Against Interpretation:Reading On In America

Susan Sontag(1933-2004)was an active scholar of contemporary American academic circles,famous novelist,well-known critic,and pioneer of political movement.Her academic interest extensively covered literature,art criticism,novels,philosophy,cultural studies,and photography theories.Even to this day,her works have been translated into 32 languages and published throughout the world.The western critics speak highly of her and regard her as “the conscience of American intellectuals” and “unofficial literary queen”.Sontag set off an uproar in the Western literary world for her unique and pioneering criticisms in the Against Interpretation.With the publication of the book,in 1960s',she began to fire on the traditional interpretations centered on “morality,” “content,” and “meaning,” and advocating a brand new interpretation standard of “Form-based”.Since then,she had successively put forward literary concepts such as “new sensibility”,“sense of camp”,“erotics of art” and “silent aesthetics”.She was also greatly affected by the postmodernism.Her early works were known for the abstract symbols,streams of consciousness,and structures which were difficult to interpret.After the mid-1970 s,confronting the proliferation of extreme literary views,“consumerism” and “antiintellectualism” for example,art was in danger of being sentenced to be “dead”.Hence,Sontag undertook to re-examine her early aesthetic thoughts and simultaneously realized the importance of traditional “moral” interpretations in art protection.She finally set about “new sensibility” which perfected her core aesthetic value,culminating in her last full-length novel In America in 2000.Since the publication,it has invited critics from the fields of feminism,narratology,new historicism,and psychology for its unique narrative approach,concise and profound language,use of multiple genres such as diaries,novels,and monologues,as well as multiple themes.However,those studies only note one aspect of the novel and lack a comprehensive understanding of Sontag's sense of art and its reflection in the book.Improperly,art views such as criticizing of feminism and psychological analysis which are against by Sontag are applied to analyzing her work.This thesis is completely analyzing In America from the forms to the content and pointing out the Sontag's opinion changes reflected in the book,based on her sense of art.Firstly,the thesis figures her art claims on the “new sensibility” and tells that “new sensibility” not only belongs to interpretation but also differs from traditional interpretation.To clarify these thoughts,the author of the thesis analyzes Sontag's art views from the following four perspectives: the definition and origin of interpretation,the shortcomings of traditional interpretation,obstacles of setting interpretation and establishment of the new sensibility.Secondly,blending with the text,the author of the thesis explains how In America rejects traditional interpretation and sets up new sensibility on the basis of “researches based on forms”,“researches based on text” and “reconstruction of new sensibility”.“Form analysis” include the changing of narration perspectives,identification study of narrators and study of novel genre,which displays barriers that Sontag has set for readers for the purpose of building a textual “new sensibility”.“Research on text” analysis covers the historical consciousness,writer consciousness and Utopia consciousness which show the development and transformation of her sense of art that are returning toward text itself.Thirdly,through analysis of sensibilities of “camp”,aesthetic eroticism and love,this paper is exploring a possibility of “new sensibility” for new literature criticism.Combing theoretical study and text reading,this thesis finds out the reason why Sontag is against interpretation and then back to it,as well as the change happened and reflected in her book In America.Also,the author has explored a new access to literature criticism — new sensibility that distinguishes from the traditional form criticizing and text criticizing.Moreover,this thesis points out the inspiration and weakness based on the ideas of against interpretation and new sensibility: there is no absolute against interpretation that should be considered on a background of specific social,cultural and historical context;on the other side,interpretation is needy for readers because it could accelerate their understanding of works;more importantly,art interpretation is bounded,thus the mastery of the standards involves writer,text and readers.The beauty of art relies on its formal diversity,so does interpretation.