path of our becoming”^51 in illuminating ways while pulling back from
claiming too much.^52 What calls for interpretation is the detailed consti-
tutive incompleteness in orientational knowing that appears both in life and
in the significant work of literary or other art.
The possibility of agreement in understanding
Agreement in the“seeing”of expressive-affective significance, sought via
imaginative exploration of the work guided by elucidatory criticism, can
often be achieved and can reasonably be hoped for. For a number of reasons,
however, agreement cannot be readily achieved in every case. Interpretations
of expressive and affective features depend upon which genres or categories a
work is seen in, and there are multiple and sometimes conflicting criteria for
determining genre membership. Kendall Walton notes that the criteria
for determining genre membership–a necessary aspect of understanding–
include at least (i) that there is a well-established genre of somewhat similar
work in the cultural context of production, (ii) that the artist intended the
work to be perceived in a given genre, (iii) that the work is more satisfying
when perceived in a given genre, and (iv) that the work has a large number of
taken-for-granted, noninterpreted features in common with other members
of a genre.^53 Though these criteria for determining genre membership may
often point in the same direction, they need not always do so. An artist may
intend a work to be perceived in an altogether new genre–consider perform-
ance art at its inception–and these considerations may cut against generic
similarities with another already established genre (e.g. theatre or storytell-
ing), with no clear resolution available. Second, new ranges of comparison
and contrast that inform imaginative exploration of the work can become
relevant as a result of the other forms of understanding: Spirit-of-the-Age,
biographical, sociopolitical-structural, editorial-physical, or artistic-
improvisatory. The works of Shakespeare or Wordsworth or Austen can bear
(^51) Ibid., p. 119.
(^52) For a detailed working out of Stanley Cavell’s similar sense of the kind of shared,
constitutively incomplete subjectivity that is expressed in some significant literary texts,
see Richard Eldridge and Bernard Rhie,“Introduction: Cavell, Literary Studies, and the
Human Subject: Consequences of Skepticism,”inStanley Cavell and Literary Studies, ed.
Richard Eldridge and Bernard Rhie (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 1–14.
(^53) Walton,“Categories of Art,”inPhilosophy of Art, ed. Neill and Ridley, p. 346.
Understanding art 163