Six Notes on Reading
EN122 2015-2016
Paulo de Medeiros
Six Notes on Reading
Matter
Value
Responsibility
Hauntings
Frames
Community
Matter
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned,
and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses
his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
The rise of literary studies
The New Criticism
Intentional Fallacies, Death of the Author
Structuralism
Feminist Theories
Poststructuralism
Postcolonial Theory
Cultural Criticisms
Post-theory, no theory at all
Why theory matters
If the humanities has a future as cultural
criticism, and cultural criticism has a task at
the present moment, it is no doubt to return
us to the human where we do not expect to
find it, in its frailty and at the limits of its
capacity to make sense.
Judith Butler. Precarious Life. 2004.
Personal perspectives
Historical Context
Ideological choices
Epistemological blindspots
reading/ˈriːdɪŋ/
noun
the action or skill of reading.
an occasion at which pieces of literature are read to an
audience.
a particular interpretation of a text or situation.
a figure or amount shown by a meter or other measuring
instrument.
a stage of debate in parliament through which a Bill must
pass before it can become law.
Help Desk
Reading is never just reading
Conventions
Rules
Forms
Blind spots
Theory
Theory in the Humanities and Social
Sciences
Theory in Literary Studies
Interdisciplinarity
Refusal of binary logic
Theory as a supplement
Against Theory
Paul de Man1986
What is the matter of Literature?
– Social construction
What is the matter of Theory?
– meaning
What is the matter with Literature?
– Competing media
Why does Theory matter?
– Reading texts
How does Theory matter?
– Critical reflection and transformative options
Reactionary saviours
(Frank Farrell. Why Does Literature Matter? 2004)
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned,
and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses
his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
Matter and Spirit
Aris Messinis AFP/Getty Images The
Guardian Eyewitness 29.06.2011
Aris Messinis AFP/Getty Images The Guardian Eyewitness
29.06.2011
Thomas Hoepker
USA. Brooklyn, New York. September 11, 2001.
Young people relax during their lunch break along the East River while a huge plume of
smoke rises from Lower Manhattan after the attack on the World Trade Center.
This image happened, in passing, so to speak, when I tried to make
my way down to southern Manhattan on the morning of 9/11. (…)
The second tower of the World Trade Center had just imploded;
estimates of more than 20,000 deaths were quoted and later
discredited. Somewhere in Williamsburg I saw, out of the corner of
my eye, an almost idyllic scene near a restaurant— flowers, cypress
trees, a group of young people sitting in the bright sunshine of this
splendid late summer day while the dark, thick plume of smoke was
rising in the background. I got out of the car, shot three frames of
the seemingly peaceful setting and drove on hastily, hoping/fearing
to get closer to the unimaginable horrors at the tip of Manhattan.
Thomas Hoepker, “I Took That 9/11 Photo”, Slate Magazine,
14.09.2006
Four and a half years later, when I was going through my archive to
assemble a retrospective exhibition of my work from more than 50
years, the color slide from Brooklyn suddenly seemed to jump at me.
Now, distanced from the actual event, the picture seemed strange and
surreal. It asked questions but provided no answers. How could disaster
descend on such a beautiful day? How could this group of cool-looking
young people sit there so relaxed and seemingly untouched by the
mother of all catastrophes which unfolded in the background? Was this
the callousness of a generation, which had seen too much CNN and too
many horror movies? Or was it just the devious lie of a snapshot, which
ignored the seconds before and after I had clicked the shutter?
Thomas Hoepker, “I Took That 9/11 Photo”, Slate Magazine, 14.09.2006
Seen from the perspective of 9/11’s fifth anniversary, Mr.
Hoepker’s photo is prescient as well as important — a snapshot of
history soon to come. What he caught was this: Traumatic as the
attack on America was, 9/11 would recede quickly for many. This is a
country that likes to move on, and fast. The young people in Mr.
Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American.
In the five years since the attacks, the ability of Americans to dust
themselves off and keep going explains both what’s gone right and
what’s gone wrong on our path to the divided and dispirited state
the nation finds itself in today.
Frank Rich, “Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?” The
New York Times, 10.09.2006
With the aid of such images and procedures, man was eventually
able to retain five or six ‘I-don’t-want-to’s’ in his memory, in
connection with which a promise had been given, in order to enjoy
the advantages of society – and there you are! With the aid of this
sort of memory, people finally came to ‘reason’! – Ah, reason,
solemnity, mastering of emotions, this really dismal thing called
reflection, all these privileges and splendours man has: what a price
had to be paid for them! How much blood and horror lies at the
basis of all ‘good things’! . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morality. Second Essay Part
3. 1887
Jonathan Culler. Literary Theory. OUP, 1997
Reading as Poetics, as Hermeneutics and
Politics