Lest I perform a \u201ccontextectomy\u201d on the term as he used it, here is the context:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve taken the words, performed a contextectomy on them where you strip any and all cultural nuance from them, and attempted to force-fit reality into the hollow shell that remains.\u201d<\/p>\n
That pretty well sums up what I\u00a0understand the word to mean. You take a term (or a text, phrase, passage, or story), remove it not necessarily or not merely from its literary context but also from its linguistic, cultural, social and historical context, translate it into English if it isn\u2019t in English already, and then assume it means whatever the \u201cplain sense\u201d of the English seems to be to you. <\/p>\n
For the procedure to be successful, it is helpful if you (1) demean anyone in your own time who thinks the \u201cplain meaning\u201d might be something else, and (2) ignore all scholarship about the relevant language, culture(s) and history of ideas. You should also pretend either that (1) you don\u2019t interpret the text, you just read it, or (2) everyone <\/em>interprets the text and your assumptions are divinely-revealed, God-given ones that ensure that your interpretation is the correct one.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s the word of the day for today: contextectomy<\/em>.<\/p>\n Jay (in a comment on a recent post) used the term \u201ccontextectomy\u201d and I liked it so much that I wanted to share it with a wider audience. I am not sure if it is original to him (I have a vague sense that I may have heard it used before, but I may be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-805586770886203357?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")