“Interpretation thus presupposes a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of (later) readers. It seeks to resolve that discrepancy. The situation is that for some reason a text has become unacceptable; yet it cannot be discarded. Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter, without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can’t admit to doing this. He claims to be only making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning.”

—  Susan Sontag

Source: Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 6

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Interpretation thus presupposes a discrepancy between the clear meaning of the text and the demands of (later) readers.…" by Susan Sontag?
Susan Sontag photo
Susan Sontag168
American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933–2004

Related quotes

Susan Sontag photo

“The old style of interpretation was insistent, but respectful; it erected another meaning on top of the literal one. The modern style of interpretation excavates, and as it excavates, destroys; it digs ‘behind’ the text, to find a sub-text which is the true one.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 6

“Each community, each discourse tradition, has its own canons of intertextuality, its own principles and customs regarding which texts are most relevant to the interpretation of any one text”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 36

Brian Leiter photo

“Nehamas invokes Nietzsche’s talk of the “eternal basic text of homo natura” (BGE 230, quoted above) as evidence of aestheticism--the view, recall, that “texts can be interpreted equally well in vastly different and deeply incompatible ways” (p. 3). But the talk of “text” in this passage is actually incompatible with aestheticism. For in this passage, as we have seen, Nietzsche asserts that prior claims to “knowledge” have been superficial precisely because they have ignored the “eternal basic text”— ewigen Grundtext—of man conceived as a natural organism. That this text is eternal and basic implies not that it “can be interpreted equally well in vastly different and deeply incompatible ways” but just the opposite: readings which do not treat man naturalistically misread the text—they “falsify” it. It is these misreadings, of course, that Nietzsche, ever the “good philologist,” aims to correct.”

Brian Leiter (1963) American philosopher and legal scholar

"The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud"

Frederic G. Kenyon photo

“The aim of the scholarly editor is not to produce the the easiest text for the reader, but to get as near as he can to the text of the author.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 142

C.G. Jung photo

“Every interpretation is hypothetical, for it is a mere attempt to read an unfamiliar text. An obscure dream, taken by itself, can rarely be interpreted with any certainty, so that I attach little importance to the interpretation of single dreams.”

C.G. Jung book Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Source: Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933), p. 14
Context: Every interpretation is hypothetical, for it is a mere attempt to read an unfamiliar text. An obscure dream, taken by itself, can rarely be interpreted with any certainty, so that I attach little importance to the interpretation of single dreams. With a series of dreams we can have more confidence in our interpretations, for the later dreams correct the mistakes we have made m handling those that went before. We are also better able, in a dream series, to recognize the important contents and basic themes.

David Levithan photo

“I text tiny a minute later.

MADE NEW GAY FRIEND.

And he texts back

PROGRESS!!!”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux photo

“The Judge has not organs to know and to deal with the text of the foreign law, and therefore requires the assistance of a foreign lawyer who knows how to interpret it.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Sussex Peerage Case (1844), 11 Cl. & F. 115.

Jordan Peterson photo

“The radical left thinks that the lines in Genesis about dominating the animals and plants has given rise to the environmental degradation that we are facing today. I disagree with that. I think that is the wrong interpretation of the text. It tells us to 'tend' the garden, which means to make the proper decisions that will be good for the things that are living there that aren't people, and also that will be good for the people too. This is a different take on the text than the ultimately cynical take that is often discussed today.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Antonin Scalia photo

“Now the Senate is looking for 'moderate' judges, 'mainstream' judges. What in the world is a moderate interpretation of a constitutional text? Halfway between what it says and what we'd like it to say?”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Address to Chapman University students http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/08/30/scalia.re.enactment.ap/index.html (2005). <br class="br">2000s

Related topics