Friends of Interpretable Objects

by Miguel Tamen

A strikingly original work, "Friends of Interpretable Objects" re-anchors aesthetics in the object of attention even as it redefines the practice, processes, meaning, and uses of interpretation.Miguel Tamen's concern is to show how inanimate objects take on life through their interpretation--notably, in our own culture, as they are collected and housed in museums. It is his claim that an object becomes interpretable only in the context of a "society of friends." Thus, Tamen suggests, our inveterate tendency as human beings to interpret the phenomenal world gives objects not only a life but also a society. As his work unfolds, "friends" also takes on a legal sense, as advocates, introduced to advance the argument that the social life of interpreted and interpretable objects engenders a related web of social obligations.Focusing on those who, through interpretation, make objects "speak" in settings as different as churches, museums, forests, and distant galaxies--those who know the best interests of corporations, endangered species, and works of art--Tamen exposes the common ground shared by art criticism, political science, tort law, and science. Learned and witty, with much to teach art historians, environmentalists, anthropologists, curators, and literary critics, his book utterly reorients our understanding of how we make sense of our world.

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 28, 2001

About the author

MIGUEL TAMEN é professor (e director do Programa em Teoria da Literatura) na Universidade de Lisboa. Deu aulas em várias universidades americanas, nomeadamente, desde 2000 como visitante, na Universidade de Chicago. Foi senior fellow no Stanford Humanities Center e Rockefeller Fellow no National Humanities Center. Escreveu vários livros, o último dos quais What Art Is Like.

Reviews

[afonso abreu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gostaríamos de perguntar: quem foi o primeiro a ter a brilhante ideia de nos personificar? De novo, porém, a resposta só poderia ser «uma outra pessoa». Só um outro poderia ter tido essa ideia.



[…] numa descrição de um curso datada de 1794, Fichte declara: «Não somos os legisladores do espírito humano, mas os seus historiógrafos; não talvez propriamente jornalistas, mas pelo menos historiadores pragmáticos».

[Emily]

i don't even remember buying this.