Introduction: Assembling an Ethics of Reading

Abstract

Iwant to start with two related claims, neither of which may be true: (1) nobody reads literature anymore; (2) nobody conceptualizes reading anymore. My first claim exaggerates a line of argument that holds that during the 1980s the disparate practices that continue to be grouped under the rubric of the English department shifted away from literature and toward theory. I consider my second claim to be an effect of the first. That is, as focus shifted from literature to theory—and theory can be defined here as the study of the production of subjectivities—reading first became a subject of an intense theoretical debate that eventually dissipated so much that reading is no longer considered a useful term. Reading, as a site of theoretical investigation, now seems hopelessly retrograde at best, and politically naive at worst. For many, reading has come to serve as a synonym for a kind of close textual attention that is oblivious to the social, historical, and material conditions of literary production. In short, reading is no longer hip. Worse, mentions of such concepts as “response” and “ethics of reading” may throw up warning signs for many a reader fearful of a nostalgic return to such 1980s horrors as asymmetrical haircuts and “reader-response” criticism. Nevertheless, in what follows I argue that a reformulated concept of reading—focused on an ethics of response that is not just literary—can be a focal point for considering the role that literature plays in the production of subjectivities both inside and outside the academic world.