Language as a Blade: The Ethics of Precision in Post-Interpretive Criticism

Abstract

Language as a Blade The Ethics of Precision in Post-Interpretive Criticism

A Treatise by Dorian Vale

Language reveals. But it also wounds.**

In this incisive treatise, Dorian Vale turns his attention to the sharpest tool in the critic’s arsenal — language — and the quiet violence it enacts when left unchecked. Language as a Blade explores the ethics of writing in the context of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC), exposing how words can either guard a work’s sanctity or slit its meaning wide open.

Vale develops the central premise that all criticism leaves a mark — but not all marks are made in reverence. The essay introduces critical concepts such as The Interpretive Incision, Lacerated Presence, and Forensic Reading, arguing that even well-meaning interpretations can displace, distort, or dominate the very thing they claim to witness. Through this lens, the work becomes not a subject to be carved open, but a body to be held — with care, clarity, and ethical precision.

Language as a Blade is not a rejection of criticism, but a reframing of it as custodial labor. Vale calls for a new art-critical vocabulary that replaces spectacle with stewardship, analysis with attention, and cleverness with moral proximity.

This treatise is a foundational text within the Post-Interpretive Movement, sharpening the very language we use to approach art, and reminding critics: every word is a blade. Use it as if the wound remains.

Vale, Dorian. Language as a Blade: The Ethics of Precision in Post-Interpretive Criticism. Museum of One, 2025. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17052152

Dorian Vale is a chosen pseudonym, not to obscure identity, but to preserve clarity of voice and integrity of message. It creates distance between the writer and the work, allowing the philosophy to stand unclouded by biography. The name exists not to hide, but to honor the seriousness of the task: to speak without spectacle, and to build without needing to be seen. This name is used for all official publications, essays, and theoretical works indexed through DOI-linked repositories including Zenodo, OSF, PhilPapers, and SSRN.

This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and Art as Truth: A Treatise (Q136329071), Aesthetic Recursion Theory (Q136339843)

Language as a Blade, Dorian Vale, Post-Interpretive Criticism, ethics of art writing, language and trauma in art, art and violence, descriptive precision, critical restraint, moral aesthetics, semiotics in art criticism, ethics of naming, language as wound, poetic accuracy, reverent writing, critical interpretation ethics, witness-based criticism, presence in criticism, aesthetic linguistics, post-linguistic art theory, interpretive violence, art writing and harm