reception history
Reception history is the grim pastime of tracing how ideas and artworks throughout the ages are fawned over, exalted, or beaten into the ground by the masses. Its true aim is to pilfer the scoreboard of ideological tug-of-war from past critics, under the guise of scholarly inquiry. It delights in lining up the ecstatic praises of believers and the furious rejections of exiles on a single timeline—a veritable circus of academia. Beneath its lofty theoretical paraphernalia, reception history is nothing but a festival of biases paraded as erudition.