‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Mark 12:30 wrote:

I also stated that in my opinion those who claim to "have" or to have "mastered" the Truth haven't been pursuing it long enough to realize how big it is. So how do you extrapolate from that that I aim to impose my view-- Sauron-like, "own personal vision of truth (through his ego)?"

And Child threatened:

Ahem! That's the second time, you've hinted at a certain kinship I may have with the Nazgûl. As I read your posts, I feel a strong compulsion to go down to the Shire and dig up an RPG where I can fly around and instill terror in folk's heart!

To save myself from misunderstanding (not to mention Child’s wrath!) allow me to clarify my point somewhat (although I was very careful there to say that I don’t think anyone here is a Nazgûl – balrogs, maybe, but never Nazgûl! (hmmm. . .but would they be winged balrogs, or unwinged. . . )

It just seems to me that the instant we begin to locate the text’s meaning or value anywhere near its association with or embodying forth of Truth (no matter how we use that term, and Child, I agree with you this is very dangerous territory – perilous even) then we run the risk of putting ourselves into the role of the Nazgûl insofar as we render ourselves willingly passive before the text. No matter how much we might say that we can apprehend that Truth as our own and make it belong to ourselves as individuals, we still are saying that the ‘point’ of reading is to lay ourselves down on the tracks of the reading experience and let the Truth roar over us like a freight train.

This is why I want to locate the ‘truth’ of the text within the process that it begins between the readers of it. This way, the truths that we develop within the truth-full relation or manner of speaking that we construct in response to the text is one in which we can maintain an active and willed freedom. The Nazgûl are the Nazgûl because they have lost the ability to ask any question other than “What does Sauron want of us?” They are utterly passive before the Truth that they have accepted (or been forced to accept, or whatever). The Fellowship remains free because they locate the truth of their quest explicitly NOT in relation to what Eru wants (there is no divine injunction to destroy the Ring) but because of the relationships that they have with and toward each other, and the other peoples of Middle-Earth. They are free in their Quest because they are free to turn aside from it at any time, but do not. The choices they make are, and must always be, over and over and over again, active re-affirmations of their commitment to the truths that impel them on their journey and bind them together. The instant we forget this and announce that the meaning of the journey is bound in any way to some singular and static Truth at the end. . .well, we cease to engage in the active pursuit of reaffirmation between and amongst our community, and subjugate ourselves to what we imagine that Truth to be.