7026 Poetics Today / 24:4

‘‘Between Thing and Theory’’ takes up perennial problems of critical thought and interpretation, particularly as they pertain to the relation between history and aesthetic judgment. The inconclusiveness of aesthetic judgment is perhaps its primary attraction, challenge, and vexation. Aesthetic works are the products of deliberate human imaginative effort and thus reflect the traces of other consciousnesses in some way. Beholders of such works often seem compelled to respond, ‘‘as if,’’ in Derek Attridge’s (1999: 25) words, the work under consideration ‘‘demanded a new work in response.’’ The difficulty has been in locating the grounds of interpretation—the nature of the demand. Is such a ground to be found in the originating consciousness, the work itself, the interpreter, or the historical context within which the work was produced and is apprehended? One goal of critical thought over the long history of Western culture has been to answer