Legitimate judgment in art, the scientific world reversed? Maintaining critical distance in evaluation

Abstract

This article considers affinities between artistic and scientific evaluations. Objectivity has been widely studied, as it is thought the foundation for legitimate judgments of truth. Yet we know comparatively little about subjectivity apart from its characterization as the obstacle to objective knowledge. In this article, I examine how subjectivity operates as an epistemic virtue in artistic evaluation, which is an especially interesting field for study given the accepted relativism of taste. Data are taken from interviews with 30 book reviewers drawn from major American newspapers including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and others. The data reveal that critics invest in a set of strategies to effectively 'objectivize' the subjectivity intrinsic to artistic evaluation, which I refer to collectively as strategies for maintaining critical distance. I argue that the concrete procedures for producing legitimate judgment in the world of art can be usefully compared to the norms for legitimate judgment in science.

Striving for Consensus: How Panels Evaluate Artistic Productions

“…What critics describe here confirms what Hanrahan (2013) discovers in her study of music critics and what Chong (2013) finds about literary reviewing: that art criticism is an evidencebased analysis, "a survey" (Dewey 1934, 320). By providing evidence, critics allow their justifications to be tested by peers.…”

“…Art critics employ a variety of customary rules in order to legitimize their judgment (Chong 2013); for example, critics interrogate their artistic experiences by turning their immediate, spontaneous reactions into an object of scrutiny. The strategy in question is relevant not only to the individual judgment but is also part of group reviewing, where self-interrogation is required from a reviewer by her peers, who expect her to translate her emotions into a reasoned argument.…”

“…De Nooy 1999; Janssen 1997), or music (Dowd et al 2002)-the most recent studies have been engaged in exploring standards and practices of evaluation using an inductive approach. This new work in cultural sociology includes, for example, ethnographic research that concerns how artistic tastes are formed and performed in social interactions (Benzecry 2011;Hennion 2001) or how shared aesthetic judgments tie people together (Wohl 2015), and interview-based analysis of critics' legitimization strategies (Chong 2013). These studies meaningfully contribute to our understanding of how experts and amateurs interact with works of art and how these interactions help them place themselves within larger social groups.…”

Reader and author gender and genre in Goodreads

“…In addition, they may be influenced by factors other than the quality of the work reviewed, such as publisher status and author actions ( Van Rees, 1987;Janssen, 1998). In order to reduce the chance of introducing biases, reviewers may avoid others' reviews of the same book, provide a rational explanation for their decision, and check their work for fairness (Chong, 2013(Chong, , 2015.…”

In the Eye of the Beholder: The Stratification of Taste in a Cultural Industry

“…Finally, I suspect that the ability to switch between systems of valuation—and knowing how and when this is acceptable—is a valuable symbolic resource for cultural intermediaries. Peer reviewers make separate judgments of taste and expertise (Lamont ) and book critics evaluate works based on distinct “civilian” and “critical” readings (Chong ). Although the latter types of evaluation are considered intellectually “pure” because they are distanced from personal preferences, they are also a product of social experience.…”