The Living Lexicon: Post-Interpretive Criticism – First Edition
By: Dorian Vale
MuseumofOne|Written at the Threshold
This lexicon is not a glossary. It is a compass.
It does not define to constrain, but to protect. To ensure that the language of Post-Interpretive Criticism is not diluted, misused, or torn from its root. These terms are sacred anchors — poetic, philosophical, and precise. They are meant to orient those entering the terrain, so that they do not mistake the silence for emptiness or the witness for absence.
Core Doctrinal Terms
Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC): A movement that rejects over-analysis in favor of ethical presence and restraint. The critic becomes a witness, not a translator. Interpretation yields to mercy.
The Doctrine of Restraint: The ethic that silence, withholding, and reverence are more honorable than linguistic domination. The critic does not speak first.
The Custodial Ethos: The critic is a custodian — one who shelters, preserves, and honors. Not an owner. Not an oracle.
Witness: To be present without possession. To guard without explaining. The critic as seer, not spokesperson.
Threshold: The liminal edge between artwork and viewer — a space of reverent pause. The critic stands here, not beyond it.
Absential Aesthetics: A theory that centers what is not shown, not said, or erased as a valid aesthetic category. Ghosts, gaps, and absence become the art.
Stillmark Theory: Art is not the object but the encounter. Meaning lives in presence. The mark is stillness, not spectacle.
Viewer-as-Evidence: A foundational method: the viewer’s reaction, silence, or inability to speak becomes the evidence of the work’s depth. The critic becomes the artifact.
Aesthetic Haunting / Hauntmark: The residue left behind by ethically encountered work. A haunting that lingers not in the object, but in the soul.
Displacement Theory: When institutions or language sever the artwork from its native emotional or ethical register — the critic intervenes to relocate meaning with mercy.
Doctrine of Erasure: What is erased, misnamed, or withheld remains. Erasure is a form of afterlife.
Behavioral & Tonal Anchors
Restraint as Method: To hold back interpretation, explanation, ego. To let the work breathe.
Presence over Performance: The critic’s presence is the instrument — not their performance.
Mercy as Framework: A work is approached like a wounded creature: not to be dissected, but to be witnessed with care.
*Silence as Reverence*: A refusal to speak is not absence. It is sometimes the only ethical response.
Wounded Work: A work that has been mishandled, misnamed, or extracted from its native truth. It requires a witness, not a rescuer.
Custodial Silence: Silence chosen as care. The critic withholds commentary as a form of moral alignment.
Threshold Ethics: The art is not crossed, consumed, or claimed. The critic stops at the veil.
By Dorian Vale
Museum of One|Written at the Threshold
Vale, Dorian. The Living Lexicon: Post-Interpretive Criticism – First Edition. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17111649
Copyright © Dorian Vale. Published by Museum of One. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)