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SUSAN SONTA6
attractions, mainly sensual, that have not been brought under the
sovereignty of reason. They
allow
that considerations of taste play
a part in their reactions to people and to works of art. But this
is
naive. And even worse. To patronize the faculty of taste
is
to
patronize oneself. For taste governs every free--as opposed to rote-–
human response. Nothing
is
more decisive. There
is
taste in people,
visual taste, taste in emotion-and there is taste in acts, taste in
morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in
ideas. (One of the facts to
be
reckoned with
is
that taste tends to
develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good
visual taste
and
good taste in people
and
good taste in ideas.)
There is no system in taste, and no proofs. But there
is
some–
thing like a logic of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies
and gives rise to a certain taste. A sensibility is almost, but not quite,
ineffable. Any sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of
a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a
sensibility at all.
It
has hardened into an idea. . . .
To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that
is
alive and
powerful,
l
one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings,
rather than an essay (with its
claim
to a linear, consecutive argu–
ment) , seemed more appropriate for getting down something of
this
particularly fugitive sensibility or taste. It's embarrassing to
be solemn and treatise-like about Camp. One runs the
risk
of
having, oneself, produced a very inferior piece of Camp.
These notes are for Oscar Wilde.
"One should either be a work of
art, or wear a work of art."
-Phrases
&
Philosophies
for the Use of the Young
1. To start very generally: Camp
is
a certain mode of esthetic–
ism.
It is
one
way of seeing the world as an esthetic phenomenon.
1.
The sensibility of an era is not only its most decisive, but also its mOlt
perishable, aspect. One may capture the ideas (intellectual history) and
the behavior (social history) of an epoch without ever touching upon the
sensibility or taste which infonned those ideas, that behavior. Rare are those
historical studies--Iike Huizinga on the late Middle Ages, Febvre on 16th
century France--which do tl"ll us something about the sensibility of the period.