A reaction on
Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag
Posted in autografitti@yahoogroups.com, August 5, 2003.
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I can understand the dislike that Sontag has for hermeneuts and their penchant for reducing a work of art into its purported meaning, especially when such meaning is made to appear as esoteric and accessible only to initiates. I’m inclined to think that this is the same dislike that we have for so-called experts, academicians, philosophers, and intellectuals. These personages are supposed to illumine life but most of the time they only succeed in clouding and cluttering it with hot air, pollution and garbage.It is interesting to note that Michel Foucault argued for an “ars erotica” vis-a-vis the “scientia sexualis” in Volume I of The History of Sexuality. Of course, he was not talking about an “erotics of art” but an “art of erotics.” But he, like Sontag, is wary too of hermeneutics and its promise of getting into the “depth of things.” (The truth/meaning of things.)
Except for this essay that Fredda posted, I haven’t read Sontag so I wouldn’t really know where she’s coming from. Foucault’s dislike of hermeneutics (to my mind) is to be understood in the light of his aversion for a single truth. Insofar as hermeneutics gives the impression of a single truth which can be discovered, Foucault too is “against – a singular – interpretation.” But taking his cue from Nietzsche (not from Freud), Foucault does make use of a hermeneutics of sorts, what some would call a “hermeneutics of suspicion.” Only Nietzsche has baptized it with a different name, “genealogy.” Truths are not discovered, they are excavated, ferreted out, even manufactured, i.e., historically constituted.
What is Sontag’s (or anyone’s) beef with interpretation? I mean, what’s really wrong with interpretation? To be human is to interpret. Inside and outside of art, interpretation is almost always inevitable. In “Genealogy of Morals,” Nietzsche claims that human beings would rather have “nothingness” as their end (nihilism) rather than to have nothing as an end (i.e., to have no goal/purpose at all). And ends/goals/objectives/purposes are always a result of interpretation. We interpret because we need it to survive, to live. Interpretation is ultimately there because it serves a pragmatic end.
Sontag herself states that she’s NOT REALLY AGAINST INTERPRETATION IN ITS BROADEST SENSE and agrees with Nietzsche’s “There are no facts, only interpretations.” She continues: “By interpretation, I mean here a conscious act of the mind which illustrates a certain code, certain ‘rules’ of interpretation.”
I think what Sontag rails against is when the interpretation of a work of art is forced and that in the face of Marxism/Communism (where the idea of art for art’s sake is not only scandalous but immoral), there is a felt need for art to have a justification. And where do you find art’s justification? In its interpretation.
I agree here with Sontag. This is really the revenge of the intellect against art. Rationality has always that recuperating function. It wants to bring everything into its ambit of meaning and order. If Sontag is affirming that not all art can be brought back into the realm of reason and order, that there should be, that there is, a pre-intellectual encounter with art (and with the whole of reality itself), I nod my head in assent.
But who ever said that a commentary on art is better than the artwork itself? Commentaries are, among other things, meant to be an introduction to, a way of accessing, a work of art. Sometimes, commentaries on an artwork become works of art themselves.
Insofar as interpretation stifles the production and appreciation of art, insofar as interpretation is appropriated by the literary critics, art critics, and hermeneuts, I too am against this kind of interpretation.
As for me, philosophaster and charlatan that I am, what draws me to an artwork most of the times is precisely its content. I can and do appreciate seemingly inane and exuberant works of art (and seemingly too, I’d say) devoid of meanings. But I’ve always been drawn by the artwork’s content.
What puzzles me about Sontag’s essay is that while her opposition against interpretation seems to me more of an attack against the arrogance of hermeneuts who would appropriate interpretation to themselves as their rightful task and prerogative, she also calls for more attention to form. (This might be interpreted as an attempt to balance what she perceives to be a prevailing bias for content. Earlier, she already made the observation that the distinction between form and content is an illusion.) But who would have this sort of knowledge and vocabulary of forms? Wouldn’t these be the experts, again? Art then, wrested away from the tyrannical hermeneuts, would be handed over to the experts on form. I don’t think that makes art accessible to a would-be enthusiast who’s a non-critic.
After all, whether it be in art or in life, what is most accessible to everyman? Isn’t it content? Isn’t it meaning rather than form? Again, as Nietzsche would say, man would be willing to suffer any “how” (form of existence) if he had a “why” (meaning).
best regards,
interpretat-ian
Tags: Art, Education, Foucault, Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Life, Nietzsche, Philosopyhy, Sontag, Translation, Writing