Intentionalism, Anti-Intentionalism, and Aesthetic Inquiry: Implications for the Teaching of Choreography

Abstract

One of the most heated debates in modern literary and aesthetic theory concerns the relevance to criticism in general, and to interpretation specifically, of information about an author/artist's intentions in creating a particular work. This intentionalist/anti-intentionalist debate is an important one for dance educators to examine and discuss with students, since teachers' beliefs about the relevance of an artist's intentions determine in large part the way they interpret and judge dances (and other works of art), and mentor student choreographers and critics. The critical advice of mentors who hold intentionalist assumptions naturally tends to be quite different from the input of those holding anti-intentionalist views.The debate over artists' intentions began in earnest in 1946 with the publication of a provocative and now famous essay entitled “The Intentional Fallacy” by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley. In this work the authors attacked the intentionalist idea that to achieve a valid, or true, interpretation of a work we must ascertain whatever meaning its maker intended it to possess. The essay laid the groundwork for a rigorous anti-intentionalism, which held that works of art and literature are autonomous entities whose meanings are carried entirely by their internal structures and do not depend on the so-called meaning-intentions of their creators.