preserving

is a matter of holding open that force of disclosure to which the artist already responds in the emergent work, and not to make of the work an object on to which predetermined labels could be fixed.

Respect for its singularity means not forcing the work to be intelligible within the framework of what one already understands, whether that be the reader’s sense of the work’ s social context or of its author’ s thought. To preserve the singularity of the work is a matter of holding open, as it were, that force of disclosure to which, as we have seen, the artist already responds in the emergent work, and not to make of the work an object on to which predetermined labels could be fixed.

preserving, n.All

preserving