To Nietzsche,
there aren’t facts but only interpretations!
Well, he calls it perspectivism, by which he connotes to say that, since perception,
experience, and reason change according to the viewer’s relative perspective
and interpretation, there is no objective reality that is free from ‘perspective’
or ‘interpretation’!
Susan Sontag’s seminal 1966 essay titled,
“Against Interpretation,” is an admonition for all those interpretations on
art! And hence her famous dictum that, interpretation had become ‘the
intellect's revenge upon art.’
Jonathan Culler, in his profound book
titled, The Pursuit of Signs, posits the
need to go beyond interpretation. His opening essay to the book is quite an
eye-opener of sorts!
To Culler, the nuanced exercise of
criticism has a strategic place in the production of literary tradition, but
that does not mean that it should dominate literary studies.
He is of the opinion that,
Readers will continue to read and
interpret literary works, and interpretation will continue in the classroom,
since it is through interpretation that teachers attempt to transmit cultural
values, but critics should explore ways of moving beyond interpretation. E. D.
Hirsch, for many years a leading champion of interpretation, has reached the
conclusion that criticism should no longer devote itself to the goal of
producing ever more interpretations: ‘A far better solution to the problem of
academic publishing would be to abandon the idea that has dominated scholarly
writing for the past forty years: that interpretation is the only truly
legitimate activity for a professor of literature. There are other things to
do, to think about, to write about.
And therein lies the importance of The Pursuit of Signs, which explores
some of the possibilities in this direction of thinking beyond interpretation!
image: amazondotcom
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