Indefinite Perspectives In An Interpretive Community Hirsch example essay topic

When a young man wearing a University of Washington T-shirt and shorts comes up alongside of you and runs past you very quickly on campus, you will most likely automatically assume that he is exercising. To you as an observer and a member of the campus community, it is obvious as to what he is doing, even though there could be many possible reasons for his running across campus. Whatever the events that take place in our lives may be, we can almost always make meanings out of them through some interpretive or cultural background that we have come to belong to. In his essay "How To Recognize a Poem When You See One" Stanley Fish explains that the different ways we create meaning about events comes directly from the interpretive communities of which we are a part. The critic E.D. Hirsch, arguing about what perspective one must take in order to interpret a text in his essay!

^0 Faulty Perspectives, ! +/- claims that a! ^0 text cannot be interpreted from a perspective different from the original author!'s! +/- (Hirsch 49). Although these two authors disagree on how a text should be interpreted, what they are stating leads me to believe that it is in every human being!'s capabilities to acquire multiple, ever-expanding interpretive communities or in a greater sense, cultural perspectives.

Someone might argue that irresolvable conflicts among unique sets of values from the different perspectives we assimilate will arise and cause confusion to our understanding of the world, therefore human beings are not able to acquire multiple cultural perspectives indefinitely. However, from what the two authors write in such adamant belief and from my real life experiences, the ability in humans to indefinitely assimilate various cultural perspectives and resolve any conflicts that arise is undeniable. The experience I had in my life, of going to a completely different country to live, as well as the same experience millions of others had, proves the existence of the universal capacity of humans to assimilate multiple cultural perspectives. Approximately three years ago, I went on a plane with my family and ventured all the way from China to this new world, America, for reasons complicated and irrelevant to our discussion. As I got off the plane, all I could see was people with different hair colors, eye colors, and countenances from mine, and all I could hear was people who were speaking in a language with most of the words that I could not make the meaning out of.

I still remembered that bewildering moment when I was standing petrified among people of such a different culture and wondering what happened to the place I belonged. Yet somehow I had the feeling that everything would be just fine. Three years later now, I am writing this paper, thinking in the same general context of American literature as my classmates, and applying the great amount of knowledge about writing in English that I have acquired to articulate the belief that I come to believe in. I am able to engage in conversations freely with classmates about what!'s on TV, movies, and class schedules in the same perspective as theirs. It is obvious that I have assimilated this completely different cultural perspective into my own system of cognition and knowledge.

Likewise, through out the course of one!'s life, one can easily find oneself in many different interpretive communities acquired through experience. As a student of a university, or a student of a particular class, or even a member of a student organization, we interpret events differently. We adjust so naturally from one role to another and from one interpretive community to the next that we don! t realize it is us who, through the natural process of adaptation, learn the particular set of concepts for each community in order to perform the normal tasks as defined in that group. Introducing the experiment of turning an assignment into a poem, Stanley Fish argues that! ^0 the assignment we all see is no less the product of interpretation than the poem into which it was turned, ! +/- and that! ^0 it requires just as much work, and work of the same kind, to see this as an assignment as it does to see it as a poem!

+/- (Fish 309). The work required to see the list as an assignment is done! ^0 in the course of acquiring the huge amount of background knowledge that enables you and me to function in the academic world! +/- (Fish 309).

Therefore, the logic follows that in our lives we do not innately possess these different ways of interpretation, but through the process of assimilation, we incorporate them into our systems of cognition and choose from them one primary interpretive community to apply at any given moment. Through our own thoughts, our instructors, and our interactions with others, many common perspectives and much common knowledge are formed without the members of the community even realizing what is going on. This is best demonstrated by the fact that when I first came to this country, although I did not deliberately strive to assimilate the new culture, through interactions with everyone around me, I gradually became more and more furnished with the common perspectives. Similarly, the students mentioned in Fish!'s essay interpreted the list of names as a poem because they were consistently educated to think poetry and explicitly informed that the list was a poem. They could have just as easily perceived the list as an assignment if they were advised to, since they acquired both the perspectives in the general academic interpretive community and in the specific poetry class. This ease in switching between acquired interpretive communities undoubtedly proves that multiple interpretive perspectives can be acquired by us with ease.

On the other hand, some might say that different interpretive communities would cause confusion in the process of creating meanings, since particular concepts of some communities are very different from the others. For example, the assimilation process I experienced has certainly caused conflicts between the old set of cultural values and the new definitions. Understanding the respected virtues of a culture is essential to our everyday living. One of the highest valued virtues in a person of the Chinese culture is modesty, which is to not be too competitive and to always consider! ^0 saving face! +/- for the other person. On the contrary, American culture tends to value the competitiveness of a person more.

I had the most difficult time trying to resolve this conflict between the fundamental values of the two cultures. Someone might argue that because in general these inflicted conflicts are irresolvable, humans can never assimilate multiple cultural perspectives indefinitely. I would respond to the argument with the fact that although conflicts were indeed inflicted by cultural differences, I overcame them and turned out to acquire the essence of both cultures. As time passed and I had more experience in dealing with the difference between the concepts of modesty and competitiveness, I gradually learned to cope with it and found my unique way of balancing the modesty and competitiveness in me. This experience made me realize that no irresolvable conflict could ever hinder our acquiring of various cultural perspectives because of the unlimited capacity of human!'s mind to expand and accumulate cultural possibilities. The interesting question here is, how do we keep expanding our cultural perspectives; is it an innate, natural process, or a forced, obligatory one?

I believe that it is an intrinsic ability in humans to adapt to different cultural perspectives. In the following quote Hirsch claims that: Cultural subjectivity is not innate, but acquired; it derives from a potential, present in every man, that is capable of sponsoring an indefinite number of culturally conditioned categorical systems. It is within the capacity of every individual to imagine himself other than he is, to realize in himself another human or cultural possibility (Hirsch 47). Apparently he believes in the capacity of every living human to learn and adapt to a new cultural perspective. He explains that!

^0 we can understand culturally alien meanings because we are able to adopt culturally alien categories! +/- (Hirsch 46). I strongly agree with him because after going through the experience of living in a different country with culturally alien categories, I realized in myself another cultural possibility that I had never imagined of, a cultural possibility that not only expanded my perspective in observing the world but also made me discover the potential capacity in me to expand. Therefore, I believe the ability to adapt to different cultural perspectives is innate in all human beings. Just like I have the capacity to assimilate both cultures I lived in, Hirsch and Fish would be able to acquire each other!'s opposing interpretive communities if they experienced differently, all because of the ability in humans to assimilate multiple interpretive communities. Hirsch!'s major argument in his essay is that a valid interpretation of a text can only be from the original author!'s perspective, while Fish disagrees and believes that the perspective people take when they interpret a text can vary depending on what interpretive community they are involved in.

This divergence on the issue of the perspective one takes when interpreting a text is itself an illustration of the capacity of humans to acquire and accommodate different perspectives. Hirsch believes in his major argument because he is in an interpretive community that fights for the authenticity of a text and the authorship of the author. It is a perspective in an interpretive community he acquired and belonged to. On the other hand, through experience Stanley Fish belongs to an interpretive community which believes that it is trivial for authors like Hirsch and Barthes to fight over texts and authors because interpretation of a text and the text are related through social organizations. He argues that! ^0 there can be no adversary relationship between text and self because they are the necessarily related products of the same cognitive possibilities!

+/- (Fish 315). Consequently, the diverging arguments made by Hirsch and Fish all originate from the innate ability of humans to acquire different perspectives through experience. Some people might say that the disagreement in arguments they have is generated from the fact that the two different interpretive communities they are in are exclusive to each other, that when they are in one of them they can not acquire the other, and that the capacity of humans here is limited. However, it is also valid to point out that it might have simply been the experience they had in their lives that lead them to choose to be in their respective communities, and if hypothetically the two men!'s lives are exchanged completely, then they probably would be taking the other!'s stance "C their roles switched. And that shows the capacity in humans to adapt to multiple, different interpretive communities.

After analyzing what Stanley Fish and E.D. Hirsch write about interpretive perspectives and my life experience as a foreigner, it is clear that human beings do possess the great gift of being able to assimilate different cultural perspectives indefinitely. Even though at the beginning of every act of adding a new perspective, there might be conflicts caused by the contradictory sets of principles, in the end the conflicts will be resolved by the process of learning. These different interpretive communities, or in a greater scale, cultural perspectives that we acquire throughout our lives define what we think, how we interpret events, and who we are. The existence of the unlimited capacity in humans to expand our minds indicates that given a certain amount of freedom to choose, we are not, in any way, constrained to a certain possibility of life. Ultimately, the capacity to adapt is what makes human beings different from any other species on this planet, a species that can evolve not only genetically, but also culturally.

Bibliography

Fish, Stanley.! ^0 How To Recognize a Poem When You See One.! +/- Academic Discourse: Readings for Argument and Analysis. Ed. Gail Sty gall. 3rd ed. Mason: Thomson Learning Custom Publishing, 2002.
303-315. Hirsch, E.D.! ^0 Faulty Perspectives.! +/- The Aims of Interpretation. Phoenix ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.