What you are describing -- "i take it that the
impulse to leave endless wiggle room for the viewer/reader, to
emphasize
what bathes valorized as the readerly text, comes from a now pretty outdated
academic [scholastic] tradition" -- is actually what Barthes called
the writerly text, in which the reader must participate (as a writer does) in
the construction of meaning. A readerly text, on the other hand, is more like
candy. No intellectual input is required. Thus I fail to see how the concept of
a writerly text is outmoded.
Regards,
E. Pigeon