Are Texts Tools? What Are They For?
You can use a shoe to protect your foot when you walk, but you can also take it off and use it as a hammer. You can’t use it to sew, to fly to outer space, to cook pasta, or to read people’s minds. You can use it to point. You can use it to make a sculpture, or an idol. If the shoe belongs to a famous person you can make it an icon, or sell it as a relic. You can use a shoe as a drumstick and a table as a drum. You can use it as a flyswatter.
Every tool has a primary use, a task it is intended for. But it also has secondary uses, capacities perhaps unknown to its inventor or to its users until the time that it is needed for its other capacities. Nobody buys a piece a bubble wrap thinking that, in a pinch, they’ll use it as a bandage. But just because tools have flexible utility, doesn’t mean that their capacities are infinite. A word can describe or command, but, for most of us (outside the world of Harry Potter), it can’t lift objects.
If texts are tools, we should distinguish between their primary function and secondary functions. It’s perfectly reasonable to use a text for reasons other than its intended use, but should we blame texts when they are used in secondary ways we don’t like? This seems like getting at mad at shoes because they can be weaponized (most things can be). On the other hand, if a text is designed for an effect we don’t like, it seems reasonable to criticize the text. The problem is that—unlike most tools whose primary use is obvious—texts don’t have an explicit primary use; it’s not easy to know what they are for, other than reading and interpreting. Texts communicate—but can we say anything more? Or is each text a unique tool with a unique function for a unique task?
P.S. Please enjoy my mega thread on Derrida.
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