Friday 23 August 2019

'It is through interpretation that teachers attempt to transmit cultural values, but...'

On Interpretation and Beyond! | Culler

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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