Explaining That After

frederic jameson on the art of criticism.Giorgio de Chirico, “L’incertezza del poeta” (“The Uncertainty of the Poet”), 1913.

You can’t have ideas about things ahead of time. In our kind of criticism, one has to just come at stuff without too many preconceptions—though you can never be without them—and allow oneself to be struck by something. Criticism or interpretation is explaining that after. You can’t have a method that tells you what to do beforehand.

— Frederic Jameson