MS. CENDALI: Let’s put on the screen the entry for occamy. Am I pronouncing that correctly?

A. I mean I read that he claims that one of the works he used to help him add value, as it were, to my work, one of his research tools was the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Now, I was pretty sure that he should have been able to work out my little joke if he had looked in the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and so I went and looked it up, and I was correct. Ockham was a philosopher, an English philosopher, most famous for what is known as Ockham’s Razor, which is the statement nothing should be presumed to exist which is not absolutely necessary. So, this was my little joke, my little private joke to create an occamy in a book of things that were quite clearly not at all necessary. And there is nothing there. All The lexicon has done is reprint what I wrote about the fictional creature the occamy.

Ms. Rowling states that her joke about Ockham is in reference to the lack of necessity of the text in which the definition/description exists; could there be a more self-conscious attempt to ask the reader to become aware of the act of reading a particular sort of book while reading that book? In case you doubted the assertion that Chamber of Secrets is largely about good and bad books and Reader Response, appropriate and inappropriate, we have confirmation here of what was sufficiently evident in the text that this sort of thing is indeed part of the author’s understanding of what she was about in her writing.

And does anyone else think what’s as funny about the Occamy joke is that Ms. Rowling believes that anyone armed only with the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is going to get her joke? And “Yes. You can pronounce it any way you like; it’s not a real thing, you know”? Priceless.

To clarify just a smidge what I meant in the last portion of my post, fundamentally what I mean is that God made the world, and makes Him authoritative to it. It does not exist without His power, and He can do what He wants with it (Rom. 9), which also includes assigning meaning. I do not believe that we can come to the world, get some facts devoid of interpretation or bias, and then reason anywhere. Perception of facts colors facts, and so anybody who tries to paint a debate in terms of facts vs. interpretation is horrifyingly misguided. God’s world is subject to His interpretation and bias; He assigns it meaning according to His worldview, and this is revealed to us in the Scriptures. We are called to imitate and conform to Christ, who is very God in God, and this means learning to interpret the entire world according to the perspective revealed in the Word of God, the Person and the Book. So God’s subjective assignment (he could have assigned something a different meaning) becomes our authoritative, and therefore objective, interpretation.

I will not get too wrapped up in sign theory. Not my area. However, has anyone considered how classical protestant sacramental theology might add clarity to the idea of the sign and the thing signified? I’ve been exploring Calvin’s use of sign and thing signified as separate but covenantally unified ideas recently, and this might be a promising area for discussion and exploration. In other words, the discussion has turned in some ways around perception in the Potter novels. The memories are a perception by Snape, which is perceived by Harry, which is perceived by Rowling, through whom we perceive it all. If there were a covenantal union, a real union, between sign and thing signified, just as there is in the sacraments (the promise and the thing promised both present), then we could acknowledge the truth of the shades of perception, but also acknowledge there is a union between the sign and the thing signified, in other words that some perceptions are more perceptive than others. Just because we only see Harry through Rowling does not, in a Trinitarian sacramental sign theory, mean that we are not truly seeing (or understanding) Harry. I am sensing Alex trying to get here, and perhaps this helps.

The pensieve is a strange literary device, to me, to be sure.

Chosen, I appreciate your comments. I agree with you that Christian theology is instructive to much of Derrida’s philosophy. I kind had trouble following you in your last bit, but I think there is a lot agreement there as well. However, I would say that I don’t think the “denial of objective knowledge *must* lead to subjectivity,” because I do not recognize either category of knowledge. For me, I don’t think that objectivity is possible, warranted, or even desirable. I do think Truth is knowable, but I do not think that it is absolute, mostly because I don’t believe that knowledge, truth, reality, or whatever happens in a vacuum. So this is not a slippery slope from “absolute Truth,” because I think that Truth is a very different kind of animal than defined within modernist, post-Enlightenment, positivistic framework. But I loved your bit about “Added glory,” I think that is right on.

I also agree with you that the question is really about authority! I really do. I don’t believe that God is objective – I believe that he is biased and inclined towards certain beliefs; I do, however, believe that he is authoritative in his actions and beliefs. I think the language of subjective/objective ultimately fails, but I do not think the language of authority does.

Reyhan, for the most part, I still think you are on. Really great thoughts. If I may add a few caveats…=).

First off, I do not think that it goes against postmodernity to believe that truth is “knowable” or “out there.” Here would be where I think Christian theology (or any thought pattern of a truth-based people group, which includes most people groups) is instructive to *some* facets of postmodernism. Of course, I do think there is a problem with the word “objective,” but I think I have stated that ad nauseum. Nor does postmodernity necessarily deny clarity. However, there are some strong qualifiers that must be made with that kind of language. Does clarity exist within space and time – sure. Is that clarity available or even the same for everyone – probably not.

Secondly, I do think that Harry’s story affords a bit more clarity than the average human being – I mean, he is after all, the “Boy Who Lived.” However, I do think that much of Harry’s fight to make sense of his world and himself is a fight to understand the narrative in which he is a part, and what that narrative means for the who he is and the kind of values he will live by. I do think that partly Harry finds those answer from within, but I also think there is an element of naivete to that statement as well. Part of who Harry is within is what has happened from a life of living with abusive muggles, of being an orphan, of being taught by Dumbledore and other teachers at Hogwarts, and so on. Harry’s choices/answers from within, I think, must in some way reflect that which is and has been pushing on him from without.

Does that make sense? Great discussion, y’all. Grace and Peace.

Rowling constantly highlights language as a problematic tool in meaning construction — Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows are nothing if not a two volume treatment of some of the problems of language and narrative construction. Harry’s frame of reference about all the stories and “truths” he’s learned for four and a half books is pulled from underneath him from Order of the Phoenix onward. We watch Harry’s education move from something like a rote classroom curriculum to something closer to the critical thinking expected from university-level students. He must learn to infer what is probably true based on incomplete information, humbly mindful that he might be wrong.

That Rowling takes the issue one step further is interesting — Dumbledore doesn’t tell Harry about critical details; neither does he send Harry to Madam Pince in the library to research the issue. To do this, Rowling invents the Pensieve, a device that allows Harry literally into the psychological strata of various subjects. Then, she introduces Legilimency and Occlumency. All three devices operate independent of language. She’s taking language out of the perceptive dialogic altogether. I’ve wondered for quite some time about the seeming accuracy of memories that can exist beyond the subject’s mind, or more literally his brain. This would seem to be her answer to the language problem, but it’s not. She removes language from the perceptive framework, but she never fully removes linguistic problems from the interpretive framework. Harry must still give voice to his reasoning, not only articulating his understanding for others, but constructing it for himself, as well — the camping sections of DH serve as a primary example — anyone ever wonder how Hermione would have treated a trip into the Pensieve?

‘And, in the vein of this dialogue, I think there is some postmodern element there, whether intended or not. This could be a key to Rowling’s success. As we go through life, trying to make sense of the world around us and our place in it, we have a truly wonderful story of a boy trying to do just that same thing.’

Let’s take it a couple of steps further.

Harry’s quest to understand his place in his world resonates with a universal need: we all seek to make sense of the world and our place in it. But how often is it in real life that our role is so clearly defined by factors outside of ourselves? How often are the answers truly “out there”, known by others but not ourselves? How often is there such a clear answer to the question: what am I? what do I need to do?

So in a way, JKR’s fiction places an artificial degree of clarity and certainty on the universal quest for meaning. That is fine and good: we turn to fiction for that degree of clarity often lacking in our own lives. And the genre in which JKR writes – which for me is detective fiction – requires that degree of clarity. I’m just not certain how postmodern it is for the truth to be objective and knowable and “out there”.

However, I think JKR goes one step beyond. The purpose of Harry’s life isn’t really an “out there” fact. Voldemort tries to kill him because of a prophecy which may – or may not – be true. JKR never tells us with 100% certainty that prophecies are valid. In fact, the creatures who seem to know the most about the matter – centaurs – are very skeptical about it. In the act of trying to kill Harry, Voldemort brings about the circumstances wihch will eventually lead to his destruction: he makes an enemy of Harry. But as Dumbeldore points out, Harry is free to decide what he is going to do about Voldemort. Even the knowledge about the Voldemort soul-piece he carries doesn’t have to push him to his “destiny”. It’s his choice. And that choice is underlined by the late-stage introduction of Aberforth into the dialogue: forget about Dumbledore’s mad plans and schemes; run away, and live.

In effect, it’s Harry who gives meaning and purpose to his own life. He spends seven years trying to understand the truth about himself. But when he finally “gets” it, he still has to make the decision what he’s going to do about it.

Now we have argued that by the time he finds out that he must die in order to destroy Voldemort there isn’t much of a decision to make, that he is already so far committed to the path that it would be inconceivable for him to back off. That the option Aberforth offers him comes too late, Dumbledore has had too many years to school him to make the “right” choice. That the freedom of choice is illusory at that point.

I don’t know about that. I think that rather than Dumbledore or any external agency, it is Harry’s own nature which makes him walk that final walk into Voldemort’s hands.

And coming full circle, after a life-time trying to get answers from outside of himself about “who am I” and “what am I supposed to do”, Harry finds the answers within.

And so Alex, I understand your frustration with not really dealing with postmodernism. It is not wholly about epistemology, but that is a fruitful conversation anyway. The most annoying element of postmodern epistemology, especially with regards to theological interpretation of the Bible, is precisely that it gives wonderful excuses for sinners to excuse themselves from following God’s requirements. God says not to have sex outside of marriage – the postmodern glibly says, “Ahh, but that’s just really a matter of perspective. Who is God talking to, what were they thinking, and what was the author of this book thinking, and the people who transposed it down through the centuries? After all, this was necessary for a post-Babylonian exiled nomadic people trying to survive.” Yes. Wonderful questions, and helpful in interpretation, and by the way, you’re commanded to quit it too. Incidentally, this was an example; I wasn’t addressing Alex as though you were arguing this, merely that I have heard people argue in this way.

Postmodernism does not take into account the Trinity. For instance, Derrida (in Disseminations) makes much of the thought that for Plato, communication between origin and supplement is a violent fall, an exile, a lie, a corruption of what was there at the origin. To Plato, thought is highest, speech second, and writing third, and every tier downward erodes the meaning of the origin.

For Derrida, the supplement is always already at the origin, just like a spring of water. If the water flows, it has an origin (spring) and a supplement (stream). To not have the stream is to not have the spring either, so origin and supplement support one another. Yet supplementation is still a violent supplementation, a destructive replacement of the origin. Thus, for him, writing is an act of violence which replaces the thought of the story, and the interpretation by the reader destroys the original meaning of the work. In language and reality, the supplement is equiprimordial with the origin, and so the origin is disrupted and destroyed from the beginning. Every act of meaning is therefore a patricide, killing what birthed it. Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” necessitates every author writing against what came before, causing filial revolt. As each tries to overcome the influence of what came before, the necessary creativity requires the destruction of those which fathered us.

Derrida then theorizes, rightly, that origin is father, supplement is son, but the very fact that there is a son is what makes a father a father, and so an eternal father must have an eternal son. Unfortunately, being an atheist, he cannot find anything but a distortion, seeing the very act of Son-ness requiring the patricide of the Father, closer more to Hesiod’s Theogony than to Paul and John.

Here is where a robust Trinitarian orthodoxy comes in handy. We can, with much eagerness and rejoicing, embrace the fact that the supplement is at the origin, but deny that there is any degradation or loss between them, on an ultimate, inter-Trinitarian basis. The Son exists eternally because the Father exists eternally, and this does not require the death, distortion, or destruction of the Father. The Son is the very image of the Father, because the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father and this perichoresis is essential to the gospel. For St. John, seeing is knowing (John 6:40; 11:45; 14:7), and this seeing/knowing is eternal life (John 17:3), and there is no distance between them, otherwise there is no salvation. God is present in Christ, eternity has “tabernacled” in human flesh (John 1:14). In the OT, man could not see God (Ex. 33:20-23), but in the Incarnation God the Father is made known (John 12:45; 14:9), and there is no distortion.

Jesus is the way to God, and He is the way because the “destination” has always been “in” the way itself (John 14:7, 9-11). This is why when Jesus says He goes to prepare a place for us in His Father’s house, He is speaking about Himself on the cross and in the resurrection. He “is” His Father’s house, the place His Father dwells, or if you prefer, “tabernacles” (John 14:10-11). The Father glorifies the Son in redemption just as He has in eternity and creation (John 17:5). This glory the Father has given Christ those in union with the Incarnated Christ also get (John 17:22-23). We participate in, are drawn into, the life of the eternal Trinity in salvation, and there is present nothing but mutual love, glory, and self-giving in the Godhead.

In that Godhead there is always supplement, and a Third supplement, alongside the eternal First, and all three are bonded together in an eternal covenantal love, a mutual indwelling that does not distort or corrupt between sender and receiver, between origin and supplement. The First is always with the Second and the Third. This is what Christians are drawn into, and the First and Second come alongside us through the Third, who speaks only what He hears (John 16:13-15), which was also what was spoken to us by Christ, who speaks only what His Father says (John 17:8, 14, 17). These words, the very words of the Father He gives to the disciples, who have heard the very words of the Father, without distortion or corruption in transmission (John 17:13). They, of course, will be distorted by the unbelieving, but to the one God grants ears to hear, it is undistorted.

Christian theology can agree with just about everything Derrida says about origins and supplements, even what Derrida calls “contamination,” except that it is not a contamination at all, just a difference. The Son is not the Father, they are distinct Persons, and yet they are both perfectly God, reflecting and dwelling in one another. The Son and Spirit are simply the fullness and glory of the Father, without whom He would not be the Father.

In this as well, because the world reflects the Trinitarian personality of its maker, finitude is not a degeneration from infinitude. Supplementarity therefore is not a structure of distortion or veiling or loss of knowledge, but rather simply a structure of respect, of acknowledgment of limitation. The creation is not a distortion or impurity in its move from infinitude or origin, rather the creation is simply (or ought to be) respectful of its Father. The creation is good. The movement of history for Derrida must be corruptive as each cycle of destruction eliminates knowledge. For the Trinity, the movement of history proceeds from First to Second and Third perfectly, from beginning to a stated end goal that is actually greater than the start – from untamed Garden to the Garden-City of Revelation, from God and man separate to God and man united in the salvation of the God-man.

Thus every supplement is not a destruction, but an “added glory” to the First glory. The end is not simply a new beginning, but a glorified, resurrected beginning, a higher place from the start. The Son gives His glory to the Father eternally, and the Father returns that glory to the Son with interest. What is given up always dies, and is always resurrected to be returned. (Leithart goes into much more detail on this front in his books “Deep Comedy” and “Solomon Among the Postmoderns”, on which I based much of this).

To return this discussion to the line of the thread, the ideas of objective and subjective are interesting. Within the Trinity each Person has a subjective perspective because each perspective is different from each of the others, yet because the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, and the Spirit in them, the knowledge within each is undistorted. In other words, each subjective view is truly subjective, and yet each subjective view is completely objective. Similarly, God the Father created the world through the Son via the Spirit (John 1), and so the world never speaks for itself. The world is never objective; it never has meaning “of itself.” Rather all meaning, all “facts” in the world are in the world itself, but from the Godhead’s subjective assignment of meaning. So God’s subjective becomes our objective. Our job is not to look at the world and get the neutral or objective facts, but rather to conform to the knowledge of God, which means learning to interpret the world in light of God’s perspective, through the Spirit who teaches us all things. We spirate from subjective to objective, gathering greater depth in an infinite swirl (John 17:7, 21, 25-26).

To say that all knowledge comes from “a perspective” is not powerful enough to defeat the absolute claims of certain perspectives. The denial of objective also is not helpful, because denying objective knowledge *must* lead to subjectivity. I agree that they are falsely pitted against one another, but saying objectives is not possible or desirable simply pushes us down the slope from absolute truth. The only solution to pitting objective/subjective against one another is to say both are equally necessary and reciprocal in our minds, made as we are in the image of the Triune God. The question of perspective doesn’t matter; everything is a perspective. The question is whether a perspective is authoritative or not – and God’s is.

Wow. Bit longer than intended. Oh well. Been wanting to talk about that for a while.

I meant that Dumbledore forswears romantic love after his disastrous early experience with it. I separately meant that he subsequently doesn’t let love influence his decisions. To wit, he loves Harry as much as he is capable of loving anyone, but he does not let his love let Harry off the hook for being the boy who must die. He doesn’t even let his love influence him enough to trust Harry with the truth.

Ask yourself, if you were Dumbledore, would you not have said something to Harry about his destiny, especially when you knew you were about to die and Harry would be left to walk to his death alone?

Cold, cold, Dumbledore, the coldest man in the whole damn town, colder than old Voldemort …

I understand where you are coming from a little better, but I have a few responses. First off, Derrida is respected as the “Father of Postmodern Deconstructionalism,” however, there has been more work in that field since Derrida. Postmodernism is characterized by more than simply deconstructionalism, and there are other deconstructionalist theories beyond Derrida. My particular influences in postmodernism and deconstructionalism are mostly Christian theologists, such as Hauerwas, Yoder, Wright, Wittgenstein, etc. All of these people have adapted deconstructionalism in their own right. I understand what you are saying, but I still struggle with applying only Derrida’s theories, especially considering that they are dated.

Moreover, as I said before, postmodernism moves outside of post-Enlightment linguistic frameworks, such as the (I would add false) dichotomy of objectivism/subjectivism. Derrida, in his critique of modernism and the positivism that results, is at least correct, I think, in saying that we are always working from our interpretation. Now, I am not inclined to think that this makes knowledge of reality impossible, as Derrida has been accused of saying. However, even with your illustration of the plane and pilot – where is the objective reality? The instruments have a “perception” (sort of) in that they are receiving information/knowledge based on their programming or the way they are built or whatever. Interpretation can be guided, but we must at least accept that we are always interpreting, and never seeing “objective reality.” At least, that is what the postmodernist says.

Okay, that was too long a response. Just a bit more, though, if you’ll forgive me. I don’t know how much Rowling knows of “Derrida’s sign theory,” and beyond, but I don’t know that we can conclude that because she writes that there is a certain way magic must be done (I would add, by Hogwart’s cirriculum – we can’t say that the way Weasley is taught to do magic is the only way necessarily; I refer again to my earlier comment: how was magic done before Latin? Before Wands? How did Harry and the other young wizards do magic in “stressful situations” without the knowledge about the Latin, etc, from attained at Hogwarts), this necessarily means that she is “critisizeing postmodernist sign theory from within” nor that she is subscribing to Eco’s semiotics. I think that is a leap.

Another clarifying question: what do you mean by “unlimited postmodernism?” I think I understand you, and more the most part agree with what you are saying. I don’t think Rowling subscribes to complete relativism, if that’s what you mean, or that there is not some kind of reality. Anyway, I appreciate this dialogue, and please don’t take my arguments personally – I think this is a good discussion.

Reyhan, I really think you are on to something. I do agree that much of the book is Harry trying to make sense of his world, his past, himself. And I really thought appreciated your insight concerning Ron/Hermione contra (if that’s the right word) Dumbledore/Snape. I think a part of this theme is trust, which is related to the other themes you mentioned (Death, Love, etc). You know, we have, if I remember correctly (I haven’t read DH twice yet), Dumbledore apologizing for not being more up front with Harry, which really took me by surprise. And all through DH, we have, as Granger (I’m really not on first name basis with yet!) pointed out in one of his posts on Alchemy, the question of whether or not Harry will trust Dumbledore and stay on the quest for the Horcruxes, or will he abandon the quest in favor for the Hallows. And the center struggle in this question for Harry is, as you pointed out, driven by Harry’s need to understand.

And, in the vein of this dialogue, I think there is some postmodern element there, whether intended or not. This could be a key to Rowling’s success. As we go through life, trying to make sense of the world around us and our place in it, we have a truly wonderful story of a boy trying to do just that same thing. Great observations.