Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: The hermeneutic circle provides a straight forward answer to the question when to stop researching, and, as a corollary, when to stop interviewing. The premise for accepting this answer lies in recognizing that any scientific research must start with theory, as only a theoretical framework allows for the separation of realms for systematic inquiry. First, we have to define what we are interested in, then our theory will tell us what variables we have to look for and how we suppose they relate to the phenomenon in question. In other words, the hypotheses we formulate allow us to determine what is relevant to our inquiry. Once we have separated a realm for our inquiry, we can start the process of gathering data, where speech acts are considered part of the data to be collected. In addition to collection speech acts, we must contextualize this data with other information relevant to the speaker(s) so that we can reach an understanding of her lifeworld and situate her speech. This is achieved by going for and back between the specific and the general, the concrete speech act and the political, historical, psychological, and in general institutional context in which the speaker and the speech is embedded. This conceptions leads us to gather empirical data up to the point when each single new information “makes sense,” i.e. it complements the logical structure of the lifeworld we are exploring. Each new interview must relate to and ultimately confirm what we already have found out, in a positive of negative way, and little by little we construct a contextualized understanding of the single speech act in question, which allows us to interpret each new piece information and locate it within the horizon of meanings that constitute the context or lifeworld of the speech and the speaker and the realm we have separated for our inquiry.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Gadamer has long been criticized for the inherent
conservative bent to his thought. These critics point to Gadamer’s
claims concerning tradition and authority as the conditions for
knowledge, truth, and understanding, and they allege that this
precludes the possibility of a critical stance toward the dominant
tradition(s). From this they conclude that his approach leads to a
conservative politics, to the maintenance of the status quo and
resistance to change. However, Gadamer did not understand the political
implications of his thought in these terms, and in some of his writings
he explicitly favors leftist causes. In this paper, I explore this
seeming contradiction, arguing that Gadamer’s leftist politics are not
at odds with, but rather flow from, his hermeneutical approach. The key
to this is the interplay of solidarity, friendship, and practical
reason – concepts that appear prominently in his later essays. For
Gadamer, solidarity and friendship are necessarily connected to
tradition and authority and create the possibility for political
action. However, they are also the grounds for practical reason, the
exercise of which always includes a critical component that calls forth
and revises our prejudices. In this way, practical reason ensures that
the political action arising from solidarity and friendship does not
merely reproduce the status quo but generates new political
possibilities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper addresses the issue of what political theory has to learn from the arts, through an examination of the differences between Gadamer's ideas about poetry and those of his teacher, Heidegger.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper is an inquiry into the paradoxes of ontological hermeneutics and the blind spots that its founders have shown in practicing the radical historicism they prescribed for a hermeneutically-sensitive inquiry. My thesis is that both Heidegger and Gadamer’s views were profoundly influenced by the political currents of the Weimar and post-Weimar Germany, that both failed to come to grips with this influence and systematically misrepresented their Nazi era writings, and that phenomenological hermeneutics lacks the theoretical and methodological tools of critique insofar as it concentrates on language as the chief medium of interpretation and ignores pragmatic and nondiscursive forms of signification. The paper outlines pragmatist hermeneutics as an alternative to its ontological and phenomenological counterparts.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: I argue for the relevance of Gadamer's theory of the subject for feminism. I assert that viewing identity as the fusion of public and private horizons allows us to account for differences among as well as the origin of resistance