“I used to think so. But I don’t any more. You know, that notion has a history-a rather brief one. To apply the word “interesting” to a work of art was an invention of the Romantic writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and one that seemed very peculiar at first. (Hegel, for example, thought it was not a compliment to say that something was “interesting.”) The notion of “the interesting” is approx- imately as old as the notion of “the boring.” Indeed, it seems to me that “the interesting” presupposes “the boring,” and vice versa. One of the proudest claims of the modernist theatre is that it is anti- psychological. But “the interesting” and “the boring” are psychological categories, nothing more. They are feelings, assumed to be of limited duration, and to be capable of mutating into each other-categories of the solipsistic, narcissistic world view. (They replace “the beautiful” and “the ugly,” which are attributes—hypostasized, quasi-objective, assumed to be permanent.) An “interesting” object has an arresting quality: it seizes our attention, we take cognizance of it, and then let it go. An “interesting” experience is one that has no lasting effect. The notion of “the interesting” arises when art is no longer conceived of as connected with truth. (When truth comes to be reserved for science, for so-called rational inquiry.) In continuing to consider something to be valuable-valuable enough-because it is interesting, we perpetuate a romantic attitude that needs reexamining.”
— Susan Sontag (via hioe)
