Dear Ken,
I don’t want to go into the discussion about dictionaries. In fact I’ve
been studying three old English dictionaries (Robert Cawdrey Table of
hard Words, Nathan Bailey’s first English Dictionary and… the Noah
Webster Dictionary). They give a very good account of what people
call(ed) to things but not what things are and for that matter they are
really interesting.
What we have been talking about is the nature of a written piece as part
of a practice led PhD. Ekphrasis, Exegesis and Eisegesis are
hermeneutical “methods” to “read” others work so they must be carefully
adapted to what we are talking about: a text about our own work. Ek, Ex
and Ei exist because we normally don’t know a lot about the others work
and we want to understand it. This is not what happens with our own work.
I think that exegesis, as a method, result from the specific way in
which written language is before us and the consequent multiplicity of
senses (I’m not speaking of meaning strictly here, but of sense that
encompasses both purpose and meaning) you can read in written text. An
Exegesis is not and interpretation, in fact exists to overcome
interpretation that results from the nature of writing and consequently
reading.
This is what troubles me. We all know that exegetics is normally
associated to the so called Religions of the Book. There is a palimpsest
nature in these texts that require this kind of work that is often inter
textual. We normally don’t hear about that someone had done a fine
exegesis of Homer’s Iliad but of S. Paul’s letters or even Kafka’s
Castle. Exegesis not only refers to texts but it normally refers to
difficult texts and this difficulty is what demands exegesis. However,
nobody has ever heard of an exegesis of the instructions fill in the
IRS, although they are really difficult. So there is more than
difficulty in the texts requiring exegesis. There is the notion that the
texts conceals something. Part of it results from a textual richness
that is over the multiplicity of meaning and purpose and has its own
richness as a veil. I think that this textual richness is only possible
in texts.
My intention in bringing forth ekphrasis was to underline two things (to
be discussed): a) A Design is mostly imagery. b) There is an advantage
to read A Design not as a text but as a work of art.
That’s why I brought up the example of the panopticon.
Cheers,
Eduardo
Eduardo Côrte-Real,
Dr Arch
Scientific Board President IADE, Lisboa
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