Empoword

Part Two: Text Wrestling 154 Interpretation is a complex process that is unique to every reader. It is a process of meaning- making that relies on your particular position as a reader. Your interpretive position is informed by several factors. • Your purpose – In the same way you have a rhetorical purpose in writing, you often have a purpose in reading, either consciously or subconsciously. What are you trying to accomplish in this encounter with a text? • Your background – Your lived experiences have trained you to perceive texts with certain assumptions. This background is a blend of cultural, educational, geographical, familial, ideological, and personal influences, among many others. • Your posture – The stance you assume relative to a text will contribute to what meaning you make as you read, think about, and write about that text. This relative position might be emotional (what mood you’re in while reading) or contextual (what situation you’re reading in), and may also be impacted by your background and purpose. • Your lens – Related to your purpose, lens refers to the way you focus your attention on particular ideas, images, and language to construct meaning. Toward what elements are you directing your attention It would be simpler, perhaps, to acknowledge that we will never all agree on an interpretation of a text because of these differences. But the stakes are higher here than simply, “Is Mad Max feminist?” Interpretation gets down to the very way we encounter the world; it is about all our biases and flaws; it is about truth; it is about building new knowledges and dismantling institutional oppression. In other words, analytical interpretation is not so esoteric as slotting texts into labels like “feminist” or “not feminist.” It is a practice of thinking critically, examining our sense of community and communication, and pursuing social justice. Analysis On a basic level, analysis refers to the conceptual strategy of “part-to-whole.” Because I grew up playing with LEGOs® (or, more often, the cheap knock-offs), I like to use this analogy: Imagine a castle built of 1000 LEGO bricks. I can look at the entire structure and say, “Oh, that’s a castle”—this is a reasonable interpretation. But to understand how that castle has actually come together, I pull a few of the LEGO bricks from various parts of the structure. I look at those bricks individually, closely examining each side (even the sides that I couldn’t see when they were part of the castle).