MOO-CAT-013
- Description level
- Item
- Source publication date
- 2025-12-31
- Medium / format
- Digital document · PDF
- Digital extent
- 1 digital file; 229568 bytes
6 PDF file pages
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Interpretation at Risk: Post-Interpretive Criticism After the 20th Century
2025Deposited editionSource-linked record
An early theoretical essay that questions the assumption that interpretation provides a neutral foundation for aesthetic meaning, proposing instead that mediation carries ethical consequences.
Scope & content / Editorial catalogue descriptionARCHIVAL LIBRARYInterpretation at Risk
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6 PDF pages · Facing-page reader · Original deposited file
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- Museum of One Digital Archive Library
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- Theory & treatisesLocal editorial grouping within a selected catalogue. This is not asserted as an original fonds or repository collection.
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- Zenodo source record ↗Description assembled from the public repository and institutional work record. No transfer of physical custody is recorded.
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- 2026-11-04Catalogue review date; distinct from publication, deposit, and metadata-modification dates.
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- author
- Dorian Vale ↗The matching institutional publication record credits Dorian Vale as author.Relationship source ↗
- publisher
- Museum of One ↗The institutional work page identifies Museum of One as publisher of the web publication; repository edition details remain in the item record.Relationship source ↗
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Subjects & discovery
Editorial subjects · Local discovery vocabularyAesthetic theoryInterpretationCritical languagePost-Interpretive CriticismRepository keywords
Post-Interpretive Criticism · interpretation · aesthetics · phenomenology · art criticism · ethics of witnessing
Repository description
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Title:
Interpretation at Risk: Post‑Interpretive Criticism After the 20th Century
Author:
Dorian Vale
Affiliation:
Museum of One — Registered Archive and Independent Research Institute for Contemporary Aesthetics
Abstract:
This essay establishes Post‑Interpretive Criticism as a formal break with the dominant aesthetic consensus of the late twentieth century, which treated meaning as something produced through mediation rather than encountered through structure. Surveying post‑1950 traditions across structuralism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, critical theory, and post‑structuralism, the essay identifies a shared assumption underlying their disagreements: interpretation functions as the necessary and ethically justified ground of meaning. Post‑Interpretive Criticism rejects this premise not by proposing an alternative theory of meaning‑production, but by questioning whether production itself is the correct frame.
The essay argues that interpretation is not neutral, inevitable, or inherently liberatory, but structurally hazardous. Language, when introduced prematurely or excessively, alters the proportions of the aesthetic encounter, collapsing interval, crowding distance, and displacing presence with discourse. Meaning, on this account, does not originate in interpretation but in a relational field between work and witness that possesses structure prior to mediation. Interpretation is therefore recast as an intervention rather than a foundation—one that must justify itself ethically by preserving proportion rather than overwhelming it.
Positioning Post‑Interpretive Criticism against the historical conditions that necessitated interpretive excess in the post‑war period, the essay argues that contemporary aesthetics now faces the inverse problem: interpretive saturation. Where interpretation once functioned as moral responsibility, it now frequently preempts encounter, substituting commentary for perception. Drawing careful distinctions from phenomenological aesthetics, the essay emphasizes that description of experience is insufficient without a discipline governing speech. Post‑Interpretive Criticism introduces restraint as method, silence as ethical posture, and proportion as evaluative criterion.
The essay concludes by outlining the institutional, pedagogical, and critical consequences of adopting Post‑Interpretive Criticism, including reduced interpretive authority, contraction of discourse, and the re‑training of attention prior to articulation. It does not argue for universal application, but claims necessity under specific contemporary conditions. Interpretation, once required, is now placed at risk—not because meaning has vanished, but because the encounter has returned as the primary site of aesthetic responsibility.
Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen.
First published by Museum of One on 31 December 2025. Stable work DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18104019
Source corroboration
Museum of One’s matching publication page confirms Dorian Vale’s authorship and the work’s institutional context. Its repository links and publication dates are retained separately from this selected Zenodo edition. Web-record dates are not treated as dates of the deposited edition. Source review: 4 November 2026.
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- Catalogue snapshot
- 2026-11-04 · Selected catalogue, not live synchronisation
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- 2026-11-04 · Latest documented description event
- Source review
- 2026-11-04
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- 2026-11-04
- Original source filenames
- Interpretation at Risk Post-Interpretive Criticism After the 20th Century.pdf
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- Access-copy verification
- 2026-11-04 · Local digital reading copy of the deposited file
Source-based description with automated drafting and metadata assistance. Responsibility for the public catalogue rests with Museum of One; automated assistance does not constitute independent scholarly or curatorial review.
- 2026-11-04 · Source-based catalogue description
Local description assembled from the identified public repository record and available institutional work record. Source metadata remains separately identifiable.
Source-based automated description assistance · Museum of One - 2026-11-04 · Qualified descriptive enrichment
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Source-based automated description assistance · Museum of One - 2026-11-04 · Digital reading copy verified
Downloaded access-copy MD5 matched the source checksum; local SHA-256 and PDF file-page count are recorded in the file manifest. This event does not describe transfer of custody.
Automated file checksum and PDF inspection · Museum of One - 2026-11-04 · Description policy and provenance context adopted
Responsible service, source repository, local access-copy role, unknown custody and original order, correction route and dated description history made explicit under moo-description-policy-1.0.
Source-based automated description assistance · Museum of One - 2026-11-04 · Unify graph identities and qualify exported relationships and citations
Local graph projection now uses one contextual identity per entity, distinguishes work-level institutional matches from selected-edition links, retains title-level ISBN uncertainty, and derives citations from the source title. Typed relation assertions and a versioned validation profile are introduced. No publication date, original source snapshot or PDF changed.
Source-based metadata implementation and regression validation · Museum of One Digital Archive Library - 2026-11-04 · Record inspected public ORCID profile evidence
The official ORCID public person API returned the credited name Dorian Vale and the Museum of One website. This confirms a matching public profile, not independently verified biographical or affiliation claims. Original creator arrays and source snapshots are unchanged.
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Files & preservation metadata
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224 KB
md5:d18570c20f85fd773c64d6f7730443d3Source-declared bibliographic relationships
- 2819-7232Repository relation: isPublishedIn
Rights & access
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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Related reading
- Diagnostics Without Possession: An Operational Manual for Post-Interpretive Criticism (Operational reference for inter-rater reliability) ↗
- Moral Proximity: Ethics as Method in Post-Interpretive Criticism ↗
- The Afterlife of the Work: Viewer as Evidence in Post-Interpretive Criticism ↗
Editorial suggestions from this catalogue, not asserted bibliographic relationships.