Gadamer's 'Fusion Of Horizons'

Part One

Understanding through the “Fusion of Horizons”

The fact that dialogue aims at gaining a better and rich understanding of the Other, be it a text or a human interlocutor, does not negate its difficulty and the eventual misunderstanding at stake. For this reason, Gadamer’s hermeneutics does not support the idea of an ideal fulfilling dialogue. Rather, his entire approach cannot be grasped without a slow meditation on his “fusion of horizons”, which constitutes the core of Truth and Method. In fact, the concept of horizon in Gadamer’s thought derives from Husserl’s phenomenology which is “obviously seeking to capture the way all limited intentionality of meaning merges into the fundamental continuity of the whole” (Gadamer 247). Gadamer’s

M. Forster’s well-known and controversial novel, A Passage to India. It is an exemplary literary case that teaches us ways of knowing as to how to approach otherness in its diverse categories. Yet, as criticized by many, the novel is said to be controversial due to its eclectic scope and unclear vision through which one finds it hard to decide upon the authorial intention and position on the Anglo-Indian encounter. This lacking of position concerning the tensional situation in colonial India makes Forster appear as a persona non grata in the political scene. Forster reveals several fallacies of English colonial rule and analyzes the cultural and raced-based conflict between the Indian and the English, scrutinizing the colonial period of the British Raj from with a double bind. Questioning the legacy of British presence, on the one hand, Englishman Forster becomes widely criticized of spreading skeptical attitudes and ill will among Anglo-Indians. On the other hand, his regular and snobbish Bloomsbury-group attitudes make him unwelcomed among Indian readership. Belonging to the “white superior race”, Forster could escape harsh criticism and accusations of V. S. Naipaul who describes A Passage to India as “utter rubbish” and “a lying mystery” (Kelso The Guardian 2001), pointing to Forster’s sexual orientation and his experience in colonial

For this end, I will first discuss the importance of moving a step further from postcolonial theoretical confinement toward a more including and open understanding of the Other. That is, a vision of understanding which includes the Other as an active participant in dialogue and in the process of knowledge formation. Reading the novel from the different themes it tackles, I will secondly examine, in the light of Gadamer’s ethical insights –notably tradition, dialogue and the “I-Thou” encounter– the cross-cultural conflict and ways of understanding, as depicted in A Passage to India, and in a later stage, in Season of Migration to the