In this case art began needing support from outside to appreciate it. Susan Sontag Against Interpretation 1964 莉 舒 2 mimetic theory need not close their eyes to decorative and abstract art. She discusses and mixes the ideas of other writers and further differentiates two kinds of interpretation – form based interpretation and content based interpretation. H�lTɒ�0��+�Q�b!ɋ��DAAAMQ|c8h��h�lef��晬���΀�so�����m[��v�*YS��W�?+�3�/b�b y��L�ٚ�f5�Hg��n�{q By three armies of interpreters one citing is writing as a social allegory, the other as psychoanalytic allegory and the third as a religious allegory. The only difference is in classical theory interpretation, only alter in order to reconcile meaning where insistent but respectful in their opinions and give one more meaning to the existing meaning without rejecting the original. 0000009324 00000 n 0000005118 00000 n In a 1968 essay in Commentary, Irving Howe saw her as the “publicist” for a young generation of critics that was making its presence felt “like a spreading blot of anti-intellectualism.” Focusing on the woman rather than the work, other critics dubbed her “… She also asks for “a vocabulary of forms” that is like descriptive rather than prescriptive. The persuasiveness of “Against Interpretation,” for example, Sontag’s manifesto for a more immediate and sensual relationship with art, free of overly intellectualized mediation, is thoroughly undercut by the dry verbiage of the essay itself. Nothing was rejected in classical interpretation. on Susan Sontag’s Essay “Against Interpretation”, Dr Vinay Lal’s Concepts of the Indian Diaspora. 0000006848 00000 n It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including 'On Style,' and the eponymous essay 'Against Interpretation.' The title “against” does not mean that Sontag is against interpretation, rather it questions those that are against and tries to defend interpretation. She believes that it was the classical period which gave importance to ‘content’ of a work other than meaning and other things. The theory of interpretation both makes and mars context as she believes that the task of interpretation is virtually one of translating through transforming. Irrespective of the conceptions on the theories of art, whether art is a picture of social reality or of language, the content of it is what all finally look to (that something it says or it is trying to say or it has said). She also believes that margins are always inverted. 0000004312 00000 n Therefore interpretation does not give absolute and complete meaning that is it does not have absolute and complete meaning; that is, it does not have absolute value. "Against Interpretation" is the direct statement of this view. Like Nietzsche, Sontag thinks we're too analytical, too divorced from our instincts, and a direct encounter with art is essential to enliven us. Sontag spelled out this critical program in her 1964 essay, “Against Interpretation,” which now appears in the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism in its most recent third edition—the sure sign of her domestication by American humanities. These modern theorists acting as interpreters question the truth and started excavating in order to create new meanings by “digging behind the text”. The world here she refers to is the text in all it’s gestalt glory and this is what the interpreter recreates. On the contrary, modern interpreters discarded established truths in order to recreate their own. Sontag traces interpretation with all its doubtful, corollaries, to the classical theory of art as mimesis (imitation) of reality. 0000003471 00000 n In 1966 her first essay collection Against Interpretation was released to wide critical acclaim. Susan Sontag. 0000003230 00000 n 0000007687 00000 n Summary Sections 1–3. 0000003004 00000 n In the same way, Samuel Beckett is read as an absurd world of man’s alienation from meaning or from God and from the psychological point of view looked on as an allegory of psycho-pathology. In reducing the work of art to its content, an interpreter “lames the work of art”. Susan Sontag addresses this in her essay Against Interpretation, which was published in 1966 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Hence, the world of art gets depleted and impoverished in the transformation of ‘the’ to ‘this’ work, art or world. As the only woman among the 1960s world of New York Jewish intellectuals, Sontag was both venerated and villainized, depicted as either a counter-cultural hero or a posturing pop celebrity. She argues that, yet they both have looked upon art as (in Freudian terms) manifest content with the intention to communicate meanings alone. “If I had to choose between the Doors and Dostoyevsky, then — of course — I’d choose Dostoyevsky,” Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933–December 28, 2004) wrote in the preface to the 30th-anniversary edition of her cultural classic Against Interpretation, then mischievously asked, “But do I have to choose? She talks about the past with the present interpretation. 0000007666 00000 n 0000005139 00000 n 0000054959 00000 n Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. … Happenings did not make me care less about Aristotle and Shakespeare. ���{�N��/'��@S�NRM3 B0L�H�rK (Cf. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of … Against Interpretation closes with the platitude: “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.” (Sontag, p.14) This is one of Sontag’s statements that promises more than it delivers. 0000000967 00000 n Against Interpretation is an essay written by American critic Susan Sontag. She discusses and mixes the ideas of other writers and further differentiates two kinds of interpretation – form based interpretation and content based interpretation. Unlike most literary critics, Sontag believes that literary criticism is growing increasingly destructive towards the very works of art that they, supposedly, so … Her non-fiction works include A gainst Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and its Metaphors and Regarding the Pain of Others. 0000033967 00000 n B�_��t�Ͱ�"V�crw7���u���o^PF�'��������T~��!���y:��Ŗ�X��ܜN?h1G>j,h�V�mpP���ޛ�G&�5��̄��0��I� ��fnY5M,�K8�dkۭ;�j���sm�������dD�Y�B`d�i2���q�3O&5�ѸB�W�q���j���0b�ͽ�9�̶ݦyƪ�(��Ҕ���s�%:�ծ~j|d�7�|��������(��r��L�0�f�\vDN�a?L�.������9_1�D̴:���D�����t2첖�5'P�q�J~|�0kAO\X^�*��4Ub/��w��\.��u=L�� �H�86��M��:�5S���>�d���� �6O� endstream endobj 32 0 obj 707 endobj 33 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 32 0 R >> stream Rather than recognizing great creative works as possible … Susan Sontag addresses this in her essay Against Interpretation, which was published in 1966 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In the latter, Sontag argues that in the new approach to aesthetics the spiritual importance of art is being replaced by the emphasis on the intellect.… Sontag's best-known work is On Photography (1977), a collection of essays dealing with the history of visual culture as well as its impact on both art and the national psyche. If a reader learns to remove the content from focus, one will begin to see things as they are and as they should be. Download books for free. She has written novels like The Benefactor (1964) and Death Kit (1968) . 0000001569 00000 n Sontag immediately addresses this, clarifying her use of the term at the start of section 3: Of course, … 0000006012 00000 n Sontag’s criticism was marked by a formalist aversion to content. An interpreter exercises all the sensory experiences to set up a “shadow world of meanings” and “turn the world into this world”. Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation” Susan Sontag is an American Critic who rejected New Criticism. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including "On Style," and the eponymous essay "Against Interpretation." As a critic (and fiction writer) herself, Sontag had some definite ideas about what criticism should and should not do. 0000003531 00000 n 21 0 obj << /Linearized 1 /O 23 /H [ 1060 301 ] /L 105399 /E 57788 /N 5 /T 104861 >> endobj xref 21 31 0000000016 00000 n the paintings in the caves at Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La Pasiega, etc.) In conclusion Sontag advocates against looking at an interpreting art didactically or as a delight. Susan Sontag is an avante-guarde writer (who discards conventions) who belongs to the American school of criticism. The chief commodity of Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation," according to its own author and her reviewers, is a modern sensibility. Susan Sontag in her essay “Against Interpretation” focuses on what an interpretation really is. Therefore art was neither useful nor true. Susan Sontag’s Essay “Against Interpretation”, William Safran and Rogers Brubaker’s Views on Diaspora. 0000008501 00000 n 0000006033 00000 n Sontag cites Thomas Mann as an over-cooperative author and “the mars ravishment” of Kafka. Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Among the three interpretations, Kafka as Kafka is lost. 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