"The philosophy of art as an academic discipline has long thrived on
paradoxes and the insights that come from taking them to pieces"
"Three of the hottest continuing topics in aesthetic theory are:
1) The role of artists' intentions in understanding art
2) the aesthetic implication of forgery and authenticity
3) the aesthetic status of Dadaist works such as Duchamps 'Fountain'
This post will only examine the first, the "Intentional Fallacy" as first
presented by Wimsatt and Beardsley in 1946:
"The design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a
standard for judging the success of a work of literary art" and as Beardsley
later wrote: "It is language which speaks, not the author)
... and then expanded in the sixties by Roland Barthes ("the death of the
author") and Michel Foucalt (abandoning the "author-function", so that texts
are produced by ideological systems rather than individuals)
(BTW, Saul is keeping this 20th C. tradition alive on this listserv with
his intererest in "diverse, linked texts", and his recent inquiry into
"Where do opinions come from?")
Contrary to this approach, however, Dutton notes that ethnographers need to
determine intention in order to categorize cultural production. I.e. -- they
continually need to ask "What are these people up to?"
Then there's the problem of irony.
You need to know whether a writer has ironic intentions in order to
appreciate his cleverness. (So "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" might be clever
if it were ironic, but stupid since it isn't)
Finally, there's the issue of anachronism -- where the meanings of words,
like "gay" or "plastic" change over time, and a proper interpretation requires
original usage.
The same principle might apply to the visual arts, where the original
appearance is changed over time -- like the once-painted statues of the
Parthenon. (or does it? You might recall that Camille Paglia's
interpretation of the bust of Nefertiti was responding to damage done to one
eye - a condition that was certainly not intended by the sculptor)
Dutton then asserts that the "paradoxes of authorship begin with the uneasy
coexistence of three (evolved) functions for language in human social life.
Identifying these three functions can demonstrate why aesthetic theory finds
itself locked in perpetual arguments about the status and importance of
authorial intention"
1.The communicative/descriptive function: "A herd of buffalo has entered the
next valley"
2. Imaginary function : the creative medium for storytelling - following the
ability for "dis-interestedness" or to "de-couple" truth from fiction.
3. The fitness indicator function: which co-exists with both of the above -
language as a show of skill, style, and intelligence that reveal the character
of the speaker or writer.
Dutton claims that the fitness indicator is "an ever-present voice that is
whispering to us that one kind of truth always matters: the truth about the
sobriety, knowledge, intelligence, seriousness, or competence of the
fact-teller or fiction maker"
And so, humans have to know who the real-person author is - beyond just the
"postulated author" who performed the "author-function" - and they care about
what that person intended, even if the only evidence for those intentions is
in the work itself.
So, what you think?
Has Dutton resolved the issues surrounding the "intentional fallacy"?
I think he's explained why people are prone to have it -- but he has yet to
address whether they should try to overcome it.
And humans must often overcome many of their instinctive urges. (this is
where we need to still have Kirby tell us about original sin)
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