Deconstruction and the concept logos in the Gospel of John and the binary opposition between the oral and the written text, with special reference to primarily oral cultures in South Africa.
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2002
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Abstract
This thesis examines the Historical Critical method and its opponent Deconstruction in relation
to the Logos tradition from the perspective of Orality-Literacy Studies. The resultant paradigm
seeks to revise the logical procedures underlying the Historical Critical method and
Deconstruction, so as to approximate the media realities that underlie the Logos tradition and its
power for resistance.
The first part of the thesis undertakes a detailed historical critical analysis of the Logos
tradition and the proposed religious influences in the Gospel of John. The Historical Critical
Method of the Logos has focused exclusively on written text, i.e.Words committed to
chirographic space. This analysis is followed by a critical analysis of the Logos-Hymn, which
is followed by an indepth exegetical study ofJohn's Prologue (1: 1-18) in locating the form and
character of the Logos-Hymn. The Logos tradition will serve as bedrock in understanding the
polemic in Chapters five and six and its relationship to John's Prologue (1: 1-18) in the Gospel
of John and that of primarily! oral communities prior the 1994 democratic era in South Africa.
The second part of the study will focus on Derrida' s Deconstruction critique of the
metaphysics of presence against the Logos which presents as a leading case for Logocentrism.
Deconstruction should be seen as a series of recent displacements among philosophy, literary
criticism and Biblical studies. Current reaction to Derrida in philosophy and literary criticism includes enthusiastic acceptance but also hostility and rejection from academic humanists who
perceive him as a threat to their metaphysical assumptions. Reaction from Biblical scholars
could be similarly negative, although most of Derrida's writings should stimulate them to a
healthy rethinking of their positions. Derrida's insistence that meaning is an affair of
language's systems of difference "without positive terms" and his proposition that writing is
prior to speech are two main elements in his attack on the foundations of Western metaphysics
and its 'logocentric' convictions that we can experience meaning in 'presences' removed from
the play of differential systems (Schneidau 1982:5).
Derrida repudiates the classical logos behind this assumption but also the Christian Logos, yet
the Biblical insistence on our understanding of ourselves in relation to a historical past, rather
than in terms of a static cosmic system, breaks with the tendencies of logocentrism and allows
us to align Derrida and the Bible. This radical way of appropriating history, without the
possibility of reifications of various sorts, should lead Biblical scholars further into
kerygmatic reflection. Derrida's deconstruction demonstrates the dubious status of ordinary
language, literal meaning, and common sense thinking and invites us to see the illusory
metaphysics behind the written text, a metaphysics that some Biblical structuralists seem to
accept uncritically. It is these metaphysical analyses of the Word that unravel the binary
opposition between the spoken Logos and that of the written text and its relation to meaning
and representation in the reality of primarily oral cultures.
The third part of the thesis will focus the attention on tradition perceived as transmissional
processes towards a means of communication in primarily oral cultures. In the place of the Historical Critical Method and Deconstruction henneneutics of the Logos tradition, an oral
thesis is developed which will focus on an Anthropology of Liberation. The Logos can be seen
as a liberating force for primarily oral communities against the falsely constructed realities of
the written text in our South African context. The written text has played a major role in the
social engineering of segregation and social boundaries by the Apartheid government in South
Africa.
It is suggested that Orality-Literacy research is an appropriately inclusive metaphor in
understanding the Logos as a collective memory for primarily oral cultures shared by hearer
and speaker alike. Orality-literacy helps us to understand the literary dynamics between
speech and writing and to dialogue with the history of the 'Other' or those from the
'otherside, 'the marginalized and the dispossesed. Finally this thesis suggest that the discourse
of the 'Other' is able to produce meaning and representation in the construction of knowledge,
and is a discourse that is shared by hearer and speaker alike.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.
Keywords
Oral-formulaic analysis., Bible. N.T. John--Language, style., Oral tradition--South Africa., Theses--Orality-literacy studies.