Race And Reading: The Problems Of Interpretation
...on a piece of paper. There are as many ways to interpret text as there are readers and
each reader has their own knowledge reservoir to draw from. People relate what they are
reading to what they know and have experienced. If they see and immigrant or traveller
they will associate everything they know about the persons country to them. If they are
reading a narrative they will visualise the characters as they would expect to find them
based on their experience. The ethnicity of both the reader and what is being read can be a
particularly powerful aspect affecting interpretation. A European academic is going
approach a text in a different way than an African tribal elder. Under this scrutiny even the
most seemingly universal topics will be read, interpreted and pondered in a way that will
give specific meaning to the reader; this meaning may even be contrary to what the author
was originally trying to communicate. The problems of interpretation are evident in many
texts.
Personal experience is a powerful tool that readers use when they read a text. Experience
influences how they interpret text and make what they are reading specific to themselves.
They take what they already know about the subject and form an opinion, this opinion may
be positive or negative. Amitava Kumar tends toward the negative aspects of interpretation,
or prejudice, in his article “The Shame of Arrival” (Kumar 2000). Kumar claims that
history is glued to the backs of immigrants and that they are associated with this history
wherever they go. For example, Kumar puts a lot of emphasis on how two Indian men, V. S.
Naipaul and his friend Rashid interpret William Howard Russell’s description of the Indian
mutiny differently. According to Kumar Russell’s book “reeks of death and plunder”
(Kumar 2000:5) and that this...
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