Interview: Hans R.

Jauss
Author(s): Hans R. Jauss, M. H. Abrams, Herbert Dieckmann, D. I. Grossvogel, W. Wolfgang
Holdheim, Philip E. Lewis, Ciriaco Morn-Arroyo and Jacques Roger
Source: Diacritics, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 53-61
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/464722
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DIECKMANN

JAUSS
This conversationtook place after a
Cornell in November,1973. Among
the participantswere M. H. Abrams,
HerbertDieckmann,D. i. Grossvogel,
W. Wolfgang Holdheim, Philip E.
Lewis, Ciriaco Mor6n-Arroyoand
JacquesRoger.Publicationin extenso
was not possible due to the limitations imposed by the formatof Diacriticsandthe qualityof our recording
instruments,

DIECKMANN

JAUSS
i "Die Partialitatder rezeptionsasthetischen Methode, Nachwort zu: Racines und Goethes Iphigenie," Neue
Hefte fur Philosophie, Heft 4 (1973),
1-46. (English translation forthcoming

in YaleFrenchStudies.)

' "The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach," New LiteraryHistory, 3 (1971/72), 279.

DIECKMANN

JAUSS

Could you recapitulate some of your ideas on esthetics that might serve as a point
of departure for this discussion?

I will try. One of my interests is to develop categories which no longer refer to what
is generally called the history of esthetic ideas. These categories are not esthetic
ideas, nor literaryhistory in the manner of Lanson.What I seek is a middle category,
esthetic experience. With categories of esthetic experience, one could bridge different fields of art. A bridge could be envisaged between pre-autonomous art in the
Middle Ages, art which had a social function, and post-autonomous art which is
supposed to be free of social functions. The opposition between "serious" and
"trivial"literatures interests me too: the literature of masterpieces versus consumer
literature. New theories of communication cannot successfully focus their analyses
on consumer literature alone. One must begin by exploring what were the models
of "serious" literature that consumer literature was patterned on. Here, I think that
categories, based on the different levels of identification, may be applied to form
another bridge. There is a third opposition one could bridge through an esthetics
of reception. The new science of literature, and the textual linguistics also, are no
longer content with categories that concern only the speaker; they now seek to develop categories which concern the person to whom one speaks-intersubjective
categories. An esthetics of reception would not be a self-sufficient method. It is a
method which must be completed by the esthetics of production and the esthetics
of presentation. It would seem that the best hermeneutic approach to artistic phenomena lies on the side of reception, because we, the philologists or interpreters,
are also situated on the side of reception. We are not involved in the mystery of
production; yet all, or nearly all traditional approaches stem from an esthetics of
presentation.
Would you see any difference between what one calls in French "la fortune de
Racine, de Corneille, de Molibre" and your esthetics of reception? There seems to
be a relation between the two.

There is a difference. I alluded to it in a recent polemic argument against the German Marxist theory of literature.' I distinguish between "efficacy" [Wirkung] and
"reception." W. Iser has explained, in an article about the reading process,2 that the
significance of the work of art depends on the convergence of the work (the text
created by the author) and the code of the receiver (the realization of the reader).
This convergence affords an understanding of what German hermeneutics, Derrida
and others, call the open structure of signification. And if there is an open structure
of signification, then it is not sufficient to represent quantitatively the "efficacy" of,
say, a Racine: the changing code of reception must always be respected. Previously,
explaining the history of great works of art meant almost always accepting implicitly
a Platonic point of view according to which the work generates its effect unfailingly
and consistently, with no respect for the changes in codes that change in every age
the perceptor's understanding of art.
If I understand you correctly, what you call the history of reception is still an essential part of our present-day interpretation: we must be conscious of the special way
in which the work of art was received at a certain time and take this into account
in our present-day interpretation. If this is so, there would be a difference between
"la fortune de Racine" and the "reception" of his work because the perspective
would have changed.

I agree. Questions and answers are necessary in hermeneutics in order to identify

the manner in which our contemporary interpretation is determined. Neither the
esthetic code of a past work, nor the current code of its understanding, can be
grasped through an atemporal descriptive system. Codes of reception are generally
not obvious, but depend on unconscious traditions. We can avoid the illusion of
a constantly valid descriptive system only when we determine, through question
and answer, the difference between past and present codes of understanding. Her-

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53

meneutics must keep even the new semiotics mindful that every description presupposes a question to which this description was or is still the answer. If I don't
ask that question, I am dependent on something which is worse (not to say ideological), because I have not reflected upon it.
ARROYO

It seems to me that there are three different levels, when we speak of "la fortune de."
If we speak of "la fortune de Cervantes en France," the works analyzed are likely
to be inferior imitations, not really artistic works. I would exclude such exemplars
as instances of "la fortune de." At a second level of reception, there is the echo of
Cervantes in Goethe, who never wrote an imitation of Cervantes. And yet there is
a dialogue there. It is perhaps here that we have what you call the "imaginative"a deeper assimilation of work and interpretation. Then there is a third level-the
one you mentioned, the reception of the work of art, by the public, in its normcreating aspect. At this third level, "reception" is indeed a social phenomenon tied
to the concept of esthetic enjoyment: before there is ever any criticism of artistic
creation, there must be simple enjoyment by the untutored reader.
JAUSS Yes. I would insist however that it is importantto realize that all levels of the history
of reception do not simply continue the past as a tradition: tradition is, on all levels,
retention as well as omission. An esthetic canon is a consensus omnium which selects certain works of art from the past at the expense of others. In this respect it
would be wise to reexamine the formation of canons on the reflexive level of
esthetic experience (dialogue of authors, imitation of canonic works, canons of the
schools of the exemplary authors of each period). The reception of works of art is,
in part, a function of reflexive conditioning (through the educational system, cultural
institutions, and orientation by the critics), and partly of pre-reflexive norms of social
behavior transmitted indirectly through esthetic pleasure. Esthetic pleasure, however, cannot be completely channelled or manipulated. That which our children
find interesting in art is not determined solely by the educational system or the
conscious canon of parents. The change of interests from generation to generation
would be a fruitful topic-one perhaps more rewarding than the traditional pursuit
of Comparative Literaturethat simply compares nations or periods.
GROSSVOGEL I would like to ask you about what you term the consensus omnium. Don't your
categories correspond to a learned tradition in which the receptive disposition depends on acquiring knowledge? When we slip, as our conversation has so far, into
areas of the subjective and the Freudian,we are no longer talking about a consensus
omnium, but of a consensus individualis-a tacit agreement between the individual
percipient and the artistic object. Am I correct or incorrect in this assumption?
JAUSS

ROGER
JAUSS

Must we not contrast an individual answer or subjective norm on the level of prereflexive experience with the consensus omnium as a general esthetic norm in the
reflexive tradition? We might speak of a subjective answer or an individual norm
on the reflexive as well as on the pre-reflexive level of esthetic tradition. An interesting question then arises: how, in esthetic experience, can an objective tradition
can a general, albeit dynamic, historically
develop out of subjective reactions?
How.arise from individual norms? My answer
mutable consensus of esthetic judgment
is supported by Kant's definition of esthetic judgment-judgment directed by the
assent of others, and necessarily intersubjective. Esthetic judgment is, then, neither
an individual act [parole] nor a statement of universal applicability, but rather an
historical norm, which is continually redefined and further developed in the process
of interaction between work and public, past art and evolving reception. The esthetic consensus omnium is a process in which the subjective answer or individual
norm becomes effective only as an innovation when others agree with it, raising the
individual norm to a general norm and thus further developing the esthetic code.
It is also necessary to distinguish, on the pre-reflexive level of esthetic experience,
between a system of possibilities of behavior (identification-models) and historical
norms or realizations, where a much more limited flexibility is established for innovations arrived at through subjective answers or individual norms. To admire an
artistic model is not to indulge a subjective category: it is something to be admired
with others. What I admire personally and alone may be relevant for my biography,
but not for the process of esthetic experience. Freudian categories are interesting
because they concern intersubjective attitudes.
You detach the concept of esthetics from any kind of value?
Is not the open-ended judgment which develops in the continuous consensus of
tradition a kind of "value"? Certainly not in the sense of an esthetic platonism. I
doubt, however, whether we could answer decisive questions concerning the
esthetic activity of man and the function of art in history by assuming absolute or
universal esthetic values which are supposed to be independent of it. Esthetics as

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a scientific method must assume only those values which are developed historically.
And the nai've reception of past art can often provide more information concerning
the question of the development of esthetic values or norms of taste than the subtle
interpretation of a work by a professor of literary history, who exceeds the interpretations of his predecessors only by nuances.
DIECKMANN Am I right in seeing in your conception of the history of receptivity two different
functions? First,it is interesting simply to know how a work was once received. But
it seems to me that you also consider in your concept of receptivity what you call
the reflective approach to the work of art, and the reflecting in the work of art.
Could there not be a conflict between the two? The first is an historical inquiry.
It seems to me that you stress more the function of a work in making us more reflective in our own appreciation. Do we really have a fully developed, fully reflective receptivity for the work of art, if we do not know its history?
JAUSS Certain hermeneutics-Gadamer's, for example-are of the opinion that to arrive
at the plain understanding of our present codes, we cannot but analyze previous
positions of past experience on which we rely. This may be true, but one has the
feeling that one cannot, in a single existence, see or analyze all tradition. That is
why we-and each generation anew-must achieve a critical viewpoint in reference
to the "thesaurus" of past art. This critical viewpoint demands that we discover the
pre-history of our contemporary experience in the tradition of past art. We must
find the exemplary works and esthetic norms which determine, overtly or covertly,
our contemporary relationship to art. To achieve such a critical viewpoint demands
a critical hermeneutic reflection which must avoid two dangers: the harmonization
of tradition and the actualization of past experience to serve the present.
HOLDHEIM Do you lump together the past, which is a datum of the collective memory, and the
critical act or judgment on the work, which selects certain aspects of this past, do
you lump these under the same concept of receptivity? Do you make any distinction?---or do you see a relationship between the two?
JAUSS These questions describe a difficulty which affects not only my own theory. At this
point I would like to recall the recent esthetic debate in West Germany between
Gadamer and Habermas-between classical hermeneutics and the critical theory
of the Frankfurterschool. In my view, this debate led to the conclusion that hermeneutic reflection and an ideological and critical methodology contain no irreconcilable opposition (Paul Ricoeur had already anticipated this in his book on Freud
and the concept of interpretation). Hermeneutic reflection can integrate the postulates of ideological criticism, if it admits that all tradition-especially in the realm
of art-retains as well as omits, extols and represses man's experience. The development of tradition in the esthetic experience does not conform to Bergson's model
of Zeit-philosophie. But neither can the history of esthetic experience be described
according to the model of collective recollection (Maurice Halbwachs), which preserves from the past only what is of current interest. Ideological criticism, which
traces all historical manifestations of art back to the veiled interests and material
needs of the ruling classes, ought not to limit itself to the unconscious-collective
processes and should accept the fact that the history of art always goes beyond the
reductions of collective recollection.
ROGER What distinguishes esthetic communication from other forms of communication?
HOLDHEIM Also, can one speak about the ironic denial of esthetic identification? Isn't irony at
least the primary characteristic of every esthetic identification-as opposed to a
non-esthetic one?
JAUSS

HOLDHEIM

diacritics/Spring

The difference between esthetic and non-esthetic identification lies in the mediating
role of the imaginary.When the imaginary is involved, there is esthetic experience.
The esthetic theory of German classicism explained the function of the imaginary
through the concept of "the beautiful illusion." Sartre also described the change
between imagination and perception, between the object in esthetic and emotional
attitudes. Similarly, the Prague School of structuralism describes esthetics as an
"empty function": the imaginaryobject is not a specific object; rather, each object
of our everyday experience can be organized, according to Mukarovsk--it can be
isolated, elevated, and idealized through the esthetic function, and thereby raised
to the level of esthetic pleasure. In contrast to an esthetic attitude or to the beautiful
illusion, irony has an apparently disturbing function: it interrupts the pre-reflexive
esthetic enjoyment, abolishes the power of esthetic identification, and compels reflection. Only a disciple of Kierkegaard,who must judge ironic behavior on the
basis of ethical principles as being "merely esthetic," can dispute this.
But is the ironic syndrome not necessarily connected with the concept of the missing hero or the anti-hero? What about tragic irony?

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JAUSS

I think that irony-the idea of omnipotent fate toying with the weakness of mancan allow for a positive hero. The levels of esthetic identification that I propose
are not necessarily an historical succession of steps. There may be a synchrony in
each period of literature, or in a single work (when it leads the spectator through
various attitudes such as wonder, pity, amazement, fear or compassion).

ABRAMS

Concerning the adequacy of your typologies: you comprehend heroes in frequently

recurring literary types; what about the kind of story in which the hero is largely
a transparency,where the nature of the hero is secondary to a focus on, let us say,
the solution of a mystery?
Our pleasure in problem-solving does not exclude an enigmatic interest through
identification. Let me add, however, that the models of identification with a hero
which I propose comprise only the beginning of an analysis of esthetic experience. I am aware that there are also levels of identification which are expressed
not in the third, but in the first person. Freudhad already distinguished among three
categories of identification: being like someone (admiring identification); a relation
based on having (to have somebody as a father, for instance); a relation no longer
with a person but with a situation: I may read a love story and not identify with
the person, but might wish to be in the same situation. The pragmatics of such
situational models are of prime importance to me.

JAUSS

GROSSVOGEL If I understand you correctly, you accept the Freudian only at its point of juncture
with categories that are susceptible of such universality as would allow esthetic
evaluation. But how do you square a "receptive disposition" with, say, alienation?
Laughter, for example, supposes such a radical destruction of that which is being
laughed at, that the organism is, in a sense, separated from its head-where the
categories are. It is a visceral response; if you remain at the level of esthetic classification, are you not talking of a "head" response, which I would understand as
more befitting a category like "admiration"?
JAUSS Indeed, laughter can be understood primarily as an act of separation (rupture)
which destroys every admiring or sympathizing identification. But this does not
mean that all laughter must therefore have its roots in greater psychic depths than
those identification-models which you want to dismiss as mere cerebral reactions.
It was Freud, in fact, who explained the admiration of a hero as more than a superficial enjoyment of an imaginary escape-dream. In a 1908 article on the relation of
the poet to day-dreaming, he says that the increment of pleasure which is offered
us in order to release yet greater pleasure arising from deeper sources in the mind
is called an "incitement premium" or, technically, "for-pleasure." He has in mind
the esthetic shock of the recognition of those desires assimilated during childish
play, but whose fulfillment had been denied us by life. This theory of recognition
links Freud and Proust; both deal, not with cerebral reactions, but rather with the
understanding of a depth psychology far more important for the esthetics of reception than much of what Freudsaid about the biographies of poets.
GROSSVOGEL My question remains, at least to this extent: is something like laughter not an emotion whose psychic roots lie buried deeper in the reader than the recognition of
childhood patterns-the infantile residuum which you preserve in your balance? Is
not laughter deeper and does it not subvert more immediately?
JAUSS Bakhtin has described what he termed "a grotesque laughter"-with deeper roots
than the mere "laughter about something or someone," because it originates in the
moment of victory over all types of fear---of the hereafter, of death, of power or
authority. But this grotesque laughter is only one of the various functions of laughter. We can laugh at something (say, at a comic hero), but we can also laugh with
someone (with a humorous person who is able to laugh at himself). Laughingat can
occasionally change to laughing with. There is first what you have described as a
phenomenon of rupture. This pertains also to the beginning of a group solidarity.
If you observe laughter at political meetings, there are two possibilities: one party
may laugh at the other; but it may be that both parties, that didn't agree, laugh
at the same event. Nobody likes to laugh with his enemies at the same subject.
There is an interesting moment in political meetings when you can often sense that
this may be the beginning of a new understanding. In a discussion I had with Roland
Barthes at Lille, he defended the thesis that where there is sense there must be
conflict. If Barthes is right, then the interest of a new semiotics in rhetoric must be
to explain how to resolve the conflict. I proposed as a subject of investigation the
phenomenon of laughter-a phenomenon of rupture, but which can interrupt contention and be the beginning of an understanding that would not be attainable
without this element of rupture. In laughter there is rupture, but this rupture can
be the beginning of solidarity of the group that "laughs with" the other at (something else).

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GROSSVOGEL Pity is another one of your classifications that I find problematic. For me, Aristotelian pity is an emotion as deeply perturbing (as deeply visceral, that is to say,
subjective) as laughter. But I think that admiration or sympathetic laughter unbalances the organism much less than would genuine pity. I believe that when Aristotle speaks of pity and fear he is speaking of the two outermost poles of going
towards-pity-and moving away from-fear-that he could envisage. Viscerally,in
the Freudian sense, these were the two most disruptive forces that he could think
of in the theater, as opposed to the "mentalizing" virtues of admiration, understanding, irony-everything that is controlled by the mind.
JAUSS It is difficult to contradict you here, since you have assumed the classical definition
of catharsis. To that I can only oppose the Christian redefinition of this classical
doctrine. In the Christian era, it was no longer understandable that pity had to be
something of which the spectators must be purified. Pity was the beginning of
readiness for action and it was a good thing. Fear may still be a subjective emotion,
but pity turns the subjective mood to readiness for action, and the entire history of
catharsis shows the transformationof pity running counter to the Aristotelian tradition. I would conclude that all esthetic experience, including laughter, involves an
act of removal. I differ from you in that I interpret this removal not only as rupture,
but also as providing the possibility of a new attitude. The analysis of esthetic behavior must take into account that which follows the extreme moments of pity and
fear, as well as that which follows the moment of laughter. Wonder, too, contains
a moment of rupture-specifically astonishment. But wonder, too, elicits a response
which goes beyond the moment of rupture.
DIECKMANN How would you relate your theories of admiration, etc., to the problem of identification in the theater?
JAUSS The classical theater and its audience have been explained by cathartic identification.
In the history of literature, after a period of autonomy of art, there often arises a
new desire for a more engaged comprehension of literature. In the eighteenth century,the importance of Enlightenment literaturewas to induce in the bourgeois audience solidarity of action. The novel did just that and it was the intention of the
genre serieux in the theater to do the same. But we know that the genre bourgeois
was not as successful. Melodrama was a concession to more subjective feelings, but
remained within the realm of the larmoyant and path6tique alone, without any
didactic attempt, with the exception, perhaps, of liberating through subjective feeling a solidarity necessary for the formation of a new middle-class consciousness.
DIECKMANN The ideal purpose of the Enlightenment theater is definitely education through the
performance on the stage. The idea is to create within the spectator a love of
virtue, instead of teaching an abstract moral concept. Thus we cannot speak of only
a sentimental identification. The result to be obtained is really a setting free of the
inherently virtuous nature of man.
JAUSS Yes. But isn't it interesting that this theater is no longer understandable later on?as we now find it difficult to understand the moral painters of the eighteenth century (like Greuze), because of other esthetic norms which emerged subsequently.
In the nineteenth century, the melodramatic form is so much perverted into mere
enjoyment of sentimentality that we no longer understand the emancipatory function which it had at first.
DIECKMANN But the means are entirely different. The process of catharsis in classical French
tragedy is obtained by means of words and concepts. Perhaps the break in the line
of the alexandrine had a direct effect, a kind of awakening effect on the audience,
because they knew that something was going to happen. A good example is the
violation of the cesura in Iphig6nie, where Achilles deliberately destroys the normal
alexandrine break: the intent is to shock the audience enough for them to realize
that something very serious is at stake. But this remains within the domain of words
whereas the new effect of catharsis is in its enactment on the stage. In Le Pare de
famille, for instance, take the sharp contrast in the stage presentation between the
first scene and the last: the first scene shows immediately, to a sensitive audience,
the total destruction of bourgeois life. In the very staging which Diderot devised,
there is the immediate suggestion that something catastrophic has happened, that
the family is torn apart. And the final tableau (and both are called tableaux) is the
reunion and the renewal of the bourgeois family. These are ways of suggesting
ideas, and they are new: visual impression, stage enactment, the very bearing of the
actors, the placing of the various persons achieve the same effect as a tableau-a
picture. This would seem to raise the whole question of identification in a new way
because the means are so different: the direct appeal is to unknown factors in the
human personality, factors which you cannot define in terms of mind, in terms of
thought, in terms of thought content, which society shares, to which you appeal,
which then activate the percipient.

ciocritics/Spring

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JAUSS

You are right saying that the first reception of cathartic classical theater was, as you
described it, at the level of surprise and shock. But for a post-classical audience,
there often remained only the pleasure of classical language. And the moment we
appraise a work of art only at the level of pleasure in the perfection of language,
moral identification is no longer realizable. Was not the bourgeois theater in France,
from the start, in opposition to a perfect hero as well as to a purely esthetic pleasure
in perfect language? This opposition is perhaps articulated in the desire of the new
bourgeois drama to present conditions rather than characters as models of identification.

DIECKMANN

Isn't distance involved? Classical distance is suppressed by the technique of the

tableau; genuine identification is achieved through the action of the sympathetic
nervous system.
JAUSS The tableau, seeking to abolish the distance between spectator and stage through
an impression of reality, poses a special problem of identification. We can no longer
speak of admiring or sympathizing identification with a person. We must think,
rather, of that which Freud has described as identification with a situation: the
spectator is expected to be gripped by the pathos of the tableau and is thus directed
towards a new solidarity of behavior.
DIECKMANN I've always been struck by how much the eighteenth century was surprised by
Rousseau's reaction to Berenice. He says that, at the moment when Titus decides to
break with B'r'nice, the whole audience marries her. Is there any record of identification, or even of the question and problem of identification, before the eighteenth century? You use identification as such a fundamental category: did anyone
actually identify at the time? Do we have any information that the problem of
identification existed? It is raised by Rousseau, and it was considered shocking in the
eighteenth century. Should we not discuss a genealogy of identification?
JAUSS There has been little collected evidence regarding the reception of classical theater
by its contemporaries; it would have to be sought in biographical sources or in
letters. Some indirect evidence is provided by the Church's criticism of classical
theater. It is not surprisingthat the enlightened Rousseau is, in this respect, on the
side of the Church fathers, with whom he had otherwise little in common.
DIECKMANN Still it seems to me you start from what you consider to be a "fact"--not an empirical fact-that identification is an attitude towards a work of art which is fairly constant throughout history. How can we know about modes of identification in the
Middle Ages where an esthetics of this kind didn't exist? How can we know that a
medieval reader identified with Roland and Olivier? The fact that people are called
Roland and Olivier is not proof of actual identification. Can we take it as a constant
of the spectator's attitude-or the reader's?
GROSSVOGEL If we refer to tradition, is there not another factor that intrudes-the object itself?
Before the sophistication of the reader-critic, the poet's word may have been closer
to the Word of God. But when we speak of a subsequent tradition, it seems to me
that the "recognition" of the hero is the recognition of the whole tradition that goes
with the hero, so that the hero is no longer an immediacy-he is already an artistic
object. Don't your categories presuppose the kind of immediacy that antedates the
tradition? To respond to Professor Dieckmann's question, I believe that since there
was a Roland, and there was a war in Spain, it is not unlikely that the audience at
the time responded more directly to the "reality" of Roland than they did to the
form that gave a particulardimension to that reality. But thereafter, when you have
only a tradition within which to respond, are you not responding to the-hero-aspart-of-the-tradition-a fiction, a work of art?
JAUSS You are describing the transition from immediacy to tradition, when reflection enters. It is true that one cannot remain in the realm of absolute immediacy, but I
think that there remains always a need for heroic models, and generations will seek
immediate possibilities of identification by honoring incarnations of this need. We
find in Heidegger, for instance, that the mass always seeks a hero. In prereflexive
esthetic experience, the heroes of our fathers are replaced by new heroes. On the
reflexive level, on the other hand, there is actually a process in which the hero as
behavioral model disappears more and more behind the author. We admire the
author because of his originality, in contrast to our children, who admire Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza without being interested in the author Cervantes, whose
name they may not remember. I concede to Mr. Dieckmann the fact that my system of identification-models assumes certain anthropological constants. Why should
we not assume that admiration or pity, amazement or sympathy, laughter or irony
have defined, under changing motivations, the esthetic behavior of man in his
everyday experience, since the production of art freed itself from ties to the religious
cult? We might agree more easily in this matter if I add that such anthropological

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constants are interesting to me chiefly because of their hermeneutic function.

Whether or not I can determine empirically how the public of the twelfth century
identified with Roland appears of minor importance when the access of the modern
reader to the distant world of this heroic epic depends obviously on esthetic experiences which he can still share with the public of that time. What allows us to
understand Roland in a world where heroic virtues and Christianconception are no
longer valid, is our feeling of admiration: it allows us to understand the heroic
attitudes in the Middle Ages even if we no longer understand the Christianideology.
DIECKMANN

clicrtiCS /Spring

Even though history is what we recreate in our minds, history is also a number
of other things. History is all that actually happened, which is not reconstructed
in our minds but which we perceive, as we perceive objects outside of ourselves.
I think that a certain objectivity is possible; and the complete subjectivity of what
we recreate in our minds should, perhaps, not be taken so much for granted. A
certain differentiation seems necessary to me. I wonder whether we can speak of a
generally valid esthetics for large segments of history.

JAUSS

An esthetics which remains completely on the reflexive level and is related to the
concept of the work of art and limited to a history of the beautiful is certainly not
suited to all the historical manifestations of art: it fails not only in regard to nonEuropean traditions, but even in regard to the greater part of medieval art and
literature.That is why I am attempting to compare a history of esthetic experience
with the history of esthetic ideas, a theory of the reception of works of art with
ontological esthetics, identification-models of the collective consciousness on the
prereflective level with the development of models on the reflective level. Not all
manifestations of art exist in a perceptible historical continuity. When this continuity
is interrupted or non-existent, even classical diachronic hermeneutics are of little
use to us, and we must employ systematic approaches, or that which I should like
to call "synchronic hermeneutics." In a recent book on the old-French epic, Alfred
Adler illustrates how a semantic anthropology can be utilized as an hermeneutic
instrument. Levi-Strauss'"logique du sensible" achieves an hermeneutic function
when it concerns itself with tracing genetically unrelated epics back to mirror-image
or contrastive-image relationships that illuminate a past intellectual horizon which is
obscure to the modern reader. (The ambivalent relationship of Charlemagne to
Roland, for instance, is explained when we understand that Roland is allowed to be
only a nephew of the Emperor,although he is in reality the latter's incestuous son.)
That which cannot be explained by diachronic understanding supplied by tradition
can be explained by synchronic hermeneutics through combinations of symmetrical,
asymmetrical, or reversible relationships among contemporary works. Hermeneutics
and structuralismno longer appear here as inimical methodologies.

LEWIS

Could we elaborate the polemical side of some of your remarks on the contemporaryscene? One concept, in particular,seems to be crucial in your own work and has
also become prominent in some of the work of the French semioticians, or postsemioticians-the concept of pleasure. Could you, in the first place, discuss the
sense of a kind of revalorization of the concept of pleasure in your work? And then,
if it seems pertinent to you, distinguish your own attempt to analyze pleasure as a
part of the esthetic experience from another sort of revalorization of pleasure that
seems to be taking place precisely within the Tel Quel group that you have criticized? I'm thinking there of the notion of plaisir du texte as articulated, for example, by Sollers and Barthes.

JAUSS

For art history today, that experience of art worthy of theory usually begins beyond
pleasurable behavior, which, as the subjective side of art-experience, is generally
left to psychology (that has little interest in it). The sharpest criticism of all pleasurable art experience is in the posthumous esthetic theory of Theodor W. Adorno,
who attacks all enjoyment of art as false consciousness of the late-capitalistic consumer culture. Adorno, and the currently popular esthetics of negativity, stand in a
long tradition of puritanicalhostility towards art, which connects such mighty names
as Plato, Augustine, Rousseau, and Kierkegaard.It is possible to conclude indirectly
from this secular polemic that esthetic pleasure in the history of esthetic experience
has not been perceived as a mere sign of adaptation but, again and again, as an
element of anarchy and rebellion against order or domination. According to my
theory, pleasurable behavior, which art releases and makes possible, is therefore
the primordial esthetic experience. But I think it is important to regard esthetic
pleasure as release from as well as becoming available for something. Pleasure in
the esthetic object assumes the negation of everyday practice: the acting subject
must become spectator, listener, observer, reader, in order to achieve esthetic enjoyment; he must loose himself from the constraints of habits and interests in order
to perceive an object esthetically, or to identify with the represented action.

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I suppose this means that, among other things, you would be using the concept of
esthetic pleasure polemically in opposition to a strictly formalistic reading of literature or analysis of art?
In this opposition I am on Barthes'side and approve, in particular,of his criticism of
those who believe that all esthetic pleasure is ideology. I doubt, however, whether
the difference Barthesdescribes between plaisir and jouissance can be upheld as an
actual opposition of affirmativeand negative esthetic pleasure. Barthes seems interested in only the "real" negative pleasure of "rupture," which he separates from
merely affirmativeor cultural enjoyment (plaisir) as an elite attitude, without recognizing that this latter enjoyment can also have an intersubjective and social function. This explains why, although Bartheswants to project an esthetics that is based
on the enjoyment of the recipient, he is not able to honor this claim. He stresses
the "insular character" and the "asocial nature" of pleasure in the reading process
so simplistically that the activity of the reader-and with it the dialogue between
reader and text-is lost. The "plaisir du langage," which stands in the center of
Barthes' apologia, seems to me to be merely the typical pleasure of the lonely
philologist who has forgotten the possible social function of art. I should like to
expand the apologia of esthetic pleasure to a theory of esthetic experience which
comprises the three origins of esthetic pleasure: the productive consciousness creating the world as its own work; the receptive consciousness grasping the possibility
of comprehending the world differently; and finally, the agreement with a judgment
demanded by a work or the identification with predetermined and further-to-be
defined norms of behavior.
If I understand the kind of criticism that you're addressing to the contemporary
avant-garde, you seem to be saying that the activity of the avant-garde would tend
to be essentially destructive rather than creative?
Destruction would not be an objection, if it did not end as the sanction of isolated
esthetic pleasure which is good only for a lonely spectator. This esthetics of negativity cannot require that art achieve a communicative, let alone a revolutionary,
function. As long as an esthetic theory such as that of Adorno or of the Tel Quel
group is not in the position to describe esthetic activity within intersubjective categories, it will remain individualistic and idealistic from the onset, even if it acknowledges materialism.
You have spoken of your own polemical position in terms of a general oppositionone exceedingly vast in its implications-between hermeneutics and semiotics. You
appear to see both a clear-cut opposition between semiotics as we have come to
know it over the past few years, as a study of what we might term covert structures, and a hermeneutic position which is seeking to uncover the covert structures
that are simply inaccessible to a rudimentary semiotics oriented around language.
At the same time, you also spoke of a certain possibility for conciliation of semiotics
and hermeneutics. I wonder if the meeting ground which you envisage would be the
opening on to Freud that you were speaking of. It would appear that in what recent
French semiotics terms the "expansion of semiotics," semiotics as a discipline is trying to open up its own enterprise, not simply to a Freudiandiscourse, but to include
a broadly conceived field of communication as well. The kind of semiotics to which
you have objected may be disappearing, and semiotics, as it expands, propelled in
the main by a rereading of Freud (in and outside of France), may well be opening
up to questions which you consider vital. I wonder if you can elaborate on the
potential for such a reconciliation between semiotics and your own hermeneutics?
Your suspicion is correct. In discussions at Columbia with Julia Kristeva, I agreed
that the gap between semiotics and hermeneutics could be bridged through a new
reception of Freud. If a new semiotics wants to open itself up to the intersubjective
aspects of communication, it need not begin its work at point zero. It would need,
first of all, to recognize the excellent interpretation of Freud by Paul Ricoeur, who
has taken decisive steps to mediate the argument that is being waged in France between semiological and hermeneutic exegesis, as well as the argument that has
flared up in Germany between ideological criticism and hermeneutics. Semiotics
could take over from Ricoeur the theory of ambiguous language (a differentiation
of the relationship of meaning to thing and the relationship of meaning to meaning). On the other hand, the FrankfurtSchool of criticism and the Marxist ideological critics could learn from Ricoeur how the two "interpretationsof interpretation,"
specifically the reconstruction of meaning and the destruction of illusions of consciousness, complement each other methodologically in an overlapping hermeneutic reflection. Like Ricoeur in France, Alfred Lorenzer in West Germany has introduced a new reading of Freud, of which our French friends have apparently taken
no notice as yet. This new "German Freud," especially Lorenzer's theory of "the

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understanding of the scene," appears to me to be no less important than the

"French Freud" (Lacan). If the new semiotics is serious in its desire to reestablish
the subject within the structure or, as Julia Kristevaput it in an Hegelian formulation, to recreate the substance as subject, it should consider such research.
Another way of stating the opposition might be simply to consider the object of a
so-called new semiotics. The current expansion of semiotics seems to embrace the
study of polyvalent meanings and even evidences interest in the "genesis" of meaning. Yet there would seem to remain a significant difference between a semiotic
outlook and an hermeneutic outlook, if only because the semiotician feels that he
has to protect in his enterprise something that was acquired at an earlier stage.
What is being sustained derives from the critique of consciousness, the critique
of the notion of origins, and the critique of structures of power to which you referred a moment ago. Some semioticians appear to maintain a suspicious attitude
toward hermeneutics on the basis of an assumption that the hermeneutician must
be protecting a heavy investment in the notion of human subjectivity and in origins
as such. Perhaps this opposition has to do with an absolutely fundamental conception of language or expression, with the status of the subject in relation to language.
In any case, as hermeneutics and semiotics grapple with the problem of the subject,
the question arises as to which of these two disciplines is ultimately capable of including the other. Which discourse used to expose what is hidden in the work of
art will ultimately be able to claim epistemological priority? Do you perceive the
hermeneutic discourse as primary, as one that will be ultimately in a position to
provide an account of the semiotician's work, whereas the semiotician will not be
in a position to provide an account of yours?
Your questions touch upon the central misunderstandings which inhibit the opening of the new semiotics to the new hermeneutics. The first thing to be said is that
the new hermeneutics is no longer primarilyinterested in the subjectivity of understanding (the relationship of the interpreter to the other ego of the author), but
rather in the intersubjectivity of communicative processes. Secondly, it is an old
and apparently indestructible misunderstanding of hermeneutics that it is corrupted
by the myth of "origins." Gadamer has explained, in his theory of the fusion of
horizons, that the concern of hermeneutics is precisely not the reconstruction of
the original or "first" meaning of the text; rather it is the establishment of the
difference and the temporal interval between the code of the author and the code
of the recipient, i.e., between the code of the first reader and that of the current
one. It seems to me, moreover, that the myth of "origins" has become the prey
of that semiotics which establishes the text or the 6criture as the first and unquestionable beginning. Last, in answer to your question concerning a primarydiscourse
of hermeneutics, it cannot be anything other than that dialectic of question and
answer to which I referred earlier. Semiotics must also avail itself of this dialectic if
it wishes to comprehend the text as a dialogical structure and no longer as a
causa sui.

LEWIS

One last question. To what extent do you see the hermeneutic tradition to which
you were referring turning back upon itself and constituting a critique of its own
enterprise? What kind of changes in the orientation of hermeneutic research might
you anticipate as your enterprise proceeds to assimilate the tools of other enterprises that you are able to dominate conceptually? I have in mind both psychoanalysis and semiotics.

JAUSS

I see, above all, three interesting possibilities for a future development of a theory
and for empirical research which uses semiotic as well as hermeneutic methods:
(1) Hermeneutics has been developing new methods to examine overt and repressed
traditions since the Gadamer-Habermasdebate. I hope that ideological criticismwhich to date has itself remained ideological-will admit its so far unacknowledged hermeneutic assumptions and include them in self-reflection. (2) The progression from the classical hermeneutics of texts to a new hermeneutics of intersubjectivity could lead to a new area of research in the still inadequately developed
theories of the act of speaking and linguistic games, in "new rhetorics," and also
in the barely explored field called "Pragmatics,"with which linguistics has recently
concerned itself. (3) My personal interest as a literaryscholar is directed towards the
progression from classical esthetics to a modern theory of experience. This includes
the attempt to return from conventional literary history to the still undescribed
history of esthetic experience-an endeavor for which this discussion at Cornell
has provided many new ideas, and for which I should like to thank all participants.

(Translated
by MarilynSibleyFries)

dlocrltlcs /Spring 1975

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