ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the contrast and interaction of the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ and the ‘hermeneutics of trust’. The hermeneutics of suspicion is commonly linked to the work of Paul Ricoeur. However, rather than championing suspicious interpretation, Ricoeur insists that suspicion and faith (or trust) may both play a role in the activity of sense-making. On this point, the hermeneutic thought of Ricoeur and Gadamer is comparable. Gadamer's key notion of dialogue conceives of the relation between text and interpreter in terms of that between two speakers in exchange with one another. The text speaks, it has something to say; and our role as readers is to listen to it and question it further, in the belief that it may communicate something important to us. The chapter then examines a particular instance of ‘suspicious’ reading: Edward Said's discussion of Albert Camus in his Culture and Imperialism. Said's influential reading finds hidden colonialist attitudes in some of Camus's best-known works. On the basis of close reading and reference to the work of other critics, the chapter suggests that these attitudes are not in fact hidden but they are precisely the explicit subject of Camus's writing. A suspicious reading finds secrets and concealment, whereas a trusting reading gives credit to the text for its own knowledge and insight.
