Empire and a hermeneutics of vulnerability

Abstract

The author proposes a hermeneutic of vulnerability as part of a programme of an ethics of interpretation whereby readers not only become aware of what the effect of their reading or interpretation will be on others and for which they need to take responsibility, but that will also limit the effects of any discrimination in future. Recognising vulnerability in oneself and in others can further lead to unmasking privileged positions of the past that the former political dispensation has produced and which need to be fore-grounded for the sake of reconciliation. In other words, it is unmasking the old prevalent colonial power relationships in what has become the new “empire”. This article will start by looking at the way people have historically been made vulnerable by a particular understanding of reality as empire with specific reference to the portrayal of Africa as dark and wild, and how the historical narrow understanding of hermeneutics (Berkhof) fed this vulnerability. Secondly, in order to recognise vulnerability, the author discusses the need for a broader definition of hermeneutics as scientific understanding. Thirdly he illustrates the need for a hermeneutics of vulnerability by unmasking whiteness and the psychological advantage it provided in history and, fourthly, he explores a model of a hermeneutics of vulnerability in terms of the exclusion of the “Other”.