In Defense of Reading: Or, Why Reading Still Matters in a Contextualist Age

Suspicion of reading as a lived experience is a consequence of the rhetorical success of a few key arguments that together have defined a critical landscape dominated by various forms of contextualism. Where the contextualist consensus prevails, reading is tacitly or explicitly regarded as an epiphenomenon, inasmuch as the real locus of meaning-creation is elsewhere. The essay analyzes three core contextualist doctrines (about consciousness, history, and the status of the subject) and argues that they need not delegitimate the experience of reading. Rather, in each case the defining assumptions and beliefs of contextualism require attention to reading in order to do their interpretive work. Giving reading its due may also have a corrective function to the extent that contradictions caused by its neglect have thwarted an understanding of issues such as the relation of form and history, the status of the aesthetic, and the disciplinary purpose of the lettered humanities. Recognizing reading as the hidden ground of our critical and theoretical activity can help get us past various conundrums, impasses, and dead ends that haunt our profession.