For Whom Do We Read? - “Reading-to vs. Reading-(be)for(e)” | Leah Price

We always read for. We might have forgotten it since we imagine reading as mainly silent and solitary. But think about how, in a more or less distant past, readers used to read aloud for someone who listened; think about today’s audiobooks; think about the other part of us, in us, that is lending an ear when we apparently read only for ourselves.
We always read for. In other words, there is always an addressee of reading whose place or role could be central to thinking about any politics or economies of reading. There have been many theories of reading - close reading, symptomatic reading, distant, surface, just, or reparative reading, to name just a few. Shifting the emphasis away from the face-to-face between reader and text could open or reopen, in the very act or scene of reading, a space for alterity, for futurity, for responsibility towards the other.
“For Whom Do We Read?” was a two-day conference presented by Economies of Aesthetics Initiative at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, convened by Peter Szendy.
“Reading-to vs. Reading-(be)for(e)” | Leah Price
Conference playlist: • For Whom Do We Read?
Conference bios and abstracts: humanities.bro...
Recorded on October 18 and 19, 2024.