25 Points: Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation”
“The Silence” (still), directed by Ingmar Bergman (1963)
[Update: I posted a follow-up to this post, here.]
1.
Susan Sontag’s seminal mid-60s essay has come up several times at this site. I’ve been busy rereading it since Xmas, and want to take this chance to set down some thoughts regarding it.
2.
Obviously, whatever interpretation is, Sontag seems against it.
3.
What, then, does Sontag mean by “interpretation”? Does she mean any and all interpretation, as my fellow contributor Chris Higgs recently argued? Or something else, something more specific?
Blake Butler—
In Georgia today Gov. Sonny Perdue is arguing for a new bill that will make teachers’ pay pend on how their students’ testing scores come out. Somehow the program will also cost taxpayers. Curriculum remains unexamined. In other news, though I still don’t like Kid A, I listened to “Everything in its Right Place” 57 times in repetition at JFK airport and on the plane returning home.
4