424 RüdigerKunow
the secret operations in question are those of a powerful disease. In this
latter context, it is important that Josselson should have identified
hermeneutics, including its critical, distrustful variant, "as a cultural
mechanism for our apprehension of reality" (Tou ching Feeling 3;
emphasis added).^121 I take this to imply that hermeneutical suspicion is
not an aberrant pathological condition of being in or seeing the world
but instead a critical operation mounting a challenge to the apodictic
evidenceofthegiven.
Ihaveinvokedthisdiscussionherenotforthepurposeof"applying"
the concept of a hermeneutics of suspicion, however conceived, to yet
anotherproblemareabutrathertodescribeinterpretivepracticesthatare
solicited by and suitable to emergencies, such as those created by the
inexorable presence of a shape-shifting, deadly disease such as cancer.
And here, suspicion is not necessarily only directed towards the disease
and its workings but might also extend to the medical profession itself,
its interpretations of cancer, and the treatments which it considers
appropriate.^122 Given the existential and epistemological urgencies
created by such a disease, when evidence cannot and oftentimes should
notbetrusted,"theproblemofhermeneuticalsuspicion"(Gadamer313),
the problem of doubting the reliability of appearances, including those
of the body, is of paramount importance. It may cost lives—and it may
save them. Cancer is probably the most obvious instance of a cultural
hermeneutics in which disease is playing the role that in previous times
cultural critique, "these infinitely doable and teachable protocols of unveiling
[which] have become the common currency of cultural and historicist studies"
(Hardt21).
(^121) Gadamer makes a similar point that is even more closely related to our
present concerns: speaking of Schleiermacher, he defines hermeneutics as "a
foundation, a primary aspect of social existence, [important] not only for the
scholarly interpretation of texts as documents of the past, but also for
understanding the mystery of the inwardness of the other person"
("HermeneuticsofSuspicion"316).
(^122) ThewholevastcontextofCAM (ComplementaryandAlternativeMedicine)
is important here. Cf. Clarke, "Rise of Medicine" 139-41; Clarke et al.
"Theoretical and Substantive Introduction" 15, "Technoscientific
Transformations" 75-76. My thanks to Ariane Schröder for alerting me to this
context.