The View from Downstream: aesthetic effects of imaginative resistance

Existing philosophical work on imaginative resistance regularly assumes that any impact resistance has on aesthetic judgements is always negative. I challenge this assumption. To do so I illustrate how resistance can cause a reader to undergo one of two changes in the way she engages with a fiction. The first is narrative doubt, a process which I compare to unreliable narration. The second is imaginative alienation, wherein the reader employs a lower kind of imaginative activity when engaging with the fiction. I describe the features of these, and explain how each can affect aesthetic judgements positively as well as negatively. Finally, I argue that even if no change in engagement occurs, there are certain circumstances in which imaginative resistance can have a positive effect on a reader’s aesthetic judgement of a fiction.