Interpretation

From Geography

Every observation is not entirely objective. This is because all those observations are derrived from things that happened in the past. In short: an interpretation is a personal judgement about the meaning of a given situation, a text, a place and so on. According to Hall (1997) Meaning and representation seem to belong to the interpretative side of the human and cultural sciences. Interpretations never produce a final moment or absolute truth. Instead, interpretations are always followed by other interpretations, in an endless chain, which creates a 'circle of meaning' (Hall, 1997: 42). Jacques Derrida compared interpretation with writing: writing always leads to more writing. Differences, he argued, can never be wholly captured within any binary system (Derrida in Hall, 1997:42).

References

Hall, S. (1997). Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. The Open University, Walton Hall.

Published by Pauline van Heugten