01 Corpus of Research & Doctrine

This lexicon is not a glossary. It's 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.

To speak of recursion in art is to resist the clean arc of interpretation. It’s to acknowledge that some works don’t exist in full during their unveiling, but rather complete themselves in memory, in absence, in delay.

This document delineates Post-Interpretive Criticism as a new genre: with its own philosophical ground, its own ethical stance, and its own practical consequences for institutions, curators, critics, and the future of art writing.

Post-Interpretive Criticism is not merely a reaction—it is a redirection. Emerging in the wake of exhausted interpretive traditions, this genre identifies a rupture in the relationship between art and language.

Art doesn’t end when the lights dim, nor when the object is returned to its pedestal. Its most decisive movements begin after departure, in the strange residue that follows the encounter.