In addition, people have one agenda when they read a work for the first time, and very different ones, when they reread. Developing a strong interpretation requires being very conscious of all of these processes and changes in reading, understanding individual responses better by comparing them with others, and thus seeing multiple interpretive possibilities. But what may at first sight have seemed like a disadvantage, in comparison with our normal modes of perception, may now seem to offer distinct advantages, in so far as it permits a process through which the aesthetic object is constantly being structured and restructure. As a recreative mode, critical interpretation participates in an endless process of translation and readjustment by which a culture takes possession of its texts. Interpretation is thus promoted from its subordinate position within the traditional literary paradigm, to an active participator in the process of cultural negotiation.
Interpretation opens a space of conflict and variation, negotiated differently by every reader.
By reading we uncover the unformulated part of the text, and this very indeterminacy is the force that drives us to work out a configurative meaning while at the same time giving us the necessary degree of freedom to do so. Through gestalt-forming, we actually participate in the text, and this means that we are caught up in the very thing we are producing. This is why we often have the impression, as we read, that we are living another life. However, this position is not entirely nonprogrammatic, for it can only come about when existing codes are transcended or invalidated. Our knowledge of our behavior can become available only through language and thought.