Distantiation

J. Severino Croatto uses the term distantiation in his book Biblical Hermeneutics: toward a theory of reading as the production of meaning. He uses this term to mean the distance between two things, which results in ideas and language being lost.

Croatto mentions three occurrences of distantiation in the process of reading a text. These three distances are between language and speech, between speech and text, and between text and rereading.

The distances between language and speech happen when someone is trying to get a thought from their head into the spoken world. He says that the “badge” of this first distantiation is “the ‘closure’ of meaning. No temporal of spatial distance is involved, of course; the ‘distance’ is of the logical order” (pg. 16). The exact thoughts of the speaker will not be understood by the listener, since the speaker must put into a language or set of signs that the listener must interpret. The speaker will close meaning whenever they speak, while meaning is then opened up for the listener, which they have to interpret for themselves.

Another occurrence of distantiation is between speech and text. This text can either be oral or written. “A text is a ‘texture,’ etymologically, a web, in which the elements of language (words, sentences, literary units, and other elements) are organized according to structural functions that as such produce a meaning” (pg. 16). This is similar to the first distantiation, because as soon as ideas are written down, they are open to interpretation. Also with written texts, there can be hundreds of years between the author writing his or her thoughts and another person reading and interpreting that text. “The disappearance of the author of a text, the shift in addresses, changes in the life context engendering questions about the message—all these factors occasion a distantiation with respect to the first production of meaning, that of the act of discourse” (pg. 34).

The third hermeneutic distantiation occurs between text and rereading. Each time you reread a text, you will come to it with more knowledge than you did the previous time you read it. You will have a larger reservoir or meaning for the text. “The greater the distance, the more numerous will be the perspectives of a rereading of the text” (pg. 34).

These different distances within interpretations of text are important to realize. Whatever the author or speaker was trying to communicate may not match exactly with your interpretations. This is not a bad thing, but can create a richer understanding of a text.