Re-Imagining Text - Re-Imagining Hermeneutics

What is it about?

Is sacred scripture the only text where God reveals himself to humanity? How do we navigate scriptures that simultaneously liberates some while being used to oppress others? This article examines three significant insights that Paul Ricoeur contributes to our expanding understanding of text. The first section presents Ricoeur’s de-regionalization of classic hermeneutics culminating in his understanding of Dasein (Being) as “being-in-the-world,” as the turn that allows meaning to transcend the physical boundaries of the text. The next section presents Ricoeur’s threefold under-standing of traditionality/Traditions/tradition as the “chain of interpretations” through which religious language transcends the temporal/historical boundaries of the text. The final section presents Ricoeur’s understanding of the productive imagination and metaphoric truth as the under-appreciated yet key insight around which Ricoeur’s philosophical investigation into the metaphoric transfer from the bounds of the text to life beyond the text revolves. The paper concludes with an excursus that presents the New World religious tradition of Rastafari as an exemplar of the metaphorization of scripture that opens new worlds of hope and promise. Rastafari is a New World religious tradition emerging from the crucible of oppression, poverty, death and alienation, of depression era Kingston, Jamaica. Rastafari names Babylon in the oppressive forces of racial and economic oppression, while projecting hope for liberation in Zion. Rastafari’s performative hermeneutic of Word, Sound and Power shifts, for those who have eyes to see, our gaze beyond the ordinary canons of sacred texts to appreciate the erstwhile neglected intertextuality of the canon within the canon, which is the truth, the word made flesh, written on the other half of the heart.

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