Whose Home is it Anyway? A Feminist Response to Gadamer’s Hermeneutics

In his paper, "Hans-Georg Gadamer&s;s Metaphorical Hermeneutics", Joel Weinsheimer argues that, for Gadamer, language and understanding are fundamentally metaphorical. In developing his analysis, Weinsheimer follows the ontological direction of Gadamer&s;s thought. Although ontology, in Gadamer&s;s view, goes beyond the limitations of an analysis beginning with subjective consciousness, Gadamer imports into discussions of Being normative commitments drawn from social relations between subjects. His onto-logical analysis undermines his project of acknowledging how history operates in human consciousness. Gadamer&s;s concern with universality precludes raising questions about the relations of power that inform his own discourse and that are a parameter of language in general. His search for a relation to language that is prior to specific relations in the human community precludes seeing that one&s;s access to language and the content of one&s;s discourse are shaped by existing relations of power. Being at home, as Weinsheimer notes, is Gadamer&s;s preferred metaphor for understanding the fundamental relation to language.