Study Day: Text and authority - Minutes
Graduate School Asia and Africa in Global Systems of Reference
Study day 2, organised by section 1 Text and context. General subject Text and authority at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Dec 14, 1pm - 6pm
Participants gave presentations; the texts of these presentations will be posted at the GZAA website. Presenters are requested to send in their texts to Asma Hilali who will then forward them to the web administrator.
Therefore, the following minutes disregard the presentations and reflect only remarks and comments.
1 A first debate came up after the presentation given by Elvira Wakelnig on Western scholars and hadith. The central questions, however, concerned the first presentation (by Stefan Leder) as well. The questions were: What is the point in studying hadith, how does this specialised field relate to the general topic of text and authority? And: What is "western" about the approach and the studies which were the centre of the second presentation? (It was Dorothée de Nève who asked these questions.) First, with reference to the presentation: hadith continues today as a powerful presence and a system of reference in large parts of Asia and Africa. It is important as an example for the coherence of a system which in this case is given also by a text corpus. As for the second question, there was a beginning of a debate revolving around different conceptions of authority. The cited scholars, after all, put the authority of the medieval Muslim scholars in question (or of Muslim scholars in general), and they seem to make a claim to authority themselves. There is, of course, a difference between theology (and approaches based on belief in general) and the critical scientific approach the cited scholars claim to follow. But nevertheless, since in medieval Muslim .ad îth criticism many of the methods used by modern "western" scholars were already in use, the debate is open. This debate in a way continued after Felix Otter’s presentation (on Indian texts on how to build houses). How can we define authority in a non-European context? The word "authority" (with its roots in Latin auctoritas meaning "ownership of a field") as well as the concept are so thoroughly European that it is hard to find a non-European term for it (there is no such term in Hebrew - is it in any of the other languages studied by any of us?).
2 After Ahmed Abdessalam’s paper on textual authority in the Quran there was another debate. The following propositions were made: Textual authority works on the basis of a theoretical framework and support. Therefore, there are Islamic theories of textual authority (out of these, some were mentioned in Ahmed Abdessalam’s talk). As a result, textual authority is not given to a text all over, but there are degrees: Some parts of the revealed text (the Quran) have authority for e.g. legal matters, others are explicitly deprived from such authority even if they still are good for recitation.
Moreover, hadith as a source for relations between the Quranic text and the circumstances of revelation asbâb an-nuzûl does not refer a text, but an occurrence (an event). It is not the text that qualifies the authority of a given verse in the Quran, but an event (which, it is true, is reported in a text). Normally, the difference between event and its textual representation is not taken into account. And even though as a general rule, we tend to be deconstructionist and stress textual representations over what they claim to represent, in this particular case it is the other way round: We have to look at the event, the referent, as well, and not only at its textual representation.
Who confers authority to a given text? Is it the text itself or the hermeneutics applied to it? It is the hermeneutics because authority comes in only as soon as we try to understand the text, it is therefore those who process the text in their endeavour to understand it who provide the text with authority.
3 After Christoph Langer’s presentation on funerals in Ghana there was a short debate on the orality and scripturality of authoritative texts. It was generally admitted that oral texts tend to be more flexible and liable to adjustment, whereas written texts are more rigid. But when a rite (which implies not only that certain texts be recited, but also gestures made and other non-verbal forms of behaviour) is being described authoritatively, new media come in. Can there be such a thing as an authoritative video tape? In this case, it is quite clear that it is neither the text nor the tape that holds authority, but the person(s) behind both. There are examples from other fields: "Popular" (or shamanic) medical practices are shown on video and are imitated because the person(s) behind them hold authority. In modern cinema, the mobile camera enables a quasi omniscient perspective not unlike narrators in 19th century novels, in these cases, the director vanishes behind the camera. Earlier, cameras used to be static, cuts used to be less smooth and so forth. Camera devices convey a higher degree of authority to the film.
4 After the presentation on pseudo-epigraphic literature given by Lutz Greisiger, there was a debate on this subject. The issue of who is responsible for a text being accepted as authoritative was at the centre. Lutz Greisiger added the following story: A given monastery had a manuscript presenting a text that was thought to be a Gospel according to St Peter. The monks asked their bishop whether they could use it in service. The bishop answered that there was no problem as long as there was no heresy in the text, and the monks continued to use it. But after a while, the bishop noticed that certain heretic positions or practices had become widespread in this monastery, and after an investigation, he concluded that this was due to certain passages in the pseudo-Gospel according to St Peter, and he ordered that the book be burnt because it was heretic. He did not argue that St Peter never wrote a Gospel and that therefore, the text could not be authentic - he was quite willing to accept such a text as authoritative and in fact, even holy, but when he noticed that the text did not fit into the context of orthodoxy and orthopraxis, he had to take according measures.
5 Authenticity and the relationship between authenticity and authority of a given text was a central issue in the debate after Asma Hilali’s paper. In fact, there can be two lines of thought. A transmitted text does not have to be supported by a theory of authenticity. Some authors quote texts as authoritative without ever addressing the question of their authenticity (such as Ghazâlî). Such a use of hadith could be called pragmatic. Even otherwise spurious texts can therefore be powerful.
Remarks at the end of the day:
- There should be more examples to convey an impression about the literary genre one is talking about.
- Basic definitions in the field of hadith should have been provided (but they were given in the invitation to the study day).
- The texts proposed for preparatory reading were difficult to understand for nonspecialists, and their sheer volume was repellent. Also, the texts did not clarify the issue. It would be better to indicate just a small amount of reading as obligatory and have a larger volume of texts as facultative reading. (But in a kind of afterthought mail, Asma Hilali had pointed out that the texts were meant rather as suggestions and not as obligatory reading.)
- The texts of the presentations should be made available on the GZAA homepage. (This was taken up. Presenters should send their texts to Asma Hilali who will then hand them over to the web administrator.)
- This second study day was more useful for the participants because many presentations referred to the projects pursued by the presenters. Thus, a diversity of perspectives was visible. Nevertheless, the focus on hadith was perhaps too narrow.
- Suggestion: Divide the study day into two steps. First, give a general introduction into the special field, and then try to generalise. Thus, we would first have the input of one discipline and then the others could relate to it. This would, however, presuppose that the there are questions to structure the debate.