Six Notes on ReadingEN122 2015-2016Paulo de Medeiros

Six Notes on Reading

MatterValueResponsibilityHauntingsFramesCommunity

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 studiesThe New CriticismIntentional Fallacies, Death of the AuthorStructuralismFeminist TheoriesPoststructuralismPostcolonial TheoryCultural CriticismsPost-theory, no theory at allWhy 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 perspectivesHistorical ContextIdeological choicesEpistemological blindspots

reading/ˈriːdɪŋ/nounthe 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 readingConventionsRulesFormsBlind spotsTheory

Theory in the Humanities and Social SciencesTheory in Literary StudiesInterdisciplinarityRefusal of binary logicTheory as a supplement

Against Theory

Paul de Man1986

What is the matter of Literature?– Social constructionWhat is the matter of Theory?– meaningWhat is the matter with Literature?– Competing mediaWhy does Theory matter?– Reading textsHow 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 HoepkerUSA. 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