Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading (Masterlist)

[sqbr]

Or: You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Post Is about You

About the original essay, and the point of all this

I came across the idea of reparative reading on Tumblr and was immediately taken with it. As described in this article:

A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader.

Unfortunately all the discussion I could find was either unhelpfully vague, or in the form of (very positive) reactions to the writings of the creator of the term, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Specifically, to her 2003 essay collection Touching Feeling and the essay "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is about You".

Just as I was deciding if I really wanted to pay $25 US for a book I probably wouldn't be able to understand, I came across the original version of the essay, created in 1997 as the introduction to a book of queer readings, and offered online for free by the publisher: Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You.

I found a online version of the 2003 version of the essay, from a brief skim it's basically identical, minus the parts about the book of essays it used to be an introduction to.

Anyway! I started reading and it was interesting but I started getting overwhelmed by all the unfamiliar terms and concepts, and so I'm going to try summarise it as I go like I did with confusing academic papers during my Phd. Which may or may or not end up helpful for anyone else but will hopefully at least help me!

I was going to do this as one post but then looked at how long it had gotten for just the first 7 pages of 35 and went AH. OK THEN. TIME FOR A MASTERLIST.

My understanding of the meanings of various terms

accretive: produced by or growing by a series of additions of identical or similar things

affect (noun): The emotional aspect of what causes us to take an action

affective: relating to emotion

aporia: an intellectual puzzle, or contradiction

contingency: something that might or might not happen, depending on circumstances

deontological: Judging things as right or wrong by a set of rules instead of their consequences.

enjoin: to be forced to do something

epistemology: a philosophy concerned with knowledge

fantasmatic: Phantasmal, incorporeal

genius loci: the spirit of a place, or the 'vibe'.

hermeneutic: a way of understanding the world, along with forms of interpretation and communication

hermeneutic of suspicion: a style of literary interpretation in which texts are read with skepticism in order to expose their repressed or hidden meanings.

inchoate: in an early or imperfect stage of development

jouissance: Joy, but in a kinda sexy way

le vouloir-être-intelligent: French for "I want to be smart". A quote from Barthes.

morcelé: French for "divided", comes up in Lacan's theory of the fragmented body (corps morcelé) which I'm not even going to try and understand.

mimetic: representing or imitating something

nonce: relating to the current moment

obiter dicta: an aside separate to the main argument being made

père de famille: 'Father of the family', a famous French play.

phenomenological: to do with the philosophy of experience and consciousness

problematic (noun): a thing that creates questions?

reflexive: multiple meanings, mostly involving an object acting on itself or being about itself etc.

reification: to conceptualise something abstract or variable as concrete and immutable.

rubric: classification, or set of rules

strong (affect) theory: a broad, compelling way of viewing and interacting with the world which relies upon and encourages a specific affect/emotion.

tautological: vacuously true by definition.

tropism: to turn towards or away from something, as a plant turns towards light.

weak (affect) theory: a way of viewing and interacting with the world which only describes/offers guidance on a small range of things, and has little overall effect on decision making and worldview.

Posts:

The section divisions are my own, and page numbers those in the PDF I linked.

• Pages 1-7: Introduction, An inspiring conversation, The hermeneutic of suspicion, Paranoia and it's relation to queerness
  
• Pages 7-21: Some thoughts now I'm partway through, Alternatives to the hermeneutic of suspicion, The nature of paranoia
  
• Pages 21-35: The problem with paranoia, Beyond paranoia, Where to for queer readings?, Description of the individual essays, Conclusion (Sedgwick), Conclusion (me)
  

I am sure to have misunderstood and/or poorly described things, and I am very open to differing perspectives, especially from people who actually understand this stuff properly. Like if someone can tell me what 'a problematic' actually is...

(the masterlist thing is something I do on alias_sqbr for reaction posts, but I can see it working for this, too)

Comments

[winterbird]

I'm having very sudden and visceral memories of doing queer theory back in the late 90s and early 00s reading through all of this, lol, and I looked up the book Touching Feeling and it is indeed queer theory.

It's a great concept though, re: reparative reading. I mean it's good to have a term for it. Especially since it's one that sort of conveys its meaning pretty well without being too sort of opaque in the words themselves. The paranoid reading is interesting too. In media studies we also had 'oppositional reading' and 'hostile reading' and a whole bunch of other defined methods of reading, but queer theory always made this stuff so much more interesting.

But also *hugs* for the brain breakage that comes with jargon + queer theory + 'this is interesting but that paragraph was OOF.'

[sqbr]

hugs thank you!

In media studies we also had 'oppositional reading' and 'hostile reading' and a whole bunch of other defined methods of reading

Yeah, she assumes the reader is familiar with stuff like that which I am not, but maybe I'll look into it.

[scytale]

*camps in your masterlist*

I am looking forward to this a lot! I just ran into this concept as well and found it fascinating as well; it hadn't occurred to me to look up the source though.

problematic (noun): a thing that creates questions?

This is fascinating to me, because obviously fandom uses the term in a very different sense.

I'm also generally curious about your method of summarizing confusing academic papers; it's always nice to see how other people organize and make sense of information.

[sqbr]

I'm also generally curious about your method of summarizing confusing academic papers

I write for a very specific reader: me, in a year, at one in the morning, with a headache, desperately needing to relearn these concepts as quickly as possible before a deadline. I look at each sentence and go "Will that reader actually understand this? Will they be irritated by the unnecessary verbiage? Is there anything important they'll be missing because they've forgotten the original context?"

You can likely imagine the circumstances which led me to settle on that particular imaginary reader, but they have served me well in the 20 years (!! /o\ ) since then. Remembering all the times I have been that reader, or something like it, is very motivating. And then if it's not actually just for me I do a second pass to add extra context my expected audience might plausibly need. Which in this case wasn't much, just explanations of a few mildly obscure terms I happened to already know.

[ember_keelty]

This is fascinating, and your dissection is a lot easier to read than trying to dive in head-first myself would likely be (though I should probably try to do that eventually too X_X)

[sqbr]

I'm really glad it's helpful! There's definitely some good stuff in there I didn't capture very well, good luck if you do dive in.

This is exceptionally helpful!

[jesse_the_k]

Because you're modeling such thoughtful scaffolding for future-fuzzy-you.

I'm dealing with more cognitive losses these days and points at the ceiling and the floor simultaneously you're showing me a way to deal.

Re: This is exceptionally helpful!

[sqbr]

I'm really glad this is helpful! Doing a Phd with worsening chronic fatigue was definitely a crash course in writing information aimed at fuzzy brained future me.