Witnesses… this is one of Aristotle’s topoi. I’ll address it after my précis of Jerome McGann’s essay on interpreting texts.
Jerome McGann, in “Interpretation” (2005), lays out a how-to guide for up-and-coming scholars for discerning texts and documents. McGann supports his endeavor by illustrating how one goes about conducting performative interpretation and scholarly interpretation, an act he likens to “finding flesh and blood” (161). McGann’s purpose is to help his reader understand how to read a text with a more critical eye, searching for nuances that bare truths about the text and ourselves. He creates a trusting relationship with his audience of graduate students, instructors, and scholars, who are interest in and need interpretive tools to broaden their critical abilities.
So if McGann is calling for us to develop more nuanced and critical eyes, then he is asking us to witness many things an author is attempting—theme, political convictions, persuasions, morals, monetary issues, ideological issues, etc. (just to name a truly small few). In other words, we are witnesses to an author’s argument, story, poem, film, speech, etc. As witnesses, do we have a responsibility to stand up and testify to what we have observed?
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