On Reading Reading

Fundamental Problems of “Méta-lecture”

It is hard to say anything about the process of reading, Barthes argues, because he considers the text, and especially the literary text to be an object with infinite layers and possibilities. What can be observed is nothing but a burst of ideas, of fears, of desires, of delights, of oppressions. Barthes reflections on “Méta-lecture” point to the more general problems of reading reading. Regardless of where or in which context a text about reading is written, it faces the same fundamental problem regarding its subject even if the texts do not evoke this as a problem: reading is hard to observe […]

Digital Reading in the Context of Media-Critical Discourses

The course of digitalization has reshaped how we read, write, and access information. With the change of media, reading has become a highly debated topic. Not only are fears being voiced that the end of the “Gutenberg galaxy” will push back the spread of the cultural technique of reading, but since the beginning of the millennium the consequences of ‘digital reading’ have been problematized by empirical reading research (e.g. Anne Mangen) as well as by pedagogical, neurophysiological and cultural-critical perspectives …

A Memoir of My Reading

I do not know where I was taught to read, or exactly when, or by whom. At the least I reckon that I have been reading for 66 years now, because I am now 71. Although I have many very early memories, including crib and high-chair memories, the oblivescence of my instruction in reading indicates to me that I immediately adopted reading into my inner self, as if it were such a basic part of myself, like my eyes or my limbs, that it had no origin other than my coming into…

Presences We Live By

Rethinking the Eternal Return and Time Lapses between Now and Then from Vico to Arendt

Once upon a time a species called human beings created techniques to measure time. This discovery led to the consciousness of causality. Causality led to certain observable effects becoming predicable and recorded by lines and letters in various material manifestations…

Post-Debt

A Student Loan Retrospective

Whenever anyone asks me why I kept signing the promissory notes that eventually led to a student loan debt that was just short of $265k when it was forgiven—almost ten times the current average—I refer to childhood memories of my maternal grandmother…