The Question of Understanding Otherwise: Rehabilitating the Interpretation of Art

Interpretation has historically been understood as a method to shrink the distance between the interpreter and the interpreted. This view has dominated the comprehension of the interpretation of art: it always entails the interpretation of something, and this something must then govern our effort to understand it. If not, we are left with mere subjective whims. This book tries to modify this well-worn view by altering the dualist position to incorporate the very object within the sense-making activity. Interpretation rather becomes the creative making of something different, and this explains why it is deemed unfinished. The notion of "re-contextualization" covers this in between operation (between work and interpretation), and the very object of interpretation remains just an enabling condition of transference. Interpretation preserves the challenge, by re-making and re-locating meaning.