Squirrels Can Jump!

           On Friday October 14^th, before class started, I offered professor Russell the view that Wollheim’s essay on criticism was the most boring essay I’d ever read. He agreed that it’s written in a convoluted style with a very awkward sentence structure.

I also asked Devlin if Monday’s quiz would be as hard as the review questions that we answer with our iclickers. I told him that I get almost every one of them wrong. He answered that the quiz won’t have multiple-choice questions, which are actually very hard to answer correctly, so in that sense the quiz will be easier.

Before the lecture, he told us, in answer to a question, that there is no recommended length for the short answers, be he urged us to be concise and to not waste time saying what doesn’t need to be said.

We opened with a fairly long review of the previous lecture.

What distinguishes art-critical interpretation from interpretation?

The critic is trying to persuade others. With interpretation, one might interpret by oneself. Interpretation is not description. In general it describes meaning and the artist’s intention is one theory.

What is the aim of evaluation?

One position is that it contributes to value. Meaning may be ascribed for good-making.

The Cognitivist thinks that bringing out the good brings forward how it enriches understanding.

Another proposal is that the critic appraises the work as either a successful or unsuccessful achievement that is measured against a standard.

What is the standard?

One option is how well it produces artistic value. Negative criticism is possible in this option. Here it is the critic that adds the value. The standard is not measured against a genre.

Another option is that standards come from genre, category or kind. For example, a comedy is funny or it’s not or a horror story is scary or not. But it’s not so obvious in other cases. The other view measures against a standard, but if the work is of a new genre, it throws this off. The critic here does not add the value because the values already exist in the standards.

At this point Devlin began his lecture on Wollheim’s idea of criticism as retrieval.

The aim, from Wollheim’s view is to reconstruct the creative process. Evaluation is not involved, only description and interpretation. The critic offers meaning and we evaluate. Also important is the intention of the artist, reconstructed. Actual Intentionalism persuades others that there is meaning in the work by appealing to the intentional process.

The objection to this is that it is physically impossible to reconstruct the creative process. We don’t have sufficient evidence to determine the artist’s intention but maybe the process to some degree. The objection says that criticism as revision is better. Make the work speak to us today if it makes sense now, and if not, dismiss it. This view might say, “Screw Jackson Pollock!” because maybe his work means nothing in the modern context. We have considered Actual Intentionalism, Hypothetical Intentionalism and Conscientionalism, but this view rejects all three of them.

He asked us to answer with our iclickers whether revision was better than retrieval. I didn’t think so but the class was almost evenly divided over all the options. This has happened on several occasions, so Devlin said he would love to be able to split the class up for a debate.

Revision puts importance on the work before us. He urged us not to confuse revision and retrieval.

Actual Historicism just interprets a work according to today’s meaning in the same way that Revisionism does.

Wollheim’s response revisionism is that if there is evidence there is no need to ignore the creative process. His view is not that we never have sufficient evidence to reconstruct the creative process, but we can know the artist’s intentions. Some cases are difficult but sometimes they are not with the help of documentation and biographies. So why ignore the process?

            After I got home, I was doing some writing in the living room when I heard the kind of thumping from the kitchen that didn’t sound like it had been caused by the wind or by anything just falling as a result of vibrations caused by the streetcar. It was repeating in the way that animals thump when they are clashing with things they are not used to. I did not think that it was one of my cats returned from the dead and it was too early in the day for raccoons. I went out to see and saw that somehow a squirrel had gotten in. The apartment door was open but I doubted that it had come all the way down the hallway from the deck. If it had it would be trying to get back out the way it came. It must have done some squirrelrobatics to climb up the vertical pipe that holds the electrical wires, crawled across the top of the eastside Coffee Time sign and then jumped up and in through my east window. When it saw me it began to panic and seemed to have forgotten how it got in. It jumped up on the credenza to try to get out through the south window, but it was closed, and besides, I don’t think there would have been anything to jump to from there. It went back down to the floor and finally jumped to the east window and outside. I wondered where it could have leapt, so I went to lean out. When I looked, it was already on the street and almost at the back end of the building. It must have practically flown across the three meters to the tree in O’Hara’s Garden and skittered down it like lightning. Man, those guys can jump!