Intentionalism, Anti-Intentionalism, and Aesthetic Inquiry

Intentionalism, Anti-Intentionalism, and Aesthetic Inquiry: Implications for the Teaching of Choreography Larry Lavender Dance Research Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1. (Spring, 1997), pp. 23-42. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0149-7677%28199721%2929%3A1%3C23%3AIAAAII%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V Dance Research Journal is currently published by Congress on Research in Dance. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/crd.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org Mon Jun 4 05:56:45 2007 Intentionalism, Anti-Intentionalism, and Aesthetic Inquiry: Implications for the Teaching of Choreography Larry Lavender One of the most heated debates in modern literary and aesthetic theory concerns the relevance to criticism in general, and to interpretation specifically, of information about an author/artist7s intentions in creating a particular work. This intentionalistlanti-intentionalist debate is an important one for dance educators to examine and discuss with students, since teachers' beliefs about the relevance of an artist's intentions determine in large part the way they interpret and judge dances (and other works of art), and mentor student choreographers and critics. The critical advice of mentors who hold intentionalist assumptions naturally tends to be quite different from the input of those holding anti-intentionalist views. The debate over artists' intentions began in earnest in 1946 with the publication of a provocative and now famous essay entitled "The Intentional Fallacy" by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley (1). In this work the authors attacked the intentionalist idea that to achieve a valid, or true, interpretation of a work we must ascertain whatever meaning its maker intended it to possess. The essay laid the groundwork for a rigorous anti-intentionalism, which held that works of art and literature are autonomous entities whose meanings are carried entirely by their internal structures and do not depend on the so-called meaning-intentions of their creators. Dance students and teachers alike often struggle with the central issues in this debate. Should the artist have a specific plan, goal, or semantic content to express firmly in mind before beginning to work, or will meaning emerge through the work process itself? Should the critic investigate the artist's intentions, or simply focus on the immediacy of the work itself? The way one answers these kinds of questions determines to a large extent how one will proceed in crafting a work, and in interpreting and evaluating others' works. Interestingly, dance students and their teachers ordinarily go about the business of making and critiquing dances in general accordance with one of the two sides in the debate without being aware of the basic arguments for, and the underlying assumptions of, each position. There are two likely reasons for this. First, the standard literature on teaching and learning choreography Larry Lavender is head of dance at the University of New Mexico. He holds a B.A. in Humanities and a B.A. in dance from the University of California, Riverside, and an M.F.A. in Dance from the University of California, Irvine. He earned his Ph.D. in dance education at New York University. His other work on critical issues in dance education includes Dancers Talking Dance (Human Kinetics, 1996); "Understanding Interpretation" in DRI 27.2 (Fall 1995); and "Standing Aside and Making Space: Mentoring Student Choreographers" in Impulse 4.3 (July 1996). Dance Research Journal 29/1 (Spring 1997) 23 delves only briefly into this philosophical territory (2). Second, college and university dance students are not typically expected to immerse themselves in the literature of aesthetics and art criticism where the concepts of meaning, intention, and interpretation are explored. But for students to participate successfully in the complex and competitive artworld they will enter after leaving school, it is valuable for them to understand at least the rudiments of the intentionalist and anti-intentionalist positions-if for no other reason than to discover and appreciate how an artist's particular beliefs influence his or her artistic and critical practice. To help students gain the understanding they need, I present in the first two sections below a brief but substantive review of the intentionalistlanti-intentionalist debate, identifying the ideas and arguments of key theorists, and explaining the logical underpinnings of the arguments for the various positions discussed. Next, drawing upon insights gained from this review of the debate, I sketch a model for aesthetic inquiry-an approach to interpretation that honors both the intentionalist notion of artist-centered meaning and the anti-intentionalist notions of viewer-centered and work-centered meaning. I discuss aesthetic inquiry specifically in the context of the choreography class since that is the educational setting in which dance students are expected to function both as creators and as critics. Intentionalism The arguments for intentionalism are most often associated with E.D. Hirsch, whose positions are spelled out in two major works, Validity in Interpretation (1967) and The Aims of Interpretation (1976). While Hirsch focuses his discussion on cases of literary analysis, his views may be generalized to cover all kinds of artistic expressions. The thrust of Hirsch's argument is that to avoid anarchy in interpretation, meaning must be conceived as being both fixed by the author/ artist and retrievable by interpreters. To sort through the multiple meanings a work might appear to have, interpreters need a strategy for interpretation that will allow them to determine conclusively which meaning is correct. Hirsch construes correct (determinate) meaning to be the particular complex of meaning that is willed by the artist. In speaking of texts, he writes that "Verbal meaning is whatever someone has willed to convey by a particular sequence of linguistic signs and which can be conveyed (shared) by means of those linguistic signs" (1967, p. 31). Without a particular meaning having been "willed" by an author, there can be "no distinction between what an author does mean by a word sequence and what he could mean by it. Determinacy of verbal meaning thus requires an act of will" @. 47). In noting the distinction between what an author does and could mean by the same text, Hirsch clearly recognizes that literary meaning is, at least in part, constrained by linguistic rules and conventions of usage and that texts can legitimately be seen as having more than one possible meaning. This recognition leads to two interpretive alternatives to prioritizing authorial meaning, and both alternatives are unacceptable to Hirsch. First, there is the alternative of allowing readers to interpret a work solely on the basis of what it says to them. And since a text may say different things to different readers-depending upon such variables as their own cultural orientations, emotional inclinations, levels of intelligence, and aesthetic biasesto choose this alternative condemns interpretation to idiosyncratic subjectivism. Second, even if arbitrary subjectivism is ruled out, and interpreters rigorously confine themselves to focusing strictly on the meanings a text can possess given the conventions of language and its use, there is still the likelihood that many works will support multiple and even contradictory meanings. Interpretation will remain mired in indeterminacy, with no uniform measure for choosing the "correct" reading from among rival readings of the same work. To rule out these possibilities Hirsch urges that "Unless there is a powerful overriding value 24 Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) in disregarding an author's intention (i.e., original meaning), we who interpret as a vocation should not disregard it" (1976, p. 90). This moralistic imperative is justified by Hirsch as being a reasonable extension of Kant's "practical imperative" which holds that people are properly regarded as unique and individualized ends in themselves rather than as instruments for the use of others. Hirsch's move is to construe Kant's imperative as applying not only to the individual but also to his or her words on the grounds that speech "is an extension and expression of man in the social domain" (p. 90). Thus rather than being seen as mere points of departure for the free play of interpretive activity, works of art are to be regarded as fixed ends in themselves constructed by artists to convey particular and consciously intended meanings (3). Hirsch is not alone in arguing for the decisive power of authorial intention in determining meaning. Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels (1982) argue even more strenuously than Hirsch that "what a text means and what its author intends it to mean are identical" (p. 19), and that "the object of all reading is always the historical author's intention" (p. 103). In developing their ideas, Knapp and Michaels criticize Hirsch for at one moment defining meaning firmly in terms of the author's intended meaning but then acknowledging the possibility of other kinds of meaning, namely textual meaning (governed by linguistic rules and conventions) and readers' meaning (governed by the idiosyncratic makeup of individual readers). Knapp and Michaels accuse Hirsch of wrongly ... imagining a moment of interpretation before intention is present. This is the moment at which a text's meaning "remains indeterminate," before such indeterminacy is cleared up by the addition of authorial meaning. But if meaning and intention really are inseparable, then it makes no sense to think of intention as an ingredient that needs to be added; it must be present from the start. (p. 14) Having allowed the legitimacy of a kind of meaning other than authorially intended meaning forces Hirsch into what Knapp and Michaels consider to be the weak position of relying on fairly shaky ethical grounds (the extension of Kant's imperative) for urging interpreters to regard authorial meaning as the fixed meaning of a work. Knapp and Michaels reject Hirsch's position because they disavow the very idea of multiple kinds of meaning. For them there is only one legitimate kind of meaning a work can have: the intended meaning of its author. Knapp and Michaels' position raises a number of concerns. To regard it seriously necessitates, first, that one ignore the possibility that authors and artists might "mis-speak" or otherwise fail to express what they mean. But mis-speaking is commonplace; how can this be ignored? Second, one must disregard the fact that linguistic rules and the conventions of linguistic usage at least partially determine what can be meant by a particular utterance or text; authors' intentions cannot literally be the sole factor in determining meaning. Finally, Knapp and Michaels' position requires one to deny any power of shaping meaning to the "intentions" of those who read, observe, or listen to a work. Given these concerns, does Knapp and Michaels' position deserve any serious consideration? A further examination of intentionalist assumptions about art-making, the artworld, and art-critical inquiry paves the way to addressing this question. For many intentionalist theorists, the very concept of art demands the acknowledgment of the presence of someone-the artist-from whose mind the specific entity we identify as "the work of art" has issued (4). To support this claim, intentionalists point out that in our individual and institutional practices we do not treat artworks as random collections of aesthetic elements Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) 25 (words, sounds, movements, etc.) thrown together by happenstance. Instead, we regard them as specific, purposive attempts by artists to communicate with readers and audiences. Artworks, and the activity of artists in creating them, are appropriately conceived of in this way, the argument continues, because it is clear that artists make specific critical choices-each one partially imposed by the consequences of prior choices-which cumulatively determine the shape and expressive content of the final product (5). Moreover, the choices an artist makes are never arbitrary but, rather, reflect his or her artistic concerns, sensibilities, skills, inclinations and, most importantly, communicative intentions. The work of art could have possessed any number of characteristics; there were, after all, countless possibilities available to the artist. But, as Berel Lang (1974) points out, "when in the end only one [possibility] emerges it is probable that it emerges from the welter of other might-have-been's because it was intended to" (p. 308). Thus we must at the very least regard an artwork as the consequence of an intention by the artist not only to make a work of art, but to make thisparticular one. For intentionalists, then, works of art are very much like ordinary actions or deeds (6). And to describe accurately complex or ambiguous actions or deeds requires knowledge of the intentions of the agents whose actions they are. Colin Lyas (1992) argues this point when he writes: We could not call an action a murder if we did not know or assume that a certain intention or state of mind existed in its agent.. .. Scrutinize the details of a killing as I might, nothing in what is publicly available to inspection in that action need solve the important question whether it is to be called a murder. (p. 141) Therefore, the intentionalist would argue, just as we naturally seek to ascertain the true sense of a person's actions by appealing to the person's intentions, so we should proceed with works of art. Moreover, even if we confine ourselves to a study of the so-called "internal" properties of a work-i.e., its aesthetic surface and underlying structural features-we are bound to the artist's intentions. For the object of such study (the work itself) has assumed its qualitative identity only through the prior, intended acts of the artist. To understand the work one must understand these prior acts, for as Richard Wollheim (1980) remarks, "criticism is concerned to find out not just what the work of art is like, but what it is like by design" (p. 190-191). Seen in this light, our interest in works of art is what Noel Carroll (1992) terms a "conversational" interest. He suggests that in reading a text and in contemplating a work of art, . . . we enter a relationship with its creator that is roughly analogous to a conversation. Obviously, it is not as interactive as an ordinary conversation, for we are not receiving spontaneous feedback concerning our own responses. But just as an ordinary conversation gives us a stake in understanding our interlocutor, so does interaction with an artwork. (p. 117) Carroll recognizes that the notion of "conversational interest" may be seen as weakened by his own admission that in contemplating an artwork we never receive ongoing feedback concerning our own part of the "conversation." To remedy this he implies an ethical imperative similar to Hirsch's to construe interpretation as the retrieval of artists' intentions. He writes: A fulfilling conversation requires that we have the conviction of having grasped what our interlocutor meant or intended to say. A conversation that has left us 26 Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) with only our own clever construals or educated guesses, no matter how aesthetically rich, would leave us with the sense that something was missing. (p. 118) Here Carroll's admonition against "our own clever construals" of a work, "no matter how aesthetically rich" these might be, is directed both at critics who would privilege readers' purposes and intentions over authors' and at those who would deny that the aesthetic richness of a particular work is directly attributable to the intentions of the artist. Recognizing that an artist's own interpretation of a work may often provide a less aesthetically rich reading of it than rival interpretations, Carroll takes pains to develop the argument that our conversational interests override our purely aesthetic ones. "Aesthetic satisfaction does not obviate our conversational interest in artworks," he writes. For Carroll, the best interpretive policy is thus "the pursuit of aesthetic satisfaction constrained by our best hypothesis about authorial intent" (p. 124). Carroll's notion of art as being a kind of conversation between artists and viewers raises the question of whether or not it is possible for those of us in the present truly to understand the values, intentions, and motives-i.e., the mindset-of an artist working, say, a hundred years ago, without our interpretive vision being distorted by our contemporary mindset. Certainly it is illegitimate to attribute to artists of the past any values or insights that were not part of the conceptual furniture of their own time. Similarly, it is wrong to judge works from the past on the basis of values and insights that are unique to our time (7). The specific ways interpreters might understand the art and artistic traditions of the past have long been debated. Anthony Savile (1978) argues that while we naturally tend to see works of art through the lens of our contemporary frames of reference, we can succeed in the effort to understand them in other ways, including the way they were understood by their original audiences. He points out that we often come to see a work the way one of our peers sees it, even though this is often to see it in quite a different way from our natural inclinations. Indeed, the art of critical persuasion aims precisely at convincing us to see a work in one way rather than another. Thus Savile and other intentionalists argue that since we often are persuaded to understand a work as one of our peers understands it, so too can we come to see it as it was originally understood. Moreover, to protect the very integrity of art itself, the intentionalist might argue, we must struggle to understand works from the past in the way that their makers originally intended them to be understood. For to insist (as some anti-intentionalists do) that the original meanings of past works are inevitably unavailable to contemporary interpreters is to define art as a kind of consumable product with a fixed shelf life of significance. On this view, whatever significance a work from the past now has is derived solely from our immediate responses to it. Savile rejects this stance when he writes: On any acceptable theory of art it is clear that our understanding of the art of the past depends on understanding the tradition in which the past itself is rooted.. .. The natural conclusion to draw from this argument is that fundamentally we have to espouse an historical view of art. (p. 315) Echoing these views, Colin Lyas (1983) stresses the interpretive importance of at least some historical considerations, and seeks to resolve the conflict that may arise between interpretations of a work generated by a close analysis of its "internal" aesthetic properties and those grounded in accounts of "external" authorial intention (8). Lyas begins his discussion by noting that even Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) 2 7 to accept the anti-intentionalist insistence upon focusing only on "what is true of the work of art itself' does not eliminate the validity of interpretive appeals to artists' intentions. He points out, for example, that it is "true of Picasso's 1940 picture Nude Dressing Her Hair that it was occasioned by Picasso's rage at the Nazi invasion of Royau.. . . And it is true of Nielsen's Sixth Symphony that it was prompted by Nielsen's exasperation at certain modern trends in music" (p. 291-292). Next, he argues that "it is hard to see how we could know such things to be true of these works without some knowledge of their relation to their creators" (p. 292). He concludes that if interpretive validity is to be achieved through investigation of what is incontrovertibly true of a work, knowing the artist's intentions is indeed relevant. Even in evaluating the coherence or complexity of a work, Lyas argues, we presume an intending artist behind it. For in judging a work to be, say, sophisticated and beautifully proportioned, one refers to the sophistication and beautiful proportions "displayed there by its creator" (p. 292). In similar fashion, P. D. Juhl(1980) argues that it is necessary to understand artists' intentions because even the best analysis of a work's intrinsic features may be identified as being the best only by assuming authorial intention. Like Lyas, Juhl accepts the fundamental antiintentionalist maxim that valid interpretations must be grounded on the visible features of a work; that the best interpretation demonstrates a work's internal coherence. But, for Juhl, the very notion of "internal coherence" presumes an intending artistic mind behind the construction of the work. Juhl develops his argument through the example of two rival interpretations of Wordsworth's poem, "A slumber did my spirit seal." The conflict between the two interpretations concerns the line in the second stanza which reads: "Rolled around in earth's diurnal course." One interpretation of the words "rolled around" is that they connote a slow and gentle motion. The alternative interpretation is that the words connote a violent motion. In analyzing the conflict between these two interpretations, Juhl points out that the first (gentle motion) is strengthened by the coherence given the line by the words "in earth's diurnal course," which qualify the words "rolled around" in such a way as to suggest the orderly motion of the earth's revolution along a circular path, rather than any violent motion (p. 70). Juhl points out that it is entirely consistent with the anti-intentionalist insistence upon close textual analysis to find the line in question to be more coherent under the first interpretation than it is under the second. But it is sensible, he argues, to proceed in this way-i.e., to regard the words "in earth's diurnal course" as qualifying the words "rolled aroundn--only if one assumes an author having intended all of these words to operate together in such a manner. Thus the first interpretation is more persuasive than the second because the words "in earth's diurnal course" are seen as "an appropriate means to suggest a slow and gentle motion" (p. 71). And to see something as having been an appropriate means for achieving a particular artistic purpose requires the accompanying conception of someone both to have had that purpose and to have employed those means. In the case of artworks, that someone is the artist. To drive home this point Juhl asks us to suppose that the poem is not Wordsworth's but "has been accidentally typed out by a monkey randomly depressing keys on a typewriter." In this case we can no longer justify the first interpretation by explaining that the words "in earth's diurnal course" are an appropriate means for achieving a particular linguistic purpose, for we already know there is no one to have possessed or acted upon such a purpose. A monkey, after all, cannot intend one group of words to qualify another (p. 72). For Juhl, the conclusion is clear: "To call something a poem or even a text is to say among other things that the words, phrases, lines, or sentences of which it consists have not been arranged in this way by 28 Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) chance but have been produced by a person and with certain kinds of intentions" (p. 84). Thus to sum up the intentionalist argument, the meanings of literary and artistic works are determined by the purposeful intentions of their creators. While the complexity and ambiguity of many works allows them to appear to support multiple interpretations, the interpreter's proper task is to determine the artist's meaning and to regard it as decisive. A dance educator holding intentionalist views might begin a critique of a student's dance by asking the choreographer, "What are you trying to say to your audience in this work?" or "What does your work mean?" The ostensible aim of this inquiry is twofold: to gain what intentionalists term "interpretive knowledge7'-i.e., what the work does in fact mean-and to establish a basis for judging the success or merit of the work. The assumption here is that excellent works skillfully and unambiguously express the artist's intended meaning while poor works do not afford as tight a match between their aesthetic properties and their intended meaning. Elsewhere (1994) I review critical approaches and perspectives articulated in the professional literature on teaching and learning choreography. I provide two representative examples from that literature here to show how natural it is for dance writers to issue transparently intentionalist critical and creative imperatives. Lois Ellfeldt (1967) writes that "making a dance is very much like writing a composition: first find something to say, then say it as well as you can" (p. 78). Later she declares that success in dance-making "is always a question if the meaning intended by the choreographer is the same as that perceived by the audience. Obviously a dance is more successful when audience reaction bears a close resemblance to the choreographer's intent" (p. 86). Similarly, Blom and Chaplin (1982) write, "Let's face it, we should know what we are trying to say with movement" (p. 8). Whether or not assertions of this kind have any pedagogical merit is best determined through an exploration of positions on the other side of the "intention" question. Anti-Intentionalism As mentioned at the start, Wimsatt and Beardsley's 1946 essay "The Intentional Fallacy" is widely regarded as the wellspring of anti-intentionalist theory. Briefly, to commit the intentional fallacy is to permit the design or intention of the artist to be the standard for interpreting and judging the work. While not all who disclaim the critical authority of artists' intentions agree with everything proposed by Wimsatt and Beardsley, in their essay and in Beardsley's subsequent works, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (1958) and The Possibility of Criticism (1970), one finds the grounding tenets of the "New Critical" anti-intentionalist position. Briefly, this position holds that while authors and artists may well have elaborate meaningintentions for their works, the works themselves stand as public and autonomous entities. As such, they may take on meanings far beyond those intended or envisioned by their creators. In any case, artists' intentions in and interpretations of their works, even when decisively known, are not necessary to determine either the meaning of the work or its aesthetic merit. Beardsley draws a sharp distinction between the "internal" and "external" features of a work of art. As noted in the previous section in the discussion of the ideas of Lyas and Juhl, both intentionalists and anti-intentionalists recognize this distinction, but they disagree both on how features in each category are appropriately defined, and on the relevance to criticism of external features. A look at the details of Beardsley's reasoning illuminates the New Critical anti-intentionalist position on this and a host of other issues. Beardsley (1958) defines the artist's intentions as "a series of psychological states or events in his mind: what he wanted to do, how he imagined or projected the work before he began to make it and while he was in the process of making it" (p. 17). While Beardsley Dance Research Journal 29/1 (Spring 1997) 29 considers intentions to be external to the work itself, he allows that one can amass "direct evidence" of them "by biographical inquiry, through letters, diaries, workbooks-or, if the artist is alive, by asking him" (p. 20). The problem, then, is not that artists' intentions are mysterious or unavailable, but that We can seldom know the intention with sufficient exactness, independently of the work itself, to compare the work with it and measure its success or failure. Even when we can do so, the resulting judgment is not a judgment of the work, but only of the worker, which is quite a different thing. (p. 458) Here Beardsley rejects the idea that a work may appropriately be judged on the basis of how well or poorly it embodies the artist's intentions. For to say to an artist, "You have (or have not) expressed your ideas clearly in this work" is quite different from saying "This is an excellent (or poor) work." The first statement evaluates how well the artist has done at self expression. The second statement evaluates the work itself, which is what Beardsley holds that critics are supposed to do. Beardsley demonstrates with the following example that the proper and exclusive domain of criticism is the work's internal features. Suppose we encounter an abstract sculpture said by the artist to symbolize Human Destiny. Beardsley writes: "We look at it and see no such symbolic meaning, even after we have had the hint. Should we say that we have simply missed the symbolism, but that it must have been there, since what a statue symbolizes is precisely what its maker makes it symbolize?" Beardsley rejects this, for it "leads in the end to the wildest absurdity: anyone can make anything symbolize anything just by saying it does, for another sculptor could copy the same object and label it 'Spirit of Palm Beach, 1938"' (p. 21). The anti-intentionalist response to all this is to stress the distinction between the object itself and the psychological processes that produced it, and attend to the former in criticism while leaving the latter aside. This solution holds both for works of art and of literature. For in the case of a spoken or written utterance one may ask either "What does the speaker mean?" or "What does the sentence mean?" Beardsley urges the latter option since "what the sentence means depends not on the whim of the individual, and his mental vagaries, but upon the public conventions of usage that are tied up with the habit patterns in the whole speaking community" (p. 25). A number of important consequences derive from this line of reasoning. First, it implies that while an artist may, in great detail and with great conviction, tell us what his or her work means, this does not establish that it really means what the artist says. For the aesthetic features of a work and their interrelations might not support the artist's meaning. Consequently, what the artist wills the work to mean has no automatic authority in interpretation. As Beardsley (1970) writes, "An ambiguous text does not become any less ambiguous because its author wills one of the possible meanings. Will as he will, he cannot will away ambiguity" (p. 29). Second, a notion Sigurd Burkhardt (1971) terms as "poetic mistake" must always be kept in mind, for it opens the door to the dual possibility of an artist not only failing to express what he or she intended, but of expressing something quite clearly that was completely unintended. These consequences can result from such causes as the artist having lost sight of the work's original intention; having made awkward or misguided attempts to shape the work in accordance with the conventions of public taste; or simply having been unaware of the expressive power of certain emerging properties of the work-in-progress. In any case, anti-intentionalists hold that it is a mistake to regard intentions as fully controlling the outcome of a work. Indeed, Richard Shusterman (1992a) points out that intentions "share much of the indetermi30 Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) nacy of the language in which they are typically formulated, and thus they themselves can be differently interpreted" (p. 170). Moreover, some artists may deliberately create works that are ambiguous and support multiple interpretations. For Burkhardt, when interpreters resort to explaining a work in terms of the artist's intentions, "interpretation in its true sense-which must regard the poem as an ordered whole-has stopped. Whoever explains apparent inconsistencies through laws which are not derived from the poem itself thereby indicates that interpretation beyond this point is impossible" (p. 1204). The cumulative effect of these arguments is that the intentionalist quest for artists' intentions is, as Beardsley (1970) writes, a misguided attempt to be "mind-readers" instead of "poemreaders" (p. 33). Contrary to Carroll, then, our critical interest is not appropriately conceived as "conversational," but as aesthetic. In determining what the work of art does in fact mean we need only attend to its internal properties: to the publicly available features of the work itself. We need not look backward to its origins and causes, for the explanation of the work that such inquiry provides is external to the work, and as such is not what criticism seeks to achieve (9). Interestingly, the New Critical anti-intentionalist position just reviewed, like that of the intentionalists, posits the existence of a single, correct meaning for literary and aesthetic works. The debate, then, centers on how to recover this meaning. Intentionalists such as Knapp and Michaels simply equate the terms "meaning" and "author's meaning"; to speak of one simply is to speak of the other (10). Moderate intentionalists, like Hirsch, recognize the constraining influence over meaning of linguistic rules and conventions, and propose various rationales or imperatives for choosing to investigate the author's meaning over rival interpretive strategies. Anti-intentionalists like Beardsley rigorously stipulate what is to count as a work's "internal" properties to mark out the proper domain of interpretation. On this view, if a work appears to support more than one interpretation, critics must press on with deeper formal or textual analysis to determine the best, or maximally explanatory, alternative, for this is the correct meaning of the work. It is on this point that many anti-intentionalist critics part company with Beardsley and the New Critics, holding that there is no need to posit the existence of a single, determinate meaning for an artwork. For example, pragmatist theorists such as Shusterman (1988b) strongly resist the tendency both of intentionalists and New Critical anti-intentionalists to regard meaning as an independent object "which can be correctly or incorrectly described in the manner of material objects" (p. 405). For Shusterman, the inclination to regard meaning in this way is driven by a bias toward technical, instrumental, and capitalist thinking, where what is conceived as existing needs to be construed in quantifiable, commodifiable items. Authors create works with meanings which readers purchase and consume as aesthetic commodities.. .. Understanding in this technical mode is ultimately motivated by the desire for individual control and mastery. (p. 405) Richard Rorty (1982) also rejects intentionalist and anti-intentionalist arguments for singular or fixed meaning, and construes meaning instead as something continually re-defined by the intentions and interpretive practices of readers. In striking contrast both to the artistcentered theories of Hirsch, Knapp and Michaels, and to the supposedly objective approach of the New Critics, Rorty claims that the question "What is the meaning of the text?" is moot. Rather than to worry about recovering a work's "true" meaning, interpreters need only to "put it in a context, describe the advantages of having done so, and forget the question of whether Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) 31 one has got either at its 'meaning' or 'the author's intention"' (p. 134). Rorty's suggestion that meaning is shaped by the actions and intentions of readers (observers, listeners) echoes Roland Barthes' (1977) post-structuralist doctrine of "the death of the author," and is the bedrock maxim of so-called "reader-response" theories of interpretation (11). While it is impossible here to flesh out the differences and similarities among the approaches of various reader-response theorists, it is useful to note that they hold in common the notion that readers are active agents in the construction of literary meaning. Louise Rosenblatt (1991) characterizes reader- response theory when she writes: The reader does not approach Shakespeare's text in order to uncover an already defined entity, the meaning, the literary work of art. The physical text is simply marks on paper until a reader transacts with them. Each reader brings a unique reservoir of public and private significances, the residue of past experiences with language and texts in life situations. (p. 347-348) Hence, while there is disagreement among reader-response theorists both over the precise extent to which one's habitual ways of looking at things must influence one's readings, and the extent to which a work may be construed as a fixed structure of meaning that determines what a reader can "do" with it, there is consensus that the meaning-shaping intentions of readers are just as important as those of authors. Stanley Fish (1980) challenges the validity of author- and reader-intended meaning, as well as that of independently fixed or objective work-meaning, with his notion of interpretive communities (12). Fish writes that "it is interpretive communities, rather than either the text or the reader, that produce meanings" (p. 14). For Fish, the individual's power to interpret literary and artistic works is an illusion, for as interpreters we are always already controlled by pre-existing traditions and practices of interpretation which determine how we "see" works of art. Works do not exist independent of interpretation, available to have their secrets unlocked by clever interpreters. Instead, they are constituted by interpretation; the properties we might allege them to possess are themselves nothing more than the product of one or another interpretive strategy. "Interpretation is not the art of construing but the art of constructing," he writes. "Interpreters do not decode poems; they make them7' (p. 327). While it is true that criticism always in some way creates the phenomena it attempts to explain, Fish's notion that criticism does only that is dubious. Robert Scholes (1983) argues that Fish forgets that "making a poem from a text is a different activity from making a poem in the first place" (p. 172). Scholes objects strongly to Fish's denial that a work has distinguishing properties of its own that allow it to resist some interpretations while supporting others. On Fish's view, each individual strategy of interpretation-i.e., each interpretive community-"produces" a unique work containing its own set of properties, so there can never be any objective (work-centered) basis for choosing the best from among rival interpretations. Interpreters can persuade others to "see" the work as they do, but they can accomplish this only through rhetorical means, never by demonstration grounded in objective properties of the work. Successful persuasion simply brings another to adopt one's interpretive assumptions, thereby constituting the "same" work. Thus all perceived differences between rival readings of a work are really only the result of different mechanisms of perception. In other words, according to Fish, we do not "decide between interpretations by subjecting them to the test of disinterested evidence." Instead we "establish by political and persuasive means (they are the same thing) the set of interpretive assumptions from the vantage point of 32 Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) which the evidence (and the facts and the intentions and everything else) will hereafter be specifiable" (p. 16). Scholes rejects this position when he writes, "It is like saying that bluejays and robins can never be seen by the same person because any person will be either in the bluejay community or the robin community and therefore will see only one or the other" (p. 176). Scholes's (and others') objections to Fish notwithstanding, his views are influential insofar as they challenge authors, readers, and the so-called "objective properties" of works as privileged or fixed sources of meaning. The last anti-intentionalist position I will discuss is that of deconstruction, the critical movement that emerged in France in 1967 with the publication of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology. At first glance there appears to be an affinity between the New Criticism and deconstruction: both rely on a close reading (analysis) of the textlwork and both reject the sanctity of authorially-intended meaning. But while the New Critics tout close analysis as a means to resolve textual ambiguity and to achieve the correct meaning of a work, the deconstructionist view is that ambiguity can never be resolved; indeterminacy of meaning is inescapable. Contrary to the New Critical principle of organic unity, which seeks to harness textual ambiguity by incorporating it into broad structures of meaning, deconstructionist critics use close analysis to show that every work supports incompatible or contradictory readings; all works are thus unreadable, and none can ever be brought to closure (13). Grounding this categorical rejection of the work as a repository of fixed and stable meaning is the notion of "intertextuality." Shuli Barzilai and Morton W. Bloomfield (1986) explain: Because all present texts, literary and critical (though this distinction itself is challenged), are permeated by past ones, no text is ever self- contained or sufficient unto itself. Every text is an intertext, a network of scraps and fragments, a set of relations formed with and by other texts. The notion of autonomy, like that of recoverable meanings and absolute truths, is an illusion. (p. 160) This notion stands clearly in opposition to the New Critical practice of "decontextualization": the interpretive isolation of the "work itself' as if nothing came before or after it. The principle of intertextuality paves the way for deconstruction to disavow the idea of communicating specific artistic meaning. A text, Derrida (1976) explains, "always interweaves roots endlessly, bending them to send down roots among roots, to pass through the same points again, to redouble old adherences, to circulate among their differences, to coil around themselves or to be enveloped one in the other.. ." (pp. 101-102). Thus deconstruction construes traditional criticism as clinging to the misguided illusion that determinate meaning can be contained within or transmitted by a work to a reader/observer/listener. Against this, deconstruction argues that all interpretive efforts to "double" or reproduce what an author tries to say are always doomed to fail. Two reasons are given for this allegedly inevitable failure. First, language itself, whose contexts and conventions are continually in flux, is held automatically to prevent the transmission of meaning. Second, in interpretation there is, as Harold Bloom (1979) puts it, "always and only bias, inclination, pre-judgment, swerve" (p. 9). Accordingly, the word "reading'' is preferred by deconstructionists over "interpretation," for the latter term falsely presumes that stable meaning can be gleaned from a work by an objective, or neutral, critic. Moreover, the traditional notion of "wrong" or "incorrect" reading is eschewed for incorrectly implying the possibility of there ever being a "right" or "correct" reading. Since the instability of language and the quirks of individual interpreters guarantee that there can be no Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) 33 clean transmission of objective meaning, all reading is necessarily "misreading." It is important to note that by positing all reading as misreading, deconstruction both ignores the meaning-shaping power that may be brought to a work by its readerlobserver/ listener, and leans heavily upon the very notion of determinate, recoverable meaning it purports to overturn. Shusterman (1988b) criticizes deconstruction on these grounds, showing that Derrida and his followers rely on "a naively pre-Wittgensteinian picture of understanding as the recapturing or reproduction of a particular intentional content or meaning-object so as to render true reading and understanding a hopeless pursuit" (p. 404). In other words, deconstruction slyly construes meaning and understanding in terms of an objective one-toone correspondence between perception and reality, easily defeats that construal by showing that such understanding can never be obtained, and then declares a victory for elusive, indeterminate, and incommunicable meaning-as if our choice is only between fixed author-centered meaning and hopelessly arbitrary, idiosyncratic meaning. Shusterman posits an alternative view when he writes: ...meaning is not a separate object or content but merely the correlate of understanding something. And understanding something is not the mirroring correspondence or capturing or reproduction of some fixed and determinate intentional object or semantic content. It is fundamentally an ability to handle or respond to that thing in certain accepted ways which are consensually shared, sanctioned, and inculcated by the community.. . (p. 405) Later, he articulates a view of interpretation as the activity of developing and transmitting a richly meaningful response to the text. "The project is not to describe the work's given and definitive sense," he writes, "but rather to make sense of the work" (p. 407). Perhaps ironically, by denying the possibility of fixed and transmittable work-meaning, and by introducing the notion of intertextuality, deconstruction may be seen as legitimizing the intentionalist claim that interpreters must explore the external and "genetic" features of a worki.e., its origins and causes. For if Derrida is correct that a work is merely a system of "roots," then one legitimate aim of interpretation--or reading-is the excavation and analysis of those roots, among which must be included the cultural, historical, and biographical contingencies of the author. Of course, the deconstructionist's claim against this assertion would be that, as "texts" in and of themselves, all pieces of external evidence are unreadable and indeterminate. Clearly, there are many varieties of anti-intentionalism, and it is not necessary here to attempt either to reconcile or to rank them. What is important is to appreciate the disparate lines of argument they employ to justify their rejection of intentionalist arguments for authorially-intended meaning as determining a work's meaning, and to synthesize useful aspects of the arguments so far considered-on both sides of the debate-into an approach to interpreting dances. Aesthetic Inquiry The critical approach I term "Aesthetic Inquiry" is grounded in the recognition that works of art are multidimensional and thus may be investigated in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes (14). One may, for example, proceed phenomenologically by isolating the work in perception, momentarily suspending all beliefs and assumptions about it, and conduct a close analysis of the aesthetic properties of the work itself. Or, one may take a step back from the immediacy of the work itself to focus on the affect the work has on the psyches of viewers, 34 Dance Research Journal 29!1 (Spring 1997) T s t h e t i c lnquiry The Work Itself hological lnquiry Affect On The Viewer graphical lnquiry The Artist Art-Historical lnquiry SchoolIGenre ropological lnquiry The Work As Cultural Artifact Figure 1: Modes Of Inquiry Into Art aiming through psychological inquiry to discover the response patterns and taste preferences of different people. Or, one may investigate the biographical history or motivesiintentions of the artist who created the work. Or, one may view the work from a strictly art-historical perspective, seeking to classify it according to genre or type, or to discover its significance in relation to antecedent or subsequent works by the same or other artists. Or, one may investigate the cultural context of the work, pursuing such anthropological questions as "How does this work function in and reflect the values of its culture of origin?" These five modes of inquiry into, or dimensions of, works of art may be schematized as a series of rings rippling outward from the work itself-the aesthetic object-which resides at the center, or core, of inquiry. (See Figure 1.) As the diagram reveals, only aesthetic inquiry deals with the work of art specifically as art; inquiry into the categories assigned to the four "outer" rings occurs at various degrees of conceptual distance from inquiry into the work as it exists aesthetically. Information about the affect of the work on viewers, the biography and/or intentions of the artist, and the work's arthistorical or cultural significance is thus non-aesthetic information. One may go quite far in obtaining such information without paying particularly close attention to, or gaining an aesthetic understanding of, the work itself. This is precisely the danger of outer-ring inquiry. It is important to recognize that without the aesthetic object there can be no outer rings. Thus inquiry into the aesthetic-or visible-properties of a work must orient each of the other modes of inquiry. That is, rather than turning away from the immediacy of the work, outer-ring inquiry must be guided by it so that a thorough understanding of the work of art specifically as art may inform all subsequent non-aesthetic reports or claims made about it. Dance Research Journal 29!1 (Spring 1997) 35 For example, the psychological report that many viewers find a particular dance to be wildly exciting gains critical import only if the viewers' wild excitement can clearly be traced to specific aesthetic properties of the dance rather than to some other cause. Similarly, the arthistorical claim that with a particular dance a choreographer has abandoned the artistic values of one school or genre and embraced those of another must be substantiated by showing precisely how the aesthetic properties of the work reflect or embody the allegedly new artistic values. Thus the work itself is the authority for all claims made about it on any of the other levels of inquiry. Metaphorically speaking, the aesthetic object is a planet around which the other modes of inquiry orbit. Practically speaking, if one neglects to achieve aesthetic understanding of the work, and focuses instead on collecting non-aesthetic information about it, one demeans the work in a sense by using it merely as an instrument for attempting to demonstrate or challenge one or another viewer-response, artist-intentional, art-historical, or anthropological theory-as if these theories are what really matter and artworks simply serve as convenient specimens of them. Even more specious, in my view, is to imagine that one might gain aesthetic understanding exclusively through "outer ring" inquiry without ever really focusing on the work itself. Aesthetic Inquiry in the Choreography Class Turning now to the specific teaching/learning environment of a choreography class, where both formal and informal discussions of dances routinely take place, one notices that each of the five modes of inquiry in the diagram may be pursued. Logically speaking, one could begin anywhere. But pedagogically speaking, one's primary interests are in the work and the artist, since both are present, both can "speak for themselves," and it is with the improvement of each that dance education is fundamentally concerned. Elsewhere (1996) I have articulated in detail a systematic approach to teaching dance critical skills by focusing on the visible properties of the work itself. In the space remaining here I will briefly summarize the principles of my approach, explain what I hold to be the proper role in interpretation of accounts of artists7intentions, and sketch out a conception of the interpretive community that is the choreography class. Finally, I will close with a few words about how specific intentionalist and anti-intentionalist perspectives can inform critical practice in the choreography class. Following the New Critical imperative, critical inquiry is most fruitfully initiated with the viewers isolating the work in consciousness to perceive clearly how it "works." Viewers observing the performance of a dance must attempt throughout to attend to its visible properties without focusing on questions or assumptions more appropriate to one of the outer rings of inquiry (15). Following observation, the operative critical questions for the class to address are thus, as Eugene Kaelin (1989) asserts: "How is this work structured? What experience does it afford, structured as it is?" (p. 35). To address these questions observers must first describe what they have perceived and experienced as the work's aesthetic properties and analyze the formal relationships among them. Following this reflective process interpretive hypotheses may be formulated, discussed, and checked for referential adequacy against the work. Finally, recommendations for revisions to the work may be offered by the viewers and, after revisions have been selected and implemented by the choreographer, the process of aesthetic inquiry begins anew. In a classroom setting, where peers of the artist whose work is under review have an interest in exploring creative approaches and lines of critical reasoning different from their own, choreographers may be invited to contribute to discussions in two important ways. First, 36 Dance Research Journal 29il (Spring 1997) they may describe their aesthetic decision-making process and provide insight into what the work fundamentally is, and how it came to be put together in this particular way. In articulating this, artists explain what Jerrold Levinson (1992) terms their "categorical intentions." These kinds of intentions, Levinson says, "involve the maker's conception of what he has produced and what it is for, on a rather basic level" (p. 232). For example, a choreographer might inform the class that the work under review is a personal ritual. Another choreographer might state that her work is simply a study in circles and arcs. A third choreographer may announce that her work explores the rhythmic relationships between spoken words and movements. These categorical intentions state in a general way the context in which the work is to be seen; what kind of work it is. They do not specify precisely what it means. Second, choreographers may provide interpretive hypotheses of their own, stating what, if any, particular meaning or message their works are intended to convey. In Levinson's terms these kinds of explanations provide firsthand evidence of the artist's "semantic intentions." While knowledge of a choreographer's semantic intentions may help others to see something in or about the work that their own interpretations overlooked or underemphasized, an artist's statements about the work's meaning, like those of any viewer, must be checked against the work itself for their referential adequacy; viewers must not regard artists' semantic intentions as decisive or privilege them over rival interpretations. William E. Tolhurst's (1979) distinction between "utterer's" meaning and "utterance" meaning is instructive in clarifying the limits of the relevance of artists' semantic intentions. Briefly, utterer's meaning is "just whatever an utterer means" through the use of specific linguistic tokens (p. 4). To determine utterer's meaning one must investigate both "word sequence" meaning and the speaker's intentions in using a particular word sequence. That is, one must discern which of the meanings that a given word sequence can be used to express the speaker did mean to express by uttering the word sequence. Utterance meaning, on the other hand, is determined neither by word sequence or utterer's meaning. For an utterance is aparticular occasion of the use of a particular word sequence by an utterer. To determine utterance meaning readers must inquire both into the context of its use, including the intentions of the utterer, the textual properties of the utterance itself, and their own experience of the utterance. In considering the different meanings a particular dance may be seen as supporting, viewers should proceed as Tolhurst suggests by attending carefully to the aesthetic properties of the work and how these have been experienced. Next, consider information about the work provided by the choreographer, keeping in mind that the meaning-intentions of the choreographer are relevant to aesthetic inquiry only insofar as they afford a match with the work itself. Inquiry into the artist's intentions must never supplant aesthetic inquiry, but only enhance and deepen it. Indeed, the interpretive claims of all the viewers should be given a fair hearing. Each way of seeing the work must be heard, interrogated, and compared both with alternative ways of seeing it, and with the work itself (16). It is important to note that the implied analogy between the movements and structural characteristics of a dance and the "word-sequences" of a text is loose and figurative, not literal. In other words, while the analogy is helpful in relating Tolhurst's concept of utterance meaning to the interpretation of dances, it is not meant to imply that dances are to be construed as coded linguistic structures whose meanings may be "read" by interpreters (17). In proceeding as described above, the choreography class functions as a kind of miniature artworld: a community of discourse in which an array of interpretations, or ways of seeing each dance, may arise. In debating these, the class-viewers and the artist alike-must seek Dance Research Journal 29il (Spring 1997) 3 7 to find the best way of construing the work, not to determine "the meaning" of the work, for there is no single such thing. There is always, even at the beginning of the critical process, a baseline set of properties the work is seen as possessing by the members of the class, and against which each interpretive hypothesis may be assessed. These commonly observed datawhat Shusterman (1992b, p. 94) terms the work's "referential identityn-are not rigid, but fluid; they accumulate bit by bit as reflections on the work from different viewers are heard, weighed, and discussed. In addition to descriptive evidence of the work's surface and depth properties, these reflections might include facts about the artist, the work's cultural or arthistorical significance, or about the particular affect of the work on various viewers (18). Agreement may be reached on the best way of seeing the work, but this is not necessary. And even when agreement is reached it does not mean that the meaning of the work is fixed, for interpretive agreement may be undermined by the arrival of yet another interpretation that appears to explain or shed light on the work in a better way. The "best" interpretation (at any given moment) is thus not the easiest one to rule in, but the hardest to rule out (19). This view of group critical activity suggests an alternative to Fish's notion of an "interpretive community" as consisting of those holding a particular set of interpretive assumptions. The interpretive community that is the choreography class is best construed as an environment in which viewers of a work negotiatively compare each other's responses to a particular work, seeking through intersubjective experience to perceive and appreciate the work as fully as possible (20). When aesthetic inquiry is first introduced into a class, student critics (particularly those holding strict intentionalist assumptions) are often taken aback by the variety of interpretations a single work can elicit. The initial reaction of some students to the discovery that an artist's meaning is not the final word is to leap to the opposite conclusion that interpretation is wholly subjective: that works have as many meanings as there are viewers, and that criticism is a waste of time. Embedded in these sentiments is the desire to replace the determinacy of singular (the artist's) subjectivity with that of plural (viewers') subjectivity. This idea is pedagogically treacherous, for it suggests that there is no point in learning to see one's own interpretive hypotheses as provisional; to suspend one's own ways of seeing a work long enough to entertain others' ways of seeing it. But there is a point to doing this: to gain a deeper understanding of and appreciation for works of art. Even the most radically opposed critics may benefit from exploring each other's perspectives. After all, nothing prevents, say, a Freudian, a Marxist, and a feminist critic from engaging in productive and mutually illuminating critical discourse, provided they are willing to disengage their Freudian, Marxist, and feminist assumptions long enough to have a direct encounter with the work and with each other. The same holds true for students and teachers in a choreography class. When, in the face of a seemingly overwhelming plurality of interpretive views, students reject the legitimacy of the critical enterprise, it is helpful to remind them that, in the words of Paul B. Armstrong (1986), ...bewilderment makes growth and discovery possible to the extent that confusion is the precondition for a change in one's orientation aimed at restoring the bearings one has momentarily lost.. .. One of the main forms of discovery that interpretation offers is exposure to worlds other than our own. (p. 324) To alleviate critical bewilderment, then, and to get on with the business of interpreting and 38 Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) appreciating an artwork, one need only return to the work as it exists aesthetically to find, in the light of all that can be discovered about it from any and all sources, what interpretation it can best be seen as supporting. It follows that intentionalist theorists are right when they argue for the potential relevance to interpretation of information about an artist's intentions. Works of art do take shape through artists' deliberate acts of selecting, shaping, and forming artistic materials, and knowing something about these acts can be enlightening. Intentionalists are wrong, however, when they equate work-meaning and artist-meaning, because inquiry into the artist's motives or reasons for making a work is no substitute for aesthetic inquiry into the work itself. Similarly, antiintentionalists are right when they insist upon the primacy of inquiry into the work itself, but err when they discount the potential value of artists' intentions to the effort of gaining a more complete understanding of the work. The error on both sides, of course, begins with the notion that a work has one fixed, stable, determinate meaning, and that there is but one way to find it. Equally erroneous, but for a different reason, are anti-intentionalist theories holding that the absence of fixed meaning means that works cannot be understood at all, or that a work may plausibly mean anything to anyone, or that interpretive strategies themselves literally "create" works. These theories ignore that works do possess certain stable properties; that interpretation is always interpretation of something, and that by resisting in various ways the different interpretive hypotheses critics bring to them, works are clearly "there" prior to interpretation. Thus while it is true that different interpretive strategies give rise to different hypotheses of meaning, this does not prevent an interpreter either from coming to see the work from the standpoint of any one of a number of perspectives, or from choosing which of these perspectives best aligns with the work. Indeed, it is precisely these skills, and the inclination to use them, that dance educators must strive to develop in their students s o they will become more perceptive observers, more reflective thinkers, more effective choreographers, and more articulate spokespersons for their art. NOTES 1. One earlier statement of the total repudiation of artists' intentions is implied by Clive Be11 (192811969) in his claim that "to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions" (p. 424). Compare this with Taine's (186311971) lengthy argument for gaining an understanding of an artist's products only through understanding the artist herself to see the historical basis for the present debate. 2. Among the standard works to which I refer are Blom and Chaplin (1982), Ellfeldt (1967), Hayes (1955), H'Doubler (1949), Humphrey (1959), Minton (1986), Morgenroth (1987), Schlaich and Dupont (1988), Smith (1976), and Turner (1971). I review the approaches to criticism of these and other writers in "Critical Evaluation in the Choreography Class" (1994). 3. Hirsch does not deal with the question of whether Kant's imperative appropriately covers cases of non- linguistic artistic expressions, such as dances or paintings. Lutz Danneberg and Hans-Harald Miiller (1984) discuss this and other difficulties with Hirsch's extension of Kant. 4. The historical impetus for this view comes from Benedetto Croce's seminal workAestheric as Science of Expression and General Linguistic (190911956). Briefly, Croce holds that the work of art is the material reproduction of the artist's original "intuitionexpression," and that to interpret a work is "to reproduce it in oneself" (p. 118). See Richard Shusterman's "Croce on Interpretation: Deconstruction and Pragmatism" (1988a) for a critique of Croce's aesthetic. 5. See David W. Ecker's "The Artistic Process as Qualitative Problem Solving" (1963) for a detailed explication of this view. Eugene Kaelin (1989, pp. 4752) offers a critique of Ecker's theory. D a n c e Research J o u r n a l 2911 (Spring 1997) 39 6. The "speech-act" theory of H.P. Grice (1968,1969) provides a theoretical basis for this position. relationship between deconstruction and the New Criticism. 7. Carroll himself raises this issue in a discussion of film director Ed Wood's 1959 film, Plan 9from Outer Space. Carroll criticizes J. Hoberman (1980) for suggesting that Wood intended (and succeeded) in this film to transgress Hollywood filmmaking conventions: to produce a postmodern collage. Carroll writes: "It is incredible to attribute to Edward Wood the kinds of beliefs that contemporary avant-garde filmmakers have about the techniques, purposes, and effects of subverting Hollywood cinema. Those beliefs (and avant-garde desires) were not available in the film world Edward Wood inhabited ... " (p. 120). 14. Key sources for the formulation of this approach include the pragmatic aesthetics of John Dewey (1934) and Richard Shusterman (1992b); the phenomenological aesthetics of Eugene Kaelin (1989); and the art-educational principles of David W. Ecker (1963, 1967), and Edmund B. Feldman (1967). 8. Beardsley (1958) employs the "internal/external" distinction in formulating his anti-intentionalist argument. The "New Critical" movement, in which Beardsley was a major player, relied heavily on this distinction. 9. Even if we do seek the work's origins and causes we must not equate what Michael Krausz (1992) terms "individual" and "social" intentions. Krausz argues that the latter is not reducible to the former. On the contrary, "We cannot make sense of individual interttionality independent of social intentionality" (p. 153). Thus work-meaning cannot be tied exclusively to author's meaning. 10. Hence the title of their work,Against Theory. What Knapp and Michaels are against is the notion that we need to do any interpretive theorizing at all. Since work-meaning and author-meaning are identical, there is no need to theorize on the relevance of the latter. 11. The rise of reader-response criticism as an institutionally sanctioned and widely used methodology flies in the face of Wimsatt and Beardsley's other influential essay, "The Affective Fallacy" (1949) in which confusing what the work is (aesthetically) with what it does (affectively) is labeled a critical fallacy. See Jane Tompkins (1980) for a survey of reader-response positions. 15. To treat the work in this manner is to effectuate the phenomenological epochk, the suspension both of the "natural standpoint" and the embodied ego for the purpose of grounding inquiry in the work as it is in itself. Husserl (1960) writes that this move enables one to "describe adequately what he sees, purely as seen, as what is seen and seen in such and such a manner" (p. 35). See Ihde (1986), Kaelin (1989), and Lentricchia (1980, pp. 67-69) for more on the phenomenological epochk. 16. For viewers in a class to hear, interrogate, and assess each other's impressions, descriptions, and interpretations of a work is a pedagogical application of Husserl's variational principle, which calls for viewers to explore structural or invariant features of the phenomenon in question. See Larry Lavender (1994, pp. 80-113) for an explication of phenomenology as a method for art-critical and aesthetic discourse. 17. See Lavender and Predock-Linnell (1996) for a discussion of pedagogical problems associated with treating dances as vehicles for denotative linguistic communication. 18. "Surface" and "depth" are Eugene Kaelin's (1989) terms. In the present context, the former term refers to the movements, gestures, patterns, and aesthetic qualities of a dance while the latter refers to the particular symbolic or representational images and ideas these may be seen as expressing. Different viewers may see surface properties as "deepening" into the expression of different images and meanings. 12. For rigorous and insightful critiques of Fish's interpretive theory see Walter A. Davis (1984) and Gerald Graff (1985). 19. Larry Lavender (1996, pp. 121-131) analyzes the problem of disagreement, and provides remedies for that and other potential obstacles to group critical discussion. 13. Michael Fischer (1985, pp. 83-125) provides an excellent discussion of this point and of the 20. See David Bleich (1978) for a thorough discussion of intersubjectivity and interpretation. 40 D a n c e Research J o u r n a l 2911 (Spring 1997) REFERENCES Armstrong, Paul B. "The Multiple Existence of a Literary Work." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 44 (1986): 321-329. Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, And Text. New York: The Noonday Press, 1977. Barzilai, Shuli, and Morton W. Bloomfield. "New Criticism and Deconstructive Criticism: Or What's New?" New Literary History 18.1 (1986): 151-169. Beardsley, Monroe C. The Possibility of Criticism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970. . Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. NewYork: Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc., 1958. Bell, Clive. "The Aesthetic Hypothesis." In Philosophy ofArt andAesthetics, edited by Frank A. Tillman and Steven M. Cahn, 415-428. New York: Harper and Row, 1969. Bleich, David. Subjective Criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Blom, Lynne Anne, and L. Tarin Chaplin. The Intimate Act of Choreography. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986. Bloom, Harold. Deconstruction and Criticism. New York: Seabury Press, 1979. Burkhardt, Sigurd. "Notes on the Theory of Intrinsic Interpretation." In Critical Theory Since Pluto, edited by Hazard Adams, 1201-1211. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971. Carroll, Noel. "Art, Intention, and Conversation." In Intention and Interpretation, edited by Gary Iseminger, 97-131. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. Croce, Benedetto. Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic. New York: The Noonday Press, 1909/1956. Danneberg, Lutz, and Hans-Harald Miiller. "On Justifying the Choice of Interpretive Theories." Journal ofAesthetics andArt Criticism 43 (1984): 716. Davis, Walter A. "The Fisher King: Wille zur Macht in Baltimore." Critical Inquiry 10 (1984): 668-694. Yale University Press, 1979. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Gayatri Chakravorty. Spivak, trans. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Dewey, John. Art As Experience. New York: Perigree Books, 1934. Ecker, David W. "Justifying Aesthetic JudgmentsnArt Education 20 (1967): 5-8. . "The Artistic Process as Qualitative Problem Solving." Journal ofAesthetics andArt Criticism 21.3 (1963): 283-290. Ellfeldt, L0is.A Primer for Choreographers. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1967. Feldman, Edmund B. Varieties of Msual Experience. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1971. Fischer, Michael. Does Deconstruction Make Any Difference? Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980. Graff, Gerald. "Interpretation on Tlon: A Response to Stanley Fish." New Literary History 17.1 (1985): 109-127. Grice, H. P. "Utterer's Meaning and Intentions." The Philosophical Review 78.2 (1969): 147-177. . "Utterer's Meaning, Sentence Meaning, and Word Meaning." Foundations ofLanguage 4.3 (1968): 225-242. Hayes, Elizabeth R . Dance Composition and Production. New York: A. S, Barnes, 1955. H'Doubler, Margaret. Dance: A Creative Art Experience. New York: F. S. Crofts, 1940. Hirsch, E. D. The Aims of Interpretation. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1976. . Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. Hoberman, J. "Bad Movies." Film Comment 16.4 (1980): 7-12. Humphrey, Doris. The Art of Making Dances. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1959. de Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations. D. Cairns, trans. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1960. . Allegories of Reading: Figural Languages in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven: Ihde, Don. Experimental Phenomenology. New York: State University of New York Press, 1986. Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) 41 Juhl, P. D. Interpretation. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980. Kaelin, Eugene F. An Aesthetics for Art Educators. New York: Teachers College Press, 1989. Rosenblatt, Louise M. "The Aesthetic Transaction." In Aesthetics andArts Education, edited by Ralph A. Smith and Alan Simpson, 347-354. Chicago: University of Illinios Press, 1991. Knapp, Steven, and Walter Benn Michaels. Against Theory. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982. Savile, Anthony. "Tradition and Interpretation." Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism 36.3 (1978): 303-316. Krausz, Michael. "Intention and Interpretation: Hirsch and Margolis." In Intention andlnterpretation, edited by Gary Iseminger, 152-166. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. Schlaich, Joan, and Betty Dupont. Dance: TheArt of Production. 2nd ed. Pennington, NJ: Princeton Book Company Publishers, 1988. Lang, Berel. "The Intentional Fallacy Revisited." British Journal ofAesthetics 14.4 (1974): 306-314. Lavender, Larry. Dancers Talking Dance. Champaign: Human Kinetics, 1996. ."Understanding Interpretation." Dance Research G n a l 27.2 (1995): 25-33. . "Critical Evaluation in the Choreography Class." Ph.D. Diss., New York University, 1994. , and Jennifer Predock-Linnell. "Standing Aside and Making Space: Mentoring Student Choreographers." Impulse 4.3 (1996): 235-252. Lentricchia, Frank.After the New Criticism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. Levinson, Jerrold. "Intention and Interpretation: A Last Look." In Intention andlnterpretation. edited by Gary Iseminger, 221-256. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. Lyas, Colin. "Wittgensteinian Intentions." In Intention and Interpretation, edited by Gary Iseminger, 132151. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. . "Anything Goes: The Intentional Fallacy Revisited." British Journal ofAesthetics 23.4 (1983): 291-305. Minton, Sandra Cerney. Choreography. Champaign: Human Kinetics, 1986. Morgenroth, Joyce. Dance Improvisations. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987. Nathan, Daniel 0 . "Irony, Metaphor, and the Problem of Intention." In Intention and Interpretation, edited by Gary Iseminger, 183-202. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. Rorty, Richard. "Philosophy Without Principles." In Against Theory, edited by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, 132-138. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1982. 42 Dance Research Journal 2911 (Spring 1997) Scholes, Robert. "Who Cares About the Text?" Novel 17.2 (1984): 171-180. Shusterman, Richard. "Interpreting With Pragmatist Intentions." In Intention andlnterpretation, edited by Gary Iseminger, 167-182. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992a. . Pragmatist Aesthetics. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992b. . "Croce on Interpretation: Deconstruction and Pragmatism." New Literary History 20.1 (1988a): 199216. . "Interpretation, Intention, and Truth." Journal ofAesthetics andArt Criticism 46 (1988b): 399-41 1. Smith-Autard, Jacqueline M. Dance Composition: A Practical Guide for Teachers. London: A & C Black, 1992. Taine, Hippolyte. "History of English Literature." In Critical Theory Since Pluto, edited by Hazard Adams, 602-614. NewYork: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1971. Tolhurst, William E. "On What a Text is and How it Means." British Journal of Aesthetics 19 (1979): 314. Tompkins, Jane P., ed. Reader Response Criticism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Turner, Margery J. New Dance: Approaches to NonLiteral Choreography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971. Wimsatt, W. K., and Monroe C. Beardsley. "The Affective Fallacy." Sewannee Review 57 (1949): 3155. . "The Intentional Fallacy." Sewanee Review 54 (1946): 468-488. Wollheim, Richard. Art and its Objects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. http://www.jstor.org LINKED CITATIONS - Page 1 of 4 - You have printed the following article: Intentionalism, Anti-Intentionalism, and Aesthetic Inquiry: Implications for the Teaching of Choreography Larry Lavender Dance Research Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1. (Spring, 1997), pp. 23-42. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0149-7677%28199721%2929%3A1%3C23%3AIAAAII%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from an off-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Please visit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR. Notes 3 On Justifying the Choice of Interpretive Theories Lutz Danneberg; Hans-Harald Müller The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 43, No. 1. (Autumn, 1984), pp. 7-16. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28198423%2943%3A1%3C7%3AOJTCOI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7 4 Croce on Interpretation: Deconstruction and Pragmatism Richard Shusterman New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 1, Critical Reconsiderations. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 199-216. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-6087%28198823%2920%3A1%3C199%3ACOIDAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K 5 The Artistic Process as Qualitative Problem Solving David W. Ecker The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 21, No. 3. (Spring, 1963), pp. 283-290. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28196321%2921%3A3%3C283%3ATAPAQP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B 12 The Fisher King: "Wille zur Macht" in Baltimore Walter A. Davis Critical Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Jun., 1984), pp. 668-694. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0093-1896%28198406%2910%3A4%3C668%3ATFK%22ZM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list. http://www.jstor.org LINKED CITATIONS - Page 2 of 4 - 12 Interpretation on Tlön: A Response to Stanley Fish Gerald Graff New Literary History, Vol. 17, No. 1, Philosophy of Science and Literary Theory. (Autumn, 1985), pp. 109-117. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-6087%28198523%2917%3A1%3C109%3AIOTART%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F 14 The Artistic Process as Qualitative Problem Solving David W. Ecker The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 21, No. 3. (Spring, 1963), pp. 283-290. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28196321%2921%3A3%3C283%3ATAPAQP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B References The Multiple Existence of a Literary Work Paul B. Armstrong The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 44, No. 4. (Summer, 1986), pp. 321-329. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28198622%2944%3A4%3C321%3ATMEOAL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4 New Criticism and Deconstructive Criticism, or What's New? Shuli Barzilai; Morton W. Bloomfield New Literary History, Vol. 18, No. 1, Studies in Historical Change. (Autumn, 1986), pp. 151-169. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-6087%28198623%2918%3A1%3C151%3ANCADCO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1 On Justifying the Choice of Interpretive Theories Lutz Danneberg; Hans-Harald Müller The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 43, No. 1. (Autumn, 1984), pp. 7-16. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28198423%2943%3A1%3C7%3AOJTCOI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7 NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list. http://www.jstor.org LINKED CITATIONS - Page 3 of 4 - The Fisher King: "Wille zur Macht" in Baltimore Walter A. Davis Critical Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Jun., 1984), pp. 668-694. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0093-1896%28198406%2910%3A4%3C668%3ATFK%22ZM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 Justifying Aesthetic Judgments David W. Ecker Art Education, Vol. 20, No. 5. (May, 1967), pp. 5-8. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0004-3125%28196705%2920%3A5%3C5%3AJAJ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M The Artistic Process as Qualitative Problem Solving David W. Ecker The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 21, No. 3. (Spring, 1963), pp. 283-290. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28196321%2921%3A3%3C283%3ATAPAQP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B Interpretation on Tlön: A Response to Stanley Fish Gerald Graff New Literary History, Vol. 17, No. 1, Philosophy of Science and Literary Theory. (Autumn, 1985), pp. 109-117. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-6087%28198523%2917%3A1%3C109%3AIOTART%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F Utterer's Meaning and Intention H. P. Grice The Philosophical Review, Vol. 78, No. 2. (Apr., 1969), pp. 147-177. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108%28196904%2978%3A2%3C147%3AUMAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2 Understanding Interpretation Larry Lavender Dance Research Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Autumn, 1995), pp. 25-33. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0149-7677%28199523%2927%3A2%3C25%3AUI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list. http://www.jstor.org LINKED CITATIONS - Page 4 of 4 - Tradition and Interpretation Anthony Savile The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 36, No. 3, Critical Interpretation. (Spring, 1978), pp. 303-316. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28197821%2936%3A3%3C303%3ATAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F Croce on Interpretation: Deconstruction and Pragmatism Richard Shusterman New Literary History, Vol. 20, No. 1, Critical Reconsiderations. (Autumn, 1988), pp. 199-216. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-6087%28198823%2920%3A1%3C199%3ACOIDAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K Interpretation, Intention, and Truth Richard Shusterman The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 46, No. 3. (Spring, 1988), pp. 399-411. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28198821%2946%3A3%3C399%3AIIAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list.