The changes that are currently taking place principally in the theory of art and the theory of interpretation and criticism reflect a deeper change in the arts themselves and, even more broadly, a change in philosophy and science in general. I should say that they were marked by the following features:

   1. a preference for ontologies of flux over ontologies of invariance;
   2. the replacement of assuredly rigorous methodologies by open-ended critical and explanatory practices opposed to a priori constraints on relevance and validity;
   3. the denial that we can legitimate any form of objectivity or epistemic neutrality suited to the sciences or critical disciplines that is not an artifact of our habitual practices or that claims cognitive access to an order of reality not itself constituted in accord with the categories of human understanding;
   4. the admission that human selves--human agents, human cognizers--are themselves emergent and similarly constituted by the enabling processes of history and enculturation;
   5. the further admission that human thinking is profoundly historicized, formed under the conditions of changing history and subject, through its own exercise, to further variable and divergent transformation; and
   6. the recognition that a bivalent logic is not likely to be best placed to service the rigor and objectivity of truth-claims in accord with (i) - (v) and that it must be replaced or supplemented by some accommodation of relativism.


www.uqtr.ca/AE/vol_1/margolis.html