PTE Reading MC Single Answer
Read the passage and answer the question by selecting the correct response from the options below.
The ethical quandaries surrounding issues of subjectivity and the interpretation of art often revolve around the questions of who is representing, who is represented, and who is looking; and around how these dynamics produce and reproduce visual systems of power on the basis of gender, race, and libidinal desire. On a slightly different trajectory, phenomenology interrogates how we interpret in the first place. Though it presumes that the artwork and the spectator situate one another within a shared network of sense, this is not to say that information is easily communicated between them. The viewer’s task is not to ascertain the artwork’s objective meaning, but rather to respond to the artwork with the question, ‘how does this artwork mean to me?’ The ethical charge of this questioning lies in its acknowledgment that the meaning of the artwork is not inherent but rather presents itself to the spectator, historian, or critic through the body’s actions, reactions, or non-actions. The meaning may be either enabled or encumbered by the viewer’s response to the artwork.
What is the author’s main purpose in this paragraph?