A successful hermene�tic must simultaneously demystify and restore lost meaning

Evidence

There are a number of coordinates by which such a hermeneutical operation might be located. We must, for example, distinguish between what Paul Ricoeur has called negative and positive hermeneutics, between the hermeneutics of suspicion and the hermeneutics of a restoration of some original, forgotten meaning, between hermeneutic as demystification, as the destruction of illusions, and a hermeneutic which offers renewed access to some essential source of life. For Ricoeur, of course, the latter cannot be imagined as anything other than the sacred, so that the only form of positive hermeneutic of which he is able to conceive remains an essentially religious one. Negative hermeneutic, on the other hand, is at one with modern philosophy itself, with those critiques of ideology and illusory consciousness which we find in Nietzsche and in Marx, in Freud (“for Freud,” Bloch tells us, “the dream’s manifest content is essentially carnival time, wearing masks; the interpretation of the dream is the Ash Wednesday that follows”). With these twin, irreconcilable characteristics, that of demystification and that of an essential restoration of access, the requirements for any genuinely successful and concrete hermeneutic are given, and the ingenuity with which Bloch manages to satisfy both on a secular basis may be judged. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 238

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Ricoeur’s negative vs. positive hermeneutics and shows how Bloch unites them on a secular basis — a key dialectical move.
• XREF: Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion connects to Jameson’s later totalization/ideology critique and to Marx/Nietzsche/Freud as the master-suspicion trio the reader knows from The Political Unconscious. — connects to: Hermeneutics requires both suspicion and attentive listening — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 6814; Hermeneutic interpretation recovers authentic hope from even the most regressive cultural forms. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 258

Broader Connections

• Hermeneutics requires both suspicion and attentive listening #corroborates (0.90) — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 6814
• Hermeneutic interpretation recovers authentic hope from even the most regressive cultural forms. #expands (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 258