Expert interpretation as a method of power in a performative mode

We may think of the expert interpretation of complex texts, hermeneutics, as the invocation of power like a speech-act.

Hermeneutics occurs once the meaning of something is sufficiently complex yet socially important, such as legal and religious texts (Paul Fry). Due to its complexity, it cannot be transparently understood nor passed down through oral tradition. Methods of interpretation arise out of the impossibility of direct knowledge of meaning. Because the meaning of religious and legal documents cannot be maintained without hermeneutics, this meaning is fluid. Hermeneutics is therefore a form of knowledge preservation tangential to the archive. It is tangential because once it begins, it will follow its own line of reasoning in collaboration with its larger discourse. 

In turn, this method of knowledge transmission reflexively redefines the object of its knowledge. This is the manner in which the flowing, interpretative, even performative, evolution of power-knowledge undermines the authority of that knowledge. The rule of interpretation is not identical to itself as it progresses over time. In the same movement, this hermeneutic power causes the appearance of change. It functions as appearance due to the inessential relations that perpetuate it. The social relationship unfolds as a speech-act in that only symbolically designated people are permitted to speak in and through these interpretations.

The reproduction of complex discourse is inessential to its source text, yet a necessary act in the invocation of its power. Interpretation is a political act appealing to a symbolic authority, revitalizing itself as power in every performative utterance of the expert. Its effect is equal to the social importance of the source text. The expert is a politician through these means.

Reference

Paul Fry, "Ways In and Out of the Hermeneutic Circle."