Law and Literature: Two Hermeneutic Sciences

[alixtii]

inlovewithnight linked to this article, "Harry Potter and the Framers' Intent," which discusses the way one should respond to JKR on Dumbledore's sexuality in relation to various theories of constitutional law. I used the same exact parallel in the comments of this post, actually, to discuss my position on authorial intent. What the article writer fails to emphasize sufficiently, however, (because he is too interested in selling his position on consitutional law, one I agree with) is that one doesn't have to go all the way to the place he goes wrt constitutional law to get to the rejection of JRK's authority. Even the position of a conservative originalist/textualist like Scalia would be enough to transfer the interpretative authority from JKR as author to the world as readers (which includes JKR, but also millions if not billions of others); the question of whether posterity should approach the text with the same interpretative conditions that we do is a question that can be saved for, well, posterity.

Scalia writes:

Two persons who speak only English see sculpted in the desert sand the words “LEAVE HERE OR DIE.” It may well be that the words were the fortuitous effect of wind, but the message they convey is clear, and I think our subjects would not gamble on the fortuity.

[. . .] As my desert example demonstrates, symbols (such as words) can convey meaning even if there is no intelligent author at all. If the ringing of an alarm bell has been established, in a particular building, as the conventional signal that the building must be evacuated, it will convey that meaning if it is activated by a monkey. And to a society in which the conventional means of communication is sixteenth-century English, The Merchant of Venice will be The Merchant of Venice even if it has been typed accidentally by a thousand monkeys randomly striking keys.

[. . .]

What is needed for a symbol to convey meaning is not an intelligent author, but a conventional understanding on the part of the readers or hearers that certain signs or certain sounds represent certain concepts.

And remember: this is the conservative position; the liberals would agree with it, and go even further (to the claim that meaning is even more manipulatable than Scalia would accept--but still not authorized by the [living, breathing, historical-biographical] author, but by a reader-constructed author-function).