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Here is a link to the source we referenced in our presentation on Ecofeminism:

http://womenst.library.wisc.edu/bibliogs/ecofem.html

We hope that our presentation answered any questions, opened everyone's mind to the possibilities that Ecofeminism has to offer and accurately recognized the reality to the movement.

Sontag: believing game

Yes, people focus on their analyzation/interpretation of art far more than the emotional impact of the art. In the English classes I have been in, people are spending more time trying to manipulate texts in certain ways to prove an interpretation they hold. Yet, this is not a direct reading or a respectful one. It ignores the original work, and it distances people from it. People feel as if the interpretation of a work actually surpasses the work itself.

I would go to the Free Library and pick up books off of the shelves and read one to two sentences from each of them. Perhaps the lack of context would help me separate interpretation of a text from the text itself. Maybe the words themselves will impact me more than the meaning that might surround the words (this wouldn't be the other words on the page, but my own separate thoughts about words that is derived from context). Maybe in this way I could actually test the believing game and submit myself to it so that I could better understand the benefits of Sontag's argument.

I thought it was really interesting to do our group project on ecofeminism and explore the subject more than we had in class. I have very mixed feelings about the concept and when we mentioned it in class it was more just in passing and often not taken so seriously, so this was a perfect topic to focus on more. I mentioned this in our presentation, but I think the thing that strikes me the most about ecofeminism is how open and accepting the concept is - it's definitely a case of feminism unbound - yet at the same time, how it is so inaccessible to the majority of people because in order to be a full ecofeminist vegan, you need to have access to the money and resources for it, which leaves ecofeminists in a very exclusive, classist clique. I'm not really sure how this issue could be solved and how ecofeminism could be made more accessible to a more diverse community though, which makes the situation very difficult - hence my mixed feelings about the subject! I was also interested to hear what other people's thoughts on ecofeminism were, especially because like I said, we hadn't taken it very seriously in class before; we'd just been brushing it off as totally radical. Although I'm only a vegetarian (not full vegan) and would have trouble identifying fully as an ecofeminist, I do think the movement in theory has a lot of good ideas and thoughts behind it, and studying it more has made me more concious of such things. Anyway, it was a fun project to put together! I documented some of the cooking shenanigans, so I will post those photos here.

I would say that in Sonntag’s essay anything concrete would mean an example or interpretation and abstract would be leaving the art alone with time and it’s physicality. Sonntag leaves parts of her essay open to interpretation in her use of sentence structure and words and what “new vocabulary” we would use to describe/define art. Instead of “genius” I would say as a “critic” that this is a lack of it, a lack of concrete ideas. I don’t like how she presents the abstract emotional side of art as indefinable. I think the emotional reaction that someone has to art is directly related to concrete ideas about the world. This as she says can constrain the artwork, but there are also multiple interpretations of art. Therefore, art mixed with time and multiple people has the potential to be interpreted in almost everyway. This basically infinite amount of interpretations is how I think of the abstract emotional side of the art. I think that interpreting isn’t altering something but is taking from it something that is already there whether the artist knew they put it there or not.

In the excerpt we read from Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation," Sontag threw out many strong opinions about why interpretation is bad. Saying things like "Interpretation...violates art" and explaining that interpretation lets us forget our initial emotions. From this reading, I've generated a true/false question:

Does trying to find meaning in art strip the work of its otherwise emotion-rendering power? 

“Against Interpretation” can be paralleled to the Believing Game. The believing game is the next level of the doubting game. It's not blindly believing in everything, but someone with the ability of critical thinking choosing to believe. Similarly, Sontag is not promoting ignorance and asking us to deny any knowledge of art, but suggesting that there is another way to look at art: don't rush to judge every artwork, try to enjoy and appreciate first.

I rather enjoyed Sontag’s essay; her argument was an interesting one, a point of view that I had thought in passing but never considered in depth. That said, I found her somewhat frustrating, simply because while her argument is all well and good, she offers no practical advice for how to put it into action. Particularly among traditionally educated people and in the North American school system, students are taught little else but how to interpret everything they see. It is incredibly rare for me to look at anything and not start automatically dissecting it for ‘deeper meaning’, and on those rare occasions I experience a piece without analyzing it, its purity remains unsullied for the length of time for me to realize what I’ve experienced before I go back to the begin and analyze it then. What seemed to me to be one of the interesting parts of her argument, and the part that she least touched on, is how to incorporate her ideas into practical use. How does one use this ‘vocabulary of form’ she discusses, without making comparisons of some sort? How can one discuss anything without comparisons? And how, among a group of people taught to interpret, taught to make connections that are not inherent to the piece, how can one make comparisons without connections, and through those interpretation?

Thoughout Susan's claim,I generaly agree with her. The exact interpretation of art may not only lead to misunderstanding of the ture meaning of the Art, but also, more ridiculous, add more ideas on the artworks, which may be never came up with the artists when they did them. In my opinion, every work of art represents a unique mood of its artist who made it, which means that,except the artist himself/ herself, nobody can exactly feel or interprete its meaning. 

However, I still think that Susan's claim is a little bit exceeding. The interpretation is not completely useless or harmful. Some logical speculation can help us to learn the artwork better. I think the goal of the artists to create artworks is not only express their thinkings, but also to deliver informations to the viewer. As viewers, we should try to guess or image something from the artwork and try to understand it.

I played a believing game with Sontag's essay as I read it. I've had similar thoughts occasionally--why can't we just appreciate something for its beauty or complexity without digging too much into it? Often, these thoughts were directed at "digging too deep" into literature for a class. After having done some more analysis of art in this class, as well as compiled such a big analysis toolbox, I've decided that interpretation can be really useful and can help me learn a lot about the art, artist, or even something else. Even if it's completely innacurate, the interpretation itself is a next way to interact with a piece. I agree with Sontag to an extent, though. Interpretation used as a tool too often leaves less space for pure appreciation of art.

In her essay, Sontag talks about interpretation and how the act of interpreting something alters the original thing to the point that it becomes something else entirely. When reading this I find myself playing the believing game a lot, I really want to take in all of what she says and go with her arguments. I also found myself making personal connections to what she is saying, tying it back to everything from my trip to the Barnes Foundation to my high school english classes. These connections along with the use of the believing game make Sontag's claims so much more real, it seems obvious how interpreating a piece of artwork of literature can completely reshape it to fit whatever mold the interpreter chooses for it.