abduction of agency

is the loose differential structure used to investigate how art actively acts upon the passive viewer.

Gell argues in Art and Agency (1998) that art actively acts upon the passive viewer with its own brand of agency. The interaction is guided by the abandoning of strict certainty (be that derived from premises (i.e. deduction) or from experience (induction)) for a kind of inferred reasonableness. This loose inferential structure, Gell (via Pierce), calls ' abduction.' For example, the inference that 'the lawn is wet so it probably rained last night' is abductive. Notice that while it is by no means certain in any iron-clad (deductive or inductive) way, it is nevertheless reasonable

abduction of agency, n.All

abduction of agency