In a time like this, when the thinking and actions of everything from politics to menu choices are about as clear as today's weather -- totally fogged -- the hermeneutics of suspicion are in play, but ought to be challenged. What good is it? First a definition.
In Wikipedia Rita Felski is quoted as saying: "[Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche] share a commitment to unmasking 'the lies and illusions of consciousness'; they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths ... Ricoeur's term has sustained an energetic after-life within religious studies, as well as in philosophy, intellectual history, and related fields.
All this is natural enough in a time of doubting authorities, resisting propaganda, and realizing what brain-washing can do. But it has led to a general attitude of debunking the truth of anything except one's own lived experience. Recently, given evidence of the unreliability of one's life, the idea has grown that there is NO truth and therefore one should stubbornly commit to one's own opinion, even in the face of pain or penalty. Our literature portrays heroes resisting torture in defense of truth. More mildly, advertising encourages product commitment.
"Felski also notes that "The 'hermeneutics of suspicion' is the name usually bestowed on [a] technique of reading texts against the grain and between the lines, of cataloging their omissions and laying bare their contradictions, of rubbing in what they fail to know and cannot represent." She turns back on these people their own critique. It's not unwelcome in a time when these three thinkers share a cultural background of white patriarchy and personal arrogance.
It's so automatic to be suspicious and dig for the meaning under the meaning that when someone spouts a screed of hatred against someone or something, a sarcastic response is "how do you REALLY feel about it?" More seriously, we look for the hidden psychological meaning, like the need to dominate and control. There are two gender versions: men wanting to run the world and women wanting everything to be 'perfect." Both get involved in religion/church. When it's in families, people suffer.
Recently the hermeneutics of suspicion have been running wild in indigenous communities struggling with the issue of identity, not just whether or not someone has the proper genetics (which can't be determined in spite of marketing DNA claims) but how much entitlement is entailed by provenance/pedigree. Money involved can be big if belonging to a tribe that operates as a cooperative and makes a profit on resources or a casino. Job and education advantages are also connected, But it is in the ineffable-but- "eff-able" contexts of art and literature where emotions run wild.
Much of this is so powerful because all creatures draw on the biological principle of suspicion to avoid or attack anything unfamiliar. In opposition is a tendency to want to know about something new or different, maybe as a source of renewal -- maybe just curiosity. Most difficult is the situation where there is a strong drive to find out something for sure, like the core defining characteristic of "Indians", but it is either impossible to discover because it existed only far in the past and in a thousand localities, or it is a concept that doesn't really exist because it was invented.
Since scientific research has "pulled the covers off" fertility-dictated binary sexes, revealing a host of variations plus the capacity to move from one physical sex to another, let alone the potential of choosing or inventing an infinite number of gender-role variations, this dynamic of suspicion versus commitment has ballooned.
Now for my specific example, the case of Stanley McCormick, son of Cyrus McCormick, the famous inventor of the McCormick reaper, which he is represented as single-handedly transforming grain harvest. In fact, he was working closely with his slave and others, plus using prototypes from England. It was a one-horse-drawn machine. The fame came from promotion in competitions so that from a headquarters in Chicago, sales were good enough to attract International Harvester to a merger. Then came the step up to the massive fire-driven combines. The real secret was sharp and resourceful business practice. People from around Seattle will tell you the same is true of Microsoft.
Stanley McCormick was handsome, smart, won prizes and popularity at Princeton and married one of the first women to earn a biology degree. Then he went mad. The reason was a mystery. It was attributed to "hormones" which were all the rage. It sounds to me more like hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis) or a prion disease. It was said that his chief symptom was hatred of women and the main scientific measure was to exclude all women from his life, including his wife. Transparently, the women obstructed access to the McCormick fortune. This hangup of Stanley's was a legal lever for removing his wife, her mother, and possibly even his mother.
Stanley's sister had the same affliction, though presumably her hormones were a different set. She was also confined, but in a different place with different care, which is never described. In her case nothing is said about hating women or men. For most of his life Stanley was kept at "Riven Rock" a sort of Mar-a-Lago in a California orange grove. Climate was considered vital.
Since he was on the east coast when the decision was made, in that bicoastal way of wealthy people, he was transported across the continent on a train. The key incident, Stanley's escape from his keepers so that he could get into the dining car was his last contact with a woman, a pretty girl whom he attacked by throwing himself on her, "grabbing her by the pussy", and licking her throat. (This may be a euphemism.) This was reported and was a real event. It was considered ghastly, unforgivable if he hadn't been so rich.
T.C. Boyle in his novel, "Riven Rock", begins with the Freudian past of Stanley at the little boy's father's funeral, continues through the train incident with a fictionalized National Enquirer nightmare of imagining that is sensational, cynical, sarcastic, and full of class hatred. As narrator he uses the head nurse, a stereotypical Irishman: vulgar, avaricious, uneducated, and semi-alcoholic. His staff is hydrocephalic but functional. The shrink is obsessed with monkeys and an orangutang, but these are not the creatures of Jane Goodall. Rather they are shitting, fucking, stinking, uncooperative versions of the underside of humans, which is animal.
The worst characteristics of treating madmen, of gender assignment. of science verging on charlatanism, are all described in the most extravagant prose and obscure words, as though written by a wanna-be with pretensions of grandeur. There were evidently enough people in 1998, the year of publication, who appreciated that sentiment to sell a lot of books and inspire a movie. But it was a construct. One could take the same known facts and construct quite a different story from a far more compassionate point of view. Outright lies were excused by saying this was fiction -- not a hoax, as would have been claimed in the next decade or so -- but a brilliant Shakespearean extension of the facts. It was also a time when obscenity was considered to be frank, revealed reality that was normally suppressed. The writing was considered bold and brilliant.
All of this fit with the hermeneutic of suspicion. It would be worth a thesis if one could bear to read the whole book. I'm struggling, but the daily news of hearings is no better so maybe there's some insight I just don't get. The Marxist critique and the Freudian prejudices are obvious. It must be in the Nietsche part of the idea.
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