Against Interpretation

“Against Interpretation” offers its own critique of criticism itself by engaging in discourse on the prioritization by critics of interpretation or meaning in art over content. As mentioned in the summary, she also provides Marxist and Freudian concepts as examples of the hermeneutics that she writes against. In addition to these, Sontag cites various critics by name, especially in relation to generally common and unique perspectives of canonical writers, including but not limited to the following: Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Rainer Maria Rilke, D. H. Lawrence, André Gide, and Tennessee Williams, as well as film directors like Jean Cocteau.

Beginning with Karl Marx (a 19th-century communist philosopher) and Sigmund Freud (a prominent psychologist of the 19th to 20th century), Sontag cites the latter figure’s conceptualization of manifest content and the former’s discussions of wars and revolutions. Freud’s idea involves the difference between observable experiences and their latent content, or the meaning that underlies them. He often believed that a person’s observable behavior was indicative of subconscious sexual impulses, thus prioritizing his interpretation of a person’s actions over literal value, intention, or impact. Marx, similarly, focused on the cultural and sociopolitical elements that led to broader conflicts. He believed classism and capitalism were the driving factors behind societal malcontent. Both of these figures gathered large followings that persisted after their deaths, followings that perpetrated these values of interpretation, and Sontag believes their tendencies to value interpretation of individual or societal action over the action itself aligns strongly with contemporary tendencies in art criticism.

Sontag later focuses her discussion on modern interpretations of Kafka and Beckett, reflecting on the allegorical modes that dominated literary criticism of her time. Franz Kafka was a modernist writer that often blended this form of writing with fantastical elements. Sontag mentions that a primary critical interpretation of Kafka’s work is that it is a psychoanalytic allegory alluding to the author’s relationship with his father. This is indeed a common perspective of Kafka’s writing that is rooted in his own authorial context, particularly in terms of biographical details and textual examples. Relating to Freudian theories, some also interpret Kafka’s work to be representative of his psychosexual complexes. Samuel Beckett, conversely, penned fiction and drama in a very sparse, direct style, and Sontag despairingly describes critical interpretations of his work as “a statement about modern man’s alienation from meaning or God” (99). She continues to list the aforementioned 19th- and 20th-century writers whose work have undergone similar critical readings.

These intertextual and interdisciplinary references place “Against Interpretation” in a broad contemporary context, ensuring that readers don’t mistakenly assume the urge to interpret is limited to certain subjects or forms. Like other scholars that Sontag mentions, Rita Felski and Elizabeth S. Anker, Sontag’s work emphasizes the importance of the essay’s role in the development of postcritique as a field of its own that aims to move beyond traditional methods of interpretation.