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Against Interpretation is an essay written by American critic Susan Sontag. It is included in her 1966 collection Against Interpretation and Other Essays . This seminal essay argues that interpretation is an inherently harmful process that ignores the content of a piece of art in favor of its purported meaning. She riles against the pervasive Freudian and Marxist modes of interpretation, and invokes famous films (A Streetcar Named Desire, Last Year in Marienbad, and The Silence) as well as Pop Art and classical Greek philosophies of art.
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Susan Sontag: Against Interpretation
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Literature and Humanities
literature simplified and made lively
Susan Sontag’s Essay “Against Interpretation”
Susan Sontag is an avante-guarde writer (who discards conventions) who belongs to the American school of criticism. She has written novels like The Benefactor (1964) and Death Kit (1968) . “Notes on Camp”, an essay was first published in 1964, and was republished in 1966 in her collection of essays, Against Interpretation .
Susan Sontag in her essay “Against Interpretation” focuses on what an interpretation really is. She discusses and mixes the ideas of other writers and further differentiates two kinds of interpretation – form based interpretation and content based interpretation.
She talks about the past with the present interpretation. Nothing was rejected in classical interpretation. She believes that it was the classical period which gave importance to ‘content’ of a work other than meaning and other things. She also believes that margins are always inverted. 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. She strongly believes that in trying to establish the content of a work the interpreter avoids the form of the work. 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. An interpreter exercises all the sensory experiences to set up a “shadow world of meanings” and “turn the world into this world”. The world here she refers to is the text in all it’s gestalt glory and this is what the interpreter recreates. Hence, the world of art gets depleted and impoverished in the transformation of ‘the’ to ‘this’ work, art or world.
Sontag traces interpretation with all its doubtful, corollaries, to the classical theory of art as mimesis (imitation) of reality. Plato speaks of the value of art being dubious, since the poet-creator is “twice removed from reality”. Therefore art was neither useful nor true. Aristotle disputed this idea and interpreted that art is “medicinally useful in arousing and purging dangerous emotions” (catharsis). Here, Aristotle does not reject Plato but only adds more meaning to substantiate and defend the value of both the poet and his heart. She argues that, yet they both have looked upon art as (in Freudian terms) manifest content with the intention to communicate meanings alone. Until the advent of New Criticism, the study of ‘form’ was never given a serious thought or exercised diligently. Form is present in all animate and inanimate things even as content is. 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.
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). 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. On the other hand, modern theorists were radical, aggressive and dismissive in their act of interpretation. These modern theorists acting as interpreters question the truth and started excavating in order to create new meanings by “digging behind the text”. That is, in the classical period of interpretation, the old is not discarded but only revamped. On the contrary, modern interpreters discarded established truths in order to recreate their own. 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. On the other hand, Sontag believes interpretation must be self-evaluated, with the historical view of human consciousness.
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. In this case art began needing support from outside to appreciate it. The theory of interpretation both makes and mars context as she believes that the task of interpretation is virtually one of translating through transforming. In reducing the work of art to its content, an interpreter “lames the work of art”. Sontag cites Thomas Mann as an over-cooperative author and “the mars ravishment” of Kafka.
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. Among the three interpretations, Kafka as Kafka is lost. 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. The numerous writers that Sontag cites show that interpretation has only undone the gestalt of a work. 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.
A work of art can be as Sontag believes that more attention to form in art should be given. She also asks for “a vocabulary of forms” that is like descriptive rather than prescriptive. Thirdly she finds equally valuable those criticisms which are accurate, sharp and feels the form of a work of an art. In conclusion Sontag advocates against looking at an interpreting art didactically or as a delight. What is needed according to her is to refine our senses “to see, more to hear more and to feel more”. If a reader learns to remove the content from focus, one will begin to see things as they are and as they should be. She closes with a very debatable punchline saying “in place of a hermeneutics we need and erotics of art”.
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Against interpretation
and other essays
By susan sontag.
- ★ ★ ★ 3.25 ·
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Against Interpretation and Other Essays
Susan sontag.
312 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1964
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None of us can ever retrieve that innocence before all theory when art knew no need to justify itself, when one did not ask of a work of art what it said because one knew what it did. From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art.
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The endurance and magnificence of this essay collection lie not with their ability to persuade but their stimulating arguments and ideas. However—this is a reductive take on an otherwise complex ... Read full review
There don't seem to be as many public intellectuals around as there used to be. Sure, there are more commentators than ever—look at the many, many bloggers out there, as well as other individuated ... Read full review
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About the author (2013).
Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. Her non-fiction works include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and its Metaphors, Regarding the Pain of Others and At the Same Time. She is also the author of four novels, including The Volcano Lover and In America, as well as a collection of stories and several plays. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004.
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Susan Sontag Against Interpretation 1964
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NOTE: This original entry from 2011 has been updated in a 2015 revision by the authors, available on the SEP website. Walter Benjamin's importance as a philosopher and critical theorist can be gauged by the diversity of his intellectual influence and the continuing productivity of his thought. Primarily regarded as a literary critic and essayist, the philosophical basis of Benjamin's writings is increasingly acknowledged. They were a decisive influence upon Theodor W. Adorno's conception of philosophy's actuality or adequacy to the present (Adorno 1931). In the 1930s, Benjamin's efforts to develop a politically oriented, materialist aesthetic theory proved an important stimulus for both the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and the Marxist poet and dramatist Bertolt Brecht. The delayed appearance of Benjamin's collected writings has determined and sustained the Anglophone reception of his work. (A two-volume selection was published in German in 1955, with a full edition not appearing until 1972–89; English anthologies first appeared in 1968 and 1978; the four-volume Selected Writings, 1996–2003.) Originally received in the context of literary theory and aesthetics, the philosophical depth and cultural breadth of Benjamin's thought have only recently begun to be fully appreciated. Despite the voluminous size of the secondary literature that it has produced, his work remains a continuing source of productivity. An understanding of the intellectual context of his work has contributed to the recent philosophical revival of Early German Romanticism. His essay on ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility’ remains a major theoretical text for film theory. One-Way Street and the work arising from his unfinished research on nineteenth century Paris (The Arcades Project), provide a theoretical stimulus for cultural theory and philosophical concepts of the modern. Benjamin's messianic understanding of history has been an enduring source of theoretical fascination and frustration for a diverse range of recent philosophical thinkers, including Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben and, in a critical context, Jürgen Habermas. The ‘Critique of Violence’ and ‘On the Concept of History’ are important sources for Derrida's discussion of messianicity, which has been influential, along with Paul de Man's discussion of allegory, for the poststructuralist reception of Benjamin's writings. Aspects of Benjamin's thought have also been associated with the recent revival of political theology, although it is doubtful this reception is true to the tendencies of Benjamin's own political thought.
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Narrative, indispensable for ordering events in time, can also be used to give unified meaning to forms in space. Most people shown a figurative picture can without difficulty invent a story, often elaborate and original, about what is hap pening (often with reference to what has happened and will happen) to the fig ures. Primary school teachers routinely use this method to teach perceptive and linguistic skills to children. Adults looking at a painting in a book or a museum frequently invent narratives of this sort to explain to themselves or ...
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Divine Madness provides a theory that enables the concept of irony to be transferred from the literary to the visual and aural domains. Two stories are being told. One is a story of how literary conceptualization has conquered the fields of the other arts and the other is a story of how literary conceptualization, conversely, has been successively relativized. Elleström provides a survey of the historical roots of the concept of irony as well as a discussion of two hermeneutical "options": irony as a mode of oral communication and irony as a mode of literary expression. The author examines how irony is classified and how it is used as an interpretive strategy rather than a "textual trait" intended by an author. Other concepts such as paradox, mysticism and deconstruction are also evaluated in terms of their relation to irony. Elleström concludes by demonstrating that ironic interpretations of not just music are intimately connected to norms, values, and even political stances that tend to be hidden behind an allegedly objective terminology - a terminology that has its roots in the comprehension of irony as an intentional, oral phenomenon.
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ix, 304 pages 22 cm From the publisher. First published in 1966, this celebrated book -- Sontag's first collection of essays -- quickly became a modern classic, and has had an enormous influence in America and abroad on thinking about the arts and contemporary culture.
Against Interpretation Susan Sontag The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual. (Cf. the paintings in the caves at Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La Pasiega, etc.) The earliest theory of art, that of the Greek philosophers, proposed that art was mimesis, imitation of reality.
Against interpretation : and other essays Item Preview remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. Share to Twitter. ... and other essays by Sontag, Susan, 1933-2004. Publication date 1969 Topics Literature, Modern, Criticism ... 14 day loan required to access EPUB and PDF files.
"Against Interpretation" is Sontag's influential essay within Against Interpretation and Other Essays that discusses the divisions between two different kinds of art criticism and theory: that of formalist interpretation, and that of content-based interpretation.
Created Date: 8/19/2005 2:30:21 PM
In "Against Interpretation" Susan Sontag takes a stand against the ancient trend of "interpretation." Interpretation has dominated art and literary criticism for hundreds of years and has been accelerated by Marxist ideology and Freudian psychology.
Against Interpretation Essay Susan Sontag Mki - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. ... Save Save Against Interpretation Essay Susan Sontag Mki For Later. 0 ratings 0% found this document useful (0 votes) 112 views 7 pages.
Against interpretation, and other essays. Author: Susan Sontag. Summary: From the publisher. First published in 1966, this celebrated book -- Sontag's first collection of essays -- quickly became a modern classic, and has had an enormous influence in America and abroad on thinking about the arts and contemporary culture. As well as the title ...
About. Against Interpretation is an essay written by American critic Susan Sontag. It is included in her 1966 collection Against Interpretation and Other Essays. This seminal essay argues that ...
This article investigates the influence of French films and French film culture on the development of New Zealand film culture (1930s-1950s). Discursive practices on film developed within local frameworks of understanding, ideas available via specialist reviews and periodicals, and regular contact with 'foreign' films following the growth of alternative distribution and exhibition networks.
Background. It was first published as an essay in 1964, and was her first contribution to the Partisan Review. The essay attracted interest in Sontag. It was republished in 1966 in Sontag's debut collection of essays, Against Interpretation. The essay considers meanings and connotations of the word "camp".The 2019 haute couture art exhibit Camp: Notes on Fashion, presented by the Anna Wintour ...
Susan Sontag: Essays of the 1960s & 70s (LOA #246) - Susan Sontag 2013-09-26 With the publication of her first book of criticism, Against Interpretation, in 1966, Susan Sontag placed herself at the forefront of an era of cultural and political transformation. "What is important now," she wrote, "is to recover our senses . . . .
Against Interpretations by Susan Sontag - Free download as PDF File (.pdf) or view presentation slides online. Against Interpretation is a collection of essays by Susan Sontag published in 1966. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including "On Style," and the eponymous essay "Against Interpretation."
Susan Sontag: Against Interpretation - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or view presentation slides online. Against Interpretation and Other Essays is a collection of essays by Susan Sontag published in 1966. This is the eponymous essay "Against Interpretation.
Susan Sontag in her essay "Against Interpretation" focuses on what an interpretation really is. She discusses and mixes the ideas of other writers and further differentiates two kinds of interpretation - form based interpretation and content based interpretation. She talks about the past with the present interpretation.
An edition of Against Interpretation: and other essays (1966) Against interpretation and other essays by Susan Sontag ★★★ 3.25 · 4 Ratings 51 Want to read 1 Currently reading 5 Have read Overview View 9 Editions Details Reviews Lists Related Books Publish Date 1966 Publisher Dell Pub. Co. Language English Pages 304 Previews available in: English
Against Interpretation. : Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the groundbreaking essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as her ...
7,954 ratings465 reviews. Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as her impassioned ...
Against Interpretation and Other Essays is a beautiful novel written by the famous author Susan Sontag. The book is perfect for those who wants to read essays, non fiction books. Against Interpretation and Other Essays pdf book was awarded with National Book Award Finalist for Arts and Letters (1967), .
Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. Her non-fiction works include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and its Metaphors, Regarding the Pain of Others and At the Same Time.She is also the author of four novels, including The Volcano Lover and In America, as well as a collection of stories and ...
Susan Sontag Against Interpretation 1964. 莉 舒. Download Free PDF. Belluigi, D. Z. 2002. BROKEN VESSELS: The im-possibility of remembrance and recollection in the works of Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski, William Kentridge and Santu Mofokeng. Master of Fine Art thesis, Unpublished, Rhodes University, Grahamstown. Dina Z O E Belluigi.
Susan Sontag Against Interpretation: And Other Essays Paperback - August 25, 2001 by Susan Sontag (Author) 304 ratings See all formats and editions Kindle $11.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook $0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover $57.27 4 Used from $29.76 Paperback $16.89 28 Used from $11.00 22 New from $12.05 2 Collectible from $399.95