.” it is almost as if the children could intuit an inherent coercion in the practices of behaviour modification (for example), and they resented it, often starting to play different sorts of power games with their assigned staff members. no, we are all invalids; that is why we need each other. without you, as a living, breathing presence with whom to share a world, i am only half a person. as persons, we need first to feel accepted and welcome in this world before we need to be “interpreted.” indeed, as a contemporary sage, wendell berry (1999, p. 4) has put it, “a preoccupation with interpretation and meaning often gets in the way of simple appreciation.” i think this holds true also in the broader realms of culture and international relations. for example, we must not allow a single, culture-bound interpretation of economic development to rule the whole world, an issue with which i will end my remarks. there are two ways of understanding the identification of “global times” referred to in the title of this paper. most personally favoured is a view that, for the first time in the human story, people from around the world are “facing” each other in unprecedented and creative ways. new possibilities now exist whereby we might better alleviate our invalidity, our collective suffering, through accessing the deep wisdom traditions from around the world, providing visions of what is required at the deepest ethical levels for our mutual survival. this is a vision of “intercivilizational dialogue” over shared human futures (first so named by pasha & samatar, 1996). smith journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 5 8 unfortunately, “global times” are being determined most fully by its second identification, which is not intercivilizational dialogue, but the “clash of civilizations” (huntington, 1998). the world seems saturated with war and conflict, and this is largely the result of legitimate (in my view) resistances to the over-determination of economic liberalism, or neo-liberalism, as a universal recipe for human development. there is not space here to elaborate on this matter, but for a good elucidation of neo-liberalism, see bourdieu 1998. what is most important is its effects on increasing numbers of people, both in the west and around the world. as philosopher david loy (1998, p. 17) has said, “today, the logic of the market is the world’s first universal religion,” and the consequences of this are, and will increasing be, devastating. this is because reigning free market theory is nothing but an abstract mathematical formulation that provides justification for environmental exploitation, hoarding of personal resources, cutting of public finances for social programs and the heralding of “excellence” culture. excellence culture is another name for social darwinism: only the best deserve to survive, and such survival necessarily involves a struggle and war. for those of us in education, and perhaps especially special education, social darwinism does not look kindly on the weak, the vulnerable, and the infirm. if only the fittest survive, then under the reigning interpretive paradigm, only the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the most wealthy, and the most powerful have a chance. the polarization of the rich and poor of the world is increasing at a rapid rate, with the wealthy now barricading themselves behind ever more sophisticated systems of security against “everyone else.” as educators, what do we have to say about this? surely “nothing” is an inadequate response, revealing our entrapment within interpretive paradigms that have lost sight of the worldly context of our work. somehow, i think it means we must denounce at every opportunity, like the resistant children in the residential treatment centre, the dominant social hermeneutic of our time. instead, let us affirm the fundamental solidarity and commonness of the human condition, sharing our ‘invalidity’ as our most important asset. references ahmed, n., & leonard, j. (2002). the war on freedom: how and why america was attacked on sept. 11, 2001. brighton, uk: progressive press. beck, c., & smith, s. (1989). everyday zen: love and work. san francisco, ca: harper. berry, w. (1999). thy life’s a miracle. wild duck review, 5(2), 3-4. bourdieu, p. (1998). the essence of neoliberalism: utopia of endless exploitation. le monde diplomatique. available at http://mondediplo.com/1998/12/08bourdieu. chossudovsky, m. (2000). war and globalization. toronto, on, canada: james lorimer. dussel, e. (1995). the invention of the americas: eclipse of ‘the other’ and the myth of modernity (m. barber, trans.) new york, ny: continuum press. http://mondediplo.com/1998/12/08bourdieu smith journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 5 9 dussel, e. (1996). the underside of modernity: apel, rorty, taylor and the philosophy of liberation (e. mendietta, ed. & trans.). atlantic highlands, nj: humanities press. gandhi, m. (1967). the gospel of swadeshi (a. hingorani, ed.). bombay, india: bharatiya vidya bhavan. huntington, s. (1998). the clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. new york, ny: touchstone books. jardine, d. (2000). learning to love the invalid. in d. jardine (2000). "under the tough old stars": ecopedagogical essays (pp. 193-200). brandon, vt: psychology press/holistic education press. loy, d. (1998). the religion of the market. in h. coward & d. maguire (eds.), visions of a new earth: religious perspectives on population, consumption and ecology (pp. 15-28). albany, ny: state university of new york press. mcmurtry, j. (2002). value wars: the global market as an ethical system. toronto, on, canada: garamond press. pasha, m., & samatar a. (1996). the resurgence of islam. in j. mittleman (ed.), globalization: critical reflections (pp. 187-201). london, uk: lynne reiner. spring, j. (1998). education and the rise of the global economy. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. thompson, w. (1987). the cultural implications of the new biology. in w. thompson, (ed.), gaia: a way of knowing. great barrington, uk: lindisfarne press. van manen, m. (1984). action research as a theory of the unique. occasional paper #32. department of secondary education, university of alberta, edmonton, ab, canada. journal of applied hermeneutics june 21, 2018 the author(s) 2018 corresponding author: katie webber master’s student, faculty of nursing university of calgary email: katherine.webber@ucalgary.ca offering a concert for two: an interpretation of friendship in pediatric oncology palliative care nursing katie m. webber abstract in this paper, written for a hermeneutic research course for my master’s graduate work, i discuss how pediatric oncology nursing is an interpretive practice. i explore the subject of the relational complexity of pediatric oncology nursing, conceptualized as friendship. i then discuss the similarities between understandings of hermeneutics and friendship. in the second part of the paper, i provide a narrative and interpretive account of a personal experience of friendship with a palliative patient and his mother, to offer understanding about the complexities of the work of pediatric oncology palliative care nursing. keywords interpretation, hermeneutics, pediatric oncology nursing, friendship on an inpatient unit, where patients and their families often spend more time than at the address listed in their chart, it is not uncommon that nurses and the parents of pediatric oncology patients develop relationships. pediatric oncology nurses bear witness to parents experiencing the diagnosis, treatment, and sometimes palliation of their child. over time, the relationships between nurses and parents develop and become increasingly complex. an interpretation of this relational complexity is friendship. however, due to a focus in nursing on the creation and maintenance of professional boundaries, it is challenging to understand how friendship could be experienced in a professional mailto:katherine.webber@ucalgary.ca webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 9 2 hospital setting, such as pediatric oncology, as it is rare for friend and nurse to be held together as equal partners. when i consider, from a hermeneutic perspective, how i might understand the moments of meaningful connection that have contributed to a sense of purpose in my work as a pediatric oncology nurse, an interpretation that seems to aptly describe these experiences is friendship. exploring the complexities of pediatric oncology palliative care nursing in my own experience, the rigidity of personal and professional boundaries, which divides nurses, patients, and their families, becomes more interpretable and more flexible when providing palliative care. palliative care nursing offers a relational permission that does not always exist when the focus is curative. as the focus shifts towards palliative care, there is a necessary reimagining and reinterpretation of the role of bedside nurse. this shift, from personal experience, can be uncomfortable and requires, as moules, mccaffrey, field, and laing (2015) suggested of heidegger’s understanding of dasein, “a thereness of being” (p. 23), which encourages an absorption into the experience itself, in this case, the experience of caring for a dying child and their family. in many ways, when caring for a palliative patient, one’s perspective of time shifts. no longer are vital signs, assessments, and chemotherapy administration the focus. instead, an ability to be visibly invisible becomes the priority. in other words, as a pediatric oncology nurse caring for a palliative patient, the focus is to be available and present to the experience, while still offering the space and room needed for the patient and parents to have time alone together. pediatric oncology nurses become interpreters of how to best support the needs of the patient and family members. there is no manual, guide, or certification that pediatric oncology nurses can follow in doing the work of palliative care. gadamer (1960/1994) referred to phronesis as a “practical knowledge…[which] must grasp the ‘circumstances’ in their infinite variety” (p. 21). applied to pediatric oncology, an understanding of phronesis, as the practical wisdom needed to interpret and understand both the universality and infinite variability of the dying process, is helpful in describing the interpretability of the practice of pediatric oncology palliative care nursing. a few years ago, i remember hearing a mother recount the experience of her son’s death. she recalled sitting on the parent bed, taking a few minutes to herself in what had been an exhausting week of being at the bedside of her dying son. she shared that her nurse came into the room and softly suggested that she crawl into bed beside her son. within the hour, her son had passed away. she was so thankful for that nurse’s wisdom in that moment. i, too, am so thankful for my colleague, whose practice was profoundly phronetic. as i endeavor to express how nursing in pediatric oncology is interpretive, i will offer some beginning understandings of the connection between hermeneutics and friendship. to illustrate this connection, i have included a personal experience and interpretation of friendship, as a bedside pediatric oncology nurse, with a palliative patient and his mother. as gadamer (1960/1994) offered, “understanding begins…when something addresses us” (p. 299). admittedly, when wrestling with the topic for this paper, i was overwhelmed with emotion. i did not want to confront the topic of the relational complexity of pediatric oncology in the context of palliative care nursing. however, it was undeniable that the topic was addressing me and, having avoided it my entire first webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 9 3 semester as a graduate student, it became clear that the time had come to enter into the topic of friendship in pediatric oncology nursing, from a hermeneutic perspective. hermeneutics and friendship much like hermeneutics, which defies a clear, methodical definition (moules et al., 2015), friendship finds itself in a similar situation. as moules et al. offered, hermeneutic interpretive work is best understood through practice, rather than by the careful examination and execution of a specific method. understanding or interpreting friendship seems to be much the same. it is not a step-by-step guide that one follows in friendship, but a human connection that transcends the traditional nurse-patient relationship, which seems to happen “over and above our wanting and doing” (gadamer, 1960/1994, p. xxviii). as a pediatric oncology nurse, my experiences of friendship, with patients and their parents, are not the results of an ability to skillfully complete a central line dressing change or to effectively teach a parent about fever and infection. of course, the technical skills of nursing contribute to building trust and understanding, but my experiences of friendship seem to have happened, over and above what was done or what ought to have been done (gadamer, 1960/1994). as moules et al. (2015) offered “the art of interpretation, that is often only learned through experience and is difficult to teach, involves the process of moving past the initial descriptive themes into the depth and richness of interpretation” (p. 119). in the same way, the art of friendship between nurses, patients, and their families, in the work of pediatric oncology nursing, is also difficult to teach. it requires a moving past the tasks and skills, policies and procedures, and rules and regulations of the work of nursing to experience the depth and richness of friendship. of course, not every patient or family member becomes a friend, but it seems remiss to not acknowledge that patients and family members may become friends somewhere along the cancer trajectory, particularly, in my own experiences, when the treatment shifts in focus towards palliative care. sir francis bacon (1612) offered a poignant and practical attribute of friendship as it relates to understanding. “for friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections, from storm and tempests; but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness, and confusion of thoughts” (para. 6). i cannot help but draw a connection to the complex relational work of pediatric oncology palliative care nursing. perhaps one of the darkest storms, a tempest in life, is the experience of being present during the death of a child. how could any daylight be experienced in this storm? how could the confusion of the experience be made clearer, even just for a moment? perhaps, in the confusing experience of the death of a child, an experience of friendship between a nurse and a parent offers an opportunity for a new perspective, similar to the work of hermeneutics (moules et al., 2015). these friendships that develop, between nurses and parents who have experienced the loss of a child, is perhaps why many parents, even after the passing of their child, return to the unit to visit the nurses; to tangibly experience aletheia, a working “against what was dead bringing it to life” (moules et al., 2015, p. 3). as a pediatric oncology nurse, it has been my experience that friendship, true human connection, offers an opportunity for understanding to begin. the memories that i draw on from my nursing practice about friendship are the moments where authentic human connections, which defy the traditional nurse-patient boundary, have taken place. in the moments where i, as a nurse, no longer webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 9 4 hold a position of power, but a position equal to or perhaps even lesser than that of the patient or their parent. i must be clear, though, that it is not always a comfortable or easy place to sit. as a nurse, i have been employed to know, to advise, to educate. i am there to meet the needs of the other, the patient and their family, not the for the other to meet my needs. however, when given the space to consider the meaningful moments in my career as a nurse, the moments that have grasped a hold of me, they are often the quieter moments of sitting with, listening to, and sometimes even sharing something personal about myself. these moments give way to an opportunity that transcends the traditional nurse-patient boundary, and enters into one that allows for a greater, more human understanding and appreciation of one another. my last day with ryan i remember walking into the report room. i was going away for the weekend, and so i had elected to take the last four hours of that friday’s shift as vacation. i knew that there was a palliative patient on the unit, but, in general, palliative patients are assigned to nurses who are working full twelve-hour shifts and several shifts in a row, in order provide consistency for families. somehow, though, i had known driving to work that i would be assigned to him. i felt anxious as i listened to the report from the night shift nurse. my heart was beating, and i was frustrated. i had hoped to have a weekend away that did not involve any baggage from work. i had hoped for a stress-free, eight-hour shift. i had hoped not to care for a dying child that friday. i was wrong, though. caring for ryan that day was exactly what i needed. ryan and his mother, unknowingly, taught me something about friendship that continues to influence my nursing practice today. the nurse, who walked into his room at 8 a.m., heart-pounding, worried that his mother might ask something hard that she would not know the answer to, was a different nurse, who walked out 3:30 p.m. throughout the morning, doctors, nurses, and family members filtered in and out of the room. there was a certain thickness in the air that only rooms with dying people seem to have in them. however, when michael, the mandolin-strumming spiritual care worker, came in, whistling a happy tune, he breathed a freshness into the room with his music. ryan was unconscious, heavily sedated by the intravenous analgesics being given to him, but his mother smiled so graciously as the music played. after the mandolin-playing finished, she thanked michael because she knew ryan, as a violin player himself, had been listening and appreciating the music. almost before i realized what i was potentially offering to do, the words came tumbling out of my mouth “i play the violin, too.” in wanting to find a connection with his mother, perhaps even to attempt to expose myself, if only in a small way, as i watched her be so exposed by the experience of watching her son die, i had disclosed something that, at the time, i held quite quietly to myself. she looked at me, with soft, pleading eyes, and asked if i would play my violin for him. i paused. it was my general practice to avoid any public appearances with my violin, but i could not help but promise that, when i returned to work on monday night, i would bring my violin. while the hours of my shift progressed, i continued to mull on this willingness in me to play the violin for ryan and his mother. something had shifted between ryan, his mother, and me. by extending a piece of myself that i generally kept quite private, the distance between myself as a nurse and ryan’s mother had closed ever so slightly, moving towards a fine balance of friendship in pediatric oncology palliative care nursing. i moved in and out of the room for the next hours, webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 9 5 propping ryan up when he slipped down, listening to ryan’s mother’s fears about what it would be like to watch him die, and trying my best to be present to their needs. as the hours went by, i felt myself relax into the role of palliative care nurse. in the last hour of my shift, ryan’s mother asked if i would sit with him while she went for a long walk. she told me that it was her birthday, and she said that she wanted to mark the day, even in the midst of sorrow, by walking to the pond near the hospital. i wanted to be brave for her. i wanted to acknowledge the trust and friendship she was extending to me to sit with her son on one of his last days. however, i must admit that i was terrified that ryan would take his last breath with only me by his side. as she left, i sat down beside him and held his hand. i do not remember what i said to him, but i remember softly chatting, humming a little bit, and then long moments of quiet. an hour or so later, she returned from her walk. her face held a settled despair that only the mothers of dying children must know all too well. as my shift ended, i said my goodbyes to her and ryan, and i thanked her for the time i had spent with them that day. i was grateful, calm, and deeply moved by the opportunity she had given me to hold the hand of her boy on one of his last days. of course, that would be the last time i ever saw ryan and his mother. as is the practice of our unit to notify nurses of patient deaths, my phone rang the following day. i did not answer but waited for the message to be left to let me know that ryan had passed away. i was somewhat at a loss of how to respond to the news, which was surprising because i knew that ryan was going to die. i do not write in a journal very often, in fact, it is the only time that i have written about a patient, but, the experience of friendship and human connection that transcended the traditional nurse-patient boundary, compelled me to respond in writing to what i was feeling. i wanted to capture the moments of that day. the following is what i wrote, which i share as my own interpretation of the experience of caring for ryan that day. it is exposing, asks me to be even more vulnerable than i already feel. barriers are my judgments of others reflected back onto myself. i am emotionally exhausted by yesterday. all i have, all that fills my mind are his breaths, the progression from sixty, to forty, to thirty-eight…to none, as if i could count down his last minutes. the invitation, i am sure, is to let myself feel this, but, the temptation is to try to forget it. or, perhaps, the temptation is to hold on too tightly? quite honestly, i do not know. i am afraid to be too affected and i am afraid of forgetting. i am afraid of whatever is left in the middle. the mandolin strums, my foot taps, his eyes are closed. the tube that draws air to his lungs has also taken it away. who am i in this? i am a healer, but today, a pallbearer. today, is a sad day. i will not need my violin on monday night, will i ever need it in that way again? as i write, i notice how i feel. i feel that i do not deserve the grief. but, admittedly, i do. a smile rolls onto my face as i see how alive he was in his death. “kids have a way of choosing their time,” she [the doctor] said. she was right. not yesterday, but today. so, cheers to you, beautiful, intelligent, young, and experienced ryan. may you rest in peace. unpacking and concluding my relationship with my violin has always been complex. i am usually quite shy about playing it for others. as a child, i was embarrassed because it made me different than many of my peers. i remember standing up alone at the front of many stages, feeling so vulnerable, hoping that the webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 9 6 shaking of my hands was being communicated to the audience as vibrato, and desperately hoping that i would remember the pages of sheet music i had memorized. when i finally quit taking lessons late into my teenage years, i questioned whether i would ever want to play my violin again. this relationship, over time, began to heal, and as an adult i have realized that being able to violin is not such a terrible thing. although i have become more willing to share this part of myself, largely thanks to ryan and his mother, i am still, and was certainly at the time, very closed about playing the violin. so why would i disclose this part of myself, let alone share something personal in a professional setting? as gadamer (1960/1994) suggested, my offer of connection and extension of friendship, was “over and above my wanting and doing” (p. xxviii). ryan’s mother was going through an experience that i could only begin to imagine. although her request was to play for ryan, i was not really going to be playing for ryan, i was going to be playing for her. what i saw in front of me was a mother, so vulnerable, simply wanting to hear the sound of a violin, to remind her of her son. in my own desire for connection with her and to honour her vulnerability, i wanted to play for her. unfortunately, i never had the opportunity. i can only imagine how nervous i would have been and how uncomfortable it would have made me to have my coworkers overhear me playing in his room. however, to this day i wish more than anything that i had had the chance to play my violin at a concert for two. in a pediatric oncology setting, the friendships that develop, between nurses, patients, and family members, can erode barriers that sometimes prevent nurses from truly understanding their patients. from a perspective that nurses and parents of palliative patients do experience friendship, as an equalizing human connection, the anxiety of being the most technically skilled nurse starts to dispel and can soften into a more phronetic experience of nursing. gadamer (1996) wrote that there is an “unmistakable evidence of a connection between the conscious and self-conscious awareness of our own life and the very ungraspability of death” (p. 63). my experiences of friendship, with parents of palliative patients, due to the nature of working so close to death, have affected my conscious and unconscious ways of being a nurse. to close, through the process of articulating my own understandings and interpretations of friendship as a nurse in pediatric oncology, i can see the similarity of the challenge that hermeneutics and friendship both face: “hermeneutic questions are hard questions; hermeneutic understanding is hard understanding” (moules et al., 2015, p. 202). however, i have also begun to see how, going forward, my continued desire to pursue an understanding of the topic of friendship in pediatric oncology nursing, responds to what moules et al. concluded with about hermeneutics, “at the heart of it is the capacity to know and live differently – to find language that works” (p. 202). it is my sincere hope to continue to find language that works to articulate how we might understand the complex, meaningful experiences of friendship in pediatric oncology settings. references bacon, f. (1612). of friendship. retrieved from http://www.authorama.com/essays-of-francisbacon-27.html http://www.authorama.com/essays-of-francis-bacon-27.html http://www.authorama.com/essays-of-francis-bacon-27.html webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 9 7 gadamer, h-g. (1996). the enigma of health. (j. gaiger & n. walker, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1994). truth and method. (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. journal of applied hermeneutics june 21, 2018 the author(s) 2018 corresponding author: graham mccaffrey, rn phd faculty of nursing, university of calgary email: gpmccaff@ucalgary.ca editorial: chi 2018 – the politics of displacement graham mccaffrey today, in light of increasingly coercive conformism, it is more urgent than ever to heighten heretical consciousness. (byung-chul han, 2017, p. 83) the history of the canadian hermeneutic institute (chi) is entwined with that of the journal of applied hermeneutics (jah). the chi was inaugurated in 2009 and has just successfully completed its tenth annual meeting. the jah began life in 2011 – the journal came out of a suggestion by dr. richard kearney, the visiting scholar at the third canadian hermeneutic institute in 2011. the first two articles in the journal were an editorial by moules, mccaffrey, morck, and jardine (2011) setting out their vision for the journal, and a landmark paper by kearney (2011) where he discussed his ideas about diacritical hermeneutics. this is a paragraph from that opening editorial summarizing chi’s history to that point (more information and subsequent history can be found at the chi website, http://www.chiannual.com): drs. nancy johnston, deborah mcleod, and nancy moules established the canadian hermeneutic institute in 2009, with its inaugural 3-day meeting in halifax, nova scotia, canada. the intent of the institute was to bring together scholars of hermeneutics and hermeneutic research across disciplines in creative dialogue and conversations of philosophy, research, and practice. the first visiting scholar was dr. david jardine, http://www.chiannual.com/ mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 2 2 professor in the faculty of education at the university of calgary. in 2010, the institute was hosted in toronto with visiting scholar, dr. john d. caputo, professor of religion emeritus at syracuse university and the david r. cook professor of philosophy emeritus at villanova university. in 2011, dr. richard m. kearney, charles h. seelig chair of philosophy at boston college and visiting professor at university college dublin, was the visiting scholar for the institute held in calgary, alberta. dr. kearney initiated the idea for a journal that could showcase the work he heard from institute participants of bridging philosophy and practice. (moules et al, 2011, p. 3) of the three founders, drs. mcleod and johnston have retired from their academic positions and dr. nancy moules has continued as the prime organizer and inspiration for the work of the chi. the journal and institute continue to share a common goal of providing space for the work of applied hermeneutics, a ground for the meeting of hermeneutic philosophy and practice disciplines, such as nursing, education, and counselling psychology. after the conclusion of the tenth institute, it is a fitting moment, in this journal, to reflect on the chi and, through its most recent meeting while still fresh in the mind, on the extraordinary kind of event that it is. another reason for revisiting the chi in this moment is the recent release of dr. john caputo’s new book, hermeneutics: facts and interpretation in the age of information (2018). dr. caputo is a leading hermeneutic philosopher who has been exploring and expanding the possibilities of hermeneutics in print since his book radical hermeneutics in 1987. he was the invited scholar at the 2nd chi in toronto in 2010. his new book is a kind of taking stock, reviewing the hermeneutic tradition (with his distinctly deconstructionist emphasis), and positioning it for the contemporary challenge “to address what is becoming of the professions, of our institutions, of our world, in the age of ‘advanced information technologies,’ which have brought about a sea change in everything we do” (2018, p. 20). he included a chapter entitled gadamerian nurses (pp. 217-244) in which he discussed his encounter with the chi and the work of hermeneutic researchers in practice professions. i can attest to the enormous influence it has had on me to attend the chi, to listen to leading hermeneutic scholars, and to engage in conversation with them – it is rather wonderful to find such affirmation that the influence flows in both directions. the 10th annual canadian hermeneutic institute took place in calgary, where the visiting scholar was dr. ted george from texas a&m university. dr. george had met with dr. moules on previous occasions, and was the organizer of the 2016 north american society for philosophical hermeneutics (nasph) conference in texas where dr. moules and myself, with the eminent hermeneutic scholar dr. jean grondin, gave a panel presentation about applied hermeneutics. in part, no doubt, because the conversation was already under way, dr. george was extraordinarily well attuned to the habitus (to borrow a term he used) of the chi of the meeting place between philosophy and practice professions,1 between attentive thinking and discerning action. over three days, dr. george traced the arc of an argument for the ethical weight of gadamer’s hermeneutics, how his thought points to ways of seeing how we are held to situations of obligation that we may or may not face into in their fullness, and which may comprise pockets of resistance 1 i use this distinction for convenience – it is not to say that philosophers do not practice and practitioners do not philosophize – that blending is integral to the unique atmosphere of the institute. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 2 3 to the instrumentalizing forces of globalization. i will not attempt an exposition of his case, which was fulsome, profound, and elegantly expressed – that is another article, and it is not mine to write. instead, i want to try to capture the mix of deep interest, stimulation, engagement, conversation, urgency, relaxation, intellectual and emotional seriousness, laughter, and – yes – deepening understanding that has been engendered in the brief life of each meeting of the chi, through the lens of this particular meeting. first, it is important to recognize the hard work that the visiting scholars put into preparing and delivering a sustained program of philosophical reflection to nonspecialists for three full mornings in succession. i have already mentioned dr. george’s attunement to the people in the room, and the metaphor extends to his tuning of his ideas in question and answer sessions, and in presenting on successive days in the light of the previous days’ discussions. i have never failed to be impressed by, and grateful for the generosity of the visiting scholars who have spoken at the chi, and their lively curiosity and receptiveness towards the work of those of us bringing hermeneutics to our places of practice. on the first day, dr. george drew attention to gadamer’s concern with alienation, which he went on to read through jean luc nancy’s (2007) account of globalization. according to nancy, globalization, with its spread of uniform technologies, lifestyles, and markets, renders everything in terms of exchange value, and leaches the worth of the non-replicable, the non-exchangeable, the unique experiences that are essential to a meaningful life. one effect of globalization is the obsolescence of physical centres of power, which means that resistance can no longer take the form of revolutionary crowds in the city square. the potential space of resistance is in the “nooks and crannies” of everyday life, in hermeneutic situations of human encounter. “nooks and crannies” of hermeneutic situations in the work of practice professionals working in institutional settings became one of the working motifs for the institute. it came up, for example, as the experience of the ems paramedic noticing the effort required to recognize the call of each patient in their personhood, not only in the measurements required by the institution; in the use of digital stories in healthcare as a mode of human expression that interrupts the flow of data to kindle human connections; in the challenge of creating moments of encounter with nature for schoolchildren without reducing it to mere spectacle. “displacement” was the stand-out word of the second day, as dr. george explored what it is to go forward in terms of gadamer’s account of hermeneutic experience (erfahrung) as factical, circular, and demanding a disposition to openness that is effortful and ethical. displacement, as i hear it, is the jolt of not-knowing that permits new-knowing, and can lead to deepening of understanding. phronesis is the mode of application, how one responds out of displacement, making “good decisions in irresolute situations” (george, personal communication, june 7, 2018). conversations continued, about caring for others at the end of life, as a nurse or as a close relation, about the limit situations that confront us, displace us, challenge us to bring forth good ways of responding with and beyond the rules we already know. on the third day, dr. george talked about embodiment in gadamer, a theme, as he noted, not usually associated with his work. we had been primed the day before by an afternoon presentation from alexander crist, a doctoral student in philosophy at texas a&m university who gave a paper exploring gadamer’s ideas about pain, which gadamer had delivered in his last public lecture at the age of 100, and recently translated by crist. (with my rudimentary german, one of mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 2 4 the pleasures of this institute for me was listening to the back and forth between dr. george and crist on the finer points of translating gadamer’s german terms). there was a poignancy to the picture of the philosopher in old age turning his thoughts to pain and illness, not to complain but to think about them, and to make an argument for the arts of healing, for the restoration of health as part of a fulfilled life. dr. george brought the theme of embodiment, how we view our bodies, illness, and medicine back to nancy’s account of globalization. in the regime of globalization, even bodies have market value as productive entities, so that health is commodified and illness becomes a loss of value. conversely, for gadamer, participation in the restitution of health has value as part of a life meaningfully lived. the hermeneutic insight of displacement reappears as the existential acknowledgement of pain as part of life from the start. a brief narrative of what was said (my interpretation thereof at least) tells you something about what went on at the chi this year, but it scarcely does justice to the conversations that occurred in open sessions, over coffee, at lunch, and overspilling the end of the scheduled day that infused the event with an exciting abundance of ideas. the institute has remained small, for a conference, but is more like a large seminar with plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion with the visiting scholar and presenters. none of this is accidental. it has held true to the original intention to focus on hermeneutics, with a gadamerian slant, and the format has been adjusted over the years to find its current balance. in the discussion following a presentation by galicia blackman about the place of play in a language arts class, the role of the referee came up – dr. jim field drew on his experience as a rugby referee to say that the referee’s role is to know, monitor, and enforce the rules of the game – but also to discern and to allow the flow of play. dr. nancy moules has been instrumental in establishing the chi and in organizing it each time it has been held in calgary – she has set out the field of play, established some rules for the game, and then she is expert at that other role, of allowing the flow of play. all of us who have attended and participated in the chi owe a debt of gratitude to the three co-founders, who wanted a canadian forum for gadamerian philosophy, and so they created one, and to the continuing work of dr. moules. coda: in defence of the agreeable as i consider the agreeableness of the three days of the chi, i start to wonder whether we were missing just that displacement of which we all felt so much in favour. i use the word agreeable advisedly, not only for its sense of coming to an agreement but also the mood of stability and contentment that it evokes. did we sign up to displacement in theory, but not in practice? did we come away with a false sense of moral superiority in our enhanced ability to cope with experience (by which i mean erfahrung, of course)? well, maybe, but displacement does not have to be abrasive. fusion of horizons means that we have found common ground, space in which our prejudices have been put under pressure, where something in our understanding has shifted, and we have made room for it to shift. sometimes this hurts, and sometimes it is more like the sensation of well-made effort, for example in the bike ride i took this afternoon – feeling my legs ache uphill, rolling smoothly on the flat, hazy blue rockies on the horizon, then precisely judging the curves on the fast downhill. a meeting of people who share a commitment to gadamer’s hermeneutics ought to be agreeable, just as the people i have met who knew gadamer always stress how personally agreeable he was, how close he was in personality and conduct to his philosophy of respectful openness towards the mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 2 5 other, seeking deeper understanding through conversation. the chi is a clearing, to borrow heidegger’s famous image, a space in which fusions of horizons are sought and welcomed – not guaranteed, and they take work but made more likely. fusions plural, because as with hermeneutic research, if we went back to piece together what happened at the chi we would inevitably find a plurality of horizons taking in the common meeting place. far from being a problem, we should not take the agreeableness we find at chi for granted. it does not happen by accident, but is the outcome of reflection upon previous experience, careful planning, and expert facilitation. after the chi, philosophers remain philosophers, nurses remain nurses, and teachers remain teachers. we have had an experience that now cannot be undone, and if we have been listening, we have been displaced – with kindness and generosity – by visitors from other places (and of course we are all visitors in each other’s worlds, within and across all professions and disciplines) with other concerns, other ways of seeing, of speaking, and thinking. several people commented in our final discussion about the chi itself that this is not as other academic conferences and events. there is room to breathe. chi is one of the “nooks and crannies” of resistance to globalization. our agreeableness, our finding worth in conversations, is a recuperation and a clarification of what we can do, as thinkers and practitioners with hermeneutics, to keep open spaces of human contact amongst the instrumentalizing demands of the institutions we inhabit. references caputo, j.d. (2018). hermeneutics: facts and interpretation in the age of information. london, uk: pelican. han, b.c. (2017). psychopolitics: neoliberalism and new technologies of power. london, uk: verso. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., morck, a.c., & jardine, d.w. (2011). on applied hermeneutics and the work of the world. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 1. issn 1927-4416. retrieved from: https://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/5 nancy, j.l. (2007). the creation of the world, or globalization (f. raffoul & d. pettigrew, trans.). albany, ny: state university of new york press. https://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/5 mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 editorial 2 6 corresponding author: david w. jardine, phd retired, university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 23, 2018 the author(s) 2018 sunflowers, coyote, and five red hens david w. jardine preamble not everyone is beguiled by the hunt for double meanings, the decoding of references, the connection between sub-rhythmic dots of syllabic emphases, or the tracing of narrative arcs. [but] i do believe that those buried layers of syntactic, semantic and symbolic meaning give life to the songs, regardless of whether the listener gives a hoot about decoding them. they deepen the saturation of the colours, the concentration of feeling and the verisimilitude of the small world the songs describe. (newsom, with paytress, 2015, p. 86) sight-lines i feel uneasy stepping into the great territories opened up by nancy moules (2017) and kate beamer (2017) at the tail end of last year’s journal of applied hermeneutics. it is not (yet) a territory i have endured as deeply. that bracketed “yet” is little more than a feeble attempt at trying to remember not to forget what surrounds us all, whatever its proximity. there is no real refuge out of the sight-lines of impermanence, death, and grief. a shuddering thought, that this makes persistent and practiced mindfulness of these sight-lines the only reliable refuge. it is no accident that contemporary hermeneutics, in its ventures to speak about our living circumstances, is inevitably surrounded by penumbras of finitude and its ins and outs, and how, or whether, or to what extent, i have come to live with this inevitably. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 4 2 this is wound into the flesh of any and all topics of any interpretive delve: “the concept of substance is . . . inadequate. [there is a] radical challenge to thought implicit in this inadequacy” (gadamer, 1989, p. 242). the challenge is simple. what shall we say, what shall we do, in the face of the reality of impermanence? we want to speak clearly and openly but without foreclosure or finality. we want to invite others into this open wound and help them calm themselves and become composed and undistracted if they do. that is what these two authors have done for us. when their teacher, edmund husserl (1970, p. 7), desperately asked “can we console ourselves with that? can we live in this world?” his students’ answer was a resounding yes, yes, this is the locale of our solidarity and hope. the good news, the hermeneutic consolation, is that “everything around us teaches impermanence” (tsong-kha-pa. 2000, p. 151). everything around us teaches us precisely this consolation. everything is an opportunity for practice and commiseration, for comfort in its lovely etymological origin – common strength. thus, the secret of interpretive work is that this impermanent dependent co-arising is full of relations, full of often hidden or occluded voices and ancestries, mixed blood lines, secrets. it is full precisely of the voices and images and ideas and lingerings of the quick and the dead. opening the mouths of the dead in lament of the dead (hillman & shamdasani 2013), james hillman repeatedly introduces a stunning image to help formulate his experience of first opening carl jung's then-recently published red book (1999): “i was reading about this practice that the ancient egyptians had of opening the mouth of the dead. i think we don’t do that with our hands” (p. 1). sonu shamdasani soon elaborates: it is the ancestors. it is the dead. this is no mere metaphor. this is no cipher for the unconscious or something like that. when [jung] talks about the dead he means the dead. and they’re present in images. they still live on. (p. 2) this is an ecological as well as a mytho-poetic presumption, and it has some affinity to threads of buddhist thought as well. it is a presumption that “transforms the world and its beings into a most extraordinary vision” (tsong-kha-pa, 2005, p. 125): the land of the dead is the country of ancestors, and the images who walk in on us are our ancestors. if not literally the blood and genes from whom we descend, then they are the historical progenitors. (hillman, 1996, p. 60) likewise, the linguistic progenitors hidden in words (like “comfort”). and the earthly progenitors hidden in the plain sight of the animal body’s tracing of places and footfalls. the dogs sniffing old piss trails as the snow melts. “transforming according to circumstances, meet all beings as your ancestors” (hongzhi zhengjue [1091-1157 ce], 1991, p. 43; see jardine, 2016, pp. 75-78) jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 4 3 we “are always already everywhere inhabited” (smith 2006, p. xxiv). the ancestors, our relations, human and other-wise, are always already amongst us and we amongst them, in the most ordinary of objects or words or images, in the texts, in the trees, in the dreamstates, in the gestures, even in the flesh-ache of muscle-born dry wood for winter and the panicky bugs that scurry over it. or in the distant, unwarranted and perhaps inevitable fear for one’s child, care sometimes gone amuck, monkey-mind in the midst of impermanence. and this is just as true of ravens nearby and long since disappeared, of trees long gone to soils, of the outbreath of this forest, here, now, around me, inhaled under the sun’s slow returning. sunflowers and five red hens every road leads to an end your apparition passes through me in the willows five red hens – you’ll never see us again. sufjan stevens (2015), from “death with dignity” a delicate helado negro remix of “death with dignity,” these shreds and patches have the poignant, half-there quality of going through the possessions of someone dear who has died. its incompleteness, then, is as apt a reflection of grieving as you could hope for. (harris, 2018, p. 107) pennants. #239, 2nd floor west, trueman house, 1947. the still, colourless memory of a colourful past still embedded with pins. (adapted from moules, 2017, p. 3) five red hens whose saturation of color is palpable in those lines that took my breath away, even though i don’t quite know what it means: we are drawn into an event . . . and arrive, as it were, too late, if we want to know what we are supposed to [now] believe. (gadamer, 1989 p. 490) but i do know how it means. its specificity holds and intensifies and “breaks forth as if from a center” (gadamer, 1989, p. 458). images are sites of power and prickle, pins that beckon attention and ask something of us – to take good care of them. they are incomplete, and an elegant interpretation of them leaves them as they are, deepening the saturation of the colours. i didn’t know john moules well. only a wee bit. only once upon a time sat in his backyard, with seven-foot –were they eight-foot? 10? 20? -sunflowers laced to the garage and singing in the full-bore summer light, all heads, ours too, turned in phototropic obedience, and all this burned into memory traces whose graces come and go. we are all sat still. still there. motionless. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 4 4 and he came to see my garden and it now seems like a near-mythic event, his frail gait and determination under ravens overhead soaring on summer thermals, black oily wings glinting and curving in thin air. all things teach as they alight and gurk-gurk and click and burble and yellow-eye the compost. we check the greenhouse and check the smell of the tomato leaves. that smell like nothing else. furry vines thick with the perfume of red pulses. grieving can be just this acrid sweet: silhouette of the cedar what is that song you sing for the dead? (stevens, 2015, n.p.) i grew up around cedar trees and there aren’t any hereabouts. they haunt me still from little boy days near lake ontario and the niagara escarpment, where they clung to limestone edges and aged in place for centuries. as did i, feeling my age as this image flits by and flirts and teases. red hens, cedars, ravens, sunflowers, all new and fresh. there is some relief to be had in feeling already somewhat outlived. of dropping the heavy weight of feeling necessary to the well-being of the world. “a radical challenge to thought.” it is an escape from something. held captive and coming to insight is more than the knowledge of this or that situation. it always involves an escape from something [latin fugere] that had deceived us and held us captive. thus, insight always involves an element of self-knowledge and constitutes a necessary side of what we called experience in the proper sense. insight is something we come to. it . . . is ultimately part of [our human vocation] –i.e., to be discerning and insightful. (gadamer, 1989, p. 356) [insight is] is not [simply about] this or that particular thing [but] insight into the limitations of humanity. thus, experience is the experience of human finitude. the truly experienced person is one who has taken this to heart. the idea that everything can be reversed, that there is always time for everything and that everything somehow returns, proves to be an illusion. (gadamer 1989, p. 357) we are reifying beings and such reification belies impermanence and such belying of impermanence leaves us haunted but not necessarily insightful. images can spellbind as much as they can release us into the tumult of things. remaining fugitive is the art of interpretation. martin heidegger’s unheimlichkeit, “un-home-like-ness,” (1962, p. 233) sensing the uncanny haunt of things under the icy surface calm, just looked up in an old hardcover bought in 1971, held together with tape, aging in place on the shelf, still with the notes from a conversation with gadamer from 1976 scrawled inside the cover, with his note back to his own teacher: jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 4 5 care [german sorge, root of “sorrow”] is internal to being-in-the-world rather than its dominating father. (see jardine, 2015) it is sometimes true that the dead are more amongst us when they are no longer alive, that they are “with” us in more lively and haunting ways in their death than in their living. back and forth, between memory love, anger, disappointment, reality romance, gratitude, admiration, regret. (adapted from moules, 2017, p. 2) every death bursts forth as if from a center. their living, in death, gets tossed up into thin air and scattered outwards, an energy out beyond the thicknesses of a body, lying, stilled. it is getting these grave gravities back in motion again, back “in play” (gadamer, 1989, pp. 101-109), that is the work of undergoing grief – aristotle’s energia, that very thing that grief can drain faster than it fills up, “aliveness.” “the claim” after this recognition – the image as ancestor – there is the experience of the claim that images make upon me. . . . we do not make them up, so we do not make up our response to them but are ‘taught’ this response by them. . . . our way . . . does not interpret the image but talks with it. it does not ask what the images means but what it wants. . . . how do we know whether they mean well with us or would possess us? (hillman, 1996, pp. 60, 61, 93, 75) “shifted toward a rustling” something outside of the funeral hall window caught my attention and my gaze shifted toward a rustling in the bushes. coyote. it was one of those bone chilling winters, a harsh climate, that provided comfort to me in its barren, hollow form. yet still, there was movement. (beamer, 2017, p. 1) still. there was movement, animation in a barren, hollow form. back and forth. between. “the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (gadamer 1989, p. 295). it is the fugitive spot where we can sense, in the smallest or largest of events, that “something is going on, (im spiele ist), something is happening (sich abspielt)” (gadamer, 1989, p. 104), or as the german etymology betrays, something is at play (german spiel). jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 4 6 but watch out. hiding here, too, is a yiddish-english usage of a tricky tale meant to deceive or persuade or to allow the teller to escape unharmed or elude capture. thus summoning pitchman hermes all over again and coyote’s trickiness. in taking up the trick, walking through the open gate, then, we must remain alert and not just fall for it. the wound of grief is thus a locale of the unexpected, rustling arrival of “something outside”: perception of opportunities requires a sensitivity given through one’s own wounds. here, weakness provides the kind of hermetic, secret perception critical for adaptation to situations. the weak place serves to open us to what is in the air. we feel through our pores which way the wind blows. we turn with the wind; trimmers. an opportunity requires. . .a sense. . .which reveals the daimon of a situation. the daimon of a place in antiquity supposedly revealed what the place was good for, its special quality and dangers. the daimon was thought to be a familiaris of the place. to know a situation, one needs to sense what lurks in it. (hillman, 2013, pp. 101-102) coyote is just such a familiar figure, and it is how hermes might be cast as well, both like the sweep of a black cat on a witch’s broom. familiars. the bush-rustling portend of energia, aliveness. coyote’s trick, hermes’ opening of the gate, can bring hope and a sense of futurity, opportunity out beyond grief and its thickness and gravity and haltedness. opportunity, portals, pores, openings, wounds. a hint, then, of aletheia (see moules, 2016). sensing what lurks. pins and hens and sunflowers turn to face me. what do you want? what shall i do that is proper to this turning? imagine. death’s swerving halt sets things in motion. its arrival is not adequately understood as simply the causal outcome of previous events or circumstances. instead, it happens and its happenstance cascades out into the future and back into previous events deemed finished and over with. in this sense, it makes sense, but does not make enough sense to speak of the “cause of death.” death enlivens – memory, presumption, desire, hope, imagination, expectation, regret, anger, and grief, yes grief. precisely its eventful finality makes it an unfinished swerve, back and forth, and sidelong into surroundings, multiple. summoned “to see with fresh eyes” (gadamer, 1989, p.16) it is full of “lightning flashes” (calvino, 1988, p. 48) the suddenly found object, the suddenly arisen smell or word or little totem having been left behind here on a table, sometimes unbearably and unexplicably full of significance, reminder, or portend. the ghost of a forgotten habit run into over coffee spilled in the morning. “i see dead people” in the quickening light glanced in the window. even those words about fresh eyes are precisely such, remembered here, memorably risen up seemingly of their own volition. italo calvino (1988) speaks of “quickness” in this light. things happen and no amount of wellwrought themes or rules or the like can outrun the fact that “the rule does not comprehend it” jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 4 7 (gadamer, 1989, p. 39) – the event outruns and such outrunning keeps the rule alive and alert and in play. it becomes a live-wire that must prove itself again and again in the face of events. oddly, so oddly, death in the experience of the living as an experience of “lightness” (calvino, 1988) and “quickening” (see jardine, 2015a, p. 109-122). and this just as the very opposite also occurs, where the live body, in death, becomes a thick thing in an instant and how the dead body seems to weigh so much more than one that is alive. “afflicted by openness” opportunities are not plain, clean gifts; they trail dark and chaotic attachments to their unknown backgrounds, luring us further. one insight leads to another; one invention suggests another variation; more and more seems to press through the hole, and more and more we find ourselves drawn out into a chaos of possibilities. (hillman, 2013, p. 94) we can become “afflicted by openness” (hillman, 2013, p. 113) as those grieving know full well. what might have portended quickness and enlivening can shift: “wingedness [can] become mere haste” (p. 51) or the repeated, even relentless rush of moments, swerves, waves of memory and gut that simply push and stab. those doing hermeneutic work understand this full well, too. suddenly, unexpectedly, “everything points to some other thing. nothing comes forward just in the one meaning that is offered to us” (gadamer, 2007, p. 131). we can be “outplayed” (gadamer, 1989, p. 106). or, perhaps worse “through his[/her] own wounds, [“wound” as locale of vulnerability, pain, sensitivity; “wound” as hole or portal, latin porta, root of opportunity] may feed others, but may himself [/herself] be drained thereby” (hillman, 2013, pp. 19-20). in grief, we can end up spent, drained whilst all the while there is the buzzing of event. there are those times when the memory of the dead starts to flit and cascade and buzz and tremble and skitter and scatter and it won’t stop. it won’t stop. this is so much like those first becoming involved in interpretive work. “how do i get it to stop?” “the uninitiated,” the unpracticed, “have no proper vessel. they carry water in a sieve and pour it into a perforated jar” (hillman, 2013, p. 220). “the green signals” how their deaths quicken the air around them, stipple their bodies with a light like the green signals trees send out before their leaves appear. (wallace, 1987, p. 40) what writers have is a license and also the freedom to sit -to sit, clench their fists, and make themselves be excruciatingly aware of the stuff that we’re mostly aware of only on a certain level. and that if the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is. [it] is to wake the reader up to stuff that the reader’s been aware of all the time. (wallace, with lipsky, 2010, p. 41) jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 4 8 this is such a lovely hint at the nature of interpretive work when it works. it reads like something i knew all along but had forgotten, something that allows us “to recognize ourselves in the mess of the world as having been engaged and always being engaged” (hillman, 1996, p. 49). even if we leave such engagement undecoded, it increases the richness of the colours of red hens. there is a passage from the first volume of tsong-kha-pa’s the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment (2000, p. 111) that i find myself returning to: “i compose this in order to condition my own mind.” if i may be so bold, i compose this, i write, in order to compose myself, in order to gain some fleet and failing composure in the face of the onrush of things. writing, when it works, does not despoil the richness and saturation of the colours. paying proper attention to experience breaks through the illusion of permanence. it can deepen the colours and can expand me beyond my own means of consolation: “by making the object of meditation extensive [you] expand your [own] mind” (tsong-kha-pa, 2002, p. 63). freedom the aim of interpretation, it could be said, is not just another interpretation but human freedom, which finds its light, identity and dignity in those few brief moments when one’s lived burdens can be shown to have their source in too limited a view of things. (smith, 1999, p. 29) and then, from the gelug tradition of tibetan buddhism, from tsong-kha-pa’s the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment: buddhapalita’s commentary on [nagarjuna’s] “fundamental treatise” says: what is the purpose of teaching dependent-arising? the master nagarjuna . . . saw that living beings are beset by various sufferings and assumed the task of teaching the reality of things . . . so that they might be free. [my emphasis] what is the reality of things? it is the absence of essence. unskilled persons . . . conceive of an essence in things [something fixed and final and permanent] and then generate attachment and hostility with regard to them. (tsong-kha-pa, 2002, p. 210) and from longchenpa’s finding rest in the nature of the mind (2017, p. 47): “through wisdom, freedom is achieved.” but it is not just my freedom that is frailly and momentarily won. interpretation frees its object of investigation to be what it is – dependently co-arising, rather than caught in the binds of grief and other afflictions that might reify. it lets john moules catch the thermals and fly up above the sunflowers even as my chest heaves at the thought. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 4 9 away you go, then, so we can console ourselves. so that you can remain with us beyond these dead and silent remains. references beamer, k. (2017). and coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 10. accessed on-line: http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/157. calvino, i. (1988). six memos for the next millennium. cambridge ma: harvard university press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method. new york, ny: continuum. harris, s. (2018). review of sufjan stevens (2017), the greatest gift. mix tape. outtakes, remixes and demos from carrie and lowell (stevens, 2015). mojo: the music magazine, issue 291, february 2018. london, uk: academic house. heidegger, m. (1927/1962). being and time. new york, ny: harper and row. hillman, j. (1996). healing fiction. woodstock, ct: spring publications. hillman, j. (2013). senex and puer. putnam ct: spring publications. hillman, j., & shamdasani, s. (2013). lament of the dead. new york, ny: w.w. norton. hongzhi, z. (1991). cultivating the empty field: the wilent illumination of zen master (t.d. leighton & y. wu, trans). san francisco, ca: north point press. husserl, e. (1970). the crisis of european science and transcendental phenomenology. evanston, il: northwestern university press. jardine, d. (2015). “you’re very clever young man.” in d. jardine, c. gilham, & g. mccaffrey, (2015). on the pedagogy of suffering: hermeneutic and buddhist meditations (pp. 7-18). new york, ny: peter lang. jardine, d. (2015a). quickening, patience, suffering. in d. jardine, c. gilham, & g. mccaffrey, (2015). on the pedagogy of suffering: hermeneutic and buddhist meditations (pp. 109-122). new york, ny: peter lang. jardine, d. (2016). in praise of radiant beings: a retrospective path through education, buddhism and ecology. charlotte, nc: information age publishing. jung. c.g. (1999). the red book. new york, ny: w.w. norton. longchenpa. (2017). finding rest in the nature of the mind. boulder, co: shambhala. http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/157 jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 4 10 moules, n.j. (2015). editorial. aletheia: remembering and enlivening. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 2. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5qr4p68 moules, n.j. (2017) editorial. grief and hermeneutics: archives of lives and the conflicted character of grief. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5h708h8 newsom, j. with paytress, m. (2015). “keep your eye on the rats!” joanna newsom speaks to mark paytress. mojo: the music magazine, issue #264, november 2015. london, uk: academic house. smith, d.g. (1999). pedagon: interdisciplinary essays in the human sciences, pedagogy and culture. new york, ny: peter lang. smith, d.g. (2006). trying to teach in a season of great untruth: globalization, empire and the crises of pedagogy. amsterdam, nl: sense publishing. stevens, s. (2015). death with dignity. from the cd carrie and lowell. asthmatic kitty records. catalog: akr099. release date: march 31, 2015. stevens, s. (2017). the greatest gift. mix tape. outtakes, remixes and demos from carrie and lowell. asthmatic kitty records. catalog: akr134. release date: november 24, 2017. tsong-kha-pa (2000). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment. volume one. ithaca, ny: snow lion. tsong-kha-pa (2002). the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment. volume three. ithaca, ny: snow lion. tsong-kha-pa (2005). the six yogas of naropa. ithaca, ny: snow lion publications. wallace, b. (1987). the stubborn particulars of grace. toronto, on, canada: mcclelland and stewart. wallace, d.f., with david lipsky. (2010). although of course you end up becoming yourself: a road trip with david foster wallace. new york, ny: broadway books. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5qr4p68 http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5h708h8 microsoft word tappmoules proof.docx 1 faculty of nursing, university of calgary calgary, ab t2n 1n4 corresponding author: dianne m. tapp, rn phd email: dtapp@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 16, 2012 the author(s) 2012 enlivening the rhetoric of family nursing: “there, in the midst of things, his whole family listening” dianne m. tapp1 and nancy j. moules1 abstract at the time that this study was conducted, family nursing practice in acute care hospital settings had received little attention in nursing research and theory. a hermeneutic inquiry explored nursing practices that involved families on three cardiac medical-surgical units in two hospitals in a large urban health care region in canada. data for the inquiry were generated through field observations with fifteen nurses and interviews with ten nurses. nurses supported and enabled family presence in these units but demonstrated limited evidence of deliberate family assessment and intervention. nurses espoused a familiar rhetoric that claimed that family nursing exists because of the inevitability of encounters with family members throughout daily work. nurses wished to appear to include family members in their practice and emphasized the importance of family teaching. still, nurses’ ability to articulate the nature of this practice was limited. family nursing rhetoric is explored as a potentially legitimate discourse that underlies current trends influencing nursing of families, particularly the impact of early discharge and increased reliance on family members to provide care at home during early recovery. keywords family nursing, family presence, family intervention, hermeneutics, gadamer enlivening the rhetoric of family nursing: “there, in the midst of things, his whole family listening” (wallace, 1988, p. 110) illness in families is an inescapable presence inherent in our human condition. some illnesses are minor and create little, if any, disruption to family life. other illnesses, either acute or chronic, time limited or life limiting, can have an enormous impact on families at every level of functioning. it is when illness arrives, and the intersection of nurses and families is necessitated through health care encounters and environments, that the practices of family nursing are, in theory, called tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 2 into action. what is not known, however, is how often these practices truly live up to that which they aspire to in theory. in this paper, we describe a hermeneutic inquiry that guided an exploration of these questions with nurses working on three cardiac medical-surgical units in two hospitals in a large urban health region in western canada. through this inquiry, a rhetoric of family nursing became apparent that was seemingly uninformed by deliberate family nursing assessment and intervention. we highlight the importance of family nursing rhetoric as a discourse that underlies practice since nurses are increasingly obligated to include family members to achieve shortened length of hospital stay, and to prepare family members to provide care at home during early recovery. background and literature review at the time of the conduct of this study, the nursing of families of adult patients in hospital medical and surgical units had received little attention from nurse researchers and theorists. the literature, however, reflects longstanding interest in family-centered care related to hospitalization of children and maternal-child care in labour and delivery. exploration of family needs in critical care settings has been extensively documented over the past two decades (ågård & harder, 2007; brown, deeny, & mcllroy, 2000; chien, chiu, lam, & ip, 2006; davidson, 2009; engsötrm & söderberg, 2007; hickey, 1990; leske, 1991; mitchell, chaboyer, burmeister, & foster, 2009; stahan & brown, 2005). more recently, there has been interest in family presence during invasive procedures and during resuscitation in emergency departments (basol, ohman, simones, & skillings, 2009; baumhover & hughes, 2009; eichorn et al., 2001; fernandez, compton, jones, & velilla, 2009; funk & farber, 2009; happ et al., 2007; henderson & knapp, 2006; mcmahonparkes, moule, benger, & albarran, 2009; maclean et al., 2003; miller & stiles, 2009). tucker (2002) noted, with irony, the slow shifts in health care professionals’ acceptance of family presence in hospital settings. in the 1970s, hospital labor and delivery units allowed for fathers and family members’ presence at the beginning of life (draper, 1997, friedewald, fletcher, & fairbairn, 2005, leavitt, 2003; martin-arafeh, watson, & baird, 1999). decades later, there is increasing acceptance of family presence at the end of life (andershed, 2006; fridh, forsberg, & bergbom, 2009; meert, briller, schim, & thurston, 2008; teno, casey, welch, & edgman-levitan, 2001; truog et al., 2008). there has been increasing interest in the impact of chronic and life-threatening illnesses on family members. with shifting demographics that reflect the “graying” of the north american population, there is interest in the roles of family members in care of the elderly and the potential for caregiver burden. the nature of the family-nurse relationship has been explored in critical care settings (chesla, 1996; chesla & stannard, 1997), long term care (gladstone, duuis, & wexler, 2007; gladstone & wexler, 2001; wardgriffin, bol, hay, & dashnay, 2003), and community settings (hunt, 1991; kellett & mannion, 1999). åstedt kurki, lehti, paunonen, and paavilainen (1999) explored the impact of hospitalization on families with a member in a neurological ward and in acute care settings in finland (åstedt-kurki, paavilainen, tammentie, & paunonen-ilmonen, 2001). may, ellis-hill, and payne (2001) examined everyday interactions between family members and multidisciplinary health care providers. yet, within most of this older literature, the family-nurse relationship and the practice of family nursing on adult hospital medical and surgical nursing units had remained untapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 3 der-theorized and relatively invisible. in more recent years, there has been increased focus on this relationship (azoulay et al., 2003; benzein, johansson, årestedt, & saveman, 2008; gavaghan & carroll, 2002; lefebvre, pelchat, & levert, 2007; maxwell, stuenkel, & saylor, 2007; pryzby, 2005; tarnowski goodell & harmon hanson, 1999; van horn & kautz, 2007; yetman, 2009). it is this aspect of the family-nurse relationship that led to this study and these questions guided an exploration of aspects of family nursing practice and perspectives: what is the character of hospital nurses’ interventions and interactions with family members? how do nurses involve family members during hospital care and how do they address family concerns? family nursing practice study this study was motivated by the observation that, despite good intentions, family-focused nursing care in adult hospital settings continues to be a remote goal in canadian healthcare systems. our purpose in this inquiry was to explore and describe family nursing practices that support involvement of family members in health care encounters and address the concerns and difficulties of families with a member hospitalized with cardiac health problems. research approach this interpretive inquiry was guided by the philosophical hermeneutics tenets of hansgeorg gadamer (1976, 1960/1989). as a contemporary and student of heidegger, gadamer extended a tradition of hermeneutic thought that is increasingly the basis of interpretive research in nursing (fleming, gaidys, & robb 2003; geanellos 1998; moules, 2002; walsh 1996). gadamer’s unique contribution included his explication of genuine conversation as a distinctive mode of understanding in the human sciences. he explored hermeneutic conversation as the dialectic of question and answer, the playful to and fro of dialogue, and the stance of holding out the possibility within dialogue that the other might be right (binding & tapp, 2008; gadamer 1960/1989). gadamer revealed the productive possibility of our pre-understandings or prejudices and challenged the concept of prejudice as a negative or limiting bias in human understanding. prejudices come into play in the hermeneutic circle, a metaphor for interpretive understanding where beginning conjectures are developed and put into play in writing, practice, and dialogue to sound out their merit and credibility. conjectures are revised, reconsidered, and recycled until a sufficient description of the phenomenon can be offered. a productive account explores and extends understanding by addressing traditions of meaning (e.g. cultural, professional, and social discourses) that the author or participant could not or did not explicitly consider. gadamer’s work guides nursing research through a philosophical stance rather than a methodological framework for generating and analyzing text. prejudices and pre-understandings while we acknowledge that it is impossible to specify in advance the biases and prejudices that shape our understandings of the research topic, there are some beginning understandings that informed the research team’s approach to this inquiry. we assumed that nurses in hospital settings do nurse family members and that such practices are relational and occur in dialogue. as such, there is a risk that family nursing practices are less amenable to measurement and observation, and thus less visible to those concerned with evidence of the impact of nursing interventions on health care outcomes. we believed not only that family members ought to be included in hospital care but also that those families want to be acknowledged and involved. we believed that resources, unit routines, and hospital poltapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 4 icies powerfully shape nursing of families. in addition to interviewing nurses about their practices, we wanted to account for organizational supports and constraints that shape nurses’ work with families. we anticipated that fieldwork would enable us to witness nurses’ engagement with families and to appreciate the complexity of family nursing practice in acute care hospital settings. research process participants included 15 staff nurses on three cardiac nursing units at two teaching hospitals in a large health region in western canada. nurses were recruited through small group presentations to nurses on each unit. in qualitative work, the goal of recruitment is to engage participants who can best speak to the phenomenon of interest (moules, 2002). this may also be the most significant limitation of this inquiry: participating nurses may be those who were most interested in family nursing and thus most inclusive of families. though their perspectives and practice may not be representative of their colleagues, this was not the goal of the inquiry. the aim was to reveal family nursing as it appears in these particular nursing units rather than to claim that the descriptions that follow constitute typical nursing practice. a total of 34 field visits (170 hours) were conducted. most nurses were job-shadowed (non-participant observation) on at least two occasions by the lead researcher or a graduate student. researchers were interested in observing routine nursing practice to witness encounters between nurses and family members. they were present on a variety of shifts from early morning until late evening. ethical approval was obtained from the conjoint health research ethics board of the university of calgary. informed consent was obtained from nurse participants, and the researcher obtained verbal consent from patients and family members to whom the nurse was assigned for the shift. immediately following each observation, researchers wrote fieldnotes based on recollections and brief notes made during the visit. several months later, 10 of these nurses were interviewed. the time delay was not related to the observation process but more a function of the research process. it was not intended that observations and interviews be linked. two nurses declined participation in the second phase of the study and three others could not be located. using unstructured interviews, we explored instances of family nursing that they believed reflected their everyday practice or that stood out as significant to them. these dialogues provided opportunities to inquire about particular thematics that became apparent within the initial interpretations of the field notes. interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. the research team was comprised of two faculty members, two graduate students (one doctoral and one master of nursing), and one registered nurse who worked as a staff nurse on one of the participating nursing units. all research team members were involved in the interpretation of text generated through field notes and interviews by independently reviewing all transcripts and preparing interpretive memos. the findings presented here offer a weaving of these interpretive writings, as our understanding of the phenomenon of the family-nurse relationship in this setting was uncovered through this process. family presence each of the three participating units had visiting guidelines but nurses had significant discretion regarding implementation. though it was usually family members who were present during the morning hours, general visitors were increasingly present throughout the afternoon and evening. in the telemetry areas, tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 5 nurses were more likely to enforce an afternoon rest period and ensure an early bedtime. each unit had a small number of private rooms and a larger number of two-bed rooms. two units had a few four-bed wards and a small cardiac telemetry unit for patients requiring more intensive monitoring. the physical environment had a significant impact on family presence as the semi-private, four-bed wards, and telemetry units afforded very little physical space or privacy to accommodate family visiting. both hospitals were built 20 to 40 years ago and were not designed to provide facilities for family members. each unit had a large waiting room with couches, television, and telephone access. none of these units provided overnight facilities for family members. an exception might occur if the patient spoke no english and family members were needed to assist with translation and communication. if a family member wished to stay overnight, nurses occasionally placed a reclining chair or stretcher at the patient’s bedside in a private room. this was typically discouraged in other rooms. nurses in this study implicitly accepted family presence in a manner that would have been considered extraordinary in hospitals thirty years ago. some nurses commented on differences they noticed over time in hospital policies and practices regarding visiting hours. within the limitations of physical space and visiting policies, there was a prevailing ethos that recognized family entitlement and desire to be present. nurses anticipated that family members are entitled not only to be present but also to ask questions, receive information, and know details of diagnostic and treatment plans. although variations were observed and reported in nurses’ comfort with family presence during routine activities, many nurses actively encouraged family presence. anytime i want to do something with the patient, the family is usually there and i usually tell them “okay i’m going to do this” or, i want to give them (the patient) some information about bypass surgery or having a pacemaker put in …and if they make as though they’re going to leave i say “no, no that’s fine, just stay cause i’d like you all to have this information.” so i usually, unless i’m doing something personal with the patient it’s obviously not appropriate to have family there, i prefer to have them stay and listen. nurses knew how to make the system more accommodating of families and sometimes found creative ways to enable family presence when they would normally not be allowed. exceptions were more likely made when the patient did not speak english and family members were required to translate. nurses frequently commented on benefits to the patient when the family could be present. family members were not expected to assist with physical care but were recognized as a source of emotional and social support to the patient. by involving family members in incidental patient teaching and structured group classes, nurses believed that the family would be prepared to help the patient manage symptoms and the treatment plan more effectively at home. nurses appreciated that family members would reinforce important information about recovery at home. nurses believed that information helped family members understand illness and recovery, reducing family stress and anxiety. for me, knowing what’s really going on with a patient is knowing what’s going on in their family and who is visiting them and how does that impact them …to really care for that patient you have to know who the family are and what they’re about and what is the relationship. and just letting them understand what’s going on, i think helps that person as well…what do they have to offer to this situation as well. tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 6 you can gain lots of information that you might not gain from your patient even, from the family. nurses recognized family members as a resource, having something “to offer to the situation.” they acknowledged that the family is more able to interpret the patient’s behavior, needs, and responses because they know the patient better. family members can speak for patients’ preferences in situations where patients cannot. nurses acknowledged the importance of family involvement to maintain vigilance regarding patient safety, and the occasional need for family members to advocate for the patient. some family members wished to assist with aspects of physical care. acknowledgement of family presence nurses in this study implicitly accepted family presence at the bedside. the extent to which family members were acknowledged by nurses and engaged in dialogue varied greatly. nurses practice in individual ways, with their own rituals for introductions at the beginning of the shift. nurses’ introductions typically focused on patients, with varying attempts to address family members or visitors. visitors who were at the bedside early in the day were more likely to be family members or significant caregivers; those visiting throughout the day were not necessarily family members. nurses displayed tact and discretion as they encountered others at the bedside. what kind of visitor is this: a relative, neighbour, pastor, friend, or caregiver? a clarification of the kind of visitor helped ensure that when information was offered to appropriate persons and with the patient’s consent. some nurses made negligible attempts to greet, engage, or acknowledge family members present at the bedside. they might not direct any comments to those present unless the member first addressed the nurse or asked a question. the nurse might assume that if the patient did not introduce others, they did not want them involved. sometimes nurses launched immediately into a start-of-shift assessment or problem-focused dialogue, asking visitors to leave for the sake of privacy. these nurses tended to be patient focused and pragmatic about the patient’s physical needs and concerns. such instances occurred both in situations when nurses were pressed for time, and when the unit pace was more relaxed. how might acknowledgement of family members matter in nursing practice? to acknowledge is to recognize or accept something or someone as valid, to show and admit a noticing (pearsall & trumble, 1996). to acknowledge is to make visible. when acknowledged by nurses, family members come to light as connected to the patient and as meaningful to the health care situation. providing appropriate and sensitive care rests upon understanding of the involved persons’ unique concerns that contribute to possibilities for healing and recovery (benner, 1999). levine (1998) suggested that family members want recognition that they, too, are undergoing something; are important in the life of the patient; and make a contribution to the patient’s well-being and recovery. when family members are over-looked at the bedside, does this diminish their expectation or willingness to express their own needs, seek information, or offer their perspectives? despite increased family presence in hospital settings, we observed that nursing practice on these units remains extensively patient rather than family focused. even when family members were present, nurses typically attuned their gaze and attention almost exclusively to the patient. any gaze carries responsibility and obligation. if a nurse engages the family, there is a necessary responsiveness to what emerges within the encounter: if i hold tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 7 my gaze too long and family members engage me, i am obligated to address their concerns. although nurses usually did not directly inquire about how individual family members were coping with the hospitalization, they did engage in introductions, comments, and a gaze of looking directly at families, and this seemed to have the effect of recognizing family presence and putting them at ease. the word “engage” means to occupy, hold another’s attention, and commit or promise (pearsall & trumble, 1996). family members most often appeared to be distinctly in the nurse’s peripheral vision where the nurse, by avoiding the family members’ direct gaze, could also limit their questions and contain the time required at the bedside if necessary. may, ellis-hill, and payne (2001) proposed that this is a deliberate relational practice by which nurses control demands on their time and the nature of their work. hupcey (1998) identified strategies used by both families and nurses in the process of developing the family-nurse relationship in the intensive care setting. nursing strategies that inhibited the relationship included refusing to chat, avoiding eye contact, refusing to acknowledge family members, being too busy to answer family questions, and maintaining an efficient attitude that focused on physical care. each of these strategies was evident at times in the fieldwork undertaken for this inquiry. on being a visitor in one sense, both patients and family members are visitors to the hospital setting, in a terrain where they may not have previous experience. there are explicit rules for visiting hours, rest periods, and numbers of visitors allowed. there are informal and unwritten norms about relationships with health care providers, and ways to access information and influence decision-making. nurses have latitude, discretion, and power to bend rules, helping patients and families navigate this terrain. in this geography of limited space, shared rooms, and interrupted schedules, nurses often attempted a semblance of privacy behind thin curtains, creating a comfortable space for patients and family to feel more “at home” than visiting. we observed many nurses at the start of the shift postponing assessments or tasks with patients when there were visitors present. they would purposefully pass by the room and return to see the patient later. this could be understood as avoidance or a missed opportunity to meet and engage family members. nurses might also view family presence as an obstacle to care, perhaps assuming that the assessment of the patient would take longer. in some instances when nurses purposely did not approach patients with visitors, the nurses seemingly assumed visitor status for themselves and avoided interrupting the family’s time together. in these circumstances, nurses recognized themselves as the outsider or visitor to the patient/family relationship. in this awareness, nurses respectfully avoided intrusion on family terrain, creating space and small moments of privacy for families. bringing the family and the nurse into the situation there were no formal approaches to family assessment observed in practice or described in the interviews. when nurses did inquire about the family situation, it was typically in the context of what might be construed as social conversation; the simplicity of the questions asked by nurses was remarkable. the nurse might ask a couple “how are you two making out?”, or ask a spouse “how are you managing at home?” questions were sometimes open ended but often linear and closed: “tell me about your family”, or “is your wife well?” or “what kind of work does your husband do?”, or “do you have kids or grandkids?” nurses purposefully pursued casual tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 8 lines of questions woven throughout their work as a way to get to know the person and family, to understand what kind of support and information were needed, and to prepare for returning home. this inquiry was typically described as being in service of nurses’ emphasis on patient teaching. some nurses noted that families vary greatly in their need for support from nurses. for many patients and families, hospitalization is an unexpected crisis. it may involve a new diagnosis, or may be an omen of progressive health deterioration. nurses described the discretion and judgment required as they interpreted family distress. they stand farther back, they’re afraid to get involved, they’re afraid to ask questions. not all families are like that, but you see it often. they’re afraid. they don’t know what to do. they don’t know what to say. they don’t know where to stand …they are clearly very upset and not knowing what to do …you can maybe see the stress, or they don’t say anything to anyone, they just sit there kind of blank. patient and family distress is heightened when they experience a cardiac hospitalization as a life-threatening event, an existential threat leaving them feeling groundless. in this instance, not knowing “where to stand” occurs on multiple levels as both patient and family try to understand cardiac illness and how to navigate the hospital environment: what do i need to know? what should ask? whom should i ask? what should we be looking for? what does the future hold? how will our lives be changed? as nurses read the family situation, they are taking into account where and how the family is standing on this unfamiliar and shifting terrain. nurses gradually brought patients and family along, encouraging them to ask questions and voice concerns, helping them to interpret diagnostics and treatment plans, and guiding them to anticipate important features of recovery for their return home. much of this work of “reading the family situation” is unspoken in practice. many of the cues that nurses read to interpret anxiety, distress, coping, and need for support are nonverbal. nurses struggled to explain their practice with distressed families, offering inarticulate, vague, and uncertain descriptions of how they came to understand these situations. my nature is just seeing. i can see a lot by just seeing. i’m just reading their cues, like just reading their body language [for] tiredness, frustration. even more difficult were nurses’ attempts to explain how they addressed situations that called for emotional support, conveying caring through dialogue, presence, and touch. although nurses knew something important was needed and something was happening, they could not find language that embraced such actions or meanings. nurses made efforts to bring family into the hospital situation and help them feel comfortable and secure in this foreign terrain. in nurses’ practice and stories of practice, it was also obvious that they brought themselves into the family situation, and described this as an intention to build rapport with the family. that joking, that superficial stuff, it has meaning…it has a way of breaking the ice and letting them, and sharing some of your life with them. i think that really helps. …cause if you’re willing to share your life with them, they’re willing to share their frustrations and whatever is happening with them. tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 9 nurses felt connected to families by virtue of similar circumstances in their own families, family relationships that held special meaning to them, or personal experiences that resonated with family encounters in hospital. sometimes nurses commented on these personal experiences with patients and families, or during the research interview they acknowledged the impact of these personal circumstances on their practices. many nurses noted that their commitment to family nursing was bolstered by a personal experience with an ill family member. just put yourself in that person’s or that family’s situation and see…how would you feel if that was your dad, what would you want out of it? i went through something like that with my mom. and i remember some good experiences and some not so good experiences that i had with the nurses and with the staff. and really the good ones outweigh the bad ones. although nurses connected with families in ways that brought them into family situations, some family members also brought nurses into their particular situations. occasionally, family members engaged nurses by remembering a nurse’s name, seeking the nurse out to ask questions, inquiring about the nurse’s own family or personal life, and offering non-verbal cues of acknowledgement and recognition. family members often initiated interaction with the nurse by volunteering responses to questions directed to the patient, or cautiously seeking information, frequently with an apology offered for consuming the nurse’s time. this reciprocity of nurse and family bringing each other into this particular situation was significant. how family members participate in this relationship does make a difference to the ways they are included. the nurse needs to get comfortable with the patient and family, and to feel acknowledged and respected by them. family teaching and discharge preparation although nurses varied in the extent to which they deliberately engaged family members and viewed themselves as responsible for providing emotional support to family, nurses consistently described their practice with families as patient teaching and discharge preparation. some apologized at the end of a field visit that family members were not present to be able to show the researcher more teaching interventions. many nurses immediately launched into their research interviews by claiming the importance of family teaching within their practice. we deal with families every day. so it’s encouraged to get information, and because we do a lot of focus on discharge planning and getting the person ready to go home. you have to deal with families and loved ones to get information and find out their needs to plan this. facilitate them going home. that’s a big part of contact with families. the constantly reiterated belief about nursing of families in this practice setting was that family members need teaching. and it’s a teaching thing…because one way to get the patient out quicker is if the family is there and they know exactly what to deal with these things [that] get stressful at home if they don’t know what to deal with and what to expect. so if we’re teaching and reassuring and reinforcing things everyday, like, “this is how he’s doing right now and this is what he needs to work on”, and that makes them feel better, too. embedded through these explanations was the explicit drive to teach family members as part of discharge preparation. this work was tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 10 clearly motivated by nurses’ roles in moving patients through the system to maintain effective bed utilization. first day they’re in, it’s looking at going home because it’s quick and you got to be on that plan all the time. impromptu teaching in the midst of other nursing activities was both described and observed in practice. nurses typically practiced with awareness that family members were present, watching, and listening. for example, if i’m doing incision care, i’ll go over what we do with the incision, looking for signs of infections, that type of thing …. if we’re doing morning care or evening care, then it’s a good time for teaching …. a lot of it is for discharge teaching. but a big part of that is how are they going to cope at home, in terms of them and their families. and do they have help at home. this nurse believed that families are informed and reassured “there, in the midst” (wallace, 1987, p. 110) of practice, as she talked aloud during the dressing change or staple removal, or explained what nurses do about feet swelling. as she made her nursing care audible, she uncovered her observations about the patient’s needs and progress for the family. much of the family teaching was informal and embedded as nurses provided information, responded to, and encouraged family questions. this emphasis on family teaching may be a way to categorize interactions between the nurse and the family. the event of teaching might be included in the list of responsibilities and tasks that the nurse accomplishes. the continued reliance on the categorization and language of “family teaching,” however, suggested something else to this research team. this language may be a way to offer description of something that exists but is not articulated, that might be held up as something more legitimate in the professional context than listening, being present, or inquiring into the family’s emotional domain. the latter might be viewed within scientific or medical discourse as a softer, less valid role of nursing. alternately, family teaching might be regarded as a more vital and significant nursing activity. it might offer a context for interaction with the family, an opportunity for time, concern, attention, and caring. we began to question whether “family teaching” provides a name in which to capture a complexity of work with families that is often beyond description or articulation. rhetoric of family nursing this inquiry intended to show the character of nurses’ practices as they addressed family concerns and involved family members during hospitalization for cardiac illness. hermeneutic inquiry begins with a sense of heightened attunement to something in particular. there is anticipation of un-concealment, the possibility of revealing new understandings, and the prospect of practicing differently because of understanding differently. in many regards, one could say that the findings reported are commonly shared meanings of everyday nursing practice that contribute little to new understandings of family nursing. how do we accommodate this disappointment of the familiar? how can we understand differently when what is uncovered is seemingly obviously present, previously stated, or widely known and appreciated? there was also a disappointment that, at the time of this study, family nursing theory seemingly had little impact on the clinical practice we were exploring. we discovered that discrete events of family assessment and intervention were exceedingly rare. none of tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 11 the nurses overtly used genograms, ecomaps, or other family assessment tools within their practice. nurses rarely inquired about the impact of the hospitalization on other family members. it was extremely rare that nurses intentionally engaged family members to address a particular therapeutic goal or intervention. family nursing was most often equated with family teaching activities. involvement of family members frequently focused exclusively on discharge preparation. we witnessed superficial conversation with families, missed opportunities to inquire more meaningfully into family concerns, and dutiful questioning of family without attunement to their responses. nursing of family members seemed to occur in a haphazard manner rather than as a deliberate consideration in the nurse’s practice. nurses, however, described themselves as welcoming and valuing family presence. during the fieldwork, nurses were respectful of families and consistently responsive to questions from family members. in the interviews, we frequently heard declarations of interest in families, and their sense that family nursing is an inherent part of practice. it just seems like an everyday thing …families are involved every day. i’m big on family. families are always involved. and certainly on the unit i’m on, with these patients waiting to go for bypass surgery or waiting for anything, families are very very concerned and so forth, and they’re always around. we have to involve the families because they need to be a part of the care-giving process after the surgery. there were oft-repeated echoes of the importance of family teaching to help the patient, reduce family members’ anxiety, and ease the transition to discharge. some nurses even noted that family members need information to prevent heart disease for themselves. we observed that nurses constantly gleaned information through both formal and social conversations about the context in which the patient lived and to which they would be returning. participants often found it difficult to offer exemplars of family nursing, describe their nursing practice with families, and articulate what family nursing means to them. is the presence, support, and inclusion of families so ingrained in practice that one can barely comment upon it? does it mean that family nursing is not happening if nurses have difficulty explaining and illustrating it? nurses were keen to have their practice appear as family-oriented. in these endorsements of the significance of family nursing, however, their declarations often appeared as rhetoric that fell short within the simple instances of family nursing that they offered during the interviews. within this rhetoric, it was assumed that family presence is related to the inherent necessity of family nursing in hospital settings: families simply are present and thus deserve to be addressed in some way. the rhetoric was undercut even further when contrasted with the observations of practice from the field visits. there was extremely limited evidence of intentional family assessment or intervention within their practice. we began to question whether there is a gap between the espoused ideal of family nursing and the realities of everyday practice. these nurses seemed to believe that happenstance encounters with family members, responding to members’ family questions, or simply asking about or referring to family members constitutes family nursing. might these limited practices be insufficient yet constitutive of family nursing? is family nursing just so much rhetoric? tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 12 at first glance, rhetoric can be understood as language that is pretentious, showy, or elaborate but essentially void of meaningful ideas or sincere emotion (agnes & guralnik, 1999). do declarations that family nursing is valued and significant truly hold up in meaningful ways in everyday practice? at one point a decade ago, baumann (2000) asserted that family nursing is nursing theory anemic and deprived, but the theory has evolved since then. even though accessible in theory, however, our study suggested that family nursing theories and practice models do not generally appear to be useful, or actively applied, in practice in acute care hospital settings. how do we understand that the practice of family nursing in generalist hospital practice settings has been under-theorized and resistant to description and explanation? must we persist with rhetorical statements that value family nursing without explicating more fully the contribution that such practice might make to health care? we came to realize that family nursing rhetoric makes a statement of import. another version of rhetoric is “the art of speaking well” that carries conviction and is convincing “as long as we do not trivialize it” (gadamer 1986, 17). rhetoric coming from the greek “rhetorica” is the art of persuasion. skepticism of nurses’ declarations of the importance of family presence and involvement might invite us to overlook something of significance that is happening in their practice. at a most basic level, families are a feature of hospital nursing practice. they are present. they will continue to be present in hospitals for the foreseeable future. it is no longer a choice whether or not to nurse families. shortened length of hospital stay has an impact on family members, who assume responsibility (whether desired or not) for a much greater proportion of post-discharge recovery than was the case in past. nurses recognize this impact on family members, and they require the assistance of family members to be able to move patients through the system efficiently. in the past, it was more or less, okay you dealt with the patient, that’s it. now we’re seeing that … family members have to be involved in their care. when we’re sending people home, especially in our elderly population, they need to know what medications they’re on, they need to have some concrete information on what’s happening with their loved one. and it’s the whole thing has just shifted. this raised the awareness of the research team that, as our expectations of family members shift, we need to consider how the boundaries, obligations, and relational capacity to families must shift as well. if there is truth and significance in family nursing rhetoric, we must understand rhetoric differently. bruns (2002) proposed that rhetoric is a call to action in the context of complex systems where one must understand at least provisionally in order to survive. rhetoric is… a mode of responsibility rather than, purely and simply, a mode of knowledge; it responds to the need for action by producing a consensus in the absence of sufficient (that is, self-evident) reasons…. rhetoric is a real world construction of a provisional order of reason, a practical construction of what is reasonable in a world where randomness and contingency can not be eliminated. (p. 51) family nursing practice is a relational practice that occurs in dialogue and relationship, exif there is truth and significance in family nursing rhetoric, we must understand rhetoric differently. tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 13 change and reciprocity. these elements of nursing practice are most resistant to measurement, specification, prediction, and control. family nursing occurs in those happenstance and haphazard moments when families are present and when questions, needs, and concerns are visible. the apparent lack of deliberation and therapeutic intention could be as much a feature of the fragmented nursing practice context as it might be a criticism of the awareness or skillfulness of the nurse. responsibility borne by family nursing rhetoric family nursing rhetoric offers a mode of attunement to families in the midst of everyday nursing practice. hamrick (2002) proposed that such attunement is always particularized in some definite mood, a disposition of feeling that persistently attends to the welfare of the other. attunement does not happen in isolation but always in harmony with, and relationship to, something or someone else. the attunement that lies at the heart of family nursing rhetoric creates possibilities for nurses to become available to families and responsive to their needs. such rhetoric is a reflection of nurses’ felt obligation to engage and involve family members. the productivity of this rhetoric in the present and future lies not simply in a verbal tribute to the significance of family nursing but in the action and responsiveness that needs to occur in practice. family nursing rhetoric claims that family nursing exists because of the inevitability of encounters with family members throughout nurses’ daily work. it would appear that enabling and acknowledging family presence is important but, in itself, insufficient. how does family nursing rhetoric shed light on the responsibilities that nurses bear towards families? benner (1999) highlighted the crucial significance of nurses’ actions that enabled family presence in critical care settings: family presence provided information that oriented the family to the patient’s critical condition and trajectory, helping “grasp [the] changing clinical relevance” of the situation (p. 318). this served, in some instances, to sustain hope for recovery and, in others, to prepare for the patient’s impending demise. there is a future orientation to such meaning-making that resonates deeply with nurses’ intent to provide families with information in the context of this study, but it is differently nuanced. the extent to which nurses in this study emphatically laid claim to their teaching roles with family members becomes more understandable. nurses consistently cited their obligation to family teaching to prepare family members to support the recovery of the patient at home. nurses know that family members will bear the work that is imposed by earlier hospital discharges. when an understanding of rhetoric shifts from a meaningless and insincere showing to a persuasive language of argument that serves to extend and share common and important insights, nurses move into a new awareness of obligation. this obligation consists of learning how to live up to an embraced rhetoric. rhetoric is created and sustained by its own repetition; it argues for itself in its apparentness and the compelling evidence of its very presence. the obligation and responsibility that is birthed in a rhetoric embraced in family nursing is one that involves more than simple acknowledgement of family presence or family teaching. it calls for a relational attunement to family, a commitment to family nursing and living up to the rhetoric that defines it. in the midst of major life events of illness, hospitalization, healing, or death “the whole family” watching and listening, family nursing takes a place and assumes a shape that must necessarily live up to itself and all that it claims. tapp & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 2 14 declaration of conflicting interests the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding for this research was provided by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (2001-2004) bios dianne m. tapp, rn, phd is dean and professor in the faculty of nursing, university of calgary. nancy j. moules, rn, phd is a professor in the faculty of nursing, university of calgary and holds the alberta children’s hospital foundation/alberta children’s hospital research institute nursing professorship in child and family centred cancer care. references ågård, a. s., & harder, i. 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(2009). caring for families: double binds in neuroscience nursing. canadian journal of neuroscience nursing, 31(1), 2229. microsoft word nielson corrected proof.docx corresponding author: cynthia r nielsen, phd university of dallas email: cynthia.nielsen@gmail.com journal of applied hermeneutics march 15, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 gadamer on the event of art, the other, and a gesture toward a gadamarian approach to free jazz cynthia r. nielsen abstract several prominent contemporary philosophers, including jürgen habermas, john caputo, and robert bernasconi, have at times painted a somewhat negative picture of gadamer as not only an uncritical traditionalist, but also as one whose philosophical project fails to appreciate difference. against such claims, i argue that gadamer’s reflections on art exhibit a genuine appreciation for alterity not unrelated to his hermeneutical approach to the other. thus, by bringing gadamer’s reflections on our experience of art into conversation with key aspects of his philosophical hermeneutics, we are able to better assess the viability of gadamer’s contributions to contemporary discussions of difference and alterity. keywords hermeneutics, hermeneutical aesthetics, aesthetics, philosophy, jazz, philosophy of music i. introduction while appreciative of gadamer’s contributions to philosophical hermeneutics and what we might call “hermeneutical aesthetics” (nicholas davey’s term), several distinguished contemporary philosophers have at times painted a somewhat negative picture of gadamer as not only an uncritical traditionalist, but also as one whose philosophical project fails to appreciate difference. for example, jürgen habermas and john caputo criticize what they see as gadamer’s oversimplified account of power relations and distorted discourses in his explanation of the formation and maintenance of traditions. caputo suggests that gadamer belongs among those philosophers nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 2 who “cannot tolerate the ambiguity of the flux.” 1 robert bernasconi argues that gadamer’s understanding of dialogue and his notion of assimilation and the fusion of horizons “have the common feature of diminishing alterity.”2 however, an examination of gadamer’s reflections on art exhibits a genuine openness to and appreciation of difference, not unrelated to his hermeneutical approach to the other. thus, by bringing gadamer’s reflections on our experience of art into conversation with key aspects of his philosophical hermeneutics, we are able to better assess the viability of gadamer’s contributions to contemporary discussions of difference and alterity. the first part of my essay (sections two through six) focuses on key concepts in gadamer’s account of art’s dynamic ontology and our experience of art. such concepts include the play structure of art, hermeneutic identity, tarrying with a work, and contemporaneity. the opening sections provide not only a discussion of these central themes, but they also (1) draw attention to the various ways in which difference and otherness are integral to gadamer’s account, and (2) utilize relevant musical examples that prepare the reader for a more focused discussion of a gadamerian approach to free jazz in section seven. by highlighting how gadamer’s understanding of art possesses a dialogical play structure, is characterized by identity and difference, requires actively engaged spectators and auditors, and is amenable to what many criticize as an unintelligible musical expression, viz. free jazz, gadamer’s project is shown as other-affirming and open to ambiguity and dynamism. that is, the essential structures and concepts characterizing gadamer’s reflections on art are likewise central to his overall hermeneutical project, and hence are not rightly described as un-attuned to difference or other-negating. rather, gadamer’s philosophical project upholds difference, since it requires a dialogical interplay between self and other that creates the possibility for a transformative experience. ii. play and the play structure of art play as a participatory structure is central to gadamer’s account of hermeneutics and the ontology and phenomenology of art. in his analyses of play in general and the play of art in particular, gadamer emphasizes the active engagement of the spectator or auditor. that is, not only do the players play the game, but also the observers actively participate in the movement or life of the game. one frequently witnesses this type of spectatorial “playing along with” in organized sports. for example, fans bring their baseball gloves in anticipation of catching a ball and in so doing intensely follow the movement of the game sometimes even diving onto the field itself. the spectator, in other words, is drawn into the spirit of the game and thus is “played by” the game just as much as the players themselves. as gadamer puts it, “the real subject of the game […] is not the player but instead the game itself. what holds the player in its spell, draws him into play, and keeps him there is the game itself.”3 1 john d. caputo, radical hermeneutics. repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project (indianapolis: indiana university press, 1987), 263. see also, jürgen habermas, “the hermeneutic claim to universality,” in the hermeneutic tradition: from ast to ricoeur, eds. gayle l. ormiston and alan d. schrift (albany: suny press, 1990), 245-72. 2 robert bernasconi, “you don’t know what i’m talking about: alterity and the hermeneutical ideal,” in the specter of relativism, ed. lawrence schmidt (evanston: northwestern university press, 1995), 178-94, here 180. 3 hans-georg gadamer, truth and method, 2nd ed., trans. and rev. joel weinsheimer and donald g. marshall (new york: continuum, 2004), 106. (hereafter, tm.) [hans-georg gadamer, hermeneutik i: nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 3 similarly in the play of art, the viewer or listener engages in a back-and-forth interplay with the work, which, in the case of art, allows the work to emerge in a communicative event. here too, the artwork draws the viewer or auditor into its movement and expects a countermovement or response. as with the game, spectatorial participation in the event of the work is not reducible to the subjective experiences of the players or audience members. rather, as davey observes, “the game analogy implies that the act of spectatorship contributes to bringing what is at play within the artwork into fuller being. the spectator just as much as the artist performs a role in realizing the subject-matters art brings into play.”4 play by nature requires an other. this other may be another human, an animal, or an object such as a ball, a child’s toy, or an imaginary object. even in the most basic expression of play, one finds a move and a countermove. this same to-and-fro movement structures our experience of art. as gadamer is fond of saying, the artwork address us; it calls out to us and expects a response. given an artwork’s complexity, we must continually return to its call, lingering with its message as we attempt to grasp its meaning(s) and allow them to impact our present understanding of our world and ourselves. thus, our very experience of art, as gadamer understands it, requires an intense listening and responding to the other’s “voice.” iii. hermeneutic identity and tarrying with the work both the play involved in art and the spectator’s active participation in it constitute essential moments of the dynamic ontology and temporality structuring art’s event. in section four, i discuss art’s temporal structure and how gadamer’s notion of contemporaneity describes art’s unique temporality in relation to the spectator’s participation and comportment. here i turn first to gadamer’s analyses of art’s dynamic ontology, paying special attention to his descriptions of hermeneutic identity and tarrying with a work. hermeneutic identity claims that the work’s identity necessarily involves difference and thus always entails openness to future possibilities, allowing for multiple presentations or enactments of the work over time.5 more specifically, for gadamer, the being of an artwork is inseparable from its various presentations, which bring out new and previously unrealized possibilities of the work. enactment or presentation is thus an essential feature of an artwork’s being. phenomenologically speaking, art exists only in presentation and performance. accordingly, art as experienced requires an ongoing “rebirth” and sustaining through both players and audience participants. the notes on the page are silent without a performer to give them life. likewise, the wahrheit und methode: grundzüge einer philosophischen hermeneutik, gesammelte werke band 1, 4. auflage (tübingen: j. c. b. mohr (paul siebeck), 2010),112. hereafter, wm.] 4 nicholas davey, unfinished worlds. hermeneutics, aesthetics and gadamer (edinburgh: edinburgh university press, 2013), 48. 5 on gadamer’s notion of “hermeneutic identity,” see donatella di cesare, gadamer: a philosophical portrait (bloomington, in: indiana university press, 2013), esp. 59–60. as di cesare explains, “[a]ny new identity that comes to light is an identity that forms itself only in difference. thus difference becomes indispensable for identity” (ibid., 60). see also, gerald l. bruns, “ancients and moderns: gadamer’s aesthetic theory and the poetry of paul celan,” in on the anarchy of poetry and philosophy. a guide for the unruly (new york: fordham university press, 2006,) 33-54, esp. 35-9. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 4 musician, painter, or sculptor creates his or her work to convey something to someone, requiring the work to be displayed or performed in a concert hall or an outdoor gathering.6 art, perhaps even more than simple play, is a communally constituted event. that hermeneutic identity is infused with difference does not mean that a performer or interpreter can simply project arbitrary meanings onto the work. doing so would be to silence the work or do violence to its integrity or structure, thereby disregarding the work’s otherness. nor does hermeneutic identity mean that interpretations or performances cannot be judged regarding their quality. in the case of a poor performance of rachmaninov’s piano concerto no. 2, opus 18, competent musicians or critics may judge the performance as presenting, albeit poorly, the structure (gebilde) of rachmaninov’s work. if there is a true engagement with the work, then every presentation relates to the work’s structure and, and gadamer puts it, must “submit itself [sich unterstellt] to the criterion [maßstab] of correctness [richtigkeit] that derives from it.”7 at the same time, the very being of the work itself is constituted by a built-in indeterminacy or openness to future possibilities enabling new dimensions of the work to emerge over time. however, that we can discern a failed presentation of a work does not imply that there is only one excellent or ideal way for the work to be manifested. on gadamer’s view, it is possible to have many correct, fitting, and even exemplary presentations, enactments, and performances of the same work. here the notion of structure should not be equated with the original composition or entity, as if the original is the ideal or standard that future performances and presentations must copy. on the contrary, future performances of a work often bring out a depth and richness not present in the original. john coltrane’s performance of the popular broadway tune, “my favorite things,” is a case in point. in coltrane’s version, the standard and rhythmically simple three-four waltz time is transformed into a polyrhythmic and densely textured six-eight (and beyond) time. in addition, coltrane adds lengthy improvisatory solos and complex harmonic textures to the original composition. in both the 1959 broadway performance and john coltrane’s, the work emerges and a common structure is discerned; yet coltrane’s performance displays a level of harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic complexity not present in the original. a. the (performed) work as reality not copy gadamer also argues that through presentation (and performance) an “increase in being” [zuwachs an sein] occurs.8 to understand his claim, one must examine his account of the complex relationship between bild and urbild. if presentation (darstellung) is the artwork’s mode of being, how does a symphonic performance or a painting present the work? for gadamer, a 6 as gadamer observes, in the play of art something comes forth that is “intended as something.” moreover, its meanings are reducible neither to mere concepts nor to some activity coordinated with a utility function. see hans-georg gadamer, “the relevance of the beautiful. art as play, symbol, and festival,” in the relevance of the beautiful and other essays, trans. nicholas walker and ed. robert bernasconi (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1986), 24. (hereafter, rb.) [gadamer, hans-georg, “die aktualität des schönen. kunst als spiel, symbol und fest,” in ästhetik und poetik i: kunst als aussage, gesammelte werke band 8. auflage. (tübingen: j. c. b. mohr (paul siebeck), 1993), 115. hereafter, gw8. 7 tm,122. [wm, 127]. 8 ibid., tm, 140. italics in original. [wm, 145]. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 5 presentation or a performance of a work is not a copy of some original or more “real” entity, being, or object. the defining task of a copy is to duplicate as accurately as possible the original. thus its essence is self-erasure or self-effacement; it points not to itself and its particularities but away from itself to what it copies. “[i]ts nature [bestimmung] is to lose its own independent existence [sein eigenes für-sich-sein aufzuheben] and serve entirely to mediate what is copied.”9 a copy’s self-effacement indicates its function as a means, not an end. its independent existence serves this very purpose of self-erasure. by contrast, a painting’s essence is neither self-erasure, nor does it function as a means to some other end. the painting points to itself and how it presents its subject matter. in other words, “one is not simply directed away from the picture [painting] to what is represented. rather, the presentation remains essentially connected to what is represented [die darstellung bleibt vielmehr mit dem dargestellten wesenhaft verbunden]— indeed belongs to it.”10 again, instead of a self-cancelling existence and purpose, the painting’s being—the painting itself—brings out something new in the subject matter that it depicts. thus the painting is more than a mere copy or reduplication of an “original” or more “true” reality; rather, the painting brings out new possibilities and new ways of seeing the “original.” thus, the original becomes more than it was; hence, its being has increased, and yet the two are integrally connected as both participate in presenting the same subject matter—yet a subject matter that itself is always in motion.11 to illustrate further, consider again coltrane’s version of “my favorite things.” coltrane’s performance is the reality or end to which we are directed. that is, his performance is not a selfeffacing copy, a sign pointing beyond itself to the original, as if the goal is merely to reduplicate the original. rather, coltrane’s version presents us with the work in a new key—that is, new possibilities of the work come forth, and we encounter dimensions of the work that did not exist previously (e.g., more complex rhythms, harmonies, improvised solos etc.). yet we identify it as a performance of “my favorite things.” coltrane never intended to merely replicate the original, but rather to enact his version of the work, which has its own independent existence while remaining connected to the original and extending, as it were, its life or being. in short, a work’s being is increased in the event of art’s unfolding over time in various enactments that bring forth new aspects of the work. so far i have established that even though the same work is repeated in each new enactment, subsequent enactments are not mere copies of an original and thus are not understood as ontologically inferior imitations. instead, gadamer’s notion of hermeneutic identity shows itself in a phenomenon of repetition in presentation that harmonizes structure and freedom. hermeneutic difference thus describes a dynamic yet discernable identity. on the one hand, hermeneutic identity is ever and always infused with difference, dynamism, and open possibilities; on the other, it indicates an identifiable structure that emerges in the communicative event of art’s appearance. as gadamer puts it, “[t]o understand [verstehende] 9 ibid., tm, 138. [wm, 143]. 10 ibid., tm, 139. [wm, 143]. 11 the discussion here pertains to non-abstract paintings in which some resemblance relationship with another object(s) can be discerned. even so, gadamer’s point is that the traditional model of art as representation does not capture the essence of what art is. in modern, abstract paintings, the notion of representation has been abandoned, and the artists themselves, as it were, “show” gadamer’s point. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 6 something, i must be able to identify it. for there was something there that i passed judgment upon and ‘understood’ [verstand].”12 stated otherwise, the work’s identity consists in its presence before me as other, in its being there as something addressing me. the work asks to be understood; it issues a challenge requiring a response.13 here again the emphasis is on the active, engaged listener or spectator: in order to experience a work of art as a communicative event, one must actively participate—one must “play along with” (mitspielen) it. 14 the listener must comport herself to the work as an other expecting something meaningful to come forth. if the viewer or listener approaches the work having already decided that it has no value and thus nothing to say, then the work will remain silent. art is a dynamic, communal event; its happening or occurrence can be thwarted or foreclosed when we comport ourselves to the other with a closed attitude. the same is true of our hermeneutical encounters with others—whether texts or human beings. b. tarrying as ecstatic participation gadamer also emphasizes the importance of tarrying or lingering with a work. to tarry or linger is to become so intentionally absorbed in a work of art that one forgets oneself. as one attunes herself to the work and becomes wholly captivated by it, she is able to see beyond her projects, concerns, and cares; she exists ec-statically, or outside herself. this ecstatic way of being should not be understood as merely passive or private; rather, as gadamer explains: being outside oneself is the positive possibility of being wholly with something else. this kind of being present [solches dabeisein] is a self-forgetfulness [selbstvergessenheit], and to be a spectator [es macht das wesen des zuschauers aus] consists in giving oneself in self-forgetfulness to what one is watching. here self-forgetfulness is anything but a private condition, for it arises from devoting one’s full attention to the matter at hand [denn sie entspringt aus der zuwendung zur sache], and this is the spectator’s own positive accomplishment [leistung].15 when one actively enters into a condition of self-forgetfulness, the occasion for the event of art to emerge in a communicative address becomes viable. as the work comes forth, it makes a lasting claim on the spectator or listener. in other words, the experience of art’s address is not a fleeting aesthetic pleasure wherein one anesthetizes oneself momentarily only to return to one’s 12 gadamer, rb, 25. [gw8, 116]. the english translation deletes the scare quotes in the german text around the word “verstand.” since gadamer placed the scare quotes in the original and likely did so to emphasize the openness and non-exhaustive character of understanding, i have included them in the english translation. 13 gadamer, rb, 26. [gw8, 116-17]. see also, daniel l. tate, “the speechless image. gadamer and the claim of modern painting,” philosophy today 45 (2001): 56-68, esp. 59-61. tate provides a helpful analysis of gadamer’s view that even the most abstract modern art manifests a “unity in tension” capable of addressing us (ibid., 60). 14 see also, bruns, “ancients and moderns,” esp. 35-6. bruns highlights the similarities between gadamer’s theory of our experience of art and our experience of play, noting the emancipatory aspects of each. in both experiences we are caught up in the self-presentation of the work or the game, and we also actively participate in the event. 15 gadamer, tm, 126. [wm, 131]. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 7 world unchanged. rather, one’s world and way of being-in-the-world-with-others is affected—at times radically so. once again, the emphasis is on an engaged, rather than detached spectator or auditor. as one intentionally and with great effort and commitment tarries (repeatedly) with the work, one experiences both a self-forgetfulness due to one’s fully being-there with the work and a selfenrichment via a world-expansion. as gadamer says, “what rends him from everything at the same time gives him back the whole of his being” [was ihn aus allem herausreißt, gibt ihm zugleich das ganze seines seins zurück.]. 16 thus the spectator’s absorbed engagement is an achievement allowing the work’s otherness to emerge.17 iv. contemporaneity and the work’s full presence and nontransparency gadamer intentionally employs the term “claim,” which søren kierkegaard developed in conjunction with his theological reflections on contemporaneity. as observed earlier, a claim is not something fleeting but enduring, enforceable, and is “concretized in a demand.”18 for example, when the gospel is preached, the hearer is presented with a claim of faith and is beckoned to respond. here the words themselves, in a way analogous to the sacraments, bring the reality of the past into the present transforming the one who receives them by altering his world and his view of others. however, the hearer of the gospel message is not merely a passive recipient. she is also challenged to translate and apply the message of salvation to her particular situation. this type of translation, application, or, as james risser puts it, “concretization of meaning that defines the present enactment,”19 is what gadamer means by the term, anwendung, which is often translated into english as “appropriation.” when gadamer claims that every interpretation is an anwendung, he draws attention to the performative (vollzug) dimension of hermeneutic experience. anwendung is thus a “form of practice”20 whereby one learns how to listen properly to voice of the other so that its claims can be brought to bear meaningfully on the present. the result is not, as caputo suggests, to consume the other,21 but to allow the other’s claims to come forth so that my world, practices, and ways of being might be enriched or challenged. gadamer’s emphasis on play, art’s address, and our being drawn in and even arrested by the work are aspects of his critique of the over-subjectivization of aesthetic consciousness; yet his critical remarks should not be interpreted as denying the subject’s experience or, as we have seen, her contribution occasioning the work’s emergence. gadamer repeatedly underscores the artwork’s ability to address the engaged participant directly. however, it appears that one can be 16 ibid., tm, 128. i have slightly modified the english translation. the italicized word indicates my modification. [wm, 133]. 17 see also, daniel l. tate, “in the fullness of time: gadamer on the temporal dimension of the work of art,” research in phenomenology 42 (2012), 92-113, esp. 104. 18 gadamer, tm, 127. [wm, 132]. 19 james risser, hermeneutics and the voice of the other. re-reading gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics (albany: state university of new york press, 1997), 103. 20 ibid., 105. see also risser’s discussion of the crucial differences between gadamer’s hermeneutical project and ricouer’s (102-5). as risser observes, gadamer, unlike ricouer, does not claim that “every interpretation is an aneignung” (103). 21 see, for example, caputo, radical hermeneutics, 115. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 8 drawn into the work in varying degrees of depth (or not drawn in at all.) that is, given its materiality, the immediacy of one’s experience of art’s sensual qualities does not require that one possess knowledge of the particular social and historical factors in which the work first emerged. yet, that person may still be drawn to the work through the “pull” of the work’s sensuous qualities (e.g., dissonant sounds, complex rhythms, a striking juxtaposition of geometric shapes and lines). gadamer’s stress on art as a communicative event and art as addressing us with meaningful content, which requires one to linger repeatedly with the work, suggests that something beyond a (subjective) experience of art’s immediacy is required. in order to respect the otherness of the work, we must take the time to learn its “language.” that is, we must enter into its world, pondering how the interplay of its symbols, sounds, colors, and gestures says something not only in its time and context but in one’s own as well. here it is helpful to mention what daniel tate describes as the artwork’s “paradoxical temporality.”22 that is, its temporality is “marked by an immediate presentness in time and at the same time by a rising above time.”23 building on tate’s notion, one might add that the work’s ability to come forth in the present and communicate meanings in different historical periods should not be equated with timelessness or a denial of art’s social and historical conditioning. artworks (and texts) are historically shaped; they arise, participate in, and belong to various traditions.24 yet great works of art have the ability to draw us in, to captivate us by their sensuous elements— but sensuous elements arranged meaningfully in languages of sound and symbols, which are themselves communally shaped via artistic, social, and other practices and traditions. what i have outlined above suggests a movement beyond erlebnis and to erfahrung. since both words are translated into english as “experience,” the difference between the two is lost. erlebnis is associated with wilhelm dilthey and “emphasizes the distinctness and singularity of the perceived moment.” in contrast, gadamer is concerned with erfahrung, which “emphasizes the cumulative and formative character of experience, as when one speaks of an ‘experienced’ artist or musician.”25 erlebnis highlights the intensity of the present moment and is concerned not with the work’s meaning but with its sensual qualities and sophistications. erfahrung stresses the unfolding, cumulative, and unfinished character of experience; moreover, erfahrung “implies an involvement in the meaning and significance of what is experienced.”26 hence, for gadamer, our experience (erfahrung) of art is something more than an intense, momentary subjective experience (erlebnis); yet, our subjective experience plays an important role in drawing us deeper into art’s communicative address. 22 tate, “in the fullness of time,” 99. 23 hans-georg gadamer, “the artwork in word and image: ‘so true, so full of being!’” in the gadamer reader. a bouquet of the later writings, trans. and ed. richard e. palmer, 192-224 (evanston, il: northwestern university press, 2007), 196. 24 for an instructive explication of gadamer’s understanding of tradition as “an event of repetitive disclosure,” (81) see risser, hermeneutics and the voice of the other, esp. 65-81. in chapter two, risser engages caputo’s (and to a certain degree habermas’) concerns regarding gadamer’s alleged conservatism and backward-looking orientation. 25 davey, unfinished worlds, 70. 26 ibid. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 9 as we have seen, gadamer stresses what he calls the “absolute presentness” of the work that is, the artwork’s ability “to build bridges that reach beyond the enclosure and space in which it originated.”27 i have suggested that this is in part due to the work’s immediacy, its ability to draw us in via its materiality and sensual qualities. however, this is a structured materiality; the work’s sounds and colors are artfully arranged. its structure has a discernable movement that can be perceived even if its meaning(s) remain in many ways opaque and enigmatic. here it may be helpful to consider how achievement relates to contemporaneity. as gadamer explains, contemporaneity means that when a particular work of art presents itself to me, it “achieves full presence [volle gegenwart], however remote its origin may be. thus contemporaneity [gleichzeitigkeit] is not a mode of givenness in consciousness [eine gegebenheitsweise im bewußtsein], but a task [eine aufgabe] for consciousness and an achievement [eine leistung] that is demanded [verlangt wird] of it.”28 thus understood, contemporaneity is not a given, but instead something that the spectator or auditor must in some sense actively bring about. this suggests that the coproductive, participatory activity of the spectator, listener, or interpreter is necessary for the work’s coming-into-presence. the spectator’s or auditor’s achievement of making a past reality present here and now marks the distinctive temporality of contemporaneity. historical distance is not a barrier to the work’s meaningful address; what comes to presence through spectatorial, auditorial, and performative cooperative activity can be re-contextualized and repeated over time. here the event of art—its happening via active participatory engagement—points both to its hermeneutical identity (i.e., identity and difference) and dynamic ontology. the artwork is not a static object whose meaning remains the same; rather, as new performances and interpretations emerge, new (multiple) horizons are fused among the work and its performances and audience members. as is the case in a genuine dialogue among persons, the work as other can challenge and (re)shape one’s horizon. likewise, a community of performers (e.g., musicians) can creatively (yet non-violently) expand the work as they bring out new possibilities over time. still, whatever meanings emerge in art’s event, those meanings are always socially and historically conditioned by communal practices, traditions, and shared discourses. before closing this section, it is important to clarify what gadamer means when he speaks of a work’s “full” or “absolute” presence. although the language is somewhat misleading, he does not mean that when the work is “fully present,” every aspect of the work in that particular encounter is transparent or exhaustively understood. in yo-yo ma’s masterful performances of bach’s cellos suites, the works are fully present for him as performer and for the attuned listener; nonetheless something new and unexpected emerges in each performance. in this sense, the reality of the work is fully present in its various presentations and performances; however, its being is not exhaustively grasped in one’s experience of and participation in it here and now. in other words, the work’s “absolute presentness” and one’s being present with the work can (and does) readily coexist with the notion of an ongoing interplay of hiddenness and manifestation or, in heideggarian terms, concealment and unconcealment. that something is genuinely or fully present does not mean that one can or will ever grasp all that it is; one’s encounter with the reality of its presence might in fact be too much to take in. in such a situation, both participants are fully “there,” as the event of art unfolds. however, it is often the case that the work qua other 27 gadamer, “the artwork in word and image,” 199. 28 gadamer, tm, 127. [wm, 132]. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 10 speaks meaningfully without one comprehending its totality.29 in short, gadamer’s understanding of art and our experience of art’s alterity not only permit but also expect and affirm the work’s enigmatic dimensions. v. art as dialogical interplay in order to bring together several strands of my argument, i turn to discuss our experience of art as a form of dialogical interplay that requires letting the other’s voice—whether dissonant, consonant, or disorienting—sound. as noted previously, the structure of the work manifests an integrity and autonomy—an otherness—that resists my attempts to force arbitrary meanings upon it. such a move would amount to remaking the work in my own image and thus silencing the other’s voice. to interact with it in this way is to do violence to the work and would amount to a monologue rather than a dialogue. for gadamer, a proper (hermeneutical) aesthetic experience with a painting or a musical work is dialogical, and thus by definition requires the other’s voice to sound in and against my own (dynamic) horizon so that my way of seeing the world might be challenged or expanded. as i linger with the work and open myself to its address, what formerly appeared strange may become more intelligible, remain enigmatic, or be a combination of both. nonetheless, as i abide with the work and allow it to come forth, it addresses me in a communicative event that requires my participation and response. hence, to mute the other’s voice would result both in a failed hermeneutic and aesthetic experience. stated otherwise, gadamer’s notion of an event-ful experience of art, poetry, and the like expects and even invites dissonances both to sound and to remain. as noted previously, one need not conclude that a genuine encounter with art requires exhaustive understanding without remainder. here a musical insight proves helpful. harmony itself—especially the complex or extended harmonies of jazz and 20th century music—requires the differences of the notes to sound in their fullness. to eradicate or remove dissonance (i.e., difference) from musical works would render them dull and monotonous. analogously, an authentic or harmonious hermeneutic or aesthetic encounter demands neither that the other become fully transparent nor be reduced to my unison voice. vi. gadamer’s openness to modern art and a coda on tradition when it comes to modern art, gadamer is aware that many artists repudiate or seek to redefine traditional accounts of beauty, form, and proportionality. it is precisely here that gadamer’s position proves particularly insightful in its ability to listen to the voice of the other and thereby to move us beyond traditional understandings of art’s ontology. for example, toward the end of his introductory remarks in his essay, “the relevance of the beautiful,” gadamer poses a series of questions expressing a genuine interest in taking seriously the works of modern artists. 29 perhaps this is something akin to jean-luc marion’s idea of the bedazzling event of the saturated phenomenon. see, for example, jean-luc marion, being given. being given. toward a phenomenology of givenness, 1st ed., trans. jeffrey kosky (stanford: stanford university press, 2002), esp. 199-247. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 11 how can we understand the innovative forms of modern art as they play around with the content so that our expectations are constantly frustrated? […] how are we to understand what duchamp is doing when he suddenly exhibits some everyday object on its own and thereby produces a sort of aesthetic shock reaction? we cannot simply dismiss this as so much nonsense, for duchamp actually revealed something about the conditions of aesthetic experience.30 here gadamer exhibits a genuine openness to artists such as duchamp, whose works are meant, among other things, to provoke and challenge our thinking about what art is and how our experience of art is conditioned by social, historical, and other communal practices. for gadamer, our experience of art is not chiefly about our subjective responses to artworks (although our subjective responses do play a role in our experience). nor is the goal to try and uncover the artist’s intentions or to teach us the proper way to interpret what particular works mean. rather, his aim, from a hermeneutic point of view, is to analyze the conditions or structures of our experience of art in order to clarify “how aesthetic experience is both involved in something larger than itself and reflects (speculum) that larger actuality within itself.”31 thus, one’s meaningful encounter with an artwork always has a “backstory,” and gadamer’s interest lies in understanding what informs, shapes, and conditions that encounter. one aspect of that conditioning is the fact that we belong to multiple traditions linguistic, sociopolitical, aesthetic, etc. prior to my discussion of a gadamerian approach to free jazz (and relevant to that discussion), i want to speak briefly about gadamer’s notion of tradition. that we are situated within and shaped by traditions does not mean that we are unable to oppose, challenge, or alter them and the practices and norms they embody. as complex, socially constructed human artifacts, traditions exhibit a dynamic stability: they can and do congeal for certain periods of time and thus manifest a staying power, yet they are not rigidly fixed. instead, they change over time as new infusions from other voices expand and alter what in an earlier phase were standard practices and established norms. in the following consideration of free jazz, i discuss specific ways in which this process of transforming musical traditions and practices occurred in the transition from bebop and hard bop to free jazz. here i mention briefly one element of tradition-transformation: namely, the creative application of other musical voices whether voices of past, or present musicians in one’s own tradition, or voices of those outside it. jazz luminaries such as miles davis, charlie parker, and john coltrane creatively applied musical insights from earlier jazz masters, 20th century classical music, and afro-cuban and indian music in order to go beyond (trans-gress) jazz norms and develop new practices and musical styles. their creative uses (anwendungen) of others’ voices are not understood as violent or consuming acts. on the contrary, they communicate a profound respect for the others’ achievements and contributions to the tradition(s). thus, by dwelling with the (musical) other in order to learn the other’s language and style—imitating it and yet creating something new—the other’s voice continues to sound into the future, acting as an ongoing tribute to the other’s greatness while also expanding the tradition beyond its previous limits. as gadamer 30 gadamer, rb, 22. [gw8, 113]. 31 davey, unfinished worlds, 47. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 12 himself explains, “tradition means transmission rather than conservation. this transmission does not imply that we simply leave things unchanged and merely conserve them. it means learning how to grasp and express the past anew. it is in this sense that we can say that transmission is equivalent to translation.”32 vii. a gadamerian approach to free jazz we have seen that a key feature of our aesthetic experience is the spectator’s or listener’s active participation. also significant are gadamer’s understanding of art as an event, tarrying with a work, the play-character of art, art’s communal dimensions, and the primacy of art’s address. in the following paragraphs, i highlight how these fundamental aspects of gadamer’s account apply to free jazz. i conclude that a gadamerian approach to free jazz not only allows but requires the voice of the other to sound in its alterity; consequently, gadamer’s hermeneutical aesthetics demonstrates an openness to the other that creates the possibility for selfand world-questioning and even a transformation of one’s way of seeing the world. free jazz, also called the “new thing,” burst forth on the jazz music scene in the late fifties and is frequently associated with names such as john coltrane, ornette coleman, and cecil taylor. an adequate definition of free jazz is notoriously difficult, as each group or musician now recognized as a pioneer or exemplar of free jazz instantiates diverse expressions of the genre. even so, ekkehard jost highlights a “point of agreement” among free jazz groups: namely, they sought to subvert signature practices and norms of traditional jazz that carried over into bebop and hard bop.33 in particular, free jazz musicians were unsatisfied with the constraints of the harmonic, metric, and structural norms that constituted jazz up to hard bop. although the harmonic elements of bebop and hard bop had become increasingly complex compared to earlier expressions of jazz, the structures of standard jazz pieces had become rigid and formalized. as jost explains, in traditional jazz the main purpose of the melody or theme is to establish the harmonic and structural framework for improvised solos. however, “[i]n free jazz, which does not observe fixed patterns of bars or functional harmony, this purpose no longer exists.”34 thus both the form and content of free jazz pieces are highly specific, consisting neither in typical jazz harmonic sequences (ii-v-i, etc.) nor in common structural frameworks (e.g., the aaba form). as a consequence, one cannot continue to recycle standard chord changes and simply write a new melody, which was a common practice until the new thing began to challenge these accepted jazz norms. even within the very same free jazz composition, the form itself can continually morph, as bar lines are porous and allow for new melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, and interactive motifs to develop. given this freedom from functional harmony and rigidified forms, “the members of a group are forced to listen to each other with intensified concentration.”35 another aspect of certain expressions of free jazz is collective or group improvisation. when group improvisation becomes central, the motivic development of the piece is in constant flux as each player responds to and builds upon the work’s ever-changing rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic elements. this creates a dynamic composition in which collective conversation is 32 gadamer, rb, 49 [gw8, 139]. 33 ekkehard jost, free jazz (new york: de capo press, 1994), 9. 34 ibid.,153. 35 ibid., 23. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 13 foregrounded rather than traditional jazz’s emphasis on a single soloist improvising over relatively stable chord-changes. moreover, as is the case with works such as ornette coleman’s “sound gravitation” and “falling stars,” numerous free jazz pieces contain no traditional melody or theme.36 rather, the works are “compositions in sound that grow from the spontaneous interaction of [the] musicians.”37 as one can imagine, such sonic “happenings” are risky and require not only intense, responsive listening among the players, but also high levels of trust, openness, and vulnerability.38 even when one does not fully understand what another member plays, one must listen and respond to the other, anticipating and trusting that s/he has something valuable to say and worth the effort to puzzle through. here one might highlight an ethical dimension involved in collective improvisation: namely, the trust and vulnerability required among the improvisers is not unlike gadamer’s emphasis on the need for openness to the other in order for a genuine dialogical engagement to succeed. after all, gadamer’s notion of openness implies not only that one listen attentively and expectantly to the other, but also that one approaches the other with respect and trust.39 given that one’s presumptions may be exposed as inadequate, misguided, or may even be radically challenged, entering a gadamerian dialogue requires vulnerability and a willingness to take risks. in addition to internal developments within the musical practices themselves, socio-political factors played a role in shaping the music. as many commentators and jazz historians have documented, jazz musicians in america were subject to racialized laws, customs, and practices both in society at large as well as in the more narrow confines of the music industry.40 such practices affected not only the musicians’ personal and communal lives but also the music itself. white club owners were by and large apathetic to aesthetic concerns. driven by profit motives and operating on the basis of stereotypes of black musicians as mere “entertainers” rather than serious artists, they set up obstacles that free jazz musicians had to overcome in order to develop their music. for instance, in order to maximize alcohol sales, club owners frequently demanded three short performances with small breaks in between.41 such pre-set time frames, calculated for monetary benefits rather than artistic exploration, were ill-suited for the dynamic and open character of the new thing. as noted earlier, free jazz musicians created pieces that neither conformed to the common time frames for a work nor to traditional formal structures—much less to predetermined sets established by club owners. hence, in order to pursue their aesthetic aims, the musicians created the loft movement and performed their music in large loft apartments 36 with no discernable melody to serve as a “grounding point,” rhythmic and sonic textures and densities are foregrounded and in a sense become “thematic,” similar to the way that in a kandinsky painting, line, point, and color are thematized. 37 jost, free jazz, 64. 38 see also bruce ellis benson’s discussion the vulnerability and risk required in musical dialogue in the improvisation of musical dialogue. a phenomenology of music (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2003), 168. 39 for a detailed discussion of the ethical dimensions of gadamer’s hermeneutics, see monica vilhauer, gadamer’s ethics of play. hermeneutics and the other (new york: lexington books, 2010), chapter 5. see also, benson, the improvisation of musical dialogue, chapter 5. 40 see, for example, eric lott, “double v, double-time: bebop’s politics of style,” callaloo, 36 (1988): 597-605, ingrid monson, freedom sounds. civil rights call out to jazz and africa (oxford: oxford university press, 2007), and ekkehard jost, free jazz (new york: de capo press, 1994). 41 john d. baskerville, “free jazz: a reflection of black power ideology,” journal of black studies 24 (1994): 484-497, here 488. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 14 within their own local communities.42 in such a setting, jazz artists could develop their music and let it to carry them for as long as the group collectively agreed. acknowledging music’s socio-political conditioning is consonant with a gadamerian approach to art, as gadamer’s understanding of our historical conditioning, our belonging to various traditions, and our thrownness can be readily applied to the history of american jazz in its multiple expressions. gadamer, no doubt, recognizes how cultural and sociopolitical narratives shape both a societies’ conception of art and its function, as well as how an artist views his or her role in relation to the society.43 these aspects are an important part of the work’s being and meaning, both of which always exceed what is presented or performed at any given time and change with every performance and enactment. art’s dynamic nature and ongoing movement of revealing and concealing go hand in hand with an excess of meaning. davey sums this up nicely with his hermeneutical axiom x = x+, which emphasizes that “words, symbols and images all point beyond themselves. all mean more than initial acquaintance suggests.”44 for example, when a musical work (x) presents itself to an engaged participant, the work also discloses the broader horizons of meaning or speculative fields (x+), which constitute it and give it its significance. the part (x) discloses the whole (x+) but only partially, as the whole (x+) can never be fully captured in images or concepts. as is the case with any dialogical encounter, one must approach the other with a spirit of openness. here free jazz (along with other expressions of modern art) often proves challenging. for example, the intense and often harsh sonic textures and rhythmic densities of free jazz may draw a listener in or repel and frustrate her. the complexity of free jazz, its trans-gressive character, and heightened alterity, places significant demands on the listener, requiring her to spend time with the work in order to learn its “language.” thus, a genuine encounter with free jazz precludes casual listening. one doesn’t listen to free jazz as a way to escape from the mundane, nor does free jazz work well as background or “atmosphere” music. free jazz demands intentional engagement; it asserts itself as a singular, unrepeatable other that simultaneously invites and eludes understanding. gadamer’s hermeneutical aesthetics not only expects but also welcomes interpretative tensions and ambiguities. modern art’s complex alterity requires the listener to slow down, to dwell with the work, and to readjust his or her expectations. we must be fully there with a work in order for any understanding to occur. given our sound-byte world, replete with iphone distractions and interruptions, modern art’s demand for intentional involvement serves as a reminder of what genuine dialogue requires. likewise, the uniqueness of free jazz—its rejection of standard harmonic structures and musical forms—speaks against what gadamer calls the “rule of number” so characteristic of modern life. “the rule of number is visible everywhere and manifests itself above all in the form of the series, aggregate, addition and sequence. […] it is the exchangeability of parts which typifies the sum and series. the fact that an individual part can be exchanged and replaced is an essential component of the kind of life we lead.”45 a free jazz improvisation is a unique event whose very nature resists the “rule of number.” as such it speaks against a consumer culture where objects are mass produced and easily replaced. one does not consume free jazz; one participates in its non-repeatable event. 42 ibid., 489. 43 see, for example, rb, 6–7 [gw8, 97-8]. 44 davey, unfinished worlds, 6. 45 gadamer, rb, 89. [gw8, 321]. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 15 vii. conclusion gadamer understands the artwork not as a static object to be analyzed, but rather as an event in which one actively participates. the work’s dynamic ontology can also be described in terms of its hermeneutic identity, which is always identity constituted by difference. as a communicative event, the artwork has the capacity to speak. that is, the work is an other, whose communally constituted “language” of symbols and sounds, can and does speak meaningfully to those willing to learn its language and hear its address. yet as with any dialogical encounter, a genuine engagement with an artwork results in both clarity and opacity. gadamer’s hermeneutical aesthetics assumes and embraces interpretive tensions; art’s truth is not only a play of revealing and concealing, but it also resists a reductionist propositional “capture” as well as hermeneutical closure. furthermore, participation in art’s event demands an openness and willingness to listen to the work qua other. this comportment can be understood as an ethical commitment, wherein one resolves to be “fully there” with the work even when its language is frustrating and difficult to understand. such attentive dwelling allows the work to come forth, revealing certain aspects and simultaneously concealing others. that is, as one intentionally enters into a back-and-forth play with the work, one comes to understand its message but never with a sense of finality, as if everything has been grasped and no additional meanings could ever surface. given our finitude and the work’s dynamic ontology, this incomplete yet genuine experience of an artwork’s varied meanings and unfinished character is to be expected. here our hermeneutical condition mirrors our human condition. just as one’s self-understanding unfolds over time and in conversation with others, but never reaches final clarity, so too one’s understanding of the work is always incomplete. that our dialogical encounters with others will also be of a both/and, dialectical, and unfolding character is fully compatible with gadamer’s hermeneutical project. on the one hand, when a genuine dialogue occurs, one comes to understand the subject matter better, which is not to say that one must agree with the other. a successful dialogical encounter with a text or a work of art neither requires agreement about nor a complete grasp of the subject matter. as one repeatedly contemplates works over the course of a lifetime, new insights emerge; one comes to see the work, oneself, and the world differently. nonetheless, no single interpretation, nor a combination of interpretations, will ever exhaust the work’s meaning. contra gadamer’s critics, difference is not primarily a problem to solve or overcome. both difference and sameness are equiprimordial. although gadamer does not thematize exploitative and oppressive social relations in which true dialogue is prevented and the goal is simply to eradicate difference, his philosophical project is in no way fundamentally hostile to difference.46 on the contrary, as i have argued, gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and hermeneutical aesthetics embrace difference and otherness. in its ideal gadamerian expression, one might say that difference dances with sameness in an ongoing interplay where neither takes the lead, but 46 in his discussion of gadamer’s notion of “fusion of horizons,” bernasconi discerns a diminishment and even antagonism to difference. see, for example, bernasconi, “you don’t know what i’m talking about,” 187. nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 16 each tarries together in a community where moves and countermoves are reciprocally recognized, valued, and harmonized in the truest sense. references baskerville, j.d. (1994). free jazz: a reflection of black power ideology. journal of black studies, 24, 484-497. benson, b.e. (2003). the improvisation of musical dialogue: a phenomenology of music. cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. bernasconi, r. (1995). you don’t know what i’m talking about: alterity and the hermeneutical ideal. in l. schmidt (ed.), the specter of relativism, pp. 178-194. evanston, il: northwestern university press. bruns, g.l. (2006). ancients and moderns: gadamer’s aesthetic theory and the poetry of paul celan. in on the anarchy of poetry and philosophy. a guide for the unruly, pp. 33-54. new york, ny: fordham university press. caputo, j.d. (1987). radical hermeneutics. repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project. indianapolis, in: indiana university press. davey, n. (2013). unfinished worlds. hermeneutics, aesthetics and gadamer. edinburgh, scotland: edinburgh university press. di cesare, d. (2013). gadamer: a philosophical portrait. bloomington, in: indiana university press. gadamer, h-g. (2007). the artwork in word and image: “so true, so full of being!” in r.e. palmer (ed & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings, pp. 192-224. evanston, il: northwestern university press. gadamer, h-g. (1986). the relevance of the beautiful: art as play, symbol, and festival. in r. bernasconi (ed., n.walker, trans), the relevance of the beautiful and other essays, pp. 3-53. cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. gadamer, h-g. (1993). die aktualität des schönen: kunst als spiel, symbol und fest. in ästhetik und poetik i: kunst als aussage, gesammelte werke band 8. auflage, pp. 94-142. tübingen, germany: j.c.b. mohr (paul siebeck). gadamer, h-g. (1960/2004). truth and method (2nd ed., j. weinsheimer and d. g. marshall, trans & rev.). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h-g. (1960/2010). hermeneutik i: wahrheit und methode: grundzüge einer philosophischen hermeneutik, gesammelte werke band 1, 4. auflage. tübingen, germany: j.c.b. mohr (paul siebeck). nielsen journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 6 17 habermas, j. (1990). the hermeneutic claim to universality. in g.l. ormiston & a.d. schrift (eds.), the hermeneutic tradition: from ast to ricoeur, pp. 245-272. albany, ny: suny. jost, e. (1994). free jazz. new york, ny: de capo press. lott, e. (1988). double v, double-time: bebop’s politics of style. callaloo, 36, 597-605. marion, j-l. (2002). being given: toward a phenomenology of givenness (1st ed., j. kosky, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. monson, i. (2007). freedom sounds: civil rights call out to jazz and africa. oxford, uk: oxford university press. risser, j. (1997). hermeneutics and the voice of the other. re-reading gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. albany, ny: state university of new york press. tate, d.l. (2012). in the fullness of time: gadamer on the temporal dimension of the work of art. research in phenomenology, 42, 92-113. tate, d.l. (2001). the speechless image. gadamer and the claim of modern painting. philosophy today, 45, 56-68. vilhauer, m. (2010). gadamer’s ethics of play: hermeneutics and the other. new york, ny: lexington books. microsoft word jardine corrected proof (2).docx corresponding author: david w. jardine professor emeritus, university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics november 15, 2018 ãthe author(s) 2018 “to be dying under their wings is a weird miracle” david w. jardine abstract in this paper, the author responds to the moules and estefan (2018) editorial “watching my mother die: subjectivity and the other side of dementia” with a hermeneutic interpretation of memory, remembering, forgetting, grief, and subjectivity. keywords hermeneutics, gadamer, grief, memory, subjectivity, ecology as in spinning a thread, we twist fibre on fibre. and the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres. don't say “there must be something common”. . .but look and see whether there is anything common to all. for if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. to repeat: don't think but look! we see a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail. i can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than “family resemblances.” (familienahnlichkeiten). ludwig wittgenstein, from philosophical investigations (1968, p. 32) thelma’s other side jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 12 2 i only met thelma moules once, on exactly the same day that the sunflowers appeared and housed themselves in my memory (jardine, 2018a), a vivid day, strangely more so now than then, as per the exacting vagaries of memory. this image cluster buffed and come to shine with attention. it seems, once again as before, that it must have coalesced of its own accord into something that could be tucked away in a recess and called up, now, reading “watching my mother die -subjectivity and the other side of dementia” (moules & estefan, 2018). to be honest, i only barely recall thelma’s face. i’d even forgotten her name but recognized it right away whilst reading. thelma. a great old-as-the-hills name, that, as is the phrase “old as the hills.” of that meeting day i mostly remember her even-then thinning hair and the brightness of the shine of her skull’s skin amidst the sparse stalks of sun and sparkle of light. reading nancy’s words, the very first thing that jumped up was that grief is always someone’s. general concepts, expressions, ideas, theories, descriptions, themes, necessarily leave out one of its primal features -its closeness, its rattling immediacy up and down the spine, in and out the inand out-breaths, its being mine and no one else’s in a way that is not diminished no matter how much i share, how much i write or tell the tale or hug or weep. it does not exhaust even when it seems it has. but it does round back in memory apses, naves and niches, tucks and folds, images, glimpses and nods. it composes itself and thereby composes me and thereby decomposes, slowly, only to be shred open again at the whiff of something that reminds. dying and its reaches are long-lived, even in forgetting. i am not a subject but all this doesn’t make my experiences subjective, because i am not a subject. me being cast as a subject is an existential cast-off of the very objectivism that hermeneutics is also not especially interested in kowtowing to, contesting, or vying for or against. i am not a subject. i am one of us, one of your kin nancy, andrew, john, thelma. i grieve right out in the full, dark sun of the world and even my experience of isolation and loneliness in grief is long-since understood as one of our lots in life, one we share variously, in weird and familiar ways, proximally, and at a distance. even in the intimate moment that i feel that it is mine to suffer alone, this feeling is confirmed by paging through picasso’s blue period, or through speeding past a deer carcass at the side of the highway and see the ravens cackily, joyously gathering, feasting. these multifarious voices, stories, glimpses, images, don’t replace one another but cumulate, with each added tale rattling spinning like fiber on fiber, making it new and old at the same time. thelma irene moules. reta lenore jardine becomes weirdly legible again having been long since forgotten. “only in the multifariousness of voices does [‘my experience’] exist” ( gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 284). it is not an inner state once you exhale. and hermeneutics suggests that perhaps you should, exhale that is. speak. write. these are ways to not only “make memory last” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 391) but to let my own experiences be borne up where they belong, in the familienahnlichkeiten of the earth’s fabrics and tugs and pulls. like air under wings. and even if i pull back “inwards,” this interior is familiar territory. i am not alone in my lone. this is an ecological truth. subjectivity, borne as a buttress against the vagaries and irrationalities of the early 20th century, hides the fact that, in its retreats, it affirms precisely that which sent us, full of jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 12 3 anxiety and dread, scurrying into ourselves, forgetting that these very selves that seemed a refuge against those vagaries were, to a hidden degree, the invention of that from which we retreated. this is why stories must be allowed to speak out, why they must be placed in broad and abundant fields of living relations and not be caught back in the captures of retreat. grieve out loud. otherwise, it is an ecological, not just personal, disaster. the past is turning out to be different than it was i get it. all this seems contradictory. get over it. one can’t rescue the life-world from its multifarious contradictoriness by trying to portion off the varieties of its ways into the “moist gastric intimac[ies]” (sartre, 1970, p. 4) of various subjects. the contra, in the life-world’s contradictoriness, is not just in and between the dictions underneath or behind which there is a noncontradictory world. the life-world itself is full of contradictions, occlusions, variegations, mixed blood, unclear turns, upheavals, impenetrable mysteries and revelations that come and go, rise and fall, emerge and perish. we all know this. it does not follow the logic of identity and difference, of “it is” or “it isn’t.” it is woven, instead, in an ecologic of interrelatedness, of textus, weave and catch-a-thread unravelling and weave again. the one new thread suddenly makes the ones that have become old and familiar different than they used to be. the past, as nancy’s writing hints, is turning out to be different than it was. even finished events are unfinished, just like picasso’s work did not simply add itself to a list of art history but changed how we might understand that history. precedents, exemplars, turn out to be some different than they used to be. nancy moules was not born as just one more in a line of blood but renders that line re-spun. john and thelma turn out to be something different that they were, and they will again, even in this wee way of having their names mentioned in writing, their names read in reading. i’ve turned out differently because of them and her. we are not subjects simply subjected to this. we are earth beings who are in this weird way. the summer after i wrote about john moules death and recalled those monstrous sunflowers at his house (jardine, 2018a), my own back garden got inundated by sunflower-volunteers grown from the happenstance scattershots of bird seed over the winter. and nancy and i are caught to wonder what it means. and it doesn’t mean anything. and yet it does. we are both weavers and woven, and which is which is which is always “yet-to-be-decided” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 119), again, again. the job of hermeneutics and an old biblical matter the job of hermeneutics is not to step in and stop this process. it is not bent on straightening this out or solve this puzzle, but to puzzle over it and gather us together around our bespoken kin, nancy, here, and thelma, and john at a greater distance, but nearer because of it. and ravens, too, and sunflowers each lean in to listen to the gathering. this is why hermeneutic work needs to use language that fails in the task to name its topic once and for all, not because of a desire to be vague or “poetic,” but because such halty, stumbly, gooey, etchy, sly and hinty words bespeak the tremble of how lived experience is lived, what lived experience is. it’s the old mensuratio ad rem thing again. objectivity is too dumb-ass a thing to ask of living, and subjectivity, its modern consort, also fails the test of adaequatio. objectivity and subjectivity are equally/oppositely inadequate to lived experience. this is the great value of andrew estefan’s part of “watching my mother die -subjectivity and the other jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 12 4 side of dementia.” it takes great detail and careful study to see through these inheritances we too easily presume. to take what seems to be a given, what seems to be something obvious, and to “make the object” -in this case, “subjectivity” -“and all its possibilities fluid” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 367) is part of the “skilled art of questioning” (p. 367) that is vital to hermeneutic insight. the tough task of hermeneutic work is that, in order to be understood and communicated and commiserated-over, lived experiences are not to be tossed, shall we say, “upward” into a regnant idea or generality or theme or pattern and then fetched down by others to apply to their situation too, or in order to adjust the soaring idea so as to better ensure its flight. grief shall not be lifted up. it graves. so even when “what is fixed in writing has detached itself from the contingency of its origin and its author and made itself free for new relationships” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 395), these new relations are now drawn into the orbit of this contingency through a recognition of the contingency of their own living and the slap-back echo urged in the arches of air and sun. understanding, here and therefore, is always, shall we say, a lateral pass, a toss of likeness, of verisimilitude (gadamer, 1960/1989, pp. 20-21), analogy, allegory, metaphor, interruption, startle, familiarity and the strange be-wariness that familiarity makes possible. this is like that but -tricked you! -no it’s not. this brushes up against an old biblical matter that i wished i had discussed with john moules. it is the non-monotheistic, hermeneutic logic of a non-believer, of one who, instead, finds everywhere the experience of “breaking open” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 362) into relations of dependent co-arising. there is not one true incarnation of the eidos, no one true word that is sovereign over all that it governs, that is the perfection, the essence (or, more softly put as per “interpretive research,” the theme) of that which it names. instead, there are multiple incarnations, each of which are suggestive, not of the one true logos of which they are the variegated incarnations but instead, of each other. we live our lives akin. each suggests all the others, laterally and each “stubborn particular” (wallace, 1989) is thus “whole” without each needing to be being redeemed by some univocal singularity which arches over all and in which, to use the platonic image, each “participates” in relations of proximity and distance. “a special effort of memory” now the trouble with this is at least double. first, the receiver of such a lateral pass --the reader of a hermeneutic piece -must engage in a precarious, deeply risky calling up and: running up and down the known range of cases to which [the topic being discussed] applies, by actually calling up the spectrum of different exemplifications and then catching the point. (norris-clarke, p. 67) that work of “the spontaneous and inventive seeking out of similarities” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 432) is what hermeneutics names as the “basis of the life of language” (p. 432). here is where the counterpoint of “objectivity” resides: it requires a special effort of memory to recall that, alongside the scientific ideal of unambiguous designation, th[is spontaneous and inventive seeking out of family resemblances constitutes the] life of language itself [and] continues unchanged. (gadamer, 1960/1989, pp. 433-434) jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 12 5 the topic must be allowed to “to expand to its full analogous breadth of illuminative meaning” (norris-clarke, 1976, p. 72). that, by itself, is tough work enough and it points to how, in order adequately be myself, i must read, i must study the vagaries in all the forms i can muster. and here is the rub. read well if it is well-written, my own living will find itself at stake, summoned up to bear witness, to sing, to lament. to understand. to write this. having to be not remembered understanding is the expression of the affinity of the one who understands to the one whom he understands and to that which he understands. (gadamer, 1983, p. 48). from old french afinite, “relationship, kinship; neighbourhood, vicinity.” (on-line etymological dictionary) i can't stop thinking about the intertwining of two things. first, losing the memory of one’s loves -that weird and seemingly inevitable time-fade, where the voice cadence can’t quite be recalled, where the old photo startles with something lost to the wear of living, where a small, forgotten object hides unbeknownst and unexpectedly triggers memory. second, remembering how one’s loved one lost their memory. lost their memory of me. my own mother drifted off into a playful spot, with a clutched teddy bear, and when my son visited her in her final days, she thought he was perhaps me? perhaps just back from world war ii, from overseas? and her husband (actually long-dead) was off getting the bags out of the car for vacation and the lovely restaurant they have here, where you can eat for free! lucky me and her and us to have it happen that way. but nancy writes, and i read. it’s not just losing a parent but having to live with the fact that they lost you in their waning days and then died. they take something of you with them in any case. but to take the memory of you ahead of time is a tough matter -to be unremembered, to somehow disappear, right before the eyes of your parent. in alzheimer’s, it is as if i have died, as if i had never lived, right in front of their eyes, even though, well, here i am. to be alive to witness my own death in the eyes of a loved one is a strange, strange thing. to be able to write about it, to be able to have that writing read, is an old cluster of our deeply human arts of living and dying. when her mother died, nancy was no longer having to live with being not remembered. what an utterly weird relief, eh? same as with my own mother, whose traverse into final reverie was far sweeter than most. for reta, it became a family resemblance mix-up and mash-up and she was not frightened or angry. just lucky happenstance, that. it wasn’t like i wasn’t remembered. it was like i was part of the mix up. freeing, in its own ambiguous way. an ecological aside regarding memory and place-value jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 12 6 another happenstance drifted by in the orbit of “watching my mother die -subjectivity and the other side of dementia.” i haven’t worked it out adequately, yet, but it is the closest i’ve come to glimpsing this land. just a broken-up sketch, then: . . . this very same sort of memory/forgetting . . . driving into south calgary on saturday along hwy. 22 . . . all the construction, with many of the old, familiar signposts and figures and trees and fields torn up. . . had the feeling, not simply that i didn't quite know where i was, but that i knew exactly where i was, but that this place doesn't remember me being there at all. like i’d been forgotten, erased from tree-memory, earth-memory, or something . . . after all those drive-bys, all that attention and devotion . . . right there in the midst of me lamenting its shifts and remembering its shapes, it forgets . . . me, trying to be so in touch with the place and feeling its perishings, and having it spurn like that . . . it’s not just that i’ve lost something, but that something has lost me. this happened to me a lot when i was young. the town i grew up in had these repeated ravagings of the living grass and field and bird and flat dirt path surroundings to make way for spiking population growth . . . and it wasn’t just that places i remembered were gone, but that the places that remembered me were gone . . . could no longer remember. that i had become forgotten by the land itself . . . a small version of a first nations lament that i can hardly stand to have so near . . . great moon, eagle moon, goose moon, frog moon tethered here lesley tait (from latremouille, tait & jardine, in press) and then this, written, my oh my, twenty years ago after my first return from alberta back to southern ontario where i was raised: how things smell, the racket of leaves turning on their stems, how my breath pulls this humid air, how birds songs combine, the familiar directions of sudden thundery winds, the rising insect drills of cicada tree buzzes that i remember so intimately, so immediately, that when they sound, it feels as if this place itself has remembered what i have forgotten, as if my own memory, my own raising, some of my own life, is stored up in these trees for safe keeping. cicadas become archaic storytellers telling me, like all good storytellers, of the life i’d forgotten i’d lived, of deep, fleshy, familial relations that worm their ways out of my belly and breath into these soils, these smells, this air. and i’m left shocked that they know so much, that they remember so well, and that they can be so perfectly articulate. (jardine, 1998, p. 92) a terribly shareable incommensurateness and, of course, to be not remembered by a mother, the very one whose remembering of me shaped me for good or ill as much as anyone and for a long stretch of my life, back when none of this was able to be articulated enough to be anywhere near free of, well, that has a terribly shareable incommensurateness. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 12 7 the very one whose remembering of me greatly shaped my way in this family resemblance (and this, of course, for good or ill, well-meant or otherwise), in losing their memory, loses me, but loosens as well: echoed perhaps in a ripple of air or a brief shrug of a robust bough. . . . alone now, they wind through tangles, relentless. call up to the creators; we are here, we are here. . . . tender parting and elegant flow, a silent passing above the forest floor. wings raise up to gain favour and soften the looming perch. (innes, 2014, pp. 117, 110, 117) so, here’s to my own pate glowing red in the hairbrush sparsenings of grey and white. to mothers. to fathers. to sunflowers and the loft of ravens. so, there go the ravens, my dears, again caught and uncaught on the warm spring-air foothill uplifts. to be dying under their wings is a weird miracle. (jardine, 2018b, p. xiii) and brightness and darkness, remembering and forgetting, here in this great hermeneutic commiseration. i hope it is arced just a bit by sweet looms of sunflowers. afterword nancy moules, 9:03am, november 15th, 2018: i noted that you wrote that you only met thelma once. you actually met her a few times and she had a bit of a crush on you because you gave her a kiss. the first time was at a graduation party that lori limacher had for me. then there was the time with the sunflowers, but i know there was one more time. she liked that you acted interested in her and listened to her. memory. turns out i’m sweeter than i recall. or so someone else remembered me in ways i’d forgotten. references gadamer, h-g. (1983). reason in the age of science. boston, ma: mit press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. innes, j. (2016). excerpts from “a pocket of darkness” and “time.” in j. seidel & d. jardine (2016)). the ecological heart of teaching: radical tales of refuge and renewal for classrooms and communities (pp. 110, 117). new york, ny: peter lang. jardine, d.w. (1998). birding lessons and the teachings of cicadas. canadian journal of environmental education, 3, 92-9. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 12 8 jardine, d.w. (2018a). sunflowers, coyote, and five red hens. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 4. retrieved from: https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53327/pdf jardine, d.w. (2018b). preface: advice in this liquid midst. in e. lyle (ed.). the negotiated self: employing reflexive inquiry to explore teacher identity (pp. vii-xiv). leiden, nl: brill sense publishers. latremouille, j., tait, l., & jardine, d.w. (in press). an ecological pedagogy of joy: on relations, aliveness and love. new york, ny: dio press. moules, n. j., & estefan, a. (2018). editorial: watching my mother die subjectivity and the other side of dementia. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 3. retrieved from: https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/57328/pdf. on-line etymological dictionary. on-line: https://www.etymonline.com/ sartre, j.p. (1970). intentionality: a fundamental idea in husserl's phenomenology. journal for the british society for phenomenology, 1(2), 3-5. wallace, b. (1989). the stubborn particulars of grace. toronto, on, canada: mcclelland and stewart. wittgenstein, l. (1968). philosophical investigations. cambridge, uk: basil blackwell. 1 counselling psychology, werklund school of education, university of calgary 2 faculty of nursing, university of calgary corresponding author: emily p williams, phd candidate email: emily.williams@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics september 18, 2018 the author(s) 2018 defending hermeneutics emily p. williams1, catherine m. laing2, & isabel brun1 abstract this article offers several perspectives on the challenges of defending gadamerian hermeneutics in applied research settings, specifically counselling psychology and nursing. given the lack of methodological steps associated with the method, researchers employing hermeneutics can be vulnerable to scrutiny from others. we discuss the uncertainty that is inevitable when embarking on hermeneutic inquiry and provide personal accounts of how we have encountered the uncertain nature of hermeneutics. keywords hermeneutics, qualitative research, counselling psychology, nursing part i: post-candidacy the day of my doctoral candidacy exam had finally come. i found myself sitting at the head of a large table in a boardroom, surrounded by five academics. they had general queries about my research proposal (“what inspired this line of inquiry? what is your intended sample?”), and then they narrowed in on the how questions: “how will you analyze your data?,” “how will you manage the unstructured interview?,” and “how will you incorporate your prejudice into your interpretation?” in the moment, i felt like i knew nothing. i said to myself: “wow, and you thought that you were prepared!” i answered as best i could by saying: “interpretation is not always clear until you actually begin the interviews, and until you see the data in front of you.” gauging that my ambiguous answers did not satisfy the examiners sitting across from me, i felt the need to offer more information, trying to fill the holes that i had left open in my previous williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 11 2 response. i felt like these types of questions dominated my exam, and ironically, they were the exact sort of question i felt least prepared to answer. in the days after my exam (and yes, i passed), i (williams) put my thoughts to the keyboard, with the intention of describing my candidacy experience in order to help those who use hermeneutic inquiry in the future. with this objective, i contacted others who have used, and will use, hermeneutic inquiry for various research endeavours. joining me in this paper are the perspectives of an associate professor in a nursing faculty (laing), who used hermeneutics for her doctoral dissertation and has a developed a program of research using hermeneutics, and a doctoral student (brun) who is considering the applicability of hermeneutics for her research. together, we provide our experiences and insights of defending hermeneutic inquiry before the interpretation has begun. defending any type of research method has its challenges, however this is especially true of applied gadamerian hermeneutic inquiry. embracing uncertainty there is an attraction to certainty. lay people and researchers alike are drawn to choices or actions that are clearly this way or that way. in this sense, philosophic hermeneutics, as explicated by the german philosopher, hans-georg gadamer, stands out as different. hermeneutic inquiry is a way of interpreting the world, taking into account that the world is always changing, and our understanding of a phenomenon is rooted in language and history. as such, since the world and our topic of inquiry is bound to change, so too do our interpretations. this practice requires a tolerance of uncertainty, both of the topic and interpretation (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). thus, it is fitting that gadamer (1960/2013) noted, “the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (p. 306). researchers using hermeneutic inquiry must exist in this in between and resist blindly following a pre-determined method that assumes all cases within the inquiry are the same (caputo, 2015). applying method and rules universally implies that every encounter the researcher has will be similar to its last and resemble the ones to come. “hermeneutics is not a neutral enterprise; we do not simply select a method and aim it at the world to accomplish something we want to do” (moules et al., 2015, p. 58). thus, when conducting hermeneutic research, researchers must navigate their topics while applying foundational pillars of hermeneutics to guide their understanding. essential to philosophical hermeneutic practice is acknowledging that, as researchers, we do not, and cannot, know everything. we welcome our participants’ ability to teach us something new, something that makes our understanding of the topic change (moules et al., 2015). since this is the goal, it does not make sense to use pre-determined steps and apply them to all cases. perhaps this resistance to using a standard system across all cases perplexes researchers not familiar with hermeneutic inquiry, as this is how it seemed during my examination. guidelines versus method while learning about the history and philosophy that has shaped applied hermeneutic practice, i considered the difference between rules and guidelines. “guidelines are not methodological williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 11 3 imperatives. they are in the service of steady, dependable motion” (moules et al., 2015, p. 61). researchers employing hermeneutic inquiry are encouraged to apply their knowledge of how philosophical hermeneutics evolved to applied practice disciplines and to use that understanding to guide them in making responsible, reliable, and defensible decisions. while learning to think like this, it made sense; however, when faced with examiners who required me to demonstrate my thorough understanding of the method i would be using for my dissertation, it was hard to convincingly demonstrate. during my exam, i found myself clinging to a particular page in the book from which i had learned hermeneutics: this is hard work. balancing a description of how to conduct something without offering a map… is challenging. in many ways, the work of hermeneutics as a research approach is somewhat intuitive… we know what we do when we are into the deep work of interpretation and we so often talk with students about how to begin this deep and involved work… to find language, though, to describe this practice was very difficult. (moules et al., 2015, p. 201) during my exam, i tried to relay the idea that hermeneutic work unfolds as it happens. i shared that hermeneutic inquiry is a learned practice, a way of applying theory to the topic, which often feels more comprehensible once one is in the depth of one’s analysis. according to the philosophy and tradition of hermeneutics, my answers aligned with the applied practice; however, when defending hermeneutic work to an audience not familiar with its foundational pillars, i became overwhelmed when tasked with explaining in detail how analysis would occur. in angst, i offered how my interviews and interpretation might proceed. i spoke about implications that my research might yield. ultimately, however, by trying to satisfy someone’s need for certainty, i was answering against the tradition of hermeneutics. hermeneutics embraces uncertainty. being comfortable with ever changing interpretations is essential to the practice. for hermeneutic inquiry, this ambiguity and openness to possibilities is not considered problematic, but rather is thought to be an asset of the approach (moules et al., 2015). ultimately, as a researcher beginning my journey with applied hermeneutics, i struggled to defend the approach’s how questions. i believe that as my interviews commence, and analysis begins, i will appreciate the ambiguity involved with the process, but until then, i will continue to wonder what this process will look like. part ii: academic it is almost unfair to ask a hermeneutic researcher to describe, in detail, how he/she will analyze data not yet collected, yet herein lies the crux of the problem of how hermeneutics exists within the realities of academia, practice, and research. not having an answer to such questions opens students up to vulnerability during exams, and subjects researchers to criticism as their grants are compared to others with “standard” qualitative methodologies, or worse, quantitative studies. as a hermeneutic researcher, i (laing) constantly walk the line between methodological rigor and situating my projects in such a way that they will be funded. too much detail and you are accused of “sounding defensive” or not being “true” to your method; too little detail and you williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 11 4 have not provided enough evidence as to how your project will proceed, methodologically. there is, quite simply, no winning this game. as an academic, there is an irrefutable reality that one needs their research funded and findings published in order to succeed and satisfy the overwhelmingly foregrounded arm of the tripartite mandate: research. it does not take many rejections from funding agencies to start to change your approach with hermeneutics for the realistic reason of getting grants and future publications. we talk about hermeneutics as an art, practice, philosophy, and research approach, however it is much more than these: it is a sensibility and comportment that positions us such that hermeneutics is within us, within our way of being and our ways of thinking. you can recognize a hermeneutic thinker quickly even though they themselves may never have heard the word before. said more simply, people either “get” the gestalt of hermeneutics or they do not. it becomes quickly evident with different lines of questioning who is genuinely curious to understand hermeneutics and who is “on the attack,” trying to discredit this approach. it is a daunting task, when one starts out with philosophical hermeneutics as a research method, to defend one’s work, or more accurately, one’s approach. this, however, is the never-ending responsibility of the hermeneutic researcher, and like all things, one becomes more practiced with it over time. davey (2015) stated that the notion of practice, though not well discussed by gadamer, is a form of “sense-making” (p. 9). practice involves repetition, memory, adjustment, failure and success: upon these rhythms the confidence to perform is built. participatory engagement with a range of practices enables the capacity and confidence to engage and develop. tradition and cultural horizons are the pre-conditions of practice but they do not build the certainties gadamer speaks of. it is the engagement with practice and the self-insight it affords that grounds the certainties and confidence of the practiced performer, whether artist, doctor or scientist. (davey, 2015, pp. 5-6) as we “practice” with hermeneutics, both in the applied sense but also in the sense of making it fit into places it is not well understood, we are better able to “make sense” of this task. we become more practiced and skilled, and the task becomes less onerous because we search less for the “right words” or struggle less with how to articulate something “just right.” over time, with practice, this comes easier. we do ourselves a disservice in many ways, as hermeneutic researchers and scholars, by speaking about applied hermeneutics in sometimes poetic, sometimes overly philosophic, and sometimes even unintelligible ways to anyone who is not practiced with this methodology. we forget one of the foremost rules of communication: know your audience (ricci, 2012). sometimes hermeneutics needs to be discussed plainly, in ways that are understandable for others. while we bemoan the injustice of this (should others not just know and get it?), hermeneutics lives within a world where it is the underdog with respect to research methodologies. in many ways, hermeneutics defies the essentialist nature of a definition (moules et al., 2015), yet herein lies our conundrum as students and practitioners of this methodology – we must continue to find ways to understand, explain, describe, and even force-fit ourselves into the research community. we need a seat at the table, and we need not assume a “poor cousin” stance against the natural sciences or other more easily articulated research methodologies. williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 11 5 when i used to try to negotiate with my children when they were younger it was a futile exercise. they did not understand that in a negotiation, neither party gets exactly what they want, and the whole point of negotiation is to reach an agreement. it is a useless endeavor to engage in this behaviour with a young child who does not yet possess the cognitive ability for this understanding. similarly, when disagreements occur between adults and it sometimes becomes evident that one party is unwilling to move, even slightly, from their position, it quickly becomes apparent that no understanding will occur between them. no one is willing to consider the possibility that the other person may be right. no one is willing to even try to understand what the other is saying; both are invested in their own “rightness.” these two scenarios – negotiating with a child and futile disagreements – are not unlike our task as hermeneutic researchers. sometimes it is evident that the person with whom you are engaging (e.g., an examiner, a grant reviewer) is unwilling to listen. they are not playing by the same rules as we are and, quite frankly, this can be a futile and frustrating experience. we want the ideas of hermeneutics to transcend all: i want gadamer’s idea of a genuine conversation, for example, where the process of question and answer, listening and speaking, and seeing others’ points of view ultimately enabling us to reach new understandings (spence, 2005) to be the norm. when in a genuine dialogue with another, we try to understand how what the other person is saying could be right (gadamer, 1996). in a genuine conversation the concern is with the subject matter and with its possible truth (warnke, 1987), and neither participant claims to know the truth, rather each is open to the other’s views. different understanding – understanding differently – is a foundation upon which we stake a claim in hermeneutics. yet, when the other party does not play by these rules or worse does not even know of their existence, in many ways we are engaging in the equivalent of negotiating with a toddler. sometimes, it feels as though we are alone in this world where quantitative methodologies and natural sciences still reign supreme, as if we have gained no ground here at all. i prefer to think of applied hermeneutics as still in high school – it has not yet peaked – but it will. we are working our way through the awkward years, gaining ground slowly, and trying our best. in the end, that is all we can do. part iii: pre-candidacy as a first year phd student, i (brun) was tasked with finding a dissertation research topic that appealed to me, as well as a method that would fit my dissertation research aims. throughout my entire adult life, i have been passionate about learning about parenting practices that would aid in the development of positive body image for children; however, i was disappointed when i discovered that little work had been done to explore this topic. i was so captivated by the idea of researching parenting practices that encourage the development of positive body image in children that it almost felt like a calling: i needed to do this research not only for myself, but for parents who may be struggling to find ways to not only diminish the chances that their children develop negative body image, but also encourage the development of positive body image for their children. given this strong inclination towards conducting such research, i decided to propose this topic to my supervisor. after a passionate pitch on my behalf, my supervisor suggested that i consider hermeneutic inquiry as my dissertation research method, as it appeared to her that i had been called to this topic, which is often the jumping off point for hermeneutic research (moules et al., williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 11 6 2015). i was slightly put off by my supervisor’s suggestion as i thought to myself: “how do you even do hermeneutic research?” and “isn’t it a philosophy and not a research method?” given my look of contemplation, my supervisor advised that i read about hermeneutic inquiry and decide whether or not it would be a fit for my research. during this time, i felt as though i had to be certain of hermeneutic inquiry’s merit and validity before i could commit to using it for my dissertation. through my readings, i was convinced that hermeneutic inquiry would be the perfect fit for my dissertation research. furthermore, i looked forward to using hermeneutic research to gain a better understanding of my research topic as well as, ultimately, bringing about change in my field of study. defending the how and why of hermeneutic inquiry in my experience, individuals who conduct research are often concerned with the “hows”; they want a step by step guide to follow so that they can conduct research that is “valid” and “rigorous.” i used to be one of those people who relied on predetermined research steps so that i could confidently defend my work (“see, my research is valid: i followed all the steps!”), which is why the thought of conducting hermeneutic research was so daunting. in my understanding, hermeneutic inquiry is not a research method that outlines steps for a researcher to follow; instead, it guides the researcher to adopt a new philosophy or frame of mind (i.e., a genuine interest in considering others’ perspectives related to a specific topic or phenomenon) that leaves them open to gaining a new understanding of their topic (moules et al., 2015). this different perspective may be difficult for researchers who are statistically minded to embrace, and i have personally experienced their skepticism when describing my proposed dissertation. given the reluctance i have encountered while explaining my dissertation plans to “non-hermeneuts,” i have developed the following analogy to explain hermeneutic research: most individuals have participated in a conversation, with another person in which they have experienced a significant shift in their understanding of a particular topic. i can only describe these shifts in understanding as oprah’s “aha moments.” throughout my childhood, i would sit in front of the television on a nightly basis to watch my favourite television show, oprah. i watched oprah experience many “aha moments” where you could actually see her experiencing a shift of perspective as a result of dialoguing with an interviewee; it was like a light bulb had turned on in her mind which illuminated a new understanding of the subject matter at hand. during these “aha moments” an individual’s perspective suddenly changes, they begin to understand the topic differently, and this new understanding cannot be unlearned (i.e., they cannot go back to the way they previously understood the topic). as i understand the process of conducting hermeneutic research, researchers take on a mindset that opens them up to experiencing “aha moments.” in addition to adopting a frame of mind that is conducive to these experiences, they conduct interviews in a manner that makes it more likely for their participants to share experiences or information that will prompt such shifts in understanding (i.e., by creating conditions akin to gadamer’s genuine conversation; spence, 2005). through practice, hermeneutic researchers become more apt at interviewing participants which enables them to gather rich data. furthermore, once a shift in understanding has been williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 11 7 experienced by the researcher, it is up to him or her to recreate the “aha moment,” through the writing of their findings, for others. the resulting hermeneutic work will, hopefully, produce a similar shift in understanding for those who read it. another feature of hermeneutic research that convinced me of its merit was its focus on developing phronesis, which translates to practical wisdom (i.e., knowledge and skills that can be applied to practice; moules et al., 2015). while conducting hermeneutic research, researchers are concerned with coming to a new understanding of the studied topic and disseminating this new understanding in a way that will have practical implications. overall, hermeneutic research is not only about gaining a new understanding of the world, it is also about changing it (moules et al., 2015). one could say that hermeneutic inquiry’s catch phrase is: “when you know differently, you do differently.” given the focus on phronesis, hermeneutic researchers take on the mindset that when we acquire insight that has practical implications for the world, we are ethically obligated to act on it (moules et al., 2015). thus, as a hermeneutic researcher, i commit myself to conducting research that will have practical implications for my field of study, and i will disseminate this knowledge in a way that may bring about change. in sum, i want to make a difference in this world, and hermeneutic inquiry offers the framework that will aid in the realization of this aim. conclusion as these three accounts suggest, defending the process of hermeneutic research can come as a challenge. given the lack of methodological steps associated with hermeneutic inquiry, it leaves hermeneutic researchers vulnerable to scrutiny from others (e.g., exam or funding committees). for this reason, we decided to offer our experience and insights related to defending hermeneutic research in the hopes that it would help others, who use this method, to articulate its value, despite the lack of procedural steps. as such, we present our experiences in parts i, ii, and iii to argue that hermeneutic research involves embracing uncertainty, as it is in uncertainty that we open ourselves to experiencing “aha moments” or profound shifts in understanding. furthermore, we suggest that hermeneutic researchers be guided by phronesis, which involves gaining new understandings of certain topic or phenomenon and acting upon them to create change. overall, although a difficult methodology to defend, it is important to stay faithful to the philosophy that guides hermeneutic inquiry by remaining open to interpretation, wherever it may lead us. references caputo, j.d. (2015). foreword: the wisdom of hermeneutics. in n.j. moules, g. mccaffrey, j.c. field, & c.m. laing, conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice (pp. ix xiii). new york, ny: peter lang. davey, n. (2015). a hermeneutics of practice: philosophical hermeneutics and the epistemology of participation. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 7. retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5707x51 gadamer, h.g. (1996). the enigma of health. stanford, ca: stanford university press. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5707x51 williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 11 8 gadamer, h.g. (1960/2013). truth and method (bloomsbury revelations; j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). london, uk: bloomsbury. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. ricci, t. (2012). public speaking: know your audience. retrieved from https://www.asme.org spence, d.g. (2001). hermeneutic notions illuminate cross-cultural nursing experiences. journal of advanced nursing, 35(4), 624-30. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2648.2001.01879.x warnke, g. (1987). gadamer: hermeneutics, tradition and reason. stanford, ca: stanford university press. https://www.asme.org/ 1 university of prince edward island 2 dalhousie university corresponding author: charlene a. vanleeuwen email: cvanleeuwen@upei.ca journal of applied hermeneutics july 19, 2017 the author(s) 2017 conducting hermeneutic research in international settings: philosophical, practical, and ethical considerations charlene a. vanleeuwen1, linyuan guo-brennan1, & lori e. weeks2 abstract hermeneutics has been theorized and applied as a philosophical framework and interpretive research methodology which pays particular attention to linguistic, social, cultural, and historical contexts to understand the life world and human experiences. while adopted as a qualitative research approach in the fields of education, nursing, psychology, and legal studies, its use is emerging in other human service disciplines. the rich philosophical and theoretical legacy embedded in this research methodology often presents unique challenges and a steep learning curve for researchers, particularly when the research is conducted in international settings. drawing from insights gained from two hermeneutic studies conducted in kenya and china, this paper presents considerations for designing a hermeneutic research inquiry. in addition to philosophical, practical, and ethical issues researchers need to consider when designing and implementing hermeneutic studies in international settings, we examine factors and strategies to facilitate successful data collection and interpretation. keywords hermeneutics, interpretive research methodology, international research researchers who are interested in conducting qualitative research in international settings need to explore and adopt research methodologies that allow them to integrate the cultural, historical, and linguistic characteristics of the research setting into research design and implementation. hermeneutics, a research philosophy and interpretive methodology, has been widely adopted as a qualitative research approach for research in the fields of education, social sciences, and vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 2 humanities because it acknowledges and highlights the linguistic, social, cultural and historical contexts in research design and implementation. however, the rich philosophical and theoretical legacy embedded in hermeneutics and the distinctive methods, procedures, and writing style associated with hermeneutic inquiry often presents challenges and steep learning curves for researchers, particularly for graduate students who are interested in using a hermeneutic inquiry approach in international research. drawing from insights gained from two hermeneutic studies conducted in kenya and china, we discuss the philosophical, methodological, practical, and ethical issues researchers need to consider when designing and implementing a hermeneutic study in international settings. we start with a brief summary of the hermeneutical orientations that guided the two international studies, and this summary is followed by discussions about the practical issues researchers need to consider in conducting hermeneutic research in international settings. using the two studies as examples, we discuss how a researcher’s role as a cultural insider or outsider affects the research process. we conclude with a discussion and critical analysis of ethical considerations for international hermeneutic studies. international research can mean different things to different researchers. for the context of this paper, international research is defined as studies conducted overseas that involve relationships and understanding between and among nations, cultures, peoples, wisdom traditions, and discourses. the two international studies described in this paper were carried out in settings outside of canada where the researchers’ home institutions were based. both studies intentionally examined and incorporated the interconnected relationships of cultural identities, wisdom traditions, epistemologies, and ontologies between canada and the other country where the research was conducted. hermeneutics as a research philosophy research design involves the intersection of research philosophy, inquiry strategies, and specific methods and procedures. research philosophy reflects a researcher’s general orientation about the world and the nature of the study and is shaped by her/his discipline, personal and research experiences, and the beliefs and orientation of an adviser, advisory committee, or prominent scholars in the chosen field of study (creswell, 2009). when selecting a research approach, the first task of the researcher is to understand, and be able to explicitly explain, the philosophical assumptions supporting his/her choice. the process of understanding and articulating a worldview and philosophical assumptions helps researchers become aware of how traditions, culture, motivations, identity, and institutional structures can impact their understanding and choice of a research philosophy and methodology. hermeneutics is defined as the science or art of interpretation (gadamer, 1976; malpas, 2014; porter & robinson, 2011). derived from the greek verb hermeneuein, the term hermeneutics means to understand or interpret (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015; patton, 2015). emerging in the nineteenth century in reaction to the dominance of positivist scientific approaches, hermeneutics was theorized and applied as a philosophical framework as well as a research methodology for understanding the world and human experiences that gives special attention to the context in the human sciences (gadamer, 1976; guo, 2010; patton, 2015). the vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 3 task of hermeneutics is not to solve problems in practical situations, but to serve as a mode of reflecting to question the meaning of being and to clarify the interpretive conditions for understanding the meaning of human experiences by attending to the roles of language, culture, historicity, and pre-understandings (davey, 2017; gadamer, 1976; guo, 2010). kinsella (2006) described hermeneutics as an approach that (a) seeks understanding rather than explanation; (b) acknowledges the situated location of interpretation; (c) recognizes the role of language and historicity in interpretation; (d) views inquiry as a conversation; and (e) is comfortable with ambiguity. these characteristics lend themselves well to international research contexts. different from the post-positivist worldview shaping most empirical research with a focus on problems and identifying objective reality through careful observation and unbiased measurement, hermeneutics allows a researcher to discern whether or not a problem truly exists through deeper understanding. hermeneutics offers researchers an approach to explore and understand the complexity of a topic or phenomenon (mccaffrey, raffin-bouchal, & moules, 2012; moules et al., 2015) without problematizing a situation prematurely or inappropriately due to an inadequate understanding of the research context and topic. researchers’ pre-understanding is embraced as a constructive contribution to the research process rather than a potential source of bias, an attractive and prominent advantage of adopting hermeneutics in international research (moules, 2002). this active role of the interpreter through self-reflection can provide an opportunity to refine reflection skills and develop self-understanding. these are principal tasks in hermeneutics. the integration of interpretation, historicity, and critical reflection in hermeneutic inquiry allows a researcher to understand human experiences from comparative perspectives and reexamine practices that are closely defined by traditions, cultures, history, and languages. hermeneutics permits researchers to explore complex, dynamic relationships and experiences while acknowledging issues such as asymmetries of power relations, gender (in)equality, or other contextual and historical factors (mccaffery & moules, 2016). this approach is appealing to international researchers because designing and implementing research in international settings is complex and demanding and often involves comparative perspectives, choosing different or modifying research methods, a lack of literature with international/global perspectives, and cultural uncertainty and ambiguity. hermeneutics provides researchers the space to identify and understand various perspectives on human experiences which is advantageous in international research (grondin, 2002; ricoeur, 1981). meanwhile, incorporating the voices of participants in the construction of meaning through conversational interview approaches that affirm and reinforce positive cultural identities of participants can have a decolonizing effect, which is an important concern in conducting research in locations with a history of colonization (kovach, 2010). in addition, international research particularly requires a researcher’s thoughtful consideration of how her/his unique linguistic capacity and cultural identity influences the inquiry at hand and his/her pre-understandings, prejudices, and foreknowledge about the research topic and context. hermeneutics brings awareness to a researcher’s positionality as a cultural insider or outsider in international research and creates opportunities for understanding human experiences from multiple and comparative perspectives. the relational, reflexive and artistic options provided by hermeneutics allow researchers to understand the depth and nuances of human experience and provide an interpretive lens of making meaning of the day-to-day experiences (jardine, 2006; newberry, 2012). since vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 4 hermeneutics is not focused on a predetermined horizon and can generate new understandings of practical wisdoms, or phronesis, it has been adopted by researchers that work within the applied domains of the human sciences such as education, clinical psychology, social work, occupational therapy, medicine, legal studies, criminology, and psychiatry (chowdhury, 2016; guo, 2010; kinsella, bossers, & ferreira, 2008; laing, 2012; macquarrie, 2005; mccaffery & moules, 2016; newberry, 2012; ovens, 2014; von zweck, paterson, & pentland, 2008). cross-cultural competence effective use of context allows cultural factors to be foregrounded in international research (stephens, 2012). in the process of conducting international hermeneutic research, the researcher’s positionality can be viewed as cultural insider (i.e., collecting data within one’s cultural community), cultural outsider (i.e., collecting data outside of one’s cultural community) or a combination of both. an awareness of a researcher’s positionality is critical and necessary for research design, preparation, and implementation, and reporting in an international context. a culturally competent researcher is aware of his/her own cultural identity, understands the cultural norms of the research setting, seeks to minimize and cope with cultural differences, articulates the cultural explanations of perspectives and behaviors, has cross-cultural communication skills, and capitalizes on the similarities of common experiences. the hermeneutic practice of articulating prejudices and biases can bring awareness to the cultural and academic filters that may be encountered in the interpretive process. preparatory reading for cross-cultural research, reflection, and discussions with local contacts or a critical friend can also serve to sensitize the researcher to contextual issues that might otherwise be missed or not questioned. utilizing a critical friend will be discussed in the section on preparing to conduct international hermeneutic inquiry. the collaborative stance in hermeneutic inquiry may be unfamiliar and initially uncomfortable to research participants given their cultural experience or the perceived power imbalance in the research relationship. accordingly, there may be a need to nurture in-depth conversations with participants through taking extra time to develop the research relationship and making a concerted effort to carefully ask probing questions during conversations to achieve a fusion of horizons. it is necessary to demonstrate the ability to conduct research that is trustworthy and respectful of the cultural context and divergent worldviews; these are features of decolonized research which will be discussed in greater detail below. a hermeneutic approach shifts the orientation away from the outsider’s voice, placing the researcher in a less authoritative position while privileging the voice of the participants (carson, 1986; stephens, 2009). researchers’ hermeneutic orientations illustrated in case studies reflecting on the case of a chinese researcher conversing with chinese teachers in china and a canadian researcher collecting data from kenyan university students in kenya, the authors present the key principles underpinning their hermeneutic research studies in international settings. this overview is illustrated by two case studies which critically examine how the authors’ research positionality affected methodological, epistemological and ethical considerations. the first case is hermeneutic research conducted by guo (2010) that aimed to vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 5 understand what the nation-wide new curriculum reform in china meant for teachers who experienced the inspirations and struggles during curriculum implementation. the second case is a hermeneutic inquiry conducted by vanleeuwen (2017) to explore kenyan university students’ learning experiences in community-based field placements and what community-based learning meant for their academic, personal, and professional growth. hermeneutic principles guiding the international research hermeneutic literature and tapestry has categorized hermeneutics into five orientations, including romantic or conservative hermeneutics, phenomenological hermeneutics, critical hermeneutics, radical hermeneutics, and philosophical hermeneutics. each hermeneutic orientation has distinctive concepts and principles. the hermeneutic orientations guiding the authors in conducting the case studies in china and kenya are philosophical, radical, and critical. for example, the goal of romantic or conservative hermeneutics is to reproduce and reconstruct interpretation (ramberg & gjesdal, 2013). this orientation emphasizes the importance of language as the medium of understanding and the role of dialogue in the extension of understanding (moules et al., 2015). phenomenological hermeneutics requires researchers to reflect on their pre-understanding, framework, and biases. this orientation requires a researcher to search for genuine openness to engage in a conversational relation with phenomena (van manen 2006; van manen & adams, 2010). “epoché” and “reduction” are two important concepts in phenomenological hermeneutics. epoché deals with freeing oneself of (“bracketing”) assumptions, and reduction deals with returning to the original sources of people’s experiences. reduction refers to a regimen designed to transform a philosopher into a phenomenologist by the attainment of a certain perspective on the world phenomenon. phenomenological hermeneutics allows a researcher to use an interpretive approach to gain deep understanding of phenomena and uncover the complex realities of difficult life situations (van manen, 2006). philosophical hermeneutics offers several key principles which informed these two inquiries. the hermeneutic circle is an important concept in philosophical hermeneutics and it refers to the elements of the ontological structure of understanding (gadamer, 1960/1975). philosophical hermeneutics recognizes that understanding is reached within a fusion of horizons. through the collaborative, cyclical, interpretive process, the researcher and the participant(s) reach a fusion of horizons and gain a more profound understanding of the experiences being studied (gadamer, 1976). philosophical hermeneutic principles assist the researchers in bringing the historical context, cultural traditions, and our prior knowledge into the hermeneutic circle because such prior knowledge served as an enabler to understanding, rather a barrier (jacobs, 2014; malpas, 2014; moules, 2002). philosophical hermeneutics is a very open domain of enquiry which cannot be definitively defined or understood (davey, 2017). the task of hermeneutics is to clarify the interpretive conditions in which understanding takes place (gadamer, 1976). the preparation and reflection process was important in setting the stage through a heightened sensitivity to language, tradition, historicity, culture, and our personal subjectivity as the fertile ground upon which conversations and understandings occur (gadamer, 1960/1975; jardine, 2006). understanding our prejudices, the values, experiences or “fore-structures” as researchers, enabled us as researchers to be open to dialogue and new possibilities and avoid closing off dialogue because vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 6 the conversations were used only as confirmation or contradiction of an established position (davey, 2006; gadamer, 1976; malpas, 2014; von zweck et al., 2008). critical hermeneutics attempts to critique the relations of power inherent in tradition, and to expose the institutionalized, reproductive exploitations of persons and classes (apple, 1982; friere, 1970; giroux, 1983; habermas, 1971). critical hermeneutics advocates critical reflection which can neutralize researchers’ experiences through self-reflective methodologies to that of a non-participative, external observer who emancipates interpretations from authority structures (jacobs, 2014). critical hermeneutics allows researchers to become aware of the impact of traditions, culture, ideology, institutional, and organizational structure and attends to the extralinguistic forces that possibly influence the interpretations of meanings. an important concept in critical hermeneutics is the hermeneutic arc, the back and forth movement between the text as a whole and its constituent parts during the interpretative process. as analysis continued through the back and forth movement between explanation and understanding, interrelated and complementary processes, understanding deepens, and initial or naïve understandings are discounted, re-oriented, or accepted and gradually expanded upon, keeping in mind that all phases of analysis are informed by the interpreter’s pre-understanding (ricoeur, 1981; tan, wilson, & olver, 2009). radical hermeneutics uses deconstruction as the primary interpretive tool to disrupt and destabilize expectations rather than determining truth (caputo, 1987; porter & robinson, 2011). radical hermeneutics settles on the indeterminacy of interpretation because it recognizes that interpretive acts cannot escape one’s subjectivity and always privileges one meaning over many possible others where the meaning of experiences emerged through a relation with what it was not (porter & robinson, 2011). case 1: researcher as a cultural insider china has the world’s largest and oldest public education system with deep roots in its cultural and historical traditions. the new national curriculum, which was heavily informed and influenced by western philosophy and epistemology, represented a radical departure from traditional chinese education and brought tremendous ambiguity and dilemma to chinese teachers during the implementation process. the hermeneutic research aimed to reveal the complexity of the new curriculum reform by understanding teachers’ experiences in curriculum reform and the contributing factors to the challenges and struggles during new curriculum implementation (guo, 2010). a combination of philosophical and radical hermeneutics was adopted as the inquiry approach to fulfill the dual methodological tasks of this study – understanding the meaning of curriculum reform and transforming education practice through interpretation. participants were six educators in western china and three conversations were conducted with each participant over a period of four weeks. as a chinese native and a researcher from a canadian university while conducting this study, guo grew up in china and obtained educational and professional experiences in both chinese and canadian contexts. she viewed herself as a “cultural insider” when entering the research field. this positionality affected the research process from different angles. first, as a chinese native speaker, the researcher was able to conduct a literature review in both chinese and vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 7 english. the thorough literature review helped the researcher identify a topic and research design absent in both chinese and english literature as well as to make the research topic and questions significant and relevant to local, national and international research contexts. second, the shared cultural, linguistic, and ethnic identity between the researcher and the participants allowed the researcher to obtain a deeper understanding the social, political and academic contexts of the research settings. they also served as advantages in recruiting participants through culturally responsive strategies (e.g., phone calls, emails, meetings, introduction by a third party) and in establishing trust and rapport with the participants. third, the researcher could minimize the logistical challenges of data collection in china, such as booking flights and hotels, scheduling meetings, and making travel arrangement to research sites. fourth, the researcher could have conversations with the research participants in chinese, which allowed the participants to freely share their experiences and express their insights. the conversations were transcribed in chinese first and fully translated into english. hermeneutic inquiry expects a researcher to understand and interpret not only what is said, but also what is unsaid by the participants. being a chinese native speaker offered the researcher linguistic and cultural advantages to achieve this task during the data collection and interpretation process. such advantages enabled the researcher to understand the power relationships, participants’ social-economic positions, their concerns for confidentiality and anonymity, and the proper procedures needed for obtaining research consent and engaging in ethical research appropriate for the research site. last, an insider’s in-depth understanding of the research context and topic provides the opportunities to facilitate the fusion of the researcher and participants’ horizon on the topic by sharing new perspectives during research conversations. case 2: researcher as a cultural outsider the decision to employ hermeneutics came as a surprise to vanleeuwen who was looking at methodologies which would incorporate context in meaningful ways, work from a cultural outsiders’ perspective and serve as means to decolonize the research process in kenya. hermeneutics fits these criteria and the resultant inquiry was informed by a combination of three strands of hermeneutics. firstly, adopting a critical hermeneutical orientation allowed her to highlight how traditions, culture and institutional structures impact the experiences of participants. as a cultural outsider, her interpretations were different based on her unique preunderstandings, prejudices, foreknowledge, and preparation for research in the field. critical hermeneutics provided opportunity to consider motivation as well as focus on issues such as asymmetries of power relations, gender (in)equality, and the colonial and indigenous contexts of kenya. utilization of ricoeur’s (1981) theory of interpretation offered procedural, interpretive, evaluative, and reflexive rigor in data interpretation. given the significant role played by preunderstanding and positionality as a cultural outsider, plurivocity or multiple interpretations are very probable and expected within critical and philosophical hermeneutics (grondin, 2002; ricoeur, 1981). secondly, the deconstructive process in radical hermeneutics allowed her to consider what is and is not said by participants (caputo, 1987; porter & robinson, 2011). philosophical hermeneutics was the third and principal strand of hermeneutics utilized. the fusion of horizons was the concept that attracted her to hermeneutics, however, it was the process of learning about and communicating the historicity of context that confirmed the suitability of hermeneutics for international cross-cultural research, where sensitivity to context is essential (gadamer, 1976; moules, 2002). hermeneutic methodology acknowledges researcher vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 8 prejudices and uses them in the interpretive process by recognizing relationships and legitimizing the subjectivity of researcher interpretations (mccaffery et al., 2012). the deeper she ventured into hermeneutics as philosophy, theory, and methodology, the more she learned about her own prejudices and biases, thereby enhancing awareness of the cultural and academic filters that could be employed or encountered in the interpretive process. six university students in kenya enrolled in a program that focused on preparing students to work as professionals providing community and human services were purposely selected and invited to participate based on their gender, ethnic/tribal heritage, type of organization and the location of their field placement. data was collected by conducting three conversations with each participant over three weeks, one focus group, and photovoice. the participants were fluently multilingual in three languages, their home or tribal language, kiswahili and english. english was the common language between the researcher and participants and was used for the research conversations and focus group. as a canadian researcher of irish and french canadian heritage, vanleeuwen had travelled to kenya and collaborated for over 4 years with kenyan university faculty through research and international development projects in their shared discipline of family sciences. these prior experiences provided her with a preliminary understanding of the kenyan context and culture. however, she could only work with one official language (english), but not with the second official language (swahili) or the languages used by indigenous ethic groups. she considered herself as a “cultural outsider” when entering the research field due to limited exposure to kenyan culture and language skills. this positionality as an outsider affected the research process in several ways. first, embarking on a hermeneutic inquiry requires that researchers articulate their prejudices and prior understandings and gadamer insists that prior hermeneutical situatedness incorporate cultural and historical background (porter & robinson, 2011). as a cultural outsider, a researcher needs to reflect and explore prejudices and (new) understanding in relation to perceptions and experiences of the unfamiliar cultural context and his/her values associated with local knowledge (gadamer, 1976). reading about the context to prepare for the multitude of cultural differences and articulating these pre-understandings is only the beginning. being prepared to engage with strangeness in the process of trying to make sense of things that fall outside of our experience was also required (smith, 2003). second, in addition to self-location as a researcher, it is essential to consider the purpose and motivations guiding the research (kovach, 2009). as a canadian aware of the exploitation experienced by canada’s first nations communities, the potential for the research to be experienced as a form of re-colonization was a concern. actions were taken throughout the inquiry to decolonize the research for example by articulating awareness and sensitivity to the colonial experience. fourth, using a hermeneutic approach as a cultural outsider makes it easier for a researcher to be attentive to the dynamics around issues such as power, language use, and gender. this positionality provides the researcher rich opportunities to observe cultural factors from a comparative perspective, where possible, and to critically examine their influences on the data collection and analysis processes as a researcher’s ongoing reflexivity. fifth, within the hermeneutic tradition, it is important to remain open and alert so that the layers of complexities and additional questions can be revealed through conversations, however, accents and local differences in language usage can interfere with this vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 9 process. a cultural outsider needs to adopt active listening strategies and clarify ambiguous expressions during conversations with participants. careful re-listening is required during the process of data analysis and interpretation to understand the meanings generated from what is said and unsaid. finally, thorough preparation for field work in international settings is vitally important for a researcher as a cultural outsider to make data collection processes smooth and productive. preparing to conduct international hermeneutic inquiry there are many key issues that researchers need to examine when planning to conduct an international hermeneutic inquiry. in this section, we examine aspects of decolonizing research knowledge, pragmatic and logistical factors, utilizing a critical friend, and ethical issues. while these considerations are not exclusive to international research, these are considerations that we found to be particularly helpful to keep in mind. decolonizing research knowledge conducting research in international settings is often a complex process looking at difficult questions and issues with different theoretical lenses (e.g., anti-colonial, liberatory, feminist) and perspectives rooted in indigenous cultures, histories and heritage (dei, 2012). a consistent thread in this discourse is the focus on asserting humanity in light of terribly dehumanizing imperatives of colonialism related to language, social and cultural relations, and the economy (e.g., smith, 1999; wa thiong’o, 1981). the strength of anti-colonialism rests in how it examines systems of oppression structured along lines of difference (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, [dis]ability, language, religion, ethnicity) repositioning the notion of agency and resistance into the heart of the framework to give voice to the oppressed and serve as a tool for accountability for the colonizer (dei & asgharzadeh, 2001; simmons & dei, 2012). this gives rise to empowerment, the underlying purpose for decolonizing research, by recognizing the processes of knowledge production, how it was or is legitimized, and prioritizing research benefits to indigenous communities (beeman-cadwallader, quigley, & yazzie-mintz, 2011). as scholars, researchers and knowledge producers, there is need to move beyond simply challenging epistemological imperialism to rooting our practices in contexts which affirm the languages, perspectives, social values, and worldviews of our research participants (dei, 2012). in choosing to conduct international hermeneutic research in countries with a colonial history, concerns related to re-colonization and knowledge exploitation need to be explicitly addressed (beeman-cadwallader et al., 2011; ndimande, 2012). this can be accomplished when researchers read broadly and deeply on issues associated with the experience of colonialism and colonial residue, articulate an appropriate level of sensitivity to the colonial experience, ensure robust cultural competence, and develop a strong awareness of the key issues and the factors which have and continue to influence the life experiences of participants. these decolonizing actions are consistent with the hermeneutic practice of articulating foreknowledge and prejudices. decolonization of research is a dynamic, evolving process and recognizing the potential for international research to be viewed as exploitative, careful consideration should be given to vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 10 models for the conduct of culturally appropriate research. the work of indigenous and nonindigenous scholars should inform the research design (kovach, 2009; smith, 1999). studies by non-indigenous researchers who have co-researched with indigenous researchers are valuable information sources on research practices to avoid re-colonization effects (fleet & kitson, 2013; hodge & lester, 2006; smithers graeme, 2013; smithers graeme & mandawe, 2017; stelmach, 2009). researchers are advised to take the time needed to establish authentic relationships and promote collaboration during all phases of study by spending time in the setting, learning the language, and making findings available to participants (beeman-cadwallader et al., 2011). this promotes phronesis, the habit of attentiveness and understanding of life as it is lived. deliberations such as these were important to gadamer (1960/1975) and are not only effective strategies for decolonizing research; they are also vital aspects of hermeneutic practice. differences in philosophical, theoretical and practical perspectives between indigenous and western contexts often cause confusion and frustrations in research. this tension can be alleviated by having a more critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, theories, values, and methods that inform decolonized research practices, combined with a deep and rich understanding of the specific local context required within hermeneutic tradition, which can support understanding from an indigenous perspective (moules et al., 2015; ndimande, 2012). hermeneutic inquiry, where knowledge is co-constructed with research participants through the fusion of horizons within the hermeneutic circle/spiral (gadamer, 1960/1995; moules, 2002; porter & robinson, 2011), requires a researcher to be aware of and sensitive to such differences. for graduate students who are cultural outsiders, an important decolonizing action that can be considered is the purposeful selection of a supervisory committee with expertise on the international context. the knowledge, skills, and experience that committee members bring to the table can be a very helpful counterbalance to a graduate student’s limited international research experience. their vigilant oversight as academic advisors can help ensure the cultural competence of the research. pragmatic and logistical factors international research requires thoughtful preparation and careful attention to pragmatic and logistical issues. determining the amount of time to dedicate to field work requires meticulous attention to all the required research tasks. a comprehensive plan can ensure that appropriate time and resources are allocated to essential tasks and all processes are included. special consideration may need to be given to situations where the researcher is unknown to the participants with time and effort dedicated to establishing relationships and developing rapport. in circumstances where the researcher does not speak the local language, planning to work with a translator may be a consideration. given the significant role language plays in hermeneutic research, the benefits would need to be carefully weighed against the challenges and limitations that this would place on the data analysis and interpretation processes. external factors can also influence the timing of a research visit, thus staying abreast of current events where the research is to be conducted is important. as experienced researchers know, field work rarely proceeds exactly as planned, so it is prudent to factor in a healthy percentage of extra time. however, this comes with a cost, as extending field work means additional expenses vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 11 for travel and accommodation. while it is important to remain focused on the goal of data collection, prepare to be flexible when carefully laid plans come apart, and be resourceful and open to inventive solutions when issues arise. for example, we have had to deal with extended electrical power brownouts or outages, unfamiliar civic or religious holidays, being sensitive to gender proprieties for one-on-one conversations or interviews when participants are of the opposite gender, and very different cultural and administrative expectations related to class attendance at the beginning of a semester (e.g., students do not attend class until their tuition fees are paid in full, which can take a period of weeks). spending extensive time on field work requires adequate resources. in addition to funds, this can be a time-consuming undertaking. having a trusted local contact person to work with in making arrangements can be a huge benefit, such as a liaison for recruiting participants or securing a place for the research conversations or helping to arrange researcher accommodations for field work. developing a comprehensive budget can ensure that essential expenses are included. when expenses for entry visas, research permits, immunizations or medications, such as antimalarials, and medical and travel insurance premiums are added to those for international travel, accommodation, food, local transport and possibly interpreter/translation services, the final tally is not insignificant. for some, these expenses are a prohibitive barrier to conducting international research. in an era when research funding is limited, funders may question or decide not to fund a project that either appears to have unrealistic expenses or an inadequate budget. utilizing a critical friend for international researchers, it can be very helpful to have a “critical friend” from the research site to provide local support at different points in the research process (costa & kallick, 1993). this role is separate from, but complementary to, academic supervision provided by supervisors and committee members of graduate students (appleton, 2011). engaging one or more critical friends in an international research inquiry can serve as a mechanism to strengthen awareness and sensitivity to various contextual and historical factors which shape hermeneutic interpretation and maintain researcher integrity in particular with regard to monocultural interpretation (appleton, 2011; baskerville & goldblatt, 2009). a critical friend can be invited for several purposes. first, she or he may help the researcher facilitate local logistical arrangements, provide support during the ethical review or assist with participant recruitment. second, for a researcher as cultural outsider, a critical friend may serve as a cultural guide, a translator if participants use words or phrases in an ethnic language, or a note taker if focus groups are used. a critical friend who is familiar with the research topic and context can ask thoughtful, provocative, and challenging questions about the research design; engage in conversations that clarify the researcher’s perspectives during data collection; provide critique to data interpretation; and participate in knowledge dissemination and translation in international settings. for international researchers, these purposeful discussions and communications with a critical friend could be conducted through e-mail, mail, google chat, skype, and other forms of electronic communications (appleton, 2011; costa & kallick, 1993). finally, in acknowledgement of the myriad challenges that come from carefully studying and becoming familiar with the topic, a critical friend can “commiserate and console and clarify” (jardine, 2016, p. 1). vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 12 ethical considerations depending on the context of the inquiry to be undertaken and the participants’ situation, international researchers need to be clear if additional ethic reviews are needed. for example, the school boards involved in the study conducted in western china do not have policy and procedures in place for research; the researcher only needed to have the research plan reviewed and approved by the canadian university where the she initiated the study. however, in the context of the study in kenya, the researcher had to apply for a government research permit and request research affiliation with a research institution or local community organization in kenya. as the result, extra time was planned and allocated to have these additional reviews approved before data collection. given the volume of data that can be generated in hermeneutic research and the distances involved for field work, data organization is key since researchers cannot easily return to the field if they discover that something is missing, or lost and not recoverable. all documents should be digitalized to facilitate transfer of documents to and from the international location. plan to have all raw digital data (photos or recordings) backed up regularly and stored in a secure location away from the primary work location. early in the planning stages of the inquiry, it is prudent to develop plans to meet institutional requirements for protecting research data and carefully investigate whether there are any legal restrictions on transnational or international data collection in the country to avoid problems later. data collection methods data collection methods in hermeneutic inquiry cannot be simply formalized into a series of technical procedures; a variety of modes of inquiry or activities can be utilized to conduct hermeneutic inquiry. in this section, we introduce methods we have adopted to understand and interpret the meaning of human experiences. these methods of conversation, photovoice, focus group discussions, and reflective journals and field notes are consistent with kinsella’s (2006) description of hermeneutic inquiries, reveal the cross-cultural competence of the researcher, and can help avoid re-colonization of participants. conversation characterized as a dialectic dialogue process of question and answer, giving and taking, talking at cross-purposes, seeing each other’s point through working out the common meaning, conversation has long been recognized as a research mode for collecting, analyzing and making meaning of data (carson, 1986; feldman, 1999; gadamer, 1960/1975; guo, 2010). conversation allows the researcher and participants to share knowledge, develop deeper understanding of the topic, and help each other make meaning of the topic under discussion (feldman, 1999; guo, 2010). the dialogic nature of hermeneutics gives researchers the ability to ask questions about complex human situations that are centred in language and the historical, highlighting the critical importance of context (moules et al., 2015). as hermeneutics ventures deeply into the contextual world of research participants, researchers are called to consider not only what is said, but also vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 13 what is silenced or not said (grondin, 1995, cited in moules et al., 2015). utilization of a conversational method is congruent with hermeneutics as a philosophical orientation, but also within an indigenous worldview (kovach, 2010). privileging participants’ voices using conversation can affirm and reinforce positive cultural identities of participants (ndimande, 2012). while serving as an efficient data collection method, conversation is also an oral inquiry and horizon-expanding process in hermeneutic inquiry. conversations with participants, as opposed to highly structured interviews, create spaces for thoughtful reflection and expanded horizons on the experiences being studied (carson, 1986; guo, 2010). seeking to advance understanding of a topic through a discovery of other people’s standpoints and horizon is the nature of hermeneutic conversations. this requires the researcher and the participants to pay attention to the different perspectives or experiences the “other” has to share in order to achieve a fusion of horizons. therefore, strong cross-cultural competence is a prerequisite for conducting hermeneutic research in international settings and is important to ensure successful and productive research conversations. we found that using culturally appropriate greetings were useful tactics for building rapport with participants and creating an atmosphere for conversations to flourish. in the kenyan study, this involved standing, shaking hands, and sharing personal stories or experiences. due to the inherent differences between oral and written means of discourse, particularly in cross-cultural or international situations where interviews may be facilitated through the work of a translator, a pilot process run can be most helpful to identify issues before beginning data collection conversations (kvale & brinkmann, 2009). when conducting hermeneutic conversations, researchers can share their experiences related to the research topic or bring perspectives contradictory to participants’ expressions to achieve the fusion of horizon (guo, 2010). in addition, thoughtful choices of words to converse with participants can help keep the research conversation genuine and maintain inclusive, thoughtful, and respectful relationships with participants. research conversations in international settings are often more complex and situational than what was planned in research design phases, therefore, researchers are expected to appreciate the essential difficulty of conducting hermeneutic conversations in cross-cultural settings. participants may relate to the in-depth conversation as a structured interview, therefore, researchers need to intentionally preserve openness during the conversation and be prepared to face the challenges of asking questions of a personal nature to direct the inquiry deeper and re-focus the conversation related to the research topic when they go beyond research boundaries and social conventions (baglin & rugg, 2010; guo, 2010; moules, field, mccaffrey, & laing, 2014; paterson & higgs 2005; von zweck et al., 2008). when researchers meet multiple times with participants, it is helpful to prepare a summary following each conversation to encourage reflection, mutual questioning and the generation of additional questions to clarify the unfolding stories for each participant, a process which often results in richer data and new understandings of the participants’ experience (carson, 1986). photovoice photos and video can be used as a supplementary data collection method for participants to share contextual information, helping direct the conversations to critical, meaningful objects, moments and experiences. with the availability of cell phones worldwide, use of photovoice is a more vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 14 viable option for international researchers, especially if the research population is younger and located in urban areas with good cell phone connections. photos can reinforce memories from the setting and are useful where researchers do not need to capture elements of interactions. video may also be used in situations where preserving an interaction is important. regardless, attention needs to be given to the cultural appropriateness of data collection using photos or video. in addition, researchers need to be aware of potential ethical concerns with photos or video. this is a concern in international research where ethics protocols may be different, less developed or not exist at all in some locations. the photovoice process involves the selection of, and talking about, a small number of photos which the participant believes are most significant, using a series of questions based on the showed protocol to assist in taking a critical view of the stories portrayed through their photos (wang & burris 1997; wang, 1999). conversation flowing from these photos can serve as a means of engagement, empowerment, and a bridge to strengthen rapport, helping the participants and researcher get to know each other as they delve deeper into their inquiries (moules et al., 2015). this method of engaging with participants provides a visual stimulus which can lead to new questions that complement or diverge from those arising solely from the conversation. this process can lead to more fusions of horizon between researcher and participant and result in deeper understanding. for example, in the kenyan study, participants shared photos from their placement activities in a camp for internally displaced persons, a women’s group meeting in a rural community, and faith-based service organization in an urban slum. these images allowed the researcher and participant to attend to the community context in ways that would not have been possible without the photos. vivid images such as these can enhance hermeneutic writing, helping researchers reveal the diverse layers of the topic. when utilizing this method, information with basic photography tips can be provided during the recruitment process to review possible ethical concerns and identify ways to minimize possible risks to participants themselves or those in the photo when taking pictures for the research project. wang (1999) described how issues such as social class, access to power, and education have the potential to increase the sense of vulnerability of individuals that participants may wish to photograph. on the other hand, when participants are given control over what they photograph and which aspects of the photo they want to discuss or highlight in their conversations with researchers, this can be an empowering experience (o. bryanton, personal communication, may 24, 2017). an information sheet can also provide ideas of alternative ways to represent or portray their experience. if the researcher is providing the cameras, then this expense and funds for participant training needs to be built into the overall budget. focus group discussions focus groups may be used to establish relationships between the participants and the researcher, an option for international researchers who are looking for opportunities to engage with small groups of participants that they may have only recently met (moules et al., 2015). while some hermeneutic inquiries use conversational interviews with family members as a group, very few appear to take advantage of the benefits of a focus group to highlight the voices of participants (e.g., laing & moules, 2013). a focus group may generate deeper and richer data through a discussion of the topic between participants, allowing for additional fusions of horizons and vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 15 interpretations. for example, in the kenyan study, the participants were very keen to share and discuss their experiences of community-based learning with each other. this focus group was their first opportunity for peer sharing. listening to, and observing, the interactions among and between the individual participants was insightful for the researcher. opportunities for participants to reflect on and discuss their shared or unique aspects of their experience can potentially allow participants and researcher to reach a new fusion of horizons. in addition, researchers who are positioned as cultural outsiders may gain insights from focus group discussions where participants might only feel insiders would understand and would simply not think to talk about with an outsider. on the practical side, thought should be given to who will facilitate the focus group discussion, an issue for researchers who are cultural or linguistic outsiders. reflective journals and field notes a critical aspect of hermeneutic work is the reflexivity of the researcher engaged in their own reflective writing regarding the research process, personal learnings, or confusions as part of a personal process of turning around the topic (moules et al., 2015). a self-reflective grasp of the hermeneutic structure of the lived meaning of time is a difficult and often laborious task, involving a process of reflectively appropriating, clarifying, and making explicit the aspects of meaning of the experience (van manen, 2014). for international hermeneutic inquiries, a considerable amount of time needs to be dedicated to writing researcher’s reflective journals or field notes to document the myriad of background elements associated with the international context for the research. this is in addition to the typical notes, reflections, and observations from the conversations, questions that emerge from listening to recorded conversations, or points that come up during the focus group discussion. these include additional information such as vocal intonations and gestures of participants, notes related to the meeting context, or reflections and notes from reading or re-reading data. data interpretation and writing hermeneutic analysis encompasses more than the spoken words of the participants, and can include speaking, listening, sharing, questioning, and reflecting by the participants and researcher as they engage in a conversation about what their experience means to them. consequently, thorough preparation for field work and strong cross-cultural competence is essential. data analysis in hermeneutic inquiry starts as soon as data collection begins. we examine here issues related to the transcription of conversations, interpretation of data, and writing hermeneutically in an international context. transcription of conversations in hermeneutic research, decisions regarding the transcription process should be carefully documented in a researcher’s log to ensure consistency. assuring the accuracy and validity of transcripts is critical since the transcripts are not simply copies of the original conversation; they are interpretive and decontextualized (kvale, 1996). transcriber reliability and the interpretational character of transcription needs to be considered along with the layers of context that are documented in the transcribing process around features such as pauses, repetitions, and vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 16 tone of voice to interpret what is said or unsaid particularly in international research (kvale & brinkmann, 2009). participants at a distance could be offered the opportunity to discuss the transcript or summary via phone or skype instead of more traditional member check processes to ensure accuracy and clarity (kvale & brinkmann, 2009). there are those, however, that do not see a fit of any form of member checking with hermeneutics (see for e.g., moules et al., 2015). interpretation interpretation of the meaning of experiences occurs through a precise understanding of the social, cultural, and historical context (gadamer, 1960/1975). a systematic process of listening to conversations along with reading and re-reading conversation transcripts, summaries, field notes, and the researcher’s reflective journal helps to identify emergent themes from the data and establish naïve understanding of both the whole and parts. this initial phase in working toward a hermeneutic understanding of participants’ experiences is followed by writing about the context for each participant prior to presenting the meaning and understanding of their experience by situating his/her horizon. throughout the interpretative process, researchers need to take time to allow all the histories and voices to reveal themselves and have their say (jardine, graham, clifford, & friesen, 2002). it would be prudent for researchers to periodically revisit preparatory notes and readings to ensure that they remain sensitive to the international context of their research. as international researchers move further into data interpretation, deeper layers of understanding will be uncovered and they should remain vigilant to ensure that they remain conscious of the hermeneutical situation/position along with the cultural and historical context (gadamer, 1960/1975). listening to the recordings along with reflective writing while still in the field can help form (naïve) interpretations and uncover additional questions that need to be asked. as data analysis and interpretation continues, researchers should clearly acknowledge and remain open and sensitive to the various ways that their preunderstanding has and continues to influence their interpretations. writing hermeneutically in hermeneutic research, a researcher is a seeker of meaning. the purpose of hermeneutic inquiry is not to provide “information” or “solutions” in a technical sense, but to enhance our perspectives and provide pathic forms of understanding that are situational, relational, and enactive (van manen, 2014). therefore, hermeneutic writing reflects how philosophical and methodological perspectives are practiced in research and the process of presenting and making sense of human experiences. in other words, writing hermeneutically is not simply writing up conclusions or preparing a report at the end of inquiry, it is an engaging process with human existence in a linguistic form (gadamer, 2006). a hermeneutic writer does not present the reader with a conclusive argument or with a determinate set of ideas, essences, or insights. instead, he or she orientates the reader reflectively to participants’ experiences in recognizable form. hermeneutic research is a philosophical project, therefore, its writing needs to reflect the philosophical reflection on the world and the experiences being studied (van manen, 2006). thoughtful hermeneutic writing presents something familiar into profoundly unfamiliar and vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 7 17 touches the readers by the epiphany effect of its reflective engagement with prior experiences. the hermeneutic text brings readers in touch with the familiar experiences, resonates with the reflective being, and changes their understanding of the being through gaining new meanings from the text and experiences. hermeneutic inquiry-writing reflects the idea that no text is ever perfect, no interpretation is ever complete, no explication of meaning is ever final, and no insight is beyond challenge (moules et al., 2015; van manen & adams, 2010). during the writing process, a hermeneutic writer is situated in a solitary sphere and is profoundly affected by the infinite uncertainty and possibility presented in the text. the researcher steps back from the text to encounter the fundamental questions behind the naked human experiences, recognizing the limitation of human understanding, without completely stepping out of his or her social, historical, biographic being. in writing international hermeneutic research, a researcher considers the integration of the fundamental questions addressed in the study, the philosophical and interpretive traditions of hermeneutics, the linguistic and cultural differences as interpretive conditions and analysis of the data, and a deepened understanding of meanings and human experiences from comparative perspectives. a hermeneutic writer also moves through the hermeneutic circle to consider a particular topic in both international and local contexts. this is a challenging process, but one that supports broader interpretations through different lenses. our own research writing experiences confirm that it is sometimes challenging to find the indigenous terms or words that have equivalent english expressions or vice versa. therefore, it is always helpful for a researcher to adopt key indigenous words or phrases to achieve accurate interpretation. this writing process not only facilitates transnational conversations on the topic, but also allows the researcher to move in and out of the data and reflect the possibilities and limitations language creates in understanding and interpreting the meanings. conclusions as an interpretive methodology, hermeneutics allows an international researcher to gain deeper understanding and new perspectives on human experiences through interpreting text and highlighting the cultural, historical, philosophical, and linguistic characteristics of the research setting. therefore, it appeals to researchers in fields such as education, clinical psychology, criminology, legal studies, family sciences, nursing, and medicine. however, the unique philosophical legacy embedded in hermeneutics and the distinctive processes of interpretive writing combined with the challenges inherent with working in an international setting need to be faced head on by researchers who are interested in conducting hermeneutic inquiry in international settings. based on our experiences with two hermeneutic studies conducted in kenya and china, we present these ideas as signposts to guide hermeneutic inquiry, particularly for graduate students who are traversing the intersection of research design and international context. we examined philosophical, methodological, practical, and ethical issues a researcher needs to consider when designing and implementing a hermeneutic study in international settings. these considerations are not only practical for following hermeneutic traditions in international research, but also crucial for decolonizing research and knowledge through transnational conversations and collaborations. vanleeuwen et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 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(1999). photovoice: a participatory action research strategy applied to women’s health. journal of women’s health, 8(2), 185–192. corresponding author: emily p. williams university of calgary werklund school of education email: emily.williams@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 22, 2018 the author(s) 2018 not quite this and not quite that: anorexia nervosa, counselling psychology, and hermeneutic inquiry in a tapestry of ambiguity emily p. williams, shelly russell-mayhew, nancy j. moules, & gina dimitropoulos abstract as a group of researchers exploring how to best understand the complex topic of families discovering their loved one has anorexia nervosa (an), we found that we had to weave ambiguity into our design. embracing ambiguity allowed us to create a tapestry that acknowledges the ambiguity of an, counselling psychology (and other helping professions), and hermeneutic inquiry. in fact, the “not quite this and not quite that” features of these three constructs emerged as the thread that holds the inquiry together. we review the topic of an through a lens of ambiguity. further, we position both the field of counselling psychology and the research method of hermeneutic inquiry as compatible frameworks in the study of an, in both practice and research. by acknowledging, and at times even embracing, ambiguity, we respect the complexity of the situation we are studying. keywords ambiguity, anorexia nervosa, hermeneutic inquiry, counselling psychology discovery is an objective of research and practice. this is also true of us; as authors, we are in the process of discovery. we seek to reveal, unveil, un-conceal a topic that is unknown, making discovery challenging and ambiguous. central to any process of discovery is the concept of aletheia, a greek term describing some act of uncovering and opening pieces of understanding, at the expense of covering and closing others (moules, 2002). the particulars of a topic are both williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 2 exposed and hidden from us at the same time. while we pursue the truth, we are always one step behind, never able to capture the whole essence in our understanding. the term aletheia has multiple meanings. the first means to open, or to find a portal of understanding (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). in terms of discovery, we must look for questions that will open our understanding or opportunity to learn about the topic in its complexity. second, aletheia contains the word lethe, referring to the mythical river of hades that was said to cause forgetfulness when crossed (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). aletheia is the opposite of forgetting, thus, while discovering, we must remember what has been forgotten. the third understanding of aletheia comes from the opposite of the word lethal; it is about bringing to life what was taken for granted, what was dead, or what was assumed about the topic (moules et al., 2015). evidently, aletheia captures an ambivalence about what we have to forfeit in order to see something else; we must make a wager with what we are willing to give up in order to better understand or discover. in this paper, we offer the argument that ambiguity is not something to be feared or fixed, but instead allows researchers and practitioners, particularly those specializing in the treatment of anorexia nervosa (an), to be as effective as possible. our topic of inquiry, an examination of the experience of families discovering that their child has an, does not sit comfortably in one place. it does not have a permanent home in prevention, treatment, psycho-education, or stigma management; nor does it have a place with any single member of the family. moreover, the discipline of psychology that we (first and second author) are from is commonly mistaken for something that it is not. the nature of counselling psychology is not recognized by many and is still in some ways (and maybe always) in development. in addition to the complexity of these factors, the research approach we will utilize is arguably difficult and abstract; hermeneutic inquiry attends to history, interrelatedness, dialogue, language, and the possibility that we will be forever changed from understanding our topic, while at the same time noting that our understanding can never be complete (gadamer, 2013). as we explored a research topic that involved an, counselling psychology, and hermeneutic inquiry, we came to understand that we needed first to address the concept of ambiguity to better prepare for our research. the solution to ambiguity is to not solve it. ambiguity is a part of the process of research and of being a practitioner, allowing us to better understand the topic or the person in front of us. this is especially true when ambiguity is deeply ingrained in our topic, field, and research method. by welcoming ambiguity into research and practice, we remain open to possibilities and differences and are able to attend to the complexities of the phenomenon. ambiguity ambiguity refers to understanding a concept, word, or expression in two or more ways (merriam-webster, n.d.). ever changing, shifting, unknowing, wavering, ambiguity refers to a concept with more than one meaning, and more than one interpretation. first used in the 1500s, the latin term ambiguus coming from the term ambigere meaning “to dispute about, contend, debate” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.), is made up of the prefix ambi meaning “both” or undecided and agere meaning "to drive" (merriam-webster, n.d.). uncertainty, doubt, and hesitation are sewn together, closely stitched to the concept of ambiguity, all pointing to the tendency to wander, waver, and change. ambiguous concepts are not of poorer quality nor better williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 3 than concepts that have known truths or are easy to decipher, but rather lend themselves well to interpretation through multiple lenses, perspectives, and fields of inquiry. throughout the paper, we argue that ambiguity does not need to be solved. ambiguity might have something to teach us; we can grow in our understanding and be changed by the process of creating space for ambiguity. instead of running from, fighting against, or trying to solve ambiguity, we must welcome multiplicity and constant change as concepts that will lead to better understanding. first, we will describe an and the mystery and inconsistency that surrounds the disclosure, recognition, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery processes. it is our intention that, by synthesizing the literature, we illustrate the ambiguity and ambivalence inherent for individuals and families affected. further, we will position our research question: how might we understand the experiences of parents who have discovered they have a child living with anorexia nervosa? (research question of first author’s doctoral dissertation) as not having a home in one field or another; leaving us as researchers wondering how to proceed in grey areas rather than having a black and white forward moving path. thus, as a research team preparing to embark on a novel, discovery mission, we needed to create space for the complexities and richness of experiences inherent within the topic before collecting data. this complexity and richness can be likened to a tightly woven tapestry, one made up of many strings of different understandings, experiences, perspectives, biases – essentially, a tapestry honouring ambiguity. next, a discussion about counselling psychology within a canadian context is provided. within this discussion, the multiple interpretations of what this profession is and what counselling psychologists actually do are emphasized. last, hermeneutic inquiry is introduced and described as a method that is not quite this, nor that, but rather a method that is comfortable working with topics that are in the inbetween. further, since understanding the history and tradition of a phenomenon is fundamental to hermeneutic inquiry, throughout the paper brief histories of topics will be offered. overall, we seek to weave the string of ambiguity throughout each section and also call attention to the spaces in between the stitches, illustrating and sewing together the ambiguity and unknown in various fields. together, this stitch work contributes to the larger tapestry, acknowledging ambiguity as a resource for research and practice. by highlighting the ambiguous thread throughout, we are creating space for the ambiguity, creating space for the uncertainty inherent in all areas. we do so not to suggest we solve this, but rather accept all areas as not quite this and not quite that and allow ourselves to explore and understand the uncertainty rather than avoid it. evidently, our research process is a discovery, the same way that the topic is discovered. ambiguity and anorexia nervosa the overall experience of having an is marked with nuances, nebulosity, and ambivalence (ryan & callaghan, 2014; williams & reid, 2010). weaving in and out of grey areas is cause for concern for many practitioners providing treatment to individuals with an (adlam, 2015; george, thornton, touyz, waller, & beumont, 2004) and is troublesome for those in support and caregiver roles, including family members and friends (craigie, hope, tan, stewart, & mcmillan, 2013; voriadaki, simic, espie, & eisler, 2015). evidently, ambiguity is not solely felt by the individual with an, but also takes up space in the lives of professional helpers, care givers, and families. the ambiguous nature of an will be illustrated through a discussion of a) the history of an; b) the ambivalence often reported towards an; c) when the disorder is williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 4 somehow discovered; d) the complicated recognition process, and e) the inconsistent outcomes for those with an. at all points throughout the course of an, ambiguity is not far away, it is not separate from the experience but rather a part of it. history of anorexia: the hysterical female we begin with a brief history of an, the first eating syndrome to be described by physicians in the 1870s (gull, 1874; lasèque, 1873). broken down, the prefix an translates to “without” and orexis means “appetite,” therefore in full translating into “lack of appetite” (merriam-webster, n.d.). the history of the conceptualization of an is full of fascination and allure specific to the era, adding obscurity to the term’s construction by medical professionals of the last several centuries. researchers examining the archives of hospitals and mental asylums from the 16th to 19th centuries established notable accounts of fasting women and varied explanations of the disorder (habermas, 2015; parry-jones, 1985). the varied conceptualizations seem to be due to nationality and era. french physician, lasègue, introduced the term anorexie hystérique in 1873, then one year later the term anorexia nervosa was coined by british physician, gull, in 1874 (habermas, 2015). differences in conceptualizations stemmed from the french tradition of paying greater attention to psychological aspects of the condition, whereas british traditions emphasized the physical and behavioural features (habermas, 2015). french conceptualization. french physician, lasègue described the condition in terms of hysteria, noting that his female patients had afflictions of the mind, suffering from “some emotion which she avows or conceals” (1873/1997, p. 493). lasègue described the syndrome eventually becoming the sole object of preoccupation and portrayed his patients with an as hysterical: what dominates in the mental condition of the hysterical patient is, above all, the state of quietude-i might almost say a condition of contentment truly pathological. not only does she not sigh for recovery, but she is not ill-pleased with her condition, notwithstanding all the unpleasantness it is attended with. in comparing this satisfied assurance to the obstinacy of the insane, i do not think i am going too far. (p. 495) british conceptualization. in 1874 (adapted and reprinted in 1997), gull published a piece on a peculiar condition characterized by extreme emaciation, which he referred to a disease that occurred mostly in young females. gull used phrases such as “complete anorexia for animal food, and almost complete anorexia for everything else” (p. 498) in his description of a former patient. in addition to describing his patients’ physical states in his case studies, gull made bold remarks regarding the treatment and lack of consideration of the patient’s desires in her treatment. he made clear the dangers of continued starvation and noted that “the inclination of the patient must be in no way consulted” (p. 500). further, gull spoke to the destructive mental states of the women he treated, referring to young females being “specifically obnoxious to mental perversity” (p. 501) and females with this syndrome not being of sound mind to make their own choices about caloric consumption. williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 5 since the time of these physicians’ early writings of an, others have gone beyond descriptions of lack of appetite and hysteria by describing distinctive features such as addiction to extreme thinness, referred to as a “drive towards emaciation” (selvini palazzoli, 1963/1974), and relentless pursuits of thinness (bruch, 1965). clearly, the evolution of these descriptors throughout the 19th and 20th century point to how an has been disputed throughout history, and how many of these disputes continue in present among medical and mental health professionals. our understanding of an has evolved over time. as more is understood about the development and trajectory of an, the conceptualization will be modified to meet the time period and be congruent with modern practices and theory. regardless of this changing and ambiguous identification process for what constitutes an, questions still remain: what happens next for someone with an? how do they experience an? ambivalence to one’s experiences of anorexia nervosa not only is the history of an marked with contestation, but so is the experience of living with the disorder including one’s will to recover and autonomous motivations regarding an (nordbø, espeset, gulliksen, skårderud, geller, & holte, 2012). anorexia nervosa is considered to involve greater ambiguity and ambivalence compared to other eating disorders (e.g., bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder), and individuals with an tend to appreciate their symptoms differently than other groups experiencing mental illness (nordbø, espeset, gulliksen, skårderud, & holte, 2006). ego-syntonicity, referring to states, thoughts, behaviours, or feelings that are congruent with one’s self-concept, and ambivalence are central features of an (marzola, abbate-daga, gramaglia, amianto, & fassino, 2015). according to qualitative inquiries, some individuals have little desire to make changes, as an is a source of pride and endurance providing a sense of achievement and self-confidence (nordbø et al., 2006; robinson, kukucska, guidetti, & leavey, 2015). further, researchers have illustrated how individuals with an often depict their an as providing them with a sense of security and stability, a way to avoid negative experiences, and as a way of obtaining a sense of power and inner sense of mastery and strength (nordbø et al., 2006). at the same time, there are also individuals who are ambivalent about the disorder, not sure whether the an controls them or whether they are in control of it, and irresolute if they wish to recover or maintain it (colton & pistrang, 2004; reid, burr, williams, & hammersley, 2008; williams & reid, 2010). some individuals with an regard their symptoms as a set of behaviours that are meaningful and positive in their lives (nordbø et al., 2006), whereas others are ambivalent, only at times wishing to rid themselves of their restrictive eating behaviours and/or weight loss routines and resume the life they once lived (williams & reid, 2010). much like the ambivalence regarding one’s feelings toward their an, individuals also vary in how they wish to proceed in the course of their experience with an. some may decide to disclose and ask for help, whereas others might not. evidently, the experience of an is individual and widely varied and, as such, an ambiguous quality emerges. disclosure of anorexia nervosa intentional and planned disclosure is the process of letting one’s self be known to others (corrigan & rao, 2012). individuals with an may intentionally come forward, verbally sharing information about their eating and weight related behaviours. however, it is also possible that williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 6 disclosures happen against the will of the person with an (i.e., those who are caught purging). being caught is not the same as making a willful decision to share intimate details with others. conversely, people close to the person with an may begin to suspect ill health and perhaps disordered eating when the size of an individual’s body begins to unquestionably decrease or uncharacteristic eating and exercise habits are exhibited. individuals communicating online via websites specifically created for those with eating disorders have reported feeling “too far gone” to continue concealing their illness from others (williams, russell-mayhew, & ireland, in press). this account supports a third type of disclosure, one that is neither intentional nor accidental, but rather an act of defeat, like one has lost his or her power over the eating disorder. individuals struggling with an are often hesitant to disclose they have a problem (becker et al., 1999). researchers have suggested that disclosing one has an eating disorder is a gateway for receiving professional help (gilbert et al., 2012), however, it is more complex since the process of disclosure is characterized by ambiguity, for all parties involved. disclosure unfolds over time (williams et al., in press), opening up the possibility that it can resemble an entirely unique experience for everyone who discloses an, and for everyone who is on the receiving end of that disclosure. hence, perhaps a better term for this disclosure process is discovery, meaning to “obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time” (merriam-webster, n.d.). discover was first used in the 1300s and meant to “divulge, reveal, disclose” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). from the old french term descovrir meaning to “uncover, unroof, unveil, reveal, betray,” and from the late latin discooperire, dismeaning “opposite of” and -cooperire meaning “to cover up,” the term conveys an undertone of betrayal or malicious exposure. in the 1550s, discoverer originally meant “informant” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.), thus the etymology of the word maps well to the experience of one’s an being discovered by others, whether this was intentional or not. ambiguity of an recognition after a discovery, sometimes a long, complicated, and ambiguous process of recognition and assessment follows. factors contributing to this process include differentiating between other medical conditions and symptoms mimicking malnourishment (schwarz, ponder, & feller, 2009), late-onset eating disorders (santonastaso, camporese, caregaro, & favaro, 2008), and atypical cases (american psychiatric association, 2013; forney, brown, holland-carter, kennedy, & keel, 2017). recognition can be made challenging and go unnoticed for a number of reasons including unintentional denial, comprised of the individual with an having impaired self-awareness and reality distortions (vandereycken & van humbeeck, 2008). there may also be deliberate denial about symptoms and minimization that anything is wrong, which may occur as an expression of avoidance and fear of the consequences (gray, murray, & eddy, 2015; vandereycken & van humbeeck, 2008). some practitioners go as far as to say that those with an do not wish to be diagnosed or have their an be recognized, because they do not wish to be treated (adlam, 2015; cooper, 2005; halmi, 2005). based on physicality alone, the prototypic individual with an presents as malnourished and emaciated (gray et al., 2015), yet just because there is a prototypic patient does not make the recognition of an any easier as there can be multiple reasons for weight loss. also adding to the ambiguous nature of recognition or assessment is that the behaviours and thoughts of someone with an fall along the same spectrum williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 7 of behaviours and thoughts that the majority of western females have, that is a preoccupation with shape and weight (tantleff-dunn, barnes, & larose, 2011). various practitioners including brown and jasper (1993), neumark-sztainer, levine, paxton, smolak, piran, and wertheim (2006), russell-mayhew (2007), and sundgot‐borgen and torstveit, (2010) have argued for a continuum of weight and body preoccupation. brown and jasper (1993) proposed that it was not accurate to stigmatize an as “individual pathologies or diseases, at the same time we approve, even praise, the behaviour of those women who exercise and diet to attain the culturally prescribed body ideal” (p. 54). brown and jasper (1993) offered that it is difficult to suggest that someone who meets the diagnostic criteria of an is any more pathological than someone who diets and engages in a rigid exercise routine for the purpose of controlling shape and weight. feeling negatively towards one’s body is a similar experience for women engaging in eating disorders and those dieting, as women internalize the ideal body image, recognizing that how they look will reflect how they are valued and treated (brown & jasper, 1993; malson & burns, 2009). a wide range of eating and weight related issues exist on a spectrum, ranging from negative body image and shape concerns to significantly distressing eating disorders such as an and bulimia nervosa (levine & smolak, 2006; neumark-sztainer, 2005; russell-mayhew, 2007). in this vein then, the ambiguity presents itself when behaviours that are considered normal, even virtuous, go too far. often, individuals with an report a sense of self-confidence and feelings of worthiness after they have lost weight (nordbø et al., 2006). in addition, individuals reported receiving positive feedback from others related to their shape and weight upon initially losing weight (nordbø et al., 2006). therefore, it is not surprising that these same individuals would experience tensions between the way they feel in their bodies after having lost weight and others conveying that they are concerned for them. hence, the ambiguity must be endured by both the individuals with an and the practitioners who are tasked with recognition. apparently not everyone in these situations share the same perspectives and at times might be in direct tension with the other (vandereycken & van humbeeck, 2008). hence, the string of ambiguity continues to weave through, for both individuals experiencing an and practitioners involved. there are multiple perspectives and positions in recognizing an, emphasizing how this process in not black or white. clear cut ways of recognizing that one is experiencing an are not available; we must honour the ambiguity and hold space for all these positions so the tension and contestation are visible. anorexia nervosa outcome variability treatment outcomes for an are inconsistent, and of limited success for select individuals (steinhausen, 2008). though treatment for an often temporarily succeeds in weight restoration, these individuals are considered to be at high risk for early relapse (carter et al., 2012; khalsa et al., 2017). the limited success in treating an is not the fault of individuals with an, rather perhaps an issue of not having yet found a treatment that works well for all. according to the most exhaustive reviews of treatment outcomes of an to date, among surviving patients 37% reach full recovery within four years after the disorder onset, 33% improved, and 20-25% developed a chronic course of an (berkman, lohr, & bulik, 2007; steinhausen, 2002). the crude mortality rate is reportedly 5-9%, which is accounted for by suicide or medical williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 8 complications from starvation or compensatory behaviours (berkman et al., 2007; steinhausen, 2002). thus, according to our knowledge of the course of an, particularly the course following treatment, reaching the recovery status is not cut and dry. the sense that one has to balance or somehow operate in ambiguous territory is not unique to those with an, their family members, or those professionally working with this group. experiencing uncertainty or multiple ways to go about something is also inherent in various practicing professions. one of these fields is counselling psychology, where multiplicity is the norm, creating space for ambiguity to flourish. as we move throughout this process of discovery, we intend to illustrate our position and entrance into this topic by framing it in terms of the ambiguity we, and other professionals, face as we work and study with those with an, but also the ambiguity that will be inherent in our practice because of our background. by doing so, we will illustrate using counselling psychology as an exemplar that there is another shade of grey, another realm of uncertainty, and another uneven stitch of the string of ambiguity. we can identify that ambiguity is involved in both an and counselling psychology separately. we must also acknowledge that the entire process that comes between an emerging and interacting with counselling psychology professionals is ambiguous and uncertain in itself. first, families go through an ambiguous process in determining how to respond to this discovery, who to seek help from, how to interact with other family members. families seek out counselling psychologists likely in the hopes that their ambiguity will be resolved by the counselling psychologist, only for an entirely new environment fraught with ambiguity to be presented to them. yet, this ambiguity is necessary if we are to truly embrace and honour each individual seeking treatment. families with children with an seek out treatment (i.e., counselling psychologists) to avoid ambiguity, to get clear answers, to help their child get better, whereas counselling psychologists make space for ambiguity, because they do not strive to fix ambiguous states; rather, they operate within them. the profession of counselling psychology is comprised of many fixtures, and this intricate make up of responsibilities – sometimes a mixture of not quite this nor that, and/or sometimes “both this and that,” certainly does not make ambiguity go away. hence, one door to ambiguity closes when families choose to seek professional help within a particular discipline, only for a completely new door to ambiguity to open when this same family interacts with a counselling psychologist. ambiguity and counselling psychology the contestations and uncertainty towards what exactly counselling psychology (cp) is has been well documented (bedi et al., 2011; bedi, sinacore, & chistiani, 2016). the fact that cp has been recognized in canada as a specialized discipline within the field of applied psychology since 1987, yet only received a formal definition in 2009, speaks to the equivocality of the profession’s apparent “distinctive identity” (bedi et al., 2011, p. 128). it is no wonder that counselling psychologists face uncertainty when positioning their training and approach to psychology as different compared to other psychology specialties and maybe even other professions, as up until nine years ago counselling psychologists were not united in their understanding of what cp stood for and its philosophical frameworks. in order to better understand the complexity, it is helpful to trace the history of cp in a canadian context, allowing us to review its evolution and multifaceted approach. during our discussion of cp, it may be williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 9 helpful to think of the profession as comprised as both this and that, hovering in-between various specialties. history of counselling psychology in canada to understand cp’s emergence in canada, one also has to be cognizant of the profession’s status at the same time south of the border. in the united states, cp was recognized as a distinct discipline by the american psychological association in 1951 (munley, duncan, & mcdonnel, 2004). due to this history and early recognition, cp in the united states was and is firmly embedded within professional psychology and is better understood to be a distinct specialization. counselling psychology in canada on the other hand, emerged years later in the late 1980s and was pioneered by professionals who were trained as either professional counsellors or psychologists (lalande, 2004). given this later emergence, the history of cp in canada is intertwined with professionals who would not be considered to be part of psychology disciplines or cp in the united states. a field that initially narrowly focused on guidance and career counselling (robertson & borgen, 2016) has undergone a transformation where an applied psychology specialization emerged from the roots. the evolution of cp in canada has certainly added to the ambiguity, leaving individuals wondering if counselling psychologists primarily assist individuals with softer life transitions (e.g., career transitions), rather than more serious concerns (e.g., eating disorders), or both. eating disorders, and an in particular, are considered anything but soft, therefore individuals wonder if a field traditionally focused in career and guidance has a place in the treatment of the most fatal mental illness (arcelus, mitchell, wales, & nielsen, 2011; keel et al., 2003). this tension becomes especially obvious after reviewing the history of the field. ultimately, cp struggles to find its home. the string of ambiguity continues to be finely stitched throughout, as multiple interpretations and understandings of what cp is, act as the foundation of which the field is based. counselling psychology and anorexia nervosa counselling psychologists offer a broad array of services to their communities and the world beyond. counselling psychologists across canada focus on client strengths. an emphasis is placed on (a) respecting diversity, (b) social justice for those who are marginalized, (c) mental wellness versus psychopathology, (d) psychoeducation, (e) assisting with successful transitions throughout life, and (f) applied research (bedi et al., 2011). it is clear that cp holds elements that are not quite this and not quite that and both this and that. counselling psychology conceptualizes individuals in terms of wellness, however the same professionals may also diagnosis a client with a label indicating psychopathology (bedi et al., 2011). this represents a tension within the field, one that is especially relevant to counselling psychologists working with individuals with an. dominant discourses about an come from a psycho-medical model, suggesting an is an internalized, traditionally female phenomenon (botha, 2015). if a clinician working from this model assigned a diagnosis, critics would suggest that, by doing so, the individual being treated would carry around a stigmatizing label as pathological (botha, 2015). while receiving a diagnosis of an may lead to an individual being accepted into a specialized service, considered by some to be what that individual requires for medical reasons, other counselling psychologists may be conflicted in assigning this label as it contradicts working from williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 10 a wellness perspective. these conflicts are important to consider when honoring the ambiguity in cp, as cp welcomes strength based conceptualizations, while also valuing assessment, diagnosis, and evidenced based treatment, all of which are linked to the medical model. thus, the tension is not solved, nor does it have to be. rather, we must be aware of this contestation within the field (and other helping professions). when the theme of ambiguity runs so deep through a phenomenon and a field, it is necessary to find a way to welcome differences and multiple interpretations. ambiguity and hermeneutics hermeneutic inquiry, most simply put, is focused on interpreting phenomena and experience within the world. interpretation refers to when an unknown or apparently unfamiliar meaning is made comprehensible (grondin, 1994). hermeneutic inquiry has been described as a “practice and theory of interpretation and understanding in human contexts” (moules et al., 2015, p. 3). rather than being driven by a rigid set of methodical rules dictating a pre-determined step-bystep method, hermeneutics offers a philosophy for understanding the world and is substantively driven (moules et al., 2015). described by caputo (2015), hermeneutic inquiry does not apply principles or rules of understanding to cases, because this would imply that the topic and cases within it being studied are common and pre-determined. rather, hermeneutics offers a way of proceeding in one’s understanding by being led by the topic. therefore, philosophical traditions cultivated over the last 2000 years guide hermeneutic research and practice. applying hermeneutics to applied practice is difficult to put one’s finger on – it is not quite this and not quite that. for hermeneutic inquiry, this ambiguity and openness to possibilities is not considered a problem or a down fall of the approach to understanding, but rather this resistance to categorization is an asset (moules et al., 2015). in the same sense that hermeneutics is difficult to categorize, no two people’s experiences with an are the same. though an is a categorization of an eating disorder, the factors comprising one’s experience of this disorder are infinite. the variance and ambiguity grows exponentially greater in the recognition, disclosure, assessment, treatment, and recovery processes of an. the feeling that one can never quite get a ha ndle on an parallels that of hermeneutics, as the topic of inquiry in hermeneutics is impossible to fully understand and see in its totality. hermeneutics requires a tolerance, even an embracing, of uncertainty, both of the topic and interpretation (moules et al., 2015). to look for possible meanings and understandings of the topic requires one to oscillate within a world of uncertainty and mystery. this ambiguous oscillation parallels how practitioners working with, and family members supporting those with, an must navigate their daily experiences – living in a world that is unknown to them, trying to do the best they can with little direction. as gadamer noted, “the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (2013, p. 306). hermeneutics is not quite this and not quite that, as it is a philosophy and an applied practice. hermeneutic inquiry is capable of, and comfortable with, studying something that may never be fully understood, and the same could be said of a practitioner working with, or a researcher studying one’s experience of an, or a family’s experience of discovering their child or sibling williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 11 has an. the concept of aletheia, the process of uncovering pieces of understanding, at the expense of closing others is very much alive in situations involving ambiguous topics. in order to be open to discovery, we must have the ability to encounter the other or the topic in a way that we acknowledge that our understanding is limited and in need of a reworking (moules et al., 2015). therefore, in order to discover this topic, and to do so with integrity, hermeneutic work: lies in its ability to hold tension, to be “not quite this and not quite that,” in recognizing that with every opening, there is a closing of something else, in knowing that openings are invitations and portals to understanding, not dark rabbit holes where the topic disappears. (moules et al., 2015, p. 179) this quotation illustrates how we must honour the ambiguity inherent in the experience of having an, and in a family’s experience of discovering their loved one has an. in order to discover, we must be flexible when encountering others’ truths and accounts of the topic, and be open to the possibility that we may be changed in the process. creating space for ambiguity openness to ambiguity and not pushing it away may be uncomfortable, but when we are able to do this, it could lead to better research and practice. it is natural to seek clear answers, as certainty helps with decisions about what to do next. yet, we may take things for granted and act before considering all possibilities when something is clear-cut, and thought of as either this way or that way. when we take pieces of the situation for granted, we start to overlook details, narrowing our considerations for lessons and perspectives that might surprise us. openness and the ability to work in the grey areas, creating space for different perspectives and different disciplines is advantageous. the solution to ambiguity is not to solve it, in fact, the solution is to do nothing to fix it or make it clear. rather, in the spirit of aletheia, we must be open to the tradeoff of concealing some pieces for the benefit of uncovering others, when discovering a topic, or understanding it more deeply. evidently, the experience of an is marked with ambiguity. for adults, there is no best course of treatment for an and certainly not a clear prognosis (hubert lacy & sly, 2015; steinhausen, 2008). further, the recognition of an adds more complexity; given that many females living in a western society strive for the thin-ideal, there is a fine line between behaviour that is virtuous, or too far gone. evidenced by the high mortality rate and inconsistent recovery statistics ( arcelus, mitchell, wales, & nielsen, 2011; berkman et al., 2007; keel & brown, 2010), an can be likened to an unevenly dispersed thread, a thread with variously spaced stitches, and even at times a stitch that appears to have stopped before it was expected. interdisciplinary teams must be included in this fight, involving medical doctors, psychologists, social workers, nurses, nutritionists, dietitians, et cetera (american psychiatric association [apa], 2010). though counselling psychologists would be ready to take up arms and use their holistic treatment approach, other professionals may question their place. counselling psychologists are not limited to a specific type of inquiry, nor are bound to examining solely treatment related phenomenon. further, the not quite this nor that placement of cp mirrors our research topic, as the study of a family’s discovery that their child or sibling has an is not quite considered treatment, nor prevention, or psychoeducation. williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 12 given the ambiguity, hermeneutic inquiry is a fit to study the uncertainty that is certain with an and within the field of cp. hermeneutics takes history and tradition of a topic into consideration, carefully trying to understand how the topic in its present form has evolved since its beginning. further, the qualitative approach of hermeneutic inquiry is welcomed by counselling psychologists, who wish to discover the world and are open to multiple interpretations, not bound exclusively by quantitative methods. this openness to multiplicity and the possibility of one’s perspective being changed in the process of understanding mirrors how practitioners must hold space for ambiguity. by holding space, not trying to solve for the ambiguity, we can learn from it and possibly grow. conclusion an openness to working with the unknown is the key to working with individuals with an. when discovering a topic, especially one marked by so many uncertainties and multiple interpretations, we must make a “hermeneutic wager” (kearney, 2010) – taking a risk on an uncertain outcome, hoping we might better understand. in order to better understand the experiences of families discovering their child has an and to learn more generally what it might be like for someone living with an, we must be open to stepping into unknown territory and resist the urge to make our surroundings neater or more put together. by acknowledging the ambiguity inherent in one’s experience of an, we respect the complexity of the situation. by conceptualizing the many moving parts at play within this complex situation, as a tapestry of ambiguity, we reveal and hold space for interwoven complexities. by acknowledging, we are not solving for, nor are we tiptoeing around it, but rather as we honour ambiguity, we come to accept that it is not quite this, nor that, and that is okay. perhaps it is even a resource. references adlam, j. 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(2002). the outcome of anorexia nervosa in the 20th century. american journal of psychiatry, 159, 1284-1293. retrieved from http://www.saegre.org.ar/biblioteca/arbol_bibliografico/agosto2005/1284_anorexia_outcome.pdf steinhausen, h.c. (2008). outcome of eating disorders. child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of north america, 18, 225-242. doi:10.1016/j.chc.2008.07.013 sundgot‐borgen, j., & torstveit, m.k. (2010). aspects of disordered eating continuum in elite high‐intensity sports. scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports, 20, 112-121. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2010.01190.x tantleff-dunn, s., barnes, r.d., & larose, j.g. (2011). it's not just a “woman thing”: the current state of normative discontent. eating disorders, 19, 392-402. doi:10.1080/10640266.2011.609088 vandereycken, w., & van humbeeck, i. 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(2010). understanding the experience of ambivalence in anorexia nervosa: the maintainer's perspective. psychology and health, 25, 551-567. doi: 10.1080/08870440802617629 williams, e.p., russell-mayhew s., & ireland, a. (in press). disclosing an eating disorder: a situational analysis of online accounts. the qualitative report. young, r. (2009). counseling in the canadian mosaic: a cultural perspective. in. l.h. gerstain, p.p. heppner, k.l. norworthy, s. aegisdottir, & s.a. leung (eds.), international handbook of cross-cultural counseling: cultural assumptions and practices worldwide (pp. 359367). thousand oaks, ca: sage. young, r.a., & nichol, j.j. (2007). counselling psychology in canada: advancing psychology http://www.saegre.org.ar/biblioteca/arbol_bibliografico/agosto2005/1284_anorexia_outcome.pdf williams et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 3 19 for all. applied psychology: an international review, 56, 20-32. doi: 10.1111/j.14640597.2007.00273.x corresponding author: kevin aho, phd dept. of communication and philosophy florida gulf coast university kaho@fgcu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics april 9, 2018 the author(s) 2018 neurasthenia revisited: on medically unexplained syndromes and the value of hermeneutic medicine kevin aho abstract the rise of medically unexplained conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome in the united states looks remarkably similar to the explosion of neurasthenia diagnoses in the late nineteenth century. in this paper, i argue the historical connection between neurasthenia and today’s medically unexplained conditions hinges largely on the uncritical acceptance of naturalism in medicine. i show how this cultural acceptance shapes the way in which we interpret and make sense of nervous distress while, at the same time, neglecting the unique social and historical forces that continue to produce it. i draw on the methods of hermeneutic philosophy to expose the limits of naturalism and forward an account of health and illness that acknowledges the extent to which we are always embedded in contexts of meaning that determine how we experience and understand our suffering. keywords neurasthenia, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, somatization, naturalism, hermeneutics in 1881, new york neurologist george m. beard published american nervousness, its causes and consequences: a supplement to nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia). in this expansive work, beard examined the explosive growth of affective and somatic symptoms emerging from “neurasthenia,” the deficiency or exhaustion of, what he called, “nerve force.” he identified a vast number of possible symptoms for neurasthenia including: neuralgia, dyspepsia, hay-fever, diabetes, sensitivity to narcotics and various drugs, depression, premature baldness, sensitivity to mailto:kaho@fgcu.edu aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 2 cold and heat, tooth decay, chronic catarrh, infertility, hysteria, inebriety, fatigue, and impotence (beard, 1881, vi-xi).1 beard attributed the rise of neurasthenia both to a hereditary predisposition as well as the wrenching social upheavals of modernization in the united states at the end of the nineteenth century, as large swaths of the post-civil war population migrated from slow-paced rural communities to chaotic and bustling cities in the northeast. with this movement, men abandoned their traditional vocations as manual tradesmen and farmers for new roles as workers in office buildings, and women left their stable domestic roles as wives and mothers to compete with men in universities and professional careers. beard also cited the new technologies of industrialization such as the periodical press, the telegraph, telephone, and steam engine, as well as the ubiquity of mechanical clocks and watches that “compel us to be on time, and excite the habit of looking to see the exact moment” (p. 103).2 these factors, taken together, contributed to the excessive strain on mental and physical life, and helped explain beard’s claim that the “chief and primary cause” of neurasthenia is not the result of some new organic pathology but of “modern civilization [itself]” (p. vi). by the turn of the century, neurasthenia had spread to the other side of the atlantic to europe’s teeming urban centers.3 influential cultural figures such as sociologist max weber and novelist marcel proust received the diagnosis, and neurasthenic characters became increasingly fashionable in the fiction of writers such as edith wharton, theodore dreiser, henry james, and thomas mann. indeed, the diagnosis became so common in the united states that philosopher william james referred to it as “americanitis,” and the massive drugstore chain rexall produced an “americanitis elixir” for the “man of business, weakened by the strain of [his] duties” (osnos, 2011). by the end of the great war, due to its diagnostic vagueness, its unproven theory of “nervous energy,” and the ambiguous breadth of its symptoms, neurasthenia began to fall out of favor in the united states.4 but today we are seeing the symptoms of neurasthenia emerge once again in a proliferation of “functional somatic conditions” such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. in this paper, i offer an account of the medicalization of neurasthenia and show how this process has undermined the original value of beard’s work by failing to engage the socio-cultural forces through which neurasthenic symptoms emerged. rather than viewing the neurasthenic from a narrow naturalistic perspective, as a discrete causally determined physical organism, beard’s analysis views the neurasthenic in terms of, what hermeneutic philosophers such as martin heidegger would later call, “being-in-the-world,” a situated activity or way of 1 the ideas in american nervousness emerged out of an earlier article of beard’s (1869) entitled “neurasthenia or nervous exhaustion.” 2 george simmel develops this point in his pioneering 1903 essay, “the metropolis and mental life” (1903/1997) by exploring the emotional costs of clock-time, where “punctuality, calculability, [and] exactness are forced upon life by…metropolitan existence.” (p. 177; see aho, 2007) 3 it is interesting to note that neurasthenia stretched across class and gender lines in a way that was unique among functional somatic conditions. it was diagnosed first among upper middle class women; then among “stressed out” middle class business men; and finally among the lower working classes before vanishing altogether from american medicine. (gosling, 1987; wessely, 1990) 4 although it eventually disappeared as a diagnostic category in the united states, the diagnosis continues to be applied in europe and is still listed in the icd-10, and it is used widely in countries such as japan, korea, china, australia, and russia. aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 3 being that is already involved and embedded in a meaningful socio-historical context. this situated activity not only shapes the way we experience, feel, and perform our bodies, more importantly, it informs how we interpret and give meaning to our nervous distress. drawing on the insights of hermeneutic philosophy, i call into question some of the core naturalistic assumptions in medicine today. this questioning, in turn, makes it possible to interpret the toxic experiences of stress and nervous suffering from within the context of our contemporary ways of living. which is to say, in effect, that modern medicine is often complicit in enacting and perpetuating the very pathologies it is seeking to treat. neurasthenia and naturalism: a brief history the diagnosis of neurasthenia emerged against the backdrop of enormous successes in the natural sciences in the nineteenth century in areas such as anatomy and physiology, zoology, evolutionary theory, and in the emerging field of neurology of which george beard was a pioneer. these successes contributed to the loss of religious authority and an increasing trust in the methods of natural science to explain and alleviate bodily suffering. this secular turn not only contributed to the emergent vocational prestige and cultural power of the medical professions, it also influenced the pervasive naturalistic paradigm that has fundamentally transformed the ways in which medicine interprets pathology.5 naturalism in medicine entails both an epistemological and a metaphysical assumption. from an epistemological standpoint, naturalism generally presupposes that the view of theoretical detachment and the objective procedures of empirical science are best suited to gain knowledge of the ailing body. from a metaphysical standpoint, naturalism assumes a position of physicalism, that all manifestations of sickness must be constituted in terms of physical substances in causal interaction and that these interactions can be quantified under mathematical laws of mass and motion (ratcliffe, 2009). this paradigm creates the mechanistic and objectifying picture that characterizes medicine today, where a disease is considered legitimate or “real” only insofar as there is a measurable lesion or a deviation from normal functioning that is identifiable by anatomical or physiological-chemical observation. the result is a kind of biological reductionism, where pathology—including mental illness— is generally viewed as having a physical or bio-chemical origin. on this account, apropos of mental illness, the dutch physiologist jakob moleschott wrote, “the brain secretes thoughts as the kidney secretes urine” (cited in szasz, 2007, p. 47). this reductionism was evident in the way american medicine framed its understanding of nervous disorders at the end of the nineteenth century.6 indeed, it could be argued one of the reasons that beard’s account of neurasthenia became a diagnostic juggernaut is because it was viewed as “a physical, not a mental state” (beard, 1881, p. 17). by 1900, neurasthenia had become the single most common diagnosis in the area of neuropathology and psychopathology (shorter, 1992). by tracing its origin to a congenital weakness of the nervous system, beard’s thesis made it “real” from the perspective of 5 this cultural shift was evident, for example, in the ways that various forms of social deviance earlier regarded as religious or moral failings by priests— such as alcoholism, depression, and homosexuality— came to be medicalized by doctors in the twentieth-century (see aho & aho, 2008, pp. 65-70). 6 it is important to note that medical treatment and the interpretation of disease in the united states tends to be far more reductive and mechanistic then other westernized countries (e.g., payer, 1989). aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 4 naturalism, and this gave it scientific legitimacy. although many of its most pronounced symptoms were psychological— including crippling phobias, depression, panic anxiety, and compulsiveness—its status as a physical disease meant that the medical establishment could take sufferers seriously. it was not madness that triggered the “nervous breakdown,” but a physiological depletion of the body’s finite reserves of electrical “nerve force.” by removing the stigma of shame and fear associated with insanity, neurasthenia was often viewed positively: not only as a mark of a highly evolved and refined nervous system but of a man’s commitment to the protestant values of industriousness and productivity or, in the case of women, of sensitive intellectual and literary proclivities. emerging in the busy urban corridors of the east coast, it was initially viewed as the signature disorder of middle and upper class “brain workers”— as opposed to rural “muscle workers”—whose focus and ambition could not match the frantic pace of a modern capitalist society. physician george drinka (1984) described the phenomenon in terms of a person with a nervous tendency [who] is driven to think, to work, to strive for success. he presses himself and his life force to the limit, straining his circuits. like an overloaded battery, or like prometheus exhausted from reaching too high for the fire of the gods, the sufferer’s electrical system crashes down, spewing sparks and symptoms and giving rise to neurasthenia. (p. 191) in this way, neurasthenia provided both a scientifically legitimate (i.e., naturalistic, physical) and culturally accepted (i.e., burnout, overwork) justification for being sick (abbey & garfinkel, 1991). rather than being viewed as insane, treated by a psychiatrist (or “alienist’ as they were called at time because they dealt with those who were alienated or estranged from everyday life), and banished to the custodial care of the mental asylum, a prosperous neurasthenic could be cared for privately by a “real” doctor, a neurologist trained in general pathology and internal medicine, and given the standard somatic treatment of the time, namely, bed rest, a milk diet, electrical stimulation, and massage (freedman, 1987; shorter, 1997, pp. 129-136). this is how neurasthenia exploded in popularity at the turn of the century, becoming a “catch-all” diagnosis for anyone suffering from inchoate feelings of exhaustion, pain, anxiety, and nervousness. but almost as quickly as neurasthenia emerged as a diagnostic behemoth, it began to fade, eventually disappearing from american medicine altogether. this decline can be attributed to a number of overlapping factors. first, what contributed to the staggering popularity of neurasthenia also contributed to its precipitous decline, namely the sheer broadness of its definition. beard identified over seventyfive possible symptoms of neurasthenia with the result that virtually anyone could be diagnosed with the condition. in terms of neurasthenia-related phobias alone, he listed: “fear of lightning, fear of responsibility, fear of open places, fear of closed places, fear of society, fear of being alone, fear of fears, fear of contamination, fear of everything” (beard, 1881, p. 7). as a result, “one found [neurasthenia] everywhere,” wrote a french author of the time, “in the salons, at the theater, in the novels, at the palace. by virtue of it, one explained the most disparate reactions of an individual: suicide and decadent art, adornment and adultery; it became the giant of neuropathology” (cited in chatel & peele, 1970, p. 37) the ubiquity of neurasthenia’s symptoms made the disorder virtually impossible to classify with any precision. in describing what he aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 5 called ‘the caprice’ of the condition, beard acknowledged that, “sufferers often times wonder and complain that they have so many symptoms [because] their pain and distress attack so many parts and organs” (beard, 1880, p. 76). this diagnostic ambiguity resulted in increasing skepticism in the scientific community, becoming “the garbage can of medicine” (wessely, 1990, p. 47). the decline was also marked by the fact that neurasthenia’s medical advocates could not identify a specific organic or physiological cause. beard’s belief was that it was a physical disorder of weakened nerve cells characteristic of a hereditary or congenital condition. the stronger one’s heredity, the more strain an individual could endure before succumbing to “nervous bankruptcy” and vice versa (gossling, 1987, pp. 84-5). it was thought that the dramatic social, economic, and technological changes taking place in america at the time served as a trigger for those with a congenital weakness of “nerve force.” as beard (1881) put it: the force in [the] nervous system…is limited; and when new functions are interposed in the circuit, as modern civilization is constantly requiring us to do, there comes a period, sooner or later, varying in different individuals, and at different times of life, when the amount of force is insufficient to keep all the lamps actively burning; those that are weakest go out entirely, or, as more frequently happens, burn faint and feebly—they do not expire, but give an insufficient and unstable light. (p. 99) the neurasthenic, in short, could not endure the physical and mental strain of a country that was “becoming rapidly americanized.” the problem, of course, is that beard’s thesis remained scientifically untestable. yet, even though physicians could not find an organic cause for neurasthenia, they also could not deny that a condition existed that was overwhelming a large swath of america’s urban population, incapacitating individuals who were previously living successful and productive lives (freedman, 1987).7 the question for physicians was whether or not it could be demonstrated that it was a single disease or if a more precise nosology could identify specific disorders that existed within this broad classification. and it was the issue of nosology that sealed neurasthenia’s fate. neurasthenia, psychiatry, and the crisis of validity in 1895, sigmund freud published a paper called “on the grounds for detaching a particular syndrome from neurasthenia under the description of anxiety neurosis.” this signaled one of the first attempts to provide a more rigorous system of classification, parceling out “anxiety neurosis” and “hysteria” from the general category of neurasthenia. shortly thereafter, freud’s contemporary pierre janet did the same with “compulsivity,” detaching it from neurasthenia. these diagnostic changes meant far fewer were suffering from the condition (gossling, 1987, p. 169; wessely, 1990, p. 47). although fin de siècle figures like freud, janet, and jean-martin charcot were trained as neurologists and were still committed to the idea of the physical natur e 7 beard’s theory was further undermined by the discovery of hormones in 1902, which convinced physicians they had identified a specific causal agent—a chemical or hormonal imbalance that fit nicely into the mechanistic model of naturalism. the problem with this early version of the “chemical imbalance” theory was that, although hormones certainly exist, it could never be demonstrated that they in fact caused nervous disorders (chatel & peele 1970). aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 6 of nervous disorders, they did not rely exclusively on the trademark somatic therapies of the day such as bed rest, electrical stimulation, massage, and water and thermal therapies. they focused instead on mental processes or disorders of the mind, with the idea that the physical symptoms of neurosis might arise as the result of unconscious, usually libidinous, conflicts that emerged in early childhood. with this turn, “psychotherapy” (or the “talking cure”) was born as a way of verbally accessing long repressed sexual desires and fantasies. using dialogical techniques such as dream analysis, free association, and transference, the therapist would help the patient become aware of their unconscious conflicts, and this awareness might free them of the physical symptoms of neurosis, demonstrating, in the words of one of charcot’s students, “that the body could be cured by the mind” (cited in shorter, 1997, p. 138). although the “talking cure” became wildly popular with middle and upper class society in mid twentieth century america and was generally recognized by the medical establishment as offering legitimate therapeutic techniques to treat neurosis, its scientific foundations remained dubious. this is because psychoanalysis does not fit well into the empirical framework of naturalism. the assumption that an individual’s neurotic behavior could, for example, be explained in terms of repressed libidinous fantasies did not meet the objective standards of observation and testability that characterize empirical science. as opposed to somatic medicine, there is no way to physically locate, test for, or measure the source of repression or psychic conflict that manifests neurotic symptoms. unlike physical abnormalities of blood, muscle, and bone, the abnormalities of the mind cannot be directly observed because, obviously, mental phenomena are not physical substances. the psychiatrist cannot point to an organic lesion or marker in the brain that secretes abnormal thoughts and emotions. as a result, they can only infer what a given mental disorder or abnormality is based on speculative theoretical assumptions, that is, on the metapsychology of the psychiatrist. but such inferences are unscientific precisely because they are impossible to empirically refute or falsify. in the latter half of the twentieth century, with advances in neuroscience, pharmacology, and genetic research, psychiatry attempted to regain a footing in the natural sciences by embracing a more empirical and biologically informed approach to mental illness. this new vision of biopsychiatry was framed by influential figures like nancy andreasen (1984) who wrote: the major psychiatric illnesses are diseases… they should be considered illnesses just as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer are… caused principally by biological factors, and most of these factors reside in the brain… the brain is the organ of the body that serves to monitor and control the rest of the bodily functions, as well as providing the source and storehouse of all psychological functions, such as thoughts, memories, feelings, and personality. as a scientific discipline, psychiatry seeks to identify the biological factors that cause mental illness. the model assumes that each different type of illness has a different cause. (pp. 29-30) central to this shift toward bio-psychiatry was a major revision by the american psychiatric association (apa) to the third edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm-iii) in 1980. this involved a thorough rejection of the ideology and jargon of psychoanalysis with the aim of implementing a system of disease classification based on empirically observable symptoms. according to robert spitzer, the primary architect of the aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 7 dsm-iii, this revision represented psychiatry’s return to medical legitimacy, “an advancement toward the fulfillment of the scientific aspirations of the profession” (cited in lewis, 2006, p. 4). key to this transformation was the elimination of the broad and ideologically loaded category of “neurosis” that was replaced with the more neutral medical term “disorder.” henceforth, what was once neurosis was carved into seven more precise and reliable disease classifications, each with its own symptoms and diagnostic criteria: agoraphobia, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, simple phobia, and social phobia (horwitz, 2002). having addressed many of the affective dimensions of neurasthenia by eliminating neurosis, the dsm-iii also addressed somatic dysfunctions. it did this by eradicating the archaic category or “hysteria’ and replacing it with a new diagnostic label, “somatoform disorder.” this was intended to identify those patients who presented with symptoms like chronic pain, dizziness, weakness, gastrointestinal issues, and fatigue, but had no demonstrable physical cause. for diagnostic precision, this category was also broken up into seven discrete disorders: body dysmorphic disorder, conversion, somatization, somatoform pain disorder, undifferentiated somatoform disorder, somatoform disorder not otherwise specified, and hypochondriasis (lipowski, 1988). but discarding antiquated disease categories and the metapsychology of psychoanalysis for the sake of diagnostic precision did little to address the core issue of scientific validity; instead, it simply created more disorders. while the dsm-i (1952) was only 130 pages long and listed 106 different disorders, the dsm-iii was almost 500 pages long and contained 265 disorders, and dsm-v (2013) is 800 pages and describes nearly 300 disorders. not only is there tremendous overlap or co-morbidity among these disorders (for instance, someone diagnosed with somatoform pain disorder could also present symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, and major depression, resulting in a patient having not just one but four distinct disorders), none of the disorders can be explained using the “gold standard” of pathology, namely, a physical marker in the brain. in other words, the hope that an empirically rigorous system of classification might help legitimize psychiatry as a medical science by providing “greater objectivity, diagnostic precision, and reliability” (usdhhs, 1999, p. 44) has proven to be an illusion. to this day, psychiatry has generally failed to demonstrate that behavioral, cognitive, and emotional abnormalities are the effects of biological diseases of the brain, this, in spite of the recent discovery of neurotransmitters and receptors, advances in genetics, and magnetic resonance technologies. indeed, only in the most severe cases, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, is there any evidence at all of a biological (i.e., genetic) marker (horwitz, 2002). for the vast number of nonpsychotic disorders listed in the dsm, the psychiatrist is left to make inferences, not on the basis of biology but on the basis of the observable behavior of the patient, their speech patterns, posture, facial expressions, and comportment. but what counts as abnormal in these respects are not medical (i.e., scientific); they are social, cultural, and religious (szasz, 2007). psychiatrist, nassir ghaemi (2013), summarized the situation this way: “the leaders of the dsm [do not] believe there are scientific truths in psychiatric diagnosis—only mutually agreed upon falsehoods. they call it reliability” (n.p.). as a result, psychiatry continues to be regarded with suspicion and skepticism, even by its own practitioners, as “the dustbin of modern medicine” aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 8 (wessely, 1990, p. 42). sufferers of nervous disorders remain, as ever, haunted by the specter that what they experience is “imaginary,” “unreal,” or “in their heads.” in what follows, i suggest this enduring skepticism about psychiatry may shed light on the renewed interest in medically unexplained somatic conditions such as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome that bear striking resemblances to neurasthenia. by emphasizing a somatic or non-psychiatric explanation of symptoms, the diagnosis creates the impression of medical legitimacy, of being “real.” i argue that, from a hermeneutic perspective, this is crucial for the narrative integrity and self-constitution of the sufferer. hermeneutics, somatization, and medically unexplained syndromes one of the advantages of approaching questions of health and illness from a hermeneutic perspective is the way in which it reconfigures the traditional conception of the human being. rather than viewing the human being in naturalistic terms, as a causally determined physical substance, hermeneutic philosophy sees it as an interpretive activity, where we exist in the narrative identities and self-interpretations that we create for ourselves. on this view, it is not an account of “what we are” as biophysical entities that is important, but “how we are,” that is, how we ceaselessly fashion and refashion our own being (or identity) as our lives unfold. this is why, when referring to the hermeneutic self, heidegger wrote, “we are expressing not its ‘what’ (as if it were a table, house, or tree) but its being” (1927/1962, p. 180) this means that there is no pregiven physiological essence that fundamentally determines who we are. on the contrary, what distinguishes us from non-human animals is the fact that we are “self-interpreting” (taylor, 1985), that is, we “create” or “understand” who we are by interpreting and giving meaning to our physiological givenness. as self-interpreting beings, when we suffer from nervous exhaustion, diffuse pain, and anxiety it is up to each of us to understand it, that is, to imbue those symptoms with the intelligibility and significance that they have. moreover, the meanings we give to our suffering are always embedded in a particular sociocultural context. as a result, the hermeneutic self cannot be viewed as an encapsulated subject separate and distinct from an external world of objects (including other people). rather, “self and world belong together. [they] are not two beings like subject and object … self and world are the basic determination of [human existence] itself in the unity of the structure of being-in-theworld” (heidegger, 1982, p. 297). as an inter-subjective “being-in-the-world,” our interpretations are limited or constrained by the meanings made available by our situation. the world, on this view, opens up an array of possible ways for us to understand and make sense of our suffering. and because our interpretative context today is shaped so decisively by the paradigm of natural science, it is easy to see how the symptoms of neurasthenia are reborn in “functional somatic” conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. 8 because we are so invested emotionally and cognitively in physical or somatic explanations for our nervous 8 in listing the symptoms of neurasthenia, beard referred to “profound exhaustion,” “pains in the back,” and “heaviness in the loins and limbs” (1881, p. 7) which today could indicate a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome. he cited “localized peripheral numbness and hyperesthesia,” ‘ticklishness,” “local spasms of muscles,” and “vague pains and flying neuralgias’ which fit the diagnostic profile of fibromyalgia (pp. 7-8) and he cited special idiosyncrasies with regard to “food,” “cramps,” “nervous dyspepsia,” and “indigestion” (pp. 7, 41) which resemble the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 9 distress, it follows that under the auspices of naturalism, such explanations indicate the existence of something legitimate and “real.” this is why, as robert aronowitz cautioned, “[there is] a market for somatic labels… in the large pool of ‘stressed-out’ or somaticizing patients who seek to disguise an emotional complaint or to ‘upgrade’ their diagnosis from a nebulous (i.e. psychiatric) one to a legitimate disease.” (1991, p. 97) this process can be described as “somatization.” not to be confused with the somatoform disorder in the dsm, somatization refers to a type of narrative construction or self-interpretation, where mental exhaustion, diffuse pain, anxiety, and stress arising largely out of the situated upheavals and emergencies of living are experienced and explained as a physical disorder, even when there is no evidence to support it (lipowski, 1988). consider the case of linda. linda had spurned previous recommendations for psychiatric counseling. she would not accept that she might have a psychiatric illness, and was angry, rather than relieved, when doctors implied that ‘nothing is wrong with you’ and that ‘it is all in your head’. she was convinced that something was physically wrong, and she wanted [the doctor] to identify and treat that problem. (young, 2003, p. 165) although physicians would usually treat linda’s condition as “psychosomatic,” as a somatic presentation of mental illness, for sufferers there is something deeply consoling when it is explained in physicalist terms. this is because it allows the patient to fashion a narrative that fits into the culturally accepted paradigm of naturalism. even though “functional somatic” conditions are scientifically dubious (i.e., they cannot be traced back to an organic cause), the fact that they are regarded as physical explanations of their symptoms is often sufficient for the patient to construct an account of their suffering in a way that is not only intelligible but culturally legitimate. fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, then, are not just useful diagnostic labels. for patients, they are symbols that reflect a specific cultural reality and help to create a meaningful identity. as jerome groopman (2000) claimed, “of all the words a doctor uses, the name he gives the illness has the greatest weight…. with a name, the patient can construct an explanation of his illness not only for others but for himself” (n.d.). on the hermeneutic view, language and the words used in diagnostic medicine are expressive of a wider culture and are as rhetorically valuable as the physician’s stethoscope, syringe, or scalpel because it allows the patient to fashion an intelligible self-interpretation. this helps to sharpen the distinction between the biochemical aspects of “disease” and the subjective experience of ‘illness” (conrad, 1987). if the physician’s instruments treat and measure disease, language allows the patient to give meaning to the lived-experience of their unease. where the language of spirits, sin, and guilt was expressive of the context of meaning that allowed people to make sense of their suffering in the middle ages, the language of naturalism and somatization is expressive of our context today. this helps explain why, instead of going to a psychiatrist for complaints of inchoate feelings of pain and fatigue, insomnia, racing heart, digestive problems, or difficulty concentrating, we instead go to a medical specialist to validate our experience. we seek an immunologist to receive a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, a rheumatologist for a fibromyalgia diagnosis, a neurologist for tension headache, a cardiologist for atypical chest pain aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 10 and palpitations, or a gastroenterologist for irritable bowel syndrome. by medicalizing these symptoms, the patient feels validated, that there is a “real” cause to his or her suffering even if the physician does not see it this way (barker, 2002; hearn, 2009; jimenez & mayer, 2015). thus, even though the majority of those labeled with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue have an accompanying psychiatric disorder, and the treatment is often the same as the treatment for anxiety or major depression (e.g,. a combination of antidepressant medication, exercise, and/or some form of cognitive-behavioral therapy), patients generally favor a “functional somatic” diagnosis because it avoids the stigma of unreality associated with mental illness (wessely, 1990). the uncritical assumption underlying somatization, then, is that it is only a matter of time before an authentic biochemical “fact” can be found that directly causes the syndrome. and excitement builds in the medical community with the scientific discovery of each new cause, whether it is measurable deficiencies in neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, low levels of somatotropin or growth hormone, or the poor sensory functioning of “substance p” (groopman, 2000). but it is this assumption that is precisely what a hermeneutic approach to medicine calls into question. even if such a discovery is made, it is still up to the sufferer to understand and give meaning to their own subjective experience on the basis of the interpretative resources made available by their world. hermeneutic philosophy dissolves the traditional scientific distinction between objective “facts” and subjective “values.” from the standpoint of hermeneutics, there are no brute, value-less facts when it comes to human experience. as charles taylor wrote, such “a reductive explanation of human experience in physiological and ultimately in physical and chemical terms” is a denial of the qualitative meaning and value we attribute to our experience (1985, p. 47). in fact, on closer view, the allegedly neutral and objective explanations of biochemistry are themselves valueladen insofar as they emerge against the background of a common language and are viewed by culture in qualitative terms as “valid” and “real.” we can make sense of our experiences only through the language that we grow into. biomedical reductivism betrays this aspect of enculturation and the complexity and ambiguity of “being-in-the-world,” and this brings us back to the value of beard’s initial characterization of neurasthenia. neurasthenia today although beard’s theory of “nerve force” was scientifically unfounded, what makes it so relevant today is how it critically engaged the way of being unique to modernity. instead of regarding the sufferer as a discrete object separate and distinct from his or her context and offering a biochemical account of physical and emotional exhaustion, beard focused on the broad social and cultural upheavals taking place at the end of the nineteenth century, and he examined the possibility that simply existing amidst these upheavals might be unhealthy. by attending to the destabilizing social forces associated with turn of the century american life— urbanization, industrialization, the insecurities of a market economy, new transportation and communication technologies, and the emerging dominance of clock-time—beard recognized that neurasthenia was “an inevitable reaction from the excessive stain of mental and physical life” (1881, p. 83). as a physician, approaching questions of health and illness in a historically and sociologically informed way, he saw the obvious, that the human being is not an encapsulated material body but an interpretative way of being that is already bound up in a particular lifeaho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 11 world, one that invariably shapes our emotional and physical health. today, with corporate downsizing and outsourcing, increased productivity and efficiency measures, and overall economic insecurity combined with wearable technologies that keep us perpetually on alert, electronically tethered to work and to each other, beard’s conclusion seems self-evident, that “nervous sensitiveness and nervous diseases ought to increase with the progress of modern civilization; and neurasthenia would naturally be more abundant in the present than in the last century” (p. 137). beard’s account of the toxic effects of an over-stimulated, insecure, and mechanized existence not only reflects contemporary descriptions of american life as perpetually “overwhelmed,” “stressed,” and “burned out.” it also opens the possibility for a deeper analysis of the particularities of nervous distress. this is especially interesting as it pertains to issues of gender. whereas for men, neurasthenia was once widely regarded as a mark of ambition and drive, “[an] acceptable and even an impressive illness… ideally suited to a capitalistic society and to the identification of masculinity with money and property” (showalter, 1985, p. 135). for women, the situation is far more complex. among those suffering from neurasthenia at the turn of the century, women were disproportionately represented. and today, the vast majority of those complaining of medically unexplained somatic conditions are also women, including ninety percent of all fibromyalgia sufferers (groopman, 2000). rather than attributing this overrepresentation to the idiosyncrasies of a woman’s reproductive organs and hormones, beard took a broad hermeneutic view, focusing on the changing social roles and meanings for women in a new industrialized economy, her entry and acceptance into colleges and the professions, and her emergent vocational ambition and drive (abbey & garfinkel, 1991, p. 1643). although criticized as a misogynist by regarding motherhood and domesticity as a woman’s natural state, 9 beard’s view resonates to the concerns of contemporary feminist critics by exposing the limits of medicalization and drawing our attention to the concrete social and historical forces that produce and reproduce our nervous distress. this not only helps frame what betty freidan in the 1960s called, “the problem that has no name” (referring to the social conformism of the post-world war ii american economy that pushed women into lives of empty domesticity resulting in “housewife neurosis” and its accompanying symptoms of fatigue, emotional irritability, and despair) (shuster, 2011, p. 164). it also situates the gendered incarnation of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome today as women struggle with rapidly changing social roles, busily trying to balance careers, family obligations, and personal ambitions all while confronting social obstacles like discrimination, lower pay, and sexual harassment. in this way, beard’s account anticipates the relational complexity and ambiguity of our “being-in-the-world” later acknowledged in hermeneutic philosophy and creates an opening for health care professionals to adopt a more nuanced and contextualized perspective when it comes to the experience and interpretation of nervous suffering. while it is true that medicalizing nervousness creates a consoling sense of legitimacy by making it “real” under the paradigm of 9 beard and his contemporary, neurologist s. weir mitchell warned against the educational, creative, and intellectual pursuits of women as they contribute to her nervous exhaustion. after prescribing his notorious “rest cure” for writer charlotte perkins gilman, for instance, mitchell implored her going forward to “live as domestic a life as possible. have your child with you all the time… lie down an hour after each meal. have but two hours’ intellectual life a day. and never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live” (gilman, 1975, p. 96, my emphasis.) aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 12 naturalism, it fails to critically engage the historical context that made the paradigm possible in the first place. hermeneutic medicine acknowledges our “being-in-the-world”; that we exist only in the social meanings we create for ourselves, and that it is only through these shared selfinterpretations that we can experience and make sense of our suffering. compliance with ethical standards: this article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by the author. acknowledgement: i would like to thank sociologist gesine hearn at idaho state university for her many helpful suggestions and comments on earlier drafts of this paper. references abbey, s., & garfinkel, p. (1991). neurasthenia and chronic fatigue syndrome: the role of culture in the making of a diagnosis. american journal of psychiatry, 148(12), 1638-1646. aho, k. 2007. simmel on acceleration, boredom, and extreme aesthesia. journal for the theory of social behavior, 37(4), 447-462. aho, k., & aho, j. (2008). body matters: a phenomenology of sickness, illness, and disease. lanham, md: lexington books. aronowitz, r. (1991). lyme disease: the social construction of a new disease and its social consequences. the milbank quarterly, 69(1), 79-112. barker, k. (2002). self-help literature and the making of an illness identity: the case of fibromyalgia syndrome (fms). social problems, 49 (3), 279-300. beard, g. (1880). a practical treatise on nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia). new york, ny: william wood. beard, g. (1881). american nervousness, its causes and consequences: a supplement to nervous exhaustion (neurasthenia). new york, ny: g. p. putnam’s sons. chatel, j., & peele, r. (1970). the concept of neurasthenia. international journal of psychiatry, 9, 36-49. conrad, p. (1987). the experience of illness: recent and new directions. research in the sociology of health care, 6, 1-31. freedman, a. (1987). introduction. before freud: neurasthenia and the american medical community, 1870-1910. urbana and chicago, il: university of illinois press. aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 13 freud, s. (1895). in j. strachey (ed.), on the grounds of detaching a particular syndrome from neurasthenia under the description of ‘anxiety neurosis’ (standard ed.; vol. 3; pp. 87-115). london, uk: hogarth press. ghaemi, n. (2013). requiem for the dsm. psychiatric times, http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/dsm-5-0/requiem-dsm accessed april 6, 2016. gilman, c. (1975). the living of charlotte perkins gilman: an autobiography. new york, ny: harper colophon gosling, f.g. (1987). before freud: neurasthenia and the american medical community, 18701910. urbana and chicago, il: university of illinois press. greenberg, d. (1990). neurasthenia in the 1980s: chronic mononucleosis, chronic fatigue syndrome and anxiety and depressive disorders. psychosomatics, 31(2), 129-137. groopman, j. (2000). hurting all over: with so many people in so much pain, how could fibromyalgia not be a disease? the new yorker, november 13, 2000. hearn, g. (2009). no clue—what shall we do? physicians and functional syndromes. international review of modern sociology, 35, 95-113. heidegger, m. (1982). basic problems of phenomenology (a. hofstadter, trans.). bloomington, in: indiana university press. heidegger, m. (1927/1962). being and time (j. macquarrie & e. robinson, trans.). new york, ny: harper and row. horwitz, a. (2002). creating mental illness. chicago, il: university of chicago press. jimenez, x., & mayer, p. (2015). medically unexplained symptoms and mental models: from failure to fusion and back to illness behavior. journal of ethics in mental health, open volume. http://www.jemh.ca/issues/v9/documents/jemh_openvolume_article_medically_unexplained_symptoms_and_mental_models_march2015.pdf issn: 1916-2405 kutchins, h., & kirk, s. (1997). making us crazy: dsm, the psychiatric bible and the creation of mental disorders. new york, ny: the free press. lewis, b. (2006). moving beyond prozac: dsm and the new psychiatry: the birth of postpsychiatry. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. lipowski, z. 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(1992). from paralysis to fatigue: a history of psychosomatic illness in the modern era. new york, ny: free press. shorter, e. (1997). a history of psychiatry. new york, ny: wiley. showalter, e. (1985). the female malady: women, madness and english culture, 1830-1980. new york, ny: pantheon books. shuster, d. (2003). neurasthenia and a modernizing america. journal of the american medical association, 290(17), 2327-2328. shuster, d. (2011). neurasthenic nation: america’s search for health, happiness, and comfort, 1869-1920. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. simmel, g. (1903/1997). the metropolis and mental life. in d. frisby & m. featherstone (eds.), simmel on culture ( pp. 174-186). london, uk: sage. taylor, c. (1985). self-interpreting animals. in philosophical papers: vol. 1. human agency and language (pp. 45-76). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. u.s. department of health and human services. (1999). mental health: a report of the surgeon general. rockville, md: u.s. department of human services, substance abuse and mental health services administration, center for mental health services, national institutes of health, national institute of mental health. ware, n., & weiss, m. (1994). neurasthenia and the social construction of psychiatric knowledge. transcultural psychiatric research review, 31, 101-124. wessely , s. (1990). old wine in new bottles: neurasthenia and ‘me’. psychological medicine, 20, 35-53. young, r. (2003). patients like linda. journal of the american medical association, 290(2), 165-166. aho journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 6 15 microsoft word risser corrected proof introduction.docx corresponding author: james risser, phd seattle university email: jrisser@seattleu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics july 31, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 the difficulty of understanding: an introduction james risser abstract in june 2019, dr. james risser was the invited scholar for the canadian hermeneutic institute (chi), held in calgary, alberta, canada. dr. risser is a professor of philosophy at seattle university and the senior research fellow at western sydney university. he is also the editor of the journal research in phenomenology. he has held philosophy chairs and is a prolific writer of books and articles in the areas of continental philosophy and philosophical hermeneutics. this paper is the introduction to the three-day event of the chi, and his beginning introduction to his papers. it is followed by three papers entitled when words fail: on the power of language and human experience; speaking from silence: on the intimate relation between silence and speaking; and hearing the other: communication as shared life. keywords philosophical hermeneutics, hans-georg gadamer, understanding, communication i would like to begin with a few general remarks about the theory of understanding that is developed in the work of hans-georg gadamer, the philosopher who lived the entirety of the 20th century. he died in 2002 at the age of 102. his work is described as a philosophical hermeneutics because his theory of understanding is not developed as a method for understanding texts or as a method for the human sciences, as we see in classical hermeneutic theory. it is a philosophical hermeneutics in the way first demonstrated by martin heidegger, who showed how interpretation and understanding are basic to our apprehending of ourselves and the world. in his formulation of this broader dimension of hermeneutics, which he closely follows, gadamer will often speak of the universality of hermeneutics, or the universal aspect of hermeneutics. in his risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 5 2 essay, “on the origins of philosophical hermeneutics,” gadamer describes his hermeneutics in the following way: behind [the employment of methodological research] a much broader dimension opens up, one that is rooted in a fundamental linguisticality or language-relatedness. in all recognition of the world and orientation to the world, the element of understanding is to be worked out, and through this the universality of hermeneutics is to be demonstrated. (gadamer, 1985, p. 179) exactly how this understanding of the world is to be worked out becomes the distinguishing trait of gadamer’s hermeneutics. quite simply, it occurs in speaking-with-another and listening-toanother. indeed, understanding, for gadamer, is rooted in language, but such language is always the language of dialogue, of conversation, even when there is no actual other person you are speaking with. we are in a conversation, for example, when we try to understand a poem that we read to ourselves, or an artist’s painting that presents itself to our view. something addresses us and the task is to understanding the address. and in every hermeneutic conversation this address has the priority. put differently, every conversation aimed at understanding gives priority to the voice of the other.1 from a hermeneutics so conceived we can see why gadamer will say on multiple occasions that the experience of understanding is a communicative event. in his essays written after the publication of his main work, truth and method, gadamer will stress the basic implication of this communicative event. he writes: “the communality that we call human rests on the linguistic constitution of our life-world” (gadamer, 1985, p. 180). for gadamer, the experience of understanding is tied to the very way in which we are human and participate in what i have described elsewhere as “shared life.” with this basic outline of gadamer’s hermeneutics in view, we can now hopefully see what interpretive understandings are to be included in this understanding of the world. certainly it includes more than what we learn from art, history, and philosophy–the three disciplines named in truth and method where we can have an experience of understanding outside methodological research. it also includes the experience of understanding in the therapeutic situation, in nursing care, and in the classroom. when we consider what these experiences have in common, we might also begin to see something of the very nature of understanding. understanding is a distinctive kind of knowing. in understanding something one does not prove anything, or acquire facts, or even make logical arguments. when gadamer speaks about the experience of truth in art, he uses the language of recognition to describe the knowing that is understanding. but what is this? it is something like seeing, as when the student in the classroom says “oh, now i see.” that is the experience of understanding. understanding the world means to be able to see what is. to use another word for this experience, i would use the word “learning.” but this brings me to my point. as every therapist, nurse, and teacher knows–and for that matter, for anyone caught up in communicative understanding–the task of understanding is not without its difficulty. in speaking to and hearing others, we are never neutral, as if unshaped by our prior involvement in the world. we speak and listen from out of the experiences of our own lives and from the language that we already possess. so when we engage in the effort to understand we often talk at cross purposes or with words that mean little beyond the reach of our own hand. as gadamer often notes, coming to an understanding in conversation will require finding a common language that is never a fixed given. but more than this, we often find ourselves at a loss for words or caught up in silence that risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 5 3 seems to make understanding difficult, to say the least. and so we can say that hermeneutic experience is the experience of the difficulty that we encounter in hearing what the other has to say, which includes the other in us. each of the talks that i have prepared for these three days will address a difficulty in the task of understanding. references gadamer, h-g. (1985). on the origin of philosophical hermeneutics. in philosophical apprenticeships (r. sullivan, trans.; pp. 179-180). cambridge, ma: the mit press. gadamer, h-g. (1997). reflections on my philosophical journey. in l. hahn (ed.), the philosophy of hans-georg gadamer (p. 46). chicago, il: open court publishing. notes 1. in his “reflections on my philosophical journey,” gadamer describes how his hermeneutic philosophy is an attempt at countering the illusion of a full self-presence and selfconsciousness when it comes to understanding. while heidegger conveyed this counter position through the notion of thrownness, gadamer writes: “but what i had in mind was the special autonomy of the other person, and so quite logically i sought to ground the linguisticality of our orientation to the world in conversation” (gadamer, 1997, p. 46). corresponding author: tiffany a. beks, ba, msc email: tiffany.beks@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics june 5, 2018 the author(s) 2018 becoming the vulnerable neighbour: from trauma research to practice tiffany a. beks abstract in this article, i explore the relevancy and application of gadamerian hermeneutics and lévinasian philosophy (lévinas, 1991) as adapted by orange (2011) to the field of counselling psychology, with a focus on working with individuals who have experienced trauma. i begin by exploring an encounter that ignited my search for better understanding the suffering associated with traumatic betrayal in the context of military service, a journey which led me to an application of hermeneutics as a theoretical orientation in trauma counselling. i then examine gadamerian hermeneutics and lévinasian constructs with respect to how my practice was altered by this encounter and how my approach to working with survivors of trauma continually evolves. the review of gadamer’s constructs of dialogue and prejudice and orange’s hermeneutic sensibility brings me to new insights as to the application of hermeneutics in the context of counselling psychology and its associated work in trauma care. keywords hermeneutics, counselling psychology, trauma, psychology, qualitive research i can recall vividly the first time i became aware of the profound suffering experienced by veterans and their families in the aftermath of being betrayed by the military. i had nearly finished an interview with my first msc thesis research participant, a spouse of a veteran who had been suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) due to adverse events he experienced during a military deployment. the interview had focused on how spouses were affected by the veterans’ ptsd, as well as the barriers and facilitators spouses face in engaging with psychosocial supports and services in their community. “is there anything else you would like me to know before we end the interview?” i asked the standard question that typically beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 2 proceeds this type of interview, not expecting much more of a response than a signal that she had expressed everything she needed to say. at this point, i was already thinking about everything i had to prepare for a different meeting later that day. then, unexpectedly, my participant stated, “actually yes. this didn’t come up in the interview but, i have to say it.” her voice cracked. she fell silent for a moment. she began to cry. i was confused, concerned, and surprised. i thought: this is not how an interview ends. with uncertainty and anxiety, i encouraged her to continue. “i am forever talking my husband off a ledge. i am forever walking on eggshells, making sure he doesn’t take his life, avoiding triggering him, preventing angry outbursts. ptsd touches every part of our life. my kids are suffering with depression and anxiety now because he never got the help he needed. and not once have i ever been offered assistance or training from veterans affairs. my husband, my family, we have devoted our life to the military and the military destroyed him. but do you think they will take any responsibility? they promised to support injured veterans and their families, but instead they dismissed him from service, and then they abandoned us. and this…this was the ultimate betrayal.” i could feel my eyes well with tears. i was holding my pen so tight by this time i was shaking. shaking in anger, disgust, and sorrow. i did not know how to respond and so i remained silent. i have revisited this experience many times since because it represents the encounter that brought into question everything i thought i knew about trauma. the above narrative not only illustrates the potency of hermeneutic encounters, but it also represents the seedling of the transformation and sense of responsibility that is cultivated within researchers when they are guided by a topic and engage it care-fully (moules, venturato, laing, & field, 2017). it attends to the unpredictable, yet invaluable learning that takes place in coming to an understanding -the kind of learning that, paradoxically, leaves us speechless at a time when we feel the intense need to say something. it is also the kind of research “findings” that are rarely articulated in traditional dissertations or empirically-oriented journal articles but are of vital importance to our relationship with a topic and the lives and community it inhabits. this form of learning – coming to an understanding forms the foundation upon which we, as researchers and practitioners, become a vulnerable neighbour to the suffering stranger and establish a sense of commitment to a subject matter. although my hermeneutic encounter occurred within the context of counselling psychology research, it exerted a profound influence on how i orient myself in counselling practice, specifically toward those who have suffered trauma. gadamerian hermeneutics and lévinasian constructs offered a philosophy by which i could make sense of the way my practice was altered by this encounter and how my approach to working with survivors of trauma continually evolves. hence, the purpose of this article is not to demonstrate the application of hermeneutics in research, but to highlight how a hermeneutic encounter in research ignited a shift in my theoretical orientation toward counselling. throughout this article, i discuss how gadamerian hermeneutics and lévinasian constructs adapted by orange (2011) have informed my understanding of the work i do as an aspiring trauma-focused counselling psychologist. first, i discuss how the experience of being addressed by the topic called into question what i thought i knew about trauma. next, i offer a rationale for the relevance of hermeneutics to my practice as an emergent trauma counselling psychologist. in the final section, i describe the application of gadamer’s constructs of dialogue and prejudice and orange’s hermeneutic sensibility in the discipline of counselling psychology and its associated work in trauma care. beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 3 calling what is “known” into question: the address of the topic gadamerian philosophy asserts that a topic lives before we are aware of it and after we conceal it, but the place where our hermeneutic inquiry begins is likely when we are addressed by the topic (moules et al., 2015). an address is the experience of being caught off-guard, called, or summoned by something (moules et al., 2015). addresses come in the form of an interruption, a break through or, perhaps more so, a breakdown in our regular day-to-day life and routine, calling on us to listen, to be vulnerable, and to be open (moules et al., 2015). this opening to a topic allows us to be guided by its character, rather than previous reductions, labels, or categories we have ascribed to it (moules et al., 2015). when an address occurs, the topic matters to us and demands a response, a “servitude” imbued in morals and conscience (moules et al., 2015, p. 72). when a topic presents itself to us, parts of it are hidden and revealed at the same time, and consequently, it breeds questions about how to cultivate an understanding of what already exists (moules et al., 2015). gadamer might have said that our topics are partially concealed from us because of our own biases, beliefs, attitudes, background, and traditions (moules et al., 2015). furthermore, it is our engagement and participation in our practice and the topic itself that conceals and reveals aspects of the topic (moules et al., 2015). our day to day discourses that constitute our practice remain unquestioned, unexamined, and taken-for-granted until this routine is interrupted by an address. this address problematizes the taken-for-granted, calling on us to understand it differently and wholly (moules et al., 2015). as such, the address involves aletheia in that it is concerned with conserving, enlivening, and remembering something (moules et al., 2015). with gadamerian philosophy in mind, i revisit my experience of being addressed by the topic of the suffering experienced by veterans and their families in the aftermath of being betrayed by the military. according to moules et al. (2015), topics are often founded in our practice because, as practitioners, we suffer these things in our day to day work. as i actively listened to the narrative of the other (“participant”), i simultaneously understood that there was something about her and me, in this time and place, that created an emotional and psychological space that enabled and fostered a deepened sense of human and worldly connectedness. i felt inextricably linked not just to her and her story, but also society, its welfare, and the future of the world. even though the content of her story was heart-breaking, it felt good and right to be in that space with her and connect with her. i was absorbed with care care for the other, her pain, her family’s suffering, and the betrayal they endured by an institution to which they had devoted their lives. i felt a profound sense of injustice, a need to understand how this could happen, what it meant to her and her family, and the looming question: now what do i do about it? hearing her story transformed me as a researcher, counselling psychologist, and most importantly, a human being. she taught me about a world i did not know existed, a realm of experience i wanted to know more about. it was as if i had been called upon to devote the total sum of my energy to the topic of traumatic betrayal, and yet, at the same time, it energized me. it was through this dialogue and this experience we shared that this topic unfolded, far-removed from a literature review or from an objective, “rational,” logically deduced process. it did not feel as though i had “discovered” this issue, but rather that this topic greeted me and made itself accessible to me. it was almost as beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 4 if the topic itself was a living thing, and i held it with the same regard, responsiveness, and responsibility that i would another life. in reflecting upon my encounter with this topic, and in keeping with the principle of historicism, i must acknowledge a tradition in which i have been situated and entrenched. i am intrigued and passionate about working with individuals who have suffered trauma and with military families because the suffering associated with military service has been a part of my life since i experienced the “thrownness” (field, 2018) of the world at birth. i come from a long line of descendants who served in the military, and in many ways, my upbringing carries many military traditions, artifacts, and customs forward from the past into the present and future. a description of these traditions is beyond the scope of this article; however, the main point is that there exists an immutable relationship between my decision to focus on trauma in my counselling practice and my family’s military identity, history, and the suffering they have endured. it was not, however, until i began conducting research that my understanding of trauma was challenged. as my research participant shared her story with me, it was her perspective that caught me. it was fresh, new, and very different from my own. i had never thought about the actions of the military institution in the aftermath of traumatic military experiences, its impact on veterans and their family members. on the contrary, i had always thought about their suffering as a mental health condition, categorizing their behaviours and attaching a label in accordance with dominant psychiatric and diagnostic entities. the possibility of a different phenomenon at work sent shockwaves through me, jolted my perspective, and overturned what i thought i knew about trauma. for example, empirical studies have suggested that biological mechanisms may underly ptsd – that is, individuals may be genetically predisposed to develop ptsd based on their dna (i.e., genetic risk) and this structure may be passed down to offspring, resulting in an intergenerationally produced risk for ptsd (yehuda, & bierer, 2009). at the same time, when exposed to a particularly stressful environment, an individual’s genetic functioning may be altered (i.e., epigenetic trauma) and result in ptsd (yehuda, & bierer, 2009). this body of knowledge has contributed significantly to my understanding of trauma and its systemic occurrence within and across generations. yet, i was left wondering: given this new understanding of betrayal, how i do i make sense of trauma and its origins against the backdrop of my traditions? what other forms of trauma have been concealed by my theories and orientations toward human suffering? finally, how does this new perspective change the way i practice? through the experience described above, something taken-for-granted and never seen was enlivened through listening to the other. in the spirit of gadamerian philosophy, hermeneutic inquiry seeks to understand that which has been previously concealed (moules et al., 2015). furthermore, gadamerian philosophy emphasizes understanding in terms of practical wisdom and how it occurs in living examples (moules et al., 2015). this form of knowledge, phronesis, is cultivated in our everyday work (moules et al., 2015). said differently, it is through listening to the other that i come to an understanding of how i might respond better to the suffering associated with military trauma in my counselling research and practice. i now turn to the writings of orange (2011) who, in drawing upon gadamerian and lévinasian constructs, facilitated my understanding of the applicability of hermeneutic philosophy to the discipline of counselling psychology and its associated work in trauma care. beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 5 entering a hermeneutics of trauma and betrayal in this section, i provide a rationale for the relevance of hermeneutics to my practice as an emergent trauma counsellor. the rationale for selecting hermeneutics to guide my practice is grounded in three important assumptions. the first pertains to the idea that the practice of counselling psychology is inherently interpretive. the second pertains to the notion that counselling individuals who have suffered trauma requires a shift in our understanding of human distress. the third pertains to the notion that counselling psychologists engaging trauma work must expect to be changed by their practice. each of these revelations are described in greater detail below. counselling as an interpretive practice in the practice of counselling psychology, “interpretation is an omnipresent force that psychologists and clients alike must appreciate and revere” (klingle, 2015, p. 1). this means that interpretive practice is constantly at work as we search for understanding, not only with respect to the experiences of the other (commonly referred to as “client”), but also our own experiences. our interpretation and the interpretation brought by the other to the counselling session occurs within an interpersonal and intrapersonal relationship, the self and the other (klingle, 2015). further, interpretation is shaped by others and the world around us. the practice of counselling psychology can be thought of as a dialogue between the counsellor and the other that has potential to shape and transform both individuals (klingle, 2015). yet, this transformation depends on the extent to which counsellors are open to being transformed by our own experiences and by bearing witness to the narratives of the other. according to some of the major teachings underpinning counselling psychology as a practice and profession, interpretation is critical to the counselling relationship because interpretation itself is conceived as necessary for therapeutic change to occur (paré, 2013; patterson, 1974; porter, 1959). moreover, interpretation is viewed as a technique, a skilled art form that must be cultivated and offered carefully and sincerely, with the goal of deepening understanding for both parties (patterson, 1974). previous authors have suggested that the distinction between therapeutic reflection and interpretation lies in the motivation underpinning the interaction (paré, 2013; porter, 1959). hence, when a counsellor offers his or her perspective, this is merely the technique of reflection (klingle, 2015). in contrast, the interaction moves toward interpretation when the intention of an interaction, or offering, is to cultivate deeper understanding (klingle, 2015). however, i argue that therapeutic interpretation involves more than an intention to deepen understanding. as counselling psychologists, we must remain aware that we cannot escape the fact that interpretation is shaped by our beliefs, attitudes, biases, past experiences, and histories (klingle, 2015). thus, if the intention of therapeutic interpretation aims to deepen understanding, the historical, social, emotional, cognitive, and cultural context in which our perspective is rooted must be considered. furthermore, i offer a different perspective in that to deepen understanding is to question previous understandings and come to new understandings, for both the counsellor and the client. gadamer (2013) reminds of us the nature of transformation: beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 6 …transformation means that something is suddenly and as a whole something else, that this other transformed thing that it has become is its true being, in comparison with which its earlier being is nil. when we find someone transformed we mean precisely this, that he has become another person. (p. 115) thus, the interpretive practice of counselling psychology cultivates change and transformation as it transforms both the client and the counsellor. shifting perspectives on trauma and distress in drawing from lévinasian philosophy, orange (2011) stated that trauma is inherently relational, and that to be traumatized is a complex series of moments. the first moment is constitutive of the trauma (greek for injury) – the shocking, abusive, or neglectful occurrence – followed by the denial, hypocrisy, dismissal, and silencing both by the perpetrators and by others to whom the individual may have turned to for help. hence, trauma and betrayal are not distinct events, but are a complex, interconnected sequence of moments that occurs in the process of traumatization. according to orange, and of critical importance in working with traumatized individuals, we must shift our focus away from what is wrong with the person (i.e., the pathology) to what has happened to the person to result in such distress, a transformation referred to as “entering a hermeneutics of trauma” (p. 83). importantly, orange’s account of entering a hermeneutics of trauma parallels my experience of being addressed by the topic of betrayal in the context of military trauma. indeed, my perspective shifted from a focus on traumatization as a pathology to better understanding the betrayal that happens alongside trauma and its role in human suffering because i was confronted with a new perspective that challenged my own traditions. as such, i argue that a hermeneutic approach is necessary for guiding trauma counselling because to better understand the suffering of others and make their pain accessible, i must begin by understanding what within myself impedes my compassion, empathy, and care. clinical attitude and transformation according to orange (2011), in our work in trauma and the accompanying instances of betrayal, rejection, and disavowal experienced by trauma victims, it is necessary that counsellors both listen and expect to learn something from the traumatized other. this expectation shapes the attitude of counsellors working in the area of trauma. according to orange (2011), clinical care in the field of trauma must be guided by the needs of the other, the expectation that one will be questioned by the other with whom we seek understanding, the assumption that the other is surviving despite being wounded, and the presumption that the other is our partner in the search for meaning and understanding. the expectations and, by extension, the attitude described by orange echoes gadamerian philosophy and its emphasis on understanding through being with the other (field, 2018). given the importance of allowing oneself to learn from, and be changed by, the traumatized other, and the need for clinical trauma work to be guided by a caring and compassionate attitude, hermeneutic philosophy is an appropriate theoretical orientation for counsellors to take in working with those who have suffered forms of trauma, including betrayal. the suffering stranger: applied hermeneutics in trauma counselling beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 7 applied hermeneutics refers to the application of hermeneutics to the lived realities of professional practice disciplines (moules, mccaffrey, morck, & jardine, 2011). it offers a means to explore professional practice with respect to the inherent complexities and meanings, the dialogues of communal and self-understanding that occur, and how our practice occurs through language and tradition (moules et al., 2011). moules et al. (2011) reminds us that “our day to day work is hermeneutic in character” (p. 2). the practice of counselling psychology is a deeply interpretive discipline wherein the philosophy and method of hermeneutics is central to the work of practitioners (klingle, 2015; williams, 2017). an important responsibility of counselling psychologists is to remain abreast of new understandings that inform the way we practice and how we interact with clients – a responsibility that is codified in our ethical professional guidelines (canadian psychological association, 2017). in the context of clients who have suffered trauma, this ethic is extended, not just to include the responsibility to remain current about new understandings, but to remain accountable and ethical to clients through understanding their preand post-trauma reality. the experience of being traumatized is multi-faceted, touching the cultural, social, physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional fabric of our being (freyd & birrell, 2013). violations of trust and protection perpetrated by powerful and depended-upon institutions, such as the military, either concurrently or in the after-math of traumatic events, might be understood as an additional traumatic experience in its own right or as an event that cannot be separated from what it means to become traumatized (freyd & birrell, 2013). it is this emphasis on understanding the suffering of the other who has experienced concurrent or post-trauma betrayal, in an interpretive profession such as counselling psychology, that makes hermeneutics a fitting approach for coming-to-an-understanding of effective trauma care. in her book the suffering stranger, orange (2011) asserted that hermeneutics is a “clinical philosophy” (p. 15). according to orange, gadamerian philosophy reminds us that hermeneutics emphasizes a “readiness to listen to and learn from the voice of the other” (p. 15), meaning that the clinical practice of counselling psychologists calls on us to respond to the suffering of the other through dialogical understanding and a hermeneutic of trust. as counselling psychologists, we have an infinite responsibility to respond to the suffering stranger and let him/her teach us. it is this combination of dialogical understanding, in a hermeneutic of trust, that cultivates the response and infinite responsibility to the suffering other, a “hermeneutic clinical sensibility” (p. 3). in drawing from her own experience as clinical hermeneut, orange stated that the gadamerian constructs of dialogue and prejudice are continually at work in caring for those who are suffering from trauma. each of these constructs and their application to counselling psychology are briefly outlined below. gadamer thought that we can understand only from participating in conversation with the other, with the expectancy of learning from the other (orange, 2011). moreover, one should expect to be surprised or caught-off guard by the other and what one learns from the other. according to gadamer, we “fall into” conversation, without knowing the outcome or the path of the conversation (orange, 2011, p. 16). understanding (or not understanding) is an event that occurs. thus, the path is unpredictable. the construct of dialogue is important with respect to clinical practice, as our work can be thought of as an interpretive interaction between two human beings beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 8 (klingle, 2015; williams, 2017). for counselling psychologists to help clients, we must engage in dialogue – be it through spoken word, expressive arts, music, or an outdoor walk. through dialogue, we enter clients’ lives and experience and tap into the strands of their lives that have fallen into the background of, or completely disappeared from, the dominant narrative they bring to counselling. we reflect, make, and clarify meaning with our clients. it is our greatest hope that through this dialogue and meaning-making, that life flourishes. this means that dialogue is not a means to an end, but rather, dialogue is the meaning-making and the therapeutic ingredient of counselling (paré, 2013). hermeneutics recognizes that understandings “come from somewhere; they are not simply fabricated” (moules et al., 2015, p. 3). gadamer proposed that dialogical understanding takes place between worlds of experience steeped in traditions. this is, of course, the case in counselling practice, where counsellor and client encounter one another and represent two worlds of experience existing in the traditions in which we live (orange, 2011). we each bring to conversation a perspective that is historically built, and thus, it is crucial that we know ourselves, our perspectives, and our traditions better. in counselling practice, we must become astutely aware of our perspective, and appreciate that what occurs between counsellor and client is not void of perspective, beliefs, attitudes, history, or tradition. according to orange, this does not mean that we are to suspend our prejudices and traditions, but that we develop an ethic and integrity that requires richer and more far-reaching truthfulness with ourselves and with the other. in the words of gadamer: it is neither possible, necessary, nor desirable that we put ourselves within brackets. the hermeneutical attitude supposes only that we self-consciously designate our opinions and prejudices and qualify them as such, and in so doing strip them of their extreme character. in keeping to this attitude, we grant the text the opportunity to appear as an authentically different being and to manifest its own truth, over and against our own preconceived notions. (1987, p. 132) in counselling practice, awareness of the personal and therapeutic theories and traditions in which our practice is grounded, as well as our personal background (e.g., cultural, social, gender), outlines the margins of our perspectives and interpretations (orange, 2011). in so doing, we return to dialogue as it provides a corrective mechanism to our perspective, broadening and expanding it (orange, 2011). orange (2011) referred to the abovementioned elements as a “hermeneutic sensibility in everyday therapeutics” (p. 22). counselling as an activity is an endeavour to make contact with the other through language, and to articulate in words what comes to be understood with the other. counselling is the shared search for understanding. furthermore, orange reminds us that clinically-focused work is a matter of the hermeneutics of trust, in that we must allow the other the opportunity to educate us. counselling involves a willingness to see that the other may have a perspective, an idea, which we have been unsuccessful in understanding. furthermore, this hermeneutic attitude assumes that, as practitioners, we believe in the veracity, authenticity, and honesty of what the other is saying. finally, the hermeneutic attitude of trust does not assume that the other will trust us as a counsellor, given their history and background of betrayal, violence, and victimization. in turn, it is this attitude that guides our work with those who are beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 9 suffering and cultivates an environment in which the other may learn that he or she belongs and is safe. according to orange, interpretation is not synonymous with understanding, but rather interpretation makes the understanding explicit. in counselling practice, we must suspend our desire to be right, our theoretical orientations surrounding clients’ problems, and our assumptions about ourselves if we are to “hear the voice of the other” and let him or her teach us (p. 43). in the spirit of a clinical hermeneutic sensibility, orange (2011) called upon counsellors to better understand the parallels between traumatic suffering, clinical practice, and lévinasian philosophy. the hermeneutics of trauma, according to orange, means the clinician allows oneself to be traumatized by the suffering other. similarly, gadamerian philosophy reminds us that we belong to a common world, and belonging in a community means we are obligated to our neighbor. to be ethical in trauma care is to respond, and a response is a “refusal to be unmoved, or indifferent, to the face of the other” and the suffering of the other (p. 43). drawing from the lévinasian construct of incumbency, orange asserted that there is no time to decide whether the other is worthy of our care, our response; the other’s need rises above us, so that we are never in the place to judge. it is the needs of the other, “the suffering stranger” (p. 57), and a counsellor’s compassion and receptivity to suffering through dialogue, that is the purpose of the therapeutic relationship. furthermore, to conceal or misremember this responsibility is a collapse of ethical clinical work. through this compassion and receptivity to the suffering of the other, we take a risk in that we are then vulnerable, we suffer, and we become traumatized. orange claimed that our modern obsession with applying palpable tools and procedural interventions deters from the response that is most needed – that is, our willingness to respond by becoming traumatized by the suffering of the other and by coming to a shared understanding of the meaning of the trauma through our dialogue and own traumatization. the practice of counselling psychology and its associated work in traumatic suffering is deeply hermeneutic. through dialogue and interpretation, we strive to understand clients’ realities, perspectives, and suffering. in working with those who have endured trauma, counsellors are confronted with the responsibility to respond to the suffering of the other, and through a dialogical understanding, we too make ourselves vulnerable and are, in turn, traumatized. by taking this risk and responsibility, we gain self-understanding and mutual understanding. thus, a hermeneutic sensibility to working with those who have experienced trauma does not require one to relieve the suffering of the other, but to live with the other in their suffering. summary in this article, i have explored an encounter that ignited my search for better understanding the suffering associated with traumatic betrayal, a journey which led me to an application of hermeneutics as a theoretical orientation in trauma counselling. through this work, i have come to an understanding and an appreciation of counselling psychology as an interpretive practice, as well as the human concerns i attempt to understand and respond to in my counselling practice. our interpretation of the trepidations and suffering our clients bring to counselling informs the way we practice, and thus, each new encounter transforms us and we become a different counsellor than we were before. through hermeneutics, we approach the other with humility, curiosity, and a desire to learn, an attitude that parallels the practice of counselling. therefore, in applying a hermeneutic sensibility to my practice, i will attempt to live with the other who is beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 10 suffering the effects of trauma, to be the vulnerable neighbour, and through dialogue, search for a communal understanding of what it means to survive and flourish after trauma. references canadian psychological association. (2017). canadian code of ethics for psychologists (4th ed.). ottawa, on, canada: author. field, j. c. (2018). lecture on gadamer and grondin [class notes, eder-701]. calgary, ab, canada: university of calgary. freyd, j. j., & birrell, p. j. (2013). blind to betrayal: why we fool ourselves we aren't being fooled. hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons. gadamer, h.-g. (1987). the problem of historical consciousness. in p. rabinow & w. sullivan (eds.), interpretive social science: a second look (pp. 82-140). berkeley, ca: university of california press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/2013). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). london, uk: bloomsbury. klingle, k. (2015). batman and the sticky-fingered maiden: psychology as an interpretive practice. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 5. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca lévinas, e. (1991). totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority (3rd ed.). dordrecht, nl: kluwer academic publishers. moules, n. j., mccaffrey, g., field, j. c., & laing, c. m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. moules, n. j., mccaffrey, g., morck, a. c., & jardine, d. w. (2011). on applied hermeneutics and the work of the world. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah moules, n. j., venturato, l., laing, c. m., & field, j. c. (2017). is it really “yesterday’s war”? what gadamer has to say about what gets counted. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 1. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/index orange, d. m. (2011). the suffering stranger: hermeneutics for everyday clinical practice. new york, ny: routledge. paré, d. (2013). the practice of collaborative counseling and psychotherapy: developing skills in culturally mindful helping. thousand oaks, ca: sage. http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/ http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/index beks journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 8 11 patterson, c. h. (1974). relationship counseling and psychotherapy. new york, ny: harper & row. porter, e. h. (1959). critical incidents in psychotherapy. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. williams, e. p. (2017). what should i do? what would you do? a counselling psychologist’s interpretation. emerging perspectives, 1(2), 1-5. retrieved from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/ep/index yehuda, r., & bierer, l. (2009). the relevance of epigenetics to ptsd: implications for the dsm-v. journal of traumatic stress, 22(5), 427-434. doi:10.1002/jts.20448 https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/ep/index microsoft word purcell.docx corresponding author: sebastian purcell, phd assistant professor of philosophy suny cortland, ny email: sebastian.purcell@cortland.edu journal of applied hermeneutics june 5, 2012 the author 2012 translating god: derrida, ricoeur, kearney sebastian purcell abstract the purpose of the present essay is to defend two related notions. the more specific notion that i seek to defend is richard kearney’s conception of god as posse, of god as a possible god. his position has recently been criticized for three separate reasons: that it is not radical enough, that it is crypto-metaphysical, and that it forecloses the most profound aims of ethics. at a broader level what seems to be at stake is the opposition between partisans of radical finitude, those who hold that the most profound questions are encountered at the limits of thought, and an alternative “infinite” conception that kearney shares with paul ricoeur, which maintains that fidelity to unpredictable events opens the way to what is most profound about the human condition. in response, i argue that the criticisms fail to hit their mark because they presuppose a broadly derridean or post-modern position in order to make their argument, when it is just those presuppositions that are in question. keywords deconstruction, derrida, ethics, eros, events, finitude, god, hermeneutics, infinity, kearney, ricoeur, translation whether one chooses to lead one’s life by means of a belief in a god or not, and how one does so in light of such commitments, is a central existential and practical matter for anyone’s life. this question orients our sense of what goals we deem worthy of pursuing, what codes of conduct at least in part we deem necessary to observe, and above all it provides a distinct sense of our human place in the universe. perhaps it is for these reasons that one finds a broad public interest in question of religious belief in our modern world. richard dawkins and stephen hawking are but two of the most well-known of many recent authors to have engaged this topic.1 yet philosophy as a discipline has stood at some distance from this discussion, despite the clear public interest in it. the reason for this is that philosophical discussions on god tend to suffer from a fatal defect: they deadlock almost immediately. atheists are likely never to accept any proof for god’s existence, and theists are likely purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 2 never to accept that their proofs are incorrect. it would seem, as a result, that despite the public interest in the matter, there is little scholarly interest in it. as intense, personal, and practical as the discussion might be, it would appear that philosophy has almost nothing new to say about the topic. it is in light of this deadlock that continental philosophy as a whole, and hermeneutics in particular, has something of specific value to contribute. this tradition of thought has followed a path that søren kierkegaard and friedrich nietzsche opened. rather than pursue the question “does god exist?” it has instead pursued “what kind of god would be worth believing in, would be worth hoping for, should such a being exist?” this is the sort of question that theists and atheists alike can pursue, so that it does not result in an immediate deadlock, and it has equally proven to be of both scholarly and public value. charles taylor’s a secular age (2007), for example, has renewed this scholarly discussion, and hubert dreyfus and sean kelly’s all things shining (2011), which pursues a defense of polytheism on existentialist grounds, has become a national best seller. the key problem, when one takes up this approach, is what has come to be known as the problem “nihilism.” nietzsche’s (in)famous statement that “god is dead. god remains dead. and we have killed him.” compresses the two related aspects of this matter (1974, p. 181). one aspect concerns the annihilation of christian values, the fact that the christian god does not provide meaning for “western” culture as he did around 1500. the other concerns the distinct possibility that all our lives are but much sound and fury signifying nothing a total annihilation of meaning which might be termed the problem of absurdity. nietzsche and the tradition of continental philosophy following him, further linked both of these aspects to a metaphysical view on the world. the metaphysics of presence is a view on the world that is taken to be exemplified in the works of plato, aristotle, and st. thomas aquinas, and which at the same time gave rise to the scientific approach to reality that denies any place to existential meaning.2 it maintains that being is to be defined in terms of its presence, in terms of what it is here and now, in its actuality, and thus allows one to manipulate it maximally according to one’s best use of instrumental reason as one finds, for example in cost-benefit analysis. such a view on reality has no place for existential meaning. the implication for the philosophy of religion, then, is that even if one were to believe in god’s existence, one would have to do so within a framework that did not draw upon the traditional metaphysical accounts, on the metaphysics of presence, since it is just those accounts that resulted in both the secularization of our contemporary culture and the broader problem of absurdity in modern life. two of the most robust accounts of god that have been provided in response to the problem of nihilism are those by jacques derrida and richard kearney, though they have not thus far seen eye-to-eye. my specific aim of the present essay, then, is to provide a defense of two related philosophical notions. at one level, i seek to defend richard kearney’s conception of a possible god, god understood as “posse,” the god who may be, from some recent derridean criticisms, notably john caputo’s and mark dooley’s, which suggest that his conception belongs to the tradition of the metaphysics of presence. at a more general level, because the criticism kearney’s work has received is of a distinctively derridean kind, what is at stake in this defense concerns the viability of an alternative to derridean thought, the viability of a program of purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 3 thought that is not committed to radical finitude in the way that he is. insofar as derrida’s commitment to radical finitude may be understood to be shared by giorgio agamben, martin heidegger, even slavoj žižek, and insofar as kearney’s commitment to an alternative, one could call it: the program of infinite thought, is shared by thinkers as diverse as alain badiou and paul ricoeur, the stakes of this opposition are significant for continental philosophy as a whole, and not only the philosophy of religion.3 the argument that i pursue in what follows, then, makes the case both that there is a viable alternative to the program of radical finitude, and that kearney’s conception of god as “posse” is part of that alternative. one result of this argument is thus to suggest that it is not possible, as derrideans have done, simply to assume that because kearney does not share their basic philosophical commitments that his conclusions are misguided. a second result is that it might be possible to lead one’s life meaningfully if guided by a conception of god as posse, which, following kearney, entails an ethical task for human living, a kind of ethics of translation. because exegetical points have in some ways resulted in the current disagreement, the present investigation will be served well by proceeding slowly and with clarity. i begin, then, with a thorough review of the three charges that derrideans have leveled against kearney, specifically, and ricoeur, from whom he draws, more generally. 1. the three charges although kearney’s work has been discussed by other groups than derrideans or continental philosophers generally, to my mind it is the derridean critique that poses the most serious challenge.4 john caputo and mark dooley, while always friendly and appreciative in their responses, have made the strongest case in this regard. taken together, one finds that they have leveled three separate charges: that kearney’s work is not radical enough, that it is cryptometaphysical, and that it forecloses ethics, or at least the most profound point of ethical responsibility. i take up these charges each in turn. the first charge: not radical enough caputo has argued in a number of essays and in several presentations that kearney’s diacritical hermeneutics, along with ricoeur’s reflective hermeneutics, is simply not radical enough to twist free from the metaphysics of presence. he has made his case against ricoeur as early as radical hermeneutics (caputo, 1984) and has expanded it to include kearney in his more recent work (caputo, 2006, 2010, 2011). incidentally, i note that he is not the only derridean to argue that ricoeur failed to meet the challenge posed by the metaphysics of presence. to mention but one other prominent scholar on derrida who has addressed the relation of ricoeur and derrida one could look to leonard lawlor’s work (1992).5 this line of critique, then, broaches a deep tension between derrida and ricoeur, indeed to my mind, it broaches one of the most fundamental disagreements in contemporary continental philosophy, and i shall gesture in that direction below (section 3). nevertheless, i begin with the derridean criticism. caputo’s most recent argument is that the structure of kearney and ricoeur’s hermeneutics, whether diacritical or reflective, is too hegelian to countenance the possibility of events, and this is important because if correct, this means that kearney and ricoeur alike are committed to the metaphysics of presence.6 to recall, should that commitpurcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 4 ment turn out to be correct, then their proposed solutions to the problem of nihilism, and in particular their conceptions of god, would turn out to be part of that same problematic history. specifically, in response to kearney’s most recent attempt to find a way to mediate between theism and atheism in anatheism (kearney, 2010) caputo wrote: of course, richard kearney is interested in hermeneutics, not hegelian metaphysics, but the question is whether [kearney’s] diacritical hermeneutics does not have a hegelian imprint. are not hegel and kearney both writing their own de trinitate? in a hermeneutics more radically conceived [i.e., caputo’s own], where things are deeply at risk, belief and unbelief are not parts or moments in or in any way contributors to a third position one step removed. their momentum is never allowed to unfold or even get off the ground. … instead of 1,2,3 we encounter the innumerable. the binary of theism and atheism is displaced, has not earned the right to reconciliation.…this is not simply a “negative” operation, for the displacement of these “positions” exposes a more radical “affirmation,” a risky affirmation, a hope against hope, which is inscribed in a more fundamental undecidability that bests both of them. (caputo, 2011, p. 62) caputo’s argument is thus that kearney and ricoeur both retain a certain hegelian structure in their thought, that they are “closet hegelian[s]” (caputo, 2011, p. 61). caputo’s own derridean position, by contrast, avoids the metaphysics of presence because it remains open to a “risky” possibility; it is open to the notion that being/reality is not to be understood entirely in terms of presence, but also in terms of events, or radically unpredictable reconfigurations of being. kearney and ricoeur’s hegelianism is problematic not because it forecloses certain risks why should one value riskiness for its own sake? but because in that foreclosure of risk, this structure of thinking has no place for events, no place for the “perhaps” that escapes the metaphysics of presence, the “perhaps” that “is the necessary condition of possibility of every experience which is truly an ‘experience,’ which means that it arises from the unpredictable otherness of the future and shatters our horizons of expectation, which is what [derrida] means by the possibility of the impossible” (caputo, 2011, p. 59). this “perhaps,” this possibility of impossibility, is just the derridean concept of event: “[t]here the word peut-être cuts deeply into the name of god, so that god is in the very element of the peut-être, the ‘event’ of the promise which is no less a promise/threat, of the maybe which is also a maybe not” (caputo, 2011, p. 59). in short, kearney and ricoeur are not radical enough for the following reasons: they retain a hegelian structure to their thought, and that structure forecloses the possibility of the event, yet one must remain open to the event, because it is only in this way that one can avoid commitment to the metaphysics of presence. the second charge: crypto-metaphysics the charge that kearney and ricoeur are closet hegelians might be one way to argue that they are crypto-metaphysicians, but when caputo levels this charge against kearney in particular, he has something more specific in mind. in the god who may be (kearney, 2001), kearney’s goal is to mediate between the metaphysical conception of god understood, as aquinas wrote, as ipsum esse per se subsistens, and the more personal, eschatological god of the prophets in the bible, the god of abraham purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 5 and issac, even jesus, who seems to be little encumbered with metaphysical terminology. he does this by reconceiving god in terms of a sense of possibility beyond, or more profound than, the metaphysical alternatives of potency and act, that is to say, he reconceives god in terms of posse. given this aim, caputo argues that there is no real incompatibility between the two conceptions, and that kearney’s “posse” thus turns out to do no more than “update” traditional scholastic accounts of god. caputo wrote: it seems to me that there is no real incompatibility between the eschatological and the metaphysical concepts of god which richard distinguishes. there is no reason that god as such, god quoad se, as aquinas would put it, or god “an sich,” as kant would put it, could not also be pure act, actus purus, the god who “is” through and through without a trace of potency, while god quoad nos, or für uns, god in terms of our experience of god in time and history, is the god who may be. …. exactly how far is diacritical from dialectical? (caputo, 2011, p. 59) for caputo, none of kearney’s ideas are open to the maybe/maybe not, the peut-être of god as event, as khora. as a result, when kearney proposes a new concept, such as “posse,” he is not twisting free from a metaphysical approach to god, from the metaphysics of presence, he is simply “updating it,” by providing another list of qualities that would presumably stand alongside thomas’s categories. even though he claims to be going beyond metaphysics, then, he is really just doing a more modern form of it. the third charge: foreclosing ethics the final charge, which one finds in both caputo and dooley’s essays, is that the way in which kearney attempts to mediate positions, his call for ethical discernment, forecloses the more radical ethics to which deconstruction remains open, to which any philosophy that escapes the metaphysics of presence must remain open. caputo put it as follows: richard takes up this question of the “monstrous” name of khora in strangers, gods, and monsters, where i think his complaint is that when all is said and done khora cannot be trusted. but that i think is precisely what the poetics of the im/possible implies, that the conditions under which we trust also undermine our trust, so that trust is trust in a radical “perhaps,” a god who may or may not be, who may or may not be trusted, which is after all what “perhaps” must surely mean, even as a trust that is completely trustworthy is no trust at all but a surety. (caputo, 2011, p. 60) dooley understands kearney in a similar way. he characterizes kearney’s criticism of postmodernism, of deconstruction, in this way: when “one opts for the postmodern suspension of the ‘appearance-reality distinction,’ one leaves oneself without scope to judge between good and bad. once, in other words, one abolishes all notions of reference and representation, one succumbs to ‘narrative irresponsibility’ since one cannot differentiate good from bad narratives” (dooley, 2007, p. 161). yet, like caputo, dooley argues that by remaining committed to ideas such as “reference” or “representation” kearney “remains captive, in spite of himself, to a view of the self and the world that is residually ‘foundational’” (dooley, 2007, p. 166). the foundation in this case ought to be understood as some form of ethical presence, a certainty, an unrisky, uneventful, definitely the case and not a perhaps/perhaps not. purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 6 to sum up: kearney’s ethical imagination remains ethical only in the pale, bland, metaphysical way, along with all the other concepts he has developed, and though he has tried to think beyond the metaphysics of presence, despite himself, he always ends up slipping back into it. furthermore, it is precisely his idea (the very idea) of ethical discernment between good and bad that prevents him from recognizing the more radical demands of a possible ethics beyond, or at the limits of the metaphysics of presence. 2. ricoeur’s reflective hermeneutics my basic point is that derrideans have simply failed to understand kearney and the ricoeurian pattern of thought (not hegelian) that is present in his work. once that pattern is illuminated, once it is understood on its own terms and not derridean ones, it seems to me that the multiple ways in which their criticisms beg the question will be rather clear. i begin my defense, then, with a reconstruction of ricoeur’s thought and the pattern at work in it in order to illuminate what kearney draws from his thought. in his late exchange with the neuroscientist jean-pierre changeaux, ricoeur gives us the key to understanding the continuity of his thought. there, he suggests that phenomenology and hermeneutics form only two parts of his three-part method, stating: “i want to make my position clear at the outset. i am a partisan of a current of european philosophy that contains three distinctive approaches, typically referred to as ‘reflective philosophy,’ ‘phenomenology,’ and ‘hermeneutics’” (ricoeur, 2000, p. 4). in fact, it is ricoeur’s commitment to reflective philosophy that enables him to unify phenomenology and hermeneutics, to graft the branch of the latter onto the tree of the former. it is because philosophical reflection plays this unifying role that i believe his kind of hermeneutics is most aptly titled a reflective hermeneutics. when viewed in this light, one sees that ricoeur’s central methodological piece is one on the philosophy of reflection, specifically his essay “nabert on act and sign” (ricoeur 1972). the central points for ricoeur’s thought are the following. nabert argues (at least as ricoeur interprets him) that there is a distinction between conscious acts and the representation of those conscious acts in signs. there is a difference between, for example, perceiving the coffee mug on my desk and stating: “there is a coffee mug on my desk.” the latter case represents the conscious act by way of signs. nabert, however, does not understand this representation of conscious acts in signs as an impediment to knowledge, since they rather complete (aufhebet) the conscious acts, enriching them with a sense they did not and could not have on their own. representation by signs, then, becomes a necessary form of mediation on the way to knowledge, rather than an impediment. at this point, when one recognizes the productive role of the signifying representation of conscious acts, one has begun on the arc of philosophical reflection. signs call out for interpretation; they are not always self-evident. hermeneutics, understood as the art of interpretation, thus becomes constitutive of reflective philosophy. in this way it is elevated from a regional discipline, which addressed sacred texts, to one of general philosophical import. this approach makes ricoeur’s hermeneutics fundamentally different from either heidegger’s or gadamer’s insofar as he does not attempt to “dig under” the ontical disciplines, such as logic, mathematics, or science in particular linguistics but instead attempts to traverse them. his reflective hermeneutics is not about a fundamental pre-understanding, a horizion or back-drop purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 7 of understanding that needs to be in place in order to make sense of those sciences. reflective hermeneutics is instead posterior to the sciences, rather than prior, for it is the conflict of interpretations among these regional disciplines that gives rise to the need for hermeneutics. one reflects on these conflicts in order to complete one’s intentional conscious experience. how that interpretation is to be carried out, and how it is to be related, tested, with respect to the original phenomenological evidence are the questions that formed the task of ricoeur’s intellectual career. a caveat is necessary at this point in order to understand one of kearney’s more significant departures from ricoeur. ricoeur’s understanding of phenomenology was such that he never agreed with levinas that the other, the experience of the secondperson intention, maintained priority over one’s first-person conscious experience. in his late the course of recognition, ricoeur addresses the relation of husserl to levinas as follows: one version, that of husserl in his cartesian meditations, remains a phenomenology of perception. in this sense, his approach is theoretical. the other, that of levinas, in totality and infinity and otherwise than being or beyond essence, is straightforwardly ethical and, by implication, anti-ontological. both approaches have their legitimacy, and my argument here does not require us to decide in favor of one or the other of them. (ricoeur, 2005, p. 154) for ricoeur, the opposition is one that results from a choice about methodological origin, and could not be decided simply by averting to the phenomena. below i review kearney’s significant departure from ricoeur on this matter. returning to the general schema of ricoeur’s thought, one notes that the result of these methodological commitments is that the hermeneutic arc of any of ricoeur’s investigations is sustained by reflecting on a specific kind of meaning, and in the course of his career he provided three specific models of such meaning: the symbol, the text, and translation. i shall not here pursue the details of all these models, because it is only the model of translation that is necessary for understanding kearney’s sense of a possible god god as posse. in his brief work entitled on translation, ricoeur stated that the problem of translation may be taken in two ways: “either take the term ‘translation’ in the strict sense of the transfer of a spoken message from one language to another or take it in the broad sense as synonymous with the interpretation of any meaningful whole within the same speech community” (ricoeur, 2006, p. 11). there is a specific point concerning translation in the narrow sense that is pertinent to translation in the wider sense, namely the “construction of comparables” (ricoeur, 2006, p. 34). after one gives up the romantic ideal of perfect translation, it is possible to recognize that it is the work of translation that establishes the equivalent terms between languages. ricoeur’s paradigm case in this regard is established by reflecting on the french sinologist françois jullien, who argues “that chinese is the absolute other of greek that knowledge of the inside of chinese amounts to a deconstruction of what is outside, of what is exterior, i.e. thinking and speaking greek” (ricoeur, 2006, p. 36). ricoeur does not dispute jullien’s point, but rather points out that in order to make his case, jullien must engage in a construction of equivalent but not identical terms, especially with regard to the tenses (or lack thereof) of chinese verbs. this construction is just what ricoeur means by the construcpurcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 8 tion of comparables. moving across (translatum) from one untranslatable language to another is made practically possible by the construction of comparable, though not identical, terms, by an equivalence without identity. ricoeur takes this as a general hermeneutic method of reflection for relating, without equating, two mutually incompatible domains of sense, such as cultural and personal memory, or (as kearney pursues) christian and hindu conceptions of god. this traversal through the conflict of interpretations, especially by means of the model of translation, sets up ricoeur’s approach to metaphysics. this terminal point in ricoeur’s hermeneutic arc is import, since i need to demonstrate that ricoeur was in fact a metaphysical philosopher and not just a philosopher of language in order to respond to the derridean charge that ricoeur and kearney could not avoid being metaphysicians of presence, since they only ever discuss linguistic meaning. ricoeur always maintained that in order to complete the arc of hermeneutical reflection it was necessary not only to travers the existing conflicts of interpretation, but to take the results back to their ontological root, to follow the referent of the symbols, metaphors, texts, and translations back to being itself. in principle, this sort of project could address any form of being, so that the arc of reflection could be completed by returning to the being indicated by physical or mathematical equations. don ihde has, for example, shown how ricoeur’s approach to hermeneutics lends itself quite fruitfully to an analysis of contemporary science and technology (see idhe, 1993, 1998). that domain of investigation, however, was not ricoeur’s concern. rather, since the very beginning of his work, he was concerned with the ontology of human beings, with elaborating a philosophical anthropology. it is for this reason that the kind of being ricoeur was interested in was being as capability. in memory, history, forgetting he puts it thus: as we read in aristotle’s well-known declaration in metaphysics 4.2: “there are many sense in which a thing may be said to be.” i have argued elsewhere on the basis of this aristotelian warning in exploring the resources of the interpretation that, among the various acceptations, privileges that being as act and as power on the plane of a philosophical anthropology: it is in this way that i propose in the course of the present chapter to hold “the power to remember” (le pouvoir faire mémoire) to be one of these powers along with the power to speak, the power to act, the power to recount, the power to be imputable with respect to one’s actions as their genuine author. (ricoeur, 2004, p. 343-344) in his work on recognition, ricoeur adds a sixth power to the list: the power to recognize and be recognized. this last is a sort of meta-capability, since it is by mutually recognizing one another that one in fact develops capacities. “[i]t is a question,” ricoeur writes, “of seeking in the development of conflictual interactions the source for a parallel enlargening of the individual capacities” (ricoeur, 2005, p. 187). this six-fold list is ricoeur’s response to heidegger’s existentials in being and time and his correction of the kantian categories, since in the former case, ricoeur maintains that heidegger’s account remains untested by the conflict of interpretations, and in the latter, one must note that none of these capacities may be understood to apply to natural beings, such as rocks or trees, so that kant’s categories prove to be far too broad to correctly explicate the human condition. they thus stand as a significant contribution to the ontology of our human condition, and prove equally that purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 9 ricoeur’s reflective hermeneutics does address being and not just language. i now turn to develop how this ontology escapes the legacy of the metaphysics of presence. 3. not radical enough? one of the basic criticisms of ricoeur and kearney’s hermeneutics is that it is not radical enough, that it is not open to the event, the unforeseeable, unpredictable, impossible possibility. this charge, then, amounts to the point that any hermeneutics following a ricoeurian structure is too hegelian (which is a point of contact i have provocatively courted in the foregoing) to twist-free from the metaphysics of presence. having presented the foregoing on ricoeur, it seems to me that i could respond to this charge in either of two ways: by means of what might be called an adequate account argument, or by means of a similar adequate inference argument. by these arguments i intend the following. adequate account argument: this is the stronger of the two responses. it argues that in the contemporary discourse of continental philosophy there are two broad accounts of events: one, the derridean-heideggerian account, has two parts, and one, which ricoeur, kearney and others (including most notably alain badiou) maintain, which has three parts. next, it argues that the two-part account is unworkable, but the three-part account is not. this argument, in short, seeks both to establish what an adequate account of events would look like, and that the derridean conception is inadequate given those criteria, while the ricoeurian conception is adequate. hence the title: it is an argument about which account of events is most adequate, given the shared aim of twisting-free from the metaphysics of presence. adequate inference argument: this is the weaker of the two responses. it argues that there are, in the contemporary discourse of continental philosophy, two broad accounts of events. one of these, the derridean-heideggerian, has a twopart structure, while another, the ricoeurian (and kearneyan, and badiousian), has a three-part structure. next, rather than settle which side has a better conception of events, the argument moves to establish the weaker claim that it is unwarranted simply to presuppose that one account is correct and then charge the other side with failing to conform to one’s presupposition. to do so would be to engage, rather straightforwardly, in begging the question. yet, when caputo, or lawlor, or dooley accuse ricoeur or kearney of failing to be sufficiently radical, their argument amounts just to the charge that ricoeur and kearney’s conception of events does not conform to the two-part structure one finds in derrida’s thought. in doing so, as a result, they beg the question, since what needs to be established is whether that conception of events is the correct one. to sum up, this argument concerns the (in)adequacy of the derridean’s inferences, while the former is an argument about the (in)adequacy of the derridean account of events. while i maintain that the conclusions of the adequate account argument are warranted,7 establishing that claim is both more involved than the space i have available for the present essay, and it is something that i have already explored (to some extent at least) in some of my other pieces.8 for the present essay, then, i think it is enough to make the case for the adequate inference argument. the character of the present defense, as a result, leaves one with a choice between two approaches to events, to god purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 10 even, but i do not think that this decision is one that is groundless, or one that will remain unresolved. rather it looks to me as though a new field for research is opened, and that some fruitful discussion is likely to follow. for the present, i content myself with making the case that there is a need for this discussion. in order to make my case, i begin with the point that is common to both alternatives, namely that in the contemporary discourse of continental philosophy there are two broad accounts of events. since derrideans have overlooked or misunderstood the alternative account, the one found in ricoeur’s thought, i begin with it. in the conclusion to the symbolism of evil (ricoeur 1967), a relatively early work, ricoeur outlined a three part process for the recovery of symbols. [i] i wager that i shall have a better understanding of man and of the bond between the being of man and the being of all beings if i follow the indication of symbolic thought. that wager then becomes [ii] the task of verifying my wager and saturating it, so to speak, with intelligibility. in return, the task [iii] transforms my wager: in betting on the significance of the symbolic world, i bet at the same time that my wager will be restored to me in the power of reflection, in the element of coherent discourse. (ricoeur, 1967, p. 355) to summarize, the process has three parts: a wager, verification, and transformation. the wager itself is a wager on symbolic meaning, that is to say, meaning that is not present in the semantics of ordinary, dictionary sense. to use a little terminology from alain badiou, symbolic meaning “inexists” in the structure of sense; it exists in the structure of univocal semantics precisely as that which is excluded from it (badiou, 2009, p. 153). because it does not clearly exist as something literally meaningful, because one can imagine logical positivists dismissing the investigation of “evil” in the bible as nonsense, one must wager that it does exist. second, one must act, one must do something to bring about this meaning, and this is the process of verification. the long detour through the conflict of interpretations just is this process of verification, of truth-making. finally, if successful, this process will have brought a new kind of meaning into existence, so that my wager is transformed, so that the world of dictionary sense is displaced. this is a structure that ricoeur maintains for all his models of sense; it holds just as much for the new sense provided by symbols as it does for that provided by texts, or for that provided by translation. at the same time, because it is always possible to follow the referent of any sign to its ontological base, each of these ruptures in the established order of sense, (symbolically, textually, translatively) is at the same time a rupture in the order of being. in each case, utterly new and unpredictable forms of meaning and being are brought fourth. they are, in short, events. what this structure describes, then, is just how events occur and are completed. it is this three-part structure (wager, verification, and transformation), which moves through representations rather than trying to subvert, “dig under,” or displace them, that is intended by the “infinite” structure of events. derridean (radically finite) events, by contrast, have only two parts. the first of these is the recognition of an in-existent, the structure of included exclusion, heidegger’s no-thing, derrida’s supplement, in the structure of signification. next one takes a step to the recognition of something “beyond,” purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 11 something “older” than the supplement, “‘older’ than presence and the system of truth, older than ‘history’” (derrida 1973, p. 103). or in derrida’s later work, one comes to recognize the surprise of the incoming of the other, of the unpredictable, im-possible, unforseable, radical break in meaning and being that is an event (heidegger’s ereignis). one does not verify the event, for derrida, since to do so would be to presuppose what the event was, to reduce its riskiness by naming it, and thereby betraying its very character as an event. where ricoeur’s account differs from the derridean account of events concerns the role of agency. for derrideans, ricoeur’s (or kearney’s, or badiou’s) mediations are an attempt to gain control over the unpredictability of events, to lessen their riskiness. yet for ricoeur, events simply do not come into being on their own or at least not all of them.9 for human events, and for the assessing (the working-through) of non-human events, a certain kind of agency is necessary to foster their transformation this is the process of verification, of truth-making. mediation completes the events, not by bringing them into some higher dialectical synthesis, but by allowing them to happen this is the ricoeurian sense of “aufhebung.” one might say, then, that more risk is involved in ricoeur’s approach to events than derrida’s, since in ricoeur’s approach one must commit oneself to the fostering, to the be-coming of events, while in derrida’s approach, one only tries to prepare the way to the recognition of the radical unpredictability of their occurrence no agency is necessary to make them happen. to put it another way: for derrida, the risk involved with events concerns their unknowability, in assenting to a radically unknown, for ricoeur the risk involved with events concerns one’s own actions, concerns acting on behalf of an unknown. one account of events has two parts, then, another three parts. both are committed to the twisting-free from the metaphysics of presence, but each attempts to do so in different ways. i do think that ricoeur’s approach is the only workable one, but the foregoing suggests a more modest conclusion: that derrideans cannot charge ricoeurians of being insufficiently radical, measured by their own standards, when it is the adequacy of their standard that is the point of contention. in a similar way, they cannot accuse ricoeurians of shirking from risk, when the sense of “risk” is the point of contention. in short, their argument presupposes their point of view’s correctness in order to make its claim, but it is their presuppositions that have yet to be established. the charge of insufficient radicality, as a result, does not appear to be sustainable, either for ricoeur or kearney, since both are committed to this three-part structure. 4. diacritical hermeneutics while i have spent some time reviewing ricoeur’s thought, with the intention of defending kearney’s work, one should not understand kearney to be engaged some sort of application of ricoeur’s general principles. what kearney accepts from ricoeur is two-fold: a commitment to a three-fold structure for events (which he shares as much with badiou as he does with ricoeur), and the way that ricoeur “grafts” hermeneutics onto phenomenology, namely by beginning with phenomenological consciousness, moving through a conflict of interpretations, and then returning to a refigured consciousness. his disagreements are at least threefold: he entirely re-characterizes the arc of hermeneutic reflection, he broadens ricoeur’s account of narrative, and he redresses ricoeur’s l’homme capable by introducing the capacity for eros. any of these points, i believe, put him rather deeply at odds with purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 12 ricoeurians, and as one will note, they are mutually interdependent claims. kearney’s general correction of ricoeur’s reflective hermeneutics consists in the argument that the choice between levinas and husserl on the priority of the other is not merely a matter of methodological origin, as ricoeur maintained.10 for kearney, levinas was right in one capital sense: the presence of the other disrupts first-person consciousness in an irreducible, irrecoverable way: “[t]he rejection of relative otherness in favor of absolute otherness, by levinas and other thinkers of radical alterity, marks a decisive ‘break’ between thought and language” (kearney, 2003, p. 16). furthermore, once acknowledged, this break, this disruption of consciousness and language indicates that one has a responsability to the other, a capacity for ethical response. kearney wrote: “[t]he basic aim of diacritical hermeneutics is, i suggest, to make us more hospitable to strangers, gods and monsters without succumbing to mystique or madness” (kearney, 2003, p. 18). ricoeur, of course, recognizes one’s capacity for moral imputation as one of the basic capabilities of human beings, but kearney draws a deeper lesson from levinas. what levinas’ phenomenologies indicate for kearney is that one does not begin only with phenomenological consciousness, which must then pass through the conflict of interpretations, so that it can finally return to some ontological dimension. rather, one begins with an ethical, phenomenological consciousness, which gives rise to a conflict of interpretations, and returns to an ontology. the trajectory of hermeneutic reflection, then, is sustained from beginning to end by an ethical obligation. one cannot, as a result, mediate among conflicting interpretations by simple appeal to rational or logical criteria. rather, such mediation must always pass by way of an ethically evaluative moment. the criticism of dia-critical hermeneutics is sustained, is completed, only by averting to the demands of an original ethical intention. this point has rather significant implications for the status of events for kearney. while his thought still follows the “infinite” model of events by retaining a three-part structure, the agentive aspect of events for kearney is always ethical. veri-fication, what ricoeur calls truth as attestation at certain points, is an ethical practice. one cannot divorce the most profound sense of truth from ethical activity. it is in this way that he maintains the levinasian thesis that ethics is first philosophy, and he does so without the need to commit himself to some form of absolute asymmetry, or “madness” as he puts it. for ricoeur, a kind of rational completion of events allows them to happen, while for kearney this completion (aufhebung) is always ethical. my hope is that these points should clarify how kearney could respond to dooley’s concern (the third charge) that kearney is not open to the most profound call of ethics. dooley sees a sort of “shrinking back from the abyss” in kearney’s insistence that mediation, that completion, of opposed positions in the conflict of interpretation always remain subordinated to an ethical intention. god might be monstrous after all, and so could the stranger, he seems to suggest. yet, in making such an argument, dooley is clearly presupposing the derridean two-part account of events, wherein the greatest challenge, the greatest risk, concerns assenting to an utterly unknowable. for kearney, the risk of response requires agency, and this agency is only possible by living together, by our respons-ability, and so is only possible in a broadly ethical way. kearney’s ethics, then, in no way forecloses the most profound challenges of ethical response, but rather it opens a way to it. purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 13 even with this rather substantial modification to ricoeur’s thought, kearney innovates in other significant ways. to begin, his general correction of ricoeur’s hermeneutics results in a process of hermeneutical thought that at a more specific level acts as if it were a correction of ricoeur’s model of translation. i write that it acts “as if” it were a correction of the translative model, since kearney developed his own account before ricoeur completed his account of translation. the “correction” that i suggest, then, is for the sake of illustration, and so is warranted only by its ability to illuminate the significance of kearney’s departure ricoeur. one may think of it in the following way. in both the god who may be and anatheism, kearney undertakes to mediate hermeneutically (diacritically) between two seemingly untranslatable poles: in the former case, he mediates between the scholastic conception of god as ipsum esse subsistens (thomas aquinas’ interpretation of exodus 3:14 “i am who am”) and new eschatological conceptions, while in the latter case, he mediates between a naïve theism and a postmodern atheism. the work of these works consists in something like the construction of comparables, in the construction of an equivalence without identity. in the former case, the comparable term that kearney constructs is god understood as posse, while in the latter it is, quite obviously, anatheism (kearney, 2003, p. 98; kearney, 2010, p. 6). incidentally, one might note that kearney has taken a similar approach in his hosting the stranger (kearney & taylor, 2011) collection, in which the latin “hostis,” meaning both guest and host, becomes the comparable term for translating between untranslatable and irreconcilable cultural differences, such as the opposition between israelis and palestinians. this analogy with ricoeur’s thought, however, only carries one so far, since kearney is not content simply to construct a term that functions as an equivalence without identity. although he does provide specific terms, such as posse or anatheism, to identify his projects, what kearney in fact designates by these terms is a comparable narrative. unlike ricoeur, kearney maintains that narratives are their own model of sense they are not simply a form of textual meaning as ricoeur thinks. it is just this point that kearney explores in on stories (kearney 2002), which is part of the trilogy that includes the god who may be (kearney 2001) and strangers, gods, and monsters (kearney 2003). it is by mediating irreconcilable narratives, by translating them, that kearney undertakes to reconcile (without identifying or synthesizing) opposed religious traditions, or even theists and atheists. it is in this sense that kearney’s religious, diacritical hermeneutics, which consists of constructing comparable narratives between untranslatable positions, and which is always carried out by means of the ethical demand, may be considered a project that aims at translating god. a third and final significant departure from ricoeur’s thought that i see in kearney’s work concerns the role of desire, of eros. it is a remarkable point that among ricoeur’s fundamental human capabilities he does not include the capacity for eros or love more generally. yet, since kearney is committed to the levinasian point that the ethical intention fundamentally transforms one’s phenomenal consciousness, and because levinas maintained that eros was one of the ways to try to complete this ethical intention, it is perhaps unsurprising that kearney would move to include eros as a fundamental feature of our ethical responsibility. the centrality of eros to kearney’s thought is something that patrick burke has identified (burke, 2011), and it is a point with which kearney has explicitly agreed purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 14 (kearney, 2011a). despite his commitments to levinas, however, kearney does not develop his account of eros in a levinasian way. while kearney has explored the topic of eros in a number of ways, what i think is most important for the present essay is the way in which eros functions for him as a model for ethical discernment without formal criteria.11 in the tradition of virtue ethics it is the phronimos, the man of practical wisdom, who is able to make discerning judgments without formal criteria. for kearney, it is the lover. one of the more significant differences between these two sorts of person is the way in which the lover is open to excessive actions that the man of practical wisdom’s moderation would not allow. nowhere is this point clearer than in kearney’s analysis of the shulamite woman in the song of songs. this biblical chant uses powerfully charged erotic imagery. kearney wrote: the amorous verses [defy] any purely allegorical interpretation: “his left arm is under my head and his right makes love to me (2:6 and 8:2); he “pastures his flock” among the lilies (6:3); his “fountain makes the garden fertile” (4:15); or “my beloved thrust his hand/through the hole in the door; / i trembled to the core of my being” (5:4). doesn’t get much hotter than that. …this kind of language was, according to andré lacocque, almost unprecedented in the bible. and it was to prove so controversial in the later rabbinical and christian monastic traditions as to be frequently laundered, chastened, or censored. (kearney, 2003, p. 56) yet it is not only that the language is one that courts excess, nor is it even the case that this biblical chant is a woman’s song, above all kearney argues: “the shulamite’s passion represents free love—she is faithful to her lover ‘outside matrimonial bonds and social demands’ (e.g., demands to remain a servant, wife, child-bearer, mother, or commercial exchange object)” (kearney 2003, p. 57). the lover is thus a model for ethical discernment without formal criteria because in a loving relation one responds automatically, without thinking, to the needs, the demands of one’s beloved. in the loving relation, one has no need either of deontological universalizing criteria or a list of ten commandments (love your beloved is not one of them!). at the same time, this kind of response knows no boundaries. it would seem to go against the very nature of love to require moderation in response to one’s beloved. love is an overflowing excess through and through, and this is why it may seem to be an appropriate model for a humans relation to god. additionally, one notes, it is only this kind of excessive ethics, an ethics modeled on eros, that would seem to be appropriate to the agency required to complete an event of meaning a moderate ethics, closed both to the excesses and fragility of love, would not appear to be up to the task of response to utterly new breaks in meaning and being. these points, i believe, demonstrate why kearney is not a crypto-metaphysician, why his account of god as posse is not a simple “update” to scholastic conceptions of god. caputo was concerned that such a conception of god was not open to the horizon shattering possibility of the event, the riskiness of the “perhaps” of god. yet this point again presupposes his derridean commitments. kearney’s god as posse is possible in more than one sense, but i think most profoundly insofar as the meaning of this god as posse inexists in our contemporary (christian) religious traditions. kearney’s posse is a mediating construction, a notion purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 15 of a god that he hopes to assist in bringing to completion, to articulate by translating the narratives on god in both metaphysical and postmodern conditions, even theists and atheists. furthermore, the character of this god is one that is to be discerned ethically, following the model of erotic demand, following the way of the shulamite woman not following formal codes or moral rules. this is the god, probably, that he hopes for, and as a result this god remains only a possibility in just that sense. this is not the god für uns, as opposed to an sich. it is a god, perhaps if we can make sense of him/her/it, if we can make this kind of existence meaningful (though perhaps we will fail, and that is always a risk!). 5. how to life with/for a possible god at this point, i hope to have made it reasonably clear why none of the charges against kearney’s conception of god hit their mark. to argue, as the derrideans do, that kearney’s thought is (1) not radical enough, that (2) it is crypto-metaphysical, or that (3) it is closed to the most profound possibilities of ethics, is simply to misconstrue the character of kearney and ricoeur’s thought. both of these thinkers maintain that hermeneutics is a response to events of meaning/being, and that this response has a threepart structure: wagering, verifying, transforming. this three-part structure is what i have been calling the structure of infinite thought, and i have opposed it to the structure of radical finitude, which the derrideans defend. their sense of radical finitude turns on a conception of events that consist in the identification of an inexistent, and the recognition of the unpredictable to-come (a decision on the undecidable). while i have not provided any grounds for evaluating the relative strengths of these competing conceptions, the mere identification of two rival approaches is enough to demonstrate that the derrideans’ criticisms are unfounded. their arguments must presuppose the accuracy of just those points that are objects of dispute. a number of consequences follow for how one is to live in light of kearney’s conception of god as posse. the first of these connects with the broad concern of continental philosophy: just how does this account respond to the problem of nihilism? rather than assert that meaning enters the world through belief in some transcendent being (the traditional, scholastic approach), kearney’s approach accepts straightforwardly that the realm of sense described by natural science proscribes existential meaning. the sense of “god as posse” inexists in the order of being so understood, so that one gains access to its meaning only insofar as one sub-jects oneself to the god-event. in wagering on the sense of “posse” then, one twists-free from the tradition of the metaphysics of presence by finding a space for existential meaning through the events of being. in short, being is not all there is, for there “are” also events, understood as the unpredictable shifts, happenings of being. yet this approach to god does more than restore a form of existential meaning to the universe, which is also something that the derridean account contends that it is able to do. for the sense of god as posse also provides a means by which to live an ethics if not a rule-bound morality for one must also act in order to bring about the happening of the event. the exchanges between kearney and caputo have often centered on an analogy about opening doors. caputo argues that his account of events is radical insofar as it recognizes that in the case of god, one’s belief is like opening the door to one’s house without knowing who stands on the other side it might be a friend or a murderer. living before this mysterium tremendum et fascinans constitutes the life of the relipurcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 16 gious believer, who cannot foreclose the possibility that god might be a monster. this analogy aptly characterizes the derridean account of events, since it has two crucial parts: an inexistent, in this case represented by the door, and the incoming of an unforeseeable possibility, the person/beast standing on the other side. the kearneyan response is to suggest that the opening of the door is not something one does alone, that caputo’s metaphor presupposes a kind of individualism. events, he would respond, are only brought into being with others, so that when i open the door, i do so in relation to the other people in my household, those who have enabled me to live as i am. the opening itself, then, is a third part (the verification), without which the event does not happen. this basic difference concerning the character of events thus entails different ways of living. the event of god as posse, kearney suggests, is sustained by the practice of love, including even erotic love. at its most profound level, loving god as posse means that one must work actively to find better designations of god by translating incomparable narratives about god. this act of translation must be guided by an ethical commitment, since one only realizes an event with others and through one’s respons-ability to them. unethical conceptions of god, monstrous conceptions, then, are proscribed because they arise from a conception of human living, human intentional consciousness, that is abstract one that assumes that individuals exist prior to the communities in which they live. none of this suggests that the ethics of a commitment to god as posse follows rules, for the basic point that is underscored is the need to trans-late incommensurable conceptions of god, incommensurable conceptions of the highest goal for our lives, and this must follow the model of love, which operates excessively, without criteria. as a result, the need for hermeneutic trans-lation defines the basic ethical character of our lives. for kearney, we live in and through our hermeneutic endeavors, in and through our attempts to construct comparables between incomparable narratives, in and through the dissenting stories that people tell both in our own cultures and in those of others. i close these reflections with two brief indications for some further research that might follow from the foregoing. one of the more immediate consequences of the foregoing argument is that it suggests a new area for research in the philosophy of religion. it seems to me that the tactic of radical finitude has been explored rather thoroughly in contemporary thought, in the work of derrideans, such as caputo, in jean-luc marion’s conception of the doubly saturated phenomenon, or even those who have followed heidegger, such as jean-yves lacoste.12 this alternative path, taking up the position of infinite thought, perhaps deserves more consideration. kearney’s way is one way to do so, but perhaps there are others. a second consequence suggests that more work needs to be undertaken to evaluate the respective strengths of these positions. given the shared aim of twisting-free from the metaphysics of presence, which account of events is most capable of achieving this aim? this point seems to me to be a general metaphysical problem, and one that concerns one of the most profound points of contention in that area. if the “theological turn” took place just for the reason that it seemed poised to test such points of profundity, then perhaps it will continue to serve our thought well on this explicitly metaphysical point. the other area that seems to be flourishing in contemporary continental philosophy is this so-called “speculative turn,” a field in which badiou, deleuze, and žižek have established the existing contours. perpurcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 17 haps a point of contact between these two discourses, one metaphysical and one theological, would be salutatory for both. at least for any theological conception motivated by conceptions of possibility, this “perhaps” is one that should not be missed. references agamben, g. 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(1975). hegel. new york, ny: cambridge university press. notes 1 see for example (dawkins 2008), and (hawking & mlodinow 2010). 2 there is, of course, considerable disagreement concerning whether or not these specific thinkers ought to be included in this tradition, and if so, to what extent. i mention the matter here only because these thinkers have at various points been understood to partake of that tradition, and because they serve an illustrative purpose as a result. 3 for the specific places where these thinkers endorse a sense of radical finitude, see the following. for agamben see his (1999a) and (1999b). heidegger’s commitment to finitude is well-known. for what is one of the clearest essays on the character of his commitment see (lawlor, 2004), and for a book-length study, one might look to (stambaugh, 1992). for žižek’s straightforward commitment to finitude, see especially the “introduction” to the co-authored (gabriel & žižek, 2009). for the character of badiou’s infinite thought, likely the best essays are included in (badiou, 2008). for the way in which ricoeur and kearney are committed to infinite thought, clearly it is the point of the present essay to make this case. 4 patrick masterson, for example, has criticized kearney’s thought from a more traditional, metaphysical side in (masterson, 2008a; 2008b). this criticism deserves more consideration than it receives in the present essay, but it seems to me to be less serious than the derridean critique, since it does not entirely to share the aim of overcoming the metaphysics of presence. to my mind, then, while it is a form of criticism, it is not entirely an immanent one. purcell journal of applied hermeneutics 2012 article 5 20 5 lawlor makes a careful argument throughout the whole work, but the concluding chapter crystalizes what he takes to be the significant difference between the thinkers. 6 it should be noted that caputo is here assuming the traditional understanding of hegel, as one finds exposited in charles taylor’s account (taylor, 1975). on this understanding, hegel is the metaphysician par excellence, and so most culpable for contributing to the problem of nihilism. 7 at least they seem to me to be warranted under the ordinary construals of derrida on events, such as one finds in caputo (1987, 2010) or marder (2011). for a possible construal that might work given badiou’s recent criticisms, see purcell (2012). 8 see purcell (2010) and (2011). 9 in his exchange with changeaux, ricoeur seems to leave open the possibility that scientific occurrences just happen, though the sense of those occurrences is something that humans must process. see (changeaux & ricoeur, 2000, p. 4). 10 i am not the first to suggest that kearney’s position is committed to a fundamental ethical moment. for another, more detailed account of kearney’s commitment to ethics, see (gedney, 2007). 11 kearney has recently underscored this point in a recent essay, writing” “[i[n contrast to deconstructive sans-savoir, diacritical hermeneutics practices a certain savoir, which goes beyond derrida’s maxim of ‘reading in the dark’” (kearney, 2011a, p. 4). 12 for caputo’s derridean-inspired work on the philosophy of religion see: (caputo, 1997, 2006). for jean-yves lacoste’s heideggerian-esque work see (lacoste, 2004). marion outlines his account of saturated phenomena in (2002a) and updates it in (2002b) and (2007).   microsoft word amundson corrected proof.docx corresponding author: jon k. amundson, phd university of calgary email: amundsoj@shaw.ca journal of applied hermeneutics january 18, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 the special obligation of the sufferer jon k. amundson abstract there are a number of inter-personal and intra-personal dynamics which affect/define the role of “sufferer” and that of the other encountering suffering. what follows is discussion regarding the role of each, and the paradoxical obligation of the beleaguered to assist in the management of their suffering through charity toward the other. keywords risk management, loss aversion, reflective and deliberate effort, resilience, post traumatic growth “the only thing we can be absolutely sure of is that sisyphus was happy.” ~ rollo may it is generally the case that when misfortune strikes, say in the form of disease, loss, or similar critical event, those proximate to the sufferer exclaim “if there is anything we can do, just let us/me know.” in such overture are two implications: the first one of conventional, though modest, empathy and the second, an implicit distancing from the object, event, or context of suffering. stated bluntly, the implicative conversation is that the person or institution has no interest in approximating nor appreciating the unique circumstance of the sufferer, to truly enculturate to their circumstance, nor engage in the reflexive, deliberate, cognitive exertion required; essentially saying, “you, the sufferer, do the heavy lifting in sorting through your confusion and dismay and assign me a task. hence any moral obligation to be a decent person will be satisfied withamundson journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 1 2 in myself and these may be an opportunity to actually do something.” yet, who in active grief or suffering can in fact roadmap the situation anyway? retreat to this cynical posture however is a bit too convenient. in what follows, the matter is further exploited through reference to the social psychology of risk management (amundson & short, 2018), the concept of the wounded healer (amundson & ross, 2016), the benefit/discipline of shared suffering (amundson, ross, & campbell, 2018), and finally the special obligation of the sufferer. risk management in approaching the suffering of the other “of all renunciation, the most difficult is to renounce the need to be well thought of.” ~ buddha risk management in social relationship is a dynamic enterprise, ultimately grounded in avoiding social pain. there is a robust literature on social pain and the means whereby humans, through risk management protect themselves (leary, tambor, terdal, & downs, 1995; murray, holmes, & collins, 2006). amundson and short (2018), though speaking of this phenomenon in the context of high conflict parenting, post-separation/divorce, nonetheless provide a framework for its explication. essentially, each person seeks a sense of presence, agency, and reciprocity in the world. this situation is profoundly subjective and expressed existentially as purpose, or meaning, or self-definition relative to others. however, as counterbalance is fear for social pain reflected in disapproval, rejection, censor, shame, critique, or “humiliation” (amundson & short, 2018, p. 3). between these two pales – the desire for roses and fear of the thorns – each person operates. this operation however is governed by internal and external dynamics. these consist of constitutional or biological predisposition, cognitive and socio-emotional competency, shaped by experiential learning through the lifespan and vulnerable periods in the organisms of life. all this, however, is also governed by sociocultural context which defines honor and shame, agency, and humiliation (appiah, 2010). hence in the subjective sense discussed above, an individual operates under their own sociometer (leary & baumeister, 2000; leary et al., 1995; macdonald & leary, 2005). some are more risk tolerant, some more risk avoidant; some more associative/affiliative; some more dissociative/restrained. this calibration related to social encounter, while historically located in the individual, is also contextual and immediate: essentially the question: “what here/now, with these people and this event, in my current most immediate state of mind, might/ought i do?” as practical organisms, human beings often resort to a particular heuristic or the tried and true. it is even argued that such response is outside of conscious control or the immediacy of the given. i watched a busy urban couple clearly on a mission of their own purpose/intent walk through the path of a disabled individual negotiating the sidewalk in a wheelchair, a sort of hypo-cognition blinding them to an experience perhaps outside of any regalities in their life. this phenomenon has been spoken of by appiah in his book experiments in ethics (2008); the classic good samaritan/theologian encounter where personal expediency overrides virtuous opportunity. again, risk management, and especially loss avoidance (kahneman, 2011) favors restraint, obliviousness, avoidance, or inhibition in the face of the anomalous. loss aversion, the possibility i will make a mistake, do something wrong or error underscore the “if there is anyamundson journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 1 3 thing i can do” response to suffering. better do nothing says this social psychological imperative than fuck it up; and it is without precedence that fuck up exists. in one of my first encounters with loss, a child of an acquaintance was killed in a tragic accident and the parents in hospital as result of the collision. they were to be released and return home in 10 – 14 days and two friends, closer to them than i, elected to visit their home and pack up the room of the deceased child under the auspices of sparing them any undue, renewed, or exacerbated grief. you can appreciate how this turned out. in another, a woman suffering from a neuromuscular degenerative disease, stumbled in the hallway of the hospital, and was set upon by the good intentions of those who began to offer assistance, beleaguering her with questions about consciousness and any reason she fell, asking for her to acquiesce to wheel chair assistance, and so on. when all the patient had wanted to do was demonstrate for as long as she could as much capacity as remained to manage herself. in this case, the simple dignity of getting herself up from the floor. hence then, loss avoidance, empirically supported and existentially anchored, seems to be the best policy for most. but what of those who do transcend hypo-cognition, risk aversion, and a neutral, non-engaged sociometric posture? what do we know, and can be said of this cohort? initially, they bring a modest sense of patience to the anomalous/challenging. this serves as foundation for cognitive exertion demonstrated through reflective and deliberate practice (amundson, 2017). while beyond the actual interest of this article these skills to think and think hard and think about one’s thoughts are associated with the goals of sympathy, empathy, and effective encounter with suffering. wounding and its benefits “there are two kinds of people; those who are scared and those who are scared and keep going.” ~ a. adler in a series of articles, amundson and ross (2017, 2018) spoke of the role of professional suffering in the life of the clinical psychologist. this exposure to moral injury (jinkerson, 2013) or in a more sterile clinical term vicarious traumatization (mccann & pearlman, 1990), is the necessary cost/inconvenience of exposure to human suffering. the challenge in the consulting room, and please begin to let this generalize to the central issue with this article, is that there are two potential responses. the first is browning out. unlike burn-out where both inside the skin and outside the skin symptoms become too much to bear or endure by oneself or others, browning out is a clinical state of mind where a professional goes to work in order to go home. there is role and well-established practice, and restriction in range or application of clinical skills, an automaticity of sorts. a second response however is found in a quote by carl jung: the doctor is only effective when he himself is affected. only the wounded physician heals… the analyst must go on learning endlessly…it is his own hurt that gives the measure of his power to heal. (stevens, 1994, p. 110) let us not be too dramatic in this sense however. by wound or effective, it is best to think of cognitive exertion: the reflective and deliberate effort to, as already stated, think and think about such thinking. this capacity is not a static skill acquired but a skill acquired and continually amundson journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 1 4 remade in the context of the person, their experiences, their growth, and maturity. in the career of milton erikson, a renowned psychotherapist, it was said he was continually remaking himself and his therapy. when queried about why/how he always seemed to be able to do something different, case to case, it is alleged his reply was “of course, it would be boring otherwise.” this capacity to sustain the effort (i.e., wound/effort) associated with reflective and deliberate effort, is worth considering relative to potential personal benefit. clinical practice/proximity to suffering as sadhana “when i stand before thee at the days end, thou shall see my scars and know that i had wounds and also my healing.” ~ rabindranath tagore amundson, ross, and campbell (2018) applied the hindu concept of sadhana to the disciplined exercise described above as reflective and deliberate cognitive exertion (r/dce). the word itself translates into “a means of accomplishing something.” in burrowing into this “something” and the word itself, it is stated: everything can be sadhana. the way you eat, the way you sit, the way you breathe, the way you conduct your body, mind, and your energies and emotions…sadhana does not mean any specific kind of activity, sadhana means using everything as a tool for your wellbeing. (https://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/yoga-meditation/demystifying-yoga/the-whatwhy-of-sadhana) managing the encounter clinically or in any other aspect of one’s life through not only our r/dce is associated with wellbeing; that things go better with thoughtful attention, patience, and diligence. this can be seen as a discipline; a practiced attitude or posture which, as above, opens us to wounding (i.e., conceptual discomfort) and the vicissitudes of any encounter with the other, but also skillful management of ourselves in the world, and self-development. what does this sense of attending to the suffering of another have to do with the special responsibility of the sufferer? while presented as blueprint for the design of interaction with someone in distress, it is also an emphasis upon the obligations of the sufferer to others, to those who might be involved in their distress. while empirical evidence for the failure of the “if there is anything i can do” posture is not necessary – google the term and the public forum provides multiple anecdotal/qualitative examples of its fail, empirical evidence does exist for its fail to the beleaguered in assisting in their distress management (nordal, 2011), and an opposite obligation emerges. the special responsibility of the sufferer “i know you are tired but come, this is the way.” ~ rumi it is difficult to say to someone suffering that you have a responsibility to assist others in feeling comfortable with your situation. initially this feels absolutely contrary to the conventional sense of others making you – the sufferer – feel comfortable. the paradoxical position spoken of here amundson journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 1 5 is situated between the metaphoric and the literal. yes, there is a literal pursuit of comfort promotion and it is situated in a metaphoric sense of what “comfort” is about. there is no given as to what will bring relief to the sufferer: there are no stages to grief/loss (moules, 1998; moules, simonson, prins, angus, & bell, 2004; neimeyer, 2001), only unique phenomenology experience. if one persists in presence (i.e., r/dce) belabored above, the sufferer will make it clear what comfort means. comfort here does not imply repose, nor ease, it instead implies letting people know where and how to stand, intentionally or implicitly. an elderly woman in the last stages of cancer made it clear that the role of any would be comforter was be patient with her enduring complaint regarding not only the unfairness of her status, but the failure of the world and others to be all as she expected. another patient, suffering decline associated with a terminal neuromotor condition, when asked by an acquaintance of her status, and upon declaring she had stopped working, was congratulated upon her retirement. polite, quiet response was the patient’s way of helping the thoughtless acquaintance to feel “comfortable:” the patient had loved her work and had used it as way to keep herself alive and vital. an elderly patient progressively losing sight, consistently and enduringly expressed gratitude for contact and conversation with family and friends. with each, a “comfort” sociometer is set, by intent or not; whether endurance with complaint, deferred conversation/discussion, or genuine repose in the presence of a person truly grateful. beyond this, however, is a more engaged role for the sufferer to actively create a context of comfort; to appreciate the capacities of each individual interacting with their grief/loss/suffering. such proposal is, however, not without controversy, and timing. when initially gripped by the inertia inherent in emergent grief or shock (moules & amundson 1997), a sufferer is most likely to take to ground. this refers to either literal quiet dissociation or activity and associative yet avoidant response. however, each sufferer – my illness, my loss of a loved one – will wrestle with the phenomenon of their circumstance, coming to their own “comfort” with their circumstance. there is the iconic story of the family of a 9/11 victim, who had slept in the morning of the attack and hence went into work and was there to his fate. normally he would have been in and out of the building before the time of its destruction. initially the family blamed themselves for not having awakened him, however with time they came to the position that this circumstance really gave them/him extra time on that day to spend with them on that day. it is this resolve which can empower the sufferer to empower others: to face the ability or inability of another to deal with you. as with the scenario above of the “can no longer work” celebratory miscue by an acquaintance, the sufferer deferred further conversation and allowed agreeable diffusion, appreciating that such was the lesser of several bad choices, for further engagement. in a similar sufferer as comforter scenario, a young man assigned to a wheel chair would, when observed by children, engage in wheelchair theater (i.e., rotations and movements), which entertained and released tension. this capacity to appreciate the burden of the other – amundson journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 1 6 what to do/say/make of the encounter – brings to the sufferer agency in their plight. it is as well an assignment of meaning and healing upon oneself. the irony of the admonition that “it is your job to help others relate to you” is that it requires ongoing obligation to relate to oneself. the degree to which we can set others at ease is the degree to which we can be at ease with ourselves. in the examples above, complaint and even avoidance, to some extent, reflect ill ease in the sufferer. nonetheless, gracefulness with maladroit or invasive pursuit by others also reflects our metaphor of comfort. it is achievement of coherence within the individual context of the sufferer/helper moment: what with this person, at this moment are the right reasons/potentials for one or another response? this striving by the sufferer is the striving within themselves to make of the situation the best it might be. is this not the lesson from the vast literature on coping? duan, guo, and gan (2015) and walsh, morrison, conway, rogers, sullivan, and groarke (2018) outlined the features associated with resilience and post-traumatic growth (ptg) relative to suffering; their relationship each to the other and their differences. resilience is the inherent ability of the person to manage trauma or related event. it differs in quality or even quantity, person to person. resilience is reflected in forbearance, endurance and self-maintenance in the face of adversity. individuals so loaded, predispositionally, manage the challenges of suffering better (zerach, solomon, cohen, & ein-dor (2013). for the sufferer, assisting others in relational management increases resilience, like increasing your strength in order to assist others in carrying their load. ptg however is of a different sort. it is re-evaluation and re-positioning of oneself within the context of one’s life through ever deepening reflective encounter with suffering. it is the apocryphal statement that something has “changed my life forever”; that “i will never be the same” and so on. the term apocryphal is used because in the face of the dire or imminent often such statements are uttered, only to fall short, once tragedy is averted. nonetheless, true ptg does occur and true ptg is accompanied by increased feelings of authority and genuineness relative to one’s inner experience and in the context of one’s life. i believe this might be the essence of accepting and benefiting from the special obligation of the sufferer, and the skill in assisting others in the management of their plight. and this perhaps takes us back to the beginning and the oft heard, “if there is anything i can do” which we might translate into “please embrace your special obligation and find solace in helping me, the other, with my suffering, and in so doing, you and i will benefit.” references amundson, j.k. 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(2001). meaning reconstruction and the experience of loss. washington dc: american psychological association. amundson journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 1 8 nordal, k. (2011) mind your body/grief: coping with the loss of a loved one. psychology, help center apa homepage apa.org stevens, a. (1994) jung. london, uk: oxford press. walsh, d.m.j., morrison, t.g., conway, r.j., rogers, e., sullivan, f.j., & groarke, a. (2018). a model to predict psychological and health-related adjustment in men with prostate cancer: the of post traumatic growth, physical post traumatic growth, resilience and mindfulness. frontiers in psychology, 9, article 136. zerach, g., solomon, z., cohen, a., & ein-dor, t. (2013). ptsd, resilience and posttraumatic growth among ex-prisoners of war and combat veterans. the israel journal of psychiatry and related sciences, 50, 91-98. microsoft word wong corrected proof.docx corresponding author: katherine wong, rn, master’s student email: katherine.wong1@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 october 9, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 raising children: philosophical hermeneutics and children with life-limiting illness katherine wong abstract children are authentically hermeneutic beings; they are not only open to the possibility that the other may be right, but often expect that the perspective of the other is correct. the hermeneutic tenets of history, tradition, and authority shape how children and childrearing are perceived in society. children are often regarded as in-progress, and this has implications for children diagnosed with life-limiting illness and the pediatric palliative healthcare providers that care for them. children who experience unique phenomena, such as dying in childhood, may possess an authority gained through superior insight that adults often overlook. art is a common language that can be used in hermeneutic research to better understand children’s experiences of lifelimiting illness. researchers who work with children must raise the value of children’s perspectives, find a shared language to foster understanding, and enter the circle with the same genuine hermeneutic spirit that children exemplify. keywords hermeneutics, children, authority, art, pediatric palliative care play, art, talking stuffed-animals, and story-telling are part of the language of children (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; bluebond-langner, decicco, & nordquest schwallie, 2012; sourkes, 2018; sourkes et al., 2005) and capture the essence of a child’s reality, expressed in a way that must be interpreted to be understood. philosophical hermeneutics is “the art of understanding and of making oneself understood” (zimmermann, 2015, p. 2), and is used as a underpinning in qualitative research that seeks to better understand the experience of another (moules, mccaffrey, field, wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 12 2 & laing, 2015). in this paper, i discuss how the hermeneutic tenets of history, tradition, and authority influence the position of children in society; childhood as a hermeneutic state of being; the address of children with life-limiting illness (lli); and how hermeneutic interpretations of the language of children with lli can offer new insight into their experiences. fusing art therapy techniques commonly used in pediatric palliative care (ppc) with hermeneutic interpretation, i will explore how adults might understand the language of art for children who are dying. thrown at birth humans are self-interpreting beings who navigate a complex world of meaning relations into which we are “thrown at birth” (zimmermann, 2015, p. 35): cast into the hermeneutic circle, immediately situated in our environment, and surrounded by family, friends, and teachers who contribute to our knowledge of that environment. understanding the world is a matter of interpreting through the piecing together of things such as words, symbols, and experiences into a meaningful whole (zimmermann, 2015). hermeneutic philosopher, hans-georg gadamer, connected the importance of history, tradition, authority, and language in shaping our understanding of the world (zimmermann, 2015). he posited that we cannot come to an understanding of anything from an objective, outside position; we cannot step outside of the context of our reality to view anything from a blank slate (moules et al., 2015; zimmermann, 2015). rather, history provides the foundation upon which understanding is made possible. our ability to interpret and understand the world is “always already” situated in a complex web of previously organized and interpreted conceptions – or traditions – within which we live and think (moules et al., 2015; zimmermann, 2015). authority is the recognition of superior insight, ability, and knowledge in the other (gadamer, 1996). in this positive sense of the word, authority is not meant as the exertion of power over another; it is the expectation that one’s authority will benefit the other. for example, the superior knowledge of a physician informs his or her ability to help a patient. tradition and authority are connected to our understanding of the world, insofar as understanding “always draws from the handed-down experience of tradition through recognized authorities” (zimmermann, 2015, p. 45). one may think for oneself, but one cannot think by oneself, as it is impossible to isolate one’s interpretations of reality from the authorities and traditions that construct it (zimmermann, 2015). a genuine experience is derived from an encounter that challenges our pre-understanding of the world as we have interpreted it, something new that refutes the expectations we have established from our initial construction of reality (moules et al., 2015; risser, 2019a; zimmermann, 2015). the new experience presents its own truth against our previous understanding (risser, 2019a). the repositioning of the familiar and unfamiliar – our becoming experienced – calls for an openness to the other and the alien, and a humble acknowledgement that what we understand may be revised by our encounters with something new (moules et al., 2015; risser, 2019a; zimmermann, 2015). early childhood and childrearing are a confluence of tradition, history, authority, and experience: a child’s main pursuit is to interpret a new and unfamiliar world by integrating their own experiences with the authority and handed-down traditions of the adults in their lives. wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 12 3 expanding the circle hermeneutics is new to me; my beginning interpretations of hermeneutics as a philosophy and research underpinning overlay the areas of my life where i consider myself to be more experienced. my career in ppc and pediatric nursing have a significant influence on how i interpret and understand my reality – i have been addressed by children with lli and the way that they go about being in the world. my pre-understandings of children as innocent and amusingly naïve have been revised over the course of my career; children have been my wisest teachers. the experience of witnessing children confront death led me to question the position of children, communicating with children, and the experiences of children who are dying. language, conversation, and questions a child’s first word is not the beginning of language; it is the start of a child’s ability to talk (risser, 2019b). the word is always preceded by the child’s interpretations of the world in which he or she occupies (risser, 2019b). reality presents itself to the child first, and language comes second to “re-present” the child’s reality with words (risser, 2019a, p. 4). along with the ability to talk comes the opportunity to converse and ask questions, and my experience as a pediatric nurse has led to the expectation that a considerable amount of my time spent with a young child will be full of questions. indeed, much of what young children encounter in their realities is experienced as something new or an added layer of complexity to a previous understanding. the posing of a question is the recognition of the limitations of one’s own knowledge on a subject, and the acknowledgement of the authority of the other, who is being questioned (gadamer, 1996; moules et al., 2015). questioning requires humility and curiosity in order to recognize one’s own ignorance and an openness to the unfamiliar. genuine conversation, the process of arriving at an understanding, requires each person to be open to the other, and accept the perspective of the other is truly valid (gadamer, 1960/2004). the hermeneutic circle becomes quite intelligible when equated with the rapidly expanding horizons of young children and their efforts to interpret and understand their world. when young children ask questions, they are not only open to the possibility that the perspective of the other may be right, they expect that the other possesses superior insight. children do not go about questioning with a conscious effort to be humble about their limitations, they are genuinely open to the other. the endlessly/perpetually curious and repetitive nature of a child’s line of questioning is authentically hermeneutic, as it is a continual effort to reconcile his or her interpretations of reality along with the knowledge of their authorities. the process by which an adult interprets and understands his or her reality may have a level of sophistication that a child does not yet possess, but this should not imply that the child’s reality is any less valid than that of the adult’s. historically, children’s genuine hermeneutic nature has been misinterpreted for inferiority or lack of insight, and these traditions may have significant implications for parents and healthcare providers of children with lli. wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 12 4 childrearing and childhood parents often serve as the main authority in a child’s world. the concepts of tradition, history, and authority have a significant influence on childrearing practices in modern society. to rear is to “bring into being” or “to bring up” (rear, n.d.). to “raise” a child suggests that the parent is an authority, for their power and superior insight, and that the child’s lower position can be elevated over time. there are social roles imbedded into the meaning of childrearing, placing the parent in the role of the nurturing superior, and the child as the subordinate. the history and tradition of childrearing has influenced the societal perception of children as deficient adults. historically, adults have not acknowledged children’s views to be of equal value, and often children are thought of as “in progress,” best seen and not heard (larcher & carnevale, 2012). childhood is often regarded as the process of “becoming,” and the precursor to, or absence of, mature rational capacity (bluebond-langner, 1978; hatab, 2014). the traditional perception of childhood becomes problematic when a child is diagnosed with lli. children who are dying will not be raised, will not “become,” and are thrown into experiences that force them to prematurely conceptualize things that would typically lie beyond their grasp developmentally (bluebondlangner, 1978; sourkes, 1995). the experience of lli in childhood challenges society’s expectations of childrearing and of being raised, as what it means to be a child and what it means to be dying are conflicting concepts in western culture (wong, 2019b). thrown out of the circle the beginning and end of life occurring simultaneously throws an assumed sequence of life out of order (wong, 2019a): parents are not meant to outlive their child, palliative care programs for children should not need to exist, and, as morgan (2009) stated, “children, the hope and future for our society, are not supposed to die” (p. 87). everything that history and tradition has taught about childrearing is thrown out of the realm of understanding with such a drastic disruption of the traditional succession of family life. the perceived innocence and vulnerability of children influences how involved they are allowed to be in their care and decision-making at end of life, and how much information is shared with them (larcher & carnevale, 2012; rahimzadeh et al., 2015; stein et al., 2019). my work with children with lli was often complicated by parental wishes to keep their child ignorant of the fact that he or she was dying. historically, parents and healthcare providers have been unwilling to disclose information regarding a terminal prognosis to children, with the hope that their ignorance would protect them from the distress and anxiety that arise when one realizes their death is imminent (larcher & carnevale, 2012; stein et al., 2019). while there has been a substantial change in practice over the past 70 years regarding information-sharing with children about their illness and prognosis (stein et al., 2019), i frequently encounter families who adhere to the once-prevailing belief that children are better left unaware. however, it has been my experience that no matter how much information is withheld from children with lli, many children have some level of uncertainty about whether they will continue to live, and may be explicitly conscious that they will die from their illness. wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 12 5 children with lli seek to make sense of their experiences by interpreting the world around them, with whatever information and resources are available to them (aasgaard & edwards, 2012). drastic changes in physical appearance, the ability to play and participate in care, and increasing pain and fatigue are examples of what sourkes (1995) described as the “wisdom of the body” (p. 107), and provide the child with an impression of how sick he or she is. children may also be made conscious of their poor prognosis by interpreting the facial expressions and body language of their carers or by noticing an increase in the intensity of their treatment (bluebond-langner, 1978; sourkes, 1995; stein et al., 2019). children may note the reluctance of parents and healthcare providers to acknowledge these changes, and interpret the silence on the matter to mean that it is not to be discussed, preventing further understanding that could be achieved through conversation (bluebond-langner, 1978; sourkes, 1995; stein et al., 2019). bluebondlangner (1978) argued that children who are dying may maintain the pretense that they are ignorant of their situation because they understand and wish to uphold their social position as children, as the lesser being. however, childhood is more than a biological phenomenon or antecedent to adulthood: it is a social construction that is influenced by prevailing cultural, historical, and societal beliefs (rahimzadeh et al., 2015). the prejudice of children’s realities as inferior and incomplete violates the hermeneutic principle that the perspective of the other is valuable, valid, and an opportunity for new understanding. in order to better understand the experiences of children with lli, the value of children’s worlds must be raised, and adults must enter the conversation with humility and the same genuinely hermeneutic approach that children embrace to understand their reality. re-entering the circle qualitative ppc literature is largely informed by studies that overwhelmingly represent the narratives of the parents of children with lli and their healthcare providers, not from the firsthand account of children with lli (liben, langner, & bluebond-langner, 2014; rahimzadeh et al., 2015). without adequate inquiry into the experiences of children with lli, ppc providers have a limited ability to understand how current policies, literature, and practices affect pediatric patients in ppc (rahimzadeh et al., 2015). future research in ppc must respect that children have a central role in constructing and interpreting their worlds (montreuil & carnevale, 2016) and recognize, as rahimzadeh et al. (2015) stated, “there is yet so much to learn from children of the death and dying process in order to better care for future children during the death and dying process” (p. 4). if researchers were to recognize children with lli as authorities on dying in childhood, and re-enter the hermeneutic circle as adults with the same genuine openness that we once possessed as children, what new insights might we discover? what common language might we find to help us merge our horizons? the position of the participant in hermeneutic research reflects the need to revise the prejudice of children as “becoming.” we do not come into being during our childhood, we are thrown into being at birth, into a world that “always already” has meaning for us to interpret (zimmermann, 2015). a child who experiences lli and the threat of death possesses superior insight of what it is like to be a child who is dying, insight that an adult is unlikely to have, simply because he or she has survived to adulthood. children conceptualize death differently than adults (bluebondlangner, 1978; bluebond-langner et al., 2012; sourkes, 1995), and their pre-understanding of the meaning of death may have a significant influence on how they experience lli and dying. wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 12 6 to better understand the experiences and language of children who are dying, i must recognize a child with lli as an authority on the topic, and be open to the possibility that he or she may know or understand something that i do not. understanding through art ppc healthcare providers often use art therapy to allow children to convey their experiences of living with lli, to assess coping styles and developmental maturity, and to capture the essence of their realities in the form of creative expression (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; sourkes, 1995). creative therapeutic approaches are recognised by children to be safe, familiar, and often enjoyable activities, which can be particularly important to children in clinical environments and when experiencing unfamiliar and distressing situations (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; sourkes, 1995). art therapy also allows children who may not have the vocabulary or ability to articulate their experiences with words to express themselves in a different form of language (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; sourkes, 1995). utilizing art therapy in a hermeneutic interview may assuage some of the concerns regarding participant vulnerability and the challenge of communication. how might we understand the language of art for children who are dying? the question necessitates a hermeneutic lens for research, as it asks what artistic expression might reveal about the nature of a child’s being in the world. art and its ability to depict the more enigmatic truths of human life is an important characteristic of philosophical hermeneutics, as it encapsulates both the event of understanding – experiencing art – and of making oneself understood – creating art (zimmermann, 2015). as a research methodology, hermeneutics provides an interpretive lens that allows the language of art to be weaved into the whole of the participant’s story. conclusion understanding through interpretation is at the heart of philosophical hermeneutics (zimmerman, 2015). future research in ppc must recognize that children with lli are an authority on the experiences of ppc patients, and that the worldviews of children are as valuable to ppc literature as the perspectives of parents and healthcare providers. in this paper, i have discussed how history, tradition, authority, and experience may influence children’s realities and how they are positioned in their social roles. i have argued for the recognition of the superior insight of children with lli, and the need for adults to re-enter the hermeneutic circle as authentically as children do. i concluded with a discussion on how art may be used as a common language in research in ppc so that the experiences of children with lli can be better understood. references aasgaard, t., & edwards, m. (2012). children expressing themselves. in a. goldman, r. hain, & s. liben (eds.), the oxford textbook of palliative care for children (2 ed.; pp. 101-116). oxford, uk: oxford university press. bluebond-langner, m. (1978). the private worlds of dying children. princeton, uk; princeton university press. wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 12 7 bluebond-langner, m., decicco, a., & nordquest schwallie, m. (2012). children's views of death. in a. goldman, r. hain, & s. liben (eds.), the oxford textbook of palliative care for children (2 ed.; pp. 68-78). oxford, uk: oxford university press. gadamer, hg. (1960/2004). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshal, trans.). london, uk: continuum. gadamer, h.-g. (1996). the enigma of health. stanford, ca: stanford university press. hatab, l. j. (2014). dasein, the early years: heideggerian reflections on childhood. international philosophical quarterly, 54(4), 379-391. doi: 10.5840/ipq201410619 holloway, i., & galvin, k. (2017). qualitative research in nursing and healthcare (4 ed.). ames, ia: wiley blackwell publishing. larcher, v., & carnevale, f. a. (2012). ethics. in a. goldman, r. hain, & s. liben (eds.), the oxford textbook of palliative care for children (2 ed., pp. 35-49). oxford, uk: oxford university press. liben, s., langner, r., & bluebond-langner, m. (2014). pediatric palliative care in 2014: much accomplished, much yet to be done. journal of palliative care, 30(4), 311-316. doi: 10.1177/082585971403000414 montreuil, m., & carnevale, f. a. (2016). a concept analysis of children’s agency within the health literature. journal of child health care, 20(4), 503-511. doi:10.1177/1367493515620914 morgan, d. (2009). caring for dying children: assessing the needs of the pediatric palliative care nurse. pediatric nursing, 35(2), 86-92. retrieved from http://www.pediatricnursing.net/ce/2011/article35086090.pdf moules, n. j., mccaffrey, g., field, j. c., & laing, c. m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. rear. (n.d.). online etymology dictionary. retrieved from: https://www.etymonline.com/word/rear#etymonline_v_7344 rahimzadeh, v., bartlett, g., longo, c., crimi, l., macdonald, m. e., jabado, n., & ells, c. (2015). promoting an ethic of engagement in pediatric palliative care research. bmc palliative care, 14(50), doi:10.1186/s12904-015-0048-5 risser, j. (2019a). when words fail: on the power of language in human experience. journal of applied hermeneutics. article 6. retrieved from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/index wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 12 8 risser, j. (2019b). speaking from silence: on the intimate relation between silence and speaking. journal of applied hermeneutics. article 7. retrieved from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/index sourkes, b. m. (1995). armfuls of time: the psychological experience of a child with lifelimiting illness. london, uk: routledge. sourkes, b. m. (2018). children's experience of symptoms: narratives through words and images. children (basel), 5(4). doi:10.3390/children5040053 sourkes, b. m., frankel, l., brown, m., contro, n., benitz, w., case, c., . . . sunde, c. (2005). food, toys, and love: pediatric palliative care. current problems in pediatric and adolescent health care, 35(9), 350-386. doi:10.1016/j.cppeds.2005.09.002 stein, a., dalton, l., rapa, e., bluebond-langner, m., hanington, l., stein, k. f., . . . bland, r. (2019). communication with children and adolescents about the diagnosis of their own lifethreatening condition. lancet, 393(10176), 1150-1163. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(18)33201-x wong, k. (2019a). holding both: a conceptual analysis of duality in pediatric palliative care. unpublished manuscript, faculty of nursing, university of calgary, calgary, ab, canada. wong, k. (2019b). unspeakable, unspoken, and unheard: hermeneutics and pediatric palliative care. unpublished manuscript, faculty of nursing, university of calgary, calgary, ab, canada. zimmermann, j. (2015). hermeneutics: a very short introduction. oxford, uk: oxford university press. microsoft word williamson field corrected proof 2.docx 1 university of calgary corresponding author: w. john williamson email: wjohn.williamson@cssd.ab.ca journal of applied hermeneutics february 27, 2014 ©the author(s) 2014 the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery w. john williamson1 & jim field1 abstract this interpretive essay attempts to demonstrate the potential good that might come from approaching a hermeneutic phenomenological study as a hard-boiled detective story in the tradition of raymond chandler. the authors attempt to explain the hermeneutic warrants for such an adventure—that is, for how and why a topic like the categorization and treatment of students in the public education system as “slow learners” might be approached as a detective story. the parallels between detective fiction, chandler’s work as a noir novelist, and hermeneutics are drawn out. attention is drawn to the ground of our interpretive relationship with the world in heidegger’s notion of the “as structure” of interpretation. a case is made for seeing the hardboiled detective story as a hermeneutic venue for shaking up commonsense understandings of how we have come to see and do education with those students designated as slow in their learning. keywords fiction, hermeneutics, mystery stylistically, one of the many interesting and “novel” things about applied hermeneutic research is how it can challenge the boundaries of what might be loosely called “formal academic writing.” hermeneutic work, because it is committed to the notion of truth as “the radiance of the beautiful” (gadamer, 2004, p. 479), and the appreciation of the poetic nature of truth (heidegger, 1962), often spills over into the more aesthetic side of writing. hermeneutic research is highly personal (moules, 2002), in the sense that with each hermeneutic encounter researchers become more williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 2 attuned to the possibilities inherent in their future encounters. researchers become, to paraphrase gadamer (2004), better able to have experiences and learn from them. the transformation and reorganization of experience is at the heart of hermeneutic work, and one of the senses of application that gadamer (2004) described. in this way, the personal in hermeneutics boldly and baldly asserts the value of the authors’ experiences, not as hermetic traps sealing the researchers up inside the “circuits of historical life” as gadamer (2004, p. 278) has so elegantly stated, but as a way to cultivate the very opposite: the competency to have an encounter with the truth of a living topic located in that vast and fluid landscape known as the human condition. just as the art of the visual or the literary addresses its themes obliquely in their complexity, hermeneutic research rarely offers straightforward solutions to the issues it discusses, at times openly opposing the very idea of straightforward solutions to complex human dilemmas. its application comes to fruition when it is able to “restore life to its original difficulty” (caputo, 1987, p.1), that is, when it helps us see life as such difficult, tragic, but not impossible as caputo (1987) has said, but instead full of possibility. this is often accomplished through writing that is lyrical, metaphoric, playful and, above all, evocative. as jardine (2012) both claimed and continues to demonstrate: hermeneutic work treats its topics like works of art that gather up our festive returns, topics that, in return for our attention and devotion, begin to glow in response to the attention we have bestowed upon them. (p. 3) the quote may seem to make hermeneutics an approach steeped in romanticism. it certainly has been criticized on these grounds. habermas (in bernstein, 2002, p. 273) has accused gadamer of “engaging in a sentimental nostalgia for past traditions and epochs" in, and derrida (in bernstein, 2002, p. 273) has claimed gadamer was naive in his belief that dialogue can yield unity, coherence, and structure, and as such “gloss over the hetereogeneities and abysses that confront us”. it would be un-hermeneutic to deny these risks, however, we continue to assert the opportunity for the unflinching and compassionate honesty that hermeneutic work offers. it can be about the sharpest pain we can experience as humans: the loss of something or someone that makes getting on with one’s life, for the moment anyways, unimaginable (moules, 2009). for all its reliance on metaphor and joy, hermeneutics begins with the assumption that peoples’ suffering is real (davey, 2006). so we offer another bold claim that comes perhaps too early to be believed: when it works, hermeneutics is, in all its instances, applied, and its application occurs at a precise moment. according to risser (1997), “application is not a simple matter of following a procedure as one follows a recipe, but a matter of perceiving what is at stake in a situation” (p.107). it is here that life returns in all its difficulty because seeing what is at stake is not a given; blindness is the more likely outcome, especially without the help of the other. the topic of this paper, borne out of 15 years of one of the authors working as a teacher with struggling students and students with diagnosed disabilities, could broadly be construed as an investigation into the phenomenon of slow learners, viewed as mysteries to be lived with rather than problems to be solved, as they are so often construed in educational discourse. this, however, says too much and too little, as formal explanations are want to do with mysteries, because there are missing people involved here that we are determined to “find” so to speak. let us try to recover them briefly and at the same time to speak to their disappearance. williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 3 the language of seeing learners as slow “slow learner” is an educational label that describes a psycho-educational category of students testing in the low-average range of intellectual functioning (king, 2006). predicted to struggle in school due to having intellectual functioning one category below the average range, slow learners are nevertheless categorically excluded from special education supports and services. while learners categorized as special needs when engaged in regular curriculum are eligible for enhanced tracking, supportive programming and academic accommodation (alberta education, 2004), the only programming alternative for slow learners, who are unable to keep up with regular curriculum, that is offered is a set of vocational electives called knowledge and employability (k & e) classes. these classes culminate in a different credential than the higher status and better-known alberta high school diploma (alberta education, 2008). such disparity might simply be addressed as an apparent gap in educational services, but what is also at stake here is the taken for granted-ness of educational categories such as “slow learner” and “learning disabled.” in education, they exist as empirical givens. what is forgotten here is that categories like this are socially constructed, and exist as historically-affected institutional practices (danforth, 2006). even if these categories also signify measurable learning deficits, as educators we tend to forget that there is no pedagogy attached to them. who these people are has not been revealed through a label, and the mystery of what to do for them has not been solved. a disability studies perspective serves to remind us that, while an individual may have a distinct physical or intellectual impairment, disability itself is, partially at least, a function of the barriers that are created by institutional responses or lack thereof to the individual’s particular impairment (dunn, 2010). life itself does not come with a label; it presents challenges to us all that sometimes we can overcome, but that often “disable” even the most capable of us. therefore we ask: who among us can ever claim that they are always able, never “slow” or “impaired” in life? moreover, the use of these kinds of labels in education, because of their implied permanence, that is, because they assume that someone is always and everywhere disabled, or slow if labeled as such, has been critiqued because it can create negative stereotypes, which result in many cases to self-fulfilling prophesies (danforth, 2006). the situation is both more complicated and simple than this—these students, left on their own in a system infamous for its inflexibility and lack of accommodation for individual differences of all types, are likely to struggle and fail in regular classes (couture, 2012). this means that the kind of educational support they need requires funding, and garnering funds requires that these students be categorized and labeled (gilham & williamson, 2013). here is the dilemma: if we label these students, making them “appear” as it were, we may be doing them harm, and if we do not, and we allow them to simply “disappear,” we may be doing them harm. we are confronted with the possibility of propagating evil, both as “suffering” and “wrong-doing” (kearney, 2003, p. 84), on either path. it appears to be “a devil’s bargain from the start” (robbins, 2007, p. 6), one that escapes our ability to make sense of it because it is the thing (no thing) we cannot get around, both in the sense of something we cannot avoid running into somewhere along the way and in the sense of something we cannot surround, circumscribe, or encompass with our concepts. it is what is left over, the radical hermeneutic residuum which conceptual thinking and planning can never exhaust, include, and assimilate. it is the moment of withdrawal (ent-zug), which inhabits everywilliamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 4 thing that is “given,” the absence (abwesen, ab-esse) in everything which we try to summon into presence (anwesen, prae-esse) (caputo, 1987, p. 270). yet, in a taken for granted kind of way, it does make sense, in that we regularly proceed in schools as if everything was right and just, as if the absence /presence, thing/nothing of slow learners did not call for careful investigation in each and every case. it appears to be, as caputo (1987) claimed, a mystery, one that claims us, one that requires that we be open to both its presence and absence, or more essentially to “the unsettling fluctuation between the two” (p. 270). all well and good, we might say, at the level of ought and should, but how are we supposed to accomplish this-how are we to understand this mystery, or at the least, where might we turn for help in making our way through? heidegger (1962) and gadamer’s (2004) response to this question was to turn to metaphor, or more accurately perhaps, to acknowledge that our language and thus our relationship to the world and to understanding is deeply metaphorical. all understanding, heidegger (1962) boldly asserted in being and time, “has the structure of something-as-something,” that is, it is meaningful already. weinsheimer (1985) put it beautifully: we do not hear pure sounds, but a car in the street, a baby crying; we do not see pure colors or shapes, but always a face, a knife, a wreath of smoke. … perception understands, and understanding involves the construal of something as something. (p. 94) if understanding is metaphorical, it is also playful, as gadamer (2004) reminded us, but not playful as the uncommitted toying of an individual subject with an object (vilhauer, 2011). in line with gadamer’s thinking, we are not proposing here simply to play with the topic, like a cat does with a mouse, but also to be played by it like someone caught up in an event, in what vilhauer (2011) called “a dance of mutual responsiveness” (p. 33). this dance is as schwandt (2007) reminded us is a dialectic of transcendence and appropriation. on the one hand, as one gives oneself to the play, one becomes fascinated with the world and loses oneself in the game or play. the play takes over, determining possibilities and moving the player into the unknown. on the other hand, play affects a kind of self-discovery; it reveals possibilities to the player and thus is a kind of self-transformation. being at play or the event of play is like being in a genuine conversation or dialogue with a text or another person. play is thus an analogy for the event of understanding. (p. 228) we hope that through this play, the meaning of the topic (die sache), or better perhaps, the topic in play, might emerge more fully. it is this hermeneutic offering, of the possibility of understanding something differently, that we wish to take up in addressing the topic of slow learners through the medium of a fictionalized, stylized narrative in the tradition of hard-boiled detective fiction. it is provisionally titled “the case of the appearing/disappearing slow learners: an interpretive mystery.” williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 5 though seeing the phenomenon of slow learners as a stylized mystery may seem risky or excessively speculative (and yet caputo [1987] made the case that avoiding speculation is nothing short of being cowardly and irresponsible), we offer this as an alternative to the way special education/diverse learner discourse sees slow learners, a way that many have accused of being extremely limited, hubristic, and pernicious in that there is a tacit acceptance of the way things are (couture, 2012; danforth, 2006; dunn, 2010, graham & slee, 2008). specifically from a disability studies perspective, these approaches seem to operate on the principle of metonymy, or the substitution of one characteristic, perhaps a student’s discreet impairment or some proposed intervention, for the complex whole of their being. the substitution conceals the problematic nature of the operation. through our alternate “seeing as,” we hope to explore this phenomenon metaphorically in an attempt to cast a different light, to broaden and deepen the educational conversation about slow learners. similarly, we offer the extended metaphor of the hard-boiled detective story as one unsettling way of interpreting the phenomenon of slow learners and broader process of educational classification in alberta’s schools. we hope to find our own forms of renewal in this meaning-making, to inspire and be enriched by other speculative interpretations, and to occasion renewing conversations about how, as educators, we can live more justly with students who appear to us as different in their learning, who appear as others, outside but inside educational discourse. our claim to the need for an alternate “seeing as” regarding this topic may seem more obvious than our claim to the hermeneutic potential of this particular genre. why hard-boiled detective writing? despite the worn cliché of the trench-coated, wise cracking private eye, hard-boiled writing, when it is done right, is powerfully unsettling. it asks uncomfortable questions. it goes to dark places. it has little regard for privilege or authority, particularly when these forms of power are wielded oppressively. hard-boiled detective writing is an ideal tool to agitate and then, ungently, break away the time-thickened sediment of institutional discourse and practice and reveal the often troubling assumptions beneath. we will explain how this genre came to acquire its vigilant character, and elaborate on its value as a form of applied hermeneutics, but first we offer this demonstration of hard-boiled writing applied to our topic of educational classification. samples of the work in progress what follows below are two anecdotes from the lead author’s experiences as a teacher working with slow learners, both told as parts of a hard-boiled detective story. john williamson is a fictionalized version of the author. max hunter is a fictional private detective hired to investigate the symbolic and actual disappearance of slow learners in alberta’s schools. max is characterized as a jaded, detective, someone who does not live easily in the world, a “misfit” in modernity’s program so to speak, much like slow learners in the education system. like them, max appears and disappears at inexplicable times. he does not comport himself in the same way that these students do however, because he does not suffer fools gladly, he cannot abide “departmental regulations,” nor flaccid explanations of “that’s just the way things are done.” he becomes insufferable, in fact dysfunctional, in the face of them. max is not there “to serve and protect” but rather, like dorothy’s dog, in the wizard of oz, there to pull back the curtain (or more in character, perhaps, to tear it to pieces) to reveal the caprice and fakery of the apparatus that propagates the myths and injustices of society. max loves the horror of the effect, revels in pulling people up short with the “awful truth.” max’s investigations lead, as caputo (2007) wrote, williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 6 “not to comfort but to thunderstorms” (p. 214), and he is present as an unwelcome reminder that it is not just nice guys that tell the truth. max does not always believe that the “other might be right,” as does gadamer, nor is he always gadamer’s ideal conversational partner, the friendly interlocutor engaged in the art of strengthening. we cannot listen to max because we like him; he is easily dismissed on that account, as was heidegger for his association with the national socialist party or his infamous das speigel interview. rather we have to listen to max, in spite of his sordid lifestyle, even when he does not respect us, even when he would rather kick our favorite dog than pet him, because he is capable of dragging us, kicking and screaming, to the truth. in this way, he is an important (radical) foil to williamson, bonhomie gadamerian through and through. in both anecdotes, max hunter is the narrator. the first sample demonstrates max’s hard-boiled incredulity in discovering, from primary sources, educational psychology’s categorical depictions of slow learners and learning of the apparent lack of effectiveness in current forms of programming for them in alberta. the next section demonstrates the hermeneutic potential of the fictional detective as means of interrogating williamson’s real unease with the negative assumptions that often haunt slow learners in the educational institutions. the first excerpt from the story begins on a winter’s day in calgary, alberta… ***************************************************************************** the library sitting in the buick, windshield wipers fending off a slow but insistent snowfall, i realized i had no idea where to start. i had to do something though. a paying case is always good but i didn’t want to be stuck in this cold city any longer than i had to and this unnaturally early meeting with williamson had left me with a lot of day to work with. more often than not i like to work by stirring things up instead of piecing things together1, waiting to see what comes to the surface, but i didn’t even really know where to stir. williamson had lent me his public library and university library cards and i had a roughly similar general appearance, aside from being fitter and better dressed, i thought maybe a warm library might be a good place to check up on some of the facts of williamson’s story. i still didn’t entirely trust this strange, earnest client. he seemed, at times a moralizing boy scout, at other times a delusional fool. what kind of man hires a detective to look for an educational category? i drove to the downtown public library, and then away from the library when i saw all the nearby lots were full. i parked at an expensive pay lot making sure i got a receipt so i could pass the pain on to my client and walked several chilly blocks. reaching my destination i passed through a metal detector overseen by an ancient sentry. i’d guessed there might be such security and begrudgingly left candace2 locked and lonely in the trunk of the buick. 1 references and commentary will be made through footnotes in the novel so as not to interrupt the narrative. this note acknowledges that hamilton (1987) makes this point about hard – boiled detectives. 2 max hunter’s affectionate nick-name for his revolver. idea was from spillane (1947).   williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 7 i walked past the checkout desk and some shelves of books and sat myself down in a little patch of heaven, a cubicle with chipped particle board, a hard plastic chair, graffiti and a desktop computer with greasy keys and a smudged screen. i logged myself in as williamson and began to look up subjects. i thought maybe i’d verify what williamson had begun to tell me about slow learners in our first meeting. it was weird; as soon as i’d entered the phrase “slow learner” a couple of times into library catalogue, the computer i was using seemed to slow down for a minute too. despite this i managed to locate a recent book on the topic in their holdings. it was called slow learners: their psychology and instruction3, and a copy was available at this branch. i left my trench coat on the chair to mark my place and walked up the stairs, retrieved the book from one of the shelves and returned to my station. i noticed that while i was upstairs i had acquired a neighbor in cubicle beside me. he didn’t seem particularly sociable or even conscious. a head of matted hair rested, facing away from me, on a huge fleshy forearm. a formless grey overcoat concealed the rest of my companion’s appearance but i could detect the sickly sweet smell of rot. classy joint. the cover of the book i selected depicted child of twelve or thirteen sitting backwards on a chair, maybe to emphasize his perceived backwardness as a slow learner. he was staring out at me with a look that was both forlorn and somewhat vacant. reading the introduction i noticed that the authors authoritatively stated the i.q. levels williamson had only mentioned approximately. i also observed that they seemed to think he had pretty much everything else figured out about slow learners too. the experience of educators confirms that there are many children who are so backward in basic subjects that they need special help. these pupils have limited scope for achievement. they have intelligence quotients between 76 and 89 and they constitute about 18 percent of the total school population. these students do not stand out as very different from their classmates except that they are always a little slow on the uptake and are often teased by the other students because of their slowness. they are quite well built physically but rather clumsy and uncoordinated in movement. they are no trouble in school. although much of the work is difficult for them, they are patient and cooperative…they need help in the form of special class [sic] in ordinary school. most slow learners struggle along in ordinary classes failing to have the special attention which they need.4 “wow,” i thought, “could it be true that almost a fifth of the students in any given school are just like this?” that smelled funny so i checked out another source on the computer, this time an article written by an american psychologist, answering a series of “faqs” or “frequently asked questions” about slow learners on the website “schoolpsychogistfiles.com”.5 3 reddy, ramar, & kusama (2006). 4 reddy, ramar, & kusama (2006). 5 king (2006).   williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 8 a “slow learner” is not a diagnostic category, it is a term people use to describe a student who has the ability to learn necessary academic skills, but at rate and depth below average same age peers. in order to grasp new concepts, a slow learner needs more time, more repetition, and often more resources from teachers to be successful. reasoning skills are typically delayed, which makes new concepts difficult to learn. at this point the website quoted the same iq numbers that williamson and the previous book mentioned. but then the writer made and interesting clarification. those who fall two standard deviations below the mean are often identified as having an intellectual disability (iq below 70). a slow learner does not meet criteria for an intellectual disability (also called mental retardation) [sic]. however, she learns slower than average students and will need additional help to succeed. all this sorting into cozy little boxes was making me miss my tiny warm hotel room, not to mention the greasy buffet table at the hotel restaurant. i was tired and hungry. i noticed my companion in the next cubicle had disappeared; i chided myself for missing this when it happened. still he’d seemed harmless. i gave myself a couple of quick slaps to the face and concentrated on my research again. i was looking for a different perspective on this classification process and found a study in an on-line journal that offered just that.6 this article was pretty technical. still i was able to piece together that these authors didn’t like how psychologists and educators, in the authors’ opinions, often overused the idea of “low average” in describing the traits and needs of students. “low average” described the very same iq range as slow learners were said to have. they said “low average” carries the risk of being a self-fulfilling prophecy for children without the benefit of being a label that leads to additional services. in addition to this, the authors did an interesting experiment. they found one hundred and ninety six archived i.q. tests from a private clinic in an urban centre in alberta and rescored these tests using a different scoring system that was also considered acceptable in the field7. they found that a full eighteen percent of the classifications changed by one category, from low average to average for example. no wonder these slow learners were disappearing. you could make them come and go by how you scored the test. the authors who did the rescoring experiment were pretty critical about the practice of denying struggling students special education services on the basis of their low average iq tests. i wondered why this would even happen. i found an answer to this, though not a very satisfying one, on the previous psychologist’s website. it was in her answer to another f.a.q8. “if these students struggle so much, why do are they often not eligible for special education?” 6 claypool, murusiak, & janzen (2008). 7 the rescoring involved replacing the “symbol search” subtest instead of the “coding” subtest as one of the measures in determining full scale i.q. 8 king (2006). williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 9 special education services are provided for students who have a disability. slow learners typically do not have a disability, even though they need extra support. cognitive abilities are too high for these learners to be considered for an intellectual disability. however, the abilities are usually too low to be considered for a learning disability. i was still suspicious of the claims these sources were making about this group of students, but now something new was bugging me too. if i had it right, it seemed strange to me that in many jurisdictions a special education system had evolved such that it routinely excluded from special services a whole group of learners that the intelligence tests the system seemed to value so highly predicted would struggle at school. “where have the slow learners gone?” indeed. maybe my foolish client was on to something after all. a little thrill of danger ran down my spine. i did know, from my conversation with williamson, a place where some of the slow learners in alberta had gone. it was an instructional tier offered to struggling high school students in some schools. williamson seemed to have mixed feeling about it; then again i didn’t know that that meant either williamson seemed to have mixed feelings about everything. i typed in “knowledge and employability (k & e) classes.” i got several hits. i selected the third item down called “accountability pillar results for annual education results report”9 because i wanted to know who was accountable for these classes. i always wanted to know who was accountable. i was rewarded with a complex document showing various statistics about student achievement and about parent and student perceptions about the general quality of education in the province. “dead end,” i thought. it wasn’t telling me anything about k & e or slow learners. i was about to close the site when i saw the phrase “high school completion rate.” this seemed important, but why? i remembered williamson griping that the students who took this level of classes left school with a credential called the k & e certificate, a credential widely seen as less valuable than the alberta high school diploma. surely if there were even half as many slow learners around as the previous data claimed and they really did have as tough of a time in school as the information about the categories suggested, these k & e classes would be an inevitable path for many of them. the completion results would surely show a significant minority of alberta’s students earning the k & e certificate instead of the high school diploma. i started to look at the stats on this. now that i was in the right section they were easy to find, but not so easy to believe. in 2009, 30,689 students completed high school in three years having earned a high school diploma; 305 completed earning a k & e certificate of achievement. in 2008, 30,500 students completed high school with the diploma, 266 completed with the certificate in the same year. in 2007, 30,105 diplomas, 255 certificates. i rubbed my eyes and looked again, i thought maybe i’d missed a zero. if up to eighteen percent of students were slow learners why were less than one percent of students completing high school with the credential intended for slow learners? “maybe the high school diploma route isn’t so bad for them” i thought, “maybe most of the slow learners manage to scrape through at the higher instructional level.” but what if they didn’t? i looked at the drop our rates for the same five years. for several years running a quarter of the year’s cohort of potential graduates had not completed high school within the three expected years,10 it rose a little to eighty percent when another two years 9 alberta education (2008, 2009, 2010).   10 alberta education (2008, 2009, 2010). williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 10 beyond the expected three were added. i wondered how many of the drop-outs were slow learners? “how do students get lost?” i pondered for a second. i realized one of the main ways was by not completing school. the mystery was coming into focus for me. i felt all tingly; the hairs on the back of my neck were standing at attention. suddenly there was an arm around my throat. so eager had i been to begin my investigation, put this case to bed nice and early, i hadn’t really taken a good look at my foul neighbor at the next computer station. now he was choking me from behind. the full force of the rotting smell hit me with the last breath i was able to take before he cinched my throat shut. as massive, fleshy arms tightened around me i brought my feet up to my desk and pushed backwards with all my strength. the desk thudded against the wall, giving me what i thought was good leverage for dislodging my assailant but he easily absorbed the force and the chokehold just got tighter. my peripheral vision beheld a profile of a part of a pallid face and a bulging eye, black as an eight ball. i wrenched to one side, the hold just got tighter. i looked to the entrance of the library; the old guard was sleeping in his chair. for some reason, my eyes fixed for a second on the computer i was operating. the escape key was missing. someone didn’t appreciate me poking around this category, i realized. my indignation at the story arriving at this point was short-lived as everything went black. later in the story… the entrance exam the sun threw little daggers at me through the gaps in the dirty curtains, interrupting what felt like the first moments of sound sleep i had experienced since awakening from a strange dream. during the night i’d dreamt i was at the dinner table, a shrill voice was telling me “don’t let your meat touch your potatoes, don’t let your potatoes touch your peas” over and over again. i looked down, fork in hand, to try to follow the instructions, make sure my portions were orderly. my plate was filled with hundreds of tiny children, dressed in white, brown and green, skittering across the plate with the unsettling speed of fleeing mice. i rolled over and looked at the clock. it was quarter to eleven. my head hurt, it was still throbbing from the beating i took at the library and the bourbon i took late last night to nurse my wounds. i sat up. i felt sick but not as sick as i ought to, not as sick as i would feel if i had a salaried job11. i tripped over to the window on legs as stiff as stilts. as i looked through the dirty glass with its breathtaking view of a trash bin and narrow industrial road leading out to the ugly main drag, i realized i couldn’t take any more of this on an empty stomach. i spied the adjacent neon sign of a breakfast joint, its glow dulled by the winter daylight. i called williamson and asked if we could meet for breakfast, told him i had some questions. he said his lunch break was at 11:05 so he could meet me then. i made some acrid coffee in the machine provided and changed from the suit i’d slept in to the only other one i’d brought along. i exited the hotel through the main lobby, scraped out a sightline the size of my head on the windshield of the 11 line penned by chandler (1992, p. 44). williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 11 buick, started it up and carefully drove the fifty feet to the restaurant. the cook, the waitress and i made three, a crowd. i sat down and the waitress rambled over with a menu. i ordered black coffee, bacon, toast and a four-egg omelet with extra peppers to kill anything untoward that might be lurking in the grease. i snatched an abandoned section of a newspaper from the table next to me. i read “alberta’s minister of education refers to self as slow learner.”12 apparently while being grilled in the legislature by opposition member, harry chase, about the use of the multiple choice format for provincial standardized exams, hancock, the minister, had referred to himself as a slow learner. i guess he was using some sarcasm of his own to suggest his opponent’s questions were obscure. that was interesting. williamson had said “slow learner” was hidden. in this case, it seemed right out in the open, more available, in fact than other things he might have called himself to make the same point. i’m not the most politically correct guy around but even i realized that, for a variety of reasons, no sensible politician would have chosen to call himself “retarded” even if it was to insult his opponent. williamson showed up looking disheveled already. a lock of his hair was sticking straight up and he’d gotten off track buttoning his shirt. he was off by one and the unsettled fabric stuck out like a fat finger in the middle of his chest. he said he’d been up late again looking for slow learners in his computer. he ordered some sort of fruit cocktail and toast, the cheapest thing on the menu. i asked him the question i’d been wondering about for a while. did any of these slow learners he said had disappeared end up reappearing after high school? instead of answering my question, williamson starting griping, again about the certificate of achievement many of his slow learners end up graduating with instead of the high school diploma, saying how unfair it was that his kids worked so hard but only got a token sort of high school completion credential, one that wouldn’t get them very far after high school. so i challenged him, “so what if some of your k & e students, slow learners… whatever… graduate with a different credential, get credits in different sorts of courses, what’s the big deal? if they can’t handle the normal program isn’t that what should happen? besides, i thought you told me if they did well at this level they could always move back up to the regular program?” i 12 event was actually described on alberta teachers association website (2009) harry chase (lib—calgary-varsity): “because of my inability to interpret educational bafflegab, i have prepared a translation test to help the minister of education qualify and quantify his responses from yesterday, upon which he will be graded, with his results published by the fraser institute. hb pencil ready, mr. minister. multiple-choice tests (a) assume that there’s only one correct response, (b) emphasize the final product over process, (c) are easy and inexpensive to mark, (d) any or all of the above. letter only, please.” minister of education dave hancock: “mr. speaker, being a slow learner, i missed the first part of the question, so i can’t answer the (a), (b), (c), or (d) part.” mr. chase: “grade 12 students don’t have those options. (emphasis added)   williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 12 was already beginning to have my own feelings about this but i wanted to hear what he had to say. williamson looked to be mustering his forces for another of his moralizing salvos, but possibly remembering how i’d reacted last time he tried this, he regrouped and asked a question instead. “you remember how i told you i used to do a lot of work with the high school registered apprenticeship programs13?” i nodded. where was he going with this? “well, one time i was at the apprenticeship and industry training office. i needed some more apprenticeship applications for my students and with the office being so close to my school i found it easier to go there than just asking them to mail them out. there was a kid in front of me in line with his mom, a young man i mean. not a young man like a kid, a young man like eighteen or nineteen.” i loved it when williamson lost control of his labels. he spent so long looking for the right one i was amazed he ever got anything done. he took a breath and continued. “anyhow, i’d overheard as i was waiting behind them that the …son had just graduated from high school, one of the vocational schools where they have k & e, the lower tier only of regular education classes and shop14 classes. during high school he had been indentured as an apprentice mechanic and worked a thousand hours in the trade. he was registering for his first eight weeks of technical, you know, college training, to complete the first year of his apprenticeship. i could hear from the conversation that he started in k & e classes but that he had upgraded during high school and by the time he’d left high school he’d completed the regular high school diploma. his transcript showed he’d enrolled in and passed the right level of math to be automatically accepted, providing that he had been apprenticed, into the college part of his trades training.” “so what was the problem?” i asked, still stymied as to the relevance of any of this. “well the guy at the desk said with k & e courses on his transcript and considering where he went to school he should really write the entrance exam, you know the exam that apprentices who don’t have the pre-requisite courses have to write.” “what? hadn’t he already passed the required math course?” i was confused. 13 a provincial program that enables high school students to begin to earn required hours on the job towards trades certification while also receiving high school course credits for the time they put in alberta learning. alberta learning (2003). 14 alberta’s program of studies gives students the option of more difficult and less difficult classes in all the core areas, english, math, social studies and science. both streams are considered regular education. the lower tier is one level above k & e. alberta education (2013). williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 13 “this was the same question the…apprentice asked. yeah, but the guy at the counter said k & es have a tough time with mechanics training and before wasting a bunch of time and money in the program he should just write the exam to see.” “to see what?” “to see if he could handle the coursework for the program he was enrolling in, i guess.” “so, what happened?” “the apprentice and his mom kept asking if he really had to write the exam of if he could just register. after listening for a while i poked my nose in and, as quietly as i could because i still needed my forms, told the apprentice and his mom that i was sure he had all the prerequisites based on what i’d heard and that they should insist on going ahead and enrolling in the college program, without writing the entrance exam” “did the guy at the counter give in?” “apparently it was getting close to his break time or something and this other worker told the guy she’d take over and processed the application. he kind of shrugged and went on break. after they were done, she handled my request too and when i couldn’t help but comment on the situation that just played out in front of me she told me that her co-worker wasn’t wrong. students from k & e, in their experience, do have a rough time she said.” “is that true?” “it could be. i’ve heard trade school programs are much harder than people think. lots of people probably flunk out. maybe this one would have had trouble too, but he had the prerequisite.” “would you have done more if the guy at the counter dug his heels in?” “i don’t know. i needed the help of the apprenticeship board for a lot of things at the time. i had a lot of students in the apprenticeship program.” the waitress came by to refill our coffee. williamson held out his fruit bowl instead of his cup. he really was a mess. ****************************************************************************** max provides a way to ask an important question: what is the appropriate interpretive response to the procrustean excesses of educational classification these anecdotes describe? the measurement and sorting of students is a serious business, and the rightful critique of the negative consequences and methodological arrogance of these sorting practices can, at times, at least seem to take on a grave character (ervin, n.d.). attempting to have a “serious” conversation about this topic, however, at least if serious is misunderstood as polite, rule-abiding and theoretical, may williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 14 well mean surrendering the hermeneutic vantage point from which the specific, bloody, grotesque truths of educational classification might be revealed. in a strategy that we argue is more effective, disability rights scholars and advocates, particularly those with disabilities, have often taken to playing with disability categorization in satirical artistic representations. phil smith’s (2006) free-verse experimental poem “split-------ting the rock of {speci[es]al} e.ducat.tion: flowers of lang[ue]age in >dis<ability studies” [sic] used found poetry from psychology texts, “mash-up” words, popular culture references, profanity, and puns to disrupt the orderly narratives of educational classification. another example is the work of mike ervin, an increasingly popular blogger, physically disabled with muscular dystrophy, who calls himself “smart ass cripple.” a side panel on ervin’s blog quotes bertrand russell "those who are solemn and pontifical are not to be successfully fought by being even more solemn and even more pontifical" (n.d.), and his work embodies this theory. writing, as he often does, of his demeaning experiences in the residential school for children with disabilities where he received his education, the sam houston institute of technology, ervin (2012, 2013) has never missed the opportunity to concisely state his opinion of the school by referring to its title in acronym form (shit). remarking on the implications of increasingly sophisticated technologies to detect birth defects pre-natally, and thereby offer the option of terminating the pregnancies that would otherwise lead to the birth of children with disabilities, ervin (2012) wrote “i’ve always been tempted to form an exclusive cripple fraternity called “coulda beena borted” (para. 1). the “play” of these authors with controversial topics that they continue to take very seriously, honors the topics in their “original difficulty,” and promotes the free play of dialogue and the opportunities for understanding more easily than less playful communications about the same topic. we think, through hard-boiled detective fiction, we may be able to invite this sort of play with reference to this topic as well. we hope to use the convention of the genre to break through abstraction, bedevil predictability, and keep the work playfully unsettling. speculation/making up truth even as we defend our choice to a certain hermeneutic leeway with the tone of the piece, why do we find it necessary to explain the appearance/disappearance of slow learners as a work of fiction? why make things up? the following example from a hard-boiled detective novel may begin to explain. in raymond chandler’s (1942) the high window, detective phillip marlow discovers a body in the process of investigating the case of a stolen rare coin. when two policemen come to question him, they demand his cooperation by threatening him with various charges, even as they refuse to tell him any information about the case. in response, he tells them a story of another case, the deaths of a wealthy heir and his secretary in a murder-suicide. the investigating police, to prevent scandal, chose to ignore crucial evidence and reverse the roles in their final report of the case, depicting the heir as the victim and his secretary as the killer. marlowe tells his interrogators “until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine” (p. 15). the two police men marlow is speaking to, recognizing what his story suggests about the moral culpability of a police force that often engages in such practices, become less threatening and more forthcoming with him and the three begin to have a more open conversation about the present case. later, when the younger officer remarks he would like to read up on the case marlowe was describing, marlowe admits that he made it all up. in a way, it does not matter. it could easily have been true and there was still enough mutually understood truth, the sort of truth that hurts, williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 15 in marlowe’s story to chasten his interrogators and enable a different kind of conversation to evolve, one that brought a different understanding of the case. kearney (2002) has written extensively of the power, for better or worse, of story. he has suggested that despite rumors of the third millennium death of story in our post-modern culture of “parody and pastiche” (p. 11) and “talk shows” (p. 10) (and, we would add, reality television), that story remains central to the human experience. it is, in this way, alive and well. kearney makes his case with the help of aristotelian poetics, organizing the ancient and continuing societal need for stories into categories of plot/mythos, recreation/mimesis, release/catharsis, wisdom/phronesis, and ethics/ethos, each with its own ancient and continuing connection to the human need for story. this is, in many ways, a hermeneutic phenomenological celebration of story, “fictional” or “real,” and one that would certainly support its use in any applied hermeneutic project where the ongoing, sensitive refinement of one’s understanding of self and others is essential in living ethically. kearney has also, however, sometimes distinguished between fact and fiction, and drawn attention to the unique powers of fiction to explore possibilities, ignite imagination and promote understanding. he has pointed out that while narrative as a form of academic history, works via evidence, fiction “discloses possible worlds” (p. 135). as we have indicated, our particular speculation is something like this: what would happen if we perceived and treated mysterious gaps in programming for students the same way we treat hard-boiled mysteries involving crimes such as homicide, or in this particular case, missing persons? what understandings might this occasion? hard-boiled detective fiction is hermeneutic the job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they [characters in detective fiction] inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink. (walter mosley, 2005, p. 2) we wish to further discuss some of the features critics and writers have proposed as defining characteristics of our medium of presentation, the genre of hard-boiled mystery writing, and to draw out its deeply hermeneutic sensibilities. we would suggest that hard-boiled detective writing represents a hermeneutic turn in the field of mystery writing. detective mysteries: a brief history though mysteries, both supernatural and those we now call crimes against persons and crimes against property, have obviously been a theme of storytelling since antiquity (cain and abel for example), the modern detective story had its roots in four short stories by edgar allen poe. all of these stories featured an amateur aristocratic detective by the name of c. auguste dupin who assists slower-witted parisian professional police officers in the solving of frightfully befuddling crimes (van leer, 2003). accompanied by his friend, a less intelligent un-named narrator, who serves the role of conversational sounding board for the protagonist’s brilliant reasoning, dupin, an otherwise solitary figure who seems to eschew all other human relations as beneath a man of his intelligence, solves crimes through the application of rules, logic, and observation. sir arthur conan doyle obviously followed, perhaps even perfected this formula in his creation of the iconic detective sherlock holmes and his companion and biographer watson. these very williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 16 popular late 19th and early 20th century works led to the emergence, from the 1920s to the 1940s, of a genre of mystery writing, called the golden age of detective fiction. while these works displayed significant variety in characterization, plot and setting, they all celebrated the same sort of process for solving crime. the holmes “method” involved, in part, the intellectual separation of the reasoning detective from the outer world that he, in turn, investigates, a methodological approach that loudly echoes the influential work of descartes in the philosophical tradition (jardine, 1998). more specifically, while the investigation was initiated by a bodily and perhaps even bloody crime in the outer world, the solution to golden age mysteries typically involved the successful application of a process of abstract, bloodless, almost disembodied reasoning, undertaken by a privileged amateur detective at a venue far from where the crime occurred (chandler, 1950). in a narrative move that likely conflated social class with intellectual fitness in the social darwinist sense (gould, 1981), the detective’s status as an amateur, who solved crimes as a benevolent form of recreation, reinforced his superiority to, and separation from, the paid police detectives he (or she, in the case of the few female detectives created during this era) assisted. the resolution of the crimes led to the reinforcement of a social order that was never questioned in the larger narratives, or put in any serious danger by the crimes. the orderliness of these narratives was further honored, though often somewhat in jest, by the publication of various sets of rules of fair play governing the author–reader puzzle-games of solving the mysteries by popular authors in the genre (dewan, 2010). the conservative, escapist tendencies that characterized this genre may go a long way in explaining their popularity as a distraction from the many economic and political anxieties britons experienced in the interwar years. as rzepka (2005) has noted with its reliable evocation of order out of disorder, its respect for the rule of law in defense of life and property, and its faith that a rational intention informs even the most baffling acts of violence, the new genre of detection seemed tailor-made to allay the anxieties that lingered below the superficial complacency of british middle-class life. (p. 153) strangely enough, the same charge might be leveled against positivist research in the present era. hard-boiled detective writing was a reaction against golden age detective fiction that was pioneered in america in the 1930s by writers such as dashielle hammet and raymond chandler. it sought to infuse a gritty, albeit stylized, realism into a genre of writing that had, until this point, been characterized by a paradoxical (considering that it dealt with murder) gentility (willet, 1992). the genre of golden age detective fiction that preceded hard-boiled had, according to raymond chandler (1950), depicted a style of investigating murders that bore little resemblance to how detectives really worked, and sanitized the corrupt, sleazy, and dangerous environments in which most violent crimes occurred. despite his grudging admiration of a few golden age writers, chandler (1950) found the genre stilted and inartistic. in his essay the simple art of murder, a manifesto of sorts for hard-boiled detective fiction, he (returning again to our parallels between golden age detectives and cartesian reasoning methods) speculated of many golden age authors that the coolheaded constructionist does not also come across with lively characters, sharp dialogue, a sense of pace, and an acute use of observed detail. the grim logician has as williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 17 much atmosphere as a drawing board. the scientific sleuth has a nice new shiny laboratory, but i'm sorry i can't remember the face. (p. 12) hard-boiled writing, on the other hand, chandler claimed, “took murder out of the venetian vase and dropped it into the alley” (p. 14). he proposed that the true literary potential of the mystery genre could only be reached through work that acknowledged the tragic pervasiveness of corruption and that celebrated in all their complexity the grimly wise-cracking, sacrificial heroes who deigned to wade through these cesspools of inequity in order to find some small measure of justice or redemption for their clients. though alert and observant, the hard-boiled heroes realize that abstract reasoning is not sufficient. if they want to solve the mysteries, they will have to get their hands dirty. the stories, albeit stylized, attempt to portray a narrative connectivity to a “life world” as opposed to the sterile, detached sensibilities of the golden age genre. the vision that chandler expressed and that, in our experience, hard-boiled detective writers try to follow glows with hermeneutic possibility. despite the loneliness and distance hard-boiled detectives keep from others and from institutions, the knowledge and wisdom they possess comes as a result of engagement with the world. this world is messy and complicated, and will remain so even after the reader is provided with the small dose of redemption the narratives allow. good writing does not sugar-coat or oversimplify this reality; indeed in something of britzman’s (1998) spirit of the inconsolable, and caputo’s (1987) “undecidable,” it celebrates it. it is true that in hard-boiled detective fiction, the ostensive crimes (not in the sense that the crimes are not real but in the sense that crime is everywhere) that initiate the narratives are often ostensibly solved. deeper mysteries, however, always remain. there are, as well, mysteries common to many of the stories, though this commonality does not suggest they are easily solved. for example, even after the killer’s motives are revealed near the end of the stories, these seem insufficient as explanations for the departures from human decency that the crimes entail. as chandler (1992) put it, writing of a murderess, “it was a cool day and very clear. you could see a long way--but not as far as velma had gone” (p. 292). then, there is the ongoing existential mystery of why and how the heroes, despite their cultural competency, choose to adopt identities that separate them from all that might be comfortable, good and enduring in the world of human relations. why would they allow themselves to be used by clients who lie to them, who put them at risk and who are usually only marginally less corrupt than the villains? what is the personal cost of giving up so much to eke out such a small measure of justice, and why would anyone do it? this inexplicable departure from humanity has significant existential consequences, as suggested in the following passage i put the duster away folded with the dust in it, leaned back and just sat, not smoking, not even thinking. i was a blank man. i had no face, no meaning, no personality, hardly a name. i didn't want to eat. i didn't even want a drink. i was the page from yesterday's calendar crumpled at the bottom of the waste basket. (chandler, 1949, p. 179) hermeneutics is hard-boiled “he felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him see the works.” ― dashiell hammett, 1930, p. 63 williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 18 if good hard-boiled detective writing can be said to be hermeneutic, it might also be said that all good hermeneutic writing is, at least latently, hard-boiled detective writing. we say this because of the converging ways these genres honor the concept of mystery in its deepest sense. etymologically “mystery” has meant and, many philosophers of language would argue (e.g., derrida, 1988; gadamer, 2004), continues to carry resonances of all of the following meanings: “religious truth via divine revelation, hidden spiritual significance, mystical truth, secret rites, secret worship, to close or shut, a trade or craft, a secret or hidden thing, and most recently, a detective story” (mystery, n.d.). hermeneutic phenomenology fully devotes its time to the investigation of various kinds of existential, phenomenological, and linguistic mysteries, with deep ontological and epistemological implications. like hard-boiled detectives investigating their own set of mysteries, hermeneutic philosophers have often, through a combination of deep reflection and worldly engagement, achieved the hermeneutic equivalent to “solving” or, better yet, naming some phenomenological aspect of being. even in their novelty, and “solvency,” these knowledge claims often resonate with us in terrifying familiarity15. the trouble is that for every phenomenon named or understanding suggested, a new set of mysteries and complications emerge. often these involve the ongoing mysteries of how it might appear to us, and how we might live authentically with what appears (heidegger, 1962). mysteries of truth: concealment and unconcealment waves can wash away the most stubborn stains, and the stars do not care one way or another. john d. macdonald, 1987, p. 51 though heidegger (1962) did not name this phenomenon as a mystery, we might note that an essential mystery of being involves the process by which, as soon as we understand something a certain way, as something, other possibilities become hidden or effaced. as heidegger described in being and time, in a “clearing” (p. 133), a thing may well be unconcealed or revealed to us, but it still appears in a certain way that conceals other ways it may appear. this is a temporal and historical process, one where we tend to forget previous modes of being, thereby, preventing the entire range of possibilities of being from ever being revealed to us. unconcealment/concealment implies a serious interpretive mystery of what potential alternate understandings are being concealed by what we currently understand as the truth about the people, places, things, relationships, and experiences. the narrative samples’ depictions of our desperate quest to understand 15 from broadcaster robert harrison’s (2005) reflection below on heidegger’s statement “the growing and unacknowledged anxiety in the face of thinking no longer allows insight into the oblivion of being which determines the age.” (harrison, 2005). if only heidegger was with us today. what would he say? would he be speechless? would he say “i saw it all coming”? “i told you what the oblivion of being leads to. the unearthing of the earth. the unworlding of the world. the devastation of the bonds between people. the setting in place of an absolutely technical state or better a bio technical state, which orders and enframes all things, all available energies and resources. putting them on standing reserve for general distribution and human consumption. i told you that when beings are abandoned by being they lose their density, their power of resistance. their very thingness and fall prey to objectification, exploitation and manipulation. when being withdraws from the world the world becomes an unworld, no longer hospitable to human habitation.” (audio podcast). williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 19 and to do right by these students, and the despairing passages from chandler suggest that the implications of living in this state of ongoing contingency are hard-boiled indeed. mysteries of the unsaid related to this, another mystery addressed in hermeneutic phenomenology is the mystery of the unsaid, particularly the truth of the unsaid, which gadamer (2004) equated with language’s speculative structure. in a sentiment that sounds almost post-modern, gadamer noted that every word, though seeming to appear in the world in its individuality actually causes the “whole of language…to resonate and the whole world view it carries to appear” (p. 454). every word, on occasion of its use, he noted, carries with it the unsaid, to which it is related by “responding and summoning” (p. 454). in gadamer’s (2004) opinion, the presence/absence of what is unsaid, instead of virally deconstructing meaning (derrida, 1994), instead brings it into play. the occasionality of human speech is not a casual imperfection of its expressive power; it is, rather, the logical expression of the living virtuality of speech that brings a totality of meaning into play, without being able to express it totally. (gadamer, 2004, p. 454) for gadamer, this is true in everyday communication, where one’s communicative act involves both what one says and what one leaves unsaid, and it is particularly evident in the wilful use of tact where both parties, for the sake of decorum, maneuver around what is often a keen mutual awareness of what needs to be left unsaid (gadamer, 2004). in addition to acknowledging the words that are immediately available, the communicative “unsaid” involves a further act of speculation on the part of the participants that gadamer claims is common in conversation. this is also true, argued gadamer, when one records another’s statement, perhaps in an interview or legal interrogation. the necessary speculation distorts the statement even when the recorder makes no wilful attempt at distortion. even as the recorder speculatively distorts to some degree, the artifact, the legalistic recorded statement often preserves little of the speaker’s meaning. anyone who has experienced an interrogation—even if only as a witness—knows what it is to make a statement and how little it is a statement of what one means. in a statement the horizon of meaning of what is to be said is concealed by methodical exactness; what remains is the “pure” sense of the statements. that is what goes on record. but meaning thus reduced to what is stated is always distorted meaning. (gadamer, 2004, p. 464) when we move from the methodological reductiveness of producing transcripts to the interpretively rich exercise of producing poetry, quite an opposite effect occurs. gadamer claimed that, in a (presumably well written) poetic construction of a conversation, even as the immediate opinion or experience of the author may be distorted, the speculative richness of the poem remains intact, preserving not just the content of the captured conversation, as might be shown in a transcript of a conversation, but the totality of the said and unsaid and the speculative address of the poem to its mode of being. if poetry shows people in conversation, then what is given in the poetic statement is not the statement that a written report would contain, but in a mysterious way the whole of the conversation is as if present. (gadamer, 2004, p. 465) williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 20 we have all had the experience of being haunted by a piece of art, a poem, an evocatively written prose passage, or a picture, even as we are unsure about exactly what it has to say. this is the mystery of the unsaid as truth, not distortion. we find this in hermeneutic scholarship, particularly some of jardine’s (2000) essays on the most boldly hopeful and simultaneously mysterious philosophy of education possible, that of the “bringing forth of human life” (p. 121). we find it, as well, in hard-boiled detective writing, particularly the work of chandler (1992, 1950) who, as we have tried to show in the few passages we have sampled, used metaphor, hyperbole, and understatement naturally and beautifully. in recalling the not fully speakable complexity of human experience, this sort of writing can help to humanize us, can help to remind us of our follies and fallacies, and in doing so, offer a interpretive foil to the technical forms of distortion that surround us in contemporary life. hermeneutic writing is hard-boiled in its attention to the “original difficulty,” the truth of the unsaid, a truth that cannot be reduced, in the words of sergeant joe friday from the iconic television series dragnet, to “just the facts, ma’am.” mysteries of suffering while hermeneutic openness requires a measure of goodwill, max, the more radical hermeneut of this investigation would point out, sometimes good will is not enough. our examples begin to show how, despite any good intentions to target specific needs and organize supports, the slow learner label can be harmful. while a disability studies perspective would rightly criticize the portrayal of a students as tragically suffering from the differences in their learning styles, abilities, or levels of achievement that result, in part, in their educational labelling (titchkosky, 2001), many labelled students suffer profoundly from their school experiences (couture, 2012). while many citizens at large often enjoy the freedom to seek out vocations and recreational activities that they enjoy and have some aptitude for, students who struggle academically, at least in the limited range of academic activities schools often impose, endure days of compulsory public display of their weakest skills. in order to qualify for help, support, and accommodation, they are required to endure the further humiliation of a process that labels their particular ways of learning and being as defective. though impairment may well be a natural part of the human experience, the institutional suffering of these students is not a natural disaster; human (in) agency plays a part in this tragedy and the quiet violence of the sorting the “not normal” from the “normal” needs to be contested from the perspective of social justice as foucault (1997) has so often reminded us. there is, however, a mystery even deeper and more complex than this “whodunit” of social inequity. flowing from the awesome responsibility of being an educator, it relates to how to best hear the ethical call the other, particularly the other who suffers, makes to us and how best to address this suffering. it involves, as caputo (1987) wrote, a controversy over the naturalness of suffering itself. from a religious perspective, he has argued, suffering does not belong in the world. if there is something inviolable about the other, something that demands that we treat him or her with dignity, suffering is more like a wanton marauder that violates at will. suffering is violence, human violence when it comes to the suffering which human beings inwilliamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 21 flict on one another, the violence of the cosmos itself when suffering is inflicted by a natural disaster or a disease without warning. (caputo, 1987, p. 279) from this perspective, god expresses his solidarity with humans, and we with each other, in the context of the scandal of human suffering, “the genealogy of religion in suffering means that the affirmation of god is implicated in the affirmation of life and the protest against suffering” (caputo, 1987, p. 281). caputo, with reference to kierkegaard, nietzsche and “dyonasaic exuberance” (p. 285) contrasted this perspective with “tragic hermeneutics,” the affirmation of the totality of fate, including “the pain as well as the pleasure” (p. 285). this affirmation extends beyond enduring fate, it involves finding the courage to laugh at one’s place in the flux. as nietzsche (in caputo, 1987) wrote, “the most suffering animal on the earth invented for itself – laughter” (p. 285). it is caputo’s contention that the project of radical hermeneutics lies in the tension between these two perspectives: laughing away suffering with no attempted resistance seems almost craven; fighting suffering with excessive stoicism seems a hubristic form of activism that imposes its own oppressive suffering. how radical the hermeneutics of this mystery story will be is another mystery to be worked out, between max hunter and john williamson over the course of the novel, but it bears mentioning how closely caputo’s guiding, dual (and duelling) perspectives on suffering are reflected in the hard-boiled genre. whether religious in the strict sense or not, the detective hero “speaks in the name of life against suffering” (caputo, 1987, p. 281). he has “character” and “honour” and is the “best man in his world and a good enough man in any world” (chandler, 1950, p. 6). he expresses his empathy for the underdogs, the exploited, in muscular acts of redemption and sacrifices himself to protect those in his care. at the same time, he is never too serious. he is possessed of a “rude wit” and a “lively sense of the grotesque” (chandler, 1950, p. 5) and, even as the narrative places him in constant mortal danger, he seems to experience his adventures with some ironic amusement. our story too relies on this tension. there is the earnest, disability studies-informed need to describe the educational experiences of slow learners and to open up different possibilities for seeing and working with struggling students. the hermeneutic, hard-boiled work also, however, works through acknowledgement of the flux, the impossibility of knowing with certainty exactly how to understand and what to do, the willingness to shake up the well-intentioned but overly certain understandings of these students and their needs. it is in this acknowledgement that the sometimes sardonic, always hard-boiled breath of laughter helps keep our understandings open and inclusive. bios w. john williamson is a teacher/coordinator of special education services at a calgary high school and a phd candidate in interpretive studies in education at the university of calgary. jim field, phd is an associate professor at the university of calgary in the werklund school of education. acknowledgement the authors would like to acknowledge dr. nancy moules for her encouragement, zen-like mastery of style guidelines, and editorial insight. williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 22 references alberta learning (2003). registered apprentice program information manual. edmonton, ab, canada: crown in right of alberta. alberta education. 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(1985). gadamer's hermeneutics: a reading of truth and method. london, uk: yale university press. williamson & field journal of applied hermeneutics 2014 article 4 26 willet, r. (1992). hard boiled detective fiction. baas pamphlet no. 23. british association for american studies. retrieved from http://www.baas.ac.uk. microsoft word jardine editorial corrected proof.docx corresponding author: david w. jardine, phd professor emeritus, university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 september 19, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 guest editorial: writing hunches and the horrible gift of bells david w. jardine hunch (v). “raise or bend into a hump,” 1650s; earlier “to push, thrust” (c. 1500), of unknown origin. hunch (n). figurative sense of “a hint, a tip” (a "push" toward a solution or answer), first recorded 1849, led to that of "premonition, presentiment" (1904). (hunch, n.d.) but again, and again, why have these on-line etymological digs so easily on hand on one’s desktop? after all, beware “etymological intoxication” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 409). although speaking directly of plato, this is most probably also an affectionate dig by hans-georg gadamer (1900-2002) about his teacher, martin heidegger (1889-1976). why, then, flirt with intoxications? because they can unexpectedly wrench up coils of suppressed ideas and images, presumed and silenced thoughts and suggestions, out of my most intimate innards. they can suddenly place before me my own unnoticed ancestries being unwittingly dragged behind me, now looming up and around in the trees, in the smoke, in the passings, lamenting. this is what interpretive work does. on purpose. (jardine, in press) i am being treated for tinnitus. its proximal cause was muscle strain, last october, turning over a large compost heap and still-strangely co-incident with the yearly flu-shot. good news is that, so far, this condition comes and goes. it is fascia related. it yields to acupuncture. i’ll have days without a peep, then days that are all day. overall, i can’t suss much of a pattern-cause of its appearance and disappearance. when i lie down. when i slump in a not-so-easy chair. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 editorial 2 2 but then, this strange news. a more long-standing cause of my current buzz feed is writing, more specifically, my posture when writing combined with how very much of this practice i do, dayto-day. my ear ringing is almost inevitably set off if i do what i usually do when writing -hunch over it, literally and figuratively. i have started to notice that my posture when writing has also long-since been something of a posture of writing itself. something of the intensity of ideas and their allures is linked to the body-posture that comes from such allure -anticipation, investigation, nervous/joyous energy, intrigue, burrowing, sussing, peering and squinting and then bursts of arrival, discover, resolution, and then the oh-so-careful editorial parses and compositional decisions, and so on. i can hardly get a hold of this yet, but i can get near it if i start with a different example. part of coming to tend to my tinnitus has been about being of a certain age and, simply put, not standing up straight. my shoulders had become hunched forward and up...very common, i hear. i was informed that my posture is better than many fifteen-year-olds who hunch day and night over their “devices” in sometimes grievous urgency to “keep in touch” (whilst, of course, “device” is defined as a “method whereby something is divided” -an idea that, by itself, can make my ears ring if i’m not careful). a weird subtlety, then. when i would begin to finally start taking notice of this slouch of mine and stand up straight, i felt arrogant and i felt that i looked it as well. i did get assured that it didn't look so. it still feels it. a weirdly unaccustomed thing, this, deeply buried and forgotten in the very flesh and breath of the day. i’m sitting here writing right now and this hunch has become so very hard to notice because, habitually, it has become the posture with which i notice, not that which i notice. this certainly helps re-invigorate and make more complex an old, tooeasily-tossed-off medical platitude about “developing healthy habits.” now it isn’t just the whiff of (apparently not apparent) arrogance that is part of this vaguely familiar upright posture. i also feel something like “younger” unhunched. this is probably a combination of muscle-memory of a time before the hunching seriously began and all the relentless writing that has been my mainstay posture for many years. the imputation of bowing, of cowering, of submission, of following, is a slight secret about writing. i must admit, though, that sometimes the act of writing has a broad and open stride, like when i just now thought of this and this line came in with a young and loping ease. my ears are ringing. i have to stop for a bit. so now, when i write and must, at the same time, remember to stand or sit well and carefully and alertly, i have run into the fact that being this alert and unhunched means that the bodily locale in which and out of which i used to spontaneously write must be avoided. i find myself, again and again, when, especially, seeking out a line, a reference, something exact and meticulous, hunched again over a hunch of an idea, without noticing it (v.) while noticing it (n.), if you see what i mean. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 editorial 2 3 so, to be specific, there is something utterly wonderful about standing up straight and back and feeling the beautiful aching arching of muscles finding their way back into aging place, along with the morning squirming standing at the standing desk, urging the arrival of enlivening postures that shake off the ringing of the night for what sometimes feels like the pretentious, arrogant impostures of writing. for now, this ringing is a weird, ambiguous gift. to hold the urgency and shape of the composition of words in a spinal/fascial discomposure is a stunning thing to have finally noticed, and to, again and again, have fall from notice so easily. habit can be embarrassing and frustrating, especially, in the long run, for something so relatively trivial given the suffering to come. that one of the results of writing, for me, is tintinnabulation --a word apparently invented after the latin by edgar allan poe, i'm just now discovering [don't hunch!] -is especially fascinating given that much of my writing is, somehow or other, “auditory” -not exactly precisely the sounds of words, but rather the sway, cadence, and movement of them. sometimes, when hunched over writing, i’ll sense, in the distance of oncoming letters, the exact cadence and trip that the next part of a sentence needs before i sense the exact word-sense of it, as if the ringing echoes and the habitats it trips over and longs to reveal, precede the words themselves and open a way ahead. so to speak. and tintinnabuli (from the latin tintinnabulum, “bells’) is also the word that arvo pärt uses to describe his style of composition. i am especially enamored of his composition fratres (see, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnvozvfpw58]) which has several versions with various instrumentation. so, to speak: at times, this ringing is horrible and frustrating and exhausting, then i’ll hear again of those who have it constantly. and i’ll also, sometimes, catch the fact that frustration and exhaustion is a way of leaning into it, a hunch where cause becomes effect becomes cause. the [for now] coming and going of my own condition makes it strangely worse and better, i suppose. the [for now] coming and going provides a gap -an “opening”/protal/opportunity/moment - where can upspring a spine tingle in reminder of younger airs, sprightlier steps and the arrogance of writing. a bit of a gift. even discovering back in the winter that meditating on falling snow somehow perfectly aligned a visual splay with the multilayered ring-a-lings and let me resignedly settle into its then-inevitable occurrence. but watch out: opportunities are not plain, clean gifts; they trail dark and chaotic attachments to their unknown backgrounds, luring us further. one insight leads to another; one invention suggests another variation; more and more seems to press through the hole, and more and more we find ourselves drawn out into a chaos of possibilities. (hillman, 2013, p. 94) don’t forget. hermes is a trickster spent up along the spine, rusing and blocking energy lines as much as opening them, misleading as much as leading, needling and in need of needling, too. edits. i forgot again. ringing. stop writing. now. references jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 editorial 2 4 gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method. new york, ny: continuum books. hillman, j. (2013). notes on opportunism. in j. hillman, senex and puer (pp. 91-107). putnam, ct: spring publications. jardine, d.w. (in press). "like life, it is hazy": part 2, "like breathing summons oxygens." in j. latremouille, l. tait, & d.w. jardine, an ecological pedagogy of joy: on relations, aliveness and love. new york, ny: dio press. hunch. (n.d.). online etymological dictionary. retrieved from: https://www.etymonline.com/ microsoft word gagnon corrected proof.docx corresponding author: justin gagnon, msc, ma doctoral candidate, mcgill university email: justin.gagnon@mail.mcgill.ca journal of applied hermeneutics july 12, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 using narrative construction to prepare the ground for hermeneutic dialogue justin gagnon abstract hermeneutic research methodologists have recommended that, when conducting interviews, investigators should minimize the imposition of their pre-understandings on the conversation, as this would restrict the range of possible understandings that dialogue may produce. instead, the phenomenon under investigation should determine the direction of conversation. this position paper argues that the iterative construction of a narrative enables increasingly focused, in-depth discussions with experts in the clearing where the interlocutors' horizons of understanding converge. hermeneutic dialogue involves navigating one’s own pre-understanding and exploring new branches of possible understandings that emerge from conversation. this navigation demands reflexivity and adaptability, as well as an openness toward the complexity of a living understanding informed by a diversity of perspectives. to illustrate how narrative construction informs an increasingly refined understanding, and how this understanding subsequently frames dialogue with interview subjects, this paper draws on a historical case study of electronic medical records implementation policy. keywords hermeneutics, qualitative research, methodology, electronic health records, research design hermeneutics is a philosophical discipline concerned with interpretation and understanding. making sense of others’ understandings of the world involves integrating the unfamiliar with that which is familiar to us (gadamer, 1960/2004). that is, we make sense of our interactions through our own frame of reference. hans-georg gadamer, one of the pioneers of hermeneutic philosogagnon journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 3 2 phy, characterized the interpretive process as a fusion of horizons (gadamer, 1960/2004). interpretation of another, upon reading a text or in conversation, involves the meeting of two (or more) worldviews, or horizons of understanding. our horizons are informed by our traditions, which include our contexts and prior experiences and interactions. upon fusion of another’s horizon with our own, a shared spaced is negotiated and, through this fusion of horizons and integration of the unfamiliar, our understanding is transformed. in recent years, researchers have made strides in developing what might be called “hermeneutic research methodology” (curtis, 2010; moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). while hermeneutics has its roots in the reading of (religious) texts, the principles of hermeneutics are particularly relevant to the conduct of interviews. whether one is reading texts or dialoguing, interpretation involves a back and forth between what the other has expressed (a reflection of their own understanding, put to language and rooted in their own tradition) and one’s own tradition. dialogue, however, is bi-directional. in dialogue, a negotiation takes place whereby the interlocutors work out a common language and frame of reference pertaining to the object of their discussion. understanding is co-created. the interlocutors each navigate their own understanding and what was said toward a contextually contingent shared understanding. in hermeneutic dialogue, precedence is given to the object of discussion in determining the direction of conversation. proponents of hermeneutic research recommend caution when conducting interviews, as one’s pre-understanding (horizon) can restrict the range of possible understandings that can emerge from conversation (geanellos, 1999; moules et al., 2015). however, in research where data is iteratively synthesized into a narrative, one’s preunderstanding is periodically refined and reconfigured, and inevitably influences the conversation. in what follows, i argue that this is still compatible with the principles of hermeneutics, and i provide recommendations for researchers adopting a narrative approach. to provide an illustration of the application of hermeneutics to the conduct of research interviews informed by an increasingly refined narrative, i will draw on a historical case study of electronic medical records (emr) implementation policy in quebec. hermeneutic interviewing when conducting interviews in a manner consistent with the principles of hermeneutics, methodologists recommend that researchers be mindful of how their prejudices or pre-understanding might influence the conversation (geanellos, 1999; moules et al., 2015). in traditional qualitative semi-structured interviews, researchers tend to deliberately direct the conversation around established questions. however, when following the principles of hermeneutics, interviews should approximate a “genuine conversation” whereby the object of discussion plays a more prominent role in determining its direction. we say ‘conduct’ a conversation, but the more genuine a conversation is, the less its conduct lies within the will of either partner. thus a genuine conversation is never the one we wanted to conduct. rather it is more generally correct to say that we fall into conversation, or even that we become involved in it. the way one word follows another, with the conversation taking its own twists and reaching its own conclusion, may well be congagnon journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 3 3 cluded in some way, but the partners conversing are far less than leaders of it than the led. no one knows in advance what will ‘come out’ of a conversation. (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 383) certain authors, geanellos (1999) for instance, proposed avoiding pre-determined questions entirely, as these could restrict dialogue around researchers’ pre-understandings (geanellos, 1999). however, research interviews are inevitably initially directed by things that you know and would like to know. instead, moules et al. (2015) suggested having pre-determined questions, but following a more unstructured approach in the conduct of the interview (moules et al., 2015). accordingly, the questions are simply a resource to guide the lines of inquiry that the researcher might want to explore, depending on how the conversation goes. research interviews […] have a structure of sorts, and more importantly a purpose. that is not to imply that the interviewer enters with an immutable list of questions, but that the structure is defined by the topic and the interviewer attempts to keep the topic central to the conversation, while “turning around” with the participant. (moules et al., 2015, p. 89) in addition to giving precedence to the object of discussion and following the natural flow of conversation, limiting the influence of your pre-understanding also involves keeping open the range of possible understandings that can emerge. the conversation should be conducted in a way that does not simply confirm the researchers’ assumptions. researchers should remain open to the transformative possibilities of the conversation. it belongs to every true conversation that each person opens himself up to the other, truly accepts his point of view as valid and transposes himself into the other to such an extent that he understands not the particular individual but what he says. (gadamer, 2004, p. 387) research interviews are influenced by numerous factors, such as: the research objective, the nature of the phenomenon, the researcher’s interviewing skills and their decision to pursue particular lines inquiry over others as the conversation unfolds. the interlocutors’ knowledge and experience, or pre-understanding, regarding the object of discussion also play an important role. rather than following a particular formula, i contend that research interviews should be conducted in a manner that best serves the research objective and that reflecting on and acknowledging factors that might influence the conduct of research interviews is integral to trustworthy qualitative research. the aim of my historical case study of policy decisions surrounding emr implementation is to map and understand policy decisions. more specifically, the aim is to provide an explanation of policy decisions in terms of actors, actions and social, historical and organizational contexts. to achieve this aim, i am constructing a narrative, through the triangulation of data from various historical documents and interviews with key experts and policy decision-makers (creswell, 2012; langley, 1999). the interviews will tend to involve discussions of policy processes, technological components, information infrastructure, and contextual factors. knowledge about these aspects related to emrs is essential to our establishing common ground and having a meaningful dialogue. i will frame my conversations around my prior knowledge about health gagnon journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 3 4 technology in general and emrs specifically, as well as institutional and policy processes. furthermore, i will interpret the new knowledge generated from our discussion according to a pre-established map. were i conducting conversations about patients’ experience of care, for instance, the discussions would be drastically different. one could posit that discussions around experience of care involve a broader range of possible directions. every patient’s story involves their own context and experience, and their own way of understanding and communicating it. a common frame of reference would, therefore, need to be re-established with every interview. in all research, the process begins with an extensive review of the literature on the phenomenon under study. an effort is made to understand the available research on the topic. researchers establish what is known and unknown and thereby refine their research objectives. in research involving interviews, a review of the literature also informs the interview guide and thus the direction of conversation. both the researcher and interview subject bring their prior knowledge and experience to the conversation. as the subjects approached for interviews should be selected on the basis of their being knowledgeable about the object of study, both the researcher and interview subject are effectively experts on the topic, approaching it from different angles. research prior to the conduct of interviews, therefore, enables more focused, in-depth discussions about the object of study. the scope of conversation is bounded by the shared horizon. indepth discussion engendered by expertise is achieved at the cost of breadth, and breadth of understanding at the cost of detail. methodologists have acknowledged the influence of prior research on dialogue, in the context of interviews (moules et al., 2015). i contend, however, that important consideration should also be given to how data is integrated throughout the research process, as this can have an important impact on the content and structure of one’s pre-understanding. to my knowledge, this has not been discussed extensively in the literature. narrative analysis my narrative about the history of policy decisions affecting emr adoption is iteratively constructed. through the reading of historical documents, i constructed an initial narrative that serves to frame my understanding. subsequently, each instance of data collection influences and is influenced by an evolving understanding. all instances of data collection are inherently transformative. the review of every document and each interview transforms your understanding. they shape the scope and focus of the lines of inquiry pursued in conversation. in addition, each interview influences your pre-understanding for subsequent interviews. when you process your data iteratively, as in my case study of emr implementation, rather than after all your data are collected, your pre-understanding is increasingly structured. you have more formal moments in which you integrate your new understanding with the whole. your understanding becomes increasingly refined throughout the research process, as more data are integrated. gagnon journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 3 5 when constructing a narrative, your pre-understanding, brought into each interview, is structured in a particular way. accordingly, a narrative frames and directs the conversation in a particular way as well. narrative configuration consists of the construction of a story from the data. in narrative construction, the researcher chronologically configures and links events and actions within a story, to give meaning to the data, as contributors to a particular end (polkinghorne, 1995; sandelowski, 1999). in [narrative configuration], the researcher’s task is to configure the data elements into a story that unites and gives meaning to the data as contributors to a goal or purpose. the analytic task requires the researcher to develop or discover a plot that displays the linkage among the data elements as parts of an unfolding temporal development culminating in the denouement. (polkinghorne, 1995, p.15) in my research, my narrative comprises events linked to particular actors and their actions. these events will be presented alongside social, cultural, and political contexts. these contexts change over time. i will then propose possible explanations and meanings, linking decisions and actions with changes in conditions surrounding emr adoption, in an attempt to make sense of why quebec has had such limited success in this regard. we often make sense of happenings in the world narratively (bruner, 1991). we tell stories. we even make sense of our own lives in a narrative fashion. yet, narrative construction, in the context of research, has particular qualities that set it apart from narrative understanding. our thoughts can be rather messy and are often quite abstract. things are not always organized chronologically. when probed, we sometimes find a great number of inconsistencies in our thoughts. we have not worked everything out. the act of thinking and communicating ideas to others transforms our thoughts. when called upon to tell a story, we put our thoughts to language and give it structure. our understanding is transformed by our telling a story. in working out our stories, inconsistencies may be made apparent, and only then do we tend to try to resolve them. over time, after multiple iterations of re-working our narratives, our stories take on a more logical structure. they become more coherent and refined. the formal act of writing has an even greater structuring effect on our understanding. writing is also transformative. through writing, you produce something tangible that you can return to and reinterpret in light of having distanced yourself in time, thought, and experience. structure is necessary as a point in a cycle of interpretation and understanding in which meaning comes together as a unit of articulation an in doing so, the newly articulated meaning becomes available in itself for questioning, reappraisal, deconstruction, and interpretation. (moules et al., 2015, p. 51) gagnon journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 3 6 a written narrative permits the integration of vastly more information. it allows for greater complexity, with multiple layers and divergent paths. at the same time, having something tangible permits your identifying and resolving leaps in logic, contradictions and inconsistencies. writing better permits your working out a logic linking the data to events and actions in your story, and interpreting their meaning in relation to the plot that you have devised. when the act of writing is performed iteratively, the narrative may be increasingly refined. it enables greater coherence and complexity. in the conduct of interviews, this evolving formal narrative informs your pre-understanding. for my historical case study, i constructed an initial narrative with a reading of news articles, scientific papers, strategic plans, auditor general reports, ministry of health reports and commission reports. i used the information contained in these documents to construct a timeline of factual events. these events consist primarily of policy actions and decisions, such as the creation of a governing body tasked with driving and coordinating emr infrastructure projects, or the publication of policy that sets the context for emr adoption. at present, i have only begun conducting interviews. in my interviews, at this stage, i am primarily interested in establishing the key actors and organizations, and understanding their influence on emr implementation. i am beginning to get a sense of the organizational cultures of the implicated institutions and the different political contexts, as they pertain to key policy decisions. i have also begun delineating phases in the history of emr implementation, in terms of distinguishable groups of actors, organizations and contexts – in terms of major shifts in preoccupations and priorities. as i conduct more interviews, i will make more and more links between context, actors and actions. i will develop and put forth explanations about how and why emr adoption in quebec has been so challenging. the more i learn, the more questions will inevitably arise as new gaps in understanding are revealed. i will cease data collection when i will have constructed a sufficiently coherent narrative without any apparent, seemingly relevant gaps. i have begun the interview component of my research prioritizing experts familiar with the bigger picture, so to inform my initial narrative. then, as i locate particularly meaningful events in the history of emr implementation in quebec, i will progressively narrow my focus around these key moments. i will therefore select subjects more specifically knowledgeable about these events. the data derived from each interview will fill in gaps in my understanding that emerge throughout the research process. they will thus provide greater depth to my narrative. before discussing strategies that favour hermeneutic dialogue in the conduct of research interviews, i will briefly summarize my argument so far. i have noted that data collection informs your understanding, and processing that data further refines your understanding. when narratively configured, your understanding takes a particular form. furthermore, formally writing a narrative makes it something tangible that favours greater complexity and coherence. this then informs your pre-understanding in the conduct of interviews. subsequently, each interview becomes increasingly focused around filling specific gaps in understanding, answering specific questions, and corroborating or refuting specific assumptions. gagnon journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 3 7 following the principles of hermeneutics, is it a problem for one’s pre-understanding to expand and one’s line of questioning narrow throughout the research process? is it a problem that i have a timeline of events and an increasingly coherent and complex historical narrative that delineates the space where my discussions take place? i argue that, given my research objective of constructing a historical narrative, it is not. we always already have a horizon. we never approach a text, experience, or topic as a completely blank slate we already have a fabric of meaning into which we accommodate, with more or less difficulty, the next new event. (moules et al., 2015, p. 43) your horizon directs the conversation. following the principles of hermeneutics, however, means ensuring that you avoid, as much as possible, restricting the range of possible understandings that can emerge. you want to ensure that you are not simply confirming your beliefs. you want to remain open to what the other has to say and not ignore information that does not fit with what you already think you know. you want to remain open to transformation of your understanding. i argue that to achieve this, the following should be considered. first, the conduct of interviews requires skill as well as reflexivity and creativity. approaching a genuine conversation in the prepared ground established by your narrative pre-understanding involves allowing the object of discussion to lead and following the flow. to obtain good data […] requires a discernment and instinct around choices of which direction to take the conversation, which leads to follow and which to divert, which statements to probe further, when to engage the participants in interpreting, and ultimately keeping the topic as the focus while respecting the participants’ needs to tell their narratives of experience. (moules et al., 2015, p. 89) it demands an awareness of the potential impact of your words on both the direction of conversation and the boundaries of understanding. it is important to recognize when you may be imposing your understanding in a way that restricts the range of possible understandings that can emerge. reflection upon your prejudices is recommended, and researchers should be open and transparent about them in their writing. recognition of the potential impact of one’s words is generally cultivated with experience. with each interview, through trial and error, and the practice of reflexivity, you cultivate a better sense of how your pre-understanding might influence the direction of conversation. as every situated understanding action both reveals and conceals (you cannot know what you do not know), the ideal of self-awareness is an unattainable state. awareness is a continuous process that demands practice and adaptability. in addition to creativity, reflexivity and skill, i contend that researchers should embrace the complexity and ambiguity of an understanding informed by a diversity of interpretations. as more data are collected, the range of interpretation grows rather than shrinks (curtis, 2010). the number of possible interpretive paths and interlinkages increases. the story becomes increasinggagnon journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 3 8 ly complex. the advantage of the narrative structure is that is embraces complexity and ambiguity by permitting the inclusion of multiple, potentially contradictory accounts. if two people have different interpretations about the factors that contributed to a certain outcome, both may be included. then, one can reflect on the meaning of each interpretation in the context of the whole. a “true” story is not the aim. the aim is to tell a good story. as weick (1995) suggested, a good story should be reasonable, coherent, and plausible (weick, 1995). understanding is finite. research follows a certain path, limited in time, setting and scope. one cannot include everything of potential relevance nor reconcile differing accounts. in my case study of emr implementation in quebec, i will not be reconciling, aggregating, averaging, or reducing people’s accounts when i consider them to meaningfully contribute to the plot. i will include contradictions in people’s interpretation as bifurcating branches of my narrative understanding. my research presents a living understanding rather than a timeless verity. triangulation of data sources is valuable in this regard. inclusion of complementary viewpoints can simultaneously strengthen particular propositions when different accounts are concordant and broaden the range of possible interpretations when accounts are irreconcilable. each interpretation has value. every interview should therefore be approached with curiosity and humility. i will now provide a concrete example from my research to illustrate how i navigated the flow of conversation, while utilizing a graphic timeline of events to prepare the ground for our discussion. in one of my first interviews, i spoke with a physician/researcher who had been involved in a number of health information technology initiatives over the last 30 years. i had done my research on him and had an idea about the specific moments about which he might be particularly knowledgeable. i adapted my interview guide to include more directed questions about his relevant experience. in my interview, after explaining my project, i began by asking my subject to speak broadly about the basis of his expertise, such as: what initiatives was he involved in? this already began generating lines of inquiry that i had not anticipated. for instance, he mentioned that he was involved in a chip card program prior to decision-makers’ formal discussions about strategic plans to digitalize the health system. i had known a bit about the chip card program, but i had not discovered in my research that he was involved. i decided to put on pause his description of his experience and focused the discussion around how the program went. later in the interview, after we had discussed other similar initiatives, i asked my interview subject to reflect on how the projects differed in terms of how they were managed. i asked him about the different organizational cultures of the actors involved, and what this impact this might have had on the outcome. none of these questions had been specifically planned; they emerged from the conversation. throughout my interview, as a prompt for our discussion, i used a graphic timeline depicting the major events that i considered relevant to the narrative. i felt that this was extremely valuable in quickly establishing common ground. i could point to two distinct events and ask if he felt there was any connection between them. for instance, in 2006, quebec proposed a formal plan for digitalizing the health system. i asked: “what contributed to the development of this plan?” he looked at the timeline and located “canada health infoway” a federal organization charged with driving health information technology interoperability across the country. he said: “quebec’s plan was devised in such a way as to meet canada health infoway’s conditions for receivgagnon journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 3 9 ing funding. they didn’t devise a comprehensive digitalization plan until much later.” thus, we uncovered an important influence explaining the state of emrs in quebec. most of the remainder of the conversation involved a deeper probe into this. had i taken a more traditional approach to the conduct of my interviews, i suspect that i would not have pursued the new direction that emerged from our conversation. additionally, had i not prompted the subject with my visual timeline, and established common ground and my expertise on the topic, we may not have had such a rich, focused discussion. conclusion in sum, the iterative construction of a narrative involves the development of an increasingly coherent and complex, formally written, understanding. i began with an initial timeline, informed by the reading of historical documents. then, in the conduct of interviews, my pre-understanding became increasingly refined and formally structured into a narrative. the conversations i had with my interview subjects were situated in the clearing where our horizons met. i presented to the interview subject what i knew, and as two experts on a topic, we had a focused discussion. as i conduct more interviews, they will become increasingly focused and directed around filling in gaps, addressing remaining questions, and reinforcing or refuting events and interpretations. i have argued that this does not inhibit my following the principles of hermeneutics. with each interview, there is a back and forth between the discussion (the part) and the grand narrative (the whole); between following the flow of conversation and making sense of what was said in relation to your pre-understanding. i concur with fellow methodologists in positing that navigating this back and forth requires reflexivity and adaptation. in addition to this, i contend that embracing the divergent accounts and interpretations that emerge in conversation is vital to conducting trustworthy hermeneutic research. references bruner, j. (1991). the narrative construction of reality. critical inquiry, 18(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1086/448619 creswell, j. w. (2012). five qualitative approaches to inquiry. qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches. thousand oaks, ca: sage. curtis, b. (2010). baudrillard and gadamer are dead : exploring play and the virtual through hermeneutic conversation. (master of arts thesis), montreal, qc, canada: concordia university. gadamer, h-g. (1960/2004). truth and method (3rd rev. ed; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. geanellos, r. (1999). hermeneutic interviewing: an example of its development and use as research method. contemporary nurse, 8(2), 39-45. https://doi.org/10.5172/conu.1999.8.2.39 gagnon journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 3 10 langley, a. (1999). strategies for theorizing from process data. academy of management review, 24(4), 691-710. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1999.2553248 moules, n. j., mccaffrey, g., field, j. c., & laing, c. m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. polkinghorne, d. e. (1995). narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 8(1), 5-23. doi:10.1080/0951839950080103 sandelowski, m. (1999). time and qualitative research. research in nursing & health, 22(1), 79-87. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839950080103 weick, k. e. (1995). sensemaking in organizations. thousand oaks, ca: sage. corresponding author: alexander crist, ma phd student texas a&m university email: acrist@tamu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics june 29, 2018 the author(s) 2018 a hermeneutic approach to pain: gadamer on pain, finitude, and recovery alexander crist abstract while philosophical hermeneutics has often been criticized for not engaging issues concerning the body and human finitude, gadamer’s “defense of pain” in his final public academic appearance is an underappreciated hermeneutic contribution to the way in which we experience and respond to the physical and existential demands of pain. in light of his criticism, that the modern medical community is occupied with the utter eradication of pain, gadamer is concerned with the consequences of such a sensibility which does not appear to focus on developing and fostering the patients’ own capacities and participation in the process of their own convalescence. for gadamer, the patients’ active participation in the recovery (verwinden) from pain is an opportunity to experience the joys of recovery and to engage in their own vibrant rhythm of health. yet more than this, pain is an opportunity to return to an existential and hermeneutic truth about one’s own finitude. through reflections on the newborn’s cry at birth (geburtsschrei) and the forgetfulness of our own mortality, we find in gadamer’s presentation an intriguing account of pain as a deeply embodied and hermeneutic experience that furthers interpretation and understanding of our own intimate relationship with birth, death, and life. keywords gadamer, hermeneutics, mortality, health, body crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 2 a common criticism of contemporary hermeneutic philosophy is that hermeneutics often neglects the topics of embodiment, the body, and an existential concern for one’s mortality. 1 yet what is perhaps just as neglected is the way hans-georg gadamer takes up these themes in his essays and lectures on health and suffering. perhaps most overlooked, and still untranslated, is the transcript of a presentation he gave on the topic of pain, in what would be his last official public appearance.2 on the one hand, gadamer’s “defense of pain” is a further entry in his efforts to distinguish the art of healing from the modern science of medicine in the technological age and to reopen the question of what it means to be healthy in the modern world.3 yet more than this, gadamer points toward something of much greater concern in our response to the physical and existential demands pain. in the first part of this essay, i discuss gadamer’s comments on the topic of pain in his 2000 lecture and his concern with modern medicine’s combative disposition towards pain. instead of a recovery (verwindung) from pain that includes the active participation of the patient, gadamer points to an attitude in modern medicine that wishes to eradicate pain as if it were an enemy to be fought and destroyed. furthermore, gadamer suggests that to fight pain in this manner is to risk a kind of existential forgetfulness and lose out on the joys of taking part in one’s own recovery. i then turn to several of gadamer’s previous texts in order to frame and respond to his questions and concerns in his “defense of pain.” his comments on the person of experience in truth and method show how pain, disruption, and openness towards these experiences have always been crucial to gadamer and hermeneutic experience. likewise, in his essay, “on the enigmatic character of health,” what is decisive for the rhythm of health is the very painful disturbance of this health, as well as the experience of recovering from this disturbance. lastly, i consider the existential implications of gadamer’s “defense of pain” by turning to his essay, “anxiety and anxieties,” and the image of the birth cry that arises in both texts. in this, i suggest that our experience and recovery from pain awakens us to the ungraspable mystery of our own birth and death at the heart of hermeneutic experience. for gadamer, pain is an opportunity to return to a forgotten truth about our own mortality. as we shall see, he suggests that pain not only echoes the child’s first intimation of mortality in the newborn’s cry at birth (geburtsschrei), but always and again invites us to return from a profound forgetfulness of our relation to our own death. as i wish to argue, pain is an opportunity to confront our own mortality that rings out in the image of the birth cry and allows us to return to a forgotten, perhaps repressed, tension between our incessant striving to understand the mystery of death, and of our inability to ever grasp this mystery. accordingly, pain is not only an opportunity to take part in our own recovery and to be active in the vibrant rhythm of our own health, but is ultimately a call to return to an authentic encounter with our own finitude. in turning to gadamer’s presentation on pain, we find an intriguing account of pain as a deeply embodied and hermeneutic experience that furthers interpretation and understanding of our own intimate relationship with birth, death, and life. 1 for more on the body and mortality in hermeneutics see kearney and treanor (2015), aho (2017), and risser (1997). 2 see gadamer (2010). the conference was held at the orthopädischen universitätsklinik heidelberg in 2000. 3 in hermann lang refers to gadamer’s talk on pain as an “apologie des schmerzes” (an “apology” or “defense of pain”). see the afterword in gadamer (2010). crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 3 gadamer on recovering (verwinden) from pain to begin, i want to offer a brief account of gadamer’s comments on pain, the birth cry, and forgetfulness in his final lecture in order to frame this larger discussion of pain as a return to recovery, health, and the mystery of one’s own death. gadamer’s last public presentation (gadamer, 2010), while important, remains untranslated and warrants careful attention, especially in the few passages i wish to consider. while gadamer touches on many interesting facets of his own life and experiences with pain, the crucial moment of the lecture involves his provocative assertion that pain is not something to merely be numbed, ignored, or eradicated, rather, pain is something both patient and doctor must appropriately orient themselves towards, engage, and recover from. pain is something one must develop a sensibility for precisely through one’s experience with pain. instead of an enemy that must be eliminated by the doctor, pain is that which challenges us and demands a response that is not a submission to the illness, but rather a call to develop our own strengths and abilities in the process of our own healing and convalescence. but perhaps more than this, gadamer suggests that pain is an opportunity to confront something we have forgotten, something we are reminded of when we contemplate the newborn’s cry at birth. gadamer introduces his brief account of pain with an initial reflection on this birth cry (geburtsschrei), which is perhaps our first memory or encounter with pain: “what is, for example, the initial birth cry? an expression of pain? does one know such a thing? can one know such a thing? i don’t know” (gadamer, 2010, p. 22).4 this initial cry at birth is a profound and particular response to an unbelievable and unimaginable change in existence, namely, one’s emergence into the world (p. 22). the cry at birth in response to the radical shift into existence indicates that life immediately begins with, among other things, pain and alienation (p. 22). it is already in this moment that the cry at birth signals a conversation with the unseen other (the mother and/or doctor) (p. 22).5 for gadamer then, this cry at birth is both a reaction to what is radically new and a prompting towards a conversation with the newness of the world. one greets the world, and is greeted by the world, through a painful and alienating newness of experience. towards the end of his talk, after various illuminating digressions, he returns to a discussion of pain and articulates the life-long role of pain that starts out from the initial cry at birth and continues into the muted, yet persistent pain of old age. as he explains, one’s particular experience with pain is difficult to convey because “we are in pain and cannot separate this pain from ourselves. pain, as it were, encompasses our lives and consistently challenges us anew. what pain demands from us is considerable” (gadamer, 2010, p. 27). yet what is most important for gadamer is that we do not give up (p. 27). if we have the resolve to face these imposing challenges and demands, pain becomes something that we are able to recover from (verwinden) (p. 27). by recovery, or, verwinden, gadamer says he means a kind of “mastering” (meisterung) of pain (p. 27). yet this is not a mastering in the sense of dominance or command over pain, rather in the sense of coping (fertig zu werden), managing (fertigbringen), and coming to terms with pain. what gadamer finds as perhaps “the most remarkable thing [das verwunderlichste] in our remarkable lives” is our propensity to forget the most valuable and most impactful 4 all english translations in this essay of gadamer’s presentation in schmerz are my own. 5 gadamer only mentions the mother and doctor. however, this could of course be anyone aiding in the delivery of the newborn, such as a nurse, midwife, or doula. crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 4 experiences of our lives: “forgetfulness is weakness” (p. 27). pain, and our struggle with pain, is an opportunity to engage with that which most concerns us and with what most fulfills us (p. 27). it is a chance to come to terms with an original task that has been given to us: “the authentic dimension of one’s life becomes perceptible in one’s experience with pain, so long as one does not allow oneself to be conquered [überwinden lassen]” (p. 27). this, for gadamer, is the great danger in modern medicine’s approach to pain, in that its immediate reaction to eradicate and eliminate a patient’s pain is to sacrifice the patient’s discovery of their own capabilities in healing and to lose the experience of the joys of one’s own ability and success in recovery (pp. 27-28). this emphasis on the word verwinden, on a recovery from pain as one’s development of a sensibility towards pain, is crucial for gadamer’s considerations and contains certain existential valences. verwinden, while commonly used to mean an overcoming or the getting over of an illness (to “get over” a cold), also stems from the word winden, meaning to wind, coil, or contort. for gadamer, the word verwinden implies that one cannot separate themselves from pain in their own recovery. rather, resonating from its root word winden, the patient and his or her pain are intertwined and entangled with another. when one tends to this relationship and engages his or her pain, one opens up the possibility to heal and to not allow oneself to be über-wunden, to be conquered. it is in this way that verwinden also combats forgetfulness. as gadamer points out, through our struggles with pain, we engage what most concerns us, what most occupies us, and what has been initially tasked to us. this engagement is then a reminder of a profoundly intimate, and perhaps forgotten, relationship one has with pain. life begins with pain and one cannot separate oneself from pain, or to continue with the resonance of (ver)winden, one cannot unwind, uncoil, or disentangle oneself from this pain. to recover from pain is then to develop an appropriate sensibility towards pain; a sensibility that does not ignore, dominate, nor eradicate pain, but is willing to engage one’s pain as something deeply personal to oneself and perhaps reminiscent of one’s very first experience with the world. gadamer’s person of experience yet, there is still some question as to what gadamer is driving at with this brief and perhaps cryptic reflection on pain, forgetfulness, and the birth cry in his “defense of pain.” at first blush, gadamer’s talk on pain appears to merely advocate a more active role of the patient in their own relationship to pain, one which allows the patient to experience the joys of taking part in one’s own recovery. yet it appears that gadamer is suggesting that pain opens us up to an experience with something carrying more ontological and existential weight. what exactly have we forgotten and how is this revealed through approaching the demands of pain and reflecting on the image of the newborn’s cry at birth? in order to respond to some of these questions, i want to first return to his comments on the person of experience in truth and method in order to draw out the broader philosophical framework of hermeneutical consciousness and experience. with this in the background, we can then focus on his more specific comments on pain and health in the enigma of health. gadamer’s comments in truth and method on being a person of experience, as one who participates in the movement of understanding and interpretation through developing an open disposition towards new experience, perhaps foreshadows the kind of open and engaging crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 5 sensibility towards pain that gadamer advocates in his later writings and lectures on health, pain, and medicine. at the beginning of chapter four of truth and method, gadamer (summarizing heidegger) explains the ontological process of understanding and interpretation in its relation to hermeneutics. what is important for both heidegger and gadamer is that there is no method or technique that is to be worked out, rather, they want to describe how interpretive understanding is achieved (gadamer, 1960/2013, p. 279). when we interpret, that is, when we work through our projections of meaning for the world (or a text), it is crucial to be watchful of various “arbitrary fancies” and “imperceptible habits of thought” that deviate and distract ourselves from the “things themselves” (p. 279). in the process of understanding, we are constantly projecting possibilities and are always met with an “initial meaning” that emerges out of our various expectations, that is, out of our fore-projections (p. 279). understanding is then the process of interpretation that constantly works through and revises these various fore-projections and foremeanings (p. 279). this is a process in which fore-projections and fore-meanings are constantly being exchanged for more appropriate ones: this constant process of new projection constitutes the movement of understanding and interpretation. a person who is trying to understand is exposed to distraction from foremeanings that are not borne out by the things themselves. working out appropriate projections, anticipatory in nature, to be confirmed ‘by the things’ themselves, is the constant task of understanding. (p. 280) what is critical then for the process of understanding is an initial examination of the legitimacy of our own for-projections and fore-meanings (p. 280). regarding textual interpretation, gadamer explains that this kind of critical examination is enacted whenever we have the experience of being ‘pulled up short’ (die erfahrung des anstoßes) by a text: “either it [the text] does not yield any meaning at all or its meaning is not compatible with what we had expected” (p. 280). interpretive understanding then involves an interruption or disruption of our fore-meanings that invite us to “remain open to the meaning of the other person or text” (p. 281), thereby allowing us to continue to project new and meaningful possibilities in the process of interpretive understanding. this confrontation with alterity and the willingness to be open towards new and challenging developments in the process of understanding are both crucial aspects of gadamer’s hermeneutic conception of the person of experience. in truth and method, gadamer distinguishes hermeneutical consciousness from the hegelian notion of absolute self-consciousness, namely, the former recognizes our inability to never fully supersede or sublate new experience or knowledge (gadamer, 1960/2013, p. 364). a crucial insight for hermeneutical consciousness is that “the truth of experience always implies an orientation toward new experience. that is why a person who is called experienced has become so not only through experiences but is also open to new experiences” (p. 364). in this way, the experienced person is not someone who has simply amassed a collection of experiences, but has developed an ability to be open to and to learn from new experience: the experienced person proves to be, on the contrary, someone who is radically undogmatic; who, because of the many experiences he has had and the knowledge he has drawn from them, is particularly well equipped to have new experience and to learn from crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 6 them. the dialectic of experience has its proper fulfillment not in definitive knowledge but in the openness to experience that is made possible by experience itself. (p. 364) yet this is not to imply that we can choose to ignore or avoid new experience altogether. experience is something no one can be “spared” or be “exempt” from (p. 364). for gadamer, these unavoidable experiences are often disappointing, painful, and disagreeable: “every experience worthy of the name thwarts an expectation” (p. 364). yet these are precisely the kinds of experiences that orient us towards newness, insight, and growth (p. 364). what one learns through this aeschylian notion of “learning through suffering” is not a “particular thing, but insight into the limitations of humanity . . . thus experience is experience of human finitude . . . the experienced man knows that all foresight is limited and all plans uncertain. in him is realized the truth value of experience” (p. 365). the person of experience is then one who constantly engages new experience and develops a sensibility towards the newness of experience. it is to be open to all the experiences of human finitude that consistently thwart our expectations and are also the kinds of experiences that allow us to grow, flourish, and resituate ourselves to the openness of new experience. pain as a return to mortality and the birth cry in light of this anstoß and openness that is proper to the person of experience and hermeneutic consciousness, we can now approach the close relationship gadamer lays out between pain and health, such that a sensibility towards pain is to understand pain and suffering as constitutive of the rhythm of health. as previously mentioned, gadamer touches on this in his talk on pain, where one’s fortitude in attending to the demands of pain, without merely numbing or eradicating this pain, allows one to experience the joys of taking part in their own convalescence and the development of their own capabilities in responding to this pain. on a more general level, he takes up the notion of health in his earlier essays, “bodily experience and objectification,” and, “on the enigmatic character of health,” as a kind of balance that is threatened by disturbance. in, “bodily experience and objectification,” he wants to consider the hiddenness of health by first addressing how pain and suffering are taken up through the lens of modern medicine: we notice how pain and the suffering it inflicts change in character when they are no longer accompanied by the certainty or the expectation that it can be eliminated. this is something we know from contemporary medicine with its virtuosic capacity to ‘eliminate’ pain, the source of the pain, the symptom and sometimes even more than this. (gadamer, 1996, p. 76) because of this capacity to rid the experience of pain, pain loses its status as something important or meaningful (p. 76). this attitude towards pain presents several challenges when trying to deal with, for instance, chronic or psychosomatic pain (p. 76), whereby “eliminating” this kind of pain is not so easily managed through surgery or pharmaceuticals. in the case of “emotional disturbance and mental illness,” it is less a matter of crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 7 ‘taking something away’ than of assisting in the process of adaptation and reentry into the cycle of human, social, professional and family life . . . to rediscover their own internal balance and equilibrium, strikes me as prototypical for the general experience of disturbance and the task of readaptation with which humankind has always been confronted, and with which it always will be confronted. (pp. 77-78) for gadamer, this constant back and forth between “the loss of equilibrium and the search for a new point of stability” is how we experience the life of the body (p. 78). health seems to be this point of stability, this equilibrium that is constantly threatened with disturbance, imbalance and disruption. once again in “on the enigmatic character of health,” illness, in modern medical science, is experienced as something “threatening and disruptive which we seek to be rid of” and becomes something we try to “master” or “gain control of” (gadamer, 1996, p. 105). pain is that which registers “a disturbance in that harmonious balance of bodily processes which constitutes health” (p. 108). health, however, is not a state of utter stillness, immovability, or inactivity, rather it is a “general feeling of well-being,” whereby we are “open to new things, ready to embark on new enterprises and, forgetful of ourselves, scarcely notice the demands and strains which are put on us. this is what health is” (p. 112). however, because health involves a condition of an active, engaging, and rewarding kind of “being in the world,” health becomes something concealed from us and difficult to pin down (p. 113). what reveals our own health to us are precisely those “recalcitrant matters which intrude into our human experience of life” (p. 113). health, then, is a rhythm of life, a continuous movement in which equilibrium is disrupted and must reestablish itself, and manifests its own robustness when we are able to manage these disruptions without a complete numbing of pain (pp. 113-116). like the person of experience, the rhythm of health involves an openness towards the thwarting and disruptive experience of pain as that which is not merely destructive, but allows us to develop our own capacities in our return to this active and engaging sense of health. in the rhythm of health, we develop a sensibility towards the newness of painful experiences by being open to our own finitude, and engaging the challenges of our own convalescence as that which returns us to the active and dynamic movement of health. it is a reflection on this close relation between one’s pain and recovery, and the revelation of one’s own health through the very disturbance of this health, that then leads us to consider the more existential implications of gadamer’s reference to forgetfulness and the birth cry, namely, the tension between anxiety, death, and life in his essay, “anxiety and anxieties.” gadamer begins this essay with reference to heidegger’s fundamental disposition or attunement of anxiety as that which reframes the question of the meaning of being. in section 40 of being and time, heidegger describes anxiety as a disposition in which existence, or, dasein is “brought before itself” (heidegger, 2010, p. 178). while dasein may take flight from itself and its own “authentic potentiality for being itself” (p. 178) amidst its involvement in the world, anxiety returns us to this authenticity. while anxiety does not appear to us as any particular object or coming from any particular location, it concerns the vastness and the strangeness of “the world itself” (p. 181). it is with heidegger’s concept of anxiety in the background that gadamer reminds us of a poem by the baroque poet friedrich von logau that emphasizes the newborn’s cry at birth: “as soon as a newborn child feels the first touch of air it falls to crying. the sun must shine upon it for well nigh forty days before it starts to laugh. oh in this our world, tears crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 8 predominate over laughter” (gadamer, 1996, p. 153). gadamer’s reference to this poem allows us to consider the birth cry as an expression of an intimate, primary, and constitutive relation we have always had with the world as one of alienation and strangeness, a relation we are confronted with in the experience of anxiety. more than this, for gadamer, the lived experience of anxiety is closely tied to one’s own death. in reference to heraclitus, gadamer notes how wakefulness, or consciousness, is closely tied to its necessary and self-evident counterpart: death and our acceptance of death (gadamer, 1996, p. 155). anxiety is closely linked then to our human tendency to strive to grasp this mystery of death. yet, it is not the knowledge of death which causes this striving but something more fundamental that causes us to “repress the thought of death” (p. 155). it is this tension that gadamer unpacks throughout this essay, namely, the role anxiety plays in our striving for an understanding of the mystery of death, while never being able to fully comprehend this profound relationship between anxiety, life, and death. gadamer likewise references aeschylus’ prometheus bound to show how this tension is constitutive of human experience. while one interpretation of this drama emphasizes prometheus bringing fire and technology to human beings, gadamer is more taken with the interpretation that highlights how prometheus’ real accomplishment was ridding human beings of the knowledge of their own death. it is this forgetting of death that gadamer considers a necessary condition of life itself: “but this myth signifies the forgetting of death so that he no longer has to reckon with it. and yet, since no reckoning with death is possible and since death can never be overcome, this forgetting of death is never a real forgetting or overcoming, but rather constitutes life itself” (gadamer, 1996, p.156). anxiety is as an experience of alienation and strangeness to one’s own self and the world, and has “given human beings a distance from things” (p. 157). while it is a distance that threatens a heideggerian inauthenticity, in which we remain distant from our own self or selves, it is also a distance that allows us to keep our horizons open to new and varied possibilities, and to authentically engage our own anxiety (p. 157). for gadamer, all of this is bound up with the question: “to what extent can human life endure truth at all?” (gadamer, 1996, p. 160). what seems necessary for him is the ability to “recognize and accept the fundamental disposition of anxiety in the face of life, and equally of death” as the “ontological privilege” of human beings (p. 162). what is at stake then, is not an understanding of the mystery of death, rather, the willingness to approach this tension with open eyes: “the life which awakens to thinking and questioning thinks and questions beyond all limits. to know anxiety and to be unable to grasp death, this is the human birth cry which never wholly dies away” (p. 162). to reflect on the birth cry is to reflect upon the mystery of our own mortality that has continued to echo throughout our lives from the very moment of our emergence into the world. yet, as gadamer indicates, this encounter with death and mortality in reflecting on the birth cry is not meant to paralyze one’s thought and activity, rather, it is meant to continue the conversation with the world and others that is prompted by this very cry at birth. the image of the birth cry is meant to open up and enliven our being-in-the-world. like gadamer’s robust sense of health, the birth cry may provoke and disturb with its resonance of finitude, yet our rehabilitation and reorientation from out of this engagement with the birth cry enriches our experience with the world and enacts a renewed vitality in our own worldly projects. crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 9 in this sense, we can think of gadamer’s reflection on the birth cry in relation to hannah arendt’s focus on the idea of natality, namely, on the newness and possibilities of birth. for arendt, birth and natality signal not the limiting and closing off character of an end, but the perhaps unexpected potential of a beginning: the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. in this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities. (p. 9) for arendt, just as much as death and mortality ground our engagement with the world, birth and natality are fundamental to the active, productive, and vital possibilities that are ever present in human experience. while arendt wishes to situate the idea of natality much more in a political context, it nevertheless bears on gadamer’s existential and hermeneutic considerations on the birth cry. while gadamer certainly draws from the importance of death and anxiety found in heidegger, the image of the birth cry also resonates with an openness, a newness, and an activity that is present in gadamer’s sense of health. the birth cry is a painful and alienating emergence into the world, but is likewise an initiative. it is one’s first venture into interpreting and understanding one’s situatedness, and is thereby a first action that inspires newness, possibility, and creativity as essential to human experience. while the birth cry is the newborn’s cry at birth, what is left out of gadamer’s particular focus is likewise the mother’s cry at birth.6 in his lecture on pain, gadamer passingly mentions that the mother is perhaps one’s first interlocutor at birth, and is a conversation initiated by the newborn’s cry at birth. the mother is already situated in the particular context and world that the newborn emerges into, such that the mother experiences a similar hermeneutic and existential pain and alienation as the newborn in the moment of birth. instead of the pain of an emergence into the world, the mother perhaps experiences the pain of separation, and of a loneliness bound up in the experience of anxiety. while anxiety is the experience of the strangeness and vastness of the world we are inextricably situated in, it likewise evokes a feeling of distance and separation from this world as well. at the moment of birth, both cries of the mother and the newborn signal the overwhelming experience of loneliness and alienation in this profound and transformative event. for the newborn, it is the intensity of the dislocation from the womb into the world. for the mother, it is the indescribable experience of a loss and separation. while both the mother and newborn experience the devastation of a loss, they also experience the beginnings of a new and richer conversation, one initiated by birth that transforms over a lifetime. it is the natality, the initiative, of the cries of both mother and newborn that project forth uncountable and unknowable possibilities into the world. it is in this moment that both mother and newborn begin their recovery from the physical and existential pain of birth. it is in taking up the challenges and demands of this pain that one first enters into a conversation with the other, with the newborn or the mother, and returns to the vibrant and dynamic rhythm of health. 6 i would like to thank dr. nancy moules and the participants at the 2018 chi for pointing me towards these considerations of the mother’s cry at birth. the following considerations are also not meant to accurately describe the real, cognitive, and sensory experiences of all women in childbirth, rather, to reflect on potential existential and hermeneutic considerations of the figure of the mother in the image of the newborn’s cry at birth. crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 10 conclusion gadamer’s brief presentation on pain manages then to resonate on several different registers, ultimately pressing one to think and return to their own existential origins and finitude. on a medical and practical level, gadamer speaks to a renewed disposition that both medical professionals and patients ought to take in relation to the challenges and demands of pain. rather than waging a war against pain, whereby pain is something eradicated or eliminated by purely chemical or surgical means, doctors and patients ought to develop the patient’s own healing capacities alongside the careful application of medical technology. on a more general level, gadamer’s talk on pain raises the question of health in general, whereby pain, illness, and the disturbance of health play an important role in the rhythm or equilibrium of health itself. health is not an unaffected and closed off state of inactivity, rather, health involves an active engagement with the world and others. like the person of experience, health involves being open to the challenges of painful disruptions and convalescence. more than a mere collection of experiences with pain, a hermeneutic openness involves a disposition that is constantly open to these new and challenging experiences. yet beyond these considerations, i want to suggest that gadamer’s presentation on pain points to a reflection on a forgotten truth about our own mortality and about our own striving to understand the mystery of our own death and life, a mystery we will never fully grasp. pain offers a chance to return to this mystery; not to fully master, control, or understand it, but as an authentic turn towards this tension as such. it is a chance to return to the pain and alienation of our first emergence into the world, the newborn’s cry at birth, and to come face to face with one’s own anxiety. in this way, gadamer’s talk on pain echoes a particular sentiment from kafka: “you can withdraw from the sufferings of the world – that possibility is open to you and accords with your nature – but perhaps that withdrawal is the only suffering you might be able to avoid” (kafka, 2006, p. 102). for gadamer, to eliminate the patient’s experience with pain, along with their participation in the recovery of their own pain, leads to a suffering of its own in this very withdrawal from pain. to be sure, gadamer is not arguing for the removal of all pain medication and suggests that modern medical technology still plays an important role in the art of healing. yet what is at stake in this eradication of pain is, on the one hand, the ability to take part in the joys of one’s own recovery and return to health. but just as much, and perhaps even more than this, it is the possibility of remembering and returning to a forgotten existential and ontological truth that echoes from out of the image of the birth cry: only by continuing to authentically engage the irresolvable mystery of our own birth and death are we able to understand who we are, and to return to life. references aho, k. (2017). a hermeneutics of the body and place in health and illness. in b.b. janz, place, space, and hermeneutics (vol. 5, contributions to hermeneutics, pp. 115-126). cham, switzerland: springer. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52214-2_9 arendt, h. (1958). the human condition. chicago, il: university of chicago press. gadamer, h-g. (2010). schmerz: einschätzungen aus medizinischer, philosophischer und therapeutischer sicht. heidelberg, germany: winter. crist journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 10 11 gadamer, h-g. (1996). the enigma of health: the art of healing in a scientific age (j. gaiger & n. walker, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. gadamer, h-g. (2010). schmerz: einschätzungen aus medizinischer, philosophischer und therapeutischer sicht. heidelberg, germany: winter. gadamer, h-g. (1960/2013). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). london, uk: bloomsbury. heidegger, m. (2010). being and time (j. stambaugh & d. j. schmidt, trans.). albany, ny: state university of new york press. kafka, f. (2006). the zürau aphorisms (m. hofmann, trans.). london, uk: harvill secker. kearney, r., & treanor, b. (eds.). (2015). carnal hermeneutics. new york, ny: fordham univ. press. risser, j. (1997). hermeneutics and the voice of the other: re-reading gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. albany, ny: state university of new york press. microsoft word mccaffrey corrected proof endnotes 2.docx corresponding author: graham mccaffrey, rn phd email: gpmccaff@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics march 29, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 touching from a distance: nursing and carnal hermeneutics graham mccaffrey abstract carnal hermeneutics represents a new development in hermeneutic thinking, extending merleauponty’s work on embodiment. it is potentially useful for applied hermeneutics in nursing, which is a discipline of caring for and with bodies. in this paper, i take up key essays by richard kearney and brian treanor that establish themes in carnal hermeneutics, exploring them in relation to nursing. in the first part, i focus on medical nursing using an example from a student nurse’s practice to look at some of characteristics of nursing using a carnal hermeneutics lens. in the second part, the focus is on mental health nursing, considering how treanor’s field of “new realism(s)” can help to give a fuller account of the physicality inherent in what has become conventionally separated off as “mental” health. keywords hermeneutics, carnal hermeneutics, nursing, mental health carnal hermeneutics is a development in hermeneutic philosophy that holds great promise for practice professions, and certainly for nursing. all practices are bodily practices, performative expressions of a disciplinary identity that manifests in a particular setting at a particular time1. nursing, even among health care professions, is centrally concerned with practices of caring for others; it is bodily, and carnal, in both directions, touching and being touched. in this paper, i set out an exploratory discussion of carnal hermeneutics, as applied to nursing, based primarily upon the essays by kearney and treanor in their edited volume, carnal hermeneutics (2015). i have taken two examples from practice as a basis for discussion, one to do with “physical” and the other with “mental” problems. my division and subtitles are designed to be read with a dose of mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 2 2 irony. they follow the cartesian division of mind and body around which hospitals are still organized. as i will argue in part two, carnal hermeneutics does not favour body over mind, leaving the division intact, but offers a way of understanding the mental-as-carnal that is ecological rather than reductionist. part i: nursing the body three themes that kearney (2015) takes up in his account of carnal hermeneutics are sense, taste, and touch. all three are underpinned by his argument that carnal hermeneutics is primal, it is a condition of our embodied being. in this, of course, he is drawing on merleau-ponty’s work, but in the shift from “embodiment” to “carnal” i hear an attempt to dispel the coolness of the former and to emphasize the natural, animal aspects of human life. in an earlier paper, where he introduces carnal hermeneutics, kearney adds to hermes disclosing “messages from above” the dog argos, which “brings animal savvy from below” (2011, p. 2) to express the fullness of this version of hermeneutics. before discussing kearney’s themes in more detail, i will give a description of an incident from practice against which to test out his ideas. the example comes from the academic setting, but from a conversation with a nursing clinical instructor who worked with students in hospital, teaching them the complex integrative work of nursing, incorporating various kinds of information, practical actions, and interpersonal skills. the instructor had a concern about one student who was having trouble grasping the process of clinical reasoning, of putting the various pieces of nursing together into a coherent process of care. the student was looking after a patient with a urine tract infection, and the instructor asked her to go through the steps of how she would know it was a urine tract infection. the student’s answer was to check the white blood cell count, because the body produces more white blood cells in the presence of an infection as part of the immune response. that is correct, but one trouble with that answer is that it is non-specific – a raised white blood cell count might suggest there is an infection somewhere in the body, but it could not tell you where. the instructor’s advice to the student was to test the urine with a dipstick, a simple tool consisting of a plastic stick with coloured squares along its surface. the nurse dips the stick into a sample of urine and the squares will change colour, quickly indicating likely abnormalities in a number of chemical properties of urine, the most relevant one in this instance being protein, which is a sign of infection. another trouble with both responses is that they beg the question of what would prompt you to take a blood sample or to dip-test the urine in the first place. my suggestion was even more basic, to look at the urine and smell the urine, to use your senses. where there is an infection the urine is typically cloudy in appearance and has a strong smell. a nurse would also pay attention to the risk factors for urine infection to do with the actual patient; for example, older people are more at risk because the bladder muscle gets weaker with age, not drinking enough, being sedentary, all of which can contribute to reduced flow through the bladder. as well as such observable factors, a nurse should simply ask the patient about their own sensory experience, whether they had experienced a burning sensation on passing urine. a humble urine tract infection can have dramatic systemic effects in the body such as delirium, when the patient can quickly become confused, agitated, and hallucinate, so it is important to catch. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 2 3 by itself, the above example is a relatively minor and simple part of learning nursing practice. however, it does contain elements, seen through the lens of carnal hermeneutics, that have interpretive richness for understanding nursing and becoming a nurse. kearney (2015) notes three different connotations of sense in english, referring firstly to sensation through the physiological workings of the five senses, then meaning as in making sense of something, and thirdly of orientation, where we would talk in english about having a sense of direction and in romance languages the word for sense itself retains that idea of orientation in time and space2. my example of the urine infection includes all three of kearney’s senses of sense. first the physical sensation, of looking and smelling (also perhaps the patient reporting a burning sensation on passing urine), the meaning making based on these and other pieces of information, then the direction – what to do? – including a range of actions such as collecting a urine sample for microscopic examination, encouraging the patient to drink more water, monitoring their temperature, and taking a blood samples (where the student’s white cell count would come into the picture). returning to the student’s initial response, there is another way in which carnal hermeneutics reveals a truth in the student’s line of thought, even though she was mistaken in terms of the immediate demands of care. emphasising the sensory aspect of nursing throws into relief that the student’s first thought, to check the white cell count, is perhaps the least directly sensory thing she could have done (though it would entail interacting with a computer, touching a keyboard and looking at a screen). her response was misdirected because it was stripped of context and sequencing but not because white cell count does not have some connection to the presence of infection. in another way, however, her response reflected a deeper truth about contemporary nursing as subject to a kind of neo-cartesianism. examining how a white blood cell count is established reveals a sensory division of labour in the hospital; although blood has to be taken to obtain it, that physical task would be delegated to a phlebotomist, a technician coming by solely to take the blood sample and send it to the lab for examination. both the order to initiate the test, and its result would be entered in the electronic health record, and what the student would have been thinking of would be looking up a number on a computer screen. the student’s response, although still wrong, is saturated with beliefs in healthcare about the value of data over sense experience, and of social organization by specialization, including delegation of routine contacts with body fluids. the extended body is held at a distance and cognitive data processing becomes the most valued asset of the professional. one of my arguments for applying carnal hermeneutics to nursing is that it throws this tendency into sharp relief and at the same time makes clearer what remains indispensable about work with the senses. disgust one of the primitive forces that may be in play in the tendency towards the rationalization of nursing, enabled by technology, is disgust, when we want to get away from what our senses reveal to us. kearney (2011, 2015) follows his observation about the senses by going on to discuss the etymological roots of wisdom sapientia and knowledge in the sense of taste, the basic physical sapere. the association is audible in the english savour and the french savoir, and to mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 2 4 have savoir faire is more than just to know how to do something, but involves a sensitivity to where one finds oneself. kearney’s point is that “hermeneutics begins…in the flesh” (2015, p. 16) with our basic responses to the tangible. i add to this a track through another latin word for taste, gustare, which remains closer to its bodily origins in modern english words like gustatory and from which we get disgust, a bad taste in the mouth. nursing is partly a practice of learning to manage disgust. martha nussbaum makes a distinction between distaste, which she says is a purely sensory reaction, and disgust which has a cognitive, or i would say hermeneutic, content in that “it concerns the borders of the body: it focuses on the prospect that a problematic substance may be incorporated into the self” (p. 202). thus, disgust in the nursing situation has to be both felt and held in suspense to allow for interpretation of what is coming out of another’s body. i hear new nursing students going through a phase of comparing disgust stories about encounters with body fluids as a way of acclimatising to a new arena of working with the messy realities of the human body. an accompanying phase is to try out these kinds of stories around the family dinner table; boundary crossing, pushing the limits of good taste. i sometimes wonder whether part of the “angel” stereotype of nursing is an overcompensatory denial of the blood, urine, excrement, vomit, phlegm, and pus with which nurses come into contact. even if much of the basic work of cleaning up body fluids is now delegated to nursing aides, it is still part of professional practice to engage with the senses, to look, smell and touch in order to interpret. as a point of reference to this sensory world of activity, to provide some interpretive leverage to the role of disgust, i turn to the artwork by andres serrano called piss christ (1987). this was one of those modern artworks that suddenly blew up in public awareness and became for a little while a battlefield in the culture wars in the late 1980s. it is a photograph of a crucifix in a jar of urine, but beautifully lit so that the crucifix appears suspended in a refulgent yellow glow. part of the appeal or the disgracefulness of the piece, depending on your point of view, is the tension between the conventional appearance of beauty and the carnal realization of the title. part of the common reading of the piece, which dates from 1987, is that it flaunted the use of a body fluid during the era of the aids epidemic when body fluids became a site of moral panic. like student nurses at the family dinner table, but much more sensationally, you could say, serrano mentioned body fluids where they were not supposed to be mentioned. nussbaum comments that “…in all cultures an essential mark of human dignity is the ability to wash and to dispose of wastes” (p. 203) but whereas it is a mark of individual dignity to be able to do so for oneself, it is highly ambivalent to do it for others. there is another border of disgust in social structures around the messy facts of bodily sickness, corruption, and waste. the tradition of nursing vocation, reaching back through nightingale, whose vision of nursing was both modernizing and deeply christian, has roots in the monastic infirmaries of the middle ages, where closeness to the filth of sickness was also closeness to god. if part of the impact of serrano’s work was to step across the border between the sacred and the disgusting, that impact was possible because he noticed that there is such a border. in a more mundane way, this ambivalence is played out in the division of labour in modern healthcare. as i mentioned previously, registered nurses now delegate much of the work of cleaning up to low status, untrained nursing aides, while their contact with the disgusting is framed around interpretive tasks associated with mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 2 5 quantifying and assessing the meanings of bodily wastes or delicate technical tasks like wound care. touch after considering the senses, kearney (2015) goes on to discuss touch, and the mediating character of touch in “exposure to otherness” (p. 19). he links touch to tactile to contact to the tact in contact and says that, “to learn to touch well is to learn to live well, that is, tactfully” (p. 20). nursing is a special case of tactility and the attendant call for tact in its social, historical, legal licence to go beyond the usual boundaries of both touch and tact. another of the initiatory experiences for new student nurses is giving an injection for the first time. as a psychomotor skill, it is easily learned and not difficult to do but it has a symbolic value as one of the first steps across the normal boundaries of touch, whereby one knows better than to stab sharp objects into strangers. students move on to putting catheters into urethras, needles into veins, not just muscle, nasogastric tubes into the pharynx, and so on demanding varying degrees of skill and specific knowledge of what goes where. one of the legal boundary markers of nursing is in very specific terms of intrusion into others’ bodies. the regulations that govern the scope of nursing in the health professions act of alberta, for example state that nurses are permitted to: (b) … administer anything by an invasive procedure on body tissue or…other invasive procedures on body tissue below the dermis or the mucous membrane; to insert or remove instruments, devices, fingers or hands (i) beyond the cartilaginous portion of the ear canal, (ii) beyond the point in the nasal passages where they normally narrow, (iii) beyond the pharynx, (iv) beyond the opening of the urethra, (v) beyond the labia majora, (vi) beyond the anal verge, or (vii) into an artificial opening into the body (college and association of registered nurses of alberta [carna], 2005. p. 5). this is not generally what we have in mind when we think about the soothing touch of a nurse, even while we know full well it is part of the picture. it is also not what we have tended to think of up to now when we bring hermeneutics to nursing. most nurses who have taken up hermeneutics have tended to highlight the conversational structure of gadamer’s thought, which fits so well with the interpersonal core of nursing practice. we have turned hermeneutics to good account in thinking about subtle questions of relationship, of difficult conversations, or of the healing influence of words, when at times words are an adjunct to physical care, or absent altogether. this is where carnal hermeneutics opens a new way of thinking about nursing. tact runs all the way through nursing practice, and the heightened technical skill that means the nurse gets the vein the first time, or does not put the nasogastric tube into the lungs, is another kind of tact, of touch done well. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 2 6 mediated touch kearney (2015) goes on to discuss the idea, from aristotle, of mediated touch. in contrast to a platonic distinction between the senses of distance, sight and sound, which are held to be purer, all senses are mediated, by light, air, or in the case of touch by flesh. there is always a gap, even in the case of touch, between sense and object and it is in the mediated gap that carnal hermeneutics enters to make sense of the world around us. this conceptualization of the mediated gap, the space of interpretive discrimination, further helps to understand nursing using carnal hermeneutics. i have already suggested that for nurses, technical skill, having a good feel for something, is one expression of interpretive movement. but i also want to expand upon the idea of mediation to include a third element between sense and object, which is any kind of tool or technology that can be used as an instrument of touch. the simplest and most prevalent example in modern health care is the disposable glove, that sign of the borderland between clinical and natural, or clean and dirty. in addition to needles and tubes that enter the body, there are also thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, heart monitors, and sensors that touch the skin but remain on the surface. these are the tools of the trade that nurses learn to use proficiently and easily, that like heidegger’s hammer, become part of their being-inthe-world. but unlike a hammer, they are instruments of touching another (except when a hammer is misued used and hits a thumb or is co-opted as a weapon) and mediate between nurse and patient, between oneself and another. this is the point at which the neo-cartesianism i introduced earlier threatens to overwhelm the tactility required for carnal hermeneutics. the object, the clinical instrument serves as a mediator of touch but it also separates. the instrument can easily become the focus of the nurse’s attention at the expense of the patient. the instrument can enforce distance that remains distance, and stand as an alienating barrier disrupting the relationship between persons. my argument, based on my reading of carnal hermeneutics, is that there is always a tension between the inherently alienating effect of the instrument and its presence as an object of mediation; it conveys meaning about purpose, security, confidence, all of those things we attribute in a positive way to professionalism, to someone who knows what they are doing; the object itself mediates between the institution and the patient, and of course there is the question of the sensitivity, or tact of the nurse not only in their ability to use the tool well, but in their wider apperception of the person on the other side of the instrument. part ii: nursing the mind treanor (2015) in his essay in the carnal hermeneutics volume takes a different tack to kearney and introduces further themes in carnal hermeneutics that have potential value for nursing. he begins by pointing out that the body in its materiality has been relatively neglected in postmodern thinking, in favour of attention to texts and language. he warns against overcompensating with a rush towards “scientism” and asserts “both the inescapable nature of our hermeneutic condition and its ineluctably carnal character” (p. 59). he takes up the theme of the gap to argue that hermeneutics is not confined to the interpretive space of gaps in language, between languages, between text and reader, but also belongs in the physical world: …gaps are also carnal, material, and earthy: the synaptic gap between nerves, the gaps between sense organs and the objects sensed, the distinction between body…and flesh…, mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 2 7 the fold of proprioception, the reversibility or ‘intertwining’…of sensing and sensed, the distance of alterity between the self and the other…, the spaces between bodies in the world…and so on. (p. 60) treanor’s line of thought here extends the idea of the mediated gap into spaces between bodies, that are mediated by social and institutional forces as well as material technologies. mental health nursing, amongst other things, entails the negotiation of bodies in space in the light of what shapes the space itself. i worked for a while as part of a service called psychiatry consultation liaison. our function was to conduct mental health assessments and make recommendations for care and treatment of patients in a large general hospital who were there for some primary physical problem. in other words, we worked across the gap between mental and physical that is made concrete in the layout of the hospital itself. our team represented an embodied gesture of the system having second thoughts about itself, thinking perhaps it might happen that someone could have heart disease and be anxious at the same time, both occurring within the same body when the design of the hospital expects these two phenomena to appear in two different places. i went to see a patient one day who, we were told in our referral, was “non-compliant” which is healthcare jargon for someone who does not unfailingly do what we, the professionals, want them to do. he was refusing, some days, to attend his physiotherapy sessions. after talking to him for a few minutes, he smiled and confided, “sometimes i say no just because i can.” he was fed up with the discomforts of hospital, the sleep deprivation and unappetizing food, the surrender of control over his body, what would be done to it, where and when it was expected to be, so he asserted a little piece of control, some days, by refusing to move. this is an illustration, i would argue, of derrida’s neologism, “hostipitality” (2002, p. 358). derrida derived it from the etymological tangle of hostis and hospes, of host, who may receive or refuse, and of guest, but it conveys beautifully the embodied experience of the hospital patient, pulled between gratitude and resentment, relief and fear. this tension is carnal, it is felt within the body and played out between bodies, expressed in the language of will in this case, or of emotional excess that brings the psychiatric consultation liaison team running. what was ostensibly a “mental” problem of will and motivation perceived as improperly aligned with a program of treatment was just as much, indeed inextricably also a bodily problem. one could go further and suggest that simply listening to the patient, and allowing him to vent his frustrations with the experience of hospital, which he knew at that same time was for his own good, was less a mental health intervention than an impromptu exercise in carnal hermeneutics. there is more that could be said about the disposition of bodies and the spaces between bodies in mental health nursing. one of the tropes of compulsion in acute care hospital settings is holding down an acutely disturbed patient while a nurse injects an antipsychotic medication. this is a doubled physical restraint, manual force and chemical, external and internal, each working physically even if designed to achieve results that are perceptible in expressed mood, thought processing, and social attitudes. it is also another example of the social and legal permissions that frame the domain of nursing as it is enacted in touch. beyond these forms of bodies in space, treanor reveals pathways to thinking about advances in neuroscience that might inform and enliven nursing practice with people in the world, without a kind of reductionist retreat into faith in inaccessible brain chemistry. he introduces a range of mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 2 8 thinkers in what he calls “the new realism(s)” (p. 60) who accept the existence of a world independent of human perception that can be accessed by science. this is not new in the sense that it is consistent with hermeneutic thought since gadamer, who was always clear that he was not out to relativize science, but to articulate understanding that is not producible through scientific method and which is indeed anterior to scientific method. (every scientist decides where to look, based upon some set of existing assumptions, before bringing to bear the methods of scientific attention on the object of interest). caputo (2018) also addresses this turn in hermeneutics in his book about current developments in hermeneutics, both in a chapter about nursing and other practice professions, and in a chapter about the post-human. he raises issues including the density of human existence that is inherent in the body, not only the brain, and the interplay between genetics and environment as new elements in hermeneutic thinking. what is new, and what runs through both treanor’s and caputo’s discussions is the hermeneutic engagement with science, and most especially advances in neuroscience and genetics that tell us something about who we are, as a species and as individuals, how we come by our being-in-the-world and how we make sense of the world. conclusion carnal hermeneutics is an exciting direction in philosophy that only reinforces the wellestablished affinities between hermeneutics and nursing. it does not supplant or replace questions of language and relationship, but deepens them in important ways. it creates an ecological field of interpretation in which nursing encounters with patients are always conducted by, through, towards, and in interaction with physical beings in physical spaces. a lens of carnal hermeneutics affords powerful interpretive possibilities of addressing one or more features of the ecological field of encounter. from the cellular information contained in a sample of urine, to the social organization of who gets to take a blood sample; from a physical gesture of disaffection with hospital routine, to the carnal expression of neurochemical processes, carnal hermeneutics suggests that we are always already immersed in an interpretable, physical world. carnal hermeneutics presents a new way of seeing nursing, with its manifold blend of knowledge and skills, as an interpretive practice. notes 1 i make this claim well aware of the important question of technology that can, for example, furnish teaching or medical consultation remotely, across great distances, and asynchronously. although outside the scope of the present paper, carnal hermeneutics may be helpful precisely in mapping the shifting boundaries between human and technology, in understanding the shapeshifting cyborgs we are. 2 jean grondin (2003) has explored the multiple meanings of sens in french which is even richer than in english but as far as i can find, this has not been translated. he gave a wonderful version as an oral presentation in english at the canadian hermeneutic institute in halifax in 2015. references caputo, j.d. (2018). hermeneutics: facts and interpretation in the age of information. london, uk: pelican. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 2 9 college and association of registered nurses of alberta. (2005). health professions act: standards for registered nurses in the performance of restricted activities. edmonton, ab, canada: author. derrida, j. (2002). acts of religion. new york, ny: routledge. grondin, j. (2003). du sens de la vie. montréal, qc: bellarmin. kearney, r. (2011). diacritical hermeneutics. journal of applied hermeneutics, 2011. article 1 doi: https;//doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53187.g40578 kearney, r. (2015). the wager of carnal hermeneutics. in r. kearney & b. treanor (eds.), carnal hermeneutics (pp.15-56). new york, ny: fordham university press. kearney, r., & treanor, b. (eds.). (2015). carnal hermeneutics. new york, ny: fordham university press. nussbaum, m. (2001). upheavals of thought: the intelligence of emotions. new york, ny: cambridge university press. serrano, a. (1987). piss christ, retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/piss_christ treanor, b. (2015). mind the gap: the challenge of matter. in r. kearney & b. treanor (eds.), carnal hermeneutics (pp. 57-76). new york, ny: fordham university press. microsoft word risser corrected proof 1.docx corresponding author: james risser, phd seattle university email: jrisser@seattleu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics july 31, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 when words fail: on the power of language in human experience james risser abstract beyond the ordinariness of experience in daily life there are times when we encounter an experience for which words seem inadequate to express and communicate the experience. the focus of my remarks for the first paper will explore this situation of the potential limits of language for understanding experience. the question of these limits depends on an analysis of just what takes place in experience and (the hermeneutic experience of) language. drawing on hans-georg gadamer’s hermeneutic theory for an answer to the question, i will show just how experience and language are interrelated, and, as a result, i will show how the dynamic of language formation expands to accommodate what appears to be inaccessible and inexpressible, while allowing experience to sustain its own richness. keywords philosophical hermeneutics, hans-georg gadamer, language, experience, failure of words presenting the difficulty how often have you had an experience, especially one that is deeply profound, after which you exclaimed “it so moved me there are no words to say what it means”? words have failed to take hold of the meaning of the experience, and yet, presumably, you do want to speak about it, you want to bring it to its understanding, if not to yourself, then to another. let me give you two examples of this kind of experience. the first is an experience of what we would call the sublime. my example comes from the philosopher immanuel kant. in an essay on our ability to know ultimately reality (kant means here knowledge of god) by reflecting on nature, kant writes in risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 2 relation to a microscopic observation of a single drop of water: when i contemplate the intrigues, the violence, the scenes of commotion in a single particle of matter, and when from there i direct my gaze upwards to the immeasurable spaces of the heavens teeming with worlds as with specks of dust–when i contemplate all this, no human language can express the feelings aroused by such a thought; and all subtle metaphysical analysis falls far short of the sublimity and dignity characteristic of such an intuition. (kant, 2003, p. 159) what kind of experience is this really? as a truly sublime experience, it is an experience in which what is being presented in it is something literally unpresentable, in this case the intricacies of life and the immeasurable quality of the cosmos. as kant tells us, the thought of this exceeds the ability of thought to comprehend it, where even the feeling aroused by the thought of this cannot be captured in language. so, what is really taking place in this profound experience that is excessive to the point that we are at a loss for words? what, in other words, is the precise break that is responsible for language failing to achieve its function, which is to express and communicate, not just to others but even to ourselves? in the most profound experiences, we see that they are often, if not always, accompanied by what the ancient greeks named as the experience of wonder. wonder is after all more than fascination, and certainly it is not the same as mere curiosity. modern media wants us to be curious, but has little interest in having us be captivated by wonder. wonder is a deeper phenomenon that draws us into the strange and the challenging. the experience of wonder signals a certain placelessness with respect to what we are experiencing–a being out of place because we cannot go further in our thinking and speaking with the categories of expectation involved in our experiencing. as in the kantian experience of the sublime or any one of those human experiences in which a gap opens between word and feeling, word and expression, we are, in a sense, left almost speechless in wonder. almost speechless, but not totally speechless, for while indeed speech may desert us when it comes to articulating a certain experience, such desertion is not necessarily evidence of the complete failure of speech, and thus the end of speech. quite the opposite. to be left almost speechless in wonder, one can say, is to be at the opening of thinking and speaking. certainly one can well imagine that in the attempt to communicate a profound experience of joy, one wants to say so much that one does not know where to begin. this experience of the insufficiency of words is not restricted, of course, to experiences of the sublime. the second kind of experience like this is more far-ranging. it can be found in not only in those deeply personal experiences that range from the traumatic to the blissful, but also in the awkward situation of speaking in the face of death. the case of psychological trauma is an extreme case in this regard. trauma is the shattering of an experiential world in such a way that there is an unbearable affect. these traumatic affects remain experientially unintegrated. the movement toward understanding is not just thwarted, separating a person from the normal flow of life, but often times inaccessible. as such, there is an additional difficulty when it comes to speaking. unlike the overpowering thought of the intricate order of life and the cosmos, our deeply personal experiences are often inseparable from memory–or better stated, from memories-in-transition, from the return of experience that is infected with loss. in this memory-inrisser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 3 transmission it is especially so that words face the prospect of failing, of not being able to say what has been experienced. but here too, more so than in any experience of the sublime, the prospect of the failing of words does not signal the impossibility of speech, but just the opposite. here i am simply following gadamer. in his words: “the breakdown of language actually testifies to one’s capacity to search out an expression for everything . . . . in actuality, speaking has not come to an end but to a beginning” (gadamer, 2007, p. 93). the issue of the breakdown of speech thus becomes the question of where we are to find the words for what we cannot say. now, the short answer to this question is actually quite simple: it is from language itself that we find the words for what we cannot say. but this simple answer depends considerably on a certain understanding of the nature of language, and along with it, a certain understanding of the intimate relation between language and experience. in my remarks that follow, i want to present the hermeneutical account of language and experience that will allow us to see the full force of this answer to the question. i will divide my remarks into three parts. part 1: language and experience from a hermeneutical point of view so first of all, let us put aside a notion of language and of experience that is inadequate for what i want to say in this regard. regarding language, then, our ordinary understanding of language seems to be shaped by how we think language works in language acquisition, let us say in a child learning words from her mother. as if this were the beginning of language, the mother says the word “ball” and rolls the object in front of the child, repeating the association so that the child comes to name the object with the word “ball.” one can well imagine more sophisticated examples of the same phenomenon: a drug company invents a name for a chemical compound because the name of the compound by itself would not suffice for the demands of marketing the compound (how do they come up with those names?); or, a computer technician gives the name “flash drive” for a newly created devise for media storage. but coining a term or simply giving names to objects is not language in its fullest sense. it is not even our basic linguistic relationship to words, as if the use of language is at the whim of the user of language, something in front of the speaker at his or her disposal like a tool (gadamer, 2007, p. 105). sooner or later, we will run out of nouns and have to use a verb! we will not just utter a word, but try to say something in speaking by relating one word to another. giving names to things is not yet discourse where meaning unfolds through the relation of words in combination and play. more to the point, what is implied by these examples of naming is that the word functions merely as a sign, as the word “ball” is a sign signifying the round object of play for the child. to regard language as a system of signs is to assign to language an instrumental character, for the nature of a sign is to refer to something beyond itself and thus has no meaning within itself. as signs, words are effectively detached from the reality that is being spoken about, a reality that is presumably already known. to understand language in this way raises the problem of how linguistic instruments can effectively express non-linguistic material. this is the epistemological problem that nietzsche sees with language and that he “solves” by turning this broken connection into a radical theory of interpretation. a simple physical object such as a leaf, with all its sensible particularity, will always be drained of its particularity when translated into words, which, ultimately, as the work of concepts, can only convey the general. in going from the thing risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 4 to the word, there can only be a dissimulating transference. for nietzsche, then, words cannot say what we experience sensibly and accordingly cannot render intelligible what we see. how, though, is language to be understood otherwise? to say the least, as gadamer presents his case in truth and method a word is not just a sign, but is more like an image (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 416). what he means is that, unlike the arbitrariness of a sign, the word bears a deeper connection to the appearance of what is named in the word. but when he says the word is more like an image, he is not suggesting that a word is a mere copy of reality in the way some think that art copies, or imitates, reality. gadamer wants to claim that language is not a second order presentation: first reality presents itself, then language comes second to re-present the reality in words. for gadamer, who follows heidegger in this regard, the nature of language is to be disclosive of reality, it allows something to show itself, to reveal itself. such coming to appearance is to be understood phenomenologically. what comes to appearance in the word is, to use the german word, die sache, the issue or the matter at issue, the thing that is meant.1 language allows the matter to come to appearance in its understandableness, that is to say, in its meaning. therapeutic conversation illustrates this point very well. the reality of a client’s stress, for example, may have produced physical symptoms, but the worldly reality of that stress is precisely what is coming to word in the dynamics of speech where there is never simply one word. for gadamer, this coming to word connects not only thinking and speaking, but also the deep accord between word and thing. a person who thinks something–literally, says it to himself– means by it the thing that he thinks.2 there is no reflection when the word is formed, just as there is no consciousness of our speaking when we speak, for the word is expressing the matter intended. so gadamer says, “the starting point for the formation of the word is the substantive content that fills the mind” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 426). whether there are factors that may hinder the understanding and the articulation of the intended thing in word, as we see in therapeutic conversation, or whether in our human speaking we ever completely say what we mean are developments within the enactment of speech that do not affect the principal intention of speech. to say this in another way, gadamer does not think that human speaking must find a way to cross a bridge between a wordless world on one side, and a worldless word on the other. our words are worlded from the start; the reality of language is that the world is presented in it.3 accordingly, for gadamer language is nothing other than the experience of the world. and what then of experience? as experience of the world, it too should be understood accordingly. “experience,” gadamer insists, “is not wordless to begin with only to be made an object of reflection by being named by being subsumed under the universal of the word. rather, experience of itself seeks and finds words that express it (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 417). to understand this idea of experience requires that we let go of the inadequate idea of experience that gadamer is rejecting here, namely, the idea that experience is a part of knowing, in the same way we think of data. considered in this way, experience is nothing more than a basic component of knowledge that completes itself only through an act of reason, that is, in the establishing of patterns and generalizations from the data of experience. so understood, experience is something to be made available to mastery by the act of knowing. it is what is given over to the power of the knowing subject, and thus stands within the framework of calculation and repeatability. as data, experience stands risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 5 in relation to the proposing subject who finds order in the world through reason. when considered in this way, experience has little to do with language and understanding. so, against this view, gadamer holds that experience is actually a more encompassing phenomenon when we think of it in terms of human experiencing; that is to say, when we consider experience as that which we undergo and gain something from. this is experience that is taking place in time and is something the individual is involved in. the idea of experience here is actually best described by heidegger. he writes: “to undergo an experience with something, means to attain it along the way, by going on a way” (heidegger, 1971, p. 73). to ask then about how the experience of something becomes intelligible, that is to say, to ask how experience can be at once an experience of understanding, is to turn to the experience of language. it is to turn to language that seeks and finds words for itself. accordingly, gadamer says that through language “the order and structure of our experience itself is originally formed and constantly changed” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 457). but this claim that language characterizes our human experience of the world is for some quite bold. to defend this claim, which brings us to the very core of what gadamer calls hermeneutic experience, let me turn to my second set of remarks. part two: the intimate unity of language and the experience of the world up to this point i have only been concerned with setting aside certain notions that make it difficult to speak about the problem of finding words for our experiences. i wanted to set aside the idea that language is simply a system of signs because ultimately this notion robs language of its power, a power by which it can expand beyond what appears to be its limit. i also wanted to set aside the idea that experience is data because this notion removes experience from the sphere of life and language, removes it from the world we inhabit. following the indications just given, let me now expand upon these more positive notions in an attempt to make clear the intimate unity of language and the experience of the world. if we look back at the history of hermeneutic theory, we see that gadamer was not the first to talk about the experience of understanding in relation to the experience of life. we find it already in dilthey, one of the early pioneers of the human sciences, who famously writes that “thinking cannot go back behind life.” this means that when we attempt to understand what dilthey calls the “expressions of life,” which include all human thought and action as well as the communication of experiences, we do so from within life. we understand within the nexus of life. we cannot put life-expressions in front of us like an object because of our own involvement in life. for dilthey then, to understand life-expressions, that is, to comprehend living human experience, will involve transposing ourselves into the life of another. it involves a re-experiencing the world of another. when gadamer follows the basic outline of this position in his reformulation of the hermeneutic circle, which involves relating what is to be understood from our pre-understanding in life, he does so by emphasizing that we are not just situated in historical life–at this point agreeing with dilthey that we interpret life from life. gadamer also says that we are affected by historical life whenever we attempt to understand it. we are conditioned by the affects of historical life, by historical life working on me behind my back, so to speak, which affects the context in which we attempt to understand life. because of this i can never understand life in a free and neutral way in an even deeper way than dilthey thought. because of this affection and involvement in life, which gadamer calls the hermeneutical situation, understanding will always occur risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 6 as an event–understanding happens or occurs as a result of this involvement and is not produced by me in the manner in which we ordinarily say we know something. i am in history when i come to understand an event in history. i am already in language when i come to understand the meaning of something said. the event of understanding is a moment of the actualization of meaning but never can it be the ideal meaning, the one true meaning. as with dilthey, life is intelligible but it is also unfathomable–one does not get to the bottom of it in understanding. now, the way that gadamer will present this unfathomable character of life in its understanding– what we can simply call our finite comprehension of the world–is through the claim that interpretive understanding unfolds very much like the experience of experience itself. real experience, gadamer tells us, is something i am involved in and occurs only in individual acts. and if experiencing is itself a form of knowing, this knowing, obviously so, will emerge from the actual encounter with the experienced object in the manner of an event. for gadamer, this encounter is everything, for what is at stake is more than an inductive knowing in which in which we look for the constant confirmation of experience. sooner or later, real experience will refute our expectation for confirmation. this new experience effectively asserts its own truth against the expectation from our preliminary or pre-understanding. the new experience amounts to the birth of experience as an event over which no one has control, and becomes valid until it is refuted by a new experience. with the occurrence of new experience not only does the experienced object change–what is experienced is now no longer what it initially was–but also the experiencing mind changes as well–i am now different as a result of being experienced. since real experience can always involve new experience, the process of experience has its fulfillment not in definitive knowledge but, as gadamer says, “in the openness to experience that is made possible by experience itself” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 355). thus, gadamer insists, in being experienced one not only recognizes the limits of one’s knowledge, but remains in a state of openness regarding what is other. presumably, a person who takes the experience of experience seriously would be naturally inclined to a state of humility. hermeneutic experience, and with it the event of understanding, unfolds accordingly. in the attempt to understand–whether it be a historical text, a work of art, the words spoken by another or even that experience that is strange and challenging–we are not mastering an object, but placing ourselves in the open where we encounter the breakdown of our expectations. being in the open is a condition of exposure that is required for letting the meaning that is beyond our expectations emerge. it is here that gadamer also insists on the linguisticality of understanding, for it is language that accomplishes this expansion of meaning and understanding of what is other. to state the matter succinctly: bringing something into the open is a function of the question, and the logic of question and answer, that is to say, conversation or dialogue, becomes the structure for understanding. but to say that gadamer has a dialogical version of hermeneutics only tells us one half of the story; it tells us only that understanding is accomplished in the communication of meaning with respect to the address of the other which is brought about by the question. by itself, this does not tell us enough about the movement of language in dialogue. the interplay between conversational partners in dialogue is itself caught up in the interplay that language itself is undergoing. this interplay is the movement of language in its possibilizing condition. language is not a stockpile of words but a virtuality of words, which is simply that of an open potentiality with respect to the performance of meaning in language. gadamer describes this movement as the speculative dimension of language. the term “speculative” actually comes risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 7 from 19th century german thought where it was used to convey the way concepts relate to one another, as one can begin to see from the root word speculum, to mirror. language is speculative in the sense that the subject matter is “mirrored” in it but not just in a simple way; think of it more like a hall of mirrors. meaning in language is not complete when one simply makes a statement; it unfolds, it comes to appearance by thinking further in words. in the speculative dimension of language “finite possibilities of the word are oriented to the sense intended as toward the infinite” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 469). this coming into word, this enactment of meaning that is language, is nothing less than the raising into intelligibility our experiencing of the world. it is not the case, then, that something is first understood and then subsequently put into words, but rather, we are always seeking and finding words to make ourselves intelligible to the other and also to ourselves. in all knowing of the world the moment of understanding has to be worked out. let me conclude this section of my remarks by emphasizing from what has just been said the distinctive dynamic of hermeneutic experience. two comments: first, to say that the moment of understanding has to be worked out means that at least in principle we may not succeed in finding words for what we want to say. despite the overt optimism of gadamer’s position–an optimism that speaks to the fundamental humanism of gadamer’s position, a point i will make in my third talk–there are indeed limits to the communication of meaning. most notably for gadamer there is the case of translating and understanding poetic texts where the very character of the poetic word may make translation and understanding impossible. i am thinking here of gadamer’s analysis of the poetry of paul celan, where the opacity of meaning approximates a form of hermetic poetry. this limit situation is actually attached to language from the outset. certainly there is the awareness of every speaker in seeking the correct word for what he or she wants to say that this word is never completely attained. what has been said in words is always less than what is meant, as those deeply personal experiences often attest to. and yet, can we not also say that “an unstilled desire for the appropriate word” constitutes the true life and essence of language (gadamer, 2000, p. 17). and then secondly, let us not forget just how language works. to rephrase gadamer’s characterization of language as speculative, “every word, as the event of a moment, carries with it the unsaid to which it is related by responding and summoning” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 458). as the (finite) event of the moment the word is not everything and yet “there is laid up within it an infinity of meaning to be explicated and laid out” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 458). every word has an inner dimension of multiplication, so that the task of understanding is, to say it once again, to find the right word. part three: finding the right word for the sake of understanding to turn then to my final set of remarks, i want to consider here this notion of finding the right word. let me begin here by rephrasing the initial question posed against the acknowledgment that words fail. the question is no longer where are we to find the words for what we cannot say, but where are we to find the right word for what we cannot at first say. this shift allows us to see the real problem for the experience of understanding. if i do not know fully what i want to say because the intention of meaning exceeds itself or if the experience i want to convey does not have an explicit identity already formed but is shadowy in my own mind, or i am in a dialogue risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 8 where there is a problem of translation even when we are speaking the same language, then what constitutes the right word? what, in other words, constitutes the success of speech and understanding? this further question leads us into still more complexities in the experience of understanding in language. let us say, for example, that one of my parents had recently died and i wanted to understand my relationship to my parent in a way that i could not have considered before. this particular task of understanding would not be so different from the task of understanding other things, perhaps even a book that i had read. the success of understanding will depend on giving the matter, whether it be the relationship or the meaning in the book, the power to speak. this is after all, the central concern for the experience of understanding as conceived by gadamer. what is to be understood should present itself in all its otherness, as if it were a new experience, so that it can assert its own truth against my own for-meanings. in the attempt to understand my relationship with a parent i begin with an awareness that encompasses conscious and unconscious relations which have directions and meanings that i can only vaguely be in touch with. my thinking in relation to this awareness brings with it feelings and orientations, the latter because it is situated in history. the point here may be obvious: the relation between awareness and a thinking that is directed at understanding is not at all similar to the awareness in simple act of perception or to the simple recall of memory that we call reminding. in this personal experience, but also in the understanding of life in general, the awareness and the thinking are inseparable from memory in a deeper sense. here awareness and thinking are caught up in memory-in-transition where they are involved in an elemental forgetting and loss while coming to mind. forgetting and loss are at work in the occurrence of memory in such a way that memory enacts not a re-presentation but a recreation as a present happening. memory, in other words, is a transformative occurrence, and thus always a form of interpretation. it should not be surprising in this context to learn that gadamer will say at one point that “language signifies memory” (gadamer, 1992, p. 90). but in saying this, the issue is more than transformative occurrence since memory is after all a form of preserving. for gadamer, this preserving is not a matter of an unquestioning clinging to what is, as if one could not forget, as if one can hold oneself back from the forces of transformation. rather, in the effort to continually renew what we hold to be true, and thus engage in preserving, memory becomes a way of confronting ourselves, and this is precisely what language accomplishes. if in our experiencing we are caught within the experience of time where all things escape us, living language can bring about a recovery from this loss. and what then of my attempt to understand an awareness in memory of my parent? to the extent that my awareness needs understanding, and thus brought into the play of language, this play is working at the fringes of identity, caught not just within the passing of time but also within an experience of strangeness at the edge of familiarity. the experience of understanding is to make this crossing in language from strangeness to familiarity. as gadamer notes, “the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 295). as a first approximation to the answer to our question, then, let us say that the right word is the word that has made this crossing and is a word that has found its time. but this word is in some sense not my word; that is to say, it is not a word i possess that i fit into the matter to be understood. rather, in the play of language the word that crosses into familiarity is the appropriate word that presents itself in the unfolding of the word’s own naming power. and this coming forth of the word brings with it not just meaning, but new meaning in a double sense. in one sense, the new meaning comes forth as an addition to my awareness and thus to my risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 9 experiencing. what comes to understanding was not there in advance in some completed state only to be retrieved in recall, but was initially there in the shifting sensibilities of meaning where certain associations may interfere with one another. perhaps what comes to understanding was at first glance something on the periphery, not unlike the peripheral meanings that are in play in every word. what comes to understanding then amounts to a coming into presentation in which there is an “increase in reality.” gadamer uses this phrase–in german, zuwachs des sein–in several places. my friend dennis schmidt, who is well versed in german wants to translate this not as increase but as an intensification of realty. he does so, i think, because of the experience of art that is for gadamer an intensification or a heightening of reality. but the german word zuwachs is clearly a matter of an increase in the sense related to growth. and so, i would say that the increase in reality that accompanies hermeneutic understanding is at once an enlargement of my experience of the world. while indeed it may be for me in the particular example of understanding my relationship with my parent that i now see something new, what transpires in this play of language, in more general terms, is a “constant building up and bearing within itself the communality of world orientation” (gadamer, 2007, p. 96). in letting my experience speak language is at the same time building up an aspect held in common. what is added, then, is not simply another opinion about the matter, one more opinion piled on top of others, but, to use gadamer’s words for what takes place in genuine dialogue, “a transformation into a communion in which we do not remain what we were” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 379). as a second approximation to the answer to our question, then, let us say that the right word is the word that comes as an increase to meaning. as to the other sense of new meaning, if it is a new meaning at least in the sense that it leaves something behind in us that we have not encountered in the same way before, then we should expect that it is a surprising meaning as well.4 this aspect of surprise goes hand in hand with the dynamics of language that cannot be reduced to logical calculations. understanding in language does not unfold by moving in strict logical sequence from statement to statement. it does not unfold in a thinking that moves from one thought to another in linear fashion where there can be no surprise. rather, it is a matter of a movement of language in which thinking can also move backwards, rephrasing against the particular horizon that is in view, and thus carrying the matter forward into other words. when one finds the right word within this dynamic, it is often a word unforseen. and as unforseen, the experience of the world that is brought to language, then, is not about an event that has happened but is happening. the experience retains its vitality–its life and liveliness–in coming to word. the richness of experience thus continues to be brought about by language and the experience of understanding. to the question where are we to find the words for what we cannot at first say, i would now answer, accordingly, in the evocative power of our words in living language–what i think can best be described quite simply as the future of our words. references figal, g. (2002). the doing of the thing itself: gadamer’s hermeneutic ontology of language. in r. dostal (ed.), the cambridge companion to gadamer (p. 115). cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 10 gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h-g. (1976). philosophical hermeneutics (d.e. linge, trans.; p. 63). berkeley, ca: university of california press. gadamer, h-g. (1992). hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (d. misgeld & g. nicholson, eds.). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (2000). boundaries of language. in l. schmidt (ed.), language and linguisticality in gadamer’s hermeneutics. lanham, md: lexington books. gadamer, h-g. (2007). language and understanding. in the gadamer reader (r.e. palmer, ed. & trans.; pp. 93107.). evanston, il: northwestern university press. heidegger, m. (1971). on the way to language (p. hertz, trans.). new york, ny: harper & row. kant, i. (2003). the only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of god. in theoretical philosophy, 1755-1770 (d. walford, trans.; p. 159). new york, ny: cambridge university press. notes 1. see günter figal (2002, p. 115), “the doing of the thing itself: gadamer’s hermeneutic ontology of language.” 2. we are always thinking in language and we are already in language when we begin to speak. when a child speaks a “first” word it is folly to believe that the parents are witnessing the beginning of language. such a word is always preceded by previous developments, by exchanges of looks and gestures, and nascent conversations from within the socialized linguistic world that the child inhabits. the child’s first word is merely an opening into the child’s ability-to-talk. see gadamer (1976, p. 63). 3. gadamer finds the general frame for this more substantial notion of language in the historical christian idea of the inner word (verbum interius) where the very idea of the word as image first emerges. what intrigues gadamer about this idea is the way in which human speaking is conceived in relation to the divine inner word as the source of intelligibility. when augustine speaks of the inner word of god in order to approach the idea of incarnation he is following the stoic distinction between logos endiathetos and the logos prophorikos. this is the distinction between an indwelling reason and the external word in which the thought dwelling within finds expression. since the external logos is a secondary process to the internal reflection of thought, the external logos is but an imperfect manifestation of the reality. but the peculiar character of the christian “speaking of the word” does not allow it to be understood exactly this way, for in such speaking there is a becoming within this dynamic of language that does risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 6 11 not lessen itself by its emergence into exteriority; nor is the word made flesh–the speaking of the word–to be regarded as a mere appearance of something more essential behind it. according to gadamer, here the “miracle of language lies not in the fact that the word becomes flesh and emerges into external being, but that which emerges and externalizes itself in utterance is always already a word” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 420). in this idea of the inner word the human word is formed in relation to the perfection of thought, but not as a reflective act. in reflection words are formed in a secondary process by turning back to the mind where they take hold of a completed thought that comes first. in the idea of the inner word, language has already entered thought and the spoken word is caught up in saying the thought; it is being formed in relation to the matter of thought. 4. in a sense, this coming forth that is a surprise is how gadamer speaks about the experience of truth in hermeneutics. it is truly remarkable that the title of his major word has truth in the title, but there is no explicit discussion of truth as such. instead, the issue of truth becomes the issue of the beautiful, which pertains to the fundamental character of reality to appear in its appearance. corresponding author: e anthony muhammad, ms doctoral student, university of georgia email: edward.muhammad25@uga.edu journal of applied hermeneutics january 9, 2018 the author(s) 2018 a philosophical hermeneutic study of the interview between minister louis farrakhan and imam w. deen mohammed: toward a fusion of horizons e. anthony muhammad abstract the philosophical hermeneutics of hans-georg gadamer has broadened the scope and manner of hermeneutic inquiry. by focusing on aspects of gadamer’s hermeneutics such as dialogue, the hermeneutic circle, play, openness, and the fusion of horizons, this study sought to apply gadamer’s ideas to an historic interview that took place between two notable islamic leaders, minister louis farrakhan and imam warith deen mohammed. by analyzing the dialogue of the interview and identifying the relevant gadamerian concepts at play within the exchanges, it was determined that a fusion of horizons did in fact occur. by applying philosophical hermeneutics to a real world dialogic encounter with participants who harbored deep-seated, divergent views, the current study accentuates the use of philosophical hermeneutics as an analytic framework. this study also highlights the utility of using philosophical hermeneutics in inter and intra-faith dialogue specifically, and in the quest for understanding in general. keywords hans-georg gadamer, philosophical hermeneutics, fusion of horizons, interfaith dialogue, nation of islam while early attempts to establish islam in america were made by individuals such as mohammed alexander russell webb and the ahmadiyyas from india, the rise of islam in america, in large numbers, can be traced to two early movements centered in black, inner city muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 2 enclaves (berg, 2009). the first of these two movements, the moorish science temple, gained adherents during the 1920s in newark, new jersey. the second, more impactful movement, was the nation of islam (noi) founded in detroit, michigan in 1930. during its nearly 90-year history, the nation of islam has produced a number of iconic, if not controversial, personalities including malcolm x and muhammad ali. two other globally recognized leaders emanating from the noi are minister louis farrakhan and imam warith deen mohammed. while minister farrakhan and imam mohammed had both been influential ministers within the ranks of the noi, dynamics within the organization would ultimately drive a wedge between them. after their split, the adversarial islamic organizations subsequently headed by the two men would oscillate between cordial and contentious relations for nearly 25 years. the historic interview under investigation in this study represents the first time the two leaders have publicly reunited since their split in 1977. these two men, and their respective organizations, have particular relevance in the life of the author. my earliest recollections from childhood are fond memories of my experiences in a noi daycare in kansas city, missouri during the 1970s. by this time, leadership of the noi had passed from the honorable elijah muhammad, patriarch of the noi, to his son, imam mohammed (then named wallace muhammad). my parents, who were not muslim, enrolled my sister and i in the daycare because of the strong reputation that the noi had in the community. once my sister and i started grade school however, we were enrolled in the public-school system. ironically, some 12 years later, minister louis farrakhan would be thrust into my life. as a child of the 1980s, much of my adolescence was spent listening to hip hop music. during “the golden age” of hip hop (a period roughly spanning the mid 1980s to the early 1990s) many of the top rap artists infused their songs with audio samples of minister farrakhan’s speeches and their lyrics with references to the teachings of the noi. these references piqued my interest in the man and his organization and, after some time, i joined the ranks of the noi in my early twenties. my time in the noi acquainted me with an insider’s view of the teachings and the history of the organization. it additionally gave me an indepth understanding of the issues surrounding the split between minister farrakhan and imam mohammed. i respected the imam because he was a gifted son of the honorable elijah muhammad. i was indebted to minister farrakhan because his teachings changed the direction of my life. during my time in the noi, the coming together of these two islamic leaders was often discussed, though it seemed a near impossibility. but, in many ways, that is why this interview is so historic. for me, this interview not only represents a reconnection between two men, two organizations and two theological doctrines, it also represents a reconnection with the early and later influences in my own life. purpose of the study my purpose in this present study is to analyze a moderated discussion between two religious leaders. the contentious history of the leaders, the divergent paths of their respective religious groups, and the polarizing nature of the subject matter makes their historic conversation suitable for applying hans-georg gadamer’s hermeneutics of understanding. principles and concepts relevant to gadamer’s approach will be examined with an emphasis on his notion of the fusion of muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 3 horizons. the background of the participants in the interview and the nature of their theological disagreement will be explored. from there, portions of the dialogue between the participants will be analyzed through the lens of gadamer’s concepts. last, a determination will be made as to whether a fusion of horizons was achieved. by analyzing this interview, it is my intent to highlight the value of gadamer’s approach as a hermeneutic tool as well as to shed light on its utility when applied to a real-world, dialogic encounter. gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics german philosopher hans-georg gadamer, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, developed a version of hermeneutics aimed at determining how we achieve “understanding.” gadamer called his approach philosophical hermeneutics (ph). in discussing ph, it is helpful to begin by pointing out what ph is not. unlike classical hermeneutics where a toolkit of methods is used in order to mine and extract interpretable information from a text, ph is not a method at all. in differentiating gadamer’s approach from the rigid and mechanical approach of traditional hermeneutics, gill (2015) noted that hermeneutics “is a human’s mode of being-in-the-world” (p. 11). rather than engaging in interpretation through the systematic, methodical investigation of a text, gadamer suggested that, our “be-ing,” as we navigate in and make sense of the world, necessitates an ongoing, perpetual process of interpretation. in our daily existence, the people, places, and things that we encounter represent an “other.” by actively engaging with these “others” (and their active engagement with us), we diligently strive to create a shared opportunity for knowledge acquisition and the expansion of insight. this, in turn, leads us to a greater understanding of the “other” and of ourselves. conceptualized in this way, gadamer sees understanding as “more of an event than a procedure” (grondin, 2009, p. 407). in every situation in which we seek to understand an “other,” we bring critical components that lead to these “events of understanding.” these components, our prejudices, our fore-knowledge from previous experiences, the traditions of our environments, and the histories of our micro and macro worlds, are the building blocks we innately bring to every encounter. taken together, these components are in fact the antecedents to understanding. as moules, mccaffrey, field, and laing (2015) wrote: understanding is always about something that is already there, which means we can never start as if with a blank slate…we never approach a text, experience, or topic as a completely blank slate we already have a fabric of meaning into which we accommodate, with more or less difficulty, the next new event…interpretation happens in dialogue and it is our prior commitments that give us something to say in dialogue with new experience. (p. 43) this intrinsic wealth of knowledge we bring to every encounter, these “prior commitments,” represent our horizon. through our horizon we see, interpret, interact, and understand the world. at any given moment, our horizon manifests as the vantage point from which we see and interpret the world. in conversations, horizons are instrumental because, as vesey (2009) noted, they muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 4 provide perspective by being the implicit and explicit beliefs that furnish the context for understanding a sentence; they establish what is significant for understanding…and what is insignificant...horizons mark the limits of our understanding as our background beliefs affect what sentences we understand and how we understand them. (p. 537) it is the interplay of our horizon in conversation with the horizon of an “other” that facilitates the potentiality for understanding. this dialogically derived understanding between interlocutors is what gadamer called the fusion of horizons. it is my aim in this study to determine if a fusion of horizons occurred between minister louis farrakhan and imam warith deen mohammed during their historic interview. background to the interview the nation of islam the disconnect between minister farrakhan and imam mohammed has its roots in the religious organization known as the nation of islam. founded on july 4, 1930, by an enigmatic and mysterious figure named fard muhammad, the noi preached a doctrine of moral uprightness, religious devotion, economic independence, self-determination, and an esoteric version of islam that was a departure from islam as preached and practiced throughout the orthodox muslim world (lincoln, 1994). the doctrine of the noi was also known for promoting highly racialized teachings such as references to whites as “devils” and blacks as “gods,” a call for the separation of blacks into their own land, and the identification of “yacub” as the progenitor of the white race (muhammad, 1965). upon the sudden departure of fard muhammad in 1934, leadership of the noi was bequeathed to elijah muhammad. prior to his departure, fard muhammad had groomed elijah to be his successor. after assuming leadership of the noi, elijah muhammad began professing that fard muhammad (now referred to as master fard muhammad) was in reality allah/god in person. this controversial, anthropomorphic doctrine was the bedrock of the noi during elijah muhammad’s leadership from 1934 to his passing in 1975. farrakhan and mohammed: the parting of ways upon the passing of his father in 1975, wallace muhammad (imam mohammed) assumed leadership of the noi. the popularity of minister farrakhan within the noi, as well as his beloved status in the eyes of elijah muhammad, led most observers to believe that farrakhan would be the logical heir to noi leadership after elijah muhammad’s passing. however, in a show of deference, farrakhan conceded leadership of the noi to wallace and a power struggle was averted (gardell, 1996). not long after taking over, wallace began drastically changing the teachings and the structure that had been the foundation of his father’s noi. specifically, wallace sold off much of the properties and assets held by the noi, he relaxed the strict dress code and social habits of the organization, and, most notably, renounced the noi’s racialized teachings and the deification of master fard muhammad (lincoln, 1994). ultimately, wallace changed his name to warith deen mohammed, he changed the name of the organization, and he muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 5 completely transitioned the religious teachings and practices of the group into unison with those of the orthodox islamic world (gardell, 1996). farrakhan, after initially going along with the drastic changes implemented by imam mohammed, eventually became discontented. believing that imam mohammed was distorting the legacy and teachings of elijah muhammad, and no longer willing to accept this new direction, farrakhan renounced his membership in 1977 (magida, 1996). not long after his defection, farrakhan aligned himself with elijah muhammad loyalists (both in the imam’s community and outside) to reestablish the teachings and practices of “the messenger,” elijah muhammad, under a reconstituted noi. the horizon of minister louis farrakhan louis farrakhan was born louis eugene walcott in 1933 (magida, 1996). a college educated calypso singer, walcott joined the noi in 1955 where his name was subsequently changed to farrakhan. a native of boston, massachusetts, farrakhan showed immediate oratory promise and quickly rose through the ranks of the noi. having been mentored by the noi’s electrifying national representative malcolm x, farrakhan eventually became the minister of the boston mosque. then, after the assassination of malcolm x, farrakhan assumed leadership of mosque #7 in harlem, new york (magida, 1996). as minister of the powerful new york mosque, as well as serving as the national representative of the noi, farrakhan was a very popular and successful proselytizer of the teachings of elijah muhammad. the horizon of minister farrakhan is firmly rooted in the history and tradition of the black experience in america. his lived experience as a black man in pre-civil rights america greatly informs the vantage point of his horizon. the fore-knowledge and prejudices harbored by the minister are informed by the history of exploitation and oppression of american blacks by whites. this history includes the african slave trade, the middle passage, american chattel slavery, jim crow, segregation, lynching, racism, and discrimination. this history situates minister farrakhan squarely within the context of a society where an oppressed minority is lorded over by a dominant and repressive majority. in addition to this socio-historic aspect of the minister’s horizon, there also exists a vantage point from his membership in the noi, a nationalist group with a radical and racialized religious, educational, political, and social doctrine. this doctrine, through the use of counter-storytelling (solorzano & yosso, 2002), ethno-centric myth-making (berg, 2005), and racialized narrative-inversions (acevedo, ordner, & thompson, 2010), attempts to rehabilitate and revitalize a black community devastated by centuries of mental, physical, spiritual, psychological, and social subjugation by whites. farrakhan’s doctrine a rearticulation of elijah muhammad’s customized, racialized, islamic liberation theology also promotes a corporeal, anthropomorphic depiction of god. in the words of elijah muhammad (1965), “your god and my god is a material being the supreme of beings” (p. 4). further elaborating the point, muhammad stated, “god is a man and we just cannot make him other than man, lest we make him an inferior one” (p. 6). this core tenet of elijah muhammad’s teaching is the foundation of minister farrakhan’s islam. the vantage points of an oppressed minority under an oppressive majority, an adherent of a racialized, recuperative islamic tradition, and an advocate of a corporeal conception of god, all coalesce to form the horizon of minister louis farrakhan. muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 6 the horizon of imam warith deen mohammed in many ways, the horizon of imam mohammed mirrors that of minister farrakhan. imam mohammed, was the seventh of eight children born to elijah and clara muhammad in 1933 (gardell, 1996). the imam certainly shares the minister’s vantage point of an oppressed minority living in a society dominated by an oppressive majority. being reared in the noi, the imam, at one point, shared the minister’s vantage point of membership in a contextualized, racialized, islamic liberation organization that espoused a corporeal understand of god. while imam mohammed and minister farrakhan share the socio-historic vantage point of being black men reared in a pre-civil rights, highly racialized society, their religious vantage points are drastically different. the imam’s interpretation of islam and of the nature of god/allah has always proved to be more in line with islamic orthodoxy than with the teachings of the noi and his father. far from surprising, the imam’s ultimate renunciation of the noi’s doctrine, and his subsequent adoption of orthodox islam, were evident even during the imam’s time in the noi (lincoln, 1994; magida, 1996; marable, 2011). through exposure to an orthodox islamic teacher while attending the schools ran by the noi, and later, while serving time in federal prison for refusing induction into the military, a young wallace (imam mohammed) began to seriously question the islamic interpretation, application, and practice of his father (gardell, 1996; magida, 1996). the discontent manifested itself on several occasions throughout his life in the noi. wallace would often express disbelief in his father’s teachings. on three separate occasions, he was suspended from the organization for his dissenting views (gardell, 1996). the last of his defections and subsequent returns took place in 1974, approximately one year before the passing of his father. it was not until his father’s departure (and him assuming leadership of the noi) that wallace’s inclination toward orthodox, sunni islam was made official noi doctrine (gardell, 1996; lincoln, 1994; magida, 1996; marable, 2011). by becoming a devout member of the orthodox, sunni branch of islam, the imam patently rejected any attempt to ascribe a physical body to allah/god. this was based on the orthodox islamic belief that god is an incorporeal, unseen, spirit and to liken any form to allah/god is the height of islamic heresy (ali, 1990). it is the collective views of an oppressed minority living under an oppressive majority and an adherent of the incorporeal conception of god as prescribed by the orthodox islamic world that inform the horizon of imam mohammed. through his identification with the orthodox doctrine of islam, the imam has a religious history, tradition, prejudice, and fore-knowledge in stark contrast with that of minister farrakhan. it is the previously described horizons of minister farrakhan and imam mohammed that meet in the interview currently under analysis. the interview the historic 2002 interview with minister louis farrakhan and imam mohammed is important because it represents the first time the two leaders have met and agreed to speak publicly (muhammad, 2014). the roughly half-hour interview was part of a larger islamic commemoration. for the interview, minister farrakhan and imam mohammed were placed muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 7 opposite an interviewer, who himself is a member of the orthodox islamic community. the discussion that is captured focused solely on arguably the most discordant issue between the minister and the imam, the reality of allah/god in the person of master fard muhammad. the video is also important because it allows for the application of gadamer’s ph principles to an actual dialogue between parties with deep, theological differences. by identifying the horizons of the participants, analyzing the language and dialogue of the interview’s hermeneutic circle, and assessing the openness of the participants during the interview, a hermeneutic analysis can determine if in fact a fusion of horizons occurred between the minister and the imam around the nature of god. the hermeneutic circle of the interview the interview itself can be found online: (https://youtu.be/osxntl-g5yc?t=1m19s). the clip allows for an analysis of the dialogue in light of the hermeneutic principles described by gadamer. one such principle is the hermeneutic circle. this is the process whereby understanding is co-constructed by dialogue participants through the ebb and flow of conversation. the relationship of the hermeneutic circle to one’s horizon is described by moules et al. (2015) as “the movement of existing understanding, or prejudice, into constructive interchange with another” (p. 44). the analysis of this interview between the imam and the minister affords us the opportunity to analyze the interplay of their horizons throughout the course of the conversation’s hermeneutic circle. the initial exchanges of the interview address the historic coming together of the two leaders. after both the imam and the minister address the circumstances and timing behind the meeting, the interviewer first addresses minister farrakhan. while the object of his question (master fard muhammad being god in person) is to be expected, the phrasing of the question is telling. in addressing the minister’s corporeal view of god, the interviewer notes that farrakhan’s view is drastically different than the orthodox islamic conception of god as an incorporeal being. seeking conformity to the orthodox view, the interviewer, at one point early in the discussion, asks the minister to “shed some light and put this out of the way so that we go forward” (muhammad, 2014). the request to “put this out of the way” could be taken as an attempt to summarily disabuse minister farrakhan of his contrarian belief on the nature of allah/god so that a “legitimate” dialogue can then proceed. the nature of the interviewer’s question is an example of “inauthentic dialogue” (gadamer, 1994). as gadamer informed us: there is the critical distinction between authentic and inauthentic dialogue. to someone who engages in dialogue only to prove himself right and not gain insight, asking questions will indeed seem easier than answering them…in order to be able to ask, one must want to know, and that means knowing that one does not know… discourse that is intended to reveal something requires that that thing be broken open by the question. (p. 363) rather than a discussion of the nature of god being “broken open by the question,” it seems the interviewer was intent on closing down the discussion before it even began. https://youtu.be/osxntl-g5yc?t=1m19s muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 8 in responding to the interviewer’s question, the minister affirms his view of master fard muhammad as allah/god in person but also displays an openness to expand his theological horizon. minister farrakhan explains his unorthodox view of islam by saying, “the starting point is not the finishing point. the starting point is letting us know that we have a journey” (muhammad, 2014). in making this statement, the minister suggests that his horizon is open and that his vantage point may very well change as his knowledge changes. additionally, by referencing “journey,” minister farrakhan is admitting that movement will take place and that his current horizon will shift as his knowledge and experience shifts. this willingness to remain open and the expectation of movement is captured by vessey (2015): our intellectual horizons change whenever we learn something new or when we weigh differently what we already know, and these changes do not require crossing beyond the limits of our understanding…the horizon is…something into which we move and that moves with us. horizons change for someone who is moving. to ‘move’ conceptually requires simply gaining new information or new insights, a common enough event. (p. 540) this kind of openness is critical for understandings to develop within the hermeneutic circle of a conversation. lawn and keane (2011) described the relationship of openness to the hermeneutic circle by noting that “the hermeneutic circle does not involve closing the interpreter in upon themselves, but rather a systematic openness to the otherness of the text and to the voice of the other” (p. 71). minister farrakhan’s response demonstrates a willingness, an expectation even, to readjust his horizon in order to gain a fuller understanding of the nature of god. following minister farrakhan’s response, the interviewer again chooses to “dwell on fard muhammad.” he follows up with another comment about the “troublesome” view of fard muhammad being “god on earth.” this line of questioning fails to demonstrate any openness to the “other” or even a willingness to understand the view presented by minister farrakhan. rather than offering up his horizon for interrogation, the interviewer appears to only be concerned with getting minister farrakhan to renounce his belief. this runs contrary to a hermeneutics of understanding as described by gadamer. the interviewer’s rigid adherence to his own horizon fails to invoke a fundamental tenet of ph that says we cannot stick blindly to our own fore-meaning about the thing if we want to understand the meaning of another… this does not mean that when we listen to someone or read a book we must forget all our fore-meanings concerning the content and all our own ideas. all that is asked is that we remain open to the meaning of the other person or text. (gadamer, 1994, p. 268) in response to the interviewer’s inquiry, minister farrakhan attempts to explain his view of god through the use of scripture from the quran, the holy book of islam, and through statements made at a previous talk by imam mohammed. the quranic reference and the reference to the imam’s talk buttressed farrakhan’s position that god’s spirit can reside in man and how god, when desirous of sending correction and guidance to humans, elects to raise other humans as an example of righteousness. in bringing these points together, minister farrakhan says, “we saw god in what this man did to bring us out of the horrible condition that we’re in” (muhammad, muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 9 2014). in making his point in this way, minister farrakhan did not “forget all his fore-meanings” nor all of his “own ideas.” rather, farrakhan attempted to guide the interviewer and the imam to understand his view by offering it in a manner familiar to their horizons. by appealing to the fore-knowledge of the others and by presenting his beliefs in terms familiar to them, the minister is engaging in a critically important act within the hermeneutic circle. for gadamer, the aim of the hermeneutic circle is to throw the interpreter back on his/her own initial preconceptions and to force the reader to come back to them, to review and correct them, through repeated comparison with the object or matter of interpretation. (lawn & keane, 2011, p. 71) by wrapping his conception of god in the scriptures of the quran and in the teachings of imam mohammed, minister farrakhan was actually throwing the others “back on his/her own initial preconceptions” with the hopes of them reaching a better understanding of his view through the reflective lens of their own views. in ending his comment, minister farrakhan says, “i would just close that point because i don’t think that we should focus on the things which create division because we have more in common than we do in division” (muhammad, 2014). by attempting to work toward agreement rather than division, minister farrakhan has again invoked a critical tenet of gadamer’s view of conversation. in ph, conversation is “a process of coming to an understanding…what is to be grasped is the substantive rightness of his opinion so that we can be at one with each other on the subject” (gadamer, 1994, p. 385). in wanting to focus on the congruence of their views rather than the divergent aspects of their views, the minister is seeking understanding within the mutual “rightness” of their shared positions. he is seeking communion with the imam and the interviewer. as minister farrakhan completes his response, the interviewer picks up with another statement regarding how divergent minister farrakhan’s depiction of god is from the orthodox standard. in a subsequent follow up, the interviewer again bombards minister farrakhan with criticisms of his divergent articulation. it appears that, absent minister farrakhan renouncing his belief wholeheartedly, the interviewer is unwilling to put his own horizon “at risk” or to “transpose himself” into the minister’s perspective (gadamer, 1994). a similar back and forth continues for the next several minutes. the minister again offers an explanation from the horizons of the imam and the interviewer. then, the interviewer again follows up with comments pointing out the orthodox islamic view of god and how minister farrakhan’s view falls outside of it. in a closing remark to this portion of the talk, the minister again shows his openness to put his horizon “at risk” by saying, “i still think there’s a lot that we have to learn of what master fard muhammad taught” (muhammad, 2014). this again exemplifies an openness to possibly adjusting his view and of moving his horizon based on the accumulation of future knowledge and experience. next, the imam re-enters the discussion. not having spoken since the beginning moments of the interview, the imam describes his theological disagreement with his father, the honorable elijah muhammad. he details a conversation where he confessed his disbelief in his father’s teachings. the imam then tells the story of a conversation he had with his mother, clara muhammad, immediately after being excommunicated by his father for his disbelief. he recounts asking his muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 10 mother if master fard muhammad ever declared himself to be god. she replied that he had not. the imam then asked his mother how he could be expected to believe that fard muhammad was god when fard never claimed to be such. these comments give insight into the deeply personal and hurtful experiences that no doubt factor into the horizon of the imam. these statements, like those of the interviewer, show that the imam has resigned himself, from the start, to relying solely on his own fore-meanings and prejudices as they relate to master fard muhammad not being allah/god in person. the next few minutes of the discussion include an acknowledgement on the part of the imam and the interviewer. both admit to the sincerity of master fard muhammad and the great work he did to help the black community. after this agreement, the interviewer once again attempts to refute the claim that master fard muhammad is god in person by referencing the “1.2 billion” orthodox muslims in the world who hold an opposing view. minister farrakhan, addressing the criticism of the interviewer, pulls again from the scriptures of the holy quran as well as from one of the oft-repeated prayers in the muslim world. he concludes this statement as before, with the claim that a “greater understanding” will be gained through scripture and prayer. using the quran, referencing the islamic prayers, and acknowledging that a “greater understanding” is yet to be had are all examples of the minister not relinquishing his horizon but rather, opening it up, putting it at risk, and seeking to appeal to the horizons of the imam and the interviewer. adding on to minister farrakhan’s remarks, the imam offers an articulation of master fard muhammad that begins to approach minister farrakhan’s horizon. the imam acknowledges that fard muhammad was indeed a “master” by saying, “he was a master psychologist. he knew how to deal with people with problems and help them” (muhammad, 2014). the imam then equates the methods used by master fard muhammad to those used by jesus in the bible. in equating fard and his methods with jesus (whom christians believe was god in person) and his methods, it appears that the imam has subtly opened himself up to the view of master fard muhammad held by minister farrakhan. he has not relinquished his own view, but instead, has attempted to grasp the “substantive rightness” of minister farrakhan’s perspective on master fard muhammad. this is in line with gadamer’s view of understanding wherein he writes: when we try to understand…we do not try to transpose ourselves into the author’s mind but, if one wants to use this terminology, we try to transpose ourselves into the perspective within which he has formed his views. but this simply means that we try to understand how what he is saying could be right. if we want to understand, we will try to make his arguments even stronger. (1994, p. 292) next, in another promising moment, minister farrakhan begins discussing master fard muhammad’s instructions to elijah muhammad before his departure in 1934. in mentioning a purported 104 books master fard muhammad instructed elijah muhammad to read, farrakhan reports that elijah muhammad said the most important of these books was the holy quran and the other 103 books all contained pertinent aspects of the life of prophet muhammad (muhammad, 2014). farrakhan further notes how elijah muhammad shared with him his desire for ministers in the noi to stop teaching from the bible and start teaching from the quran. going further, farrakhan addresses how elijah muhammad’s ultimate aim was to move the noi, theologically, in the direction of the larger muslim world. this move, however, was not intended muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 11 to bring about assimilation and subservience to the orthodox islamic community. since the orthodox muslim world had deviated from the true path of islam, elijah muhammad wished for his followers to adopt the good of the orthodox world while his peculiar brand of islam would insulate them from the bad of the orthodox world. at several moments while farrakhan is speaking, the imam chimes in with agreement. when farrakhan finished, the imam mentioned that he never heard his father express those desires but believed the minister’s words to be true. by encountering this new information, and with the expressions of agreement with minister farrakhan’s words, here again was another possible moment of fusion on the part of the imam. according to vessey (2009): horizons fuse when an individual realizes how the context of the subject matter can be weighted differently to lead to a different interpretation from the one initially arrived at. either new information or a new sense of the relative significance of available information leads, at the very least, to an understanding of the contingency of the initial interpretation, quite possibly to a new understanding of the subject matter, and ideally to a new agreement between the two parties about the subject matter. in any case, the original understanding is surpassed and integrated into a broader, more informed understanding. our horizons are broadened; we have a new perspective on our old views, and maybe new views as well. this is the meaning of ‘the fusion of horizons’. (p. 540) the new information presented to the imam by the minister may very well have altered, broadened, or otherwise surpassed the imam’s original understanding of the type and purpose of islam that was taught by his father. after this exchange, the interviewer again acknowledges the “undeniable” and “uncontested” role of master fard muhammad in bringing islam to blacks in the depression era slums of detroit but points out that this acknowledgement is separate from the characterization of master fard muhammad as “god on earth.” in his follow up comment, the interviewer once again dismisses any openness to the minister’s horizon. in addition, he continues to show an unwillingness to put his own horizon at risk while persisting in his attempt to elicit a retraction from the minister. the interviewer displays his unwillingness to even entertain the minister’s view of fard muhammad by saying, “if we have, eh, eh, you know, gotten the explanation from you that we were not dealing with fard muhammad as god on earth then we are fine, we can go forward with this discussion” (muhammad, 2014). here the interviewer is actually disrupting, if not negating, the dialogic flow which is so intrinsic to the possibility of achieving understanding. in ph, the fusion of horizons comes out of the play of the hermeneutic circle. it emanates from the flow of the dialogue that takes place within the conversation. for the interviewer, however, the conversation cannot even begin until the minister relinquishes his horizon and adopts the horizon of the interviewer. this flagrant violation of the hermeneutic process is made clear in light of gadamer’s view of the purpose of conversation. as gadamer (1994) explained: conversation is a process of coming to an understanding. thus it belongs to every true conversation that each person opens himself to the other, truly accepts his point of view as valid and transposes himself into the other to such an extent that he understands not the particular individual but what he says. (p. 385) muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 12 though the interviewer’s disruptive and negating remark was aimed at the minister, the imam interjects with a comment. in his response, imam mohammed again invokes the bible. he notes how jesus never referred to himself as “god.” instead, the imam points out that jesus asked peter “who do you say i am,” to which peter responded by giving jesus a lofty and divine title. the imam then likens this biblical exchange to master fard muhammad and elijah muhammad. referencing “the lessons” (the esoteric catechisms and teachings given by master fard muhammad to the noi), the imam insinuates that it was elijah muhammad, not fard, who instigated the idea of fard being god in person. the imam’s comment achieves two things. first, he is again equating master fard muhammad with jesus (god in person to christians). at the same time, he is also making the point that neither jesus nor fard muhammad ever called themselves god. it was their followers who elevated them to such divine heights. the point made here by the imam can be taken as further criticism of the minister’s view. in pointing out that master fard muhammad (like jesus) never referred to himself as god, the imam is setting up the argument that it was elijah muhammad who came up with the erroneous, though sincere, characterization of fard muhammad as god on earth. the imam closes his comments by referring to the methodology of master fard muhammad. in the view of the imam, the arcane, mathematical, and problem-oriented nature of “the lessons” were devised by fard to eventually lead the noi toward adopting orthodox, or “real,” islamic doctrine. by master fard muhammad devising the teachings in this way, the imam then suggests that fard, “planned for me to come to real islam, and it worked” (muhammad, 2014). the fullness of the imam’s remarks, and the multiple characterizations of his view of orthodox islam as “real” islam, shows derision toward the islamic beliefs of minister farrakhan. this ultimately shows the imam’s remark to be a further rejection of the minister’s horizon. in the final exchange of the video, the interviewer summarizes the discussion. here, the interviewer attempts to gain consensus among the three by asking, “are we then saying that we all here believe in one god and the finality of prophet muhammad, uh, and that’s where it ends?” (muhammad, 2014). in response to the question, the imam quickly responds, “that’s where it ends.” immediately after the imam’s statement, minister farrakhan responds with, “or that’s where it begins,” and the interview closes with the three men laughing in agreement that, “that’s where it begins.” this ending is reminiscent of lawn and keane’s (2011) discussion of gadamer’s notion of “play.” they describe it as a to and fro movement that is not tied to any goal that would bring it to an end. play is an activity that is not random and yet has no obvious goal or teleological endpoint; purposeful and yet without some grand overarching purpose. (p. 109) play in this sense is the actual “game” of the dialogue. it is the engagement in, and flow of, the dialogue that all of the parties took part in. while the interviewer tried imposing an ending to the play of the conversation and force an understanding among the three, the ultimate reality is that the process of understanding, as minister farrakhan’s closing remark suggests, is never ending and is always in “play.” the fusion of horizons muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 13 with regard to a fusion of horizons, three outcomes emerged in the interview between the minister and the imam. first, the imam mostly held fast to his own horizon but, on occasion, opened himself up to the horizon of minister farrakhan. at one point during the discussion, it appeared that the imam did indeed have a fusion of horizons with the minister regarding the purpose of elijah muhammad’s teachings and the ultimate relationship between the noi and the orthodox muslim world. the imam received new knowledge and that knowledge allowed him to adjust his view from his initial perspective. at another point, the imam seemed to slightly open himself up to the minister’s characterization of master fard muhammad as god in person by juxtaposing fard with biblical references to jesus (whom christians believe to be god in person) and jesus’ teaching methods. in those moments, the partial shift in the imam’s view and his attempt to see the “substantive rightness” of the minister’s position resulted in a partial fusion with the horizon of minister farrkhan. from a ph perspective, minister farrakhan exhibited the disposition and openness most necessary for a fusion of horizons to occur. from the very beginning, the minister was willing to put his horizon at risk, to accommodate aspects of the horizons of the others, and to willfully admit the potential of his horizon to change based on the acquisition of new knowledge and experience. unlike the imam and the interviewer, minister farrakhan never attempted to invalidate the positions of the others. the minister, in offering explanations of his position, invoked and incorporated aspects of their horizons in an attempt to illustrate the “substantive rightness” of all three participants. in these ways, minister farrakhan successfully manifested a fusion of horizons. vessey (2009) noted that a fusion is not necessarily agreement about the subject matter, but it is, by gadamer’s definition, a shared understanding about the subject matter. while the participants in a dialogue still aim at agreement, the dialogue is a success if each has acquired a new perspective from which to see the subject matter…they have either revised their evaluations, or they have set their evaluations in a larger context of possible evaluations. (p. 541) by this definition, the shifting perspectives, the partial fusion of the imam, and the openness and the willing fusions of the minister proved their dialogue to be a “success.” and then there is the interviewer. a strong case could be made that the interviewer’s horizon should not be considered at all in this particular analysis. one could argue that, by virtue of being an interviewer, he is not necessarily entering the hermeneutic circle seeking understanding. his goal may simply be to provoke discussion, conflict even, between the minister and the imam. as valid as this claim could be in other scenarios, in this case, the interviewer’s one-sided focus belies that conclusion. an interviewer looking to agitate would do so to both interlocutors. they would search for opportunities to seize upon the positions of both sides. from the beginning of the interview, however, this interviewer abandoned any sense of balanced questioning. he was intent on introducing his own horizon into the hermeneutic circle and this was made clear by his sole focus on assailing minister farrakhan’s position. despite consistently inserting himself into the hermeneutic circle, the interviewer never exhibited a desire to seriously open himself to the position of the minister. from his questions being “asked wrongly” (gadamer, 1994) to antagonistic calls for retraction solely directed at the minister, the interviewer’s goal was quite evident, the subjugation of minister farrakhan’s position to his own. muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 14 conclusion in this study, i sought to deploy gadamer’s ph in an analysis of an historic interview between two religious leaders with antagonistic histories and beliefs. in addition to highlighting ph principles that emerged throughout the interview, a major goal of this study was the identification of a possible fusion of horizons between minister farrakhan and imam mohammed. to be sure, given its highly personal, and deeply internalized nature, determining someone’s horizon, as well as identifying a fusion of horizons, is a highly subjective and immensely difficult task. however, analyzing a dialogic encounter in light of the tenets of ph provides a sturdy framework for approximation. the implications of the current study are far reaching. by applying ph principles (play, horizon, conversation, openness, hermeneutic circle, dialogue, etc.) to this real world, dialogic encounter between participants who harbored deep-seated, divergent views, the current study highlighted several beneficial practices. such practices included suspending, though not relinquishing, one’s own position, being truly open to the vantage point of the other, adopting the position of the other in an attempt to make it stronger, and utilizing the horizon of the other as a means of making one’s own horizon more understandable. these practices were catalysts for the fusions that came out of the hermeneutic circle of this particular encounter. more generally, these practices, if implemented, may also increase the likelihood of enabling more authentic and more productive conversations in general. last, while a fusion of horizons between the minister and the imam was the initial focus of the study, the presence of the interviewer’s horizon quickly became apparent. but, his horizon was not the only one that intruded upon this meeting between the minister and the imam. in truth, there were four horizons at play; the minister’s, the imam’s, the interviewer’s, and my own. if a true ph analysis is to be conducted, my horizon, my “prior commitments,” and my own vantage points must also be considered in the analysis. from my horizon comes the initial interest in the topic of the interview. from my horizon comes the value i ascribed to the minister and the imam. from my horizon comes the magnitude in which i view their meeting. and, from my horizon comes my interpretation of the words of each party. my horizon is that of a black male and a muslim living in a racialized, post 9/11 america. this horizon, similar to those of the minister and the imam, also includes the vantage point of an oppressed minority reared under an oppressive majority and a vantage point of one influenced by a racialized, recuperative, islamic tradition that advocates a corporeal conception of god. from this horizon comes my overall characterization of this interview as a metaphor for all inter and intra religious dialogue. in my experiences, inter and intra religious conversations (as well as conversations generally) invariably include one who sticks rigidly to their horizon (like the interviewer), one bound to their horizon but who, reluctantly, shifts (like the imam), or one, like the minister, who enters the conversation fully committed to putting their horizon at risk in order to gain understanding. in any given dialogue, one of these prototypes may be present or all three muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 15 may be present. the presence of all three in this particular interview was integral to the shift that ultimately occurred in my own horizon. my personal fusion occurred in two parts. first, if an honest assessment is rendered, i (like the interviewer) have been accustomed to entering conversations with the goal of winning, converting, or convincing rather than entering conversations with the goal of understanding. while my initial exposure to ph revealed an altogether different approach to conversations, actually witnessing ph within the hermeneutic play of this interview is ultimately what instigated a shift in my horizon. the ability of minister farrakhan to consistently appeal to the horizon of the “other,” and the effort by the imam of attempting to strengthen the position of the “other,” were invaluable lessons to me and should be to all who seek to “understand.” their example resulted in a “new perspective” for me, a perspective informed by seeing these ph concepts in action. this new perspective is one that has effectively shifted me away from an adversarial orientation in dialogue and toward an orientation that seeks to be more sensitive to the “other’s” alterity (gadamer, 1994). my second fusion was more general in scope and came about as a result of the promise that the dialogue between the minister and the imam represents. reflecting back on my time in the noi, the position of many of the members i encountered ranged from a faint hope for reconciliation with the imam and his community, to outright enmity. being aware of both the deep wounds caused by the imam’s disavowal of his father’s work, and the oppositional nature of the doctrine and practices of the imam and the minister, i personally viewed a reconciliation between the two as not only improbable, but also theologically impossible. that remained my view until i stumbled across this interview. just as the examples of the minister and the imam offered me another vantage point for approaching a conversation, their examples also gave me a bold, new perspective on the real possibility of not just their reconciliation, but of something much greater, the possibility of achieving mutual understanding between other ostensibly intractable schisms, schisms like those between muslims and christians, sunnis and shias, or even palestinians and israelis. the fusions that took place between the minister and the imam should offer a glimmer of hope to the reader as well. for, in their example lies the hermeneutic and dialogic blueprint that may prove helpful, not just in the realm of inter and intra religious dialogue, but in any encounter where the goal is to understand an “other.” references acevedo, g.a., ordner, j., & thompson, m. (2010). narrative inversion as a tactical framing device: the ideological origins of the nation of islam. narrative inquiry, 20(1), 124-152. ali, m. m. (1990). the religion of islam. columbus, oh: ahmadiyya anjuman ishat at islam. berg, h. (2005). mythmaking in the african american muslim context: the moorish science temple, the nation of islam, and the american society of muslims. journal of the american academy of religion, 73(3), 685-703. muhammad journal of applied hermeneutics 2018 article 2 16 berg, h. (2009). elijah muhammad and islam. new york, ny: new york university press. gadamer, h-g. (1994). truth and method. new york, ny: continuum. gardell, m. (1962). in the name of elijah muhammad: louis farrakhan and the nation of islam. durham, nc: duke university press. gill, s. (2015). holding oneself open in a conversation: gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and the ethics of dialogue. journal of dialogue studies, 3(1), 9-28. grondin, j. (2009). hermeneutics. in c.v. boundas (ed.), columbia companion to twentieth-century philosophies (pp. 402-414). new york, ny: columbia university press. lawn, c., & keane, n. (2011). the gadamer dictionary. new york, ny: continuum international publishing group. lincoln, c.e. (1994). the black muslims in america (3rd ed.). grand rapids, mi & trenton, nj: wm. b. eerdmans & africa world press. magida, a.j. (1996). prophet of rage: a life of louis farrakhan and his nation. new york, ny: basicbooks. marable, m. (2011). malcolm x: a life of reinvention. new york, ny: the penguin group. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. muhammad, a. (2014, february 25). a meeting of the minds: w deen mohammad and louis farrakhan part 4 [video file]. retrieved from https://youtu.be/osxntl-g5yc?t=1m19s muhammad, e. (1965). message to the black man in america. chicago, il: muhammad’s temple no. 2. solorzano, d. g., & yosso, t. j. (2002). critical race methodology: counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. qualitative inquiry, 8(1), 23-44. vessey, d. (2009). gadamer and the fusion of horizons. international journal of philosophical studies, 17(4), 531-542. https://youtu.be/osxntl-g5yc?t=1m19s microsoft word markle corrected proof.docx corresponding author: joshua r markle, doctoral student werklund school of education university of calgary email: joshua.markle@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 june 27, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 holding fast to being possible: teaching as an interpretive practice joshua r. markle abstract this short piece is a response to the provocation, teaching is an interpretive practice, as offered in the hermeneutic research class i was taking. i discuss why i believe teaching to be interpretive and point to aspects of my practice that i believe to be a rich source of insight. keywords teaching, philosophical hermeneutics, silence, capabilities approach illustrious ancestors by denise levertov the rav of northern white russia declined, in his youth, to learn the language of birds, because the extraneous did not interest him; nevertheless when he grew old it was found he understood them anyway, having listened well, and as it is said, ‘prayed with the bench and the floor.’ he used what was at hand – as did angel jones of mold, whose meditations markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 3 2 were sewn into coats and britches. well, i would like to make, thinking some line still taut between me and them, poems direct as what the birds said, hard as a floor, sound as a bench, mysterious as the silence when the tailor would pause with his needle in the air. the forgotten dialect of the heart by jack gilbert how astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. love, we say, god, we say, rome and michiko, we write, and the words get it wrong. we say bread and it means according to which nation. french has no words for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure. a people in northern india is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. i dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can. maybe the etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling. and maybe not. when the thousands of mysterious sumerian tablets were translated, they seemed to be business records. but what if they are poems or psalms? my joy is the same as twelve ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light. o lord, thou art slabs of slat and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor. her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts of long-fibred egyptian cotton. my love is a hundred pitchers of honey. shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. giraffes are this desire in the dark. perhaps the spiral minoan script is not a language but a map. what we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds. this is a response to the following provocation: teaching is an interpretive practice. i certainly believe it to be. teaching is about working together to reach an understanding. gadamer’s notion of genuine conversation, in which the participants are carried along above their own wanting and doing (gadamer, 1989), is not just a metaphor for teaching, but its core. i find one particular aspect of conversation in my teaching practice has become both a source of richness and unease: silence. although we tend to focus solely on what is said in a conversation, silence is also important. as gadamer (1989) wrote, “to say what one means … means to hold what is said together with an infinity of what is not said in a unified meaning” (p. 464). i chose to open this markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 3 3 piece with two poems that i hope will help to both elaborate on why i believe teaching to be an interpretive practice and reveal more about this source of unease. i have also titled the piece by way of both introduction and conclusion with a phrase borrowed from heidegger: holding fast to being possible (cited in moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015, p. 28). this phrase, for me, captures what it means to work alongside children in an interpretive way. the address of the topic there are many aspects of the teaching profession that arguably do not fall under the rubric of interpretation. in discussing the role of language in understanding, heidegger differentiated between saying and speaking: “saying and speaking are not identical. one can speak, speak endlessly, and it may all say nothing [but] one can be silent, not speak at all, and in not speaking say a great deal” (heidegger, cited in freeman, 2011, p. 546). i came a bit late to teaching, and although i felt that teaching held promise, i did not hear or feel that call described by many practitioners in vocations such as teaching and nursing. to me, much of it was just speaking. in fact, i had also applied to go to school to become a journalist, and chose a teaching program mostly for practical reasons. but somewhere around the middle of my program, in the second of my three required practicums, i was addressed by the topic. moules et al. (2015) wrote that being addressed in such a way is the “experience of being addressed personally about something at work in one’s life or practice” (p. 71), and that it often occurs at a moment in which one becomes aware of a tension between the familiarity and strangeness at play in one’s life and work. previously, i had completed some coursework and a five-week practicum in a grade four classroom and had come to believe i had made the wrong choice in pursuing teaching. the classroom itself felt both familiar and strange: i had experienced the same smells (damp lunches in brown paper bags) and activities (tracing your hand to draw a turkey) as a student more than two decades earlier, but it all felt as foreign to me now as it did then. in my second practicum, a six-week immersion into teaching in my subject major of mathematics, i ended up at an alternative high school in a small, western canadian city. it was in this context that the “disruption of success in our everyday practices [allowed] a topic to emerge, in completely familiar, but also strange and disrupting ways” (moules et al., 2015, p. 74). the word alternative meant nothing and everything in this context. one defining characteristic of this student body was that they evaded labels: yes, many of them were there because they had not experienced success in the city’s other high schools, but there were also many students highly capable of academic success in a traditional classroom. those students were there for other reasons: they might have been struggling with addiction, parenting children, experiencing psychological distress, or homeless. in the end, what defined the students at this school was the way in which disadvantage manifested itself in their lives: it was pervasive, proliferate, and persistent. i had prepped and planned all sorts of mathematics lessons, but i threw them out the minute i sat down with my kids. it was not that working with them was or should be different than working with more “traditional” populations. rather, it was in questioning whether this “traditional” or “normal” population existed at all. it put the specious notion that teaching and learning is inextricable from our lives into high relief. markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 3 4 canoe math i ended up completing my final practicum closer to home in another city and, although i am trained as a mathematics teacher, was hired into a middle school there as an english teacher upon graduating. i very much enjoyed teaching english (which was the degree i had actually started in as an undergraduate), but i never forgot my experience at that alternative high school. a couple of years into my teaching career, one of the two math positions at that alternative school opened up. i got the job and spent the next five years teaching there. in this section, i briefly recount a math program i designed and ran with a colleague in which students collaborated to build 14foot prospector canoes to achieve grade ten and eleven math credits. working alongside the students at this school had made me realize the degree to which our education system, particularly in the case of mathematics, did not reflect their lives or experience. i wanted to create a program that enabled students to realize the mathematics we learned in their lives in ways they had reason to value. i have written elsewhere about this program in more detail (markle, 2019), so i will recount it here briefly: we moved our math classroom down to a small space adjoining the wood shop and got to work collaboratively building canoes. one source of inspiration for the course was martha nussbaum’s work on capability (nussbaum, 2011). a capabilities approach places its emphasis not just on what one can do (a test score, for example), but on one’s capacity and potential for action. a second source of inspiration for this work was gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics (gadamer, 1960/1989). reading gadamer gave me the language and ideas i needed to make sense of what was possible. focusing on capability was a necessarily interpretive practice. of course, i still collected evidence of what my kids could do, but from the perspective of hermeneutics, these demonstrations of understanding changed from periods to question marks. they were not the last say in my grade book, but rather they disclosed what was possible. one student i worked with took the class for both grade ten (math 10-3) and eleven (math 20-3) math credits. he was an intelligent but reluctant student. in our first iteration of the class, the excitement of offering such a novel program was compounded by my own inexperience and lack of qualifications in the wood shop. in short, we all struggled. but one moment with this student stands out in particular. in building our canoes, we had to first stitch together the twenty planks that would form the canoe’s hull. this was a complex exercise in spatial reasoning: first we had to organize the planks in a two-dimensional plane (i.e. on the floor of the shop), stitch them together with wire, then jostle them into a three-dimensional canoe shape. it involved bending and contorting all of these planks in different ways in different places. in one particular class, nine or ten of us were doing just this. this student had not engaged in the class thus far and he stood off to the side by himself, watching the process. we tried and failed to get the canoe into shape a couple of times and frustration was beginning to mount. our primary mode of discourse in this class was what a lay observer might characterize as hollering – keep in mind, we were in the shop. i preferred the phrase mathematical argument. and it was over this din on our third try that this particular student called out: “it’s not going to work!” it was not exactly what i wanted to hear, but when i looked over to the student, he was making a motion with his hand and arm, as if to describe a curved surface. he was looking at a particular spot of the canoe and making that gesture. another student asked him what he was talking about markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 3 5 and he came over to us, first working in one spot, then another, saying things like, “it has to be like this,” until the canoe seemed to pop into shape. the silence of the word the canoe program ran for five semesters and has been a source of reflection and insight for me ever since. i have written about my experience working alongside those students in the shop several times, and much like re-reading a poem, each time it resonates differently. i would now like to return to the two poems with which i opened this short piece. both in some sense deal with the finitude of language. i am acutely aware of language’s inadequacy each time i think back to trying to assess the understanding of the student mentioned above. to be sure, one could argue that the student simply lacked some of the mathematical vocabulary for describing the understanding he embodied through gesture. but i argue there is something ineffable in that sweeping hand gesture, something as mysterious as the silence when the tailor would pause, so to speak, both in terms of how this student understood and what that disclosed of what was possible. at the 2019 canadian hermeneutic institute, dr. james risser spoke of the silence of the word that speaks along with the spoken. one reason i believe i have a growing unease when i think and write about teaching as interpretive practice – and even more so when i am in the classroom – is because i find myself drawn to this silence. as risser (2019) noted, silence is not simply the absence of speech or the limit of understanding (p. 2). rather, it is a disclosure: silence can reveal in both what is said and what is not said. it pervades and sustains speech. much like levertov, risser (2019) characterized silence as something that “intervenes in the manner of a suspension, a kind of holding apart that allows something to be free in movement” (p. 5). so much of what i have come to view as fundamentally important in teaching and learning consists in maintaining the tension between holding apart and holding fast. teaching as an interpretive practice means working with students so as to hear them speak. it requires an openness to what is possible, to which we must hold fast. so much of the teaching profession seems not just oriented by but given purpose through accountability and efficiency. how can we make sure teachers cover all of the content? how can we make sure teachers have delivered it effectively? but focusing on these criteria is a relinquishing of being possible. and it is in holding fast to being possible that we realize teaching as an interpretive practice. acknowledgement i would like to acknowledge drs. nancy moules and graham mccaffrey, professors of the class on hermeneutic research from which this paper evolved. references gadamer, h.g. (1989). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. originally published in 1960. freeman, m. (2011). validity in dialogic encounters with hermeneutic truths. qualitative inquiry,17(6), 543-551. markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 3 6 markle, j.r. (2019). loving kindness and capability. journal of the canadian association for curriculum studies, 17(1), 16-27. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research. new york, ny: peter lang. nussbaum, m. (2011). creating capabilities: the human development approach. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. risser, j. (2019). speaking from silence: on the intimate relation between silence and speaking. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 7, 1-14. doi:https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.68705 microsoft word mccaffrey corrected proof (1).docx corresponding author: graham mccaffrey, rn phd university of calgary email: gpmccaff@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 september 9, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 book review: “the responsibility to understand: hermeneutical contours of ethical life” by professor theodore george graham mccaffrey abstract this article is a review of dr. theodore george’s new book, the responsibility to understand: hermeneutical contours of ethical life (2020) from the viewpoint of applied hermeneutics and practice professions, especially nursing. i highlight aspects of the book that speak most directly to applied hermeneutics, including figal’s version of objectivity, and the need to allow displacement to open space for new understanding. i discuss points that i think are open to continuing debate, including the question of whether hermeneutics is being presented as an ethics in itself, or as a gateway to ethical decision making that has to be determined by other values. for practice professions that are conspicuously bounded by regulations of various kinds, it is a feature of ethical life that has to be taken into account. another question, is whether george’s analysis of solidarity, pushing back against impersonal, calculative values penetrating modern life, sufficiently captures the fervour of closed solidarities that have sprung up as reaction and adjunct to those same values. i suggest that george’s chapter on translation could provide a stimulating starting point for a hermeneutic analysis of “knowledge translation” in research. the conclusion is that george’s book is an excellent addition to the hermeneutic literature, postgadamer, that extends a welcome to those of us working in applied hermeneutics, inviting us into a thought provoking and creative conversation. keywords hermeneutics; ethics; practice professions; objectivity; solidarity theodore george’s new book is a welcome addition to hermeneutic philosophical literature that speaks to applied hermeneutics. its primary claim is that philosophy has drifted too far from the mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 8 2 ethical demands of everyday life, and it is time to “restore the validity of a certain weightiness of our factical concerns for the study of philosophical ethics” (p. viii). already, this speaks to the concrete problems of practice professions. later in the book, george goes on to discuss factical life as displacement: “recurrent exposure of exteriority that irrupts each time an event of understanding unfolds” (p. 48). since applied hermeneutics always starts with an instance of irruption, of some event or persistent feature of experience, that takes place among particular people in particular places, his contours of ethical life start to map a landscape with which we, as practitioners, are familiar. the book is divided into three parts, drawing the “contours of ethical life” in different areas of existing hermeneutic attention. section one sets out “the responsibility to understand,” expanding upon the implications of displacement. section two, entitled “i and thou,” in successive chapters looks at relationships with “things; animals; and others.” the final section, “i and we” advances towards politics, looking at routes of understanding amidst social and global pluralities, without committing to a fixed political position or ideology. every step of the way, i read passages that made me stop and think about what they might have to say to applied hermeneutics. reading this book became a hermeneutic experience of dialogue with the text, somewhere in a meeting between horizons of philosophical hermeneutics and practice professions. in his introduction, george locates his work in the context of post-gadamerian thought in which he contrasts two strands, of “post-modern” and “realistic” positions on gadamer’s “attempt to advance the ontological turn in hermeneutics” (p. 10). both positions start from heidegger’s concern with interpretation as a feature of human life, but whereas the postmodern emphasises the role of language in determining values, the realistic emphasises the importance of interpretation as response to the world that presents itself to us. george introduces the work of a contemporary german philosopher, günter figal, who has recovered and renewed the term objectivity. for figal, this is not objectivity in the accustomed sense of verifiable, generalizable pieces of scientific knowledge, but that which stands outside of us and demands something of us. (the german word translated as objectivity is gegenständlichkeit which literally would look something like “against-standing-ness”). i find the orientation of the work to realism refreshing, because for me the rootedness of hermeneutics in the stubborn world of things, people, and their concerns is precisely what makes it so compelling for nursing. nurses’ work is inescapably bound up with value-laden encounters with others, using tools and equipment, in institutional structures (both actual buildings and sets of rules). george mentions a connection to other innovations, “such as the so-called new realism” (p. 20) which is discussed by brian treanor in the 2015 book carnal hermeneutics (kearney & treanor, 2015). although he does not pursue the connection in the book, it is one of many suggestive leads in working out future directions for applied hermeneutics. none of this is to underestimate the importance of language, but for figal it always refers back to something, just as for researchers in practice professions, we always start from a topic of interest, something that stands against us, demanding interpretive attention. from the discussion of realism and referentiality, george introduces his central theme of responsibility. it is not just that we act, think, speak with reference to what confronts us, but that we are placed (or thrown in heidegger’s word) in a position of having to take responsibility for how we act, think, and speak, for what we decide. it is the responsibility that george draws out from the mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 8 3 hermeneutics of factical life that leads him to the discussions that follow, mapping the “contours of ethical life.” george’s deepening discussions of his theme raised for me questions about the locus of ethical values, and how far positive values need to be defined in terms of limits and opposites. at points in the book, i found myself questioning where the line is between the “is” of what factical life demands of us, like it or not, and the “ought” of how we should respond to those demands. if there is an “ought,” then where does it derive from? i am not sure how much this is an effect of reading the book from a practice profession perspective, where i constantly want concrete examples that i should not necessarily expect to find in a book of philosophy. while the responsibility to understand is part of our condition of thrownness, we do not in factical life have to understand everything at every moment. most of what we encounter, we readily assimilate into existing assumptions, and necessarily so in order to keep moving around in the world. the responsibility to understand kicks in when we first make discernments between what is unexceptional and what demands interpretive attention. that in itself invokes ethical assumptions about what counts as “unexceptional” or not, and then, when one has decided to pay attention, ethical assumptions about what to do. is the responsibility to understand the signpost to ethical decision-making, or is it an ethical imperative in its own right? in the chapter about animals, george gives one answer: our hermeneutical responsibility towards animals, like every responsibility to understand, is not concerned with the establishment, clarification or adjudication of ethical systems or principles. rather the responsibility to understand takes shape in the displacement of prejudices that allows us to become more open to the ethical stakes of the factical situations we find ourselves in and of the matters at issue within them. (p. 105, italics added) i wonder whether the hermeneutical comportment of accepting displacement, of putting one’s prejudices into question, and of becoming more open already relies on ethical assumptions that these are good things to do. george states that “the responsibility to understand calls for us to cultivate and enact a capacity for displacement” (p. 71). if the responsibility to understand is inherent to factical life, and yet the human capacity for displacement, is empirically an on-again, off-again proposition, then something is happening within that call that is already ethical, that tends towards more, not less displacement, that says it is a good thing. (here i regret the cancellation of the canadian hermeneutic institute in 2020 due to covid, since dr. george was to be the invited speaker, talking about “the call”). a similar question came up for me in the discussion of solidarity. george argues that in his later work, gadamer framed solidarity as another type of disposition towards “mutual interpretive openness that first allows a shared world to become visible and that thus first makes it possible for us to enter into political deliberation, judgement and action” (p. 131). solidarity thus becomes a way of enabling people to seek political solutions in a shared pluralist space, not assuming agreement or conformity either at the beginning or the end of deliberation. george is setting out a view of solidarity that he argues is coherent and desirable, but not as definitive or exclusive. in other words, i do not take him to think that solidarity is always like mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 8 4 this and it is not necessarily his purpose here to consider other versions of solidarity. however, elsewhere he does address what an ethics of hermeneutics is up against. at points throughout the book he targets modern society’s “calculative management of human relations” (p. 142) as a force that deserves countering with hermeneutic principles. while that is certainly a feature of present society, arguably even more so than in the late 20th century when gadamer wrote about it, we now have a situation where technology acts, paradoxically, both as a hegemonic means of “calculative management” and, mainly via social media, as an atavistic engine of harsh identitarian divisiveness and mutual hostilities – solidarity’s evil twin to gadamer’s version of openness, when groups define themselves in opposition to outsiders. facebook’s algorithms are an exemplar of calculative rationality that is impersonal, directly linked to profit generation, and yet produces pools of closed solidarities that range from benign to malevolent. in the chapter entitled “others,” george takes up his theme of responsibility to understand in a world of others, where displacement is a matter of making room for what another has to say, though with gradations of recognition that advance from the most insular and oriented to one’s own ends, to “listening, grasped as the openness to the possible validity of the other’s claims” (p. 110). it is a series of distinctions that does have concrete applicability for healthcare professionals, who are often secure (or insecure) in their expertise and judgements to the extent of precluding hearing about specifics of patients’ individual lives, experiences, or values. willing exposure to what we cannot know in advance about the other opens into phronesis as responsive action to each new configuration of circumstances. george adds kant to aristotle to emphasize the need to decide, to underline the responsibility at work in the flow of phronesis. he also recognizes the presence of those ethical assumptions that each person carries with them into a situation. even in phronesis, ethical decisions are not made wholly anew but draw on factors that must include existing values, not to mention external laws, permissions, and constraints. “understanding never attains an absolutely self-reflexive ‘view from nowhere,’ but rather always remains within a horizon of convictions, sensibilities and dispositions carried over from the past” (p. 117) and “practical philosophy turns not on the establishment of transcendent laws, but on the interpretation of ethical values immanent to a historical milieu” (p. 117). these points are crucial in joining george’s arguments to applied hermeneutics since, to take nursing as an example, nurses’ actions always occur within a network of laws, policies, and ethical guidelines that inform their decisions, even if not absolving them from interpretive responsibility. in the final chapter, “translation,” george effectively continues his argument for solidarity as an ongoing attitude of openness by including translation as a creative invitation to engage with others across differences of language, and the cultural and historical horizons held in languages. against the “calculative rationality of the global network” with its universal semantic codes of statistics and corporate technologies, he argues we need to “learn again to hear one another from out of the context of the planetary cacophony comprised by our respective languages” (p. 165). he does not assume that translation is a simple operation of transferring a text from one language to another, but that it is an act of interpretive opening, in which a new text is created in the target language. for george, even in the case of lyric poetry, which is often said to be untranslatable, this constitutes an expansion of the original text, though never a final version. one of many possible ways to take up threads from the book into applied hermeneutics would be to bring his discussion of translation to bear on “knowledge translation” in research. at the other end of the spectrum to lyric poetry, research evidence is assumed to be completely translatable, such that mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 8 5 the language – or horizon – of the recipient of knowledge is of little or no concern. there is only willing reception of new knowledge or non-compliance. taking up the significance of translation for understanding, as opposed to mere transmission, i suggest an interpretation of noncompliance as an accusation of barbarism, recalling that the origin of the word in greek is the incomprehensible and thus worthless ba-ba sounds made by non-greek speakers (online etymology dictionary). framing non-compliance as the knowledge users’ problem is a form of hermeneutic closure that is inimical to genuine translation. george’s book fulfils its goal of mapping the “hermeneutical contours of ethical life.” i am not qualified to evaluate it in the context of philosophical debates about ethics, but i am confident in saying that it is exactly the kind of hermeneutic work that sustains and advances applied hermeneutics in research in practice professions. george’s analysis of the ethical demands of factical life gives us new ways to talk about not only the ethical implications that invariably run through research topics like veins of quartz in rock, but also the ethical impetus within hermeneutic research as such. references barbarian. (2020). online etymology dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/barbarian george, t. (2020). the responsibility to understand: hermeneutical contours of ethical life. edinburgh university press. kearney, r., & treanor, b. (eds.). (2015). carnal hermeneutics. fordham university press. corresponding author: graham mccaffrey, rn phd email: gpmccaff@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 january 9, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 imagination, application, and ethics: a review of a collection of writings by richard kearney graham mccaffrey abstract littlejohn, m.e. (ed.). (2020). imagination now: a richard kearney reader (m.e. littlejohn, ed.). rowman & littlefield. (pp. 364, $54.50 cad, pbk) this is a review of a new collection of writings by richard kearney, from 1988 to 2019. the volume is organized around the overarching theme of the role of imagination in hermeneutics and ethics. it has four thematic sections, focusing on poetics and culture, carnal hermeneutics, religion, and politics, followed by a recent interview with kearney. the review is written from a viewpoint of applied hermeneutics. it is a rich and complex collection from which i highlight threads of narrative imagination, self and other, discernment, and the relationship between phenomenology and hermeneutics. two examples pertinent to nursing practice are explored in relation to themes in the book as a way of showing its potential for contributing to applied hermeneutics and the concerns of those in practice professions. keywords hermeneutics, phenomenology, narrative, imagination, ethics, richard kearney richard kearney was one of the first visiting scholars at the canadian hermeneutic institute in 2011. over three days, he engaged with the hermeneutic work of practice professionals and suggested founding a journal, this journal, as a forum for work in applied hermeneutics. kearney wrote the first article to appear in the journal of applied hermeneutics which is republished as chapter six in this new volume of a selection of his writings dating from 1988 to 2019. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 2 2 the overarching theme of the book, in the words of its editor, m.e. littlejohn is “recognition of the power of imagination, and its ethical implications” (2020, p. xvii). the book is organized into five sections, on poetics, literature, and culture; carnal hermeneutics and touch; religion; ethics, politics, and peace; and an interview with richard kearney from 2019 that draws together threads in the preceding chapters. these section headings already point to the broad range of kearney’s concerns, and of his engagement with the social world. i have long been impressed by the knowledge that kearney contributed, as a public intellectual, to the development of the good friday peace agreement in northern ireland in 1998. he created a hermeneutic formula for a plurality of national identities and traditions that could co-exist on shared land. it is rare to see a philosopher make such a practical contribution to a political problem, to engage with such a closely compacted conflict as that in northern ireland, and to offer ideas that are not only elegant as theory, but workable in life. these chapters, drawn from articles in philosophical journals, newspapers, and books are deeply philosophical and at the same time hold to the original promise of phenomenology to make philosophy about everyday life, what kearney in one chapter refers to as the “epiphanies of the everyday” (p. 183). it is no surprise then to find much to engage with here from the viewpoint of applied hermeneutics, thinking of both the practical concerns and practices of practice professions and research into them. there are significant themes that recur throughout the book, sometimes in differing forms according to whether the immediate frame of reference is, for example, art or religion. in the discussion that follows, i take up several themes, not necessarily following neatly the topic subdivisions of the book. narrative imagination is discussed both in the section on poetics and again in the section on ethics, reflecting kearney’s concern that imagination, as he argues, is primarily a matter of seeing beyond ourselves, opening ourselves to the concerns of others. imagination is relational, social, and cultural. he calls for the “rehabilitation of narrative imagination in our postmodern culture” (p. 28), insisting on a referentiality in narrative in contrast to post structuralist “signifiers relating to signifiers” (p. 28) with nothing beyond themselves. in other words, ethical narrative holds on to criteria for the truth of what happened, even while telling the story of what happened. telling and hearing what happened both require hermeneutic, or imaginative, attention. he draws on ricoeur’s “ethic of narrative hospitality” (p. 249, italics in original) in reference to historical memorials of trauma. narrative in this public sense of expressing a shared history (the chapter is about the irish hunger memorial in new york) passes through qualities of “narrative flexibility,” where exchange of stories guards against dogmatic fixity into a sole narrative, “narrative plurality” where there are many voices, “transfiguring of the past,” and “pardon” (pp. 249-250). narrative at this communal level can have a redemptive, therapeutic function analogous to the more familiar setting of individual psychotherapy. a related theme – and the themes as i am discussing them here interjoin with each other in changing configurations throughout the volume – is that of self and other. in a chapter on hermeneutics and imagination, where he considers the roles of cognitive reason, affective motivation, and creative action in ethical life, kearney says, “the hermeneutic model of imagination, which overcomes subjective self-centredness so as to understand oneself-as-another, has obvious ethical implications” (p. 41). in the section on carnal hermeneutics, he takes up the mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 2 3 motif of exchange through merleau-ponty’s concept of “chiasmus” or flesh as “reversible crossing” (p. 110) through which we know ourselves and others (though never fully, in either instance). hermeneutics, as a question of sense making in every sense, thus is always carnal, or as kearney puts it, “the work of hermes is everywhere – from the inner capillaries of our heart to the nerve endings of our fingers – sounding and coding, ciphering and signifying through every touch of skin and flesh” (p. 108). exchange of self and other, referring back at moments to ricoeur’s late work oneself as another (1990), is at the heart of kearney’s hermeneutics of imagination, since it is through the capacity to imagine the lives of others – individually, collectively, culturally, historically, psychologically, corporeally – that we discover and rediscover our own social being and ethical orientation. one of the distinctive points of kearney’s hermeneutics is his emphasis on the necessity of discernment, a theme that is included here in a selection from his 2003 book strangers, gods, and monsters and in the paper outlining diacritical hermeneutics that inaugurated the journal of applied hermeneutics. he does not deflect from the necessity of judgement in interpretation, and he is critical of derrida and levinas for the extremity of their calls to submit to a version of the absolute, be it the face of the other or unalloyed justice. he is a thinker of the middle ground, not in the sense of shallow compromise, but of negotiating actual difficulty to find liveable possibility. hence, he refers at several points to ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion, the need to look beneath the obvious and the given, twinned with the hermeneutics of affirmation, the necessity of stepping forward into ethical action. in the interview that concludes the book, he talks about the middle ground between phenomenology and deconstruction, where he argues hermeneutics resides. he describes a threestage movement through “proto-hermeneutic experience, phenomenological bracketing, and hermeneutic retrieval” (p. 320). one way he refreshes phenomenology is by treating bracketing not as some confessional discharge of assumptions, nor as a contorted pseudo-objectivity, but as a moment of silence, of stepping back before re-engaging. in the religious section of the book, this is associated with his concept of anatheism and an attitude of receptivity to experience. epoché in kearney’s reading is both a methodological suspension in order to formulate interpretation (discernment again) and a space of respect for alterity in which otherness is allowed to appear as otherness. nonetheless, the human impetus towards interpretation always returns: “imagination precedes and exceeds reason. which is why phenomenology always begins and ends in hermeneutics” (p. 321). kearney treats the border between phenomenology and hermeneutics as open, a locus of mutually beneficial exchange. there are implications here for how we think about research, loosening the classifications of hermeneutics and phenomenology or, for that matter, heideggerian hermeneutic-phenomenology. as kearney notes, dasein for all its hammerwielding, is disembodied, and it is phenomenology from husserl to merleau-ponty that esteems the fleshly body. i see kearney’s thinking with carnal hermeneutics linking up to figures in contemporary phenomenology like dan zahavi and shaun gallagher, to their ideas around embodied cognition and links to applied research (see for example gallagher, 2017; zahavi & martiny, 2019). mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 2 4 all of these themes, narrative imagination, linked to historical identity of self and other, hermeneutics of suspicion and affirmation, ethical discernment, and the middle ground between phenomenology and deconstruction have salience for applied hermeneutics. i am thinking of it from the viewpoint of nursing but a reader from any applied discipline that involves purposeful encounters between self and others (which is all applied disciplines, actually) would, i think, find their own points of contact. here are two examples where the book sparked connections and suggested new pathways for insights in my own areas of interest in mental health nursing and nurse-patient relationship. applied hermeneutics (i): trauma informed practice narrativity, touch, ethics, and historical trauma, which are spread across several sections and chapters coalesce around the question of trauma-informed care. i recently took part in an on-line symposium organized by an interdisciplinary interest group initiated by medical students. i was struck by how much the students seemed accustomed to a research discourse of “brain and mental health” in which mental health is, in fact as well as syntactically, an appendage to neuroscience. in spite of the rediscovery in trauma-informed care of the freudian insight that earlier traumatic experiences return later in life, refracted through layers of genetic and environmental time, there is a stubborn belief that life-as-lived is going be found in neural pathways, and “fixed” there. kearney’s hermeneutic interests powerfully support a quite different way of thinking about trauma, that is about care and not biochemical aetiological correlates. it is social, relational, historical, cultural, and belongs in the difficult lived world of encounters between people. comparing with the four principles of trauma informed practice set out in a current canadian best practice guideline (bc provincial mental health and substance use planning council, 2013) kearney’s discussions show there is more to this than adopting another clinical technique. “trauma awareness,” (p. 13) the first principle, requires a disposition of narrative imagination, an openness to what is possible, to what might be present (strangers, gods, and monsters in the past and re-emergent as “presenting” symptoms). it is the basic hermeneutic realization that, in the words of a poem by robert hass, “we get our first moral idea / about the world – about justice and power, / gender and the order of things – from somewhere” (2007, italics added). here too is the practical implication of the moment of the epoché, standing back to let the other appear in their alterity, not as a set of symptoms to be fitted into a more-or-less closely fitting dsm diagnosis, but an individual in the midst of their own life. the second principle is an “emphasis on safety and trustworthiness” (p. 13) that includes “physical, emotional, and cultural safety” (p. 13). here is the tact in contact, perhaps in touch, or whether or not to touch, certainly in speech, but also in the physicality of bodies in space, and what kind of space. cultural safety is partly a matter of knowledge, and partly a matter of humility, of the hermeneutic recognition of the finitude of knowledge – tactful negotiation in spaces of knowing and not-knowing. the third principle of trauma informed practice is “opportunity for choice, collaboration, and connection” (p. 14) which has far reaching implications for the deportment of clinicians. in a chapter entitled “the hermeneutics of wounds” (p. 125), kearney discusses the idea of the mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 2 5 wounded healer, and points out the contrast in the greek origins of western medicine between hippocrates and asclepius. hippocrates worked from an ethos of distance and control, constantly seeking to outpace illness with cure, the source of evidence-based medicine. while not denying the spectacular successes of the hippocratic tradition, kearney turns to the alternative of asclepius who learned medicine from chiron, a centaur who was wounded and, unable to heal himself discovered the gift of healing others. in the asclepian mode, the healer is close by, present, and is receptive to the excess of pain and illness, that which cannot be cured or controlled. the wounded healer feels with the pain of the patient yet maintains a distance in which to act. “wounded healers are those…who maintain such equilibrium in a subtle interplay of word and touch, narrativity and tactility, effect and affect” (p. 134). the fourth principle, “strengths based and skill building” (p. 14) at a broad level introduces coping skills of “calming and staying present” (p. 14). kearney’s writing on carnal hermeneutics points to the integration of mind and body in approaches to understanding and working with trauma. (not in the volume reviewed here but in a recent a paper in jah, kearney (2020) cites the work of van der kolk, an expert in trauma who advocates in great detail for mind-body interventions). applied hermeneutics (ii): a glass of water the aspect of kearney’s work that to me often appears most remote from applied hermeneutics is his writing on religion, from a judeo-christian starting point. he argues for anatheism as a place after god, a place of humility that “contains a moment of atheism within itself” (p. 161), but this formulation seems to offer little to atheists (such as myself) for whom life seems at first sight to be all atheistic moments. however, at times his use of biblical and theological terminology is understandable as a way of speaking about deeply felt aspects of human life that we do all share, even though there are many different languages for them, including arts and poetry. one of the entry points for me to his religiously framed thinking is his idea of “a microeschatology” (p. 183) or “eschaton [end] dwelling in each unique, material instant” (p. 184). at this point, kearney’s thinking with religion, goes to a space where mysticism appears not as remote and mysterious, but as the luminous immediacy of ordinary experience. this is perhaps the perception sought for in phenomenology and is found too in the zen tradition. in one wellknown zen teaching story, a monk seeks wisdom from zen master joshu, who asks, “did you finish your rice gruel?” and when the monk replies he has, joshu says “then wash your bowls” (wick, 2005, p. 120). the eschaton of the everyday then connects with the concerns and work of applied hermeneutics. kearney’s discussion reminded me of the mid staffs hospital scandal in the uk several years ago, where a series of systematic breakdowns, including appalling instances of poor nursing, led to a government inquiry and a moral panic in the media about nurses who no longer care. in the austere language of the official report, “a number of staff in different professions raised concerns about the lack of basic nursing care, such as poor hydration and nutrition of patients, and failure to help patients eat or drink” (p. 1499). nursing care dwells in details, minor by themselves, like whether or not a patient can reach a glass of water or drink it without help; in those details dwell questions of dignity and caring, noticing and listening, physical comfort, and even life and death. mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 2 6 as represented in this collection, richard kearney’s work is alive with a striving to make sense of things and more importantly to understand how we make sense of things. he leads the reader to encounter the fullness of our ways of making sense, including of course texts and language, but of ourselves and others speaking through and with our sensory bodies, through history, identity, narratives, and not least the unrolling event of everyday life. references bc provincial mental health and substance use planning council. (2013). trauma-informed practice guide. author. https://bccewh.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2013_tip-guide.pdf francis, r. (2013). report of the mid staffordshire nhs foundation trust public inquiry (r. francis, chair). uk government. gallagher, s. (2017). enactivist interventions: rethinking the mind. oxford university press. hass, r. (2007). the world as will and representation. retrieved from https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poem/20026/auto/0/0/robert-hass/the-world-aswill-and-representation/en/tile kearney, r. (2020). healing touch: hermeneutics of trauma and recovery. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 10, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.vi0.71458 van der kolk, b. (2015). the body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. penguin. wick, g.s. (2005). the book of equanimity: illuminating classic zen koans. wisdom publications. zahavi, d., & martiny, k.m.m. (2019). phenomenology in nursing studies: new perspectives. international journal of nursing studies, 93, 155-162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.01.014 https://bccewh.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2013_tip-guide.pdf https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poem/20026/auto/0/0/robert-hass/the-world-as-will-and-representation/en/tile https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poem/20026/auto/0/0/robert-hass/the-world-as-will-and-representation/en/tile https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.vi0.71458 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.01.014 microsoft word dhaliwal et al corrected proof.docx corresponding author: sandip k dhaliwal, rn, master’s student faculty of nursing, university of calgary email: sdhali@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 june 9, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 new realities and tsunamis: a nurse’s interpretation of a family navigating cancer sandip k dhaliwal, nancy j moules, & graham mccaffrey abstract this short paper was written for a hermeneutics research course from the perspective of the first author in response to the statement “nursing is an interpretive practice.” a narrative account of caring for a young adult with hematologic cancer and his mother is provided to offer understanding on how cancer is an interpreted experience with a relational backdrop of family, and nursing is an interpretive practice situated within this relational complexity. gadamer’s ideas around horizon of understanding, experience, and conversation are utilized to present a nurse’s interpretation of this family navigating the “new realities and tsunamis” and overturning of their lives by hematologic cancer. given the interpretive nature of understanding in nursing work with families, it is proposed that hermeneutics, as an interpretive inquiry, offers a meaningful approach to understand family experiences of cancer in nursing research. keywords interpretation, philosophical hermeneutics, relational complexity, oncology nursing, family nursing family is considered a significant part of an individual's psychosocial dimension in which illness is experienced (quinn & herndon, 1986). the context of family frames an important part of one’s dhaliwal et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 4 2 “being-in-the-world” and the experience of cancer is often interpreted within the relational complexities of family. as nurses, we are not outsiders but right there in the midst of the changing dynamics and relationships between family members. in this paper, i offer that cancer is an interpreted experience with a relational backdrop of family, and nursing is an interpretive practice situated within this relational complexity. i provide a narrative account (in italics) of two practice events with a young adult and his mother to illuminate the importance of interpretation in understanding as an oncology, hematology, and blood and marrow transplant nurse. new realities i was working in an outpatient blood and marrow transplant treatment clinic, and the next patient on my list was 28-year-old ray (pseudonym) who was post-stem cell transplant for leukemia. his visit plan for the day was a routine bloodwork draw, and the time allocated for his visit was 15 minutes. i walked out to the waiting room, called his name, and a 5’8” man stood up and greeted me with a “good morning” and a warm smile. we walked together from the waiting room to a clinic chair while making small talk about the weather and what he ate for breakfast. he took off his jacket and a bright red toque that revealed his bald head. he got comfortable in the clinic chair and lifted his shirt, as if it was second nature, so that i could access his central venous catheter line from which to draw blood. as i started to draw blood, i noticed he had a tattoo on his arm. “that is a cool tattoo, is it a guitar?” i asked. “yeah it is” he responded. i noticed initials in the tattoo, “does it symbolize something for you?” i asked. the conversation that followed this simple question was profound and embedded with stories about cancer and moments that were sad, happy, heartbreaking, and everything inbetween. i came to learn that the tattoo was a tribute to ray’s friend that passed away a couple years ago. the friend played guitar in a band of which ray was a part; ray played the electric keyboard. the band was a source of fun for ray, but he had to stop being part of the band when he was diagnosed with cancer. he had also just finished receiving a heavy-duty equipment technician diploma and started a new job but then “cancer happened.” he married his high school sweetheart and was looking forward to having a financially stable job so they could start to think about kids; those plans had to been interrupted and he had to move to a different city temporarily in order to get a stem cell transplant, but “at least” he banked his sperm for later. i learned that was not the way he imagined having kids, but he did not need to think about that right now. he needed to think about “being independent again” instead. he and his wife became dependent on his parents for financial support, which he admitted was hard for him. he was grateful to his family for being supportive, but he wished someone “understood” what he was going through. he did not want to be “a pessimist” with all the “cancer talk” though, “do you have any tattoos?” he shifted the conversation. i did not have any tattoos, but we found a common ground – a love for music – and continued the conversation talking about favourite bands and songs. the conversation between ray and me was not one that was part of a care plan or within the allocated time frame of 15 minutes. rather, the conversation had lasted well beyond 15 minutes. one might ask if having a “conversation” about a tattoo is really a nursing responsibility or priority. dhaliwal et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 4 3 at a glance, it may appear nursing work consists of vital signs, assessments, administering medications, drawing blood, completing dressing changes, and charting before moving on to the next patient. although these are important tasks of nursing work, i would argue that a caring presence, attentiveness to the particular, and interpretation are the heart of nursing. my initial question in relation to ray’s tattoo was answered with a simple response from ray, but i interpreted there was more to be said when i noticed rays eyes had filled with emotion. interpreting the unsaid, i made the decision to probe, and although ray could have ended the conversation, perhaps he had interpreted my inquisition as an invitation to express what he had hidden but lingered in his mind. there was something about the language he used – being a “pessimist” when it comes to “cancer talk” and wishing someone “understood” – that told me there was a conscious hiding of his feelings, emotions, and thoughts when it came to cancer. perhaps for ray, our conversation was simply the opportunity for him to share what was already at play in his mind, but this conversation became one of significant understanding for me and brought to light his experiences navigating cancer in relation to family. it is not surprising to think that our dreams, hopes, and understanding of experiences is based on “being-in-the-world” alongside those who help us construct meaningful lives. as gadamer (1960/2013) stated, “long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live” (p. 289). our “horizon of understanding” provides the familiar context in which we engage in understanding, and it is impossible to isolate our understanding from this horizon. ray, as a young adult, was not only trying to understand his new reality of navigating hematologic cancer, but he was navigating what this meant for his relationship with his parents, on whom he was dependent again, and for his relationship with his wife who, with whom he was no longer having conversations about having kids, but had now become his caregiver. gadamer viewed experience “[as] an event over which no one has control and...in which everything is coordinated in a way that is ultimately incomprehensible” (gadamer, 1960/2013, p. 361). seemingly, the experience of hematologic cancer is an unpredictable one that throws families off a predetermined course and disrupts and shakes the dreams and hopes of those experiencing it. as a nurse, attempts to understand this experience is wrought with complexities, but these attempts may begin through conversation (or dialogue) and attention to the particular. similar to experience, gadamer suggested that understanding emerges from dialogue in the form of an unpredictable discovery rather than a controlled outcome. of conversation, he stated: rather it is generally more correct to say that we fall into conversation, or even that we become involved in it. the way one word follows another, with the conversation taking its own twists and reaching its own conclusion, may well be conducted in some way, but the partners conversing are far less the leaders of it than the led. no one knows in advance what will ‘come out’ of a conversation. (gadamer, 1960/2013, p. 401) the conversation between ray and me was not pre-planned with any specific intent, yet the “to and fro” of the conversation exposed what navigating hematologic cancer meant for him and his particular case. in this conversation with ray, space was opened up for new understanding to occur, dhaliwal et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 4 4 and this newfound understanding became part of my interpretations in subsequent interactions i had with ray and his family. being hit by a tsunami two months later, ray was admitted to an inpatient hematology and bone marrow transplant unit for work-up to investigate abnormal blood counts, and i was assigned to care for him. i reviewed his chart and recent bloodwork before starting my day. platelets, low; hemoglobin, low; white blood cells, low. i walked into his room for my initial round; his mother was in the room and ray had his head back with a tissue shoved into his nostrils. upon entering his room, i interpreted based on what i knew (his platelets were low) and what i saw (he was doing what most patients do when they have a nosebleed) and put together pieces of the puzzle. ray was having a nosebleed. i introduced myself; ray remembered me. i instructed ray to hold pressure to the bridge of his nose while i grabbed supplies to stop his nosebleed. i rested a cold pack to the nape of his neck and started rolling gauze to put up ray’s nostril. ray’s mother jumped in to guide me on the size of the gauze that works best, how many pieces of gauze are too thick for his nostril, and about how in the past, nurses would use the “sticky stuff” to wrap around the gauze so that the gauze holds its shape. (she was talking about jelonet, a sticky adherence dressing). ray rolled his eyes as she continued to guide me, and you could see the annoyance on his face. “mom, seriously? she knows what she is doing, can you just leave?” he exclaimed. ray’s mother left the room, and i allowed space for silence that had filled the room after she left. i attended to ray, rolled up the gauze, secured it with jelonet, and put it up his nostril that was bleeding. “i’m sorry, i know she is trying to be helpful,” he broke the silence, “would you like to talk about it?” i asked. he did not want to talk right then. i walked out of the room to find ray’s mother in the patient area directly outside his room, crying. it was a quiet crying where she was holding back in an attempt not to draw attention, but the tears rolling down her cheek were hard to miss (and dismiss). i sat down next to her, searching for the right words to say. before i was able to find them, she explained, “i’m trying my best to help him and i wish he understood that.” i took a moment and thought back to the conversation i had with ray in the clinic, “he appreciates having you, but do you think, right now, he just wants some control?” i asked. the words that i chose in response to ray’s mother were not based on the singular event that had just occurred, but rather were interpreted in relation to the conversation i had with ray months prior. i knew ray loved and appreciated his mother, he told me this, but his world had been shaken up by cancer and seemingly, there was little of which he had control. perhaps now that he was admitted back to inpatient care, there was even more uncertainty, fear, and a lack of control. i did not interpret ray’s moment of frustration in which he asked his mother to leave as indicative of ray being an unappreciative son but rather as one that his inner and hidden emotions had been revealed and expressed through anger. dhaliwal et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 4 5 ray’s mother dabbed the tears streaming down her cheeks with a tissue and took a moment to respond, “i never thought about it like that.” i sat with her a while ruminating on the notion of “control” and listening to her story. having a child diagnosed with cancer is like “being hit by a tsunami that knocks you off your feet” she explained. tsunami is a japanese word derived from tsu meaning “harbor” and nami meaning “waves” and is defined as “an extremely large wave caused by violent movement of the earth under the sea” (tsunami, n.d.). for ray’s mother, being “hit by a tsunami” was akin to being tumbled and tossed in the turbulent waters of uncertainty and fear that accompanies a diagnosis of hematologic cancer. her experiences thus far had been filled with great waves of shock and fear followed by gentler waves of hope only to be followed by another tidal wave of fear. seemingly, ray and his mother were learning to navigate the changes to their relationship and the new realities while also trying to protect each other. that is, they both talked about wanting to be understood, and although they shared bits of their story with me, it was evident they did not want to burden each other. perhaps sharing moments of happiness and sadness but also protecting one another is what being family means. in the case of cancer, which demands to be addressed and to be seen, the ability to protect is hindered and like when a tsunami hits, there is no protecting each other from the waves of fear, anger, and frustration that may follow. concluding thoughts one’s understanding of the world is “always already” situated within familial relationships. nursing practice, in relation to working with families, is not solely about acquiring and applying technical expertise (techne), rather, it is about being immersed in situations and deciding the right thing to do in particular contexts (phronesis). in every particular situation, the “task of moral knowledge is to determine what the concrete situation asks of him [sic]—or put another way, the person acting must view the concrete situation in light of what is asked of him [sic] in general” (gadamer, 1960/2013, p. 323). facing the uncertainty and unfamiliarity of a particular situation does not require ready-made rules, but it is still our responsibility to know and decide what to do. in the case of hematologic cancer, the patient becomes the family, and deciding what to do co-evolves through interpretation and understanding between the family and the nurse. nurses strive to understand and interpret to understand; one could say nurses are already practicing hermeneutically. for nursing research work with families, hermeneutics as a methodology presents the ability to understand through interpretation. at the heart of hermeneutics is aletheia, which is described as unconcealedness (aletheia, n.d.). aletheia occurs when we open the portal to new understanding, when we enliven what was dead or taken-for-granted, and when we remember what was forgotten or concealed in darkness (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). hermeneutic inquiry, embracing aletheia, unlocks a path to inquiry that would allow families particular experiences with hematologic cancer to be brought to a presence and a place that calls for further questions, discussion, and need for understanding. references aletheia. (n.d.). in definitions.net. retrieved may 17, 2020 from https://www.definitions.net/definition/aletheia dhaliwal et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 4 6 gadamer, h-g. (1960/2013). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). london, uk: bloomsbury academic. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., & field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. quinn, w.h., & herndon, a. (1986). the family ecology of cancer. journal of psychosocial oncology, 4(2), 45–59. doi:10.1300/j077v04n01_04 tsunami. (n.d.). in cambridge dictionary. retrieved may 17, 2020 from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/tsunami microsoft word antilla corrected proof.docx corresponding author: kerry thomas -anttila, phd email: kerry.thomasanttila@aut.ac.nz journal of applied hermeneutics august 17, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 understanding the other in the psychotherapeutic relationship kerry thomas-anttila abstract psychotherapy is often described as the art and science of endeavouring to understand the other. the difficulties inherent in understanding have contributed to psychotherapy being described as “the impossible profession” (malcolm, 1980). in this article i explore the difficulties of understanding in the psychotherapy relationship, drawing on the hermeneutic phenomenological thinking of hans-georg gadamer, martin heidegger, and maurice merleau-ponty in particular, as well as the thinking of psychotherapy writers. i note the relationship between the spoken word and silence, whereby words emerge from silence and contemplation. further, that understanding is enhanced by being willing to place oneself continually in the position of apprentice learner, by remaining open and able to tolerate uncertainty and not knowing and, to closely attend to one’s own and to the other’s emotional states as they manifest in the work. in describing a clinical case from my practice, i illustrate the complexity and difficulties of doing any or all of these. keywords psychotherapy, hermeneutics, hans-georg gadamer, martin heidegger, merleau-ponty, listening, silence this paper began as a presentation to the 11th annual canadian hermeneutic institute that had as its theme “the difficulty of understanding”. this theme is pertinent to the practice of psychotherapy, which is often described as the art and science of endeavouring to understand the other. difficulties inherent in understanding the other have contributed to psychotherapy often being referred to as the “impossible profession” (malcolm, 1980). what does it mean in psychotherapeutic practice to attempt to understand the other? there is a large knowledge base within the discipline of psychotherapy that addresses this question. naturally there are competing views and thomas-anttila journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 10 2 perspectives. as a psychotherapist myself, i have found that the thinking of both psychotherapist writers and phenomenological/hermeneutical philosophers such as martin heidegger and hansgeorg gadamer illuminate and complement thinking about understanding. in this paper i will explore “understanding” within the context of the psychotherapy relationship, while drawing on aspects of the thinking of heidegger, gadamer, and merleau-ponty in particular, to assist in this exploration. this will be illustrated with discussion of a clinical case. i will begin with putting some background context around psychotherapy as a clinical treatment and, crucially, as an encounter between two people, which is its traditional and possibly still most practised form. the following is from lewis aron and karen starr, american psychoanalysts, as they described what psychotherapists1 do: that is what psychoanalysts do. we listen to people in depth, over an extended period of time, with great intensity. we listen to what they say and don’t say, to what they say in words and through their bodies and enactments. we listen to them by listening to ourselves, to our minds, our reveries, and our own bodily reactions. we listen to their life stories and to the story they live with us in the room. we attend to their past, present, and future. we listen to what they already know or can see about themselves, and for what they don’t yet know or can’t see in themselves. psychoanalysis is a depth psychology. despite the claims of managed care, people still want to be listened to in depth and always will. that’s why there will always be patients who want and need an analytic approach and why there will always be therapists who want to learn it. (aron & starr, 2013, p. 24) in this brief but very dense explication of what psychotherapists “do,” the word “listening” occurs very many times, which we might reasonably expect. the phrase “in depth” is also used a number of times, again this is to be expected. psychotherapy is not a form of social contact but rather the setting and frame are designed to facilitate meaningful exploration that cannot be easily experienced in other settings. aron and starr (2013) also make a distinction between listening to what is said and listening to what is not said. here, they include not only the words that are spoken but also what is said with the body and what is said by the patient with their actions (or as they describe it, enactments). they also make a distinction between listening to the patient and listening to oneself (the therapist’s mind, reveries, bodily reactions) and, between listening to what the patient already knows and listening for what the patient might not yet know in themselves. the timeframe stretches across the patient’s past, present, and future and, listening over an extended period of time, with great intensity, is mentioned. there is the time inside the room and the time outside of the room; the confluence of these often leading to a sense of overall timelessness. as well as listening, aron and starr (2013) mention “attending to.” i imagine this phrase to have been purposely chosen for its somewhat broad and undefined nature. to my mind, “attending to” means paying close and focussed attention to an other. etymologically, “attending to” has meanings such as “to expect, wait for, pay attention” (old french) and “to stretch toward”, as in stretching one’s mind toward something or someone (latin). from the 14th century it carried the 1 for the purposes of this paper, i use the terms “psychotherapist” and “psychoanalyst” and “psychotherapy” and “psychoanalysis” interchangeably. thomas-anttila journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 10 3 meaning of to “take care of, wait upon,” from the 15th century “to pay attention,” to “accompany and render service to,” “to be in attendance,” and from the 1600s, also “to accompany or follow” (barnhart & steinmetz, 1988; harper, n.d.). the psychoanalyst nina coltart (2000) mentioned, as part of her description of, as she put it, the “moral infrastructure” (p. 122) of psychoanalysis, the necessity for a “single-minded attention to what is happening while at the same time allowing the inner flow of free-associative thoughts and images” (p. 117). it has been suggested by sheldon bach, another analyst, that paying very close attention to the patient is his “personal prescription for love” (2006, p. 133) and the “moral equivalent of a prayer” (p. 133), wherein the patient begins to feel held together and that more and more parts of him or her become more meaningfully connected. he goes on to say that paying this kind of attention, while maintaining one’s narcissistic balance, leads to being totally involved in the process, which then leads to a kind of “falling in love” (p. 133) with the patient, although he says it is dangerous to say so. it is indeed dangerous to say so and psychotherapists generally shy away from any public mention of loving their patients, for fear of being seen to transgress the very necessary boundaries in the psychotherapy relationship and for fear of being perceived as having inappropriate and amorphous sentimental feelings towards one’s patient, or worse, that mention of love becomes conflated with the perception of an acting out of sexual feelings with the patient. it is difficult to accurately describe the nature of the love that can occur in the therapist toward their patient. symington (2005) lamented the lack of words in the english language to describe love and talked about the therapist’s love as having passion, delight, regard, and contemplation. he described it further as having wonder in it, metaphysical passion, and scientific attention: “in this act the person marvels at the other. it is this act, the act of contemplation, there is a focused wonder at the quality of the other…” (p. 14). in any case, i would say that, given the difficulties of mentioning the word “love” in conjunction with talking about psychotherapists and their patients, in particular that this may be misconstrued, aron and starr’s (2013) “attending to” is a wise choice of phrase but it has to be said that behind that is a plethora of multi-faceted and often deeply moving and meaningful experiences and connections, for both therapist and patient. i would like now to move to a brief description of, firstly, a woman i saw some years ago for long-term psychotherapy, and then secondly, a description of a short piece from a session with her, together with my reflections on it, as they pertain to the difficulties of understanding in the psychotherapy relationship. i begin with some words from picard: “it is language and not silence that makes man truly human. the word has supremacy over silence. but language becomes emaciated if it loses its connection with silence” (1952, p. 15). “amelia”2, a 38-year-old woman, sits in silence for some time before beginning to tell me about something that had happened between her and a beloved teacher she had had in her late teens. at that time in her life she was very much on her own. her father had died in a car accident two years earlier and her mother, grief-stricken, had retreated further from other family members. i say further, because her mother had suffered from long-term chronic depression throughout her (amelia’s) childhood and amelia had always experienced her as distant and uninterested. another family member, with whom she was close, had died by suicide and she had also acrimoniously fallen out with a previously much-loved sister and they were now estranged. amelia had sustained many painful losses in her life. 2 pseudonym thomas-anttila journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 10 4 “i had this teacher who was very kind and really important to me,” amelia said, “and one day she said to me, ‘i often have the feeling that you would like me to take care of you, to bring you home and actually bring you into the family and look after you.’” amelia looked at me carefully as she said this, looking to see, i thought, how i might be responding to what she was saying. i looked at her. it was evident from amelia’s tone that she thought this had not been the correct thing for her teacher to say and that she had found it jarring and unhelpful. i was thinking that amelia fairly often told me about other people’s transgressions against her and that it was more difficult for her to be aware of her own thoughts and feelings. i often felt recruited into joining amelia in an agreement that other people were unfair and brutal, particularly towards her. and it was easy to agree with her, when her life thus far had contained many elements of the unfair and brutal. so, i found myself feeling angry in a familiar way towards this unknown teacher, who may or may not have said what amelia was reporting. it was extremely insensitive, even sadistic, i thought, to tell a young woman who had at that time suffered so much loss, and who desperately wanted and needed to be looked after, that she induced in her a feeling that she should look after her. we talked for some time about how this experience had been for amelia and i gradually noticed my judgmental feelings towards the teacher were increasing. amelia and i kept looking at each other, “i’m thinking of you at that time,” i said, “how life was so desperately difficult, and you were so alone. of course, you would have wanted someone to look after you, and as we have discussed, your wider family let you down badly, there was no-one to care for you, you shouldn’t have been left on your own in the way that you were.” “yes, but what about now?,” she replied. “i still want someone to look after me now.” i nodded, taking this in, thinking of amelia and her life; 38 years old, with a partner and two young children, still coming to terms with the losses she had had in her life, still in many ways not very different from the young woman she had once been. but in other ways very different. she had been in therapy most of her adult life and had been able to establish herself professionally and marry a man who appeared to love and care for her. she no longer, except in her darkest moments, thought that killing herself was a reasonable option and she desired to be a good mother, while at the same time often resenting her children for having a better life than she had had, while having to help to provide it. i am not, i thought, about to repeat the mistake that amelia’s teacher (perhaps) made and tell her that i think she wants me to look after her and take her home with me. we both already knew that without it needing to be spoken. and she had spoken it in any case, by telling me the story of her teacher and also how this wish to be looked after was still alive in her. in this way, time had been both stretched and condensed. and the teacher could just as easily have been me. this was palpably in the room and i was under no illusion that, despite my best efforts, my own “insensitivity” could have emerged at any time and, further, that i had been given warning. so now i was thinking about what this 38-year-old woman needed in her present life. not what the young woman in her 20s needed (we had already spent many, many hours, not to say years, considering this and grieving her losses together) but how this ancient and once perfectly thomas-anttila journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 10 5 legitimate longing continued to stymie her in her life, how it played out in her endless resentments towards her partner and children, and towards other people, who she thought should be only caring towards her, who she felt were never caring enough. sadly, she herself had been reduced to caring very little for others, instead only able to attempt to please others for fear of their adverse responses, thus creating enormous anger in her. i wanted to ask her why she would imagine that others should endlessly care for her and get next to nothing in return. i noticed my own critical feelings of impatience and frustration towards her. i had had these feelings many times before, for example, in response to her invariably very late payments to me, wherein she let me know that i should be caring for her for free and that her giving money to me was an insult to her and just more of the bad luck that she had always had to suffer, and where she presumed that others were far more fortunate than she. and where i got to feel the sadism that she was quick to accuse others of. in her actions she communicated to me how it had been for her during her life to be neglected. my anger and irritation belonged to me in one sense; in another way they assisted me in understanding amelia’s inner states. this is what i call “empathy.” not a “feeling for,” although of course this also happens, but rather, being open to experiencing the feeling state of the other, in the service of understanding. of course, this does need to be thought about as well as felt. to return to amelia. i knew that giving words to my feelings of anger and annoyance would not be therapeutic for her. i wanted to think of ways to convey both my understanding for the intolerable things she had been through, as well as some sense of a challenge to the now 38 year old woman, in order to help her to free herself from her patterns of being in ways that were detrimental to her wellbeing and to that of those who were close to her. it needs to be said that she was a very difficult person to be in the presence of; the person where i most doubted my abilities to be a therapist. coltart (2000) wrote about working with a man who evoked in her a “mass of angry, contemptuous and horrible feelings” (p. 122) and that the work was more taxing than she had ever experienced. i resonate greatly with coltart’s words and have found them helpful in understanding that this is a part of the very necessary territory of the work and in learning more about how to tolerate my own feelings and to use them to deepen my understanding of amelia (and other patients). it was always painful to hear amelia talking about how she knew that other people did not like to be with her and how she so much wanted people to care, but that in her actions she made it impossible for them to do so. in one session, for example, she talked about her intense anger towards one person in particular, who had recently slighted and betrayed her. for many sessions she ranted about this person, how horrible he was, how he had intentionally hurt and tried to destroy her. the words were always the same and as the weeks went by we seemed to become more and more stuck, as i swung between feeling on the one hand outraged on her behalf and on the other more and more frustrated and irritated as she seemed unable to make use of any comments from me around understanding what was going on in her. i want to emphasise here the difficulty for me in coming to an understanding in the face of what felt like a relentless tirade of anger and bitterness. as i reflected on the feelings that had been produced in me on my own and in my supervision and how they related to amelia and to our work together, a process began wherein amelia and i were slowly able to make convincing connections to her past. this helped her to see that while this person in the present certainly had betrayed and hurt her, the force of amelia’s emotional response, and its debilitating impact on her, had roots in events that thomas-anttila journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 10 6 had taken place in her own distant history, where she had experienced a number of other people as not having had her best interests at heart during a vulnerable time in her life. understanding in the psychotherapy relationship relies much on the therapist keeping his or her view open and hovering over long periods of time, of being able to reach back into time and ascertain events that may have impacted and shaped the person who is now living in the present, many years on, but finding it impossible to pull the threads of understanding together on their own. the therapist and the patient weave the threads together; sometimes the therapist can communicate his or her understanding for this joint endeavour, other times it is the patient, for whom something suddenly becomes clear. however, it is the two minds at work that make a difference and that create a possibility for understanding. heidegger (1927/2008) spoke about a “concerned being-with-one-another” (p. 204), however his writing about care (sorge) was, according to gadamer (2003), mostly about a concernfulness about one’s own being rather than that of the other. i would say that care for the other is central to the psychotherapeutic endeavour (and includes care for one’s own self). there is an overlap here, i think, between care or caring and the earlier discussion about the therapist’s love. perhaps aron’s (2013) “attending to” (p. 24) points in this direction without using the word “love” itself. in any case, a communication between two people in a concernful and caring way, at least on the part of the therapist, is highlighted here. much as i have mentioned in relation to how “love” is conceived of in the therapy relationship, “care” does not take a syrupy, sentimental form. rather, it is more as heidegger suggested, and gadamer paraphrased, a letting “the other come freely into one’s own being self – as opposed to taking care of (versorgung) the other, which would take away from him care for dasein” (2000, p. 284). communication in the therapy setting can be hindered in many ways, depending on the two individuals. for example, with amelia, i was constantly being placed in the position of the mother who did not find her interesting and who did not pay attention to her feelings or listen to her difficulties. this is part of how the past plays out in the present. amelia believed, no matter how interested i was in her, how much care i took in my interactions with her, and how much time i spent with her, that i was another person who did not care and who was not interested. naturally she would not have agreed with this on a conscious level and she often told me how helpful i was. however, her actions demonstrated that she often felt differently; this disconnect between her feelings and her conscious thoughts and actions had simply become her way of being in the world. my supervisor and i discussed amelia being in the grip of a psychotic belief that no-one was there for her, a belief which understandably translated into her feeling chronically alone, depressed, and aggressive. this understanding did help me to be with amelia and to carry on. it occurred within the framework of my own reflections during and after the sessions, and with my supervisor, as we pondered together what my experience with amelia was telling us. this relationship with my supervisor is akin, i think, to heidegger’s description of the apprentice learning to respond and that this ability to respond depends upon the presence of a teacher. heidegger (1954/1976) suggested that learning to respond is a lived experience of relatedness, which is transmitted by being in the presence of a more experienced other and by living in and through the particular experience. he gave the example of the apprentice cabinetmaker, who not thomas-anttila journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 10 7 only makes furniture but who responds to the wood, saying that without the responsiveness there is only “empty busywork” (p. 15). the teacher is also able to point out that which is thoughtprovoking, “that which calls on them to think, that which has relevance for their essential beingin-the-world with others” (kleiman, 2009, pp. 35-36). although i am an experienced psychotherapist, there is never an end to the learning that takes place. one is always becoming what one is and does; to take the position of apprentice is to be aware of this. and from this apprentice position, i can ask the question: “what does it mean to understand and why is it so difficult?” to return to the session with amelia, my awareness in the room with her of the impact of both my non-verbal and my spoken responses was palpable. i felt strongly that my words had to be chosen carefully, that they must emerge from silence and from contemplation rather than from an immediate response. merleau-ponty discusses this rather evocatively as being “sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven” (cited in dauenhauer, p. 116). this is familiar territory for psychotherapists and in the following, gadamer articulates the difficulty of language and how it conceals: language contains a self-protecting and self-concealing power, such that what happens in it is protected from the grasp of one’s own reflection and remains hidden in the unconscious. when one comes to recognize both the revealing and the self-concealing nature of language, then one is obliged to go beyond the dimension of sentence logic and press forward to wider horizons. (gadamer, 2007, p. 107) this speaks to, i think, something of the therapist’s task, that is, not to talk for the sake of talking, to choose words carefully from a place of reflection, feeling into oneself and into the patient at the same time, keeping in mind the question of whether the words are of any use, how to choose words that may be useful, and at the same time recognising the limitations of the words. as gadamer (2000) mentioned, “what reaches the other through language, what has been said in words, is always less than has been meant or was intended” (p. 17). at the same time, psychotherapists are familiar with the notion that talking happens while the more important things are taking place. which is not to say that the talking is not important, only that it is not perhaps as primary as we might like to consider. yes, it is important to choose one’s words carefully, and at the same time know that they sit on top of, or at best, alongside everything else that is being experienced. including that the words we say may not be the words that are heard: “an interpretation can never be to a patient what it was to the analyst” (friedman, 2000, p. 254). all of this and still much is concealed from us and cannot be known by us. gadamer’s (2007) mentioning of pressing forward to wider horizons means for me, in this context, moving beyond the simple exchange of words, taking into account the feelings in both participants, noticing the theoretical knowledge that may present itself and then how consciously to make use of it, the use of silence to deepen reflection, very close noticing and attending to the patient’s words, expressions and other non-verbal cues, the conscious awareness of and use of one’s own nonverbal cues to communicate that one is present and attending, of holding the gaze and averting the gaze as a way of being-with and letting the other be with him or herself, the dynamic interplay of these, the therapist tuning into their own reverie and what it may be communicating. varkøy (2010) is helpful here in reminding us of both the tentative and expansive nature of this endeavour when he says that “each individual will try his understanding against the other thomas-anttila journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 10 8 person’s, and in this way, dialogue can lead to the participants expanding beyond themselves. only then can they meet the unknown” (p. 94). this speaks to the evolving and intersubjective nature of the conversation, wherein two minds together are able to think what two separate minds cannot. it was an analyst (thomas ogden) who said that, “the minds of two separate people are required for thinking one's previously unthinkable thoughts” (ogden, 2008, p. 21). it was heidegger (1927/2008) who described listening as “dasein’s existential way of being-open as being-with for others” (p. 206). and further, that “being-with develops in listening to one another [aufeinander-hören]” (p. 206). heidegger also spoke of “hearkening” (horchen), something that he described as being more primordial than listening. it includes, he said, the sensing of tones, the perception of sound, the “kind of being of the hearing which understands” (p. 207). reading heidegger’s description of hearkening resonates with a level of experiencing during a clinical session that is known but not often articulated. what is often articulated are the words that are spoken and the dynamics that are present, however heidegger was talking about more than hearing words or noticing dynamics; there is a sensing or feeling that goes on before, during, in-between and after the words: “what we proximally hear is not what is expressed in the utterance” (p. 207), he said. what is intimated here is that hearkening is what contributes to our understanding, in many cases much more than words are able to do. my earlier description of the feelings i experienced in the session with amelia is an example. something of her experience was communicated to me, which helped me to understand. again, this is familiar territory for the psychotherapist. words are spoken that often bear little relevance to the reality of the individual. of course, like talking about love, this is a rather dangerous thing to say. dangerous because it seems reasonable to imagine that people must know their own mind and be able to speak it, that they must know of their own concerns. if the spoken word cannot be taken at face value, surely it makes trying to understand almost impossible? this is again where the intersubjective nature of the conversation comes into play. merleau-ponty (cited in dauenhauer, 1980) noted that one only knows after one has spoken, what one has said and, that speaking and hearing in a dialogue is an effort to work towards something that makes sense. in fact, he said: “to the extent that i understand, i no longer know who is speaking and who is listening” (p. 116). understanding is thus created together; this reduces significantly the importance of what an individual might articulate. one of my great dislikes is the situation whereby great note is taken of what an individual says with their words, as if he or she is not, as merleau-ponty put it, working something out in dialogue. i think we do others a great disservice when we hold them to our simple memory of words that were spoken. firstly, because there is no consideration of what is being said between and beneath the words and, secondly, because it denies that a dialogue is taking place that is leading towards understanding but that is not there yet, may never be. and perhaps most importantly, that it keeps the individual who is speaking their words in a place where change becomes very difficult. working something out means an evolving process wherein constant change is taking place. with amelia, for example, i had to know that her words represented a tiny part of her reality. this is not to say that i did not regard her words as important because i did. they were what we had to work with together, but they were not all that we had. we had silence and all that is within the silence, we had listening in the form of hearkening, feeling and sensing and we had the thomas-anttila journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 10 9 timelessness that comes with considering the past, present, and future and how they work on each other. we had the knowledge that words do not stay in one place but keep evolving as we change and that we need to keep open to this being able to occur, including being open to that which we cannot know. we also had what can be created by two minds thinking together and, as symington (2005) put it, we had (or at least i as the therapist had) contemplation and wonder, even feelings of love, which arise from the intimacy of being together with the intent of understanding. all of these contribute to the possibility of understanding the other. as i write, i know there is much more that i have not articulated and i am in the place i am in now, thinking about understanding at this time, with the knowledge that next week, next year, there would be differences in the words that would make it onto the paper. in the meantime, i am grateful for the opportunity to write on this topic; it has helped me to understand something more about understanding and in particular about understanding more fully my work with amelia and other patients. i have said that i write to understand and in this i think of writing as another form of talking, of using words to find out what i think. far from this being a solitary endeavour, however, i have had accompanying me in this writing the experience and memories of the many contributions of the canadian hermeneutic institute organisers, visiting professor dr. james risser (to whom special thanks are due for clarifying heidegger’s thoughts on sorge), and attendees, as we discussed together the difficulties of understanding. the enthusiastic nature of our thinking together has made this writing possible. references aron, l., & starr, k. (2013). a psychotherapy for the people: toward a progressive psychoanalysis. new york, ny: routledge. bach, s. (2006). getting from here to there: analytic love, analytic process. london, uk: the analytic press. barnhart, r.k., & steinmetz, s. (1988). chambers dictionary of etymology. new york, ny: chambers harrap. coltart, n. (2000). slouching towards bethlehem. new york, ny: other press. dauenhauer, b. (1980). silence: the phenomenon and its ontological significance. bloomington, in: indiana university press. friedman, l. (2005). is there a special psychoanalytic love? journal of the american psychoanalytic association, 53(2), 349-375. https://doi.org/10.1177/00030651050530020901 gadamer, h-g. (2000). subjectivity and intersubjectivity, subject and person. continental philosophy review, 33, 275-287. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1010086224341 gadamer, h-g. (2003). a century of philosophy: hans-georg gadamer in conversation with riccardo dottori (r. coltman & s. koepke, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. (original work published 2000). thomas-anttila journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 10 10 gadamer, h-g. (2007). language and understanding. in r.e. palmer (ed. & trans.). the gadamer reader; a bouquet of the later readings (pp. 89-107). evanston, il: northwestern university press. harper, d. (n.d.). online etymology dictionary. retrieved from https://www.etymonline.com heidegger, m. (1976). what is called thinking? (j. glenn gray, trans.). london, uk: harpercollins. (original work published 1954). heidegger, m. (2008). being and time. (j. macquarrie & e. robinson, trans.). new york, ny: harper & row. (original work published 1927). inwood, m. (1999). a heidegger dictionary. oxford, uk: blackwell publishers. kleiman, s. (2009). on the way to learning. medsurg nursing, 18(1), 33-37. malcolm, j. (1980). psychoanalysis: the impossible profession. new york, ny: random house. ogden, t.h. (2008). bion’s four principles of mental functioning. fort da, 14, 11-35. picard, m. (1988). the world of silence. southbend, in: regnery gateway. symington, n. (2005). a technique for the creation of mind. paper given at the second annual conference of the tel aviv institute for contemporary psychoanalysis, tel aviv, 27-28 october, 2005. retrieved from http://www.taicp.org.il/page/conferences_en.asp varkøy, ø. (2010). the concept of bildung. philosophy of music education review, 18(1), 8596. https://doi.org/10.2979/pme.2010.18.1.85 microsoft word markle corrected proof.docx corresponding author: joshua r markle, ma, med doctoral student, werklund school of education, university of calgary email: josh.markle@gmail.com journal of applied hermeneutics august 13, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 some hermeneutic qualities of a capabilities approach joshua r markle abstract this paper draws inspiration from two seemingly disparate cases – one of friendship and one of imagination – to explore some of the hermeneutic qualities of a capabilities approach. keywords philosophical hermeneutics, friendship, imagination, capabilities approach, amartya sen, martha nussbaum, hans-georg gadamer in this paper, i explore some hermeneutic qualities of a capabilities approach, a normative framework of well-being and social justice developed primarily by amartya sen (1980, 1999, 2009) and martha nussbaum (1988, 2000, 2006, 2011), and draw inspiration from a story related in the editorial to this 2019 volume of the journal of applied hermeneutics. moules (2019) relates a story in which she shields a sick friend from problems in her own life, so as not to be an additional burden (p. 1). although clearly rooted in an instinct to protect someone she cares for deeply, she acknowledges undermining the very principles that permit and animate friendship. friendship requires of its participants the exercise of several capabilities, such as empathy, the capacity to love and be loved, and using one’s autonomy to furnish that of another. it also demands of its participants two important sacrifices: trust and vulnerability. but as moules (2019) notes, friendship ultimately depends on the capability to choose to be one (p. 2). in the sections to follow, i provide a brief overview of nussbaum’s (2011) capabilities approach and make connections to gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. along the way, i draw on my own experience as an educator, both in a secondary classroom and in a post-secondary program for pre-service teachers. markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 9 2 a capabilities approach according to nussbaum (2011), a capabilities approach seeks to answer the following question: what is each person able to do and to be? (p. 18). that is, it is not simply concerned with a present state of being or doing – what a capabilities approach denotes as functionings – but also with a person’s latent potential for choice and action, or capabilities. this emphasis on the individual’s potential is one of the approach’s affinities with hermeneutic thinking. one useful way to conceive of the relationship between these two key elements of a capabilities approach is to understand functionings as realizations or manifestations of underlying capabilities. in this light, yet another hermeneutic quality emerges: capabilities are alethic. in being disclosed (i.e. in the realization as a specific functioning), what might have been is concealed (i.e., other realizations). in her book creating capabilities (2011), nussbaum sets out a list of ten capabilities which all people must possess in some shape or form in order to lead lives worthy of human dignity, listed below: life: the ability to live a long, healthy life. bodily health: the ability to have good physical health, nourishment, and shelter. bodily integrity: freedom of movement, from violence, and control over one’s body. senses, imagination, and thought: this might include basic numeracy and literacy as well as imaginative and metaphoric capacity. emotions: the ability to connect emotionally with others; to love; to be the object of love; a freedom from fear and anxiety; good psychological health. practical reason: a capacity for critical thinking and being able to make reasonable decisions for one’s life. affiliation: a freedom to associate individually, politically, etc. other species: an affinity for the natural world. play: a freedom to recreate. control over one’s environment: this could be political, material, and emotional control over one’s lived life. each of these capabilities is irreducible and incommensurable – taken together, they constitute the basis for a dignified life. one can see elements of friendship, for example, in nussbaum’s capability of affiliation. specifically, she characterizes affiliation as the capability to “live with and toward others” and “to be able to imagine the situation of another” (nussbaum, 2011, p. 34). but despite her fundamental role in the development of a capabilities approach, it is important to note that nussbaum’s is but one conception of the approach. exploring this further assists in illuminating the hermeneutic qualities of capability. in her book wellbeing, freedom and social justice (2017), ingrid robeyns carefully distinguishes between the capabilities approach as a broad conceptual framework and what she denotes as specific capability theories, or the various accounts, analyses, and applications of the broader framework that exist in the literature (p. 37). to make this distinction, robeyns (2017) parses out the approach into modules, which is helpful for exploring the hermeneutic qualities of capability. the modular account affords the opportunity to be explicit in terms of human diversity, the chosen capability space, unique structural constraints, meta-theoretical considerations, and markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 9 3 other aspects of lived experience. this not only reflects a plurality of value inherent in the capabilities approach, but of its possible applications, too. all capabilities theories share a common set of core elements. these elements are what distinguish a capabilities approach from other approaches to well-being, such as those rooted in human rights or the availability and distribution of resources. a capabilities approach must orient itself around these two fundamental concepts: functionings and capabilities. a capability, as nussbaum (2011) notes, is a sphere of freedom and choice, a rich set of potentialities from which a person may choose to realize specific functionings. a functioning is a state of being or a doing. functionings constitute one aspect of lived experience: that we are always in a state of some being or doing is a defining characteristic of human existence. in many cases, there is significant overlap in the nature of a functioning: one can both be numerate and do arithmetic, for example. in other cases, the state of being has no corollary in doing (e.g., the state of being a friend). yet another quality of functionings and capabilities is that they are value-neutral. that is, the capabilities approach reflects two important aspects of lived experience. firstly, it recognizes that not all functionings or capabilities are good. the capability to rape is one oft-cited example of a capability with negative value (robeyns, 2017, pp. 39-40). while a capabilities approach is clearly oriented around agency, it is so only insofar as that agency is in service of human dignity. in establishing functionings and capabilities as value-neutral, the approach compels us to choose which functionings and capabilities we value. robeyns (2017) notes that many capabilities theories collapse two normative moments into a single decision in defining functionings as “those beings and doings that one has reason to value” (p. 43). instead, we must carefully delineate between the decision to use capabilities and functionings as the interpretive space (i.e., to agree on a capabilities approach) and the choice of which capabilities and functionings will fill that space. this is an especially important distinction for complex moral questions, such as those we find in education, as well as for the practical decisions of living a life. should children be able to determine the content of their learning and how they communicate their understanding? should education cultivate in students the imaginative capacities to live a rich life or the skills required to be an economically productive citizen? to what extent should we cultivate the capabilities for vulnerability, trust, and friendship as a society? these are also the sorts of questions one must approach hermeneutically. at its most fundamental, a capabilities approach focuses on both functionings (beings and doings) and capabilities (spheres of freedom) as the interpretive space in which we can best understand individual well-being. it embraces value-pluralism in its strong commitment to human dignity. it takes each person as an end and the individual as the ultimate unit of value, but it does not do so at the expense of other aggregative approaches to well-being. rather, it is a complement to other approaches. a capabilities approach strives to tell us the most about the individual: how one can convert resources into capabilities, how one can realize states of being and doing from their capabilities, and about one’s ultimate state of well-being. markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 9 4 some detective work: settling in when in need of both relaxation and inspiration, i turn to whom i think is one of fiction’s great hermeneuts: george simenon’s chief inspector maigret. the protagonist in simenon’s slim novels bears little resemblance to others in the genre, say conan doyle’s sherlock holmes or chandler’s philip marlowe. surely, they share a certain mise-en-scene: the streets are gritty, knifed with shadow, full of sideway glances and hushed talk. it matters little whether the puddles they splash through as they walk their beats are in paris or london or los angeles. but maigret is different. “i don’t go in for deductions,” maigret barks at an underling in the yellow dog, as if taking a shot at his esteemed colleague across fictional space and time (p. 69). when a counterpart questions his method in maigret, the chief inspector asks what he means. “you know better than i do,” the man replies. “usually you get involved in people’s lives; you try to understand their thinking and you take as much interest in things that happened to them twenty years earlier as you do in concrete clues” (p. 103). rather than abstract experience into formal logic, like holmes might have done, or punch and stumble his way through high society’s seedy underbelly, as marlowe was wont to do, maigret, as a superior notes in maigret and the toy village, “settles into a case as if it were a pair of comfortable old slippers” (p. 22). moules, mccaffrey, field, and laing (2015) invoke the insufficiency of the “raymond chandler method” of inquiry (p. 62). “hermeneutic practice,” they note, “is a lot like detective work in that one proceeds on the basis of attuned perception, concrete discovery, and the imagining (…) of possible meanings and courses of action” (moules et al., 2015, p. 62). we typically associate interpretation – or, in the profession’s parlance, cracking the case – with the accumulation and analysis of data or clues, but this sort of concrete discovery is only part of a complex process. maigret’s colleagues mistook his attuned perception, his interest in the particular, for a lack of method. heidegger, as moules et. al. (2015) note, suggested that when “something addresses us in the particular, it does so as a case of something that is already significant” (p. 63). moules et. al. (2015) are careful to distance the term case from its typical sense: it is not a body of hard facts to be acted upon, but rather “something that has befallen one” (p. 63). caputo writes that the word case is derived from “cadere, casum, to fall, as in a casualty, for which we buy insurance” (cited in moules et al., 2015, p. x). but in hermeneutics, and arguably for my friend maigret, the case is not merely a particular instance of some universal. for teachers as for detectives, it is the individual that is of most importance; universals are simply abstractions. we do not presume to crack a case – it cracks us! as caputo argues, a case does not fall in one’s lap, rather one rises to the case: “we have everything we can do to rise to the occasion of the individual, to ascend to the thick, dense, rich, complexity of the individual situation, instead of lolling lazily amidst the thin transparencies of universals” (cited in moules et al., 2015, p. x). moules et al.’s characterization of hermeneutics as detective work lends itself well to interpreting capability. consider the case of friendship. we can conceive of what friendship might look like: a friend is someone who is there for you when you are down, who you share important moments with in life, and who you feel you can trust implicitly. these are the sorts of concrete discoveries one might make with an attuned perception (moules et al., 2015, p. 62). but what of the underlying capability set that makes friendship possible? friendship requires vulnerability, for example, but in friendship it must be reciprocal and what is said is as important as what is left unsaid. each offer of friendship is underwritten by a solicitation: will you be mine? and no friendship is markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 9 5 settled once and for all. rather, the functionings and capabilities we require to sustain so complex a human relationship as friendship are in constant flux. one must not only take stock of the present state of a relationship, but anticipate a friend’s needs, wants, and desires, to “imagine (…) possible meanings and courses of action” (moules et al., 2015, p. 62). a concrete example from my practice as an educator might offer further insight. i work diligently to listen to my students, to hear them, to interpret what i hear in curricular and pedagogical contexts, but i often become distracted by institutional constraints, the logistics of schooling, and calls for accountability. it is easy to forget what one is listening for, to forget that the goal of interpretation is human freedom and that capability is the shape that freedom assumes in lived experience. i regularly find the pendulum of my own teaching practice swinging frequently between the two extremes of reductive abstraction and a kind of teacherly punch-and-stumble, as if specters of holmes and marlowe have alighted on my shoulders. in the same lesson, i might as easily deduce ideas about a student’s ability from a test score as i induce them from a conversation in which i am forced to rely mostly on intuition. in cultivating a hermeneutic approach to capability, the point is to stop the pendulum, to remain vigilant of both extremes. i must remember to evoke my friend maigret. of course, a case soon falls in which one is obligated to do just that. in this case – the case of the mysterious rock – i observed a student teacher in a grade-three classroom during his first practicum in the education program at the university. his lesson was simple but engaging: they were to brainstorm as a class the general characteristics of rocks, then work through stations characterizing specific examples. in the first part of the lesson, students raised their hands to suggest the general characteristics of rocks, and the student teacher wrote them on the whiteboard for all to see. “hard,” a little girl called out after raising her hand. “yes, rocks are definitely hard,” the student teacher agreed, writing the word hard on the whiteboard. “rough,” suggested a boy, to which the student teacher again agreed, writing the word rough on the whiteboard. all was going as planned. in our conference prior to the lesson, the student teacher had mentioned one boy in particular. this boy had taken out every book in the library on rocks and minerals; he spent his recesses “mining” in the schoolyard; he insisted his father take him out looking for rocks on the weekends. he was obsessed with rocks, and the student teacher was excited to present his lesson to this boy. consequently, i watched this boy with some interest throughout the lesson, and as students continued to suggest adjectives – round, sharp, grey, and so forth – this boy looked increasingly pensive. finally, he put his hand up, and the student teacher smiled broadly when he addressed the child. “mysterious,” said the boy. there was a slight pause and the student teacher furrowed his brow. markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 9 6 “well, i don’t know,” said the student teacher. “i don’t know if rocks are mysterious.” to which the boy relayed a story of finding a rock with his father. the rock they found, said the boy, was hard, rough, and grey, but when his dad hit the rock with a hammer, it was filled with crystals. “it was mysterious,” the boy repeated. the student teacher was intransigent. mysterious would not end up on the whiteboard. “that is really interesting, that must have been pretty neat,” said the student teacher, “but is mystery a characteristic of a rock?” the boy scrunched his face up. “like, when i say ‘mysterious’,” the student teacher continued, “does it make you think of a rock?” yes, i screamed from within. the boy said nothing. “are there any other ways we could describe a rock?” the student teacher said as he turned to the other students. something of this story gnawed at me. it was not simply pedagogical. rather, i felt i had watched a scene unfold in which two impulses wrestled and wrangled for dominance. gadamer (1960/1989) writes that the principles of both romanticism and the enlightenment secure their validity through “the presupposition of the progressive retreat of magic in the world,” and in a sense i felt i had watched it recede before my very eyes (p. 275). my own impulse was to lament the lost opportunity to sustain a young child’s curiosity, but when i reflected on the lesson, i did not feel comfortable with the obvious alternative – writing mysterious on the board and moving on – either. at some point, i realized it was not these two impulses, but rather the ontological vacuum in which they consisted that required my attention. this manifested itself in the student teacher attempting to strip away the boy’s experience from the characteristics of a rock. the student teacher discounted mysterious as a characteristic of a rock because it did not fit into a methodical basis for characterizing one, namely the senses. rocks are rough or smooth to the touch, can be shiny or grey, feel light or heavy – but with which sense can i determine a rock to be mysterious? for the student teacher, the “absence of such a basis [did] not mean that there might be other kinds of certainty, but rather that the judgment [had] no foundation in the things themselves” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 273). what i lamented most was the lost opportunity for conversation, one in which each member is subsumed and led by the topic. what might the topic have been in this case? it was clear the impulse of the student teacher would have been to move the student from unknown to known, from mysterious to hard, heavy, and grey. a dichotomy of subject and object and the ostensible assurance of method are two defining characteristics of rationalism and the enlightenment. in its markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 9 7 drive for objectivity, gadamer (1960/1989) argues that one prejudice “defines its essence: the fundamental prejudice (…) is against prejudice itself” (p. 273). it was this impulse that made the student teacher reluctant to accept mysterious as an answer, but with some justification, too. romanticism’s rebuttal to the enlightenment was to supplant objectivity with the “world of myth, unreflective life, not yet analyzed away by consciousness,” which it conferred a “romantic magic, even a priority over truth” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 275). in doing so, romanticism situated itself in opposition to the enlightenment, perpetuating “the abstract contrast between myth and reason” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 275). it would do the child an injustice to simply accept mysterious as an answer. rather, it demands a conversation – but which one? the answer requires good detective work and we cannot arrive at one simply by collecting physical evidence. in discussing heidegger’s notion of being, caputo (2018) writes that our lived experience is not so easily observable. “we are not simply there, period, not simply present, like a rock or a plant which has certain properties,” he writes. “our being is more evasive, more self-evasive, so a hermeneutic investigation is more like detective work, looking for clues” (p. 36). but we know there is never just a plant, never just a rock. in discussing heidegger’s example of a table – how such an inanimate object can become enmeshed in and inextricable from our experience – caputo (2018) notes that it is not the table that is meaningful in itself, but in how it relates to those who live with it: “the table links us to other people who also sat at it, is marked by the times of the day, by the times of life” (p. 41). i think caputo is right to suggest that if heidegger’s sons happened upon the table later in life, “the whole world of their childhood (…) would come rushing over them (caputo, 2018, p. 41). much the same for a mysterious rock or an old friend. square brackets in her translation of sappho’s poems, the canadian poet anne carson uses square brackets to indicate missing pieces of text in the papyri. this is not a technical convention, nor does carson mark every gap in sappho’s work. rather, the brackets “are an aesthetic gesture toward the papyrological event” and “imply a free space of imaginal adventure” (carson, 2002, p. xi). a well-placed bracket is a rich metaphor for capability and offers a fecund space for hermeneutic inquiry. in this sense, the familiar notion of giving someone space, whether it be for grieving, imaginative flight, or friendship, takes on new meaning – and confers great obligation on those involved. the specifics of that obligation are variable. the brackets might be to acknowledge a student’s lived experience in the classroom or to furnish the opportunity for one to be vulnerable, to be a friend. characterizing capability as hermeneutic draws our attention not simply to the act, or functioning, but to its potential. heidegger writes that hermeneutics consists in the “quiet power of the possible” (quoted in caputo, 2018, p. 55). this is arguably true of a capabilities approach as well. of this connection between action and potential, ricoeur writes: we could say that a meaningful action is an action the importance of which goes “beyond” its relevance to its initial situation… an important action, we could say, develops meanings that can be actualized or fulfilled in situations other than the one in which this action occurred. to say the same thing in different words, the meaning of an important event markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 9 8 exceeds, overcomes, transcends, the social conditions of its production and may be reenacted in new social contexts. (quoted in arthos, 2000, quotations and italics in original) caputo (1987) also writes eloquently of this intimate connection between what is realized and what is possible, noting that the “real world is the world which, motivated by actual concatenations of experience, has actually taken shape in experience. and corresponding in this are the real and more or less likely ‘possibilities’ opened up by the actual course which experience takes” (p. 44). this idea of the opening up of possibilities is echoed by sen in his discussion of the role of education in a capabilities approach and its capacity to make “the horizon of vision wider” (sen, 1999, p. 199). the actual beings and doings of a life are clearly important, but they cast long shadows of potential on the “undetermined but determinable horizon of … experiential actuality at [a] particular time” (husserl, quoted in caputo, 1987, p. 45). capabilities represent this undetermined but determinable horizon, and the best means by which to explore these horizons is hermeneutic inquiry; a conversation – but which one? references arthos, j. (2000). “to be alive when something happens”: retrieving dilthey’s erlebnis. janus head, 3(1). retrieved from http://www.janushead.org/3-1/jarthos.cfm caputo, j.d. (1987). radical hermeneutics. bloomington, in: indiana university press. caputo, j.d. (2018). hermeneutics: facts and interpretation in the age of information. london, uk: penguin uk. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. moules, n. (2019). “protecting” the sufferer [editorial]. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1. doi: https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.61824 moules, n.j, mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. nussbaum, m. (1988). nature, functioning and capability: aristotle on political distribution. oxford studies in ancient philosophy, supplementary volume, 154-184. nussbaum, m. (2000). women and human development: the capabilities approach. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. nussbaum, m. (2006). frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species membership. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. nussbaum, m. (2011). creating capabilities: the human development approach. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. markle journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 9 9 robeyns, i. (2017). wellbeing, freedom, and social justice. cambridge, uk: open book. sappho, & carson, a. (2002). if not, winter: fragments of sappho. new york: alfred a. knopf. sen, a. (1980). equality of what. in s. mcmurrin (ed.), the tanner lectures on human values (pp. 196-220). salt lake city, ut: university of utah press and cambridge university press. sen, a. (1999). development as freedom. new york, ny: knopf. sen, a. (2009). the idea of justice. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. simenon, g. (1987). maigret and the toy village (e. ellenbogen, trans.). san diego, ca: harcourt brace jovanovich. simenon, g. (2013). the yellow dog (l. asher, trans.). london, uk: penguin classics. simenon, g. (2015). maigret (r. schwartz, trans.). london, uk: penguin classics. corresponding author: lisa alphonsus, master’s student, faculty of nursing, university of calgary email: llfast@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 june 13, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 weathering the storm together: how emergency nursing is an interpretive practice lisa leanne alphonsus abstract this paper was written for a hermeneutic research course in response to the statement: emergency nursing is an interpretive practice. in it, i share from my own experience as an emergency department nurse, sharing deeply reflective and profound examples illustrating how i have come to understand the practice of interpretation. drawing on other works within philosophical hermeneutics, i explore how emergency nurses bring our backgrounds and prejudices to work, and how we create meaning together with our patients. gadamer’s description of the hermeneutic circle is used to explore how nurses move back and forth between the part and the whole, both as ourselves as nurses and how we care for our patients. the importance of emergency nurses remaining vulnerable, despite the acuity and chaos in which we are often surrounded, is emphasized, as well as supporting emergency nurses in our work, in our care for our fellow humans. keywords interpretive practice, philosophical hermeneutics, emergency nursing, hermeneutic circle, prejudices, vulnerability, compassion “i wish.” the words of man about to be intubated. 100% fio2, 30l o2 through the high-flow nasal prongs and non-rebreather mask, gasping for breath. the most amount of oxygen we can give without a breathing tube. covid positive. desperate eyes. searching eyes. his entire body poised and pushing to take each breath. a respiratory rate of 40 breaths every minute. neck taut. alphonsus journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 7 2 tired. “sir, the icu np is wondering if you have been vaccinated?” “i wish.” his wife on speakerphone asks, “how do you feel about that?” she sounds uncertain. she is questioning whether he really needs to be intubated. “i want to get better” he snaps. it takes all his energy to get the entire sentence out and he goes back to focusing on his breathing. silence. the hiss of the oxygen flowing into his lungs, the beep of the monitor alarming his oxygen is low. it was my idea to call her. his wife at home, also infected with covid-19. i thought it a humane thing to do. it will be weeks before they may see each other again. if they do. i’m thinking of the future, of the recovery, and of my grandmother. she passed away from covid-19. it wasn’t pretty. at the end each phone call was painful, for each of us in different ways. but i treasured every word. and so, my gift to them, is a few more words. we tell him that to intubate him we will first put him to sleep, he says “good…. i need… a good sleep.” he looks so tired. he is tiring. we spring into action, an intricately executed dance involving powerful drugs which paralyze the man we were just talking to, we oxygenate his lungs for him. a breathing tube down his throat. unconscious. he will go to the icu now to recover. which he might. or he might not. we do not know. i wish we did. but we have done our part. yet it doesn’t end there. it never does. these things take their toll. we are left wondering. it affects us. why else would i have written this? i am no poet. i am only human. and watching other humans suffer is no fun. did he recover? i wish i knew. how many more people with covid will i need to intubate? how is he doing? how is his wife doing? are they ok? am i ok? i wish. emergency nursing is a profession like no other. it is a unique, beautiful, glorious, fulfilling, and altogether devastating professional line of work. lives are saved, and lives are lost in the emergency department. nothing is as straight-forward as it seems. patients come and patients go. alphonsus journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 7 3 it is a fast-paced, hectic, and stressful place to work, and amongst all of it, the hermeneutic practice of interpretation is at work. in this paper i will discuss what the statement “emergency nursing is an interpretive practice” means based on my understanding of hermeneutic philosophy and my experience as an emergency department nurse. using examples, i will explore how nurses bring our backgrounds and prejudices to work, how nurses and patients create meaning together, how we move back and forth between the part and the whole, both as ourselves in our nursing practice and how we care for our patients, and how we recognize and understand firsthand that our interpretations are never final. my hope for this paper is that it allows for aletheia, for something that that was closed, to be opened, for unconcealment (moules et al., 2002) both for myself, the writer, and for the reader. emergency nursing the beep of monitors, ringing of phones, people calling out, patients passing by in the hall, residents and physicians answering pagers, overheard pages, it is a symphony of chaos, and embedded into all of this, are the emergency department nurses. not only do we make sure that the department runs smoothly, the cogs behind the wheels, but we make meaning from our nursing interactions. whether we may recognize it or not, we are continuously interpreting, continuously making meanings from the interactions and situations that are presented to us. we bring with us our backgrounds and our prejudices, which influence the interpretations that we make. prejudice, as gadamer described, refers to the fact that we never approach an experience as a completely blank slate, that we always bring existing understandings to a topic (moules et al., 2015). prejudice “certainly does not necessarily mean a false judgment, but part of the idea is that it can have either a positive or negative value” (gadamer, 1960/2013, p. 283). these prejudices are important for us to understand and reflect on to the best of our ability. we must remain open to the possibility of “stumbling over our own prejudices or having someone else stumble on them and point them out to us” (moules et al., 2015, p. 44). our prejudices influence the interpretations and the meanings that we make when nursing, which consequently also influence our other areas of life, like a circle, playing a game of back and forth, serve and return. my prejudices affect my nursing care and experiences, which affect me, which affects all other aspects of me. the part of me that is a nurse, affects the whole of me as a person. this circular relationship, the hermeneutic circle, tells us that we must “understand the whole in terms of the detail and the detail in terms of the whole” (gadamer, 2013, p. 302). as we move back and forth between the part and the whole, we move forward in our understanding. the hermeneutic circle helps us understand how emergency nurses make meaning from their experiences and also describes how they go about understanding the patients in their care. going back and forth between the patient as a whole, and the details that are bringing the patient into the emergency department allows us to come to a deeper understanding of the patient. both the whole and the part need to be understood as fully as possible in order to take the greatest care of the patient. patients do not always clearly or explicitly say the “real” reason why they are coming into the emergency department, and although we will not be able to fully understand the entire whole of the patient, it is important to not get entirely caught up in the details only, but to alphonsus journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 7 4 remember that there is a whole, a person who we are treating and not just the symptoms the patient presents to us. the nursing care that i, as a nurse, provide is not separated from the other aspects of me. it is an extension of myself, as a whole. i am not compartmentalized. i provide care not just as i was objectively taught in nursing school (this is how to insert an iv/foley catheter) but as a person who has life experiences. the manner in which i provide nursing care is influenced by my past experiences, starting from the way i was raised, all the way until an experience from the last shift i worked, or even as recent as a moment before i walked through the door of a patient’s room. i provide nursing care as a mother, a wife, a sister, a friend, a student, a daughter. all these aspects of my life influence how i provide care. my nursing care is also individualized both to the patient, the person, that i am providing care for, from me, the person, who is providing the care. for example, being a mother allows me to see things i was not able to see before i experienced becoming a mother. recently i cared for a patient who was six weeks post-partum from a vaginal delivery, and although it was years ago, i remember what six weeks post-partum felt like. the patient was anxious and concerned about how her perineal stitches were healing, and i was present while the male physician conducted a pelvic exam. i stood at her side and kept a gentle hand on her knee during the exam because she seemed very anxious. i asked her how she was doing, and during a particularly painful part of the procedure her hand reached up and touched my arm. just a few fingers on my forearm. i expected her to move her hand when the hardest part was over, but the fingers lingered, and stayed on my arm for the remainder of the exam. through that touch, in that moment, there was communication back and forth. i need you; i am here for you. i cannot do this by myself; i will stay right here. i am scared; i know it is scary. in these types of moments, titles such as nurse and patient fade away, and what is left is just two people—two humans weathering a storm together. these moments are a private dance between patient and nurse. the conversation, the dialogue, where questions are asked and answered, where truth is searched for, that is private. it is not shared, it cannot be shared, with others. and even if we try, they will only be able to have a shadow glimpse of the moment that passed, the communication of what was said, and more importantly, how it was said—how a touch added an exclamation mark, how a look brought forth tears. this is nursing, this is interpretation. the practice of interpretation in emergency nursing requires vulnerability, openness, and compassion. patients in the emergency department are some of the most vulnerable people and can be at a very vulnerable point in their lives. nurses must also allow themselves to be vulnerable; they must allow themselves to be present in their work. a few months ago, i helped care for a patient who was ten days post-partum, but her baby had passed away at four days old. we have a protocol in the emergency department that allows any patient less than 14 days post-partum to go straight to the labour and delivery floor to be assessed by the obstetrician there. however, due to the devastating circumstance, the triage nurse exhibited compassion and told me she was putting the patient in my room because she thought the last place the patient would want to be was on the same floor her baby passed away and alphonsus journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 7 5 surrounded by new mothers and their babies. i could not have agreed more. when i went in the room to do my initial assessment of the patient, i was concerned about how it would go, nervous that i may say the wrong thing, but also trusting myself to know how to proceed, and remaining open to where the conversation may lead. i started on as neutral ground as i could: what brings you in to the emergency department today? she explained about having a syncopal episode at home, and briefly mentioned that she had had an emergency caesarean section ten days ago at 28 weeks and her baby had passed away after four days. when she got to this part i said, “i am so sorry, that is awful.” she seemed open so i asked what her baby had passed away from. she explained what had happened, speaking quietly, gently, and matter-of-factly, almost as if she did not want to make a big deal of it. but i did not want to leave it there, i needed to somehow acknowledge in some small way what she had been through. so, i asked, “what was your baby’s name?” she started to cry. “hannah.” then i started to cry, because that is a beautiful name, and she was a beautiful person, and it was heart-wrenching to think of her losing her beautiful baby. she looked me in the eyes, “thank-you so much for asking her name, that means so much to me.” moments, or experiences, like these are special and sacred, these moments create meaning amongst the chaos. however, they only happen if we allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable. i could have offered my condolences and left it there, but i chose to go deeper—to allow myself to feel and to allow myself to experience the experience. this example glimpses sight of the finitude of experience, how “one cannot know what is coming” (moules et al., 2015, p.45), and shows the importance of allowing ourselves to be led by the situation and the opportunities presented to us. it also exhibits the idea of hermeneutics as a “condition of being human, an inescapable immersion in making sense of the world, but always finitely, always open to reinterpretation” (moules et al., 2013, p. 8). nursing is more than surface level. a good nurse, an experienced nurse, gently reaches down past the surface to explore what needs to come up. the interpretations we make are unique to ourselves, flowing from our prejudices. the poem at the beginning of this paper exemplifies this. the poem references an experience that impacted me, and so i wrote a poem as a way to express myself. everyone else in the same room would have written a different poem, or they might not have written a poem at all, but it goes to show that our interpretations are personal. emergency nurses also understand that our interpretations are never final. through an everevolving shifting of meanings and contexts and situations, we understand that “it is not our lot, as humans, to know once and for all” (moules et al., 2013, p. 9). the interpretations we make are not conclusions; they are doorways that lead us further into our profession, further into our understanding of our patients, of each other, and of ourselves. concluding thoughts emergency nursing is an interpretive practice. whether nurses are aware of it or not, they constantly create meaning from their experiences. the hermeneutic practice of interpretation allows us to decide “how we might live well with others, how we might, given their lives, help them heal or learn” (moules et al., 2017, p. 5). we move back and forth between the part and the whole as our prejudices affect our nursing care, and our nursing experiences affect us as a whole. alphonsus journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 7 6 we create meaning together with our patients, understanding that our interpretations are never final. we experience moments of clarity and understanding when we allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable. understanding the experience of the emergency nurse is crucial to ensuring they are supported in the work that they do. the work of caring, of compassion, of supporting and healing, of taking care of the patients in their care, the people in their care. we are, after all, just humans taking care of other humans. weathering the storm together. don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets. for it, and knowledge, can raise men to the divine. ludwig van beethoven. references gadamer, h-g. (1960/2013). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.; 2nd rev. ed.). bloomsberry academic. moules, n.j. (2002). hermeneutic inquiry: paying heed to history and hermes. an ancestral substantive, and methodological tale. international journal of qualitative methods, 1(3), 1-19. https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/ijom/article/view/4597/3750 moules, n.j., jardine, d.w., mccaffrey, g.p., & brown, c. (2013) isn’t all of oncology hermeneutic? journal of applied hermeneutics, article 3. http://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53221/pdf moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. peter lang. moules, n.j., venturato, l., laing, c.m., & field, j.c. (2017). is it really yesterday’s war? what gadamer has to say about what gets counted. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 1. http://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53302/pdf https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/ijom/article/view/4597/3750 http://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53221/pdf http://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53302/pdf corresponding author: david w jardine, phd professor emeritus, university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 online date ©the author(s) 2022 doi: https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2022i2022. 74349 guest editorial beet juice david w. jardine i’m not trying to describe experience – my own or yours. i’m trying to shape my experiences, my immediacies, into more beautiful shapes and contours, richer colors, full of more vivid memories and vivid dreaming, more alert to the relations roiling under the surface of my “livedexperience.” my own life – any life – is full of forgetting, is inevitably wrought with inadequacy, is inevitably finite, located, frail and limited. every tradition, every voice, betrays itself when it https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74349 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74349 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74349 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74349 jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 1 2 feels itself fully adequate: the issue today is not simply a matter of making pure choices for one tradition over another, which is psychologically and conceptually impossible anyway, given that there is no such thing as a ‘pure’ tradition. the real challenge is to face the truth that no one tradition can say everything that needs to be said about the full expression of human experience in the world and that what the global community requires more than anything else is mutual recognition of the various poverties of every tradition. the search to cure the poverty of one’s own tradition works in all directions at once. (smith, 2020, p. 334) and that search only works if those traditions that have been marginalized, silenced, or betrayed come to full voice, not because we might choose this instead of that, but because each voice can only be what it is in the daresay beautifully poverty-stricken admixture of the whole of the breath of things. the very same be true of any one life, whatever tradition it beckons, summons, forgets, or remembers. this is our collective fate, and it includes the fate of ravens, too, of planted beets and their harvest, of the fail of that harvest or its success. these relations –where my living experience, with all its traditional entrails, is exposed to the open wind -are often buried, forgotten, distorted, marginalized, unheeded, simply fallen for, taken for granted, occluded, distorted, intermingled. and, well, often suppressed, repressed, denied, erased, stolen, subjectivized, objectivized, exaggerated, and so on and so on. and let me invert this. i’m trying to plumb things hidden from the immediacies of my own selfreflection – things lingering in the words we use, i use, ideas we wittingly or unwittingly inherited and this from wherever and whomever. “neither . . . is it enough simply to ‘let differences be,’ as if there could never be any points of address between them” (smith, 2020, p. 334). the proof? i live on unceded land and i breathe. these are both proofs the attention to which will take more life than i’ve got left. that attention can never be adequate to the full expression of human experience in the world because that fullness keeps coming. it is the desire for it to finally fully succeed that is the real common enemy in relation to which we must all marshal our poor little gifts (pre-latin pau-paros, --you can spot the word “pauper” here, involving parare “to produce, bring forth” and the root pau“few, little” (see the online etymological dictionary entries under “poor” and “poverty”). so, i take a picture and offer it here for good reasons that i am too frail to understand all by myself. i think it is beautiful and that may be part of our locales of commiseration and healing. it is not “enough.” we’ve all become of mixed blood, earth blood. beet juice. it’s a joke. smile. here we are, all of us. first born. second born. indigenous. exogenous. no one of these locales is fully adequate to the things themselves. the voles eat up the composted leaves after we’ve sorted the edible beet greens. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 1 3 references online etymological dictionary. (n.d.) https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=poor and https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=poverty. smith, d.g. (2020). the farthest west is but the farthest east: the long way of oriental/occidental engagement. in d. smith, confluences: intercultural journeying in research and teaching. from hermeneutics to a changing world order (pp. 311-338). information age publishing. smith, d.g. (2020). confluences: intercultural journeying in research and teaching. from hermeneutics to a changing world order. information age publishing. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=poor https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=poverty microsoft word wong corrected proof.docx corresponding author: katherine wong, rn, doctoral student faculty of nursing, university of calgary email: katherine.wong1@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 september 22, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 speaking in pictures and play: the unique approach to using art and play as data in hermeneutic research katherine wong abstract art and play are the language of children. the act of creating art and playing help children to make sense of their world. pediatric clinicians have used art and play as therapy to elicit conversation, to allow children to express themselves, and to overcome communication barriers when children may not have the vocabulary to articulate what they would like to say. art and play therapy have demonstrated their utility in practice, and this way of communicating should be equally effective as part of data collection and analysis in hermeneutic research. by approaching hermeneutic interviews with children in a novel way, using art and play to augment what is said in an interview, new opportunities for understanding the worlds of children may arise. keywords art, play, children, hermeneutic research, data collection, data analysis play and art are recognized as the language of children, and allow them to understand their reality and to be understood by those who engage in these activities with children (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; kramer, 1971; piaget & inhelder, 2000; sourkes, 1991, 1995). depending on their developmental and cognitive age, a child may not have the vocabulary to articulate their experiences with words (sourkes, 2018). art and play therapy is often utilized by pediatric healthcare teams to allow children and clinicians to communicate in a common language (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; sourkes, 1995; sourkes et al., 2005). the ability to communicate effectively with children in a clinical setting using art and play should extend to research interviews with pediatric populations (wong, 2019). wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 9 2 hans-georg gadamer established hermeneutics as a philosophical examination of human understanding through interpretation (gadamer, 1960/2004). moules et al. (2015) have developed a research methodology founded on gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics that inquires through open dialogue, careful listening, deep reading, and interpretive writing to better understand phenomena and experiences, rather than explain them. research that utilizes other ways that children communicate, through play or art, could provide researchers with a common language to facilitate conversation and deepen our understanding of the experiences of children (montreuil & carnevale, 2016; wong, 2019). hermeneutics provides a substantive philosophical foundation for the interpretation of art and its communicative power, as well as an interpretive research methodology that allows the researcher and their participants to use art and play to meaningfully discuss a topic and arrive at an elevated understanding of experience. data in hermeneutic research to be situated in a meaningful world is to live in a world that is understood and interpreted through language: the language of art, nature, and “in short, any language that things have” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 470; moules et al., 2015). language is not a simple verbal narration describing experiences or phenomena; it provides humans with a foundation for understanding the world (gadamer, 1960/2004; moules et al., 2015). in hermeneutic research, everything that helps to further clarify the interpretation of a topic may be considered data, including the visual arts, textbooks, policy, poetry, literary or scholarly texts, and conversation (moules et al., 2015). this extended concept of language, as more than the spoken or written word, includes the universal languages of children: art and play (sourkes, 1991). the idea to use art and play as data in research developed from my experiences in practice. rather than asking how theory may work in practice, caputo (2018) stated that, “when it comes to hermeneutics . . . the right question is, ‘these are good practices, how do they work in theory?’” (p. 221). as a nurse practicing in pediatric palliative care, i have seen how providing children with familiar and unthreatening activities can establish trust and enhance communication, either by providing the child with a distraction from what they are discussing, or by using art or gesture to communicate without words. because art and play are so effective in establishing a shared understanding and language in practice, i am confident in my theory that it will work in hermeneutic research. art as data art and its ability to depict the seemingly unfathomable or mysterious truths of human life is an important position of thought in hermeneutic philosophy, as it includes both the event of understanding through the experience of art and of making oneself understood through the creation of art (zimmermann, 2015). gadamer described the communicative nature of art as the “speechless language of the pictorial image” (gadamer, 1977/1986, p. 83), as a speechlessness that is in its own way a kind of speech. gadamer (1977/1986) wrote that the german word stumm (mute) is linked to the word stammeln (to stutter or stammer); the difficulty of the stutterer does not lie in the fact that he has nothing to say, but that he has too much to say at once and is incapable of finding the words to express the abundance of things on his mind. if an artist could express what wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 9 3 they had to say in words, there would be no need for them to create the artistic form of their ideas (gadamer, 1977/1986). when art is used as an intermediary in conversation with children in the clinical setting, questions can be posed earlier in the process, conversation deepens, and children may provide an explanation of their drawing, thereby revealing their reality (sourkes, 1991). creating art is a developmentally appropriate medium for children to express themselves and to be understood, regardless of their ability to describe their experiences with words (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; kramer, 1971; sourkes, 1991, 2018). children in the concrete operational stage of cognitive development, about age seven to 12 years, are able to produce mental images from their experiences and re-produce them in the form of art (parsons, 1987; piaget & inhelder, 2000). adolescent children are able to recognize and use metaphor and symbol in art (parsons, 1987), which may yield rich data if the child is interviewed about the meaning of their work. a colleague once told me about a bereaved identical twin brother, who sculpted a totem that featured prominent eyes in his sibling support group. this prompted my colleague to ask what the eyes meant, to which he replied, “every day when i look in the mirror, it’s my brother’s eyes that are looking back at me. we have the same eyes.” had this been collected as data in a hermeneutic interview, the researcher would have a surplus of language to interpret – the combination of the words and the image provide a widened horizon for the researcher to explore. the artwork of children becomes a complementary set of data, where the researcher may analyze the artistic creations of children within the context of the interview dialogue to ensure that the interpretations are derived from the child’s explanation of what they were trying to convey. the researcher benefits from both the interview transcript text and the generated artwork to inform their interpretations. the convergence of the textual and the visual enhances the researcher’s ability to interpret the experiences of the other, giving them more data to be addressed by, and expanding the possibility of understanding further than what may have been achieved through dialogue in populations where the “right” words are not so readily available. the play of art (gadamer, 1977/1986) also guides the interpretation of children’s artwork. entering into play in hermeneutics is to step outside of oneself, immerse oneself in the game, and become open to the possible outcomes of interpretation and re-interpretation (moules et al., 2015; zimmermann, 2015). for gadamer, the play of art is not about escaping reality, but fully engaging in it: “the play of art is a mirror that . . . constantly arises anew, and in which we catch sight of ourselves in a way that is often unexpected or unfamiliar: what we are, what we might be, and what we are about” (gadamer, 1977/1986, p. 130). philosophical hermeneutics emphasizes the ability of art to convey real knowledge about ourselves and reveal the invisible forces that shape our lives, allowing us to cope with them (zimmermann, 2015); the goals of art therapy align particularly well with hermeneutics in this sense. artwork can help explore the meaning of a person’s experience (devlin, 2006), and can be analyzed hermeneutically to construct new meanings that arise from careful interpretation and the play of art. wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 9 4 play as data play is a familiar concept for pediatrics and hermeneutics. laing and moules (2013) emphasized the ability of play at children’s cancer camps to reshape and understand experiences, to find belonging and community, and to heal. in the population that i work with as a pediatric palliative nurse, children are constantly confronting reality rather than fantasy, and the opportunity to provide levity and fun through play is all the more valuable (sourkes, 1995). therapeutic play is another mode of communication between children and clinicians that may help children to convey their experiences and realities without needing to have a “sit down” conversation in a traditional therapy setting (sourkes, 1995). when a child is engaged in therapeutic play, the illusion afforded by play is what exposes the child’s reality (sourkes, 1995). the truth being revealed as an illusion may seem counterintuitive, but is congruent with the hermeneutic concept of aletheia, the event of concealment and unconcealment (moules et al., 2015), where “truth occurs precisely in itself in that concealing denial” (heidegger, 1971, p. 52). the illusion provided by play is transparent, revealing the child’s reality to the therapist and the child, without either having to address it directly (sourkes, 1995). piaget and inhelder (2000) theorized that symbolic play functioned for children in what an adult might consider to be their internal dialogue, and that rather than simply recalling and discussing an event, children require more direct symbolism to convey their experiences. symbolic play is “the creation of symbols at will in order to express everything in the child’s life experience that cannot be formulated or assimilated by means of [verbal] language alone” (piaget & inhelder, 2000, p. 61). as with the creation of art, play serves as an intermediary language for children and adults, and allows children to understand their realities and convey their experiences to others. therapeutic and symbolic play demonstrate their efficacy in practice, and may be useful as data to analyze and interpret for hermeneutic researchers. lang et al. (2020) used digital story telling in their hermeneutic research, where cocreated films served as data for analysis and interpretation. the method of data collection and analysis that lang et al. (2020) established may also be applied to research interviews with children. children could be interviewed using play to strengthen communication and filmed for visual analysis alongside the transcript text. engaging with children in research the use of play and art requires that the researcher comes into play with the child, in the literal and philosophical sense, and to be open to allowing these modes of being to show them something new. the flexibility of what might be considered as data in hermeneutic research provides an opportunity to think of new ways to engage participants who have traditionally been excluded from or under-represented in research, whether it is because of communication challenges, perceived cognitive or developmental deficits, or ethical concerns regarding the discussion of sensitive topics. through the novel approach of using art and play in hermeneutic research, the barriers to understanding are eased and allow children to participate in research and reveal their realities in familiar, enjoyable, and unique ways. wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 9 5 references aasgaard, t., & edwards, m. (2012). children expressing themselves. in a. goldman, r. hain,& s. liben (eds.), the oxford textbook of palliative care for children (2 ed., pp. 101-116). oxford university press. caputo, j.d. (2018). heremeneutics: facts and interpretation in the age of information. pelican. devlin, b. (2006). art therapy: the art of healing and knowing in cancer and palliative care. international journal of palliative nursing, 12(1), 16-19. https://doi.org/10.12968/ijpn.2006.12.1.20391 gadamer, h-g. (1989). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshal, trans.; 2nd rev. ed.). continuum. (original work published 1960) gadamer, h-g. (1986). the relevance of the beautiful and other essays (n. walker, trans.). cambridge university press. (original work published 1977) heidegger, m. (1971). poetry, language, and thought (a. hofstadter, trans.). harper & row. kramer, e. (1971). art as therapy with children. shocken books. laing, c.m., & moules, n.j. (2013). the island of misfit toys. journal of applied hermeneutics, 3, article 8. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i2 lang, m., laing, c.m., ewashen, c., & moules, n.j (2020). digital stories as data: an etymological and philosophical exploration of cocreated data in philosophical hermeneutic health research. international journal of qualitative methods, 19, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406920913673 montreuil, m., & carnevale, f.a. (2016). a concept analysis of children’s agency within the health literature. journal of child health care, 20(4), 503-511. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367493515620914 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. peter lang. parsons, m.j. (1987). how we understand art: a cognitive developmental account of aesthetic experience. cambridge university press. piaget, j., & inhelder, b. (1969). the psychology of the child (h. weaver, trans.; 2nd ed.). basic books. (original work published 1966) sourkes, b.m. (1991). truth to life: art therapy with pediatric oncology patients and their siblings. journal of psychosocial oncology, 9(2), 81-96. https://doi.org/10.1300/j077v09n02_06 wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 9 6 sourkes, b.m. (1995). armfuls of time: the psychological experience of a child with life-limiting illness. routledge. sourkes, b.m. (2018). children’s artwork: its value in psychotherapy in pediatric palliative care. child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of north america, 27(4), 551-565. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2018.05.004 sourkes, b.m., frankel, l., brown, m., contro, n., benitz, w., case, c., good, j., jones, l., komejan, j., modderman-marshall, j., reichard, w., sentivany-collins, s., & sunde, c. (2005). food, toys, and love: pediatric palliative care. current problems in pediatric and adolescent health care, 35(9), 350-386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2005.09.002 wong, k. (2019). raising children: philosophical hermeneutics and children with life-limiting illness. journal of applied hermeneutics, 9, article 12. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.69210 zimmermann, j. (2015). hermeneutics: a very short introduction. oxford university press. corresponding author: lorraine venturato, rn, phd email: lventura@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 february 10, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 book review towards an ecology of nursing knowledge: nursing and humanities by dr. graham mccaffrey lorraine venturato abstract mccaffrey, g. (2020). nursing and humanities. routledge. (pp. 127, $63.95 cad, hardcover) nursing and humanities by dr. graham mccaffrey explores the role of humanities in nursing knowledge, and mccaffrey makes a compelling case that humanities are an integral, though often invisible, part of nursing practice. he places nursing humanities within the sphere of health humanities and provides a cogent argument, along with examples and insights, to support the claim that the humanities offer not merely another form of knowledge to sit alongside science, but also a way to integrate the diversity of nursing knowledge into a coherent framework or ecology of nursing practice. in this respect, the book serves as an important development in understanding nursing practice and forms a possible bridge between the tensions inherent in contemporary explorations of nursing as an art and science. the book is aimed at nurses, graduate students, nurse educators and researchers, and anyone with an interest in nursing theory. nursing and humanities is rich with ideas and propositions, often thought-provoking and challenging in its offering of an evolution of thinking about nursing knowledge and practice. keywords humanities, nursing, medical humanities, health humanities venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 4 2 in nursing and humanities, mccaffrey sets out to chart the sometimes-murky waters of nursing identity and knowledge, and in particular, to argue that the humanities belong in, and make a contribution to nursing practice. in so doing, he establishes a convincing argument for nursing to move further toward reconciling our history of dichotomy and tension in understanding nursing practice. these tensions are highlighted throughout the text, exploring the art and science of nursing, flesh and spirit, mind and body, the technical and the relational, technology and materiality, theory and practice, and body work and knowledge work. as a discipline, we have moved from questions of whether nursing is an art or a science to embrace both options, recognising nursing as an art and a science. mccaffrey’s proposition throughout the text is not only that humanities have a place in the diaspora of nursing knowledge and practice, but that, as a profession, we need to move understanding beyond the inference of the “and” that, while recognising the influence of both art and science, still regard them as distinctly separate entities. for mccaffrey, the humanities offer a way forward to reconcile this separation through the development of a hybrid nursing ecology “…whose character lies precisely in its diversity, its borrowings and adaptations from other disciplines, and its constantly renewed work in caring for the health needs of others” (mccaffrey, 2020, p. 116). the book is aimed at a diverse audience, including educators, graduate students, nurses, and researchers, as well as those interested in nursing theory. it is not always an easy read, but it is compelling and provocative. mccaffrey has divided the book into three sections, with the first two chapters addressing the history and application of humanities in nursing, while differentiating medical humanities and nursing humanities, and making a case for health humanities as an interdisciplinary space within which nursing has a unique voice and identity. the second section (chapters three to five) unpack and extend some of the theoretical positions on the nature of nursing practice and the place of humanities. here, mccaffrey argues against the traditional dichotomous views of nursing knowledge and practice that divided nursing into art and science, technical and relational, and instead sets out a case for nursing (like other practice disciplines) as “…human activity that is consistent with both scientific explanation and cultural meaning-making” (mccaffrey, 2020, p. 4). chapters six, seven, and eight comprise the third section as a series of individual essays on applications and implications of various ways of thinking about nursing and humanities. these include the concept of pharmakon in thinking about health humanities as having effects in much the same ways as drug therapy effects; the place of prose and poetry in highlighting and making sense of nursing practice; and the application of buddhist thought in mental health nursing. the final chapter (chapter 9) looks to the future and argues that technological increases and post-human possibilities serve to highlight rather than negate the need for health humanities. exploring nursing and humanities throughout nursing and humanities, mccaffrey argues that humanities have a role, not just in making sense and identifying what matters in nursing practice, but also in shaping how we think about nursing as a discipline. as a human activity, nursing is focused on the rich world of humans, health, and bodies, and such activity moves from cells to systems, from individuals to communities, and from technological skill to skillful relating, in often seamless ways. mccaffrey explores these rich nuances through the following chapters. venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 4 3 chapter 1 introduces the current context of the humanities in nursing, and teases out the differences in definitions, historic roots, and contemporary positions of medical humanities, nursing humanities, healthcare humanities, and humanities from a disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective. mccaffrey highlights the different place occupied by the humanities in medicine and nursing and explores the humanities as a stand-alone disciple. he also makes a case for the use of the term “health humanities”, as a broad and inclusive term that facilitates the involvement of professional and non-professional groups (for e.g., unpaid caregivers), as well as the inclusion of art and humanities as therapy. mccaffrey also highlights the invisibility of humanities in nursing as an example of the close connection between nursing and humanities, so much so that many aspects of practice (for e.g., patient narratives) are often not recognised or considered as humanities but rather core elements of nursing practice. chapter 2 considers the place of humanities in nursing education and research through history, philosophy, and aesthetics. this chapter serves to highlight the difficulties in drawing a clear boundary around nursing humanities through unpacking the idea of nursing as an art and science. here, mccaffrey highlights the challenge of categorising or dichotomizing nursing practice and suggests that humanities play to the art of nursing and represent an attempt to make visible and express the human and relational aspects of nursing. chapter 3 addresses the challenging question “what is nursing?” and considers historical and cultural mediating factors rooted in institutions, but also in the debates that seek out the heart of nursing – namely the role of caring, compassion, and empathy in nursing. this chapter highlights the multiple tensions that shape and frame the way nursing is understood – between the scientific and relational, between theory and practice, and between education and practice. mccaffrey highlights the link between humanism and nursing and suggests a way forward – a possibility for humanism to bridge humanities and nursing. chapter 4 explores further these polarised views of nursing in relation to the rise of science and rationalism, as well as looking at some of ways that seek to restore balance and that recognise humanities and that support a “rich mixture of knowledge and practice” (mccaffrey, 2020, p. 50). mccaffrey explores pluralistic ideas of balance and blending using atlas and maps examples, cooking and recipe examples, and interpretation examples to explain nursing as a mixed practice. he argues that irreconcilable and competing paradigms of thought are largely unhelpful, while the multiplicity of ways of knowing in nursing means that various ways of knowing (including poetry and literature, history, and philosophy) are essential to understanding nursing in its fullness. mccaffrey argues for a preciseness “in how we use both science and humanities in the mixture of nursing” (mccaffrey, 2020, p. 59). chapter 5 tackles the divide between science and humanities, which mccaffrey argues falls short in practice disciplines like nursing, teaching, social work, law, and medicine. here mccaffrey posits that practice disciplines exist in a shared space of relational and scientific knowledge and he takes as his starting point the world of experience. this chapter goes on to explore the ways that science and philosophy come together in ideas about human experience that make sense for nursing and that help identify the place for humanities in nursing. this argument builds through exploration of richard kearney’s carnal hermeneutics, damasio’s brain, body culture link, and varela, thompson, and rosch’s enactivism, as well as a discussion venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 4 4 on negative plasticity and trauma through the lens of experience and mental health. using kearney’s carnal hermeneutics, mccaffrey positions nursing in the realm of the physical, and the body and senses as material to interpretation in nursing with its focus on “physical bodies in physical spaces” (mccaffrey, 2020, p. 62). damasio’s work supports a brain-body link that aligns with carnal hermeneutics, from its view of the brain from cells, to systems, to functioning in a way that highlights the interaction between biology and culture. for mccaffrey, enactivism serves to round out this discussion. an enactive approach to cognition is based on an embodied and related circularity between biology, cognition, and social and cultural factors that focuses on making sense of experience in interaction with the environment. mccaffrey argues that nursing must be “scientifically informed, but culturally active” (p. 60), and that this mandate requires knowledge from both science and humanities. indeed, he places nursing practice as engaged in negotiating the gap between biology, science, and experience and in “shuttling back and forth between objective and subjective, flash and culture, history and story” (mccaffrey, 2020, p. 69). in chapter 6, mccaffrey returns to consideration of empathy and compassion, this time in relation to the claim that the humanities foster empathy among students and health care professionals. mccaffrey uses the metaphor of the pharmakon, which is associated with drugs and medication, but which can also be interpreted as a substance or movement towards difference, to make the case for considering the arts and humanities as a mind-body altering substances (mccaffrey, 2020, p. 74). as a consequence, arts and humanities may have positive, negative, or no effect, in much the same way that medications and drugs may produce similar effects on the body. mccaffrey continues his thoughts on nursing and humanities in chapter 7, through consideration of creative writing, and, in particular, poetry and prose, and the role of story-telling and communication in bringing various aspects of nursing practice to life. here mccaffrey explores different genres and uses of prose and poetry – through nursing narratives and lyric poetry – in education, reflection, and therapy. chapter 8 draws parallels between buddhism and nursing drawing on four buddhist principles: 1. begins with suffering; 2. compassion in response to suffering; 3. emphasis on practice; 4. interdependency and relational/network affinity. mccaffrey argues here that the buddhist concept of interdependence aligns well with the complexity of nursing and uses examples from mental health nursing to further explore the concept of interdependence in nursing and buddhism. he provides an example of the historical narratives that drive mental health nursing intrinsically (nurse, asylum attendant, therapy, and custodial) and states that there is no one final master narrative and that all histories need to be considered. this raises interesting questions for nurse educators and researchers who often position from a narrative that reflects contemporary (as opposed to historical) narratives associated with best practice and evidence. the remainder of this chapter considers causes and conditions (stories), labels, and boundaries as touchpoints where buddhist thought offers insight into understanding nursing practice. the chapter concludes by highlighting the difference between interconnection and holism, and proposes that, given the lack of clear definition in relation to the term holism, interconnectedness may be a more helpful term for nursing practice. venturato journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 4 5 chapter 9 explores the future of nursing and humanities in light of the rise of the post-human and the shifting boundary between the human and the non-human, and between the human and the technological. this shifting boundary has seen technology move from “tool manipulated by humans and into the human body itself” (mccaffrey, 2020, p.105). mccaffrey makes reference to genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, and nanotechnology, as well as the increase in data and surveillance as increasingly shaping what it is to be human. he notes that, in light of this, “(n)ursing without the humanities is not nursing at all. it is robotics” (p.112). conclusion mccaffrey makes a convincing argument for the place of humanities in nursing and for greater consideration and recognition of health humanities as a domain of nursing knowledge. further, he hints at an exciting opportunity in the evolution of the ways in which we understand and think about nursing practice as an integrated practice, where diverse forms of knowledge and its varied applications come together in practice that is focused on human health, and where “(t)he future for humanities and nursing is in securing the importance of embodied, enculturated human experience when matters of health are at stake” (mccaffrey, 2020, p.112). importantly, this work points to the range of further possible applications of health humanities. as mccaffrey points out, somewhat ironically, this is happening at a point in time when the humanities themselves are under threat from shifts in higher education that prioritise economic and employment ready education. references mccaffrey. g. (2020). nursing humanities. routledge. 1 university of calgary 2 alberta children’s hospital corresponding author: nancy j moules, rn phd email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics march 5, 2017 the author(s) 2017 changing the shape of sickle cell disease treatment: a hermeneutic study of a case that changed a family and a medical practice nancy j moules1, catherine m laing1, & gregory guilcher1,2 abstract this hermeneutic study analyzes a case of one family who chose to undergo two hematopoietic stem cell transplants for two of their four children affected with sickle cell disease (scd) with full knowledge of the risks involved with curative therapy. this case had a life-changing impact on the family and on the medical practice of the physician who worked with them. as a result of this family, international treatment of early transplant for scd has adopted different protocols. in this study, interviewing the mother in the family, the physician, and the transplant nurse, and analyzing the data hermeneutically brings us to a deeper understanding of how change occurs and its profound effect on lives and medical treatment. keywords hermeneutics, sickle cell disease, change, family-health care professional relationships sickle cell disease (scd) is the first human genetic condition that has ever been described, but it has only been curable since the 1980s (johnson et al., 1984). progress in the treatment of scd has not come without a cost, and the decisions and choices that face families and physicians are complex and changing. in this hermeneutic study, we analyze the case of one family who chose to undergo two hematopoietic stem cell transplants for two of their four children knowing the risks involved with curative therapy. this case, as a result, had a profound impact on the family and also on the medical practice of the physician who worked with them. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 2 aim of the study our aim in this study was to employ an in-depth analysis of one particular family-physician encounter with scd and the decision to, knowing clearly the medical risks, proceed with the treatment approach of transplant rather than opting for the life-long risks of living with scd. through this endeavor, we gain insight into, and understanding of, the complexity of such decisions and the implications for future medical practice in this area. background sickle cell disease is a genetic lifelong blood disorder, named as such because the red blood cells resemble the shape of a sickle (quinn, 2013). due to the errant shape of the red blood cell, these cells tend to lodge in joints and organs, resulting in pain and inflammation. it is also the first human genetic condition described at the molecular level (serjeant, 2010). until recently, the only course of treatment was medical management through means of symptomatic control through transfusions, medications, and hospitalizations for severe pain (quinn, 2013). worldwide, the life expectancy for someone with scd varies based on cultural history and access to care. in the united states, for example, a life expectancy for men is 42 years and for women is 48 years (platt et al., 1994; quinn, 2004). in other countries, the life expectancy is not as high and the world health organization reports mortality rates in low-income countries as high as 50% by the age of 5 years (lee, thomas, cupidore, serjeant, & serjeant, 1995; odame, 2014). for perspective, the jamaican scd cohort study in the 1970s showed a 20% chance of being alive by age 20, and that standard of care remains the reality in some countries today (odame, 2014). sickle cell disease was first noted to be curable in the 1980s when a child with both acute myeloid leukemia (aml) and scd had a hematopoietic cell transplant (hct) and was cured of both (johnson et al., 1984). later that decade, a cohort of 12 children who were planning to return to africa from belgium all underwent matched sibling donor hct and were cured (vermylen et al., 1991). these children were returning to a setting of inherently greater medical risk due to endemic malarial infections and access to health care. this cure, however, was not without risks including graft versus host disease (gvhd), which can be life threatening and life limiting, infertility, or life threatening transplant related infections (quinn, 2013). in the 1990s, a landmark trial was published in the new england journal of medicine, which used the criteria that most hct medical specialists have since adhered to in determining hct eligibility for scd (walters et al., 1996). under this regimen, cure rates were respectable; gvhd was relatively low, but some children died due to a disease-specific learning curve around supportive care. sickle cell disease, therefore, is curable with hct but still carries transplant associated risks, which must be weighed against the long-term risks of the disease (bolañas-meade & brodsky, 2014; quinn, 2013). the latter have been poorly defined, given how long we have known about scd, and are in constant evolution given improvements in supportive care. a sickle cell crisis is a complication of these abnormally shaped cells blocking blood supply to bones (causing pain), brain (causing stroke or subclinical infarcts), kidneys (causing renal failure), lungs (causing respiratory and right-sided heart failure), spleen (causing infection or massive enlargement), and eyes (causing blindness). a crisis can be life threatening moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 3 and result in prolonged hospitalization for several weeks. chronic breakdown of sickle cells leads to low hemoglobin or anemia, and intermittent or regular blood transfusions may be required to decrease symptoms. stroke and subclinical cerebral infarctions affect over 10% of those who reach age 18 years (now 97% survive in north america to that age) (quinn, 2013). in young adulthood, many individuals cannot work due to the inadequately described impact of scd on the brain even in the absence of stroke (i.e., neurocognitive function) in addition to pulmonary hypertension, right sided heart failure, and renal disease. there is stigma associated with this disease, which results in denial on the part of patients and families, inadequate provision of emergency care for pain by health care professionals (even in canada), and conditions where employers are unwilling to accommodate the sudden need to take time off of work for 1-2 weeks with a sickle cell crisis a crisis which could even be a life-threatening acute chest syndrome (bediako, 2010; butleer & beltran, 1993; freirermuth et al., 2014; hank, sackett, & hartman, 2014). currently, with myeloablative hsct, event free survival rates are as high as 95% with overall survival rates of 97% (events may include death or graft failure) (bernaudin et al., 2007). infertility is an expected side effect from hct, and this – not the risk of death or gvhd is often the reason many families say no to the transplant option. dr. greg guilcher (coinvestigator), along with others, has led the way in pediatrics in adopting reduced-intensity hct, which can preserve fertility and is associated with 100% survival in those who engraft with no gvhd (the national institutes of health had one death in someone who did not engraft, and that person died of scd, not hct complications) (hsieh et al., 2014). as a result, if we can cure people with minimal risk and, in the worst-case scenario, they have scd if they do not engraft, we feel this curative option should not wait for complications, such as stroke, that arise from scd. the international literature and ethics conversations are also lining up with this view (bolaños-meade & brodsky, 2014; hsieh et al., 2014; nicket, hendrickson, & haight, 2014; roth, krystal, manwani, driscoll, & ricafort, 2012). unrelated donor hsct is still experimental; only 19% have an unaffected sibling match (i.e., 10/10 human leukocyte antigen [hla] match and not affected by scd) (lee et al., 1995). even for those who want to enrol in a clinical trial for unrelated hsct, due to hla diversity in people of african background (applicable to most but not all persons with scd) and less representation on the donor registry, many cannot find matches (guilcher, fernandez, & joffe, 2015). the genetic diversity in hla phenotypes in individuals of african descent presents challenges for hct. these facts support the case that we present here as a basis for our study, a case that arose in alberta children’s hospital (ach) and which, as a result of the treatment, changed not only the family but also the physician involved. the impact of this relationship has subsequently influenced treatment options for other families experiencing scd. in dr. guilcher’s practice at ach, one particular family was the first to request (or really politely demand) hct for scd for one of their children. in this family, there are four children: two born with scd (zaki and abayomi; for confidentiality, the names have been changed) two without (nkeoma and ileara), with both of the unaffected children having each donated to a sibling. the father, when quoted all the risks of hct, astutely stated that, in his view, they were comparable and not only acceptable, but preferable to the risks associated with a life of scd. he moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 4 also described guilt in transmitting a genetic condition (although the inheritance requires genes from each parent) and the need to "undo what he had done." the family chose to undergo a full intensity myeloablative hct for their son, zaki, his twin sister, ileara, being the donor. as a result, he is now cured with no major complications except (almost certainly) infertility. the family, while very happy with the outcome, requested to meet with dr. guilcher again after several years to discuss hct for their youngest child, abayomi, with scd. abayomi also received an hct, although it was with a different, reduced-intensity regimen, thought to be fertility sparing. abayomi is now cured of scd; the oldest daughter, nkeoma, was the donor. the encounter with this family changed dr. guilcher’s career as he examined the ethical issues of offering hct to a child who had few complications of scd (at the time of zaki’s transplant, hct was only offered if specific criterianow revisedwere met). he struggled with taking the risk of hsct without the child meeting criteria for eligibility that were accepted at the time. during the time when dr. guilcher and the family worked through the decision process together, the child had another pain crisis and the decision was made easier for all. since this experience, dr. guilcher has been instrumental in building a national and increasingly internationally recognized program for the treatment of scd using a reduced intensity hct protocol, and this area has become his career passion. the family has demonstrated a willingness to be very open about their circumstances and experiences, volunteering their “case” to be used as an exemplar of how one family can make a difference, and in their case, change the face of the management and treatment of scd. research design method this study was conducted through the research method of hermeneutic phenomenology. hermeneutic inquiry is described as the practice and theory of interpretation and understanding in human contexts (moules, 2002). it is a reflective, dialogic inquiry, concerned with understanding the world and the various forms in which understanding is manifested (gadamer, 1960/1989; moules, 2002; moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). hermeneutics allows us, with the help of others, to make sense of the particulars of these contexts and arrive at deeper understandings. hermeneutics nudges at the boundaries of the ways we think and converse about experiences and allows for language to give voice to experience that is often difficult to articulate. hermeneutic phenomenology is a sophisticated method of research well documented and executed within the human sciences, particularly in health care research. although philosophical in origin, hermeneutic research has been shown to have invaluable applied utility, offering insight into phenomena that has direct implications for practice (mccaffrey & moules, 2016; moules, jardine, mccaffrey, & brown, 2013; moules, jardine, mccaffrey, & morck, 2011; moules et al., 2015). this is not a case study, which has its own methodology, but a hermeneutic study of a particular case. we do not mean to diminish the family by classifying them as a case; we think rather of case in relation to its original meaning: moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 5 the word “case,” long since incorporated into medical, legal, and other professional speech, has this sense of arrival in its origin. case derives from the latin casus, meaning a chance, occasion, opportunity, accident, mishap. literally, it means “a falling.” in the 13th century, it had the meaning of “what befalls one” and in the 18th century began to be adopted by medicine. (moules et al., 2013, p. 3) this family then befell dr. guilcher and the case itself became an occasion and opportunity that was life changing. hermeneutics is a method that honors the particular and an in-depth hermeneutic study can be conducted with as much thoroughness and rigor with an n=1 as with an n=10 (moules et al., 2013; moules et al., 2015). it has been convincingly argued that sound qualitative research provides different answers to questions, and therefore different kinds of understanding than does research that uses measurement tools (moules et al., 2015). it offers the opportunity to conduct a more thoughtful, effective, skillful, and humane practice in contexts where prescriptive and assumed practices do not adequately satisfy the complexity of the situation. data collection after ethical approval was granted by the university of calgary conjoint health research ethics board, the principal investigator (moules) conducted in-depth interviews with the mother of the family, the allogeneic hct primary nurse/transplant nurse coordinator who was involved with both children, and with the hct physician. the physician is also a co-investigator in this study, but hermeneutics, as a method, allows for researchers to also be participants; in fact, it argues that they always are to some extent. the interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim for purposes of hermeneutic analysis. the transcribed interviews were then reviewed by the physician who wrote an additional reflection based on them. all of this work culminated in approximately 70 pages of single spaced data in textual form. data analysis in hermeneutics, analysis is synonymous with interpretation, which occurs in the complex dialectic of research interviews with participants and interpretive memos written by the researchers based on the transcripts. qualitative software is not used in analysis because hermeneutic interpretation is not based on thematic analysis or a search for recurring themes. software data analysis is unable to attend to the particular. we begin interpretations through a careful reading and re-reading of the data, looking for statements and instances that resonate with the researcher and provide an opening for understanding. in other words, we look for statements in the data that have “grab” in that they catch our attention and appear as avenues to shed light on the phenomenon under investigation. the initial individual interpretations of researchers are then raised to another level of interpretive analysis in the research team’s conversations through in-depth, rigorous, reflexive, and communal attention to the data. hermeneutic work not only generates a rich description of the phenomenon, but it must also strengthen the description through exemplars and rich data. in the arrival at interpretations, particular criteria guide the analysis: agreement, coherence, comprehensiveness, potential, and penetration (madison, 1988; moules et al., 2015). unlike some other qualitative methods, hermeneutics is not in search of themes, semantic coding, constructs, or theories, but rather seeks events of understanding to moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 6 deepen understanding of a topic in such a way that it can be seen differently and can ultimately be practiced differently (moules et al., 2015). the family for purposes of confidentiality, only some aspects of the family will be described here. the family structure consists of a father and mother (both carriers of scd) and four children, the eldest being at the time of the research 13 years, then twins at 10 years of age, and a younger daughter who was 5 years old at the time of the research interviews. the male child of the twins and the youngest child were affected with scd, and the other two children were matches for transplant. only the mother agreed to be interviewed for this study, and we admit that her perspectives might not be representative of the father’s or of the children. the interviewer, however, by way of observer perspective questioning (moules et al., 2015; wright & bell, 2009; wright & leahey, 1990, 1994, 2000, 2005, 2009, 2013; wright, watson, & bell, 1996) attempted to elicit other members’ perspectives. the mother represents the voice of the family for this study. the nurse the nurse in this study is the allogeneic hct primary nurse and transplant nurse coordinator at alberta children’s hospital for the bone marrow transplant program for alberta. at the time of the interview, she had been in this position for 10 years, but had worked in hematology/oncology for over 25 years. she worked with the family in the cases of both transplants of their children. the physician the physician in this study (and co-investigator) is a pediatric oncologist and bone marrow transplant physician at alberta children’s hospital and an assistant professor of oncology and pediatrics at the university of calgary. at the time, when this family came to his care, he considered himself “fairly junior…only in practice a couple of years.” the “case” the following is a description of the co-investigator/physician’s (guilcher) experience with this family, written by him after reviewing the interview transcriptions. our sickle cell transplant program started in 2009, when this particular family requested a consultation. zaki was affected with scd, and had had some complications from the disorder. ileara was identified as a 10/10 hla match, and did not have scd. the family wanted a cure. they came to the meeting ready to organize a transplant. bone marrow transplant (bmt) for scd has a 30-year history, only for those with matched siblings who do not have scd. the first case was a child who also had aml, was transplanted and cured of both. the next group were children who were transplanted as they would most likely die of scd upon their return to africa from europe. then came clinical trials which moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 7 showed high rates of success. these trials, however, had specific inclusion criteria as do any clinical trials. these criteria are to ensure the ethical conduct of the research and subject safety. in zaki’s case, he did not meet those criteria established for the prior research trials. but his family was not looking to participate in research they accepted the data from those trials and felt the benefits outweighed the risks. they felt that transplanting before zaki developed many sickle cell complications was the right thing to do to avoid those complications complications such as stroke, lung and heart disease, kidney failure and more. his father could quote these risks of scd, and wanted to take away this disease that he felt responsible for giving to his son. we agreed that the family had a valid case for transplant. we also wished to spare him of those life-threatening and life-limiting complications of scd. however, we wondered if the family really understood the risks of bmt: gvhd is an abstract concept until your child is living with it. but does any family truly understand these risks? yet we accept their consent for bmt. we also debated whether the generally accepted criteria for bmt for scd must be adhered to now that those trials were complete and the data available (the need for a child to have a severe enough phenotype, yet adequately preserved end organ function). do these criteria still hold now that the data are available, or is it still justifiable to apply them prospectively to ensure bmt is not used too liberally with its inherent risks? the family did not need to debate these points, but we did. we owe families autonomy to choose for their children, but we must also seek to do no harm, or minimize this harm. in the end, we felt we could honour their request, but zaki ultimately met the established criteria before bmt anyway, having developed another painful crisis in the meantime. in the process, we were challenged in a healthy and productive way. we consulted within ourselves and abroad, and grew in the process. we explored these important points of tension deeply, and felt we understood them better. we still struggled with the infertility risk associated with bmt for scd using protocols established at the time. zaki did very well. he still is doing well. we were relieved and proud. the family was happy. then abayomi was born with scd. she was born the same week as my daughter, at the same hospital. she feels like a daughter to me. i was sad for the family, and offered to discuss bmt when they were ready. we typically don’t offer bmt before 3 years of age for these “elective” indications. eventually, oluchi (mother) was ready to talk about bmt. she requested a meeting, and was pleased to hear that we had adopted a newer protocol with fewer toxicities and one which does not usually compromise fertility. with nkeoma identified as a match and keen to donate, oluchi asked us to transplant abayomi. at this point, with the very high rates of success, low risk of infertility, and no reported cases of gvhd with this new approach, we were ready to move ahead. i should note that another family respectfully challenged us to adopt the new protocol, which we did once sufficient data were available to document it was safe and successful in adults. there was no reason to believe it would be riskier to use it in children. we believe we have the only experience with its use in children in the world. abayomi did well. she had an easier course than zaki, with a shorter time in hospital, as would be expected with a “lighter” protocol. this conditioning regimen involves immune suppression moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 8 and a low dose of total body irradiationno cytotoxic chemotherapy. the family went from two children with scd and an uncertain future and life-expectancy to four children without the blood disorder. we all celebrated. this family has changed my career, and my life as a result. they challenged my practice and way of thinking. they did so in a considerate way, out of a duty to advocate for their children. we worked through the tension of different viewpoints with respect, and all of us grew in the process. at least i can say our team did. i certainly did. they changed our practice physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers the list goes on. our criteria for offering bmt for scd changed as a result. many children have undergone bmt since we met this family. all of these children are cured and well. our hospital has developed a program which provides excellent care for those who cannot undergo bmt for scd due to lack of a family donor. we have a world class hemoglobinopathy clinic. but families want a cure. we want to cure them, but we want to do it safely. we do not want any child to die as a result of bmt, or develop major complications. however, some children will have life threatening complications from scd, so we need to have more options for those children without family matches. so, we have opened clinical trials for children who only have unrelated donors. again, we have safety criteria to be eligible for such trials to make sure we do things in the right way before we have data. the data that exist for unrelated donor bmt show these children get many complications. but we will keep trying to learn more and find better ways. we have participated in the establishment of the sickle transplant alliance for research (star), an international consortium dedicated to finding more cures through bmt for scd cures for more children with fewer complications. we have a vision of helping in the development of more comprehensive sickle cell disease programs in africa. with 50% of children in the poorest countries dying before age 5, we have a lot of work left to do. i believe we can bring bmt to africa and cure more children, not just those in countries with more resources. this work has already begun with friends and colleagues in nairobi, kenya, and mbarara, uganda. alberta children’s hospital and the university of calgary have become leaders, and are advancing the field of scd disease care and bmt. this story started with zaki and his parents advocating for him. many parents have followed. i am humbled by their trust and respect. this family changed my practice, and my life as a result. the “butterfly effect” continues. i am grateful to them. an interpretive analysis of the case in hermeneutic interpretation, we weave the voices of the participants with the interpretive reach of the researchers. interpretation is aimed at starting from, extending, and then returning to the participant’s experiences and understandings in such a way that the topic under investigation can moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 9 be understood anew and deeply. participant quotes are presented in italics and identified as mother, nurse, or physician. being heard: “i’m not going anywhere because there is something wrong with him” for this family, the first instance they faced around needing to convince healthcare professionals came during the first pain crisis experienced by their son at 14 months of age. after two visits to emergency and being sent home after being told that nothing was wrong, the mother refused to leave without further investigation. fortunately, at her insistence, a doctor came on duty who had worked in atlanta and was familiar with scd and suggested the son be tested. the mother’s knowledge that the fact that her son could no longer walk was warranted both in physical evidence and in a mother’s intuition that something was wrong. a young child unable to weight bear could be dismissed but it warranted some investigation. the early tests in emergency, however, missed the later discovery that a blood clot in his hip had developed into an infection. only after the scd testing was initiated, did the full diagnosis of the clot and infection arise. this missed diagnosis resulted in a 3-month hospital stay and an introduction to the physician who would eventually change their lives. “being heard” arose again in this family’s experience around their request for a transplant without meeting the criteria for transplant. in consideration of this request, the physician had to gather his own experience and his faith in research that was almost 20 years old. there were historic criteria for transplant that were based on a publication that is now almost 20 years old, which made sense to have inclusion and exclusion criteria. of course, being a researcher myself, i believe in those criteria but they’ve been perpetuated as the criteria for which a transplant for scd should or should not be performed. (physician) against scientific “evidence” and guidelines, this physician was faced with the dilemma of who to hear and to whom to listen. when the family first approached us, they were adamant they wanted the procedure done and the child had not met the criteria…so not having a lot of experience for transplant for scd and a child who did not meet what might have been rightly or wrongly accepted criteria for transplant, we were hesitant to subject him to a potentially life threatening procedure without that experience and without those criteria having been met. that was an issue for us more than the family. (physician) literature on the knowledge of parents about the condition of their child or that “something is wrong” despite medical professionals indicating the opposite has been documented in health care literature (see farde & linja, for e.g.). the intersection of the expertise of healthcare professionals and the expertise of families (wright & bell, 2009; wright et al., 1996) is shown here in both in the mother’s experience of finally being heard in the emergency department that something was wrong and, later, in the family’s approach to the physician. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 10 weighing the risks as time continued and more pain crises occurred, the family was clearly informed about the option of transplant. they gave us options to see if there was a chance for a transplant, how life would look like. and then we figured out both ways if he didn’t have the transplant or if he had it, how it affected his life…if he would just live the deficient life, a transplant for him was better at the time…worth the risks. (mother) the risks presented to the family were out of concern and experience. the family said we acknowledge that these criteria have existed in the past, but were able to quote the risks of a lifetime of scd and said that nothing they had heard about a transplant was worse than what they were anticipating for their child with scd. which, with the eye of retrospect, i certainly agree and i’ve been converted if you will but this is also from a family who had not seen a child die of gvhd or transplant related complications. so, it’s one thing to say they understood those risks, which… this will sound contradictory given that we get “informed consent” for transplant all the time but i don’t really believe a family really gets it until they live it and they all live it differently so a family who has not had gvhd or a life-threatening complication of transplant will look at transplant differently than a family who has. (physician) the risks, as the mother understood it, were gvhd and infertility but, in their minds, the risks of him living with this disease were even worse than these possibilities. seeing her child in recurring pain was tormenting for them as parents. in the middle of the night he would just be in pain and there was nothing you can do to help him, you know. (mother) as a parent, seeing your child in pain is unbearable. often overlooked clinically, the parental response to seeing their child in pain can have effects on both the parent and the child at cognitive, behavioral, and neurobiological levels (simons, goubert, vervoort, & borsook, 2016). the needs of a parent whose child is suffering with chronic pain, while currently not well understood, is an emerging focus of research (palermo, valrie, & karlson, 2014; vervoort, trost, sutterlin, caes, & moors, 2014), as it is recognized that the resultant, sometimes maladaptive, behavioral responses of parents may influence the treatment outcomes of their child (simons et al., 2016). the complexity of parent-child interactions in the context of childhood pain in an important consideration within the treatment of scd, given both the acute and chronic nature of pain experienced by these children. you’re just watching him while he’s sleeping throughout the night because you don’t want him to stop breathing…you don’t want to wake up in the morning and he is not awake…so i stay awake at night just to watch him breathe…yeah, it was really huge. (mother) moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 11 there was some division in the beginning in terms of the family’s wishes and their claims to understand the risks and what was involved and what the medical team perceived to be as accepted practice, but the family remained committed to their decision. they were committed to transplant…there was a meeting but my recollection was that in their minds, the meeting was not to decide but to talk about how to make it happen…their minds were made up before ours were. (physician) however, despite the disparity, two other things happened to intervene on the decision: one, we had a visiting professor who is one of the world leaders in scd…who comes from ghana, so he’s got a cultural perspective as well...that supported us in that if we felt the family truly understood the risks and benefits, that it was reasonable to provide the therapy. and secondly, in the course of this discussion, he (child) had another one or two pain crises that made him fit the historic eligibility criteria. (physician) at two and a half years of age, his twin sister was found to be a match for transplant and a successful transplant ensued. at the time of the interview, zaki was 10 years old, a normal, healthy kid. and you wouldn’t even know. he plays basketball now, he plays sports, he’s active and he can exercise and run. i never had any regrets because i felt it was better and the most important thing is his organs were really intact; none of the organs were destroyed, spleen kidney, everything was fine, so i mean it’s still excellent so i think it’s the right decision we made. if he still be sickle cell, he’ll be on this one medication for life till he dies. (mother) the nurse spoke of the sense of anticipation and interest that this transplant irrupted in the clinical area. he was the first i believe, the first if not one of the first sickle cell transplants that we did here at children’s. and i remember at the time you know there was a certain amount of excitement and you know interest and so on because it was the first one. but i do remember also being a little bit unsure about the unknowns as well because it was the first one we had done and not really knowing what to expect with respect to how he would respond, how ill he would become, you know and then what would the outcome and follow-up piece look like you know how would he do. so, i remember that piece, i do remember the family when i first met them i also felt that there was a little bit of pressure from the family, especially, to get this done and, in a sense, wondering if they truly understood the implications you know of going forward on this particular protocol. because it was such a high dose toxic regimen. and also the third piece that really resonated with me was the sense of like the family, because we were not familiar, a familiar team, i also felt there was this feeling of sort of that trust, right, you know in being able to hand over their trust to us. you know there was that bit of transition as well. (nurse) moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 12 from the family, you felt they were checking you out? (interviewer) from the family, yeah. because they’re i think you know they had been followed for so long by the hemoglobinopathy team and you know you build the trust with the team that you’re most familiar with and so we were a new team and sort of when you mentioned about the mom being a little shy at the beginning of her interview that is exactly what i recall when we first started working with her as well, she was a very sort of shy almost a little… not standoffish but just very guarded i would say. (nurse) the confluence of the two events of the visiting professor and the new pain crises solved the ethical and medical dilemma faced by the medical team. we could answer to ourselves or to anyone who had asked, well he had met these medical criteria, we had gone through what we thought was due diligence with the family and then we had consulted with someone from outside our program and this relationship with the family, who also supported our thinking that even if the child had not had these additional pain crises that the family was adequately informed and we weren’t doing anything unethical. so, that led up to the first transplant for this family and for our program. (physician) the family too demonstrated their astute knowledge of the risks of treating and the risks of not treating. i thought a part of their motivation to fix this disorder was connected to their sense of guilt about having given it to their child, but when they told me a clear description of what a life of scd would be, including them quoting statistics of risk of stroke, lung disease, and right sided heart failure…the father in his mind matched them all up and said “well there’s still nothing you’ve said that is worse than what i know we face as a family with a child with scd.” (physician) changing the future: convictions and stereotypes so, then that was the first transplant successful…in terms of curing the child, he had no major unexpected complications, the family is happy with their experience to the point that they wanted to pursue transplant again for a second child, which i thinking was probably as much proof that they thought it was worthwhile out of any. (physician) like all situations, context is complex. one of the things that emerged in the interview with the physician was the issue of stereotyping. between families in the communities where scd most often occurs, news of the early transplant was circulated, and within the local ethnic community where scd is most prominent, there was open discussion about it. alberta, however, stands in contrast to many other american and canadian scd communities because it is mostly first generation canadian, whereas other locations have multi-generational histories that may contain some embedded apprehension and distrust of the medical system. there is a history of racially, and often financially disadvantaged families that already feel marginalized and perhaps not in a position to engage with healthcare professionals with confidence. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 13 …lack of connection with the medical community and some of it is certainly the fault of healthcare providers given that this is a disease that is commonly associated with severe pain and people who live with severe pain and when they present with a painful crisis which is by the description of those who have such crises extraordinary painful and certainly and the source of the pain is generally lack of good blood supply to the bone and when we see this in certain malignant conditions we have we know those kids are in extraordinary pain. these kids with sickle cell or these young people learn to live with it a bit better or a bit i shouldn’t say a bit better; they are more familiar with the pain and they find a way to cope because they have to and perhaps their outward manifestation of such pain is less evident… presents in a different way they also might not look as distressed as a healthcare provider might assume they should look for the amount of pain they are describing because the standard of care is aggressive narcotic treatment and that combined with being perhaps from a marginalized community leads to distrust from a lot of care providers and a delay in providing adequate medical care including pain relief. that is a common stereotype and then there’s a reluctance for patients with scd to pursue medical care when they might otherwise need it because they’re fearful of that experience. they, like any person, [find] that judgement is very upsetting to them and after so many experiences of going to an emergency room to say “i’m in extreme pain” and have someone disbelieve them then that’s where medical care providers have played a part in creating a divide between these families and care providers so that and this situation in the us is the same or worse where there’s an even longer more complicated racial history, i think most people would say, not that canada has a perfect history by any stretch, but i think the history with slavery is longer than that with canada and the african american population is larger and i think it’s fair to say that political sociologic history is much more well known to people and entrenched. (physician) this is a context in which stereotypes and political, sociologic, and racial histories play a role. these issues perhaps have had effects on treatment approaches. a part of changing the future of transplant and scd treatment locally for dr. guilcher also included acknowledging this history that is well entrenched in parts of the world. the medical community, however, in the face of new evidence such as provided by this encounter with this family has also addressed old biases and beliefs and there has been a ripple effect of treatment changes in the world of scd. facing it again: relationships already formed when their youngest child was born, the family waited until she was six months old to test her for scd. though she had no symptoms, the results came back positive for scd. she was not as ill as her brother had been, yet she did eventually have some pain crises requiring hospitalization and, at 3 years of age, had her transplant with her oldest sister as the donor. i told dr. guilcher, you know what my decision will be, so he said okay, he will be here for her if she had sickle cell, and that’s how it went. she was waitlisted, but he had a cancelation…so that is why she went. (mother) moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 14 the physician was curious initially why the family did not immediately approach him with the same enthusiasm for immediate transplant, and surmised it was multifactorial. i think first of all she was very young. i wondered if it was in part due to the fertility and perhaps cultural views of gender and fertility…it’s not that she waited to see how severe her scd phenotype would be. which is what most hematologists and transplant physicians would want to see before offering transplant, but that was not at the heart of her coming to us. i guess she was ready is how she expressed it. (physician) eventually, the family made the decision and the older sister willingly became the donor. she wasn’t afraid. once she knew that she could help her sister, she was happy to do that and there wasn’t like a second thought. (mother) with advances in treatment, the younger sister received a less aggressive form of transplant that was intended to preserve her fertility. fortunately, our clinical practice had evolved as i mentioned offering ric [reducedintensity conditioning] and she was very excited to hear about a different option that offered the same high rates of success but less toxicity as well as more, a difference of an 85% infertility rate with myeloablative transplant compared to no expected adverse impact on the child’s fertility. (physician) the mother considered this advancement as huge for the system so that people will not be scared because like something might be scared oh why won’t my kids have kids, right? (mother) the second time around with this family was experienced as different for the nurse. completely different because obviously that trust was already there. i felt, with mom, the sense of the stress level in going through it again was certainly considerably lower because she had already had that prior experience of what to expect. and then, compounded with the fact that it was a much-reduced intensity so even less of a concern on her part, and knowing that son did so well even with the high intensity protocol, it was so much easier. it sort of set the tone for the relationship the second time around as she already had that feeling of security and trust. (nurse) the tone of trust and familiarity that this nurse speaks of is integral to a relationship that works in healthcare settings (robinson, 1996), a relational stance of collaboration and trust. this family was known by the team and the team was known by them. mcleod, tapp, moules, and campbell (2010) wrote about the impact on knowing and being known in relationships between nurses and families. in fact, the little girl was introduced to the certain members of the team from the time of birth through the treatments of her brother. moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 15 so, we sort of were introduced to her right from day one so to speak, so even going through her you know from infancy right through to the time that she was transplanted. (nurse) this family had perhaps been through relational components that form in healthcare situations, moving through naïve trust to a place of a guarded alliance, where consumerism and team playing take shape (thorne & robinson, 1989). discussion: change and making a difference i would recommend it to any family that has a sickle cell kid and if there is a match in the family, they should go ahead with it and because there is not any risk – not being able to have kids so the risk is very very low. they give opportunity to the kids to have a second life. they are not going to be sad, not going to be unhappy, and they’re going to appreciate their life. i think that’s huge. he (dr. guilcher) gave our family a second life – like he believed he could do it and then he did it and it was successful by the grace of god. (mother) practice changes and treatment changes, all change for that matter, are not always seamless and easy. even good changes require adjustment. this case that changed the medical practice for one physician has had a global ripple effect on the treatment of scd. starting transplants earlier in the scd trajectory broke a protocol that held precedence over judgement. …a good thing from a toxicity perspective, a recovery perspective, and sort of long term related effects perspective definitely. now mind you, with some of these reduced intensity protocols, we’re still learning and still collecting data of course, but i feel like it’s very hopeful and it’s certainly opening up a whole new group of diagnoses who in the past were maybe not eligible to even consider transplant as a curative treatment…the sky’s the limit really…if you consider the chronicity of the illness and the impact on healthcare and healthcare dollars… (nurse) change depends on difference; a difference has to be noticed to make a change. the terms “news of difference” and “difference which makes a difference” are associated with the onetime revolutionary anthropologist, gregory bateson. in his teachings of difference, bateson (1979) offered a metaphor of the weather, suggesting that the weather is in a constant state of change of which we are aware on a day to day or even moment to moment basis, but he questioned if it is changing from year to year. he maintained that we cannot know this without detailed study, as it is a gradient of difference beneath our ability to discern. since the mind can receive news only of difference, “there is a difficulty in discriminating between a slow change and a state. there is necessarily a threshold of gradient below which gradient cannot be perceived” (bateson, 1979, p. 98). bateson (1979) went on to suggest: similarly, it is very difficult for us to perceive changes in our own social affairs, in the ecology around us…it is a nontrivial matter that we are almost always unaware of trends in our changes of state. there is a quasi-scientific fable that if you can get a frog to sit quietly in a saucepan of cold water, and if you then raise the temperature of the water moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 16 very slowly and smoothly so that there is no moment marked to be the moment at which the frog would jump, he will never jump. he will get boiled. (p. 98) this family were kind of the starting point…the beginning of this new sort of era…sort of cutting edge in a way…led us to where we are now. (nurse) this family was the difference that made a difference and heralded change, not just in one physician’s practice but internationally. my practice changed because of this family really…so we offered sickle cell transplantation to this family so we then could no longer say to ourselves or to those who came to us that we hadn’t done this before. we had learned, fortunately through the literature and not through bad experiences, there are very unique supportive care measures for scd transplantation that are distinct from routine transplant supportive care which i don’t think are really the focus of this study. we learned about that in the process and that was intellectually challenging and stimulating. but then came the ongoing and continuing relationship with our hematology colleagues for referrals and requests from families. referrals which have led to a series of children who have been transplanted. such that outside of montréal, we’ve done the most of any centre in canada. and i think that, not that it’s about who does the most, but we could foreseeably become the most experienced centre in canada with transplant. we have a series of research collaborations and local research projects that are advancing the field and catching people’s attention… joined, because this is become a marriage of transplant and sickle cell care for me it’s something i’m very passionate about. i heard steve jobs said once before he died that when you’re passionate about something that work pulls you instead of having to push yourself to do it and that’s what i really found here when i was looking for an area of interest within my practice and had dabbled in a few areas such as, which are still very interesting to me, bioethics and adolescent young adult oncology care. and i’m still interested in those areas but none so much as this, i just knew that this is what i loved and wanted to do and so when an opportunity, when i heard about a north american consortium was starting as a grass roots group of people who had started some conference calls because this is also what they loved and i could tell when i only happened upon this through speaking to one of my transplant colleagues about another project she was doing for a different hemoglobin disorder called thalassemia and she mentioned this. then it wasn’t, for me, it wasn’t a question of if i could participate; i had to be a part of it. and then the person leading the charge is someone i had worked with in other children’s oncology group work and when i spoke to him i could tell he was initially reluctant because they were trying not to just grow their numbers of participants without some degree of caution but in my head and in my heart, i wasn’t taking no for an answer and i have been a very, i think i have been a very valuable contributor within that group and the only canadian contributor. so, we are the only canadian centre part of this consortium which is developing registry work in clinical trials and advocacy work for sickle cell transplantation so and so these are really the leading sickle cell transplant physicians anyway in north america and i’m becoming increasingly respected within that group and within canada. it has really launched my career and it really changed the life of this family. (physician) moules et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2017 article 4 17 summary: changing shapes through a rigorous hermeneutic analysis of one case of a family facing life with two children living with scd, and choosing a treatment path that was, at the time, not the first recommendation of physicians, we examine how this family changed the medical practice of one physician. in turn, he has had an influence on other medical practitioners in his field, and the approach to treatment of scd. more importantly, this family now has four healthy children. the arrival of one family matters. moules et al. (2013) wrote of the power of the individual case in the context of oncology and how the renowned medical oncologist, dr. robert buckman, was reported to have commented that it was the individual case that changed his practice always. he claimed he could not walk into a new patient’s room without his practice being forever changed. in this regard, dr. buckman was arguing for something subtly hermeneutic about his practice and about the knowledge that arises only in practice. it was not simply that the individual patient was more important than his aggregate knowledge…but that the confrontation with the individual, the particular, always enlivened, challenged, and informed that knowledge, keeping it awake, alert, and in proper perspective…the next case always seemed to arrive as an opportunity to open up his vast knowledge and to let it be susceptible to what enlivening difference this new arrival might make. (moules et al., 2013, p. 3) we believe this intensive analysis of this case, an n=1, which in traditional approaches to scientific understanding would be dismissed based on this very fact, has the potential to change the “shape” of treatment of scd worldwide. in fact, we know it already has. acknowledgements: the authors thank the university of calgary university research grants committee for the funding for this study and kids cancer care for their support of the kids cancer foundation chair in child and family cancer care held by dr. nancy moules. references bateson, g. (1979). mind and nature: a necessary unity. new york, ny: e.p. dutton. bediako, s.m. (2010). predictors of employment status among african americans with sickle cell disease. journal of health care poor underserved, 21(4), 1124-1137. doi: 10.1353/hpu.2010.0945 bernaudin, f., socie, g., kuentz, m., chevret, s., duval, m. bertrand, y., … gluckman, e. 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(1996). beliefs: the heart of healing in families and illness. new york, ny: basic books. corresponding author: nancy j. moules, rn phd email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 january 9, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 conducting interviews in hermeneutic research: an example nancy j. moules & lisa m. taylor abstract in this paper, we discuss the conduct of an interview that was done as a demonstration of the character of interviews in hermeneutic research. this interview was conducted within the context of a graduate course on hermeneutics and involved one of the course professors and a volunteer doctoral student in the class. although the interview did not occur within a research study, the content of the interview is genuine and not fabricated or acted. offering the course in an online platform of zoom allowed for the opportunity to record it and, as a result, we are able to discuss it as well as offer a link to the viewing of the actual interview. keywords hermeneutic research, interviewing, gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics in the book, conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice, moules et al. (2015) dedicated chapter 6 (pp. 87-116) to a discussion on the conduct of research interviews in hermeneutic research. they specify clearly that, although there is not particularly such an entity as a hermeneutic interview as some others have claimed (see geanellos, 1999 or vandermause, 2011 as examples), there is a difference in the character and conduct of interviews in hermeneutic research from other types of qualitative interviews. although the hermeneutic research defined by moules et al. is guided by hans-georg gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, not all of the components of the research adhere to the philosophy explicated by gadamer. one example of this is the notion of genuine conversation. moules et al. argued that, moules & taylor journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 1 2 when gadamer identified this concept, he was not describing either therapeutic conversations or research interviews, so therefore, unlike a genuine conversation, the interview is “conducted” by the interviewer. “the research interview is not a conversation between equal partners, because the researcher defines and controls the situation” (kvale & brinkman, 2009, p. 3). as moules et al. claimed “(g)ood research interviews are conducted and conducted well…” (p. 88). the reason that we demonstrate an interview in this graduate research class is that many novice researchers frequently ask the question about how to obtain useful data through the execution of a well-conducted interview. teaching students or novice researchers how to conduct meaningful, productive, and rich interviews is something that is very difficult to describe in theory or to write in instruction. even in the moules et al. (2015) book chapter, struggling with how to describe the nature of the interview, the authors instead offer the transcript of an interview accompanied by commentary from the interviewer as to choices made in determining the direction and the discernments made in the interview. in a classroom, this can be powerfully demonstrated through the in-person conduct of an interview, particularly with one of the members of the class as the interviewee. the class observes the interview, and a discussion follows where they can question the interviewer on strategic choices and why particular directions were taken or assessed as having the greatest leverage to deepen the interview. they can also interview the interviewee on the impact of the interview on them and the effect of particular questions and directions. because the spring 2020 class was offered in an online platform due to the current pandemic, we were able to use the capacity of zoom to record the class, and more specifically, the interview. there have been some unexpected ramifications of having this interview recorded, and in discussion about this, the two authors moules (one of the course professors) and taylor (the doctoral student who participated in the interview) decided that this was an important conversation to explore and to share with others. in this paper, we discuss the context and content of the interview, the internal decision making that was involved, and the resultant impact of the interview on both the interviewee and the interviewer. a link to an mp4 file of the video recording of the interview is provided with thanks to dr. amber porter, the learning and instructional design specialist of the technology integrated learning team in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary. the video is hosted on yuja with the following link. https://yuja.ucalgary.ca/v/video?v=244868&a=130699778 context the hermeneutic course described here was led by course professors, drs. graham mccaffrey and nancy moules. the intensive course consists of six all day classes, with two classes per week. the first three days/classes are focused on examining the history of the development of hermeneutics as a philosophy with a cumulative focus specifically on the work of hans-georg gadamer. the final three days/classes are attuned to the pragmatics of undergoing hermeneutic research: being addressed by a topic, developing a research question, seeking participants, conducting interviews, interpreting the data obtained in those interviews, and developing interpretive writing to best communicate these interpretations. issues of rigor and ethics are explored in relation to hermeneutic research. https://yuja.ucalgary.ca/v/video?v=244868&a=130699778 moules & taylor journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 1 3 in this particular course, moules conducted the interview and approached one of the class participants about the topic of the “study” and to inquire into her willingness to be interviewed. moules happened to know that taylor had intimate relationships with both music and with recent grief, so she explored the sensitivity of the topic and discussed how comfortable taylor was with being interviewed around it. the selection of taylor was a deliberate choice by moules, recognizing that taylor would be someone who had the insight, capacity, experience, and reflexivity that might create the context for a meaningful conversation. the hypothetical research question in this case was “how might we understand the relationship between music and grief?” process prior to beginning the interview, moules and mccaffrey engaged the class in a discussion about what they might pursue or be interested in finding out during the interview, and as a group (a pseudo research team), the class generated questions that they thought might be useful in eliciting a deep and illuminating understanding of the topic. these questions did not formulate a research guide or protocol; they were simply a means to focus the inquiry on possible explorations that might be (or might not be) pursued. moules also speculated on some internal thoughts she had prior to starting so that the class might have insight into the directions she might take during the interview and rationale or motivations behind these directions. at that point, the class members all entered “mute” and turned off video and the zoom recording was focused on speaker view, alternating between the interviewer and the interviewee. in order to imitate how a typical interview would begin, moules offered some context, discussed the topic of the study, and set up the beginning of the relationship required to elicit a good interview. in this particular example, the interview began with a demonstration of a youtube song written and performed by taylor. following the viewing of the performance, moules began tentatively, with a hesitancy of entering into the depth of the interview, needing to test out the relationship (or establish it) between the two and their relationship to the topic and their place within it. the gentle approach to inquiry allowed for an easing into the topic with respect and genuine curiosity. this tentative approach seems to be a condition of making space and room for the topic while trusting that the context could hold it up and do it justice. taylor then began telling the narrative of her recent profound loss and for a while the interview paid respect to the story that needed to be told and understood prior to turning directly to the topic. noted is the transparency of the interviewer in presenting the topic and offering questions. there are times moules openly stumbles around the question with no need to disguise the stumble with feigned confidence and knowingness. she is open around her “reach” for the right question, even engaging taylor in helping her articulate what she was looking for. this kind of transparency serves not only to flatten the inherent hierarchy of the interviewer and interviewee positions but to create space for a mutual working out of what is meaningful and important and the beginnings of emerging interpretations. there are times when it is apparent that humor is used as a means to engage as well as relax both partners, recognizing it as something that often reflects humanness and resonance. humor has the capacity to bridge gaps and find commonness and recognizability and, in that sense, is a hermeneutic encounter. sometimes hermeneutic research tackles painful and difficult topics, and, with tact, skill, and sensitivity, there is a time and place where humor can serve as a useful, engaging, diffusing, and modulating moment. it does, however, need to be moules & taylor journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 1 4 employed with tact and taste, acknowledging appropriate timing and placement. it is sometimes even a tether that serves to keep things grounded when they want to drift away. what is very apparent in the interview presented here is that there is much flexibility around what is asked, a reciprocal response to the conversation – they are not the questions generated in the class specifically, but they are, in some regards, versions of them. those initial wonderings and curiosities seemed to fuel the flexible responses of the interviewer to the comments and responses of the interviewee. if a script had been followed, the spontaneity and flexibility would have been lost to script and not given the leverage that nimbleness provides. it also allows for a deep listening to what is said and what is left unsaid — a deep listening to the topic that also has a voice. moules et al. (2015) discussed the place of deep listening, being open to the other in difference as well as sameness, and listening to the truth in the other even if it differs from what the interviewers expected or believed. interviewing also involves developing the skill of knowing good questions and learning timing, as well as a willingness to take risks and cross boundaries. as mentioned, the chapter in their book also offers the transcript of an actual blinded research interview. all of these aspects of an interview are demonstrated to various degrees in the example given here in the video recorded interview. the interviewee as mentioned, one of the unexpected outcomes of this online and recorded interview involved the impact of the interview on taylor, and the delayed impact that resulted from repeated viewing of the recording. taylor reflects on this in the first-person voice. as a first-year doctoral student, having no knowledge regarding philosophical hermeneutics prior to the course that offered a place for this interview, i was eager to find learning in every moment and around every corner during the condensed spring class. when moules offered for me to take part in an interview with her in class, i was eager to participate, recognizing the unique opportunity to explore the position of an interviewee as part of my learning in the course. additionally, i was eager to discuss the interview topic as i felt i personally benefited and continued my grief experience with each opportunity to talk about my experience, helping me to work things out for myself. considering my somewhat recent experience with grief, moules’ expertise with the topic, as well as her sincerity and genuineness communicated through emails regarding the interview opportunity, i trusted her to handle the topic and interview with care. as a student, being interviewed in front of the class was a unique situation. i was eager to bring awareness to the topic discussed in the interview, however i was also aware that i was sharing and detailing quite a personal piece of myself with my colleagues and my professors, both through music and with my story, which was cause for some nervousness during the interview. as the interview evolved, i was aware my colleagues were listening and observing, however i did not feel this took away from the interview or affected my responses. the zoom platform offered a space where my colleagues could mute themselves and, in speaker view, offered moules and me a space that felt much like a one-on-one opportunity. i felt as though i genuinely engaged in the class interview as an interviewee, as a participant in a hypothetical study. i moules & taylor journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 1 5 answered questions as though my account was of interest, and to some degree i consciously disregarded the student in me who wanted to analyze how moules approached questions and conducted the interview, in order to authentically engage. in the evening, days, and months that followed the interview, i spent hours reviewing the recording of the interview that moules provided to the class via email. with each viewing, i slowly transitioned from an interviewee, sharing my story with music and grief, back into the student who was eager to learn from the in-class interview. as the interviewee, i reflected on how i benefited personally from the interview, my feelings of being listened to and heard, which were contributed to by the validating and compassionate comments moules made following my answers to her questions. i reflected on my description of grief through music, which moules provided time and space for me to further consider and articulate with this interview. as a student, i reflected on the interview recording, with my role as the interviewee in mind, but focused on how moules conducted the interview, with her “careful and mindful listening and skilled questioning” (moules et al., 2015, p. 89). while not intending to derive a protocol or guide from the interview, as moules identified as unhelpful in the previous section of this paper, i was inspired by what i interpreted as tools used to conduct the interview. moules described a number of the following tools in the paragraphs previous to this section of the paper; my hope here is to further elaborate with my interpretations, using specific examples from the interview. easing in the first tool that i recognized was touched on above by moules regarding an easing into the conversation with genuine curiosity at heart. when moules asked, “can you maybe start by telling me about the song?” it offered me a fresh canvas to paint on, and not within a paint by numbers grid. with this question, i was given some freedom to explore the thoughts i was eager to share regarding my experience, details that felt important to me; this also helped to ease some of the nervousness i felt. offering validation throughout the interview, a number of compassionate and empathetic comments were made which created an encouraging environment for me to share. following my description of the inspiration for my song, moules expressed, “first of all i have to say, that’s a tragic and horrible loss for you to have experienced and it’s really heartbreaking to hear about, much less to live and i just want to say i’m sorry about that.” while i felt that my experience was difficult, it was reassuring to hear that it was perceived that way, perhaps, in a way, communicating to me that i was heard and understood that i was able to articulate my experience in a way that made sense to her. leading into another question, moules stated, “you’re going through a tremendous, like a huge, like…it’s an unfathomable loss to me,” and i felt a sense of validation for my deep feelings of grief. where grief is such a uniquely individual experience and process, at times i wondered whether or not i was right in my path, if my path made any sense; the validation i was offered was very encouraging to me as the interviewee. words of validation were also offered by moules with her statement, “it’s a beautiful song too […] there’s something about it that had a huge moules & taylor journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 1 6 resonance for me, there was just something recognizable in it.” i felt appreciated and encouraged by moules’ considerate and validating offerings throughout the interview. humor as noted in the previous section of this manuscript, moules detailed the hermeneutic use of humor within an interview. while perhaps impossibly planned for, and with a taste that understands and recognizes the opportunity for its use within a moment, moules offered humor to lift some of the heaviness that exists within the topic we discussed. following my answer in response to whether or not i had received any troubling comments on youtube, moules added, “well there’s stupid people, right? you can’t fix stupid.” the humor offered an opportunity to share a smile, a commonness as moules identified, and i felt as though it helped to lighten the load of the topic at hand. neutral transparency the transparent reach to grasp ahold of the right question, as moules identified above, as well as her apparent search for meaning making, could be identified as a tool as well. one example of this is when moules stated, “oh gosh, what is it about? that’s what i’m looking for. is it about comfort? i don’t think it’s about comfort…there’s something that i just can’t put my finger on. can you help me with that?” her genuine search for understanding that offered me a hand in that discovery, allowed me to feel more like a partner to construct understanding with, rather than an individual to be studied. this helped to neutralize or breakdown the inherent power dynamic between interviewer and interviewee, and unique to this scenario, between instructor and student. this was felt in other statements in the interview as well, including, “you and i know enough about grief…” which was a small adjustment to a statement that included me as one who holds knowledge. again, i felt validation, that my opinion and perspectives were of value, encouraging my contributions to the interview. flexible inquiry throughout the interview moules creatively and responsively molded together inspiration from preconceived and pre-discussed questions regarding the topic of the interview, with information received from the perspectives i provided in my answers during the interview. for example, moules asked, “when you listen to music that isn’t of your own […] does [it] have the same effect on you as writing your own and expressing it?” this question was informed by responses i shared prior to the question, where i detailed the expressive avenue music offered me in dealing with grief. with careful listening and a true presence in the moment, moules used an informed, flexible approach to foster meaningful inquiry regarding the topic. gratitude at the end of the interview, moules shared, “as tragic as this has been to hear, and as moved as i have felt with your song and with my conversation with you, there’s a part of me that feels really energized ‘cause i want to go and i want to write because you just have given me so much insight around… my way of thinking about this topic and i’m really grateful for that. thank you.” moules & taylor journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 1 7 with this, moules indicated inspiration from the interview and did so with sincerity and gratitude. as the interviewee, i felt as though my account was meaningful and that our time was put to good use by engaging in the interview together. reflecting on how i felt in the interview as an interviewee, with my student hat on, i also pondered a possible future avenue for research which might involve exploring research participants’ perspectives of having access to video recorded interviews in studies around the topic of grief. this notion addressed me while reflecting on my repeated viewing of our interview recording as an interviewee, prior to making the transition back into viewing it as a student. i appreciated being able to view how i worked through questions that moules asked. there were also feelings of justification, contentment, and gratification that i felt. it was as though i offered my account and myself, vulnerably, in my most raw and intimately detailed form, and was heard, genuinely embraced, accepted, and appreciated. following the interview and the course, i went on to write more songs, in part because i felt so encouraged by moules in our interview, which helped me along my grieving path well after the day the interview took place. i continued to review the interview recording intermittently, months following the completion of the course. as identified above, my viewing was motivated as an interviewee who shared their story, as well as a student who was eager to learn. with upcoming doctoral research that embraces gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics and uses unstructured one-on-one interviews, i worked to envision how i might conduct the interviews and looked to moules’ demonstration in the video for inspiration. as a student of education, former k-12 teacher, and current postsecondary instructor, i also viewed the interview pedagogically. it was with this lens that i was addressed regarding the educational opportunity this interview recording might provide if published and shared publicly. i saw opportunity for students who are eager to learn and perhaps gain a more comprehensive understanding or view of an example of an interview conducted using hermeneutic methodology. i saw opportunity for instructors who might like to offer their students a resource to supplement their instruction regarding interviews using hermeneutic methodology. i also saw opportunity for instructors who might be inspired by moules’ approach to interviewing a student, as a way of embracing and living hermeneutically through pedagogy — perhaps a way of talking the talk and walking the walk. extending the interview not shown in this video is the lengthy discussion that happened with the class prior to the interview in generating curiosities and questions, but also not shown is the long conversation that followed the interview. the class members seemed first to need to offer their gratitude to taylor for her openness to share her experience for their learning and then they began to ask their own questions and wonderings about taylor’s experience. for the most part, this focused on the content of the interview, but it eventually evolved into a discussion of the process — the choices made by the interviewee, a wondering about the impact on the interviewee, the pacing, timing, directions, and complexities of the interview. this is where the exercise grew in its pedagogical purpose and the interview became both a place of reverence as well as learning. moules & taylor journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 1 8 conclusion in this manuscript, we offer an exploration of an interview shared between an instructor and student in a graduate level hermeneutic course. the framing and pedagogical approach to the interview within the course was described by moules, as were decisions made regarding her exploration as the interviewer. the interpretations of taylor, from the perspectives of interviewee and student were shared, which included a list of tools that were understood as an effective approach to this interview. in offering this particular interview, or the transcription of the interview offered in the moules et al. (2015) book, one might be invited to think there is one way to interview in hermeneutic research. we offer a completely different argument: every interview in hermeneutics is an individual “case,” a special case, if you will. each one will develop out of the context and timing, the relationship between the interviewer and interviewee, the topic at hand, and most importantly, out of the conversa (latin word meaning turning around together) that happens in the holding of the moment of recognizing what is at stake in the conversation. no interview will follow the same path (which is why protocols and guides are not helpful); and nor does someone in search of the topic want them to adhere to a preset protocol or path. the portal to understanding that interviews bring must open up something and openings only arrive with being open to the newness and difference that is ready to greet us if we have the commitment, curiosity, and skill to enter the door. references kvale, s., & brinkmann, s. (2009). interviews: learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing (2nd ed.). sage. moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. peter lang. microsoft word george corrected proof.docx corresponding author: nancy j moules, rn phd faculty of nursing university of calgary email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 september 3, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 book review: “the responsibility to understand: hermeneutical contours of ethical life” by professor theodore george nancy j moules abstract this paper is a book review of professor theodore george’s recent book, the responsibility to understand: hermeneutical contours of ethical life, published by edinburgh university press (2020). the review is directed towards not only the book itself but its applicability to applied hermeneutics and the ways that hermeneutic philosophy and hermeneutics research have been taken up in practice disciplines. not written as a typical book review, this paper is more of a dialogue and conversation i had, and continue to have, with the book. keywords hermeneutics, ethics, responsibility, gadamer, contemporary philosophy, understanding, interpretation the journal of applied hermeneutics was approached by edinburgh university press to review the recently released book written by professor theodore george, where he examines the significance of hermeneutics at the intersections of ethics, politics, arts, and humanities. the book entitled “the responsibility to understand: hermeneutics contours of ethical life” (george, 2020) is an engaging and provocative examination of how contemporary philosophy, specifically hermeneutics, is not only connected, but is also deeply and ethically responsible for the work involved in understanding. in the book, george argues for a hermeneutic responsibility in our relations to things, animals, and others and calls for a need to achieve solidarity through the work moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 6 2 of arts, literature, and translation. overview of the book dr. george’s book is crafted into three parts: part i the responsibility to understand, where he deconstructs understanding and rehabilitates it as, not just an endeavor, but a deeply human obligation or responsibility. he further talks about the achievement of this understanding through developing and embracing the capacity for displacement. part ii is entitled i and thou. in this section, george engages in a dialogue of the responsibility to not just each other, but to things and animals as well as to others. part iii is titled i and we and, in it, he discusses the concept of solidarity and the capacity of arts and literature, and translation as acts of solidarity. the book is a cleanly articulated and argued work of philosophical insight that has relevance for many and varied aspects of our lives beyond the sphere of philosophy alone but in the ways in which we engage in life and in our work in responsible and ultimately ethical ways. review: a conversation george prefaces his book with a reference to the “unbearable lightness of ethics,” a play on kundera’s “unbearable lightness of being” (kundera, 1988). he situates it as being in an urgency of responsiveness to the demands of individual situations and the need to “develop our abilities to live and act well” (p. viii). along with kundera, he argues that we require the burden of our concerns and it is a weight that we need as, in the weight, there is sustenance and orientation. therefore, in answering the call to the responsibility to understand, we acknowledge that understanding is not a light encounter or a fleeting event; it is an act of deep attention, reverence, and care. george moves us beyond the focus in hermeneutics on understanding and interpretation and laces these acts with a recognition of responsibility. in taking up a perspective on ethical living, he proposes that such a life requires thoughtful and reasonable decisions, striving to do the right thing in the specific situations that are themselves unique and asking something of us. doing the right thing is not something that can be decided in advance with a template of what is good and what is not good but rather, he says, our responsibility involves “what the good means – right here and now” (p.2). no theory or rule can take us there – instead it requires an “openness, attunement, imagination, and decisiveness” that arise anew in every situation (p. 9). part i: the responsibility to understand in part i, george expands his argument that every situation comes with a demand to understand, in spite of the fact that no situation is fully understood in advance as every situation is unique. he speaks to this as an event, and i am reminded of caputo’s work on events in against ethics (caputo, 1993). events happen. they happen for better or for worse...when events are torn asunder, when the loss is beyond repair, when events leave us in shreds, in “tears”, then you suffer a dismoules journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 6 3 aster and you lose your lucky star. that is what activates the lines of obligation, what gives obligation a sense of urgency. it does not take much for the tenuous gossamer web of life to come apart. a stray bullet, a stray chromosome, a stray virus, a wanton cellular division and the flesh is hopelessly ruined. events strike a very delicate balance; they form frail, fragile, vulnerable configurations and microconnections. (caputo, 1993, p. 234) however, perhaps unlike caputo, who claims that events happen without “why,” (p. 223), george argues that events require and ask a responsibility to understand them. both authors agree, it seems, that events “do not yield to principles” (caputo, 1993, p. 96) and that they “press hard upon us and demand a decision… a response to an ambiguous turn of events, here and now” (caputo, 1993, p. 106). they are unique but they require and ask something of us. george makes a compelling argument that the responsibility to understand is not about reaching agreement but rather a responsibility about the capacity of putting what one claims to know into question and even abeyance as the only way that the new can be welcomed and difference can be appreciated and understood. curiosity, then, is one of the things that creates this possibility, and i am appreciative of how this is relevant to the early work of the milan family therapy group who took up curiosity as the portal to good understanding in therapy (see the work of gianfranco cecchin in particular). applied to research in the applied disciplines, moules et al. (2015) have claimed that questions end when curiosity is satisfied – we stop searching when we no longer wonder. since every situation is unique and exceptional, george reminds us that, although we might strive for agreement, it is not the demand the demand is openness and embracing of the displacement that arrives with each situation. this displacement can only happen if we are capable of putting all things, including ourselves, into question. the research done hermeneutically in practice disciplines demands this capacity for displacement, an openness that what we held as true might not be or might be more complex than we have so far compartmentalized into our “already understood – done and dusted” category. displacement is not provisional; understanding is…as our lives unfold, our achievement of understanding in one situation is inevitably interrupted by a new situation, and by the predicament of the exception with which this new situation confronts us. in life, it is not continuity, but precisely this exception, that is the rule. (george, 2020, p. 48) several years ago, i was presenting to a group of bench scientists and oncology clinicians, proposing a hermeneutic study in the field of psychosocial oncology. the conversation that evolved was around the fit of hermeneutics in the field of oncology. a participant (a prominent oncologist in the field) in the audience made the comment “isn’t all oncology hermeneutic?” and proceeded to talk about the work of the now deceased oncologist, dr. robert buckman, who claimed that every time he walked into a new patient’s room, his practice changed. the new situation confronted him with new understanding, and from george’s work, we now see this also with a responsibility to understand. moules et al. (2013) wrote: moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 6 4 robert buckman knew something of suffering, but perhaps his greatest wisdom was that he did not claim to know it with certainty and finality, because he understood that that is not our lot, as humans, to know once and for all. even knowledge that has been pinned down with great precision by natural scientific methodology does not help us avoid having to decide, contingently and carefully, as to whether this is a case of that, and if it is, what we might now best do with those whose suffering is in our hands. buckman saw suffering as the thing that could only be approached through a hermeneutic wager that the next “case” would indeed change the face of understanding the minute the door was opened. (p. 9) george takes us to gadamer who reminds us that understanding, if it happens at all, is not about knowing better, but differently (gadamer, 1960/1989). therefore, although it involves displacement, it returns again to familiarity. in hermeneutic research, we find that we try to exoticize the domestic (disrupt what is taken for granted) and then return to an act of domesticizing the exotic so that it once again becomes familiar, comprehendible, relatable, and recognizable (moules, 2002a). this george has termed the “tragic sensibility about hermeneutical experience” (p. 67). as with all embracing, something is left untouched and is therefore tragic and alienating in some regards. aletheia reminds us that, as one thing is uncovered, another is covered (moules et al., 2015). “the hermeneutical life, rather, circulates entirely within the prospects for growth and the inevitability of pain that arise from such displacement” (george, 2020, p. 67). part ii: i and thou in part ii, george moves to a discussion of “i and thou” taking up the idea of the responsibility to understand through a cultivated capacity of displacement from the perspective of our relations with and encounters with things, animals, and others. he offers that our everyday encounters with things also carry a hermeneutic demand. things, like situations or events, do not necessarily claim commonalities and therefore must too be “understood on a case-by-case basis” (p. 78). our tendency to reduce things to correlations tends to reduce them to objects, something that research in modern sciences is often directed towards in its efforts to understand. understanding in this sense does not involve the reduction of the grouping of things together to categorize them and give them a place. in our work, we see this in research that differs from research using hermeneutics, even qualitative research that seeks to reduce things to themes and codes, arguing that it is only commonalities and repetition that warrants their place as a thing at all. there can be a tendency to appropriate things rather than live responsibly with them – we make them “ours” and begin to own them, rather than be in relationship with them. things, then, become property and often even commoditized. instead, hermeneutics and hermeneutic research is about an honoring of the particular and recognition that something does not need to be repeated to warrant it. george suggests that letting a thing be means to involve ourselves in particular ways: “we do not as it were leave it alone out of respect; rather, we look over it, tend to it, so as to bring it out into the open and bring it to bear in our situation as what it properly is” (p. 80). when we allow things to come into presence, it involves acts of “conviviality and even community” (p. 81). things have the capacity to surprise us and interrupt our familiarity, as he gives the example of opening the rusted hinge of an oven door and being startled by the sudden memory of an older parent’s arthritic hand struggling with the handle. “despite every familiarity, we can be surprised moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 6 5 by any number of ways in which the thing can thing” (p. 82) and, in this surprise, we are invited to engage with them in genuine ways that offer correlation, rather than subjugation. “in living responsibly with things, then – that is, in coming into correlation with them in their independence and not subjecting them to our wills – letting a thing be and being exposed to its exteriority” (p. 86). in chapter 4 of part ii, george addresses our responsibility to understand animals, maintaining that it is the enactment of play and the relation of reflexivity and back and forth movement that allows such a relationship to emerge. in this chapter, he proposes that our responsibility calls for an ability to displace our anthropocentric tendency to “other” animals as distinct from humans. rather, he suggests that we are only able to be available to a genuine interaction with animals when we simultaneously respect our differences but recognize our commonalities and belonging. again, he claims that, in our experience with animals, we face something that lies between “strangeness and familiarity” (p. 91). of note is his caution that our “responsibility cannot be reduced to a position on our duties toward animals or provide a code of conduct for the ethical treatment of animals” (p. 104). rather, he claims that, like our responsibility to understand, our responsibility to animals is not in search of principles but a displacement of our prejudices that then allows us to be in relationship. finally, in part ii, george moves into a discussion of our responsibility in relationship to others. this section, perhaps the most, speaks to the work we do as it addresses the heart of where we sit in practice professions – our relationship to others. it is also the location of most of our research in applied hermeneutics. however, george not only reminds us, he begs that we embrace the responsibility to understand that lies at the heart of the work we do. the ability to embrace something always involves a risk and a possibility of reward. george invokes gadamer’s three gradations of the recognition of the other, the lowest of which involves a sense of self-absorption thus that the other becomes purely a means to our own ends. the concern then around human nature is to reduce others to fit into “predictable, general aspects of their behavior” where there is no variation of any other phenomenon but an imposed categorization, in spite of any claims that it is for their own good (p. 107). the second gradation continues self-absorption but with some recognition of the other as separate with their own voices, however, in allowing another voice to emerge, it is in the service of a “demand that they confirm the validity of what we have to say” (p. 108). whereas the lowest gradation involved an instrumentalization, this gradation involves a subjugation. the third gradation distinguished by gadamer is in the full recognition of the other as a person, with a voice of their own that is valid and legitimate. this recognition necessarily involves listening and listening for the validity of what the other says. self-absorption necessarily has to be suspended as we listen, even as that listening involves holding open a “tension of a challenge posed and a promise elicited by the other” (p. 109). the challenge lies in the acknowledgement that since the other may be right, we might have to change our minds; the promise is “the opportunity for a deeper, richer understanding and transformative growth (p. 109). moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 6 6 perhaps in agreement with gadamer and george, humberto maturana, a chilean neurobiologist, discusses that we listen to the other in two possible ways: in the first, we listen to see if what the other has to say agrees with what we already know; in the second, we listen to find the truth in what the other is saying (maturana, 1988). george also challenges us to consider the “other others” (p. 112), the recognition of others who may not be familiar to us. this is perhaps the greater challenge as it is easy to claim an openness to the other that we already recognize. in some regards, in this familiar recognition, there is something about just recognizing ourself in the other, rather than truly recognizing the other. the chapter ends with george’s exploration of friendship as not just “a feature of private life, but…as an entree to the larger world in which both friends participate” (p. 114). in this section, we are invited into gadamer’s thesis that friendship is an outgrowth of self-love, not as selfabsorption, but as a “genuine concern for one’s own being” that will transform then to friendships with others. once again, george emphasizes that friendship is not necessarily located in agreement but in the capacity to “experience the limits of our grasp of ourselves and the world, and, thus, to displace ourselves through exposure to the unfamiliar with us as well as without” (p. 116). the conditions of modern life, including culture and the media, bring new facets to the consideration and even the urgency of friendship. the depersonalization and distancing that many conditions of modern life, such as mass media, has impact on our relationships that arise from dialogical experience. communication then changes; in some regards, it allows for connections not possible without it but also limits us in “the lessons we might learn from friendship” (p. 124). friendship then has the capacity to transition to the more expansive notion of solidarity, george’s focus of part iii of his book. part iii: i and we in chapter 6 of this final section in george’s book, he moves us to a discussion of solidarity, with the sometimes subtle, but other times, not so subtle, recommendation that perhaps the biggest challenge but the possible solution to our situation lies in solidarity which makes visible the world differently. in examining the contours of the responsibility to understand in the lives we live in common, he makes a useful distinction between the political and politics. in the end, he suggests that it is important to reclaim the political without a collapse into politics. in current times and world situations, this is a relevant caution and evocation. even within gadamer’s focus on practical philosophy, george suggests that the “i and we” involves opening a context “in which we first come to see ourselves as belonging to a world of other persons that is larger than ourselves” (p. 128), a world that is complex and ambiguous. solidarity, then, raises its complexity particular in the age of globalization where it must be found not only among the familiar but the different – different communities, nations, languages, traditions, cultures. when urgent global issues and crises arise, there is a call for global political response. i could not help but read this section in the context of current conditions of a world pandemic and how george’s claims resonate with what is going on almost as though he anticipated that such an event was upon us when he was writing the book. in such urgent global calls of concern, george is arguing that solidarity often arises first from necessity, but he offers the idea that solidarity can also move past necessity “toward an elective concern to make ourselves visible to one another” (p. 139), and he makes the case that this can happen through art and culture. in this, the arts and moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 6 7 humanities can arise as political endeavours, offering that this is something that is often overlooked in current times. george seems to align more gadamer than richard rorty’s approach to solidarity which is grounded in finding similarities in our common experience of pain and humiliation. gadamer, on the other hand, does not believe that “human solidarity requires the deflation of our differences…to clear the way for us to see our similarities” (p. 131). gadamer, according to george, suggests that “solidarity concerns our mutual interpretive openness that first allows a shared world to become visible and that thus first makes it possible for us to enter into political deliberation, judgement and action” (p. 131). challenges to this shared world also lie in the movement towards “calculative management” resulting in the state of a responsibility without a name or as karl jaspers and gadamer refer to it an “anonymous responsibility” (p. 133). as our relations, actions, and functions are reorganized by scientific and technical structures, our calculative management shifts our responsibilities from each other to systems that organize. nowhere is that seen more clearly than it is in “advancements” of modern medicine and health practices, but i believe it happens in schools, and other social structures that begin to assume the responsibility for the person rather than allow the responsibility to lie in human relationship. this, george frames as a diminished visibility of each other in a shared world and the resultant anonymizing of responsibility. i think this is akin to caputo’s claim of regarding ethics as obligations with proper names (caputo, 1993). “the discourse on obligation is a treatise on proper names, on the affirmation of ‘someone,’ something more or less proper, personal, over and beyond the cosmic hum” (caputo, 1993, p. 245). finally, in this chapter, george invokes us to consider reclaiming our “taste for the political” without collapsing it into politics. it seems, at least, that in many quarters, whether in the academy, the media, or even the arts, the concern to tarry on the political, to attempt to make things visible in a new way, is increasingly squelched in the name of frames of debate that already have accepted trappings and established channels of dissemination. (george, 2020, p. 142) the road to the political, he suggests, is solidarity and perhaps a rediscovery of it puts us in the position where we can embrace politics with the responsibility they deserve. as mentioned, george, along with gadamer, sees the arts and humanities as one portal that offers promise. in chapter 7, he takes up arts and literature as one disruption to the calculative rationality that threatens to embrace and erode our lives. the global network, in spite of promises fails in george’s opinion in enhancing our meaningful connections with each other, rather, it has resulted in the “alienation of interrelated foreignness” and diminishes rather than nurtures solidarity (p. 143). in this chapter, george’s attention turns to art and literature in particular, arguing for their capacity to make visible what matters, thereby bringing us closer to the possibility of a shared life. although both are important and instrumental in this endeavour, george makes a case for literature and world literature as the most transmittable across space, culture, geography, time, and place. our interpretive engagement with art and literature as it is performed (this does not just apply to performing arts, such as drama, but to the performance of paintings, sculpture, poetry, novels, classic text, translated text, and even scholarly writing) is what has the moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 6 8 capacity to enact art and allow something to be recognized in its universality. the performance allows itself to present to us in full presence, in spite of its origin. in truth and method, gadamer wrote of the power of writing and thus of the written word: nothing is so purely the trace of the mind as is writing but nothing is so dependent on the understanding mind either. in deciphering and interpreting it, a miracle takes place: the transformation of something alien and dead into total contemporaneity and familiarity…that is why the capacity to read, to understand what is written is like a secret art, even a magic that frees and binds us. (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 163) literature has this capacity to transcend space and time with an almost magical quality. even consideration of the alphabetical ordering of words or as george calls one of the “societal structures that allow the written word to be produced and disseminated” (p. 156), is a part of its potential and power. david abram (1996) suggested that the “potent magic” (p. 133) of the written word is derived from the word “spell.” spell originally meant to tell a story but came to mean both the correct ordering of written words and also the casting of a magic formula or charm. as the two meanings converged, the assembling of letters in correct order came into being as the casting of a spell, effecting a magic (moules, 2002b). george’s book and the attention to literature as one way to escape the alienation of our times and the “anonymous responsibility that attend the calculative management of human relations” (p. 162) is restorative of the almost magical capacity of literature. the chapter concludes with a discussion on world literature and with the summation that art and culture generally, and literature in particular, may be just the “magic” needed to restore responsibility in relation and in relationship. in chapter 8, george moves to a final discussion of the role of translation in the discovery of solidarities, retrieving both gadamer’s and derrida’s arguments on it and attempting to further gadamer’s caution by, to some extent, resolving the dilemma he posed. george proposes that translation lends itself to the pursuit of solidarity through the engagement of languages other than our own. while gadamer wrote of translation as always some form of “betrayal,” george reframes this as the possibility of an extension of understanding and meaning that, rather than robs or strips the original, enrichens it and, as a result, leads us in opening our capacity to understand. therefore, translation does not always result in only a remainder of the original, it also extends it or increases it. he offers the example of a picture of an artwork and how this picture and all pictures of the art are not simply representations of it that are less than the original but in fact further interpret the work and becomes an “overflow of meaning” (p. 178). despite the debates, paradoxes, and cautions of translation as a practice, george discusses it as one of the things we can do to step toward solidarity and understanding. summary theodore george’s book the responsibility to understand: hermeneutical contours of ethical life is a sensitive, thoughtful, and insightful invocation to rehabilitate connection and the relational capacity of our lives. this book not only invites an internal reflection of the ways i live in the world and keep in relationship to others in it, but it deeply connects to the work we do in practice professions. like gadamer, george offers us a sophisticated practice philosophy that moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 6 9 resonates and coalesces with our human endeavours of understanding each other in the context of urgent social and global concerns and fundamental human experiences of suffering, pain, joy, loss, and love. references abram, d. (1996). the spell of the sensuous: perception and language in a more-than-human world. new york, ny: vintage. caputo, j.c. (1993). against ethics: contributions to a poetics of obligation with constant reference to deconstruction. bloomington, in: indiana university press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1984). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. george, t. (2020). the responsibility to understand: hermeneutical contours of ethical life. edinburgh university press: edinburgh, scotland. kundera, m. (1988). the art of the novel (l. asher, trans.). new york, ny: harper perennial. maturana, h.r. (october, 1988). the biology of cognition and the biology of love: implications for health care. faculty of nursing, the university of calgary, calgary, ab, canada. moules, n.j. (2002a). hermeneutic inquiry: paying heed to history and hermes. an ancestral, substantive, and methodological tale. international journal of qualitative methods, 1(3), article 1. https://www.ualberta.ca/~ijqm/ moules, n.j., (2002b). nursing on paper: therapeutic letters in nursing practice. nursing inquiry, 9(2), 104-113. https://doi.org/10.1177/1074840709331639 moules, n.j., jardine, d.w., mccaffrey, g., & brown, c. (2013). “isn’t all of oncology hermeneutic?” journal of applied hermeneutics, 3, article 3. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5w95141 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. new york, ny: peter lang. corresponding author: david w. jardine, phd professor emeritus, university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 june 16, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 guest editorial an ode to 215 babies tossed away unmarked david w. jardine all things being well we have a baby coming. all things being well. a baby. where we become, so they say, grand. all things being well. such are my words, here, now. the changing of names – first nations children, jews at the port of entry. the suppressing or erasing of memory and language. parents and grandparents who were taught that cree, for example, was ugly and against god himself. forgetting, figuratively and literally, where the bodies are buried. as gail jardine (2012) noted so clearly, with reference to duncan campbell scott (1862-1947): “our object is to continue [with ‘enfranchisement”, which means giving up ones first nations status], “is to continue until there is not a single indian in canada that has not be absorbed into the body politic and there is no indian question” (cited in miller, 2004, p. 34; see jardine, g., 2012, p. 36 valuable detailing of this and other relevant canadian legislation). one deals with difference, diversity, interrelationships by the eradication of difference and diversity such that no further dealing is required. “i want to get rid of the indian problem,” (d.c. scott, in miller, p. 34) by getting rid of the indians. colonialism as precisely and exactly the epitome of cancel culture. this is precisely the sort of thing against which applied hermeneutic work works. it is about not forgetting (aletheia), opening up wounds and occlusions wrought by regimes of power, silences jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 guest editorial 1 2 foisted and fostered and often then denied. it is about suffering all the pain released in finding out about relations lost and found. it is about calling out attempts to replicate these silencings, bringing forth marginalized voices and letting one’s own voice fade back and come forward in hoped-for good measure, uncancelled. as happens in such work, my own voice and expectation and memory and prejudices get called out in this work. hermeneutics does not provide methodological immunity or a means to “enfranchise” its topics into the anticipations and presumptions of the day. and there is always, always the open-wound prospect that all my efforts leave me and you unprepared for the arrivals that arrive. unprepared for what they tell us about the world and, perhaps even more so, unprepared about what they tell us about ourselves. what they tell me about myself. this is the locale where hermeneutics is not “subjective” but far, far more intimate and immediate than that. i find that i have been precisely not subjective but instead complicit in a world of relations and ancestries “over and above my wanting and doing” (gadamer, 1989, p. xxvii) we’ve all heard that a local school in calgary, alberta, just had its name changed from langevin school to riverside school. it had previously been named riverside but was changed to langevin in 1936. hector-louis langevin (1826-1906) was one of the “fathers of [canadian] confederation” and was considered the architect of the residential school system in canada for first nations children. this name change followed up on the discovery in late may 2021 of the remains of 215 previously undocumented bodies of dead young children found buried and unmarked near a former residential school in kamloops, british columbia: the children were students at the kamloops indian residential school in british columbia that closed in 1978, according to the tk'emlúps te secwépemc nation. (paperny, may 29, 2021) one of the main blocks of the canadian parliament in ottawa, ontario, is called “the langevin block” (hayday, 2017). this story is still unfolding. the calgary catholic board of education has been asked to consider renaming bishop grandin school, grandin also having had a hand in the “work” of residential schooling in canada. and now, more recently, a statue of edgerton ryerson was torn down outside the university named after him, and calls have arisen to rename that, too. i know this without knowing one single thing about ryerson. i can easily simply get caught in the outpouring and end up as unknowing as i did before, but perhaps weirdly slaked by the chance to get roused up. tough to say, and even tougher, this. i had never heard of langevin in all my 70 years except as the name of that nearby school. i had to look up even these mere facts. there comes a great deep breath of air with these new [to me] revelations and, frankly, a gasping for air as well – this, too, having provided us all with recent images and halts. say his name: george floyd. how about the 1921 tulsa oklahoma massacre that just had its anniversary? how about this revelation: duncan campbell scott’s “no more indian problem” document was a parliamentary memo, written, not in the 19th century, but in 1920? (see jardine, g., p. 36): jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 guest editorial 1 3 the gradual civilization act (1857), the british north america act (1867), the gradual enfranchisement act (1869), the indian act (1876) and duncan campbell scott’s parliamentary memo (1920) appear to intend to assimilate aboriginal peoples through treating them as “minors,” as “wards of the state” with no ability to make their own decisions. (jardine, g., 2012, p. 30) shock but not surprise. a great, deep breath of humiliation once again about what is known, what is said, what is suppressed, what is revealed, how easy it is for me to live a life not knowing. privilege means not only not knowing about “them” and “this” and what has been perpetrated upon first nations people. but it also means something more severe: not knowing about my own relations. great networks of relations now rising up out of the earthbowels full of unnamed, re-named children’s flesh. looking, now, for names and family lines. petitioning the catholic church to open its records. stay tuned. stay tuned. but now that the school’s name has simply disappeared, so has even the possibility of the tricky confrontation. like it never happened. like everything is now set right by erasing the name and replacing it with an english name…oops, no, sorry, that’s what residential schools did. it’s a joke, this cancelling, a terrible one. and those who swoon over land acknowledgements and exploring first nations language and knowledge –i’ll say it. don’t think for a moment that they have explored their own language, their own ancestries. i would never impugn motives, here. there is most often a real affection and real, valuable learning happening in the interweavings and acknowledgments. again, a note towards hermeneutic work and an acknowledgement of the careful work needed to go beyond a simple attraction to leaving one’s own tongue, one’s own people’s doings, behind. there is nothing to be gained by leaving one’s own living forgotten but still vividly, secretly at work. would that just once some well-meaning person would start a meeting with reading from the treaty promises that their people wrote. acknowledging my own impugnments. and now, amid all the scurrying talk of “cancel culture” (gerstmann, 2021) at the change of that school’s name, i settle in to thinking, yes, change the name, but don’t simply replicate the erasure of names and languages and memory perpetrated by residential schools in the first place. put a placard with the old name’s stone out front of riverside school. name what happened, who, and when and their reasons, with all the detail you can muster. this is one of my ancestors whether the name is changed or not. this happened, name change or not. don’t let me forget what happened again. give hector-louis langevin his full due in full view. otherwise, we simply name-change as a sort of high-handed moral duty and then risk forgetting all over again. this field must be dug up, relation after relation, named, shown and i will not change that terrible image of a field dug up. i will say it loudly in the face of images of 215 babies tossed away unmarked. the purpose of hermeneutics is to read the marks, make the marks, not erase them. it means to remember, to open, to enliven. this is true of every topic that hermeneutics confronts. and this sort of forgetting, suppressing is itself tragically endemic. pandemic, perhaps. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 guest editorial 1 4 i must learn, once again once again once again, to not turn away, to love the terrible griefs as good, harsh, demanding teachers. there are terrible courses still to come and i hope we can bear it. i hope i can bear it. we’re told by elders that this 215 is a mere drop of rain in a storm more terrible than we can imagine. more terrible than i can imagine, because many of our fellow beings have long-since heard of it and many still suffer it. many suffer it without knowing about its whence and whither. and ah, yes, literally as i began to write this, pope benedict, june 6, 2021: “i follow with sorrow the news that arrives from canada about the upsetting discovery of the remains of 215 children,” francis said in his customary sunday noon remarks to the public. “i join with the catholic church in canada in expressing closeness to the canadian people traumatized by the shocking news,” francis said. “this sad discovery increases the awareness of the sorrows and sufferings of the past.” “may the political and religious authorities continue to collaborate with determination to shed light on this sad affair and to commit to a path of healing,” francis added. (d’emilio, 2021) “the sorrows and sufferings of the past.” no. the open wound is now and simply changing the name of that school, or that university, does not serve to cleanse that wound. tearing down statues might be required as a locale of action and pain and anger and its outworking. but don’t erase. none of us will be healed by cancelling and forgetting. and yet, i step back, right here, because i cannot adequately imagine what actions might be right, proper, needed, helpful. it may be that rage and outrage are hermeneutically acute explications – there’s a sentence for you and for this journal and for my own work and its limits and usefulness. my work is feeble, here. like this: it is ironic, perhaps even tragic, that “benedict “means “wellspoken.” it is ironic, perhaps even tragic, how much sway the catholic church still holds over first nations people. but what do i know other than bending my cupped ear again and falling, right here, right now, into silly words? we need the repressed and marginalized stories of schools, of deaths and births, of illness, of joy, of earthly raven arrivals, of entangled ancestral howls in the night. all of us need this. and we need this whatever our topics may be. we don’t fulfill our summons by all simply rushing off towards the latest news. but this latest news-that-is-not-new can provide a moment of renewal whatever work might then ensue, now, again, hopefully more alert, more full of the energies that hermeneutics provides and demands (see aho, 2018; see jardine. d., 2018) but who am i to say much more than that, knowing so very little of any of this till just now? i can only hope that something of the blackened pages to follow struggle to be true to that howling familiar’s whisperings. we all have work to do. i have work to do. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 guest editorial 1 5 references d’emilio, f. (2021) pope voices sorrow over residential school deaths but doesn't apologize. ctvnews online: https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/pope-voices-sorrow-over-residential-schooldeaths-but-doesn-t-apologize-1.5458352 gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method. continuum books. gerstmann, e. (2021). what is cancel culture? forbes. march 22, 2021. online: https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2021/03/22/what-is-cancelculture/?sh=566c15febd55 hayday, m. (2017). sir hector-louis langevin, “architect” of residential schools? online: https://activehistory.ca/2017/06/langevin/ jardine, d. (2018). “asleep in my sunshine chair.” journal of applied hermeneutics, article 7, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53335 jardine, g. (2012). an invitation to explore the roots of current aboriginal/non-aboriginal relations in canada. one world in dialogue, 2(1), 25-37. https://ssc.teachers.ab.ca/sitecollectiondocuments/oneworldindialogue/oneworld%20indialo gue%202012%20v2n1.pdf miller, j r. (2004). lethal legacy: current native controversies in canada. mcclelland & stewart. paperny, a.m. (2021). remains of 215 children found at former indigenous school site in canada. reuters. online: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/remains-215-children-foundformer-indigenous-school-site-canada-2021-05-28/ https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/pope-voices-sorrow-over-residential-school-deaths-but-doesn-t-apologize-1.5458352 https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/pope-voices-sorrow-over-residential-school-deaths-but-doesn-t-apologize-1.5458352 https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2021/03/22/what-is-cancel-culture/?sh=566c15febd55 https://www.forbes.com/sites/evangerstmann/2021/03/22/what-is-cancel-culture/?sh=566c15febd55 https://activehistory.ca/2017/06/langevin/ https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53335 https://ssc.teachers.ab.ca/sitecollectiondocuments/oneworldindialogue/oneworld%20indialogue%202012%20v2n1.pdf https://ssc.teachers.ab.ca/sitecollectiondocuments/oneworldindialogue/oneworld%20indialogue%202012%20v2n1.pdf https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/remains-215-children-found-former-indigenous-school-site-canada-2021-05-28/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/remains-215-children-found-former-indigenous-school-site-canada-2021-05-28/ microsoft word laing et al corrected proof .docx corresponding author: catherine m. laing, rn phd email: laingc@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 january 20, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 understanding the impact on healthcare professionals of viewing digital stories of adults with cancer: a hermeneutic study catherine m. laing, nancy j. moules, shane sinclair, & andrew estefan abstract the purpose of this study was to understand the effects on oncology healthcare providers (hcps), both personally and professionally, of watching digital stories made by adults with cancer (past and present), and what hcps envisioned for the uses of digital stories. seven healthcare professionals from various disciplines volunteered for this study. this research took place in a large urban center in western canada and was done in the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics. a 90-minute focus group was used for data collection, where participants watched eight digital stories (batched in four groups of two stories) that had been created by individuals with cancer (past or present). data were analyzed using the interpretive method of hermeneutics. findings revealed that watching digital stories made by adults with cancer was emotionally compelling, provided context, incited deep introspection, and may offer a protective effect with respect to hcp burnout. keywords hermeneutic research, digital storytelling, healthcare providers, adult oncology, cancer our purpose in this study was to understand the effects on oncology healthcare providers (hcps) of watching digital stories made by oncology patients (past and present). digital stories are short, first person narratives that combine the participant’s voice, photos, video, and music to tell a story (storycenter, 2016). specifically, we sought to understand in what ways hcps were affected by watching the stories; how digital stories might influence their clinical/professional laing et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 1 2 practice; and in what contexts hcps thought digital stories could be used. in this paper, we report on the secondary objective of our recent study aimed at understanding the meaning and impact of creating a digital story with adult cancer patients. digital stories have been used in a wide variety of industries with varying functions from marketing to education. recently, digital stories have gained increased attention in healthcare, with four predominant uses (lang, laing, moules, & estefan, 2019): (a) education and quality improvement (alberta health services [ahs], 2019; christiansen, 2011; de vecchi, kenny, dickson-swift, & kidd, 2016); (b) advocacy and public health (briant, marchello, escareno, & thompson, 2016; haigh & hardy, 2011); (c) research (laing, moules, estefan, & lang, 2017a, 2017b; laing, moules, sinclair, & estefan, 2019); and (d) as a therapeutic intervention (akard et al., 2015). while much attention has been paid to the effects of the digital story on its creator (often a patient), little is known about the effects on the viewer, in this case, hcps. a recent systematic review (moreau, eady, sikora, & horsley, 2018) related to digital stories in health professional education determined that patients’ digital stories alone had minimal impact on hcps’ learning. in a previous study, hcps who viewed the digital stories of pediatric, adolescent, and young adult cancer survivors found them to be powerful, therapeutic, and educational tools with the potential to change their practice (laing et al., 2017b). digital stories may be an efficient and effective way through which to understand the patient experience, thus affecting patient care delivery. at the heart of a digital story is a story, and storytelling has existed since the development of language (eder, cajete, & natural child project, 2010). stories and storytelling were the way of teaching, learning, and passing wisdom through generations (koch, 1998). they remain an important form of communication today, and while we are no longer reliant on them for survival, stories can assist with reaffirming and making sense of experiences (frank, 1995; whiddershoven, 1993), fostering resiliency (east, jackson, & peters, 2010), linking our past to our and allowing for reflection (frank, 2000). the telling of stories may increase resiliency (east et al., 2010), insight (stone, machtynger, & machtynger, 2015), and hardiness (haigh & hardy, 2011). participants and setting following ethical approval (hreba.cc.16-0754), participants were recruited via posters at a large urban outpatient cancer centre in western canada, and through word of mouth. seven healthcare professionals from various disciplines volunteered for this study (table 1). eligibility criteria included being a member of any health discipline with a focus in adult oncology (either inpatient or outpatient). purposive sampling, where participants who can best inform the topic, was used to elicit rich data through participant experiences (moules, mccaffrey, field, & laing, 2015). with this sampling method, the careful selection of participants helps ensure that each will provide valuable information to the study (suen, huang, & lee, 2014). laing et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 1 3 methodologic approach this study used the research method of hermeneutics, as informed by the philosophical hermeneutics of hans-georg gadamer (gadamer, 1960/1989; moules et al., 2015). hermeneutics is an effective research approach to use when understanding of a phenomenon or concept, versus explanation, is the desired outcome (moules et al., 2015). data were collected via one 90-minute focus group where participants watched eight digital stories (batched in four groups of two stories) that had been created by individuals with cancer (past or present) as part of the first aim of this study. after each batch of two stories, semi-structured interview questions were asked related to the function, effect, and utility of the stories (figure 1). the entire 90-minute focus group was audio recorded and subsequently transcribed for data analysis. field notes were taken during and after the focus group to capture body language, non-verbal communication, and other relevant factors to aid with the data analysis. in hermeneutic research, data analysis is known as data interpretation (moules, laing, mccaffrey, tapp, & strother, 2012), where the focus in not on coding or thematizing, but on “interpreting” the data such that the topic in question can be deeply, or sometimes differently, understood (gadamer, 1960/1989; moules, jardine, mccaffrey, & brown, 2013; moules et al., 2015; sandelowski, 2004). interpretations are presented as results, and are developed via repeated readings of the transcripts and field notes both in detail and as a whole, interpretive memos (initial interpretative conjectures), team discussions related to initial interpretations, and a synthesis of knowledge, information, conversation, experience, and data (moules et al., 2015). unlike some qualitative traditions, member-checking is not done in hermeneutics as it is the topic that is of central importance versus representation of the individual participants (moules et al., 2015). rigor and trustworthiness are established through the robustness, facility, and resonance of the interpretations (moules et al., 2015). findings as is tradition in hermeneutics, findings are presented as interpretations, and woven throughout are the participant voices meant to illustrate and enliven the understanding. participant quotes are verbatim, however the presence of ellipses (…) indicates some text removed due to irrelevancy, square brackets ([ ]) indicate word change needed for clarity, and bolding is used to indicate words where participants placed emphasis. enriching the content and enhancing the context the content of the digital stories – what the stories were about – was of considerable interest to participants, despite gentle reminders and “urgings” of the interviewers to focus on the topics/questions asked after each pairing of digital stories. while frustrating at first, we came to see that discussion around the content – while an unanticipated focus – was serving a very important function for the participants; it was giving them context. most of the hcps who participated knew most of the digital story authors, especially if their treatment was ongoing or recently completed. in one story, renee (pseudonym) centered her digital story around her decision to discontinue her treatment and chose to focus on quality of life versus extending her life. unbeknownst to us, this decision had been highly controversial and upsetting to many hcps who laing et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 1 4 cared for her. watching her video, and how her story related to her reasons for doing so, was fodder for much discussion from our participants: p1: yeah, that one is really interesting because here’s someone who turned down chemotherapy. it’s the patient who turned down conventional therapy. p2: she stopped chemotherapy. she did take some. p1: sorry, she discontinued therapy and continues to turn it down. so…i can make sense of this decision a little bit more now, knowing this. and she starts to tell you about her life and where’s she’s been and these moments of realization that she has had, and all of a sudden it starts to make sense to you. in her digital story, renee discussed her childhood and adult life to date, along with many salient events, turning points, and decisions she had made along the way. when she discussed her decision to stop chemotherapy (early, against medical advice), participants understood that decision much more so than they had previously. it seemed to provide a degree of relief for them, as if it had been something with which they had struggled or been distressed by. p3: you know, it makes more sense now, after seeing this story. it really bothered me when i heard about it [renee’s decision] and i thought “why would you do that? we are nowhere near being out of options for you!” but it’s very clear that she’s at peace and she’s happy and, like, she’s committed to life. which i think is helpful for people to see that this wasn’t a crazy sort of decision. we have to accept that people are living their lives. as our participants discussed renee’s story, often circling back to it, it became clear that watching it helped them not only understand her decision but to also understand her as a person. it struck us that digital stories can help “fill in the blanks,” and add to hcps’ understanding of the individuals in their care from all aspects versus as someone with cancer. the context that these stories offered was welcomed and desired, with participants often expressing that they “wished they knew this before” (p2) and “it’s so great to know more about their lives before cancer but also to see how they are now” (p7). the digital stories seemed to create a more fulsome picture of their patients, and a more complete understanding of them as individuals. the effects of digital stories on hcps just as participants discussed the content of the stories, so too did they discuss the effects that the stories had on them personally. p4: “some of those [digital stories] almost brought me to tears because at the end of the day we’re all human, and we all have thoughts and feelings. and to hear somebody’s experience…it’s powerful. it’s gets right to the heart.” healthcare providers described the digital stories they watched as “powerful,” “focused,” and “meaningful.” one participant elaborated: there is something about watching this story and interacting with it this way. it’s like, you’re looking at their life story, part of it at least, but it feels like you’re doing it together, with them. i don’t know…there’s something about that interaction that is generative, you know? it allows you to look at their life differently. (p5) laing et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 1 5 participants felt that watching digital stories were particularly meaningful when they knew the person in the story. when asked the question “what do you think the differences would be watching a digital story of someone you know, versus someone you don’t know” they unanimously stated that while they thought digital stories could have utility in either case, they were “immeasurably more powerful” (p6) when watching the stories of someone you know (e.g., current/former person in their care). p6 clarified: “when you know them, there is sort of this immediacy of being drawn into the story…as you’re watching the story, you’re connecting to all these other events, other interactions you’ve had with them.” all of our participants agreed that watching stories of individuals with whom they were familiar was more emotional, powerful, and meaningful than for individuals with whom they were not familiar. it helped them more fully understand the person in the story. when the other is no longer the other participants in this study described “getting to know the person better” and “seeing another side of the person” resulting from watching the digital stories. however, this ran deeper than simply getting better acquainted with an individual; watching the digital stories appeared to “de-other” (levinas, 1969/1980) the person in the story. “there’s this whole person, and i really need to actually take time to go further to understand them” (p5). the “other” is defined by levinas (1969/1980) as different, not one of us, and part of how we understand ourselves depends on how we define the other. participants described a sense of obligation to “do better,” (p1) “not judge,” (p4) and “take more time” (p7) in their own practice to get to know the individuals in their care more fulsomely after watching the stories. understanding their stories, as in the example above with the patient who refused chemotherapy, seemed to “de-other” the author of the story. reflecting on the patient who refused treatment, p2 offered: it was interesting, the turning point for her [the patient] was when her mom threw open the curtains, because there were a lot of pictures of spiritual light or bright light and her looking up at it somewhere in the mountains or wherever that was. and she talked about a transformation, really with that realization that there were people who loved her and that she loved… kind of that you’re bigger than the sum of your parts. the idea of pulling back a curtain has metaphorical meaning in this instance as well, as it evokes the idea of exposing or revealing something or someone. pulling back the curtain necessarily brings the other person closer to us and separates the differences between us. levinas (1969/1980) offered, recognizing the other starts with the opening of oneself in an encounter, exposing oneself while truly seeing the other. it is unclear from this study whether or not that is what the participants felt specifically, however there was an undeniable “call” they described, that invoked a desire to understand individuals in their care as whole people, “bigger than the sum of [their] parts” (p2). re-humanizing healthcare de-othering the authors of the digital stories also seemed to incite a deep introspection in our participants. while they discussed having a greater understanding for the other, so too did this laing et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 1 6 lead to an inward gaze on themselves, particularly about their practice and contentment, or lack thereof, in their professions. hcps in this study unanimously described entering their chosen profession with a desire to help others. heavy workloads, bureaucracy, and the regular demands of personal lives, over time, seemed to result in many losing site of their original reason for entering a healthcare profession, even experiencing burnout or compassion fatigue in some cases. they described a result of watching these stories as having them remember, or rediscover, why they entered their chosen field in the first place. i loved watching these stories because it made me feel something again…i think i’ve been kinda, i don’t know, routine about my job, i guess. i don’t really feel things at work anymore. and i guess i didn’t even realize that until i watched [the stories] and had tears in my eyes during every one of them! (p6) they also offered the idea of bringing this medium to their colleagues, many of whom they recognized as feeling similarly to them: i mean, i have only been a nurse for 5 years and i think this would be a fantastic way for others to see the other side of somebody’s diagnosis. i just know [staff] are so overwhelmed with like, “i have to give this med and this med,” but like, can i just bring you back to the fact that this is a person?! (p1) another participant added to p1’s idea, offering “maybe these [digital stories] are an antidote to burnout!” (p6). a salve to burnout digital stories allowed access to another side of the individuals in their care and seemed to “personalize” them for the participants. p7 offered: i mean, i know that one [patient] really touched me, and although i never directly cared for her, i always think, you know, there is a patient in this bed, they aren’t just a number or a disease, they are people. and it doesn’t matter how hard i try i can never get that story out of them. and that [digital story] was only three minutes! so that’s, i don’t know, i feel that was very powerful to just bear witness to a very vulnerable story. participants described their appreciation – almost relief – at learning more about their patients and being reminded about why they are in their chosen profession. but i think for staff that may have become a little bit complacent it would just bring them back to that “oh dear, i need to do better” idea. i think [watching these stories] could be really valuable for care providers who don’t have the opportunity to get to know their patients in a personal way. (p5) there is a busyness to most healthcare professions that cannot be ignored, and a stark reality that there is often too much work for too few hands. p6 offered that “this stuff [the psychosocial side of patient care] often gets left out, when in reality it can be the most rewarding part of the job.” laing et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 1 7 p7 then elaborated, saying “they’re [digital stories] like an antidote to burnout!” the vigor with which the participants took to this idea, of digital stories as an antidote to burnout, speaks to the potential protective effect these stories may have with respect to compassion fatigue, or burnout, so often seen in caring professions. interestingly, they all agreed that watching these stories is best done in a facilitated manner, as the discussion elicited by the story increases the understanding, effect, and poignancy for the viewer. discussion digital stories can be a powerful medium for understanding the human condition—both for creators and viewers. for oncology healthcare providers, they can illuminate a more fulsome picture of individuals in their care, and particularly when it comes to unconventional choices (e.g., early cessation of treatment), may provide the human context and help open minds. they add to the individual’s story and diminish the “otherness” of those receiving our care. levinas (1969/1980) first described the idea of “otherness,” and offered that recognizing the suffering of another leads to an opening of the self so as to put oneself into a place of vulnerability. this vulnerability is the starting point for the responsibility, or ethic, we feel toward another human being (levinas, 1969/1980). kearney (2003) argued that, by recognizing ourselves in the other, we begin to understand how our most basic fears and desires manifest themselves in the world; this increased understanding oneself can lead to a more mindful, holistic approach in one’s practice. much like the shift in north america to personalized medicine with respect to the physical care, so too did the participants in this study advocate for a “personalized” approach to the psychosocial care of individuals with cancer. p3: it gives more of a sense of… i don’t know, narrative. or completeness, or something. interviewer: like you understand them a little more, or --? p3: it feels like you get a sense of trajectory of a life… i mean, a whole person instead of a repository for drugs. we need to treat the whole person. we know their illness, but we need to know the person, not just their cancer. digital stories may also allow for a different way of caring for a person. they may provide a more fulsome picture of an individual’s life and provide context from where hcps can provide holistic care. including their digital stories as part of care plans, for example, could provide hcps a deeper understanding of individuals in their care prior to stepping foot in the room. a more personalized approach to psychosocial care of adults with cancer could benefit not only those receiving treatment for cancer, but also allow the hcp to deliver more fulsome and efficient care. you know, [digital stories] kind of circumnavigate our developed way of interacting with patients. so if i’m asking a patient questions [directly] i’ll keep it fairly… on a common path, whereas the digital story allows you to go into a totally different place and allows you to have a different conversation with a patient because you’re starting from a different place. (p7) laing et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 1 8 digital stories may also offer insight into healthcare practices: “i thought it was interesting to hear how they perceived some of the care providers and what they found helpful. it kind of leaves you to wonder what can i do better as a health care provider?” (p2). they may offer efficiencies around the care of individuals with cancer by reminding hcps of the human dimension of the individual versus just the cancer. while most healthcare systems are facing increasing demands coupled with fiscal limitations, ways in which to provide efficient care are urgently needed. digital stories, typically 3-4 minutes, are robust with information that is easily accessed, quick to watch, and full of information about individuals in our care that could otherwise take weeks to months (if ever) to know. limitations hermeneutic research is an interpretive, qualitative approach where understanding (versus explaining) is the objective. accordingly, the aim of our study was to understand the effects of digital storytelling on hcps. while generalizability of any qualitative research is limited, lincoln and guba (1985) advocated for the idea of “transferability” (versus generalizability) in qualitative research as it describes the degree of similarity between two contexts; the more similar the contexts, the higher the degree of transferability. a limitation of this study lies in the fact that our interpretations may not resonate – or be transferable with all who read them. similarly, while statistical power and large sample sizes are not indicators of rigour in hermeneutics, the views of our seven participants, who were self-motivated and volunteered to participate in this study, may not be congruent with other hcps, particularly those who are critical toward the topic. finally, further research, comparing digital storytelling to other interventions intended to expand hcps understanding and ability to see the whole person, is needed to determine the impact that digital storytelling versus other mediums. conclusion maybe [digital stories] are a way that staff would be influenced … seeing a larger snapshot of a person’s experience in three minutes instead of just how they present in the room when they don’t want to say the wrong thing, they don’t want to over share. (p4) participants in this study told us that digital stories compelled them to look, and consider, the whole person versus just the disease for which they were being treated. further, they expressed what might be considered a sort of “relief” with this, suggesting that this is what they have wanted all along (e.g., p2: “i always want to know more about them, but how can i?”). it is perhaps the type of individual drawn to an oncology setting in the first place, one where individuals often stay weeks to months at a time, which offers insight as to why these hcps would want to more fulsomely understand their patients and ultimately deliver truly person-centred care. connecting with those in our care, and understanding their experiences, can generate new ways of practicing, leading to improved care practices and even, perhaps, a happier workforce. laing et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 1 9 references akard, t., dietrich, m., friedman, d., hinds, p., given, b., wray, s., & gilmer, m. 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(1993). the story of life: hermeneutic perspectives on the relationship between narrative and life history. in a. lieblich & r. josselson (eds.), the narrative study of lives (pp. 1–20). thousand oaks, ca: sage. table 1. participants and discipline participant area of practice 1 registered nurse 2 clinical psychology 3 registered nurse 4 clinical psychology 5 social work 6 registered nurse 7 patient advisory group figure 1. focus group sample questions 1. what was it like for you to watch these digital stories? 2. what did you learn about these individuals that you didn’t already know? 3. what was most/least impactful? 4. do you think these digital stories might affect your practice or the way you think about/relate the individuals in your own area? how? 5. do you think digital stories could it work in your area? 6. what do you think digital stories might be beneficial in your workplace? for you as an individual? what about them might not be beneficial? 7. how would you describe these digital stories to someone who hasn’t seen them? how would you describe the impact they had on you? 8. what kind of use do you think these digital stories could have? can they be used in other areas? corresponding author: dennis sumara, phd email: sumara@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 february 5, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 on becoming what the story needs dennis sumara abstract in this article, i use derrida’s (1978) conceptualizing of différance to inform hermeneutic readings of my queer archive of deferrals. these readings show some of the complex ways remembered and forgotten experiences of learning, teaching, and schooling are inevitably shaped by heteronormativity. my interest in différance is informed and maintained by my active resistance to how the subjects needed by those stories can lose track of their deferrals in ways that can reposition the normative within the counternormative and vice versa. i conclude by discussing how creative re-storying can support acts of remembering, forgetting, and fictionalizing that can lead to hermeneutic insight. keywords queer, archive, subjectivity, story, difference, normative, hermeneutics, writing, teaching, reading sumara journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 3 2 the story of what happened, or what did not happen but should have—that story can become a curtain drawn shut, a piece of insulation, a disguise, a razor, a tool that changes every time it is used and sometimes becomes other than we intended. the story becomes the thing needed. (allison, 1995, p. 3) it was in 1991, as a doctoral student reading and writing about hermeneutics, poststructuralism, and deconstruction that i happened upon an unsettling idea i needed then and still need now. in 1968, jacques derrida used the french word différance to highlight the dual acts of differentiating and deferring in all acts of representation. the differences become the markers separating this from that, normal from not normal, ugly from beautiful, in from out, right from wrong, fact from fiction. the deferrals necessary for those differentiations, however, become obscured, erased, silenced absences that remain as felt but unrepresented traces. since then, i have been curious about how acts of fictionalizing and imagining can create the conditions for the complete meaning of différance (differentiating and deferring) to be written and read in ways that change the subjects of learning and the subjects that learn. remembering to forget i am not able to watch violent scenes on television. i cover my eyes and ears or leave the room when i can see they are about to happen. i avoid arguments and don’t like to be in the presence of angry people. i realize this is influenced by growing up as an only child with working-class immigrant parents in a small 1950s bungalow that was permeated with the smells of beer, cigarettes, disappointment, and sadness. sometimes i noticed those smells on some of my students when i taught grades 7, 8, and 9 in the 1980s. in my tiny basement bedroom during the late sixties and early seventies, i read novels and watched television, not realizing i was lonely and that it was probably my fatness preventing anyone from noticing i liked boys and preferred novels with strong women characters. i read my favourite ones over and over, becoming a powerful character in my own fictional future, planning the ways i would enact revenge on the bullies who made my one-mile walk home from school a misery. those imaginative engagements with novels and television shows became half my world. i believe now it was my fear of being both invisible and exposed in my small room, in our small house, in our small city on the vast open-skied canadian prairies that drew me to novels and television shows situated in big cities. indeed, i had pictured myself living in new york city so vividly that on my first visit there it felt like coming home. in two or three things i know for sure (1995), dorothy allison tells stories about what it was like for the gibson women to grow up poor in south carolina with men they loved and feared. i have read it at least a dozen times since buying it twenty-five years ago—each time noticing something different in the text and in the reader. because i know it is a memoir, not a novel or an ethnography, i believe the stories being told are based on things that are true because they happened. a novel can look and sound like a memoir, but because i know that the characters are made up, i read it as fiction. if the text is an ethnography, i read it as reliable exposition. all three of these are stories cast in and through different genres we have used to neatly separate the sumara journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 3 3 truth from a lie, fact from fiction, normal from not normal. genre, formatting, publishing, and marketing produce the identity of the text and the reader. writers produce the texts that produce the readers that produce the reading. it’s not hard to discern why and how the story becomes the thing needed. it is not so easy to understand why and how even the most astute, critical reader becomes what the story needs. forgetting to remember poststructuralism and deconstruction as ideas more than practices have been able to show the limits of structuralism. whereas structural linguistics showed how meanings derive from assemblages of words, with the use of différance, derrida showed how those assemblages emerged from hierarchical, patriarchal, colonial, imperialist, capitalist, neoliberal, normative processes where decisions are made about what and who counts by naming what and who doesn’t count. as someone whose queer sensibilities are oriented by what berlant (2011) describes as “practices that feel out alternative routes for living without requiring personhood to be expressive of an internal orientation or a part of a political program for how to live” (p. 18), i have had plenty of experience with how deferring requires social processes of traumatic shaming from homophobia, femphobia, and fatphobia. i resist identity categories, preferring to discuss how my queer sensibilities are oriented by my ever-expanding archive of deferrals. deferrals are never benign. my interest in différance is informed and maintained by my active resistance to how both the stories and the subjectivities needed by those stories can lose track of their deferrals in ways that can reposition the normative within the counternormative. for example, in july i received an email reminding me about the upcoming pride parade that is held in my home city every year in early september. i know i should be proud that this event now has become so popular. but i am not proud. i am sad and disappointed that what had its genesis as a march of protest intended to tell a story of outrage by being outrageous has become a parade intended to prove that homophobia has been solved. public displays of outrage require the outraged to make spectacles of themselves, not only to be noticed, but to interrupt the usual ways of noticing. the pride marches i attended in the 80s and 90s included entries like dykes on bikes, lip syncing drag queens, scantily clad muscle men on floats, leather, plumes, loud dance music, protest signs, chanting, laughing. the streets were lined by uneasy, cautious spectators some of whom helped write the story of outrage, some who were trying to understand the story, and some who were trying to silence the story with homophobic displays that usually exist insidiously in more muted ways. it was the juxtaposing of the outrageous with the outrage that produced a march that was a parody of a parade, not a parade. however, parody only has disrupting power if those who are performing and watching it understand what that story needs them to become. over the past decade, the minor shift from the word march to parade was accompanied by major regressive move—the requirement that the stories of lgbtq histories and cultures be presented within normative structures and meanings. yes, it is true that there are now many more people in the pride parade representing non-queer sensibilities; however, most of the outrage and outrageous have been edited out and, as a sumara journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 3 4 consequence, histories of queer resistance have been mostly erased, lost, forgotten, deferred. the pride parade in my home city now reads like a story with a happy ending, needing little more from spectators/readers than the most superficial forms of tolerance. i would argue that normalizing a march of protest into a parade of pride is not unlike reading a novel in school—a regression to the normal—changing in profound ways what that story needs the reader to become. pedagogies from and for patriarchy when i was in grade one at st paul’s school, my teacher sister mary louise (who wrote to me after i started teaching to let me know she had eventually left the convent to get married and have children) was required to use the dick and jane basal reading series. i remember being confused and worried when i realized dick and jane’s mother did not go to work every day and their father carried a briefcase not a toolbox; and even more worried when i noticed there were no ashtrays or beer bottles on their kitchen table and the adults were always smiling. to me, dick and jane’s family was another species. one day i arrived at school to find a coloured chalkboard mural drawing depicting human-like figures falling into flames that sister mary louise had artfully drawn, which during our catholic studies class she warned us happens to unrepentant sinners. as the school years passed, the queer me emerged despite the fact there was nothing in the school curriculum to suggest i should exist. not only was i a different species, i was an alien from another planet—and probably a sinner who would fall from the sky into the fires of hell. my queer sensibilities had to read through racist, homophobic, classist, sexist, dogmatic texts in the complete absence of any queer historical or cultural knowledge to support my own responses to those texts. like other readers who felt like an alien, for my classmates and teachers i mostly had to make up responses that were expected rather than reveal publicly how i read them through the emerging queer story of me. luckily, in the language arts classes in the 60s and 70s my teachers were not interested in whether i identified with the curriculum. the explicit purpose of those texts was aligned with the purposes and functions of schooling, which in some ways made it easy to become what the story needed: a student who read the words accurately, learned how to write grammatically correct sentences, and who knew the difference between a simile and a metaphor. i didn’t have to put my mostly hidden story on the curriculum table. the worst thing (i was invisible) also was the best thing (i was invisible). those acts of reading (books and television) and writing (planning my revenge and escape) was the genesis of a private queer archive of resistance made from the deferrals i still depend on to fashion my queer subjectivity. as cvetkovich (2003) argues, those who experience their identities from and in the elusive queer archive do not have access to (or even feel entitled to) reliable historical, intergenerational, contextual, cultural knowledge to orient their counternormativity. like human consciousness, the queer archive of deferrals is everywhere and nowhere. complicating these gaps and absences are that the words and images and genres we use to think about, read and/or write about our experiences are produced by densely normative structures and cultures. sumara journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 3 5 in the early 1980s when i realized there were more than just a few wounded and wary students in grade 7, 8, and 9 language arts classes, i abandoned textbooks and learned reader response and process writing pedagogies. i could get away with doing that back then, a short-lived period in education history in the canadian province of alberta where progressive education and rugged individualism informed programs of study that trusted teachers to embrace an inquiry-based approach to teaching. like me, some of my students needed the chance to learn the uses of fiction in a world of hard truth—not to escape their experiences, but to learn to understand them and, through imaginative engagements with reading and writing, plan their escape. however, even in inquiry-based classrooms with teachers knowledgeable about and committed to a critical pedagogies approach, the evidence from my and others’ research has shown the insidious ways homophobia and sexism handed down through patriarchal systemic structures limits not only what one can be, but also what one can know (sumara & davis, 1999). indeed, gender and sexuality normalization extend not only to the content of curriculum and processes of teaching, but also to the theories of learning that inform teaching practices—often becoming amplified through debates of the optimal ways to ensure the kind of learning most valued. i cut my teeth on the highly politicized contestations between inquiryand skills-based approaches to teaching reading, realizing years later that both approaches emerged from normalizing discourses that continued to enable systemic forms of exclusion. ironically, schools continue to produce conformity even in the context of personalized, student centred, inquiry-based pedagogies. it doesn’t end there. despite my early career research hopes that university teacher education might avoid the most severe pedagogical normalizing, the results of my research into the uses of literary genres in university-based teacher education were clear—neither the conventions of the text nor the intentions of the teacher can usually prevent literary engagements from being schooled. the imaginative functions of literary engagement are hijacked by the normalizing social and cultural practices that shape what it means to be a teacher or a student in school—a place explicitly oriented by all valences and variations of the word normal: neutral, right, generic, silent, deferred (sumara et al., 2008). the remembered present i continue to hold a somewhat pessimistic critique of schools and schooling—but at the same time i am deeply committed to the institution of public schooling. it was the experience of being schooled by adults who were not my parents in a place that was not my family home that provided me with refuge and an imagined future. i am not the first to insist that imaginative work be given more respect in school. for me, this begins by acknowledging that what we imagine contributes to our consciousness—what edelman (2004, p. 8) describes as “the remembered present.” the intellectual, emotional, and psychic responses we have through our engagements with fictional characters are included in our embodied archive that supports our knowing, being, and doing. because these fictional engagements are personal, and the texts public and fixed (rarely are novels or poems ever changed), we are given the opportunity to notice how we both mark and are marked by and through those re-readable texts. it is quite challenging to study the sumara journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 3 6 situation of the reader if we include the biological body of the reader as that situation. the biological body is not only in a situation; as de beauvoir (1989) noted, the body is a situation— the complexities of which cannot be captured by the words used to describe it directly. that’s the hard part because it means trying to use how we have learned to see what we have learned not to see: that which has been deferred and declared not worthy of notice. the absence may be felt yet ironically not known. perception needs to be tricked into finding its way into the known but not perceived. in my research, teaching and, indeed, in my daily personal life, i use the reading and re-reading of novels to help with this trick of perception. i first happened upon this practice at the same time i was reading about différance. as part of my doctoral research, i read and re-read michael ondaatje’s (1991) novel the english patient with a small group of high school english teachers as part of my doctoral research. for the unnamed pilot who is only known as the english patient, the story of identity is told indirectly during times the nurse reads aloud to him from his commonplace book that he has kept for 30 years: and in his commonplace book, his 1890 edition of herodotus’s histories, are other fragments—maps, diary entries, writings in many languages, paragraphs cut out of other books. all that is missing is his own name. (ondaatje, 1991, p. 96) like the english patient, i annotate books, including novels. those annotations are particularly interesting when i am re-reading the same printed version of a book over many years. the marks become not only a record of the reader on the text, but also during re-reading they are evidence that the re-reading is conducted with a different consciousness, a different remembered present, a different reader. it is the temporal period between the marking and the remarking that is interesting to me and has over the years become productive for my students and research participants. it is not only a history of the experiences of reading and re-reading, it is a fascinating window into the reading subject, including what the reading subject became over the course of repeated readings over time. this all sounds so tidy and simple; however, there are limits to what can be known through intentional processes of marking. as cvekovich (2003) has discussed, the remembered and imagined self can only be fashioned from what is available to perception and conditioned by the stories in which we are situated and the ways in which we are storied by others. this is not so much of a problem with those whose experience and story of self-identity is closely aligned with normative conceptions, images, and practices. it is a problem for those who have been storied as outside the normative (outliers, outsiders) and named with pejorative language that has no place in polite conversation or this writing. the fear of being ordinary and the desire to belong in retrospect, i realize that since completing my doctoral dissertation up to the present time my work has been trying to work out the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the fear of being ordinary and the desire to belong—an ironic paradox that the situation of schooling amplifies. i have tried to understand this productive ironic tension by studying the readerly and sumara journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 3 7 writerly dynamics of literary engagement. i have learned how and why the situation of reading and the subjectivity of the reader influences where on the continuum from fearing ordinary and desiring to belong can land. how much queer can extraordinary include? how much ordinary must be maintained? what are the different consequences of becoming what is needed for one story or the other? some of this i worked out in private readings in public (1996) by examining the differential functions of the literary imagination in school and non-school settings. fifteen years later i wrote why reading literature in school still matters (2002) to offer a more hopeful account emerging from research i had conducted in both schools with teachers and their students and in community settings with adults. in that book, i also began to experiment with form, juxtaposing literary, and academic expository text with data that included my own and others’ written memoirs. in chapters with titles like “learning how to be a subject” and “learning how to fall in love,” i offer essays (from the french essayer: to try) that present hermeneutic interpretations of what i learn by juxtaposing the actions and thinking of characters in novels alongside memoir-like narrative episodes, discussing these using theories and concepts from my academic reading. in those texts, i attempt to find ways to draw attention to my archive of deferrals by using conventions and practices i learn from poets, novelists, and songwriters. i assign these reading and writing practices to students in all my classes (both graduate and undergraduate) which means that no matter what the course i include a novel as one of the required readings. i do not include a novel for the purposes of expanding the content of the curriculum. i do not ask the students to reveal their personal responses to the novel in the assignments or in class discussions. instead, i ask them to do a close critical theorized reading of what they can now know or see when they merge three stories: an episode from a novel; a vignette from their remembered experience; a slice of theory. what can they now think about after completing a writing assignment that asks them to work out a relationship among these three different stories? and then the most interesting part: who did they have to become to write that story? what did that story need them to be? for example, how does applying a queer theoretical lens to my reading of the english patient alongside my remembered experience of sorting through my mother’s photographs and immigration papers create knowledge that changes how i remember and read and write and, ultimately, who i become (sumara, 2002)? that becomes a very important story to study—the one that has been created using that process initiated and completed by the one who becomes implicated in the outcome and eventually in the analysis of that outcome. in other words, i am not only interested in what story of learning that can be told about what is produced from those reading and writing practices, i also am interested in hearing about who the writer needed to become and became through and as a result of that process. the question arises, then, what did the story of this article i am writing need from me? did i conduct the story or did the story conduct me? what deferrals occurred in order for me to get this published? i wonder. becoming what this article’s story needed was far more difficult than i anticipated when i sat down to write. the hard part was realizing how seductive it is to attach to stories that seem to need me more than i need them. or maybe it’s the other way around. sumara journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 3 8 references allison, d. (1995). two or three things i know for sure. the penguin group. berlant, l. (2011). cruel optimism. duke university press. cvetkovich, a. (2003). an archive of feeling: trauma, sexuality, and lesbian public cultures. duke university press. de beauvoir, s. (1989). the second sex. vintage. derrida, j. (1978). writing and différance. routledge. edelman, g. (2004). wider than the sky: the phenomenal gift of consciousness. yale university press. ondaatje, m. (1992). the english patient. mcclelland & stewart. sumara, d. (1996). private readings in public: schooling the literary imagination. peter lang. sumara, d. (1998). fictionalizing acts: reading and the making of identity. theory into practice 37, 203-210. sumara, d. (2002). why reading literature in school still matters: imagination, interpretation, insight. lawrence erlbaum associates. sumara, (2007). small differences matter: interrupting certainty about identity in teacher education. journal of gay & lesbian issues in education, 4, 39-58. https://doi.org/10.1300/j367v04n04_04 sumara, d., & davis, b. (1999). interrupting heteronormativity: toward a queer curriculum theory. curriculum inquiry, 29, 191-208. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3185891 https://doi.org/10.1300/j367v04n04_04 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3185891 corresponding author: nancy j moules, rn phd faculty of nursing, university of calgary email: njmoules@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 march 9, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74956 editorial: what’s at stake in emerging horizons nancy j moules i am delighted to welcome the serialization of dr. michael (mike) lang’s doctoral thesis, emerging horizons: crafting meaning and cultivating understanding through digital storytelling, to the journal of applied hermeneutics. this is the second time we have embarked on presenting thesis work in this way. the first was in 2016 with the work of dr. john williamson who offered his doctoral thesis called the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery. his five articles were accompanied by five editorials from him first, and then from his supervisor and supervisory committee. with mike’s work, the same process is followed; we present seven articles taken from this thesis that are accompanied by four editorials: his introductory one; one from his supervisor, dr. catherine laing; one from both of his supervisory committee members: dr. deborah mcleod and me; and one from his external examiner, professor ted george. when mike first approached dr. catherine (catherine) laing and me about the possibility of studying with us and completing his phd in nursing, as well as his idea about somehow wanting to explore digital storytelling, we very simply said “well this is where you should be.” and that was it. catherine became mike’s supervisor and he, a non-nurse, began phd nursing studies. in conceptualizing what he wanted to research and how he wanted to research it, mike was mike – he wanted to do everything! he wanted to do a documentary since he had experience with that, but he also wanted to interview people who had created digital stories, particularly adolescent moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 3 2 and young adult survivors of cancer, and he wanted to also help them create those digital stories. but he also wanted to conduct a hermeneutic study. it was suggested in a supervisory committee meeting that he could do it all. he could conduct the workshop to create the stories and teach how to do so, while filming it and then creating a documentary out of that footage of the one weekend workshop (that was all conceptualized by mike). then, he could use this as his data to conduct a hermeneutic analysis. this was a huge undertaking that could not be done by all – very few people have the film making style and experience that mike has. by that time, he had countless experiences of creating digital stories and was an experienced and credentialed digital storytelling facilitator. however, conducting a hermeneutic analysis – deeply immersing himself in the interpretive depth of this data – was new to him and mike embarked on this experience with an openness to learn and understand what it means to think and write interpretively. with careful coaching and advice from his supervisor, catherine, and many rewrites and reconsiderations, mike completed his thesis with an exemplary product of strong hermeneutic research. what makes this work strong? in reading the interpretations that mike offers, it is clear that he is not offering a psychological analysis of his participants; he is looking for the deep rich interpretive conjectures that emerge from the data that have the ability to take understanding somewhere – to raise the particular of the situation to the commonality of human life. it is about recognizing something of kinship and familiarity, something we know to be true of something something we find ourselves in, even if we have not been in that place. hermeneutics is showing an integrity of the capacity to hold tension, to be “not quite this and not quite that” (moules et al., 2015, p. 179). in the hermeneutic humility of knowing that truth is always a flexible encounter with something that allows room for something else, there is also recognition that it offers something that matters or, as dr. james risser called it, “something that is at stake” (risser, 2012, 2019). mike speaks to many things that are “at stake” in this work, important in understanding cancer survivorship and the effect of cancer on lives and relationships, but also deeply important in understanding ourselves and our place and circumstances in this world. “with respect to the living word, hermeneutics cannot escape from an operation of memory—an operation of memory that is undoubtedly quite complex, for in the movement of its reproduction what is at stake is a central tenet of gadamerian hermeneutics, namely, the sharing of meaning” (risser, 2012, p. 92). i also strongly believe that being supervised by an excellent and experienced hermeneutic researcher is of vital importance. catherine has done this kind of work and been focused on the same population. she knew his method and his topic area very intimately and i think we cannot diminish the difference that makes. in addition, his supervisory committee dr. deborah mcleod and me, both have conducted, taught, and supervised hermeneutic research. both of us have worked in the area of cancer as well. on the final thesis defense, mike was examined by dr. graham mccaffrey, a hermeneutic researcher, and professor ted george, a world renown hermeneutic philosophy expert. this presence of hermeneutic expertise is remarkable; hermes was alive and present in this process. i mention these details because they are not meaningless. in my many years in academia, i have seen many students of hermeneutics struggle with learning it philosophically and applying it to research and often that struggle is located in not having the infrastructure and composition of a moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 3 3 team who has the same lens and vision of what the work could do. i am not suggesting that bringing another lens to the hermeneutic table is not useful as, on the contrary, i think it is exactly what hermeneutics asks of us but having a lens that cannot see hermeneutics or cannot appreciate its value is another matter. the work is not to meant to be exclusive but inclusive, thoughtful, and open to the other. in that, however, its job is not to defend itself and to be under constant demand to prove itself of value (see for e.g., moules et al., 2013, “isn’t all oncology hermeneutic?”). the real challenge that lies in the work showing itself well is it having been done well – mike lang shows us what work done well can look like, or as in the expression he often uses is “a good story well told” (mark twain). moules et al. (2017) discussed the importance of how hermeneutic work needs to be received, appraised, judged, and promoted through different lenses and criteria of value but field (2017) reminded us that, perhaps when this work is not done well and fails to reveal something true of being in the world, it becomes a poor advocate for itself. he described the four problems that can emerge in hermeneutic work: making the obvious inescapable, confusing or mixing hermeneutics in other methods, and devolving into “little t” truths. mike’s work is but one of many of the examples of when the work stays true to hermeneutics, but more importantly to being true of an aspect of being in the world. mike laing’s thesis of emerging horizons: crafting meaning and cultivating understanding through digital storytelling is an exquisite event of meaning that reflects, in part, mike’s artistry, creativity, and sensitivity. it, however, does something even more important: it allows the stories of amanda, harmony, derek, kelsey, kenzie, and bethany to emerge and give us a glimpse into the world of cancer with all its complexities, atrocities, unexpected surprises, cuts, removals, exchanges, and rising awareness. they help us move to the hermeneutic edge of understanding something that defies understanding and almost embrace it with the very sense of humility with which it needs to arrive. references field, j.c. (2017). losing the so-called paradigm war: does our confusion, disarray, and retreat contribute to the advance? journal of applied hermeneutics, article 5, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53308 moules, n.j., jardine, d.w., mccaffrey, g., & brown, c.b. (2013). “isn’t all oncology hermeneutic?” journal of applied hermeneutics, article 3, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i2.53221 moules, n.j. mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. peter lang. moules, n.j., venturato, l., laing, c.m., & field, j.c. (2017). is it really “yesterday’s war? what gadamer has to say about what gets counted. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 1, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53302 risser, j. (2012). the life of understanding: a contemporary hermeneutics. indiana university press. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53308 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i2.53221 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53302 moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 3 4 risser, j. (2019). when words fail: on the power of language in human experience. journal of applied hermeneutics. article 6, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.68706 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.68706 1 calgary, alberta, canada corresponding author: michael j lang, phd email: mike@mikelangstories.com journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 march 1, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74856 emerging horizons, part one. amanda’s story: wound care michael j lang & catherine m laing abstract this first installment of the emerging horizons series explores amanda’s digital storytelling (dst) experience (please see the introductory editorial to the series, crafting meaning, cultivating understanding, to access the film). although attenuated, amanda’s involvement in the film provides valuable insight into important safeguards that should be in place when using dst in healthcare settings. using the metaphor of broken bones and open wounds, this interpretive article highlights the importance of recognizing chaos narratives and unstoried emotions in the early stages of the dst process. it concludes with three practical “wound care” measures that can help safeguard participant wellbeing as they find, tell, craft, and share their digital story. keywords hermeneutics, digital storytelling, adolescents and young adults, psychosocial oncology, artsbased research, documentary filmmaking, narrative interventions as a five-year-old in the late 1980s, i (first author, lang) smashed my leg into a large wooden post that supported a dangerously tall playground swing. my father, who was pushing me on the swing, picked me up and comforted me while i cried, and when it was apparent that i was not going to stop crying, he put me on my feet and said, “it’s just a charlie horse michael, you need to walk it off.” i still remember feeling the three distinct pieces of my femur (that should have been one bone) grating together as i attempted to walk home before laying down on the pavement in the middle of a crosswalk. i also clearly remember my mother yelling, “it is not a charlie horse, maurice! call the ambulance now!” i spent the next two months in a body cast lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 2 2 that went all the way from my armpits to my toes. thirty-two years later that story is routinely told during family holidays and accompanied by laughter and teasing, much to the chagrin of my father. the temporal distance from that traumatic and painful experience and knowing that my leg eventually healed and still works well (despite being three centimeters longer than my other leg), makes the telling of that story possible. in the midst of that terrible spring, however, there was nothing that could be said without overwhelming sadness and tears; the story was not ready to be told. in emerging horizons, amanda was experiencing her own terrible spring, and her presence in the film, though attenuated, provides a striking storyline. in many ways, she “steals the show” in the opening act, and then abruptly leaves the show. her early departure looms over the film like a giant question mark, the audience wondering about the aftermath of her involvement in the digital storytelling (dst) workshop and her psychosocial wellbeing as she struggled with the loss of her unborn child. it is not until the final seconds of the ending credits that amanda’s storyline has any closure, a miracle pregnancy confirmed only a few weeks after discontinuing her involvement in the workshop, and a beautiful newborn girl in her arms. losing a pregnancy because of a cancer diagnosis is a uniquely female adolescent and young adult (aya) sequela. amanda’s few short moments on screen conveys both the emotional distress that accompanies a potential loss of fertility due to cancer treatments (lawson et al., 2015), and how this distress can be compounded by the forced choice between one’s own life and the life of a wanted unborn child (reardon, 2018). amanda had decided prior to her intake interview to make this aspect of her cancer experience the focus of her digital story and expressed a strong desire to share her story to help other aya women who may be facing the same devastating choice. however, during the initial evening session of the dst workshop it became clear that this particular story was not ready to be told, and through her experience, amanda highlighted a specific challenge of dst with aya cancer survivors: recognizing and caring for the emotional broken bones and open wounds that accompany every cancer experience. broken bones: in the midst of the trauma amanda: you know, you lost the second child that you wanted to have... and then you don’t know if you can have children... and then, the doctor is telling you to wait because the cancer could come back and there’s all these decisions and you are trying to balance what you want and then all your fears and the different outcomes. broken bones, apart from complex open fractures, are under the surface (baudour et al., 2018). they are recognizable by swelling and bruising, deformation, loss of function, and pain that increases during palpation (baudour et al., 2018). similarly, emotional “broken bones” exist under the surface and become apparent in particular storytelling symptoms (angus & greenberg, 2011). symptoms such as the inability to tell the story (loss of function), chaotic or “broken” story structure (deformation), or uncontrollable emotional pain during reflection (pain on palpation) all could indicate the grating ends of unknit bones below (angus & greenberg, 2011). exposing and palpating emotional broken bones during a dst experience is not as straight lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 2 3 forward as a broken femur, however, narrative theory can help provide a general sense of where to start. in his book the wounded storyteller, medical sociologist arthur frank (2013) described three archetypal illness narrative structures: restitution, quest, and chaos. restitution narratives describe an illness being treated and resolved, quest narratives chronicle the illness experience as a series of obstacles to overcome, and chaos narratives are those in which the illness experience has no resolution (frank, 2013). although cancer stories are often complex and resist compartmentalization, frank’s typologies are a helpful starting point to recognize and understand an aya participant’s illness narrative in the early stages of a dst process (lang et al., 2019). in particular, understanding the characteristics of a chaos narrative can help determine if an aya is in the midst of the trauma that they desire to turn into a digital story (lang et al., 2019). in emerging horizons, amanda provided an example of a chaos narrative, while her experience during the first evening session revealed the difficulties of storying a concurrent traumatic experience. one hallmark of a chaos story is the “and then and then and then” syntactic structure (frank, 2013, p. 98). the quote that opens this interpretation utilizes this structure, and amanda’s voice, tone, and pacing as she shared these words in the film conveys a feeling of being overwhelmed by the conflicting desires and fears of motherhood after a cancer diagnosis. this inner turmoil was compounded by having previously experienced the joy of having had one successful pregnancy, and by her choice to have an abortion despite the practice conflicting with her evangelical christian belief system which was highlighted in her pre-workshop interview. chaos stories also lack coherent sequence or discernable causality (frank, 2013). telling a story about our life requires us to order and casually link events in and across time (ricœur, 1990), essentially, creating order out of chaos. in the process of creating the outline for her digital story, amanda struggled to determine where each moment belonged in the storyline (i.e., inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, etc.) and could not articulate the relationship between the meaningful moments she selected. her story was too fractured, and the pain too immediate, to knit together those moments into a cohesive whole. during the process of constructing a story outline about her abortion experience amanda was brought face-to-face with the broken, chaotic, unresolved nature of that experience. frank (2013) provided some insight into amanda’s struggle to craft her story outline: those who are truly living the chaos cannot tell it in words. to turn the chaos into a verbal story is to have reflective grasp of it. the chaos that can be told in story is already taking place at a distance and is being reflected on retrospectively. for a person to gain such a reflective grasp of her own life, distance is a prerequisite . . . lived chaos makes reflection, and consequently storytelling, impossible. (p. 98) laing et al. (2017a) provided additional support for this idea of reflective distance by suggesting a linear relationship between length of time since diagnosis and the “reflectiveness” of a digital story (p. 279). it was noted that ayas closer to, or in the middle of, their cancer experience, primarily used dst as a distraction tool, while those who were further from diagnosis were more likely to use it as an opportunity to process and share their cancer experience with others (laing lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 2 4 et al., 2017a). together with amanda’s experience, these observations suggest that the exploration of lived chaos narratives with ayas should be done differently, in an individual psychotherapy setting for example, or at the very least, not in a group dst setting that is being filmed and turned into a publicly available documentary film. indeed, angus and greenberg (2011) identified two subtypes of chaos stories (i.e., “broken stories,” p. 73), narrative incoherence (fragmented plot structure), and emotional incoherence (conflicting emotional plotlines), which are amenable to individual psychotherapy. ultimately, amanda was not able to story her experience of having a cancer-induced abortion potentially because she did not have the necessary reflective distance from that experience; she was still lying in the crosswalk with her femur in three pieces, still living amid the trauma of losing her unborn child. it was not yet an experience that could be storied in three short minutes despite the supportive environment and the creative possibilities that the dst workshop provided her. open wounds: recognizing unstoried emotions amanda: i don’t know about you, but i hid a lot of that emotional stuff to make it easier for everyone else. open wounds are often more obvious than broken bones. in the acute stages, there can be copious amounts of blood followed by pus, discoloration, and sometimes malodour while the wound heals (baudour et al., 2018). it is hard to miss an open wound, and despite some nuances, the same could be said for emotional expression. generally, humans recognize the emotions of others, even if they do not understand the underlying causes (ekman, 2007). this occurs intuitively and almost instantaneously without the need to identify all the exact facial expressions, body postures, or voice tone that indicate surprise, anger, or sadness, for example (ekman, 2007). this intuitive emotional understanding, and corresponding reactions, was documented repeatedly in the filmed pre/post-interviews, dst workshop, and digital story screenings that was the source material for emerging horizons. one unmistakeable moment of emotional expression and reaction occurred in the initial evening session as kelsey recognized amanda’s expression of sadness and instinctively responded by placing a hand on her shoulder in a gesture of support. this short clip was included to represent all the moments of emotional support amanda received that evening. throughout the session, the lived chaos of amanda’s chosen story topic was painfully apparent through her raw emotional expression. no one was surprised when i explained her decision to discontinue participation at the beginning of the weekend workshop; the emotional wound of losing her unborn child was still open and bleeding. however, this is not to say that all forms of emotional expression in a dst workshop indicate open wounds. in the dst process, as with most group-based psychosocial interventions, specific forms of emotional expression are not only encouraged, but they are also seen as essential to crafting a meaningful digital story and/or processing an emotionally laden cancer experience (angus & greenberg, 2011; classen & spiegel, 2011; giese-davis et al., 2002). primary negative affect (i.e., sadness, direct fear, and anger) is common and encouraged when ayas share their cancer lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 2 5 story in a supportive group setting (giese-davis et al., 2005; giese-davis et al., 2002). from a dst facilitation perspective, if the meaningful moments an aya selects for their digital story do not elicit strong emotions, it is worth asking, is this the story that needs to be told? whenever meaningful moments are being shared, emotion is a reliable, and necessary, by-product. however, emotion that appears to be unmanageable in its intensity and duration, and occurs out of context, could be important to recognize and address throughout a dst experience (grecucci et al., 2015). again, amanda’s experience is informative. during the “meaningful moments” exercise at the beginning of the evening session, amanda expressed low sadness (i.e., drawing down of the corners of the mouth, upper eyelids drooping, eyes and forehead down; giese-davis et al., 2005) as she reflected on the meaningful moments associated with her abortion. this slowly progressed from low sadness to high sadness (i.e., tears; giese-davis et al., 2005) throughout the evening, culminating with the sudden appearance of tears during the final didactic teaching portion of the evening that provoked kelsey’s empathetic gesture. although expressions of sadness could be expected as amanda shared moments from her difficult cancer experience with others, the slow escalation and expression of high sadness outside of a narrative context (i.e., tears during didactic teaching, not when telling her story) indicated that she was struggling to manage both the intensity and duration of her emotion. in amanda’s own description of her experience she said, “i think about this [on] a certain day, and it just always comes out.” specifically, she was describing her experience of “unstoried emotions” (angus & greenberg, 2011, p. 69). unstoried emotions are identified as “undifferentiated, maladaptive emotional states not embedded in a narrative context” (angus & greenberg, 2011, p. 69). in emerging horizons, as with most dst workshops, the story circle aroused strong emotions (e.g., kelsey: “i have read that story like eight times, but then you say it out loud and you start to cry”), but these emotions are often short in duration and embedded in a “narrative context” (i.e., reading the story aloud) despite their intensity. in other words, the difference between kelsey’s tears during the story circle and amanda’s tears during the didactic portion of the evening workshop was their context, intensity, and duration. angus and greenberg (2011) provided a salient description of the difference between amanda and kelsey’s experience of high sadness: it is as if the emotion is in charge rather than that they are experiencing a situated discrete emotion. it is only when these unexplained emotional states are embedded within a specific narrative context . . . that a client can achieve a nuanced understanding of what the feeling specifically means and says about him or her. (p. 70) amanda believed that she was ready to share her cancer-induced abortion story to help other young women facing the same tragic circumstances, but her emotions were still “in charge,” the wound was still open and bleeding. together, we decided that this particular wound needed more acute care to staunch the bleeding before it could be turned into a digital story. wound care: safeguarding participant wellbeing mike: just let us know if you’d like to chat with someone, and yeah, i can connect you with that person if you want. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 2 6 amanda: no, i’m good, but thank you. there is a lot of exposing and palpating that occurs during a dst experience. kelsey highlighted this during lunch on the second day of the weekend workshop as she described her experience so far, “you know, you keep relistening and relistening to it [cancer story]. like, it kind of reopens the wound, or like, keeps picking at it.” with this description, it could be suggested that the dst process may not be the best form of psychosocial support for certain aya cancer survivors. in particular, if a chaos narrative and unstoried emotion are apparent, a decision needs to be made that safeguards storyteller wellbeing. the word “safeguard” comes from the old french salve or sauve (safe) and garde (a keeping; online etymology dictionary, n.d.). the term salve in english also signifies a healing ointment applied to a wound (online etymology dictionary, n.d.) and consequently, one interpretation of the word safeguard could be “wound keeping.” if we are all wounded storytellers (frank, 2013), it could be said that our wounds need to be kept safe until and during their storying. specifically, a wounded digital storyteller may not need to be fully healed, but perhaps the bone needs to be set and immobilized, the wound salved and bandaged, and the acute emotional pain subsided before a dst process can be a meaningful “brick in the pathway to healing” (laing et al., 2017a, p. 276). a chaos narrative with unstoried emotion is a raw, complex open fracture of the psyche, and the salve of time, or in some cases professional psychotherapy, may be necessary to cultivate the reflective distance and emotional understanding necessary to craft it into a digital story. if a chaos narrative is still being lived and the emotions remain unstoried, it follows that the response to an open complex fracture being exposed and “picked at” through the dst process is intense and uncontrollable emotional pain. amanda’s dst experience demonstrates that the complexity and severity of the psychosocial wounds of a cancer experience may not be apparent until the dst process is underway. as she said in her opening line from the film, “is it going to, you know, be exhausting? is it going to be too much to handle? you just never know.” if it is apparent in the early phases of a dst experience that an aya is attempting to story a broken bone or open wound, the ethical imperative is to have safeguards in place. one of these safeguards is providing ongoing opportunities for ayas to disengage from the dst process during routine check-ins and the established continual consent process. in designing the dst workshop for emerging horizons and in my enrollment communication with participants, i indicated that the introduction to dst evening session was a no-commitment opportunity to see if this dst project was a good fit. not only did this allow me a face-to-face opportunity to assess participant readiness, but it was also a developmentally appropriate approach that empowered the ayas to make their own decisions (i.e., in contrast to the paternalism of intervention suitability being determined entirely by the facilitator/researcher in advance). another safeguard was to provide opportunities to pursue a different storyline than what arose from the “meaningful moments” exercise. in one of my two follow-up phone calls with amanda, i proposed that she could share another story from her cancer experience. in particular, i suggested that she could share about how being a police officer who was used to helping others made it difficult to ask for help during her cancer experience. in contrast to amanda’s broken and chaotic abortion story, this particular story from her cancer experience had already been lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 2 7 transformed into a quest narrative, with amanda overcoming the obstacles of cancer treatments by learning to ask for help. this storyline could have been more amenable to the dst process and conveyed an important lesson from her cancer experience. however, amanda felt like that was not as meaningful a storyline for her to pursue at that time. the final safeguard was shown in the film through the hallway conversation between amanda and me, where i asked her if she wanted to talk with the psychosocial oncology specialist who was part of my supervisory committee (moules). in that moment, she declined the additional support, but this initial conversation continued over the next eight days via email and phone before we came to the decision that “this was not the right time or place for her to tell that story.” she decided to continue visiting the psychosocial oncology professional that she had previously connected with at the local cancer centre. however, despite dropping out of the study, amanda still had a strong desire for her footage and storyline to be included in the film. this is an indication that storyteller wellbeing was maintained; amanda felt invested in the project even after her decision to discontinue participation. furthermore, 11 months later in the online small group screening of emerging horizons for the aya participants, she acknowledged that her experience was indeed a good “inciting incident” in processing her abortion experience, as i had hopefully suggested in the film. ultimately, for amanda, completing a digital story was not what she needed from the process; it was an awareness that she had been living with an open fracture that had not yet been set, salved, or casted. amanda’s experience suggests that, although it may not be possible to determine in advance if it is the right time and place for an aya to share a particular story, it is possible to support them to make that determination for themselves and safeguard their wellbeing throughout the process. if this is done well, it could be possible for aya cancer survivors to move forward with a deeper understanding of profound wisdom embedded their scars and the enhanced strength and resilience of their broken bones. references angus, l.e., & greenberg, l.s. (2011). working with narrative in emotion-focused therapy: changing stories, healing lives. american psychological association. baudour, c.l., bergeron, j.d., & wesley, k. (2018). emergency medical responder: first on scene (11th ed.). pearson education. classen, c.c., & spiegel, d. (2011). supportive-expressive group psychotherapy. in m. watson & d.w. kissane (eds.), handbook of psychotherapy in cancer care (pp. 105-117). wiley. ekman, p. (2007). emotions revealed, second edition: recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life. henry holt. frank, a. (2013). the wounded storyteller. university of chicago. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 2 8 giese-davis, j., koopman, c., butler, l. d., classen, c., cordova, m., fobair, p., benson, j., kramer, h.c., & spiegel, d. (2002). change in emotion regulation strategy for women with metastatic breast cancer following supportive-expressive group therapy. journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 70(4), 916-925. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-006x.70.4.916 giese-davis, j., piemme, k. a., dillon, c., & twirbutt, s. (2005). macro-variables in affective expression in women with breast cancer participating in support groups. in j. harrigan, k. r. scherer, & r. rosenthal (eds.), nonverbal behavior in the affective sciences: a handbook of research methods (pp. 399-445). oxford university. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.04.003 grecucci, a., theuninck, a., frederickson, j., & job, r. (2015). mechanisms of social emotion regulation: from neuroscience to psychotherapy. in m. l. bryant (ed.), emotion regulation: processes, cognitive effects and social consequences (pp. 57-84). nova. laing, c.m., moules, n.j., estefan, a., & lang, m.j. 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(n.d.). salve. in online etymology dictionary. retrieved october 12, 2020 from https://www.etymonline.com/word/salve reardon, d.c. (2018). the abortion and mental health controversy: a comprehensive literature review of common ground agreements, disagreements, actionable recommendations, and research opportunities. sage open medicine, 6, 1-38. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050312118807624 ricoeur, p. (1990). time and narrative: volume 1, 2, 3 (mclaughlin & d. pellauer trans.). university of chicago press. (original work published 1975) https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006x.70.4.916 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.04.003 https://doi.org/10.1177/1043454216688639 https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919863241 https://doi.org/10.1080/07347332.2015.1045677 https://www.etymonline.com/word/safeguard https://www.etymonline.com/word/salve https://doi.org/10.1177/2050312118807624 lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 2 9 microsoft word webber corrected proof (1).docx corresponding author: katie m webber, rn, doctoral student university of calgary email: katherine.webber@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 september 13, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 relational complexity in pediatric oncology: a hermeneutic research inquiry katie m. webber abstract in this paper, i explore the fit of philosophical hermeneutics with understanding relational complexity in pediatric oncology nursing. i begin by introducing the applicability of philosophical hermeneutics to the practice of nursing and nursing research. i then contextualize pediatric oncology and offer my address of the topic of relational complexity in nurse-parent relationships within pediatric oncology contexts. in the second part of the paper, i draw connections between gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and relational complexity by considering the significance of one’s relation to the other, conversation and self-disclosure, and the interpretation of friendship in nurse-parent relationships. i conclude the paper by briefly returning to how my research, guided by philosophical hermeneutics, might contribute to nursing practice. keywords nursing, nurse-parent relationships, relational complexity, philosophical hermeneutics, gadamer, friendship in october 2019, i had the pleasure of accompanying my supervisor, dr. nancy moules, to the north american society for philosophical hermeneutics conference in oregon. there, she presented a paper, “hermeneutic practice: what gadamer has to teach nursing,” a paper soon to be published as a chapter in ted george’s upcoming book the gadamerian mind. in this paper, dr. moules eloquently summarized over twenty-five years of her life’s work and contributions to understanding the applicability and fit of hermeneutics within practice disciplines, in particular, nursing. as dr. moules suggested, this fit of philosophical hermeneutics and the practice of nursing is the substantive claim that nursing is an interpretive practice. although the practice of nursing involves a significant focus on technical knowledge (e.g., administering chemotherapy, webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 2 performing a bone marrow transplant), what i believe is the strength of nursing practice is an ability, as gadamer (1960/2004, p. 20) suggested, to “grasp the ‘circumstances’ in their infinite variety,” or phronesis. illuminating this further, mccaffrey and moules (2016) suggested that, one of gadamer’s concepts that speaks most naturally to nurses is his retrieval of phronesis, or practical wisdom. nursing done well demonstrates the exercise of judgment in the moment, drawing upon knowledge of various kinds, and applying it judiciously and helpfully according to the contours of the unique instance. (p. 4) as dr. moules (2019) also suggested, the fit of gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics with nursing is evidenced by how nurses “recognize the importance of history – how a disease developed, what symptoms came first, and when – and they know how to ‘read’ this history into its current context of particularities” (p. 2). this contextual history-reading involves engaging with the patient about their perspective of their history, and thus, nursing is also an inherently relational practice (moules, 2019), concerned with how nurses can relate themselves helpfully to their patients (peplau, 1952, p. ix). from a gadamerian perspective, this relating helpfully is often facilitated through language and through seeking to understand what the other has to say (moules, 2019). as risser (2002) suggested, “gadamer’s project of philosophical hermeneutics entails a transformation of hermeneutics beyond the framework of methodology … for the sake of the broader experience of understanding and interpretation that is found in experience itself” (p. 167). in their book, conducting hermeneutic research, moules et al. (2015) applied gadamerian hermeneutic philosophy to the process of conducting research in practice disciplines. rather than a strict methodological approach for researchers in practice disciplines to follow, moules et al. have offered a “way to proceed” (p. 8) in research “beyond the framework of methodology” (risser, 2002, p. 167) that is attentive to particulars, asks questions of that which lies beneath the surface (moules et al., 2015), and rigorously examines a topic in a way that challenges us to “live in the world differently” (moules et al., 2015, p. 191). in nursing research today, there is a great investment in proving experiences through the collection of aggregate data, which is then regarded as fact. however, as gadamer (2007) reminded us, thus, what is established by statistics seems to be a language of facts, but which questions these facts answer and which facts would begin to speak if other questions are asked are hermeneutic questions. only a hermeneutical inquiry would legitimate the meaning of these facts and thus the consequences that follow them. (p. 84) as a nurse working with children and their families who experience cancer, it is quite clear that a strict statistically driven, methodologically focused approach to understanding their individual experiences cannot simply be limited to responses on a yes/no/maybe survey. understanding experience involves a willingness to engage in complexity and tension, through dialogue and conversations with those who are best able to speak to the experience (moules et al., 2015), in this case, nurses and parents who experience relational complexity in pediatric oncology. it is for these reasons that i have found gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics applicable, if not transformative, to my inquiry into the topic of relational complexity in pediatric oncology nursing. webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 3 contextualizing pediatric oncology nursing for children, and their families, the experience of being diagnosed with cancer is wellunderstood as a stressful and life-altering experience (björk et al., 2005; coyne et al., 2016). in pediatric oncology care contexts, family-centered care is a priority, and so both the child and their family are considered to be the patient. as the most accessible healthcare provider and due to pediatric patients requiring active or continuing care from diagnosis and then throughout the remainder of their childhood, pediatric oncology nurses often develop close and meaningful relationships with patients and their families (boyce et al., 2018; brimble et al., 2019; slobogian et al., 2017). slobogian et al. (2017) suggested that “oncology nurses become educators, caregivers, hand holders, and trusted confidants through the most traumatic and triumphant experiences. patients often feel like their nurses are like family” (p. 394). while pediatric oncology nurses are not biological family members, it is clear that there is a possibility for familial familiarity in nurses’ relationships with children and their families who are experiencing cancer. accordingly, there is an inherent complexity about these relationships, due to their extended length, the intensity of treatments, and the emotional nature of cancer (hopia & heino-tolonen, 2019). a definition of complex that the merriam-webster (n.d.) dictionary suggests is “a group of obviously related units of which the degree and nature of the relationship is imperfectly known.” pediatric oncology nurses and children with cancer and their families are obviously related to one another, and while there is something that is known about these relationships, there is a degree of imperfection and ambiguity that is worthy of exploration and understanding. in philosophical hermeneutics, the commitment to understanding experience in a way that, as gadamer (1996) suggested, acknowledges the need to “build a bridge over the existing divide between the theoretician who knows the general rule and the person involved in practice who wishes to deal with the unique situation of [the] patient who is need of care” (p. 94) is a compelling reason to explore the applicability of philosophical hermeneutics to understanding the inherently complex relational work of pediatric oncology nursing. according to gadamer (1960/2004), “understanding begins … when something addresses us” (p. 310), which i now offer as a portal into the topic of relational complexity within nurse-parent relationships in pediatric oncology. address of the topic a particular moment in my nursing career has continued to shape my perspective about the complex relationships between nurses and the parents of children diagnosed with cancer. i had been assigned to care for a palliative patient, who i had worked with countless times over the years of her treatment. on one of her final days, i spent much of my shift in her room with her and her family, orientating them to a new, but emotionally challenging reality, one defined by finality. due to her disease progression, she was severely nauseated, and despite our best attempts with antiemetics and supportive care to control her nausea, she had vomited, mostly all over her mother. while her mother held her young daughter in her arms, cleaned her, and settled her, i leaned down to wipe the vomit off of her mother’s shoes. in trying to make light of the situation, i looked up at her mother, who was also a nurse, smiled, and in jest said, “i am being such a good… ”. as i started to say “nurse,” she interrupted me. in the exact moment i said “nurse,” she said “friend.” webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 4 days later, this patient died, and the demands of working in pediatric oncology coupled with the need to maintain professional boundaries, which limited any opportunity for follow up, meant that i did not have the opportunity to truly reflect upon the gravity of my experience. it was not until several years later, sitting in my supervisor’s office, that the memory of this experience resurfaced. at this point in my graduate studies, i was wrestling to settle on a topic of interest that might be worthy of a thesis project. i listed off several tangible ideas, mostly related to quality improvement and educational initiatives. somehow, though, towards the end of the conversation, and perhaps out of desperation to connect with a topic that really mattered to me, some iteration of, “but what really brought me to graduate school was …”. awkwardly, and with eyes rimmed with tears, i shared this experience with my supervisor. her response was emphatic, “this is what you must study.” it was in this moment that i knew that i had come home to my topic. the ethically complex landscape of professional boundaries and nurse-parent relationships in pediatric oncology is, at best, challenging to navigate, and inherently wrought with tension. however, despite being uncomfortable and perhaps even stressful at times, tension may also offer opportunity for understanding. its latin root word, tendere, indicates, “to be stretched” (merriam-webster, n.d.). when something is stretched it becomes thinner, more malleable, and more vulnerable, revealing gaps in understanding that are not always available to us in strength. rather than seeking to resolve the tension between the art of navigating complex relationships and the science of regulated professional boundaries, the aim of my research is to increase understanding for the sake of its applicability to practice – to better support the relational needs of parents of children with cancer and the nurses who care for them. drawing connections between gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and relational complexity in pediatric oncology i-thou, one-other one’s relational engagement with, and understanding of, the other is a significant concern in hermeneutic philosophy and is helpful in framing the topic of relational complexity within nurseparent relationships in pediatric oncology. as a novice nurse researcher interested in relational complexity, my own understanding about one’s relation to the other has, and continues to be, informed by several philosophers, in particular, hans-georg gadamer. gadamer (1960/2004) suggested that: in human relations the important thing is, as we have seen, to experience the thou as truly thou – i.e. not to overlook his [sic] claim but to let him really say something to us. here is where openness belongs…without such openness to one another there is no genuine human bond. belonging together always also means being able to listen to one another…openness to the other, then, involves recognizing that i myself must accept some things that are against me, even though no one else forces me to do so. (p. 369) gadamer articulated the importance of listening, the significance of not overlooking the other, and the value of openness, even when it might be against our own selves. in nurse-parent relawebber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 5 tionships, particularly in contexts where the relationship develops and can become more complex over time, the challenge of continuing to listen to what the other has to say is no small task, particularly when conflict about care might arise. nurses can overlook parents’ perspectives, even unintentionally, and i would suggest that parents can also overlook nurses’ perspectives. while gadamer’s conceptualization of the other was not written about nurse-parent relationships, there is an opportunity for his philosophy to influence how nurses’ and parents and listen to each other, even when their perspectives might differ. according to risser (2002), “gadamer’s hermeneutics is concerned with the opening of shared life in which one is able to hear the voice of the other” (p. 167). being able to hear the voice of the other is significant in nursing practice. we see in nursing, especially in pediatric oncology nursing, an emphasis on providing care that is focused or centered on the needs of the patient and their family, rather than the needs of the healthcare provider or institution. the principles of family-centered care, according to kuo et al. (2012) involve open and objective exchanging of information; respecting and honoring diversity and difference; collaboration and partnership; care planning that is negotiable; and contextual care that acknowledges the patient’s family and community. however, despite these well-intentioned principles of care that are focused on the family, care that is authentically family-centered continues to be difficult to realize in everyday clinical practice (kuo et al., 2012). optimally, nurses and parents collaboratively partner to provide care to the sick child (kuo et al., 2012). however, a frequent criticism of family centered care is that it fails to acknowledge several inequities inherent in situations that involve the provision of care (kuo et al., 2012; mcneil, 2012), leaving nurses and parents feeling frustrated with inadequate healthcare systems. theories about why family centered care has been challenging to implement include misunderstanding about role responsibilities of parents and nurses, structural challenges related to resource management, and diverse cultural perspectives (coyne & cowley, 2007; shields, 2010). admittedly, while i would agree that the issues related to implementing care that is family-centered are complex and layered, what is a worthy reminder in everyday nursing practice is the significance of working to remain open to the other, and as gadamer (1996) suggested, giving “due recognition to the fact that what is involved is always a relationship between two human beings” (p. 171). while there is an undeniable asymmetry of nurse as care provider and parent as care receiver, there remains a mutual humanness between both the nurse and the parent, which is often at risk of being forgotten, due to competing, and often imposed, demands of the healthcare system. this mutual humanness is often understood and expressed through language, or more specifically, through conversation. gadamer (1972/2007) suggested that the art of conversation, a capacity to hear the other, is at risk of disappearing, which may also point to why family centered care can be difficult to actualize in clinical practice. conversation and self-disclosure in pediatric oncology settings, opportunities for conversations to occur between parents of children with cancer and nurses occur twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. countless times a day, nurses enter in to and out of hospital rooms, completing necessary medical tasks, but also, over time and as relationships develop, sometimes just to play a quick game with a patient or to debrief difficult news with a parent. this is often where the work of phronesis becomes alive in pediatric oncology nursing care, as “contextualized knowledge” (moules et al., 2015, p. webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 6 50) that is informed by the particularities and intricacies of the complex circumstances of cancer. while the conversations are not always productive, there remains a real possibility for meaningful conversations between parents and nurses to occur where, as gadamer suggested (1972/2007) “one is open, and finds the other open, enough that the threads of the conversation can run back and forth” (p. 352). it is in these conversations that the pronounced titles of nurse as nurse and parent as parent become less of the focus, and laughter and tears are held in common, rather than expressed on behalf of one towards the other. as gadamer (1972/2007) offered, “something is a conversation for us if it leaves something behind in us” (p. 355). upon reflection and with experience, nurses and parents may feel that something has been left behind in them, a lasting influence of their conversations, and the necessary building blocks of their relationships. due to the nature of cancer treatment, which does not offer breaks for birthdays, vacations, or anything else, conversations between nurses and parents may involve planning a surprise birthday through the window of a hospital room for a severely immunocompromised child or, unfortunately, processing with a parent how they might be able to tell their child that they are going to die. it is for these reasons, and many more, why the conversations between parents and nurses in pediatric oncology sometimes extend beyond shift change. while conversations of equal reciprocity are not the goal, in the nursing profession there remains an overwhelming apprehension about the degree to which self-disclosure might be able to contribute therapeutically to helping relationships (baca, 2011; college and association of registered nurses of alberta, 2020; manfrin-ledit, 2015). quite fairly, excessive self-disclosure can be disruptive, if not harmful, to the therapeutic nature of helping relationships (baca, 2011; manfrin-ledet, 2015; morse et al., 2008). however from a patient perspective, self-disclosure can also provide a “reprieve from being the centre of attention” (audet & everall, 2010, p. 333), offering some balance to the inherently asymmetrical nature of provider-receiver relationships, more readily establishing trust, reducing feelings of judgment (audet & everall, 2010), and challenging “the one-sided clinical gaze” (frayling, 2010) that patients can sometimes perceive from their healthcare providers. to illustrate how nurses and parents engage conversationally, and the application that gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics might offer to deepening understanding about the conversations that nurses have with parents, i will offer an example. an interaction might begin with a nurse explaining a medical skill that the parent must learn to do before they can be discharged home with their child – a pedagogical conversation (gadamer 1972/2007). according to gadamer, the challenge of a pedagogical conversation is that it can be difficult for the teacher, in this case the nurse, to maintain a capacity for conversation. gadamer wrote “the incapacity for conversation above all rests on the side of the teacher, and in particular, in so far as the teacher is the principle purveyor of knowledge, on the monological structure of modern science and theoretical education” (p. 356). however, according to gadamer, there is still the possibility of engaging authentically in conversation in “individualized conversational situations in which the true function of conversation is preserved” (p. 356). gadamer further distinguished between three types, one of which is the curative form of conversation. although in his discussion about curative conversations, gadamer referred specifically to psychoanalytic conversations between a patient and a doctor, i suggest that there is still something applicable to this example of a nurse teaching a webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 7 medical skill to a parent. according to gadamer, a successful curative conversation is “truly a joint enterprise aimed at understanding, and not simply the application of knowledge on the part of the doctor [or in this case, the nurse]” (p. 357). rather than simply applying their knowledge about how to correctly perform the task, a pediatric oncology nurse might notice a parent’s trepidation and underlying anxiety and take the time to acknowledge and respond to the stress of the situation, rather than the need to discharge the family within a predetermined, systemimposed timeframe. in other words, the nurse is paying attention to the “fecundity of the individual case” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 36), deepening understanding about this particular parent’s experience of having to be now play the role of both parent and nurse in their own home. perhaps this parent is mourning a lost sense of normalcy for their child, who now has a medical device implanted into their body for years to come, or, perhaps there is something else that needs to be uncovered. there is always a significant potential for the incapacity for conversation to occur, particularly if the nurse reduces the significance of the experience by not noticing or misunderstanding the parent’s anxiety, or worse yet, choosing to ignore it. however, in the event that the nurse choses a posture of openness, seeks understanding through conversation, and engages more relationally, perhaps even disclosing something about their own experience of anxiety to the parent, there is a genuine possibility that such a conversation may be successful in deepening (gadamer, 1972/2007, 1996) both the nurse’s and parent’s understanding of themselves and the other. put another way, despite the pressure to focus on technical skills and pre-determined care delivery, a posture of openness towards the other allows for an opportunity for the conversation to become, as gadamer might say (1960/2004) less conducted and more genuine. as gadamer (1972/2007) offered, conversation has a transformative power. where a conversation is successful, something remains for us and something remains in us that has transformed us. thus a conversation is a close neighbor of friendship. only in conversation…can friends find each other and develop that kind of community in which everyone remains the same for the other because they find the other in themselves and find themselves in the other. (p. 355) when a nurse finds something of themself in a parent and when a parent finds something of themself in a nurse, through meaningful conversations that complexify and deepen their relationships, it then becomes an interpretive experience, for nurses and parents, of or like friendship. interpreting friendship in relationally complex nurse-parent relationships while it is generally undisputed that nurses and parents can develop close, meaningful relationships due to the particular contextual features of pediatric oncology, there is significant tension about what this closeness should be called. admittedly, despite my own experience of having a patient’s mother call me a “friend,” i too am uncertain about what language to use that works to describe the closeness, meaningfulness, and complexity of nurse-parent relationships. nurse scholars have worked to conceptualize these relationships, describing them as experiences of befriending (balaam, 2014; bignold et al., 1995; fegran & helseth, 2009), friendliness (gardner, 2010; geanellos, 2002), or as resembling friendships (bignold et al., 1995). however, using the term friendship, as a descriptor of nurse-parent relationships, is uncommon and generally diswebber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 8 couraged due to its reciprocal nature (bignold et al., 1995; brous, 2016; caroline, 1993; fegran & helseth, 2009; hartlage, 2012). it is important, then, to understand the nuances of language used to describe nurse-parent relationships. as geanellos (2002) clarified about nursing relationships, “friendship is qualitatively different than friendliness and results in a deeper knowing and stronger bond” (p. 242), which is also reflected in gadamer’s (1985/1999, 1999/2009) work on the phenomenon of friendship. gadamer’s (1985/1999) interest in the phenomenon of friendship began early in his career, with his inaugural lecture at marburg in 1928 entitled, “the role of friendship in philosophical ethics.” it was not until much later that gadamer returned more extensively to friendship in two essays, “friendship and self-knowledge: reflections on the role of friendship in greek ethics” (1985/1999) and “friendship and solidarity” (1999/2009). in both essays, gadamer (1985/1999) argued for greek thought to be re-considered, “…in opposition to the modern philosophy dominated by the primacy of self-consciousness” (p. 131). as vessey (2005) suggested, “gadamer regularly return[ed] to the greeks to arrive at insights into solutions to contemporary philosophical questions that avoid some of the errors of modern thinkers” (p. 63). in considering the application of friendship in our modern linguistic use, gadamer was concerned that “the word ‘friendship’ is used with colorless frequency” (gadamer, 1999/2009, p. 4). gadamer’s efforts to re-cover friendship can be helpful in understanding the complexities of distinguishing between friendship and “mere friendliness” (gadamer, 1985/1999, p. 134) in nurse-parent relationships. according to gadamer (1985/1999), the distinction between ‘kinds’ of friendship is not strict or exact, so true friendship always exists within all limited kinds of friendship. what is under discussion … [is] the true essence, which in other kinds of friendship is only partly realized, yet realized in such a way that it is still meaningful to inquire into what they have in common. (p. 133) this is helpful in the understanding the experience of friendship in nurse-parent relationships, as it leaves space for the possibility that nurses and parents may experience a form or kind of friendship with one another that bears both similarities and differences to that of true friendship. as gadamer (1999/2009) suggested, “[a]ll life friendships probably will always have something of the unattainable, which would be the real, true, final, and complete, the good” (p. 10). gadamer (1999/2009) also suggested that friendship becomes known through living it, not because its standards have been achieved. this perhaps speaks to the difficulty of aggregately defining nurse-parent relationships as friend-like, like-friends, friendships, characterized by friendliness, and so forth. from gadamer’s (1985/1999) perspective, the distinction between friendship and “mere friendliness” (p. 134) is nuanced, but clear. he says, that merely being well disposed to someone … or having good will toward someone is not friendship … it would be mere friendliness so long as the two people were not really openly bound to each other. the common condition of all ‘friendship’ is more than that: the true bond that – in various degrees – signifies a ‘life together’. (p. 134) the question remains, then, do nurses and parents in pediatric oncology experience friendship, or perhaps more clearly, live a “life together” (gadamer, 1985/1999, p. 134)? it is possible to webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 9 consider this, as children and their parents often spend weeks or even months living in the hospital to receive intense treatments for their cancer. when they are well enough to be discharged, nurses continue to visit children and their families in their homes. accordingly, these relationships develop, and just as patients and their parents move from home to hospital and back again, the relationships that develop with nurses can move between professional and more personal and back again. however, it is also significant to note that parents do not have the choice about whether or not their child has cancer and, therefore, do not get to choose whether or not they want to share their lives with nurses who provide care to their child. if the purpose of describing the phenomenon of friendship in pediatric oncology nursing was to best represent the most relationships, i would suggest that friendliness would both allow for the acknowledgement that reciprocity can exist in these relationships, while still not assuming that parents and nurses are “openly bound to each other” (gadamer, 1985/1999, p. 134). however, in considering how to approach my research on the topic of relational complexity in pediatric oncology, i am concerned that asking questions about the nature of friendliness in nurse-parent relationships may not get to the heart of their experiences. furthermore, what, then, do i do with being called “friend,” by a parent a grieving mother of a dying child? it becomes increasingly necessary to attend to language in conversation as well as to acknowledge the particularities of the individual cases of experience (gadamer, 1960/2004). in the moment when that mother called me “friend,” the boundaries between nurse and parent became more blurred in the best sense, and in a varied degree that gadamer suggested, we did share some life together; friendship was a good that arose and was shared between us (walhof, 2006). furthermore, as geanellos (2002) challenged, “should the way nurses and clients consider their relationships be discounted because it conflicts with professional understandings?” (p. 242). while i have not arrived yet at what to call the meaningfulness of the relationships experienced between nurses and parents in pediatric oncology, i am grateful for gadamer’s significant efforts to restore the meaningfulness of friendship in our modern world and his careful exploration of the nuances of language. despite the ambiguity that remains about the nature of meaningful relationships in nurse-parent relationships in pediatric oncology settings, i have been encouraged by gadamer (1960/2004), who offered that “hermeneutic work is based on a polarity of familiarity and strangeness; but … the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (p. 306). in this way, hermeneutic work is not easy work, but it is worthy work in the sense of finding “language that works” (moules et al., 2015, p. 202). it is my sincere hope that despite the challenges of articulating relational complexity, there is something yet to be uncovered about complexity in nurse-parent relationships that will change the way nursing is practiced in pediatric oncology settings. returning to the research and its application to practice as a nurse coming from practice and entering into research with very little education in philosophy, foraying into german philosophy has felt immensely challenging, and there is much left to learn. however, hermeneutic philosophy has also brought some comfort; by providing language and understanding, as at its core, it is deeply rooted in practical application (moules et al., 2015). for example, the first time i read gadamer’s (1960/2004) discussion of phronesis, or his remindwebber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 10 er that “in the vast technical structure of our civilization we are all patients” (gadamer, 1996, p. 81), i felt as though i was coming home to something about nursing that i had not had the language to express before. while this holds personal significance for me, in understanding the work that i do as a pediatric oncology nurse, i believe it also points to the significance of the application of philosophical hermeneutics to nursing research, which for me centers around relational complexity in nurse-parent relationships. accordingly, i would like to close by articulating how this research, guided by philosophical hermeneutics, might contribute in a significant way to nursing practice. in my proposed research, i will conduct interviews with nurses and parents, who can best speak to the topic (moules, 2002; moules et al., 2015) of relational complexity. “hermeneutic research is not validated by numbers, but by the completeness of examining the topic under study and the fullness and depth to which the interpretation extends understanding” (moules, 2002, p. 14). as with all good research, the aim is to “produce knowledge that discernably matters to someone for something” (sandelowski, 2004, p. 1367). the impetus to suggest strategies in which the knowledge gained from the research can be translated to practice has become quite prevalent in nursing, as, of course, it is necessary to consider how research might tangibly inform practice (moules et al., 2015). in hermeneutics, the aim of interpretation is to make sense of something, to understand it (zimmerman, 2015). this understanding is honored through application, and, in the case of hermeneutic nursing research, in its phronetic applicability to practice. there is the potential for this research, guided by philosophical hermeneutics, to be usefully applied to practice in a variety of ways. this research may have symbolic utility (sandelowski, 2004), for example, by persuasively demonstrating the need to improve psychosocial support for nurses and parents in pediatric oncology contexts. there is also the potential for this research to be have instrumental utility (sandelowski, 2004), for example, through the inclusion of nurse and parent perspectives into policy development about professional boundaries. perhaps, though, the greatest possibility for the applicability of this research is the least concrete form of research utilization – conceptual utilization, which “entails no observable action at all but, rather, a change in the way users think about problems, persons, or events” (sandelowski, 2004, p. 1371). conclusion the complexities of pediatric oncology nursing practice, to engage in meaningful relationships with parents of children diagnosed with cancer, is a topic that is, arguably, taken for granted. while we know that nurses and parents engage relationally with one another, what is often misunderstood are the inherent complexities of engaging meaningfully in relationships, while also maintaining institutionally determined boundaries that limit expressions of reciprocal selfdisclosure. the significance of this research does not lie, necessarily, in the agreement of all the participants that relationships are complex. rather, the significance of the research lies in how the understanding gained from this research, “will make a difference in the matters of human consequences of living well in conditions where suffering exists” (moules et al., 2015, p. 200). hermeneutics offers a philosophical framework that best allows for the room needed to hold space for the tensions, complexities, and meaningfulness that nurses and parents experience while caring for children with cancer. webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 11 references audet, c.t., & everall, r.d. 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(2002). shared life. symposium, 6(2), 167-180. https://doi.org/10.5840/symposium20026216 sandelowski, m. (2004). using qualitative research. qualitative health research, 14(10), 13661386. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732304269672 shields, l. (2010). questioning family-centred care. journal of clinical nursing, 19(17-18), 2629-2638. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2702.2010.03214.x slobogian, v., giles, j., & rent, t. (2017). #boundaries: when patients become friends. canadian oncology nursing journal, 27(4), 394-400. http://www.canadianoncologynursingjournal.com/index.php/conj webber journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 7 14 vessey, d. (2005). gadamer’s account of friendship as an alternative to an account of intersubjectivity. philosophy today, 49, (61-67). https://doi.org/10.5840/philtoday200549supplement7 walhof, d.r. (2006). friendship, otherness, and gadamer’s politics of solidarity. political theory, 34(5), 569-593. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591706290515 zimmerman, j. (2015). hermeneutics: a very short introduction. oxford university press. microsoft word risser corrected proof 2.docx corresponding author: james risser, phd seattle university email: jrisser@seattleu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics july 31, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 speaking from silence: on the intimate relation between silence and speaking james risser abstract in understanding the world through language, silence, regarded simply as the absence of speech, appears to be the enemy of understanding. but in fact, it can be shown that silence is always a function of language. as we learn from merleau-ponty, heidegger, and others, the relation between silence and the word of language is a positive one. there are acts of silence that can generate the movement towards meaning in language. the focus of my remarks in this paper will explore three modalities of silence that characterize the positive relation between silence and the word of language. first, there is silence as the withdrawal of the word. this is the silence of the voice that wants to hold back from speaking and to hold back the word from falling into chatter. second, there is silence as giving voice to words. this is the silence that enacts the spacing within language that possibilizes the intentions of meaning within speech and the efforts of communicative understanding. third, there is silence as the beginning of the word. this is the silence that stands in relation to a hidden or absent origin, such as an unknown god, generating thereby a word from silence that is a beginning. keywords philosophical hermeneutics, silence, language, merleau-ponty, heidegger, gadamer presenting the difficulty if the essential condition for understanding requires not just the fact of language, but the activity of speaking and communicating, as we see modeled in the language of conversation, what are we to make of the phenomenon of silence? and what, if anything, does silence have to do with risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 2 understanding? as a way of taking up this question, and the difficulty of understanding that lies within it, let me begin with a provocative musing on the nature of silence and its relation to words. what if, at the beginning of creation, a beginning, let us say, before god announced light–a beginning that would have to be, for christianity at least, a beginning before the word–there was only the void. by all accounts, such a beginning would be a beginning in silence. this hypothetical beginning before the word could also be expressed in a different framework: a cosmological beginning, let us say, where the beginning of creation might have originated from a compressed singular point. this beginning from the earliest time would also be a beginning in silence, a beginning from which an expansion occurred, perhaps as a vacuum fluctuation, a vibration, a tensional movement not unlike a wave on water, breaking open within itself by its own possibility and movement. by virtue of this movement, this beginning would have to be a beginning that in some sense had already begun, as if to say, in the beginning there was silence breaking into sound, just as the silence of the void would have to break open to all that pertains to created life. to avoid entangling ourselves in such hypothetical beginnings, would we not at least grant that the creation that follows upon such beginnings is not itself capable of what one could only describe as dead silence–the sheer absence of sound. certainly this must be the case for the creation that lies under the heavens where, befitting life, there is always air and movement. the impossibility of dead silence under the heavens was actually proved in a simple experiment. the experiment was conducted by the musician john cage in 1951. cage attempted to experience this kind of silence by stepping into a technically constructed soundproof room where the noise and sounds of everyday life where made to disappear. but even here there was no absolute dead silence. once outside the soundproof room cage reportedly told the sound engineer that he heard two faint sounds in the room which the engineer identified as cage’s own nervous system in operation and his body’s blood in circulation (gann, 2010, p. 162).1 what is of nature is, in fact, never silent as such. there may be a stillness in the air or the quiet before the dawn, but this degree of silence is not silence as such. when one listens closely, one still hears the incessant sounding vibration in the growth and decay of everything living. one can hear it even in the heat of the noonday sun as one among the many murmurings in the world (serres, 1995, p. 13).2 but what then of that other domain of silence, the silence not of sound as such, but of the silence that is involved in and accompanies the sound of speech? while it may be the case that nature cannot be silent, the same cannot be said with respect to language. in relation to the creation of spirit that is language, there is indeed silence, for our words fall silent on the page and as speakers we can keep silent before speech and in speech. but what kind of silence is this? too often we think of this silence just like the other kind, a silence of sheer absence. as sheer absence, this silence is set in opposition to the word and the voice such that where one is the other is not. but in fact, when we look closer at the phenomenon of silence, we see that language and silence has a much more intimate relation. here silence is not a mere possibility lying in wait for the actuality of speech to stop, but is itself an actuality such that by virtue of the voice there are acts of silence, and that speech itself may be born from silence. here we approach the real problem: what does it mean to say, as max picard does in his groundbreaking work on silence, that speech is born from silence? (picard, 1988, p. 24). and more important, how can we speak about this relation between silence and language which is voiced without expressing it as the limit of risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 3 understanding, as in the case of some forms of religious piety. in what follows i want to provide an analysis of the relation between silence and the living word in three different ways: first, silence as the withdrawal of the word; second, and more important for my purposes here, silence as giving voice to words; and then third, silence as the beginning of the word. silence as the withdrawal of the word the purpose of speaking first about silence as the withdrawal of the word is to immediately introduce a way of qualifying the seemingly natural opposition between silence and the word. our everyday understanding of this opposition, to say again, is that silence is simply the absence of speech. philosophers have explained this opposition logically on the basis of how they explain reality in general. once a word is spoken, silence, understood as the lack of speech, is not an actual reality; it is not present in the presence of speech. if you are speaking then you are not being silent. but it is possible to regard the relation between silence and speech otherwise as heidegger does. for heidegger there is a more intimate relation of presence and absence within reality such that the reality of language as discourse and voice is capable of holding silence within it. so regarded silence is simply the withdrawal of the word. in silence, the presence of the speaking voice simply withdraws, while the voice remains present. here silence is a silence of the voice, a relational difference that we can readily understand. in euripides’ phoenician women the chorus lead asks creon why he is silent without a word when faced with choosing between his love for the city and his love for his son. the greek text literally says that he is silent with a speechless speech, a voiceless voice (sigas gerun aphthoggon). his silence is such that he abstains not merely from speaking but from uttering any sound (montiglio, 2000, p. 12, note 25). he offers no word of reply. the sounding voice has become silent, but also, his voice has become silent, he has abstained from speaking. creon is doubly silent. the idea of a voiceless voice suggests that there can be a form of silence that is not simply the absence of sound. there is also the silence of keeping silent. this act of speech that keeps silent is silence as the withdrawal of the word. such becoming silent is one way, if not the primary way, of describing secrecy. a secret is a word that cannot be said, an outer word kept silent by being silent. the idea of secrecy and keeping silent is famously described by kierkegaard in fear and trembling. in this book, kierkegaard describes the distinctive character of the religious individual through the story of abraham. keeping silent is the task of abraham when called upon by god to sacrifice his son isaac. he cannot confess his intended action, but must keep it hidden so not to expose himself to the violation of the ethical universal “thou shall not kill.” his rational duty, after all, is not to kill. but although his silence stands in opposition to the publicity of discourse, it is not, strictly speaking, in opposition to the voice. in not saying anything, abraham, as kierkegaard notes, “says what he has to say” (kierkegaard, 1983, p. 118) he is “efficacious in his silence as a witness” (kierkegaard, 1983, p. 80). while this silence can be the snare of the demon that grows more terrifying the longer the silence lasts, it is also for kierkegaard, “the mutual understanding between the divinity and the single individual” (kierkegaard, 1983, p. 8). his silence after all is not completely indeterminate, but simply a withdrawal of the outer word for the sake of the speaking of another. abraham’s silence is the silence required to hear the voice of god; it is a silence that is for abraham the first condition for being able to obey (derrida, 1995, pp. 58-59).3 risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 4 there is of course a long history to this silence of the withdrawal of the word. for the ancient greeks, this silence was at the center of the eleusinian mystery cults. the silence practiced by the initiates was not predicated on there being a mysterious reality that was itself ineffable. it was not a practice of silence to convey the ineffable, as one finds in christian mysticism, but simply a practice of guarding the secret, protecting its exclusive knowledge. the silence of the initiates was principally a matter of holding the tongue, of keeping silent appropriately, knowing what not to repeat to the non-initiate. the greek word for the initiation into the mysteries, muesis, derives from mu, to make a muttering sound with the lips, a sound that imitates pure sobbing. this silence that would speak in a special way may in fact have been an attempt to draw the human back to the mute language of nature; though, undoubtedly, the aim of this silence served a social function. it excluded those who have no right to speak and those who are not able to speak (the foreigner who did not speak greek) (montiglio, 2000, p. 31). this relation between silence and initiation was also practiced by early philosophy. it was said that the initiates in the school of pythagorus were required to keep quiet for five years in order to see if they were capable of self-control and ready to listen (hegal, 2006, p. 35).4 but more than this the silence was deemed necessary in order for the initiate to acquire a disposition for learning, which meant that the initiates were able to refrain from idle chatter where one talks incessantly about trivial matters. pythagorus knew what we too discover from everyday experience: chatter and silence are deeply opposed to one another, and this opposition is not insignificant when it comes to the experience of understanding in language (kierkegaard, 1978, p. 97).5 if silence is the withdrawal and withholding of words for the sake of real communication, chatter is the withdrawal of silence in our words, leaving in its place nothing but noise, for what is noise if not sounds without silence, verbal and otherwise. the noise of chatter reduces language of significance for it communicates everything and yet nothing; in chatter one speaks without really saying anything, not unlike gossip that simply passes the word along. as heidegger notes, idle chatter conveys a fall into insignificance. in the noise of chatter there is no interruption in speaking, which, as we know from the experience of listening, is what is required for learning. with chatter there is no formation either in language or in the mind of the initiate who desires to see and hear, i.e., to understand. silence as giving voice to words as we are about to see, this second way of regarding silence is not without importance for the experience of understanding, and is the aspect of silence i want to treat most extensively. for silence to give voice to words it must be able to intervene within speech, but do so not in the manner of a simple break as if it were simply a pause between words that amounts to nothing, as if silence were nothing. rather, it has to intervene by being involved in the work of language as discourse, so as to aid the generation of meaning in language. this is the silence that merleauponty describes as the silence that is there before speech has been pronounced and which never ceases to accompany speech “and without which it would say nothing.” merleau-ponty goes on to say that “we should be sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven,” for unlike habitual speech where the element of silence has been obliterated, the tissue of speech can say what has never before been said (merleau-ponty, 1973, p. 46). what merleauponty is saying here is slightly enigmatic: the tissue of speech is woven from the thread of silence? but this same idea is also expressed by heidegger. when he tells us that silence, “which risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 5 is often regarded as the source of speaking, is itself already a corresponding [with what is being said],” he is saying along with merleau-ponty that in speaking to be understood what is spoken is interwoven with the unspoken (heidegger, 1971, p. 131). if we ask ourselves, then, just how silence intervenes and becomes interwoven within speech, we see that it does so in at least two ways. first of all, silence intervenes in the manner of a suspension, a kind of holding apart that allows something to be in free movement. such holding apart is what occurs in a pause. the pause in speaking and the silence commensurate with it is precisely what the 20th century poet paul celan describes so eloquently as the breath-turn. quite literally, the breath-turn refers, in celan’s words, to the “the silent, whisper-like transition and alteration between inhaling and exhaling” (gadamer, 1997, p. 162). in a speech given on the occasion of receiving a prize for his poetry in 1960, celan refers to the breath-turn as a way of indicating the ability of the poetic word in its turning around (umkehr) to resonate, a turning around by virtue of the “sensuous experience of the silent” (gadamer, 1997, p. 73).6 such turning around–that moment of a beginning of breath in an interval of silence–sorts out, in celan’s own words, “the strange from the strange.” in effect the silent pause is alterity, otherness, not as pure foreignness but as that rupture and reversal that is an opening for meaning in the eminent language of poetry. in effect, it is what gives voice to words from within the plenitude of language. the reversal of the breath-turn, he says, is “never a spectacular occurrence,” but consists of “a thousand silent imperceptibilities.” so celan says: “poetry is perhaps this: an atemwende, a turning of our breath. who knows, perhaps poetry goes its way–the way of art–for the sake of just such a turn” (celan, 1986, p. 47). less dramatically so, gadamer, who writes about celan’s poetry, sees for himself this same relation between silence and the poetic word. he insists that the poetic word is different from the word used in ordinary conversation and communication, which he describes as a perishing form of speaking. in everyday speaking and communicating, our words perish as they direct us to the thing meant in our speaking. the poetic word, though, does not refer to something in a manner that one is directed away from it, but is always directed back to language itself. for gadamer, the poetic word has its own autonomy and is language in its eminent sense where its saying power is most prominent. such a word has little to do with metaphors and ornate speech; rather, it is a word that makes a “return” to language where it conveys a powerful foreignness within our home-like familiarity with language. as in celan, in the poetic word’s resounding, its turning around in language, the word is able to say something more, that is, to generate meaning in language. but how exactly is silence at work in this generation of meaning in language? would we not agree with gadamer that we do not read poetry in the same way we read an ordinary message? in poetry, which has something to do with intonation in language, there are always prominent breaks or pauses of silence. when we read poetry, we have to listen to these breaks in order to gain an understanding of what is being said. a few lines from rilke’s sonnets to orpheus provide an example. each line-break instantiates a pause: not understand are the sufferings. neither has love been learned, and what removes us in death is not unveiled. only song over the land risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 6 hallows and celebrates. in a less noticeable way, we encounter a similar experience with silence in music. there is no rhythm in music without a break between tones. silences are in play in all sonority. there is, though, another dimension of silence in relation to poetry that gadamer wants to bring to our attention. in an essay titled “are the poets falling silent” gadamer asks the question in the title out of a concern for the task of the poet in our world today. his answer is that they have not become quiet but they have become quieter. but this is a good thing for it allows the poet to share something with someone who has an ear for it, for someone who is ready to pause, which means to linger with the word and thereby give voice to the word. gadamer goes on to say that “in an epoch of the electronically amplified voice, only the quietest word still confirms the communality and therefore the humanity, which you and i find in the word.” he calls this almost silent word, that is to say, a word “spoken” in a low voice such that not everyone can hear it, a word of welcome and meeting (gadamer, 1992, p. 81). but notice how this almost silent word is to be heard. the reader must have an ear for it, which requires a lingering with the word. the german word that gadamer is using here is verweilen. it means to linger or to tarry, as someone in lingering might “while-away” the time. in an age of efficiency and production there is little use for someone who lingers; but for gadamer, lingering is a good thing, for what he is describing is an attentiveness of being there with something so that you do not look past it. hopefully, you can gather from these remarks that poetry is only a heightened instance of an experience with lingering or tarrying. in general, we do not understand much at all when we are in a hurry! the tarrying being described here, which goes hand in hand with an experience of silence, is the disposition to create a hold upon nearness to something. there is another instance of the silent pause in language worth noting, one that more immediately demonstrates the way in which silence gives voice to words. it is the pause in therapeutic communication. the force of this pause is most evident not in the communication between the therapist and the client but in the client’s own speaking. in an attempt at understanding the meaning of some experience in a self-reported narrative, the client may realize that the initial understanding of the experience was not quite right. making sense of the experience requires taking new steps to say again what the experience means. before each new step there is a pause, a silence. it is this pause that is doing the contradicting, a “sensing” that happens during the silences between the words. the silent pause has the effect of articulating the experience that demands the right words. the force of this silent pause is all the more evident when contrasted with what one might call “empty silence.” this is the silence that expresses nothing because the person who expressing it feels nothing. the second way that silence intervenes within speech is implicit in gadamer’s idea of the quiet word as well as in therapeutic communication. silence intervenes within speech as suspending that holds open, providing speech with a space of reception. classically, the speaking we call discourse is nothing other than the declarative statement in which something is said about something. but speaking is more than making statements. in our enactment of language we do not simply say something about something when we speak; we say something about something to someone. discourse is oriented to communication in which the intention to meaning in speaking is directed outwards toward another. but in every attempt to fulfill the intention of risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 7 speaking, silence has entered discourse as a matter of necessity. to speak about something to someone requires silence for the act of reception of speech. this silence actually engulfs speaking, for before one is able to speak to another, the speaker must first have been silent. speaking never begins absolutely each time, but takes place from a reception of what has already been spoken. as in every encounter and dialogue, speaking starts from the silence of a receptive listening and requires the silence of reticence for its enactment and fulfillment. this form of silence in the receptivity and the reticence of speech is not properly speaking, a silence of passivity. as merleau-ponty tells us, “i am not active only when speaking; rather, i precede my thought in the listener. i am not passive when i am listening; rather, i speak according to . . . what the other is saying. speaking is not just my own initiative, listening is not submitting to the initiative of the other” (merleau-ponty, 1973, pp. 143-144). to merely submit to the initiative of the other is to regard listening as a matter of “hearing from” the other, rather than a “listening to,” which indicates in its simplicity just how silence intervenes in speaking and dialogue. it intervenes as the condition not just for the reception of speech but for being able to understand what is spoken about by the other. as such, it is the silence of listening that holds open the possibility for the return of speech within dialogical speaking, that is to say, it holds open the articulating of speech that can issue in a communicative understanding. hermeneutic understanding, gadamer tells us, depends fundamentally on the rigor of uninterrupted listening. this holding open for the sake of understanding in the silence of listening amounts to a waiting in the active sense that heidegger gives to this word. here waiting is not the simple holding back while expecting something to appear, but an attentive anticipation, or better, an attuned responsiveness–what heidegger calls in gelassenheit a “reserved steadfast releasement” that receives (davis, 2007, p. 222). in different words, waiting is something like an active generosity as one finds this in therapeutic conversation where it measures the infinite distance between the words of another and one’s own words. it measures as that discretion within speaking that is able to heighten what is said so that one is most able to hear the other. and in taking the measure of this infinite distance, one can say in some sense and with some caution in order to avoid romanticizing silence, that the silence of listening is also taking the measure of the silence within words–the enormous unsaid that lies within speaking when we try to say what we mean. in this waiting and measure-taking, the silence of listening is not concerned with guarding the secret, but just the opposite. it enacts the spacing necessary for the becoming manifest–the showing–that is the function of speech. let me repeat that last sentence in different words: the silence of listening, as a space of receptivity and reticence, allows for meaning to appear, for something to show itself, to reveal itself, in words. the key idea here is simple yet subtle: vocal speaking and saying are not the same! the distinction here is a variation on the idea of chatter. as heidegger writes: “someone can speak, speak endlessly, and not say anything. in contrast, someone may be silent, does not speak at all, and yet, without speaking say a great deal” (heidegger, 1971, p. 122). one can readily imagine what heidegger is referring to here. this silence that would say something is more than a gesture, such as a nod of acknowledgment. this deeper silence would leave nothing obscure. it would be a reserve of being sure of one another that forgoes speaking superficially. it would forego expressing what would not fit the situation, and thus would hide more than it would show something. sometimes it may be better to not speak in the face of death. risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 8 this difference between speaking and saying is significant for hermeneutics. hermeneutic understanding is oriented to hearing the saying, what is being said in language! what is to be understood is what is being said when one speaks. heidegger’s point here is that silence, with its space of receptivity and reticence, has something to do with being able to understand what is being said. he writes: “in talking with one another, the person who is silent can ‘let something be understood’, that is, one can develop and understand more authentically than the person who never runs out of words” (heidegger, 1927/2010, p. 159). the subtlety here for heidegger is that speaking is not just the vocalization of thoughts; speaking is at the same time also listening. so, a dialogue is not simply that one person speaks and other person listens. “speaking is of itself listening. speaking is listening to the language we speak” (heidegger, 1971, p. 123). we have to listen to language before we speak, consciously or not! in this sense, the silence of listening is the wellspring of the word. heidegger gives us the most intriguing description of the relation between silence and speaking in his analysis of the phenomenon of conscience. he treats the idea of conscience in connection with the need for the self to find a way to take up its existence in a genuine way. for the most part, we live our lives in everydayness in such a way that we tend to lose ourselves in it. such a way of living is just what he means by existential inauthenticity. we are numbed by the noise of the everyday and are unable to bear witness to ourselves in our ownmost possibility for existing. we fail to hear ourselves because we only listen to the “they–the anonymous self of everydayness.” such listening, listens-away, an awkward phrase that heidegger uses to convey the idea that we are not really listening when we listen to the “they.” so, there must be another kind of listening that interrupts the listening to the they, a listening in which there is a summons that summons the self back to itself out of its everydayness. this summons is for heidegger the call of conscience, and it is a distinctive mode of address: the call comes from me, yet beyond me and over me. and in this distinctive mode of discourse in which there is something to understand, there is no explicit phonetic speaking, nor does the call of conscience actually speak about anything. in this regard, the call of conscience is quite unlike the freudian voice of conscience that internalizes the restraint from our culture. heidegger’s voice of conscience does not tell us what we did wrong. what interests us here, then, is the nature of this call. the call speaks in the mode of silence and can only be heard in silence. heidegger calls such silence reticence. this reticence is the intensity of hearing that is necessary for bearing witness to a self in the possibilities of its being. in the uncanniness of the silent call of conscience the self is receptive to the call of care. silence as the beginning of the word in this third way of regarding silence i want to return to my provocative musing at the outset of my remarks today. i want to briefly explore the possibility and implications of a silence that is the beginning of the word. now, immediately, a good gadamerian will be skeptical of my intention here. gadamer claims that we begin to speak as a response to a word already spoken. the movement of logos at its beginning, is, for humans at least, drawn back into the already taking place of language. even for the child there cannot be a first word. when a child speaks a “first” word, it is folly to believe that the parents are witnessing the beginning of language risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 9 (gadamer, 1976, p. 63). such a word is always preceded by previous developments, by exchanges of looks and gestures, and nascent conversations from within the socialized linguistic world that the child inhabits. the child’s first word is merely an opening into the child’s abilityto-talk. so, i will have to be very cautious in what i am about to say about the beginning of the word. the provocative idea of a word beginning from silence has its roots in the mythic character of hermes, who, as a messenger of the gods, brings a word from the realm of the wordless. he is an interpreter who brings into word what was not yet word, a coming to birth of the word. this provocative idea of a word from silence also has its roots in theology, as i alluded to in my opening remarks. i am not interested in theology here, but i am interested in the work of the contemporary jewish thinker edmond jabès in which the word’s relation to silence is taken up in a theological context. for jabès, the revelation of the spoken word must contest with the unsayable that stems from an unknown god, a god hidden in such a way that god is absent from the world. the spoken word must contest with the unsayable as infinite separation. jabès describes this separation and absence in many ways, including that of silence, but this silence is no ordinary silence. “god,” he writes, “is god’s silence remaining silent” (jabès, 1996, p. 9). a doubling of silence of sorts, one rooted in the kabbalistic interpretation of creation, which jabès often draws from. quoting the kabbalah in the book of questions, he writes: (“god was the first to break the silence,” he said. “it is this breakage we try to translate into human languages.” “vowels make us see, make us hear. vowels are image and song. in our ancestors’ script, vowels are points.” “god refused image and language in order to be himself the point. he is image in the absence of images, language in the absence of language, point in the absence of points,” he said.). (jabès, 1991, p. 353) for such a god human life can only be that of exile, the place of which is the ceaselessness of the desert. the ideas expressed in the quote from the book of questions reflect the writing of the sixteenth-century kabbalist, isaac luria. according to luria, god created the universe by first concealing himself and then by creating light from which came all creation. this concealing has the sense of withdrawing or retreat and by virtue of it luria is able to explain how god “could have created things that were not divine, how a world could have been created out of nothing if there was no such ‘thing’ as nothing, since the idea of god excluded such a notion” (stamelman, 1985, p. 102). this image of contracting and withdrawing into itself is described in the tree of life, a work attributed to luria: know that before all the emanations were emanated and the creations were created, the simple supernal light filled all existence and there was no empty space in the sense of . . . void, but everything was filled by the undifferentiated light . . . . and when it arose in his undifferentiated will to create the worlds. . . . he contracted himself at the center-most risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 10 point that was within him and the light was contracted and withdrew towards the sides surrounding the central point, thus leaving an empty space, a vacuum, an empty void (where) the central point had been. (biale, 1984, p. 322) for jabès, writing repeats this withdrawal, and with it the separation between the human and god. in effect, writing is given over to expressing this other side of creation where one is exiled from the pure word of god. and as such, the written word stands in a distinctive relation to silence. writing is an “act of silence directed against silence” (jabès, 1996, p. 75). but this relation to silence is not a deformation, where the word is stripped of its breath in still-life fashion, unable to participate in interrogation and reopened questions. in relation to this silence, and with it a particular dimension of unsayability, the written quite paradoxically speaks. jabès describes this speaking as “vocable,” the word for the “oral dimension preserved in the written” that is to be distinguished from parole (waldrop, 2002, p. 64). one can say a word (mot) but one can only read a vocable. for jabès, the vocable is intended to convey the character of the written word that, in relation to the unsayable, calls out (vocare) “as words continually strain toward one another” (motte, 1990, p. 59). if we leave aside the theological interest that sustains jabès writing in order to continue to probe the sense of speaking silence, we could begin by noting, along with jabès, that what sustains the relation between word and silence is the absence of origin that is peculiar to the written word. the written word is, of course written by someone, but unlike the speaking person, it is removed from the originating voice of the writer, and one can say therefore that in some sense it gives voice to absence. this speaking silence is not unlike the command of the ancient delphic oracle in which the source of speaking cannot be said directly. she neither declares nor conceals but gives a sign; that is to say, she indicates, she provides an index for something, like a silently pointing finger.7 strictly speaking, an indication is not the same as a sign, which can merely point to something. an indication expresses an intention of meaning. so, the indication does not say anything, since it is specifically not a declaration; and yet, in indicating it does speak–a silent speaking. it is an indicating speaking that comes from an absent god, and occurs in relation to the absence of words, as if it were the beginning of speech–an awakening one to words through a silence that points towards the unknown (blanchot, 2007, p. 40). if our ordinary writing and speaking seem distant from such speaking silence, the same cannot be said for the poetic word. a poetic word, unlike an ordinary word, can be said to be, in its creative force, originating, not in the sense that it comes from nothing, but as in the index, a word from silence that is a beginning. this silence of beginning, one might say, is silence breaking into the sound of speech. the silence at the beginning of the word is the word on the way to sense, to the tonality of words that refuses the void as well as noise as the undifferentiated, like the void (gadamer, 2007, p. 381).8 what i have been saying here is really only a variation on the main idea that silence gives voice to words. the point about silence that is the beginning of the word simply underscores the fact that we often begin the experience of understanding from a certain experience of silence and unsayability. hermeneutic understanding brings meaning to word, but what is meaning if not something that points in a direction. meaning is what is present in, to use the french phrase vouloir dire, a wanting to say. this is exactly how gadamer understands the experience of meaning that is understanding. gadamer has said on more than one occasion that in “wanting to say” we never fully say what we had wanted to say. in wanting to say we express the approach to risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 11 and coming close to the meaning. meaning is indicating like that silently pointing finger, pointing in a direction and in that way determines meaning (gadamer, 2007, p. 381). in a very late essay, gadamer makes a strong point about this “wanting to say.” this silence of the unsaid speaks along with the spoken, but not just to be uncovered, so that it will not speak anymore. it is there in every conversation that has its own direction. let me say this in another way so to give the idea practical relevance. in speaking to one another, we are often confronted with the inchoate word–a word that is literally “in a beginning,” not unlike the indicative signaling of the oracle. this is a word that does not yet say what it wants to say is the word often encountered by therapists in the therapeutic situation, and by teachers in the classroom, and by anyone who listens to someone beginning to speak. for the sake of understanding we have to attend to this beginning word in its silent indication. references biale, d. (1984). jewish mysticism in the sixteenth century. in p. szarmach (ed.), medieval mystics (p. 322). albany, ny: suny press. blanchot, m. (2007). a voice from elsewhere (c. mandell, trans.; p. 40). albany, ny: suny press. celan, p. (1986). collected prose (r. waldrop, trans.; p. 47). new york, ny: the sheep meadow press. davis, b. (2007). heidegger and the will: on the way to gelassenheit (p. 222). evanston, il: northwestern university press. derrida, j. (1995). the gift of death (d. wills, trans.; pp. 58-59). chicago, il: university of chicago press. gadamer, h-g. (1976). philosophical hermeneutics (d.e. linge, trans.; p. 63). berkeley, ca: university of california press. gadamer, h-g. (1992). are the poets falling silent? in hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history (l. schmidt & m. reuss, trans.; p. 81). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (1997). gadamer on celan: “who am i and who are you?” and other essays (r. heinemann & b. krajewski, trans.; p. 162). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (2007). hermeneutics tracking the trace [on derrida]. in the gadamer reader (r.e. palmer, ed., & trans.; p. 381). evanston, il: northwestern university press. gann, k. (2010). no such thing as silence: john cage’s 4' 33" (p. 162). new haven, ct: yale university press. hegel, g.w.f. (2006). lectures on the history of philosophy, 1825-6, volume ii: greek philosophy (r.f. brown & j.m. stewart, trans.; p. 35). new york, ny: oxford university press. risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 12 heidegger, m. (1927/2010). being and time (d.j. schmidt, rev. trans.; p. 159). albany, ny: suny press. heidegger, m. (1971). on the way to language (p. hertz, trans.; p. 131). new york, ny: harper & row publishers. jabès, e. (1991). the book of questions, volume ii (r. waldrop, trans.; p. 353). hanover, nh: wesleyan university press. jabès, e. (1996). the little book of unsuspected subversion (r. waldrop, trans.; p. 9). stanford, ca: stanford university press. kierkegaard, s. (1978). two ages (h. hong & e. hong, trans.; p, 97). princeton, nj: princeton university press. kierkegaard, s. (1983). fear and trembling/repetition (h. hong & e. hong, trans.; p. 118). princeton, nj: princeton university press. merleau-ponty, m. (1973). the prose of the world (j. o’neill, trans.; pp. 46, 143-144). evanston, il: northwestern university press. montiglio, s. (2000). silence in the land of logos (p. 12, note 25). princeton, nj: princeton university press. motte, w. (1990). questioning edmond jabès (p. 59). lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press. picard, m. (1988). the world of silence (s. godman, trans.; p. 24). washington, dc: regnery gateway. serres, m. (1995). genesis (g. james & j. nielson, trans.; p. 13). ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. stamelman, r. (1985). nomadic writing: the poetics of exile in e. gould (ed.), the sin of the book: edmond jabès (p. 102). lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press. vallega, a. (2009). sense and finitude (pp. 81-102). albany, ny: suny press. waldrop, r. (2002). lavish absence: recalling and rereading edmond jabès (p. 64). middletown, ct: wesleyan university press. notes 1. see gann (2010, p. 162). john cage’s experiment with silence was played out in his music. 1952 was the premiere of cage’s 4' 33". in the performance of this piece of “musical comporisser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 13 sition” the pianist david tudor “sat down at the piano on the small raised wooden stage, closed the keyboard lid over the keys, and looked at his stopwatch. twice in the next four minutes he raised the lid up and lowered it again, careful to make no audible sound, although at the same time he was turning pages of the music, which were devoid of notes. after four minutes and thirty-three seconds had passed, tudor rose to receive applause” (gann, 2010, pp. 2-3). 2. michel serres (1995, p. 13) characterizes this murmur as noise (noise) which he understands as more than auditory noise. it is in a sense, all of empirical life where there is always contention and strife: “we never hear what we call background noise so well as we do at the seaside.... space is assailed, as a whole, by the murmur; we are utterly taken over by the same murmuring. this restlessness is within hearing, just shy of definite signals, just shy of silence. the silence of the sea is mere appearance. background noise may well be the ground of our being. it may be that our being is not at rest, it may be that it is not in motion, it may be that our being is disturbed. the background noise never ceases; it is limitless, continuous, unending, unchanging. it has itself no background, no contradictory. how much noise must be made to silence noise?” 3. as derrida (1995, pp. 58-59) notes, this is here a double secret: the secret itself, which as a secret abraham does not understand, and abraham’s secrecy of keeping the secret. 4. depending on the source there are two greek words used to covey this sense of quiet. diogenes laertius uses hesuchazo, while iamblichus uses hechemuthia. both convey the sense of quiet rather than silence (sigao) as the absence of the human voice. see hegel (2006, p. 35). 5. as kierkegaard (1978, p. 97) notes: “what is it to chatter? it is the annulment of the passionate disjunction between being silent and speaking. only the person who can remain essentially silent can speak essentially, can act essentially. . . . . chattering gets ahead of essential speaking.” 6. “the poem says to the poet, as well as to all of us, that the stillness [stille] is welcome. it is the same stillness heard in the turn of breath, the ever so quiet recurrence of the act of breathing. more than anything, this is the breath-turn [atemwende], the sensuous experience of the silent [lautlosen], calm moment between inhaling and exhaling. i do not want to deny that celan does not only associate this moment of turning breath, this instance when the breath returns, with calm self-restraint, but that he also allows the subdued hope bound up with every return to resonate” (gadamer, 1997, p. 73). for an analysis of gadamer’s reading of celan, see alejandro vallega (2009, pp. 81-102). 7. the greek semainai is derived from sema that, among its several meanings, is a sign to begin something. 8. understood in this way, when we “listen” to language we are listening to silence breaking into the sound of speech, like the breath of life in an ever new beginning. “the word, jabès risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 7 14 (1991. p. 324) writes, is dry at its death.” “then the void is nothing but life emptied of being, and its call perhaps a desperate call back to life” (jabès, 1991, p. 334). corresponding author: david w jardine, phd professor emeritus, university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 online date ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.75826 guest editorial locus and soul: uncoiling hermeneutics from phenomenology david w. jardine “the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (gadamer 1989, p. 295) jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 4 2 both hans-georg gadamer and martin heidegger inherited from their teacher, edmund husserl, a deep understanding of, and reliance upon, phenomenology and its near-revolutionary turning of research towards the life world, lived experiences (erlebenisse). this source remained alive and well in their work and my own as well. the touchstone is, and remains, that “something awakens our interest–that is really what comes first" (gadamer, 2001, p. 50; here, for me, a shout-out to ted newell for a still-ongoing email conversation first started a couple of year ago [newell & jardine, 2020]). what comes first is that something in our lived experience rises up and beckons us to pay attention. flowing from this is the cascade of voices rising up and telling the stories of their lives, many long ignored, long repressed, marginalized as trite compared to the “standard story of reality;” this is part of the, so to speak, liberatory effect that this stream of thought provided us, and it was, for these three ancestors of this work, precisely that – a way to start to unshackle european philosophizing from its own spent, sometimes dark and foreboding, unexamined presumptions. so, then, what of hermeneutics? “we can entrust ourselves to what we are investigating to guide us safely in the quest" (gadamer, 1989, p. 378), but earning this trust takes practice, over and over again, because what we are investigating holds in its hands part of the answer to how we might carefully, adequately proceed. it is not just “given” and laying before us, ripe for analysis. it speaks, it interrupts, it often says “no, wait, that won’t do.” and we have to shake off the spell of immediate experience and learn something new, perhaps even about we thought was old and settled and irrelevant. this, then, gives a hint to hermeneutics and its “locus” and “soul,” and what distinguishes it from how phenomenology proceeds and what phenomenology takes as its “object of interest.” while taking the phenomenological awakening of lived experience as what “comes first,” hermeneutics brings with it a certain level of “suspicion’ (gadamer, 1984) about the “givenness” of that experience. it feels immediate, but hermeneutics brings to this a hard-won, rather simple life-lesson itself inherited from long traditions of attempting to understand texts and their meanings. in my own seemingly immediate experience are often hidden words, implications, images, inheritances, ancestries, ideas, emotions, subtle or gross cultural spins, personal foibles, repressed, fetishized, codified, forgotten, all intermixed in ways of which i may have utterly no inklings. no matter my own felt “authenticity” and good heartedness regarding my attempts to analyze the givenness of my very own, intimate experience, i find, over and over again, that other voices erupt, contradict, haunt and sometimes bluntly say “no, that won’t do at all.” hermeneutics, then, begins with the immediacies of “lived experience” but then takes a course aimed, itself, at an “experience” of a different, but oddly similar sort: it is not “experiences” as per husserl’s phenomenology (german erlebenisse) but is, rather, an “experience” (german erfahrung, from fahren, to journey, to venture), yielding [and affinity to] vorfahren, those who have venture “before” (german vor -), thus hinting at a hermeneutic interest in ancestors and tradition [and thus foreshadowing, jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 4 3 in a very german, european tradition, a nebulous affinity with many contemporary ventures]. (jardine, 2016, p. 20) the locus of hermeneutics, then, is not on “my experiences” (erlebenisse), even though that’s where i must begin. its locus is on my living venture through the entrails of ancestry and history and interrelatedness, and the tough conversations that ensue between “my experiences” and the ways and means, the ancestries and inheritances, the paths and blockages and signs and waystations of the life world as a whole that i find tangled around my own breath, my own seeming immediacies. my own intimate experiences are not first given and then entangled by interpretations that are somehow “imposed” upon it. here’s the difference that heidegger (1962) tersely captured: i am “being-in-the-world” – the whole mess of it, intended, unintended, inherited, forgotten – all, certainly, “from here,” me, hello, but that standpoint of me has no special status except as the home from which i venture and finding, on return, that it ain’t quite what i thought it was (thus hinting at why the title of heidegger’s book includes the word “time”). the locus of hermeneutics is therefore a conversation had between me and my lived experiences and the swirling cascades that i lived in the midst of – human, more-than-human, textual, poetic, scholastic, artistic, historical, old, brand new. father grosbeaks and their persistent young’un. the young and the old, the new and the established, the “given” and the eruptive new arrival. perhaps this might be a better picture for an image hermeneutics. a mature junco feeding an infant cowbird that must have been laid in his nest as brood parasite cowbirds are wont to do. “'feeding beside,' from para'beside' + sitos 'food'" (online etymological dictionary). an interruption of my common experience that the etymologies helped my experience more richly, in more proper measure to this life-world arrival: jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 4 4 . . . life, it is hazy [diesig]; over and over it will surround us with a haze. again and again we move for a while in a self-lighting haze, a haze that again envelops us as we seek the right word. (gadamer, 2007, p. 371) to end this little venture, here is a very simple, utterly ubiquitous example i have to hand right now and that entwines with both these photos. i am currently experiencing something utterly new to me, being a grandfather and having him, just turn one yesterday, and his family now close at hand. what has been happening is that my own life-experience is being repeatedly interceded upon – by him, by his parents, by my wife, by my own memories of my own – i duck my eyes here – experience of being a father. in between is arising family resemblances (wittgenstein, 1968, p. 33) and my own need, all over again, for this phrase that i’m glad he handed me years ago. my own story of what is happening is being repeatedly interrupted, being read in ways often, in fact frequently, “beyond my wanting and doing” (gadamer, 1989, p, xxxvii). my experience is being read back to me in ways i could have never imagined by myself alone. i delight in others now sharing their smiles and stories at the grocery store, about how “everything must be different now” – heartwarming commiserations. but there is something more here that hermeneutics has helped me with, something those stories don’t necessarily get at. those experiences “would not deserve the interest we take in [them] if they did not have something to teach us that we could not know by ourselves” (gadamer, 1989, p. xxxv). why quote gadamer here? not just because ancestors infuse the life-world with their words, but because summoning him, reading him regarding what i am experience is useful. because he, too, has had a hand in teaching me something about the careful practice of interpreting my very own lived experiences. his phrase, his phrase about haziness, about “in between” has saved me from myself more than once, instructed me to learn something that i might not have learned by myself about my lived experiences (you see, phenomenology remains hale and well in this work). just imagine, inside me, that upwelling of the piercing of his cries at the dinner table and my own tiredness and anxieties and impatience and the sometimes-awful, suppressed knee-jerk experiences that simply won’t do, that turmoil up in my locked-down gullet. and how glad i am that i read alice miller’s for your own good (1989, p. 42) and found this citation she had from the encyclopedia of pedagogy from 1851, ripe to have become the long-forgotten atmosphere into which my own grandmother was raised and then, too my own mother and then me, and quite unbeknownst though experienced immediately: it goes without saying that pedagogues not infrequently awaken and help to swell a child’s conceit by foolishly emphasizing his merits. only humiliation can help here. (from the encyclopedia of pedagogy, 1851, as cited in miller, 1989, p. 22) one of the vile products of a misguided philanthropy is the idea that, in order to obey gladly, the child has to understand the reasons why an order is given, and that blind obedience offends human dignity. i do not know how we can continue to speak of obedience once reasons are given. these [reasons] are meant to convince the child, and, once convinced, he is not obeying us but merely the reasons we have given him. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 4 5 respect. . .is then replaced by a self-satisfied allegiance to his own cleverness. (1852, as cited in miller, 1989, p. 40) “pedagogy correctly points out that even a baby in diapers has a will of his own and is to be treated accordingly” (1851, as cited in miller, 1989, p. 41). “accordingly” means, as these manuals say, that their wills must be broken and the reason is simple. because i said so. and undoubtedly, as happens with hermeneutic work, one thing tends to lead to another. there is something nestled here about the fear of the wild, wilful child and the fear of the wild itself, fear of the animate earth, thus hinting at a terrifying and all-too-evident ecological implication, where the uprising of our living surroundings is crying out to be heard. just a little instance of how hermeneutics remains focussed on my own personal gut-wrenching lived experience, but its task is, in a way, to relieve me, to the extent that is possible – and never once and for all -of the burden of intimately dragging around unseen weights, unexamined infections and inheritances and feigned givens and immediacies that are nothing of the sort. to re-iterate, hermeneutics is not bent on imposing something on “the sphere of absolute clarity” (husserl, 1970a, p. 28) that is phenomenological givenness in its husserlian origins. it is not attempting to “fix [lived-experience] once and for all” (husserl, 1970b, pp. 177-178), as per the old dreams of an “eidetic phenomenology” (gadamer, 1989, p. 254) – watch out, this is a dream that still haunts many contemporary voices. instead, hermeneutics has a vaguely more ecological aim (this being a new affinity it has inherited in recent decades, a newborn child whose wildness and energy has been quite a challenge to it) – to explore the lived relations, relations long past into the air and atmosphere, lived places and nooks and crannies, shared and contested. there, along with grosbeaks and cowbirds and juncos and grandsons, grandmothers, and mothers, too. and, apparently, grandfathers who write often of ravens and such. like the colourful stuff animals strung along the tsuutʼina nation fenceposts nearby that my son and his family pass every day. one day, just like a sweet little cowbird come sit, someone is going to ask, and the whole roil required of careful reading will start all over again. so, atherton, my dear boy’s dear boy, i’m glad i got a chance this morning to re-read this: “the possibility that the other person may be right is the soul of hermeneutics” (h.g. gadamer, july 9, 1989, cited in grondin, 1995, p. 124). i knew it a bit way back when, and i tried (i suppose), but it is good to read again. the ravens, too, may be right. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 4 6 “it’s good to be writing again” (callahan, 2019). as bill taught me, when it works, “clear water flows from my pen.” i daren’t forget that muddy waters will, of course, come again. another little hermeneutic lesson. references callahan, b. (2019). writing. from the cd shepherd in a sheepskin vest. drag city records #dc747. released june 14, 2019. rough trade publishing. gadamer, h.-g. (1984). the hermeneutics of suspicion. man and world, 17(3-4), 313-323. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01250456 gadamer, h.-g. (2001). gadamer in conversation: reflections and commentary (r.e. palmer, ed. & trans.). yale university press. gadamer, h.-g. (1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). continuum books. gadamer, h.-g. (2007). hermeneutics and the ontological difference. in r.e. palmer (ed. & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 356-371). northwestern university press. grondin, j. (1995). introduction to philosophical hermeneutics. yale university press. heidegger, m. (1962). being and time. harper books. jardine, d.w. (2016). “don’t say ‘there must be . . .’”. in d.w. jardine in praise of radiant beings (pp. 17-22). iap press. husserl, e. (1970a). the idea of phenomenology. martinus nijhoff. husserl, e. (1970b). the crisis of european science and transcendental phenomenology northwestern university press. miller, a. (1989). for your own good: hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence. collins. newell, t., & jardine, d.w. (2020). “arms outstretched in love toward the further shore”: a conversation. journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies. 20(1). online: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/jaaacs/article/view/192308/189834 online etymological dictionary. (n.d.). parasite. in online etymological dictionary. http://www.etymonline.com/ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/jaaacs/article/view/192308/189834 http://www.etymonline.com/ corresponding author: randip k dhaliwal, rn, doctoral student, faculty of nursing, university of calgary email: randip.dhaliwal@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 september 25, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.76092 caring for the terminally ill: an interpretation of time, existence, and mortality randip k. dhaliwal & shelley raffin bouchal abstract in this paper, the first author explores the complexity of caring for palliative care patients approaching end of life in response to the statement nursing is an interpretive practice. a reallife scenario is used to unravel the exploration of time, existence, and mortality. the author proclaims that the question of death remains unanswered, and the call to palliative care nursing requires an extensive examination of one’s own temporality to cultivate an understanding of patients experiences of grief, legacy, and meaning making in the context of terminal illness. keywords philosophical hermeneutics, death, grief, legacy, palliative care, end of life when i (dhaliwal) first grappled with the question of how palliative care nursing exemplifies interpretive practice, i was reminded of niall keane’s (2021) exploration of time as giving and time as taking away. this dichotomy of time established by keane (2021) draws attention to the relentless exploration of death as an adventure that involves coming face-to-face with the question of what it means to have lived. time, which gives the opportunity for love, celebration, and hope is also an expert in loss, heartache, and tragedy. palliative care nurses are bestowed the responsibility of living in this delicate in-between, constantly moving between life and death. in this work, i will explore how caring for patients diagnosed with a terminal illness is an inherently interpretive venture that reminds us of death’s inevitability. i will begin the paper by providing an example of a real-life scenario in which i cared for a terminally ill palliative care patient. i dhaliwal & raffin bouchal journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 14 2 will then examine the ways in which interpretation made space for understanding this experience. finally, i will explore the complexity of time, existence, and mortality in shaping the care of patients approaching death. the call to palliative care i began my career four years ago working as a registered nurse on an inpatient cardiology and overflow general medicine unit. patients requiring palliative care were frequently admitted to the unit, often with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure or cancer. as a nurse that regularly engaged with patients diagnosed with a terminal illness, i became acclimated to the grief that unwelcomingly housed itself in the room of dying patients. specifically, it was following my initial experience caring for patricia, 1 a patient at end of life, that i first recognized the pervasiveness of death that seamlessly bypassed the sterility of medical science and accentuated nursing as an artistic venture. when patricia first visited the emergency department, it was for standard treatment. she was experiencing symptoms of a pulmonary embolism and required anticoagulation treatment. although a pulmonary embolism can be life-threatening, it is highly resolvable with treatment. upon examination, diagnostic testing during patricia’s visit would reveal a higher-than-normal count of lymphocytes and monocytes. over the next four weeks, patricia would be informed by oncologists of her grim prognosis. she would then proceed to experience a stroke three days prior to her death. a room that was once filled with laughter and patricia’s frequent quips, would now be filled with silence. interpreting taking and giving palliative care nursing is an interpretive practice. as gadamer (1960/1989) declared, “understanding begins when something addresses us” (p. 298) and i was moved by the 71-yearold woman, once described as “the life of the party” by her husband of 40 years, who was unable to verbally communicate in the final days prior to her death. many years later i can still recall the ethereality of being in the same room as patricia and witnessing her resilience in the face of lifealtering news that followed numerous diagnostic tests and visits to the cancer centre. one morning after patricia returned from an ultrasound, her hair was disheveled, she was evidently exhausted, and she complained of having to wear a patient gown that stripped her of her personality. rather than asking patricia how the ultrasound went, we exchanged numerous jokes. i turned to her husband and said, “she’s a funny one, i see why you picked her.” he then informed me that he moved to calgary for patricia, and they had two children. he proceeded to disclose that their daughter died of cancer three years prior. following the realization that patricia had experienced immense grief following the death of her daughter under similar circumstances, i recognized that this is where palliative care nursing lives. it is being present and right there (dhaliwal et al., 2020) with our patients as they navigate death and dying. as we interpret what they need from moment to moment, a portal to new understanding reveals itself (moules et al., 2015). as nurses, our jobs extend beyond interpreting blood tests and vital signs. in my interactions with patricia and her family, there was a delicate balance that needed to be dhaliwal & raffin bouchal journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 14 3 maintained between knowing when to provide medical information, knowing when to make room for witty remarks, and knowing when to listen. when patricia’s diagnostic test results first indicated incurable cancer, the oncologists delayed visitation. patricia’s husband, a former physician at the same hospital, pleaded for staff to communicate the results of her test. he said, “i know you’ve gotten the test results back for the ultrasound and i know you’re not supposed to tell me, but i need to know. we need to know.” i knew that disclosing the test results was not within my scope of practice and as patricia’s husband awaited my response, i fell silent. i said nothing at all, and yet, it was this silence that gave him the confirmation he needed. albeit unintentional, patricia’s husband and i had a profound interaction without the exchange of verbal dialogue. he was interpreting my silence for what it was – tragedy. he returned to patricia’s room, and from his silence, i knew that he understood that time had come to take (keane, 2021). his focus shifted from pleading with staff about the results of the test to confirming patricia’s end-of-life wishes. when patricia died, i was in san francisco on vacation. i returned to the unit to find her room occupied by a newly admitted patient. i was consumed with sadness, but i knew that i had a job to do – i needed to care for the next dying patient. keane (2021) wrote, “the first silence we experience in time appears to be the silence of loss. it is the silence of the other who no longer responds” (p. 2). patricia’s death was a stark reminder that silence also has something to say. as nurses, we develop a secret language with our patients. when we are present with our patients during their most vulnerable moments, conversation naturally ensues. it is the time we spend with them, caring for them, that allows this special language to develop. as we get to know our patients, we begin to move in response to them, maintaining a fluidity of to-and-fro movements that occur in reciprocation to one another. perhaps the most difficult aspect of caring for the terminally ill is knowing that eventually, that language will never be spoken again. although immediately following patricia’s death i felt a relentless anger towards time for its unapologetic nature as it continued to take, i also experienced gratitude. i felt thankful for the moments that i got to know patricia and her family, and it was the first time i understood that time also gives (keane, 2021). what interpretation has to teach us about death heidegger explored death as a concept tangled up with the idea of existence (shariatinia, 2015). he believed that the only certainty of existence is death. existence is derived from the latin term existentia, which means to “come into being” (lexico, n.d.). after caring for patricia, i began to question the conceptualization of death as the end of being. my colleagues informed me that following patricia’s death, her husband continued to share his favourite stories of her. it was his recollection of her that cemented patricia’s existence. despite her death, she continued to be right here, in the stories that her loved ones shared of her. i realized that existence does not have to end with death. instead, death is simply a reframing of being. in 2021, when i lost a loved one tragically to suicide, i remembered patricia. i felt immersed in a sense of knowing that would change the lens from which i viewed the world. with nursing, interpretation does not end when the patient interaction does. we are in the business of remembering and re-remembering (moules et al., 2015) until understanding shakes us to our dhaliwal & raffin bouchal journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 14 4 very core. at the time of our interaction, i did not want to fully understand what patricia and her family were experiencing because it meant coming to terms with my own temporality and the temporality of those that i loved most. when i remembered patricia and her family following my own loss, i recalled the stories that her husband told of her. i experienced erfahrung, meaning to travel or journey with (moules et al., 2015). it was caring for patricia and interpreting her family’s response to her death that taught me how to make sense of my own loss many years later. i knew that if i continued to say jay’s2 name in conversation, he would not cease existing. as poet thomas campbell (1825/n.d.) once wrote, “to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die” (para. 1). with each mention of jay’s name following his death, i was not only inviting others into my own experience of loss, but also patricia and her family’s experience. the two were intertwined, and they could not be uncoupled or deconstructed from one another. ultimately, jay’s and patricia’s deaths collided and coexisted in such a way that they could no longer be seen as independent entities. george (2017) explored grieving in the context of limit situations (jaspers, 1969), in which our lives are defined by moments of existential challenges. death and the inevitable suffering that accompanies the loss of a loved one is a reminder of our own cosmic insignificance and impermanence. becker (1973/2020) insisted that it is death that has the ability to push us to the edge of the human condition. he argued that we retaliate our own temporality with a defiant creation of meaning (becker, 1973/2020) and in many ways, george (2017) echoed this sentiment in his exploration of grieving as a limit situation of memory. in the presence of death, we immerse ourselves in establishing unshakeable perpetuity. whether it is creating an archive of documents, such as paintings, poetry, or photographs, or reappearing in the memory, thoughts, or conversations of our loved ones, we have an inexhaustible desire to affirm that our existence extends beyond our limited presence as physical beings on this blue dot circulating somewhere in the cosmos. in his publication, george (2017) explored a passage written by paul celan, which reads “the world is gone, i must carry you” (celan, as cited by derrida, 2005, p. 141). the work is referenced by jacques derrida (2005) in response to the loss of a friend and validates the responsibility we have to remember those that we have lost. as our lives, circumstances, and understanding of the world changes, the task of “grieving remains unending” (george, 2017, p. 3). we acknowledge that forgetting would be a disservice to our patients and our loved ones, and so we carry the burden of grief and all that it encompasses as a radical act of legacy. death: a question the natural sciences cannot definitively answer gadamer (1960/1989) explored the conceptualization of certainty in the medical sciences and its reduction of human lives as something that can be measured. as the natural sciences take precedence over that which cannot be proven to be objectively true, nursing falters to the trap of quantification. when patricia’s ultrasound results indicated incurable cancer, interpretation was at play and the results were not seen in isolation but instead as a life-altering diagnosis that would undoubtedly change the course of patricia’s life. the results meant that a daughter would lose her mother and a husband his wife; it meant that patricia would continue to experience agonizing, unresolvable pain. there was no method of quantifying the gravity of what the test result meant for patricia and those who loved her most. the size, proportions, and objective description of the metastatic cancer did not matter, nor did it occur to me to delve into this information. dhaliwal & raffin bouchal journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 14 5 heidegger described dwelling as safety and security (shariatinia, 2015). ultimately, it is death that destabilizes our dwelling. it asks to be heard, acknowledged, and remembered. hermeneutics is an exercise of vulnerability. it calls on us to recognize that, despite the advancements in technology and the natural sciences, the question of death is one that cannot be definitively answered. there is a humility in allowing ourselves to be transformed by the experiences of our patients despite the discomfort that might come with addressing our own mortality in the process. philosophical hermeneutics is a natural fit for palliative care nursing, as the focus always lies in phronesis, that is, practical knowledge (moules et al., 2015). nurses are situated “in medias res, in the middle of things” (caputo, 2018, p. 223). we recognize that there is no “correct” way of caring for each terminally ill patient. there is a constant fluidity required to address the patient, the illness, and the context in which these two things coincide. conclusion gadamer (1960/1989) maintained that "hermeneutic work is based on a polarity of familiarity and strangeness” (p. 295). i was called to the profession of palliative care nursing because of my sikh mother, who embedded seva (i.e., selfless service) in every aspect of my life and taught me that the most important thing we can do in service of others is to be there with them (khalsa, 2019). there is a familiarity for me when it comes to palliative care nursing and this conceptualization of seva. yet, caring for the terminally ill also maintains a sense of strangeness, unfamiliarity, and innocence. we serve others without any particular goal of answering the question of death, because we acknowledge it is simply not within the realm of possibility. although the question of death can never be definitively answered, learning and relearning occurs with each patient interaction. whether palliative care nurses are obtaining a heart rate and identifying the appropriate course of action in conjunction with patient symptoms or consoling a patient and family following a terminal diagnosis, the opportunity to learn is always abundant and endless. alongside the privilege of being present with our patients and their families in the face of these incalculable moments is the responsibility to question the mundane, taken-forgranted norms of everydayness, and the responsibility to understand. acknowledgement this paper was written in response to an assignment in a doctoral level hermeneutic research class in the faculty of nursing at the university of calgary, taught by dr. nancy moules. i would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, dr. shelley raffin bouchal, for her support throughout my graduate studies in conceptualizing death, grief, and legacy in the context of palliative care. additionally, i would like to thank my committee members, dr. nancy moules, who has been integral in helping me understand hermeneutics as both a philosophy and research methodology, and dr. graham mccaffery, who has deeply changed my perception of poetry and the place of humanities in nursing. references becker, e. (2020). the denial of death. souvenir press. (original work published 1973). dhaliwal & raffin bouchal journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 14 6 campbell, t. (n.d.). hallowed ground. poetry nook. https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/hallowed-ground (original work published in 1825). caputo, j.d. (2018). hermeneutics: facts and interpretation in the age of information. pelican. derrida, j. (2005). sovereignties in question. fordham university press. dhaliwal, s., moules, n.j., & mccaffrey, g. (2020). new realities and tsunamis: a nurse’s interpretation of a family navigating cancer. journal of applied hermeneutics, 10, article 4, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.vi0.70511 gadamer, h.-g. (1989). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.; 2nd ed.). continuum (original work published 1960). george, t. (2017). grieving as limit situation of memory: gadamer, beamer, and moules on the infinite task posed by the dead. journal of applied hermeneutics, 7, article 11, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53324 jaspers, k. (1969). philosophy (vol. 2, e.b. ashton, trans.). university of chicago press. keane, n. (2021). mortality, time, and the lessons of silence: a hermeneutical analysis of give and take. journal of applied hermeneutics, 11, article 9, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2021i2021.73474 khalsa, s. (2019, february 17). 3 golden rules of sikhism: tenets and fundamental principles. learn religions, https://www.learnreligions.com/golden-rules-of-sikhism-2993479 lexico. (n.d.). existence. in lexico dictionary. retrieved may 16, 2022, from https://www.lexico.com/definition/existence moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. peter lang. shariatinia, z. (2015). heidegger’s ideas about death. pacific science review b: humanities and social sciences, 1(2), 92-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psrb.2016.06.001 1 patricia is a pseudonym used to maintain patient confidentiality. 2 jay is a pseudonym used to maintain the confidentiality of the individual that the writer lost to suicide. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.vi0.70511 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53324 https://www.learnreligions.com/golden-rules-of-sikhism-2993479 https://www.lexico.com/definition/existence microsoft word skuce & pelech corrected proof.docx 1 brandon university 2 university of lethbridge corresponding author: tim skuce, phd email: skucet@bu.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 july 16, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 a pedagogical venturing into the three sisters’ garden: lessons of attunement and reciprocity in education tim skuce1 & sharon pelech2 abstract this paper explores the connections the authors make between their experiences in the classroom and the powerful work of robin wall kimmerer (2013) in braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teaching of plants; specifically, her chapter entitled “the three sisters.” through kimmerer’s work, we interpret our own experiences within the classroom. we also draw upon hans-georg gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in general and his notion of erfahrung in particular. we were inspired by the author’s insights into how she happened upon a “new teacher” for her students. as a result, this paper explores her work, as it provides an image of what it is to be present among students while honouring the topic’s own being and becoming--staying open to its future possibilities not yet known. the pedagogical turn away from predetermined outcomes to reciprocity, interconnectedness, and relationships is examined in how they help us understand teaching and learning. keywords three sisters; kimmerer; hermeneutics; curriculum; erfahrung; reciprocity; education; preservice teachers; land-based curriculum prologue and you’ve got to understand that you don’t make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline. so you’ve got to respond, in what you see happen. and if you keep seeing this acceleration, it skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 2 doesn’t matter what you say. one week, two weeks, three weeks – you’ve got to go with what the situation on the ground is. dr. anthony fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert (cnn: march 25, 2020) we write this paper during extraordinary times. in response to the exponential rates of infection and deaths attributed to the global pandemic induced by covid-19, many governments, as a means to “flatten the curve,” have declared states of emergency and have demanded that citizens practice social distancing. however, despite warnings from the nation’s top infectious disease experts, united states president donald trump wants the country “opened up and just raring to go by easter” (liptak, vazquez, valencia, & acosta, 2020). in response to the president’s comments, dr. fauci, the director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases contends, “you've got to understand that you don't make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline” (cited in leblanc, 2020). dr. fauci’s response is a stark reminder of the limits of modern science to predict, control, and manipulate the spread of the virus. rather, in order to stave off the rapid spread of infection induced by covid-19, it is critical to learn and respond according to its ways. in other words, we need to learn to listen to, and respond to what is happening in the world in spite of what we would like to be able to do. introduction this paper explores the connections the authors make between their experiences in the classroom and the powerful work of robin wall kimmerer (2013) in braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teaching of plants, specifically, her chapter entitled “the three sisters.” as educators who originally taught in the public school system for years (tim as a social studies teacher; sharon as a biology/science teacher) and then both moved to preservice/graduate teaching in different faculties of education, we have experienced and often discussed the irresolvable but necessary tension that resides between curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived experience, as aoki (2005) described. we also draw upon hans-georg gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in general and his notion of erfahrung in particular. to be and to become an experienced teacher is not merely the accumulation of strategies and knowledge, but rather it calls for one to confront one’s previous understanding. it is in and through venturing with others where one comes to acknowledge their finitude. and it is in the recognition of one’s finitude where one may come to garner more fulsome understandings of self, other, and the world. we also draw upon the seminal work of curriculum theorists ted aoki and william pinar and how their understanding of curriculum deepens our reading of kimmerer’s work and her connections to the complex venturing that an enlivened curriculum demands. we have both experienced the push from the dominant discourse of fragmented curriculum, and specifically, preservice educators’ often narrowly-conceived concept of teaching as an act of transmission—the covering of predefined outcomes/objectives as articulated in provincially mandated curriculum guides. given such a construal of curriculum and teaching, we have found that preservice teachers are often preoccupied with accumulating knowledge regarding the subject matter and learning “tips and tricks” on how to teach. this may partially account from students’ desires to control their new environments in the classroom, and to disseminate fragmented bits of information which renders the curriculum a noun--an object. perhaps this may skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 3 partially explain students’ recurring questions: “how do i teach world war one? how do i teach food chains/webs?” underlying these questions is often a demand for particular methods that will render the subject matter fixed and stable. such an orientation often stymies student desire to question their own and their students’ relation to the topics. further, this orientation to curriculum and teaching is an image they have often experienced throughout their formal education. the curriculum topics are “covered” and students are held accountable through regularly scheduled examinations. it is no surprise, then, that many preservice teachers seek surefire methods that will ensure the smooth “delivery” of course content. this view of curriculum often severs students from exploring how they are always and already embedded in a particular time and place; always and already imbued with understandings of topics such as citizenship, identity, and ecosystems. while reading the chapter “the three sisters” in kimmerer (2013), we were struck and inspired by the author’s insights into how she happened upon a “new teacher” for her students. as a result we want to explore her work, as it provides an image of what it is to be present among students while honouring the topic’s own being and becoming--staying open to its future possibilities not yet known. we hope that through our writing, we convey our reverence and respect for the lessons that dr. kimmerer offers. we are both so moved by how her teachings spoke to many of the questions and wonderments about school, curriculum, and pedagogy that have provoked us throughout our experiences as educators. as a result, we wish to explore more deeply her writings to help us provide a deeper understanding of what it means to lean into the lessons the three sisters have provided. coming to understand the three sisters in her essay, “the three sisters,” kimmerer (2013) describes how she was gifted a small packet from awiakta, a cherokee writer, and was instructed to open the small bundle in the spring where she found the three sisters: the corn, bean, and squash seeds. along with this gift came the wisdom of generations of indigenous agricultural practice from “mexico to montana” (p. 129). kimmerer shares the stories and lessons of reciprocity that are written in a three sisters garden and how indigenous agricultural practices for generations have planted these three plants together. historically, the three sisters are planted together in “may-moist earth,” and as a result have the opportunity to grow collectively through their interaction and interdependence both above ground and also amongst their root systems spawning and sprawling beneath the ground. this method of growing the three plants together was seen by the colonists as evidence that the “savages did not know how to farm. to their minds, a garden meant straight rows of single species, not a three-dimensional sprawl of abundance” (p. 129). kimmerer’s chapter resonated with us on a pedagogical level. we were intrigued by the connections between her experience with the three sisters as a botany professor and our own consideration of pedagogy and how it is enacted in the classroom. as a result, we explore how kimmerer’s work has helped us to understand our own practice differently. being pulled up short being drawn into the garden...the eventfulness of the garden “it jolts us, knocks us over, and sets up a world of its own, into which we are drawn, as it were.” skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 4 (gadamer, 2001, p. 71) as a beginning high school social studies teacher many years ago, one of the disciplines i (tim) was entrusted to teach was geography. a central task was to cover the specific curriculum outcomes as articulated in alberta provincial curricula. i remember taking great solace in the fact that my generous colleagues offered me unrestricted access to their materials--binders bursting with ready-made assignments and corresponding examinations. i also had a class set of textbooks replete with teacher’s resources to help guide my work. however, throughout my undergraduate studies in political science, philosophy, history, literature, etc., i had come to recognize the contingency, ambiguity, and precarity of the lifeworld. i appreciated the unfinishedness of these disciplines--that understanding of the topics will always be on the way. further, i believed that there was no terra firma--no stable or immutable truths. although i embraced such an ontological understanding, perhaps given my nascence as a teacher, i was often unable to create spaces for students to linger with the subject matter, to pursue their wonderments. as a means to cover the course content, i would ask students to fill out retrieval charts with information extracted from their textbooks regarding the names and characteristics of canada’s physiographic regions. in common educational parlance, i was frontloading knowledge so we could eventually move on to something more interesting. for the most part, students would willingly memorize the content and demonstrate their knowledge on prescheduled examinations. within such a construal of teaching, i was simply teaching “about” geography. unknowingly, i had turned the living discipline of geography into an object by dispensing inert and fragmented bits of abstract knowledge. such pedagogical practices rendered students merely passive recipients devoid of physical contact with earthly elements. further, such an orientation often foreclosed on the pregnant possibilities that abounded as i gathered with my students. i was often unable to be open to, or opened by, the eventfulness of classroom life. rarely, if ever, did i provide opportunities for students to share their lived experiences of the natural world. perhaps this may partially explain students’ recurring questions: “can we do something fun today?” “is this going to be on the test?” “do i need to write this down?” although many students came to accumulate factual information about canada’s geographic regions, its landforms, flora and fauna, this information did not necessarily give students a deeper sense of what it might mean to belong to a place--to learn its ways. such an orientation severed students from the calls and obligations that reverberate from earthly sounds and silences that inhabit a place. cynthia chambers (2008) contends that “being is constituted through the tasks that he or she conducts as he or she dwells in a particular place within a region of places” (p. 116). further, such practices provided little opportunity for students to foster an understanding of the interdependence and interconnectedness of the living world. how might students learn to cultivate a sense of history about a place and to become enchanted and attuned to its songs--to its eternal becoming? how might students foster a sensitivity and sensibility to care for all human and non-human life that honours the fragility of the world? skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 5 welcoming a new teacher understanding begins…when something addresses us. (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 299) kimmerer reflects on teaching a first-year university class in general botany in a large lecture hall. for many years her main pedagogical practice consisted of displaying slides, diagrams, and the telling of stories that attempted to reveal the marvels of photosynthesis. however, on this day, somewhat frustrated, she asked her students: “how many of you have ever grown anything?” (p. 135) many students responded that they had little or no experience “of seeds and soil, they had never watched a flower transform itself into an apple” (p. 135). it was here where she suddenly awakened to her students’ boredom. she vowed to herself: “they needed a new teacher” (p. 135). as a result, each fall she now begins her class in a garden. for the month of september, she sits with her students among the three sisters. kimmerer describes the new teacher she invites to come forth and speak: they [students] measure yield and growth and get to know the anatomy of the plants who feed them. i ask them first to look. they observe and draw the way the three live in relationship to one another and other forms of life. sitting among the three sisters the students learned to pay attention, to look, to observe and to draw the way the three live in relationship. (p. 135) we are struck by the seeming serendipity of kimmerer’s pedagogical decision to first ask the students, “in a bit of frustration,” if they had ever grown anything. on this particular day, with these particular students, the everydayness of classroom life was interrupted. her pedagogical practices suddenly put into question. perhaps it was a sensitivity to the students’ silences, their disinterestedness, or an overall mood that permeated the lecture hall, that she could no longer bear to endure. here, on this day, in the lifeworld of the classroom kimmerer is confronted by the limits of slides, diagrams, and stories. the efficacy of well-rehearsed lessons delivered year after year, suddenly and irrevocably shattered. a university classroom cannot honour the earthy habitat of the three sisters. detached from the lifeworld of the garden, students were unable to foster an embodied attunement to the sisters’ ways, unable to witness the beautiful reciprocity that exists among the sisters, unable to venture forth from a common place--from their own varied, limited, and fragmented experiences. and it is here, as gadamer (1960/2004) suggests, that one discovers “the limits of the power and the self-knowledge of [one’s] planning reason” (p. 365). kimmerer had also become severed from how she had come to know and care for the world of plants--the living world. although she had come to learn the anatomy of plants by heart, there was more, so much more than simply amassing verifiable knowledge. she had fostered an attunement to the natural world by becoming increasingly alive to its nuances, to its variances, and to the particularities that lived in a place. she had spent many hours immersed in conversation with elders and in gardens learning to pay attention, not simply in the form of a passive presence but a “function of the fullness and intensity of attention and engrossment” (ross, 2006, p. 109). she would lay among ripening pumpkins to hear the sound of them yearning, growing. “a microphone in the hollow of a swelling pumpkin would reveal the pop of seeds expanding skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 6 and the rush of water filling succulent orange flesh” (p. 128). and with practice she had come to know her way around; she had learned to carry herself in such a way that derby (2015) describes as an understanding education as a home-coming, home-making (ecopoiesis) “as finding ourselves already home in a world thrumming with resonant meaning [what he calls the voice of the world]. then the question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?” (p. 9). venturing into the garden, into the world in the garden, kimmerer graciously prepares to venture with her students, a readiness to be open to and opened by her students’ questions, worries, wonderments and, at times, their reluctances. her september afternoons are now spent with her students among the three sisters. in this new place, she has had to abandon the familiar--she can no longer rely on the repeatability and predictability of teaching strategies once implemented within the confines of a lecture hall. it is in the lived reality of being in the garden with students where the study of botany is no longer an abstraction, but rather it is something concretely experienced. in the worldliness of the garden, kimmerer comes to encounter her students face-to-face where she is called to decide, to enact pedagogical decisions that are not derived from a rationality that permits her to simply fix them a priori. as she encounters her students in the concrete situation, through conversation she comes to exchange ideas, thoughts, mysteries. and perhaps, in the midst of life, she may continue to foster an attunement, a pedagogical praxis that embraces the vulnerability of her own understanding, to gracefully respond to the multifariousness of students entrusted to her care, and to nurture an eternal vigilance to inquire into the fleshy wonderments of ecological life. gadamer (1960/2004) observes all adventures require that one’s preunderstandings are put at risk by opening them to questions. kimmerer’s journeys into the garden created opportunities to interrupt life’s customary course of events, to feel its “breath and strength” and “here lies the fascination of an adventure. it removes the conditions and obligations of everyday life. it ventures out into the uncertain” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 63). in venturing, gadamer (1960/2004) suggests that one must leave home, to put at risk one’s previous understanding, to feel estranged from one’s home and then to return home, but in a new way, a different way, a way more attuned to the ever-emerging sights, sounds, and demands of a place. in many instances, being prepared to teach is conceived in accordance with an epistemological focus that requires teachers to acquire fidelity to specific and general learning outcomes prescribed by mandated curriculum. according to pinar (2004), such a focus often forces teachers to “mime others’ conversations, ensuring that countless classrooms are filled with forms of ventriloquism rather than intellectual exploration, wonder, and awe” (p. 186). further, epistemological concerns often foreclose ontological considerations. although knowing and adhering to the “whatness” of teaching is essential, we also want to consider how teachers may become experienced in venturing with students that embraces and ethically responds to the roils of classroom life. in part, we draw upon gadamer’s (1960/2004) notion of erfahrung that calls for the cultivation of attunement, taste, and ethical judgement that exceeds the strictures of method, an orientation that often relies on rational and empirical knowledge that fails to capture the full scope of human experience. rather, gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics offer an ontological orientation of a self-becoming, and the potential for skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 7 possibilities not yet known. gadamer (1960/2004) proffers that hermeneutics is also concerned with knowledge and truth. he asks: “but what kind of knowledge and what kind of truth?” (p. xx). to honour and respond to the chance noticings, to the to and fro motion of classroom life, and to the eternal movements and inexhaustibility of the curriculum topics. the lifeworld of the classroom calls for a constant mediation among teachers, students, and the subject matter, “the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 306). the concrete situation of being in the garden--a living and breathing context that provides a space for an exchange of ideas, of possibilities--and engaging in direct conversation with one another is an opportunity to extend one’s understanding, as “self-understanding always occurs through understanding something other than the self” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 86). it is in this in-between where opportunities abound for educators and students to uncover “the knowing and appreciative eye to worlds hitherto unseen and unknown” (pinar cited in magrini, 2016, p. 174). learning to live well in the in-between is not accessible by merely gathering and implementing universal pedagogical strategies, but rather calls for the cultivation of a situational praxis that requires an eternal commitment to deliberation and discernment. according to gadamer (1960/2004), this profoundly relational space constitutes the heart of education, where educators need to “exercise above all is the ear, the sensitivity for perceiving prior determinations, anticipations, and imprints that reside in concepts” (gadamer, 2007, p. 21). being in the garden with students calls for practical actions and practical reasoning that is attuned to the everydayness of classroom life. kimmerer’s careful and thoughtful pedagogical encounters with two students in the garden points to and honours the multiplicity of students’ voices as she responds with care to the unfolding demands of the present moment. one student: an artist kimmerer designed a learning task which began with the materiality of the lifeworld; she invited her students to “first look” and then draw the way the sisters live in relationship--in reciprocity. this task created an opportunity for students to draw upon their capacities to observe and to reflect on their previous understanding and perhaps in venturing they might come to uncover something unfamiliar through the familiar--through their lived experiences. the provocation to create an aesthetic presentation of the three sisters required students to engage in a multisensory phenomenon that honoured the ever-emerging vibrancy of the garden’s colours, textures, motions, smells and other living and non-living forms. although kimmerer may have had a sense as to what her students might bring forth, their responses were unknown and unknowable. what might become of this venture was, and is, susceptible and sensitive to the flow of time-each venture full of a creative and necessary tension between what has already appeared and possibilities not yet known. as mentioned above, prior to kimmerer’s venture into the garden, her teaching was solely concentrated on the dissemination of knowledge and understanding delivered through slides and stories. pinar (2004) describes that such an epistemological orientation to curriculum that focuses on the implementation of predefined outcomes stultifies the process of education. rather, he suggests that curriculum ought to be a complicated conversation where students and teachers connect academic knowledge to their “own subjectivities, to societies, and to the historical moment” (p. xiv). and it is through such study that “subjective and social reconstruction” (pinar, skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 8 2011, p. 2) is enabled. in kimmerer’s new context, she is confronted with the contingencies and frailties of the unceasing flow of life and the perpetual being and becoming of students in relation to the subject matter, the three sisters. such an ontological orientation eludes ontic certainty--mastery. as means to honour an ontological orientation, we ally with gadamer’s notion of experience-erfahrung--as it illustrates a commitment to embark on a journey, an encounter with the other in conversation as a means to elucidate more expansive understandings of self, other, and the world. further, erfahrung calls for one to venture, to return to the lifeworld--the world among living relations. venturing to the garden and dwelling among the three sisters provided kimmerer and her students with an opportunity to question the way they had come to know the world and to extend their understandings of the world in which they live as human beings. this questioning, as gadamer (1960/2004) insists, requires humility and the willingness to lovingly embrace alterity, to be open to that which is unfamiliar, to live in tension, and to believe that things could always be understood anew. thus, an experienced teacher proves to be one who is “radically undogmatic” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 364). it is in and through encounters with others where one is confronted with one’s own finitude, as one’s understandings are always limited, always embedded with a specific time and place. according to gadamer (1960/2004), becoming experienced is not simply oriented toward the accumulation of verifiable knowledge, or a sequence of predictable and repeatable occurrences, but rather erfahrung pulls in the opposite direction where one’s taken-for-granted assumptions of everyday life are brought up short. this is no soloist or narcissistic adventure but a journey with fellow interlocutors where one suffers one’s inherent and finite understandings. however, as gadamer (1960/2004) suggests, it is in and through our encounters with others where we gain new insights, and “insight is more than knowledge of this or that situation. it always involves an escape from something that had deceived us and held us captive. thus, insight always involves an element of self-knowledge” (pp. 364-365). and as jardine, friesen, and clifford (2006) contend, it is through one’s sojourns with others where “you become someone (not just anyone) as a consequence of how you carry yourself in the world. with practice, you become more experienced in experiencing things in their abundance” (p. xxv, original emphasis). and perhaps as kimmerer ventures into the garden with her students they will become ever more alive to the worldliness and spirit of the arrival of unknown and unknowable future possibilities. coming alongside one of her students, an artist, kimmerer notices, “the more she looks the more excited she becomes. ‘look at the composition.’ she says, ‘it’s just like our art teacher described the elements of design in the studio today. there is unity, balance, color. it’s perfect.’” as kimmerer glances at her student’s notebook, she notices that the student has a deep aesthetic appreciation. kimmerer states: “she’s seeing it like a painting. long leaves, round leaves, lobed and smooth, yellow, orange, tan on a matrix of green. ‘see the way it works? corn is the vertical element, squash horizontal, and it’s all tied together with these curvilinear vines, the beans. ravishing,’ she claims with a flourish” (p. 135). on this particular day, with this particular student, kimmerer recognizes that her student is enchanted by the natural world, drawn into its spell--lost in its play--succumbing to its ways while making connections to her previous understandings. this interaction between kimmerskuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 9 er, her student, and the three sisters, reminds us, yet again, that it is in our primordial condition that we always and already find ourselves in the world as learners, continually seeking to understand ever more fully the world in which we are immersed. to honour our students being-in-theworld, we are called to listen more attentively to their calling, to approach them, and invite them to approach us as a means to create opportunities to dwell in learning and to appreciate the unknowability of human and non-human existence. a second student as kimmerer approaches a second student, she observes that the student is “dressed for the allure that might work in a dance club, but not a botany field trip. she has avoided any contact with the dirt so far” (p. 135). standing side by side, kimmerer and her student “simply [follow] a squash vine from one end to another and diagramming the flowers. way out at the young tip of the vine are orange squash blossoms” (p. 135). kimmerer points out the swollen ovary of the flower after it has been pollinated. and then together they pick a ripe butternut squash and slice it open so the student can see the seeds in the cavity within (p. 135). in the conversation that follows, the student says incredulously, “‘you mean a squash comes from a flower?’ ‘yes,’ i tell her, ‘this is the ripened ovary of that first flower.’ the student responds, ‘i love this kind of squash at thanksgiving.’ her eyes widen in shock. ‘you mean all these years i’ve been eating ovaries? blech--i’ll never eat squash again.’” (p. 136) as we travel into the world, we are often unaware of the possibilities and the wealth that resides in places. the second student, during a dialogic encounter with kimmerer, is surprised, awakened, and transformed by what had always and already existed, but had been concealed from her hitherto experiences. experience in such cases is not the result of one’s will or intention, but rather emerges through the ways the world presses itself upon us--where an unexpected and an unanticipated truth shines through. suddenly a part of a whole has imposed itself upon us, reconfiguring an experience. moreover, such an event is not simply the application of a method; it is not, as aoki (2005) reminds, a matter of skill and technique, but rather a way of being. as educators dwelling in the in-between, we are thrust into the temporality of our lives as we are always mediating a world contemporaneously. though there are family resemblances, kinships, and kind-nesses, each encounter is unique--our lives have never been lived out in this space with these students and it will never be repeated. nothing simple returns. gadamer’s (1960/2004) notion of the festival points to the temporality of the lifeworld of the classroom--a form of remembering in relation to time and topic’s perpetual movement. thus, the garden “has its being only in becoming and returning” (p. 126). and perhaps we might conceive of each new day as a journey, as mendelson (2017) reminds, “just one day’s worth of movement was a significant enough activity, an arduous enough enterprise, to warrant a name of its own: journey” (p. 21). as we prepare to teach, our daily lessons will anticipate that the young in our midst will beckon us to attune ourselves to the particularity of their voices, to listen, to respond, and to share together as we wander and wonder. and it is in the uniqueness of each venture that our daily routines may burst asunder the mundane as we engage the garden’s endless and constant activity--its meaning never fully disclosed. further, happenstances and chance noticings of classroom life are never skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 10 guaranteed. how students might respond to our offerings is contingent and uncertain. kimmerer’s invitation to her students to venture requires a leap of faith. as educators, we can never know in advance how students will respond to our offerings. as pinar (2004) reminds, “education is an opportunity offered, not a service rendered” (p. 5). regardless of how students respond to the generous offering of their teachers, there remains a pedagogical question: what are we to do in this concrete moment? and as gadamer (1981) suggests, there are “no learned and mastered technique[s that] can spare us the task of deliberation and decision” (p. 92). kimmerer’s encounters with her students point to a conviviality, an opportunity for students to recognize and make meaning from a world already familiar to them. perhaps kimmerer’s recognition that her student was “dressed for the allure that might work in a dance club, but not a botany field trip” called for her to reconsider her initial intentions of having all of her students come into contact with the soil. an attunement to a concrete situation--to graciously and gracefully respond to particular students in her midst--at times may call for a letting be and a letting go, at other times might demand a leaning toward--to question, to provoke--or still at other times to remain in silent repose. to respond to this student, in this moment, in the right measure, in the proper proportion, kimmerer, perhaps to avoid any contact with the soil, decides to invite her student to “simply [follow] a squash vine from one end to another and diagramming the flowers. way out at the young tip of the vine are orange squash blossoms.” perhaps it was kimmerer’s attunement to this student that enabled her to maintain possibilities, to keep the subject matter in play, and perhaps in this instance the “to-and-fro movement [was] not tied to any goal that would bring it to an end” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 108). at the end of each class, of each semester, my hopes are that although we have reached an end, as all courses must do, the end does not represent closure. rather, study, as pinar (2015) suggests, is a capacity to recognize “our particularity, that we become more than we have been influenced to be, that we refashion ourselves by engaging freely and creatively our circumstances” (p. 14). also, it is a possibility through study that we, and our students, may come to appreciate the topic’s unfinishedness, its inexhaustibility, and as a result, we feel compelled to tarry, to wonder as to what might become of the three sisters. and, as anne michaels (1996) suggests in her novel, fugitive pieces, perhaps “if you know one [garden] well, you will look at all other [gardens] differently. and if you learn to love one place, sometimes you can also learn to love another” (p. 82). attunement to the land as curriculum similar to kimmerer’s move to the garden, i (sharon) have tried to create opportunities for a new teacher (the land) to make itself known to preservice teachers. each year in my science curriculum course i take the students out on a field trip to sit and pay attention to the land, an experience introduced to me by dr. darron kelly (kelly, 2007; pelech & kelly, 2017). during one particular trip i had been asked by our public relations person to allow a photographer to join us on our field trip to capture “an innovative way to teach.” i reluctantly agreed, but only on the condition that the field trip be allowed to go as planned and not be disrupted. i explained that this is not a typical class where i will be giving information, or directing students on what to do or what to pay attention to. skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 11 as we arrived at the top of the coulee overlooking the oldman river, i invited students to spread out along the outcrop that stretches toward the river valley and to find a place to sit and “use their senses to notice.” some students moved to the edge of the coulee, a couple of students laid on their back, while others began to look closely at the grass that they were sitting on. most students gazed outwards to the vista spread out at their feet. while the students were spread out the photographer came over to me and asked, “aren’t you going to be teaching the class at all out here?” i was speechless. how could i explain to him in a few minutes that the purpose of this experience was to create the space for learning to take place in relationship with the land? the photographer’s question points to what aoki (2005) describes as the business metaphor of curriculum implementation, where it is assumed that as a “producer-consumer paradigm” (p. 112) the role of the teacher is to provide an unidirectional flow of information, and implementation is simply finding ways to increase the effectiveness of communication. as a result, the focus on testing, management by objectives, only requires teachers to have skills and techniques that focus on technological thought/action frameworks, providing the best way to put a program into practice. instead, my purpose was to create an opportunity for the students to wonder, to notice, and to open themselves to the land as their teacher, as kimmerer described. aoki (2005) explains implementing curriculum “must be seen not in terms of a being-as-thing but as a human being interested in their becoming” (p. 120). the worldliness of curriculum is not simply a means to a putative end. and perhaps, as jardine (2006) suggests, “each one of us who ventures to this place becomes someone who, in different and multiple ways, has come to know her or his way around this place--someone ‘experienced’ in it” (p. 217). instead of explaining this to the photographer, i replied, “no, i was not going to be doing any teaching.” so he asked that we stage a teaching moment for the magazine article. when the image of the artificial photo shoot of me “teaching” was published, it represented everything i was hoping to disrupt from this experience. the students were arranged to stand in a semi-circle focused on me, their backs to the true teacher that the coulee and the land had become during their short time on the land. my inability to respond to the photographer’s assumptions within his question allowed me to recognize that if, as an experienced teacher, i struggle to respond to this dominant narrative of what teaching looked like, how much harder it must be for new teachers entering the field faced with similar questions. it was a pivotal moment of insight provided to me, and it allowed a deeper understanding of the difficulties preservice teachers have in being open to a new experience in how learning can unfold. it is important to note that by allowing the experience of inviting the land to become the “new teacher,” i did not forfeit my role or responsibility as a co-teacher. the experience allowed the students, the teacher, and the land to “codwell within the insistent presence of a ‘curriculum x to-be-implemented’” (aoki, 2005, p. 116). in other words, it opened up the experiential world of situational praxis (aoki, 2005) where “praxis is a way of knowing in which the subject within a pedagogic situation (like a classroom) reflectively engages the objective world guided by the telos of ordering human action. here, theory and practice are seen to be in dialectic unity” (p. 116). it is within this dialectic unity a newer understanding of the complexity of curriculum can emerge. the dialectic experience opened up the possibility of learning from and with each other: students, teacher(s), and land, just as the three sisters support each other in a dialectic relationship of uniqueness and strength. after the field trip the students developed beautiful, unexpected questions that i could never have predicted; questions that then led us to explore how the curriculum skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 12 can come alive when it is allowed to dwell “in the midst of a multiplicity of curricula” (aoki, 2005, p. 214). curriculum theorist dwayne huebner (1999) suggests that the young need to be continually invited to interpret the world, an opportunity “to feel wonder, amazement, a sense of mystery” (p. 5). this orientation calls for educators and students to venture, to engage and learn with the world in a profoundly relational encounter with human and non-human others. this, in turn, fosters care and attunement to the ever-unfolding ways of the world, and as a result our role within the world remains interpretable. the preservice teachers realized that they do not have to create interdisciplinary curriculum, but that mathematics, science, social studies already have natural connections when they are allowed to emerge from place; in other words, the lived curricula. the new teacher had much to say to the preservice teachers and offered countless ways to ensure that studying curriculum can come from a place of meaning and context. in schools, there are current discussions on competency-focused curriculum. aoki (2005) explores the root etymology of “competence” from the latin root of “com-petere.” com means “together” and petere means “to seek.” kimmerer’s pedagogical act of bringing students into the garden embodies the original meaning of competency—which is to seek together, or “be able to venture forth together” (aoki, 2005, p. 130). aoki’s understanding of venturing forth together resonates with the concept of erfahrung. by allowing the students to become experienced in the garden with the three sisters, kimmerer offered an opportunity to venture together into the process of learning; what to pay attention to, how to make decisions on which way to go, knowing when to abandon one direction and move to another. in other words, the messy processes of what it is to come to know one’s way around a topic. by creating the space to venture together, student teachers are invited to the complicated conversations (pinar, 2004) of curriculum, relationships, and thoughtful considerations. such seeing may eclipse a teacher’s cultivated practice that is not simply to be in possession of technical skills, but a practice on learning to wield such tools with the knowledge of the end itself, the “what for.” the richness of a polyculture classroom the lived curriculum is not the curriculum as laid out in a plan, but a plan more or less lived out. (aoki, 2005, p. 201) in teacher education, there is often a desire for certainty that is compelling for preservice teachers to help navigate within the complex world of a classroom. aoki (2005) describes the “seductive appeal of these understandings--of suggestions of simplicity and pragmatic usefulness” (p. 197). kimmerer shows us that certainty is the opposite of what is needed to create the space that allows for learning to unfold. how tools are used and the impact they have on relationships must be considered thoughtfully and critically. kimmerer provides a beautiful example of a reorientation away from focusing on tools that aoki (2005) also contends educators rely upon to and instead to “see and hear our doings as teachers harbored within pedagogical being” (p. 197). from his many years of studying agriculture, wendell berry (1965) observes, “that the same information, tools, and techniques that in one farmer’s hands will ruin land, in another’s will save and improve it” (p. 65). under such a gaze, they often neglect the relational--the response of how the students may be experiencing the lifeworld of the classroom. how might preservice teachers learn to look, to see, to pay attention? how might we meld theory and practice that calls skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 13 for a renewed engagement that fosters perceptual acuity as we come face-to-face with myrian’s struggles to read, or jamil’s incessant questioning, or brook’s residual fascination and continued pensiveness on yesterday’s conversation. here teachers’ noticings need to be applied in response to the worldly happenings of classroom life: what am i to do? if one is focusing on the uniqueness of students in an instrumentalist/efficiency way, then the assumption may be to make the students conform to the needs of the outcomes in the lessons that have been predetermined: jamil needs to stop asking so many questions, myrian needs to be coded and directed to levelled readers, and brook needs to be taught to move on because we don’t have time to dwell in yesterday’s lesson. the uniquenesses of the students are seen as problems that need to be solved, and if they cannot be solved, then we need to find ways to differentiate the lesson so that the students can be successful, or students need remediation; deeper interventions to bring them up to grade level. this reminds us of the conventional rows of corn that kimmerer describes in her neighbours’ fields. there must be millions of corn plants out there, standing shoulder to shoulder, with no beans, no squash, and scarcely a weed in sight. the relationships disappear and individuals are lost in anonymity. you can hardly recognize a beloved face lost in a uniformed crowd. (p. 138) the corn is grown as huge monocultures to fit the needs of the large machines—tools to harvest, to meet the demands of the market. to increase yield, the tank sprayers need to constantly add new fertilizer, herbicides are needed to suppress weeds, and pesticides are required to remove any bugs. any plant other than the corn plant is seen as something that gets in the way and needs to be eradicated. conversely, in the three sisters gardens, not only are the unique gifts of each sister needed, but so are all of the other species of plants and animals that live amongst them. kimmerer describes this as a polyculture where what is often seen as pests and weeds in rows of corn are actually welcomed plants and animals because, through the diversity, a beautiful balance emerges and polyculture crops are less susceptible to pest outbreaks. amongst the plant-eating bugs are also insects that eat the crop eaters, and as a result the crop eaters are kept under control. by creating a rich, diverse environment all living things are able to live in harmony and, as kimmerer states, these relationships ensure that “more than people are fed by this garden, but there is enough to go around” (p. 139). the three sisters communicate their readiness and do not simply adhere to preestablished times. rather, the three sisters require that we learn to pay attention. coming to understand anew is “never a subjective relation to a given object, but to the history of its effect; in other words, understanding belongs to the being of that which is understood” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. xxxi). such an understanding is akin to how naturalist writer trevor herriot (2016) describes picking berries. one does not simply pick berries on a predetermined date established by the picker, but rather one must learn to pay attention, to cultivate a sense of when it is most fitting, in the proper proportion, a readiness that is silently spoken by the berry--giving it a sense of agency. the picker’s grace herriot observes honours the proper measure of the world. “they knew the times for things--when to pick the berries and when not to” (p. 51). a polycultural classroom requires skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 14 this attunement to the needs and readiness of the students so that the students’ unique gifts can flower to maturity when they are ready, as opposed to trying to force the readiness under artificial preestablished times. embracing a rich, diverse environment can be daunting for teachers who have only experienced the straight row of desks and the monoculture of one curriculum for all within a classroom. often teachers worry about how they are going to create 30 lessons for 30 students if they are to take into consideration students’ ostensible learning styles. this, on the surface, is an impossibility, and it assumes that the needs of individual students are as isolated learners, like rows of corn in a sterile field. yet, the three sisters can help teachers understand the relationships between the students, the curriculum, and the teacher in a new light. kimmerer describes how the lessons of interrelationships and reciprocity are most evident at the height of summer in a three sisters garden, and how these relationships provide a blueprint of balance and harmony for the world. the corn stands eight feet tall... no leaf sits directly over the next, so that each can gather light without shading the others. the bean twines around the corn stalk, weaving itself between the leaves of corn, never interfering with their work… spread around the feet of the corn and beans is a carpet of big broad squash leaves that intercept the light that falls among the pillars of corn. their layered spacing uses the light, a gift from the sun, efficiently, with no waste. respect one another, support one another, bring your gift to the world and receive the gifts of others, and there will be enough for all. (p. 131) what if we allow time to explore how we create classrooms as a relational place where students’ unique gifts and talents not only flourish, but also work with others’ gifts so that they can support and nurture each other in a place of reciprocity. kimmerer describes how the three sisters embodies the fundamental teachings of her people. the most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction so they can be shared with others. being among the sisters provides a visible manifestation of what a community can become when its members understand and share their gifts. (p. 134) reciprocity and erfahrung are intimately connected in that the relational in-between spaces that reciprocity creates is required for one to embark on a journey of self becoming and venturing which are at the heart of erfahrung. hammersley, bilous, james, trau, and suchet-pearson (2014) describe reciprocity as an ethical approach that is formed through interpersonal relationships that “promote mutuality, reflexivity and a respect for multiple ways of knowing” (p. 209). this definition points to a mutual exchange that flows backward and forward, a sharing in which creates a dialectic encounter. buitendag (2012) states that within the reciprocal process of understanding the horizons of the self and the other, along with the present and the past, create the space to fuse. erfahrung occurs within the space of reciprocity as we are opened up to new possibilities that emerge from the unique gifts that each person brings to the classroom. the corn does not demand the bean and squash to conform to how it lives in the world; instead the corn gains strength and support from the reciprocal relations that are intimately interwoven together. it is through their differences that the three sisters are stronger. as kimmerer states “we are skuce & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 5 15 bound in a covenant of reciprocity, a pact of mutual responsibility to sustain those who sustain us” (p. 382). this way of being in the classroom with students calls on teachers to recognize the tensions created amongst the interrelationships of aoki’s curriculum-as-planned and curriculumas-lived. this requires a move from a singular curriculum that is to be delivered to recognizing the dynamics and interplay of curricular landscapes “which vary depending on the situated lives of teachers and students” (aoki, 2005, p. 299), where they are understood differently as “lived multiplicity-in-its-unfolding” (p. 298). by teachers allowing an opportunity to dwell within the space where they invite their students to reattune and reawaken so that they can experience how they are integral parts of the curriculum and the landscape in which they live (magrini, 2014) and where their unique gifts may blossom. conclusion we would like to express our gratitude to dr. kimmerer and to the three sisters for the lessons they have provided us by her sharing of their pedagogical journey. kimmerer and the sisters invite us to attend to sets of relations that call for educators to nurture capacities that include the naming the world of botany, however, it also calls for reciprocity, renewal, generativity, supplementation, transformation, interdependence, interconnectedness, traditions, experience, attention, and love. kimmerer provides a beautiful example of a reorientation towards reciprocity and relationships that aoki (2005) also contends, where we can “see and hear our doings as teachers harbored within pedagogical being” (p. 197). through erfahrung, students and teachers alike become transformed by the pedagogical venture within the three sisters garden. creating the space for learning to happen in relation to the topic, instead of focusing on predetermined outcomes of what will be learned, opens up the possibilities that the learning may end up somewhere they could never have imagined, “over and above our wanting and doing” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. xxvi ). just like the three sisters, there are many lessons that the covid-19 virus and pandemic is currently teaching us. a difficult lesson for many is that our response to the virus is not already known, and how we respond and continue to respond must be worked out in relation with others; we must creatively and imaginatively adapt to its ways. ultimately, we will need to respond to the urgent and pressing questions posed by the pandemic that call for us to work in solidarity to question our previous understandings--which ones might we grasp more firmly, which ones might we abandon, and which ones need to transform our previous understanding of what it means to live well in a global community? as gadamer (1960/2004) argues, “the way we experience the natural givenness of our existence and of our world, constitute a truly hermeneutic universe, in which we are not imprisoned… but to which we are opened” (p. xxii). globally we are venturing into a garden that is new and uncertain, one in which we will all be transformed. as a result, we must respond in a way that is thoughtful by recognizing the deep connections we have with the virus and with each other. references aoki, t. 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(2006). the temporality of tarrying in gadamer. theory, culture & society, 23(1), 101123. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0263276406063231 corresponding author: melissa freeman, phd university of georgia email: freeman9@uga.edu journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 november 24, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 art’s speculative perturbations melissa freeman abstract in this paper, i consider the speculative movement of understanding performed by art. i show how the repeated coming-into-being of a work’s structure not only participates in life’s living discourse but offers a model for how to transverse its complex, often contradictory, landscapes. art reconfigures the edges of (un)intelligibility creating a speculative ethics that perturbs established modes of perceiving and interpreting. i conclude with a call for the necessity of art in a transient world. keywords art, gadamer, speculative thinking, perception, correspondence, living discourse, ethics we learn from the work of art how to tarry. ~ gadamer, 2001b, p. 77 art perturbs. it disorders, destabilizes, displaces, disturbs. this paper explores the speculative movement of understanding engendered by art’s perturbations. it is inspired by hans-georg gadamer’s readings of greek philosophy, in particular his engagement with heraclitus, to open up a correspondence with the movement of living, experiencing, and perceiving. gadamer’s study of heraclitus reveals the incommensurable experiences of living that create a paradox for being and for understanding. at issue here is that the movement of life as one filled with contradiction compels us to make sense of the world in terms of opposites instead of in its unity. art, i show in the second section, troubles the movement of separation that dualities perform. art challenges the temporal, linear, and taxonomic procedures at the heart of sense-making practices and questions unwarranted disconnections between experience, perception, and interpretation. gadamer positioned art at the center of his speculative hermeneutics because he saw its potential freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 2 to deepen our understanding of life’s seemingly contradictory multiplicity and to re-envision the inter-play of experience and interpretation. because art brings into being its own language, it is indispensable to sense and to sense-making practices like hermeneutics, the focus of the third section. my overall aim is to show that art re-construes the relationship between the intelligible and unintelligible in ways that open up a critical correspondence with the “speculative ethics” (puig de la bellacasa, 2017) inherent to all sense-making practices. in-one-another the heraclitean message is not differentiation ... but perceiving the one in everything that is differentiated. ~ gadamer, 2001a, p. 50 what has been handed down by heraclitus are numerous fragments of “oracle-like paradoxes,” riddle-like statements about flow and change, oppositions and unity, ignitions and extinctions, whose influence, gadamer (2001a) argues, “is felt wherever philosophical questions are set into motion” (p. 21). gadamer’s heraclitus studies begin in true gadamerian style, as a conversation with the text, exemplified by close, slow reading, fragment by fragment, “proceeding from the morphological” (gadamer, 2001a, p. 47). in this way, we are introduced to heraclitean statements such as: • “the barley drink that is not stirred separates itself” (p. 38). [fragment 125] • “for those who are awake there is one and only one common world, while those who sleep each turn away into their own” (p. 53). [fragment 89] • “the human being kindles a light in the night, when the eyes are extinguished. alive, he touches the dead; awake, he touches the sleeping” (p. 74). [fragment 26] stillness and motion, unity and separation, wakefulness and sleep, a world in common and one apart, what are we to make of these oppositions? as gadamer labors through these fragments, discerning their resemblances and the historical multimodality of each term used, he puts forward re-occurring themes to connect statements in expository ways. gadamer illustrates that for heraclitus, the state of all things is one of movement and it is from this movement that things take shape, sometimes appearing this way, sometimes that way, but all becoming from within the being of the same existential flow. furthermore, things can transition from one configuration to another without any apparent prompt or reason. life, then, is unpredictable and complex. it presents us countless co-existent experiences that challenge meaning—just think of the flow of emotions as we move through re-occurring events that bring joy, cause pain, restore, or truly break us apart. what sense can be made of these seemingly incommensurable events? in his commentary of heraclitus’ fragment 21: “death [not life] is what we see awake; what we see as slumberers, sleep” (gadamer, 2001a, p. 54), gadamer (2001a) explains: dream and sleep stand for the delusion that consists in the fact that we are not in a position to recognize one and the same essence in all the various things that we encounter.... the statement shows all humanity falling into the same error of taking what is opposed as separate entities instead of recognizing their true unity.... he does not just freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 3 mean what everyone knows, the ‘one-after-another,’ the necessary dissolution of one thing by another, like day and night, summer and winter, youth and old age; but rather, above and beyond this, he means the ‘in-one-another.’ (p. 56) in other words, this is not a temporal sequence, a movement of change over time, although that movement is not eliminated in this account. rather, this is a movement that is more like a mixing, such as in heraclitus’s example of the barley drink where different ingredients will separate when not stirred. when we think of a mixed drink, though, whether literally or as a metaphor for life, we rarely think of its necessary parts in their separate states. these we assume are subsumed as an-other-within, even while they have also become something different, in having now become a mixed drink. but mixing does not quite capture the movement of transition that is implied by in-one-another. instead, these suggest more of a metamorphosis or transfiguration of one state into another so that a new formation “arises like a counter-world..., like an event of emergence” (gadamer, 2007, p. 386). in another presentation of his heraclitus studies, a 1989 interview circulated by philosophy overdose1, gadamer elaborates on the character of the movement of the “in-one-another.” in talking about the opposition between war and peace as an example, he states that heraclitus is not teaching us to distinguish and identify what is war versus what is peace, rather “both are the one: the danger of war and the task of peace, that is human life.... that which can be divided and taken apart belongs at the same time together.... so it is a single movement which produces this: that of separation” (n.p., my emphasis added). this suggests a complex fabric connecting all matter, where the tugging of some threads will produce a very different event of being than if another set of threads had been emphasized, leaving each set of threads vulnerable to believing theirs is the only truth. how can we make sense of a living in contradictions that seems to randomly disclose and conceal itself? how does one thing differentiate itself from the flux while another vanishes into its folds? and what effects do these seemingly separate motions have on the whole? this is the hermeneutic paradox of living and the movement of understanding that gadamer returns to again and again. he questions the notion of origins, asking “what beginning is a beginning at all that is not the beginning of an end?” (gadamer, 2007, p. 361). he wonders what effect a world primarily focused on change as a rupture from the past will have on attending to understanding’s complex movement of self-regeneration (gadamer, 1989). he follows heidegger’s assertion that “dasein does not first exist and then move; it is constituted by its movements” (inwood, 1999, p. 133). here we also see the speculative logic that lies within gadamer’s own notions of becoming. in a section in truth and method on the universality of the hermeneutic experience, gadamer (1989) asserts: “what something presents itself as belongs to its own being. thus everything that is language has a speculative unity: it contains a distinction, that between its being and its 1 gadamer on heraclitus is an interview presented through rai multimedia encyclopedia of philosophical sciences and recirculated on the youtube channel philosophy overdose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs05n0-prss. the translation of the interview was conducted by philosophy overdose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs05n0-prss freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 4 presentations of itself, but this is a distinction that is really not a distinction at all” (p. 470). philosopher joel weinsheimer (2004) explains that the “unity between being and its presentations of itself ... is a ‘speculative unity,’ not an identity.... [so] the crux of gadamer’s hermeneutics ... consists in reconciling the unity of meaning with the multiplicity of understandings” (pp. 163-164). gadamer’s statement that “everything that is language has a speculative unity” points to the plurality within the unity of living and thinking inherent in language. language is itself a multiplicity—performing its speculative being in its configuration of words, sounds, images, bodies, and objects. like life, then, language is performative, in motion; carrying out a dialogue with itself that enacts its being and becoming at the same time. it cannot be defined or contained. gadamer (2001b) explains: language is not something assigned by individual human subjects. language is a we, in that we are assigned our place in relation to each other, and in which the individual has no fixed borders. this means, however, that we all must overstep our own personal borders/limits of understanding in order to understand. (p. 56) language, like art, as i illustrate in the next section, manifests in its own event of being and becoming. it is always, then, carrying out the speculative movement of sense; a movement that does not stand outside the relations and practices that make up lived life but neither is it constrained by them. “that things could be different,” science and technology studies scholar maría puig de la bellacasa (2017) asserts, “is the impulse of speculative thinking” (p. 110). speculative thinking flows from the contradictions of life; those incommensurable experiences that create and trouble the boundaries between what is, what we thought was, what is no longer, and what might be (davey, 2013); that is, an in-one-another without becoming one or the other. philosopher nicholas davey (2013) explains: thesis and antithesis are not regarded as formal opposites but as speculative modes of one another. hermeneutical engagement allows each position to re-describe itself in the language of its other.... this is not a case of a subject assimilating its other but of a subject becoming-other-to-itself as a consequence of learning how ... to think of itself in the other’s terms. (p. 7) it is this undefinable space between—the space of neither and both, this non-assimilative becoming-other-to-oneself, that i am interested in. and yet, the movement of becoming other with no apparent transition suggests that we should no longer speak of an in-between since this reinforces the notion of distinctions between opposites. furthermore, gadamer asserts that the speculative self-movement of being’s understanding is not one of self-consciousness but is the movement of being and thought-becoming in the midst of living (gadamer, 2001a). how are we to learn from a movement that presents its being in its own terms, is in us, while also requiring that we do not assimilate the other? art, i believe, is a manifestation of a speculative space where the plurality of life meets the limits and possibilities of its meaning-constituting capabilities. it is to art that i now turn. freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 5 the constellation of the art-structure i call this change, in which human play comes to its true consummation in being art, transformation into structure. ~ gadamer, 1989, p. 110 although the focus of my paper is on art in all its forms, artists do not stand apart from the politics of the sensible (rancière, 2004). they too are caught up in discourses that commercialize, instrumentalize, and colonize meaning. but art, by virtue of its presence in this flow, as this flow, with this flow, and against this flow, provides us with a productive multiplicity of thought that furthers thinking. art works with and against this flow in ways that move us beyond the seemingly oppositional—in the interplay with sound and silence, light and shadow, movement and stillness—speculatively provoking, in the words of philosopher jacques rancière, numerous “configurations of experience that create new modes of sense perception” (2004, p. 9). in this way, art is the being and becoming of sense, and a key partner in, and evidence of, its moving effects. gadamer (2006) suggests that we miss the point when we focus on the creativity of the artist or seek to understand the meaning or event it is reproducing. art, rather, is in how “it” comes forth as “something that one has never seen in exactly this way before” (p. 75). attuning to art’s being means orienting ourselves to the way it conveys a fullness of meaning in the uniqueness of each iteration of its transformation into structure (gadamer, 2006). in art, the movement of sound and silence, light and shadow, presence and absence become together—this is not like an opponent exerting its influence on the other, but the coming-into-being of their inter-play. silence provides a ground for sound. sound surrounds silence. light is accentuated by shadows. shadows are given depth by light. what we have here is more like a composition, a gathering of rising and falling notes, appearing and receding sounds, shapes, chords, and figures. these all work together to make it what it is and can be. art effects a correspondence with the entities and materials from which it is constituted and that lie beyond it. “to correspond,” anthropologist tim ingold (2021) writes, “is to be ever-present at the cusp where thinking is on the point of settling into the shapes of thought. it is to catch ideas on the fly, in the ferment of their incipience, lest they be washed away with the current and forever lost” (p. 11). this describes well the way swiss artist, edmond quinche, watches the world while remaining at the threshold of the visible. in florian rodari’s (2000) book on the artist bearing that title in french, rodari describes how the forms and figures of quinche’s work are born from his attentive and repeated study of the way light shines from within the things themselves, revealing, if perhaps only momentarily, the impulse in a figure or the upright strength in a tree (rodari, 2000). rodari describes: every drawing, in effect, announces this slow approach, the movement of the figure as it marches towards its final form and being: the pencil seeks to grasp its point of emergence, when the act of accomplishment still remains, everywhere and under all avatars, possible. (p. 91, my translation) freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 6 rodari, explains that quinche, having spent six years in ireland, was stripped of any preconceptions about taking possession of the workings of light. in a region where wind, light, fog, water and land create new and unpredictable configurations of light and shadow, it seemed best to watch and listen. in this kind of extreme instability, rodari (2000) remarks: “there are no landmarks, frames jump about, perspectives dissolve. we no longer face things but are caught up with them, transported in the comings and goings of shifting manifestations and vanishments. nothing is definitive. nothing is had, but shared. we are merely passers-by” (pp. 45-46, my translation). in his reading of plato, gadamer (2006) hones in on plato’s explorations of a third kind of being, distinguished from those of ideas and appearances. this is a being of movement, a being that is not yet or one that is no longer. in this way, gadamer says, plato overcomes the false illusion of their being “any actual separation between the two worlds” (p. 69). from this reading, gadamer (2006) concludes: what he now everywhere aims to show is that, in the structure of the world as well as in the practice of life, we encounter the mixed, and within it we must seek and find the ‘exact’.... becoming is no longer simply some kind of non-being, that is, something seen as the becoming of something different, but now it signifies coming into being.... being emerges from becoming! (pp. 69-70) aristotle, gadamer observes, develops this notion further by creating a new concept, he named energeia. this new concept, gadamer explains, allowed aristotle “to think a motion that was without path or goal, something like life itself, like being aware, seeing or thinking. all of these he called ‘pure energeia’” (p. 72), a concept that gadamer states associating with art. this is because, energeia points both to the inherent movement within an art’s structure and to the nature of the challenge that the speculative unity of the work issues to us and expects of us (gadamer, 1986). every work of art brings into being its own language. it asks that we stay with it, observing, experiencing, listening, following its lead, as “there is much that is completely unnameable to which the work directs our thinking” (gadamer, 2006, p. 58). art theorizes through a singularity that performs a “composite multiplicity” (gadamer, 2006, p. 78). it is “its own measure and measures itself by nothing outside it” (gadamer, 1989, p. 111). in its multiple ways of saying, sounding, imaging, sculpting, materializing, it brings the world into being (gadamer, 2001a). it is in its coming-into-structure that art makes intelligible a movement of meaning that is often too complex to be attainable in any one way, or at any one time. yet, this constitutive movement is often obscured by the prevailing obsession with categories and conclusions that determine, identify, and configure meaning once and for all. rather, art is always a being-becoming. it is presentation, representation, and expression of the unnameable flows, stutters, collisions, extractions, swirls, lines, forms and horizons that make up the moving landscape of living life. art is able to transverse the oppositions inherent to the experience of living and those shaping formalized methods for perceiving and representing life’s meanings. art performs meaningmaking’s fluidity and discloses how the layers of meaning that surface with any expression “do not muddy its intelligibility ... but increase it” (gadamer, 1989, p. 567). freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 7 rodari (2000) reminds us that the eye cannot see without light first hitting an obstacle. to see requires illumination and shadows. it requires that we pierce through the blinding light or boundless void and bring to being perception itself. what we are able to see is not only subject to light’s movement, it is also shaped by modes of perceiving that shine on what is presented to us in particular ways. art, then, is not a simple representation performed out of whimsy, but is more often than not, the result of serious, ongoing inquiry into the states of things, their appearances, their effects, and so forth. in the case of quinche, for example, the study of shifting and refracting light was a re-occurring theme. rodari (2000) writes: movement is born like a breath rolling up the underside of things, fueling their combustion. a bird, a cloud, a tree, are, for edmond quinche, emblematic figures of the breathing of light—carried by the wing, chassed, inflated by the wind, seized in the quivering of all of their branches, they assure the passage, more or less lively, more or less fleeting, of this life-giving force. (p. 55, my translation) we forget that perceiving is learned. that when we entered the world, the world was already there. as its temporary inhabitants, we each draw on and become with the words, sounds, sights, and rhythms available to us, groping our way through the lights and shadows of understanding. life is always a process of discrimination and discernment, as we take into account, learn from and learn how to make sense of what we encounter. we forget that the intermingling of what we see and how we see is always in motion; an endless flow of collisions, emergences, ruptures, foldings, and fusions (ingold, 2021). yet, becoming does not dictate being. its relationship to being is fluid. becoming is unstable, open to rifts, perturbations, and interferences. art directs our gaze to this movement. it encourages an attentive and engaged correspondence with “the ways along which lives, in their perpetual unfolding or becoming, simultaneously join together and differentiate themselves, one from another” (ingold, 2021, p. 9). working with a multiplicity of registers and modes that present themselves to sense, art penetrates and perturbs assumed borders between discursive systems. in doing so, art undermarks particular practices that do or might spread through ways of being and relating that have complex ethical and political effects. the movement of art, gadamer asserts, disrupts conventional associations between sense-making and reason. it reminds us that what is often construed as reason or reasonable undermines the way discourse is actually carried out in living dialogue, and is, therefore, continuously re-organizing the unity of sense it performs (gadamer, 1998). art perturbs discourse by unsettling the very dispositions and practices by which certain ways of saying, doing, and perceiving gain dominance. art tackles the difficulties presented by perception. it does not stand outside the vast and diverse contradictions of lived-life, but is instead an involved partner in exposing and seeking out new connections between being and becoming. gadamer (1986) notes: “the play of art is a mirror that through the centuries constantly arises anew, and in which we catch sight of ourselves in a way that is often unexpected or unfamiliar: what we are, what we might be, and what we are about” (p. 130). art surfaces and confronts spoken and unspoken questions, embodied meanings, felt-senses circulating through time and space in the very language of itself—that is in its multilingual, multimodal, material presentation. davey (2013) explains, it is because art “does not represent anything actual [that it can] … alter rather than repeat actuality” (p. 135). freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 8 art’s gift is to perturb our sensibilities; to keep us from thinking we are more than we are. as we face the magnitude of ways art puts into being relationships of sound, images, words, forms, and so on, we are absorbing, whether consciously or not, the many ways in-one-another moves and swells, appearing and disappearing in the relational movement of being and becoming. art confronts us with boundless formulations for re-imagining our world. it performs the movement of sense-making in its multiplicities; working with movements that separate, fold, converge, permutate, collide. it also confronts us with our limits, the prejudices that orient our beings and shape our discourses, prejudices that block our capacities to listen to ways of being and performing that disturb or disgust us. art does not stand outside of thought-thinking, life-living, being-becoming. it does not provide answers or offer solutions. rather, art reminds us of our effect. it asks us to consider the consequences of our existence, our reasons-for-being. it asks us to stay with the flow, and face the challenge of living in the midst of the multiplicity of ways of being and becoming that we are, and can be. on the threshold of (un)intelligibility the creative artist has eliminated the frame, and the articulation of surface constitutive of the picture points beyond itself into other contexts. ~ gadamer, 1986, p. 89 art opens up a correspondence with a world shifting and swirling; still very much in formation. this is not a disengaged process. what is presented to us in the world and in the work of art is both meaning-full but not self-evident. gadamer (2001b) reminds us that for understanding to happen, “we do not need just to hear one another but to listen to one another” (p. 39). this listening, however, entails that we enter the other’s particular way of unfolding the world. a poem, for example, gadamer (1997) remarks, “wants us to know, learn, and experience everything that it knows” (p. 142, my emphasis added). this form of correspondence turns away from a process of sense-making that seeks to reconstruct the meaning of the whole as a something that aligns with learned modes of perceiving and interpreting. instead, it asks that we turn toward a form of correspondence that, ingold (2021) argues, “joins with ... the forward movement of ... [life’s] ongoing generation” (p. 13). works of art challenge interpretation because of their semantic complexity. listening, looking, reading, sensing, and interpreting require careful attending to what is collected in the piece and how the parts are arranged. a work of art presents us with a discursively meaningful gathering, in that it expresses something through the what and the how of its collective performance; a constellation of items that are themselves a collection, and so on, an endless assemblage of form, matter, and meaning. because of this complexity, art stirs up the ambiguities and incommensurabilities that lie within meaning (gadamer, 1997); that is, its meaningfulness cannot be lifted from its performance and defined once and for all. rather, gadamer states, the meaning of any work of art resides in the utter presence of the work and in the continuous, collective “hermeneutic struggle ... of making visible the unity of meaning which befits [it]” (1997, pp. 127-128). it is not the difference between composing and listening that is important, composer john cage (1961) writes, but rather “their uniqueness and their infinite play of interpenetration with themselves and with us” (p. 171). as we engage with, learn from, and freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 9 reject the numerous art performances that surround us, we are actively participating in the intermingling of transmission and transformation, adding as we take, creating as we reproduce. art, then, is a model for what holding a conversation about difficult material entails and for how we might reconfigure our modes of perception and communication. art does this in that it addresses us with its complexity, is willing to have its meaning-effect altered in the course of our interaction, but also speaks back to us, inviting new connections, pointing out unexplored directions, beseeching us to reconsider, rethink, re-envision. “a work of art,” gadamer (2001b) expresses, “has something to say to us ... either through the question it awakens, or the question it answers” (pp. 69-70). and, in our questions of the work and of each other, lie the speculative movements of sense that reveal and conceal our understandings of self, other, and the world we share. art tackles the transversal movement of the concrete and abstract, the perceptible and imperceptible, the experienced and the interpreted. the world configured in a work of art, philosopher theodore george (2017b) explains, brings “the ambiguities and contradictions of factical life into special focus precisely as ambiguous and contradictory” (p. 109). as such, art takes speculative thinking beyond its limits because it exposes and breaches the rules and norms of interpretive and relational practices that most of us feel we must follow. artist heather mekkelson, for example, works with these ambiguous junctures. known for installations made of reconstructed facsimile objects one might find strewn about in the aftermath of a disaster like a flood, she discusses her more recent exhibits. in these, mekkelson creates intricate installations of abstract forms to consider more expansive metaphysical questions such as the nature of perception or the existence of time. when asked how she approaches time through sculpture, she explains: using a medium that results in a blatantly physical, obdurate thing seems antithetical to expressing a formless concept such as time. it’s a wonderfully daunting task. i have noticed, using assemblage in particular, that each component does a lot of the temporal work on its own. whether the object is recognizable or not, it carries its own potential, its own history. then my associations come into play.2 gadamer uses the concept gebilde to mean both that which is there in the it of the work’s interrelated components and the interpretive moves one might take to make sense of it. for him, gebilde is not an act of construction as outlined in a blueprint but is “something that has developed into its own pattern from within and thus is perhaps to be grasped in a further formation” (gadamer, 2007, p. 189). this process of “construing,” he explains, is similar to the strategies one might employ to make sense of a latin text. as each latin word is identified as a verb or subject, relations among words begin to form, until “the disordered fragments of the sentence, the words, suddenly crystallize into the unity of meaning of the whole sentence” (gadamer, 2007, p. 187). this is an iterative and always incomplete process since the building of relations between components is a linguistic event and stirs up the speculative excesses of meaning at play within language itself, whatever its mode. gebilde, then, can be understood as 2 mekkelson was interviewed in 2016 by caroline picard in sector 2337 of the green lantern, p. 7. https://sector2337.com/sector-daily/page/7/#how-does-when-an-interview-with-heather-mekkelson freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 10 “structure,” or “contour” and “figure,” as george (2017b) suggests, to mean both the process of configuration by which a work might be interpreted to bring a particular “order” to its arrangement (george, 2017b) and the semantic overflow emanating from the substantive material of which it is made. as cage (1961) remarks: “there is no such thing as silence. something is always happening that makes a sound” (p. 191). art, i suggest, is a necessary dialogue partner in the ongoing conversation of life. it transforms the very configuration experience and interpretation can take by perturbing the ontological landscape from which perception and sense are construed. the speculative play at work in the art work calls for us to enter its complex structure; a structure that moves with and against the current in its recurrent iterations of being and becoming. it provokes us to consider the world’s arbitrariness, cruelty, beauty, ruins, realizations. art awakens us to the power and effect of the very real, very impactful formations and gatherings of sense that circulate and mingle with understanding’s being. it challenges us to better understand the impact and power of our own forms of engagement. it asks that we consider critically the way our sense-making practices are themselves complicitly reproducing the very systems that constrain our abilities to see and relate differently. this turn to the being of perception should not be misunderstood as a perceiving that stands outside of lived life. it is, rather, a perceiving that critically considers how the circumstances of our situatedness participate in what can be perceived and how (haraway, 1988). in addition, feminist science and technology studies scholar donna haraway (1988) reminds us that “vision is always a question of the power to see—and perhaps of the violence implicit in our visualizing practices” (p. 585). art transforms our speculative and hermeneutic ways of perceiving and interpreting and simultaneously asks us to consider the ethical issues at play in these very practices. art perturbs because it places us in a dialogical event, where the possibilities and implications of our interpretive capacities and procedures are brought into being again and again in different ways, perturbing the way things are thought to be, stirring up different configurations for being. it confronts us with a “speculative in ethics [that] invokes an indecisive critical approach, one that doesn’t seek refuge in the stances it takes, aware and appreciative of the vulnerability of any position” (puig de la bellacasa, 2017, p. 7). since these conversations are occurring across time, place, disciplines, languages, and artistic forms, we can’t assume to understand their complexity of meaning or the unfamiliarity of their form without effort. george (2017a) asserts that “to be a conversation from out of the larger context of life ... may be said at once to require that we have much less in common than a common tradition and, precisely for this reason, to demand much more of us” (p. 345). by listening to the beginnings and absences of comprehensive meaning, the stutters and breaks in our thinking together as we seek connective junctures, stumble on to new perceptions, we bring into visibility as well as perturb the potentials, limits, and effects of our sense-making practices. in this way, art reveals forms of ordering that teeter on the edge of intelligibility, and, that when critically scrutinized, often “collapse into non-meaning” (davey, 2013, p. 51). gadamer (2007) notes that the greeks had a word “for that which brings our understanding to a standstill. they called it the atopon ... [meaning] ‘the placeless,’ that which cannot be fitted into the categories of expectation in our understanding and which therefore causes us to be suspicious freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 11 of it” (p. 93). rather than be suspicious of what at first we do not understand, or at first appears offensive, or something unworthy of our attention, art asks us to look again, to listen more intently. as cage (1961) provocatively suggests, a sound should not fear “the silence that extinguishes it” (p. 173), or environmental noises that appear to interrupt or exist outside its composition. it is in these experiences of perturbation that art engages us in speculative thinking at the edge of certainty. we need art. art performs a speculative ethics by provoking us to partake in conversations and confront ethical questions pertaining to our beings and becomings as individuals and societies. it forces us to consider the movements of thinking and being already infiltrating the fabric of life and those bubbling up from within its complex array of discursive systems. art asks us to consider the ramifications of likely and seemingly unlikely scenarios arising from the in-oneanother of a shared existence on our ways of being and understanding. it asks that we do not thoughtlessly accept the settling of meaning and matter. rather, it calls on us to remember that a barley drink will separate when not stirred. art by necessity i tried to demonstrate that art can convey truth and therefore form public opinion, that art stood for more than giving aesthetic pleasure. ~ gadamer, 1992, p. 63 what i have illustrated in this paper is that art’s location in society has a direct and indirect effect on a public’s capacity for sense-making. art confronts the forms and practices of inquiring, conversing, and relating that circulate through institutional and social contexts. art blurs the arbitrary boundaries established by societies around disciplines of knowledge, including what counts as art. for example, cage’s “experimental’ compositions troubled the definition of music by focusing on noise and the “organization of sound” (cage, 1961, p. 3), which in turn pushed us to consider the way music, and all forms of sound intermingle with our living, how we attend to them, what they do to us, what the consequences of their definitions mean to society. entering the movement of speculative thinking in conversation with art deepens our attentiveness to the consequences our ways of perceiving have on our understandings of lived life and the ecological contexts in which these lives take place. gadamer saw in art the inexhaustible and rich multiplicity of understanding. he recognized the dangers to our hermeneutic practices that situating art as mere embellishment would have on the interpretive capacity of individuals and societies. instead, he called on the rehabilitation of their critical correspondence. dialoguing with art, engaging interpretively with its multiple forms is not a frivolous activity. it, more than anything else we have at our disposal, performs an uninterrupted, public speculative ethics, always keeping open the threshold where intelligibility and unintelligibility redescribe themselves in the language of its other. the living discourse of the distribution of sense often works behind our backs, invisibly like the motion of the undertow as it pulls water back into the ocean, keeping rhythm with each breaking wave. art makes visible the consequences of this often imperceptible effect of our interpretive and discursive systems and calls on us to stay critically attentive to their repercussions. this is freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 12 not to suggest that art has any moral edge or never harms, silences, oppresses, or exploits. quite the contrary, all speculative conversations are complex inter-plays of the harmonious movement of the undertow and the transversal disruption of the riptide. these seemingly irreconcilable movements open up spaces of correspondence that, with effort, reveal the speculative unity of the in-one-another. the sheer magnitude and diversity of art is evidence of this performative and unfinished unity within diversity; a creative capacity that is not to be taken for granted in a transient world. by staying on the threshold of (un)intelligibility, conversing and confronting the difficulties of a seemingly senseless world, art can hold us together. acknowledgements i wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and dr. cristina valencia mazzanti for her valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this paper. references cage, j. (1961). silence: lectures and writings. wesleyan university press. davey, n. (2013). unfinished worlds: hermeneutics, aesthetics and gadamer. edinburgh university press. gadamer, h-g. (1986). the relevance of the beautiful and other essays (r. bernasconi, ed.; n. walker, trans.). cambridge university press. gadamer, h-g. (1989). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). continuum. gadamer, h-g. (1992). hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (d. misgeld & g. nicholson, eds.; schmidt & m. reuss, trans.). state university of new york press. gadamer, h-g. (1997). gadamer on celan: “who am i and who are you?” and other essays (r. heinemann & b. krajewski, trans. & eds.). state university of new york press. gadamer, h-g. (1998). praise of theory: speeches and essays (c. dawson, trans.). yale university press. gadamer, h-g. (2001a). the beginning of knowledge (r. coltman, trans.). continuum. gadamer, h-g. (2001b). gadamer in conversation: reflections and commentary (r.e. palmer, ed. & trans.). yale university press. gadamer, h-g. (2006). artworks in word and image: ‘so true, so full of being!’ (goethe) (1992). theory, culture & society, 23(1), 57-83. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276406063229 freeman journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 10 13 gadamer, h-g. (2007). the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (r.e. palmer, ed. & trans.). northwestern university press. george, t. (2017a). are we a conversation? hermeneutics, exteriority, and transmittability. research in phenomenology, 47(3), 331-350. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691640-12341373 george, t. (2017b). art as testimony of tradition and art as testimony of order. international yearbook for hermeneutics, 16(1), 107-120. haraway, d. (1988). situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. feminist studies, 14(3), 575-598. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066 ingold, t. (2021). correspondences. polity books. inwood, m. (1999). a heidegger dictionary. blackwell. puig de la bellacasa, m. (2017). matters of care: speculative ethics in more than human worlds. university of minnesota press. rancière, j. (2004). the politics of aesthetics: the distribution of the sensible (g. rockhill, trans.). continuum. rodari, f. (2000). edmond quinche: au seuil du visible. la dogana. weinsheimer, j. (2004). meaningless hermeneutics? in b. krajewski (ed.), gadamer’s repercussions: reconsidering philosophical hermeneutics (pp. 158-166). university of california press. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691640-12341373 https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066 microsoft word morck corrected proof.docx corresponding author: angela c morck, rn phd email: amorck@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 september 17, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 “do you think the angels will speak spanish?”: nurses’ experiences of death in pediatric oncology angela c. morck & nancy j. moules abstract caring for children dying of cancer and families experiencing immense suffering is challenging complex work. pediatric oncology nurses attend to the physical and emotional needs of children and their families during the illness progression, at the moment of death, and beyond, however, little is known about how they themselves are affected, and how this influences the care they give. our intent with this philosophical hermeneutic research was to add to understandings of these effects on pediatric oncology nurses and to support them in this challenging component of their work. this is a part of the doctoral research of the first author which is published online (morck, 2014), and was supervised by the second author. fifteen pediatric oncology registered nurses were interviewed to expand our understanding of this topic. these data were then analyzed according to hermeneutic tradition as guided by the philosophical hermeneutics of hansgeorg gadamer. findings from this research revealed nurses struggled to navigate the ideals of nursing versus the realities of practice when working with children who may die. this called for them to maintain a fine balance between the personal and the professional. this ontological struggle is not absolute but premised on a shifting continuum based on a complexity of personal and professional beliefs, experiences, and expectations. there needs to be a reminder that death continues to be an unfortunate constant in the work of these nurses a reality, that in many ways, society has turned away from and hidden, a reality that has shaped the way death is experienced within pediatric oncology. this common middle ground is what nurses called for in order to be sustained and remain in their work. research and transformative education that specifically addresses the tension created by insufficient end of life and death education is required for nurses to feel more comfortable and competent within the ontology of death and dying. this necessitates a re-conceptualization of how death is processed in pediatric oncology. morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 2 keywords death, grief, hermeneutics, pediatric oncology, nursing we commonly believe that our children should not die before us, yet each year in canada, approximately 1500 children under the age of 20 will develop cancer. while 5-year survival rates now exceed 80%, cancer remains one of the leading causes of disease related death in children and adolescents (canadian cancer society, 2009). advances in cancer research and technology over the past 50 years have greatly improved the prognosis of childhood cancers. as a result, there has been a dramatic increase in the survival rates of children with cancer. some malignancies are now considered curable. although the advances have been significant, there remains a wide-range of diagnoses and prognoses in childhood cancer (ellison, pritwish, mery, & grundy, 2009). the international classification of childhood cancers has classified 12 diagnostic groups of childhood cancers (steliarova-foucher, stiller, lacour, & kaatsch, 2005). compared with adults, children have a higher proportion of blood and lymphatic cancers. leukemia, a cancer of the blood, is the most common childhood malignancy (26%), with lymphomas (17%), and cancers of the central nervous system (16%) the next most common. cancer is marginally more prevalent in boys than girls, and the type of cancer diagnosed often varies by age groups (canadian cancer society, 2009). a diagnosis of childhood cancer may be delayed due to the nonspecific nature of signs and symptoms that can also vary by type of cancer and extent of the disease. compared with adults, tumours in children are more likely to have short latency periods, to grow more rapidly, aggressively, invasively, and to metastasize more frequently (pizzo & poplack, 2010). the prognoses of childhood cancer will vary widely depending on the location of the malignancy and its development but 5-year survival rates for all malignancies have improved considerably in canada to approximately 82 % (canadian cancer society, 2009). improvements in childhood cancer survival rates have been attributed to improvements in treatment regimes. clinical trial protocols, used for many types of childhood cancer, have given a definite survival advantage to children. almost 80% of children with cancer in canada are either enrolled in a clinical trial or receiving treatment according to a registered protocol established by a clinical trial (ellison, pogany, & mery, 2007). once a child has been diagnosed with cancer, there is a range of treatments. methods of treatment include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and bone marrow transplant. some malignancies will require treatment with a combination, or all of these methods. the length of treatment for childhood cancer is considerably longer than for adults and can range from five months to three years and more (ellison et al., 2009). pediatric oncology patients in canada will be admitted to the hospital 5000 times and spend approximately 50,000 days in the hospital per year (scott-findlay & chalmers, 2001). the introduction of increasingly more effective treatments, medications, medical imaging technologies, and surgical procedures has produced significant improvements in prognoses and longer survival times. however, with these advances, medicine has over time become increasingly complex. despite substantive improvements in life expectancy and prognosis, this greater complexity has led to more uncertain consequences, including the knowledge of when treatment has failed and dying is imminent (docherty, miles, & brandon, 2007). most children with cancer will die in a hospital setting (bearison, 2006; libin, papadatou, & wolfe, 2008). it is often during the time surrounding the death of their child that families require the greatest amount of morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 3 expertise from healthcare professionals (davies, steel, collins, cook, & smith, 2004). the memories surrounding the moment of death can have profound impacts on family’s grief and bereavement. bellali and papadatau (2006) found the memory of events, experiences, and interactions surrounding a child’s death had positive or negative effects upon the grieving process of parents for several years after the loss. nurse presence during the time of a child’s death has been seen as a source of great comfort (heller & solomon, 2005; macdonald et al., 2005). a failure to acknowledge emotional needs and nurses’ absence during the moment of death has shown to be profoundly distressing for some families. this distress has shown to continue four to nine years after the loss of their child (kreicbergs et al., 2005). healthcare professionals, and nurses in particular, are now more than ever affected by childhood death since an increased number of these children will die in hospital while receiving active cancer treatments (national cancer institute, 2009). caring for a child dying of cancer and a family experiencing immense suffering is challenging complex work. pediatric oncology nurses are frequently the healthcare professionals bearing witness to this vulnerable and intimate time of profound loss (olson et al., 1998; papadatou, 1997). these nurses attend to the physical and the emotional needs of children with cancer and their families during the course of this life limiting illness, at the moment of death, and beyond, however, little is known about how they themselves are affected, and how this ultimately has an impact on the care they are able to give. research purpose and significance research has shown there can be tremendous amounts of suffering in families who have had children die from cancer, and this suffering can continue for years (bellali & papadatau, 2006; heller & solomen, 2005; macdonald et al., 2005). it is an obligatory demand of nursing to attend to suffering, to diminish, and hopefully soften suffering’s progress whether it is of an emotional, physical, or spiritual nature (wright, 2005). in the midst of this attendant practice, are pediatric oncology nurses who “with their hands, voices, and hearts” (de ruiter, 2007, p. 63) witness the unfathomable experience of a child’s death. pediatric oncology nursing is an area that is at once both rewarding and stressful (clarke et al., 1996; docherty et al., 2007; papadatou, bellali, papazoglou, & pertaki, 2002, papadatou, martinison, & chung, 2001). it follows that professionals who witness the pain and suffering of children and their families may also experience pain and suffering (papadatou et al., 2002; rashotte, fothergill-bourbannais, & chamerlain, 1997). however, there is a paucity of literature in this area and relatively little is known about how pediatric oncology nurses are affected by the death of a child in their care. this research focused on how nurses were affected by their day-to-day involvement in the complex navigation of circumstances and relationships surrounding the death of a child from cancer. research question, method, and design the research in this doctoral research conducted by the first author and supervised by the second author was focused on the topic of the impacts on pediatric oncology nurses of the death of a child in their care. we were curious about the impacts and effects of this complex experience on nurses. in a context where relationships form, and are sustained over time by the very nature of the trajectories of childhood cancer, how do nurses navigate, live alongside, and experience their own losses when a child with whom they have cared, and perhaps loved, dies? morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 4 the research method employed in this study was guided by hans-georg gadamer’s (1960/1989) tenets of philosophical hermeneutics, following the method as described by moules, mccaffery, field, and laing (2015). this study was approved through the university of calgary conjoint health research ethics board. the participants for the study were recruited through email and poster presentation, and 15 registered nurses were interviewed. all participants were women with age ranges between the mid-twenties and fifties. pseudonyms were assigned. the interviews were transcribed into text, and analyzed interpretively according to moules et al. (2015). these emerging interpretations were then fleshed out with relevant literature not limited to nursing but including philosophy and non-academic literary works. the culmination of this intensive interpretive work was intended to extend, disrupt, and transform the theoretical and practical understandings of the topic. several interpretations were developed around the topic, all of which are featured in the publication of the doctoral study (morck, 2014). in this paper, we focus on a few of the interpretations that speak to the complexity of this work. the next section refers in first person to the first author morck. do you think the angels will speak spanish? the little boy actually said to his parents that he didn’t want chemo again, that he was done with that. it made him feel awful, he got sick, the cancer just came back and “i don’t want to do this.” his parents were not ready to let go. he was six at the time. it was amazing to me, they brought in child psychologists, they brought in child life, they did all of these interviews with him: “do you know what being alive is?” “do you know what being asleep is?” “do you know what being dead is?” “do you know what the difference is?” he knew and he was fine with that. he said, you know, “i want to go be with the angels.” all his biggest concern was: “do you think the angels will speak spanish?” so they, they let him, and they took him home and he died peacefully at home. that was my first experience… it was sad, it was heartbreaking, but it was okay because it was his choice and his family came around to it. and you know, they didn’t take it lightly. it was not ah “okay, you know, whatever,, it was “do you understand, if you don’t get chemo this is not going to sleep?” and it, it was pretty amazing. his whole family was around him. that was my very first experience with a patient dying. (shannon) shannon’s first experience with death was “sad” and “heartbreaking.” through her words we begin to get a glimpse into what this was like for her, as a new nurse, to be involved in this little boy’s life and the process that unfolded towards his dying and death. it was, to her, heartbreaking and yet amazing that, despite all adult concerns, he wondered if the angels upon his arrival among them would speak spanish, if he would be able to talk with them in his own language. we would expect and not be surprised that the family of this little boy was thrown upon his death into the complex landscape of grief. northern american society expects and allows those who have suffered such a jarring loss to grieve (corr, 2002). can the same be said of the pediatric oncology nurses, such as shannon, who worked alongside this and other families, were involved in the child’s care and eventual death? can or should we anticipate and assume to know what they are experiencing throughout these undeniably difficult professional encounters? moules, morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 5 simsonson, prins, angus, and bell (2004) wrote, “when death and loss arrive they arrive accompanied by grief. the arrival stays with us, haunts us, wakes us at night, asks questions of us, and needs to be answered and re-answered over time” (p. 104). this has been an undeniably difficult topic for me to navigate. cancer is formidable. i am the member of a family who has been eviscerated and eaten by cancer. the steady and continual suffering cancer has wrought on my family makes it difficult to stand back from my own grief surrounding this topic. i have often wondered as i write about my own responses to patients dying and death how my personal journey with cancer leaks into the spaces and presence with those whom i work. i have begun to wonder what indeed i did feel when they died. these are some of the questions that arrived with this topic, questions that flourish unanswered. historically, nurses were mentored to maintain an appropriate demeanour and emotional distance from their patients (henderson, 2001; papadatou, 2009). as doka (2010) stated however, this is difficult to achieve in practice. lines are often murky; relationships encouraged and strong bonds are forged. this may be particularly true in pediatric oncology where long treatment regimens foster relationships over months or even years. when a child dies, nurses face that loss, as well as the end of the relationship with the family. it has been said that the very nature of long-term cancer treatment protocols exacerbates the potential for vicarious grief (kastenbaum, 1987). times of intense crises, such as an ill or dying child, forge a strong bond more quickly than other situations. relationships and bonds formed vary, and not every nurse is attached to the same degree to every child and family. certain losses, however, may provoke a strong response. working in an environment where the death of a child stands in contrast to normative beliefs can leave pediatric oncology nurses vulnerable to expressions of failure, despair, sadness, and regret in the pursuit of unmet goals of care (bearison, 2006; doka, 2010; papadatou, 2009). papadatou (1997) indicated nurses often view the death of a child as a “triple failure” (p. 576): they lacked the necessary skills to save the child’s life, to prevent the child’s suffering, and betrayed the parents’ and society’s trust. death may evoke a reflection on one’s own mortality or on those in our personal lives. we see the faces of children and their family reflected back onto our own children and family. the personal and professional encounters with death and loss become intertwined and reciprocally affect each other. the tension between cure and care, of having the elephant in the room, remain unchallenged can exacerbate feelings of powerlessness and distress. through all of these threaded and diverse points of connection and disconnection, grief may manifest along with a sense of loss. doka (2010) expressed that grief may arise in such instances, emotionally evident as anger, anxiety, hopelessness, powerlessness, sadness, remorse, or guilt. many express it as being emotionally depleted, exhausted, or depressed. some may become preoccupied with the death, transferring it to hyper-vigilance in their work or personal lives, or become conversely defensive, unfocused, rigid, or apathetic. they may question their beliefs or sense of purpose, or become skeptical. there may be physical manifestations of stress such as aches and pains, sleep or appetite changes, or other manifestations (figley, 1995). these reactions may interfere with their relationships with others at home and work. there may be responses of anger, impatience, or withdrawal, or distrust. these responses can affect the work environment, lowering morale and morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 6 contributing to staff turnover (figley, 1995; papadatou, 2009). the manifestations detailed correspond and intertwine with those experienced in stress, burnout, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and moral distress research (figley, 1995; hinds, quargneti, hickey, & magnum, 1994; kaplan, 2000; spinetta et al., 2000; papadatou, 2009; zander, hutton, & king, 2010). grief is a word i mean that’s all it is grief is a word, right? (michelle) this statement and question from michelle bring me to the heart of the nurses’ responses to childhood death in pediatric oncology. it places into question society’s understanding and beliefs around grief, and around the relationship nurses have with grief in pediatric oncology. it places into question what a word like grief is. a word is a sound or combination of sounds that has a meaning when it is spoken or written (word, n.d.). some words are different. they hold a hallowed, revered, or feared place in our language and history. grief is such a word. the word grief has an ancient history and an expansive kinship. it is the focal topic in the oldest surviving written work of literature, the epic of gilgamesh, dated between 2750 and 2500 bce. the story of gilgamesh follows his unrelenting grief over the death of his friend enkidu and the reconciliation to his own finitude that ensues (anonymous, 2003). grief from the old french grever denotes hardship, suffering, pain, distress, wretchedness, burden, or wound. from latin, it originates from gravare and gravis meaning to weigh down or heavy. in sanskrit, and perhaps its oldest origination it is derived from gurus, a venerable teacher or priest. this refers to the imparter of knowledge, and is connected to the word gur meaning to raise, lift up, or to make an effort. it is based on the interplay between darkness and light. the guru, or venerable teacher, is seen as the one who dispels the darkness of ignorance (hoad, 1996). grief brings forward pain. it cannot be easily turned away from or ignored. grief is defined as the “multifactorial response be it psychological, social, or somatic response to the perception of loss” (rando, 1984, p. 15). yet, it is so much more. i feel like if you’re an oncology nurse there’s always some underlying sadness in a lot of ways even if you’re an upbeat positive person. i think families would probably say that too. it’s just, there’s a sad undertone to being there because there’s always something sad happening on the unit at any given time really. (sara) sadness is deeply entwined with grief. there is, according to sara, always a sad undertone in pediatric oncology. that, despite the bright colours, play, and celebrations, there is a sadness that marks everyone’s presence and reason for being there. this is an undertone, a subliminal current of sadness, that runs perhaps below the surface, colouring and shaping every encounter within pediatric oncology without conscious awareness. it is if to say that sadness runs beneath in the day-to-day reality of children living and dying now with cancer, in the spaces that treatment and a move towards cure cannot fill. many of the nurses spoke of this sadness whether in their own experiential responses or in witnessing and being with children and families. sadness appeared and lingered for the nurses and others, but did grief and its many messy and shared connections arrive? what became of those? morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 7 i don’t know maybe grief is more profound than sadness. like, they’re all related but grief is just more all encompassing in your life. kind of affects your whole being. (shannon) for shannon, grief, sadness, regret, despair, and sorrow arrive together entangled. it becomes difficult to disentangle these interpretations and understandings, messy and overlapped as they are. the weight of the word grief in our language, however, stops people in their tracks. grief arrives heavy. there is neither innocence nor naiveté to grief. it is substantive. it is important. i think it is important enough to be called grief. i just don’t know if it’s the same. but it’s important enough to have a word like that associated with it; what it does to you and how it changes the way you look at life, and the way you deal with people going through. (michelle) important is related to the latin portare meaning to bring in, to carry, hold, or shelter (portare, n.d.). a word like grief, imports a message to the hearts and minds of humanity, to take notice, to pay attention, stop and heed its call. it is an indication that this experience matters. in this way, an important experience, such as the effects wrought from a child’s death, can be viewed in another connection to a port or a wound, a portal, or opening to a new lesson. a word like grief embodies profound feelings of sadness, hurt, a heaviness of one’s heart with a gravity of meaning, which is how michelle expressed her experience with the death of her young patients. through her encounters with the death of these children, michelle has changed the way she looks at life and the way she attends to, and cares for, the people she is looking after. one can begin to see reflections of the guru; she has been taught, learned, and been transformed through her encounters with death in pediatric oncology. for michelle, however, and for many of the other nurses, grief was not a word that felt comfortable for them. their experience was like grief, important enough to be called grief, yet not. grief as a descriptor simply did not fit. davey (2006) specified “words carry a heavy burden of meaning and association, which can be difficult to set aside” (p. 149). perhaps none so much as the constellation of words that surround and point to grief in its etymological root of heavy, weighted, or grave. these words of sadness, regret, despair, loss, and failure are ancient kin who have borne and carried the divergence of expression surrounding the death of a child from cancer. they are steeped in societal discourses that shape our beliefs, understandings, and practices surrounding death, loss, and grief. they hold onto us and weigh us down. maybe is it that we believe that grief should be overwhelming sadness instead of just reaction to loss. certainly i feel sadness when a patient dies, but mostly i feel sad for their parents and all these different kinds of sadness. whereas when you lose someone you feel sorry for yourself. (michelle) the way in which michelle interprets grief is from her experiences of loss from both her personal life and from her encounters as a nurse. michelle delineated a difference in meaning between that of a patient death to those in her personal life. to her, the experiences are not felt the same. there is a sense of personal proximity and professional distance that separates the two. when you lose someone, you feel sorry for yourself, but when you lose a patient you feel sorry for his morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 8 or her family. it appears michelle is describing the difference between the experiences of loss in our personal life with those at work. we grieve those we are personally close to; we express sadness for those we worked with, cared for and about but were not close to in a personal realm. michelle delineates these experiences as explicitly different. she does not interpret the death of one of her patients as a loss that necessarily evokes grieving. there seems to be an awareness of space between her and the child that perhaps cushions away grief, and helps keep the loss in perspective that she is a caring professional and not part of their family. this delineation between feeling grief or deep sadness is related to her interpretation of grief being a complex response to the death of someone close to her in family or friends. this does not negate that grieving for a patient is possible, but rather, it is a patient-to-patient nurse-by-nurse response. we do not hold grief; it holds us. it redefines us in its wake, shapes, negates, and redefines who we are. we all experience sadness, learn how to live through it and heal. grief is a place to experience the pain, loss, and for the relationship with our loved one to be housed. death within this context is always felt; it is what humanizes us, and what we need to discover within ourselves is the divide between personal and professional expressions of loss. lost loss and grief gone awry loss is often denoted as the precursor or partner to grief (papadatou, 2001; rando, 1984). like grief, loss it has roots and derivations in many languages signifying regret, miss, lacking, perish, absence, and lament (hoad, 1996). death is usually taken to be the paramount source of loss (de unamano, 1954). hence, the working title of this dissertation for years was marked by loss. at conferences and in class work, i have used this phrase; i have written, and spoken about the impacts of loss on pediatric oncology nurses. this title arose from a video clip of a los angeles area pediatric oncology nurse receiving a day of the dead tattoo as a commemoration to her young patients who had died (von drachenberg, 2010). she marked her skin in a visible reminder of the ways she had been marked by the loss of these lives cut short by cancer. some cultures confront death through their rituals to symbolize death and rebirth. día de los muertos, or the day of the dead, is a holiday celebrated in many spanish-speaking countries to commemorate friends and family members who have died. the tattoo for this nurse was a tribute and permanent reminder of her los angelitos, or the little angels, who were lost and her struggles to come to terms with how this affected her. i awoke one night with a start and thought, “where was the loss?” it was not there. the word loss was lost. i looked back through page after page of transcripts searching for a glimpse of it. i did not find it. none of the nurses i interviewed used the word loss to describe their experiences of childhood death. i sat perplexed on my office floor surrounded by the scattered pieces of paper and contemplated this absence. what did the loss of loss indicate? like michelle, two nurses used loss to describe deaths in their personal life of family or friends. they spoke of their grief, of the gnawing pain and suffering they experienced when a loved one died. yet, the death of a patient was set apart and separated as something other. i question this separation and wonder how it can be that death and loss can be cleaved apart. how can death just be death and not loss? what marks the difference? this was curious to me given the prevalence of the word loss in our common vernacular of death and within the grief literature. what are the ways in which the nurses did not experience death as a loss? these nurses believed there was a difference in their experiences of personal and professional encounters with death. they taught me that those who morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 9 have remained in pediatric oncology practice had found a way to separate the personal from professional as evidenced in their language of delineation. in other words, these nurses reserved loss and grief for personal traumatic events; sadness and compassion arose in a professional manner for the children and families. we cannot assume that all deaths are experienced as a loss. responses to loss through death are mitigated by our beliefs, values, societal and cultural expectations, and personal history with death amongst other factors. our responses are dependent on our relationship with the person who has died, as well as on the meaning we attribute to the loss (corr, 2002). we also feel for others through their proximity to us, which may be a critical element when we experience or do not experience grieving. death, while universal, does not hold a universal meaning. nor does loss through death affect all in a universal manner; each loss, each death, affects persons in singular and particular ways (moules, simonson, fleiszer, prins, & glasgow, 2007; papadatou, 2009). while a family and healthcare team members experience the loss of a child, the experience appears to hold different meanings and expressions to each person involved (papadatou, 2009). as a nurse, if i understand my role in healthcare means that sometimes people die despite our best efforts, then i might be considered by some to have developed a healthy professional perspective. treatment and cure do not always co-exist. if we perceive that the death of a child is not a professional failure but a limitation and a harsh reality of being human, does this in turn affect the way loss and grief are interpreted? the death of a child is an undeniably difficult and sad experience as anna denotes below. there is, however, seemingly a difference of perspective; rather than a personal loss, this is a professional sadness and caring for the loss experienced by the parents and family. i came to sort of realize that it is very sad always for the child, for the family, the whole family that has to go through a child who dies from cancer. but i don’t think it was necessarily grief that i was feeling. (anna) i had come to believe there was a symbiotic relationship between death and grief, the two coexist, one following after the other. i can see now, through the words of these nurses, that there is a danger inherent in this assumption -an assumption as perilous as presuming all grief is experienced similarly or that it follows prescribed stages or processes. this assumption can lead us to view nurses who are not visibly grieving or who state they do not grieve the loss of their young patients, as hardened or embittered, or that their grief is disenfranchised, disallowed, or hidden. if the protestation that they are not grieving is too loud or long, they can be deemed to be in denial, or the system has taken away their means or awareness to grieve, or they are simply burnt out. this is an interesting position, which places the nurses in an almost passive response in their inability to accept that grief naturally follows and is the appropriate response to a patient’s death. it is an interesting position as well to assume that this should or could be the case. it is a challenging and confusing continuum for nurses to traverse, assuming that on the other end of the spectrum nurses should not or must not grieve because it can be interpreted as unprofessional. it strikes me that we are once again setting up another dichotomous choice of values, this time one of grief no grief, which leaves little room for the messy shades of grey toned reality along the way. morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 10 my look into these nurses’ experiences of grief had gone awry. lost loss and no grief threw me off of the course i had expected to find. in this, i began to wonder about the connection that arose earlier between professional failure and loss, and the demands relegated to “bring them all home” and that failure was not an option. not that the physicians don’t, but cure is not my intent generally in my interventions. it’s not cure, it’s you know coping, and helping people live through what we’re doing to them in order to try and cure them. that is what nursing does. (michelle) nursing work in michelle’s words is caught in the tension between cure and care. there seems to be a wish to open and retrieve a broader remembrance of what nursing does, of their role and responsibility in cancer care. the death of a child, not perceived as a professional failure, seemingly opens up the space for this death to not be perceived as a loss. by this, i refer to a professional loss or failure to cure cancer and win the battle. it is rather viewed, as not a failure to cure, but an unfortunate loss of a life. the intent and focus have shifted to care versus the failure to cure and seemingly softens the affectual responses by the nurses. while there is recognition of the family’s grief and loss, there is not the overwhelming response that disables. one wonders if, in this delineation, nurses are striving to find a conceptual allotment and permission to view death not as a failure but rather as an unfortunate reality of their work. there seems to be a desire to reconcile that good work can be accomplished and fulfillment achieved despite the death of children from cancer. it’s different because when i think of grief i think of sort of an overwhelming sadness. not to say i’m not sad when i lose patients but it certainly doesn’t overwhelm me. so there must be something about it that’s a little bit different or the way it’s approached. (michelle) the nurses i spoke with acknowledged a child and family’s loss, cried for the family, perhaps attended the funeral, or had alternate ways to recognize and remember a young life cut short. there seemingly was, however, a capacity or need for this to be set outside and separate as a work experience. it was distanced from who they were as people and integrated as a component of the work they did as pediatric oncology nurses. many of the nurses i spoke with were open and frank in their responses to me. i did not get the sense they believed they could not share how they felt after a patient’s death with either me, their colleagues, or within the system. their grief was neither hidden nor disallowed; many reported feeling like they were supported in being able to respond as needed to a child’s death. it was, however, as michelle states, a different response than one found in their personal life. they approached it differently. a new label i think it would be a step backwards to say grief versus burnout. it’s a new label. for me it’s a journey and each one is different. it’s the timing, when does it happen in your career, where does it happen. have you just had three deaths? i think when i broke was when i was like “enough already.” (sue) morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 11 labels are meant to instruct and inform us about the world in which we find ourselves. they are intended for convenience and safety (label, n.d.). they tell us the content of our food, the size of our clothing, and delineate dangers. the outward sticker label becomes our position of identification. when we label people or experiences, however, we set up the possibility that we begin to believe things are solely as labeled. this is problematic when the label of schizophrenia or down’s syndrome, for instance, becomes who someone is rather than something someone has. the world of people living with mental illness and disabilities has suffered profoundly because of labels; reduced to stereotypes, these labels acknowledge superficial aspects of the person rather than the entirety of their experience. the new label of grief, as interpreted by sue, demonstrates that the label does not humanize the way in which death was experienced; nor does it reveal that each experience is different and as such is beyond, or more specifically lives underneath the label. labels do something else as well. as identifiers and positioners of content, they tell us what we need to know; often, this is where our search for knowing ceases. in the identification and labeling, we believe we know them, or the product, or experience that we have “got it.” the search for anything more or deeper often ends. if grief is delineated as just a new label, one wonders if sue worries our quest to understand nurses’ experience of death has been realized or fulfilled or that we now have “got it” in terms of pinning meaning down. i hear in her words, though, a marking that this is just one more label applied to the surface of an experience that exists below, in a depth beyond our attempts to apply a word to it. i also wonder if she hopes the conversation about nurses’ experiences will continue to be opened and explored rather than shut down by the conclusion that often arrives when we believe we have captured an experience. the experience of death was different for each nurse in this study at different times in her life, for different reasons, and different with each child. they have convinced me, to my own chagrin and my own needs to fit it in a box, sand off the rough edges, round the corners, and fix it, that i cannot. i do not know what the “it” is. that is perhaps the fallibility of our language to describe an experience that belies words to find one or even many that capture what it is. perhaps at the end of the examination there are many “its,” many places of dark and light, and places that rest between. these nurses expressed no need to encapsulate their experiences under a banner, a word, label, or a condition. they instead offered through their own words and insights into the complexity of how they felt, responded, and continued to understand their experiences with dying and death. grief, like burnout, vicarious traumatization, compassion fatigue, and other terms is a placeholder for these nurses. it does not fit, nor do they wish to have the label applied without discussion and awareness of the fluidity and changeability of the experiences associated with the affects of childhood death. in the end, they are attempting to make sense of how they can continue, or not, being involved in this work. they are in many ways attempting to be okay. being okay erica: i believe thirteen children passed away in three months. i started in an extremely bad time. i was basically surrounded by kids going south right from the beginning. i’d walk by the room, and i’d see them just lying in bed, and just hooked up to every tube immorck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 12 aginable, and mom crying at the bedside. i remember thinking that looks terrible, and i remember when they passed it was “okay, good, no more tubes everywhere no more mom crying at the bedside.” that’s mostly what i remember about those thirteen kids. i remember that they suffered. that’s what i remember most. acm: it sounds to me like somehow you came to the belief that death was better than suffering? erica: yeah, having to watch a child or anybody suffer when we’ve done everything, when they pass it’s okay. when we’ve exhausted every avenue, when we’ve exhausted everything and it’s just suffering and miserable, to me death is okay. that’s why i find that the death of our kids doesn’t really bother me, because i know especially four years in, we do everything, we exhaust every option. so if they pass, that’s all we could do. (erica) when all medical and treatment options have been exhausted, erica’s belief in our ability to attempt any and all necessary means of healing enabled her to reconcile that it was okay for death to be the alternative. there does not appear to be a notion of failure for her, or an exploration or torment that more could or should be done, she was able to let it go. for her, this was the making of meaning on a middle road of okay. what the nurses i spoke with, including shannon in the retelling of her first experience with patient death, were and continue to hope for is to be okay with it. to find a way and means to stand in the midst of a work practice where they will encounter death over and over again and to be able to continue to stand and bear the weight of the families with whom they work. what, however, did being okay mean; why did this language continue to arise and stick with me in the words of the nurses i spoke with? if it’s not for you, that’s okay. it’s not something that you should have to force yourself to be okay with because you’re going to have a hard time. you shouldn’t have to force yourself to be okay and not okay with a child’s death but at peace with what has happened in their life. (erica) okay is the position of non-commitment, as though we are unsure what is going to come at us next, whether the next entails good or bad. it occupies a space, which is neither positive nor negative. although many would argue it holds more of a negative persuasion than that leaning towards the positive. it is a zero-sum holder, allowing the positive and negative to exist without cancelling them out. okay allows one to exist in a place of ambiguity and openness. it fills a void in our language for that which is mediocre, all right, or average. it also indicates assent but with a question tagged on, as if to say i agree but not whole-heartedly, i hold out a certain amount of resignation or taciturn reluctance. okay is also connected to borders and boundaries in its relation to something one is able to bear, endure, or tolerate. it does not indicate a love of, but neither does it forward an outright dismissal nor inability to get through what one is faced with. it indicates an air in some ways of reluctance, yet it can also deny permission to engage further. as an adjective or adverb, okay means adequate, acceptable, or mediocre. it is often used in contrast to good, as in “the food was (just) okay.” as an interjection, it denotes compliance (okay i will do that), or agreement (okay, that’s good). as a verb and noun, it indicates assent (she said it was okay). as a versatile discourse marker or back-channeling item, it can also be used with appropriate voice tone to show doubt or to seek confirmation (are you okay?) (okay, n.d., merriam-webster dictionary). morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 13 while pervasively used in the north american english, the origin of okay is a point of debate. it is premised by that okay may have originated from the north american indigenous language choctaw. missionaries working in this community provided translation of the bible into choctaw. many lines of translation ended with the particle “okeh,” which meant “it is so” (okay, n.d. oxford dictionary online). in this origination of okay, we can begin to see connections to letting it be and a sense of permission and surrender to the realities of dying and death in pediatric oncology that many of the nurses i spoke with reiterated. in their attempts to be okay, nurses saw or understood things differently in terms of their approaches to children dying. for many of the nurses, they came to believe that death was a better alternative to enduring endless suffering. like erica, they struggled with how to make sense of a child in pain. how you’re able to make meaning. what meaning you derive from that and how you process that and if you think that’s okay. if you think it’s unfair and not okay than you can’t work there right? so somehow you have to be able to process it to being something that’s okay somehow. something terrible and you make it kind of like well, that’s just the way it is. (michelle) arriving at a stance and understanding that, “that is just the way it is,” “it is so,” and being at peace with that, was a struggle and middle road for these nurses. this was a making sense of the death versus make sense of death globally as part and parcel of their workplace and of the world of pediatric oncology. there seems to be a need to make meaning of their experiences and encounters with childhood death. they are not hoping to excel or relish in their work with dying children, nor do they strive to run away and continue to avoid it in their practice. the nurses i spoke with are trying to maintain the balance of being okay, of that middle ground, neutral position, and placeholder for zero. being okay becomes a reasonable response to the day-to-day encounters with children who may die. this does not presuppose that there are not moments of joy, relief, or humour; yet neither does it disallow explications of sadness. okay holds and protects the nurse in a space of openness to remain professional with the potential to respond to the needs of children and their families. suddenly you are surrounded suddenly you are surrounded by it. your colleagues are experiencing it, you’re experiencing it your physicians are experiencing it. it’s just one of those moments. i think there is actually a threshold when you have this incredible, too many, whatever that line i’m talking about, it gets a little frail and you can’t deal with it anymore. but i don’t think it is grief. it’s like, it’s just too much, there’s only so much you can witness. it is sort of a witness thing. as pediatric nurses we witness a lot. (sue) the stance of being okay is in continual flux and reconciliation. there were times when experiences became too much. sue shared that, when the line became frail, her ability to maintain a position of being okay was disrupted. there are physical thresholds, tangible ones we see and walk over, and there are temporal ones, marked by lines of distress or suffering that wear. these morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 14 too are palpable. thresholds create the fulcrum around which our internal state changes, around which we function; sometimes you only notice you have crossed from one place to another and stepped over the threshold once it has happened. this appears to be the case for sue, she was aware she was in a position of being suddenly surrounded, as if she and her colleagues were taken off guard. the term surrounded originates in being overflowed or submerged under water (surround, n.d.). there is a sense in sue’s words of being enveloped and overcome by water, with little or no room to breathe. to be surrounded indicates one is besieged on all sides, with no position of defense, or safety, or recourse. the fullness of witnessing and bearing the experience of children and families was too heavy and there was no room left to hold it. there was no reprieve and the space of being okay was disrupted. being not okay in black august that was probably the lowest point that i have ever seen in the unit. it was like one after another of the patients that had been there forever. lowest morale, people, i’m pretty sure people were thinking about quitting. we call it black august when we talk about it now. you bring it up and everybody just knows, if they’ve been there that long, know how hard that was. at that time there were a few in just 24 hours and it was just one after another. i can’t even describe it. and it was when i was pretty new too. it was the busiest i have ever seen the unit and everyone was so sick. on a particularly horrible day you’d go to the supply closet, take a deep breath, try not to cry, grab what you needed and leave. it was a hard time. (heather) heather’s words reveal the struggle to get through a time she calls the lowest in her work in pediatric oncology. there is a feeling or sense of being besieged, struggling with the volume of despair and distress, and of finding brief moments of respite in deep breaths in the supply room. by all accounts and from numerous nurses i interviewed, this was a distressing and difficult time. during times of multiple patient deaths, such as was the case for black august on unit 1, nurses struggled with being okay in their attempts to maintain their position of emotional safety while standing in the midst of death. they struggled to find ways to continue in their work through seemingly endless stretches of one after another of their children dying. during this time, they were attempting to appreciate the work they did amidst suffering from the sting of cancer, and to reconcile their place, as nurses and people. this affected not only the nurses who were working but, as heather remarked, the entire unit was affected and experienced low morale. there appears to be a threshold. when this threshold was breached, a struggle ensued to maintain the perspective and distance gadamer (1996) noted in his description of balance. equilibrium shifted heavily towards proximity. it became difficult to get away from or to have any distance from death. there was little or no time for reflection, and death continued to unrelentingly pervade and be the focus of the unit. for many of the nurses who worked amidst the dark times of black august, the unrelenting nature of deaths, of children they knew well and had worked with for many years, took a toll. they were no longer able to maintain the balance of being okay. nurses such as amy struggled with the meaning of what she was doing as a nurse in pediatric oncology. she no longer believed that children with cancer lived. her optimism was drowned in morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 15 darkness. her perspective had been altered and reframed to one of disappointment and disillusionment and she was no longer okay. she was surrounded by death, submerged, and no longer believed she could continue her work in a positive manner. for me leaving pediatric oncology i wouldn’t say burnt out, i loved what i did. but, i knew it was time to go, because it was (pause) i don’t know how to explain it but i was seeing more, more death and more. i didn’t have the same positive outlook. by that point last year every kid that came to the hospital died. and i’m like, that’s not what i went into it with, that we can fix these kids and this is positive. if you don’t believe it, it’s hard to tell these kids and it’s hard to tell the parents that, because i’m not going to, it’s very hard, they’ll know. when i first started i strongly believed that every kid had a fighting chance and i think it was just the amount of kids that lead up to before i left that i knew very well that passed away. i did have that negativity that no, i don’t believe or i think most kids that come into this hospital now died. i’m like maybe it is time for me to change. i don’t think it was burnt out. i think it was my awareness that i needed a change and that i wasn’t as happy coming to work or positive that i was more focusing on the negative and focusing on the cancer and not the kids. probably change, not necessarily burnt out or grief i think it was a desire to change. (amy) a long succession of dying children wore many of the nurses on unit 1 down. there was no reprieve or safe space of distance from death. amy no longer believed children had a “fighting chance,” her work became focused on beating cancer and not on the children. her work had lost its heart and positivity and she was no longer okay with her place among the distress and despair that black august brought. this shift of balance towards a negative outlook was the threshold for amy and she decided she needed to leave pediatric oncology. for kate as well, this change in perspective from being okay, to not okay, came when she no longer believed she was making a difference in children’s lives; rather, despite all efforts the unrelenting nature of cancer continued forward. she could not reconcile this fact nor make sense of how she positioned in the work of pediatric oncology that included these times of death. kate: i do find after your first few years and it’s not as you thought you know “i am helping people, i am making a difference.” it seems like you have one die every month or every two months you sort of start wondering, “what am i doing? i am making the last months, year of their life miserable and then they die.” it seems like if they don’t die they go out into the world, and they come back five years later, and they come back ten years later with something new or the thing has recurred. so for the kids that we did not lose that went off into the world and were supposed to get better and never come back again, when they started coming back on year four, year five, that’s what really did it to me. i was kind of okay with the kids that got better or are going to get better and just know that some just don’t. but when the kids that got better, that are supposed to be off living their lives, started coming back again with the same thing recurring or with something new that we gave them because we gave them chemotherapy or radiation and now they have a new tumour somewhere else, i wasn’t okay with that. i had a really tough time. that was probably my worst thing, because you are seeing these families again and it’s very unfair, very unforgiving the second time around. it just does a number on these families. it does a number on all of us. morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 16 acm: how did you cope? kate: i didn’t. i left. kate was unable to reconcile the remission and subsequent death of children she had previously worked with. this, for her, was her threshold of too much. the delicate balance she had created, of being okay with working in a place where children die, was shattered. this return of children the second time appears in many ways to be understood as a failure to kate. there is a stated disillusionment with her position in not being able to help children and families. instead, kate now perceived her role in their life as postponing the inevitable or making matters worse. she felt the damage and failure too closely and chose to leave pediatric oncology. to kate this shift, return, and multiple deaths of children she knew did a number on her. to do a number on someone refers back to a musical “song and dance” that has been colloquially termed as a “number.” to do a number on someone is also referred to as beguiling or hoodwinking him or her. this was often used in reference to running a con or a confidence game on an unsuspecting someone (number, n.d.). in this instance, cancer conned kate and others into believing children were cured and would be okay; however, in its wily unpredictable nature cancer returned, took everyone by surprise, and wreaked devastation. reconciling your place in it all i think you at the end of the day you want to be able to at least reconcile what’s happened at work with who you are as a person. i think it’s just hard to reconcile a child’s death. (sara) reconciling, for sara, positioned bringing together who she was a person with the work she encountered in pediatric oncology. there was a need to bring the discordant events or facts of her life and work together in a way that made it okay. sara has to be able to go home at the end of a shift and be okay with the work she has done as a nurse, and who she believes herself to be as a person. these two parts of self had to be brought together in a way that made sense and meaning to her. it is difficult, however, to reconcile a child’s death. it goes against the belief that children should not die. to sit at the bedside of children who take their last breath and to be okay or to find a place of being okay with the work that they have to do is a struggle for these nurses. reconciling these discordant events is challenging. i sense for sara and the other nurses a struggle to find a safe place to be okay: not okay with a child’s death per se but with their work and place in the child’s life and death. conciliatory gestures related to reconciliation or bringing discordant points of view together often happen at the end of a battle or fight; on one side, either the winner or the loser, approaches the other party to find a common ground for the common good. it is a show of good faith and a wish to move forward despite their differences or displacements. there is an inherent sense of needing to placate or pacify something that is causing discord or disharmony, to make them be able to work together again despite differences. reconciliation and conciliatory gestures are often a matter of changing or joining perspectives. for paige, this form of reconciliation meant “having a very good sense of life and death, and recognizing my place in the big picture” (paige). this indicates how she understood her position within the life and death rhythm of the world as a nurse but also as a person. perspectives shift with changes in the angle approached, or morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 17 in the lighting; means of understanding, and framing change over time, child-to-child, family-tofamily influenced by home and work life. who they are as nurses and a people, and where they are, crescendo together lending to their angle in and their perspective on death. the perspective then frames the meaning they give to the situation and to the individual children within their care. this is in essence, how they look at a particular situation or an encounter with a family. i see it as like a negative or positive perception of where we are working. because i can see it and i certainly remember going through periods of it myself where nurses become very focused on the negative of everything…things that are challenging to deal with you can see the environment turn to being a lot more negative and i think that doing that for periods is certainly normal being able to get through that and gain perspective that it doesn’t mean that you work in a terrible place and that we still do good things makes a really big difference. (jill) a shift in perspective from negative to one of greater positivity was prefaced by jill as the ability to still view the value and good in the work done in pediatric oncology. the optics that frames the culture and mood of the unit also influences how they perceive their work and the meaning they then attribute to what comes towards them in practice. they were once again, in my estimation, looking for balance and the middle way. the middle way i think you just want people to know that you genuinely care about these kids. even though you may not throw yourself on the floor crying when they die it still has meant something to you and it still has affected you as a person probably in good and bad ways. i want people to know that that was really tough for me, but i was able to find something good in it and i hold onto that in a lot of ways. (sara) finding something good in a terrible experience is a matter of finding that middle way and route of being okay. it is a matter of finding something to hold onto while you are holding up others. “in the experience of giving care there is a delicate balance between opening our heart endlessly (compassion) and accepting the limits of what we can do and how we and others feel (equanimity)” (halifax, 2008, p. 44). equanimity, prevalent in both eastern and western philosophical and religious thought, is described as an evenness of mind, neither elated nor depressed. it stands in a middle ground. equanimity is the capacity to attend to suffering and yet not be overcome. it is the strong back that supports the soft front of compassion. these interdependent qualities are the foundation for effective work with suffering. it offers characteristics necessary to walk the fine line between openness and protection. in german, equanimity is comparable to gelassenheit and arose from the work of meister ekhardt. heidegger referred to it as openness to the mystery at play in the world. equanimity is found in the experience gadamer referred to as letting go or letting be (bruns, 2004). it is a means of living without why. the mean, middle ground, or mitte is according to gadamer where understanding takes place (gadamer, 2004). this common middle ground is what nurses called for in order to navigate their experiences within pediatric oncology. it becomes the place where knowledge and experiences about children dying is spoken about, ideas are shared, and ways to learn to be okay with morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 18 dying and death are openly discussed and explored. there is a need for ways to share what they have experienced, how they have been affected and transformed, narratives where support replaces isolation and distress. this is the ground where risk meets protection, where we move past fear and anxiety, not forgetting or pushing it aside but walking with intent and purpose towards tenderness and learning. this calls for transparency. this calls for seeing the world clearly in the manner gadamer (1996) stipulated as requiring awareness of the wholeness of experience and life nurse and person, bright colours and grey, life and death, and of letting the world see into us. all manner of ups and downs one never meets just cancer, or war, or unhappiness (or happiness). one only meets each hour or moment that comes. all manner of up and downs. many bad spots in our best times, many good ones in our worst. one never gets the total impact of what we call ‘the thing itself.’ but we call it wrongly. the thing itself is simply all of these ups and downs: the rest is a name or an idea. (lewis, 1961, p. 21) “experiences of joy or of grief share a complexity that escapes easy linguistic expression” (davey, 2006, p. 149). in journeys of gaining experience in pediatric oncology, of learning that their work encompassed the death of children, nurses spoke to me of stories woven and influenced by their individual and collective history, cultural and societal norms, and institutional regulations. they shared in a human struggle to speak about and name an experience that is messy, painful, and shifting. according to gadamer (1960/1989), experience negates our prior knowledge, tempers and transforms us. we work to find an understanding, through dialogue, that replaces a profound internalization of our experiences, back into the world. this process may disrupt our previous ways of knowing and being and expand our horizons. intense experiences such as the death of children challenges our thinking and understandings of it things are not as they ought to be. this leaves us feeling uncertain or unclear about how we position in the midst of our practice as nurses. our work is to help bring to form, through language, an articulation of such experiences so we can better know what it is like for these nurses to work were children sometimes die. summary the topic of death and loss yield a woven tapestry of history, understandings, personal sensitivities and professional ambiguities. death is asking to be addressed. this does not mean that we make things similar and accordant. this does not mean we understand experiences as solely grief, or burnout, or compassion fatigue. rather, it is the arriving difference that propels us to look at our own prior understandings, assumptions, beliefs and in doing so, challenges us to think differently. through this process we may be transformed, and, in doing so, our practice is transformed. the effects on nurses of dying and death of children are not clean cut. they are messy, heart wrenching, tightrope-walking stories of discomfort and transformation. they ask us to keep the question open to keep asking how they are doing in practice, how they are able to enter rooms of dying children and bear the unbearable for others. they ask us to be able to lean morck & moules journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 11 19 into the question asked by a little boy who wonders if the angels will speak spanish, as he looks into the face of his own mortality. references bearison, d. j. 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(2010). coping and resilience factors in pediatric oncology nurses ce. journal of pediatric oncology nursing, 27(2), 94-108. doi: 10.1177/1043454209350154 corresponding author: michael j lang, phd email: mike@mikelangstories.com journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 may 29, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.75368 emerging horizons, part three. kelsey’s story: breaking cancer’s grasp michael j lang & catherine m laing abstract this third installment of the emerging horizons series explores kelsey’s digital storytelling (dst) experience (please see the introductory editorial, crafting meaning, cultivating understanding, to access the documentary film on which the series is based). in addition to providing a compelling exploration of a relatively common occurrence of adolescent and young adult (aya) cancer survivors, delayed diagnosis, kelsey’s involvement in the film illustrated the potential for dst to help participants explore, name, and represent their inner emotional experience. her storyline illuminated how difficult it can be for ayas to both understand their “true feelings” and share them with others in a way that moves beyond a surface level, “hashtag” description of emotion (e.g., #sad). i (lang) conclude by discussing how the three primary modes of narrative engagement in the dst process (external, internal, and reflexive) could help ayas cultivate a deeper understanding of their emotional cancer experiences, and in doing so, break cancer’s grasp on their life, by grasping it instead. keywords hermeneutics, digital storytelling, adolescents and young adults, psychosocial oncology, narrative interventions, arts-based methodology, documentary filmmaking kelsey’s second line in emerging horizons illustrates her initial nervousness around the dst workshop. she said, “i have all these “what if” questions, that i’m like, what if my story sucks? [nervous laughter] what if it is terrible? what if i don’t finish it?” she even admitted to almost canceling her involvement in the project as she was driving to the first pre-workshop interview. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 6 2 in a similar way to harmony, kelsey was not sure if she had a story that was worth sharing. in the first evening session of the workshop, it was quickly revealed that kelsey had experienced a very delayed diagnosis. she described the paradoxical emotional experience of feeling validation and vulnerability at the same time by saying, “ha! i told all you people something was wrong with me, but i’m gonna die! but yeah! [pumping fist] but i’m gonna die!” she described these conflicting emotions at the moment of her diagnosis as “a really weird feeling,” however the other participants understood her meaning as delayed diagnosis is a regular occurrence within this demographic (herbert et al., 2018). one large cohort study of ayas (n = 803) found that the median symptom-onset-to-diagnosis was 62 days (iqr 29 – 153) with a third of study participants having three or more consultations with a general practitioner before referral to a specialist (herbert et al., 2018). of the seven ayas in the room that first evening, five had a similar experience to kelsey, with many months of troubling symptoms before their own diagnosis was finally confirmed. as kelsey explored the meaningful moments of her cancer experience, it became clear that the delayed diagnosis, marked by crippling pain in her jaw, neck, and back, was more consequential than the active treatment and survivorship phase. this made her story unique among the five digital stories that were created as her diagnostic moment occurred close to the climax of her story instead of serving as the inciting incident. despite shifting the focus of the story away from her cancer treatments and their aftermath, kelsey’s story revealed a rarely glimpsed aspect of the aya experience: the culturally derived “meta-narrative” pressure many patients and survivors feel to mask the physical and emotional suffering they experience (atkinson & rubinelli, 2012). kelsey’s digital story offers the viewer a barefaced encounter with aya cancer, and through her workshop experience, the potential of dst to help ayas explore, name, and represent their inner emotional experience is manifest. kelsey’s storyline demonstrates how dst could help ayas break cancer’s grasp on their lives so that they can move forward. #sad: a barefaced encounter with aya cancer kelsey: i can say the logistical pieces of my story... but that doesn’t really show my true feelings. kelsey’s opening line in emerging horizons hints at her principal plotline which centred around revealing her “true feelings” about cancer to the world. this desire to share a more honest depiction of her cancer experience became the central theme of both the digital story she created and her overall dst experience portrayed in the film. however, the visual metaphor that she eventually chose to represent this theme in her digital story was not her idea. during the story circle, bethany stated that she was having a “strong visual response” (meaning an idea for a visual symbol) to kelsey’s story, a mask. kelsey responded enthusiastically, saying “wow, that’s really good. it was only me or my mom that knew the real version. so, yeah, the mask thing is awesome. thank you!” in that moment, the mask became a central image and metaphor in kelsey’s story. my initial feeling about the mask metaphor was mixed as it felt slightly cliché, and as discussed earlier in this thesis, clichés do not enhance understanding, they stifle it (mckee, 1997). lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 6 3 consequently, i felt that the mask metaphor might not aid kelsey in her aspiration to reveal her “true feelings” in and through her digital story. i wrote this observation in my field note reflections at the end of the story circle, before crossing it out, and writing next to it, “it is a meaningful metaphor to kelsey, and this is her story.” thankfully, in that moment, my awareness of dst facilitation ethics, in particular making a conscious decision around not “shaping” a person’s story (gubrium et al., 2013), overruled my initial emotional response. in the end, the mask metaphor helped not only cultivate kelsey’s understanding of her cancer experience but led to many honest and insightful conversations with both the participants and friends and family audiences. interestingly, in these conversations, the mask’s primary function was to provide juxtaposition and focus the audience’s attention on what was underneath. the centre of those discussions was not the mask itself; it was kelsey’s face. one of the most powerful moments in kelsey’s digital story occurred when the photo of her smiling is overlaid by a video of her crying. in that particular moment, the audience came face to face with kelsey’s primary internal conflict, and it produced a strong emotional response (e.g., harmony cried at this moment as well as multiple members of the friends and family audience). this moment was also one of the most difficult for kelsey to craft. in the opening discussion of the weekend workshop, kelsey disclosed that it was challenging to articulate the feelings that accompanied the incessant pain of her delayed diagnosis. in recounting the writing process around that particular moment in the story she said: cause for me it was easy to say, “and then i felt sad.” but then your [mike] bracket comments were like, tell me how you felt sad or how you portrayed being sad. i was like, man! . . this is what the process of story writing is, not just saying the general statements . . . “then i felt sad” was four words, and now i have written a whole paragraph! despite her initial challenges, a single probing question inspired kelsey to write an entire paragraph describing her emotional experience of sadness and pain; a description which ultimately became the voiceover for a crucial and compelling moment in her digital story. to borrow harmony’s words, kelsey transformed a surface level, “hashtag” description of her inner emotional experience (i.e., #sad) into a richer portrayal of the sadness and pain that was distinctive of her delayed diagnosis experience. determining the visual components to enhance her written representation of sadness and pain was equally as challenging for kelsey. in particular, including the crying video was something we discussed a number of times throughout the weekend, and she was still unsure about incorporating it right up to the moment the story was shared with the other ayas. in the discussion that followed the screening of her story kelsey said: i had said to mike, i said, “i don’t want to put it in” cause it, like seemed really vulnerable. it’s kinda weird, like why was i selfie-ing myself crying? but before we had it, like, two separate things and he said, “maybe you should just overlay it.” and in a way, that kinda made me feel better ‘cause it wasn’t just on its own, and it didn’t feel as vulnerable. and also, it kinda showed the smiling part, but then also, i guess, what we all feel inside even though we don’t show it outwardly. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 6 4 in this statement, kelsey hinted at why including the crying video was such a difficult decision for her; that short video clip was the moment she visually revealed her true feelings, her true face, to the world. despite the challenges kelsey faced as she tried to present her true feelings in digital story form, she described how it was easier in the context of a story arc that had some form of resolution. as the aya group ate lunch on the second day of the weekend workshop, kelsey described this aspect of her experience: yesterday evening, like, i was feeling, like, really, really spent. cause you are editing the first part of your video which is like going through the tough stuff part. . . and it kinda reopens the wound, or keeps picking at it. but today, you get to go to the end, where it’s like “then i came through” and i’m like “yeah!” [fist pump and laughing]. taken together, the preceding three quotes indicate how the dst process placed kelsey in an agentic position to reveal her true face through the words, images, and composition of her digital story. she could not change how she felt during her delayed diagnosis experience, but she could choose how to tell the story. in this way, she was able to remove her mask and be “barefaced” about her emotional experience. the word barefaced is defined as “having the face uncovered” or “to be exposed or vulnerable” (oxford university press, n.d.). this definition describes kelsey’s experience as she felt vulnerable uncovering her true feelings in the words and images of her digital story. however, barefaced can also mean “shameless and undisguised” and is synonymous with “bold, unabashed, unembarrassed, or brazen” (oxford university press, n.d.). perhaps this second interpretation is a more apt description of kelsey’s experience; by the end of the process, she was shameless and unembarrassed by her own emotional experience of cancer. this transformation is apparent in both her decision to include her crying video in the story and in the final lines of her voice over where she says, “i still have days where i am fearful about cancer, but i no longer ignore it. i say it loud and proud, and despite the fear now i can really smile.” kelsey’s acceptance of her emotional response to the delayed diagnosis was enhanced by the audience’s response. she had shown her true feelings to the world and had found acceptance and caring instead of judgement and disregard. tears were shed by both the participant and friends and family audiences because of the story content, but also because they understood what the story represented to kelsey; she had been able to share her true feelings for the first time. paradoxically, she could not have achieved her goal of sharing her true feelings if she had not discovered what those true feelings were through the process of writing and editing her digital story. in other words, she could not have shared her true face with the world until she understood what that was. “till we have faces”: narrative self-coherence and digital storytelling mike: whenever you don’t know what to do, just remember that the images are there to create a feeling. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 6 5 kelsey: ok. mike: so, what were you feeling in those moments? kelsey: [slow breath out, long pause]. . . like . . . [long pause, staring at the screen] the word “face” has a complex etymology, but its current form emerged from the latin facies which means “appearance, form, figure” and in modern times is commonly used in a literal, physiological sense to signify the “front of the head” (online etymology dictionary, n.d). however, the phrases that use the word, such as “save face,” “show your face,” “face the music,” and the previously discussed “barefaced,” all hint at its many symbolic uses. the hermeneutical excess of this word was first highlighted for me in the allegorical novel till we have faces: a myth retold, by c.s. lewis (1956/2017). the troubling lines that provided the title for the book continue to resonate deeply with me: i saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? how can they meet us face to face until we have faces? (p. 335) ever since reading this book and writing a report on it as an undergraduate student, i have interpreted “having a face” as being conscious of the entire self, the emotions, motivations, language, culture, history, and the resulting worldview that underlies and informs all our actions. this seed of understanding sown by lewis’ symbolism sat dormant for many years until it was fed and watered by gadamer’s (1960/2004) writings on “prejudice” and the historically effected consciousness. by highlighting both the importance of self-understanding and its tragic elusiveness, i believe lewis brings his readers to the same conclusion as gadamer: the importance of humility. as summarized eloquently by philosopher jean grondin (2003), “in a sense, the whole of gadamer’s hermeneutics wishes to remind us that we are not gods” (p. 96). our understanding of the infinite forces acting in and upon the world is limited, and therefore our understanding of ourselves as beings shaped by these forces is limited. as humans, we may catch momentary glimpses of our “true face,” but most often it is blurry and partially obscured. extrapolating lewis’ symbolism to the field of aya cancer survivorship, the question could be asked: how can ayas meet a cancer experience face to face until they have a face? in other words, how can ayas begin to heal from the psychosocial traumas of cancer until they understand what those traumas were and how and why they experienced them? cancer, as an interpretive, emotionally complex, existential event, does not “speak to us openly, nor let us answer” and therefore, the words must be “dug out of us” (lewis, 1956/2017, p. 335). as demonstrated by kelsey’s storyline in emerging horizons, the process of finding, telling, crafting, and sharing a digital story (laing et al., 2017; lang et al., 2019) could allow ayas to look deeply into their cancer experience, unearth the emotions that are below the surface, and discover their “true face.” angus and greenberg (2011), in their book working with narrative in emotion-focused therapy: changing stories, changing lives, discussed the concept of narrative self-coherence which could be described as a process in which “to better understand themselves, people continually symbolize, story, and explain themselves to themselves, and in so doing, construct an ongoing, emergent self-narrative that organizes their personal stories and provides a sense of lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 6 6 self-coherence” (p. 46). the “narrative process model” that is the mechanism through which this process occurs contains three primary modes of narrative engagement: external, internal, and reflexive (angus & greenberg, 2011). the external narrative mode is driven by the question “what happened?” which encourages a detailed and specific description of a meaningful moment. the internal narrative mode is guided by the question “what did i feel?” and entails the description and elaboration of subjective feelings and emotions connected to that moment. finally, the reflexive narrative mode asks “what does it mean?” and explores personal expectations, needs, and motivations in a way that attempts to make meaning of that moment. this narrative process model was embodied in kelsey’s dst experience and demonstrated how dst could help cultivate narrative self-coherence in aya cancer survivors, in other words, help them glimpse their own face so that they can share it with the world. in kelsey’s dst experience, the external narrative mode of “what happened?” occurred primarily in the initial evening workshop through the identification of meaningful moments, conversations with other workshop participants, and organizing these moments into a rough outline using five phase story structure (freytag’s pyramid, 1995). it was through this process that kelsey realized her delayed diagnosis was the aspect of her cancer experience on which she needed to focus. the internal narrative mode of “what did i feel?” was exemplified through one particularly striking moment on day one of the weekend workshop. kelsey called me over because she could not come up with image ideas for a piece of her story. i reminded her that images “are there to create a feeling” before asking what i have found to be one of the most productive questions in a dst experience, “what were you feeling in that moment?” kelsey responded with a resounding silence that said nothing, and everything, at the same time. as the camera moved closer and closer into her face, the deep emotional excavation taking place was made apparent. although kelsey’s silence was only ten seconds in the film, in real time it was close to a full minute. i almost spoke a couple of times in that minute, but always stopped short; i intuitively understood that the “word” was being dug out of her, and i needed to hold space for that to happen. this process of naming emotions and then representing them through images could be a primary ingredient in what has been called the “sneaky” or unexpected therapeutic process of dst (laing et al., 2017, p. 7). in the process of naming and selecting an image to represent it, ayas could both understand and instantiate their own emotional experience of cancer. the final reflexive narrative mode of “what does it mean?” is evident in kelsey’s overall story arc in emerging horizons. at the beginning of the friends and family screening, i mentioned that when i first connected with kelsey, she did not think she had a story to share. she responded sheepishly, with a nod, a smile, and by saying “yeah.” in that short exchange, it was clear that despite her nervousness to share the story, she no longer believed that it was not worth sharing. in other words, through the dst process her cancer experience had become both “meaningful and meaning filled” (angus & greenburg, 2011, p. 45) and had helped to break cancer’s grasp on her life. breaking cancer’s grasp kelsey: it’s funny. it’s a year ago, but even as i talk about this, i feel emotional. and, so, i know it has a grasp over me in some ways. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 6 7 the word “grasp” comes from the proto-indo-european root *ghrebhwhich means “to seize, reach” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). in one sense, ayas can be “seized” and held back from forward movement in their life because of cancer (e.g., as kelsey said in her digital story “fall behind. be a failure.”), but a cancer experience can also continue to “reach” a long way past the active-treatment phase and continue to influence the lives of aya long-term (barnett et al., 2016; jones et al., 2020; lang et al., 2018). some of the ayas in emerging horizons, like kenzie (five years post-treatment), derek (six years), and bethany (10 years), and were many years removed from their cancer experience but still felt the need to engage with it on some level. in my pre-interview with kelsey, she recognized that cancer still had a grasp on her life because of the significant emotion she experienced every time she thought about it. that portion of our conversation ended by me saying, "in my experience, decreasing cancer’s hold on you is an ongoing process,” and the result of this process is portrayed in kelsey’s storyline. during the story circle, kelsey had to stop a number of times as she read her story because of the overwhelming emotion. during each pause, she apologized. after reading her story she mused about how despite reading it multiple times, something about saying it out loud made her cry. she was embarrassed by her strong emotions, and at that point in the dst process it was apparent that cancer still held her tightly. however, by the end of the weekend, and at the friends and family screening, as she watched her story and engaged in discussion about it, that same emotion was not present; there was a genuine smile instead. validation of this internal transformation was provided by kelsey’s best friend during the friends and family screening discussion: everyone would always say, “well you look great. you look good.” and i think, i knew she was smiling, but not from the inside. and she had this front for a while and she was so strong, and now just being able to see her smile and know she is really smiling from the inside as well, it’s really nice to see. kelsey herself described the change that had occurred in her final interview. she stated, “i do think it [her story] changed a little bit. i refined it and was able to put my thoughts better together, and what i actually wanted to say.” concerning the friends and family screening specifically she said, “like, they got it! like, what i was trying to say for once, someone finally understood.” using the central symbol of her digital story as a metaphor, it could be said that through the dst process kelsey had been able to remove her mask and glimpse her own face, before revealing it to the world in and through her digital story. in that process, she was able to meet her cancer experience face to face for the first time, and from this agentic position, was able to break cancer’s grasp on her life, by grasping it instead. references angus, l.e., & greenberg, l.s. (2011). working with narrative in emotion-focused therapy: changing stories, healing lives. american psychological association. atkinson, s., & rubinelli, s. (2012). narrative in cancer research and policy: voice, lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 6 8 knowledge and context. critical review of oncology and hematology, 84(suppl 2), s11-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1040-8428(13)70004-0 barnett, m., mcdonnell, g., derosa, a., schuler, t., philip, e., peterson, l., touza, k., jhanwar, s., atkinson, t.m., & ford, j.s. (2016). psychosocial outcomes and interventions among cancer survivors diagnosed during adolescence and young adulthood (aya): a systematic review. journal of cancer survivorship, 10(5), 814–831. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-016-0527-6 freytag’s pyramid. (1995). merriam-webster’s encyclopedia of literature. merriam webster. gadamer, h.-g. (2004). truth and method (2nd ed.; j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). bloomsbury. (original work published 1960) grondin, j. (2003). the philosophy of gadamer (k. plant, trans.). mcgill-queen’s university. (original work published 1999) gubrium, a.c., hill, a.l., & flicker, s. (2013). a situated practice of ethics for participatory visual and digital methods in public health research and practice: a focus on digital storytelling. american journal of public health, 104(9), 1606-1614. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2013.301310 herbert, a., lyratzopoulos, g., whelan, j., taylor, r.m., barber, j., gibson, f., & fern, l.a. (2018). diagnostic timeliness in adolescents and young adults with cancer: a crosssectional analysis of the brightlight cohort. the lancet child & adolescent health, 2(3), 180-190. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2352-4642(18)30004-x jones, j.m., fitch, m., bongard, j., maganti, m., gupta, a., d'agostino, n., & korenblum, c. (2020). the needs and experiences of post-treatment adolescent and young adult cancer survivors. journal of clinical medicine, 9(5), 1444-1459. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm9051444 laing, c.m., moules, n.j., estefan, a., & lang, m.j. (2017). stories that heal: understanding the effects of creating digital stories with pediatric and adolescent/young adult oncology patients. journal of pediatric oncology nursing, 34(4), 272-282. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043454216688639 lang, m.j., giese-davis, j., patton, s.b., & campbell, d.j.t. (2018). does age matter? comparing post-treatment psychosocial outcomes in young adult and older adult cancer survivors with their cancer-free peers. psycho-oncology, 27(5), 1404-1411. https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.4490 lang, m., laing, c.m., moules, n.j., & estefan, a. (2019). words, camera, music, action: a methodology of digital storytelling in a health care setting. international journal of qualitative methods, 18, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919863241 https://doi.org/10.1016/s1040-8428(13)70004-0 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-016-0527-6 https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2013.301310 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2352-4642(18)30004-x https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm9051444 https://doi.org/10.1177/1043454216688639 https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.4490 https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919863241 lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 6 9 lewis, c.s. (2017). till we have faces: a myth retold. harperone. (original work published 1957) mckee, r. (1997). story: substance, structure, style and the principles of screenwriting. harpercollins. online etymology dictionary. (n.d.). face. in online etymology dictionary. retrieved november 3, 2020 from https://www.etymonline.com/word/face online etymology dictionary. (n.d.). grasp. in online etymology dictionary. retrieved november 3, 2020 from https://www.etymonline.com/word/grasp oxford university press. (n.d.) barefaced. in oed online. retrieved december 1, 2020, from https://www.oed.com/view/entry/15506 https://www.etymonline.com/word/face https://www.etymonline.com/word/grasp https://www.oed.com/view/entry/15506 corresponding author: katherine wong, rn phd candidate faculty of nursing email: katherine.wong1@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 january 22, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74588 an ephemeral light: the question of death in the artwork of children who are dying katherine wong abstract the question of death, and what happens after, is a query with no certain answer. philosophers, scientists, artists, poets, and healthcare providers have grappled with the question of death and how best to answer it. children with life-limiting illnesses (lli) who face death in childhood are in a unique situation where their typical sources of information (i.e., the adults in their lives) may not be able to come up with a suitable answer when asked what happens when we die. as plato stated, there is an inner child in all of us who is not totally convinced by assurances of an afterlife. what children with lli understand of death and dying is not always easily conveyed in everyday language but can be revealed in their artistic forms of expression. artwork, poetry, and stories seem to carry the unintelligibility of death so that both children and adults may cope with it. keywords children, life-limiting illness, understanding death, pediatric palliative care, hermeneutic philosophy for children with life-limiting illnesses and conditions (lli), their families, and their pediatric palliative care (ppc) providers, death in childhood is a present and looming threat. the experiences of children who are dying are not well researched (ghirotto et al., 2018; rahimzadeh et al., 2015); however, the artistic expressions of children with lli that are featured in scholarly literature (e.g., examples of drawings from therapy sessions) and in the humanities serve to wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 2 illuminate what such an experience may be like. the drawings and poems that are featured in this paper are some rare examples of the art of children with lli who are now deceased. their creations are not bound by the temporal and physiological limits of human beings, and their art is the stable and lasting form of their fleeting experiences, ready to be viewed by those who wish to understand (gadamer, 1986). hermeneutical interpretation of art has the quality of an encounter or experience, rather than a focus on taste or beauty, in which the viewer and the artwork engage in a kind of conversation that can lead to a different understanding of what is presented in the work (gadamer, 1986). my thesis work focuses on understanding the experiences of children who are dying through their artistic forms of expression. children with lli, especially young children and children with developmental delays, may face concepts and experience events that they do not have the vocabulary to articulate with words alone (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; kramer, 1971; sourkes, 1991, 2018). ppc teams often include child-life and art therapists who utilize arts-based therapies to facilitate communication and understanding with children, to assess coping skills, and to allow children the opportunity to express themselves in a safe and non-judgemental way (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; councill & ramsey, 2019; devlin, 2006; jones & weisenfluh, 2006; sourkes, 1991, 1995, 2018; sourkes et al., 2005). this paper was part of my doctoral candidacy examination and was written in response to the following statement and question: in examining the topic of the artistic expression of children who are dying, you have indicated that sometimes children may not have the language through words to express what they are thinking or feeling but they do have other forms of expression. is the difference in expression due to lack of words or connected to the unfathomable experience they are undergoing? in experiencing the artwork of children who are dying, both in my practice as a pediatric hospice nurse and in my scholarly undertakings, i have come to understand that, concealed in seemingly naïve and innocent words and images, is the ungraspable, unfathomable character of death. perhaps it is not always the case that children lack the vocabulary to express their experiences of dying, but that death itself presents all human beings, young and old, with the unsayable and the unthinkable. children’s understanding of death revisited the literature on children’s understanding of death has focused on developmental theory and standardized ways in which children come to a mature concept of death. the ppc literature has indicated that children who face lli may not yet possess the vocabulary necessary to express their feelings, experiences, and concerns about death and dying, as they are encountering these life events earlier than what is typical for their developmental stage (aasgaard & edwards, 2012; buckingham, 1983; councill & ramsey, 2019; devlin, 2006; rollins, 2005; sourkes, 1995, 2018a, 2018b). spinetta et al. (1973) indicated that children’s awareness of death may precede their ability to talk about it, and that a child who is dying may understand that they are going to die before they are able to verbally express it. how a child with lli understands death may affect the language they use to communicate their experiences of dying to their adult caregivers (buckingham, 1983; spinetta, 1975; sourkes, 1995; 2018a, 2018b). young children may equate death with a reversible separation, sleep, or the continuation of life under changed circumstances or form (bluebond-langner et al., 2012; koocher, 1973; nagy, 1948/1959; slaughter & griffiths, 2007). children between the ages of five and nine years may view death as a personified being, such as a skeleton or the grim reaper (nagy, 1948/1959). between six and 10 years of age, wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 3 children demonstrate an “adult,” “mature,” or “complete” understanding of death as inevitable, universal, irreversible, and caused by illness or injury that results in the cessation of bodily functions (bluebond-langner et al., 2012; glicken, 1978; ellis & stump, 2000; slaughter & griffiths, 2007; speece & brent, 1984). children’s understanding of death as described in developmental theories have provided a significant foundation for research and practice in ppc, informing when and how children with lli should be involved in decision-making (bluebond-langner et al., 2012; buckingham, 1983; larcher & carnevale, 2012), in research (ghirotto et al., 2018, rahimzadeh et al., 2015), and whether the diagnosis of lli should be disclosed to a child (buckingham, 1983; larcher & carnevale, 2012; stein et al., 2019). however, developmental theories have also been used to justify non-disclosure of illness or impending death for both children with lli and their siblings (matthews, 1989). for some adults facing the unspeakable character of pediatric death (rallison & moules, 2004), it may be comforting to think that a child who is dying does not understand the severity of their circumstances (matthews, 1989); as william wordsworth (2014) wrote, “a simple child . . .that lightly draws its breath, and feels its life in every limb, what should it know of death?” (“we are seven,” para. 1, emphasis added). a mature understanding of death that includes a conceptual grasp of irreversibility, inevitability, universality, causality, and non-functionality is a demonstration that one can describe a biological account of death. according to gadamer (1996), the “second enlightenment” that emerged as a result of advancements in the natural sciences has also brought about a “demythologizing of death” (p. 61). to maintain that describing the physiological facts of death is enough to shape one’s understanding of it is an oversimplification that neglects to consider the cultural, theological, or philosophical foundations for the understanding or meaning of death that many children and adults ascribe to (kenyon, 2001; speece & brent, 1984). the developmental approach to children’s views of death assumes that there is such a thing as an “adult” concept of death (kenyon, 2001). while developmental frameworks can be useful and informative for practitioners who regularly encounter children who are dying or bereaved, children’s reportedly immature understanding of death is often one that is shared with adults. when one considers how death appears in art, holy texts, and literature that are created by, and often for, adults, the concept of death frequently reverts to its supposedly childish origins. the history and tradition of death in the arts and humanities one’s understanding of death is informed by the history and tradition, the handed down meaning relations that structure one’s understanding of the world, into which one is thrown at birth (gadamer, 1960/2004). in the history of western thought, what someone believes about death may be informed by an explanation of physiological death as found in the natural sciences, while for others it may be situated in the tradition of the humanities or theology. the modern western tradition has also repressed the topic of death in conversation, emphasized the prolongation of life through artificial means, and removed death from family homes to institutions, culminating in a gradual removal of death from everyday life (buckingham, 1983; gadamer, 1996). the disappearance of death in society has limited the opportunities for children to witness and experience the death of others, which may have contributed to children’s incomplete or immature understanding of death as it appears in developmental and ppc literature. children’s views of wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 4 death may also be influenced by the history and tradition found in art and the humanities, as these disciplines have the quality making visible the subjects that matter to humans (george, 2020). figure 1 klimt, g. (1910-1915). death and life [painting]. in the public domain. figure 2 stokes. m. (1908) death and the maiden [painting]. in the public domain. adult artists and authors have frequently utilized an embodied being as a symbol of death in literature and art. klimt’s death and life (1910-1915, figure 1) and stokes’s death and the maiden (1908, figure 2) both feature personifications of death as a menace to the living. klimt’s painting denotes a clear separation of death from a group of sleeping, intertwined, humans flushed with life. in the brothers grimm fairy tale godfather death (2002), death presided over thousands of candles, representing the lives of humans, as they burn and extinguish. perhaps the wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 5 personification of death in nagy’s (1948/1959) investigation of hungarian children reflected the ways in which children interpret death as it appears in art and literature, especially fairy tales aimed at teaching a moral or lesson to children, rather than a pre-mature concept of biological death. according to developmental theory, people over the age of five years should understand that death is different from ordinary separation, that it is not the continuation of life in an alternate form, and that it is irreversible. however, in his theology of the body, pope john paul ii (2005) described the resurrection as a reunion of the soul and body: “the resurrection is not only a manifestation of the life that conquers death . . . but it is also a revelation of the ultimate destiny of man in all the fullness of his psychosomatic nature” (p. 183). in plato’s apology (ca. 399 b.c.e./1954), socrates stated, death is one of two things. either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything, or, as we are told, it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another. now if there is no consciousness but only a dreamless sleep, death must be a marvelous gain. (40c) in these texts, death might be considered the continuation of life in an altered form or in a different space. death might be like sleep, it might be a separation of the soul and body, sometimes with the opportunity to reunite with one’s body in the afterlife. socrates readily admitted his own ignorance of death in apology (gosetti-ferencei, 2014; plato, ca. 399 b.c.e./1954), despite his adamant defence of “evidence that the soul is deathless” in phaedo (plato, ca. 360 b.c.e./1954, 114d). moreover, it is the inner child of the adults in phaedo who require reassurances for the immortality of the soul (gadamer, 2016; plato, ca. 360 b.c.e./1954); as cebes remarked, “suppose that we are afraid socrates, and try to convince us. or not so much that it is our true selves who are afraid – perhaps there is a child with this kind of fear hidden in us too” (77e). if historical leaders of thought and faith did not, or could not, offer a “mature” concept of death, to conclude that children’s views of death are pre-mature or incomplete is unwarranted. death anxiety in adults may compel them to shield children from death, under the pretext that it may be “too much” for them (buckingham, 1985); however, in these situations, it may be the adult who is protecting themselves from facing the unintelligibility of death (bluebond-langner, 1978; matthews, 1989), for no matter the circumstances that one is born into, a genuine understanding of death itself is beyond the limits of human experience (gadamer, 1996, 2016; heidegger, 1927/1962). on understanding death, gadamer (1996) offered, . . .we can ask ourselves when is it that a child learns to grasp the fact of death. i am not sure if modern psychology is able to give any sort of clear answer to this question which would be acceptable to the enlightened society of our culture. presumably it is bound up with that interconnection . . . between life and the repression of death that the knowledge that we ourselves must die remains almost veiled, even when, as mature adults, this knowledge has become established at the deepest inner level within us. (p. 65) wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 6 the differences between mature and immature concepts of death become secondary considerations when one contemplates whether an understanding of death itself is possible for human beings. death is not, strictly speaking, an experience or event that one can encounter and relate back to a meaningful whole of life (gadamer, 2016). while developmental frameworks for children’s views of death may be useful in practice, the focus on the sequential evolution of children’s understanding of death fails to address how human beings might comprehend a situation in which they no longer exist. the distance between adult and child horizons of understanding, and all the life experiences that unfold in between, may explain the level of sophistication with which children and adults can discuss or theorize death. however, when it comes to the question of death itself, children and adults are equally unexperienced; as rilke (1923/2009) said of death, “we know nothing of this going. it excludes us” (enter death i, para. 1). death as an unanswered question mattie stepanek (1990-2004) was a child poet who died of autonomic mitochondrial myopathy, a progressive, neurodegenerative disease that causes complications such as seizures, muscle weakness, and heart failure. he was predeceased by two siblings with the same lli, and wrote several poems about bereavement, living with lli, his experiences with hospitalization, and dying. stepanek was a child who was able to frame his experiences in poetic language, and his poems speak to the unintelligibility of death. in his poem unanswered questions, following the death of his brother, stepanek wrote, “i know why he died, but i also don’t know why” (stepanek, 2001, p. 31). the simultaneous knowledge and ignorance of death highlights the distinction between a child’s ability to explain death as a physiological fact and their understanding of death as an “existential-ontological” perplexity (heidegger, 1927/1962, p. 280). the artwork of children who are dying express that, like adults, children grapple with the unintelligibility of death. as the title of stepanek’s poem suggested, questions of what death is, when it reveals itself, and why it must occur have no answers (gadamer, 2016). traces of death death is a fact of life that conceals itself in everyday living. heidegger’s (1927/1962) extensive examination of human being-in-the-world, which he called dasein, is self-evident and universal, while simultaneously veiled in an a priori enigma in “the fact that we already live in an understanding of being” (p. 23). dasein is always “ahead-of-itself” and continuously projecting its being into a future in which death is certain (heidegger, 1927/1962, p. 279). heidegger (1927/1962) maintained that dasein can either evade death by situating it as a “not-yet” possibility (p. 303), or dasein can realize death as “the possibility of the impossibility of existence” (p. 307) and use the prospect of non-being to inform the present. ricoeur (2009) wrote that any answers we may have regarding the survival of the dead in the afterlife are connected to a “question not called into question” (p. 10), and all responses are answers to a question posed by survivors, concerning the state of those already deceased. gadamer (2016), wrote that death is always necessarily concealed in its unintelligibility: being cannot even think death, let alone face it as life’s most extreme possibility (j. grondin, n. keane, & j. risser, personal communication, april 25, 2021). for gadamer, one can merely grasp “a trace of death” (2016, p. 69) when thinking of it, for there is something incomprehensible about the fact that a wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 7 being who can anticipate the future will one day cease to exist (gadamer, 1996, 2016). these traces come into sharp focus when one experiences the death of the other, as death always leaves an impression on those who remain, along with the reminder that it is there. in his poem rebecca’s reminder, stepanek (2001) wrote: it is sad when a friend dies. death becomes suddenly painful. suddenly real. suddenly reminding.1 the abrupt reminder that being is finite, that non-being is a real possibility at any time and not simply a perpetual-not-yet, is the anxiety of being anxious about nothing, or a “no-thingness” as far as empirical objects are concerned (n. keane, personal communication, september 24., 2021): it is “the uncanniness of being anxious about nothing is precisely the true anxiety” that is often concealed by one’s certainty of being alive (gadamer, 2016, p. 69; heidegger, 1927/1962). it is conceivable that the facts of physiological expiry is also a trace of death for those who survive the deceased person: it is the inevitable, universal, irreversible state of the nonfunctionality of the human body, that allows the bereaved to state, “i know why he died,” while simultaneously leaving no reassurances for when one correspondingly acknowledges “i also don’t know why he died” (stepanek, 2001, p. 31). the uncertainty of life in the face of life-limiting illness figure 3 i don’t know which side of the rainbow i am on. from “food, toys, and love: pediatric palliative care,” by sourkes et al., 2005, current problems in pediatric and adolescent health care, 35(9), p. 370 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2005.09.002). copyright 2005 by elsevier. reprinted with permission. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2005.09.002 wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 8 life-limiting or life-threatening illnesses leave traces of death. a drawing of a rainbow by a seven-year-old girl (sourkes et al., 2005, figure. 3) waiting to hear if her cancer had relapsed is an example of art that children with lli create in ppc practice (sourkes et al., 2005). according to sourkes et al. (2005), the girl drew a series of rainbows as she waited for her results. the rainbow cuts through the middle of the page, between a sun on one side and dark flecks on the other. gadamer (1986) wrote that the language in which images speak is a speechless language, though not in the sense that an image has nothing to say. there is a presented world in an image, one that summons language to re-present what is shown in words; it is a disclosure of “the matter at issue or the thing that is meant” (gadamer, 1986; risser, 2019, p. 4). for the girl who was awaiting her test results, her rainbow allowed her to summon the language to disclose: “i don’t know which side of the rainbow i’m on.” viewed interpretively, one could begin to understand the experience of residing in the liminal space between the enigma of health and its counterpoint in the actuality of illness, as the character of health is most apparent in its absence (gadamer, 1996). it may be that she would not have concerned herself with the other side of the rainbow if the status of her health had not been in question. in health and in everyday living, “our own impermanence is concealed from us” (rilke, 2009, the impermanence we are, para. 1), but when one is presented with a possibility or certainty of illness, one’s ephemerality is felt (gadamer, 1996). sourkes (1995) commented that even if a child has not concluded that their illness will result in their death, they may express an awareness that their life is in jeopardy or their uncertainty about living. in tombstone (sourkes, 2018a, p. 4), a boy drew a picture of himself lying in bed with a thought bubble of a grave inscribed with “r.i.p” above his head and stated: “when i’m just lying in bed in the hospital and in pain, this [the drawing] is what i’m thinking about” (sourkes, 2018a, p. 4). the boy expressed his concern over the possibility of dying from his illness without ever saying the word death, for he said “this,” the drawing, and not “dying” was what he had thought about. in the uncertain space between terminal illness and health, the threat of death “becomes suddenly real, suddenly reminding” (stepanek, 2001, p. 37). the child hidden in the human being that is not convinced of any claims to knowledge or understanding of death (gadamer, 2016; plato, ca. 360 b.c.e./1954) expressed their uncertainty in stepanek’s poetry and in drawings of rainbows. wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 9 figure 4 hirémy-hirschl, a. (1898) souls on the banks of the acheron [painting]. in the public domain. if one cannot think of death, it would follow that scientific or conceptual language cannot adequately carry the unfathomable character of non-being: scientific and theoretical language are one’s mode of relating to the world-that-is. even hermes, the messenger god after whom hermeneutics was named (grondin, 1994; moules et al., 2015), offers no words on death for mortal souls to interpret in hirémy-hirschl’s (1898) souls on the banks of the acheron (figure. 4). however, when confronted with the unintelligibility of death, as it is when one encounters an image, there is still an attempt to summon language of some kind, to try to understand. on routledge’s (2016) podcast, speaker dennis schmitt stated, the truth of mortality is not at all to be understood conceptually . . . it is a singular truth. it is, however, the province of literature. above all, it belongs to the language of poetry, in which language is pressed most powerfully into its idiomatic being. (routledge, 2016) it is in the broader domain of art and the humanities that one might find something of the unintelligibility of death to understand. in death, something absolute happens (routledge, 2016), and in thinking death, one thinks beyond oneself and thinks oneself away, while at once revealing the certainty of one’s being-in-the-world through the very act of thinking (gadamer, 2016). likewise, the creation of art is the occurrence of an absolute (gadamer, 1986): in its being made and in its being encountered, a work of art stands for itself, resisting “pure conceptualization” (p. 37) and imposing its own temporality on the viewer. the experience of art is also a thinking beyond oneself, as a work of art simultaneously removes the person experiencing it from the context of their life while relating them back to the whole of their beingin-the-world (gadamer, 1986). there are traces of the unintelligibility of death in art and the humanities: in klimt’s skeleton (1910-1915, appendix, figure 1), in drawings of rainbows and tombstones (appendix, figures 3, 4), and in the poetry of stepanek and rilke. a question of dying the current literature on children’s understanding of death and ppc is informed by a comprehensive collection of statistical data from research conducted on children (kenyon, 2001; speece & brent, 1984). research conducted with children, especially those who are experiencing dying, would likely yield different results. as gadamer (2007) emphasized, wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 10 thus, what is established by statistics seems to be a language of facts, but which questions these facts answer and which facts would begin to speak if other questions were asked are hermeneutical questions. (p. 84) the questions about death that researchers have posed to establish theories for children’s understanding of death are ones that had anticipated responses which aligned with the developmental stage of the participants. koocher (1973) categorized children based on their age, intelligence, and cognitive functioning, and asked questions (e.g., “what makes things die?”) to determine if children’s responses best reflected their age or developmental stage. as stepanek’s (2001) poem unanswered questions alluded to, knowing the “what” of why things die, and knowing the “why” of why things die, are two separate questions; one which has a possible answer, and one that does not. a death anxiety scale might reveal a statistically significant difference between the stage of development in which children with lli are aware of death compared to children with chronic illness (spinetta et al., 1973); but a researcher who acknowledges that children and adults are equally perplexed by the unintelligibility of death might ask different questions of children with lli. death, according to gadamer (2016) and heidegger (1927/1962), is not an in-the-world phenomenon, event, or intelligible thought; dying and witnessing the death of the other, however, are experiences in the purview of human beings. perhaps in ppc practice and research, the question of death, both physiological and ontological, should come after the question of one’s dying (n. keane, personal communication, april 25, 2021). attaining a “good death” may not be possible, insofar as death remains a mystery to human beings. however, “good dying,” while still living, is not only possible, but is where the dying person, and those caring for that person, are able to learn from the experience. stepanek (2001) wrote about his living up until death, including his experiences of hospitalization in the intensive care unit: “lives are not always saved. i feel pain, intense at moments, but i also feel the hurt of anxiety, and neither are good for the spirit” (p. 36). stepanek’s words serve as a reminder for ppc practitioners that the care of children with lli includes both the relief of physical and spiritual pain (world health organization, 2018), and that the care of the spirit may require a better understanding of the experiences of children with lli. while heidegger (1927/1962) attested that “no one can take the other’s dying away from him” (p. 284), it is one’s death, not the living leading up to dying, that the other cannot take away. in practice, there are many occasions where the fullness of one’s dying is subdued or removed, sometimes for the benefit of the dying person. palliative sedation, the initiation of medications to induce a comatose state until the time of natural death, in a way removes the dying person from their experience of dying. i frequently encounter situations in practice where adults have chosen not to disclose the diagnosis of lli to a child, and while it is often the case that children with lli are aware of the fact they are dying (bluebond-langner, 1978; sourkes, 1995; stein, 2019), in leaving it unacknowledged, the child’s full experience dying could be taken away from them. what children with lli consider to be good dying may be different from an adult’s perspective, not due to an incomplete understanding death, but because children who are dying are experiencing something that adults are unlikely to have encountered, simply because they have survived to adulthood (wong, 2019). an ephemeral light wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 11 when gadamer (1996) referred to the “demythologizing of death” (p. 61) in modern society, he may have been alluding to phaedo (plato, ca. 360 b.c.e./1954), to the inner child in the human being who does not feel reassured by the proofs of immortality that socrates provided. in response to the child who is afraid that their soul will be blown away by the wind when it leaves their body, socrates offered this advice: “what you should do . . . is to pronounce an enchantment over him every day until you have charmed his fears away” (plato, ca. 360 b.c.e./1954, 77e). socrates acknowledged that while his audience may not have been fully convinced by his rational arguments for the immortality of the soul, he emphasized that they should still allow themselves to be comforted (i.e., enchanted) by the stories and myths that allow one to confront the fear of death or imagine an afterlife (plato, ca. 360 b.c.e./1954, 114de). in his essay death as a question, gadamer (2016) closed with the fairy tale godfather death (grimm & grimm, 2002), a story that helps carry the unintelligibility of death in a way that theoretical or scientific language cannot (n. keane, personal communication, april 25, 2021). as the story goes, death brought his godson to a cave full of thousands of candles: “see,” said death, “these are the lights of men’s lives. the large ones belong to children, the medium-sized ones to married people in their prime, and the little ones belong to old people; but children and young folks likewise have often only a tiny candle.” (p. 179) in his horror at seeing his rapidly shortening candle, death’s godson tried to place another candle on top of his, but in his haste accidentally extinguished his own flame. the burning candle, gadamer proposed, is a fitting image for human life and its temporal limits, “because in it the finite and ephemeral character of our existence is symbolically represented” (gadamer, 2016, p. 70). while the taller candles burn slowly, their flames flickering back and forth in a dimming and brightening sway, “the flickering of the candle on the verge of burning itself out seems at times to spread a wee bit more brightness than the quietly burning candle” (gadamer, 2016, p. 70). a child’s flame, lit on a tiny candlestick and already on the verge of burning out, must then burn brilliantly for the entirety of its existence. one can focus on the length of the candlestick, on the life that will be “snuffed out before it has unfolded” (solnit, 1965, p. 693), or one can turn their attention to what is illuminated in the glow of that brightly burning flame. ricoeur (2009) referred to the “emergence of the essential” (p. 15) as the grace that differentiates individuals at the end of life. just as a candle seems to burn brighter on the cusp of extinguishing, ricoeur (2009) similarly described the dying person’s “mobilization of the deepest resources of life in the coming to light of the essential” (p. 15) as an affirmation that they are still living. ricoeur (2009) offered that where one chooses to direct their gaze in the presence of a person who is dying is an ethical domain, wherein those who truly accompany the dying do so with compassion and a willingness to imagine the struggle of the individual who, while dying, is “still living until dead” (p. 18). ricoeur (2009) made the distinction between viewing the situation as though one were a “spectator anticipating the already-dead” (p. 22) and the perspective that attends to all that is revealed when one witnesses the end of a life, a “gaze that sees the dying person as still living, as calling on the deepest resources of life” (p. 22). the latter is the gaze of ppc practitioners: it is an attestation offered to the child who is dying, in a wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 12 “gesture of accompanying . . . between understanding and friendship” (ricoeur, 2009, p. 22) that safeguards the quietly burning candle from becoming invisible to the world prior to it being extinguished forever (n. keane, personal communication, september 24, 2021). perhaps in situations where adults are unable to answer children’s questions of death, the gesture of accompanying them in imagination and in compassion (ricoeur, 2009) will offer some comfort to the inner child in all of us who is not fully convinced by any claims of knowledge of the afterlife. ephemeral, from the greek root ephemeros, means “lasting or living only one day” or “shortlived,” but can also mean “for the day” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). children with lli and their families often live “for the day.” sourkes (1995) shared that, during a therapy session, a young child with a lli drew a picture of her family and stated, “we don’t plan ahead like we used to. we live each day as it comes” (p. 119). all being, not just being-in-childhood, is a process of becoming (heidegger, 1927/1962). in my accompanying children with lli in their living and dying, i have observed that some are able to let go of the future that most children expect to live out in a way that allows them to embrace the present, who they are becoming in that moment, and not who they might have grown up to be: “the children too, even the very small ones, didn’t just have any child’s death; they gathered themselves and died what they already were and what they would have become” (rilke, 1982, p. 16). conclusion according to his mother, stepanek’s last word was “yes” (demkovich, 2019); but, just as a child’s first utterance is not their first word (risser, 2019), “yes” was merely stepanek’s last verbalization, as his poetry continues to speak to those who encounter it. while it is a mysterious last word to have spoken, rilke (2009) may have understood something similar: “life always says yes and no simultaneously. death (i implore you to believe) is the true yea-sayer. it stands before eternity and says only: yes” (our closest friend, line 9-15). children who have died or are dying have something to teach the living. while being is ephemeral, the artworks that children who are dying leave behind endure. like the luminous glow of a candle on the verge of extinguishing, children’s artwork can have a “campfire effect” (rollins, 2005, p. 215): the ability of art to draw one in, focus attention on the matter at hand, and summon language in such a way that what is presented in the work “shines forth” (risser, 2012, p. 108). while the question of death may remain unanswerable, those who have tried to convey their experiences of dying and confronting the unintelligibility of death through art and literature have left the living a wonderful gift. acknowledgements this paper was originally written for my doctoral candidacy exam. i would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, professor nancy moules, for years of stimulating conversations and the question that led to this work: in examining the topic of the artistic expression of children who are dying, you have indicated that sometimes children may not have the language through words to express what they are thinking or feeling but they do have other forms of expression. is the difference in expression due to lack of words or connected to the unfathomable experience they are undergoing? what might children’s artistic expressions teach wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 1 13 us about what children understand and what they are experiencing? i was asked to work out a hermeneutic analysis of my thesis topic, the artistic expression of children who are dying, and to approach this paper as though i was writing an interpretation of this phenomenon to demonstrate my readiness to conduct hermeneutic research. i would like to acknowledge the contributions of the philosophers in the gadamer reading group, a bi-monthly seminar hosted by professor david vessey and the north american society for philosophical hermeneutics. in particular, i would like to thank professors jean grondin and james risser for their reflections on gadamer’s (2016) death as a question, which were most helpful while writing this paper. i would like to thank dr. niall keane, whose comments at the gadamer reading group were critical to the development of the thesis of this paper. dr. keane also took the time to read this paper following my candidacy exam and offered his feedback, thoughts, and further reading which deepened my interpretations. i consider it a great honour to have the guidance of such esteemed and generous hermeneutic philosophers and researchers, who have demonstrated the principles of gadamer’s hermeneutics in all their interactions with me. my gratitude also extends to jeni stepanek, mattie’s mother, who gave me permission to faithfully cite mattie’s poetry in this paper. notes 1 from journey through heartsongs (p. 37), by m. j. t. stepanek, 2001, hyperion. copyright 2001 by mattie j. t. stepanek. reprinted with permission. references aasgaard, t., & edwards, m. 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(2018). integrating palliative care and symptom relief into paediatrics: a who guideline for health care planners, implementers and managers. retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/274561/9789241514453eng.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cppeds.2005.09.002 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.2307/1129915 https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/52/6/841 https://doi.rg/10.1016/s0140-6736(18)33201-x https://eclecticlight.co/2020/01/05/paintings-for-our-time-death-and-the-maiden/ https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.69210 https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/274561/9789241514453-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/274561/9789241514453-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y corresponding author: leah j verburg, rn, master’s student, faculty of nursing, university of calgary email: ljverbur@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 october 8, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.76109 open-hearted flesh: burn injuries and interpretation leah j verburg, graham mccaffrey, &vincent gabriel abstract this paper aims to describe the interpretive nature of burn care nursing using an example from the first author’s practice. it asserts how burn injuries are uniquely situated from a hermeneutic perspective as an embodied change that alters the way a burn injured person lives in the world. this paper was written for an assignment in a hermeneutic methodology class, focused on the role of the burns nurse, and further expanded in relation to the hermeneutic significance of burn injuries. it demonstrates the fit of hermeneutics as a way of understanding nursing practice and burn injuries and serves as a support to the use of hermeneutics in the author’s master of nursing thesis project exploring the experiences of burn survivors. keywords nursing, burns, hermeneutics, embodiment hermeneutic philosophy rests on assumptions that interpretation is a fundamental way people make sense of their world and themselves. these interpretations are all situated in social, cultural, and historical contexts (mccaffrey et al., 2012). burn injuries are an extreme form of human experience for the person injured, and for the care providers. the delivery of care from providers requires knowledge, services, and skilled practitioners to optimize outcomes. burn injuries are complex, traumatic injuries that result in lifelong physical scarring and dysfunctional skin. the resultant embodied change after injury alters the way burn survivors are situated within the world with their scars as constant reminders of what occurred. in this paper, i (first author) will provide a rationale for the interpretive nature of burn injuries. i will draw an example from my nursing practice to demonstrate the interpretive nature of burn nursing practice. ultimately, i will verburg, mccaffrey & gabriel journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 15 2 demonstrate how the injury itself to the person who suffers it and the nursing care that follows are always moving in an interchange of simultaneous interpretation. burn injuries burn injuries have a particular place within the interpretive nature of being. burn injuries carry history and context that impact the ways in which people interpret them. historically, men and women were burned at the stake as capital punishment for crimes such as heresy and witchcraft. slaves were burned by branding to identify them as property. modern villains in films such as freddy krueger are horrifically scarred from burn injuries. the modern portrayal of scarring in villains attaches it to fear and evil. these historical and contemporary meanings attached to burning or being burned, shape the way in which the public view burn injuries and the subsequent scarring. advances in burn care mean that more people live with the impacts of severe burn injuries than ever before (capek et al., 2018). these injuries the lifelong sequelae are unimaginable to most people and even to many healthcare providers. burn injuries are painful, traumatic, physiologically complex and result in lifelong physical and psychological recovery as burn survivors report having to adjust to a "new normal" (burnett et al., 2014; jeschke et al., 2020). burn survivors suffer from physical changes including stiffness of burn scar that limits movement and burn scar pruritus (burnett et al., 2014). they also experience emotional distress, anxiety, and difficulties with body image (grieve et al., 2020). these injuries serve as everlasting reminders of traumatic events and their changed perspective and perceived place in the world. modern hermeneutic philosopher richard kearney (2015) offers a way of understanding burn injuries in a particular interpretive light. “flesh is open-hearted; it is where we experience our greatest vulnerability. it is the site where we are most keenly attentive to wounds and scars, to preconscious memories and traumas, as even our navel reminds us” (kearney, 2015, p. 105). he argues that hermeneutics begins in the flesh, in our skin, in our embodied being. he also asserts that it is interpretation of flesh that is what first allows us to differentiate between ourselves and others. our skin is a medium through which we interpret and are interpreted in the world. the skin is an organ through which we interact through sensation of temperature, of pain, of touch, and of being touched. our skin is an intrinsic element of how we interpret the world. therefore, the appearance and function of our skin provides an instrument from which we interpret ourselves and others. burn injuries cause permanent change in the function and appearance of skin in burn survivors. burn wounds are typically classified into four categories: superficial, superficial partial-thickness, deep-partial thickness, and full-thickness (jeschke et al., 2020). superficial and superficial partial-thickness injuries can heal without surgical treatment and usually result in no to minimal scarring. deep-partial thickness injuries can heal without surgical intervention but may result in significant scarring with or without surgical intervention. full-thickness injuries require surgical intervention to heal. the standard treatment for deep-partial thickness and full-thickness burn wounds is early wound debridement and autologous split-thickness skin grafting. even though autologous grafting achieves wound healing, it results in permanently dysfunctional skin (burnett et al., 2014; jeschke et al., 2020). burned skin replaced with a skin graft becomes verburg, mccaffrey & gabriel journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 15 3 thickened and tight. the skin has irregular sensation such as sensory loss and temperature sensitivity (holavanahalli et al., 2010). burn survivors also report long term itching at their grafts and scars (holavanahalli et al., 2010). if we follow kearney’s assertions that our skin is intrinsic to our interpretations and interactions with the world, burn injuries permanently change the way survivors sense and interact with their worlds (burnett et al., 2014; holavanahalli et al., 2010) as kearney (2015) writes: “it is my flesh that inserts me – body and soul – into the flesh world” (p. 110). therefore, when the flesh is forever altered, one never fits their previous life and world quite the same. burn survivors must adjust to a "new normal" post-injury and may find that they see their place in the “flesh world” differently as they return to pre-injury social and cultural contexts, and furthermore, others may see them differently (burnett et al., 2014). this experience of the “new normal” speaks to the interpretive nature of our lives. the contextualised change in a burn survivor's viewpoint mirrors the ongoing search for meaning at the core of hermeneutic philosophy, and interpretive practice. here, burn survivors are forced into reconceptualizing their identities and their lives and achieve the seemingly insurmountable task of making sense of the meaning of their injuries. burn nursing as an interpretive practice like the interpretive nature of burn injuries, nurses caring for burn patients engage in interpretive practice daily. i will demonstrate this with an example from my nursing practice. i believe several parts of this story have something to add to the conversation of the interpretive nature of burn nursing practice. when i first started working in burns, i felt that every time i came home, i smelt like the burnt flesh i had provided wound care on that day. i was surprised at what a human being could survive and could hardly fathom how people continued in their lives after such significant injuries. over time, i stopped noticing the smell of burnt and raw flesh, but i never got used to the resiliency of the patients for whom i cared. still early in my nursing career on the burn unit but with gained familiarity of the patient population, i had a patient who had suffered severe burns from an automobile accident while working as a truck driver. he was middle-aged and had a wife and young children. his burn injury occurred over more than 70 percent of his total body surface area. after several months in intensive care, he was transferred to the burn unit, where he stayed for even longer. over these months, i grew to build a strong working relationship with him and his wife. this was not the first patient i had cared for who had suffered such significant injuries, so i was somewhat familiar with what to expect. this story takes place after one of the many surgeries this patient had undergone. he returned to the unit from the post-anesthetic recovery room to my care in the burn unit. i could see he was distressed. in the preceding hours, skin grafting surgery was performed in which he had a thin layer of skin shaved off both thighs and moved to his arms where it was now held in place by several hundred staples. verburg, mccaffrey & gabriel journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 15 4 as part of his initial assessment, i recorded his vital signs, the first basic skill i learned in nursing school. only i did not ask him to rate his pain as the vital signs flowsheet i would later have to complete would ask me to do. it was unnecessary. i knew his pain was “a ten out of ten” because i had seen him there before. the last time i saw him this way, it was during a 3-hour wound care session where myself and three other healthcare providers changed dressings on all four of his limbs and his back. his back at that time, was raw flesh. his pain during that wound care was seemingly impossible to control while maintaining any reasonable respiratory drive. after that shift, i cried for several hours over his suffering. by his next dressing change we were able to advocate for procedural sedation so that never happened again. after this surgical procedure, his entire body shook as he said nothing to me. he looked at me with tears welling in his eyes, the same look i had seen before during his wound care i described before. his wife was in the corner of the room, looking at me with what i read as a similar sense of desperation for someone to help him. i quickly reviewed my medication orders and considered his current vital signs. his heart rate was very high; most other vitals fell within normal ranges. i gave him the maximum dose of narcotic and every other adjuvant pain treatment i had on order, at doses one would not give to the average post-surgical patient, but i knew i could safely give to my patient because i had given him far more than that in the past. i also knew that it would not be enough, but it would not get us anywhere if i called the surgical resident responsible for his orders without trying with what i already had. surely, what i could give in his order set was not even close to what would be needed to control his pain. now i could demonstrate that to plead my case to the surgical resident, i called to advocate for more options and higher doses with eventual success. while waiting for the new medications to have an effect, i just sat with him. his wife sat in the corner of the room, and i sat next to him, my hand resting gently on his dressing-wrapped arm, exchanging eye contact with each other while we waited. i had done all that i could at that moment. he and his wife knew that, as i had kept them updated on everything i was doing to try help him. in the meantime, i sat with them in the pain. his pain from his raw skin and exposed nerve endings, her pain of watching her husband suffer, and my frustration of not being able to do more. his pain eventually decreased to a level that was bearable enough to rest after what was probably ninety minutes. it felt like a lifetime. he finally settled. his breathing relaxed, the distress in his eyes dissipated and he drifted into rest. his wife, who rarely spoke more than a few words, surprised me as she quickly shuffled across the room and wrapped her arms around me. “his pain is better when you are here,” she said. now, i do not share that story to show that i am a special nurse with the power to decrease pain with my mere presence. i share it as a single example to demonstrate the complexity of burn nursing that requires interpretation within context, with particular patients, at particular times. firstly, his heart rate may have warranted serious concern for an arrhythmia in a different context. however, his tachycardia was a result of severe pain and persistent hypermetabolism following large burn injury. because i knew this from experience with other patients and my experience with him, his tachycardia did not warrant concern where it might have otherwise. secondly, my experience in communicating with surgical residents told me that i needed to try with what i had first before i could convince them to give me more to work with. i often think of verburg, mccaffrey & gabriel journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 15 5 why i would have had to prove this. sometimes i have thought it is because maybe the physicians think they know better than the nurses. however, when i conceptualize it now, as i understand nursing practice to be interpretive, so is medicine. my experience as his nurse and knowledge of analgesic dosing allowed me to interpret his pain as beyond the capacity of the available drugs to manage. the surgical resident that happened to be on call that week was not equipped with this knowledge and therefore lacked the ability to anticipate the patients need. so the resident required more evidence before providing more drug orders for the patient. my interpretation was personal experience based on past knowledge. i had more “data” to work with. the resident was working with only current information to be supplemented by future report of the affects. i had not just pain ratings or medical history but also a relationship with the patient through which i understood the needs differently. this was the kind of knowing that allowed me to interpret his needs based on a few seconds of eye contact. interpretive practice occurs in partly transparent layers, one layer on top of the other to form a final picture of a particular patient in a particular time. knowledge of pathophysiology and pharmacology which forms the basis of nursing knowledge sits as a foundational layer. knowledge of the healthcare system and of roles and responsibilities of interdisciplinary healthcare providers and the navigation of those relationships is cultivated through experience and layers onto the foundation. finally, the fundamental and existential kind of interpretation of a human experience formed through history, context, and relationship opens a layer which the picture could not be complete without. when i chose to sit with my patient, i did not do it because he asked me to or because i or others had done that before. what i really wanted to do as an act of self-protection was leave the room because to be witness to that kind of pain is exhausting. nevertheless, instead of what i wanted to do, i sat with him and his wife in the pain. to me, the only thing that seemed worse than being in the kind of pain he and his wife were in was to feel that way and feel alone. in that moment i offered him and his wife that which nurses are often known for – compassion. the etymological root of compassion is “com,” meaning “with,” and “passion,” meaning “to suffer” (compassion, n.d.). there i sat, suffering with him. in reflection now, i can see that i did that because it is what my mother would have done for me when there was nothing else left to be done. here, i can see where my history of suffering affected my interpretation of what this patient and his wife needed. conclusion i added and removed, wrote, and re-wrote several sections to this paper, trying to describe how nursing is interpretive. something i know it to be inherently true but it is harder to describe than i imagined when i started to write. when i used to describe to people why i wanted to be a nurse, perhaps rather than a physician, i described wanting to have time to be with the people i was caring for, knowing them in some way more than knowing their diagnoses and the appropriate treatment protocols. treating the human body as a series of biological processes interacting together to form processes would never be enough for me. now, this is not to say that practicing medicine is not interpretive. however, my early experiences with neurosurgeons and geneticists told me that physicians did not have time for the kinds of things that make people who they are beyond their health. things like history, context, and emotions that play into people’s health experiences. the kinds of things that allow you to see yourself in another and, in that recognition, verburg, mccaffrey & gabriel journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 15 6 understand something new about them and, maybe, about yourself. this is the kind of knowing that is built in relationships and experiences seems inherently human, and critical to individualised care. in this paper, i have offered a brief discussion of how burnsnursing is an interpretive practice. i have given an example of a story from practice to demonstrate the interpretive nature of burn nursing. although nurses deal with the world of science and often objective goals for health, we consistently use our history and experience to interpret our work and the history and context of the person for whom we care. moreover, using kearney’s insights into flesh as a medium of interpretation, i have suggested that burn injuries themselves should be understood as an interpretive event, forcing burn patients to reinterpret their interactions in the world. all nursing is an interpretive practice because being human in interaction with the world is interpretive. burn nursing presents an especially deep instance of nurses needing to recognize the work of (re)interpretation that patients undergo. references burnett, l.n., carr, e., tapp, d., raffin bouchal, s., horch, j. d., beirnaskie, j., & gabriel, v. (2014). patient experiences living with split-thickness skin grafts. burns, 40(6), 1097-1105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2014.03.005 capek, k.d., sousse, l.e., hundeshagen, g., voigt, c.d., suman, o.e., finnerty, c.c., jennings, k., & herndon, d.n. (2018). contemporary burn survival. journal of the american college of surgeons, 226(4), 453–463. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2017.12.045 compassion. (n.d.) in online etymology dictionary. retrieved july 13, 2022, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/compassion holavanahalli, r.k., helm, p.a., & kowalske, k.j. (2010). long-term outcomes in patients surviving large burns: the skin. journal of burn care & research, 31(4), 631-639. https://doi.org/10.1097/bcr.0b013e3181e4ca62 jeschke, m.g., van baar, m.e., choudhry, m.a., chung, k.k., gibran, n.s., & logsetty, s. (2020). burn injury. nature reviews disease primers, 6(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41572-020-0145-5 kearney, r. (2015). what is carnal hermeneutics? new literary history, 46(1), 99124. doi:10.1353/nlh.2015.0009 grieve, b., shaprio, g.d., wibbenmeyer, l., acton, a., lee, a., marino, m., jette, a., schneider, j.c., kazis, l.c., & ryan, c.m. (2020). long-term social reintegration outcomes for burn survivors with and without peer support attendance: a life impact burn recovery evaluation (libre) study. archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation, 101(1), 592-598. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2017.10.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2014.03.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2017.12.045 https://www.etymonline.com/word/compassion https://doi.org/10.1097/bcr.0b013e3181e4ca62 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41572-020-0145-5 http://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2015.0009 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2017.10.007 verburg, mccaffrey & gabriel journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 15 7 mccaffrey, g., raffin-bouchal, s., & moules, n.j. (2012). hermeneutics as research approach: a reappraisal. international journal of qualitative methods, 11(3), 214–229. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691201100303 https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691201100303 corresponding author: graham mccaffrey, rn phd email: gpmccaff@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 july 18, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.75702 lot’s wife: an exploration of nursing and calls, guided by two poems graham mccaffrey abstract the article is a discussion on the theme of “the call” that formed the basis for dr. ted george's series of presentations at the canadian hermeneutic institute (chi) in 2021. it takes up two poems, both entitled “lot's wife,” that are interpreted from the point of view of nurses who have to make decisions routinely in response to the demands of patients in actual settings of practice. the poems, by anna akhmatova and wislawa szymborska, treat the theme in contrasting ways that allows for a series of interpretive reflections, first considering a two-sided contrast between external regulation and anguish, and secondly a diverse array of “calls” to decision and action. a version of the article was first presented at chi 2021. keywords poetry, nursing, call, hermeneutics “philosophy reads supreme poetry and is read by it. both intuit common ground, that originating art and music of thought which inform our sense of the meaning of the world (der weltsinn)” george steiner (steiner, 2011, p. 101). note on method this article was first written as a presentation for the canadian hermeneutic institute in 2021. dr. ted george, who was the visiting scholar for that year’s institute, chose the theme of “the call,” mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 10 2 arguing that the world calls out to us and compels us to respond, and that how we respond to any given call is a hermeneutic practice. my paper was of course written in anticipation of dr. george’s discussion, addressing his topic and the question posed in the call for abstracts, “how do we know what we are supposed to do”? i took up the topic in relation to nursing, since that is my profession though the following discussion is not, i hope, confined to nursing too inflexibly. it is not about nursing as a vocation, a call-of-calls that brings a person into a profession, a discipline, and a working life, but a lower-key attempt to discuss the question of what we are supposed to do once the vocational leap has been taken, what we are supposed to do day-to-day and moment-to-moment in instances of practice that join up over time into a career. for my method, or way into the question, i looked for inspiration in poems in the belief that great poetry gets under the skin of life yet leaves open the maximum space for interpretation and reinterpretation. lot’s wife my discussion is based on two poems, both entitled “lot’s wife,” which i argue provide rich material to consider nursing practice and what calls us, what orients us to what we are supposed to do. lot’s wife of course is that famous character from the old testament who was turned into a pillar of salt. according to genesis, lot gave hospitality to “two angels” whom he protected from the citizens of sodom. they then reveal to lot that their actual mission is to destroy the city entirely, and they are offering lot and his family an escape pass, provided they do not look back: genesis 19:17 “look not behind thee.” and so they flee the city, “but his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt” (genesis 19:26). as the book of genesis tells it, the story seems to be a straightforward instructional narrative of god’s righteous judgement, his immense power, the rewards of faith and obedience, and the price of disobedience. lot’s wife is a cipher, she is never named, and her only role is to suffer her idiosyncratic fate. genesis offers no clue as to her motivation for looking back, which is where our two poems come in, both imaginatively putting us as readers into the experience of lot’s wife. i will discuss them in the order in which they were written, the first by the russian poet anna akhmatova from 1924 and the second by the polish poet wislawa szymborska from 1975. akhmatova: pravednik and anguish akhmatova’s poem is short, four stanzas of four lines each.1 it opens with lot, not named but identified as “the righteous man” following god’s messenger away from the doomed city. then “anguish spoke” to his wife and the second stanza is the voice of anguish telling her she can still look at the city she is leaving, with its memories, its imprint on her past and her identity. the third stanza describes what happens to her when she does look back; intense pain, then immobility. the last stanza, in the voice of the poet, asks “who will weep for this woman? / isn’t her death the least significant?” and answers in the first person that “my heart will never forget.” there are three calls going on in the poem. it is in the form of a call and response, though the expected order is reversed. in the final stanza, akhmatova asks, “who will weep for this woman?” a call she has already answered by writing the poem we are reading. the other two calls are first, the call that has happened before the poem starts, that of god’s messenger to lot mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 10 3 to flee the city and not look back, then, second, the call of anguish that forms part of the poem. the poem begins with lot. as readers, we are joining a story already in progress, the first word is “and.” lot is in the process of following the divine call, delivered via the two angels. he knows what he is supposed to do because god gave him clear instructions. that is the first call. then in line three, akhmatova introduces another kind of call, of “anguish [that] spoke loudly to his wife.” it is the contrast between these two kinds of call that provides hermeneutic generativity. for the first kind of call, i will use the russian word in the poem for the phrase “righteous man” in the first line. in russian it is a single word, pravednik which hemschemeyer translated as “righteous man” (variant translations have the same or “just man”). i am using it for its defamiliarizing effect (if you are not a russian speaker) and to allow it to take on multiple senses. outside of its place in the poem itself, pravednik is used here not to denote a type of person, but as a vector for a certain type of call, that i will argue might appear in various guises, some of which appear in the world of nursing. the call of the pravednik is unarguable. it has power and authority; it is righteous and it is right. how do we understand what we are supposed to do? well, we do as we are told, we go where the pravednik tells us to go. the call of anguish, by contrast, is woefully subjective. it is felt before it is understood. it is affective, emotional. it is at the mercy of the senses, of the body, of memory things you saw, things you did, people you loved. the call of anguish speaks through attachments, connections, and relationships. it arises from a rich, personal world of people and things, a lifeworld in phenomenological language. how does lot’s wife then understand that at this moment, she is supposed to look back, in spite of the fact that in doing so she is arguing with the unarguable, discounting righteousness, and courting annihilation? understanding here is a felt understanding, an inner call, that is fully present in an embodied, temporal sense of self that is part of a world, bound to it. the pravednik obeys the order not to look back, because the pravednik is following another kind of call that is transcendent, self-sufficient, and not entangled in the world. nurses, i suggest, are being called constantly both by pravedniks and by anguish. most of the time the call of the pravednik is heard through institutional abstractions such as policies, contracts, or legislation: all those instruments that tell us unequivocally what we are supposed to do or not supposed to do. here is my reason for using the unfamiliar word because the call of the pravednik appears in so many guises, as externalized abstract forces and internalized as a disposition or inclination within people. where it may be embodied in the figure of a righteous man (or woman), in modern life they are likely to be someone channelling institutional authority through status and prestige. the call of anguish on the other hand, arises out of enmeshment in the world, of a concrete and contingent situation of unique, embodied appeal. (the actual content of course may not be anguish as such, defined as severe bodily or mental pain, but since one of its latin root means narrow, tight (shorter oxford dictionary, 1993), perhaps we could think of being in a tight spot, being constrained, and needing help to open out). in genesis, and in the poem, it is one or the other pravednik or anguish, and to choose the latter is the end. however, when it comes to nursing, there is not the same finality. although the two kinds of call can be differentiated, in practice they emerge together and are both taken up, in interchange with each other. nurses do know what they are supposed to do because nursing is a regulated profession that has precisely defined legal limits and permissions, and because they are mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 10 4 bound by employment contracts and registration requirements. policies tell them how to carry out procedures properly, software programs (the pravednik in the machine, so to speak) tell them what to measure and record, what medications to give when, and so on. there is no path of nursing as a socially sanctioned professional activity other than following the pravednik. at the same time, nursing cannot be abstracted and reduced to the sum of its network of rules and regulations, it always inescapably occurs in the lifeworld, in a flesh and blood, felt, spoken, embodied, and enacted mesh of moments that manifests between particular people in particular places. all of this is in the second verse of the poem, where the call of anguish is deeply personal and deeply meaningful for lot’s wife. i do not think these are experienced as two separate calls in reality, but as an embodied response that includes cognitive and affective mobilization. returning to the poem, however, there is no doubt where the power lies, and the pathos of the final stanza lies in the fact that akhmatova places herself on the side of the powerless, “the least significant.” although i argue for a dialogue between the two calls that does not happen in the poem, it does not mean that it is a dialogue on equal terms or that power is not still in play. there are consequences and disincentives to the backward glance, and advantages to sticking with the pravednik. going back to the nursing context, this is evident in the reach of managerial regulation in hospitals, or in the prestige of quantitative research in academia. looking back simply makes no sense to the pravednik of scientific progress, when evidence over five years old is worthless, and all that matters are outcomes, which lie in the future, and improved outcomes which lie further in the future. nursing is a directed, purposeful activity, which does have to do with making things better, in the future, equipped with scientific knowledge of ways to do so, but nursing is at the same time a dialogue with the present – presenting anguish, which comes from somewhere, somewhere behind us, in the past; nursing has to look back, heeding the call of anguish. szymborska: a cacophony of calls i am now going to turn to the second poem entitled “lot’s wife,” by the polish poet wisława szymborska, which offers up another angle from which to consider the call, and what we are supposed to do.2 szymborska also brings us what was going on for lot’s wife, she brings her alive, but unlike akhmatova’s version, there is no simple alternative call to that of obedience, to god and to husband. instead, szymborska slyly presents a raft of possible reasons for the look back: “carelessly, while tying my sandal strap…from the disobedience of the meek…the futility of wandering…in shame…in anger…” they vary from the tragic, of despair and weariness, to the defiant she spells out the self-righteousness that so often accompanies righteousness from the vengeful to the merely accidental. she leaves us with an ambiguous ending, “it’s not inconceivable…”, “it’s possible…” none of the reasons she proposes in the poem are inconceivable, they are all very human, in many cases to the point of being humdrum. much nursing practice is like this, we naturally recall moments when anguish calls, acute suffering, but often what call us to do the next thing is unremarkable. in szymborska’s poem the locus of the call is different. for akhmatova, anguish speaks, it calls, and she shows us how lot’s wife responded. does anguish call from within lot’s wife? presumably, but akhmatova externalizes the call. in szymborska’s poem we have direct access to the first-person and everything takes place in the moment before lot’s wife is turned to a mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 10 5 pillar of salt. quite where she is speaking from is anyone’s guess, but what she reports is a whole series of inner calls. it becomes more explicit that the call of anguish (and this is now very unsteadily standing in for a whole carnival of motivations) is moving from inside to out, unlike the call of the pravednik that comes unequivocally from without. if the call of anguish is emotional, the linguistic root of emotion is the latin emovere, to move out (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). szymborska gives us the manifold of inner call but in response to external events. outward call is turned around into a response that is also a call from within. call is “modified in the guts of the living” in auden’s phrase (auden, 1940/1991, p. 247). we know what we are supposed to do when the call is not only heard, but digested and re-called as inner decision. but if akhmatova’s version of lot’s wife gives us two contrasting calls, either of which we can take as telling us what we are supposed to do, szymborska’s version states the dilemma a bit differently. she shows us all kinds of things that might call out to us, some principled, some emotional, some trivial, some accidental but at the end of the poem we are not really any the wiser as to which call lot’s wife responded to, nor are we any closer to working out what we are supposed to do. the message might be something like this; you are going to have all kinds of things coming at you, enjoining a response, and yet which one, or which ones you respond to and how, well, that you are going to have to decide when the time comes. we are back to square one. we need criteria, but in the light of everything szymborska has shown us, just following the back of the self-righteous husband’s neck seems like a poor option and an easy surrender of the difficulty of having to choose. szymborska’s call is anguish + x, where x is actually x,y, z and beyond. we have to exercise discernment but as soon as we do that, we invoke some kind of measure of rightness, of judgment about what we are supposed to do. re-enter the pravednik, but now we are going to take its righteous voice into account, not merely follow it unquestioningly. szymborska’s poem does not have the moral clarity of akhmatova’s. it does not set out the problem so clearly, the problem of the bipolar pull between pravednik and anguish, but it is more acute in its depiction of actual decisional polyvalence3. how do we understand what we are supposed to do? as a nurse, deciding to heed either the unipolar call of the pravednik or of anguish is a mistake. i am not sure one even could since it is always a question of the mixture between the two. too much pravednik may lead to forms of bureaucratic or scientific alienation, depending on the context. on the other hand, too much anguish can lapse into antinomianism, when someone claims to be a self-dependent fount of compassion, which will result either in entropy, because the calls of anguish are too many and too relentless to be able to do anything at all, or to becoming yet another kind of pravednik. paradoxically, in terms of the antinomy i have been presenting, it is possible to become a pravednik for anguish, to insist upon the primacy of one’s own feeling of justice or compassion at the expense of others, to allow anguish to set into moralism. for example, when i see in the nursing literature that “compassion is the essence of nursing,” i hear the call of pravednik speaking, because it is a singular moral claim, it brooks no alternative, no backward glances. if akhmatova’s poem lends us the thought of pravednik and anguish, as elements themselves in exchange with each other, as ingredients of the call, then szymborska’s suggests the fragmented, mccaffrey journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 10 6 multiple, constant arising of calls in practice. these may be proximal or distant, urgent or mild, obvious or subtle, but they are of the stuff of nursing practice, calling constantly to the next action. in my analysis, there is one part of the story i have rather obviously ignored the pillar of salt. in akhmatova’s poem it is the dramatic hinge, in szymborska’s it never quite happens but we know it is about to. for my purposes, it doesn’t fit there is no sudden end, no stasis. i have not been considering the call as it is in the story as a biographical singular moment, but as a structure of call and response that keeps on happening. nurses are in the moment of decision which is repeated but differently each time. references akhmatova, a. (1973). lot’s wife. (s. kunitz & m. hayward, trans.). poets.org. https://poets.org/poem/lots-wife akhmatova, a. (1994). the complete poems of anna akhmatova: updated and expanded edition. (j. hemschemeyer, trans.). canongate press. auden, w.h. (1991). w.h. auden: collected poems. vintage books. online etymology dictionary. (n.d.). emotion. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=emotion shorter oxford dictionary. (1993). anguish. oxford university press. steiner, g. (2011). the poetry of thought from hellenism to celan. new directions. szymborska, w. (2016). map: collected and last poems. (c. cavanagh & s. barańczak, trans.). mariner books. szymborska, w. (2016). lot’s wife. (c. cavanagh & s. barańczak, trans.). poemhunter.com: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lot-s-wife-2/ 1 i have not given the whole poem due to copyright restrictions. all quotations are from judith hemschemeyer’s translation (akhmatova, 1994, pp. 273-4). you can find the whole poem online, in a translation by stanley kunitz and max hayward at https://poets.org/poem/lots-wife (see references). 2 here again, i have not given the whole text. i have used the translation by clare cavanagh and stanisław barańczak (szymborska, 2016, pp. 203-4). you can find this version online at: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lot-s-wife-2/ (see references). 3 the contrast is partly explicable by when they were written. akhmatova was writing in the immediate aftermath of the bolshevik revolution and civil war. looking back to what had been lost in the revolution could already be deadly. her husband nikolai gumilev was executed by the bolsheviks on trumped up charges of conspiracy in 1921. symborska wrote her poem in 1970s poland, where communist rule had been locked in for thirty years. the stakes were not as high, but people had learned strategies of day-to-day accommodation under an oppressive state, what to say or not to say, what to do or not to do. https://poets.org/poem/lots-wife https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=emotion https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lot-s-wife-2/ https://poets.org/poem/lots-wife https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lot-s-wife-2/ microsoft word rentmeester & hogan cp.docx corresponding author: casey rentmeester, phd bellin college email: casey.rentmeester@bellincollege.edu journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 february 8, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 are you ready to meet your baby? phenomenology, pregnancy, and the ultrasound casey rentmeester & amanda hogan abstract iris marion young’s landmark paper on the phenomenology of pregnancy chronicles the alienating tendencies of technology-ridden maternal care, as the mother’s subjective knowledge of the pregnancy gets overridden by the objective knowledge provided by medical personnel and technological apparatuses. following fredrik svenaeus, the authors argue that maternal care is not necessarily alienating by looking specifically at the proper attention paid by sonographers in maternal care when performing ultrasound examinations. using martin heidegger’s philosophy as a theoretical lens, the authors argue that sonographers who cultivate technical mastery, build patient rapport, explain the process and significance of the ultrasound, and understand the patient’s world are able to provide excellent patient care. the authors utilize hans-georg gadamer’s hermeneutics to show how sonographers can frame the ultrasound in a way that acknowledges both the subjective knowledge of the mother and the objective data obtained by the sonographer through the use of technology. ultimately, the authors argue that the common practice of framing the ultrasound as the chance to “meet the baby” is inappropriate, as it exacerbates the tendency to regard objective knowledge as the only legitimate knowledge in medical contexts. they recommend a more balanced approach that elicits a fusion of horizons between the patient’s subjective knowledge and the objective data that are obtained by the sonographer via the ultrasound, thus respecting and bolstering patient autonomy. rentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 2 keywords iris marion young, martin heidegger, hans-georg gadamer, sonography, hermeneutics, patient communication in 1984, iris marion young published her landmark paper on the phenomenology of pregnancy wherein she chronicles the mother’s privileged access to the experience of pregnancy that is partially displaced and overtaken by technology-ridden maternal care. young criticizes what she experienced as the objectifying and alienating tendencies of modern medicine during her experience with pregnancy. fredrik svenaeus has argued persuasively that young’s perspective is too critical of modern medicine, noting that not all maternal care is necessarily alienating. we argue that proper maternal care may not only be non-alienating, but can preserve and even bolster the dignity of the mother by looking specifically at the proper attention paid by sonographers in maternal care when performing ultrasounds. we provide four essential aspects to excellent patient care to guide sonographers in clinical practice: 1) technical mastery, 2) building patient rapport, 3) explaining the process and significance of the examination, and 4) understanding the patient’s world.1 we then show that the common practice of framing the first ultrasound as the chance to meet the fetus for the first time is misguided, since it exacerbates the tendency of medical professionals to regard objective knowledge as the only legitimate knowledge in medical contexts, thus potentially intensifying the feelings of alienation of the mother. we recommend a more balanced approach that acknowledges both the subjective experience of the pregnancy on the part of the mother and the objective data provided by medical devices using hans-georg gadamer’s hermeneutics as a guide, which we supplement with edith stein’s work on the phenomenology of empathy. the phenomenology of pregnancy in her article, “pregnant embodiment: subjectivity and alienation,” young (1984) notes that narratives of the experience of the mother during pregnancy have been almost entirely lacking in western societies. her explicit goal is to remedy this by providing a phenomenology of pregnancy, that is, a description of what it is like to be pregnant from the perspective of the mother. in the process, young provides an account of her own experience with pregnancy, as well as several narratives culled from seldomly referenced diaries and literature. in combining the various narratives that come forth, young notes four aspects of the mother’s experience of pregnancy: 1) the mother’s privileged access to the creative process; 2) the dislodging effects that accompany the changes of the mother’s body; 3) how such effects induce wonder; and 4) how wonder has the potential to invoke an innocent narcissism on the part of the mother. first, young (1984) describes the experience of the first fetal movements as only accessible to the mother herself: “only i have access to these movements from their origin, as it were. for months only i can witness this life within me, and it is only under my direction of where to put their hands that others can feel these movements. i have a privileged relation to this other life” (p. 48). the reddening and tenderness of the nipples and breasts, swelling of the belly, nausea, cramping, and other aspects of the initial phases of pregnancy are entirely new for the first-time mother and only experienced by the mother herself. thus, the mother not only has a privileged rentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 3 access to this experience, others who attempt to gain any access at all to the experience in the early stages require guidance on the part of the mother. moreover, any access to the experience of pregnancy on the part of the other can only be partial and can never surpass or replicate the experiential knowledge of the mother. as the fetus continues to grow, the mother changes along with the fetus, and these changes lead to what young (1984) refers to as a dislodging effect: “my automatic body habits become dislodged…in pregnancy my pre-pregnant body image does not entirely leave my movements and expectations, yet it is with the pregnant body that i must move” (p. 49). formally seamless everyday activities like tying one’s shoes become difficult as the requisite movements needed to bend over become challenging. to use the language of martin heidegger (1927/1962), one of the foremost phenomenologists who has had a clear influence on young’s work, one can say that one’s taken-for-granted everyday ways of “being-in-the-world” are disrupted, thereby prompting reflection on the part of the mother. this reflection may inspire the mother to wonder what is going on with her body and the fetus developing within: “the pregnant woman experiences herself as a source and participant in a creative process … though she does not plan and direct it” (young, 1984, p. 54). the fact that the woman is merely a participant, and not a director, means that the development of the fetus and the correlated changes to the mother’s body are not entirely controllable nor exhaustively knowable. young argues that this lack of control and lack of complete knowledge leads to a sense of wonder, and this wonder may induce an innocent narcissism: “as i undress in the morning and evening, i gaze in the mirror for long minutes, without stealth or vanity. i do not appraise myself, ask if i look good enough for others, but like a child take pleasure in discovering new things in my body” (young, 1984, p. 53). the narcissism is not of the usual egotistical sort since it is induced by wonder at the not-entirely manageable changes that accompany the growth of the fetus from within. “objectified observables” on the whole, young’s portrayal of the mother’s experience of pregnancy is positive, as it includes the privileged access to a wonderfully creative process. indeed, pregnancy provides the mother access to a beautiful and unique experience that opens up a new world for the mother in terms of her identity and understanding. although there are clearly uncomfortable aspects that fundamentally alter the mother’s sense of being-in-the-world, these aspects are typically tempered with a sense of resilient care for the soon-to-be-newborn or embraced with a sense of wonder. nevertheless, young argues that the new and beautiful world that the mother has embarked upon becomes tainted with the introduction of technology-ridden maternal care, which she argues is objectifying and alienating. before we discuss young’s critique, we should note that the concerns of technological advancements in medicine are not new. in 1816, the french physician rené laennec introduced the stethoscope for enhancing the superficial examination of internal organs. although this technical innovation was intended to preserve the patient’s privacy, many physicians worried that the stethoscope would diminish physician-patient relationships as the doctor was “increasingly an active interrogator of the body,” as opposed to the doctor serving as a biographer of the patient’s narration with an eye towards restoring health (rice, 2010). in other words, the initial worry was that technological apparatuses like the stethoscope would lead to an increasing objectification of the patient as a body and a subsequent decrease in the understanding of the patient as a person. rentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 4 the stethoscope was followed by other technological medical devices that are able to provide a glimpse into the inner aspects of the body: the x-ray was discovered by wilhelm röntgen in 1895, the first practical commercial ultrasound machine was patented by walter erich krause in 1965, the first commercial computed tomography (ct) scanner was developed by godfrey hounsfield in 1971, and the first advances in medical resonance imaging (mri) were made by raymond damadian in 1978. in short, doctors practicing in the era of modern medicine now have an impressive array of technological devices at their disposal to examine the human body, thereby increasing the possible modes of bodily objectification on their patients. with more precise instruments in medicine, there is an increased temptation to focus on the measurements in order to collect accurate data, as opposed to focusing on the patient as a person. this temptation to focus on collecting scientific data, as opposed to eliciting the patient’s narrative, can be alienating for the patient. as kevin aho (2018) notes, “what scientific medicine often fails to acknowledge are the feelings and perceptions of the [patient] as they are expressed, lived, and made intelligible within the context [of] his or her world” (p. xvi). while there has been a recent resurgence in the emphasis on the importance of acknowledging and respecting the patient as a person within all medical contexts, the very nature of modern medicine always leaves open the possibility of objectification given the fact that diagnoses are largely based on data, not feelings. young zeroes in on two ubiquitous technological aspects of routine maternal care in modern medicine that allow for bodily objectification: the ultrasound, which provides reliable data regarding the dimensions of the fetus, and the fetal monitor, which records the duration and intensity of contractions of the mother. given these technologies, young (1984) states, “the woman’s reports are no longer necessary for charting the progress of her labor” (p. 58). in other words, the worries that were noted as early as the introduction of the stethoscope have started to come true: in young’s eyes, the locus of knowledge shifts from the subjective sphere of the mother to the objective sphere of medical technology. the consequences of this shift are significant according to young (1984): “such instruments transfer some control over the means of observing the pregnancy and birth process from the woman to the medical personnel. the woman’s experience of these processes is reduced in value, replaced by more objective means of observation” (p. 58). looking specifically at the fetal monitor, young argues that the mother’s subjective sense of the intensity of the contractions is no longer important: the intensity is more accurately depicted by the monitor itself. the monitor cannot lie, as it were, while some mothers may be more sensitive to pain than others or less attuned to one’s body and therefore misreport on the intensity of the contractions. regarding the ultrasound, the mother’s account of the progression of the pregnancy becomes less valuable than the objective dimensions provided during the ultrasound and depicted in the sonogram. young (2005) sums this up in her postscript to the article: these objectified observables come to be defined as the authoritative knowledge of the process of gestation and the state of the fetus, and thereby the pregnant woman’s privileged insider knowledge comes to be devalued …. sonogram technology makes it possible for anyone to experience fetal movement by looking at the same projected image. the pregnant woman’s experience of that image is just the same as anyone else’s who views it. this shared and shareable experience of the fetus tends to have more status as ‘reality’ than the feelings only she can report. (p. 61) rentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 5 the objectified observables come to be “the truth” in regard to the status of the fetus, while the subjective feelings of the mother come to be seen as somehow “less.” in the words of heidegger, “only that which becomes object in [the scientific] way is—is considered to be in being” (1938/1977a, p. 127). the account of the mother is regarded as merely subjective and therefore not as authoritative. essentially, young’s account of the alienating tendencies of modern maternal care has three stages. first, the subjective experience of the mother is de-emphasized in favor of the objective measurements of technological apparatuses. second, due to this shift, there is an appropriation of control on the part of the medical professional. at this point, the locus of truth resides in the technology and the expertise of the medical professional, as opposed to the mother herself. finally, the mother feels alienated as her subjectivity is overridden, as she is surrounded by technology that she does not fully understand, is objectified by this technology, and no longer feels that her perspective is valued. as karl jaspers (1959/1989) has stated, “the patient sees [herself] in a world of apparatuses, in which [she] is worked up without [her] understanding the significance of the events which are transpiring above [her]” (p. 256). for young, what was initially a beautifully creative process that invokes wonder has become less wonder-ful. young makes an important argument regarding the increased likelihood of objectification of the patient in technology-ridden maternal care. as peter-paul verbeek (2008) states, “ultrasound substantially contributes to the experience of expecting a child, by framing pregnancy in medical terms” (p. 21). the accuracy and precision that technology provides simply cannot be replicated by asking the mother herself what she is experiencing; therefore, there may be a tendency on the part of the sonographer to emphasize the objective collection of data and overlook or ignore the subjective aspects expressed by the mother. we can understand this tendency by looking at the ontological shift that occurs with the introduction of modern technology in medicine by using heidegger’s philosophy. heidegger (1954/1977b) has argued persuasively that technology is not simply a means to an end but rather “a way of revealing.” what this means is that the technological devices that are utilized in healthcare reveal what matters in the world of medicine in an ordered fashion. in this case, the technology reveals the prioritization of objective and therefore scientific data over subjective and therefore unscientific narratives. hans-georg gadamer (1993/1996), a student of heidegger, argues that this shift in the prioritization from subjectivity to objectivity allows for the dissolution of personhood: the loss of personhood … happens within medical science when the individual patient is objectified in terms of a mere multiplicity of data. in a clinical investigation all the information about a person is treated as if it could be adequately collated on a card index. if this is done correctly, then the relevant data will all uniquely apply to the person involved. but the question is whether the unique value of the individual is properly recognized in this process. (p. 81) the patient charting that occurs during the visit may include some of the subjective narrative of the patient, especially if the patient is experiencing some discomfort, but for the most part the charting will consist of objective data since this is regarded as what is “really real” in the modern medical context. rentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 6 how are we to respond to this shift? we should point out with heidegger (1957/2002) that “we cannot, of course, reject today’s technological world as devil’s work” (p. 40). the technological advances in medicine clearly lead to better health outcomes and should therefore be celebrated, rather than shunned. since ultrasounds have the ability to reduce mortality and improve patient outcomes for both the fetus and the mother, we should embrace and praise this technology as a society and hone in on our bedside manner as sonographers, as opposed to being too critical of the alienating tendencies of technology-ridden maternal care as young does in her work. this is why fredrik svenaeus (2018b) is right to point out—pace young—that “medical science and the attention of doctors and nurses are not necessarily alienating or oppressive for the patient” (p. 80). svenaeus also notes that the pictures and videos of the fetus in utero can be a very positive experience for the mother, as they are often shared with others and put in the family album (2018b, p. 81). moreover, ultrasound examinations can give some expecting parents the feeling of being closer and more attached to the unborn, thereby “triggering a process of ‘prenatal bonding’” (zechmeister, 2001, p. 389). fathers especially form stronger bonds with the soon-tobe-newborn through ultrasound technology, since seeing the baby on the screen escalates their awareness of the baby, thereby reinforcing its reality (draper, 2002). at the same time, however, we must be mindful that technological integration in medical settings changes the dynamic of patient care as it reveals priorities that are not necessarily aligned with placing the patient as a person first. sonographers must be mindful of the effect that technological devices have on the patient experience if they are going to provide excellent patient care, especially in medical professions that inherently involve the use of technological apparatuses. in the next section we outline ways in which sonographers can provide excellent patient care while integrating technology. technological integration and patient care certain medical professions necessitate technological integration, which is seen most obviously in medical imaging: radiographers simply need to use diagnostic imaging equipment to perform x-rays, ct scans, and mris; and sonographers simply must use transducers and scanners to perform ultrasounds. mastery of the technology is crucial to providing good patient care, as noted by the society of diagnostic medical sonography’s code of ethics (2017). it is important for sonographers to become so skilled with manipulating the transducers that the transducer almost becomes part of the sonographer’s bodily being as it is, to some degree, nearly an extension of the hand. to borrow language from heidegger (1927/1962), we can say that, through repeated and skilled practice, the sonographer comes to embody a concernful circumspection [umsicht] with the transducer that is “proximally ready-to-hand as equipment” (p. 200). for heidegger, concernful circumspection is the “sight” that accompanies the masterful navigation of tools when they are functioning as tools. just as the master carpenter has a certain sight while hammering, the master sonographer has a certain sight while performing an ultrasound. above and beyond this “sight” is the fact that the transducer is used as a tool of perception, and not merely as a tool like a hammer. merleau-ponty (1945/2002) provides a fitting example of tools of perception when he speaks of a blind person utilizing a walking cane: “the blind man’s stick has ceased to be an object for him, and is no longer perceived for itself; its point has become an area of sensitivity, extending the scope and active radius of touch, and providing a parallel to sight” (p. 165). while a blind person’s stick is admittedly likely more intrinsically related to one’s sense of perception than a sonographer’s transducer, it does lend a nice analogy as to how rentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 7 the master sonographer may experience the transducer. if the sonographer experienced the transducer as foreign to oneself or as an object that was standing against oneself, attention would have to be paid to the technology, rather than the patient, and this would negatively affect patient care. when the sonographer has a mastery of the equipment, he or she is able to mediate the patient interaction smoothly by task-switching one’s attention seamlessly between the ultrasound screen and the patient, thus allowing for the possibility of providing excellent patient care. the transducer, in such an instance, “falls into the background” since the attention is properly given to the patient, and not the technology. while technical mastery is an important step in providing patient care, it is not sufficient to provide good patient care. sonographers must spend time getting to know their patients if they are to build the proper trust needed to provide good patient care, as signaled by the society of diagnostic medical sonography’s code of ethics (2017). moreover, different procedures require a different level of patient interaction to ensure a proper level of comfort between the sonographer and the patient. for instance, particular attention needs to be paid to building rapport with the patient before first trimester ultrasounds since they must be performed vaginally. sonographers must be mindful of the fact that access to one’s vagina is deeply private for most people, since such access is only typically shared consensually with significant others or trusted physicians. thus, it is important for sonographers to explain the examination prior to performing the exam, both in terms of the process of the procedure and its significance. typically, first trimester ultrasounds are performed to establish gestational dating, to screen for genetic abnormalities, or to check the position and viability of the fetus (doubilet, 2014). the reason for the exam must be explained clearly to the patient so that the patient is fully aware of the importance of the exam and therefore more comfortable with allowing the sonographer to enter this extremely private realm. in the examination itself, the sonographer places a vaginal ultrasound probe inside the vagina in order to examine the uterus, ovaries, and the growing fetus. documentation of the fetus includes the fetal heart rate, growth, position, yolk sac, and placenta location (doubilet, 2014). all of this must be communicated to the patient beforehand, so the patient can understand the procedure and be truly informed as to the process. moreover, throughout the examination, the sonographer must ensure that the patient’s pain and discomfort are minimized, since the vagina is typically sensitive to touch. the sonographer should explain the ultrasound images in language that the patient can understand, as well as be cognizant of the emotional responses offered by the patient (larsen, nguyen, munk, svendsen, & teisner, 2000). while documentation of the dimensions of the fetus is crucial in the procedure, these dimensions likely mean very little to the mother. even anatomic language needs to be adjusted at times to the level of patient health literacy. for instance, one important visualization that sonographers look for in first trimester ultrasounds is an image of the rhombencephalon, which is one of the three major developmental divisions of the brain. instead of speaking of the confirmation of a rhombencephalon visualization, sonographers should inform the patient that the brain is forming. in this way, the sonographer is respecting that the patient likely does not have the same level of medical literacy and is adjusting his or her language to the context. in general, the sonographer has to be mindful of how the patient is responding to the description of the images and adjust his or her language accordingly. sonographers must also be prepared to answer any questions the patient may have regarding the procedure, such as whether or not the ultrasound puts the fetus at risk. since they utilize soundrentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 8 waves, ultrasounds do not pose the cancer risks that are accompanied with radiologic imaging procedures that utilize ionizing radiation; nevertheless they do inherently contain high ultrasound energy that can prove damaging to fetal development. thus, “special care and reduced scanning times should be used for sensitive tissues such as those found in the embryo (<8 weeks), eye, head, brain, and spine” (nelson, fowlkes, abramowicz, & church, 2009, p. 145). sonographers limit the exposure of the fetus to high ultrasound energy levels by adhering to alara (as low as reasonably achievable) principles. specifically, sonographers are trained to use the lowest output power possible to achieve the best image and make scans as short as possible (society of diagnostic medical sonographers, 2019). this is just another reason as to why the mastery of the technology on the part of the sonographer is important, as the sonographer who has developed concernful circumspection will be able to scan more efficiently and thus more quickly, thereby causing less exposure to potentially damaging high ultrasound energy for the fetus. while the risks of ultrasound are typically not high enough to warrant a formal informed consent process, sonographers must be mindful of the energy dosage and should be able to explain these risks to patients who explicitly ask. if a sonographer is mindful of the risks involved in scanning and has developed the technical mastery of the equipment, he or she is on a solid path to providing good patient care. if the sonographer wants to provide excellent patient care that goes beyond the code of ethics of the society of diagnostic medical sonography, however, he or she must also be mindful of the patient’s world and the patient’s experience during the examination. young’s description of the phenomenology of pregnancy proves useful in providing some understanding of what it is like for the mother to have privileged access to the experience of pregnancy in all of its wonder. the sonographer who provides excellent patient care is the one who is mindful that the introduction of ultrasound technology is both building an objective account of the pregnancy and—at the same time—eradicating the privileged access to the experience of pregnancy for the mother, thus potentially diminishing the importance of the subjective account of the pregnancy for the mother. moreover, the objectification involved in the ultrasound does “kill off” some of the wonder in the experience of pregnancy. the more the ultrasound can be framed as a complement to the experience of pregnancy and seen as a way to enhance the bond between mother and fetus, as opposed to a means of objectifying the experience that was otherwise subjective, the less alienating the experience will likely be for the mother. the goal is to respect the unique value of the patient, and we argue that the way to do this is to strike a balance between acknowledging the subjective experience of the mother and providing the relevant objective data during the ultrasound. are you ready to meet your baby? unfortunately, given the sometimes myopic focus on objective measures as the sole means to reality, it is common for medical staff to frame the first ultrasound as the chance for the mother to “meet her baby for the first time” (weir, 1998). indeed, in their study on first-time pregnant women’s experiences in early pregnancy, bergbom, modh, lundgren, and lindwall (2017) note that some women did not trust their subjective feelings regarding their own pregnancy and even doubted that they were indeed pregnant until it was validated by an ultrasound image. thus, both the sonographers and the patients may be under the false impression that only the objective is able to validate reality. moreover, the very nature of the ultrasound allows for the possibility of rentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 9 objectification. sandelowski (1994) notes, “the fetal sonogram depicts the fetus as if it were floating free in space: as if it were already delivered from or outside its mother’s body” (p. 240). however, since most ultrasounds occur before the fetus is viable outside the womb, this presents the false impression that the fetus is isolatable from the mother when the fetus is, in fact, deeply dependent on the mother. the mother, of course, knows this intellectually, emotionally, and is reminded of it physically given all the bodily changes that accompany pregnancy. how can sonographers frame the ultrasound in a way that acknowledges these subjective experiences of the mother in a context that is so geared towards objectivity? we argue that gadamer’s hermeneutics provides a fitting philosophical lens to understand the appropriate approach to communication between sonographers and mothers in ultrasound care. gadamer (1960/2004) understands true communication as a “fusion of horizons” [horizontverschmelzung] between both parties: “conversation is a process of coming to an understanding. thus it belongs to every true conversation that each person opens himself to the other, truly accepts his point of view as valid and transposes himself into the other” (p. 387). in order to achieve a fusion of horizons, both the sonographer and the patient must have an attitude of openness in approaching each other during the ultrasound. the patient needs to acknowledge that her subjective experience of the pregnancy does provide some truth and perspective regarding the pregnancy and the status of the gestational process, but that the ultrasound will complement this truth with objective, scientific data. the sonographer must understand that the scientific data that he or she will collect during the ultrasound is undoubtedly important in understanding the gestational process, but that the subjective narrative of the mother also helps frame the experience of pregnancy. if the sonographer is to respond to the particular, unique patient, he or she must not only acknowledge the subjective experience of the mother, but seek out details regarding the mother’s experience if she is to provide excellent patient care. using language like “have you felt the baby kick?” or “do you have a sense as to the sex of the baby?” are appropriate ways to engage these conversations. ideally, the subjective narrative and objective data complement each other to provide a well-rounded account of the pregnancy. the fusion of horizons occurs when “both partners are ready for it and are trying to recognize the full value of what is alien and opposed to them” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 388). in order to achieve this, above and beyond the openness of the participants, it is helpful if both the sonographer and the mother acknowledge that they are entering the hermeneutical situation from different perspectives, that these perspectives are described using very different languages, and that both perspectives have some claim to truth. the question of the claim to truth is inextricably linked to the question of the claim to authority. recall that in young’s critique of technology-ridden maternal care she felt that the medical personnel came to take on authority by claiming access to the “truth” of the pregnancy, thus leading to feelings of alienation on her part (2005, p. 61). gadamer’s hermeneutics provides a perspective that allows for both the subjective elements of truth to come forth on the part of the mother and the objective aspects of truth on the part of the sonographer and technology. gadamer (1960/2004) states, “acknowledging authority is always connected with the idea that what the authority says is not irrational and arbitrary but can, in principle, be discovered to be true” (p. 281). since the nature of the ultrasound is already geared toward objectivity, sonographers must be diligent in acknowledging the experience of the patient, especially since science has come to rentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 10 take on an “unassailable and anonymous” authority in the modern age (gadamer, 1966/1976, p. 3). in order to overcome the sense that science is the main authority during the ultrasound, we argue that the ideal relationship between the sonographer and the patient is grounded in empathy, and that edith stein’s work on the phenomenology of empathy provides a complementary perspective to gadamer’s notion of a fusion of horizons in the context of the ultrasound. a fusion of horizons can occur when both the sonographer and the patient are open to gaining knowledge from the other in order to arrive at a more holistic account of the pregnancy. in this case, the holistic account includes the experience of the mother and the data obtained from the ultrasound itself. if we are to genuinely elicit a fusion of horizons, the sonographer demonstrates empathy to the patient. recently, svenaeus has helped to revive interest in stein’s work on empathy, which was conducted under the supervision of edmund husserl, the founder of phenomenology. stein defines empathetic acts explicitly as “acts in which foreign experience is comprehended” (1989, p. 6); specifically, stein attempts to understand how i can “empathetically project myself” into another person’s experience (1989, p. 61). in svenaeus’s interpretation of stein, he offers the following helpful question to understand stein’s project: “is it enough that i feel and understand the experiences that the other person in front of me is undergoing …, or must i also feel alongside the other person in the sense of somehow joining her feelings … in order for my experience to count as empathy?” (svenaeus, 2018a, p. 745). in order to differentiate these two, we will refer to “empathetic understanding” as the act of understanding the experiences of the other person and “empathetic feeling” as the act of feeling with another person. empathetic understanding is more basic than empathetic feeling and essentially involves knowing what one means and having a sense as to where one is coming from. in the context of the ultrasound, the sonographer with empathetic understanding is able to understand the perspective of the patient and know what she has been through in her experience being pregnant. empathetic feeling is deeper than empathetic understanding and can be explained using stein’s example of seeing a member of one’s family who is extremely upset, which naturally makes oneself upset, too (1989, p. 23). for stein, the family member naturally and reflexively responds to another family members suffering with similar feelings oneself. applied to the context of the ultrasound, the sonographer with empathetic feeling is able to feel with the patient and have a similar experience as the patient. we argue that sonographers should seek to ground the patient care in empathetic understanding in order to provide excellent patient care, not necessarily empathetic feeling, although empathetic feeling could come into play in some contexts. for instance, if the patient struggled with infertility and explains this during the ultrasound and thus approaches the ultrasound with a sense of anxiety, the sonographer could also share her story regarding infertility to build patient rapport if she happened to have a similar experience. in most situations, though, the sonographer’s display of empathetic understanding is sufficient, and exhibits proper patient care. using gadamer’s hermeneutics and stein’s understanding of empathy, sonographers are able to replace the “are you ready to meet your baby?” sort of rhetoric that is currently often found in the initial stages of the ultrasound with language that acknowledges the subjective experience of the mother, which can then be used as a segue for explaining the process and significance of the ultrasound. once appropriate patient rapport has been established and the patient is fully informed, the sonographer can then proceed with the examination, interweaving acknowledgements of the patient’s subjective narrative of the pregnancy throughout the process. this hermerentmeester & hogan journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 2 11 neutical approach recognizes that “we must understand the whole in terms of the detail and the detail in terms of the whole” (gadamer 1960/2004, p. 291). the whole pregnancy, which was hitherto exclusively framed by the subjective experience of the mother, thereby becomes complemented with the detailed precision that comes forth through the measurements allotted by ultrasound technology. if done correctly, instead of an alienating objectification, the mother will experience a more well-rounded understanding of her pregnancy and the gestational process by supplementing her subjective knowledge with objective data. concluding thoughts technological advancements have undoubtedly changed the dynamic of patient-medical professional relationships. certain medical professionals inevitably must utilize technology, and sonographers in particular rely heavily upon technology to perform ultrasounds and obtain accurate data that affects health outcomes. we provide several ways in which the sonographer can frame the ultrasound in a way that is respectful of the patient’s subjective experience and, ideally, complement the patient’s experience of the pregnancy with objective data, thereby coming upon a more holistic experience of pregnancy. gadamer’s hermeneutical approach provides an appropriate framework from which sonographers can work, which, when coupled with stein’s notion of empathetic understanding, can provide an appropriate philosophical lens to approach patient care in ultrasound settings. the fusion of horizons that can occur between the sonographer and the patient in an ultrasound setting can help to stave off the feelings of objectification and alienation that iris young chronicled in her landmark work on the phenomenology of pregnancy, thereby allowing the experience to bolster the dignity of the mother and thereby respect her as a unique individual. references aho, k. 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(2001). foetal images: the power of visual technology in antenatal care and the implications for women’s reproductive freedom. health care analysis, 9, 387-400. notes 1. throughout the paper, we will use the term “sonographers” to refer to anyone performing an ultrasound in a medical context (e.g., ultrasound technicians, as well as physicians and midwives). we will use the term “sonogram” to refer to the images obtained from ultrasound examinations, and the term “ultrasound” to refer to the ultrasound examination itself. 1 werklund school of education department of counselling psychology, university of calgary 2 faculty of nursing, university of calgary corresponding author: shelly russell-mayhew email: mkrussel@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 april 5, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 101010.11575/jah.v2022i2022.7512 7 war on weight: capturing the complexities of weight with hermeneutics shelly russell-mayhew1, nancy j. moules2, andrew estefan2 abstract in professional practice, body weight issues are typically considered from an individual-level standpoint. in contrast to this dominant perspective, we highlight that body weight has prominent social, economic, and political influences and connotations. an examination of the social complexity of weight provides opportunity to shift focus from individual to societal and structural influences on perceptions of weight. seven renowned experts in weight-related issues with at least 10-years-experience in various fields from across europe, australia, the united states, and canada participated in interviews about their professional experience with weight. interviews were analyzed using hermeneutic methods via an iterative interpretive process. the interviews revealed a battlefield, a war waged on weight. war emerged as an overall metaphor that included aspects of war on obesity, bodies as battlefields, war camps, war fronts, entrenchment and negotiation and, finally, the phenomenon of “no man’s land.” in many ways, language itself limits us from capturing the complexities of weight. the war metaphor provides a way of understanding the intensity of the firestorm surrounding the construct of weight. new understandings from what we might refer to as veterans of the war on weight offer hope for transformation, not just win or lose, but a hermeneutic wager of possibility. keywords weight, body image, weight bias, hermeneutics, qualitative research a few years ago, i (principal investigator and first author) stared at images of a mother in northwestern africa force-feeding over 18 litres of goat milk a day (i.e., the gavage diet) to her russell-mayhew, moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 5 2 young daughter to “plump her up” to make her more appealing for marriage (jazeera, 2008). the same day i was asked to speak on a panel about a mother in new york who put her 7-year-old daughter on a diet and went on to describe her success in fighting her daughter’s hunger in her top-selling book (weiss, 2013). my experiences on this day forever changed how i thought about weight and how i practice within fields related to weight (i.e., obesity, eating disorders, body image, weight bias). my professional journey working with weight-related issues has always been influenced and fueled by a deeply personal and sometimes troubled relationship with my own body. in this moment of contrast where one mother is “fattening up” while another across the world is “slimming down” their daughters, i realized that the problem is so much more than one individual’s response to an environment; weight is about individual interaction with social, relational, and environmental complexities. no one is immune to cultural discourses, whatever they may be, about weight. i wanted to better understand the systemic issues that has mothers, with the best of intentions, purposefully manipulating their children’s bodies in an attempt to meet a cultural expectation. i reflected on the personal, professional, and political “situatedness” of my research and knew i would need to enlist the help of experts if i wanted to better understand weight in all its complexities as i aspire to embody the change i wish to see in the world. as a team of researchers, we gathered around the topic, bringing our varied expertise. we come to this from different personal and professional positions and have worked with individuals who struggle with weight. our personal and professional experiences have taught us that this is complex terrain in which there are no simple answers. in the absence of answers to the complexities of weight, we have remained intensely curious about how weight as a construct has influence in the world and how it might be understood. weight issues are socially complex and at the core of our humanity. concerns about what foods provide appropriate nutrition for fetal development situate people as subjects of body-related discourse before we are even born. how we feed our children and our relationships with food and our bodies have become fundamental to how we live. however, the solution to the forcefeeding taking place in mauritania, africa is not to “educate” mothers about the dangers of this practice just as the solution to the problem of putting children on diets is not to educate about the dangers of dieting. a fundamental change in our collective understanding of weight is needed because the “social problems” of weight are more complex than how we feed ourselves or our children. we need to frame these issues in larger social contexts to capture the challenges our world faces in relation to food, gender, power, status, and social inequity. it is perhaps not surprising, given the complexity of weight when framed in the larger social context, that even within the fields that study weight (i.e., eating disorders, obesity, weight bias research), there is division about how weight ought to be studied. historically, researchers from the obesity and eating disorder fields were often working in silos and at times at cross-purposes (russell-mayhew & grace, 2015). “early efforts to prevent obesity were seen as dangerous in promoting precursors to eating disorders (o’dea, 2005) and efforts to prevent eating disorders were seen as encouraging complacency about healthy behaviors” (russell-mayhew, 2006, p. 254). more recently, integrative approaches have been proposed to ensure consistent messages around health and growth across the weight spectrum with a focus on ecological and systemic russell-mayhew, moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 5 3 change (ireland et al., 2021). framing the issue as weight allows input from multiple fields of study including obesity, eating disorders, and weight bias. within the fields of weight and in popular social discourses about weight, there are tensions, debates, misunderstandings, contestations, and silos. literally hundreds of social discourses are implicated in weight issues (e.g., van amsterdam, 2013), including but not limited to: obesity epidemic (mann et al., 2015); obesity as a disease (rich, 2015); healthy weights (rodgers, 2016); sizeism (chrisler & barney, 2017); size matters (cameron, 2016); supersize versus superskinny (leadley, 2015); cult of thinness (hesse-biber, 2007); pro-ana and pro-mia (knapton, 2013; schott & langan, 2015); body positive (sastre, 2014); and everybody matters (canadian obesity network, 2016). frederick et al. (2015) offered four ways to frame how people organize their understanding of weight. first, the public health crisis frame situates obesity as a crisis requiring government intervention. second, the personal responsibility frame places blame on the food and exercise choices of each individual. third, the health at every size frame denies weight and/or body mass index (bmi) as a useful indicator of individual health and emphasizes that health exists across the weight spectrum. the final frame, the fat rights frame, is a social movement that rejects the medicalization of body size and the use of terms such as obesity to describe bodies in favor of reclaiming the term fat as a value-free descriptor. while these four frames are not exhaustive cultural accounts of how weight is framed, they demonstrate that the conceptualization of weight can influence the perceived health risks of certain weights and how one might treat someone who lives in a large body (frederick et al., 2015). colloquially, these different views or opinions about weight are often referred to as “camps,” which is of interest given the metaphor of war that emerged from our data. our purpose in this research was to draw attention to, and invite a deeper understanding about, weight by interviewing expert professionals who work in research, practice, and/or policy in fields related to weight. research method and design this research was conducted using the research method of hermeneutics, as guided by the philosophy of hans-georg gadamer (1960/1997). gadamerian hermeneutics asks questions that emerge from practical day-to-day experiences in language and historical spaces (moules et al., 2015). the construction of weight is at a critical point in history. looking at the obesity and eating disorder fields in silos, they can be regarded as ordered, where weight-loss and weightgain are the main goals respectively. however, taken together, and at more than face value, these issues of weight have many layers. the contested conceptualizations and language about weight invite chaos or disorder, leaving open the possibility of new interpretations and understanding. as human beings in the world, exposed to a multitude of messages about weight, professionals in weight-related fields have much to offer in terms of how they make sense of weight and how that influences their practice. we were guided by our research question: how might we understand the social complexities of weight? we recruited weight experts who were members of a listserv consisting of 530 members from 30 countries at the time of data collection. this listserv is the only international collection of interdisciplinary professionals across varied fields related to weight (i.e., obesity, eating russell-mayhew, moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 5 4 disorders, body image) and has been operated by a professor emeritus in the us for over 20 years. membership to the listserv is free and includes researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and advocates from across disciplines. this study was approved by the university of calgary conjoint research ethics board for the project, “reb18-0684” all participants provided consent to participate. given the eligibility criteria (at least 5-years’ experience; able to participate in the interview in english), the operator of the listserv hand-picked the 24 most elite members and sent the recruitment email. nine initially responded to the call for participation and ultimately seven were interviewed. seven renowned experts in weight-related issues with 10-37 years’ experience in various fields including psychology, psychiatry, counselling, and public health from across europe, australia, the united states, and canada participated in interviews about their professional experience with weight. interviews were conducted in-person (2) or by phone (5) by the first author, given her background, expertise, and reputation as a researcher in the field of weight, and lasted approximately one hour each. all interviews were audiotaped for exact transcription of data. in hermeneutics, analysis is synonymous with interpretation, which occurs in the complex dialectic of research interviews with participants, intensive review of the transcriptions, and interpretive memos based on the transcripts. “the initial individual interpretations were then raised to another level of interpretive analysis in the research team’s conversations through in-depth, rigorous, reflexive, and communal attention to the data” (moules et al., 2017, p. 1). analysis involves careful reading, re-reading, and writing around significant interpretations that arise from the data, attending to the criteria of sound interpretive work that allows understanding of the topic to emerge. the criteria involve context, agreement, coherence, comprehensiveness, potential, and penetration (madison, 1988, as cited by moules et al., 2015). unlike some other qualitative methods, hermeneutics is not in search of themes, semantic coding, constructs, or theories, but “rather seeks to deepen understanding of a topic so that it can be seen differently and, ultimately, practiced differently” (moules et al., 2015, p. 119). in the following section, we offer one interpretation that arose from the data. in hermeneutics, participants are not identified individually but are used to collectively contribute to our understanding of the topic. participant quotes, then, are not named individually but appear in italics throughout the interpretation to ground the interpretations. while a number of interpretations emerged from the data, we focus on the initial and most prominent—that of war. interpretation: war and no man’s land while not surprising or different given the decades long “war on obesity” we have seen globally, a developed interpretation of war in relation to weight can offer new insights into our understanding of weight across the diverse and sometimes controversial tensions, debates, misunderstandings, contestations, and silos. “declaring war” was a phrase used by one professional that provoked strong imagery, and in the context of her mention of history, brought to the forefront ideas about how the metaphor of war might extend our understanding of the construct of weight. russell-mayhew, moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 5 5 i think it would take a historian to write a whole book to really reveal all the different kinds of forces that led to this situation now. but certainly, if higher weight was not stigmatized the way it is, i don’t think it would have the, society would have responded by declaring war on it…the declaration on the war on obesity and then billions of dollars of funding going to the healthcare industry and going to researchers to then solve this “obesity epidemic.” the metaphor of war has previously been used to understand and make meaning of weight. both academic literature (i.e., war on obesity) and popular culture (i.e., battle of the bulge) enlist this metaphor in an attempt to describe and more fully understand our complex relationship with weight. it is not surprising, then, that during world war i, gaining weight was written about in magazines as an unpatriotic act (smith, 2004) and, while not because of food shortages, weight gain today is still linked strongly to notions of citizenship and morality. laws, ethics, and cultural mores emphasize that being a good citizen is important at all times, including during war times, but it seems there is not a good time in recent history of the west to be a person in a large body. while this provocation spoke to us, we were still surprised to see a recent connection to the war on obesity and the military. a number of prominent figures including a former first lady and a former us surgeon general declared obesity a threat to national security because fat people will not make good service men and women (welsh, 2018). indeed, obesity is one of the most common disqualifiers for military service (welsh, 2018). in the context of this study, we imagine it difficult to enlist for military service if our own bodies are a daily battleground; we are conscripted into a war that we do not always know we are fighting. “the battlefield is our bodies. no better way to keep the enemy occupied than to cause infighting. each camp keeps the other occupied while the enemy wins the war.” this reflection from the research team member interviewing the professional experts echoes the sentiments around “entrenchment,” “captives,” and “prisoners of war,” and of particular relevance to many of the professionals interviewed, these different “camps” that have emerged in the academic literature. as one participant voiced, “i’m still trying to figure out where i stand.” to simplify a complex interdisciplinary phenomenon, weight is often framed in one of two opposing ways: through the lens of body diversity (sometimes referred to as health-centric or body acceptance approaches), or through the lens of excess or deficit weight as a preventable health risk (sometimes referred to as weight-centric or medicalized approaches; colls & evans, 2014; nutter et al., 2016; saguy & riley, 2005). the weight-centric perspective often includes researchers, practitioners, and policy makers from health care and psychology. the health-centric perspective often includes researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from interdisciplinary fields (i.e., sociology, women’s studies) who identify in scholarly areas such as health at every size (bacon, 2010), critical weight studies (bombak, 2014), and fat studies (cooper, 2010; mcphail et al., 2016; nutter et al., 2016). researchers from various disciplines and theoretical positions also have different approaches to language, with some using the word fat to refer to individuals who live in large bodies, while others using the words overweight or obese (nutter et al., 2016). furthermore, with regards to language in the literature, researchers differ in terms of russell-mayhew, moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 5 6 use of either person-first (e.g., “person with obesity”) or identity-first (e.g., “obese person”) language (nutter et al., 2016). weight is contested, even within and among the professionals who work with and study it every day. however, if there was agreement and certainty within the fields about weight, then a quest for deeper understanding of truths would not be needed (moules et al., 2017). discussions with professionals about “camps” were approached carefully and with trepidation. participants were uncertain where the interviewer stood on these positions and were treading lightly in the discussion. one particular participant seemed especially “gun shy” about taking a position despite several invitations from the interviewer. it was later discovered that this individual was “under fire” from a particular camp both privately and publicly because of some controversial research of which she was a part, which may have influenced her unwillingness to take a stand. nothing invites chaos and division like war. the metaphor of war allows us to look at the war on weight from many fronts including the ideological wars of the different camps in the professional context. in this sense, war, or at least the different camps in a war, has potential to unite individuals, to gather around a cause, and create safety. questions about the complexities of weight were met by participants with thoughtfulness and with wondering. many expressed the tension about different camps and the messiness that results. “i feel an obligation to be in the mess, to try to help clean it up…”, “we have to be able to figure out how to have dialogue and find common ground if we are gonna change…”, “you try to find a middle ground between two positions you know.” no easy solutions were found but the idea of common ground and dialogue was often discussed. furthering the metaphor of war, in war at some point, negotiation is inevitable. stepping out of extreme or entrenched positions must happen for war to end. indeed, weight seems to invite extreme positions; professionals seemed to agree that room must be made for all the variations and complexities, yet many people seem to be “dug in” about their views and positions. in war, soldiers “dig in” to withstand attack or to consolidate a position (mugglestone, 2014). the war on weight here is extending to a war on each other leading to trenches in the battlefield of social inquiry and service provision. what are we all fighting for that is so different? what are all sides fighting for? in war, where warring sides meet has been referred to as “no man’s land.” the term no man’s land describes “disputed ground between the front lines or trenches of two opposing armies,” “an indeterminate or undefined place or state,” and “land or area that is unowned, uninhabited or undesirable” (oxford languages, n.d.). the idea of a no man’s land related to weight is interesting when thought about alongside the gendered nature of social and clinical discourse about weight. occupying no man’s land is ambiguous and dangerous; it is a disputed position in war. the difference when we consider this phrase in light of the war on weight is that in the middle of war, there are positions, fronts, weapons that are constantly changing. in the war on weight, we have found ourselves asking who are the wounded, who is the enemy, and who prevails? history books about war and war stories have, until recently, overlooked the impact of war on women and ignored or undervalued female contributions to war efforts (simpson, 2020). in thinking about the war metaphor and weight, we have also asked, what does it mean to win or lose a particular war? at what cost? if “no man’s land” is a useful construct to understand weight – russell-mayhew, moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 5 7 what is it that we might be able to see differently from this vantage point? if we step out of the front lines, out of the extreme positions and camps to find common ground, what is no man’s land asking of us? importantly for this hermeneutic study, we wanted to ask, what possibilities for understanding and practice does no man’s land offer? hermeneutics calls upon us to question what we know, to think about and critique our historically and socially derived understandings in a way that informs how we live. perhaps the middle ground of no mans’ land is one vantage point from which to view the complexities of weight. however, no man’s land might pose different dangers to those on the front lines. at least on the front lines a soldier knows which direction to face to confront the enemy. just as when we fight a war, when we try to understand the complexities of weight, we realize that the outcome of any war is really beyond any one individual. as one participant stated, “so many of the things that determine outcomes are actually not within the individual’s control.” the war on obesity might be harmful in so much as it is seen as a war against people with obesity. to date, the war on obesity has had little impact on prevalence but has had unintended consequences (o’hara & gregg, 2012). the problem is that the war has been targeting individuals to the neglect of socio-environmental policies and programs and that the war on obesity has focused inappropriately on weight—as an individual attribute and phenomenon—and not health (russell-mayhew, 2006). the consequence of this war campaign has been weight preoccupation and fat phobia which can lead to stigma, body dissatisfaction, dieting, disordered eating and weight-based bullying (mensinger et al., 2021; ramos-salas, 2015). as in the case of an opponent in a conventional war, the war on weight has resulted in weight being demonized. when an opponent is dehumanized and to be defeated “at all costs,” soldiers will do things they would never dream of doing in regular daily life (bruneau & kteily, 2017). in the war on weight, it is not that weight, as a construct, is dehumanized, but rather it seems to dehumanize, bringing large and apparently unwieldy (or small and apparently fragile) bodies into the world. in doing so, weight interrupts and stands as a visual counterpoint to dominant discourses about healthy bodies and good citizenship. in such a context, the body can become one’s own enemy against compliance with social expectation: an exhausting and lonely war where the boundaries of the trenches quickly fall away. implications: from war-y to wary one of the characteristics of hermeneutic research is its capacity to join understanding with practice. understanding is always understanding of something and the “somethings” we try to understand in our practice disciplines are things of human concerns and how we make sense of our lives so that we are capable of “living well with and for others in just institutions” (ricoeur, 1992, p. 172). to live well, hostilities need to be put to rest, even if war cannot be ended. perhaps a shift from war-y to wary, which means to be watchful, to watch out for, be on guard for, and attentive to (merriam-webster, n.d.), acknowledges the need for vigilance, balanced with a concerted selffacing in light of experiences gained in the war on weight. the metaphor of war might be helpful in revealing understandings about the complexities of weight in ways that have not yet been considered. it is not new knowledge to state that experts belong to camps. however, thinking in a russell-mayhew, moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 5 8 more focused way about how camps form around the real-world practice concerns of experts offers room for movement within and between camps that are erected, dismantled, and reformed over time. for example, the movement toward person-first language in medical journals focused on obesity, while still a contested practice, demonstrates some compromise among conflicting camps in the field. most wars eventually end, and this offers hope for the construct of weight (flusberg et al., 2018). even in the midst of war, a pause in hostilities can bring people together in unexpected and humanizing ways that resist constructing the other as deviant, dangerous, or inhuman. several months into hostilities in the first world war, an unofficial ceasefire was struck along sections of the western front. the “christmas truce” of 1914 transformed no man’s land into a space where the troops’ various needs could be, albeit briefly, met: they met and talked, they shared food and, together, they buried their dead. perhaps this historical moment is a call to reinvigorate no man’s land in the modern war on weight. these kinds of truces are their own acts of resistance to accepted norms and practices, which can be cultivated and sustained on a changing landscape (wiedemann et al., 2018). in this space, professionals may be able to step outside of disciplinary custom and convention in our conceptualization about and responses to weight. if this is an act of reclamation of capacity to respond to weight complexities, then it is also the possibility of reclamation of spaces that shape weight, and of the body that has been subject to gendered discourse. there are reasons to be wary of the war metaphor despite its ability to capture attention, elicit emotions, and provide a shorthand. these include the risk of hyperbole, the combative sidetaking nature of the metaphor, and its overuse over time (flusberg et al., 2018). the findings of this study also call for a measure of caution in applying martial metaphors in the helping professions. numbers are a portal that permit weight into the world but numbers, in and of themselves, are an abstraction; there is no instance of 200 anywhere in the world, but there are people whose bodies weigh 200 pounds. waging war on abstractions may be something akin to an exercise in futility, leaving us proverbially war torn and without direction. numbers and measurements can only be apprehended in the world of practice when they are located upon and within bodies (human or otherwise) and, as such, the body itself becomes either battleground or foe. if the war is understood only as being against individuals with obesity, it perpetuates an oppositional stance of fear, threat and blame of the other (flusberg et al., 2018). for weight as a construct, there is no clear enemy, the war is being waged on multiple fronts, and it is a battle we have been fighting for a long time. summary: war into wager perhaps the war on weight metaphor is useful as an initial call to arms (flusberg et al., 2018) but first we need to identify what we are fighting for. the war metaphor can also be a call to lay down arms, even if only for a time, to explore how else we might engage around this complex issue. through this research, we arrive at more clarity about what is important to understand around this complex issue of weight. gadamer (2007) suggested that “understanding is an adventure, and like any other adventure, is dangerous” (p. 243) but we offer that “understanding is the ultimate hermeneutic wager: that understanding matters and will make a difference” (moules et al, 2015, p. 196). russell-mayhew, moules & estefan journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 5 9 acknowledgements this work was draws upon support from the social sciences and humanities research council under grant 435-2018-0116. we would also like to acknowledge michael p. levine, emeritus professor of psychology, kenyon college for his support with participant recruitment. references bacon, l. 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(2004, may 1). demonizing fat in the war on weight. the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/arts/demonizing-fat-in-the-war-on-weight.html van amsterdam, n. (2013). big fat inequalities, thin privilege: an intersectional perspective on ‘body size’ the european journal of women's studies, 20(2), 155–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506812456461 welsh, t.l. (2018). healthism and the bodies of women: pleasure and discipline in the war against obesity. journal of feminist scholarship 1(1), 33-48. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jfs/vol1/iss1/13 weiss, d. (2013). the heavy: a mother, a daughter, a diet. ballantine books. wiedemann, n.j.b., pina e cuna, m., & clegg, s.r. (2021). rethinking resistance as an act of improvisation: lessons from the 1914 christmas truce. organization studies, 42(4), 615-635. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840619882957 https://www.uvic.ca/humanities/history/assets/docs/natasha-simpson---honours-thesis-2020---final.pdf https://www.uvic.ca/humanities/history/assets/docs/natasha-simpson---honours-thesis-2020---final.pdf https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/arts/demonizing-fat-in-the-war-on-weight.html https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506812456461 https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jfs/vol1/iss1/13 corresponding author: casey rentmeester, phd email: casey.rentmeester@bellincollege.edu journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 march 10, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 hermeneutical healing: physical therapy with a gadamerian twist casey rentmeester, eric chaconas, jon weiss, mark bake abstract in recent decades, phenomenology has been utilized not only as a conceptual framework from which to understand medical encounters in healthcare settings, but also to guide medical professionals in providing care. in the realm of physical therapy, phenomenology has been touted as a philosophically-based avenue to aid in helping to understand what it means to be a patient. the works of edmund husserl and martin heidegger have been utilized as paths to approach phenomenologically-informed care in physical therapy. however, to our knowledge, no significant connection has been made in regard to the work of hans-georg gadamer’s phenomenology and hermeneutics in the realm of physical therapy. the authors aim to close that gap by showing the ways in which gadamer’s philosophy can help physical therapists provide phenomenologically-informed patient care. they begin by outlining some of the touchpoints between phenomenology and healthcare and then introduce gadamer as a figure who deserves attention in the question of how to apply phenomenology to healthcare settings. upon analyzing gadamer’s account of what it means to experience an altered body, they outline gadamer’s understanding of tact, practical knowledge, and good sense in order to show how to understand at a conceptual level what it means to empathize with patients on the path to building therapeutic alliance, that is, a cooperative working relationship. they then look closely at gadamer’s hermeneutics and particularly his comments on how to cultivate a fusion of horizons in order to attempt to help guide physical therapists in theoretically understanding how to empathize with their patients. ultimately, they argue that physical therapists who practice phenomenologicallyinformed care, which they call “hermeneutical healing,” are positioned well to form strong working relationships with their patients. rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 2 keywords medical humanities, phenomenology, hermeneutics, gadamer, fusion of horizons in recent decades, phenomenology has been utilized not only as a conceptual framework from which to understand medical encounters in healthcare settings, but also to guide medical professionals in providing care (zahavi & martiny, 2019). in the realm of physical therapy, phenomenology has been touted as a philosophically-based avenue to aid in helping to understand what it means to be a patient (greenfield & jensen, 2010). the works of the two titans in the realm of phenomenology, edmund husserl and martin heidegger, have been utilized as paths to approach phenomenologically-informed care in physical therapy (shaw & connelly, 2013). however, to our knowledge, no significant connection has been made in regard to the work of hans-georg gadamer’s phenomenology and hermeneutics in the realm of physical therapy. we aim to close that gap by showing how gadamer’s philosophy can help physical therapists provide phenomenologically-informed patient care. we begin by outlining some of the touchpoints between phenomenology and healthcare and then introduce gadamer as a figure who deserves attention in the question of how to apply phenomenology to physical therapy settings. upon analyzing gadamer’s account of what it means to experience an altered body, we outline gadamer’s understanding of tact, practical knowledge, and good sense in order to show how to understand at a conceptual level what it means to empathize with patients on the path to building therapeutic alliance, that is, a cooperative working relationship. we then look closely at gadamer’s hermeneutics and particularly his comments on how to cultivate a fusion of horizons in order to attempt to help guide physical therapists in theoretically understanding how to empathize with their patients. ultimately, we argue that physical therapists who practice phenomenologically-informed care, which we call “hermeneutical healing,” are positioned well to form strong working relationships with their patients. phenomenology and physical therapy phenomenology has a rich and fruitful history in philosophy. founded by the german philosopher edmund husserl in the early 1900s, phenomenology’s goal is to get “to the things themselves!” [zu den sachen selbst] (husserl, 1900/2001, p. 50), which means to stay true to the way things are as they appear in context, rather than appealing to abstract theoretical constructs. although most philosophical doctrines are abstract by their very nature, phenomenology was deliberately created to be more practical as it deals with everyday life rather than speculative theories and systems. this makes it a fitting candidate to influence professional practice. two of the most famous phenomenologists, martin heidegger, who studied under husserl, and hansgeorg gadamer, who studied under heidegger, attempted to apply phenomenological methods to healthcare. in heidegger’s zollikon seminars, which were delivered exclusively to health professionals on a two-week, annual basis from 1959-1969, he tries to demonstrate “the highest need for doctors who think and who do not wish to leave the field entirely to scientific technicians” (1987/2001, p. 103). in gadamer’s the enigma of health, he provides a phenomenology of health and illness in which he attempts to show how it is only when something goes wrong with the body (e.g., a broken bone, an aching back, etc.) that we explicitly attend to its dysfunctionality, as its functionality is normally taken for granted when healthy (1993/1996). gadamer did his part to try to help medical professionals understand what it is like rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 3 to be a patient with the hope of helping to initiate more patient-centered care. while both thinkers gained some ground in making phenomenology applicable to healthcare, it is only recently that health professionals are truly applying phenomenological methods to professional practice. one of the first clear attempts to connect phenomenology and healthcare was made by patricia benner, who was drawn to the work of the famed heideggerian hubert dreyfus during her graduate studies at the university of california in the late 1970s and 1980s. benner leveraged dreyfus’s work in phenomenology to write from novice to expert: excellence and power in clinical nursing practice in 1984 in which she attempts to demonstrate phenomenologically how a nurse moves from novice to expert via experiential skills acquisition (benner, 1984/2001). since benner’s work, phenomenology has been utilized in various ways in the realm of nursing.1 in the realm of physical therapy, though, phenomenology is relatively new. in 2010, havi carel published a paper on how phenomenology can be applied in various medical contexts in order to provide better patient care (carel, 2010). later that year, bruce greenfield and gail jensen argued that “the tools of phenomenology provide opportunities to understand the illness experiences of [physical therapists’] patients” (2010, 92). in a phenomenological context, illness refers to the patient’s subjective experience of a disease or injury, rather than the objective dysfunctionality itself. thus, rather than focusing exclusively on the body of the patient, a phenomenological approach to physical therapy attempts to understand the patient’s experience of the injury and how it has affected the patient’s life in a broader context, his or her expectations regarding recovery, and what matters most to the patient in the grand scheme of his or her life. in other words, to put it simply, the phenomenological approach to healthcare emphasizes meanings to complement the focus on measurements. greenfield and jensen cite both husserl and heidegger as helpful avenues in the quest to achieve phenomenologically-informed physical therapy practice in clinical settings. two years after the greenfield and jensen publication, james shaw and denise connelly (2012) explicitly utilize husserl and heidegger as theoretical underlays to positively affect patient care in physical therapy practice. to our knowledge, no one has explicitly utilized gadamer’s phenomenology and applied it to the field of physical therapy. we aim to try to close that gap by showing the ways in which gadamer’s philosophy can be practically applied in physical therapy settings to better care for patients as persons, and not simply a list of bodily impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. we begin by examining gadamer’s phenomenology of illness, which provides insight into what it often means to experience an altered body from the point of view of the patient, which is sometimes referred to as “the broken body” (dahl et al., 2019). we then turn to gadamer’s hermeneutics, i.e., his theory of interpretation in communication, to provide guidance to physical therapists attempting to understand what matters to their patients with the hope of achieving therapeutic alliance, which can be defined broadly as the overall bond between the physical therapist and patient (horvath et al., 2011). therapeutic alliance is a tenet of healthcare practice that originated in psychotherapy with the work of sigmund freud (1958a; 1958b) but is now utilized broadly across various healthcare specialties. in recent years, physical therapy literature 1 this is evidenced by the fact that the main peer-reviewed nursing journals, including nursing inquiry, qualitative health research, nursing philosophy, international journal of nursing studies, nurse researcher, and journal of research in nursing have showcased articles on the phenomenology of nursing since benner. indeed, the fact that we have the journal of applied hermeneutics is a testament itself of the influence of practical phenomenology. rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 4 has adopted therapeutic alliance as a fundamental component to successful outcomes in the rehabilitation of patients along with movement dysfunction. for instance, ferreira et al. (2013) identified positive therapeutic alliance ratings by physical therapists and their patients as being associated with improved outcomes for individuals with chronic low back pain. moreover, a strong therapeutic alliance has demonstrated positive impact in the physical rehabilitation from stroke (lawton et al., 2016) and cardiac procedures (burns & evon, 2007). indeed, a recent study identified 42 sub-themes within the context of therapeutic alliance across 130 publications related to physical and occupational therapy practice (babatunde et al., 2017). thus, it is safe to say that therapeutic alliance is referred to widely in the realm of physical therapy. while broad application of concepts relevant to therapeutic alliance may be currently employed clinically, such application has been informed more by psychological concepts than philosophical concepts, which is understandable given its historical roots. our goal is to help to guide physical therapists in their attempt to form therapeutic alliance with their patients through the lens of the philosophical subdiscipline of phenomenology in order to complement the work that has already been theoretically undergirded by psychology. gadamer argues that hermeneutics, which we can understand as a conceptual framework to guide interpretation and communication, plays a different role than psychology: “hermeneutical work is based on a polarity of familiarity and strangeness; but this polarity is not to be regarded psychologically” (1960/2004, p. 295). our goal is to outline the role in which gadamerian hermeneutics can play. in order to cover that terrain, though, we need to begin with what it means to experience a broken body and thus enter the realm of phenomenology. the broken body gadamer calls health an enigma in that when we are healthy, our bodily functionality is taken for granted as it lays in the background of our awareness. it is only when there is a disruption in this seamless functionality that we typically explicitly attend to the body. he states, “i know only too well how illness can make us insistently aware of our bodily nature by creating a disturbance in something which normally, in its very freedom from disturbance, almost completely escapes our attention” (1993/1996, p. 73). when this happens, the body becomes the object of attention and “thus appears as something set over against us, as an ‘object’ (gegenstand), as that which offers resistance (widerstand) and must be broken” (1993/1996, p. 96). instead of receding into the background, the body all of a sudden becomes present due to its inability to perform tasks that were once routine. when this happens, we objectify the aspect of the body that is not functioning and attempt to bring it back to functionality. sometimes we are unable to heal the body by ourselves and thus seek the expertise of medical professionals. physical therapists often play a role on the road to recovery when the injury results in impairments affecting the musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, or neurological systems. gadamer cautions us that “modern science and its ideal of objectification demands of all of us a violent estrangement from ourselves” (1993/1996, p. 70) since, by focusing myopically on the body, we lose sight of the person. by the very nature of the profession, physical therapists need to objectify the body in order to provide appropriate assessments and treatment measures (it is, after all, called physical therapy). however, it is important to understand the context of the injury that has been experienced by the patient—as well as the patient’s interpretation of that injury—in order to provide proper patient care. the following examples provide a small sample of the types of injuries that physical therapists come across to help us understand just how broad the treatment spectrum can be. rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 5 physical therapists are sometimes dealing with patients who have an acute injury that can be overcome with treatment such that the person is able to retread back to a healthy state in which the body falls back into the background. consider a 52-year-old male who begins to experience achilles tendon pain upon running and is hopeful this new pain in the back of his ankle will go away with treatment so he can still participate in his planned half marathon next month. his prognosis and hope that his body will return to its prior status is good, and he does not anticipate the injury to bar him from participating in the race for which he has prepared. when given proper therapy, in this case, the patient can easily tread back to a state of well-being in which the body is “unhindered” and “ready for and open to everything” (gadamer, 1993/1996, p. 73). at other times, though, regaining health as one once experienced is simply not a live option—all that can be hoped for is managing the condition as one attempts to navigate the new version of themselves that is somehow “less” (cassel, 1982). for example, consider a 39-year-old female who endures repeated lumbar spine injuries related to her employment that requires heavy lifting. her new standard is living with chronic pain coupled with a limited range of motion. in this scenario the physical therapist must create a level of trust and confidence that therapy will yield a positive result of improved function through a reduction in pain severity, although the process may be slow, knowing full well that the distress of chronic pain is often related to feelings of helplessness (kusch & ratcliffe, 2018). in such chronic cases, as gadamer notes, “it is a question of tending to the ill, which also requires attending to their mental and emotional wellbeing” (gadamer, 1993/1996, p. 76). the physical therapist needs to empathize with what it means for the patient to have endured this changed life situation that includes living with an altered body, recognizing that “one must learn to accept such illness and attempt to live with it as far as the illness in question will allow” (gadamer, 1993/1996, p. 76). in other cases, the situation is even more severe and significantly life-altering. take, for instance, a 28-year-old woman who is injured in a mountain biking accident and sustains a complete c6 spinal cord injury. her recovery process is much different with the realization that even with extensive rehabilitation, walking again independently is not likely to ever occur. thus, the patient may be forced to reckon with the fact that in this situation, the body has truly become gegenstand, that is, an object “which withstands our natural impulses and which we cannot simply incorporate [seamlessly] into the order of our lives” (gadamer 1993/1996, p. 105). in such cases, the care team will likely recommend psychological counseling to help navigate her new life situation of living with an altered body, which is certainly appropriate. we think it is also appropriate, though, for the physical therapist to attempt to empathize with the patient and try to understand what it is like to undergo such a drastic change in life situation; phenomenology can help us on both of those fronts. empathy is a commonly used concept in the realm of physical therapy, but it is poorly understood (davis, 1990). we do know that there is strong evidence that empathy is an essential component of therapeutic alliance (feller & cottone, 2012). therefore, it is important to understand what is meant by empathy as we help to provide guidance to physical therapists aiming to build therapeutic alliance with their patients. for the sake of this paper, we agree with fernandez and zahavi that “the most basic form of empathy acquaints you—in the most direct and immediate manner possible—with another’s experiential life” (2020, p. 21). they call this “the phenomenological concept of empathy,” which they juxtapose with other concepts of empathy that come from the field of psychology. a helpful way to dissect various rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 6 understandings of empathy is to differentiate empathetic understanding, which is the act of understanding the experiences of the other person, from empathetic feeling, which is the act of feeling with another person (rentmeester & hogan, 2020). gadamer’s phenomenology provides us with a conceptual toolkit to help empathize with patients in the physical therapy settings at least at the level of empathetic understanding. importantly, gadamer argues that health professionals should approach each situation differently with an eye towards the context (1993/1996). therefore, the following concepts should be understood as philosophical scaffolding to help aid physical therapists in providing empathetic care, rather than ethical prescriptions to guide practice. tact, practical knowledge, and good sense greenfield and jensen argue that a phenomenological approach to patient care allows physical therapists to go beyond the code of ethics of the profession and provide truly individualized and context-mindful care (2010). they put the point the following way: although a code of ethics provides a moral framework for physical therapy, and provides a consistent and common moral language to base ethical decisions, many find the principles contained in codes of ethics too abstract or impersonal to address their day-today moral concerns and issues. (greenfield & jensen, 2010, pp. 88-89) gadamer’s hermeneutics provides a wealth of concepts that physical therapists can use in order to provide what we refer to as “hermeneutical healing,” that is, patient care that acknowledges the unique perspective and world of the patient while also attempting to achieve the best possible patient outcomes. first and foremost, let us begin with why professional codes of ethics in and of themselves should not be the sole guide for ethical conduct in a profession. since they are meant to serve as a general guide for the profession in its practices, they are not well-constituted to guide specific provider-patient interactions. in other words, codes of ethics are great at providing general principles to keep in mind as one practices in the profession, but not as good at giving details as to how to approach patient care in context. thus, there is a need for more nuanced approaches that go beyond the code of ethics and help practitioners navigate everyday patient interactions. indeed, theodore george (2020) has argued recently that understanding what “doing the right thing” means in any given situation cannot be given to us by a template; rather, “what the good means–right here and now” (p. 2) requires an “openness, attunement, imagination and decisiveness” that is particular to each unique situation (p. 9).2 thus, if we are to understand professional codes of ethics as templates, we need to complement their use in order to ethically practice in the profession. as a phenomenologist, gadamer is committed to the idea that one should approach the world as it is lived in context, rather than appeal to broad principles, and his hermeneutics provides a lens to investigate a more nuanced approach. the first three gadamerian concepts that we think are helpful in conceptualizing hermeneutical healing are tact, practical knowledge, and good sense. 2 nancy j. moules provides an excellent review of george’s book in the 2020 issue of the journal of applied hermeneutics (doi: 10.11575/jah.vi0.71086). https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/71086 rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 7 gadamer uses the term “tact” to refer to “a special sensitivity and sensitiveness to situations and how to behave in them, for which knowledge from general principles does not suffice. hence an essential part of tact is that it is tacit and unformulable” (1960/2004, p. 14). physical therapists practice in a wide array of contexts, including outpatient clinics, acute care hospitals, rehabilitation units, schools, athletic events, long-term care facilities or the homes of their patients. gadamer can help us understand how a physical therapist should approach a situation in the outpatient clinical setting differently than in, say, a patient’s home. consider the case of the 48-year-old male who is voluntarily seeking physical therapy for his aching back in a clinical setting. in this case, the patient knows what he wants and simply needs help achieving it; moreover, he is self-motivated to do so, as evidenced by his autonomous choice to seek out a physical therapist. here, the physical therapist can look to tackle the problem at hand quickly and build a care plan together with the patient, as the values of the patient are clear and well-defined (emanuel & emanuel, 1992). on the other hand, consider the case of an 84-year-old female who is receiving in-home physical therapy for the first time on her back pain based largely on the authority of a referring provider. in this case, it would likely be inappropriate for the physical therapist to dive in with a medical analysis or even begin the conversation with a medical question. rather, the physical therapist should work to get to know the patient as a person, perhaps aided by cues in the home itself such as pictures on the wall or artworks, etc. once the physical therapist feels that he or she has established solid therapeutic alliance, he or she can then simply ask “why were you referred to physical therapy?” to shift the narrative towards the medical context of the meeting. in all contexts, physical therapists require tact to do their jobs well since no two injuries are exactly alike nor are treatment plans going to be identical for the same types of injuries. moreover, all patients are unique in regard to their background and life plans. the tactful physical therapist recognizes the nuances that are unique to each medical encounter in order to be positioned well to provide optimal care. the well-experienced physical therapist with tact understands how to adjust one’s communication to the context, and when he or she has done this consistently and combines his or her professional experience, he or she starts to build what gadamer refers to as “practical knowledge” (phronesis), which is knowledge that is directed towards concrete situations (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 19). as gadamer unpacks this concept, he speaks about it as “the grasp and moral control of the concrete situation” that allows one to always keep an eye towards “the goal that one is pursuing so that the right thing may result” (1960/2004, p. 19). any physical therapist understands what the goal of treatment should be, namely, the restoration of the health of the patient in as much as is feasible given the circumstances. ideally, the physical therapist aids the patient in taking the broken body that has become an object for the patient and assists in restoring it to the point of a healthy body so the patient can return seamlessly to engaging in life’s projects without pain or dysfunction getting in the way. however, the physical therapist with practical knowledge knows not only this overarching goal but also how to get there. in order to do so, the physical therapist must not only accumulate clinical experiences in gadamer’s sense of lived experience (erlebnis) that occur in isolated moments but also “gain better knowledge through [new experiences]” (gadamer 1960/2004), p. 348), a reflective and developmental process that gadamer refers to as erfahrung (which is also translated as “experience”). 3 the 3 on the difference between erlebnis and erfahrung, see joel weinsheimer and donald g. marshall’s preface to gadamer’s truth and method, pages xii-xiv. thank you to dr. graham mccaffrey for his insight about gadamer’s distinction between erlebnis and erfahrung. rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 8 physical therapist with practical knowledge has synthesized his or her clinical experiences in a reflective, hermeneutical fashion via erfahrung such that he or she understands how to navigate new clinical encounters. while tact allows the physical therapist to recognize the nuances of the situation that cannot be formulated via general principles, practical knowledge allows the physical therapist to navigate those nuanced concrete situations in order to restore the health of their patients. again, an example may prove helpful. consider the case of a 56-year-old male with chronic low back pain and a history of depression and anxiety. he constantly ruminates about his pain and informs the physical therapist that he has not had a day without pain in many years. the physical therapist with tact understands the role communication will play in this patient’s outcome, especially given the patient’s history of mental health issues. tact provides the physical therapist with the first steps toward empathy, but practical knowledge ensures that the care provided will also be grounded in sound principles of therapeutic strategies and psychologically-informed care to complement the therapeutic methods based in exercise physiology and biomechanics. in this situation, the physical therapist should allow the patient to feel like his viewpoint, thoughts, fears, and anticipated difficulties will be heard and then work to create a safe environment for optimal patient recovery. the physical therapist should use tact and practical knowledge to utilize skilled communication to help the patient reshape his thoughts, better learn his body, and see the opportunities for progress. it is possible for a physical therapist to have tact but lack practical knowledge. this would entail being sensitive to the nuances of the situation but not being able to practically navigate it so as to ensure optimal health outcomes for the patient. in such situations, the physical therapist has good intentions and displays empathy but is not quite skilled enough to bring about the best results. it is less likely that a physical therapist has excellent practical knowledge but lacks tact, since a key feature of most clinical encounters in physical therapy is building therapeutic alliance, and tact is an essential component in doing so. ideally, as the physical therapist begins to build a wealth of practical knowledge and is guided by tact, he or she can be said to form what gadamer calls “good sense” (gesunder menschenverstand), which is the ability to judge holistically what situations call for (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 27). gadamer argues that good sense “cannot be taught in the abstract but only practiced from case to case” (1960/2004, p. 27). this is why experience in the sense of erfahrung is such an important aspect of physical therapy. since all medical encounters are unique, particularly for physical therapists who practice in such a wide array of settings, the formation of good sense requires experience (erfahrung). a physical therapist with good sense understands when he or she must spend more time building patient rapport in order to create a strong therapeutic alliance and also judges well when it is appropriate to engage in difficult conversations, such as when a patient is not being compliant with the care plan. patient adherence has been demonstrated as greater when a strong therapeutic alliance exists between patient and clinician, which is why a good physical therapist will dedicate so much time to this process (babatunde et al., 2017). from gadamer’s perspective, the more experience a physical therapist has in these spheres, the stronger one’s good sense will be for future situations. although there is no rulebook that could possibly guide all future patient scenarios and contexts in a gadamerian understanding of patient care, one’s accumulation of practical knowledge does allow for the cultivation of good sense, which then prepares the physical therapist for similar situations in the future. one common approach to practicing empathetic care in the clinical encounter that has proved influential in physical therapy settings comes from the work of geoff maitland, who emphasized collaborative decision-making on the rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 9 part of physical therapists and patients with the ultimate goal of providing patient-centered care (hangeveld & banks, 2013). it has also been shown how engaging in bigger-picture types of discussions with patients (sometimes dubbed “ethical reasoning”) can be beneficial as a clinical reasoning strategy in physical therapy settings (edwards et al., 2005). we hope to build on these already proven techniques in physical therapy by showing how gadamer’s hermeneutics can be leveraged to better understand how to practice empathetic care towards patients. cultivating a fusion of horizons now that we have a sense as to the importance of tact, practical knowledge, and acquiring good sense, we can move on to more general concepts in gadamer’s hermeneutics. to begin, we should note that the primary task of hermeneutics is to guide communication and interpretation. gadamer makes it clear that “it would seem that there is something absurd about the whole idea of a unique, correct interpretation” (1960/2004, p. 118). since interpretation and communication are more properly labeled as art than science, it is wrongheaded to suppose that a person can come upon the right interpretation or communicative technique. rather, the goal of hermeneutics is to provide concepts to better prepare individuals to engage in the art of interpretation and communication. the ultimate goal of patient-provider communication is to reach an understanding, and gadamer has a lot to say about what reaching an understanding entails. this longer quote provides a good starting point from which we can work: to understand means to come to an understanding with each other” (sich miteinander verstehen). understanding is, primarily, agreement (verständnis ist zunächst einverständnis). thus people usually understand (verstehen) each other immediately or they make themselves understood (verständigen sich) with a view toward reaching agreement (einverständnis). coming to an understanding (verständigung), then, is always coming to an understanding about something. understanding each other (sich verstehen) is always understanding each other with respect to something. (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 180) three points can be gleaned from this quote regarding gadamer’s conceptual analysis of understanding. first, understanding is always understanding with another and displays itself as agreement (we provide the original german above to show the etymological link between the words “understanding” and “agreement” in gadamer’s native language). in order to come upon an understanding, one must “get on the same page” as the other and begin to see things eye to eye. second, understanding sometimes comes very quickly but other times requires time. those who have long-lasting relationships with one another—say, family members or good friends— may be able to come upon an understanding quickly since they have a wealth of experience with each other and already understand each other’s values and goals. in such situations, good sense may have been formed well by both persons who are thus able to practically navigate situations together in a seamless fashion. on the other hand, new acquaintances may require a significant time investment in order to reach an understanding. physical therapists sometimes have patients with whom they have formed deep and lasting relationships and thus have strong therapeutic alliance but also sometimes have brand new patients in which it will take time in order to build rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 10 therapeutic alliance. even when physical therapists have strong bonds with their patients, life sometimes “gets in the way” and they need to be poised to be patient towards the barriers that present themselves. third, in understanding, the agreement that occurs is always with respect to something. in a physical therapy setting, this has not only to do with health goals but overarching life goals that are threatened by injury and need to be re-evaluated, re-prioritized, adjusted, or, in worst-case scenarios, abandoned. understanding from gadamer’s perspective “is always a movement in [the hermeneutical] kind of circle” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 189). phenomenologists in the hermeneutical tradition often refer to this as the hermeneutic circle wherein individuals who engage in communication and interpretation must simultaneously mediate the whole and the parts. gadamer calls this the hermeneutical rule, which states that “we must understand the whole in terms of the detail and the detail in terms of the whole” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 291). the “whole” is life itself, which includes one’s goals, hopes, projects, and, in a phrase, everything that matters to a person. the details or “parts” are more focused on the specifics of the particular situation. a physical therapist who only focuses on the patient’s injured body and how to restore its functionality without paying attention to the patient’s life as a whole is not demonstrating good sense by myopically being fixated on the parts and losing sight of the whole, which will therefore not likely produce the best possible results. in order to pay heed to the parts and the whole, gadamer talks about the importance of attaining a “fusion of horizons” (horizontverschmelzung), which is perhaps his most famous concept. for gadamer, “the horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point” (1960/2004, p. 301). the physical therapist’s horizon includes expertise in how the body functions and how to restore dysfunctionality back to functionality, as well as the unique background that informs that expertise, which is bolstered by the tact, practical knowledge, and good sense that he or she has formed throughout his or her career. the patient’s horizon includes his or her own unique background and the range of options that make up his or her life’s projection. a fusion of horizons occurs when both persons acknowledge each other’s unique background and still come upon a common ground regarding the topic at hand. in order for this to occur, gadamer argues that both participants in the dialogue should approach the conversation with an “openness to the other,” which he defines as “recognizing that i myself must accept some things that are against me” (1960/2004, p. 355). critically, this attitude of openness includes the idea that the other is a possible authority for you that must be acknowledged (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 281). in a physical therapy context, the physical therapist, of course, is the authority regarding the medical aspects of treatment and the therapeutic plans needed to be put in place in order to restore health or manage pain. at the same time, the physical therapist must recognize the patient as an authority as well, not only in understanding his or her own body but in understanding his or her life and life plans, which provide the background of the treatment plan. from a gadamerian perspective, the patient’s life and life plans oftentimes have more of an effect on the care plan than the patient’s body from the perspective of the patient since, from the patient’s perspective, when healthy, the bodily self often falls into the background, as noted above. one of the goals of the patient may simply be to return to the state in which the broken body no longer announces itself as broken so that life in general can go on without dysfunction or pain. in order to achieve the status of retreading back to a state of health, a fusion of horizons must occur in which “one learns to look beyond what is rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 11 close at hand—not in order to look away from it but to see it better, within a larger whole and in truer proportion” (gadamer, 1960/2004, 304). sometimes, restoring health to the point where one’s bodily being falls into the background is simply not possible in the near future, and it may be the case that in such contexts, understanding what matters most to the patient becomes of paramount importance. take, for instance, a 78-year-old female who has fractured a hip but desperately wants to attend her granddaughter’s birthday party, which would require her to climb five steps. in such a context, while the progression of healing for the hip is undoubtedly important in creating a care plan, the explicit goal of the patient to climb the five steps means that the physical therapist should focus in on stair training to accomplish that goal. this stair climbing focus may occur earlier in the rehabilitation phase than is ideal from a general practice perspective, but in building the care plan with the patient in order to achieve the patient’s goal, an investment is established on the part of the patient and the plan is crafted explicitly with the patient’s goals in mind, thereby displaying empathy and accomplishing a fusion of horizons. even when a care plan is created mutually with the physical therapist and the patient, the patient may be unable to follow through on the plan. while this can be frustrating for the physical therapist and the patient alike, gadamer does provide some guidance as to how to navigate such a situation. he states, “reaching an understanding in conversation presupposes that both partners are ready for it and are trying to recognize the full value of what is alien and opposed to them” (1960/2004, p. 388). in some situations, the patient is not ready to commit fully to the care plan, even though the patient may act as if he or she is ready. addiction to opioids would be one example in which a patient may not be ready to participate in a rehabilitation program, as the physiological changes that occur in the brain might block any desire to take an active approach to recovery. in other situations, the lack of adherence to the care plan is much more nuanced. in the situation of noncompliance, the physical therapist should do his or her best to understand the barriers to patient adherence, which may have nothing to do with the “will power” of the patient. take, for instance, the patient who is consistently not able to make the appointments on time, which places a strain on the physical therapist, who already has a very busy schedule. in this context, the physical therapist should attempt to understand the world of the patient: is the patient having issues with transportation? if so, perhaps he or she can be referred to a case manager who can facilitate rides for the patient. is an in-home physical therapy setting more appropriate, given the barrier at hand and the treatment plan? are there other reasons for the non-compliance that can be addressed? in the contemporary era in which we strive for patient-centered care, physical therapists must be willing to think outside of the box and meet the patients where they are in order to achieve the best possible health outcomes, and also understand that some of the barriers to achieving success in regard to those outcomes have nothing to do with health. we know that a strong relationship exists between therapeutic alliance and program adherence for a variety of conditions (babatunde et al., 2017). thus, physical therapists should emphasize building therapeutic alliance in such situations. we believe that, on the whole, the physical therapist that interweaves “hermeneutical healing” with contemporary patient management strategies can help to build therapeutic alliance, which will thereby help in achieving optimal health outcomes on the whole. rentmeester et al. journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 5 12 concluding thoughts as with many professions, physical therapists often point to their code of ethics to guide practice; however, the general nature of such codes is not well-suited to guide physical therapy practice in context. we have argued that physical therapists who seek to provide patient-centered care that is mindful of the context in which the care occurs may benefit from a phenomenological approach to patient care, and we have shown how gadamer’s hermeneutics can be applied as a phenomenological resource for physical therapists. upon exploring what it means to experience a broken body from gadamer’s perspective, we have highlighted key concepts from gadamer’s philosophy in our attempt to showcase what we call “hermeneutical healing,” including his notion of tact, practical knowledge, and good sense. ultimately, we think that gadamer’s concept of cultivating a fusion of horizons that acknowledges the authoritative expertise of the physical therapist and the patient is appropriate, and we have provided some examples of cases in which physical therapists can approach situations differently, depending on the context, in the quest to build therapeutic alliance. gadamer’s notion that understanding is always understanding with another is especially helpful in the quest to provide patient-centered care, which also helps in overcoming common barriers face in the physical therapist relationship, such as lack of compliance. overall, we encourage physical therapists to 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(2012). phenomenology and physiotherapy: meaning in research and practice. physical therapy reviews, 17, 398-408. https://doi.org/10.1179/1743288x12y.0000000043 zahavi, d., & martiny, k.m.m. (2019). phenomenology in nursing studies: new perspectives. international journal of nursing studies, 93, 155-162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.01.014 https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0022186 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2016.03.031 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.vi0.71086 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.vi0.69717 https://doi.org/10.1179/1743288x12y.0000000043 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2019.01.014 corresponding author: haley irene burke, phd student, texas a&m university email: burkeh@tamu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 july 5, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.75563 developing gadamerian virtues against epistemic injustice: the epistemic and hermeneutic dimensions of ethics haley irene burke abstract in her groundbreaking text epistemic injustice, miranda fricker evaluates types of harms incurred by individuals undergoing unrecognized and inarticulable oppression. at issue in epistemic and hermeneutic injustice are prejudicial comportments to, and evaluations of, reality. in the following, i focus on hermeneutic and epistemic injustice in relation to the formation of intellectual and ethical virtues. when reading fricker and hans-georg gadamer’s hermeneutics together, there is a clear pathway to improve ethical development. in particular, ethical development ought to cultivate the proper virtues that promote understanding. gadamer’s emphasis on the qualities of a researcher and the epistemic virtues that fricker highlights reveal an educative path for addressing injustice. in other words, cultivating these virtues counteracts injustice wherein recognition and articulation of reality is challenged or at issue. keywords hermeneutics, ethics, hans-georg gadamer, miranda fricker, education in the opening to his 1947 rectoral address, hans-georg gadamer comments that, after “a war full of absurdity and crime” the institution of the university has become “questionable itself” (1992, p. 15). indeed, gadamer affirms that the university must establish new reasons for its existence amidst social and political reconstruction which he writes is only possible “from the fertile depths of our totality as social beings” (p. 16). while post-war germany is a singular place burke journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 9 2 and time, it seems that gadamer’s words might still speak to researchers and teachers in university settings. we might ask related questions, such as: what is the role of the university in light of disagreement and social erosion in the realm of politics? what type of education will produce a sufficiently just polis? i do not aim to offer a conclusive answer to such questions. rather, i suggest an entry point for beginning to address such issues. ethics education is a site for communal change, and it can be conceived as such in light of miranda fricker’s analysis of epistemic and hermeneutic injustice. in my view, her work on epistemic injustice is bolstered by a gadamerian account of hermeneutical experience. read together, fricker and gadamer provide a blueprint for developing ethical hearing and speaking. in this context, fricker and gadamer can be read in tandem to point to the virtues that protect one from epistemic injustice. in particular, ethics educators or ethicists ought to attend to virtues like “epistemic confidence” and “intellectual courage”; these are fricker’s terms (2007, pp. 4759). paraphrasing gadamer’s work in his rectoral address, they should emphasize humility, commitment to doubt, and absorption in truth. these virtues work together to actualize one’s dialogical and epistemic capacities such that one does not lose sight of their convictions when faced with negative reactions. moreover, they allow one to examine differing beliefs and judgments with a sense of openness, allowing one to change one’s mind when appropriate. in my paper, i first show how fricker articulates the problem of epistemic injustice which takes shape in testimonial and hermeneutic situations. i suggest that ethical education can intervene in injustice at the level of virtue development. i then articulate the virtues necessary to deal with interpretive breakdown or opposition, on fricker’s view.1 in response to the virtues that fricker points to, i provide a gadamerian response. in so doing, i shift the point of emphasis in gadamer’s hermeneutics from the “fusion of horizons” to a concern for the matter (die sache selbst) (2013, p. 317). finally, i speculate with the support of some texts on teaching ethics and applied hermeneutics about how ethical training might be reframed to cultivate these virtues. part one fricker articulates the epistemic contours of power relations and social hierarchies in her work epistemic injustice. the basic thrust of her argument is that hierarchies and relations orient both accesses to knowledge and capacities for articulation and recognition. with this, fricker’s analysis incorporates both the testimonial and hermeneutic dimensions of epistemology. the epistemic is thus deeply intertwined with the ethical/political domains in fricker’s view. to act ethically, one must properly orient themselves to epistemic concerns. moreover, epistemic judgments are shaped, in part, by the political realm. as fricker puts it in the opening of her text: “the ethical features in question result from the operation of social power in epistemic interactions, to reveal them is also to expose a politics of epistemic practice” (2007, pp. 1-2). these ethical features unfold interpersonally as we move through the world, and they are indicative of relational power structures. thus, cultivating an ability to address epistemological injustice carries ethical and political weight. to consider the ethical and political implication of fricker’s work, it is necessary to understand her emphasis on the epistemic. epistemic injustice is produced in testimonial and hermeneutic modalities. in the mode of testimonial injustice, epistemic practices are distorted by some kind of burke journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 9 3 prejudice (fricker, 2007, p. 43). such injustice produces a harm against a speaker who does not receive basic respect from the hearer. this lack of respect undermines their testimony as epistemologically weighty, and this can lead to further consequences for the speaker (2007, p. 44). by contrast, according to fricker, when such testimonial injustices occur at a structural level there is a hermeneutic injustice at play. this can amount to hermeneutical marginalization which serves to obscure experiences of injustice, such that they are barely comprehensible or articulable. marginalizations are generated through power relations and social hierarchies. that is, hermeneutic marginalization is a result of experiences or events going unrecognized or unacknowledged by those with the social power to influence collective hermeneutic resources. simply put, “if you have material power, then you will tend to have an influence in those practices by which social meanings are generated” (fricker, 2007, p. 147). in this way, those with less material power also have less epistemic power. 2 such marginalization renders the “collective hermeneutical resource structurally prejudiced” because groups in power have a disproportionate influence on collective resources (2007, p. 155). this structural prejudice shows up through “hermeneutical lacunae” (2007, p. 154). 3 these lacunae are gaps in the social imaginary that obscure certain experiences. while the particular harms that fricker lists are reprehensible, she suggests that there is one underlying harm that reinforces the power structure described above. fricker explains that a oneoff moment of testimonial injustice, such as a court ruling against an innocent party on the basis of counter testimony or a misjudgment of one’s competence, can diminish the speaker’s intellectual confidence (2007, p. 46). when one undergoes a prolonged state of self-doubt in relation to their capacity as a knower, fricker argues that one loses a particular type of confidence (2007, pp. 47-48). i consider this one of the most detrimental harms because without intellectual confidence, which enables “epistemic confidence,” “intellectual courage,” and “social self-knowledge,” individuals are limited in contributing to social epistemic resources (fricker 2006, pp. 102-108).4 one way of addressing the issue of epistemic injustice, then, is to foster more intellectual confidence. below i consider how fricker addresses the intellectual virtues necessary for combatting testimonial injustice. part two fricker highlights the virtues a person must develop to protect against epistemic disadvantages (2006, p. 104). one such virtue is epistemic confidence. fricker identifies epistemic confidence as a characteristic that allows an individual to incorporate new knowledge without undermining themselves. the epistemically confident person can ask incisive questions and develop their epistemic. after repeated instances of epistemic injustice, one’s epistemic confidence is liable to be eroded. as fricker puts it, the implications for someone who meets with persistent testimonial injustice are grim: not only is he repeatedly subject to intrinsic epistemic insult that is the primary injustice, but where this persistent intellectual undermining causes him to lose confidence in his beliefs and/or his justification for them, he literally loses knowledge. (2007, p. 49) burke journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 9 4 without the confidence to compare one’s sense of reality with another’s, one loses the opportunity to continue to learn more. one’s knowledge of something in particular might even be washed away by another raising questions against it. without confidence, one might assume views from another without question or they might lose the capacity to raise questions. there is a further risk that one loses intellectual courage. intellectual courage refers to one’s capacity to resist backing down too quickly when engaged in a discussion (fricker, 2007, p. 49). fricker cites james montmarquet’s conception of intellectual courage as “the willingness to conceive and examine alternatives to popularly held beliefs, (the) perseverance in the face of opposition from others (until one is convinced one is mistaken), and the determination required to see such a project through to its completion’” (2007, pp. 49-50; from montmarquet, 1993, p. 23). without the confidence to continue to develop one’s orientation as a knower and have a sense of one’s social self, one might lose knowledge as well as the courage to challenge popular ideas and affirm one’s knowledge or even to change one’s mind. so, fricker contends that ongoing epistemic development in the social sphere is contingent on an individual being both capable of continuing to learn and develop their knowledge (epistemic confidence) and capable of holding firm when confronted with opposition (intellectual courage). part three the obvious gadamerian response to the kind of injustices discussed above take place through genuine conversation whereby one’s prejudices are brought into question and mutual understanding is reached. 5 this takes place through confrontations with exteriority that destabilize previously held beliefs or, as gadamer calls them, prejudices (vorurteile). one can only go through this process if they have, as theodore george calls it, the “capacity for displacement” (2020, p. 47). when one is a successful hearer on gadamer’s account, they are able to reverse biases or prejudices through understanding. this capacity is constituted by the features of prejudice and openness. george characterizes gadamer’s notion of the hermeneutical experience as being essentially constituted by prejudice (2020, p. 52). he writes: “as a fore-structure of understanding, prejudice always makes possible, as well as limits, every effort to understand” (george, 2020, p. 52). prejudice, then, is a condition for the possibility of understanding, but its content or “limit” is always undergoing development (george, 2020, p. 54). indeed, it is prejudice that undergoes a transformation when one is participating in a hermeneutical situation. when one encounters a view that is contrary to their own or if they are met with an interlocutor who does not immediately admit of having the status as a knower, one might dismiss or ignore such an encounter. such a disposition for both fricker and gadamer should be avoided. if an understanding is to be reached or if epistemic injustice is to be overcome, ethical hearers must allow themselves to reconsider their views in light of what the speaker contributes. a prejudice can only be displaced if one is sufficiently open to the text or to a speaker. undogmatic openness is the second trait of an ethical hearer. the truth of what is disclosed in a genuine i-thou relation must be understood in order for one to partake in a hermeneutical experience. the thou is treated as a person who is a participant in the burke journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 9 5 i-thou relationship; the relationship itself is mutual and participants constitute its reality (gadamer, 2013, p. 367). for this bond to give way to true understanding, gadamer writes that there must be “openness to one another” (2013, p. 369). reiterating this point, nancy moules, in her chapter “hermeneutic practice: what gadamer has to teach nursing,” distinguishes between types of dialogue partners. she writes: “when we listen to find the truth in another, we are truly listening; when we listen to find how what the other says agrees with what we know, we are only listening to ourselves” (moules, 2021, p. 380). to truly experience the thou, then, hearers must listen for the truth of what is presented. such expansive listening might include, as jose medina suggests it should, attention “to the emotional side of communication” (2020, p. 222). sufficient openness means treating the thou as a participant who may nevertheless be subject to injustices that affect their status as a knower. still, undogmatic openness dictates that a hearer take seriously what is said. the capacity for displacement, constituted by prejudice and undogmatic openness, is a condition of the “fusion of horizons.” such a fusion takes place when genuine understanding between the speakers is reached. as george summarizes this: “gadamer’s concern for the whole of our factical lives leads him to the ethical consideration that the excellence of such a life is its openness to what brings our prejudices into question, what loosens our horizons, and what thus, in turn, allows always for new interpenetration and fusion with other horizons” (2020, p. 66). if a new understanding is reached, the prejudice that was originally displaced in the hermeneutical situation, then, is rethought and is transformative of the whole subject in what gadamer calls a fusion of horizons. as useful as these elements of gadamer’s hermeneutics are, the emphasis on a fusion of horizons through an event of understanding after a displacement of one’s prejudices deemphasizes one of the epistemic virtues that fricker points to as necessary for working against epistemic injustice, namely, intellectual courage. 6 learning to be displaced and to listen despite prejudices is, however, a first step and one that supports epistemic confidence. what is required for both fricker and gadamer is the development of further particular virtues that allow a hearer to discern when displacements ought to develop into fusions. gadamer makes evident that particular epistemic virtues are necessary for politically responsible university research in his 1947 rectoral address. these virtues are primordial aspects of science, in gadamer’s view, and they were forgotten during the rise of the national socialist party. gadamer affirms that within the realm of science: “opinions do not count but only reasons,” he continues, emphasizing the difficulty of this aim, “what an enormous demand on the weakness of humans, all of whom so very much love their own opinions and being right in discussions” (1992, p. 19). indeed, it must be in the realm of reason that the truth of some matter is accessed. gadamer is emphasizing the role of science, here, in an attempt to rethink the university after the national socialist party, with the support of many academics, took hold of germany. in other words, gadamer is speaking directly to distortions of reality that gave way to terrible injustices. the primordial scientist is a perfect exemplar of the person who focuses on reason rather than opinion. gadamer highlights three features that constitute the scientist’s virtue: humility, a commitment to the feeling of self-doubt, and an involvement with the matter at hand. from the perspective of humility, an educated person of science can “divest himself of all arrogance burke journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 9 6 concerning his own position” (1992, p. 21). humility, in this context, echoes the undogmatic openness discussed above. as for self-doubt, gadamer writes that “the man of science lives through doubting himself in the course of his work and this could grow into despair” because it is “difficult to do justice to the inner demands of truth and cognition instead of to one’s environment” (1992, pp. 20-21). in the context of distortion or ideology, as the case may be, gadamer suggests that the scientist must look beyond their time and toward truth. a scientist’s judgment of truth stands over and against accommodation to distorted realities or convictions. indeed, this trait echoes truth and method where gadamer states that true understanding “does not mean simply that we do blindly what the other desires” (2013, p. 369). an aspect of hearing ethically is determining for oneself how to judge what is being said. in addition to these virtues, gadamer highlights involvement in truth as a crucial virtue for the scientist. absorption in the subject matter is identical with “unconditional involvement” (1992, p. 20). such involvement brackets the influence of ideology and, indeed, practical matters. gadamer notes that thales embodied this trait in a particular way when he falls into a well while contemplating the cosmos (1992, p. 20). gadamer takes care to suggest that this virtue comes with special “weight” and cannot come at the cost of worldly ignorance. yet, this virtue, in my view, points to a care or participation in the subject matter such that one is not overly influenced by distorted opinion. indeed, science “stands above because it considers carefully the subject matter [sache selbst] and its true foundation” (gadamer, 1992, p. 20). care to the subject matter opposes “glittering opinion” (1992, p. 20). i highlight this aspect of gadamer in order to point out the difficulty of enacting these hermeneutic virtues. taking part in conversation such that one is always open to revising their prejudice is risky. in the rectoral address, gadamer places a point of emphasis on the practical risk of his hermeneutic view. in order for a genuine conversation to take place, one must not only be open to being shown that they are wrong, but they must also have an eye to truth and persevere through self-doubt when necessary. fricker’s invocation of epistemic confidence and intellectual courage can be read in conjunction with gadamer, on this score. part four in the context of ethics training, we ought to consider the problem that fricker touched on in relation to her views on character development. she writes: the value of an intellectual virtue is not reducible to the value of those particular items of knowledge it might bring, but derives also from its place in the harmony of a person’s intellectual character as a whole…an enduring loss of intellectual confidence entails a certain regrettable malformation of epistemic character. (fricker, 2006, p. 105) epistemic injustice is a result of social hierarchies distorting social knowledge through the enforcement of skewed epistemic resources. fricker points to virtues that might be cultivated to work against testimonial injustices. read with gadamer’s convictions about conversational and burke journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 9 7 scientific virtues, ethical education works against epistemic injustice and might even address hermeneutical injustices. so, given that the formation of an ethical person (at least in part) requires becoming a hearer with epistemic confidence and intellectual courage which are pronounced when one is undergoing displacement brought on by discernment and being involved with the truth of the matter, what resources do we have for cultivating such capacities in the context of ethical training? gadamer, in raising the question of the role of the university, advises us to think of ourselves in light of our community. in considering the university in relation to community, educators can be expansive in their approach to education. such an expansion is clearly necessary in the realm of ethics as the vast majority of applied ethics textbooks focus solely on ethical and professional training with little reference to broader humanistic insights, such as historical events, the history of ideas, critical self-assessment, and dialogue. indeed, jeremy rehwaldt’s study of contemporary north american ethics textbooks yields that “most focus either on exploring moral theories and approaches in detail or on describing moral theories and then applying them to contemporary issues” (2019, p. 35). the epistemic and hermeneutical aspects are, thus, left out of a vast majority of ethics curriculum in north america. approaching the ethical matter at hand from the perspective of hermeneutics and social epistemology might look like asking students to develop a narrative about their ethical development. applied biomedical ethics, for instance, implements “ethics autobiography” which provides greater opportunity to uncover epistemic and hermeneutic prejudices, especially when shared with others (zhu & woodson 2020). moreover, putting into language one’s ethical identity provides one with a robust sense of self that may persevere through self-doubt. recently, glen miller (2018) has argued for a holistic approach to professional ethics, wherein the individual’s personal values bear on their capacity to choose rightly in a professional context. indeed, he contends that asking students to answer what charles taylor calls “qualitative questions,” develops student’s individual sense of ethical responsibility (2018, p. 100). with a robust sense of one’s ethical self, students are able to integrate their personal values with professional goals and practices. such an existential approach to ethical development suggests a commitment to the virtues outlined above. creating tensions in classrooms can also serve to teach students to judge for themselves if they are maintaining epistemic confidence and intellectual courage. as nicholas davey has described it, hermeneutical education aspires “to the public and private pursuit of those ‘free spaces’ capable of drawing out those yet to be realized possibilities already at play within our various horizons of understanding” (2017, p. 11). when addressing prejudice, hermeneutical education and dialogue can serve to chip away at meanings that obscure rather than reveal truth. moreover, engaging in such practices empowers individuals to question biases and to reaffirm knowledge of injustices to serve a more just and truthful end. burke journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 9 8 conclusion fricker and gadamer are both concerned with understanding that achieves justice and truth. whereas fricker emphasizes intellectual courage and epistemic confidence, which contribute to one’s ability to question as well as maintain convictions when necessary, gadamer highlights prejudices and openness which may lead to understanding through displacements and fusions. beyond this, gadamer also recognizes the importance of caring about the matter. without this element, displacements and fusions would not be anchored to anything but opinion. as it concerns ethics education, curriculum ought to broaden its scope to include epistemic and hermeneutic elements. learning to take oneself, others, and the matter seriously is a crucial step to ethical development. beyond this, it will contribute to solving the injustices that fricker reveals. gadamer places education at the heart of social justice. he affirms, as i have already shown, that the task of social progress “is a responsibility for the teacher as well as the student of science. and it should be so, even if it is not always so” (1992, p. 21). acknowledgements i would like to thank those in attendance at the 2022 meeting of the canadian hermeneutic institute for helping me develop these ideas. i am especially grateful to drs. ted george and glen miller for their critical comments on earlier drafts of this project. references caputo, j.d. (2021). gadamer and postmodern mind. in t. george & g.-j. van der heiden (eds.), the gadamerian mind (pp. 435-448). routledge. davey, n. (2017). education and the formative power of hermeneutic practice. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 8, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53315 fricker, m. (2006). powerlessness and social interpretation. episteme: a journal of social epistemology, 3(1-2), 96-108. https://doi.org/10.1353/epi.0.0004 fricker, m. (2007). epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. oxford university press. gabriel, m. (2021). the ontology of the work of art and the universality of hermeneutics reconsidered: gadamer and new realism. in t. george & g.-j. van der heiden (eds.), the gadamerian mind (pp. 532-545). routledge. gadamer, h.-g. (2013). truth and method. (j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). bloomsbury publishing. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53315 https://doi.org/10.1353/epi.0.0004 burke journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 9 9 gadamer, h.-g. (1992). on the primordiality of science: a rectoral address. in d. misgeld and g. nicholson (eds.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (l. schmidt & m. reuss, trans; pp. 15-21). state university of new york press. george, t. (2020). the responsibility to understand: hermeneutical contours of ethical life. edinburgh university press. medina, j. (2020). complex communication and decolonial struggles: the forging of deep coalitions through emotional echoing and resistant imaginations. critical philosophy of race, 8 (1-2), 212-236. https://doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.8.1-2.0212 moules, n.j. (2021). hermeneutic practice: what gadamer has to teach nursing. in t. george & g.-j. van der heiden (eds.), the gadamerian mind (pp. 376-386). routledge. miller, g. (2018). aiming professional ethics courses toward identity development. in e.e. englehardt & m.s pritchard (eds.), ethics across the curriculum—pedagogical perspectives (pp. 89-105). springer. rehwaldt, j. (2019). expanding the context of moral decision-making: a model for teaching introductory ethics. teaching ethics, 19(1), 35-51. https://doi.org/10.5840/tej202021367 zhu, q., & woodson, s. (2020). educating self-reflective engineers. teaching ethics, 20(1/2), 31-46. https://doi.org/10.5840/tej20214190 1 fricker points to virtues such as epistemic confidence and intellectual courage and social selfknowledge, whereas gadamer, in his 1947 rectoral address, discusses virtues of involvement, discernment, and humility. 2 one of fricker’s examples of hermeneutic injustice is carmita wood’s encounter with sexual harassment. in the time before movements like #metoo and others, sexual harassment was a “hermeneutical lacuna” (fricker, 2007, p. 152). that is, the experience of sexual harassment fell outside of the domain of meaningful sense-making such that the experience was wrong, uncomfortable, and unwelcome but nevertheless indeterminant at the level of articulation. 3 of this general type, marginalization can occur systematically when a structural identity prejudice in the collective hermeneutic resource leads to some significant area of one’s social experience being obscured from the collective understanding (fricker, 2007, p. 155). it can also occur incidentally, when there is a particular instance that does not have to do with social powerlessness. 4 fricker also considers that such a harm directly distorts one’s identity. she writes: “in certain social contexts, hermeneutical injustice can mean that someone is socially constituted, and perhaps even caused to be, something they are not, and which it is against their interest to be. thus, we can say without essentializing that they are prevented from becoming who they really are” (fricker, 2006, p. 107). https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=medcca-2&proxyid=&u=https%3a%2f%2fdx.doi.org%2f10.5325%2fcritphilrace.8.1-2.0212 https://doi.org/10.5840/tej202021367 https://doi.org/10.5840/tej20214190 burke journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 9 10 5 in truth and method, gadamer (2013) highlights conversation as the process by which understanding is reached through language (pp. 401-407). he emphasizes the importance of translating between languages or contexts, writing: “having to rely on translation is tantamount to two people giving up their independent authority” (2013, p. 402). indeed, in a genuine conversation, each speaker seeks to learn from the other such that understanding really takes place. 6 indeed, the scholarly literature on gadamer and ethics paint gadamer as an anti-realist or postmodernist. john caputo provides good reason for viewing gadamer as a particular kind of postmodernist in “gadamer and postmodern mind” (2021). for a refutation against reading gadamer as an anti-realist, see markus gabriel’s “the ontology of the work of art and the universality of hermeneutics reconsidered: gadamer and new realism” (2021). microsoft word risser corrected proof 3.docx corresponding author: james risser, phd seattle university email: jrisser@seattleu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics january 31, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 hearing the other: communication as shared life james risser abstract in the phenomenological tradition, which took root in the first part of the twentieth century, the issue of intersubjectivity became prominent as a way of characterizing social life. but as seen in the work of edith stein, for example, this philosophy of intersubjectivity gives prominence to the subject, and as such it leaves open not only the question of the basic character of social life, but also the hermeneutic problem of understanding the other. the focus of my remarks in this paper will explore the way in which gadamer moves beyond a philosophy of subjectivity in his effort to establish the conditions for communicative understanding. for gadamer, communicative understanding only occurs through a genuine way of being with another. it requires not just being in relation to the other but a form of participation that amounts to an idea of shared life. gadamer establishes the precise character of this shared life in relation to his critical encounter with karl löwith’s version of the i-thou relation. keywords philosophical hermeneutics, hans-georg gadamer, communicative understanding, i-thou, karl löwith, intersubjectivity presenting the difficulty let me begin today with the key quote for this talk: communication’ [mitteilung] – what a beautiful word! it involves the idea that we share [teilen] something with one another [miteinander] that does not become less in the sharing but perhaps even grows. (gadamer, 1998, p. 6) risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 2 if you had previously read this quote from the outline of my talks or you are just hearing me read it now, you can probably understand why i wanted to include the german words. the german words help us see just how gadamer understands the word communication (mitteilung) that is not readily understood in our everyday use of the english word communication. basically, we understand the word communication to mean making contact with another; in communicating, a message of some sort is sent to another. social media is filled with messages and is now part of the communication industry. for gadamer, communication is more than this when considered as a fundamental aspect of hermeneutic understanding. that is to say, the hermeneutic problem, as we have seen, is much broader than the problem of interpretation in the human sciences. for gadamer, it “has to do with everything about which one can seek to communicate,” and this means it has the human situation in the world in view, including that of inter-cultural understanding (gadamer, 1997, p. 29). i am involved in understanding in hearing what the text has to say, but also in hearing the other who breaks into my ego-centeredness, presenting me with something to understand. understanding is effectively a communicative event, and this communicative event is more than a simple reception of a message. it involves the effort of bringing something into words and is itself a contact that has something to do with the very formation of human life. it speaks to the commonality that we call human such that it is nothing less than an experience of shared life. exactly how this communication takes place is evident to every reader of gadamer. the universe of language lives its life in conversation. when we want to understand something, even a mute written text or a painting, we are caught up in the language of conversation that wants to hear what this other has to say. in the more pronounced case of wanting to understand what the other person wants to say, there is a participatory engagement with the other that has a direct relation to the idea of shared life. now, it is almost self-evident that this engagement with hearing the other, with the undergoing of an experience of shared life, is not without its own difficulty. we think that understanding the other is not so different from ordinary communication. it is what occurs when i reach out and connect with another. i listen, perhaps i say, empathetically, “i understand what you are saying, i had something similar happen to me.” my emphasis on the “i” is intentional. it is what poses the difficulty in the first place. how can there be real sharing between one and another when we start from the singular experience of an i, when we start from the fact that each of us has a world to ourselves? even gadamer will remind us that we encounter others from our own pre-judgments, some of which we are actually blind to. but more than this. in his essay “the incapacity for conversation” gadamer describes how we experience in ourselves the incapacity to hear the other when we ignore and mishear in conversation. he writes: ... one who ignores or mishears or feigns to hear is one who constantly listens to himself, whose ears are so filled by the words of encouragement that he constantly gives to himself in pursuit of his own urges and interests, that he is unable to hear the other. that is, i would stress, to some degree or other a character trait we all share. nevertheless to become always capable of conversation—that is, to listen to the other—appears to me to be the genuine elevation of the human being to humanity. (gadamer, 2006, p. 358) from this difficulty, we have our questions. how is communication as shared life, as gadamer understands this idea, possible? and what constitutes the character of sharing such that it forms a risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 3 basic dimension of social life, if not our humanity? i want to answer these questions through a number of steps, beginning with an historical account within the phenomenological tradition of the problem of the relation of one to another, the problem of what we usually call intersubjectivity. edith stein on empathy and intersubjectivity edith stein was a german philosopher in the early part of the 20th century. she was born into a jewish family but converted to roman catholicism to become a carmelite nun. she died at auschwitz. as a young woman, she entered university studies with an interest in psychology, but soon became interested in the work of edmund husserl, the founder of phenomenology. she eventually became husserl’s assistant and her own work closely follows husserl’s phenomenology. with the publication of her book philosophy of psychology and the human sciences in husserl’s yearbook in 1922, stein had already made great inroads in her earlier book the problem of empathy to surpass the prevailing idea, mostly from husserl, that the relating of one to another resided in analogical presentation. this is the idea that one apprehends the other person by comparison with oneself, where the self is a knowing conscious subject. stein thought that the experience of relating to another involved more than an experience of self-reference. she thought that empathy, properly understood, constituted a real relation to the other. the experience of empathy was for her an encounter with the foreign other in which the conscious ego sees both sameness and difference, and, as a result, the conscious ego is able to become more aware of itself (stein, 1989, p. 11). still, this early work on empathy for all its merits never completely escapes from thinking the relation to the other from the priority of the conscious ego. what is different in philosophy of psychology and the human sciences is stein’s extension of her earlier analysis to include various forms of living together. at the center of this work is the living together of community, which she understood as an organic union of individuals. but here too, even with the introduction of the idea of solidarity and being with one another, she continues to frame her analysis in terms of the conscious ego. her starting point is the subject, as if community were simply a plurality of subjects in a relation of reciprocity. but in starting from the position of the subject stein fails to thematize the with-one-another as such. she only takes note that there is evidence to suggest there is an orientation of individuals to one another. this orientation of individuals to one another is sharing only in the most general sense. the with-oneanother of community is for her simply “out there in life” (stein, 2000, p. 197). in the end, stein’s analysis of the relation of one to another is insufficient for coming to terms with more fundamental aspects of the with-one-another of shared life that reaches expression in gadamer’s hermeneutics.1 martin buber’s i-thou relation most people are familiar with the name martin buber, who was a jewish philosopher known for his philosophy of dialogue. when buber published i and thou in 1923, we have what could be considered the first attempt to explicitly thematize the relation of one to another as relation. in contrast to stein, buber thinks that the i-you relation precedes any self-recognition of an i. buber writes, “in the beginning is the relation,” which means that there are not first two terms, risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 4 the i and the you, which are subsequently placed in relation. what is first is the “genuine originality, the lived relationship,” as immediate encounter (buber, 1970, p. 69). why buber used the expression i-you for the relation of one to another is not without significance. buber does not invent the expression. it was first used in a letter by friedrich jacobi in 1785, and then more prominently by ludwig feuerbach in 1943 (buber, 1972, pp. 209-210). the expression was used by feuerbach to convey the basic idea that the essence of the human is found only in community, and he uses the expression i-you specifically to capture our communal nature at a personal level. for his part, buber characterizes the i-you relation in an almost mystical way. the i-you relation expresses a non-mediated contact with another. at one place he characterizes it as “meeting” that can occur without two people speaking with one another. he contrasts this relation with a means-end relation, an instrumental relation of use that fails to support inter-human life. he calls this one-sided relation of knowing and using an i-it relation. so buber will speak of “setting at a distance” and “entering into relation” to describe the two forms of relating. buber is now closely associated with this expression i-you, but others working on the idea of intersubjectivity also used it. in particular, the expression was familiar to buber’s friend and collaborator, franz rosenzweig, who contested buber’s account of the i-you prior to the publication of buber’s book. rozenzweig thought that buber’s presentation of the i-you was too narrow, that he had compressed all of authentic life into an i-you, ignoring other possible relations in the basic relation of one to another (buber, 1996, p. 280)2 rozenzweig’s influence provoked buber to amend his text as it was going to print. he convinced buber that dialogical speech was to be seen as an essential component of the i-you relation (batnitzky, 2009, p. 114). the path to gadamer’s i-thou relation: karl löwith in 1928, karl löwith, a student of martin heidegger, publishes his habilitationsschrift (a second dissertation required for university teaching) “on the individual in the role of fellow man” under heidegger’s supervision. in the same year gadamer, who was a close friend of löwith, was completing his habilitationsschrift on plato under heidegger’s supervision (gadamer, 1987, pp. 436-440). 3 in his own work löwith shows that he was well aware of these earlier developments on the sociality of the i-thou relation and agrees with buber that the relation has priority over the relata. more importantly, löwith views his work as supplementing heidegger’s analysis of intersubjectivity in being and time. actually, heidegger does not use the word “intersubjectivity” in being and time. and, actually his analysis of being with others is quite sophisticated. in a nutshell, heidegger thinks that being with others is basic to being human, along with the fact that human existence is always individuated (heidegger describes being human with the german word dasein and says that dasein is in each case mine). heidegger claims that for the most part we live in everydayness which is characterized as the world of the “they,” which means we live in an always familiar world with a range of social expectations and interpretations. as a they-self i accept these expectations and interpretations and let my world be structured by them. in this way of being with others i am existing inauthentically: i do not live in terms of my ownmost possibilities and i view my relation to others from a perspective of distance. in modern life this perspective of distance appears in relating to others in terms of a “having”: “my neighbor has two new cars while i only have one.” heidegger then notes a more positive dimension of being with others, which he risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 5 characterizes in general as a form of care that expresses itself in two ways. the first way he calls leaping-in for the other. in leaping-in i take care for the other, i take the other’s “care” away from him. in effect, i take over the other’s responsibility, as a parent leaps-in to help a child with their homework, or a teacher leaps-in to help a student with their assignment. in this kind of concerned care the other can become someone who is dependent and even dominated. the second way he calls leaping-ahead. his description of this concerned care for the other is almost cryptic since he does not explain it in any detail. this care, heidegger tells us, leaps-ahead not in order to take “care” away from the other, but to authentically give it back as such. to quote heidegger, this care, which “pertains to the existence of the other and not to a what which it takes care of, helps the other to become transparent to himself in his care and free for it” (heidegger, 1927/2010, p. 119). we can say this much: this type of care is concerned with the other’s way of existing and not towards the things with which is the other is concerned. having said this, löwith thinks that there is a basic sociality of being-with-one-another that is not found in heidegger’s analysis of dasein/being human. he claims that the being with-oneanother is the primary and decisive feature of our being in relation, against what one could consider heidegger’s insistence on having it both ways: dasein as original co-being and at the same time in each case mine.4 regarding löwith’s contribution to this early development of the idea of intersubjectivity, there are two points of note. first, löwith’s argument for the primacy of the with-one-another entails a primacy of social practices over individual activity. löwith regards these social practices not as something an individual makes by him or herself, but as pre-existing the individual in their particularity of time and place. in effect he is saying that there is always a cultured social world that precedes the individual. this may be splitting hairs with heidegger, but for löwith this amounts to a difference that allows him to start from what he calls human dasein and not simply dasein (heidegger, 2007, p. 290). the second point concerns the point of intersection between löwith and gadamer that emerges from his emphasis on the importance of conversation in being-with-one-another. in the section from his book titled “being-with-one another as speaking-with-one-another” löwith claims that the with-one-another of conversation binds the speakers such that there can be communication (mitteilung). löwith writes: that which is communicated is there in an original way only in communication. in the communication [mitteilung] that communicates something one shares [teilt] oneself with another at the same time. the authentic meaning of the “with” of sharing [“mit” der teilung] is found in the one-another [ein-ander].5 when gadamer then writes his habilitätionsschrift on plato, he too will describe the being withone-another in conversation, but not without some reservation of löwith’s position.6 in his preliminary discussion of the nature of socratic conversation and the ability to bring about a shared understanding, gadamer first notes how the matter to be understood in speech is inseparable from its expression, and this pattern of mutual self-expression constitutes a specific way of being with another. he then adds that the shared understanding guiding this activity does not necessarily mean that agreement is reached, but only what enables “the participants themselves risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 6 to become manifest to each other in speaking about it” (gadamer, 1991, p. 37). translation: i hear you, you hear me, but i am not sure if we are sharing. the question for gadamer is “whether this way of understanding the other person is a genuine way of being with one another” (gadamer, 1991, p. 37). what is behind his question is the concern that understanding others through self-expression is made possible by a constant return to the self as if it were two “i”s trying to come to agreement. for gadamer, such a reflective stance is a degenerate form of being with one another.7 in such a relation a person will reflect him or herself out of the real mutuality of the relation, thus changing the relation and destroying its moral bond in the process. despite having the character of a “we” relation, it is the form of understanding oneself by contrast with others, and, as such, gadamer insists, it actually pushes the other away. it is not a genuine being with the other. for gadamer a real conversation attends only to the substantive intention of what is said and not to the expression of speech. only in this way can the distinction (and separation) between i and the other break down. the small, yet important, criticism of löwith’s position appears in a small footnote in gadamer’s text. according to gadamer, löwith understood thinking in a one-sided way, as dealing with fixed assumptions, which loses sight of a more encompassing thinking and reasoning that gadamer wants to argue for. while the critique is small, it opens for us the context for yet another version of a shared life in which the thou is a focal point (gadamer, 1991, p. 43).8 gadamer’s idea of shared life the small distance that gadamer wants to take from löwith’s work does indeed pertain in part to his rejection of the privileged place of self-reflection operative in speaking-with-one-another. it is not that gadamer is opposed to reflection, since it is undoubtedly an essential dimension of thinking and the ability to make something present to the mind. what is his point? the reflexivity of reflection amounts to a “secondary phenomenon, compared to turning directly to some object” (gadamer, 2000a, pp. 277-278). gadamer wants to let the critical function achieved by reflection be carried out by the dynamics of question and response over the matter at issue in conversation. and conversation, in turn, while oriented to communication, is not simply for him communication involving an agreement over some proposition or statement. the difference here pertains to the enlarged sense that gadamer gives to being with-one-another and to the way in which the thou in the relation of one to another has priority. as noted at the outset of my earlier remarks, for gadamer, being with one another comprises the entirety of intentional life in human living. it is the world itself which is communicatively experienced in the life of language.9 language for gadamer is the very commonality that makes sharing, in its proper sense, possible, an idea that gadamer first finds in aristotle.10 as noted in his rhetoric, aristotle thinks that humans achieve a sense of community among themselves because they are capable of mutual understanding through speech (aristotle, 1967, pp. 1253a15-18). but gadamer will translate this idea into his hermeneutics in a decisive way. with a very intentional phrasing, gadamer writes: “who thinks language already moves beyond subjectivity.”11 in saying this, gadamer’s slight departure from löwith’s position becomes more evident. the “with” of sharing is not simply found in the one-another, as löwith maintains, but is constituted in the life of language, with in turn opens individuals to an expansion of their world. in sharing there is an opening, presumably between one and another, where the world becomes larger. without sharing, one’s world can be potentially very small, like narcissus in front of his reflection or echo risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 7 waiting for the return of her voice. the narcissist only sees himself, there is no experience of the other for the narcissist, and there is no real community for the narcissist as well. the difference between community, with its overtones of formation in the relation of one to another, and mere association, which can be a mere group of individuals, may very well lie with this idea of sharing.12 gadamer’s reformulation of the i-thou relation but the exact sense of the encounter with the other in which shared life takes place is yet to be seen. from what has been said so far, it should be becoming apparent that the encounter between the i and thou that structures hermeneutic understanding, for gadamer, should not be taken as one of intersubjectivity in the strict sense.13 in an 1993 interview with gadamer, carsten dutt quotes gadamer’s own text on the nature of conversation in order to solicit a response from gadamer. here is dutt’s quote: “conversation with another person, whatever the objections or disagreements, whatever the understandings or misunderstandings, means a kind of expansion of our individuality and a probing of the possible commonality we have to which reason encourages us” (gadamer, 2001, p. 59). dutt then poses the question whether gadamer’s philosophy thematizes conversation as our capacity for rational intersubjectivity, and gadamer responds: “oh, please spare me that completely misleading concept of intersubjectivity, of a subjectivism doubled! in the passage you quoted i did not make any clever theoretical constructions at all: i said a conversation is something one gets caught up in, in which one gets involved” gadamer, 2001, p. 59). what gadamer objects to is framing conversation in terms of the priority of a “subject,” a doubling of the subject no less. in different words–and this is the key–through such framing the very commonality that subtends subjectivity, namely, the shared common world of language to which we first belong as the condition for sharing, is lost.14 yet despite this reservation towards intersubjectivity, gadamer employs a very rich account of the i-thou encounter in truth and method, an account that we can now better understand in view of our consideration of both buber and löwith’s positions.15 that account emerges in truth and method in connection with gadamer’s analysis of the concept of experience. as noted in my first essay in this series, in our experiencing, which involves the experience of encounter, our expectations are not always confirmed. experiencing will involve encountering something that is different than expected, and encountering this difference is what it means to be experienced. this encountering of difference, this reversal of expectations, is what we mean when we say we learn from experience. the experienced person knows this about experience so the experienced person is one who remains open for new experience! what we then learn from experience is not simply the new thing, but just what experience teaches us, namely, we learn about the limits of our knowing, what philosophers call the experience of finitude. gadamer then claims that we should be able to find this same structure in hermeneutic experience, and he makes this connection by characterizing hermeneutic experience through three versions of the i-thou relation. the first version of the i-thou has actually little to do with a thou, since it is described as the mastery of what is encountered in methodological research. here gadamer notes the use of method in historical understanding to confront the past in a free and uninvolved way. on an everyday level, it is the experience of treating the thou as a predictable object. on a personal level, it is the experience of engaging someone dispassionately on the basis of one’s knowledge risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 8 of people who are just like that someone. the second version of the i-thou is a form of selfrelatedness that comes close to what gadamer finds in löwith’s social philosophy. it involves the claim to know the other from one’s own point of view. the thou is “preempted reflectively from the standpoint of the other person” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 359). in this relation the thou loses the immediacy with which it makes its claim; in fact, in this relation i may claim to know the other better than the other knows himself. the third version of the i-thou is the only one that captures the full import of hermeneutic experience as gadamer understand it. gadamer writes: in human relations the important thing is, as we have seen, to experience the thou truly as a thou–i.e., not to overlook his claim but to let him really say something to us. here is where openness belongs.... without such openness to one another there is no genuine human bond. belonging together always also means being able to listen to one another.... when two people understand each other, this does not mean that one person ‘understands’ the other. openness to the other, then, involves recognizing that i myself must accept some things that are against me, even though no one else forces me to do so. (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 361) only this third form will constitute shared life as gadamer understands it, for the openness he describes involves both the i and the thou belonging not so much to themselves but to the world and its language in which both participate and communicate. but more than this. the last sentence in the quote is also quite revealing. notice how it mirrors the character of real experience. in the openness to the other, which effectively grants superiority to the thou, the i undergoes a learning. the problem in understanding what the other has to say is not simply that i do not understand the person, but, to quote gadamer, “that we don’t understand ourselves.” in the effort to understand “we must break down resistance in ourselves if we wish to hear the other as other” (gadamer, 2007, p. 371) you can begin to see that gadamer’s idea of communicative understanding depends on a certain humility on the part of one who wants to understand. that is why gadamer gives priority to the thou, for by strengthening the other against oneself one not only allows one “to recognize in principle the limitation of one’s own framework,” but also “allows one to go beyond one’s own possibilities” (gadamer, 2000a, p. 284). conversation can thus have a transformative power, as we know from a successful outcome in a therapeutic situation. and a final note in this regard. in his later writings, gadamer will use the word “other” in place of the “thou.” while gadamer acknowledges the philosophical importance that the i-thou problem served in the 1920s, he also acknowledges that such speech “hides a mystifying substantiation” that blocks us from getting at the real problem. to say “the other” in place of “the thou” changes the perspective, for “every other is at the same time the other of the other” (gadamer, 2000a, p. 282). the further dimensions of shared life: participation, friendship, and solidarity but as yet we have not shown how this relating of one to the other comes to characterize our sociality. in pursing this we cannot move too quickly away from the issue of language, for, as gadamer writes, “language intends the other.” such a claim makes little sense of course if we confine language to propositional statements in which the intentions of meaning in language are removed. as previously noted, gadamer regards language as a unique life process where world is disclosed, “uniting all who talk with one another” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 446). so gadamer risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 9 would insist, along this aristotelian line, that being with-one-another “developments in the true life of language,” which we find in conversation. conversation, in turn, is the word seeking an answer; that is to say, while there are the intentions of meaning from the speakers in dialogue, in a genuine dialogue words are given their play, which means “the one-another of word and answer has its own entitlement.” this entitlement is what gadamer describes in truth and method as the self-presentation of meaning in language; it is language “making something intelligible in the how of its meaningfulness” (gadamer, 1969/1989, p. 563). and this is to say that the with-one-another that develops in the true life of language is an enactment and a sharing in its fundamental sense of participation. the word is not just seeking an answer, but, as reported in my first lecture, it is seeking the right word that enables one to hear the other. in his late essay, “towards a phenomenology of ritual and language,” gadamer describes this interaction as partnership, which in turn requires taking part in something larger than oneself (gadamer, 2000c, p. 46). with this slight variation in the description of sharing gadamer is able to link language and ritual.16 rituals are not simply modes of behavior, such as a courting ritual, that one can readily see even in animal life. rituals are cultural arrangements that are a form of acting, an acting in which the individual does not act as an individual. in rituals the individual is sustained by the whole. the with-one-another of language has the same form. for both there is an enactment through mutual agreements, and for ritual in particular it is an enactment in which the correctness is not supported by the rule of law, but by the ethos in living together. rituals pertain to those forms of human living that “carry and support us,” but then the same can be said with respect to speaking with-one-another, and, one could add here, this is precisely what gadamer means by tradition.17 this idea of partnership can also be characterized by what leo strauss considered to be the form of the i-thou relation in classical greek philosophy, namely friendship–an idea that gadamer will follow in his own way.18 this is the friendship that gadamer sees in the friendly questioning of socratic elenchus, namely, a favorable putting forth questions to call for further statements, or, as gadamer says in his reply to derrida in 1981, a good will to see that the other is right (gadamer, 1989, p. 55). this is also, and preeminently so, the friendship of goodwill and mutuality that we find in aristotle’s ethics. but gadamer is not suggesting here that the friendship in which the communality of life is lived out is a simple friendship among those who are alike in virtue or as a general love of one’s neighbor. he is also not taking literally aristotle’s contention that friendship involves a self-sufficiency. gadamer insists that aristotle knew well “that when someone is wholly sufficient unto himself, something essential is missing from true perfection. what is lacking is precisely the increase that friendship signifies” (gadamer, 1999, p. 136). here too it is a matter of participation. for gadamer, aristotelian friendship is that distinctive relation with an other–the “stream of self-forming commonalities”–in which one begins to feel and recognize oneself.19 it is an orientation toward fulfillment against the cognizance of one’s own limitations. in this regard it is interesting to see how gadamer describes the associated aristotelian virtue of sunesis in ethical life in his discussion of phronesis (practical reasoning) in truth and method. the word sunesis is actually related to a cluster of words connoting a kind of understanding or comprehension in the manner of a quick comprehension. in english we might use the word “astute.” it is often translated as good intelligence, but this does not adequately convey its intended sense. in aristotle the word is used to name the capacity to discern what is to be done in risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 10 relation to the council of others, conveying more precisely the sense of conscientious apprehension.20 gadamer will translate sunesis as sympathetic understanding (verständnis) in practical matters, adding “someone’s sympathetic understanding is praised, of course, when in order to judge he transposes himself fully into the concrete situation of the person who has to act” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 323). this transposition, though, should not be confused with empathy. it is simply that the one who is understanding “does not know and judge as one who stands apart and unaffected but rather he thinks along with the other from the perspective of a special bond of belonging, as if he too were affected” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 323). sunesis is thus not so much an individual’s ability to be united with the other through sympathetic knowing; sunesis is not an understanding of the situation of the other in which the subject can say “i can understand the other, the other is like me.” sunesis is rather understanding for the view of someone else, which is possible only if one and the other are bound together from the outset.21 and finally, this partnership, this practice with respect to life in common, is given one other formulation by gadamer that deserves comment. in his essay “citizens of two worlds,” gadamer describes friendship as “a sustaining solidarity which alone makes possible the organized structure of human coexistence” (gadamer, 1992a, p. 219). for gadamer solidarity does not mean that everyone is united on some common agreement. it also does not mean that everyone is united by a vague notion of humanity that would make an appeal to an equally vague notion of tolerance towards others. rather, it simply pertains to the coexistence of differences in contemporary social life. this coexistence will require the “self-evident communality which alone allows for the common establishment of decisions which each considers to be correct in the areas of moral, social, and political life” (gadamer, 1992a, p. 218). in this common establishment there is not simply the common as a substantialized entity that robs sociality of its differences, but a relation to the other in which “one is risking one’s own in relation to the recognition of the other.22 so understood, gadamer sets the notion of solidarity against the ever-increasing uniformity of life brought about by a globalized technological society, and in this context, he worries about the possibilities for our humanity.23 but equally so, he worries about the other extreme, namely, a public life that places “too much emphasis on the different and disputed” in which what unites us, however minimal that may be, is without a voice (gadamer, 1992d, p. 192). solidarity is indeed about the humanism of life, and for gadamer the humanism of life entails the need to live with an other, to live as the other of the other. in fact this is precisely what is at stake in the humanism of life. at one place gadamer writes: we may perhaps survive as a humanity if we . . . learn to stop and respect the other as an other . . . ; and if we would be able to learn to experience the other and others, as the other of our self, in order to participate with one another” (gadamer, 1992e, pp. 235-236). it is ironic that in america where a version of this idea is in play undercuts itself when it is played out in terms of identity politics. to conclude, what we see in gadamer’s version of shared life is a distinctive form of relation and encounter. undoubtedly, what gadamer speaks for here is not without its difficulty. i think the merit of his position is that it is unquestionably a relation and encounter in which one’s world can become larger. in the end, gadamer is not a philosopher who offers a prescription for truth. he simply wants to mark out what must be undergone in order to make ourselves at home in the world, which at the same time elevates our humanity. the difficulty here is not that i have to be friends with my enemies, but that, through the with-one-another of shared life, we are able to see ourselves put into question. put differently, the attempt to hear what the other has to say is the risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 11 very essence of hermeneutic understanding. to understand someone else, gadamer tells us, “is to see the justice, the truth, of their position. and this is what transforms us” (gadamer, 1992c, p. 152). i will end with my favorite sentence from truth and method that succinctly captures what i have been saying here: “to reach an understanding in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully asserting one’s point of view, but being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were” (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 379). references aristotle (1967). rhetoric (j.h. freese, trans.). cambridge, ma: harvard university press. batnitzky, l. (2009). idolatry and representation. princeton, nj: princeton university press. buber, m. (1970). i and thou (w. kaufmann, trans.). new york, ny: charles scribner’s sons. buber, m. (1972). the history of the dialogical principle. in between man and man (r. gregor smith, trans.). new york, ny: macmillan co. buber, m. (1996). the letters of martin buber: a life of dialogue (n. glatzer & p. mendes-flohr, eds.). syracuse, ny: syracuse university press. cohen, r. (1994). elevations: the height of the good in rosenzweig and levinas. chicago, il: university of chicago press. gadamer, h-g. (1960/1989). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, rev. trans.). new york, ny: continuum. gadamer, h-g. (1975). hermeneutics and social science. cultural hermeneutics, 2, 311. gadamer, h-g. (1987). “ich und du (karl löwith),” neuere philosophie ii, gesammelte werke, bd. 4 (pp. 436-440). tübingen, germany: mohr/siebeck gadamer, h-g. (1989). reply to jacques derrida. in d. michelfelder & r.e. palmer (eds.), dialogue and dialectic (pp. 55). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (1991). plato’s dialectical ethics (r. wallace, trans.) new haven, ct: yale university press. gadamer, h-g. (1992a). citizens of two worlds in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds.), hansgeorg gadamer on education, poetry, and history (pp. 218-219). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (1992b). the future of european humanities,” in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history (p. 207). albany, ny: suny press. risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 12 gadamer, h-g. (1992c). applied hermeneutics. in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds.), hansgeorg gadamer on education, poetry, and history (p. 152). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (1992d). the limitations of the expert. in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history (p. 192). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (1992e). the diversity of europe. in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds.), hansgeorg gadamer on education, poetry, and history (pp. 235-236). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h.g. (1997). reflections on my philosophical journey. in l. hahn (ed.), the philosophy of hans-georg gadamer (p. 29). chicago, il: open court publishing. gadamer, h-g. (1998). culture and word. in praise of theory and other essays (c. dawson, trans.; p. 6). new haven, ct: yale university press. gadamer, h-g. (1999). friendship and self-knowledge. in hermeneutics, religion and ethics (j. weinsheimer, trans.; p. 136). new haven, ct: yale university press. gadamer, h-g. (2000a). subjectivity and intersubjectivity, subject and person (p. adamson & d. vessey, trans.). continental philosophy review, 33(3), 277-278. gadamer, h-g. (2000b). boundaries of language in l.k. schmidt (ed.), language and linguisticality in gadamer’s hermeneutics (pp. 11-12). lanham, md.: lexington books. gadamer, h-g. (2000c). towards a phenomenology of ritual and language. in l.k. schmidt (ed.), language and linguisticality in gadamer’s hermeneutics (p. 46). lanham, md.: lexington books. gadamer, h-g. (2001). gadamer in conversation (r.e. palmer, ed. & trans.). new haven, ct: yale university press. gadamer, h-g. (2006). the incapacity of conversation (d. vessey & c. blauwkamp, trans.). continental philosophy review, 39, 358. gadamer, h-g. (2007). hermeneutics and the ontological difference. in the gadamer reader (r. palmer, ed. & trans.). evanston, il: northwestern university press. grondin, j. (2000). play, festival, and ritual in gadamer: on the theme of the immemorial in his later works. in l.k. schmidt (ed.), language and linguisticality in gadamer’s hermeneutics (pp. 51-57). lanham, md.: lexington books. heidegger, m. (1927/2010). being and time (j. stambaugh, trans.; d. j. schmidt, rev. trans.). albany, ny: suny press. heidegger, m. (1984). the metaphysical foundations of logic (m. heim, trans.). bloomington: in: university press. risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 13 heidegger, m. (1997). phenomenological interpretation of kant’s critique of pure reason (p. emad & k. maly, trans.). bloomington: in: university press. heidegger, m. (1998). on the essence of ground. in pathmarks (w. mcneill, ed. & trans.). bloomington: in: university press. heidegger, m. (2001). einleitung in die philosophie, gesamtausgabe 27. frankfurt, germany: vittorio klostermann. heidegger, m. (2007). letter exchange with karl löwith on being and time. in t. kisiel & t. sheehan (eds), becoming heidegger: on the trail of his occasional writings, 1910-1927 (p. 290). evanston, il: northwestern university press. heidegger, m. (2010). logic: the question of truth (t. sheehan, trans.). bloomington: in: university press. honneth, a. (2003). on the destructive power of the third: gadamer and heidegger’s doctrine of intersubjectivity. philosophy and social criticism, 29(1), 5-21. doi: 10.1177/0191453703029001830 kearney, r. (1995). text matters. in states of mind: dialogues with contemporary thinkers. new york, ny: new york university press. long, c. (2004). the ethics of ontology: rethinking an aristotelian legacy. albany, ny: suny press. risser, j. (2011). shared life. in b. weber, h. karlfriedrich, e. maral, t. dobashi, & p. schweitzer (eds.), cultural politics and identity: the public space of recognition (pp. 49-60). berlin, germany: lit verlag. smith, c. (1991). hermeneutics and human finitude. new york, ny: fordham university press. stein, e. (1989). the problem of empathy (w. stein, trans.). washington, d.c: ics publications. stein, e. (2000). philosophy of psychology and the humanities. (m. baseheart & m. sawicki, trans.). washington, dc: ics publications. vessey, d. (2005). gadamer's theory of friendship as an alternative to intersubjectivity. philosophy today, 49, 61-67. vessey, d. (2011). paul ricoeur’s and hans-georg gadamer’s diverging reflections on recognition. in f. mootz & g. taylor (eds.), gadamer and ricoeur (pp. 142-155). new york, ny: continuum. watson, s. (2001). tradition(s) ii. bloomington, in: indiana university press. risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 14 zahavi, d. (2001). beyond empathy. journal of consciousness studies, 8, 151-167. notes 1. in this context see dan zahavi, (2001). in relation to a critique of the priority of the subject and its presumed encapsulation, heidegger will be dismissive of the claims of empathy: “‘empathy’ does not first constitute being-with, but is first possible on its basis, and is motivated by the prevailing deficient modes of being-with in their inevitability” (heidegger, 1927/2010, p. 121). for heidegger, empathy leaves unexplained how this alter ego is first manifest to an ego. the critics of heidegger who insist there is a solipsistic element of dasein seems to fly in the face of heidegger’s own insistence that dasein is fundamentally a being-with-others and that as being-in-the-world dasein is fundamentally a relationality. however, that there are different modalities of being-with will undoubtedly complicate the issue, as is the case with heidegger’s insistence that dasein is inseparable from a notion of selfhood. see below, note 3. 2. buber (1996), the letters of martin buber: a life of dialogue. the precise sense of these other relations is made clear by richard cohen (1994, p. 89) in elevations. he-it corresponds with creation and thus with god; we-it corresponds with “global redemption through both judaism and christianity,” and this with community. 3. in his habilitationsschrift on plato, which was accepted in february of 1929 and published in 1931, gadamer discusses in one section the notion of a shared world necessary for dialogical conversation. he not only references löwith’s work but also points to his review of löwith’s work, which was published in 1929. see hans-georg gadamer (1987), “ich und du (karl löwith),” neuere philosophie ii, gesammelte werke. 4. from a 1925-26 lecture course, heidegger writes: “in interpreting the phenomenon of beingwith and as being-unto-an-other never forget that we never experience other people as some indeterminate mental ‘centers’, floating around in an empty ‘over-against-us’. we experience each other person as an existence, a being-with, a being-with-one-another in a world. even being-with-another lives first of all from a shared-being [mitsein] with him in a world. thus, the other is, in principle, uncovered for others in his very existence. so it is a mistake to interpret the other phenomenally as a second ego, and it is absurd to pose the problem of cobeing with others in such a way that one posits the constructivistic presupposition that first i am given only to myself–and then how does this solus ipse manage to reach out to a thou? (heidegger, 2010, p. 197). what is more interesting is heidegger’s similar statements made in lecture courses after the publication of being and time. they can be found in his 1927-28 winter semester course, his 1928 summer semester course, and his 1928-29 winter semester course. a similar statement also appears in his essay “on the essence of ground,” written in 1928 and published in 1929. all of these explicitly refer to the i-thou relation. two deserve citation. from his 1928-29 lecture course, heidegger writes: “the with-one-another [miteinander] cannot be explained through the i-thou relation, but rather conversely: this ithou relation presupposes for its inner possibility that dasein functioning as i and also as thou, is determined as with-one-another; indeed even more: even the self-comprehension of risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 15 an i and the concept of i-ness [ichheit] arise only on the basis of the with-one-another, not from the i-thou relation” (heidegger, 2001, pp. 145-146). heidegger is even more explicit in “on the essence of ground”: “the statement: dasein exists for the sake of itself, does not contain the positing of an egoistic or ontic end for some blind narcissism on the part of the factical human being in each case. . . . the statement in question contains neither a solipsistic isolation of dasein nor an egoistic intensification thereof. by contrast, it presumably gives the condition of possibility of the human being’s being able to compart ‘himself’ either ‘egoistically’ or ‘altruistically’. only because dasein as such is determined by selfhood can an iself comport itself toward a you-self. selfhood is the presupposition for the possibility of being an ‘i’, the latter only ever being disclosed in the ‘you’. never, however, is selfhood relative to a ‘you’, but rather–because it first makes it possible–is neutral with respect to being an ‘i’ and being a ‘you’, . . . (heidegger,1998, p. 122). see also heidegger (1997, p. 214); and heidegger (1984, p. 187). 5. the passage in german reads: “ursprünglich da ist das mitgeteilte nur im mitteilen. in der etwas mitteilenden mitteilung teilt der eine, indem er etwas mitteilt zugleich sich selbst einem andern mit. der eigentliche sinn des “mit” der teilung liegt im ein-ander.” karl löwith, das individuum in der rolle des mitmenschen (münchen: drei masken verlag, 1928), p. 109. 6. gadamer’s habilitationsschrift was published three years later under the title platos dialektische ethik. an english translation, plato’s dialectical ethics, appeared in1991. see gadamer (1991). 7. the emphasis on reflection by löwith is apparent from the quote from schelling which is the opening lines of das individuum in der rolle des mitmenschen: “we awake through reflection, through coerced turning back to ourselves. without opposition there is no turning back.” das individuum, 1. 8. plato’s dialectical ethics, p. 43. gadamer states basically this same criticism in his review. see “ich und du (karl löwith),” p. 238. 9. in the afterword to truth and method gadamer (1960/1989, p. 562) describes philosophical hermeneutics as pertaining “to the whole of our experience of life and our world, but like no other science–rather like our very experience, articulated in language, of life and the world.” 10. commenting on the passage in aristotle’s politics, gadamer refers to the concept of syntheke, which he claims is misleadingly translated as “convention.” “in truth, the complete sense of language and the whole sense of the humanity of life are determined through this expression. . . . the concept ‘syntheke’, mutual agreement, implies first that language constitutes itself in the with-one-another (miteinander), to the extent that understanding develops by means of which one can come to agreements.” (gadamer, 2000b, pp. 11-12), “boundaries of language” risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 16 11. see aristotle (1967), rhetoric, 1253a15-18. “wer ›sprache‹ denkt, bewegt sich schon immer in einem jenseits der subjektivität.” gadamer, hermeneutik im rückblick, gesammelte werke, bd. 10, 99. see “subjectivity and intersubjectivity,” p. 286. 12. in the same essay gadamer (1998, p. 6) defines culture in this way, i.e., culture [kultur] is the domain of all that becomes more by sharing it. 13. in alex honneth’s (2003) “on the destructive power of the third: gadamer and heidegger’s doctrine of intersubjectivity,” honneth critiques what he considers gadamer’s position on intersubjectivity, citing löwith against gadamer because of löwith’s retention of the element of reflection. but in failing to see that conversation for gadamer is not a matter of intersubjectivity honneth’s criticism of gadamer is misplaced. the fact that gadamer would want to separate himself from heidegger in this regard is further evidence for the misplaced criticism. 14. gadamer repeats himself in relation to a similar question in an interview with richard kearney. see richard kearney (1995, p. 277), “text matters,” in states of mind: dialogues with contemporary thinkers. 15. after noting the second of the three versions of the i-thou, gadamer references this “reflective” dialectic of the i-thou in löwith’s das individuum in der rolle des mitmenschen. see truth and method, (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 359). 16. the idea of ritual approximates the idea of festival that gadamer discusses in relation to the concept of play in truth and method. see truth and method, (gadamer, 1960/1989, pp. 122-123). see also jean grondin, “play, festival, and ritual in gadamer: on the theme of the immemorial in his later works,” in language and linguisticality in gadamer’s hermeneutics (2000, pp. 51-57). 17. this implication is made by jean grondin. see “play, festival, and ritual in gadamer,” (2000, p. 57). 18. see truth and method (gadamer, 1960/1989, p. 535). the connection of gadamer’s notion of sociality with friendship has received considerable attention. see stephen watson (2001), tradition(s) ii, chapter 1; david vessey (2005), “gadamer's theory of friendship as an alternative to intersubjectivity”; james risser (2011), “shared life,” in cultural politics and identity. 19. “the wisdom of aristotle recognizes in all human cognition–as in the sumpatheia–an element of the ‘with’: perceiving-with, knowing-with, thinking-with–that is, living with and being with (mitsein).” gadamer (1999), “friendship and self-knowledge,” in hermeneutics, religion and ethics. 20. see christopher long (2004, p. 148), the ethics of ontology: rethinking an aristotelian legacy. risser journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 8 17 21. see p. christopher smith (1991, p. 86), hermeneutics and human finitude. 22. see “the future of european humanities,” in hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history (gadamer, 1992b, p. 207). david vessey (2011, pp. 142-155) in his article “paul ricoeur’s and hans-georg gadamer’s diverging reflections on recognition” argues that gadamer gives up the dialectic of recognition in his later writings for the idea of friendship as the proper mode of being with others. while i am sympathetic to his argument and his scholarship, i do think gadamer holds to a notion of recognition even within friendship. formally gadamer seems to hold to a complementary double emphasis in friendship, namely, the self recognition through the other and the recognition of the other as encounter. 23. solidarity is also set within the relation to modern science in general, and can be seen as gadamer’s (1975) version of the life world. what is at stake in this relation then is “a critical effort which shares the modern ideal of method and yet which does not lose the condition of solidarity with and justification of our practical living” (p. 311). 1 calgary, alberta, canada corresponding author: michael j lang, phd email: mike@mikelangstories.com journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 march 1, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74857 emerging horizons, part two. harmony’s story: answering the big question michael j lang & catherine m laing abstract this second installment of the emerging horizons series explores harmony’s digital storytelling (dst) experience (please see the introductory editorial to the series, crafting meaning, cultivating understanding, to access the film). in this article i lean on the philosophy of paul ricœur to suggest that 1) the metaphorical possibilities of dst could enable adolescent and young adult (aya) cancer survivors to come to a deeper understanding of their own cancer experiences and 2) the process of “emplotment” in the creation of a digital story has the power to transform the random and coincidental, pre-narrative experience of cancer into a meaningful whole. i conclude by discussing how attaching meaning to, and learning from, an otherwise meaningless cancer experience through the dst process, can help aya cancer survivors construct their own answer to the “big question” of cancer in young adulthood. keywords hermeneutics, digital storytelling, adolescents and young adults, psychosocial oncology, narrative interventions, arts-based methodology, documentary filmmaking harmony’s bubbly personality was apparent from the moment she appeared on the screen. she was energetic, expressive, and engaged -a perfect fit for her job as an elementary school teacher. however, underlying her extroverted character were deep existential questions; something about her thyroid cancer diagnosis and treatments still lingered. like most adolescent and young adult (aya) thyroid cancer patients, she was told that she had lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 3 2 the “good cancer” (randle et al., 2017) with a 98% 5-year net survival rate (canadian cancer statistics advisory committee, 2019). her major neck surgery took weeks to recover from leaving a significant scar, and the radioactive iodine required physical isolation from her family for 10 days, but for the most part, her treatments were straightforward. even when she had a reoccurrence a year later, with the cancer having spread to lymph nodes in her neck, a second round of the same treatments seemed routine. so, why was she still thinking about cancer eight months later, she wondered? that whole chapter of her life seemed like a random and meaningless detour in her life story. in her own words, “it was not a story that was worth telling,” so why did she feel compelled to sign up for the study? together, harmony and i (first author, lang) mused about these questions in her pre-workshop interview and were unable to answer any of them, yet she intuitively understood that it was important for her to be involved in the project. ultimately, it was harmony herself who discovered the answers to her questions, with the dst process providing both the impetus and framework to do that important work. her story arc in emerging horizons illustrates the value of dst as an opportunity to use metaphor to deepen understanding and make the coincidences of life meaningful and, in this process, help ayas find their own answer to the “big question” that can confront them when they are diagnosed with cancer. stop, stop, stop! harmony: i’m kinda going off this stop sign. mike: love it! you are starting to develop a central metaphor. harmony: ha! ok! mike: so, what about going past it was meaningful? a central element of digital storytelling (dst), that will be explored in more detail in a future publication, is the use of metaphor and imagery to enhance hermeneutic excess (davey, 2013; ricœur, 1976) and access the deeper emotional level of lived experiences (van laer et al., 2014). historically, metaphor is a central element of hermeneutic research due to the ability of a judiciously used metaphor to carry or convey interpretations (moules et al., 2015). ricœur (2003), in particular, devoted significant attention to the exploration of how metaphors can create and recreate meaning. harmony’s experience in emerging horizons is a practical example of how dst can leverage the “positive and productive use of ambiguity” (ricœur, 1976, p. 74) available through metaphor. in the first session, harmony quickly identified the stop sign as a central image of her experience when she shared her “meaningful moment” with the group (i.e., finding the story phase of dst; laing et al., 2017a; lang et al., 2019). she vividly remembered the stop sign in the middle of the hospital hallway as she was preparing for her radioactive iodine treatments. it was strange and out of place with caution tape draped around it, and this strangeness produced one of the most memorable moments in her cancer experience. the sign literally stopped her. she turned around and walked back to the nursing station to ask if she could go past the stop sign. the nurse responded “yes you can. those signs are for everyone else.” lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 3 3 reflecting back, harmony intuitively knew that moment was one of the most meaningful of her entire cancer experience, but she had not yet stopped to think about why. in the early stages of the dst process, she had difficulty articulating why the stop sign moment was meaningful and what it represented to her. all she understood was that it mattered, and it was in the conversations with other workshop participants, and through the reflection required for creative writing (i.e., telling the story phase of dst; laing et al., 2017a; lang et al., 2019), that she discovered why it mattered. after recognizing the importance of the stop sign, she began developing her digital story around it, and was surprised and excited when i pointed out that she had intuitively begun developing a central metaphor for her story. in subsequent writing, she used the stop sign metaphor literally when describing her trips to and from the hospital and hitting “every red light” along the way. she also used it metaphorically in the way that cancer had stopped her from living the life she wanted or had expected (“stop traveling. stop being a present mother. stop plans to grow your family. stop dreaming. stop looking forward. . . stop, stop!”). eventually, in a story circle conversation with bethany, she recognized the visual potential of the metaphor as well. bethany suggested using images of driving in the city versus an open country road to visually leverage our cultural understanding of the “open road” as a symbol of freedom (i.e., freedom from personal expectations, freedom from the routine and mundane, freedom from cultural constraints). in this way, as harmony continued the video editing process (i.e., crafting the story; laing et al., 2017a; lang et al., 2019) and conversing with the other ayas, the stop sign morphed into a robust metaphor that helped everyone, including harmony, understand at a deeper level her inner emotional experience of cancer. harmony’s experience also demonstrated the ability of a digital story to leverage the interpretive potential of metaphors beyond what is possible in the creation process alone (i.e., beyond the finding, telling, and crafting phases of dst). through the screening and discussion of her digital story (i.e., showing the story; laing et al., 2017a; lang et al., 2019), the understanding of her own experience that had been cultivated through the creation of the digital story was further deepened as her stop sign metaphor was reinterpreted in conversations with others. in other words, the emerging horizon of her cancer experience was continually reformed as it merged with the horizons of other audience members. below is a short list of the interpretations that were offered by the ayas and their friends and family following the viewing of her digital story: 1. at diagnosis, it feels like cancer has stopped you from living the life you had expected (i.e., achieving independence from parents, start a family and careers, travel, etc.); 2. cancer, like all stop signs, only creates a momentary pause in your life, and eventually you need to keep going. cancer only stops you from living if you allow it to (“i moved beyond that sign”); 3. after being diagnosed with cancer as an aya, the culturally determined road signs and mile markers of life (e.g., education, family, career, etc.) do not seem to matter as much (“those signs are for everyone else . . .”); 4. ayas are free to choose their own road after cancer because they have been forced to stop and determine what matters to them early in their life. (“it has also given me the opportunity to open my heart, my thoughts, and my perceptions of what matters”). lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 3 4 many of the interpretations offered by the ayas and their friends and family went beyond harmony’s original intentions for her stop sign metaphor, providing a clear demonstration of how the hermeneutical excess available in a digital story can help cultivate understanding in both the storyteller and the audience. through conversation with others, harmony’s understanding of her own metaphor, and consequently her cancer experience, was deepened. one particular moment represented the resonance of harmony’s stop sign metaphor with the other ayas. in the small group screening at the end of the dst weekend workshop, kelsey responded with widened eyes and an audible gasp when the music in harmony’s story suddenly stopped exactly as she heard the word “cancer” from her doctor. for kelsey, and the other ayas in the group, the music stopping at that moment reverberated through their own experience; when hearing the word cancer for the first time it can feel like the whole world stops, just like the music in harmony’s story.1 in the discussion that followed the screening of harmony’s story, bethany highlighted the power of that particular story element, and harmony explained that it was actually an editing “mistake.” the group was shocked, and out of this moment emerges another interpretation of harmony’s dst experience. when coincidence creates harmony bethany: really loved the way you just stopped the music. very dramatic. harmony: again, a mistake! bethany: what?! really?! harmony: that’s what i was hitting mike about when he was working with derek... it just stopped, and i don’t know if i would’ve thought . . . to do that. ricœur (1990), in his three volumes of time and narrative, explored the hermeneutic circle that exists between the human experience of time and narrative. he argued that human experience has a “pre-narrative” coincidental quality that needs to be meaningfully and coherently organized into a narrative by means of developing a plot, which he termed “emplotment” (ricœur, 1990). as the basic feature of narrative, a plot allows humans to pick out, order, and assign significance to the otherwise random and temporally disconnected events of our lives, turning them into an intelligible whole (ricœur, 1990). essentially, ricœur argued that narrative allows humans to make sense of our confused and unformed experience of time itself. when crafting a narrative, we can place specific experiences together in time to re-present causality (i.e., moments selected and included in a digital story are connected to each other because they occur within three minutes of time) and create connections between events that occurred across time (i.e., moments selected and included in a digital story could have occurred days, months, or years, apart, but are connected to each other through their emplotment). in harmony’s dst experience, the power of narrative to transform the coincidental, pre-narrative experience of cancer into a meaningful event is on full display and offers a practical example of the theory suggested by ricœur (1990) in two different, but parallel, ways. first, in harmony’s digital story itself, the relatively mundane experience of driving in the city and the basic traffic signs and symbols (e.g., stop signs, traffic lights, congested roads) become meaningful when temporally ordered in her story plot. specifically, the significance of “hitting lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 3 5 every red light” on the drive to the hospital on both the morning of her cancer diagnosis and the morning radioactive iodine treatment becomes significant in their emplotment; their temporal location in the plot (i.e., in time) foreshadowed both harmony’s cancer diagnosis and her stop sign encounter in the hospital hallway. furthermore, connecting both driving experiences with the other events of her cancer experience, which occurred over the space of many months (i.e., across time), these mundane or “meaningless” driving moments became meaningful; they became a symbol of cancer stymying harmony’s desires and plans for her life. by providing harmony the opportunity to construct a plot that assigned significance to these seemingly coincidental events surrounding her cancer diagnosis and treatment in her digital story, all of these events became more meaningful. a second illustration of how emplotment can help assign meaning to coincidental events occurred in real-time on screen through the events surrounding the creation of harmony’s digital story. during the discussion of her story at the end of the weekend workshop, it was revealed that, in two different places, a “mistake,” or coincidence, led to meaningful and compelling story elements. the first was the accidental recording of a truck passing on the highway outside of the workshop space during her voiceover recording. when harmony and i were completing the final edits to her story she said, “did you purposely let there be a sound at the end of a transport truck? . . . you hear it! would we be able to bring it up a little . . . drove past it!” we intentionally boosted the audio level of the truck and the resulting effect contributed a compelling auditory complement to harmony’s closing image of the open road. bethany immediately noticed this auditory element saying, “love that sound at the end!” and harmony responded with an enthusiastic “ha!” as i explained its origins. the second “mistake” of the music stopping when harmony heard the word cancer from her doctor was also revealed in the group discussion. the visceral response of harmony during the editing process (i.e., hitting my arm), kelsey’s wide eyes and gasp during the viewing of the story, and bethany’s additional comment and surprise all demonstrated that this coincidence also contributed a meaningful aesthetic element to the story. crucially, when harmony recognized how the representation of her cancer experience was enhanced by those two coincidences in the video editing process, she chose to highlight them instead of fixing them. in other words, those coincidences were only meaningful because she actively chose to make them meaningful; she chose to craft meaning out of coincidence to create greater harmony in her story. these two examples from harmony’s dst creation experience of hitting red lights and embracing video editing mistakes demonstrate how highlighting, or interpreting (i.e., “all interpretation is highlighting,” gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 401), coincidental life events within an artwork can make those events more meaningful. in the first case, providing ayas the opportunity to narrate, visualize, and compose their cancer experiences into a digital story (i.e., casually connect life events in and across time), promotes the identification of life lessons that may be embedded in a “pre-narrative” cancer experience. this could be an important outcome for ayas as learning is antithetical to meaninglessness; nothing is wasted if you learn from it. secondly, harmony’s experience of incorporating “mistakes” into her story displays how making meaning out of coincidental life experiences can be an internally driven activity, potentially enhanced through dst (i.e., emplotment). together, these two realizations could be lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 3 6 transformative for ayas, and could ultimately help lead to a partial and momentary answer to the “big question” that confronts many of them. answering the “big question” over the past 12 years i have facilitated film screenings and discussions with thousands of aya cancer survivors and continue to do so. as part of these screenings, i often share moments from my own cancer story. one moment i share happened three months into my treatments when i was lying face down on the floor of my parent’s basement at 4 am, punching the carpet until my knuckles were bloody. that moment, for me, represents the extreme limit of the existential distress that accompanied my cancer experience. i explain to the audience that in that moment, i was struggling with “the big question,” and i ask if anyone has an idea of what i am referring to with that phrase? without fail, in a matter of seconds someone calls out, “why me?!” this question is particularly troublesome for ayas as it is unlikely for people in their 20s and 30s to have had sufficient exposure to the known behavioural or environmental causes of cancer that could explain their diagnosis (e.g., smoking, alcohol, poor diet, obesity, air pollution, sun exposure, carcinogens, etc; national comprehensive cancer network, 2020). for this demographic in particular, cancer is most often a random occurrence of gene mutation that can only be explained by factors completely outside of our awareness or control (american cancer society, 2020). consequently, the “big question” can be a constant, nagging companion, a companion that could be quieted by attaching meaning to the experience of cancer in an aya’s life. one tool ayas can use to give their cancer experience meaning, as demonstrated by harmony’s experience, is to connect the coincidental experiences surrounding it together into comprehensible relationships using story (ricœur, 1990). through the lens of emplotment, it could be said that harmony is who she is because of the associations she has created among coincidental life experiences in the stories she has knowingly, or unknowingly, crafted about her life. in other words, the meaning-making process of emplotment is always already occurring, so the more appropriate question to ask may be if, or how, ayas are participating in the process. if ayas are passive participants, carried along in the uninterrupted “pre-narrative” experience of time, other influences – be it individuals or cultural forces – may shape and dictate their stories. being able to stop and take a step back from the pre-narrative experience of cancer could allow them to more actively participate in the meaning-making process of their cancer experience. crucially, harmony’s intuitive awareness that she needed to stop and reflect on her cancer experience, to stop and story her experience, to stop! and engage in a conversation about cancer, was enough impetus for her to enroll in this research project. she expresses her need to stop when she said in the film: i think, as you move through your experience it is like, get to the other side, get to the other side, next thing, next thing. at least for me it was, and so this was a time where i actually, like, thought it all the way through and, like, lived back in it . . . lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 3 7 cancer can be a powerful stopping force in an aya’s life. bookending this stopping moment with a dst workshop could allow them to craft meaning from coincidence and draw out the lessons embedded in their experience so they can rebuild their lives in a way that is meaningful for them. harmony exemplified this in her final post-workshop interview when she said, “this entire process of digital storytelling is a great way to engage with yourself.” ayas may need more opportunities to engage with themselves as they attempt to understand their complex emotional experience of cancer. references canadian cancer statistics advisory committee. 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(2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. peter lang. national comprehensive cancer network. (2020). practice guidelines in oncology: adolescent and young adult (aya) oncology. https://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/aya.pdf randle, r.w., bushman, n.m., orne, j., balentine, c.j., wendt, e., saucke, m., pitt, s. c., macdonald, c.l., connor, n.p., & sippel, r. s. (2017). papillary thyroid cancer: the good and bad of the "good cancer". thyroid, 27(7), 902–907. https://doi.org/10.1089/thy.2016.0632 ricoeur, p. (1976). interpretation theory: discourse and the surpluses of meaning. tcu. ricoeur, p. (1990). time and narrative: volume 1, 2, 3 (mclaughlin & d. pellauer trans.). university of chicago press. (original work published 1975) https://doi.org/10.1177/1043454216688639 https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919863241 https://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/aya.pdf https://doi.org/10.1089/thy.2016.0632 lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 3 8 ricoeur, p. (2003). the rule of metaphor: multi-disciplinary studies of the creation of meaning in language (r. czerny trans.). routledge. (original work published 1975) van laer, t.o., ruyter, k.d., visconti, l.m., & wetzels, m. (2014). the extended transportation-imagery model: a meta-analysis of the antecedents and consequences of consumers' narrative transportation. journal of consumer research, 40(5), 797-817. https://doi.org/10.1086/673383 1 amanda highlighted this common experience during a discussion with kelsey in the introduction to dst session when she said, “so, one of the things that. . . ummm. . . i think we [ayas] all probably have, is like, when you are told you have cancer, it is kind of like full stop!” https://doi.org/10.1086/673383 corresponding author: tracy king, rn, doctoral student faculty of nursing, university of calgary. tracy.king1@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 march 14, 2023 ©the author(s) 2023 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2023i2023.77162 invited editorial who me? a hermeneutic dip into impostor phenomenon tracy king i have found myself studying in a philosophical doctor of nursing program. it might sound like i stumbled into a room, slipping in unnoticed upon finding the door unlocked, and that is what it feels like at times. the reality is that i have spent my life working towards this opportunity. my brain does not always seem to know that though. impostor phenomenon (ip) was first described by clance and imes (1978) as an internal experience, linked to early family dynamics and sex-role stereotyping, whereby high achieving women are unable to internalize the external evidence of intelligence and success. i am in the midst of my program and ip is present. it is not quite the heavy and looming presence it was once, but it lurks in the shadows even after a quarter of a century in nursing. ip sits in wait until the ground under my feet is shaken by stress, caregiving, work, fatigue, or just life. as i seek to regain my balance, it stands over me dark and heavy, whispering doubt in my ear and breathing history down my neck. sometimes i can use logic and name it, and turn to face it, and sometimes it slowly retreats, but not always. i have had an uneasy sense of belonging in this next level of the academia. someone referred to me as a “breath of fresh air” and i felt embraced. i have also felt rejected, left out, and then included, and welcomed at other times. i seem to bring forth a perspective that is often otherwise unsaid, and i do not believe that my perspective is particularly brilliant; it is just that i join in. i raise my hand, unmute my microphone, and step forward to join the conversation. this joining of the academic conversation is where the idea for this article was borne. dr. nancy moules, in the king journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 1 2 way that she does, with thoughtfulness, created space, and an invitation that is crafted for all, asked what might prevent one from feeling confident in the critique of published work. after waiting for what was likely three seconds, i unmuted and exclaimed “looking stupid!” after i talked about this for what i felt was too long, she suggested that i write an article and even offered a title. “who me?” my early life includes some factors that predispose me to ip, and i will share a little of that story. my father worked in the oilfield industry and although lacking in formal education, he was an intelligent and capable man. he was also funny, helpful, and compassionate, with the added complexity of dealing with problematic alcohol use. my mother was a steadfast caregiver, providing much needed stability. she was a role model for education, completing her ged as well as library systems course work while caring for our family. i remember watching her diligently work away at each course with a quiet and steady sense of purpose. growing up in an alcohol-affected household left me with a tense combination of self-doubt and strength. my parents’ message that i was smart and capable came with the organized and shared messaging from my parents on post-secondary education; “you will go.” i was successful in classes, with friends, and in clinical practice, but the undercurrent of ip was present. i recall worrying that i would be “found out” as not belonging, not worthy, as out of place so many times over the years. in nursing school, i joined a room full of people who i was sure were smarter and better than me. i had a year of courses completed and had met a friend who was in my class, and both of these helped. i worked hard to prove myself and four years later when my degree arrived it said, “with distinction.” with distinction? it sounded good, but what did it mean? these were questions that my parents nor i knew the answer to. i was one of the first people in my family to have the opportunity to attend post-secondary education, and this was a whole new world. my dad’s sister, marjorie, had multiple degrees, so she was called. she shared exactly what distinction was, and then she screamed in delight that i had achieved such a thing. this built up the external evidence of my abilities. her celebratory scream was also a ray of sunshine and, in that moment, the dark cloud of ip did not stand a chance. the cloud can not survive long in the heat of the sun. after graduating from nursing school, i worked in hospitals for six years and i thought i would do that until retirement. i absolutely loved working with people in such a meaningful way and often thought it was amazing that i got to be a part of it. in rural hospitals i cared for all sorts of people from pediatrics to palliative care. after only three years of practice, i took a travel nursing position and when my contract was done, the manager of the unit told me i was the best traveller she had ever had, and she asked me if i would stay. i remember her words to this day, and more than that, i remember the sense of pride and accompanying disbelief that she was talking about me. who, me? as i write this, my tears display my grief for how unfortunate it is that the words were such a surprise to the younger me. i always knew i was a good nurse, but early divisions in the landscape of nursing had me wondering if i was good enough for some people and some places. proving my value as a nurse somehow had to happen far from home. i have always been a hard worker, or from the perspective of some colleagues i have been a task master, perfectionist, or anal retentive. can i say that in an article? the point is that i gave my best each day to my patients, my clients, persons as we say now; and would be there to help colleagues if king journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 1 3 needed. it took time to start to internalize evidence that my nursing care was excellent, and her words are part of my external evidence that still echo 20 years later. a link has been found between ip and perfectionism, and most people experience ip at some point in their life (grubb et al., 2021). there are environmental factors as well and people who grew up in an alcohol affected home were found to be more likely to have ip in adulthood (robinson & goodpaster, 1991). the relationship between ip and gender is unclear and although many studies have found women affected more often, further research is needed (clark et al., 2022). i check many of the boxes for ip, but i have had some of the buffers as well. clark et al. (2022) identified that self-compassion, friends, parental support, teacher support, a sense of belonging, environmental mastery, and active coping skills were protective factors from ip. i have shifted my work several times so environmental mastery builds, and then crumbles like a sandcastle as i disrupt the architecture in my pivot to the next nursing role. the foundation is still there, but it needs rebuilt with each move. after 14 years of nursing, i took a position as a nursing instructor. the moment i had my own students, the work resonated deeply. the fact that someone was allowing me to partner with students to craft their nursing practice was deeply valued, and a source of intimidation. who me? the sense of pride that i had in leading my students onto units or in their learning was counterpoised by my inner worry that i did not know enough. i had some of the buffers that clark et al. (2022) described in the form of support from colleagues and the reminder that i knew more than the students. the sage advice that teaching was not about what you know, but more about who you are and how you engage with students struck a chord. i took the supportive advice to heart and allowed it to buoy me, to float me up above the dark waters where ip lurks. i have described ip as lurking, whispering, dark, and overhanging. it is borne out of a diversity of circumstances both at an individual and societal level. as an aspiring hermeneutic researcher, i have made use of metaphor and i am also drawn to explore the phenomenon linguistically. the etymology of the word impostor includes an origin meaning swindler, or cheat, and is linked to the french word, “imposteur” (online etymology dictionary (oed), nd). it can also mean: place upon, impose upon, a deceiver, one who passes himself off as another, and finally, to tax or a pay a duty (oed, nd). i am imagining ip as a duty paid to occupy one’s profession. in this use of the word occupy, i include the physical places that the profession has taken me, including to different countries, towns, cities, hospitals, and health care settings. it also includes the rooms, theaters, and other curtained-off spaces where care is provided to people. perhaps occupation of these private spaces requires a duty paid, and the care might be enhanced by a certain amount of questioning of position that invites a service mindset. mccaffrey’s (2014) hermeneutic study of mental health nurses facilitated a consideration of host and guest as concepts in healthcare for me. it allowed me to reflect and consider that each time i am engaged with a patient, i am a guest in their lives rather than they a guest in the care setting. the experience of ip may facilitate alignment with this way of thinking and prevent a sort of ownership of the health care space. i have heard many health care providers talk about units, hospitals, offices, budgets, and work hours with a very personal ownership over them. the reality is that for most of the canadian context, these places, spaces, processes, and even defined hours are not ours; they belong to the public. king journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 1 4 it is hard to hear even a whisper of ip when i recollect conversations with former clients who express gratitude to me for being there, taking time, and being real. i would like to quote a former client, but first i will give a description of the scene. he was receiving detox services and seemed to present as unengaged and annoyed, he gave minimal responses to questions. he was in the setting for the first time but had been in hospitals, jail, and prison. over several days, i took care of him. he was in acute alcohol withdrawal and required numerous assessments, treatments, and reassessments through the days. during the course of a weekend, i spent time talking and uncovered grief where anger first seemed to be. he shared about the loss of a parent and, at the end of my first shift, i created a grief journal for him and told him he could use it today, tomorrow, next week, in a few months or even just discard it, but it was an invitation to explore his loss. he presented as ready and the discussions we had were meaningful. the next day i took report and when i went to see him, he was ready for me. he asked who the hell i thought was coming in and making him feel things. i froze a little bit, but then i noticed the tears. he described me as “another auntie” and that it was like we had known each other for a long time. we wondered together if our paths were meant to cross so that we could have the important conversations about family, love, and loss together. ip was not in that room, i was free. ip crept in when a colleague asked what i did with the patient. he talked about how helpful it was and she wanted to learn. i was hesitant to share that i had a special interest in grief, that i had completed an initial certificate on grief counselling, and that i had an amazing experience with him. ip whispered to me then, even in the face of an incredibly positive patient experience. ip whispered that i should hide from colleagues, but not clients. the education, experience, and skills that i have can not serve others effectively if i am preoccupied by ip. perhaps it is ip, gender, culture, or something else, but i am ready to shed that which covers up my education, skill, knowledge, and what is wonderful about my nursing practice. the phenomenon at hand is just that, a phenomenon. it is not a syndrome, or a disease. it also might have a sliver lining. tewfik (2022) found that imposter thoughts can make people more adept at relationships, be more attuned to the feelings and perceptions of others, and they perform just as well at work. when i think of nurses with a keen sense of the other, who are more adept at relationships, and who perform just as well at work; maybe the duty paid was worth it. in my doctoral classes i am surrounded by yet another group of buffering agents. there are encouraging new friends, group texts, reminders to write, and acknowledgement of expertise. there is hesitation to engage at times, but there is also an overwhelmingly impressive group of people who want to do good in the world. and there, among the impressiveness, is me. yes, me. references clance, p.r., & imes, s.a. (1978). the imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: dynamics and therapeutic intervention. psychotherapy: theory, research, and practice, 15(3), 241-247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006 https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006 king journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 1 5 clark, p., holden, c., russell, m., & downs, h. (2022). the imposter phenomenon in mental health professionals: relationships among compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion satisfaction. contemporary family therapy, 44, 185-197. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-02109580-y grubb, w.l., & grubb, l.k. (2021). perfectionism and the imposter phenomenon. journal of organizational psychology, 21(6), 25-42. https://ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarlyjournals/perfectionism-imposter-phenomenon/docview/2618172603/se-2 mccaffrey, g. (2014). host and guest: an applied hermeneutic study of mental health nurses’ practices on inpatient units. nursing inquiry, 21(3), 238-245. https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12065 online etymology dictionary. (n.d.). imposter (n.). https://www.etymonline.com/word/impostor robinson, s.l., & goodpaster, s.k. (1991). the effects of parental alcoholism on perception of control and imposter phenomenon. current psychology: research & reviews, spring/summer, 10(1 & 2), 113-119. https://doi:10.1007/bf02686785 twefik, b.a. (2022). the imposter phenomenon revisited: examining the relationship between workplace impostor thoughts and interpersonal effectiveness at work. academy of management journal, 65(3), 988-1018. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2020.1627 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-021-09580-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-021-09580-y https://ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/perfectionism-imposter-phenomenon/docview/2618172603/se-2 https://ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/perfectionism-imposter-phenomenon/docview/2618172603/se-2 https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12065 https://www.etymonline.com/word/impostor https://doi:10.1007/bf02686785 https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2020.1627 microsoft word pelech corrected proof.docx corresponding author: sharon pelech, phd email: sharon.pelech@uleth.ca journal of applied hermeneutics july 28, 2019 ãthe author(s) 2019 of butterflies and silences: exploring teachers’ and students’ experiences in high school biology classrooms sharon pelech abstract this paper is a hermeneutic inquiry into how students and teachers experience the biology classroom and how they navigate between expectations from external factors leading to classrooms that are focused on memorizing facts and the desire to engage students deeply in the discipline of biology. from data collected from semi-structured interviews with teachers and students, and an open-ended questionnaire, the paper explores the experiences and assumptions about teaching biology that is prevalent in the classroom. the inability of teachers or students to be able to point to memorable experiences within the classroom leads to a discussion of students’ experience of biology as a passive transmission of facts that are often considered irrelevant and boring. the paper explores the teachers’ sense of conflict between wanting to instill a love for biology in their students and their perceived role in preparing students to memorize information for tests and prepare students for post-secondary school. keywords hermeneutics, classroom education, biology, science, teaching, memorization of butterflies and classrooms the work our students do is memorisable . . . but it is rarely especially memorable. (jardine et al, 2003) pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 2 figure 1. photo of an owl butterfly about a year before i began my current research, an event occurred that still haunts me. after a family vacation in costa rica, i posted some photographs to facebook. one particular picture was from a conservatory housing hundreds of butterflies of different endangered species. one of the workers had carefully picked up an owl butterfly (caligo eurilochus) and gently spread its wings so that we could see the coloration (figure 1). the butterfly’s markings looked just like the face of an owl. he then carefully turned it sideways, with the wings together, so that the coloration revealed a clear impression of the head of a snake. next to the picture i posted, “biology 30 lesson . . . owl butterfly—great example of mimicry. hold it another way, and it looks like the head of a snake! see! biology is fun everywhere!” some former students whom i had taught 15 years earlier responded. one wrote, “how come you never had anything that fun in our class . . . lol?” to which i replied, “every day was a fun day in my bio class,” which led another student to declare, “15 pages of notes per day on photosynthesis is not my idea of fun” and “my left wrist still cramps up from time to time.” although i knew they were joking, i was shocked. i had been told by these same students many times biology had been one of their favorite courses, yet their primary recollection was one of mundane note-taking of topics they cared nothing about. i think back to those classes and now realize what they said is true. i remember the room as darkly lit, the overhead the only source of light. i stood with my binder full of pre-made overhead sheets, passing on predetermined knowledge. i also used diagrams, stories, puns, and analogies, but it was all about giving students information, hoping that they would remember it long enough for the test. even now, i see myself standing there, waiting for students to be finished copying the notes . . . the moments of silence broken only by the humming of the projector, the scratching of pencils, and the rustling of their loose leaf paper. often i felt overcome by impatience, wanting to move on, but knowing i had to follow all the correct teaching methods i had been taught: walking along the desk rows, checking to see how far along the students were and asking, “can we move on now?” in anticipation of the next section of the overhead sheets. during those long note-taking days, i, too, had been bored, waiting for them to write the notes so i could move on to more notes. palmer (1998) has described this experience: “[sometimes] the classroom is so lifeless . . . and i am so powerless to do anything about it—that my claim to be a teacher seems a transparent sham” (p. 1). like palmer, i felt like a fraud with a few moments of authenticity. in fact, the irony of the above facebook conversation was that i did take that particular class on a two-day trip to a northern alberta lake where they worked with biologists in the field to study the different biotic and abiotic factors of the lake. this included pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 3 field work in boats and lab work in a university laboratory; however, rather than recalling that special field trip, their first thoughts were of the daily grind of notes and textbook questions. in later years, i thought i would be innovative and hand out fill-in-the-blank notes to decrease student writing, but that change still maintained my role as the disseminator of knowledge and the students as passive vessels. even during “fun” events like labs or videos, it was still a oneway procession of information, and questions were answered quickly so i could move on. no wonder students’ recollections were of notes; i rarely offered them an opportunity to journey into the discipline of biology, to ask questions, to do something memorable. a hermeneutic study the draw to hermeneutics the data for this research (pelech, 2015) were based on an interpretive inquiry into how students and teachers understand the question, “what does it mean to teach biology well?” the focus was to explore the participants’ experience of the biology classroom and how they navigate between the expectations of external factors, such as diploma1 examinations, post-secondary requirements, and the expectations laid out in the alberta education program of studies’ for teaching through an inquiry-based focus. as indicated in the experience described above, these were tensions i had experienced throughout my own teaching career in high school biology and i wanted to explore how other teachers and students navigated through their own experiences. following from gadamer’s work in truth and method (1960/2006), the application of hermeneutics attends to questions of meaning and understanding—questions that are complex and nuanced and provide few easy answers (smits, 1997). davey (2006) has argued that “philosophical hermeneutics is not interested in the acquisition of facts and information but in what happens as a consequence of embarking upon such a quest for knowledge” (p. 38). my draw towards exploring this topic hermeneutically emerged from an extensive examination of the literature that coalesced when i came across the following quotation: “science teaching has suffered because science has been so frequently presented just as so much ready-made knowledge, so much subject-matter of fact and law, rather than as the effective method of inquiry into any subjectmatter” (dewey, 1910, p. 122). in spite of a plethora of research that has identified the “issues” and recommended “solutions” to increase student interest in the hundred years since dewey, it is evident that little has changed. what is missing from the literature are the lived experiences of students and teachers of the practice of teaching and learning biology. i wanted to create the conditions where gadamer's fusion of horizons (2006) could emerge from my dialogue with teachers, students, the literature, and my own experiences. data gathering and analysis the data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with six students and seven teachers as well as an open-ended questionnaire completed by 81 students enrolled in grade 12 biology in 1 diploma examinations in alberta are provincially mandated standardized tests that students complete within their final grade in high school in english, french, social studies, mathematics, and all of the sciences. the weighting for the exam at the time of writing this article was 50% of the student's overall mark but changed to 30% of their mark in 2015. pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 4 the province of alberta. the teachers’ experience ranged from 5 years to over 20 years. moules, mccaffrey, field, and laing (2015) have described studying a topic hermeneutically as occurring through a process of reflexivity, dialogue, and interpretation. i cycled multiple times between reading the interview transcripts, listening to the tapes, analyzing the open-ended questionnaires, and reading deeper into the literature on science education. the intent of the analysis was not to find universal themes, but rather, as gadamer stressed, to “understand the phenomenon itself in its unique and historical concreteness . . . to understand how this man [sic], this people or this state is what it has become, more generally how it happened that it is so” (gadamer, 1960/2006, p. 4). i started with questions that were tied directly to the teachers’ and students’ experiences in the biology classroom, asking for specific examples, which i hoped would begin a deep discussion into what it means to teach biology well. exploring the uniqueness of the particular and “bring(ing) it to presence, not essence” (moules, 2002, p. 6) was intended to help the particular not to just stand out as an individual experience, but to allow the particular to “stand with its history, legacies, and relationships . . .” (p. 6). my intent was to allow the teachers and students to be able to share their experiences and, subsequently, open up the conversation of teaching biology and how we came to understand it as it is lived in the classroom. my first few interviews both confirmed my expectations of student and teacher experiences, but also provided some surprises. gadamer (2006) observed that the first necessary condition of hermeneutics occurs when someone or something addresses us. gadamer (2006) stated that “a question … ‘arises’ or ‘presents itself’ more than that we raise it or present it” (p. 360). the following explores this experience where, through dialogue, the unexpected emerged from the interviews with the students and teachers. of silences and surprises the first interview was with student nh, who was in a first-year university biology class. she had attended a school from a separate (catholic) board in alberta with a class size of 30-35 students, and most of the assessment had come from tests and unit exams. to explore what had engaged her in biology, i asked the following: [interviewer]: . . . what i’d like you to do is think back to a biology lesson that you felt was good . . . that really helped you understand biology. so, if you could describe what that would have been like? [student nh]: ok, so basically what my teacher did is she gave very comprehensive notes for us to copy down off of an overhead. with that she kind of talked to us and then she actually gave a personal example. . . she was talking about . . . hypothyroidism, she actually had it herself. so, she was relating all these things about her own personal experiences about that. i found that it helped me remember that concept and actually grasp that concept a lot easier than if there was, you know, no story behind it. [interviewer]: so, it was the storytelling that impacted you. [student nh]: to an extent, yeah. pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 5 when student nh first described taking notes as a good biology lesson, i was taken aback. i did not think a student would describe taking notes as a lesson that had gone well. when i looked at how i asked the question, i realize that i had stated, “that really helped you understand biology.” it would make sense that within a framework of a course that was assessed primarily on tests and a diploma examination that student nh would consider a “good” class as taking comprehensive notes. during the interview, my interest in teaching practice that involved alternatives to taking notes made me pay attention to the storytelling she mentioned her teacher had used to help contextualize the topic. to bring out this piece, i pursued this line of questioning: [interviewer]: was that the only incident that you can think of where there was a story that helped you remember? [student nh]: . . . i can’t really think of too many. she kept talking about all her family members . . . but i can’t think of any other specific incidences. she also gave a lot of diagrams, a lot of notes. she was very comprehensive. she was actually a very good teacher. even though student nh described how storytelling helped her understand the topic, she could not come up with any specifics. i had assumed that a student would take this opportunity to bring up any interesting, engaging opportunities that had occurred in the class; was this because there had not been any? the second student interview was with jill, also a student in her first year at university taking a science degree in biology. after hearing that most class time in her biology 30 had been spent taking notes and doing activities described as “textbook stuff, worksheets, exams,” i asked: [interviewer]: so, when you think back to your biology 30 class, think about a class that was really interesting, what you would consider a good class, a good lesson and . . . describe it for me. what would that have looked like? [student jill]: what i liked was we would go in and first of all, we would get homework check right away . . . then what we would do is we would do a fill in the blank notes . . . then after that we’d get questions and then the time that we had to work in class we’d get like a significant amount time . . . we would always go over the homework from the previous night. [interviewer]: so, within those, the kind of daily structure, can you think of a particular lesson that really stuck out for you or something you learned in bio 30 that really stuck out for you, that you really enjoyed doing? [student jill]: my favorite unit was genetics. that’s what i remember . . . i don’t remember like a specific day that was really exciting but i definitely liked the actual learning process of that. . . i don’t enjoy labs as much . . . i like to take notes and learn it as opposed to do it in lab. when student jill stated that she had enjoyed genetics, i thought we would discuss an activity or event that she had experienced that had allowed her to pick genetics as her favorite topic; however, she could not remember anything specific and, in fact, preferred to take notes as opposed to doing lab work. my assumption that students would much rather do hands-on activities was challenged. these two students believed that being given comprehensive notes, homework checks, and textbook work to be examples of an interesting biology lesson. pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 6 my next interview was with vicki, a teacher with five years of experience teaching at a large urban high school in alberta. she explained how her desire to teach biology arose from her fascination with the topics she had studied in high school. she stated that she wanted to inspire students to learn about biology and hoped to hear them say, “wow, our human bodies are amazing! ecosystems are amazing!” teacher vicki described thinking constantly about ways to incorporate interesting examples of biology whenever she traveled during her vacation breaks. in keeping with that conversation, i asked teacher vicki the following: [interviewer]: so, if we go to your classroom, can you describe for me, if you’re thinking about instilling that passion for your students, can you describe for me a lesson or something that you have done that would demonstrate that? after the two previous interviewees replied by discussing note-taking and homework checks, i was certain that my rewording of this question would lead to the discussion of an engaging lesson. [teacher vicki]: i think it’s just the way that you present it. you have to sell the lesson to them, you have to link it to things that they already know. this is not new information for either one of us. but, for example, (4 second pause) at the point of coming up with an example, teacher vicki paused for four seconds. it seemed like a long time on the tape considering the rest of the time she responded to questions quickly and animatedly. after the four second pause, she began “i” and then paused again, then continued: i (pause)—at the beginning of every semester i make a batch of play-doh. three or four batches of play-doh and they’re colour coordinated and things like that . . . i just reuse it all the time because it’s tactile and the kids can make brains, or they can make the eyeball . . . these are fun and successful lessons because they’re hands-on and they actually get to see what they can’t really see because it’s just movement of molecules . . . but for the most part i have powerpoint lessons, i just click through and i talk to them, they write it down, then we do examples . . . throughout the interviews, i sensed that the students and teachers were not able to give me specific examples of when a lesson had gone well. i suddenly realized that the absence of specific examples was what demanded my attention. i reconsidered the 4-second silence that occurred during teacher vicki’s interview. that quiet pause was reminiscent of when i was a biology teacher desperately trying to engage students with exciting lessons. however, the perceived constraints of the course structure, the expectations of the students, parents, and administration, and the need to “prepare” students for the diploma exam all hung within that silence. i know if our roles were reversed and i was asked that question, i would have responded in the same way, with silence, because my teaching practice was identical: giving comprehensive notes, having students fill in the blank note sheets, even using play-doh to make certain difficult topics interesting. within that silence, i felt a common bond in having a sense that the “everyday-ness” of teaching biology was missing something significant. greene (1995) argued that as teachers, it is “simply not enough for us to reproduce the way things are” (p. 1), which is what happens if teachers become “clerks or functionaries” as opposed to allowing students to ask pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 7 questions creatively and explore topics through dialogue “among people who have come together to solve problems that seem worth solving to all of them . . .” (p. 5). through this process of vigorous inquiry, greene suggested, students become active in the discipline and are able to explore “what might be” (p. 5). in the epigraph at the beginning of this article jardine, clifford, and friesen (2003) have stated that when the topics we teach are structured “under ‘basics-as-breakdown,’ the work our children do might be memorisable (a version of control, prediction, and manipulation) but it is rarely especially memorable” (p. 87). memorization is passive and does not allow students the creative freedom of curiosity to become involved with the topic; whereas, being memorable requires the student to become a dynamic part of the event, as opposed to remaining a submissive figure. the students and teachers whom i interviewed spoke about comprehensive notes and homework checks, which all point to memorizing. nothing in their teaching and learning experiences seemed memorable. for experiences to be memorable, the disciplines need to become things that students undergo, not just objects that they “have,” things that enchant, possess, and capture their imaginations, their passions and not just things they “possess” and can then exchange in the market economy of knowledge-as-commodity, for marks. (jardine et al., 2003, p. 87) for something to be memorable, the students must have a vivid experience, which means they need to undergo an event or a journey, to venture into something where they could be “changed by its lessons” (p. 87). in the interviewee’s descriptions of the biology classroom, there had been no opportunities presented in the classroom for journeying, which would have allowed students to experience the discipline of biology as it lives in the world. the transmission of fragmented facts did not appear to allow this space to be created for students to venture into, which is likely why students were not able to describe moments when they were engaged in science. sadly, this phenomenon was not something unique to these teachers and students; rather, it remains common practice. common experiences of science education three common views of science education by students emerged from a study conducted by lyons (2006) through a comparative analysis of three research projects conducted in england, sweden, and australia. students held the view that: (a) science education is simply a passive transmission of facts; (b) the science content is irrelevant and boring; and (c) science is a difficult subject due to the nature of how it seemed irrelevant and learning was about memorization (lyons, 2006). these experiences were echoed by the student respondents in my research. the interesting phenomenon that i noticed in the interviews with both teachers and students, no matter whether they were from public, separate, or private schools, in urban or rural settings, was the similarity of their experiences with those described in the research below. science education as passive transmission of facts lyons’ (2006) first theme, that the passive transmission of facts from teachers or textbooks to students was a common characteristic of science education, was evident among all of the stupelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 8 dents i interviewed. in the interviews, for example, student rick described his biology class as rote learning: “90 percent of the classes would be, you know, open your textbook read three to four pages. do the exercise at the back, and then either, you’d ask your questions as you were going along, you would work with someone nearby.” similarly, student martin stated that “in a typical class session we were usually taking notes for maybe half an hour to 45 minutes. we didn’t take notes every class . . . the rest of the time we would spend maybe doing like an assignment or worksheet.” as well, all of the 81 students that responded to the questionnaire indicated that taking biology was inherently a passive transmission of facts. although a few students on the survey stated that they wished biology class was otherwise, many thought that the best way to teach biology was simply by improving the way science was passively transmitted. in one response on the questionnaire, a student described this experience in a wonderfully graphic way: i find when we do a lot of shovel-and-puke work it gets very old and boring… working entirely out of the textbook is really boring and i find myself losing more information than i am gaining. bio [sic] has too much memorization and not enough hands on work. “shovel-and-puke” was a telling description of what happens in many biology classrooms, including mine. for that particular student, biology class meant that information was being “shovelled” into the students, and then he was asked to “puke it out” on a test. how the student described learning was also significant, where his statement “i find myself losing more information than i am gaining” becomes a useful critique for the fragmented view of learning. as a biology teacher, i was comfortable with the idea that there is a body of knowledge (curriculum) that i must do my best to transmitting information to my students’ so that they could understand biology. i based my assumption on the idea that education is the “acquisition of learning ‘objects’—facts and procedural rules that can be understood as facts” (st. julien, 2000, p. 255). i wonder now how anything in that process could be memorable. only a few students seemed to think that biology could be taught differently from note taking and test making. one student asked for teachers to “show us the real thing” by bringing in “research papers and articles that are interesting and relevant to the area currently being covered in biology” and using “examples from our real life.” another asked teachers to “make it less about memorization and more about understanding, with more real life applications through experiments or field trips.” in particular, student rick described how it is important to raise ethical and controversial issues in the classroom. although he felt that much of the course content was not controversial because its predetermined facts were “core to the topic,” he believed there were still controversial issues when new understandings emerged in the scientific field. the experiences described by the students in my study mirror the findings in the secondary analyses made by the programme for international student assessment (pisa) in 2006 that compared student engagement in science across organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) members (oecd, 2007). pisa gathered data of student interest in science from student questionnaires as well as embedded contextualised questions about student attitudes towards science within the actual test units (woods-mcconney, oliver, mcconney, schibeci, & pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 9 maor, 2013). the report indicated that in canada the types of teaching strategies that created the most engagement and interest in science were those least experienced by students. these included students being allowed to design their own experiments, to choose their own questions, and to test out their ideas (woods-mcconney et al., 2013). as a result, their experience of science was as lyons (2006) described, through passive transmission of facts. the nature of science education: irrelevant and boring in lyons (2006), students overwhelmingly expressed the common viewpoint that science content is irrelevant and boring. this criticism of science classes has been repeated often throughout the history of research on science education, and appears to remain relevant to today’s classrooms as well (aikenhead, 2005; osborne & collins, 2001; schussler, 2009; turner & peck, 2009; willms et al., 2009). turner and peck (2009) observed that students leave high school believing that “school science is confusing, trivial, depersonalized, irrelevant and decidedly uncool” (p. 55). schussler (2009) described a study by yazzie-mintz in 2006 that asked over 80,000 students why they are bored in science class. seventy-five percent responded that it was due to lack of interest, and 39 percent said the material was not relevant. as far back as 1902, dewey had described how irrelevant content disengages students when science is presented as facts without any connection to students’ lives: it condemns the fact to be a hieroglyph . . . the most scientific matter loses this quality when presented in external ready-made fashion—those things that are most significant to the scientific man, logic of actual inquiry . . . drop out. (p. 202) lyons (2006) reported that students’ views of science being irrelevant to their lives led to a sense that the topics were boring as well. the boredom described by lyons (2006) would often deter students from pursuing careers in science, even when they initially expressed a desire to continue into a scientific field upon graduation. students repeatedly take notes, but often they are seldom told why they need to learn particular content (lyons, 2006). aikenhead (2003) reported that one of the fundamental concerns regarding traditional science teaching is the “dishonest and mythical images about science and scientists it conveys” (p. 12). mccomas (1998) had previously noted that scientists were often presented as being objective and scientific methods as being capable of providing absolute proof. what is often lost with this portrayal is the tentativeness and creativity which are both key components of the process of scientific investigation (aikenhead, 2003; blades, 2001; mccomas, 1998). one of the main sources of this myth is the way laboratories and the scientific method are presented in science classes (mccomas, 1998). in most science textbooks, a linear, lock-step approach to the scientific method is provided, implying that all scientists follow a common series of steps to do research. many students, in fact, are disappointed when they learn that scientists do not have a framed copy of “the scientific method” posted above their workbench (mccomas, 1998). “the scientific method” is presented in classrooms as a predetermined, tidy, linear activity that students must follow, then write up to hand in for assessment. there is no imagination, creativity, or opportunities for discovering new ways of understanding a concept. if course work is presented in this way, students acquire an understanding of science that does not bear any relation to the lived world of science (blades, 2001). pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 10 according to eger (1989), students could see applications and creativity in other subjects, such as language arts, but they felt that science courses were “presented as a singular, unifunctional [course] with no different interests” (p. 81). when i asked student noel, “has biology given you anything in your everyday life,” she responded, um, not really. it was just something that i did in school, and that’s what i want to do in university . . . i wouldn’t say it affected my daily life . . . i enjoyed the stuff we learned, but it didn’t change the way i thought about things as opposed to if you took social [studies] or something. as well, student rick stated that taking biology did not offer any “life shifting, earth shattering conclusions” for his life. neither of these students were able to connect classroom biology to their own lives, yet most of my respondents could voice how they applied the knowledge that they learned to their own lives, especially when it came to understanding their own health and watching television shows that were medically based. there seemed to be a disconnect between what the students perceived as science in the classroom and the science encountered in their everyday lives, as if these were two separate, unrelated entities. the interesting twist in the research occurred when many of the students who described science classrooms as irrelevant and boring were able to see science as it lives in the world as being interesting and relevant. this contradiction confirms the findings of turner and peck (2009) in the university of oslo’s project rose: the relevance of science education, in which students differentiated between their experience with school science and with science in general. a similar finding is illustrated in lyons (2006) by the student comment that: i like to read scientific books and magazines and watch such programs on tv. all i know i have learned that way, and i really like science. but i don’t like that sort of science we have to learn in school. (p. 601) eger (1989) also pointed to the contradiction that, while research showed a decreased interest in school science, the general public’s increasing interest in real-world science had led to the proliferation of books and publications by outstanding scientists. lindahl (2003, cited in lyons, 2006) concluded that it was not the content itself that students found irrelevant and boring, but rather how it was presented in school. most of the students i interviewed described how biology allowed them to see and appreciate the world in different ways. for example, when i asked a student whether biology had impacted his life in general outside of school, he responded by stating that studying biology had allowed him to appreciate the complexity of life: [student martin]: i think [science] enhances the beauty of something because you can look at a piece of grass . . . one of the things we learned [is] how complicated photosynthesis really is. so, you can look at a piece of grass and just be like “wow, that’s pretty incredible. the distinction between biology in the classroom and biology in the world was clear when one student answering the question on advice for teachers pleaded, “don’t make students write out pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 11 all their notes—there are way too many in biology!” yet also said that biology had impacted her life because “now i know conditions and symptoms of diseases/disorders when learning about the human body . . . i find biology very interesting because it is a relatable course–unlike math/physics.” the ability for students to see ways that the knowledge could be used in their lives helped them appreciate studying biology, in spite of having described the class as involving too much note-taking and memorization. science is difficult the third vision of science education which students commonly hold, is that science is a difficult subject. although the students lyons (2006) interviewed found science intellectually stimulating, they complained about the overwhelming terminology and, more importantly, that difficulty arose primarily from passive learning, memorization of facts, and the irrelevance of the content. any discussion of difficulty by the students in this research came from the massive amount of information presented and how fast teachers plowed through it. in the questionnaire, students asked teachers to slow down, not give as many notes, and provide lots of examples for them to help memorize the mountain of information. one student in my research pleaded for teachers “to take things slow. giving tons of information in one class makes me panic and start to freak out and feel overwhelmed.” how well can students truly understand a concept in biology if they are not given the time to slow down and explore the topic? based on focus groups across 144 students, osborne and collins (2001) found that one of the most often articulated concerns students had was how rushed the curriculum seemed to be in science classrooms. they found that when a biology course is focused primarily on content and the teachers’ need to cover a curriculum that is overloaded, then students are “frog-marched across the scientific landscape, from one feature to another, with no time to stand and stare, and absorb what it was that they had just learned” (p. 450). many of the students who responded to the questionnaire in my study shared this concern. for example, one of the students suggested, “students should be given 10-15 minutes or so at the end of class to review, ponder and ask any questions they may have about the material.” it is telling that a student has to ask for 10-15 minutes of time to contemplate the topics they learned. out of a 90-minute class, they do not have 10-15 minutes to slow down and think about all of the pieces of curriculum that have been thrown at them. if they do not have time to ponder, to ask questions, to wonder, then how can they be engaged in the topic? how can they have any sense of biology as a discipline? because the curriculum is perceived as content-heavy, osborne and collins (2001) reported that science was delivered primarily through transmissive modes of teaching, so students did not have time to dwell on a topic. in fact, some teachers respond to questions from students by asking the student to just take what they are teaching at face value, that they did not have time to go into what they are asking (osborne & collins, 2001). as a result of this rushed curricula, it seems that students skip along on the surface like a rock, never breaking the surface so that they can explore what is underneath. as long as biology teachers see their role as giving one piece of information after another, without feeling they can slow down to help students understand how biology really lives in the world, it makes sense that students would find biology difficult. greene (1995) pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 12 argued, for example, that the detrimental effect of this disconnect has lasting negative effects. when knowledge is presented as disconnected pieces of information, it does not need care from us. in fact, she asserted, that since disconnected knowledge has been removed from the living field in which it belongs, it rejects the possibility of caring. as a result, lyons (2006) pointed out that most of the difficulty that students expressed was not in the topics themselves but “with passive learning, memorization, or the irrelevance of the content, rather than from any intellectual challenge” (p. 603). however, most science classes in the countries studied in lyons research presented a pedagogical framework of content-focused classes that teachers and students had to get through in order for students to pass tests. breaking the silences: butterflies and mimicry in the classroom from the conversations with the teachers, there was an overwhelming sense of feeling conflicted over how they teach biology because they want to instill passion in their students and have them leave the class with a love of biology. the teachers all talked about not caring if the students remembered specific content, yet when they are in the classroom, the content remains their main focus. looming over them are the all of the specifically mandated content and outcomes, the ominous shadow of the diploma exams, the marks required to compete for post-secondary admission, parental expectations, and student demands to “just tell us what we need to know.” thus, although teachers’ immediate attention was on getting the “material across” to prepare students for the diploma examinations through memorization and note-taking, their long-term goals included having students develop an appreciation for biology and acquire skills that would be useful in their lives. turner and peck (2009) identified these “two incompatible goals” as one of the key reasons of disengagement by students. they described how teachers are caught between preparing students for more advanced courses—mainly “feeding the metaphorical ‘pipeline’ of students who will go on to pursue post-secondary study in science-related fields” (p. 55)—while, at the same time, trying to serve the majority of the student population, who will not pursue careers in science (turner & peck, 2009). as a result, endless pages of notes are being taken, as opposed to stopping to look at the uniqueness of a butterfly’s wing and appreciating how beautiful and complex our world is that this butterfly could seem to be an owl, a snake, and a butterfly all at the same time. this is not an example of mimicry—it is mimicry as it lives in the world. the butterfly is not there for us to be able to understand the word “mimicry,” but rather, being part of that world where we live with that butterfly, we can begin to understand why mimicry is part of our ontology. memorizing the word and looking for an example is counter to what science and knowing should be. we should be looking at the world and understanding the world with the word. yet we teach concepts and words, emphasizing definitions and quizzes, and we then point to the butterfly only to help make the word more memorizable. cartesian thinking would tell us that a butterfly is a butterfly; whereas, science would name it caligo eurilochus; but in nature, it is also seen as an owl and a snake. how it lives its life is multifarious, not black and white as many science classrooms would have us assume. in the classroom, teachers seek opportunities to make connections through telling stories or connecting to moments, but these moments are often an aside, a tool used in an attempt to help students “cover” the material. the stories and connections are often a means to an end to help the students pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 13 memorize the concepts. the students are not asked to share their stories or even to participate in storytelling, because their questions and wonderment are often seen as slowing down the primary focus of covering the curriculum (blades, 2001; macpherson, 2009; osborne & collins, 2001). the stories become merely the icing on the dense structure of content and testing, and are quickly set aside when time is rushed. the conflict between covering the content and making connections is like a dance that goes unacknowledged, and when teachers tried to discuss it in the interviews, we were confronted with moments of silence and vagueness. instead, what emerges are discussions of note-taking, play-doh making, homework checking—all elements of my own teaching. so, when i think back to my darkened classroom with the single source of light on the overhead screen projecting predetermined notes, the students in rows facing forward, quietly writing down, suffering the physical and mental cramping that this experience could only offer, i am embarrassed. why did i teach that way? i spent 17 years not knowing that this method could be something else. how else could it be? this is a question that teachers do not have many opportunities to explore within their frenetically paced lives in schools, but one that hopefully will begin to emerge more and more. the specific learning outcome in biology 30 related to mimicry reads, “students will: [30– d2.2k] explain the role of defence mechanisms in predation and competition; e.g., mimicry, protective coloration, toxins, behaviour” (alberta education, 2014, p. 77, original italics). this specific learning outcome is only one of over 70 outcomes narrowly focused on knowledge and sts connections. within these outcomes are sub bulleted outcomes that bring the count to over one hundred, not including the outcomes for initiating and planning, communication, and teamwork. how can teachers find time to make the class anything but memorisable when they are required to cover all of these specific outcomes? before every knowledge, sts, skills outcome in the alberta education program of studies it states, “students will.” for example, “students will explain the role of defence mechanisms in predation and competition; e.g., mimicry, protective coloration, toxins, behavior,” (p. 77). at the bottom of every page in the alberta education biology 20/30 program of studies there is a disclaimer: “note: some of the outcomes are supported by examples. the examples are written in italics and do not form part of the required program but are provided as an illustration of how the outcomes might be developed” (alberta education, 2014, original bold). the purpose of the italicized examples is to give teachers options how they can present the different topics. the intent is to allow flexibility in different classrooms, which then allows teachers to choose to take up topics in different ways. in the face of the 70 bulleted objectives the students are expected to reach (meaning, then, the teachers must teach), the reality is that anything italicized is often seen as an add-on, an extra, something that will not show up on the diploma examination. if it is assumed the italicized examples are simply an add-on to the real (that is not italicized) content, then how the content is connected in the world is lost. aikenhead (2005) has described the tension teachers experience between “educational soundness and political reality” (p. 385). teachers are often caught between what the research demonstrates as strong pedagogical decisions to increase student engagement, but politics such as “historical precedence, pressure from universities, directives from professional interest groups . . .” (p. 385) all contribute to how teachers decide to teach. pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 14 this makes me wonder, is this way of teaching a form of mimicry? in biology, mimicry is when one organism pretends to be something else in order to survive by looking or behaving like something it is not. the owl butterfly has two large marks on its wings to look like the eyes of an owl in an attempt to scare away its predators. maybe that is what teachers are doing. to protect ourselves, we say we are trying to teach using stories to engage the students, but in reality, we are still focused on the content, because that is how we survive. what if i had turned the light on in the classroom and allowed students to look around, to look at the world and each other and ask questions? what if we had ventured into the world where a butterfly could be an owl and a snake and ask how did it come to be and why is it important to know? the difficulty for me as a teacher is what if i turn the light on my vulnerability of what i know about biology, what i do not know becomes exposed as well? i may have to abandon the role of disseminator of knowledge and become a person that also needs to journey into the world in ways that are unfamiliar to me. what if i had shifted the focus from students will to students’ will? the merriam-webster online dictionary defines the term “will” as “used to express a command, exhortation, or injunction: you will do as i say at once.” if teaching and learning are going to be the journeying that jardine (2003) addressed, for it to be memorable, then the students’ will needs to be part of the journeying. by shifting the “will” from commanding to inviting, “used to express desire, choice, willingness, consent,” then students could choose to journey into the complex discipline of science and explore the world where they live with the butterfly and understand why mimicry is important in the world. however, when we look at the research of science classes in canada, europe, usa, and australia, the most striking element of the results is how universal student disengagement with classroom science is spread throughout the western world. if students are invited into this world of butterflies that are owls and snakes, then their own stories and questions could emerge, potentially leading to moving beyond memorizing and creating space for memorable moments. conclusion: moving away from mimicry from exploring the literature and my research of student and teacher experiences, it would seem that many attempts to change how biology is taught have been made with little success. in light of the research that suggests students experience biology as a form of mimicry, the question remains: how can we find ways for students to experience biology as it lives in the world? jardine (2012) began his book, pedagogy left in peace, with a quote from a speech by gadamer (1992) called, “the idea of the university–yesterday, today, tomorrow.” i found this quote compelling when contemplating how to move forward with this research. we should have no illusion. bureaucratized teaching and learning systems dominate the scene, but nevertheless it is everyone’s task to find his free space. the task of our human life in general is to find free spaces and learn to move therein. in research this means finding the question, the genuine question. (p. 59) jardine (2012) further argued that we need to free classrooms from the ingrained “circumstances that make schools, teachers, and administrators retract from any such suggestions of free spaces and the work needed to live therein” (p. 9). from my research, those circumstances include the pelech journal of applied hermeneutics 2019 article 4 15 pressure of too much content, the sense of never getting past preparing for the next test, and prescribed learning outcomes that already dictate where the topic will take us (derby, 2015). i would argue that it does not mean forgetting about those factors but recognizing that they can be taken up differently, where the topic becomes alive in context of the world in which it belongs. i am drawn to the concepts of creating a free space, where teaching and learning is a living universe, a place where something happens to us; in other words, something memorable. what would it be like for the classroom to be a living, contemplative place of being, where free space is opened for students to have opportunities to delve in depth into the field of biology? a place to ponder, to wonder, and to ask questions? this is where hermeneutics can speak profoundly to science, by helping to find ways to root the scientific concepts back to the habitat of which they are part; into what heidegger would call “being in the world” (as cited in kozoll & osborne, 2004, p. 158). finding ways to bring these concepts back into the world in a way that includes their ancestry, the memories that they evoke, and the truths they say about the world is essential to understanding the complexity behind why students seem disengaged in science. allowing students to have opportunities to be part of the conversation already in play would move the content in the biology classroom away from what jardine (2013) described as an “ever-accelerating succession of ‘nows’” (p. 8). students would then be able to recognize that science is not a static book of facts, but a living discipline that has a history, which impacts the present and the future. being immersed in the discipline of biology means that problems can be understood more deeply, allowing a spontaneous and yet informed response to questions. knowledge can then be used to answer a question in a new and unanticipated way, moving away from the passive transmission of facts. by exploring in-depth the many questions that emerge from events in the world that demand a biological understanding, students would then able to see why biology is an important and valued body of knowledge. biology instruction would no longer be about disconnected facts, but a part of living in the world along with the butterflies, owls, and snakes. biology classrooms can then go through a process of metamorphosis from being an example of mimicry to being experienced as a “transformative capacity [through] the process of engaging with a subject matter” (davey, 2006, p. 39); or put differently, how biology actually lives in the world. references aikenhead, g.s. 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(1910). science as subject-matter and as method. science, 31(787) 121-127. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/1634781 eger, m. (1989). the 'interests' of science and the problems of education. synthese, 81, 81-106. gadamer, h-g. (1992). the idea of the university: yesterday, today, tomorrow (l. schmidt & m. reuss, trans.). in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (pp. 47-59). albany, ny: suny press. gadamer, h-g. (2006). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). new york, ny: continuum. greene, m. (1995). releasing the imagination: essays on education, the arts, and social change. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. jardine, d.w. (2012). pedagogy left in peace: cultivating free spaces in teaching and learning. new york, ny: continuum. jardine, d.w. (2013). time is [not] running out. journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies, 9(1), 1-32. jardine, d. w., clifford, p., & friesen, s. (2003). back to the basics of teaching and learning: thinking the world together. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. kozoll, r. h., & osborne, m. d. (2004). finding meaning in science: lifeworld, identity, and self. science education, 88(2), 157-181. lyons, t. (2006). different countries, same science classes: students' experiences of school science in their own words. international journal of science education, 28(6), 591-613. macpherson, s. (2009). teaching biology or teaching to the test?: how high stakes standardized tests impact the biology classroom. the international journal of learning, 16(7), 525-533. mccomas, w. f. 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(2009). can we do school science better? facing the problem of student engagement. education canada, 49(2), 54-57. will. (n.d.). in merriam-webster.com. retrieved from http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/will willms, j. d., friesen, s., & milton, b. (2009). what did you do in school today? transforming classrooms through social, academic and intellectual engagement. toronto, on, canada: canadian education association. woods-mcconney, a., oliver, m.c., mcconney, a., schibeci, r., & maor, d. (2014). science engagement and literacy: a retrospective analysis for students in canada and australia. international journal of science education, 36(10), 1588-1608. corresponding author: david w jardine, phd professor emeritus, university of calgary email: jardine@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 april 23, 2023 ©the author(s) 2023 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2023i2023.77349 guest editorial: on temporarily regaining a measure of well-being david w. jardine abstract this paper is an exploration of the experience of re-gaining a measure of well-being. new hearing aids helped me recognize and elaborate anew aspects of the art of interpretation and how it relies on noticing the unnoticed. gadamer's the enigma of health also provides hints as to the troubles with the idea of ecological well-being being unnoticeable. keywords hermeneutics, health, hearing-loss jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 2 2 my grandson and i barefoot over them swept up on the deck. we’d be swept up in the crunch and toss and giggle. ah, these leaves’ sounds once again live up to their deep familiar smell. i can smell them more in this first fall of good ears in years. with the great aid, too, of [his] focussed abandon. autumn. inbreath. i can hear its scents. (jardine, 2023) i know only too well how illness can make us insistently aware of our bodily nature by creating a disturbance in something which normally, in its very freedom from disturbance, almost completely escapes our attention. here it is a matter of the methodological primacy of illness over health. but of course, it is the state of being healthy which possesses ontological primacy, that natural condition of life which we term well-being, in so far as we register it at all. but what is well-being if it is not precisely this condition of not noticing, of being unhindered, of being ready for and open to everything? (gadamer, 1996, p. 73) this second passage is from hans-georg gadamer’s the enigma of health and, as per his example, i looked up the etymology of this word “enigma,” a word easily used but full, as with all words, of secrets. “from latin aenigma, ‘riddle,’ from greek ainigma, ‘a dark saying,” from ainissesthai, ‘speak obscurely. . .’, from ainos, ‘tale, story, proverb’” (online etymological dictionary, under enigma [n.]). gadamer warned that such etymologies “are not proofs” (1989, p. 103), but they can help loosen up things that have become, as edmund husserl (one among many of gadamer’s teachers) described it “implications of meaning which are closed off through jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 2 3 sedimentation or traditionalization” (1970, p. 52) and “the sediments of passively accumulated experiential residues, analogies, etc.” (p. 303). thus, the core of interpretation to puzzle over such obviousnessses, things taken for granted, things that go without saying -hidden, forgotten, unspeakable, commonplace, and so on, such that, when you try to write about it, words struggle and trip, because it is precisely a locale measured by no need for words. health. well-being. “freedom from disturbance.” i started wearing hearing aids for the first time on friday, january 7, 2022. i re-gained a measure of “well-being,” a well-being whose gradual loss i had hardly registered till recently. i was thrust into a condition of noticing a well-being whose loss i hadn’t been noticing and whose characteristic seems to be precisely being in not being noticed. i suddenly experienced not only becoming (relatively) unhindered, but also experienced how i had become hindered and had not noticed. trying to get these sentences to be properly fitting is a bit of an hilarious exercise which, in a way, proves gadamer’s point, that well-being tends to escape notice, and registering its return is an odd thing, since something of it, he claims, not only lives in a condition of the unregistered, but has this as its defining characteristic. health doesn’t exactly “register.” so arises old echoes of the task of interpretation itself: “the great problem here is to understand what is so obvious” (husserl, 1970, p. 187), breaking the spell of the “tranquillizing self-assurance [of] ‘being-at-home’ with all its obviousness (heidegger, 1962, p. 237). the amount of available literature on this subject of hearing loss and gain is utterly mindboggling. i could make a list, here, but will leave that to others better qualified in judging this literature. for now, i will follow some experiential trails in hope of elaborating what has been a fascinating, frustrating, and occasionally joyous venture. what follows are all caught up in the new glimmers of sound. what also follows are brief thoughts on the analogues between this temporary re-gain and noticing, and the nature of hermeneutics itself, along with parallels to the fleeting noticing of our current ecological circumstances and the often-accompanying tranquillizing self-assurance that comes from not noticing its increasing prevail. one news item talked about how the returning fish and animals felt wrong and also felt right. this sounds like new hearing aids sound. bringing to notice their previous absence. there is much talk of ecological troubles, but we did have glimpses of the momentary return of a strange, distorted measure of forgotten well-being. here: ‘nature is taking back venice’: wildlife returns to tourist-free city. (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/20/nature-is-taking-backvenice-wildlife-returns-to-tourist-free-city). all this new onslaught of sounds at the same time as nebulous, wide-spread pandemic talk of wanting to “get back to normal” – these emerging fishes, read as signs of” not normal?” or a notice of well-being that we can’t handle? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/20/nature-is-taking-back-venice-wildlife-returns-to-tourist-free-city https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/20/nature-is-taking-back-venice-wildlife-returns-to-tourist-free-city jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 2 4 a notice of well-being that we can’t handle? an anecdote to start first, an anecdote of how i just happened upon taking the step of getting my hearing tested. the anecdote itself is simple but was utterly disturbing. my partner and i were watching a dvd and i was, as per recent occasions, having trouble hearing the dialogue clearly. the voices seemed too wrapped up in the ambient noises of the scenes being played out. sound had become twodimensional, so to speak, without foregrounds and backgrounds, without a “field” in which things were sounding here and there. flat. singular. as i expect might be commonplace, i’ve simply become less and less interested in even bothering with dvds or cds. so, i cupped my hands behind my ears and could hear a little bit better and make some better sense of what was going on. it worked a bit. so far, so ordinary. i’m old enough to clearly find familiar the images that come up when you search for “ear horns” or “ear trumpets” in a simple online search. of course, cupping your hands behind your ears will change the sound you hear, help you quite literally gather more of what is auditorily happening. but here is the crux that made the difference in this case. utter happenstance. i went out into the kitchen and for no reason i can remember, i cupped my ears and started talking out loud, basically to myself and about what i can’t recall. of course, what i heard sounded different because of the cupping, however, my voice sounded, not strange but shockingly familiar. it sounded like a voice i knew intimately but hadn’t heard in years and years. i recognized the voice i heard and recognized something hard to express accurately – i sounded like i used to sound. i blurted out [several expletives deleted]: “i sound like i’m 18 years old!” frightening, comforting, not exactly either of those. it was a sudden and utterly bright and disturbing looming up of something long-lost, long forgotten and utterly, intimately, almost secretly familiar: recognizing, right now, my very own voice from years ago suddenly appearing as if out of nowhere. not new. but also, brand new. enigmatic, this. i didn’t know i hadn’t been hearing it -a slightly spooky, slightly dream-like experience. and so, as happens with this sort of writing that i do, i went to find counsel and see if it might help me elaborate these dark sayings, this enigmatic uprising. conversations with loved ones nearby, emails to friends and colleagues, reading and rereading old sources of consolation and clarification. the usual as happens when the urge to write arises as well, my own long-since refuge of trying to compose myself over experience and its wafflings. the very thing sought by hermeneutic work is the very thing often eluding notice: we do not understand what recognition is in its profoundest nature if we only regard it as knowing something again that we already know. the joy of recognition is rather the joy jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 2 5 of knowing more than is already familiar. in recognition, what we know emerges, as if illuminated. (gadamer 1989, p. 114) i might say here, as if sounding and re-sounding. sounds and openings we went down the driveway with the dogs, down the road a bit where the fields open up. i can hear them opening. this finally sounds like it looks. i expect that anyone might be able to notice this, that fields sound wide? i don’t know this for sure. to actually explicitly experience what it is that is so obviously experienced is not a trivial matter. there is also a renewed kinaesthesis –hah, the aesthetics of movement -to this shift because we carry hearing with us as we move, and it is one of the ways that our moving is measured –this over and above issues of balance and so on. hearing turning the corner of the room, hearing the distance of things, hearing them nearing, me nearing them, and now, looking out the back door at the bitter cold spell finally broken for a bit, not just “seeing” out the door, but hearing its openness and anticipatorily hearing what is to come as i step out into the open, bare feet on the snow, open sky above, light just coming up. those small blinks of snow crystals melting underfoot. the cascades of small energies upwards, seems a different pleasure, but the same, now. aletheia. the word “splash” is onomatopoeic. of course, it was before when i heard the soft roundness of water filling a tall glass and said the rounded word. and now, the word hisses and sparkles and glistens as does the sound of filling water. the empty neck smalls, slowly up-pitches, just like it looks. so, a bit of synaesthesia as well, that the light has a sounding bristle to it – as if the increasing visibility is trying to stimulate my hearing as well, showing my eyes what i’m hearing full well already. or the new ability to hear is expecting sound from brilliant sights? hearing the wind in the distance – hearing that there is a distance which is plainly visible. hearing, not just wind but its approaching. almost like these new-old sounds are themselves doing the sketching and i’m just trying to keep up, name, gather, embrace…even the audible slitting sound of a sharp knife through a red pepper. the slit sounds sharp. can humans “hear” knives being sharp? of course. so wonderfully mundane, that cascade upwards of sound when filling a glass with water, poured from a height just for fun, just for the sound of it. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 2 6 it really is a complex thing – the rising pitch of sound, the rising water. so very ordinary, like the face of an old acquaintance or some such thing? that none of this is exactly a brand-new thing being experienced (i’ve walked roads, filled glasses, and cut vegetables, after all, for years), but is a brand-new noticing of the unnoticed. so, the hermeneutic point: the joy of recognition is coming to know more than what is familiar. this sentence is getting more and more enigmatic and more illuminated. ah, of course: aletheia “the lean towards noticing”: warns of the overwhelm and further signs of dis-ease the effect does leak ‘sideways’ into other senses. coming down the darkened stairs to the basement office, the light was left on in the bathroom and the light it cast ahead of the bottom of the stairs – not that it was literally brighter than before, but its notice-ableness [?] was brighter? huh? a result, i think, of the hearing aids increasing the lean towards noticing more generally than just noticing hearing. “health does not actually present itself to us” (gadamer, 1996, p.107). it may be, too, that if health suddenly does present itself to us, we may, in a way, we may withdraw. suddenly having hearing aids can involve, to coin a phrase, the fright of hearing but not recognizing. on the first day of having hearing-aids, i could hear that the hallway was narrow. hearing that and not knowing what it was, at first, troubling. right here is a grand hermeneutic analogue of the summoning of the desire to interpret which can get scared off if the “address” is too much to take, too unfamiliar, too loud, too hardened to budge under consideration. i’m remembering graduate classes from years ago when the idea of the interpretability of things started to settle in on us all, that one person said: “i took the c-train home and i looked at the sign above the person’s head across from me and it meant something stranger than i’d noticed before. everything started to mean something.” we laughed in recognition and commiseration, and also over pleas, in another class, of “how do you get it to stop?” once the interpretive uprising starts to gain notice. in analogue, i’ve talked with many folks over the past months about how they’ve simply shelved their hearing aids. lots of reason for this, of course. this be its own myriad of inquiry. one thread, then another. this overwhelm of hearing aids is somewhat like the experience of hearing a noise or maybe thinking that you may or may not have heard a noise outside in the dark of night and not knowing what is happening or what to do or whether anything needs to be done. to ‘decode’ this strange plenitude...and i can easily imagine what might happen if one couldn’t exactly do this… i can see why some people might profit from a guide of some sort who can take them for hearing walks, rolls, and enjoy the joys of recognition, help stop over and name what jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 2 7 they are hearing, sometimes for the first time in decades…how all this incoming, with an incommensurate amount of stilling oneself over it, could easily be mistaken for madness or demons everywhere. this is why i’m writing this, in part. to turn upside down (“english whelmen [oed]) is, to a certain degree, the clever and too-easily tossed about desire of hermeneutic work – the trickster opening closed doors, tripping you when you least expect it and so on, all on behalf of checking out the red ant colonies under the rocks near my mother’s roses as a child, the bursty, lemony smells hidden underneath. it can be fun. it can be joyous. and it can be terrifying, to be summoned to interpret an unexpected onslaught. it is important to avoid the sometimes off-handed, post-modern glibness of upsetting other peoples’ applecarts, so to speak. i’m having enough to do with my own. my happenstance and practiced ability to hear as well as my practiced ability to write and ponder, has been helpful and have made the overwhelm more noticeable than it might have been, more bearable. so, a second thread of other dis-eases muffled in hearing loss: today [3 days post -aids], the water-delivery-guy-dog-barking was just unpleasant. no startle at all, no panics and breathlessnesses. i got to say out loud to him that i’d got these hearing aids and he mentioned that he remembered, last time, how i had to leave when he arrived. meanwhile, my partner woke up and came out for coffee and i mentioned all of this to her, and she said “yes, i could hear it all out the window, your reactions were completely different. calm. well, calmer.” coming into view in this yawning new gap are a myriad of dis-eases that accompanied my hearing lost: anxiety, impatience, and [low level] paranoia, anger, suspiciousness, the startle reflex that kept getting cued off by loud sounds, and, of course, how the whole matter got blurred and deferred by masks and plexiglass and muffled voices already muffled at the grocery store. depression. enclosure/enclosedness. withdrawal. distance. retreat. isolation. masks. plexiglass. conditions arising from my hearing loss, from recent pandemics, from swathes of recent political rants and raves my partner has mentioned more than once that it had become slightly frightening to be around me. that is making more and more sense. she wasn’t alone in this. i had become frightened to be around myself, feeling out of control of these monstrous, sudden, violent, terrifying uprisings. her beautiful patience (whose beauty is now radiantly clear). how the illness was spread around, as illness will do. not like others catching the same ailment, but others having to live in the wider orbit of someone with that ailment. this is not just “i have/had and ailment and they didn’t. they just had to cope with me having/having had an ailment.” no. they were ailing in the orbit of my ailment. family nursing. it is not just a matter of me becoming accustomed to hearing again, but how that accustom goes, must go, far beyond that. jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 2 8 all of us overwhelmed. and me properly single out as someone bearing part of this and, well, just not listening when encouraged to get tested. this is neither ironic nor a joke, but it is both. might be good to think of this as all one ailment and our locales in it being different? this line of thought needs its own meditations. even a spoon or pot lid dropped on the stone counter—i’d get set off, short of breath, having to retreat somewhere and settle back down. these were really like brain-stem bolts of energy, piercing, frightening. when i went to my doctor and we talked about the startling, he mentioned that part of it can be simply not being around loud sounds and losing a sense of proportion when one arrives out of the blue. all this, of course, is now wrapped up in how my hearing had become, for the most part, a huge, muffling cushion. too much and not enough reading online of the links of hearing loss to alzheimer’s. me aging enough to have memory glitches becoming more common. “as before – and yet not quite as before” for the life-world – the “world for us all” – is identical with the world that can be commonly talked about. every new apperception leads . . . to a new typification of the surrounding world and in social intercourse to a naming which immediately flows into the common language. (husserl, 1970, pp. 209-210) is it not an extraordinary thing that the lack of something, although we do not know precisely what it is that is lacking, can reveal the miraculous existence of health? it is only now, in its absence, that i notice not what was previously there but that it was there. (gadamer, 1996, p. 74) gadamer speaks of the sometimes “violent estrangement from ourselves” (1996, p. 70) that can come from the sudden disappearance of well-being. it can also come from its reappearance. this blanket “world for us all” proves increasingly enigmatic, especially once disturbed, and this both through loss and/or gain. this summons up what happens when one starts stepping into the odd locale of an hermeneutic/phenomenological alertness to lived experience. everything is exactly like it used to be and yet also, somehow “as if illuminated”: with the break with naïveté [perhaps better to say “goes without saying-ness,” “unnoticedness”] brought by the transcendental-phenomenological reorientation, there occurs a significant transformation…. as a phenomenologist i can, of course, at any time go back into the natural attitude. . . . . as before – and yet not quite as before. for i can never again achieve the old naïveté; i can only understand it. (husserl, 1970, p. 210) jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 2 9 there is an amazing parallel, i’m now seeing, between the effects of hearing loss and how it makes uprisings startling, and the effects of interpretive work and how, initially, uprisings can be startling, like too-loud sounds. with practice, the startling sort-of still happens with hearing aids, but they allow it to be located in a rich field that helps them seem less monstrous and dizzying. with interpretive work, becoming practiced in it has the same sort of effect, that there are still startling uprisings -like these emails we're doing and me getting almost bowled over by this parallel itself -and then...well, i’m used to then cutting and pasting it and seeing if i can compose it into the paper on hearing that i’m trying to write...this situating turns away from my own ‘overwhelmedness’ and towards the topic of hearing, of interpreting sounds, and my writing about it. there is a layer in here that is vital: whatever my topic might be, my efforts are, in part, to find the verities of hermeneutics in it, to find its relations, threads, ancestors, familiarities, unspokennesses, what is at play, what is going on in it -to find its “hermeneutic.” this is why, with students starting out, the first question always is “what is your topic?” because that will help the rampant connectionism… slow down and sit somewhere --in a topic, in a field, over this, regarding that. this is where composure comes back in...it is not a general or empty category or practice. as per some forms of meditation, it is a meditation upon something from which one gains composure from its composition/composure -e.g., loss of hearing and getting hearing aids. what its composition is, is where i get a source for my composing of myself over this new arrival. one last speculative exaggeration, for now: “sloping to severe loss” hearing-loss becomes downright avatarial. narrows. suffocates. barricades. exhausts. enrages. harsh, echoey ping-pings with not enough space to calm and ameliorate themselves outwards into hearing the regard of trees off in the distance, and incoming winds, nearing. and ravens overhead. it may be that well-being is better located in the notice of it, that the non-notice squanders its being what it is. squanders our relation to what is, weakens us into the numbing of everydayness. noticing well-being, noticing the unspoken, is, in and of itself, a form of well-being that is deserving of some sort of attention. it is a noticing indigenous to hermeneutics and to never quite being able to go back. i can’t go back to the “don’t worry. you’ll get used to them” well-meant consolations about hearing aids, my ear-things, my earthings. hans-georg is a bit correct, though, and i use his first name because of the intimacy of this last cluster of notice. he talks of the feeling of “weightlessness” that comes the equilibrium of wellbeing (1996, p. 113). something is disappearing from notice. it is fading a bit. it feels like childhood having come back around and now having it slowly dissipate, dreamlike, as i re-gain my equilibrium, the not-notice of aided hearing. and this feels anything but weightless. the good news is that hermes helps a bit. having my grandson nearby also helps, him and i loving barred owl hoots in the grocery store. there is well-being to be had in being disturbed jardine journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 editorial 2 10 out of not-noticing. him and i all ears as the leaves crunch underfoot, as the snow crunches underfoot and the drainpipe water-melting rings inside the metal pipe and down and off down the driveway. you can hear that it is metal, there, waiting to be heard. water down the drive, out into the field that still sounds like it looks. references gadamer, h. -g. (1989. truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans.). continuum books. (originally published in 1960) gadamer, h. -g. (1996) the enigma of health: the art of healing in a scientific age (j. gaiger & n. walker, trans.). stanford university press. heidegger, m. (1962). being and time (j. stambaugh, trans.) harper and row. (originally published in 1927) husserl, e. (1970). the crisis of european science and transcendental phenomenology (de. carr, trans.) northwestern university press. (originally published in 1936) jardine, d. (2023). an early childhood education. journal of curriculum and pedagogy. https//doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2023.2191355. online etymological dictionary.(n.d.). enigma. in online etymological dictionary. retrieved april 19, 2023 from https://www.etymonline.com/ https://doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2023.2191355 https://www.etymonline.com/ corresponding author: tom grimwood, phd university of cumbria email: tom.grimwood@cumbria.ac.uk journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 may 4, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 on covidiots and covexperts: stupidity and the politics of health tom grimwood abstract the covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the significance of the politics of health as an ongoing interpretative event. the effectiveness of delivering prevention strategies is in negotiation with day-to-day arguments in the public sphere, not just by “experts” in peer-reviewed papers, but also in the everyday interpretations and discussions of available expertise on print and digital media platforms. in this paper, i explore a particular facet of these public debate over the politics of health: the deployment of the commonplace of stupidity. i argue that the growth of this commonplace within discussion is rooted in particular models of interpretation which limit selfunderstanding, by over-emphasising certain points of significance within the interpretative horizon over more banal (and “stupid”) aspects that are, nevertheless, influential on health interventions. keywords stupidity, agnotology, knowledge, expertise, post-truth, uncertainty analysing the advent of what he terms our current “burnout society,” byung-chul han points to the problematic role of immunology as a framework for interpretation. “the past century was an immunological age,” he argues. “the epoch sought to distinguish clearly between inside and outside, friend and foe, self and other. […] the object of immune defense is the foreign as such.” (2015, pp. 1-2) the “fundamental category” of immunology is the other (2015, p. 2), and immunization has thus served as an interpretative category which links together otherwise disparate concerns in medicine, politics, and technology (see esposito, 2011, p. 1). yet for han, this immunological model is insufficient to describe the workings of 21st century late capitalism with its globalised networks and dissolution of boundaries. if the model of immunology leads to grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 2 disciplinary responses – the type of organisational control which was described so well by foucault’s account of institutions such as hospitals and factories – for han, we now live in an “achievement society.” here, negative control is replaced by an excess of positivity, and “prohibitions, commandments, and the law are replaced by projects, initiatives, and motivation.” (2015, p. 9) the problem is no longer an external other, but rather the demands of self-fulfilment requiring immune responses to be suppressed “so that information will circulate faster and capital will accelerate” (2017, p. 83). amid the mass exchange of knowledge via communication networks which are no longer concerned with borders and have absorbed all forms of otherness, han suggests “the idiot, the fool” – the one who performs an “inner contraction of thinking to make a new beginning,” who “wants to turn the absurd into the highest power of thought” – has “all but vanished from society.” (2017, pp. 81-82) the idiot, han argues, being “un-networked and uninformed,” would stand opposed to “the neoliberal power of domination: total communication and total surveillance” (83); if only the achievement society allowed for the stupid. it is fair to say that the covid-19 pandemic has necessarily and pointedly re-introduced immunology into our models of thinking, while simultaneously retaining the hallmarks of han’s achievement society. consequently, it should be no surprise the extent to which the pandemic has highlighted the significance of the politics of health as an ongoing interpretative event. that is to say: the effectiveness of health delivery is in negotiation with day-to-day arguments in the public sphere, not just by “experts” in peer-reviewed papers, but also (and perhaps predominantly) in the everyday interpretations and discussions of available expertise on print and digital media platforms. there is no separation of communication networks. hence, the emergence of a pandemic of a previously unseen virus is not only, as carley et al. suggest, “arguably […] one of the greatest challenges to ebm [evidence-based medicine] since the term was coined” (2020, p. 572). for clinicians, they note that the emergence of a new pandemic in a digital age is problematic because of: the sheer volume of new “evidence” that we are faced with. on the one hand, this research can be both informative and hypothesis generating, but on the other hand, it is prone to selective promotion and can overwhelm the user by the nature of volume and the frequency of publication. (carley et al., 2020, p. 574) the same issue is at hand in the public discussion of how best to deal with the virus: the lack of clear and well-established protocols, the variations in approaches taken by different countries, and, particularly of note in the uk, the ways in which its key themes – global travel and border control, state-sanctioned lockdown and welfare provision, considerations of society’s “vulnerable” and the legacy of downgraded public health investment – interweave into existing political arguments. as a result, discussion amongst the “general public” around whether to accept or reject a particular health intervention frequently take place in the same public forums, and particularly on social media, in which these existing political debates take place. in this way, one can easily suggest that the decisions made by members of the public whether to wear a mask, whether to visit a general practice, and whether to conform to social distancing rules is mediated at least in part by interpretations of the volume, frequency, and promotion of certain views, on social media no less than in the world of ebm. precisely because of this, the debate over public health and individual behaviour within the covid-19 pandemic has been framed by the longergrimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 3 term interrelationship between politics and health (see bambra et al., 2005; oliver, 2006) and, in this case, in particular the critical discussion over the role of expertise in the times digital media saturation, one which has challenged the health professions as much as any other (see, for example, hawkes, 2017; heinrich, 2020; hopf et al., 2019). this is what paul and haddad describe as a “new truth regime, [where] politics seems to have unilaterally withdrawn from the social contract and appears to operate, once again, primarily on the basis of a stubborn will to ignorance and blatant forms of denial” (2019, p. 300). what, though, of han’s “idiot”? do they return, like the immunological model, and if so, in what form? in this paper, i want to explore a particular facet of these public debate over the politics of health, or rather, a particular commonplace line of reasoning, a particular topic of discussion which situates covid-19 at the centre of the so-called “post-truth” mediasphere battleground. this is the deployment of the commonplace of stupidity. as with any discussion of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, my paper here can only be schematic at this point: we lack any finality, and the interpretative connections i want to suggest may yet take unexpected turns. nevertheless, the role of stupidity in public debate has been an increasingly febrile one. the interpretative distinction between the stupid and the intelligent, the unreflective with the rational and the conspiratorial with the informed has long been found in arguments against the more general, precovid “anti-vaxxers,” the united states presidential elections in both 2016 and 2020, and, either side of the brexit divide in the united kingdom. it is within the context of covid-19, though, that specific questions for applied hermeneutics are brought to the fore. it seems appropriate to illustrate the commonplace of stupidity through some examples of their primary vehicle for communication, the internet meme. grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 4 these are images and texts that are easily shared and viewed, at speed, across digital media platform, in order to spread a message or viewpoint. in this way, the internet meme operates on a level of what aristotle termed the enthymeme: that is, a unit of cultural transmission embedded within an audience’s ability to accept similarities across situations (see grimwood, 2021, p.180). similarly, memes appeal to the manifestation what gadamer turns to as the sensus communis underlying interpretative judgement (2004, pp. 28-29). in this sense, these meme examples appeal to a clear argument: following science is the antithesis to being stupid. those who do not “follow the science” are, therefore, stupid. accompanying the concern for the decline in the value of expertise, and the associated ascent of fake news and post-truth, the line is very clearly drawn in social media between those with intellect and those without, those committed to the value of fact over the allure of conspiracy. in such a context, the aim of the arguments around applied responses to the pandemic revolves around an established commonplace of digital rhetoric, encapsulated in a popular pre-covid meme which asserted “science: it reduces the stupid.” the ethos of the stupid isn’t this obvious? perhaps too obvious: the readymade accessibility of this form of critique renders stupidity a cliché. it is merely stating what we (the non-stupid) already know; the equivalent of showing a picture of a globe to a flat-earther (and typically with much the same effect; that is, none). but much like the use of clichés, something more is being appealed to than tautology. if the medium for these accusations is often irony or humour, the sentiment is certainly not flippant. this is not the “oh, don’t be so stupid!” that we might say to a partner or sibling. instead, the mud is very much supposed to stick. after all, in the midst of a pandemic, the stakes are very real: a reasonable, evidence-based approach to public health initiatives is key to the prevention of further spread and deaths from the virus. this is not the “idiotism” which han borrows from deleuze, a celebrated instigator of new thought by virtue of their idiosyncrasies (han, 2017, p. 81). clearly, so-called “covidiots,” while sometimes declaring opposition to various notions of neoliberal domination, are nevertheless entirely networked, fuelled by communication access, and au fait with the language of reason and evidence. at the same time, the prevalence of this specific trope and its specific concern with expertise suggests it is something more than an ad hominem attack (even if it is that as well). and in that sense, it grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 5 seems right to ask: what kind of stupidity is being referred to? if, as i have already suggested, these accusations of covid-19 behaviours are embedded within the wider concerns for the fate of expertise in contemporary culture, then what are the wider interpretative systems used to frame them? to complicate this question, stupidity itself bears an etymological relationship to the idea of a “type.” the latin stupēre root term (to be stunned or numb) gives rise not only to stupidus, with its sense of stultifying astonishment, but also to typos, an impression or model, and to typtein, to strike or beat. in antiquity, then, stupidity carried the sense of being stunned still, whether by amazement or by violence. it was only in the 17th century that the notion of halting came to refer to a slowness of mind; and only later still that stupidity was defined as ignorance. indeed, in the 19th century nietzsche describes stupidity not as an error or misunderstanding, but rather thoughts which are true but “base” (see deleuze, 1962/2006, p. 98) this alignment is also at work in gustave le bon’s the crowd, a 1895 treatise on mass psychology, which remains so persuasive it is reprinted almost every year. for le bon, stupidity is exemplified by the formation of the crowd: once inside, individuals become incapable of logical argumentation, and instead allow their behaviours and attitudes to change via the contagion of suggestibility. this is, in effect, the spreading stultification of critical thought, and it is clear that on this view stupidity – much like a virus – needs containment and reducing. indeed, as ernesto laclau has shown, le bon’s line between social organisation and mass crowds “coincides […] with the frontier separating the normal from the pathological” (laclau, 2005, p. 29). nevertheless, while le bon’s dated views might still be entreated in discussions of the decline of expertise in the face of political populism, they do not in themselves shed much light on the meaning of stupidity as a trope: not just because of laclau’s argument that le bon woefully fails to account for the myriad of ways people might group together and communicate whilst also thinking relatively logically, but additionally because le bon insists that mass psychology requires anonymity, and the loss of self. however, the targets of the memes above are not anonymous; if anything, covid-deniers and anti-vaxxers are prominent not just in identifying themselves, but in their displays of (apparent) reason and evidence to support their claims. it is perhaps for this reason that another answer to has become particularly prominent, which is the invocation of “confident idiocy,” or what has become known as the dunning-kruger effect. in a small experiment in social psychology, david dunning and justin kruger asked participants to report on their confidence in carrying out a task, and then compared this to how the candidates actually performed. they argued that there was a direct correlation between confidence and performance: the more confident a participant was, the less well they had performed. the study concluded that incompetent people were unable, and unwilling, to acknowledge their lack of competence, because this would require the very expertise that they lacked; instead, they will become more belligerent in their view of their own abilities. arguments by anti-vaccination advocates and claims that covid-19-deniers are seen as fine illustrations of this, as the direct reproach to established evidence-bases is precisely what buoys the arguer. the louder one shouts about one’s expertise, the less one is likely to know. unlike le bon, kruger and dunning’s work is notable for its emphasis on the individual at fault: arguing that “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others” (1999, p. 1127, my grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 6 emphasis). this particular aspect of the dunning-kruger account of stupidity is often picked up by its proponents. for example, us blogger and obstetrician gynecologist amy tuteur, argues that the “disparagement of expertise may boost the self-esteem of its promoters, but often harms everyone else. what confident idiots know rarely represents the sum total of all knowledge on the subject; that’s why real expertise is worthy of respect” (tuteur, 2016, on-line). writing for forbes, ethan siegel concludes that the dunning-kruger effect can only be challenged by a response based on one’s ethos rather than pathos. it: requires a kind of transformation within yourself. it means that you need to be humble, and admit that you, yourself, lack the necessary expertise to evaluate the science before you. it means that you need to be brave enough to turn to the consensus of scientific experts […]. if we listen to the science, we can attempt to take the best path possible forward through the greatest challenges facing modern society. we can choose to ignore it, but if we do, the consequences will only increase in severity. (siegel, 2020, on-line) this focus on character traits serves to cement that stupid people are not simply mistaken on the facts, they are also morally wrong. the change to be made is within the individual, in order that they are better able to “listen to the science.” and clearly, in many instances of public debate, the emphasis on choice is one of moral imperative: to not wear a mask is to risk the lives of others; so is avoiding a vaccine. these are individual choices about our behaviours which have effects on the people around us, just as refusing to self-isolate or taking a holiday to north wales are. in some cases, choice is emphasised precisely to frame an action as moral, rather than, say economic (as in the case, for example, of the person who refuses to self-isolate because they work in the gig economy and can’t afford to take the time from work). but more fundamental to our concerns here is the role of choice in accepting or not accepting knowledge. inherent to this version of confident idiocy is a working assumption that we can pick up and use information as it passes us by, as we please. therefore, if we choose wrong, we are stupid, and probably immoral for that. of course, this can be very convincing, especially when faced with the stream of sometimes bizarre claims and conspiracy theories which one can encounter on social media regarding covid-19. but the more interesting aspect of the dunning-kruger research is that it bears significant marks of the production of expertise (“real expertise” that is “worthy of respect”). for example, it is referred to as “dunning-kruger,” when the original paper has kruger’s name first. but it is not the kruger-dunning effect, because kruger was at the time only a graduate student, whilst dunning was the professor. hence, when the skeptical ob blog declares in relation to the confidence we might have in expert views, “that’s why professional qualifications are so important,” the wider implications of that claim are unwittingly reflected in the dunning-kruger example: that is, the darker side of what jason brennan has championed as “epistocracy” (brennan, 2016), or the advocacy of elite knowledge over and against democratic representation (mcgoey, 2019). titles matter. furthermore, dunning and kruger’s original studies were of students at university. it is perhaps not surprising that over-confidence was a problem here: students who had reached tertiary education, often at great financial cost to themselves, may well be disposed to feeling a certain elevated confidence in their abilities. the use of students as participants is common practice in much social psychology simply because they are more readily available and easier to recruit than others, and this keeps the costs of an experiment down grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 7 considerably. while it is therefore problematic to scale up these findings to those participating in internet debates – the self-confidence of the original participants was not opposed to expertise but embedded in the same system that produces it – such choices of data subjects represent what paul and haddad term “convenient uncertainty” (2019, p. 306): a choice made less out of intentional exclusion of non-students, but rather from “agnotological convenience” (see also proctor, 2008, p. 24). for some, these points are insignificant; the evidence still stands and the observation is still astute. however, both points demonstrate the cultural and economic aspects of expertise which a simple line between confidence and competence does not attend to; as well as how convention and tradition is a key determinant to which forms of reasoning and illustration are used. what is significant is that the contemporary invocation of “confident idiocy” takes place against the backdrop of a specific (though notoriously ill-defined; see keane, 2013, 2018, vogelmann, 2018) cultural context: that of “post-truth.” this, too, is a context beset with agnotological convenience. the term “post-truth” has become, amid the genuine concerns over its political and cultural effects, a de facto victory of a positivistic certainty; and accompanying this victory is an industry of conferences, academic papers, and even research centres that have arisen in its wake to determine who are the intelligent ones and who are the confident idiots. but in this response, “post-truth” rather too quickly becomes merely “non-truth,” and the complexity of the “post” prefix is lost. too quickly, post-truth is shaped into a shorthand straw man figure to be bested by conservative epistemological mantra, a figure uncannily similar to older enemies of that same mantra, such as radical feminism, post-modernism, or the hermeneutics of suspicion (see, for example, haack, 2019). too quickly, the complexities of “post-truth” becomes a cipher for nothing other than a yearning for an ideal model of academic institutions of truth and readily graspable “facts.” this is not to dismiss kruger and dunning’s argument, and certainly not to deny that ignorance can be damaging to public health efforts. instead, i would argue that there are certain rituals, processes and cultures of knowledge production which remain at work when peer-reviewed research becomes the content of public debate. and if it might be tempting for the epistocrat to suggest that the invocation of dunning-kruger by a wider population leads to misrepresentation because, ironically, it is being utilised by non-experts, this merely repeats these rituals, processes, and cultures once more. as such, this case highlights the way in which a beacon of reference for framing “stupidity” carries with it a number of less manifest aspects of “intelligence” in our time, which nevertheless constitute an interpretative horizon in the gadmerian sense of combining cognitive, normative, and reproductive aspects of interpretation (gadamer, 2004, p. 309). as such, if we are to interpret the impact of these commonplaces of public debate on applied health interventions within the pandemic, then we need to attend to how such horizonal aspects facilitate the shorthand of “reducing the stupid” which turns epistemology into moral requirement: that is, what cultures and rituals are maintained or perpetuated, and what this speed of judgement leaves out, or steps around. stupidity on (and in) the horizon a prime reason that the pandemic brings this shorthand into focus is that, as carley et al. argue, the pandemic provides “a time when we can experience first-hand the journey from ignorance grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 8 about the disease through to a better understanding and approach to diagnostics and interventional therapy.” (2020, p. 574) as such, one could argue that covid-19 has shone a light on the processes of knowledge-production which are more usually obscured either by a form of site-exclusivity (hidden behind the pay walls of academic journals or the real walls of the university and the laboratory), or the length of time such production usually takes due to funding, access to resources, ethical approval, and so on, all of which has been accelerated in covidrelated research during 2020 and 2021. furthermore, the political machinations of evidence – from the micro academic rituals of dunning-kruger to the macro policy decisions, funding allocations, and presentation of data of national government (see ashton, 2020, pp. 160-179) – have also been manifest. if this is the case, then it becomes increasingly clear that the invocation of stupidity is not a simple reliance on the “facts,” however popular the positivist revival in public (and large parts of academic) debate might be. the rhetoric of “the science,” in need of defending from the stupid, masks the complex yet entirely functional ways in which such science is made meaningful, and consolidated from a myriad of data into one single “the.” or, in other words: to judge something as stupid requires interpretation. the word ignorance stems from the latin ignorantia, a lack of knowledge, but its long journey – via middle english and old french – to today’s usage leaves a number of ambiguities in it. arfini (2019), for example, notes that “to be ignorant” and “to ignore” are two quite distinct perspectives: the former suggests being uninformed or unlearned, the latter suggested an intentional refusal to take notice of something. this is echoed in the work of both mcgoey and paul and haddad, who note in their respective fields of practice (sociology of health and policy studies) that rather than aligning ignorance with misinformation or falsehood, choosing to ignore aspects of a certain horizon can form “very tangible effects of selective processing of researchbased knowledge,” where “ignorance emerges as a by-product in knowledge-making processes.” (paul & haddad, 2019, p. 308) on these arguments, ignorance is not the “other” to knowledge, as the scientistic memes might suggest, but rather a material part of it. knowledge itself depends on a level of “strategic ignorance,” if only to reach something like a “conclusion” in a manageable form. as before, this begins to reflect something like a performance of what gadamer terms the ontological “effective-historical consciousness” which situate our interpretative acts: the horizon for understanding which is not universal in reach but rather a “range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point” (gadamer, 2004, p. 301). this fluctuating frame of reference is shaped and changed by the limits of our situation and knowledge, and the ways in which such knowledge is significant to us. our horizons are not simply operational knowledge of the world, but also our expectations, projections and hopes. like prejudice, the strategic ignorance raised by mcgoey and paul and haddad is not necessarily an obstacle to understanding. it is, rather, a condition of understanding itself: such “fore-understanding” is “what determines what can be realised as a unified meaning and thus determines how the fore-conception of completeness is applied” (gadamer, 2004, p. 294). in this light, it is noticeable that, like many in the field, carley et al. utilise a narrative structure for ignorance whereby the concept emerges from a sense of assumed completion: in other words, ignorance is only a step on the way to proper knowledge. hence, this is a “journey,” not an errant adventure. we start with nothing, in order that we finish in possession of understanding. this notion of possession – from not having knowledge to having it, from not having an appropriate grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 9 therapy to carrying out an intervention with it, and so on – is instructive, and not just typical of health research. indeed, in analytic epistemology possession is the keystone of both dominant views of ignorance: what is known as the “standard view on ignorance” refers to it as a lack of knowledge (one cannot both be ignorant and have knowledge of a certain thing, whereas the “new view” argues that it is the absence or lack of true beliefs (one cannot be ignorant and have a true belief about something). both assume that knowledge, beliefs, and truth are things that people possess, and subsequently excludes one from holding both at the same time. but if possession is at the centre of knowledge, it cannot be a literal “possession”: after all, one does not physically pick up knowledge in their hand. storing memories is not exactly the same as storing real books (if it was, surely the distribution of photocopied handouts would have been far more successful in higher education over the years). indeed, as paul mason has argued (2015), in an age where digital files can be infinitely reproduced, premising possession on scarcity – one has it or one doesn’t – ceases to make sense. instead, in all of the cases above possession serves as a practical – and highly traditional – illustrative structure. it is, in this sense, not just a description but also a trope in which certain conditions for understanding are established via the imagery of possession. key to the effect of this trope is a binary rhetoric: one possesses something, or one does not, just as one has knowledge, or one does not. hence, when we read that “science reduces the stupid,” we are clearly not meant to ponder on those parts of the history of science we would now think of as “stupid,” and whether that should be considered a longerterm part of the reduction. in this sense, such non-stupidity is both historical, in that it follows a temporal path in achieving its goals, whilst also being outside of history (both because its focus on “fact” contests the hermeneutic effective-historical consciousness of a situated horizon, and because the achievement of its goal is always assumed: a vaccine, a herd immunity, etc.). this is what vattimo and zabala once referred to as “the winner’s history” (2011, pp. 37-39): it was, because it was always going to be. in this sense, we may well stop and pause before the assumed “completion” at work in the narrative structure of ignorance’s journey to knowledge. gadamer’s account of the horizon and fore-understanding allows us to unpick some of the problems with this binary rhetoric; in particular, the modality of what gadamer refers to, following scheler, as “knowledge as domination,” (2004, p. 447) which hermeneutics is opposed to. instead, the responsibility of the hermeneutic encounter is to establish the relationships between the kind of ignorance or stupidity in play, and the wider concerns around expertise and methodological rigour. it is precisely the domain of the commonplace – the enthymeme, the sensus communis, the internet meme – in which the persuasive work of the tropes underlying claims to understanding are at their most effective, but also at their most bare in terms of the limits they reveal. at the same time, while gadamer’s argument that fore-standing determines our sense of how this journey can or will be completed, there is reason for caution around moving from this general account of ignorance as constitutive of knowledge, and what is at stake in the specific covidrelated invocations of stupidity, and of knowledge production in the time of pandemic. the caution revolves around this: for gadamer, “a person who has an horizon knows the relative significance of everything within this horizon, whether it is near or far, great or small” (2004, p. 301). in this way, our understanding is formed out of an acknowledgement of our ignorance, the gaps or incompletions in our horizons, which requires a necessary open-ness to other horizons: grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 10 “working out the hermeneutical situation means acquiring the right horizon of inquiry for the questions evoked by the encounter with tradition” (gadamer, 2004, p. 302). this knowledge of significance is especially important to the clinician-patient relationship, and why gadamer aligns medicine with rhetoric, with both requiring to know when to speak and when to remain silent, and “the right kinds of discourse to exercise an effect on the soul in the right kinds of way” (gadamer, 1996, p. 41). i have suggested earlier in this paper, though, that while the interpreter being aware of the relative significance of what is within their horizon, it is precisely the formative aspects of knowledge which are both pointedly insignificant yet banally effective which trouble the simplicity of this “journey” from ignorance to knowledge. not only is this a symptom of han’s “achievement society” – where interpretation is less a dialogue and more a constant curation of information exchange – but furthermore, within the covid-19 pandemic specifically, it is the question of significance which underlies the very effectiveness of certain public health interventions: from what constitutes a significant number of deaths or vaccinations, to how significant leaving one’s house twice for exercise or washing the car during national lockdown. in this way, one might suggest that, if only for the moment, measures such as national lockdowns which affect the entire experience of being (see žižek, 2020, p. 129) raise some interesting problems for gadamer’s account of “relative significance” as differentiated from the insignificant, and consequently the understanding of one’s horizon from the open-ness to others, into question. as such, i think there is more to say about the construction of an interpretative horizon and the specific way in which stupidity is playing its role within the pandemic. models of the non-stupid, or “colonial interpretation” in his critique of the uk’s handling of the pandemic, john ashton points out that the discourse around the virus has been dominated by limited forms of knowledge; namely, laboratory-based epidemiology and data modelling (2020, p. 213). in the main body that advises the uk government, the scientific advisory group for emergencies (sage), there is a notable absence of public health experts, as well as historians of disease outbreak and anthropologists, whom ashton argues would provide lived context – particularly of the interconnection between health, economy and society – for interventions. the issue i want to take from this observation is not to question which discipline is best suited to support the covid response, but rather how a narrow model of “knowledge” affects the interpretations of stupidity under consideration. this, i think, suggests the adoption of a particular model of immunology which, unlike han’s account, is intrinsically related to both practices of health intervention and its requirements of “knowledge”: that is, how the binary relationship between knowledge and ignorance is figured. whereas foucault described immunology in terms of disciplinary institutions, this re-introduced immunology, idiosyncratically placed within technologies that have, if han is correct, outgrown it, can be described in terms of interpretative horizons that have already internalised the recognition of what is “significant” and what is not. it seems clear that a reliance on a narrow horizon of expertise risks what charles mills once referred to, in the context of race relations, as a “closed circuit of epistemic authority” (2007, p. 34), whereby the structures of approval reinforce their own narratives. politically, when governments in the midst of a pandemic argue that they are “following the science” or being grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 11 “guided by the data,” the singularity of this claim – the science, the data – insists on a binary line between official intelligence and what might be cast as “alternative facts.” the question becomes fixed on whether the science says x or y; or whether this science is better than that science (for example: the science of herd immunity versus elimination strategies). within a digital mediasphere where both the data is there, alongside any number of youtube conspiracy theories and re-presentations of that evidence, the circuit of epistemic authority is only closed tighter: regardless of whether i am supportive of covid interventions or suspicious of them, i am right because of the data, and the data makes me right. this is why chris anderson’s polemic that the transparency and availability of data would lead to “the end of theory” – “with enough data, the numbers speak for themselves” (quoted in han, 2017, p. 58) – is troubled precisely by the prevalence of so much information. for the “right data” to be identified as such, interpretation frequently falls back on the traditional means of demarcating truth from everyday thinking, even when the complexities of “post-truth” problematize such means. we are therefore left with an awkward juxtaposition of a complicated pandemic in need of complicated answers (research, policy, intervention, vaccine, and longer term social measures) next to a brute and simplistic view of stupidity. yet this is not just an unfortunate by-product of internet aggression, or a careless insult used once too many times. the themes that we have identified so far – embedding facts in a system of elite institutional practices, the alignment of intelligence with possession, the spread of knowledge as a moral duty through tropes of journey and travel, and an aggressive distinction between all of these and an underdeveloped, “stupid” other – all echo a spirit of interpretation that utilises the notion of ignorance as core to its own value, a spirit which we might have once described as colonialist. such an interpretative colonialism borrows the motifs of binary distinctions (civilised versus stupid) and traversing borders (the “journey” of knowledge about covid, and specifically of vaccinations, is expected to consolidate in the global north before finding its way to the poorer nations). stupidity thus becomes not only a display of ignorance, or an act of immorality, but one of barbarity: a wilful destruction of evidence, and consequently the health of a population. barbarity, as we know, is the hallmark of the barbarian: a term originally coined for those who did not speak greek in the classical world, the name mocking the uncivilised noises that came from their mouths. in the history of stupidity, insults are always intertwined with interpretative strategies. there is also a colonial resonance with the nostalgia for interpretative certainty, and indeed the tropes which present ignorance and stupidity as mere steps towards their obliteration – journeys, possession, binary moral choice – are imposed at the expense of the tensions and contradictions within the pandemic’s social, cultural, and political effects. if such nostalgia may appear anachronistic within the present context, it is supported only by the revelations which repeat the legacy of real history: that the impact of covid-19 up racial and social disparities (see, for example, greenaway et al., 2020; nafilyan et al., 2021; van dyke et al., 2021); or that the line between legislation to prevent the spread of the virus and the curtailing of civil rights and protests is often difficult to discern (see civicus monitor, 2020). indeed, if the “reducing the stupid” that was promised turns out to be what vattimo and zabala describe as “nothing else than the ‘silencing’ of other interlocutors through an apparent dialogue,” then “truth and violence will become interchangeable” (2011, p. 19). it’s a pandemic, stupid grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 12 these are all big issues to pass over so quickly. my suggestion here is merely that these echoes of the colonial seem to order the significant from the insignificant of an interpretative horizon, at a time when making that judgement is increasingly difficult. furthermore, the difficulty of making this judgement is rooted in part in the inevitable link between the politics of health (how to deal with the pandemic) and the politics of expertise (how to deal with post-truth, alternative facts and fake news), as well as in part a consequence of attempting to think through immunology in the context of public health, when, as han suggested at the start of this paper, immunology is no longer the appropriate modality for understanding a late-capitalist “achievement society” of digital communication networks. but what do we do when confronted with genuine ignorance or misdirected understanding – be this a person travelling too far from their home, a patient refusing a vaccine, or a protestor outside of a clinic warning of global conspiracies? the answer is clearly not found in the imperative for people to simply make their own minds up (or “do your own research!” as belowthe-line comments so frequently call for). this would merely continue the models of possession and choice lying at the heart of the traditional disdain for ignorance, which we have already called into question. likewise, any banal recourse to liberal rights (“everyone has the right to an opinion,” etc.) or arguments about negative freedom (“who are we to call another person stupid?”) should be dismissed, because rights are not the ethical problem at hand. nor would this answer address the obvious need for speed and urgency in public health responses to the pandemic. i take as granted that, in such times, collective and unified responses by a population are more effective and preferable. the risk, though, is that a binary model of knowledge as possession overlooks the production of knowledge, not in terms of interpreting the “evidence” or “data” (which is where covid conspiracies speak at odds with government advisors using the same language), but rather in terms of the flow and circulation of interpretation at work in any form of understanding. this is the nub of the issue. when deployed in public health debates, it becomes clear that the accusation of stupidity carries an interpretative commitment that goes beyond a simple identification of lack of knowledge. instead it becomes a key trope for maintaining certain economies of practice which are, in turn, embedded within a range of contexts that can and should be questioned. paul and haddad thus rightly note that dismissing (or ignoring) ignorance can be significant. “a merely defensive move animated by the desire to restore the shattered fabric of science and policy is […] not enough” (2019, p. 300, my emphasis). instead, attempting to reconstruct the hermeneutic horizons in play can bring into focus the ways in which this trope moves so easily through matters of applied health to wider political and epistemological concerns. in this sense, it is perfectly reasonable to accept that accusations of stupidity are effectively throwaway insults, and that the study of memes and on-line debates are perhaps the least significant concerns in the current global health situation. my argument is simply that what is considered insignificant in one’s horizon – whether this be social psychologists using students in experiments, the ways in which immunological models support approaches to epistemology, or the uncomfortable resonances with past cultural practices of domination – can yet be telling, precisely because of its insignificance. grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2021article 6 13 if these insignificances are what are passed over in silence when stupidity is invoked, then engaging with them may offer alternative ways to speak about the experience of an immunological struggle in an achievement society. and this, i think, is an issue: when we insist on the primacy of knowledge as a possessed determinant of morality, what we lack is a way of speaking which falls in-between knowing and not-knowing. not quite han’s idiot, but more a way of articulating experiences within and beyond the pandemic which are not 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(2020). pandemic! covid-19 shakes the world. polity press. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141076821999973 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.25.101802.123126 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-019-09352-4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/ https://www.skepticalob.com/2016/09/dunning-kruger-nation-and-the-disparagement-of-expertise.html https://www.skepticalob.com/2016/09/dunning-kruger-nation-and-the-disparagement-of-expertise.html http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7011e1 https://doi.org/10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.986 corresponding author: sam mcauliffe, phd student monash university email: samuel.mcauliffe@monash.edu journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 june 28, 2021 ©the author(s) 2021 improvisation as original ethics: exploring the ethical in heidegger and gadamer from a musical perspective sam mcauliffe abstract martin heidegger famously claimed that ethics needed to become “original” again but offered no detailed insight into what an “original ethics” might be. several commentators, however, find evidence of such an original ethics in the philosophical hermeneutics of hans-georg gadamer. in this paper, i argue that an original ethics, as alluded to by heidegger and taken up by gadamer, depends upon a certain improvisational comportment, such that acting ethically involves spontaneously attending and responding to that which one encounters in factical existence. to substantiate this claim, i draw upon improvised musical performance as an exemplar, highlighting how the responsiveness at issue in musical improvisation is equally present in an original ethics, which is itself demonstrative of a practical, performative, and spontaneous engagement with the world. this account not only elucidates the improvisational character of ethics, but it also equally illuminates the nature of the ethical at issue in improvised musical performance. keywords original ethics, martin heidegger, hans-georg gadamer, improvisation, improvised musical performance, philosophical hermeneutics ethics is concerned with action or, better, praxis. for enlightenment thinkers, ethics was conceived as providing a rational or reasoned procedure for determining how one should or should not act. it was supposed that the “right” ethical treatise would be able to generate the correct decision for every situation of practical choice. at least since friedrich nietzsche (2003), mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 2 however, who spoke of the need to think “beyond good and evil,” the idea of the ethical has become increasingly questionable. dennis j. schmidt observes that “some of the most cherished assumptions underpinning the dominant traditions of ethical thought – assumptions about subjectivity, agency, and autonomy, among others – have been called into question, and those traditions have largely collapsed, or at least lost all vitality, under this questioning” (2008, p. 35). it is notable that, for enlightenment thinkers as for many contemporary thinkers (particularly in the english language philosophical tradition), ethics, especially “applied ethics,” is primarily an epistemological concern (which is not to forget that it was with plato that ethics first became a discipline of scientific [epistēmē] thought). that is, it is the system or method that prescribes in advance the best course of action that has been the dominant concern of ethics. this is perhaps seen most clearly with respect to utilitarian ethics where the action required of the agent – action that seeks, in broad terms, to maximise the happiness or wellbeing of the greatest number of people – is divorced from the conditions from which the ethical imperative itself emerges. one may rightly ask whether utilitarian ethics, for instance, insofar as it is a system based on calculation, is really concerned with a human good or, instead, a mathematical good (grondin, 2003, p. 105). as jeff malpas has noted in an unpublished manuscript entitled “ethics, place, and hermeneutics,” in utilitarian ethics the ethical itself disappears and is replaced by a system of calculation. if one begins from epistēmē, the standard perspective of intellectualism, a certain (objective) distance is introduced between the agent who must act and the situation from which the imperative to act emerges. and thus, as malpas argues, the agent is required to act as if they were nowhere and nobody (unpublished manuscript). german philosopher, martin heidegger, like nietzsche before him, questions the dominant conception of ethics that focusses on systems or guidelines for action divorced from the circumstances that call for that action. in contrast to the epistemological view, heidegger, somewhat cryptically, suggests that ethics needs to become “original” again. that is, ethics needs to be born anew from out of factical life. while heidegger offers little with respect to explicit details of what such an “original” ethics may entail, he makes it clear that ontology is ethics (1993, pp. 254-259). notwithstanding heidegger’s own shortcomings with respect to his political acts, there is something worth pursuing in the relationship heidegger identifies between ontology and ethics. heidegger writes that “ontology always thinks solely the being (on) in its being” (1993, p. 258), and that “such thinking is … recollection of being and nothing else” (p. 259). it is this ontological mode of thought that must be, according to heidegger, the foundation for an original ethics. for heidegger, there can be no method for ontological inquiry. indeed, rather than suggest a particular discipline or method of inquiry, he writes that ontology “means doctrine of being” and thus ontology refers to an “indefinite and vague directive that … being should in some thematic way come to be investigated and come to language” (1999, p. 1). with respect to genuine ontological inquiry, no prior determinations can be made of the object of one’s inquiry, thus no prior determinations can be made of the nature of that inquiry itself (malpas, 2016). thus, every inquiry into being emerges from out of factical life, is singular, and inheres its own structure. ontological inquiry is, then, essentially hermeneutical – it involves a certain dialogue between inquirer and subject matter where the direction and structure of that dialogue, and the insights that arise, emerge from the happening of the dialogue itself. mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 3 heidegger asserts that “such [ontological] thinking has no result. it has no effect. …it lets being – be” (1993, p. 259). he argues further that ontological thinking “is neither theoretical nor practical. it comes to pass before this distinction” (p. 259). with respect to the praxis of ethics, from an ontological perspective there can be no stable rules or guidelines that can be readily applied in advance to our active lives. there is certainly no enduring “system” that one can appeal to that will inform and guide one’s decision making in myriad situations. what are we to make of ethics, such that it is ontology, if there can be no prior determinations made as to how one should act, and that such engagement with the world has no theoretical or practical result or effect? to address these questions, i want to take what may at first appear to be an unusual route. i intend to address what heidegger alludes to as an “original ethics” by appealing to music; precisely, improvised musical performance. there are two reasons for taking such an approach: (1) while ethics is of increasing concern to musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and philosophers of music (see cobussen & nielsen, 2013; higgins, 2018; warren, 2014), there is a relative scarcity of literature that considers the ethical character of music performance from an ontological perspective. by working out an “original ethics” with respect to improvised musical performance i hope to contribute what i take to be a neglected perspective in the dominant literature on music and ethics – that is, a philosophical hermeneutic perspective; (2) given heidegger’s comments on ethics and ontology, and given the way in which these themes emerge in the work of hans-georg gadamer, whose philosophy is characterised by a certain situated engagement with a thing or subject matter, there is good reason to believe that the idea of improvisation at issue in improvised musical performance can provide some insight into the nature of an “original ethics.” i will argue that the indeterminacy, spontaneity, attentiveness, responsiveness, and, ultimately, genuine engagement at the heart of improvisation is consistent with the dialogic character of hermeneutics that underpins “original ethics.” from here on, this paper will progress as follows: i first provide a brief overview of improvisation as it is manifest in music practices such as jazz and free improvisation – practices that exemplify the spontaneity, indeterminacy, and engagement at issue in improvisation. i then outline the ethical character of the hermeneutic dialogue with a view to highlight the way in which the dialogue at issue relies upon a certain improvisational comportment. subsequently, i extrapolate the insights gained from the discussion of ethics in gadamer’s hermeneutics to outline the nature of ethics in improvised musical performance. finally, i offer some concluding remarks that address what we can take away from the presented argument. a brief overview of improvisation the literature on improvisation is wide-ranging, relatively young, and contradictory. it is increasingly being discussed by art practitioners and theorists (especially musicians) (caines & heble, 2015; lewis & piekut, 2013; siddall & waterman, 2016) and philosophers from fields including performance philosophy (grant, 2014), philosophy of language (haas, 2012; mackenzie, 2000), metaethics (schroeter & schroeter, 2009), and embodied cognition (lindblom, 2015). given the burgeoning of studies related to improvisation since at least the 1970s from diverse perspectives and the myriad ways in which improvisation itself is manifest in human activity, it is no surprise that the literature is riddled with contradictory arguments. for mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 4 example, improvisation is presented as both something that requires a great deal of skill and preparation on the one hand (jazz music, for instance), and, on the other, is thought to be something one falls back on when they are unskilled and unprepared (an “improvised” shelter, for example). although more nuanced and philosophically rich discussions of improvisation are emerging (benson, 2003; dipiero, 2018; peters, 2011), given the diversity of arguments it is impractical to work through them here in any detailed way. the argument i intend to present below will not be impeded by putting such discussions to one side. what i offer below is a brief overview of improvisation as it is understood in this paper to give the appropriate context for the ensuing discussion. in its most basic form, improvisation is hermeneutical (benson, 2003); it is an act of attending and responding to the situation in which one finds oneself such that something productive may emerge from such an engagement. improvisation is an essentially dialogical activity where, in virtue of one’s prior understanding of the world – one’s “prejudice,” as gadamer (2008, p. 9) would say – one engages with the circumstances of the immanent situation. importantly, the circumstances of the situation are not merely observed by the improviser but constitutes that which addresses the improviser. the circumstances that arise in the place or situation of engagement are not merely objective or external but stand in a certain topological1 relationship that defines the very nature of our being-in-the-world – we come to recognise ourselves as subjects by virtue of our situatedness in the world with both other people and things.2 players encounter and hermeneutically converse with that which is of concern in the situation. just as gadamer tells us interlocuters can engage in hermeneutic conversation but so too can one engage in hermeneutic conversation with a text (2013, p. 401407), for it is always the subject matter (sache) with which one converses, players engaged in improvised musical performance equally engage in hermeneutic conversation with the work they are performing (mcauliffe, 2021). that the outcome or “agreement” of hermeneutic conversation is not reducible to the interpreter alone but emerges from between the subject matter and the interpreter indicates that the interpreter cannot know with certainty precisely what agreement will be reached, or how it will emerge (gadamer, 2013, p. 406). likewise, when improvising music, the work cannot be predetermined by the players; the work emerges from the dialecticity between player and the circumstances given in the situation. the conversation of improvised musical performance is genuinely attentive and responsive. players cannot merely retreat into themselves, focussing primarily on technique or subjective expression. instead, they must engage with the circumstances of the situation that extend beyond their subjectivity. indeed, as sam mcauliffe and malpas note (forthcoming), the improvisation manifest in music, especially with respect to the way it cannot be reduced to a method or a set of precepts or principles, is consistent with what the later heidegger describes, in essays such as “building dwelling thinking” (2013a), in terms of “dwelling.” that is, the recognition that the world is not produced by human subjectivity or that the world is for or controllable by humans. instead, one is a part of the world and thus, one cannot simply shift one’s responsibility for engaging with the world on to a set of preconceived rules or principles. this insight applies to what heidegger 1 on the relationship between the topological and the hermeneutical, see malpas, 2017. 2 this point has been made on both sides of philosophy, most notably perhaps by heidegger (2008, p. 155) and donald davidson (2006a, p. 243). mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 5 refers to as a “dwelling life” (2013c, p. 227) inasmuch as it applies to improvising music, or any improvisational activity. thus, to improvise is to engage with and “give oneself over to,” in the sense that musicians typically refer to as “being in the moment,” the circumstances of one’s situation. improvising musicians must be responsive to the situation and allow the situation itself to play a role in the direction of the performance. individual players are not solely responsible for bringing the artwork into presence. rather, insofar as one is genuinely improvising and therefore attentive and responsive to the situation, the player (regardless of whether one is performing solo or as part of an ensemble) allows the situation to lead them. this view is consistent with gadamer’s account of “play,” where we can liken “play” to “improvisation.” he writes, “the actual subject of play is obviously not the subjectivity of an individual who, among other activities, also plays but is instead the play itself” (2013, p. 108).3 just as the “outcome” of a game is not solely reducible to the players of that game but is tied up with the to-and-fro of the game itself, so too does the productive “outcome” of improvised musical performance (the work) emerge from the improvisational situation itself. that is, in a duet, for instance, one cannot say that the work performed is reducible to one player or another. neither can we say that the performed artwork is simply the result of two contributions coming together, as if what is played by each individual musician constitutes one half of the same token, such that the performance is merely the uniting of two parts to make a whole. rather, the “play” or conversation of performance is integral. to reiterate, improvisation is fundamentally hermeneutical. gadamer’s ethics it is not altogether surprising that not a single volume of gadamer’s gesammelte werke is devoted to ethics. given gadamer’s central argument is that there can be no method for arriving at knowledge in the human sciences, it would be perplexing to find that he had written a treatise on ethics outlining guidelines for determining how one should act, comparable to that which one finds in conventional epistemology and metaphysics. like heidegger, gadamer is primarily concerned with ontology. thus, one might suspect that by working out the fundamental way in which we arrive at truth and understanding, gadamer’s account will implicate a concern with ethics. schmidt (2008, pp. 37-39) argues there are three ways in which one can acknowledge the centrality of ethics in gadamer’s philosophy: (1) across the entirety of gadamer’s collected works one finds an overwhelming number of remarks explicitly dealing with questions of ethics; (2) gadamer relies upon a range of ethical texts, from aristotle to kant, to develop his theory of hermeneutics; (3) one can extrapolate a concern for ethics from key hermeneutical concepts in gadamer’s work. while schmidt convincingly argues for all three, 4 with the space available, here i focus on the third of these options. my aim will be to highlight both the ethical and improvisational character of the dialogic nature of hermeneutics. the dialogic nature of hermeneutics 3 cynthia nielsen (2016) has discussed the nature of gadamerian “play” with respect to free jazz. 4 a range of thinkers have also discussed the nature of ethics present in gadamer work (davey, 2006, pp. 9-12; grondin, 2003, pp. 100-110; warnke, 2002, pp. 79-101). mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 6 for gadamer, understanding is not an individual achievement; understanding is not reducible to the subjectivity of the individual. rather, all understanding is mediated through another. there is always something beyond oneself that brings one to understand – a person, a text, an artwork. indeed, gadamer writes that “understanding belongs to the encounter” (2013, p. 91, my emphasis). according to gadamer, as we go about our daily activities the world is more or less as we expect it to be. we have an historically mediated prior understanding and prior expectations of the world and more often than not the world meets those expectations. for the most part, we have no reason to alter our understanding of the world. it is when we encounter something in the world that does not meet our prior expectations that we are presented with the opportunity to review our understanding. “we understand in a different way, if we understand at all,” writes gadamer (2013, p. 307). by encountering a certain discord between our expectations and our experience, we encounter the limits of our own knowledge – and thus we encounter ourselves – and we are presented with an opportunity to understand differently and broaden our horizons. one comes to reflect upon oneself by encountering the world; indeed, this was the appeal of hermeneutics for the early heidegger who saw hermeneutics as a means to encounter oneself – the reflexive character of hermeneutics offered a means to call dasein back to the facticity of its self-existence (grondin, 1994, p. 98). as gadamer writes of aesthetic experience, “in art man encounters himself” (2013, p. 54). the cultivation of the self is dependent on the encounter with another. the encounter, however, is not directed by the subject. rather, gadamer asserts that “understanding begins … when something addresses us” (2013, p. 310). thus, irrespective of whether or not one actively seeks out understanding, it is never entirely directed by the individual. indeed, as nicholas davey writes, “it is the dialecticity of the hermeneutic encounter, rather than the wills of the participants, that achieves a fundamental shift in how different parties understand themselves and each other” (2006, p. 10). it is the “dialecticity of the hermeneutic encounter,” the hermeneutic dialogue, that is essential for understanding. understanding is not something we achieve subjectively, rather, it dawns on us, or, better, it approaches us and we receive it. we may say that understanding is something that happens by virtue of hermeneutic engagement. in being addressed by something one becomes absorbed in conversation, such that gadamer says “we fall into conversation [wir in ein gespräch geraten]” (2013, p. 401). gadamer describes the (conversational) engagement that ensues from this “falling into” as “tarrying” (verweilen), which describes the mode of conversation that occurs when we are taken up by what addresses us. he writes, to tarry is not to lose time. being in the mode of tarrying is like an intensive back-andforth conversation that is not cut off but lasts until it is ended. the whole of it is a conversation in which for a time one is completely “absorbed in conversation,” and this means one “is completely there in it.” (2007, p. 211) such a statement will resonate with anyone experienced in improvising music; tarrying appears synonymous with what musicians commonly refer to as “being in the moment” – we will pursue mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 7 this idea further in the following section. presently, we will consider how this hermeneutical tarrying with the other inheres an ethical dimension. “no one knows in advance what will ‘come out’ of a conversation. understanding or its failure is like an event that happens to us,” says gadamer (2013, p. 401). the conduct of tarrying, or hermeneutical conversation, does not lie with either participant. the engagement at issue here is something that happens, beyond one’s intending it. moreover, there is an indeterminacy and unpredictability present in conversation; what emerges from conversation, and, indeed, the conversation itself, cannot be predetermined (the indeterminacy of language and conversation is highlighted not only by gadamer but also by davidson, 2006b). thus, the understanding or agreement that emerges by virtue of conversation is not reducible to either the subjective or objective. rather, understanding emerges from the dialecticity of conversation, from the interplay between transmission and reception. it is a result of the indeterminate nature of conversation and the fact that tarrying always goes beyond the individual that we encounter an ethical character of hermeneutic engagement. gadamer asserts that “understanding is, primarily, agreement” (2013, p. 186). when interlocutors fall into hermeneutic conversation their tarrying moves toward reaching agreement about something. it is the subject matter that determines the path of their conversing. while conversation entails “argument, question and answer, objection and refutation” (gadamer, 2013, p. 187), genuine conversation moves toward reaching agreement. agreement, however, does not mean that one simply accepts the view or opinion of the other. instead, it is about coming to understand what the other is saying. each interlocutor, gadamer writes, must be “at one with each other on the subject” (2013, p. 403). neither party can approach the conversation with an obstinately fixed perspective that views all other opinions as secondary or absurd. interlocutors must be open to the views of others and take seriously what the other has to say. they must, in their tarrying, work with the other to genuinely understand each other’s point of view such that something productive might emerge from their conversing – agreement. hermeneutical conversation, then, is grounded upon what davey refers to as a “civility of difference” (2006, p. 12). indeed, with respect to the dialectic of conversation, gadamer argues that it consists “not in trying to discover the weaknesses of what is said, but in bringing out its real strength” (2013, p. 376). the partners in dialogue do not talk at cross purposes, nor do they try to argue the other person down. as schmidt writes, “for gadamer the ethical task of philosophy is not to lay down the law, but to listen to what is said” (2016, p. 68). the ethics at issue here, then, is not primarily concerned with “right or wrong” or “good and evil.” neither is it primarily about understanding how a prior set of dispositions can determine future behaviour – although, as will be discussed below, pre-existing rules and conventions are not irrelevant. hermeneutic understanding emerges by taking seriously the alterity of the other. there must be a mutual (ethical) civility between interlocutors such that they each recognise the limits of their prior understanding and recognise that they depend on one another to broaden their understanding. hermeneutics and original ethics mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 8 the structure of hermeneutic dialogue cannot be given in advance. there can be no rules or system for how one should act. and yet there is clearly an ethical dimension to gadamer’s account. the ethics at issue here, however, is not determined “objectively” by those beyond the situation but by those enmeshed in the happening of the unpredictable and indeterminate situation itself. indeed, heidegger writes that “êthos means abode, dwelling place” (1993, p. 256). the origin of ethics, in the sense that ethics might be originary or original, is the place in which we each always already are. insofar as we are open to the alterity of the world – genuinely engaged with the world – our very being-in-the-world, as malpas notes, is always already ethical (unpublished manuscript). given that the ethical imperative itself emerges from the situation in which we each always already are, there can be no singular “perfect” or “objective” action that we can make. rather our ethical responsibility requires us to do our best by the situation in which we find ourselves with the knowledge available. to act ethically is to attend and respond to the peculiarities of the situation in which one finds oneself. it requires one to be open to the alterity of the other rather than dogmatically asserting the superiority of one’s argument or perspective or turning away from the other and pretending their views do not exist or are not worthy of consideration. hermeneutics and improvised musical performance to properly draw out the nature of ethics at issue in hermeneutics we can appeal to improvised musical performance. while i cannot develop the position here, as touched on above, i contend that hermeneutics and improvisation share an almost identical structure. that is, they are both, at bottom, a mode of attending and responding to – engaging with – the situation in which one finds oneself. by appealing to improvised musical performance, we not only gain insight into the nature of an original ethics but as noted, we also uncover the nature of ethics at issue in improvised musical performance.5 improvised musical performance, like hermeneutic conversation, belongs to the encounter – the encounter between player and situation. just as in a conversation where interlocutors are primarily concerned with the subject matter that exists between them, so we may say that the work exists between players. and just as one can engage in hermeneutical conversation with a text or artwork, i.e., when there is not another interlocutor as such, so too is the solo performer concerned with the work that they are performing, and thus solo performance is essentially conversational (mcauliffe, 2021). what is important to acknowledge is that just like hermeneutic understanding, improvised musical performance is not an individual achievement. even if the solo performer is playing a “free improvisation,” where there is no pre-conceived melody, harmony, musical structure, and so forth, and so the performance may, on the face of it, appear to be entirely reducible to the performer, the work itself exists beyond the subjectivity of the individual and leads the player inasmuch as the player leads the work. in this way we might think of someone playing with a ball – the player is never entirely in control of the situation, rather their acting is always responsive to the peculiarities of the game that they are participating 5 notably, marcel cobussen and nanette nielsen (2013, ch. 3), as well as daniel fischlin, ajay heble, and george lipsitz (2012), have attended to improvised musical performance to develop an account of ethics. while the account of ethics offered here diverges from their work, there is of course a degree of overlap. my account may be seen to complement and contribute to the work that they have already undertaken. mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 9 in. so too must the performer of solo free improvisation be responsive to the to-and-fro of the situation in which they find themselves. the way in which one is “taken up by” or becomes “caught up in” the musical such that they tarry with the work or lose themselves “in the moment” cannot be predetermined. rather, just like gadamer’s conversation, it is accurate to say that it is something that simply happens, or that one “falls into” the moment. when players improvise music “in the moment” (assuming that there is in this instance an ensemble of at least two players, for this draws out the ethical considerations most clearly), the happening of the work is thoroughly indeterminate. the “work” in this sense is best understood as that which players concern themselves with during performance – the “work,” then, is not necessarily merely sonic or acoustic, it may equally encompass the gestures of other players, the reverberant qualities of the performance venue, the cheering or heckling of the audience, and so forth. thus, we may say that what is of concern to the players, first and foremost, is the situation itself, which encompasses each element that contributes to the coming forth of the work. irrespective of how “good” or “experienced” a player is, their primary task is to attend and respond to the situation. insofar as one is genuinely improvising, one must be engaged with the situation. one cannot be concerned with, first and foremost, their technique or their subjective thoughts about what the audience may think of them,6 for such thinking draws the player into themselves and impedes their ability to engage with the situation that exists beyond their subjectivity. the responsibility of the player is not to retreat into themselves, but to do their best by the situation with the knowledge and skillset available to them. as jean grondin writes of the capacity to discern what is right in hermeneutic engagement, “this capacity of discernment is not a matter of objectivation, but of vigilance, of awakening to the situation” (2003, p. 106). the player of improvised music must awaken to the situation. they must, as musicians would say, be good listeners. for that which they encounter in the situation cannot be predetermined – the very nature of improvisation suggests that players must be open and receptive to that which approaches them. players can rely upon nothing except their ability to spontaneously attend and respond to the indeterminate situation. one cannot meaningfully attend and respond unless they are genuinely engaged, that is, as grondin would say, awake to the situation. to give an example, improvised musical performance involves a certain degree of risk, vulnerability, and trust (cobussen & nielsen, 2013, p. 64). in their mutual attending to the work, players engage in a dialectic comparable to gadamer’s conversation. bringing forth a work of art is the mutual concern of each player. playing at cross purposes, then, such as undermining the contributions of another player or drawing attention to the weaknesses in their playing, does little to positively contribute to the work. drawing out the strengths of the other player’s contributions however, strengthens the work. knowing that other players are working in the best interests of the work, each player can feel supported, which fosters trust amongst the ensemble and gives players the confidence to take risks and be vulnerable. the ethical dimension of improvised musical performance, then, concerns the way in which players awaken to the situation and 6 tracy mcmullen (2013) has argued against the centrality of “recognition,” originally developed by derrida and subsequently taken up by butler, that dominates performance theory, and instead argues for what she calls the “improvisative.” mcmullen argues the subject is not constructed by “recognition” from the other but by the “generosity” of performing. mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 10 perform in the best interests of the work. thus, genuine improvised musical performance can strengthen relationships, enhance creativity, and foster solidarity among players. the ethics of improvisation two insights have emerged: (1) improvised musical performance involves an engagement with that which is beyond oneself; (2) the productive outcome of improvised musical performance is indeterminate and cannot be reduced to the subjectivity of the individual players. resultingly, the ethics of improvisation begins to emerge: (1) improvisation necessarily involves an engagement with the other; (2) the ethical actions required of individual players cannot be given in advance but emerge from out of the situation itself or, as heidegger would say, the “abode” or “dwelling place” in which one is; (3) the coming forth of the artwork is not an individual achievement but relies upon the player encountering and engaging with that which is beyond them. let us unpack these observations further. when one improvises music with others, no single individual is responsible for the coming forth of the artwork. indeed, insofar as the work itself leads the players, i.e., the players respond to the call of the work, we may say that even as a collective, the players are not solely responsible for the coming forth of the artwork. rather it is from the “play” of improvisation itself, as gadamer (2013, p. 108) would say, that the artwork emerges. thus, the actions required of the players do indeed emerge from out of the situation itself. players cannot plan in advance how they will act, rather they act spontaneously on the basis of their prior experience in response to the circumstances of the situation. the call to act ethically, emerges from out of factical existence, just as heidegger suggests. by awakening to and attending to the situation players necessarily open themselves up to the alterity of the other. the situation, properly understood, necessarily encompasses the players – the players, along with myriad other elements (heidegger’s fourfold [2013c], which refers to the co-responsive happening of earth, sky, divinities, and mortals, being an apt concept to elucidate the breadth of what those “other” elements constitute; although i cannot do justice to the fourfold here7) – but enacts a certain relationality between those players. each individual player only is insofar as they are with the other players and therefore standing in relation to and engaged with the alterity of other players.8 as they are in their being situated with respect to the work, in their tarrying with the work each player necessarily encounters the contributions of other players, as mediated by the work, and must interpret and engage with the work accordingly. there is no room or time for players to assert themselves or their interpretation of the work over and above another player’s interpretation and contributions. rather they must work with that which is given in the situation as it happens. thus, we might equate what gadamer refers to as “agreement” with respect to a hermeneutical conversation with the “work” that emerges from improvised musical performance. what is important to recognise is that the work emerges from the situation. 7 for a discussion of heidegger’s fourfold, see malpas, 2006 (ch. 5). for a discussion of how heidegger’s fourfold relates to improvised musical performance, see mcauliffe & malpas (forthcoming). 8 such an observation may be seen to echo heidegger’s assertion that “the world of dasein is a with-world [mitwelt]. being-in is being-with others. their being-in-themselves within-the-world is dasein-with [mit-dasein]” (2008, p. 155). mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 11 while what it is that we each attend and respond to is given in and by the situation in which we find ourselves, this does not imply that an improvisational/original ethics is void of tradition (rules, conventions, etc.) or normative foundations. simply because the ethical imperative emerges “in the moment,” as it were, does not mean that there is only one option available to the agent who must act, or that all options are of equal value. we do not lose ourselves when we improvise – we retain ourselves essentially and thus we still possess an awareness of our prior experience. gadamer writes, “a person who has to make moral decisions has always already learned something. he has been so formed by education and custom that he knows in general what is right” (gadamer, 2013, p. 327). thus, rules and conventions still play a part in an improvisational/original ethics. but we must acknowledge, as gadamer does, that “what is right… cannot be fully determined independently of the situation that requires a right action” (gadamer, 2013, pp. 327-328). while one should not attempt to shift one’s ethical responsibility from oneself to some form of rules or guidelines, the suggestion is not that any and every appeal to rules or guidelines is inherently flawed. the argument is, rather, that ethical action must be in response to the indeterminate situation. for instance, certain situations may indeed call for a utilitarian approach. an appeal to rules in this instance does not, however, negate the improvisation at issue. following rules is inherently indeterminate and requires improvisation, for rules themselves fail to eliminate any sense of indeterminacy, as wittgenstein points out (2009, pp. 39-40). one’s impetus to consider one rule instead of another as perhaps being appropriate must be in response to the situation. thus, even rule-following is a situated, improvisational practice – the rules appealed to only make sense guiding one’s actions insofar as they are understood from the perspective of that situation. thus, one’s appeal to rules, insofar as one is awake to the situation, is indeed improvisatory. the rule that one follows strikes the agent as being appropriate in virtue of the agent’s attending and responding to the situation in which they find themselves. the indeterminate situation in which we find ourselves, then, is not void of normative foundations. it is simply that this foundation cannot be prescribed in advance. players are tasked, then, not with asserting themselves or attempting to conduct or direct the performance but with bringing out the strengths of each other’s contributions in the broader context of the work; they each participate in the event of bringing forth the work. while this may include pushing and pulling against one another, cutting one player’s theme short or stopping playing to encourage another player to extend their contributions, these tensions are not individual or subjective achievements but, insofar as the players are genuinely engaged, are always in response to what the work calls for – each player performs in service to, and is, at least in part, directed by, the work. thus, while one cannot prescribe in advance guidelines for an ethical performance, insofar as players are genuinely improvising, they necessarily engender a civility of difference as they each act in the best interests of the work. conclusion improvised musical performance provides a certain insight into and highlights a particular character of hermeneutical or “original” ethics. while the account of ethics at issue here is radically different to conventional accounts of ethics and may seem to offer little with respect to practical insight for how one should act in the world, such an account does illuminate something mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 12 of the essential or primary character of the ethical imperative. just as musicians cannot appeal to rules or methods for how to improvise but rather cultivate their ability to improvise through experience and by surrendering, as it were, to the happening of the situation, neither should we suppose that we can prescribe in advance guidelines for how to act in the world. indeed, as schmidt argues (2016, p. 71), “no philosophical ethics should ever forget [the] profound limitation upon the possibility of any contribution in advance to the riddles that one confronts as the riddles of ethical life.” what both heidegger and gadamer argue with respect to ethics, and what improvised musical performance highlights so well, is that our engagement in the world must engender a return to factical life – that is, one must attend to the situation from which the ethical imperative itself emerges. in practical terms, the implications of an improvisational/original ethics lie in our recognition of the character and limit of ethical life. thus the “application” of an improvisational/original ethics, as it were, is simply the recognition of this character of ethics, and living with the awareness of this recognition. insofar as one is ignorant to the improvisational/original character of ethically being-in-the-world, one may be inclined to suppose that one could simply turn away from the other without consequence; they may be inclined to think that some activities rely upon ethics while others do not. indeed, a “standard” view of ethics may regard the ethics of improvised musical performance as being of peripheral importance in comparison to other activities, such as being a lawyer or medical practitioner. should a performer of improvised music adopt this “standard” view and not consider the improvisational situation to inhere an ethical dimension, they not only fail to recognise the true nature of improvisation, they equally engage in a distinctly unethical act. insofar as one is primarily concerned with oneself at the expense of the other, the quality of the work is jeopardised and consequently, trust within the ensemble is undermined. having turned away from ethics as ethos – turned away from the situated character of ethics – the player is divorced from the ethical imperative that emerges in that situation. every engagement involves ethics – to be sure, in some situations the stakes are much higher than in others – our actions not only have the potential to affect others in unforeseen ways, but also, each action we take reinforces our own behaviour. so, when tasked with an immediate and spontaneous call for action we inevitably fall back on prior experience. if we are prone to dogmatically appealing to a certain set of ethical guidelines, or disregarding a particular practice as not possessing an ethical dimension, we cultivate a detached, ethically ignorant approach to factical life. by recognising the improvisational/original character of ethics however, we can guard against such detachment. while we cannot address the “riddles of ethical life,” as schmidt says, in advance, an improvisational/original ethics highlights the imperative to listen, see, awaken to, and engage with the situation in which we find ourselves. if we ignore this character of our being-in-the-world, to use a metaphor from music, the “work” suffers. we might now return to the question posed at the beginning of this paper: what are we to make of ethics, such that it is ontology, if there can be no prior determinations made as to how one should act, and that such engagement with the world has no theoretical or practical result or effect? to engage with the situation in which one finds oneself is, essentially, to improvise; it involves attending and responding to the peculiarities of that which is beyond oneself. thus, improvisation is necessarily ethical for it involves a certain comportment where one is open to, engages with, and strives to arrive at agreement with, the other. insofar as no prior mcauliffe journal of applied hermeneutics 2021 article 8 13 determinations can be made as to how one should act means that an originary ethics calls for improvisation. such that there is no theoretical or practical result or effect refers us to the very nature of being. being itself merely is. 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(2011). the philosophy of improvisation. the university of chicago press. schmidt, d.j. (2016). hermeneutics and ethical life: on the return to factical life. in n. keane & c. lawn (eds.), the blackwell companion to hermeneutics (pp. 65-71). wiley blackwell. schmidt, d.j. (2008). hermeneutics as original ethics. in s. sullivan & d. j. schmidt (eds.), difficulties of ethical life (pp. 35-47). fordham university press. schroeter, l., & françois s. (2009). a third way in metaethics. noûs, 43(1), 1-30. siddall, g., & waterman, e. (eds.). (2016). negotiated moments: improvisation, sound, and subjectivity. duke university press. warnke, g. (2002). hermeneutics, ethics, and politics. in r. j. dostal (ed.), the cambridge companion to gadamer (pp. 79-101). cambridge university press. warren, j.r. (2014). music and ethical responsibility. cambridge university press. wittgenstein, l. (2009). philosophical investigations (g. e. m. anscombe, p. m. s. hacker, & j. schulte, trans.; 4th ed.). blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195370935.013.016 https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v0i0.53277 microsoft word kearney corrected proof[1].docx corresponding author: professor richard kearney boston college email: kearneyr@bc.edu journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 november 12, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 healing touch: hermeneutics of trauma and recovery richard kearney abstract this is an edited, abridged, and revised version of a chapter written by richard kearney which will appear in his forthcoming book touch: recovering our most vital sense to be published by columbia university press in 2021. the chapter in the book contains many extensions, footnotes, and references that do not appear in this paper. many thanks to professor kearney for his permission to print a version of this chapter in the journal of applied hermeneutics. keywords touch, trauma, healing, carnal hermeneutics men have sunk very low. they’ve let their bodies become mute and they only speak with their mouth. but what d’you expect a mouth to say? what can it tell you? -zorba the greek no mortal is ever silent. if he does not speak with his mouth he stammers with his fingertips -freud kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 2 psychoanalytic beginnings sigmund freud is generally recognized as the founder of trauma therapy. his first major insight on the subject came in beyond the pleasure principle (1920), which he wrote while treating “shell shock” veterans returning from the trenches of world war i. his question was this: how are humans so wounded that they prefer to return to their pain compulsively than follow their normal “pleasure principle”? his answer was the existence of a death drive (thanatos) that accompanies our life drive (eros) and sometimes overwhelms it. curiously, the mature freud played down the role of touch in healing, privileging the intellectual interpretation of words over more embodied approaches. and yet freud himself was a wounded healer in many respects. not only did he suffer from his outsider status as a jew in an anti-semitic vienna, but he also bore a more private suffering: his irremediable pain at the death of his daughter, sophie. indeed, it was arguably this personal trauma that enabled freud to empathize with the pain of his own grandson, ernst, at the “absence” of his (ernst’s) mother – the same sophie – in a famous section of beyond the pleasure principle. i am speaking of the much commented upon fort/da scene where little ernst plays with a cotton spool in imitation of the coming (da) and going (fort) of his mother. yet when freud witnessed the cries of his grandson, he did not reach out and hold him. he sat and observed, recording the scene of suffering from a theoretical distance. he even appears to have ignored the obvious fact that his anguished grandson responded to this missing mother not only with the words fort/da – “now she’s here now she’s gone” – but also with physical child-play: a game of bodily gestures. freud does, of course, note that ernst casts the toy back and forth, but his diagnostic eye focuses on the psychic compensation provided by the play of words rather than the play of hands. he opts for a hippocratic model of psychoanalytics over a more asclepian model of psychohaptics. thus, freud missed an opportunity to acknowledge the key role of tactility in therapy. he failed to see that talk therapy sometimes calls for body therapy. little ernst needed to handle the spool as well as speak the syllables fort/da. to be fair, the early freud did allow a limited role for the therapeutic laying on of hands when it came to recovering repressed memories – establishing a connection between the disremembered pathogenic scenes and the symptomatic residue traces of such events. he conceded in a letter to his colleague, josef bruer, that while verbal interpretation was primary, “reminiscence without affect almost invariably produces no results” (freud, 1960). but these initial concessions were overshadowed by the whole controversy of transference and countertransference between analyst and analysand – confirming freud’s disapproval of the boundary-free experiments of disciples like carl jung, sabina spielrein, and wilhelm reich. touch became the bête noir of the mainstream psychoanalytic movement. cure was more about minds than bodies, as freud felt it increasingly necessary to keep a distance from his patients, declining emotional or affective contact. hence the great fear of countertransference – namely the overinvestment of the analyst’s feelings in those of the patient. perhaps his one homeric nod was permitting his dog, lün yu, to sit in on sessions in the belief that the hound not only calmed his patients but also possessed the flair to signal peak moments with a wag of the tail. the freudian discretion regarding therapeutic touch was rigorously observed – with few exceptions – for several generations, reaching its hyper-linguistic extreme in jacques lacan’s obsession with “floating signifiers” at the expense of suffering bodies. but things were to change with the emergence of a new era of trauma studies from the 1980s onward – a critical movement responding kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 3 to the diagnosis of ptsd symptoms after the vietnam war and the rise of holocaust and postcolonial studies, with their focus on somatic questions of affect and material questions of race, gender, and class. the leading figures here were often women – retrieving the neglected work of melanie klein – and included pioneers like judith lewis herman, cathy caruth, juliet mitchell, françoise davoine, and helen bamber. the last of these, helen bamber, was one of the first therapists to enter bergen-belsen after the liberation and later went to work with amnesty international where she treated torture victims in argentina, chile, and elsewhere. bamber discovered that the best way to help sufferers of trauma was to be physically present to their pain. not only to interpret, but to bear bodily witness. not just to talk, but to receive and “hold” the suffering. to experience what she called a felt catharsis or “purging” (bamber, 1998, p. 228). in her book the good listener, she describes sitting on bunks in concentration camps, holding the hands of inmates as they stammer and stumble through words and recall scenes of violation committed against them and their loved ones. “i would be sitting there in one of those chilly rooms, on a rough blanket on a bed, and the person beside me would suddenly try to tell me what it was like…and what was most important was to stay close to the survivor and listen and receive as if it were part of you and the act of taking and showing you were available was itself a healing act” (bamber, 1998, p. 228). bamber points to the need for affective witness, which goes deeper than the chronicling of facts (though that too is crucial). “we must,” she says, “acknowledge the truth as well as having knowledge of it.” we must re-cognize the somatic symptoms of trauma as well as cognize the causes. this double duty of being both physically present to the sufferer and representing clinical evidence is, she believed, central to healing. without some element of embodied testimony, the inmates of the camps could not rise from their beds and walk. they could not survive their own survival. flesh keeps the score skin is the largest organ of the body, a total wrap-around surface that goes deep. it covers over two square meters of flesh with millions of neural connections, relating our inside to our outside. skin has two sides, epidermal and endodermal, serving as a double cutaneous agent of tactility. the phrase “skin deep” actually means what it says. the physiological response to touch goes like this: “receptors in the skin detect pressure and temperature and movement, and these signals shoot up the spinal cord and into the brain, which adjusts its chemical output accordingly. that the emotional responses become physical in predictable patterns suggests that our bodies evolved to respond favorably to touch – or at least to miss out on benefits where we are physically isolated” (van der kolk, 2015, pp. 27, 245-247). james hamblin offers this basic account of tactile functioning in his book if bodies could talk, a study that charts therapeutic map for the healing of the human body. he cites evidence of mri scans showing how physical touch activates areas of the cerebral cortex, and he rehearses numerous studies demonstrating how touch lowers heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol. he also demonstrates how deep tissue massage therapy has proven effective for depression, stimulating neurotransmitters that modulate and decrease pain (hamblin, 2016). but this is only half the story. for, if the tactile body possesses extraordinary powers of healing, it is also the barometer of past hurts. the body carries traces of our shame, guilt, childhood conditioning, repressed desires, and deepest fears. hence the need for a highly sensitive approach to touch in the treatment of trauma victims in therapy. this involves delicate discernment regarding kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 4 the classic too close/too distant question. while touch can, in certain circumstances, retrigger trauma, it can, in other circumstances, help establish a sense of trust and containment – areas crucial to trauma sufferers, for whom insecure and disorganized attachment and childhood abuse are often central. reaffirming trust levels (a pre-requisite to good therapy) can release energies that have been frozen in the body by traumas too overwhelming to be registered in purely verbal-conceptual accounts. in a groundbreaking study, the body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma, bessel van der kolk (2015) presents cogent evidence for a therapeutics of touch. confirming the basic thesis of physioneurosis – that our primary traumas are lodged in our bodies – the author argues that “talking cures” need to be grounded in bodily cures. words are not enough to address the carnal “imprint” that a traumatic event leaves in our memory. only some kind of incarnate gesture can recover the original wounding and help us realize that the danger is gone and that we can live in the present. “healing depends on experiential knowledge. you can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions” (p. 38). but in most contemporary western medicine, the brain disease model has taken control out of our hands. in the u.s., the hippocratic method has sidelined the asclepian, with over one in ten americans taking antidepressants and medicaid (a u.s. government health program) spending more on antipsychotics than any other form of medication. nondrug treatments are minimal and usually labeled as “alternative.” mainstream medicine, writes van der kolk, “is firmly committed to a better life through chemistry, and the fact that we can actually change our own physiology and inner equilibrium by means other than drugs, (that is) by such basic activities as breathing, moving and touching...is rarely considered” (p. 46). the asclepian approach of body therapy, by contrast, proposes to treat sufferers of ptsd less as “patients” to be administered with pharmaceuticals than as “participants” in an interactive haptic healing process. as peter levine put it: “i grew up in a profession where it was deemed unethical to touch a client. i await the day when it will be unethical not to” (levine, 1998). such an ethic of tactile therapy endorses a model of “somatic dialogue” whose benefits in the form of affirmative mutual mirroring between therapist and patient are associated with non-verbal formative processes. these processes are accessed through the therapist’s psycho-bodily sense of their patients, as they register them via voice, gestures and touch still often ignored in standard therapy. good trauma therapists, attentive to projective identifications, will often feel in their bodies an intuitive sensing of the patient’s primal family world, their prelinguistic lived being and mode of relating. and this indeed is a “dramatic” presence, for we are first of all incarnate actors, performing with tactile bodies on the stage of life (grey, 2010). faced with trauma, the mind often goes into denial and proceeds as if nothing happened. meanwhile stress hormones continue sending signals to the muscles and tissues of the body – resulting in certain forms of somatic illness. drugs, alcohol, or other addictive behaviors can temporarily delay unbearable feelings, but the body keeps the score. and no matter how much understanding the rational brain provides, it cannot “talk away” the pain. for real healing to happen, sufferers need to reintegrate the event into their felt lives: they have to move from “there” (where the trauma occurred) to “here” where they can be present to experience now. this doesn’t mean that talk kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 5 therapy and medication are not useful or necessary, only that they are not sufficient. more is needed. van der kolk cites current neuroscientific research showing the existence of an “emotional brain” in direct touch with the body. this middle brain operates at a different level than the rational brain, located in the prefrontal neocortex, and combines both the reptilian brain and the mammalian brain (known as the limbic system). it serves as a neurological center of operations and is deeply informed by our earliest relations with others, beginning at birth and forming our basic instincts for negotiating what is nurturing, pleasurable, or dangerous (pp. 274, 276). this emotional space is the first theater of “carnal hermeneutics,” serving as a base camp for what neuroscientists call “mirror neuron” activity: a sensorium where we first respond to others in terms of bodily imitation and empathy – thereby prefiguring the onset of language. the emotional brain records our first steps in life, when mind and body are synchronous, and continues to keep us in touch with others’ feelings – positive and negative – making us angry or vulnerable, calm or anxious (gendlin, 1978, 2000; levine, 1997, 2010; o’hanlon, in press). respondeo ergo cogito. contemporary neuroscience clearly confirms the claim of both phenomenology and clinical therapy that we do not really know ourselves until we feel and interpret our sensations. our most fundamental sense of ourselves is our body. body therapy recent body-based methods – including sensorimotor and somatic psychotherapy – treat psychic wounds by going behind verbal explanations and tracing physical sensations back to the imprint of past trauma on the body. one thereby learns to revisit buried feelings that overwhelmed the patient at the time but can now, in retrospect, be re-accessed to allow for a modicum of tolerance, helping restore a physical capacity to engage and reprocess, even going so far as to transform the sensations of fear and panic into a more positive fighting energy. when the brain is knocked out by trauma, one first responds to the shock not in terms of plots with beginning, middle, and end but in fragments of feelings (bosnak, 2007; weineger, 2017). by going behind conscious surface narratives to the wounding sensations of the past, one can reintegrate screened traumatic memories into a “that was then this is now” recovery mode. the aim of somatic therapy is to get us back in touch with these pre-narrative sensations so that we may re-live them (and re-tell them), eventually incorporating them into our future. the goal is to reintegrate one’s bodily experience of past trauma without being overwhelmed by the original pain and panic. a survey of 225 people who escaped the twin towers in 2001 showed that the most effective treatment in overcoming their experience was not talk therapy or sedation (though these greatly helped) but tactile therapies like acupuncture, massage, yoga, and emdr (see kearney, 2019). trauma affect is registered first as sensation, then as image (flashbacks), then as story. each step is important, but embodied sensation is primary. the aim of somatic reintegration is to relive the past “tactfully” in the here and now. only then can one transform injured history into healing story. we have argued that hippocratic medicine is good at treating symptoms but ignores the underlying wounds. this is where asclepian methods come in. flesh keeps the score as the bruise behind the scar. the bruise is deeper than the scar, for while the scar is visible for all to see, bruises lie beneath the skin, pointing inward to subcutaneous injury and observing a different modality of sense and temporality – what we might call “infra-sense” and “infratime” (gallagher & kearney, 2018; kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 6 kearney & gallagher, 2017). deep therapy calls not for instantaneous cures but a painstaking work of hypodermal recovery. as joan wickersham (2008) notes: “while some healing does happen, it isn’t a healing of redemption or epiphany. it is more like the absorption of a bruise” (p. 317). in contrast to the exterior scar that everyone can see, the healing bruise reabsorbs pain from inside. indeed, sometimes there is no feeling in that spot for years, and when the nerves finally awaken, the sensations can be transferred to other parts of the body, as if replacing the wound with new feelings (gallagher & kearney, 2018)). while unconscious wounds take shape in time, and scars take shape in space, bruises are where time and space meet. when describing the therapy of touch, the story of helen keller is instructive. deaf, blind, and mute from a viral infection she contracted at the age of nineteen months, helen regained her power to communicate at age 5 thanks to the training of a partially blind teacher, anne sullivan. the breakthrough came when sullivan led helen to a water pump on april 5, 1887, and, holding her hand under the flow, finger-spelled the five letters w-a-t-e-r onto her palm. something tangible happened, and the meaning of words became clear. anne could see in helen’s face that she understood. this manual alphabet, triggered by the crossing of word and touch, restored helen’s ability to relate with others. it brought helen’s “tactual memory” into full communion with another human being (hederman, 2019). helen later recounted the key collaboration between hands and words in her autobiography: we walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. as the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. i stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. suddenly i felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. (cited in hederman, 2019, p. 237) langston hughes writes of helen’s healing through touch: “she, in the dark / found light / brighter than many ever saw” (hughes, 1994, p. 146). reintegrating trauma when it comes to healing trauma, the body is the bridge. flesh harbors places not easily accessed by our rational, linguistic consciousness – however necessary the latter is before and after the process of “tactful” engagement. van der kolk calls such primal tactful perception “interoception” which he sums up as follows: we can get past the slipperiness of words by engaging the self-observing body-based self system, which speaks through sensations, tone of voice and body tension. being able to perceive visceral sensations is the very foundation of emotional awareness. if a patient tells me that he was eight when his father deserted the family, i am likely to stop and ask him to check in with himself. what happens inside when he tells me about that boy who never saw his father again? where is it registered in his body? when you activate your gut feelings and listen to your heartbreak – when you follow the interoceptive paths to your innermost recesses – things begin to change. (pp. 62-63) kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 7 in other words, getting in touch with deep self-pain involves a visceral perception that only subsequently translates into verbal-conceptual thinking. the primary work of transmission is located in the amygdala: two small almond-shaped structures that reside within the limbic brain. the amygdala serves as a “smoke detector,” interpreting whether incoming sensory data from skin, ears, eyes, and nose (registered by the thalamus) are relevant for our well-being or survival (van der kolk, 2015, p. 65). it tells us what is safe and unsafe. if it senses pain, it summons various stress hormones (cortisone and adrenaline) and our automatic nervous system to organize a full body response, putting us into flight or fight mode. for this reason, it is important that our somatic alarm system responds to others’ behavior with tact and savvy lest we overreact or underreact to what is happening. and here the amygdala calls for supervisory expertise from the “watchtower” – the medial cortex situated in the prefrontal brain area that offers rational “objective” guidance on our behavior (van der kolk, 2015, pp. 66-73). a sane response to danger requires collaboration between the upper watchtower and the lower smoke detector, lest we “take leave of our senses” – by either flying off the handle (too much emotional brain) or withdrawing into a denial of feeling (too much rational brain). both our cerebral and carnal cartographies need to be calibrated for the appropriate reaction. using touch, breath, and movement, trauma therapy can work carnally from below while also inviting top-down adjudication. by contrast, when our two brains, rational and emotional, are out of sync, a tug of war ensues: a battle largely played out in “the theatre of visceral experience” – heart, throat, belly, and lungs – leading to “physical discomfort and psychological misery” (van der kolk, 2015, pp. 206-207). post-traumatic stress disorder is symptomatic of a blanking-out of pain where sufferers may opt to replace the original wounding with numbness and evasion (alcohol, drugs, escape fantasies). in such cases a sense of carnal re-anchoring in current bodily feelings is needed to provide a proper distinction between where i am now in the present and where i was then in the past. the ultimate goal of trauma therapy, van der kolk holds, is to get us back in touch with our injured selves so we can be more fully grounded in the present (p. 76). most of our primary responses to others are felt in the gut, not the mind. in trauma this is particularly so, wounds being registered less by the rational brain accessible to narrative memory, than by the emotional brain expressing itself in physical responses: “gut-wrenching sensations, heartpounding, breathing becoming fast and shallow, feelings of heartbreak, speaking with an uptight and reedy voice, and the characteristic body movements that signal collapse, rigidity, rage or defensiveness” (van der kolk, 2015, pp. 207-208). purely logical explanations – why you feel this way or that – do not change your experience. radical healing calls for a deeper somatic transformation, following the old adage: the hair of the dog that bit you. where the disease is, there you find the cure. recovery requires reconnection. and to help us redraft our somatic maps, we need to open revolving doors between the disjoined territories of reason and feeling. the aim of trauma therapy is, accordingly, to put the mind into tactful contact with the body. how many of our mental health issues, from self-injury to drug addiction, begin as efforts to deal with the intolerable pain of our emotions? “until recently,” observes van der kolk, “the bidirectional communication between body and mind was largely ignored by western science, even as it had been central to the traditional healing practices in many other parts of the world, notably in india and china. today it is transforming our understanding of trauma and recovery” (p. 76). so, the ultimate aim is to turn visceral reactions into felt responses – responses we can then kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 8 translate into new forms of narrative discourse. this is why so many trauma specialists today are working with breathing, movement, rhythm, and touch to address basic somatic functions of the sympathetic nervous system (sns) and heart rate variability (hrv). indeed when it comes to the treatment of ptsd, one of the most effective steps is “limbic system therapy,” which brings our rational and emotional brains into collaboration, releasing the body from its default extremes – namely, the shut-down or hyperarousal modes that cause illness. to see better what this means, just think of our colloquial expressions, “my heart sank,” “my stomach churned,” “my skin crawled,” “i was scared stiff,” “i choked up,” and so on. we first respond to pain as “humanimals,” and it is at this level that we find primary release (van der kolk, 2015, p. 88). most of our psychological illnesses are registered in terms of “dissociation,” or what william james called “sensory insensibility” – the collapse of connection between our mental and somatic components; so it makes sense that our psychic wellness takes the form of a return to sensory sensibility” (william james, cited in van der kolk, 2015, p. 92). neurotic or traumatized people feel notoriously unsafe inside their own bodies, the past gnawing away at the nerves and sinews. but where the harm is, there is the healing. we need to re-own our tactile experience because, where all else fails, our bodies keep count. “if the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems, and if mind/brain/visceral communication is the royal road to emotion regulation, this demands a radical shift in our therapeutic assumptions” (van der kolk, 2015, p. 112). william james offers this telling account of one of his patients describing how she lost touch with her body and her world: each of my senses, each part of my proper self, is as it were separated from me and can no longer afford me any feeling. this impossibility seems to depend upon a void…due to the diminution of the sensibility over the whole surface of my body, for it seems to me that i never actually reach the objects which i touch. all this would be a small matter enough, but for its frightful result, which is that of the impossibility of any other kind of feeling and of any sort of enjoyment, although i experience a need and desire of them that render my life an incomprehensible torture. (cited in van der kolk, 2015, p. 92) if we lose touch with ourselves, we lose touch with the world. no tactile connection, no resonance between self and other. d.w. winnicott, bessel van der kolk, and helen bamber (drawings by simone kearney) kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 9 a short history of attachment theory it seems that human health is intimately linked to questions of attachment. in what follows i briefly rehearse some research on this subject from doctors, therapists, and ecologists as it pertains to the tactile therapy of trauma. it was the british child psychologist john bowlby who first developed “attachment” theory in the 1940s and 1950s to explain the formative relationship between mother and child before, during, and after birth. our prenatal existence, he showed, is already one of deep tactility and sound (the fetus responds to the rhythm of the mother’s voice and movement). as we enter the world, we live a drama of attachment and detachment; “we scream to announce our presence. someone immediately engages with us, bathes us, and fills our stomachs, and, best of all, our mother may put us on her belly or breast for delicious skin-to-skin contact. we are profoundly social creatures; our lives consist of finding our place within the community of human beings” (van der kolk, 2015, p. 115). our interpersonal relations are fundamentally tactual, and the goal of healthy child-rearing is to balance the double need for somatic attachment and detachment in right measure. the premature removal of a young infant from its parents – for reasons of health or hospitalization (isolation or quarantine) – can have a deep impact on its later experience. on the other hand, it is well known that excessive infantile fusion with the mother may require timely weaning, toilet training, and regularly spaced feeding. donald winnicott developed the theory of attachment into the related notion of “attunement.” studying the way mothers hold and caress their infants, he surmises that the tactile interaction between mother and child, well before the acquisition of language, was at the root of the child’s sense of self and other, informing a lifelong identity. the way the mother carries her infant influences the capacity to experience the body as “the place where the psyche lives,” and it is this “visceral and kinesthetic sensation of how our bodies are met” that prepares for what we later experience as “real” (cited in van der kolk, 2015, p. 122). indeed, untimely withdrawal of touch may do worse psychic damage than outright hostility or anger. the notorious case of abandoned orphans in ceaucescu’s romania – where infants were left untouched for months on end – bears this out. as does the finding of austrian doctor rené spitz, concerning a postwar orphanage that went to great lengths in 1945 to prevent its children from being exposed to disease, giving them excellent nutrition and medical care, but minimizing physical contact for fear of germs. thirtyseven percent of the infants died before reaching the age of two (cited in van der kolk, 2015, p. 122). failings in the primary tangible attunement between mother/primary caregiver and child can lead to malfunction in later life. whence the claim that infants lacking physical attunement are susceptible to missing feedback from their own body as a primary site of pleasure and orientation. in his book the feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousnes (2000), neuroscientist antonio damasio builds on the insights of former psychologists to explore the relationship between inner states of the body, which comprise our “primordial feelings” and our basic emotions of communication and survival. damasio describes how our sensible world first takes shape in the womb with tactile feelings of wetness, warmth, fluidity, hunger pangs, and satiation, along with heartbeat and blood flow, fatigue and arousal. all these prenatal sensations inform our basic nervous system prior to any conscious awareness. they are deeply formative and never go away, constituting a “proto-self” of “wordless knowledge” – a carnal subject that in time kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 10 enters into communication with our more developed linguistic rational selves. but we ignore this proto-self at our peril, a denial that leads to illness. only by acknowledging the primal savoir of muscles, belly, and skin – and using all our savvy to reconnect with it – can we find healing through “attunement” (damasio, 2000). another contemporary scholar, tiffany field, bears out the findings of attunement theory in a series of empirical studies on touch and health. basic human touch, she shows, leads premature babies to gain weight: a finding supported by a study in the medical journal pediatrics (1986) detailing how ten days of regular “body stroking and movements of the limbs” led babies to grow 47 percent faster and averaged fewer days in hospital. field, a developmental psychologist, founded the touch research institute at the university of miami’s miller school of medicine, where she extended her research of “touch deprivation and enhancement” beyond infants (preterm, full-term, and orphaned) to adults with chronic pain, pregnant women, and elders in retirement or hospice care (field, 2014). the touch research institute is also dedicated to studying the effects of tactile therapy as it relates to practices such as massage therapy, yoga, tai chi, music, and movement. this application of such research to everyday health care is today evidenced in a series of popular studies of the healing benefits of ordinary handshakes and hugs, with explanatory titles like “the healing power of touch,” “can we touch?” or “is it time we talked about touch?”. recent epigenetic research shows that key alterations in our bodies are made not just by toxins and biochemical stimulants but by the way we resonate with our fellow beings. for all the good medication does for trauma sufferers, the most effective way of alleviating stress and suffering is, new research indicates, by being “touched, hugged and rocked”: actions that quell excessive arousal and make us feel “intact, safe, protected and in charge.” moreover, “gestures of comfort are universally recognizable and reflect the healing power of attuned touch” (van der kolk, 2015, p. 217). parents and parental figures know this well, as do most good primary caregivers, nurses, and doctors – even if the tactile gesture in question is as simple as holding a patient’s arm or placing a hand on their forehead or pulse. thus, do professional carers attend to the temperature, breathing, and heart rate of patients, helping them become attuned to their bodies as they regain health and integrate their powers of living connection. indeed, dominique meyniel, professor of medicine at the hôpital tenon in paris, is known for teaching his students the critical importance of touching patients with a gentle but firm clasp, providing them with a sense of physical assurance and trust. this gesture of “holding” proved extremely important in patients’ positive response to treatment, and professor meyniel was clear on the therapeutic benefits accruing to elderly patients – especially in need of touch – and the accompanying experience of connection, warmth, and concern. code 10-1993 of meyniel’s medical instructions reads as follows: “it is forbidden for nurses, medical interns and students not to touch aging patients. in addition to clinically examining them, they should hold their hands for long periods” (meyniel, 2015, p. 157). these simple modalities of touch involve a basic reading of patients’ bodies and of the reciprocal impact on their carers. on a more personal note, i would like to say something about my own experience of dealing with depression with the aid of embodied practices. while i was very grateful to medical psychiatry for offering remedial sedatives and antidepressants, i found these treated the symptoms – insomnia, acute anxiety, lack of appetite, exhaustion – rather than the roots. i ultimately discovered modes of “embodied” healing to be more effective and long-lasting. in my case, these included iyengar yoga practice, shiatsu massage therapy, pranayama deep breathing, and regular physical exercises kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 11 like swimming and fishing in the irish sea, planting trees and shrubs, and spending as much time as possible with animals (especially horses and dogs). the more i walked the wicklow hills with my retriever, bella, the more the black dog slipped away. in all this i followed the advice of a wise friend: “enough talk, back to the body.” and another important step on this path of embodied healing involved walking pilgrimages from vézelay to santiago de compostella and from rishikesh to gongotri, source of the ganges. i didn’t manage the full trip in either case, i confess, but both journeys offered deep affective healing – a slow, steady reintegration of head and heart, mind and body, spirit and flesh. toward a commons of the body the body is the place where the psyche lives – both personally and communally. the implications of tactile embodiment for public health practice and policy today are enormous. van der kolk concludes his monumental review of somatic therapy research with the claim that trauma is the “greatest threat to our national wellbeing” (p. 350). this is a startling claim largely unreported in official trauma statistics, which tend to focus on victims of war, genocide, natural disasters, or terrorism, while neglecting more common casualties of physical and psychic wounding found in domestic abuse, car accidents, neighborhood gang feuds, or school bullying. these lower-case traumatisms tend to pass beneath the big news grid and are often treated with quick-fix solutions like painkillers, antidepressants, short-term behavioral therapy, or social work. but such solutions, while satisfying the criteria of busy professional clinics and insurance companies, do not always work in the long term, for they rarely address the underlying causes; and they frequently neglect what current research shows to be the most important thing for any successful treatment of trauma, namely sufficient human contact. institutions that treat traumatized people all too often bypass the “emotional-engagement system” that is the register of our pain, concentrating on reforming “faulty thinking” and suppressing difficult behaviors. but deep healing only comes, as asclepius knew, when we acknowledge the primacy of deep embodied interactions – both personal and communal. public health strategists take note. the need for healing through “contact” is evident at the collective public level quite as much as the private therapeutic level. of particular relevance here for the development of what i am calling a “commons of the body” is the work of communal memory. i am thinking particularly of truth and reconciliation projects in postconflict societies like south africa, rwanda, or northern ireland. here enemies come face to face and share physical space and gestures with each other, as a way of acknowledging and overcoming violence. victims and perpetrators of seemingly irreparable communal traumas make contact in public tribunals in efforts to find escape from cycles of recrimination and bloodletting; they engage in a collective “working through” of wounds in hopes of some kind of healing. especially instructive here, for example, is the testimony of pumla gobodo-madikizela, a founder of the antiapartheid movement in capetown, who tells the story of touching the hand of one of the most criminal executioners of the apartheid regime, eugene de kock (see gobodo-madikizela, 2019). her testimony is all the more remarkable for the fact that she happened to touch his “trigger hand” (kearney, 2020) used for shooting his victims. it was her totally unpredictable gesture of touch, she realized, that sparked a moment of “impossible forgiveness”: her forgiveness somehow triggering his retrospective empathy for his victims, which no amount of legal or institutional retribution could have achieved. pumla gobodo-madikizela kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 12 challenged the senseless repetition of wounding where trauma breeds more trauma, pain replicates pain. that is why endless revenge cycles need to be broken. why we need to replace handguns with handshakes. such exemplary experiences suggest that language – while essential – cannot substitute for body work. no matter how much talking sufferers of collective historical conflict engage in, they continue to suffer recurring pain until they convene in a communal space – psychic or physical – with their adversaries. stories are very important, but they are not always sufficient (kearney, 2002). vital engagement with bodies sometimes seems necessary for more lasting healing to occur. it is not sufficient to recount one’s wounds, one also needs to touch and be touched. in sum, one might describe the healing arc of trauma therapy – at both personal and communal levels – as a movement through different somatic stages. one could put it like this: wounded by a foreign body (a common trope for trauma), we become a nobody (dissociation) that requires connection with another body (healing) in order to become somebody again (recovery). moving thus from traumatized nobody to reintegrated somebody is an empathic opening to everybody who has suffered pain. human sense is ultimately embodied sense. a commons of the body. references bamber, h. (1998). the good listener. wiedenfeld and nicolson. bosnak, r. (2017). embodiment: creative imagination in medicine, art and travel. routledge. damasio, a. (2000). the feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness. houghton mifflin harcourt. field. t. (2014). touch. mit press. freud, s. (1920/2003). beyond the pleasure principle. (original title jenseits des lustprinzips; j. reddick, trans. & ed.) penguin books. freud, s. (1960). letters of sigmund freud 1873-1939 (e.l. freud, ed.). dover. gallagher, s., & kearney, r. (2018). wounds to scars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3i5w9w-jtg gendlin, e.t. (1978). focusing. bantam books. gendlin, e.t. (2000). let your body interpret your dreams. hushion house. gobodo-madikizela, p. (2019). preface. in d. veldsman & y. steenkamp, debating otherness with richard kearney: perspectives from south africa. oasis. grey, e. (2010). unify your mind: connecting the feelers, thinkers, and doers of your brain. cmh&w. kearney journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 10 13 hamblin, j. (2016). if bodies could talk: a guide to operating and maintaining a human body. doubleday. hederman, m.p. (2019). living the mystery: what lies between science and religion. columba press. hughes, l. (1995). the collected poems of langston hughes (a. rampersad, ed.). vintage. kearney, r. (2019). the recovery of the flesh in ricoeur and merleau-ponty. in r. kearney et al. (eds.). somatic desire: recovering corporeality in contemporary thought (pp. 41-55). rowman and littlefield. kearney, r. (2002). on stories. routledge. kearney, r., & fitzpatrick, m. (2020). radical hospitality: from thought to action. fordham university press. kearney, r., & gallagher, s. (2017). twinsome minds: an act of double remembrance. cork university press. levine, p.a. (1997). waking the tiger: healing trauma. north atlantic books. levine, p.a. (2010). in an unspoken voice: how the body releases trauma and restores goodness. north atlantic books. meyniel, d. (2015). le couloir des urgences. cherche midi. o’hanlon, r. (in press). the potential of touch. in the art of mourning. bloomsbury. van der kolk, b. (2015). the body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. penguin. weineger, r. (2017). heartwork: the path of self-compassion – 9 practices for opening the heart. shambhala. wickersham, j. (2008). the suicide index. harcourt. corresponding author: martina kelly, md, phd cumming school of medicine, dept. of family medicine email: makelly@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 january 26, 2023 ©the author(s) 2023 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2023i2023.76926 physicians’ experiences of touch, a hermeneutic reflection martina kelly abstract touch is central to clinical practice but can be a “touchy subject” in medical education, simultaneously associated with care, and risk. in the clinical literature, touch is typically categorised as communicative or procedural, with an emphasis on touch as behavioural. philosophically, touch is also a subject of consideration, yet this literature remains relatively unfamiliar to clinicians. in this essay, i reflect on touch in healthcare and medical education, as explored in my phd studies, drawing on the work of hermeneutic philosophers, particularly merleau-ponty. interpreting touch, i propose, is inherently hermeneutic, offering many possibilities to deepen our understanding of human interaction and clinical practice. touch embodies the clinician-patient relationship as a holistic encounter. in high intensity interactions, touch orientates expression of empathy “beyond words.” i present the significance of hermeneutics for clinical education, to richly re-imagine, and challenge, the concept of patientcentredness. keywords touch, healthcare, senses, body, language touch in clinical practice is both familiar and strange. it “falls into the in between” (gadamer, 2004, p. 306) bridging philosophy and practice. the universal sense (aristotle, c.350 bc as cited in durrant, 2015), touch accompanies and signifies the human journey through life – babies nurse at their mother’s breast, toddlers explore their world through touch, the rough and tumble of childhood years, replaced by tantalizing tingles of burgeoning sexuality, sealed with a kiss of marriage. as nature repeats the cycle of life, we hold the hands of our loved ones, through diagnosis of illness, to parting at death. yet touch, in contemporary society, is a “touchy subject.” healthcare professionals in particular worry about “inappropriate touch,” fearful of triggering kelly journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 1 2 trauma or crossing boundaries of age, gender, or culture. during the covid 19 pandemic, touch became taboo; hazard signs warned of perils of contamination and promoted touch avoidance. concurrently, society experienced “touch hunger,” a phenomenon which describes hankering for human connection (field, 2014). healthcare crystallized many of these dilemmas, juggling the jeopardy of infection with the tragedy of dying inaccessible and alone. it is in this context i share my experiences and thinking on touch as a physician educator. a few years ago, a hug bestowed by an elderly patient, called me to question touch in medical practice. i was curious to understand my colleagues’ experiences of touch; if, how, when they touch a patient – to the extent i conducted my phd on the topic. (kelly, 2019). at the time, i could not have anticipated the move from bedside and clinic to “virtual care;” the rapid adoption of a new cybernetic space to deliver patient care. in 2021, consequent to the covid-19 pandemic, approximately 73% of canadians had at least one virtual health care interaction (canadian institute for health information, 2022). many question the role of virtual care, (canadian institute for health information, 2022; mann et al., 2020; moynihan et al., 2021) and to what extent it will transform healthcare. do we live in a new era of “hands off” healthcare and what are the implications for health professions education? i do not have all the answers but in this essay invite you to ponder with me the role of touch in contemporary health care and health professions education. i will draw on empirical studies that formed the basis of my phd. my thinking has evolved since then and like many healthcare professionals, i grappled during the covid-19 pandemic and with a radically changing culture, one in which health and social inequities became more visible, but ironically, i suggest, less felt. our societal ability to be touched by the suffering of another, seemed questionable at times. the role of healthcare personnel “to cure sometimes, relieve often and care always” (shaw, 2009, p. 995) never felt so challenging and simultaneously so rewarding, often demonstrated through clinical touch, or lack thereof. this essay is presented in three sections, as i reflect on touch in healthcare and health professions education, its past, the present, and future. the past the whole of the parts the relationship between touch and healing is entrenched in history. kearney eloquently traces the connection between hands-on practice, healing, touch, and knowledge in his recent book touch (kearney, 2021). he reminds us of classic tales from ancient greece. chiron, son of zeus, taught asclepius, first patron of medicine, the healing power of touch – healing involved bathing, massage, and the application of soothing herbs. in the second century, roman physician galen, described the role of the senses in medical treatment, and for galen and his followers, touch played a key role– “medicine was above all a tactile science” (wootton, 2006, p. 63, as cited in howes & classen, 2013). galen described in elaborate detail recording of the pulse – its strength, hardness, speed, interval, regularity, and rhythm, a tradition which persists, albeit to a lesser degree, to this day (talley & o’connor, 2021). the bible preserves the association between touch and healing; jesus heals the leper and calls out “who touched me,” when a woman touches his cloak. the rich association between touch, kelly journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 1 3 healing (physical and spiritual) and life is readily apparent in western art, evidenced in the work of michelangelo’s creation of adam or carravaggio’s the incredulity of thomas. in the middle ages, touching relics or, as possibilities of reproduction of art improved, religious images was linked with healing. it was believed that any ailment, no matter how dire, could be cured by touch; different saints became associated with different ailments and abilities to cure by touching their relics. touching religious objects or placing them on the afflicted part of the body was associated with the transmission of spiritual holiness and physical wholeness (classen, 2012). as history unfolds, the power of god became synonymous with the divine power of royalty. in both england and france, the royal touch could cure scrofula; ceremonies were scheduled and crowds would gather, hopeful for the royal remedy of touch (howes & classen, 2013). in these accounts, the attention to healing is not based on a science of illness but healing is represented as restorative of the whole person. healing is holistic. healing, according to gadamer, means “to make whole”; it’s not only the successful struggle against illness but care for health in its broadest sense (gadamer, 1996). whole extends beyond the confines of body and mind of the individual (and historically could include the family of the afflicted). whole refers to the harmony that is the interconnectedness of man in the world and how we are all linked, caught in the flux of humanity, partners in a shared lifeworld. this idea is echoed in the present day by the world health organization (who) definition of health as not merely the absence of disease but as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being (who, n.d.). a definition which, at times, feels at odds with patient experiences of healthcare, and for health professional learners, how it is taught. the parts of the whole “cogito, ergo sum” descartes’ (1596–1650) (descartes, 2000) legacy divides the whole into parts – the palpable body, the intangible mind. descartes was born some fifty years after the publication of fabrica (1543), vesalius’ influential anatomical text. it is possibly here that the metaphor of the body as machine originated – veins, arteries, and nerves are described as pipes. (bleakley, 2017). descartes referred to the body as a machine and many of the subsequent metaphors remain part of modern-day history taking. i may ask, for example, a patient about “his plumbing” (urinary tract) or “ticker” (heart). advances in neurophysiology make use of references to electrical systems, and we talk of the brain as a computer. machines can be broken down, examined in pieces – engines repaired with replacement valves. but metaphors, as ricoeur (2004) reminds us, have generative power, extending meaning beyond the apparent. the present learning in parts let us peer behind the metaphor of man as machine, to understand what is being said and, to listen to what is silenced (moules, 2002) – or perhaps forgotten as we speculate on the meaning of touch in medical practice. heidegger reminds us that words and language are not wrappings in which things are packed, but rather – language is the master of man (heidegger, 2010). to what extent has the dominant rhetoric of “man as machine” organized our experience and perception of the body, and touch in clinical practice and education? importantly, what is being valued and kelly journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 1 4 what is being devalued – or as we play hermeneutically – what is revealed and concealed by this language? bleakley suggests it is inevitable that, a mechanical notion of the body produces a mechanical notion of health care (bleakley, 2017). consequently, a culture working within a mechanical model of medicine will attend to the sorts of interventions that are observable and measurable. the body is transformed into systems, each learned separately, sequentially. skills to interrogate each system, for example, canulation, are learned in compartmentalized modules. in contemporary care, the metaphor of the machine has been supplanted by an increasingly sophisticated technology; simman (laerdal, n.d.) – a life-size plastic model, replete with monitors that beep and display the pulse and breathing rate, has replaced the tactile body. a technological prestige which risks suppressing the role of the senses in diagnosis and treatment. the metaphor is perpetuated in our clinical language. as language is our house of being (heidegger, 2010) our ability to express touch linguistically is vast – verbs for action, adjectives to qualify, nouns of texture. yet, perhaps, at least in medical practice, the language we use is quite limited. textures in medicine are often “hard, firm, or soft,” objective and lacking the rich subjective description of touch used in everyday interactions. verbs are active and authoritative. let me share some that are familiar to me; as a physician i conduct a physical examination, i perform a procedure, i excise a lump, which i describe as soft, firm, hard. physicians probe, measure, cut; we may, on occasion, pat someone on the arm. a language of action predominates over one of sensation; the body of the patient is silent, compliant, and devoid of agency. learning the language of a profession is an important rite of passage, legitimizing membership. language lives in the learning environment. in medical education, early learning takes place in a clinical skills laboratory. in the past, anatomy was often learners first encounter with the body – and the literature is replete with accounts of the impact this had on students (hodges, 2004; kelly, 2011). prosection, where the natural anatomy has been prepared, cleaned, perhaps even preserved with plastic, has, in the majority, replaced dissection. the anatomy lab is replaced by the clinical skills laboratory. the clinical skills lab – as conjured by the word, is clean, sterile, often a mocked-up version of a hospital ward: beds, with no privacy. technology and sophisticated simulators are the focus of the clinical gaze. bodies are replaced by (programable) mannequins. the body is replaced by disembodied dismembered plastic parts – a pelvis without legs, an arm without a trunk. gender and race sporadically appear, usually as biologically significant. as students learn to feel pathology, their hands press on plastic, slightly sticky from a previous learner’s hands, or sanitizer. models, over time, become slack or stiff. the objective of the task is to find the abnormality, rather than appreciate the subjective normality of healthy tissue. no sweat gets stuck under fingernails, no slimy mucus to remove from the cervix, no clothes to fumble around. the bodywork of care, preparing the room, cleaning up vomit, delegated to assistants or technical staff. the warm, fleshy, visceral, responsive body of bedside teaching is obsolete. learning has moved from proximity to proxy, from incarnate to excarnate. (kearney, 2021). practicing as whole from learning laboratory to clinical practice. during my research, i interviewed physicians of different ages from different disciplines about their experiences of touch. “tell me about an experience you’ve had as a physician that involves touch” i asked “it can be from yesterday, last week or last year….but i’d like you to describe it in as much detail as you can.” physicians kelly journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 1 5 initially puzzled, started hesitantly; the word ‘touch’ felt strange – they countered – “do you mean an example from clinical examination or ….?”. “any example that comes to mind” i responded. interviews started slowly, participants feeling their way into the topic. some interviews lasted over two hours, participants probed their own experiences “why did this encounter stay with me?” they remarked. “what does touch really mean?” – a physician pauses perplexed to recall if he physically touched a patient of if “the connection was in my head – does it matter?,” he wondered. “you develop a sense of what is normal …and it becomes part and parcel of your innate senses” (neonatologist). perhaps, one of the reasons physicians struggle to describe touch, is it has become embodied. exit descartes, enter merleau-ponty; the physician body, becomes “my point of view” of the world. “the body … as our means of communication with [the world], … as the horizon latent in all our experience and itself ever-present and anterior to every determining thought” (merleau-ponty, 1962, pp. 91-92). to help clarify this experience of the body as living (experienced), husserl, later re-enforced by merleau-ponty, used the term leib, distinguishing such experience from the body-object (körper). physicians described, “going through the motions” of physical exam and complex technical procedures. a neonatologist explained the awe people have for what she does – how can she place tubes in tiny pipes – but it’s “automatic” for her. she doesn’t “think” about it. the same story – different disciplines: radiology, surgery, family medicine, obstetrics; repeated touching – directly or via instruments becomes second nature. here we encounter what merleau-ponty described as the habitual body – “body schemata…are ‘ready-made systems of equivalents and transpositions from one sense to the other’” (merleau-ponty, 1962, p. 235). habitual performance of physical examination resulted in a “rearrangement and renewal of the corporeal schema” (merleau-ponty, 1962, p. 142). the body [schema] becomes the reference point, establishing a stable perceptual background; a site of integration of past experiences, prior learnings, or skills which change from being fragmented to being embodied, to the extent that participants no longer needed to think about them. similar to leder’s (leder, 1990) notion of the “absent body,” the physician’s body becomes absent, fading into the background, only to speak up when something goes wrong. when the body speaks, she speaks through all the senses. physicians described with intensity, experiences when they encounter “moments of mismatch” (harris, 2011) to reveal the body in the moment. a family physician described feeling a breast lump which she suspected was malignant. she recounted feeling with her hands, listening to her own heartbeat as it thumped in her chest, seeing, searching in the patient’s eyes as the patient’s eyes touch hers. the moment was “full-body-brain.” boundaries blurred – the senses are entangled; the body of the patient and the physician were indistinguishable, reminiscent of merleau-ponty’s idea of the “chiasma,” a crisscrossing of bodies and world – “i live in the facial expressions of the other, as i feel him living in mine” (merleau-ponty, 1964, p. 146). time went slower, as the physician recounted the moment in detail, but the touch was also suspended in time; i realized after the interview, this event happened years previously. perception is “achieved[d] with our whole body all at once” (merleau-ponty, 1962, p. 225). the unity of the intersensory thing is “constituted in the hold which my body takes upon it” (p. 320). the physician’s body not as a collection of organs but a “syngeneic system,” radiating existential possibilities of intersubjectivity. kelly journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 1 6 healing, to make whole, sometimes feels impossible. my heart breaks when i hear some of my patient’s stories. i see people hurting and my science cannot combat the inequities and harm, often unwittingly inflicted on the other. lives fragmented, revealed in pieces. many of my participants recounted experiences, however, which conveyed a sense of healing, even if momentary. i am not sure, sometimes, who was being healed – physician or patient. an intensive care physician describes touching a patient’s hand during rounds; a surgeon similarly holds a patient’s hand as the anesthetic agent seeps into the bloodstream. small gestures, small moments of interconnection, shared life-worlds of vulnerability, responsibility, and trust, a shared “experiential flux.” a young physician holds an ultrasound probe, smoothly gliding over a pregnant abdomen. the patient is expecting twins. the first heartbeat is immediate but after the gel has been applied several times, and her tummy shines with a search for a rapid lub-dub, lub-dub, the probe slows and stills. silence. two pairs of eyes swivel from the screen to each other. the physician had experienced a similar situation in her own pregnancy – a twin pregnancy which resulted in a single birth. she perceives the moment when the mother realizes, one baby alive, one baby dead. she sees shock, fear… she does not know what. for in that moment, the doctor recognizes that although she has had a similar experience, it is not the same. she does not know what this woman is feeling, thinking, perceiving. she puts the probe down and touches the woman’s hand. touch “speaks” an ethical response to the concrete experience of the other, creating a space where physician and patient are present for each other (large, 2015). “empathy is not a feeling of oneness” (stein, 1989, p. 17). understanding comes from perceiving the differences between the other and the observer. the selfness of “i,” she argued, is “brought into relief in contrast with the otherness of the other” (stein, 1989, p. 38). meeting the other is a “chiasm” in which people are “two openesses” (merleau-ponty, 1968, p. 213). touch, as embodied, empathic communication between physician and patient opens us to the invisible connection that unites us as people participating in a shared lifeworld, other orientated. “once a body-world relationship is recognized, there is a ramification of my body and a ramification of the world and a correspondence between its inside and my outside and my inside and its outside” (merleau-ponty, 1968, p. 136). i suggest that in such “touching moments” the body of the physician becomes changed, somehow “moments of meeting” imprint on our body; the intersubjective experiences, as a point of view on the world, is carried forward, as a new horizon of understanding. the future restoring the whole when i wrote my thesis, my focus on touch was, in essence, a call to re-embody clinical practice and health professions education. to resuscitate “the leib” of clinical praxis, as essential as “körper.” clinical practice is neither subjective nor objective; healing starts in the in between, the intersubjective space of being-with-others (mitsien). starting with my personal experience and discovering i was not alone, i wanted to draw attention to the undocumented but perceived kelly journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 1 7 ways in which clinicians and patients encounter each other, often at a primordial level – we respond, without knowing or comprehending the other (large, 2015); it is the other that calls us into being. this ethical call is at the heart, for me, of being a health professional, pre-cognitive, pre-affective. ironically, it is when touch becomes cloaked in rationality and social constructions that it becomes unethical. thus, the task, which i feel is incomplete (my attempts in this essay, i hope raised many questions for you), remains to restore touch to its original difficulty (caputo, 1988; moules et al., 2015). touch is complex, messy, encountered in “moments” which appear fleeting but embody our shared humanity. health encounters, like most experiences in life which are worthwhile, involve risk. we cannot and should not seek to reduce the complexity and wonder of what it is to be human to logarithmic behaviourist platitudes – it’s okay to touch here but not there. to do so in healthcare and health profession education risks, i suggest, reducing touching to transactional medicine which belies the beauty of embodied experience as central to our encounter with another. of course, i cannot as a teacher, deny that deconstructing concepts to help understanding is important – essential even. but this risks fragmenting experience in an artificial way ways that do not reflect how we practice. perhaps it is simply that in our efforts to structure care and learning, we have just forgotten the importance of stepping back and seeing – and teaching the importance of the whole. coda a curious reader may ask – hmm, so what has changed since the covid-19 pandemic? it looks like virtual care is here to stay; it facilitates access to care, and reduces transport time and costs, contributing to planetary health – where does touch fit now? my reflection, perhaps strange, is that not much has changed. while virtual care helps with many administrative, and relatively simple transactions, people in distress still need to be “seen.” part of being “seen” is being heard, and being felt – felt, not just in terms of physical examination but felt as in having their presence acknowledged. for those requiring in-person care, that care continued through the pandemic and continues. the pandemic did, however, heighten societal awareness of touch, physical contact, and our interconnectedness. it showcased the intersensory ways in which we communicate; for many patients and physicians, virtual visits, while satisfactory “miss” a certain element, a presence, an acknowledgement. it reminded us of that humans need each other and we are interconnected in ways that include and extend beyond the physical and verbal. references bleakley, a. (2017). medicine as war and other didactic metaphors. in a. bleakley (ed.), thinking with metaphors in medicine: the state of the art. routledge. canadian institute for health information. (2022). virtual care in canada: strengthening data and information. https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/virtual-care-in-canadastrengthening-data-information-report-en.pdf caputo, j. d. (1988). radical hermeneutics: repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project. indiana university press. https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/virtual-care-in-canada-strengthening-data-information-report-en.pdf https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/virtual-care-in-canada-strengthening-data-information-report-en.pdf kelly journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 1 8 classen, c. (2012). the deepest sense: a cultural history of touch. university of illinois press. descartes, r. (2000). discourse on method and related writings. penguin. durrant, m. (2015). aristotle's de anima in focus. routledge. field, t. (2014). touch. mit press. gadamer, h.-g. (1996). the enigma of health: the art of healing in a scientific age (j. gaiger and n. walker, trans.; 1st ed.). stanford university press. gadamer, h.-g. (2004). the nature of things and the language of things (d.e. linge, trans.). university of california press. (original work published 1960) harris, a. (2011). in a moment of mismatch: overseas doctors’ adjustments in new hospital environments. sociology of health and illness, 33(2), 308-320. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2010.01307.x heidegger, m. (2010). being and time (j. stambaugh, trans.). suny press. (original work published 1927) hodges, b. (2004). medical student bodies and the pedagogy of self-reflection, self-assessment, and self-regulation. journal of curriculum theory, 20(2), 41. https://www.academia.edu/900997/medical_student_bodies_and_the_pedagogy_of_self_reflecti on_self_assessment_and_self_regulation howes, d., & classen, c. (2013). ways of sensing: understanding the senses in society. routledge. kearney, r. (2021). touch: recovering our most vital sense. columbia university press. kelly, l. (2011). anatomy dissections and student experience at irish universities, c. 1900s– 1960s. studies in history and philosophy of science part c: studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences, 42(4), 467-474. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.08.001 kelly, m.a. (2019). body of knowledge: an interpretive inquiry into touch in medical education. [doctoral thesis, maastricht university]. laerdal. (n.d.). simman® 3g. retrieved january 3 from https://laerdal.com/us/doc/85/simman3g large, w. (2015). levinas "totality and infinity": a reader's guide. bloomsbury publishing. leder, d. (1990). the absent body. university of chicago press. https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2010.01307.x https://www.academia.edu/900997/medical_student_bodies_and_the_pedagogy_of_self_reflection_self_assessment_and_self_regulation https://www.academia.edu/900997/medical_student_bodies_and_the_pedagogy_of_self_reflection_self_assessment_and_self_regulation https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.08.001 https://laerdal.com/us/doc/85/simman-3g https://laerdal.com/us/doc/85/simman-3g kelly journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 1 9 mann, d.m., chen, j., chunara, r., testa, p.a., & nov, o. (2020). covid-19 transforms health care through telemedicine: evidence from the field. journal of the american medical informatics association, 27(7), 1132-1135. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa072 merleau-ponty, m. (1962). phenomenology of perception (c. smith, trans.). routledge. (original work published 1945) merleau-ponty, m. (1964). signs. northwestern university press. merleau-ponty, m. (1968). the visible and the invisible. northwestern university press. (original work published 1964) moules, n.j. (2002). hermeneutic inquiry: paying heed to history and hermes. an ancestral, substantive, and methodological tale. international journal of qualitative methods, 1(3), 1-21. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690200100301 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. peter lang. moynihan, r., sanders, s., michaleff, z.a., scott, a.m., clark, j., to, e.j., jones, m., kitchener, e., fox, m., & johansson, m. (2021). impact of covid-19 pandemic on utilisation of healthcare services: a systematic review. bmj open, 11(3), e045343. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-045343 ricoeur, p. (2004). the rule of metaphor: the creation of meaning in language. routledge. shaw, q. (2009). on aphorisms. british journal of general practice, 59(569), 954-955. https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp09x473312 stein, e. (1989). on the problem of empathy (w. stein, trans.; 3rd ed.). ics publications. (original work published 1917) talley, n.j., & o’connor, s. (2021). talley and o'connor's clinical examination. elsevier health sciences. world health organization. (n.d.). constitution. world health organization. retrieved january 3 from https://www.who.int/about/governance/constitution https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa072 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1177/160940690200100301 https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-045343 https://www.who.int/about/governance/constitution microsoft word nielsen liakos corrected proof.docx corresponding author: cynthia nielsen, phd email: cynthia.nielsen@gmail.com journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 december 1, 2020 ãthe author(s) 2020 dialogical breakdown and covid-19: solidarity and disagreement in a shared world cynthia r. nielsen & david liakos abstract this article considers the limitations, but also the insights, of gadamerian hermeneutics for understanding and responding to the crisis precipitated by the covid-19 pandemic. our point of departure is the experience of deep disagreements amid the pandemic, and our primary example is ongoing debates in the united states about wearing masks. we argue that, during this dire situation, interpersonal mutual understanding is insufficient for resolving such bitter disputes. rather, following gadamer’s account of our dialogical experience with an artwork, we suggest that our encounter with the virus gives rise to new ways of seeing and experiencing ourselves and the world. further, we draw on gadamer’s account of the fusion of horizons to show how even competing perspectives on wearing masks arise within a shared space of meaning created by the virus. these insights provide hope for an improved model of political dialogue in the world of covid-19. keywords covid-19, dialogue, hans-georg gadamer, pandemic, polarization, political disagreement in the last analysis, goethe’s statement ‘everything is a symbol’ is the most comprehensive formulation of the hermeneutical idea. it means that everything points to some other thing. this ‘everything’ is not an assertion about each being, indicating what it is, but an assertion as to how it is to encounter man’s understanding. there is nothing that cannot mean something to it. but the statement implies something else as well: nothing comes forth just in the one meaning that is offered to us. hans-georg gadamer, “aesthetics and hermeneutics,” (pp. 130–131) nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 2 like many others, our present experience is the challenging, straining, monotonous, and altogether unnatural situation of sheltering-in-place due to the covid-19 pandemic. in america, this already bleak experience is further exacerbated by the politicization of the pandemic. for example, in the united states to wear a mask is frequently perceived as supporting one political party, whereas deciding not to wear one may signal support for another. dialogue between both sides has become nearly impossible with each seeing the other as enemies. the situation is even worse, however, because public sources of knowledge—whether news articles or scientific studies—are increasingly viewed by each side as merely distorted interpretations or even outright falsehoods offered to bolster or further a social, cultural, or political agenda. the power of proclaiming something “fake news” and then utterly dismissing it seems to have won the day, whether such proclamations come from the highest political office in the country or from one’s family member. if neither of the opposing sides trusts the other, and each side fears that the other has an agenda that radically conflicts with his or her own way of being in, inhabiting, and understanding the world, is anything like genuine dialogue possible? if each side believes that the other’s view involves, is motivated by, or is built upon ethically or morally problematic principles and values, can true dialogue and compromise occur? if the other refuses to listen to you, and you refuse to listen to him because you both believe that the other is lying, does not value truth, or wants to bring about a world in which you cannot see yourself being at home, dialogue becomes, so it seems, impossible. in situations of dialogical breakdown, does the hermeneutical tradition—that is, the philosophy of understanding and interpretation which emphasizes how, as the poet friedrich hölderlin famously put it, we are a conversation—have anything to offer? in particular, what if one listens attentively and expects to learn something from the other, but at the end of the day finds the other’s view reprehensible? no matter how eloquently a white supremacist presents his position, for example, he will not convince us to accept it. of course, we may gain a clearer understanding of his position and perhaps why he is convinced by the teachings of white supremacy; however, his way of seeing the world and others is one that we fundamentally reject. according to hansgeorg gadamer’s hermeneutics, a successful dialogue need not result in one accepting or agreeing with the other’s position, but rather what counts is a greater understanding of the subject matter at issue in that conversation.1 given these parameters, we can say that our dialogue with the white supremacist was at least in part “successful” to the extent that we now have a better understanding of his position. but if the white supremacist has a political agenda, and worse, the political power to carry it out, then what? a “successful” or “partially successful” dialogue in this instance seems utterly insufficient. something more than an expanded understanding is needed when dialogical breakdown occurs. in what follows, we attempt to dwell with and take seriously the difficulty, frustration, and dead-end experience of dialogical breakdown. then, we will turn to dialogue with an unlikely (and certainly unwelcome) dialogue partner—namely, covid-19. perhaps surprisingly, such a dialogue not only manifests similarities with and connections to gadamer’s reflections on our dialogical engagement with art and on the phenomenon he calls the “fusion of horizons,” but also discloses, we shall argue, hermeneutical insights that are relevant for understanding and also moving forward in response to our situation. let us return to the example mentioned earlier of wearing masks in public. here we have sabrina, who, having listened to various medical experts and educated herself through reading articles issued from nationally and even globally recognized science-based organizations, chooses to nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 3 wear a mask in public in order to mitigate as much as possible the spread of the virus and, of course, to protect herself. sabrina’s colleague, jeremy, on the other hand, sees mask-wearing as a fundamental violation of his rights and as one of many incremental steps devised by the government to more fully control its citizens. jeremy also both distrusts the “mainstream” media sources reporting on covid-19 and believes that the number of cases and fatalities have been inflated.2 he is likewise suspicious of the medical experts and their claims regarding the need for everyone—whether symptomatic or asymptomatic—to wear masks. sabrina and jeremy have tried to engage one another in dialogue; however, their attempts have been fruitless. jeremy, in fact, has said that he will not wear his mask in public or at his workplace, which, of course, concerns sabrina since the two work together. jeremy’s employer may require that he wear his mask or be fired, which solves the workplace issue. but it may also be the case that jeremy’s employer looks the other way and does not enforce the “recommended” mask-wearing policy, since the governing authorities in his region have not officially mandated wearing masks for those who work in this particular field. when science-based recommendations and the advice of medical experts trained in virology and other medical sciences become politicized and opposing sides fundamentally distrust one another, dialogue with the other on how to live together in shared spaces in the midst of a pandemic seems to go nowhere.3 given our crisis, where so many lives are at stake and dialogue among opposing parties—both at the existential and grassroots level and among politicians with the power to make policy decisions—has either failed or resulted in no significant changes in perspectives or behaviors, how should we proceed? what do we do when expanding one’s understanding of the other’s position is not enough? lastly, is the type of scenario sketched above a fundamental threat to gadamer’s insights on dialogical interactions? while gadamerian hermeneutics certainly entails an ethical dimension and has implications for social and political practice, it has its limits and cannot be expected to provide answers to all of our political problems. our remarks about the shortcomings of dialogue at our present moment of crisis should in no way be taken, however, to suggest that dialogue is futile or should not be pursued, a point to which we will return later. healthy dialogue is absolutely crucial for thriving personal relationships as well as our civic well-being. if an individual or communal bond has so deteriorated that trust and the other’s credibility are strained to the point of practical nonexistence, though, something more than or in addition to dialogue is needed—or perhaps an expanded view of dialogue is needed. furthermore, if one party’s words, actions, and policies are putting others in grave danger, action motivated and informed by knowledge and the relevant expertise and experience must be taken to mitigate and prevent such harm. with the united states having as of november 18 surpassed 250,000 deaths, we can hope for and commit ourselves to civic and interpersonal dialogue that results in changed ways of seeing and being; but given the extremely dire circumstances and the lives at stake, we must also listen to medical experts and take immediate actions such as wearing masks, avoiding large indoor gatherings, and engaging in appropriate “social distancing” (almasy, hanna, & holcombe, 2020; macfarquhar, 2020). such actions signal and affirm our shared human condition—namely, a condition of vulnerability and a recognition of our interdependence. we are in this together whether we like it or not (and whether we like each other or not). our decision whether to wear masks in public spaces affects you; your decision whether to engage in appropriate social distancing affects us. nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 4 the virus exposes the fragility of life and discloses our interconnectedness, irrespective of our political convictions. the suggested action-points mentioned above are not radical, but rather count as reasonable actions based on the advice of scholars, physicians, and scientists with the relevant expertise and experience to recommend them. for example, the johns hopkins center for health security recently published a study entitled, “resetting our response: changes needed in the us approach to covid-19,” which articulates ten policy recommendations needed for the us to get back on track in its attempts to control the virus. the recommendations require actions from federal, state, and local agents and emphasize the need for collective action. “it is only our collective action that will generate the change necessary to regain control of this epidemic, avoid cascading crises in our healthcare system and economy, and save great numbers of lives throughout the united states” (rivers et al., 2020, p. 4). the first policy recommendation suggests, where appropriate, the follow actions: “the foundation for the response in every community should be what it has been for so many successful countries in the world: universal masking, individual physical distancing, hand hygiene, and avoiding large gatherings, particularly indoors. without having these measures in place, it will be difficult to maintain control of outbreaks or turn the corner on an outbreak that is accelerating” (p. 4).4 to politicize the virus and ignore or downplay scientific understandings of how such viruses spread will not change the nature of the virus or its ability to harm and even destroy our bodies. what the virus is and how it operates—its reality—will not bend to our will by any speech act, tweet, or social media campaign. words have amazing, creative, almost magical power to transform the social world, but there are some realities that push back, having a power of their own to resist any magical incantations we might cast upon them. the virus is, in some sense, pushing back, disclosing what it is and what it does, and we must listen to what it says and respond appropriately. this responsive and sensitive listening is, of course, hermeneutical; perhaps here we can apply some of gadamer’s most important insights—namely, first, to listen to the other as other and as one having something to say, perhaps even something true, from which we might learn. what, then, is covid-19 saying? granted, it seems to be saying and doing different things to different people. that is, in some cases, the virus results in severe lung damage, while in others it feels more like a case of the flu, and in yet others it causes death, to say nothing of those carriers who remain asymptomatic (see galiatsatos, 2020). given that scientific study has confirmed that the virus is highly contagious, that it can spread even when one is asymptomatic, and that it is unclear why some people—even those with no underlying health conditions—contract more severe cases than others, a reasonable interpretation of the virus’s varied speech (so to speak) is to act, until the virus is under control and the curve “truly flattened,” as if the most severe cases are the norm and to follow the recommended medical advice. our dialogue with covid-19 not only expands our understanding of the virus, but it requires an immediate response. that is, our dialogue with covid-19 calls us to radically and immediately change our lives and ways of being with others. instead of grabbing dinner and drinks with a group of friends, going to the gym, celebrating a birthday or other special event with a large group, we forgo these activities or transform them into virtual or masked, socially-distanced events which feel utterly unnatural and make us long for what we took for granted—namely, embodied presence with others. a simple handshake among colleagues or a hug among close nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 5 friends and extended family members must for now be resisted given the potential consequences. this is not an easy ask, nor is it natural. we are embodied, social beings, who need human contact and physical presence in order to flourish, and we certainly cannot sacrifice such interactions indefinitely. in one of his controversial but poignant recent philosophical reflections on the current coronavirus crisis, giorgio agamben presses this point: “other human beings […] are now seen solely as possible spreaders of the plague whom one must avoid at all costs and from whom one needs to keep oneself at a distance of at least a meter” (agamben, 2020, n.d.). agamben disturbingly suggests that mask-wearing and social distancing will increasingly alienate us from the other. in line with his well-known analysis of the “state of exception” characteristic of modern politics in general, agamben is concerned that extreme measures will persist even after the emergency to which they ostensibly are meant to respond ends, thus solidifying the political powers that instituted those changes. agamben’s claim admirably alerts us to the possible longterm social and political consequences of passively accepting or even embracing the various forms of distancing to which we are rapidly becoming habituated. agamben’s interpretation of social distancing, however, can only count as one possible view, or at least one certain delimited range of views, of the meaning and significance of the measures we have collectively undertaken in response to the virus. wearing a mask, our central example, does not, by any means, only or even primarily signify that one considers the other as a threat, as we will soon explain. on this score, we discover certain similarities between the current crisis and gadamer’s account of our dialogical experience with an artwork. we are not suggesting that the coronavirus is a work of art; however, our encounter with the virus, as in the case of an artwork, can give rise to a new way of seeing and experiencing ourselves and the world. in his essay “aesthetics and hermeneutics,” gadamer offers an account of how great works of art speak to us in profound, life-changing ways. commenting on art’s ability to arrest us and potentially alter our way of seeing ourselves, the world, and others, gadamer writes: the work of art that says something confronts us with ourselves. that is, it expresses something in such a way that what is said is like a discovery, a disclosure of something previously concealed. the element of being struck is based on this. […] everything familiar is eclipsed. to understand what the work of art says to us is therefore a selfencounter. (gadamer, 2007, p. 129) thus, for gadamer, a dialogical engagement with a work of art, wherein we listen to and contemplate what the work has to say to us, brings about a disclosure of something unexpected, something previously hidden that has come to light. we now have not only new insights about ourselves but also others, the human condition, and our shared world. gadamer goes on to state that our dialogical experience of the work of art “is experience in a real sense and must master ever anew the task that experience involves: the task of integrating it into the whole of one’s own orientation to the world and one’s own self-understanding” (p. 129). our collective and personal encounters with covid-19 accord with gadamer’s definition of genuine hermeneutical experience as altering and shaping our orientation to things. having considered gadamer’s claims regarding the transformative power of a dialogical encounter with great works of art, let us return to our dialogue with covid-19. what we have learned from scientific studies of the coronavirus, as well as reports from other countries—and especially nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 6 from those countries like new zealand, whose actions early on in the pandemic have been described as “crushing the curve”—is that we must take decisive, collective actions now (world health organization, 2020).5 that is, we must listen to the virus and to those who have studied it and respond in a timely manner that takes seriously the reality of the virus and the transformed world in which we now live; failure to do so may result in losing our lives or inadvertently infecting others, which could cause them severe, lasting harm and even death. the virus has disclosed both the fragility of our shared human condition and, albeit hidden—and in our polarized, dis-eased american body politic, denied and largely unrecognized—solidarity and interconnectedness. we are in this together whether we like it or not, and we need each other’s help, resolve, and collective action to stop or at least significantly slow the spread of the virus. recall, in this context, agamben’s despairing conclusion that during the current pandemic we too often view our fellow human beings as a threat to our own health. while understandable in light of the incredible changes our social interactions have undergone in so short a time, and cautionary in terms of guarding against the dangers of authoritarian politics, agamben’s view importantly ignores, however, the way these measures testify also to our feelings of solidarity with the other, particularly with the vulnerable other. the mask signifies not only our own desire not to be infected, but also our attempt to avoid unwittingly endangering others. toward the end of gadamer’s essay on aesthetics, he reiterates one of the central points of his argument—namely, that the artwork comes to presence and speaks meaningfully to us from within a larger relational field of meaning. stated otherwise, the artwork’s particular meanings are connected to and in part dependent upon a relational network of meanings; thus, the artwork’s meanings always exceed what the artwork itself immediately presents. gadamer likens our “universal hermeneutical standpoint” to goethe’s characterization of the symbolic character of our experience of the world—that is, things always point beyond themselves and present themselves differently depending upon the larger field of meaning in which they are encountered (gadamer, 2007, pp. 130-131). in other words, we should not forget that hermeneutical phenomena—including socially and politically meaningful phenomena like wearing masks—always contain a multitude of interpretative possibilities and imperatives, and never only a single possible significance. to further illustrate this point, we turn to insights from another of gadamer’s formulations of human understanding—namely, what he calls the “fusion of horizons.” each of us approaches something we want to understand—an artwork, text, historical event, natural phenomenon, another person—from a particular contextualized vantage point. that standpoint, or “horizon,” is shaped by such factors as, above all, language and history but also location, race, gender, age, and personal experience. but, for gadamer, we are not thereby condemned to occupy one rigid, static, unmoving horizon that is incommensurable with anyone else’s: “understanding is always the fusion of these horizons supposedly existing by themselves” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 305). that is, genuine understanding happens only by placing one’s own horizon in dynamic interplay with that of the other whom we want to understand. in dialogue with the horizon that the other occupies, we each find our horizons transformed in turn by our encounter with the perspective of the other. for gadamer, this fusion of horizons fundamentally occurs in and as language, which for him means in conversation: “the fusion of horizons that takes place in understanding is actually the achievement of language” ((gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 370). a genuine gadamerian dialogue takes place as an encounter between two standpoints of meaning that emerge altered in nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 7 light of their mutual confrontation with and by a common subject matter under discussion: “i have described this above as a ‘fusion of horizons.’ we can see now that this is what takes place in conversation, in which something is expressed that is not only mine or my author’s, but common” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 390). thus, we can describe the fusion of horizons that takes place in genuine conversation as, following an image belonging to donald davidson that is deeply consonant with gadamer’s view on this issue, a triangulation between self, other, and world (davidson, 2001, pp. 205–220). in matters of understanding, no one of these three can stand on its own; to understand any one of these three things requires contact with the other two. the fusion of horizons includes not only the two horizons that find themselves in dialogue, but also whatever else is held in common between those horizons. this triangular conception of understanding has, as we will explain, profound implications for our presently shared social and epidemiological experience. earlier, we mentioned how masks have been variously interpreted by opposing political ideologies. to one group, a mask symbolizes our solidarity and points to our shared human condition and consequent need to act for the common good; to another, the mask symbolizes our loss of freedom and the encroachment of governmental power or our willingness to give ourselves over to ever-increasing governmental control of our lives.6 this politicized contemporary phenomenon becomes more comprehensible in light of gadamer’s analysis. like works of art, what masks symbolize and how they are understood at this moment in our history—that is, how they are embedded within a relational field of meaning, which certainly includes the wider context of a polarized body politic—will differ even as the reality of the virus and its ability to infect, harm, and destroy remains the same. symbols, whether great works of art or mass-produced masks, are historically indexed and thus always influenced by and intertwined with larger fields of meaning. consequently, they yield various meanings and interpretations, not only owing to the complexity of what they present—as in an artwork—but also—as in a mask—owing to the relational field of meanings in which they are embedded and the significances that individuals and groups attach to the subject matter at issue. the fusion of horizons or triangulation further complements the gadamerian view of our encounter with artworks and can in turn contribute to our hermeneutical analysis of masks. the mask-wearer and the mask-skeptic occupy different horizons, of course, since they represent competing political perspectives and, perhaps, cultural standpoints. on the basis of seemingly dire situations such as this one, are we thereby compelled to accept the skeptical assessment of interpersonal understanding by thinkers such as jacques derrida, for whom “there is no world, there are only islands”? (derrida, 2011, p. 9)7. that pessimistic conclusion is seemingly motivated by the genuine epistemic, ideological, and cultural gaps between perspectives such that they appear, as they do to many today who observe our deteriorating contemporary political situation, as only so many disparate islands without any true point of contact. but such a negative assessment would be premature. the perspectives of the mask-wearer and the mask-skeptic are, despite their real differences, at the same time both horizons on a common, shared world—namely, in the present instance, the physical, epidemiological, emotional and psychical, as well as social and political experience of the coronavirus crisis. the way the crisis affects each of us is, of course, not equal. far from completely distinct, atomized-subjective individuals or islands who are cut off from one another by our diverse ideological points of view or personal backgrounds, our different horizons all count as perspectives on the same common subject matter—that is, our nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 8 occupation of what we should not hesitate to call a world: the world as currently shaped by the effects of covid-19. the mask-wearer, mask-skeptic, and the virus itself all form a hermeneutical triangle, each one necessarily shaping and affecting one’s understanding of the other. not only, then, are we in dialogue with covid-19 as if it were a work of art that transforms the way we see reality and ourselves, but the virus also acts as the meeting point between otherwise disparate horizons or points of view. it is crucial to emphasize in this context that it is only in light of our collectively shared experience of covid-19 that we can even arrive, in the first place, at competing interpretations of and responses to the virus. as gadamer puts this point, “every misunderstanding presupposes ‘a deep common accord’” (gadamer, 2007, p. 81). this reference to a common accord does not mean, as some of gadamer’s critics have suggested, that his view entails that agreement is violently or artificially imposed upon dialogue participants who find themselves overwhelmed by the weight of the truth of historical tradition.8 this emptily optimistic view of interpersonal agreement that some critics have imputed to gadamer would indeed be especially problematic and false when put to work as an interpretation of covid-19 in particular. despite its seismic impact on all of human beings, those effects have been inequitably and unevenly distributed along racial and socioeconomic lines, affecting most acutely many of the most vulnerable and marginalized members of our society.9 rather, gadamer’s claim is that genuine disagreement must take place against the background of certain fundamental aspects of reality upon which we can and must agree, acknowledging the respective places from which our understanding emerges. in other words, only conversation partners occupying a common physical or discursive space can subsequently disagree on the meaning of what takes place within that space. to return to derrida’s challenge to hermeneutics, even islands distant from one another must also be, so to speak, points on the same common map.10 as gadamer expresses his subtle view of the agreement that functions as the necessary background of all understanding, which does not mean the imposition of any homogenous uniformity, “the true locus of hermeneutics is this in-between” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 295). the different interpretations of mask-wearing are a case in point of gadamer’s observation that disagreement takes place in the context of agreement. for example, the rival horizons on maskwearing represented by our characters sabrina and jeremy may in fact still be put into contact with each other in virtue of their convergence upon a common space of meaningfulness and experiences of the world in virtue of the fact that they both count as competing responses to covid-19. the practical and political dispute between a mask-wearer and a mask-skeptic, while undoubtedly real and contentious, nonetheless presupposes the experience held in common by both of these horizons as points of view on living in the world of covid-19. the philosophical denial that there is a common world would dangerously obviate this essential practical and political truth. none of us, we think it would be fair to say as of this writing, can at present fully escape a pandemic that, as the etymology of the term suggests, affects all of humanity in some way, although not, to be sure, in an equal or uniform fashion. all of us live in what gadamer called the in-between, which the coronavirus has only crystallized. covid-19, paradoxically, brings to light not only what separates us from each other (as agamben emphasizes), but also what unites us all. jeremy and sabrina are disagreeing about a subject matter they hold in common, one that nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 9 has acutely and dramatically affected both of them and indeed all of us. further, since any fusion of horizons occurs paradigmatically in language, we may remain hopeful that productive conversations develop on the different perspectives regarding wearing masks and other aspects of the crisis—that is, conversations that take seriously both what is held in common as well as the differing perspectives and lived experiences of the virus. such hope is consistent with our earlier point that dialogue will not always successfully or rationally resolve every political dispute and must, in this case at least, be complemented by concrete action as well. although in our current situation in the u.s., divergent fields of meaning among opposing political points of view may initially seem fixed and rigid, in reality they can be altered and reconfigured, as the fusion of horizons convincingly illustrates. such changes in larger hermeneutical fields of meaning influence, in turn, how the subject matter presented comes forth and consequently introduces new interpretative possibilities. recall how gadamer claims that a genuine dialogue with a work of art involves the task of integrating our newly discovered insights about ourselves with our understanding of others and our shared world. those convinced by science-based findings of the medical community can, in their own various spheres of influence, help to reshape the relational fields of meaning in which masks are interpreted in ways that productively emphasize our interdependence, shared humanity, and need for collaborative cooperation in the midst of this crisis. reshaping meaning through active dialogue need not take the form of rigidly rational debates among competing ideological perspectives, an option that is unlikely to produce genuine consensus or progress, as our contemporary political situation makes painfully evident.11 conversation, as gadamer understands that phenomenon, is far more dynamic and unpredictable than argumentative discussions framed by rational and communicative norms. in this respect, gadamerian dialogue may yet prove a flexible and workable model of politically and socially salient change during our current crisis. at this juncture, gadamer’s critical reflections on the role of experts in our modern and technological culture could prove prescient and useful as a complement to listening to and acting upon the advice of medical experts. in a 1967 essay called “the limitations of the expert,” gadamer cautions against abdicating our individual and collective responsibility by dangerously leaving social and political decision-making in the hands of scientific and technical experts. instead, gadamer urges us to conscientiously cultivate and vigorously apply our own power of judgment that certain technocratic and politicized employments of the natural sciences attempt to take away from ordinary citizens (gadamer, 1992, pp. 181-192). we have argued here for the importance today of listening to and following the input of health and medical experts as we forge our own responses to the coronavirus crisis and attempt to build upon existing solidarities and strengthen further solidarities in turn. another way of putting our point, then, which is consonant with gadamer’s critique of our expert culture, is as follows. we have opted to follow medical and public health guidelines and recommendations precisely as a result of our own informed and careful judgment and not at all on the basis of some existing political ideology, fixed cultural position, or servile scientism. we should stress this point in dialogue with critics of maskwearing—not merely as a way of argumentatively persuading those who currently disagree with us, but as an invitation to them to continue developing and applying their own judgment in conversation with our point of view. mask-skeptics have indeed arrived at different, competing judgments about these matters. it is our task now to convince and persuade them to adjust and reformulate their judgments for themselves, taking our collectively shared experience of covidnielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 10 19 and the crisis it has precipitated as a starting point for what may be a painful and difficult conversation. to enter into a dialogue of this kind must also mean opening ourselves to the surprising twists and turns that genuine conversation involves, which means putting our own considered judgments into play in the interest of mutual engagement. no matter our political ideology, we are all social beings whose flourishing requires regular physical contact with and the embodied presence of others; this fact is a perfect example of those fundamental realities that compel our collective agreement and that form the necessary background of any subsequent disagreement that the fusion of horizons or triangulation emphasizes. this embodied mode of being-with-others is not only necessary but is also something we desire and in which we take pleasure and satisfaction. the mask-wearer and mask-skeptic may in fact find that they are both experiencing fundamentally similar fears, anxieties, and confusions regarding the rapid changes to our collective form of life that lie at the root of their political and practical dispute. our task in following those recommendations that have so profoundly altered our lives and behavior involves a genuine and unavoidably painful sacrifice, but one that it is our belief we must take if we ever hope to regain some semblance of the way things were. such a line of reasoning would, at least, serve as our opening thought or gesture in an ongoing dialogue with alternative points of view on wearing masks amid the covid-19 crisis. we cannot afford to refuse to listen to others—especially those with relevant scientific and medical understanding. nor can we afford to act as if we are isolated, radically autonomous individuals hermetically sealed from one another. as we have emphasized, we live in a shared world of dynamic horizons that are always intersecting and overlapping. in light of the conversation that we are, to refuse to listen and properly respond would signal dialogical failure and a body politic whose members and most vital organs have indeed been infected—a body politic perhaps in the late stages of a potentially deadly disease. notes 1. for gadamer’s discussion of three types of hermeneutical dialogical encounters that have analogues in three types of i/thou encounters and what characterizes each, see gadamer, 1960/2004, pp. 358–362. 2. for an actual example of a high-profile individual who holds this position, see blake, 2020. 3. we are not, of course, advocating an uncritical acceptance of scientific discourse but rather a careful, responsible engagement with current scientific studies on covid-19 and medical advice based on empirical experience with this virus and those like it. we shall develop this point later in the main body of our essay. 4. on the mask-wearing and state mandates, lyu, w. & wehby, g., 2020, pp. 1-7. 5. it is worth mentioning that new zealand’s success is attributed in part to decisive, timely actions and listening and learning from reports received from china and organizations such as the world health organization. “three days after who declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on 30 january 2020, new zealand began introducing disease prevention measures and continued strengthening them in the weeks that followed.” dr. ashley bloomfield, new zealand’s director-general of health, went on to say that “their strategy was influenced by a report from the who–china joint mission in february” (world health organization, 2020). nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 11 6. these are just two interpretations of masks that have been prevalent in recent u.s. news reports and noted in scholarly studies. no doubt, there are other interpretations and possible meanings of masks in our present moment. 7. on numerous other topics, we find derrida’s insights to be extremely valuable and fruitful. our criticism of this particular point should not be taken as a wholesale rejection of derrida’s thought. 8. versions of this critique were developed by commentators on gadamerian hermeneutics who were influenced by derrida’s deconstruction. for example, see caputo, 1987, pp. 108-115. 9. there has been much discussion of this deeply problematic situation in the united states. see, for example, eligon, j., burch, a., searcey, d., & oppel, r., 2020. 10. our employment of the language and concepts of space and place in connection with hermeneutical thinking owes much to research by jeff malpas. see malpas, 2017, pp. 379-391. 11. this model of rational debate is the object of a recent insightful critique by raymond geuss, principally aimed at the model of communicative rationality developed by jürgen habermas. geuss argues that habermasian discourse would prove highly incapable of bridging ideological gaps such as those involved in the debates concerning brexit in the united kingdom. see geuss, 2019. references agamben, g. (2020). “clarifications.” (a. kotsko, trans.). an und für sich. https://itself.blog/2020/03/17/giorgio-agamben-clarifications/. originally published in italian as “chiarimenti” by quodlibet. (2020). https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-chiarimenti. almasy, s., hanna, j., & holcombe, m. (2020). as us passes 150,000 coronavirus deaths, experts at johns hopkins call for reset in national response. cnn.com. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/health/us-coronavirus-wednesday/index.html blake, a. (2020). rush limbaugh: americans should adapt to coronavirus like donner party members took to cannibalism. washington times. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jul/15/rush-limbaugh-americans-should-adapt-tocoronaviru/ caputo, j. (1987). radical hermeneutics: repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project. indiana university press. davidson, d. (2001). three varieties of knowledge. in subjective, intersubjective, objective (pp. 205–220). clarendon press. derrida, j. (2011). the beast and the sovereign, volume ii (g. bennington, trans.; m. lisse, ml. mallet, & g. michaud, eds.). university of chicago press. eligon, j., burch, a., searcey, d., & oppel, r. (april 7, 2020). black americans face alarming rates of coronavirus infection in some states. new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-race.html. nielsen & liakos journal of applied hermeneutics 2020 article 11 12 gadamer, h-g. (1992). the limitations of the expert (l. schmidt & m. reuss, trans.). in d. misgeld & g. nicholson (eds.), hans-georg gadamer on education, poetry, and history: applied hermeneutics (pp. 181–92). suny press. gadamer, h-g. (2004). truth and method. (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshal, trans.; 2nd rev. ed.). continuum. (original work published 1960). gadamer, h-g. (2007). the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (d. linge, trans.; r. palmer, ed.). northwestern university press. galiatsatos, p. (2020). what coronavirus does to the lungs. johns hopkins medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/what-coronavirusdoes-to-the-lungs. geuss, r. (2019). a republic of discussion: habermas at ninety. the point. https://thepointmag.com/politics/a-republic-of-discussion-habermas-at-ninety/. macfarquhar, n. (2020). the coronavirus has now killed more than 250,000 people in the u.s. new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/18/world/covid-19-coronavirus#aquarter-of-a-million-people-have-died-in-the-us-from-covid-19. malpas, j. (2017). placing understanding/understanding place. sophia, 56(3), 379–391. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-016-0546-9 national public radio. (2020). why covid-19 disproportionately impacts latino communities. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/885878571/why-covid-19-disproportionately-impacts-latinocommunities. rivers, c., martin, e., watson, c., schoch-spana, m., cicero, a., & inglesby, t. (2020). resetting our response: changes needed in the us approach to covid-19. johns hopkins center for health security. https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/pubs_archive/pubspdfs/2020/200729-resetting-our-response.pdf. lyu, w., & wehby, g. (2020). community use of face masks and covid-19: evidence from a natural experiment of state mandates in the us. health affairs 39(8), 1-7. https://doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818 world health organization. (2020). new zealand takes early and hard action to tackle covid-19. https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news/feature-stories/detail/new-zealand-takes-early-andhard-action-to-tackle-covid-19. corresponding author: michael lang, phd email: mike@mikelangstories.com journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 march 1, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74855 invited editorial crafting meaning, cultivating understanding: a prologue to the “emerging horizons” series michael j lang facts bring us to knowledge, but stories lead to wisdom. (remen, 2006, p. 40) first, a story about the importance of stories i clearly remember the moment i began to realize that the healthcare system as a whole, the people that work in it, as well as the patients and their families, needed more stories. in april 2010, i did a showing of my first documentary film, wrong way to hope: a story of young adults and cancer, to a packed theatre of 250 oncology professionals and support staff at the saskatoon cancer centre. i was told it was the first time anyone had proposed showing a film at grand rounds1, and people were intrigued. after the presentation had concluded and the crowd had cleared, a lone doctor in a white lab coat stood up from his seat at the back of the auditorium and began walking down the aisle toward me. he seemed deep in thought, walking slowly with his head bowed. i stopped packing up my computer and stood waiting for him. when he was a few feet away, he slowly looked up and said: you know, i have been an oncologist for over 20 years and i thought i understood my patients... but until watching your film, i never realized what is truly at stake for them; it is not just their health, it is their entire identity. we continued to talk for a few minutes about some of the other major themes highlighted in the lang journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 2 2 film and audience discussion that followed, but it was the four words from his opening line, “until watching your film,” that lingered in my mind as i drove to the next stop on the crosscanada tour. i had met only eight young adult cancer survivors in my entire life and knew almost nothing about cancer apart from my own experience of it over the previous two years. how could a 20-year oncology veteran who had treated thousands of patients glean practice-changing insight from my film? over the next 30 days, that same scenario repeated itself many times as cancer care professionals continued to discuss with me the lessons they had learned from the film. when i screened the film for patients and families at community-based cancer support organizations the response was the same. i witnessed rich discussion and flashes of insight at every single screening, no matter the audience. on that tour, i learned that many healthcare professionals, patients, and their families had never been given the opportunity to stop and reflect on the experience of cancer through a patient-created film, despite films and video being a dominant form of communication in our culture. it became clear that cancer care systems had not yet explored the possibilities of video-based storytelling on a broad scale. in this setting, simply sharing young adult cancer experiences in a candid, compelling, and aesthetic way on screen, had offered healthcare professionals, and the patients they cared for, access to a deeper level of understanding of the cancer experience, and sometimes, life in general. twelve years, five feature length documentaries, three web series, and over 800 digital stories later, i am thrilled to continue exploring video-based storytelling in healthcare settings through the serialization of the interpretive chapters of my phd thesis in the journal of applied hermeneutics (jah). the “emerging horizons” series and the editorials that accompany it, are all based on a film of the same name which acted as the primary data source for my thesis. the film explores the digital storytelling (dst) workshop experiences of a group of six adolescent and young adult (aya) cancer survivors2. it is a 53-minute film crafted from almost 30 hours of footage, and in the same way that numerous salient moments from the workshop were necessarily left on the “cutting room floor,” many possible interpretations were culled from the interpretive papers of this series. indeed, aletheia reminds us that covering, and uncovering are always concurrent events (caputo, 1987) and together, the film and the interpretations offered provide only one possible path to understanding what could occur as people create digital stories about their healthcare experiences. the primary goal of the film was to maintain the incommensurability between what an artwork says and what it is capable of saying so that the viewer can have the experience of something emerging (davey, 2013); the interpretive writing serialized in jah is meant to keep that conversation going. the remainder of this introductory editorial will set the stage for the series by briefly reviewing the topics of aya oncology and dst, exploring the fit of applied hermeneutic research with documentary filmmaking, and finally, “dimming the lights” to promote an intellectual shift in engagement with both the film and the interpretive writing that follows. adolescent and young adult cancer and digital storytelling: a developmentally appropriate psychosocial tool over the past 50 years, in parallel with increased survival, there has been mounting evidence of the late effects and long-term impact of cancer treatment on psychosocial outcomes in addition to lang journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 2 3 physical sequelae of treatments (adler & page, 2008; institute of medicine, 2006). routine integration of psychosocial supports with biomedical treatments, from diagnosis through survivorship, is now a standard of care in oncology (balogh et al., 2011, holland & weiss, 2008). one sub-population that has begun to be delineated, better understood, and increasingly highlighted for specific biomedical and psychosocial intervention are adolescents and young adults (aya, 15-39yrs; national cancer institute, 2006).3 over the past 15 years there has been increasing recognition of the differential psychosocial impact of cancer by age, with the aya age-range experiencing elevated levels of clinical distress, depression, and anxiety relative to all other age groups of cancer survivors (lang et al., 2015; lang et al., 2018). beyond the basic psychosocial outcomes of distress, depression, and anxiety, being an aya at the time of diagnosis and treatment is a significant risk factor for poor health-related quality of life (husson & zebrack, 2017) and post-traumatic stress (abbey et al., 2015) in cancer survivorship. many other commonly studied cancer-related psychosocial sequelae, such as self-efficacy (jones et al., 2010), financial toxicity (gordon et al., 2017), education and employment regression (ketterl et al., 2019; kosola et al., 2017), fear of recurrence (lim & humphris, 2020; simard et al., 2013), infertility (logan et al., 2018), and body image (fingeret et al., 2014) all indicated “younger age” (i.e., aya age-range) as a primary risk factor for negative outcomes. as a whole, the literature provides compelling evidence for the long-term differential impact of a cancer diagnosis and treatment on ayas’ overall psychosocial health (bibby et al., 2016; de et al., 2021), and there is increasing recognition of the many unmet physical, psychosocial, and practical concerns in this population (jones et al., 2020). the elevated adverse impact of a cancer experience on ayas’ psychosocial health is primarily attributed to the unique characteristics of the aya developmental life-stage (arnett, 2000; docherty et al., 2015). transitioning to adulthood consists of important developmental tasks including developing a positive body image and sexual identity, separating from parents, increasing involvement with peers and dating, and making decisions about careers, higher education, and/or family; all important tasks related to identity formation (d'agostino et al., 2011; zebrack, 2011). consequently, cancer-related issues such as changes in physical appearance, increased dependence on parents, premature confrontation with mortality, loss of fertility, treatment or recovery related disruptions in social life and school/employment, and health-related concerns about the future can be highly distressing for ayas (bibby et al., 2017; canadian partnership against cancer, 2017). as long-term survivorship is possible in the aya demographic (i.e., 50+ years), physical, emotional, and social quality of life needs to be protected so that ayas can be productive members of society over the long-term (baird et al., 2019). therefore, age-appropriate psychosocial care (i.e., psychosocial care which supports key developmental life tasks) is essential to ensure that ayas are able to not only survive cancer but thrive throughout rest of their years as productive members of society (d'agostino et al., 2011). despite this awareness very few psychosocial interventions for ayas have been developed and “aya-focused interventions delivered on platforms that are acceptable and accessible to ayas are urgently needed” (jones et al., 2020, p. 1454). one such intervention could be digital storytelling (dst). lang journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 2 4 the terms “digital” and “storytelling” have become commonplace in the internet age and are often used to broadly refer to “telling stories with digital technologies” (alexander, 2017, p. xiv). numerous frameworks and variations of this broad concept of “digital storytelling” have been developed, with many fields of study (e.g., business, social justice, arts and humanities, education, healthcare) incorporating their own theoretical, logistical, and ethical perspectives (dunford & jenkins, 2017). however, the first articulation of what has become known as “classical” dst today was by dana atchley and joe lambert of the storycenter in berkley, california (hardy & sumner, 2018). their first dst workshop was held in 1993 around the beginning of the personal computer revolution that allowed lay-people access to the tools necessary to create “mini-movies” about their lives (lambert, 2013). currently, the storycenter’s three-day workshop process that they pioneered, and the style of digital story that they produce (i.e., simple three-to-four-minute narrated stories using still photos and minimal video effects and transitions), is termed “classical” dst (hardy & sumner, 2018), and is considered the foundation from which new approaches and modifications arise (de jager et al., 2017; hartley & mcwilliam, 2009; lambert, 2017). at its most basic level, the dst process comprises the creation of short digital media products with “the assistance of skilled facilitators, in a safe, technology-enabled environment [emphasis added]” (flicker & hill, 2014, p. 3). in other words, it is an intentional, co-creative process involving some level of facilitation or interaction with others in the production or screening of the story. however, within this generic understanding there is significant variation in the temporal, technological, and procedural aspects of dst (de jager et al., 2017) with the dst workshop of emerging horizons demonstrating a single facilitator, two-and-a-half-day group workshop model with imovie as the video editing software. the product of the dst process is a digital story. generally, digital stories are two-to-fiveminute visual narratives “that synthesize images, video, audio recordings of voice and music, and text to create compelling accounts of experience” (gubrium, 2009, p. 186). it has been proposed that a digital story should: include compelling narration of a story; provide a meaningful context for understanding the story being told; use images to capture and/or expand upon emotions found in the narrative; employ music and other sound effects to reinforce ideas; and invite thoughtful reflection from their audiences (alexander, 2017). in reviewing the literature concerning aya psychosocial oncology and dst, the congruence between the developmental needs and preferences of aya cancer survivors and the theory, form, and functions of dst is apparent. dst occurs in an informal group setting which offers many opportunities for conversation and relationship building. many participants report a strong connection formed with other program participants which persists long after the workshop is finished (paterno et al., 2018). dst is also inherently participatory with the content of the stories and group discussions entirely driven by participants (gubrium et al., 2015). this aligns well with the aya developmental task of developing personal autonomy and could be one of the reasons that a dst experience is empowering for ayas (laing et al., 2017). the nonpathologizing approach of narrative-based interventions (white & epston, 1990) is exemplified in the dst process and creates a compelling opportunity for ayas to reframe and incorporate their cancer experience into their life story (laing et al., 2017). finally, dst is an emotionfocused process with participants exploring their inner emotional experiences of specific events lang journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 2 5 in their life through the finding, telling, crafting, and sharing of their stories (fiddian-green et al., 2019; lang et al., 2019). as ayas have difficulty processing the many difficult and conflicting emotions that accompany their cancer experience (jones et al., 2011), dst could provide them with an appropriate opportunity to feel, name, process, and convey these emotions as a form of “sneaky-therapy” (laing et al., 2017, p. 6). in short, ayas have a preference for non-traditional, technology-based psychosocial interventions, value meaningful connections with their peers, have difficulty naming and processing the difficult emotions associated with a cancer experience, and are in the midst of the important developmental task of identity formation. an appropriately designed and facilitated dst experience (i.e., a theory based, professionally facilitated experience with clear project goals and outcomes) could provide a group-based, emotion-focused, peer-driven, technologymediated intervention that supports ayas to cultivate understanding of, and craft meaning from their cancer experiences while integrating it into their life narrative. emerging horizons and the associated interpretive writing, offer both a visual example of dst facilitation and a deeper understanding of the aya dst experience so that healthcare professionals and researchers can better theorize and apply dst in their own contexts. cinema verité documentaries and hermeneutic research: parallels in philosophy and praxis the camera . . . has to be open to the moments that reveal the thing that you cannot otherwise see. – wolf koenig, in cinema verité (wintonick, 1999) for all parties involved in this study, using a documentary film as a primary data source was a unique undertaking. however, seeking understanding through what was seen, and not only through what was said, aligned closely with the ethos of dst and fulfilled the appeal of hermeneutic research to allow the phenomenon being studied to influence how understanding of that phenomenon was pursued (moules et al., 2015). cinema verité, which is translated as “truthful cinema,” is a style of documentary filmmaking that is observational in nature and relies on the use of a camera to reveal the “truth” (aufderheide, 2007). despite its common usage, a formal definition does not seem to exist, with many early progenitors of the form having different opinions on its principles and origins (aufderheide, 2007; parkinson, 2012; wintonick, 1999). however, cinema verité is closely related to the documentary genres of direct or observational cinema, in that the camera is often positioned as a “fly-on-the-wall” and records life as it happens with a reliance on the editing process to give shape, structure, and meaning to the material recorded (watson & hill, 2015). it has been proposed that a distinctive feature of cinema verité which separates it from pure direct and observational cinema is that the filmmaker participates in front of the camera and creates situations within the structure of film that are designed to provoke and reveal (kroon, 2014; parkinson, 2012). the film emerging horizons aligns best with the cinema verité documentary genre as i participated on screen as the dst facilitator, a film crew captured the entire dst workshop in a “fly-on-the-wall” style, and the storylines in the film emerged afterwards in the editing suite, being cut together in a way to reveal the process of dst with aya cancer survivors. throughout the creation of emerging horizons and the encompassing hermeneutic research project, striking similarities were lang journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 2 6 recognized between cinema verité filmmaking and hermeneutic research in both philosophy and practice. parallels in philosophy the very first, and perhaps most noticeable, similarity between cinema verité filmmaking and hermeneutic research is the pursuit of revelation and understanding. in the same way that a hermeneutic research project centres the concept of aletheia, or “the event of concealment or unconcealment” (caputo, 1987, p. 115), cinema verité films are meant to look past the surface level characterizations of experience to reveal, or unveil, the deeper “truths” that may be embedded in the moments observed by the camera (kroon, 2014). relying on the aesthetic attentiveness of the camera lens, cinema verité filmmakers are looking for moments of truth that emerge in the spontaneous events of life (wintonick, 1999) in the same way that hermeneutic researchers follow leads and look for the particular word, phrase, or idea that enlivens understanding of the topic when conducting a research interview (moules et al., 2015). this complementary philosophical approach enables cinema verité filmmaking to be an effective hermeneutic research approach when the lens is turned towards a particular phenomenon of interest, in this case dst with ayas. it is important to note that the term verité, and the discussions of “truth” that many pioneers of the cinema verité form engage in, do not refer to presenting events exactly as they happened. in the words of canadian cinema verité pioneer wolf koenig: all documentary is theatre. it’s all manufactured. every cut is a lie. it isn’t really like that. those two shots were never next to each other in time that way. but you are telling a lie in order to tell the truth. (wintonick, 1999) in other words, cinema verité is not an exact representation of events as they unfolded in time and space, but an attempt to identify and film the truth in a way that the audience and the characters in the film deem trustworthy (aufderheide, 2007). another cinema verité pioneer, albert maysles, described it in this way: if you are worried about subjectivity and objectivity, you are afraid to film! so . . . you are going to be fair and end up with something that is truthful in that it would demand the respect of the person you are filming [emphasis added]. (wintonick, 1999) the spirit of maysles’ comment aligns well with the assertion that rigorous hermeneutic research has both a deep resonance with the experiences of the stakeholders and a strangeness or newness (koch, 1996). similarly, cinema verité filmmakers are attempting to create an artwork that is both recognizable and revelatory for the audience and the participants in the film. the goal is to relate the events and emotions of filmed participants in a way that cultivates both in them, and the viewer, a deeper understanding of those very events and emotions. another philosophical similarity is a shared ontology and epistemology. ontologically, both cinema verité filmmakers and hermeneutic researchers are anchored in realism and believe that lang journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 2 7 the life of a phenomenon exists beyond our interpretations of it (aufderheide, 2007; lang et al., 2020). however, both assert that it is impossible to remove, or “bracket,” the researcher or filmmaker to present an objective representation of a phenomenon (aufderheide, 2007; lang et al., 2020). cinema verité filmmakers recognize that the very process of capturing and editing footage removes objectivity and therefore do not attempt to disguise their involvement in the film (parkinson, 2012). similarly, ph researchers accept that the very act of formulating and asking questions about a phenomenon of interest influences the qualitative data collected (lang et al., 2020), and embrace the role that their preunderstandings play in the data analysis (interpretation) process (moules et al., 2015). in this way, both cinema verité filmmakers and hermeneutic researchers accept that a phenomenon exists beyond their experience of it (realist ontology) and reject the idea that they can access it objectively (subjectivist epistemology). there are other philosophical parallels that could be explored, but a cogent summary statement that encompasses the philosophical ethos of both cinema verité filmmaking and hermeneutic research is, “rather than finding or claiming truth, we attempt to stay true to something (the topic) and to interpret in such a way that is true of something (within the topic)” (moules et al., 2015, p. 175). or, in the words of the canadian documentary film pioneer michel brault, “you can’t claim to write the truth with a camera. what you can do is reveal something to your viewers” (wintonick, 1999). in both cinema verité filmmaking and hermeneutic research, truth is an event in which we actively participate to cultivate a deeper understanding of ourselves, others, and the world(s) we inhabit. parallels in praxis beyond the philosophical parallels of cinema verité filmmaking and hermeneutic research, the filming/editing and data generation/analysis practices are also similar. to begin with, both follow an inductive, reflexive, and active approach to filming/data generation. in hermeneutic research, this occurs in the unstructured interview format that encourages researchers to listen deeply and follow leads as they engage in the back-and-forth of conversation with a participant (moules et al., 2015). in cinema verité, the filmmaker often participates on screen and follows leads in real time, engaging with participants and asking questions that could help to reveal the subject matter on camera (i.e., “interviewing” participants about their experiences while still being engaged in the activity). both hermeneutic researchers and cinema verité filmmakers are not dispassionate observers but active participants in pursuit of understanding and meaning through reflective engagement with both the participants and the topic being explored. this requires a practice of “listening right behind your eyes . . . [meaning a] watchfulness, openness, and searching to find the truth in what the other is saying [or experiencing]” (moules et al., 2015, p. 94). the disciplined openness required to have the “experience of something emerging” (gadamer, 1993/2007, p. 207) and then following that lead, which is essential to both cinema verité filmmaking and hermeneutic research, is remarkably similar in praxis. the editing process of cinema verité films is also similar to the interpretive analysis and writing of hermeneutic research. a “transformation into structure” is an entirely apt description of both processes (moules et al. 2015, p. 126) with the story and interpretations slowly emerging from the video footage and interview transcripts through thoughtful, in-depth, intellectual, and emotional engagement. the editing process of cinema verité films is multi-staged and circular, lang journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 2 8 constantly moving between individual storylines and that of the film as a whole, a process which mirrors the hermeneutic circle of interpretive writing in hermeneutic research. furthermore, the editing process and the writing process is organized around particular moments that enliven understanding, not the frequency of an event, word, or phrase (moules et al., 2015; wintonick, 1999). indeed, in filmmaking, repetition is called cliché, and clichés do not enhance understanding of phenomena, they stifle it (mckee, 1997). interestingly, many early cinema verité filmmakers were influenced by the phrase camera-stylo (wintonick, 1999), translated as camera-as-pen, originally coined by french film critic alexandre astruc (1948/2009). this is a productive metaphor to summarize these parallels in praxis. in the same way that hermeneutic researchers cultivate interpretations of a phenomenon through (re)reading, (re)writing, and conversations with the research team, cinema verité filmmakers (re)watch and (re)edit as a team, utilizing the camera to pen their interpretations of the phenomenon. using their own unique yet related means of communication, the hermeneutic researcher interprets experience using the creative tools available in spoken and written language (i.e., etymology, metaphor, plurivocity, etc.) while the cinema verité filmmaker interprets experience by utilizing the aesthetic and creative tools available in filming and editing (i.e., framing, temporality, juxtaposition) to focus the audience’s gaze on moments that “speak.” in each case, cinema verité films and hermeneutic research do not simply “capture” phenomena on film or in writing, but set them free within it (moules et al., 2015). there are many more philosophical and practical parallels between cinema verité filmmaking and ph research that could be explored. the goal of this short exploration was to highlight that a congruency exists, and that using cinema verité filmmaking as a data generation tool in hermeneutic research may be an interesting and fruitful relationship to continue to explore. practitioners of both value the “experience of something emerging” (gadamer, 1993/2007, p. 207), and what emerged in the experience of both editing and writing about the film emerging horizons, is what will be explored in this series. dimming the lights to borrow a metaphor from the cinema experience, this editorial, up until this point, has been the intellectual equivalent of driving to the theatre, purchasing tickets and snacks, and watching the previews; it is now time for the main feature. dimming the lights is the universal signal used in cinemas around the world to quiet the audience. but the “quieting” that it signals goes beyond a simple reduction in auditory stimuli; it encourages a quieting of the mind, by putting aside other concerns and conversations, so that a story can be fully experienced. in other words, dimming the lights signals to the audience that it is time to alter their default mode of intellectual engagement with the world around them so that they can inhabit the lives of the characters on the screen and see the world afresh through their experiences. in the same way, an intellectual shift is required here by the reader as we transition to the interpretive articles that explore the ayas’ dst experiences in the film emerging horizons. at this juncture there will be a change in the style, tone, language, and structure of the writing. it is my hope that through these interpretive chapters the reader will be transported deeper into the lives and dst experiences of the ayas in the film. lang journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 2 9 to promote this shift in intellectual engagement, i suggest watching the film before reading further (a direct link is provided in footnote 2). at the beginning of the film, you will meet amanda, bethany, harmony, kelsey, derek, and kenzie. at the time of filming, amanda was a 35-year-old police officer and mother who was one-year post-diagnosis from non-hodgkin’s lymphoma. she wanted to share her story of having a cancer-induced abortion as a way to help other women who may be facing that same reality. bethany, also 35, was the furthest of the group from her initial cancer diagnosis of synovial sarcoma, which occurred 12 years prior. she felt like creating a digital story could be a marker in her cancer experience but was worried that no one else would understand or appreciate her story. harmony, a 32-year-old elementary school teacher, was back at work three years after her initial thyroid cancer diagnosis. she felt like there were aspects of her cancer experience that she had not explored or shared with anyone and thought a digital story could help her do just that. kelsey was diagnosed with acinic cell carcinoma (salivary gland cancer) and finished treatment a year prior to her participation in the film at the age of 27. she did not feel like she had a meaningful story to share and admittedly almost did not come to the first session because she was so nervous. derek, 36, is an environmental engineer and was the oldest participant. he was diagnosed with stage four hodgkin’s lymphoma six years prior to the dst workshop and was looking for a better way to share one particularly meaningful story from his cancer experience in a way that people could understand. finally, mckenzie (“kenzie”) is a paramedic who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia six years prior to the dst workshop at 15 years old. she had created a digital story with me while she was still in treatment and wanted to see if, or how, her cancer story had changed five years later. of these six participants, two had never met another aya cancer survivor before (harmony and amanda), and none of them knew each other. through the process of creating their digital story they were able to craft meaning out of their challenging cancer experience and cultivate a deeper understanding of the lessons embedded in their own stories. last, a story about the importance of stories i had a unique experience of déjà vu after a recent online screening of emerging horizons. one participant stayed on the zoom call for a long moment after the session concluded before she turned on her camera, and after brief hesitation and prompting from me, said, i have read a lot of research papers about digital storytelling and have even used digital stories in my work, but until watching your film i don’t think i really understood the emotional energy it takes for people to make a story like this. they are sharing their soul with us! i don’t think i will ever watch a digital story the same again. i feel honored to be invited daily into the most meaningful moments of people’s lives as dst facilitator, and i have benefited immensely from their candor and trust. in the dedication section of my thesis i wrote, “to all the aya cancer survivors and supporters i have met: if i have any wisdom to offer the world, it has come from the stories and experiences you have shared with me.” it is my hope that by watching the film and reading the interpretations that emerged from it, wisdom is gleaned, and horizons changed. if this occurs even to a fractional amount of my own learning throughout my phd studies, it will be well worth the effort. lang journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 editorial 2 10 acknowledgements this series would not be possible without the steadfast support, supervision, encouragement, and skills of many wonderful people. as my supervisor, dr. catherine laing guided the entire process of my phd from beginning to end, reviewing research proposals, early versions of the film, and many chapter drafts, continually offering invaluable feedback that kept this project on course and moving forward. dr. nancy moules and dr. deborah mcleod lent their wisdom and expertise to the conceptualization of this project and were vital members of my interpretive community that enhanced the rigour and salience of both the film and the written thesis. all six participants in this study, amanda, harmony, kelsey, derek, kenzie, and bethany, were incredibly open and honest with their thoughts, experiences, and personal cancer stories, which ultimately enabled the in-depth exploration of the dst process in this thesis. there was also the amazing film crew, joel, evan, phil, alex, jill, justan, les, and louw, who captured the dst workshop with such tact and aesthetic awareness. to everyone listed here, this project is as much your accomplishment as it is mine. thank you. funding michael lang’s phd studies and research were funded by the canadian institutes of health research fredrick banting and charles best doctoral award and the eyes high doctoral recruitment award from the university of calgary. conflict of interest statement michael lang is the owner/operator of two private business related to dst. in his involvement with mike lang stories (mikelangstories.com) he works directly with researchers, healthcare systems, charities, and other 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(1990). narrative means to therapeutic ends. w. w. norton. wintonick, p. (director). (1999). cinema verité: defining the moment [film]. canadian national film board. https://www.nfb.ca/film/cinema_verite_defining_the_moment/ zebrack, b. (2011). psychological, social, and behavioral issues for young adults with cancer. cancer, 117(s10), 2289-2294. https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.26056 1 “grand rounds” are a form of continuing medical education used in most hospitals and larger clinics. it is a regularly scheduled (i.e., weekly or monthly) invited presentation on topics of interest that often cross disciplinary boundaries. most cancer treatment centres have weekly grand rounds to which all staff are invited. 2 the film and associated digital stories can be viewed in their entirety here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=plrt4tm_ihjjty5n0jdlhakk1qssgbh6nl 3 this definition of the aya age range endorsed by the national institute of cancer has also been recognized by the canadian partnership against cancer (cpac) aya task force. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-013-0272-z https://www.nfb.ca/film/cinema_verite_defining_the_moment/ https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.26056 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=plrt4tm_ihjjty5n0jdlhakk1qssgbh6nl microsoft word williamson part 3 final.docx corresponding author: w. john williamson, phd email: john.williamson@cssd.ab.ca journal of applied hermeneutics april 7, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery part three: all hell could break loose w. john williamson abstract this follows the events described in parts one and two of this narrative. max hunter, a west coast private detective, still conducting an investigation to find the educational category of slow learners, explores portrayals of slow learners in popular media, learns more about his client, john williamson, and investigates the history of slow learner as an educational label, and the history of programming for slow learners in the province of alberta. the case grows more dangerous with each clue max unearths. keywords hermeneutics, education, slow learners, popular media, disability studies, history for jacob xv it was the first day of school for the new semester. i was at the back of the class. at the front of the room, a featureless black cloud, in vaguely human form, was shouting “max hunter” over williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 2 and over again, but the affirmation i was expected to give stuck in my throat and the angry cloud just kept shouting my name. waking from my dream, i realized that the cloud was the door to my room and, in fact, there were two voices shouting my name and pounding on the door. i shouted, semi coherently, that i would be right there. i looked at the clock beside my bed and realized i had overslept. i was ten minutes late for my breakfast appointment with jacques and michel. i must have forgotten to set my alarm clock in my drugged exhaustion the previous night. that wasn’t like me. i staggered to the door and peered through the peephole. two figures in suits bad enough to make it obvious they were plain clothes cops glared back at me. i opened the door and they walked into my room. “are you max hunter?” the first asked unnecessarily. two beady eyes, sunk into a round coldreddened face, glared at me. i replied to the affirmative. “mr. hunter,” the other began. he was a full head shorter than me, and two shorter than his large, round partner, but he looked wiry and alert. “i am detective gimlet, and this is detective bennet. we are looking into the disappearance of two renowned professors.” i must have shot him a baffled glance. gimlet continued, “it’s well short of the twenty-four hours we normally wait for missing persons investigations but the circumstances are very strange. the conference organizers who called us said that they had been asked by the professors to juggle their speaking schedules. they said they had been approached by a local educator and asked if they would assist in some sort of mystery that he and a detective he hired were investigating. they were both interested in helping, and arrangements were made for them to take the afternoon and early evening to assist in the investigation.” i couldn’t stand any longer. i asked if i could sit on the bed. they exchanged glances and gimlet gestured his consent. bennet took over from where his partner left off. “they had both promised to attend a celebration later that night, but neither of them showed up. the organizers were worried. both had keynote addresses later today. the organizers tried to reach them in their rooms this morning. they did not respond to phone calls. the organizers contacted the hotel staff who knocked on their doors, and eventually opened up their rooms. they concluded that they had not returned to them since the previous day.” “what does all this have to do with me?” i asked, playing dumb. gimlet now regarded me with contemptuous patience. i’d changed categories in his thinking after my last remark. “what we do have,” he said pedantically, “is a 911 call made after a black peugeot was seen colliding with a pedestrian of your description outside a restaurant yesterday afternoon and a security camera video of the same vehicle driving you up to the front entrance of this hotel last night.” “where did you go with them after the collision?” bennet demanded. “for medical attention, and then to another diner to talk about the case,” i replied. i didn’t want them liking me for an arson charge too. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 3 gimlet asked me what the name of the diner was. i said i was woozy from the medications and couldn’t recall. bennet asked what the case i was investigating involved and i said that was between me and my client. he followed up by asking if anything suspicious had happened so far, something that might help; i said it was the dullest case i’d ever worked and i expected to be leaving the city soon. just then bennet got a call on his mobile phone. he stepped back a few steps and turned sideways. he stood up straighter and mumbled a few questions, and, nodded out of habit despite being involved in a phone conversation when he got the answers. “they just pulled a black peugeot out of the bow river.” gimlet informed me they were hauling me in as a material witness. i was given five minutes to get dressed, a painful process. a grape-colored bruise occupied about as much space on my leg as canada does on the map of the continent. every step filled me with searing pain, but i refused any help on the walk from my hotel to the car. after a short drive and a hobbling walk through a parking lot, i was brought by the two detectives into a perfectly square brick building and seated in a small, painfully bright interview room with my back to the door. the detectives remained standing, glaring at me. i heard lumbering steps and then the door opened behind me. a bear of a man plodded in and walked to the other side of the small table. he was even taller than bennet. he looked likely to burst out of his brown slacks and shirt. his red tie looked more like a leash on his tree stump of a neck. his bulk suggested a layer of fat concealing a thicker layer of muscle underneath. he had gnarly, strong-looking hands, and thick forearms burst out of rolled-up sleeves. as he leaned into my face, i got a generous view of a red nose full of burst capillaries, and more hair jutting out between his ears and nostrils than on his head. he dismissed gimlet and bennet who exchanged more glances on the way out. i wondered what that meant. he introduced himself as captain trent. “i don’t have much use for philosophers,” he growled, “but no one murders visiting intellectuals in my city and gets away with it. you may confess now.” this wasn’t good. i thought i might not make it out of the room with enough sense left to finish the investigation if i wasn’t careful, i’d seen his type before. “i’d like to cooperate,” i stalled, “but i want to make sure my statement gets recorded right. can we get someone from the public defender’s office to help us out?” something large whistled through the air and nearly took my head off. from the floor, i saw trent rub his knuckles. my ear rang as i pulled myself painfully back into the chair. a little seed of rage hatched inside me and began to grow, but i needed to stay cool, i told myself. “why did you do it?” trent demanded. i changed my mind about disclosing our presence at the fire. maybe if he had to reckon with my statements related to another crime, one with its own investigator, he’d be more cautious about how he handled me. “i didn’t do anything. i don’t know where jacques and michel went after but where i last saw them was at the disability research institute on the outskirts of town. the williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 4 one that is built into a giant foothill, or at least it was before last night. it burned down when we were visiting it. probably arson. we made it out. they dropped me off at my hotel.” he considered this with growing incredulity. “i’ve never heard of the place or the fire.” i wasn’t sure if i believed him or not. “and i think you’re stalling.” his lack of curiosity was troubling. i was in for it no matter what, i thought. the best i could do was go down protecting the case. trent then asked me who my client was and, figuring he knew already from what the other two detectives said, i told him, “williamson.” he asked me what williamson had hired me to investigate. i thought it might harm the investigation irreparably if i told him that much, so i braced myself and i said, “fat, lazy cops with hairy fists who ask lame questions and are too illiterate to know where their city’s museums are.” it wasn’t one of my best cracks, but it nevertheless made him think for a minute. then he reached down, grabbed the leg of my chair and yanked it towards himself throwing me backwards to the floor again. i landed awkwardly on my bruised leg. my body felt impossibly heavy as i got to my feet again, but i tried to hide it so he wouldn’t have the satisfaction. he reached into a drawer on the table and pulled out a pen and a pad of paper. he slammed the items down in front of me. “that’s enough with the games,” he warned. “i want a detailed statement of everywhere you’ve been and everything you’ve done since you arrived here. start writing.” resigned to my fate, with surprisingly steady hands i did a quick sketch of a pair of lips with a zipper fastening them shut; it was sort of juvenile but i had been spending a lot of time in schools lately and that was the image that came to mind. then i wrote out a short rebuke for him two words, seven letters. then, below this, i wrote, “i want a lawyer.” trent watched with a bemused expression as i composed my statement. when i was finished he remarked, “you really are a slow learner.” he got out of his chair, stood over me, rolled his right shoulder a little and planted his feet. i was beginning to wonder if i should say some final prayers just in case there was someone up there to hear them, or if i should stay hard–boiled to my last breath. then a curious thing happened. trent appeared to be moved by some other consideration. he relaxed his posture and even sniggered a little, sounding disagreeably like air draining out of a wet inner tube. he picked up the phone in the interrogation room and summoned the two detectives who brought me in. then he told them to lock me up in their holding cell and see to it that i was transferred as soon as possible to the city’s remand center to await charges. i wasn’t sure if it was the power of prayer that saved me, since i never quite got around to it, but a wave of relief washed over me and i felt for a second like i was floating. it was followed by a wave of hurt as injuries new and old formed an army and hit me all at once, and then things got hazy. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 5 xvi i remember little of my time in the holding cell. i must have been concussed again. after a while i was rounded up, handcuffed, and placed on a bus to take me down to the remand center. it must have been a slow day for crime because i was thankfully the only occupant. it was a large, spider shaped institution, almost completely grey on the outside. i was led, limping, inside. the color palette continued, it was like being inside a storm cloud, minus the humidity. grey floors, grey ceiling, and grey bars. i was given grey clothes and grey bedding and taken to my cell. it was reasonably clean. it had a grey cot, a metallic grey toilet, and a concrete floor that maintained the drab pattern. i laid on the bed. my leg and head throbbed in a two/four rhythm. at first i only dozed and hurt, but my thoughts soon came into tighter focus. i considered the new companions who had assisted me on this case and saved my life. where were they? were they safe? could i do anything to assist them? i considered the case so far. williamson had hired me to find the slow learners, or rather the proper place for the educational category of slow learners. it had been difficult during my investigation so far to keep this distinction straight, and i had often found myself trying to pursue actual students who might be considered slow learners instead. i had been to two schools and talked to five teachers, including williamson, and a small class of students who may or may not have been slow learners. i had found out quite a bit about these knowledge and employability courses. then there was the museum. i couldn’t quite piece together how what i had learned there fit into this investigation. the bleak displays of exclusion, confinement, and eugenics seemed a dark and haunting legacy for any current practice that sought to label and categorize students even for educational purposes. my meditations were interrupted by two voices. i saw that they belonged to a uniformed guard and a prisoner coming toward my cell. it wasn’t the sort of hostile conversation i might have expected. they were debating and laughing amiably about football, the guard extolling the virtues of the rules of the canadian league and prisoner arguing that america’s national football league had superior rules and entertainment value. with the press of a controller, the prisoner wheeled himself into the cell and actually thanked the officer as he slid the bars closed. i guessed the new prisoner to be in his fifties from his medium length grey hair and neatly trimmed grey beard. he studied the contents of the cell. “that’s what i’m talking about,” he noted approvingly as he gestured to something that had escaped my attention; the hand railing along the wall beside the toilet. “universal design for incarceration. you don’t see many cells like this.” i shifted to a sitting position on my cot to better regard my new cellmate. a spasm of pain shot through my leg, but then went away. i didn’t have anything to add to his comment about the cell’s accessibility; despite my usually keen observational skills. i wondered why i hadn't noticed the railing. instead, i asked him what he was in for. i got one of my assistants to chain me to a chair in the hall of the legislature. there’s been some deep cuts to disability services in this province. i came up to help out in the protest.”1 1 see climenhaga (2013). when, in 2013, the provincial government of alberta cut 42 million dollars from the budget of funds that support the community living of adults with intellectual disabilities (p.d.d.), 1000 people with intellectual disabilities and other concerned citizens protested outside the provincial legislature in edmonton, with smaller protests outside the premier’s constituency office in calgary, as williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 6 “and this was the result,” i stated, referring to his incarceration. despite my efforts to use my time wisely going over the case, i was still disturbed to be locked up. it bothered me he didn’t seem disturbed as well. “it’s no big deal. i did five years of hard time as a teenager at a school called the sam houston institute of technology, i like to call it shit for short, for the crime of muscular dystrophy. this is a luxury compared to that.” “how can going to a special school be worse than getting arrested and sent here?” i asked. “look, i’ve been arrested for civil disobedience twenty other times before. the cops are usually pretty gentle with cripples, it looks really bad if they’re otherwise. in a way, cops are more scared of protesting cripples than of the mafia and the chinese triads combined. compared to the sadistic therapist who tried to teach me to walk at shit, the guards at places like this are like big teddy bears.” his usage of the word ‘cripple’ bothered me. i tried to say so. “i’m a p.i. investigating a case that has to do with disability…,” i began. “you must be very skilled,” he interrupted, referring i think to where i had ended up. i felt a flash of anger. my cellmate was a smart ass.2 “and,” i persevered, “i’m starting to learn about how, with all the negative assumptions they carry, how damaging some of the old-fashioned words for disability can be. i’m not sure you should be throwing words like ‘cripple’ around.” “who the fuck are you to tell me i can’t say cripple?” my cell mate retorted, showing me, to my consternation, none of the collegial manners that he’d shown the guard. “whoa there gunner,” i shot back, “i’m on your side here. i’m investigating the disappearance of a group of sort of disabled students, slow learners. i’ve been all around the disability community. i’ve been to the disability museum. i’ve seen the pain all this sorting and exclusion has caused disabled people. i can’t tell you how sorry i felt for them, how poorly things were handled, how angry it all made me.” well as in red deer, lethbridge and medicine hat. max’s fictionalized fellow prisoner was a part of this protest. 2 this character is a fictionalized version of the satirical blogger smart ass cripple, who is himself an exaggeratedly autobiographical literary alter ego of journalist mike ervin. i have attempted to replicate the sarcasm and artful profanity of ervin’s literary creation as well as his (smart ass cripple’s) expressed views on certain disability issues, directly quoting on occasion. i thought it would be illuminating for max to talk to this character. though ervin gave me his blessings for this meeting of characters, i did not interview him on his views on slow learners. what follows is extrapolation only, based on his writing in the blog. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 7 “how what was handled?” my cell mate was glaring at me. “you know, the…” suddenly, i didn’t know what to say. “the burden?” he insinuated. “that’s not what i said,” i protested. “well, what else does one handle? i am a burden to society,” he leered. “i once added up all the taxpayer costs for my assistants, my pit crew to help me take a leak, sit on the crapper, get dressed, and brush my teeth …”3 “i don’t need to hear about this,” i remarked. “and i don’t need your sympathy, or help from anyone who thinks i need to be handled.” coming to the understanding that maybe my cellmate did have a point about how i was explaining myself, i did something i rarely do. i apologized. he accepted this and we shook hands and exchanged introductions. he asked me to call him smart ass cripple or sac for short, which i found odd until he explained that was the handle he went by on his blog. taking him as something of an authority in issues of disability rights, based on what he’d already told me about his history as an activist, i asked him if i told him the story of my case more slowly if he might be able to give me some advice. i began to tell him about the case of the slow learners. after i told sac about the separate classes i’d seen for students labelled as slow learners and students labelled as having intellectual disabilities, he interrupted me by admitting “i don’t know much about this category of kids you’re talking about,” and then went on to say “though i did write on my blog about some of the other state-run schools for students with disabilities. my favorite was the massachusetts school for idiotic and feeble-minded youth. i wondered if anyone in the outside community would offer a venue for their prom. imagine the holiday inn marquee, “welcome prom for the feeble-minded.”4 sac’s voice rose in fantastical speculation and, though still feeling a little stung from my prior scolding, i grinned despite myself. it was a relief hearing this disgusting label that had informed so much of the oppression i’d learned about in the museum being wielded so sardonically. it drained a little of the poison out. i directed the conversation back from this amusing tangent and took sac through the rest of the case. when i had finished i had explained williamson’s original desperate call and all my subsequent travels, injuries, discoveries, and suspicions. “wow,” he remarked. “that’s quite an adventure. and you say you still can’t find the slow learners?” “not really. i’ve come close to finding them several times, but every time i think i have them they slip through my fingers. none of the teachers i talked to gave me a clear sense of where exactly the slow learners were. i came pretty close in the classroom i visited, but in talking to the 3 smart ass cripple, (january 30, 2012) 4 smart ass cripple (january 23, 2012) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 8 kids i realized that, technically, everyone in this class was probably in the intellectual disability category and technicalities aside, they seemed too complicated to all be called slow learners. plus a lot of the things they said seemed pretty apt, not slow at all. i thought i’d found traces in the museum, but disability was understood so differently back then it was hard to get a clear sense.” “understood?” sac interjected. “is that how you still see it despite all your experiences in this fcase? disability isn’t just understood by society; it’s created by society.” “what?” i blurted. “that doesn’t make any sense to me. disabilities are in people.” “are you so sure about that?” he asked. “for too long we’ve focused on the medical model, calling a disability a defect, a problem in the individual. this leads to obsessions with curing the disability, excluding the people with disabilities, making all kinds of decisions on their behalf and at best a charity mentality in those who think they are trying to help us. these defects in thinking are societal.”5 i thought of my travels through the museum. looking at the situation through the lens my cell mate had just provided me, i realized that in every exhibit i saw it was difficult to separate the actual disability from the (usually negative) cultural response to it. the shifting ways disability was understood over time was good evidence of this point. the medieval idea of idiot was different from the categorical construct of the same name the early twentieth century iq pioneers had come up with, and the learning disabled child was a very recent invention altogether. i still thought he was taking things too far though. “i see your point about culture,” i offered in partial concession, “but disabled people have disabilities.” that sounded lame and circular as soon as it came out of my mouth, and, in fact, he rolled his eyes as soon as i said it. sac sighed, and then went into an explanation. “well, some people have some functional impairment. they need help, though it’s not just them. all people regardless of disability need help with some things if you think about it, even though most of us are too individualistic to admit it. i once read, “what is universal in life, if there are universals, is the experience of the limitations of the body.”6 we all get along by using tools to compensate for our physical limits, living together in communities, and helping each other out. but the forms of help cripples, for example, require has been a symbol of defect, an excuse for exclusion. institutions have often failed to acknowledge that we need to realize the same basic rights for participation that everyone else gets. they have deemed us incapable of participation or deemed our inclusion too expensive. or they have said we have to be cured before we can participate. i, for one, have nightmares about getting cured. i make my living telling cripple jokes on my blog.” i ignored the wisecrack and thought about the rest for a minute. remembering that slow learner wasn’t a disability category, i still thought i saw that medical model he was talking about at work in the definitions of slow learner i’d read. “i can see that in my current case,” i admitted. “slow learners are excluded from regular classes because of their so-called ‘slowness.’ maybe the remedial classes they are placed in try to cure their slowness so they can participate in regular schooling. but is that a bad thing?” 5 smith (2010, p. 8) 6 davis (2002, p. 32) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 9 before sac could reply, i added a broader question, “if some disabilities are curable or treatable what’s wrong with funding and researching and working on cures and treatments?” “well, nothing in one sense. some of these things might be required for a person with a particular disability to participate in society at all or even to survive. but you always have to ask who the treatment is actually for. as for cures, the same thing can be said. sure some conditions can be cured but around twenty percent of the population in the country where i live have diagnosed disabilities. does this mean that any so-called uncured person in this group is an incomplete human being? i remember, jerry lewis once held up a kid with muscular dystrophy during a televised charity telethon and said, ‘god goofed up – it’s time for us to fix his mistakes.’7 what about curing society from a particular disability by getting rid of people with that disability? like curing deafness and as a result getting rid of deaf culture or curing dwarfism and down syndrome by preventing these people from ever being through genetic screening. i once wrote something like ‘i’ve always been tempted to form an exclusive cripple fraternity called coulda beena borted.’8 the last part of his rant had me cringing and smiling all at once. it was fascinating listening to sac, i thought he would have made a pretty good detective. still, somewhere during our conversation, i wondered if we’d strayed too far from the thread of what i asked for his help about. “ok, i get the medical model stuff now,” i said, “but do you think any of this might help me find slow learners?” “it might help you better understand the ways in which schools create slow learners,” he asserted, “and how to transcend these definitions and consider what their inclusion and participation might actually look like in a school setting. i’m no expert but i know what it doesn’t look like… shit, the sam houston institute of technology i was telling you about earlier. participation, inclusion for me, [means] when you know if you need equipment, you can get equipment you can get wheelchairs, when you know that you can get accessibility in your environment, that your personal and public transportation is accessible and available, when you need the assistance of others in terms of attendants and you know that whatever you need in terms of physical assistance to get through your day that it’s going to be there and you won’t have to be broke to get it, when you know that those things are in place and you can complete your day successfully with the help of others and call your own shots and accomplish what you want to accomplish, when all that support is there, people that i’ve seen tend to view their disabilities as no big deal.9 find a way for whatever these kids struggle with to become no big deal to them.” suddenly sac abandoned his eloquence and demanded, “why the fuck are you looking at me like that?” 7 see richardson (producer and director, 2005). in addition to depicting ervin’s description of this moment in one of jerry lewis’s labour day telethons for the muscular dystrophy association, the the kids are all right film chronicles ervin’s journey from being one of “jerry’s kids”, the ‘adorable’ children with md portrayed as objects of pity in the telethons to one of “jerry’s orphans,” a group of former jerry’s kids who, as adults, began to protest the telethons as demeaning and unhelpful. 8 smart ass cripple (july 2, 2012) 9 richardson (2005) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 10 the ongoing novelty of this case for me was not good for the poker face i try to keep as a key investigative tool. i was feeling a strong current of admiration at sac’s last statements, and my countenance must have betrayed me. why this angered him i had no idea. god, he was touchy, either that or he was just enjoying making me squirm. however i offended him now, i didn’t want to aggravate the situation further by saying anything. maybe i’d overestimated how much common ground we’d negotiated. he glared at me for a full two minutes. finally he said, “there’s something else you need to learn if you want to avoid making things even worse for slow learners than they are already.” i asked him what it was, and all he said was, “later.” we lapsed into a long silence. i wondered what i had done to end our conversation on such a sour note and what this new thing he thought i needed to know so badly was. after a while, sac stopped glaring at me and his eyes glazed over in deep contemplation. i wondered if that was the same sort of look i had when i was starting to put a case together. xvii a buzzer rang signifying, as a prisoner who walked by told us, a couple of hours of recreational time. “follow me,” sac ordered, jamming the controller on his motorized wheel chair forward. he was out the door and half way down one of the halls before he observed i wasn’t with him and he circled back and waited as i struggled out of my cot and began to walk gingerly in the direction he had initially gone. he accompanied and accommodated me, now manipulating his controls for minimal speed. i wished i had the scooter i used at the museum but then i realized it might be good to get some strength back into my leg. i thought i might have to kick someone with it before the case was done. “what the fuck happened to you?” sac asked as i hobbled down the hall beside him. “choking, wrestling, falling, peugeot accident, smoke inhalation, interrogation,” i listed. “all that trouble from looking for a category of children in schools,” he mused. “more dangerous than you might think,” i asserted. “you must be one hell of detective,” he mused again. i let the smart ass have that one. he turned right then and i followed. we entered a small but surprisingly well stocked prison library. as soon as we got into the library sac zoomed over to a computer station, and, as i limped over to catch up with him, began to enter the demographic information that would allow him to access the system. he then clicked through a multi section user agreement to log in. a couple of guards williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 11 stationed at the back of the library regarded all this warily. i hoped he wasn’t planning on going on any sites that would be harmful for his conduct record at the institution. “what’s your favorite helen keller joke?” sac asked me. i couldn’t think of any but said that i’d definitely heard some. in a similar vein, sac began an internet search of “slow learner jokes.” this was the first one that came up. why does sea world have a seafood restaurant i’m halfway through my fish burger and i realize, ‘oh my god... i could be eating a slow learner!’10 “that’s not very helpful,” i said. “it’s not even the right species.” then i remembered all that social darwinism stuff and i wasn’t so sure. he pulled up another one: a teacher called upon the classroom to make sentences with words previously chosen. the teacher smiled when pete, a slow learner, raised his hand to participate during the challenge of making a sentence with the words defeat, defense, deduct, and detail. pete stood thinking for a while, all eyes focused on him while his classmates awaited his reply. smiling, he proudly said, ‘defeat of deduct went over defense before detail.’11 “that’s not really slow either,” i said. “this kid used what little homespun vocabulary he had better than anyone in class might have used the real words. if anything he was too practical. besides, how much can a couple of stupid jokes really mean?” “you know what freud said about jokes,” sac offered. i found my poker face again for that comment. i had gone to college. i even went to some classes. but i only sort of knew. i knew more clearly that the throwing and receiving of wisecracks on the streets i roamed was a complex martial art that one’s credibility as an operative depended on mastering. sac widened the search to ‘slow learner insults.’ we came to the example i remembered from the minister of education in alberta, the one that i’d read about in the restaurant. he had used ‘slow learner,’ applied to himself as a sort of reverse insult to accuse his opponent of being obscure.12 i told sac that in my own practice, i sometimes pulled the columbo act too,13 pretending not to understand things i understood well in order to lure suspects i was questioning into revealing more information than they wanted to. i’d recalled saying, “forgive me for being such a slow learner, but….” before launching into an inquiry that was fatal to the alibi of some cutie who figured he was too smart to get caught. “clever,” sac remarked. i couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. 10 “why does sea world…” (1997) 11 “a teacher called upon the classroom…” (n.d.) 12 alberta teachers’ association (2009) 13 stndrds79 (2010) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 12 next we read about how, after president obama had twice told american corporations and that going to las vegas for conventions was an irresponsible move during the recent economic crisis, the mayor of las vegas called him a ‘slow learner.’ in the mayor’s opinion, obama had failed to realize the impact his words might have on the city’s tourist industry.14 “how can ‘slow learner’ be missing in schools like your client says it is? it looks like it’s all over the place everywhere else,” sac remarked, echoing a mystery williamson had earlier identified. “i didn’t believe him about schools at first either,” i said, “but there’s some evidence to support the claim. it really isn’t out there very much in schools. at least not in the open.” “what are schools then, cultural fallout shelters? how can it be out in broader society, but not in schools?” sac demanded. “that’s an interesting question and i don’t know the answer,” i admitted, “but that’s not what i’m trying to find out. i’m looking for slow learners in schools, period. how is all this pop culture stuff going to help with that?” i didn’t want to spend the whole recreation period reading jokes and quotes and be left with nothing to take away to help me with the investigation. “okay, okay,” sac relented. “i’ll get to the point. i just find this all kind of interesting. let me show you the main thing i wanted you to see.” with that, he searched for, found, and opened a scene from the film forrest gump.15 the scene he had selected depicted some i.q. politics; that is, a mother’s parental advocacy ‘saving’ the titular slow learner who had tested on the cusp of having a full-fledged intellectual disability from being placed in a special education classroom. the bell curve that i’d been learning so much about made an appearance when forrest’s borderline intellectual functioning was dramatically illustrated as the principal patronizingly pointed to what ‘normal’ cognitive functioning was, and then pointed to the bottom margin of an oversized page to show forrest’s score. williamson had described a very similar practice of an educator or psychologist pointing to a spot on the bell curve while explaining the results of intelligence testing to a child’s parents. forrest’s mom initially inquired about what ‘normal’ really meant, but when she saw she wasn’t getting anywhere she took a less theoretical approach by having sex with the principal in exchange for his reversing the placement. i went and saw the film when it came out, i thought it wasn’t bad though maybe a bit maudlin, but i had forgotten about that scene. “now check this out!” sac demanded, opening a google preview of a section of a popular novel. the book was called lottery. in the section sac showed me, perry, the protagonist, was saved from being diagnosed with an intellectual disability when his grandmother said he was too sick to be at his best on the day he’d written his first, low scoring, i.q. test.16 she demanded a retest and prevailed over the protestations of school district personnel. perry scored one point higher 14 coolican (2010, para. 14) 15 i actually viewed dvds of both films and read a hard copy of the novel mentioned in this section, sac’s internet search is a plot construct of convenience. 16 wood (2004, p. 35) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 13 and avoided the categorical diagnosis of intellectually disabled. sac then scrolled back to the very first sentence of the book lottery. “my name is perry l. crandall and i am not retarded.”17 then he showed me some parts where perry and his friends repeatedly corrected anyone who confused his slowness with an intellectual disability. next he pointed out a part where perry read about a convicted murderer on death row who had the opportunity to mount a legal defense of incapacity based on an i.q. in the sixties, but who chose to remain on death row instead of publicizing his disability.18 “i get it,” i said. “being a slow learner is depicted as better than having an intellectual disability. i already knew about this hierarchy. of course it appears in books and films.” “it’s not that simple,” sac said. “look how lottery and forrest gump emphasize how narrowly each protagonist qualifies as normal or non-disabled. perry escaped the diagnosis of disability by a single point and forrest gets to be non-disabled because his mother looks hot to the perverted arbiter in charge of deciding such things. and even though they are not technically disabled, their being slow is still shown as a pretty sad state a lot of the time.” he advanced to a scene when forrest was informed by his on again/off again love interest jenny that they’ve had a child together. he tearfully asked, “is he smart, or is he like,” before proving unable to finish his statement verbally and pointing nervously to himself. then, he showed me a part in lottery where perry tried to do his laundry and house cleaning by himself for the first time after his grandmother who used to help him with these things passed away. he ended up flooding the house and bursting out in tears. “and when it isn’t sad, being slow is goddamn funny, i mean in the laughing-at sense.” showed me another scene from forrest gump. this time forrest was part of the collegiate all-american football team. he was being honored at the white house. he failed to fully grasp the gravity of the situation but was impressed by the free food and beverages. he drank fifteen free dr. pepper soft drinks. then when greeting president kennedy, forrest blurted, “i gotta pee.” “hilarious,” remarked sac flatly. and then typed another search term into the computer. this one opened a film called being there that i’d seen as a much younger man.19 i vaguely recalled it was about somebody named ‘chance’, a middle-aged ‘slow’ person whose whole sheltered existence had consisted of gardening and watching television. he got cast out into the real world when his wealthy benefactor died and chance was evicted from the mansion. in the scene sac played for me, chance, when confronted by a group of african-american muggers, took out his television remote control, pointed it at a mugger, and tried to change the channel away from the unpleasant scene in front of him. he was surprised when the muggers remained present. “that’s a good one,” sac commented. “racist too.” 17 ibid. (p. 1) 18 ibid. (p. 34) 19 ashby & braunsberg (1979) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 14 “i get it, i get it,” i insisted to sac, “but why so many examples? i already know that the label provokes feelings of ridicule and superiority. many of the iq scientists i saw in the museum practically jeered at anyone they considered to have less than normal intelligence in their writing.” “it gets worse,” sac warned me. then he opened footage from forrest gump on the computer again and showed me a bunch of scenes in short succession. these were all very different than the buffoon-type scenes we’d just watched and i wondered why sac had a problem with them. forrest was a private in the army amazing his drill sergeant with his obedience and his ability to assemble his rifle in record time. forrest, in soldier garb, was embracing jenny, who was clad in a flowing hippy-style dress, in front of the washington monument during an anti-war protest, symbolizing a moment of peace between the two factions, as the crowd cheered. forrest was inspiring john lennon to write the lyrics to imagine. forrest was sporting long hair and a beard and running across america for some reason. “jesus in nikes,” sac quipped. then he showed me some passages from lottery again. his face was contorted with disgust as he scrolled though the pages. in the scenes sac pointed out, perry had won millions in a lottery but was besieged by greedy relations who were after his fortune. perry, in a moment of clarity, gave away his fortune, not because he was duped, but as an act of free will that seemed wiser and wiser as the novel progressed. despite their manipulations, the dysfunctional relations really did need the money more than he did, and his act of generosity cleansed his life of their demands and interference. sac ripped the book out of my hand and opened footage from being there on the computer again. he shot through a bunch of scenes where chance was talking to people, laying down a ‘simple brand of wisdom’ on every one he talked to, except that he didn’t know he was being wise at all. all he was doing was making literal statements about gardening that everyone misread as brilliant aphorisms about the economy and politics. in the end, he was being considered as a midterm replacement for the president. in the last scene, inexplicably, he walked on water. “look!” sac said. “he’s a slow learner jesus too!” and then he threw up his hands. one of the guards looked at us suspiciously. “i don’t get it,” i complained. “what’s your problem? i mean it’s all a bit cheesy but these are all positive scenes. how can this be worse than the ridicule in all those other parts?” “yeah, but it’s all this superhero shit. there’s even a word for it in the disability community the supercrip stereotype.20 i need that like i need a hole in the head. the same kind of thing happens in real life stories, the sort of inspiration porn the media always shows about people with disabilities. i was in the audience of an oprah episode one time, i wrote about it on my blog. she did an inspirational piece on a woman with no arms. she was driving a car with her feet, changing her baby’s diapers with her feet, doing with her feet everything the fully-limbed do with their hands.”21 20 martiniello (2009) 21 smart ass cripple (january 21, 2011) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 15 “but that is impressive,” i argued. “why shouldn’t a story like that be celebrated?” “because how are you supposed to convince people you want to live an ordinary life like everyone else when they’re of the mindset that everything you do, ordinary shit like eating breakfast, is heroic? that’s worse than the jokes. whatever you do, don’t make these slow learners appear as heroes. they’d be better off staying lost.” and with that, i finally understood why my look of admiration back in our cell had angered him so much. i thought williamson probably felt similarly when, in addition to saying straightforwardly negative things about the students he worked with, people sometimes described the students and their struggles in similarly overwrought ways. i also suspected williamson would object to anyone depicting him as especially heroic for working with these students when, in fact, he told me he enjoyed it and preferred these duties to the “regular” teaching he had done previously. playing devil’s advocate though, after a respectful pause, i began to protest that i’d read about how people with disabilities were sometimes regarded with awe, like symbols of grace in earlier cultures and about how the mad and the palace fools always got the best line in shakespeare. sac just waved me off. “the kind of shit i just showed you is not that. and even if it was, a time-honored stereotype is still a stereotype,” he insisted. i wasn’t sure i agreed, but i didn’t say anything. i didn’t see how arguing this point would be helpful for slow learners. he sighed and said, “that’s all i got. i don’t know what else to tell you, i’m no expert. i hope you find these slow learners, or actually like i said, maybe i don’t. from what you’ve told me about the way things have gone until now, i’m not sure finding them will benefit them much. maybe you should keep it to yourself if you find them. have you considered that?” i admitted that i hadn’t. i said i wasn’t sure how my paying client would feel about this suggestion, but i didn’t always do what my clients said when issues of justice were involved. he nodded. a buzzer rang for head count and we put the items back on a return cart and made our way back to the cell. the walk took a while with my injury and our having to fight our way through the rest of the prisoners returning to their cells. we fell to talking of other things, none of which i remember, but i remember it as pleasant despite the throbbing in my leg. i was appreciative of sac’s advice and i hoped it would help with the case, but as we neared our cell, i remembered that if i really wanted to find the slow learners i had to get back on the outside to do it. xviii when we got back, trent was standing in our cell, like a bear that had taken over a cave. a shiver crawled slowly down my spine, like a tarantula on a sunday stroll. trent told me i was being released and to go with him. i was too surprised to say anything. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 16 “max here has told me about your methods,” sac jumped in. “how do we know it’s safe for him to go with you?” “tell your friend to mind his own business,” trent growled to me. “i get it, we’re playing address the vert.22 well tell this guy he’s an asshole and we’re not letting you go with him,” sac instructed me, looking defiantly into trent’s eyes. trent surprised me by appearing more worried than enraged. he looked around for where the video surveillance was, turned his hulking back to the camera to inhibit sound recording or even lip reading, and quietly, through clenched teeth said, “my bosses don’t even know i’m here. we gotta get you out of here now before they figure us out. no time to explain.” there was something in his urgency that struck us both. maybe not enough, but something. sac raised his eyebrows, and then sort of shrugged indicating it was up to me. i took a leap of faith and began to follow trent out of the cell. i stopped and turned to sac and said, “so long friend,” and i added a piece of advice i have trouble following myself, “stay out of trouble.” i started walking again. “hey hunter,” he called, and as i glanced back one more time he slowly raised his middle finger at me, grinning. i took this as him wishing me good luck. i was limping too slowly for him, so trent grabbed my shoulder and began to drag me. i objected and he ignored me. he dragged me down a hall, past a checkpoint with a sentry with whom he exchanged grim pleasantries, and to a station where i signed for my possessions and was asked to exchange my grey jumpsuit for the rumpled clothes i’d been arrested in. as i was changing, trent growled for me to hurry up a guard told him to relax and trent gave him an impossible instruction in reply. we cleared the final gate, and trent dragged me even faster across a parking lot. he threw me in the back of a big brown unmarked cruiser, slammed the door shut, and tore out of the parking lot before i could assume a sitting position in the back seat. after i recovered my balance i realized williamson was sitting in the front passenger seat. his eyes widened in relief, and he managed a weak smile but he didn’t say anything. “i’m gonna get busted down to crossing guard for this,” trent grumbled. “why are you doing it?” i managed. “i’m sorry about the other day. i had orders. orders i couldn’t refuse. past misdeeds held over my head. i didn’t want to interrogate you, but they insisted. i held back, though. then i looked for a way to make it right.” he took a hard right, nearly knocking me over in the back seat again. “didn’t feel like it to me,” i noted. “the treatment you got wasn’t my a-game. not even close.” trent replied. 22 smart ass cripple’s term for people able to walk (september 14, 2012) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 17 i shuddered at that. “they wanted you comatose in a prison infirmary awaiting trumped up charges you couldn’t answer to.” “you nearly got me there. what stopped you?” i asked. “the act you pulled in the interrogation room reminded me of how my kid acts in school. then i heard myself calling you a slow learner, which is what they’re always calling him. oh, he’s squirrely all right. it’s hard to get him to do anything he doesn’t want to, and he’s got a smart mouth on him, too. sometimes the things he says make me laugh in spite of myself. i’ve never had much luck talking any sense into him, but that slow learner thing is trumped up, it’s just been an excuse not to try harder to work with the little brat. when i heard myself call you that and i thought about your case, i realized it was too important to let the institution shut it down.” trent said that last bit with something like conviction. something wasn’t right. “but i didn’t tell you anything about the case,” i protested. “we already knew all about the case. you’re about as subtle as a jackhammer with your methods. you attract attention.” he chuckled, sort of. it was a horrible sound. williamson, who on account of being out of his element had remained nervously silent until now, offered something up. “officer trent told me jacques and michel are fine.” “yeah. they’ll be okay, aside from hurt feelings,” trent confirmed. “once the video of the three of you surfaced, they were rounded up and sent on the first flight back to france. the authorities around here don’t mind if they speak at conferences and bring in tourist dollars, but the minute they start poking their noses into the way things work in our institutions….” he didn’t finish his sentence. “who burned down the museum; who parked the peugot in the river?” i demanded. “was this all an inside job?” “beats me,” trent replied. “that line from the good book about alms-giving don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. change hand to tentacle and add about six more of them. and then change the part about alms-giving to alms-keeping, but still with the other tentacles being none the wiser. that’s how the institution operates.” williamson and i exchanged glances over that one. we drove for around three quarters of an hour, south of the police station where i’d been held, and past my hotel, and if i was piecing the directions in the layout of the city together, past williamson’s school too. we arrived at what looked from the outside to be a non-descript suburban house. i realized it was williamson’s. trent asked williamson if he was sure we’d be safe there. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 18 “i don’t have much experience with this, but out in the light is probably the safest place for us,” williamson replied. trent nodded. we all got out of the car. trent opened the trunk and retrieved my suitcase for me. “supposed to be in evidence,” he said. i thanked him and took it, but the weight made me stumble. williamson took it for me. “good luck,” trent said. “i hope you find some justice for these kids.” he shook williamson’s hand. i saw williamson wince a little at the strength of his grip. then trent said, “no hard feelings,” and offered his hand to me. it took all the resolve i had to accept it when i caught a full view of that huge paw of his again. xix entering williamson’s front door into a living /dining room area, i noticed some family pictures. i asked where the rest of his family was. his wife, he said, was still at her job and his daughter was at a friend’s house. there was bit of hesitation in his voice when he said this. i wasn’t sure why. i sat down at the kitchen table, and cleared out a space to rest my arms by moving some of the documents and books that littered the table to one of the chairs instead. demonstrating strong competencies with a toaster and microwave oven, williamson made us some bacon sandwiches and, with apologies for not having anything stronger, he got a couple of beers out of his refrigerator too. after a few bites and a few gulps, i reflected that i was beginning to feel ‘normal’ again. then, reflecting on my experiences with ‘normal’ lately, i thought, more precisely, that i was beginning to feel a renewed sense of personalized equilibrium. i was beginning to doubt if i had much of a handle on what normal was. williamson shoved another pile of books to the side and joined me at the table. when we were finished eating, williamson explained how trent had contacted him about my arrest and that they had hatched the plan to release me into his custody. now that i was in a position to answer to charges in a public forum, trent had figured that whatever the authorities had tried to pin on me would be quietly withdrawn. i filled williamson in on all the developments in the investigation since our last meeting. he listened intently, nodding in agreement and smiling when i told him about the students i met at the school. he looked troubled when i told him what i’d seen at the museum. then he got very quiet and just stared at his hands when i told him what smart ass cripple had said about the medical model and charity models of disability, and supercrips, and about slow learners maybe being better off lost. he didn’t even laugh when i repeated a couple of sacs more memorable lines to him. “if you look at it that way, that’s what i do all day, i guess,” he finally said. “create and distribute disability.” it sounded to me like he was feeling sorry for himself. “maybe you need to get your job title changed.” if he was going to beat up on himself, i thought it might be fun to pile on too. but then he just kept morosely staring at his hands, as if he had built all the sorting machinery himself and only discovered how dangerous it was to operate it once it was out on the market maiming everyone. i thought he was being too hard on himself, and further, that his moping would slow down the investigation, so i tried to offer up something to assuage his conscience a bit. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 19 “that can’t be all you do,” i mused. “even if you aren’t exactly replacing or fixing the system, don’t you at least try to use it to the advantage of the kids you work with? the system i work in,” i offered, “seems designed to unleash justice for my clients in the same way the claw of a hammer is designed to open a beer bottle. you know, not a recommended usage. but if you fumble around enough and then apply some force at the right moment, sometimes you get somewhere.” williamson thought about that for a minute and then smiled a little. he held up a document. “you see this?” he said. “i was working with this girl who wasn’t a very strong silent reader. so we started reading her exams out loud to her and she started doing much better. she was pretty perceptive if she could hear the words too. i mean she could read silently to some degree, but she just needed that little bit extra for the subtleties of the questions to really register with her. but the problem was, she didn’t have any diagnosed disabilities on record and her grade twelve diploma exams were coming up fast. so i talked to her for a while about this and it came out that she’d been in a car accident and experienced pretty bad whiplash, with neck and back pain and headaches. so we got her coded as having a medical disability.” “were the headaches causing the reading problem?” i asked. “i don’t think so,” williamson replied. “her reading comprehension grades were pretty low even before the car accident. she probably wasn’t a very good silent reader even when she was healthy. but i was able to use her whiplash to get her disability coding which got her audio cds as an accommodation for her diploma exams. because that’s what her real problem was, academically, silent reading.” something occurred to me, based on what i’d learned so far. “couldn’t one of your district psychologists have tested her to see if she had an actual reading disability? why the indirect route?” “the indirect route was more direct,” replied williamson. “it is expensive and time-consuming for the district psychologists to test students and there’s no guarantee that just because we observed she handled assessment better that way, it would show up as a formal learning disability in a formal psycho-educational test and qualify her for accommodations.” “williamson!” i scolded, though more in amusement. “isn’t that taking advantage?” “i don’t know,” williamson replied. “if the accommodations were really a validity threat to the exams they wouldn’t allow them for anyone. i’m just using the tools i have to make a rigid system a little more flexible for the kids who need it. i thought of another question, though i was reluctant to ask it just as i was getting williamson to cheer up a bit. but before we took this way of playing the system he was describing out on the road, i thought we better look it over and kick the tires. “but doesn’t that get you back to creating disability like you were so sad about just a minute ago.” “yeah, i suppose it does,” he replied, sounding a little deflated again. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 20 “i guess that’s one way to reduce the stigma of disability, though,” i said. “code everybody as disabled. what would normal have to say about that?” we contemplated this ridiculous possibility over our beers. i unthinkingly shifted position a bit and a pain shot through my leg. i must have winced visibly. williamson noticed this and took a good look at me. “i’m sorry you’re getting so banged up working this case,” he offered, “but i warned you it would be dangerous, especially proceeding the un-methodical way you have been. i’m worried; i don’t want you to disappear too.” “you’ve talked about the danger many times,” i observed, “and i’m beginning to see what you mean. but who is responsible for all of this danger? it’s all been shadows until now.” “it’s often hard to say,” said williamson. “trent said the authorities.” “which authorities?” i asked. williamson had no answer for that. putting that concern on the back burner, i asked him what all the books were for. “kind of like your cold case files,” williamson smiled, taking pride in dropping a bit of detective jargon on me, though in reality i’d only ever heard the term on television. “these books are all from between the 1950s to 1980s when people still used the term ‘slow learner’ a lot more openly. i’d prefer something more recent, but there really isn’t that much being written about slow learners in contemporary educational research. even if you weren’t interrupted by a chokehold in the library, you wouldn’t have found much more than you did. we need to go through these texts. we still need to learn more about how this category was established.” “why?” i demanded. “i’ve already spent too long with my nose in books during this case. i need to get out there i need to interview the living!” “but you said that, except for a few fleeting glimpses, you had trouble finding slow learners in the museum,” williamson pointed out. “these books are about slow learners specifically. maybe we can trace the category and the programming for the category right up to its confusing present.” i heard an echo of michel in that statement.23 williamson picked up a small red book with gold lettering, dated 1957. “this book shows that people have been aware that special educators often make bad placement decisions for a long time. it has several case studies of children who were misdiagnosed with disabilities and/or misplaced in special education. it actually reads ‘let us be clear in our minds that a student may be educationally subnormal and yet rightly retained in ordinary school.”’24 “but does it come out as critical of special education in general?” i asked. 23 foucault in tremain (2008, p. 16) 24 m.f. cleugh (1957, p. 7) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 21 “not especially. the author firmly believes in iq as the best means of comparing a child’s intelligence to that of the general population, and that it is worthwhile do so. he believes in separate classes, and separate schools and even residential schools depending on the level of intellectual disability, and the outright exclusion from schools of children with more severe intellectual disabilities.” “then why even bring this up? why not condemn the author, throw him on the scrap pile with all the other bigots i learned about at the museum?” i asked. “he also says the rules need to be applied generously and flexibly, with a lot of wiggle room for the complexity of some students. even though he believes in the usefulness of iq, he acknowledges the possibility of error and some imprecision in the process. he says a great deal of care is needed in how all of the decision-making about student programming gets done. even though he’s in favor of special classes in schools for students with milder learning problems, he also worries that the existence of this kind of special class will result in the risk of the school dumping too many students into the special class instead of being more flexible and accommodating in the ‘ordinary classes.’ that rang a bell with me, and i then understood why williamson was reluctant to wholly disregard the book. it also gave me another question. “those sound like the same concerns you and some of the people i’ve interviewed have had, and that i pieced together in the later parts of the museum,” i observed. “there have been some changes in special education,” williamson agreed “but you’re right to some degree. the actual referral process for identifying and programming for students with special education needs that this book describes is very similar to what is still in use in alberta’s schools.” 25 “okay, so the finding and losing of special needs students hasn’t changed much. how does knowing this help us find slow learners now?” i asked. i was getting irritated with williamson. i’d lost time when i was locked up, and the trail wasn’t getting any warmer now as we leafed through these faded books. “i’m getting to that,” said williamson. his crisis over the value of his work forgotten for now, he seemed a little more confident here, in his own house, poking around these old books that we were supposedly investigating together, even though he’d already found all the parts he wanted to show me. i wasn’t sure i liked this change. he pointed to another three books. “these books are from the seventies and eighties. the definition doesn’t seem as tied to intellectual disabilities anymore. there is still a lot of talk about slow learners, but it’s becoming less clear in the texts exactly who these kids are or what they need.” illustratively, he held up a large purple book entitled strategies for success: an effective guide for teachers of secondary slow learners. “despite the title,” he noted, “the authors rarely use the words slow learner in the text of the book. in the index under slow learner, it says, “low 25 see alberta education (2004, pp. 6-10) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 22 achiever.” the book begins with a cautionary tale. it’s about an underprivileged girl named ‘brenda,’ doesn’t say if she was a case study, a memory, or a fictional invention. after some early, ‘against the odds’ success learning to read in grade one, she fell behind due to several weeks of school absences, and failed to thrive throughout the rest of her schooling. she became a truant, marijuana user and eventual dropout. she hooked up with ‘joe,’ another poor reader, became pregnant and married young. the authors predict they will have three or four children before the couple can be convinced to use birth control. their offspring will become another generation of poor readers.”26 “scary story,” i remarked. “i think i read similar cautionary tales from the eugenicists in the museum. like a horror movie the non-readers are multiplying!” then i asked “but do you get a sense that the authors advance any theories about who slow learners are?” “it seems to me they define slow learners pretty literally and with reference to reading. anyone who has proven slow at picking up on reading. and they recommend the same reading program to fix the problem for all of these cases.” finally, a real clue. according to this, slow learners could be found through reading assessment. “what do you think of that?” i asked. “i don’t know. in a way i agree; if kids have reading problems you have to address them. and like we were talking about the other day, i’ve read other research which actually argues that when it comes to reading problems, the distinction between slow learners, you know, the low average iq types and kids diagnosed with learning disabilities in reading is actually pretty blurry.27 there is something to responding to reading problems quickly and directly instead of obsessing about the right diagnosis. but i think this approach risks oversimplifying things, too. potentially useful diagnostic information about impairments should be attended to, not glossed over or ignored.” “what do you mean?” i asked. “i’ve also read some brain research which i found pretty convincing that indicated a significant minority of students simply are not wired up to hear the words in their head well when they read silently, and the only way to fairly assess their reading or to use reading for learning with them, is if they are given the chance to hear a text of any real length as they read with their eyes at the same time, you know, the accommodations i was talking about.28 and if you want them to improve as much as they can as silent readers, a much more concentrated approach than would be appropriate for other struggling students is needed.”29 this took me back to the sputnik exhibit in the museum and the birth of the learning disability label. even if there was a lot of politics behind the label, what if there was something to the 26 wilkins & miller (1983, pp. 3-4) 27 klassen (2005, p. 307) 28 wolf & stoodley (2008, p. 188) 29 ibid. (p. 194) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 23 science too? then i remembered what smart ass cripple had told me. i replied to williamson from that vantage point. “so sometimes the reading problem is in the student then? a whole species of kids with different brains. sounds like the medical model all over again.” “and there’s the danger,” said williamson, finally, “at least part of it. it’s dangerous to ignore a possibility like this, the reading brain thing. otherwise you end up imposing a program designed to help struggling readers that’s totally unsuited to how some of the kids learn. but it’s dangerous to fully embrace an idea like the differences in the reading brain because our concept of normal is so dominant that once you decide a kid’s brain does reading differently, it kind of paints everything about the kid in this exotic color. what else does this impact, how else might this kid be different from the rest?” “and that’s the danger we’ve seen with slow learners too,” i concluded. “the label just keeps accumulating all these characteristics that set the kids apart, even if there is some truth to the characteristics in some cases.” i felt like we were getting somewhere, despite my annoyance over looking at books instead of talking to people. even as we were starting to find some traction, however, i was increasingly troubled by williamson and his confidence looking through these sources. i still couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but i thought it might be important in the case. i decided i’d better keep talking to him until i could figure out what it was. xx williamson picked up another book to show me. “here’s one from the seventies i kind of like,” he announced. he held up a black book affirmingly titled yes they can: a practical guide for teaching the adolescent slow learner.30 it looked like williamson had pierced its flesh with a hundred daggers, thin red bits of paper stuck out all over the place marking different passages. he read me one part. the reality as any teacher of the adolescent slow learner will attest, is one that goes much deeper than the fact of intellectual capacity. students are placed in these classes for a host of reasons. some are there because they apparently lack intellectual capacity. others have a physical handicap serious enough to retard their progress but not serious enough to warrant special individualized treatment. the adolescent slow learner class has a share of psychologically disturbed students, a sampling … of students who have been unable to adjust to a new language, and of course a number of behavior problems who have been assigned to the class for lack of a better solution.31 “i like the acknowledgment of the complexity of who slow learners are,” williamson noted. “the author even goes on to describe a number of students who he worked with as a teacher, and each of these was very unique in his or her learning needs. he had a writing sample on the topic of riding the city bus from a student who’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in his 30 weber (1974) 31 ibid (p. 7) emphasis in original. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 24 slow learner class. this kid’s writing was so nuanced and expressive i think it would have scored well in any tier of english. another thing he found out, and i suspect it would hold today, is the relationship between economic class and who gets placed in slow learner classes. he found some research that indicated that, in a cohort of all students enrolled in toronto’s secondary schools in 1970, children of unemployed parents and parents holding jobs involving unskilled labor made up sixty percent of the students placed in special education classes or vocational education classes for slow learners. children of parents working in professions made up less than five percent of the students in these classes.”32 that reminded me about what i’d seen in the museum by the replica of sputnik, the more affluent parents who didn’t want their academically struggling kids in slow learner programs and who had lobbied for a different label and a different way of supporting them. i told williamson about that. “yeah, we need to keep investigating that one,” he agreed. there was that assertiveness and confidence again. “another thing he writes about, observed williamson, “are some prominent myths about slow learners. among these is, that because they do so poorly in school slow learners, need to be trained more directly for employment through programming that focusses narrowly on employment skills. the author says this is inconsistent with democratizing intentions for education and likely to pass along values of subservience and unquestioning obedience in the students.” i thought michel might have made a similar observation about how narrowly job-specific vocational training functioned and found myself missing my banished co-investigator.33 “if he thinks all of this is so complex, what sort of instruction does this author recommend for slow learners?” i asked. “it’s hard to summarize, but basically a competency-based literacy program to try to get the students more actively engaged in school. he lists the main goals of the program as life confidence, self-confidence, and employment confidence and the main competencies as reading, speaking, listening, writing, creative thinking, logical thinking, critical thinking, appreciation and awareness.” “sounds worthwhile, but vague. any clue to how it looks under the hood, as you interpret it?” “a lot of what he writes makes sense. he has a long section on engaging students who have become discouraged with reading and writing. for example, he suggests reading out loud to the class when you want students of a variety of skill levels to be able to discuss the same text, but individualizing more when the tasks involve silent reading. i’ve always found if i read out loud and we slowed things down and discussed things a lot, i could use a recommended text from 32 ibid. (p. 17) 33 see foucault (1995). foucault’s analysis of the institutional production of “docile bodies” seems particularly applicable to a curriculum for poorly achieving students that narrowly focuses on employment skills training for labor / semi-skilled occupations. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 25 almost any level of high school english to my k & e classes. i teach catcher in the rye to the kids all the time even though it’s supposedly a recommended resource for a more advanced level of english.” “so you pretty much agree with all his advice for working with slow learners?” i asked. “not all of it, actually,” williamson said. “he recommends the kids do a lot of word searches for improving their visual acuity; so did the other book with the reading program for slow learners, actually. i’m not so sure about that. i don’t enjoy word searches myself. i’ve found that some kids enjoy them, but these are the same kids who are good at finding the words already and don’t need the practice. i’m not convinced it would be worthwhile imposing a word search on a kid who would find it torturous unless you were sure it would make a significant difference in improving his or her reading.” williamson was at-risk of ranting so i cut him short. “anything else?” “again, there is no mention of accommodations. but i guess the main thing that bothers me is it seems like there is a built in disconnect between the first section that strongly protests stereotyping slow learners, insisting they are heterogeneous group of complex learners, and the second section that proposes a common curriculum for all adolescent slow learners.” that was a lengthy appraisal. it took me a minute to digest all of it. when i did, though, a question jumped out at me. “but wouldn’t most of his advice on how to set up an effective classroom apply to any student?” “oh,” he paused considering. “i hadn’t thought of it that way. i guess so, except the stuff about word searches.” boy, he really had an axe to grind about word searches. i wondered if one had stolen his lunch money or kicked sand in his face at some point. williamson showed me another book. it was navy blue and had no writing on the front or back. on its spine it bore the title “teaching geometry to slow learners”34 and the date, 1986. “why does it look so plain?” i asked. “it’s a master’s thesis, not a published book,” he explained. “there’s a standard format, and a pretty sparse one at that. we have to pay for the binding ourselves so it’s no-frills. anyhow, this one is about using computer assisted instruction to help slow learners in math. but the curious thing is, this author isn’t so sure who slow learners are either.” he read a passage to me: there is still a disagreement as to the definition of a ‘slow learner’. there are many terms which are used interchangeably. these include ‘culturally deprived’, ‘educationally disadvantaged’, ‘underachievers’, ‘low achievers’, as well as slow learners. the inability of educators to agree on one specific term with any degree of precision is due to the 34 ellis (1986) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 26 fact that the individuals characterized vary greatly in characteristics and needs, and in part to the fact that each definition is based on different criteria which sometimes erroneously describes the student.35 before he read the passage, williamson let something drop that helped me clarify what was bothering me about his newfound confidence, but i didn’t want to pursue it. not yet. i asked a blander question instead, keeping him talking. “so, did computers help with slow learners?” “well, it seems like it. despite her caveats about who exactly slow learners were, she did find a number of low achieving students at a vocational high school in calgary to do the research on. from the criteria she describes, these would basically be k & e level students. the students did pick up faster than the control group on the geometric concepts taught, something she attributed to the novelty of the technology, as well as their opportunities to control the pace of the instruction and to receive immediate feedback from the system on how they were doing. you know what else this research noted?” williamson asked, starting to grin. “what?” i asked. “the microcomputer cannot be viewed as just another electronic fad that will go away if the teacher ignores it for long enough.”36 he giggled at this now-obvious prophesy. he was getting giddy. maybe it was the half of a beer he’d consumed; maybe it was all the reading. this was perfect. i chuckled too, but then, when he wasn’t expecting it demanded suddenly, “how come you said we when you were talking about this thesis?” williamson’s smile froze and his mouth fell into an oblong shape as he stared off into space while he considered how much he should tell me. people sometimes beat the truth out of themselves if you have the patience to wait them out. “i wrote one of those too a few years back and i am working on another one right now about slow learners.” i felt my temper flare up. “is that how you got acquainted with jacques and michel and that other methodless method you told me about the day we met?” “hermeneutic phenomenology. yes, it is.” “i suppose you have a supervisor and a committee helping you with your research too?” i’d had some clients from the academic world, so i knew the basics about the process. he admitted this as well. “why didn’t you tell me how long you’d been working on this case before we met? why did you let me risk my neck at the library, and the school, and the museum when you already had all this information? how come you’ve waited this long to show them to me? and while i’m at it, are 35 ibid. (p. 10) 36 ibid. (p. 7) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 27 you so sure you’re even actually worried about finding the slow learners and saving them from that crisis in special education you were telling me about? seems more like you’ve been worried about finding an interesting and familiar topic to exploit so you can look clever. you’re too sure of yourself with these books. was all that stuff you told me about needing me and my strength all just hot air too? what am i even doing here? am i just a sideshow?” i had a habit of asking too many questions in a row when i was steamed, and besides, i was feeling williamson had a lot to answer to just then. williamson sighed. it was a heavy sigh, a sincere sigh, it belonged in the sigh hall of fame. “mr. hunter,” he began, “i am very sorry i didn’t tell you more about my own work with this topic. i have my reasons.” i made a note not to let him off the hook so easily on this point but allowed him to keep talking for now. “as to your concerns about exploiting this topic, maybe i can tell you a little about the last time i researched an educational issue like this. a few years back, i investigated a different sort of teaching, work experience education. at the time, a part of my job was visiting students who were working with employers as a part of their high school program, making sure the paperwork was done right, helping make sure the workplaces were safe, helping resolve any conflicts that came up between the student and the employer. actually, many of the students i supervised over the years were from iop, and later k & e, as the graduation credential for these students required work experience. as i continued to work in the program, i developed some ethical concerns. there were parts of teaching work experience that just didn’t make much sense but other aspects that i really liked. at first, the research i was doing didn’t sound much different than the standard complaining i do about my job. i was at risk of wasting my time and not really learning or proving anything. then, with the help of my supervisor, i looked at the issue interpretively, at the level of discourse, and i recruited some theorists, primarily michel foucault, to help me. i learned all kinds of things i wouldn’t have otherwise. when i finally completed the whole thing, i came to the realization that even though i highly valued work experience as a form of learning for some students, the whole program was just going in one direction with too much momentum it was a potentially exploitive direction for many students and i needed to stop teaching it.37 i started teaching more special education classes instead. i wasn’t able to fix work experience, but i outlined my concerns about it my thesis, in a summary i prepared for the school district, and later in an article for a teaching magazine.38 i moved myself to a type of teaching i felt i could get behind more, at least at the time, and when i do talk to kids who are considering doing work experience classes, i try to give them what i see as a balanced perspective. in the end, this all felt a lot better than just griping about the work all the time without doing anything. the research made me a more ethical teacher. i am hoping our work with slow learners will help me similarly in this area.” this explanation calmed me a little; it was a reasonably satisfactory answer to my accusation that he was exploiting me and the students. but he was still leaving some things unanswered. i thought a little ridicule might shake the rest of the truth loose. “so, a method saved you, did it? you’re a strange one, williamson. this is what i learn from my methods on pretty much every case. the rich get away with murder, almost everybody’s on the take, and if you shake your highball a little, the ice cubes dance in their pretty black dresses.” 37 williamson (2004) 38 williamson (2005) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 28 “if it’s that bad why do you even keep taking cases?” asked williamson, with that surprising assertiveness. i could feel him trying to shift the interrogation back onto me. “it’s kind of absurd, i guess,” i found myself admitting. “it’s like that greek hero i learned about in college, on one of the days when i decided to change things up and actually went to class. he was condemned for scorning the gods and sentenced to push the same massive boulder up the same mountain for eternity and seeing it roll back down every time. he could despair of his fate, but he chose to own it. his thing was pushing the rock up, and when he is doing it, he’s doing his thing, he is pushing that rock up. it’s his struggle.”39 i heard myself sounding circular but somehow i couldn’t stop talking. it was weird, as if my interrogation had backfired. “i mean he’s trying to relish his fate,” i continued, “i even imagine him jogging back down the hill to start again. i can’t even let myself think about making the world safer or fairer, but when i take a case i can find or restore or avenge or protect someone for a while, even if the rot catches up eventually, which it always does in the end, at least i can do that much. it still seems a worthy fight, even sort of sickly enjoyable at times.” why was i owning up to all this, in the middle of my attempt to get williamson to come clean? there was something about this case. “i don’t think i see this as starkly as you,” remarked williamson. “but i agree it is a worthy fight.” “why did you think i needed the help of jacques and michel in this fight?” i asked. “they’re not even the theorists i think we need to pay the most attention to in order to solve this case,” said williamson in another moment of candor, “but i thought as you started investigating things you’d need some help sniffing out all the injustices for slow learners, not just what they were, but where they came from and how they operated, and it seemed like they could help you get a good start on this.” i didn’t disagree with this, so i just let it sit there on the table with all the books. williamson had answered many of my questions, but there was still an elephant in the room, an elephant which, despite its girth, was as elusive as the prize fighter willie ‘will o the wisp’ pep. i’d gone several rounds with it and there it was, still untouched, taunting me. i was beginning to despise this elephant. i looked right at williamson, holding his eyes in my best glare of accountability. “williamson,” i began, calling him out by name, “why did you really call on me to work this case? what do i have that you need? never mind the vague stuff about needing my strength you said earlier, if you don’t tell me that right now, and clearly, we are through here.” i’d changed my mind about letting him off the hook on anything. every bit of disclosure seemed too important for the case now. cornered, williamson sat there staring at me. the seconds and minutes accumulated slowly, as though they were being piled on top of each other by sluggish bricklayers. eventually, he went up a flight of stairs and returned with a book of pictures. he extracted one of them. it was of a 39 camus (1983, p. 123) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 29 skinny kid in an orange large-collared shirt. he was gangly as a monkey, and stared up at the camera with a shy smile and big eyes. i realized it was williamson. “you were right to say i’ve been holding out on you,” williamson admitted. “i was hoping i wouldn’t have to do this, but that was probably wishful thinking. what you need to understand first about why i called you in, is how highly involved i am in all of this. i’ve been accidentally studying, or to put it another way, experiencing, disability and special education for most of my life. the kid in this picture,” the way he said it was interesting, as if trying to get some distance from his former self, “had difficulties in school that i am sure, from my knowledge of coding, would have resulted in a special education code in today’s classrooms. he struggled, particularly with handwriting, sports, counting objects in primary math textbooks, and copying off the board. he was diagnosed by a psychologist as having a learning problem related to visual motor integration; at the time they were still sometimes calling it a form of brain damage. these days, these learning issues probably would have resulted in a code for a mild to moderate medical disability.”40 i was glad williamson was finally being honest with me, and the thing with the word searches was starting to make sense too. he still, however, hadn’t directly answered the question i was asking. i decided to try a little patience to see if he’d get to it. instead of redirecting him to my original question, i asked, “was he, were you, accommodated at all in those days?” “there was no formal system of coding or accommodation in schools at the time to help manage these difficulties. but i remember one time my mom,” he had switched back to the first person, maybe on account of thinking about his mother, “recopied word for word this big fantasy story i wrote during grade five, even a love scene,” he blushed, “and the teacher gave me a perfect score and read it out loud to the class. i liked that. but i don’t remember the supports being very comprehensive, and i remember getting a lot of bad marks in english which should have been my best subject because teachers couldn’t read my writing. i remember being called lazy for writing off the board too slowly or messily, and elementary school math was always a disaster with all those tiny dots to count and all those columns to keep straight. seeing as how we played sports every recess, my clumsiness made me pretty unpopular with the other boys, and i didn’t want to hang out with the girls in elementary school, so i was pretty isolated.” “is that why you got into special education, to see that other kids who learn differently get treated more fairly?” i asked. “not really,” williamson admitted. “i never really connected the two things. i often thought i was kind of a loser and not very bright, but no one ever called me disabled, so i didn’t develop much of a sense of solidarity with anyone who might have been labelled disabled or handicapped, or whatever the words for it were at the time. i vaguely remember some kids in my school going to work in a different room some of the time, i might have been sent there too at some point, but i don’t recall hearing the word ‘disability’ or even ‘handicapped’ connected to this either. things got a little better for me in my later teen years. i discovered i was a little better, no superstar but better, at contact sports like boxing and rugby, and it felt really good being even average at something physical. we got a personal computer when i was in junior high, and by the time i 40 alberta education (2012, p. 5) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 30 was in high school, i was word processing most of my written work at home and achieving well on some of it. i still felt like an imposter in any group that seemed to accept me, like if they found out what i was really like i’d be out for sure, but after those early experiences even being an imposter felt like an improvement.” “so how did you end up connecting to special education as a teacher?” i asked. “two things. i’d kind of fallen into teaching after an english degree and was doing alright. actually to back up, i guess i had a mandatory special education class as a part of my education degree in university, but all i remember was a little bit on disability categories, a lot of talk about gifted kids, and a lesson on mnemonic memory tricks. it didn’t do much for me. anyhow, i was doing alright with teaching english but then i got surplused, you know, bumped out of my position at the junior high i was teaching english language arts at when there was a drop in enrolment, and i ended up getting moved to teaching iop, as it was called at the time, at a high school where there was an opening. i really didn’t have much choice but to move into iop if i wanted to stay in teaching, but it turned out that i bonded pretty well with a lot of the kids, and i liked how i was rarely told by administrators or departments heads what to do or how to teach. it seemed like as long as i kept the iop kids contained, i could do my own thing as a teacher.” “what was the other thing?” i asked. “i’m getting to that.” williamson opened the photo album again, but then changed his mind, closed it, and instead rolled up the sleeve of his golf shirt, like he was about to get a flu shot or something. when he got the sleeve all the way up, i saw staring back at me, a portrait-style tattoo of a child with the biggest, most beautiful smile i thought i’d ever seen. the smile was so expansive the child’s eyes were half shut to make room for it, and, even in this black and white likeness, they seemed to sparkle in merriment. after staring, dazzled, at it for a minute, something else began to slowly register to me about the face i was looking at, but by then williamson had resumed his explanation. “this is jacob,” he said, “he’s always with me. jacob was our second-born. he was gifted with a capacity for affection i have not experienced in any other person since. he was also severely disabled with down syndrome and a host of additional medical problems. he was really fragile at first when he was born and, for me and my wife anyway, the news that he had down syndrome, when they told us in the icu, was pretty secondary to our incredible relief when he got stronger over those early days and we became sure he would live. there were all kind of things he struggled with. never mind the developmental milestones for non-disabled kids, they have a separate set they use for kids with down syndrome, and he was often way behind on those too. i guess he would have seemed more like a baby or a toddler than a young child even when he was four, which is when he passed away. our lives were a whirlwind of therapies, checkups, surgeries, administering medications, and operating assistive equipment. but he had such a personality! he was so loving; i don’t think there is a word for love that approaches the depth and sincerity i think he felt it and shared it with. and then there was his laugh he’d laugh hysterically whenever there was a sort of a crashing sound, like dropping dishes in the kitchen. and he’d give you these kisses with his whole mouth open. he couldn’t walk, and actually had trouble with crawling too but if our daughter, who was six at the time he passed away, entered the room he’d light williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 31 right up and study her every movement, and if she went upstairs he’d strain his body after her like he was going to burst out of his chair and fly up to join her.” williamson smiled at the memory and then went on. “people all reacted differently to jacob. some seemed to accept him intuitively; but i could tell that some people were uncomfortable around him. we had some of the most caring doctors, nurses and therapists but then there were some who were all about clinical indifference too. when he was getting tested for allergies, the technician without a word of reassurance to jacob or my wife forcefully slapped a board of little needles with potential allergens on his back like he was a slab of meat, after which he screamed in terror and pain, and the technician just stared blankly. he probably didn’t have much of a bedside manner in general, but i’m not sure he would have thought he could get away with that level of indifference with a child who could walk and talk. we were provided a wide range of government-funded support and services for which we will always be grateful. but my wife and i, more her than me because i was working full-time, still had to attain these services through a daunting process of documentation. we were left wondering what happened to other families with similar needs in which the parents were less skilled at completing complicated forms. he touched a lot of lives and we had a lot of support. when he passed away, almost every seat in the church was filled with our families, his caregivers, and people my wife and i worked with. but when jacob was born one of my acquaintances told me he was sorry and when he passed away, another acquaintance assured me it was for the best, and both of them were teachers.” a muscle twitched in williamson’s jaw. he was still angry over the defects in thinking that would have produced such statements. i said i was sorry and he thanked me. then i said i had a question. “why are you investigating the disappearance of the slow learners instead of something to do with jacob and how people understood him?” “maybe i will do something more to explore my experiences with jacob more directly at some point, but trying to do something for slow learners is strongly connected to this. jacob had a lot of medical issues but he wasn’t defective; he was whole. he filled our lives with his personality. it took a lot of help, money, time, and effort to care for him, but these obligations were small compared to what he gave us every day. i’ve been working with iop/k & e kids for fifteen years now. i haven’t seen eye to eye with every student i’ve taught, but i have seen how much these kids can do when you treat them with respect. some of these kids are pretty complicated in terms of how they learn. but they’re not half students and they don’t deserve a half of an education, half a credential or a half-assed effort to meet their needs. and like i said, changes are afoot in special education and in schooling in general; the slow learners are more at risk now than ever. someone needs to look out for them.” “so with your background, why do you need me on this case?” i asked again, insisting. “i can research and write about this, that’s true,” he said, “but i need something…” he stopped and began again. “i’ve read some fine, challenging, thoughtful books and papers on teaching and on disability that were written in an academic style. but the way these students have been categorized and either ignored or moved into other programs, and the ongoing issue of what do williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 32 with them now it’s a tough conversation and it requires a tough approach, something….” he trailed off as if searching for a phrase he’d suddenly forgotten. “hard-boiled?” i suggested. “yes, hard-boiled. hard-boiled operatives, like yourself, talk tough and are tough. look at everything that’s happened to you on this case, and here you are still. they do not suffer fools, i mean not the fool category, but the generic kind of fool as in ignorant and unthinking persons of course, gladly.” williamson was correcting his labels again, i figured he must have been feeling more himself. “they speak for the dead, they help the oppressed defend themselves, they demand truth, and they demand justice.” i was about to say i wasn’t sure i could live up to these expectations. williamson was on a roll though; i couldn’t get it out. next, he said something that has always stayed with me. “and they look for missing persons. slow learners are missing persons, or they are missing as persons. that’s what i want. find them as persons if they are there to be found, and give them the truth and justice they deserve. that’s why i need a hard-boiled detective, that’s why i need you.” his voice had firmed up as he spoke and, ironically, seeing as how he was asking for help, there as an almost defiant resolve in his last sentence. with that, i finally thought i understood, as well as i ever would, what williamson was up to. i said “okay,” and we both sipped our beer. i was troubled by sac’s question about whether or not the slow learners would benefit from being found, but in williamson’s statements i found a purpose i could deal with trying to find some justice for them, just in case their getting found was inevitable, but i didn’t share this with williamson. instead, to make him feel in control again, i asked him to tell me more about some of the scholars who might help me proceed a little more cautiously as i continued to investigate. still calming down, he began to tell me what he thought i needed to know about hermeneutic phenomenology; about how it was the tradition, philosophy, and practice of interpretation, about how it involved thinking about and describing things themselves in the life-world without appeal to some sort of external reality.41 he was tired now, but he made a good effort, sometimes correcting himself on a point, sometimes owning up to only partially understanding some aspect of the topic. i listened and tried to understand. i thought i picked up a few things. some of it was interesting, but i still didn’t see why it was necessary for this investigation. after i’d heard him out for a while, i said i was eager to get back on the road the slow learners were still out there. i thanked williamson for explaining this all to me but said i needed to get back to the investigation. he protested that there were still things in hermeneutic phenomenology that i could benefit from hearing about, but i insisted. i asked him to drive me back to my hotel and he obliged. as we were driving, the dull pain in my leg still disturbed me now and then, like a loud neighbour, but i’d been off my feet a lot recently and the rest had done it good. i needed a shower and a change of clothes and, after that, it was still early enough to peek into some corners to look for slow learners. 41 moules (2002, p. 6) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 33 xxi i reached my hotel. the host regarded me warily as i walked, limping slightly, past the front desk, wearing the same ripening suit i’d had on for two days. the news of the visit the police had paid me in my room must have reached management by now, but when i opened the door, i saw no notice of eviction. maybe you really were innocent until proven guilty at this establishment, or maybe the only indictable offences were not paying your bill or ripping those little tags off your mattresses. i quickly showered, shaved and changed. i would have liked the chance to relish the heat of the shower more, but i wanted to get back to the case. before we left his house, williamson had added to my small suitcase some of his teacher clothes so i might look more inconspicuous which was good because both of my suits had taken as much abuse as i had. i put on some beige cotton pants and a red sweater. i felt heavier, like i had grown a thicker set of fur for the winter, and i thought i looked ridiculously like a character in a christmas movie, but at least i’d be warmer. as i was changing, it occurred to me to my annoyance that, despite how tired i was of historical research at this point, the one thing i hadn’t done was conduct a thorough search of programming for slow learners, over time, in alberta’s schools. i needed to check this out more. hopefully this city had some kind of archives where a guy could find some primary sources about this, but where? i looked in the booklet of guest services on my dresser; it had a cigarette burn and some kind of dark stain on it, but it said clearly enough that the hotel had a business centre with high speed internet. for a dollar for each fifteen minutes, a guest could browse and research all he wanted. i went down to the business centre and slid my room card through the key reader to get into the room. i stuck a couple canadian dollar coins into the machine, and a desktop computer that was missing the letter ‘q’ started humming and clunking. it was a little quieter than a jumbo jet starting up. after some browsing, i saw that a large local gallery, this one more widely known than the apparently mysterious and now destroyed museum of sorting i’d visited, had an archive that included records of educational institutions. i was annoyed to see it had very limited visiting hours and was closed, and further so to see a notice that some documents previously available had recently been restricted for public use due to changes in the province’s privacy laws. just as i was about to click away from the site, i noticed it had a staff section. out of curiosity i clicked it. i was taken to a login page, to which i entered “admin” and was then prompted for a password. harnessing all possible stereotypes about the unknown site administrator i was trying to impersonate, i tried ‘the boss,’ but to no success. i tried ‘captain kirk,’ but was again told it was incorrect. ‘password’ itself seemed so obvious as to be verging on negligence, but remembering jacques, the idea of ‘binary’ popped into my head. using a free translator program i located online, i searched and found the binary code, expressed in hexadecimals, a form of writing binary, for the phrase ‘the password.’ then thinking this was still too easy, i added an adjective ‘the sexy password,’ seeing as how it was february, the month of valentine’s day. a whirling icon sprung up and a second later i entered a page with a big picture of a smiling dude in a suit, job postings, links to various forms related to benefits, and a ‘what’s new’ section. an announcement in this section told me that there was a wine and cheese that had just started in the archives room to celebrate the discovery and donation of a bunch of pictures and records williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 34 related to a-hundred-year old championship curling team that were thought, until now, to have been lost in a clubhouse fire. here was my chance to visit the place on my own schedule and maybe use the distraction of the party to access some of the confidential documents. there was only one monkey still jumping on the nerves in my leg and he wasn’t even trying very hard as i drove to the gallery. i parked across the road and entered the main gallery, flashing a fake badge at the security guard. i made my way to a large archive room and selected, for extra camouflage, one of a few remaining name lanyards from a table by the entrance. the large, warmly lit room was replete with mahogany tables, and on this occasion, was also lousy with curlers in various team jackets milling around and looking at all the pictures, yearbooks and old tournament programs. several had eschewed wine in favour of beer and a nervous man was running around reminding everyone to be careful with the artifacts in the collection and to use drink coasters on the tables. what i assumed were staff members hung around the periphery in business casual attire and forced smiles. i wondered if the staffer who came up with the idea for this celebration might be archiving elsewhere soon. at a cash bar along the far corner, a stunning woman exchanged an empty plastic wine glass for a full one. she was clad in a ridiculous sweater that depicted an outdoor bonspiel with canadian wildlife among the spectators and a loud tartan skirt that somehow still worked on her, and me. she had wavy brownish-blond hair and eyes of a much lovelier green than any of the many varieties sampled on her skirt. in her other hand she absently held an old straw broom. she pouted beautifully. my planned beeline to the storage area took a detour. “want to help me sweep something under the carpet?” i asked her. “good one,” she said, icily but giving me a once over as she said it. then she looked selfconsciously at her sweater and, in a more approachable tone, confided, “staff all agreed to come in retro curling gear. help us honour our guests. kind of dumb but it might have been fun that is, if everyone followed the plan like we agreed to. apparently that plan was changed at the last minute, but no one told me. i don’t feel much like mixing at this point.” “well, you’re classing up the joint nonetheless,” i assured her. “as for me, i quit following the sport once they switched to synthetic fibres in the uniforms.” “thanks,” she said flatly. but she wasn’t leaving either. “you run a nice line of bull, mr.?” her inflexion rose as she paused for me to fill the space in. we both looked down at my lanyard. “save it,” she said. “you’re wearing my ex-boyfriend’s name.” “max hunter,” i admitted. “listen. you look like you want to be anywhere but here. i can help you with that. i’m a shamus. i need to get a look at some documents in your collection… and i got a good bottle of something stronger than what they’re serving here if there’s someone who can help me with that.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 35 “veronika sternwood,” she said, unnecessarily since her name was hanging just above a row of maple leaves on her sweater. after a half of a second’s consideration, she uttered, “why not?” and led me down a narrow hall into a small, but tidy office. she clicked on a bright overhead lamp on the way in. she got a couple of spotless glasses out of a desk drawer and i retrieved my flask of bourbon and poured out a couple fingers each. there were two plastic chairs along the side wall of the office and two more comfortable looking chairs on either side of her desk. she sat down along the wall on one of the plastic chairs, away from the artifacts and motioned me to sit beside her. i felt a little like i was sitting at a stop waiting for the bus but nevertheless obliged. she downed half her drink, carefully dabbed a pretty upper lip with a kleenex she had taken from a box on her desk, sighed, and said, “that’s more like it.” getting to the point, i said, “i’m looking for slow learners.” “we should have stayed at the party then,” she said. there it was, the concept right there for disparaging use, just like it had always been for me before this case. “no, i’m looking for records on students labelled as slow learners, you know academically. i’m trying to piece together what sort of programs they’ve been in over the last hundred years or so.” “oh,” she said, “that kind of slow learner. what’s your interest in them?” “justice, ma’am,” i said in a deep voice, doing my best lone ranger impression. she laughed at that. it was a nice laugh, but maybe a little forced. perhaps my impression hadn’t been as good as i thought. or maybe she wasn’t partial to masked lawmen. “i might be able to help with that,” she confirmed. “if i can’t find anything under ‘slow learner’ are there any other terms i might look for?” i told her about iop/k & e and suggested she see if there were any records of similar programs that would have preceded them. she took this in for a second and appeared to decide this was pretty doable. she said, “okay, be back in a jiffy” and with that she downed the rest of her drink, wiped her mouth again, and was gone. i surveyed her desk. documents and tools were neatly arranged, like rows of soldiers. i would have liked to look around but i didn’t think upsetting the order would go over well, so i just sipped my drink. she was taking longer than a jiffy. i was making some shadow puppets with my hands along the back wall of her office when she came back in with a stack of documents. “there were actually quite a few things that matched,” she informed me. leaving our empty glasses on the plastic chairs for now, we both donned thin gloves and began. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 36 leafing through some turn of the century newspaper clippings and department of education policy statements as well as what i now recognized as a thesis on the topic from more recent times,42 i understood for the first time that the idea of a practical public school program that would train students for employment had been a feature of public schooling almost since the inception of mass public schooling in alberta. the benefits of such instruction were seen to apply not just to slow learners but to all students. by 1901, the elementary school curriculum already included something called “manual training” including construction activities in paper, cardboard, clay and plasticine, as well as weaving, all of which were designed to develop handeye coordination in the children and leave them prepared for related duties in their “after lives,”43 which i took to mean their lives after school not the great hereafter. i also realized from reading this that, for many, lives after school meant after elementary school. this marked the end of the majority of students’ careers in public schooling at the time. i asked for the next document and veronika carefully handed me a yellowing report from alberta’s department of education.44 looking it over, i realized that from these beginnings a program of manual training was formalized in all the province’s elementary schools, which must have included grades seven and eight at the time. in addition to prescribing instruction in the basic construction craft skills i’d already read about, the program included more advanced training for the boys in “simple processes in the accepted industrial manner” and, for the girls, training in “sewing and cooking.”45 again, it was understood that these courses would prepare the majority of students for careers in technical trades or, depending on their gender, domestic sciences. as the document stated, this instruction aimed: to give a new channel to the expression of ideas; to give hand and eye training; to develop constructive impulses, judgement, accuracy, resource, patience, industry, and a sense of symmetry, proportion and beauty by the artistic production of common things; to give respect for manual pursuits and encourage industrial efficiency.46 “i like a man with an eye for symmetry and sure hands,” veronika, who had been reading over my shoulder, remarked with a bit of a purr. “a little patience doesn’t hurt either.” i felt my hand twitch and was glad i didn’t rip the article i was holding. we’d hit it off fairly well from the start, but she seemed to be kicking things into a new gear. i wasn’t sure if i could chalk this up to the bourbon or if my studious look was just that irresistible. regardless, if she was already getting bored with these documents and looking for a new game to play, i was unfortunately, just getting started with them. i murmured my amusement at her innuendo and returned to the documents. skimming the thesis again, i read about the emergence of junior high schools in calgary. by the 1920s, the minimum school leaving age had risen to fifteen, creating a number of growing pains for the school district. many students ignored the law and continued to drop out sooner than this because they or their parents saw no purpose in continuing their educations past grade eight. the 42 knobbe (1978, p. 11) 43 “it is time for a change,” the morning albertan, november 23, 1900 (as cited in ibid., p. 13) 44 alberta department of education annual report (1912) (as cited in ibid., p. 14) 45 ibid. 46 ibid. (p. 14) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 37 only schooling alternative for grade nine remained a highly academic curriculum which was irrelevant to many students’ present interests and future career paths. despite this, the calgary district also predicted overcrowding in high schools with the increase in the minimum school leaving age. stakeholders worried, now that a transition at least to grade nine was mandated for all, that many students would experience difficulties moving from elementary school to high school. were slow learners among the students predicted to struggle with this transition, i wondered? as a result, the calgary district developed a junior high school program that operated in a dual capacity: preparing students, depending on their interests and aptitudes, for high school, or for entry into the work force after grade nine. almost a third of a student’s classes in a week were to be spent not in core academic instruction but in the study of various electives which could, for the more academically inclined, include french, dramatics, music or elementary sociology, or for the students more inclined to practical pursuits include general shop, typewriting, business arts, and home economics. it seemed to me that as it was becoming more normal for most students to be enrolled in school and stay there until they were at least fifteen, the possibility of two school pathways, a more academic one and a more practical one was elbowing its way into the normal curve too. or was it? i remembered the iq pioneers, had, as i understood it, liked their reasoning as abstract as possible. so was this more practical pathway a place i could look for slow learners on, or was it just a distraction? “where do slow learners fit into all of this?” i mumbled out loud. “what’s that baby?” veronika asked, having returned to the plastic chairs and poured herself some more bourbon which she sipped while she watched me read. i realized this probably wasn’t very fun for her, she was probably hoping to be better entertained. i thought i could try to make it up to her soon. i wasn’t quite done though. i mumbled that i was just talking to myself and got back to reading. skimming back a little, i noticed something i had missed. even before the junior high concept, spurred on by the success of the manual training evening classes they had begun offering adolescents, the calgary district formed a committee to discuss opening a technical high school. this resulted in the founding of victoria prevocational high school in 1919. students were recommended for this school on the basis of being “hand minded [not] book minded,”47 and, in a jarring description i recognized from the iq exhibit in the now-incinerated museum of human sorting “not the bright and studious pupils but the dull uninterested ones.”48 i had found where the slow learners fit into the story. my pulse quickened. victoria prevocational offered a modified curriculum with a fifty/fifty split between academic coursework modified to be more accessible to slow learning students, and vocational training designed to help students discover the technical occupations they were best suited for and prepare them for these occupations. the echoes of this in the k & e policy i’d read about were unmistakable. this vocational school for slow learners was, for a time, widely lauded as a progressive step in education in the city. it was praised by both the chief school inspector at the time and in an article in the calgary herald. the district superintendent went so far as to note that students who had “previously been regarded as retarded would, by way of this new [pathway], be stimulated 47 ibid. (p. 15) 48 ibid. (p. 18) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 38 and come to enjoy their schooling.”49 when the junior high concept arrived in the 1930s though, this discrete program became absorbed by the larger plan i had read about previously. i wondered if the absorption of victoria prevocational, while making schooling a little more ‘practical’ for most learners, made schooling more ‘academic’ for the sorts of students victoria prevocational had targeted. compared to victoria prevocational, the junior high plan involved less time spent in practical electives, more time spent in academic instruction with no reduction in the difficulty levels of academic instruction. from what i could tell, there was little talk of a more vocational tier of instruction specifically for slow learners for the next twenty years. had the slow learners gone underground? “come back to the party, we miss you,” a boozy voice pleaded. i looked up and saw that veronika was shimmying my flask back and forth slowly in her hand even as she was shimmying a little herself. she had undone a couple buttons on her curling sweater, and in the process cleaved a moose that was depicted on the picture on the front. it stared at me accusingly. “in a minute,” i stalled. it seemed like a nice party, but i was on the trail of slow learners. i skimmed ahead a little in the thesis. by the 1950s the department of education and calgary school district were beginning to worry that the junior high concept wasn’t working for all students after all. they were concerned by the amount of students continuing to drop out during their junior high years. facing a set of rigorous standardized exams to qualify to transition from grade nine to grade ten, and with only limited access to more practical classes, many students still weren’t even sticking around until the end of grade nine. by 1959, some calgary schools were beginning to experiment again with modification of curriculum for students who were seen as unable to keep up. a wholescale report on the state of the education system in alberta the cameron report of 1959 criticized the school system, particularly junior highs for failing to address the growing diversity of ability levels that was appearing in classrooms, and proposed a distinct vocational education route for students.50 one year later, the federal government lent support for this suggestion with the technical vocational assistance act which, in collaboration with ten provincial governments, provided substantial funding to improve industrial education in general and to re-open discrete vocational pathways for non-academic students. not only did the federal government agree to funding seventy-five percent of capital expenditures for facilities until 1963 and then fifty percent for five years after that, ottawa also agreed to assume fifty percent of the cost of any approved vocational program for the length of the agreement.51 i remembered seeing a plaque in williamson’s school acknowledging the support of this act in its construction, and read of additional hybrid academic/vocational high schools, combining a full high school academic program and an extensive industrial arts program. this funding also led to the eventual creation of lord shaughnessy secondary vocational school in southwest calgary, and van horne secondary vocational school in northwest calgary, two schools designed specifically to provide vocational training to non-academic students, including slow learners. i also learned that the location of van horne was initially controversial in the university heights community as the resident association noted that while they commended the school district attempting to “teach the unteachables,” they did not want these students, all of whom they felt 49 ibid. (p. 18) 50 ibid. (p. 35) 51 ibid. (p. 102) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 39 came “from a lower class,” schooled in their community.52 my mind flashed back to the eugenics gallery in the now-destroyed museum of human classification. in 1961, the calgary district initiated the junior vocational program, later renamed the junior academic vocational program, in several of the schools with vocational facilities. this program was intended specifically for students who had gone through at least seven years of schooling and who had shown consistently below average achievement in their grades at school, as well as low average intellectual functioning in formal testing. students who would benefit from the junior vocational program were identified by teachers and administration. the school principal was then expected to meet with the parents to describe the program. junior academic vocational involved a course load of about fifty percent core academic classes with a focus on basic literacy and numeracy skills demanded in the workplace, with fifty percent technical skills. structured work experience placements, in which students worked with community employers under the supervision of the school, were also required. the program grew in popularity and eventually six percent of the calgary district’s students were enrolled in junior academic vocational programming.53 knowing what i’d learned so far about k & e and iop, i was not surprised by the instructional balance of academic and vocational courses, with even the academic courses emphasizing the practical demands of the world of work. i did find three things interesting though. the first of these involved the political heat generated by the proposed opening of these programs. trustee g.m. burden was the primary opponent. in a speech at a home and school association meeting in 1964, burden declared that instead of lowering their standards for their children such that they considered vocational education a possibility, that all parents should have the ambition of university education for their children. he feared that these schools would become known as “dumb schools” and that it would be seen as a public embarrassment that the district was spending so much money on a school for “dumb children.”54 he also declared of the minority of students who might actually require modified programming that “these people will make no contribution to society”55 and that money could be better spent serving the needs of the majority of students in the general student population instead. the second thing that interested me was the positive perceptions of the program held by many of the enrolled children’s parents. on a 1964 questionnaire that asked responders to rate the program as excellent, average, or poor, one hundred and seven out of the one hundred thirty-four parents said it was excellent and none responded that it was poor. in the comments section one parent wrote: i have only praise for this program and find that my son has taken an interest in school for the first time since he was in grade two. his marks are much better and he has a bet 52 ibid. (p. 82) 53 ibid. (p. 88) 54 ibid. (p. 68) 55 ibid. (p. 67) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 40 ter understanding of the subject he is being taught. i am sure that this program has saved him from becoming another drop-out.56 many parents of children in the district’s junior academic vocational programs not only agreed to their children’s placements, but formed an association and aggressively lobbied to keep the program open during this period of controversy. alan low, president of the association, was quoted as saying prior to the program, “i saw my own son drowning in a sea of frustration in academic studies. continuous failure was making him a nervous wreck.”57 having weathered the storm during the first few years of the program, the parent association remained involved, continually advocating for more funding, better facilities, and expansion of the program to make it available to all students who might benefit. in 1965 1966, a hundred students who had qualified for the program were turned away because it had reached its quota. the third thing that interested me was the sense i got that planning for the program went far beyond trying to simplify curriculum for weaker learners; there really did seem to be an attempt to do something different for students than what was currently being offered in regular education. former administrators the thesis author interviewed indicated that they felt fortunate that the program necessitated hiring new teachers as such teachers were often unhindered by ‘knowledge’ of the standard teaching procedures these students had struggled under. newer teachers had not as yet met very many pupils in the regular stream, so they were less likely to devote much thought to negatively comparing junior academic vocational students to more academic students.58 i thought about what williamson had said about moving to iop so early in his teaching career, appreciating the autonomy he was given, and enjoying the students. after my experiences in the museum and in speaking with smart ass cripple who had experienced his own separate schooling in an institution he continually referred to as shit, i was bewildered to read this overwhelmingly positive depiction of a separate program, housed in separate schools, for slow learners. save for mentioning that the school tended to do more to enhance the career prospects of boys than of girls, for whom the emphasis in vocational training remained on domestic skills, the author of the thesis had little of a critical nature to say about the junior academic vocational program. she reserved most of her criticism for those who had opposed the program, suggesting for the most part that this opposition had its roots, not in a pedagogic disagreement about what slower learning students needed to thrive, but in a parsimonious and elitist notion that these students were not worth devoting extra attention or resources to. i closed the thesis, though not before reading that one of the “unteachables” from the junior vocational program had upgraded to high school diploma level courses, completed a university degree and was, at the time the thesis was written, working as a teacher in the city.59 i looked up. veronika was nowhere to be seen. maybe she’d given up on me and gone back to the wine and 56 ibid. (p. 63) 57 ibid. (p. 71) 58 see ibid. (p. 59). additionally, the freedom from provincial academic curricula and standardized examinations in the vocational schools may well have fostered a sense of liberation from more traditional teaching methods. knobbe mentions team teaching as an example of a successful method regularly used in the vocational schools, despite its being discouraged in ‘regular’ classrooms at the time. 59 ibid. (p. 93) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 41 cheese, if it was still going on. i really hadn’t been much of a date so far. i was usually more attentive to gorgeous dames who threw themselves at me. i saw that she’d taken my flask with her wherever she went. i thought maybe i should go look for her. looking back at the desk, however, i saw that she’d also brought me a couple of interesting looking books with light blue covers. they bore the label alberta education in that stylized futuristic font that everyone was so excited about at the dawn of microcomputers, and both appeared to be evaluations of other academic occupational programs in various parts of the province. i gathered that, even though there was no centralized provincial curriculum and there might have been bumps in the road in various districts, this approach to programming for slow learners had hung in there through the 1970s and into the early 1980s. i realized i was reading program evaluations, commissioned by alberta education and written by members of the educational psychology department at the university of alberta, for the purposes of determining if two urban school-based programs merited funding from the province.60 just as the thesis i’d just read had, these reports went out of their way to praise the dedication, skill and enthusiasm of many of the teachers in the academic occupational programs and listed characteristics of ideal teachers of the programs. the authors suggested teachers of such programs should: ideally have some training in special education, be flexible as to individual needs but also firm on maintaining an atmosphere of mutual respect, appreciate and use humour but not sarcasm (that disqualified me, i thought), know their subject disciplines well, and enjoy teaching students at this academic level. the classroom conditions these students were said to require included the use of small discussion groups, hands-on activities whenever possible, and the use of inquiry-based projects where the students and teachers worked together on figuring out the tasks necessary to explore a particular topic. despite my experiences in the museum of sorting, i felt from reading these reports, some good will towards the creators, administrators, and teachers of these programs. i saw few of the eugenic assumptions that these students were a burden on the system or incapable of learning. it seemed to me that i was reading an earnest discussion of how to teach these students, with care, such that instead of disappearing from the educational landscape, they succeeded in school and went on to live successful lives. all of these documents seemed to describe an attempt to create an educational oasis for this group of at-risk students. as i thought of all this, the gravity of the realization that i had just witnessed almost a hundred years of a type of programming for slow learners that continued on in present times in the knowledge and employability classes began to hang on me. were slow learners being lost or found in these programs? in describing the need for this sort of programming, these documents had strongly implied that the regular education system at the time was far too rigid and theoretical for many of its students. was it still so unyielding to diversity that it required this sort of intervention for slow learners? i felt the case breaking open. xxii i had just started reading a report on the piloting of the integrated occupational program, getting no further than the acknowledgements page, when a hand belonging to the stunning archivist i’d been neglecting tousled my hair from behind, surprising me slightly and making me realize how deep my distraction with all this history had been. it slid softly down my neck, and stroked my 60 nyberg (1984) and harders consulting (1983, p. 64) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 42 chest. then i heard a regretful sigh. i was about to say, again, i’d be all hers in just a minute more when i heard a click. i whirled around, finally giving veronika the attention she’d deserved all along. she was holding a pretty little pink revolver. it was so tiny that it looked at first like a toy, but the consequences of getting this category wrong could be grave. it was pointed at my heart. its mouth said ‘oh’, which, by coincidence, was exactly what i was thinking. on second glance it didn’t look like a toy at all. it looked hard and sleek and dense. “i know i've been neglecting you, dear, but…” my wisecrack dried out in my mouth before i could finish it. “shut up hunter.” i couldn’t hear booze in her voice anymore and, moreover, it appeared we were no longer on a first name basis. “insecure damsel in vintage curling sweater desperately seeking bourbon and companionship,” she leered, mocking me with the backstory i had believed so completely. “willing to look up documents and... hook up. ridiculous, but i knew you'd fall for it all of it. too bad you got so distracted by the first thing; we might have had some fun with the other for a while. it wasn’t for lack of hinting.” mentally, i agreed it was too bad, in retrospect. i’m red-blooded as any man, more than most likely, but it wasn’t the first time i’d jilted a potential paramour over a curious case. the ensuing scorn was always a particularly dangerous occupational hazard. now that i’d blown it, she looked even more alluring as she stood there threatening and despising me. “why?” was all i could manage. i really needed to reload my wisecracks. “you've been unsettling the categories. if we let you keep this up all hell could break loose.” “i haven't disturbed any categories, i've been looking for slow learners.” “they’re not for you to look for, who do you think you are anyway?” who are you?” i stalled, trying to hold her glance while using my peripheral vision to track the pistol. so far she was holding it depressingly steadily. “that information is...” i think she was going to say classified but then she changed her mind. “well i suppose it doesn't matter. when you lose all amusement value to me, which will be pretty soon, you'll have your own permanent shift in category and it won’t matter what i’ve told you. i work for an operation that maintains categories... by any means necessary.” “government? corporate?” i asked. “not directly. more covert. we call ourselves the arranging angels.” there was a trace of pride in this. “never heard of you.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 43 “we work in the shadows. we have to. we’re under constant threat.” “you sound more like terrorists to me.” a muscle flexed in her jaw at this. it was hard to concentrate on an escape plan even though i knew that’s what i needed to be doing. i just wanted to appreciate the hard beauty in front of me. i asked a different question, stalling to get my bearings. “who hired you for this case anyway?” “i don’t ever see the clients, not directly, it’s all rather tacit.” “so your job at the archives…” “part of the persona. and rather convenient. history is useful to a point; it can help you refine your categories and methods. but you can get bogged down in it; it can impede progress. sometimes a little forgetting is needed too. sometimes i help with that forgetting.” staring at her, i was thinking that maybe getting together with her and forgetting a few things might not be too bad. she hadn’t shot me yet, that was something. i had to keep her amused one way or another. i asked another question. “did you and a book of matches help with some forgetting over at the museum of sorting?” “our cells all work independently, but yes, that was probably one of us. i’ve been on the lookout for you for several days, my colleagues too i suspect. regrettable, that fire. we work closely with the people who built that institute. it was very valuable in category maintenance. but there you went, poking around in things, using what was in there to destroy the categories, not refine them. it was safer to destroy the institute.” “i’m not looking to destroy anything, i’m just looking for slow learners,” i repeated, hoping if i could put just a little doubt in her head about all the categories that it might travel all the way down to her trigger finger. “and you keep on finding them, and then you keep looking anyhow. digging up the dirt, disturbing things. what else are you playing at, if not to destroy the slow learner category?” the more she mocked me, the more alluring she became to me. it was sick. “i keep looking because i’m never sure if i found them.” i was only being partially truthful when i said this. i had wondered if the category might need to be put out to pasture, or out of its misery, but i thought saying so might make her clench that gun-toting fist. “have you met adolescents with slow learner-level iqs?” she demanded. “well yes,” i admitted. “then you found the slow learners. you should have packed your bags and left town. how stupid are you? i just solved your mystery for you in ten seconds.” “do you have something against slow learners, is that why you want to stop me?” i asked. i williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 44 didn’t know if this was a safe question or not, but keeping her talking seemed the most important thing. “do you have something against slow learners, hunter? what do you think will happen if you destroy the category? from what i can tell the system figured out who these kids were and what to do about them a hundred years ago. for one hundred years compassionate people have been trying to give them the special attention they need so that they can overcome the unhappiness and sense of personal inadequacy that comes with failing in school and in life. the system has kept them out of jails and mental hospitals and, instead, doing the routine tasks that need to be done for society to function.61 you’re the terrorist here for wanting to blow all this up.” her firm body vibrated in delicious contempt but she held the gun steady. “but still, isn’t the history behind all this sorting pretty dark? if your organization was affiliated with the museum that burnt down you know it is.” i thought i had a good point but wished i was doing as well wresting the gun from her. “mistakes were made. omissions, excesses, sure. but just because the science behind iq has been abused on occasion, doesn’t mean we should get rid of it.” “but how,” i persevered, “can you even know if an intellectual category like slow learner is real when the claims it makes about the students in that category seem so contaminated by negative prejudices based on race, class, or disability?” “there’s some risk of prejudice maybe, but there is a lot of solid empirical work behind a measure like iq too. and it’s the good science that purifies that which might contaminate it. it is built right into the process. 62 maybe disabled people were treated badly in the 1700s and 1800s because society wasn’t advanced enough to rigorously study these people and what their needs were. science didn’t invent mental retardation,” i noticed her clinical word choice here, “or slowness. science discovered these defects and is well on the way to figuring out how to manage them. and it’s getting better all the time. look at how many excellent categories of disability we have now and how much more we know about each one of them. the process works. and you want to break it and go back to the days of ignorance.” “part of being enlightened is realizing that human intelligence can’t be studied this easily, and the claims to knowledge you get are problematized by your two roles as,” i wasn’t sure what to say next, “empirical subject and empirico-transcendent doublet.”63 i concluded. i was surprised to hear myself saying something like this, but the weird phrase had been sitting half-remembered in my consciousness. it was never fully there or absent. i’d heard it from michel when i was in a pain-and-pill fog in the back of the peugeot, and he and jacques were having their argument about descartes. i was feeling rather outside myself at the time, but it had still struck me as odd. i was glad adrenaline had wrested it out of me now. i needed all the words i could get. 61 see chauhan (2011, p. 288) 62 ibid. (p. 183) 63 foucault (p. 1994, p. 4) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 45 “hocus pocus words,” she scoffed. “the idea of human is exactly what entitles us to study ourselves.64 and where would we be if we hadn’t?” she hadn’t really addressed my claim with this, but i was in no position to complain. i was running out of ammunition in this debate; some of her arguments even made a warped sort of sense. i could see how things would appear that way from her perspective. now that her alluring but feigned vulnerability at the cash bar was long forgotten, i saw a beauty that could break you in two. “i never said that this knowledge isn’t potentially helpful,” i protested, “i’m just learning there might be some other ways, beyond these categories of understanding these students and their troubles in school, some ways that might help educators be more inviting.” “different ways of knowing!” she scoffed. “like you can just pull some possibility out of the sky about how these students learn and stack it next to a research-proven treatment and say they are equal to each other. is it all relative then, or maybe magic? are you a magician? there’s only one true way to know who these subjects are and what they need and its logical scientific inquiry. figure out how the slow learners learn differently, theorize different ways of getting their competencies as close to normal as we can and measure your results.” her cheeks now took on a reddish hue as she spoke to her lust for clarity and continued to aim the pink revolver right at my heart. “but when you call them slow learners haven’t you already stacked the deck about how they appear?” i managed, feeling a little hypocritical as this was the label that i’d been using during the whole case, and because, given what my client had hired me for, i was likely to continue to use it. “you’re confusing names and things, hunter.65 no matter what you call them, these students are low average; the category below normal. you can’t make that come and go by what you call it.” “but isn’t normal just...” i began. “a hypothetical abstract. yes, and a very good one, one that’s been helping educators get students, including slow learners, to learn up to their potential for years.” “but isn’t potential….” three things happened simultaneously before i could finish my question. the first was that veronika finally lost all patience with me. her lovely finger squeezed the trigger and a short sharp shot echoed through the archive. the second was that i realized too late that i’d misjudged this encounter. this debate hadn’t aroused any doubt at all in her. she felt the need to explain herself to some degree, maybe to hear herself justify her own beliefs, but no matter what i could come up with in reply, there she was, shooting me.66 the third thing that happened was that a pair of arms appeared behind her and redirected her aim as she was firing. the arms kept pulling, 64 ibid. (p. 386) 65 sasso (2001, p. 190) 66 see vilhauer (2010, p. 134). vilhauer writes of the barrier to understanding posed when one participant in a conversation declares “no more talk the time for talk is over.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 46 adding a twist to her wrist until she released the pistol. the arms tried to restrain her but she was too fast for that last indignity and broke free. veronika turned and lashed out with a vicious left hook but she put too much on it. a nice straight cross got to her first, connecting to her perfect jaw with little cracking sound. she fell asleep, and colleen birdseye caught her and set her into one of the plastic chairs on the periphery of her office, the chairs that she’d insisted we sit on to keep the bourbon away from the paperwork. after a moment’s recovery, i picked up the smoking gun. “what are you doing here?” was all i could manage. “thank you might be a more appropriate response. john williamson called me and asked if i could help you out again on the investigation. he was afraid you’d be too embarrassed to contact me after you ran out on me, but he said you were encountering a lot of danger.” i thought williamson was reading too much of himself into that concern. i don’t embarrass that easily. but it wasn’t worth pointing out just then. instead i asked, “how did you know i was here?” “there’s only so many places slow learners, the way schools describe them, might show up. i’ve heard some rumors about some strange events going on around the city in some of the other places slow learners might be found, but nothing about here yet. i figured maybe this was your next stop. let’s get out of here.” “what should we do about her?” i asked. “leave her here. i don’t think i hit her hard enough to do permanent damage. she’s going to wake up cranky any minute now. we should be gone when she does.” “won’t she come after me again?” “i don’t know if they’ll use her again. from what i could gather she wouldn’t be that effective now that her …” she paused looking for a word, “approach has been compromised. what’s with that sweater anyway?” it would have taken too long to explain so i just walked out of the archives with as much dignity as i could muster. colleen birdseye followed me. the party was over, the place was dark, and there were no alarms or sentries to object to our being there or leaving. veronika must have arranged for this during her ‘jiffy’ so she could dispatch me undisturbed. whoever this group she worked for was, they seemed to have, as trent had suggested, some pretty long tentacles. xxiii following our escape from the museum, colleen birdseye and i agreed to meet at a coffee shop well clear of the facility to conclude the interview that i’d cut short when i pursued the stalker. we purchased coffees and sat and sipped. hers was decaffeinated; i would have hated to see her on caffeine after the display i’d just witnessed. i filled her in briefly as to where i’d been since williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 47 we last spoke. she said it sounded like i was making progress. then i cut right to the chase and asked her a question i’d been wondering more and more about since i started reading about slow learners but that i’d been lacking the understanding to put so succinctly until now. “do schools produce slow learners?” “i think that they can, yeah,” she replied. “i think the label itself can make the kids go, ‘oh, i’m a slow learner. oh, i’m not able to do this’ instead of their looking at other ways of learning. ‘i might not be able to read very well; i might read at the level of my grade one brother or sister but i still can understand in a different way.’ i don’t think schools allow students enough opportunities to show their learning ultimately, and they do come out believing they’re slow. slow in the way of less than.” “you talked about a sort of a hierarchy between ld kids and slow learners last time. is that part of how schools produce slow learners too?” “k & e is viewed as the kids that... it’s often viewed as the kids that aren’t worth putting the effort into. there are issues around ld too, i’ve often seen it where no one is really looking out to see that the ld students are getting the proper accommodations. but, when it comes to k & e, a lot of people don’t want to work with the students because they see it as a waste of time. unfortunately. and it’s not a waste of time at all!” colleen birdseye’s observation confirmed the dynamic i’d seen in the “birth of ld/sputnik” exhibit. it also related to the book that demonstrated that the slow learner label was, at least in the 1970s when it was written, strongly connected to social class.67 i would have laid this all out for her as further evidence of her suspicions but it was getting late and i wanted to stick with exploring the most pressing concerns in the remaining time we had to talk. along these lines, to give her another contemporary example of the sorts of negative forecasts that i’d discovered slow learners often face, i told her williamson’s story of the student he’d seen in line at the apprenticeship board, the one who’d been asked to complete an entrance exam even though he already had the required coursework to bypass the exam.68 “wow,” she remarked, then added, “and that happens, unfortunately. yeah, it’s sad, and that’s… i mean, that’s part of the reason the vocational schools saw numbers drop and that kind of thing, is because of that kind of attitude, right? that it’s somehow less of a school if it’s a vocational school, y’know? even though those kids are trying to move from what’s basically a trades high school to a trades college, right?” “do you think those schools do a good job of getting the students ready for trades colleges?” “yes they do. those kids go into these trades courses and they come out ready because the k & e occupational courses are supposed to be hands-on. like, you are working for three years. you are in a shop. you know how to pull a car apart and put it back together by the time you’re done, or build a house, i mean, we build houses on-site, right? so, you learned how to do whatever 67 weber (1974, p. 17) 68 williamson (2016, p. 5) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 48 shop content you were taking. you might not have had all the bookwork to go with it, but that’s what college is for, right?” a question came to me out of the blue just then, it was unfairly broad but i asked it anyway “what is intelligence and how does it relate to schooling?” she took a sip of her coffee and smiled. “that’s a loaded question,” she remarked. but then she took a shot at it anyway. “i think intelligence is... i truly think there’s all different kinds of intelligence, i guess? it’s... i guess, someone’s ability to process and understand something in various ways. how does that come out in school?” she asked herself. “there’s a very specific type of intelligence that is measured in schools. i think that that’s what we see and that’s what society focuses on, that being people’s ability to memorize and people’s ability to write an exam. to be able to understand what the marker is going to want at the end of the day or to understand how multiple choice exams are laid out. i think that’s what schools honestly consider intelligence.” i nodded. “and i think that when... i think other types of intelligence are just as important in being a human being in this world.” i nodded again. “so, at the end of the day, there are a lot of things which aren’t looked at in schools that are not measured. things like being able to participate with a group of people, and collaborate, and have conversations, and understand why so-and-so next to you is having a bad day, and how to help that person. relating it back to k & e, that’s one thing that, in a k & e school, you see so much of kids helping other kids. you see so much of kids getting together and working together for a ‘big-picture’ good. like, when they put our school forward for closure, the students got together and they were down at every school district meeting. they were talking at the meetings to public officials, they were protesting protesting in a very productive way, not just out there swearing, and...” “throwing rocks,” i said, helping her along. “yeah, exactly! it was organized, it was... they started up, like, a facebook page, they looked into government documents to see if the school could actually be closed legally or if the district was going against human rights. they were working together and really showing who they were as human beings. and a lot of the students involved in that were grade thirteen kids or grade fourteen kids who would have been too old to come back there the next year anyway. so, it was really neat to see because it wasn’t about their personal gain.” “they were looking out for those…” “those coming up after them. yeah. and that’s a type of intelligence, that... in a school, is only celebrated if it’s in the right way in the right student with the right issue. but for kids who see williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 49 injustices that others don’t want to hear about, then that is often seen as a behavior problem. that’s the type of intelligence, again, that is not celebrated, and that’s where our k & e kids often suffer, the things that they are good at and the intelligence that they have towards certain things is not valued.” there was something about all this. i retrieved williamson’s business card from my wallet and took out a pen and wrote down the words ‘intelligence/valued’ on the back of it as a reminder for myself. i liked what she said and wanted to pursue it. birdseye started talking again, about the school closures and about some of her students. her stories were very informative and i listened carefully for quite a while. suddenly, however, i yawned a yawn of tectonic proportions. i realized i wasn’t feeling very intelligent anymore. it had been an eventful day and i was getting sleepy. i apologized and assured my interviewee it was the tiring case and not her stories that had caused this reaction in me. “thanks for all of this,” i said. “i mean now and in the archives. i would have got the drop on her eventually by myself but you helped.” “we all need help from time to time,” birdseye said evenly. i confirmed her contact information, intending fully to call on her again if things came up in the case that she could help me interpret. i had finally realized what a valuable source she was. we went our separate ways. biting my tongue to stay awake, i drove back to the hotel, went to my room, and fell into a deep, dreamless and all too brief sleep. after a couple of hours, i lurched awake realizing there was something i had been neglecting all the while during this investigation. i wrote this down on a notepad by the phone beside my bed and fell back asleep. this time i didn’t sleep dreamlessly. the tiny children were back scurrying around my dinner plate again. i awoke early the next day. there was no need to look at the notepad, i remembered what i needed to do. i got myself ready (donning another one of williamson’s teacher outfits) and out of the room in twenty minutes. i had made a large cup of java in the machine and carried it with me to the business center, ignoring their ‘no food or drink’ sign. i deposited my coins and the old desktop computer reluctantly woke up and began to fill the room with its song of clunks and grinding. after about fifteen minutes of research, i got what i needed to and set off to follow up the lead. it was surprisingly warm out. a single cloud dominated the sky like the monolithic spaceship of an alien invader, but it had brought a nice warm wind with it. the roads were a slushy mess but for the first time since arriving in calgary i felt my blood freely circulate. i reached the office i had set out to find and asked if matthew summit was available. the secretary admonished me for not making an appointment and told me that dr. summit was a very busy man. i believed that. i’d read that summit was the leader of the team that brought in iop, k & e’s predecessor and the first comprehensive province-wide vocational program for slow learners, and he continued to be involved in numerous projects related to vocational education and job safety for young workers. despite the secretary’s warning, summit walked out of his office just then. i recognized him from some pictures i’d seen during my bit of research that morning. he was a tall, broad-shouldered man; i figured him for mid-sixties, but he still moved williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 50 with a sort of lithesome grace. he had a plain samsonite suitcase in one hand and a case that i assume contained a laptop computer in the other. “dr. summit have you seen the slow learners?” i called out walking towards him. “my client says they’re disappearing and he’s hired me to find them.” he paused and i caught up with him and handed him my business card. he studied my card for a moment and an expression i took for curiosity flitted across his face. in a faint english accent i couldn’t quite place regionally, maybe due to the contamination of many years in canada, he told me he had a flight out of town in two hours, but if i drove him to the airport we could discuss the case. he set his belongings in the trunk of the buick and sat in the passenger seat seeming to enjoy the ample leg room. i started the car, got the first few turns of the directions i needed from him, and drove off. i told him i’d been studying up on vocational education programs for slow learners in alberta and had recently been learning about the academic vocational programs that ran, in various school districts, from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. i told him i’d seen his name connected with the program that followed this, the integrated occupation program, and asked him to describe his connection to it. “you’ve learned that for as long as there has been public education there has been some sort of vocational programming,” he began, “but many of the vocational programs of the 1960s and 1970s were not meeting the needs of the students or of the employers we hoped the students would work for after graduation. the vocational programs were meant for students less likely to transition to post-secondary schooling and more likely to transition directly to the workforce, but the unemployment rates of students from these programs were three times as high as those of other students six months after graduation and still twice as high two years after graduation. though some programs in particular districts were effective, there was, overall, a lack of consistency in the quality and approach of the site-based programs. one problem many of the programs had is they tended to overvalue teaching the students job-specific skills over the generic skills they would need to function in any job.” “what was different about iop?” i asked. “i led a team that built it, from the ground up. first, we developed the occupational program component of it and brought in curriculum writers to write the academic component and ground it in the occupational component. while the mode of instruction cannot easily be controlled, the most effective instructional strategies involved integrating english, math, social, and science into the applied learning opportunities provided by the occupational courses… on a need to know basis.” i wasn’t sure what he meant by this and said so. “needed to know for practical application. seeing the application created motivation and gave meaning and concreteness to learning. similarly, all of the occupational courses focused on instruction in generic skills such as organization, communication, reading, writing, visual skills, and math as well as instruction in the skills specific to that occupation.” he directed me to turn right. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 51 i wanted to hear about the program but had another question first. “it seems like you pretty much endorsed the definition of slow learner many of the school districts were using in their vocational programs. how important was the concept of slow learner in creating iop?” “truthfully, i’m not that attached to the slow learner label. i mean i am a slow learner too at things that don’t interest me,” he candidly replied. “still, from a system perspective, you try to maximize limited resources to accommodate a diverse range of students. you try to identify the needs of various groups and set up supports to try to meet those needs as best as possible. systems do not like offering costly programs, and only do so if there is a clear need and if expenses can be kept under control. a program needs criteria to become part of a bureaucratic system, part of a funding system. alberta education funds students based on credits earned. iop students were to be funded for one and a half times per credit, i think k & e students still are,69 you can’t do that for just any student. we were most worried about students who were two years behind in core course capabilities, though it turned out that many students who were enrolled in iop were more like four to five years behind. we thought an iq range of seventy-five to ninety plus or minus five was appropriate. the combination of these things seemed most suggestive of a student who was at-risk of dropping out of school without sufficient qualification for the world of work, as well as a student who did not likely qualify to receive support from other programming such as that available for students with intellectual disabilities, behavior disabilities and so on.” i stopped, along with twenty cars that were ahead of me, at a light. the long wait gave me a chance to ask a long question. “you explained how you thought iop did vocational programming differently or better than many of the previous vocational programs for slow-learners. what did it do differently than regular schooling to give these students, who’d struggled, a better chance of success?” “the traditional academic model sees the teacher as the fountain of all knowledge and the role of the teacher as filling the empty vessels, the students’ minds, with their teachers’ knowledge. in the so-called hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, traditional schools rarely get further than thesis.”70 that would have been a good line if i knew what he was talking about. from what williamson had told me, it sounded like he was maybe describing teaching methods that left little room for the voice of the student or for negotiated understandings. summit continued. “the iop model was designed to engage students in activities that were meaningful and relevant to them… a john dewey model of learning by doing. back in the early years of the program, for example, there was a vocational school with a large iop population that taught the students aspects of both their occupational and academic coursework by engaging them in building houses.” 69 see alberta education, (2008, p. 6). max’s source is correct. 70 see leonard f. wheat (2012, pp. 1-2). a thesis in this case means a proposition, antithesis it’s negation, and synthesis a new proposition that somehow resolves the contradiction by preserving the best parts of both. although the concept is broadly attributed to hegel, scholars have pointed out that he never used these terms explicitly. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 52 that was the second time i’d heard about the house project. i silently chided myself for not investigating it yet. then i asked summit who john dewey was and he filled me in and told me a little bit about him and some other ‘progressive educators’ from the turn of the century that he’d studied. he told me that all had worked farming jobs or other forms of labor as youths, jobs where they sweated and saw the results of their work, and that they often had very religious upbringings even if they didn’t maintain conventional faith practices late in life. these experiences, he told me, helped them develop their progressive views on education. i didn’t think there was much for me in that just then, so i directed the conversation back to how iop worked. “sounds like such a program would have to be focused a lot more closely on the needs of each individual student than regular schooling tends to be,” i observed. “students come to school with ksas; knowledge, skills and attitudes. teachers must use their skills to help students use their ksas to get to a place of learning. this is done through personalization and an approach that focuses on each student’s strengths not their limitations.” “sounds like this could be challenging,” i remarked. i thought this was a pretty lame observation on my part but i needed something to keep the conversation going. summit was turning out to be a good informant. “it’s an art,” he replied. “a teacher needs to provide structure, but also be flexible. like a chameleon. university teacher training programs need to teach this strategy of ‘chameleonism’.” he paused, appreciating his word choice. i couldn’t blame him. “teacher training programs tend to teach teachers to teach curriculum not individuals.” “from a systems perspective, as you said, i can see identifying measurable differences in iq and grade level achievement in iop and k & e students,” i noted. i was switching gears conversationally and on our drive. we had turned onto a busy, slow moving highway. unlike the many drivers jockeying to improve their positions, i hung back and focused on the conversation. we had plenty of time and slow suited me just fine. “but a lot of what i’ve been reading also identifies iop students as especially concrete learners. what do you think about this?” “most students are probably concrete learners, in a sense. they learn best when learning begins with the concrete realities of their lives, their curiosities, concerns, skills, and interests. traditional teaching had tended to be so didactic that it left little room for engaging students in this way.” i had a follow-up question. “if this is the case about most students being concrete learners i mean why not use the same ideas you used in iop to make education in general more personalized and relevant to students instead of creating a separate instructional tier for them?” “a more integrated, discovery-based, individualized curriculum would likely serve all learners, but my career has consisted of the possible. i was asked to look into the needs of a vulnerable population of students and i put a team together to improve the quality of education for them.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 53 “if all students benefit from these approaches, do you think that a school or even all schools could realize a model of inclusion that was so flexible there would no longer be a need for k and e/iop?” i asked, pressing a little. “yes and no,” he replied after a pause. “definitely no if schools continue to proceed on a cookie cutter model. students will continue to be turned off of traditional schooling, and their abilities to learn and succeed will be undermined. beyond this, there is a time and place for segregated learning, and a time and place for inclusive learning; it is part of personalization. you need to figure out where the student is now in their learning, and where the student may best be placed in order to maximize their learning potential. if there is a significant number of students with similar learning needs, then it would appear to make sense to congregate those students for instructional purpose.” summit then indicated to me that i needed to change lanes. i made sure the driver behind me could see me and then eased the buick in ahead of her. i waved my appreciation of her inclusiveness. “what are the limits that would prevent students being taught, inclusively, in the same space instead of using congregated settings?” i asked. “the abstract and confusing way curriculum is often written, and the careless way it is often used, is harmful for all students but particularly so for more vulnerable populations,” he replied, pausing and then explaining further. “iop was about using a design down model of curriculum development. recently i saw an educator drafting a thirty-page bit of curriculum and asked, ‘what would you like students to be able to do at the end of all of this?’ he wasn’t sure. i said ‘figure it out, and then state it on the first page.’ he paused again for a minute, thinking. a passenger ahead of me had taken advantage of the traffic coming to a dead stop to read some messages on his smart phone and had failed to notice traffic was moving again. i was about to beep to remind him, but a hundred other motorists beat me to it. he lurched ahead in a panic, nearly running into the car ahead of him. summit and i grinned at these maneuvers. then a new possibility seemed to occur to summit and he explained it to me. “if every teacher had to constantly answer questions from their students such as, ‘why do i need to know or do this?’ like the iop students are so fond of asking, the education system would be better. “can anything be done to promote this kind of awareness?” i asked. “alberta education does a less than efficient job in orienting teachers to deliver new curriculum,” summit replied. “iop might have been the last time the minister of education provided regional in-servicing and i had to fight to get it. it tends to be seen as a school system responsibility. teachers need to know and understand the curriculum they’re asked to teach… understanding is a catalyst for learning. our iop teacher orientation sessions focused on teaching the teachers to engage students in reflective learning activities, and encourage the students never to see things as facts, and to challenge assumptions.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 54 “were you educated under a system that was more inclusive or more congregated?” i asked, steering the conversation back to this topic. “in england, at eleven years of age, students were sorted into one of two streams; grammar school for those students on an academic track and potentially capable of going on to university, technical modern school, focusing on trade/career education for those less academically inclined. there wasn’t a lot of room for movement. i was put on the academic track.” “but you ended up working in the trades area of educational programming,” i observed. “how did that come about?” “as a twelve-year-old and for some years after, i worked in my uncle’s barbershop and did lots of practical work and learned to value the learning by doing model.” i saw a sign indicating an upcoming turnoff to the airport. i figured this was about as far as i could push a discussion on inclusive education with summit. he had many ideas about what might make school more inclusive for all students; that is to say, include them more authentically in what they are learning and in communities of learning. what he didn’t seem to have was the mindset that separate or congregated classrooms for different levels of students were inherently unjust in any way. i, on the other hand, could see lots of good reasons a person might develop this latter view: smart ass cripple’s educational experiences for example, or a careful viewing of the exhibits in the museum of sorting that i’d visited. still, i could detect no derisive assumption in his practical description of who the iop students were, at least tentatively, and what could reasonably done to support their progress through a school system that was too rigid and academic for them. in that sense, what he was saying rang true to me.71 i was curious about why iop changed to k & e and what he thought about the differences between the two approaches. as i took the turn, i asked him the first of these questions. “there was the perception that, in schools that blended high school diploma level courses and iop, which every school did to some degree, it was too hard to administer both programs at the same time. the amounts of credits, which related to the amount of instructional hours students were to spend in the classes didn’t match up. five credit courses were easier to program than half day occupational courses. these changes were explained as making it more flexible for students, but iop was always flexible for students, with multiple transfer points to the high school diploma tier. the k & e model was seen to provide a simpler model for in-school organization. it moved, in my opinion from a student focused model to an administration focused model.” i remembered hearing a similar observation from one of the teachers i’d visited with in the staff room. a thought that had occurred to me much earlier in the case suddenly came back to me and i asked about it. “when i was reading up on k & e and iop, it seemed like there was a lot more about what these students needed to thrive, educationally, in the iop manual. the k & e manual seemed stripped of a lot of this. almost watered down. am i right about this?” 71 “the possibility that the other person may be right is the soul of hermeneutics.” hans-georg gadamer (as cited in grondin, 1994, p. 12) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 7 55 “yes, i believe that was deliberate,” summit remarked. there it was, slow learners not so much falling, as being pushed through the cracks. maybe the quality of k & e as a form of programming for slow learners had something to do with the shockingly low number of students who were taking it. “bureaucratic proceduralism this is what kills good programming,”72 summit added after a minute. “here is another example of the stupidity,” he added. “the k & e classes are not named as sixteen-level classes anymore. now they’re dash four (-4) classes. as long as we have tiered classes there will always be indications for more challenging classes and for less challenging classes. what difference does it make? dash four was seen as less demeaning than the number sixteen, really?” i saw a 747 descending up ahead. we were nearing the airport. i had time for one last question. “but isn’t the idea of placing students in a separate program that is obviously intended for significantly weaker learners already potentially demeaning? what is the cost of these kinds of programs for the self-image of the students?” i’d decided earlier not to pursue further discussion of what inclusion meant, but summit’s use of the word ‘demeaning’ in ridiculing the course numbers made it hard to resist. “it all depends on the program,” he insisted. “if it’s an effective program, it will treat students as people who are able to learn, and they will learn. if it’s perceived as a program for dummies, the program will be destructive to students. if you think they’re dumb and you treat them as though they’re dumb they won’t disappoint you.” i pulled into passenger drop off and thanked summit for his candor as he thanked me for the ride. before he got out of the car, summit gave me the names of a few curriculum leaders currently working with the k & e series of classes and told me where i could find them. then he offered a theory about how to find justice for slow learners that didn’t make much sense to me at the time. he told me to look to my own methods for an answer. i felt there was practical wisdom in so much of the rest of what he said; i hoped i might gather some more clues to shed some light on this last cryptic statement. to be continued… references alberta education. 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(2007). proust and the squid: the story and science of the reading brain. new york, ny: harper. wood, p. (2004). lottery. new york, ny: penguin. why does sea world…(1979). retrieved from http://laughbreak.com/quotes/comedians-bestlines-1997/ corresponding author: michael j lang, phd email: mike@mikelangstories.com journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 november 29, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.76467 emerging horizons, part seven. mike’s story: lessons learned michael j lang & catherine m laing abstract this seventh and final instalment of the emerging horizons series brings all the experiences of the participants in the film together with my own (ml) as the digital storytelling (dst) facilitator to discuss three of the many lessons learned from this research project (please see the introductory editorial to the series, crafting meaning, cultivating understanding, to access the film). the article summarizes the interpretations of the film in both written and digital story form, explores the value of the “artist of our days” mindset that dst can cultivate in adolescent and young adult (aya) cancer surivors, and leans on hermeneutic philosophy to emphasize the importance of conversation when viewing digital stories. i conclude with a personal exhortation to be vigilant in looking for the “setups and payoffs” in my own life so that, as a dst facilitator working in healthcare settings, i can continue to help others story, and re-story, the meaningful moments of their health experiences. keywords hermeneutics, digital storytelling, adolescent and young adult oncology, psychosocial oncology, healthcare, health research, narrative, arts-based methodology, documentary filmmaking the word “lesson” comes from the pie root *legwhich means “to collect, gather” and the latin lectionem which means “a reading” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). accordingly, this final article is an attempt to collect or gather the experiences in the film together with previous interpretations to cultivate broader lessons that could be relevant to the two principal stakeholder groups. importantly, these lessons learned are only “a reading,” that is, one reading of the many possible readings of the film and interpretations offered in previous articles. more lessons could lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 2 always be gleaned from this study as ayas, dst facilitators, and other health researchers bring their own unique horizon to its interpretation. therefore, what is suggested in this final interpretive article is meant only to provide additional stimulus to the ongoing conversation of dst in health and wellness settings. before embarking on this final discussion, there is one last digital story to be viewed – mine (ml). it is called guided by lightning, and i created it at the beginning of the interpretive writing process as an initial attempt to understand the storylines and experiences portrayed in emerging horizons. in the same way that the dst process helped the aya participants identify and understand the meaningful moments of their cancer experience, crafting this digital story helped me identify and artistically convey the central interpretations of the previous six chapters. therefore, before delving into some broader lessons for ayas and dst facilitators below, i invite you to spend three minutes watching this digital story as a reminder of what has already been said.1 a lesson for aya cancer survivors: the artist of our days each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become. (o’donahue, 2008, p. 191) there were many didactic elements of the dst workshop not depicted or explored in either the film or the previous interpretations in this thesis. one of these elements was the quote above that i shared at the friends and family screening immediately before the “one-word” exercise and standing ovation that closed the film. i believe this quote encapsulates some of the lessons for aya cancer survivors embedded in emerging horizons beyond what was contained in the digital stories themselves. first, through a dst experience aya cancer survivors can literally and figuratively become “an artist of our days” (o’donahue, 2008, p. 191). in a literal sense, the ayas closer to their cancer treatments (i.e., amanda, harmony, kelsey) were able to externalize (angus & greenberg, 2011), or story, elements of their cancer experience for the first time, while those further from their experience (i.e., derek, kenzie, bethany), were able to re-story it as their horizon of understanding changed over time (white & epston, 1990). specifically, the opening session helped amanda understand that she was still “in the midst of” her story (despite acute cancer treatments ending a year prior), while both harmony and kelsey stated that the dst workshop revealed to them that they had a story worth sharing (storying/authoring cancer experience; white & epston, 1990). harmony and kelsey’s post-workshop interviews confirmed that, for them, cancer was no longer a random, pre-narrative experience (ricœur, 1990), but a compelling story, full of wisdom and meaning. alternatively, kenzie and bethany were able to craft an entirely new cancer storyline that fit with their current horizon of understanding, while derek was able to share a significant moment of his cancer story in a more meaningful way (restorying/re-authoring cancer experience; white & epston, 1990). their final interviews indicated an increased awareness that life stories can be told differently, and that stopping and sitting with their cancer experiences in the reflective intensity of a dst workshop (see part five, kenzie’s story) enabled this re-storying process to occur. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 3 regardless of whether the primary aim was storying or re-storying, all the aya participants literally became “an artist of their [cancer] days” in the dst workshop, actively cultivating a deeper understanding of their own cancer experience and crafting meaning from it. interestingly, in this process of creating an artistic expression of their experiences, it became easier for the ayas to grasp the figurative implications of the “artist of our days” concept; they could not choose what happened to them, but they could choose how to tell the story. in their final interviews, all the ayas indicated a new, or renewed, awareness that although they could not control the conflicts encountered in life, like cancer, they could control how they interpreted and responded to them; an abstract concept that was made concrete in the praxis of dst. the process of reframing life conflicts in this way was intentionally initiated in the first evening introduction to dst session when i introduced the law of conflict; “nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict” (mckee, 1997, p. 210), and was further entrenched when i explained my fundamental orientation to all participants as a dst facilitator that was captured in the raw footage collected, but not included in the film: i am viewing you from a place of strength, not weakness. i am not pitying you for what you have been through. i think because of what we [aya cancer survivors] have been through, our stories have a lot to offer the world. through this explanation, the dst process portrayed in emerging horizons explicitly reframed conflict as a valuable and indispensable element of all life stories, and by doing so, placed the aya participants in a perpetually agentic position: it is because of the life conflicts they experience (like cancer), that their stories hold wisdom for themselves and others. the “artist of our days” mindset cultivated through the dst workshop could help reframe the default response to life conflicts from “why me?” to “what is the story and what can i learn from it?” the opportunity to approach a life conflict with a sense of curiosity and actively practice the reframing process is perhaps one of the most profound, lasting, and life-altering possibilities of dst with aya cancer survivors. not only could dst help ayas reclaim a sense of agency that is often lost during a cancer experience, but it could also help foster a more resilient attitude towards future life challenges. finally, o’donahue’s (2008) words emphasize that ayas have the capacity to share their experiences in an aesthetically powerful way, like an artist, if given the opportunity. from the increasingly nuanced decisions made during the creation of their digital stories, and the stimulating discussions with each other and their friends and family, it was apparent that the aya survivors in emerging horizons had become artists, capable of tapping into the deep aquifers of culturally embedded meaning that fuel our understanding of the world (davey, 2013). this is a significant outcome considering kelsey and harmony did not feel they had a story, kenzie had trouble writing hers, and derek’s motivation for participation was his inability to meaningfully convey his story. of the group, only bethany felt confident in her artistic capabilities and yet, all the stories were profound and insightful in their own way. this suggests that when ayas are encouraged to cast off the culturally acceptable, hand-me-down cancer narratives (see part five, kenzie’s story), their stories can unmask the experience of aya cancer (see part three, kelsey’s story) and cultivate phronesis for themselves, other ayas, their friends and family, and even the healthcare providers who care for them (christiansen, 2011; laing et al., lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 4 2017b). ultimately, dst is only one of many possible interventions that could encourage aya cancer survivors to (re)discover a sense of agency and (re)story their cancer experiences, but it is my hope that those who watch emerging horizons will understand that they have a story and that it matters. a lesson for dst facilitators working in healthcare: preparing the harvest kelsey: we [ayas] are good at the feedback . . . but what if no one talks in the audience?” about a year after i finished my cancer treatments, i was invited to share my story at one of the first national meetings in canada focused entirely on aya oncology. what i remember most vividly from that presentation is that i had to stop twice to recover my composure as i laid bare the raw emotional wounds of my cancer experience in front of 200 oncology professionals. in many ways i was like amanda in emerging horizons, trying to tell the story while still in the midst of my experience, and consequently, unable to manage the intensity and duration of my unstoried emotions (see part one, amanda’s story). however, the most traumatizing part of the entire experience was not being overwhelmed by emotion during the presentation, it was the response of the audience. as i sat down at the panelist table on stage after my speech, i turned expectantly towards the conference host to hear his response. he paused slightly as he stepped to the microphone, looked down at his papers, then looked up and said “our next speaker is from . . .”. throughout the rest of the day, attendees continued to give me appreciative smiles and glances, but only one of them spoke to me. everywhere i went it felt like i was separated by a pane of glass, with people peering in at me from a safe distance. it was not until years later that i understood why the whole experience was so disquieting: i had bared my raw, wounded soul, and they had simply looked on, like bystanders standing on the street corner as i lay in the crosswalk with a broken femur, watching curiously as i writhed in emotional pain (see the opening paragraph of part one, amanda’s story for reference to this story). i have experienced what kelsey and the other ayas were afraid of (“what if no one talks in the audience?”), and this study included an audience screening specifically to explore this important aspect of dst in a healthcare context. as highlighted in derek’s story, participating in a screening of their digital story could be deeply affirming for ayas because a well-facilitated audience discussion naturally moves beyond the surface-level appreciation that characterizes most of their interactions (e.g., you are so strong, you beat cancer, etc.). indeed, the “affirmation through audience engagement” (lang et al., 2019, p. 6) of showing the story was apparent in every aya’s storyline in emerging horizons. in their post-workshop interviews, derek indicated that the screening was a great experience while kenzie expressed surprise at the insightful and meaningful nature of the audience discussion. kelsey and bethany were similarly surprised and pleased that people seemed to understand, and even expand on, the message of their stories (“like, they got it!”, “yay! it felt so weird at the time”). these follow-up responses hint at the importance of audience discussion to affirm storytellers, but perhaps this was most clearly conveyed through the ayas’ emotional expression during the lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 5 screening itself: they all expressed tension while watching their story (i.e., lips pressed together, corners of mouth pushed back; giese-davis et al., 2005), and surprise/joy during the subsequent applause and discussion of their story (i.e., smile with eye activation, raised brows; giese-davis et al., 2005). harmony, in her ebullient way, wiped away happy tears during the discussion of her story which contrasted sharply with the tension on her face minutes earlier. to a lesser degree, derek, kenzie, kelsey, and bethany all expressed the same emotions, and through the intensifying focus of the camera’s lens, these facial expressions highlighted both the feelings of vulnerability when sharing a digital story, and the affirmation that can occur when the audience responds in-kind, by sharing what “resonated” with them. 2 indeed, a digital story is both a window and a mirror, and the reciprocal vulnerability inherent in the genuine conversations that followed each story was an essential pre-condition of the affirmation that each aya experienced. in this way, the screening audience played a central role in fully realizing the therapeutic value of dst for the aya participants as well as drawing out the wisdom embedded in each story. however, not all audience members were able to engage in the reciprocal vulnerability of genuine conversation. as the cameras continued to roll at the conclusion of the friends and family screening, i curiously approached one audience member who had not made a single comment. i directly asked why they had not participated in the discussion, to which they replied: i just felt very, ummm, like invited into something so significant that me saying something would actually take away from what had been shared . . . i just felt that my role was to step back, not to step in. because i think that right now, particularly around storytelling, and you know i am [an educator] so i believe a lot in storytelling, our way forward is to tell our stories, and be able to own them, and for the rest of us to kind of be ok with not having to imprint on them. although this comment was not included in emerging horizons, it struck me, and i returned to it many times throughout the film editing and interpretive writing process. i was drawn to it because after facilitating hundreds of digital story screenings in a healthcare context, i have observed that sometimes the response of screening participants is “to step back, not to step in.” while there could be myriad reasons to “step back” during a digital story screening (e.g., individual personality traits, screening context, story content, cultural expectations, etc.), the conversation highlighted above hinted at a possible cause of why this could occur in healthcare settings: digital stories can be “so significant”, or said differently, so emotional. specifically, digital stories can “take your role away from you” (laing et al., 2017b), often compelling the viewer to interact with them on a personal, emotive level. for healthcare professionals in particular, “losing their role” (laing et al., 2017b, p. 266) in this way could potentially be perceived by some as unprofessional because their socialization, as taught by the hidden curriculum3, could have associated emotional arousal with unprofessional behavior (hafferty et. al., 2015; hunter & cook, 2018; mahood, 2011). therefore, for some healthcare professionals the appropriate “professional” response to the emotional content of a digital story might not be deeper engagement through conversation, but to step back. importantly, this observation is not an indictment of those who choose to “step back” and not engage in a digital story screening, but simply one possible interpretation that cultivates a deeper understanding of this behavior. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 6 notwithstanding personality, culture, professional sensibilities, or good intentions, when patient storytellers are present at a digital story screening it could be counterproductive to the overarching goals of dst if audience members choose to step back and not actively participate in the discussion. in this context, it may appear to the storyteller, like i experienced when sharing my cancer story for the first time, that the audience is staring in through a pane of glass, focused on keeping a safe distance. for most digital story screenings, audience members are usually invited to the screening so that they can participate in a discussion. in other words, the audience has already been invited to “step in” and choosing to “step back” when the storyteller is present at the screening could cause the storyteller and/or the person who extended the invitation to feel more self-conscious in an already vulnerable situation. importantly, whether or not the storyteller is present with the audience, in a digital story screening the “spectator just as much as the artist performs a role in the subject-matters art brings into play” (davey, 2013, p. 48). as discussed in bethany’s story, it is through conversation about what a digital story expresses and what comes to expression in it (davey, 2013), that a digital story holds a surfeit of being which “leaps forth” from the aquifers of culturally embedded meaning (heidegger as cited in inglewood, 1997, p. 125). for this reason, audience members play a pivotal role in the “harvest” (lese) of phronesis from a digital story artwork (gadamer, 1993/2007), and by sharing their interpretations of the work in group conversations they are allowing others to learn along with them. in the words of davey (2013): the play of horizons initiated by transmission and reception [of an artwork] is discursive and participatory by nature. it demands a spectator’s involvement [emphasis added]. the art image is not valued as an object in itself but for what it facilitates, for its status as a mover of understanding. (p. 35) there is no doubt that audience members who do not participate in the post-viewing discussions are still “involved” with the digital story artworks, but by keeping that involvement internal, the digital storytellers and/or the screening audience miss out on the potential movement of understanding that could result from the externalization of that inner conversation. in other words, the “nourishment” from the harvest of phronesis (gadamer, 1993/2007, p. 2018) in a digital story screening could be diminished if a majority of audience members actively choose “to step back, not to step in.” accordingly, one lesson learned from emerging horizons about dst in healthcare settings is the importance of creating a screening environment that is conducive to genuine conversation by preparing both storytellers and audiences to participate in the harvest. the digital story screening in emerging horizons revealed that it is through the reciprocal vulnerability of genuine conversation that storytellers are affirmed and the subject-matters (sache) of their stories are brought into being. however, the screening conversations depicted in the film were not a default by-product of a good story, well told in digital story form: the soil needed to be prepared and the seeds planted before the harvest of practical wisdom could be threshed out through conversation. regardless of who is facilitating the screening (dst facilitator or another healthcare administrator/professional), the desired behavior should be modeled and appropriate “pre-briefing” (rudolph et al., 2014) for both the audience and storytellers provided. each screening facilitator should develop their own style and language to lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 7 prepare the harvest by developing rapport, setting expectations, and creating a “safe environment,” but ultimately, it is the responsibility of dst facilitators to ensure that this preparation takes place. in this way, the role of a dst facilitator goes beyond the completion of the stories when working in healthcare settings. in this study, and over the past 12 years, i have observed that the core element of dst is not the stories that are created, but the conversations that are stimulated. it is in and through conversation that dst works because “it is what occurs when the artwork or the game is in play that matters” (davey, 2013, p. 49). just as digital storytellers offer themselves to the audience through the story, with the appropriate attention and preparation the audience can offer themselves in return through conversation. although it is not possible to know in advance how the game will end or to what end a digital story works (davey, 2013), when digital story screenings are purposely and thoughtfully facilitated, it is possible for everyone in attendance to feel “blessed, proud, informed, thankful, fortunate, hopeful, enlightened, grateful, inspired, happy, aware, empowered, involved.” conclusion: a personal lesson learned the more you penetrate the mysteries of your own humanity, the more you’re able to understand the humanity of others and the unique ways they express it. (mckee, 2016, p. 295) the entire process of this research project has been valuable to my own practice as a dst facilitator. everything i learned in my efforts to understand hermeneutic philosophy, edit emerging horizons, and write these interpretive articles have been immediately applicable to my daily work, and hopefully contributes to the larger body of knowledge around this topic. although i will continue to learn from this research experience long into the future, one immediately available personal lesson is the importance of learning to search for the “setups and payoffs” of life (mckee, 1997, p. 238). in storytelling, setups and payoffs are defined jointly, with a setup being knowledge or insight that is layered or “planted” in a story but not fully understood by the audience until they are propelled backwards seeking answers to gaps that appear between expectation and result (mckee, 1997). setups are “planted in such a way that when the audience first sees them, they have one meaning, but with a rush of insight, [later in the story] they take on a second, more important meaning” (mckee, 1997, p. 240). after hundreds of hours of watching the footage collected for this study, i have recognized that the central activity of dst facilitation with ayas is helping them identify the setups and payoffs in their own experiences of cancer. for the ayas in emerging horizons, cancer was a large and looming setup, full of layered knowledge, insight, and meaning. however, it was the dst process that enabled them to recognize their cancer experience as a setup and consequently motivated the search for potential payoffs. this activity of identifying and uniting meaningful setup moments with potential payoffs is what allowed ayas to make sense of their cancer experience (i.e., connecting coincidental events into coherent causal associations; part two, harmony’s story). there were many moments in emerging horizons where each aya experienced a rush of insight as a setup and payoff came together, and some element of their cancer experience took on a second, third, lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 8 or fourth important meaning. this presents a unique opportunity for storytelling professionals to support ayas because: in story, unlike life, you can always go back and fix it. you can set up what may seem absurd and make it rational . . . in an intuitive flash you can see the connection and realize you can go back and make it make sense [emphasis added]. (mckee, 1997, p. 242) in other words, by using storytelling principles to help ayas understand the setups and payoffs of their cancer experience, dst facilitators can help them “make it make sense” or perhaps, discover a hidden cause of things that they did not know existed. in the 12 years since my own cancer experience, i have come to realize that the only genuine talent i possess is an ability to help people recognize the setups and payoffs in their lives, to codiscover the hidden cause of things through curiosity and conversation. however, if the root of all good storytelling is self-knowledge (mckee, 2016), natural talent and experience will not be enough to continue providing quality dst experiences. i will need to become ever more sensitive to the setups and payoffs in my own life and cultivate a deeper understanding of my own story if i wish to help others do the same. as discussed in part three of this series, kelsey’s story, if i want to meet storytellers face to face, i need to have a face: continually attempting to penetrate the mysteries of my own humanity so that i can understand the humanity of others and the unique ways in which they express it. a commitment to personal reflection and growth in this way is as important for dst facilitation as the continued development of the technical and creative skills involved. i want to become a master of my craft, and therefore, i need to strive towards a deeper understanding of myself, even if the ultimate completion of that goal will always be as unattainable as touching the horizon. a tremulous ending i began this series by proposing dst as a developmentally appropriate psychosocial tool with aya cancer survivors. i then explored the unique parallels in both the philosophy and practice of hermeneutic research and cinema verité documentary filmmaking philosophy before “dimming the lights” and introducing the six ayas who participated in this study before readers were encouraged to watch the film that was the basis for the interpretations that followed: emerging horizons. in part one, amanda’s story, i highlighted the importance of recognizing chaos narratives and unstoried emotions that could indicate a participant is still “in the midst of” their traumatic health event. amanda’s experience revealed that the complexity and severity of an aya cancer survivor’s psychosocial wounds may not be apparent until the dst process is underway. therefore, appropriate safeguards must be in place that allow dst participants to disengage from the process, choose a different direction for their story, or access clinical psychosocial supports. in part two, harmony’s story, i explored how dst can empower participants to craft meaning from coincidental events and use metaphor to cultivate a deeper understanding of their health lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 9 experiences. harmony’s storyline demonstrated that the opportunity to stop, and actively participate in the emplotment and metaphorical representation of the cancer experience is a benefit of dst with ayas. by attaching meaning to, and learning from, an otherwise meaningless cancer experience, ayas can construct their own answer to the “big question” of cancer in young adulthood (why me?). in part three, kelsey’s story, i illustrated the potential for dst to help participants explore, name, and represent their inner emotional experience. kelsey’s sub-plot illuminated how difficult it can be for ayas to both understand their “true feelings” and share them with others. dst can assist participants in both regards by facilitating the exploration of their inner emotional experience (i.e., what were you feeling in that moment?) and providing creative ways to remove their “masks.” the emotional aspects of a dst experience were expanded upon in part four, derek’s story. derek’s storyline demonstrated the ability of dst to help aya cancer survivors release “bottled up” emotions before they become rancid (i.e., diagnosed psychosocial co-morbidity) by letting them use more than words to tell the story. moreover, the multi-modal nature of dst can enable participants to incite an emotional response from their audience that in turn can confirm and affirm the life lessons embedded in their healthcare experience. in part five, kenzie’s story, i addressed the challenges of open endings and culturally accepted narratives in healthcare. specifically, kenzie’s storyline uncovered how the structure of a dst experience can empower ayas to craft a closed ending to a perpetually open-ended cancer survivorship experience, while the genuine conversation of the story circle promotes the restorying of “hand-me-down” cancer narratives. the reflective intensity of a co-creative dst experience can facilitate the discovery of deeper truths, or new truths, in healthcare stories. in part six, bethany’s story, i demonstrated how dst can help participants create markers in their lives that are layered with meaning. bethany’s experience provided an example of how aya cancer survivors can reconcile past and present versions of themselves in a digital story by indicating how they have changed, providing direction for their future selves, and creating a reminder of the meaningful moments that happened along the way. the creative potential of dst enables a profound hermeneutic excess and ensures that what is contained in a digital story is always more than what was intended by the storyteller. in other words, dst can provide access to “aquifers of meaning,” bringing to the surface what has been mute and beyond awareness. finally, in this article, i established that dst encourages ayas to become an “artist of their days” and outlined how the generative possibilities of dst in a healthcare setting are fully realized when an audience can “step in” and engage in conversation about what a digital story holds. therefore, an important final responsibility of dst facilitators is to foster opportunities for these meaningful conversations to occur, and it is my hope that i have fulfilled this responsibility through emerging horizons and the interpretations provided in this seven-part series. moreover, i trust that through the possibilities of hermeneutic excess available in all language and artwork, both the film and these interpretive articles “speak” more than what i intended, and in this way, keep the topic in play well beyond the tremulous ending provided here. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 10 if i have truly done good work as a hermeneutic researcher and dst facilitator, then this conclusion is just the beginning of something else. either way, facilitating the dst process with amanda, harmony, kelsey, derek, kenzie, and bethany (as well as editing and analyzing the footage) has continued the perpetual reshaping of my own horizon of understanding. indeed, over the past 12 years, most of my transformative life experiences have involved listening to the stories of aya cancer survivors. it was not hyperbole for me to say in the opening editorial of this series “if i have any wisdom to offer the world, it has come from the stories and experiences that you [ayas] have shared with me” (see crafting meaning, cultivating understanding): as an angry and disillusioned 25-year-old cancer survivor, listening to the stories of other ayas who were further along in their survivorship helped me cultivate a deeper understanding of my own turbulent emotions and begin to craft meaning from my difficult cancer experience. the healthcare system provided me with a wealth of facts and knowledge about my cancer, but it was the stories of my peers that gave me the wisdom i needed to live well with, through, and beyond it. there were many moments captured in emerging horizons where the ayas gleaned wisdom from each other’s stories, but there was one particular moment that highlighted another profound possibility of dst. as the music of harmony’s story faded away in the small group screening, the camera panned to a closeup of kelsey’s face and her eyes widened before she looked over at harmony and jumped to her feet for the standing ovation. we may never know exactly what happened in that fleeting moment (shock? disbelief? understanding?), but like a flash of lightning burned into the retina and slowly fading, we see that something happened. a good story, well told in digital story form compels a response, and therefore, the aesthetic (beauty) of dst could be an antidote to the numbness of routine healthcare practice or daily life. emerging horizons demonstrates that when the aesthetic possibilities dst are fully realized, both storytellers and audiences alike will sit in stunned silence as the music fades, the depths of their unconscious minds declaring, “so true, so full of being!” (gadamer, 1993/2007, p. 207), and our horizons will be different, even if we can never fully grasp how or to what end. references angus, l.e., & greenberg, l.s. (2011). working with narrative in emotion-focused therapy: changing stories, healing lives. american psychological association. christiansen, a. (2011). storytelling and professional learning: a phenomenographic study of students' experience of patient digital stories in nurse education. nurse education today, 31(3), 289-293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2010.10.006 davey, n. (2013). unfinished worlds: hermeneutics, aesthetics, and gadamer. edinburgh university. gadamer, h.-g. (2004). truth and method (2nd ed.; j. weinsheimer & d. g. marshall, trans.). bloomsbury. (original work published 1960) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2010.10.006 lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 11 gadamer, h.-g. (2007). the artwork in word and image: “so true, so full of being!” in r.e. palmer (ed. & trans.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 195-224). northwestern university. (original work published 1993) giese-davis, j., piemme, k.a., dillon, c., & twirbutt, s. (2005). macro-variables in affective expression in women with breast cancer participating in support groups. in j. harrigan, k.r. scherer, & r. rosenthal (eds.), nonverbal behavior in the affective sciences: a handbook of research methods (pp. 399-445). oxford university. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.04.003 hafferty, f.w., o’donnell, j.f., & o'donnell, j.f. (eds.). (2015). the hidden curriculum in health professional education. dartmouth college. hunter, k., & cook, c. (2018). role‐modelling and the hidden curriculum: new graduate nurses’ professional socialisation. journal of clinal nursing, 27(15-16), 3157-3170. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14510 inglewood, m. (1997). heidegger: a very short introduction. oxford university. laing, c.m., moules, n.j., estefan, a., & lang, m.j. (2017b). “stories take your role away from you”: understanding the impact on health care professionals of viewing digital stories of pediatric and adolescent/young adult oncology patients. journal of pediatric oncology nursing, 34(4), 261-271. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043454217697023 lang, m.j., laing, c.m., moules, n.j. & estefan, a. (2019). words, camera, music, action: a methodology of digital storytelling in a health care setting. international journal of qualitative methods, 18, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919863241 mahood, s.c. (2011). medical education: beware the hidden curriculum. canadian family physician, 57(9), 983–985. retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21918135 mckee, r. (1997). story: substance, structure, style and the principles of screenwriting. harpercollins. mckee, r. (2016). dialogue: the art of verbal action for page, stage, and screen. twelve. o’donahue, j. (2008). to bless the space between us: a book of blessings. convergent. online etymology dictionary. (n.d.). lesson. in online etymology dictionary. retrieved april 8, 2021, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/lesson ricoeur, p. (1990). time and narrative: volume 1, 2, 3 (mclaughlin & d. pellauer trans.). university of chicago press. (original work published 1975) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.04.003 https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14510 https://doi.org/10.1177/1043454217697023 https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919863241 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21918135 https://www.etymonline.com/word/lesson lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 17 12 rudolph, j.w., raemer, d.b., & simon, r. (2014). establishing a safe container for learning in simulation: the role of the presimulation briefing. simulation in healthcare, 9(6), 339-349. https://doi.org/10.1097/sih.0000000000000047 white, m., & epston, d. (1990). narrative means to therapeutic ends. w.w. norton notes 1 link to watch guided by lightning: https://youtu.be/69_-t6ombqi 2 as all interpretation is highlighting (gadamer, 1960/2004), the things we highlight in a story reveals as much about who we are as it does about the digital story or storyteller. ultimately, when we discuss a digital story, we are talking about ourselves in the same way that “all writing is autobiographical as it comes from us, and involves self-understanding” (smith, 1991, as cited in moules et al., 2015). it is the disclosive nature of responding to a digital story that makes it an act of “vulnerability.” 3 hafferty et al. (2015) suggested that there are four types of curricula in healthcare education: formal curriculum (i.e., learning objectives, syllabi, competencies, etc.), informal curriculum (i.e., “idiosyncratic, sporadic, and happenstance learning” that occurs in conversation, p. 7), the hidden curriculum (i.e., organizational culture or “how things work around here,” p. 7), and the null curriculum (i.e., what is not said or attended to). https://doi.org/10.1097/sih.0000000000000047 https://youtu.be/69_-t6ombqi corresponding author: karen e. davis, phd lewis university email: kdavis9@lewisu.edu journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 march 11, 2023 ©the author(s) 2023 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2023i2023.77072 doing time: exploring hermeneutic temporality in prison theater karen e. davis abstract according to gadamer, engaging with a work of art arrests our time and attention, suspends our will, and compels our participation in its unfolding. time in prison is also arrested time, when our will is suspended, and we are compelled to submit to another’s authority. time inside is often described as an endless present, without meaningful relation to the past or future. the experience of tarrying with art, on the other hand, offers a moment of absolute presentness. this paper explores how these two temporalities differ and overlap in the context of prison theater, namely shakespeare behind bars. participating in and celebrating the temporality of the work of art allows us to experience the fullness of time and an intensification of being that are absent from a prison temporality characterized as an interminable present. involvement with art can return us to ourselves and a continuity with our world that imprisonment severs. keywords hans-georg gadamer, hermeneutics, temporality, prison arts, theater the phenomenon of prison theater presents a curious context for thinking about temporality. consider, on the one hand, gadamer’s account of the temporality of the work of art: briefly, the work arrests our attention and compels participation in its unfolding. while tarrying with the work of art, we are entirely absorbed in its playing out, which achieves a full and absolute presentness davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 2 in the moment. this is the temporal experience of those involved in theater—both actors and spectators—who surrender their time to participate in, celebrate, and be transported into the world of the play. on the other hand, consider the temporal experience of being in prison—once again arrested, transported, suspended in time, compelled to surrender one’s own goals to the authority of another. the temporal experience of imprisonment can feel like an interminable present, without any meaningful relation to either the past or the future. art and prison might both casually be called experiences of timelessness, when time seems to come to a halt, and we are held up in some duration of time that just feels like an enduring present. what might participation in theater—the unfolding of an absolute presentness—accomplish for those who are suspended in time in prison, experiencing an interminable present? in this essay, i will examine the phenomenon of prison theater through the lens of hermeneutic temporality. i’ll describe some of my experiences visiting the prison theater program shakespeare behind bars and present an account of prison temporality as it has been described by many inside. then i’ll explore gadamer’s understanding of the hermeneutic temporality of the work of art and contrast these two experiences of being suspended in time, the absolute presentness of participation in art and the endless present that is incarceration. i aim to show that while it may seem paradoxical, surrendering oneself to the autonomous playing out of the work of art can restore a liveliness and vibrancy to the temporal experience of being in prison. for all of us, experiencing the fullness of time through involvement with art can return us to ourselves and inspire a new sense of belonging to the world. but this transformative experience is especially vital for those who may be suffering an interminable present behind bars. tarrying with art and celebrating its festive temporality can reinvigorate one’s experience of time and mend the continuity with our world and community that imprisonment severs. experiencing time inside i want to start by walking you into prison with me. it’s luther luckett correctional complex, in lagrange, kentucky, and we’ve come to see one of the public performances put on by shakespeare behind bars (sbb), a troupe of actors inside this medium security men’s prison.1 the first thing we do when we walk in the front door is – wait. we’ll go through security in just a minute, once the right personnel are here to sign us in and check our clearances. we make it through one set of double doors, and then, once again – we wait. we’re in a small lobby of sorts with nowhere to sit. we’ll pack into this room until it’s full to capacity, the air stuffy and hot, when finally, the electric doors at the end of the room clunk open and we’re herded around a corner and down a wide concrete hallway to another cramped room. this one is scattered with school cafeteria tables and their little attached stools. it’s the visiting room. again, we wait. we wait longer than we expect to. everything runs late here, it seems. when it’s time, we’re shuffled through another electric gate (these heavy, sliding doors) into what feels like an airlock, where we’re sandwiched between two sets of locked gates so that we can move through to the prison yard without there ever being an actual opening between the prison yard and that front building in the complex. once released onto the prison yard, we walk – carefully! between the painted yellow lines – down another concrete expanse to the prison chapel, where the sbb performances take place. davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 3 once we’re inside, it’s much like any other theater experience. a common remark from public audience members is “i forgot i was in a prison!” this is a testament to the actors and also to the nature of theater, able to transport an audience to another time and place. what gadamer says about art is true – its “absolute presentness to all times and places” means this performance “is able to build bridges that reach beyond the enclosure and space in which it originated” (1992/2007, p.199). but the journey inside, to the space of the theater, is an experience of enclosure, cementation, awash with the sense that one’s time is no longer one’s own. after a performance, my experience of time was usually of it being cut short. once i had established a relationship with the performers, the time after the show to give congratulations and chat was never long enough, and i would be shooed out before i’d finished my goodbyes. when i taught inside prisons in texas, my experience of time was unpredictable. i prepared for a three-hour class, but i never knew if i’d be allowed to see my students for that full duration, either because we couldn’t start on time or because i’d be made to leave early. on the other hand, on several occasions, i was kept long after the scheduled end of class because the whole prison had been locked down, and no one could move. sometimes there would be weeks at a time i couldn’t come in to see my students at all because of lockdowns. i spent just three nights a week inside, but even so, it disrupted my ability to expect any kind of predictable timeline at any scale – minutes, hours, days, weeks, months. prison time, in my experience, is indefinite and arbitrary. thematizing prison temporality for my students and others inside, it is worse, of course. in prison, a person’s daily routine might involve waking up at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. just to catch a shower and some breakfast before work. inside, movement is so constrained that these simple necessities can take hours to accomplish. a common aphorism in prison is, “hurry up and wait,” and this well encapsulates the frustrating paradox of prison temporality, a kind of constant fruitless hustle. lisa guenther, in solitary confinement: social death and its afterlives (2013), describes imprisoned people’s relationship to time as unstable, disorienting, and disempowering. she writes that the hyper-regulation and regimentation of time in prison “tends to undermine prisoners’ sense of meaningful temporal distinctions” (p. 195), such that moments and days become indistinguishable. time both stops and slips away unmarked. the constant waiting – for gates to open, for another visit from loved ones, for one’s release date – “both devalues the present and extends it indefinitely” (p. 196). time inside is like an endless, meaningless present. guenther quotes a man named sam gutierrez, who was imprisoned at stateville correctional center in illinois at the time, saying his time inside is characterized by “idleness and boredom,” every day showing “a dull sameness,” in which “nothing matters” (p. 197). nicole fleetwood, in her book on prison art, marking time: art in the age of mass incarceration (2020), describes prison temporality as a kind of timelessness and slow death. depictions of dysfunctional clocks in prison art reveal the brokenness of prison time, where those imprisoned often feel they await a future of nothingness. indeed, an imprisoned person’s relationship to their past and their future is fraught. the endless present they experience inside is a disruption of the temporal structure of human life, in which one’s past haunts the present, and the future is so uncertain as to feel like an impossibility. davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 4 for a hermeneutic thinker of temporality like gadamer, or heidegger before him, the present is open to the horizons of past and future such that both are always already in play. the present is a gathering together of tradition, history, and also of possibility. but for a person who’s imprisoned, for whom time itself is a punishment, those horizons might feel more like dropping off the edge of the world. small infractions can add up to extend a person’s sentence in the u.s. – ordinary things like taking a short cut, bringing food from the mess hall back to your residence, or owning the wrong kind of pen. even one’s eventual release may not hold the promise of real possibility. let me tell you just one example of a release story: one sbb member who was released after my first year there told me about how dangerous his release was for him and his family, and how difficult it was for him to survive while following all of the terms of his parole. it is policy for the victim and their family to be notified when an offender is released, but since the crime this man had been imprisoned for was related to an old feud between families, that meant his victim was also an enemy to him and his family. he was released to a family home, the address to which the rival family had been given, and where they knew he would be because his parole required it. he wasn’t allowed to possess any weapons, and with the rival family knowing exactly where to find him, he felt he was putting his own family in danger by following the legally mandated terms of his release. he was also required to hold a steady job, and was able to find one, but as there are only so many employers willing to hire a person with a felony record, and according to his parole he was not allowed to associate with any other felons at the time, he found that any off-the-job time he spent with his coworkers (including riding together to pick up food on their break) was time he was violating his parole. one simple reason recidivism rates are so high is that it’s so easy to violate the strident requirements of parole. together with the possibility of returning to the situations that led to incarceration in the first place, an imprisoned person’s release can engender as much fear and violence as their past. even the possibility of parole can be experienced as a threat to an imprisoned person’s future. so, as droll and meaningless as the endless present can feel in prison, the past and the future can also feel like traps. tray jones, a student of philosopher drew leder and a contributor to his book the soul knows no bars: inmates reflect on life, death, and hope (2000), who was imprisoned in maryland at the time, says, “i’m trying to dedicate myself to getting rid of time. because when i think about the future, that traps me, and my past traps me” (p. 92). for jones, the past has already trapped him in his current position, and looking forward, he sees two options: hope for the future (but that’s a trap!) or trying to enjoy the present. expecting anything from the future is a risk for those subject to the arbitrariness of incarceration in the u.s.; as jones says – it’s the ones who expect something good in the future who “go crazy” when their hope is frustrated (p. 88). it is between the persistent, nagging, undigested past and the uncertain, dangerous, deathlike future that the person in prison must attempt to find meaning in an interminable and unstable present. at the same time, since time itself is the punishment for people in prison, time moves on the scale of months and years. one of the imprisoned artists fleetwood interviewed, raymond towler, said, “you start keeping time with a calendar instead of a watch” (p. 42). the flow and, we might say, size of time is distorted in prison, and the person caught up within that distorted temporality is disoriented, both tumbling and standing completely still. in this state, arrested in time and lost in its outsized expanse, people who are imprisoned must develop strategies for “doing” their time, whether that means making something of it, structuring it, or trying to control it. another of davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 5 leder’s students in prison, by the name of q, calls time “a dragon [he has] to slay” (p. 86), a dragon leder imagines as three-headed, consisting of the “disappearing future,” the “empty, endless present,” and the “screwed-up past,” “all attacking” at once (p. 94). another common aphorism in prison is, “you have to do the time, or the time will do you.” time is something that has to be actively done or managed in some way or it’s not survivable. guenther talks about how in solitary confinement, it’s important to keep a daily schedule for yourself in order to stave off the meaninglessness that comes from living in an endless present. she writes, the “segmentation of time into manageable parts that one can expect or forget” helps to restore one’s relationship to the past and the future (p. 215). even when the past and future feel like traps, one can re-create a meaningful temporal structure in the day-to-day. i think of this as managing the size of one’s time, returning to watch-time from calendar-time. relationships with others can also restructure prison time. fleetwood writes about how the relationality or sharedness of time is destroyed when a person goes to prison. while the feeling of being suspended in time might impact both the person in prison and those who must continue without them, time moves differently for the person inside and for the loved ones who remain outside, and this severance in relational time contributes to the disjointedness of prison time. reconstituting relational time through shared activities and new relationships can help the imprisoned person to do their time. niall keane’s (2021) treatment of time, loss, and grief is instructive here: when there is a break between one’s own lived experience of time and world-time, we can soothe the wound and heal the breach through caring engagement with others. (this is what he describes as the gift of time, where others can hold space and share memories to grant us an open future.) keane draws on levinas to say that while we may not be able to gain control over our time, to reconcile our life-time with world-time, we can grow to belong together in a shared time. instead of trying to control our time, we can create a shared, relational experience of time and find a sense of belonging to the world again. building new relationships inside is another useful strategy for doing time. daily schedules, meaningful relationships, and shared activities are some ways a person can manage their time inside; involvement with art is another. staving off the relentless present of prison temporality is also possible through engagement with intellectual and creative projects like sbb. fleetwood obviously has this in mind when she talks about shared or relational time in her book on prison art. at a prison arts conference fleetwood hosted in 2014, prison theater practitioner ashley lucas also advocated for art as a means of resisting emptiness and stagnation, key aspects of prison temporality.2 logistically, sbb gives additional structure to a day inside with the schedule of rehearsals from september to may. the recurrent event structure of the yearly performances also lends meaningful structure to an sbb actor’s time inside. one forgets last year’s lines; one anticipates this year’s performances. it’s also an activity that fills time and mental space. the men in the program learn their lines in the long stretches of time spent waiting that intersperse their daily lives, and they practice scenes together in a broom closet between formal rehearsals. the meaningful time they spend working towards a shared goal also builds relationships among the sbb members that many call a family. having others they can rely on inside brings their experience of time into harmony with something larger, something shared which they can belong to, even if it can’t bring them into sync with how time moves outside. davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 6 doing time hermeneutically these strategies for doing time are crucial survival strategies for people inside; nevertheless, one might wonder if they are stopgap measures designed to fill empty time, where what is needed is the transformation of one’s experience of time. gadamer defines empty time, or passing time, as the string of successive moments that we ordinarily experience as time. empty time is abstracted from any real content for the sake of measurement and calculation, turning time into a resource to be used or disposed of. this inauthentic experience of time 3 is also future-oriented, used for making plans, and characterized by anticipation, as either “time for” or “time until” (1970, pp. 343-344). when a calculated amount of time is used as a penalty, i think it’s safe to say that’s empty time. the “hurry up and wait” of prison temporality is akin to what gadamer calls “bustle and boredom” (1986, p. 132), a fixation on the activities (whether too many or too few) that one has planned to fill up that measure of time. the complement to empty time for gadamer is fulfilled time, a more authentic conception of time experienced as “liveliness as such” (1970, p. 345), a coincidence of past and future where beingthere takes place, a kind of being in the moment. it is vital to note, we can’t experience fulfilled time just by filling up empty time. we must transform empty time into something more original and authentic. gadamer argues that participation in (or involvement with) a work of art transforms our experience of time, and we find support for his view in work that’s been done on prison temporality, too. guenther also claims that art holds the potential to restructure and restore meaning to the time people spend behind bars. she writes, “the temporality of engaging in a project or other challenge in which the mind reaches toward a solution or toward the completion of a task offers a temporary escape from the oppressiveness of an unchanging present, a way of forgetting oneself and focusing on something that matters” (p. 216). gadamer would likely agree, that forgetting ourselves and focusing on or being involved with a subject matter that matters to us is how we can transform our understanding of time. and in fact, these are two main ways the sbb men talk about how their involvement with theater transforms their sense of time: as transporting and in terms of forgetting oneself. i’ve mentioned already how the audience experience of sbb is one of being transported, as if during the time of the performance we’re no longer inside the prison. it operates the same way for the actors themselves. one told me, “shakespeare gets you out of this, kind of out of the fence.” just as the temporality of the play transports us to another time and place (like to ancient greece or 15th century england), so one’s participation in a work of art transports one to a different experience of temporality. in this, the transportation we experience in involvement with art is nothing less than a transformation. in truth and method (1960/2004), gadamer calls the experience of art – encompassing both actors and spectators – “not simply transposition into another world” (p. 111); rather, participants in the unfolding of the work of art are “lifted out of the ongoing course of the ordinary world” (p. 124). he says, “what no longer exists is the world in which we live as our own. … [the world of the play] is, so to speak, its own measure and measures itself by nothing outside it” (1960/2004, p. 111). in artistic play, the world of empty, measured time melts into fulfilled and lively temporality that defies any external standard of duration or calculation. davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 7 sbb has two minds about this kind of transporting experience, though, depending on the audience. for an audience of their peers inside, they aim for transportation and forgetfulness of place. one actor said what he wants for his peers in the audience is for them to be able to say, “i had fun. for two hours, i didn’t think about the razor wire.” on the other hand, sbb designs the experience to keep public audiences aware of their location, for instance with costumes that never fully cover or replace their state-issued khaki pants and scrub tops. the razor wire is actually always visible just outside. but we’ll forget anyway; we will feel the transformation. gadamer’s analysis of the disappearance or unobtrusiveness of the actors does seem to prevail: “neither the being that the creating artist is for himself – call it his biography – nor that of whoever is performing the work, nor that of the spectator watching the play, has any legitimacy of its own in the face of the being of the artwork itself” (1960/2004, p. 124). 4 the play itself takes primacy and we are wholly absorbed, forgetting ourselves and our situation. the men in sbb also identify a kind of self-forgetfulness in their experience of time doing theater. beyond forgetting that they’re locked up (or hoping that their audiences of their peers will forget they are), the men speak about losing themselves in the moment. sbb members typically conceptualize their performances in terms of listening and responding to each other – an acting technique that keeps the performance fresh and meaningful, not flat, but also a strategy for anchoring themselves in a shared experience of meaning-making that can reorient them temporally as well. being in the moment is one of their goals and challenges as actors. they aim for total absorption in the play, the character, the dialogue, to surrender their own concerns to participate fully in bringing the play to life. gadamer also associates this self-forgetfulness with being present in the moment. “being present has the character of being outside oneself” (1960/2004, p. 122), he says, and “this kind of being present is a self-forgetfulness” (1960/2004, p. 122). daniel tate (2012) describes this kind of being in the moment through heidegger and gadamer in this way: “to be in the moment is to give one’s full attention to what is encountered there, of genuinely attending to it such that it comes to presence. … thus being present involves a self-forgetfulness that consists in surrendering oneself to what one is watching” (p. 103), or we might add: performing. this full participation in the playing out of a work of art is required by actors and spectators alike in order for the work to come to full presence. we must all forget ourselves for a while to attend and participate in the bringing to presence of a work of art. yet this transportation/transformation of the world and self-forgetfulness is no kind of “escape” or avoidance for participants behind bars. in the fulfilled temporality of being with art, we come to belong more fully to our own context, and we become more ourselves. gadamer says in truth and method, the “absolute presentness” of art effects both self-forgetfulness and reconciliation with self: “what rends him [the participant in the work of art] from himself at the same time gives him back the whole of his being” (p. 125). through the transformation and self-forgetfulness of involvement with play, the participant “comes to belong to [his own world] more fully by recognizing himself more profoundly in it” (1960/2004, p. 129). the benefit of participation in theater for folks in prison is not a facile strategy for passing time or a mental escape from life inside but a transformed experience of time and a deeper understanding of self. indeed, keane (2022) describes the experience of the work of art as “bring[ing] what is durational and transitory to a standstill… [with] the promise of a lasting intensification [and, he adds later, transfiguration] of being” (p. 342). philosophical hermeneutics and shakespeare behind bars teach us the davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 8 difference between the interminable present one might suffer behind bars and a full and absolute presentness that transforms and fulfills our very being. participating in absolute presentness the temporal experience of the work of art (a suspension of ordinary time in a full and total presence) and the prison temporality that is likewise a suspension but in an unending present differ in terms of participation; the relationship they grant between the past, the present, and the future; and the fullness or emptiness of the time involved. what makes the difference is our engagement with the work of art, which gadamer explains in terms of tarrying and celebration/festival. when we’re engaged with a work of art, it’s not just that time stops and the present moment stretches. nor is it the case that art is “timeless” and entirely removed from the temporal structures of experience. those are both conceptions of time that are grounded in measurable, empty time, and so they would bring us no closer to a transformed experience of time inside prison. rather, the temporality of the work of art is an interruption to ordinary passing time that transports us to a different sense of time altogether,5 and it happens when we take the time to tarry with a work of art. “tarrying” is the name gadamer gives to our proper comportment toward and engagement with a work of art. we tarry when we participate in the unfolding of the work, its playing out, and that participation entails absorption, surrender, and self-forgetfulness just as the participants in sbb have described. tarrying with art is a deep involvement with the artwork that brings it into absolute presence, brings forth the full being of the work, and makes its historical existence and its future possibilities present all at once. along with tarrying, gadamer also uses the image of the festival to describe the temporality of our being with art. a festival is a recurring event that brings a community together in a spirit of celebration, and gadamer says that the work of art, especially the performing arts like theater, also shares this temporal character. part of the transformative magic of theater is that it’s a communal experience of self-forgetfulness, absorption in play, and intensification of being. when a whole community participates in the celebration of a festival, it provides a temporary reprieve from the ordinary and empty passage of time, and we commune with all who celebrate or have celebrated that same festival. in this, the work of art comes fully to presence with its whole past and future in hand, a unity gadamer calls art’s contemporaneity (rather than “timelessness”). when people who are imprisoned participate in this coming to presence with a community, it can transform their experience of time inside. the participation of actors and spectators alike is key in festivals and in the work of art. as gadamer says in truth and method (1960/2004), “being present does not simply mean being there along with something else that is there at the same time. to be present means to participate” (p. 121). now there is very little about prison life that engenders being-with and genuine, attentive participation. imprisoned people cannot easily participate politically or personally in the world outside, and very little about their situation inside is up to them or depends even on their consent, let alone their participation. prison temporality is largely characterized by waiting, but not tarrying. tarrying is not a lingering contemplation or an expectant waiting but, as sheila ross (2006) describes it, a “fullness and intensity of attention and engrossment” (p. 109), an active involvement with. participating in an artwork’s playing out means submitting to its temporality, its sovereignty, davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 9 much the way actors who work on their timing work to attune themselves to the rhythms and pace of the play itself. perhaps paradoxically, actors behind bars can transform their experience of time not by striving to regain control of it but by giving up all control and submitting to the autonomy of the artwork and the communal temporality of the festive. along with active, engaged participation, another key difference between the absolute presentness of art and the endless present of prison time is the relationship the present moment has with the past and the future. a festival is necessarily repeated, never stagnant in time, with the diversity of its recurrences built into its very essence (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 121). this kind of temporal experience is full and fulfilled because of the temporal unity of past and future it enacts. as i’ve said, the participant in the festival communes with all who have celebrated before and all who will celebrate that same festival. the actor and playgoer are present in a moment that’s reminiscent of every prior performance of that same play and pregnant with every future performance. instead of a present moment that is endless and empty, like prison time, art delivers a present that is full and fulfilling because it gathers together the past and the future in one coherent moment. gadamer says fulfilled time like this has the character of a transition: “… transition appears as the true being of time in the sense that everything is in it at the same time such that past and future are together” (1970, p. 350). in the experience of transition, the past departs, and the future begins – and that’s the very experience that seems to be denied people who are imprisoned. in prison, a person is perpetually reminded of and defined by their past. instead of departing, the past persists, causing constant rumination and continually determining both the present and the limited possibilities one faces in the future. the u.s. legal system makes a person’s past continually present not as a point of departure but as a constant presence that will never pass. when the past refuses to depart, one cannot transition into a future that begins either. this stuckness of prison temporality is like the way gadamer talks about psychological neuroses and how we cannot become open for the future until we relinquish the past (1970, p. 352). but when we tarry with an artwork, celebrate its festivity, and interrupt passing time to experience instead the fulfillment of time, this is a paradigm shift that can alter one’s relationship to the past and the future. ultimately, the absolute presentness of art is distinct from the endless present in prison because of the fullness, the fulfilled-ness, that being and time achieve in our tarrying with and celebrating art. the endless present experienced in prison is empty; it passes without significance or pause. but when we tarry with a work of art, bringing it into its full presence through our participation, there is something fully present in the present. gadamer explains in “the artwork in word and image” (1992/2007) how the work of art brings forth its truth, its full being, something he just calls “it” (as “it emerges!” p. 211). likewise, the work of art also is there in a way we can’t quite put into words. it is something there for us to attend to, play along with, and bring forth, and even while we can’t put a finger on what it is that’s there, it fulfills. gadamer describes this fulfillment of being and time with words like aristotle’s energeia, aliveness itself, something vital, living, fully present and aware, the “highest form of activity and reality” (1992/2007, p. 213, 215). descriptions of time in prison from those inside call the endless present an empty nothingness, and the absolute presentness we experience in tarrying with and celebrating the work of art is full of liveliness, vitality, a vibrant something being there. submitting to the temporality of the work of art can restore to those in prison something of the experience of life itself, which is exactly what is absent from a prison temporality characterized as an interminable, futureless present, a living death. davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 10 conclusion if prison time is experienced as an interminable present, more a suspension than a transition, then tarrying with and celebrating the work of art can restore a living and fulfilling experience of time to people inside, at least for a while. the arrest of empty time and the fulfillment we experience when we tarry with art may be temporary, but participating in prison arts programs like sbb can be transformative for those doing time in prison. i urge that this hermeneutic experience must be made available to people our legal system locks into a ruminative and futureless relationship with their past actions. while the absorption and self-forgetfulness of tarrying may appear to reinscribe the precarity that results from being subject to the authority of the state and being erased as an autonomous participant in world-time, in fact our involvement with art and its celebratory community can return us to ourselves and create a new sense of belonging, an effect that is especially powerful for people in prison. this surrender, to the playing out of the work and its full coming to presence, is not a loss but an intensification and transformation of our experience of being and time. acknowlegements my deepest gratitude goes to the men in the sbb circle who shared their experiences and stories with me. i also wish to thank those in kentucky who made my visits to luther luckett correctional complex possible, including matt wallace, carol stewart, and jerry alter. this research was supervised in part by dr. nandra perry and dr. kristi sweet at texas a&m university and supported in part by funding from texas a&m university’s department of philosophy, department of english, women’s and gender studies program, melbern g. glasscock center for humanities research, and the fasken graduate student teaching award. i also thank the participants at the canadian hermeneutic institute in 2022 and my colleague in prison education, dr. michelle clifton-soderstrom at lewis university, for their thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. references fleetwood, n. (2020). marking time: art in the age of mass incarceration. harvard up. freeman, m. (2021). art’s speculative perturbations. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 10. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2021i2021.73781 gadamer, h.-g. (1970). concerning empty and ful-filled time. southern journal of philosophy, 8(2), 341-353. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.1970.tb02122.x gadamer, h.-g. (1986). the relevance of the beautiful and other essays (r. bernasconi, ed.; n. walker, trans.). cambridge up. gadamer, h.-g. (2004). truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans./eds.). continuum. (original work published 1960) https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2021i2021.73781 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.1970.tb02122.x davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 11 gadamer, h.-g. (2007). the artwork in word and image: “so true, so full of being!” in r. palmer (ed.), the gadamer reader: a bouquet of the later writings (pp. 192-224). northwestern up. (original work published 1992) guenther, l. (2013). solitary confinement: social death and its afterlives. university of minnesota press. keane, n. (2021). mortality, time, and the lessons of silence: a hermeneutical analysis of give and take. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 9. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2021i2021.73474 keane, n. (2022). the temporality of artwork and festival and the temporality of the cosmos: gadamer’s reflections on time and eternity. continental philosophy review, 55, 335-351. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-022-09581-0 leder, d. (2000) the soul knows no bars: inmates reflect on life, death, and hope. rowman & littlefield. lucas, a. (2021). prison theatre and the global crisis of incarceration. methuen drama, bloomsbury. ross, s. (2006). the temporality of tarrying in gadamer. theory, culture, & society, 23(1), 101123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276406063231 tate, d. (2012). in the fullness of time: gadamer on the temporal dimension of the work of art. research in phenomenology, 42, 92-113. https://doi.org/10.1163/156916412x628766 1 i visited the sbb program at luther luckett for about two weeks (including rehearsals, the public performances, and one performance for others inside) in may of 2014 and for the public performances in may of 2015. this research was approved by the irb at texas a&m university, where i was a graduate student at the time. observations of the program were collected with informed consent from all participants. 2 she expands this view and reports on years of international research in prison theater in her 2021 book prisontheatre and the global crisis of incarceration, where she argues for the value of prison theater as a strategy for community building, professionalization, social change, and hope. 3 while i use the term “inauthentic” for empty time, i also recognize and accept keane’s (2022) argument that simplifying the relationship between fulfilled time and empty time to one of authenticity/inauthenticity is inadequate, perhaps inaccurate (p. 346). gadamer’s sense of this difference may not be a simple dichotomy as i represent it here. https://doi.org/10.11575/jah.v2021i2021.73474 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-022-09581-0 https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276406063231 https://doi.org/10.1163/156916412x628766 davis journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 2 12 4 gadamer says the performer “disappears” (1960/2004, p. 114) and remarks on their “unobtrusiveness” (1986, p. 52). 5 in this, i am reminded of melissa freeman’s (2021) exploration of the ways art can perturb our ordinary understandings of the world in generative ways. corresponding author: tom grimwood, professor, university of cumbria, uk email: tom.grimwood@cumbria.ac.uk journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 october 13, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.76169 spoilers, triggers, and the hermeneutics of ignorance tom grimwood abstract a hermeneutics of ignorance may, at first, appear to be a contradiction in terms. yet, ignorance and stupidity remain a pressing issue in the realm of today’s public discourse. the form this takes concerns, not the actual intelligence of people per se, but rather the use of the denomination of “stupidity” as an active framing of debate, or the use of perceived ignorance to strategically organise individuals, publics, and audiences. this offers a challenge to hermeneutic practice; or, at least, a pause for reconsidering some of the assumed figures that govern the hermeneutic endeavour, namely dialogue and intelligibility. in this paper, i want to sketch out some provisional areas of consideration for such a challenge and its potential response. focusing on one aspect of the contemporary media milieu – the work of the spoiler and the trigger – i want to suggest how the digital ecology through which much of public discourse takes place requires adjustments to hermeneutic approaches, and the implications of these to what a hermeneutics of ignorance might look like. keywords ignorance, spoilers, mediation, dialogue, on-line information towards a hermeneutics of ignorance grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 16 2 a hermeneutics of ignorance may, at first, appear to be a contradiction in terms. after all, if hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, this already presupposes a level of engagement with the world that ignorance rejects. the latter involves ignoring rather than engaging knowledge, sense or awareness; rooted in the latin ignotus (unknown, strange, or unfamiliar) which appears as the opposite of the efforts to understand inherent to hermeneutics, and the significance of bildung within gadamer’s own work. at the same time, as part of the “universality of the hermeneutic viewpoint” that gadamer cites as a core principle of interpretation, the importance of the effective history of knowledge renders the idea of “ignorance” as a cleanly-defined object rather more complicated. instead, there is an awareness that “people read […] sources differently” over time because they are “moved by different questions, prejudices and interests” (gadamer, 2004, p. xxix). yet, ignorance and “stupidity” remain a pressing issue in the realm of today’s public discourse. furthermore, the prominence of stupidity as a figure of discourse – ever-present in discussions of politics, climate-change, public health, and cultural practices, not to mention the all-too-common intellectual decrying of the superficiality of those discussions in themselves – suggests that it has taken on a specific value, and a specific urgency. for some, this is a key problem with progressing any form of socio-political dialogue; arguments by the likes of shawn rosenberg (“the incompetent citizen”) or hélène landemore (“the dumb many”) are supplemented by work such as hartman, hester, and gray’s research (2022) that suggests the attribution of stupidity to political opponents has a more significantly polarising effect than the perception an opponent is morally evil. as such, this form of ignorance and stupidity – which is not the actual intelligence of people per se, but rather the use of the denomination of “stupidity” as an active framing of debate, or the use of perceived ignorance to strategically organise individuals, publics and audiences – offers a challenge to hermeneutic practice; or, at least, a pause for reconsidering some of the assumed figures that govern the hermeneutic endeavour, namely dialogue and intelligibility. in this paper, i want to sketch out some provisional areas of consideration for such a challenge and its potential response. focusing on one aspect of the contemporary media milieu – the work of the spoiler and the trigger – i want to suggest how the digital ecology through which much of public discourse takes place requires adjustments to hermeneutic approaches, and the implications of these to what a hermeneutics of ignorance might look like. fields like agnotology studies have pointed to a necessary ignorance inherent to all forms of knowledge, and philosophical approaches to epistemic injustice have highlighted the faults of “prejudicial flaws in shared resources for social interpretation” (fricker, 2007, p. 147). my interest, though, is in the stupid as a figure or rhetorical commonplace, a particular argumentative device, a trope that is part explanation, part insult, which is embedded within the inherent plurality of interpretations that constitutes the current field of public discourse. in his book, stupidity in politics, nobutaka otobe comments on how the dimensions of this plurality of our everyday affairs places the cliché as a key site of public discourse: amid the plural forces that communicative interaction must negotiate, “clichés – words of others – constitute the quintessential phenomenon of stupidity. our thought is not a result of solitary activity, but the outcome of plural forces circulating within and beyond individual thought” (otobe, 2021, p. 5). i would take this a step further: not only are clichés seen as stupid, “the stupid” themselves (however they are represented) are now a cliché of public discourse. this is not to dismiss or devalue the work of the cliché, but grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 16 3 rather view it as a relational assemblage governed by particular interpretative practices (see grimwood 2021a). the idea that there is a group of people who are stupid fits almost perfectly with endlessly revived calls for a healthy dose of critical thinking, attention to detail, or understanding of the scientific method. as a trope, the stupid reflect well-known monstrosities that recur throughout discourses of the intelligentsia regardless of methods and approach: the inattention caused by media saturation, the lack of depth caused by social media’s endless clickbait, the destruction of rational debate and the reduction of nuance to angry polemics caused by a combination of all of the above. but these responses are problematic for a number of reasons. it is precisely this twitch-response, the instinct to repeat the well-worn mantras of intellectualist positions, that obscure or reject some of the key interpretative principles that philosophical hermeneutics alerts us to. yet, the urgency of ignorance as a problem can conceal such framing: indeed, such responses make implicit (and explicit) use of spoilers and triggers in their formation of the need for intellectual engagement in the public domain to provide answers we have inevitably heard before. the work of the spoiler and the trigger are therefore often-ignored, sometimes banal, but even so a crucial site of interpretative practice. accessing the ignorant but before discussing spoilers in these terms, some more groundwork on the hermeneutics of ignorance is necessary. my starting point, in keeping with the contexts in which the figure of the ignorant and the stupid have most emerged with most alarm, is an internet meme. of course, access to information alone would never be a cure for stupidity: information is, after all, not the same thing as understanding. but the meme is obviously not arguing this, and it would be less amusing and less shareable if it was. instead, it is making a familiar claim, perhaps even obvious an obvious one: the array of information promised to be “at our fingertips” in the digital age has turned out to produce counter-intellectual discourse, with people running amok through conspiracy theories, unbalanced evidence, and filter bubbles, resulting in the ominous threat of “post-truth.” as such, the meme is effectively suggesting that the access to information is being misused by stupid people (whether this is their fault, or the fault of the internet); while at the same time deploying a form of nostalgia that creates a particular sense of community (“y’all”) who are linked by virtue of their hope for the emancipation from ignorance, and a memory of the time before the widespread use of the internet. grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 16 4 i use this meme because both the implicit and explicit claims at work should raise concerns for a hermeneutics of ignorance. before exploring such a hermeneutic response, it is worth unpacking these concerns briefly. the idea that the internet provides a vast and overwhelming amount of information resonates with a range of academic writers, across varied critical traditions. we find, for example, that that an “overwhelming flood of information” (haack, 2019, p. 265) has led to “the drowning of meaningful experiences in a sea of random noise” (terranova, 2004, p. 14), bombarding our faculties and leaving us unable to distinguish meaning from non-meaning. james bridle referred to this as a “new dark age” where “the value we have placed upon knowledge is destroyed by the abundance of that profitable commodity” (bridle, 2018, p. 11). the effect of this is to place a burden of responsibility on what the meme refers to as the “access to information.” not only does this frame the idea that public debate is overwhelmed with the noise of information (too much access, not enough critical thinking), but also the solutions on offer to redress the conflicts raging over who is stupid and who is not. this typically takes the form of yearning for the “gatekeepers” of truth – however we interpret that term – to return and organise, or at least focus, the easily-led (see grimwood, 2021a, pp. 165-171). it is worth noting the recurrent metaphor of water in the descriptions of the internet, from the threats of drowning issued by haack and terranova to the “flows of information” and “fluidising” of culture discussed in, for example, the work of boris groys (2016), not only serves a rhetorical function in the framing of ignorance, but also links to a longer history of the role of metaphor within the work of philosophy, and in particular metaphor of water as a figure of unreason. rhetorically, the invocation of watery depths implies a uniformity to digital circulation, as if users are as unable to tell the difference between one ocean wave and another as they are between wikipedia and the death clock, or between the new york times and a flash game of tetris. it does not take too long to reflect on how inappropriate it would be to suggest these are all equally indiscernible. yet, the everyday user-experience of information on the internet is routinely framed as such. the sense of “being overwhelmed” by the apparently infinite information of the internet resonates with an effective history of the image of water in relation to reason, a point made by foucault in madness and civilisation and his as-yet untranslated 1963 essay l’eau et la folie lecture, and michèle le doeuff in her book the philosophical imaginary. for foucault, reason has been recognised in the western imaginary as being firmly part of the terra firma, repelling the water of unreason. le doeuff, meanwhile, focuses on immanuel kant’s imagery of a “land of truth” surrounded by a broad and stormy ocean in the critique of pure reason, which she suggests is a development of francis bacon’s in temporus partis maximus. for both (and the tradition they write from), the image of the island “produces and structures a fantasy” that is both the solidity of the metaphysical system being proposed, and the urgency and justification of its need against indeterminate unreason (le doeuff, 1989, p. 12). yet, the need for an image to articulate this justification means that, to paraphrase le doeuff, the work of such a figure operates “in places it should not belong” (1989, p. 2), i.e., as a justification for the removal of the figural from proper thought. in the context of the meme, the figure serves the purpose of removing the content of information from information itself, invoking affective responses of bewilderment. grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 16 5 in this particular framing of ignorance, then, the role of the figure is not simply to invoke a broad swathe of unintelligible information that the stupid cannot hope to understand if they access it. it also shapes the notion of what constitutes access itself. as i have argued elsewhere (grimwood 2021b), the discourse of post-truth (or, at least, how to avoid it) is dominated by the figure of knowledge as an object of possession or property. information is “there,” to be taken, a sense which can be found not only in memes but also in contemporary accounts of the analytic philosophy of ignorance. what follows from the figuring of access as a form of property is a particular organisation of knowledge as something which is either held or not held; owned or lost. this seems, adds extra weight to the invocation of nostalgia which the meme starts with. indeed, it is notable to what extent those writing with concern on the rise of stupidity in society utilise recollections of the past in much the way kant utilised his island: both for those charged with spreading post-truth, playing with nostalgia to link past injustices with conspiratorial theories (foroughi et al., 2021; gabriel, 2019), but also for those arguing for the return to truths and methods that provide certainty and reductive simplicity (grimwood, 2022; vogelmann, 2018). do y’all remember when truth was uncomplicated by suggestions it might not be as universal as it claimed? i am reminded of gianni vattimo’s observation that while “the mass media tend to create homogeneity and uniformity in the collective culture,” alongside this, the opposite effect takes place: for, “as the system of information transmission becomes denser, ‘interpretative agencies’ also tend to multiply and, by a paradoxical logic of autodetermination, these agencies present themselves ever more explicitly as interpretative” (2003, pp.16-17, emphasis original). however, whereas vattimo saw this as contributing to an inevitable “decline of the west” – by which he meant the metaphysics of certainty, universalising reason and a unitary progress to history (2003, p. 22) – the responses to the concerns with ignorance and post-truth across digital media more typically see a vehement return of “the west,” and a downplaying of the role of interpretation that allows certain clichés of who and what the ignorant are to become accepted unproblematically. the persuasiveness of such a return of the west, in relation to the problem of ignorance at work in the meme at least, thus seems to be intrinsically linked to the well-established metaphor of water as philosophical unreason, and the more recent prominence of nostalgic longing within digital culture (see fisher, 2014). dialogue (with spoilers ahead) what i’ve suggested so far in this paper is that the “access” referred to in our opening meme does not simply concern a threshold or entrance, but instead how communal understanding is formed, associated, and disassociated. to this end, a hermeneutics of ignorance would need to engage in three elements of this: first, the reflexive dialogical structure of understanding and its effect on the persuasiveness of the commonplaces of stupidity and ignorance at work in current public discourse; second, the figural resonances that constitute part of the traditions in play when such commonplaces are invoked; and third, the underlying assumptions regarding the promise of access to knowledge given by digital media, which relates directly to the work of the spoiler and the trigger. the gadamerian hermeneutic tradition has long argued for the role of effective-historical consciousness in enabling interpretation to take place. as such, a hermeneutics of ignorance would grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 16 6 suggest a route beyond the cynical deployment of faux-naif appeals to scientific method – that is, the idea that those who are stupid are simply unable to access information correctly, and as such are excluded from public discourse – as well as from the use of interpretation as some kind of relativistic enabler of post-truth. but as lorenzo simpson has argued in hermeneutics as critique, when the gadamerian tradition “shifts its focus […] to coming to terms with other competing cultures, traditions, and epistemic regimes, the question of its ability to provide an understanding that is simultaneously noninvidious and genuinely critical arises” (2021, p. 55). simpson himself offers a cohesive set of methods for doing this, arguing for the synergies between hermeneutics and both critical theory and scientific method. his book is of particular significance because, in doing so, he foregrounds the importance of interpretation as a form of mediation. mediation is a “facilitating condition” of agency, and as such whenever classifications are drawn – in our case, between the ignorant and the intelligent – “we should always be concerned to inquire after the conditions under which particular modalities of classification become the salient term of discourse” (simpson, 2021, p. 103). such mediation becomes particularly important when we consider the sites and platforms of public debates where ignorance is invoked and, at times, weaponised. consider how the focus of trigger-warnings is often specific words or images; following simpson, the question would quite rightly be not what images offend, but instead how and why the trigger is connected to the mainframe of our conceptual imaginary; or, how it plugs into the “closed circuits of history” of which gadamer once spoke. where i find myself less convinced by simpson’s account is the way in which he figures mediation in terms of a humanistic dialogue. indeed, the humanistic underpinning is something he is keen for hermeneutics to return to. for gadamer, humanism referred to a specific sense of german classicism: the cultivation of the senses and the intellect towards enlightened existence. while simpson does not press this relationship to the german model of humanism, it becomes apparent in his focus on the role of dialogue as an opening-out and elevating of interpretative discussion. he does this by introducing two stages of dialogical operation: one which constructs a common language, and one which makes use of it. this means that, “[a]ssuming that interlocutors begin with a sufficient descriptive overlap to assure themselves they are indeed addressing the same topic, it is certainly possible that they may disagree about further properties of the thing they are talking about” (2021, p. 47). in this way, we find in simpson’s work a certain narrative progression whereby dialogue serves to resolve – albeit incompletely, and with open-ness to disagreement – the loss caused by ignorance of certain positions or perspectives. with this move, despite the many other methodological differences, simpson reflects a number of those writing on the problem of ignorance and the rise of post-truth who promote dialogue as a way forward (see, for e.g., macintyre, 2021). can we ask the same question of salience to this underpinning notion of humanistic dialogue, though? this would not be to condemn interpretation to the determinations of tradition – that is, remove the phronetic dynamics of dialogue that led gadamer to employ it so centrally to his hermeneutics – but rather to consider some of the more banal and ordinary aspects of digital communication which disrupt the coherence of the reason/unreason binary. in other words, it requires thinking through the medial work of mediation, beyond simply facilitating dialogue between agents, and towards aspects which may render uncomfortable the humanistic assumptions at the heart of a dialogical response, as well as carrying and enabling the urgency and speed of the threat of widespread ignorance to public debate. grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 16 7 in this case, it seems to me that asking about the salient modalities of a discourse is effectively to think about access: who is engaged to speak and how. as i have already suggested, thinking about this access requires dialogical mediation, as well as the mediation of the metaphors and figures that shape the “who” and the “how” by associating and de-associating sense-making processes. but it is the third element, the role of information and its overwhelming presence, which precisely disrupt the assumptions of those figural commitments regarding “the ignorant.” in his book spoiler alert, aaron jaffe describes the connectivity of the digital age as a hardwired “compulsory regime of stupidity” (2019, p. 5). but unlike those who see this regime as a succumbing to some kind of debordian fantasy of ceaseless empty spectacle – the overwhelming water of aesthetically seductive unreason, for example – jaffe understands that the stupidity of this regime is not simply a reversal of what progressive modernity once imagined itself to be, as our meme might have suggested. instead, he suggests that the view of an insurmountable volume of information frustrating any attempts to distinguish the sense from nonsense becomes itself an idealist fantasy, and furthermore a fantasy which is rendered difficult to sustain by the figures of the spoiler and the trigger. these present a more complex relationship between sense and narrative: in particular, the framing narrative that digital information is an indiscernible flow of noise, what habermas once bemoaned as disrupting the “intellectual focus” of modernity. the spoiler and the trigger (the latter is, jaffe argues, the reverse-wiring of the former), far from a retelling of a narrative or issuing a causal sequence of significant events, are “a switch, a flop, a knee jerk, an impedance mechanism made operational for a connected world charged with specific knowledge sequencing problems”; less a precis and more the signal of a “new technical sensitivity to activated sensibilities” (jaffe, 2019, pp. 3, 13). the marking of spoilers is, on the one hand, a deliberate signing up to ignorance of something that we could easily find out; and on the other hand, an assumption that all there is to know is there to be found; that the spoiler actually spoils, and the trigger actually triggers. in this way, the spoiler and the trigger are both sources of information, but rather than constituting forms of knowledge, they instead curate our sense of what there is to be known, foregrounding an interplay between tacit and deliberate ignorance. spoilers at work in jaffe’s words, a regime where information is always-already available, the spoiler alert “encloses a world” that is “supersaturated with tacit, nondisclosure agreements…we simultaneously didn’t agree to and acutely experience as betrayals of virtuous stupidities” (p. 4). rather than embody the threat that the excesses of the information age pose to the intellectual, spoilers, and triggers bring to the fore the various complicities at work in how such excesses are organised and engaged with. how would this affect a hermeneutics of ignorance? some examples may help. as i noted earlier, the call for renewed dialogue in simpson’s work resonates with many similar recommendations on what to do when public disagreement is rooted, at least in part, in ignorance. consider behavioural expert andré spicer’s advice on the topic: grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 16 8 constantly dismissing the other side as stupid can be dangerous. it’s unlikely to foster dialogue, and will instead drive political factions ever further apart. politics will become a grudge match between factions who consider their opponents idiots and therefore refuse to listen to them. whenever this sort of vicious partisanship kicks in, voters become more likely to follow their own politics when making a decision – no matter what the evidence says. (spicer, 2016) spicer’s rejection of the dualism between the informed, considerate, and good, and the stupid, aggressive, and bad is a valuable ethos to follow. the sentiments cannot escape irony, though. after all, even if one agrees that politics is about finding agreement and compromise within the public sphere, many instances of the cultural battles begin from the very effort to talk more, to educate, to make visible tensions within the understanding and recognition of those occupying shared social and political spaces. the idea that voters may “follow their own politics” seems an odd warning to make (how else does one participate in politics?). it is clarified by the suggestion of the cod-psychology factions and tribalism; simply following your “in-group” line is a sign of barbarity unbefitting a modern democracy. however, barbarity is also indicative of stupidity: the very same labelling that the passage began by warning us against. spicer’s view could thus be seen as a kind of individualistic re-enactment of what jacques ranciere (2009) critiques in structural social criticism (the same social criticism that, arguably, simpson’s hermeneutic response attempts to lead us to). on the one hand, ranciere argues, such social criticism links emancipation to intellectual discovery; on the other hand, it is resigned to the perpetuity of a system which blocks it. certain groups (class, race, age, the “left behind” and so on) are said to be excluded from knowledge because they don’t know the true reasons that they can’t access that knowledge; but their ignorance is a product of the systems of knowledge that don’t let them in. they would know, if only they knew! the entire process is wrapped in a spoiler alert, carefully concealing the circular logic at work. while perhaps not as complex as jaffe’s account of spoilers, there is a similar interplay here between how expectations are tacitly accepted and usurped. as ranciere noted, such an interplay is often overlooked simply because it is unnecessary to examine them: after all, the various theories of stupidity such as “dunning krueger,” nudging, groupthink, and so on all make perfect sense in particular moments and as part of particular connections (despite the inherent problems with the ways in which all of those touchstones for condemning the ignorant have been produced; see grimwood 2021b); just as the suggestion of engaging in dialogue, rather than throwing around insults of stupidity, seems an utterly reasonable approach. but this rationality involves a particular foregrounding of certain elements of dialogue at the expense of others. it is, as gadamerian hermeneutics has long held, necessary for access to understanding to be mediated; but the form of that mediation can be inattentive to the tacit spoilers with which it might engage. consider another example. one of the most important books on ignorance, at least in analytic philosophy, has been miranda fricker’s work on epistemic injustice. fricker is less interested in ignorance per se and more the exclusion of certain groups being deemed to be “knowers,” arguing that this exclusion is both epistemological and hermeneutic in nature. as such, the work is an important step towards re-imagining the focus of traditional studies on knowledge. however, it also demonstrates, inadvertently, the problem with appeals to dialogue. for fricker, addressing grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 16 9 epistemic injustice requires awareness of different levels of interpretation, or “intellectual gears,” with which we respond to claims to knowledge. a level of “spontaneous, unreflective” response can often bear several unfair prejudices by a listener against a speaker. however, fricker suggests that if one suspects prejudice to their “credibility judgement” – through a sense of cognitive dissonance, emotional response and so on – then they should shift their intellectual gear into “active critical reflection in order to identify how far the suspected prejudice has influenced her judgement” (2007, p. 91). it is interesting, though, that all the examples that fricker uses involve dealing with a first-hand dialogue between a speaker and a listener; but each dialogue is a reported narrative, a retelling (for the purpose of explicating her argument), with her recurrent example being tom robinson from to kill a mockingbird. these stand as ideal cases, carefully constructed narrative devices to expose the clear ignorance of one group or the exclusion of another. this serves to keep the analysis contained within a certain mode of knowing: canonical literature, well-established within school curricula, and the lists of greatest hollywood films alike. this is not to say that it can’t be a useful example, of course. but the wider historical circuits of the example, and its effect on its persuasive power, is not explored. the example is thus wrapped in a tacit spoiler, and by complying with such spoilers the layers of mediation involved in the example are under-explored. such mediation might involve the deeper historical and social contexts of racial injustice that fricker ignores; it might equally involve the institutional banalities providing its credibility as a set reading for the general certificate in secondary education in english literature. fricker utilises the example because we know it; but in jumping to the end, overriding the means by which some aspects are mediated and others are ignored, renders her interpretation a literal spoiling of the hermeneutic dialogue. it is not spoiling the end, so much as literally spoiling the materiality of the text. as a result, fricker leaves us with a solution that focuses on the self-reflection of the individual, presented through a diverse web of social, pedagogical, and referential relationships. all of these examples are, in this sense, reflections of theodore george’s suggestion that, “in many quarters, whether in the academy, the media, or even the arts, the concern to tarry on the political, to attempt to make things visible in a new way, is increasingly squelched in the name of frames of debate that already have accepted trappings and established channels of dissemination” (george, 2020, p. 142). or, perhaps, simply vattimo’s return to “the west.” however, they are also examples of complicities arising from general apprehensions about the threat of ignorance. hence, jaffe suggests that the spoiler and the trigger constitute “a literary-historical interface between epistemological confidence and ontological confusion which may have been baked into media modernity all along” (2019, p. 67). the task of a hermeneutics is to engage with the conditions of such confusion, not to reduce or obscure them, but rather to understand how it is enacted and performed in the mediating structures that are supposed to resolve them. it is not enough, in other words, to consider the dialogical aspect of hermeneutics as mediative without also considering the phronetic contexts of application. but in digital media, such application involves constant associations of meaning that are not simply linguistic, but also affective, promissory, and often tacit, all of which can be easily obscured from more traditional foci of interpretation. in many senses, these associations are a more localised and everyday process of what vattimo termed “interpretative agencies.” interpreting these sites of association would lead us, not to a le bonesque diagnosis of ignorance as a contagious pathogen in need of a cure, or a nostalgia for the certainties of the pre-postmodern “knowledge,” but rather to a hermeneutics of ignorance, grimwood journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 16 10 embedded within the curation of knowledge and stupidity. this may bring us back to the work of agnotology: a hermeneutics of ignorance is not concerned with demarcating itself from its opposite (that is; intelligence, understanding, applied “truth”), but to acknowledge the complicities at work in any engagement with ignorance. this is not, though, simply to admit or describe the necessary ignorance in our hermeneutic disposition. instead, it carries an obligation to understand the curation of what is foregrounded and what is left in the background in the mediation of understanding, and the access it provides – in all its linguistic and material forms. acknowledgements this is a version of a paper given at the north american society for philosophical hermeneutics annual conference in 2022. my thanks to the many questions, suggestions, and conversations from the conference participants in response to the ideas presented. references bridle, j. 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(2018). the problem of post-truth: rethinking the relationship between truth and politics. behemoth: a journal on civilisation, 11(2), 18-37. https://doi.org/10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.986 https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12198 https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221089451 https://theconversation.com/calling-your-political-opponents-stupid-is-a-stupid-thing-to-do-62926 https://theconversation.com/calling-your-political-opponents-stupid-is-a-stupid-thing-to-do-62926 https://doi.org/10.6094/behemoth.2018.11.2.986 corresponding author: jolene b. schulz, msn bellin college email: jolene.schulz@bellincollege.edu journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 april 19, 2023 ©the author(s) 2023 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2023i2023.77200 responding to unexpected urine drug test results: a phenomenological approach jolene b. schulz & casey rentmeester abstract as a response to the opioid epidemic in the united states, the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) published the cdc guideline for prescribing opioids for chronic pain in 2016. this document served as a means to reduce risks and address harms of opioid use by recommending that clinicians conduct periodic urine drug testing for patients on chronic opioid therapy. as an unintended result of this recommendation, providers began using unexpected urine drug test results as a reason to dismiss patients from practice, both out of concern for their patients’ wellbeing as well as their own legal risks. using husserl’s and heidegger’s phenomenology, we argue that this science-based, black-and-white practice does not heed the patient as a whole person. instead, we recommend a more contextual, patient-centered approach that can help us to better understand and manage patient needs in such contexts. keywords martin heidegger, edmund husserl, opioid epidemic, medical ethics, chronic pain pain is difficult to treat. although there may be lab or imaging tests and physical assessments to support a diagnosis of pain, pain is largely subjective. there has been concern in the healthcare community that this could lead to under-reported and undertreated pain (pozza et al., 2021). the president of the american pain society, james campbell, addressed this in 1995 by introducing pain as the fifth vital sign, further emphasizing the importance of routine pain assessments (campbell, 1996). consequently, various assembly bills, professional organization recommendations, and treatment guidelines were modified to stress the importance of effective schulz & rentmeester journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 3 2 pain management (pozza et al., 2021). the emphasis on pain as the fifth vital sign had unfortunate and unintended consequences. rather than drawing attention to the need for improved assessments, many healthcare professionals and organizations emphasized the importance of treating pain, often overzealously (baker, 2017). this led to inappropriate use of opioids, with steadily increasing numbers of opioid prescriptions, and consequently, the development of the opioid epidemic in the united states (baker, 2017). in fact, from 1999 to 2014, over 165,000 americans died from opioidrelated overdoses; in 2011, it was estimated that more than 420,000 emergency department visits were due to opioid misuse and abuse (dowell et al., 2016). in some regards, the pendulum has swung the other way, with providers now fearful of prescribing opioids, both out of concern for their patient’s wellbeing as well as their own legal risks related to doing so. in 2016, the cdc guideline for prescribing opioids for chronic pain recommended routine urine drug testing to reduce the patient’s risk of toxicity and drug-to-drug interactions, mitigate medical and legal problems, and better ensure patient compliance (dowell et al., 2016). however, providers are increasingly using unexpected urine drug test results as grounds for patient dismissal (florete, 2018). while this protects the provider from a legal standpoint, it raises serious ethical concerns, as it does not take into consideration the factors and life circumstances that may be involved in the patient utilizing drugs other than opioids in the first place. using edmund husserl’s and martin heidegger’s phenomenology as our background, we argue that this practice does not heed the patient as a whole person nor is it attentive to the situational context (husserl 1913/1989; heidegger, 1987/2001). by applying phenomenology, it becomes clear that providers should avoid dismissing a patient solely on the basis of an unexpected urine drug test. instead, providers can use a phenomenological lens to better understand the patient’s experience and respond in a manner that delivers contextual, patientcentered care that respects the patient as a whole human being. overview of phenomenology in order to apply phenomenology to the issue at hand, we need to get a sense as to the general impetus of this way of doing philosophy. the motto of phenomenology is encapsulated in the pithy saying by its founder, edmund husserl, that we need to “get back to the things themselves” (husserl, 1900/2001, p. 50), which means that we need to philosophize in a way that respects how things show up in their everyday contexts, rather than approaching all entities from the strictly scientific perspective. husserl was responding to the movement of naturalism in the early 1900s “that recognize[d] as real (wirklich) only the physical” (lauer, 1965, p. 9). when naturalism is applied to medicine, husserl argues, we get “scientific medicine [that] results from the utilization of insights belonging to purely theoretical sciences concerned with the human body, primarily anatomy and physiology. these in turn are based on those fundamental sciences that seek a universal explanation of nature as such, physics and chemistry” (husserl 1911/1965, p. 149). purely from the perspective of science, the human body can be understood as a physical object that functions according to the principles of physics and chemistry. husserl’s word for this aspect of the human body as a material object is körper (husserl 1913/1989, p. 152ff). while husserl notes that “no reasonable person will doubt the objective truth or the objectively grounded probability of the wonderful theories of … the natural sciences” (husserl, 1911/1965, schulz & rentmeester journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 3 3 p. 74), he thinks that this way of approaching the world does not and indeed cannot do justice to the way in which we experience the world in our everyday contexts. since the natural scientific approach leads to a “dogmatic one-sidedness” (husserl 1935/1996, p. 19) in that there is a myopic focus on objectivity, he develops phenomenology as an attempt to describe the world as it appears in everyday contexts, thereby paying credibility to the subjective factors of experience. pain as a subjective experience plays a significant role in his analysis, which is the most obvious place to start when it comes to the opioid crisis. from a phenomenological perspective, pain cannot be approached from a merely objective, scientific stance. instead, the proper initial question is: “what is it like to experience pain?” husserl provides the following commentary on this very question as follows: if the hand is pinched, pressed, pushed, stung, etc., touched by external bodies or touching them, then it has its sensations of contact, of being stung, of pain, etc. … my body’s entering into physical relations (by striking, pressing, pushing, etc.) with other material things provides in general not only the experience of physical occurrences, related to the body and to things, but also the experience of specifically bodily occurrences of the type we call sensings. such occurrences are missing in “merely” material things. (husserl, 1913/1989, p. 153) what husserl is getting at is that the experience of sensing the world cannot be explained by merely appealing to the body as object; rather, any robust discussion of pain needs to deal with it as a subjective sensation. commenting on this, saulius geniusas states, “pain biology, if successful, can shed light on the neurophysiological mechanisms that, presumably, accompany pain experience. however, irrespective of its practical utility, pain biology cannot clarify the nature of pain experience” (2020, p. 1-2). this is why husserl makes a distinction between the body as physical object (körper) and the body as lived body (leib), the latter of which “refers to my own existence, to my experiences, perceptions, and feelings as they are lived” (aho, 2018, xvi). in fact, husserl makes it clear that the primary investigation of phenomenology is “phenomena,” “the most general essential character [of which] is to exist as the ‘consciousnessof’ or ‘appearance-of’ the specific things, thoughts (judged state of affairs, grounds conclusions), plans, decisions, hopes, and so forth” (husserl 1935/1996, p. 15). from this perspective, a description of pain has to do with one’s consciousness of pain and the ways in which pain alters one’s world. an analysis of körper can provide meaningful scientific insights into the human body, but an attentiveness to leib opens us up to the lived experience of the person, which may not only help us to understand another’s experience of pain, but also a person’s broader overarching goals, life plans, values, etc. husserl’s most famous student, martin heidegger, utilizes this distinction between körper and leib to elucidate the ways in which humans are different from merely objective entities in his zollikon seminars, which were a series of lectures given to health professionals with the attempt to show that, despite the obvious successes of scientific medicine, “the central characteristic of being human cannot be approached by natural science” (1987/2001, p. 27) and, therefore, the practice of medicine requires methodologies that go beyond those found in the natural sciences. heidegger makes it clear that his approach does not entail an “abandonment of science, but on the contrary [a means of] arriving at a thoughtful, knowing relationship to science and truly schulz & rentmeester journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 3 4 thinking through its limitations” (1987/2001, p. 18). phenomenology of healthcare, from a husserlian-cum-heideggerian perspective, complements scientific knowledge with an approach to care that attempts to understand and respond to the patient as a lived body, rather than as merely a physical object. as heidegger is talking primarily to psychiatrists in these seminars, he begins his discussion with the example of sadness to highlight his overarching point as to the limits of science and the need for human connection: how do we measure sadness? evidently, one cannot measure it at all! why not? if one approached sadness with a method of measuring, the very approach would already be contrary to the meaning of sadness … as far as sadness is concerned, it can only be shown how a person is affected by it and how his relationship to himself and the world is changed. (heidegger, 1987/2001, p. 82) heidegger’s point is that the experience of sadness from the perspective of the patient cannot be understood from a merely scientific perspective, a discussion that allows him to extrapolate towards the topic of pain. in noting that health professionals have a better sense scientifically as to what might cause pain, he states “yet, a layman’s experience is probably closer to the phenomenon of pain” (heidegger 1987/2001, p. 84). this is because the experience of pain can only be heeded by engaging with the lived body of the patient, rather than merely the body as physical object. instead of a black-and-white scientific approach to pain and access to pain relief, a heideggerian approach calls for providers to think through how pain is affecting a person holistically, thus leading to a different relationship with the world. in order to help providers engage in these more holistic approaches to patient care, heidegger makes it clear that they must heed the uniqueness of each patient and he does so by commenting on the phenomenon of “bodying forth” [leiben]. he states, “the body is not … [merely] a corporeal thing, but each body, that is, the body as body, is in each case my body. the bodying forth [leiben] of the body is determined by the way of my being” (heidegger, 1987/2001, p. 86). this concept of bodying forth is helpful in that it recognizes living as a unique unfolding for every individual. in the context of pain, this means that certain individuals are able to tolerate and cope with pain effectively, but others are unable to do so and thus require more aggressive treatments. in order to assess their patient’s capacity for tolerating or coping with pain, providers should build a relationship with the unique person in order to determine their character and “measure up” the patient’s pain capacity. heidegger discusses our myopic understanding of measurement to make this point. from a scientific perspective, to measure is to provide objective exactitude via the use of tools. but, there is also the type of measuring that occurs in relations to humans where we determine if others “measure up” to our preconceived understandings, given the information we are given. heidegger states, “all measuring is not necessarily quantitative. whenever i take notice of something as something, then i myself have ‘measured up to’ [anmessen] what a thing is. this ‘measuring up’ [sich-anmessen] to what is, is the fundamental structure of human comportment toward things” (heidegger, 1987/2001, p. 100). measuring, in this sense, is a matter of holistic assessment. when we are attempting to determine if a patient should indeed be provided access to opioid medication, heideggerian phenomenology would recommend a holistic, relational approach where we engage in communication to determine the patients’ experience of pain as it is related to their life as a whole. schulz & rentmeester journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 3 5 generally speaking, husserl and heidegger help to provide a means for health professionals to attend to their patients as persons rather than as merely bodily objects. this provides us with an appropriate springboard to think through the experience of chronic pain, which is often the reason patients seek opioid therapy (chou et al., 2020). research has shown that patients seek opioid prescriptions often to treat chronic physical pain, but that other factors are common, including seeking to get high or experience euphoria, to improve sleep, to relieve depression, sadness, nervousness, or anxiety, and to deal with bad memories (weiss et al., 2014). a holistic approach in which we explore the phenomenology of the patient can provide a means to explore the reasons as to why the patient is seeking medication so that the provider can determine the best course of action. phenomenology of chronic pain logically, then, it makes sense to first seek to better understand the phenomenology of patients with chronic pain before responding to unexpected urine drug test results. after all, patients with chronic pain are those most frequently managed with chronic opioid therapy and undergoing urine drug testing. in their article, “the world of chronic pain: a dialogue,” martin kusch and matthew ratcliffe describe kusch’s experience with chronic and debilitating jaw pain through a phenomenological lens. kusch was prescribed opioids to manage the pain, but his overarching story provides a holistic perspective as to the experience of chronic pain more generally. admittedly, the experience of a single patient with chronic pain cannot be generalized to all patients with chronic pain (kusch & ratcliffe, 2018). however, their discussion can inform healthcare providers of the possible effects of chronic pain and highlight experiences beyond the physical pain that reflect that patient as a whole human being through leib. their discussion emphasizes two key features of chronic pain: (1) that chronic pain affects how a person relates to others and anticipates behaviors from others and (2) that chronic pain is “concretely focused, and yet, at the same time, all-encompassing” (kusch & ratcliffe, 2018, p. 61). when dealing with chronic pain, kusch describes his relationships with others as fundamentally altered: he was unable to relate cognitively or emotionally to anyone without simultaneously thinking of himself as a sufferer. he began to distinguish between those who supported him through his suffering with those who did not. moreover, the depth of his prior relationship (or lack thereof) did not necessarily predict the level of support he received. in the process, his perception of his world changed (kusch & ratcliffe, 2018). whereas he previously viewed medical doctors as those who could fix or repair a physical ailment, with a moral obligation to help, he ultimately began to distrust healthcare providers for failing to alleviate his pain even after he made them privy to such inner worries (kusch & ratcliffe, 2018). kusch and ratcliffe (2018) offer interesting insight to the “self-infantilization” that can occur when someone is in chronic pain: demoralizing long-term pain and increasing doses of opiates made it impossible for me to think clearly: my higher—self-reflective and self-corrective—functions became more and more restricted. this created an area for archaic, primitive, infantile cognitive, and emotional patterns. it led me to see the medical doctors as a father figure, and to build up expectations that only a father could possibly have fulfilled. the fear of losing the schulz & rentmeester journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 3 6 doctor—what will i do if he refuses to treat me any longer?—also had irrational elements that are best explained on the basis of the equation of the doctor with the parent. (kusch & ratcliffe, 2018, p. 65) as kusch was prescribed higher doses of opioids to control his pain, his higher-level cognitive abilities became impaired. furthermore, his desperation and suffering led him to revert to a state of dependency, this time on his healthcare providers. ultimately, this positioned the provider as an authority figure. kusch also observed the provider gaining authority through ritualized assessments and an overarching objectification of the patient experience. with complaints of pain, patients are asked questions such as “on the [numeric rating scale] scale from one to 10, what is the intensity of the pain? is the pain drilling, dull, or stabbing? and how often does it occur?” (kusch & ratcliffe, 2018, p. 66). this approach objectifies the patient experience and fails to shed light on the deeper experience of living with pain. at the same time, this superficial questioning leaves very little time for the patient to express themselves as more than just körper. fredrik svenaeus (2015) also sought to understand pain from a phenomenological perspective. he describes several of the experiences and interpretations of living with pain, similar to kusch. he points out that the same tissue damage can yield varying experiences of pain from individual to individual. because of this, it is not sufficient to focus solely on “pain” per se. rather, the concept of suffering may be better suited to address the experiences of pain. svenaeus (2015) refers to the experience of chronic pain as both a physical and emotional experience leading to severe distress. first, pain signifies distress and calls for immediate action. but over time, pain can affect a patient’s entire life experience. pain can inhibit the patient from performing activities that they previously enjoyed. additionally, svenaeus (2015) describes that pain is not simply objectified in the mind of the patient. instead, it is lived in the human experience, again more reflective of suffering. he describes this suffering as follows: still, this suffering, i believe, is most adequately described as a kind of bodily resistance and modulation displaying itself at the heart of consciousness and human experience. that is: an awareness of a body that is mine, but yet alien, since it resists and disturbs, rather than supports, my ways of being conscious and directed towards the world. (svenaeus, 2015, p. 113) here, svenaeus (2015) describes how pain is an alienating process whereby the body becomes more intolerable and foreign. the patient loses control of one’s bodily experience. consequently, patients try to block or escape unrelenting pain and eventually become “prisoners in [their] own bodies” (svenaeus, 2015, p. 115). drawing from elaine scarry’s the body in pain: the making and unmaking of the world (1985), svenaeus (2015) summarizes the torture that ensues with chronic pain where torture indicates an active experience and deliberate violation. this torture causes a breakdown of language that further threatens the patient’s ability to express one’s pain and more thoroughly understand it for oneself. and while some may find an escape through other tasks and work, there is some pain that is so debilitating that patients can find no escape and suffer needlessly (svenaeus, 2015). schulz & rentmeester journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 3 7 havi carel explains how life-altering chronic pain can be by talking of the change in one’s experiential structure of the world, which husserl and heidegger would refer to as leib. she states, “the opportunities, possibilities and openness of one’s life, activities, and goals are closed down” (2016, p. 68). the result is a “life altered” (carel, 2016, p. 64) to such an extent that one loses “the subtle feeling of ‘i can’ that pervades [one’s] actions” (carel, 2016, p. 90). and this loss of the sense that one can easily navigate the world can lead persons to seek ways of escaping it through, for instance, alcohol or marijuana—or, in some cases, illicit drug use. responding to unexpected urine drug test results from a phenomenological approach understanding the basic tenets of phenomenology and especially the phenomenology of chronic pain, we can further investigate the appropriate responses to unexpected urine drug test results. first, let us assume that the patient is truly in pain, rather than drug-seeking. after all, as pain is largely subjective, a healthcare provider should adopt a prima facie trust in their patients’ declaration that they are in pain. second, we must keep in mind that chronic pain is not merely a physical experience as it also leads to tremendous suffering that can affect a patient’s relationships, experiences, and interpretations of the world. the patient may feel alienated in one’s own body, imprisoned and unable to escape the pain, thereby leading to a feeling of being tortured and unable to articulate their experience. finally, pain threatens the patient-provider relationship because of a breakdown of patient communication, thereby threatening patient autonomy (rentmeester, 2018). thus, providers need to respond to the patient as a unique individual to attempt to understand the phenomenon of pain. this, however, is not the typical way in which doctors approach patients who seek pain relief. again, from the 2016 cdc guideline for prescribing opioids for chronic pain, urine drug testing is intended to reduce the patient’s risk of toxicity and drug-to-drug interactions, mitigate medical and legal problems, and ensure patient compliance (dowell et al., 2016). when reviewing urine drug test results, providers hope to find results consistent with the medication(s) being prescribed and an absence of other medications and illicit substances. ultimately, there are two overarching ways in which urine drug test results may be unexpected. first, the medication(s) expected to be found was not detected, or second, medication(s) (or other substances) that was not expected to be found was detected. in the case that the medication expected to be found was not detected, the healthcare provider should first take into consideration possible causes of the negative test (dowell et al., 2016). there is a slight possibility of a false negative result in which the patient was taking medication regularly and as prescribed, but this was not reflected on the test (although an in-depth analysis of test interpretation itself is beyond the scope of this paper). more often, the test is deemed to yield a true negative result where the patient truly is not taking the medication prescribed. in this case, the provider must consider the reason for this. if the urine drug test does not confirm that the patient is taking the medication prescribed, the most concerning threat is that the patient is diverting medication, that is, redirecting the medication that was prescribed for another person’s use. it is well known that opioid medications have street value. in fact, mutter et al. (2023) found steadily increasing street value of prescription opioids over the last several years, particularly as the number of opioid prescriptions has decreased. patients may feel compelled to divert their own opioid prescriptions for personal financial gain. on the other hand, patients may be schulz & rentmeester journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 3 8 diverting medications to their own relations (with or without understanding the risks of doing so). understanding their own experience, this could be in an attempt to alleviate another person’s pain and suffering. although it is considered unacceptable from the provider’s perspective to divert medication, to truly accept the patient’s pain, worth, and dignity as a human being requires that the healthcare provider continue to care for their patient. despite that, it would still be reasonable to no longer prescribe opioid medications. instead, healthcare providers may look to alternative treatments with less likelihood of diversion and misuse, which we will discuss below. the other possibility in the case of a negative urine drug test result is that the patient is taking the medication themselves but not as prescribed. again, assuming the patient is truly in pain, providers can seek to better appreciate the patient’s experience from a phenomenological perspective. in consideration of the suffering and desperation that results from chronic pain, healthcare providers should take an empathetic approach and consider why the patient is not taking the medication as prescribed. the patient may have run out of medication early because there was a recent flare-up or injury for which they relied on more medication. there may have been a different activity that they were required or chose to participate in but caused them increased pain. this may include going on a family outing or working longer hours. as havi carel (2016) pointed out, given the life-altering effects of chronic pain in which one’s activities become difficult or impossible to participate, medication can allow them to regain joy and a sense of purpose by restoring their activity and level of function. it can help patients to better cope with their pain, allowing them to enjoy their favorite hobbies and be productive, as long as the prescription is appropriately allocated such that it doesn’t lead to crippling cognitive effects that kusch experienced from being on roughly 25 pills per day (kusch & ratcliffe, 2018, p. 63). at the same time, patients may not be taking medication prescribed because their pain is routinely undertreated, in which case consistently more aggressive treatment could actually enhance compliance and alleviate their suffering. if this is not felt to be the case, then the healthcare provider can again look to alternative treatments (dowell et al., 2016). in the case that other medications or illicit substances are detected, the healthcare provider must consider the reason for this. from a phenomenological perspective, the healthcare provider can understand how chronic pain can affect higher-order thinking, judgment, and language, as discussed via kusch’s commentary above. this may have been an unintentional omission of a prescribed medication on the part of the patient. if this is deemed to be the case, then the healthcare provider should discuss the risks and benefits of concomitant therapy. if it is not deemed to be safe to continue both, a discussion should be held with the patient in which they weigh the benefits of one therapy over another and agree upon a modified regimen. another possibility is that the patient intentionally omitted this information, whether it is a medication being prescribed by another provider or an illicit drug. similar to the previous scenarios, the healthcare provider must consider the phenomenology of chronic pain and the patient’s perspective. again, it is important to consider why a patient would omit such information, seek other medications, or partake in illicit substance use. empathizing with the patient’s situation, one must consider if the patient is self-medicating to treat the pain that, again, could warrant more aggressive treatment by the provider. perhaps they are looking to return to normal functioning. perhaps they are looking for an escape from the unrelenting torture that svenaeus (2015) described. regardless of the reason, this situation warrants further discussion of schulz & rentmeester journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 3 9 what the patient is experiencing to better understand that unique patient. depending on the situation, this may also present an opportunity to treat the pain more aggressively or to discuss the benefit of addiction resources and refer the patient to these services. in each of these scenarios, it is important to consider the patient’s experience from a phenomenological perspective. healthcare providers must recognize that pain is not only a physical experience but also an emotional experience marked by suffering. in acknowledging the patient as a worthy human being, it is only ethical to maintain a patient-provider relationship to demonstrate support and understanding of the patient’s dignity and worth. granted, the plan of care may take on different shapes. if it is felt that opioid medications are still reasonably safe and beneficial to the patient, the patient and provider may agree upon the conditions to continue them. often, the medication may be continued, expectations can be reiterated, and the patient will be required to undergo more frequent urine drug testing to ensure compliance. if it is not felt that opioid medications are appropriate after an unexpected urine drug test result, the healthcare provider may look to a plethora of other therapies to manage pain. in short, along with nonopioid medications, the patient and provider can collectively decide upon physical therapy, psychological counseling, acupuncture, massage therapy, chiropractic treatment, weight loss and increased physical activity (payne et al., 2010), along with heat, ice, and interventional procedures. if drug abuse is suspected, the patient should also be referred for counseling and addiction services. this more holistic approach aligned with phenomenology recognizes the complexities of the issue, as opposed to the black-and-white sort of thinking that has become commonplace in which providers automatically refuse patients due to unexpected urine tests. in addition to the phenomenological experiences already discussed, dismissal from practice for an unexpected urine drug test result would reasonably lead to numerous other consequences. it would likely result in negative stigma, untreated pain, and further suffering for the patient. inadequately treated chronic pain can negatively affect a patient’s quality of life and is associated with poor mental health, anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances; it also leads to impaired activity and ability to work and is a leading cause of disability (dowell et al., 2022; office of disease prevention and health promotion, 2022). in fact, dowell et al. (2022) estimate that chronic pain costs between $560 and $635 billion annually when considering lost productivity, disability, and direct medical costs. dismissing a patient from practice following unexpected urine drug test results could also lead to missed opportunities to discuss and encourage the person to participate in substance abuse treatment. for those patients who struggle with substance abuse, it may further compromise patient safety as they feel more compelled to obtain opioids from alternative—and unregulated—sources, further exacerbating the opioid epidemic. because of the widespread and all-encompassing effects of pain, it is not surprising that a significant proportion of suicide victims experience chronic pain (dowell et al., 2022). chronic pain can affect nearly every aspect of a person’s life, and treatment of this demands compassion and concern that goes beyond a single test result. conclusion while the aim of pain as the fifth vital sign was to better assess the patient’s pain, it ultimately led to overzealous treatment and consequential development of the opioid crisis. in turn, providers have turned to dismissing patients from practice based on unexpected urine drug test schulz & rentmeester journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 3 10 results in an effort to maintain patient safety and protect the healthcare provider from legal issues. this fails to honor the patient as a human being and reduces the patient to a mere test result. instead, the provider should use a phenomenological perspective to understand their patient’s experience with chronic pain and respond to unexpected urine drug test results accordingly. beyond the physical pain, the provider should also recognize that the patient might be drowning in an emotional experience, laden with desperation, grief, and suffering. their relationships and worldview may be disrupted. and they may feel alienated from their own body or have difficulty communicating and understanding their own experiences. not only can dismissing the patient from practice have devastating consequences for the individual patient but it can also lead to major social and economic consequences as a result of untreated pain. it is imperative that healthcare providers avoid dismissing patients from practice based solely on an unexpected urine drug test result and, instead, respond to unexpected urine drug test results with empathy and compassion, supporting their patient to alleviate their suffering while simultaneously honoring humanity. in conclusion, we should heed husserl’s adage that “merely fact-minded sciences make merely fact-minded people,” thus reminding us of the need to practice holistic care as providers (1936/1970, p. 6). references aho, k. 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(2015). the phenomenology of chronic pain: embodiment and alienation. continental philosophy review, 48(2), 107–122. https//doi.org/10.1007/s11007-015-9325-5 weiss, r.d., sharpe potter, j., griffin, m.l., mchugh, r.k., haller, d., jacobs, p., gardin ii, j., fischer, d., & rosen, k.d. (2014). reasons for opioid use among patients with dependence on prescription opioids: the role of chronic pain. journal of substance abuse treatment 47(2): 140145. https//doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2014.03.004 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-018-9823-4 corresponding author: naoko masuda, m.ed. school of communication design, alberta university of the arts email: naoko.masuda@auarts.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 june 9, 2023 ©the author(s) 2023 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2023i2023.77573 grief, dōgen, and the ethical responsibility to the other now gone naoko masuda abstract when a living other transforms into a recently-gone other, how does the relationship between two people change? after the sudden and unexpected loss of a lifelong friend, my grief not only focused on the physical loss and the loss of future opportunities together, but also raised questions about what this meant for the state of our relationship and for my own selfunderstanding. 13th century japanese philosopher and sōtō zen founder dōgen teaches that death is one with life and experienced every moment as life-and-death. for him, life is a series of ever-changing moments, and it is in this impermanence that one finds learning. drawing on gadamerian hermeneutics, i explore what it could mean to ethically relate to a beloved deceased other and how dōgen’s teachings could help deepen understanding of grief as part of a continually evolving self-in-relation-with-other. keywords gadamer, dōgen, grief, philosophical hermeneutics, responsibility thus a genuine conversation is never the one we wanted to conduct. (gadamer, 2013, p. 401) k and i had known one another as part of a close-knit group of high school friends. in our youth, we hiked and camped together, went to concerts, and talked about everything from our dreams and fears, to the more mundane. in the last decade or so, although work and life commitments masuda journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 4 2 meant that we did not see each other as often as we would like, we still supported one another in whatever way we could. there was always a mutual understanding that each of us would be there for the other. so when k’s distraught brother called to relay the news of his unexpected death on june 7, 2022 — k’s birthday — there was an abrupt and forced change upon my relationship with my lifelong friend. he had died two days prior in a freak storm while kayaking off the west coast. k’s friendship was an important part of my own self-understanding, which until that phone call consisted in part of things such as “his slowest hiking buddy,” “where k can drop by any time when he’s in town (he had a spare house key at one point, though he always called before dropping by),” and more recently, “temporary keeper of his canoe until he finds storage space”1. all of a sudden, none of these things applied to me any longer. without the anchor that was our friendship, i felt unmoored. since then, grief continues to come and go. it is not considerate. it gives me no schedule or forewarning and shifts forms inexplicably. it is a trickster (beamer, 2017). i continue to work “through the conflicting things, memories, and emotions that sideswipe you when you least expect them” (moules, 2017, p. 2). one question that arose early on and which i continue to think about is that of my ethical responsibilty toward k. what is my responsibility to my beloved friend who is now gone? in “friendship and self-knowledge: reflections on the role of friendship in greek ethics,” gadamer (1999) claims that it is through friendship that one comes to a place of deeper understanding and self-understanding. i feel confident that k and my friendship had the hallmarks of what gadamer considers an excellent (teleía) friendship, and that if k were here, he would agree (and then laugh, so as to keep you guessing). yet, gadamer goes on to say that this recognition comes in part through a “sense of reciprocity in play between friends, such that each sees a model in the other” (p.138). in thinking about an ethical responsibility to my friend, it is this reciprocity that i struggle with most. after all, in his new state, k no longer has need of the worldly offerings that i can contribute, and i feel i have lost a sense of purpose. if reciprocity is necessary, then i feel like i’ve been left alone holding the ball mid-play. yet, i feel compelled to carry (tragen) (derrida, 2004) our friendship on my own. george (2020) states that gadamer maintains that not even the experience of the possibility of our own death can “dissolve the possible validity of the other’s claim” (p. 116). george suggests that the context is about the possibility of the death of the self, for example by suicide. however, is it possible that the reverse argument can also be made? could the requirement of reciprocity in friendship necessarily mean that this possible validity of the other’s claim continues on after the death of that other? when my friend died, he did not stop being my friend. he just stopped living. the friendship remains intact as well as any promise or pledge i have made to that friendship. as long as the friendship continues, i feel that there is a responsibility to listen to what my friend has to say even after his death. even after he has fallen silent. silence after all, isn’t devoid of meaning. a gifted writer, my friend has left letters, travel logs, magazine articles, and even a puppet play. other artifacts i have of his include photos, his copy of leonard cohen poems, and the canoe which still hangs from the ceiling of my garage for now. these are what constitute what moules (2017) calls the “archives of lives.” reading them in silence, i continue to learn. he continues to share with me and teach me anew, especially about masuda journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 4 3 living with nature, humility, openness, and about overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles. in so many ways, with and without words, my friend continues to speak to me, to make his claim. risser (2019) discusses silence and the meanings it holds and describes three types of silence— “silence as withdrawal of the word,” “silence as giving voice to words,” and “silence as the beginning of the word” (p. 3). i can think at least of the first and third types of silence that apply here. first, i wonder if the silence that death ushers could be considered the ultimate withdrawal of the word? until days before his death, k and i were in regular communication. only a few hours before his brother’s call, i had texted to wish him a happy birthday and to ask about his weekend. no response would ever come. in his absence, in the silence, however, k remained and remains present in my life. more than ever, this silence speaks. even after words have been withdrawn. it then remains both my pleasure and my responsibility to listen — the latter a requirement for learning (risser, 2019) — from his life and now his death, one that was and continues to be intertwined with mine. not only has k’s death turned out to be the withdrawal of the word, but it has also been a “silence as the beginning of the word.” his absence, his silence, has birthed new conversations. despite knowing each other for many years, until now i have had few opportunities to share experiences and dialogue with his parents and brother. in our shared grief, we could have all retreated inward. yet, in their generosity and openness at their most difficult hour, they have shared with me their memories, their questions — their own horizons of understanding — and i in turn have strived to do the same. of course, it is not the same as having my friend beside me. but these new relationships, these new conversations are also important not only for us to maintain our connection with k, but now for their own sake. new friendships and new responsibilities begin to emerge. even yesterday, i had the privilege to meet and talk with melissa, k’s faculty advisor and i have a difficult time believing that this is mere coincidence. finally, another type of conversation that could only have been born out of this silence is represented by what i share with you here today. my friend’s death thrust these questions upon me as i tried and try to make sense of an all too early and abrupt exit of someone who was so fully immersed in the act of living. i never intended to have these conversations. yet here i am. however, i am still troubled by this lingering issue of reciprocity. if, like gadamer says, true friendship requires mutual recognition that confirms the self-understanding of each person, it is difficult to say what the living can do for the dead. in life, this was easier. we had concern for one another’s well-being. we trusted one another so that we could listen to one another, support each other, and simultaneously cultivate both the self and the friendship. my friend no longer has need of what the living world has to offer. now that the well-being of the other is something that i cannot be concerned about — at least in a way that we, the living, can understand — can there even be a relationship? does reciprocity as a condition for friendship create an argument against responsibility to the other after their death? am i even understanding this as gadamer intended? but if i am, i suggest that this is only true if i consider self and other as two separate beings, the common view in western philosophical traditions. buddhist teaching, on the other hand, does not see the self and other as separate, but rather as interdependent and infinitely connected (iino, 1962). specifically, it is the writings of eihei masuda journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 4 4 dōgen, 13th century japanese philosopher and founder of sōtō zen buddhism, that provide another way to understand the relationship of self and other. before i go any further, i must make clear that i do not consider myself a sōtō zen buddhist. although my family and ancestors have affiliations with a local sōtō zen temple near my hometown, i would consider us “funeral buddhists,” practitioners who turn to the temple for guidance and support mostly regarding the rites of death. this is quite common in contemporary japanese life. although we did not participate in any organized religious activities, the values with which my parents raised my sister and me are steeped in the teachings. when i read dōgen’s shōbōgenzō (正法眼蔵, treasury of the true dharma eye), i begin to understand my upbringing and myself. therefore, my experience and understanding of sōtō zen buddhism is limited (as is my understanding of hermeneutics), and i approach this as a novice and from a philosophical rather than religious perspective. shōbōgenzō is a collection of essays (known as fascicles) that illuminate buddhist teaching and practice. it addresses not only philosophical questions, but also lays out practical instruction on topics such as the principles of zazen meditation and personal hygiene. genjōkōan (現成公案), the third installment in the 95-fascicle version, was written for the lay buddhist practitioner and is seen as the foundation for the subsequent teachings (okamura, 2010). the term genjōkōan is variously translated into “the reality of our own lives” (nishijima & cross, 1994); “actualizing the fundamental point” (tanahashi, 2013); “manifesting absolute reality” (cook, 1989); as well as my personal favourite, “manifesting suchness” (waddell & abe, 1972). i refer here to the nishijima and cross translation, as it is one of the two readily available complete translations. genjōkōan begins with: when all dharmas are [seen as] the buddha-dharma 2 , then there is delusion and realization, there is practice, there is life and there is death, there are buddhas and there are ordinary beings. when the myriad dharmas are each not of the self, there is no delusion and no realization, no buddhas and no ordinary beings, no life and no death. the buddha’s truth is originally transcendent over abundance and scarcity, and so there is life and death, there is delusion and realization, there are beings and buddhas. and though it is like this, it is only that flowers, while loved, fall; and weeds while hated, flourish. (nishijima & cross, 1994, p. 27) for dōgen, the buddha’s true reality is comprised of a myriad and infinite intersecting and interpenetrating singularities. although we see one another as separate and autonomous, he says the buddha teaches us that, in reality, there is no separate self and other because one cannot speak of the self without implying the existence of everything else. the separation is therefore an illusion borne of our ordinary humanness, our limits of experience and understanding. if we accept this and practice to overcome this ordinariness, to rid ourselves of self to attain realization, then this too is an illusion because such a task is impossible (okamura, 2010). further on, dōgen says: to learn the buddha truth is to learn ourselves. to learn ourselves is to forget ourselves. to forget ourselves is to be experienced by the myriad dharmas. to be experienced by masuda journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 4 5 the myriad dharmas is to let our own body-and-mind, and the body-and-mind of the external world, fall away. there is a state in which the traces of realization are forgotten; and it manifests the traces of forgotten realization for a long, long time. (nishijima & cross, 1994, p. 27) although we can never attain absolute realization, here dōgen calls on us to learn ourselves by forgetting ourselves. only by immersing ourselves in practice and letting our “body-andmind…fall away” (身心脱落) can we take an infinitely small step toward this unattainable absolute realization. he teaches that what we consider “self” and “other” is only an illusion, and that in reality, we are all “self-and-other.” if there is no such distinction, any thought of reciprocation would be moot. in this view, what would constitute an “excellent” friendship both in life and death? if there is no point in waiting for recognition (because there is no separate other to recognize), love and concern for a friend can only be given freely for their own sake, and not for want of something in return. if we expect something in return, it becomes what gadamer, citing aristotle, calls a friendship of utility (gadamer, 1999). however, our fallibility or ordinariness means that we are bound to struggle in giving freely without expectation of reciprocation. if the other is living, we may feel hurt and shame in being ignored or rejected. in life, a true friendship provides recognition and reciprocation leading to understanding and self-understanding not out of utility, but because of our mutual practice of love and concern for one another. if such a relationship in play suddenly and inexplicably ceases and the friend’s new state makes it impossible for them to respond, the living must learn to understand this new reality. i wonder if this struggle to understand the new reality is at least in part what manifests as grief? i turn once again to dōgen. amongst his writings is a short chapter called shōji (生死). the word shōji is comprised of two characters, shō, which means “birth” or “life” and ji which means “death.” it begins: “because in life-and-death there is buddha, there is no life and death. again, we can say: because in life–and-death there is no ‘buddha,’ we are not deluded in life-and-death.” (nishijima & cross, 1999, p.197). here too, like the self is twinned with the other, life and death are considered as one. for dōgen, such a duality only exists because of our sentience and the limits of our own understanding. he goes on to say that in true reality “appearance is just nonappearance” (p.197) and “disappearance is just non-disappearance” (p.198). impermanence then is at the heart of true reality. if we return again to the genjōkōan, he writes: the firewood, after becoming ash, does not again become firewood. similarly, human beings, after death, do not live again. at the same time, it is an established custom in the buddha-dharma not to say that life turns into death. (nishijima & cross, 1994, p. 28) here he says that after death, we do not live again. although this seems obvious, i believe that dōgen is showing us that if we can accept this, we will be better able to see clearly the impermanence of reality. if the present cannot be re-lived, if the dead do not reappear, then it becomes ever more important that we immerse ourselves in the present, letting “body-andmind…fall away.” accepting, however, does not come easily, and will never be fully achieved. masuda journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 4 6 the grief, the struggle to understand continues to be a complicated and messy process that has no clear endpoint. when i consider the loss of a beloved friend with dōgen’s unified concepts of self-and-other and life-and-death, i start to glimpse his life, his death and my ethical responsibility in a new way. if the separation between self and other is an illusion, an ethical responsibility to a deceased friend becomes just as much an ethical responsibility to oneself. here i see a connection to gadamer’s claim about self-love (philautia) (gadamer, 2009). although he acknowledges the negative connotations to this term (which is perhaps now more relevant than ever), gadamer claims that in order to be a true friend to another, “friendship must exist first and foremost with oneself” (gadamer, 2009, p. 8). when the duality of self and other becomes a unified self-and-other, love for a true friend becomes synonymous with love for the self, and reciprocation is no longer needed. on the never-ending path to accepting this new reality, accepting one’s experience of grief when it appears is also part of that reality. both for love of the friend and love for oneself, immersing oneself fully in that experience of grief may reveal new understandings. when the feelings of grief disappear for the moment, rather than clinging to the grief, we should equally immerse ourselves in that moment, so that we continue to see new aspects of this reality and gain further understanding of it. it would be folly to ignore grief or to see “overcoming” grief as an attainable goal. nor would it be an ethical way to be. what could this look like in our day-to-day unrealized reality? this is only a conjecture, as i, in my ordinariness, can only experience a fraction of a fraction of this “suchness.” i believe that it is putting daily into practice the learnings from the friendship. for me this means practicing patience and openness when i teach; compassion when i encounter those in need of assistance; humility when i get a little ahead of myself as i’m wont to do. it is about maintaining important relationships and cultivating new ones, like those with k’s family or with all of you here. it is sharing with others what i have learned from him, and being open to continue learning from others. it is letting my whole self fall away into the practice of living, just like my friend did so well, and being grateful for this life, warts and all. it is hard and messy work. but it is the only way i know to try and fulfill the responsibility—the promise—to our friendship and to continue our conversation, both in words and in silence. references beamer, k. (2017). and coyote howled: listening to the call of interpretive inquiry. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 10. retrieved from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53317 cook, f.h. (1989). sounds of valley streams: enlightenment in dōgen's zen translation of nine essays from shōbōgenzō. suny press. derrida, j. (2004). uninterrupted dialogue: between two infinities, the poem. research in phenomenology, 34, 3-19. retrieved from https://brill.com/view/journals/rip/34/1/articlep3_1.xml https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53317 https://brill.com/view/journals/rip/34/1/article-p3_1.xml https://brill.com/view/journals/rip/34/1/article-p3_1.xml masuda journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 4 7 gadamer, h.-g. (2013). truth and method (j. weinsheimer & d.g. marshall, trans; 2nd ed.). bloomsbury. (original work published 1960). gadamer, h.-g. (1999). hermeneutics, religion, and ethics. yale university press. gadamer, h.-g. (2009). friendship and solidarity. research in phenomenology, 39, 3-19. https://doi.org/10.1163/156916408x389604 george, t. (2017). grieving as limit situation of memory: gadamer, beamer, and moules on the infinite task posed by the dead. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 11. retrieved from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53324 george, t. (2020). the responsibility to understand: hermeneutical contours of ethical life. edinburgh university press. iino, n. (1962). dōgen’s zen view of interdependence. philosophy east and west, 12(1), 51-57. retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/1397245 moules, n.j. (2017). grief and hermeneutics: archives of lives and the conflicted character of grief. journal of applied hermeneutics, editorial 1, editorial. retrieved from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53316 nishijima, g., & cross, c. (1994). master dogen’s shobogenzo book 1. windbell publications. nishijima, g., & cross, c. (1999). master dogen’s shobogenzo book 4. windbell publications. okamura, s. (2010). realizing genjokoan: the key to dogen's shobogenzo. wisdom publications. risser, j. (2019). speaking from silence: on the intimate relation between silence and speaking, journal of applied hermeneutics, article 7. retrieved from https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/68705 tanahashi, k. (ed.). (2013). treasury of the true dharma eye: zen master dogen’s shobogenzo. shambhala. waddell, n., & abe, m. (1972). shobogenzo genjokoan. the eastern buddhist, 7, 129-140. retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/44361338 1 this article was presented on june 2, 2023 at the canadian hermeneutic institute. the same day, k’s brother emailed me to let me know that he was ready to take the canoe. 2 the universal truth according to buddha. https://doi.org/10.1163/156916408x389604 https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53324 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1397245 https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/53316 https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/jah/article/view/68705 https://www.jstor.org/stable/44361338 corresponding author: michael j lang, phd email: mike@mikelangstories.com journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 may 29, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.75369 emerging horizons, part four. derek’s story: more than words michael j lang & catherine m laing abstract this fourth installment of the emerging horizons series explores derek’s digital storytelling (dst) experience (please see the introductory editorial, crafting meaning, cultivating understanding, to access the documentary film on which the series is based). in contrast to other workshop participants, derek’s primary goal for his digital story was to convey a specific, predetermined meaningful moment from his cancer experience in a more compelling manner. building from the image system derek utilized in his digital story, and further contextualizing the events he describes, this interpretive article depicts the unique cancer survivorship experiences of adolescent and young adult (aya) cancer survivors and demonstrates the possibilities of dst to help ayas release “bottled up” emotions before they become rancid (i.e., release suppressed or repressed emotions before they transform into diagnosed psychosocial comorbidity). finally, derek’s experience demonstrates how the multi-modal nature of dst can enable ayas to incite an emotional response from their audience that can in turn confirm and affirm the life lessons embedded in their cancer experience. keywords hermeneutics, digital storytelling, adolescents and young adults, psychosocial oncology, narrative interventions, arts-based methodology, documentary filmmaking, cancer survivorship for some ayas, like amanda, harmony, and kelsey, the finding and telling phases of the dst process can present a significant challenge (laing et al., 2017). derek, however, provided an example of a cancer story that was fully formed, just waiting to be crafted and shared in a digital story format. during the informal check-in conversation at the beginning of the weekend lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 7 2 workshop derek shared, “mine came together pretty quick,” and stated that after the evening introduction to dst session he was “thinking about it the next day, all day. and then, i just put it down on paper.” in actuality, he had been thinking about his story for a much longer period of time as he shared both the climax moment and controlling idea of his story with me during the study intake phone call. however, this detail was not included in emerging horizons, and through the first half of the film, derek’s ease of identifying his meaningful moments and determining the controlling idea for his story was a mystery. it was apparent during his description of the moment where he “released” his emotions that he had already spent a significant amount of time reflecting on his cancer experience, but it was not until watching his digital story in the film that the particular provocation of this experience was revealed. the dst workshop was not the first time derek and i spent time reflecting on his cancer story together; we had history. for 10 years (2009-2019), i facilitated week-long adventure expeditions for aya cancer survivors and supporters with the charity i founded called survive & thrive cancer programs. derek was an alumnus of the 2013 owyhee river kayaking expedition, and that experience was central to his digital story. by recounting the trip in vivid detail, he revealed how he underwent much of the reflection that occurs in the finding and telling phases of the dst process through the journaling, morning quiet times, and group discussions that occurred during those eight days on the river. in contrast to participants like harmony, kelsey, and amanda who approached the dst workshop as an opportunity to begin storying their cancer experience, derek had already spent considerable time exploring the meaningful moments of his cancer story. consequently, derek’s primary goal for his digital story was to convey a specific meaningful moment from his cancer experience in a more compelling manner. he stated in his opening line of the film, “i have told people that story, but i don’t know if people realize how profound it was for me, i guess.” expressed differently, for derek, crafting and sharing (laing et al, 2017; lang et al., 2019) his cancer story using words alone was not sufficient to convey the significance and meaning of that particular story to his audience. through the reflective lens of derek’s kayaking expedition, his experience in emerging horizons revealed how dst could help ayas release the “bottled up” emotions that can follow them through the wilderness of cancer survivorship, and then convey the transformational nature of that expedition in a more meaningful way upon their return home. bottled up: experiencing the wilderness of cancer survivorship derek: my emotions kind of just built up, and then, there was a moment where it all just released. and i didn’t really know that i was bottling it up but, it was a big moment. the most commonly used definition of cancer survivorship in an academic setting is “from the moment of diagnosis and for the balance of life” (rowland, 2007, p. 29) regardless of the ultimate cause of death. however, in colloquial usage and where treatments are undertaken with curative intent, the term cancer survivorship is commonly used to refer to the period of time following acute treatments. using either definition, derek was a “cancer survivor” when he attended the kayaking expedition, despite his three-month scan results being inconclusive, and lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 7 3 like other ayas, his transition from acute treatment to survivorship had triggered strong and conflicting emotions (jones et al., 2020). he described this in his digital story by saying, “i could tell that something still didn’t feel right. i was supposed to be a survivor and feel better about being done treatments. why was i apprehensive? why wasn’t i happy? i had cheated death.” the post-treatment cancer survivorship phase for ayas can paradoxically feel both turbulent and still at the same time. this can occur as survivors continue to struggle with the late or longterm effects of cancer treatments (i.e., neuropathy, fatigue, anxiety, depression, financial toxicity, body image, etc.; jones et al., 2020) while lacking the regular interaction with cancer care professionals that defined the past months, or years, of their lives. in this way, the kayaking trip depicted in derek’s digital story could provide a salient metaphor for the cancer survivorship experience: the river is loud and turbulent, the surrounding landscape quiet and isolated. cancer survivorship can be challenging because it is an expedition that encompasses both the turbulence of a white-water river and the loneliness of the wilderness. in particular, feelings of isolation and loneliness may be severe for aya cancer survivors as the lack of interaction with healthcare providers is compounded further by the challenge of relating to, and engaging with, their prediagnosis peer group (e.g., due to missed or delayed life milestones and/or loss of ability or desire to pursue certain activities; kent et al., 2012; zebrack & isaacson, 2012). this phenomenon is why many ayas experience a profound sense of relief that comes from connecting with cancer survivor peers who understand (kent et al., 2013; treadgold & kuperberg, 2010; zebrack et al., 2006; zebrack & isaacson, 2012) and could also be why i never had to recruit participants for our survive & thrive expeditions. ayas like derek always found us; they were searching for connection in the wilderness. with this context, derek’s description of the feeling he was hoping to create through the music selection for his digital story holds substantial meaning. when searching for his song i asked him, “what is the feeling you are trying to create?” he responded, “well, it’s kinda like, loneliness, i guess.” i immediately picked up on the connection between loneliness and the wilderness imagery he was using in his story, and using “wilderness” as a keyword, we found a unique song that distinctly cultivated this feeling. indeed, in the aya screening kelsey immediately responded to derek’s story by saying, “i loved the music, it really fit your theme.” the agreement from the group following her comment confirmed that we all resonated with derek’s aural representation of the loneliness of cancer survivorship. however, for derek, the survivorship challenge he specifically wanted to address in his digital story was the “bottling up” of his emotions (i.e., emotional suppression or repression; weinberger, 1979). he used this phrase to describe his experience multiple times throughout the dst process as well as embedding it directly in his story. remarkably, as i watched derek’s digital story and saw myself in some of the photos, i realized his emotions were not the only bottled thing that made an appearance on that particular kayaking expedition. on day two of the trip, i found a pabst blue ribbon (pbr) beer floating in an eddy at the side of the river. it was not surprising to find the can, as river rafting culture includes drinking copious amounts of cheap beer, but it was surprising to find it fully intact. the can was faded and dented but the seal was unbroken, and its discovery was extraordinary enough that it bobbed to the surface of my memory six years later while watching derek’s story. the pbr became a mascot, lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 7 4 of sorts, for the rest of derek’s trip. i would carry it in the front of my open kayak until it was washed out in a rapid, rediscovered in the calm water downstream and returned to my boat. its durability was inspiring, and to honor the many miles it travelled downstream with us, we decided to open it when we arrived at the take-out. 1after the first sip led to a bout of dry heaving, we poured the rest of it out as an “offering” to the river for our safe passage. despite our attachment to the pbr, once it was opened, we were eager to leave it behind. derek’s “bottled up” emotions portrayed in emerging horizons have a unique kinship with the pbr encountered on his kayaking expedition on multiple levels. first, both demonstrate that unless opened and emptied, bottled things may stay bottled indefinitely. the pbr was bleached and dented but still intact after floating in the river for weeks or months, and in derek’s digital story it is apparent that the strong emotions tied to his cancer experience also persisted as he resumed regular activities post-treatment. similarly, the frustration that derek felt because of his inability to convey to others the significance of his emotional “release” during the 24-hour solo (i.e., “people didn’t really seem [to think], like, it was that good of a story”) persisted, despite the kayaking expedition occurring six years prior to the dst workshop.2 second, bottled things can temporarily disappear in the turbulence of life’s rapids. i was shocked every time the pbr bobbed to the surface in the calm pool below a rapid in the same way derek described it as “a complete shock” when he began crying while reading the letters from home and realized that he had been repressing his emotions since the first day of diagnosis. 3 furthermore, just as derek was surprised by his emotional release on the 24-hour solo, he was also surprised by the intensity of the emotions he experienced throughout the dst workshop. he told me this during a lunchtime conversation on the final day: mike: do you feel tired at all? derek: uhhh, i don’t know. i was definitely getting emotional . . . mike: as you were watching it? derek: . . . yeah. mike: like, every time you watch it? derek: no, not every time, but certain parts. derek was not alone in his astonishment at the intensity of the emotions that surfaced throughout the dst process as all participants indicated the same sentiment in their final interviews. throughout the film it was apparent that the dst process surfaced emotions that had been submerged by the persistent current of daily life. finally, the turbulence of the river, the scorching sun of the desert, and the constant battering of rocks can conspire to make both beer and bottled-up emotions more rancid over time. after listening to thousands of hours of aya cancer stories on week-long expeditions like derek’s, i have learned that a cancer experience alone often does not create the strong, fetid emotions that bob to the surface long after acute treatment; it is almost always “cancer, and . . . and . . . and . . .” it is the relentless battering of life’s rocks and rapids in the sun-scorched wilderness of cancer survivorship that can transform common cancer-related emotions into psychosocial morbidity months or years after treatment completion. in derek’s case, it was his own cancer diagnosis and treatments, and his friend committing suicide, and his mentor dying of cancer, and the lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 7 5 uncertainty of his inconclusive follow-up scan, all compounding the usual pressures of young adulthood. indeed, aya cancer survivors could report a higher prevalence of psychosocial morbidity than both younger (<15) and older age groups (40+) because: • the aya phase of life naturally produces more turbulent rapids (i.e., career, family, finances, identity, etc; docherty et al., 2015); • the wilderness of survivorship is more severe (i.e., profound feelings of isolation; zebrack & isaacson, 2012); • the opportunities to release bottled up emotions before they become rancid are more limited due to significant barriers to accessing psychosocial support (holland et al., 2020). it was clear that a deep desire of the aya participants in emerging horizons, including derek, was to break the seal of their suppressed, or in some cases repressed, emotional experience of cancer through the creation of their digital story. emotional suppression is defined as a deliberate withholding of emotional expression while repression indicates a lack of cognitive awareness of distressing emotion despite evidence to the contrary (giese-davis et al., 2008). in other words, repressed individuals believe they are not upset whereas suppressed individuals are aware of their negative emotions but choose not to express them (weinberger, 1979). both amanda (“i hid a lot of that emotional stuff to make it easier for everyone else”) and kelsey (“smiling harder” to mask her true feelings) spoke of knowingly suppressing their emotional experience. in contrast, derek’s digital story provided an example of emotional repression as he did not recognize that emotional pressure had been building until the seal was broken during his 24-hour solo time. interestingly, derek’s storyline in emerging horizons also illustrated emotional suppression. while other ayas purposely chose to suppress aspects of their emotional experience by not sharing it with others, derek had tried to share about his moment of emotional “release” in the wilderness but was unable to convey it in a satisfactory way, so he stopped trying. he pushed that important cancer story back below the surface of the river, only to have it reappear periodically and remind him that one of the most important moments of his cancer experience was still not understood by the very friends and family who helped make that moment happen by writing him letters. derek intuitively recognized that if he was going to be understood pull that can out of the water, crack the seal, and empty it he needed to use more than words. he needed to show it. more than words: the meaning of river rocks derek: it always seemed like, people didn’t really seem like it was that good of a story, but to me it was, like, so profound... i would tell it to people, but it’s hard to explain it in words. after derek’s transformative 24-hour solo time next to the owyhee river he was instructed to bring back two rocks. in the group discussion later that evening, each person put their name on one rock and placed it in a hat, while the other rock was labeled with one thing that they wanted lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 7 6 to leave behind in the wilderness; something that they did not need anymore, or was holding them back, or weighing them down. everyone was then encouraged to throw that rock into the river when they were ready, and they all found their own moment to let it go. it is hard to explain in words what it felt like to hear a rock splash into the river as you lay on the warm sand under a vast curtain of stars. it is hard to explain in words the satisfaction of watching someone pause in the middle of a rapid to drop a rock into the roiling foam. it is hard to explain in words the look on someone’s face as they slowly turn around having confidently walked to the river’s edge during dinner, let out an animalistic roar, and sent their rock flying a hundred feet downstream. as i reflect on these moments, i feel closer to understanding derek’s frustration and feelings of inadequacy with sharing his own transformative experience from that expedition. sometimes, words are simply not enough. throughout the dst workshop, derek was relatively quiet during group discussions and had a difficult time formulating responses during his interviews. he was self-conscious enough about his speech and word usage that i had to ask him to stop apologizing for “not saying things right” or “being good at answering” my questions in the pre-workshop interview. this uncomfortableness with words was also apparent before reading his story for the first time to the other ayas. even though his story came together quickly, and he was confident that it was a good story, he said, “i can go. . . ummm . . . pretty nervous, but ahhh . . .” derek’s struggle with words in the film directly mirrored the challenges he faced in conveying to his friends and family the significance of that moment during his 24-hour solo where he released the repressed emotions of his cancer experience. fortunately, hermeneutic philosophers through the ages (beginning with schleiermacher in modern times) have expanded our understanding of what constitutes language (gadamer, 1966/2007). they have demonstrated that silent images or artworks can “speak,” and because of this, images and artistic composition are able to play an active role in discourse and understanding (davey, 2013). after all, if an artist could express what they had to say in words, there would be no need for them to create the artistic form of their ideas (gadamer, 1977/1986). the creative possibilities inherent in the amalgamation of word, image, and composition could provide a keener representation of the author’s inner emotional experience and, at the same time, open up that experience to a multiplicity of interpretations that cultivate deeper understanding. indeed, the possibilities of the hermeneutic excess nurtured in digital stories highlights their potential as both compelling entry points into ongoing conversations and stimulants to keep conversation going (lang, laing et al., 2020). consequently, for someone like derek who continually deprecated his linguistic abilities, dst provided a significant opportunity to tell the story of his 24-hour solo in a way that everyone, himself included, could come to a deeper understanding of that experience. clearly, derek recognized this potential and plainly stated it during the aya screening after kelsey’s story: all our stories, you know, there were physical aspects and that is what we talk about when we go to the doctor, but you know it is the emotional stuff that we don’t really talk about [nodding heads and sounds of affirmation from the group]. and this is a good way to talk about it and show it. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 7 7 the affirmation from the group spoke to the value of being able to “show” the emotional experience of cancer survivorship. derek was not alone in his struggle to convey his cancer story using words alone. a central developmental task of young adulthood is learning to understand and articulate inner emotional experiences (arnett, 2000), and therefore, an opportunity to show a cancer experience to others through a digital story in a safe, facilitated environment could support ayas to both express and regulate their cancer-related emotions (laing et al., 2017; zebrack et al., 2015). by using images and compositional elements to show his story, derek was able to help his three friends who attended the final screening understand the deep significance of that wilderness experience. by overlaying the images of friends and family with the image of the canyon, he visually demonstrated his realization that he was not alone in the wilderness (“oh my god, i am not in this alone. i am not doing this by myself”). this conveyed his appreciation for those supporters in a way that never seemed to be as meaningful when he thanked them verbally. more importantly, derek’s friends were able to understand how much cancer had emotionally affected him (i.e., “i was just as scared as anyone who had cancer”), even though he had not talked about it with them. this deeper understanding of derek’s internalized fear and anxiety was evident in the discussion between derek, his best friend glean, and kelsey’s mother after watching derek’s story. the opening part of the discussion was not included in the film, but it began with glean saying that they had done so many activities together (e.g., fishing, hiking, camping) since derek’s cancer experience, but this was something that they had never talked about: glean: this is something [fear and anxiety] i never thought, ummm, existed. derek: yeah! kelsey’s mother: why don’t we talk about it?! we’re all like that. none of us. it’s like we don’t talk about it, the elephant in the room. derek: well, especially men. . . kelsey’s mother: especially men, yeah! derek: . . . cause it is emotional. although this exchange portrayed the stereotypical characterization of men avoiding conversation about emotions, it also demonstrated that both glean and derek desired to understand and be understood. the digital story became a clear entry point into a conversation that they both desired. in the same way that i was able to ask derek on the final day of the kayaking expedition what the “letting go” rock represented to him, he and glean were able to start a conversation about the emotional side of derek’s cancer experience. the rock and the digital story came first, and the words followed. returning to life: the importance of the “other rock” derek: i had a huge wave of endorphins flow through my body, and i never felt better in my life. i felt free like nothing was holding me back anymore. i had always tried to be strong, but really, i was just as scared as anyone with cancer. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 7 8 on the last morning of derek’s kayaking expedition, the group blindly selected from the hat that contained the other rocks brought back from the 24-hour solo. each participant had put their name on a rock, and everyone was instructed to choose one word that represented the person whose rock they selected, then think of a story from the trip that illustrated their choice. that night, during the final evening discussion of the trip, we shared the word and the story before placing the rock in our person’s hand. i began the process with this prompt: we appreciate what a person does, but we affirm who a person is. appreciation comes and goes because it is usually related to something someone accomplishes. affirmation goes deeper. it is directed to the person himself or herself. by far the rarer of the two is affirmation (swindoll, 2005, p. 194). we have been able to see deep into each other’s lives on this trip because together we have struggled and suffered, cried and laughed, and most importantly, listened deeply to each other’s stories. now that we have seen each other for who we are, we need to make sure that we tell each other what we have seen. tonight, we speak truth into each other’s lives. often, ayas are appreciated for what they have accomplished (i.e., staying positive, being strong, beating cancer, starting a cancer charity, etc.) when being affirmed for who they are could be more important during the difficult transition from cancer treatments back to everyday life. in this way, a digital story could play the same role as a river rock, helping to affirm ayas for who they are not just what they have accomplished. specifically, in the dst process, screening and discussing digital stories provides an opportunity for affirmation through audience engagement (lang et al., 2019) while re-watching a digital story in the months and years following the workshop can reaffirm the lessons embedded in it. the word “affirmation” comes from the latin root firmare which means “strengthen, make firm” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). the significant hardship of the wilderness can strengthen ayas’ physical, mental, and emotional resilience (zebrack et al., 2015), and this needs to be acknowledged and celebrated, but just as importantly, the valuable lessons learned in the wilderness need to be understood and made firm in the heart and mind so that they can pay dividends throughout the rest of life (i.e., post-traumatic growth; koutrouli et al., 2012). for these same reasons, the dst process also ends with affirmation through audience discussion (i.e., “tell each other what we have seen”) that goes deeper than the surface level appreciation that storytellers receive through the “mandatory standing ovation.” in the animated discussion during both screenings, it is apparent that the words, images, and composition of derek’s story went beyond telling the audience what happened, it helped them feel what happened. in other words, the multi-modality of dst helped derek incite the emotional response from the audience that he was looking for (bethany: “it was really powerful.” kelsey: “that was so good!” mike: “yeah, derek!”); a response that had been missing as he spoke the story to others. the enhanced emotional engagement from the ayas and his friends affirmed the importance of that 24-hour solo as a transformative moment in his life story. for derek, affirmation that the emotions he had experienced were real, normal, and could be understood by others was profoundly important, and together, the expedition and dst experience provided the opportunity to be affirmed. furthermore, in all the discussions that occurred during the screenings, the conversation about cancer naturally shifted from appreciation lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 7 9 (e.g., you were so strong, you beat cancer) to affirmation (e.g., you learned important lessons through your cancer experience, and now i am learning from you). the life lesson of “releasing bottled up emotions” that derek learned in the wilderness was both confirmed and entrenched through audience discussion in this way. consequently, in his final interview derek described the dst screening as “a great experience,” and revealed that he felt he had accomplished his goal of conveying the significance and meaning of that story. the unique paradox of derek’s cancer survivorship experience is that, although he experienced a profound release of his bottled up emotions during the 24-hour solo, his emotions were again bottled up when he returned home and was unable to tell the story of that experience in a way that would help others understand what it meant to him. many survive & thrive alumni have indicated that the return to everyday life after an expedition was the most challenging part of the entire experience, in the same way that the survivorship phase of a cancer experience can often be more challenging than acute treatments (institute of medicine, 2006). in particular, i have heard many ayas describe the intense feelings of loneliness that can occur when they return to home, be it from acute cancer treatments or a wilderness expedition, and discover that they are not be able to fully convey the significance of that experience to their friends and family. despite their desire to be understood (laing et al., 2017), many ayas like derek stop trying to tell the story, when ultimately the depth of understanding they desire might not be possible with words alone. showing their cancer story to their friends and family in digital story form could provide a valuable opportunity to be understood, and by consequence, decrease feelings of loneliness and isolation in their ongoing cancer survivorship expedition. many survive & thrive alumni, including me, also indicate returning to their rock in the weeks, months, and even years following their expedition. some take their rock with them into surgery or chemotherapy treatments, others place it on their nightstand or on the dashboard of their car. i have my 23 rocks in a basket next to my desk and periodically look through them to be reminded of who i am amidst the challenges, triumphs, and more often the monotony of everyday life. similarly, ayas indicate returning to their digital story often to be reminded of who they are (laing et al., 2017), and in this way, both river rocks and digital stories can act as touchstones to help endure and navigate the rapids of life. they are much more than simple river rocks or a composition of words and images; 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(2019). words, camera, music, action: a methodology of digital storytelling in a health care setting. international journal of qualitative methods, 18, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919863241 online etymology dictionary. (n.d.). affirmation. retrieved january 9, 2021, from https://www.etymonline.com/word/affirmation rowland, j. (2007). survivorship research: past, present, and future. in p. ganz (ed.), cancer survivorship (pp. 28-42): springer new york. swindoll, c.r. (2005). day by day with charles swindoll. thomas nelson. treadgold, c.l., & kuperberg, a. (2010). been there, done that, wrote the blog: the choices and challenges of supporting adolescents and young adults with cancer. journal of clinical oncology, 28(32), 4842-4849. https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.2009.23.0516 weinberger, d.a., schwartz, g.e., & davidson, r.j. (1979). low-anxious, high anxious, and repressive coping styles: psychometric patterns and behavioral and physiological responses to stress. journal of abnormal psychology, 88(4), 369–380. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843x.88.4.369 zebrack, b., bleyer, a., albritton, k., medearis, s., & tang, j. (2006) assessing the health care needs of adolescent and young adult cancer patients and survivors. cancer, 107(12), 2915-2923. https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.22338 zebrack, b., & isaacson, s. (2012). psychosocial care of adolescent and young adult patients with cancer and survivors. journal of clinical oncology, 30(11), 1221-1226. https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.2011.39.5467 zebrack, b., kwak, m., salsman, j., cousino, m., meeske, k., aguilar, c., embry, l., https://doi.org/10.1177/1043454216688639 https://doi.org/10.1089/jayao.2020.0030 https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406920913673 https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919863241 https://www.etymonline.com/word/affirmation https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.2009.23.0516 https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843x.88.4.369 https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.22338 https://doi.org/10.1200/jco.2011.39.5467 lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 7 12 block, r., hayes-lattin, b., & cole, s. (2015). the relationship between posttraumatic stress and posttraumatic growth among adolescent and young adult (aya) cancer patients. psychooncology, 24(2), 162–168. https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.3585 1 survive & thrive expeditions were strictly “dry” trips with zero tolerance towards consumption of recreational drugs or alcohol. the pbr incident was the single deviation from this rule and seemed appropriate given the context and amount of alcohol in question. 2 the “24-hour solo” was described in derek’s digital story and involved participants spending 24-hours alone in a secluded section of beach along the river. participants were encouraged to reflect and write in their journal with provided prompts, and towards the end of the solo time they were given letters of affirmation and encouragement written by their friends and family at home. 3 interestingly, the majority of participants on survive & thrive expeditions were 2-3 years removed from their acute treatments. it was only after the initial turbulence of returning to life post-treatment had calmed that adverse emotional sequalae and feelings of loneliness surfaced, and people decided to register for an expedition. https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.3585 corresponding author: michael j lang, phd email: mike@mikelangstories.com journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 september 9, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.76026 emerging horizons, part six. bethany’s story: layers of meaning michael j lang & catherine m laing abstract this sixth installment of the emerging horizons series explores bethany’s digital storytelling (dst) experience (please see the introductory editorial, crafting meaning, cultivating understanding, to access the documentary film on which the series is based). in the film, bethany demonstrates how a digital story can become both a signpost and a monument in the life of an adolescent and young adult (aya) cancer survivor by indicating how they have changed, providing direction for their future selves, and creating a reminder of the meaningful moments that happened along the way. her experience also reveals how dst can help participants craft a story with many layers of intentional meanings while the plurivocity of word, image and compositional elements of dst enables a profound hermeneutic excess (i.e., x = x+) and ensures that what is contained in a digital story is always more than what was intended by the storyteller. using the screenwriting framework of the “said, unsaid, and unsayable,” and nicholas davey’s concept of “aquifers of meaning,” i (lang) demonstrate how a digital story artwork can act as an artesian well, providing ayas and their friends and family an encounter with the “unsayable,” by bringing to the surface what has been mute and beyond awareness. keywords hermeneutics, digital storytelling, adolescents and young adults, psychosocial oncology, narrative interventions, arts-based methodology, documentary filmmaking as a long-term cancer survivor (over 10 years), bethany had lived through many of the same experiences described by the other adolescent and young adult ayas in emerging horizons. she was told early on that her cancer would eventually come back, and therefore had learned to live lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 13 2 with uncertainty in the same way as kenzie. she also understood amanda’s experience of mourning the loss of a growing family as she made the decision to not have more children (after a conversation with her oncologist where she was asked, “how many children do you want to leave behind?”). like harmony, she had also learned to live with a constant reminder of her cancer due to a prominent scar on her face and neck. she had put on brave face for her friends and family through the blog she wrote during cancer treatments in the same way kelsey had “smiled harder” through her delayed diagnosis. finally, she understood, like derek, the challenge of conveying the nuance and meaning of her cancer story in words alone, and had registered for this dst research project because it presented an opportunity to craft a new version of her story. bethany’s cancer experience contained echoes of all the storylines in the film and this understanding, combined with her artistic background, enabled her to amplify the interpretive richness of the group interactions during the workshop. in particular, her creative suggestions in the story circle were often incorporated into other participants’ digital stories, and her response to each story during the small group screening provoked multiple engaging conversations.1 through bethany’s interactions with the other ayas in emerging horizons, we see the cocreative nature, and hermeneutic excess, of the dst process on full display. part of bethany’s ability to look beyond the surface level story and offer creative suggestions and interpretations came from her own extensive reflective writing experiences with blogging and journaling throughout her life (“i have stacks of journals”). during her initial interview for emerging horizons, she produced a binder containing the paper copy of her cancer treatment blog, describing it as her “story shame” as she opened it for me to review. i was visibly surprised by this description and sat awkwardly looking at the binder until she explained that now (10 years later) she no longer agreed with many of the things she had written. i responded: mike: yeah! the interesting thing about a story is that you put it out into the world, and it stays static, but you continue to change. bethany: absolutely, and that is kind of what excited me about this opportunity because i am really at a place where i do need to look at my story again . . . i want to do that work to look at that story and embrace it, and be thankful for that bethany in 2007 . . . but then also let that go and look at bethany in 2019 and how it has shaped me today. it was clear in this exchange that bethany was hoping to “do that work” of reconciling the past and present versions of herself through involvement in the dst workshop, a unique motivation amongst the workshop participants. the inner conflict of bethany’s reconciliation process was apparent throughout the film, even as the specifics of what was being reconciled remained purposefully unclear. this context may also explain both the structure of bethany’s digital story (e.g., she speaks directly to herself, friends, and family in the middle section of her story) and why she continually emphasized that she was making a digital story for her own edification, not for the benefit of others (“this is 100% for myself!”). notwithstanding this focus on personal reconciliation, bethany was acutely aware of the implications of the digital story process as indicated through one exchange in the evening introductory session: lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 13 3 mike: you got a few things written down. bethany: yeah. yeah, i know what it is. [i’m] just, ummm. very like, ahhh. anxious about sharing it. mike: yeah? and why is that? bethany: ummm, it’s because of a feeling that the community that supported me so much would be angry, or . . . [long pause] mike: not understand? bethany: . . . yeah. this short conversation indicated that bethany did care about the implications of her story beyond her own edification, despite her assertions to the contrary. specifically, she recognized that the process of re-storying and reconciling her past and present self through a publicly available digital story and documentary film came with certain risks: in every digital story there are real life actors, and therefore every word, image, and compositional element has implications beyond the story itself. she would need to be tactful and creative in how she crafted the story. bethany’s deep understanding of the other ayas’ experiences, her desire to reconcile her past and present self, and her acute awareness of the implications of her digital story combine to create one of the more nuanced and conflicted storylines in emerging horizons. there were many aspects of bethany’s experience left unsaid, and other aspects that were simply unsayable. consequently, bethany’s dst experience afforded a unique opportunity to explore how ayas can craft digital stories that act as markers in their lives, are layered with meaning, and contain profound hermeneutic excess. marking the path: digital stories as signposts and monuments bethany: you put a story out there because that’s a marker for where you are at. i didn’t have a marker up until that [creating digital story]. bethany was standing at the frontier of many profound life changes when she participated in the dst workshop. one of these was the 10-year anniversary of completing her cancer treatments for synovial sarcoma. in her own words, “statistics for my type of cancer go up to 10 years,” and having passed this landmark a few months prior, she was now moving into unknown territory in her cancer survivorship experience. she had been told that her cancer would certainly come back, and like derek and kenzie, had been wandering the wilderness of cancer survivorship for a long time, learning to live with the uncertainty that comes from never hearing the word “cured” (yang et al., 2019). therefore, as she stood on the edge of this unexpected frontier, the dst workshop provided an opportunity to place a “marker” at this transitional boundary moment in her life. 2 both the noun and verb form of the word “mark” come from the same proto-indian-european (pie) root of *merg meaning boundary or boarder, however, the noun and verb meanings have diverged and converged throughout the centuries (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). as a noun, “mark” was tied to the idea of a frontier, boundary, or borderlands before it evolved into a “pillar, post, etc. as a sign of a boundary,” through to “a sign in general,” and finally to its modern usage as an “impression or trace forming a sign” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). narrativeinformed emotion-focused therapy employs its modern usage to indicate how different types of lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 13 4 stories act as “problem markers” (i.e., same old story, empty stories, unstoried emotion, and broken stories) or “meaning-making markers” (i.e., untold stories, unique outcome stories, and healing stories) that have potential to cultivate change in a person’s self-story (angus & greenberg, 2011). however, the sense in which bethany used the word “marker” in the quote above appears closer to the meaning of “a sign in general” that marked not only where she was currently in her life, but where she wanted to go and where she had been. said differently, bethany’s digital story could be seen as a signpost and a monument, marking her life’s path. a signpost is a marker that contains information about direction and distance (oxford university press, 2019). a digital story can act as a life signpost because it contains a significant amount of information in only three minutes (laing et al., 2017), can convey important life lessons (lang et al., 2019), and be aspirational in nature (staley & freeman, 2017). in a similar way to other facilitated creative writing activities (bolton et al., 2004; lent, 2009; moules, 2000), a digital story could indicate movement and provide direction for ayas as they move forward in their lives post-treatment. as a signpost, digital stories can help ayas mark the path they would like to follow by directly or indirectly transmitting beliefs, attitudes, and values (i.e., speak directly to themselves, or speak indirectly through the story). the indirect transmission of beliefs, attitudes, and values is evident to some degree in all the ayas’ stories in emerging horizons (e.g., harmony: focus on what matters, kelsey: live without a mask, derek: release emotions, kenzie: embrace uncertainty), but bethany was the only participant who chose to use the direct approach. as someone who blogged and journaled extensively throughout her life, bethany intuitively understood how a story can be a valuable signpost and chose to directly speak to her future self throughout the middle didactic section of her digital story. here she directly communicated her beliefs, attitudes, and values through the story as she spoke to her daughter (“child of the sun”), partner (“dearest companion”), friends, and the world (“humanity”). she then spoke to herself (“beautiful body…to my mind”) and ended with a personal affirmation (“gentle, pure spirit”). bethany clearly recognized that it was her responsibility to place signposts in her life, and she directly embedded her current horizon of understanding (i.e., beliefs, attitudes, values) into the digital story to help mark the path she wanted to take into the future. additionally, digital stories as signposts could help ayas determine the distance travelled (i.e., personal growth, maturity, understanding, etc.). kenzie recognized personal growth in herself through the content of her two digital stories in the same way that bethany recognized her own transformation from the “2007 self” represented in her blog, to the “2019 self” that she embodied in her digital story. this reveals the positive and productive side of the “story shame” bethany described: by creating signposts (like a digital story), ayas may be able to more easily recognize and appraise changes in their own understanding of the world. by crafting a digital story about their cancer experience, ayas have an opportunity to qualitatively assess their own post-traumatic growth over time (koutrouli, 2012). indeed, this is exactly what bethany had in mind for her digital story. in her initial interview, she mentioned that watching her digital story in 10 years will likely incite “story shame” again, leading to the need to craft another one (i.e., place a new signpost). this statement alludes to the difficulty of measuring personal growth during the daily slog on the well-worn paths of life and also reveals that when a frontier is lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 13 5 reached (e.g., 10-year survival), placing a marker – a signpost – allows ayas to acknowledge and appreciate the distance travelled and the effort of “the journey.” finally, as time passes, a digital story signpost made by an aya can represent more than a means for self-direction and appraisal; it can become a monument. the word monument comes from the pie root *moneie which means "to make think of, remind," with the latin root monumentum meaning literally "something that reminds" (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). a signpost can help determine direction and distance travelled, but a monument is a reminder of the meaningful moments that happened along the way. bethany had been changed by her experiences while wandering the wilds of cancer survivorship and she wanted to craft a digital story that could act as a reminder of why and how she had changed. leveraging the power of a single metaphor, the garden, bethany created a monument to those 10 years. specifically, the animated garden time lapse component of her story provided a visual representation of her transformation while her voiceover highlighted the slow change from a neat and ordered world before cancer to one where “the wildness grew over me and enveloped all pieces of my former life.” the time lapse sequences and poetic language served as a reminder of all that she had learned and how she had changed during her travels through the wilderness of cancer survivorship, without explicitly stating all the specific elements of her transformation.3 importantly, bethany’s digital story is a monument that conserved, not preserved, the meaningful moments of her cancer survivorship experience. the difference between these two purposes is best articulated through a description of therapeutic letter writing with families experiencing illness: to preserve is to hold something in its sameness, to protect and save it from spoiling, whereas to conserve means to keep from being damaged, lost, or wasted. these letters serve to conserve the memories, accounts, and meaningfulness of a point in time, an event in suffering and healing; they do not try to keep it the same or save it from reinterpretation [emphasis added]. (moules, 2009, p. 40) digital stories keep the life-changing moments surrounding a cancer experience from being wasted or lost by firmly planting a monument in the ground of lived experience, but they do not save those experiences from interpretation or reinterpretation (e.g., “story shame”). digital stories, like all artwork, cultivate “a crucial interplay between analytical and speculative aspects of meaning” (davey, 2013, p. 9), and do not simply mark the surface world like a signpost or monument on a path; they also point downwards, marking what lies underneath, encouraging viewers and the storytellers themselves to dig deeper. new, deeper understandings can always be unearthed from the fertile soil below a digital story marker. stories within a story: layers of meaning in digital storytelling kelsey: every time i watch it again, you know, you find more and more things. bethany: awww. i appreciate that [smiling]. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 13 6 as a writer and artist, bethany was aware of the challenges she would face in creating a publicly available digital story meant to reconcile the past and present versions of herself. this was demonstrated by her opening line in the film, “it’s going to be really hard on many different levels.” this intuition proved true throughout her dst experience, from finding and telling the story (“emotionally, it was hard”), to crafting the story (“i’m having technical issues”), and finally, sharing her story (“no one is going to get this”). however, this opening line also pointed to one of the most important elements of bethany’s dst experience: there were many different levels to both her digital story and her experiences in the film. on camera, bethany talked about her cancer experience, but the reconciliation between her “2007 self” and “2019 self” involved much deeper personal “work.” similarly, bethany’s digital story was a marker of her cancer survivorship experience, but there were multiple layers of meaning about entirely different aspects of her life embedded below the surface, accessible only to the friends and family who knew where to dig. as an artist, bethany understood the interpretive potential available in the plurivocity of words, images, and composition (davey, 2013), and she fully exploited this potential to entrench multiple stories within her story. mckee (2016) provided a pertinent characterization of the phenomenon of layered meaning through his description of the “said,” the “unsaid,” and the “unsayable.” although these concepts are discussed in terms of writing dialogue for the stage, page, or screen, they provide useful language to cultivate an understanding of layered meaning in dst. briefly, the “said” are the words, ideas, and emotions that one chooses to express overtly to others (i.e., the text; mckee, 2016). the “unsaid” are the experiences, thoughts, and feelings that are deliberately withheld, implied, or expressed covertly (i.e., the subtext; mckee 2016). finally, the “unsayable” are subconscious urges, desires, or understandings that cannot be expressed “because they are mute and beyond awareness” (mckee, 2016, p. xiv). in the context of dst with ayas, the “said” are the words, images, and compositional elements that an aya chooses to utilize in their story, while the “unsaid” could be the experiences, thoughts, and feelings, that are withheld, implied, or expressed covertly in and through the story. the reasons for selecting a particular word or image, and other editing decisions made during the crafting phase, could also be considered part of the unsaid as the audience does not have access to all the choices and revelations of creative process that are embodied the digital story (lang et al., 2019). an example of the gap between the “said” and “unsaid” from bethany’s dst experience occurred during an editing discussion with me about the end of her digital story. as we watched a silhouetted video of her rising out of a mountain lake at dusk (the said) she stated, “this is the end scene that i kind of want to represent a re-baptism.” as she did not use the word “re-baptism” in her story, it is clear that she chose to leave the meaning of that particular video in her story “unsaid.” likewise, she did not explain in her digital story that: a) the music was her grandfather playing old hymns on the accordion, b) all the beginning photos of her story were in her grandmother’s garden, or c) the rainbow dress at the end of her time lapse sequence resembled the dress she wore to her 10-year cancer-free party. all of these particular elements of her story were related to the personal reconciliation of past religious beliefs with her current belief system, however, this layer of meaning was only disclosed in conversations about her story, not in the story itself. therefore, in the screening of her digital story, only her close friends and family could understand the significance of those particular audiovisual components. by choosing to include those elements bethany purposely entrenched a deeper layer of meaning into her digital lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 13 7 story. to borrow the idiomatic phrase, the deeper meaning of personal religious reconciliation in her story was “hidden in plain sight” for the majority of the screening audience. this example demonstrates how the space between what is “said” (i.e., words, images, composition), and what is “unsaid” (i.e., feelings, thoughts, reasons)4 enables a prolific layering of meaning in a single digital story and produces many possible interpretations contingent on the knowledge or awareness of the audience (both kenzie and derek also provided clear examples of layered meaning by including photos of friends who had died). in bethany’s story, religious reconciliation was only the first layer of meaning below the surface-level cancer survivorship story. she purposely crafted her story with multiple strata and only revealed the other deeper layers to me, about completely different aspects of her life, after the filming was complete. by layering multiple meanings into all the words, images, and compositional elements of her story, bethany was able to convey to the audience the “growth and transformation that [she] took on [her 10-year cancer survivorship] journey,” while also reconciling her past and present self and creating an important life signpost, all in just over three minutes. bethany’s dst experience demonstrates that every word, phrase, or compositional element in an aya’s digital story could “say 1000 words,” or perhaps, hold “1000 meanings.” for the practiced artist, the possibilities available in the space between the “said” and “unsaid” are profound, however there is still another layer of meaning accessible in a digital story, the “unsayable.” indeed, the “more and more things” kelsey referred to in the quote that opened this interpretation goes beyond what has been discussed this far. digital stories, as artwork, can extend deep below the surface of a cancer experience, providing access to aquifers of meaning surging below (davey, 2013). the unsayable: accessing aquifers of meaning through digital storytelling bethany: [i’m] trying to share things in a way that is a little more abstract, and it’s challenging because i feel, like, it’s almost too abstract. like, are people going to get the message? with the context provided in this chapter, the answer to bethany’s question, “are people going to get the message?” becomes clear: yes, and no, and more so. first, yes; during the friends and family screening, the words, images, and compositional components of the “said” created a fusion of horizons and enabled the audience to understand something of bethany’s experience. to most audience members her story was a metaphorical and symbolic representation of the transformation and personal growth that occurred during 10 years of cancer survivorship (“it was beautiful the way you relayed your story in such an analogous way”). it was also clear that the story was an important marker (signpost and monument) for bethany at this particular point in her life (“i liked how you talked to your soul at the end. cause at the end of everything, like, your soul is who you are!”). also, no; the stories within the story, the choices made within the creative process, and the space between what was said and what was meant, ensured that the “unsaid” in bethany’s story was only accessible to her friends who had additional knowledge of her life. the rest of the audience understood something of bethany’s story, but not everything. to some extent, the message of lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 13 8 bethany’s story was, and will remain, buried deep below the surface components of her digital story. the final piece of the answer to bethany’s question is more so; the plurivocity of words, images, and composition, the ever-shifting horizons of understanding, and the “always already” involvement of language, culture, and history, ensures that the message contained in a digital story is always more than what is intended by the storyteller (i.e., x = x+; davey, 2013). it is here that the profound possibilities of dst with ayas are finally tapped: every digital story has the capacity to bore through the surface experience of cancer and all the intended messages of the storyteller, said or unsaid, to access the ever-present “aquifers of meaning” (davey, 2013, p. 28) coursing beneath it all. a digital story as an artwork can act as an artesian well (i.e., a well from which water flows under natural pressure without pumping), providing ayas and their friends and family an encounter with the “unsayable,” bringing to the surface what has been mute and beyond awareness. there were multiple examples of new understandings springing forth from bethany’s story, despite the fact that it was, by design, the most enigmatic of all the stories in emerging horizons. one of the more profound responses to bethany’s story was from kelsey’s best friend: i think the amount of gratitude she has as well, and not only for people, but for her body. i think a lot of people would’ve [been] very angry at [their] body, but to say now that she is very thankful for it really, really struck me. and that’s [pause], that’s really amazing. bethany’s personal digital story, a single “case” (moules et al., 2015, p. x) that she created primarily for her own edification, pointed to a universal idea (i.e., having gratitude for one’s body) that spoke in a compelling way to another young woman who had never experienced cancer. although bethany had a particular audience and message in mind as she crafted her digital story, the artistic nature of dst meant that “the message” would always be more than what she intended, and never fixed or finalized (see interlude two). this occurs because: once placed in external form, words [images, and compositions] can shift and mold, become something else, and be moved to other contexts, other applications, and other relationships, and in this process “thinking is freed of its bonds of time and event.” (hirshfield, 1997, p. 190, as cited in moules, 2009) once bethany crafted a digital story of her cancer experience and chose to share it with an audience, a dialogue with the story began (davey, 2013; gadamer 1960/2004). her words, images, and compositional elements were intended to mean something specific (said and unsaid), but because they belong to spoken or visual language, they are always in motion, relentlessly burrowing through her own intentions to the aquifers of meaning below (the unsayable). the other participants might have had a deeper understanding of the said elements of her cancer survivorship experience, and her friends and family might have had more ready access to the unsaid elements of the story, but as an artwork, everyone had access to the unsayable world of meaning and understanding that attends all language and experience. despite her concerns about lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 13 9 the “artsy fartsy, abstract” nature of her digital story with many layers of meaning, bethany’s story proved to be as piercing as a diamond drill bit, boring into the unsayable aspects of human experience beyond her awareness and intention. in her story, it is evident that an aya’s digital story is never only about cancer; 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(2000). nursing on paper: the art and mystery of therapeutic letters in clinical work with families experiencing illness [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. university of calgary. https://doi.org/10.11575/prism/23887 moules, n.j. (2009). therapeutic letters in nursing: examining the character and influence of the written word in clinical work with families experiencing illness. journal of family nursing, 15(1), 31–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/1074840709331639 https://doi.org/10.1080/03630242.2012.679337 https://doi.org/10.1177/1043454217697023 https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919863241 https://doi.org/10.1080/15401380802705391 https://doi.org/10.11575/prism/23887 https://doi.org/10.1177/1074840709331639 lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 13 10 moules, n.j., mccaffrey, g., field, j.c., & laing, c.m. (2015). conducting hermeneutic research: from philosophy to practice. peter lang. online etymology dictionary. (n.d.). mark. in online etymology dictionary. retrieved march 8, 2021 from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=mark online etymology dictionary. (n.d.). monument. in online etymology dictionary. retrieved march 8, 2021 from https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=monument oxford university press. (2019). signpost. in oed online. retrieved april 5, 2021, from www.oed.com/view/entry/179609 staley, b., & freeman, l.a. (2017). digital storytelling as student-centred pedagogy: empowering high school students to frame their futures. research and practice in technology enhanced learning, 12(1), 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-017-0061-9 yang, y., li, w., wen, y., wang, h., sun, h., liang, w., zhang, b., & humphris, g. (2019). fear of cancer recurrence in adolescent and young adult cancer survivors: a systematic review of the literature. psycho-oncology, 28(4), 675-686. https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.5013 1 some of bethany’s creative suggestions included the traveling time-lapse videos fading into the “open road” in harmony’s story, kelsey’s mask metaphor, and kenzie’s ideas around learning to live with uncertainty. her interpretations highlighted the two random “mistakes” in harmony’s story, the use of the family photo overlays in derek’s story, and kelsey’s visual representation of being stuck in a routine of “smiling harder,” to name a few. 2 as will be discussed later, bethany’s story had many layers of meaning, and perhaps the 10-year cancer survivorship frontier was one of the least important as she did the “work” to reconcile her past and present self. nonetheless, it was a frontier that she mentioned multiple times in her interviews and throughout the dst workshop. 3 there is an interesting parallel between bethany’s description of “story shame” and the current trend of removing monuments of controversial historical figures. there is a natural desire is to hide, dismantle, or cover over stories we are ashamed of, and at this particular cultural moment it could be important to rediscover the etymology of the word “monument:” its primary purpose is to remind us of the past, not to endorse, glorify, or justify it. both bethany’s blog and her digital story served an important purpose as a reminder in the midst of her ever-changing beliefs, attitudes, and values. 4 the formulation of this same concept in hermeneutic philosophy would be the space between what is said and what is meant, or the difference between expression and thought. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=mark https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=monument http://www.oed.com/view/entry/179609 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-017-0061-9 https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.5013 corresponding author: michael j lang, phd email: mike@mikelangstories.com journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 may 29, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.75370 emerging horizons, part five. kenzie’s story: periods and ellipses michael j lang & catherine m laing abstract this fifth installment of the emerging horizons series explores kenzie’s digital storytelling (dst) experience (please see the introductory editorial, crafting meaning, cultivating understanding, to access the documentary film on which the series is based). kenzie's storyline revealed how culturally accepted language and metanarratives around health and wellness can create dissonance for adolescent and young adult (aya) cancer survivors as they attempt to share their experiences with others. alternatively, the genuine conversation inherent in the story circle, and throughout the dst process, could promote and stimulate the re-storying of ill-fitting, “hand-me-down” cancer narratives. specifically, the reflective intensity and co-creative nature of dst could facilitate the discovery of deeper truths, or new truths, in healthcare stories while the narrative structure and creative limitations of a digital story could empower ayas to craft a closed ending to a perpetually open-ended cancer survivorship experience. keywords hermeneutics, digital storytelling, adolescents and young adults, psychosocial oncology, narrative interventions, arts-based methodology, documentary filmmaking kenzie was the youngest participant in the dst workshop (21 years old) and had been diagnosed at the youngest age (15 years old). like derek, i (lang) had history with kenzie. we had created a digital story together as part of a research project five years earlier just after she had completed her treatments for acute myeloid leukemia (aml), a rare form of blood cancer in pediatrics (de rooij et al., 2015). i vividly remember sitting down with the timid, quiet, and reserved 16-yearold kenzie for the first time in the library of the children’s hospital with her mother and younger lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 8 2 brother in tow. she did not offer much information as we sat together, and i played an active role in helping her find and tell the story by constantly asking questions, typing her answers, and finally, connecting those answers together into a story arc based on her responses. as we recorded her voiceover and crafted her story over our next two meetings, she offered few ideas for images or compositional choices without prompting, and although she ultimately indicated enjoying her dst experience, she was clearly a lukewarm participant. the 21-year-old kenzie who participated in this research project was vastly different. in emerging horizons kenzie was comparatively confident, talkative, and engaged. she was actively involved in group conversations and even offered unprompted feedback and ideas to the other ayas (e.g., suggested using “theatre masks” to kelsey). she also knew what she wanted to say (although i provided support in the process of writing down her story) and required little video editing help from me beyond cutting superfluous photos. furthermore, in her intake interview she indicated how excited she was to go through the dst process again. in particular, she was interested to see how her story might be different this time around: she was looking for a new story. although none of this backstory was included in emerging horizons, kenzie’s transformation from an indifferent participant at 16 to an excited and engaged digital storyteller at 21 is hinted at in the film. in her opening discussion with bethany, she recounts her initial response to the cancer diagnosis through a conversation with her mother: and i was like, well, you can’t tell anyone. and she was like, “well, no kenz, we have to.” and i was like, no. like, no one needs to know. can’t it just be a secret? like, why does anyone have to know? this comment seems antithetical to the version of kenzie that participated in emerging horizons and helps illuminate my two exceedingly different dst interactions with her: kenzie’s 16-yearold self did not want to share about cancer, but her 21-year-old self clearly did. choosing to participate in a publicly available documentary film about cancer, when she initially wanted to keep her diagnosis a secret, demonstrated how much kenzie had changed. when i asked her about this transformation in both the preand post-workshop interviews, she attributed it to being older and having more life experience, but also to her involvement in a local pediatric oncology charity. she began as a program participant before joining the teen leadership program, and finally becoming a summer camp counsellor. during the five years since her first dst experience, she had shared her cancer story numerous times at banquets, fundraisers, and campfires to hundreds of people. in the process, she had transformed from a shy, insecure teenager to a young adult cancer advocate, despite experiencing ongoing cancer-related complications and an unclear prognosis. however, kenzie intuitively understood that she had often shared the surface-level bullet points of her cancer experience in those speeches and conversations; there was more that could be said. she signed up for a second dst project because she wanted to craft a deeper, fully-formed, more fitting story that represented the transformation she had undergone in those five years. consequently, her experience in emerging horizons provided an opportunity to explore how dst cultivates genuine conversation through lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 8 3 the story circle, troubles culturally accepted narratives, and confronts the enigma of “endings” in a cancer experience. periods and ellipses: dst and “moving on” from cancer kenzie: cancer is always in the back of my mind, and slowly over time, i realized that i can’t move on from cancer, but i can move forward. . . i feel that i approach patients in a more compassionate way because i know what it is like to be them: to live with uncertainty. in storytelling for the stage, page, or screen, “a story climax that leaves a question or two unanswered and some emotion unfulfilled is an open ending” (mckee, 1997, p. 48). conversely, “a story climax of absolute, irreversible change that answers all questions raised by the telling and satisfies all audience emotion is a closed ending” (mckee, 1997, p. 48). grammatically, a closed ending could be a sentence with a period, while an open ending might use an ellipsis. like all storytelling principles, there are gradients and grey areas, and a closed ending for some could feel open to others. however, it is clear that a cancer experience, as it is lived, is not often characterized as a closed ending. indeed, one of the defining features of cancer in young adulthood, as highlighted by the aya participants in emerging horizons, is its exasperating open-endedness, with numerous questions unanswered and emotions unfulfilled. for many ayas, the cancer chapter of their lives ends with an ellipsis, not a period (yang et al., 2019). kenzie’s story is perhaps the most explicit articulation of the open-endedness of a cancer experience due to the unique circumstances around her transition to survivorship. a sudden change in the standard treatment protocol for aml lead to an abrupt, unexpected ending to her acute treatments. although she was glad to forego the final chemotherapy treatment and stem cell transplant, this ending made her feel that she had “no closure, no reassurance that you are cured, that you are, in fact, a survivor.” compounding this abrupt transition was the relapse and subsequent death of a close friend from the oncology unit who had also been diagnosed with aml. kenzie did not explicitly mention her friend in the digital story and instead chose to include a photo of them together as she recounted, “i was assured that they would watch me closely, and that i had nothing to worry about, but that is easy to say.” beginning with this line, kenzie’s story highlighted the many challenges of closing that chapter of her life story, or in colloquial terms, “move on” from cancer. during the story circle, the striking open-endedness of kenzie’s story was immediately recognized by the group, and the subsequent discussion was one of the most robust and compelling of the entire dst workshop because of its deep emotional resonance. 1 in this conversation bethany described “what actually happens for people who have cancer” at the end of their acute treatments: bethany: there is no end marker. kenzie: yeah. bethany: you can choose to put markers, but. . . kenzie: it doesn’t really mean anything, yeah. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 8 4 bethany: . . . really, like you said, like, you can’t, doctors can’t see every cell. this exchange helps contextualize a highly prevalent and often severe psychosocial sequela for ayas: fear of cancer recurrence (simard et al., 2013; yang et al., 2019). unlike other illnesses and injuries which have a clearly identifiable cause or onset, cancer occurs quietly over time, cell by cell until symptoms develop, and from kenzie’s perspective, if it happened once, it could happen again. similarly, because oncologists cannot “see” every cell after treatment completion they often need to use a watchful waiting approach to determine treatment efficacy (miller et al., 2008) and therefore do not often use definitive, closed-ending words like “cured” (miller et al., 2013). finally, late (e.g., heart disease, secondary cancers) and long-term effects (e.g., immunosuppression, infertility, fatigue, body composition) of treatments can occur or persist for years post-treatment and serve as a “constant reminder of their disease” (yang et al., 2019, p. 683). together, fear of cancer recurrence, watchful waiting, and late and long-term effects ensured that kenzie’s cancer experience did not have a conclusive “end marker.” that chapter of her life had no period, “just new protocols, never-ending appointments, more experimental drugs to block infection, and uncertainty. . .”2 the ellipsis ending enabled cancer to continually seep into the other chapters of her life story over the next six years (e.g., “had a bruise, a cold, an infection . . . every time i wonder, is this a relapse?”). for kenzie, cancer was always lurking in the margins and spilling onto the page in unwanted run-on sentences, unfinished thoughts, and ellipses. with this open-ended chapter of unanswered questions and unfulfilled emotions continually influencing her life, dst provided kenzie the opportunity to “move forward” and “heal” from cancer by helping her craft an ending to her cancer story, without the expectation that it be the ending. in other words, it allowed her to use both a period and an ellipsis to confront the enigma of endings in her lived experience of cancer. as kenzie was still experiencing symptoms and undergoing weekly blood tests to look for signs of a relapse during the filming of emerging horizons, she expressed uncertainty about how to end her digital story during the introduction to dst session. my response, directed toward the entire group, was not included in the film: this is hard for people sometimes. i mean, “my story is still ongoing, my life is still happening. i don’t know if i have an ending for this.” but it is not like the ending of your life story, it’s just an ending of this [digital] story. there needs to be some sort of concluding statement that helps people feel that this particular [digital] story is wrapped up. in this statement it becomes clear that the entire dst process portrayed in the film was framed by an awareness and acknowledgement that the experiences expressed in the digital stories could always be returned to and told differently. in other words, the dst process was framed by ellipses even though all the digital stories produced in emerging horizons ended with a period. the paradoxical nature of this outcome can be explained by the specific dst methodology used in the film (lang et al., 2019). specifically, the finding and telling phases of the workshop generated closed endings because i introduced classical story design (i.e., casually plotting lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 8 5 meaningful cancer experiences in linear time using five phase story structure with a single, active protagonist. also known as an “archplot”; mckee, 1997, p. 45) as a way for participants to conceptualize their story. consequently, kenzie and the other ayas in the film crafted a closed ending to their digital story where all questions raised by the story were answered and all emotions evoked were satisfied (mckee, 1997): 1) harmony did not allow cancer to stop her from living; 2) kelsey unmasked the emotional challenges of her cancer experience; 3) derek discovered how important it was to release emotions; 4) kenzie embraced the uncertainty in her life as a way to help others; 5) bethany appreciated and valued who she had become since cancer. in these digital stories, the primary questions and emotions were satisfied, despite the fact that all of the ayas, like kenzie, were living an open-ended cancer story. by embracing both periods and ellipses, the dst experience allowed the ayas to gain the emotional benefits of both (i.e., a sense of “closure” and an appreciation of the open-ended nature of a cancer experience) while also providing the participants with the awareness and narrative tools to continually write new endings to their cancer story. in other words, the dst process demonstrated to the ayas that they could continually return to their cancer experience and reinterpret that experience in new and deeper ways as their horizons broadened. the endings of kenzie’s two digital stories provide a salient demonstration of this possibility. the final image of kenzie’s first digital story was a photo of her standing in the woods wearing a frilly blue gown and holding a photo of herself (bald, during treatment) with the word “survivor” printed below. in this ending the final words of her voiceover were, “i plan to be an emt so that i can help others, with eventually being a nurse on the oncology unit.” in emerging horizons, kenzie used this same frilly dress photo in her digital story, but it was incorporated as the second last image. while the frilly dress photo is on screen she said, “i have learned there is a difference between being cured. . .” before fading to a new ending image of her standing on a dock in a mountain lake, her hands raised in victory, with the words, “. . . and being healed.” these two digital stories, separated by five years, chronicle the very same cancer experience and even use many of the same images, but end in vastly different ways. the first story ended with a desire to “move on” from cancer so that she could help others, while the second embraced “moving forward” with cancer as an experience that had enhanced her ability to help others. in one story, cancer had stopped her life, in the other it made her a better emt “because i understand what it is like to be them, to live with uncertainty.” kenzie’s two dst experiences demonstrate that a cancer story, like all stories, could always be told differently. using dst to cultivate this important understanding could empower aya cancer survivors to shed the illfitting, culturally accepted, hand-me-down narratives of cancer survivorship that have been passed on to them through language and history. hand-me-down stories: troubling culturally accepted cancer narratives kenzie: i mean, i talk about it, but i don’t necessarily talk about this intense portion of it, you know? i’m more, like, i did this in treatments, isn’t that cool! i was given these lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 8 6 opportunities or, i got involved in these programs because of it. but i don’t necessarily talk about the “oh it really sucked” part of it . . . i normally just choose the lighter side of it. at the beginning of kenzie’s digital story, she described the experience of watching the hollywood film, my sister’s keeper (cassavetes, 2009), which chronicles the family struggles of a child with leukemia, two months before being diagnosed with leukemia herself. as she sat in the exam room receiving the diagnosis, she wondered, “did i jinx it?” before exclaiming, “i don’t want to die!” this opening provides a rich illustration of how cultural depictions of cancer significantly influence an aya’s diagnostic experience: after hearing the word “cancer” the historically effected consciousness (gadamer, 1960/2004) reviews the interactions over a lifetime and interprets that word based on those experiences. for kenzie, the word cancer immediately connected to the baldness, frailty, pain, and eventual death depicted in my sister’s keeper, as that film was the primary contributor to her understanding of pediatric leukemia. this film, in turn, was informed by wider cultural depictions and understandings of cancer that are influenced by, and wrapped up in, language and history. it is difficult to grasp the multitudinous ways in which language and history can affect when, where, how, and why an aya cancer survivor shares their story. in gadamer’s (1960/2004) words, “history does not belong to us; we belong to it” (p. 260), and the same could be said of language. however, it was apparent in kenzie’s dst workshop experience that the influence of language and history on her experience of cancer went well beyond her initial reaction to the diagnosis; it fundamentally influenced the way she had shared her cancer story up until the fateful story circle conversation in emerging horizons. specifically, the story circle conversation around kenzie’s experience provided two salient examples of culturally accepted narratives handed down to ayas that “are easy to say” but much more difficult, or even impossible, to live out. first, the common language of cancer in canada includes a word that kenzie and the other ayas in the film found ill-fitting: “cure.” a google search for “cancer fundraiser” reveals the dominance of this word in the cultural conversation of cancer, with many fundraisers simply titled “(insert verb) for the cure.” this phenomenon is particularly interesting as historically, the word “cure” was applied only to the person being treated and was most often connected to ancient words for “make whole” or “tend to,” with few connections to ancient words for “physician” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). only since the 14th century was the word “cure” used in a medical context with reference to a disease itself (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). the contradiction highlighted in this etymology is insightful; cancer cannot be cured, only people can be cured. only people can be tended to, made whole, or cured of something. the language of illness used in ancient times focused attention on the individual, whereas now, the focus is often on the disease. unfortunately, this subtle shift in language toward curing cancer, not the person, disregards the long-term impact of a cancer experience and produces a shapeless and unbecoming narrative centered around “moving on” from cancer as the ultimate goal, a narrative that clearly did not fit the experiences of the ayas in emerging horizons. harmony’s response to kenzie’s digital story is perhaps the best example of how the language of “cure,” and its unsaid expectation of “moving on,” can negatively affect aya cancer survivors. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 8 7 harmony said, “yeah, you could feel the, the ‘hurry up, get better,’ and then, at the end really realizing that there is a big difference, for that healing right? yeah . . . it was beautiful.” in this comment, it is clear that the language of “cure” cultivates the narrative of “hurry up, get better,” and that the language of “healing” may be a more fitting description of the experience of cancer survivorship. indeed, kenzie’s entire dst experience in emerging horizons is an attempt to shed the unhelpful modern usage of the word “cure” and its narrative implications, while taking up the more meaningful language of “healing” and the ensuing narrative of “tending to” or being “made whole.” interestingly, the ancient use of “cure” is more aligned with the modern usage of “heal” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.), and perhaps “(insert verb) for healing” would be more appropriate language for the cancer survivors that these fundraisers are meant to support. taking up the language of healing could help ayas shed the current culturally accepted “hurry up, get better” narrative while also cultivating a new cancer narrative centred on “moving forward.” in addition to the prevailing language of “cure,” historical storytelling conventions may have influenced the way kenzie shared her cancer story as an aya advocate. history has bestowed modern culture with an implicit understanding of the archetypal “hero” (i.e., the monomyth; rank et al., 1990), which has cultivated the “cancer hero” amalgam within the world of oncology (stacey, 1997). the archetypal cancer hero is someone who “beat” cancer and then went on to do incredible feats like win several tour de france races, climb mount everest, or start a cancer charity (stacey, 1997).3 kenzie, through her involvement as a teen leader and camp counsellor for a local pediatric cancer charity, became a cancer hero on a smaller scale. once she took up this mantle, her story was necessarily constrained by these unsaid but tacitly understood narrative conventions. specifically, the accepted conventions of kenzie’s pediatric cancer hero status (i.e., leader and counsellor) required her story to focus on how certain programs and services enabled her to experience meaningful childhood “play” throughout treatment and beyond (laing, 2013). this was apparent in her final interview quote provided above where she described how, when telling her cancer story, she always focused on the fun and exciting things she did during cancer, not “this intense portion of it” (i.e., fear of recurrence, late and long-term effects, uncertainty). during the story circle discussion of kenzie’s story most of the ayas indicated feeling the same unspoken cultural pressure to put on the cancer hero cloak and “curate” their cancer story in a way that covered over deeper, more honest representations of their experiences. the following conversation was not included in the film, but was the final exchange in kenzie’s story circle discussion: mike: i think the “curing” and the “moving on,” those are those narratives that our culture and world are trying to put on to us [sounds of agreement]. kenzie: they’re like, “oh you’re cured, cool.” harmony: exactly. bethany: it is way more comfortable for everyone around us to say. . . kelsey: you beat it! harmony: exactly! bethany: . . . “oh, you’re moving on, that’s so good.” or, “you’re cured, that’s so great.” but the people around us don’t want to hear the other side of it . . . kelsey: no! lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 8 8 kenzie: i’m kind of, kind of cured [laughter]. bethany: yeah! they don’t want to hear that we have to carry this experience with us our entire lives. it’s something that as survivors we can share with each other, but people that aren’t survivors. . . harmony: live in black and white when it is so grey, right?! bethany: yeah! and because they love us, they want to see us just move on [slapping hands together in forward motion]. harmony: exactly. mike: hmmm. yeah, cool. i think that it is really important for other young adult cancer survivors to hear this part of it, to hear this story. you know, the story that we are writing ourselves, not the story that other people are putting on us. harmony: or that we curate for other people, right, to make them feel comfortable. the conversations i have with my mom versus what we are having here is very different. this conversation identifies the problem with culturally accepted, hand-me-down cancer narratives: they are full of clichés and platitudes that often do not fit individual aya experiences and cover over meaningful moments of a cancer experience that could cultivate deeper understanding. ironically, the cancer hero cape could cover over the very phenomenon that it purports to reveal. the cancer hero monomyth may be perpetuated because in many settings it is easier to share than the “real” story. kenzie’s cancer hero story, for example, may have been valuable for fundraising precisely because it was understandable to the broadest possible audience (i.e., informed by a common language and history). however, the dst setting is different than most settings in which ayas share their cancer stories. they have time to reflect on their story and have their story reflected back to them through a genuine story circle conversation with people who understand the unsaid, and the unsayable, aspects of their experience. in the reflective intensity of kenzie’s story circle conversation, it became apparent to her how she had outgrown her culturally influenced cancer story like a worn-out, hand-me-down sweatshirt. she needed new clothes, and through conversation with other ayas was able to shed the unhelpful language of the “cure,” set down the bulky mantle of the cancer hero and select a new story that fit comfortably like a favorite t-shirt and perfect pair of jeans. bubbling up: the reflective power of the story circle mike: you didn’t actually have anything written down, but as you were sharing all of a sudden those two themes came out. kenzie: yeah, it kind of all fell into place as i was talking about it. i guess i knew what i wanted to say! mike: yeah, and everyone else did too! . . . there was a clear theme or message that started to develop as you were sharing it with us. as a 23-year-old, i spent five weeks hitchhiking and traveling around the tibetan plateau. i was warmly welcomed into every monastery, village, and encampment i visited, often staying for a few days and participating in the daily activities of life. stepping through those doors felt like travelling back in time, except for one piece of modern looking equipment that most monks, lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 8 9 townspeople, and nomads possessed. it was a large parabolic dish of polished metal with a steel tripod in the middle. one calm, sunny afternoon, i summoned the courage to pantomime a question about the purpose of the apparatus to a young monk, who proceeded to place a large metal teakettle full of water on the tripod. i immediately understood that the dish was meant to heat the water in the kettle but was shocked when we returned to the courtyard 30 minutes later to find the kettle steaming and bubbling over. in the rarified atmosphere 4,500 meters above sea level, a mirror could boil water faster than a yak dung cooking fire. one of the many lessons i learned from my time in tibet is that focused reflection can be powerful. across many health contexts and functions (e.g., disability advocacy, aging research, sexual health education, etc.) the dst process has been highlighted as an effective tool to help participants disrupt dominant cultural narratives of illness by enabling focused reflection on their own lived experiences, but also, and perhaps more importantly, as their story is reflected back to them in the story circle (de jager et al., 2017; fiddian-green et al., 2019; gubrium, 2009; lambert, 2013a; rice et al., 2018; rice & mundel, 2018). after facilitating many story circle conversations over the past eight years, i am continually amazed by how the focused reflection of a group can bring the tepid water of everyday experience to a rolling boil. however, i have struggled to find the words to adequately convey the uniquely emotional, emergent, and cocreative nature of this process. fortunately, kenzie’s story circle experience in emerging horizons and gadamer’s account of genuine conversations have provided a mirror to focus and reflect these story circle experiences. in real time, the story circle depicted in emerging horizons lasted just over one hour and each story led to engaged discussion as exemplified by the three and a half minutes that were included in the film. through the story circle, potential metaphors were clarified (harmony), images suggested (kelsey), controlling ideas affirmed (derek and bethany), and for kenzie, meaningful language uncovered. according to gadamer (1960/2004), each person in a conversation comes with their own unique horizon or “vantage point” (p. 313), and through genuine conversation a fusion of horizons occurs and new understanding emerges. building on this metaphor, it could be said that the multiple participant horizons represented in a story circle increases the “surface area” of lived experience, reflecting the story back to the storyteller and leading to an intensification of understanding. in emerging horizons each aya in the story circle was a mirror for the others, and as kenzie gazed at her experience through the reflected language of “moving on versus moving forward,” “healing versus curing,” and “living with uncertainty,” a fusion of horizons occurred that allowed new understanding to bubble up in her consciousness. kenzie’s story had always been there, embedded in her experience, but the fact that all the phrases provided by the other ayas in the story circle were integral to her completed digital story, demonstrated that a fusion of horizons had occurred. the combined reflective surface of six horizons was powerful enough to boil away the superfluous content of kenzie’s cancer story and cultivate a moment of truth that she apprehended in her digital story (lang et al., 2020). kenzie’s digital story itself is a demonstration of how the reflective focus of a group of peers in genuine conversation can lead to the intensification of meaning and transform vague tepid ideas into a roiling caldron of understanding. lang & laing journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 8 10 however, the potential understanding cultivated in and through the story circle experience can only be achieved if the conditions of a genuine conversation are achieved. gadamer (1960/2004) provided a clear description of how the story circle experience portrayed in emerging horizons could be considered a genuine conversation: the way one word follows another, with the conversation taking its own twists and reaching its own conclusion, may well be conducted in some way, but the partners conversing are far less the leaders of it than the led. no one knows in advance what will “come out” of a conversation. understanding or its failure is like an event that happens to us. (p. 383) there was no knowing in advance what would “come out” of the story circle in emerging horizons, only that there would be stories about cancer. moreover, although the story circle was “conducted in some way,” by me encouraging participants to share and prompting discussion with a single question (“what resonated with you in the story?”), the conversation took its own twists and came to its own conclusions that revealed or clarified something for each storyteller. it was clear that in the story circle both the ayas and i were “far less the leaders of it than the led” and that it was through the focused reflection of the group that understanding struck like lightning, like an event that happened to us all. if truth is an event (gadamer, 1960/2004), then kenzie’s experience in emerging horizons demonstrates how dst can create the opportunity for truth events to occur by placing a topic on the tripod, focusing the beam, and watching to see what bubbles up. by being aware of the conditions of a genuine conversation and purposely cultivating its generative possibilities through the story circle, a deeper truth – or perhaps a new truth – emerged from kenzie’s cancer story. in this way, dst could help ayas like kenzie address the enigma of endings, shed illfitting, culturally accepted narratives, and find a new, more meaningful story through genuine conversation with their peers. that kenzie accomplished her goal was apparent during the voiceover recording of her story in emerging horizons: mike: cool. . . that’s a good ending! kenzie: [nodding head emphatically] yeah, i like the way that ends. references cassavetes, n. 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(1997). teratologies: a cultural study of cancer. routledge. simard, s., thewes, b., humphris, g., dixon, m., hayden, c., mireskandari, s., & ozakinci, g. (2013). fear of cancer recurrence in adult cancer survivors: a systematic review of quantitative studies. journal of cancer survivorship, 7(3), 300-322. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-013-0272-z yang, y., li, w., wen, y., wang, h., sun, h., liang, w., zhang, b., & humphris, g. (2019). fear of cancer recurrence in adolescent and young adult cancer survivors: a systematic review of the literature. psycho-oncology, 28(4), 675-686. https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.5013 1 this discussion lasted 12 minutes in real time and contained many difficult editing decisions for me due to its richness, emotional expression, and group engagement. in the end only one minute out of 12 was included in the film, however a lengthy portion of that conversation is included later in this chapter that illustrates the depth of discussion. 2 this ending contrasted sharply with the beginning of the cancer chapter of her life which started a on new page with an emphatic, centered heading, and prominent, stylized opening letter (i.e., “full stop,” music goes quiet; see chapter five). 3 another form of the cancer hero that could perhaps be labeled as the “cancer antihero” archetype is someone who dies of cancer but maintains a stubbornly positive attitude to the very end. https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12190 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-013-0272-z https://doi.org/10.1002/pon.5013 periods and ellipses: dst and “moving on” from cancer hand-me-down stories: troubling culturally accepted cancer narratives bubbling up: the reflective power of the story circle corresponding author: roya haghiri-vijeh, rn, phd student school of nursing, university of victoria professor of nursing, centennial college email: rhaghiri-vijeh@centennialcollege.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 march 15, 2022 ©the author(s) 2014 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.74902 gadamerian hermeneutics with intersectionality as an analytical lens roya haghiri-vijeh & carol mcdonald abstract for decades, hermeneutics has been used as a qualitative research approach to enhance understanding of the experiences of individuals within a particular context. however, after reviewing the literature, it became evident that only a few published articles use intersectionality as an analytical lens along with gadamerian hermeneutics. this article draws on examples from a 2021 study that explored experiences of lgbtqi+ migrants with healthcare providers. utilizing the philosophical underpinnings of gadamerian hermeneutics and the theoretical foundations of intersectionality, the confluences and the tensions between these two approaches is explored. moreover, suggestions are provided for how intersectionality as an analytical lens can expand understandings and interpretations of research findings using gadamerian hermeneutics. keywords gadamer hermeneutics, intersectionality, complexity, lgbtqi+ migrants, underserved population, healthcare professionals although historically, hermeneutics originated as an approach to interpret sacred religious texts (abram, 1996; polit & beck, 2017; west, 2010), present day gadamerian hermeneutics focuses on developing a deep understanding of human experiences in particular contexts (annells, 1996; de witt et al., 2010; dowling & cooney, 2012; gadamer, 2007a). in this article, we discuss gadamerian hermeneutics, in combination with intersectionality, as an approach to haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 2 understanding the experiences of underserved people whose experiences are poorly understood through many traditional research methodologies (collins & bilge, 2016; kwok, 2021; semlyen et al., 2018). here, key examples are shared from a research study conducted in 2021 which explored the experiences of lgbtqi+ migrants with healthcare professionals in canada. lgbtqi+ refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, two-spirit, queer, questioning, and intersex, and “+” is inclusive of diverse sexual orientations (e.g., pansexual) and gender identities and expressions (e.g., nonbinary) that are not named in the initialism. migrants, broadly, refers to individuals who have relocated from one place to another (canadian council for refugees, 2010). exploring conceptual ties between intersectionality and gadamerian hermeneutics can potentially yield new insights into how these theories have utility for gaining understanding of human experiences with a view of social and systemic contexts. it is argued that both theoretical perspectives can be used for anti-oppressive and social justice aims. in what follows, we start with a background, afterwards examine the philosophical underpinnings of intersectional theory, and then provide an overview of gadamerian hermeneutics. thereafter, we discuss how this methodological approach may be used in the context of lgbtqi+ migrants’ experiences with healthcare professionals. background increasingly, theorists and researchers acknowledge that research with underserved people benefits from anti-oppressive theoretical perspectives which aim to produce systemic change by understanding intersecting positions of power and privilege using a social justice praxis (davidson, 2016; lopez & willis, 2004). the term praxis here means that research and practice are intertwined, that they inform one another, and that inquirers and practitioners reflexively strive to highlight areas for improvement (cho et al., 2013; collins et al., 2021; rodriguez et al., 2016). the integration of intersectionality as an analytical lens with gadamerian hermeneutics sets a path for critical and nuanced understandings of the realities of diverse underserved populations in health research. underserved people are defined as individuals who: may experience difficulties in obtaining needed care, receive less care or a lower standard of care, experience different treatment by healthcare providers, receive treatment that does not adequately meet their needs, or that they will be less satisfied with healthcare services than the general population. (health canada & bowen, 2001, p.7) past and continuing traumatic experiences may lead lgbtqi+ migrants to experience mental and physical health challenges (hall & sajnani, 2015; lee, 2021). intersectional researchers do not assume the vulnerability or the homogeneity of groups but categorize underserved people because it allows the recognition of needs and differences within groups while attending to the structural contexts which shape disadvantages (collins et al., 2021; mccall, 2005). the term “strategic essentialism” was coined by gayatri chakravorty spivak, a post-colonial south asian theorist and activist, and refers to a political position that is adopted to advocate for minority groups (spivak, 1996). in this article, the term lgbtqi+ migrant is used to underscore the common experience of being underserved while acknowledging the diversity of the experiences of migration trajectories within lgbtqi+ communities. in other words, it is strategically crucial and advantageous to temporarily “essentialize” lgbtqi+ migrants as a group to understand haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 3 their experiences with healthcare professionals in an effort to inform practice, education, and policy. in my (roya haghiri-vijeh [rhv]) nursing practice as a bedside nurse and as an educator, i was struck by the limited knowledge of some nurses in caring for patients who identified at the intersections of lgbtqi+, migration, race, and religion, just to name a few. i have an understanding of the experiences of lgbtqi+ migrants with nurses through hearing nurses’ lgbtqi+-phobic and racist comments. both stigma and discrimination, including a lack of knowledge of and a sense of comfort in providing care to lgbtqi+ migrants manifested itself in my encounters with some nurses, nursing students, faculty, and administrators. i heard comments such as, “they are in canada now. it is safe here!... so, they are trans – what is a big deal!” for this reason, to have a deeper understanding of lgbtqi+ migrants’ encounters with nurses and other healthcare professionals in canada, i pursued my doctoral research in situating these experiences through gadamerian hermeneutics with intersectionality as an analytical lens. the university of victoria’s human research ethics review board approved this research study (approval number 19-0591). in this article, we draw on key examples from the first author’s doctoral dissertation in which she conducted 18 semi-structured interviews on zoom with lgbtqi+ migrants (13), non-migrant nurses (2), and migrant lgbtqi+ nurses (3). rather than focusing on a singular “theme,” the interpretations of interviews strengthened our understanding of informants’ experiences. the in-depth interpretations will be published elsewhere (haghirivijeh, 2022), and here, the methodological grounding is provided. given that some readers of the journal of applied hermeneutics may not be familiar with intersectionality, the next section begins with a discussion of intersectionality, follows with a discussion of gadamerian hermeneutics, and then examines the ways in which intersectionality and gadamerian hermeneutics share a common set of principles. both approaches attend to reflexivity, historical context, and critical inquiry, and in the case of my study, do so in an effort to understand the experiences of lgbtqi+ migrants with healthcare professionals (bright, 2015; davidson, 2016; lopez & willis, 2004). situating intersectionality within a critical theoretical paradigm intersectionality is situated within an emerging critical theoretical paradigm with roots in black, latinx, post-colonial, queer, and indigenous scholarly work which reveals the complex factors that shape human lives (collins, 2019). the earliest cited iteration of intersectionality came from the combahee river collective (collins & bilge, 2016). in 1977, the combahee river collective, a black lesbian organization, challenged homophobia and heterosexism, and argued that the experiences of black non-heterosexual women were different from those of white women (collins & bilge, 2016). following this, in the 1980s, scholars continued to provide a voice for the intersecting experiences of underserved people. in 1989, legal studies scholar kimberlé crenshaw coined the term intersectionality as a metaphor for complexity (crenshaw, 1989), and in 1990, sociologist patricia hill collins initiated the integration of intersectionality as a critical social theory (collins & bilge, 2016; hancock, 2019; potter et al., 2019). intersectionality as an analytical lens is used to address complexity, and is underpinned by such concepts as relationality, power, social inequality, social context, and social justice (collins, haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 4 2019). however, not all inquirers are guided by the same assumptions when using intersectionality (collins et al., 2021). the core argument of intersectionality is that dominant structures of power are embedded in policy and practices which systematically exclude individuals or groups from privileges based on their identities and social contexts (collins, 1993; crenshaw, 1989). hancock (2019) identified critical race theory as an avenue to critique american structural and institutional hierarchies that produce injustices, inequities, and marginalization. intersectional scholars note, however, that race alone cannot be understood as a distinct category of analysis apart from class or sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (sogie) (collins, 2019b; hankivsky et al., 2019); instead, these social categories intersect to shape people’s experiences within systems of power (crenshaw, 1991; hankivsky et al., 2019). in intersectional analysis, categories and locations are socially constructed and fluid, and are not limited to race, ethnicity, class, sogie, dis/ability, mental health or religion (collins et al., 2021; hankivsky & de leeuw, 2011). categories are dynamic, diverse, intertwined and in continuous interaction with one another, and understanding them should not follow normative binarizations (hankivsky et al., 2019; hay et al., 2019; heise et al., 2019). the diversity of experiences of those oppressed is perpetuated by the unique contextual situatedness of individuals. in this way, intersectionality can be used as an analytic lens to uncover influences of power (collins & bilge, 2016; hankivsky et al., 2019). consequently, intersectional scholars call for transformation, collaboration, social justice, and equity praxis. the core arguments of intersectionality assist in seeing that lgbtqi+ migrants may well experience oppression as a result of intersecting marginalization in society and in the healthcare system. for example, a trans informant who came to canada on a student visa shared their experience of being placed in a mental health facility. prior to migration, they (“they” is the pronoun used by many people who identify outside of a constructed gender binary) had experienced discrimination and trauma due to their sexual orientation and gender expression. after migration to canada, as they started their gender transition, the realities of their multiple identities resulted in a complex experience of being poorly understood and supported. although they identified as trans, they felt that non-migrant trans people did not understand the unique challenges of identifying as trans and migrant as well as having temporary precarious migration status. at the same time, they felt excluded from their own cultural community due to their trans gender identity. additionally, with limited financial resources, they were afraid of deportation. in desperation, they experienced suicidal ideation and were brought to a mental health facility by police officers. they felt uncomfortable with being placed “in the same sack” with other patients, and felt that their intersecting experiences of migration, trans identity, mental health challenges, along with financial and language barriers were not acknowledged or understood by healthcare professionals. when they tried to communicate their fear of deportation most healthcare professionals and nurses, who were in positions of privilege, dismissed their concerns without making a meaningful attempt to understand their fears as well as their past and current experiences. intersectionality and structural systems of power haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 5 a particular strength of intersectionality is the focus it brings to structural influences such as language barriers, poverty, citizenship status, and human rights laws that shape the social lives of some groups versus others (clark & vissandjée, 2019; crenshaw, 1991; manuel, 2019). when the needs of underserved individuals are not named as a priority in policies, resources are not allocated to meet their needs; and at times even when needs are named, services are not distributed (alessi et al., 2020; crenshaw, 1991; fox et al., 2020; gupta & raj et al., 2019; hankivsky et al., 2019; kahn et al., 2018). public policies and laws can magnify the voices of underserved individuals or silence them further. it is particularly relevant to this work that structural systems of power limit the inclusion of individuals who do not conform to normative identities and orientations (lee, 2019; lee & brotman, 2013). hankivsky and jordan-zachery (2019) added that those in dominant positions may use policies, unconsciously or consciously, as an apparatus to direct and regulate the experiences of marginalized individuals. for example, “normative” sexuality, or what constitutes accepted sexuality, is regulated by policies and overemphasized in institutional arenas (cisneros, 2018; hankivsky & jordan-zachery, 2019a; lee, 2018; mcdonald et al., 2011). in addition to public policy, it also becomes apparent that educational and institutional policies that directly influence the practice of healthcare professional are put in place through structural systems of power (dickman & chicas, 2021). intersectionality provides the lens to view and to account for complex and marginalized lives in the policy arena. finally, manuel (2019) and collins et al. (2021) asserted that qualitative intersectional approaches provide an avenue to gain a deeper understanding of individuals’ lives, as they are shaped by health and public policies. in this case, gadamerian hermeneutics is guided by intersectionality in understanding the experiences of lgbtqi+ migrants. gadamerian hermeneutics hans-georg gadamer (1900 2002) was a german philosopher in a significant line of male european philosophers of phenomenology, whose works both informed and departed from gadamer’s (gadamer, 1975b; west, 2010). in particular gadamer expanded the philosophical position of his teacher martin heidegger in a number of ways that have become relevant to research approaches drawing on gadamerian hermeneutics. heidegger is well known for his movement away from the reductionistic and objective view of knowledge acquisition relying solely on the “scientific method” towards an ontological understanding of the world (gadamer, 1976). gadamer located his own philosophy in a decidedly ontological, rather than epistemological position, with implications for how those following him philosophically engage in the process of inquiry (koch, 1995; shaw & deforge, 2014). or perhaps more accurately, gadamer moves beyond focusing on the epistemological meaning of individual experiences; he is also concerned with the formation of understanding by drawing ontologically on the present and past experiences of individuals and the inquirer (gadamer, 2007a). ontological presence in dialogue for gadamer, it is not only about the epistemology of one’s language, but also having an ontological presence in dialogue (gadamer, 1976, 2007c; gadamer & ricoeur, 1991). the ontology of gadamerian hermeneutics is concerned with being and understanding through experiences (ho et al., 2017). this ontological underpinning of gadamerian hermeneutics is expressed in the hermeneutic circle, central to the process of interpretation and understanding haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 6 (gadamer, 1981b, 1986, 1998). additionally, gadamer’s ontological hermeneutics is informed through his use of the concepts of historicity and prejudices. these concepts, which we explore shortly, contribute to an ontology in gadamerian hermeneutics that illuminates multiple, evolving, and changing realities; therefore, understandings themselves become varied and transient (cohen et al., 2000a; fleming et al., 2003; gadamer, 1976). following the early work of schleiermacher and later expanded by heidegger, gadamer viewed the movement of the hermeneutic circle as an ontological element of understanding (crotty, 1998). the movement between the parts and whole, sometimes viewed as a “spiral” (moules et al., 2015, p. 44), can be seen as an account of the way in which understanding is achieved. gadamer maintains “the circular movement is necessary because nothing that needs interpretation can be understood at once” (1998a, p. 192). the hermeneutic circle is set in motion as the interpreter begins to reflect on the prejudices that accompany them to the work; the movement is perpetual, visiting and re-visiting understandings throughout the hermeneutic project. historicity shaping understanding according to annells (1996), gadamer noted that the hermeneutic circle is present when what has occurred in the past, when rediscovered, becomes new again. in addition to being ontological in nature, hermeneutics is shaped by the historicity, universality, and fluidity of each interpreter. historicity, in the hermeneutic sense, means people are “not merely in history; their past including their social past, figures in their conception of themselves and their future possibilities” (audi, 1999, p. 673). as historically located, we cannot act or understand without the influence of the history in which we are imbued. in this way, the hermeneutic project of “understanding is, essentially, a historically affected event” (gadamer, 1998b, p. 300). it is this situatedness, historical and in a sense unknowable position that forms the horizons from which the interpreter and the topic begin. this approach, assuming an ontological nature, places understanding within the historicity, the tradition, and the context of both informants and inquirer (cohen, 2000). as an inquirer (rhv), my historicity is informed by the experience of a traumatic escape from my country of birth as well as experiences of navigating social, cultural, and religious communities as a first-generation settler. additionally, this hermeneutic project is informed by my location as a nurse, an educator, and a resident in a country that legally supports lgbtqi+ people. all of this context, past and current, comes into play in the process of interpretation, beginning with my interest in the topic. similarly, each informant brings to the interview process, their unique historical location. for a number of informants, their ontological reality included living in a birth country where being lgbtqi+ is forbidden and punishable by death. their lives before migration to canada included living with trauma and daily fears of having their identity discovered. for one trans muslim woman, their religious tradition included wearing a chādor (a long head and body covering) when reciting obligatory islamic prayers. while this tradition was not available to them to enact prior to their gender transition, they also were stigmatized and ridiculed by their cultural and religious community after migration to canada and beginning gender transition. hence, in this situation it is the inaccessibility of tradition, the inability to participate in cultural and religious gatherings that shape their ontological experience. haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 7 gadamer (1976) emphasized that the hermeneutical situations of individuals have historically been rooted in their prejudices. rather than elevating an ideal of autonomous objectivity, gadamer embraces the prejudices and foreknowledge of the interpreter as productive in mediating understanding (gadamer, 1976). the idea of prejudices as a ground on which to begin understanding extends not only to the interpreter but also to the subject/objects of interpretation. while gadamer noted that the influences of our prejudices are unknowable in advance in their completeness, he nonetheless suggested that we should endeavour to make our prejudices conscious and available to critique. he noted that active reflection on a particular prejudice “brings before me something that otherwise happens behind my back” (1976, p. 38). additionally, he rightly noted that once something is known to us, it is impossible to “unknow” it. gadamer (1976) insisted that prejudices can play a critical role in moving toward new understandings, and that rather than “bracket” understandings or knowledge of a topic, as in the case with other approaches to phenomenology, prejudices should be questioned and revisited. exploring my (rhv) prejudices were crucial as gadamer (1976) asserted, “it is not really we ourselves who understand: it is always a past that allows us to say, ‘i have understood’” (p. 58). my knowledge and understandings garnered from my experience as a migrant, a refugee, and a woman of colour, as well as through my close relationships with people who identify as lgbtqi+ migrants, furthered my understandings in hermeneutic conversations with participants. my prejudices propelled the process of engaging in questioning in a particular direction, just as the prejudices of the informants are embedded in their dialogue. lgbtqi+ migrant informers, may carry with them from their past, fear of discrimination, stigma, or of being denied residency status if they disclose their gender identity or sexual orientation, even in the context of the interviews. similarly, based on norms and personal history in their country of birth they may be reluctant to criticize their experiences with healthcare providers (etengoff & rodriguez, 2021; massaquoi, 2020; semlyen et al., 2018). these are tacit examples of ways in which the influence of history and prejudices can directly play out in the hermeneutics research process. prejudice is rooted in the inquirer’s and informants’ historical-spiritual being, their past, their culture, all of which influence their being in the world. for this reason, an absence of bracketing is evident during in-depth interviews, in conversing with the transcriptions, and in the dissemination of the findings, as understanding will arise from the movement of the hermeneutical circle, mediated by past and present experiences (annells, 1996; mccaffrey et al., 2012). confluences of gadamerian hermeneutics and intersectionality as approaches to research, gadamerian hermeneutics and intersectionality arise from considerably different contexts and influences. nonetheless they do hold areas of confluence; ways in which intersectionality aligns with hermeneutics and expands the project of interpretation. these confluences are discussed as reflexivity, experience located in time and context, and critical questioning. the practice of reflexivity reflexivity finds common ground in gadamerian hermeneutics and intersectionality; it influences gaining understanding through the continuous revisiting, reviewing, and questioning of interviews as well as acknowledging the inquirer’s and informants’ experiences of privilege, haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 8 strength, and oppression. qualitative researchers, sandelowski and barroso (2002), explained the introspective process of reflexivity: “reflexivity implies the ability to reflect inward toward oneself as an inquirer; outward to the cultural, historical, linguistic, political, and other forces that shape everything about inquiry; and, in between researcher and participant to the social interaction they share” (p. 222). clearly this understanding of reflexivity aligns with gadamer’s discussion of the process of bringing to consciousness the prejudices and previous understandings of the inquirer that influence the hermeneutic process. reflexivity in conversing with the data starts from the beginning when conceptualizing the research and continues throughout every stage (moules et al., 2015; ryan, 2005). similarly, intersectional scholars consider their own social position, role, and power when applying an intersectional interpretation to interviews. in fact, this reflexivity starts before setting priorities and directions in research, policy, and activism (collins, 2019). reflexivity was at play in creating a safe environment for the lgbtqi+ migrant informants by choosing to share some of my (rhv) experiences during interviews. i experienced discrimination as a woman and a baha’i in my country of birth, as a non-status refugee in a transition country, as a new migrant to canada, and as a racial minority working in the nursing profession. cautiously allowing myself to be vulnerable led the informants to develop trust on the basis of some of our shared experiences, and this allowed me to delve more deeply into their experiences with healthcare professionals in canada. thus, the inquirer can reflexively engender a safe environment during the interview to encourage a flow of conversation about the informant’s unique experiences. using intersectionality as an analytical lens, the inquirer reflexively looks specifically for the individual oppressive experiences with healthcare during the interpretive process (hankivsky & jordan-zachery, 2019b; moules et al., 2015). the inquirer also searches beyond individual experiences and considers how dominant normative ideologies and structural policies shape those experiences (collins et al., 2021; lee, 2019, 2021). hankivsky and cormier (2019) stated that there is a scarcity of research methodologies that examine the operations of power on individual experiences. utilizing gadamerian hermeneutics with intersectionality as an analytical lens address some of these challenges by attending to social contexts as well as institutional and interpersonal power dynamics that surround and shape experiences. experience located in time and context intersectional and gadamerian hermeneutics approaches share the view that experiences are shaped by context and time (bradbury-jones et al., 2011). as discussed at length earlier in the paper, from a hermeneutic perspective, the lives of the inquirer and informants are understood as constituted within historicity, that is, within particular temporal and contextual realities. these realities deeply influence our understanding of experience. scholars of intersectionality maintain that social inequities are based on context and are the result of particular oppressive social and institutional structures and policies (collins, 1993, 2019b; collins & bilge, 2016; crenshaw, 1991; hankivsky, 2014; heise et al., 2019). engaging with the lens of intersectionality to understand the experiences of lgbtqi+ migrants, the inquirer converses with informants about their experiences and the contextual influences in their lives as well as interprets these conversations with a view to the temporal and historical context of the social and institutional haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 9 structures at play (burnett, 2019; collins & bilge, 2016). in highlighting the impact of time and context in the positioning of lgbtqi+ migrants, both intersectionality and gadamerian hermeneutics pave the way for critical questioning and are integral to conversing with informants. critical questioning while both hermeneutics and intersectionality engage the language of critical questioning, the meaning of the term is somewhat different for each. the approaches are however compatible, and the lens of intersectionality can again be seen to extend the hermeneutic interpretation. in hermeneutics, critical questioning has been referred to as asking difficult questions and being open to questions that challenge pre-existing assumptions (de witt & ploeg, 2006). the hermeneutic conversation in which critical questioning takes place focuses not only on questions of the informants’ experiences but investigates the subject matter along with the informants. such a hermeneutic conversation leads to a hermeneutic circle in which the whole and the parts of the topic spiral in an iterative and continuous format (moules et al., 2015). as discussed earlier, the inquirer continues to converse with the interview transcriptions during analysis, in relation to the topic, and then the specific informant’s experiences by reading and re-reading the interviews iteratively while searching for similarities, differences, what stands out, what is provoking, and even what calls current understandings into question (moules et al., 2015). the inquirer opens themself up and listens to what is being said and unsaid — even confronting viewpoints which may be hard to hear and observe (moules et al., 2015). it is through engagement with others that individuals may become aware of their own assumptions. in meaningful readings of texts, the inquirer questions and is questioned by the text itself. imagination needs to be rooted in the art of questioning, to see beyond what is presented during interviews and when conversing with the transcriptions. a perfect analysis is not expected (gadamer, 2007d), but an understanding occurs through detailed, dedicated, and careful interpretation of various factors shaped by the history of each individual (jardine, 1992) and brought into being through a process of critical questioning. engaging intersectionality as an analytic focus deepens the gadamerian understanding of the experiences of lgbtqi+ migrants by being critically attentive to the intersections of various systems of power illuminated during in-depth individual interviews and when conversing with the transcriptions (bright, 2015; davidson, 2016). for example, it is evident in the literature that lgbtqi+ migrants’ experiences are situated in various intersecting systems of oppression and discrimination based on the identities of race, ethnicity, sogie, religion, migration, class, language, dis/ability, and mental health diagnosis (altay et al., 2021; brennan et al., 2013; cisneros, 2018; collins et al., 2021; etengoff & rodriguez, 2021; lee & brotman, 2013; semlyen et al., 2018). collins and bilge (2016) noted that critical questioning is an integral skill that scholars using an intersectional lens require and asserted, “[critical questioning] is a way of critically analyzing the world by asking tough questions, problem solving, and critical thinking” (p. 162). critical questioning as an approach within intersectionality and gadamerian hermeneutics elucidates that the scientific method cannot answer all the questions (gadamer, 2000). in a discussion of “natural situations” in science, gadamer (1976) pointed to the reality that what is socially contextualized as natural, normal, and we add “straight” for a community now may readily differ in another time or context. following the explanation of the confluences haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 10 of gadamerian hermeneutics and intersectionality, potential tensions between the two are explored. theoretical tensions of gadamerian hermeneutics and intersectionality intersectionality and gadamerian hermeneutics’ areas of potential tensions are their historical origins and aims to address the struggle of marginalized people. first, hermeneutics was developed by privileged white european men. conversely, early intersectional writing and activism focused on black women’s vulnerabilities, oppressions, and experiences of violence (crenshaw, 1989, 1991). hankivsky and jordan-zachery (2019a) stated that oppressive and dominant policies have been created and enforced by well-educated white men’s worldviews and values. however, the production of knowledge through research is not static (gadamer & moore, 2020), and intersectionality has advanced thinking by bringing sogie and other inequities to the forefront (clark & saleh, 2019; kassam et al., 2020). scholars of intersectionality do not dismiss white european men’s theoretical work based on their gender, race, or ethnicity (cho et al., 2013); rather, the inquirer learns from past epistemology to step towards praxis. in addition to historical origins, another area of tension between gadamerian hermeneutics and intersectionality is the intention of the work regarding disenfranchised or marginalized people. intersectionality as an analytical lens has two aims that, in a perfunctory sense, may seem to be in tension with gadamerian hermeneutics. these two aims, according to collins and bilge, (2016) are the following: “(1) an approach to understanding human life and behavior rooted in the experiences and struggles of disenfranchised people; and (2) an important lens linking theory with practice that can aid in [the] empowerment of communities and individuals” (p. 36). these are points of contention because neither the “disenfranchised” nor “empowerment” are usually addressed in gadamerian hermeneutics. however, although not explicitly stated, gadamerian hermeneutics is seen by some to hold space for the inclusion of these aims and renders to the issues of “large power structures” (gadamer & moore, 2020, p. 4). first, gadamer underscored the importance of looking for the unsaid in each conversation and raising the voices of those who have been silenced. second, gadamerian hermeneutics is focused on experiences through the continuous practice of reading between the lines and examining how context and time have shaped peoples’ understanding (gadamer, 2007b; jardine, 1992). in particular, in the discussion of phronesis as practical knowledge in relation to sensus communis (common sense), gadamer (1975a) asserted, “the philosophy of sound understanding, of good sense … contains the basis of a moral philosophy that really does justice to the life of society” (p. 39). gadamer’s later publications articulated concerns with global social issues and used dialogue as a praxis to engage in understanding one another rather than othering (gadamer, 2007a; johnson, 2000; padgett, 2017). had gadamer been thinking or writing in the present-day historical context, he might have embraced a more explicit critique of power, race, sogie, and privilege (gadamer & moore, 2020). conclusion: the end game in line with gadamer’s (2007b) discussion of philosophical ethics and collins et al.’s (2021) discourse on intersectionality, understanding moves the research endeavour towards practice and policy revision. in a document titled “intersectionality 101,” hankivsky (2014) provided haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 11 practical suggestions for inquirers, policymakers, activists, and educators to integrate intersectional theory to address oppressive taken-for-granted discourses. manuel (2019) emphasized that employing intersectional theory is not only about what is “good to know” (p. 32) but more importantly requires integration into public policies. manuel argued that policy makers have been slow to integrate intersectional theory into healthcare practices. intersectional theory is not only about the oppressed, when the oppressed can also be the oppressor (collins, 2019a, 2019b). inquirers using intersectionality also need to highlight the resistance, resilience, and strength in marginalized communities (hankivsky, 2014; jordan-zachery, 2019). intersectionality is an avenue for the inquirer to be reflective about their own biases and prejudices, and strive to understand the informants’ experiences of oppression, privilege, and strength (massaquoi, 2020). while gadamerian hermeneutics is not always associated with praxis, gadamer, drawing on aristotle’s philosophy of practical wisdom, does discuss the place for phronesis and the application of knowledge (gadamer, 1981, 1996; moules et al., 2015). practical wisdom can be understood, for example, as the first-hand knowledge lgbtqi+ migrants gather from their experiences with healthcare professionals. as we come to understand these experiences, we have the opportunity to apply practical wisdom; to use understanding in a way that betters health policy and the education of healthcare professionals. according to moules et al. (2015), gadamerian hermeneutics calls for “achievement of some moral good. there is an ethical obligation in healthcare, in education, and in other practice disciplines that its practitioners be guided by an ethic of care” (p. 58). adopted from gadamer (2007b) and hankivsky (2014), intersectionality extends understanding of the experiences of lgbtqi+ migrants beyond a singular focus on identity. this approach to research initiates a conversation about understanding unique experiences and delves into what healthcare professionals can do and learn, thereby helping to strengthen education, practice, and policy (moules et al., 2015). the inquirer, applying intersectionality as an analytical lens, searches for macro, meso, and micro systems of power at play in relation to experiences of lgbtqi+ migrants. that is to say, the inquirer moves beyond understanding lgbtqi+ migrants’ experiences to an end game that looks for issues of domination, exploitation, resistance, and agency including how these can inform education, practice, research, and policy. using intersectionality as an analytical lens with gadamerian hermeneutics may enable an inquirer to understand that, for example, lgbtqi+ migrants’ health is shaped by migration, mental health, dis/ability, sogie, and healthcare as well as structural systems, and these have positioned lgbtqi+ migrants in situations of perpetual institutional surveillance. engaging with intersectionality as an analytical lens provides an opportunity to delve into untapped and taken-for-granted dominant policies and practices that have marginalized and oppressed individuals (hankivsky & jordan-zachery, 2019a) and underserved populations. in this article, drawing on the philosophical underpinnings of gadamerian hermeneutics and scholars in the field of intersectionality, the confluences between these two approaches was explored demonstrating the ways in which the hermeneutics project can benefit from an intersectional lens to further research focused on marginalized populations. acknowledgement haghiri-vijeh & mcdonald journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 4 12 we are thankful to lgbtqi+ migrants and nurses who participated in this research. roya extends her utmost appreciation to her phd committee (dr. carol mcdonald, dr. nancy clark, dr. judith macdonnell, and dr. annalee lepp) for their time and support in her intertwined formation of understanding hermeneutics and intersectionality, as well as encouraging her for moving forward in her doctoral research. also, she acknowledges centennial college and university of victoria’s dorothy j. kergin endowmen fund for their financial support. we are grateful to the journal reviewers for their insightful comments on this manuscript. finally, sarah van vugt provided copyediting and proofreading on this manuscript. references abram, d. 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(2016). the theory and praxis of intersectionality in work and organisations: where do we go from here? gender, work and organization, 23(3), 201–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12131 sandelowski, m., & barroso, j. (2002). finding the findings in qualitative studies. journal of nursing scholarship, 34(3), 213–219. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1547-5069.2002.00213.x semlyen, j., ali, a., & flowers, p. (2018). intersectional identities and dilemmas in interactions with healthcare professionals: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of british muslim gay men. culture, health and sexuality, 20(9), 1023–1035. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2017.1411526 shaw, j.a., & deforge, r.t. (2014). qualitative inquiry and the debate between hermeneutics and critical theory. qualitative health research, 24(11), 1567–1580. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732314549028 spivak, g.c. (1996). the spivak reader: selected works of gayatri chakravorty spivak (d. landry & g. maclean, eds.). routledge. west, d. (2010). continental philosophy: an introduction (2nd ed.). polity. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12131 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1547-5069.2002.00213.x https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2017.1411526 https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732314549028 corresponding author: katie m. webber, rn faculty of nursing, university of calgary email: katherine.webber@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 august 1, 2023 ©the author(s) 2023 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2023i2023.77813 conducting literature reviews hermeneutically katie m. webber, sandip k. dhaliwal, & katherine wong abstract it is well understood that conducting high quality literature reviews provides an important and solid foundation for research studies. while there is an abundance of resources available about how to conduct literature reviews for quantitative research, there are fewer publications available about how to conduct literature reviews for qualitative research, particularly research that is guided by hermeneutic philosophy. rather than detailing how to conduct a hermeneutic literature review, in this paper we make the subtle, yet necessary, distinction that literature reviews included in research studies that are guided by hermeneutics should be conducted hermeneutically. we begin by reviewing the few resources that are currently available about conducting literature reviews for hermeneutic research and detail three different literature review processes for three hermeneutic studies. we then discuss how researchers, who are using hermeneutics to guide their research, might determine what literature should be included in their literature reviews. we close the paper by addressing the significance of rigour in literature reviews that are conducted hermeneutically. keywords hermeneutics, hermeneutically, literature review, gadamer a high-quality literature review is foundational to a thorough and sound research study. however, it can be difficult to know where to begin when conducting literature reviews for research guided by hermeneutics. further, there is not a stepwise approach or widely accepted criteria to evaluate the quality of hermeneutic literature reviews. perhaps this is because there is some disagreement, when conducting hermeneutic research, about how to approach the literature review process. some might argue that, regardless of the methodology of the research, a literature review should follow a standardized approach to best demonstrate rigour. however, others have suggested that webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 2 the literature review should be consistent with the methodological and philosophical foundations of the study being conducted (greenhalgh et al., 2018). we would agree with the latter. the authors of this paper have each chosen to conduct research guided by hermeneutics for our doctoral theses. in each of our doctoral candidacy exams, we were asked a version of these two questions: how did we evaluate the quality of the research that was included in our literature reviews? what makes our literature review rigorous enough to stand up to the academic requirements of a doctoral thesis? despite our best attempts, each of us felt that our responses might have lacked the depth that we had aimed to demonstrate. in the following paper, we are returning to, rearguing, and perhaps even reclaiming our responses to these questions. prequel: a brief discussion about grammatical significance before we begin, we would like to offer that, rather than doing hermeneutic literature reviews, literature reviews that are conducted for hermeneutic research studies should be conducted hermeneutically. there is a subtle, but arguably necessary, distinction here. hermeneutic, as used in a hermeneutic literature review is an adjective—a word that describes the noun, which in this case is: literature review. however, hermeneutically, as used in conducting a literature review hermeneutically, is an adverb—a word that describes a verb. while it is not our intention to get bogged down in very elementary grammatical differences, we would like to suggest that hermeneutics, as an adverb, has a much more active “way in which we pursue a matter” (caputo, 1987, p. 213) that we suggest is a better fit with the work of hermeneutics. reviewing the literature about conducting literature reviews hermeneutically despite a disproportionate bias for the superiority of systematic literature reviews, there is evidence that suggests that literature reviews should be reflective of the chosen research methodology (boell & cecez-keckmanovic, 2014; greenhalgh et al., 2017; greenhalgh et al., 2018; mccaffrey et al., 2022; smythe & spence, 2012). it has been argued that a growing body of leading academic journals are starting to view expert-led narrative reviews as “a ‘state-of-theart’ review” (greenhalgh et al., 2018, p. 1). while the availability of resources that address how to conduct literature reviews hermeneutically is limited, there are a few worth mentioning. reviewing these articles can be a helpful starting point when conducting literature reviews for research guided by hermeneutics. there can be a marked dissonance when the literature reviews in hermeneutic studies are incongruent with the hermeneutic philosophy that guides the remainder of the research study. in an article detailing a hermeneutic approach to conducting literature reviews, boell and cecezkecmanovic (2014), argued that “highly structured approaches downplay the importance of reading and dialogical interaction between the literature and researcher; continuing interpretation and questioning; critical assessment and imagination; argument development and writing–all highly intellectual and creative activities, seeking originality and replicability” (p. 258). boell and cecez-keckmanonovic further suggested that, in hermeneutics, the literature review should be about the “process of developing understanding” (boell & cecez-keckmanovic, 2014, p. 259). boell and cecez-keckmanovic proposed a hermeneutic framework for conducting literature reviews, which involves two hermeneutic circles: a search and acquisition circle and then a wider webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 3 analysis and interpretation circle. while we would argue that this framework might not fit for every hermeneutic study, it is a resource worth reviewing. regarding boell and cecezkeckmonovic’s hermeneutic framework for the literature review process, mccaffrey et al. (2022), offered that it “embraces the interpretive efforts of the researcher in assessing literature for its quality and relevance, … [which] requires recursive reading, critical engagement, writing, and more reading.” (p. 4). to determine the strength of a literature review, boell and cecezkecmanovic suggested that it should be “judged by the arguments and evidence provided” (p. 273). in other words, the richer the depth of understanding that is demonstrated in a literature review about the topic being studied, the more convincing and insightful the literature review will be. building on boell’s and cecez-kacmanovic’s (2014) process for conducting literature reviews guided by hermeneutics, greenhalgh et al. (2018) argued that hermeneutic literature reviews are not only possible, but necessary, for studies using hermeneutics as a philosophical and methodological framework. in their paper, greenhalgh et al. compellingly challenged the spurious hierarchy of systematic reviews over narrative reviews. greenhalgh et al. suggested that narrative reviews, and thus hermeneutic reviews as a form of narrative reviews, have been “frequently misunderstood, misapplied and unfairly dismissed” (p. 1). according to greenhalgh et al., different problems require different solutions. in other words, while a problem that involves the collection of quantitative data might be better suited to a conventional systematic review, a problem that requires new insights or deeper clarification, requires “a more interpretive and discursive synthesis of the existing literature is needed” (p. 2). further, greenhalgh et al. offered that hermeneutic reviews are aimed at creating an interpretive understanding and may or may not use systematic search methods and inclusion/exclusion criteria. the primary focus of a hermeneutic review, according to greenhalgh et al., is to advance understanding. to exemplify an approach to the literature review process in research guided by hermeneutics, greenhalgh et al. (2017) conducted, what they called, a hermeneutic systematic review. the topic of greenhalgh et al.’s hermeneutic systematic review was about understanding the benefits and challenges associated with using telehealth to care for patients experiencing heart failure. after beginning with a generic pubmed search using key terms, the authors identified a sample of highly cited qualitative and quantitative articles. greenhalgh et al. also detailed their search strategy and literature review results. one overriding question guided the selection of papers: “is this paper likely to add meaning to our emerging overview of the field?” (greenhalgh et al., 2017, p. 2). we would suggest that this simple, yet important, question might be a useful tool to use when conducting literature reviews in research guided by hermeneutics. further, the detail that these authors provided about their process of conducting their hermeneutic systematic review, rather than just the product of their review, also demonstrated the strength of their approach to incorporating hermeneutics throughout the research study. finally, we identified an article written by smythe and spence (2012), in which the authors discussed the process of re-viewing the literature in hermeneutic research. smythe and spence suggested that “re-viewing is to bring words, meanings and the thoughts that arise into viewingafresh. the process and outcome is a reflexively critical understanding of pertinent literature” (p. 14). this is consistent with the work of aletheia in hermeneutics, which is to reveal, conceal, and unconceal, and to bring to life (moules et al., 2015). rather than a step-by-step guide to webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 4 conducting literature reviews hermeneutically, smythe and spence offered hallmarks of using a hermeneutic approach to conducting literature reviews. according to smythe and spence (2012), these hallmarks include: discussing a broad range of relevant literature; an identification of the researchers’ prejudices; demonstrating that the literature is a “dialogical partner to provoke thinking” (p. 23); the inclusion of philosophical literature in both the methodology and discussion; a focus on identifying meanings through traditional ways of thinking, but also through the use of images, similes, metaphors, or descriptions; language is viewed as a “carrier of hidden meaning” (p. 23); and that the literature is contextual and related to the topic of the study. these hallmarks could be particularly helpful when determining the strength, validity, and rigour of literature reviews that have been conducted hermeneutically. exemplars of conducting literature reviews hermeneutically one way to demonstrate the strength and rigour of the process of conducting qualitative research is to be able to clearly detail the process that was followed (crawford, 2019). it is one thing to be able to offer a cohesive, rigorous, and thorough review of the literature on a topic, but it is arguably more significant if one can demonstrate, and defend, as we borrowed from caputo (1987) earlier, the way in which the matter was pursued. accordingly, the following are three approaches to conducting literature reviews for research studies guided by philosophical hermeneutics. while we did not have a systematic, stepwise approach to follow, nor do we have one to suggest, we would argue that our approaches were far from un-stepped. by detailing our various approaches, we hope to demonstrate a transparent view into different, yet thorough, approaches to the literature review process. following the lead of the address of the topic the goal of the literature review that i (katie webber) conducted for my doctoral thesis was to justify the inquiry, authentically and convincingly, into my thesis topic (greenhalgh et al., 2018): relational complexity in nurse-parent relationships within pediatric oncology contexts. in addition to identifying gaps in the literature and demonstrating the need for my research, i wanted the literature review to, in both process and product, “provoke thinking” (smythe & spence, 2012, p. 14). the review of the literature began when i was addressed by my research topic in the early months of graduate school. in hermeneutics, being addressed by a topic is “the feeling of being caught in some aspect of the world’s regard, of being called or summoned” (moules et al., 2015, p. 71). my address of the topic involved being called a friend by the mother of a dying child. therefore, i was particularly interested in understanding what the literature had to say, and what it was not saying, as is the work of aletheia, about friendship within complex nurse-parent relationships. while the work of analyzing and synthesizing the literature did not follow a prescribed structure, the review of the literature was done with a critical intention aimed at deepening understanding about the topic. i consistently referred to the question: what does this article contribute to understanding the topic of relational complexity in pediatric oncology? a secondary question that also guided my process was: what might be missing here that is not being said about the topic? webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 5 i began by gathering available literature, in english, by searching the following databases: cinahl, psychinfo, medline, and socindex. i searched terms related to interpersonal relationships between nurses and parents, which included: relational, relationship, nursing, nurse-parent, nurse-caregiver, complexity, pediatric oncology, professional, ethics, professional boundaries, friendship, and social media. literature from other related disciplines (e.g., psychology, social work, medicine, mental health, intensive care nursing) was included. as there is a paucity of research about the topic of relational complexity in nurse-parent relationships in the nursing literature, broadening the disciplinary scope of the literature review was beneficial. further, broadening the disciplinary scope also offered an opportunity to engage with diverse perspectives (smythe & spence, 2012). as “the horizon of the present cannot be formed without the past” (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 317), i began the discussion in the literature review with a brief overview of the historical and philosophical foundations of nursing as a relational practice. according to smythe and spence (2012), the inclusion of philosophical literature throughout the research, including the literature review, is a hallmark of a hermeneutic approach. this discussion included martin buber’s (1923/1970) work on the i-thou relationship, emmanual levinas’ work on face-to-face encounters (bergo, 2006/2019), and gadamer’s (1960/2004) distinguishment of the three ways in which one relates to the other, or the thou. to situate the conversation about relational complexity within nursing practice, hildegard peplau’s (1952/1991) work on interpersonal relations in nursing was also included. i then moved into a discussion of the relevant literature that related to complexity within care provider-care receiver relationships. a prominent theme in gadamer’s work is tension, which is evident even in the title of his (1960/2004) seminal work, truth and method. as i engaged with the literature, it became clear that there is significant tension within aspects of nurse-parent relationships that contribute to their complexity. tensions surfaced about language (i.e., what to call relational complexity in nurse-parent relationships), communication (e.g., self-disclosure, social media), professional boundaries (i.e., what constitutes a boundary crossing versus a boundary violation), and conflict (i.e., how to navigate differences in nurse-parent relationships). i closed the literature review with a discussion about tension. despite being uncomfortable, and perhaps even stressful at times, tension may also offer opportunities to deepen understanding. the latin root word for tension is tendere, which means “to be stretched” (merriam-webster, n.d.). when something is stretched it becomes thinner, more vulnerable, and more malleable, revealing gaps in understanding and provoking ideas that may not have been as apparent without having been exposed. the aim of my literature review was to be attuned to uncovering what needed to be said (smythe & spence, 2012) about relational complexity in nurse-parent relationships. identifying these tensions was necessary to expand my horizon of understanding about the topic, and guided and provoked my thinking for the next phase of the research–data collection. expanding the vantage point to situate my literature review in hermeneutic philosophy, i (sandip dhaliwal) took up the notion of the fusion of horizons as a guide. gadamer (1960/2004) described a horizon as a “range webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 6 of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point” (p. 313). my vantage point, as an oncology nurse and doctoral student researcher, undoubtedly affected my engagement with literature scaffolding my topic of inquiry, which is aimed at understanding the complexity of family dynamics between emerging adults experiencing blood cancer and their parents and siblings. for gadamer (1960/2004), the concept of the horizon expresses the superior breadth of vision that the person who is trying to understand must have. to acquire a horizon means that one learns to look beyond what is close at hand– not in order to look away from it but to see it better, within a larger whole and in truer proportion (p. 316). accordingly, i started my literature review with the intention to expand my range of vision beyond that of my address of the topic and nursing experience, in hopes that i can view it in truer proportion. however, i struggled to know how to begin to engage with the existing scholarly literature and turned to hermeneutic philosophy for direction. gadamer (1976/2004) articulated that the difference between methodological sterility and genuine understanding is “the capacity to see what is questionable in the subject matter and to formulate questions that question the subject matter further” (p. xi). thus, i approached my literature review with a focus on interpretation, careful discernment of what might be important, and a dialogue of question and answer to open new possibilities for understanding. to help make this process tangible, i will offer examples of three leading questions that guided my literature review. for each question, i developed a search strategy to obtain relevant scholarly literature. to start, the question that i felt i needed to answer to understand my topic better was: what makes emerging adulthood unique? through exploring developmental psychology literature, i learned that the focus of this life stage is best understood not as what it is, but as what it affords young people, through exploration, experimentation, reorganization of relationships, and selfdiscovery (nelson, 2021). however, given the focus on self and future, a further question was raised for me: how, then, does emerging adulthood affect familial relationships and how do emerging adults make sense of these relationships? the answer to this question was complex, due to societal and cultural contexts influencing emerging adults’ relational needs. the initial literature i found was grounded in western contexts that focus on individuation during emerging adulthood. having realized the importance of exploring what self-discovery looks like in familial or community-orientated contexts, i then actively sought out literature outside of western contexts. lastly, i explored the question: how does a diagnosis of blood cancer add to the existing complexity of emerging adulthood and family-of-origin relationships? the literature i found that responded to this question led me closer to what is known, and unknown, about my topic of inquiry. questioning allowed for my taken-for-granted assumptions to surface, as i often needed to revisit questions that i had already asked with a new outlook from subsequent literature i found. for example, once i understood the developmental psychology of emerging adulthood, i realized the importance of neurodevelopmental theory, which informs the futureorientated thinking and the relationship choices of emerging adults. this neurodevelopmental groundwork became important in my work to understand the disruption that a diagnosis of cancer serves to an emerging adults’ imagined future that is independent of their familial unit. webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 7 evidently, a difficulty that arises with this dialogical nature of conducting a literature review is knowing when to stop searching for new literature. for me, this occurred when my search was no longer bringing up new knowledge, and i felt that i had fulsome answers to my questions at that point in time. my goal was not to accumulate a treasure chest of facts entailing every study ever done, but to start forming the horizon of the topic. the dialogical process of question and answer informed a new vantage point from which i understood my topic anew, with more depth, complexity, and fullness. as a doctoral student moving towards data collection, i recognize this vantage point informs my preunderstandings, or what gadamer (1960/2004) referred to as prejudices, which will serve to shape my future engagement with participants, data collection, and data analysis. furthermore, as gadamer (1970/2007), drawing on aristotle, stated “what we expect depends on how much insight we have into the context” (p. 93). the context that i established through my literature review will allow me to go beyond the bounds of the taken-forgranted discourse and understanding of my topic in healthcare lifeworlds. research interviewing will allow for a fusion of horizons. that is not a literal “fusion” of two horizons into one, or reaching a consensus, but expanding understanding of the topic so it can be understood differently. a foundation for understanding differently my (katherine wong) thesis topic explores the experiences of children who are dying, or may die, due to serious illness through their artistic forms of expression. my interest in children’s experiences of having a serious illness developed over 10 years of clinical practice as a registered nurse in pediatric hospice and palliative care. research and practice in pediatric palliative care are heavily informed by adult perspectives, parents or healthcare providers, of what children with serious illness experience (ghirotto et al., 2008; rahimzadeh et al., 2015). examples of research that included children with serious illness as participants were virtually absent, with few exceptions (e.g., bluebond-langner, 1978; sourkes, 1995). i began to question if the evidence-based nursing care that i had been delivering for the entirety of my career was potentially misinformed by implicit beliefs about children and their capacity for understanding complex topics and experiences. as i came to this topic with nearly a decade of experience, i felt that my practical knowledge and insight into children’s experiences of serious illness, which i had developed through conversing with children in my care, would be valuable in the research process. as i was aiming to study a topic in an area where i had practical expertise, i approached my literature review with the hermeneutic concept of prejudice in mind. gadamer (1960/2004) avoided the commonly understood negative connotations of prejudice by defining it as simply the preunderstanding that informs what we understand, which is neither negative nor positive. prejudices provide one with the foundation for understanding but are subject to revision when we are presented with a new way of thinking about a topic (gadamer, 1970/2007). my prejudices, informed by my practical experience, provided me with a unique insight into the topic of children’s experiences of serious illness from the standpoint of an adult caregiver. recognizing that the literature was lacking children’s voices, but having some insight into what children with serious illness may experience, i began to explore how i might conduct research with children in a way that positioned children as the experts in their own illness experiences. webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 8 liben et al. (2014) identified several research barriers to including children with serious illnesses as participants, such as communication difficulties, children’s understanding of death and dying, and the perception of vulnerability in children resulting in a reluctance to subject them to research during their illness experience. however, in my practice, i often noted that children knew more about their illness and imminent death than many adults realized. our palliative care team often uses art to help children express themselves, usually in the form of art therapy, which allows children who have difficulties communicating verbally to make themselves understood in profound ways. i wondered if using art during data collection might aid in communication or establishing a shared understanding between the participant and researcher. as my research addresses a significant gap in the literature, my literature review encompassed several related topics, rather than keywords, that would further establish my foundation for research. these topics included: adult palliative care, pediatric palliative care origins, child development theory, children’s understanding of death, art therapy, and arts-based research. neighbouring topics added depth to my inquiry and helped to explain why the research question had to be asked in the first place. i began by exploring what is known about children’s understanding of death, with a critical eye to how those theories were established. i then sought to address some of the identified developmental hurdles of conducting research in pediatric palliative care with children. next, i searched for literature on communicating with children in a research interview, including methods that used arts-based research to elicit the perspectives of children. these studies helped to inform how i might conduct research with children, rather than on them, and included multidisciplinary approaches to research with children in social work, childhood anthropology, education, nursing and healthcare research, and psychology. finally, i needed to establish what philosophical hermeneutics offers in addition to what arts-based research can achieve. i often noted that arts-based research with children lets the art speak for itself, rather than using their art as a provocation for interpretation. hermeneutical aesthetics, as described by gadamer (1986) and expanded on by contemporary hermeneutic philosophers, such as professors nicholas davey, theodore george, and james risser, provided the philosophical foundation for the interpretation of art and the claim that art “can help to make visible aspects of our life in common” (george, 2020, p. 150). the hermeneutic concept of prejudice served as an important guide to building a foundation to understand differently, allowing me to utilize my expertise while remaining open to the topic and what would be revealed to me during the literature review. evaluating the quality of research studies for inclusion each of the authors were asked during their candidacy exams to describe how they evaluated the quality of the research that was included in their literature reviews. the difficulty of describing how one evaluates the quality of literature worthy of inclusion is, in part, because neither gadamer nor ricouer applied their philosophy to healthcare research. however, rather than this absence of direction bringing researchers to a standstill, we suggest that it is an opportunity for play, in the hermeneutic sense. though gadamer articulated his notion of play in relation to the ontology of the work of art (gadamer, 1960/2004), we would suggest that it can also be applied to reviewing literature for webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 9 research. to elaborate, the purpose of a literature review is not to copy and paste subject-matter into a cohesive written whole, but rather to allow the subject-matter, or what is at play between the literature and the researchers, to emerge. for example, in their literature review, greenhalgh et al. (2017) used the guiding question: “is this paper likely to add meaning to our emerging overview of the field?” similarly, both dhaliwal and webber mentioned the use of questions to facilitate a dialogue with the literature on their topics, exemplifying the back-and-forth character of play to expand their horizon of understanding. thus, the meaning-value of literature, and thoroughness of a literature review, is not attributed to a detached examination of research studies that a search engine brings up. rather, reviewing the literature hermeneutically involves tactful discernment, to generate a more complex picture of the topic that is situated in healthcare contexts. thus, play provides flexibility, and as mccaffrey et al. (2022) stated, a “plurality of possibilities, influenced by practice context and project goals, without striving to impose any one formula” (p. 8). however, this does not free researchers from the responsibility to conduct a good literature review. mccaffrey et al. (2022) articulated that the common elements that make good hermeneutic research include participatory conversations, reflective spaces, paying attention to alterity, and close-up views of the subject matter. we offer that these elements could also be applied to the process of conducting thorough and rigorous literature reviews conducted hermeneutically. participatory conversations and reflective spaces encompass an exchange of perspectives and juxtaposition of differing opinions within the field (mccaffrey et al., 2022). this sometimes requires consultation and dialogue with experts, such as supervisors and supervisory committees, about topic areas relating to the research. it might also require exploring literature from disciplines outside of one’s own. paying attention to alterity includes special attention to points of differences at different levels of influence (mccaffrey et al., 2022). for example, to better understand emerging adulthood, dhaliwal explored culturally diverse experiences of emerging adults that challenged western contexts of developmental theory. the point of difference between western culture, which focuses on independence of individuals, and family-orientated cultures, which allows for interdependence of individuals, became a source of new understanding. when emerging adults are expected to individuate from their family of origin in the process of self-discovery, tension can arise in the context of a diagnosis of cancer when parents or siblings may necessarily have a more involved role. emerging adulthood theory contextualized outside of western culture allows for better understanding of emerging adults’ simultaneous desire for the presence of parents and siblings and control over their own lives in the context of a cancer diagnosis. lastly, close-up views of the subject matter include focused and fine-detailed descriptions of literature that may offer points of difference or new ideas (mccaffrey et al., 2022). in hermeneutics, non-traditional literature, such as philosophy, religious works, books, etc. can be utilized to provide a close-up view of complex phenomena. for example, as a way of understanding the philosophical and historical contributions to how nurse-parent relationships are understood within healthcare, in her literature review, webber offered a discussion about one’s relation to an other. similarly, wong focused on the usefulness of art therapy in understanding children’s perspectives of their health to make a case for using artistic expression to understand children’s own experiences of life limiting illness in research contexts. webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 10 when ascertaining the quality of literature and determining what literature to include in a review, we suggest asking questions such as: does this help establish context for the topic? does this help the researchers, or the readers, understand something new or a different perspective? does this help provoke thinking differently? these questions, rooted in expanding the horizon of understanding and, at times, challenging prejudices, can help incorporate elements of a good literature review. discerning what literature to include in a review also requires, in the spirit of aletheia, knowing when to conceal something, not so it is obscured, but so something else can be unconcealed. in other words, it requires knowing when to exclude literature that might be redundant so that novel, or more expansive, subject matter can be explored in a close-up view. an example we found useful in actualizing this idea is mccaffrey’s (2012) doctoral dissertation. in his literature review, mccaffrey introduced zen buddhist sources and ideas that were widely disseminated and applied in western societies since the 1960s and worked out their connection to nursing. particularly, he discussed the notion of interconnection as shared between the buddhist tradition and nursing theories on interrelationship. mccaffrey’s close-up view on buddhist concepts provided the context for his data analysis and allowed for a generative understanding of relational care in mental health contexts beyond what knowledge already existed about this topic. rigour and validity postpositivist appreciation for procedure has resulted in methods for literature reviews that are systematic and replicable, aiming to identify gaps in knowledge and critically appraise literature for inclusion. such an approach to literature in hermeneutic research would be a significant departure from hermeneutics. hermeneutics deemphasizes the importance of method and procedure as the cornerstones of knowledge generation (gadamer, 1960/2004), favouring different concepts (e.g., the address of the topic, fusion of horizons, or prejudice) that are relevant to conducting literature reviews and hermeneutic research in a manner that is consistent with its philosophical underpinnings. gadamer (1960/2004) was adamant that understanding occurs through language–in conversation with another person, with a work of art, or with a text. if understanding is realized through language, then all understanding is an act of interpretation (zimmerman, 2015). further, gadamer (1960/2004) maintained that “understanding and interpretation are indissolubly bound together” (p. 400). interpretation, however, is more than something that humans do; humans are interpretive beings (gadamer, 1970/2007; zimmerman. 2015), and the practice of interpretation extends to literature reviews. interpretation is present in hermeneutic research from the formation of the research question to data analysis, and the interpretations of research consumers (moules et al., 2015). this also means that replication in literature reviews conducted hermeneutically will likely be impossible, as the reviewer is interpreting the included texts within their own horizons, prejudices, and questions in mind. as caputo (2018) stated, “some interpretations are better than others” (p. 13, italics in original). it is important to recognize that the researcher’s interpretations of literature reviewed for hermeneutic research require rigourous development and justification. the examples of the literature review processes that have been presented in this paper reflect a diversity of approaches, concepts, and considerations for the topics we are studying. further, to demonstrate rigour in our work, each of us detailed our literature review process. webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 11 we suggest that detailing the process of the literature review is important, as it provides context for the research and explains choices and discernments made, while also demonstrating the fit of hermeneutics to respond to the chosen research topic. accordingly, we would like to offer that literature reviews conducted hermeneutically need to be traceable, rather than replicable or beholden to procedure. trace, in its 14th century etymological roots, can mean to “follow a course” or “make an outline,” or to “look for,” “follow,” or “pursue” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). reviews where actions and decisions are traceable can be defended and justified to demonstrate rigour, perhaps similar to an audit trail in qualitative analysis, while remaining true to the philosophical tenets of hermeneutics. we do not seek to provide a new method for conducting literature reviews hermeneutically, however, we do wish to highlight the importance of maintaining a thoughtful, traceable process during literature reviews that demonstrates accountability, integrity, and rigour on the part of hermeneutic researchers. the absence of procedure or method underscores the importance of philosophical adherence to establish rigour. applying hermeneutic philosophy to the literature review process enables researchers to explore what is currently understood of the topic, with critical attention that is aimed at understanding what is known, unknown, overlooked, and under acknowledged. researchers can then know their way around a topic, in its postulations and complexities, to conduct research that helps to understand the topic in new ways. adhering to hermeneutic concepts throughout the literature review process maintains the openness of one who is in dialogue with the text, willing to consider what the text is telling them, and noticing that which is questionable in the literature (gadamer, 1986; moules et al., 2015). recognizing that topics come already saturated, already lived out, and already interpreted (moules, 2002; moules et al., 2015), a rigourous review will not result in detailing everything that is currently known about a topic. rather, it is up to the researchers to discern if the literature reviewed is relevant to the topic of inquiry, to justify those decisions, and provide an explanation of what was done. importantly, the review should provide the researchers with a solid foundation for understanding the topic differently, leading into data collection and analysis. a well-established background of the topic will provide the basis for new interpretations, reinterpretations, and recognition of difference or unfamiliarity during the data collection and analysis phases of the research. angen (2000) suggested that the substance of the inquiry, or the complexity of the topic, is important for the evaluation of interpretive research, which would extend to literature reviews that are conducted hermeneutically. kvale (1995) suggested that external measures of credibility and rigour (i.e., established methods for certain types of literature reviews) are secondary to well-crafted research, where the results or collected literature are convincing and powerful by their own standing, thus carrying validation with them. we would offer that a rigorous literature review, which is conducted hermeneutically, is crafted in such a way that does justice to the complexity of the phenomenon, and includes its history, the researchers’ own understanding of the topic, a critical eye to any taken-for-granted contemporary views of the topic, and an invitation for further inquiry. in hermeneutic research, including literature reviews, there is an element of practical wisdom and discernment that develops with experience, also known as phronesis (gadamer, 1970/2007; moules et al., 2015). as moules et al. (2015) stated, “when something is not guided by a strict methodological procedure, its strength and credibility lies in good scholarly judgement, in being citatious, and accountable” (p. 179). returning to our suggestion that literature reviews conducted hermeneutically should aim to be traceable, we offer webber, dhaliwal, & wong journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 5 12 that this traceability serves to demonstrate the strength of the researchers and accountability of the researchers to the topic. conclusion conducting a literature review hermeneutically requires the active participation of researchers, thus no two literature reviews will follow an identical process. however, the absence of a standardized method does not free hermeneutic researchers of a sound, rigorous, and traceable literature review process. hermeneutic researchers are “guided by, and tethered to, the topics [they] are investigating and, because different topics call for different approaches, the research may show as methodologically different for different studies” (moules et al., 2015, p. 4). while some might argue that this could be difficult to accept, particularly within academic contexts where strict methodological procedures are highly valued, we would suggest that different approaches to literature reviews conducted hermeneutically reflect attention to the topic. further, we also appreciate gadamer’s (1970/2007) perspective that the mastery of procedure does not necessarily guarantee that a researcher will produce anything new. accordingly, we have found that using different approaches to literature reviews offer opportunities for new perspectives and understanding about topics to be uncovered. if there is any strictness involved in the approach to conducting literature reviews hermeneutically, we offer that it is a strict adherence to ensuring that the topic has a chance to speak. to do so, researchers should aim to engage with the philosophical foundations of hermeneutics. as demonstrated in this paper, this may involve being attentive to the address of the topic, engaging with the fusion of horizons at play, and responding to the prejudices inherent within the topic. literature reviews conducted hermeneutically are expansive–moving beyond the limitations of exact procedure to allow for different understandings about the topic to be heard. acknowledgements we extend our sincere gratitude to our supervisor, dr. nancy j. moules, for her continued support in developing our understanding of hermeneutic philosophy and her encouragement to publish about conducting hermeneutic research. we would also like to acknowledge the financial support that each of the authors receive from the social sciences and humanities council of canada. references angen, m.j. 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(2015). hermeneutics: a very short introduction. oxford university press. corresponding author: joan m humphries, rn phd nursing, university of victoria email: jmhumphr@uvic.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 august 3, 2023 ©the author(s) 2023 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2023i2023.77836 the pull of the stars: reflections on perinatal nursing from pandemic (1918) to pandemic (2019) joan humphries & lenora marcellus abstract global pandemics have been increasing in frequency over the past several decades, with infectious diseases constituting the third leading cause of death worldwide. emma donoghue, in her novel the pull of the stars, tells the story of nurse julia power, working in an irish maternity ward at the height of the 1918 influenza pandemic. during a period of three days, she is responsible for caring for expectant women with influenza who are quarantined together. in this paper, we draw on themes from this novel, employing heideggerian and gadamerian hermeneutic tenets as a central approach for analysis and interpretation. the perinatal experience for those described in the novel, as well as a century of experience for women and nurses, underscore the profile of the perinatal realm, and its implied meaning for dasein. we describe experiences of maternity care as described in the canadian nurse journal (1905 to 2019), which contribute to a context of both evolving and unchanging conditions. we identify themes relating to practices of infection control, privacy, dignity, and holistic care and integrate these ideas in the discussion. the historical and contemporary ethical and practice tensions bear consideration for emerging and future impacts from the covid-19 pandemic on nurses, families, and perinatal nursing practice. keywords pandemic, nursing, childbirth, maternity, perinatal when drawn into a piece of literature, the immersive experience of becoming “transported” can occur for the reader – across geography, across experience, and across time. for two perinatal humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 2 nurses (authors humphries and marcellus), the experience of reading emma donoghue’s 2020 novel the pull of the stars had the effect of transporting us into 1918 ireland. we found ourselves catapulted into a paradoxical journey of familiarity/ revelation, as we contemplated the sameness/divergence of maternity care during the 1918 influenza pandemic, and maternity care during the 2019 covid-19 pandemic. donoghue tells the story of nurse julia power, working in an irish maternity ward at the height of the 1918 influenza pandemic. during a period of three days, she is responsible for caring for expectant women1 with influenza who are quarantined together. pre-understandings in donoghue’s (2020) novel, the lives of the birthing women and their infants are very much at risk. the bravery and heartbreak of the individuals that she depicts in her writing invites broader understandings of the experience of giving birth, and in particular, giving birth during a pandemic. her work also inspires a cascade of scrutiny about perinatal practice then and now. the interweaving of sources, ideas, interpretations, and reflections of our analysis constitute what jardine (2012) describes as “crisscrossing.” the crisscross for us as authors fuses together as an “altogether” sort of awareness, combining the parts and the whole of our ruminations. an historical vision of perinatal nursing practice emerges, across the time span of two pandemics, with implications that extend beyond the incursive intrusion of large-scale societal disruptions such as pandemics into the everyday experience of birthing. dialogical rigor underpins hermeneutic reading (moules et al., 2015), as a way to “keep the conversation going” (p. 68). as marshall (2004) describes, the task of hermeneutics is entering into dialogue, involving an interplay with the text, encompassing question and answer. we access the texts of varietal resources to inform our interpretations. in addition to accessing the novel, for example, we extract and interact with literature that is pertinent to maternity care from the canadian nurse journal, which is a national professional nursing journal with which canadian nurses are familiar. the journal serves to acta as a national and global voice for almost half a million nurses across the country. the scholarship of second author marcellus (2018) that evolved from examining historic approaches to maternity care identifies textual markers and major patterns in canadian maternal–infant health and nursing practice, from 1905 when the inaugural issue was printed, through to the end of 2015. the excerpts we choose are examples of contributions that stand out as relevant to this discussion. in addition to the canadian nurse journal, we interact with other literature, inviting social, cultural, political, and structural synthesis that exposes how nurses have practiced with childbearing families over the past century. the title of the novel, the pull of the stars, is intriguing, but it is not until well into the novel that a fusion of impressions is revealed, situating the meaning of the title in an “aha” kind of moment for the reader. the question – the address – of revealing and concealing, coming and going, present and absent is the work of hermeneutics (moules et al. 2015, p. 23). we are pressed to enter into the interpretation of a century of perinatal care, guided by various texts. an original conception of the temporal nature of dasein, our existence and being-in-the-world, is thus exposed, urging entry into a unique hermeneutic address. in this discussion, the meaning of the humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 3 title unfolds in what we experienced as a transformative experience into that distinct moment of understanding. we are thrown is it possible that, in the reading of this novel, we are thrown into nursing settings of our previous perinatal careers? in many ways, it seems so, but the inevitable contradictions of the time and place represented in the pull of the stars also shape what we bring to this moment of inquiry. in heideggerian terms, the dimension of a global pandemic resonates strongly too, for there are many parallels to be drawn about our “thrown-ness.” for many of us, the context of a global pandemic generates a profound new understanding relating to the world into which we are and have always been “thrown.” indeed, the characters in the novel live and move through their worlds – their experiences – with many of the difficulties and joys of human life we all lived during the recent pandemic. these immersive experiences are made visible in the reading. our shared experiences of perinatal care and living through the current pandemic allows the two worlds theirs and ours – to conjoin with unexpected familiarity, seemingly allowing dasein to situate itself in 1918 dublin. many forces touch, it seems, and create the impetus to both decipher and unify understanding. lebenswelt (lifeworld) acknowledging the grounding of the “lifeworld” or lebenswelt permeates our analysis, and we contemplate our “unthinking” immersion into the perinatal experience, garnered by decades of practice, and tempered with knowledge of the everyday experience of perinatal nursing. our being-in the-world, in fact, inhabits an inextricable link to the perinatal world, and a connection with the everyday experience of birthing. the authors each author (humphries and marcellus) occupies a unique lifeworld but share common understandings of what it has meant to practice perinatal nursing during a time of evolution and change for practice, and societal changes for women. our positioning as new graduate nurses in the 1970s and early 1980s offers a unique perspective of historical western practices, and what was involved in the shift towards the person/woman/family-centered model of birthing that is held up as ideal practice. we reflect on the axis of change that marked our entry into the world of maternal/infant nursing, because the vestiges of the practices that shaped the first part of the last century were visible to us as young and novice nurses. over time, we lived the emergence of social, political, and scientific advances that altered practice. ironically, some practices and foci have disappeared, only to re-emerge in circuitous persistence. fusing horizons of understanding with the command of color the centrality of art in hermeneutic interpretation presents itself in this exploration of literature. gadamer (1964) summarizes his reverence for the influence and congruence of art with hermeneutics. he poses that the work of art speaks most directly to us, because it possesses “a mysterious intimacy that grips our entire being, as if there were no distance at all and every humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 4 encounter with it were an encounter with ourselves” (p. 95). as participants in hermeneutic inquiry, we also have the potential to be “gripped” with the altogether experience that can accompany the experience of art. donoghue’s (2020) artful novel has indeed “spoken” to us. we find ourselves transfixed with how precisely and evocatively the author is able to reveal the intricacies and intimacies of nursing practice, as if a nurse herself. three phenomena of interest surface for us in this reflection, each one with relevance for nurses who care for individuals giving birth during a pandemic and beyond that context. the notions of infection control, privacy and dignity, and holistic care emerge as a guiding design for the articulation. other phenomena align, and we describe them where relevant. each of these ideas contribute to the whole of understanding and illuminate understanding of the perinatal experience. these phenomena reflect a mere sampling of rich possibilities with which to unearth the intricacies associated with more than a century of maternity care. in the novel, donoghue (2020) tracks the progression of the influenza virus of 1918 in a person by a color that indicates its progression. the trajectory of that virus is known to affect the individual with a series of colors, which represented the stage of progression. this progression, from red/healthy to black/death informs the foundation of the organizing structure for the novel. we discuss our wonderings and interpretations below, drawing on donoghue’s intriguing colour categorizations. the trajectory of coloration depicted by donoghue renders a sense of resignation for the reader, as the inevitability of further deterioration for the characters depicted in the book unfolds. as readers, we become immersed in a process that may be familiar to those of us who are health care providers, when we bear witnessand perhaps participate in the loss of personhood in the face of illness (gadamer, 1996, p. 81). red well, i said, it starts with a light red you might mistake for a healthy flush. (donoghue 2020, p.48) the canadian nurse journal publications include many examples of how infection control manifests as a priority for individuals during labour and birth (brereton, 1912; cunningham, 1959). similarly, in 19182, nurse powers is aware of the importance of infection control. she explains to a subordinate (bridie) “our only modern defense is asepsis – that means keeping germs from getting into patients. so now do you see how cleaning one’s hands thoroughly could save a life?” (donoghue, 2020 p. 50). throughout the century many procedures have been developed, with the intention of infection prevention and control, positioning birth as fraught with risk for infection (marcellus, 2018; mitchinson, 2002). there are reasons for this positioning, given the real need to prevent puerperal sepsis, or “childbed fever” as it was once known. however, it is also possible to interpret an evolution of practice – a reorganizing and upheaval of what was expected (gadamer, 2007) that diverted from observing aseptic practice to a social context that supported paternalistic sensibilities, which pervaded birthing for much of the 20th century (cahill, 2001). brereton (1912), for example, describes the process that begins immediately on admission for a humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 5 woman in the first stage of labour at toronto general hospital. the description includes instructions for an enema, perineal clip, vaginal douche, tub bath and perineal scrub for the laboring woman. all of this was done to prepare the woman for the event of physician examination, which was overwhelmingly represented by males in those times. the recounting of these protocols calls into question the circumstances under which women subject themselves to interventional practice that have the potential to limit personal agency during the highly particular experience of birthing. gadamer (1996) cautions that doctors should “confront the temptation of wanting to play the authority, not only on account of the superior scientific knowledge and medical experience which they do enjoy, but also through the pressure of the patient’s need for their authority” (p. 124). gadamer thereby reflects traditional assumptions of power/helplessness in the health care context. however, other examples emerge of women who voluntarily instigate invasive practices on themselves, citing aesthetic reasons. gadamer (1996) may attribute these practices as exhibiting “genuine freedom” (p. 123), which includes a recognition of the authority of others, but also others’ recognition of one’s own authority. we describe an interesting “full circle” example below. authority and genuine freedom jolly (2017) attributes the accoutrements of pre-delivery cleansing of the perineum as perceiving women’s bodies as “unclean, dysfunctional, and dangerous” (p. 7). however, our best available evidence today centers around a growing awareness of the importance of the microbiome in birth. it appears, in fact, that the many organisms that are present in the birth canal actually facilitate safe transition for the infant and serve as an early inoculation process for the infant’s immune system. therefore, what was cleansed, disinfected, and scrubbed is now known to support, rather than detract from, infant health. in an ironic twist, the social context of asepsis now reverts to concerns about eliminating organisms that reside naturally in the birth canal (dunn et al., 2019). according to jolly (2017), the perineal shave became a flashpoint for exposing dominant social norms about the flawed female body. yet, currently (and somewhat ironically), women often arrive in the birthing unit with a perineal shave they completed prior to admission. researchers are now warning women, among other cautions, about genital burns from waxing, vulvar and vaginal irritation and infection, and the spread of sexually transmitted infections. apparently, there is a full circle of possibilities surrounding authoritative practice in relation to social influences, interactions with science, and freedom. interrogating the enema: this was someone’s birth we turn to further consideration of enemas in labour, and the rationales that accompanied the routine use of enemas, including shortening the duration of labour, reducing the risk of infection and making delivery “cleaner” for doctors and nurses (cuervo, bernal & mendoza, 2006, p.1). the enema is but one example of practice that purported to support the best available evidence at the time. however, how do we account for what appears to be, in retrospect, an assault on women, under the guise of infection control for a process that nature never intended to be “sterile?” the stated desire to preserve the dignity of the mother from contaminating the delivery table with fecal material, as a result of the enema, often resulted paradoxically instead, in humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 6 feelings of humiliation and pain for women and in some cases, precipitate and unnecessarily violent progression in labour. an element of moral distress for the first author (humphries) accompanies this reflection, for indeed, there were expectations for student nurses in the early 1970s to administer enemas to laboring people as described above, along with the described precipitate outcomes. the “flip flopping” of practice can be rationalized as science that has since been dismissed under the guise of new knowledge. however, in the meantime, this practice has blemished someone’s precious experience of birth. kay et al. (2017) surmised that women’s recollections of ritualistic and authoritarian practices in childbirth during the 1970s took on a mantel of “mystery.” according to these authors, the mysteries were taken as a matter of course, and to which women were content to succumb. we understand the historicity of our exploration in two ways. first, as moules et al. (2015) explain, “historicism is the idea that phenomena have to be understood in relation to their own time” (p. 14). the relevance of this understanding is significant, since we are examining historic impressions about perinatal care. we also emphasize that it is not the responsibility of the interpreter to pass moral judgment on past practices. for example, given the evolving sociopolitical, economic, religious, and other influences that informed practice over the past century, including the historic context of higher rates of infant and maternal morbidity and mortality, the sensibilities of the current context may not have meaning. yet, a temptation remains to be horrified and even outraged at the practices that people endured under the guise of medical progress. for example, we consider efforts towards excellent nursing practice that are interrupted unceremoniously, against a setting of sometimes alarming experiences that women endure, while the profession of nursing grapples with how to provide care to birthing individuals (kay et al., 2017; reingold et al., 2020). our understandings evolve with new knowledge, which in some cases, contribute to a sense of public mistrust for this “science” that is said to drive health guidelines (kukura, 2016). for example, smythe (2010) reflects that as a midwife, she is complicit in the paradox of safety, suggesting that “perhaps in being safe, we were sometimes causing harm” (p. 1476). the lived experience, interrupted by science and technology, urges a hermeneutic awareness regarding the limits of bodily objectification (gadamer, 1993). interpreting public health guidelines within donoghue’s (2020) novel, there are frequent “ditties” that interject the narrative, hearkening familiarity with social media campaigns and misinformation that plague current times. in 1918 these rhymes are found on posters which are positioned every few feet in highly populated areas of dublin. some serve to educate, by listing many of the same kinds of public health cautions as have been recently expressed during the pandemic: the public is urged to stay out of public places such as cafes, theatres, cinemas and public houses. see only those persons one needs to see humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 7 refrain from shaking hands, laughing, or chatting closely together if one must kiss, do so through a handkerchief. sprinkle sulphur in the shoes. if in doubt, don’t stir out. (donoghue, 2020, p.170) in the context of covid-19, we contemplate what appears to be an inevitable conflation of public health recommendations for infection control and the politics surrounding individual freedoms (hegland et al., 2022). similarly, in donoghue’s (2020) novel, nurse powers confronts a barrage of influences relating to societal reactions and responses to the influenza pandemic. ironically, in the novel there are references to a public longing for a vaccine to mitigate the devastation of influenza. the context of covid-19 reveals that not all long for a vaccine, a dilemma that shapes much of the significant political discord associated with the pandemic. aletheia (revealing and concealing) in this circumstance presents as an undercurrent of suspicion towards evidence-informed recommendations, and uncovers disillusionment with assumptions of scientific supremacy. brown if the patient gets worse, her cheeks go rather mahogany. (donoghue, 2020, p.48) gadamer (1993) muses about the meaning of health and well-being in the context of hole ousia or “the whole of being.” he asks, “what is well-being if it is not precisely this condition of not noticing, of being unhindered, of being ready for and open to everything?” (p. 73). his words inspire renewed attention to holism, health, and well-being in the perinatal experience. akrich and pasveer (2004) inquire about the role of women’s bodies, and muse about the influence of technology and medical interventions as determinants of how we position the notion of “body” in the childbearing experience. what meanings, then, inform understandings of the body and holism, and represent a unifying ideology for nursing practice? cunningham (1959) notes criticisms that nurses are too apt to provide physical care and are not accepting of a philosophy of providing supportive care. she wonders: “have we oversold ourselves on institutional, mechanized care? in order to make more efficient the care provided in hospitals, have we lost the essence, the heart and soul of that care? i think we have!” (p. 991). the circumstance of a pandemic invites examination of the ways that usual caring practices by nurses have the potential to be subsumed by dictates for distance, isolation, and caution (reingold et al., 2020; wilson et al., 2021). with medical intervention, nursing focus can shift from the recipient of care as someone-in-theworld to a more detached, objective, and ultimately disembodied object of treatment. a robust analysis of embodiment and its meaning to human existence is beyond the scope of this work. however, it is relevant to acknowledge the contributions of phenomenologist merleau-ponty (1908-1961) concerning this topic, and his supposition that it is through the body that humans understand their world – not as a series of isolated sensations, but as sensations in concert with humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 8 one another to inform perceptions of the world (harrison et al., 2019). perceiving a sense of embodiment can be challenged in the context of a complicated pregnancy, whereby holistic visions for new life and fulfilled mothering have the potential to be extinguished with the progression of illness. the onset of “brown” awakens a fusion of meaning– a sinking realization about the trajectory of the illness described. the dialectical interaction (laverty, 2003) infolds between the author and the text. caring for the whole person: beyond the biomedical funny to think the two of them had been one a quarter of an hour ago and now were severed forever. (donoghue, 2020 p. 226) in the context of childbirth, curious and contradictory relationships exist surrounding the notion of holism, and an accompanying exploration of disembodiment. the very act of birthing, in certain contexts, could be interpreted as a human exercise in disembodiment, as the infant that has been “part” of the pregnant woman’s body emerges from the uterus as its own entity. the placenta, representing the nourishing connection between mother and infant, also emerges, and is examined and discarded. as bergum (1989) describes, birthing represents the transformation from woman to mother, and is accompanied by complex and disparate notions of loss and completion. there is much to contemplate about the existential finitude associated with the birthing process, and what it represents in the fullness of dasein. because the banality and everyday-ness of childbirth surrounds us, it can be tempting to overlook or dismiss the profound transitions that occur for people enroute to mothering. surveillance what is it to be-in-the-world of birth that is mediated by technology, and how might that inform understandings of the meaningful presence of things? (heidegger, as cited by kay et al., 2017). any discussion of objectification of the body, in the context of perinatal care, must include the incursive presence of surveillance, and with it, the potential for the loss of personhood (kukura, 2016). in the past century, maternity care has evolved with the forethought that obstetric practice can assume the investigative privilege of surveillance, increasingly through technological means. gadamer (1996) expresses fortuitous concern about the potential for science and technology to evolve from enhancing the natural world to providing an “artificial counterpoint” (p. 6) to nature. the presence of technology in birthing may indeed challenge hole ousia in the current context of maternity care. contextualizing birthing as an occurrence of human experience gives rise to broader understandings of human essence. gadamer (1996) posits that “what is manifest in concrete detail and belongs as such to historical knowledge is of interest not as the particular but as ‘the human’ – though it may always become visible only in particular occurrences (p. 29). according to gadamer (1996) the “inexact knowledge” (p. 28) of the humanities (the geistesswissenshaften) offers dimensions of breadth about humankind. gadamer’s attention to the geistesswissenshaften sustains attention to donoghue’s (2020) literary enterprise, as the reader becomes entangled with the depth of joy and tragedy that shape human experience as humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 9 depicted in the novel. in donoghue’s (2020) rendering, for example, the transitions that accompany the act of birthing elicit a sense of deep poignancy. there is a suggestion of an innate and visceral promise of new life that occurs for women across socio-economic spectrums in this quarantined maternity ward. the women in the novel share the experience of illness and expectancy. in spite of possibilities to achieve well-being in the birthing context, not every woman in the novel overcomes influenza, however, and not every woman takes a new life home with her. below, donoghue depicts nurse power’s reflections in the following description of infant loss that is suffered because of influenza. donoghue (2020) writes: delia garrett coughed as if she were choking on a rock and began to sob. bridie was rubbing the woman’s shoulder, stroking her damp head, murmuring to her: shush, now, shush. it wasn’t protocol, but there was such instinctive gentleness in it, i didn’t say a word. bridie whispered, mrs. garrett, do you want to see your daughter? i stopped in my tracks. i’d been taught to take away a still as soon as possible and encourage the mother to start putting the loss out of her mind. (p. 87) nurse power is caught off guard by the initiative of her uneducated and inexperienced helper, bridie. the authenticity of bridie’s intuitive approach to the loss her “knowing but not knowing” (smythe, 2010, p. 1478) reflects an instinct that defies the evidentiary norms of the time. however, her actions exemplify what we now consider to be a more highly evolved and compassionate approach to perinatal tragedy, and embodies notions of holism in her resolve to unite the stillborn infant with the grieving mother. once again, the sensibilities of today collide with practices of the past, since uniting that dyad in life – and deathis now considered an expectation. the nudge of historicity resonates, urging attention to time and context. attention to evolving sensibilities comprising the lifeworld once again emerge. in the context of the many elaborate prescribed procedures to prepare for birth during the early 20th century, cunningham (1959) writes, “the doctor orders it, the nurse performs it, and the patient endures it” (p. 993). her words signal a paternalistic and medicalized approach to birth, accompanied by limited agency of the nurse and birthing woman. the world of birthing into which women and nurses are thrown indicates a lack of autonomy for either. in some instances, nurses are complicit with unnecessary intervention and procedures that reflected medicalized, reductionist practice, as opposed to advocacy for holistic approaches (corbin, 1950). these interruptions of a path towards well-being may well typify what gadamer described as an “art of great difficulty” (1996, p. 88). donoghue addresses these paradoxical implications when she describes an unexpected elevation of nursing agency for nurse powers. the physician sanctions what we might ascribe as clinical nursing judgment in today’s terms, in the context of analgesia (in this case the analgesia was whiskey) for after-pains (the name for uterine contractions following birth), and a cough. nurse power relays, “i was filled with gratitude; she’d untied my hands” (donoghue, 2020, p. 103). in that transaction, nurse powers is in effect advocating for a higher quality, and safer level of patient care by exercising her elevated agency. by viewing safety in birthing as an interpretive act (smythe, 2010) and interpreting women’s perceptions of emotional safety in the delivery room (nilsson, 2014) there are possibilities to humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 10 contextualize practices and attitudes over time. indeed, the hermeneutic notion of historical tradition acknowledges the influence of history in our current milieu without objectifying history as an irrelevant theoretical abstraction (grondin, 2003). as kay et al. (2017) suggest, there are generational divides regarding what women view as acceptable experience in childbirth, recognizing that narratives of “safety” for women in the 1970’s and 1980’s, are replaced with notions of “choice” in the new millennium. the interpretive act that comprises safe care during childbirth (nilson, 2014; smythe, 2010) also summons paradoxical possibilities for caregivers to cause harm under the guise of safe practice. in many health care settings (including, but not exclusive to maternity settings) there are contradictory safety expectations for nurses to follow doctor’s orders, while simultaneously establishing agency for excellent nursing practice. the horizons for shared visions of safe care struggle in this context to fuse harmoniously. blue in a more severe case, the brown might be followed by lavender in the lips. cheeks and ears and even fingertips can become quite blue as the patient’s starved of air… (donoghue, 2020, p. 48) examining privacy and dignity gadamer (1996, p. 138) emphasizes the significance of attending to the particular situation, and the enlisting the practical wisdom (phronesis) to respond to the situation holistically. these tenets guide the following interpretations of privacy and dignity. the fundamentals of privacy in 1918 bear examination when considering the environment of birthing depicted in the ward under the care of nurse powers, and especially in the progression of illness. patients in that small setting are housed together, separated only by a makeshift curtain or screen. a patient’s deterioration to an anoxic state and beyond is unveiled for all, and often constitutes unavoidable intrusion into another’s tragedy. donoghue’s (2020) depiction conjures the context of privacy, and a sense of indignity, with pointed verisimilitude: mrs. garratt’s passed a comfortable night,’ said sister luke. comfortable! the word made delia garrett cough into the back of her hand. in this pokey cubby on a backbreaking camp bed with people dying left, and right? (p. 20) historicity once again inserts itself into the address. in this instance, understandings that surround views of privacy and dignity unravel in donoghue’s account. the texts of other literature featured in this discussion, leaving us to contemplate the temporal dimensions of the work, and the task of establishing fresh understanding (moules et al, 2015). a lack of privacy and consideration of a woman’s dignity during birthing continue as concerns from a global perspective, more recently framed as obstetrical violence or reproductive injustice (world health organization, 2015). a side-narrative in donoghue’s novel concerns bridey’s upbringing in one of the notorious irish church-sanctioned mother and baby institutions. that narrative exposes the humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 11 shame and violence that took place for women who became pregnant outside of marriage, highlighting the indignity and injustice suffered by unmarried women in the context of birthing. interpretations of birth in the 1970s as being “shrouded in mystery” but allowing the mystery to “take its course” while being “on the conveyer belt of care” (kay et al., 2017, p. 6). these authors bring into view an image wherein women surrender their birthing experience to accommodate systemic expectations. the promise for interpreting such discourses are provocative, involving the address of paternalism, prudery, and misplaced authority over the intimate act of birthing – all the while entangled with narratives of privacy and dignity. the crisscrossing of these various possibilities gives rise to inquiry into the meaning of the historically situated instance, perhaps informing attitudinal sensitivities of the current birthing context. the loss of dignity may look different today, involving a woman’s relationship to the caregiver, if there is a perception of not being understood or taken seriously (nilsson, 2014). black i’ve seen it darken to violet, purple, until they’re quite black in the face. (donoghue, 2020, p. 40) blame, shame, and guilt donoghue (2020) alludes to a societal impulse to assign blame, and addresses the stigmas associated with both succumbing to influenza and caring for someone succumbing to influenza. these societal impulses are recognizable today, creating significant societal binaries where various factions take up health guidelines in confrontational ways. donoghue (2020) infuses the text of her storytelling with the following communique: would they be dead if they stayed in bed? infection culls only the weakest of the herd (p. 257) donoghue (2020) depicts a physician, dr. kathleen lynn (the only character in the book who is based on a historic individual). dr. lynn discusses the notion of blame with nurse powers, and in doing so, provides something of a “gut-punch” for the reader. that is, the inevitability of human powerlessness, the forbearance that persists despite the powerlessness, and the repetitive nature of influenza moves the reader towards what caputo (1987) refers to as an “actuality (which) must be continually produced, brought forth anew again and again” (p. 17). dr. lynn says: we could always blame the stars. i beg your pardon, doctor? that’s what influenza means, she said. influenza delle stelle-the influence of the stars. medieval italians thought the illness proved that the heavens were governing their fates, that people were quite literally star-crossed. i pictured that, the celestial bodies trying to fly us like upside-down kites. or perhaps just yanking on us for their obscure amusement” (donoghue, 2020, p. 147). humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 12 the power of the title, the pull of the stars, is thus exposed. this revelation, in and of itself, lends a certain humility to the perspective of our being-in-the world. when contemplating the persistent mysteries of the universe, it seems that humans accept its influence over existence – our dasein and the infinite implications associated with human being and time. when contemplating the works of heidegger, then, we return repeatedly to the notion of our temporal being as enacted by dasein, and the many influences that encompass existence, in order to present the ultimate hermeneutic opportunity for understanding. we engage in the paradoxical possibilities involved in the hermeneutic address of what darkness could mean alongside a light-filled hope of a new life. these questions, and so many others, permeate the parts and the whole of the inquiry. the fecundity of elizabeth’s case jardine, in his 1992 classic article, refers to the “true fecundity of the instance” (p. 55) that comes into play. jardine also cautions that there should be limits associated with explicating implications of meaning. we believe the following narrative intimates parallels with much of the previous analysis in this work. however, we invite readers to elicit understanding for themselves. the account explores the lived experience of first author (humphries) daughter, who delivered her first infant in july of 2020 in london, england, at the early height of covid-19, when much was not yet known about transmission, health impacts and outcomes, treatment, and prevention: ironically, my daughter described the first three weeks following the birth as a ‘black time,’ prompting me to tell her story, with her permission, since her description aligns with the colourbased trajectories of donoghue’s novel. when i spoke with elizabeth about these black days surrounding her birthing, she discussed many impressions. one of the first memories she shared with me was that during three difficult days of induction, health care providers stood at the doorway and did not enter the room to make physical contact unless absolutely necessary. she said, ‘it wasn’t until i started to scream during my contractions that one of the nurses finally came in and held my hand. for the first time in three days, i actually felt that someone was taking care of me, and that i felt truly looked after.’ because of covid restrictions in the hospital where elizabeth gave birth, her partner, stuart, was not allowed to be with her for much of the prodromal and first stage 3of labour, prompting feelings of isolation and fear during a difficult labour. before her transfer to the labour/delivery unit, however, elizabeth was very aware of the other women in the room, even though she was unable to contain her vocalizations. she imagined the trauma that her screams would elicit for other expectant women on the ante-partum ward. she described that experience as one where she felt alienated, frustrated, and abandoned. in the postpartum period, most of the midwife visits took place over the phone, rather than the usual practice of having the midwife come to the home. the much-needed hands-on breastfeeding support was not available to her. the inability for assessment by a health care professional effectively positioned this new mom and her partner with the responsibility for medically assessing any of the inevitable concerns that arose. humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 13 for my part, as an experienced clinician and researcher of the perinatal experience, a brandnew grandmother, i was desperately trying to glean what was transpiring from thousands of miles away, and offer what i could in the way of guidance and support. the meaning of the pandemic for elizabeth’s nuclear family in canada has meant that we were unable to travel to england to support the new family, and to be with a treasured grandchild and nephew during a very special time in our family history. hermeneutic circling grondin (2003) asks “can the interpretative-the hermeneutic-really be overcome?” (p. 12). his question is thought provoking, for it implies that interpretation occupies a very basic aspect of human approach to truth. in heideggerian terms, it seems that in the fullness of dasein, we are unable to avoid interpreting the facticity into which we are “thrown” in the world-that-is-alreadythere. in other words, the everyday realities of our circumstances will always provide the backdrop for our inevitable interpretations. perinatal nurses will be tasked, for some time, to interpret the long-term effects for new families, many of whom accessed poor levels of support during the birthing experience. important questions surface about the implications of giving birth during pandemic. for those who experienced birth we wonder how the experience will influence parenting and overall maternal well-being – both at the time of birthing and beyond. reingold et al. (2020), for example, suggest that violation of who’s respectful care framework constitutes a violation of human rights. these authors, and others, researched the negative experiences of maternity patients during covid-19. the harmful practices include a loss of person-to-person contact with caregivers in pre-and postnatal contexts, reliance on digital health, restrictions on birth companions, inadequate information about policies (reingold et al., 2020), lack of continuity of care (rudrum, 2021), and the feeling of “doing it alone” (wilson et al., 2021). the research resonates with elizabeth’s experience, the discourse surrounding dignity, and gadamer’s notion of “genuine freedom” (1996, p. 23). gadamer underscores the significance of dasein by equating heidegger’s conception of the hermeneutic circle as derived from its temporality (grondin, 2003). for the millions of women who have given birth during the pandemic, the temporality of understanding is exquisitely highlighted. it seems that a certain universality to understanding-in-language (moules et al., 2015) is also at play, given the significance of donoghue’s text, and the texts of others in our analysis, which offer unending potential for continued interpretation. understanding, in the context of our discussion, unfolds with the interplay that circumnavigates the part and the whole of understanding, and the always-present underpinning of dasein. our interactions are resplendent with expanding understandings of the connectedness of each (moules et al., 2014; gadamer, 1960/2004). for perinatal nurses, the taken-for-granted “knowing” about care has been interrupted by a pandemic. the parts and the whole communicate with fluidity. discussion humphries & marcellus journal of applied hermeneutics 2023 article 6 14 we are moved by the depiction of strength, courage, knowledge and skills of nurse powers as she navigates what is a somewhat typical four-day stretch in her work schedule, albeit a stretch that provokes lasting consequences for her life. we contemplate her strength and courage, and that of those who give birth under her care. we wonder about the name, “nurse powers,” and speculate that the choice of name intimates the potential for profound influence that nurses hold. we muse about the similar and dissimilar aspects of political discourse that shapes both that pandemic and the current one. the questions and wonderings spiral, long after the initial reading. the image of the celestial bodies yanking on us for their obscure amusement interjects, alongside circuitous fascination about historical understandings regarding the influence of the stars, and the predictable and cyclical nature of infectious disease. the power of such an image has implications for the conceptualization of dasein, perhaps elucidating the futile quest for autonomy within one’s existence. as jardine (1992) said, “a ‘good’ interpretation then, is not definitive and final, but is one that keeps open the possibility and the responsibility of returning (authors parenthesis), for the very next instance (author’s parenthesis) might demand of us that we understand anew.” (p.57). jardine thus exposes the ongoing opportunity for further interpretation, creating what caputo (1987, p. 5) described as an “opening,” rather than a resolution. the quest for understanding is underpinned throughout this analysis by acknowledging dasein, with its implied finitude, historical situatedness, and a sense of “being-toward-death” (caputo, 1989, p.199). the projection of the finitude of dasein that we contemplate as a result of donoghue’s work indeed represent a “penetrating glimpse into the radical temporality and angst of human existence” (grondin, 2003, p. 145). the context of a century between pandemics, and the unique experiences that shape the existence of those who occupy that century give pause. from pandemic to pandemic, the contemplation of dasein in the perinatal context is sobering. references akrich, m., & pasveer, b. 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(2015). statement on the prevention and elimination of disrespect and abuse during facility-based child-birth https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/134588/who_rhr_14.23_eng.pdf 1 throughout this article we primarily use the term woman to reflect the language of the times used in both the novel and journal. we acknowledge that definitions and understandings of gender and inclusiveness evolve and vary over time and context. thus, we also integrate inclusive and gender-neutral language as described in the american college of obstetricians and gynecologists policy statement on inclusive language (2022). 2 puerperal fever, or childbed fever, was common prior to the discovery of germ theory. routine handwashing is still not yet a standard of practice globally. 3 prodromal labour is defined as a type of false labour contraction that takes place in the third trimester, with no changes in the cervix yet taking place. the first stage of labour, also called the latent phase of labour, is defined as when the cervix begins to soften and dilate and persistent contractions begin to be experienced. corresponding author: katherine b. stelfox, doctoral candidate faculty of nursing, university of calgary email: katherine.stelfox@ucalgary.ca journal of applied hermeneutics issn: 1927-4416 september 5, 2022 ©the author(s) 2022 doi: 10.11575/jah.v2022i2022.76002 death, dying, and credibility in long-term care: how healthcare aides were the voiceless other during the covid-19 pandemic katherine b. stelfox abstract confronted by an unprecedented number of deaths in long-term care (ltc) during the covid-19 pandemic, society had no choice but to engage in a public discourse about the state of death and dying in ltc, and the staff who were caring for residents: healthcare aides. despite being places where older adults die, death and dying has largely been hidden within ltc homes, serving to complicate and conceal healthcare aides’ experiences at a time when ltc residents were visibly dying. although being the subject of public discourse, healthcare aides remained voiceless during the pandemic, their experiences of caring for dying residents overlooked by the testimony of experts. instead of healthcare aides being invited into a conversation to share their unique knowledge of death and dying in ltc, namely through that of touch and practical wisdom, they experienced a lack of epistemic credibility, having been served a testimonial injustice. keywords healthcare aides, long-term care, death and dying, testimonial injustice, hermeneutic philosophy for the first six months of the covid-19 pandemic, the media was gripped by what was happening inside long-term care (ltc) homes. a continuous news cycle reported climbing death tolls, family members standing outside of loved ones’ windows, and military personnel deployed in their home country. confronted by death and dying on an unprecedented scale, stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 2 society had no choice but to engage in a public discourse about what was going on inside ltc homes, and the ltc staff who were caring for their residents. similar to the way a child rediscovers a dollhouse long since outgrown and tucked away inside a closet, the roof was now being lifted off, the pieces pulled out, and those inside coming under close scrutiny in a shroud of controversy. the reclaiming of an old dollhouse with the potential for something new, yet familiar with childhood memories, is similar to that of aletheia, the greek philosophical understanding of “unconcealment, enlivening, and remembering” (moules, 2015, p. 1). what was known by the public about the state of death and dying in ltc during covid-19 came primarily from the testimony of experts, namely physicians, government officials, and those deemed credible in their opinion on the topic. this narrow selection regarding who was considered to have credibility to speak about ltc excluded the very people who could speak to something true of the experience of caring for residents at that time: healthcare aides. opposing aletheia is lethe, the river of forgetfulness and concealment that runs through the greek underworld of hades, its waters both foreboding and seducing for how we may either resist or welcome what can be hidden from us (moules, 2002; moules, 2015). although the covid-19 pandemic helped us rediscover ltc and consider long-standing quality of care issues, the absence of healthcare aides’ voices from public discourse left us wading in lethe’s waters, having failed to uncover hidden truths about ltc that both complicated and concealed healthcare aides’ experiences and testimony. the hidden truth is, that while there may be a common social knowledge that ltc is a place of death and dying, as was brought to light by the covid-19 pandemic, this remains largely unspoken within ltc homes. thus, to better understand healthcare aides’ voicelessness during covid-19 is to better understand death and dying in the ltc context, as healthcare aides’ villainization in public discourse was directly related to the accelerated rates of death and dying in ltc homes. in this paper, i explore how the ltc context has shaped, concealed, and marginalized healthcare aides’ experiences, and how ltc homes, being places of death and dying, also experience a kind of marginalization and voicelessness within society, making healthcare aides an invisible population in a largely invisible place. hans-georg gadamer (1960/2004) argued that if we are to understand the testimony of the other, we must maintain an openness and vulnerability about us, ready to put our pre-understandings at risk. instead of openness and vulnerability in public discourse or from persons in authority, however, healthcare aides were the recipients of harmful misunderstandings, these misunderstandings or the willful refusal to grant them credibility having served to de-voice and marginalize them as less powerful others (fricker, 2007). i make the claim that healthcare aides have been served what miranda fricker (2007) characterized as a testimonial injustice, having been wronged in their “capacity as a knower” of death and dying, their voices absent from public discourse and their experiences misunderstood, if understood in any way at all (p. 20, emphasis in original). approaching this topic through the lens of testimonial injustice will allow me to better understand what it is about the ltc context that has fueled healthcare aides’ experiences, and the unique kind of knowledge healthcare aides have that has granted them less epistemic credence as knowers of death and dying in ltc. in the first section of this paper, i will explore the historical and social conditionedness of ltc as an institution, or its social epistemology (goldman, 2020), turning to gadamer’s (1960/2004) stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 3 concepts of history and tradition to shed light on the tension that exists between how society understands death and dying in ltc with how it is understood within the institution itself. in the second section of this paper, i will consider the ways healthcare aides have been granted less credence in their understanding of death and dying due to their knowing falling within the remit of a practical knowledge, or one of the senses, namely, touch, and in ways that are socially mediated by the ltc context. to make this connection, i turn to richard kearney’s work on carnal hermeneutics and briefly gadamer’s concept of phronesis. finally, i will bring this topic forward into the context of the covid-19 pandemic, bringing attention to the ways in which healthcare aides were left out of the public discourse about covid-19 in ltc, despite being the subject of much conversation and debate in the media. testimonial injustice, prejudice, and power to understand testimonial injustice, we must first understand epistemic injustice as the “forms of unfair treatment that relate to issues of knowledge, understanding, and participation in communicative practices” (kidd et al., 2017, p. 1). in all its various forms, epistemic injustice “wrongs a knower as a knower” (pohlhaus, 2017, p. 14), in a way that is “harmful but also wrongful, whether because discriminatory or otherwise unfair” (fricker, 2006, p. 97). fricker (2007) argued there are two kinds of epistemic injustice: testimonial and hermeneutical, the distinction between the two hinging on whether language is shared or not. in the case of hermeneutical injustice, there is a “hermeneutical lacuna,” where the absence of shared language places some people at a disadvantage when trying to make sense of their experiences with others (fricker, 2006, p. 98). i argue healthcare aides in ltc already possess the language with which to understand their experiences with death and dying during the covid-19 pandemic, and have instead experienced a kind of voicelessness, their testimony falling outside the realms of meaningful epistemic consideration both within and outside of ltc homes. testimonial injustice, then, is a kind of epistemic discrimination, where those who experience a credibility deficit do so because of the prejudices others have toward their social identity, in ways that cannot be chalked up to innocent misunderstanding (fricker, 2007). in their use of the term prejudice, fricker (2007) considered prejudice to be “ethical poison in the judgment of the hearer” (p. 22), which may resonate with many, as it so concisely conveys the negative meaning of the word. fricker’s use of prejudice to make sense of testimonial injustice is not to be confused with the way gadamer used the term prejudice, however, as “simply that condition in which we at first experience something” (risser, 1997, p. 68). this is not to say that gadamer (1976/2008) implied we are not capable of holding ourselves accountable to our prejudices or exercising sensitivity, having argued, “we welcome just that guest who promises something new” (p. 9), but that we revitalize prejudice as having a positive value when we allow our prejudices to be changed through dialogue with the other (nielsen & utsler, 2023). the kind of prejudice about which fricker is concerned, however, is one that is not open to dialogue, is rife with misunderstandings, and is closed off from what the other has to say (nielsen & utsler, 2023). according to caputo (2018), “events do not take place in mid-air; they happen in institutional settings. there is almost nothing outside institutional contexts” (p. 220).what is of interest in this paper, then, is not how individual social agents may be considered perpetrators of epistemic stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 4 injustice, more themselves “the vehicles of power,” but how the institution of ltc as a social system wields a kind of social power that is held above and over healthcare aides in ways that are deeply structural (foucault, 1972/1977, as cited in fricker, 2007, p. 11). prejudices against healthcare aides’ social identity are not held by one particular agent, but instead are structural operations of power that “create or preserve a given social order” (fricker, 2007, p. 13). we can think of registered nurses and licensed practical nurses (both will be referred to collectively as nurses from this point on), physicians, and healthcare aides as social agents, all operating in an epistemological social hierarchy of sorts that places healthcare aides at the bottom. fricker (2007) argued that the most harmful forms of testimonial injustice are those that stem from systemic social injustices, a person's identity prejudices having followed them throughout different social activities. healthcare aides are a marginalized population both within ltc and broader society, often belonging to ethnic minorities, being predominantly female, and being the lowest paid healthcare workers in alberta (depasquale et al., 2016; duan et al., 2020; estabrooks et al., 2020; lightman et al., 2021; statistics canada, 2021; turcotte & savage, 2020). although healthcare aides experience an intersectionality of social inequalities, experiencing both marginalization and a lack of social support in the community and the ltc context, this paper will focus on how ltc institutions yield a kind of social power that disarms healthcare aides as credible knowers of death and dying, while acknowledging their testimonial injustice as traceable to systemic structural identity prejudices. a social epistemology of death and dying in ltc in order to better understand what was complex and concealed about healthcare aides’ experiences during the covid-19 pandemic, and the ways they experienced a testimonial injustice, i must first explore how ltc as an institution has been concealed and marginalized within society, as well the hiddenness of death and dying within it, or its social epistemology. broadly, social epistemology can be characterized as the ways in which knowledge, beliefs, and judgements are socially constructed and conditioned within communities (fricker et al., 2020). at the 13th annual canadian hermeneutic institute conference, dr. david vessey (personal communication, june 1, 2022) argued that social epistemology is the bridge by which we might connect fricker’s (2007) work on testimonial injustice with that of gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, namely history and tradition, and to whom i extend my deepest gratitude, as well to the other attendees of the conference for the meaningful conversations that took place there. “over the hill to the poor-house i’m trudgin’ my weary way / i, a woman of seventy, and only a trifle gray” (carelton, 1872, line 1). according to gadamer, our very understanding of ltc is one in which history is operative, this understanding only made possible from within the tradition in which we already find ourselves (gadamer, 1960/2004), tradition being “that which is handed over” to us (vessey, 2022, p. 117). as the descendent of 19th and 20th century poor houses and almshouses (charitable institutions), ltc has a long history of filling a space in society that has not been well understood, its purpose handed over to us in ways that are socially reconstructed to fit the needs of society at the time (estabrooks et al., 2020; mah & gallup, 2021). historically in canada, the eldest son in each family was expected to care for their parents as they grew older, and ensure appropriate and suitable living accommodations (estabrooks et al., 2020; mah & gallup, 2021). if not afforded housing by family, older adults were subject to stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 5 elizabethan poor law and sent to live their final years in poor houses, where it was understood they were no longer a person of value in society, being of lower class, and without means to pay for room and board were expected to work until they were too frail or until they died (mah & gallup, 2021). the movement of people into cities during 19th century industrialization resulted in increased numbers of older adults requiring shelter, and government began to problematize these older adults as “destitute, ill, and dependent,” ageing considered an issue of poverty (montigny, 1997, p. 29). as a consequence, older adults were not only sent to live, and die, in poor houses, but insane asylums, and even prisons, as if growing old was a crime to be punished (montigny, 1997). in late 19th century ontario, for example, the rhetoric from institutional administrators, government, and the media at the time suggested institutionalized older adults were mere “decrepid [sic]” and “decaying” beings, destined to die in the streets if not for the institutions forced to take them in (montigny, 1997, p. 29). in its origins, ltc is the latest manifestation of an answer to the ongoing question of the worth older adults have in society, and where people should go to die. in the early 20th century, federal and provincial governments attempted to better support older persons to remain in the community with the introduction of pension payments, assuming that if people were financially prepared, they could avoid being institutionalized (mah & gallup, 2021). as such, ageing was becoming socially understood as an issue that should fall on the shoulders of the individual, and not society as a whole, effectively acquitting the federal government of having to claim responsibility for institutionalized older adults. for families who could afford it, the proliferation of private institutions in the early 20th century were seen as a preferable alternative to the public institutions that were poorly funded and poorly regulated by government (emodi, 1977). ltc homes have since become increasingly privatized in alberta, which is arguably constitutive of canada's liberal welfare regime, and of the way market forces are encouraged to address social welfare issues (béland et al., 2020). despite the advancements that would eventually be made for a universal publicly funded healthcare system in canada, ltc remains outside the canada health act (1985), and without regulation by federal government. ltc not falling under the canada health act has been emblematic of the ways in which society has been conditioned to think of ltc as a place not demanding complex nursing skills, adequate resourcing, safe staffing levels, or the attention of research. near the bottom in the hierarchy of healthcare, ltc is perceived as being a place of little technology, expertise, or curative medicine, stigmatized as simply custodial care for the old and dying. a lack of both federal government regulation and sense of public responsibility toward the care of institutionalized older adults has arguably meant limited funding and consistency of research across canada (canadian healthcare association, 2009). as “traditioned-beings who inherit various prejudices, customs, and practices” (nielsen & utsler, 2023, p. 64), it would seem that we have inherited a social collective knowledge that ltc is a place of little value, yet it continues to fill an essential need in society in the absence of community supports and government-supported home care options (sinha et al., 2019). while ltc is projected to become home for over 600,000 canadians by the year 2031 (deloitte, 2021), most older adults consider ltc a place to avoid at all costs, especially in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic (feil et al., 2021; iciaszczyk et al., 2021), suggesting that many will not consider ltc to be home, even if they end up living and dying there. if residents do not stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 6 consider ltc to be their home, does this mean they consider themselves only house guests? in this case, ltc homes, and subsequently healthcare aides, could be considered the hosts, as older adults who are required to move to ltc give up a sense of power and authority in exchange for hospitality. of dausner’s (2018) account of conditional versus unconditional hospitality, kearney and fitzpatrick (2021) wrote, “many hosts never fully relinquish ‘control’ or ‘power’ over the situation—cautiously keeping guests at a distance, despite letting them into their house” (p. 5). we could, perhaps, think of ltc residents as the recipients of conditional hospitality, where residents are not guaranteed the right to stay, and behaviors considered “poor” would make them unworthy houseguests (kearney & fitzpatrick, 2021). clearly, ltc being a place of exchange of goods and services is unlike the kind of virtuousness inherent in true hospitality, however, i argue this line of thinking brings attention to how residents may feel: like guests in a home they never wanted to stay at in the first place, in a place society, in general, wants to avoid. while the marginalization of the older adult population in society has also contributed to a gap in our understanding of death and dying in ltc, gadamer would argue that modern society has long been inclined to deal with “the very ungraspability of death” by systematically repressing it (gadamer, 1993/1996, p. 63). consequently, ltc as a place of death and dying becomes further marginalized in a society that is socially conditioned to repress death. about the increasing hiddenness of death in society, gadamer (1993/1996) argued that “modern civilization eagerly and enthusiastically seeks to bring this tendency to repression which is rooted in life itself to institutional perfection and so to push the experience of death wholly onto the margins of public life” (p. 65). namely, the ways in which society has been incapable of confronting death, it has become increasingly institutionalized, away from the domestic life of family, and in this institutionalization, becomes but a shadow we are left to wrestle with alone; “we portray death as the robber of life, a phantom cloaked in black that waits in darkness to descend upon its victim. we would like nothing better than to sweep the streets clean of all suggestions of our morality” (smith, 2016, p. 113). no place is this sweeping of death from the streets more apparent than in the institution of ltc, where despite the expectedness of death, it is hidden away from the residents who are both living and dying, as well those who provide them with care. needing to overcome a long history of being a place where people went to die in deplorable conditions, ltc homes have been working to convince people that ltc is, in fact, a place older adults want to be. names of ltc homes such as, golden years long-term care (https://peoplecare.ca/long-term-care/golden-years/), and better living at thompson house (https://mybetterliving.ca/long-term-care/), speak to a focus on quality of life, and very few ltc homes have any mention of palliative care services, or their philosophy towards death and dying. with the increasing privatization of ltc homes in canada, it cannot be overlooked that homes are competing with each other for the business of older adults and their families, the perpetuated culture of quality of life over quality of dying therefore embedded within corporate interests and profit making. one administrator of a ltc facility told cable-williams and wilson (2016) about their concern with presenting the reality of death and dying in marketing ltc to the public: “i can imagine that families wouldn’t be too excited about that – oh yeah, we’re taking dad to die” (p. 7). in an attempt to be brought back from the margins of social life, it would seem ltc homes want to shake off the cloak of death, and with it, the epistemic privilege that should be granted to healthcare aides who are directly caring for those who are dying. https://peoplecare.ca/long-term-care/golden-years/ https://mybetterliving.ca/long-term-care/ stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 7 cable-williams and wilson (2016) also attributed the hiddenness of death and dying in ltc, in part, to the culture within ltc homes, and the commonly held social belief among staff and administrators that ltc is not a place for dying but a place for living. this belief, they argued, manifests itself in practice, for the ways in which palliative care is not often considered until the final few days, or even hours before a resident’s death. palliative care practices are therefore more of a reaction to the unexpected inevitable than a guiding philosophy in ltc institutions. for example, the director of care for a ltc facility told cable-williams and wilson (2016), “people don’t understand long-term care it’s about care and living. it just happens that probably 95% of people do end up taking their last breath here” (p. 6). eager to get away from the stigma of ltc being a place people go to die, healthcare aides may not associate their practice with death and dying or that of palliative care, even feeling it may be disrespectful, ageist, or neglectful to acknowledge the reality of death (cable-williams & wilson, 2016). as a nurse, the culture of ltc being a place for the living and not for the dying is one that i have often experienced myself. walking into the room of a resident deemed palliative by the physician that morning, i could hear the cheynes-stokes breathing, the sound of rapid breaths between moments of silence. upbeat music was drifting in from not far down the hall, the voice of the recreation therapist shouting, “come on everybody, let’s liven this place up!” otherwise, her room was quiet. i pressed a damp cloth to her forehead while i checked her breathing. wishing i could sit with her longer, i squeezed her hand before walking out of the room again, already behind on administering medications and completing paperwork. i walked past the dining hall, the music now louder, and took in the sight of the other residents. all seated in their wheelchairs, they were waving their arms in the air, shaping out the letters y-m-c-a, unaware of the person taking their final breaths just down the hall. the healthcare aides were already busy, assisting more residents into the dining hall or helping others eat their supper, and i knew it would be hours before a healthcare aide would have time to provide care to our palliative resident. it was as if she no longer had a place, her dying an unexpected disruption to the routine of daily care, and beyond the limits of what healthcare aides could feasibly accomplish in an eight-hour shift. what i have shown in this section, however briefly, are some of the ways in which history and tradition has socially shaped the institution of ltc in such a way that it holds a marginalized position within society, the reality of death and dying repressed within it. the barriers healthcare aides face when caring for those who are dying in ltc, such as unsafe staffing levels, heavy workloads, insufficient training and education, and inadequate resourcing (cloutier et al., 2021; giesbrecht et al., 2021; hanson & henderson, 2000; knopp-sihota et al., 2015; mather & bakas, 2002; schell & kayser-jones, 2007; song et al., 2020; touhy et al., 2005; unroe et al., 2015) are tethered to this origin story of ltc, these barriers like moveable beads on a thread that is being woven throughout history, giving us a way to look back to understand the present. to now support my claim that structural inequalities in ltc homes have led to healthcare aides experiencing a testimonial injustice, i inquire into what it is that healthcare aides understand about death and dying, how it is that they understand it, and why this kind of knowledge has been, and still is, perceived as less credible within institutions. stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 8 carnal hermeneutics and phronesis of the wisdom or tact we are granted through our senses, kearney (2015a) wrote, “when we say that someone sensible is someone sensitive: they have ‘the touch,’. … by extension, they have the eye, the ear, the nose. they are attentive, tentative, in touch with things” (p. 16, emphasis in original). the practice of healthcare aides is one that is constitutive of the senses, namely touch; the holding of someone's hand, bathing or feeding them, requires a sensitivity or attentiveness to the body of the other, a kind of sensory know-how or understanding of themselves as embodied interpreters. for kearney (2015a), sensation is interpretation, where one is “constantly reading flesh, interpreting senses, and orienting bodies,” or what he characterized as being the task of carnal hermeneutics (p. 17, emphasis in original). the majority of care that healthcare aides provide to dying residents is of the physical kind, even psychosocial care being largely expressed through physical touch (estabrooks et al., 2015; mccleary et al., 2018; mcclement et al., 2009; thompson & mcclement, 2019). for many older adults in ltc, the march of time has impaired their senses of hearing, sight, smell, and taste, as well they are often afflicted by the challenges associated with cognitive changes that have been found to be exacerbated by sensory impairment, such as dementia and alzheimer’s disease that make engaging in spoken language more difficult (banovic et al., 2018; fischer et al., 2016). touch remains a conduit for healthcare aides as a way of understanding something about residents that otherwise may have remained unintelligible, for “without the sensitivity of touch–bare-skinned and fragile–there would be no resourcefulness of tact” (kearney, 2021, p. 43). many times i have witnessed healthcare aides’ use of touch bringing forth emotion from dying residents that is telling of their well-being: a well-positioned hand on the shoulder of a resident who is dying alone bringing tears of being seen, or brushing a resident’s hair bringing a smile of gratitude. of the kind of understanding that is granted only through touch, kearney (2015a) argued that we mediate the otherness of who it is that we touch, “crossing back and forth between self and strangeness” (p. 20), a back and forth that connects us with the other and a shared sense of what it means to be human in a community with others. although i turn to some of the writing on carnal hermeneutics as a way to explore this kind of understanding i argue healthcare aides have about death and dying, i want to make clear that i am not entering into any kind of hermeneutic wager on the primacy of either sensation or language for epistemological understanding. while kearney (2015b) wanted to rehabilitate carnal hermeneutics from what he argued was “an embrace of language at the expense of body” (p. 100), i avoid this debate, and instead seek what may help strengthen my claim that healthcare aides experience a credibility deficit. the word tact is derived from the latin word tactus, meaning “a touch, handling, sense of touch” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). while i focus on touch as being that of a tactile sense in order to draw attention to the differences in healthcare aides’ practices from that of nurses or physicians, kearney (2021) argued that touch, “precisely as tact, it traverses all the senses” (touch, sight, smell, hearing, and taste) (p. 16). having a sense of sensitivity and sensibility in practice involves a kind of synesthetic communion of all the senses through tact, or as having carnal wisdom (kearney, 2021). for gadamer (1960/2004), tact also involves a kind of distance, where in what is said tactfully, someone also leaves something unsaid, that if expressed, would be tactless. touch also requires this kind of distance; to have a sense of tact, healthcare aides stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 9 have to make judgments about when and how to use touch with their residents, a judgment that cannot be known ahead of time. in nursing practice, moules (2022) argued that “tact truly is an art of special and knowledgeable sensitivity and of being willing to recognize and receive difference, otherness, and sometimes even warnings” (p. 378). for the healthcare aide who practices with tact, they must act with attentiveness and sensitivity, which i argue is largely expressed through their use of touch. not all touch in healthcare aides’ practice is tact, however. kearney (2021) argued that tact is not synonymous with contact, but is instead having a way with others, putting ourselves at risk and in question in order to understand. in other words, “being tactful here means being sensitive in our behavior with others, listening and responding to the other in a responsible way” (kearney, 2021, p. 11). faced with understaffing and highly routinized care, healthcare aides are systematically forced by the institution of ltc to forgo the kind of touch that would require tact and sensitivity, and instead are groomed to be the masters of technical skills that are simply the means to an end for dressing, feeding, and bathing residents. tact takes time, and in the absence of time due to structural barriers, healthcare aides would be pressured by the institution to distance themselves from practicing with tact, instead having to become more mechanical in their delivery of resident care. in this environment, changing someone in bed or feeding someone in a busy dining hall can be reduced to a tactless use of touch that is not responsive to the needs of the other; “so there is touch and touch. and tact knows the difference” (kearney, 2021, p. 11). the kind of knowledge healthcare aides are granted through touch that is tactful is one that arises in the singularity of each case, requiring more of an “experiential knowing-how” than a “knowing that” of residents who are dying (alloa, 2015, p. 200, emphasis in original). this experiential knowing-how is a practical knowledge, where judging the right thing to do cannot be known outside of what is concrete, requiring a sensitivity and flexibility toward a practice that is constantly being made anew (moules et al., 2015). practical knowledge is a kind of practical wisdom, or that of phronesis (gadamer, 1960/2004), and when it comes to touch, a carnal wisdom of tactility (kearney, 2021). in practical wisdom there is also self-understanding, a healthcare aide having to deliberate with themselves on what the right thing to do is in each concrete case, making each new event of understanding met by a changed self in its application (gadamer, 2001). a practice of touch is inherently an ethical practice, kearney (2021) having argued, “tactile sensitivity involves moral sensibility–the combination of both implying tact” (p. 44). the healthcare aide who practices with tact, then, is one who knows such things as empathy, responsiveness, compassion, and trust through their use of touch, a practice i have witnessed often in ltc. at the bedside of a resident who was recently deemed palliative, i stood across from the healthcare aide as i removed the oxygen from the resident as per the physician’s orders. “she is not dying, not yet. feel her feet,” the healthcare aide said to me, lifting up the blanket so could i wrap my hands around the bottom of the resident’s foot. “see, still warm,” they said, then began to gently apply lotion to the resident’s feet, massaging as they did so. having touched the resident to know something about circulation, it was clear this use of touch had warranted an act of reciprocity, the healthcare aide having the moral sensibility to provide stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 10 the resident with comfort in that moment, their practice being that of tact. while one does not obviously see warmth in the way one feels it, i had been struck by the healthcare aide’s likening of “seeing” to that of understanding, and what kearney (2015a) wrote about plato’s consideration of sight as more noble a sense than that of touch: “of all the senses, sight was deemed the most theoretical in that it allowed for the most distance and detachment” (p. 24). the healthcare aide’s use of the word “see” for having knowledge of something is fitting with plato’s articulation of sight as standing the closest to intellect of all the senses. touch, on the other hand, plato considered to be an unmediated sense, furthest from that of intellect, and “helpless before the flux of things,” (kearney, 2015b, p. 103). the perception of touch being that of a lowly sense still carries weight for the ways in which society perceives the testimony of healthcare aides who carry out their work largely through that of touching bodies. in my experiences in ltc, physicians and nurses often only touch the bodies of residents in limited ways, most often done so as a way of informing theoretical or scientific understanding, diagnosing, predicting prognosis, or treating clinically. a nurse in ltc may place a hand on the forehead of a dying resident to sense temperature or provide comfort, or clean a pressure ulcer wound, but it is the healthcare aide who comes into contact with the bodily fluids and excrements of someone who is dying, experiencing the gritty realities of the bodily processes that take place during death. a nurse or physician in ltc must therefore rely on the healthcare aides for the kind of knowledge that comes only from touching and being exposed to the whole body. although the surgeon may touch the whole body, their hands inside bodily cavities and in contact with bodily fluids, their touch would be different than that of the healthcare aides (g. mccaffrey, personal communication, june 23, 2022), often mediated by highly technical equipment, and for the purpose of treating and informing theoretical or scientific knowledge (l. venturato, personal communication, june 29, 2022). because the surgeon possesses the language of science and knowledge that comes from specialized and technical training, they are free from any negative stigma associated with their use of touch, esteemed in society as credible knowers of their patients and placed in positions of authority. as is the medical examiner, who, despite touching the bodies of dead people, something considered to be taboo in many cultures, is granted epistemic privilege due to their ability to explain bodily processes and causes of death scientifically. conversely, healthcare aides’ use of touch to know and understand ltc residents gives them a credibility deficit, and no position of authority, suggesting that it is not the touching of bodies that is stigmatized, but how bodies are being touched, what is being touched, and who is doing the touching. going back to the historical roots of nursing, touching the bodies of those who are sick and dying has long been problematic for women who were first looking for work outside of their father or husband’s home. where nursing was considered to be “impure” or “dirty” work, women were seen as having a kind of moral and physical contamination in their having to touch sickness, disease, poverty, and in the nineteenth century, largely that of men’s bodies (gordon & nelson, 2006). to overcome this social stigma associated with touching strangers’ bodies, and an overt sexualization that arguably still exists today, nurses sought the protection afforded by religion, and the ways in which nursing could be considered virtuous work, or a kind of calling laden with altruistic values (gordon & nelson, 2006). perhaps responding to what the physician’s practice was not, nursing practice was tightly interwoven with feminine ideals or expectations of caring, nurses serving to soften the hand of the physician, and to care for the patient as a whole in ways stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 11 beyond medical diagnosis and treatment. working under the physician who was considered to be the intellectual authority on all matters of the patient, nurses who wanted to avoid being a threat to the physician's knowledge domain had to stay in their own epistemic lane, surrendering any claim to being that of credible knowers of human anatomy or bodily processes (gordon & nelson, 2006). instead, they had to claim their unique knowledge solely on the grounds of moral authority (gordon & nelson, 2006). while touch has since been pulled from its relegation as the most inferior of the senses philosophically, notably beginning with aristotle and his articulation of the primacy of touch for interpretation and a sense of wisdom, tact, and moral sensibility (kearney, 2015a), touch is still perceived as a less credible way of knowing for nurses in medical institutions, and even more so for healthcare aides in ltc. rather, theoretical knowledge, that which is distanced from practice, is often perceived to be at the top of an epistemological hierarchy of sorts in healthcare, denigrating practical ways of knowing deemed subjective to the bottom, especially that of touch (risjord, 2006). in recent years, nurses have been fighting for the epistemic credence that comes from scientific nursing knowledge, the developments of evidence-based practice and high-level nursing theory being clear indicators of this pursuit (risjord, 2006). although these developments have been positive for the profession in many ways, nurses may end up relinquishing their claim to touch as being a unique kind of nursing knowledge, or as having a sense of tact, having to operate within institutions that favor quantifiable and performance-driven outcomes. whereas nursing practice is becoming increasingly distanced from having to touch residents, healthcare aides’ practice has been socially constructed within institutions as being only that of objective skills, or techne, reducing healthcare aides’ knowledge to that which is learned, repeatable, and does not require moral knowledge (gadamer, 1960/2004), or carnal wisdom (kearney, 2021). as a consequence of what i have discussed so far, healthcare aides, whose knowledge is largely constituted by that of institutionally mediated touch and practical knowing, are the ones left most significantly navigating the credibility deficit that has plagued nursing practice since its origins. as a nurse in ltc, i have experienced blatant instances of ltc being structured in ways that are epistemically unjust, and observed, as well participated in, practices and social norms that prevent healthcare aides from being given the epistemic credence in which to offer valuable knowledge about residents who are dying. one such instance took place during the first care conference i attended in ltc, where my role as the registered nurse was to provide the care team and family members with an update on the status of a resident who was on the verge of death. having only met the resident that morning, i read aloud a summary of the resident’s documented care. what i shared however, was not what the family, or what the other members of the care team, for that matter, really wanted to know. “do you know how my father’s spirits are in the morning before i arrive?” i did not know. “do you know if the resident seemed more nauseated this morning than yesterday morning?” i did not know. “do you know the time it takes for my dad to fall asleep each night after i leave to go home?” i did not know. stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 12 what the care team and the family wanted to know was only what the healthcare aides intimately knew, and what was not captured in the reports received by the nurses, or in scientific or medical knowledge. in a care conference that included a pharmacist, nutritionist, physician, rehabilitation therapist, social worker, and registered nurse, the only staff member who knew the resident better than all the rest had not been invited. the next time i crossed paths with the facility care manager i asked why healthcare aides were not invited to resident care conferences, to which i was told it was not feasible to spare a healthcare aide from the demands of the unit. it was clear that healthcare aides lacked epistemic entrée into the places where their knowledge was dismissed as being merely technical, and not possibly transferable from that of the bedside to that of a conference table. healthcare aides are experiencing a kind of epistemic exclusion (hookway, 2010), being systematically overlooked by the institution, their practical knowledge and testimony of death and dying not credible enough to be formally recognized. what is of significant harm to healthcare aides is how this exclusion and lack of recognition may result in what fricker (2006) considered to be the epistemic loss of intellectual character. fricker (2006) argued that “intellectual virtue is not reducible to the value of those particular items of knowledge it might bring, but derives also from its place in the harmony of a person’s intellectual character taken as a whole” (p. 105). although fricker was referring to the harms resulting from hermeneutical injustice, the concept still arguably applies in this context for that of testimonial injustice. the healthcare aide whose testimony is deemed less credible and is therefore excluded from participating in knowledge-making activities, such as care conferences or even education or training initiatives, is also harmed by their not being able to develop intellectual virtues, namely that of intellectual courage by way of epistemic confidence (fricker, 2006). this means healthcare aides may begin to internalize their credibility deficit and not trust their knowledge, possibly resulting in a lack of courage to participate in conversations with residents and family members about death and dying, delegating these conversations to nurses instead. fricker’s intellectual character could be considered akin to that of gadamer’s (1960/2004) bildung, namely the cultivation of self in one’s professional practice. in the same way a healthcare aide may suffer from a lack of epistemic confidence and intellectual courage, the healthcare aide who cannot fulfill their “profession wholly” is one who cannot be changed by their practice or granted a universal sense about death and dying (gadamer, 1960/2004, p. 12). it is only through an ongoing cultivation of self that each situation demanding moral knowledge or phronesis is always made anew, the healthcare aide able to be changed by their practice, and their practice able to be changed (gadamer, 1960/2004). for gadamer (2001), phronesis “has the character of a conversation” (p. 79); while healthcare aides are not spared from having to make individual judgments about the right thing to do in their practice, they make these judgments within a social context that is mediated in dialogue with others (gadamer, 1960/2004). instead of healthcare aides being credited for their experiential know-how of death and dying, however, and the knowledge they have through touch, they are instead often excluded from conversations and dialogue with others. i argue this exclusion is a kind of testimonial injustice for healthcare aides, the resulting harm being that their intellectual character suffers, and they are denied a kind of self-understanding in their work that is harmful. testimonial injustice and the covid-19 pandemic stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 13 reflecting on the impacts the covid-19 pandemic had on touch, kearney (2021) wrote, “touch is never so obvious as when confronted with its opposite—the untouchable. the imperative of social distancing, mandated by the coronavirus, made us acutely aware of how central touch is to our lives” (p. 133). at a time when the world stopped hugging, shaking hands, or kissing loved ones, healthcare aides in ltc went on touching, caring for ltc residents at a time when family could not physically be present. healthcare aides became a kind of conduit for the touch of others, standing in for family members deemed “non-essential” during times of visitor restrictions and lockdowns, who had to trust that healthcare aides would have a sense of tact, or practical wisdom, in their absence. certainly, while my own grandfather was living out his final months in ltc during the covid-19 pandemic, my family had to place a considerable amount of trust in the healthcare aides, that their practice would be sensitive, sensible, and empathetic. while the pandemic may have brought to light the primacy of touch for ltc residents only through its absence, there was little public discourse surrounding how and what it was that healthcare aides knew of their dying residents through touch. instead, healthcare aides were pulled into a kind of public court, society having perceived them to be accomplices to crimes committed by the faceless institution of ltc, and the last ones holding the smoking gun when people were dying in a place where, as argued throughout this paper, death had always been there. where healthcare workers in hospitals were painted in the media as heroic and brave, ltc workers were often vilified, the easy scapegoats for long-standing institutional and structural inadequacies, their practice occurring against a backdrop of negative headlines, such as, “canadian military details horrific conditions in nursing homes battling covid-19” (forrest, 2020) and “canada’s nursing homes have worst record for covid-19 deaths among wealthy nations” (ireton, 2021). for example, white et al. (2021) found that ltc staff had felt their caring practices and hard work throughout the pandemic were not positively recognized in the same ways as that of hospital staff, and instead had to grapple with public blame and a lack of recognition. if intensive care units and those who worked there were seen as being in the business of saving lives, then ltc was perceived by the public as the place that was taking lives. it was as if the world had fallen under the purple hue of an ultra-violet blacklight, every ltc facility aglow with the virus, and healthcare aides were the culpable vectors that would have to experience not only public scrutiny and emotional distress, but incur considerable financial loss as well. healthcare aides are often employed at more than one ltc facility to make ends meet (duan et al., 2020; lightman et al., 2021), meaning, unpaid sick leave and single-site work policies implemented by the government to limit the spread of covid-19 may have had significant financial consequences for healthcare aides (lightman et al., 2019). while healthcare aides would have undoubtedly experienced death and dying in ltc the most significantly, nurses experienced a credibility deficit and exclusion as well, the federal government having failed to instate a chief nursing officer to speak for the largest healthcare workforce in canada, for example. the pandemic made it clear that only physicians, government officials, and individuals deemed experts were considered credible in their knowledge and as having the authority with which to engage in a public discourse about what was happening in ltc. where the epistemic authority of the physician or expert becomes problematic is when it goes unquestioned, garners blind obedience, or suppresses the testimony of others (zagzebski, stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 14 2012). on the other hand, gadamer (1993/1996) considered genuine authority to be that which recognizes its own limitations in the posing of questions, and the other as knowledgeable or true. despite the majority of care continuing to be that of touch or practical knowledge during the pandemic, ltc homes, along with the government, seemed to value numbers over healthcare aides’ stories or experiences with death and dying, the number of deaths, number of transmissions, and number of outbreaks speaking more loudly than the words of those in the thick of it. gadamer (1993/1996) argued that “authority is grounded in the superiority of that knowledge which has been accumulated and passed on by science as an institution” (pp. 121–122). as shown in this paper, the value and prestige assigned to theoretical and scientific knowledge in ltc has meant healthcare aides experience a testimonial injustice due to their practical ways of knowing being perceived as inferior, reduced to simply technical skills, or even stigmatized as women’s work. i certainly do not mean to suggest that institutions should remedy this by denigrating theoretical or scientific knowledge, or the authority of the physician or expert in favor of practical knowledge. instead, to quote gadamer (1993/1996), we should “build a bridge over the existing divide between the theoretician who knows the general rule and the person involved in practice who wishes to deal with the unique situation” (p. 94). if we fail to pick up the bricks and build the bridge together over knowledge domains in social institutions, society will continue to suffer from an epistemic lacuna (fricker, 2007), healthcare aides’ knowledge and experiences of death and dying having been excluded from telling us something true. summary healthcare aides’ testimony of death and dying has not been given epistemic credibility due to their knowledge being largely that of touch and practical wisdom, an injustice which has been socially mediated within the institution of ltc. not only have healthcare aides been marginalized within the ltc setting, but ltc homes themselves have taken up a marginalized position within society, leading healthcare aides to experience a kind of double invisibility. in ways that have been historically and socially conditioned, the institution of ltc has largely repressed death and dying, with healthcare aides left to make sense of their experiences in institutions that do not support them to practice with a sense of tact and practical wisdom, and also exclude them from knowledge making activities and meaningful conversation. this tension within which healthcare aides are caught, their work being that of caring for those who are dying in a place where death is hidden, was exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic, and instead of healthcare aides being invited into a conversation to share their experiences and bring about new understanding, they remained voiceless. final thoughts “i years had been from home / and now before the door / i dared not enter, lest a face / i never saw before” (dickinson, 1891, lines 1–4). behind a row of view-obstructing oak trees on a quiet suburban street, a ltc facility stands hidden. no longer is a continuous flow of emergency medical services, stretchers, or white body bags moving in and out of its doors, the media are gone, as well. instead, it is easy to imagine this place as having survived the covid-19 pandemic unscathed, now hidden in a camouflage of ordinariness. when you look carefully, stelfox journal of applied hermeneutics 2022 article 12 15 however, up close near the windows, you can sense the story inside still playing out, confronted not by what you see, but by what is hidden. the windows no longer serve their original purpose, to look in or out, but instead are covered with signs and symbols, a warning to some, a reality for others. beyond its doors and windows healthcare aides still remain, the silent pillars of an institution that failed to understand the weight they carry—the kind of weight imposed by a weightless stranger, the kind of weight that cracks, splinters, and fractures the walls. remnants from the last two years of pandemic are beginning to fade from collective memory, and so is any concern for the structural integrity of ltc, the cracks having been plastered over and the paint redone. but it is time we dare to enter, to open the doors, air out the rooms, and peer through the cracks. acknowledgements this paper was originally submitted to my thesis examining committee as part of my doctoral candidacy examination and was written in response to an interpretive question crafted by my supervisor, dr lorraine venturato: in your proposal, you write that the covid -19 pandemic served to shine a spotlight on long-term care. at various times during the pandemic, heath care aides were positioned as both heroes and villans in public discourse. despite often being at the centre of care and discourse during covid-19, health care aides’ voices have largely been absent in the post covid discourse. what might it be about long-term care as a context that serves to both fuel the complexity of health care aides’ experiences and acts to conceal their experiences? this paper was an interpretive account of how healthcare aides’ experiences have been concealed and complicated by the hiddenness of death within ltc homes, and the ways in which their unique knowledge of death and dying has not been given epistemic credence within institutions or broader society. i express my sincerest gratitude toward dr. venturato, for all her guidance and support in helping me prepare to write this paper, and whose insights have been integral for my thesis work and interpretive writing. i would also like to thank dr. venturato for recommending the works of richard kearney regarding healthcare aides’ practice being that of touch, and sharing her valuable experiences and interpretations of death and dying in ltc homes from years of research. i would like to extend my gratitude to my thesis committee, including dr. nancy moules and dr. graham mccaffrey, for their feedback on the ideas in this paper, and the meaningful conversations that have taken place regarding my research and hermeneutic philosophy. i would also like to deeply thank my thesis committee for inviting me into the world of hermeneutics, and for the ways in which i now see the world, and myself, differently. i would like to thank the internal and external examiners for my doctoral candidacy exam, dr. theodore george and dr. martina kelly, both of whom invited me to reflect on the ideas in this paper and helped deepen and broaden my thinking on this topic. as well, i would like to express my gratitude to the canadian hermeneutic institute and chair dr. moules, and for all the incredible visiting scholars who have stimulated meaningful conversations surrounding hermeneutics, including 13th annual visiting scholar, dr. david vessey. dr. vessey's introduction of hermeneutics and injustice provided the inspiration for approaching this interpretive question 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(2012). epistemic authority: a theory of trust, authority, and autonomy in belief. oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.3928/0098-9134-20050901-07 https://doi.org/10.3928/0098-9134-20050901-07 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-28-0001/2020001/article/00036-eng.htm https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2015.06.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamda.2020.11.022 microsoft word williamson part 5 corrected proof (1).docx corresponding author: w. john williamson, phd email: john.williamson@cssd.ab.ca journal of applied hermeneutics june 8, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery part five: time to kill time w. john williamson abstract these concluding chapters follow the events described in the previous four parts of this narrative. max hunter, a private detective remains on the trail of “slow learners,” a category of students his client, educator john williamson, claims are continually getting “lost” in alberta’s school system. as this section begins hunter and williamson are in a bowling alley where they hope to remain undetected as they investigate recent reforms to alberta’s special education system. at the conclusion of part four, the detective and client read a terse statement on alberta education’s website declaring that action on inclusion, the ambitious reform project “no longer exists.” these chapters examine the termination of this project, other recent educational reforms in the province, and their impact on students labelled as slow learners, additional bureaucratic discourses that are toxic to slow learners and diversity in general, and a fleeting glimpse of hope involving how “slow” might be more generously reclaimed from its current deficit-based discursive usages. keywords slow learner, efficiency, bureaucracy, inclusion, inquiry, lived curriculum, dewey, honoré, rancière, slow movement williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 2 for jacob xxxi “action on inclusion no longer exists as a project or initiative, but the work continues as part of our collective practice to build an inclusive education system in alberta.” when i saw the news that the inclusion project had been halted, a chill ran through me, followed by a grim tension that began in my chest and worked its way up to my jaw. this sounded like a cover-up, like someone had got to someone. considering their bureaucratic origins, the setting the direction documents williamson had been showing me seemed frank and earnest in identifying the problems with the current model and the reforms identified as necessary. what was this vaguely stated work in the message i’d just read? i wondered if this phrase, in an1 orwellian sort of way,2 meant its opposite, in just the same way that police cover-ups i’d experienced on the west coast were always still labelled “active investigations.” i had to remind myself the background noises i kept hearing were crashing bowling pins and not doors being slammed shut. “and take a look at this,” said williamson, clicking on a video link. some upbeat music started up. a blandly handsome man, whom i saw from the by-line was an education minister at the time the video was produced, spoke up in faintly accented english, “when you are looking at becoming an inclusive society there really isn’t a beginning or an end. it is all about a process, it is all about becoming accepting and inclusive and not reaching a finite goal.”3 from what i had observed on this case, i had to agree with him. inclusion was complicated. the video that followed, however, wasn’t very complicated at all. a group of students with learning disabilities, a student with a physical disability, students from cultural and linguistic minority groups, and a student who identified himself as gay were all shown going about their school days. they were happily participating in the educational and social activities in their school, and appeared to be receiving, as a matter of course, a variety of forms of support including peer and teacher support, assistive technology, adaptations to the physical space, and a gay-straight alliance club. i attended to my first impression and i realized i was touched. but then i felt a little sick. the lighting in the bowling alley didn’t help, but it was the saccharine aftertaste of the video that i was reacting most strongly to. williamson observed my reaction. “it makes it all look pretty easy, doesn’t it?” he remarked. “it looks like all the inclusion that needs to occur is already happening, despite what the guy said about it being a journey,” i agreed. “it’s happening, it’s already happened and it’s about to happen,” williamson mused, making me think of a confusing article on quantum physics i’d once started to read in a science magazine in a doctor’s office. then, returning to a prior point he added, “you know, inclusion can get pretty messy a lot of time. i spend large parts of my day helping teachers, students, and teaching assistants 1 alberta education (2012) in gilham and williamson (2013) 2 i am alluding more specifically to the portrayal of deceptive bureaucratic language constructions such as “ministry of truth,” “ministry of love,” and “reality-control” in george orwell (1976. p. 6, 7, & 31). 3 inspiringeducation (2012, january 13) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 3 work together with each other, and there’s often tears, frustration, and confusion all around. it’s hard to convince a busy teacher to take the time to design a different assignment for a student labelled with a reading disability when that same kid has skipped her class three times this week and told her off in his first class back. even though i’m supposed to be the expert, i sometimes wonder how inclusive my own classroom really is. i was teaching a story to my k & e english class yesterday, i didn’t think the story was that hard, but i had a student who was moving up to k & e from a program for students with intellectual disabilities burst into tears and run out of the room because she said she didn’t understand any of it.” “what did you do about it?” i asked. “when she came back i worked with her a bit, re-reading the story with her one on one and giving her some hints until she felt more confident,” williamson replied. “it wasn’t that big of a deal, but with all my years of doing this, i still didn’t anticipate that story being any sort of barrier for her, or anyone, until it was.” i thought about that for a minute. then williamson spoke up again. “and where are the kids with behavioral/emotional disabilities in this video? or the student with tourette’s syndrome who can’t help blurting out racial epithets?” his rhetorical question was answered by the sounds of crashing pins. the video had seemed to focus on the more photogenic forms of diversity. i was worried williamson might continue to rant along these lines, and i didn’t need to hear a bunch of war stories to illustrate why inclusion was more complicated than the video suggested. i tried to move our inquiry forward with another question. “did they change anything at all about special education before action on inclusion…?” i paused, unable to come up with a verb for the particular way in which the project had ceased to be. “good question. let me try to find out.” he punched some searches into the computer. i drained my coffee and tried another stale chip before giving up, crumpling the bag and attempting to throw it into a nearby bin. i missed, and the bag fell on the floor spilling five chips. the cashier shot me an angry glance and i held out my arms in apology and went and picked it all up. when i got back to the table, williamson had already found something. “it looks like,” he said pointing at a document on the screen, “they did get around to replacing the model of block funding for each student with a disability with something called a ‘census’.4 there is still per pupil funding for diverse learning needs, but it’s based on all the students in the district, not just the ones with diagnosed disabilities, and it’s more generally called ‘an inclusive education fund.’ it specifically says the resources are supposed to be used to support all students. instead of funding specific disabilities at higher rates, it ties increases in inclusive education funding to a variety of demographic factors in communities that suggest the students in these communities have greater needs.”5 he showed me the chart. the new inclusive education funding was set up to address, through additional funding, community issues including: if there were a greater number of single parent 4 alberta education (2013a, p. 28). 5 ibid. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 4 families than the provincial average, lower average incomes per family, lower education levels in parents than the provincial average, or higher rates of children in care in an area and so on.6 “i like how this better addresses the social complexities of struggling in school,” williamson admitted. “i remember what we found out about the socioeconomic factors that might contribute to kids appearing as slow learners, instead of learning disabled. if they’re no longer just funding for specific students with disabilities, maybe this will mean distributing resources more equitably for all students who struggle in school regardless of disability labels. remember how i told you that was one of the problems with the slow learner label? because it wasn’t considered a disability, it didn’t bring in very much additional funding.” i considered this. “i can see that,” i said. still, i’d grown pretty good at interpreting financial statements over my career, and i could see there was a certain shrewdness that had little to do with philosophies of inclusion at work too. “but it also makes the funding much more predictable and manageable,” i explained to williamson. “the way i understand it, under the previous model, any time a school district could come up with a new severe code for a student, a massive amount of funding was suddenly allocated to that student. and alberta education had no control over these increases, as they were dependent on the diagnoses of specialists, diagnoses that, as you mentioned, are increasing in number. community demographics don’t change very quickly and neither does overall enrolment in the district. i can’t tell if this will actually save alberta education money in the short term, but it will certainly make special education, or inclusive education funding much more predictable.” williamson took that in for a minute. “did you find any other significant changes that were made before the announcement that action on inclusion …?” i asked still unable to find the cause of death to put on the autopsy. williamson admitted that he hadn’t. we both considered this for a minute. “it looks bad,” williamson agreed. “that after such a thorough and collaborative process, and after all of those inspiring promises, that action on inclusion was just arbitrarily terminated like that. there was no warning to stakeholders about it, just a statement saying the department supported diversity and the short video i showed you. it almost does make it look like it was all about the money, or at least that changing the funding model was the main priority. but that sounds paranoid too – everyone seemed so committed to reform at the consultations.” at least he’d found the right verb combination for the initiative’s demise. “i don’t know if anyone is going to get to the bottom of that one,” i remarked pragmatically, though it rubbed me the wrong way to admit it. then, feeling we’d exhausted that subject, i inquired “do k and e students still earn more funding per credit?” williamson pulled up a k & e manual. it took some scrolling but it turned out that this hadn’t changed; they were still funded 5/8 on the credit in k & e courses.7 it seemed ironic really. slow 6 ibid. 7 ibid. (p. 16) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 5 learners, despite the obscurity of the label, were in a way now one of the only specifically funded categories of student; that is as long as they went with the k & e course offerings. we talked about how these funds, as limited as they were, supported the idea of assigning specific teachers to look out for k and e students in some way but, again, that there was no guarantee schools would continue doing this just because we thought this was the implication. i looked outside the lounge in the alleys, to see if anyone was watching us. in one of the middle lanes, a young, muscular dude, his white shirt glowing purple in the light, shanked his throw at the last minute and threw a gutter ball. i thought for a minute. williamson had used the word “inspiring,” and i remembered my conversation at ultimate brew and my intention to ask williamson if he'd heard of inspiring education and the high school flexibility project. i'd got the sense that whatever happened to action on inclusion these two initiatives were very much alive and, according to the two school administrators i talked to, potentially beneficial to slow learners. i asked him first about inspiring education. “well, lately, whenever they talk at staff meetings and district professional development sessions, principals and superintendents of my school district refer to the three ‘es’ of being a twenty-first century learner, according to inspiring education, “engaged, ethical and entrepreneurial,”8 williamson replied. “but i haven’t had time to look closely at any of the literature the initiative has produced myself.” i told williamson there was no time like the present. if this was the vision of the future of education, we needed to try to find the slow learners in it. williamson pulled up the inspiring education page from the department of education website and we both surveyed the screen. we scrolled through a page describing alberta in 2030 and predicting what the generation that comes to adulthood then will have to be able to do to thrive in this complex era. we then met the trio of “es” williamson had mentioned. the website briefly explained each value, and its importance to the project of producing a citizen ready to face the challenges the future posed. engaged thinker alberta must cultivate students with an inquisitive, engaged mind. students that are prepared to ask “why?”and think critically about the answers they receive. ethical citizen knowing the answer is not enough. our children and grandchildren must be ethical, compassionate and respectful to truly grow and thrive. entrepreneurial spirit to shape innovative ideas into real-world solutions, our education system should develop motivated, resourceful and resilient citizens. alberta would do well to encourage our students to be bold, embrace leadership and actively seek new opportunities. the document went on to assert that these traits were best fostered not through teaching that involved the “dissemination of information,” but “a process of inquiry and discovery.”9 i thought the rhetoric in this echoed the iop manual as well as summit’s remarks about learning when we met in person. i told this to williamson. he agreed with me. “the entrepreneurial spirit idea interests me,” said williamson. “it seems written to sound compatible with the other two values, 8 alberta education (2010, pp. 5-6) 9 ibid. (p. 7) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 6 and i think it can be in some ways. trying to motivate students to think for themselves seems obviously worthwhile. but i read a book a long time ago entitled no logo that talked about how the idea of being a “free agent” can be interpreted more critically as a gloss painted over a future of privatization, frequent layoffs, contractual work over long term employment, and a deregulated de-unionized labor market.”10 you’d better be resourceful and resilient because it’s a jungle out there. be your own boss, because you can’t count on a loyal employer,” i remarked. williamson scrolled down and we looked more deeply into the document. we skimmed over a section that, like the principal i’d met at ultimate brew, criticized the relevance of the industrial model of schooling for the present generation of learners. then there was a further explication of the entrepreneurial value we had been discussing: entrepreneurial spirit: i create new opportunities. i am motivated, resourceful, and selfreliant. many people describe me as tenacious because i continuously set goals and work with perseverance and discipline to achieve them. through hard work, i earn my achievements and the respect of others. i strive for excellence and personal success. i am competitive and ready to challenge the status quo. i explore ideas and technologies by myself and as part of diverse teams. i am resilient and adaptable, and have the ability and determination to transform my discoveries into products or services that benefit my community and by extension, the world.11 maddox paine’s themes of individualism and intense competition rang out again.12 there was something else too. despite the earlier commitment to move schooling away from the industrial model, here we were grinding out products and services. i repeated martin’s words “standing reserve” and williamson, who seemed to have some familiarity with the concept, nodded.13 we continued scrolling up and down the document, trying to make sense of it. williamson paused on a section and the spirit moved him to observe, “the tone of the document is sort of all over the place,” he observed, “there’s all the talk of entrepreneurship, excellence, competition, and being top-performing, but then there are earnest statements like this one.” he showed the section that he’d stopped on a letter written to the then minister of education that had made its way into the document: in 20 years i hope that education isn’t about grades. grades judge us on external things – and don’t take into account the darkness that is often on the inside. people always say that if you try hard enough you can achieve anything. but unfortunately that is not true. when i’m being abused, feeling alone, or if i have a physical or mental disability or don’t have a safe place to go home to – i can’t try very hard at the things that people measure. please stop measuring as much. please give me a chance even if i don’t measure up. thanks for listening.14 10 klein (2000, p. 255) 11 alberta education (2010, p. 20). emphasis in original. 12 williamson (2016a, p. 16) 13 heidegger in williamson (2016a, p. 34) 14 ibid. (p. 50) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 7 we weren’t sure what to make of this letter, what commitment to inclusion it might be implying. “what else does the document say about disability?” i asked. if inspiring education had absorbed action on inclusion, i wondered what traces of the latter initiative’s themes might be found in it. williamson did a key word search for “disability” in the document. it appeared once, in the letter we’d just read. he tried “inclusion.” the word didn’t appear at all. he tried “special needs.” it showed up three times in the main body of the document. two of these mentions were simply demographic descriptors of participants in the committees that helped create the document. “special needs” in the context of instruction only appeared once, in a paragraph about how assistive technology, including “intelligent clothing” would continue to break down barriers for learners with special needs.15 “smarty pants,” i couldn’t help but remark. we then scrolled through the document to see if we’d missed anything that addressed concepts from action on inclusion without specifically mentioning any of the words we’d searched. there really wasn’t very much. “it looks pretty thin on disability and inclusion,” williamson said. “it’s almost as though they think curriculum will be so flexible in the future and technology will be so advanced that disability will disappear in a way, or at least become less relevant. i hope they’re right. i hope the changes do open up more spaces for kids.” “either that or they are paying lip service,” i suggested. i was trying keep an open mind, but i’d read my share of long on promises short on details documents. williamson sighed and remarked, “it wouldn’t be the first time for that. i’ve seen both the high school diploma level english and social studies programs of study re-written in my years as a teacher. both curricula were supposed to be more flexible and inquiry-based.16 but what i’ve often seen in practice after ten years with these new curricula, is kids answering questions from textbooks, and writing multiple choice tests and in-class essays that seem modeled after diploma exams; things slow learners don’t do very well with. this was a familiar complaint. other interviewees had made it too. “that’s not very inspiring,” i remarked, echoing the name of the document we were looking at. “maybe this time will be different. i hope so,” williamson remarked, and then added. “i’d like to hear about the concrete things that are being done to support this new vision.” i made a mental note to ask my next interviewees for some of the specifics williamson was looking for. he clicked away from the framework document and searched for other documents related to the title inspiring education. we found a website with the heading “what’s happening now?” related to the project and found a list of projects that alberta education was currently engaged in to support inspiring education. among the various initiatives, williamson thought the following were relevant to students labelled slow learners: 15 ibid. (p. 29) 16 alberta education (2003; 2005) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 8 a new provincial dual credit strategy creating opportunities for students to earn both high school and post-secondary credits for the same course. a high school flexibility program empowering students to show learning through mastery of the subject, rather than linking credits to the number of hours at a desk. i asked williamson to explain why he thought these two were relevant. “i think some of this stuff was already happening, even before it got absorbed under inspiring education,” he began in his ever-equivocating way, “but it’s still good. i like the dual credit strategy, especially the ability to credit students for the college component of their training for the trades. some of our k & e students really are strong hands-on learners and have an aptitude for this sort of thing, so giving them opportunities to receive trade school credit for advanced training in the areas they excel at during high school honors their strengths and motivates them.” then he tempered this by saying, “this is great for students who excel in these areas, but it isn’t going to turn around the lives of all the kids who struggle in their classes, or even all k & e students. some of our students who present as k & e level academically are also no better than i was in their hands-on courses on campus.” “what about this flexibility project?” i asked. “i don’t know much about that,” he admitted, clicking on a link. a black and white summary in five short paragraphs popped up. it explained how the flexibility project had, experimentally, eliminated a requirement that formerly applied to most of the province’s schools. the stricken requirement was that students receive twenty-five hours of face-to-face instruction with teachers for every high school credit earned. a trial in sixteen schools in the province had apparently gone well enough that the time per credit requirement was being loosened for all of the province’s high schools. when the report on the initial trial was released the minister of education at the time had made these comments: this is inspiring education in action. we are rethinking and redesigning high school to provide flexibility for students and teachers. linking credits to the time a kid spends sitting in a desk is too prescriptive for some high school students, especially those who don’t require the full 25 hours of face-to-face instruction to master the curriculum.17 gord, one of the administrators i recently met, had complained about the hours to credit policies also, but i still didn’t see the connection to this case. “i don’t understand how this will help slow learners,” i commented. “if they learn slower, how will the opportunity to move faster through curriculum be of much benefit?” williamson nodded in agreement. but then he got a thoughtful look in his eye. “there might be something more to it than that,” he said. “maybe we need to check that out more thoroughly.” we scrolled through a series of reports about the project. we came to an explanation of the carnegie unit, the roots of the hours to credits concept that the flex project was challenging. it was 17 johnson in government of alberta (may 8, 2013, para. 3) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 9 more or less the same information that gord had explained to me, except that it was specific to alberta’s ratios.18 i saw that fate had rewarded the intention i’d made to follow up on the carnegie stuff by providing me with this detail, but i still wasn’t sure i saw the connection to this case. “i don’t see the problem with this,” i said. “a public education system needs some way of organizing what classes the students take, how much emphasis gets placed on each subject, and how the students are measured on their learning. this seems pretty logical; no wonder it’s lasted for as long as it has.” i didn’t fully believe this – i’d actually switched careers from cop to shamus precisely to escape this sort of regimentation – but i thought i’d try this perspective out on williamson to test his views on the subject. “according to this,” said williamson, pointing to a paragraph further down in the document, “the logic you are talking about is the exact problem.” he pointed to the passage he was talking about. [a]lthough intended as an organizational construct designed to manage teaching inputs, the carnegie unit’s logic may have crept into teacher’s beliefs about the nature of learning.19 the paragraph went on to describe how this form of organization implied a highly standardized form of teaching and learning that was focused more on what teachers did than what students did and more interested in numerical grades than student engagement. a page below this passage listed several questions, three of which pulled us up short. how can teachers relinquish some of the control over time and pacing but still adhere to their responsibilities to support student learning? how do school practices such as streaming conflict with the ability of the school to honour the learning goals of students? what does success mean in school if all students are not following a standardized path through their coursework? 20 i recalled martin’s sentiments that the true teacher lets learn. “if pacing was more personalized,” i asked suddenly seeing a possibility, “what would this even do to the idea of a slow learner?” williamson and i paused to consider the weight of this question, and then we began to discuss the implications of the project for the students who concerned us the most. as we read through the various ways the flex project had been implemented, we realized that it was true that the project offered the opportunity for some students to move more quickly through their courses. but there seemed to be more to it than that. williamson said he disagreed with my earlier statement that this would be of no value to the students we were representing just because these students were purported to learn slowly. 18 fijal (2011, p. 9) 19 ibid. (p. 10) 20 ibid. (p. 12) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 10 “if work is being assigned not on the basis of personalized observation as to how each student learns and what he or she requires to move forward, but to fill a certain amount of instructional time, it might imply an attitude of rigidness in assessment that is harmful to the students. it could mean asking every student to do the same volume of work in a class no matter how quickly or slowly he or she works, not so much to get them to an acceptable level but to fill the time. it might involve giving all academic tasks in the class equal time instead of moving students more quickly through content they are showing mastery of and taking more time with content they are struggling with. maybe this project might challenge this kind of rigidity,” williamson speculated. i thought he was done speaking, but after a short pause he piped up again. “and what about when slowness isn’t really slowness at all but just a handle for other problems? i have a student in my k & e english class right now who is repeating the course for the third time even though she’s one of the best readers and writers of all of our k & e students. she probably shouldn’t even be in courses at the k & e level, but they kept dropping her levels due to school failure. she just can’t seem to get it together to attend more than once or twice a week, probably the seven o’clock bus she has to take from the reserve she lives on doesn’t help. our counsellor and family support workers are obviously trying to work with her and her family to get her to come to school more often, but in the meantime it seems like such a waste to repeatedly fail her just because the course is stretched over a one hundred and twenty-five hour time frame that she doesn’t seem to have the stamina for, especially when she entered the course with most of the skills to pass it.” “how might this be different under the flex project? i asked. “instead of marching her through one hundred and twenty-five hours of content, i could just give her the assessments that meet the main outcomes of the course on the days she showed up. once she completed all of these, we could credit her in the course, even if it was only after a few hours. instead of watching her repeatedly failing a course that is actually too easy for her, we could enable her to prove she can do k & e english so at least she has credits in that. maybe having these credits in the bank would give her a little more confidence and we could begin to assess her at a more challenging level of english when she shows up.” “doesn’t that strike you as just enabling her truancy?” i asked. “being forced to put that much time into a course she can already do, on top of everything else she is dealing with, is a pretty good reason to want to avoid school altogether. her pattern has been to begin each new semester with good enthusiasm, miss a few days, get behind, get discouraged, and end the semester by missing most school days every week. the structure implied by the time requirement might be good for some students, but it’s just boring and frustrating for her, she never feels like she’s getting anywhere. at least this way we can make it count for something on the days when she does show up, maybe even motivate her to attend more often because she thinks she’s getting somewhere.” a suspicious thought came to me. the strategy williamson was talking about didn’t sound like it had come out of nowhere or had never been tried before. “would you even really need the flex project to do this?” i asked. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 11 “probably not,” said williamson after considering my question. “there are already all kinds of ways students can challenge courses, or take classes that are not strictly tied to the time requirement. there are schools where most of the learning students do is self-guided, so it would be impossible to measure how long students were actually spending being instructed. and there are on-line courses and old-fashioned pen and paper correspondence courses which must be exempt from time requirements too.” “maybe it’s more symbolic then,” i suggested. “like a ritual sacrifice. even though much this stuff was already possible, something has to go for educators to feel that they have permission to free their minds. someone has to kill time, and not in the way that we usually mean that phrase.” “if you killed time,” i then asked, “what would happen to slow?” we contemplated this as a strike in one lane and a gutter ball in the next sounded off in the distance. another question came to me. “is there any indication that students were more successful in the schools that experimented with the flex project?” williamson tried to look this up. “so far it hasn’t dramatically changed the dropout rates in those schools, or dramatically improved how students did on diploma testing, but i think it’s still pretty early. it’s hard to tell how deeply flex got worked into the culture of these schools. one thing it appears to have done in all the schools is improve student’s intellectual engagement, at least how engaged students report they are on annual surveys. on average in canada, only forty-four percent of students feel intellectually engaged in school.”21 “that’s depressing,” i remarked. “yes it is. but, over the three years of the flex project in the experimental schools, intellectual engagement rose almost seven percent. and look at this.” with that williamson pointed to another paragraph that reported qualitative data: principals and teachers have reported a much more purposeful atmosphere in their schools and a reduction in disciplinary issues. it is noteworthy that many principals, teachers and students have reported that there is a sense of calm in their school; that overall their schools seem less “stressed–out” and “frantic.” time is available to all stakeholders to approach learning in a manner that suits them best and is most responsive to the natural “ebb and flow” of the school year.22 “what does that mean for slow learners?” i asked. “maybe it’s easier to persevere with work you find difficult when you are intellectually engaged, or maybe it’s easier to become intellectually engaged in the work when the learning experience is more flexible and personalized,” williamson offered. 21 fijal (2013, p. 13) 22 ibid. (p. 7) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 12 “beyond the hypothetical opportunities you’ve identified for k & e students, how do we know if this was even applied to k & e kids specifically in the trial schools?” i asked. “maybe they’re just trying all these innovations out on the high fliers, the more academic students.” “or maybe they’re using k & e students as guinea pigs because they are an obscure population who don’t write diploma exams. i can see k & e kids being considered perfect subjects to test this on, with minimal perceived risk,” williamson countered. he was beginning to sound excited. we searched one of the documents for k & e. as it happened, two of the schools who had trialed the flex project had directly involved k & e classes in the experimentation. “this chart is still pretty low on detail,” i said, referring to the list of flex projects we were looking at. “can you find out more specifically where all the trial projects happened, and how they all went over three years?” williamson pressed some keys but then looked at me apologetically as his laptop had shut off. he told me it was his school laptop and though the batteries had been losing their capacity for several months, he could not ask for replacements until they were completely exhausted. i noticed the last set of players leaving the bowling alley. i looked at my watch. the place was closing in ten minutes. i told williamson i thought it was time to go and we got up from the table and began to head out. on an impulse, before the manager could complain that i was still in my street shoes, i grabbed a ball and attempted a throw. i play infrequently and poorly but i threw a strike nevertheless. i would have taken this as good tiding for the case except that the leg injury that had begun to heal so nicely tweaked angrily from my exertion and continued to hurt as we walked to my car. i drove williamson home and dropped him off. i drove to a pay lot a block away from my hotel instead of the hotel lot, not wanting to make it too easy for the tail to find me again. back in my room, i poured two fingers of bourbon in the smudgy glass and sat on my bed and stared at my imagined circle of possibilities on the end table, adding the things i’d learned in the bowling alley. i felt i was close to something. the abandonment of action on inclusion, the superficial diversity video, the failure of the inspiring education document we read to comprehensively address issues related to disability and diversity, and what i suspected would be the continuing problems with k & e, all suggested to me that slow learners were still at-risk. i saw this all clearly enough, but i still worried that i didn’t completely have a handle on the larger dangers slow learners faced. these dangers had often seemed to come out of nowhere on this case, so i was still looking for some clear advice to give my client about how to keep slow learners safer in schools. on the other hand, i saw some promise in the initiatives williamson and i had looked into. again, however, i had a strong feeling there were important things about this aspect of the case i was missing. if these new initiatives held some possibility of greater justice, the larger vision of what this looked like still eluded me. i felt closer but not close enough. at least i had a better idea of the questions i needed to ask the informants summit had recommended to me, i thought. maybe that was enough for the night. i sent myself to bed, exhausted, but i slept lightly, like a spider might. i always do when i feel a case coming together. xxxii williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 13 i awoke early, feeling not so much refreshed as excited. the picture was still hazy, but i somehow felt closer than i’d ever been to discovering what justice for slow learners looked like. i dressed, choosing the second pair of beige pants williamson had lent me, and a blue sweater. i looked so bland i thought i might disappear completely. i brought my first coffee of the day down to the hotel’s business office. a further breach of the hotel’s rules was required as the office wasn’t open yet. while a balding overnight clerk faded in and out of sleep, his head bobbling up and down like those novelty dolls, i loaded the door with my almost maxed-out credit card. i booted up the old beast again and fed it some coins. on the department of education site, i searched under contacts for the names summit had given me. i cursed my luck when the first name generated no hits; perhaps that person had gone back to classroom teaching and now worked in some far flung school district. i had better luck with the second name. it appeared from the website that she had a different job in the curriculum area, but at least she still worked for the ministry and i figured she must have switched positions pretty recently and probably still knew a lot. i did some further searches on her name and discovered she was a frequent user of social media. on her facebook page she’d commented on developments in education, world news, and entertainment. what interested me more was that she’d also described the interesting conversations she’d had on public transit and the refreshing winter walks through downtown she’d been enjoying as she made her way from the train station to the nearby department of education office. her new year’s resolution, she wrote, was to be more ecological, slow down her busy life a bit, and build some exercise time into her day by taking the train to work. she was even getting off the train a few stops early to lengthen her walk. chronicling how much serenity this was all bringing her, she’d posted a few pictures of frosty trees and icicles hanging decoratively off city lights. i could see she had a good eye for this type of thing even though, with all my recent experiences on this case, i was less than enamored with winter wonderland pictures. aside from this aesthetic difference, i appreciated all her posting. i didn’t want to lose momentum by waiting to schedule an appointment with her, and she’d provided more than enough detail in her posts to triangulate her location as she began her morning walk. i drove downtown, parked at an expensive lot near where i thought i would be able to catch her, and walked to the station. my much-abused leg didn’t appreciate the walk and neither did the rest of me. it was a little warmer out again but still too cold for me. at the best of times, i viewed walking not as a form of recreation but as a necessary evil, a regrettable body function, and this wasn’t even the best of times. at 8:00 a.m., the woman i recognized from her picture as yolanda grant exited the transit platform. she was wearing a smart red wool overcoat that i didn’t think looked warm enough, but she wasn’t shivering. she had grippy-looking winter boots on and carried a briefcase that i assumed held dressier work shoes, along with her other supplies. she wore her hair straight and just past her shoulders and, when a fellow passenger deferred the single safe walking lane to her on an icy patch of sidewalk, she wore a wide appreciative smile too. “ms. grant!” i called approaching her. “can i ask you a couple of question about slow learners?” her smile vanished as i made the distance between us, holding up my detective’s licence as i did. “i’m max hunter. i’ve been hired by a client who is worried about these students.” “we don’t really use that phrase much where i work. how do you think i can help you?” she asked. she seemed vexed at this sudden intrusion on her morning walk. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 14 “you’ve worked in k & e recently; i have some questions about the classes and the students in them. as i said, my client is worried about them.” “why is he worried?” she asked. this was my one shot to interest her in the conversation; i had to come up with something concise and practical. “a lot of kids struggle in school, a lot of kids have low average iqs, whatever that data means, and there are classes designed for these students. so why do less than one percent of alberta’s students graduate with the k & e certificate?” she considered this for a second and then sighed. she told me she was still several blocks from the education building,23 which i knew but didn’t own up to knowing, and that i could walk and talk with her. i wasn’t eager for more walking but it sounded like my only chance. she was a rather fast walker for someone who taken up the hobby in order to slow things down. it took considerable effort to keep up while regulating my breathing enough to carry on a conversation. after we’d covered some ground she said, “you’ve probably heard that the fact that it ends with a certificate instead of diploma is one of the main problems with k & e. if employers and post-secondary institutes have heard of the certificate at all they tend not to value it. students don’t see the value in working towards it.” “how has the department of education responded to this problem?” i asked. “i don’t work in k & e anymore,” she told me, and i tried to affect a slight look of surprise, “but i do know that how high school students are certified is under discussion, that there’s been some talk of including k & e students into the diploma proper.” that was interesting but a little vague. i asked, “can you tell me anything more about that?” “no, not at this point.” she seemed pretty firm on that. there must have been some rule she was following about keeping mum on the ideas that were being floated about this. too bad. still, i thought this kind of secrecy probably rubbed someone as chatty as she’d appeared to be on social media the wrong way. other than maybe the very most confidential stuff, i could probably find out a lot from her if i kept asking questions. we came to an intersection and the light was against us. i said, “my client is really worried. he doesn’t think k & e as it stands is doing enough for these students and he also says it’s getting worse. numbers are so low a lot of schools are cutting k & e programming.” then i asked her, “is there anything else going on in the department that you can tell me about that you think might support k & e, or as my client has said, help slow learners?” nothing wrong with a little guilt trip, i figured. 23 ministry office moved from edmonton to calgary for plot convenience. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 15 “there’s an initiative called inspiring education,” she said. “the whole idea behind it is to make things more flexible, inclusive, inquiry-based and learner-centered. it’s to be based on competencies without rigid rules about how students have to show them.” i chose not to reveal that i’d already been reading up on this with williamson. instead, remembering the complaints of ongoing systematic rigidity i’d heard from many of the teachers i talked to, i commented, “that sounds great but would it even be possible under the current system?” “not fully. the changes will have to go deep to bring this about. curriculum will have to get a lot …” she paused, searching for the right word, eventually settling on “skinnier.” “don’t know what you mean,” i admitted. “you know. based on the most essential competencies for a subject instead of a four–inch binder full of content teachers are required to march the students through at all costs,” she replied. “how will that help k & e students or slow learners?” i asked. “take writing. i taught iop for many years before i started working here and most of the students i taught struggled with writing. if i got a strong ten-sentence paragraph from a student by the end of a k & e class i would be thrilled. not because i was ‘dumbing it down’,” she stuck up some finger quotes for that one, “but because they were meeting the outcomes. it’s nice if they can write more than that, but if you really look at what they’re supposed to be able to do, that should get them through. anything that supports the teacher in making these kinds of assessments is what the kids need.” that sounded fine to me, but then i remembered my own english teacher from high school, less forgiving than a sadistic loan shark. i thought also of the diploma exams that almost all the teachers i’d met had complained about. would a single paragraph be enough to pass the writing component of one of those? “would it be possible,” i asked, “to set things up so everyone has this understanding of assessment?” “i hope so, but,” she paused, considering how much to tell me, “i’m not sure. these kinds of changes can be pricey, at least at first. keep watching the provincial budgets.” i didn’t understand how making a change to assessment practices like the one she was describing would be that expensive but i kept quiet on that count. “speaking of the budget, i’ve heard k & e is pretty under-resourced,” i commented instead, moving to another topic. “i can’t get too far into that,” she said cautiously. then sighed and said, “but you’d be amazed at how little has been allocated to develop resources for k & e. we’ve tried anyway, but it’s minimal. they’re probably the least resourced students in the province in terms of curricular materials.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 16 this admission from yolanda grant was a little more candid. i felt i was making some progress, which was good. on the other hand, the last exchange had bothered her, and she was the sort who walked faster when troubled, so i had to work even harder to keep up. i was grateful when we came to another set of lights and had to wait. catching my breath, i asked another question. “what else did you try to do, or do you think needs to be done to make more space for k & e students?” “flip it,” she said, and she stepped to the side to make room for a pack of excitedly talking adolescents rounding the corner and heading the down the same sidewalk we’d just come from. a boy of maybe thirteen in the group noticed and thanked her, his voice squeaking a little. “come again?” i asked. “in alberta, it practically seems like course design starts at the phd level and works down. i mean, a lot of the time when curriculum is written they design it with the most academic kids in mind and then keep trying to water it down to more basic levels. this almost automatically insults the less academic students and it might not even work. there’s a risk that whatever simplifications are introduced to make the content more accessible might still fail to do this. the worst part, though, is after the ‘dumbing down’ of curriculum for the next lower instructional tier, they eventually get tired and give up or simply forget before they even get a chance to think of the needs of k & e students. instead of designing curriculum for the high-end kids and then ‘dumbing it down’ we should start at the k & e level first. if we started with the outcomes that were most important for every student to meet, no matter how much they struggled in that content area, and then built in additional challenges for the more academic students, no one would be left behind.” i thought about that for a minute, found it sensible, and remarked, “if it worked that way, it does seem unlikely they’d forget to build up to the ‘cream of the crop’ students.” she nodded in agreement. now that she was speaking a bit more freely this was becoming an instructive stroll for me. the walk sign lit up and beeped and we resumed our journey. after a minute, yolanda grant confided, “as a provincial person, i always worried that, because so few students are enrolled in k & e that the kids are being left off on their own, off in the corner while the class is doing the main activity. teachers don’t know what to do with them. k & e was supposed to provide an opportunity – a sanction – to scaffold. the purpose of providing this instructional level was to support student learning.” i didn’t really know what she meant by scaffolding. i imagined some builders standing on temporary structures and installing some windows on a high rise. i wasn’t sure what this had to do with teaching. i asked her to explain herself. “well, say the kids are engaged in a larger project-type of assignment,” she began. “the idea might be for students to end up with a similar type of product at the end, but every student doesn’t have to complete all the same steps or produce all the same parts or do all the work completely independently. requirements as to what steps of the projects the students complete and for the pieces of evidence of learning they have to submit for marking along the way can be different between k & e and other levels of classes. but kids can still feel part of the same process.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 17 “would the more advanced students be required to show higher level thinking?” i asked. i knew by now that the psychological literature claimed that the more abstract the reasoning task, the more a slow learner would struggle with it. i no longer believed it was as simple as this, but i still found it helpful to speak from this perspective when asking that particular question. “that’s one way of looking at it,” she replied. “imagine i am writing chapter review questions for a textbook. if i am on page ten and i am asking a question about something that can be found on that page everyone should be able to answer it because it’s right there. maybe these questions could be marked with a check mark as mandatory for every student. if i am in k & e, everywhere i see a check mark i know i should be able to answer those questions. the next level up is marked with some other symbol, maybe a circle. these will involve more critical thinking. and, now if i am the teacher of that class i know i either need to highly support students in doing this or, in some cases, not assign those parts. and maybe the next part is marked research questions – rectangles. everybody in the class is going to answer the questions marked with the check marks. the rest will get assigned depending on context, some might be supplementary.” i thought that sounded like a good way to make things more concrete and achievable for slow learners, but also a little bit elitist in the assumption that they would struggle with the deeper questions. not to mention that it might be a little boring for them to always be asked to sniff out all the facts without ever being asked to consider their deeper meaning. my fleet-of-foot informant seemed to read my mind and continued. “but bloom’s taxonomy …” she realized this too might sound like jargon to me and explained to me it was a hierarchy of levels of abstraction used to guide educators in questioning for student learning.24 knowledge and comprehension were the bottom two levels of the pyramid, synthesis and evaluation the highest two. she continued, “bloom’s taxonomy doesn’t need to be quite as linear as the pyramid that explains it suggests. k & e students can still do synthesis if they are properly supported. if you ask a student, ‘why did they expropriate the funds?’ versus ‘why did they take the money?’ it’s still a synthesis question, just one that is fair for the student. if k & e students have the right kinds of scaffolding and support, then they can get to the critical thinking. eventually they even start to build their own structures, find their own ways of figuring things out.” we dodged around another ice slick. i asked, “are accommodations a part of scaffolding too? i’ve heard k & e students have trouble accessing accommodations sometimes.” “that’s because it’s too formalized and reactive,” she replied. “every time i put an exam in front of any kid, it should be designed to have those accommodations options, just like it’s built into microsoft word to be able to get the program to read out loud to you or to dictate out loud to the program, no matter who you are. the first time you design something to be accessible it’s more expensive and time-consuming, but then it’s done. why couldn’t an exam a student was writing on computer – which is an increasingly popular mode of administering tests these days – have a built in auditory feature to read it out loud? if i am talking to the class as a teacher, i’m likely doing a visual on the board along with auditory explanation so that students can be more engaged. a test should be like that. the whole point of accommodations, which is what the inclusive education people are trying to get everyone to understand, is that accommodations should not be for 24 bloom (1984, pp. 35-37) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 18 some – they should be for all. that’s called universal design for learning – udl,25 you’ve heard of it?” i said i had. at least i thought i’d seen the phrase somewhere in my investigation. i liked the simple goal those four words expressed, but thought that getting there might be significantly more complex. “ideally,” yolanda grant continued, “planning is bringing those two worlds together, udl and scaffolding. it’s more expensive, you have to muck around with it, but once you’ve done it, you have that template.” with all this talk of projects and templates, it sounded to me that, in her thinking, a lot had to be decided and planned in advance in order to make things inclusive for slow learners. like an online social studies course with all the readings and assignments already posted from the very first day. i wondered if there was a way to be more spontaneous while still being inclusive. i thought i might try to figure this out for myself. i knew the education building was maybe only a block or so ahead and i only had time for maybe two or three more questions. i went with one that had been bugging me for quite a while. “what’s better for k & e students? is it to be in blended classes with other levels of students or in separate classes?” “i don’t think that’s a useful question really,” she replied. i felt faintly chastised by this, but i looked at her face and i could see from the thoughtful expression she had no rancor in saying it. “the milieu in each district, each school even, are different. i always just tried to provide the best resources – so teachers with blended and teachers with discrete k & e classes – could be supported.” “do you think education could ever get so inclusive there would no longer be a need for k & e?” i asked. i’d asked something similar of colleen birdseye. she thought for a second and then replied, “yes, i do actually. but it would take more money, support and flexibility. alberta education would have to restructure many things. sorry to repeat myself but assessment might be the most important. the way we often do assessment now couldn’t be done in a truly inclusive, inspiring education-type classroom. students need choice, assistance, flexibility and second chances.” we were at her destination. the tall grey department of education building, that i hoped had more personality on the inside, stood right in front of us. she considered the icy set of stairs leading up to it, but opted for a long ramp up instead. i don’t know if it was because it looked safer or because it offered a little bit more of one of her favorite things – walking. as she was about to ascend, i 25 alberta education (2011) has defined udl as follows: “an educational approach that aims to increase access to learning for all students by reducing physical, cognitive, intellectual, organizational and other barriers … udl is based on the concept of universal design in architecture, which proposes that designing for the divergent needs of special populations increases usability for everyone. a classic example is the sidewalk curb cut. although it was originally created to allow wheelchairs to move more freely between roads and sidewalks, an unintended consequence was that other people, including parents with strollers, cyclists and people with shopping carts, also found it easier to move from the sidewalk to the street.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 19 asked if i could pose one last question. she nodded. i asked, “what is the one thing that has to happen so that slow learners or k & e students don’t disappear so regularly?” she thought for a second and said, “the students need to feel safe and involved. when they feel school is that place – where they are getting something that will sustain them – then they’ll get to the finish line more often.” with the finish line analogy, i heard an echo of what former education minister jim dinning had said regarding the iop certificate, about school being a foot race. but unlike his claim that it was perfectly natural that some kids run like hell and never get to the finish, she thought that working to support the students all the way to the finish line was worthwhile. i was getting ready to thank her but then she added to her answer, “and authentic context. the students need to look out into the world say that’s something that i will need to do or that is relevant to me. we teachers might have the greatest goals but we’re already educated, more or less, we need to get the kids to buy in.” i thanked her for her time and she said i was welcome. then she took a couple of steps onto the ramp leading up to the building and turned back again. with all these encores i was beginning to feel like i was at a james brown concert and an entourage member might be required to drape a cape over her and drag her in to the building. she said, “and we need to quit trying to be so prophetic about what various levels kids will be able to do. they’re all kids. their frontal lobes are still developing. give them a break.” she waved goodbye and shrank from my vantage point as she ascended the long ramp into the building, eventually entering. it took me a minute to wrap my head around all her “one last things.” i looked up at the winter sunrise shining down on the many stories of the education building and considered the interview. whatever complaints williamson and many of my informants had about the curriculum branch, here was a professional, who’d recently worked in k & e, who spoke passionately and optimistically about what inclusion for these students could look like. she’d owned up to the larger department’s underfunding of k & e, which wasn’t a solution but was at least a useful admission. it was the sort of admission that made me think there might still be like-minded advocates for k & e students here in these offices constantly pushing for more resources. she’d given concrete examples of how instruction could be made fair and accessible for slow learners in classrooms, even if some of these ideas were a little on the technical side. she’d confirmed some of williamson’s hunches about the inclusive possibilities of inspiring education including the need to rethink entire courses to realize these ambitions. i asked myself if that was enough, if i’d finally found enough justice to tell williamson that slow learners were likely safe. i sat down at a nearby bus bench to rest my leg and think for a bit before the walk back to the buick. i considered the phrase inspiring education, especially the first word. “who have i found inspiring during this investigation?” i asked myself. i started to list them in my head. the department insider i’d just met, who saw the need to better support these students and who had done her best to look out for them was. so too was colleen birdseye’s determined, empathetic practicality. so were the administrators i met at ultimate brew, both trying to wrap their heads around inclusively supporting all the students they worked with, including slow learners. i was inspired by the class of k & e students i met a diverse group of students, some of whom were supposed to learn even slower than slow learners and all of whom seemed willing and able to learn given just williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 20 conditions. my client, williamson, was an annoying, often confused worrywart, but the work that he was trying to do in his learning centre seemed pretty inspiring. looking back, the iop guru, summit, in his efforts to create an educational oasis for a struggling group of learners, was inspiring. despite my distaste for the exclusionary language, and some of the openly stated negative assumptions about slow learners i had to admit that aspects of the vocational programs going back forty to eighty to a hundred years were inspiring in some ways – some educators had from very early on seen the flaws in the ‘one size fits all’ academic program offered and thought and worked hard to provide an alternative. all of this inspiration began, ironically, to depress me. if i couldn’t think of a time in the last several decades that didn’t have inspirational educators working to engage slow learners, how could i be so sure that the current batch of inspirational educators would have any more success than anyone else, especially under the regime of diminishing resources yolanda grant had described? would someone finally make some improvements to k & e that would see more than the current one percent of alberta’s students complete high school with the k & e certificate, or would the new programs of study become so inclusive that k & e was rendered obsolete, in a good way? did i truly feel any change was on the horizon that was so inclusive that students would stop appearing as slow learners? i could maybe tell williamson i’d found some evidence of justice for slow learners, but could i tell him, truthfully, that any sort of comprehensive plan to treat these students more justly was in the works? i thought then of michel’s word’s “everything is dangerous” and of what martin and hans had tried to explain to me about the concealing/unconcealing of truth. i realized i might be neglecting the immediate in trying to take such a long view. my suspicion was quickly confirmed. my peripheral vision registered something black coming at me with devastating speed and power. it hit me thunderously on the ear. connoisseur that i am, i registered earthy notes of leather and the hearty finish of buckshot. i lost my equilibrium and fell off the bench and onto the icy sidewalk. i saw a hazy blue-clad figure swinging at me again and raised my arm to block, but my perspective was off and i took another shot in the same spot and then another on the temple. “this sap has been sapped,” i thought. it wasn’t very funny, but i heard sardonic laughter and realized it was my own. then i didn’t hear anything for some time. xxxiii when i regained consciousness, all i could hear was bad music: humming, whirring, squeaking, ringing, and a steady throbbing. the ringing, i realized, was in my ears. the throbbing was in the back of my head. when my eyes got their focus back, i traced the rest of the noise to behind a closed door along the far wall from the small room i found myself in. despite the slight visual relief the door provided, it was the plainest room i’d ever been in. cold light came off a single fluorescent fixture overhead. the walls, floor, and table (which i could have been resting my arms on were they not tied behind me) were all different off-white shades. none of them were the least bit warming, organic, or chosen for any apparent purpose save for starkness and expedience. i was sitting in a plastic chair. a plastic zip tie was biting into my wrist. like so many of the educators i met, i thought, i could have been doing a lot more for slow learners if my hands weren’t tied. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 21 across from me sat a man i’d seen before in a greasy spoon restaurant. he was wearing the same grey suit with the sharp creases. he was bald, pale, thin, and looked neither young nor old. he regarded me with the steely-eyed gaze he’d surveyed me with several days ago, except this time i thought he was using this gaze for effect instead of concealing it. i demanded that he release me and began to say that my client was expecting me back with instructions to call the police should i not return by the afternoon. i was inwardly embarrassed trying this play, but could think of no other. the bluff that never even worked in the movies didn’t work this time either. he held up his hand before i could even get it all out. “don’t waste my time, mr. hunter. there were no outgoing calls from your room at the hotel, and we’ve been observing your solitary patterns since it first came to our attention that you’d undertaken this foolish quest. your client is likely working away in his learning centre oblivious to your whereabouts.” i had nothing to offer in reply. my most recent captor spoke again. “besides, if you handle this situation correctly you will be released in short order. you are to return to your client and tell him that despite his concerns, the slow learners are safer now than they’ve ever been. then you are to return to the west coast and never speak of this case again. not only will you and your client remain unharmed, you will be well-compensated. once you have fulfilled these requirements, you will receive a wire transfer well beyond your usual fees, or imagining. if you refuse …” he left that one hanging. “that’s a tempting offer, i mean the first one,” i remarked, and it was, “but why is it necessary? what threat do i pose for you? all i am doing is looking for justice for slow learners. how is that a threat?” “you have been interfering with the smooth operation of things and undermining the careful progress this system is seeking to make,” said the grey-suited man. “within prudent guidelines, and in recognition of sensible restraints, the educational system is always trying to move toward a higher standard. your critique is disrupting this orderly process. it is a foolish and selfish quest.” i was having trouble believing this guy. maybe it was the careful way he was talking; maybe it was because he’d had me sapped and restrained. remembering what hans had told me about being more hermeneutic, more open to the possibility of the other’s intelligibility (or at least that was as far as i was willing to take it) i reminded myself to keep talking and thinking calmly and not to resort as quickly to insulting him as i’d done with maddox paine. “some might say this process needs all the help it can get,” i remarked. “as far as i can tell, none of the reforms have addressed the concern that you have an underfunded, undersubscribed series of classes intended for students who cannot handle the high school diploma stream of instruction and, despite this program being on the books, an overall dropout rate of around twenty percent. this needs to be addressed.” then, figuring ‘why not?’ i added. “and i’m not sure i can accept your kind offer until i am convinced that it will be.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 22 he glanced at a digital wristwatch and sighed. “it is regrettable that our dropout rate is that high. but efforts are being made. you have seen the changes to special education funding. school districts can now choose how best to apply the resources; it is no longer tied to a small group of students with disabilities. if school districts determine that the needs of certain categories of students are not being met, they have the flexibility to use their diversity funding to address this. also, k & e courses continue to be funded at a higher rate.” “but from what i can tell none of this is helping,” i objected. “many districts are closing k & e schools and collapsing discrete k & e classes.” “good,” he replied. “with such low enrolments these sorts of discrete interventions are very inefficient. and they run counter to our priorities for inclusive education.” “some feel this way about separate k & e classes,” i admitted. “but if blended is the tacitly preferred model what is being done to support it?” “as i said, schools can choose how to use their diverse learning funding. supporting slow learners in blended classes could be one way. inclusive education funding has also been increased by two percent. they’ve cut or frozen budgets in other areas of education to allow for this.”26 “couldn’t that be seen as a sort of a shell game?” i argued, still keeping an even tone. “if the whole point of inclusive education is the inclusion of students in the school proper, isn’t taking resources from other areas in order to support it still harmful?” the grey-suited man’s voice took on a somewhat sharper edge as he replied, “there is no more money available. the minister of education has said ‘the fiscal reality is that many school districts will see fewer operating dollars this year compared to last year and we will all need to work together to make sure that kids are not impacted in a negative way.”27 “but how are schools supposed to reach more struggling students with fewer resources?” i asked. he glanced at his watch again. i was beginning to feel that this conversation was on some sort of schedule. then he replied, “my concerns are only with priorities and efficiencies within the system, not the larger provincial education budget. on the former count, you remember that one of the reasons for the special education reforms was that the emphasis on diagnoses and specialists hindered a lot of the funds from going directly to the student.” 26 see alberta school councils’ association, (2014); alberta teachers’ association (2015) and tucker (2015). this was written at the time of 2014-2015 education budget. in the following year the then government proposed a budget that would cut inclusive education funding by 1.9% as well as freezing or reducing funding in most areas despite a provincial enrolment increase of 2% or 12,000 students to alberta’s schools. a change in government after the may 2015 election saw an increase in the education budget that reversed many of the cuts and addressed increased enrolment. 27 johnson in salz (2013) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 23 i had to concede that point. but i was curious how far he was willing to take that logic. i asked, “if including more efficiently is the goal, why even have k & e, why not make things more accessible for slow learners in the high school diploma stream? get rid of diploma exams, they are a major expense after all,28 or at least open up a pathway to a high school diploma that doesn’t require the writing of diploma exams.” “that would mean sacrificing the rigor of the high school program of studies for the sake of a handful of students,” he replied. “diploma exams are money well spent. they hold districts, schools, teachers, and students accountable. they push the system towards excellence. with their high stakes and high visibility, they prevent the work of teaching and learning and those engaged in it from becoming slothful and complacent. as the most important thinker about institutional efficiency the last century produced, frederick winslow taylor, correctly noted many years ago, workers, meaning teachers and students, are wont to take it easy and underperform when leadership fails to provide accountability measures such as this.”29 i found this a warped view. i thought he was drinking from the same rancid stream goddard, terman, and the other eugenicists were when proposing that even in a democracy only an elite few were really fit to rule. i found it ridiculous to suggest that, without a strict external measure like this, students and teachers would collectively fall into indolence. i didn’t say any of this, though. i suspected instead that he would go out of his way to claim this system was a fair one, so i tried to tackle him on this point. “but many students struggle with these exams,” i objected. “not just k & e students, students with disabilities and english language learners too.” he quickly replied, “and there is a fair and efficient system of accommodation to level the playing field for them.” i was ready for that and noted, “from what i can tell, the accommodations policies are better than nothing, but fall well short of levelling the playing field. the exams don’t set students up very well to do their best work, especially students whose learning needs appear as more complex.” he sighed and looked at his watch again. “the exams are not supposed to bring out the best in students, they are intended to provide an environment where the students provide representative samples of what they are capable of. accommodations are not intended to optimize performance.30 accountability needs to be based on representative samples of work, not rising to the occasion. upon analysis of these representative samples, the appropriate managers will determine what more needs to be asked of teachers and students in order to make the work of learning more productive and efficient. this is how you push a system towards excellence.” his answer was noxious to me, but it had a certain thoroughness that seemed to discourage further questioning. i went back to the idea of fairness. “the accommodations policies regularly exclude slow learners from accommodation.” 28 see hancock (2010). in answer to an on-line question from a student the then education minister wrote that the province spends about $10.5 million a year on administering diploma exams. [site discontinued]. 29 taylor (1919, p. 54) 30 alberta education (2013b, p. 1) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 24 “i thought veronika sternwood explained this to you. some students have legitimate, measurable, scientifically verifiable disabilities and, for the sake of fairness, should qualify for accommodation. if students do not meet the criteria for disability, however, then accommodating them is a threat to the validity of the exams,” he said. “we cannot grant unfair advantage. it is expected, after all, that only eighty-five percent of students will test within the acceptable range on these exams. anything higher than that would be a sign the exams were starting to lack rigor. i applaud these slow learning students for their ambition in wanting to take on the diploma tier, but given their functioning levels, it is likely that some slow learners who opt for this higher stream of instruction will fall within the fifteen percent who do not meet the standard. k & e remains on the books for students who are unable to complete the diploma.” “but k & e is a poorly funded series of classes that leads to a credential that nobody wants,” i objected. “how is that inclusion? how is that equity?” my captor took another look at his watch and replied, “they are guaranteed equality of choice, not outcome. students can choose whether or not to go into k & e. they have equal opportunity to choose the diploma stream.” i ignored my perception that this was all becoming dangerously circular and focused instead on exploring the new value that had just revealed itself. “but if the diploma stream is indifferent to the learning needs of many slow learners, how is that any kind of choice?” i asked. “the diploma program provides the rigor to ensure that everyone working in education is accountable to learning and that students are prepared to transition to further education and the workforce. we cannot water the diploma route down for the sake of a handful of students. we owe it to society to provide the next generation of literate and skilled workers to meet the needs of industry. k & e will look after the students who are unable to make it up to this standard; it was, after all, designed to ensure that these students successfully occupy the lower vocational niches they are able to.” that was a distortion, more goddard and terman than any of the expressed purposes of k & e i’d seen, but i let it pass. “but you just said you supported blended classes. how different can k & e really look in a blended class? isn’t it true that being included in classes that emphasize diploma exam-style assessment, and teaching to the tests might feel inhospitable to k & e level students, or slow learners?” i asked. he wasn’t having any of this, replying, “this is the responsibility of the teachers. teachers of these classes will have to determine how to make their k & e students accountable to the outcomes at a lower level of instruction. that’s what inclusion is all about. making all students and teachers appropriately accountable.” after making this statement, he produced a cellular phone and briefly typed and sent a message to someone. that seemed like a bad sign. i tried to find something else to engage him. “but isn’t high school completion also a priority? aren’t you concerned about the drop-out rate? don’t you think if the whole program was set up to be more flexible and to give more chances …” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 25 “it is unfortunate that certain students, due to various deficiencies, cannot handle the system without additional support,” he said, cutting me off. “it is our responsibility to study these students as individuals and remediate their deficiencies as best we can so that they might eventually become more proficient as learners, or at least become as proficient as they can. k & e is one such remediation. the inclusive education measures are another. and perhaps more are needed too. but dropout prevention is about the most efficient delivery of specialized services to the most at-risk students. it has nothing to do with curriculum.” something occurred to me then, a point i thought he might have to acknowledge. “from what i’ve been hearing, inspiring education will involve changes to make assessment more flexible, to make teaching more inquiry-based and less top down. skinnier programs of study, greater student involvement in deciding what they want to learn about, how they want to learn it, and how they want to demonstrate their understanding, and more cross-curricular work. and then there’s the high school flexibility project removing the time-to-credit requirement. isn’t the system changing right under your feet?” he glanced again at his watch. i wondered what event he was waiting for and when it was supposed to happen. in a voice that was beginning to sound bored he said “i am familiar with these projects, and not necessarily wholly opposed to them. if students’ perceptions of having greater freedom and being more in charge of their own learning can be recruited to produce the sorts of the results the system needs, these things need consideration. but these are merely techniques, not a philosophy. limits are needed: regimented inquiry, managed discovery, controlled participation with no larger changes to our efficient and accountable system. the expert work of deciding what learning needs to go into the production of socially useful citizens cannot truly be left to the students. i will work to limit how deep these changes go.” from what i could tell from reading through the new initiatives with williamson and from talking to yolanda grant, my captor’s interpretation of these reforms underestimated their intent and ambition. i had assumed i was talking to someone who worked directly for the department of education, but some of his statements, and the blunt style with which he said them, were making me start to question this assumption. “who are you and how do you fit into all of this?” i asked. “i work in an unofficial advisory capacity related to ensuring efficiency, standards and correct bureaucratic procedure in the department’s operations. i’m often consulted, though always unofficially, about the sorts of issues we have been discussing.” he stated all this flatly, more like he was killing time now than really talking to me. then he added, “and, officially, i own the company that does all the shredding and recycling for the education building.” it registered on me that he’d neglected to tell me his name during this explanation, but i was even more curious about his connection to all the others who’d enacted their objections to my work on this case. was he connected to whoever had deported jacques and michel, and told trent to lock me up and throw away the key? what about veronika sternwood, the black widow of categorization, and maddox paine, the homicidal president of the competition society with the stupid name? i asked about this. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 26 “i may have given unofficial advice to the authorities in the case of the banishing of your friends and your incarceration. the others you mention are colleagues, but we work as independent cells to avoid detection, only communicating when it is strictly necessary, such as when a determined anarchist seeks to destroy a functioning system over a handful of students. when their methods of persuasion failed, i knew it was up to me to put an end to your quest – by any means necessary.” i was going to thank him for the new label to add to my resume, but i remembered i’d decided to leave the sarcasm out of this conversation. instead, i objected in a straightforward manner. “i’m not trying to destroy the system,” i insisted. then i asked, “why can’t inquiries like the one my client and i have launched help guide the reforms? why are they a threat?” his voice went from bored to firm, and even more precise. “beyond the level of the individual taking the initiative to be more productive in his duties, the system can ill-afford the distractions posed when any worker feels entitled to abandon his station and indulge in planning conversations that he is ill-equipped to comprehend or contribute meaningfully to with his betters. it may seem collaborative and helpful, but it is narcissistic and inefficient. in the [disordered] past man has been first. in the future the system must be first.”31 he looked as his watch again and straightened an already stiff frame in resolution. then he said, “when i made the arrangements for our meeting, i determined that i could afford to discuss my offer with you for ten minutes, mr. hunter, less if you were ill-mannered. i commend your manners but our ten minutes is up.” he then asked, “are you prepared to terminate your investigation?” i considered my options. i couldn’t take the money and abandon the case; i’d seen the danger the students were in. i could pretend i was closing the case, and continue discreetly investigating. but this guy or someone from one of the other cells was bound to catch up with me again. they seemed to have eyes all over the place. it was suicidal, but i decided to go with a tactic of frontal honesty and hope for some luck or inspiration with which to deal with whatever consequences arose. “maybe i’m a slow learner,” i said, “but i think there are still things that need to come to light in this case.” my captor sighed and remarked, “what a waste.” then he walked across the small room and opened the door. four thickly-built men, each dressed in a security uniform, entered. he instructed the men. “mr. hunter has proven unfit to serve the purposes i intended. please dispose of him as we discussed.” then he left without saying goodbye, hurting my feelings. the henchman yanked me to my feet and muscled me out the door and into a large room. a creature with a giant mouth hummed, whirred, and squeaked. it was the largest paper shredder i’d ever seen. it was being fed paper, several boxes at a time, by a wide conveyor belt, shredding not only the contents but also the boxes. the shredded remains flew into large plastic bags which in turn rolled the rest of the way down the conveyer, through a chute, and into (i assumed) a bin outside the bay door. no need to be careful about staples and paperclips with this one, you could have run the buick through the blades and got nothing but thin little strips of fine american styling on the 31 taylor (1919, p. 7) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 27 other end. i felt like i’d been somewhere like this before, and then i remembered the sick dream i had at the beginning of this case, the dream that took place in the sorting factory. i shouted and struggled as eight strong arms added a leg tie to the arm tie, and wrangled me into a large box, half full of paper. darkness now as my head was forced down. then a squawking noise like a team of ducks as the henchman wound rolls and rolls of tape around the box. a distant memory of the days of hilarity i’d experienced playing in a refrigerator box, when my thrifty mother finally broke down and purchased a new unit, came to me. not so fun this time, maybe i was getting dull in my old age. i felt suddenly weightless as the box was hoisted onto the belt. i wondered what documents were here in the box with me, my final earthly companions, destined to share my fate. perhaps copies of some of the documents i’d read during my investigation. the special education coding criteria, the knowledge and employability manual, last year’s education funding manual, the diploma exam guidelines, or the, as yet unchanged, high school program of studies, a program yolanda grant had told me would have to get a lot ‘skinnier.’ i hoped, in my absence, the inspiring professionals i met would be able to prevail over the likes of veronika sternwood, maddox paine, and the nameless vigilante of efficiency who’d finally got the drop on me. i decided to call him shredder man. i felt the box beginning to move. my mind raced with a thousand thoughts, old cases, broken romances, plans postponed until more convenient times, regrets. then i heard a voice. to this day i don’t know if it was some part of my consciousness that was always there, waiting for the right moment to talk to me, or if the case somehow took on a presence of its own and called out to me. wherever the voice came from, its message was a simple one. “slow down, max.” it seemed strange advice in my current predicament, facing a less forgiving deadline than even the standardized tests that i’d been learning about, but it somehow made sense. i cleared my mind of thoughts, and when i did, possibilities started coming to me manageably, in single file. i rocked back and forth vigorously and felt the box tip and then fall to the side. but rolling the box hadn’t dislodged me, i was still moving forward. i remembered a trick from my time in law enforcement. i slammed both my wrists into the small of my back using my body as a lever. the tie bit into my wrist but stayed on. i did it again with the same result. on the third try the tie burst. i then tried punching through the box, but the cardboard was too thick. i got my car keys from my pockets and made a jagged fist, keys between each knuckle. i attacked the same spot on the box again, rapidly punching. my hand burst through. i let go of my keys, stuck my arm out of the box and grabbed onto the first solid thing i could feel. i forced my other arm through and strengthened my grip on the thing. the conveyor belt kept pulling on the box as i kept gripping the purchase i’d found, whatever it was. just as i began to worry the strength of my fingers might give out, the opposing forces of the conveyer pulling me forward and my stubborn grip pulling me back began to rip a larger hole in the box. my head and then my whole torso popped out. i saw that what i’d grabbed was the outer edge of the mouth of the shredder. the blades were just beginning to slice at the bottom of the box. i pulled hard and got myself free all the way to my knees. the blades screamed as they cleaved. i could feel the paper sliding past my legs and into the blades as i finally got my feet out and tumbled off the conveyor. i landed on my shoulder and rolled away from the machinery. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 28 i heard shouting, and then footsteps from the distance. my potential executioners must have been watching from another room. still bearing in mind the advice i had recently given myself, i scrunched down, slowed down my breathing and tried to make a plan. crouched in the empty space between the conveyor belt and the safety fencing, i got the credit card from my wallet and used it to unlock the leg tie. someone had shut off the shredder. i thought of trying to flee, but the footsteps were getting louder and i didn’t think i had enough time. i hid under machinery. i saw four sets of legs. it was a tight space between the conveyor and the safety fencing, probably too tight for all of them to fit in at once, i thought. i heard a bit of discussion and then one of them entered the space. he walked gradually, carefully. it was all shadows under the machine and he couldn’t see me. quickly as i could, i rolled out behind him from under the machine. i crouched and grabbed both his feet and pulled back like i was an olympic rower. for a second, i thought i wasn’t going to be able to move him but i had surprised him and the space had forced him into a narrow stance, bad for balance. he fell forward and i let myself fall with him, reaching for and winning his sidearm as he was falling. the fence caught our fall and he struck back at me with a clumsy elbow i was mostly able to roll away from. i cracked him behind the ear with his sidearm, once and then again for good measure. he sagged into the fence. i turned now on the other guards. they were drawing in on me from three different angles. we all stood there for a minute staring at each other. i tried to come up with another possibility for this situation but couldn’t, no matter how much i tried to slow things down. then every light in the place went out. there was confused shouting, scuffling, and the percussive sounds of heads and bodies being struck. someone with a flashlight pointed it in my face and told me to follow him. i shuffled out between the fence and the conveyor belt and followed the light. another four beams, all in single file joined up with it. we paraded down the large room to the chute where shredded paper fell into the bin outside. the crew who had rescued me had simply come in through a hole in the chute. one by one, we took a ladder down through the hole. my leg didn’t like it, but i didn’t have much choice and it was only a short way down. a van was waiting for us. i got in along with my most recent rescuers. i began to ask questions, but one of them shushed me. the driver wasn’t taking anything slowly just then, tearing down the building’s back road and blowing through a security gate. once we’d travelled for a while, though, he did slow down. i started again to ask questions but they were coming out too fast. the rescuer beside me in the first row of seats took off his black ski mask. he had a strong, wizened face; determined lips below a moustache that pulled off the trick of looking both down-to-earth and distinguished. he had bright, alert eyes. he told me what i had repeated to myself earlier, “slow down, max.” i took his advice, deciding not to speak again until i’d had more time to consider everything that had just happened to me. the rest of the crew took their masks off as well. like my seatmate, the driver was an older fellow, with straight grey hair that hung past his ear, a chin dimple that rivalled kirk douglas’ and a permanently (i suspected) quizzical expression. there were three rescuers in the seat behind us; a broad-shouldered, red-haired man with a round face and a whitening goatee, a younger woman with pink hair, eyebrow and nose piercings, and an oddly serious face, and a thin man with short, curly hair just starting to grey at the sideburns. he had dark eyes and an impish sort of smile. “who are you?” i asked, deciding this was as good a place to start as any. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 29 “we’ll do individual introductions once we find a more comfortable place to talk,” the thinner of the two men in the back seat began, “but suffice it to say we are a loosely structured league in defense of slow learning.” “that’s exactly what i’ve been doing!” i exclaimed. “defending slow learners.” “slow learning, max, not slow learners,” said the pink-haired woman. i wasn’t sure i got the distinction. “does my client, williamson, know about you?” i asked. the man beside me, the older one with the moustache, spoke up. “we’ve been considering approaching him. other members of our community have recommended him to us, but we are still vetting him. his heart is in the right place about justice for the students, but we have been unsure, as yet, if he is ready for our message.” he had a way of talking that made even ordinary words sound weighty. it was interesting to hear this assessment of my client. i wondered how many of the people who’d helped me on this case were members of this league? many of the rest seemed likely compatriots too. i made a mental note to ask about all of this later, but i had a more immediate concern just then. “where are we going?” i asked. “we’d like to take you to one of our meeting places and tell you more about who we are and what we do. it may be essential to your case.” this came from the driver, who spoke with a french accent. ironically, considering my present company, i didn’t feel like i had the patience. i wasn’t sure i could stand another long conversation about educational philosophy. “i have a better idea,” i said. “you seem a handy enough crew. let’s go back and see if we can get shredder man.” “get?” asked the husky guy in the back seat. “yeah, rough him up, maybe force him to help us find some damning evidence of his crimes, wrap him up like a present and give him to the cops,” i replied. i wanted to do worse, but knew my code would only allow me to take things this far, unless it was more or less in self-defense. “please max, slow down and let me explain,” the driver said. “we came right away when yolanda grant called us up and said you were near the education building asking questions about slow learners. we thought it likely you’d be captured. we came as soon as we could but, even so, we were worried we wouldn’t make it in time. you did well, by the way, to hold your captors off for as long as you did.” none of this came close to answering my question, but i thanked him nevertheless, feeling a tinge of pride at this. i made a mental note to remember the two things i learned from the adventure: you can keep a villain talking for longer if you don’t insult him, and when things look like they’re at their worst, slow down. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 30 “these sorts of skirmishes need to be fought when the dangers are imminent,” the driver continued, “but the struggle we are engaged in is more like a war of attrition. you’ve done well to expose and reveal some of the ideologies that threaten your slow learners, and our principles of slow learning. it would be wiser now to let the sorts that you have encountered attempt their misguided work in greater light, for all to see. our movement is gaining momentum, and these displays of ruthless sorting, out of control competition, and monstrous bureaucracy serve ultimately to emphasize the need for our way of thinking. the complete vanquishing of the agents you struggled with might serve to drive these ideologies underground, towards greater secrecy, where they might be more dangerous." most of me thought that this was the wrong way to go, and that a big reckoning was still due. what the driver said made at least enough sense to me, though, that i felt i needed to hear more about their league before i made my next move. i agreed to go along with them. xxxiv the driver took us to yet another large high school. there were only a few cars in the parking lot, the night caretaking staff i figured. he drove around the back and up to a bay door and we all got out of the van. the husky, red-haired guy punched a code into a panel beside the door, and it slid up. we all went in and he lowered the door and turned on the lights. what i saw brought me back to the semester of high school when i took a class in a shop like this, finding the experience enjoyable but my carpentry skills mediocre. it smelled comfortingly of sawdust, glue, and paint. on the far side from where we entered, there was a small office and then ten large tables where i assumed the students worked at light assembly as well as any theory or ‘bookwork’ components from the class. there were various power tools, table saws and the like by the bay door, and a storage space for hand tools and projects in progress in the other corner. the man who let us in bade us to sit at one of the tables. the metal stools weren’t any more comfortable than i remembered them from high school, but still an improvement over the chair i’d occupied while bound and wondering what form the most recent attempt on my life would take. he went into the office and came back with a tin, a kettle, a french press, cups, and an icepack for my face. the icepack made my injuries feel worse again, but then better as it started to do its work. aside from the impishly smiling guy staring at my face for a minute and then wincing sympathetically, no one said or did much of anything while the husky man prepared the coffee. the whole process probably only took four minutes but i found this annoying nevertheless. if they were going to talk to me about their league, i wanted to get to it. i wanted to see where it fit into the case so i could make my next move. i wondered why a busy shop teacher, as i deduced him to be, would choose this method to get his java fix when there were faster ways. then i wondered if it had anything to do with the league i was about to find out about. when he was finished, he poured for us all and then, glancing to make sure a safety poster still obscured the window of the door leading out to the rest of the school, produced a flask of brandy from his pocket and topped us all up. the coffee was good, perhaps not cosmically worth the pain and terror that had led up to my connecting with this group, but well worth the short wait as he had prepared it after all. after sipping appreciatively for a while, we did introductions around the table. the pink-haired woman was annabelle stanley; the husky shop teacher/french press wizard was tony baird; the williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 31 impish-faced guy with the curly hair was carl honoré; the driver was john dewey, a thinker matthew summit had told me a little about, and the man who’d been sitting beside me in the van was jacques rancière.32 carl honoré spoke up, “around ten years ago, i wrote a book about a worldwide movement – the slow movement – active on multiple fronts, dedicated to challenging societal obsessions with speed, hyper-efficiency, and hyper-productivity33 i discovered the same phenomena at work in human endeavors as varied as cooking and dining, urban planning, health and exercise, work, sex, leisure, and schooling and child-rearing.” i almost missed the last, and most relevant, items on his list, my mind having trailed off to thoughts of slow sex. when it did register with me, though, it hit me almost as hard as the blackjack had some hours ago. i gave myself a stern mental warning that i had better focus. “carl has been called the godfather of the global slow movement,”34 annabelle stanley said teasingly. “and its unofficial guru,”35 added jacques rancière chuckling. carl honoré rolled his eyes and said, “these labels are grotesque exaggerations, though they do help sell my books. actually, i’m more like a recovering speedaholic.”36 he grinned self-effacingly. i asked him to explain himself. “well, the crisis that provoked my investigation of our cultural obsession with speed, and of the slow movement, involved reading bedtime stories to my son, who was two at the time.37 my tendency was to speed read the stories, not wanting to spend too long on the task lest it take time away from my next scheduled activity. his preference, of course, was for me to take my time. read more slowly, actually talk to him about the book, and read his favorite books, not just the shortest ones.38 it was a nightly tug-of-war between us.39 well, one day as i was reflecting on this dilemma, i saw an ad for a series of ‘sixty second bedtime stories.’ i immediately lurched on to the concept of this as the solution to all of my problems. then, later, i was horrified at my own interest in the books.” 32 it is perhaps a somewhat egregious exaggeration of the common ground between this writer, these two scholars, and these two teachers/interview subjects to lump them into this defense league for slow learning, particularly since only honoré uses the term “slow learning” explicitly. the idea of slow learning is nevertheless strengthened by this appropriation. 33 honoré (2004) 34 huffington post in honoré (n.d.) 35 globe and mail in honoré (n.d.) 36 honoré (2005) 37 honoré (2004, p. 2) 38 ibid. (p. 3) 39 ibid. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 32 “that’s a courageous confession,” i remarked, “but what does it have to do with slow learners?” “patience, max,” john dewey said in a fatherly tone that i somehow didn’t resent. carl honoré continued. “well, once i started investigating, i came to realize that the various communities that make up the slow movement, though diverse and decentralized, all challenge the same ways of thinking that i was displaying with the bedtime story. larry dorsey, a physician, called it time sickness, the feeling that time is getting away and that there is never enough of it.40 it starts with the western tendency to think of time as linear and finite. add to that increasingly sophisticated technologies for measuring time and centralization of global time zones. add to that the impulse of industrial capitalism to consider time as a resource, ‘time is money’ as benjamin franklin said, and to feed on speed.”41 “i saw a formula for funding high schools in which time is quite literally money,” i said. then i realized it was a little hypocritical of me to see this as some sort of sign of institutional depravity. even though the rates i charge for my work are pretty reasonable, one hundred twenty-five dollars a day was indeed a ‘time is money’ calculation as well. carl honoré nodded in polite acknowledgement of my example and continued. “now consider consumerism, which constantly jacks up both the levels of abundance and the number of components which go into our vision of the good life, and then decreases the time we have to enjoy any of these things.42 and technology, the false friend that saves time [but always with the result] of creating new duties and desires.43 and then there’s multi-tasking …” i heard echoes of martin’s idea of standing reserve, but i still wasn’t sure we were getting anywhere. “i get it,” i said, cutting him off. “we’re all time sick. but what does that have to do with slow learners, or even with your league of slow learning? i still wasn’t sure i got the difference between the two, but i wanted to steer him away from this depressing analysis and towards something relevant to me – if he had anything to offer. “well, the damage done by an over-velocitized society can potentially be hard on everyone. constant impatience and boredom, anxiety over not being able to achieve everything, obesity problems from gorging on un-nourishing fast food, health problems from overwork and lack of sleep, inability to relax, a consumer industry that rushes out products before they are they are thoroughly tested for safety …” “carl,” annabelle stanley chastened, saving me the effort. “but specifically to your students, the cult of speed contributes to drill and kill teaching practices, rigid, content-heavy curriculum, more homework and more exams, standardized tests, de-emphasis of activities that require creativity, increased competition, and generally, the imposition of an intensified mode of being for children in schools that isn’t even working very well for their parents 40 ibid. 41 ibid. (p. 23) 42 ibid. (p. 30) 43 ibid. (p. 31) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 33 in workplace settings.” i thought of how sputnik, the satellite that had accelerated u.s. curriculum, had helped create the idea of learning disabled as carl honoré continued. “it’s hard to imagine any student truly thriving as a happy and well–rounded person in this environment, but some students fail to thrive in particularly visible ways, behavioral issues and low grades for example, and can be labelled ‘slow’ as in stupid because of this. maybe they lack the so-called advantages that the parents of so many of their peers are increasingly exploiting, tutors and the like, or maybe they’re just not built for this kind of speed. it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them, but it appears this way in such a system.” “so, there’s your slow learners,” i acknowledged, “but where does slow learning come in?” “slow schools and slow classrooms are emerging and we work to support them. just as the slow food movement has inspired people to really appreciate cooking and dining we try to give students the freedom to fall in love with learning.44 the pacing is gentler, students are given an opportunity to study subjects in greater depth, make connections, and learn to think. less emphasis on ‘drill and kill’ and sorting by ability levels, and a greater emphasis on communities of learners playing with ideas and flexing their creative muscles. a scholar i am reading has recently described this type of learning as ‘whiling’ and ‘tarrying’ and points out that it provokes a ‘profound thoughtfulness’ and honoring of the subjects being studied.45 let me see if i can find the exact quote i liked.” and with that he pulled out his cell phone, clicked around for a bit, and then read it to me. “the more we understand of them, the better — richer, more intriguing, more complex, more ambiguous and full and multiple of questions — they become, and the more we realize that gobbling them up into a knowing that we can commodify, possess and exchange is not only undesirable. it is impossible.”46 there were murmurs of agreement around the table; one of them came from me. from what i could tell, the practices the students i met had suffered under the most involved the commodifying sort of knowing that this scholar that was objecting to. this way of consuming knowledge had declared them lacking when they were unable to keep up, and when they became the subjects, this same consuming way of knowing had settled on the labels slow learner, or intellectually disabled, or learning disabled and then cut off any further discussion of their complexity. and yet, in our two discussions, given the time and space to consider my questions, they’d often presented as pretty insightful students. many of the suggestions that my previous informants had given about what conditions would make school more just for slow learners seemed contained in what carl honoré and the source he was quoting were saying too. colleen birdseye had described how she taught thusly, and matthew summit had said that was how he envisioned iop being taught. hans had talked about free spaces, and martin had talked about a deeper, non-quantifying, non-commodifying way of thinking. slow learning, as carl honoré suggested, certainly seemed conducive to deeper thinking for anyone who attempted it. i imagined the other jacques, as well as michel, 44 ibid. (p. 255) 45 jardine (2008, section vii, para. 2) 46 ibid. (section vi, para. 4) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 34 martin, and hans all had to employ slow learning in their careful reading and thinking, how else would they have come up with the interpretations they laid out?47 still, coming from carl honoré, and regarding a way of being in classrooms, it seemed, possibly, like some sort of pipe dream type of suggestion. did he really know what he was talking about? as far as i could tell, this man was neither a professional educator nor a philosopher, he was just some sort of writer type who’d had crisis of conscience, did some research, and wrote a book. on the other hand, he had managed to attract the other league members too. i thought for a minute, and came up with some objections i could throw at him to test this all out. though i didn’t like all the sorting by perceived intelligence levels i’d seen, i’d become wellversed in the assumptions behind the practice, so, playing devil’s advocate, i asked a question from this perspective. “this sounds great for brighter students, kids who already have the ability to take a topic they are curious about and run with it, but psychologists say slow learners need more repetition, more instruction in basic skills, less abstraction, and content reduced to the most essential parts. it doesn’t sound like this kind of teaching really plans to ensure they receive these things – it might leave too much to chance. are slow learners intelligent enough for slow learning as you describe it?” carl honoré looked like he was about to say something, but jacques rancière spoke up sooner. “a basic principle of criminal justice – how does it go? unless proven guilty you are …” “innocent,” i replied automatically. “what if intelligence was thought of in a similar way?” he asked. “just as innocence is presumed – presume that everyone is intelligent, equally intelligent.”48 “that’s ridiculous,” i couldn’t help but saying. “people are not all of equal intelligence. everybody knows this.” “suspend for a moment your doubt about whether jacques’ idea is true in a grander sense, and consider the practical difference it might make if people operated on this assumption,” john dewey advised pragmatically. “many would say that it is unlikely that people are all equally innocent, even among those deemed innocent,” jacques rancière added, resuming his analogy to the criminal justice system, “but it remains an important operational principle in the system. besides, who are we to say? you cannot really say because she did better on this test, that sally is smarter than the other students, or make the same statement with the clauses reversed. it all becomes dangerously circular, it explains nothing.49 imagine if institutions of learning operated on the understanding of equality of intelligence instead, if we considered equality as a starting point, not a destination. there could be no definition of slowness as in a lag or a deficiency under such an understanding.” 47 see nietzsche (1997, p. 5). “to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers.” 48 rancière in bishop (2013) 49 rancière (1981, p. 50) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 35 “i’ve been learning about scaffolding, as a means of making learning equitable,” i said. “the skilled teacher determining how much support each student requires to meet the learning outcomes of the course and expertly providing these supports. how does this jive with this idea of equal intelligence? if all the students are of equal intelligence, why should teachers look for times they need to scaffold?” “i find it interesting that you bring up the idea of a scaffold. not that i have any opposition to the act of helping it describes, but because of the vertical, hierarchical relationship that the metaphor implies. this is a problematic relationship that institutional teaching, unfortunately, usually entails. the greatest risk is not that teachers will be deficient in the knowledge and skills to teach labelled students, it is that their method of teaching, as so-called teaching experts, will reproduce the very inequities they are hoping to heal. it matters little whether this inequity is brought about by an authoritarian who believes the indoctrination of docile pupils is the proper way to do things, or by the misguided reformist who believes the students too culturally deprived to endure the rigors of their studies – the damage is the same.50 there is stultification whenever one’s intelligence is subordinated to another ... whoever teaches without emancipating stultifies.”51 “stultification?” i asked. “to frustrate, to make another feel useless, to kill one’s enthusiasm,”52 he replied. “but teachers should know more than their students do in the subjects they are teaching them. isn’t it inevitable that this will create an unequal relationship?” i asked. “another principle i hold essential in emancipatory education is that every student has received from god the ability to self-instruct.53 the teacher’s only true role is to assist in this process, having the will to help move it forward. recognizing this is how stultification is avoided,” jacques rancière replied. i’d heard this line of thought before, it was implicit in the statements of several of my interviewees, and in the vision of learning presented by inspiring education. it was particularly evident in how hans had quoted socrates in describing the teacher as the midwife to learning,54 and in how martin had said the true teacher lets learn. i recalled martin had also described this way as very ‘difficult,’ and hans had said it required considerable knowledge and wisdom. “is it realistic,” i asked, “to expect that teachers of slow learners will all have the necessary skills to teach in this emancipatory way?” 50 ibid. (p. xv) 51 ibid. (p. 18) 52 oxford dictionary (n.d). 53 rancière (1984, p. 16) 54 see ibid. (p. 17). max would have no way of knowing this and it therefore it seems unlikely to come up in this conversation, but rancière’s perspective is that socrates used inquiry only to guide students towards pre-established knowledge. therefore, even this master was, as seen from this perspective, a perfected stultifier not an emancipatory educator. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 36 “it may not be a matter of formal expertise. slow learning is a way of thinking and acting,” carl honoré stated. “it has emerged outside of institutions. it has come, at least in part from the work of the home-schooling community, parents who know their children and embrace the philosophy of slow learning, but who are not necessarily experts in all the subjects their children are learning.55 it has come from informal learning collectives. a blog i was reading the other day called ‘adventures in slow learning,’ a forum for arts, crafts, creative writing and philosophizing suggested the following characteristics of slow learning ...” he began to rattle off the following list of items. slow learning, the blog had said: • promotes deep learning • crosses genres, disciplines • is grounded in the interests of the learner • champions the pleasures of learning • promotes inquiry and dialogue • lasts a lifetime • allows for authentic learning • seeks unmediated experiences • supports, and is supported by learning in community. “more specifically,” said jacques rancière, “it has been shown that an effective teacher can, in fact, be ignorant in many respects. indeed, ignorance can be beneficial in emancipatory teaching. in 1819, joseph jacotot, a popular professor in the city of dijon, france, was forced into exile by the return of the bourbons. he took up a professorial position in the netherlands, and soon found himself in the challenging position of having students who spoke no french, even as he spoke no flemish. he gave every student a bilingual text of télémaque, a popular contemporary retelling of the adventures of the mythic hero telemachus, with instructions that the students work with the text until they could fluently recite it in french. by using this text, but with no additional support from jacotot, the students learned french grammar, spelling, and composition. please understand this was not a simplified text nor was it designed to have any particular application for french instruction, and yet this was the result.56 this was a surprising discovery for an instructor who had, until then, endorsed the conventional view that it was his duty to transmit knowledge, or explicate, to his students. it is less shocking when you remember that we have all acquired our mother tongues as children without explication, before spending a day in school.57 why do we presume this intelligence goes away?” “good question,” i conceded. “but,” i added, hoping i wasn’t about to sound too much like shredder man, “you can’t seriously be suggesting that an educational system could run under a method this … haphazard and random. what assurances would you have that the students were learning what you wanted them to learn?” 55 kambitsch (2011, para 2) 56 rancière (1984, pp. 3-5) 57 ibid. (p. 5) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 37 that question seemed to puzzle him for a minute. then he said, “the pupil will learn what he wants, nothing maybe. but he will know he can learn because the same intelligence is at work in all the production of the human mind.”58 i wasn’t sure if i was satisfied with his answer, but before i could say anything, john dewey who had, until then, been listening attentively, and often nodding in agreement, broke in. “i endorse these views to a point. jacotot’s experiences and my colleague’s alert analysis of them are of great service in dispelling the unfortunate and undemocratic view that the act of teaching the child simply involves pouring knowledge into a mental and moral hole that needs filling.59 indeed, to be effective, curriculum must recruit the child’s native impulses, and develop creativity as well as academic skills.”60 john dewey continued, “still, jacques underestimates the role of the teacher as the careful guide and the organizer of instructional activities. the goal of constructing a curriculum that results in maximum growth is too important to rely solely on the spontaneous interest of the pupils, or to leave their learning completely up to their own impulses, or nature, or what have you, and hope for the best.61 education has to be directive to function.”62 jacques rancière tilted his head and regarded john dewey suspiciously. i thought it unlikely that this was the first time they’d discussed this difference. dewey hastened to add, “but with the urgency of the project of democratic education, and the potential contribution of our league of slow learning in advancing this project and mitigating the threats to it, perhaps this is a debate for calmer times.” jacques rancière looked mollified, but only partially, by this. he still looked like he wanted to say something, but i jumped in instead with a question of my own. “where exactly do you see the most serious threats to democratic education?” i asked. i’d heard carl honoré’s and jacques rancière’s thoughts on this, but was curious as to how john dewey saw things. “the threat begins,” he replied, “with a fundamentally flawed definition of social efficiency. teaching for social efficiency does not involve subordinating individuals to the demands of an industrial system, or merely acclimatizing them to the particular stations within that system that they are deemed most likely to occupy.63 it does involve teaching the students industrial skills, but this is only one aspect of the larger project of facilitating their development as complete persons, citizens ready to exercise justice in daily life and participate in the democratic process,64 citizens ready to have and reflect on experiences such that they will progressively learn to direct the course 58 ibid. (p. 18) 59 dewey (2001, p. 56) 60 pinar et al. (p. 107) 61 dewey (2001, p. 57) 62 ibid. (p. 28) 63 ibid. (p. 124) 64 ibid. (p. 126) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 38 of future experiences.65 teaching for social efficiency means neither more nor less than the capacity to share in the give and take of experience.”66 i was a little surprised to hear this advocate for slow learning talking about efficiency at all, but this was a very different understanding of it than the one held by the man who’d attempted to have me shredded a few hours ago. i considered the phrase ‘industrial skills,’ and another couple of questions came to me. “how do you balance training in industrial skills with the broader goals that you mention, and how do you offer an appropriately comprehensive training program in industrial skills without making the students feel like they’re being pigeon-holed into narrow career areas?” this was something that had been bothering me since i read the phrase about those ‘doing the drudgery’ being in their rightful place in the museum. though i’d found many educators who were trying to open doors for slow learners, i still worried that the system itself was in some ways grooming them for little more than low paid, low-skilled work even if they did their part in completing the knowledge and employability certificate. john dewey replied, “occupation is not to be misconstrued as a purely vocational concept though i highly value the practical, manual work that falls under the rubric of vocational education – as a way to engage all students. thinking occupationally involves a way of learning that is active; it is closely linked to the student’s environment and interests, it is conducted in democratic and cooperative ways, it should involve the open communication of ideas, and it should mirror how learning takes place in the larger community outside the school, at least if that community is appropriately democratic.”67 jacques rancière added, “occupation might also mean to occupy – as in the recent protests. authorities often imagine a space such as a downtown street only as a means of circulation of people, money or goods. they recoil when it becomes a space of gathering and speaking and exchanging ideas. imagine the police saying ‘move along, there is nothing to see here’.68 similarly, gathering and talking and taking one’s time with ideas in communities of learning, and thereby slowing down the traffic of institutional currencies, that’s slow learning as a political act.” there were nods around the table but none of us had anything to add to this. “the whole idea of active occupation sounds pretty, i don’t know, fast, or at least busy,” i remarked, returning to john dewey’s conception of it. “i imagine excited students scurrying around. how does this even count as slow learning?” carl honoré remarked, “slow learning isn’t necessarily inefficient, and rushed and intensified learning isn’t necessarily that effective. many of the educators i spoke to said children learn more completely and develop more rounded personalities when they learn in a less regimented, less hurried way.”69 65 ibid. (p. 81) 66 pinar et al. (p. 109) 67 ibid. (p. 106) 68 rancière (2001, para. 27) 69 honoré (2004, p. 256) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 39 “slow learning means done with the right intent, the moral imperative to educate democratically,” john dewey said. “a child may have to be snatched with roughness away from a fire so that he shall not be burnt. but no improvement of disposition, no educative effect, need follow. a harsh and commanding tone may be effectual in keeping a child away from the fire, and the same desirable physical effect will follow as if he had been snatched away. but there may be no more obedience of a moral sort in one case than in the other.70 learning through the mere absorption of facts is no better; it might increase a child’s competitive zeal to memorize more information than her classmates, but it will produce no social gain.71 learning some sort of self-contained lesson is artificial and ineffective. these restrictive classroom conditions mirror nothing so much as the societal pattern of hordes of laborers who are not permitted to fully, freely, or intelligently engage in their work,72 who are treated by their employers more or less as appendages to the tools they operate.73 as jacques has implied, the restrictive classroom conditions only reproduce the larger inequities.74 to organize education so that natural active tendencies shall be fully enlisted in doing something, while seeing to it that the doing requires observation, the acquisition of information, and the use of a constructive imagination, is what most needs to be done to improve social conditions.”75 i remembered something matthew summit had said. when i asked him if he thought slow learners were different than other students in their need for concrete learning, he’d said he thought all students were concrete learners. i found myself enjoying this conversation. over the course of the investigation, i’d been given glimpses of ways of teaching and learning that might finally provide some justice to slow learners, but this league, though they still appeared to have some tensions to resolve, was attempting to give these practices a name and turn them into a comprehensive philosophy. it was also nice to be talking on this higher plane, beyond labels and procedures and course sequences and funding formulas, for a change. this reflection, however, drove me back to the practical. i’d certainly witnessed leagues, organizations, and full-scale movements that were long on talk and short on action. was this, i asked myself using a metaphor that i’d used before on this case, a mirage or an oasis? the rescue they’d recently affected on me was pretty decisive i supposed, but aside from this i’d seen little evidence of a capacity for action in this group. and i was beginning to wonder what purposes, aside from helping out on rescue operations, annabelle stanley and tony baird served in the group. she’d spoken up only once, when carl honoré was getting carried away. after making the coffee, all tony had done was sit and listen. finally i asked, “what does it all look like? i mean, this is an impressive set of ideas, but what might this look like in alberta’s schools?” john dewey asserted, “all of us have had many relevant and valuable experiences with slow learning, but our colleagues here,” he added, seeming to have heard my unasked question as well, “can speak to some very contemporary examples.” 70 dewey (2001, p. 31) 71 dewey (1907, p. 29) 72 dewey (2001, p. 268) 73 ibid. (p. 323) 74 ibid. (p. 143) 75 ibid. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 40 carl honoré took back the role of master of ceremonies and said, “tony, please tell us about your house project.” this hit me like a jolt of electricity. i had been hearing about this project for much of my investigation, but didn’t know where it fit in, and twice failed to follow up on the lead. tony drained the rest of his coffee and began, “i used to work at a school with one hundred fifty or so iop students and nine teachers. for three weeks at a time, the whole school would shut down and every student would go to work in cooperative job placements. this was a good arrangement for a lot of the students, but there were a few problems. kids would get fired from their jobs, and we’d have to find something to do with them. the other problem was that it was hard to get kids into trades jobs. trades employers didn’t feel like they had the time to train students. as we thought a lot of our students well suited for career paths in the trades, this was a problem. then i remembered hearing from one of my instructors when i was in college about a school in houston that built a house as a class project. i got together with some other teachers and the instructor who told me about the houston project, and we decided to try to build a house with our iop students. at first, the school district wouldn’t allow us to borrow money; we even offered to take out money against our own mortgages, but they wouldn’t allow it. so, we did a presentation to one of the largest companies in the city, canuck foods, and they said they’d give us fifteen thousand for the project, and after that the district changed its mind and said they would loan us another seventyfive thousand. we eventually built four houses and twenty-one garages between the house projects.” “that’s pretty impressive,” i said, “but how did it help the students?” tony chipped absently with his fingernail at some dried glue on the table and then answered my question. “we were able to work with the trades employers to have them send out journeyman who would be good with the students. they were often older guys. the journeyman electrician, for example, would turn a bucket over, sit on it, and tell his two students ‘do my plug in,’ and he’d watch and direct the students this way as they did every plug in for the house. it took a week longer than he would have taken on his own, but that was ok.” “a week longer,” i thought, “that is slow learning.” “what was so special about how the trades guys taught the students, as opposed to what their teachers could have done on-campus?” i asked. he replied, “well the lived curriculum in project house …” i interrupted to ask what ‘lived curriculum’ was, and he told me it was exactly what it sounded like, an emphasis on thinking of teaching and learning not in terms of planning, but as lived or experienced.76 tony baird continued. “the lived curriculum was really evident in the house project. you’d have iop kids who couldn’t do math in abstraction suddenly using a square, doing rise and run when doing stairs – because that’s how you have to do it. sometimes the tradespeople who might have been iop level students, you know pretty un-academic way back when they were in school, would 76 aoki (1993, p. 255) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 41 have a method of doing some sort of measurement or calculation that we college-instructed teachers didn’t get. but our students would get it the way the tradespeople were teaching it. it would make sense to them. in a way, they were better math teachers than us.” “was it just having access to the tradespeople as instructors that made the difference in the student’s learning?” i asked. i knew there was more to it than that, but wanted to hear him explain it. “well, you can’t tell a kid what to wear, or what to take for lunch.” i thought of all the students i’d seen outside, smoking, in their t-shirts in the dead of winter, and i knew what he meant. tony continued, “but the kids on our project realized ‘hey i need a bigger lunch,’ and, ‘hey i need to dress warmer.’ once winter set in, we noticed the students were bringing much larger lunches with thermoses of hot liquids. they were dressing in layers. you need this when you are in the cold from eight to three, except for maybe a half hour in a warm van at lunch.” i wondered if the bitter cold had taught me anything on this case. john dewey said, “the more human the purpose, or the more it approximates the ends which appeal in daily experience, the more real the knowledge.”77 despite this expression of approval, i was already thinking that it sounded like things had fallen into place too easily once tony and the other teachers got it up and running. i asked tony about some of the obstacles he had faced. “i switched schools at one point – i was recruited really – to start up the house project at this other school. a new administrator to the school used to make all kinds of rude comments about slow learners. he was smart enough to know better than to make fun of the students with outright intellectual disabilities, but he loved to insult the iop students. he said trying to teach these kids was a waste of time, and why couldn’t we just build doghouses. i had to go the principal, who assured me we wouldn’t just be building doghouses. also, we made money on most of the houses we built and spent that money on improving the shop facilities at the school, but on the third house we had a buyer who didn’t really get that this was an educational endeavor and basically tried to squeeze us for all the material costs on the project. we ended up losing $3000 on that one. i got questioned about it by an administrator and had to remind him that the art department loses $6000 every year, so for me to spend $3000 in order to provide these sorts of opportunities to such a large number of students was probably worth it.” “accused of inefficiency, you had to remind him of the deeper efficiencies of habit you were developing in so many students,” john dewey remarked. “your project depended on the separation of iop students from other students in the district,” i observed. “if you didn’t have the separate classes with three weeks at a time for vocational pursuits, you wouldn’t have had a project. doesn’t that run counter to inclusive education?” “even though the one school specialized in iop and the lower academic tier of regular education, i don’t think it was that restrictive. in my old school, you’d have an iop level, english 30-4, or i guess it was 36 at the time, class of maybe fourteen students. you’d teach them well, raise their confidence, and maybe six or seven would be willing and able to go that extra mile and learn a bit more to challenge the diploma exam. that’s way better than dumping four or five k & e students 77 dewey (2001, p. 206) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 42 in a regular english 30-2 class with teaching to the test going on, and thirty-nine kids in it. now on the house project, when i transferred to more of a regular sort of school that had every level of class, we included students from lots of different areas in the project. we had an international baccalaureate art student design one of the houses, and then he took shop so he could help build it. we had special education kids with intellectual disabilities on project house with us, with assistants. it went fine. i noted he was speaking in the past tense. “are you still running the house project?” i asked. “unfortunately, no. the alberta government changed the rules for insurance. there’s urban school insurance, and rural insurance for schools, and we’re under urban – and it became so restrictive it would have been impossible to continue the projects. too much red tape, and it drove the costs up too high.” this annoyed me. “i thought you said this was a contemporary example. if the house project would be impossible under today’s regulations,” i asked the league of slow learning, “why was it so important to have tony tell me about it?” “i hold this project as one of many examples of the sorts of experiential learning your so-called slow learners need to thrive educationally. there are mental and bureaucratic barriers to every project; they may become unsurmountable in some cases, but there are also free spaces for experiential learning in any educational milieu,” john dewey replied. “take something as simple as an eighty-minute wood shop class,” said tony. “when i teach shop in here, i let everyone build the projects they want to build. we spend the first five minutes of every class figuring out all the jobs that those projects will need. it works well. this other guy i work with has everyone build the same widgets. it’s more efficient maybe, whatever that means, but the students don’t learn as much or enjoy the class as much. they all make the same lamp. they all line up at the table saw to do exactly the same cuts, or the instructor does the cuts for them.” “with the other teacher, it’s like the students are widgets making widgets. it’s more about the learning than the product with you,” i said, thinking i was summarizing. “yes it is, but the product isn’t irrelevant. they get a lot more choice and freedom, but i expect good work. unless it’s done right, it doesn’t leave the shop. i tell the kids that no parent is going to want to pay the shop fee next year if their child brings home junk. but it’s a lot easier to get the students to buy into all of this when the projects are truly theirs.” john dewey said, “tony’s students in the shop class – their projects are all different, but they are all truly participating in the experience of the craft as a learning community. just like the students working on the house project. nobody said anything for a minute. then jacques rancière said, “annabelle’s project epitomizes my concept of equality of intelligence.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 43 on this cue, annabelle produced a small tablet-style computer from her backpack, entered a password, and clicked on a video file. the video depicted a large gathering of students in what looked like a library. some students were at tables; some were sitting together on the carpeted floor. i wondered why anyone would sit on the floor when offered the choice of a chair, but dismissed the thought as unimportant. many students had laptop computers or tablets. while some were engaged in individual work, others appeared to be showing or explaining things to partners with use of the machines. i could tell by the give and take dynamics between the partners that they were not just passively watching videos together. many of the kids were smiling and laughing, particularly when they noticed they were being filmed, but it still looked like work. “what is this?” i asked. annabelle paused the video and explained. “all of the students, regardless of their levels of english language arts, do an all-semester inquiry-based project. the amount of support we give and how we assess depends partially on the level, though we are pushing for depth at all levels. we work on it all afternoon one day a week, we teachers call it diverse learning day, but the kids call it english mondays. students get to choose the space they work in, a classroom, the library or a computer room. some of the working environments are noisier, some are quiet. the grade tens come up with an inquiry question, research it, and then explain to their classmates what they asked about and what they learned. in grade eleven, still working with the same topics usually, they go back to their questions and revise them, go back to their sources and evaluate them, and then do annotated bibliographies. then they film a public service announcement or psa, you know like the advertisements you see on tv, about some aspect of that topic. the psas are only sixty to ninety seconds, but we expect they cover a lot of ground with this time. they watch a lot of psas in advance.” “wow, a whole semester to make a sixty second ad,” i thought. “that is slow learning.” i asked if there were challenges unique to working with the k & e students or slow learners. jacques rancière scowled at me. annabelle stanley replied, “for the k & e kids, it’s really hard at first because they are so conditioned by ‘what do you want me to do’. that’s where the rapport comes in. we really have to persuade them they are their projects, and they can inquire into anything they want. as long as it’s school appropriate, and even if it isn’t, we can make often help them make it that way. after that it’s fine. it can sometimes be hard to remember what instructional levels the different students are from when it’s going well.” annabelle stanley resumed playing the video. it showed a student apparently in the process of explaining her project to an attentive group of peers. i had no way of knowing what level of english she was in, but she looked pretty confident. as this continued, a list of some of the inquiry projects scrolled across the screen: • do professional athletes get paid too much? • body image of women in the media. • do we control time or does time control us? • what causes a black hole? williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 44 • does god exist? • is sport the new religion? • why do we dream? • why am i so pessimistic? annabelle explained that the student who’d completed the last project had done an inquiry that involved media, literature, psychology, and personal and family history. she then told me more about some of the other projects. “last year, the student who was really into black holes, who was a k & e student, wrote to nasa. they not only responded, but posted, his question. we’ve twice had students with autism email temple grandin and get responses from her as a part of their research. there’s something to it when the k & e students are sitting next to advanced placement students, and they are working on the same project.” i thought i understood what she was trying to show me, but i wasn’t sure i was buying it. “looks like a good project,” i admitted, “but how does this address the larger institutional injustices slow learners experience? how does it prevent them from falling through the cracks, or getting pushed through the cracks?” she replied, “in the past three years since we started the project, graduation rates have improved. in this school, the subject of english had been one of the many beasts that hindered high school completion, not only with the k & e students, but with our large population of english as a second language students. in addition to our overall graduation rates, our class grades in english have improved in every tier since we started with the inquiry project, and in the tiers in which students write diploma exams, the marks have improved on these too. it’s becoming more and more crosscurricular, which means we can use it to engage the students more in their work throughout the entire school day. we always took the instructional time from the humanities, and the students’ work on the projects was considered a part of both their english and social studies marks, but teachers in other areas like math, science, and art, have started to give the students credit for demonstrating learning relevant to these courses too. so in addition to being able to inquire into topics that personally interest them, the students are having their efforts recognized across multiple subjects.” i told them about the high school flexibility project, and how i thought it would be a perfect match for something like this, allowing students the time to work on their inquiries without all the timekeeping about how long they were spending engaged in this or that class. to this, john dewey nodded and said, “and with projects like this, the academic subjects become more like resources to serve the learners and their inquiries and less like sets of arbitrary and artificially divided lessons that are being imposed on them.”78 nobody said anything for a while, giving me time to come up with what i felt to be an important question. “i can see many similarities between the two projects, but i can’t help but notice that the house project depended on a lot more separation of slow learners from other students. tony, your first house project happened at a separate vocational school, and even the new school you worked 78 pinar et al. (2008, p. 107) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 45 at must have run a pretty different program for the iop students, if they were able to get that much time to be off-campus working on it. annabelle, your project is just the opposite, bringing students from a variety of academic levels together. what is your stance, as the league of slow learning, on whether programming for slow learners should be separate or congregated?” they looked at each other for a minute. “that’s another issue we are still discussing,” carl honoré admitted. “i admire tony’s project and his approach,” annabelle stanley said, “but when it comes down to it, i think the risks of separating off the k & e level students are too great. if you use these kinds of projects that treat all the students as capable learners, and teach sensitively and carefully, there’s no need to keep separating the students by ability levels. and doing so just perpetuates the negative stereotypes about students seen as weaker.” “agreed,” said jacques rancière. “any such separation reinforces inequality. everyone is equally intelligent.” carl honoré suggested, “but couldn’t it be argued that keeping this level of classes separate frees the iop students and teachers from the pressures of all the standardization that still infect the diploma program and gives them a better opportunity to form communities of slow learning?” annabelle stanley pointed out that she had managed to run her inquiry project, inclusively, despite these pressures. tony said, “but not everyone values the k & e kids like you do, annabelle. i’ve heard what other teachers say about these students. the separate classes, even the vocational schools, give us a chance to focus on these kids, and make sure they are taught well.” john dewey said, “democracy is not just a political system. it is the practice of association, the art of living, of conjoint communicative experience. i oppose any divisions that severely limit the opportunity for students to practice association in its plurality. however, students also need to have the opportunity to discover and realize their aptitudes. it is tragic for students to be so unprepared for future eventualities that they fail to discover what they are good at, and end up engaging in occupations that bring them little pleasure.79 if within a larger system of free association these particular students who concern you are given greater access to some educational experiences that are less restrictive, more connected to out-of-school experiences, and where industrial themes enliven and enrich curriculum instead of narrowing it, i cannot oppose that. i would hope that all students would receive these opportunities but i cannot oppose efforts to offer this population of students integrated occupational learning in this sense, as long as it does not mean their larger exclusion.” matthew summit had made a very similar point, and i considered again how colleen birdseye had characterized the now-closed vocational school she had worked in as a democratic community, and how the students of that school had demonstrated this by protesting its closure. with john dewey’s pragmatic reply, which was principled but also sort of on the fence, i counted two league 79 dewey (2001, p. 317) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 46 members against separate classes, and two league members more or less for them. “how can you even work together if you can’t agree on something like this?” i asked. “because if the individuals that make up the system are always embracing the values we’ve been discussing, that system will progress in a more democratic direction. this issue may be more easily resolved in a more evolved system,” john dewey replied. that seemed to settle the issue for now among the five of them, though i thought jacques rancière looked unsatisfied. this sounded like too much of a leap of faith to me too, and that thought brought me back to my original question. “is simply advocating for slow learning as a classroom practice good enough? there are still so many things endangering slow learners,” and with that i rattled off the long list of all the problems i’d observed on the case as the various league members nodded sympathetically. finally i came to my point. “there are three especially nasty villains still on the loose, and each of them seems to have some sort relationship to the governance of education. you seemed pretty handy when you rescued me, why can’t we simply go after them directly, take as many of them as we can down for good; won’t that do more for slow learners?” “as i said,” asserted jacques rancière, “slow learning becomes political in the way it interrupts the standard traffic of educational discourse, the sorting, the competition, and the imposition of a top-down bureaucratic process at the expense of respecting communities of learning. in insisting, by way of one’s own practice, on considering the students intelligent, in insisting that their inquiries matter …” “and by insisting that they be granted the time and space to learn from experience, to learn by doing,” john dewey added, “you work to ensure that the democratic community within the school offers the hope for democratic reform of the larger system.” “and you demand the right to be considered a community of intelligent learners,” jacques rancière concluded. we all took this in, and then john dewey said, “these restrictions you object to – the limiting graduation credential, the barriers you say standardized testing creates for these students, and the stingy dispersal of resources – should be vigorously and publicly opposed as policy, resisted when possible in practice, and co-operated with in an un-endorsing way when absolutely necessary. but the emphasis needs to be on making the conditions possible for the work of slow learning to happen on a daily basis.” i thought this last statement was taking things a little too far. my prayer of serenity, which i chose not to share just then, went a little differently. “potentially existing creator, i lack the foresight to know what i can and can’t change, so give me the strength to keep on hammering until the walls start to break.” nevertheless, i thought i got the larger message. a question suddenly occurred to me. “why haven’t you haven’t recruited my client yet?” i asked. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 47 carl honoré replied, “our network includes others that you’ve talked to, but despite his sincere desire for inclusion, we fear john williamson is more worried about slow learners than slow learning. our people are talking to him, trying to bring him around, but he can’t be fully trusted with the work of the league until he makes this leap. we are spreading the message of slow learning as much as we can, but the league itself is still somewhat vulnerable.” i told the five around the table with me that i thought i might be able to start bringing him around, and asked if i could tell him a little about them, and maybe set up some sort of way for him to contact one of them, at least so they could vet him further if i thought he was ready. after some discussion, they agreed, i was given the number of an untraceable cell phone to give to williamson. that concluded our business for the evening, unfortunately with no retaliatory assault on shredder man. they drove me back to my car. there were four parking tickets on the frosty windshield, but i was grateful it hadn’t been towed. i scraped the frost with the nearly maxed-out credit card and drove back to my hotel. i noticed i wasn’t cold. i wondered if it had kept warming up all day or if i was finally starting to get used to the weather. xxxv it was before school, around the same time of day we’d initially met, when i walked into williamson’s learning centre. a student was sitting in a desk working, probably using the room as a venue to complete a test he’d been unable to finish the previous day, or maybe he’d missed it altogether and was making it up before school. williamson was at his cluttered desk. an open newspaper sat beside him and he was reading something on his computer. he looked morose. i greeted him. his expression changed to one of worry when he looked at the lump on my head. i assured him i was fine and asked what he was looking at. “looks like alberta education just released another guidebook to k & e,”80 he said quietly, on account of the student. “i found it on-line today.” “are there any changes?” i asked. he scrolled back up to the beginning of the document on his computer. the title page bore a picture of an intense-looking male teacher pointing at a spot on a partially built wooden stool while a young man in a blue shirt raised a lever on a large industrial drill. “there are some new sections,” williamson said. “it quotes heavily from inspiring education. the authors describe how k & e is a part of a larger move of the ministry towards a child-centered, inclusive education system,81 they talk about educating children to be engaged, ethical and entrepreneurial. it mentions first nations, metis, and inuit students, english language learners and students with disabilities as students who might benefit from k & e,82 if they meet the other enrolment criteria. and the guidebook has links to further resources for working with these students.” 80 alberta education (2013c) 81 ibid. (p. 16) 82 ibid. (p. 4) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 48 the test-writing student gave us a dirty look. williamson apologized to him. i tried to talk more quietly. “does it say anything that’s different than previous guidelines about how k & e should be run?” i asked. “not really,” he assessed. “it sort of sits on the fence about whether it should be taught through segregated classes or blended classes, just like the 2008 version did.83 it gives case studies of successful k & e classes with both sorts of delivery models. when describing the benefits of k & e, though, it talks about how students make gains from being in smaller classes, with more hands-on learning and better connections between the subjects of study and occupations. it reminds readers that k & e students are funded 8/5 on the credit for k & e classes.84 i don’t remember that being in the prior guidebook. maybe that’s a hint that classes with k & e students should be kept small, and that schools should invest more resources in these students, seeing as how they are being funded at a higher rate. it specifically mentions dual crediting, maybe reminding readers that k & e students are good candidates for apprenticeship programs.”85 “that’s all good – right?” i asked. “i don’t know,” williamson said. “it’s kind of underwhelming. no substantial changes. it still pretty much says the program is for slow learners, without actually using those words: low average iq, history of academic failure, and so on. it still distinguishes between the certificate of achievement and the high school diploma, though it does explain the transfer points for students who want to use k & e as a stepping stone. the certificate of achievement is still on the books, and requirements for it are basically the same.”86 he sounded defeated. the student got out of his desk and brought williamson his completed test. williamson affected a cheerful face, and told him he hoped the rest of his day went well. williamson went to the back office, placed the test in a filing cabinet, and returned to the main room. “well at least there don’t seem to be any plans to cut k & e,” i noted. “you were worried about that when you hired me. if efforts are being made to explain its relevance to all of these other initiatives, it looks like alberta education still thinks there’s a place for it.” i was surprised to hear myself sounding this optimistic. “there’s still a place for a series of classes that very few students have any interest in taking, that school districts and the ministry itself have little interest in funding that heavily, and that postsecondary institutions have no interest in honoring. and there have been no concrete steps spelled out about how to improve classrooms for slow learners, outside of k & e. how progressive.” his voice rose sarcastically as his spirits sank. i was glad the student wasn’t in the room to hear it. “weren’t you worried that k & e might be cut and not replaced with anything?” i asked. 83 ibid. (pp. 31-33) 84 ibid. (p. 6) 85 ibid. (p. 11) 86 ibid. (p. 20) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 49 “i was, but i was also worried it would continue as it has been,” he said. then a thought seemed to occur to him, and he asked me why i had come to see him. wasn’t i supposed to be out on the case still? “i’ve come because i can’t keep charging you for my work on this case. i’ve come as close as i can right now to finding justice for slow learners,” i replied. “how can that be?” he demanded. “what has been settled with k & e seems to have been settled pretty uninspiringly. and there is no guarantee slow learners won’t be forgotten, or at least undervalued again, in what remains to be settled in inclusive education reform and education reform in general. how can you say you’ve found anything to prevent slow learners from getting lost, as much as they currently are?” “let’s backtrack,” i suggested. “you hired me to look for slow learners.” “yes,” he agreed. “we did a lot of searching through the annals of human classification and educational classification. we learned that the label had its roots, at least in part, in social class. we heard many negative stereotypes about slow learners. we learned that slow learners don’t just appear, they appear in an educational system that predicts and produces their appearance, that often excludes them from socalled regular schooling opportunities even as it sets aside certain types of schooling, often vocational schooling, for them. and as regards the label itself, what conclusion did we reach?” i quizzed. “slow learners are complex learners,” williamson replied quickly. we’d been over this several times. “exactly. the label is a gathering and an oversimplification of a certain way of failing to thrive in a restrictive educational system. that’s even tacitly acknowledged in that list of categories of students you just said the new handbook suggests might benefit from k & e, if they meet the other criteria of course. the slow learner label’s only potential use is as a lens through which the ways of being more inclusive might be magnified. where did we decide to take the investigation after that?” i asked. “to finding justice for slow learners,” williamson replied. “right. and at first i thought we’d do this by rooting out the injustices they experience. if we could only identify all the barriers in the system that contribute to their school failure, all the obstacles to their inclusion, then i thought we’d have a chance of breaking down or getting around these barriers. but i could never see the villains coming, and when they did come for me they were crafty and ruthless, i was lucky to get away with my life. and i have no reason to believe there aren’t more dangers out there.” “then how can you say you’re done with the investigation?” williamson asked. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 50 “because these forces can be fought effectively, and are being fought largely effectively, in classrooms all over the place,” i said. “how?” williamson asked. “through slow learning,” i said. “what?” he asked, his face contorting in confusion. i brought williamson up to speed on all my adventures, even the parts i’d withheld earlier. if i planned on leaving him with this, he needed to know everything i had learned. he seemed especially interested when i got to the part about my conversation with hans and martin in the cabin, and he made me repeat a lot of what they said. he was a little envious, i think, and wanted to at least take in as much as he could in vicariously. finally i got to the most recent part of the quest. i told him about my experience with shredder man, and how i’d used a rapid bit of slow learning to extract myself. then i’d told of how, coincidentally, i’d met the league of slow learning. i explained about their work to williamson, at least the parts they’d agreed would be okay to share. at first, he had as much trouble as i did with “everyone is equally intelligent,” but i did my best to explain why this was a useful way of thinking. i explained about inquiring students, doing practical activities in supported learning communities, assisted by teachers who helped when needed and got out of the way the rest of the time. i explained how slow learning was critical of the idea that there were things the students couldn’t do, whether it was contributing to ambitious housebuilding projects, or launching their own extensive inquiries of topics that were supposed to be too hard for them to understand. i told him the league had persuaded me that the promotion of these practices was the first thing that had to happen to make things more just for slow learners, and i told him if he was interested, i could provide information for him to contact them. williamson considered all of this and then hung his head in disappointment. “don’t you have anything more original, or more conclusive to suggest?” he asked. “as we discussed when we last met, educators are already supposed to be using an inquiry model of teaching, which sounds like it’s a big part of slow learning, and it has been part of the conversation about how to plan curriculum and teach in public schools for more than a hundred years.” “i met someone who claimed to support inquiry, but only in the most restrictive way possible,” i said. “then he tried to have me shredded for taking things too far. i met people whose obsessions with categorization and competition would be destructive to the supportive learning communities this kind of work needs to happen in. they seemed influential. maybe that’s why it isn’t going on as much as it might. but that’s no excuse not to embrace it. you need to be hard-boiled in your determination for slow learning, the league certainly was.” “how do you even do slow learning?” williamson asked. “you’ve only given me two examples of what it looks like in classrooms, and the examples were very different from each other.” “there is no exact method,” i admitted. “the league doesn’t even totally agree on how to do it. it’s a set of principles, or a way of thinking, and one that is constantly being revised.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 51 williamson continued to look unconvinced. “you’ve spent most of your time on this case rooting out current and present injustices slow learners face. how can you claim that slow learning will be of any help with this when it doesn’t offer any direct remedies? i hired you to fight these injustices, i told you how important this was to me, and why.” he was looking almost crushed now. i could understand that. he had seen the harm that came from this label and other labels, and the restrictive practices they unleashed firsthand, and had invested much of himself in trying to fight this. a lot was at stake for him. i thought i’d have to explain myself carefully on this point. i reminded him that we’d looked at some potentially helpful reforms. i told him i talked to people who worked inside the curriculum area that i knew or suspected were affiliated with the league, and who were advocating for conditions that supported slow learning during this process. i told him that the teachers i’d met who embraced slow learning seemed like the types to challenge injustices when they saw them, and to fight to be able to teach in slow learning classrooms. then i asked him, “what did colleen birdseye tell you happened when they tried to shut down the iop school?” “the students protested,” williamson answered. “why?” i asked. williamson looked about to say something, but i answered my own question. “because, in part, they were taught to inquire, and they were given the time and space to do so.” i moved on to explain how the league had felt that, in addition to supporting slow learning, it was important to continue fighting the good fight on specific injustices like getting rid the k & e certificate and inviting students into a more inclusive high school diploma stream, and ending or reducing the weight of diploma exams,87 or opening up a tier of instruction that led to the high school diploma that didn’t require the exams. i said also that at least one member of the league had questioned the need for any tiering practices whatsoever, and was unsure why high school instruction was in the business of granting diplomas or certificates. i said that underfunding was a concern that came up when i talked to many league members. but then i got back to saying the most essential way to work for justice for slow learners was to establish slow learning classrooms. i talked about how this might move things forward from the ground up, how behaving like a democratic, slow-learning community tended to reinforce the community’s will to demand the conditions it thrived on. for good measure, i mentioned jacques rancière’s idea that slowing down the traffic of things, occupying education spaces and actually using them as educational spaces, was a political act. williamson didn’t say anything for a minute. he eventually said, “i still don’t know if it that’s good enough.” but it sounded more like this was to get the last word in. the statement didn’t have the same sort of heat on it the prior objections had. in truth, i still wasn’t so sure either. many 87 see williamson (2015; 2016). when i originally wrote this part i chronicled statements by the alberta school board association and members of the then-governing party that, as it subsequently turned out, foreshadowed that government’s decision to reduce the weighting of diploma exams to 30% of students’ final grades. as mentioned in part two of this serialization, i have chosen not to revise this work in light of changes in policy subsequent to its release in its first inception – though i do acknowledge these changes are likely to benefit students so labelled as slow learners. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 52 aspects of the system remained hostile to slow learners. but when things were at their most dangerous on the case, there always seemed to be someone from the league nearby to lend a hand. but was it enough? williamson sighed resignedly and asked, “did you at least figure out if i should continue resisting blended classes in my school, or if they were actually the more just approach for k & e students?” “no, the committee couldn’t agree on that either,” i admitted. “but either way, they did all feel the most important thing for the students was that the classrooms they ended up in were slow learning classrooms.” like a new torrent of tears from an infant whose troubles his mother thought she had finally soothed, williamson appeared to think of something and his waning suspicions seemed suddenly renewed. he asked, “do you really think teachers will be given the autonomy to run slow learning classrooms?” he held up a newspaper. “this task force report about teaching excellence, initiated by the current minister of education, just came out. it recommends much tighter regulation of the professional development of teachers. if it goes through, teachers will have a lot less say about the goals they want to pursue in order to become better teachers. instead of reflecting on their own practices and being given the freedom to take a few risks in how they might approach teaching differently, they are more likely to be directed as to which goals they need to pursue, and evaluated by principals about their success in achieving these goals. in addition to the ongoing professional development that is already an expectation, teachers would have to apply to be re-certified every five years. do you really think anyone will feel very compelled to take the risk of embracing slow learning classrooms under this kind of surveillance? does this really leave you feeling much hope for the vision put forth in inspiring education, or the promise of those other initiatives we discussed?”88 these were pretty good questions. no wonder my client wasn’t in a trusting mood just then. i hadn’t heard of this report before, indeed it seemed kind of late in the case to be bringing it up, but i supposed it had just come out. i wondered if the shredder man had influenced this task force report. “it’s ironic,” i agreed, “that even as the inspiring education document talked about giving students more space to figure things out for themselves, this report appears to be recommending teachers be given less space to do the same thing. but that’s where you have to be courageous, and know that there is a league to support you. it sounds bad but who knows, maybe if some of this does go through, slow learning classrooms might actually produce the sorts of results that would help teachers meet the targets they need to, even if the proposed process is wrongheaded and belittling.”89 88 see alberta teacher’s association (2014, pp. 4-6). the recommendations made in this proposal have not been enacted and may reflect the less collaborative approach to governance of education that characterized the governing party at the time. more broadly, teacher supervision practices that favor “inspection, direction, accountability, [and] top-down management” (p. 40) remain frequent topics in neoliberal discourse about school reform. 89 see friesen (2010, p. 12). there is some evidence that schools using more inquiry–based learning tend to have higher results on standardized testing. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 53 williamson looked unconvinced. “more like teachers won’t even want slow learners in their classrooms slowing the class down or pulling down their results, if that’s how they think they are being evaluated.” finding my client’s suspicions, though well-founded, a bit petulant as well, i decided the take the offensive. “how much attention do you give to slow learning in the k & e classes you teach?” i asked him. “some, on some projects, but maybe not as deeply or as often as i could,” williamson said. “and it often goes well. but there’s stuff i really want them to know. the ones who are upgrading to the high school diploma level courses especially. i feel like i’m leaving too much to chance if i leave things too open-ended or give the students too much choice. there’s things i feel i have to … download on them, or in them, to really make sure they get it before their next courses.” “and how much slow learning, and not in the deficient sense, do you see going on in the projects from other teachers you help students with in your learning centre?” “same answer,” said williamson. “and in your role as a coordinator of diverse learning, how much time do you spend talking with other teachers about his sort of thing?” i asked. “not as much as i’d like,” williamson admitted. “the conversation usually doesn’t get much further than the accommodations the students need, like making sure the teacher knows a student should get a reader for tests if she asks for one, and making the arrangements if she does request it, or encouraging teachers to send students to my learning center if they need more support than the teacher can give them just then.” williamson didn’t say anything for a minute. then he said, “yes, i could be doing more. but how much can i really change things? i don’t even know if i will be given k & e classes to teach next year. they are still talking about blending them. for the classes i teach, when i’m not doing the coordinator stuff, i could just as easily be assigned a regular english class, with a few k & e students in it.” “but from what i can tell, slow learning was one of the best, most inclusive ways of teaching in a blended classroom. and if that happens, that’s all the more reason for you to embrace this philosophy yourself and push for it with other teachers,” i insisted. williamson looked uncertain. “there’s a contradiction here,” i said. “we’ve been asking every question we can think of, really taking our time to get to the bottom of this case, checking out every lead, looking at it from every angle. it’s been a slow learning kind of investigation, and we’ve learned a lot. you’ve been like a dog on a bone with this, but you have not fully embraced this same philosophy to use and promote in your school with the students you are most worried about. isn’t that the place to start?” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 54 williamson took this all in for what seemed like a long time. “i guess i’m a slow learner,” he finally said, and smiled a little. he asked me how to get a hold of the league so he could begin a conversation with them, and i gave him the information. a bell rang, and a few kids started wandering into the learning center. out of habit, i wondered which ones were slow learners but then i thought, “all of them one day, hopefully.” “am i ready for this?” williamson asked. “ready, enough. you started this inquiry in the first place. and you’ve been guiding it all the way with your annoying questions. that’s got to count for something.” then williamson stuck out his hand, and i shook it, and he thanked me for my work. then he said, “the school business manager isn’t going to be too happy with me, but i guess we need to go see her and settle up.” i felt an impulse that often comes to me at the end of cases, and tried to fight it. my rent, after all, was overdue. it was no good. i couldn’t help myself. “save it,” i said, raising my hand like i was refusing dessert in a restaurant, “it’s been an education.” acknowledgements i would like to gratefully acknowledge all those who made this serialization possible: dr. nancy moules (an industrious wizard) for accepting, editing, and guiding each new part as well as ingeniously editorializing this last section, dr. jim field for supervising the original dissertation and for brilliantly editorializing part 4, dr. jim paul and professor nick hodge for their wonderfully thought-provoking editorials, dr. angela morck for the handsome typesetting, tracy williamson for proofreading all of it (again!), and em williamson for all the hard-boiled artwork. references alberta education. 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(2010). inspiring education: a dialogue with albertans. retrieved from http://www.education.ualberta.ca:82/en/~/media/education/documents/inspiring%20education/inspiring_education_steeringcommitteereport.pdf alberta education. (2011). making a difference: meeting diverse needs with differentiated instruction. edmonton, ab, canada: author. alberta school councils’ association. (2014, march 6). education budget 2014 [web log post]. retrieved from http://www.albertaschoolcouncils.ca/news/163674/education-budget-2014.htm. alberta teachers’ association. (2015, april 7). education budget cuts student support. ata news. retrieved from http://www.teachers.ab.ca/publications/atanews/volume49201415/number-15/pages/education-budget.aspx. alberta teachers’ association. 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(2010, may 5). are diploma exams fair to students? speak out: student engagement initiative. retrieved from http://www.speakout.alberta.ca/blog/tabid/59/entryid/423/default.aspx. [site discontinued]. honoré, c. (n.d.) about carl. [web log post]. retrieved from http://www.carlhonore.com/about/. honoré, c. (2005, july). in praise of slowness [video file]. retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_honore_praises_slowness?language=en. honoré, c. (2004). in praise of the slow: how a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed. toronto, on, canada: vintage canada. inspiringeducation (2012, january 13). diversity in alberta schools: a journey to inclusion. [video file]. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c-3ycr7zr0. jardine, d. w. (2008). on the while of things. journal of the american association for advancement of curriculum studies, 4. retrieved from file:///c:/users/jetfamily/downloads/187670199866-1-sm.pdf. kambitsch, p. 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(1981). the ignorant schoolmaster: five lessons in intellectual emancipation (k. ross, trans.) stanford, ca, usa: stanford university press. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 10 57 salz, e. (2013, march 7). budget cuts for alberta school boards a blow to educators. the edmonton sun. retrieved from http://www.edmontonsun.com/2013/03/07/budget-cuts-for-albertaschool-boards-a-blow-to-educators. stultify. (n.d.). in oxford english dictionary online. retrieved from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com /definition/english/stultify. taylor, f.w. (1919). the principles of scientific management. new york, ny: harper and brothers. tucker, e. (2015, may 28). rachel notley announces $103m for education; cyoc to stay open. global news. retrieved from http://globalnews.ca/news/2023099/watch-live-rachel-notley-recaps-first-ndp-cabinet-meeting/. williamson, w.j. (2015). the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery. retrieved from http://theses.ucalgary.ca/handle/11023/2185. williamson, w.j. (2016a). the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery. part four: quaint notions of justice. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 8. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/118. williamson, w.j. (2016b). the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery. part two: cells of categorical confinement. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 3. retrieved from http://jah.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/jah/index.php/jah/article/view/1 microsoft word williamson part 2 corrected proof 2.docx corresponding author: w. john williamson, phd email: john.williamson@cssd.ab.ca journal of applied hermeneutics february 22, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery part two: cells of categorical confinement w. john williamson abstract this follows the events described in part one of this narrative. max hunter, a west coast private detective, still conducting an investigation to find the educational category of slow learners at the behest of his client john williamson, meets his client to discuss the next steps in the investigation. max engages in some incognito detective work in educational settings and then encounters an injurious interruption to his casework. he then resumes his work, now as a wounded operative, by investigating the history of disability categorization with the help of two prominent critical theorists. keywords hermeneutics, education, slow learners, psychology, diploma exams, disability history for jacob v the sun threw little daggers at me through the gaps in the dirty curtains. i rolled over and looked williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 2 at the clock. it was quarter to eight. my head hurt and i had a kink in my neck, either from all the abuse i took the prior day or from sleeping in one corpse-like position all night. i sat up. i felt sick but not as sick as i ought to, not as sick as i would feel if i had a salaried job.1 i tripped over to the window on legs as stiff as stilts. as i looked through the dirty glass with its breathtaking view of a trash bin and narrow industrial road leading out to the ugly main drag, i realized i couldn’t take any more of this on an empty stomach. i spied the adjacent neon sign of a breakfast joint, its glow dulled by the winter sun. i called williamson on his mobile phone and told him i had some questions and asked if we could meet for breakfast. “i’m glad you called,” he said. “i’m going to a district in-service for people who work in the same position as me later this morning and i want you to come along. if you like, we could meet first for your breakfast.” the last sentence came out with a bit of a clip to it, implying maybe he was an earlier riser, and maybe more determined in this way, than the heroic hunter he’d hired to look for slow learners. some payback for yesterday’s wisecracks, maybe. it was a worthless consideration in my trade. it’s not how early in the day you look that catches the worm; it’s knowing where to look. i let him keep that one anyways. i had a more important question. “what the hell is an in-service?” i demanded. “it’s a gathering of teachers for professional development,” williamson replied. i allowed my silence to speak to how satisfied i was with his answer. “an in-service is when a school district gets teachers together to learn more about things like resources for courses they are teaching, teaching strategies, or in my case, how best to work with certain kinds of students. i was surprised to see that today’s was about slow learners, so i made sure i signed up and thought you should come along too. maybe we can pretend you’re my student teacher.” i had a pretty good idea what a student teacher was so i didn’t need to ask about this, but i still wasn’t sure if i needed to go. “are there going to be any slow learning students there?” i asked. “well if you heard some of the questions people ask …” williamson began the joke before he could catch himself, making the same lapse in correctness by using “slow learner” as an insult that he’d scolded me for yesterday. from what i could observe from talking to him, i figured other teachers probably thought he was the slow learner at such events. then he started over, pretending he’d said nothing. “no students. but it will be a good chance to learn more about the category, and that might help you.” “i already learned about the category, at the library, remember?” 1 see chandler (1940, p. 44). this line is borrowed from chandler. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 3 “educational psychology is an evolving field.” he was about to launch into an explanation but doubled back. “i just think it would be helpful if you came along, unless you had somewhere else to investigate right away this morning that can’t wait.” i didn’t want to admit this, but in truth i hadn’t figured out where to begin the day’s work yet. i realized talking some more about the case with williamson might give me some idea. “i was going to look into some leads, but i can probably put them off for a bit,” i offered. my stomach growled. “let’s figure the rest out over breakfast.” i gave him the address of the joint across from my window. i must have been pretty close to williamson’s school because he told me he’d see me in fifteen minutes. that meant i needed to put some haste on getting ready. i had a quick shower and shave, and changed into the only other suit i’d brought along. i exited the hotel through the main lobby. i got out the almost maxed-out credit card, and with fingers already numbing, scraped out a sightline the size of my head on the windshield of the buick. i started it up and drove fifty feet to the restaurant. in the short time all this took, i caught a lyric from a down-tempo song that i couldn’t tell if it was a modern hip hop song or an old blues number. a husky voice growled suggestively, “fast ain’t always better than slow, you know,”2 and i briefly wondered if i was hearing things before shutting off the ignition and entering the restaurant. i was already chilled and welcomed the heat. the cook, the waitress and i made three, a crowd. i sat down, and the waitress rambled over with a menu. i ordered black coffee, bacon, toast and a four-egg omelet with extra peppers to kill anything untoward that might be lurking in the grease. i snatched an abandoned section of a newspaper from the table next to me. i read: “alberta’s minister of education refers to self as slow learner.”3 apparently while being grilled in the legislature by opposition member harry chase about the use of the multiple choice format for provincial standardized exams, in the ironic form of a multiple choice question, the minister had referred to himself as a “slow learner.” i guess he was using some sarcasm of his own to suggest his opponent’s questions were obscure. that was interesting. williamson had said “slow learner” was hidden. in this case, it seemed right out in the open, more available, in fact than other things he might have called himself to make the same point. i’m not the most politically correct guy around, but even i realized that, for a variety of reasons, no sensible politician would have chosen to call himself “retarded” even if it was to insult his opponent. williamson showed up looking disheveled already. the bit of alertness i caught on the phone now seemed of the frazzled sort. a lock of his hair was sticking straight up and he’d gotten off track buttoning his shirt. he was off by one and the unsettled fabric stuck out like a fat finger in the middle of his chest. i made a point of telling him he looked awful. he said he’d been up late 2 buck 65 (2003, track 10) 3 news item was actually found in alberta teachers’ association (2009) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 4 again looking for slow learners in his computer. he ordered some sort of fruit cocktail and toast, the cheapest thing on the menu. i had planned to tell williamson about my interview with colleen birdseye and my subsequent discovery that i was still being followed, but i hadn’t found anything i could put into words yet to describe what these experiences had taught me about where the slow learners were. and dogooder that he was, i was worried if he got a sense i was in too much danger, he’d simply terminate the case. as i was looking for a less sensational aspect of the case to discuss with him a question came to me then, not about what colleen birdseye had told me, or about my experiences during and after the interview, but about the informant herself. she had said she was labeled, or maybe mislabeled, as a slow learner, but as an adult she seemed pretty unencumbered by any of this classification business. how many students had he met that had transcended the label as adults? i asked williamson if he knew. instead of answering my question, he starting griping, again about the certificate of achievement some of his slow learners end up graduating with instead of the high school diploma, saying how unfair it was that his kids worked so hard but only got a token sort of high school completion credential, one that wouldn’t get them very far after high school. how it placed them at a disadvantage even after school was over. i’d heard this tune already and i challenged him, “so, what if some of your k & e students, slow learners … whatever … graduate with a different credential, get credits in different sorts of courses, what’s the big deal? if they can’t handle the normal program isn’t that what should happen? besides, i thought you told me if they did well at this level they could always move back up to the regular program?” i wanted to needle him a bit and hear how he’d react. williamson looked to be mustering his forces for another of his moralizing salvos, but possibly remembering how i’d reacted last time he tried this, he regrouped and asked a question instead. “you remember how i told you i used to do a lot of work with the high school registered apprenticeship programs?” i nodded. where was he going with this? “well, one time i was at the apprenticeship and industry training office. i needed some more apprenticeship applications for my students and with the office being so close to my school i found it easier to go there rather than ordering them to be mailed out. there was a kid in front of me in line with his mom, a young man i mean. not a young man like a kid, a young man, like eighteen or nineteen.” i loved it when williamson lost control of his labels. he took a breath and continued. “anyhow, i’d overheard as i was waiting behind them that the … son had just graduated from high school, one of the vocational schools where they have k & e, the lower tier only of regular education classes and shop classes.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 5 i realized from this description that was probably what colleen birdseye meant by “k & e school” when she said it. i had figured out what bothered me when she said it was that it hadn’t made sense to me that a set of classes with such low enrolment would necessitate a whole separate school. but if it got combined with classes from the next level up as well as a lot of shop classes…. williamson continued. “during high school, this student had been indentured as an apprentice mechanic and worked a thousand hours in the trade. he was registering for his first eight weeks of technical or college training, to complete the first year of his apprenticeship. i could hear from the conversation that he started in k & e classes, but that he had upgraded during high school, and by the time he’d left high school he’d completed the regular high school diploma. his transcript showed he’d enrolled in and passed the right level of math to be automatically accepted, providing that he had been apprenticed, into the college part of his trades training.” “so what was the problem?” i asked, still stymied as to the relevance of any of this. “well the guy at the desk said with k & e courses on his transcript and considering where he went to school he should really write the entrance exam. you know the exam that apprentices who don’t have the pre-requisite courses have to write.” “what? hadn’t he already passed the pre-requisite math course?” i was confused. “this was the same question the … apprentice asked. yeah, but the guy at the counter said k & es have a tough time with mechanics training and before wasting a bunch of time and money in the program he should just write the exam to see.” “to see what?” “to see if he could handle the coursework for the program he was enrolling in, i guess.” “so, what happened?” “the apprentice and his mom kept asking if he really had to write the exam or if he could just register in the courses. after listening for a while, i poked my nose in and, as quietly as i could because i still needed my forms, told the apprentice and his mom that i was sure he had all the prerequisites based on what i’d heard, and that they should insist on going ahead and enrolling in the college program, without writing the entrance exam.” “did the guy at the counter give in?” “apparently it was getting close to his break time or something, and this other worker told the guy she’d take over and processed the application. he kind of shrugged and went on break. after they were done, she handled my request too, and when i couldn’t help but comment on the strangeness of the situation that just played out in front of me she told me that her co-worker wasn’t wrong. students from k & e, in their experience, do have a rough time she said.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 6 “is that true?” “it could be. i’ve heard trade school is much harder than people tend to think. lots of people probably flunk out. maybe this one would have had trouble too, but he had the pre-requisite.” “would you have done more if the guy at the counter dug his heels in?” “i don’t know. i needed the help of the apprenticeship board for a lot of things at the time and it was important to me to have a healthy relationship with them. i had a lot of students in the apprenticeship program.” the waitress came by to refill our coffee. williamson held out his fruit bowl instead of his cup. he really was a mess. he mentioned a few more things i should consider about the case but nothing seemed to me to connect that well with what i’d experienced so far. he then glanced at his watch and saw it was time to leave for the in-service. williamson picked up the tab, and i followed him in the buick to the site where the in-service was being held. it was a short drive. i felt the first shot of warm air from the heater enter the frigid interior of the buick just as i was turning the ignition off in the parking lot of our destination. vi i felt the welcome pain of the heat thawing my already frozen face and hands as we entered. the sessions were being held at an old elementary school that had been renovated into a center for consultants, psychologists, supervisors, and clerical staff. peering in the rooms on the way in, i noticed all the little desks had been replaced by adult-sized tables suitable for the new occupants of the building, but when i stopped by the washroom i observed the toilets were still at a height meant for five-to-nine year olds. various professionals milled about. williamson and i made our way to the room the session was being held in. williamson introduced me as his student teacher to the facilitator, a smiling blond wearing a dark skirt and light blue blazer. she glanced at me quizzically for a moment, i wondered if she thought i looked a little too old for that role or if something else was at work, but then she welcomed me in. i introduced myself as d.b. hoffa, my mind suddenly unable to retrieve first or last names that didn’t belong to missing persons. there was a table of refreshments in the room and even though i just ate i was already hungry again. i blamed it on the cold and the beatings. i grabbed a danish which was good and a cup of coffee which wasn’t. williamson bypassed the table altogether and we both sat down. i felt overdressed amidst this clique of business casual professionals, but hoped that they would consider my suit, which wasn’t in great shape, but was the only suit in the room, evidence only of an overly eager student teacher. the speaker who had greeted us now introduced herself to the larger group as a school psychologist and, after a few opening remarks, turned on a power point slide show presentation. she pleasantly went through the same sorts of information about slow learners and students with learning disabilities that i had been reading about the day before. i was reminded how learning disabled students were considered to have average to above average intelligence, with discrete impairments in areas unrelated to reasoning, and slow learners were thought to be globally low average in their intelligence. i was told that intelligence scores tended not to fluctuate much over williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 7 time and that learning disabilities, though not diagnosed through physical exams or blood tests, were genetic, neurobiological deficits. williamson whispered to me. “i’ve taught two students whose iqs, when they were tested in elementary school, came out low average go on to take advanced placement physics in high school and do fine in the course. i have another student whose iq was borderline when they tested her. she’s just finished writing a fantasy novel.” i considered this. a teacher on the other side of the room, cozily dressed in a sweater that bore his school’s logo, asked the speaker to elaborate on how large the gaps between the specific areas of weakness and global intelligence had to be to diagnose learning disability. she replied there was some leeway for professional judgment, but the general guideline for diagnosing a student with a learning disability was that the standardized measure of academic achievement in a skill such as math or reading should be at least two standard deviations from where their overall iq was.4 the speaker then surprised us by admitting that slow learners might sometimes demonstrate higher scores than learning disabled students on parts of an iq test. they might score, average or even higher than average in areas including processing speed and word reading but never, by definition, in reasoning. that was interesting. if i understood the concept of ‘processing speed’ correctly, that meant one could literally ‘think fast’ but still be a slow learner. i wondered how it got decided that some of the tasks on iq tests were considered to be tests of reasoning while others were not. my mind drifted off to something i’d learned about a long time ago, the cult of reason ceremonies during the french revolution during which reason itself was venerated in quasi-religious ritual, as a supreme being.5 that seemed to come out of nowhere, so when i heard myself think it i bit my tongue to make myself focus on the speaker. the psychologist then shifted gears from explaining these categorical definitions to describing how she encountered them in diagnostic practice. she admitted that she was always relieved to be able to diagnose a learning disability rather than a slow learner profile in a student, because the former label was less demeaning and resulted in more funded services for the student. williamson was listening attentively and i could tell from his eyes he was formulating a question. he finally blurted out, not to me but to the speaker, “when a student tests as a slow learner, how do you communicate this data in a way that doesn’t suggest they are of lesser value than other students, like less valued than so-called ‘normal’ students or students with learning disabilities but average intelligence?” the speaker was confused. “communicate … to whom. to parents?” williamson said, “to everyone.” then he went on. “how do you prevent the statistical measure of iq from becoming interpreted as a global statement about somebody’s worth as a learner?” the speaker still looked confused. i couldn’t blame her. i wasn’t sure i got it either. but she attempted an answer. “the iq, it is what it is. i just try to communicate the scores as tactfully as i can. but if the parents you work with are upset by these reports, or if you or other teachers 4 american psychological association (2000, p. 51) 5 doyle, (2002, p. 238) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 8 don’t know how to interpret them, you can always call us to try to explain them again.” williamson looked less than satisfied with that answer and leaned forward a bit in his chair, about to reply, but then thought better of it. the speaker went on to explain strategies for supporting slow learners. these involved: giving concise, one-task-at-a-time instructions, trying to avoid passive learning activities such as copying notes from the board in favor of more active things like games and puzzles, trying to find ways that the subject areas of learning converged with the students’ personal interests, finding what the students were good at and drawing on these competencies, and using a lot of repetition when teaching difficult concepts. i saw williamson nodding along. i asked if he tried to use these strategies, and he said he tried to, not just with students who were supposed to be slow learners but with most of students he worked with. while this speaker had given an unsatisfying answer to his previous question, she was identifying many of the same strategies he said he used with these students. while the speaker was answering another question, i glanced over a handout we’d been given entitled ‘how to support a slow learner.’6 most of the strategies addressed what were thought to be gaps in slow learners’ reasoning abilities, how to keep content as concrete as possible and, when abstraction was necessary, to make sure they were prepared and well-supported. this advice followed logically enough from the label but when i came to a section on reading, i was surprised to see in stark print the admission that many of the strategies that worked for students with reading disabilities would also work for slow learners. i briefly skimmed over these and then i elbowed williamson in the chest, maybe a little too forcefully as he looked up with a pained expression. but then i showed him this passage and he glanced over it too and nodded his agreement again. “if so many of the strategies for working with struggling learners are so similar, at least for reading,” i whispered, “why make such a big deal over the categorical differences?”7 a young, but stern looking teacher to our left shot us an angry glance, fed up with our talking during the presentation. the speaker then went on to describe a few more assessment strategies. she said slow learners tended to do better with assessments that allowed them to affirm what they knew instead of assessments that ‘tricked’ them into exposing their deficiencies in knowledge. she said that they tended to struggle, for example, with math problems with irrelevant information, or “red herrings,” i thought, packed into the questions. she said they tended to struggle with multiple choice testing when the distractors, or incorrect answers, were too close to the correct answer. she said that teachers always had to emphasize their strengths, to find the things they were actually good at, and to build on these things. she said that slow learners lacked confidence and were often embarrassed to ask for help. she then concluded by saying that due to long careers of school failure that slow learners are often highly discouraged, highly at-risk of dropping out8 and that they required care and attention despite the lack of resources the system made available to support them. 6 see shaw (2010, pp. 12-16). this is the actual source for most of the advice in the fictional handout. 7 see burgess (1990, p. 53) and klassen, neufeld, & munro (2005). both of these sources articulate the perspective max has just come around to. 8 shaw (2006, pp. 12-14) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 9 the remainder of the session involved questions for the speaker and some sharing, between the various participants, of further strategies to support slow learners. i tried to listen, but found my mind wondering where this speaker’s ideas fit in to this investigation, and where else i might look for slow learners that day. a little later, the speaker announced she was finished, and that there would be a fifteen-minute break, after which the topic for the session would change to something called assistive technology. there were murmurs of thanks and light applause. as the other attendees began to shuffle out towards the restrooms or over to the refreshments, i told williamson that i thought he’d exaggerated his claims about the indifference slow learners faced in the province’s educational system. there were a lot of concerned teachers at this session, i pointed out. “there’s over a hundred schools in this district,” williamson answered back, “and there are only sixteen teachers here today.” i glanced at the large pile of still undistributed handouts in front of the speaker and at all the uneaten refreshments on the table. i took another danish. “still,” i asserted, “the speaker seemed to know a lot about this educational category and the supports these students need. everyone who did show up seemed concerned about slow learners.” williamson conceded this point with a shrug. “but did you hear her say anything about ways of actually changing things systemically to make things fairer for slow learners? did you hear her response to my concern that the way the data is communicated sets the students up to be less valued?” “the strategies that she was talking about do sound like efforts to make school fairer for slow learners. you said you use some of the same ones she described,” i insisted. “don’t you think more slow learners would get through school if everyone knew more about the category and the supports these students need to be successful?” “that’s not good enough,” williamson insisted. “something about the label still puts these kids at risk. something about the interventions that flow from the label, even if some of them work, is contaminated. you heard her say she’d rather diagnose a learning disability than determine a student is a slow learner.” “what if slow learner was a disability label?” i asked. “you said that would lead to more services?” “i said it might make it easier to access services,” williamson replied, “but i didn’t think it was a good idea overall. do you think these kids would really be that well served by a disability label that sets them even further apart, based on measured intelligence, from normal kids? the stigma of being quasi labelled is bad enough.” “is it really that bad?” i asked. the room was beginning to quiet down again as the coffee break drew to a close. another speaker had filed into the room and was plugging her laptop computer into the projector the previous speaker had used. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 10 “back when the slow learner program was called iop or the integrated occupational program, other kids and even some teachers used to sneer at it calling it ‘idiots on patrol’, or ‘on parade’. and how often have you heard the words ‘retard’ or ‘retarded’ used as an insults?” williamson asked tersely. i didn’t answer, but i reflected i heard this all the time and had even used those words in this way on occasion myself. “just asking,” i said, holding up my hands in a placating manner. most of the attendees had returned to their seats by now and people were staring at us again. “the argument is only academic anyway,” williamson replied in a calmer, quieter voice. “the way i understand it, the overall iq is one category too close to average for any new sort of intellectual disability label to apply. on the other hand, there is no way another category of learning disability could be opened up for slow learners as learning disabilities all depend on big discrepancies, and once the overall iq starts to get a little lower it’s harder to find that big of a discrepancy.” i remembered reading something about this categorical impossibility in the library, and hearing williamson explain it to me now, with uncharacteristic clarity, seemed to exhaust the topic for the time being. i couldn’t think of anything else to talk to my client about, at least nothing worth continuing to disrupt the in-service over. while there was still a chance to make a getaway, i asked williamson if he thought there would be much for me to detect in the session that was about to start. he shook his head. i whispered that i was going to check on some more leads and would call him that evening. he reminded me to be careful. vii back in the buick, i sat shivering in a frozen vinyl seat and considered the next steps to my investigation. i wasn’t exactly lying when i told williamson i had leads to follow up; i just didn’t know what they were yet. he had told me about a couple of other k & e teachers he respected at a different school in the district, though he said he didn’t know them as well as he knew colleen birdseye. he’d talked to them for a while at a convention one time and didn’t even remember their names, only the school they came from. still, he thought maybe i should talk to them. colleen birdseye had been an open, forthcoming informant from the first words we spoke. i think i struck her as a straight shooter which i can be when a case doesn’t require deception, but i doubted this level of trust would be typical of every informant. i needed to talk to these teachers as an insider. i made a plan to pose as a substitute at a school other than williamson’s, and try to engage some teachers in a conversation about k & e. i considered the looks i got at the in-service and thought maybe i needed some help to blend in better. to get in character i stopped at a department store and picked up some beige corduroy pants. i grabbed a pre-packaged frozen stir-fry dinner too. consulting a city map, i realized the teachers williamson had suggested i speak to worked at a school on the other side of town from his. it took a while to drive there. i had never worn corduroy in my life and between the car’s heater finally warming the interior and the texture of my pants, i felt like my legs were being squashed by a panini press. i parked in a ‘visitor’ stall and made my way into the school. a bell schedule posted in the hall told me that, having skipped the williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 11 next session at the in-service, i was still on-time for the school’s lunch break. trying to affect the purposeful walk of a hungry substitute teacher, i made my way to the staff room. glancing about as i walked, i noticed this school was newer than williamson’s and had a sort of open design. through windows and open doors, i noticed the classrooms looked more like small conference rooms with students sitting together at tables, not desks. most of the rooms i walked by had smart boards. i reached the staffroom and quickly went over to the mailboxes. i observed that “mr. bostwick’s” box had accumulated several items over the past few days, including an as yet unmarked social studies test on ultranationalism during world war 2. i always liked history. i figured i would be mr. bostwick’s sub for the day. i started to microwave my stir-fry, made a trip to the staff restroom on the other side of the room and through a door, and returned to retrieve my heated meal. i also purchased a coffee for a dollar from a vending machine in the staff room. i listened to the conversations in the central part of the room as my coffee poured. some of the groups of teachers at different tables were talking shop while other discourses involved familiar themes of sports, politics, and gossip. i couldn’t hear anything about iop, k & e or slow learners. along the back far corner of the room, i saw three teachers who had been too far away to eavesdrop on. one of them was a hipster dude i figured to be in his thirties. he was sporting hornrimmed glasses, an impressive set of sideburns, khaki-colored skinny jeans and a retro golf shirt. he had a binder of resources that bore the handwritten label social studies 10-4. i remembered colleen birdseye using a similar course number when talking about teaching k & e, and i guessed that this man and his companions were likely the teachers williamson had suggested i interview. i asked if i could join them at their table. they seemed surprised, but not unpleasantly, to have been noticed. one looked up and smiled, a young, tall dame with dark wavy hair and a pink blazer. she took a break from punching the buttons of her smart phone and gestured toward one of the cushioned chairs. the third teacher, an older fellow with a proud, senatorial head of silver hair, the formal effect toned down by a plaid woodsman’s shirt and faded blue corduroys, asked who i was in for and i replied “bostwick.” they digested this news pretty easily. the hipster commented that he’d been out a couple of days and had a different sub yesterday and then things fell into a casual silence for a minute. pointing to the binder, i asked if they were all k & e teachers. the older guy said they all taught some k & e classes, but only part time. they each had only one or two k & e classes in their teaching schedules, the hipster clarified. the older guy offered that he and the hipster had taught k & e full time before being moved over to this school due to closure of their prior school, so it looked like two of the three of them used to work with slow learners on more like a full-time basis. the hipster said that the group of teachers assigned to k & e classes liked to hang out together once or twice a week and exchange stories about the students they had in common and help each other out with strategies. i said i’d been doing a lot of subbing for k & e teachers throughout the system lately. “i hadn’t heard good things about k & e,” i said, between the small bites of the bland, oversweetened stir-fry i was pretending to be enjoying, “but the students i’ve been working with have been pretty nice.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 12 “if you treat them fairly and actually try to teach them it’s fine,” offered the teacher in the pink blazer. “it’s too bad about the certificate of achievement,” i opined. “if these classes were more popular, i’m sure a lot more kids could benefit from them, but no one seems to want the certificate as a completion credential.” “yeah, i used to work in ontario,” offered the hipster. “it’s different there, more flexible. being weaker in academic skills doesn’t cut you off of the diploma. in ontario, students who require a lot of differentiation can get a diploma with only locally developed courses geared towards helping them. it’s not just the k & e kids who suffer in the province really, alberta is focused on such a high standard. it’s great if your kid is in the elite, but it’s a shameful place to be for the mainstream population. only a third of students go to university; what does alberta education really do for the other two thirds?” “do you think we could ever get as flexible here as you say it was in ontario?” i asked. “not as long as there are diploma exams,” asserted silver hair. “these kinds of kids aren’t pen and paper learners. the diploma exams only test their weaknesses, not their strengths.” i didn’t know what diploma exams were but couldn’t admit to it. “it’s so unfair for the k & e students,” i echoed, hoping to learn more. silver hair nodded in agreement and said, “even if they manage to succeed in math and science where the next tier up from k & e has no diploma exam either, they can’t get out of high school with a diploma without having to sit for three hours through two english exams and two social exams worth half their marks in these classes.”9 from the context i took these exams to be some sort of highly weighted high stakes exit / completion exams for the province’s high school students. “three hours of assessment hell,” i remarked, hoping this was apt enough to solicit further commentary. “i don’t know what’s worse,” the hipster said, taking the bait. “the reading challenges, not to mention the stamina challenges, posed by the multiple choice components, or having to perform multiple written responses, with no real chance to collaborate or revise.”10 9 see alberta education (2015, p. 2). in a policy change implemented sep. 1, 2015, after the completion of this novelization, alberta education lowered the weighting of diploma exams to 30% of student’s final grades in their courses. this change seems likely to benefit students labelled as slow learners, so i am mentioning it in the interest of fairness. to maintain the integrity of the narrative and the phenomena it describes, however, i have not incorporated this or any changes of policy made after the initial release of this work, at the end of april, 2015, in the main story. 10 see alberta education (2013, pp. 1-8). to elaborate on what max has pieced together, for alberta’s grade 12 students on the high school diploma track there are mandatory diploma examinations weighted (at the time this was written) at 50% of a student’s course grade in the following grade 12 courses: williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 13 “whether or not we recommend k & e often hinges on if we think the student will eventually be able to handle a diploma exam,” added the girl in the pink blazer. “and a lot of the k & e students don’t even qualify for accommodations on them.” even though i thought i’d already heard the answer from colleen birdseye, for the sake of verification i asked her why many k & e students didn’t qualify for accommodations. her explanation echoed what i’d heard from the psychologist earlier that day; it sounded like a reasonable explanation of another unreasonable policy regarding slow learners. i still found this concept of accommodation weird. i’d always associated the word with shelter. like the dingy hotels, including the present, that i occupied while out on cases. it sounded like slow learners were being denied shelter in a way. “doing better on a test with an audio cd or a scribe should be seen as a learning modality, not a disability,” asserted the hipster.11 “i don’t know about that,” i responded, playing devil’s advocate. “if we just start letting everyone do tests and assignments by talking and listening wouldn’t that undermine reading and writing. we’re supposed to be all about literacy, aren’t we?” “yeah, reading and writing is important. we obviously need to teach those skills,” acknowledged pink blazer, “but they are also ubiquitous. they shouldn’t be imposed so exclusively that a k & e kid feels like … he’s burning under a thousand hot suns every time he walks into the school,” she concluded poetically. “back when schools were more concerned about k & e students i was asked do an in-service for the staff on the needs of this population of students,” silver hair said. there was that ‘in-service word’ again. i silently reflected that this profession must have a lot of screwed up individuals in it if they all needed constant retraining, as he continued with his story. “at the in-service, i asked biology 30, chemistry 30, english language arts 30–1, english language arts 30–2, français 30–1, french language arts 30–1, mathematics 30–1, mathematics 30–2, physics 30, science 30, social studies 30–1, and social studies 30–2. while there are tiers of math and science on the high school diploma track that do not require completion of diploma exams, to receive a high school diploma students are required to write diploma exams in either english language arts 30–1 or english language arts 30–2 and either social studies 30–1 or social studies 30–2. the english and social studies examinations are both divided into multiple choice and written response parts. 11 see alberta education (2013). unlike this informant, alberta education takes a very cautious approach to providing accommodation on standardized testing, seeing their potential over-use as a threat to the validity of the assessments. “the goal of accommodation is not to optimize performance but to level the playing field by removing obstacles to performance that are inequitable. consequently, accommodations are neither intended nor permitted to: alter the nature of the construct being assessed by an exam, provide unfair advantage to students with disabilities or medical conditions over students taking examinations under regular standardized conditions, or compensate for knowledge or skill that the student has not attained” (p. 12). williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 14 everyone to write down what their weakest commonly used skill in life was. you know how staff are at these things.” i didn’t but rolled my eyes in feigned solidarity. “teachers are often the least cooperative students,” he continued, “but i didn’t go on until i saw everyone had actually done it. then i told them to imagine for the next eighty-five minutes everything we did would involve that skill. it was only hypothetical of course, but you could have cut the tension in the room with a knife.” we all chewed on that, and our lunches for a while. finally, i broke the silence. “i’ve only been doing some subbing in k & e,” i asserted, “i’m not really a k & e teacher, but do you really think it’s that bad? every high school i’ve worked at has these amazing shop classes. seems like there’s a lot of hands-on learning.” “yes and no,” pink blazer said. “in our cts classes in mechanics, as an example, students are asked to complete three thick booklets and a written safety test before they even get to touch anything on the car.12 for many k & e students, this turns them off, they lose all motivation. this is all backwards. they should get the hands-on learning first and if they really need to do some of the written theory at least do it only after they’ve actually had the hands-on experience. you know, to help them make sense of it.” “so,” i thought, “even the classes these overly concrete learners are supposed to be able to excel at are often inaccessible for them.” i tried, instead to fish out more optimistic sentiment in the conversation. “at least you have your actual k & e core classes to give them some practical chances for concrete learning in these areas.” “we had more chances when it was iop,” the older gentlemen informed me. “the curricula for english, math, social and science were all geared towards giving the kids a more practical experience. they were shorter than the classes that were the next level up too. the -4 k & e classes are now the same length of time as the next level up and in terms of content are pretty much a watered down version of the -2 classes, which are themselves a watered down version of the -1 classes.” “why did it change?” i asked. a lot of schools were saying iop was too different to offer at their facilities. so the curriculum writers were trying to align it better with the so-called regular program, and make it easier for schools to timetable it and for students to schedule it along with their non iop classes, but they ended up nearly killing it.” he sighed as he uttered this last statement. “i don’t get,” i pressed. “how did aligning the classes better with the diploma route nearly kill k & e?” here was another mystery to solve. 12 see alberta education (2010). this acronym stands for career and technology studies classes which include “shop” or industrial arts classes in welding, carpentry, mechanics, cooking and cosmetology, as well as classes in legal studies, management and marketing, accounting, and computing. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 15 silver hair began to explain, “well, even if not all schools were embracing iop, some of the schools that did were using the emphasis of the classes and format of the program to do some really innovative things. i heard about one school program at the time that routinely engaged its iop students in building houses, as a part of their iop classes.” that sounded pretty exciting. i made a note to try to follow up on it. silver hair continued, “before i started working in this high school, i was at a vocational school. we weren’t quite as ambitious as the house-building school, but things went pretty well. in the core area we had iop classes and the lower academic tier of classes; sometimes we combined the two levels in the same classroom. it had great labs, and shop teachers who really focused on hands-on learning.” his face transformed into a wistful expression as he explained this last bit. the hipster jumped in with his own story, “where i used to teach we just had a large iop population in a regular school. we often relied on off-campus education work experience placements with community employers to get the kids through the vocational requirements for their iop certificates. by the time most of our kids reached grade twelve, they’d worked at several school-arranged jobs and they’d learned how to communicate with employers, how to conduct themselves in a place of business, how to work hard, and so on. one of the non-iop teachers in the school said he could always tell who my kids were, not because their skills were weak but because they were so much more polite than the other students. at least they graduated ready to function on a job; now they leave knowing no more about this than any of the other students do. they gutted the program.” “isn’t this all a bit nostalgic?” i challenged. “things couldn’t have been going that well or they wouldn’t have changed the program. besides, isn’t education supposed to be getting more inclusive?” “inclusion into what?”13 the hipster spoke up. “if all inclusion means is putting k & e students back into some of the same rigid classrooms they’ve struggled in throughout, without offering additional support, they’d be better off in separate classes that are at least designed to meet their needs.” “inclusion has meant taking things away for k & e kids, not putting things in,” silver hair agreed. “our district’s interpretation of inclusion has meant shutting down the vocational settings where k & e was being offered. inclusion was seen as you don’t need discrete schools. maybe there were problems with the previous model but no one in this district has proposed a meaningful alternative, schools were just given another teacher or two and a bunch of k & e kids and told to figure it out. once again, the actual k & e students were the afterthought, or afterbirth.” i found this to be a rather harsh metaphor and expected his companions to shudder or appear offended in some way, but they all calmly accepted the truth of the statement. this was all rather depressing. i could see why no one else was sitting with these three. then, once i got over the 13 allan (2008, p. 48) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 16 shock of the metaphor, the reality he described set in and i blurted out, “but how? how can a district be so careless with such a vulnerable category of students?” they all looked at me quizzically and i thought i’d blown my cover with such a naïve question. “you haven’t worked in special programs much, have you? i mean before the subbing gigs in k & e?” asked the teacher in the pink blazer. i don’t think she had any idea how completely she was rescuing me with that remark. i was so grateful i considered proposing marriage. “no, i’m just starting to learn my way around that corner of education.” i thought i might as well admit to this, but tried to follow up with some kind of observation to show i wasn’t completely out to lunch. “but from what i’ve seen in the little experience i have with it, i mean from the classes i’ve been in, it seems that schools don’t always follow the criteria for k & e real closely either. i’ve heard that k & e is supposed to be for slow learners, you know, behind in school, low average iq and so on. it seems more like it’s often used for anyone who doesn’t fit into the regular program.” “it’s not a big surprise schools have to look for alternatives for a variety of students. the regular program can be pretty brutal, curricularly. it leaves a lot of complex learners out in the cold. diploma exams loom large over the classroom experience, governing not only what is taught but how it’s taught,” she explained. “why is it a bad thing that classroom teachers model most of their assessments on diploma exams?” i asked, now embracing a naïve persona. “they don’t test a whole range of skills, or knowledge,” she asserted. “take english language arts. the program of studies indicates students should be taught and assessed on their ability to do process-oriented writing, produce multiple drafts, restructure first draft writing, and shape texts according to audience and purpose.” “uh-huh,” i replied. i felt like she was lecturing us, but thought i’d bear with her to see where it went. “well, where is the opportunity to do these things on a diploma exam, or on a time-limited inclass essay that is modeled after the diploma exam? these skills from the program of studies are basically bypassed while skills like writing under pressure, coming up with ideas quickly, and producing a polished first draft, that aren’t even on the program of studies get added as the major skills being assessed.”14 “sounds like a game show,” i remarked. “some kind of beat the clock thing.” “yeah, a sick, high stakes game show, with mandatory participation.” pink blazer agreed. “kind of like in that movie the hunger games.15 teaching to the test sometimes is bad enough, but this 14 see slomp (2008) 15 williamson & paul (2012, p. 6) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 17 literally turns teaching into the test. the course becomes a one hundred twenty-five hour diploma exam.” “more like three hundred and seventy-five,” silver hair suggested. “the grade ten and eleven courses pretty much work this way too, even though the diploma exam isn’t until grade twelve. you know, just to keep it consistent, they say.” “isn’t that overstating things a bit,” i asked, winning a shrug of concession from the teacher in the pink blazer. “besides,” i added, hoping i had a line of argument i’d picked up from in the news in my own country right, “don’t these tests also hold schools accountable for teaching students the curriculum,16 for giving students reasonable marks, and so on. don’t they help it all from becoming a big free-for-all?” “you’re not expressing a very high opinion of the work we do if you think that’s what would happen without these tests,” scolded silver hair. chastened, i changed the topic, reframing the statistic i’d read about low provincial enrolement in k & e as a personal observation and follow-up question. “k & e numbers are pretty low at the schools i’ve been working at. are they low here too?” “i only have five students in my k & e social class next period,” pink blazer confirmed. “i can’t see any administrator putting up with numbers that low for very long. they’ll probably just dump the k & es in with the lowest tier of the high school diploma level class, the -2s, next year and have me teach that, just to make everyone else’s numbers a little lower.” “oh? will that make things even worse for slow learners?” i asked. “i don’t know,” she admitted, “maybe.” i was about to ask her to elaborate when i saw, out of the corner of my eye, a tall, broad-shouldered, bearded man, legs so thick his brown corduroys rubbed together as he walked, enter the staff room. he went over to the mailbox labeled bostwick, retrieved the contents, sat at an empty table in the far corner from where the k & e teachers and i were sitting, and began to go through them. my lunch companions were not positioned as well as i was for viewing the entrance to the staff room and, luckily, did not notice him. still, i thought i was pressing my luck remaining in the room any longer. i thanked my ‘colleagues’ for the company and made my way out of the staff room. viii i returned to the foyer, where i observed an intramural floor hockey game through the window of the gymnasium doors. i wondered if any slow learners were playing. the stands were filled with students watching the game. a team dressed in long socks, half shirts and shorts in ironic homage to 1980s fitness wear opposed a team in coveralls with the team name ‘the mechanics’ written on their backs in felt pen. though the uniforms were light hearted, the game was contested with a scrappy intensity that made me tired just watching. one of ‘the mechanics’ caught my eye as he waltzed with liquid grace through three hacking and slashing opponents and popped 16 stewart (2004, p. 185) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 18 the ball into the upper left corner of the net before the goal tender could even move. his game made everyone else look slow; i reflected if i was playing on the other team, i’d try to inflict a well-placed elbow to slow him down. this game ended in favor of ‘the mechanics’, and the 1980s fitness stars left the court to be replaced by a group of students dressed as superheroes. as they warmed up, i realized at least a couple had down syndrome and it dawned on me that this whole team might be made up of students with moderate intellectual disabilities, maybe from one of the school’s programs. the game began. ‘the superheroes’ definitely knew how to play but were not the floor hockey equals of most of ‘the mechanics’, least of all the graceful forward i had noticed earlier. whereas the game before was hotly contested – anyone who had the ball could count on only a split second before his opponents would be all over him – in this game. ‘the superheroes’ were given a little more space, a little more room to play. just enough to keep it a playable game. with all the aggressive sorting of students i’d been reading about it was nice to see a game that included everyone. still i was left wondering if ‘the superheroes’ would still have ended up on the same team if they weren’t all in the same special education program? or, would many have found their ways on to other teams, having been invited by their friends from their various classes? looking back to the foyer traffic i saw, out of the corner of my eye, the teacher in the pink blazer walking towards me and it occurred to me that, even though it was risky, that this might be a good opportunity to find some actual slow learners. she had said she had a k & e social class scheduled for next period. i told her that bostwick (who i prayed she had not noticed in the staffroom) had a spare and the office had not been able to find any other classes for me to assist with yet. i offered to teach her class. she considered for a moment and then gratefully accepted. she told me she had her class working on an ultranationalism assignment, but not to worry if we didn’t get very far as they often spent a long time just talking about the content, and sometimes things only vaguely related, instead of doing written work. she told me if i had any background knowledge or experiences with the lesson to feel free to talk about them – her kids loved stories. weaving in and out of the traffic of a couple thousand students en route to class, i followed her down the hall and up some stairs to the classroom. we entered a large room with new tables and chairs and old motivational posters featuring charlie brown, garfield, photographs of orangutans, and trite advice. apologizing for the room’s lack of personality, she told me that due to her varied schedule in the school she taught in different classrooms most of the day she wasn’t allowed to change the class decorations. a pair of students entered the room, then another student, and then the last student. the last one deposited a pungent, grease-stained paper bag bearing the label burgeropolis on it in the classroom trash can on the way in. every student said hello to us as they entered, the first three rather confidently, the last student quite shyly. their teacher quickly ran through the names for me. she said all but one of the students were present. she explained that i would be substitute teaching the class for her and told them to keep working on the ultranationalism assignment. after she left, i told the students that before they continued with the assignment i, as a new substitute, would appreciate a chance to discuss k & e with them. i told them that this would help me in my career as a substitute. wanting to begin on a positive note, i asked “so what do you like about being in k & e classes?” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 19 a girl with long black hair and a hello kitty shirt, introduced to me as hope, was the first to respond. “just, all the nice teachers, and how they help you all.” i looked behind myself to see if her regular teacher had come back in the room and she was saying that for her benefit, but no it was a genuine statement. i chided myself for my own cynicism. another student, the bearer of the burgeropolis bag, jumped in. he was a thin, sandy haired boy by the name of david who looked young for grade eleven. he more or less repeated what the girl had said. i acknowledged these observations and moved on to asking how many k & e students attended their school, but none of them had any idea. observing that this current class was pretty small, i asked if all of their k & e classes were like this or, remembering what their teacher had said about blended classes if there were some of those running too. i figured maybe some classes in other disciplines had already been blended. a couple of the students, at the same time, indicated they were in a blended science class. it combined students from the less academic tier of high school diploma level science with a handful of students taking science at the k & e level. i asked how many students were in that class and they indicated that it was around twenty-five. “what is that like?” i inquired, thinking someone might note that it was harder to get help in the larger class. “it was okay. like, everybody did what they were supposed to do. everybody worked. we could all work together,” replied arturo, a young man with brown eyes, a round face, and an accent that i thought i recognized as mexican. “i liked the pace in the blended class,” david noted. “in this social class it took us two months of lessons just to be ready for the first chapter of the text book. in science there was usually a chapter a week with a test after every single week.” i considered this for a minute and then asked, “seeing as how you are in a class that has two different levels of science, have you had the chance to notice how often you are given different tasks or assignments than the other students?” “they don’t really do anything different,” she asserted. “they treat you, like, the same as everybody else, and that’s kinda what i liked about it. no one knew i was in es1, and that’s, like, um … they asked me, and they were like… there was this one kid, and she asked me if i was in es1 … and i was like, ‘yeah’, and she goes, ‘i never actually knew you were, you were keeping up so well’.” she had mentioned es1, not k & e. i made a mental note to double check what es1 meant, but i had a line of questioning to keep pursuing first. “wow. that’s great,” i remarked, “but, i mean the work in the science class would be too hard at the higher level for some of you, right? or you’d be getting higher level credits, not k & e level credits. how come you’re not getting higher level credits instead of k & e credits then?” i didn’t like to hear myself using the words ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ with these kids but i couldn’t remember all the damn numbers in the sequence and i needed some handle to get my point across. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 20 “because we would be doing …” she began, but then ran out of steam. “that’s actually a really good question, and i’m really not sure about that one. you’d have to maybe ask our teacher.” “why are we getting k & e and not high school diploma level science?” arturo interjected, looking to clarify my question. at least he knew what to call the two different levels. “yeah, yeah!” i could barely contain my excitement. “because,” he explained, “k & e is for, like … is the level where it’s … they give you easier work, and in the high school diploma stream, you get to do what everybody else is doing, while in the k & e stream, you just … just do the half of the work that the other people are doing.” “i never noticed that, like … i would work with david all the time,” hope said. “me and david would have the same work. so i never really thought about it, it could have been true, but i never thought about it.” “maybe,” i speculated, “your teacher was just so smooth doing it that you never really felt that different. you were getting handed something different, but you just didn’t notice?” “that’s probably it,” she said and then instead of being disturbed by this possibility she smiled, “it’s just … you do the work and they see how you do, and then see what credits you get. then they kinda know, and then they judge about not having you answer certain questions, and how neat is that?” i wasn’t sure if it was neat or not so i was glad her question sounded rhetorical. i observed that, by and large, what i was experiencing so far was a group of positive, optimistic students who seemed appreciative of the programming they were receiving. this did not square with williamson’s statements that slow learners were in danger, or colleen birdseye’s concerns, or those of the three teachers from this very school i’d been talking to minutes ago in the staffroom. why? remembering colleen birdseye’s story of being shunted so haphazardly all over the educational chessboard during her school career, i thought i could get a better sense of the dangers these students had traversed, and maybe were still experiencing, if i asked a little about their backgrounds. i thought i’d begin with the student who’d said nothing so far. he was a tall and gangly red-haired student. “uhh, i’m so bad with names,” i lied looking to open him up with a simple question before i asked him for his story, “and there’s only four of you i should know this by now … what’s your name again?” “jonah,” he replied. “jonah. how did you end up in k & e social studies?” “i … have really no idea,” he answered. i could see he was going to be a tough nut to crack. “no?” i pressed. “well, at some point somebody must have told you what was going on with the level of classes you were going to take and maybe even asked you how you felt about it?” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 21 “it’s all pretty, uh …” jonah began before shifting to a more summative statement. “i feel pretty uncomfortable with this class.” “you’re uncomfortable with being placed in k & e social?” i tried to clarify. “yeah …” he agreed. “okay. why’s that?” i asked. “just because there’s not a lot of people and it’s just not as, uh, fun as the other classes i’ve taken,” jonah answered vaguely. understanding that this student was in grade eleven, i tried to clarify what other classes he might be referring to by going back to his earlier educational experiences. to get a better sense of this, i asked, “when you were in grade nine, were you just in regular ed. or were you already in k & e?” “neither,” he replied. “i was in a special class, es1.” it dawned on me that this es1 was probably a class that was seen as academically lower than k & e, maybe a class for students with intellectual disabilities. three out of four of these students described coming from es1. no wonder some of these kids like being in k & e, i thought, they see it as moving up in the educational world. just as i was thinking this, however, arturo began a lengthy story indicating that he was not happy to have been placed in either es1 or k & e. “i used to live in mexico,” he began, “and i did kindergarten and grade one down there. but then they put me down to kindergarten here, and because i didn’t know the classes, i didn’t know the language, uh … the teachers didn’t want to struggle with me in teaching me the language and they just put me in es1 for the es1 teachers to struggle with me. and i guess that was unfair, because it, like … from grade three to six, i was, like, per se…” i was struck by his use of a latin expression i associated more with contracts and lawsuits than high school students but thought maybe he’d heard it one day and it tickled his fancy, maybe even became a sort or earworm for him. arturo continued. “i was put back from all the students, and then, at the end of grade six, i write this really, really strong letter to the school saying that i didn’t … that i strongly disagreed for me being in this program, because i … i knew i could do better, and i could succeed in the normal stream, and then they changed me. but then, the next year, when i arrived to normal grade seven, i don’t know anything because when i left grade six, in the es1 classroom i was doing grade four material. and the next three years they pushed me up to grade seven, eight and nine, and i didn’t know where i was going or what i was doing, because i didn’t have grade five and six. and then williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 22 in high school, because i can’t take the -1 level courses, i will not be able to go to university because of this.” i felt myself questioning the accuracy of some of his perceptions. from what i could tell from my conversations there was es1, which was probably a level of special education for students with mild intellectual disabilities, then k & e above that for slower learners, then a more general high school diploma stream for kids who could achieve at normal levels but were not particularly strong in those subjects, and lastly a more academic, university-bound stream. it seemed somewhat outrageous for this student who had been placed in es1 to be saying that he’d been unfairly kept out of the highest level of courses due to these experiences in early schooling. then i remembered colleen birdseye’s story. maybe i didn’t have any business questioning any of this. “so, it sounds,” i summarized, “like you think that some of that was unfair, like you’re not happy with how you were treated in some of those earlier grades, right?” “yeah,” arturo agreed, “because i knew i … that i can do more, and i have more energy, and i have more effort and i can do extra stuff that just … when i was in the es1 program, we used to repeat the same material. they were just stalling in the same material. and, i guess i didn’t feel like we were … per se … advancing in the program, and i was just stalled. and now i’m stuck in k & e 20-4, when i could have been in 20-1 and been able to have the courses for university. but now, because of this, i’ll have to go to college because of these certain train of events.” from what i could tell from my investigation so far, arturo had overestimated the value of the k & e certificate as a school leaving credential and was actually in even worse shape than he thought. he would qualify for very few post-secondary pathways, college or university, unless he was able to move above k & e, but i didn’t say this. just then i heard mr. bostwick being paged to the office. i wondered if any of the people i’d spoken to, including the teacher whose class i was presently ‘teaching’ heard that announcement. how much longer would i be able to get away with this ruse? i decided i better cut to the chase. “uh, have you guys heard the term ‘slow learner’ before? they sometimes use that in the same kind of, uh, student description as k & e. what do you know about that word, or those terms?” this felt to me like a rather abrupt shift but the students seemed to take it in stride. arturo began, “slow learner is … well, a slow learner basically is that you don’t learn as fast as the other students, and you need a little bit of help for you to be able to succeed. i guess, i have been a slow learner and what happened with me is that i was a slow learner, and the school didn’t want to struggle with me,” he repeated from his previous reply, “so they just put me in es1 because they thought i had a ‘problem’, that i didn’t learn because i didn’t learn as fast as the other … normal students. but i was … i could have … just stayed in the same level, because i wasn’t that behind.” i asked another student, hope, the cheerful and talkative girl who had answered many of my earlier questions. “have you heard the, uh, expression ‘slow learner’ before?” “i have,” she replied. “my teachers, when i was back in grade, like … half of grade three to four, they called me a slow learner and i asked, ‘what does that mean?’ and they told me, ‘you need a williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 23 lot of time on projects, and you need a lot of time on booklets and paperwork, and you need more time on powerpoints and copying down.’ that’s what i always think it is.” “i’m a slow learner too when it comes to notes,” david said. “in my health class i was always a little bit slow, and then if i did try to go faster i started to become messy. like, i kept trying to copy it down, and then i’d go way too fast and miss parts. my health teacher, he said he would print out the notes so i wouldn’t have to copy them down. he goes incredibly fast. i don’t know how the rest of the class can keep up either. it’s like five seconds on one page and then he flips over to the next page.” this wasn’t the sort of ‘slow’ i thought educators and psychologists were talking about when they said ‘slow learner’. ‘slow’ was shorthand for lower iq i thought. whatever the abstract concept of intelligence was supposed to mean, and however limited and limiting this concept was when reduced to a single number, i thought it was still a lot more complicated than how fast a kid could copy off the board. at least i thought it was supposed to be. is this what they thought ‘slow learner’ meant? had someone actually told them this was what it meant? “i’m far-sighted too,” hope broke in interrupting my thoughts, “i can’t see far. and then, like, my glasses are at my mom’s house…” “you mean near-sighted, because far-sighted is that you can see far,” arturo corrected. “one of the two, yeah,” she replied, unconcerned. “and, um … so, my glasses are at my mom’s, so i haven’t had my glasses for two weeks.” i was considering if not being able to see the board made a student a slow learner too, when david, the skinny kid at the back, broke in again. “yeah. i’ve heard that i am a slow learner. i need lots of help with my work, and everything i do. i did curling, and my friend’s dad was the instructor. he’s tried to teach me how to keep my foot from going way up there, but it still kept going up there, so i needed a lot of help with that.” i considered the arcane sport of rocks and brooms he’d just mentioned, one i was only familiar with from a brief viewing of it on television during a lonely night a long time ago when the winter olympics were the only thing on television. “if you have to be a slow learner at anything,” i thought to myself, “i guess being a slow learner at curling isn’t so bad.” instead of offering this evaluation, in case the kid did think it was a big deal, i just kept quiet. “i took dance last semester,” hope remarked, “and my teacher was impressed on how fastly i picked up the moves. that was my first time ever taking dance.” “i’m definitely not a slow learner at basketball,” arturo offered. jonah, who had been sitting silently ever since he’d trailed off telling the story of his placement in es 1 and arturo had taken over with his own story, suddenly stood up and produced from his backpack three bowling pins. he began to expertly juggle them. i supposed i should say somewilliamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 24 thing about this interruption in routine, but then i remembered i was only impersonating a teacher and didn’t really care whether they did their work or performed circus acts, so i just watched him for a while. “that’s fantastic,” i remarked when he was done. “where did you learn how to do that?” “he just saw it on you tube one day,” david said, speaking for jonah. “we watched it together at lunch time. that night he took some balls and figured it out in about five minutes, he showed us the next day. then he bought some bowling pins and he’s been putting on these shows for us ever since.” jonah smiled and sat down. i’ve never been able to juggle anything, balls, bowling pins, relationships, money. i didn’t know whether i wanted to hug him, ask him how he did it, or break his arms. i reflected on what i’d heard from the kids so far, and felt none the wiser about where the slow learners went. these students were in a class for slow learners. most of them had even come from a program for students who were supposed to be intellectually weaker than slow learners. but many of the things they said they were slow learners at didn’t really seem that central to learning. furthermore, they often gave thoughtful, articulate answers to my questions and had showed me a few things they definitely weren’t slow learners at. everywhere i investigated, this concept of slow learner appeared for a second, and then pulled a vanishing trick. i was getting tired of this act. i’d heard all i could process from these students. i couldn’t think of any more questions to ask. hopefully i’d be able to figure out a way to see them again if i came up with some more. they were paging bostwick again. i needed to make a getaway. with hunched posture and a little moaning, i began to simulate a sudden onset gastric ailment. the students began to look concerned. i told them i suddenly wasn’t feeling well. then i phoned the staff room where the teacher who i’d volunteered to relieve for the period was working, and let her know i’d taken ill suddenly and was leaving. abandoning the class that had shown me such goodwill with their answers to my questions, i began a hasty exit. in the downstairs hallway, i passed a classroom with an open door and a large man pointing to a map of 1944 europe on a smart board; it was bostwick. as i walked straight ahead past his class, i caught him regarding me curiously before resuming his lecture. since that was all he did, i surmised bostwick had not yet heard about his strange, unsolicited substitute, and i felt grateful that there wasn’t more interdepartmental collaboration going on in this particular high school. i pulled out of the school parking lot, passing the burgeropolis restaurant across the road at a little strip mall i hadn’t paid much attention to on the way in. noticing the buick was running low on fuel, i stopped at a gas station a few blocks down and filled it up, and then changed out of the corduroys in the station’s dirty bathroom. as the itching in my legs subsided, i felt more myself again, but i also reflected that for a while there, when the kids and i really fell into conversation, i hadn’t felt like an imposter at all. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 25 ix i decided to take a drive. i had nowhere to be, but it would give me something to do with my hands while i reviewed the recent developments in the case. reflecting on my earlier realization that i wasn’t sure if i’d actually met any slow learners in the class for slow learners, i also remembered that arturo had attributed his academic troubles to language difficulties. if he was right about being misplaced in es1 and k & e over language learning issues this made the application of the slow learner label doubly suspicious. this was indeed an elusive category of students i was looking for. the neon sign of a greasy spoon restaurant glowed through the dirty windshield of my car. though i’d already consumed two meals and a snack in five hours, i realized i was hungry again. my body had been constantly craving things to burn for warmth since i’d arrived in this city, and the stir-fry hadn’t been very substantial. i pulled into the restaurant and walked from my car to the entrance, bracing myself against the sudden insult of a harsh wind. i sat down, and the waitress rambled over to pour some coffee for me and gave me a menu. her hair hung in tired spirals and she smelled of potatoes and nicotine. i ordered a clubhouse sandwich and, maybe because this restaurant was almost as empty as the one i’d been to in the morning, received my food right away. there were no stacks of newspapers at this joint to entertain me as i ate but that was okay, i had my thoughts about the case to read. i wondered if i was looking too closely at all of this, if i needed a longer view to find slow learners.17 despite my best efforts to find them by talking to teachers and students i had yet to find one. instead of using the category as a lens to see students who matched the description, maybe i needed to study the process by which the school system had learned to find slow learning students. how long had it been finding slow learners for? i thought about these knowledge and employability classes, and the integrated occupational classes that preceded them. i wondered what came before iop? i wondered if, at least since public education started, there had always been some sort of different schooling for students seen as slower. did they always sort students into these programs by iq? how did this all come about? did the alternate schooling paths for slow learners always have this vocational emphasis? what called out to me just then, was the history of all of this. i felt, then, the heat of being observed and, using a clean part of my spoon as a mirror, saw that someone had slipped into a booth a few tables behind mine and was watching me. bending to scratch my ankle, i stole a longer glance using my seasoned peripheral vision. he wore a grey suit with creases so sharp you could shave with them and was alternating between writing in a clipboard and measuring me with unblinking, steely eyes. everything about this guy spoke of bureaucratic conspiracy. i took a slow breath to contain my excitement. this was the break i was waiting for. i needed to turn the tables on him; tail him, and find out who he was working for. i thought if i dialed up the heat in this restaurant and upset his sense of an orderly stakeout, he might want to leave to avoid attention. i could then follow him back to wherever he came from. when my waitress returned to refill my coffee, i began to berate her about the quality of the meal, the staleness of the coffee, the rubbery bacon, the soggy toast, and the dirty table. i 17 see heidegger (1927/1962) “the being of the entities encountered environmentally as closest to us remains concealed” (p. 131). williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 26 demanded to see a manager. i pounded the table. the cook came out from behind the grill and began to advance towards the table. his greasy t-shirt didn’t succeed in covering a large stomach or enormous meaty arms, each one the size of a ham. the bemused expression he wore suggested there was nothing he’d like more than to brace me between himself and the table with his giant gut while he drummed on my head. my observer got up and skittered out of the restaurant and, a half beat later so did i, throwing down enough cash to pay for the meal plus a generous tip and a shouted apology to the bewildered staff. i rushed to my car, looking to follow my pursuer. he had used his head start well and was already speeding out of the parking lot in a nondescript grey van. i had to catch up or i’d lose him. in my haste, i was only vaguely struck by the novelty of a black peugeot driving towards me. then i was struck more intensely as it lurched into a sharp arc over the restaurant sidewalk and clipped me just below the hip. i fell to the ground clutching my thigh, the nerves in my leg a gang of jumping monkeys. two men scrambled out of the car to see if i was okay. under normal circumstances, an assault such as this would bring out the darkness in me and i’d fight on even with four broken limbs. leading with my fists was, after all, one of my primary methods of investigation. but i was so surprised by the event, and the men who were jumped out of the car struck me as so odd, that my rage was short-circuited and i simply waited in curiosity and agonizing pain. the first man approached me. as he crouched to examine me, leaning on the car that had struck me, i noted that he was not physically tall but had a tall crop of thick snow-white hair that seemed to possess a will of its own. once he determined my life wasn’t in peril, his lips turned up slightly in an enigmatic smile that might have been amusement or embarrassment, and his brown eyes took on a playful sparkle. i studied him as he inquired about my injuries in a strong french accent despite his excellent english. under his overcoat, he wore a slightly rumpled charcoal suit brightened by a burgundy shirt and oddly patterned brown, grey, and purple tie. he seemed amicable, but shy and a little distant, alert and inquisitive, and yet haunted by a certain melancholic stillness.18 his companion was stranger still. standing over the two of us, at first poised and ready to assist in whatever first aid was needed, and then relaxing slightly when he determined my life wasn’t in danger, he had the cunning face of a fox, albeit a completely hairless one. he wore thick glasses, and though he was only slightly taller than average, the tall effect exaggerated by his thinness and striking baldness. under his overcoat, he wore black pants, a black sport coat and a white turtleneck. he looked almost like a comic book caricature mashup; the thin body and outfit of a beatnik jazz musician with the head of lex luther, from the superman comics, pasted on it. after i assured the driver i did not think my leg was broken, the two of them helped me to my feet. it was too soon to try to stand and my leg began to throb so they had me sit sideways in the passenger side of the peugeot. from what i could piece together from the french i dimly recalled from a boring class during a boring high school career, the bald man had begun to chastise the other for his bad driving. though i couldn’t make out most of the words, listening to him speak was like watching a skilled baker knead dough, expertly forming the strands together and then slapping the dough into its final form with petite bits of measured violence. the effect was lost on the other who just shrugged indifferently. they offered to take me to a clinic to check out the 18 goodrich (2005, p. 814) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 27 extent of my injury and since this was my favorite leg, or perhaps my second favorite, and i wanted to know how soon it would start working again, i accepted. the shorter man went into the restaurant and inquired where the nearest medical center was. when he returned, despite the protests of his companion, jacques, as i heard him addressed, got behind the wheel again and started off. he drove like it was some kind of sport. the liquor stores and sex shops and soulless restaurants on the ugly thoroughfare whizzed by my eyes like signposts on a highway to despair. at first the two made polite attempts to converse with me, taking turns apologizing and asking how my leg was feeling. when it became apparent i was too sore and too shocked to make much conversation, they began a heated debate in french and english. i gathered that the topic being debated had to do with the name ‘descartes’,19 and that the bald man was named michel, but i could not determine either of their perspectives on the topic. they seemed deeply divided on some point, whatever it was, yet in how their speaking cadences meshed, they seemed somehow inseparable. though i never caught the overall gist, some of the weird things they were saying have stayed with me, half-remembered, to this day and still pop into my head if i’m daydreaming. we arrived at the clinic, a box-shaped building on a small side road of the main drag and i limped in, leaning on the bald man for support. when we approached the front desk, the receptionist saw us coming and retrieved a wheelchair from a small room behind the counter. popping her chewing gum absently, she beckoned my new friends to help me sit, and then handed me a form to fill out. she said the doctor would see me shortly. my leg was throbbing so badly that the pain radiated all over my body, and i could barely see straight enough to complete the form, so my new friends volunteered to help. “you are to list your last name first? does your first name then become your last name and last name your first name?” inquired jacques, scrutinizing the form. “writing the last name first brings to bear some formality on an event such as this, though making the last name first suggests a strange intimacy too. a formal-intimacy indeed, as you will soon be taking your pants off so the doctor can examine you!” “and your occupation…,” chimed in michel, who was studying the form as well, “your present occupation is occupying this chair waiting to be seen. why should your occupation matter on a form such as this? but before treatment you, through a routine exercise of power/knowledge and by the tool of this clerical technology, are to be sorted and classified by how you make your living, your gender, marital status and so on. what if you live in the spaces between some of these boxes? without asking you, these discourses are already confirming your so-called normality or pushing you to the margins. if you are here you may be sick to be sure, but are you a ‘normal’ sick or an ‘abnormal’ sick’?” he punched the last two words insinuatingly. 19 see boyne (1990, p. 63). descartes’s views on madness became a source of tension between these two intellectuals when derrida described madness as in cartesian thought as internal to the cogito and accused foucault of simply and naively rearranging the reason/unreason dichotomy in his writings on descartes’ meditations. in this parallel universe, it is still something of a sore point in an otherwise mended relationship between the two. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 28 a nurse arrived and told me that a doctor would see me soon. she seemed vexed that between the three of us we still hadn’t completed the brief patient registration form. i took it with me as she wheeled me into an inner office, leaving jacques and michel to continue discussing the artifact they had just seen. despite my pain, maybe it was better if i completed the form on my own. i waited in the inner office for some time, taking turns between checking off boxes on the form and cursing. i was laying down a familial-themed blue streak when a stern-looking woman in a white lab coat entered the room. at her bidding, i took off my pants and she subjected my leg to some painful bending and prodding as i continued to mutter profanity. i was usually more of a gentleman in mixed company, but i simply couldn’t help it this time. the physician declared my wound an acute grade two soft tissue injury to the quadricep, hamstring and gluteal muscles. as i struggled into my pants, she wrote me a prescription for some painkillers, and when i objected that i was a private investigator and didn’t want to be medicated during this case, she told me that i seemed pretty angry, and if i investigated this case while in such intense pain i might have difficulties with self-control. it would be good if i submitted to the need for medication. she then told me i needed to stay off my feet as much as possible for the next seventy-two hours, and that complete healing might take as long as a month. i’d never known complete healing. the nurse returned me to jacques and michel. we left the clinic and they drove me to a pharmacy to pick up my pills. “where are you planning on going next?” michel inquired, seeming like he was enjoying this adventure. “i don’t really know,” i replied. “i’m a detective,” my two new acquaintances made appreciative noises, “and i lost one of my only leads this morning when you two crashed into me. this case has gone as cold as this city and now i’ve been disabled too. i might as well go back to my hotel and start drinking. better yet, maybe you could take me out on a nice country road, shoot me, and leave me in the ditch.” “i have a better idea,” said jacques, “i think we can take you somewhere that will help in your investigation.” “you’ve done enough to help already,” i grumbled. i couldn’t help it; my leg was killing me. “no, we insist. i think you will have a much easier time finding the ‘slow learners’ if you take this journey with us.” it took a second for this to register with me. after it had i realized that these two had been holding out on me. i felt the sudden urge to get away from them. i grabbed the inside handle on the peugeot and shouldered the door open. i launched myself awkwardly out of the car and took four steps before collapsing in pain on the pharmacy parking lot. michel got out and retrieved me. feeling resigned to whatever my fate might be at this point, i accepted his help with docility and was soon settled into the back seat where i could stretch out my throbbing leg. i thought i might as well pop a painkiller. the one i got out of the box looked appealing. it was a pretty purple color with little yellow stripes and tiny white writing. it looked a bit like an easter egg. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 29 “we are sorry to have potentially excluded you from your own investigation in this way,” began michel. “you see,” interrupted jacques, “john williamson asked us to see if we could help you. he was worried; he said he you’d been in danger already.” “vehicular assault? is that what passes as help where you come from?” “i assure you,” jacques asserted soothingly, “that was accidental. we saw you trying to pursue that man in grey and thought we should intervene. we got too excited.” “you got too excited!” michel corrected, producing another shrug from jacques in reply. i wasn’t quite ready to forgive, but i was calming down. the medication kicked in, and the buildings began to glide by in white blurs as jacques turned into and sped through a long industrial district. as we began to reach the outskirts of town, i inquired where we were going. “a special place,” answered michel, “a private museum and archive. it is here that you will get the background you will need to crack this case.” x by the time we reached the structure, everything was starting to get a surreal tinge that i could not decide if i liked or not. i settled on ‘structure’ for a label because it looked more like a retaining wall than a building; it was built into a large hill that could just as easily have been man-made or natural. michel parked, and i gingerly got out of the car with some help from my new companions. it would be a long, painful and cold walk to the entrance. only official institute vehicles were allowed in the first several spaces in the parking lot and though the inner lot was almost completely empty, a gate and key card setup reinforced the boundary. “be wary. do not approach your walk through these galleries as a journey through increasingly refined categories of disability.” michel admonished me as we walked, with the two of them supporting me, along a sidewalk leading to the building. i wasn’t sure if his warning was distracting me from my discomfort or adding to it. “disability and slow learner are not, finally, scientific or theoretical discourses, they are regular daily practices. what assumptions govern the placement of slow learners on this educational track, and how does this track in turn shape understandings of the slow learner label? how did separate tracking emerge to construct slow learners as different from ‘normal’ learners? how did it come to be that ‘slow learner’ as a label was parceled out as separate from the many disability labels that get applied to individuals? what were the prior ways of addressing learning impairments and how did they construct people?” even through the haze of the medication, these questions caught my attention. i’d had similar ideas, but found michel’s way of addressing these considerations particularly penetrating. i felt less a hostage and more a partner for the first time since meeting these two. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 30 “do not attempt to find a truth or a grounding for the idea of slow learner.” michel continued, “just appreciate how the systems of knowledge that produce such ideas have mutated over time. do not be so bold as to try to fully understand past appearances of categories, just look for discursive traces, clues if you will, by which you might construct a history of the present. then you might find your slow learners.”20 “you have to analyze the history and the historicity of the breaks which have produced our current world [of disability categorization]. out of [a certain] origin, [but] breaking or transforming this origin, at the same time,” jacques added, emphasizing, as far as i could tell, that the transformations michel was speaking of were rarely smooth or orderly.21 i thought this another fair point. as i hobbled along, a question occurred to me. “i’m not just looking for slow learners, you know, my client thinks the ways they’ve been classified have something to do with why they’ve fallen through the cracks, or been pushed through the cracks, and he is looking to make sure it doesn’t happen again. is there some kind of tool i can use to expose the problems with the classification systems in order to make things safer for them?” “i have a whole toolbox designed for this sort of thing,” michel confidently remarked,22 “but do not assume the enterprise will make things safer for your client’s students in any stable or permanent way. everything is dangerous.” 23 i took this as less helpful. it sounded both cryptic and paranoid to me but before i could press him on it, we finally reached the building. a large sign above the thick wooden doors read codri. looking at the black lettering on the door itself, i realized this was an acronym, and a rather stupid one in its unwieldiness. it stood for. classification of disability research institute noting the confusion in my face, jacques remarked, “the sign is an ill-named thing.” 24 i couldn’t tell if he was being cryptic too, or just remarking on the unwieldy acronym. we entered the facility. it appeared to be a very slow day; i saw no other patrons. michel and jacques signed me in as a guest at the registration desk. they insisted, due to the very recent injury they had helped me acquire, that i borrow a motorized scooter, like the kind patrons with limited mobility are sometimes lent in shopping malls, to make my travels easier. they insisted 20 tremain (2008, p. 16) 21 derrida (1997, p. 10) 22 foucault (1974, pp. 523-524) 23 foucault (1997a, p. 256) 24 derrida (1974, p. 18) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 31 that we each travel through the gallery individually, arriving at our own conclusions. we could discuss things after my tour. a host standing in front of the reception desk, a smiling, sandy haired young man in an official grape-purple blazer, explained to me that to blur the lines between observer and observed, i could select a particular disability from the menu above to embody and, in my travels, i could experience how i was being treated throughout the ages as a person with this disability. he told me each disability had its own self-guided audio tour. i asked why it wasn’t a good enough category that i needed a scooter to get around the museum. he said that didn’t count, it wasn’t one of the ‘official’ categories. i asked him if picking up his teeth with broken fingers was one of the categories and, as he considered this, i slammed the controller on the scooter forward, running over his toes, and then turned into the entrance of the gallery. glancing quickly at a floor plan on the wall i saw that the museum was set up as a series of long ovals, one on top of the next, wrapped around closed-off offices, meeting rooms and laboratories. the exit/entrance to the gallery on each floor was the only access point to the stairs and elevator to the next floor. the first floor dealt with disability in antiquity. that seemed an awfully long way to go back to find slow learners so i opted for the next floor where i could tour ‘disability in medieval times.’ 25 i took the elevator to the second floor and began the long circle through the displays. a sign near the start of the gallery informed me of the greek roots of the word idiot, “idiotes,”26 meaning roughly: a layman or one ignorant of the affairs of more educated individuals. i reflected that in my early investigation of this rather specialized missing persons case and in many other things i was, indeed, an idiot by these standards. in old english, the word came to mean an intensely private person, set aside physically and psychologically in the community, before settling into a more evaluative definition interchangeable with the concept of natural fool. in both cases it seemed to designate individuals seen as having limited intellectual capacity. this condition differed, legally, from the definition of lunatic, which involved the possibility of a restoration of sensibility. i had routinely called people idiots and lunatics, to their faces or in my own reflections, in my life and career. there always seemed to be an abundance of thoughtless, reckless, feckless, stupid people and these words were a nice all-purpose paint of disapproval to spread over them. but now, confronted by the necessity of facing these words, as words for disability, in this gallery i felt uncomfortable. i learned that going as far back as the sixth century, as criminal law evolved, idiocy and lunacy were increasingly considered conditions that exempted one from liability for offenses, with the rationale that impaired individuals in these cases acted without intent, malice, or appreciation of consequences. i read a legal decree from the english king’s prerogative (drawn up between 25 see gould (1996, pp. 51-52); jardine (2012, p. 8); and stiker (2002, pp. 23-50). i chose not to make max’s decision to bypass this display an impactful one in terms of whether or not he will ‘solve’ this case, and did not feel there was adequate room in the narrative to take the geneology back this far. i did want to quickly note, however, that scholars continue to point to western antiquity for many of the ideological roots of current issues related to ableism and/or disability. some of these roots include socrates’ notion of inborn “mettle”, aristotle’s principle of noncontradiction (x = x), euthanasia/abandonment, abramic religious dictums related to both exlusion of and charity toward people with disabilities, and the emergence of christian charitable institutions for people with disabilities. 26 wright (2011, p. 19) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 32 1255-1290) that superseded legal property and inheritance rights for those deemed lunatics or natural fools. in both cases the benevolent monarch would, ‘without waste’, assume custody for the property of these subjects and use any profits the land generated to pay for their care. in the case of lunatics, these rights were to be restored upon the return of their lucidity. i then saw a series of petitions, drawn up by concerned family members, applying for the guardianship of idiots and natural fools. i saw a recommendation that the courts select, when possible, male relatives… sound of religion, of good governance in their own families, without dissolution, without distemper, no greedy persons [and] no stepmothers.27 the next exhibit described itself as a sixteenth century ‘iq’ test with the first part in quotation marks in recognition of its anachronistic use. an idiote or a naturall foole is he, who notwithstanding he bee of lawful age, yet he is so witlesse, that he can not number to twentie, nor can tell what age he is of, nor knoweth who is his father.28 i wondered about the ‘knoweth who is his father’ part. what did that have to do with so-called idiocy? i’d helped lock up many punks of uncertain parentage who were far from idiotic in their criminal schemes. beside this exhibit was a quote from court records: indicted for stealing a silver cup, thomas middleton, the third of march last. the evidence against the prisoner that he lodged at middleton’s house and middleton’s wife missing of said cup made inquiry of the prisoner whether he knew what had become of the cup. he confessed that he had taken it and offered it to sale for 20s. but the prisoner appearing to be little less than a fool, he was acquitted.29 a further explanation below the quote noted that the reason for acquittals in these cases was termed as ‘misfortune of fate.’30 moving past this section, i read the title “madness: familiar foreignness.”31 i detected something of michel’s way of turning phrases in this title, and as i drove through the exhibit i saw, out of my peripheral vision, that he was watching me watching the displays and grinning. unsure, again, of the exact relevance of any of this for slow learners, except that categories seemed much more plastic in these times, i didn’t linger in this section. i saw, as i drove past figures of don quixote, as well as shakespeare’s hamlet, ophelia, king lear and lady macbeth, symbolizing some sort of tragic madness a madness linked with mystery, death but also, paradoxically a strange sort of wisdom. i recalled how in shakespeare’s work, the mad always seemed to get the best lines. i read too, about palace fools, lear’s fool and others, whose jobs involved exposing the artifice of the court and or even the sovereign, but again, who spoke from a place of unreason as making these criticisms from any other position would amount to treason. i recalled sitting in 27 ibid. (p. 22) 28 swinborne (1590) in ibid. (p. 21) 29 old bailey criminal court session papers (1685) in ibid. (p. 22) 30 ibid. (p. 22) 31 foucault (1988, p. 28) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 33 the professional development session with williamson, being struck by how much currency the professionals seemed to place on the amount of reason that a student supposedly possessed. had this strange niche that unreason seemed to fill in older societies been filled in with cement somewhere along the way, leaving unreason with no place to be at all?32 did that make any difference for slow learners? i reflected this was pretty thin as far as my own investigation went, after all slow learners were thought to have less reason, not unreason. feeling i’d gleaned the larger sense of this gallery, but frustratingly, little of import about slow learners, i circled back to the elevator and rose to the next floor. xi the elevator doors opened on a section entitled ‘the great confinement.’ in a display case, i saw a dollhouse-like model of what would, blown up to its real proportions, have been a mammoth institution. this dollhouse was not for kids though; the tiny figures on the inside simulated the scenes of abject misery that characterized these institutions at the time. in the display case, beside the miniatures, two quotations from visitors to such institutions from this era testified to the veracity of the exhibit. the first described the conditions of several ‘patients’ in a large room in the asylum: one of the side rooms contained about ten [female] patients, each chained by one arm to the wall; the chain allowing them merely to stand up by the bench or form fixed to the wall, or sit down on it. the nakedness of each patient was covered by a blanket only.... many other unfortunate women were locked up in their cells, naked and chained on straw.... in the men's wing, in the side room, six patients were chained close to the wall by the right arm as well as by the right leg ... their nakedness and their mode of confinement gave the room the complete appearance of a dog kennel.33 a written section along the wall provided some background to the miserable scenes, detailing how unlike the prior eras which made room for madness with a strange inclusive form of exclusion or vice versa, the classical age saw an attempted total containment and silencing of madness, as well as of disability and poverty.34 the economic crises brought about by war and industrialization resulted in spikes in the ranks of the unemployed, beggars, and vagrants. declining rates of leprosy had emptied leper asylums. in the classical era, these were repurposed to contain not only the mad, but the disabled, the poor, and the criminal. indeed, the authorities during these times had turned on the indigent with a vengeance. i saw a painting of parisian archers posted on the city walls shooting beggars trying to enter the gates. i saw a translation of a law at the time, done up in stylized writing and printed on parchment paper. it decreed that those caught begging in the city would be whipped for a first offense and, if they were male, hanged for a second offense.35 the preferred intervention, though, appeared to be confinement. a caption below another picture of a prison noted that in 1656, one in a hundred parisians, including those we would now call mentally ill and those we would now call disabled, 32 ibid. (p. 202) 33 wakefield (1814) in andrew scull (1993, p. 113) 34 foucault (1988, p. 262) 35 ibid. (p. 49) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 34 were locked up, with similar practices occurring throughout an increasingly industrializing, urbanizing europe.36 i wondered if any of them were slow learners. i realized as i drove along the exhibits, that they were taking on a greater variety. they were now describing the orphanages, workhouses, and prisons that characterized the great confinement. institutional categories bled into each other, like the blood of the inmates pooling on the floors, in the overarching project of confinement. i passed along paintings and models of confined workers – some apparently able-bodied, some bearing physical disabilities digging wells, polishing glass, rasping logwood, blacksmithing, beating hemp to make ropes, and sewing. i realized that, despite the novel ‘cures’ i had read about in the previous section, the preferred “treatment” for any confined population was work.37 “what is the source of the disorders of [the asylum]?” a sign asked. “idleness,” was the reply below. “what is the cure?” another asked. “work!” was the reply.38 or, as the enabling act of the english charity workhouse st. marylebone spelled out the purpose the institution was: to admit the poor, both healthy and sick, diseased and infirm; the profligate and idle who were to be corrected; and infant poor to be educated `in habits of industry, religion and honesty, the profits from their labour to be used for their own upkeep as well as for the parish.39 this idea of the formative character of work was interesting. i wondered if it was a stretch to think that i was seeing in these exhibits some vestiges of what would later appear as educational programming for all learners, but especially slow learners who were deemed to require extensive vocational programming. i read a list of rules for a ward for boys and girls under twenty-five in one of the larger ‘hospitals’: 1. work is to occupy the greater part of the day for all inmates with unassigned time is to be spent reading pious books. 2. inmates will be required to work as long and hard as their strengths and situations will permit, it is then, but only then, that they can be taught an occupation befitting their sex and inclination. 3. the desire for reform will be determined by the zeal with which an inmate works. every fault will be punished by reduction in gruel, by increase in work, by imprisonment and other punishments customary in the said hospitals as the directors see fit.40 the next exhibit showed the blueprint of the floor plan of a large workhouse. a caption below explained how these workhouses were complicated institutions that imposed “care, control, 36 ibid. 37 armstrong (2002, p. 440) 38 foucault (1988, p. 57) 39 markus (1993) in armstrong (2002, p. 440) 40 foucault (1988, p. 60) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 35 discipline, training, religion and productivity” on the inmates.41 the culture of the workhouse, the exhibit read, was built into its very design: in bishopsgate street there were 129 children (increased to 400 by the early nineteenth century)...in two 150-foot long workshops. the boys’ lodgings were located above these workrooms, the girls’ over the chapel which separated the workhouse from the prison. boys had reading and writing lessons; for the girls sewing and knitting replaced writing.42 i felt i was finally getting closer to slow learners by getting this glimpse of the rudiments of the educational pathway slow learners were often placed on even now. but it was more than just the slow learners on this pathway. during the times depicted in the exhibits, i reflected social class made one a candidate for a workshop as often as perceived intellectual potential or disability. i wondered if vocational training in its present form was the same sort of thing as what i’d seen in these workshops. williamson’s school was replete with various welding, carpentry and mechanics shops, as well as its kitchens and salon, but the courses offered in these shops all seemed more or less voluntary and, in fact, seemed valued in the school. it was hard to imagine the students i’d seen confidently striding the halls in their coveralls and chef’s hats as inmates or urchins. one of the teachers at my table in the staffroom of the other school had even mentioned that it was sometimes difficult to get slow learners into the shop classes because they struggled with the bookwork. williamson had told me the story of the apprentice whose entry into the college part of his training had been discouraged by a gatekeeper who was made suspicious over the k & e courses on his transcript. that made this form of education sound faintly elitist, quite the opposite of a charity workhouse. more like a guild, the mysteries of which were somewhat guarded. whatever my confusions were in reconciling the two epochs of vocational training i’d recently learned about, the ‘work’ section was the last display of the confinement exhibit. i saw, to my relief that some “humanist reform” would be offered on the next floor. i took the elevator up. xii arriving on the floor i immediately saw a display titled, “the philosopher’s idiot.”43 a drawing of john locke stared earnestly out at me, and the caption below explained that locke had seized on the concept of idiocy to help disprove rene descartes’ notion that knowledge comes innately to humans. an idiot’s limitations or inability regarding reasoning, locke suggested, was emphatic proof of his tabula rasa, or blank slate theory of human knowledge.44 whereas individuals of normal intelligence, over time, ‘fill’ the blank slates they are born with through sensation and reflection on sensation, the slates of idiots, who have trouble drawing conclusions from sensory experience, remain blank or at least emptier – proving his theory. i felt ambivalent about this. it seemed exploitive to characterize the capacities of this population in order to make this point. on 41 armstrong (2002, p. 440) 42 markus (1993) in ibid. (p. 440) 43 wright (2011, p. 29) 44 ibid. (p. 30) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 36 the other hand, the tabula rasa idea itself implied that under the right conditions, most have some capacity to learn and implied that the right sorts of environments were required to stimulate learning.45 in as much as i’d been hired to look for slow learners themselves, so far i’d often ended up getting dragged into an inquiry about the best educational conditions for students in general, so the implications of the tabula rasa theory aroused my curiosity. seeing little of direct relevance in the next section the philosophes i went through it more quickly, pausing in only a few places. i wasn’t driving so quickly however that i wasn’t impressed with the sea-change in thinking that the enlightenment involved. it was true that this period overlapped chronologically with some of the abuses of the classical era, and that the same worship of reason had, in different ways, informed the confinement i saw depicted on the floor below as well as the advances i was seeing on this floor. still, the potential impact of enlightenment thought on how people with disabilities were seen and treated was considerable. i saw displays of scientific discoveries and moral and political philosophy suggestive of a breaking down of the barriers of “fatalism and pervasive superstition” that had been aspects of how disability was understood up until this point.46 i saw an increasing secularism that, instead of hoping for divine intervention, spoke to the possibility of advancing individuals, classes, and all of society to a more just, free, and rational way of living. i saw a scroll of rousseau’s revolutionary complaint at the beginning of his version of the social contract, “man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains.”47 i saw, for the first time, documents detailing how the poor and infirm ought to be assisted, not, as part of christian charity, but as a part of societal obligation, part of the social contract. as a pre-cursor to some of the educational research i’d been exposed to since i began the investigation, i saw in the replicas of the writing of condillac, diderot, de l’epee, and periere an incredible zeal to study, empirically, how deafness and blindness impact an individual’s learning and communication, and their subsequent efforts to apply their theories in devising methods of teaching children with these disabilities.48 concerning madness, i read asylum reformers pinel and tuke arguing that the madness in many inmates was, if not caused, at least aggravated by the brutal, inhumane conditions to which they were subjected. those afflicted with madness required only the peace of bucolic settings, attentive care, detailed treatment plans, and the restrained, gentle hand of correction to overcome their disorders.49 i saw miniature models and posters of a variety of educational/therapeutic institutions, each specializing in the treatment of something that was deemed a particular category of disorder at the time. in addition to the new corrective methods for the mind i read about, i saw replicas of 17th and 18th century orthopedic devices for normalizing the body: neck braces, scarpa’s shoe for club feet, extension beds, and corsets.50 a sign at the end of this section summed it all up rather nicely: the governing ideas of today’s rehabilitation are already present in [these] institutions. the claim that the disabled can tap into the same assets as the able-bodied; the invention 45 ibid. 46 winzer (1993, p. 80) 47 winzer (1986, p. 42) 48 ibid. 49 see foucault (1988, pp. 242-246) 50 see stiker (2002, pp. 14-119) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 37 of techniques and pedagogies to achieve these goals; the foundation of specialized institutions to make this all possible. from this came the thought that there should only be customized institutions that were geared toward dealing with the particular situation of their client.51 despite my annoyance at not seeing any slow learners in the exhibit, i had to stop for a minute and marvel that all of this progress had taken place in such a short time. my imagination reached out to the free thinkers i was seeing pioneering these humane forms of treatment in admiration. just as i thought i was having my own moment of enlightenment, however, i felt like someone was watching me. i looked over my shoulder and saw michel’s grinning face again, peeking out from behind a portrait of one of the asylum reformers. i’d run into him in the confinement display, too. had he been following me the whole time or was he just touring for himself? i couldn’t be sure. he walked over to me and asked me what i thought about this portion of the gallery. i said i was relieved to see conditions for institutionalized people with disabilities improving so much, and to see all these efforts were underway to learn about impairment and help people with impairments. i marveled at what an improvement over mass confinement this all was. then i said this was all very interesting, but i hadn’t seen very many clues about where the slow learners were and i was beginning to worry that the rest of the facility might be equally bereft of clues. he seemed to ignore my second concern but, in apparent response to my first warned me, “do not allow yourself to be blinded by this enlightenment. there are games of truth and games of power afoot. there is a less apparent form of violence, but violence still: a separation of power between those who hold it and those who do not, the production of the truth about what you now call disability rapidly accelerating, and even as conditions for the physical confinement improve, notice the proliferation of cells of categorical confinement.”52 “what do you mean?” i demanded. “what are cells of categorical confinement? whatever your suspicions are, all i see in the real world is things getting better for disabled people, in both thought and practice, over the course of time depicted on these two floors.” “reason, max, consider reason, and not just in the seductive, idealist sense. everything is dangerous.” he said, repeating the advice he’d given me at the entrance. having gifted me with this wisdom, michel strolled away, pausing only to appreciate a display case of unusual orthopedic restraints before continuing to tour on his own. i felt incredulous that he could claim, if i understood him correctly, that these humanist reforms somehow concealed a form of violence comparable to the horrors i’d experienced on the previous floor. it seemed undeniable that the focus on increasingly specialized and individualized forms of therapy and rehabilitation were an improvement. as i watched michel walk away, i continued to be bothered by what he had said. my mind flashed back to the image i’d learned about so long ago in history class. adoring crowds, all gathered in ecstatic festivals honoring a concept both abstract and provocatively embodied in a 51 ibid. (p. 107) 52 foucault (1997b, p. 45) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 38 beautiful, thinly-clad woman: reason. girls in white roman dresses and sashes dancing around the costumed goddess.53 why was i thinking of this now? xiii i noticed i’d again come full circle and was back at the elevators. a sign pointed upward informing me that the “progress through measurement” section was on the next floor. i rode there. i was first confronted with a bust of a youth with medium length hair and vulpine features staring out at me with a look that might be described as atavistic alertness. it bore the inscription “victor: the wild boy of aveyron.” a write-up below indicated that asylum reformer pinel, while holding progressive views on the receptiveness to cure those deemed insane, continued to hold that ‘idiocy’ was hereditary and irreversible. his pupil, jean marc gaspard itard felt otherwise and, to disprove his mentor’s views, took on the care and rehabilitation of a young boy of twelve who had been found running feral in southern france. while pinel declared the boy incurable, itard felt his condition was due to severe neglect and that he could be rehabilitated through a program of training to help him realize to use his senses and eventually learn practical skills including speech. though he failed in his attempt to completely rehabilitate his new patient, itard did, according to reports, realize enough success in teaching victor to identify letters and recognize simple words to consider his approach of sensory training a promising basis of future practice.54 i moved on to further portraits and write-ups. i read that itard’s methods were widely circulated in the french medical community and inspired maria montessori and eduord seguin. the latter became superintendent of one of the first schools, housed inside the bicetre hospital specializing in the education of ‘idiot’ children. seguin reinforced itard’s belief that intellectual deficits were attributable, at least in part, to sensory isolation or deprivation and that this could be reversed through powerful motor and tactual stimuli and adequate nutrition.55 he strongly advocated for a specialist approach, asserting the need for intellectually disabled students to be educated/rehabilitated at different institutions and with different methods than people with mental health disabilities or physical disabilities. he also believed that every student could be taught, not just confined, and that many could return to successful participation in the larger community following the completion of their schooling.56 seguin published two influential volumes on his methods in france before being mysteriously fired from his position and emigrating to the united states where his influence on the field continued.57 seguin, his american colleagues and their students, established the theoretical basis for working with so-called ‘idiots’ or ‘the feebleminded’ and advocated strongly for the need for specialized, separate institutions for people in these categories as an alternative to the brutal catch-all lunatic asylums that still lingered in the new world. their advocacy was often successful; they won government and charitable funding and went on to found the new institutions they had proposed. 53 doyle (2002, p. 238) 54 wright (2011, pp. 35-41) 55 winzer (1986, p. 48) 56 ibid. 57 wright (2011, p. 37) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 39 i wondered where the slow learners fit into all of this. i felt i was getting warmer again, as things started to get more specialized. in the earlier exhibits, it seemed likely that when so many financial, physical and intellectual states of being were defined as deficient and subject to confinement, many slow learners were probably confined. but, then again, would a phrase like ‘slow learner’ even have any meaning in an era when so many were locked up so indiscriminately? “what about in the more specialized institutions that were beginning to emerge?” i wondered. with this question in mind i drove past a section detailing the growth of specialized ‘idiot asylums’ in great britain and its colonies and the rest of europe in the mid to late 1800s. this led into a section that held no portraits, statues, floor plans, busts or miniatures. it was nothing but black and white charts, mathematical formulations and quotes from scholars. i happened upon a chart made in 1848 by samuel gridley howe, an american colleague of seguin’s. what caught my attention was the highest functioning of his two categories of idiocy: fools are a higher class of idiots, in whom the brain and nervous system are so far developed as to give partial command of the voluntary muscles; who have consequently considerable power of locomotion and animal action; partial development of the affective and intellectual faculties, but only the faintest glimmer of reason, and very imperfect speech. simpletons are the highest class of idiots, in whom the harmony between the nervous and muscular system is nearly perfect; who consequently have normal powers of locomotion and animal action; considerable activity of the perceptive and affective faculties; and reason enough for their simple individual guidance, but not enough for their social relations.58 i noticed that in 1866, seguin, my hero of the prior exhibit, and two of his colleagues had come up with their own classification system declaring “the distinction between the perfect and the imperfect mind is ... clear,”59 and proposing eight separate categories of unclear minds. these categories took into consideration both presumed “tissular lesions” or identifiable diseases of the 19th century tied to idiocy as well as observation of traits including intellect, willpower, and physiological functioning.60 then, a shiver ran down my spine as i read on, a free-standing exhibit about a category i hadn’t seen in this gallery before. the “enfant arrière.” according to seguin, as the sign explained, this category was a borderline sort, as: the idiot makes little or no developmental progress compared to the ordinary child, whilst the backward child develops in degrees intermediate to the two groups. [a difference of] “arrest” rather than “retardation” of development.61 58 simpson (2012, p. 546) 59 ibid. (p. 544) 60 ibid. 61 ibid. (p. 545) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 40 had i finally, after three floors, found slow learners in this museum? here was the backward child, the “enfant arrière” pushing back, blurring the emergent boundaries. i saw a wisp of white hair behind this exhibit. jacques emerged and wandered over to me. “border towns, interesting places …” he remarked. “dangerous places,” i added after a second or two of thought. “you never quite know where you stand. folks who come from border towns can’t be trusted.” my voice sounded hard-boiled as i uttered this last sentence. maybe i was getting my edge back. “your slow learners have appeared on the border,” remarked jacques. “this undecidable, the slow learner label, this nearly normal/nearly abnormal, has been shoved into a cell designated abnormal. but perhaps it cannot be contained. perhaps it will burst out and call both judgments into question.”62 i considered this. it sounded weird the way he said it, but i thought maybe jacques was on to something. maybe i needed to look for slow learner in the in-between places in this institution. maybe i needed to look for the ways the label troubled these emerging categories. maybe i needed to look for how the authorities tried to contain this trouble. jacques wandered away and i drove next past a shelf labelled “phrenology” which contained a collection of skulls, rulers, and “fact” cards. i didn’t get out of my scooter to examine them. i then happened upon a large photograph of a bearded man with a kind and inquisitive face and eyes alertly staring out from behind an oddly shaped pair of pince-nez. this, i read, was alfred binet, father of the modern iq test. the biography beside the portrait read that binet, the director of psychology at the sorbonne, began his career as a dedicated phrenologist. he published several papers on the relationship between cranial volume and intelligence before eventually growing disillusioned with how inconclusive research in this area was beginning to seem to him.63 seizing on some emerging research proposing psychological determinations of intelligence instead, binet decided to direct his research along these lines. commissioned by a minister of education to develop techniques for identifying those children whose lack of success in normal classrooms suggested the need for some form of special education, binet devised a battery of tests meant to simulate everyday reasoning tasks such as counting coins or assessing which faces in a series of pictures were prettier.64 his contention was that a large number of these sorts of progressive tasks, administered by a trained examiner, could be used to estimate intellectual capacity and thereby flag the learning deficits he had been commissioned to find. on the second revision of his tests, he decided to assign each of the tasks in a series an age corresponding to its difficulty. from this he was able to glean composite ‘mental ages’ of the test subjects as determined by their average ages on the tasks subtracted from their chronological ages. children whose mental ages were well behind their chronological ages were flagged for 62 see simpson (2012). the author describes the backward child as one of derrida’s undecidables and, illustratively, refers to another example of categorical undecidablity. in india in colonial times between the british colonial elite and the subaltern classes there existed an ambiguous indigenous elite class. this class formed a blurred, indeterminate, and shifting boundary between the elite and the subaltern masses; sometimes part of the dominant group, sometimes part of the dominated. 63 gould (1996, p. 177) 64 ibid. (p. 179) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 41 special education programming.65 binet, the exhibit noted, went on to develop special education classes, offering “mental orthopedics” as a means of boosting the intelligence of his pupils.66 the now familiar concept of intelligence as a quotient was born out in a refinement of this method when german psychologist w. stern argued that, in order to better represent disparities, the mental age should be divided by chronological age instead of subtracted from it.67 i read, next, a list of binet’s fears regarding potential misuses of his invention. these included: 1. mental age is a rough empirical estimate for practical use, in reality the tasks cannot be superimposed on one another so there can be no real overall intelligence. low scores shall not be used to mark children as innately incapable. 2. there is a danger of mental age being abused by schoolmasters to exclude unruly pupils and also abused as a self-fulfilling prophesy reducing the effort that is invested in teaching some pupils. 3. mental age is best used to determine which pupils require additional help, it should not be used to rank all pupils. 4. no opinion is offered on whether the student’s performance is indicative of hereditary or environmental factors or predictive of future potential. it is the mental age at the time of testing only.68 this all sounded eminently reasonable to me. indeed, it was hard to see how iq came to mean so much more than this from reading about the modest aims of its founder. i admired binet’s cautious practicality, his efforts to provide a tool to help children and educators, combined with his insistence that this tool be wielded carefully. then, however, i happened on the copy of binet and co-writer simon’s the intelligence of the feeble minded left out on a podium for museum patrons to browse and i read a few passages:69 taking account only of the practical acquisitions we find, that is of instruction, we find it an absolutely clear difference between the two subjects. the normal child of seven years can read hesitatingly; an imbecile of twenty years cannot read, and can never learn to read.70 as i browsed through it, i saw the book was a detailed volume of the limitations inherent in various levels of ‘idiocy’. it included many photographs of its subjects. a lengthy section discussed the almost animalistic insensitivity to physical pain in imbeciles as compared to ‘normals’. a photograph showed a subject, one of the case studies, reaching forward for a biscuit 65 ibid. (p. 181) 66 ibid. (p. 184) 67 ibid. (p. 185) 68 list paraphrased from ibid. (pp. 181-182) 69 binet and simon (1916, p. 133) 70 ibid. (p. 133) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 42 that had been offered him, “in animal fashion” with his mouth instead of with his hand.71 here was a volume that not only sought to detail “how a superior intelligence differs from an inferior one.”72 it also sought to introduce a pecking order of sorts between the various levels of imbecility that it so meticulously described.73 for someone whose ambitions for his tests were so cautious, binet now appeared to boldly assert how this separate lot of humanity, set apart by measured intelligence deficits, was so very different than the rest of the species. i next saw a urethane replica of a thick, mighty tree. across its branches and foliage hung the banner “eugenics.” its intertwining, exposed roots bore labels such as “genetics, biology, mental testing, archeology, surgery, psychology, and law.” an inscription read: like a tree eugenics draws its material from many sources and organizes them into an harmonious entity.74 a banner entitled “social darwinism” hung just a little past the eugenics tree. this section of the exhibit bore a picture not of the father of evolutionary theory, charles darwin, but of his cousin sir francis galton. a piece of trivia indicated that galton was a polymath who pioneered twin studies in behavioral genetics, came up with the first free association psychological test, and who devised a reliable system for storing and recording fingerprints.75 i hoped i would someday be able to use these facts in conversation at a dinner party before remembering that i didn’t get invited to dinner parties. more relevantly, galton was moved by his cousin’s evolutionary theories, particularly those focusing on selective breeding of domestic animals, and became convinced that the human race could be improved by careful breeding too. coining the term ‘eugenics’, he suggested that those of high merit should be encouraged, even financially awarded, for marrying amongst themselves and having children when they were still young. he presented the following vision of a social darwinist utopia: the best form of civilization in respect to the improvement of the race, would be one in which … every lad had a chance of showing his abilities, and, if highly gifted, was enabled to achieve a first-class education and entrance into professional life … [and] where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods.76 the last sentence caught me by surprise, and gave me the creeps. i then passed under a hanging banner quoting the bible verse: now therefore ye are cursed, and there shall none of you be freed from being bondmen, and hewers of wood and drawers of water.77 71 ibid. (p. 16) 72 ibid. (p. 11) 73 hall (1997, p. 19) 74 american philosophical society (n.d) 75 gega (2000) 76 galton (1892, p. 362) 77 in gould (1996, p. 212) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 43 that was odd. i wondered about its relevance. a short ways down i noticed i was about to pass under something else. i initially thought was an arch. then, straining my head up and back in the scooter, i realized it was a gigantic bell curve subjecting, symbolically, any who sought further passage in the museum to an exercise in sorting. assuming it was oriented for forward progress, i maintained a path somewhat, but not excessively right of center. i figured bright but not too bright was a good path. an illustrated film on a monitor went over the early history of the curve, showing a figure repeatedly flipping a coin, with distribution tables scrolling across the screen below the cartoon. the video then described, with another animated sequence, how the curve also found use in astronomy, as a means of averaging out the errors in various sightings of a star when trying to calculate its location. i mentally noted that michel would say it was almost inevitable that such a powerful tool would be turned on modernity’s favorite subject of measurement – man. indeed, the film next indicated it was an astronomer, adolph quetelet, who was actually the first to apply the curve to the study of humans. he felt that the statistically average man embodied values of moderation as well as the rightful political ascendance of france and britain’s middle classes.78 “how paradoxical,” i thought. “average is suddenly great.” after a few seconds, the following text, a quote from quetelet, scrolled up over the picture: one of the principal acts of civilization is to compress more and more the limits within which the different elements relative to man oscillate. the more that enlightenment is propagated, the more will deviations from the mean diminish…. the perfectibility of the human species is derived as a necessary consequence of all of our investigations. defects and monstrosities disappear more and more from the body.79 more tables scrolled across the screen, these ones of a variety of human traits including height, weight, strength and eyesight. i was interested to learn that the idea of ‘normal’ was such a recent invention, only finding widespread use with the rise of social statistics in the 1800s,80 and agreed that in many ways it was still viewed the way quetelet saw it, as a desired state of being. indeed, since taking on this case, i’d often wished i was employed in a more ‘normal’ investigation, as if i’d ever had one. the finer points of the statistics eluded me, but as far as i could tell this idea of producing a more normal population seemed like a dog chasing its own tail. after all, the curve that created all the fuss about the desirability of ‘normal’ would also produce a large number of abnormals whenever it was applied, so how could you move a population towards normal by using its data? then, i remembered a radio show i used to listen to in the buick during long surveillance engagements, something about a town where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”81 sure, it seemed like normal was often the going concern even now, but i also wondered if somewhere along the way, ‘superior’ got thrown in as an even more desirable state in the populations the curve measured. i remembered glancing at the psychologist’s website where i found the information about slow learners, 78 davis (2006, p. 4) 79 ibid. (p. 5) 80 ibid. (p. 6) 81 keillor (2013) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 44 way back in the library, and seeing that one of the current grades of human intelligence, as measured by iq testing, was labelled “very superior.”82 just as i was thinking this, the video flashed back to a bell curve, on which data of human characteristics including height, strength, agility, and, most relevantly, intelligence were plotted. it explained how galton had renamed the error curve as the “normal distribution” curve, divided it into quartiles, and ranked the extremes he saw as most desirable highest, and least desirable as lowest.83 although it was a dog chasing its tail again, all of this implied, to those amenable to interpreting it this way, that there was a way that most humans should be, that the human race was indeed perfectible, and that negative deviation from the norm was an affront to social progress. the video advanced to a description of types of citizen unfitness that showed the trend, once the statisticians had constructed this sorting machine, to find and lump together all the deviants who threatened the health of the nation. “the habitual criminal, the professional tramp, the tuberculosis, the insane, the mentally defective, the alcoholic, the diseased from birth or defect.”84 this list had been given, in 1911, by karl pearson, a leader of the british eugenics movement. “how widespread were these views?” i wondered. the next scene answered my question. across the screen scrolled a who’s who of public supporters of eugenics. some of the names i caught were: john maynard keynes, president theodore roosevelt, bertrand russell, alexander graham bell, george bernard shaw, winston churchill, and h.g. wells.85 i’d seen enough. in solidarity with the subjects i had been hired to find, and with the rest of the deviants on pearson’s list too, i did a u-turn with my scooter, drove back to the giant curve, and circled under it again. this time i went through on the left hand side of the center. passing the video on my way back to the gallery, i saw a sign that provocatively asked, “did it work?” was this in reference to all this curving business? it seemed a sort of a silly question without clarifying what exactly was supposed to work. below, however, were some interesting, if somewhat confusing points about the normalizing curve. the self-same karl pearson who had come out so strongly in favor of eugenics itself nevertheless worried about the universality of the curve. doing his own observations of distribution in many of the same phenomena considered textbook examples of the curve (rolls of dice, roulette wheels) he claimed to have been often unable to reproduce the normal distributions originally found.86 i then learned that a pair of contemporary researchers had pointed out that galton had never directly identified normal distributions in human populations when studying various traits. he had to produce his distributions through the conversion of his data to standard scores and the averaging of these scores together. this was important to remember, they suggested, because it remained unclear whether galton’s ‘correction’ actually found the normal distribution in human populations he claimed it had.87 additionally, many statisticians continued to worry that many human traits and phenomena had too many uncontrolled-for variables to be randomly occurring, and were therefore inap 82 king (n.d., para. 8) 83 davis (2006, p. 8) 84 ibid. (p. 9) 85 see brignell (2010a) and (2010b) 86 dudley-marling & gurn (2010, p. 14) 87 ibid. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 45 propriate applications of the normal curve.88 while the curve had enabled a practice of labelling many types of people deviant, all of these considerations left me in doubt about the meaningfulness of the concept of human normality that quetelet had claimed to discover, or the possibility of an orderly meritocratic ranking of any human trait as galton had claimed to discover. the next display was a long, illustrated timeline painted horizontally along the far wall, entitled “iq – an institutional journey.” i learned how the normalizing curve, despite these problems, fit well with interpretations of binet’s work with intelligence, and the concept of a measurable hierarchy of intellectual fitness became widely popular with american psychologists. under the energetic promotion of h.h. goddard who brought the scale to america, and who, despite binet’s warnings, celebrated iq as a reified measure of hereditary intellectual fitness, intelligence testing was soon put to widespread use.89 goddard and other social planners believed that a single, hereditary gene was responsible for the phenomenon they understood to be intelligence, and that it could be bred for as readily as early geneticists had bred for desired traits in plants and insects.90 they felt that the nation’s fitness depended on the careful breeding of its citizens in order to maximize intelligence and minimize ‘feeble-mindedness.’ there was a picture of soldiers in desks writing with pencils. a caption indicated that, by the outset of world war, i intelligence tests had become so popular as a tool for social planning, that psychologist r-m. yerkes, was able to persuade the army to test a hundred and seventy-five million conscripts and volunteers at the outset of the united states’ participation in world war i. the data from this mass testing was used not only to rank soldiers for various duties,91 but also to establish a base of supposedly objective data that vindicated hereditarianism claims, and led to the immigration restriction act of 1924, which severely limited immigration from lands afflicted by populations seen as genetically inferior.92 a caption below a picture of smaller people in desks, also writing tests, indicated that during this same period, the keeping of educational statistics began to emerge as a dominant practice in schools. lewis terman, a prominent psychologist who’d worked for the army testing program and columbia university’s edward l. thorndike, while disagreeing on the ideal types of intelligence tests to administer, felt that testing of all students was essential in determining their potential for school success and making educational decisions on their behalf based on these measures.93 the social efficiency movement in education, or the idea of the mandate of the school to provide society with “socially useful citizens” informed the use of academic tracking along ability lines with the idea that these tracks would feed the students into appropriate vocational pathways suited to their “mental, moral, and physical endowment.”94 as the timeline continued along the wall, there was a standing display of quotes and pictures to my left. it was entitled “menace of the feeble-minded.” i realized that while these developments, 88 ibid. (p. 15) 89 gould (1996, p. 190) 90 ibid. (p. 192) 91 noll (1995, p. 31) 92 gould (1996, p. 206) 93 gavin loss & loss (n.d.) 94 terman [1914] (2013, pp. 2-3) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 46 the one-two punch of iq testing and genetic theory, did not bode well for people with the iqs of the students i’d been hired to find – those deemed low average – they were disastrous for the many individuals with levels lower than this. the widespread theories of innate, measurable intelligence combined with eugenics to create, in the words of hunter s. thompson,95 a widespread and enduring fear and loathing of those deemed intellectually deficient, the ‘idiotic’ and ‘feeble-minded’ in the punitive vocabulary of the time. goddard made the following comments on the different types of threats posed by people with varying degrees of intellectual impairment: the idiot is not our greatest problem. he is indeed loathsome... nevertheless, he lives his life and is done. he does not continue the race with a line of children like himself…it is the moron type that makes for us our great problem.96 i pieced together that this ‘problem’ goddard perceived actually had two aspects; so -called ‘morons’ or ‘feeble minded’ persons, though capable of marginal functioning in society, were seen as intellectually incapable of developing higher moral sense and, therefore, prone to careers in crime and, in goddard’s vast exaggeration of the potential role of heredity in determining intelligence, they were also seen as threatening the quality of the gene pool of the ‘race’ in general.97 i got to the first realization by reading a series of quotations like this in the display section on goddard: not all criminals are feeble-minded, but all feeble-minded persons are at least potential criminals…morality cannot flower and fruit if intelligence remains infantile.98 beside the quote, a pair of eyes stared expectantly, as if to ask if their owner was correctly following the instructions she’d been given by the photographer. they belonged to a young girl in a white dress, primly posing for a photo. she had a cat in her lap and an open book in her hands. i saw it was the blown up cover photo of goddard’s 1916 book the kallikak family. an accompanying summary told me that it was a cautionary tale of how, during the american revolution, a revolutionary soldier of good breeding had a dalliance with a feeble-minded barmaid. though he subsequently married a respectable quaker woman and had many children of good standing, goddard claimed to have found conclusive proof that almost all of the one hundred and eighty descendants that sprang from this soldier’s brief union with the barmaid were feeble-minded. moreover, goddard claimed that these ill-bred descendants were more prone to infant mortality, and, if they survived to adulthood, given to sexual immorality, alcoholism, and crime.99 goddard contrasted the bleak outcomes of the majority of the kallikak children with the idyllic life of deborah, a kallikak descendent living out her life ‘carefully guarded’ from bad influences and from the possibility of ‘breeding’ more kallikak descendants, residing in his vineland training school for feeble-minded boys and girls.100 as described by goddard, deborah had an ambitious schedule of activities at vineland including reading, writing and math lessons, gardening, woodworking, sewing and music. one could almost have said the descriptor 95 thompson (1998) 96 goddard (1912, pp. 101-102) kallikak is a pseudonym. 97 ibid. (p. 190) 98 ibid. (p. 211) 99 ibid. (pp. 18-19) 100 ibid. (p. 12) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 47 suggested she was being offered a rather thorough vocational and life skills training program were it not for goddard’s intent to keep her permanently institutionalized. the next displays in the ‘menace’ exhibit suggested the pleasant conditions goddard claimed deborah experienced were not typical of such institutions at the time. as i saw from the pictures, the treatment of people with intellectual disabilities in some institutions resembled nothing so much as the contemptuous neglect shown towards the more generalized indigent populations during the great confinements of the classical era. these practices continued for a long time in many institutions. on this theme, the ‘menace’ exhibit ended with a provocative display about an american institution for intellectually disabled children. posing the question “1846 or 1966?” it provided the following quote from an eyewitness: dirt and filth, odors, naked patients groveling in their own feces, children in locked cells, horribly crowded dormitories, and understaffed and wrongly staffed facilities … rooms with “groups of 20 and 30 very young children lying, rocking, sleeping, sitting – alone. each of these rooms were without toys or adult human contact.”101 the horrific photographs, depicting such conditions, continued below the quotation. beneath this, the answer key on the next display depressingly read “1966.” despite my abhorred fascination with these exhibits, i realized that after jacques’ promising lead, i felt like i was losing the trail of the slow learners again. notwithstanding the likelihood the categories constantly bled into each other, the so-called ‘feeble-minded’ might have tested a little below those who would now be considered slow learners. then again, so too might some of the students i met in the investigation – the ones in the k & e class who said they were upgrading from a program for students with intellectual disabilities. i drove away from the exhibit and back to the timeline. back in the early nineteenth century again, i learned that as public education became the norm in canada and the united states in the late 1800s to early 1900s, it was accompanied by massive increases in enrolments in special education (including large residential institutions like vineland) as a separate form of education for students with disabilities.102 for these students, eugenic sensibilities informed not only their placement in separate institutions, but their treatment within these institutions. i stopped and looked to my left, along the floor, at another brief exhibit. it was a mannequin of a masked surgeon with gleaming, but antiquated instruments. i learned from an informative plaque at his feet that, for the first half of the century onward, particularly after mass iq testing was pioneered, it became a legally sanctioned practice in many countries to forcibly sterilize children and adolescents with diagnosed intellectual disabilities. reinforced by a 1927 supreme court decision in favor of eugenics in the united states, 60,000 operations to sterilize disabled children took place in thirty states before the practice was stopped in the 1970s.103 the alberta eugenics 101 blatt & kaplan (1974, p. v) 102 winzer (1993, p. 324) 103 spaulding & keith (2010, p. 30) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 48 board approved the sterilization of 4,725 children diagnosed as intellectually disabled before 1972.104 there was a display case beside the surgeon that showed the picture and biography of a woman from alberta named lelani muir. i read that ms. muir had, in the 1990s, successfully sued the alberta government over her sterilization while she was institutionalized as a child. signed over at the age of eleven by an abusive and neglectful mother to the provincial training school for mental defectives in red deer, ms. muir was sterilized as an adolescent. she was told she was being sent for an appendectomy. the institution took these actions on the basis of her tested iq of sixty-four, which placed her, in the vocabulary of the time, in the range of a ‘mental defective moron.’ from records of the case, this single test the results of which likely reflected a culturally impoverished upbringing was apparently the only evidence of an intellectual disability. she was doing well in her classes in the institution, and was reported to be “talk[ing] easily and volubly” in an interview with a supervisor.105 later, after leaving the institution and benefitting educationally from the opportunity to live as an adult in society at large, ms. muir had another iq test and this time scored eighty-nine, which i’d learned was highest possible score in the low average (slow learner) range, or just one point shy of a score of average range. i reflected that had she tested in this range initially, she never would have been sterilized.106 i wasn’t proud of myself for thinking this, it was horrific that she was sterilized regardless of her iq, but it did show how tentative and arbitrary such measures could be. maybe, i thought, trying to be as generous as i could, that the scores were helpful, as binet had proposed in his more egalitarian writing, as a tentative estimate of current functioning for the purposes of remediation. but as a justification for the state-sanctioned violation of citizen’s bodies? i wondered what michel would have to say about that. another sign pointed to a sectioned off exhibit about a program in nazi germany titled “aktion t-4.”107 the sign warned that it was disturbing, as if the rest of the exhibit wasn’t. it was, without doubt, a part of the larger eugenics section, from these same roots, but i didn’t think i could take much more, so i didn’t enter this section, choosing to go back to following the timeline. i hoped i wasn’t leaving any slow learners behind therein. where were the slow learners? lelani muir tested in the right range, but her history of neglect and institutionalization seemed to suggest that even her best test score might have been an underestimate. there was the enfant arrière label i’d seen at the start of the measurement section, but that was before the tests were standardized. why was i unable to find clear examples of slow learners in this section? where was this border haunting jacques had suggested i look out for? i reminded myself to look specifically for this as i returned to the timeline. i finally caught a 104 wahlsten (1997, p. 190) 105 ibid. (pp. 192-193) 106 ibid. (p. 195) 107 see wright (2011, p. 103). aktion t-4 was a nazi program to murder, under the euphemism of euthanasia, disabled residents of german hospitals. it resulted in the killing of between 75,000 and 95,000 adults with disabilities and 5000 children with disabilities before protests in german churches and local communities resulted in the official termination of the program in 1941, state-ordered “wild cat” killings continued thereafter. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 49 glimpse of a possible slow learner in one of the comments of lewis terman regarding the concerned parent of a child who had recently tested below normal: strange to say, the mother is encouraged and hopeful because she sees that her boy is learning to read. she does not seem to realize that at his age he ought to be within three years of entering high school. the forty-minute test has told more about the mental ability of this boy than the intelligent mother had been able to learn in eleven years of daily and hourly observation. for x is feeble-minded; he will never complete the grammar school; he will never be an efficient worker or a responsible citizen (1916). the child’s iq was seventy-five, currently seen as borderline, not an indication of disability,108 and potentially within the slow learner category as williamson had explained it to me. terman’s ‘nevers’ sounded pretty vicious. i had read in the programs of study for both k & e and its predecessor, the integrated occupational program that preparing the students for responsible citizenship was a primary intent of programming, meaning that they were assumed to be capable of this. compared to terman’s gloomy thinking, the literature i read from these programs had suggested slow learners had a lot of potential. was i wrong when, in the library, i thought these programs sounded exclusionary? on the other hand, they were still forms of separate programming based on students’ deficits in learning. did they honor the idea that slow learners had the potential to learn, or were they merely a much gentler form of eugenics? just towards the end of the timeline, i saw the title, “walks of life.” i was confronted by a few quotes by goddard, and slowly another connection began to form in my head. the first quote was from a recanting of sorts in which goddard had softened some of his views on the feebleminded: they do a great deal of work that no one else will do... there is an immense amount of drudgery to be done, an immense amount of work for which we do not wish to pay enough to secure more intelligent workers... may it be that possibly the moron has his place.109 in another, he noted that, in terms of career hierarchies, “the people who are doing the drudgery are, as a rule, in their proper places.110 in other words “the poor are poor because they are stupid.”111 a sucker for the underdogs, i reflected on how all of this might function as one more way to stack the deck against ‘the people doing their drudgery’, not only to muse on where their ‘proper places’ were, but to actually keep them there. did the iq tests sometimes reflect the more privileged ways of knowing of their designers, and then tend to reward those test subjects more practiced in these ways of knowing? reasonably well trained for polite society, i’d nevertheless occasionally had dispersions cast on my character for using the wrong fork for the wrong dish and, similarly, i suspected the ques 108 american psychological association (2000, p. 48) 109 goddard [1917] in gould (1997, p. 108) 110 goddard [1919] (2013 pp. 246-7) 111 erevelles (2005, p. 68) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 50 tions that supposedly measured reasoning in isolation often got contaminated by relying on this sort of insider knowledge.112 aside from this, i wondered, seeing as how i’d read in the library that the tests favored ‘abstract reasoning’, if ‘abstract’ reasoning really was possible and if it was, how, other than by way of privileged cultural inheritance maybe, did it come to be seen as the pinnacle of intelligence in the first place? i’d more or less solved every case i’d been hired to investigate, but i wasn’t sure if i’d ever used it. my reasoning was most successful when it was good and dirty with context. my mind flashed back to the french revolution image of the goddess of reason. a goddess for all, supposedly, but who did she really serve in this case? seeing as how more privileged students likely had experienced better life-long access to academic learning activities that developed their so-called abstract reasoning abilities, might this all not feed back into a vicious circle where privilege was presented not in a democratically unpalatable way, as a birthright, but as a reflection of merit in a mythic land where everyone supposedly got a fair shot? was the fix in all along? i felt like i was on to something here. below terman’s quote, in honor perhaps of our locality, was a quote from an early vocational school program for slow learners in calgary. it maintained its mandate was not to serve “the bright pupils, but the dull, uninterested ones.”113 i felt the case might be coming together again. perhaps a new niche for slow learners, based on their perceived potential to be the workhorses of their nation’s economies had emerged. xiv i continued to follow the timeline around the bend, learning about further refinement of iq-based categorization and special education programming but, to my frustration, again losing the trail of slow learners. i had come pretty far, at least in distance, and thought maybe there would be only one more section of exhibits on this floor before it rounded back to the entrance. just as i was beginning to wonder if i’d seen all the relevant history on this floor, something from above jumped into my peripheral vision and made me slam on the brakes. it was a large, hanging, silver ball with four thin protuberances sticking out like spider’s legs. i wondered if my mind, unable to bear another image of oppression, had forced me to hallucinate this object. it seemed as though it belonged in a different institute. i rubbed my eyes and looked again. i was not hallucinating. i realized the object was a life size model of sputnik, humankind’s first artificial satellite. i wondered what it was doing here. a display case below the satellite contained several magazines from the late 1950s decrying the american public education system in light of the lead the soviet union had taken in the space race with the launching of sputnik. 114 a saturday evening post headline that provocatively asked, “can ivan read better than johnny?” caught my eye. the other magazines, late fifties 112 see gould (1997) in which the author demonstrates how these army assessments were culturally and economically biased. in one example, subjects were asked to analyze pictures of culturally specific activities such as tennis and lawn bowling for missing features, the absence of which would not be readily apparent to someone unfamiliar with the game. 113 gordon [1919] in knobbe (1978, p. 33) 114 sleeter (1987, p. 215) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 51 editions of good housekeeping, vogue, life, ladies’ home journal, time, us news and world report, look, newsweek, and readers’ digest all asked similar questions.115 i realized that at this point in the cold war, the space race was not a friendly competition; it was a method of war by other means closely linked, by way of rocket technology, to the nuclear arms race. the panic that ensued after this soviet display of superior technology had resulted in widespread criticism of an american education system that apparently had failed to produce scientists of the ilk of the soviet team that built and launched sputnik. a clipping in the display case from the magazine with the “ivan and johnny” title went so far as to note: what russian students learn in school and what american students learn in school may do much to determine whether the free world will check and defeat communism, or whether communism will check and defeat the free world.116 “this is all very interesting,” i thought, “but what does it have to do with the previous exhibits about disabilities, or with slow learners?” then, in another display case, i read some of the specific criticisms of the american school system at the time and about the ensuing curricular reforms that followed the sputnik launch. i began to understand. educational planners, fearful that lax educational standards had caused american children to fall behind, and concerned with augmenting the abilities of american students to compete on the world stage, began to develop elementary school curricula that were much more rigorous and difficult than they had been the previous two decades. 117 under this new curriculum it became natural for many teachers to assume that as many as a third of the students in an elementary school class would be below grade level and unable to handle the programs they were being instructed in. achievement testing practices increased to continually evaluate if children were meeting the new, higher curricular standards. the move towards increasing rigor occurred as american schools, for the first time, were dealing with the mandate to end formal racial segregation in education.118 despite the legal requirement of desegregation, minority children were often assumed to be less capable and therefore re-segregated into their newly integrated school’s special education programs.119 as school became more demanding academically, white, middle class children, despite often being the recipients of preferential treatment in schools, struggled more frequently with the revised curriculum, and this became a concern for parents and educators. many white, middle class parents of academically struggling students did not want their children placed in special programs with minority students, and many of the same parents were not willing to accept the application of any of the four existing academic deficit labels, mentally retarded, slow learner, emotionally disturbed, or culturally deprived to their children.120 115 ibid. (p. 216) 116 trace [1961] in ibid. (p. 216) 117 see ibid. (p. 218). sleeter identifies a significant change in the readability of first grade textbooks with the years 1944 until 1962 being marked by progressively easier texts and 1962 to the early 1970s reversing this trend and the texts becoming progressively more difficult. sixth grade textbooks also became more difficult during these years. 118 ibid. (p. 220) 119 see erevelles (2005, p. 77). by 1968, 60-80% of students in special education programs in american schools were african american, native american, hispanic, non-english speakers, and/or from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. 120 sleeter, (1987, pp. 221-224) emphasis added. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 52 i read the descriptors of what educators during these times considered to be the characteristics and predicted educational pathways for students falling into these four categories. they all sounded quite negative. i could see why parents wouldn’t have much interest in the application of any of these labels to their children. i read the description of slow learner from a leading expert at the time: slow learners compose the largest group of mentally retarded persons. among the general school population, 15 to 17 or 18 per cent of the children can be considered slow learners.121 that statement didn’t surprise me much. i had already studied that bit of categorical shifting and realized slow learner was once but was no longer considered an intellectual disability category. what interested me more was the following statement: preferred suburban communities where executive and professional persons reside will have very few slow learners… the subcultural areas of large metropolitan communities where the children receive little psychosocial stimulation present quite a different picture… fifty per cent or more of the children can appropriately be designated as slow learners.122 i wondered if the same measurements existed in feudal times if the statistic might have read that ninety percent of the population was slow learners? it was an apples and oranges thing and sort of a stupid, impossible thought, but i had it nonetheless. the descriptor went on to suggest that slow learners were likely to experience regular schooling as too difficult and eventually drop out. for these reasons they were better served in a more remedial educational stream where they could gradually advance at their own rate and not hold other children back. slow learners were to be trained for semi-skilled or unskilled occupations. slow learners were likely to be followers instead of leaders in society because they could not understand the subtleties of the social order. 123 i wondered how many of these assumptions still informed current thinking about students thought to be slow learners. i continued my tour of this section and next came to a sign that said “learning disability the birth of a label.” a caption below explained how, since the 1900s, some physicians, psychologists and educators had been interested in the idea of an organic defect, a form of brain damage, that severely impacted people’s reading abilities while having no impact on their overall intelligence or reasoning abilities. i had heard the word ‘dyslexia’ before, and recognized it among the list of labels that researchers were using at the time to describe this sort of disorder.124 other labels included ‘brain injury’ and ‘psychoneurological learning disorders.’125 this research had gathered steam over the fifties and sixties and had begun to receive popular attention. both newsweek and reader’s digest had published articles about reading impaired but normally 121 johnson [1963] in ibid. (p. 223) 122 ibid. 123 ibid. (p. 224) 124 ibid. 125 ibid. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 53 intelligent children and the interventions that were thought to hold the promise of curing them. these included exercises that were said to stimulate new brain cells to take over the role of the dead cells during reading.126 to many parents of struggling students, particularly more privileged parents, this was a more tolerable label. it did not imply global defects in their children’s intelligence and it did not suggest their children were falling behind due to deficiencies in how they, as their children’s primary educators, had prepared them for school. unlike the labels mentally retarded and slow learner, assumed to describe life-long deficits, it was thought at the time that this particular disability might be curable. institutionally, the addition of a new disability category also reinforced a conservative agenda of locating school failure as a defect in individual children instead of questioning an educational system that, at the bidding of military and business interests, had begun to leave more and more students behind. i toured through the gallery and saw a display chronicling the growth of advocacy groups consisting of parents of children diagnosed with this recently discovered disability. a series of black and white pictures showed people gathered at meetings, sitting in folded chairs, filling styrofoam coffee cups from aluminum urns, and looking intent as they listened to expert speakers. 127 further displays went on to explain that, at a large conference that brought together parents from a number of these advocacy groups, samuel kirk, the most prominent researcher in the field, proposed the label ‘learning disabled’ to describe this population of students. the label stuck. i next drove past time-faded periodicals now using the title learning disabilities, and black and white pictures of newly formed learning disability classes in schools. an accompanying list of statistics explained that the majority of test subjects in studies of learning disabilities at the time, parents in learning disability advocacy groups, and students placed in learning disability programs in the united states were white and middle to upper class. the logic of this theory of the category’s emergence very nearly overwhelmed me. it also added even more evidence to the increasingly obvious impression i had gathered so far in the case that in the impairment pecking order,128 slow learners were less valued than students with learning disabilities. as i was leaving this section, i heard a piercing siren followed by a low–pitched hum. the main lights in the museum went out and dimmer emergency lights painted the gallery in shadowy illumination. i smelled smoke. i kept going for a minute, figuring i was nearly round the floor, but i was driving into an increasingly thick cloud of smoke. by now the sprinkler system had engaged but it only added to my confusion about what was up ahead. i turned the scooter around to go back the way i came. i saw flames start to lick the exhibits i had just seen as i retreated from the sputnik section and reversed my course along the timeline asking the scooter for more speed than it was prepared to offer. i made it under the bell curve a split second before it crashed to the floor. i saw jacques and michel rushing to find me. they told me the elevator was out of commission and we had to get to the stairs. i got out of the scooter and, supporting myself on both of them, hobbled as quickly as i could. 126 ibid. (p. 230) 127 ibid. (p. 228) 128 hall (1997, p. 19) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 54 we descended the three flights, a choking, cursing journey, my leg absorbing each step with the pliability of an old dry two-by-four. we made it past the burning admission desk and out into the frozen darkness – how long had i been in the museum? the few staff members on duty were already mustered in the parking lot; it appeared we had been the only visitors. some fire trucks arrived but it was too late to save the building, and the frozen foothill it was built into didn’t need much saving. there were probably other such museums but no one would be coming back to this one. after what i had seen i wasn’t sure i would have wanted to come back anyway. wet, cold, and stinking of smoke, in the intermittent warmth of the peugeot’s heater, we watched the museum burn until all that was left was a pile of smoldering grey, like a lower row of rotten teeth in the gaping mouth of the foothill. there wasn’t much to say. jacques and michel drove me back to the restaurant where we had met, and did me the further kindness of driving the buick back to the hotel for me so it might be available to me when my leg recovered enough that i could drive. my companions had been responsible for the most recent injury i had experienced on this case, but this was more than cancelled out by their saving me from the inferno. what was more, i could see they had been right. there was no way i would be able to find slow learners in this current setting without the benefit of seeing where they and their many companions in disability classification had come from. they hadn’t exactly given me the straightforward break in the case i was hoping for all day, but i was finally starting to understand how complex and dangerous all of this was. i had a million questions for them but couldn’t clearly think of a single one. i was tired and disoriented and needed time to think. we planned to meet up the next morning, at the restaurant nearest my hotel, to discuss the case. they offered to help me in, but my room wasn’t far from the front desk and i thought i could hobble there. it occurred to me i should warn them to be careful too. they’d been seen helping me, and between the choking in the library, being tailed, and the likelihood the fire had something to do with the case, i’d faced a lot of danger over the last two days. unfortunately, that thought only struck me as i watched the tail lights of the peugeot begin to fade into the darkness. i asked for a plastic bag at the front desk, filled it with ice from the machine, and limped to my room. i peeled off the stinking suit and wrapped a threadbare blanket around myself. i took a few pills, poured a double and sat and dutifully iced my injury despite the unpleasantness of the cold. i thought hazily about the case. i must have nodded off for a while; when i woke up, i noticed i was still holding the remainder of my drink but my home-made icepack, now half melted, had fallen to the floor. transferring myself to the bed, i slept deeply despite the throbbing pain in my leg and my growing sense that williamson had been right to hire me – slow learners had been in danger for a long time. to be continued… acknowledgements williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 55 i would like to thank journal of applied hermeneutics editors drs. nancy moules and angela morck for the laborious and skillful wrangling it has taken to adapt this complex and multifaceted text into its present accessibility on the page. references alberta education. 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(2012). the level playing field: unconcealing diploma exam accommodation policy. journal of applied hermeneutics, article 13. http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5f766p2 williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 5 59 winzer, m.a. (1986). early developments in special education: some aspects of enlightenment thought. remedial and special education, 7(42),433-366. doi:10.1177/074193258600700509. winzer, m.a. (1993). the history of special education: from isolation to integration. washington, dc: gallaudet university press. wright, d. (2011). downs: the history of a disability. new york, ny: oxford university press. microsoft word williamson part 4 corrected proof.docx corresponding author: w. john williamson, phd email: john.williamson@cssd.ab.ca journal of applied hermeneutics may 13, 2016 ©the author(s) 2016 the case of the disappearing/appearing slow learner: an interpretive mystery part four: quaint notions of justice w. john williamson abstract these chapters follow the events described in parts one to three of this narrative. max hunter, a private detective, is still on the trail of “slow learners,” a category of students his client, educator john williamson, claims are continually getting “lost” in alberta’s school system. max encounters philosophers, fellow educators, and even students labeled as slow learners, all of whom have suggestions for finding these students in ways that attend to them as learners while resisting the rigidity of their labelling. he also encounters an agent of a sinister operation who works to ensure that slow learners stay lost, and who intends to make max disappear too. keywords slow learners, competition, labelling, heidegger, gadamer, hermeneutics, inclusion for jacob xxiv there were a couple of other places i’d planned on checking out that day. talking to a former leader of programming for slow learners had been quite helpful and i wanted to pursue more of williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 2 these kinds of sources. the informants summit had suggested i spring interviews on next were way across town from the airport so i thought i might make a stop along the way and try to catch up with some of the students from the k & e class i’d met a few days back. after talking to summit, i had a few more questions for them too if i could get to them. i wasn’t sure what the fallout from my substitute imposter routine had been, but i didn’t think it wise to return to the school itself. it was, however, getting to be near the lunch break and, on the day i’d played substitute, i had noticed a student from the k & e class discarding a bag from a fast food joint, burgeropolis i recalled, on his way in. as i made my getaway, i saw that the restaurant was right across the road from the school. i thought, if i had any luck, i might see one or more of the k & e students on this occasion if i waited for them at the restaurant. if it turned out the kids had been warned to stay away from the interloping substitute, it’d be easier to make a getaway from this neutral location. i drove to the restaurant and presumed from how empty the place was that i’d arrived shortly before the school lunch break started. the restaurant itself was a pretty standard burger joint except for a series of cityscapes from all over the world hanging on the walls, each with ‘burgeropolis’ scrolled across the top in neon pink handwriting. considering this was the first restaurant of this franchise i’d ever seen, i thought this vision of world domination a little too ambitious. the tackiness didn’t dull my appetite. having skipped breakfast, i was ravenous but i only ordered a coffee for now, thinking it might be more convivial to break bread with the students if they showed up, as long as they didn’t run or call the cops at the sight of me. the paper coffee cup bore a photo of the empire state building. as i was waiting, i thought more about dr. summit. i wondered how many of the actual integrated occupational programs that districts set up in schools had lived up to his vision. in his insistence that iop was a program with a distinct approach to learning for a distinct population of students, i thought summit could be seen by those who favoured inclusion of all students in blended learning communities as unprogressive. on the other hand, i thought the actual concept of learning he presented with iop sounded progressive and familiar in many ways, and i even wondered if any of these same ideas would appear in the upcoming changes to special education and to education in general that williamson had told me about, another lead i still needed to pursue. in light of what i’d learned from summit, i considered the ideas of one of the hermeneutic scholars williamson had told me about, though i couldn’t remember which one. as williamson explained it, this scholar had given a speech critiquing the university experience in his times while insisting on the continuing potential of the university to disseminate a culture of intellectual freedom and solidarity between inquiring learners.1 williamson had mentioned that one of this scholar’s chief concerns was that overcrowding and bureaucratic responsibilities tended to restrict the professors’ abilities to work with their students in collegial relationships. he had suggested professors ideally ought to work alongside the students, with ideas, as more experienced fellow learners. he’d bemoaned the separation of academic disciplines into various departments which rarely worked together. he’d complained that instead of “living with ideas,”2 the life of a student often entailed scurrying between smaller academic tasks, and that the disciplines of study were too focused on training the students in the narrow skills demanded in the 1 gadamer (1992a, pp. 47-52) 2 ibid. (p. 53) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 3 professions. this philosopher hadn’t laid out a systematic program to improve this situation as much as a spirited reminder that whatever obstacles students and professors faced, that “everyone's task to find his [sic] free space [and that] the task of our human life in general is to find free spaces and learn to move therein.”3 had summit and his team been trying to create “free spaces” for slow learners and their teachers? in listening to the man’s personal views, and in what i’d been able to read in the curricular documents for iop, this desire seemed evident. it remained, however, a program for a group of students defined by academic deficits, and a program that handed out a separate and, in the eyes of most, lesser graduation credential to its completers.4 it was like those perspective drawings i’d been shown so long ago in my police training, the ones they used to teach us how eyewitnesses are always seeing events from their own, biased points of view. if you looked at a picture from a certain angle, you saw one thing – in one case, an old hook-nosed witch, chin jutting creepily out of a jacket that concealed her neck and lower jaw. she was staring out into the world with cruel beady eyes. if you looked from a different angle, you saw the other thing, a young pretty fashion model type, turned coyly away from you. it was impossible to see both at the same time.5 if i looked at iop one way, i saw a plan to create for these complex students freer spaces of learning than regular education students would have access to. if i looked at it another way, i saw a continuing agenda to separate slow learners so they wouldn’t slow the class down or cause trouble, maybe even a program that, despite summit’s egalitarian intentions, functioned to groom them for entry level labour jobs occupying the bottom rung of the ladder of social class. the hag and the looker; i couldn’t see both at the same time. my thoughts were interrupted by a short sharp buzz, like a sound recording of an angry hive of hornets, dubbed over itself a few times to make it sound extra menacing. a dismissal buzzer. it was lunch time at the school. after a minute or two, groups of students milled into the restaurant. the place was packed to about three-quarters capacity in about two minutes, the small crowd better reflecting the pretensions of the restaurant’s title. i was beginning to doubt my luck when two of the students i’d met, accompanied by one i’d never seen before, walked into the restaurant via a side door. they noticed me and walked over to my table. “hey it’s the sick-in-the-pants substitute,” hope quipped, referring to the distress i’d affected to get out of the classroom. this was less than flattering, but at least suggested my cover hadn’t been blown. “seriously,” she said, now wearing a concerned face, “how are you doing? we were worried after you took off so fast.” 3 ibid. (p. 59) 4 see alberta education (2004a, p. 12). one of the recommendations that came out of a series of province-wide consultations with stakeholders concerning the potential revision of the integrated occupational program was that iop completers receive a high school diploma, not an alternate credential. this recommendation was obviously not adopted in the policies governing knowledge and employability classes. completers still only earn a certificate most of the students and teachers i interviewed considered this alternate certificate of completion a negative aspect of k & e. 5 weisstein (n.d.) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 4 “i’m fine now, thanks,” i said. “it was just a twenty-four hour virus. it sure hit, though, i had to get out of there.” i rubbed my stomach and made a frowning face. “sorry i couldn’t stay for longer.” “yeah, me too. that was the most interesting class i had all week,” added arturo. “this is paul, by the way,” he added, noticing that we’d not been introduced. “he was absent the day you came by.” “skipping class,” accused hope, giggling. “not your business,” paul retorted, but, without malice, more as a gentle reminder of courtesy. “nice to meet you paul,” i jumped in, hoping to cut off further discourse on this topic. “can i buy you guys lunch?” i then offered. “i’m still trying to learn more about k & e so i can get more subbing gigs. i have a couple more questions for you, we could eat and chat.” none of them objected to this plan. i fished some colourful canadian money out of my wallet and sent them up the line to order for us. i thought quickly about what i wanted to ask them about. they arrived with the food, a delicious assortment of meat, grease and cheese. we divided it amongst ourselves and ate without saying much for a while. “what do you guys think about when you hear the words ‘slow learner’ and ‘k & e’ student together?” i asked, breaking the silence with a tough question. “people in k & e most likely have disabilities. we can’t learn in a short period of time, we can’t process that quickly so we’re not in higher level classes,” paul replied, pretty quickly and concisely i reflected. “does processing speed matter?” i asked. “of course it does,” said hope. “some people are slow, some people are fast, some people can’t remember, some people can.” i wasn’t sure where she was going with that, so i pulled some of the disability studies i’d been learning about out of my toolbox and asked another question. “but how do things get called disabilities? suppose a student understands something she’s supposed to read much more easily if she can hear it at the same time. what is that? is that a disability?” “it’s a difference,” paul said. “if you can comprehend it by reading silently or by reading and listening to it at the same time, then either way you have good comprehension. it’s just a difference in how you read.” “who gets to say what a disability is?” i asked. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 5 “teachers and administrators get to say,” hope replied. “when i was in grade nine i was tested. i thought i did pretty good on it – i thought i was good at math and vocabulary, but they said i had a disability.” “when i was in grade six,” paul said, “all the other students were doing division. i didn’t really understand it and the teacher just assigned it, she didn’t really teach it, so for pretty much the whole unit i just went over to the class computer and screwed around on it. nobody really stopped me. then at the start of grade seven they tested me and after that they put me in an isolated room with a few other kids for all my core classes. i didn’t even have english, math, social or science grades on my report card after that. the report card just had my option classes and then said i was in the ld – learning disabled – program. it was just called ld.” paul’s voice was calm but his face betrayed the anger and confusion he still felt. he took a sip of his soft drink and didn’t say anything more. i thought the name of the class made it sound like class’s main purpose was to teach the kids the correct ways to be disabled but i didn’t say so, paul seemed angry enough about it already.6 i found myself questioning what i thought i’d gleaned about learning disabled always being a higher status disability. there was little to suggest this in paul’s description of how the label had been applied to him. maybe it didn’t always work that way. i also saw that the application of the ld label had not prevented his subsequent placement in a class for slow learners. maybe the categories and interventions bled into each other more than i realized. hope broke in, interrupting my reflection. “in grade nine i got called lots of names. actually not just grade nine, all through my life i’ve been bullied. they called me retarded.” “me too,” arturo said. having exchanged their stories of names and labels, the students all fell silent. we all just sat sipping and eating. finally, shifting gears, i asked, “what do you think about the k & e certificate?” paul answered first. maybe he was talking so much because he didn’t get his say the last time i visited. “i think it’s okay, if it weren’t for it we’d be graduating with nothing. with the certificate at least you can go somewhere.” “at least we get some kind of credential when we graduate. i heard in the intellectual disability programs they don’t get anything.” arturo said. 7 6 see allan (2008, p. 94). allan describes how in special education programing students are often given “the imperative to perform … impairment in public.” 7 see alberta education (2016a). as a student perception of the value of some congregated programs for students with intellectual disabilities this is a troubling statement that requires consideration. on the level of “truth as correspondence,” however, the student is incorrect. the provincial government grants a school-leaving certificate for students with diagnosed intellectual disabilities who complete at least twelve years of school but whose programs do not include core classes on the high school diploma track or the k & e certificate track. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 6 “and with the work experience part of k & e they help you find a job doing things you are interested in,” arturo joined in. “yeah … with the k & e certificate you could get a job as a manager somewhere,” hope added. “you don’t have to start at the bottom if you apply for a job.” i thought that the idea of this credential allowing one to start at a manager’s position was overly hopeful on hope’s part, but i was nevertheless beginning to see the utility of helping the students find and maintain job placements as they began to explore careers. i could see where the success they’d experienced with this during high school might help them find better jobs after high school and have more success at these jobs. i thought i might have to investigate this further. another thing that surprised me was hearing them talk this positively about the k & e certificate. i thought of a question that was similar to one i’d asked summit to further probe their feelings. “do you think if regular education was more flexible there would still be a need for k & e? could everyone take the high school diploma instead?” i asked. “i don’t want to write diploma exams, i’ve heard they are pretty hard,” hope said. “why would you make an exam like that worth fifty percent? if you’re doing well in that class like with an eighty percent and you fail the exam it could pull your mark down too much.” arturo said.8 i’d already been over this with prior informants, so i didn’t ask any of them to elaborate on their thoughts on diploma exams. paul spoke next, answering my question from a different perspective. “i guess in k & e we are just doing a lot of the same work from the next level up but slowed down so maybe it’s not that different. a lot would depend on the teacher,” paul said. “what kind of teaching might make things more fair, or accessible, for k & e students?” i asked, going with paul’s assertion. “make the teachers actually teach,” hope said. “don’t treat us like babies but still help us. get teachers that know how to teach k & e students.” “the teachers just read the textbook out loud,” arturo jumped in. “they need to break things down with examples and tell us stories.” “i’d like to know more interesting stuff about how the natives lived, or imperialism, or globalization, or the boxer rebellion. not just what’s in the textbook,” paul said. 8 see williamson (2016a, p. 12). as mentioned in part 2 of this serialization as of 2015 alberta education weighs diploma exams at 30% of students’ final course grades, but in preparing this publication i chose to depict the policies, including the 50% weighting of diploma exams, that were in place at the time of writing. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 7 “even at the k & e level, this other student in our social studies class is so lost i have to help him. i give him the answers, like ‘it was the chinese’ if that’s what one of the questions was asking for,” hope added. “that’s not helping, it’s sort of cheating,” arturo said. hope blushed a bit. by then we were all nearly finished eating. for a while my three companions fell to discussing matters less to do with teaching and learning. i smiled and nodded from time to time, but had little to add. shortly before we went our separate ways, though, the topic of the talent show that had taken place at the school came up. hope pulled out her cell phone and found a video of jonah. actually she had to tell me it was jonah because he was wearing a ski mask like some sort of psycho killer in a movie. she said he always liked to wear a mask when he performed. he was juggling again, but this time it was swords (with blunted blades for the sake of safety she hastened to tell me) and riding a unicycle all to the rhythm of a frantic hip hop tune. a crowd of a hundred or so students seated on bleachers were cheering wildly. hope told me he came in second in the talent show. i didn’t think anyone was grading on a curve. xxv getting back into the buick after my lunch with the students, i reflected that i’d not detected anyone tailing me all morning. they probably assumed that veronika had taken care of me, and were probably waiting on confirmation from her. but it was only a matter of time before they figured out i was still on the case. the disconnect between my two morning experiences was bothering me. it was almost inspirational hearing about the intent of iop as summit explained it. but then i talked to the students. i was haunted especially by the words “it wasn’t even a real class” spoken about a class for students with learning disabilities. could the same be said about iop and k & e classes? at a stop light, i fished williamson’s business card out of my wallet and wrote “not a real class” on it. i’d have to pursue that idea later. i decided to make another stop on my journey across town to meet the curriculum leaders summit had suggested i see. after my conversation with the students, i realized that in order to be prepared for the interviews there were some questions i needed answered first. my client seemed as good of a source as any. i thought i’d try to catch him by email, i figured it would be faster than the school switchboard, so i drove to an internet café. it was a small and slightly rundown building sitting by itself on a side street just off the main road. it had sort of a halfhearted hippy vibe inside, prices for coffee and baked goods, along with caricatures of sixties musicians and lyrics from songs from the era were written in coloured chalk on a blackboard. strings of beads were hung instead of a door, closing off the back hallway where the bathrooms were. the cashier was a lanky, bored-looking teen who was in no hurry to conclude the game he was playing on his cellular phone and serve me. i wished he was a student worker whose teacher might come by and chide him over his lack of manners. “bonnie and clyde” by serge gainsbourg and brigitte bardot was playing. i reflected that i hadn’t heard that number in twenty years. it was still too soon to hear it again. a current of empathy for the cashier, who i thought might have to endure it on a daily basis, ran through me. still stuffed full with meat, cheese and grease from burgeropolis, i bypassed the baked goods and bought a coffee and twenty minutes of computer time. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 8 i sat at a desktop with tie-dye decals, logged into my account, and began composing a message to williamson. “williamson, it’s hunter,” i started in case that wasn’t apparent from my email address, shamus13@ operative.com. i briefly thought of telling him i felt close to having some answers for him, but a weird feeling came over me as i considered making this claim. so all i wrote was, “i have a couple questions – you available?” i hit send. a reply to my message came back right away. “for a minute – my class is writing a test.” “you worked under both iop and k & e, right?” i remembered him saying this but asked anyway to open the conversation. “yes. four years in iop, the rest after the switch to k & e.” “were the programs very different?” i asked. a longer pause this time. eventually he replied. “quite a bit. when it was iop, the way my school implemented it, the kids spent half days at worksites for four out of their six semesters of high school. a major part of the job for me and my colleague back then involved supervising them at the jobs we had found for them. it was pretty extensive on the work experience education, sometimes too much.” “weren’t community partnerships recommended in the iop curriculum?” i remembered summit saying something about that, i also remembered one of the teachers in the staff room of the school i substituted in saying something about working at a school that ran iop similarly to what williamson was describing. “not that extensively,” williamson replied, making use of italics. “the way we used to do it involved way more work experience than the iop curriculum recommended.”9 “why so much then?” i asked, the question being so obvious it practically asked itself. there was a long pause before i got a reply to that one. “basically, we couldn’t get the kids in the school’s shop facilities a lot of the time. the iop certificate required the students do forty credits or a thousand hours of occupational courses, which was a lot. it would have meant making room for the iop kids for half the day in the school’s shops for several of their semesters of high school. the programs of studies were different between, say, an iop welding course and a regular education welding course, and the school often had high enrolment at the regular education level, enough to fill the classes to the cap all day long. also the iop kids weren’t exactly seen as the sort of students teachers would want to go out of their way to work with. so, for the most part, the iop kids had to be sent elsewhere to get their occupational credits.” 9 see alberta education (1992, p. 9). the program of studies for the occupational course component of iop recommend that only 20% of a student’s instruction should come through community partnerships at the grade 10 level, 40% at the grade 11 level and 60% at the grade 12 level. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 9 “that’s a damn shame,” i wrote. “the kids who might have needed the shop environment most badly being steered away like that.” i thought of the beautiful shop facilities at williamson’s school and the slow learners who were locked out of them. then i thought of the now-closed schools colleen birdseye had spoken of that specialized in iop and how the shop classes at those schools must have been specifically designed for the inclusion of iop students. “it wasn’t quite as bad as that,” williamson clarified. “it wasn’t so much a conspiracy to exclude the iop kids from the shop classrooms. a lot of them did end up taking a class or two in one of the shops when they just enrolled in them as regular kids, not as iop students. some of them did okay, though all the bookwork that went with the courses was always a problem. it was more like an unwillingness to teach the iop curriculum in the shops, figure out a way to teach both levels in the same place at the same time, to make getting the iop kids through with the specific course credits they needed a priority of any sort. and, like i said, the courses were different; the iop mechanics looked a lot different than the regular cts mechanics,10 teaching both at the same time would have been a tough balancing act. but not impossible one time a shop teacher made an exception for an iop kid he got along really well with. that student did end up working in one of the school shops for iop course credits and it went okay. but as a rule it didn’t work out well. so, the students ended up doing the occupational component off campus mostly.” i wasn’t sure if williamson’s clarification consoled me or not; was failure to accommodate any better than intent to exclude? if they got one favored student through iop using the school shops, would it really have been that hard to get the rest of them through this way too? i also wondered how much attention williamson was paying to his class as he typed his detailed replies. they were probably hanging from the rafters by now. but it wasn’t any of my business and this was useful information he was providing. we’d exhausted that topic, so i asked another question. “how did it go doing these credits off campus, with employers?” i asked. “sometimes great. a lot of the students got what they were supposed to out of it. some of the students responded really well. if we matched the kids up with good employers who really mentored them well, and found work they were well suited-to, the students gained a lot of confidence both at their worksites and back at school. some of the students thrived so much at their worksites it was like they were completely different people than the sullen pupils we saw in the morning – they’d greet us with smiles and proudly show us around their worksites like they belonged there. with all that interaction in more adult-oriented environments, many of the students left iop with more confidence than i think they would have had if they just stayed in regular education. some of the kids kept on working with their employers after graduation earning full-time positions, even journeyman tickets eventually, if they were working in the trades.” “that’s great,” i typed. maybe there was something to this approach. “sounds like in these cases, your school found a very effective way to work the iop requirements around your limited resources.” 10 see alberta education (2010a). this acronym stands for career and technology studies classes which include “shop” or industrial arts classes in welding, carpentry, mechanics, cooking and cosmetology, as well as classes in legal studies, management and marketing, accounting, and computing. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 10 a longer pause this time before the answer popped up. “maybe i’m being too nostalgic,” williamson admitted. “there were lots of problems too. it was hard for iop students who wanted to do extra-curricular activities with the rest of the kids in the school because they’d have to leave at the start of the lunch break to get to their worksites on time and, typically, couldn’t make it back to the school in time for the dismissal bell at the end of the day. so it set them apart and actually reinforced the stereotype that the iop kids were too apathetic to be involved in the school teams and clubs because those were the times when the clubs and teams met. there were some employers that, i felt, exploited the students, who they didn’t have to pay under the rules of the program. they just gave them repetitive jobs and never taught them any specialized skills they could take away from the placements. some employers did their best but just weren’t really set up that well to deal with student workers, despite their good intentions. and, other than learning how to function in a workplace, the actual curricular learning was often pretty dubious. at the start of a placement we usually didn’t even have any idea what occupational courses we should credit the students for at the end. we’d just sort of pick the closest curriculum to what their employers ended up asking them to do at work, and, if none of them fit, we’d choose the most generic of the courses, business services i think it was called.11 as an educational enterprise it was often pretty random. and some of the students just weren’t ready for the world of work. what do you do with a slow learner, appropriately placed in iop, who is scheduled to go to work every afternoon but who keeps getting fired from his worksites?” that was a good question. “send him back to regular education?” i speculated. “where he’s already shown he can’t function? where there are few classes offered he can have success in?” williamson asked back. a second later i got another message, this one answering the riddle. “every semester administration withdrew iop students from school because they couldn’t function at their worksites, even if they were passing their on-campus classes in the morning. it was against the rules to be a half-time student in grades ten and eleven.” “weren’t they all half time students?” i asked. “half-time at school / half at work, not half-time in classes / half-time causing trouble in the halls or parking lot,” williamson wrote back. that seemed to me a pretty ruthless way to deal with struggling students, only offering the occupational part of the program through one mode of delivery and kicking out anyone who didn’t match up well. it reminded me of the nightmare i had about the boxing and slicing machine.12 i wondered how well i would have done in iop under this setup. i’d been fired several times for insubordination until i finally found an employer more tolerant of my wisecracks – myself. even so, i was usually on thin ice with me too. this was all interesting, but it occurred to me we were discussing a program that no longer existed so i moved on. “is it different under k & e?” 11 ibid. (p. 3) 12 williamson (2016b, p. 20) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 11 several seconds went by and then an answer came back again. “yes. they reduced the amount of occupational credits k & e students have to get and better aligned it with regular education. the k & e students can now use regular education cts classes as part of their certificate of achievement,13 which is a pretty good reason for the teachers to include them in these classes and try to work with them, and the shop teachers often do a good job of meeting their needs now. we use our learning centre area to help them with the bookwork and accommodate them on the tests in the cts classes when we need to – that helps too. and even if they couldn’t do the cts classes the new k & e occupational classes are the same amount of credits which might make it easier to teach them simultaneously, though i haven’t often experienced that as necessary.” this chafed a little against summit’s statement that the changes from iop to k & e were unnecessary; in williamson’s school it seemed to have made a difference in getting the slow learners in the shops they should have been in to begin with. then again, the prior method of delivering iop williamson had described as his school’s approach sounded like it fell short of fully embracing iop as the program had been intended, so gleaning any meaning from comparison might have been unfair. i also wondered if inclusion in the cts classes was really going as seamlessly as williamson suggested. one of the teachers i’d spoken to earlier had complained about how bookish the courses were. fearful that williamson might have to go at any minute, i shelved my follow-up questions about the cts classes and asked for a clarification on something else instead. “so there’s no more work experience?” another short pause and then an answer. “there’s still a little – the certificate still requires one hundred and twenty-five hours of work experience, which is more achievable than a thousand, i guess. but the other way we could really focus on getting them good placements and helping them keep them. the time was built into our teaching schedules. we’re too busy teaching them classes now to have time for this. now we just have to hope they can keep any part-time job or volunteering gig for that amount of time to fulfill the requirement. we don’t really have time anymore to call up employers and find placements for the students, or monitor the placements very carefully to make sure the kids are learning anything. for the students who would have benefited from doing a lot of work experience with a variety of good employers, and from having a constant teacher presence to advocate for them in the workplace, i think this is a loss.” from what i could tell from what the students at the other school said, someone had helped them find work experience positions, so maybe it wasn’t as hard to find a way to help the students with this requirement as williamson suggested. but i didn’t want to insult him just then so i went for a more neutral question. “why are you too busy teaching the students their classes now?” “the length of time spent in the core classes doubled from iop to k & e.” “is that for the better?” “maybe for some. i guess if your plan is to boost your skills and move back into regular education doing more k & e english, science, social or math to get ready for the transition makes sense, but for some of the students i think it’s too much. they’ve suffered a lot in these courses 13 alberta education (2013, p. 23) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 12 already by the time they hit high school. they’d have been better off doing the shorter classes and more work experience.” i remembered what summit had said about the core classes being on a “need to know” basis in iop. i asked williamson, “what are the k & e core classes like?” a reply came back. “we always ended up teaching the student as much as the curriculum, under both iop and k & e. i mean we end up trying to help them figure out things they are wondering about or struggling with as much as following the curriculum. but there’s definitely less occupational stuff in the new k & e programs of study. and the cores make no attempt to really integrate the subject with the occupational side anymore. it’s more like a watered-down version of the regular education curriculum.” “was it healthier and safer for slow learners under iop, or is it better under k & e at your school?” i asked, going for a big question this time. “i don’t know,” williamson wrote back. “despite the problems with all the work experience, that transformative thing that happened – when the students sometimes really found a place to belong at the worksites – that doesn’t happen anymore. maybe k & e still improves their motivation simply by giving them classes they can have some success at, but the changes in the students aren’t as dramatic. then again, iop, at least the way we ran it, didn’t work for everyone. we lost kids who needed it, who couldn’t handle the high school diploma route, but who didn’t fit with our model of delivery. but we lose kids this way too with k & e, we aren’t really offering an educational experience that is different enough from the one that’s failed them. and it looks so similar to regular education; a lot of schools in my district seem to be questioning why it’s needed at all lately. k & e is pretty much dead in a lot of schools in the district lately and, like i said, i constantly have to explain why i think it’s a bad idea to combine the k & e students and kids from the next level up in the same core classes.” i wondered if i should tell williamson that one group he’d have to explain that to were the students i’d met who said they preferred their blended science class to their discrete k & e social studies class. but then i surprised myself by remembering a technicality i’d learned – the tier of science the k & e kids were blended in with didn’t have a diploma exam. the teacher probably had more wiggle room for everyone. then again, colleen birdseye had said she taught english, a course sequence that ended in a diploma exam, in blended classes where students could receive credits at the iop or the regular education level. but she’d done this at a school that specialized in iop so maybe she’d found a way to give the iop level students what they needed while enriching the experience for the few who could handle it. maybe this was different than watering down a regular education curriculum for a handful of iop students in a class. another message popped up. williamson had been doing some musing of his own and now offered this statement. “iop had problems. but everywhere i look, k & e is dying. and i’m not sure there’s anything out there to replace it or address the needs of slow learners. that’s why i hired you, remember?” i read that last sentence as a little cranky. maybe the guilt of all the students he’d seen withdrawn from school was getting to him. or maybe i was wrong on his tone. it was hard to tell with email. “i have to go,” williamson then wrote tersely, leaving me to williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 13 wonder if he was signing off to deal with a student behavior crisis in the class that his distraction with my questions had allowed. but then, as an afterthought, he sent me a few links to review so i figured he was fine. it probably wasn’t the first time williamson’s k & e students had been ignored by a teacher but i hoped that, at least in the class he taught, it was a rare event. the first link was to an article that came out right when iop was being rolled out at a calgary high school. though they said they appreciated the alternative programming, parents and students were complaining about the iop certificate of achievement as a credential that wouldn’t take the students anywhere. a parent said it suggested the government regarded iop students as “second-class citizens”. 14 i was familiar with this complaint by now. what did “pull me up short”,15 though, were the comments that jim dinning, the then minister of education, made about the differences between the iop certificate of achievement and the high school diploma. seeming to confirm this parent’s impression, he agreed, “they are not equal diplomas,”16 and went on to imply the certificate was symbolic of an inferior and perhaps even still incomplete high school career on the part of the student: it is like a foot race [in which] everyone works like hell to get to the finish line but not everyone does. we as a society have standards of achievement, standards of results. and in a society which admires competition, not everyone gets the same size trophy.17 “wow, what an asshole,” i thought, at least that was how he revealed himself to me in those statements. summit’s comments to the effect of “if you treat them like dummies” echoed through my head. a message warned me that i had only ten more minutes of browsing time. i could have paid for more but there were other corners i needed to peek in. i opened some more of the links williamson had sent. the next article was from 1992 and described the closure of all the junior high integrated occupational programs in calgary’s vocational high schools.18 the chief superintendent at the time said that the current philosophy of alberta education was to “integrate all students into regular classrooms wherever possible be they mentally handicapped, integrated occupational students, or whatever,” and that “alberta education [was] revamping its technological program to concentrate less on specific job skills and more on general preparation for the world of work.”19 as a detective i had issues with both of these statements. from what special education history i’d learned, i knew at the time the superintendent made these statements his school district had many segregated programs for students with disabilities beyond iop that were under no threat of closure due to changes in inclusive education thought and policy. the other issue i had was that i knew from reading the iop manual and from talking to summit that generic work skills were always supposed to be the emphasis. i read that another trustee at the meeting suggested instead of pursuing vocational education using the school’s shop facilities, 14 ross (1989, p. b3) 15 see gadamer (1989, p. 268). gadamer used this phrase to describe the initially alienating hermeneutic experience of encountering a text that thwart’s ones expectations. 16 ross (1989, p. b3) 17 ibid. 18 ruttan (1992, p. b1) 19 ibid. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 14 that iop students should be placed with employers in the community to learn these skills instead. i remembered what williamson had told me about the ups and downs of work experience education. i wondered if the reasons for closure really had more to do with economics than student learning and remembered the statements made in the 1920s critique of a vocational education program that it simply wasn’t worthwhile to invest so many resources in such a small number of struggling students. i opened a link to a similar but fairly recent article, one that came out twenty-eight years after the one i’d just read. this one was about the outright closure of the calgary school district’s vocational schools which i’d assumed, despite losing their junior high students, had remained open to high school iop, and later k & e, students in the interim.20 enrolment was dropping in the schools and both were well under capacity. i could see, economically, the operating costs being a problem for the school district in this context. a superintendent stated that it cost twice as much to educate students in these high schools as it did in other high schools in the city. he also said that there was a “movement” to offer career skills training in all high schools, not just in congregated settings.21 i found “movement” a vague term. certainly there had, historically, been schools that specialized in vocational programming, but it had also seemed to me that offering career skills had been a part of the mandate of every public education school for quite a while.22 if all schools were always supposed to be doing this, why was this supposed movement so recent? the article also quoted the school council chairwoman with an opposing view on the closure, “with seventy-eight percent of its students requiring special education modifications, [this school’s] students are "complex learners" who may struggle in a traditional school.”23 she also said “it's about students with high needs that are at risk and finding a place where they feel safe. that's important. it's not just about where they can get their courses.”24 colleen birdseye had mentioned that her students had protested their school’s closure and, sure enough this article mentioned that students from these schools had gathered outside the school district’s head office to protest. a student protester was quoted describing the flexible and patient approach of a school scheduled for closure, an approach the article implied, students were unlikely to encounter at other high schools. “this school gives you chances, they don't give up on you.”25 another student predicted, “if they close this school, there's so many kids who are going to drop out of school.”26 williamson had also sent me a link to an editorial about these school closures in which the author had opined that, in comparison to academic programming and athletics, vocational education students tend to get the “short end of the stick” when it comes to school funding priorities.27 the author had also suggested the impact of these school closures on students needed to be closely studied, especially given the provincial high school dropout rate.28 20 mcginnis (2010, p. c.5) 21 ibid. 22 mathew (1984) 23 mcginnis (2010, p. c5) 24 ibid. 25 ibid. 26 ibid. 27 sears (2010, p. a11) 28 ibid. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 15 i wondered if the student’s prediction was right, if these school closures resulted in more slow learners leaving school early. i did remember something colleen birdseye had said about how she thought some of her k & e students did after being moved to new schools following the closures. she said she didn’t think they coped well with what they saw as stricter attendance and behaviour policies at their new schools and felt lost and anonymous. the computer warned me it was logging me off in one minute, but i’d opened most of williamson’s links and felt that i’d accomplished what i needed to. i felt closer to slow learners than i had at any prior time in this investigation. i’d seen slow learners (or students labelled as slow learners) at two high schools and read about them at other schools. i’d read about the programs that made them, by the claims of their teachers and parents, but also in their own words, feel ‘at home’. i still didn’t know whether slow learners were born or produced by schools, or even if much of the categorical information about them was that accurate, i’d just have to tell williamson i’d been unable to ascertain these things. after researching these programs, the slow learners in iop/k & e did at that moment seem to me to be a real category of students, at least in the sense that the creator of iop, matthew summit had explained them to me, as an at-risk group of students with a certain pattern of school failure and deserving recipients of additional resources and attention. and, from what i could tell, despite the efforts of many of the educators i met, slow learners remained a category of students for whom these protective interventions were often half-hearted, underfunded, poorly planned, and under continual threat of outright closure. i couldn’t hope that this investigation would save all of them, but i could tell williamson what i’d learned about the nature of the danger they were in. williamson, i thought, should keep fighting for the k & e classes that despite their problems were the best thing currently going for slow learners. i just needed to shore up a few more details on what k & e looked like right then, and figure out how things might look for this educational category in the future. i could do this by talking to the curriculum leaders i planned to see next. then i could prepare my final report for williamson. another interview and then – case closed. i logged off of the computer and made my way to the buick. on the short walk my mind began to wander in odd directions. i felt a nagging doubt if it was as easy as this after all. maybe iop and k & e were like the medications they were always selling on tv, said to dramatically relieve some troubling symptoms but, then, there it comes – a list of potential side effects, long as a mile of ticker tape, scrolls across the screen. then a presence i’d not sensed was suddenly upon me, crashing into me, knocking me to the ground and falling with me. i wished i’d been more alert as i exited the cafe. i was overwhelmed with the familiar sour stench of my attacker from the library, and just as i was about to lash out and mount some sort of defence, a large hand holding a rag went up to my face and i tasted the sick sweetness of chloroform. as i lurched woozily for my bearings the words ‘case closed’ repeated in my head, and then became ‘caste closed’ and then ‘category closed’ as i replayed veronika sternwood‘s passionate and warped defense of educational sorting, and wondered if it had had a delayed effect on me. i realized there was more to this case than the simple whodunit of program closures, and i’d nearly betrayed the slow learners by forgetting what i’d learned at the museum of classification, from smart ass cripple, and from a learning disabled-labelled williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 16 student i’d spoken to recently. then the phrase became ‘casket closed’ as i wondered if i’d come to this knowledge too late. shadows flitted across my world, and then the blackness was total. xxvi regaining consciousness, i slowly took in my surroundings. i had been seated, with my hands bound in front of me, on a leather couch in somebody’s office. the mounted head of a whitetailed buck on the wall stared incuriously at me from above. along the side wall stood a tableau of a stuffed grizzly menacing a stuffed muskrat which gazed glassily up at the predator. my eyes fixed on a large man sitting at a desk. his square head was just a little smaller than the grizzly’s, his white crew cut hair stood up like hundreds of tiny daggers. he had a wrestler’s neck and the rolled-up sleeves of his sweater revealed forearms so thick it looked like he’d had additional hunks of meat implanted under the skin. one large hand held a highball glass two fingers full of something that would have normally looked appealing to me. the other hand held a book entitled not everyone gets a trophy.29 his piercing grey eyes scanned the pages. he made a face like he had just smelled sour gas, looked at me, and when he saw that i was awake tossed the book into a trash can beside his desk. it settled with a tinny thud. “nice title, stupid book. not what i thought it was going to be about at all.” he had a flat tone of voice save for bit of a growl at the end of the sentence. the hand that held the book reached into his desk and produced a bottle, which he waved at me questioningly. i shook my head woozily. i try not to drink with villains on principle, though i sometimes do in practice. this time, with the sick tickling the back of my throat it was easy to hold firm. he shrugged and put the bottle back in his desk. “who are you?” i demanded. “i’m maddox paine, the chairman of spehc,” he said and then slowly walked me through the acronym. “special private executive for healthy competition. the ‘h’ is silent.” “why?” i asked. even in my dazed state that sounded ridiculous. “sounds better, i guess. besides, it’s sort of assumed. competition is always healthy,” he replied. “who do you work for?” “we work for ourselves of course, but we can be found in all institutions. wherever competition is threatened we assist.” “to make it fair?” “to make it healthy. healthy isn’t always fair,” he said gesturing to the tableau of animals. “does veronika sternwood work with you?” i asked. 29 tulgan (2009) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 17 he considered his response for a minute and replied, “not as such but i have a lot of respect for the work her agency does. our agendas often overlap. categories are good for healthy competition.” “what do you want with me?” i asked. he looked fondly at me for a minute, which was frightening, and then spoke. “you’ve been sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong ever since you arrived here. we’ve tried to remove you from this situation several times, but you’re tenacious, and lucky. you appear to be a survivor, mr. hunter.” i wanted to give credit where it was due and own up the fact that on this particular peculiar case, i had often been helped during the severest dangers. i thought, however, that might lower me in his estimation so i stayed quiet. paine continued. “i admire you as a competitor, mr. hunter, but enough is enough. the game is up, and you’ve lost. the education system, like every system, needs winners and losers. slow learners function, necessarily, as the losers of educational categorization. we need you to stop interfering with the natural order of things. you’ve investigated your last case.” i didn’t like the sound of that for a variety of reasons. “i’m not interfering. i’m just looking for slow learners,” i protested. “please mr. hunter,” he chuckled. “have you ever taken a case in which your original purpose wasn’t overtaken by your quaint notions of justice?” he poured some liquor into his sneer to reward himself for that question. he had me there, if he wanted to see it that way, so instead of responding, i took the offensive. like veronika sternwood, this was a talkative villain, and i was hoping to use that to my advantage. “what do you mean, slow learners function as the ‘losers’?” “there’s the battle of the labels, for example. quite the cockfight,” he replied. “the impairment pecking order?” i echoed, recalling the phrase. i looked around the room out of the corner of my eye and saw we were the same distance to the door so there was no use making a quick break for it. i assumed even if i made it, he had a monster on the other side waiting for me. “exactly,” he confirmed, staring hard at me to redirect my gaze to him. “as soon as there was any distinction between the labels, the slow learners had already lost out to learning disabled students. in the battle for academic accommodations slow learners lose out. learning disabled students are thought to have at least average intelligence, often above average. some learning disabled students are even gifted.30 slow learners by definition are not average. learning disabled is wiping out slow learner in the prestige game and the accommodation game – look at how 30 alberta education (2004b, p. 35) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 18 often the differences between the two labels are pointed out – always at the expense of slow learners.” i thought of the in-service williamson and i had attended. i felt sick and not just from the chloroform hangover. “but why does one label have to be better, why does there have to be a battle for accommodations?” i asked. “resources are limited. categories have to vie for the title of most deserving. and when it comes to reasoning, slow learners are less capable, not differently capable like the learning disabled, so accommodations would give them an unfair advantage. and giving them more resources to support their learning would be a waste. like buying a five gallon pail you could only ever fill to three gallons.” this was the most inclusive villain i’d ever met in his acceptance of learning disabilities and the need for academic accommodation, but that didn’t make the social darwinist landscape he was including them in sound any less depraved to me. still, i’d read similar statements about slow learners. before i could comment on his statements he introduced another example. “in the battle for completion credentials, the slow learners in k & e don’t even make the final cut. they don’t write diploma exams so they don’t get high school diplomas. they’re first out in the round robin. they are eliminated, so they get the lesser certificate, and they’re lucky to get that.” that sounded a lot like the “foot-race” quote from former education minister jim dinning, i thought. i needed to offer up something in rebuttal. “i thought diploma exams were about maintaining teaching standards not fostering competition,” i said.31 by now i knew better than this, but thought i could draw out more conversation by taking this position. whatever he was planning to do to me, he couldn’t do it when we were still talking. “that might be part of it, mr. hunter,” he responded. “certainly the results can be an excellent stick to flog teachers with, to ensure they are doing their best to keep the system competitive worldwide.32 but you are naïve to think that’s all of it. look at how the results are announced, doesn’t it all remind you of other cultic competitions like the academy awards, march madness, quarterly market reports, heavyweight title fights, the stanley cup playoffs, the superbowl, or the olympics? look at how schools are ranked by the fraser institute and in the media based on these results. this series of exams is an annual competition, the announcing of the results an annual spectacle!” 33 31 stewart (2004, p. 177) 32 see melnyk (2012, p. 1). in 2010 then education minister dave hancock issued a press release indicating the ministry of education was concerned and would be investigating a drop in student achievement in the written portion of the english 30-1 diploma exams. 33 graham and neu (2009, p. 27) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 19 “those other things you mention are explicitly competitions. aren’t the exams simply supposed to encourage all students and schools to achieve better?” i asked, repeating my query in other words. “this may be the stated purpose, mr. hunter, but think about how students classified as below average, average, and above often internalize and continue to reproduce these results.34 the competition teaches the students where they belong. in the case of your k & e students who don’t even write the exam, they are below the below-average grade,” he sneered. “but k & e isn’t supposed to be about ‘sorting’, it’s supposed to be about providing a more practical educational alternative for students who struggle. it’s about finding career paths for students who learn better when working with their hands.” i knew i was just parroting the program descriptors i’d read on this, but wanted to hear what paine had to say about it. he smiled his ugly smile and replied, “your slow learners are losing the battle for careers too. there isn’t a single trades program for which the k & e certificate or any of the -4 classes are mentioned as pre-requisites.35 someone from the building council the other day was telling me he thought with trades becoming so technical ‘if students can't make the cut to go to university or community college, maybe we're a little doubtful that we want them either.’36 there’s even a credential called ‘tech prep’ that students can be granted on their high schools diplomas that certifies that they have extensive training in a career area. students who only have done academic coursework at the k & e level are not eligible for the tech prep credential. it was deliberately planned to leave them out.”37 there was little i could say in response to that, it was consistent with what many of my other sources had indicated. it seemed when k & e programming was effective it boosted students’ confidence, which was promising for future employment. and if a k & e student was fortunate enough to obtain meaningful work experience placements, or connect well to one of the careers courses on-campus, that seemed promising too. but when it came to the programs paine had mentioned, the system was too rigid to make a place for them. i remembered williamson’s story of the apprentice registering for his technical training, how his way was almost barred because his transcript was tainted with k & e credits.38 things were stacked against slow learners in this way. it was sick that paine found this a good thing, but there wasn’t much for me to say. fortunately, paine didn’t require my input just then. he was on a roll. “as i mentioned, with limited resources your slow learners are losing the battle for funding too. various programs and populations of students compete at every level to be funding priorities. how do you think k & e does in this battle?” “tell me,” i said, though in truth i already had a sense. 34 ibid. (9) 35alberta apprenticeship and industry training (2015) 36 taylor and lehmann (2002, p. 151) 37 ibid. 38 williamson (2016a, p. 5) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 20 “k & e barely survived the transition from iop. in the middle of the program reforms, the department of education sent a letter to principals saying it was scrapping the curriculum writing project for the new k & e courses.”39 i had a rebuttal for this. “but they must have changed their minds because they did eventually follow through and release the new series of classes, i’ve seen them. besides, k & e students are still funded for more per credit than regular education students.” “so what?” he sneered again. “aside from that top-up on credit funding, which doesn’t amount to much with so few students taking k & e, it’s barely funded at all. other than a brief honeymoon period when iop first came out, it never has been.40 i’m sure you saw the recent history on k & e schools being closed, you saw the statistics on how few students enroll in k & e. the program is losing on every level. even when there is a little money available for districts to develop resources or offer teacher in-servicing for k & e, it often isn’t spent.41 slow learners are not a priority.” “if you are working to close down k & e,” i said switching topics, “i’m not a strong threat to you. i’m still unsure what should happen to it myself.” “hunter!” he barked, “you haven’t been listening. i don’t want to close down k & e, i want to keep it exactly like it is. somebody has to lose at this game. for the concept of priority to have any meaning you have to have low priorities. in a bureaucratic system one has to choose between requests to approve and requests to, regrettably,” he said that last word sarcastically, “decline. that’s how you show restraint. the profile of an educational category depends as much on who you exclude from it as it does on who you let in. the dropout rate is troubling and regrettable,” more sarcasm on those last two words, “but it also shows the system is tough enough, that we’re not letting everyone through. at every level someone has to lose.” “it’s public education,” i objected. “every student is supposed to be a priority.” “every student gets a shot,” he replied. “we set up contests of merit and sort out the winners and losers. this is all sanctified in the department’s latest statement on the direction it is taking education in. inspiring education says that all of tomorrow’s students need to be entrepreneurial and competitive.42 what do you suppose that means?” this was the first i was hearing of this initiative and i thought i’d have to investigate it further if i was able to escape, but there was no way i was going to admit that to paine. i shifted the topic again instead. “but privilege interferes with the competition; some slow learners lack the social 39 skytt (2002, para. 6) 40 taylor and lehmann (2002, p. 146) 41 see central alberta regional consortium (2010, p. 5). in 2009 / 2010 a consortium of central alberta school districts, supported with funding from alberta education and the alberta teacher’s association, set aside $10,000 for professional development and in-servicing of k & e teachers. none of it was spent. conversely, $15,000 was set aside for professional development for special education teachers with expenditures of $39,577 significantly exceeding this allocation. 42 alberta education (2009a, p. 6) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 21 capital to thrive the way the system is set up. so does discrimination about learning styles. some of them learn in ways that are undervalued,” i pointed out. “some of my colleagues are reluctant to admit it, but the truth is that privilege is part of merit, competitively speaking. so is having at least normal ability for the most part. so is learning in the ways that are the most valued,” he said simply. “but diversity is healthy,” i protested. “how do you get it under the conditions you’re talking about?” “if a difference is good enough it will find its niche, maybe even become the new normal,” he insisted. “that’s still not diversity!” i protested. “it’s what works – competition – it sorts and purifies.” he was raising his voice as he shortened his sentences. “you’re demented,” i blurted. i’d lost patience too, despite myself. “why would anyone hire you?” i had to ask. “i didn’t say we worked for institutions. we work in them and on them,” paine replied with a sigh. then he glanced down at his meaty wrist and consulted a large, swiss army-looking timepiece that had so many dials on it i had no idea how he could make out the actual time of day. he downed the rest of his drink. that seemed like a bad sign. i have no more time for you, hunter,” he announced. “i thought you were a worthy competitor, deserving of some hospitality even in defeat. but you just don’t get it.” with that he pressed a button on his desk and a huge trench-coated figure walked into his office. it was my assailant from the library. the smell left no doubt. “this is xeno, i believe you’ve met,” he said. “he’s something of an anomaly. he has a rare disorder that badly inhibits the sloughing off of skin.43 he’s only a medium-sized man under there, but as you’ve noted carrying around all that extra dermis has given him awesome strength. he used to work as an entertainer at carnivals performing mighty feats and extreme piercings on himself, but he’s something of an introvert and never much liked it. when i met him in shanghai, i told him if he came and worked for us i’d have our lab try to develop an antagonistic bacteria that might help him overcome his disorder.” xeno did indeed seem introverted. he’d said nothing when paine was introducing him. verbose as he was, paine probably liked a quiet assistant. xeno had other qualifications too. i could verify the claims to his strength and his loose, fleshy, shapeless face would make any witness that reported his appearance sound crazy. and i doubted his outer layer of flesh would yield much for fingerprints. 43 this ridiculous combination of symptoms and resultant super powers are not meant to resemble any known impairment or disability. it is meant to address the sorts of implausible and monstrous conditions that authors often inflict on villainous henchmen in pulp fiction and comic books. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 22 at paine’s bidding, xeno yanked me up from the sofa, leaving my arms tied. paine got up and left his office and xeno shoved me ahead, following paine. we were on the top floor of a building that, aside from paine’s aggressively developed office, was still under construction. it looked like it had been in this state for some time. it smelled of drywall dust and was illuminated by temporary floodlights but no one was working. paine led us down the stairs and xeno shoved me along with just enough force to remind me who was boss and just enough care that i didn’t tumble away from him. noticing that paine was far enough ahead to be out of earshot of whispering and desperate to gain any possible advantage, i harnessed what i had learned from my travels in the disability museum and from smart ass cripple and began to tell xeno how badly i thought he was being exploited in his thankless and stereotypical role as a disfigured henchman. it was a long staircase, and while my legs did not appreciate this, it allowed me the opportunity to harangue xeno at length with this whispered opinion. all the while, paine did a determined and oblivious march down the stairs ahead of us. all i was hoping for was a little distraction, enough to surprise and briefly overtake my captors, an effort i suspected would be in vain but that my code told me i had to try. xeno had a surprise of his own, though. i wasn’t even sure he’d been listening, but he suddenly stopped in the middle of the staircase; the way he was looking at me, i was sure he was going to throw me down the rest of the way, but he simply said, “i’m not comfortable with my role in the story.” then, without another word, he walked down ahead of us and out of sight. he was apparently only literally thick-skinned, i reflected, or maybe he’d been having similar thoughts all along and my words were the tipping point. paine and i watched his departure in disbelief. his loud, heavy steps continued; i heard a door slam shut and i knew he was gone. it would have been better for me if, instead of leaving the scene altogether, the disfigured henchman had a dramatic change of heart and used some of his strength and indignation to save the hero, but i supposed he might not be comfortable with that role in the story either. it looked like it was up to me. i recovered from my surprise more quickly than paine and threw myself, like a bowling ball at the back of his legs. he fell back, cracking his huge head on one of the stairs and i fell forward, wrenching my shoulder as i rolled. paine lay in a stunned lump, moaning loudly and cursing, but i had the good fortune of being able to get to my feet. i grabbed the railing on the stairs for balance and took a risk with my injured leg by kicking his cruel face, following through like it was a football at kickoff time, all teed up just for me. a jolt of pain shot through my leg, but it felt good anyways. paine stopped moaning. he just lay there rasping. i stepped carefully over him, and despite the old wound on my leg and the new one on my shoulder from the tackle i had thrown, i ran down the rest of the stairs. i had to put some serious distance between me and paine. i knew i’d still be no match for him when he recuperated enough to pursue me. i made it out of the building and tried to figure out where i was. i saw from the warehouses and a junkyard to the west of the building that i was in some sort of industrial district. it must have been on the outskirts of the city, because to the east, a two-lane, poorly paved road was all that stood between me and a dense forest. i ran across the road and into the forest, following a vaguely trafficked trail. risking the loss of a second to look back, i saw i wasn’t leaving much for tracks on the frozen ground so felt it safe to stay on the path. i continued running as well as i williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 23 could with my injuries, stumbling painfully from time to time on stones and tree roots and slipping on ice and loose snow. when i was too exhausted to run, i fell to walking, and then i neared a point at which even walking was difficult. despite the recent improvement in temperature, there was still enough winter cold to get to me. i saw a cleared section of the forest that revealed a little hill upon which, i was surprised to see, sat a cabin, or more of a hut really. there were footprints in the snow and frozen mud leading up to it. i didn’t know what i would find in the cabin, but the only two options out in the forest seemed to be exposure or apprehension, so i followed the footprints. in a small cleared yard, i saw an axe stuck in a stump. i pulled the axe out and began to use its blade, awkwardly, to unbind my hands. it wasn’t the sharpest of tools, and breaking through the rope took some effort. when i was finally done i caught my breath and looked up to see two old men staring at me from the small porch of the cabin. they were holding what appeared to be antique mauser rifles. xxvii the first man was dressed in rustic clothes. he was wearing short, dark pants of a coarse fibre, work boots, and long grey breeches. a thick brown shirt peeked out of a jacket with broad lapels and a militaristic collar. his piercing eyes glared at me in what i took as a challenge; his lips were turned upwards on an otherwise square moustache in what appeared to me as a humorless sort of smugness. his companion was more formally dressed in slacks, a corduroy blazer, and a red woolen tie. there was something proprietary about the first man – i took him to be the cabin owner. with the officious expression he wore, he looked particularly disturbing standing at the ready, locked, loaded and aiming straight at my heart. despite being armed as well, his companion smiled slightly as if intrigued by the event of my arrival at the cabin. desperately, knowing that, despite their reception of me, i was exhausted and needed rest and shelter if i was to survive, i slowly walked towards them holding my hands up in surrender. nearing the porch where they stood, i asked if i could come in to warm up. i claimed i was out hiking and had become lost in the woods. i saw, as they exchanged glances with each other that they had some doubts about my story. i supposed very little in my comportment suggested i had been out for a nature walk. the man i took to be the cabin owner spoke to the other in german. i caught the word ‘polizisten,’ and saw his guest nod and move towards the cabin. all in all, i had not been well-treated by the authorities of this city and had no desire to sample their hospitality again, moreover the longer i waited outside the greater the risk that paine would hunt me down. deciding to come clean, i called out to wait and said i was a private investigator on a case. maintaining eye contact with the cabin owner, i asked if i could enter my pocket and get out my license to prove myself. he gave a slight nod and i very slowly and carefully got out my wallet and produced my i.d., feeling lucky paine hadn’t taken my wallet. i set it on the first stair of the porch. the companion took a few steps and bent to get it as the cabin owner continued to regard me warily from behind his rifle. they took turns scrutinizing my i.d. i begged permission to explain why i was truly at the cabin and received another microscopic nod from the cabin owner. i began to explain myself. the two listened intently but with different styles. the cabin owner was indignant. he made small adjustments to his rifle to continue bearing the weight of pointing it at me. he was ready at any minute to carry through on his intention to call the police and detain me in the yard until they came by, or to do worse. his guest grew increasingly curious, williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 24 eventually relaxing and letting his rifle hang by his side. i tried my best to be calm and expedient in the telling. having explained how i became involved in the case and some of the dangers i’d encountered so far, i brought the story to my apprehension by paine, my escape, and the present danger i was facing, given that it was almost inevitable that he would come looking for me. something shifted slightly in the cabin owner’s attitude at the mention of the social darwinist in the industrial district, not necessarily a greater empathy for me but his face very briefly registered looks of disgust and then regret before he smoothed it into indignance again. after i had explained this part of my story, he finally lowered his rifle, spoke briefly to his companion who shrugged in apparent agreement and smiled. the cabin owner gestured toward the open door of his shelter. thanking my reluctant host profusely, i approached the cabin, i knocked some mud from my pants, removed my shoes and asked, deferentially, where i could set them so that they couldn’t be seen from the porch. the cabin owner opened the door and gestured to a mat inside the cabin. i stepped into the cabin and set them on the mat alongside another pair of muddy boots that sat there drying, their heavy wetness, soiled leather, and worn innards speaking of their belonging not so much to the world of the cabin, but to the wintry forest that had marked them.44 the cabin owner and the companion followed me in and shut the door. it was sparsely but functionally appointed inside. a kitchen and sitting room occupied most of the floor space to my left, and open doors to my right revealed two small bedrooms and a small study. a few windows provided the only relief from the wood paneling all around. a wood-burning stove in the kitchen heated the cabin itself and also the water for the coffee the two men had been drinking before my visit interrupted them. the steam from the tin percolator and two plain mugs on the thick, plank-style table billowed out into the cabin air. the warmth of the cabin nibbled at my cold fingers and toes. the companion asked the cabin owner something in german, received what sounded like an affirmative response, and invited me to sit at the table. i thanked them both and sat down, grateful to rest my weary limbs but also careful not to slouch in excessive familiarity. the companion went into another room, came back without his rifle and sat down to the right of me at the table. the cabin owner sat across from me with the mauser resting on his lap. the companion seemed to ask for and receive further permission from the cabin owner, and then found another mug in the cupboard and offered me some coffee. i accepted, bowing and thanking both of them. it was good, lightly bitter, refreshing and warming. i knew i had been cold, but hadn’t realized how thirsty i was. it wasn’t long after we were seated that i heard the whine of an all-terrain vehicle, followed by a putt-putt sound as it came to rest. i heard heavy steps and then a loud knock on the door. i looked imploringly at the host; he briefly considered things and then, with a look of annoyance, gestured towards the study. i crept into the room and quietly shut the door behind me. from the study i heard another door squeak slightly open, probably only a crack, and then paine’s voice. he was growling and slurring a little, maybe concussed from the kick i had delivered to his head. he described a man who looked like me and demanded of the cabin owner that he tell him if he had seen this man. he claimed this man had recently broken into his office and then fled the scene. my host, with equal brusqueness, told him “no” and slammed the door in his face. paine pounded on the door again. this time i heard some footsteps in the cabin, and then a rummaging sound before the door squeaked again. there was a rough exchange of words. paine said they 44 see heidegger (1978a, p. 159) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 25 had to have seen me. the two men insisted no. paine shouted they were liars. more shuffling, paine trying to shove his way into the cabin, my hosts resisting on the other side of the door, i guessed. worried, i opened the study door very slightly and risked a peek. as paine kept shoving, my hosts suddenly quit resisting and the door swung open all the way. they each took a quick step back as paine stumbled forwards, barely keeping his feet under him. he held a large revolver, but it was futile; my hosts had the drop on him and both were aiming rifles at a distance of six inches from his head. the cabin owner barked out orders. after a minute, paine cursed and set his piece on the cabin floor and backed away with his hands up. i heard him start up his atv and drive off. i returned to the main room. the companion walked into another room with paine’s revolver, a .44 magnum, and the rifle he himself had been using, stored them and sat down at the table. the cabin owner was already seated at the table, absently stroking the smooth stock of the rifle he still had out, like he was scratching his favorite dog behind the ear. i thanked my hosts and, thinking further introductions might be in order after the incident with paine, somewhat awkwardly asked their names. the cabin owner gruffly introduced himself as martin, his guest as hans. i was prepared to take what i was given and ask for no more, but i felt funny having only their first names at my disposal. it seemed too familiar. both of them spoke, drank coffee, and even sat in the custom of a grander era, one that i thought demanded formal address. even so, maybe the correct ritual for being a guest in the cabin involved first names only, who was i to say? hans spoke, smiling, “i must thank you max, for the opportunity you’ve just provided, to enact a kantian morality experiment in real life.45 i trust you think we chose correctly.” i wasn’t sure what he was talking about but smiled politely. i did, after all, appreciate their choice. martin did look like he understood, but shot a disappointed look at hans suggesting he was unimpressed with this attempt at levity. hans caught the glance and looked like a chastened child. hans continued with me more seriously. “i like the work you are doing on this case; i like how you are playing with this educational concept.” this pulled me up short a bit.46 it wasn’t what i thought i was doing. despite my gratitude at the rescue and the hospitality, i felt i had to correct him. “with respect,” i began, “i don’t think i’m playing with anything. my work is more important than that. i’m looking for slow learners. my client is very worried about them.” “and just where do you think they will appear?” martin demanded suddenly, staring intently at me in a manner that rubbed me the wrong way. “i’ve found students who would be categorized as slow learners,” i said, but then felt compelled to add, “but i’m still trying to find where the category belongs so that the students can be treated more justly.” “where do you think the category belongs? what is the appropriate enframing for slow learner?” asked martin with that same dismissive stare. 45 korsgard (1986, p. 325) 46 gadamer (1989, p. 270) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 26 i wasn’t sure if there was any difference between his two questions, so i just answered the first. “i’m not sure,” i admitted, thinking of veronika sternwood. “from what i’ve seen, these kids wouldn’t do well if they were just thrown into the educational system such as it is and ignored. for most of the kids i talked to, this kind of inattention was where their school failure started. but where does the category belong?” i repeated martin’s question; it was a good one despite his angry condescension. “that’s part of the problem too. from what i’ve seen, institutions seem to take too many liberties once this kind of a concept gets locked down too tightly.” “locked down, locked in, and locked up in storage,” martin scoffed cryptically. i didn’t think there was anything in that for me so i continued. “from what i can tell, if that happens, the concept starts to produce restrictions, stereotypes, long quasi-scientific lists of all the things the students aren’t supposed to be able to do, and the sense that they are lesser students. so for the slow learner concept to belong, maybe there has to be some fluidity built into the concept,” i concluded articulately. “play?” hans suggested. he’d been patiently, almost deferentially, listening to our exchange before he heard this word calling out for recognition again. despite my earlier rejection of the term, it sounded like he was offering it as a possibility more than a challenge. “maybe,” i replied, i still wasn’t sure about that word. hans waited deferentially for martin to respond, but martin looked like he was still making up his mind as to whether he should deign to offer me any sincere counsel beyond the potshots he was currently taking. whatever it was in him that compelled him to offer me shelter, it didn’t seem like it extended so far as taking a sincere interest in my larger mission. after a moment, hans asked me the question, “have you ridden a bicycle?” i said that i had. “concepts are like that.” he went on. “on the front wheel, the axle, it is important not to tighten the nuts too tightly, else the wheel cannot turn. it has to have some play! [but] not too much play, or the wheel with fall off.” “you know,” he said, “spielraum, leeway.”47 that interested me. it reminded me of the way some of teachers i’d met seemed to be able to use their technical knowledge of things like disability categorization and learning styles without being constrained by them. i had been thinking of play in the sense of folly, which i’d had little use for on this case, when he brought it up. i asked him to tell me more about how he regarded play. martin continued to register only vague interest. hans thought for a minute and then replied, “the play of light, the play of the waves, the play of gears or parts of machinery, the interplay of limbs, the play of forces, the play of gnats, even a play on words. all of these things [play in a] to-and-fro movement that is not tied to any goal that would bring it to an end.” as he spoke, hans swung his hand a few times, like a pendulum, in seeming demonstration of his claim. he 47 gadamer in miller (2003, para. 4) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 27 then paused for a minute before concluding, “the play is purposeful, not random, but at the same time it has no set end point or forgone conclusion.”48 now i thought he was taking the idea too far, at least as it applied to my case. “with respect,” i began again, “i don’t want to be engaged in that kind of play on this case. i want to solve this case, find a safe place for the category of slow learners and find some justice for these students. i want to tell the truth about how slow learners have been treated in the past and what they truly need right now. this case needs an end point; it can’t be an endless investigation that accomplishes no goals, it needs to be settled.” “how is your desire to close the case any different than the categorical impulse for closure that you’ve just claimed endangers these students in institutions?” martin suddenly demanded haughtily. i didn’t appreciate being lumped in with veronika sternwood and maddox paine and tried a reasoned response to break the association, “because the institutional claims that they are somehow defective as students is a distortion – and one that traps them both categorically and physically in restrictive programming.” i was not thinking so much of the k & e classes themselves but the, seemingly willful, systemic denial of opportunities for these students. “i need to find and tell the untainted truth about who these students are and what they need, i need to break down the stereotypes. i need to piece together the facts of the case and carefully present them to my client in a way that corresponds with the reality of the situation.” happy with my reply, i drained my coffee cup. my host and his guest exchanged glances. martin now regarded me with a little smile as though he was a gator studying an unwary tourist who’d wandered too deep into the everglades. it was unsettling. hans was smiling too, but sympathetically. as martin continued to stare at me, hans retrieved the percolator from the table and refilled my cup. “max,” he said patiently, “what if, as one of your disability studies scholars has said, the purity of a concept is its danger?49 does there have to be a singular, objective, disembodied truth to be found about these students?” i’d liked hans better than martin from the first time i’d seen the two, but this question bothered me. i’d already owned up to believing the category needed to be thought of flexibly and generously, but i now felt as though i was being treated as naive, or even dangerous, for still wanting to make a tangible claim about how to help these students. in my resentment i blurted, “look, students are in danger here. this isn’t some intellectual exercise, like how you two must sit around this table and wax philosophical about nothing, some sort of game in which anything goes …” i winced inwardly as i heard myself say this. it was rude and stupid. martin, unconsciously i hoped, shifted his rifle in his lap. i raised my arms in apology. hans objected to my statement on a point of order. “there aren’t any games in which anything goes. any game is a shaped activity by definition.”50 48 gadamer (1989, p. 104) 49 porter in rice (2006, p. 17) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 28 “more to the point,” said martin, seeming more engaged now, though no more friendly, “true thinking, or the thinking truth, is preserv[ing] something in its essence … maintain[ing] it in its element ...it is the quiet power of the possible.”51 i didn’t sense he’d suddenly come around to being interested in my case. it was more like, hearing the depths of my ignorance, he suddenly felt compelled to help hans straighten me out on their similar notions of truth before i went back out into the world with such a poor understanding of the concept. i nodded, a little afraid of him still, but pleased that he had joined the conversation. something about him wanted to make me hear him out despite his apparent disdain for me. i was still, however, confused as to the significance of what he had just said. it was obviously some sort of response to the ‘anything goes’ charge that i’d levied, but what did it mean and why did it matter? “what i mean to say,” i continued along my own familiar lines of thought about the case, “is that there are students’ lives at stake here. and the truth of their oppression, through class hierarchies, through restrictive definitions of what counts as intelligence, or even what counts as legitimate disabilities requiring resources and supports has to count as more real than all the negative stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophesies about their potential. for the sake of justice it has to be more real.” “obviously yes, some interpretations are unhealthy, toxic even,” hans acknowledged. “perhaps as caputo, a scholar i am enjoying recently, has noted, these are enforced interpretations, examples of the self-serving abuse of power.52 but i’m sorry to tell you that any truth you find about slow learners will also be an interpretation. as our host and my teacher,” he said, gesturing to martin, “has pointed out, we are always already interpreting,53 so there can be no disembodied, objective truth about slow learners. you cannot liberate these students with an appeal to ‘just the facts’ as that american detective serial used to claim.54 as caputo points out, the very word ‘fact’ comes from latin – facere – meaning ‘to make’. you’ve seen firsthand the trouble psychology, all the sciences really, get themselves into when they forget this, or at least when their practitioners do. it may look otherwise when a truth seems particularly compelling, but truth does not float above context, just as a dove does not float weightlessly in the sky.55 the dove must press on, shift with and employ the resistance of the wind, the air, in order to achieve flight. so too does truth depend on context.” martin nodded at his companion, this time in appreciation of this homely metaphor before turning his gaze back on me. “context grounds truth, it gives a weightiness, an importance, to the objects of discussion and to ourselves. the machinations of modernity in all their objective 50 weinsheimer and marshall (1989, p. xiv) 51 heidegger (1978c, p. 196) 52 caputo (2013, p. 214) 53 ibid. (p. 215) 54 see internet movie database (n.d). hans is speaking of the 1951-1958 television series dragnet, though the exact line “just the facts ma’am” was, in fact, never used on the program. 55 caputo (2013, p. 217) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 29 calculabilities have not brought truth closer to the essence of things, they have unhinged things from significance and reduced understanding to diffusive trivia.”56 i thought i was starting to get it but, coming from a profession that operated on the currency of evidence, this way of thinking about truth still bothered me. i was typically hired to find out the truth about a case, the location of lost property or people, or, if i was desperate enough for work, the identity of some mistress or gigolo in a home-wrecking tryst. my clients didn’t always appreciate the truth i brought back, but they usually recognized it when they saw it. maybe, i thought, that wasn’t because i’d found objective truth after all, but more like what martin meant about being engaged in preserving and maintaining an essence. and context was crucial i realized. once, i’d debated the motives behind a murder-suicide – the killer being a dangerously beautiful sort at the end of a chain of crimes – with a cop i was on more or less friendly terms with. the dame was bad news, that much we both agreed on, but whereas all the homicide detective could see was another evil act in the chain, i saw in her final act, a means of sparing her already put-upon husband and benefactor the further indignity of being implicated in her trial.57 you couldn’t even really say the fact of the crime lay outside our interpretations; it was in both of our interpretations, but seen from different vantage points. still though, i was left feeling that both the case and i needed more certainty than this way of thinking offered. “i’m still not sure i agree, but for the sake of argument, let’s say i am looking for a better, a much better, interpretation of who slow learners are and what they need,” i said. “but i can’t be just playing with interpretations here – i need to settle on one that brings justice to these students, that has the potential to change how school looks for them in a real and permanent way. i’m not sure my client would accept anything less than this. how will i know for sure?” “there is a problem also,” martin observed, instead of answering my question, “with your notions of justice ...karl marx once said, ‘the philosopher has hitherto interpreted the world; the point is to change it’. but in saying this he overlooked that the fact of a world change presupposes a change in the world’s conception and that a conception of the world can only be won by the fact that one interprets the world sufficiently. marx bases it on a completely certain world interpretation to demand his change. therefore he knows this sentence is not a sound sentence.”58 he looked very satisfied with himself after saying this, so satisfied that he apparently deemed his rifle a more imprecise weapon than his wit, and finally re-engaged the safety on it and set it aside, in close reach, on the kitchen counter. he returned to the table and now rested his arms on it, gripping his coffee mug in two hands. at first i wasn’t sure why he looked so confident. his observation sounded like logic-chopping, a distracting riddle in a case where, as i had pointed out, real lives were at stake. out of professional thoroughness, though, i parsed the statement in my head a little more before dismissing it. then i began to feel a sort of vertigo. i had been coming around to understanding that most of what we knew about slow learners was a matter of interpretation. i now saw that whatever justice looked like for them was too. whether or not we actually made things better for them in the end was highly interpretive, and, in an evershifting educational landscape, any changes would necessarily mean re-interpreting the whole scene all over again. martin and hans had spoken of essences and the grounding of context, but i 56 wrathall (2011, p. 202) 57 see chandler (1940, p. 92). max’s recollection is borrowed from chandler’s phillip marlowe. 58 heidegger in eidos84 (2011) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 30 felt like i had completely lost my bearings and was spinning out of control, passing by martin’s smug mug on each queasy rotation. hans, noting my discomfort, asked me to take a deep breath and drink some more of my coffee. i did, and felt less dizzy but no more certain. martin, seeming to read my mind as to the source of my distress remarked, “this circle of understanding is not to be reduced to the level of a vicious circle ...in the circle is hidden a positive possibility of the most primordial kind of knowing.”59 it was nice to hear martin offer up something more affirming, though his concern seemed more directed at clarifying his position than at reassuring me of anything. moreover, i was still confused. what was “primordial knowing?” “i don’t know about all that,” i admitted. “but,” i added, looking to find a claim to stabilize things, “since you mention marx, i do think one strong interpretation is that economic class plays a large part in constructing slow learners, in some of the negative assumptions people make. i’m pretty much convinced of this, that this is something that needs looking at.” “yes, you likely do need to look into that.” martin granted. “but can you say the essence of ‘slow learner’, the label, is a position in a class struggle?” he asked, still somewhat indignant. “maybe,” i replied. “but what and where is this ‘is’ for slow learners?” he asked. “what?” i blurted. but he had spoken very clearly, there was no way i’d misheard his ridiculous question. “slow learner is a lot of things,” i replied somewhat hotly. “i’ve done a thorough investigation.” “and which appearances spoke the most strongly to you?” martin asked. “the ones that best represent the present reality of their situation,” i replied. “even if something always remains undecided, surely this is how we have to judge the strength of the interpretation.” “how so?” martin asked. “the best interpretation is the one that most closely matches the situation,” i repeated. “which you can only abstract, so you will compare your representation to your abstraction to see if you’ve found the truth.60 too early and too late.” he had worn a stern expression as he questioned me and i felt like a schoolboy being called out by a teacher intending to expose his ignorance. “maybe so,” i replied, “but it works pretty well. we flew to the moon on this sort of correspondence.” i thought i’d made a good, if argumentative, point but he didn’t even acknowledge it. 59 heidegger (1962, p. 195) 60 see ibid. (p. 258). heidegger expressed what i have paraphrased here in argumentative dialogue as “with regard to what do intellectus and res agree?” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 31 “if you want to bring a report back to your client that he might actually find helpful – consider this. imagine a lichtung – a clearing in these trees,” he said gesturing to the forest outside the cabin window. as it happened, just as martin was speaking i looked out the window and i did fix on such a clearing in the forest. a snow white rabbit flitted across it. as paine’s recent quarry, and feeling somewhat pursued by martin too, i felt some solidarity with the little animal. martin continued. “in this clearing, a spot where licht – light – shines, something previously concealed appears as unconcealed in the light. but even as it appears, other possibilities are concealed. before you can even begin to discuss whether your statement about that thing matches up to it, that thing has already appeared, been presenced and unconcealed to you as itself.”61 i considered this for a minute, finding it perplexing. “how is that supposed to help my investigation? how is that supposed to help my client? how is it going to bring justice to slow learners?” i was losing my cool again; i reminded myself to calm down. “you described how strange you find the history of all this – the exhibits in the research institute relating to mass confinement, for example. perhaps in some of these artifacts lie unconcealments or disclosures that are no longer available as truthful or even comprehensible.” “that’s because they were evil,” i shot back, though i quickly realized it was a weak point. martin ignored this and advised me, “consider, then, what is un-concealed and concealed in current understandings of slow learners.” “to what end?” i asked. “so that you might move from these current apprehensions to the being of these students,” he replied. “i have more important things to worry about than the being of these students,” i said. “if i can identify the prejudices they’ve had to deal with and the mistreatment they’ve faced, and how they might be treated more fairly, their being will take care of itself.” he stared at me as though i’d uttered the most naive statement he’d ever heard. in a matter-offact voice he said, “the growing and unacknowledged anxiety in the face of thinking no longer allows insight into the oblivion of being which determines the age.”62 he then fell silent. he drank his coffee and stared out the window at the forest. i did the same. i wasn’t sure how much i understood him, or how relevant his ideas were to the case, but something about them was starting to itch at me. “my friend, i think, is worried that in your methods you are forgetting that we are always a part of what we seek to understand,” hans spoke up. he’d listened patiently to our testy exchange and was still smiling. 61 ibid. (p. 51) 62 heidegger in harrison (2013) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 32 “well obviously, i take my work personally, but the problems are in the institutions in this case, not in me. i’m just the part of the case that intends to solve it,” i replied. “do you feel that you’ve become an expert on slow learners and the hardships they face?” he asked the question calmly, without challenge it seemed. “i’ve only been on the case for four days, but i think i have learned a thing or two,” i replied with what i hoped was appropriate modesty. “but you feel that your investigation has led you to understand the ills in institutional treatment of slow learners and the potentials cures for these ills?” “to some degree, yes,” i had to admit that i was operating on this assumption. “i commend your interest in justice for these students, but it sounds as though from your investigative methods, you are assuming the role of the lone healer, the one who will eventually be ready to deliver a cure to all of the hapless institutional victims. that may not be very hermeneutic, or practical.” i wondered what hermeneutic and practical had to do with each other? as to hans’ comment, i preferred to think of myself as the lone gunslinger, not the lone medicine slinger, but i could see where he was going. i wasn’t sure i agreed with his assessment of where i’d positioned myself in the investigation. i thought i’d been more collaborative than usual this time around. “i’ve interviewed a lot of people affected by the slow learner concept, and i’ve read a lot too. i’ve been very thorough,” i insisted. “but were you listening for symptoms of an institutional disorder you intended to piece together and repair, or were you truly trying to understand?” he asked. it took me a minute to consider how different these two things really were. i decided they were similar to a degree but the first had a cold, clinical flavor i didn’t like. i felt i’d mostly done the latter, but at times maybe i hadn’t listened carefully, or openly enough. “i’m just trying to bring some justice for slow learners,” i repeated, a little evasively. “but what if you recommend something for your client, and through his efforts it becomes a sanctioned practice. and then, your solution turns out to be flawed in concept or application and causes many problems of its own. using the analogy of illness and medicine, it too will need a cure. have you read ivan illich’s limits to medicine in your investigation? he calls this cycle of cure and cures for cures iatrogenesis.”63 a cliché about good intentions sprung to my mind. i realized that the process he described did indeed make sense to me. it reminded me of much of what i’d read about in prior attempts to reform programming for slow learners. the range of problems that resulted in the switch from iop to k & e also came to mind. a question called out to me. “i can see this is a problem, but it almost seems the inevitable way of things. how can i avoid it?” 63 illich (1977, p. 23) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 33 “there is a rilke poem about an acrobat,” hans said, and then he quoted a line. “the pure toolittle incomprehensively transforms itself, springs over into the empty too-much.”64 he saw in my eyes that it hadn’t done much for me, and he went on to explain. “the more strongly the sphere of application becomes rationalized, the more does proper exercise of judgment along with practical experience in the proper sense fail to take place.”65 i asked him to elaborate. “continuing to use medical practice as an analogy, i would note that the role of the practitioner as technological specialist of the body has undermined the previous sense of medicine as an interpretive art – a healing conversation between the practitioner and patient. the hubristic notion of being the agent responsible for healing has overshadowed the wiser, primordial sense that the doctor assists in the healing process,” he said. “so if there are problems with how slow learners have been treated institutionally, this needs to be addressed as a healing conversation, not a diagnostic and prescriptive treatment?” i suggested. “or indictment and manifesto,” martin added, recalling, i think, his earlier mention of marx. a thought struck me. “might this healing conversation you are talking about as a way of dealing with the problems with how slow learners are treated also relate to the approaches to teaching these students? some of the teachers i spoke with recommended things like inquiry, discovery, and experimentation.” “yes!” hans exclaimed, beaming, and even martin looked somewhat interested. hans continued, “socrates said he modeled his teaching after his mother, who was a midwife.66 he did not pass knowledge on to his students; he helped his students give birth to thought.” “what teaching calls for is this – to let learn.”67 martin added. i found myself liking the sound of this idea, but if i was going to bring it back to williamson, i wanted to examine it a bit, kick the tires and look under the hood. i asked, “if all the teachers do is ‘let learn’, what does this say about the need for their teacher to be skilled and knowledgeable?” i asked. “it is very difficult to teach such that the impression is we properly learn nothing from the teacher.”68 martin asserted. “it requires, as aristotle said, not only technical knowledge – techne – but also phronesis or practical wisdom,”69 hans added. 64 gadamer (1996, p. 17) 65 ibid. (p. 24) 66 plato (n.d, p. 10) 67 heidegger (1968, p. 15) 68 ibid. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 34 i asked them to explain the difference between these two ideas a little more. hans spoke up. “techne is without a moral or contextual dimension – it is just skill. phronesis is imbedded in concrete situations. it is contextual. it has moral and political dimensions. it does not follow a predetermined, uniform course, it is interpretive in its approach to action. it requires, always, the choice of the proper application [of knowledge and ability] for the good.70 practices such as teaching and medicine are best understood as hermeneutic arts – arts of bringing forth – under this understanding; bringing forth learning, bringing forth healing. the way knowledge is considered in the modern world distorts the relationship between theory and practice.” “how so?” i asked. martin’s hands clenched more tightly around his coffee cup. i interpreted that this was not in vigorous objection to his companion’s ideas, but in his desire to add his particular interpretation. “the more strongly the sphere of application becomes rationalized, the more does proper exercise of judgment along with practical experience in the proper sense fail to take place. he,” martin noted, gesturing to his companion, “will tell you that aristotle held there was a special place among skilled artisans for the doctor as he did not directly construct an object, but brought forth healing. to me, every artisan working is engaged in poesis or bringing forth. each handicraft uniquely bears its own history, the marks of its own construction: the materials it was crafted from, the artisan’s labor, and the artisan’s choices. each handicraft is, even if only subtly, different from the others. it is revealed, as itself in itself as such an object. modern machine technology has a very different form of revealing. it strives for uniformity so there can be no revealing of the particularities of anything. the revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging-forth.”71 i had been following along fine until he lost me with that last sentence, so i asked him to explain “challenging forth.” “things have lost their density, their existential importance.72 instead of making a claim on us, they’ve become formless formations of technological production.73 everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering. whatever is ordered about in this way has its own standing. we call it the standing-reserve,” he replied gloomily.74 the darkness with which he uttered that last thing provoked a silence during which i considered what i had been hearing. i could follow what hans was saying about the importance of practical wisdom in teaching. i recognized how, beyond my investigative skills, practical wisdom guided my own practice as a detective. it was usually this sense of where a case was going, needed to go, 69 gadamer (1992c, p. 170) 70 ibid. (p. 184) 71 heidegger (1978b, p. 321) 72 wrathall (2011, p. 201) 73 heidegger (2001, p. 110) 74 heidegger (1978b, p. 322) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 35 that was the glue that bound the disparate pieces together. what i could not immediately recognize was the application of martin’s rant about handicrafts versus manufactured goods to the current mystery i was investigating. on a literal level, it sounded two parts stodgy and one part wistful, what were we supposed to do, abandon industrial manufacturing in order to be more authentically? i liked the buick and, when it was running well, felt nothing but appreciation for the good men and women on the assembly line in detroit who put it together. i liked that there was another one just like it, minus the personal touches i’d installed (coffee stains, fuzzy dice and a few bullet holes) out there in case i broke the first one. i took a drink of coffee and thought for a minute longer. where else might this standing-reserve critique have application? a few things came to me. was the wild proliferation of educational labels i had learned about such a form of production, a ready-made set of shunts and widgets to attach to children who did not appear as orderly in order to make their disorders uniform too? did schooling itself function as such a form of production – producing its own standing reserve of workers, consumers, modern subjects, and human resources?75 if so, was this unhealthy for slow learners? and, then the question i had been asking all along came back to me – did schools produce slow learners? was ‘slow learner’ a discarded part of the production, a label put beyond use, or was it still standing on reserve? i’d have to think more about that one later. i had another question, a pressing one. “how can i find justice for slow learners within all of this?” i asked. “cultivate solidarities,” hans interjected. “we focus too strongly on that which divides us, and shift too much responsibility onto so-called experts to solve our collective problems. embrace activism against those things that endanger us collectively, support reform to strengthen measures to protect the vulnerable – these things are genuine solidarities.”76 finding something familiar in this, i then realized this was the guy williamson had told me about who’d spoken of free spaces. i recalled how colleen birdseye told me about the soon-to-be alumni who’d protested the closure of the vocational schools despite not being directly affected by the plans. i thought of the protest march against cuts to disability funding when smart ass cripple had been arrested. i also, however, thought of those on the other side. the veronika sternwoods and maddox paines and their fanaticism and hostility, and, again of my revulsion at what i’d seen on my tour of the sorting museum. i had a question. was hans’ way tough enough to deal with them? “what about those with whom solidarity seems impossible? it’s pretty hard to find common ground with someone who is standing on your throat, or someone whose ideas seem reprehensible to you.” hans responded. “perhaps in that case not solidarities, then, but it is always in your best interest to try to understand, even in such a situation. you may feel strongly opposed to an idea, perhaps quite rightfully. this feeling, this prejudice,” i was surprised at his use of this word, “is not just ethically warranted; it is also useful. it informs your understanding; it makes your understanding possible. this is your interpretive horizon, the wide expanse of your interpretive vision as well as its limits. in an interpretive event, whether reading, conversing, considering an idea, trying to come to terms with a historical event, you nevertheless try to put your prejudices, your interpretations at risk or in play, you allow for the possibility that there is something to the sentence, the 75 wrathall (2011, p. 198) 76 see gadamer (1992a, pp. 191-193) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 36 idea, the event, that you are interpreting. in doing so, you allow for a fusion of horizons between yourself and that which you are interpreting. you will not fully overcome your prejudices but you will have a more expansive understanding, one you can continue to use as you interpret other things.”77 i considered this. it made sense, but i still had a problem with it. “i can see why i might want to engage in such a process with some person or idea or practice i might find some common ground with, but how can any fusion be possible when i find whatever i am interpreting beyond contempt? or what if i am talking to someone who makes no attempt to understand me?” it was true that i operated, often, by trying to wrap my head around the dark matters i was looking into, but “fusion” sounded too intimate. “but you benefit as in investigator from the effort,” hans replied. “an awareness of your own reactions the consciousness that informs your prejudice leads to greater, though not ever complete, self-understanding. historically effected consciousness is an element in the act of understanding itself and …is already effectual in finding the right questions to ask.78 the traditional ways of thinking that you feel have led to the oppression of these students need to be questioned, but it is an error in thinking to believe you can do so by standing outside of tradition. you draw from the well of your own traditions in forming your questions; they are, in this sense, part of your creative energy. you do value asking the right questions?” he asked this almost impishly. his question seemed rhetorical so i didn’t respond, but i liked the idea of tradition being used to question tradition. instead of beating on a wall empty handed, why not rip a brick from the wall to use for the smashing? there were probably some problems with this analogy but that’s what it made me think of. “and the purpose of interpretation,” he continued, “is not necessarily to find agreement. finding intelligibility can be good enough.79 how are you to find greater justice for these students you are worried about if the ways of thinking you think are destructive for them remain unintelligible to you? how can you question these ways of thinking from this position?” again, he was challenging me, but i found little in his manner threatening. i considered this. i still wasn’t sure if i thought this was true, though it did make me think of the many cases i’d solved, the victims i’d avenged, the future victims i’d protected, not by dismissing offenders as incomprehensible, but by trying to understand them. and if i was going to close this case, i did need to ask the right questions. martin, who was now listening with interest, took the opportunity to bring up something of his own. “if you want to have any hope of finding justice for these students, look first at the language that you’ve used to describe them. every statement you made about these students when you de 77 see gadamer (1989, p. 305) 78 ibid. (p. 301) 79 ibid. (p. 302) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 37 scribed this case to us, even the statements about your supposedly humanist intentions towards them, has cast them as ‘objects’. this is an issue with language.80 philosophy has been in this rut since plato, and what we need right now is less philosophy, but more attentiveness in thinking. 81 undertake a destruktion,” he said, punching the hard “c” in the word, “of all of this categorization, of the whole ontological tradition,82 find a way, like the pre-socratics, to present these students outside this objectification, as they are made manifest, being-in-their selves.” i would have liked the idea better if i understood how i was supposed to achieve this destruction and how i was supposed to find a way to present students as in-themselves. i at least understood hans well enough to consider his views. martin’s thinking sometimes seemed almost mystical to me. i tried to say it back in my own words. “if the appearance of slow learners as lacking or defective is an effect of a variety of inequities in educational institutions, any attempt to bring justice for them needs to acknowledge this and try to find a more genuine way for them to appear as students in schools.” i had been concentrating hard on formulating that sentence and thought it had a nice ring to it. martin looked grimly at me and told me that the ontological and epistemological problem ran much deeper than this and i was bound to fail if i could not see and address this, and then he fell silent. hans spoke up. “i do not fully share my friend and teacher’s pessimism. writing off modern thought so completely strikes me as somewhat dangerous.” martin’s face twitched a little at being challenged, however gently, by hans but he remained silent on this charge. hans continued, “i do not think there is some oppressive and monolithic ‘language of metaphysics’ because language is simply that which we speak with others and to others.83 metaphysics occurs only when language becomes hardened into concepts – and this rigidity can be restored, not through the abandonment or rebirth of philosophy, but through continual dialogue and (re)interpretation.” but then hans hastened to add, “i do, however, appreciate the threat to intellectual freedom posed by trends toward bureaucratization, specialization, accountability and, as i said, technologization of knowledge, but it is still up to us to discover free spaces.”84 and there it was again. the free spaces idea. it spoke to me. “you speak of restoring justice for these slow learners as solving the case,” martin said, resuming his critique of me after recovering from the mild one directed at him by hans. “has it occurred to you that too much ‘solving’ has already been undertaken on their behalf? we encounter beings as actualities in a calculative businesslike way, but also scientifically and by way of philosophy, with explanations and proofs.85 even the assurance that something is inexplicable belongs to these explanations and proofs. you should be considering ways not to solve slow 80 heidegger (1978c, p. 243) 81 ibid. (p. 242) 82 heidegger (1962, p. 44) 83 gadamer (1989, p. 98) 84 gadamer (1992b, p. 52) 85 heidegger (1978c, p. 199) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 38 learners, but to restore the mystery of their persons, to be content to exist in the nameless [until] you and they can be claimed again by being.”86 “with no official label slow learners have been existing in the nameless. that’s been part of the problem,” i countered. martin raised an eyebrow. still smiling, hans elaborated on this point for me. “not the namelessness of a bureaucratic style of inattentiveness to their needs, the namelessness of, as my teacher has called it, ‘care.’ being attentive to what is unsaid; the unsayable. as davey has written, “our understandings have everpresent limits.”87 there is a strong ethical implication to these limits as they remind us to maintain a “principled otherness”88 in how we interpret others, indeed to a large degree we remain mysteries to ourselves as well. as for language, “the occasionality of human speech is not a casual imperfection of its expressive power; it is, rather, the logical expression of the living virtuality of speech that brings a totality of meaning into play, without being able to express it totally.”89 “so let me get this straight,” i said. “in order to find justice for slow learners you are saying i need to find a way to restore their mystery of being, and to try to say what is both sayable and unsayable about them. how am i supposed to do that?” i wasn’t being ironic. for once, i really meant it. they had answered all my questions well and pointed to some things i needed to pay attention to. but what they were asking seemed a tall order. at more or less the same time hans and martin said “poetry”. then martin said “art” and then “handicraft” and then, most decisively, “thinking”. we all sat in contemplation. i drained my second cup of coffee. it had grown cold while we were talking. i saw from my watch it was 4:30 but i had no idea what time it was when i’d arrived at the cabin. these two had saved my life, giving me shelter and nourishment and had stymied paine’s pursuit of me. what’s more, though i still found much of what they’d explained to me confusing, some of the disparate elements of the case had started to gel a little in my mind. at least they’d solved the mystery of why williamson thought i needed to consider the principles of hermeneutic phenomenology in this investigation. not that i would have admitted an analogy this childish to them, but i also realized that, despite what my client said, like dorothy, the tin man, the lion and the scarecrow from the wizard of oz, i had possessed most of the traits i had needed for the hermeneutic journey all along. maybe i’d not proceeded as humbly, patiently, or wisely as i should have, and martin and hans had taken me to task on this, but i’d been engaged in a rigorous, multifaceted attempt to interpret slow learners and the educational scene they appeared in. i’d observed, discussed, and listened attentively, and brought an expanded horizon to each new encounter. i’d even conversed at length with villains, though admittedly mostly for the purpose of saving my own skin. there was still a lot i needed to understand about the case but, having learned this much with my accidental brand of hermeneutics, i hoped that with the heightened sensitivities i’d gained from this conversation i might follow up my remaining leads in greater depth and 86 ibid. 87 davey (2006, p. 11) 88 ibid. 89 gadamer (1989, p. 454) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 39 eventually be in a position to offer my client the understandings he needed to move through his distress about the slow learners. i also realized it was risky to have spent so long in a place so close to my most recent captor. maybe, despite his threats, paine had believed martin and hans and was looking elsewhere for me. there were many directions i could have gone in and it probably wasn’t the first time someone had reacted this way to his personality even without harboring an escaped prisoner. on the other hand, maybe he was simply re-arming and calling for back up. i couldn’t afford to stay and find out which one of these possibilities was correct. shaking hands with both, i thanked them for the hospitality, the coffee, and the conversation and said i had to be going. martin, who had seemed to have had less use for me as a partner in dialogue than hans, nevertheless gruffly asked me to sign a guestbook which he kept on the porch. it seemed like a big deal to him, so i obliged. stepping out of the cabin and surveying the wilderness around, it we saw no sign of paine. pointing along the other side of the cabin, martin showed me a thin, partially concealed path back to civilization, one that would emerge well clear of the building i’d recently escaped. a thought seemed to strike him and he asked me to wait while he went back into the cabin. he returned with paine’s revolver and said i should take it along with me. my leg throbbed during my walk back, but i noticed my stamina for traveling was much improved now that i was thawed, rested, caffeinated, and following a purposeful path. my aimless flight from paine had somehow brought me to a safe place but it had been exhausting and terrifying. after a half an hour of travel, holding a reasonable pace, i reached the end of the forest. it emerged in the now familiar industrial district. i saw the building i’d been held in was far off in the distance, and i knew that hans had indeed directed me well. i had seen no one on my walk through the forest, but it seemed unlikely the same would be true back in town. realizing the large weapon i was carrying would bulge too obviously under my coat, i pocketed the shells, dissembled it as best i could without tools, smashed the grip with a rock and distributed the various parts in several dumpsters along the block. my pleasure in wrecking something of paine’s was only dampened by the thought that i was treating one of candace’s relations so unkindly. when i was done disposing of paine’s weapon, i kept on walking west. the sun was beginning to set. i saw a collection of workers, who i assumed to be coming off of day shifts at various factories, huddled around a bus stop – there was probably a shuttle that came around at this time for them. i waited with the crowd, and got on the bus with them when it came along. i had to pay the driver a full five dollars because i didn’t have exact change for the $2.75 tab, but it was worth it not to have to walk any further. i sat down gratefully but there were more riders than seats on the bus, and i ended up giving my seat up to a woman who wore a long open coat, under which her blue coveralls bulged out to reveal a very pregnant belly. i stood and held onto the railing, piecing a puzzle together in my mind as the city lights began to shine on the passing factories. i was getting close to something major. i wasn’t sure to what, but i could feel it. after a while, i walked up to the bus driver and got directions back to the part of the city where i hoped my car still was. a half hour ride on this bus, a transfer, a shorter ride on the next one, and williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 40 a short walk later, i was safely in front of the internet café from which i’d been apprehended. it was almost 6:00 p.m., obviously too late to try to track down the curriculum managers summit had recommended to me. i felt renewed and full of purpose after talking to the wise men in the cabin, but being captured had still burned an afternoon of research and left me with no immediately apparent point to enter the circle again. i needed to find one. xxviii i checked my city map and saw i was near another two large high schools. that was good. it was too late to follow my original investigative plan but questioning some additional high school educators in light of what i’d learned recently might be a good way to get the investigation rolling again. despite hans’ and martin’s warnings about the limits of my knowledge, i felt some sort of realization was out there, just a little beyond my horizon, and that i was getting closer with each lead i pursued. it was obviously too late to try to bluff my way into another school, but i figured if i drove around for a bit i might be able to find a pub where the staffs from both of the nearby high schools would be likely to hang out. it was the tail end of happy hour. i drove to and then a little past one of the schools and started looking for the nearest bar. i entered a shopping complex, and saw a building painted entirely in red above which the neon sign ‘ultimate brew’ glowed. another lit up sign below promised ‘fine food’ and ‘beers of the world’. though it was darkened in the bar, i could see inside well enough to tell it was busy. i thought i’d give it a try. i made a partially successful attempt to knock some of the frozen mud off my shoes and pants, made a wish that the low light would conceal the rest of it, and made my way in. the pub fell a little short of its name on the inside. faux vintage beer ad posters scattered unoriginally over the walls, a chipped laminate floor, and peeling wood-effect wallpaper completed the depressing scene. a pool table and gambling machine occupied one section, a large seating area another. something annoyingly upbeat played on the speakers, and several television screens with closecaptioning on displayed various hockey games. i went up the bar and, confronted with thirty different possible taps to choose and none of them my preferred brand, i asked for a lager that was on for cheap. i was rewarded for my thriftiness with a synthetic-tasting peach flavored aberration that i nevertheless carried with me as i looked for somebody to talk to about slow learners. wandering around looking for a seat, i listened in on various conversations but all i overheard was idle chatter; sports, weather, entertainment, like i was listening to a morning news show being acted out by the pub’s patrons. then i overheard something different. someone was talking curriculum. i looked more carefully to see where the voices were coming from. there was a tall, lanky dude in a navy blue suit. he was wearing a novelty tie with hearts on it. his curly hair was receding slightly; it just meant a larger forehead for now but all he’d have left of it would be a monkish island in the center in a few years. across sat a shorter lanky dude, meaning he had the build of a tall, thin man too but was not tall, as though the first man had been shrunk to four-fifths size. he wore black corduroy pants and a beige sweater with a collared shirt under. he’d probably gone to work looking fresh enough, but now his shirttail hung out below his williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 41 sweater and his collar stuck out on one side and stayed in on the other. i asked if i could sit with them and was rewarded with a nod and a gesture to an empty barstool from the taller man. gord, as he introduced himself, continued with a point he was making. “it’s pervasive,” he said, directing his comments more to the other man. “as a principal, i adopted the same timetable i’d followed as a student thirty years before. the twenty-five hour per credit requirement wasn’t officially on the books until 1993, but even before then schools were stuck in this logic.” he spoke with an earnestness that belied his novelty tie. there was a pause after this and then the shorter man, chuck, under the assumption that i too was an educator, asked me what i taught. i said i was a k & e teacher. he said he worked in k & e too. i wondered if this was just a lucky coincidence, or if with all the problems with the series of classes and how they were handled, k & e teachers flocked in thirsty multitudes to these sorts of places. he asked me why i got into teaching k & e and i tried to imagine what williamson might say. i said when k & e was at its best it was a good opportunity to try to do some authentic teaching and learning with a group of kids who’d been overlooked. i asked him how he got into k & e. the conversation he’d been having, the drinks, and his weariness must have loosened him up a little because, despite our being strangers, he offered a rather personal story. “i struggled in school myself,” he said and took a swallow of something dark and frothy. from his appreciative look i could tell he’d ordered more wisely than me. he continued. “eventually my parents sent me to a private school, where i did a little better but not much. i scraped through high school, and after a while of sort of drifting around, i went to college as a mature student, at least that’s what they called me. i partied way too much at first; it took me three years to get my first year. i left the city after a while and went to a college in a smaller town. i still wasn’t doing well even though i was living cleaner. eventually i saw a doctor and got an adhd diagnosis. i went on ritalin as an adult. my marks steadily improved once i could concentrate. i finished a teaching degree, subbed for three months, and taught grade six. after a while i got to choose what areas i wanted to focus on, and i started working more with kids with disabilities. i’ve been in it seventeen years now. i’m in my fourth year of being a department head of k & e, and they offered me the chance to be assistant principal this year too.” chuck was pretty earnest too; i could see how these two had gravitated toward each other. i was struck by how his story paralleled williamson’s and colleen birdseye’s stories of their own struggles in school. that made three teachers i talked to who had struggled in school and had made k & e the focus of their teaching. i didn’t ask about that, though. i remarked that if his school actually had a leadership position involving k & e that it must have a pretty comprehensive approach to it. “we had ninety students enrolled in english 20-4 this year,” chuck said. “but a lot of those students will move on to get the high school diploma. of the students who’ve stayed with k & e, we’ve had a one hundred percent completion rate of the certificate of achievement.” “why do you think it’s working so well?” i asked. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 42 “administrative support. my principal actually values the work we do in k & e, and we do a lot of self-directed learning, which the students like, and we have teachers who actually want to teach k & e and are good with the students.” he took another sip of his stout and i dutifully did the same with my peach beer. “that sounds good,” gord remarked, “but in some of the better schools i’ve worked in we didn’t just deal with k & e as a discrete program.” he thought for a minute and then went on, his momentum gaining with each sentence. “of course, these are the sorts of schools that individualize for any kid who needs it and provide opportunities to adjust pacing. they don’t talk about ‘modified programming,’ they just meet the needs of the students. they don’t approach curriculum in traditional ways, along grade lines, stream lines, and subject lines. credentialing can happen after the fact. they’re just responsive to the realities of the student in front of them. not just k & e, but all labels seem to disappear from the lexicon with flexible teaching. every kid’s label is disappearing, they’ve become individual.” he’d become a little excited during this explanation, and took a deep breath and a deep swallow of his brownish ale. this seemed like a good chance to resort to one of my standby questions. “something that’s been bothering me,” i said, making eye contact with both of them in turn, “is whether slow learners, you know the sorts of kids we are supposed to recommend to k & e, are born learning as they do or are produced by schools.” i was coming to realize this was an impossible question to answer, but it was a great question to ask. every time i had, i’d learned a lot about the vantage point of the person i was questioning. without a second’s hesitation the taller man said, “produced. just like any other labeled kids they are produced by our system. as a principal, i ask students ‘what kind of kid are you’ and they say ‘i’m an honors student’, or ‘i’m a seventy-three percent student’ or, in this case, ‘i’m a k & e student.’” the shorter man was more circumspect. the question seemed to stick in his craw a bit. he looked disturbed. “i pray to god slow learners aren’t manufactured. maybe it’s half nature/half nurture. i know my medication helps me. i can feel the difference, that’s real, that’s not produced.” he considered this for a moment. “then again, from early on in school, you often have the robins and the blackbirds. in elementary sometimes the teachers prefer working with the good readers, so the shittiest readers are furthest from the teacher’s desks. it’s all about attitude, you know, if you get told something for long enough. when i was in school i never told off a teacher who didn’t deserve it.” with that he produced a package of cigarettes and said he was going outside to have one. “it’s more than that,” gord asserted, as his companion was leaving. “the traditional way of high school teaching is damaging to students. the carnegie unit standardizes every aspect of teaching and learning. this standardization can be insane considering how we learn as humans.” i asked him to explain what a carnegie unit was, and he told me it was a system of organizing the amount of time high school students were to spend studying each individual subject during a school year.90 i made a mental note to find out more about that with some investigation of my 90 carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching (n.d.) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 43 own. “this is the logic of the assembly line approach,” he explained, “to make sure teachers can efficiently do the work they are supposed to do, unfortunately with zero focus on learning. the carnegie unit made sense for its time. as massive increases in student enrolment in schools occurred in the nineteenth century in public education, there was a need to standardize the system for mass education. harvard needed to know what students wanting to attend there had learned in high school. the industrial model was easy to administer. but it’s only if you accept the challenge to break out of the traditional model that every individual can have a meaningful education.” maybe i was missing something but i didn’t really see how allocating time by subject area was the main problem that slow learners faced so i tried to steer the conversation towards something that had emerged as an issue instead. “do you see educational disability labeling as a part of that traditional model?” i asked. “absolutely. a young man with an intellectual disability, if he was of age, could walk into this bar and be served, but as soon as he walked into a school he would be placed elsewhere than with the other students. it’s an artificial environment, and that’s a complete disservice to anyone in the system. why can’t we create a chemistry lab that any high school student at any instructional level can get something out of?” “i’m still not sure blended classes can be as inclusive as you claim,” chuck offered, having returned, and caught the tail end of gord’s statement, “but even within our discrete k & e classes we see a huge range of student ability as well as a very diverse set of interests and learning styles among the students. that’s why we do self-directed learning. the students can all do meaningful projects regardless of these differences.” a waitress came by. they both ordered another pint of what they were drinking. i said i was still working on mine; it wasn’t pleasant work. “if you have enough imagination, inclusion is always possible,” gord insisted. “a fellow principal i knew told me that at his school there was a student who fell into a permanent coma. he remained part of his school’s band program. he attended band class and the school even made arrangements for him to go to performances. he was able to participate as best as he was able to in band. so too should all students be given these sorts of inclusive participation opportunities.” i wasn’t sure the words ‘attend’ or ‘participate’ truly fit the situation he was describing here, but then i wondered, who was i to say so? gord continued, “at the school i used to be principal of, we had an overarching theme based on the habits of mind principles of art costa, and we gave out a habits of mind award.91 the first award went to a student who had a moderate intellectual disability and was born with no eyes, but who had excelled at high school art. as a part of the habits of mind programming, students were required to present an overarching project in grade twelve. her project was a series of finger-paintings she had completed. she’d met outcomes from the art 10, 20 and 30 programs of study with the project.” 91 costa and kallick (2008) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 44 my interest rose with each of these stories, but they seemed more to me like inclusion parables, meant more to prove a point than describe any common practice. “aren’t these examples a little far out – you know, exceptional?” i asked, “would we really be likely to see these sorts of things in most schools, now or anytime in the near future?” “fear of the unknown is a big problem,” chuck agreed. “how many teachers would have the courage to try things like this?” “teachers don’t bear all the blame for not always seeing the opportunities for inclusive practice. i feel like they want to tar and feather me sometimes when i tell them this, but they are caught in the logic of the system,” gord reflected, then added, “it’s hard to separate inflexible attitudes from the system. the logic of the assembly line drives decision making. my son, according to his teacher, who states it regretfully but as a given, ‘knows his stuff but can’t do multiple choice tests.’ there is no recognition of alternate possibilities for assessment. that’s what the assembly line dictates. my daughter is in advanced placement courses. the whole gifted education stream also fosters a sense of laziness in educators. we don’t need to get to know these kids as learners, thinking they can practically teach themselves. it leads to a lazy approach to education. it allows teachers to fall into traps that are artificial – it does not reflect what human learning is all about.” “that’s all true, but individual teachers can break out of this,” chuck insisted. “everybody can remember a teacher who helped them and a teacher who didn’t. the k & e kids need teachers who will keep them asking questions, not shut them down.” i found myself thinking about the men i had met at the cabin, hans’ talk of bureaucratized learning systems and martin’s statements of technological modes of being. both these concerns echoed eerily, particularly in gord’s complaints about the industrial model of schooling. i wondered about ways of transgressing these boundaries. i remembered the advice ‘cultivate free spaces.’ both, in their own ways, had spoken to the possibilities and the obstacles inherent in trying to do this. but they’d both only spoken of their local efforts. i wanted to know if there was something larger, on a provincial level that held the promise of a free, or at least freer, space for slow learners. when i met williamson near the start of the case, i thought i’d heard him speak of something like this. i asked if they’d heard of anything on the horizon. “there was action on inclusion – an ambitious reform of special education in the province,” chuck said, “but i’m not really sure what is happening with that. but there’s also something called the high school flexibility project. i think that might make a huge difference for k & e students.” “i agree,” said gord, “the high school flexibility project could be very helpful for better inclusion of k & e students. there is also a new initiative called inspiring education. it lays out a challenging and provocative vision of what education will need to be in twenty years. the inflexible practices we’ve been talking about are definitely not endorsed in this vision.” i felt my excitement mounting. would i finally find lasting justice for slow learners in these initiatives? i was eager to start chasing these leads down. the waitress returned and i was surprised to see that i had finished most of the disgusting brew i’d ordered, sipping excitedly as i williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 45 heard about these initiatives, now oblivious to the taste. i paid for myself and for the drinks my two new acquaintances had consumed so far, to their surprised gratitude. chuck asked if i could stay longer and continue chatting with them, but i claimed to have school work to do. i cursed myself for not bargaining more firmly with williamson for the inclusion of liquor as a part of my expenses; it had proven a useful tool of the trade once again. back at my motel i brewed some coffee. i had some thinking to do. the truth, or, i corrected myself remembering hans and martin, some truth about this case was out there. i just needed a couple more things to fall in place before i could see it. i am not a voluminous note taker. i have a strong memory and concentrate hard when on a case and make a lot of mental notes which i tend to be able to retrieve on command. occasionally i jot something especially important down, more as a way of cementing things in my recall for future reference. it’s proven an effective method for me; as bashed around as i get on cases, my head is usually the only safe place to keep things. even so i’ve wondered how long the lock on the much-abused filing cabinet between my ears will hold out for – one day it might give, and all the depraved miscellany will spill out at once. this time to get my thinking started, i took the alarm clock and lamp off the circular night table and, once the table was empty, laid out the few business cards and scraps of paper with notes i’d written out so far on the case. staring at these fragments, i filled the rest of the space with imagined representations, phrases or images, for all the leads i had checked out so far. i stared at the table until it wasn’t a table anymore, just a circle of words and pictures. along the upper curve of the circle, i saw the faces of my adult interviewees. i had a bunch of dedicated teachers, administrators, and a program manager who, even if they couldn’t agree on every aspect of how slow learners should be supported, all seemed to recommend personalized approaches. on the subject of personalization i imagined, as the circle curved down, a hand reaching out. three of the teachers i talked to, including williamson, reached out to these students in solidarity having struggled themselves in school. but then i saw the number one hundred. i saw the problematic hundred-year-old solution to the issue of slow learners – segregation and vocational education; how personalized was that? but i’d been surprised to discover how this approach, despite coming from the vantage point that these students learned differently than regular students and required different programming, had in its various inceptions sometimes seemed sincere, well-intentioned, effective, and appreciated by students and parents. below this i imagined an oasis in the middle of a barren dessert. matthew summit, the father of one such program, had turned out to be less interested in conversations of inclusion and more interested in creating an educational oasis of sorts for a targeted group of vulnerable students. but had it become merely a mirage in many of the districts that implemented his vision? along the bottom curve i saw the ugly images from the sorting museum and thought of the troubling history of exclusion based on increasingly formalized determinations of intellect and impairment. rounding the curve back upwards were the media portrayals of slow learners, often demeaning, at times romantic, but always limiting. smart ass cripple sat above this, invoking in his own sarcastic way the activism of disability studies, a rejection of exclusionary practices and deficit labelling, and a demand for an authentic justice untainted by pity and paternalism. i saw jacques and michel grinning at me. their ideas fit like a hand in a glove with disability studies, ongoing challenges to the arbitrariness of categorization. though they were long gone, the modes of critique they demonstrated in the museum of sorting were still with me. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 46 i saw the students. i’d met some students who, in equal measures, resented their categorization but often appreciated some of the supports that came with it. the students colleen birdseye told me about had even protested the closure of the school they’d been they’d been placed in via iop/k & e tracking. then i saw the villains. veronika sternwood in her seductive positivism, and maddox paine with his social darwinism; i didn’t like it, but both of them made claims on slow learners as well. i wondered if there were more dangers out there than these two. next i saw the small cabin in the forest and thought of the thinkers who had given me shelter. i was still wrapping my head around what i’d learned from hans and martin. the limits to our understanding of ideas like slow learner and the consumptive mode in which people and knowledge itself are made available in modernity were certainly concerns that applied to my investigation. i rounded the circle again, past my interviewees and back to the number one hundred. but this time i saw the current inception of this form of vocational programming for slow learners; a series of classes that very few students were taking while a mysterious twenty percent of all students were not completing high school – a challenge to the efficacy of k & e, and to every other measure in place to engage at-risk students. i looked at the circle and wondered where the slow learners were. my client had hired me because he thought that the slow learners had disappeared or were being disappeared by the system. had i been able to make them reappear? remembering colleen birdseye’s insistence that the only useful common characteristic about k & e students was that they were all complex learners, and the diversity of the students i had met and heard about that shared this label, i realized the case had been pulling me away from the idea that there was some sort of essence to slow learners that held the key to educating them properly. without making a conscious choice, i’d changed my emphasis from looking for this essence to looking for justice for students who would be labelled or considered slow learners, assuming that only justice could make them appear as they ought to. having reflected on this shift in emphasis, this way the case had worked on me even as i had worked on it, i found it fitting, and felt determined to continue along these lines. i wondered if my client would approve. smart ass cripple and other interviewees had intimated that it might not be such bad thing if the slow learners, as a deficit category, disappeared – if more inclusive practices made it so. related to this were the ongoing rumors i’d heard that efforts were underway to make the system more inclusive for everyone. i realized that what i next needed to check out was the set of educational reforms my most recent interviewees had mentioned. i had to try to figure out if these initiatives were likely to bring an inclusive and attentive sort of justice, the kind that colleen birdseye and others had spoken of, to slow learners. or would they be forgotten, undermined, or shunted off to the side again? i still felt determined to ask the informants that summit had mentioned everything i could about this, but i realized i might need to know a little more for myself first in order to ask effective questions. my client didn’t seem to know much about the reforms, but maybe we could figure some of this out together. i looked back at the imagined circle on the table. i was grateful to have had the chance to catch my breath and review the case, and thought the next steps this exercise had brought me to were logical ones. but i sensed that there was something more; something mysterious that i was still trying to wrap my head around. i stared at the circle on the table hoping it would project some sort of larger truth to me. the truth was in there – the circle practically vibrated with its power – williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 47 but i still couldn’t quite get it to appear, not yet. i wanted so badly to put this case to bed, but there sat the circle, withholding something. keeping it in my peripheral vision in case some larger truth suddenly sprang out, i walked over to the phone in my room and called my client. xxix a pleasant voice i assumed to be williamson’s wife answered the phone and said she would get him. there was a pause as she carried the phone to him and then i heard her telling him she had no idea who it was. williamson’s voice greeted me. “i need to talk to you about education reform,” i said. “i’m kind of busy. report cards are due the day after tomorrow and i am marking,” williamson said, sounding oddly reluctant. “i’m close to breaking this case,” i told him, exaggerating, “and this is an important piece. we need to talk now.” williamson agreed, though with no great enthusiasm, to meet me. thinking that i might have to pry some secrets out of my sometimes cagey client, i said i’d pick him up. i didn’t want him to be surrounded by the comforts of home this time when i asked him questions. i asked him to bring a computer along if he had one. as i drove, i wondered if it was really the marking or if some other reason was making williamson hesitant to talk. i understood that the actual work of teachers could be quite pressing at times, but he’d been so worried and eager when he hired me, and as i began my investigation. i wondered what was going on now. i pulled into his driveway and walked up to the front door. i was about to press the doorbell when he opened the door. he slipped a coat over a plain white t-shirt. he was wearing faded jeans and a baseball cap with the logo of what i presumed to be a local brewery on it. i took this to be his marking outfit. he carried a beat-up laptop computer with him. we got in the car and drove off. williamson looked uncomfortable, even more so than usual. i thought it might cheer him up if i told him about my meeting a couple of scholars i was sure would be legends of hermeneutics to him, but i realized there was still some advantage to being able to feign ignorance when he talked about hermeneutics to me, and telling him about my meeting with hans and martin might undermine it. instead, i just asked him what was bothering him. “it’s just that i have all this marking,” he said unconvincingly. “no it isn’t,” i rebutted. “you were so torqued at the start of this case you would have set anything aside for a while to help me with the investigation. what’s going on?” he stared off into the night, hoping i’d forget the question. when we pulled up to a light, though, i took the chance to look right at him expectantly, to let him know i was still waiting. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 48 he finally spoke up, blurting out, “it’s just – what happens if we make things worse? maybe i just need to keep quiet on all the problems and try to protect k & e as it is right now.” “what are you talking about?” i demanded. “the only thing going for slow learners is a program that despite, its good intentions, very few of them want to be in. most of them, at least the ones that the regular program is truly too hard for, are probably still dropping out of high school instead of taking k & e. how could it get any worse?” in all honesty i knew that things could always get worse, you don’t operate in the underbelly of society without learning that. but it seemed like a good question to ask to get at what was bugging williamson. williamson sighed and began to explain. “we are planning for next year at the school i work at. with so few kids in k & e, the principal is asking why we need separate core classes for them. she says it’s a waste of human resources tying up our k & e assigned teachers with these classes when they could be teaching regular classes. the extra sections, she says, would help keep class sizes down for everyone. and she says having these k & e kids stuck together with each other in their core classes and taught by k & e specialists is ghettoizing them, that they deserve to be included with their peers more and to have access to teachers who are skilled in the subject areas they are teaching. i don’t really get that part. most of the students we enroll in k & e end up graduating with one of the two credentials; probably half of them end up transitioning successfully to the diploma stream. the k & e teachers must know something about the subjects they teach to be having that kind of success, but it’s almost like it’s a black mark on them that they want to work with these kids – like they couldn’t get a regular teaching gig even if they tried. anyhow, she wants to throw all the k & e students into the regular education classes with regular education teachers and have the teachers give k & e credits to any kids who can’t handle the work at that level. a default, no-dignity pass at the k & e level for attempting regular education work they can’t understand.” i thought williamson was being overly cynical. this was my act and i didn’t like him stealing it. whatever he thought of the blended classes, there was no reason to think that the teachers of these classes would be unwilling or unable to try to meet the needs of their new k & e students. additionally, he’d always claimed to strongly support inclusion, but was now claiming that enrolling his k & e students in core classes with kids from the next highest academic tier was throwing them to the wolves. so i challenged him on this, asking if what he was objecting so strongly to couldn’t be seen as a form of inclusion. “inclusion into what?” williamson asked back, and i recalled being asked the same question by an alert, modishly-dressed teacher in a staff room a few days back when we were discussing this same exact practice. i’d just been arguing the other side of the topic to help tease out whatever was bothering williamson, but i suddenly realized this was an important question. could slow learners get more justice in discrete or blended classes? it felt like this question had been hiding in plain sight since early on in the investigation. now it was out in the open demanding attention. i challenged williamson further on his negative views of blended classes, noting, “but some of the people i’ve been talking to have described teaching or observing blended classes and said it worked well.” williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 49 “yeah, k & e specialty teachers,” replied williamson. “in classrooms with low class sizes in vocational schools specifically organized to look out for less academic students.” he was obviously talking about colleen birdseye, and it was true that if anyone could make space for slow learners in a blended class it would be her. but there were more possibilities here than williamson was owning up to. the students i talked to described liking a blended science class that, as far as i could figure, was just taught by a regular science teacher. gord, the principal i’d met at the pub, had opined that it was already obvious what k & e students needed to thrive, schools where flexibility was the norm and academic tiering was de-emphasized. i rounded a corner. i was driving down a busy strip looking for an all-night diner. the constant cold and constant confusion of this case had done strange things to my appetite. i had felt a deep hunger that i hadn’t ever filled since arriving in this city. i thought i saw something in my rear view mirror but then i wasn’t sure. i’d have to keep an eye out. as i was driving i reflected that, despite his attempts to defend himself, for the first time i thought i was hearing the familiar tones of dogmatism and hypocrisy in this client of mine who claimed to be an inclusionist. at least the father of iop, summit, had come right out and said inclusion wasn’t his highest priority. i stayed mum on all this, though, i wanted to see where williamson’s dark thoughts on this matter would take him. williamson either read my mind or heard himself sounding inconsistent because he spoke up again in his own defense. “sometimes, in my k & e classes, i’ve had students who i felt were strong enough to be assessed at the next higher level so that’s what i did. and we always teach k & e with the consideration that we are getting many of these kids ready for the next level, so we’re not trapping anyone in that tier by running discrete classes. but consider the risks of doing blended classes full stop in a regular school.” he took a breath and i steeled myself for a long hypothetical. “maybe your first year with blended classes,” williamson continued, “you keep the class sizes really low in the blended classes with the k & e kids and hand-pick teachers who are good at personalizing to teach them. the next year the classes get a little bigger and the k & e kids are spread out a little more or maybe the hand-picked teacher moves to a different school. the next year, there’s a provincial budget cut and the administration of the school now more than ever thinks they can’t afford to give any consideration to the size of the classes with the k & e students in it. and by now the k & e kids are spread out so thin that there’s only one or two in every class. eventually the district’s central administration notices that no one is doing anything with k & e and stops funding schools for k & e teachers. pretty soon nobody even remembers the k & e level credits are on the books as a possibility and the students who the teachers think can’t pass their classes at the high school diploma level just fail. or, if that sounds too paranoid, the k & e courses do stay on the books but only, like i said, as a default pass for failing students tacked on at the end of the course with no attempt at modification throughout.” i wasn’t sure if williamson was being appropriately hard-boiled or, as he himself said, downright paranoid. “that’s a pretty bleak prediction, but i guess it could go that way,” i offered noncommittally. “but what does all this have to do with your reluctance to help me tonight?” i looked in my rear view mirror again. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 50 “what if we end up helping kill k & e?” williamson speculated. “i admit i’ve always thought there were some problems with how it was conceived and handled, and lately it seems less popular than ever. most of what you’ve found out seems to confirm this. but what if the problems we turn up in this investigation, a lot of which were probably pretty available for the seeing …” he looked at me and i shrugged in agreement, “what if this investigation is the final nail in the coffin? what if this kind of research leads to the killing of k & e? and what if they replace it with nothing? where would slow learners be then?” i thought about that. i had to admit that it was a good question, but i had one of my own. “but k & e won’t exactly be replaced with nothing, the system is supposed to be changing. will there even be a need for k & e with all the reforms that are underway to make education more flexible and inclusive for everyone?” i asked. “i don’t know,” williamson admitted but then added, “slow learners are barely on the radar now, but at least there’s a curriculum with a group of students attached to it and some sort of a fuzzy concept about how these students learn. as problematic as the label is, if there is anything at all to the concept of slow learner, if any of the claims about how they learn are true, at least contextually, then these students need to be part of the discussion about making education more inclusive.” “but if you keep singling groups of students out into all these categories based on reasons they can’t learn like so-called normal students how can you really say you are including them?” i asked. “but how can you make a space for their inclusion without considering what might be the most unique and crucial aspects of their learning needs?” williamson asked back. we were both quiet for a minute in acknowledgment of this seemingly irresolvable question. he didn’t say anything, but i sensed a shift in williamson’s attitude away from the impossible wish to withdraw and build a fence around this endangered series of classes and toward the need to take this investigation down the path of the recent educational reforms and try to figure out where slow learners fit. i checked my rearview mirror once again. i was now sure someone was tailing us. there were plenty of snow-encrusted white trucks in the city but this particular one had been my constant companion for several blocks. the driver was doing a good job by hanging back a couple cars and choosing a different lane when possible, but i’d made him nonetheless. we drove up to an intersection where the light was about to turn red. i entered the intersection anyway, executed an illegal u-turn, sped back the way i’d just come for a block, and then made another hairpin right-hand turn down a different road. i continued in this manner, making a variety of turns to ensure i would remain lost to my tail but getting somewhat lost myself in in this unfamiliar city. i saw a neon light above one of the businesses we passed advertising glowin-the-dark bowling, and i saw that the establishment had a back parking lot. if i was going to try to confer with williamson, maybe i’d need to switch to a more unlikely venue than an all-night diner. i whipped down the side road, entered the back parking lot and parked in a dark section concealed by a crookedly placed dumpster. we waited five minutes. the white truck was nowhere to be seen. satisfied i’d lost the tail for now, i led a confused-looking williamson into the bowling alley. williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 51 xxx a family of four, a trio of teenagers, and what appeared to be a double-dating couple occupied three of the lanes while the rest sat empty. a disco soundtrack played and the lanes glowed blue with strips of red lighting all the way to the pins. video screens above the pins danced in kaleidoscope patterns. it was nauseating. i attempted to tell the apparent proprietress we just wanted to go to the lounge for now, but she told me that they only served clients who purchased games. i reluctantly paid the applicable fees for games i had no intention of playing and shoes i had no intention of wearing. we walked past the lanes into a lounge near the back of the alley that was, mercifully, far enough away from the stereo system to allow conversation if one was willing tolerate the sound of crashing balls and pins from time to time. i purchased from a bored cashier a coffee for myself, a coke for williamson, and a bag of potato chips. we sat at the table near the back of the lounge. i asked williamson to tell me everything he knew about the various reforms that might impact slow learners.92 he thought for a moment, and then began. “in 2007, we were told alberta education was going to audit the documentation for students with severe disabilities, you know mental health, behavior, and medical conditions seen as having a major impact on school functioning and requiring high levels of support.93 they wanted to see if the students with these labels truly fit the criteria and schools were doing a proper job of documenting the services they were receiving.” “why did this happen? what brought this on?” i asked. “i think it was the increase in the amounts of students being labeled. i swear, in the first ten years i worked at my school, the amount of students with codes – especially severe codes – must have more than doubled,”94 williamson replied. “interesting, but so what?” i asked. i still didn’t see what this had to do with slow learners. “so every one of these labeled kids brought in extra funding to the school,” williamson answered. “a couple years ago, a student with a severe code brought in another $16,645 beyond the base pupil rate and a student with a mild to moderate disability brought in $2,438.95 i’ve even heard of something called the ‘bounty phenomenon’, the observation that some schools may 92 see gilham and williamson (2013). chris gilham and i wrote a paper that describes, in a more traditionally academic style of writing, and without reference to slow learners specifically, some of the recent changes to special education in alberta. this section outlines some of the same changes and gives a similar perspective on them. 93 alberta education (2013, p. 7) 94 see winzer and mazurek (2011, p. 51). the period between 1998 to 2003 saw an increase of 64% in identification of alberta’s students with severe disabilities and an increase of 140% for students with mild/moderate disabilities, compared to a general increase in the school population of 5%. 95 government of alberta (2011, pp. 85-88) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 52 operate by claiming to have as many students with disabilities as they possibly can, even actively diagnosing as many students as possible, in order to qualify for the most funding.”96 “isn’t that sort of unethical?” i asked. williamson thought for several seconds and then said, “i guess maybe be if the resources aren’t used for what they are supposed to be used for; say, for example, if a teaching assistant is funded to work with students with disabilities, but actually does marking and photocopying and rarely works with the kids. but supporting these students can be expensive. as i said, there are teaching assistants to help them in their classes, there are teachers of discrete programs and resource rooms for students with disabilities, and some teachers work as learning coaches that’s the fashionable word to help other teachers work with students with disabilities. in addition to our k & e teachers, there are several other teachers where i work who are designated as diverse learning teachers who were probably funded through disability funding. there are district-wide consultants to support teachers of students with various disabilities too. there are the psychologists to do the tests that result in many of the diagnoses. there is a lot of specialized equipment; communication devices for severely autistic students, programs to read out loud to students who struggle with silent reading or to translate speech into text for students who struggle with writing. it takes a lot of resources to get these kids through, so as long as school districts are actually using the money to help support students who struggle in school i can’t blame them for wanting to maximize their funding.” “never mind school districts, have you been a part of this bounty phenomenon?” i asked my client, making it personal. he paused and then replied, “i guess so. whenever i’ve been involved with psychologists and consultants to code students, if i thought the student would require a lot of support, i encouraged whoever was doing the diagnosing to go the route of severe coding. and to tell you the truth,” he admitted, “we sometimes even kept the severe codes on students whose needs no longer seemed that severe because for every one of these there was a student who required a lot of support but who didn’t qualify according to the coding criteria.” “like slow learners,” i said, and williamson nodded. “if everyone was up to this kind of thing, no wonder the amount of severe codes doubled,” i observed. “that had a lot to do with it, sure,” williamson acknowledged, “but i think it’s more complicated than that. there just seems to be a lot more diagnosing being done, i mean for things like autism, ad/hd, depression, and anxiety in society at large.”97 “is that good or bad for inclusion?” i wondered. 96 graham and jahnukainen (2011, p. 277) 97 rosenberg (2013, p. 1) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 53 “i don’t know. in a way, it probably makes people more aware and accepting of people with disabilities, but it also perpetuates the idea that disability is a problem or a defect in individual people; i mean, it’s all based on medical or psychological diagnoses,” williamson replied equivocally. i realized we had strayed a bit in our conversation and tried to direct the conversation back on course. “so what happened in the severe funding audit?” i asked. “well, the experience was pretty awful. i’d already finalized and submitted the severe coded student’s individual program plans and severe student monitoring forms for the year to our instructional services branch, but after we heard there was going to be an audit everyone panicked. we ended up rewriting the individual program plans very carefully to try to ensure they met the complex coding criteria exactly. it troubled me to do all that revision seeing as how the parents had already signed off on the original documents for the year and now we were making big changes to them. but at the time we thought we were at risk of losing funding.” “but how did the actual audit come out?” i asked. “a report came out later that said almost half of the students with severe codes were found not to meet the criteria.98 but we weren’t actually penalized on any of our cases or even told which ones didn’t make it. i don’t think any of this was a surprise to alberta education because shortly after this they launched this massive consultation about improving special education policy in the province.” the bowling pins in a couple of lanes crashed at the same time and i waited a minute before asking williamson the next question. we sipped our drinks and i munched on the chips, finding them bland and unsatisfying. when it was a little quieter again, i asked williamson to tell me about the process he’d just mentioned. he told me it was called setting the direction.99 it involved three rounds of consultations with thousands of albertans. he told me he’d been to one of the consultation sessions – a massive gathering of administrators, teachers, curriculum leaders, government ministers and other stakeholders in special education – held at a large convention centre. the event had been a two-day affair consisting of speakers and video presentations combined with small group sessions in break-out rooms. the notes from the sessions held in the break-out rooms were then reviewed by facilitators who identified common themes in the discussion and announced these to the larger group. williamson said he’d found it funny that they never discussed how to better support students with any specific disabilities, let alone slow learners, only the need to create a more flexible special education system for everyone. he also told me that one of the keynote speakers, the minister of education at the time, said he wanted to eliminate the practice of coding students with disabilities while the very next speaker, a professor of education policy, mused that there would always have to be some kind of coding in order to identify and meet students’ needs. williamson told me that the last phase of the consultation involved the formal submission of a set of recommendations for reform to the government of alberta, all twelve of which were 98 alberta education (2008, p. 1) 99 alberta education (2009b) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 54 accepted. these recommendations, he said, triggered a reform initiative known as action on inclusion which spoke to a fundamental ethical shift in alberta’s classrooms. illustratively, he opened up an on-line pamphlet from the action on inclusion initiative on his computer and showed me some examples of the planned reforms. moving from tolerating difference to valuing diversity, moving from special education founded on a medical model based on the student’s diagnosis to [a practice] of understanding a student’s strengths and needs through [collaboration] in which teachers, parents, students and specialists ...identify supports and services that best match the student’s strengths and needs.100 williamson then opened up one of the setting the direction documents to show me the vision of inclusion that was to guide the reforms. inclusive education system [is] a way of thinking and acting that demonstrates universal acceptance of, and belonging for, all students. inclusive education in alberta means a value-based approach to accepting responsibility for all students. it also means that all students will have equitable opportunity to be included in the typical learning environment or program of choice. 101 this was interesting, but i wasn’t sure of its relevance to the case. “do any of the setting the direction or action on inclusion documents talk about slow learners, or k & e students?” i asked williamson. “no, like i said, for the most part it didn’t talk about any categories of students. but a lot of it seemed to me potentially promising for supporting slow learners. the idea of teacher’s assessment of student needs driving the supports the students receive, instead of being totally reliant on medical or psychological assessments of disability, i thought might empower teachers to take a closer look at slow learners or any students who were struggling regardless of whether or not they fit into disability categories. along those lines, the literature acknowledged that…” he pulled up another website, did a search for a phrase, and showed me another line, “many of the strategies used to differentiate instruction for students with disabilities were also effective within the general student population across grade levels and curriculum areas.”102 “so,” i surmised, recalling a conversation we had early on, “you hired me to help make sure slow learners don’t get lost in all the commotion. to help hold the department to the commitments made in these documents, at least their implicit commitments to slow learners.” “initially, yes,” said williamson, “but look at this. i discovered it a couple days ago. that’s why i’m not sure we should be messing with k & e. maybe, for all of its problems, it still is the safest place for these students. i’m no longer sure these reforms are going anywhere, and if k & e goes too i don’t know what will be left for slow learners.” he ran the cursor over the word “archive” on the top of the screen and i realized we hadn’t been reading documents from a current and actively maintained section of the alberta education website. then he clicked back to a passage 100 alberta education (2010b, p. 2) 101 alberta education (2009b, p. 2) 102 alberta education (2010c, p. 3) williamson journal of applied hermeneutics 2016 article 8 55 that tersely explained the present state of affairs, “action on inclusion no longer exists as a project or initiative, but the work continues as part of our collective practice to build an inclusive education system in alberta.”103 i was probably imagining things but somehow that statement seemed to suck all of the noise out of the cacophonous bowling alley into williamson’s beat up laptop computer. all i could hear for several minutes was a dull silence.104 to be continued… references allan, j. 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