VI. (Re-)Evaluations: (Why) Do Reception Studies Matter?

Extract

There has been a paradox at the centre of much of the discussion in this book. On the one hand, much of the material analysed and the issues raised have been shown to be central to public, artistic, political, and cultural processes. In some cases (for example, Chapter 3) there has been direct tension between appropriation of classical referents for political or social purposes and the demands of the independence and integrity of scholarship. Related tensions may also arise when appropriation has commercial rationales. Educational appropriation, too, is selective and may have a strongly instrumental focus. On the other hand, I have urged caution in the face of the idea that the arts have a decisive function as shapers or transformers of consciousness, although they are a constituent part of broader social and cultural fabrics. Accordingly, I have suggested that there are necessary distinctions to be made between the heightening of sensitivity or awareness on the part of individuals or groups who ‘receive’ and the translations of this awareness into considered action (whether personal, social, or political). I have tried to show that any kind of appropriation for instrumental effect is necessarily two-edged and needs to be subject to scrutiny. Scrutiny identifies both commonalities and differences between the source text and the refigured text, subjecting both to contextual analysis, to investigation of the silences and marginalia embedded within them, and to judgements about the mediations between ancient and subsequent receptions (including not only artistic conduits and adaptations but also the nature of the media involved).