Abstract
Textuality is a central feature of much hermeneutics, and is implicit in much analysis of place from a hermeneutical point of view, but has not often been analyzed. This chapter considers the usefulness and limits of the metaphor of text for place. While there is no doubt that our engagement with place can be textualized, it is useful to a hermeneutics of place to hold the metaphor of textuality in abeyance and consider what other forms of meaning or its lack or absence might arise with the use of other metaphors. I consider other metaphors, specifically place as body, place as scene, place as image/visuality, and place as haunting, to try to highlight aspects of place that might be easy to overlook if we take the text to be the act of understanding itself rather than a metaphor with its own provenance and horizons.
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Acknowledgement
Thanks to Michael Strawser and Sabatino DiBernardo for their useful comments on this chapter.
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Janz, B.B. (2017). Is Place a Text?. In: Janz, B. (eds) Place, Space and Hermeneutics. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52214-2_3
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