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Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading: Pages 1-7
Masterlist, links, and glossary
Introduction: Pages 1-3
First off: I'm more interested in summary than criticism but it's worth noting that this essay was written in 1997 and is not always great at remembering trans people exist, and the word non-binary literally hadn't been invented yet. Sedgwick uses 'she' for any hypothetical reader, I am going to use 'they'. I'm not always going to explicitly separate my summary of Sedgwick's statements from my commentary upon them, hopefully it will be clear which is which.
Since this was written as the introduction to a book of essays, she starts with the usual Introduction To A Book Of Essays stuff about how the collection came about and how great the essays are.
The vibe of the book is that of a young person who hasn't figured out their identity yet, and reads for important news about themself, not knowing what form that news will take:
The hermeneutic of suspicion is a style of literary interpretation in which texts are read with skepticism in order to expose their repressed or hidden meanings.
The essays do use the methods of 'suspicion', rightly and well. But they can't be understood fully within the traditional suspicion centred approach to queer theory.
Sedwick is going to explore the issue of paranoia and it's alternatives "compromising the nonprogrammatic aesthetic of deontological reticence" of the essays, which...I think means that the essays have all naturally tended to avoid relying on strict rules about right and wrong, but she's going to be a bit more judgemental.
An inspiring conversation 3-4
At the start of the AIDS epidemic, Sedgwick had a conversation with her friend, the activist scholar Cindy Patten. Sedgwick mentioned having encountered conspiracy theories that HIV had been created by the US government, and Patton said, paraphrasing, "What difference would it make? We already know they want black/gay etc people to die."
This approach to knowledge has helped Sedgwick to unpack the separate parts of the baggage called "hermeneutic of suspicion". Patton's comment suggests that someone can have an unmystified, angry view of large and genuinely systemic oppressions without automatically coming to a specific set of conclusions. To hypothetically know that the government created HIV does not automatically mean you have to put all your efforts into exposing that fact, when your energies might be better spent elsewhere.
The hermeneutic of suspicion 5
Sedgwick assumes the reader knows what this is, but I did not!
So! First, Wikipedia's perspective.
A hermeneutic is a way of understanding the world along with forms of interpretation and communication.
The hermeneutic of suspicion was developed in the 1960s. It was named by Paul Ricœur and he considered it an extension of shared themes in Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche.
Hans-Georg Gadamer said "one is always deciding between a hermeneutics of faith (truth) or a hermeneutics of suspicion (method) when engaged in the act of reading". I think what he's saying is that the hermeneutics of faith trusts that the text is trying to explain the truth to us and all we have to do is understand what it's trying to tell us, while the hermeneutics of suspicion thinks the text is lying, and we have to treat it as a puzzle to uncover the real meaning.
Now for Sedgwick's take.
Paul Ricœur intended the hermeneutic of suspicion to be one of several approaches including the philological and theological "hermeneutic of recovery of meaning". But these days in modern US critical theory it's assumed that all you need is the single line from Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche to the hermeneutic of suspicion. Paradoxically, you are not allowed to be suspicious of suspicion, or critical of critical theory.
The hermeneutic of suspicion has become so widespread it is nearly synonymous with criticism itself, but may unintentionally make it harder to unpack the relations between any given piece of knowledge and the seeker, knower, or teller.
This has then ended up privileging the concept of paranoia.
Paranoia and it's relation to queerness 5-7
Freud himself said the persecutory delusions of a patient were uncomfortably similar to his own philosophical theorising. But now being paranoid isn't seen as bad.
Note: She makes some attempt at a distinction between the sort of philosophical paranoia she has issues with and the mental health symptom, but mostly isn't interested in the latter beyond this one mention with Freud.
Ricœur said:
And these days anything but a paranoid, critical stance is seen as naive in the face of an obviously oppressive world, when it should be only one of multiple methods.
Paranoia has a particular connection with queerness and queer studies. Freud etc said paranoia was caused by repressed homosexual desire.
From the late 70s queer theorists flipped this around: What is illuminated by an understanding of paranoia is not how homosexuality works, but how homophobia and heterosexism work- in short, if one understands these oppressions to be systemic, how the world works.
The focus on paranoia spread quickly, in part because paranoia is symmetrical and contagious. It sets a thief to catch a thief by combating guile with suspicion, and suspicion with guile.
It has spread well beyond queer studies, and she's not sure why.
And so the conclusion is that you can never be paranoid enough. But it makes just as much sense to conclude that being paranoid doesn't save you from having enemies. To practice other than paranoid forms of knowing does not, in itself, entail a denial of the reality or gravity of enmity or oppression.
Introduction: Pages 1-3
First off: I'm more interested in summary than criticism but it's worth noting that this essay was written in 1997 and is not always great at remembering trans people exist, and the word non-binary literally hadn't been invented yet. Sedgwick uses 'she' for any hypothetical reader, I am going to use 'they'. I'm not always going to explicitly separate my summary of Sedgwick's statements from my commentary upon them, hopefully it will be clear which is which.
Since this was written as the introduction to a book of essays, she starts with the usual Introduction To A Book Of Essays stuff about how the collection came about and how great the essays are.
Clearly and queerly enough, they share a relaxed, unseparatist hypothesis of the much to be gained by refraining from a priori oppositions between queer texts (or authors) and non-queer ones, or female ones and male.
It might even be true to say that the psychological/political ambitions of many of the essays take the form of a similar series of turns: from the nonsensical but seemingly uncircumnavigable question of how people should feel, to the much harder ones of how they do and of how feelings change
I don't think any of these essays would have been writable- thinkable -before or without the gay/lesbian studies and queer theory movements in literary criticism; indeed almost all the authors, who range from current graduate students to foundational figures in these movements, are steeped in those problematics and sensibilities. Yet what seems least settled is any predetermined idea about what makes the queerness of a queer reading.
The vibe of the book is that of a young person who hasn't figured out their identity yet, and reads for important news about themself, not knowing what form that news will take:
hardly the state of complacent adequacy that Jonathan Culler calls "literary competence," but a much more speculative, superstitious, and methodologically adventurous state where recognitions, pleasures, and discoveries seep in only from the most stretched and ragged edges of one's competence.
If the collection can be said to embody any one, primary premise, it would be that a closer, more respectful attention to past and present queer reading practices-the kind of attention these essays, in their different ways, all embody-will show how the reservoir of practices already in use crucially exceeds the theorizations of a consensual hermeneutic of suspicion.
The hermeneutic of suspicion is a style of literary interpretation in which texts are read with skepticism in order to expose their repressed or hidden meanings.
The essays do use the methods of 'suspicion', rightly and well. But they can't be understood fully within the traditional suspicion centred approach to queer theory.
Sedwick is going to explore the issue of paranoia and it's alternatives "compromising the nonprogrammatic aesthetic of deontological reticence" of the essays, which...I think means that the essays have all naturally tended to avoid relying on strict rules about right and wrong, but she's going to be a bit more judgemental.
An inspiring conversation 3-4
At the start of the AIDS epidemic, Sedgwick had a conversation with her friend, the activist scholar Cindy Patten. Sedgwick mentioned having encountered conspiracy theories that HIV had been created by the US government, and Patton said, paraphrasing, "What difference would it make? We already know they want black/gay etc people to die."
This approach to knowledge has helped Sedgwick to unpack the separate parts of the baggage called "hermeneutic of suspicion". Patton's comment suggests that someone can have an unmystified, angry view of large and genuinely systemic oppressions without automatically coming to a specific set of conclusions. To hypothetically know that the government created HIV does not automatically mean you have to put all your efforts into exposing that fact, when your energies might be better spent elsewhere.
moving from the rather fixated question, "Is a particular piece of knowledge true, and how can we know?" to the further questions, "What does knowledge do-the pursuit of it, the having and exposing of it, the receiving-again of knowledge of what one already knows? How, in short, is knowledge performative, and how best does one move among its causes and effects?"
The hermeneutic of suspicion 5
Sedgwick assumes the reader knows what this is, but I did not!
So! First, Wikipedia's perspective.
A hermeneutic is a way of understanding the world along with forms of interpretation and communication.
The hermeneutic of suspicion was developed in the 1960s. It was named by Paul Ricœur and he considered it an extension of shared themes in Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche.
Hans-Georg Gadamer said "one is always deciding between a hermeneutics of faith (truth) or a hermeneutics of suspicion (method) when engaged in the act of reading". I think what he's saying is that the hermeneutics of faith trusts that the text is trying to explain the truth to us and all we have to do is understand what it's trying to tell us, while the hermeneutics of suspicion thinks the text is lying, and we have to treat it as a puzzle to uncover the real meaning.
Now for Sedgwick's take.
Paul Ricœur intended the hermeneutic of suspicion to be one of several approaches including the philological and theological "hermeneutic of recovery of meaning". But these days in modern US critical theory it's assumed that all you need is the single line from Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche to the hermeneutic of suspicion. Paradoxically, you are not allowed to be suspicious of suspicion, or critical of critical theory.
The hermeneutic of suspicion has become so widespread it is nearly synonymous with criticism itself, but may unintentionally make it harder to unpack the relations between any given piece of knowledge and the seeker, knower, or teller.
This has then ended up privileging the concept of paranoia.
Paranoia and it's relation to queerness 5-7
Freud himself said the persecutory delusions of a patient were uncomfortably similar to his own philosophical theorising. But now being paranoid isn't seen as bad.
Note: She makes some attempt at a distinction between the sort of philosophical paranoia she has issues with and the mental health symptom, but mostly isn't interested in the latter beyond this one mention with Freud.
Ricœur said:
the distinguishing characteristic of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche is the general hypothesis concerning both the process of false conscious- ness and the method of deciphering. The two go together, since the man of suspicion carries out in reverse the work of falsification of the man of guile.
And these days anything but a paranoid, critical stance is seen as naive in the face of an obviously oppressive world, when it should be only one of multiple methods.
Paranoia has a particular connection with queerness and queer studies. Freud etc said paranoia was caused by repressed homosexual desire.
From the late 70s queer theorists flipped this around: What is illuminated by an understanding of paranoia is not how homosexuality works, but how homophobia and heterosexism work- in short, if one understands these oppressions to be systemic, how the world works.
The focus on paranoia spread quickly, in part because paranoia is symmetrical and contagious. It sets a thief to catch a thief by combating guile with suspicion, and suspicion with guile.
It has spread well beyond queer studies, and she's not sure why.
'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you' ... is so indelibly inscribed in the brains of us baby-boomers that it offers us the continuing illusion of possessing a special insight into the epistemologies of enmity('epistemologies' are philosophies of knowledge)
And so the conclusion is that you can never be paranoid enough. But it makes just as much sense to conclude that being paranoid doesn't save you from having enemies. To practice other than paranoid forms of knowing does not, in itself, entail a denial of the reality or gravity of enmity or oppression.