Material Hermeneutics: Diatoms and Cunieform Tablets/ Worms and Medieval Books

• In Event: Postphenomenology - IV: Refining the Conceptual Framework

Abstract

A material hermeneutic “lets things speak,” and this presentation examines the diatoms which are fossilized in ancient cunieform tablets. The three species found give a record of the salification of irrigation waters which doomed Mesopotamian culture millenia ago. Worm holes in the wooden stiffeners which were needed to make books in Oxford’s Medieval collection show previously unknown processes in book production, another piece of material hermeneutics which change and enrich our “histories” beyond any linguistic evidence. My argument is that the logocentrism implicit in humanities and social science disciplines need a material supplement. Imaging technologies reveal and call for a material interpretation to provide this supplement. Such a material hermeneutic unites what previously could have been called “the Dilthean Divide.”

Author

• Don Ihde, Stony Brook University