Reading and care are two concepts which inspire extensive discussions in current research, especially because both of them are perceived to be in crisis and, as a result, reconsidered and re-conceptualized. Despite this fact and despite conceptual overlaps in areas such as attention, affect and attachment, reading and care have not been contextualized or studied in relationship to each other comprehensively. Delving deeper into intersections of reading and care, this article inquires which concepts of reading emerge when it is viewed through the lens of care. Studying the two contemporary American works My Salinger Year and The Book of Form & Emptiness, the _Article analyzes how reading can constitute acts of caring about, caring for, and self-care. This introduces new perspectives on reading as a practice embedded in broader socio-cultural issues it mirrors and participates in, highlighting functions ascribed to reading.

In his essay “Sur la Lecture,” Roland Barthes (1984) expresses his doubts regarding what he calls “Méta-lecture,” or the reading of reading. It is nothing but “un éclat d’idées, de craintes, de désirs, de jouissances, d’oppressions.” My essay proposes that the ideas, fears, desires, jouissances and opressions evoked when discussing reading deserve a closer examination. There should be a systematic discussion about the problems of “Méta-lecture.” The discourse about reading has its own problems, tropes, and ways of expression. Regardless of where or in what context a text about reading is written, it faces the same fundamental problems in regarding its subject: reading is a black box. Some may even doubt the existence of a common conceptual intersection in the spectrum of practices referred to as reading (Honold/Parr 2018). This highlights the essential indefinability of the concept of reading. What reading is in each case can hardly be reduced to a general concept. This indeterminacy is complicated by the difficulties of observation: reading cannot be isolated as such, but can only be observed as it is performed within specific contexts. Furthermore, this act of observation itself involves reading and is thus always self-reflective. In my essay, I demonstrate the strategies employed by texts on reading from different periods (Ickelsamer 1527, Keyn 1803, Moretti 2013, Wolf 2018) to compensate for the indeterminancy of reading.

With the transformation of media in the context of digitization, reading is once again becoming a highly debated topic. Not only are fears being expressed that the end of the ‘Gutenberg Galaxy’ will set back the spread of reading as a cultural technique, but more recent debates discuss the consequences of ‘digital reading’ from pedagogical and neurophysiological perspectives. The aim of this paper is to analyze the media and cultural debates about the consequences of digital reading. The different varieties and reference discourses of the discussion will be distinguished and related to the history of discourses critical of reading. The pedagogical critique of ‘digital reading’ is based on the thesis that it can lead to a diminution of cognitive abilities. The materiality of reading media and the physicality of the reading process are attributed with far-reaching mental and psychological effects. Furthermore, from a culturally pessimistic perspective, the spread of digital reading is seen as a cultural caesura that threatens the ability to think critically and empathize. The central reference discourse for the plausibility of the alleged dangers of digital reading is neuroscientific studies.

_Abstract

In their literary exhibition 13 Morgen, displayed at Kunst im Tunnel (KIT; ‘Art in the tunnel’) in Düsseldorf from March until June 2023, the two authors and artists Thea Mantwill and Jana Buch invited visitors to read at the museum. The exhibition combines literary texts with installation art, visual art, and book design. In conversation, Thea Mantwill and Jana Buch provide detailed insights into what it takes to bring reading to the museum, the reading atmospheres they aim to create, as well as the roles which time, space, and mediality play for 13 Morgen.

Dutiful Reader, or, a Part-Playful, Part-Earnest Experimental Autofiction on the Fascinating and Inexhaustible Subject of How Reading is Variously Learned, Conceptualized and Practiced, which Takes Account of Socio-Political Forces and Historical Change and Whose Mode of Narration is Meandering and Discontinuous, Juxtaposing, neither Arbitrarily nor with Adherence to a Predetermined or Obvious Logic, Autobiographical Fragments, Personal Observations and Reflections, as Well as Extensive Citations Drawn from Diverse Genres and Contexts, to Create a Potentially Unendingly Expanding and Reshaping Narrative-Assemblage Designed to Be Evasive of Prediction and to Generate Increasingly Complex Feedback Loops between the Writerly Text and the Reader, Who Will Encounter during the Course of Her/His/Their Wondrous, Experiential and Transformational Adventure, Inter Alia and in No Particular Sequence, a Child Reading Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat Alone in Bed on a Night His Mother Has Gone Out, Twelve Members of a Jury Reading an Obscene Book Pre-trial in a Room at the Old Bailey, Malcolm X Teaching Himself to Read in Prison by Diligently Copying out the Pages of a Dictionary, Anthropologists, Police Officers and Laypeople Reading Human and Nonhuman Bodies Sometimes with Deadly Consequences, the Second Reading of a Bill in the U.K. House of Commons to Tackle Illiteracy by Introducing a Phonetic Teaching Alphabet, Harlem Renaissance Author Nella Larsen Inspecting the Hands of Children Readers in the Lower East Side Library Where She Worked, and Primary School Teachers Reading Evidence of Terrorism in Poor Spelling, and All of Which Concludes with the Startling Revelation of Why the Cat in the Hat wears White Gloves, Dutiful Reader Having Finally Executed His Duty and Reached the End of the Book.