susan sontag against interpretation

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. 0000007687 00000 n In conclusion Sontag advocates against looking at an interpreting art didactically or as a delight. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Therefore art was neither useful nor true. That is, in the classical period of interpretation, the old is not discarded but only revamped. Like Nietzsche, Sontag thinks we're too analytical, too divorced from our instincts, and a direct encounter with art is essential to enliven us. ��7��A_��~�-�yV�}V��ǜ�\�>z�1̰X;ݷ�0��jH��ǆ What is needed according to her is to refine our senses “to see, more to hear more and to feel more”. “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? The chief commodity of Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation," according to its own author and her reviewers, is a modern sensibility. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including 'On Style,' and the eponymous essay 'Against Interpretation.' 0000010040 00000 n Susan Sontag Against Interpretation 1964 莉舒 2 mimetic theory need not close their eyes to decorative and abstract art. It is included in her 1966 collection Against Interpretation and Other Essays. She argues that, yet they both have looked upon art as (in Freudian terms) manifest content with the intention to communicate meanings alone. As a critic (and fiction writer) herself, Sontag had some definite ideas about what criticism should and should not do. Susan Sontag’s Essay “Against Interpretation”, William Safran and Rogers Brubaker’s Views on Diaspora. 0000003510 00000 n Hence, the world of art gets depleted and impoverished in the transformation of ‘the’ to ‘this’ work, art or world. 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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 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. This is because it has been believed that literature or any work of art has two major functions; – ‘to teach’ and ‘to delight’ in trying to assimilate art into thought or art into culture. Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation is an extremely thought-provoking piece because it criticizes some of the most fundamental principles we are taught to practice at a young age when attempting to understand art and literature: the work of interpretation. 0000006869 00000 n Plato speaks of the value of art being dubious, since the poet-creator is “twice removed from reality”. 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). 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. Susan Sontag in her essay “Against Interpretation” focuses on what an interpretation really is. The world here she refers to is the text in all it’s gestalt glory and this is what the interpreter recreates. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. In the last, Sontag argues that in the new approach to aesthetics the spiritual importance of art is being replaced by the emphasis on the intellect. [Susan Sontag] Against interpretation and other es(BookZZ.org) Amy Hollinrake Tune. Summary Sections 1–3. Against Interpretation is a collection of essays by Susan Sontag published in 1966. So there has been two phases in understanding art – the innocent acceptance of art (needed no defence or support outside itself) and secondly, the experienced justification of what it says or attempts to say. Aristotle disputed this idea and interpreted that art is “medicinally useful in arousing and purging dangerous emotions” (catharsis). 0000003531 00000 n It is a line that Susan Sontag quotes toward the ... by Against Interpretation (1966 ... the problem is one of interpretation. Among the three interpretations, Kafka as Kafka is lost. Thirdly she finds equally valuable those criticisms which are accurate, sharp and feels the form of a work of an art. When done indiscriminately the films in question begin to look alike, and the process reveals more about the critic … Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of … 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 0000005118 00000 n 0000000967 00000 n 0000001569 00000 n She discusses and mixes the ideas of other writers and further differentiates two kinds of interpretation – form based interpretation and content based interpretation. In 1966 her first essay collection Against Interpretation was released to wide critical acclaim. 0000006848 00000 n Required fields are marked *. The numerous writers that Sontag cites show that interpretation has only undone the gestalt of a work. Modern theorists following soon after the formalist school believed the theory of art as a subjective expression to the point of viewing art as semiotics (study of signs) and power relationships. Her non-fiction works include A gainst Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and its Metaphors and Regarding the Pain of Others. 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. 0000001060 00000 n 0000002416 00000 n 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. (Cf. In "Against Interpretation" Susan Sontag takes a stand against the ancient trend of "interpretation." Rather than recognizing great creative works as possible … Susan Sontag is an avante-guarde writer (who discards conventions) who belongs to the American school of criticism. Unlike most literary critics, Sontag believes that literary criticism is growing increasingly destructive towards the very works of art that they, supposedly, so … %PDF-1.3 %�� Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation” Susan Sontag is an American Critic who rejected New Criticism. 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. Sontag traces interpretation with all its doubtful, corollaries, to the classical theory of art as mimesis (imitation) of reality. She talks about the past with the present interpretation. 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.… 0000033967 00000 n Susan Sontag. 0000001361 00000 n An interpreter exercises all the sensory experiences to set up a “shadow world of meanings” and “turn the world into this world”. … Happenings did not make me care less about Aristotle and Shakespeare. 0000007666 00000 n 0000005139 00000 n H�t��n�0��~�9R��p�tL� p�&@,��šm��d�J�F/}�IyKRib�f>�K9�(K��AAUi�2��r*��ŕ30sx�n֎.n��ʙ�lG��)G'�Cy=aspMy^��k�MRFcy�BE��\um�� "Against Interpretation" is the direct statement of this view. She was against the Avant Garde movement pioneered by T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound. 0000006012 00000 n She has written novels like The Benefactor (1964) and Death Kit (1968) . “Against Interpretation” in Against Interpretation and other Essays. Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Find books 0000006033 00000 n Against Interpretation is an essay written by American critic Susan Sontag. She is also the author of four novels, a collection of stories and several plays. 0000009324 00000 n Against Interpretation Susan Sontag The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual. "Against Interpretation is a collection of essays by Susan Sontag published in 1966. 0000001716 00000 n 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. 0000033889 00000 n 0000003230 00000 n 0000008501 00000 n Download with Google Download with Facebook She believes that it was the classical period which gave importance to ‘content’ of a work other than meaning and other things. 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 0000054959 00000 n 0000004333 00000 n If a reader learns to remove the content from focus, one will begin to see things as they are and as they should be. In this case art began needing support from outside to appreciate it. Susan Sontag, in “Against Interpretation,” takes a very interesting critical standpoint on the idea of literary interpretation. the paintings in the caves at Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La Pasiega, etc.) Sontag immediately addresses this, clarifying her use of the term at the start of section 3: Of course, … Download books for free. the paintings in the caves at Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La Pasiega, etc.) Susan Sontag addresses this in her essay Against Interpretation, which was published in 1966 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She strongly believes that in trying to establish the content of a work the interpreter avoids the form of the work. As the name suggests, the essay is all about Susan’s idea of what interpretation is, and why she’s against it. 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. “Notes on Camp”, an essay was first published in 1964, and was republished in 1966 in her collection of essays, Against Interpretation. Her best-known works include the critical works Against Interpretation (1966), Styles of Radical Will (1968), On Photography (1977), and Illness as Metaphor (1978), as well as the fictional works The Way We Live Now (1986), The Volcano Lover (1992), and In America (1999). Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. Against Interpretation | Sontag Susan | download | Z-Library. 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. b��e�n9�I�,�z�v�9�.I �de� �v1�U��-Pׯ�렕��Q��B8S& Sontag’s criticism was marked by a formalist aversion to content. She also believes that margins are always inverted. 0000001340 00000 n Susan Sontag addresses this in her essay Against Interpretation, which was published in 1966 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York: Picador, 2001. Here, Aristotle does not reject Plato but only adds more meaning to substantiate and defend the value of both the poet and his heart. A work of art can be as Sontag believes that more attention to form in art should be given. Your email address will not be published. Answering the question, what kind of criticism or commentary on the arts is disabled today, Sontag begins saying that works of art are ineffable and cannot be described or paraphrased. The question as I would like to reposition it is, “is Sontag categorically against interpretation?” I would answer that Sontag is not against interpretation per se, but rules of interpretation; she is against the practise of using an interpretative grid over and over to “decode” disparate works of art. V)�D��A�94lڀ��4�XA�$� X�8�YI�Q/`�N�N�i>�L�5��g��EU�˫xᠷ��Y��5�L��C`�H�4��͇��l�A��[�i��:�p��.�ւ@.R�/OB�$o��n��>�N�`�X*Ȭ��Æ��Pb9'U﬇��k�x�8. 0000009345 00000 n She closes with a very debatable punchline saying “in place of a hermeneutics we need and erotics of art”. She also asks for “a vocabulary of forms” that is like descriptive rather than prescriptive. Your email address will not be published. Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. These modern theorists acting as interpreters question the truth and started excavating in order to create new meanings by “digging behind the text”. 0000008522 00000 n 0000003471 00000 n She … Against interpretation The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual. Interpretation has dominated art and literary criticism for hundreds of years and has been accelerated by Marxist ideology and Freudian psychology. trailer << /Size 52 /Info 19 0 R /Root 22 0 R /Prev 104851 /ID[<3d534988814403b1a543876e3bfc6892><749e0604470652e71f85df57e493cacd>] >> startxref 0 %%EOF 22 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 18 0 R /Metadata 20 0 R /PageLabels 17 0 R >> endobj 50 0 obj << /S 117 /L 202 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 51 0 R >> stream Form is present in all animate and inanimate things even as content is. On the contrary, modern interpreters discarded established truths in order to recreate their own. Nothing was rejected in classical interpretation. Until the advent of New Criticism, the study of ‘form’ was never given a serious thought or exercised diligently. The earliest theory of art, that of the Greek philosophers, proposed that art was mimesis, imitation of reality. Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. (Cf. The title “against” does not mean that Sontag is against interpretation, rather it questions those that are against and tries to defend interpretation. Hence, Sontag advocates against interpretations of a work that plays more importance in finding the meaning, message, intention in a work. Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. on Susan Sontag’s Essay “Against Interpretation”, Dr Vinay Lal’s Concepts of the Indian Diaspora. On the other hand, modern theorists were radical, aggressive and dismissive in their act of interpretation. 0000003004 00000 n In reducing the work of art to its content, an interpreter “lames the work of art”. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! As the name suggests, the essay is all about Susan’s idea of what interpretation is, and why she’s against it. ��{�N��/'��@S�NRM3 B0L�H�rK 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 It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including "On Style," and the eponymous essay "Against Interpretation." 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 “… The theory of interpretation both makes and mars context as she believes that the task of interpretation is virtually one of translating through transforming. On the other hand, Sontag believes interpretation must be self-evaluated, with the historical view of human consciousness. Sontag cites Thomas Mann as an over-cooperative author and “the mars ravishment” of Kafka. Susan Sontag in her essay “Against Interpretation” focuses on what an interpretation really is.